hard bandits

[Marcus Caelius]

This is my problem, i prefer to fight my main battles on hard, but this makes bandits a real pain in the butt. On hard level, auto-resolving battles is just too damaging. As carthage i auto resolved a battle against 4 libyan spear bandits with two sacred bands and two poeni and some skirmishers and a general and lost about half my army.

Obviously if i'd fought them by hand, it would have been easy and i would have lost about 10 men, but i simply cannot be bothered hand-fighting every battle against bandits. As a result i have been playing campaigns on medium battle difficulty, but i feel i am losing out of a challenge here because of laziness.

Surely you VH/VH mavens don't handfight every bandit that comes your way? What do you do?

[Garvanko]

Build an army of skirmishers. Use it to tackle rebels.

[matteus the inbred]

Build an army of skirmishers. Use it to tackle rebels.

Yeah. In the experience of myself and some of my mates, the AI will usually do its best to kill off all your best troops including elephants if you autocalc. Could use one-off mercs under a decent general as well, I suppose, unless that's financially unfeasible. Doesn't matter if they all get killed cos then you don't have to pay them any more...

[Severous]

I hand fight every battle. Currently playing Eqypt on vh/vh.

Might take me a week to play a turn.

[Dominii]

Bribery, lots and lots of bribery

If that isnt possible, or occasionally doesnt work, either attack them once every turn (if you leave them alone for more than 2 turns, you see devastation patches on your land) which will keep them moving and hopefully into another faction's territory, or fight with a smaller army against them as your units will get valour quicker, the rebels will rout faster and you dont have to worry about being counterattacked afterwards.