Hi everyone.

I just recently installed EB having only played vanilla, BI and Napoleonic 2 before.

I had decided that I prefer the factions in vanilla despite some of the cool features in BI ('zerkers) and had been playing Thrace because I like the combination of fairly cheap phalanx units and barbarian heavy infantry. I'm not too confident with cavalry but when I need it heavier I recruit mercenaries. I liked how Thrace was part Barbarian and part Greek so I had solid infantry and stone walls for my cities.
I'm having trouble finding a similar faction in EB, the nearest thing I can find is Ptolemaioi but they have alot of different and expensive phalanx units which complicates things somewhat and they seem to get their heavy infantry (axemen) quite late, also they start off with quite a large empire but I prefer to start off small.

So can anyone suggest a faction which has stone walls, phalanxes and good heavy infantry (preferably the less organised (cheaper) barbarian types using 2 handed weapons)?

normally I would go into custom battle and look at the unit lineup of the various factions but in EB because all the mercenary units are also included I can't tell what is the faction units and what is mercs.