Playing M/M as Romani, haven't had any real "hard" battles just yet. One battle against Carthage was a bit tough (outnumbered by a thousand men on Huge scale), but they were mostly Poeni Citizen Militia so the enemy army crumbled pretty quickly. Ended up losing about 25% of my army before healing was factored in (which brought back about 25% of my losses, too). I was very happy that the AI kept its phalanx units in a reasonably straight line, and actually managed to punch through my lines with its cavalry at one stage. If they had better units I would certainly have been in more trouble...

But then the Romani campaign is fairly easy - one of the only factions to have a positive income at the start Might try a different faction, see what else has changed...