Quote Originally Posted by askthepizzaguy
The hardest Roman faction depends on your style of play as they are virtually identical. You don't necessarily HAVE to expand in the direction you are told to.

Try this:
As the Bruti or the Scipiones, expand in the direction of the other two factions, and box them in. (Havent' tried it with the Julii. I don't think you can do it fast enough)

Once you capture all their usual provinces, and you have them boxed in by your territory, keep them helpless by bribing their troops and using them against their enemies, expanding your territory.

So, if you are the Bruti, expand quickly into Sicily and trap the Scipiones. Send a diplomat north and bribe the Julii stacks that you can, and attack Gaul with those. To make it even harder on yourself, attack Greece simultaneously.

This is the challenge for those who think the game is too easy. Try playing as the entire Roman empire at once.

This is the most difficult way to play. So I would say it is a toss up between the Scipiones and the Bruti.

If you play as you are supposed to, I say the Bruti have the harder beginning game.

Oh yes, you can box them in playing the Julii. The path is quite simple actually, head to Salona, sail to Sparta before they build a wall and race to Byzantium.
Ideally, you'll want to hold Sparta+Corinth (and Athens) in the south and Bylazora/Tylis/Byzantium in Northern Greece.

In my latest campaign, everything went so smoothly that the Brutii never set a foot in Greece, I owned every city there even before the civil war.
Scipii hold the whole of Sicily (I kicked the out of Italy), while the Brutii established a African empire on the ruins of Carthage and Numidia.