Strategy guide for Carthage

[Raphia]

I want to make a Guide for playing Carthage which will cover the basic strategy, campaign guide and unit guide in a nice PDF format. I am just asking the EB community to help contribute with there own tips strategies. While there are lot of strategies/tips there are scattered around the forum. I am just trying to bring them all together. I might do other guides, if this is popular I mnay do other guides.

[bovi]

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=128

[Redmeth]

The ones in the Gameplay Guides subforum are quite old so you'd be welcome to write one. Try and follow historical expansion and aim for realistic army compositions if possible

[Apgad]

Here are some suggestions/observations from my current campaign. You might find them useful.

1. Decide early on if you want to get reformed units ASAP, or if you can wait until they become unconditional. You can save a lot of money by not building the highest level barracks everywhere you go.

2. Use the recruitment viewer to decide where you want to build regional barracks (this goes for any faction, of course).

3. Don't waste time on those settlements half-way into the Sahara. They take time and money to conquer and garrison, with very limited financial return. You may even wish to not bother with those settlements beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

4. If you can take Rhegion early, the Roman will concentrate on taking that city before Sicily. If you can hold them off with pikemen, you can develop your economy in Sicily without having to build walls and barracks everywhere.

5. Massalia is another city conquest to prioritise, as it will further fence the Romans in, is easy to defend, and allows you to recruit Gaesatae.

6. Pay tribute to the Lusotanans to keep them from attacking while you conquer the Mediterranean coast and build up sea trade.

[Morte66]

First know your MICs.

Kart Hadast is your core MIC for top-line factional troops who can fight Ptolies or post-260 Romans, it builds your best native units and has a blacksmith. Consider building up Atiqua if you think you might want a lot of heavy troops in a hurry. Mastia is your best MIC in Spain, for a Punic and Iberian troop combo. Lilibeo is an important secondary MIC for (re)training low-to-medium factional troops in Sicily. Lepki also helps if you choose to hold a defensive position against the Ptolies there. You'll eventually want a MIC somewhere in NW Africa to (re)train armies for rebellions.

After that you depend heavily on regionals. Taras or Rhegium are the key in Italy, you get you Samnite heavy infantry (badass swordsmen) plus Classical hoplites and very cheap skirmishers for garrisons; Rhegium adds some mediocre cavalry but Taras is better placed. Massilia is the place in Gaul, you recruit much better there than elsewhere (good slingers, reasonable spears/swords/cavalry, naked fanatics). Crete (archers) and the Balearic Isles (reasonable slingers and excellent light infantry) are worth considering, depending on how things play out.


Next, economics...

Carthage is a moderate challenge. It's got quite good potential, it's mostly coastal with good trade, reasonable population growth, and some mines to be had. But the distance-to-capital penalties are hard, the corruption will really bite. You need lots of law to control it, so build garrisons, baths, foreign ventures, temples of Baal-Hammon etc. And build/capture a couple of schools, then send your young FMs to them to pick up useful traits and retinue.

It's easy to get a decent economy going because low-end ports are cheap, but it won't get super-rich like a highly-developed empire in Asia Minor where the provinces are practically suburbs of each other and almost every one has mines.


Now, strategy...

There is no one true way to expand with Carthage. You have a variety of options for expansion, and it's probably easiest to pursue each in turn to a logical conclusion. That way you have one field army, you can match/exceed your currently active enemy's numbers, and you are close(r) to your MIC with less need for maritime shipping.

You can expand into NW Africa, which gets you ports and mines. The enemy are heavy on skirmishers, they fight better in the open. You can try to strike rapidly at their cities and fight them in sieges with your melee infantry. Sometimes you will have to fight in the open, so a bit of cavalry is a godsend, but in an emergency your well-armoured Libyan spearmen in loose order will give better than they get against javelin infantry/cavalry. Once you've taken the coast the interior cities are small. But taking them means you don't need to cover the coastal cities against rebellions, and if you get them all in one campaign you won't need to build/move two armies. So give it some thought.

You can expand into Spain, which is rich and full of ports and mines. It's also full of melee infantry that's a match for your non-elite units, often behind quite good walls, and the one adjacent faction that will stay friendly relatively easily (aided by the occasional gift of 100 mnai). Make sure you're hot before you tango. When you do fight here, either avoid the Lusotann and take coastal Eleutheroi or focus entirely on the Lusotann. Don't fight them part time while the EB background script gives them money to build one unit per MIC per turn. Go from peace to full blitz in the blink of an eye.

Sicily is an obvious target. It's rich, it's next to a decent MIC in Lilibeo, it's Eleutheroi who can be fought one at a time without worrying about their other cities sending reinforcements, and if you don't take it the Romans eventually will. Not much to say here.

Gaul is worth having but full of well-armed Gauls and distance to capital penalties, and a long way from your factional MICs. There's a lot to be said for grabbing Massilia early, as it's the one place where you get truly good recruiting, and coming back 30+ turns later when you've built the level 4 regional MIC. It's very defensible in the meantime, and you can get local mercs to buffer your garrison if necessary. It boxes the Romans in if you're on the defensive against them.

The Romans, ah the Romans. The Romans will fight you, and they will keep coming like the Borg spamming endless waves of Triarii and Pedites Extroardinarii from their level 4 MICs and unlimited pool of background script cash (neither of which you get if you actually play them). There is a hell of a lot to be said for invading Italy off the bat, destroying the Romani, and mopping up at leisure. Go for the throat, land an army at Rome by sea. Kill them before they get big, go for the cities with the big MICs first, and drive Epeiros out of Italy while you're at it. Once they're gone, you won't have to pay a full scale field army (or two) just to guard against whoever holds Italy.

Sooner or later you will fight the Ptolemies. They'll expand to your border and start a fight. Once it starts it'll never stop unless you conquer them, such are the joys of the VH campaign setting. They'd be rich even if they were playing by the same rules as you and their army is rock hard, phalangites with Galatian swords and so on in support. They're one army that'll make you glad of a level 5 MIC in Kart Hadast. You can fight a defensive war, ideally at that set of river crossings by Lepki (behind a good pattern of watchtowers). It's quite expensive to maintain an army there to face a strong attack every two years, but probably cheaper than the alternatives. Or you can conquer them, over long supply lines and with huge distance-to-capital penalties anywhere you conquer. Don't start an invasion of Egypt if you can't finish it. A maritime approach, landing a well-supplied army on top of their lightly defended core MICs around the mouth of the Nile, might be best.


Speaking of maritime invasions, there's the sea...

Carthage is the only faction who have any real reason to care about the sea. You don't have to, it's quite possible to work from local MICs (factional or regional) with the occasional rat run between harbours in Africa and Sicily/Spain, but it is rather good fun to run a navy. Play with BI.exe, and you'll get other factions using their navies too. Go on, it's much more fun this way. You can ship celtic slingers and naked fanatics to Africa, and ship elephants or properly armoured spearmen to Gaul, collecting Balearic slingers/skirmishers along the way. You can make bold, devastating, naval landings at lightly defended core cities. You can destroy entire enemy armies without fighting them. And they can do all this to you, so build a fleet to sweep the seas clear and build a good set of watchtowers.

[Apgad]

Excellent advice there Morte!

I'm well into my first Carthage campaign, and that's definitely given me a few new ideas to try