For all those fans of the noble Qarthadastim, I'm starting a guide to surviving in style in the early game. I am still working off of 1.0 because of a very fun current game, but as soon as I'm done with that, I will update the guide to 1.1. AFAIK, there is not a whole lot of difference in the early game for Qarthadast, so most of this information should still be valid.

Game Start

The most important thing for you to do is to Activate the Script!!!!!!!

After you have activated the script, you have two strategic options: instant offensive action or long-term economic savings. I usually prefer the second option since as Qarthadast, you don't have very many enemies around you (actually none at the start).

To start your economic savings plan, begin by deciding what is the minimal military forces that you need to accomplish three core things: public order through garrisons, brigand hunting, and border protection. The areas that need the largest garrisons are in Sicily and Iberia. This is where you have the greatest chance of fighting a war. Normally, all you will need for the early game in terms of garrisons to keep public order is an FM to govern and one or two levy/militia units of around 200-240 (on huge) men each. Your most expensive units, your cavalry and navy, should be disbanded as soon as you don't need them. I usually transport several units from Karthadast and Atiqa to Lilibeo for defence and future needs. I also make sure that all of my cities either already have a governor or can get one in the near future. This means that you may want to keep your navy around for a year or so, but no longer.

After you have disbanded your navy and extra land forces, you should raise your taxes in all cities as high as possible while maintaining public order of at least 100% and population growth of at least .5% in your main cities (Karthadast, Atiqa, Mastia etc.) and at least 1% in the rest of your cities.

On your first turn, you will have more money than you will have for a while, so spend it all on economic buildings. Roads, farms and markets are key, as well as coastal clearings for future ports. You should also make sure that you can recruit units in all of your main areas. This means that after the basic roads, farming and health buildings are queued, you should build the lowest level of MIC where you can train troops. Most of time, this will be a regional MIC, but this should not worry you, as these are often of better quality than your factional troops, especially in Iberia.

Be prepared for a long period of debt or bare neccessity income, sometimes only a few hundred mnai a turn. However, you should be able to raise your income above your first turn budget by the tenth year of this plan. By around 260, you should have around 10000 mnai. An important part of this plan is spending, despite the irony of the name (eg. economic savings). Every turn, you should spend as much as you can on buildings, primarily ones that directly in increase money, with health, pop growth and public order buildings also appropriate. The reason that you want to spend all of your money, is that this way it isn't lost to corruption or future debt. Also, if you use the money immediately, then your economy will reap the benifits quicker.

By around the 260 or 255, you should start thinking about rebuilding your military. Keep in mind that every unit you train should have a specific purpose. So decide where you want to start conquering and only train units for that campaign. Good early targets are Sucum-Murgi, Kirtan, Baikor, Siga and Arse. In Iberia at the start, Baikor has the most troops of these close towns, while Arse has a large wall that is difficult to deal with (at least for your early armies). To take these first targets, you will need at least a half stack for each. However, you can economize and save money by taking these towns in sequence, rather than at the same time. For example, I started by building a small, mostly Carthaginian army with Numidian archers as support which I used to take Kirtan (however, the attack was very costly for me). Once I had taken the town, I quickly built the smallest ship in Mastia and transferred most of the army to Iberia to capture Sucum-Murgi (with the help of locally raised Iberian troops).

A key thing to keep in mind whenever you are deciding which troops to train, remember to check which units are the largest (both for combat and for garrison), which are the cheapest and which units compliment each other. This means that you will want all troop types in your armies. For example, my army which took Kirtan had about 4 Libyan Spearmen, 4 Numidian archers, 2 Carthaginian Citizen Cavalry and 1 general (numbers are approximate). In dealing with North African and early Iberian armies, archers are perfect for taking out the unarmored skirmishers and cavalry. They can be especially devastating if you use the flaming arrow option to scare and kill enemy troops. However, as good as missile troops are, you will need infantry to protect them from the many enemy cavalry that you will encounter in North Africa and Iberia. Also, archers are not as useful against armored soldiers, which is where you will want to use slingers. Slingers can be trained in many places, but for Qarthadast in the early game, the best that you will find are the Balearic Slingers. I found myself training them in groups of 4 or 6 and transporting them to every region of my empire. At 4 units per army, the slingers were able to terribly weaken an enemy force before they even got within javelin range. For my first invasion of northern Italy in around ca. 240, I had 4 Numidian Archers and 4 Balearic Slingers, so that 40% of my force consisted of missile troops.

The other troop type that you want to keep in all of your armies is the Libyan Spearmen and Iberian Scutari. These are almost the same unit, but the Scutari is just a little bit better/more expensive. The great advantage to these units is there ability to throw javelins and use spears to defend against cavalry. Around 4-6 of this troop type accompanied all of my armies. The other great benefit of using Scutari over the Libyans is the greater unit size; 200 as opposed to 160 on huge size. However, the Libyans are recruitable in more regions, make retraining easier.

As far as cavalry goes, the Carthaginian Citizen Cavalry is good for the early stages until you can afford to recruit the Liby-Phoenician Cavalry (which are far superior and can be used even against more elite enemies). However, they are somewhat weak in a melee and can only be trained in the area around Karthadast. In Iberia, the Iberi Curisi are a much better buy. As far missile cavalry goes, I haven't found myself using them that much, but this more of a personal preference, especially since I have distinct memories of the Numidian Cavalry inflicting serious casualties on my troops. However, I usually used my unmounted missile troops to deal with enemy skirmisher cavalry.

For battle tactics, I placed my infantry in a single line with my archers behind and my slingers/skirmishers in front with the cavalry drawn up behind each flank. I have found that if you keep your cavalry behind the infantry line, the AI is much less likely to try to flank you or prematurely attack your cavalry. My general(s) was placed behind the center of my line. If I had two generals, I would space them out behind the line at intervals of a third of the line. I always kept my missile troops on hold ground rather than skirmish to prevent them from moving at the wrong moment. When the enemy came too close to my slinger/skirmisher line, I would manually pull it back behind the main battle line.

That's all for now. I will continue to update as I can or think of new advice.

Feel free to comment, ask questions or give ideas.

Chairman