Your house rules for EB

[SwissBarbar]

1. Not to accept every MotH and Promising General - dude, only Sharp/Charismatic/Vigourous ones, or if it fits in some other way into your roleplay.

2. With non-celtic or -germanic factions: no fullstacks

3. With barbarian factions: at the beginning not too much tactical moving, just go forward and slaughter them or get slaughered (of course you try to ambush and stuff)

4. don't just conquer everything for no reason but wanting to rule the world. Think of good reasons why to attack them, defeat them and then bring peace to your land. Dispand parts of your army (they want to go home) and just keep 1 regular defense army back, and wait until you get attacked or RP some other reason after a couple of seasons, to attack another city. Recruit new armies etc.... Mainly: Don't go ahead and roll every region, one by one, down.

5. RP civil wars

[Mooks]

1. Not to accept every MotH and Promising General - dude, only Sharp/Charismatic/Vigourous ones, or if it fits in some other way into your roleplay.

2. With non-celtic or -germanic factions: no fullstacks

3. With barbarian factions: at the beginning not too much tactical moving, just go forward and slaughter them or get slaughered (of course you try to ambush and stuff)

4. don't just conquer everything for no reason but wanting to rule the world. Think of good reasons why to attack them, defeat them and then bring peace to your land. Dispand parts of your army (they want to go home) and just keep 1 regular defense army back, and wait until you get attacked or RP some other reason after a couple of seasons, to attack another city. Recruit new armies etc.... Mainly: Don't go ahead and roll every region, one by one, down.

5. RP civil wars

1) already do that, and only ones below the age of 30

3) I have yet to play a barbarian faction besides pahlava and saba

4) I try to send my veteran troops home. Doesnt always work out so well (Hard not to use silver chevron troops). It does feel good roleplaying that though, sending veterans who have served above and beyond what they were required back to their family and lands.

What are you general excuses for invading lands?

[SwissBarbar]

Follow my AAR I'll update it tonight, and I'm coming up with such an excuse to invade lands

[Mediolanicus]

I think my main rules would be

1 Every army must be in a city, in a fort or laying seige during winter (or summer in arid regions) when possible.
2 Take it slow, don't blitz the map and don't blitz your enemies in war. Only attack when you have a reason (AI always attacks you so there's no shortage of reasons).
3 Use balanced armies. Don't spam slingers, archers, elites, heavy cav,...
Between 8-14 units per army. Full stacks are only allowed in emergencies and the additional units must be levies or cheap mercenaries.
For example: my 2 newest armies in my Romani campaign.
My consular army: General, 1 Velites, 4 Hastati, 2 Principes, 1 Trairii, 1 Pedites Extraordinarii, 1 Equites Extraordinarii.
My Illyrian/Greek army to fight Macedonian fullstacks: General, 2 greek levy archers, 2 Akontistai, 3 Illyrian Thureophoroi, 3 classical hoplites, 2 Illirian Light Cav.
4 Disband your armies in peace time, except for a small defensive force.
5 Use levies as garrison troops.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

For me, these House Rules apply only once the economy is in the black and making a tiny profit each turn. (Priority Number One in every EB campaign is to get the treasury out of debt.)

Rules are:

1. Building up economy (construction) always takes priority over building up the army except when your territory is being invaded.
2. Buy as few troops as possible. Only when you really need reinforcements.
3. Buy troops based on value for money, or to follow historical army composition for your faction. Don't build the best and most expensive troops unless absolutely necessary, or unless the treasury is overflowing and you can afford it easily.
4. Keep taxes as low as possible (especially for small towns). Once making a large profit, lower taxes. Growing town populations always takes priority over higher profits. Towns should always be growing.
5. Manage with as small an army as possible. Let the enemy outnumber you by 1.5 to 1 when planning a battle. If the enemy force has 9 units, attack them with 6 units or less. If your troops are much better than theirs, assume they will be a pushover and let them outnumber you by at least 2 to 1. Only if your troops are much worse than theirs can you have equal numbers as the AI force.
6. If your treasury is overflowing with many thousands of mnai, but you don't have excess population, hire mercenaries whenever possible instead of recruiting troops from your towns. (If you have loads of mnai, why not spend it? And why let your own people die in battle if you can afford mercenaries to do the dying for them?)
7. Don't attack another faction without good reason. Have a clearly defined, and limited aim in mind if you do - not total extermination.
8. Attack Elutheroi as often as you like - these guys are always your enemies. They should be the primary target for most factions at the start of the game.
9. Don't expand beyond your faction's objectives, until all those objectives have been taken first.

[Maion Maroneios]

My house rules are the following:

1. Roleplay. Try to roleplay your characters according to their traits/ancillaries and character in general. This includes simulating civil wars by disloyal/selfish characters.
2. Divide your armies into royal ones (led only by FMs of the Royal Family, not adopted ones), regional (with regional unit compositions, used for defending regions) and skirmishing (for harassing/confusing enemy armies).
3. Never have your Basileus leave too far from your capital, unless he has people of his favor there.
4. Building priorities for conquered regions are as follows: Regional Pacification -> lvl3 government. Afterwards, Katoikiai -> lvl2 government (if there is a good Hellenic population). After that, chose between a military or economically-based region by building the corresponding buildings.
5. All cities must be kept happy (green face) at all costs. This means lowering taxes and building happiness buildings where needed.
6. War is only declared formally on an enemy faction after one of the following reasons: Attack on an ally, attack on a naval/land unit of your faction, siege of [one] of your cities. 'Minor' reasons of aggressiveness from an enemy faction (ie blockade of a port, failed assassination or spying mission) will first be dealt diplomatically. If no solution is found, proceed to answer military.
7. All campaigns of any scale are to be led exclusively by a FM. This includes members of the Royal Family, as well as hired generals and adopted members/marriage candidates.
8. 'Border guard' armies are to be placed in every city that is close to an enemy faction. When borders expand, so do the armies move to protect the new border city-ies.
9. One army has to be present in every region as to efficiently counter any signs of rebellion (spawned armies) and generally to roleplay public order.
10. Every major army is to be accompanied by a diplomat (for any negotiation/bribing along the way), a spy (for scouting for enemy armies and spying enemy cities/fortifications) and an assassin (for killing weak enemy FMs, diplomats, assassins and spies). All agents are to be trained in a city before attached to an army.
11. Never expel or enslave/exterminate a Hellenic city. Even if it belongs to your worse enemy.
12. Only enslave/exterminate populations of non-Hellenic cities, only if the faction they belong to has done great harm to your faction. Or for roleplaying reasons (mad FM).

Those are the rules I follow in my Makedonian campaigns. I find that, upon following those houserules, I get smooth and slow gameplay that gives me maximum gaming pleasure. It also makes sure my faction has always a solid defense and there won't be any economical 'cracks' at any point due to excessive amount of trained troops by just raising armies without any pre-thoughts or a sudden breakdown of your empire by an AI faction that decided to exploit your state of confusion.

Maion

[Dayve]

Most of the rules i play by are here in this thread already in one post or another.

One I've come to love is not using full stacks, but instead half stacks. The only factions where this isn't feasible are:

Hayasdan - Because you need every unit you can get for the first 30-40-50 years of campaign.
Pahlava and the steppe factions - Because 10 units of HA isn't enough arrows to defeat a full stack of anything.
Rome - Because of the way a legion is laid out. 10 units isn't enough to form a triplex acies.

But every other faction, 10 units is enough to give you a front line of heavy/medium troops, some light supporting troops, 1 unit of missiles, 1 unit of cavalry and a general, and that is more than enough to defeat the stupid RTW AI, but not too much that you are always guaranteed a win.

I'd go a step further even and reduce that number to 8 units, if you were playing as, for example, Epeiros, and went to war with Rome, or even better... Gauls or Germans or Dacians.

Barbarian factions had a habit of hugely outnumbering their enemies on the battlefield... only using 8 units against them when playing as a phalanx faction would represent that quite nicely.