I just continued my macedon campaign.
I started at the point where I was fighting the julii around mediolanum, fighting Pontus at mazaka, fighting Dacia at their starting towns and I had already taken Carthage, so only Roman left was Julii, who have almost finished the Gauls.
I took mediolanum and Patavium without too much trouble, but sadly Patavium had just gotten the imperial palace, so I'm facing cohorts from now on.
I have just finished the people of Pontus and with that own everything up to Antioch and Armenia.
I kept training new armies in Greece (with armor upgrades and 3 exp) and sailing them east. One took Salamis and than moved to Antioch and Sidon. This front is reinforced by the army that took Tarsus.
Another army lands at Alexandria where massive Egyptian armies await, I hope I can defeat them and take the city, so I can retrain.
And another army has taken Cyrene, while another army is heading for Alexandria too. (money isn't really an issue anymore)
I haven't advanced into Africa yet, since my army isn't really suited yet for fighting the Numidians.
I have advanced into Gaul, taking Massilia and defeated a few armies using the bridges there. Then I fought a huge battle over Narbo, but after a heroic victory the game crashed when I clicked exterminate city button (Not the first time the game crashed at such a point
).
About the question how to deal with Romans:
Their infantry/cavalry will try to flank you, so make it harder for them by either deploying like this:
__
/ \ or in a bow shape )
. Put archers behind the phalanx and cavalry behind your flanks. I also used three catapults behind my phalanx in my conquest of Italy.
The Julii so far had mostly armies with lack of cavalry, so I let the enemy crush itself upon my phalanx, took out their skirmishers/archers with my archers and a cavalry flank attack and then ran down all routers.
This will mean that usually most casualties you take come from their pila attack and from the velites. You can't charge them with phalanx, and your cavalry can't simply rout an entire line of Roman infantry, so these losses are hardly avoidable (usually between 10-30 men per phalanx unit).
Now they have some legionary units, it will get tougher.
Spain has taken all of Spain plus baleares.
Numidia has all of north-west africa except carthage, which I hold and Lepcis Magna where the Carthaginians have their last city (constantly under siege).
Parthia rules most of the east (also has some territory from armenia), egypt rules the south-east of the map, but I'll soon reduce that a lot.
Scythia has all the steppe except Pripet and locus gepidae
germans are down to 3 towns due to britons.
So yes, I can fight as Macedon (h/h), but I never liked phalanx warfare, especially when commmanding them myself. I found the Gaul swap far more enjoyable than this campaign, though this one is perhaps easier, due to great economy (100k +).