Yeah, these are good armies, except for the siege ones : you want to take cities in one piece, not turned to dust... I personnaly use cavalry once in the streets (heavy cvl) cause their charge becomes very effective.

On the whole, I think you rely too much on archers. Think of using cvl mercenaries (some are very good).

Gladiators are very good against infantry, you should try.

Yes, cavalry is always good. Watch out for any camels, though. And you could afford to lose a few archers in non-sieging army, and replace them with more cavalry and such.

And I don't know what unit begins with S, other than the scorpion, a sort of light, long range anti-unit ballista. Could you describe it in greater detail?

I personally think your seige army is good. I don't know about anyone else, but I often try to grind as much of the wall as possible to minimize casualties than taking more casualties to take the city in one peice. I go by the philosophy that a city's best defense is brave men.

with stonewall or higher it become more and more critical to take over large chunk of the wall before entering the city as u will get constantly hit by those towers.

but rely archer to do it is kinda slow, rather push up few siege tower and drop off some infantry to do the job.

other strategy is rely on puur heavy calvary. dig few sapping points and then continuesly charge urway tru.

not sure if this is bug or feature, but calvary can charge tru its own ppl. in order to get to target. specially on narrow passages, it can push tru its own to deal the charge damage.

In Siege, I always think archers are a amazing help. But of course, they are not the main killers if there are heavy infantery on the walls. If you can afford to just send away two siege towers at each side of the gate, and have one unit of men back up the ones using it, you should manage to get the wall with semi good infantery. However, there is another option. You can have your siege army consist of alot of cavalery and only a few infantery units. Then the rest siege weps. Line up the army in front of one city gate(making defenders line up there aswell) Then pound the wall with onagers while you move a infantery unit with siegetower to the other side of the hole the onager is about to make. So when the wall is down, it's gonna look like this.

__-__-__-__-__-......-__-__-__-__-__
-__-__-__-__-_|......|-__-__-__-__-_
_-__-__-__-__-|......|_-__-__-__-__-
------------------------------------
Your army HERE, and enemy army HERE

then just let the unit you put on the wall run a lap around to the next city gate and have the cavalery follow along the wall(cause they capture the towers while at it so the wont get shot at) and open the other city gate.. flanking the original city gate defenders.

Problems with this tactic? obviously if your not quick, but Ive never seen the AI be any issue.

thanks for the replies.
the reason why i rely on archers is because im the kinda player who doesnt like taking the fight to the enemy.
i usuallu have a two line formation with the first line having legionaries and second line having archers ( general in between two lines).

i then just pour missle fire on the enemy till they flee and then i use my general and 1 or 2 light cav to chase them down. i have come to love this tactic ( even if a bit boring). It helped me defeat a larger and stronger Gual force ( full of heavy infantry and strong cavalry) and also defeat two carthage armies ( which surrounded me on both sides - that was THE most demanind battle ever for me lol)

i recently played a few custom battle games to test my army composition and i have to agree : too many onagars and i need more gladiators.

playing as julia i was defending rome against all other roman factions and in this one place my gladiator unit managed to defeat two units of legionares coming from two siege towers at the same time. I must admit that i though they wouldnt be able to take them on since thye were outnumbered hugely but infact they did suprisingly well).

also the thing which upset me is that you can make a VERY big hole in the wall. you can only make one hole per section so ill prob have only 2 onogars ( however it was amusing seeing my fire balls dropping into extremely tightly packed enemy cavalry)

if you had 1 unit of peasants and armed tham with ladders (as they get units onto walls the fastest line up your army in front of the walls then move it around to where the peasants unnopposed have been buisily captureing all the towers and the gateway then when you get your units in (they almost never send the units on the walls off them) fight your way through the remaining army and capture the center wait for the timer to run out and click end battle.