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A quick summary:
Keep taxes as high as possible without sending your cities into the land of Red Faces.
Recruiting units drains the population of the city by the amount of soldiers involved.
The number of soldiers in garrison is worth more than the quality of soldier. Thus peasants make the best head-knockers to keep the peons in line.
Build your economy and military first. Roads and ports first, then the other stuff.
Don't upgrade farming beyond Land Clearance until you can afford to crush your own cities. People are atracted to food- more food=more poeple=more squalor.
Rip down foreign temples as son as you can, unless there is some pressing reason to keep them.
Never let the AI run your towns. Manage your own money.
Make sure you have governors only in those cities you want to grow before attacking a city you intend to enslave.

For your second point- any post-Marian army going against Egypt ought to have auxilia and lots of Archers Auxilia. Egypt uses many mnay chariots and auxilia are good at stopping them so the legionaries can kill them. Urbans are great troops, but can only be built and retrained at Tier-5 cities. Legionaries can be retrained at Tier-4 cities, and are almost as good.

A tip against Egypt- their onagers will always be better than yours. They will shoot further and more accurately, no matter if the stats are otherwise equal. SO when facing Egypt, attack! Or have some sacrifical cavalry that can sweep around the army to destroy them before they can barbecue your own boys.

How to take on Egypt with a phalanx unit of your own is a constant problem for RTW players. I'd be inclined to take a lot of sword infantry in the front line with auxilia behind to counter attack any chariot attacks. You'll need cavalry as you'll run into a lot of skirmishers, but other than that cavalry is quite limited when attacking other units to try and win the battle as phalanxes and chariots will make a mess of them. It's best to fight it out with infantry supported by a lot of archers. Not that Egyptian archers and skirmishers should worry you too much - all of your men will be wearing so much armour that only a few hits will get through.

The best tactic is, on the campaign map, attack the Egyptian army so that they're sat on the defensive. They'll sit nice and still then so your archers can shoot up their chariots and your infantry can pick holes in their phalanx line. Scorpions look nice but they're not of any great use in any situation to be honest. You can only have a maximum of 20 units in an army, you'd be better off taking extra archers as they will be much more effective.

A little addition/correction to the points above: if you do decide to use Urbans, and I would recommend it, bring along a few extra ones to replace losses in your main army. Simply have them trail a little behind your main army, then bring them up and fill up your main units when they take damage. If you have Urbans, you don't really need to get Auxilia, as Urbans stand up to chariots quite well.

Thanks, didn't know that the number of troops is so important. I've kept three town watch units and two archers in every town, later upgraded to archer aux and urbans, to get a bit of decent defense.

During the big Egypt campaign, I have a full stack of 20 units advancing behind my armies that provide reinforcements, and another stack of "police" units to keep cities calm after the invaders leave.

I've been thinking about those scorpions a great deal...their accuracy is good, range better than any archers, but...overall each of them don't have enough ammo to actually rout a single stack of enemy units at their maximum range. I guess they're gonna go.

Hmm. Just a word about scorpions historically, they were fantastic. May mod them in game to make them better. Haven't really used them much, though.

Hm. I've finished a campaign as Brutii (finally), and decided to try Macedonians next. I've conqered both Greek cities around, and those two coastal villages before Brutii got them. Now I got a descision to make. From north, Thrace and Gauls annoy me, and Brutii keep trying to attack me. Should I go north, or assault Brutii? Opening a front at Italy sounds serious, is there a way to make peace with rest of roman families (and senate) after exterminating those buggers?

Go for the Brutii because they're much more dangerous. Gaul and Thrace will only ever annoy you no matter how far into the game you get, but anything Roman gets bigger and stronger the longer you wait. It may sound difficult to attack them, but there's good points too. Italy is long and thin, so you can advance without worrying about an army suddenly appearing in your rear. If you wander northwards, you'll open up your front in multiple directions to all sorts of hostile people and you'll have trouble defending it. Especially when the Brutii start coming for you.

I agree. Take out the Brutii. You will probably get involved in a big war with the Romans, but just keep going and take all of Italy. once that happens, the Romans will be almost completely destroyed, and you will have a very strong center of power. Italy is pretty safe.

I hope so. Julii seem to have enough problems with Gauls, but senate might be tricky, especially since my towns are not yet developed enough for royal pikemen and onagers. Also, I have absolutely no idea how far into Carthage did Scipii advance.

SPQR look intimidating, but there's a hand trick you can try if you want to destroy the lot quite cheaply. There's a fordable river just outside Rome, move or land an army by sea on it and the Romans will attack you. Put a pile of pikes around the ford and they'll all die there.

Or if you'd prefer to fight them honourably in the open but are worried about being outflanked due to the lack of width a unit of pikemen have, before the battle starts take everyone out of phalanx formation and press + to extend their line. When they're five ranks deep they will be as wide as royal pikemen and still presenting five pikes to the enemy.

Taking Italy will improve your economy a lot and it's easy to defend as a few troops placed on bridges and an army in reserve will cope with any eventuality. This will free up the rest of your forces to carry out your other plan and wander off into the barbarian north.

I once conquered entire italy with 1 army of armoured hoplites, hoplites and archers and few cavalry.

Either I make a circle and let the enemy storm themselves on me without a chance of breaking or flanking me.
Or I dig in on one of the corners of the map and make a 1/4th circle.
I admit it was a cowards tactic, but it worked. Even romans can't hope to break armored hoplites in frontal attack, and their pila aren't very effective against their heavy armor either. My archers usually take out their missile and my cavalry chase the runners.

I never liked phalanx warfare though. Too inflexible, too slow.

I prefer my own tactics with phalanx...

****enemy****

............_
(cav) \A/A\A/ (cav)

(dots are there just instead of spaces..ASCII art )
Archers usually lure enemy into killing zones (of course they have skirmish mode on), and cavalry then closes the escape route...

[This message has been edited by Sar1n (edited 01-16-2012 @ 10:51 AM).]

Everything has been covered, but I have never finished a campaign without doing the following:

Having one town for military production and the rest for money with roads, ports and farms. You need to capture as many port towns as possible, this is harder for the Juilii and their income can be stunted as you push into Gallia and Germania (Gerr-mah-nee-ah, it's a hard G like God not George.) I also try to expand quickly in the beginning. I hate fighting end game with Spain, Carthage, Egypt, and the Selecuids (I play Juilii) as huge superpowers so I stunt everyone else's growth first, especially Spain.

Just food for thought I guess, nice to see that I'm not the only one who still plays even if I do play vanilla.

One thing I've always found useful against the Romans as Greeks is to have lots of generals in my army. I sweep around with my cavalry and eliminate the Roman cavalry right, and then it's just a matter of routing one Roman infantry unit at a time. Sometimes I take my hoplites out of phalanx formation and charge the Roman infantry before they release their pila, and simply use them to hold the line until I charge home with my generals.

Yeah, that's the biggest weakness of the Greeks, they don't have very good cavalry. You do need to have a strong cavalry arm when you use phalanxes.

Psh, the Greeks have their gods-blessed Armoured Hoplites. They have great infantry, great archers available to them, what do they need cavalry for??

Yeah, that's the biggest weakness of the Greeks, they don't have very good cavalry. You do need to have a strong cavalry arm when you use phalanxes.

I find Generals and Militia Cavalry to be quite adequate for the task. Militia Cavalry, especially in mass, are very hard for cavalry to deal with.

Psh, the Greeks have their gods-blessed Armoured Hoplites. They have great infantry, great archers available to them, what do they need cavalry for??

Quite often, if I have ample cavalry and missiles in my army, my infantry see no action at all. And I wouldn't call the Greek archers good. The Cretans, sure, but I don't like relying on mercenaries

If only you could retrain mercs... But yeah, cavalry always sees way more action in my armies then the infantry. Missiles too.

The funny thing is even when I'm playing a faction that has superb cavalry, I never really use them to win a battle. I leave them to screen the flanks, chase down fleeing cowards, while the main fighting is left to proper soldiers... So I always find Greece a very nice formation to play with. March the phalanx forward until it hits something, then stop, let them kill it, and carry on. It doesn't really matter how much their opponents run away, there's very little that can get through the skins of armoured hoplites.

The main issue with using your infantry as your primary troop occurs when you're fighting someone like the Egyptians. If they've got a lot of archers and siege weapons, your Armoured Hoplites can still get hurt. Which is where the cavalry comes in.

The main issue with using your infantry as your primary troop occurs when you're fighting someone like the Egyptians. If they've got a lot of archers and siege weapons, your Armoured Hoplites can still get hurt. Which is where the cavalry comes in.

Actually, I personally find phalanxes indispensable in dealing with Egyptians, especially their chariots. Usually, in a battle against the Egyptians, I first try to entice the enemy Chariots to follow my cavalry into my phalanx. Then, my cavalry would be free to run circles around the enemy lines and crush its archers. Sometimes, the chariots refuse to move, and you're left with no choice but to engage the enemy in an archer duel.

Oh, I agree entirely that phalanxes are great against chariots. However, I often end up just killing all of the enemy's troops with my cavalry when I try to out-flank them and kill their archers.

Really? From my experiences, chariots spell certain doom for pretty much all cavalry. How do you use your cavalry against them?

A massed charge by heavy cavalry works decently well. If they're more medium-level cavalry, they can get chewed up, but if you get the charge, they tend to win. Cataphracts, Gothic and Praetorian Cavalry, Companions, and Sacred Band Cavalry all work pretty well against chariots. Especially since even the AI is not always dumb enough to charge its chariots into your pike nicely.

Egypt is a very odd faction to fight. Their troops are pretty average, yet they're difficult to fight as they're so varied in what they do. Lots of skirmishers so you need cavalry, but you can't use that cavalry until the chariots have been taken out. Armoured Hoplites only tend to suffer against Pharoah's Bowmen, but even then the losses aren't that great compared to what other non-phalanx units would take under the same bombardment. I ignore their fire and take losses while my archers return the fire (they have to be spread out as they come in for a lot of attention too) but the cavalry don't go in and finish them off until the Hoplites have effectively won the battle. Egyptian battlefields are dangerous ones.

Egypt is a very odd faction to fight. Their troops are pretty average, yet they're difficult to fight as they're so varied in what they do. Lots of skirmishers so you need cavalry, but you can't use that cavalry until the chariots have been taken out. Armoured Hoplites only tend to suffer against Pharoah's Bowmen, but even then the losses aren't that great compared to what other non-phalanx units would take under the same bombardment. I ignore their fire and take losses while my archers return the fire (they have to be spread out as they come in for a lot of attention too) but the cavalry don't go in and finish them off until the Hoplites have effectively won the battle. Egyptian battlefields are dangerous ones.

Exactly. The combination of missiles and chariots means that the most sensible course of action is usually to outshoot the enemy with your own archers. I've had success in baiting chariots with my cavalry, but it's a risky move and could easily end disastrously.