hmmm....I think if you fought all three of us at the same time, you'd be massacred. At least, if we were all allowed to field full armies. Excpet for DA maybe. hehehe. He'd be the suicide general that cavalry charges a wall of pikes.

But anyway, I didn't get a chance to play much yesterday. I really need to invest in archers, though. Just one unit of enemy archers puts a real hurting on me.

With missile units is really a case of "enough or none". If you have 1, they will never really dominate so you might as well have something else. Have about 3 or even 4 if you want to tear shit up.

yea, I'm mass-producing archer units in one of the few cities I have that makes them...I'm assembling and army for the domination of eastern Europe that's comprised primarily of archers. BTW, I've destroyed the Briton empire. Gotta grab that little island off to its west and then I'm done with that area. Next eastern europe and spain.

Hehe...the only time you REALLY need archers is when those §é(èé!'!è" chariot archers are around...(well, that and elephants). Those chariots bastards are too fast for infantry, too tough for cavalry (sap morale too) and never seem to run out of arrows. They're positively HORROR. The only way to stop them is to pick them off, send in elephants or sacrifice tons of cavalry. Ah well.
I'm surprised you didn't run into British chariot morons Satis...they prolly didn't get the chance to evolve that far.

lolol@ Derf's army pic. Looks like a nice and decent Roman tactic...and your advantage is that you can make such an army on relatively short notice, for me to produce those elite armies I posted above takes a LOT of turns and money. But they're worth it of course...the only problem is that if they get ambushed I start to cry cos it took me so long to assemble. hehe, or almost anyway I agree with Satis however...the chances that your army could withstand a simultaneous charge of my romper-stomper brigade and his barbarian horde (not to mention Dark Archer's lethal charge into the spears, hehe) is fairly low.

Btw, do you guys use the flaming ammo options a lot? I use it mainly to scare troops with archers, and with onagers I use it all the time. oh and about your setup Derf, aren't your onagers a little bit far behind your first line? I mean, an onager shot gone apes can impact véry short in front of it. i've toasted many a cohort of mine by positioning an onager too close behind it. hehe

lol....to answer your flaming question, as a Roman I always used flaming onagers when targetting people. Flaming arrows only when I wanted to scare people. It lowers accuracy, so most of the time I want more people to die rather than to scare people.

As for missile chariots....yes, I ran into them with the Britons. Pain in the ass those things. I usually end up charging my cavalry into them, just to get rid of em. The losses are quite often very frightening...I believe I lost a family member doing that. Still, better than getting my army routed.

No major updates....annihilated some more large Gaul armies...I think they're getting desperate. I'm also near to Scipii territory...I'm trying to tread lightly for now, since I lack the manufacturing capabilities for a prolonged war against a true adversary. Maybe once I've finished taming the rest of Europe.

I have annihilated my first Roman, a large scipii army.

His army...about 2300 men, mostly velites and light infantry, some heavy (hahahahah)

My army...about 1500. 6 units of spearmen, 4 units of dogs (heheh), 4 units of axemen (regular) and my general.

They assaulted a town I had just taken from the Gauls...I guess they wanted it too. I did my usual of moving all my units to a side exit of the town and charging them out the gate...with as many spear-chuckers as he had, I wasn't about to try and fight him at the walls with no missiles of my own.

He allowed me to form up my army, so I marched on him. As soon as I was in range, I released all 4 units of dogs...they attacked first some light infantry, and routed them, then some velites, and routed them...in fact, about six enemy units routed with just the dog. The enemy captain was on top of things, though, and stopped each route. I then charged in my axemen and put my spears into un-phalanx mode. Between my dogs and my axemen, every one of the enemy's units broke. I chased them across the map and annihilated them all. As usually happens, a few 'escaped', but not off the map. They must've been casualties that recovered or something.

End result was about 120 deaths on my side (I accidently charged some of my dog handlers into a velite unit) and roughly 2300 on his. Absolute domination of the Romans by the barbarian hordes of Germany! There's another full army nearby...I think I'll gank it next turn I play. The scipii town nearby needs to wait until I have at least 4 units of archers, though...no taking a large city without archers.

Hahaha, great story...dumb-ass Romans with their armies packed with light infantry. I hate it myself when I get holed up in a city...I like to take initiative, and when they got you pinned down in a city that's kinda hard. besides, like you mentioned, sometimes the AI reacts when you move troops out and they're too vulnerable when passing through the gate-bottlenecks...maybe it's just me and elephants/phalanxes though, they take up a lot of space and the phalanxes are slooow.

Did you ever get completely slaughtered in a battle Satis? Like ambushed or something, or bad tactical choices?

I'm starting to feel like playing a barbarian faction sometime soon, got plenty of time now the exams are over so i'll finish my seleceud game first (even if I have my doubts about anyone being able to stop me...but, to give them credit, the Scipii did stop my elite army in the east after throwing 10 armies on me, while I was without retraining post. (their cities weren't evolved enough to retrain my types of units. ) )

Some pics of tonight's session...a few things happened: the Scipii countered my attempt to push all the way through to Chartagho, killing one of my best generals in the process. So they're bossing Western North-Africa again, but my assassins are having a field day over there. One of them even murdered their faction leader in his bed..that'll teach them to mess with me.

I've also started to conquer a few of the islands near my heartland (the area around Antioch), like Crete and Rhodos...they're great financial centers, lots of naval trade income. Other than that it was quiet, mainly me restructuring the empire by sending out family members to govern cities everywhere. Most of my +- 25 provinces have their own governor, which is nice.

The general I sent up north with the elite army is doing great; he conquered the last two remaining cities of the parths (thus destroying them) and took a city or two on the Armenians. Problem is, however, that they won't fight me. I don't like to assault a city with elephants, scythed chariots and cataphracts (cos its not really their forte )in my army, so I just besiege them until they come out, but when they come out they just run and leave the city to me...happened three times in a row now. I know the army's impressive, but jesus, can't they even try? lol. Oh, and the Egyptians are done. FINALLY!

@ Satis



lol, you mean Ireland?

@ Ox



Only for shits n giggles.



Are you joking? Onager fire ammo is a waste on a lined army. I use normal stones, much more accurate and do suppicient damage. Fire is a liablity.

Can you see the senators 1337 gift?

PS, wouldnt a complete LotR mod be great fun?

heheh...the only time I suffered a major defeat was when I was really trashed on tequila. Teach me not to play this game drunker than hell. I engaged a full army of Britons with a full army of my own, and their chariots totally owned me. I had like 4 family members in that army and charged the chariots...several family members died right out, and my army just got piecemeal routed. I ended up not saving that game. :p Other than that, no major defeats. I've had some close victories, though, where the enemy really caused major damage to my forces and I barely managed to squeak out a victory.

Bleh, I hate my job.

lol...tequilla gaming nuff said. No wonder you got crushed, you were probably sending your general into enemy hoplites while spraying them from behind with arrows and onager fire. having said that, I did get my general killed once by sending him into my own phalanx...or at least, so it seemed. Could be it's impossible.

@ Derf...the cohort with the 'senate' mark, is that it? I know they're a seperate unit in custom mode, so I guess there's something special with them...can you tell me what?

More pics (you betcha). These are from a battle that I won against all odds, with nothing left but a (bad-ass) unit of silver shield pikemen. It was glorious, I killed their faction leader and routed most of his (balanced) army, killing the other half. Not to mention taking on reinforcements...the main force's morale was long broken when they arrived (with the death of their Pontian king), but the reinforcements were tenacious bastards with good morale, they tested my pikemen to the limit.

These are from a battle for some city in the Kaukasus..it was all about narrow alleyways so I didn't send in my elephants or heavy cavalry. (they have major trouble moving around inside cities as you can imagine). Instead I sent in one cohort of Silver Shield Pikemen, and boy, did they clean up in those narrow streets. The fact that the enemy didn't know better but to send in cavalry to take them on was kinda wicked, too.

The third pic is a phalanx wall holding the line, it looks really neat from up above. imho.

last three, no specific reasons for posting.