I had my first epic fight yesterday. My 2000 men against Egypts 3800+ men. I lost and took casualties not more than 1200 men but the casualties on egypts side were roughly 3000 men, that was too much for them, i then landed my army behind this battle spot and took one of their huge cities and the other one rebelled, so once my armies were restocked their devastation was inevitable. I really really really hate chariots .

I use balanced army builds. General, 2 roman cavalries, 2 spear throwing cavalries, 4-6 archers, 2 onagers (catapults), a few units (2-4 usually) Velite gladiators, and legionnary cohorts because praetorian and ubran cohorts need big cities for retraining. My biggest problem is the enemy phalanx. Thats why i brought the onagers. And the enemy knows i like cavalry, he always has like n+1 spear wielding units. But the enemy loves attacking my general so i usually lure some of his troops early into a rain of arrows. A couple of times ive been lucky enough to squash the enemy general with the onager but their familiy members never make it into the fight thanks to my army of spassins (2 spies and 5 assassins):D Unless its a city fight ofcourse, very hard to assassinate someone inside a city.

I think i can praise myself lucky i didn't have any fights with the Egyptians. The Brits have (or had) these chariots as well, they're a real pain in the ass. Especially if you don't have much cavalry and they have missile cavalry chariots. Onagers really helped me out in these battles. And i used assassins as well, since a lot of their family members had these chariots.

I generally use mixed armies as well.
Some auxilia, they're my cannon fodder units that take the first hits if necessary and they do well against cavalry. And can retrain anywhere. Some archer units, can't go without them can you?
Some missile artillery, depends which, i prefer onagers, but not all my armies have them atm.
And then some 'thougher' units, legionaries or some cohorts to deal out damage. I've got a lot of big cities now, also the ones i'm conquering, so i think i can retrain in a lot of spots.
And then there's cavalry, mostly the cheap ones + generals units, who (try to) flank my adversaries and hunt them down. Don't like the ranged cavalry so much, they die a lot.

Heh, i went on a conquering spree and almost bankrupt myself. I took about 6 or 7 Egyptian cities and the rebuilding and army costs almost snuffed out my wallet. I plan to make peace with egypt soon, i need them to control scipii.

Well im getting ready to move against romans because house julii is totally out of control, soon there will be no one left to help me with them. Should i conquer rome asap or pick up some julii cities first?

On the egypt front i managed to sink a boat with about 1000 men onboard on its way to attack one of my cities.

Theres a mark on the map now, where the battle took place.

Damn, that's a pretty insane victory..mighty impressive Peltz. Well, as long as that weren't all peasants you were fighting.

Don't bother with conquering Rome if you don't have to, yet. Just have some armies within striking distance, like in a city on the Italian peninsula. Rome doesn't conquer so doesn't get stronger, but the other factions do...much better to keep them under your thumb.

J, the Egyptian chariots are like the British ones on crack. So yeah, stay away if you can. At least the brits sometimes engange your units with their chariots. The gyppos just keep making turns.

Yea it wasnt some supadupa army. Their reinforcments actually came from a city, i was on a siege. I had some luck, i managed to take down their onagers quick, though the ai always uses flaming shot which way too inaccurate. And he kept sending his melee units one by one into my rain of arrows, 6 scores of archer fire is pretty devastating. He had a few units of missile throwers but they went down quick. The 2000 vs 4000 battle was much more interesting.

Oh i forgot to ask, how does one move the capital. Distance is causing 70% unrest in my border cities.

I also noticed that aligning onagers with the gate is not so good idea. They will hit the wall above the gate. Slightly to the left or right is a better choice.

I never use artillery to attack city gates, just sapping points to break walls...going through the front gate is a nightmare in some cities (epic walls etc).

You can move your capital by clicking on the city you want to move it to, choosing "settlement details" or something in the left bottom corner of the city scroll and then again at the bottom the button "move your capital here".

Heh, i'm glad i'm not the only one who didn't figure out how to move his capitol rightaway.

Funny (retarted maybe) thing that happened a couple of times to me already:

One of my cities gets besieged, and i counterattack with the army that's within city walls. So you start your battle inside of the walls. Sometimes had reinforcements, but not all the time.
I move some of my armies outside my gate and then ... the whole enemy army starts retreating. Huh? I guess my army is much bigger/better, but still, he picked the fight.
Now here comes the funny part: he's so busy retreating that he doesn't seem to mind me attacking his rear units with my cavalry units. I've slaughtered half of the enemy army a few times, with only my roman cavalry needing serieus retraining. Weird stuff. But easy victory.

I think there are 2 'parts' of the city gate: The door itself and the surrounding gate area (wall above the gate mentioned by Peltz), probably with archers/boiling oil/ i dunno. I tend to destroy both before i march in. Also all towers that are on my way to the battle square, otherwise you'll get slaughtered by their arrows.

I made my move against the Romans. I managed to take three Julii and 1 scipii cities instantly. Now Im slowly building up more units so i can free my conquering armies. And just when i thought everything was going fine, the scipii made a move against spain which i hoped it would not. Damn egypt, instead of attacking scipii they keep harassing one of my cities. Ofcourse they lose every time, to get some peace i conqured one of their closer cities and sold everything in it and then moved out.

Im still working towards conquering julii, cant afford to make a move against scipii yet. The border town i have with scipii is well defended, full garrison inside and two 1k groups outside the city.

With the risk of asking something stupid:

how do you get 1000 people armies? I don't think i've build armies of over 700 soldiers. You can only have 20 'units' right? So how do you get such a high number, most units are 41 max i thought?

J, it all depends on the unit size settings you have. I don't know if you can still change them once you're in a campaign, but they scale from tiny to huge. It's there somewhere under advanced options for gameplay or graphics.

yea, but playing with huge armies is pretty detrimental to your cities, at least early on. You train one unit and suddenly your entire population is gone.

Ah, okay. Didn't know that

Mm the mixed build doesnt seem to work too good against romans, they have so many cohorts the archers just fail to deal damage. I have them now only shooting fire arrows hoping that the enemy will route. Also charging with generals is risky, coz praetorian and ubran cohorts beat em up good.

Velite gladiators continue to surprise me with their survivability. They are no match for a cohort but they stay alive long enough for me to bring about my cavalry for a full flank charge. In fact, the velites usually survive many a battle like this.

Julii is in a world of hurt now, he had many armies marching towards my newly captured cities but he made a couple of strategic mistakes and i destroyed most of them. They were around 800 men to start and once i was through, they had like 100 left.

Im also attacking their cities from the side aswell, and i use my assassins to sabotage the cities so he cant produce the stronger melee units. In fact i just annihilated the faction heir. Bet that pissed em off. Scipii is running rampant through spain, thats not good, soon the confrontation is inevitable i hope i have weakend julii enough by then. Egypt is still playing a damn idiot. On the eastern front, one of my armies is marching against parthians but that is just small entertainment.