The Macedonian Phalanx (Historical Strategy)

[Ender Wiggin]

Let's start off with a disclaimer

1. This varies incredibly wildly against urban cohort/praetorian cav spam depending on the proportions of urbans to praetorians.
2. This is not a "play to always win" strategy. If you want that, do something like Egyptian chariot spam.
3. The above being said, I find this strategy to be markedly effective. It's like Alexander knew about Rome Total War and CWB when he made it.
4. This is optimized for big money, but if money is tight you can remove some upgrades if absolutely necessary. Start from the bottom up.




There's your basic outline. Some stuff we're going to snip off as Rome Total War made them suck and we only have 20 units, but now for the Ingredients.

6 units of Silver Shield Pikemen, defense upgrades in true Alexander style
4 units of gold/gold Silver Shield Legionaries, our Hypaspist stand-ins.
6 units of Cataphracts, gold/gold, our companion stand ins because companions suck. Give your general unit an XP upgrade just for Alexander
2 units of archers mostly to ward off chariots, and kill horse archers.
2 units of G/G Greek Cav just for accuracy, and to give the enemy cavalry a morale penalty for being surrounded after you tie them up with cataphracts.


Then just follow placement as outlined above. Place two units of cataphracts on the left, 4 on the right, 1 unit of GC on each wing, all the legion on the right, archers way up in the front.


And there you have it. Engage the enemy with phalanx, pila storm the furthest right unit and then flank with legions to give them both the "Unhappy over casualties" and "concerned by exposed flanks". If you're lucky or fighting the Greek City States, the enemy general may be there! If he is killed and the unit routs, the nice blend of seeing a friendly unit rout, friendly general killed, and probably getting whacked by cavalry in the back causes a mass rout. Chase the enemy down with GC and pat yourself on the back for pulling an Alexander.

[|Sith| Max]

It is good that neither Philip or Alex lived to play RTW MP. I dont think they'd appreciate what some of the vets would have to say about their army deployment.

I like how the pic says "Attack in this direction" though. That is quite funny.

[Ender Wiggin]

If you're going for the less historical approach, just swap out greek cav for companions.

[TheFoolOnTheHill]

greek cav suck

[Ender Wiggin]

That is commonly known. So the Seleucid player uses comps instead. Problem solved.

[TheFoolOnTheHill]

who said selucids

[Magic_8_Ball]

To quote you:

this is Rome Total War, not Real Life Total Realism

[Ender Wiggin]

To quote you:

This is why I don't join clans.



Yes, I'm aware. Some people just want to RP a little.

[TheFoolOnTheHill]

what you dont join clans because there right

[Maiar93]

It is good that neither Philip or Alex lived to play RTW MP. I dont think they'd appreciate what some of the vets would have to say about their army deployment.

I like how the pic says "Attack in this direction" though. That is quite funny.

Indeed. I recall some of them saying that jav cav should not be used in a normal army, in fact, when someone tried to use them the vets tried to give them "real" armies, which turned out to lose horribly against the jav cav.

Yes, i may try this out. If i'm against the greeks this surely is very effective, as greeks have crappy cavalry which do not stand against seleucids. Macedon would be different. A well-balanced macedonian army with the regular cavalry component of 5 comps and 3 light lancers, this would be much more ineffective.

[Ender Wiggin]

In such cases I would recommend 6 cataphracts and 2 companion cavalry rather than the GC.

[Maiar93]

That'd leave little money for the infantry/archers, and macedon can pikespam easily with good archer component that beats the seleucid archers.

[Ender Wiggin]

At massive money, archers that are below CAW-quality are quite frankly irrelevant against non-steppe factions, because in such cases they are good for killing horse archers.

[TheFoolOnTheHill]

Who playes massive money anyways

[Maiar93]

At massive money, archers that are below CAW-quality are quite frankly irrelevant against non-steppe factions, because in such cases they are good for killing horse archers.

Foot archers are never good against horse archers. HA has longer range than regular archers, and can go cantabrian circle.

[Ender Wiggin]

cantabrian circle wears the crap out of them, and even if they kill my archers, who cares? By such time I'm already kicking the crap out of the rest of their army.



Chariots are also good for regular archers, as chariots have 0 defense.

[Maiar93]

One minor correction: Their defense is 1.

And while 6 cats+2 comps would leave space for about 4-5 legs, macedon has after 6 g/g archers and 2 g/cretans money for good infantry component, 6 g/g RP and maybe some levy pikes with g/0/3 upgrades. After that they also have money for 2 comps/more light lancers.

[TheFoolOnTheHill]

In my opinion chariots are terreble against any of the steepe factions

[MortenJessen]

I may be getting a bit old, but I seems to have problems counting the number of units in OP's illustration. Aren't there quite a lot more than 20 ????

[Ender Wiggin]

I know, so you have to clip some. It's a rough outline sort of thing.