Who's the toughest opponent?

[mdibatti]

Playing as Romans, who do you think is the toughest opponent?

So far, I've only fought Gaul, Carthage, Greece and Macedon. Gaul I can handle, but need to be smart about retraining....same with Greece. I completely own Macedon. Then there's Carthage.....I'm hannibals bitc*

[The Lacedaemonian]

Carthage was pretty hard. i replayed campaign on medium this time (as Romans of course before hard Battle difficutly) and i beat them easily. i ambushed them in Sicily and i destryoed Hannibal. then i took Syracuse and the Greeks declared Ceasefire. so now in Syracuse i can recruit Principes and Triarii and then i took Lilybaeum though the Greeks reinforced them with Spartans but i still took it over (with two armies) Greeks declared Ceasefire again. btw in Gaul i took over Patavium (and the other settlement forgot the name) after that I took my two armies to Carthage which was defended by approx. 5 or 4 armies but i still took it over. btw in hard mode (battle difficulty) SPQR is hard! so many battles make me exahusted espiccialy in hard mode.

[Lucius_Galba]

Gaul are pretty easy to handle, i dunno about Greeks as they been destroyed . Macedon are easy but they just get on my nerves continuously, they have no honour just hiding behind their big pikes and making you do all the hard work, it really bugs me.
Carthage agreed are one of the hardest faction to defeat, they get some very strong troops later in the game, so i made an alliance with them .
Senate didn't like it so i told them to sod off!
I felt that Eygpt were a tough cookie to crack. They have some pretty strong troops too and with a good commander are more than a match for a Roman legion.

I believe though that playing as the Roman i found that the toughest opponent was your own troops. I hate the Pre-Marius Troops they are rubbish, I have no confidence in them and couldn't wait for Marius to come along and give me Legions.
Cheers
LG

[mdibatti]

I haven't made it to germany yet, but I'm hoping I have the reforms by then. Everytime I do a custome battle, pre marius vs. germany, they get me to route in less than a minute!

[Konig]

they get some very strong troops later in the game, so i made an alliance with them .
LG

Did i read right? alliance with carthage??!?! what were the terms? trade rights+sicily+all of Italy except arretium+500000 denarii+become protectorate+assistance vs SPQR????!?!?

ZOMG!!!!!111!one!!1cos(0)

[Manslaughter the Great]

Carthage is hard initially but later in teh game for Romans I must say I'm h aving a heck of a time with Germania. I couldn't cross the Rhine and conquer them even if I wanted to. I applaude how well Lt created this. They spam silver chevroned Chosen axemen at me.

Any advice?

[RZZZA]

Damn egyptians with their vast tratcs of lands, huge sums of money and chariot archers!

[The Lacedaemonian]

Damn egyptians with their vast tratcs of lands, huge sums of money and chariot archers!

seconded! mostly the money. their damn rich! sell it to the poor!

[HunterKYA]

In my recent campaign as the Romans on M/M, I was minding my northern border in the Alps with Germania not too far away. While I'm ripping Macedonia a new one for invading my territory on the Dalmatian coast, and in about 8-12 years, had most of their territory that consisted of the Balkans, under my direct control. After the war, I was consolidating my forces there and in northern Italy when the Germans decided to be cute and laid siege to Iavium. I pushed them back into their own territory, moving in about a dozen legions into their province directly adjacent to my own. In that one province by itself, I had to fight eight battles to secure that one region, suffering between 11,000-13,000 killed. Lucky for me though, I had cities closer than those of the Germans, so the major advantage of being able to retrain faster than the Germans could retrain old units or produce new ones.

The farther north I pushed into their territory, the weaker they appeared to be getting, but despite this fact, they fought with the tenaciousness of an enemy who felt they still had some semblence of defeating me. It didn't matter how many casualties they inflicted on me, because I knew I could retrain units that had seen battle and getting them back in the field, plus training new armies. As the campaign progressed onward, my army was sizably larger than when it had begun, but it didn't stop the Germans from inflicting heavy casualties on my armies while they hadn't noticed the tide of war had turned against them some years before.

When all was said and done, that war itself lasted well over a decade. At the start of hostilities, the Roman army and that of the Germans could be seen as fairly equal in terms of size and strength, but the Germans would have had the advantage of better weapons and slightly more battle-hardened soldiers. After the ceasefire, the death toll was immense by any standards; with the Romans suffering between 30,000-35,000 killed and the Germans slightly more, between 42,000-46,000 killed. The German empire, which had once stretched from Germania itself to the Baltic states to eastern Europe and all of Scandinavia, was reduced to a solitary province near Armenian-held Scythia, northern Poland, and parts of Scandinavia and their army was so devastated and depleted of manpower, that they only had two full armies to defend what was left of their holdings.

From this victory, I flexed my muscle and turned my attention to Gaul, having little trouble in subjugating their comparatively small army. Moving on from that conquest, I slowly pushed westward from the holdings I already had in Spain and felt confident no force could oppose my army for long before their defeat was inevitable. Man, I was wrong with that assumption. I sent six full-stack armies to the Iberian-held city north of Pallantia and lets just say this, of the 18,000 men I sent to deal with the Iberian rebels, I was fortunate...and I mean fortunate to get back 1,500 badly beaten men.

All that and I haven't even attempted invading Britannia.

[lt1956]

Thats why I left the Iberian Rebels, its far more historical and its a Hard land to hold, especially with the new patch :-)

You suffered pretty bad with the germans was this Premarius or Post marius legions or was Autocalc involved? I find Autocalc works good on some nations more than others. I have about 140,000 dead macedonians and lost about 55,000 Romans, alot Auxilia Alea and Garrisons. Legions suffered also. I find on M/M without Bridge battles you will suffer 1/3 casualties in battles on average.

Lt

[HunterKYA]

The war began with my army consisting of Pre-Marian units and a few years in, the reforms happened, which prompted me to train Republican legionaries to give myself a fighting chance. Although the reforms helped produce better trained soldiers, the casualty totals were only marginally better than they had been before the reforms. And since I don't always want to be throwing a fit whenever commanding a losing army personally, I find that using Autocalc lessens the tirade slightly but it still ****es me off when I lose a battle with considerably more men.

[Manslaughter the Great]

My current campaign as the Romans. Any advice?

[Lucius_Galba]

Just a little Manslaughter. Grab Spain and Sardinia. Spain shouldn't take a great deal to conquer and take Sardinia just to get the land.

But whatever you do, ALWAYS! keep a strong guard on the Rhine. I forget who it was now, maybe Revan the Great said that he had 4 legions stationed there and he was struggling. Don't take the Germans lightly they are a very difficult opponent. Only take them when you feel that you are unstoppable.

If not either enter Turkey or Egypt, or even better attack both at the same time.

Great empire though congrats

To answer your question Konig, I simply made peace with them after destroying Hannibal and taking Sicily. I got trade rights also. Later on I asked for help with Gaul and they agreed, so i pushed my luck and asked for an alliance and they said YES!!!
Faithful Ally as well.
Cheers
LG

[HunterKYA]

@Lucius_Galba

I wish it was that easy in my campaign. With mine, I essentially dominate Europe with the exception of Scandinavia and Britain, Carthage holding most of North Africa and the Baeleric Islands, and Armenia and the Greek Cities vying for control of Asia, but it'll be no contest in the long run since Greece has 50-60 full-stack armies from my estimate. Unless I wanted to make a death wish, that'd be it.

[Lucius_Galba]

Ah! I understand where your coming from, not very useful advice then sorry.

In that case:hmmm: if you still need to expand take Britain and so on. But if your happy where you are, ignore me unless of course you want a death wish
Cheers
LG

[MasterAdnin]

After playing SPQR for a while you start to see that there really is no difference in factions. Gaul is like Germania and Carthage is like Egypt, so I have found that none of them are difficult to take over especially with a good army.

Peace,
adnan

[Manslaughter the Great]

Germania is entirely different from Gaul. I did not have much difficulty to take Gaul but I did have quite a bit difficulty taking out the Germans west of the river Rhine.
Have you noticed that thier Chosen Axemen all have two silver chevrons?
What makes them a pain is that their axemen are superior to my Hastati and Principes and they are spammed in large numbers so taking on the Germans is no easy challenge. I didn't find Carthage too difficult after the initial years of conflict with it which ended with me taking Carthage and thier war effort dropping to almost nothing.
I dont' know about Egypt, I havent' fought them yet.

[MasterAdnin]

Germania is entirely different from Gaul. I did not have much difficulty to take Gaul but I did have quite a bit difficulty taking out the Germans west of the river Rhine.
Have you noticed that thier Chosen Axemen all have two silver chevrons?
What makes them a pain is that their axemen are superior to my Hastati and Principes and they are spammed in large numbers so taking on the Germans is no easy challenge. I didn't find Carthage too difficult after the initial years of conflict with it which ended with me taking Carthage and thier war effort dropping to almost nothing.
I dont' know about Egypt, I havent' fought them yet.

Egypt were fairly easy, although I only had a few battles with them due to Parthia kicking their ass. I'm still awaiting Parthia to make the first move on me, although not sure they will.

Peace,
Adnan