Numidia

[Hippias]

Anyone had any success playing these guys? I though Armenia was tough until I tried this lot.

2 starting provinces - neighbour to Carthage - your spy has to go 3 or more turns before he finds a rebel province to target.

You start "allied" to Carthage - Year 3 my diplomat enquires whether they might want a bit of map action ("I'll show you mine if you show me yours") - Carthage decides this is cause to "end our worthless alliance".

My diplomat got a preview of our (brief) future as an independant nation as he sadly rode home on our only camel - 3 full stack Carthage armies marshalling on the border.

[thoscme]

haven't tried numidia, but I know it's damn hard!
amrmenia isn't so hard on vanilla RTW, but on the MM map, the armenians have a damn hard job! either go to war against pontus, take some rebel citys or go to war against mighty seleucids..
i loved playing the armeinans in vanilla, but it's boring on the MM map..

on the MM map i play more macedon or greeek cities

[Soccer1993]

the scythians always go down to aremenia so it's really hard...yeah Numidia's alot harder though...when ur armenia you have atleast 10 turns to consolidate ur positions until either the Seleucids, Scythians or Pontus gets you, but when ur Numidia, Carthage just crushes you into dust!

[Locky]

I've actually seen, Numidia go beserk, in some of my campaigns, and it destroys carthage. The best way to utilise, Numidia, is to take fuill advantage of thier missile troops.

[Warmaster]

Yeah in my current campaign they've pretty much killed off carthage.

Im pretty sure they did go to war until a quite a few turns into the game, and when they did they just went and captured an undefended Carthage (the city) and the empire itself pretty much collapsed after that.

Its good to see because they stood even less of a chance in the old versions where they only had 1 starting province.

[Hippias]

I am guessing that Numidia as an AI faction is very different to Numidia as the player. Isn't it the case that the AI will always be extra aggressive towards a player controlled faction as opposed to another AI faction. Presumably when Numidia and Carthage are both AI, Carthage ignores them long enough for Numidia to get itself set up. When you are playing as Numidia, especially if Carthage starts on good termswith Egypt, then i reckon the AI Carthage will come for you early.

would be interested if anyone has played Numidia recently and managed to do anything with them - otherwise they might end up being a wasted faction slot?

[Zarax]

IMHO numidia should be used as another rebel slot, they've been puppets historically for most of the time and the slot could be used either for carthaginian rebels or some extra faction...

[DimeBagHo]

Hippias: You are right about Numidia being quite different as an AI faction. Carthage may not attack them early, and if the Carthaginians get distracted by war in Sicily then they often get a chance to attack Carthage while the city is poorly defended. That almost never happens for the human player.

I could use the balancing script to give human players a chance as Numidia. But I think that converting Numidia into a rebel faction might be a better idea. (1) Zarax is correct that, apart from a brief period between the collapse of Carthage and their own demise at the hands of the Romans, the Numidians never amounted to much. (2) There is nothing very unique or interesting about their unit roster so they are not that interesting to play, or play against. (3) Finally, converting them into a rebel faction would be easy and might not even break saved game compatibilty (except for Numidian campaigns of course).

[Zarax]

As rebel faction Numidia should basically get carthaginian AOR units plus some extra from iberians in the iberian peninsula...
Carthage suffered mostly of colonial and mercenary rebelliom, the core of phoeni citizenry remained loyal to death, so rebels should eventually show that (hoping that this will not weaken them too much)...