I have a bunch of thoughts about this mod that don't have a single unifying theme. I'll start posting them as I think of them. Maybe this can be my SPQR log and maybe someone might find useful info even though this sub forum seems dead. I first played this mod more than a decade ago, it's strange coming back after all this time.
-The mod is supposed to be hard but even with house rules and garrison script, it's going pretty easily for me so far because I do precise planning for the first few turns and the benefits snowball. Once the initial elephant and Spartans armies were defeated, I've yet to find a tough battle. I've added my own new house rule to try to make it harder which is no city assaults are allowed. Starving cities out should slow things down. Of course, there's nothing I can do if a relieving army attacks and all of the enemy die which would give me the city the next turn.
-I no longer assault but if you do, you can hire mercenaries just before the assault, let them take the brunt of the causalities, then disband them after. Another mercenary use is to disband them for the population to rapidly grow a city. The prohibitive aspect of mercenaries are the high upkeep, these methods make upkeep irrelevant.
-Greek and Gaul sword auxilia and spear auxilia are recruitable both pre Marius and post Marius. The same goes for Spanish spear auxilia. Focusing first on taking cities that can recruit these provide 2 benefits. 1. it eases the Marius transition, 2. it gives you a ton of time to gain experience on these units.
-Halicarnassus is logistically difficult to take early but you can send a diplomat via ship to bribe it once your economy is up and running. The 20% faster build is well worth trying to get ASAP. The cost is in the 80k range but can vary widely depending on garrison. As a side note, you start picking up bad character traits when you end turn over 150k. Vanilla was 50k.
-Corinth also gets some priority to be taken because the public order bonus from the wonder is wonderful. That said, you'll already be in position to take it if you're trying to get Greece early anyway for the auxilia. Also, early Corinth isn't nearly as important as it is in vanilla. In vanilla, if you don't take it early, the Brutii will.
-Mining is by far the best source of income. This threw me because I was used trade income being the most important in vanilla. In this mod, some cities can't trade at all and some are limited to where port upgrades add zero income. Tax is second best.
-This is speculative but a late game difficulty is AI built huge cities. You have no way to build over certain final buildings and erase the culture penalty. Therefore, it makes sense to target Egypt last. The pyramid wonder will reduce culture penalty for Egyptian cities.
-If you're not rushing, try to avoid battles whenever possible. Even if you're invading a region and see several stacks, it's often a good idea to not attack them and siege the city and let the AI decide if they want to fight. The reasoning is that this mod has 0 turn recruitment, therefore, the limit to the AI army is upkeep. Killing AI armies will only temporarily reduce their numbers. The only way to permanently reduce AI armies is to reduce their income.
-If the creator still monitors this forum, house rule question: I see that you're not allowed to assassinate generals but are you allowed to sabotage?
-Despite the design of the mod, it's very possible to rush even adhering to strict house rules and using garrison script. One method is to attack armies just outside of cities, if you kill all of them, you can immediately take the city with no siege. Regular siege assaults won't slow you down either if you use mercenaries to prevent main army casualties.
-This is mentioned in other threads but it's useful to know if you didn't and didn't search. Garrison script doesn't take effect immediately after you siege, it has to be activated the prior turn. This is a problem because the mod is prone to crashing requiring loads but such is life. Also, the script occasionally bugs and sets the year to 260. You can either reload or run the script again to fix this.
-A full pre marian legion costs 8,490 to raise and 2,990 to upkeep. This is assuming slingers instead of archers. This will vary by a negligible amount depending on general bodyguard size. If you're looking at the numbers yourself, if it doesn't add up, it's because 100 of the number is counted as wages from the general. A lone governor will then cost you 300 a turn to upkeep.
A general RTW idea that provides benefits in all RTW. This benefit is so strong it would justify it's own thread. Even if army is out of movement, the ship they are on can continue to move if you select the ships. You can also transfer an out of movement army by having a another ship join the ships the army is on, then moving the original ships out of the fleet. In this way, you can set up a relay of ships, a pony express type of idea. With this method, if you had enough ships in your network, you could move an army from Norway to Egypt in the same turn.