How do you beat the Guals?

[stupiddk]

i am playing RTR on H/H. The Guals have dominated everybody north of the Italian peninsula. The Germans are all but gone and the macedonians are withheld to the Illyrian strait. i am playing as the Romans. I have lost the last 10 of 13 battles against the Guals for some reason, low morale, or annihilation, and what not.

How do you stack up and beat the Guals on hard?

[Roman Clone]

Ahhh my friend, welcome to tactics.


This was really a tactic used by the Romans before they got Republican legions.


First line: 5 units of Hastati

Second Line: 5 units of principes

Third Line: 3 Units of Triarii


Let the Entire gallic army engage your line of Hastati. Then, send in the principes too help the hastati, which were really helping to ware down the gauls. Then, Flank the Gallic army with your Triarri and that should send them packing.

[stupiddk]

Well, I tried that and I have to say that it worked A LOT better than my Roman tactic. I am huge horse guy and the cavalry sucks on the Romans, so my tactic is to commit the entire army except the triarii and flank the enemy units with the cavalry, but when I charge the engaged guals, they see me coming and turn their backs to my heavy infantry. They slaughter the cavalry before I can get them to disengage. This leaves me hopeless. I have a bunch of infantry with no way to chase down the guals archers and light cavalry.

[Arcani 4 Ever]

The first thing you should have to do was to eliminating while they were growing, I say this because barbarians are weak at the game start, and their elite units are expensive.

Now If you want to deal with them later is better if you use mostly infantry,
specially Triarii and Principes, the have higher defence and attack.
Also for barbarian foot soldiers are weak against missiles so if you have
skirmishers or archers, you have to use them as the back line to kill them.
Cavalry, i dont recomend it, i have my own personal experiences and were
always a crushing defeat, but maybe if you attack them from the flanks it could help. Good Luck.

[stupiddk]

Yeah, that works better for me because I like having a strong economy at hte start and build up money to build Legions. Also, should I use guard mode on the legionaires and triarii?

[Roman Clone]

Nah, Guard mode Makes them, wll there are a few glitches with Guard mode lets just say that.


You ONLY FLANK IF THEY ARE Stupid Missle troops that don't know what's coming or enemy infantry that is engaged. Other than that, they are going to get killed. If You really like invincible cavalry, then I smell a m2TW fan

[s0meguy]

note: when i wrote this i assumed that you used vanilla RTW... i never played RTR so im not sure if it works there, but you can prolly at least learn something from it.

Well this is what I do. It depends on the size of their army.. but if you scale this setup to the largest possible army theres no way your going to lose any single battle against gaul. Don't use this against empires that use a lot of spearmen

Get an army with maybe 5 or 6 of the strongest infantry you can make, preferably heavy infantry if possible and 7 of the strongest cavalry units you can make, also preferably heavy. Archers are useful in this strategy as well.

On the battlefield, flank your infantry with your cavalry, 4 on each side, put the general at one side (good for morale, or get 1 extra cavalry unit and use your general to raise the infantry morale, its essential for this strategy that they don't start routing). Approach slowly, don't run. Once your at a small distance make your army stop. Get your archers to fire fire arrows at their infantry flanks and they will get disorganized and easy prey for your cavalry. In mean time destroy any cavalry they may have... they will probably try to outflank you but you have more cavalry. Destroy their flanking cavalry (once they are out of formation) by attacking it from at least 2 flanks. Once they rout leave them. Chances are that they have already thrown their general at your cavalry. If not kill it using the tactic that I just described, but only once they are out of formation and exposed.

Once you took care of their flanking cavalry, order your archers to stop attacking. Make sure your cavalry is in position to outflank their infantry (dont do it yet, or they will probably reposition themselves). Attack their infantry head on with your infantry, then outflank their infantry with your cavalry and attack from behind. Light infantry should be easily crushed between your infantry and cavalry, but do multiple charges on their heavy infantry. Don't let your cavalry just keep fighting them because they that will create unnecessary casualties, unless they are going to rout. Their flanks will easily die and rout, order your infantry to help the other infantry... you get the drill. Get them routing... killing their general helps a lot.

You can fill up your additional unit spaces with wardogs and attack light infantry with them, 2 units of wardogs per light infantry should do the trick fast. Keep some cavalry back to catch routing units, because your wardogs will follow them off the map... would be a waste. If you have a lot of wardogs and they mostly have heavy infantry... attack one unit of heavy infantry with all your wardogs. This way they will overwhelm them with numbers, and they will still be able to eat through maybe 2 or 3 other units depending on how many wardog units you have. They are one of my favorite units heh... sometimes i get about 8-10 units of them and watch them destroy all their infantry. But they are mostly my favorite because they dont need to be retrained if you make sure to keep their handlers alive. they will have a full stock of dogs for your next battle... do NOT attack cavalry with wardogs, especially heavy cavalry... they will get owned easily.

anyways... good luck

[Assyrian]

all good ways but if u are going to use the 3 line tactics make sure you stretc your lines to match theirs or u will be flanked and beaten i use the good old marathon formation that was used by the athenians to beat the larger persians it works just as good with romans

weaken your center with hastati or town watch while making your left and right strong with more elite troops let them attack you and beat you back in the center meanwhile the outnumbered flanks will be beaten back and then u can divert some troops from your flanks to attack the remaining gauls in the center and if you have cavalry it will just work that much better

[Lucius Vorenus]

Actually, if you're outnumbered and they go long lines, there is a way to avoid getting surrounded. Do a double line if you can, or use the Triarii to intercept the flankers. Worked for me on RTR.

[Hussarknight]

From my experiences playing the Romans in RTR, the Gauls are quite easy to beat. My tactic usually was to use ballistas and slingers (funditores work well) to make one or a few units come close to my line, then I charged with some infantry. These first units are quite easy to rout, because they are heavily outnumbered.
The AI will than usually send in the rest of their army, you will have to pin them down with your hastati and pricipes and use your triarii to protect their flanks. If possible, use the triarii to take out enemy cavalry.
You should keep your cavalry (2 or 3 units + general) in reserve behind your center, so they won't get attacked by enemy infantry. Cavalry will almost always lose a prolonged fight against infantry in RTR. Use them to flank when the Gaul's morale is becoming low, so they will rout quickly.

It is also a good idea to have 3 or 4 units of slingers and a unit of ballistas in an army. This way you will be able to assault most Gallic towns immediately. Use your ballistas to breach the walls and kill as many Gauls as possible. Let a few (but not all!) slingers help with that as well. Skirmishers work well too, but they have to be close to the walls - which means they could be hit by friendly fire.
It is important that one or two units of slingers don't use their ammunition yet, because you will need it to lure the Gauls away from the town square.

[^Gr8^Xander]

Here's my tactic. (It's still fresh, and I haven't been able to really test it.)

Fight in defensive mode. Let them come to you, and set your units to fire at will.

And btw, since the Roman cavalry is not so good for fighting, use them for routing the enemy. Nothing works better then a cavalrycharge in the back of a unit when it's fighting another unit, to make them rout. And if you are fighting in tight formations, one routing enemy unit will cause others to rout faster (they're close together because of your tight formation).

This worked many times, after like a minute of fighting I let my cavalry flank, attack an enemy unit in the back, and half the army starts routing.

[Domitius]

I use three lines, first a long stretch hastati, then principes and in the third line archers and/or velites. I also have triarii on the flanks and as a reserve (at the total of 3 Triarii, 5 Hastati, 5 Principes, 2 Archers, 2 Velites, 2 Equites and 1 General). Let both your hastati and principes throw their javelins, and let the enemy come to you.

Once they've run into your lines and started fighting, press their weakest flank, try to push your way through. Don't send in the principes, let the hastati move backwards until they've reached your lines with principes. Don't use that much cavalry, they cannot withhold the pressure like infantry can. And when their weakest flank has started routing, don't chase the routers, attack the closest unit at the same flank. Work your way from one unit to the next, but be sure your hastati don't rout.

[Shazbot]

Xander, change the places of the flanking Principes and the Equites, your cavalry is useless where it is in that picture.

[gogis]

Maniple tactic sucks in any TW game.

You always can go with basic "spears at flanks, swords in middle, archers behind and cavalry for flanking" and it's works always better than basic roman tactic.

I don't see a reason of placing tiarii behind, they suck at flanking, and should pe placed in first line flanks to counter cavalry charge.

And i wiped gauls from start, blitzing, so can't really help strategically wise here

[candle_86]

Maniple tactic sucks in any TW game.

You always can go with basic "spears at flanks, swords in middle, archers behind and cavalry for flanking" and it's works always better than basic roman tactic.

I don't see a reason of placing tiarii behind, they suck at flanking, and should pe placed in first line flanks to counter cavalry charge.

And i wiped gauls from start, blitzing, so can't really help strategically wise here

well Hasati is cheap, compared to triarii and id rather loose hasati than my better inf, this is just tactics, let the weaker inf die first and use your heavy to circle around there flanks and box them in.

[Juicemisbruk]

well, Gauls have a sucky roster, so u should be happy no germanians or macedonians or britons. Everyone beats gauls lmao, u must suck badly!

[Paul d]

to beat the gauls throw troops at them until they die;


just use cavalry charge cycles /archers and some weak linesmen to keep them still. and they will get chewed up fast.

[LeonidasOfSparta]

agreed with Paul

[Quintus the Great]

My experiences with Rome vs Gaul has been mainly with cavalry, simply because they can move quickly throughout the territories and to aid besieged settlements. If you have at least ten units of equites or better, it should be easy. If the Gallic general charges out in front of the pack, charge all your forces to him. If you can kill him early, the rest of the Gauls should rout quickly too.
Another way to go about it is to just pick out a unit on the Gauls flank and send your whole army against them. They should rout within seconds, and now you have their entire flank open to your charging horses. The routing should spread down the line and then you can just massacre them all as they run away.

[Aristarchus]

I play vanilla and agree with several of the tactics suggested above, but disagree with the comment that you have to spread your line to match the enemy. The Roman units can concentrate at any point and punch a hole in it with missile support. The triarii are not good in the front center to fend off the cavalry charge, because they are not the best attackers at the start. Better, I think, to keep them on the rear flanks to fend off cavalry and step up later. When facing a powerful Gallic army with a lot of cavarly support, I tend to concentrate the attack on one flank and just off center on that side, and send all but one cavalry or general to take that flank. This also makes the infantry on that side and some of the other units turn backward, making them easy to attack. The other flank of the enemy is left dangling without engaging, and they are not sure which direction to charge. Still, the center has to be protected, and this works with a reserve cavalry unit or general, and two strong infantry put on guard with velites behind them. Best if the timing on the flank you hit can allow your cavalry to swing around and hit the enemy cavalry from the rear as they charge. The timing is critical in wiping up the flank to free your units to face the remaining enemy units from both the front and rear of their original line. This is when the triarii step up to hold off the fresh enemy while you regroup against them. Too many enemy cavalry, though, can make this all very difficult.