The Marseilles Situation

[Samurai Doc]

Ok, first off, I am playing Rome: TW Vanilla. Yeah, I've tried this and that mod, but I've always loved the original.

Anyway, I'm playing as the Julii on VH/VH. Now, I consider myself a well seasoned Total War player and figured that as long as I was careful and meticulous in my advance on the frontier, I would be just fine. For the first 30 years, things went well. Slow, but well. After defeating a large army led by the Gallic Lugothorix, I quickly solidified my base in northern Italy, captured the frontier town of Iuvaum, made a surprise landing in Narbo Martius, and brazenly sacked the Gallic town of Lugundum.


Meanwhile, I island hopped my way from Sardinia and eventually captured Palma without much resistance. I was pleased to see the Scipii steamroll Sicily and Carthage leaving the Carthaginians with Morocco and maybe a part of Spain. So to the south, I had nothing to worry about.

Gaul had been fairly well beaten into submission, and had lost at least 6-8 generals in an attempt to take Narbo Martius. So for the most part now, they are pacified and left to lick their wounds up north. The wiley Spanish are in check with my navy and stunningly, Germania was completely conquered by the Britons.

It was at that point that I began to worry. I hurriedly captured Marseilles, which had been isolated for a good 5 years, and then...the Britons turned their wrath against me. They started by capturing the obscure town of Iuvaum. I took a beating there, but quickly mustered a much larger than necessary army to reclaim it and make it a permanent full stack there.

Following that debacle, the Britons successfully captured Lugundum from me, and to my horror, they continued to rampage further south to Marseilles. Amazingly, my army, lead by a guy who had for all intents and purposes, single-handedly beaten every Gallic general of any worth, turned back the Britons on one of those bridges leading to Marseilles. Two more giant armies would follow in the next year and both were repelled.

So after the casualities had mounted to several thousand and with nothing to show for it, those blue faced fools fell back to Lugundum and placed an order for a few more generals.

At this point, I took advantage of the lapse in the invasion. I started pumping out spies and assassins like crazy and I decimated the family and chain of command.

Despite having no one to lead the charge, the Britons are now again sending around a 2,000 man force to take the bridge leading to Marseilles. Despite having superior firepower and the Marius reform troops, I don't know how I can beat them. There are just too many. Two units of Hoplites could probably do the job in tandem with my archers and ballistas, but I don't just have those kind of troops sitting around.

I've never seen the Britons this good in a campaign, and even if I can somehow save Marseilles, I have no idea how to invade a nation that owns all of Germany, Britannia, eastern France. My only far-out idea is to muster a truly monstrous army with a monstrous navy, drop it in Londinum and sack every town within reach and destroy ever single building. Maybe then, I could turn the campaign into a two front war and chip away at their stranglehold on the map.

[Legio]

Get an army of pratorians/urbans and a few generals, an archer or two.
If they are captain-led hordes, bribe them for a few thousand, and attack the nearest city.

[Samurai Doc]

Thanks for the tip! Instead of defending the bridge, I moved my forces further north right to the border so I could fight on open ground instead. I crushed the 2000 man force and lost about half of my own manpower. So both of us have fallen back to the nearest city to lick our wounds and regroup. I did not have enough strength for a full-fledged invasion, so I'm going to continue waiting it out until I get my city-sack brigade all trained in my capital.

Assassinations continue in earnest and I'm going to definitely send some diplomats to bribe any encroaching forces and hopefully turn them against themselves.

[NobleNick]

....I have no idea how to invade a nation that owns all of Germany, Britannia, eastern France. My only far-out idea is to muster a truly monstrous army with a monstrous navy, drop it in Londinum and sack every town within reach and destroy ever single building...

Now you're talking. This is the same technique that is effective against Egypt, which often gets so big it is hard to overcome in any other way. But it does not need to be a brute force thing. More on that, later...

Bridge battles: You want them. Get back to that bridge and make your stand there. Your logic of: "I can't beat them at the bridge, but... I can beat them in the field," is hugely flawed. If you won against the Britons on the open field, you should have absolutely crucified them while defending a bridge. Tell us what the stack compositions were (especially yours), and your battle difficulty setting, and we can tell you how to do it.

Troops: If you have hit the Marius Reforms, Then you should be focused on getting your cities up to steam to produce Legionary Cohort (LC), Legionary Cavalry (L.Cav) and Archer Auxilia (AA). But mostly LEGIONARY COHORT. LC are THE most cost effective infantry in the game.

So, in your position, I would:

1.) Get my stack back to that bridge near Marseille, and make sure you have 6 to 8 units of good men to plug the bridge (in descending order of excellence: LC; ELC or spears), 3 to 5 units of AA, and a few cav to chase routers. You do not need ballistas: a well managed AA unit will do a lot more damage. (A stack of 8 LC, 6 AA, 4 L.Cav., and a general, used correctly, will stop and pulverize THREE full stacks of ANYTHING trying to cross the bridge. 4 LC, plus 3 AA and 2 L.Cav. will stop most full stacks.)

2.) Build several half-stacks, totally of L.Cav. led by one or more generals per stack. turn these guys loose in the enemy's interior: siege settlements until starved out. If the enemy sallys, or if attacked in the open field, decimate the attackers using tactics from *THIS LINK* .

3.) Practice "scorched earth" policy for settlements you do not want to keep: exterminate captured settlements, then raze all buildings in order to get cash; but rebuild any broken walls. Then leave the settlement to rebel while you move on to another enemy settlement. The enemy will have to use resources to fight rebels to reclaim and rebuild their settlements. These are enemy resources which are no longer available to fight you.

4.) Raise stacks built of LC, AA and L.Cav., in roughly the following ratio --> 2:1:1. (For instance, a stack of 8 LC + 4 AA + 4 L.Cav., gives room for a general and a catapult or 2 if you want.) To save time, take a few extra cav in your stack. Then, when approaching a city, run your cav ahead on the campaign map, to start the siege a turn or 2 before your main army gets there. Raise partial stacks of Peasants to follow up the battle stack; so that after a city is taken, the Peasants move in and the battle stack immediately moves on.

With 2 or 3 all-cav half-stacks (I would go with 2 stacks of 12, including 10 L.Cav. + 2 generals per stack) deep in the enemy's heartland, you can wreak enough havok to keep those Briton stacks busy reclaiming devastated cities. Meanwhile, use your single heavy stack with Peasant trailer to snap up and keep Briton cities near your border.

Whatever you do, remember that Rome is the king of infantry powers, and LC is the cost effective king of infantry. Play to your strength. LC need not fear anything except Armored Elephants: And Briton does not have elephants.

I hope this helps.

[Samurai Doc]

Good stuff. Thank you.

The reason that open territory was a better battleground was because I could better utilize my cavalry in that battle. By the time their sluggish spearmen finally engaged my infantry, my horses had already picked off a large percentage of the advancing army.

On the bridge battle, I couldn't do that as effectively because my rather inexperienced Auxilla kept routing at the choke point and the cavalry could never really flank the oncoming infantry.

[NobleNick]

Ahh. Yes. A cav-reliant force is the exception to the bridge battle advantage.

Roman Auxilia? I don't use them. Get LC: They have much higher morale, and are deadly against horses and everything else. And back them with AA, off to your left (the enemy's right) so that they can pour arrow fire into the enemy's unshielded right side, as they stand packed in like sardines on the bridge.

Well, the good news, here, is that you already seem to have the basic skills and leanings to let the "all-cav force" strategy work wonders.