Carthaginian starting position

[Marcellvs Orellivs]

I decided to start a new campaign being Rome's arch-rival; Carthage. But what I get to start with isn't good. Three N.African cities losing ~1500d and carthage losing ~1000.
Now I put all automanaged cities on a financial build policy and built up my ports and mines, anything to stop bleeding money.
A couple of decades later I was still losing money (about 3000 denarii) and the African cities were ripe for rebellion and losing inhabitants. What can I do?

[JrvUnleashed]

Ideally you're suppose to start every campaign with all your cities on very high tax rate that you can, and lowing it only when your populace's happiness goes below 75%. Begin a conquering-everything-policy very quickly. Avoid the lowly areas of Numidia until later, as they're too spread out and wont make a profit. Send all your troops into Italy and begin conquering Italy quickly, starting from the lower end and pushing forward. It wont be easy, so keep supporting your army with new troops via ships. You must take as much as possible from your enemies. More cities, more money. Don't forget to buy economy building when you have the money. Make a habit of making roads and ports in every city. Ports first, as sea trade, especially for Carthage, is huge around that area.

[despot_of_rhodes]

First of all you should disband all your expensive cavalry units, wich you don´t need at the moment. I normaly also disband most of units without starting experience. It takes too long, to transfer all the units to wherever you´d need them, then to build those in place ( maybe after you´ve built a blacksmith to save the upgrade costs ), hire mercs or simply try to fight under bad battle odds ( wich might bring you some awsome victories ), because you´d pay the upkeep for those units for several turns, wich added together makes you go bankrupt. Try to disband units in towns wich need population boost, if the travel there doesn´t take more then a turn, just calculate your income.
Take Agrigento as soon as possible and assault Syracuse - you should be fine after you gain control of those two cities.
And definetly disband those useless eles, wich eat about 2k denari per turn in upkeep!

[Marcellvs Orellivs]

Cheers for the tips, I'll see how it plays out.

[DukeCanada]

Elephants ar fairly useless in RTR PE....I never found myself using them

[despot_of_rhodes]

I´d second that, DC, but they are somehow very cool, and the sound of an ele slamming into roman infantry, while playing Carthage, creates kind of athmosphere on the battlefield, to me at least
I think the unit size should be at least doubled to have an apropriate impact and their vulnarability against skirmisher javelines is simply too bad balanced ( 2 cheap skirmisher units, available with any AOR early on in any town, or simply hired - they still are the cheapest units in the game, can slaughter a unit, wich takes 2-3 turn to build, has incredibly high recruitment and upkeep costs, and wich can only be hired in very small number of places all over the map! ) I like realism, but for a game balancing is far more important, because otherwise the realism will be contradicted by it, and people would build units like eles only for the flair, imho.

[DukeCanada]

Agreed! Though I will admit that the Selucids elephants would always cause havoc amongst my ranks, damn those golden cheveron elephants

[KingoftheGinge]

I never had this problem. In fact I found I had the best success with Carthage economically of all my campaigns so far, from an early stage at least. Don't worry about war at the start, build mines in spain and upgrade them, make alliances and get trade with spain and greek cities quickly take over the isle of sicily except the greek parts and exterminate them for the money. Use this money to build up infrastructure on your coastal towns.

[despot_of_rhodes]

Charging eles with cataphracts from 2 or 3 sides used to annihylate them almoust instantly, from what i´ve experienced ( actually a good joke, when i try to imagine how some horsemen, scared by those beasts to death, can take on those beasts )

And about Carthage: i haven´t played RTR PE for quite a while now, but ExRM instead, where you would go bankrupt, if you don´t disband the units i´ve mentioned, no matter how fast you´ll be able to conquer

[Louieman]

I don't really get why people are saying elephants are useless. They were absolute livesavers when I was taking on the Romans.

[JrvUnleashed]

Well, for the price and upkeep they're just not worth it. Their only use is charging through the enemy line after the enemy have engaged and messing up they're battle line, but since pretty much any infantry unit can beat elephants now you cant even melee with them. You get a single charge, then you have to get out, and wait 5 minutes for them to rest for another effective charge. I'd rather just spend the money on two battalions of cavalry, who are much more useful, not to mention less dangerous to your own men.

[Audacia]

Well, for the price and upkeep they're just not worth it. Their only use is charging through the enemy line after the enemy have engaged and messing up they're battle line, but since pretty much any infantry unit can beat elephants now you cant even melee with them. You get a single charge, then you have to get out, and wait 5 minutes for them to rest for another effective charge. I'd rather just spend the money on two battalions of cavalry, who are much more useful, not to mention less dangerous to your own men.

has anyone noticed that cavalry seems very weak?
i mean ill hit a phlanx flank with heavy cavalry, and somehow the phalanx will still own them, so i wihdraw the cavalry, then charge again.
this seems to have killed off almost 2/3 of my cavalry, who are then pretty useless

[Marcellvs Orellivs]

I take it all back. I'm about 25 turns in and making ~10000 profit comfortably. Rome, taste my punic blade.

[Caligula Caesar]

Hit even the most elite, confident soldiers in the back with elephants, and they will rout. They saved my life against the Romans several times.

[Brusilov]

Like a lot of RTW based mods it's necessary to 'weather the storm' at the start of a campaign. You need to improve your economy right from the start (upgrade roads, farms etc), send out diplomats to get trade working and build ports. You may also need to disband some of the starting units.

It's also best to try and only build up your barracks in one or two settlements - try and make the most of the money that you have.

Once you get your economy working you can build and deploy larger armies.

[fourganger]

Playing as Romans, I hired the mercenary Elephants in Greece and byt the end of the campaign they had gold chevrons- they are phalanx killers. My armies were typically outnumbered by the Seleucids so I couldn't really flank with infantry without thinnking my front line to breaking point. Therefore, I'd engage the Seleucids with my infantry in a single line, and then flank with elephants who could then charge down the whole length of the enemy line. Any units that
didn't rout lost formation, which let my Romans get past their pikes and into stabbing range.

Useful as cataphract killers as well.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Im playing carthage right now and she's already one of my fav factions. good spearmen/missiles, access to excellent mercs like balaeric (sp) slingers and numidian cav and berber javelinmen. The only bad thing is ur major cities are bankrupt from upkeep even on very high tax rate and grow like crazy so u hav 2 to build very shrewdly (personally I just use plague as population control). You must expand immediately, and tho ur cities are bakrupt u are still an economic powerhouse. Recruit large stacks immediately ( I usually go with 4 poeni infantry, 2-3 lybians, 2-3 punic skirmishers/berbers, 2 numidians w/ punic cav if u want, 2 towered eles and a gen w/ whetever auxilliaries u want) and take africa. with the army u have in sicily u should b able to take sicily and any greek settlements in italy(dont worry about the greeks; mace most likely will own them and prevent retaliation).

With with your mediteranian empire you can now face rome. ally w/ iberia and use ur mighty navy and eles to the fullest. blockade all roman ports and send her navy to the bottom of the sea. In battle, engage the legions and rape their flanks w/ eles - but always bware of pilae. overwhelm rome with ur superior skill and economy. once she is finished you can take iberia and crete, then crush the barbarians of europe. Beware of mace and the Seleucids (it may be wise to ally with the seleucids or ptolemies, whoever is more powerful.) but whatever you do, ATTACK!

[Lord Thesaurian]

cav are a bit weak because spears are a little overrated, but heavy cav and ippilko still can own phalanxes from the rear. the SPQR team did a great job with cav.

[Caesar Augustus]

I sense I'm doing something wrong with my skirmishers regaring killing elephants. I was fighting a battle against Pyrrhus the other day and I had 2 units of of skirmishers (80 men in each unit) attacking his elephants for pretty much the entire battle, and I still couldn't kill the entire lot of them. Though it was fun to see them run amok down into his epirote phalangites (sp?). Of course that wasn't as fun when said elephants charged through the phalangites into my principes.

I've not used any cavalry bar the preatoria to comment, but they definitely aren't as strong as the cavaly in vanilla. I'm glad about that to be honest.

[Antygon]

About elefants: Rightly used they are very useful part of any army against any opponent including Romans. But when AI using them dealing with them is rather simple matter. You only need to have a couple of skirmish units that uses javelins. Elefants are extremly vulnerable to javelins.

Place skirmishers behind your main battleline and wait till eles attack, when they do and are busy dealing with your infantry shower them with javelins.

on the other hand

When I was playing epeiros and fight against greeks I've learned best way to use eles against hoplites (not phalangites!). First I've charged them with eles and right away charged the broken lines with my cavalry. They have fled immidietly. I havent lost any horseman.