aedui units

[sandman666bz]

hi... i'm playing as the romans, reached the year 212 bc and extended into gaul, but in a battle defending a city with a full stack of principes and triarii against a full stack of aedui scum i lost miserabily because my units started fleeing as soon as they saw the barbarians. any advice to counter this in the future?

[Centrius]

Don't defend on the walls against barbarians. That's what usually makes me lose to them in siege battles.

[-iceblade^]

defend in the town, bt the flag in the center.

if you have missile troops, leave them on the walls to kill off a few guys before the enemy gets to the walls. then withdraw them to the center before they can get attacked. (usually as soon as the enemy ladders hit your walls, / a siege tower comes next to your wall)

block off the road that leads there, set your troops to guard mode, and have your strongest troops (triarii, pedites extraordinarii) in front, with missile troops (accensi) behind to pepper them with stones, etc. also, use principes in the middle (have them throw their pila into the fray when the enemy is attacking your troops)

also, build up the walls to as high a level as you can. the ones with boiling oil etc. that way they will kill off a lot of the enemy soldiers as they try and come close to your city.

[torongill]

Depends on the barbarians, really. If they were naked fanatics, hope they don't have many. Try to figure out where will they go(usually they are the unit with the siege tower, so try to guess approximately where will the siege tower go). Then, place your best 2 units, say principes with 3 chevrons and the pedites extraordinarii. Place them next to each other right where the siege tower will touch. In this way any unit coming by the tower will have to fight 2 enemies. For good measure put your general next to the fight, he gives the men morale. Don't put triarii on the walls, they have penalties against infantry and bonus vs cavalry. And maybe next time put some archers in the stack. Even 2 of the worst archers can put the ram on fire, the tower is harder, but the best results come when the siege tower has touched the wall and you flame it - instant kill on the unit that's using it.

Of course, it depends on what difficulty you're playing If you play your battles on hard, don't fight on the walls.