Belgae Campaign

[Zen1986]

I am currently playing the Belgae campaign and have doing ok so far, consolidated all of britain and half of gaul, I have inevitably came up against the romans. i am trying to find out what edge the belgae have over the romans in terms of troops to use as a counter against them, rome is by far the strongest nation. my current war with them is a bit of a stalemate although i have been able to reduce their army strength by about a half according to the power graph but they are still superior to me. currently they are swarming into southern gaul. some advice would be good.

[General Brittanicus]

I am currently playing the Belgae campaign and have doing ok so far, consolidated all of britain and half of gaul, I have inevitably came up against the romans. i am trying to find out what edge the belgae have over the romans in terms of troops to use as a counter against them, rome is by far the strongest nation. my current war with them is a bit of a stalemate although i have been able to reduce their army strength by about a half according to the power graph but they are still superior to me. currently they are swarming into southern gaul. some advice would be good.

Well i don't know about the belgae, but my plan with the cimbri campaign i am currently playing is to lay a crap load of ambushes when the romans try to enter my lands, which will allow me to destroy them with fewer casualties. Then when i go on the offensive i will train a load of armies with levy clubmen or some other cheap unit mixed with a few bear warrior/cav units and then send them burning and pillaging into the roman lands, then when those armies look like they are finished my elite veteran armies will hopefulyl move in and finish the job.

[chris10]

i am trying to find out what edge the belgae have over the romans in terms of troops to use as a counter against them,

AFAIK there is none...after all it was the Romans who conquered them and not the Belgae conquered the Romans ..
be smarter in battle is maybe the only thing you can do...archers are good against cohorts especially when they moving

my plan with the cimbri campaign i am currently playing is to lay a crap load of ambushes when the romans try to enter my lands

The Cimbri have a better unit roster than the belgae and will do a lot better against heavy roman inf.

[Zen1986]

hey chris 10, i don't think what you said is absolutley true, it is true roman infantry was uber elite but their cavalry sucks but unfortunatley so does belgae cavalry .

[RedGuard]

i thought the belgae were supposed to have the strongest infantry of all the celtic nations? probably still no match for rome though.

[General Brittanicus]

The Cimbri have a better unit roster than the belgae and will do a lot better against heavy roman inf.

Ambushes will still be effective with the belgae and you just need a few units that can be used to soak up the roman pila and then use the old hammer and anvil tactic on them (although i don't know how good belgae cav is compared to rome's)

[Velico]

When I tested the Belgae and faced the Romans, I used the Bellovaci Infantry as main line infantry against their pre-Marian reforms. The chariots are very useful if used correctly. I would skirmish until half their ammo depleted, retreat them behind my main line, turning off skirmish mode and auto-fire. I would screen with elite skirmishers so they took the bulk of the Roman pilum volley's. Once they were close I would hit them with the Bellovaci javelins and close ranks. Have at least 4 heavy cavalry, two on each flank and crush their cavalry. Once the main lines join, swing your heavy cav around and hit the flanks hard, keeping your chariots close enough for the fear bonus and launching javelins on targets of opportunity. Their line will break quickly and the rest is pie.

For post-Marian it's the same strategy but with the Heavy Swordsmen replacing the Bellovaci, the Heavy Chariots replacing the regular, and more Champions to go where needed.

I've found the most effective strategy to get them to break rank is once you lock lines, use your chariots to launch javelins on the flank units and hit that unit with both heavy cavalry on that side. It's virtually an insta rout. Good luck! The Belgae are awesome when used correctly.

[RollingWave]

Generally speaking...

A. Chariots: Chariots are imbal against almost any cavalries in open terrain (assuming they can catch them), not that the Roman cavalry are particularly impressive to begin with... but crushing them quickly still helps. exploit this, try to catch Their Generals with chariots... your biggest hope of victory would be to destroy their flanks quickly , this is vital for....

B. Slingers and Peltest : the simple stuff is often the most effective, if you can overrun their cavalry flanks quickly you can run these guys (And/or warband archers as well) behind the line and devastate the Roman infatry with rear end shots.

C. War Cry and terrain : on a general level, the Belgea (and most non-nomadic babarians anyway) have better bonus in woods than the legion. exploit this, warcry makes your infantry at least somewhat comparable to the cohorts in short burst. try to exploit both.

D. Warband archers : obviously, this is the most obvious advantage, they're cheap and very good. long range, hide in grass, can even melee alright (for a light archer anyway). try to make sure you don't keep firing strait up against their shields. I only do this to lure them into attack me most of the time unless i have higher ground...



So the general encounter strategy for me is something like this...

A. try to meet their cavalries in the open field with your chariots. or catch them with light spears in the woods, either way is good. though the former is preferablle .

B. try to avoid melee infantry line clash right off the bat, almost all your infantries are faster anyway so that's not too hard. lure them into the best situation possible before engaging (like.. slope forest with warcry, hopefully you already tired them out a bit.)

C. try to ambush different units. for example seperate infantry into 3 group . hide in different areas (or have one in the open and two hide) . this will mess up their formation more.

My general rule of thumb is... if the infantry line clashes in the open, ram chariot / cavalries into their rear repeatedly (avoid Triariis though. their moral is too high and they have too much bonus vs horse) . if their in the woods. run range units to their flank rear and fire into their back. this kinda hold true for all but Celtic barbarians really need to exploit this to the max.

[Visarion]

divide et impera... divide those legionaries in two or three subgroups because if they stand together their missile power is formidable, draw them into ambushes and voila! in the meantime, while you set the trap use missile units with long range to reduce their numbers...

[RollingWave]

firing strait at legionary.. unless from high ground, is generally futile, thier shield value is simply too high. the only reason I ever fire at heavy infantry strait up these days is to lure them into comming at me. otherwise just save your ammo for the following..

A. cavalries, always a good choice, with the possible exception of a few really REALLY heavy cataphracts they are really worth concentrating fire power on. espeically them generals if you can hit them.

B. other light troops. a meh choice depending on the situation. it's not a bad idea to take out their archers / slinger /peltast in some situation. especially the javelin type units can still be quite a pain in frontal hits.

C. units facing you with their back : the AI likes to rotate units around a lot in fights. not a bad tactic, having archers behind your line can help you make them pay for doing that though.

Generally I keep my archers in the center to react to different needs. and try to round my slingers to the rear. javelin depends on the situation.

A question though... why is the Belgae generals' armour value so low? it's even lower than light chariot..... the only reason I can seem to see is that they have the same size while other generals are usually smaller... but why can't you make them just smaller size? the low defense can be annoying at times especially when combined with the fact that chariots in a messy brawl often have a hard time disentangling themselfs. and obviously losing your general is never a good thing

[Ovidiuhtm]

Cimbri and belgae fan over here.

You asked about advantages over the romans:
1. Brythonic slingers . These guys are your biggest asset and can chew through romans . just don't fire at them from the front and while romans are still as this doubles the shield value and makes missiles 1/4 as effective. Dont use archers , ur wasting ur unit slots vs romans.
2.Volcae axemen. these guys are good vs heavy armour . use them. you can get them through the mercs builing
3.The two-axe germanic dudes. This unit makes the romans cry.
4.Use high charge bonus by overwhelming 1 flank. use fire arrows (only 1 archer), chariots nearby , and overwhelming numbers to start a rout.
5.Don't waste money on the champions. They fail vs a roman cohort . Same goes to most of ur units.

GL. I used these things and got pretty nifty victories vs the romans.
PS : you could try some raids with boats . 4-5 units + 1 spy to open the gates should get you a couple of undefended cities. Destroy buildings , set taxes to high then leave . Rinse and repeat

[sevenfaces]

Use bearmen, wolfmen, and the 2x axe men (all have high attack and I think armor pen) on the backs and sides of the legion line and it will crumble. I've never used their chariots before buti assume they can be used to break up lines. Lastly like anyone else use light calv to run down their velites or distract their own light cal.

[Ovidiuhtm]

Wolfmen don't have AP attack. They have swords.

[RollingWave]

Belgae's lack of money is a pain though, Arverni and the Iberians can both rake in money quite easily, but Belgae's starting postion is really poor financially speaking.

I typically find the Gallic factions are better fighting on the defensive than vice versa, they really need to decide where the lines clash to have an advantage.

Fighting open battles , my favorite tactic is to spread out my troops in a non-formed fashion, at least not formed in what you would typically expect, for example spliting the melee troops in two and hiding at least half of them somewhere different, and doing the same for missile and cavalry as well, this typically allows me a lot of options and do much better against opposing armies.

Again, the key to beating the Romans with Gallic troops in general is to keep your skrimisher / archers moving and try to always get behind the enemies with them, your cavalry's primary job is to cover your light troops from opposing cavalry. which shouldn't be too hard against the rather poor Roman cavalries.

[Perdiccas_Nile]

I've basically managed to wipe out the belgae, their last stronghold is on the island of brittania.

I managed to take "london" very easily, by simply positioning 1 stack on the river crossing and waiting for the rebels to attack.

When they did, I positioned my legionaries in a "U shape" at the shallow crossing area and absolutely massacred stack after stack of rebel infrantry and cavalry. (While my archers shot flaming arrows into the densely packed rebels causing them to route.

Regarding your question: I would recommend always having atleast 1 unit of chariots in your army as these cause "deminished morale" in the opposing troops. So that will def give you an edge against the romans.