To those who created this mod

[Chinaski]

May I just say that you did an amazing job?
I am taking a class on ancient warfare in college, we are covering the Romans at the moment and I thought: "Hey, I should install again my old Rome Total War, it wasn't that good but it could put me in the mood anyway''.

Then, I discovered this mod. The new visuals are a delight, the new legions are amazing, and the whole campaign is just so much better. I actually enjoy managing my cities and building stuff, trying to keep the empire afloat. And at last, this game offers a real challenge.

For the first time in the Total War series, I actually had to back down from a region because of unbearable pressure. With the Romans, the Macedonians have been a thorn in my side. I decided to push a little bit into their territory while I was busy exterminating the Carthaginians in Africa. Bad idea, they kept sending stacks after stacks to regain their territory. The whole enterprise has just been a staggering loss of money and manpower, slowing me down in my African campaign. I won every battle, but that clearly wasn't enough.

It was akin to a ''US in Vietnam'' situation; you know you should get out of there, but each year that you keep bringing more troops, it makes it a little harder psychologically to let it go. In the end, I completely ran out of manpower in Greece, impossible to recruit any more troops. I had to beg for a ceasefire, give back to Macedonia its regions + a sh_tload of money in tributes. It never happened before in TW, and it's great! Now I can breath a little, and spend all my money against Carthage. They aren't too difficult to roll back, but you have to proceed slowly. When I'm done with them, I'm gonna enslave every single Macedonian out there, lol.

Two quick question by the way:
1. How do you get generals to gain command stars? It seems that no matter how hard I try, they never get more than one or two.
2. Any good way to make the enemy flee? I never had the problem before, but it's pretty hard here. If I have to exterminate a regiment to the very last man while I have 500 men surrounding it, I guess I'm doing it wrong.

[Ferdiad]

I have this to say:You must be real bad at ths game or really rusty. :p
1)Win battles, heroic are best.
2)Fire arrows, cav charge in the back, dead general.Those all cause severe morale penalties.

[Dramatic Cat]

1. How do you get generals to gain command stars? It seems that no matter how hard I try, they never get more than one or two.
2. Any good way to make the enemy flee? I never had the problem before, but it's pretty hard here. If I have to exterminate a regiment to the very last man while I have 500 men surrounding it, I guess I'm doing it wrong.

1 if youre playing 2.0 the mechanics for gaining "command stars" was buggy as hell, you could rampage with you successor along half the world winning dozens of heroic victories and they still wouldnt get a single comand star.

This was fixed in 2.1a... though now half the generals and admirels are cowards. lol

2 and to make the enemy flee, well, the quickest way to rout the enemy army is with cav charges to their backside. also fire missiles to the flank or back causes massive morale drops.

hoap this helps

[Hunterbear]

@Chinaski

I play H/H with Alex.

1. Fighting an even battle won't get you anything. Fighting 2-3 armies simultaneously (have unlimited men on battlefield set to true in preferences) and getting a Heroic Victory gets my generals either a trait or star. Still not that easy to get but do-able.

2. You can do it the cheater way and snipe the enemy general at the start of the battle (which I never do) so it lowers morale of enemy army.

Hold the front line with Heavy Infantry set to guard mode. Try to send your skirmishers (ie. slingers,archers,etc.) around the sides and behind enemy line to effectively mow down enemy units. Always leave an 'out' for the enemy to run away and let your cavalry hunt them down. Otherwise the enemy will fight to the death when totally surrounded. Counter enemy cavalry with your own to protect your skirmishers.If you want to use cavalry to smash into the backs of the enemy, make sure they have formed their line behind the enemy and are 'all' in formation before clicking to charge, otherwise if units are still mingling around trying to get in formation, the charge won't be effective at all. Then pull them back and reform before charging again. A single charge usually won't do it, 2-3 times you should see some results otherwise pick weaker units in the line to charge to help start a rout.

I'll shut-up now and let someone else tell you their strategies.

[Ferdiad]

"Hammer and Anvil" thats all you need to know.

[Chinaski]

Thanks for all the quick answers!
Concerning the fleeing thingy, I did some quick tests and I see where I went wrong. To wait for the cavalry to be idle before charging seems indeed quite important, I wasn't waiting and now it makes a big difference. Concerning the skirmishers behind the enemy, I was afraid to mow down my own line, but it seems to be negligible (I wouldn't do that IRL, nor do I remember any ancient general doing that, but eh!).
Concerning the command stars, I guess I'll have to put myself in more danger. I usually auto-resolve a good amount of battles and usually travel with at least 2 stacks together, so not much heroic victories. I was hoping to get stars at some point anyway, but it doesn't seems so.