Can roman troops kill anything?

[Kayslay]

I played that first battle on med/med, the one where the King attacks your men, and you're told you cannot win.
Anyway during the fight, I managed to completly surround a unit, not sure which enemy unit it was, but yeah I have 4 units boxing 1 unit in, the enemy unit didn't even die, it managed to hold until more enemies come to help..

How are you meant to kill units?

[DukeCanada]

The first battle is meant to be very difficult and unlikely to be won. You'll find that the rest of the battles will make more sense.

[Sphere]

You got pwned, take it like a man.

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

Those are Greeks. The enlightened-super-human-super-soldier race of demi-gods.

What can a mere barbarian like you or me do to them?

[DarthLazy]

Those are Greeks. The enlightened-super-human-super-soldier race of demi-gods.

What can a mere barbarian like you or me do to them?

[Muizer]

As Duke says it is meant to be very hard. Rather than as a stand-alone battle, you can try to fight it with the rest of the campaign in mind. Last time I played it as the Romans, I wiped out his elephants and cavalry (Pyrrhus included), so that when it became clear I wasn't going to beat his infantry, I could withdraw with relatively few losses.

[Spike]

well, focus on his elephants and try to work from the flank, roll it from a point, at least I can got close victory in my first try

[Iguanaonastick]

I suspect that was one of their elite units, probably the elite hoplites you were surrounding.

In the custom battles I tested Roman principes basically beat everything except those elite units, which the Romans have no equivalent to as they do not have standing armies with elite units (yet) but rely on their militia-type forces.

The enemy, Greek or not, will have very few units like that and most of their armies will be fairly weak.

And yeah, you can win that first battle, as the thread on the subject shows. Some people apparently even beat it on very hard battle difficulty which gives the enemy even bigger stat-boosts. I beat it on normal difficulty using close-to-historical Roman tactics rather than game-based ones. But even if you lose you'll win in the long-term as you have a much better power-base than Pyrrhos does. And with that big army dead you'll pay little in the way of unit upkeep. (Hey, bright side to everything!)

The next army you bring south will have some experience and weapon upgrades from temples and blacksmiths whilst their forces will be depleted and you'll do -much- better.