Rebel Gladiators

**Lucius_Galba** · June 20, 2006, 01:55 PM

Hi all me again.
I would like your advise. I'm currently playing the SPQR mod of RTW and i have a full stack of Gladiator Rebels sitting outside Capua. I don't yet have the resources of the legions yet, and the rebels have more experiance and are as good as my best Trarii(scuse the spelling).
Any ideas on how to tackle this would be helpful.
Cheers
LG

**NobleNick** · June 20, 2006, 02:38 PM

I have not played SQPR mod; so don't know how unit values and gameplay were tweaked. However, I have had to take back several cites that were heavily loaded with gladiators, in vanilla 1.5 RTW. So read my advice with that in mind....

A full stack of gladiator rebels? Acckk! These guys are tough and, depending on the gladiator type, have excellent stamina. Hopefully the enemy is composed of heavy infantry types or light infantry types, and not both.

Do you have cavalry? Heavy cavalry? This is the first thing I would try. Get those guys to ATTACK you on the campaign map. Let them chase you around the battlefield until they puke and then hit isolated and exhausted units with multiple SIMULTANEOUS cav charges with fresh cav. If the gladiators have excellent stamina, this might not work out so well, since your cav will have a harder time resting to remain fresh while tiring out the opposition. Picking hilly terrain for your battle would help. Heavy cav on light infantry works best (not the other way around). Always charge downhill if you have that option.

I haven't actually done this but **THINK** that: If the gladiators are all heavy infantry, you might be able to use archers. You will need to split them up into many groups, run them all over the place, and live on the pause button. But IF the archers can run faster than the heavies, your force should stay alive long enough to make a serious dent in the population. (Make sure you concentrate on eliminating a few enemy units, rather than slightly damaging many units.) Keep your archers as close to the edge of the map as is practical, especially if things get hairy; so that if they rout, you get most of your force back. If needed, withdraw, retrain, and repeat.

**Maron** · June 20, 2006, 02:47 PM

Hi LG, I dont know if it would be against lts house rules or not but i waited until their general died of old age before i attacked them. that way they dont get any morale boost and they lose a large unit of generals cavalry. okay i dont really know what to tell u if u are using pre-marius legions. but if u are using post marius legions it should be easier. To minimize casualties to a good legion u should do the following:

Train a fresh auxilliary legion with plenty of archers

and auxilia swordsmen who can go into testudo

next bring in your good legion and put both of them in the battlefield.

make sure you attack with the auxilia legion because you need to get rid of the cretan archers before you bring in the good legion

also be sure to NOT let the AI control the second army. Dont want any suicide generals or first cohorts.

do as much damage as you can with the auxiliaries before they rout so then your good legion can move in and mop up the remains with ease

this can probably be done with 1 exprienced legion but I was trying to help reduce the number of casualties to said experienced legion

hope this helps,
Maron

edit:

Originally Posted by NobleNick

Do you have cavalry? Heavy cavalry? This is the first thing I would try. Get those guys to ATTACK you on the campaign map. Let them chase you around the battlefield until they puke and then hit isolated and exhausted units with multiple SIMULTANEOUS cav charges with fresh cav. If the gladiators have excellent stamina, this might not work out so well, since your cav will have a harder time resting to remain fresh while tiring out the opposition. Picking hilly terrain for your battle would help. Heavy cav on light infantry works best (not the other way around). Always charge downhill if you have that option.

Srry nick in spqr if the enemy has archers you keep ur cavs as far away as possible cause they will get SLAUGHTERED!!!!. and they have 3-4 units of cretans and spqr is played on huge settings so that is like over 500 CRETAN ARCHERS!!!!!

**NobleNick** · June 21, 2006, 01:41 PM

Originally Posted by Maron

...Srry nick in spqr if the enemy has archers you keep ur cavs as far away as possible cause they will get SLAUGHTERED!!!!...

Heh, heh. Another good reason to stick with vanilla!

**Severous** · June 20, 2006, 04:42 PM

Hi

Bit nervous following two esteemed members responses.

Lucius. You said the gladiators are sitting outside the city of Capua. Are they right next to the city ? What sort of walls in Capua ?

If I see a big enemy stack next to a city I try to attack the city rather than the big stack. The big stack joins in as reinforcements, on a far edge of the map. Perhaps doesnt have the same high ranking general a full stack may have.

Important to my thinking is by attacking a stone+ walled city you capture then use the walls against the reinforcement stack. Use spies to open the gates. Run in light troops through undefended gates then run the walls capturing towers. Towers then fire on the reinforcements (both outside and inside the walls).

Recent example:
Here though it was the city stack that chose to attack me.

Rather than spies I used just built seige equipment to get into the city

Ran the walls to capture towers. Towers fired on the enemy. Still had plenty of street fighting to do.

**Trajan** · June 20, 2006, 06:03 PM

I fought this full stack gladiator army in open field battle in SPQR 6.0 and the way I was able to beat them is I sent two legions at them. One legion pinned the slave army down while the other came from behind and sandwiched them. The first legion suffered a lot of casualties but it was all worth it in the end. Since you don't have the men/resources yet, I hope NobleNick's, Maron's, and Severous's tactics help you in taking care of that gladiator army.

**HappeR** · June 21, 2006, 01:51 AM

If you have a lot of money you can bribe the army

(or is that impossible in SPQR?)

**Lord Agelmar** · June 21, 2006, 01:55 AM

Its not impossible, cause thats what I did in my campaign. Those gladiators (generals and all) retook Sicily for me.

**Lucius_Galba** · June 21, 2006, 04:29 AM

Thanks to all you guys for helping me here. Perhaps i should have posted this in the SPQR forum instead but it doesn't matter. I will use all your advice.

By the way Severous that is one hell of an empire you have there. Well done

Cheers
LG

**Severous** · June 21, 2006, 03:11 PM

Originally Posted by Lucius_Galba

....By the way Severous that is one hell of an empire you have there. Well done

LG

I cant take the credit for that empire. I had the honour of being the last player in a succession/swap game passed between several players. The others did all the building. I only had one turn but boy did I have some fun using troops ive never seen before....and of course taking out Rome always has a special satisfaction.

This was the last post in the campaign write up:
http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpo...2&postcount=16

Lucius...Let us know what tactic you used and how it turned out.

**Lucius_Galba** · July 26, 2006, 04:57 AM

Hi Guys LG here

Sorry its taken so long, been busy lately and haven't had much time on Rome, but... I finally destroyed the gladiators

and its was all thanks to you lot so thanks a bunch.

A little background info for you. I was in a bad financial situation with both Gaul and Macedon attacking me continuously and i needed money and i knew there was only one place to get it: Greece. Unfortunatly Macedon by this time controlled all of Greece much of Thrace and Dacia, in short a very powerful empire. But i hit them hard and fast. Launching a very bold but highly successful amphibious assault with two legions, the 14th and 21st and numerous auxiliaries i captured four west coast cities very quickly and after several long and bloody seiges held them from Macedon. With these cities secure and my spies telling me that there were no Macedon armies nearby, i decided it was time to rid Italy of the rebel scum

. To do this I used Mainly Morons advice and a big thanks to you pal coz it worked a treat

I trained a complete auxiliary legion and marched it down from the north to were the Gladiators camped outside Capua. Then i ferried my veteran 14th legion back to Italy and placed them to the east of the enemy. I even had another legion nearby, the newly recruited 20th V.V from Sicily but they played no part in the battle.

I used Moron, NobleNicks and Severous advice here. I attacked with my auxiliaries and as they were beaten bakc and began to rout, I brought the 14th into the game. I used archers and onagers to pummel the reduced army from afar, forcing them to charge at me.I met this with countercharge and then charge my heavy cavalry(thanks nick) it the rear of the engaged infantry. I completely destroyed the enemy but i lost almost 3/4 of my auxiliaries so they can only be used for garrisons now and took a far chunk out of the 14th who still have 8 more turns to go until re-enlistment.

Thanks to Moron, Severous, Noblenick and Trajan for your advice and help.

Cheers
LG