Little help in this situation! (1st timer)

[Erwin Rommel]

hello there just gotta play rome anyway i play carthage and everything looks like hell but sure i got rome and most of the boot especially those 2 julii cities starting w/ A. my situation is worse due to wars w/ spqr(gone) and julii i am deeoly vulnurable from 2 other factions the scipii and brutii all in greece. my men are a lot of iberian (i disdain townwatch and skirmishers) a lot of long shield a cosiderable number of libyan and 4 units of poeni from rome! and i like to share you some little phenomena, corbuda can build already sacred band i mean my most advanced city is rome and it cannot churn sacred band, plus corbuda cant even build a libyan so how did that happen and it has only a handful of buildings my guess is its that awesome temple of baal!

[Zuwxiv]

hello there just gotta play rome anyway i play carthage and everything looks like hell but sure i got rome and most of the boot especially those 2 julii cities starting w/ A. my situation is worse due to wars w/ spqr(gone) and julii i am deeoly vulnurable from 2 other factions the scipii and brutii all in greece. my men are a lot of iberian (i disdain townwatch and skirmishers) a lot of long shield a cosiderable number of libyan and 4 units of poeni from rome! and i like to share you some little phenomena, corbuda can build already sacred band i mean my most advanced city is rome and it cannot churn sacred band, plus corbuda cant even build a libyan so how did that happen and it has only a handful of buildings my guess is its that awesome temple of baal!

If you click on the Building Browser on a settlement, you can see the future buildings. Right-clicking on their icon tells you what they can recruit - I'm pretty sure it's the temple that recruits the Sacred Band, not the military building.

But for the campaign, keep pumping out your best troops from those cities. Carthage has bad but cheap infantry, and later in the game very good infantry and cavalry - very few armies can withstand large numbers of Sacred Band cavlary and infantry. Pin them down in a phalanx and use your cavalry to run around them and hit them from behind.

Also, make sure you get sea power! Shipping your troops across the Sea will help in the long run. If you have the money, pump out a nice fleet and just smash through anything you can find. Only after the seas are safe should you depend on it to move troops - if your ship dies, all troops on it die.

And welcome to the forums!

[Erwin Rommel]

tHANKS apreciate it,

[Hannibal Barca]

and i like to share you some little phenomena, corbuda can build already sacred band i mean my most advanced city is rome and it cannot churn sacred band, plus corbuda cant even build a libyan so how did that happen and it has only a handful of buildings my guess is its that awesome temple of baal!

Spot on. If you check the info on the awesome temple you will see it says that it can build sacred band. I was in the same position with cordoba. I could make sacred band long before libyan spearmen lol. Obviously rome will have its own temples so it will be a long long time before you can get sacred band in rome. You will have to start over by demolishing the roman temple and build your temple from scratch.

Fortunatetly, poeni infantry can be made in one turn, sacred band in two, so just keep churning them out of rome.

[NobleNick]

...i play carthage and everything looks like hell but... i got rome and most of the boot especially those 2 julii cities starting w/ A. my situation is worse due to wars w/ ...julii ... scipii and brutii all in greece. my men are a lot of iberian ... a lot of long shield a cosiderable number of libyan and 4 units of poeni from rome!...

The advice that the others have given is good. You want Sacred Band cav and Sacred Band infantry. Peoni is definitely as low quality as you should go, since, to paraphrase what has already been said, low level Carthage infantry just plain stinks, and medium level isn't much better. And even Sacred Band infantry can not stand up long in a face to face slugfest with Legionary Cohort (LC).

If you run up against Roman legions, bring a unit or two of Armoured Elephants. They are good against LC at a ratio of about 1 Ellie unit to 4 LC; BUT that is only if it is pure LC versus Ellies. If you first pin the Cohort with your Sacred Band infantry and then run the Ellies in from the flanks, then the ratio is much higher in favor of the Ellies, and it is game over for the Romans. Armored Elephants were made to destroy heavy infantry. And Roman cav and Velites are both ENTIRELY INEFFECTIVE against them. In fact NOTHING Rome has is effective against Armored Elephants except very large quantities of High-grade Cohorts (like I said, you need about 4 units of Legionary Cohorts per Armored Elephant unit) or flaming arrows from archers, and possibly (I doubt it, but haven't tested them yet) Onager fire. So bring some Sacred Band Cav to take out enemy archers and the ranged toys; and then, with the Sacred Band Infantry - Armored Elephant combo, you are extremely lethal and (against the A.I.) all but invincible.

And, if you like to play underhanded tactics using all-cav or mostly-cav armies, then upgraded Sacred Band Cavalry is good cost-effective stuff. I all but blew the Gauls off the map during my tenure in a succession campaign, using almost all Sacred band cavalry, with an occasional Armored Elephant unit or hired merc infantry unit to blow the wooden gates in.

Carthage's navy should rule the seas. You have access to high quality ships. You say the Brutii and Scipii are entirely on the Aegean penninsula? Then they are deriving most of their cash from sea trade; and that makes blockading highly effective. Build at least a dozen upgraded (foundry) fleets, Triremes or better, of at least 180 to 200 men per fleet. Then blast the Roman navies out of the water, retraining your fleets often. Then reorganize into fleets of 100 to 120 men, blockade every stinking Roman port there is, and starve those suckers into submission!

[Erwin Rommel]

Thanks i'll do that but 1st i have to destroy julii luckily i am allied to the gauls, an allience w/ the thracians will be nice to secure the border for my new carthaginian empire in greece, and finally i'll destroy the long soughth after seleucids so i can play them man there units are so cool!