Hellenic bodyguards!

[blackmage62]

Agh, help! My armies have a lot of trouble against Hellenic bodyguard cavalry.

I'm playing as Rome, with a ton of Greek units in my armies due to the campaign taking place in Macedon. A full stack of fresh Polybian troops are coming from Rome by sea, but I need to stem the tide of Macedonian stacks coming at my cities (which stretch across upper Greece). I have several mountainous chokepoints sealed off, but the hard part is fighting to hold them.

The bodyguards just don't die, my units (mostly non-phalanx hoplites) can hardly cause any casualties except by wearing them down by attrition. How should I handle them?

[The Kybrothilian]

While the hoplites pin them down, you should slam something to their backs. Have Illyria under you? Recruit Illyrian light cavalry there (or hire them as mercenaries), and on the battlefield when you have the bodyguards in place, charge the Illyrians to their rear and have them use their secondary AP weapons. They should quickly wither them down. Campanians should work equally well and any cavalry can work too if you don't have any with AP secondaries. AP weapon armed infantry can be used too.

I can guarantee them to be useful. In my Pahlavan campaign, I once had my bodyguard engage Arachosian light cavalry in city-streets. The enemy cavalry switched for their AP axes, and caused a lot more casualties than a unit of their quality normally should.

[blackmage62]

>AP secondaries

Oh god, I didn't even know that was a thing. How in the world do I do that?

[The Kybrothilian]

To make units use their secondary weapons, hold down Alt-key while you click the target.

[athanaric]

Always make sure to check out which kind of secondary weapons your units have, and whether they might be useful in a given situation. Part of the fun in this mod is that actually most units have more than one weapon. That's why you see Gallic elite infantry switching from spear to sword and back.

Also, some secondaries are more effective than others, depending on the predetermined lethality of the weapon as well as the quality of the unit. Illyrian cavalry have axes, which are pretty mean as far as cavalry secondaries go. Their spears are AP too, and even deadlier, but also much slower at hitting anything.
Axemen on foot, clubmen, or falxmen are also a very good remedy against heavy cavalry. Just make sure to have the spearmen shield them from cavalry charges or missiles, and then use them like you would use the Illyrian cavalry. Bastarnae falxmen should be available as mercenaries all over the region.

[yuezhi]

speaking of stats go here i you don't have it yet:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...1#post10693871

this will save you a lot of trouble, mostly the exiting the game to turn on a browser to look at stats.