Best Recruiting Provinces?

[SacremPyrobolum]

What do you think are some of the best recruiting provinces in the mod?

I like Magna Grecia as it has iron to upgrade troops and has access to Macedonian Hippies, some of the best melee auxilia and Cretan archers all while being already partially owned by Rome. Just need to conquer Syracuse and have a lightning war with Carthage.

[ablebodie]

I think Galatia et Cappadocia is even better than Magna Graecia. Cappadocian Lancers, Chosen Swords, and Anatolian Mountain Dogs. The lancers are great cavalry with a large unit size. This is especially useful for nearby Greeks or Successors, who have smaller-sized, weaker cavalry in general. Chosen Swords are very solid mid-tier swords, as good as Thorax Swords if not better. Mountain Dogs are top-tier dogs - I believe there are only two tiers of dogs, but Anatolians are among the stronger. Fantastic addition to any army in an area of the map where no one else has dogs.

[SacremPyrobolum]

I think Galatia et Cappadocia is even better than Magna Graecia. Cappadocian Lancers, Chosen Swords, and Anatolian Mountain Dogs. The lancers are great cavalry with a large unit size. This is especially useful for nearby Greeks or Successors, who have smaller-sized, weaker cavalry in general. Chosen Swords are very solid mid-tier swords, as good as Thorax Swords if not better. Mountain Dogs are top-tier dogs - I believe there are only two tiers of dogs, but Anatolians are among the stronger. Fantastic addition to any army in an area of the map where no one else has dogs.

How easy is it to conquer for Rome? I'm mainly interested in the lancers as I don't find dogs useful enough to take up space in my army and all my infantry needs are met with legionaries.

In fact, the way I tend to structure my Rome armies are to have 1 general, 1 eagle cohort, 2 evocatii, and 6 legionnaire and then use the reminding space for supporting auxiliary.

[zombieflanders]

For infantry or general recruitment, it's Galatia et Cappadocia, for the reasons ablebodie posts above plus a copper mine for the built-in weapon or shield/armour bonus. Italia is a close second due to the provincial bonus to recruitment. Special note to the two provinces with the Warhorse resource (Limonum in Aquitania, and Amul in Chorasmia), which can give huge bonuses to cavalry. Hellas is pretty good for the mix of AOR infantry (Cretan Archers and Spartan Thorax Hoplites) and a naval presence. Bosporus is also a decent land/sea province, as all three settlements have ports and one has copper, plus decent ranged infantry and cavalry AOR.

Also: "Macedonian Hippies?" Like, woah, what's with all the sarissas, dude?

[ablebodie]

Every now and again Galatia actually breaks out and starts to control Anatolia, which is easy to conquer as they have no immediate allies besides Tylis.

Generally, however, the regional powers in GetC are generally Pontus, Sardes, or Armenia. If It's Pontus, you can count on two things. Generally you'll anger the Greeks nearby, but make nearby Eastern factions like you. You'll also have to contend with chariot generals. If Sardes controls Anatolia, you risk involving yourself in a possibly still-powerful Seleukidai. Armenia is generally not too much of a threat, as they get into it with the Seleukidai or Parthia somewhat often. It's possible, however, they've beaten Seleukidai by the time you reach the area. Their armies, however, can't stand toe-to-toe with Romani, despite their cavalry advantage.

Worry most if Pontus holds Asia Minor. Otherwise it's a generally a cakewalk.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

I actually have started making room in my legions for one unit of wardogs.

I was using three, but considering it was rarefor them to not get 500-800 kills per battle for each unit, I stopped using three units of them.

Deploying them against the intial skirmishing line, the ai will not pull their skirmishers back when the dogs are let lose unless the dog handlers get too close.

So in otherwards, you can completely eliminate the skirmisher line with war dogs at the start of the battle in most cases.

War dogs also completely decimate light cavalry, and any troops that can be caught from the side or rear.

For polybian era, my two primary legions consist of 1 general, 1 equites, 1 socii equites, 1 socii equitaes extrodinarii, 2 hastate, 2 socii hastate, 2 principes, 2 socii princepes, 1 trarii, 1 pedites extrodinarii, 2 velites, 2 mercenary rhodian slingers, 1 Romanized Cretan archers, and 1 molossian hounds unit.
(For imperial era just change all the troops to their upgraded equivalents when they have one)

The hounds unit will get over 500 kills easily, the archers and slingers usually get 300-500 each, all cavalry around 200-300 (sometimes as high as 600 each against barbarians with their many slingers), with the lines troops usually not getting more than 150 each.
In the imperial and marian reforms era, the legionnaires start getting more kills than the slingers and archers due to the higher global prevalence of heavy armor. The war dog kill count stays roughly the same however. So even during the marian and imperial reforms, they are an extremely useful unit.

If I may, how are you using the dogs? Do you just send them frontally against heavily armoured troops? Because that's honestly the only way a unit of war dogs is going to be anything other than an extremely useful unit to have on the battlefield. A unit with a sub unit that doesn't matter how many casualties it gets (all dogs are auto replaced, only handler deaths require replenishment) that gets 500 kills on average not being useful?


That being said, with the exception of grabbing molossian hounds out of Epirus as early as possible, I do my main recruiting in Rome itself for Roman units, and get all Socii units from magna graceia, that was I can just swing down while combining the troops into one full legion and upgrade the units from Rome at the same time.

Honestly, that's a prefect set up for quickly and efficiently recruiting an army.
So my vote goes for a combination of Rome and Magnagreacia.

[SacremPyrobolum]

Why the diversity in infantry? I usually go for three triarii and 6 principes because I can upgrade them with their veterancy and all. Also, why not have all cavs be the superior socii equitaes extrodinarii? Are you going for more lower quality armies in your build?

I''ll try the single dog unit idea though. Don't know who to replace though... I usually rock 1 general 2 melee cav (to counter other cav/run down skirmisher) 2 shock cav (the hammer in my hammer and anvil) 1 eagle/first cohort 2 veteran legionaries 6 legionaries (all the anvil) 5 Creten archers and one ballista for sieges and general field artillery.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

I keep it mostly for half house rules, half attempting to make my legions more historical.

Since it was supposed to be basically half romans, half allied socii troops. But I don't want to bring along a full second legion so I cram everything into one legion.

Also, because while I could make a super powerful legion with the best of the best, it's already too easy to win as is. And the socii
principes are debatably better than the roman ones, due to having higher health, but the same attack stats and deadliness.


I'd say drop a single Cretan archer group for the dogs. And definitely use mollosian, or as someone in the thread mentioned, Anatolian mountain dogs as they have the same stats as the former.
Four groups of Cretan archers are still murderously effective.

Before I settled on the 2 velite, 2 rhodian slingers, and 1 Cretan archer for my ranged units, I was using 2 velite and 4 Cretan archers.
I actually dropped down to one because early game mercenary Cretan archers were racking up ten times the amount of kills my other troops were getting.


Either wait till the enemy is engaged to unleash dogs from the side, or use one group of dogs against their skirmisher line. Slingers fall in less than 30 seconds.

I just had a battle with some Egyptian rebels with a greek garrison (as in to garrison the province, not a city garrison force) legion that had three war dogs. They got 721, 517, and 633 kills. This was against 10 slinger groups, 9 Egyptian swordsman, and a throax legionnaire general.

The best thing about dogs is that the AI refuses to target the dogs, and will start moving away when under attack. Allowing the dogs to attack unmolested against an an enemy that is taking flank damage penalty, and as the AI likes to run everywhere, the penalty for being attacked while running.

If the AI properly targeted the dogs, I would say they would be much less useful. But as it stands, they can easily route the entire enemy skirmisher force each battle by themselves.

[RandyRhoads]

Think Panonia has the best roman auxiliary cavalry.

[Fedual]

When playing as Rome I can recommend Aquitanias Reformed Gallic Cavalry

Province: Aquitania

Burdigala:
Roman Urbs
Forum Piscarium
Basilica Equestris
Warhorse Ranch
Basilica of Mars
Thermae

Limonum:
Roman Town (Warhorse)
Auxilia Garrison
Limited Warhorse Ranch

Gergovia:
Roman Town
Valetudinarium (or build the unique Fortified Garrison for even more morale boost if you dont want to use that building somewere else)
Nymphaeum

Make sure you swing your units by a province with a Colonia (armorsmith) & a province with Colonia (weaponsmith) to upgrade them for max protaction (golden shield) and damage (golden sword)

With that setup you now have a total apocalypse of horse units in the form of the Reformed Ala Gallorum Cavalry

[0N3]

I like to use the provinces with iron and copper right next to each other in Spain for easy upgrade to both weapons, shields and armour. Then the warhorse resource isn't far away in France either. Only annoying this is that honga isn't updated for DEI, and the in-game encyclopaedia is also missing stuff so it's hard to figure what is best to build.

[Drowsy]

During the early game i like Magna Grecia, makes it very easy to recruit a full legion fast to be sent to Greece, Gaul, Spain or Africa. Later on when these territory's are secured i like to use Illyria, Aquintaine (not always) and Cappadocia as core recruitment provinces when the need to push out as many cohorts per turn as possible diminishes. + Aux barracks in every region where Rome can get their AoR units.

[YourzZ]

Do you guys have any advice on good regions to conquer as Carthage in order to build some decent cavalry?

Furthermore in the AOR recruitment I see that Brundisium (#44) is listed separately from the Magna Grecia region with different AOR unit. I assume this means only building a barracks in Brundisium will grant you access to those units?

[ablebodie]

Do you guys have any advice on good regions to conquer as Carthage in order to build some decent cavalry?

Tarraconensis = Ambakaro Epones - North Iberian Cav

• Medium-heavy cav with javelins. Kind of a hybrid of jav cav and melee cav. Their AOR counterpart in Carthaginensis (Curisi) is much lighter, better at skirmisher-hunting. That said, the latter only requires lv1 settlements, and the N. Iberian Cav requires lv3.

Aethiopia = Aithiopikoi Hippatoxotoi - Eithiopian Horse Skirmishers

• Basically the same as Curisi from Carthaginensis, with more health and higher morale. Slightly lower combat stats otherwise, but better stamina and heat resistance. Classified as melee cav, but have Cantabrian Circle. Acquired from lv1 settlements, so available immediately.

I'm going off .98 stats from Honga, but I've used all these. The lighter ones are great, especially the Ethiopians. Having such good stamina & heat resist means it's super easy to cycle charge even after routing skirmishers. Ambakaro should be used more as the final hammer hitting a tired line of depleted enemy troops, but are very solid.

[ablebodie]

Edit to my previous post -

Tarraconensis + Lusitania for N. Iberian Cav

Carthaginensis + Baetica for S. Iberian Cav.

Sections 12 and 13 in the AOR map in the Scriptorum, respectively.

[YourzZ]

Thanks!

[Aleksander the Average]

I'm trying to play "colonization" campaign as Epirus. I've just dealt with Sparta and Athens, and have appeased Rome for the time being, and now I need to set my sights on a region for my new colony. Epirus has strong infantry and relatively good heavy cavalry, but I need some advice as to where to get a combination of good archers and durable (and preferably fast) cavalry.

House rules:
colonized region must be
- directly accessible by sea (to avoid trespassing)
- dominated by another (non-hellenic) culture
- not belonging to a major empire (4+ regions at game start)
- not bordering another greek/hellenic faction

[Cambion]

I'm trying to play "colonization" campaign as Epirus. I've just dealt with Sparta and Athens, and have appeased Rome for the time being, and now I need to set my sights on a region for my new colony. Epirus has strong infantry and relatively good heavy cavalry, but I need some advice as to where to get a combination of good archers and durable (and preferably fast) cavalry.

House rules:
colonized region must be
- directly accessible by sea (to avoid trespassing)
- dominated by another (non-hellenic) culture
- not belonging to a major empire (4+ regions at game start)
- not bordering another greek/hellenic faction

Any numidian port: Numidian skirmisher cav is the best AOR cav in game. Accuracy 20, fast, acceptable attack and charge, no armor though = dont ever get stuck in melee. Three of those will murder cataphracts, elephants or any general. You can even use them as shock-cav if javelins run out. As for archers: Nearby you will get no archers but balearian slingers. (what do you need archers for anyway? you should have cretans)
The only fast cav which somewhat pulls of "durable" btw are the greek hippeis and thats pretty much their only saving grace.

[Aleksander the Average]

Any numidian port: Numidian skirmisher cav is the best AOR cav in game. Accuracy 20, fast, acceptable attack and charge, no armor though = dont ever get stuck in melee. Three of those will murder cataphracts, elephants or any general. You can even use them as shock-cav if javelins run out. As for archers: Nearby you will get no archers but balearian slingers. (what do you need archers for anyway? you should have cretans)
The only fast cav which somewhat pulls of "durable" btw are the greek hippeis and thats pretty much their only saving grace.

I'll give numidia a try. I don't want to take Crete mainly because I want to roleplay a mass migration for my faction so i'm trying to do as little as possible near Greece and just end up moving away.

[Cambion]

I'll give numidia a try. I don't want to take Crete mainly because I want to roleplay a mass migration for my faction so i'm trying to do as little as possible near Greece and just end up moving away.

Ok get it. In that case Mauretania is even better so. The whole province is an absolute money maker. Second only to Thracia with heavy slavery. Perfect for small empire enthusiasts. Another nice scenario is building a greek gallic empire either by playing Massalia or by colonization. Greek or successor heavy cav with Lemonia cav bonuses are awesome.