My first actual challenge in Rome 2

[ptagi]

Last campaign I had my first real challenge. I am more of a Rome-player and I never had any troubles surviving. I even tried to have no allies, only trade with Egypt and German factions like Boii, Sweboz, Leugoz. Campaign setting on very hard. Even tried with a special mod where every faction is warlike (backside is that i never received a reform, scripting in DEI was disabled, so i was playing with early roman troops against late reforms from others) and even then I never had any troubles whatsoever.

Last campaign I tried Carthage on very hard (after playing a couple of times on normal to get the Carthage feel of troops and playstyle) and I got gangbanged by Garamantia, Cyrene, Turdetani, Syracuse and Rome around turn 10. Turdetani defense was easy. Just had my level 1 garrison and the army in gadir (cav general, elephants and 2 libyan spears), the war against syracuse and rome went easy as well, but took very long (116 turns before Rome was killed), but the defense of Lilybaion was similar to Gadir. Easy to perform with the elephants. Lots of heroic victories. Rome AI was stupid in my opinion in the sense that when I had my small naval fleet (the general, 2-3 melee and 4 missile) near Neapolis, they killed their armies on my fleet and it was almost always a heroic victory against Roman Legions. Sometimes they gangbanged up with 2-3 legions but they got slaughtered by my very small fleet.

Garamantia and Cyrene was something completely different. They actually pulled in a serious threat. I lost all my Africa towns to them before I could respond in kindness and take them back. I was actually forced to offer them peace to rebuild and focus war on Rome who pulled Athens and Sparta in. I was holding Cosentia and threatening to take Brundisium or Neapolis with only 1 army. I couldn't afford more. I was literally only earning 50- 500 talents per turn. Thanks to the abuse of some well placed trade-routes or switching generals from locations by disbanding the army and relocating to another place I was able to pull it off.

Now I killed Rome, liberated Epirus and the Barbarian factions somehow all hate me. But they offer no threat at all. They just attack me in my fort and thanks to the killing beasts (the elephants) I'm able to defend against 2-3 full stacks with heroic victories, only losing like 500 troops maximum. The elephants were my key in winning all these battles. Without them I was not able to survive at all.

I can remember myself defending near Cosentia in my fort against 10k of Roman troops. My Carthaginian Hoplites and their mercenary counterparts where heroes in defending the gates. The Carthaginian cav's and elephants had more then 1k kills each. It was literally 10k Romans against barely 2k Carthaginians.