I've seen various threads about tips for how to deal with the mid-game problems but I am kinda looking for advice. Right now I am on turn 70ish and have Latium, Italia, Makedon, Sicily fully under my control as well as Patavium and Genua. The Greeks, Thracians, Illyrians and Insubres all agreed to trade / non-aggression.
I'm playing on Hard/Normal. My current strategy is to turn Sicily into a fortress with small army's of romanized pike units in each city (1 infantry general unit + 3 pikes each) and then one 20 stack in the sweet spot between the two towns on Sicily. That left me with two full stack armies to conquer Massalia, then once I could get more than 6 armies explode down the Spanish coast. Unfortunately two things happened. Turns out Massalia has FOUR full stack armies and one full stack navy to defend itself, and not even levies, mostly tarantine calvary and hoplites. Then Carthage landed two full stack armies in Italia and besieged Taras and took the southern town before I could reinforce it.
So my question is what did I do wrong? Did I need to move faster than I did to take Massalia before they got so strong or was turning Sicily into a fortress like I did overkill? Should I have weakened my forces in Sicily to encourage Carthage to attack there instead of hitting the peninsula? Should I re-start with Normal/Normal settings? (This is my second campaign on DEI, I painted the map with Seleucia on my first campaign).
Or feel free to tell me to stop crying and slog it out but I'm hoping someone else agrees it's ridiculous that Massalia has 5 full stacks and a full garrison.
Thanks in advance for any advice.