So, while I was playing the Aedui, the sub-par factional recruitment (so bad, in fact, that Allied Government in core homeland territories can compete with it) kept bothering me, and I remembered, "hey, the Prits got some nice recruitment right", and decided to give them a shot as a more experienced, informed player. Hard campaign. Both difficulty and the progress so far, but entertaining.
First off, the images above. On top, my "fighting" army. As you can notice, the only Pritanoi units it got there are the chariots (don't fear enemies and the charge attack is mediocre, but it is pretty decent at assassinating generals with the ranged attack as long as they are not ludicrously armored, as it is a generic 7 jav), the skirmishers (they are plentiful and about as good as any faction's, so why not), and the foot nobles. This is because I found that the units I would normally use on campaign armies, the Retainers (Spear, Sword and, sure, Mounted, why not) are really no good against the Gaul AI. Despite being my medium tier and being very cost effective (not as much as comparable mercs, though, no idea why, if pressed for I will grab some comparison) and having decent offensive stats, they just get splattered on the ground against Gauls mid tiers and mercs, and the cavalry is so absurdly frail. These makes all of these... decent offensive troops I guess, but completely unable to hold a line without getting massacred, and for making a line is what I would need them for. So instead, at first, I opted to grab as many Gaul mercs I could in the Islands (2 recruitment areas I believe with small pools of Spearmen, Batoroi, and Horsemen, but good enough) and start raiding Britanny. There, I used the local pool even further, eventually building up a good force mostly of Gaul mercs. Why is that? Because I found that it is pretty much impossible to sign an alliance with the Gauls, who will, furthermore, be very hostile as soon as I get a foothold in the continent. At the first attempt of this campaign I probably had too many eggs in the basket and decided it wasn't worth it anymore after I lost my FL and the entire army trying to defend against the third Arverni full stack. This time, I managed to rush for that Belgium province right East just before them, and there I had my first fights, retreating to Britanny after some severe losses against the first stack and letting them take the village while I reorganized my forces and raided the countryside. After crushing that new stack (with slightly less losses, I find they tend to put pretty much the entire family tree to spearhead these invasions, which leads to an awful lot of heavy Gaul cavalry and awful little of Gaul routing, probably one of the reasons why my mostly factional army struggled so much on the first attempt), I eventually took the place back, crushed another build up with an failed ambush on the forests near the ford, and convinced them to sign peace+trade deal with a hefty fine to line my pockets. A little later, it was the Aedui who would try their luck. After I crushed their stack (a little easier still, as I had some Pritanoi nobles and merc Gaul noble tiers [Retinue and Nakeds] in the army), they organized the remainants of the forces and tried to take the rebel village north. Got repelled, losing even more forces, and handily accepted peace + trade deal with another fine. Of course, all these battles were lead by a Druits (at first my FL as he was the first I got, but later this dude who is now my official campaigner while the rest of my youth is training up in the isle), to minimize my losses as much as I could, and for now, the Gauls are no longer a threat. Even still, I am keeping this army there for now.
And the second is my raiding/recruitment army, the only one to have some Retainers to fill it up and make raiding easier. Not much to say about them, I use them to raid the countryside of neighboring rebel provinces and recruit whatever Gauls I can there. These will be sent to reinforce my campaign army or act as reserves in the continental holdings.
I would like to add that I find this pretty funny. With Gauls proper, I was using these mercs just to fill up my armies to compensate for the poor availability of factional troops, eventually phasing out most of them with the exception of the horsemen (as they are a bit better than Gaul skirmisher cavalry) and the Batoroi (who are the same as the factional ones, and useful as filler). With the Pritanoi, the most bare filler were my main line troops, and the midgame filler were my core/elites. That's funny.
So the situation is stable now. I am ready to invade the Gauls at any moment now with my hardened army, even started infiltrating some spies around. The Romans are crawling up but considering how the Gauls dealt with them last game, I am not too worried. I am just mostly binding my time, avoiding over-expanding, keeping bellow 10 provinces to continue getting some raid income, and waiting for the reform to kick in. I plan on building Allied Democracies on most of Gaul to have access to their juicy Retinues in numbers that I won't have to worry about good quality frontline troops ever. Their elite mercs will also be used, that I can assure you. Least, of course, the Allied States blow me away, we will see.
So a few questions and suggestions:
1 - Why the Prits wore so little armor, despite having pretty good metal availability in the islands? Sure, maybe they didn't have the materials to make bronze or brass (despite sitting on hoards of tin, one of the rarest components, that pretty much never shows up with the other requirement), but there seems to be a few iron mines in the isles.
2 - On that topic of armor, would it be possible to trigger a reform for them to get some armor upgrades after they take down the Gauls? Akin to the Gaul 1st and 5th reform, but maybe just one tier for their retainers and two for the nobles?
3 - Despite the manual stating nothing about they losing authority with Petty Kingdoms, their Trait_Descr got an entire section to that. What is it, then?
And as an aside and on the topic of traits, I noticed the Arverni are the only one of the non-Iberian celts that don't get the generic Druid ancillary. Why is that? As far as anciliaries go it is not the best value, but it offers great chances for some pretty good traits on acquisition (50% +1 Hale and Hearty, 50% +1 Public Faith).
As usual the post might have been an incoherent mess, but if you guys have any inquiries I think I can answer these on a more straightforward fashion.
PS: Moderation fix the title of the thread if possible?
A few things on the Pritanoi (a fewer on the Gauls)ss
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