Divide et Impera disciplined formation and AI is a joke.

[Eisenfresser]

On my playthrough with Hayk (Armenia) I invaded Italy through greece and the Dalmatean Faction backstabbed me (suprise), I had one Army defending Greece, consisting of Armenian Legionaries as the main bulk. I set them up in a defense along the river and put them into disciplined formation. I was charged by Illyrian Royal Guard (higt tier phalanx unit) and they just melted through my units. My legionaries litteraly lost 60% of their Manpower in 15 seconds and complety routed after. The ♥♥♥♥ is that ♥♥♥♥ ???????????

[Monid]

Is your battle difficulty set to normal?

[ChaosKhan]

Check the battle difficulty.

The AI in DEI tends to push in with hoplite phalanxes aggressively, which can lead to extremely high and fast death tolls on both sides. There is a submod to fix the issue.

[Eisenfresser]

Yes all settings are as recommended by the devs.
@ChaosKhan Yea thanks will check that one out

[The Last Monke]

Because the formations in DEI are underpowered.

[debonz]

Anyway facing and waiting for phalanx formations in a frontal confrontation is stg like suicide especially in narrow spaces like bridgehead or ford crossing. Pepper them with missiles attack from side or rear. Bait them and make them loose their line formation and so on ...

[ChaosKhan]

It really depends. For pike phalanxes it is kind of the case, but for hoplite phalanxes it depends a lot on 2 factors: Quality of the hoplites and their "buffs" (from general, armory, experience, etc). Elite hoplites have the uncanny and annoying trait of having extremely high defense when silver chevron and above and buffed by some other means. Stuff like Hypaspists in hoplite phalanx will have outright twice more defense than green roman legions and nearly the same advantage over Praetorians. This is why they will grind most opposition to death if they can just push into the lines uninhibited since melee attack and defense scale far stronger than weapon damage and armor piercing.

I know that I told about the submod, but I should mention that I don't use it myself. The reason is, that it makes the hoplites just standing roadblocks and therefore the battles far too easy. Also, pushing in is actually the only way for them to actually harm pike phalanxes and if they just stand in "negagement distance" and stay there, the pikes, with their longer reach, will just poke them slowly to death with barely any casualties themselves.

With all that said, phalanxes are strong, but not overpowered. Since most line infantry has some form of throwing weapons, it already softens up phalanxes quite well, especially when focus fired. I mean, if you came with the Hayk all the way to Greece and have already legions unlocked, it can only mean that you have fought tons battles against phalanxes and won them. So you better don't let this one failed chokepoint defense cloud your judgement, since like I said, the submod makes phalanxes far too easy. I also don't understand, why you yourself didn't just place a phalanx as 1st line of defense, since the Hayk has them. Isn't it just your fault for not using defensive troops for important defensive purposes?
You just win against them just the way the Romans (Greeks & Thracians) did historically: You win the flanks and then just rout the centre (or pepper them to death with javelins).

[Eisenfresser]

Yes there were multiple factors that lead to this particular situation, at the time of the battle I was at the gates of rome, I punched the romans out of greece and naval landed into southern italy with 3 armies. I couldnt use 2 stacks against dalmatea, which is my standard procedure in campaigns, and left one army in epiros to defend. Romans ♥♥♥♥ out fullstacks consistently so my only chance at defeating them before my armies got taken out due to attration and inabillity to reinforce native units in greece at the time was to rush into Italy. My Armies are focused on Archers and Kataphratktoi with additional syrian elephants. My infantry isnt there to deal damage but tie up the enemy frontline, while the archers pepper them into submission, meanwhile I usually deploy the Cav and Elephants behind their lines after defeating enemy cav and mass charge into their entire frontline once they are fully occupied with my front. I could also just use phalanx only but the tactical flexibility heavy swords provide is too useful, although not in this battle that made me go full rage mode and lead to the razing of all their settelments lol. In a defensive position like that I couldnt play to my advantages and suffered. My basic army template is 1 Noble Katapratktoi General, 4 Armenian Kataprakts, 1 Syrian War Elefant, 4 Armenian Heavy Archers/Cretan Archers, 6 Heavy Swords (4x Armenian Legionaries, 2x Nakar Thorax) and 4 Legionary Spearman/Ketrokenan Spearmen. My Spear Units (Legionary Spearmen) alone couldnt hold the rivercrossing by themselves due to disciplined formation so I was forced to deploy the legionary swords early and had to put the Nakhars in Reserve, meanwhile my cav and elephants flanked and did not suceed (btw using heavy cav as dismounted stormtroopers in sieges is op especially with the 145 armor of the noble kataphrakts) and my units just melted due to the attacking hoplites. Peppering them with arrows from the sides did a good job but I was just zerg swarmed by the illyrians. It was propably my tactical inflexibility and stubornness to defend the river itself and not wait for the illyrians to cross the river and make better use of the cav.

[ChaosKhan]

In DEI, I found it to be effective to specialize stacks to some degree. So when my faction is able to, I try to pair up hoplites or pikes with heavy shock cav with archers beeing my ranged troops of choice (fire arrows). Stacks with roman style infantry normally get supported by regular melee cav or heavy skirmishers like the Tarantine Cavalry, while I get slingers (to soften up phalanxes from far away and deal with enemy archers/skirmishers so they don't inhibit my manouvers) and peltasts (to increase killing power) for ranged support. After decinding on my stack composition, I normally proceed to get general perks which I find best to maximize its potential. Going the warrior route (and later tactician) for the roman type stack yields a highly capable force which gets a sky high melee attack over time (essential for taking down high defense hoplites), while going the commander route (later camp administrator) for the hammer & anvil helps me to rout the enemies faster due to them having lower morale.

I don't know how much you actually upgrade your units, but elites, when buffed by better equipment, technology, experience and generals, are outright terrifying. It might be, that you basically came across a highly buffed tactically specialized army while you had a strategic type general with barely any chevrons and upgrades on your units. In such a situation, the enemy elites would just walk over you in a fair fight, especially since armenian legionaries are fundamentally only hight tier regulars and not elites.

[ChaosKhan]

Hm, not sure why they break trade agreements with you. In my runs, they maintain them even with negative opinion and only tend to break them, if I lose reliability.

Regarding character builds, I tend to always recruit the max number of characters available, but only 1/4 or 1/3 of them are actual full time generals and lead expansion armies of regulars and elites. The rest end up beeing bureaucrats, sitting in settlements, lvling up slowly and providing benefits. When I need to protect my borders, I just disband one bureaucrat and recruit a general where I need and get some levy/mercs to defend. Normally, I then proceed to use those levy/foreigner stacks to bolster the numbers of the expansion stacks if they are close to the front ( by catching arrows and elephants for them ;)) or just disband them afterwards. With my provinces, I do the same and specialize them in one 1 of 2 types: Food or commerce. The ones with food also normally end up having fountains and libraries, which help reducing empire maintenance. Since they tend to be full of public order buildings to quell unrest and squalor, which farms tend to cause a lot of, they aren't supervised by characters, except if I relly need the province to get some growth asap.

The trade hubs on the other side try to maximize commerce and industry output, while sporting as many banditry reducing buildings as possible and only as many public order buildings as neccessary (most of them hurt the income quite a lot). They are normally supervised by a bureaucrat and an agent to maximize output and reduce public unrest.

Now, regarding big empires, I've sadly found only one way to keep their income high: Slaves. The thing is, that the empire maintenance debuff reduces a set % number of the taxes, which you would normally get. Slaves add a set % number to the taxes you get. Basically, by getting slaves and building up the slave trader building chain you offset empire maintenance. This allowed me to run my VH Quarthadastim campaign on very low tax rate since turn 60 onwards and never get into red regarding my income up until my win after turn 200+. Sometimes I set the taxes to very high and got somewhere around 60k-80k at once when I really needed it, but otherwise they were always set to the lowest level possible. So basically, if you don't have a slave trader in every single province capital with 4+ empire level, you're doing it wrong imho.

I honestly tried to offset empire maintenance with other means in a no slave run I've tried once, like specializing every single character in empire maintenance, promoting as many characters whenever possible, a library and fountain in every single province capital, etc, but it's hopeless. Those reductions aren't useless, since too many slaves make life and management quite difficult, but they just aren't enough on their own. Therefore, slave markets and tons of slaves and the commercial stimulation edict might actually be the answer to your income problems...

[Peasant]

I set up my pikemen in a phalanx to defend a bridge. Then when the enemy charged across it, they turned their backs for literally no reason (I didn't give any commands whatsoever)

[Lastspartan]

i like how AI range only attacks ur commander.........................................................................................................so dumb