Can't seem to get anywhere in Numidia (masaesylia) campaign [legendary difficulty]

[Mouse]

Ive tried and failed 3 times now. Never had such problems before on a campaign


First time i instantly attacked novy carthagos settlement IoL, and few turns later got overwhelmed by full stacks from every direction. The slave infantry and tribal slingers don't hold up against them.

Second time, i was more cautious. Even negotiated non-aggression pacts with nova and libya and took out garamantia. Held those provinces for a while and then moved on to the nasamones. Then Rome declared war on me and started invading and i gave up again. My full stacks vs their full stacks, the power bar is like 30% lol.

Final attempt. I decided i wanted to be historically authentic and ally with Rome. I took out Garamantia and built confederation with Gaetuli then after a while saw an opportunity and took out carthage. At this point i had +300 relations with Rome, but they declared war on me. This was about 70 turns in, so i had decent tech and units, but still they steamroll me. There's no infantry which can even hold legionaries long enough for hammer and anvil. After they killed one of the generals, i then had a secession (you start with rly ♥♥♥♥♥♥ political traits) and had -money and -food so gave up. Also had macedon, syracuse and egypt all sending full stacks at me too.


Just seems like a really hard start. Gaetuli is your only friend, and from my experience they declare war on carthage in the first turn and then promptly get wiped out. There's no way of taking out a carthage full stack with the low quality units you start with. You need land, but there's nowhere to go, but the garamantians. Its quite good to take their land, as its a 2-city province but your lands are so spread out its hard to defend everything.

It looks like the only good infantry units come from the Roman buildings you can build, but they take about 80 turns to research.

Plus the starting political party is garbage. Thirst for power, and another trash one (i think the -2 for every treaty one). Really hard to manage with -25 legendary loyalty too.

[Migz - DH]

I can't help with most of that, but the party loyalty thing I can help with a little bit. I noticed after CA introduced the Empire Divided DLC that while it added party-loyalty technolgies to that DLC, it didn't add those technologies to the other campaigns. So, I created a mod that does that. I updated it yesterday for the new Desert Kingdoms factions for the Grand Campaign. You'll still have to survive long enough to unlock the tech, but once you do, you'll get 20 more points of party-loyalty.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1287438203

Good luck!

[Welsh Dragon]

I'm doing a Hard campaign with them. About 50 turns in. I've found your strengths are really in your cavalry. You'll want some infantry to try and hold the enemy in place however briefly, but your killing power comes from your horse skirmishers.

I'm using 8 Getuli Horse Skirmishers in two groups of four in most armies to hit them from flanks and rear, couple of units of Desert Cavalry for enemy skirmishers hunting, rest of the army is spears and a few singers. Don't forget the Getuli cavalry have guerilla deployment, so you can put them off the enemy flanks before battle has even started.

Don't know how well that will work on Legendary, but hope it helps.

All the best,

Welsh Dragon.

[Abu Hajaar]

Originally posted by Mouse:

Ive tried and failed 3 times now. Never had such problems before on a campaign


First time i instantly attacked novy carthagos settlement IoL, and few turns later got overwhelmed by full stacks from every direction. The slave infantry and tribal slingers don't hold up against them.

Second time, i was more cautious. Even negotiated non-aggression pacts with nova and libya and took out garamantia. Held those provinces for a while and then moved on to the nasamones. Then Rome declared war on me and started invading and i gave up again. My full stacks vs their full stacks, the power bar is like 30% lol.

Final attempt. I decided i wanted to be historically authentic and ally with Rome. I took out Garamantia and built confederation with Gaetuli then after a while saw an opportunity and took out carthage. At this point i had +300 relations with Rome, but they declared war on me. This was about 70 turns in, so i had decent tech and units, but still they steamroll me. There's no infantry which can even hold legionaries long enough for hammer and anvil. After they killed one of the generals, i then had a secession (you start with rly ♥♥♥♥♥♥ political traits) and had -money and -food so gave up. Also had macedon, syracuse and egypt all sending full stacks at me too.


Just seems like a really hard start. Gaetuli is your only friend, and from my experience they declare war on carthage in the first turn and then promptly get wiped out. There's no way of taking out a carthage full stack with the low quality units you start with. You need land, but there's nowhere to go, but the garamantians. Its quite good to take their land, as its a 2-city province but your lands are so spread out its hard to defend everything.

It looks like the only good infantry units come from the Roman buildings you can build, but they take about 80 turns to research.

Plus the starting political party is garbage. Thirst for power, and another trash one (i think the -2 for every treaty one). Really hard to manage with -25 legendary loyalty too.

You seem experienced and bold so I’m sure you know better than me considering I’ve never played them but what you can do is let me know how you do it if you keep trying. Maybe I’ll give them a shot before them and we can compare results haha. Or we can do coop campaign next to each other. I’m having a similar experience with macedon on really hard with the DEI mods. It’s fun but it feels like a wave defense game with every neighbor including Rome declaring unprovoked war on me. It’s literally a tug of war game for survival. I gain a settlement and lose another and can’t catch a break in the north and west from Rome and others in order to move my army south and dominate the rest of the peninsula in the southern tip. I win every battle but I would call it a phyrric victory. Idk how much longer I’ll last without being able to hold more than two settlements at a time in order to economically support my army

[Mouse]

@Migz: Does seem like a good mod, i may install it but i feel like they are cheats so i rarely use mods. The loyalty when playing legendary is really hard, all it takes is one of these political intrigues and it causes secession. You have to use all edicts for party loyalty. Even then its not enough usually, and its hard to monitor loyalty every turn. Wish there was a mod or something which put as part of the map HUD so you dont have to click on faction overview just to see it.

@Welsh Dragon: Not very experienced with horse skirmishers i rarely find them useful. I did have a couple vs rome but one unit of numidian cavalry only killed like 50 legionaries before out of ammo. Will try again with a more cav-focused army. My army formation was:

5 Gaetuli Infrantrymen, 4 archers, 2 Numidian spearmen, 2 tribesmen, 2 skirmish cav, 2 shock cav and 2 melee cav. When vs rome, i tried to do hammer and anvil, but they had a bunch of numidian cav and equites so by the time my cav had dealt with their cav the legionaries hat cut straight through all my infantry.

@Abu, I would play coop if you wanted. But i dont use any mods, except sometimes 4TPY. Playing as Kush at the moment on legendary and its slightly better but still crazy. All enemy factions have unlimited resources and are agent spamming me beyond belief. I had an army stuck from agents for 20+ turns, not exagerating. Have about 6 full stacks all raiding my lands, and all their agents are harassing my settlements lol. I can't leave my settlements with my armies bc htey will get agent spammed lol

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1325916578

[Migz - DH]

Originally posted by Mouse:

@Migz: Does seem like a good mod, i may install it but i feel like they are cheats so i rarely use mods.

I hear that. That's why I designed the mod to be close to how CA built the Empire Divided campaign. In that DLC, every faction has access to a technology that improves party loyalty. But, although CA introduced the party-loyalty mechanic to the old campaigns, CA didn't give factions a technology to improve that stat, making the old campaigns more difficult than they should be.

[Abu Hajaar]

I’m not gonna force DEI down your throat because I think you’ll play that when you’re ready. It brings light to the game for me, made it feel like I was playing total war for the first time all over again. It was hard and much more detailed. They start you off with extra money to perform diplomatic actions with neighbors but it’s still hard on hard difficulties. I don’t play legendary so I can use the pause function in battle. I usually play hard or really hard. Starting with a hard faction like macedon though on really hard felt impossible. I gave up by turn 7. I’m on normal now and it was going well until Rome declared war on me. I think I’m in turn 30 maybe and now I feel like a typical Greek city state just fighting for independence. I’m busy with school and I don’t really wanna play vanilla so if you want to you’re free to add me on steam and we’ll play when you’re ready to play DEI mods which I think should give a good challenge. Even on coop.