Top ten unit rosters in Rome two break down.

[gavin2]

1. Selelucids- Best variety of elephants in game. Solid pike units. Can field excellent hoplites, and also has good accesss to good skirmishers. In adirion they field excellent melee infantry. Finnally they field some of the best calvalry in the game.

2. Best melee infantry in the game bar none. Strong melee calvalry, and cost effective supporting spearment. Has acess to elephants, and can field good skirmishers if somewhat limited variety.

3. Baktria. Excellent elephants, and calvalry. Decent pike, and spear units. Excellent skimirshers. Somewhat lacking in high tear infantry.

4. Egypt has access to elephants. Fiields some of the best pike units in the game. Acess to adequate calvalry supplemented by chariots, and elefphants. Excelent cost effective melee infantry.

5. Carthage- best variety of mercenaries in game. Passable pike, spear, and melee infantry. Their strength is in their powerful mercenaries, and elephants.

6. Epirus Excelent pike units, and calvalry make for a classic hammer, and anvil style of play. Also has acess to royal peltasts which serve as good high teir melee infantry if not the most cost effective. Also has acess to mercenary indian elephants.

7. Macedon better really in every way than Carthage, and epirus except one they have no acess to elephants which is why they are only at seven. Macedon perfected the hammer, and anvil tactics of pike infantry, and heavy calvalry combinations, and it is reflected in macedons rosters. With acess to some of the best pike, spear, and shock calvalry available. As well as excellent melee calvalry, and passable melee infantry.

8. Pontus Good pike units, calvalry, and cheap melee infantry. Excellent skimishers. Their strength lies in their chariots, and heavy calavry. Another faction that should use hammer, and anvil style play.

9. Parthia the lowest on my list with acess to elephants. Ridiculously strong calvalry. Arguably the best calavalry roster in the game, and to boot has acess to elephants. Limited elephant selection however, and lacking in solid infantry. They can cripple any flank, and their skirmishers can whittle whole armies away. However I worry it will be tough for any parthia player to hold a center against any of the above factions, and a few others particularly against sword rushes.

10. Athens my toughest choice, and really the faction that least deserves to be on this list. They lack high tier melee infantry, and pike. They have good calvalry, skimishers, and excellent hoplites. They are at ten because they field an excellent variety of mid tier troops, but this is offset by higher recruitment costs in campaign. Making the potential cost effective variety of their mid tier units somewhat pointless. Still they field a strong variety of pike spear, and shock cav another faction that you want to use a hammer, and anvil style of play.


This is purely my opinion, and it is based off of the tactics I play with. Which tend to be very pike, and shock calvalry intensive classic alexander style tactics, but I couldn't ignore Rome, and parthia as two of the best. I know no barbarian factions made it onto this list its just so many lack shock calvalry, They are typically good for strong sword rushes, and thats about it. They will never be as good as rome in melee combat; however if I were to make this argument the only factions really worth playing would be the Romans, and the selucids because much of my list offer a similar style of play to the selucids only without the spectacularly exotic unit roster.

I just find properly supported pike units can be ridiculously op, and many of the factions I chose have the unit rosters to back up a pike line. Ironically also they are also some of the best pike busting rosters like parthia, pontus, and baktria.

[gavin2]

2. is supposed to be rome.