Advice on Massilia?

[Moth]

I've been playing as Massilia and slowly expanding my nation along southern Gaul. I think Ive reached a nice state on my land provinces, and want to start focusing on the meditteranian. Problem: Rome is right on my doorstep, and are not my allies and dont want to become my ally.

I integrated the Volceans into my nations to get SOME sort of levy, though by now I have a lot of other gaulic peoples who do not have such privileged status. Not sure if I should integrate more, or focus on just assimilating what I've got.

Map: https://i.imgur.com/TnczArU.jpeg

I am allied with the Lemovicia and Indiketia, but I doubt that's enough to keep Rome away if they decide they want me dead.

[Menkerot]

since this game is all about Rome, if you play near it, you are cooked unless you can attack it right away when Rome is busy fighting someone else. But depending on difficulty it might not attack you if you have good enough relations. Rome tends to attack everybody at once on all sides but might spare the player though.

[Jean-Maurice Nya]

You crush Rome. If you want to form the Phocean League at one point with your mission tree you'll have to face it.
Best way to do so is to ally Rome from the start and be the one declaring wars on any nation in Cisalpin Gaul and Etruscan with Rome as an ally without giving it any land. It's best if Rome doesn't start its own wars. At one point Rome will break the alliance and you'll have the upper hand to beat it.

Now, on your case, just ally as much nations as you can, hire mercenaries and attack Rome at 10 VS 1 or more. Political influence doesn't matter much if your goal is to survive Rome.
You can try to keep your relations above 100 and Rome will never attack you. But it probably won't last, especially if you have high expansive aggression at one point.

[Moth]

Does anyone have any advice on what tech to go for? I headed deep into mercenary techs but I felt like this might have been a mistake, as I never felt I had quite enough money for it to matter.

Perhaps going deep into cultural assimilation, or just outright as much trade and income tech as possible?

[Jean-Maurice Nya]

Depends. For money the left civic tree is pretty good and the last tech are pretty interesting. For Massalia it can be nice to boost your incomes to hire mercenaries at the beginning and sustain a legion later. The right civic tree is probably the most powerful one as you get buildings slots, city cost reduction, plenty of pop output boost, political influence boost...
You should aim for fast assimilation in pretty much all playthrough where you intend to play until late and conquer a lot. You'll get the best happiness yield and a forever growing army.
Don't overlook the religious tree, there're plenty of great bonuses. The military tree is nice either for sieging or to improve your food supply limit. The oratory tree is good for conquest and character loyalty.

[Moth]

Originally posted by Jean-Maurice Nya:

Depends. For money the left civic tree is pretty good and the last tech are pretty interesting. For Massalia it can be nice to boost your incomes to hire mercenaries at the beginning and sustain a legion later. The right civic tree is probably the most powerful one as you get buildings slots, city cost reduction, plenty of pop output boost, political influence boost...
You should aim for fast assimilation in pretty much all playthrough where you intend to play until late and conquer a lot. You'll get the best happiness yield and a forever growing army.
Don't overlook the religious tree, there're plenty of great bonuses. The military tree is nice either for sieging or to improve your food supply limit. The oratory tree is good for conquest and character loyalty.

How does one assimilate fast? I noticed one tree which was very far down the oratory(or civic?) tree, far on the right, and required some 10+ tech to reach for a 10% boost.

[galadon3]

Main thing is putting down a theater in each of your cities and putting the assimilation policy in place in the province. And if you play in gaul BUILDING cities can be pretty important too, but around Massilia on the mediteranean coast there are at least some cities from the start.
Building a temple in the cities can help too, since it speeds up the religious conversion wich makes the cultural assimilation faster too (pops that already have your religion assimilate faster then those of a different one).
Also there is an assimilation law that needs a tech to be unlocked getting that is pretty usefull too.