Army: Carthage vs Rome: Also attrition

[Arentak]

So, Rome has 30 units in Eastern Sicily, I(Carthage) have 33 units in Western Sicily


Army composition. I have
4 Elephants
2 Cavalry
5 Archers
7 Horse Archers
15 Heavy Infantry

I have plenty of other troops in the vicinity to mix and match with. Knowing I'm going to face a Roman army, probably with no cavalry, but lots of heavy inf and archers..thoughts as to best force?

Also, wow, war exhaustion is a killer.

Edit: This force won its battles with Rome, all of them. Until I got down to 18k men from attrition and battles. So, its a winner. Would more horse archers instead of heavy infantry have been better?

[Cheexsta]

Yep, I was going to say before your edit that it's a pretty solid army.

As for swapping out more horse archers, you could do that but I like to have a solid chunk of heavy infantry when needed (particularly when assaulting forts). If you're having problems with attrition, you can try splitting your army into 2-3 parts. Keep them together when fighting enemy armies, but once the enemy is destroyed you can spread them out over a few provinces while besieging (and use a number of small 2-3 unit stacks of militia to besiege enemy provinces away from your front line). This should help reduce the insane attrition casualties.

Hope that helps.

[Arentak]

I can defeat Rome's armies again and again and again. Then I run out of manpower and lose. I even have a "trick" of luring a 40 unit roman army to Sicily, blocking its retreat, and completely destroying it. Nevertheless, more 40 unit armies show up, and their manpower doesn't drop under 90k.

My tactics need refining(Can't let a 20k army take 5% attrition per month, for example), but I guess my army composition is fine. Also, in my second Punic War(I won the first, and took syracuse), the Romans are fielding a lot of horse archers. Thank the Gods of Carthage for naval superiority. It does let me choose the time and place of our battles.

[Wave]

Your armies are fine but I'd suggest focusing on quick sieging (spread militia or something all around) and using one or two big armies for destroying their armies. Also if you can lure their army to sicily, leave it there waiting while you conquer their home country.

One good tactic could be starting from north and advancing one province at the time towards south so the enemy can't go siege their provinces back without leaving their defences open and allowing you advance even faster

[Cheexsta]

Your armies are fine but I'd suggest focusing on quick sieging (spread militia or something all around) and using one or two big armies for destroying their armies. Also if you can lure their army to sicily, leave it there waiting while you conquer their home country.

This.

A couple of other ideas:
1. Have a small army of cavalry (no larger than the lowest supply limit in the enemy territory, if possible) roam around the enemy lands. Get them to pick off individual units as they are trained but before they can form a single army. If any enemy force is brought against them, use your superior speed (and naval power) to get them out of trouble (make sure you always have an escape plan).
2. If you can, trap the biggest enemy army on an island. If you want to drain enemy manpower, sometimes it's actually better to damage the army but let it live; the reinforcements sent to that army will drain enemy manpower more quickly.
3. If you destroy or trap the main enemy army, advance quickly to capitalise on it. Send out hordes of mercenary militia in armies of ~3k men to besiege the nearest provinces that provide the highest manpower. Use your main army to defend these and get the cavalry force to prevent any actual armies from forming. If you can, try to allocate a decent-sized force to take the enemy capital, since that's where most of their manpower lies.

I've used these tactics before to defeat even the mammoth Seleucid Empire. It's all about defending the right places and capitalising on victories, while draining the enemy of its resources. With a bit of patience (and often more than a little luck), you can just grind the enemy to the ground, piece by piece.

[Wave]

If I may point out one minor thing:

1. Have a small army of cavalry

Horse archers are actually even faster than regular cavalry (or at least they were when I last checked the units file (which could have been a year or two ago thou...)), Cavalry have speed rating of 1,5 while horse archers have 2,0. Also horse archers are 50% (150/200) better against militia (and heavy inf?) than cavalry is so I recommend using them.

[Cheexsta]

I meant "cavalry" as a general term to include both Heavy Cavalry and Horse Archers HA have a better speed rating, but tar only affects battles IIRC; both units have the same movement value on the map (shown in defines.txt).