I've been playing it for the last two weeks and am very happy with it so far. Bits of it are very silly (eg the war dogs and the burning pigs - what the ...?) and some of the armour is wrong (eg Republican legionaries with Imperial period scuta and segmentata), but the fun of seeing cavalry at full gallop, with clouds of dust rising behind them, chasing down fleeing infantry makes up for all this.<br>
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I'm playing the Scipii in the campaign game and currently control Sicily, most of North Africa (except Numida and Egypt), all of Greece, Thrace, Moesia etc, and Spain. I'm about to invade Gaul and link it via Germania to the Ukraine. Then I'll turn on Pontius, Syria and Egypt with the hope of taking them before the Brutii and Julii turn on me with the Senate's backing.<br>
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I've played most of the historical battles, with mixed results. I won Gergovia and the Teutoburgerwald, though I think the latter would be a lot more fun if it were closer to history. Having the bulk of Varus' army intact and within a brisk sprint of Aliso was a bit silly.<br>
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I played Caharre last night and found why poor Crassus had such a hard time - those mobile horse archers are a pain in the butt! I locked my legionaries into testudos to fend off the archers and used my heavy cavalry to destroy the Parthian cataphracts. Then I drove off the horse archers.<br>
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So far, so good. But every time I tried to run them down they headed for the hills, drawing my cavalry away and letting their mates close on my infantry again and pepper them with arrows. Eventually I used a small infantry unit as bait, drew the archers close enough to my cavalry and then hit them as hard as I could before they scurried away again.<br>
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This was a pretty clumsy tactic though, and resulted in lots of dead infantry for every dead Parthian archer. I won in the end, but at the cost of thousands of casualties.<br>
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I've learned how useful those horse archers are though, and have been having fun with some custom battles between the Scythians and the Germanics. Shades of the Huns vs Goths circa 376 AD.<br>
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All in all, it's a great game. I buy about one game a year and this one is worth every penny.<br>
Cheers,<br>
<p>Tim O'Neill / Thiudareiks Flavius<br>
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Help create the film of Publius Quinctilius Varus' lost legions.<br>
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