Marius vs Sulla - Uh fellas.. I'm here too by the way!

[bob.]

Hello, first of all I have to say that this game is frankly just awesome! I only played a very little bit of Pride of Nations before - and hated it, it was way too huge in scale IMHO and also performance was absymal. I wouldn't have bought AJE if it wasn't for the overwhelmingly positive comments I read. And I don't regret it.

Anyway, after playing a few rounds here and there for different scenarios I decided to start as Pontus and I am having a really hard time.. I feel a bit like the important actors are the two Roman factions and I am just a little nuisance (which propably I am at most)
The thing is that in the military rating Pontus seems to be the strongest actually! Though I guess this is partly because of Pontus rather huge navy (which is of limited use as far as I can see), it still doesn't look like my army is so weak on paper. So what can I do to prevent losing every single battle with a > 5:1 loss ratio?

Has anyone got any tips on how to play as Pontus? Or is the only hope I got that the Marius faction plays good enough for Sulla having to pull his army back?
Also, is there any impact on who actually controls a region? Like, one region is controlled by "Pontus", the other by "Galatia" etc. Or is this just as a "useless" little detail and I am simply the head of the whole faction?

[Boomer]

As Pontus, I find that it's not too hard to beat the Romans until Sulla or some other decent Roman leaders get their act together and head east to confront you. The Marius/Sertorius issues should give you enough time in both scenarios to get an army together before the hammer falls. So for several months it's easy to march west, take cities along the coast, and prepare defense points (Byzantium, Nicomedia, the Hellespont, etc) in order to repel the inevitable Roman counter attack. The rest is just a matter of building a gazillion phalanx and cavalry units. In one point during the third mithridatic war I repelled the Romans from Asia Minor and found myself at the head of a 100,000 man army heading towards Thessalonike when the victory tab popped up.

It's not really hard to win at Pontus, you just have to keep the Romans from steam rolling you while building up a HUGE army in the safer eastern provinces, then unleashing them full on with Mithridates and whatever other decent 2-3 star generals you have.

And on the question of region control, I believe the man benefits to controlling a region is supply and victory points, mainly supply. However, in ancient times roads was the name of the game, so keeping/owning road networks and the cities that they run through will usually be the key to strategic movement and advancing an operation. Otherwise you can easily get bogged down chasing tiny garrison units all over the place and spending months laying siege to towns that are way more trouble than they're worth.

[Jim-NC]

Welcome to the forums bob. You will find the forums full of helpful people willing to share their knowledge.

[Cfant]

wrong thread, post deleted

[bob.]

I started a new game as Sulla now and I have to say I really have no problem crushing the Pontus "hordes". I even split Sulla's army into two roughly equal armies to take Greece and then one got attacked by the biggest Pontiac army and still won with only insignificant casualties.
Maybe it's because the AI is a bit incompetent (though it actually seems quite clever), but I haven't really felt any pressure from the Populares either they took most of Italy but I am holding Rome with my 1200 strength Italian Army so don't really care :P
This is after 13 turns by the way, so I guess it's not over yet.