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You know what? Numidia might well be the best in-game faction, game-design wise. Let me explain what I mean. The whole spirit of early TW games (and especially RTW) is 'rush, rush, rush', it's high risk-high reward gameplay. You gotta be aggressive and capitalize on every opportunity. In many other games (like Civ or smth) you can take your time, slowly develop your cities and technologies before you feel like prepared for war (if at all). But not here. Just about everything about Numidia further exacerbates the value of this approach: 1) Position. On the outskirts of the map, with terrible distances between the settlements (which aren't well developed except for the capital). You better be careful with how you move your unirs to save as many movement points as possible. But, on the other hand, if you start in the corner that means NOTHING can even theoretically attack you from at least 2 sides. So you rush to more densely located provinces (which lie in front of you). Not OP, but actually advantageous in some ways. Balanced. 2) Economy. Again, no well developed cities, no ports, nothing. You need some good money for whatever you're planning on doing so you rush into more prosperous provinces (which lie in front of you). If I remember correctly, Numidia can only reach 4 level settlements (correct me if I'm wrong please) but you're never supposed to fight late game Romans/Greeks/Egypt, so you do it earlier. And as for any of your barbarian rivals, you still have an advantage. Not OP, but actually advantageous in some ways. Balanced. 3) Unit roster. Many people consider it to be the worst or among the worst in the game. But just like with the points above, it's actually more balanced. Yes, you don't get any cheesy late game units. But you have a decent roster with all the basic unit classes: cavalry, missiles (both archers and javelinmen), regular infantry, pike infantry, and missile cav. It's mostly 1 type of unit per class, but it's not about mindlessly spamming 1 unit type unlike many other factions (fellow Greek Cities enthusiasts, I'm looking straight at you), it's about a good army composition. You actually have lots of missile units available pretty early on, one of the fastest missile cavalry units in the game, good heavy cavalry later, and decent pikemen/heavy infantry. None of them are OP, and all of them are good enough, used wisely on a battlefield. Just a couple of examples. You're not supposed to slice through principes with your desert infantry, but you can always hold just long enough to wear them down with your missiles and for your cavalry to rear attack them, while your Numidian cav distracts the enemy cavalary. Or, Egypt has ridiculously OP chariots, and that's why you don't auto-resolve battles with them. Your mediocre desert infantry will be more than enough to deal with them. You can make use of your roster to its full advantage early on, being able to take your mightiest opponents (Carthage, the Roman factions and Egypt) before they get OP. So, all in all, Numidia is hard to play as, but it really rewards skill and awareness, and that's why I actually think it's far the worst faction in the game.
Scythians are easterners with barbarian setup, the things one can do with that wide choice of cavalry is insane, want to arrow down an enemy? You can choose, cheap light horse archers or armored ones to go on en melee; want to chop down heavy units? Here, this girls eat cataphracts for dinner. Want to crush through? You have light cataphracts. You can't not love them. Ps: waiting for the eastern factions review, campaign with armenia was my favorite thing back in the day Ps 2: you called the thracians pushovers TWICE, don't be surprised if a blue haired screaming barbarian tries to cut off your head
britainia when you play it are rough, but as soon that you leave them alone with the Ai, one minute you are fighting carthege the next Britannia has taking most of the map and is number 1 faction.
Creative Assembly been real quiet since people starting noticing this. I bet those Brits passively buffed their AI on purpose. Rule Brittania or some shit.
@@gp3828 I think its because the isles are just such a save starting position. While other AIs smash each other, the Brits can just sweep in as the laughing third with a strong and save economy in the back.
hey i kinda want to play as Numidia now, i exclusively play the game with mods on BI expansion as i really love the era more than the other 2 sadly the mod is no longer available on the workshop. i really love their 500+ cities and it took me a month just to restabilize the Western Romans. Also i think there is a github repo somewhere by modders or the devs that would allow you to easily tweak turn per year as i would like to build some RP for my generals.
I’m glad the video sparked your interest for Numidia! They are super tough, but that’s what makes it fun. That mod also sound really fun, sorry to hear that it doesn’t work anymore. Thanks for watching!
I'm surprised you had so much trouble against Spain. Numidia actually has a good early game roster (especially if you stay in the desert), their main problem is that they fall off so hard in the late game that they might as well fall off the edge of the world altogether. I still think that while it's the hardest campaign in RTW for sure, there are quite a few others in Total War that are a LOT harder. The Hattori in Shogun 2, the Western Roman Empire in Attila (also not easy in Barbarian Invasion), the Ottomans in Empire, the Aztecs in Medieval II etc. come to mind.
Spain wouldn’t have been such a problem if I had more resources. 20ish turns had passed by this point, so they had a few armies while I had one half army and barely one settlement. The battles were difficult because of my lack of troops and funds. And like I said in the video, going to Spain is probably the worse option between that and taking on Carthage and then Rome immediately.I disagree slightly about the roster; I think that while their early game is definitely far better than their late game roster, the early game roster is still not very good. That’s a fair point, I haven’t played all of those factions so I can’t judge which one is truly the hardest. But Worst total war faction is a better title than worst rome total war faction. I think no matter how you spin it, Numidia is definitely one of the worst factions.
The hardest RTW campaign is by far Dacia. Yeah, they have a slightly better roster than Numidia (not much better though), but their starting in the campaign map is horrendous and they have literally 0 money
Dacia is easy af, sacrifice your home territory, just rush Thessalonica with all you have, and then you laugh as everyone fields Hastati and militia hoplites against your endgame units. Their roster is also far better than Numidia, not just slightly. They have actual heavy infantry and cavalry, early archers and artillery. Their shrines aren't half bad either, unlike Numidia's.
Try playing as the Berbers in Barbarian Invasion. They have all of Numidia's problems plus the weakest general bodyguards in the game. Is Spain the most boring faction?
medieval 2's russia is pretty damn hard. on one side you have developed poles who will steamroll you with western cavalry if you look at them wrong, and on the other you have a huge wasteland with very poor settlements. at least you get some pretty good guns late game but if the mongols come you really don't have a trump card like crusades or jihads other than to wait for cossack musketeers.
Yeah it is, but the new remastered version they released a few years ago. It’s nice because it eliminates a lot of bugs the old one has and it runs quite well on newer computers. Thanks for watching!
I never ended up getting them in this campaign, but they are super good and really fun to use. Blobbing the cavalry is one of Numidias best strategies so I’m glad to hear you won some hard battles. The problem is you take o much damage because all of your cavalry is light cavalry. Retraining is very important. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@Widzelli np, I guess you made it harder than it should be because of lack of elephants. Just imagine having one group to rout a weak unit and then using the blob to rout the rest. It is far easier than the hard game play you have had. Cheers!
Yeah I really could have used a unit of elephants for that. They’re one of my favorite units to use in the whole game. Thanks again for your support! Cheers
Their roster is pretty pitiful, but I’d also point out that they have close access to the balearic slingers, which are probably top 3ish missile units in the game. Seriously they are so good with their armor piercing. And while I like archers in general more, slingers aren’t terrible. But Spain is definitely not a powerhouse lol. Thanks so much for watching and commenting!
That's why I invaded Spain as the Seleucids once with a full stack of armoured elephants for the lulz. Haha no flaming arrows to panic them, deal with it. Edit: and Carthage doesn't have archers either
Both- if you have the spell before hand, you’ll collect them to unlock one of the two paths that spell has, and if you don’t have it, you’ll collect them until you have enough to unlock the spell. Upgrading down a path the first time takes 75 spellements and unlocking a spell takes 35 spellements.
I decided to group Thrace with the Greek/Hellenistic factions because they have Greek culture in the game, meaning they suffer a culture penalty for taking barbarian settlements but not Greek ones. Also, they have the HUGE capability of building up to tier 5 in all their cities. Both of those things seemed to make Thrace more of a Greek faction to me, but they certainly have characteristics of a barbarian faction. If you want to see a Thrace guide, I will have one uploaded very soon.
Thrace > Greek Cities IMO cos Greece is spread out af and Thrace copes with Greece's gaping cav weakness by having fast moving shock infantry that aren't just phalanxes making their armies more mobile plus better at sieges on walled settlement. Also pike phalanx have longer reach which lends itself to a cheese you can do. Seleucids are the most goated Greek faction tho for their amazing roster closely followed by Macedon.
@@TheSm1thers the cavalry for Macedon is pretty good too. Those light lancers pack a huge punch for shock tactics. Gonna give them another playthrough thanks!
I think the Spartan hoplites also inspire nearby units 🤔 making chain routing harder. Definitely right tactic to take them out 1st. Not sure in RR if units still take more damage from their unshielded side or not ?
Im pretty sure they do take more damage from their unshielded side, I should have been more careful with using my ammo against their unshielded side. Luckily I had enough anyways and it worked out. I can’t find anything to confirm that they also inspire nearby units but that would make a lot of sense. Thanks for the comment!
Thanks, I appreciate the kind words! I don’t know a ton of great mods because I haven’t really tried them. There are some great RU-vidrs out there with mod guides though
It's funny, but this is one of my favorite factions :) Yes, it is very difficult. They have almost no normal units. Legionnaires are available late, and they are not particularly strong. The fight with Reformed Rome is very difficult, and Egypt with its chariots is generally suicide :D I used to capture everything through Spain too. Sometimes it turned out to capture Carthage. The mercenaries helped a lot :) I also tried to capture as many small islands as possible (Sardinia, Crete, Rhodes, etc.), hoping to get more income. Money, it seems to me, is very important for Numidia. Great video! Good luck and success :)
I’m glad to see there are some Numidia enjoyers out there. I can see the appeal with its difficulty for sure. Getting those small islands to boost the economy is an interesting idea, I want to test that out a bit. I agree, the hardest part about Numidia is getting reliable money. Thanks for watching, and I’m glad you enjoy Numidia!
@@Widzelli Me too i like Numidia so much because Rome total war is not historically accurate to add the kingdom of Mauretania i have been fixing a lot of innacuracies by editing the game files so i can let Numidians use Elephants as they did in real life, thank you for talking about Numidia it's an honour.
Looks like a great campaign! Difficulty level? Legend of Total War has an old campaign of them up from years ago where even he spent most of it bitching about how terrible they were, lol. Ever try Spain? Another great challenge, but at least they have some solid units around which armies can be built (BULL WARRIORS). I would suggest you try Barbarian Invasion Berbers campaign - Numidia part 2, but a little bit better choice of units IMO. Little bit better...
Very Hard difficulty for both campaign and battle, I have played the game for too long for the lower difficulties to be challenging/fun. I'll have to go find that campaign of his, he's a great RU-vidr for Total War. He's also totally right here , they feel like a faction with no upside sometimes for sure. I have tried Spain and I think their roster with the bull warriors makes them that much better than Numidia, although they're still pretty trash. I think another thing about them that gets overlooked a lot is that Spain is really defensible because the ai is pretty unlikely to navally invade with a lot of units until later in the campaign, so you basically just focus on the mountain passes into the Gaul region once you consolidate all of Spain. Berbers sounds interesting, I'll have to check it out. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@WidzelliYes...Spain is a nightmare for the AI to invade if controlled by a human. Saw one guy do the Berber thing a couple of years back, but he played on average difficulty, kept save scumming a LOT, and was kinda weird, lol. A good Berber stream would be worth watching... Keep up the good work.
Numidia has definetely an interesting set up of unit roaster, with javelinman being trained at default melee-barracks (T1!) meaning they are cheap javelin throwers in place of town guard. I remember using them with huge number advantage as semi-hastati, with bigger range, more ammo and fast moving at the cost being considerably worse at melee. The only difficult part about that tactic was that training them was easy and fast but they upkeep was quite high. IIRC numidia shared medicore temples with Carthage - Baal (+law), Milquart (+trade) and Tanit (+farming), with the last one being surprisingly good, giving you mix of population growth and moneymaking, and IIRC it had really good retuine members to join you from their temples - Agriculturalist (+1 farming) and Priest of Tanit (+1 farming) meant you could end up with +7 farming or more at T3. Because numidian javelinmen are at barracks, they have their long range missle unit (slingers) put down on lower tier (T1 archery building, needing T2 city) meaning you also get earlier access to actually long range units. The Numidian infantry is even worse than it looks, since all spear units (the ones that always use spears, not hoplites of falanxmen) have +8 when fighting cavalery and -4 when not, meaning they are worse than their already underwhelming stats show on infantry-v-infantry fights.
I can see why you did the javelinman spam, but I personally think the Numidian cavalry are better because of the mobility it allows you. You can lose a battle without losing many men and dish out a ton of damage because of it. But yeah, the Numidian roster is pretty pathetic. I can see the argument for Spain having a worse roster, but at least they have bull warriors. The Numidian Legionnaires are just not good at all in comparison. Makes the campaign that much more difficult (and interesting)
@@Widzelli Barbarian factions because they only have three tiers of the cities instead five, they often have really great units for their tier - barbarian warbands are better than towns guard and their top end warriors are better than same tier principes. They often have pretty great temples. Spain does not only have Bull Warriors, but Scuttari are pretty decent, round shield cavalery is something like +2attack +2defence over roman equivelent, and +1 +2 +3 experience temple can supercharge them too. If I remember properly warcry temporarily increases attack power by 10 which can close a lot of powerlevel gaps - they may not be as good as Urban Cohort, but can mop the floor with pre-reform romans when used correctly. No way spain has worse unit roaster, IIRC they actually have same round shield and long shield cavalery as carthage (and numidia), that combined with them having better infantry and better campaing map situation (better combat temples, better starting location). I have been thinking about how to make any campaing more challanging, and instead of doing things like changing difficulty that turns the combat balance upside down (battle map difficulty gives static buffs and debuffs on all units in battle - -4 for all your units and +8 to all enemy unit attack on very hard) or making mechanics like economy upside down (very hard campaing gives you something like 25% money making penalty and gives enemy +100% money generating, making many enemies effectively infinitely rich), I've been thinking about just skipping the number of first turns (20? 30? 50?) maybe with the exception of being allowed to build buildings and defend your cities if they are attacked).
That’s an awesome idea for a campaign! Although I still enjoy the harder difficulties because I think it’s easy to snowball into a juggernaut early on and make the rest of the campaign boring. Putting the turn handicap would be very interesting though. Thanks for the comments and for watching!
@li If you like longer campaing and don't like the fact that factions like numidia or parthia are wedged into the corner of the map you should try Mundus Magnus campaing map that doesn't change anything except add bigger and denser map with more room to breathe and to conquest. Downloaded it ages ago and now each time I see a regular campaing map I get confused about how tiny it is haha Edit: IIRC remastered/steam version has messy compatibility with old mods (even on regular graphics) so you may have troubles unless you switch into old pre-remaster install of the game.
Migration campaigns are so fun. I’ve done so many of them but my favorites were Thrace->British Isles Scipii->British Isles And Greek Cities->Italian peninsula/Sicily.
Playing a Numidian campaign right now! Personally I'd suggest the quickest way to shore up your finances if you start this again is to rush taking Carthage and Lilybaeum. If you are successful and quick then it leaves you with much better finances and it's the best time to attack the Roman factions when they are still full of relatively garbage units. Fighting off the Egyptians at Siwa is always going to be a pain, depends how long they take to look at you if you feel like hanging on to it. Good effort on the campaign to get the result still!
I think you're completely right, it's definitely possible to take out Carthage and use the wealth of those cities to fuel your campaign. I was too worried about the Romans at such an early stage, but you're right, I could have beaten them early and not had to deal with the Marian reforms. The defense of Siwa is really a struggle, although I think with the right amount of skill and luck it is definitely possible. The problem is sometimes it doesn't feel like it's worth it because it's so far away from your capital, so corruption hurts public order and revenue from the cities. Thanks for the feedback and for watching!
@lordvenusianbroon Always sell or abandon Siwa, unless you play on easier difficulties. The upkeep of the garrison needed to defend it is usually far higher than its income, and bringing reinforcements so far out is just not viable. It's not a good staging point for an invasion of Egypt either (transporting troops by sea is a lot better than legging it). You can just build a few watchtowers as you retreat through Cyrenaica (if you've already captured it) and you'll see any Egyptians threatening Carthage several turns in advance. In any case, they often don't go this far west anyway. The only time I would keep Siwa is if the Egyptians are so distracted in the north that they leave Alexandria or Memphis wide open. If you capture those, it's well worth hanging on in the East.
@@bannedcommander2932 Normally I wouldn't hold on to it...but I was going for the short campaign achievement for the last game I played as Numidia. The Egyptians usually go for Siwa and can swamp the place with full stack armies, as you know. But unfortunately they are one of the factions that can easily get to 15 territories and wipe out their 'achievement enemies' thus attaining their victory conditions very quickly. So I wanted to, at least stop them from getting an easy territory. Thus giving me a bit more time to wipe out Carthage and get enough territories before they did. Thankfully in this playthrough the RNG gods were on my side: Egypt belatedly attacked me - I had enough time to set up a kick-arse garrison - and the achievement is mine. :-)
Since you dont have siege equipment or other means of breaking the walls, the game thinks you cant break in. The bot meanwhile doesnt do shit, while it is attacking. So the game gives you a draw as an option. As you said. A draw for the defender means defeat. As the enemy army cant retreat anywhere is is desolved.
The ai should be able to since it’s a sally out battle… they’re the initiators of the fight, that’s why the draw ends up with them losing and I can take the city
You have the choice windows. Do you take the draw or do you want to continue the battle. If you continue they will usually sally out, if you wait long enough and dont habe anything capable of breaking walls. Only one thing can stop them from doing that, especially on gigher unit scales: the shitty path finding. If even one entity starts to get stuck the unit will not sally out.
