Some strategic thoughts

[jjdenver]

I could be wrong about any/all of this but here are some conclusions I've drawn from play:

It's interesting to see the Roman recruiting tail off as the game progresses. There are 2 things that I think can cause this.

1) As provinces are recruited, the recruiting pool dries up. If you as Carthage can take some provinces in central/southern Italy and recruit there, you are in the long run taking Rome's recruits since you are helping to dry up the recruiting there. In other words there is a limited pool of eligible men to recruit and you'd rather they join Hannibal than Rome.

2) As you take provinces from them Rome has fewer and fewer areas to recruit from so their number of recruited units falls off.

For both of these reasons if you face a choice about what to do with Hannibal and that choice is to defend a northern province like Cisalpine Gaul or to strike south, you are almost always better to strike south, take some cities, and recruit there.

Genoa is very important for a couple of reasons. First if you want to march an army from Spain to Cisalpine Gaul you want Genoa so you don't need to march through Gaul and take attrition. Second if you can manage to get a good sized Punic fleet into the sea zone off Genoa you need that port for it to retreat to in case of storms. Putting your fleet in any sea zone other than the one off Genoa is very dangerous as the Romans tend to be able to take more southern ports in Italy unexpectedly. Genoa is usually the safest until the end game. Having a fleet in Italy is great because then you don't need a "reinforce italy" decree from the Senate to intervene w/ your navy.

As for commanders, you have 2 in Africa, 1 in Spain, and 2 (Hannibal/Mago) in Italy. I think it's pretty important to get another commander or 2 into Italy for recruiting there and for holding provinces. I try to look for an opportunity to promote every commander including Mago. A Roman leader in a city with a limited number of units - say an army of 1 + 2 or 4 militia in a city - or a Roman commander in a province with a small army. I'll go out of my way to let Mago or one of the other commanders crush this small leader's force to get promoted instead of using Hannibal. By end game I usually have a bunch of 6/7 skill commanders which makes them viable field commanders against Scipio and the other Roman generals.

[NefariousKoel]

It's a sound strategy.

I always looked at it as having to move my generals in Italy to where I can maximize my recruitment.. while trying to lure a big Roman army into an open field battle along the way. [:)]