Where the heck did Hannibal go?

[ShaiHulud]

Having finished the Rome and Caesar campaigns at Legate with only one lost battle, I stepped up a level for Hannibal. I'm thinking, "Yeah, I got this!".

The first battle against the Volcae demonstrated that Carthage, in this game, has no viable troops other than elephants and Gallic warbands. I was losing fights to light javelins when I held high ground (+75 feet) with the Carthiginian staples, for Pete's sake! Spearmen are weak, Scutiarii are weak and Poeni foot are pathetically weak.

Then I have to leave a garrison behind and get the option of using my now depleted units and 3 new Allied units from the Gauls or taking fewer reinforcements from Spain. Somewhat historic but Hannibal left a garrison of 20,000 behind long before he ran across the Volcae.

After winning that one, barely, I met the Romans. It was ridiculous. A Legion charges, I lose in red numbers and am pushed back. They simply crushed the Scutiari and the spearmen. Poeni foot? Forget it, man. A Hannibal-led warband and my one elephant had the only successes. Their general-led Legion charged and pushed a spearman back 3 straight turns before it routed. Meanwhile, my Scutiarii can't even hold up against Italian infantry. Rome just smashed every foot unit from the center to my right flank.

The Roman force consisted of 8 regular legions, two veteran legions, 4 elite Triarii, AND Italian troops AND Theurophorai, AND Velites, and a cavalry unit. That's a freaking Consular army! To top it off, ROME gets a surprise reinforcement of 4 more units on my flank. That was Hannibal's forte, not Rome's!

Any advantage of Hannibal's genius is absent. If it's to be a straight-up fight solely between troop types, why bother putting Hannibal in, at all? There are no solid Carthiginian spear phalanxes, which was the heart of his army, and the rest are just garbage.

The briefing states that Hannibal has already beaten two Roman armies. If so, then by that point his army was already swelled with Gallic recruits. I don't agree that a mere two warbands and a rabble unit satisfies historically, particularly if I have to choose between those additions and the depleted force that just barely managed victory against the Volcae or a replenished Carthaginian army with zero Gallic allies. There's just no way to recreate Hannibal's campaign with his historical inferiority of numbers when there is no Hannibal effect on the battles.

I plan to try it again at the Legate level but it seems to me that I won't be playing much as Carthage. They are just too outclassed to be any fun.

[jomni]

Your are Hannibal. Use your skill to win against increasing odds. Hehe.
By now you should have great respect for the historical Hannibal by pulling off victories with his “rag-tag” Carthage army.

[nikgaukroger]

Any advantage of Hannibal's genius is absent.

It is up to the player to provide the genius

[rbodleyscott]

Note that a height difference of +75 (arbitrary units) only gives a +25 POA advantage. You need +100 height difference or more to get +100 POA.

Also, I don't know how you play, but I have seen a lot of you tubers effectively ignoring the effects of rough terrain, so it is worth mentioning. Rough terrain will drastically affect impair the fighting ability of heavy foot that is either in rough terrain or attacking into rough terrain. This needs to be taken into account to avoid nobbling your own heavy foot, but can also be used to your advantage because you have more and better medium foot than the Romans.

The Carthaginian army units (apart from the warbands) are weaker one on one vs Romans, but you get more of them because they are cheaper. You need to use terrain and numbers to your advantage. If possible don't just attack an enemy unit with two units, but attack with one and then flank attack with the other. This might take slightly longer to set up, but it is far more effective.

The Poeni foot are home defense levies and should probably be left at home where they belong.

[Bombax]

The Poeni foot are home defense levies and should probably be left at home where they belong.

Indeed. Me and my fellow Numidian light horsemen would like to remind you that "Poeni" is pronounced "Pony" for a reason...

[ShaiHulud]

I appreciate your replies, gamers. Thanks.

Regarding terrain advantages, one of the first things I checked when deploying in my earliest games was that the game rewards the good use of terrain. So, of course, I utilize rough terrain in several ways. Missile foot, javelinmen, and scutari, for instance, suffer no disadvantage in rough ground so I try to get them there for advantage. In the battle I described above there was precious little of it and the clever AI simply went around it. The AI is to be commended for this. For myself, what little height/terrain advantage I could find, I used. The Romans are simply too superior.

Of course I tried flanking maneuvers. No matter which unit type I used, the result and the odds, was the very poor. Probably 4 times out of five, my own units took the worst of EVERY attack I made. Attacking Romans simply won outright against everything, save against the Hannibal-led warband and the elephant unit. One heavy spear unit went from fresh to fragmented, and pushed back, in the face of a single Roman attack! Another was pushed back 3 straight times before breaking in the face of the 4th attack, far behind my line.

My point is that CARTHAGINIAN troops types are simply underpowered. They just can't stand their ground. Elephants, while very viable, should not be found in a Hannibal campaign until the last battle at Zama, NOT in Rome. Which leaves one with the warbands as viable troops, of which there can be but a few. Noble cav and such are fine, too, but again, large numbers would be ahistorical in the campaign.

Imagine trying to recreate Cannae, with a controlled retreat of your center and a double envelopment on the Roman flanks. The game mechanics just don't allow for it when all the Heavy spear and scutari are decimated, in the actual sense of the word, by every Roman attack. Punic morale is just too fragile to hold while flanking maneuvers are carried out.

I've since watched others play on Youtube. They find the same weakness and experience similar results, although I did see ONE victory against a smaller Roman army setup. And, Bagradas is just overwhelming numbers against the Romans and thus not a good example, either.

Lastly, the very randomness of the battle maps can be, as it was in my battle, a handicap. If Hannibal was to open a battle on flat ground, it would be because he had a surprise on the flanks. Otherwise, he'd stand on high ground and fight at advantage. My battle offered me no high ground and, in fact, gave the flank surprise to the Romans!

Anyway, thanks for your replies. I'm no Hannibalic genius but I have been playing wargames since the 1970's, so, I'm not green, either. Regards....

[vakarr]

Actually Hannibal had 37 elephants at the Trebia, his first Italian battle.

I suppose one way of solving the terrain problem is to save the game before starting the battle, and if you don't like the terrain, reload the scenario and try again - which is more Hannibal like as then you are fighting on ground of your own choosing. The AI Roman player also tends to always advance as fast as possible, and you can use that to your advantage, by putting your heavy troops a long way back into your deployment area and putting your light troops forward on the flanks - this should give you time to do some serious damage to the Roman flanking troops before the legionaries contact, though it is risky as your own troops may rout off the table without a chance to rally them.

I have had results going both ways- as a Roman player I found that I could basically ignore terrain, the legionaries went through anything. Also if you have legionaries on open ground and medium foot on a steep hill, it's the medium foot that are going to be badly disordered and not get much benefit from the terrain, or at least that's the only excuse I can think of for their poor showing when defending a hill against wascally wowmans. Hannibal would not find much benefit from charging medium foot down a steep hill into Romans a la Trasimene, even into their flank - this resulted in my troops bouncing off fragmented. Just remember, according to the Imperial Roman Propaganda Ministry*, battles like Cannae and Carrhae never happened and Roman infantry were never run over by cavalry in a straight fight.

*If you have ever lost a battle with an unbalanced Roman army the IRPM wants you! Legionaries are too noble to be shot up or charged down! Nobody should be allowed to use underhand slippery tactics, only a direct approach through open terrain by heavy infantry shall be allowed!!

[ShaiHulud]

Vakarr- Interesting solution to the terrain problem. The logic of it is very enticing.

I've re-tried the Hannibal campaign again. The first thing that comes to mind is, Why is Hannibal ALWAYS outnumbered? Even against the Spaniards, in his own homeground, he's outnumbered. For his campaign he started, historically, with 80,000 troops. He left 20,000 behind at the Spain/Gaul border to maintain his communications. So, when he faced the Gauls, presumably the Volcae battle, he had roughly 60,000 troops! So, again, why is he always outnumbered? Anyway, only 27,000 survived the Alps crossing (what a colossal disaster!) with possibly ONE elephant (historians disagree on whether ANY survived the trip), defeated the two Roman armies and then was able to enhance his numbers with local tribesmen. By the time of Cannae he had something over 40,000 troops. In the time between Lake Trasimene and Cannae I don't recall anything like the game's consistently advantageous odds meeting Hannibal.

Likewise, where's the core of experienced fighters he surely had? It is not reflected by the experience level of his army in the game. It's just very disappointing trying to reenact a campaign that reflects neither the actual battlefields or the actual armies that participated. What I see on YouTube is rarely fought as Carthage. I think its generally understood that playing as Carthage is a dead end.

[vakarr]

So far every campaign game I have played I have been outnumbered, no matter what the army; maybe it's a deliberate way of making the games more challenging and giving the AI a chance. I also find that if the AI doesn't advance, you can hold your centre back while you destroy his flanks. I almost always advance in echelon with a refused flank because of the enemy numbers and to ensure a superiority on one flank (also the AI doesn't cope with it particularly well though it's been touch and go whether the superior flank would win enough in some battles!). Yeah I think a double envelopment is difficult to achieve; I still can't work out when I can or cannot charge the rear of a unit with light cavalry or if its some other rule preventing a charge. If you look at the quality of your army between campaign battles you will see the quality improving of all troops that fought and didn't rout, even the slingers. I guess if you want historical match-ups you create your own historical campaign, which may or may not be more fun. At least that way you can fix the terrain (though it looks like a huge job to create your own maps rather than use the random map generator). Your comments on terrain sound like me when playing FOG on the table top, never enough terrain and if there is, it's around the edges - so I guess these rules are following the table top game pretty well!!

[jomni]

So far every campaign game I have played I have been outnumbered, no matter what the army; maybe it's a deliberate way of making the games more challenging and giving the AI a chance.

This is deliberate for the campaigns. Increasing difficulty until the last climactic battle. Normally, it is tweaked where you should not lose more than 15% of your troops per battle. Those that survive increase experience and quality so the AI side needs a boost as the campaign progresses. If it's really hard for you, no shame in lowering difficulty until your feel comfortable.