[akots]

It is a great fun on very hard/very hard and I'm getting my ass kicked by Gauls playing as Julii. Hope the assasins can help to take care of their nasty generals. The most bizzare is the heavy cavalry bug when attacking heavy cavalry overruns anything, chopping straight through my mercenary hoplite phlanax and beheading hastati by hundreds. Surprisingly, but on normal difficutly it is even worse than that. I somehow mastered the economy though. It seems rather simple indeed: do not build what you don't need and don't build too many troops. Either enslave or sometimes exterminate when the loot is good. But diplomacy and battles are a real pain, especially fighting heavy cavalry. Diplomacy and diplomats are extremely glitchy and it is very difficult to take care of all relationships and wars since AI is extremely unpredictable, even worse than Civ3. Brutii seems the easiest campain once you can master the handling of Macedonian troops. And I have not even started reading or playing Scipii.

The twcenter.net is by far the greatest forum. I have not registered their either, just lurking. On the other hand, the totalwar.org site is rather useless. Their guides suck and don't really help imho.