Opening Moves – Numidia

By Adder.

Numidia is a non-playable faction. If you wish to play as Numidia download the Fixed Factions Mod. This tutorial was written while playing on Very Hard/Very Hard, it applies to all difficulty levels, however.

Numidia is a very difficult faction to play as. Only one of your four cities is making money and if you wish to conquer Africa you need to fight Carthage (and later the Roman invaders) and Egypt. Numidia’s unit choice is also fairly small. Libya is totally separated from the other three provinces. Separated enough to render it fairly useless; the Egyptians lay close by. Numidia’s only hope for survival is unification in the West and an attack on Carthage.

Let’s do this. Build a Shrine to Milquart in your three Western cities (Dimmidi, Cirta and Tingi). Train a unit of Peasants, as a garrison, in those cities as well. Que a Governors Villa in Tingi. Move you units in Tingi and Dimmidi towards Carthage. Adjust your taxes as needed. Your turn is over.

Readjust your taxes. You should be able to get to a “Very High” tax rate in Dimmidi, do so. Change your taxes to high in Cirta. Continue moving your units from last turn. Group your units near Cirta and move them towards Carthage. Move your diplomat and spy towards Carthage. Your turn is over.

Continue to move all your units from last turn. Your turn is over.

Continue to move all your units. Your Spy should be able to get into the city. Your army from Cirta should be right near Carthage. Enjoy using your diplomat but beware you’ll be attacking Carthage next turn. Your turn is over.

You should have a Prince by now. Continue moving your armies. Merge your Prince with the army from Dimmidi. Lay Siege to Carthage and build a ladder and a siege tower. Chances are Carthage has moved some of it’s units out. Don’t worry if it has/has not. Your turn is over.

I was attacked by Carthage and won fairly easily while it wasn’t my turn. The number of men they had left in the stronghold was very few and it led to a very easy assault of the city. Slaughter the cities occupants and you can be rich once more! In my game/s there were no more Carthage units in the general area. If this is not the case in your game you can kill them on your next turn with the incoming army from Dimmidi or the army of Tingi which should be right next to the city. Set your taxes to very high in the city and build roads in all your other cities. Train a unit of Peasants in Carthage and retrain all the units you can in Carthage.Your turn is over.

At this point Egypt attacked Siwa. The chances of successfully defending it are rather small but it isn’t so big a deal as Siwa was more of a burden than anything else and later in the game you’ll recapture it again. Focus on capturing Thapsus, it will be another great source of income. After capturing Thapsus (which should be fairly easy) I’d head for Nepte or Lepcis Magna. Beware of Romans on ships however. Continue to build up your other cities economies. Tingi, Cirta and Dimmidi can pretty much only be used as economy boosters as they’re too far away from your other cities to do much training and Carthage can already outtrain any of them; unit availability wise at least.

Good luck!