Mercenary armies?

[Sarissofoi]

Anyone try play game with only mercenary units?
I play recently a Ptolemy campaign and use only mercenary Greek units. Having a blast.
It play kinda funny with limited manpower costly units and not so great units. Need send general to gather army in Greece so enemy stacking or surprise attacks are deadly.
Veteran Hoplites are a best unit supported by Cretan Archers and Rhodian Slingers and Tarantine cavalry.
Anyone tried mercenary runs with other nations?
Any good compositions or useful units?

[Roach]

As Carthage I built an army of mercenaries (with a veteran hoplite core) that I used to sack most of Italy, but I did have a normal army as well over in Spain. It wasn't a full stack, but it worked its way through pretty much the entire peninsula, taking advantage of fortified stance to destroy two Roman armies in one turn. The army paid for itself, but I'm not sure if it was a win for Carthage, though Rome certainly lost out.

[daelin4]

Meh, most of them are kind of filler units that are just clones of what you got. The rest aren't terribly unique or provide enough numbers. In the end it wouldn't be a big enough difference, methinks.

I did tried it one time, went everywhere and recruited as many guys as I could. The result was, well, just another army. Maybe a bit better than some other units, but then there's the champion that trains your men over time.

[rob-a-dogg]

Tarantine cavalry is as useful as any other javelin missile troop (highly situational, and not in actual situations you would expect to use missile cavalry, more like somewhere they can dismount, park up safe and throw all ((ALL)) of their javelins into the back of an enemy unit. Take over javelin infantry, not bows though - but otherwise replace with anything at all.

[TomR199]

if you can afford it would be fun

[Kraut]

I had a situation when I was "forced" to raise an all-mercenary army. Playing as Rome, all but one small army engaged in North Africa, suddenly celtic trouble brewing in Northern Italy. As a stop-gap emergency measure, I recruited a General in Brundisium, hired all available mercs in Magna Graecia (Hoplites, some peltasts and Tarantine cavalry), moved north, hired all available mercs in Italia province (Italian Spearmen, cavalry...), finally arrived in Gallia Cisalpina and again hired the available Celtic mercs there. With the support of the present small stack of proper Roman infantry (just being recruited there in the other army), the merc army came just in time to defeat the attacking 3 stack (or rather 2.5 something stacks) Helvetii army.

But I was very quick on desolving the merc units after this, because the cost nearly broke my financial neck...

[Sarissofoi]

The idea is to use ONLY mercenary units.
So you don't have national armies just merc.
As a Ptolemy it is hard to survive this way if you don't abandon Cyprus. Because Sel is going to after you and when they move its like others deicide to move to.
There are four provinces where you can get Greek mercenaries Hellas, Makedonia, Asia and Magna Grecia. Not so close. It take time and its not reliable and time consuming. And costly but Egypt is rich.

[Igor85]

Carthage had actually real mercenary armies. I would rebuild them in Rome 2 if Carthage would've some usable Mercs (besides 2-3) and of course a bigger access to Iberian heavy units.