Equipment pairing / Item combination

Ahhh so the defensive thing. Keep in mind I have a very late game build.

The reason I use so many defensive things is because of math and team composition. my weakest generals do like 100 damage on average that was Crassius on a very defensive unit. If you do the math, +15 damage pompey gladius is a 15% increase in damage and crossbow +15% crit rate is a 15% change to do +50% damage making a overall +7.5% damage so at beast the offensive iteams are a damage version of centurian sheild and that is if we ignor the more offensive units.

Also the smaller guys basically do not matter. I spread my main damage unnit between 5 super units (Archer Com, Arminius, Huo, Vercingetorix, Mithridates) and three minor units (Octavian, Pompey, Drusus, Hasdrubal) ranked in terms of damage potneital on average. The only purpose of these very minor guys is just to attract the enemy super units. One thing I found in the game is that the AI tries to make good decisions. This usally manifest in ways like hannibal trying not to attack wood raiders or horse archers or generals trying to attack weaker units to finish them off. By having a two small units that are two stacked or close to death, hannibal and sparticus tend to attack them instead of my archer commander and ect.

Also keep in mind this is why anti hannibal works so well for me. The game Ai usally determine archer command is a bad choice to attack. Above him is pompey. Below him is bato. Bato = wood raider so hannibal tries not to attack him. Pompey is on the side of the map exactly where I want hannibal to go. So either hannibal skids out of the arena and mith, vercing, and archer commander gank him on turn 1 or hannibal does not attack (!!! This second choice actually happens a lot for me so see if you can recreate this with good positioning if you need for hannibal or another unit !!!)

All is not lost for damage equipment though. The uniforms matter.

Pompey does his damage taking very admirably and mithridates either die or goes hard (6k damage or 2k in most cases I counted). Im planning on placing unitforms on them when I finsihed upgrading all my generals to the rank of Consul + full way of honor rank.

I've replaced crassus with Belesarius. I've actually got a calvary block opposite side of hannibal (Huo, Bele, Arm, Hasd) Im planning on placing bele in back with calvary uniform, has in front, huo in from but staggered a bit behind (he has counter attack) and arm as the counterattack.

Interesting tidbit here. My main calvary generals are Huo and Arm not Huo and Bele. This unique decision comes from team cohesion. you only get 2.5k points in arena. I found that:

5 stack commander (700 damage on crit. 400 on heavy armor you want to keep that alive)
5 stack mith (outperforms arch commander against cavlary)
5 stack vercing (500-600 damage on crit on heavy armor is not unusal)
4 stack pompey (critical he says alive for anti hannibal block if he dies, another enemy unit takes his place and now hannibal is afe behind enemy lines)
5 stack arm (this is the calvary block. 3k hp with 300-500 damage 200-300 on heavy armor a hit comming your way)
5 stack huo (this is the calvary block. 3k hp with 300-500 damage 200-300 on heavy armor a hit comming your way)

works best. Belisarius ONLY works on infantry. He has barley any better damage on his war chariot and 20% better hp. That is at a cost of 525 points instead of 270 points for armenius. And thats not counting the other obious problem with him in my build. I ahve TWO good calvary generals. I dont need a 4x attack when I cna just have TWO guys attack instead. also belsarius is the defination of bad behavior. he ahs plain fighting vs arm forest fighting. Arm tries to go into forest, belsarius tries to fight in plains. Only one has a defensive bounus.

Huo is even better IMAO. His -60% defensive works ALL the time. He has coutner attack so people want to attack him less. His raid make sure he is always effective. (Cav takes a lot of damage so its not unusal for him to be smaller despite his 5 stack) He doesnt ahve plain fighting and has the essential like guerrilla and assult. Also he costs 60 less which is a 15 % discount.

Also belesarius is anti infantyr. Guess what counters infantry? Archers. I ahve a lot of archers. I have a lot of good archers.

And for the sparticus vs hannibal debate. For me its definatly hannibal. In fact, atilla might be a bigger threat then sparticus.

Look at my team composition. Spartcus is SUPPOSE to counter javlineers right? thats a juicy 700 damage he just wacked my archer commander with. But not really. My archer commander is more then capiable of sending at least 600 back at him.

Also check the loadout. I have 4 archers. All of them very capiable of dealing damage. If sparticus runs in with his light armor (the weakest to pierce damage) and no ability to counter attack and the offensive builds too many people use on him, who do you think all my archers is going to hone in on? Remeber the AI thing I taked about? Who do you think is going to get attacked? Huo with heavy armor or sparticus with light armor? (Lol I accidently created a anti sparticus team when trying to counter hannibal.)

Also sparticus is terryfying because of his damage. He eats even calvary generals alive. A full super buffed cav general dies easily to sparticus...

ONE full buffed cav general. Huo, arminius, and belesarius in the back buffing the previous two is comming and they dont care how much damage they need to take cause they have a combined 3k hp.

Its not even really the defensive items. You take out 4 of my best generals but my team is made to fight until the last. All of them counters something. Most of them do decent against all unit types or generals.

Thats why I think in fact atilla is a bigger problem for me. Being able to damge three of my good unts is definatly a pain but I usally take care of him fast enough with a lot of javlineers (anti hannibal block or octavian on the frontline + drusus) or calvary (The calvary block is comming to ruin your day).

P.S. I forgot I also have burebista with consul scepter + holy grail in the back. He goes to mountains which is good behavior (defensive buffs) and mountains slow him (hes a buffer not a fighter).

TLDR: Team cohesion is the name of my game and this counters sparticus but is hurt by overlord ability. To counter overlord I try to use the AI to trick hannibal to either attack one at a time or not attack for turn 1 or 2. (Watch and learn. The Ai does have noticeable trends for me. Play the AI) Aura uniforms might be great but havent tried them out yet. Hope this helps you all.

Also, if you want to see my talk in action, see these videos on Vimeo 
Arena battle 1 against pay to win:
Arena battle 2 against pay to win: 
Loadout: 

Premier Arena loadout (Arena lvl 30: Credits 952,400 ID 1010798600 (Tell me if you smacked my team XD))