In this game I am currently playing, the Roman empire has seven cities (as oppose to my five). The bulk of the Romance force is fortified in Attium, while other cities' defense consist of a meager three or four crossbowmen, or archers, or whatever.

I don't want to take on that huge monster of around 30 units in Attium (which is probably not that a lot for the more advanced player). So instead, I split my army into two. Each army has five horse archers, five swordsmen, five crossbowmen, and ten cats.

The first army (I'll call it the Main Force) attacked some lightly guarded Roman city whose name I don't remember (I'll call it City A). The second army is stationed near my city of Utrecht. This positioning arise out of the consideration that the army in Attium (I'll just call it the Attium army from now on) will threaten the geographically close Utrecht the minute I declare war.

Anyways, I was right. Upon war declaration, the Main Force easily conquered City A, while the Attium army tried to make a move on Utrecht. My army that is guarding Utrecht was able to reduce the Attium army down to zero, at some substantial cost to myself. But I had a sufficiently large force left to create a credible threat on Attium itself after the battle against the Attium army at Utrecht.

My strategy at this point was to converge both the Main Force and the Utrecht army at Attium, situated to the north of City A. Attium is now lightly guarded since its army has just been wiped out by me. Yes, this means leaving City A unguarded completely. I wasn't concerned about that, since Attium is the closest city to City A. And by converging my entire invasion force at Attium, the whole of Roman empire will sent their troops to Attium's rescue instead of trying to liberate City A.

As I have expected, by the time my invasion force reached Attium, this city was once again stacked with an army of about 8 or 9 units. Against my awesome army of close to 40, 18 of which is cats, that's nothing. But Attium is located inside the Great Wall, which gives it a big advantage already. The city itself is also defended by a wall. And to make matters worse, this city is located on the hill.

Which means that that the 9 units inside Attium can easily act as 18 units. That's still manageable (I am playing at the third level, novice I think is what its called) if my army of 40 is going to only take Attium down, but my goal was to use the same army, with minimum reinforcement from the rest of my Dutch empire, to go on and conquer at least one more city, and threaten another in order to force a peace treaty out of Rome. This is not going to be an easy task because my 40 units might have been reduced down to close to 20 or so after the battle at Attium.

Moreover, given the distance between City A and the rest of the Roman empire, leaving it unguarded temporarily was not a suicidal idea. In fact, so close to my Dutch city was City A that as soon as my Main Force left for Attium, I was able to reinforce City A with a few archers. But I couldn't do that with Attium, for the minute Attium becomes unguarded, the rest of the Roman armies from all over the empire will attempt to restore it. This means that I must leave some sizeable portion of the surviving invasion force to guard Attium. Lets say I leave ten of the surviving twenty after the Battle of Attium, then I will have only ten left to go on and conquer one more city, and threaten the conquest of another. Furthermore, I had to consider the fact that cats comprised half of my invasion force.

A quick look at the Romance empire will show that the rest of her cities are still light guarded. They will build up a considerable force in no time, so I must exploit their temporary weakness as soon as possible. This means that I must make the most that I can with the invasion force I now have instead of spending the time to build a new army and sent it to deep inside Rome.

How should I best position my army to accomplish the objective of guarding Attium after the Battle of Attium, and still manage to conquer at leats one more city, while threatening the impending conquest of another, all using force that I have now with minimal reinforcement from Dutch. That's the critical strategic issue I now face.

I suppose what I can do is to take a risk, and reinforce the defense of Attium with Utretch army, leaving Utretch light guarded. At the same time, I should place a portion of the army guarding my other Dutch city (I don't remember that name. Dutch names are so hard for me to remember for some reason) in between Utretch and that city so that should Utretch be threatened, that army will reach Utretch in time to its defense.

In fact, now that I think about it, I think in all likelihood, Utretch won't be threatened at all because Rome will be more interested in sending its troops to Attium to liberate it than to conquer Utretch, so that my deploying Utretch defense army to Attium should not be a security problem. Besides, after the liberation of Attium, the Roman army will have to either fortify at Attium to prevent my invasion force from coming back to take it again, or deploy the Roman army that liberated Attium to fight my army which is threatening other parts of the Roman empire. In either cases, they have no resources to pursue the conquest of Utretch should Attium fall, which is probably not likely if I re-assign enough force from Utretch to Attium.

But then again, whether or not Rome will liberate Attium, or make a move on Utretch depends also on how much force is left in Utretch right? If Utretch is lightly guarded enough, it might just give Rome the incentive it needs to make a move on Utretch instead of liberating a considerably more heavily defended Attium?

That's just the first part of the problem. The second part of the problem is how to invade the rest of the Roman empire. The rest of the unconquered Roman cities are still lightly guarded at this point. If I make a move on one Roman city, all the remaining Roman cities will come to its rescue. Which means that even if I successfully take that city down, it will still be a hurculean challenge to defend it successfully. Remember, I still have to threaten one more city in order to have any chance of forcing a peace treaty out of Caesar.

Some reading this might throw their hands up in surrender and simply tell me to build another invasion force. But even that is difficult because Dutch people is already sick of war, and refuse to work, which means that it is taking forever to build just one unit. Therefore the only real option I do have is to force a peace out of Caesar from whatever army I now have!!!!

Maybe my mistake is that I started the war with so little army in the first place? Sigh......the life of a strategist can be so stressful sometimes :(

A. does rome have iron? If so pilliage it and keep it pilliaged.
B. the great wall does not provide a defensive bonus and the cats will eliminate the walls in seconds as well as any cultural defense.
C. with 18 cats you will take antium quite easily. After the defenses are down. Attack the city with the cats. one at a time. You will probably lose 4-6 of them but the collateral damage will frop the fenders down to an easily beatable force. You did give your cats city raider didn't you? They survive much better if you do.
D. rinse and repeat. Producing more cats the entire time. If you use enough catapults with City raider promotions then your losses will pretty much be all catapults which are cheap and your swordsmen just get better and better.
E. i would have razed City A and resettled it later. it costs too much in the early game to keep cheesy cities.

With enough seige weapons, it doesn't matter how many units he has.

As above, walls do nothing after you bombard them and great wall only generates more great general points for him. It's on a hill, so that's a problem if he has a lot of city garrison 2 longbows, but still doable.

I think you overestimate his wanting to rescue his city, unless the AI has changed drastically. If the AI feels you are more powerful, he'll tend to turtle in his city.

But let's say you'll win a costly victory. If you really want to defend attium, you can pillage the roads toward his city so his troops arrive slower, pillage his metals if you can find them. If he attacks in small pieces, use roads to counterattack his counterattack with crossbows and catapults.

You could also send some units into some heavily defensive positions in his territory to distract him.

Also you mentioned horse archers. Hopefully they have flanking. This will deal with his cats on his counterattack. Also after the cats attack, then use the HA's they can further ingure units and a lot will retreat rather than die. After that the swords should mop up nicely.