It was interesting to read RJ's account
For Carthage the game was divided into quite distinctive eras and epochs. First, almost all our forces were thrown into wiping the Romans out of Sicily with reckless abandon, as we was hoping they simply wouldn't have time to ship enough troops there and Sicily would be key for invasions both ways. Since the elephants hadn't arrived yet Hannibal was set to reign over an army of Numidians, which he was none too pleased with. Meeting Caesar in a surprise of historic proportions (a couple of hundred years too early?
) he was defeated and Sicily lost.
This began the second era of rebuilding the forces in anticipation of the Roman invasion that almost had to come. So forces were built and built and built and the Carthaginian empire got reasonably productive, and at one point while the Romans were in anarchy our millitaries were equal according to our advisor. Then the Romans stormed ahead again and stayed 'strong' compared to us the rest of the game.
During the brief window of being equal with the Romans we decided to launch a new attack on Sicily, and as the Romans fled we seized the momentum to take Sardinia as well, successfully. First we blocked the islands with millitary, but later we switched to a worker blockade which later proved fatal since we did not realize workers can no longer block millitary invasions.
As the Romans again grew stronger millitarily we pledged for help from the other countries time and again, but only the Persians, who under two different rulers had been close allies were helpful in terms of tech trading. Unfortunately they had too many problems of their own to help with anything else. So the Romans began launching attacks through Spain. At first they underestimated us and it wasn't until the 4th strike through with settlers that they cleaved our Spanish territory in two. At this point our plan had been to quickly ship our troops across the mediterranean through Sardinia and onto Rome while their armies were otherwise engaged. Unfortunately just prior to this the Romans had walked into Sardinia meeting no resistance due to the worker 'blockade' and such we could not sail through undetected. This caused quite a delay in our attack plans, but eventually we got our forces through, landed next to Rome, and watched in horror as the Romans set fire to their own capital!
Most of our fleet and armies survived the invasion and quickly left the Italian mainland since we had lost precious time getting our invasion ready and feared large Roman armies would catch up and trap our forces. At this point we had established good communications with the Macedon and Egyptians, and Macedon had begun contributing a bit to our economy so as to hurry some units. They also agreed to hide our forces in a surprise re-strike where we sailed around the Italian boot and up the Adriatic to take the other Roman city with precious wonders (Padova?). We expected this would completely take the Romans by surprise since they had just witnessed us flee, and we almost made it but got spotted on the final turn by a single galley. Still, our landing was successfull and the very same troops that caused the Romans to abandon Rome had them abandon their other major powerhouse. Upon this, the cultural boundaries had contracted and there was room for our cavalry to retake the rebuilt city of Rome, healing our troops. Meanwhile our fleet was in a gambit to get back down the Adriatic, but most got destroyed - we had anticipated this and therefore did not put the armies back in the fleet, rather let them stay on the mainland and see what the Romans would throw at us. In retrospect we should have asked the Macedon to let our armies pass through their territory, but somehow we never thought of that. We also knew it was only a matter of time until the Romans would retake Rome, but it would at least keep them busy for a while, allowing us to rebuild some forces for a likely counter attack towards Carthage.
The counter attack was delayed, but eventually came across the straight of Gibraltar. At this point our Macedon and Egyptian allies realized that the only way to keep the Romans from taking all of Carthage was to aid us massively, possibly they were also impressed by our raids and saw it a worthy cause to hand over their gold? Regardless, in the last third of the game first Macedon and then Egypt contributed substantially to the Carthaginian economy, allowing us to rebuild our forces relatively quickly and hold off the Romans from pushing through Africa. For some reason they never seemed too interested in trying it with too much vigor, possibly they were more concerned with securing their coastline for yet another raid and therefore kept most of their forces at home. We did have several skirmishes, but little territory was gained for Rome. I estimate that Egypt and Macedon contributed to half the Carthaginian economy in the last third of the game, allowing us a significantly larger troop output. Further, Egypt provided us with the remaining three techs for free.
In retrospect, if we had gotten help from Macedon from the beginning in terms of tech research to reach Republic and then gold to hurry units we would have been more successful with holding off the Romans and possible keeping the battle on their territory. We would not have been able to keep them from spreading their empire to the north, however, and that's where the game was won.
It may have seemed odd that we were not more aggressive with the Romans earlier, but we truly had very little millitary power and with the Romans being constantly 'strong' in comparison and obviously outproducing us three fold or more, and also knowing that Macedon would not help with attacking from the east, any substantial counterattack would almost surely wipe out Carthage. We fully expected this to be the case after our first and second strike against the Roman heartland since almost our entire millitary was tied up and subsequently destroyed. The Romans never did attack the city of Carthago, and its citizens could multiply like bunnies without a worry in the world
Congrats to RJ and thanks all for a fun game!
Wait for screenies to know what I mean 
Hopefully, that will never happen again!
much fun reading and lurking 
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