Is Carthage Scenario #3 supposed to be extremely hard?

[Stringer1313]

I only recently discovered the scenarios and must say I love them. I increased the difficulty levels of Carthage scenarios #1 and #2 and had a great/challenging time beating them.

Scenario #3, however, is destroying me, even when I set it on default difficulty setting. I'm somehow miraculously able to keep control of Panoramus (only because after zerg rushing me with many invincible legions, if you hold out long enough they suddenly stop attacking the city), but then, the Roman navy appears out of nowhere and has 2x the number of ships I have, and immediately annihilates my navy (and capturing a few ships to boot).

Then I thought, OK, maybe this is scripted, and I'm supposed to now rebuild my navy from scratch (which would require building probably 10-15 ships which will take forever) and conquer the navy, but by then, the zerg rush has spilled onto Africa, where they are ROFLstomping through my cities with ease b/c the 5-7 weak soldiers I started with were all killed in the initial Panoramus rush.

Am I missing something here? It just seems like a dramatic difficulty difference compared to #1 and #2.

 

[PiR]

What is your difficulty level?
I guess you're trying to achieve all 12 ambitions? 6 is relatively easy I think. But 12 is challenging and fun.

Now that you know what happens you can play a bit differently. I remember delaying finishing an ambition because I found out it would spawn too many legions.

Carthage #4 is very tough for me currently, once I cross the Alps and kill Roman units, it's very hard to conquer Italian cities.

 

[Solver]

There's a big jump in difficulty after C1 and C2, yes, that's intentional. C3 is harder, and C4 is even harder. But there are different victory levels, and while achieving Gold or Epic is very hard, Bronze or Silver is less so.

For C3 specifically... historically, Carthage seemed well prepared for the war, but then quickly lost Sicily - including Panormus - and wasn't able to recover. The opening turns of C3 are supposed to feel like a desperate attempt to hold on to Panormus, where you keep the city at great cost. Then the naval battle that follows was also quite the disappointment for Carthage historically. Carthage seemed to have complete dominance of the seas, but suddenly found itself outclassed by Rome. If you're on the default difficulty, Rome should only spawn 6 ships for the first naval battle. You start with 5, and have a sixth half-built in the capital, so you can have numerical parity. But it's possible to have 8 or even 9 ships before the battle happens if you rush them.

If you win the first naval battle, managing the Roman invasion in Africa gets easier. In part because fewer troops spawn, in part because your ships can join the defense. Make sure you use Xanthippus, he's a powerful general and makes a difference. You have decent civics income, and the main use of your civics would be to rush units. If you lose a city in Africa and then retake it, you're doing better than Carthage did historically! I'd say Silver roughly corresponds to performing as in history, anything better is hard to achieve because you're outperforming the historical Carthage.