u/WasntMyFaultThisTime

I just lost a fight with 3 heavy ships and 1 light ship vs 2 light pirate ships with a 75% chance of victory and apparently the AI decided that not only would this be a crushing defeat for me but instead of sinking one ship per fleet it would sink one entire fleet of 2 ships and cause me to lose an entire stack of units I was transporting.

Not sure if I should be baffled or pissed.

After conquering Egypt and securing an alliance with Parthia I've started amassing forces in the eastern Mediterranean to sail west to attack the other Roman factions, currently I have 7 separate fleets, each with multiple ships and an army that's at least 3/4 full heading west towards the various Julii/Scipii port cities

The issue is that the Marian reforms hit while at sea and now I'm realizing I have no way of retraining my massive armies and I have to figure out how I'm going to get a second wave of post-marian units into Italy, Africa, and Gaul while keeping my pre-marian units from getting whittled down and killed off despite how many of them there are

Am I fucked? I haven't started a war yet and I accepted the suicide demand because my faction leader was useless so I put off the civil war for a little bit longer

Specially asking about if you use wider or deeper formations rather than where you put infantry vs cavalry/archers/spears

I typically have a wide front and secondary line if my enemies aren't using heavy cavalry. If heavy cav is in play, then my frontline is typically deeper and packed closer together, with a wide secondary line so that if I need to rush forwards and reinforce the front there's a chance of my units unintentionally flanking around the cavalry.

I typically have my missile units in loose formation and spread pretty thinly just to minimize the risk of trading fire with other missile units, and my cavalry is set as wide as possible to maximise on as many horses getting their charge bonus as possible since I'm not really concerned about cavalry morale since they're only gonna be fighting for a few seconds before I pull them back out to form them up for another charge

I'm looking to upgrade from my first fly rod which is a 5wt Orvis Encounter rod that I've used for pretty much everything for the last year or so. I primarily fish in creeks and small rivers around me for smallmouth bass and the occasional walleye/saugeye. Most of the fish I catch are in the 12-16" range but it's not too uncommon for a 16+ fish to show up every now and then.

I have the opportunity to purchase a Lamson Liquid combo at something like a 40% off rate but the catch is that the store I'm using (its one of those online ones that you have to work in an outdoor professional related field and be verified to use, otherwise I'd share it with you guys) only stocks the 5wt and 8wt models.

I figured there's no sense in buying a 5wt rod if I already have one and I'm not sure if an 8wt would just be ridiculous overkill for fish of the size I'm catching, but I also don't know if it's worth paying full retail price for a lower weight rod. I mostly throw streamers and bottom contact crawfish imitation flies if it matters and will probably be using either a full sink or sink tip line since I don't have much luck with topwater even on conventional tackle.

1: When is it worth it to train 1 unit of 2 turn units (legionary cavalry, urban cohort, etc) instead of 2 units of 1 turn units?

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2: Should I bother defending walls in city sieges or should I just force the enemy to funnel to the plaza? (I recently won a 1v4 against the scipii by doing exactly this. 1700+ casualties to their ~325)

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3: Inversely, what's the best way to attack a city *without* getting funneled?

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4: Is sallying out worth the effort or should you try to hold out as long as possible to let reinforcements arrive? (Assuming both armies are relatively evenly matched)

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5: Is building siege engines optimal when attacking cities? It seems like if you're towing even one unit of ballistas you can auto-resolve the fight and the AI won't realize that you don't have enough ammo to knock down a wall but instead just factors in that they *can* damage walls, saving you the extra turns for building equipment

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6: How do I gain experience for my diplomats without shelling out tons of money in gifts or tributes?

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7: How do you arrange your field armies in battle? Is there any reason to switch it up from the classic "long lines of light infantry with heavy infantry clumped behind them in the gaps with archers in the middle and cavalry/spears on the flanks"?

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Thanks in advance for the help! Currently fighting for my life in the civil war with like half my cities besieged so I figured I'd gather some intel from more experienced players before doing anything stupid lol.