Later Carthaginian vs Middle Imperial Roman

Later Carthaginian is an army with several interesting options. I like a lot the possibility to use many elephants and in this battle my list included eight behemots.

The doctrine is quite easy. Try to send the elephants in combat, and protect them. They kill almost every opponent faced, and punic support troops are of excellent quality. This is a strong army.

As attacker I set up two 1FE difficult hill. A wrong choice, it would be better select some good going feature to exploit my wider frontage and cavalry superiority. By the way I was quite lucky, because my hills were in a good position, and furthermore, having the MIR player chosen as preferred edge the right short one, my DH cancelled a  roman selected GH.

The MIR plan was easy and correct: use the hills to bolster his defensive position. Unluckily I enjoyed the night attack advantage, and the ILhO picket on the left did not cover well the roman cavalry corps on the gentle hill.

After three night turns, I was attacking in fall, this was the situation. My plan was to smash the roman on the left, use the spear command in the center to protect the attacking wing and eventually intercept the ArtF enfilade fire. Spanish scutarii would not charge the very strong enemy position on the rocky hill, but wait for them on the plain, where I could use the elephants. Just to annoy enemy I send a couple of raider around the right wing to threaten the roman baggage.

This is the first charge. The elephants are attacking 2 RKnF. The attack went badly, I killed just 1 RKnF and lost a CvO against the Moors!!!

The Roman having survived the first contact, tried to disengage his cavalry and cover it with the pretorians.

Roman infantry charged from the hill the punic lines. The Elephants were redeployed to avoid the artillery F fire and protect eventually the spearmen in the center should the pretorian try to charge them.

The Roman cavalry was under pressure and being a quite small corps, disheartened quickly once the RKnF were destroyed. Numidians were also able to attack the roman camp. The only downside was that elephants, carried away from the success, exposed the flank that could not be properly protected by punic skirmishers facing roman RBdS.

The roman infantry was beating the spanish mercenaries, while the pretorians were able to destroy a couple of elephants. The situation was still desperate for the romans, risking to be overwhelmed and surrounded on the left wing.

When the cavalry corps broke and the baggage was sacked, the Roman gave up.

The Roman did what he could. The picket wrong positioning, and an overexposition of the weakest corps doomed the roman.