Middle Imperial Roman vs Later Carthaginian

I have never been fond of inert generals, so I decided to field Macrinus' army just to see if my view was still valid. The army list used was:

1-CiC RCvO, 4 RCvO, 2 RKnF, 2 ILhO, 8 RAxO, 6 RBwO, 4 RBdX - 32ME

2-SG RCvO, 8 RBdS, 8 RAxS, 4 RPsO, 2 RArtF - 36ME

3-SG RCvO, 8 RBdO, 4 RPsO, 2 RLhI - 20ME

Army Baggage 6 RBgO, 7 TF - 12ME

The plan was quite simple: line the army and slowly roll forward, giving the lower pip to C3 and the high to CiC. I had light troops on both wings, so some bad going on the flanks would be welcomed.

My opponent used a carthaginian army in Spain with 8 ElI.

As defender I chosed the compulsory paved roard, a 1FE vineyard, 1FE Bua and 2 small orchards. I wanted some difficult going to anchor my flanks. The battlefield was pretty good, I guessed an enemy attack through the orchard line, but could not deploy there my S auxilia because I needed the cavalry wing ready to cover the open going on the far right. My deployment was then quite easy to decide, with sub 1 on th left and the CiC on the right.

I faced a large gentle hill in the center, that was an excellent defensive position, but also could let my opponent deploy there and offer me a target. Not so bad.

The Carthaginian sent 12 RAxS and 6 IPsS to attack trhough the orchards, backed by 4 IElI and supported by all the cavalry they could gather. This was a main effort.

I pulled back the RAxO from the orchard, to delay the clash and force the punic to use more pips. The cavaly wing moved uphill on the right, while the carroballistae wheeled to shoot on the elephants. My left, in the meantime, rolled forward to engage enem

The punic advance was slowed by the fire from archers and elephants, that inflicted some casualties too. The attack was repulsed with losses

A roman counterattack broke the already weakened punic central command

In the meantime on the left the carthaginians tried to manouver their troops out of the way of the roman onslaught, but were caught in a bad position. The carthaginian general survived an hard flank attack.

Also on the far right the romans had the upper hand, resisting to the enemy attack and pushing back the punics. So far so good for the romans

When the battle seemed won, the romans met problems. The punic resisance on the hill was very tough, and pips dried.

Then I made a big mistake, allowing the enemy to attack the rear of Macrinus

Macrinus died, and the round after my pips were 0, 1 and 1. Macrinus leaderless corps had 1 pip, so no moves at all with the corps half element away from being broken. I started to lose a lot of elements.

The end of the game was slow, due the very tough resistance of the punic army. I was saved by the impossibility of the numidian corps to attack my rear, having lower pip and being far away from the gentele hill sector. Once the baggage was sacked, the carthaginian gave way for a 19-6 win.

A nice game, that still has not conveinced me of the advantage to play using inert generals. Surely the army is huge and quite strong, but the manouver problems are a threat to everything but the simplest plan.