This is made up for by the fact that Greece is far richer than anything in Gaul and you will find yourself raking in the cash after building the suitable trade and port buildings (make sure to swing by Rhodes to grab the wonder).

Slightly harder than the Julii only due to the fact that Hoplites are more dangerous than Warbands. Swing down into Greece or Carthage to limit your fellow Roman’s expansion and prepare for your showdown with the senate and the other families once your popularity gets high enough. Your next options for expanding into a long campaign is to crush the barbarian neighbours for easy extensions to your territory, not much more trouble than Gaul except for Brittania’s chariots which are strong in auto-resolve. Don’t forget the settlement in Spain and you’re all done for the short campaign. Ignore any large stacks in the field if your own armies are large enough, just destroy their cities and let them waste all their time sieging one tiny town back. Gaul will be stuck on Warbands for an extremely long time and you just beat them at every stage of the game so they will never be a match for you even with a numbers advantage. If you are hunting for the “use only auto-resolve” achievement, I managed to beat the short campaign in 15 real-life minutes using this method. While you can choose to build up your economy and go for a slower conquest, simply pumping out Hastati in every single city and sending them to the front line against Gaul will crush them entirely in short order. That said, despite this very easy and quick path to late game domination, you don’t need to wait that long to destroy Gaul utterly. After capturing Patavium, start stacking growth buildings on it – this city has a hefty growth modifier and will likely be your first huge city – triggering the Marian Reforms very early on. You should be able to take both of these cities with little actual struggle – your Hastati are superior to their Warbands and the difference between the quality of your infantry will only grow as the game progresses. Take the small rebel town to your northwest in your opening turns and siphon off troops from the garrisons of your cities to move north towards Patavium and Mediolanum. One of the easiest factions to start with.

Rome total war factions