I tried four cav for a while and it's ok as the Iceni, but as Germania the cav are so weak they are next to useless for anything other than low threat engagements after the lines have clashed. This formation is designed to take a hit in the center and quickly flank enemy forces using melee infantry and cavalry. And at the back of your ranks you have war machines. Macedon can field the sturdy Foot Pikeman, the powerful.

The feared Pezhetairos, Hetairoi, and Hyspastist changed the landscape of warfare. Hailing from the great military of Alexander, Macedon was the leader of military tactics. Macedon is a sub-faction of the Successor Kingdom faction featured in Total War: Rome II. In front of the entire army you place velites skirmishers, who are forcing enemy to attack. You can help the Total War Wiki by expanding it.

While I will usually still win the battle my troops take such a pounding trying to close with them that it's often a close or even pyrhic victory, even if they routed almost on contact, and again you don't have the fast movement or armour that counters these problems with melee heavy armies. On flanks you have cavalry in form of equites. Skirmish heavy armies can cause you major headaches as well. Once they get better cav (a LONG way down the tech tree for germania and still not very good cav) you are more flexible, but they die at a collossal rate and this slows down XP gain substantialy. One slinger or skirmisher nearby and you can't take them with one cav unit. A human oponent (and occasionally the AI) will bombard your troops with low quality siege (scorpions annoy this set up a lot) and even if you can get them there the low end cav of germanic tribes and the icine is not guarenteed a win even with the frenzied charge used if the siege see's you coming and can get a couple of shots off, and that assuming they have no local support. The big flaws to this melee heavy set up are it's lack of manouverability and range.

This has worked well when severely outnumbered by low quality infantry (as the celts and surrounding tribes tend to field an awfuly lot of that). They could hold the line reasonably well, even under difficult circumstances, and you are FAR less vulnerable to cavalry but remeber you have no good cavalry to make a flanking move of your own, so more often than not I need to focus my strongest melee on one place and chew a hole in their line, then turn along to where the spears are holding to get into the sides of their foes.

When I played as the Suebi I used ten spear and two sword set ups (mainly due to their lack of good sword units early on) and found them lacking the kill speed.

Total war rome 2 tactics