Rome TW and economies,

[PeZook]

While playing Seleucid, I find that no matter what the odds are against me, I can win any battle as long as I have armored elephants.

I mean...just look at this!

The Romans rely on masses of heavy infantry to do their fighting, and a mass of heavy infantry is what war elephants like to smash the best. I once saw a legionary cohort get reduced from standard 41 people down to 12 in one attack. I also find that greek cavalry is surprisingly good. It's dirt cheap, easy to replace and not too shabby in battle.

Haven't tried out companion cavalrymen yet, but I'm preparing for an invasion of Sicily, so they should see some action soon

[Darth Wong]

While playing Seleucid, I find that no matter what the odds are against me, I can win any battle as long as I have armored elephants.

I mean...just look at this!

Obviously, that computer AI player didn't direct his troops very well. Elephants have lots of hit points, so they take a while to wear down and no single strike short of an onager stone will take them out. But if you hit them enough with ranged weapons and then charge them en masse with heavy infantry, you can take them down or make them rout, although the best strategy is to line up a few onagers and let 'em have it with flaming ammo. It only takes one hit in the group and they will usually panic and start running amok in their own lines.

The Romans rely on masses of heavy infantry to do their fighting, and a mass of heavy infantry is what war elephants like to smash the best. I once saw a legionary cohort get reduced from standard 41 people down to 12 in one attack.

Well before you are even able to build armoured elephants, your Roman enemy should already be capable of building masses of Praetorian cohort and cavalry with upgraded armour and weapons, which are much more resilient and dangerous to elephants than bog-standard legionary cohort. Try hitting a group of upgraded Praetorian cohort with an armoured elephant column and you might be surprised; a lot of them will fall down but they'll just get back up again and keep fighting.

I also find that greek cavalry is surprisingly good. It's dirt cheap, easy to replace and not too shabby in battle.

One important attribute of units in RTW is the ability to be retrained at smaller cities that don't have the advanced structures yet. That's one reason why it can be preferable to have masses of mediocre units than a smaller number of high-end units, unless you are fairly close to a large, well-equipped city under your control.

[PeZook]

Obviously, that computer AI player didn't direct his troops very well. Elephants have lots of hit points, so they take a while to wear down and no single strike short of an onager stone will take them out.

Well, you are right he didn't direct his men very well, as he let himself get charged in the flanks by elephants. Of course, I didn't use the elephants alone - they just disrupted the line, the thing that actually made the enemy break was my main battle line.

But if you hit them enough with ranged weapons and then charge them en masse with heavy infantry, you can take them down or make them rout...

That's why I always keep my own heavy infantry on hand. Elephants can break off from infantry relatively easily (they just walk out), but enemy lines will be disrupted enough so that your own heavy infantry can mop up pretty easily.

...although the best strategy is to line up a few onagers and let 'em have it with flaming ammo. It only takes one hit in the group and they will usually panic and start running amok in their own lines.

Lining up a few onagers works against pretty much anyone
Fortunately for me, the AI doesn't like siege engines very much, so I didn't really have to think much about countering them effectively. Any tips on that?

Well before you are even able to build armoured elephants, your Roman enemy should already be capable of building masses of Praetorian cohort and cavalry with upgraded armour and weapons, which are much more resilient and dangerous to elephants than bog-standard legionary cohort. Try hitting a group of upgraded Praetorian cohort with an armoured elephant column and you might be surprised; a lot of them will fall down but they'll just get back up again and keep fighting.

Yeah, playing with the Romans is easy precisely because their medium-level units are better and cheaper than anything your enemies can throw at you. At the worst case, a Roman can build four Pretorian Cohorts before I can pump out a single elephant. (They only need an imperial palace for those, while Seleucids need their best palace and best stables.)

Of course, War Elephants will do nice as well. They will knock the praetorians down and keep running, while lighter cavalry does most of the killing. In my Seleucid game, war elephants actually make up the bulk of my Oversized Weapons Division.

One important attribute of units in RTW is the ability to be retrained at smaller cities that don't have the advanced structures yet. That's one reason why it can be preferable to have masses of mediocre units than a smaller number of high-end units, unless you are fairly close to a large, well-equipped city under your control.

I find that my armies going to the far north usually end up using cheap, low-tech units. Even medium level ones from civilized nations can whoop barbarian ass easily, but you can retrain them on the fly as an added bonus.

[Vympel]

While elephants can be worn down by any unit if they fight hard enough, if you really want to take elephants out of the fight and don't want to waste an army slot on flaming pigs, use skirmish troops- for the Romans, Velites and later Light Auxilia are best for it- they'll take casualties, but as Marcus your advisor tells you, light troops are the most appropriate, and casualties among Velites and Light Auxilia can be replaced easily.

Re: lots of mediocre units- amen- I conquered 50 provinces in the lifetime of one faction leader (my second one, since your first one dies almost immediately) as the Seleucids, and my army was mostly made up of standard Phalanx Pikemen, while my hardest war, in the extreme early game with Egypt, was fought mostly with *Levy* Pikemen- skillfully used. The Greek Cavalry were indispensible. In the later game, I didn't really need Silver Shields and Cataphracts and all that jazz to win, but I wanted them

[Darth Wong]

BTW, I just thought I'd mention that I've tested my tactic of taking Syracuse early as the House of Brutii on Medium and Hard difficulty levels so far and it has been quite easy both times. The trick is simple enough: you start with two field armies. Send the larger one east, to take Apollonia and eventually Thermon. Take the smaller one, wait a few turns to put some Town Watch troops into your two starting cities, and then empty the original garrisons of Velites and Hastati to bulk up the smaller army so you can send it to rampage on the Sicilian island.

Once you get your 2nd army over to the island, you can quickly move to take Syracuse and then the western end of the island, at which point the House of Scipii is completely blocked in, with no non-Roman territories bordering their own. At that point, the House of Scipii is essentially neutered; they will never expand beyond their original two territories for the rest of the game (perhaps because the AI only expands into adjacent territories), and you can use Sicily as a staging point to take Carthage at your leisure. In essence, by taking the island before the House of Scipii can, you take their place in the gameplan.

Now you can basically play as both Scipii and Brutii for the rest of the game, simultaneously expanding east and south to take the Greek cities and North Africa. This also makes the conquest of Rome itself that much easier, because you can simply raise three armies (one for Rome, one for Capua and one for the Scipiian rump on the Sicilian island) and then crush both the Senate and the House of Scipii in one brutal stroke.

[MKSheppard]

I have a rather good game going, but it's on hold until a patch is released
for the GODDAMN squalor problem! All of my money is going towards
paying for troops to keep cities pacified; and when I try to trim my
garrisons of useless town watch to save money, the unrest goes up,
and they riot! AAAAAAAAGH

[Vympel]

I have a rather good game going, but it's on hold until a patch is released
for the GODDAMN squalor problem! All of my money is going towards
paying for troops to keep cities pacified; and when I try to trim my
garrisons of useless town watch to save money, the unrest goes up,
and they riot! AAAAAAAAGH

Shep, the problem is not that bad. Have you tried altering the build policy for the auto-governed cities? You'd be surprised what that does. And you only need peasants to guard them. I've finished two games with far flung Empires (one Brutii, one Seleucid) with only minor revolt problems.

[Stravo]

I have to agree with Vympel here, my rioting problem was never more than a nuisance and you get plenty of warning that the thing is getting bad. You just need to fidget with tax rates to keep them down until you build enough anti-squalor buildings and for the truly big cities just put a high manager governor in there to make sure you can squeeze a nice chunk of tax money out while keeping the rioting problems down.

Under the Brutei I had an empire that spanned from Britannia to Antioch. Only a handful of cities were ever in danger of rioting.

[Ace Pace]

I'm not even close to that size, but just keep creating peasents, it takes men from the city, and send them away, takes down the city populance and gives you cannon fodder for garrisons.

[Darth Wong]

Always try to build a racetrack and arena early so you can pacify the citizenry with pointless entertainment. That was my method of dealing with urban unrest.

Of course, there is another method: bring up heavy reinforcements, then empty out your garrison. When the city revolts in the next turn, immediately attack and retake the town. When the option comes up to occupy, enslave, or exterminate the populace, choose "exterminate". It's amazing how a few thousand public crucifixions will remind them who's the boss. It's best to do this immediately after the city has just passed a "city size" threshold and you've built the appropriate building, because the drop in population won't reverse the increase in city size as long as you've got that governor's building there (so you can still build the more advanced structures, but you won't have to worry about revolts for a long time).

[Captain Cyran]

Always try to build a racetrack and arena early so you can pacify the citizenry with pointless entertainment. That was my method of dealing with urban unrest.

Of course, there is another method: bring up heavy reinforcements, then empty out your garrison. When the city revolts in the next turn, immediately attack and retake the town. When the option comes up to occupy, enslave, or exterminate the populace, choose "exterminate". It's amazing how a few thousand public crucifixions will remind them who's the boss. It's best to do this immediately after the city has just passed a "city size" threshold and you've built the appropriate building, because the drop in population won't reverse the increase in city size as long as you've got that governor's building there (so you can still build the more advanced structures, but you won't have to worry about revolts for a long time).

I did that in Egypt... I took their last three territories then they got pissed and revolted, so I left, let them do it, then came back and slaughtered them all.

EDIT: Oh, and these were two Huge cities and a large city.

[MKSheppard]

Always try to build a racetrack and arena early so you can pacify the citizenry with pointless entertainment. That was my method of dealing with urban unrest.

Look look, I've done that, built the pointless entertainment, and my cities
still revolt without heavy garrisoning.

[Darth Wong]

Always try to build a racetrack and arena early so you can pacify the citizenry with pointless entertainment. That was my method of dealing with urban unrest.

Look look, I've done that, built the pointless entertainment, and my cities
still revolt without heavy garrisoning.

Assuming you can't afford to lower your taxes any more, it looks like you'll have to go to plan B: mass crucifixions. Mind you, it's perfectly acceptable to run a city at a loss in a large empire, as long as you have more cities in the black than in the red.

[MKSheppard]

Assuming you can't afford to lower your taxes any more, it looks like you'll have to go to plan B: mass crucifixions. Mind you, it's perfectly acceptable to run a city at a loss in a large empire, as long as you have more cities in the black than in the red.

My taxes are already the lowest possibul levels, and when a city revolts,
a Rebel army appears on the field, which I cannot defeat due to my
previous thinning out the garrison to put my empire into a profit.

[Darth Wong]

Assuming you can't afford to lower your taxes any more, it looks like you'll have to go to plan B: mass crucifixions. Mind you, it's perfectly acceptable to run a city at a loss in a large empire, as long as you have more cities in the black than in the red.

My taxes are already the lowest possibul levels, and when a city revolts,
a Rebel army appears on the field, which I cannot defeat due to my
previous thinning out the garrison to put my empire into a profit.

It sounds like your empire has a general revenue problem. I had the same problem during my first couple of campaigns. A few tips:

1. Despite the temptation, do not rush to build the most advanced military facilities first. Build economic structures first; the ability to build Praetorian cohort is less important than the need to grease the wheels of your military-industrial machine with money. Lots of mediocre units are better than a handful of elite units anyway.
2. Always build paved roads as soon as possible. Good roads increase income.
3. After roads, build shipyards, and keep upgrading them as quickly as you can. This increases seaborne trade income.
4. Attack and kill any roaming rebels in your territory. They may appear harmless, but they block trade on the roads they occupy, hence choking off your income. Conduct these battles yourself on the battle map rather than using auto-resolve so you can be sure to hunt down and destroy every last one. Be sure to bring lots of cavalry.
5. Try to capture more coastal cities than landlocked ones. See #3.

If you want to use the "incite revolt and then brutally put it down" technique, use one large roving army to do your dirty work (move it near each city before emptying its garrison) rather than expecting each city's garrison to get the job done. Just move this army from town to town, repeating the process at each town and retraining them afterwards to get them back up to full strength.

[Darth Wong]

By the way, I just discovered a bug: if you have an army en route to attack an enemy fort and the enemy abandons the fort between turns, the game will crash to the desktop.

[Stravo]

A little off topic but based on my crack addict behavior of late with this game I ordered the Medieval Total War pack that includes Vikings ($16.95 on Amazon). I read in a review that Rome dumbed the game down from the Medieval series so are there major differences between the games?

After having played all three Roman factions I have to say that the Bruteii are my favorite, excellent starting position and great branching out posibilities. The Scippi were OK, not fantastic, my treasury certainly did not swell to the 300,000 dinanrri levels as it did under the Brutii, the Julii also regularly leveled out around 150,000 Dinarii. I've rarely gotten over 50,000 with the Scippii.

[Ace Pace]

A little off topic but based on my crack addict behavior of late with this game I ordered the Medieval Total War pack that includes Vikings ($16.95 on Amazon). I read in a review that Rome dumbed the game down from the Medieval series so are there major differences between the games?

After having played all three Roman factions I have to say that the Bruteii are my favorite, excellent starting position and great branching out posibilities. The Scippi were OK, not fantastic, my treasury certainly did not swell to the 300,000 dinanrri levels as it did under the Brutii, the Julii also regularly leveled out around 150,000 Dinarii. I've rarely gotten over 50,000 with the Scippii.

Medieval is very differant, for one, its alot more Risk style campaign map, armies are moved from province to province, not city to city.
Also, battles are fugly, as in 3D map, 2D units, but its a whole differant level of carnage.

[frigidmagi]

Guess I need to do more bandit sweeps.

[Vympel]

Speaking of bugs, anyone notice how the Legionary Cohorts don't have the shoulder pauldrons of the lorica segmentata armor? It's in the screenshots, its in the intro, but its not in the game. They better fix it in the coming patch.

[Ace Pace]

Speaking of bugs, anyone notice how the Legionary Cohorts don't have the shoulder pauldrons of the lorica segmentata armor? It's in the screenshots, its in the intro, but its not in the game. They better fix it in the coming patch.

Skin patch fixes it.

[Vympel]

What skin patch? Where?

[Captain Cyran]

Speaking of bugs, anyone notice how the Legionary Cohorts don't have the shoulder pauldrons of the lorica segmentata armor? It's in the screenshots, its in the intro, but its not in the game. They better fix it in the coming patch.

Skin patch fixes it.

Patches? Wha?

[Ace Pace]

http://twcenter.net/downloads/db/?cat_id=1

and Realisim mod V5 is out.

[Vympel]

So which is the patch that just changes the skins of the legionaries? I don't want to get any Realism mod or some such.