Strategy tips for RTW:BI

[Darth Wong]

I don't know, but there are set criteria for ending the game. As the WRE, I have to hold 34 territories including four critical ones: three of which I already have at game start (Rome, Carthage, Tarraco), and one of which I must take by force (Constantinople).

[Vympel]

Hrm- looks like WRE gets a break in that regard compared to the ERE- the ERE has to hold on to Constantinople and Alexandria, while taking Rome and Carthage (don't see why Carthage is an objective to be honest). I'm surprised the WRE doesn't have to take Alexandria as well.

I just built a Circus Maximum in Constantinople (it's close enough to the frontiers facing the WRE that it was worth it, it's also far and away the most developed city in the area)- goddamn Equites Catafractii, Equites Clibinarii and Scholae Palatinae are expensive. Something like 1.5 thousand denarii for each of them, and upkeep costs in the 400s. One of each should be decisive in my main army stack however- the WRE is weak on good cavalry (and it suits my aesthetic concerns- one Scholae Palatinae to guard the Augustus' person, since he's the leader, and two heavily armored equites, one for the charge and one for melee).

I can't decide if Hippo-toxotai are worth the space in my stack- I've generally been unimpressed with Horse Archers ...

Owned the Huns a little while before that- I repeatedly sallied out of Sirmium while they attempted siege and massacred them time and again while taking minor losses- the large stone walls I finally managed to get up really helped. Eventually their man/horse power got so weak that they had to withdraw and were reduced to a pathetic scattering. My field army combined with the Sirmium garrison and exterminated the King and god knows how many brothers/sons in a single battle soon after. Some useless pissant third nephew twice removed cousin's roomate of the dead King is all that's left.

[Darth Wong]

I can't decide if Hippo-toxotai are worth the space in my stack- I've generally been unimpressed with Horse Archers ...

I've found that horse archers generally get massacred by the much cheaper foot archers, who have more archers per unit and seem to reload faster. As long as they have some cavalry or spearmen nearby to protect them in case the horse archers decide to charge them, a unit of foot archers is generally assured of wiping out a unit of horse archers.

Owned the Huns a little while before that- I repeatedly sallied out of Sirmium while they attempted siege and massacred them time and again while taking minor losses- the large stone walls I finally managed to get up really helped.

This is one thing I've observed about BI; large or epic stone walls are much more important than they were in vanilla RTW. In vanilla RTW, a city's defense was fairly well assured once you had small stone walls, but in BI, you feel quite vulnerable until you get those big-ass stone walls up. The epic stone walls are the best though; I love watching those tower ballistae send attackers flying.

Eventually their man/horse power got so weak that they had to withdraw and were reduced to a pathetic scattering. My field army combined with the Sirmium garrison and exterminated the King and god knows how many brothers/sons in a single battle soon after. Some useless pissant third nephew twice removed cousin's roomate of the dead King is all that's left.

Cool. That's one thing I've noticed that a lot of strategy guides really neglect; many of them do not advocate sallying out against a superior force, but there are plenty of ways to bleed besieging armies even when they have greatly superior numbers.

[Vympel]

Does anyone know if the offices/ titles that some of your family has can be assigned after the guy who originally had it died? In Medieval, you could assign offices as they became available by buildings (Admiralty for example) but there doesnt' seem to be such a mechanism here ...

In other news, Rome broke it's alliance with me for no reason whatsoever- only trade rights remain. It's weird- it happened when I sent a diplomat so we could update our maps (I wanted to see how the WRE was doing). Call me a bit of a softy but I don't like the idea of eventually attacking the WRE- seems like such a waste of good legions for both sides. I'm not too happy about going up against the Sarmatian Auxilia of the WRE either- they look badass (they're all round better than Scholae Palatinae and cheaper too) Mostly theirs, of course. I think I'll clear everything else first- destroy the Berbers (who captured Carthage from the WRE in my game) and the Rebels and WRE-Rebels who have whittled away the WREs frontier provinces.

[Fire Fly]

Titles are treated as ancillaries in BI. In order to regain them, your general must have certain command stars or certain other trains and then not be the faction heir or leader and then be in a settlement with the right buildings.

[Darth Wong]

Oh and another thing- is there any point in building Comistatenses when you get the ability to build Plumbatarii? Their cost and upkeep is identical, as is all their ability stats except for having a stronger missile rating (since those huge weighted darts are better than pilae).

This is a very overdue reply, but having experimented some more, I can say that the only reason for preferring Comitatenses over Plumbatarii is that you can build them at a small city, so it's easier to retrain them when you are campaigning in barbarian territory.

When campaigning against the ERE, there is absolutely no reason to prefer Comitatenses. Not only do the Plumbatarii have matched stats in every area except for the missile rating where they're rated higher, but they also have the additional advantage of having more ammo. The Comitatenses can only lob two or three pilae before they run out, but the Plumbatarii seem to have huge ammo reserves; I'm not sure how many volleys a unit of Plumbatarii can throw, but it's much more than what Comitatenses can throw.

This comes in particularly handy in defensive battles, where the enemy often sends its men in staggered, widely separated waves, or might have reinforcements. Your Comitatenses will generally exhaust their pilae after the first wave, and certainly wouldn't have any pilae left over for a reinforcing army. Plumbatarii do not suffer from this problem; they are usually capable of throwing deadly dart volleys against multiple waves of attackers, including a reinforcing army.

Of course, archers have much more ammo than either Comitatenses or Plumbatarii, but arrows are virtually useless against well-armoured attackers. I've seen even first cohorts get routed by repeated dart volleys alone, whereas an archer unit can exhaust its ammo against a first cohort and cause only a half-dozen casualties.

[Vympel]

Yeah I discovered that just as I was playing a few days ago- I took the Sassanid capital walls with some Plumbatarii troops, and some Clibinarii (for some reason Sassanid Clibinarii have bows) were taking potshots at me from inside after my Plumbatarii took the walls via siege tower. A rain of darts followed and slaughtered a good number of them. It was really satisfying. The Comitatenses contributed as well, but they were soon out.

I don't know if I'll ever try a barbarian game- I have trouble identifying myself with a horde of unwashed, impetuous psychopaths. And of course the Sassanids trigger my anti-Persian gene.

[Vympel]

I also added my ERE Horse Archers to my main stack (which is now fully assembled as follows):

1x General (Faction Leader)
1x Scholae Palatinae
2x Hippo-toxotai
1x Equites Auxilia
1x Equites Clibinarii
1x Equites Catafractii
1x Comitatenses First Cohort
5x Plumbatarii
2x Heavy Onagers
1x Carriage Ballista (haven't tried it out yet)
2x Eastern Archers
2x Legio Lanciarii

The Scholae Palatinae are only there because it's my Faction Leader's army- I figure it makes sense to have some of the elite palace guard with him while on campaign- the only other place there are Scholae is in Constantinople and in the future with my faction heir's stack (which isn't ready yet).

I was impressed with the Horse Archers- it's true they're vulnerable to enemy archers, but if you're fighting an enemy with not many archers they're great for harassing and inflicting casualties from inconvenient angles where the shield and armor of heavy infantry isn't as strong.

I don't know why it is, but I'm very particular with my faction's family tree- I don't accept husbands into the family that are too old (over 40) even if they have good credentials, and I never let my faction heir be anyone else but a "pure" Flavius- ie. the sons of husbands I accepted into my family don't get to play. I guess I just find it more realistic to show favour to the "real" grandkids before the in-laws kids.

[Vympel]

Well, the WRE declared war on me by blockading one of my ports for a turn. Ah, a class R:TW lame attack. I would've preferred to be surprised by having a full stack WRE army knocking on my frontiers, just to spice things up, but meh.

Luckily, my only full stack in the Empire (I only have two armies) was in Illyricum, having just put a hostile Goth horde to flight- it had taken relatively minor casualties (my Eastern Archers didn't retreat behind my Legio Lanciarii in the face of their attacking Warlord, go figure ... lost 31 archers after that debacle) and so I popped them on a Brireme I had in the area and had landed in Rome's province in Italy the next turn. I was at Rome's gates the turn after that- it was defended by a grand total of two units- Peasants and Foederati Infantry. That's it. Needless to say, I took no casualties when I took the place.

I exterminated the populace to make life easy for me and now have basically a second Constantinople with which to raise a new full stack to defend Italy from (the I hope inevitable) WRE response as well as instantly retrain the few casualties in my current full stack.

Alexandria is currently building a third full stack to take Carthage (WRE recently took it back from the Berbers) though this will take more time since it doesn't have the requisite buildings to make a First Cohort just yet (my perfectionism again, each of my full stacks has to have a First Cohort).

[Darth Wong]

You got it easy; I play as the WRE and every time the ERE has declared war on me, it has always done so by marching a full-stack army out of Sirmium and laying siege to Salona. I always either beat them back or crush them when they try to take the city, but it sounds like you had a much easier time of it.

Mind you, I've now taken all of Europe and North Africa, and I've moved east to Egypt, taking Alexandria from the ERE (I met the victory conditions a long time ago, so I'm just playing to see the map turn red). I have to say I enjoy the ERE's response to losing Alexandria; they keep sending full-stack armies overland to attack. But in order to reach Alexandria, they must cross a bridge, and I've stationed a large army at the bridge. Every time they try, they march onto the bridge and promptly get hammered by a vicious cross-fire from archers and carriage ballistae (I love watching the men get blown right off the bridge in groups by the ballistae), and the depleted, bewildered units which make it to the end of the bridge get to experience a massive hail of darts from my waiting Plumbatarii. Of course, I make a point of turning off skirmish mode and manually targeting the carriage ballistae to preferentially hit tough units like Clibinarii, Cataphractoi, and Generals.

I've wiped out three full-stack armies in a row without even bothering to retrain my units. I'm actually tempted to leave that situation the way it is, because it must be costing the ERE a great deal of resources to keep sending full-stack armies to futile deaths in the South, and perhaps this will make it easier for my pincer campaign in Asia Minor.

[Fire Fly]

I've been slow on my game, just too much that is more of a priority in life right now. Anyways, I've finally begun my campaign to take Constantinople. I've blockaded several of their ports in the Aegean Sea and I landed an army from Southern Italy commanded by my greatest general, the 8 star General Nero, whose loyalty I've taken great strides to secure. In command of the 1st Italic Legion, he's taken Athens and then I turned his attention to take out the Huns at Tessalonica. My policy of containing the steppe hoards had been very successful: I would take out their small army units if they moved them out and I would relentlessly send assassins after their generals. While I was doing that, I had another army move out from Northern Italy to take Sirmium.

My next phase for dealing with the ERE is to take Constantinople and Kydonia in Crete. After retraining and regrouping, I plan on to march down Asia Minor and take whatever settlements. Side note: I've moved my capital to Ravenna so that my Gallic cities were more in the yellow than the blue.

In Gaul, my containment policy has been extremely successful at weakening the Franks and now with only one family member left, I'm about to move an army in to take them out at Batavodorum (I think that's the one). In Britannia, I've finally been able to send units to Britain to take care of the Celts and unit the British Isle under Roman authority. In Africa, I've built up an army to move on the Berbers and stop their pathetic attempts to take Carthage once in for all. After the Berbers are taken cared of, I plan to assemble several army stacks on the WRE/ERE boarder and then move on Alexandria, which is to coincide with my attack from Asia Minor.

[Vympel]

You got it easy; I play as the WRE and every time the ERE has declared war on me, it has always done so by marching a full-stack army out of Sirmium and laying siege to Salona. I always either beat them back or crush them when they try to take the city, but it sounds like you had a much easier time of it.

It almost makes me want to play on Very Hard difficulty!

Mind you, I've now taken all of Europe and North Africa, and I've moved east to Egypt, taking Alexandria from the ERE (I met the victory conditions a long time ago, so I'm just playing to see the map turn red). I have to say I enjoy the ERE's response to losing Alexandria; they keep sending full-stack armies overland to attack. But in order to reach Alexandria, they must cross a bridge, and I've stationed a large army at the bridge. Every time they try, they march onto the bridge and promptly get hammered by a vicious cross-fire from archers and carriage ballistae (I love watching the men get blown right off the bridge in groups by the ballistae), and the depleted, bewildered units which make it to the end of the bridge get to experience a massive hail of darts from my waiting Plumbatarii. Of course, I make a point of turning off skirmish mode and manually targeting the carriage ballistae to preferentially hit tough units like Clibinarii, Cataphractoi, and Generals.

I've wiped out three full-stack armies in a row without even bothering to retrain my units. I'm actually tempted to leave that situation the way it is, because it must be costing the ERE a great deal of resources to keep sending full-stack armies to futile deaths in the South, and perhaps this will make it easier for my pincer campaign in Asia Minor.

Holy shit. The Army doing that must have triple gold experience by now (or at least the Carriage Ballistae!). Have the Sassanids been destroyed by the ERE in your game? I'm surprised they can keep raising full stack armies so often considering they've lost Constantinople and Alexandria. I figure the engines of their military must be Antioch, Jerusalem and Sidon- they start off quite big.

Do you manage to keep the "Distance from Capital" unrest effect down when you're taking areas so far from Rome? Rome has a pretty central position (more so than Constantinople anyway) and I'm tempted to move the capital at some point, but I guess I'll see. I plan to make the map turn purple as well, so I guess I'll move into Gaul and Hispania after Italy and Carthage is mine.

[Darth Wong]

It almost makes me want to play on Very Hard difficulty!

Once you establish your cities and armies, "Very Hard" is really not that much different from "Medium". It only requires that you take more care with morale in your battles, generally employ more cautious tactics, enjoy larger numerical and qualitative superiorities if you try to auto-resolve battles, and build up city defenses more before moving your army to the next target. In short, it forces you to play slower, taking more time. In the end-game against the other half of the Roman Empire I find that this is beneficial in some ways, as you don't take their cities for a long time and they're often "complete", ie- they've built every structure which can be built. So you can retrain your high-end troops right away after taking a city, and you don't have to spend money building expensive high-end structures.

Holy shit. The Army doing that must have triple gold experience by now (or at least the Carriage Ballistae!). Have the Sassanids been destroyed by the ERE in your game? I'm surprised they can keep raising full stack armies so often considering they've lost Constantinople and Alexandria. I figure the engines of their military must be Antioch, Jerusalem and Sidon- they start off quite big.

Yes, they had taken out the Sassanids, and my campaign into Asia Minor didn't start until after I already had Alexandria, so I was subjected to the full force of their military buildup in Egypt, Asia Minor, and Persia. But that bridge and their stupidity in repeatedly trying to cross it despite the cross-fire have cost them dearly, and I've now started moving into Asia Minor without encountering much resistance.

Do you manage to keep the "Distance from Capital" unrest effect down when you're taking areas so far from Rome? Rome has a pretty central position (more so than Constantinople anyway) and I'm tempted to move the capital at some point, but I guess I'll see. I plan to make the map turn purple as well, so I guess I'll move into Gaul and Hispania after Italy and Carthage is mine.

I find that certain cities are constant thorns in my side for some reason, such as Corduba. But in the East, the cities are usually so well built-up that they already have all the happiness-enhancing structures I need to keep order, and of course, I exterminate every city I take. Besides, Alexandria has the pyramids, which increase loyalty in those cities

[Fire Fly]

Hmm...if I killed every nomad general in battle and wiped out all of their men but one single soldier survived, does that mean that they get to respawn? I had laid siege to the Huns in Thesselaconia and wanted to see if the faction would be destroyed but it turns out that the faction can't be destroyed that way, so I decided to go ahead and being the attack. I had a full stack legion consisting of a first cohort, 9 plumbatarii, 4 auxillia palatinae, two generals and four Sarmatian calvary auxillia. The initial attack began in a standard attack: two siege towers lumbering towards the gate walls. The AI had chosen my first cohort to lead one of the towers and so I had them attack the more heavily defended side. After taking the walls, I decided to have my first cohort run around the city perimeter and take the other various towers and gates.

My other tower was lead by a plumbatarii; after the walls had been taken, the Huns sent a few sporadic cavalry incursions towards the captured gate and my plumbatarii would just greet them with darts. The Hun AI then pulled all of its forces to the city center and so I slowly advanced my army down two corridors leading to the central plaza. My primary goal was first and foremost the complete elimination of the general's units, which I did, or at least thought so. I had three "Fallen Enemy General" messages pop up and I fought the battle to the very end.

When I was reviewing the post-battle report, I noticed that I had killed every soldier, but one had survived. I don't remember that one soldier running away, because I had my entire cavalry force attack from the rear city side through one of the captured gates and my two columns had trapped the entire Hun army in the plaza. There was no possible way, or at least I would think so, that any Hunnic units could escape. But after the battle, to my shock and horror, the Huns formed a hoard: four full stacks and each one with its own general. First initial thought: Mother. Fucker.

So I restarted the game from the pre-battle position and withdrew the siege and decided to just eliminate the Huns with countless assassination attempts. The one good thing to come out of that episode, however, was that I had four highly trained assassins, each with 10 'eyes'.

So, if anyone who is experienced at fighting barbarian horde, did the one unit that escaped, was that the possible reason that the Huns formed a horde, or was it an error or what?

[Darth Wong]

I find that the battle stats often say that 1 guy got away even if I know for a fact that I killed everyone. I have always assumed that this was due to a soldier being healed after the battle, since that does happen. Presumably 1 guy was badly wounded but somehow crawled away and healed himself. But when Generals die in battle, they never heal AFAIK.

But you can't destroy a nomadic faction that way; if you take their last city and kill every occupant (including every general), the nomadic population in the surrounding countryside immediately forms a horde and chooses a new leader. That's why you have to hunt down and destroy a barbarian horde army in the field (or destroy it while it's attempting to take one of your cities), down to the last general. There's simply no way of avoiding the creation of a barbarian horde when you take a nomadic faction's last city.

I find that barbarian hordes generally rely on fairly low-quality troops (even their "Chosen Warrior" units are really not that difficult to defeat despite playing on VH/VH) but they derive much of their lethality from horse archers, which are particularly infuriating because when you try to chase them down, they simply run (thus making them largely immune to infantry, and forcing you to spread your cavalry all over the map trying to catch them). The best way to deal with barbarian hordes is to rely heavily on archers of your own, so an army which is built to destroy barbarian hordes will typically have lots of foot archers, horse archers, a few heavy cavalry units, and enough spearmen to protect the foot archers (especially when the enemy heavy cavalry charges).

If you can, try to engage barbarian hordes at a bridge. The chokepoint of the bridge greatly limits the effect of their maneuverability and numerical advantage, and horse archers attempting to cross the river can be shot by your archers but cannot return fire (it's important to position your archers just far enough away from the opposite shore that the enemy has to move his horse archers into the water). Then you hit them with heavy cavalry when they try to come up the near shore, and drive them back into the water (where they will continue to be shot by your own archers; the last time I did this, the river was full of floating dead barbarian horse archers).

In the late stages of my game, I found that I had a surplus of pagan generals who were causing problems in my predominantly Christian interior cities, so I made a huge army of generals, with a few archer groups and mercenary horse archers in support. 12 generals! This army kicked ass; pretty much single-handedly wiped out the Lombard horde. There's not much that can withstand the full-on charge of 12 general's bodyguard units.

[Vympel]

I won the game several turns ago and am now trying to reunite the remnants of the Empire as it was at its height- so I'm not counting all those "tribus" provinces that Rome never controlled as an objective unless they're strategically important in the wider scheme of things (case in point, Tribus Lazyges was nestled in between Dacia to the East and ... whatever to the West, both held by me, so I promptly took it from the Rebels who had set up shop there).

The Slavs appeared a while ago before I finished the game and have just appeared in my LOS- they launched a few ineffectual sieges against some Rebel cities in the centre (with all of Italy out of WRE hands it seems there was a breakdown of WRE authority- there was a series of rebellions that turned a whole bunch of cities into Rebel WRE and simply Rebels) and then entered my territory- inconveniently, they approached my city at Aquincum, which I had taken relatively recently and was quite small and only had a population of around 1000 people- and only Stone Walls, as it wasn't a Large or Huge city when I took it over.

They hadn't actually declared war on me at that point, but it's obvious they were going for it as they had no other reason to be in my territory.

Luckily I had one of my four full stacks around the area, but as Mike pointed out it's not an ideal stack for dealing with hordes- I only have one "standard" stack which I've emulated everywhere with little variation, and it consists of only 2x Eastern Archers and 2x Hippo-toxotai. Luckily, however, there was one army in the horde that was unsupported at the rear of their column, so if I attacked they'd have no reinforcements to call on. It additionally had no leader.

Anyway, I attacked and my stack was quite successful in defeating them - a concentrated Heavy Onager bombardment blew their men away for a good deal of time. While this was happening, they advanced their accursed horse archers up, of which they had a total of four (it was an infantry heavy stack, mostly spearmen and chosen warriors)- who easily got massacred by my eastern archers and hippo-toxotai. When the horse archers were all gone, the enemy gave the order to retreat- I quickly halted Onager fire and sent forth all my cavalry to hunt the enemy chosen warriors down (never attack spearmen with cavalry during a retreat unless you're willing to take casualties, they're not routing, they're withdrawing, and they will turn around and inflict losses on you if you get too enthusiastic- only use overwhelming cavalry attacks with heavy cavalry for them). I wiped out a little over half of his force, including most of his quality infantry.

The horde then moved past Aquincum without replying to my army- they seemed to form a protective circle around the unit I had routed, which had moved furhter south than the horde had been. In the process, they left another unit unsupported. I'm thinking about a repeat performance, but this stack has a few more horse archers and I took several losses in my archer units from return fire the last turn. I'll have to decide.

Another piece of bad and then good luck- the WRE sent an army from Spain by ship to take back Arles from me- it had large stone walls but a relatively weak garrison to repel a siege- only four archer units, 1x limantei, 1x peasant, and 2x legio lanciarii. The fuckers built a siege tower as well as a sap point and in my idiocy I placed my 2x lanciarii on the walls. Fuck me dead, the ballistas on that thing wiped out 1.5 lanciarii units in seconds before it reached the walls, and who leaps out? Praeventores! I had no idea what to expect as I'd never encountered them before, but figured my 20ish legio lanciarii should be able to - nope. They got massacred. They then attacked my archers, took the walls, opened the gates, a whole bunch of cavalry swarmed in (killing the limantei from behind who had replused several cavalry attacks in the breach in the walls caused by the sap point, and Arles was theirs.

I had no army in the area so I diverted one of my stacks to go on a long march to take the place back. As it was going there, I realized I had a full stack that had just taken Sardinia that could get there much quicker by sea, so I sent the former stack to Ravenna for repair. Lo and behold, a big WRE full stack appears in that tiny little pass that leads into Italy from the north, just near Mediolanium. They even built a fort! I immediately attack with the stack that's right near by, and they have *four* generals! In this little shitty fort! And I have heavy onagers

Needless to say, with only a few barrages they lost four generals, they were so packed in to that pathetic, useless fort with the low walls (my archers had a field day) that every time a fire pot landed it wiped out at least 15 men. Included in the casualties was their faction leader, the first time I had ever killed one of them in battle. The onager bombardment continued until they ran out of ammo (archers were already out of ammo) and I sent in the army for a mop up. No tactics required, they were so battered and exhausted from the bombardment that they were ground under hoof and boot in seconds.

I've never killed four generals in open combat before- forts are such a death trap.

[Vympel]

Update- I decied to attack that lone unsupported horde stack, and it ran away- right across a bridge. I gave chase- and ended my turn sitting smack dab in the middle of the bridge.

The Slavs then attacked me from two sides the next turn- one from the unit I was chasing (i.e. behind me) and the other from the other side of the river.

I hastily set up a defence to keep the reinforcements on their side of the river- archers on either side, legionaries stacked at the bridge, and carriage ballistae positioned to fire into them as they tried to cross. I then put cavalry and the legionaries I had left to defend my onagers, as well as some legio lanciarii in ambush position in a copse of trees to my rear.

Despite some distraction (watching two fronts in such a horrible position really takes a toll) which cost me 2 out of 3 of my carriage ballistae to horse archer fire, I managed to rout both attacking forces without losing any of my own units completely, though several were depleted (most noteworthy being one of my equites auxilia, who routed off the field after being caught by spearmen when I wasn't watching). The depletion was not bad enough that any units were absorbed into any others luckily.

Bonus, I killed the Slav King.

I was feeling quite proud of myself, and then they sent another stack at me during the same turn- except this time, there was no enemy at my rear to divide my attention. I got my defensive setup perfect- plumbatarii in front of the bridge, Legio I Claudia Pia Fidelis behind to offer morale and hard hitting support should anything occur, legio lanciarii immediately behind them to deal with any warlord attacks, and plumbatarii to either side of the bridge set to fire at will to throw darts at the huge mass of spearmen backed up along the bridge.

My carriage ballistae was in place as well, but only moved up after my eastern archers slaughtered the horse archers. Once this happened, it rolled up and started blasting away- it couldn't miss. I only wish I had the original fully healed unit. Onagers of course fired away as well until it was no longer safe.

They lost their faction heir in that ill fated attack, and then the column of infantry went screaming for the hills. Unfortunately for them, I had enough cavalry to ride them down and wipe them out completely.

Phew. Glad that's over.

Nope! They came at me again! It was an instant replay of the last time. There were no more attacks after that. I gutted three full barbarian stacks.

All told, I lost only about 100 men (I play on normal unit scale since my PC isn't good enough) out of my original full stack of (IIRC) 649. My carriage ballista started off that battle with one red chevron, by the end of the turn it is on a gold chevron.

When the next turn started, they had two (depleted) stacks facing me down at the bridge, but there was an over-representation of horse archers- I couldn't rely on my depleted archer units to kill them all, and the Legio in general just needed a break, so it's returning to the nearest fully upgraded city (likely Ravenna) for a refit. Hopefully what's left of the horde doesn't catch me on the way, I don't feel like fighting them on the open field- I'd win, but it'd be too costly and I don't want to lose any of these mean motherfuckers I've created.

That was my first bridge battle in BI- it's awesome how the bodies that go flying into the water float downstream ... very cool.

[Fire Fly]

I think I'll finally start an ERE campaign; I've played enough of the WRE to be bored now and have defeated the best the game as to offer. My current WRE stretches from Eburacum to the Near East, from Tingi to Campus Burgundii. I decided not to expand beyond the river Vistula and the Dnister River. Anything that was crap. I had successfully pushed the Lombardi and the Burgundi beyond those rivers, which were to become my new Rhine and Danube. I didn't crush the Celts because I enjoyed them sending full stack armies at my Britannia leion; I would, on occassion, send my Duke out with the legion and crush their pathetic attempt at power.

In regards to the ERE, I didn't outright crush them, I pitied them for they are Romans. I left them to a small terrirotry beyond the Near East region. I still maintain good diplomatic relations with the Sassinids. Other than that, the Empire has been restored to its former glory and the glunttony and the corruption of the bureaucrats flushed out. I've successfully bred a new generation of great Romans and have finally decided to convert the Empire to Christianity, save a few provinces where they produce soldiers. Glory won't be fleeting, after all.

So, on to my ERE campaign. Any quick tips?

[Darth Wong]

Vympel's story sounds familiar; it's fun to face Barbarian hordes in the field, as long as you have the right conditions for it. And really, it's not hard to make armies which are well-suited to barbarian hordes because archers are fairly cheap, both to recruit and to maintain. Although there's still something about wiping out three or four barbarian horde armies out at once in a titanic city defense battle.

PS. When you conquer the other half of the Roman Empire, you get a second victory congratulations message. And when you conquer the entire map andw wipe out every other faction, you get a third one. Yes, I know, I went too far.

[Duckie]

EDIT- Whoa, there are two pages. Nevermind, then.

To make this productive:

Is BI any more graphically intensive than RTW Vanilla? I can have RTW run at the second-highest detail ratings fine even in huge battles, but at the high levels everything slows down even in tiny skirmishes. Can my old machine handle the expansion?

[Darth Wong]

EDIT- Whoa, there are two pages. Nevermind, then.

To make this productive:

Is BI any more graphically intensive than RTW Vanilla? I can have RTW run at the second-highest detail ratings fine even in huge battles, but at the high levels everything slows down even in tiny skirmishes. Can my old machine handle the expansion?

Can your old machine handle battles with five or six thousand men involved?

[Duckie]

Can your old machine handle battles with five or six thousand men involved?

I think so- full slotted armies on each side at "Large" run without lag. I also tested it with ~2000 cretan archers all firing flaming arrows at once as I'd had a bit of a spot with fire before I upgraded my drivers, which didn't even make a blip.

It's not exactly old so much as a few years old and not gaming-focused, come to think, although the law where computer power doubles every few years comes into play there.

[Vympel]

Vympel's story sounds familiar; it's fun to face Barbarian hordes in the field, as long as you have the right conditions for it. And really, it's not hard to make armies which are well-suited to barbarian hordes because archers are fairly cheap, both to recruit and to maintain. Although there's still something about wiping out three or four barbarian horde armies out at once in a titanic city defense battle.

PS. When you conquer the other half of the Roman Empire, you get a second victory congratulations message. And when you conquer the entire map andw wipe out every other faction, you get a third one. Yes, I know, I went too far.

Holy crap. That's it, I'm taking everything.

[Vympel]

So, on to my ERE campaign. Any quick tips?

Hrm- in my game, the hordes were naturally and repeatedly drawn to the frontier city of Sirmium- beef it up as a matter of priority. They'll break against it like water on rock.

Money's not nearly as tight so you won't have to be as stingy with your units and will be able to put out quality stacks relatively quicker- however unlike the WRE you don't have any Urban Barracks or Circus Maximus' in your Empire (or Epic Stone Walls, for that matter) so you'll have to wait to get the best of the best.

What I did in my game was play defence in the West against the hordes while I conquered the Sassanids, who are too much of a distraction to leave alone. Once you conquer the Sassanids you'll be able to hop on a boat and cross the Black Sea back to Constantinople with a bunch of veteran units to go on the offensive in the West.

[Vympel]

And the award for the oldest general/governor ever goes to Gainus the Kind, Pagan governor of the city of Sion, who in 428 AD is still alive and kicking at the ripe old age of 87. Meaning that he's the only man still alive in the Flavian family that was actually alive back when the game started (IIRC).

My spy just had a look at the English channel while he was spying on Aquitania's city- there were 38 pirate ships there, arranged in two full stacks of 19 ships each, all of them with either 3 red chevrons or 1 silver chevron. I've never seen such a thing. I'm thinking about building a fleet of forty (a mix of tris and quins) when I've got money to burn to go out and sink them- just because I can.

I wonder if the Total War games will ever incorporate a naval component.