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After having a grea time winning with the Saxons I decided to give the Western Roman Empire a go (On hard/hard). They were not lying when they said it would not be easy. I am not quite sure where to start really. Its a bloody mess. I thought of trying to keep unrest down so I do not get riots and I also thought about destroying all military buildings where I will not see a line of action. This somewhat works but I still have to religons causing unrest to each other in cities and I am still losing money and I will soon be in debt. So:

1. Economically what is the best way of stablizing the unrest?

2. How do I avoid crashing into debt?

3. What do I do about the religous situation? Do I keep them both or get rid of one?

4. What should I be defending/attacking (I know the Huns will be a problem).

I didn't play WRE but rather ERE but I can tell this: You are going to have to pick and choose cities to hold and let go. Holding onto Italia will be a priority, but you might have to give up Gaul.

Another thing is disbanding any units that are not useful and consolidate the rest. You tend to start off with too many units at the start.

Next, force Christianity on every damn city, and any General or family member not converted, send him out to the field to be a general or to die. Which ever is easier. Monitor every family member for signs of disloyalty, and rotate them around.

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:I didn't play WRE but rather ERE but I can tell this:

You, playing the ERE? I'm shocked!

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:You are going to have to pick and choose cities to hold and let go. Holding onto Italia will be a priority, but you might have to give up Gaul. Another thing is disbanding any units that are not useful and consolidate the rest. You tend to start off with too many units at the start.

Next, force Christianity on every damn city, and any General or family member not converted, send him out to the field to be a general or to die. Which ever is easier. Monitor every family member for signs of disloyalty, and rotate them around.

Good ideas all, and one thing I can say on disloyal generals (if they get too victorious, they'll get disloyal; sucks huh?) is an idea I saw floated on here is to take them out of your awesomely winning full-stack army, because if they turn, so too will that army. instead, you can group them with other disloyal family members and send them around as a heavy cavalry force. That way if they turn all they'll take with them is a bunch of disloyal other family members. And you'll at least get some use out of them, even if it is suicide missions to break up some full stack army threatening an important city, buying time for reinforcements to arrive.

Since I've not actually done that myself, I don't know if the game gives them an army when that happens or if it's just them.

RogueIce wrote:You, playing the ERE? I'm shocked!

Yeah I'm a sucker for the Byzantines. But playing the ERE was hell at VH/VH fighting the damn Sassanids who came in waves of full stacks. After I was done playing that campaign, I was too exhausted to play any more factions.

But that aside, I might add that you might want to pay serious attention to North Italy. Set up lots of forts to control the mountain passes. When the fucking barbarians come, they come with a hammer. Diverting them off might be better than facing them on the field. I fielded a full fledged ERE force with considerable cavalry component (Kataphrateoi and Kilibarni) against a slightly smaller Hun army and barely got out with half my troops.

I would recommend holding onto Italy, and N. Africa and spend 2 decades or so cleaning house and setting the stage for taking Constantinople and parts of Gaul. Don't get too overambitious. Unless the economy has advanced to high tier level on average, it's hard to support too many full stack armies.

Actually, playing the WRE in BI is pretty easy. Try playing them in IBFD.

Here's what you do.

Economy - the biggest pusher. In the first round, invest all money in economy buildings. Also, concentrate your troop buildings in some centers. Like Rome, Carthage and Ravenna. Then destroy all other troop buildings in cities. You willl get tons of cash that way.

Either focus on Sol Invictus or Christianity. Do not do things by halves - either you are fully pagan or not.

Military:
- Regardless of what the manual says, your backbone is the infantry, especially the comitatenensis units. Support them with archers (no mailed archers needed) and some heavy cavalry.
- Disband all foederati units if you can replace them with cheaper garrison troops. You will save a lot of money that way.
- In 1-1 combat, your forces will defeat any barbarian horde. Set your infantry in the first line, put them on guard and have archers do the real work. Usually the enemy will try to rush you to no avail.
- The berbers are laughable. Limitanei, archers, light cavalry and auxillia troops (the standard garrison) will crush them in a few terms. You might just as well ignore them in the beginning.

First moves: Pull all the limitanei from the rhine frontiers and form a massive army. Then immediately neutralize the alemanni. You can easily take their first city within a few turn, which eliminates your biggest problem on that frontier. Exterminate it to get loads of cash.

Sooner or later the ERE will declare war on you. Do not fret - the computer sucks at forming armies. Your troops can easily crush them.

Whenever you take a city, exterminate it to get money (unless you want to get the exotic or barbarian slave ancillary). Use that money to build economy buildings. Anyway, in the beginning always exterminate. Do not be alarmed if you have a huge deficit in the first few turns. This will go down soon as you loose troops and take cities.

If a city is close to revolting, pull your troops out, dismantle all military buildings and then let it revolt. Immediately lay siege and exterminate.

Move your capital to Rome if it is not there already.

Within a few turns (about 12-20) you will have a budget surplus and then you can go back to exterminating everyone else.

Thanas wrote:- In 1-1 combat, your forces will defeat any barbarian horde. Set your infantry in the first line, put them on guard and have archers do the real work. Usually the enemy will try to rush you to no avail.

Maybe it's an issue of the difficulty level (VH/VH), but I had a hard time getting troops to withstand a frontal horde cavalry charge. Occasionally the AI has some weird idea of charging from the start at the center.

Or maybe it's the ERE. I'm not sure.

but you might have to give up Gaul.

Should I hold onto Spain then?

Either focus on Sol Invictus or Christianity. Do not do things by halves - either you are fully pagan or not.

I was thinking Pagan to be honest due to troop bonuses.

First moves: Pull all the limitanei from the rhine frontiers and form a massive army. Then immediately neutralize the alemanni. You can easily take their first city within a few turn, which eliminates your biggest problem on that frontier. Exterminate it to get loads of cash.

Should I leave the cities I pulled the said troops rebel or is it far worth keeping them?

Oh and Salona can be defended early on it seems if you take troop parts out of Rome where they are not needed. It provides a handy defence.

Bluewolf wrote:

but you might have to give up Gaul.

Should I hold onto Spain then?

Depends on whether they openly revolt. But given the distance, you might be better off not holding Spain.

Carthage Nova (sp?) is the only real city that really has any value but yes. Carthage can easily deal with any Berbers. I doubt keeping Lepus Magna, given what it is is really worth it until I am stable enough to attack North Africa again. I would also think of taxing Britian a bit given how stable it it is in the game. Celts wont attack for a little while it seems. Do revolted armies just stay nearby or do they go for other cities?

Bluewolf wrote:Carthage Nova (sp?) is the only real city that really has any value but yes. Carthage can easily deal with any Berbers. I doubt keeping Lepus Magna, given what it is is really worth it until I am stable enough to attack North Africa again. I would also think of taxing Britian a bit given how stable it it is in the game. Celts wont attack for a little while it seems. Do revolted armies just stay nearby or do they go for other cities?

Well, controlling Lepus Magna will give you a bit more defensive depth...

A bit too late for me now but thanks, I can take it back later if I lose it now. I decided to lay off most of Spain and Gaul and get money where I can. I think I have a chance of taking back many cities in those regions anyway due to the revolts only having peasents. That gives me a lot of chance to execute.

Personally, I pull back all my armies to defend Italy in depth, and start to rebuild the roman empire from scratch. First opponent is the ERE after my budget is stable..gaining greece really helps alot.

Rather off-topic, but how is BI compared to regular R:TW? Is it a worthwhile investment?

Rather off-topic, but how is BI compared to regular R:TW? Is it a worthwhile investment?

If you want more Barbarian warfare then it is really for you. The Barb factions are fleshed out far more then Vanilla Total War. It is a lot more fun to play as theme. Hordes are also in the mix making sitiuations very interesting with Hordes having their own set of rules in some respects. Religon in its basic form appears as well as many new units. It also seems slighty harder as well. It should be cheap now and I think its worth picking up. Its far better then the Alexander add on.

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:

Thanas wrote:- In 1-1 combat, your forces will defeat any barbarian horde. Set your infantry in the first line, put them on guard and have archers do the real work. Usually the enemy will try to rush you to no avail.

Maybe it's an issue of the difficulty level (VH/VH), but I had a hard time getting troops to withstand a frontal horde cavalry charge. Occasionally the AI has some weird idea of charging from the start at the center.

Or maybe it's the ERE. I'm not sure.

I only play on VH/VH. Have you made sure that your front line is buit up only by comitatus units and have you had them set up at least 5-8 ranks deep, on guard mode with fire at will?

Bluewolf wrote:

but you might have to give up Gaul.

Should I hold onto Spain then?

A competent roman commander never looses Gaul. Maybe some rhine cities, but central gaul is actually not that threatened.

was thinking Pagan to be honest due to troop bonuses.

Make sure you quickly kill the christian members of the family and make your heir a pagan one ASAP. christian members are best depost off in a head assault into a spearmen line.

First moves: Pull all the limitanei from the rhine frontiers and form a massive army. Then immediately neutralize the alemanni. You can easily take their first city within a few turn, which eliminates your biggest problem on that frontier. Exterminate it to get loads of cash.

Should I leave the cities I pulled the said troops rebel or is it far worth keeping them?

No, recruit some mercs or auxilla to garrison them. They are fairly stable. Anyway, you only need a full stack army of 20 troops to beat the alamanni.

Oh and Salona can be defended early on it seems if you take troop parts out of Rome where they are not needed. It provides a handy defence.

Agreed, but Sirmium is a far better line of defense, due to the ERE usually attacking there.

When the ERE attacks, conduct a blitz into Athens via larissa and Corinth. If possible, ally with the Huns.

If you want more Barbarian warfare then it is really for you. The Barb factions are fleshed out far more then Vanilla Total War. It is a lot more fun to play as theme. Hordes are also in the mix making sitiuations very interesting with Hordes having their own set of rules in some respects. Religon in its basic form appears as well as many new units. It also seems slighty harder as well. It should be cheap now and I think its worth picking up. Its far better then the Alexander add on.

The history however absolutely got trampled. For a real challenge and even better graphics and gameplay see This mod.

Thanas wrote:I only play on VH/VH. Have you made sure that your front line is buit up only by comitatus units and have you had them set up at least 5-8 ranks deep, on guard mode with fire at will?

Typically not that deep. Perhaps that's why.

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:

Thanas wrote:I only play on VH/VH. Have you made sure that your front line is buit up only by comitatus units and have you had them set up at least 5-8 ranks deep, on guard mode with fire at will?

Typically not that deep. Perhaps that's why.

Yes, that's it. You need at least 5 ranks deep to safely withstand a combined cavalry/infantry charge. Use guard mode at first - you will loose the first one or two ranks, but they will always be healed after the battle as casualties, because the game doesn't consider those losses to be permanent unless the unit breaks in order to simulate the dispersal effect. Then, when the enemy advance has slowed down, remove guard mode and throw your Klibanophoroi into the fray while flanking the barbarians with heavy/light cavalry. Do not try to flank with the Klibanophoroi - they are too slow for that. Think of them as tanks - charge them right down the middle.

Fun times ensue as the enemy soldiers are hacked down by the Klibanophoroi and the legionnaires and hemmed in by the cavalry. Within minutes they will break and then you can chase them down.

Sometimes the enemy keeps the general or some infantry in reserve. If it is just the general, charge him with the flanking cavalry. If it is infantry, try to lure them out and charge them in a pincer movement with the flanking cavalry. If that doesn't work, trust your battleline to hold. The east has those nasty mailed guard archers that are excelllent in meelee. Send them into the fray as well. They are faster than legionnaires and will do excellent work cutting down the fleeing barbarians.

The most important hurdles when playing as the WRE are:

1) Get over the early stage of fiscal starvation and civic unrest.

2) Convert religion.

3) Survive the barbarian hordes.

For #1, you need to build economic buildings as stated earlier, and it can paradoxically help to increase some of your garrisons. Weak garrisons have little upkeep but they also allow high civil unrest, which reduces your ability to levy taxes without inciting revolt. Use low-cost units such as peasants to fill out your garrisons until your economy improves. Also, you have to seriously consider disbanding a lot of higher-cost units such as Comitatenses in the short term, until your economy is healthy enough to support them later. Large numbers of low-cost units are better than small numbers of high-cost units, at least in the early stages. Other factions are less likely to attack you when you have a large garrison, even if it is low-quality units.

For #2, you probably want to go Christian because they have a wider variety of buildings that improve public order. However, there is no reason to jump the gun and try to convert every city right away. Look at the geography; is this settlement surrounded by pagan territories? If so, you'll have a hell of a time converting it, and getting it to stay converted. Forcing the wrong religion on a population can cause rioting immediately. Sometimes, a city with high civil unrest can be made happy by simply demolishing an offensive religious building and allowing the population to have their way. You can convert religion later in the game, by building an army out of a large number of Christian generals. As it moves around, it will convert populations until the city is happier being Christian than Pagan, and you can convert it without inciting unrest.

For #3, use archers. Lots and lots of archers; it's the best way to counter their large numbers of horse archers. Also, learn some of the city defense tricks that allow you to kill huge numbers of barbarians during their city assaults. For example, station archers on the walls near their path of advance into the city, but not too close to the point where their siege towers attack. That way, their men will simply march down to ground level and not bother your archers, thus leaving them free to shoot at the backs of their men as they attempt to march toward the city square. You can even run over and retake your gatehouse after they leave it, and they won't come back to take it again (but beware: if they have no way to escape the city, they cannot rout).

In general, once you get plumbatarii, you're all set and you can win hugely one-sided battles by simply lining them up in a good defensive position and letting fly with the iron darts. But it takes a while to get there.

Thanas wrote:Yes, that's it. You need at least 5 ranks deep to safely withstand a combined cavalry/infantry charge. Use guard mode at first - you will loose the first one or two ranks, but they will always be healed after the battle as casualties, because the game doesn't consider those losses to be permanent unless the unit breaks in order to simulate the dispersal effect. Then, when the enemy advance has slowed down, remove guard mode and throw your Klibanophoroi into the fray while flanking the barbarians with heavy/light cavalry. Do not try to flank with the Klibanophoroi - they are too slow for that. Think of them as tanks - charge them right down the middle.

The WRE doesn't have those units. The WRE has no cataphracts or clibinarii, but they do have sarmatian heavy cavalry, which are much faster. They also do not have the legio spearmen, but they had foederati spearmen instead, which are at least as good if not better. And they also get heavy palatinae spearmen, which are better than any spearmen the ERE fields. Unfortunately, the WRE does not get the good archers that the ERE gets, and must make do with crappy basic archers.

Darth Wong wrote:

Thanas wrote:Yes, that's it. You need at least 5 ranks deep to safely withstand a combined cavalry/infantry charge. Use guard mode at first - you will loose the first one or two ranks, but they will always be healed after the battle as casualties, because the game doesn't consider those losses to be permanent unless the unit breaks in order to simulate the dispersal effect. Then, when the enemy advance has slowed down, remove guard mode and throw your Klibanophoroi into the fray while flanking the barbarians with heavy/light cavalry. Do not try to flank with the Klibanophoroi - they are too slow for that. Think of them as tanks - charge them right down the middle.

The WRE doesn't have those units. The WRE has no cataphracts or clibinarii, but they do have sarmatian heavy cavalry, which are much faster. They also do not have the legio spearmen, but they had foederati spearmen instead, which are at least as good if not better. And they also get heavy palatinae spearmen, which are better than any spearmen the ERE fields. Unfortunately, the WRE does not get the good archers that the ERE gets, and must make do with crappy basic archers.

I believe Thanas is speaking in terms of Invasio Barbarorum, which is a mod that many players of Barbarian Invasion use; it improves realism, balances some things, expands the map, etc, etc.

My strategy with the Western Empire is a lot more cautious than most people have posted here; at least when playing in Vanilla. I generally play H/VH or VH/VH, if only because some of the morale cheats the AI gets on Very Hard in tactical battles can be somewhat sickening. As people have stated before, the biggest hurdle is surviving the first twenty or so turns. Be prepared to lose ground; you're going to be dealing with around three fronts, and at the beginning of the game you don't have the money or standing forces to put up a solid defense on all of them. Spain is usually a pain in the ass, and if I get bad luck with unrest and religion, I will sack every building in a given city, withdraw the garrison, set the taxes up to Very High and let it revolt. That money and freed up manpower is then used to shore up my economic stability in Northern Italy, and I'll generally redirect the troops to Southern Gaul.

The Western Empire's breadbasket is primarily Gaul, with Italy being in second place. You may feel obligated to try and pump money into all of your cities in Italy to try and get them out of starting deficit, but I've had better luck building up Gaul and letting the surplus there balance out the losses in Italy until a point where I can get Italy stable; this usually requires a ton of early offensive action, a good blitz can knock out the Alemanni, and if you feel daring enough, try and mobilize your armies in Northern Gaul and knock out the Franks. They can be a real pain in the ass if they get a chance to develop, since they love to spam heavy cavalry. While not a problem for a good, heavy-infantry based Roman Army, their Paladin spam can be nasty to deal with using an army of mostly archers and foederati.

Again, some more parroting, but the effectiveness of archers cannot be emphasized enough, especially if you're holding a strong position. Barbarian infantry is generally decently armored, but their infantry isn't really the main thing you're going to have problems with - it's the enemy's horse archers. Having a few units of archers in your field armies will really hamstring their horse archers. Also, onagers. I generally don't use ballistas since I find them rather anemic in comparison to what some onagers set to flaming ammo can do, but carroballistas can do some pretty hefty damage. I've had some decent luck pairing a few units of carroballistas with all-cavalry armies, forcing night attacks on individual stacks of a Barbarian Horde and plowing over them with concentrated ballista fire and heavy cavalry spam. Generally speaking, you won't have the numbers of heavy cavalry to pull this off initially, but once you start getting stable you're going to get overrun with adoptive family members and the like, and there's only so many cities you can use them to govern, since they tend to stack up shitty traits. Instead of having these excess generals sit around, I group them into big stacks as I mentioned earlier, and let them get themselves killed to their heart's content. It helps with skimping out on unkeep, anyway.

EDIT: Just throwing this in here, but as Mr Wong said, once you get Plumbatarii, start thinking about replacing all of your Comitatenses units that do not have a good amount of experience with them.

Darth Wong wrote:The WRE doesn't have those units. The WRE has no cataphracts or clibinarii, but they do have sarmatian heavy cavalry, which are much faster. They also do not have the legio spearmen, but they had foederati spearmen instead, which are at least as good if not better. And they also get heavy palatinae spearmen, which are better than any spearmen the ERE fields. Unfortunately, the WRE does not get the good archers that the ERE gets, and must make do with crappy basic archers.

I was replying to FIngolfin, who said that his ERE army is unable to stand up to a cavalry charge.

Darth Wong wrote:Also, you have to seriously consider disbanding a lot of higher-cost units such as Comitatenses in the short term, until your economy is healthy enough to support them later. Large numbers of low-cost units are better than small numbers of high-cost units, at least in the early stages. Other factions are less likely to attack you when you have a large garrison, even if it is low-quality units.

I cannot caution enough against disbanding comitatenses. The time it takes to retrain them is way too long. One is far better off disbanding two of the very costly foederati cavalry than disbanding one unit of comitatenses. In general, I have found the foederati to be mostly useless, a problem that is only repudiated in IBFD.

Maxentius wrote:I believe Thanas is speaking in terms of Invasio Barbarorum, which is a mod that many players of Barbarian Invasion use; it improves realism, balances some things, expands the map, etc, etc.

I use that mod, but no, I was talking about Vanilla BI.

Also, onagers. I generally don't use ballistas since I find them rather anemic in comparison to what some onagers set to flaming ammo can do, but carroballistas can do some pretty hefty damage. I've had some decent luck pairing a few units of carroballistas with all-cavalry armies, forcing night attacks on individual stacks of a Barbarian Horde and plowing over them with concentrated ballista fire and heavy cavalry spam.

I never use artillery due to the huge movement penalties it inflicts and because it is very ahistorical.

Thanas wrote: I never use artillery due to the huge movement penalties it inflicts and because it is very ahistorical.

The only time I'll use onagers with a field army is if I know I'm going to be going up against several Horde stacks, in which case I find the ability to put some onagers in the middle of my army and just pound on the enemy from range quite helpful, though yes, it is pretty ahistorical. A little less so in Vanilla RTW, but definitely BI.

I'm not sure if carroballistas incur the same movement penalty, though. It's literally been years since I played an unmodded BI.

Thanas wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:Also, you have to seriously consider disbanding a lot of higher-cost units such as Comitatenses in the short term, until your economy is healthy enough to support them later. Large numbers of low-cost units are better than small numbers of high-cost units, at least in the early stages. Other factions are less likely to attack you when you have a large garrison, even if it is low-quality units.

I cannot caution enough against disbanding comitatenses. The time it takes to retrain them is way too long. One is far better off disbanding two of the very costly foederati cavalry than disbanding one unit of comitatenses. In general, I have found the foederati to be mostly useless, a problem that is only repudiated in IBFD.

Yes, I would also disband cavalry if I thought it necessary to balance the budget and I thought the settlements could be defensed adequately without them. And of course, the decision to disband a comitatenses unit would have to taken on a case by case basis, depending on the threat level nearby. But look, you're obviously not going offensive in the near term: you're just trying to survive the initial building period. It takes time to retake lost settlements too, and I've been able to cut down on the number of lost settlements by being very economical with my army units. Of course, it's a delicate balancing act.

I never use artillery due to the huge movement penalties it inflicts and because it is very ahistorical.

The carriage ballistae inflict no movement penalty, because they're treated like cavalry. The biggest problem is that you only get them when you're pretty far into the game: well past the "how am I going to hold out" phase.

Darth Wong wrote:Yes, I would also disband cavalry if I thought it necessary to balance the budget and I thought the settlements could be defensed adequately without them. And of course, the decision to disband a comitatenses unit would have to taken on a case by case basis, depending on the threat level nearby. But look, you're obviously not going offensive in the near term: you're just trying to survive the initial building period. It takes time to retake lost settlements too, and I've been able to cut down on the number of lost settlements by being very economical with my army units. Of course, it's a delicate balancing act.

Agreed. I mostly use a combination of four archers, four medium units (foederati, limitanei) and four units of peaseants/town watch to defend a city. There is no way the AI can get through a well-played city defense.

The carriage ballistae inflict no movement penalty, because they're treated like cavalry. The biggest problem is that you only get them when you're pretty far into the game: well past the "how am I going to hold out" phase.

That explains it - I never used them because I have seen RL-examples of "roman MGs" and they are nowhere as effective as the carroballistas so I just said "I can live with the cheesy look, I can live with the stupid uniforms. But this is where I draw the line" and decided not to use them.