RTW: Barbarian Invasion

[Admiral Valdemar]

I just defeated a Gaul army of 600 men with only my 300 men in the Patavium region when they failed to let me have it with no loss of blood. They brought in damn reinforcements too, another 200 infantry and 100 heavy cavalry, but only under a captain of single star command rating. They got crushed, but it's the hardest I've had to think about a tactical battle yet. Then they cornered my army just before I took the settlement and spanked it and my best general.

I control most of the north of the Italian peninsula as the Julii family anyway, and am biding my time until I get a proper force and some artillery at that. Most of my settlements are over the 6,000 mark for populace, so I'm uprating the defences.

[Darth Wong]

I just defeated a Gaul army of 600 men with only my 300 men in the Patavium region when they failed to let me have it with no loss of blood. They brought in damn reinforcements too, another 200 infantry and 100 heavy cavalry, but only under a captain of single star command rating. They got crushed, but it's the hardest I've had to think about a tactical battle yet. Then they cornered my army just before I took the settlement and spanked it and my best general.

That's the strategy aspect of the game; even the greatest tactician can't overcome endless wave after wave of enemies, and when you see two or three full-stack armies heading your way, it's best to make a strategic withdrawal. This is also where it helps to put down lots of watchtowers as you go, although you can't do that in enemy territory. No one likes to be blind-sided. It takes extraordinary circumstances such as an excellent defensive position (eg- up on a steep hillside or defending a stone-walled city) to overcome excessive odds, particularly at "Very Hard" difficulty levels.

I control most of the north of the Italian peninsula as the Julii family anyway, and am biding my time until I get a proper force and some artillery at that. Most of my settlements are over the 6,000 mark for populace, so I'm uprating the defences.

Stone walls and archers. Any city defended by stone walls and archers will allow you to crush very large attacking armies.

[Alferd Packer]

Stone walls and archers. Any city defended by stone walls and archers will allow you to crush very large attacking armies.

Very true. If your archers can destroy their rams before they get to the gates, you force them to fight you on the walls to take the gatehouse, and you make their chariots/cavalry a nonfactor for that part of the fight. As long as they don't have onagers/ballistae, and as long as you can hold them at the towers/ladders, you're sound as a pound. All the while your archers will be raining flaming death upon any towers/soldiers unfortunate enough to be within range.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I managed to take the settlement I was eyeing before and also avert several of my own cities becoming siege fodder by fighting them in the streets. Annoyingly, two of my better generals fled in two separate battles just as I was breaking in the enemy and finishing my plan. I can understand a guy losing his balls when confronted with a massive army and impossible odds, but I was bloody winning and then this bastard runs off with my cavalry. Hard to fight off wardogs with just some triarii and velites. Almost the same thing happened when I lost my capital as three mobile rams came and smashed my wooden walls down, but I contained it and went out to mop up the enemy, before they charged at me again, and some reinforcements I managed to miss rounded the corner of my town and cut me off from going back inside.

So that's my capital gone and another town in the marching path of a new Gaul/Greek alliance. And will the Senate help? Will they hell as like. I often wonder what they must be doing for a greater, unified Rome when the main families are stuck on the defensive all the time.

[Darth Wong]

Stone walls and archers. Any city defended by stone walls and archers will allow you to crush very large attacking armies.

Very true. If your archers can destroy their rams before they get to the gates, you force them to fight you on the walls to take the gatehouse, and you make their chariots/cavalry a nonfactor for that part of the fight. As long as they don't have onagers/ballistae, and as long as you can hold them at the towers/ladders, you're sound as a pound. All the while your archers will be raining flaming death upon any towers/soldiers unfortunate enough to be within range.

Actually, when I defeated that huge 2400-man Hun army with my smallish 800-man garrison (with no infantry heavier than Limitanei, mind you), he took the walls and smashed the gates. It's actually good when he smashes the gates, because then he won't bother trying to take the gatehouse and unless there are defenders nearby, his men on the walls will just take the shortest route to get to ground level. It means that the "boiling oil" defense at the gatehouse will still work, and that will kill a lot of his best troops (the boiling oil does not discriminate between peasants and the most strongly armoured cataphract).

I like to keep a couple of disposable peasant units on the walls, but far away from where his towers and ladders will go. Once the enemy takes the towers and starts moving down to ground level, I simply rush my peasants along the walls to retake the towers so they will start shooting at his men again (defensive tower fire accounts for heavy enemy casualties during street fighting, particularly for units which he tries to send around through roundabout routes for the purpose of flanking your defenders at the city square). But I only retake the gatehouse if the gates were smashed by a battering ram, otherwise retaking the gatehouse locks the enemy inside my city and he won't route because he has nowhere to go.

You need to use tactics like this when you don't have enough heavy infantry to defend your walls (or when you have no heavy infantry at all, as is often the case when playing BI as the cash-strapped Western Empire; heavy infantry is expensive to recruit and expensive to maintain).

[Alferd Packer]

Interesting. Do you have estimates of what you were facing and what you had, both in terms of units and siege equipment? I don't have BI but I'd like to appoximate the battle and see if I can perfect my street fighting strategy.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Interesting. Do you have estimates of what you were facing and what you had, both in terms of units and siege equipment? I don't have BI but I'd like to appoximate the battle and see if I can perfect my street fighting strategy.

A lot of the BI units have no equivalents in vanilla. Limitanei are glorified town watch, really, but even that's not the greatest comparison. Late Roman units have some serious suck going on, though I was rather pleased with the performance of my auxilia palatina army...

[Darth Wong]

Order of Battle:

Roman Army
Stone-walled city
1 unit of foederati light cavalry
2 units of foederati spearmen
2 units of limitanei (sort of like Town Watch)
2 units of peasants
3 units of archers
(all units degraded by losses due to several turns under siege)
Total of 805 men

Barbarian Army
4 units of Generals with heavy cavalry bodyguard
8 units of Hun light cavalry
8 units of Hun horse archers
7 units of Hun heavy cavalry
8 units of Hun spearmen
1 unit of mercenary legionaries
1 battering ram
2 ladders
1 siege tower
Total of 2486 men

The fact that he had 4 generals and I had none was rather disquieting, since armies without generals are typically at a serious disadvantage compared to armies with generals. But victory was still mine nonetheless, although I only managed to kill 3 of his generals (the 4th one got away). And trust me, those limitanei are seriously outclassed on the walls; you have no chance of stopping him at the walls. You must fight him in the streets.

[weemadando]

Playing a campaign of "vanilla" Rome at the moment - had a Germanic army trying to sweep down across a bridge to hit one of my cities, but - alas I had 3 armies in the area. Expecting a horrific bridge fight I quickly shuffled my forces to form a more powerful defensive group. Then I assasinated his general.

So, coming out of the North are a massed force of Chosen Axemen, Peasants and four units of Beserkers. Arrayed against them are 1 unit of Armoured General Bodyguard, 1 of Mercenary Cav, 14 units of Archer Auxilia, 2 wardogs and 2 Legionaire groups.

Knowing the AI bugs (I'm a bastard, I know), I set up 8 units of archers at teh bridge, supported by hte wardogs and cavalry, then at the extreme flanks on my side of hte riverbank, went 3 archer units and a legionaire unit at each flank.

Without their rather worryingly good general (thankyou Mr Assassin), they stumble forward and try and arrange forces for the bridge crossing while under a veritable downpour of flaming arrows. They then cross the bridge, still under horrific volumes of fire and just as they are about to set foot on my soil I release the hounds. The dogs hold them up for a while as archers continue the massacre on the bridge, focusing on taking out the rear most unit and pinning them in place. Their army finally spills out onto my side and as my archers fall back to safer positions, my cavalry rides forth, splitting their force, which breaks and flees.

As they flee down the banks of the river on my side of it (the cavalry had the bridge, preventing escape that way), they run into my blocking forces and with the dogs on their heels attempt to keep on running.

Their losses - around 2400 men, not a single survivor. My losses - 5 dog handlers and a large group of dogs. I'll take those losses.

[HemlockGrey]

My greatest victory ever in R:TW was with a force of around 300 principes, 150-200 Rhodian slingers, and 150 equites against approximately 1500 men in German spear warbands. They approached in a battle line, but I used my slingers to draw the bands one by one out of the line while constantly pulling my principes back, and then smashing into the flanks of the band with the equites as the rest of the battleline tried to engage my principes. By the time the remaining few bands finally collided with my untouched but exhausted principes, they were not only exhausted but demoralized and depleted from being harassed by the slingers and they broke after a short frontal battle and were mown down by the 20 or so remaining equites. The slingers were virtually untouched.

Oh, and Valdemar, after a particularly epic battle keep an eye out for a little crossed-swords icon on the strategic map, which signifies that a Famous Battle took place on that site. It's a nice little reminder of your triumphs (or, if you lose, a good motivator to efface the shame of defeat).

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Question of my own: Installing BI seems to have invalidated all my (patched) campaigns I had going in the original. This would imply BI applies changes of some sort or another to the original. Does anyone know what they are?

[Soontir C'boath]

Every patch that has come out always invalidates the games in the previous version. I learned that the hard way when I installed from vanilla to 1.1 months ago. I'm on 1.2 now and I have no intention of installing 1.3 until I take my Greeks and conquer every single province.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Since I installed BI when I got it along with the original game, I don't have to worry about that. But does it patch the AI's ability at suicidally charging any generals not under your direct control at the enemy? I've read horror stories of battles being won, but still ending up with non-player controlled officers dying in stupid ways because of gung-ho tactics from the computer. I make it a habit of keeping my general back just enough to be safe, but still be in the midst of the battle; only ever pressing on to mop up fleeing units to gain respect.

[Ace Pace]

Yes, it does.

[Soontir C'boath]

This would imply BI applies changes of some sort or another to the original. Does anyone know what they are?

I just might install it. I hate the campaign map speed in 1.2.

Rome: Total War Patch 1.3 READ ME

INTRODUCTION
This document is designed to give the reader a brief overview of the changes that have taken place in patch 1.3 which will affect the game.
Refer to this document if you encounter difficulties with one or more aspects of installation or running the Rome: Total War™ game. Many of the most commonly encountered issues are covered here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
INSTALLATION & SET UP ISSUES
Minimum System Requirements
These have not changed from the original version of the game.
Un-install Issues
You are unable to just uninstall the Patch. If you want to go back to where you were before you will have to uninstall the entire game and then install the game from scratch.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GAMEPLAY ISSUES
Balancing
There are a number of improvements that have been made to the Balancing of the game, which will change the way that the game is played.
* Spear bonuses against cavalry have been increased (they were previously hard coded and are now moddable, in addition to mount_effect)
* Braced spearmen (standing ready) now reflect part of any attacking cavalry’s charge bonus back on the horse
* Adjusted most units’ charge bonuses to improve play balance (especially for cavalry) in response to charge code changes (which fixed an issue for higher bonus values)
* Reduced archery attack for some elite units
* Reduced secondary non-phalanx attack for stronger phalanx units
* Adjusted incorrect shield attribute for several units (to reflect models)
* Fixed Egyptian desert axemen armour
* Fixed bug for early and late Thracian and Scythian generals
* Reduced archer attack from chariots and elephants, and reduced dog attack

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Code Issues
We fixed a number of different bugs and associated issues for the patch, below you will see some of the headline fixes.
Campaign Map
There have been numerous fixes to the Campaign Map. There are a few highlights below.
* The Load Save bug has been addressed
* The speed on the campaign map has been improved
* Improvements to the Campaign map AI
* Better mix of rebelling units, including mercenary units and fewer peasants
* Fewer brigands, more pirates and the ability to mod the rate that these appear
* Fixed issues with the faction graphs where a dead faction was still receiving income

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Battle Map
As with the campaign map there have been numerous little fixes. A few highlights are:

* Improvements to the battle AI
* Pre-battle speeches for the Roman factions now include sections on previous meetings with that faction

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Multiplayer
This will enable users to play Multiplayer against other players who have upgraded their version of Rome with a Barbarian Invasion Install.

[Darth Wong]

OK, here's a challenge for you all: fight off the Hun horde attack on Aquincum in my savegame at http://www.stardestroyer.net/Mike/Softw ... H-Huns.zip (unzip it and copy it into your C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War\bi\saves directory, assuming you have BI).

You have slightly over 1000 men, they have more than 3600. But their siege engines are arranged in such a way that they have a good shot at taking not one, but two gateways, one of which has a very direct route to your city square. You are playing as the Western Roman Empire, and they (of course) are the Huns. The difficulty level is "Very Hard".

It took me four tries to beat this one. When I finally succeeded, I only lost about 20% of my cavalry, but the rest of my force took much heavier losses, being reduced to well under half strength. He lost upwards of 90% of his army, but he had enough in reserve to attack again immediately after this battle with reinforcements, before I could retrain my troops, so I had to fight off a subsequent attack with what I had left after this battle. Hence the importance of still having 80% of my cavalry intact.

Anyway, I'm curious how difficult others will find this battle.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I'm going to keep that for future use. Much as I'd like to take a shot at it now, I'm honing my basic fighting and empire building skills for now. But it sure sounds like a battle you win medals in (and they send them to your next of kin).

[Fire Fly]

I think I'll try it a little later this week when I have some free time. With school work picking up, I tend to only play on the weekends now.

Latest game update:

I've entered into an alliance with the Huns....for the moment. The ERE has begun its attacks on me, blockading my souther Italian ports, which are denying me several hundreds of denarii that are extremely crucial to my campaign. My army has gotten to large and I'm starting to get back into the red, so I had to decomission several units out of my various legions in Iberia and Gual. My Northern Italian legions, the Legio I Italica and Legio II Italica, are fighting tooth and nail to hold back a Frankish and Sarmatian horde, at the same time, along the Alps. I've defeated several full stacks, but when the stacks are defeated, they scatter all around. So now, the Italian countryside is roaming with unwashed barbarians.

I've finally crushed the WRE Rebels and have regained all of my former provinces that I with drew from. Despite my reconquest, I still don't have sufficient funds to build an offensive army to attack the ERE. The entirety of my army is tied up in desperate battles: what units I have in Iberia are not even capable of taking to the field to destroy Rebel units; in Gaul, my Rhine army is tied up moving from locale to locale to take out Rebel units and at the same time; and my Itialian forces are all but depleted from continuous battle.

The population growth rates are insane. With a population of 20 000 and a growth rate of 3%, I can bearly keep my cities in line. All of my cities are currently blue, ranging in the 70% to 80% range. My governers are lacklusters and the loyalty of my generals are questonable.

[Darth Wong]

OK, this is officially getting frustrating. Playing as the Western Roman Empire on VH/VH difficulty, every goddamned time I start to get my economy rolling, something happens to knock me down again. Either a bunch of my frontier cities get besieged (I can always destroy the attackers when they finally make their assault but in the meantime, I lose several turns of income) or fucking rebels suddenly pop up all over my territory. And if that's not enough, by the time I finally start to stabilize things on the besieging/wandering rebel front, my cities start to riot and I have to deal with constant religious conflicts.

It's bad enough that I have to deal with constant barbarian horde incursions, and that I had to slowly crawl up out of a deep financial hole because so many of my cities were tragically underdeveloped to begin with, but the way the game never really lets me go on offense is starting to really piss me off. I've expanded by precisely one city beyond my starting position, and that's after seemingly countless game turns. And now, thanks to the expenditure in military recruitment that I needed for that one lousy city, I've got three cities requiring "huge" city upgrades at 6400 denarii apiece, and I'm only pulling in around 4000 denarii per turn. All three are rapidly sinking deep into negative income as I ratchet up the games to prevent rioting. As they sink, they take my income with them, which means I'll have even more trouble paying for those city size upgrades.

This is what makes this game less enjoyable than RTW. RTW had some factions with lousy starting positions (eg- the Seleucids) but it was possible to "stabilize" some of your territory after a while. In this game, even cities deep within my territory aren't trustworthy; any one of them can go red at any time, forcing my to scramble to solve the problem. And the constant cash crisis means that the cities' population growth tends to far outstrip my construction abilities.

Mind you, the WRE is supposed to be the hardest faction to play as, and I'm also playing on VH/VH difficulty. Perhaps the game is simply not playable at VH/VH with the WRE unless you have the patience of Job. I can see how, with careful micromanagement of every battle and every city, I could very slowly solve my problems and expand, but at the rate I'm going, it will take another hundred game turns. Yes, it can be done, but I'm afraid I just don't have the patience for it. I want the game to reach a point where I can leave large portions of the empire on "auto-manage" and auto-resolve minor battles, and that never happens. Because of my severe financial problems, I have to fight almost all of my battles with low-end troops. This means I will lose 100% of the battles I fight unless I control them myself, so no auto-resolve even on minor skirmishes with rebels. I can win these stupid little battles that take place every turn or every other turn, but it drags out every game turn. Who wants to play a game knowing that it will take weeks to get anywhere?

Maybe I'll start another campaign at "Medium" difficulty level. I can see how, if the brutal financial constraints were relaxed just a bit, I would be trampling all over the place by now.

[Fire Fly]

In regards to rebel units, I always make sure that when I'm attacking, my force is of sufficient size that I KNOW I would win if I commanded the battle myself. Then I use the auto win cheat code (hit the ~ button and type in auto_win and then enter, then auto resolve the battle). Yes I know its cheap, but I DO NOT want to have to command every battle against rebels myself. It is too time consuming and I already know that I would win against the rebels anyways. This way, I just bypass the lengthy 10-15 minutes for each damn rebel group that pops up, which is often.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Is it not possible to retreat back into Rome and control only a select few cities and then, from Italy, build up and launch expeditionary forces to go and strike at specific barbarian strongholds? I admit ignorance to how the hordes work in BI and how exactly each empire is setup, but I'm wondering if the strategy of not over-reaching yourself and dealing with the enemy on your own terms is possible or not.

[Darth Wong]

Is it not possible to retreat back into Rome and control only a select few cities and then, from Italy, build up and launch expeditionary forces to go and strike at specific barbarian strongholds? I admit ignorance to how the hordes work in BI and how exactly each empire is setup, but I'm wondering if the strategy of not over-reaching yourself and dealing with the enemy on your own terms is possible or not.

If you give up that much territory, it will just take that much longer to win it back. I guess that's the frustration part; I don't want games to take too long. It's a strategy game and that involves a long-term game, but when it's taking you dozens of turns to expand by just one settlement, that's annoying.

Maybe I'll run a compromise game of Medium campaign difficulty and Very Hard combat difficulty. I just tried a Medium campaign and I was amazed by just how much easier it was because of an apparently minor reduction in things like rebels and riots. I always played Vanilla RTW on VH/VH but IMO the Medium campaign difficulty level on BI is around the same as VH campaign difficulty on RTW. I want a challenge on combat, but I find this business of constantly worrying about riots and rebel groups in my own territory to be tiresome and annoying. M/VH would be a good compromise, I think.

[Arrow]

I've thought about modding the WRE to give the cities some more economic and law giving buildings (within reason). I mean, I had Rome and several other cities built way up in the original campaign, I don't want to have to be building first and second tier buildings now in the expansion. I want the challenge of fighting off the barbarian hordes and conquering the ERE, not putting of Tom, Dick and Harry that doesn't want to pay taxes to the sword.

[Malfeas]

I modded the expr_desc_building? file to give a slight bonus to law or happiness depending upon the function of the building. For the Roman and eastern empires, on level 3 temples and higher I added another point to either law or happiness. And on the barbarian temples and tavern, since they only have a maximum of level 3 temples, I added another point on levels two and three. It was a slight change but has had a noticeable affect of allowing me to either raise my taxes one notch in large cities, and requiring a smaller garrison. To help balance that out, I now only try to use peasants as 50% of a garrison. I would have preferred to increase the affect of garrison troops on public order, but couldn't figure it out.

On VH/H, this at least allows you to field two or three good armies as the WRE, and allows a better timeline for conquest. But you still have the large amount of rebels to deal with, so I keep a mobile army of degenerate generals around to take care of that. I haven't expanded much, due to fighting off 3 hordes and the ERE at the same time. But now after about 20 years of consolidating, I can start moving east.

Another thing I do to make the game more interesting is not retraining veteran units after a battle. Instead I transfer men to build up depleted units. It doesn't make much sense to me and seems like an exploit if you have a silver chevron unit reduced down to 5 men and then retrain them to max strength after a battle. It also tends to make me conserve my experienced units, I send the raw recruits into the main line of battle and use the vets to flank and kill.

I also demolish all barbarian military structures level 2 or higher when I conquer a city. It doesn't make sense to me that I can immediately recruit specialized units in a foreign culture. Because of this, I tend to use comitatenses over plumbaaraii? due to the lower tech cost. And they are good enough to do the job anyway.

There is an unofficial patch over at totalwar dot org called 'bugfixer'. It fixes a few minor bugs, if you want to play as the berber ,celt or other barbarians, I recommend using it.

[Vympel]

Apologies if this has already been answered, but what are the victory conditions for the WRE and ERE?