Some R:TR questions/observations.

[Alferd Packer]

When do the Marian reforms take place? Is it a fixed date? Or do you need to hit like 100 provinces or something? Also, what benefits do you get? Is it a completely new set of units, or do you just gain a couple?

Also, is it deliberately hard to get a really good general? At the moment, playing as Roma, I have seven legions: 3 in Turkey, 3 in Spain, and 1 up in Britain. Of these, I'd say that most of them are commanded by 5 command star generals on average. In fact, I've only had one ten star general, and he's currently the faction leader, living a happy life retired in Calleva (his legion now has a new general). But I had used him since he came of age at 16. He was my main general for over 40 years, fighting the Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Macedonians, Ptolemaics, Illyrians, Gauls, and, of course, the odd rebel province here and there. I probably captured a good 20 regions with him, and fought perhaps 70 battles or so (One time he was attacked eight fucking times in a single turn by Macedonian armies of 2/3 stack or above).

Finally, has anyone tried to play as, say, the Parthians or the Bactrians? Are they even feasible factions, or were they just added for fluff?

[Nephtys]

When do the Marian reforms take place? Is it a fixed date? Or do you need to hit like 100 provinces or something? Also, what benefits do you get? Is it a completely new set of units, or do you just gain a couple?

Also, is it deliberately hard to get a really good general? At the moment, playing as Roma, I have seven legions: 3 in Turkey, 3 in Spain, and 1 up in Britain. Of these, I'd say that most of them are commanded by 5 command star generals on average. In fact, I've only had one ten star general, and he's currently the faction leader, living a happy life retired in Calleva (his legion now has a new general). But I had used him since he came of age at 16. He was my main general for over 40 years, fighting the Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Macedonians, Ptolemaics, Illyrians, Gauls, and, of course, the odd rebel province here and there. I probably captured a good 20 regions with him, and fought perhaps 70 battles or so (One time he was attacked eight fucking times in a single turn by Macedonian armies of 2/3 stack or above).

Finally, has anyone tried to play as, say, the Parthians or the Bactrians? Are they even feasible factions, or were they just added for fluff?

Unlike RL, there's a fixed date or ranges of date I think somewhere in the mid 200 BC's. All of your units are effectively replaced, you gain access to super-elite infantry, your generals get much, much scarier Heavy Calvary, and you can build heavy calvary. Also, you finally get some damned spearmen.

[Netko]

The reforms happen when one of the roman factions builds the the first last "increase size of province" building (Preator's court or something like that, at 24000 anyway).

As far as generals, yes Rome is much more unforgiving on them. In MTW you can easily train up your royal family to be both excellent commanders and administrators and then just get a few generations of them turned into general purpose generals who get the good provinces (for example, in my latest English game I have something like 10 full stack armies with a 5 star being the worst general commanding one, and 7 being standard, with several 8 and 9s). In Rome, as soon as you are getting good events start to happen that cripple your generals. First off, once you breach the 50000 gold mark your administrators start getting corruption and/or incompetence traits that lower their acumen (or whatever the economic ability is named in RTW). Second, you will probably have temples built up in your cities and they convay traits that aren't useful most of the time (Stay the fuck away from patrons of drinking - a fast way to turn a good general into crap). Your best bet at having good generals is building up an retinue of useful underlings (at least you get good ones after you build up the academy line of buildings) and then transfering that retinue to younger generations once a general goes over 55.

[Thanas]

The reforms happen when one of the roman factions builds the the first last "increase size of province" building (Preator's court or something like that, at 24000 anyway).

I don't think there is anything like praetor#s court in RTR. We are talking about RomeTotalRealism, right?

The Marian Reforms happen when you have several Huge cities, at least one or two of them in the Italian AOR, which starts below bononia and ends before Croton (you can almost draw a line from croton to messina to get the extent of it).

When do the Marian reforms take place? Is it a fixed date? Or do you need to hit like 100 provinces or something? Also, what benefits do you get? Is it a completely new set of units, or do you just gain a couple?

For the first answers see above. There honestly is not that much change - you are going to get jsut a few new units - basically Legionnaires (pimped principes), Aquila Legionnaires (first cohort), Equites Alares (heavy cavalry, but not that much improvement over the usual equites) and some funky auxillia like the Syrian archers (best archer unit in game).

Honestly, what you are getting is the best infantry in the whole game, and decent cavalry. On the downside, you loose the whole Italian AOR and the republic system, meaning that you can no longer recruit italian troops (swordsmen, spearmen, Italian cavalry, skirmishers you can still recruit them as mercs, but that is very, very expensive, whereas there is no way to train or retrain triarii, principes, hastari, equites, velites - you will get a different velites unit, but not the original, rotarii, fundensiores-sp?).
All teh other auxillary units are not effected.

So what you should do is to make sure you can train one or two replacement legions fast because you won't be able to keep the other ones maintained.

If you want to, I can send you one of my savegames where I was able to keep both units for comparison.

Finally, has anyone tried to play as, say, the Parthians or the Bactrians? Are they even feasible factions, or were they just added for fluff?

I have played as the parthians. It is not much a cakewalk as the other factions, but it can be quite enjoyable to use persian cataphracts effectively.

Unlike RL, there's a fixed date or ranges of date I think somewhere in the mid 200 BC's. All of your units are effectively replaced, you gain access to super-elite infantry, your generals get much, much scarier Heavy Calvary, and you can build heavy calvary. Also, you finally get some damned spearmen.

???
Even in vanilla rome you could always train spearmen. And in RTR, italian spearmen are even some of your starting troops.

[Arujei]

The Marian reforms can only occur after around 220 BC. If you have the Imperial Court built in at least one province by then, then you get a chance of having the reforms. But I think it's based on chance.

As for Bactria, I loooove playing those guys. It's fun taking on the massive Seleucid Empire from behind, with legions of Indian AOR troops and Persian phalanxes. And the Bactrian general unit is quite unique. I'm not sure there is any other general's unit that fires arrows, THEN charges. I once took out an entire rebel phalanx unit just by using my general's archery to distract them, then charging in their back.

Oh, and always build the academy line of buildings. They will help you get better management stats faster then you can say "Damn, that's fast."

As an aside, I've heard a lot about this retinue swapping, but how do you do it?

[Alferd Packer]

As an aside, I've heard a lot about this retinue swapping, but how do you do it?

Get two generals in the same army or city. Click and drag the retinue member onto the character's face and drop them on the character you want to transfer to. You should note, though, that you can't have more than one of a specific retinue, and certain types of retinues can't overlap(ones that do the same things, usually).

And thanks for the info, everyone. I look forward to raising some new kickass legions for my next campaigns into Germania, Thrace, the Middle East, and North Africa.

...It is possible to take over the entire map, right?

[Dartzap]

I've never done it, but i have seen screencaps of it done, I beleive Darth Wong has done it.

[Arujei]

Yes, it's possible. All you need to do, is when you get the screen saying you have 50 provinces and Rome, is just say "Keep playing". Although I almost never get that far, starting a new campaign often before I reach 250 BC.

[Alferd Packer]

Neato. Anyone know how many territories there are on the new map? At as recollection, I had about 80, including Italy, Greece, Macdonia, Illyria, Gaul, parts of Asia Minor, the northern Balkans, almost all of Iberia, and half of Britain. I suspect that there are about 30 in North Africa, another 50-60 in the Middle East, and maybe another 30 more around the edges of the map, or 200 total.

Do you get a congrats for conquering everything?

[Thanas]

The Marian reforms can only occur after around 220 BC. If you have the Imperial Court built in at least one province by then, then you get a chance of having the reforms. But I think it's based on chance.

You, Sir, are talking about the imperial palace, not the imperial court, which does not exist ingame.

The palace also has to be built inside the Italian AOR.

[Arujei]

You, Sir, are talking about the imperial palace, not the imperial court, which does not exist ingame.

The palace also has to be built inside the Italian AOR.

Well, it sounds the same, and I think people are intelligent enough so that if they saw, "Imperial Palace", and I said "Imperial Court" it would mean the same thing. But yes, I was wrong, thank you for correcting me.

[Fire Fly]

When do the Marian reforms take place? Is it a fixed date? Or do you need to hit like 100 provinces or something? Also, what benefits do you get? Is it a completely new set of units, or do you just gain a couple?

Also, is it deliberately hard to get a really good general? At the moment, playing as Roma, I have seven legions: 3 in Turkey, 3 in Spain, and 1 up in Britain. Of these, I'd say that most of them are commanded by 5 command star generals on average. In fact, I've only had one ten star general, and he's currently the faction leader, living a happy life retired in Calleva (his legion now has a new general). But I had used him since he came of age at 16. He was my main general for over 40 years, fighting the Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Macedonians, Ptolemaics, Illyrians, Gauls, and, of course, the odd rebel province here and there. I probably captured a good 20 regions with him, and fought perhaps 70 battles or so (One time he was attacked eight fucking times in a single turn by Macedonian armies of 2/3 stack or above).

Finally, has anyone tried to play as, say, the Parthians or the Bactrians? Are they even feasible factions, or were they just added for fluff?

You have trouble getting good generals? I seemed to be blessed with getting good generals. All of my generals right now started as career generals early on, in their late teens. Most of them already had great attributes, such as 'Military Genius.' Currently in my RTR game, I have a legion stationed in Western Greece to protect my three provinces there, two legions in North Africa fighting the Numidians and Carthoginians, a legion in Northern Italy, fighting against my former allies, the Germans, and another legion in the works.

I had also wondered when the Marian reforms would come along, as I'm getting tired of hastati, principes, and triarii. My biggest gripe that I have with RTR is that there are too many damn provinces. Its a seige fest. If they took out 1/4 of the territory, I might enjoy it more. I don't understand why people just love having a shit load of cities. I've already read complaints that in MTW2, there aren't enough cities? Excuse me? The number of cities is already upped from RTW. Shut the fuck up now, please.

[Alferd Packer]

A faction goes to war with the generals they've got. After I spanked Greece and secured the Italian peninsula, I forced them to give up Appolonia in the cease-fire agreement. After I got a legion over there, the Greeks promptly attacked, forcing me to go on a ball-busting offensive to get them to leave me the fuck alone. The result was that I went from 9 provinces to over 30 in about ten years, leaving me no one to govern over the regions I just conquered. Any adoptions/marriages that came along, I had to take, because I only had 7 or 8 generals and their kids, though numerous, were still a decade away from maturity. The end result was that I couldn't be as picky as I wanted to be in choosing who led my armies. If it was a 45 year old alcoholic, so be it; I needed to keep armies in the field to keep the Greeks under my heel.

Even now, at 80 provinces, I only have 35 or so family members. It seems to be getting better now, though; I have governers of prime reproducing age in most areas, so I'm able to distribute their kids expediently as they come of age. Nonetheless, my original thought was that truly great generals are few and far between, because it seems no matter how many heroic victories I attain, my generals never break that cusp of greatness.

[Thanas]

My biggest gripe that I have with RTR is that there are too many damn provinces. Its a seige fest. If they took out 1/4 of the territory, I might enjoy it more. I don't understand why people just love having a shit load of cities. I've already read complaints that in MTW2, there aren't enough cities? Excuse me? The number of cities is already upped from RTW. Shut the fuck up now, please.

That, Sir, is why the mod is named Total Realism - because yes, in history, conquering greece and asia minor was a siegefest. That's what the roman army excelled in even more than fighting battles. If you do not want realism, don't play RTR. So please shut the fuck up yourself.

To add on this, the military writings from the fourth century onwards all stressed on avoiding battle. Just look at Vegetius, or the Strategikon of Mauricos.

Medieval warfare was a complete siegefest. Take one look at the English campaigns in Normandy, and you'll understand that the number of cities/castles offered is way too low.

Just look at the Byzantine empire. The whole of Asia minor has about as many cities as Germany in total, and this is completely ridiculous. For example, in the reign of Manuel I, the Byzantine Empire alone sieged/captured 30 different cities on campaigns centered in Hungary and the western half of Asia Minor. The 20 or so cities CA offers is just simply inaedequate considering that the empire took twice that many cities just during the reign of one Emperor. It is also inaccurate regarding the urbanization of Asia Minor.

I'd like my games as close to history as possible, and not cut short because some people cannot manage sieges or management.