Rome 2 Total War

[The Vortex Empire]

God, defending towns without walls is a mess due to the stupid capture points. I could try to actually use the streets and terrain to pick a good spot to defend, say the hill in the middle of town with only one path up, but nope, do that and they just sit in the marketplace and you're forced to attack their superior numbers. Instead, you're forced to meet them head on as they attack from multiple sides. How does capturing a marketplace grant you control of the settlement in the first place?

[ray245]

Just pretend the marketplace is your city's granary. If they control the food supply of the city, your army will surrender.

[Titan Uranus]

Typically objectives like that make a game more challenging or interesting, but here it seems like that was their starting point, but it somehow got expanded to covering for the AI's ineptitude.

[Dominus Atheos]

Something that pisses me off, defensive garrisoned troops rout now. Where are they running to? It's their home, their families; and they are inside walls, it made sense that they would fight to the last man.

At the very least garrison troops should get a huge moral boost to reflect those factors.

[GuppyShark]

I find the object points in open field battles more disconcerting than in a siege.

Why do I lose if the enemy is over in some un-noteworthy spot when my troops hold the high ground and an artillery advantage?

[The Vortex Empire]

I wouldn't mind it if you could just, you know, disable them.

[Esquire]

I'm surprised there isn't already a mod for that. Does anybody know why they stuck the things in to begin with?

[Flameblade]

To obscure that their AI simply doesn't work.

[Esquire]

So they gave it an extra objective to juggle?

[RogueIce]

Something that pisses me off, defensive garrisoned troops rout now. Where are they running to? It's their home, their families; and they are inside walls, it made sense that they would fight to the last man.

At the very least garrison troops should get a huge moral boost to reflect those factors.

Do they get the magic "city square restores morale" thing from going somewhere, or do they just stay broken? Because I could see that, if you're just so overwhelming, that the defenders do give up because hoping for a conqueror's mercy is better than dying in battle, especially if you're some peasant or levy militiaman.

[Dominus Atheos]

No, they get like 20% casualties and then attempt to run out of the city gates, even if the overall battle is in your favor.

[AniThyng]

I kind of wish I could "release" regions as client states after the fact. There's some backwater barbarian shitholes on the edges of the empire I have no desire to directly administer that I would love to merely indirectly control. I also have a chunk of Egypt that I want to give back to the Egyptians but I can't do that.

Aside from that, after patch 5 I'm actually warming up to this game. ROMA VICTOR! (I don't care that's not the correct grammar). I also like the ability to change my mind on some buildings, and not be permanantly screwed by decisions I made 70 turns beforehand.

Training fields being only buildable in capitals is a wtf though. I liked having a field of mars in Rome, dammit. Now i have to juggle and move it to arminum or whatever. Not a big deal since the funtional effect on my recruiting is the same, but flavor, FLAVOR.

[Dominus Atheos]

Question to anyone, what is your order of battle? IE what units make up your full stack armies?

I do 4 heavy infantry, 4 heavy cavalry, 2 spearmen, and 8 war dogs, since I mostly fight Celts who just spam light infantry. And the general of course.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Right now my average legion is:

Veteran Legionaries (General) + 4 Veteran Legionaries, 7 Legionaries, 3 Velites, 2 Equites, 3 "wild" (+2 Equites, +2-3 local flavor auxilia, +2-3 Praetorians, etc)

Previously:

Triarii (General) + 2-4 Triarii, 3-5 Principes, 3-5 Hastati, 3 Velites, 2-4 Equites, various auxilia and socii


Have not yet gotten the top tier Roman military tech so not sure what I'll do yet, but I imagine the armored legionaries will just replace the regular (Republican) legionaries. I love the selectable general's unit, but I'm a bit annoyed you can't select Praetorians of all things. Which results in the odd spectacle of my general's unit being worse than the surrounding Praetorians. And I wish First Cohorts were a little better. Right now there's not much incentive to take a First Cohort instead of more Veterans. The morale buff doesn't really make up for Veterans' all-around better stats.



For my Brython game I haven't bothered with mil tech nearly as much, and I've been fine just spamming levy spearmen and slingers and zerging things to death.

[Thanas]

Aside from that, after patch 5 I'm actually warming up to this game. ROMA VICTOR! (I don't care that's not the correct grammar).

Roma victrix.

I mean, you complain about you not being able to have a field of mars, but don't care about the grammar? Jeez. It is not like victrix sounds any less badass than victor to boot.

[AniThyng]

Yeah, point taken

In any case, my preference re: army composition is to have the following, based on my current 9 army allotment:

"garrison" armies, at least one army per "frontier" (so one in africa, one in spain, one in the alps and one in the adriatic) made up of a general with bonuses to civic or tax or building stuff made up of locally recruited auxilleries in a 6(infantry)-4(ranged)-2-4(cav)+1 or 2 imported artillery , then they'll go hunt down rebels and guard the borders or whatever. Gaul can get a legion once it's properly pacified and the field armies leave.

and field armies, made up of a core of 1 general, 1 first cohort, 5-6 legions (all recruited in italia to get the very best equipment and morale bonuses from the start), some velites and roman cavalry and artillery, then maybe puff them up with some auxilleries recruited from whatever frontier I send them to.

Of course that's the ideal, reality is i have whatever i could throw in at the time and ship them off

But i hope to be able to bring all the field legions back to rome once the current border is stabalized, then do a purge/standardization before sending them off again for the second round of conquest.