RTW: Barbarian Invasion

[Vympel]

AWESOME! They retained the purple colour for the Eastern Roman Empire / Byzantines that they used for the Byzantines in Medieval: Total War. Kataphraktoi! Attack!

[Lonestar]

Stuck on the boat..playing it on my laptop.

Boy! Trying to keep the Empire (either one, I'm working on the Eastern Empire) togather is no joke. If I have to fight off one more goddamn horde from Constantinople's walls I'll go nuts. This especially pisses me off as the bulk of my army is in the East grinding against the Sassanids.

As for th Western Empire..I took one look at it, and decded that it was a disaster waiting to happen. Fuck 'em.

[Arrow]

As for th Western Empire..I took one look at it, and decded that it was a disaster waiting to happen. Fuck 'em.

I justed fired the game and tried playing as the Western Empire. Results of the first turn - a quarter of my cities riot, killing several generals, damaging some buildings and filling up a lot of graveyards.

So I decided to play a couple of quick battles instead. Night battles are NUTS!

[Clone Sergeant]

I got my copy today, the BI expansion is quite nice. Eastern Romans are my favorite so far. However, there is one problem that I wish I had been aware of before I installed the new game and it has really pissed me off.

When you install BI it also patches vanilla R:TW to 1.3. The problem is 1.3 isn't compatable with 1.1 and 1.2 campaign saves.

Thanks a ton C.A.

Another thing that should be in the manual is that before you install BI to make sure your installation of R:TW is a plain 1.0 or patched up to 1.2. Otherwise, after you install BI, vanilla R:TW with CTD when you try to run it. I learned this the hard way.

My installation had only been patched up to 1.1 because 1.2 made my system completely freeze up after a few turns on the campaign map.

[Darth Wong]

Does anyone have any tips for playing as the western Roman Empire? I'm having a hell of a time; on my first turn I had to disband a lot of my army units in order to get my cashflow in the black, because I had no real cash reserves and therefore no ability to expand and improve my cities.

Many turns later I finally managed to get the rioting under control and kill off a few rebels so I'm getting roughly 6000 dinarii per turn cash, but then I got attacked by a Sarmatian horde. I actually managed to fight off three Sarmatian armies totalling over 3000 men, thanks to a combination of good luck and poor tactics on the part of the Sarmatian generals. But I still ended up losing a city to the Sarmatians, and I'm starting to wonder if I'd be better off pulling back so that I'll have stronger cities on my borders. Certain tricks from old RTW (such as baiting them to rush toward your city walls) don't work as well (if at all) in BI, and those damned Sarmatian horse archers are bleeding me dry.

[Duckie]

Many turns later I finally managed to get the rioting under control and kill off a few rebels so I'm getting roughly 6000 dinarii per turn cash, but then I got attacked by a Sarmatian horde. I actually managed to fight off three Sarmatian armies totalling over 3000 men, thanks to a combination of good luck and poor tactics on the part of the Sarmatian generals. But I still ended up losing a city to the Sarmatians, and I'm starting to wonder if I'd be better off pulling back so that I'll have stronger cities on my borders. Certain tricks from old RTW (such as baiting them to rush toward your city walls) don't work as well (if at all) in BI, and those damned Sarmatian horse archers are bleeding me dry.

Having not played the game, there's two options really:

=Ride the bomb and scream "IT ALL BELONGS TO MOTHER MUSCO- ROME!" while the world crashes around your head [/reference]

=Or make tactical withdrawals. Off-hand, I'd drop Brittania as unholdable right away, if you haven't already. It happened historically, too, I believe. Fortify inner provinces so that once they become your borders you can ride the storm out until the end of the game in a defensive posture. Exit your borders to go attack Barbarians, but don't take territory except to make the enemy take it back and delay time.

[Stravo]

I'm currently playing as Eastern Roman Empire. Haven't had the time to actually sit down and play out an entire campaign yet, been playing it in small chunks of time - essentially a few turns at a time. So far so good, I definately felt stretched thin immediately. Spent the first 5-6 turns just trying to get things under control, build up some money and rearrange forces so that I could at least have an army in the west and one in the East.

You certainly can't start out figthing right away as you could in RTW and that's an interesting challenge.

The portrayal of barabrian movement and migrations is excellent and feels very right. I finally began moving out after fighting off a huge Sessanid army trying to take Antioch. I rallied my armies - having to combine them from 3 different eastern cities and marched on Sessanid territory. Romped all over them in a massive battle on the outskirts of their first city and took it.

My advice is to always slaughter the population. The tendency for rioting is just too damn high especially when you take into account religion's effect in this game. I decided to go Christian.

My Western army (cavalry poor which sucks because I'm a big time cavalry whore from RTW) marches out and begins conquering Western Roman rebel strongholds.

My last turn I sat back in satisfaction that I was now the strongest faction and largest faction in the game, having only expanded my empire by three cities, when I get the message "They have Arrived" The Sarmatian Hordes displaced by the uncoming Huns.

UGH. Descending on one of my western cities dismayingly close to Constantinople and one that I bled dry to forge this western army.

This is about to get very very interesting.

My main complaint and it may be heretical to some - but I just haven't been as drawn into this game as I was by RTW. I can easily play 2-3 turns and turn it off without a sense of "Let me just play one more turn." Sometimes it will sit there on my computer for days between the times I actually play it. I don't know what it is but it just doesn't seem to have that same magic as RTW did in terms of instant addiction and sleep deprivation.

[Darth Wong]

It's not as compelling because Empire-building is more enticing than Empire-defending. And almost as soon as you get started in this game, you realize that you don't really have the resources to launch the kind of aggressive campaigns that you did in RTW, because it's sapping your strength and your treasury just to defend what you already have. Also, the earlier-era Roman legions are cooler, and you don't have that whole "climbing the tech tree" progression to look forward to.

Mind you, the only group I've tried playing as so far is the Western Empire, and that's a bitch of a starting position. You start off so dirt-poor that if you do nothing on the first turn you'll promptly go into the red.

[Fire Fly]

Its not as compelling for the reasons Mike Wong mentioned. People would rather build and reflect upon their hard work. In this game, people have to defend. There is also the romanticism with classical Rome with the legions, rather than this medieval Rome with comitenseii (sp?).

The opening moves, as far as hints are, are to get rid of a large portion of your army. They cost too much and are draining your already crappy economy; use peasants to garrison as they are dirt cheap. Make strategic withdrawls to consolidate your defenses and when you do pull out of certain provinces, destroy all the buildings so you regain the money. When you retake cities, slaughter the population to control dissent and to gain money. Get rid of your navy, as its next to useless. Eliminate the Alemmeni or make sure they're weak early on, as they pose a problem quite early in the game. Continually sack barbarian cities for money, but don't keep the cities.

In case some folks are not aware, you can award certain titles to your generals. These titles look like retinues and work in a similar fashion as retinues.

[Darth Wong]

Bwahahaha!! The Huns have been destroyed! Their faction is no more! The Western Roman Empire may be collapsing, I may have a city in open revolt, and I may have lost a city to the damned Sarmatians, but I fucking killed off the entire Hun faction! Rome will not go down quietly!!!!

PS. Look up "ass-kicking" in the dictionary, and there should be a picture of the new carriage ballistae next to it. I love these things. They ass-rape enemy formations like there's no tomorrow, and they're particularly good for decimating enemy general's bodyguard units. I just fought a battle against an enemy with no less than six generals, all of whom fell one by one to the firepower of my carriage ballistae.

[Darth Wong]

Sneaky tips:

1) When a stone-walled city is attacked by a huge horde army, try moving your vastly outnumbered forces around the city in various configurations. The enemy won't ride up to your gates and sit there the way he did in RTW, but you can often get him to move his formations around and/or chase your units in such a manner that he takes heavy casualties from the static defenses. It's interesting to try and figure out what the AI logic is doing when you move a unit of archers around the perimeter of the city walls and you watch him moving his army around in reaction.

2) To alleviate the severe cash-flow problem, identify the cities that are losing the most money per turn. These are often large cities. Build up a decent garrison and then move the whole garrison away from the city, leaving it empty. When it revolts, go back in and retake the city, then exterminate the rebellious scum inside for lots of war booty. I've found this to be periodically necessary in order to build new (and expensive) structures in many of my cities, because the cash-flow situation is so damned tight.

[Crown]

So Mike, I've gotta ask; did you revert to paganism or are you going the Christian route?

[Darth Wong]

So Mike, I've gotta ask; did you revert to paganism or are you going the Christian route?

I'm handling it on a per-settlement basis right now, depending on whether the settlement's population is mostly Christian or Pagan. I'm not sure whether I can keep doing this indefinitely, or whether the game will force me to adopt one religion across all settlements sooner or later.

[Vympel]

Interesting, I've always found the thought of defending the Empire in the 300ADs onwards to be really compelling, and I've always had a massive love for the late Roman units of both East and West (I'm an armoured cavalry whore). The thought of being able to say, consolidate the East and then before the end of the game start a new Roman golden age (by annihilating everyone else, of course) and reunify the Empire (under the Eastern greeks, naturally ... ) is something I'm really looking forward to.

And of course there's always playing as the barbarians.

[Crown]

While I too wish to play for Constantinople's greater glory, I don't think that I'm gonna enjoy this game this much. It sounds like the ending to R:TW, where all my cities were uprising left, right and centre, I had to micromanage the fuck out of them, and I was straining to gain ground because my Empire was just too damn big (if there is such a thing).

One thing that would make these games infinitely more playable is that when you get a new family member (coming of age, or marriage) you can choose where to send them straight away rather than them showing up in X city and then it takes fifteen turns for you to move them out to the front lines so you can make them governers of newly conquered cities, freeing up your experienced Generals to continue kicking some ass - rather the quagmire that my games usually end up like at the end of the game.

[Fire Fly]

Any hints on opening moves for the WRE? I feel that the first two or three turns will determine what course your empire is on for the rest of the game. As for me, this is what I did early on:

Turn 1

Its the 4th century AD and the Empire is in turmoil. Internal dissent is at a peak with so called "servants" of Rome plotting their own rise. These men of Rome are largely lacking in skills of any sorts, save their influence factors.

At the start, Rome is at war with the Celts in Britannia, the Alemenni along the Rhine, and the Berbers in Africa. Relations with the ERE is at best luke warm, as they will eventually seek to reunite the Empire under Constantinople's banner.


There are reports of large scale barbarian migrations from the East, which will undoubtably change the geopolitical landscape along the Rhine and Danube Rivers. There exists one, perhaps two, field armies that are not even at half strength; the rest of the army has been distrubited to garrison duties throughout the empire.

The Imperial Coffers are pathetically low, so low that it is insulting; there exists an impressive 1200 or so denari, enough to train a few low units and build one or two buildings. At current levels, tax revenues are pulling in around 40 000 denari but expenditures are costing upwards of 45 000 denari. Funds are critically needed to build economical buildings to keep out of debt.

RECOMMENDED MOVES

-Move the governor on Sardinia to Rome. He has the single highest management skills and by movnig him to Rome, you can maximize tax revenues on Rome's 50 000 inhabitants.

-After the governor has been sent to Rome, disband all of your navy as it drains your already weak economy.

-Make strategic withdrawls from Lepicus Magna, all of Iberia except Torraco along the Iberian/Gaul boarder, any province east of Ravenna and the Roman boarder province just north of Ravenna by the Alps. By pullying myself inwards, I could better consolidate my defenses and in doing so, these provinces will become WRE Rebels. Many of them were going to anyways, so might as well try to steer the ones that you want to become WRE Rebels. And in doing so, they will eventually fill Rome's coffers later on.

-In making strategic withdrawls, destroy the its buildings to have the money returned to your coffers. I left my Illyrian provinces' military buildings relatively intact so that the WRE Rebels there could offer a buffer against the inevitable ERE and various barbarians.

-Gather as much of the Britannia garrisons without letting the provinces go red and form a field army under the Duke of Britain to premptively deal with the Celts when they are weak. Their unwashed barbarian hides will also add to Rome's coffers when you prillage what they have.

-Collect various units around Gaul to form a mobile field army in Gaul, comprised of various infantry units, missle units, and calvary; don't forget to stock up on extra generals as they are powerful and regenerate for free. Use them to deal with the inevitable rebellions and usurpers of the Emperor.

-Strike at the Alemenni early on to keep them in check and to also add to your coffers, when you go on a shopping spree (pillage).

-Try to improve relations with the Franks as much as possible: trade agreements and map exchanges. Eventually aim for an alliance. They will act as a buffer zone.

Turn 2

-By this time, various provinces will have begun to question your power. Use your army in Gaul to reconqueror Gaul.

By now, its pretty much up to whatever you want to do, as the randomness factor starts to come into play. But the following general tips should help also:

-Concentrate on keeping your finances in the black by stocking up peasants as garrison units and by building economical buildings.

-Don't worry about religion to much. Go at it region by region and once the empire has been stablized, then you can begin to unite the WRE under Christiandom or revert back to full blown paganism. Christianity offers what paganism has except that with the highest level tier pagan building, you get a +2 experience to your units build there.

-Concentrate on having each city having its own specialty: military or economical. If you try playing WRE as if it were RTW, you'll quickly lose money. Concentrate on each city producing one or two certain types of troops to further prevent excess spending on unnecessary buildings.

[Darth Wong]

I've only played one game so far, and it's still ongoing. I withdrew from a couple of weak cities, but not as many as you did. I haven't been able to go on the offensive at all until recently, however. I've been totally defensive most of the time, and I'm just trying to slowly build up my economy and hold the line against the barbarian hordes. Whatever successes I've had (such as destroying the Huns) were largely on defense. I've found those carriage ballistae to be indispensable; it's inconvenient to make them at Rome and then ship them out to the frontier, but they can seriously turn the tide of battle by kicking the shit out of the enemy's toughest units. Hit points and heavy armour mean nothing when you get slammed by a barrage of ballistae projectiles.

Only after I sent a unit of carriage ballistae out to the front lines was I able to go on the offensive, so I've taken out the Allemani and I also took the larger Frankish city, as well as retaking a couple of settlements I had lost. It's just amazing how a single unit can make such a big difference, simply by adding it to an existing army which would have otherwise been overwhelmed.

[Fire Fly]

I've cut so much of my upper tier army to save money that my peasant garrisons and limitenei units make up a large bulk of my army now. Rebels are popping all over the place in Gaul and they're incapable of defeating them and on top of that, they're need to keep the locals in line. I'm pulling in about 2,000 a turn right now, but much of it is reinvested to build more economical buildings. I'm slowly turning more and more profit (slowly) and I'm trying to build two armies: one in Gaul and one in Italy. Iberia is pretty quiet; I have a one quarter stack of calvary (two generals and three Foederati calvary) keeping the rebels and WRE Rebels in check. In Carthage, I've tried to build one or two uints every now and then, archers or Foederati infantry, to beef up the garrison against Berber seiges.

Currently, a Vandal hoard has just ran through Northern Italy and has started attacking my Western Gaul provinces. Towards the Rhine, the Goths have been rampaging against the Franks and will soon move towards Augusta Tevorum and Colonia Agrippina. The Celts in Britannia have stayed very quiet, fortuantely, because I failed to crush them early on and now they have a full stack just across the boarder versus my pathetic army of peasants and limitanei.

I eventually changed religion to paganism, since most of my empire already is pagan. I had to double the Roman garrison and lower taxes just to do that: destroyed the Christian churches and built a pagan shrine. The only Christian territories left are Tarentium and Carthage, I believe. Hopefully, that will help in the long run because I can't build a decent army since most of my money is going into garrisons and more garrisons with maybe one or two econ buildings being built a turn. I try to sell my maps for around 2000 with success. That's brought in at least 8000 on its own.

I just need a little more time; I'm starting to feel confident that I can win this, even though my territories are flowing with rebels and barbarian hordes. Arg.

[Darth Wong]

Advantages and disadvantages to each religion:

A Christian Basilica + Abbey = +30% happiness, +10% law, +%1 population growth, and +25% religious conversion.

An Awesome Temple of Sol Invictus = +10% happiness, +20% law, and +20% religious conversion.

An Awesome Temple of Mithras = +10% happiness, +10% law, +2 experience to all troops trained in that settlement, and +20% religious conversion.

So, the Christian religious buildings are more expensive (you have to build both an abbey and a basilica to max out your religious structures) but they will create the most happiness and public order so they make the most sense for "economic engine" cities. The Mithraian religious buildings are cheaper and have the benefit of adding experience points to your troops (and unlike the old Temple of Mars in vanilla RTW, this one also allows you to retrain existing troops to add experience), but they take a hit on public order: %20 less. And Sol Invictus just sucks; no conceivable reason to use it.

So, I am using Christian religious buildings in my well-defended core cities, to boost their happiness and economic output. I am using Mithraian religious buildings in my frontier cities, to build better troops. But ultimately, it all depends on the populations living in the cities; I had one city which was pagan and which went Christian after a couple of Christian generals came of age in it, so that 3/4 of its population was now Christian. In order to restore public order, I had to demolish the Mithraian temple and build Christian churches. I have made no attempt to create a unified religion across all settlements.

[Stravo]

I got PWNED this weekend, lost Constantinople (1 MOTHERFUCKING siege tower survived my archer barrages that destroyed the other siege engines and in came the barbarian hordes on my walls. It was like death by a thousand cuts as my meager defenders did their best as an endless supply of Goths stormee my walls,) and most of my western provinces while I began to suffer a series of counter attacks in my eastern provinces by the Sessanids. After taking two of their cities they descended from their Northern Turkey strongholds and besieged me, another army popping up way west in Antioch. Then the revolts and riots just got regodamndiculous.

Frustration was too much at seeing everything falling apart so I decided to restart and try again. This time I'll also start up as the Huns and see what being barbarians is like. Still I agree with Mike, the difference in game play makes this game harder to get hooked on. I don't much like playing on the defensive. I like to conquer. My intincts throughout was to buildup and army and go forth and take yet more.

Obviously that is the wrong way to go and frankly playing to hold on to what you have against the odds is nowhere near as exciting as playing to build up from nothing.

The game itself is wonderful but I'm just not the kind of player that can enjoy wacthing my empire crumble.

[Ace Pace]

I need to get this game, I love defense against the odds.

[Darth Wong]

I got PWNED this weekend, lost Constantinople (1 MOTHERFUCKING siege tower survived my archer barrages that destroyed the other siege engines and in came the barbarian hordes on my walls. It was like death by a thousand cuts as my meager defenders did their best as an endless supply of Goths stormee my walls,) and most of my western provinces while I began to suffer a series of counter attacks in my eastern provinces by the Sessanids. After taking two of their cities they descended from their Northern Turkey strongholds and besieged me, another army popping up way west in Antioch. Then the revolts and riots just got regodamndiculous.

Tip for defending cities against superior forces: if you don't have enough manpower to stop them at the walls, don't even try. Give up the walls and wait for them with all your forces in the city square. There are several reasons to do this:

1. Your men will never flee when they're in the city square (after all, they have nowhere to run since the city square is their default destination when they're fleeing).
2. The enemy must approach through city streets which effectively act as chokepoints. The javelin barrage from your limitanei is most effective in this situation if your men are situated so that they will all open fire just as the enemy comes out of the approaching streets, and archers located behind your limitanei and concomitenses can soften them up and blunt their charge.
3. His men aren't smart enough to run around taking all of your towers; once they're on the walls they will typically make a beeline straight for the gatehouse and then move to ground level to continue their assault. This means that he will often lose considerable numbers of men to inward fire from your guard towers as he wanders around the city looking for the best way to get to your city square.
4. If you're willing to take a chance with one "disposable" unit such as peasants, keep it on the walls but away from the point where the enemy will assault the walls (and definitely not between that point and your gatehouse). The idea is for the enemy to ignore the peasant unit because it's not in the way of his objective, which is the gatehouse. Once he seizes the gatehouse, he will typically move his men down to ground level, open the gates, and move his army inside. At this point, rush your peasants along the walls, recapturing the gatehouse and any towers the enemy has taken. The AI is too stupid to send his men back up once he's put them inside the city on ground level, so this will dramatically increase his casualties from the mechanism described in item #3. It will also cause the near-destruction of any of his units which try to flee, as they have no way out of the city and will be decimated while looking for one. So you won't have the joy of routing some of his units only to see them charging you again at the same strength they were when they first fled.

Frustration was too much at seeing everything falling apart so I decided to restart and try again. This time I'll also start up as the Huns and see what being barbarians is like. Still I agree with Mike, the difference in game play makes this game harder to get hooked on. I don't much like playing on the defensive. I like to conquer. My intincts throughout was to buildup and army and go forth and take yet more.

I've been thinking more about it, and I think part of the problem is the size of your starting territory. A lot of people like the beginning part of RTW the best because there are so few cities, and very little micromanagement is required. In BI, you start with a lot of cities, and because of the precarious financial and defense situation, you must carefully micromanage every single settlement. So you're stick with tedious micromanagement right off the bat, rather than focusing mostly on conquest the way you do in early-game RTW. The game actually gets more enjoyable as you keep playing, rather than getting less enjoyable as RTW did (although that is only the case if you are winning).

It's quite a thrill when you vanquish enemies despite your starting disadvantages, particularly historically devastating enemies such as the Huns. I have now destroyed the Hun faction, the Sarmatian faction, and the Vandal faction. All have been sent across the River Styx by my armies (with a little help from their own poor tactics). I find that large numbers of archers are indispensable when attacking barbarian hordes in the field because of their love of horse archer units. Their horse archers are quite vulnerable to the massed fire from foot archers, and of course, a unit of carriage ballistae can't hurt either.

The game itself is wonderful but I'm just not the kind of player that can enjoy wacthing my empire crumble.

I still don't see why anybody's playing as the Eastern Empire. Isn't the whole point of this game to try and reverse history and save the Western Roman Empire from destruction? It's the hardest faction to play, but I was whooping with triumph when I eliminated the Huns. It does take a while to get into the right mindset for this game, though. Many of my interior cities have all-peasant garrisons; something I would never have done in RTW. But the difference between peasant upkeep costs and even the lowliest mainline infantry upkeep costs in this game are huge: it takes as much money to maintain one unit of limitanei as it does to maintain six units of peasants.

[Vympel]

I still don't see why anybody's playing as the Eastern Empire. Isn't the whole point of this game to try and reverse history and save the Western Roman Empire from destruction?

For my part I can't wait to play as Constantinople because I'm Greek With my dad regaling me of all the nationalist Greek sentiment about the glory of Constantinople, it's destruction at the hands of the Ottomans (play Medieval Total War if you want to avert that, though it's inferior to Rome in terms of engine, naturally)- it seemed the natural choice. Heck, the only reason I played as the Romans first was to get to the Seleucid Greeks and the Greek city states. It seems natural to play as Constantinople after that.

I would play as the Western Empire after that, though. It's the barbarians I don't have much desire to play as.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Fuck it. I'm buying the original game and the expansion. I've put this off for too long and, frankly, the best RTS of all time (or so I hear) demands to be in my collection. I thought it wouldn't be anything special when I saw it on the Beeb's Time Commanders, but they were only playing pre-set battles and not the whole game campaign. Plus, it's cheaper now.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The developer is Swedish, ya yutzes.

Unless by "Sweden" you mean "Sussex, England", you'd be wrong.