Rome T.W.

[Sand]

Okay just started playing last night. Holy mother of god Im getting my ass handed to me very quickly in the game on just medium/normal difficulty setting.

Started as Julii didnt like them, switched to Brutii.

Within a fairly small number of turns it seems the senate goes from asking me to conquer easy rebel villages and blockading ports to trying to Conquer a Greek City capital with 400+ defending army in it. 

If you're playing as Julii then that's pretty normal. Otherwise the simplest way to keep money rolling in is kicking out an army of diplomats early on getting Trade rights with every other nation then concentrating on building ports and markets in every conquered city as a priority. If you're playing Scipii or Brutii that should be plenty to keep money coming in combined with the occasional spate of conquering other cities and enslaving the populace to promote growth in your own cities and to pacify the conquered. I haven't really found out if there's any big reason to be merciful to anywhere you conquer.

I read an online guide prior to starting the game over again. Started with Brutii this time. According to the guide build up eco buildings (roads, farms, ports, temples, sewer, trader, market, etc) before starting to build any of the more advanced military buildings. However I swear within 20 turns of starting its moved on from asking me to blockade two ports, and conquer two rebel villages, to conquering some greek city with 400+ soldiers. And even if I ignore the mission the Greek City sends out this humongous army and starts capturing my cities.

Havent caught the hang of using diplomats yet. Seems they need damn ships to get anywhere within a few turns which is a royal pain in the ass when you are tight on funds and the senate is screaming for your navy to blockade some port.

Help/advice? 

[HaemishM]

No matter what, you always start your Total War games worried about the economy. If you don't have the ducats, you can't build the armies. You can usually do decently with the lower level troops against most early game opponents unless you are a complete muppet.

[Paelos]

The Senate's job is to screw you so you never get too powerful for them to control. Remember that and make sure it's in your best interest to follow their plans.

Don't start wars on other people's terms. You should always have an economic surplus before you start building troops.

Don't over garrison your interior cities. 4 units should be enough to keep any city in line at the beginning of the game. Do not stack your cities because the upkeep kills your economy.

Get 3 diplomats. Send 1 across land to the north. Make trade arrangements with all the barbarians. Send two east and make trade arrangements with everyone else except the greeks.

Cavalry sucks in this game and they are expensive. It's ROME! Use your infantry to keep costs down and roll over nations. Pepper them with some light horses to chase down archers, and some archers of your own. The bulk should be heavy legions with some spearmen to stop horse nations. Also, archers pwn greek spearmen because they are slow as shit.

Boats are expensive. Keep one powerful fleet (4-5 boats) early and disband the rest. Use it to control the places you want to attack and move important troops. Otherwise, do not keep a large navy in the beginning.

[Sand]

Ooooh so ignoring the Senate is okay? I was like a monkey jumping through fiery hoops trying to comply with their orders.

[HaemishM]

I haven't played much Rome, but sounds like the Senate is a lot like the Church in Medieval. They will constantly pester you to start a crusade, or stop making war on other Christian nations. You can tell them to get bent and ask for forgiveness later.

[WayAbvPar]

Or install your own Pope and do what ever the fuck you want.

[Big Gulp]

I haven't played much Rome, but sounds like the Senate is a lot like the Church in Medieval. They will constantly pester you to start a crusade, or stop making war on other Christian nations. You can tell them to get bent and ask for forgiveness later.

Or better yet, capture Rome and send the papacy into exile.  I'm the Holy Roman Emperor, bitch.  You might be the vicar of Christ on earth, but I have actual armies.

Plus it's fun to get excommunicated and fight off crusading armies.

[Montague]

The Senate's job is to screw you so you never get too powerful for them to control. Remember that and make sure it's in your best interest to follow their plans.

Don't start wars on other people's terms. You should always have an economic surplus before you start building troops.

Don't over garrison your interior cities. 4 units should be enough to keep any city in line at the beginning of the game. Do not stack your cities because the upkeep kills your economy.

Get 3 diplomats. Send 1 across land to the north. Make trade arrangements with all the barbarians. Send two east and make trade arrangements with everyone else except the greeks.

Cavalry sucks in this game and they are expensive. It's ROME! Use your infantry to keep costs down and roll over nations. Pepper them with some light horses to chase down archers, and some archers of your own. The bulk should be heavy legions with some spearmen to stop horse nations. Also, archers pwn greek spearmen because they are slow as shit.

Boats are expensive. Keep one powerful fleet (4-5 boats) early and disband the rest. Use it to control the places you want to attack and move important troops. Otherwise, do not keep a large navy in the beginning.

Agree with most of this. Build ONLY economic improvements early on. Ports, Roads, Marketplaces etc.

Disagree about the cavalry though. I like having either a couple of heirs or heavy cavalry in every stack to use in double enveloping maneuvers - light cavalry is too fragile for my tastes -and having cavalry smashing into the rear of enemy units often causes a cascading rout

Elevation matters. Don't attack uphill unless you greatly outnumber the enemy, you get negatives to attack and morale. In fact the best way to take out a big stack of enemies is to stake a defensive position near hills or mountains and let them attack you. I've had AI units rout before they even reached my lines because the morale penalties were so high.

[Paelos]

Late cavalry is fine, but only after the Marius event. Early cavalry blows.

[Sand]

Doing better than I was. Decided early on to make someone my bitch and that lucky winner were the Macedonians. So Im taking the whole peninsula which also included the Greek City capital of Sparta.
That helped my economy ramp up much quicker than taking over those measly rebel villages the senate sends you afterwards.

[Shaje]

The ONLY thing I spend money on toward the start is roads/markets/ports. Those structures are also the first to get built and upgraded. Since the AI of neighbor nations will declare war (and maintain it) for no good reason, I have never put much effort into foreign trade.

Oh, the Total Realism mod is definitely worth checking out.

[NowhereMan]

Doing better than I was. Decided early on to make someone my bitch and that lucky winner were the Macedonians. So Im taking the whole peninsula which also included the Greek City capital of Sparta.
That helped my economy ramp up much quicker than taking over those measly rebel villages the senate sends you afterwards.

With trade agreements, upgraded ports, markets and roads with a good deal of Greece conquered you will have more money than you know what to do with. Also on normal difficulty it is really easy to beat the AI with classic cavalry flanking. Send in your Hastati and Principes to engage their hoplites in a nice, neat line and send equites round the back to charge in. After they've gotten embroiled in combat just keep taking them out and charging them back in, concentrate on one regiment at a time and you'll get a rout going in no time. It really keeps your casualties down, which in the early game massively reduces retraining costs and can even let you beat armies that greatly outnumber you (or at least inflict ridiculous casualties so that your real armies have an easier time). The Senate also have a really fucking annoying habit of doing stuff like ordering you to declare war on some kingdom the other side of your territory from where most of your forces are and then declaring them friends of Rome you aren't allowed to touch 8 turns later when you've just managed to march a substantial force half way across the world to take them down. Fuck 'em, some of the rewards for missions are nice and the bonuses from senate offices are can be useful for governors but they will sometimes just fuck with you for the sake of it.

Also does anyone with more experience with this than me have tips for keeping your cities happy? I find squalor levels seem to be tough to keep under control, although I noticed after beginning a campaign of genocidal conquest against the Egyptians that my own cities suddenly became a lot happier. Is it worth exterminating random places later on rather than enslaving them to keep your own populace in line or is something else at play here?

[Muffled]

Enslaving too many cities will send your home region population up faster than you can build improvements to handle it, not sure whether that's the issue you're running into or not.

I'd like to recommend the Europa Barbarorum mod, found on the website of the same name, for anyone interested in a neckbeardy complete overhaul.  Same time period and roughly the same map area, much more stuff to build and more interesting factions.

[Tale]

I recently played through to winning Rome as Brutii. My empire by that time was almost everything to the east, apart from the northeast. Moved the capital to the middle to keep the fringes happy.

My usual battle tactic against AI is a tight line of infantry in guard mode with strong flanks, with lots of ranged (pref archers) piled up behind them. Also put the ranged troops in guard mode and switch off skirmish so all they do is fire. Many Roman infantry types also have ranged ammo, so put them into fire at will mode too. Make this infantry/ranged block the main target for the enemy by sitting your general's unit behind it. Use them as a rout-creator if you want, but beware charging an inexperienced general/heir into the front of even a wavering enemy unit as he may die fast.

Run your other cavalry around the flanks of the enemy and use any opportunity to pick off units, especially when you can hit them from the rear or side, e.g. hitting one unit with 2 cavalry units from different directions. You can often take out the enemy general that way.

I hate assaulting cities as the AI is messy but defending them is pretty easy with just a phalanx type unit in guard mode blocking the gate the enemy is trying to enter.

Aggressive early expansion seemed to work for me as the neighbours aren't as single minded about it. And if you can afford naval dominance you'll have a lot more trade income.

[NowhereMan]

I think the slaving thing was the exact problem I run into. I'm always aggressive about expanding cities to tech up asap and want to pacify conquered places so enslavement is my default mode of dealing with the conquered. I don't think I'd ever realised there was a real downside to enslaving whole civilisations

Also a minor point but whenevery you're fighting a bridge map be very careful about charging cavalry or sending your troops to run down routing enemy. The enemy units will run alongside the rive and it is very common for your units to try to maintain formation while chasing them and lining themselves up directly behind them, which results in half the regiment getting a bath and drowning. In one memorable battle my own casualties were very light until I noticed I'd lost almost 150 cavalry to muddy riverbanks.

[Ghambit]

All I cared about was how badass screaming women made my barbarian horde.

[Paelos]

All I cared about was how badass screaming women made my barbarian horde.

I loved playing at the Britons and flinging the heads of my enemies into their midst so they would rout screaming.

[Ghambit]

All I cared about was how badass screaming women made my barbarian horde.

I loved playing at the Britons and flinging the heads of my enemies into their midst so they would rout screaming.

That, and watching elephants scream like little bitches when I'd unleash waves of flaming pigs into their lines.  The whole barbarian strat. is just all kinds of 

[NowhereMan]

I've developed a fondness for War dogs units in seiges, the casualties get healed up pretty quick for the dogs and they can seriously soften up an opponent for the infantry to grind them down.

Also is there any actual use for Arcani? I mean they sound kind of bad ass but generally if they're out on their own to try and ambush they get massacred and if they're far enough away to successfully hid for flanking they take ages to actually get to the battle, at which point things are pretty much decided. I want to use them and sometimes do but I don't feel like I get much out of them.

[Paelos]

Also is there any actual use for Arcani? I mean they sound kind of bad ass but generally if they're out on their own to try and ambush they get massacred and if they're far enough away to successfully hid for flanking they take ages to actually get to the battle, at which point things are pretty much decided. I want to use them and sometimes do but I don't feel like I get much out of them.

Short answer is yes, but you have to have a strategy for them. Personally, I love to build an army of 4 arcani, 4 wardogs, 2 light horses, 3 archers, and 4 legions.

You can create this unholy speed army that you use for patrol purposes on your lands, picking off rebels or small unit incursions. They are fast, they strike hard, and they scare the shit out of everyone. I send the war dogs immediately after the opposing archers, fire my archers at the infantry, engage with the legions, and then speed flank with arcani, using the horses to run them down.

Battles last a minute at best since your enemy's morale goes into the toilet.

[Paelos]

This thread got me playing again as the Brutii this time.

Screw the Macedonians!

[Teleku]

Yeah, that's what I was saying early.  My favorite play through of Rome was Brutii.  Its an epic long fight to eventually defeat the Greeks/Macadonians.  Don't think I've had as much fun, or as big of a challenge, than in any other TW game.

[Johny Cee]

Also does anyone with more experience with this than me have tips for keeping your cities happy? I find squalor levels seem to be tough to keep under control, although I noticed after beginning a campaign of genocidal conquest against the Egyptians that my own cities suddenly became a lot happier. Is it worth exterminating random places later on rather than enslaving them to keep your own populace in line or is something else at play here?

I generally just enslave, and I've never really had a problem with it.  Build order is happiness/public order improvements, market improvements, and then the public health/happiness improvements.  Don't be afraid to jack up the tax rates to keep the population growth under control.  I also try to build the public health improvements last as they jack up pop growth as well.

People forget that high incomes/trade generates wealth and happiness, so don't stint on those improvements.  Also, you need to keep ports open...  a blockaded port will drop a city's trade income which then causes a disorder problem.

Also, it's worth it in settled land to keep a couple of flying columns of troops around to exterminate any rebel forces.  Rebel forces in a province will cut off trade along roads (decreasing income), but it also factors into the amount of "rebels" that show up in your city view. 


A couple of general suggestions: 

- If you have a city with a population that is outgrowing your improvement schedule, recruit a shitload of high number low cost units from that city (peasants, for instance).  You can then march those guys over to one of the shitty, small growth rebel settlements you take over and disband them where they will pump up the local population.  This helps control the pop growth of your high growth rate cities, while getting your low population settlements' populations up.

- Make sure to check what your various governor's stats are.  A Large City needs at least a mediocre governor, or at least a governor that is a net positive.  Sometimes in backwaters, a governor you sent out there 5 or 10 turns ago has picked up a pile of bad attributes and actually is the cause of some of your disorder problems.

- I like to have at least a couple of fleets around to pick off rebel fleets or enemy fleets that harass your trade.  A high population port will generate a massive amount of income for you as long as they and their trade partners aren't blockaded.

- Island hopping is a good way to create long term income.  The islands are pretty safe from invasion, and usually grow slowly, so you can ramp up economy upgrades quickly.  This feeds back to your homeland port cities.

- Playing as a Roman faction, you know the general strategic plan for each (Julii go after Gaul, etc.).  If you start as one, it's very easy to cut off the expansion route of another faction making them permanently low developed and making your end game easier.  This also gives you more conquest oppportunities next to your capital.  So, as the Julii, force rush down and take Sicily, or take the provinces next to the Greek nations.  That really sets back the other Roman factions, so mid to late game you don't have to worry about them.