urgent assistance required

[Gaiusscipio]

im playing the rtw campaign as scippi all is going well i got sicly and carthage and thapsus. i get a good income and i am planning on conquering africa.next thing i know numidia and carthage ally and storm thapsus, killing 2 family members which i planned on using as generals marian reforms kicks in now and to make matters worse the fleet of numidia wiped out every ship of mine in 1 turn! and whats more carthage are going to capture carthage city the city back 5 turns later civil war breaks out and i find myself kicked out of italy losing 3 members! meaning carthage is my biggest income city which is under siege and has been for 2 turns, so no chance of sending a relief force because they wiped out my fleet and formed a line on the sicilian channel i am now broke and only have 3 family members left 2 are in carthage this is a calamity! and brutii are moving on messana! what do i do!

[Scutarii]

How did the civil war break out if you only have Sicily and part of Africa? And the AI can't start the civil war on its own...

I would suggest restarting your campaign. Once you only have Sicily (as Carthage is under siege), you will be far too small and poor to withstand the other Roman Factions, as by the time the civil war starts, they are always huge. What year is it?

[Gaiusscipio]

YEAR IS 195 BC AND I STILL HAVENT BEEN ABEL TO CONQUER CARTHAGE JULII STARTED WAR IN ROME

[Roman14]

I would start building up in sicily then take carthage back maby you can win the battle at carthage if its not already lost

[LeonidasOfSparta]

lol funny thread

[Roman14]

how about this when in doubt or losing a campaign start over

[NobleNick]

I have never heard of an AI Roman faction starting the civil war. And this seems awfully early for ANY faction to start it. Are you playing vanilla 1.5? If so, what difficulty are you playing?

I will try to give some advice based on the assumption that your game is not bugged. (I am not at all sure of the validity of this assumption.)

First off, I find it amazing that it is 190 BC and you have (had) 6 cities? Doesn't the game start at 270 B.C.? That means you are captured about 3 cities in 80 x 2 = 160 turns? If so, you are playing WA-A-AYYY too conservatively, my friend; and you might as well throw in the towel on this game, cause you are screwed. A very good player might be able to pull this out; but a very good player would not be in your situation. I have never had a long campaign go longer than 100 turns or so, and I've played plenty of them on h/h and vh/vh settings. You can find a detailed campaign report by Severous on this forum, wherein he completed a long campaign as Egypt, on vh/vh, in about 40 turns. You could be capturing a settlement every 10 turns, giving you 16 + 3 = 19 settlements in 160 turns, and I think virtually all RTW players would still label you as a conservative player. Get aggressive.

O.K., first overall game strategy: "The sinews of war is money." (some dead Greek guy) "It's the economy, stupid." (Bill Clinton) Money will give you the OPPORTUNITY to win battles by providing you the money to field more and better troops. So the goal is to expand territory (capture settlements) at a reasonable rate, and invest the money you get into things that will get you more money. There are lots of in depth guides, but let me give you some basic campaign rules that you should not break until you know exactly why you are breaking them:

1.) Always build the first 2 farm upgrades.
2.) Never build more than the first 4 farm upgrades.
3.) If you build more than the first 3 farm upgrades, build lots of public order buildings, as soon as you can.
4.) Invest heavily in economy in the early game (roads, markets, ports).
5.) Invest heavily in economy in the mid game (roads, markets, ports).
6.) Invest heavily in military in the late game (units and unit upgrade buildings).
7.) Keep taxes on VERY HIGH setting. IF you have to drop taxes to HIGH, you have a problem. Dropping taxes will NOT solve the problem, since they only increase population growth, making your problem worse in a few turns. Drop taxes if you must, fix the problem QUICKLY, and return taxes to the highest possible setting.
8.) Train up at least 2 diplomats in the early game and go out getting trade agreements with everybody.
9.) Try to go to war with only one faction at a time: War hurts trade.
10.) Pick on a faction you can beat; annihilate them; repeat.
11.) Start the game by waging war on the rebel faction: snap up all the rebel settlements you can, as quickly as you can.
12.) Too much military kills your economy. Build only enough military to do a job, then immediately do the job. Do not let your armies loaf.
13.) Peasants are the most cost-effective garrison. Train only peasants for garrison duty. Train only enough peasants to barely do the job. Do not train peasants to go out into field battles: These guys SHOULD loaf.
14.) Quickly build new buildings, if you capture a city not of your culture. Especially replace the temple as quickly as public order will allow.
15.) Enslave captured settlements in the early game, to keep population increasing; but exterminate large cities, especially those not of your culture and most especially late in the game or far away from your capital.

Now, on to the battle rules. Terrain and unit types can alter the odds significantly, but in general you should be able to win against the AI with the following odds (force meter in the battle screen) without any dirty tricks:

Field battle (AI attacking) 3:4 (you = 3, AI = 4)
Field battle (you attacking) 1:1
Siege battle (AI attacking) 2:3 (you = 2, AI = 3)
Siege battle (you attacking) 3:2 (you = 3, AI = 2)

Again, these numbers assume that you are only slightly smarter than the AI or are playing on a harder battle setting. If you find that you can not consistently win at these odds, then ratchet the battle difficulty down a notch and start a new game. OR learn and apply some of these rules:

1.) Use spies to figure out what units the enemy has, and to infiltrate cities to open city gates.
2.) If the enemy has mostly cavalry, you bring mostly spears and a few archers.
3.) If the enemy has mostly spears, you bring mostly swords and a few archers.
4.) If the enemy has mostly swords, you bring mostly swords and cavalry
5.) If the enemy has mostly archers, you bring mostly cavalry
6.) If you are defending in a siege, you want swords/archers on the walls, and swords/spears in the streets.
7.) If you are attacking in a siege, you want mostly swords, backed up by archers. (Throw in some spears if the enemy has lots of horses.)
8.) In field battles, ALWAYS, as much as possible, approach the enemy army on the campaign map so that you are uphill on the campaign map (this will put you uphill on the battle map).
9.) ALWAYS, as much as possible, try to be the defender.
10.) The ideal situation for a standard field battle is with you as defender, starting steeply uphill of the enemy, and you have lots of protected archers.
11.) If you have an all-cavalry force, try to pick the battle location where there are few or no trees/rocks/etc. Again, an uphill start is best: make the enemy climb up to you before you gallop off.
12.) Shields are carried in the left hand. Position your archers so that they will shoot into the enemy's right flank or into their back. This removes the protection of the shield.
13.) Use the pause feature in battles, to make sure your units do what you want, when you want it.
14.) Remember that one of the most powerful one-two punches that can be delivered in battle is to engage the enemy infantry unit with your unit, then run a full blown cavarly charge into the back of the enemy unit.
15.) Battles in which you are out-numbered and out-gunned can still be won if you deploy your forces such that you get LOCAL superiority over a small piece of the enemy army, and cause it to rout. Then repeat with an adjacent enemy unit. If enough enemy units rout in a short period of time, the whole army will rout in domino fashion. A routing army is easy to kill: don't let them get away...
16.) If you are defending, you can hide most of your army (not the general) in trees, and then let the enemy chase your cavalry for a while, until they are tired. Then fight them.
17.) If you are attacking, and the enemy has lots of archers, and you do not have lots of archers, press the "Wait(3)" button a few times, to try and get rain.
18.) Try to fight barbarians (e.g. Gaul and Germania) in the open field and in the summer: many of them get combat bonuses in woods or snow.

I hope this helps. If you want more help on your current game, please post detailed information, like exactly which cities you hold and exactly how many and what types of units you have and where they are, and what your income is and how much of that is taken up by military upkeep.

[Scutarii]

I have never heard of an AI Roman faction starting the civil war. And this seems awfully early for ANY faction to start it. Are you playing vanilla 1.5? If so, what difficulty are you playing?

My thoughts exactly...

[movemove]

dude, its been what? 80 years into the campaign and youve captured about ..5 cities?make a super strong fllet quickly and sink any naval inkursions into your waters quickly, lest they bring an invasion force into sicily.

[Kratos]

I have never heard of an AI Roman faction starting the civil war. And this seems awfully early for ANY faction to start it. Are you playing vanilla 1.5? If so, what difficulty are you playing?

I will try to give some advice based on the assumption that your game is not bugged. (I am not at all sure of the validity of this assumption.)

...

Loads of great advice there Nick, would give you rep but it's too soon since last time.

My advice: Restart your campaign.

[Gaiusscipio]

WHAT IS VANILLA? ANYWAYS I HAD MY FRIEND EDIT THE GAME TO MAKE AL MORE PROTECTIVE OF ITS LANDS AND ROMANS WANT EAGLES BACK, AI IS 50X STRONGER AND CARTHAGE AND NUMIDIA WERE TEAM PLAYERS ALMOST AS THEY COORDINATED THE ATTACK, 1 TOOK OUT THE FLEET WHILE THE OTHER KEPT BESIEGIINGN THE CITIES, AND I CANT RETRAIN

[Paggers]

WHAT IS VANILLA?

Unmodified RTW original game, may or may not be patched.

ANYWAYS I HAD MY FRIEND EDIT THE GAME TO MAKE AL MORE PROTECTIVE OF ITS LANDS AND ROMANS WANT EAGLES BACK, AI IS 50X STRONGER AND CARTHAGE AND NUMIDIA WERE TEAM PLAYERS ALMOST AS THEY COORDINATED THE ATTACK, 1 TOOK OUT THE FLEET WHILE THE OTHER KEPT BESIEGIINGN THE CITIES, AND I CANT RETRAIN

To misquote Leonidas "THIS IS NOT SPARTA!" so please stop using capital letters. Turn off Caps Lock

[Roman14]

First,I got to give you some rep noblenick for that post.
As for the AI starting civil war it happened to me ounce as the brutii.
Im also guessing that Guissscipio is new to the game so lets cut him some slack

[NobleNick]

(Thanks, Roman14 and Kratos)

WHAT IS VANILLA?

As Paggers said, UNmodified RTW.

ANYWAYS I HAD MY FRIEND EDIT THE GAME TO...

So, you are playing a modified game, and therefore are not playing vanilla.

...AL MORE PROTECTIVE OF ITS LANDS AND ROMANS WANT EAGLES BACK, AI IS 50X STRONGER...

If the AI really is 50 times as strong (that is hard to believe) and is also more protective, then I understand why you've only taken 3 cities or so. This is not RTW; and is not even a close mod, if what you say is true. I really can't give you any advice, other than to refer you back to my original statement: You are screwed.

[Gaiusscipio]

well maybe i exaggerated 50x stronger maybe 5 or 6 x stronger

[Roman14]

I would say if its that hard just start on easy and slowly get better

[Draugdur]

well maybe i exaggerated 50x stronger maybe 5 or 6 x stronger

Well, even so, I for one would certainly very much like to know whta exactly did your friend edit...'cause, no matter which mod I'd play, the AI was basically just as incompetent.

But anyway, I'll give you some advice (provided that you didn't re-start already), but not much since: a) I'd need more details for that; b) NN has already said most stuff worth saying So...
First of all - try to control as much land as you can with the smallest army possible. For instance, if you need to double your manpower in order to hold one more city, it usually isn't worth it. Use natural obstacles-rivers, mountains and even large desert areas as borders - for example, holding the entire Iberian peninsula is basically possible with 2-3 full stack armies, not more.
Some advice on naval warfare:
-Don't waste money on single ships - ships are expensive to build and to maintain. Either build something that can be called a fleet (5 ships min.) or don't build them at all.
-Try to pick your enemies' single ships and smaller fleets - this way, your own will get experience, so you'll get more power for the same amount of money. And try to avoid them doing the same to you - keep your ships together!
-More powerful ships (i.e. higher level) are better, right? Well, wrong! 'Cause, in naval warfare, higher power (bigger ship, more men etc.) means lower maneuverability, and all power and no maneuverability can mean all dead (or at least that's what people who deal with naval warfare say ). So, even if you have the cash, always have some lower-level ships in your fleet (I've found 5 triremae + 3 quadriremae a fine balance).
-Don't bother blocking ports, especially if you're playing on vhard - ain't worth it (10000d/turn bonus that AI gets )

Sometimes, running away from a battle can be a very good idea. Well, if you do so (and you should, every once in a while), pay attention to following - if you withdraw on battle map, your army will go back only a few kilometers (or 'steps'); and if the enemy engages again (and he will, in 9/10 cases) there's nowhere to run! So this is what you do: you enter the battle, and then withdraw - this way your army will go waaaay back to the nearest safe place. This is actually quite annoying since AI uses it all the time but if he can, so can you.

And once again, the best advice I can give you: read NN's post!

[NobleNick]

5x or 6x ?? O.K. If the AI is not on an eradication campaign against your faction, and if you have won a campaign or 2 on H/H or VH/VH, and if the current game difficulty is on H/H or easier, then I think we MIGHT be able to help you. But, as Draugdur said, we need to know exactly how your friend modded the game. And, as I said, we also need to know your exact situation (cities you hold, exact unit numbers and where they are, enemy force and location, your economy, the battle difficulty and campaign difficulty settings, etc.) Can you post a screen shot of the campaign map, and annotate into the picture (or describe) the force strengths and your economy?

If you want meaningful help, you need to give us detail, lots and lots of relevant (and accurate) details about the mod, about your economy and about your strategic situation.

[Gaiusscipio]

Well the mod is changing the factions personalitys


faction egypt, religious caesar
denari 1000
settlement
this means that religious caesar(unless completely unthinking) is a conquerous personality, egpt conquer the entire eastern world in vanilla i am guessing what my m8 did was change personalities of most factions to the personalities of protective factions or agressive ones (bureacrat napoleon) or trader henry ive seen in vanilla that briton are conquerous. THIS IS JUST A GUESS.