After Patch 9, playing Rome is hard or did I become a noob?

[HorseArcher]

Ok, call me a noob (not really, if you look at my history on TWC), but I can't progress beyond 20-30 turns playing on "normal" difficulty. I haven't tried playing on any other difficulty yet.

Since patch 9,I get overran by Barbarians from the North and African factions from the South and the entire known world hates me, and within time, I'm finished. I restarted the campaign 4 times now and the farthest I got was 34 turns.
After that, the empire collapses (it's pretty much just the Italian Peninsula and Carthage) no matter what I do. Collapse- I mean, constant rebellions and 4-5 factions attacking simultaneously, with others joining in soon and I can't make enough money to keep up.

As I said, ran the campaign (playing Rome) 4 times, and each time I was check-mate at 30 turns, it was pointless to continue, due to invading armies and slave revolts and zero balance.

As I said, call me a noob, but I start to loose provinces and I can't raise any money to maintain decent forces to protect what I have. The Celtic Alliance comes down with 4-5 full stack armies at a certain point in the game, (now with siege weapons too) and raze and overrun everything and even if I have 2-3 armies waiting for them in ambush mode.
The forces are to overwhelming to handle, not to mention they send 4-5 agents ahead of their attacks, assassinating, poisoning and creating unrest. I can't really deal with them since I get 1 agent of each and all needed somewhere.
Even if I don't attack anyone in Africa, Carthage turns hostile and joins the Barbarians (begins attacking from the South with insta-boat armies) and the Greeks won't trade, won't even sign a non-agression pact.
I tried playing defensive and concentrating on research and upgrades and trading, and I also tried playing offensive by attacking as much as I can, wherever I can and focusing on army upgrades and raising as big forces as my treasury allowed me.

Also tried balanced play littlebit of this and that. All types of game play lead me to failure and eventual defeat quite early in the game.

Just for the record, I have beaten the game twice already earlier (before patch 9) and I have to admit it wasn't difficult, but now it's feels like I'm on nightmare level suddenly.

Here some stuff I have noticed.
-The morale seem to be different now, my 3 chevron legionnaires get crushed and run away from barbarians with no experience. I had Legio Italica since the turn 3 or 4, with armor+weapon upgrades and getting silver chevrons, and they were wiped out without much difficulty by a freshly recruited barbarian horde.

-There is a whole lot more boating around that goes on the map, and any city not being babysit by an army will get under attacked or harassed continuously by smaller navies or insta-boat armies. If an army attacks and I win, I have to play a ping-pong as they bounce over from being defeated, sometimes bouncing 2 twice after another, leaving a newly conquered town undefended. Since the army "bounced" too far, it can't make it back in one turn to the town, which is possibly gets under attacked immediately by another enemy or riots , and now there is a slave revolt to deal with, while my treasury is running empty.

-I think the worst part is, the trespassing that goes on. i get supposedly neutral countries running over my Italy like it's just a carpet on the floor, and continue their boating around on the other side as well as the AI now plays against the human player like all the other factions is just one giant faction to be used to attack the human player.

Since I don't see anyone complaining about these, I'm still trying to figure out, whether it's just me playing this game "wrong", or maybe a remnant of a mod causing this, or did I completely loose my mojo and I forgot how to play Total War?

[GideonAI]

Yeah, they made several changes and the one that sticks out the most to me is that enemy units become more powerful on higher difficulty levels. One of the cheapest methods of improving difficulty, in my opinion.

[Vardeus]

What family are you playing? Junii can be very unforgiving. At this point if i was you i would try to get some non-aggression pacts going (even if you must pay for them) but i guess you already did that.

How many turns did you need to wipe out the etruscans? Also what was killing your legionnaires, maybe the enemy had a skirmisher heavy army build? I guess you had cavalry just to give your armies another dimension to play with, if it keeps feeling completely unbearable try to get some ballistas asap into your army builds until you get a proper economy/army of your liking and feel more confident.

I might give rome a try in this patch just to back up your thoughts with my own.

[Monoloco]

I wish I could give some insightful tips but I have refused to play Vanilla since Oct. Only my avid fascination of the era brought me back and did not do what Empire did to me in regards to playing it and Napoleon, ie quit and never play or have the desire to ever again. The fact that after recently uninstalling a bunch of mods and forgetting that I had done so ( I swap out overhauls for new campaigns often), I made it into turn 30 or so as Carthage sailed round to the Lusitani intent on invading Spain from there, and saw 3 levy spear type units with 127 defensive rating... Buffed because i play the game on VH. My best unit did not have more than 60, and my average mid 30s etc. Half of the NPC units defensive bar was white indicating buffs. I raged quit on the spot checked my mods realised my mistake and promptly installed my next collection of overhauls.

[tarloch]

i started a VH campaign after patch 9 and the enemy units are not breaking until they are down to about 10-20 men out of 160, maybe its the difficulty but i still think thats insane so maybe they tweaked morale for all levels. to counter this use a lot of skirmishers and 3-4 ballistas until you get better infantry

if you are playing rome you will already be at war with etruscans, your best opening move is to attack the island of corsica with your fleet and maybe army backup; that removes the navy threat from them and stops them building up too much making it much easier to kill them off quickly. i try to avoid africa until i have more imperium and make athens a priority as i want those cretan archers ready as soon as i have the auxiilary garrison researched. if u make treaties with syracuse war with carthage in usually unavoidable in that case make carthage your main target as it has walls!.

as a general rule always try and take the capitol of a province first as they have walls and are easy to defend (dumb seige ai). another side effect is the ai normally builds recruitment buildings there so its a win win tactic. if you take an unwalled stettlement and dont think you can defend it retreat your army out of the red zone let the ai recapture it then wipe them out as they try and defend your counter attack

one important point is to try and get a steadfast reputation in diplomacy, that means always declaring war before entering a province to attack. to achieve this make sure theres no diplomatic penalties if you are breaking a treaty then wait 3-4 turns before launching the attack. if you try and stay at steadfast you can virtually divide and conquer at will. then its just a matter of watching diplomacy to see who has bad relations with who and picking the faction you want to have as a friend by attacking their enemy.

keeping the population happy is easy just build relevant buildings keep an eye on tax rate and be patient before moving on. the ai usually spams tons of agents which i think are totally unrealistic and overpowered, you could use a limit agents mod until you get used to handling them. another consideration may be 2 turns per year as it makes generals a little more useful. one i would highly recommend is spenyi better campaign camera

hope this helps out have fun

[Rijul.J.Ballal]

It's quite the improvement...

[HorseArcher]

i started a VH campaign after patch 9 and the enemy units are not breaking until they are down to about 10-20 men out of 160, maybe its the difficulty but i still think thats insane so maybe they tweaked morale for all levels. to counter this use a lot of skirmishers and 3-4 ballistas until you get better infantry

if you are playing rome you will already be at war with etruscans, your best opening move is to attack the island of corsica with your fleet and maybe army backup; that removes the navy threat from them and stops them building up too much making it much easier to kill them off quickly. i try to avoid africa until i have more imperium and make athens a priority as i want those cretan archers ready as soon as i have the auxiilary garrison researched. if u make treaties with syracuse war with carthage in usually unavoidable in that case make carthage your main target as it has walls!.

as a general rule always try and take the capitol of a province first as they have walls and are easy to defend (dumb seige ai). another side effect is the ai normally builds recruitment buildings there so its a win win tactic. if you take an unwalled stettlement and dont think you can defend it retreat your army out of the red zone let the ai recapture it then wipe them out as they try and defend your counter attack

one important point is to try and get a steadfast reputation in diplomacy, that means always declaring war before entering a province to attack. to achieve this make sure theres no diplomatic penalties if you are breaking a treaty then wait 3-4 turns before launching the attack. if you try and stay at steadfast you can virtually divide and conquer at will. then its just a matter of watching diplomacy to see who has bad relations with who and picking the faction you want to have as a friend by attacking their enemy.

keeping the population happy is easy just build relevant buildings keep an eye on tax rate and be patient before moving on. the ai usually spams tons of agents which i think are totally unrealistic and overpowered, you could use a limit agents mod until you get used to handling them. another consideration may be 2 turns per year as it makes generals a little more useful. one i would highly recommend is spenyi better campaign camera

hope this helps out have fun

There are some great insights and thank you for those. I was doing some research on my own and making some logical conclusions regarding what exactly is going on. Apparently my problem with Carthage becoming very hostile is probably due to my treaties and help of Syracuse (Since I didn't wipe them out), which was already waging war with Carthage and Lybia and my soft hearted approach has infuriated them. I figured they could be a useful ally for a while since they don't like the Carthaginians either and their trolling around on the sea could give me an advantage to attack.
I guess, my expansion plan of going at the Celts and Gauls and trying to get Carthage for financial reasons quickly escalates into a full scale attack from all sides.

The problem I find is how the options to play a certain campaign became limited. Like playing a scripted FPS game.

So basically, the barbarians will attack whether or not I plan to invade them or forget about them. They will not sign anything from the get go, not even trade. I really wanted to get the African states, because they generate money quickly, but then I'm opening up myself to 2 fronts anyway whether I want to or not. So basically , "I must go attack the barbarians, and I must go attack and take over Syracuse and use my only given navy boat to sail around the map to find someone who is willing to trade, or my peninsula will go bankrupt".
Actually if I do attack and wipe Syracuse out, then the Greeks who's gonna have a beef with me, since it seems, that I hate Hellenistic culture (and I checked this with the relations map giving me a negative) , and early on the last thing I want is a Greek invasion force while I'm fighting with the barbarians and Carthage already.

If I play a peaceful game (trying to win culturally), and I tried this - I'm just a sitting duck then, regardless of technological research and strong popularity, because the limited 2 armies just cannot deal with the barbarians, let alone if Libya and Carthage decides to take Sicily while I'm idling around in Italy.

So the options how to move forward is becoming quite limited for everyone, unless they are ready to endure battles after battles with smaller invasion forces and rebel armies if the player decides to steer off the planned road. Actually there is a certain point, when the campaign becomes beyond reparable, but it takes a few turns more to realize this. It can be more of a frustrating experience than an enjoyable game, since there are no clues or hints given what has gone wrong and the faction was doomed already 10 years ago, the player just never realized it.

I'm also curious to try out other difficulties in the game, because If I remember Correctly Rome:Total War had this little problem, that the medium difficulty was actually the most difficult settings, which was either corrected later by a patch or never was, and people never even realized this (unless you were reading the forums at the time).

[HippieGunner34]

Yo I'm playing a similar campaign with Rome as the Junii. It was brutal at first, I was having like 6 battles every time I hit end turn. It started with Sparta, Athens, Egypt, Rhodes, and Carthage declaring war on me very early on. I think this was due to the "major cultural aversion" the Junii have for a faction trait. The best advice I can give follows what a previous user sad, to take walled settlements early. For me, Brundism, Medlahn, and Karalis all get hit pretty hard. I like to defend there, then try and counter attack a town or two, sometimes just raiding them for money and destroying all the buildings. The ai will take it back from you, but will have nothing in it. You go back to your walls and get comfy again. I usually only have an army with 4-5 units to defend these, so you have to rely on your garrison. The reason is if you put a big stack there, the ai will not attack, you kind of goad them into an attack, so you can counter. The last fortunate thing I did was pay the averni to attack Carthage and Nova Carthago. It cost a load of money, but it was worth it. Now that we shared a common enemy, I killed every prisoner, villager, etc so my diplomacy rating with averni goes up. Eventually I got a def alliance with them, and that lowers the risk of attack IMO. Stick with it man cause I just hit turn 90 and have no wars and a nice fat empire. Very much worth the hard start, I feel like I fought for every inch of territory I own. Hope some of this helps, you should post back if you start playing again, I'm very curious.

[Vimes]

Reading the first post reminded me of my own findings of late, which typically started since patch 9. I have dropped in difficulty level from hard, which was more than manageable, to normal - which is now just becoming ok(ish).

All of my campaigns have been using the three different houses of the Roman faction.

Prior to the version 9 patch I was doing reasonably well on the hard level of difficulty, holding back from any type of steam rolling and building up quite nicely, in terms of town and city development. The morale of my troops in battle, in particular against the Barbs in the North, were more than holding their own.

Then come along patch 9 and I have accepted that I have needed to drop a difficulty level but also use some more conservative tactics etc when developing relationships and really thinking much more about the province development, depending on any resources being present etc, as well as the use of agents and that my Praetorians, and the hire of mercanaries, can be both costly and no guarantee that they will no longer rout against Barbs etc since the latest patch.

I have tended to leave Syracuse, both in terms of any relationship (apart from trade) as Carthage seems to take them over anyway and previous treaties with them tends to upset Carthage. I have built one ship and gone sailing off to meet and trade as well as expand more in a northerly direction whilst maintaining good relationships with Lybia, Carthage, Nova Carthago, Egypt etc to ensure that I'm not at war on two fronts.

Even though Gladiators do not have any armour they are cheap to maintain and seem to hold up well against the Barbs.

Patch 9 for me has forced me to rethink how I have been playing the game so far as, so it seems, many of my previous tactics used no longer allow me to grow as the campaign develops. I have been a little surprised that I have not read many others experiencing similar issues.

I use a 4TPY only mod as well as a Roman archer unit add on mod.

[tarloch]

i played all three roman houses and two times i have had to war with carthage and its satellites from very early on. one was my fault i signed a treaty with syracuse which pissed them off and the other they DW virtually from end of turn one. i dont seem to have a problem with the northern tribes. maybe its because i finish the eutruscans fast and keep the number of opponents low so it prevents the AI from starting a feeding frenzy because it sees me as weak and ripe for the picking.

work on your reputation, diplomacy although not perfect seems to work reasonably well and those non aggression pacts will save you early on. if warring carthage look east for friends and vice versa if you warring with the greeks. the secret is to divide and conquer as you have limited resources. if your target is in an alliance try and see if it has a defensive ally and DW on that as a way of drawing them in to conflict without major ally support

as for trade you need a resource or two before other states are willing to sign anything, get that diplomatic rep in the green and things will start to happen before you know it

[HorseArcher]

Yo I'm playing a similar campaign with Rome as the Junii. It was brutal at first, I was having like 6 battles every time I hit end turn. It started with Sparta, Athens, Egypt, Rhodes, and Carthage declaring war on me very early on. I think this was due to the "major cultural aversion" the Junii have for a faction trait. The best advice I can give follows what a previous user sad, to take walled settlements early. For me, Brundism, Medlahn, and Karalis all get hit pretty hard. I like to defend there, then try and counter attack a town or two, sometimes just raiding them for money and destroying all the buildings. The ai will take it back from you, but will have nothing in it. You go back to your walls and get comfy again. I usually only have an army with 4-5 units to defend these, so you have to rely on your garrison. The reason is if you put a big stack there, the ai will not attack, you kind of goad them into an attack, so you can counter. The last fortunate thing I did was pay the averni to attack Carthage and Nova Carthago. It cost a load of money, but it was worth it. Now that we shared a common enemy, I killed every prisoner, villager, etc so my diplomacy rating with averni goes up. Eventually I got a def alliance with them, and that lowers the risk of attack IMO. Stick with it man cause I just hit turn 90 and have no wars and a nice fat empire. Very much worth the hard start, I feel like I fought for every inch of territory I own. Hope some of this helps, you should post back if you start playing again, I'm very curious.

Well, I'm pretty much sticking with my rebellious empire and I decided to draw back to the mainland, since Egypt started to hate me, even though I had no contact with them. Probably they had some treaties with Libya. Nova Carthago taken over Spain and they are like sh_t flies buzzing around on the sea and attack all ships I make in the docks. My main draw of treasury is a giant legion sitting in Carthage, I am debating to pull out and put them on a better use against raiding barbarians on the north and totally give up Africa for now.
The only thing p--sing me off are the agents I am getting raped, as factions join the wars against me on the North.
This is an earlier image, I have already lost this town, but the raping that goes on is quite a sight. Notice there are 2 rebelling slave armies on left and right. 2 generals of this legion got murdered withing 5 turns.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Tr0tskY]

Playing as Rome you need to address two main concerns immediately.

Firstly, you must annihilate the Etruscans ASAP.

Secondly, you must attempt to use diplomacy to break up alliances, vassals, and client states, which will help you more easily deal with enemies that declare war early on.

The Etruscans are fairly easy to remove from the mainland within the first two turns if you use your spy to poison the initial army that stands near Velathri. You can immediately attack the first army, wipe it out and take Velathri in the first turn. Using another General, you can train up a few new units, wheel up to Ariminum in the next turn and take that as well. At this point the Etruscans are really a non threat. Use your spy to keep an eye on north Italy. Use her to stall the ongoing war between the tribes in the north by poisoning stacks and stalling their movement points. This will buy you an extra few turns if you are lucky to destroy the Etruscans.
Use your diplomatic relations with Syracuse to remove Carthage from Italy as well.

Rome can be very easy or quite difficult depending on the luck you have in the first few turns. I always find agent use is critical in the early game, and it can often be down to that chance of success as to whether you are gonna have an easy time or a difficult one.

[Noif de Bodemloze]

In my Rome (Cornelia) campaign on normal difficult (with Radious mod). I am going well, money income is over 5000 I have 4 full armies in africa, 2 full armies in Apollonia and Illyrian province and Medhlan have 1 full army. North, middle and south Italy with Sicily is secured. Africa is quite in my hand but Libya is guarding their friend's border in southest Africa. Nova Carthago and Carthage are waiting their moves in west-Europe. Almost Nova Carthago was almost taking control in Africa, but my armies put stop for them and took their areas for my use. Epirus is killed and also illyrian tribes too. I would like conquer Macedonian and Hellas provinces but most of them are Sparta's control. I show to my old enemies that i am stronger than them so they often try offer truce with me, but I always refuse. If yes, then I demand +5000 denarii by them. One time Libya wanted get a peace but I wanted give 5000 with peace so they accepted in High chance. When I was was in Carthage and Nova Carthago, they are begging peace by me.

I don't know do you use mods or how far your military technology, but if you are cunning and put them to pressure. They don't dare come fight to you.

My full army: General, 14-16 hastati/principes/legionaries, 2-3 cavalry unit for backstabbing/flanking (very useful!) and 1-2 velites (if enemy use elephants) or 1-2 ballista.

At begin, my goal that I kill etruscan league in 10 turns and then gather more troops to North-Italy for barbaric tribes.

In battlefield: My keyword in battlefield is "backstab". If we are in open ground or siege battle. Usually enemy attacking to one spot (open ground, they try flank you) It is save for me. I make very strong middle that my units hold the middle area, while my cavalry units and couple infantry flanking enemy army and they will get morale drop very fast by backstab.

In my normal campaign: I don't have allies, but I have good relationship with Massalia, Sparta, Athens and other faction are angry or neutral to me. So far I am survived without any allies.

[HippieGunner34]

Well, I'm pretty much sticking with my rebellious empire and I decided to draw back to the mainland, since Egypt started to hate me, even though I had no contact with them. Probably they had some treaties with Libya. Nova Carthago taken over Spain and they are like sh_t flies buzzing around on the sea and attack all ships I make in the docks. My main draw of treasury is a giant legion sitting in Carthage, I am debating to pull out and put them on a better use against raiding barbarians on the north and totally give up Africa for now.
The only thing p--sing me off are the agents I am getting raped, as factions join the wars against me on the North.
This is an earlier image, I have already lost this town, but the raping that goes on is quite a sight. Notice there are 2 rebelling slave armies on left and right. 2 generals of this legion got murdered withing 5 turns.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

You that is a lot of agents. The first thing I build in a new province is the Temple of Jupiter. Latin conversion and security against all agent types. You can always convert to another temple later. But damn that is a lot of agents. I am playing on hard and I never had this, what gives? Maybe your medium difficulty is correct.

[Friar Chris]

You can't run anything other than 'normal' battle difficulty, or enemy units get such huge stat boosts that you'll have veteran principes losing to random Celtic spear warriors in melees and cavalry charges failing to even damage unprotected skirmishers, let alone rout them.

The hidden stat bonuses to AI units on anything above 'normal' battle difficulty in the campaign break the entire game.

[GussieFinkNottle]

Yeah Rome is much tougher to play, they take far heavier casualties than they used to and their big advantage vs. missiles (testudo) has been nerfed

[pajomife]

Here some stuff I have noticed.


-There is a whole lot more boating around that goes on the map, and any city not being babysit by an army will get under attacked or harassed continuously by smaller navies or insta-boat armies. If an army attacks and I win, I have to play a ping-pong as they bounce over from being defeated, sometimes bouncing 2 twice after another, leaving a newly conquered town undefended. Since the army "bounced" too far, it can't make it back in one turn to the town, which is possibly gets under attacked immediately by another enemy or riots , and now there is a slave revolt to deal with, while my treasury is running empty.

Well the insta-boats "feature" this game killer, remains,for some players it is a good improvement,for me its the game cancer,try this mod,it prevent some navy/armies spam ,but must be CA to fix it.
After 9 patch this game still in miserable state as at the beginning.

[pyj99]

After 9 patch this game still in miserable state as at the beginning.

That's your opinion , other may differ

Actually I tried again Rome today thanks to the OP

It is much more dynamic now than Patch 1

A bit harder because AI expands and is more agressive

I have to play much more battles rather than autoresolve them to be able to hold my territories tho

I managed to conquer Italy tho and my ally Syracusae destroyed Carthage

I am battling the Barbarian in the north

Game is enjoyable, a bit harder than before but more important much more interesting

[pajomife]

tho

I managed to conquer Italy tho and my ally Syracusae destroyed Carthage

Everyone destroys Carthage, this is the point to which I refer, Carthage going to the beach, as almost everyone and is destroyed, as the great nations, they all go swimming, and I never tire of insisting on this point,the implementation of isnta-naval transport is ruining the game.

[pyj99]

Everyone destroys Carthage, this is the point to which I refer, Carthage going to the beach, as almost everyone and is destroyed, as the great nations, they all go swimming, and I never tire of insisting on this point,the implementation of isnta-naval transport is ruining the game.

It can some good points tho

e.g. To make Sparta and Athens ally with me I agreed to join in war against Epirus

I was thinking that it was of no matter because Epirus was

but Bam they instantly crossed the sea to capture Brundisium that I left undefended

I like that the game punished me for my carelessness

and also it was quite historical to have Pyrrhus appear in Magna Graecia ...