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Thread: [TW Guide] RTW: House of Julii

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    Default [TW Guide] RTW: House of Julii



    Author: Morble
    Original Thread: Not Available

    RTW: House of JuliiHouse of Julii


    Introduction:

    The Julii are the ancient world faction people are most commonly familiar with, from Julius Ceasar, and RTW seems to suggest playing the Julii first, since you must play an Imperial Roman Campaign to unlock the other factions, and the Julii are listed first on the screen. There are some advantages to playing the Julii as a player new to the game: You will typically spend almost all of the game fighting against barbarian tribes, who have mostly similar troops units and fighting styles, and a similar lack of technological advancement opportunities. Julii is a strongly land-based faction, so you do not have to fuss with the abstract, but difficult and counterintuitive, naval game. In fact, you can play the Julii very successfully with virtually no navy at all. One drawback, though, is that barbarians and overland trading do not net nearly the sums of money you can get from naval trade and “high” civilizations. Thus, the Julii are often pinched by a lack of funds in the early and mid-game, and the faction’s ultimate success depends on the player’s skill at obtaining significant military victories over superior numbers of barbarian troops at the very beginning.


    Initial moves

    Getting off to a good start militarily is, if anything, even more important than usual for the Julii. The game helps you along a bit by placing a minor barbarian town nearby, by having easily bribable rebels show up early in your lands with fighting troops that will join your army, and by allowing you to capitalize on the strength of the other Romans factions diplomatically.

    The first thing to recognize is that your advisor is not worth a warm bucket of spit. Instead of building traders on the first turn, as “Victoria” reccommends, build a port in Ariminium and paved roads in Arretium. You can check on the adds to your treasury by going to the city details screen. The grayed out icons that show up when you select a building to build also give a monetary amount when you mouse over them. Paved roads and a port will give you hundreds more per turn than two traders, so build these first, and build the traders and markets next.

    Victoria will also repeatedly urge you to build each type of military building and its upgrades in each and every city. There is no need for this, and if you play on Very Hard, it can’t be done with few funds you get as income. From the very start, aim to specialize your cities to make either cav, missiles, infantry, ships, or strategic pieces. Most of your cities will never be called on to produce more than a couple of town watches for a garrison.

    You are going to want to take Patavium and Mediolanium from the Gauls and Segesta from the barbs in the first few years. These cities will form the core of your empire for years to come. Segesta is actually an appendix—it will take many years before it reaches useful development. However, the reward from the Senate for capturing Segesta is almost always significant, and the conquest is absurdly easy, so don’t pass it up.

    When the game starts, rebels hold Massilia, Lugdunum, and Ivavonum, as well as Segesta, and some other provinces to the northeast. But the Gauls and Dacians typically conquer these before you can get to them. Don’t worry about these small towns for now. The real prizes are the two Gallic cities to your immediate north.

    You always get a Senate mission to conquer Segesta at the start of the game. Usually it says you will be greatly rewarded, which is 5000 denarii. If not, the Senate will almost always give you a big cash reward for the next nearby city it wants conquered—and usually that next city is one of your two targets.

    Send Vibius and his stack, with the triarii unit from the Flavius stack, to besiege Segesta. The barb troops there are not worth bribing, and the city will fall without a battle in only 2 turns. If you forget to send the triarii, the rebels will try to sally. They are easily beaten, but you want to save as much money and soldiers’ lives as you can now. As noted, unlike the other Roman factions, Julii will have difficulties raising sufficient money, so you need to draw those pursestrings tight.

    The archer unit you got at the beginning of the game is arguably your most important military unit. Flame arrows work wonders against the Gauls, rebels, and other barbarians. Guard your archers carefully—actually as carefully as you guard your faction leader—because you will not be able to replenish or replace them for a long while. Otherwise your entire army is centered around a battleline of hastati. Hastati are actually pretty tough characters at this point in the game, though they become obsolete later.

    But for now, your basic battleplan is to put out an organized line of hastate units, with your archers in support, and a cav unit or two far out on the flank. You may be able to pick up some velites and equites from bribing rebels, which is all to the good, but hastate units are your bread and butter for now. Their concentrated pilum fire alone can rout most Gallic units after they have been softened up by your flame arrows during their approach. You will want to put your cav far outside the battleline because the Gauls will invariably peel off a unit of infantry to try and chase them. You want to have enough maneuvering distance to allow these Gallic deviants to be drawn totally out of the main battle, yet still be able to circle your cav around them and charge back into the rear of the Gallic line as it hits your battleline. It’s pretty important to do things just this way because, while the initial battles have a small number of units, they have a very large importance. Lose one or more of these initial battles against the Gauls and you might as well start over.

    In battles, use equites in wedge formation, and avoid any frontal charges into the enemy. Wedge formation provides more shock value, and is more maneuverable once it gets moving. However, be careful with this formation type—it takes a longer amount of time to actually get a wedge turned and moving again, and you can be overrun and routed in a few seconds if you misjudge the timing. Never place your generals’ unit in wedge, because the best soldiers in a unit form the point and outside edges of the wedge. This means your general will be leading the charge, and will likely be killed. Roman bodyguard cav is sufficiently strong that standard rectangular formation is enough to rout most enemies when charging from the rear.

    With this battle strategy in mind, start pumping out hastate from Arretium, and continue to do so until you run out of money. Build a diplomat in Ariminium. I know, setting taxes to very high turns the Ariminum face yellow, and you need a total of 4 militias to get it back to green. A green face gives 0.5% more population growth than a yellow face, but otherwise there is no penalty for it. At the very start, I want my cities to get to 6000 pop ASAP, so I try to run at least my core cities on green. However, as your empire grows, you will find this more and more difficult to maintain in every city. As long as happiness is above 80% (blue face), your people will not revolt. I actually have only had one instance of civil unrest, which will eventually lead to a revolt, on a blue face, and I have to admit that I may not have been watching the town closely enough and let it slip into a red face.

    Segesta is an example of a city you want to grow rapidly. When you conquer it, do not exterminate or enslave. You would like this city to eventually become one of your core unit builders. But it only has 932 people when you conquer it. Note that population growth is a percentage of existing population. Thus, population goes through a compound growth curve. It only takes one turn to add 200 people in a town with 20,000 people. But it takes ten turns to add that many people to a town with a population of 2,000. Getting your cities to 6000 pop is important because, while infantry upgrades are incremental, cav and missile upgrades are significant at level 3 (archers and auxiliary cav).

    So with Segesta, set taxes to very low, leave it with a decent governor, if you can spare one, and a militia, and just build economic/civic buildings there. Eventually you may want to use this city for either boats or strat pieces. Do not build military buildings in Segesta and do not recruit from there until you reach at least 2000 pop and can grow to a level 3 town. Until it reaches 2000 people, it is pretty much worthless to you anyway, and setting taxes to very low adds 1.5% pop growth (versus very high taxes) in exchange for a very few denarii lost in tax income.

    Meanwhile park your faction leader’s army on the ford in Venetia and send your starting diplomat to parley with the Gauls. Even though you are going to attack them in a few turns, you can still squeeze 700-1000 gold out of them in exchange for trading rights. Keep your options open and demand a one time tribute payment. Put a second diplomat on a boat and send him to Greece. (I usually stop at Caralis and get a trade agreement with the Carthaginians, even though they will not pay you much more than 100-200 gold, if even that. Taking Caralis is often an early Senate mission and can usually be done with 2-3 hastate, a general, and a missile troop. If it is early enough in the game, there are only peasants in Caralis, and you can just starve them out with this small army without fear of a sally.)

    Greece will be frantic to make friends with you, because the rest of the Roman factions will be busily beating the crap out of them. A Greek alliance with you will gain Greece an interim ceasefire with all the rest of the Romans. Make the Greeks pay dearly for it. Get trade rights and an alliance in exchange for map info and as much gold as you can—typically 4000-8000 denarii, sometimes more. If they don’t have that much gold, you might even suggest they give you a province, though that hasn’t happened yet for me.

    Build a third diplomat, put him on your other boat and send him to Spain. You want to talk to Spain just after you go to war with the Gauls. Spain wants protection from the Gauls and lucrative trade with you. They will also pay 2000-5000 for the privilege. Afterwards, send this diplomat to Numidia, then around and up the Western coast of Spain to talk to the Britons and Germania. Send your diplomat in Greece on to Macedonia, Thrace, and into the Black Sea area, always negotiating for as much money as you can. Don’t give trade rights away for free. Your first diplomat, stationed in Gaul, should stay near the center of your lands, prepared to bribe rebels willing to join your army.


    Bribing

    Bribing rebels is quite cheap. In the later game, I typically have a network of diplomats around my lands, ready to buy off any rebel/brigand minor army that gets spawned. You can also attack rebels using your troops. They are easy prey, and you may be able to gain stars for your general, or get a captain promoted to general status this way. I believe the promotion only happens when you play out the battle. At least, I have never yet gotten a promotion from an auto-resolved battle.

    Some rebel armies spawn with a rebel family member. These usually cost 2500 to 3500 gold to bribe. Their army disperses, but you get to adopt the family member, and he can now serve you as a general or governor. You won’t have the cash for this at first, but later on this can be a very welcome avenue for increasing your number of governors.

    One set of rebels that you always want to bribe are those that show up with Roman units. If the unit types in a rebel army are the types of units you can build, you get to hire the rebels directly into your own army. Instead of dispersing, the rebels become their little red stack for your profit and pleasure.

    You can also bribe away entire stacks and family members from other Roman factions! In fact, it is dirt cheap to bribe Scipii, Brutii, and SPQR troops—typically 40-60% of what it would cost to build them, depending on the influence of your diplomat. The game is hardwired to eventually cause the Roman Senate to fear and despise you and start making unreasonable demands on you, e.g., the suicide of your faction leader. When you refuse this, you are immediately declared an outlaw and all other Roman factions go to war with you. You will have to capture Rome and a total of 49 other provinces to win the game.

    It doesn’t matter if you destroy Scipii and/or Brutii, but bear in mind that their armies are right next door to your main cities. In the later game, it is good strategy to start bribing entire stacks of Brutii (Scipii troops are usually mostly off in North Africa) when you see your popular support rising, but your Senate support starting to dip. When the civil war finally does come, Brutii will have difficulty raising enough troops to do much damage. Meanwhile, you can press your newly-ill-gotten armies to conquering more barbarian cities until you need them for the final showdown with the other Romans.

    Some players have complained about the low price for bribing Roman troops. But, in real life, you would not be paying for trainers and facilities, weapons and armor. You are simply offering the trained soldiers a little “signing bonus” to collect their wages from your version of Rome from now on instead of from some other faction’s version. Viewed in this light, the low bribe price for Roman units does not seem unreasonable, and it can easily be construed that this sort of transaction may have occurred a lot in ancient times. After all, it’s not as if you are asking them to become foreign mercenaries; they are still Roman soldiers fighting for Rome after they accept your little inducement.


    Spies, Diplomats, and Assassins

    The strategic pieces have been overhauled from MTW. Diplomats are now quite valuable because they are the only ones who can bribe, or negotiate money exchanges of any kind. The skill of a diplomat is represented as influence wreaths. The more wreaths, the better the deal he can work for you. High (or even moderate) influence diplomats are quite difficult to kill.

    Some factions have a propensity for diplomatic bribing. You will likely notice a Germanic diplomat or two waving his hands at one or more of your units during the turn. This is a bribe offer in progress. If it is successful, you will get a notice that your unit deserted you and it will disappear from the board. (Roman units cannot enlist in Germanic armies, so they just disperse.) Diplomats can also be bribed, though a four wreath diplomat is quite a bit more expensive than a fledgling general.

    The only unit that can stop diplomats cold is an assassin. No one else can touch them. However, you will find diplomats very hard to kill, since probability is calculated primarily on influence. Don’t waste a new assassin trying to kill a 3 or 4 wreath dip. Instead, train up your assassin on captains. It doesn’t even matter if the captain is from an ally, neutral, or rebel. Assassination (or bribery, for that matter) is not considered an act of war. A plain vanilla, unadorned captain will have a 32% chance of being killed by your newbie assassin. The probability goes up to about 48% for the second kill of a plain captain. So you can see that you should immediately send your newly-spawned assassin out to look for a stack or unit led by a captain. After 3 or 4 minor kills, your assassin will be ready to take on the big shots that are giving you trouble.

    Spies also need to be trained. Spies have the special ability to open city gates to your invading army, which, now that siege warfare has been completely re-worked, is an important offensive capability. (Note, though, that boiling oil, arrow towers, and the like are part of the gatehouse and walls, not the gate itself. Your spy can open the doors to the city, as a percentage probability, but don’t dally in the doorway or your troops will be crispy critters.) Spies are also better than watchtowers for scouting the land. Eventually you will want to send an otherwise useless general on a watchtower-building tour of your empire, but until then, a network of spies can get the job done with panache.

    Spies get trained by successfully sneaking into a city, by sneaking a look at an army or unit in the field, and also, by preventing another faction from inserting a spy into one of your cities. Sneaking a peek, at cities or field armies, is not unique, and if you leave one of your units near an enemy unit or stack for a few turns, it can generate most of the same information. But spies give the exact account and details. A spy in your own city, or stacked with your army, prevents your enemy from seeing anything more than just the number of troop units present. As far as I know, the game does not cheat on this and will regard your stacks as unknown if it cannot spy them.

    As you might imagine, it is worthwhile to have a trio of strategic pieces hanging around waiting for a small rebel stack to spawn. Run your trio out to them, spy them with your spy, assassinate three captains if it is not a general-led stack, then bribe them with your diplomat. This takes 3 turns, after which you want to dispose of the rebels or they will devastate your farmlands and disrupt trade, but is a quick and easy way to train up all of your strategic pieces. You will have some losses, but they are low-value units until they get some experience—at which point they become very useful indeed.

    Eventually, your well-trained strategic piece will become a master of his profession. This is the time to retire him from the field and have him set up a school for others of his ilk. A master gives 25% discount to recruitment costs of his unit type, and will generate a similar retainer for the governor of his city.


    Development

    As the Julii, never neglect to build your trade, especially roads. Because virtually your entire game will be spent on the west and north of Europe, you will not get the huge tariff incomes generated by more centrally located factions, e.g., Greece. Roads are a major advantage for the Romans, and Romans are the only factions that can build highways. Most of the barbarians cannot even pave their roads. Check the economic benefits of building the next road upgrade in the city details screen and you will be surprised at how much they can do for you. Road upgrades provide the additional advantage of increasing travel speed, which is quite important for the Julii, which usually does not have much of a navy.

    Also do not neglect building and upgrading ports, because they will still be your major source of trade income. Marketplaces, and then forums, are also very valuable, even in inland provinces they allow you to build spies and assassins in addition to increasing income from all trade. A greater forum and curia are generally a waste unless you already have a dockyard and highways. A greater forum does allow an amphitheater, which allows you to build Samnite gladiators as the Julii. Personally, I don’t use gladiators much, although they are good, tough units, they are also a security risk. If the town with an amphitheater rebels, you will see Spartacus and his buddies in the rebel stack. (OTOH, if you have the money in hand for bribes…)

    Another set of buildings that is absolutely necessary, though not so obvious, are the public health buildings. These buildings, starting with sewers, are absolutely necessary to a developed city. They do not appear to have their full effect immediately, but seem to come “online” over a period of a few years. Public health, as can be seen from the details screen, adds immediately to counteract disorder, and thus general unhappiness. The occulted benefits are improved protection from plague and longer-lived named characters, including traits that add to your combat hitpoints.

    Farmland improvements add directly to squalor, but without them you will eventually hit negative growth in your cities, since farms provide both income and pop growth. This has the effect of capping off any increase in taxable income for the province. The fact is that you have sufficient resources in terms of entertainment, religious, and government buildings to keep your happiness above revolt levels. Use them, build farms with impunity, and maximize your income stream.

    If you are really having trouble keeping your citizens happy, build arenas and hippodrome upgrades. But usually a decent governor will be enough to keep things on an even keel.


    Temples

    As the Julii, you have a somewhat bland set of gods in that they are primarily social gods. Ceres adds to farm output, Bacchus adds straight to happiness and general joie de vivre, while Jupiter adds to law, order, and happiness. Put Ceres in your main agricultural provinces. The choice between the other two temples is mostly a matter of preference as to how you want to grow your governors, but you should look to eventually build at least one pantheon to each.

    Bacchus will add an appreciation of the arts and culture and increase trade income. But it also tends to create drunkards. Jupiter will increase general influence by adding sternness traits, which add to personal influence and citywide law and order, but can also make your guy obsessive and angry, which reduces his popularity and city happiness. Bacchus temples come with a great set of artsy-fartsy retainers that increase influence, happiness, and trade income.. Jupiter temples generally add to command and management skills, and allow the building of arcani, which are deadly ambushers, fight very well, can hide anywhere, and run very fast. I use arcani to ambush advancing skirmishers and to guard artillery units on the battlefield. I personally have never gotten the Jupiter retainers.

    There does seem to be a rather common problem when a student governor stays in your university city, but does not rule it. For example, I have been using Mediolanium as my university city, which has a Ceres temple due to its high farm output. But students who study there but never get to rule tend to receive the poor farmer trait. This naturally hurts their usefulness when they get assigned their own province. Similarly, students in Bacchus cities tend to become wastrels. I’m not exactly sure what students in Jupiter cities get. These bad tendencies are increased by the presence of a priest of the god in the general’s retinue. Of course, priests also tend to increase the good qualities. It seems to be the luck of the draw as to whether your guy turns good or bad. Hmm, how lifelike; I can even imagine some players getting into designing the best governor ever the way some already work on building the best military general.

    You have the option to take over existing temples to foreign gods when you conquer cities. The drawback is that you cannot build further upgrades of these temples. Most of your game is likely to be preoccupied with the Gauls and Spanish, who worship the same gods.

    Teutatis adds some light weapons and XP, but has no retainers available to you. Abnoba is missile specialized, plus adds retainers for line of sight and cav/dogs for Sacred Grove. Epona adds up to 3 XP but no retainers. Esus adds both law and happiness, 30% total change for Sacred Grove, but I have never received the judge or crooked judge retainer. It is generally not worth keeping a simple shrine of any foreign god, while a sacred circle probably conveys benefits you can’t get elsewhere. Whether to keep a sacred grove is a decision you have to make based on current status and remaining cities available. Usually the biggest foreign cities have the best temples in them. Alessia, for example, is the Gallic capitol and usually has a sacred circle when you conquer it.

    I greatly like missile troops, especially archers and artillery. So, keeping at least a sacred grove to Abnoba is very important to my style. Teutatis can be replaced by other gods that convey the same things more generously. Esus is not that great for Julii, since you can build temples that convey even higher law and happiness (though Esus is a maximum population control god for barbarians). An advanced Epona temple is a very nice extra. XP, I believe, works similar to the way valor did in MTW. So, increased XP (the chevrons on the side of the unit’s card) adds attack, defense, and morale. A sacred circle to Epona will add a full color chevron to your already well-outfitted Roman army, and should become a rally point for every one of your builds. That’s assuming it is not too, too far out of the way—you don’t get to choose where these foreign temples get built.

    The Britons have Brigantia which adds great health benefits to your pop and life-prolonging retainers to your governor. Brittania adds trade goods income and has some serious financial wizards as retainers. However, since you will likely exterminate Briton cities when you finally attack them, it will take a while before you can realize true income benefits from a Brittania temple. Andastra adds up to 2 XP, but can be exceeded by other gods’ benefits—Epona, for example.

    The Germanic tribes have Donar and Woden, both of which convey XP, with the nod going to Woden here. Freyja, the fertility goddess, is not to worth much to you, but it is noted that parking a governor in a city that worships Freyja will tend to make him have more children.

    Dacians have Hebeleysis, Bendis, and Zalmoxis, which add morale, farming output, and smithing, respectively. A Zalmoxis sacred circle is a nice add of +1, both to any melee weapon, light or heavy, and to armor. Combined with a forge, and you get gold armor for everyone straight out of the box. (And bronze weapons.) All the Dacian gods have some excellent retainers available, but typically my governors’ retinues are full by the time I get around to major Dacian cities.

    You will likely finish the game before you conquer the rest of the world, so other cultures’ gods are of not much consequence to you, though it is noted that Carthaginian Milqart confers trade income.


    Best Laid (Battle) Plans

    Having gotten your dosh for trade rights with the Gauls, it is now time to go to war with them. Typically, the second Senate mission you receive will be to capture one of the Gaul cities to your north. Sometimes the second mission is to blockade or attack Caralis or one of the Greek Cities. Caralis is worth taking, if you can spare the army—after taking Patavium and Mediolanium—but I ignore the Greek missions and sell an alliance to them instead, as noted earlier.

    Your two little ships are worth much, much more as transports at this point. You don’t want to risk them in naval action, and you must strike the Gauls before they consolidate the rebel provinces into their empire. So, try to avoid blockading ports or any other warlike action at sea. Use your 2 little boats to ship an army to Caralis, if you want that city (its capture greatly reduces the likelihood of Carthaginian dominance later in the game), and to ship your diplomats around the world selling trade rights.

    Naval warfare is one of the few things not significantly improved from MTW. It’s all still resolved automatically, and the AI gets humongous advantages for any auto-resolves. Consequently, you must usually attack with a 2:1 ratio in either men or command stars in order to win a naval battle.

    You have plenty of territory to attack and conquer right at your elbow and don’t need to go to sea. The basic rule about naval warfare for the Julii, then, is: don’t, if you can at all avoid it. That applies especially now when you only have two ships. Navies are most useful for blockading enemy ports and transporting your armies. If you build hundreds of ships to defeat the AI navies, you will lose the game, even if you rule the seas for a moment. Remember, the object is to become an emperor, not a pirate. Keep your eye on the prize.

    Sometimes the Senate charges you with the conquest of Narbo Martius. This is actually a good strategy that can be devastating to the Gauls if done properly and quickly. Send your second best military general, an additional general that can act as governor (and also brings a much needed heavy cav unit), a missile unit such as converted rebel velites, and at least 6 hastati, on the ship that is going to take your diplomat to Spain. You need lots of troops here, because you will not be able to reinforce unless you take Narbo Martius. Back in the homeland, prepare your faction leader, archers, and preferably 5 or more hastati to attack Patavium. You will likely run out of money soon, so just build as many hastate units as you can, then go for it.

    When you land on the outskirts of Narbo Martius, immediately seek out a stack of 3-4 Gaul units and attack them. You want the extra stars for your commander, and you don’t want to meet the entire Gallic army at once. I once gained 6 stars for my commander from this single battle (heroic victory, +4 to command and a retainer). There is a big stack of Gallic units hanging around the area, probably besieging the rebels at Massilia. You will have to fight these guys, so take care of any little stack you see nearby, then besiege the city. The big Gaul army will break off their siege of the rebels and come to relieve Narbo. You will have to fight and win.

    If you are playing on VH battle conditions, you will have to fight just about every single battle. The AI auto-resolve is atrocious. As an example, in one big battle with the Gauls, I auto-resolved to a clear defeat, with more than 700 casualties sustained to 500 kills inflicted on the enemy. Then I went back and played the battle myself. Result: a heroic victory with only 93 casualties and 1200 kills inflicted, including the enemy king and his heir. Even on extremely simple battles where you grossly outnumber the enemy, you will usually lose much more men on autoresolve than you would if you play the battle yourself.

    Winning these big battles is not all that hard if you keep your wits about you. The local terrain is hilly and wooded. Seek out cleared hilltops, put your velites or archers just down from the top of the slope, 2 deep, in front of a 4- or 5-deep single line of hastate. Start with your general directly behind your line, or out to a shallow flank. Try to hide your non-commanding general in the woods where he can burst out into the enemy rear once the battle begins. Your generals’ heavy cav can beat the light cav Gallic generals field at this point (and strangely, can outrun them too.) Nonetheless, try to avoid fighting cav one-on-one. You really need your generals to survive, so try to always use your cav in local numerical and unit superiority. Put all your hastate on fire at will, and let the Gauls slog uphill to meet you. Roman infantry will not always throw their pilums if ordered to charge, but they will greet each advancing warband with a hail of pilums if allowed to stand and wait for the attack. This sheet of missiles is usually enough in itself to rout the first couple of units that dare to approach. Even though you are likely well-outnumbered, stay calm and maintain standard small arms tactics. Control your flanks, sending out one hastate to match up against any enemy foot unit attempting to flank you. Scoot your cav out to prevent an end around by the enemy general. Once you get an enemy to rout, start to roll up through the weak point; attack his flanks with your hastate and his rear with your cav.

    It’s much the same situation in Patavium. Seek out the roaming stack of Gauls first and defeat them, then besiege the town. I always go for Patavium and Venetia first, instead of Mediolanium and Transalpine Gaul, because it is the richer of the two provinces, and also because I know Gallic counterattackers will then not be coming from the east. Use flaming arrows on the Gauls, but BE SURE you do not allow your archers to fire on engaged Gaul units. Your reward for such an action will be to watch a distressing number of your men spontaneously combust and fall to the ground in cinders. Instead, pick a target that has not closed to melee yet, light them up with fire, then have your troops charge them when they get shaky. When all Gallic units are engaged, stop the fire arrows and let the archers fire at will. (Some of your archers are just plain stupid and will take a few remaining shots with fire arrows—straight into the backs of your men. It can’t be helped; just try to minimize these friendly fire losses.)

    This double-pronged strategic attack on the Gauls will usually give you one or both cities without having to assault or finish the siege, due to overwhelming victory on the battlefield when the besieged garrison sallies. It really puts the Gauls in the hole if you can attack before their siege is completed in Massilia. A success in Patavium and Narbo Martius leaves Mediolanium isolated and Lugdunum and Massilia under rebel control, which will be cheap to bribe. The Gauls are left with 3 northern provinces and Celtiberia in Spain.

    While you have been prosecuting your war with the Gauls, continue the journey of your diplomat to Greece. If you get to Greece early, before they spend all their money, you can get an alliance and trade right along with 10,000 gold. (10,000 is what they immediately agreed to the last time I tried it. Next time I’ll bargain for 15,000!) Once you have started the war on Gaul, Spain will also pay a nice sum of a few thousand gold for an alliance, and will spend some troops and money feebly attacking the Gauls in Celtiberia to boot. Any help is good help in this situation. You want to get a dip over to bribe the rebel cities asap, then concentrate on those 3 northern Gallic provinces.

    No matter what you do, there is a big stack of Gauls hanging around, probably near the capital of Alesia. When you move up to take Lemonum, you are likely to encounter this stack. You can dither around a bit, taking Lemonum, selling all the buildings, then abandoning it in the face of the Gaul counterattack. This will send the city rebel, and the Senate will often give you a decent reward for recapturing the city.

    If you stripped all the buildings out of the town, the rebels will likely be all peasants. However, they will be Gallic peasants, and Gaul will immediately reclaim the city. As an alternative, exterminate the population when you first take the city. At some point you will have to exterminate them anyway, because you cannot afford to post a huge garrison while you still need all of your army to face-off the Gallic Armageddon.

    And, whether you mess around with Lemonum or not, that Armageddon is coming. Sooner or later you have to meet the main Gaul army in battle and defeat them. Your best bet is to try and meet them on clear flat terrain. Even better would be to meet them defensively, when you can sit back with your flame arrows and burn them as they try to close. If you end up attacking them in woods, they will have the advantage, since they are nearly entirely an infantry army with few missile capabilities and few cav.

    So you have to win the final smackdown against the Gauls, but from there it is fairly clear sailing. The Britons, and possibly the Germans will likely seek to ally with you; alternatively you should ask an alliance of one of them. (But not both, since they are probably warring against each other and you do not want to have to break an alliance. Besides, one of them is likely your next target for expansion.)


    Siege the Day

    In MTW, sieges were an insignificant part of the game. In fact, the standard practice was to simply auto-resolve the siege. If you try this in RTW, you will lose. The added emphasis on city sieges is appropriate, because the siege of a city, particularly in ancient times, was a hugely important event. The art of besieging a well-defended city is worthy of some analysis in and of itself.

    However, as the Julii, you will be spending almost the entire game fighting barbarians, who can only build wooden walls. Thus, you need not learn siegecraft until quite late in the game when you have to war against the other Roman factions. If you do about half or more of the Senate missions, you can prolong your Senate standing until you have a dominant position in the game. Then you can simply overwhelm Roman cities with superior numbers and auto-resolve.

    Against wooden walls, all you will ever need, or be allowed to build, are rams. Don’t be stingy, though. If you have determined that you are going to assault the city, build at least as many rams as your army can build in one turn. You do not want to have to assault the entire city through the single gate. This is in effect volunteering to be the attacker on a bridge battle, and is unnecessarily bloody for your army. Use extra rams to break holes in the adjacent walls. The walls take longer to break down than the gate does. If you attempt to enter the opened gate, your other units will stop breaking down the walls. Wait until you have finished knocking holes in the walls, then send your men streaming in through all openings.

    City fighting is necessarily constricted. You are seeking to enter the city to place some of your units behind the city defenders who are busy attacking your infantry trying to pass through the gate. Then you can attack their rear and send them running to the central plaza. Note that troops automatically drop from rout when they touch the plaza, though they will still be shaky or wavering, and will immediately turn to attack you again.

    The defenders will naturally try to plug the holes with infantry, especially spears. Do not charge the holes with your cav—these spears are just as deadly and demoralizing as they are on the battlefield. Instead, send your hastati or other infantry in to push the spears back. Once you have moved them back a little, you can often sneak your cav in on the side, then turn them and charge the enemy flank to send them running.

    You will note that you cannot take most group formations into a city. Instead you will have to move individual units. It’s a hassle, but you are stuck with it until pathfinding is patched. Once you have secured the gate and wall, line your foot and missile troops up in the town square or city plaza. Send your cav troops to either side of the central plaza. This begins, in effect, an entirely new battle.

    When you reach the central plaza, you will attack with missiles for as long as the enemy allows it. Do not rush to close on the enemy—especially not with early Gauls, who lack missile troops. Just sit back and kill at a distance until the Gauls tire of the game and rush forward. Then try to maneuver some of your hastati to the attacking enemy’s flanks. Your flanking cav now comes in very handy. Typically, the cav on the left (as you face the town, with the front gates nearest the bottom of the screen) will have a direct shot at the engaged enemy’s rear. Any reserved enemy units still standing in the center of the plaza will be held in check by the threat from your cav on the right side of the square. If they charge your left side cav, your right side cav gets a free shot at their bare backs.

    If you have managed to get most of your army intact into the square, and have placed cav units on either flank, this second phase of the battle is fairly simple and short. You win a siege when you can either stand a unit on the central plaza for 3 minutes without fighting, or you have killed every soldier in the city.

    It should almost go without saying that you do not attempt to conquer a city without a numerical superiority. Possibly you can get by with a 1:1 troop ratio, or even less, if you have a vast technological superiority. But if that is the case, it is almost always better to maintain the siege and force the enemy to meet you in the field. After all, the enemy cannot build during a siege, and his troop numbers can only decrease meanwhile. You are always going to lose some men in a conquest attack. Make sure you take more men than you think you will need. In game terms, this typically means 2:1 odds or better, although you can make do with less, if you have technological and experience superiority.

    On the defensive side of sieges, the AI is almost always content to let you starve—unless it has 3:1 in numbers or better. So you usually do have time to bring in another army and position it in a red spot to the rear or flank of the besiegers. This means that your relieving army will join the fight and attack the enemy rear or flank when you attempt to sally forth. Note that the AI will always control the second army if you have a general in command of that army. If you have a captain controlling the second army, the units will arrive as piecemeal reinforcements, controlled by you, whenever you have a slot open in your 20-slot battle order.

    When besieged, you must make a decision quickly. If you can get reinforcements to the city in a turn or two, then you can wait for them—but you risk getting assaulted if the enemy has time to build siege equipment. If you can’t reinforce, then you should sally as quickly as possible, before the enemy can build an assortment of siege engines and come at you with more than you can defend against.

    When you sally, it is generally best to place a few troops at the front gate: 1 or 2 foot men, a missile and a cav unit. Put the rest at one of the side gates. Because of the restricted setup area, the AI cannot cover the side and rear gates. In my experience up to now, the AI will always line up its opposing army to face your main gate.

    As soon as the battle starts, rush your army out of the side gate, using column formation if necessary, and set up a battle formation on the side of your city. When the AI catches on, it will start to redeploy, but you should have time to adopt an optimal stance before the AI army can arrive. Of course, once the enemy army has left the front gate uncovered, you can quickmarch your small reserve out the front and set up an attack force in the enemy rear.

    With your main force, do not set up too far away from the city walls. You want to take advantage of your city’s tower archers. Often the AI will try to redeploy exactly opposite you, so some enemy units will line up within range of your towers. If you exit your city from the east side (again, front gates are considered southernmost), the AI will often try to line its cav general on the flank just adjacent to the city walls. You can thus often kill their general before ever having to close to melee.

    Once both armies have redeployed on the outskirts of the city, you want to screen your left flank with fast units, such as light cav. Meanwhile you want to concentrate your missiles on one unit at a time. It is best to try to rout the enemy units closest to your walls first—and easier, since you get the added damage from the towers.

    By exiting out the side gate, you have in effect changed a river crossing battle (from your point of view) into an open field battle. Instead of having to squeeze out the front gate into the teeth of the enemy, you have the luxury of arranging your forces to maximum effect on a clear field. Naturally, you hope to have missile and/or cav forces available to you that are superior to the enemy’s. Total number of foot troops is almost inconsequential in this instance—you just need enough to protect your missilers and/or hold the enemy units in place for a cav charge.

    Having achieved your optimal position, just sit back and kill at range until the enemy has to force the day. Alternatively, if you have AI-controlled reinforcements, wait until they have set up and begun their attack before closing to melee. Whenever the AI tries to close on your main army, concentrate all missile power onto a single advance unit and force it to rout. This will scare the remaining enemy, and you can often cause the AI to abort 2 or 3 separate attempts to close to melee.

    Eventually, either the enemy will close, or you will run out of missiles. Now use your reserves and reinforcements to sandwich the enemy between them and your main force. Once the enemy pushes forward, use your screening cav on the left flank to attack into the rear of the enemy’s right flank. Use your reserves to charge the enemy’s rear. As long as you have superior missile troops, some cav, and are not vastly outnumbered, you can win some truly heroic battles with this side exit ploy, especially against the early Gauls. I’ve had a couple of battles where I killed over 3000 and lost 15 using the side exit ploy.

    “The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins…”

    In any battle, be very cautious with your family members. Even a poor general can make a huge difference in happiness and income in a city. So, even though generals provide your best overall unit in the form of heavy cav, save them, reserve them, hold them back, until you have the opportunity to use them to deliver a crushing blow. If a general gets killed, it will likely cost you tens of thousands of denarii in lost income, or if he is your main field general, his death can stop a campaign in its tracks. Even worse, it is very difficult to birth enough children to govern all your cities if your family members get cut down in the prime of their lives.

    Nonetheless, you need at least one strong field general. This strong general should be kept as fully supplied with troops as possible. You also want to avoid having captains running around the land with a short stack—they will get bribed and defect from you. A big stack helps prevent bribes from your enemies (or allies, even) because it costs a lot to bribe such a large army.

    For the most part, you can strip your two starting cities to a minimal garrison. This is usually only two or 3 militia and the governor. For the early game, you can trust your Roman allies. You need to leave extra troops in Patavium, because otherwise both Dacia and Macedonia will get greedy and go to war with you to try and win it. You also need a small reserve in Mediolanium, until you can secure the surrounding states. Segesta, in my experience, rarely gets much attention from the AI Gauls, and it is fairly easily protected by the long mountain pass and river needed to access it.

    Another major difference in RTW from MTW is that building troop units depletes the town’s population where it is built. Thus, you do not want to create a mass of low quality troops, at least not at the beginning, because you want your towns to develop quickly—and town development is directly indexed to local population. So, take care to save the lives of your troops. Every man lost needs be replaced, and this directly stunts the growth of your cities. Also, guard your spears and archers very carefully—it will be a long time, if ever, depending on the Marius reforms, until you can create new ones. Your mainstay fighters at the start will be hastati, supported by equites and velites.

    I have never been a fan of javelin throwers, and don’t much care for velites. However, they are the best you can do until you get a governor’s palace and can build the archery range. You have to hold velites very close to your battleline in combat. If you don’t, they will get overrun.

    One counterstrategy to use when the enemy cav is limited to their general’s unit—as is often the case with the Gauls and Germans—is to sacrifice a velites unit. Run them out a bit too far ahead of your line and the enemy general will charge them. Your sorry velites will try to run and get routed, but this provides you with the opportunity to close on the enemy general with your foot troops. Otherwise, keep your velites in tight, just slightly ahead of your battleline. When the enemy charges, they will run behind your line and fire from there. Be warned, though, their aim sucks, and they can kill a goodly number of your own fine soldiers. Never, ever, run your general in front of or through a unit of velites. (This is actually good advice against any missile unit that is firing.)

    Ariminium will typically show a negative income during these initial periods. This is not a huge problem. It only means that the city is not yet carrying its own weight financially. This is usually because the game assigns troop costs proportionate to population. The negative income apportioned to Ariminium does not affect your total spending ability, nor your total income, either from Ariminium or nationally. You can spend whatever you have, wherever you want, from your national treasury. As long as you have a total profit, you can maintain the city with a local negative income. To raise the city’s income, build trade and roads. Once you have maxed these out, you can build farmlands to increase the population.

    Generally, 2 town militias and a governor are all you need to maintain order and grow your population—especially with Jupiter temples. Of course, better than 100% happiness will increase your growth rate and is still desirable. Just don’t break any of your bones trying to get there. It is more important to maintain income and production. So, don’t build 4 town militias per city. In fact, with your two largest cities close together, you can almost always muster a decent army from a single build of hastate and velite, plus your 4 militias and 2 governors. This will be enough to shoo off unwanted rebel armies, assuming you don’t want to bribe them.

    Every faction wants an arm and a leg for their map information. So you can forget about bargaining for such at the start. But you can take advantage of the high price of information by gathering it yourself and selling it later. This is one reason why your first diplomat goes to sea. Every province he sails past gets added to your map info. Every city he is able to see adds that province to your map info, and you can then right click on any map area within it to see fertility and type of terrain.

    Your marine diplomat is also out to make friends, trade treaties, and occasional allies. Always ask for money to create a trade treaty. You won’t always get it, but you will get paid often enough to make it worth the effort. You can have a trade treaty with a Roman enemy and it will not cost you much in the Senate approval ratings. You should not, however, ally with either Carthage or the Greek States, since the rest of Rome will war with them. Ignoring Senate missions to attack Carthage and the Greek States also have only a small effect on your Senate standings. It is very much worth it to you not to get embroiled in any other wars until you have conquered Gaul.

    You will want to try to ally with the Spanish, Britons, Germans, Dacians and Greeks at the start if you can. In other words, seek to ally with those who neighbor Gaul (plus the Greeks for their cash payoff). These alliances will probably not stand up over the long haul, but they provide some near-term security in that they prevent the Gauls from gaining allies and convincing them to attack you in concert.

    Once you have taken Patavium and Mediolanium, you need to make some important strategic decisions. If you wish to continue to prosecute the war against the Gauls—and that is probably the easiest place you can expand at this point—then you must plan to take the rebel towns of Massilia, Lugdunum, and Lemonum (if the Gauls didn’t already conquer them). If you let the Gauls take these cities and hold them for any period of time, the Gauls will have enough of an economy to eventually outbuild and overwhelm you. The Gallic capital city of Alesia in Central Gaul is particularly valuable, since it is likely to be over 6000 population by the time you conquer it and will be able to build principes and ballistas.

    You can also try to bribe the Ivavum. The town there is not great, but a decent army there, with roads in the province, can provide a strong reserve force for Venetian emergencies, should they arise. Besides, if you don’t take it, Germania or Dacia will.

    Bribing a rebel city is often one way to gain a new general. (Not to mention gaining an additional province.) Of course, with a new city, you will need yet another governor. But you can often leave lesser cities without a governor without too much penalty—especially if those ungoverned cities are reasonably close to the capitol.

    Against the Gauls, the city of Lugdunum seems a strategic key—even though it is a rebel city at the start. Massilia is not that large of a town, though it does have fertile lands and coastline. There are enough river crossings around Massilia that it never seems to come into the main Gallic counterattack plans. A minimal garrison of troops on the bridges seems enough to deter the Gallic armies.

    But Lugdunum is the key to accessing Alesia, and the Gauls will try to attack it from both the south and west. You should attempt to capture Massilia, then leave only a garrison behind. To get there, form up on the bridge between Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul, then march in and conquer Massilia. (Alternatively, if you have conquered Norba Martius, the conquest of Massilia is exceptionally easy.) Then, as soon as you can, strike with everything you have at Lugdunum, and press immediately on to capture Alesia.

    Do make a strong effort to find a governor for each province and a general for each major army. Of course, you can fight with a captain leading your troops. This can get you a new adopted family member if the captain has a few good victories—in my experience, you have to rack up a couple heroic victories against rebels to get a shot at a captain promotion. And autoresolve won’t get this done for you; you have to play the battles personally..

    However, do not set up a captain with low quality troops if you can avoid it. If you want (usually, need) to promote a captain, set him up with some blacksmithed, armored troops with high morale. Then try to attack at strong numerical superiority. At the beginning, with undecorated troops, you really need to wait for a general to head into battle, especially against the Gauls, who have good leaders and morale. It cannot be stressed enough that armies led by captains have very poor morale and will rout very quickly on VH. Even with numerical superiority, when you are clearly winning on the battlefield, your captained battlelines will suddenly turn white and flee at the most inconvenient times (assuming there is such a thing as a convenient time to have your army rout out from under you!) You absolutely must have highly trained, high morale troops under the captain’s command to be able to win any battles with him.

    But providing a captain with a good mixed-element army and sending him to bash rebel heads is one way to rack up a few victories for him and get him promoted. This works best once you have archers, who can hit from true range, instead of mere velites. Rebels rarely have decent missile troops, and are frequently unbalanced in favor of foot troops. Have your captain’s army stand off as long as possible and decimate the enemy without risk. Then use your cav to charge individual enemy units from the rear once they have entered melee. It seems to usually require 2 or 3 clear or heroic victories to promote a captain. Again, the caveat is that captained armies will not melee for more than a 30 seconds or so. You simply cannot use a captain in a slugfest battle.

    Back on the campaign trail, once you have secured Northern Italy, the Gauls will throw almost everything they can muster at you in retaliation. If you have taken Narbo Martius, you have already met the Gauls and either won or lost. If you’ve won, the Gauls only have two stacks left—one in Spain and one in Alesia. If you’ve lost (a tough row to hoe for you now), or if you elected to follow the strategy of a single prong attack into Northern Italy, then the Gauls have consolidated France and you must now expand westward before they outgrow you and smother you.

    I typically take my best general and stack him with as many fighting troops as I can get—I don’t hire mercs at this point, though, since mercs are habitually quick to run, expensive, and in rather short supply at this point in the game.

    There is a long mountain valley through the Alps, with bridges, that you have to take to get to Masillia, your next planned conquest. Send spies and diplomats ahead of you to scout this valley. Also, I like to send one of my newly hatched generals to build a watchtower at each of the mountain passes into my lands. One pass is north of Patavium, the other two are in the long mountain valley. Watchtowers cost only 200, less than a spy, and are permanent. You must build watchtowers on your own territory. Forts are another option, but they cost 500, must be manned or they will decay (and a strategic piece like a spy or diplomat is sufficient for otherwise obsolete forts that you want to have hang around). The enemy can occupy and use forts if they take them from you, while watchtowers always belong to whoever owns the province. To my mind, watchtowers are sufficient here—you know you have to fight, you just want to know where the blows are going to be coming from.

    Use your diplomats, if you have enough money, to bribe/disperse the captained enemy armies. Make a special effort to bribe away Gallic generals, thereby weakening both their economy and military while strengthening yours. Take your time moving through this valley in the Alps, and watch the northern passes for surprises. This is excellent defensive terrain if you have some missile troops and cav.

    The Gauls will be sending primarily warbands against you. Unsupported warbands are a pretty easy kill when you can concentrate missile fire (including hastati) on a single unit at a time, then slam into the shaken unit with either heavy cav or wedged equites. Your archers, with their long range, are superb under these conditions. Once I received a unit of Rhodian slingers as a reward from the Senate. They were a lovely addition to my alpine army.

    Don’t let your equites melee—sometimes the AI will peel off foot units to chase them if you have placed them too nearby. Run away from frontal foot assaults. Circle around, and use wedge attack to hit the rear flank of shaken or wavering enemy foot troops fighting your main battleline.

    I very much like having a wardogs unit present. Of course, once the dogs are released, they are essentially berserkers and cannot be controlled (though you can still control their handlers). But they will chivvy a routing unit completely off the field, then automatically turn and charge any nearby enemy. Wardogs are shock troops, not fighters. You don’t want them in a melee, but they are superb pursuit troops. After you get 2 or more enemy units to rout, loose the dogs. Wait until you have a pathway to the routers that is fairly clear of any melee action, so that your dogs don’t get sliced and diced.

    Dogs also work great at capturing enemy city gates when defending against a sally. They will follow a routing enemy straight back into the city and leave the doors open. If you destroy the enemy inside a city, regardless of who is the original attacker, you win possession of the city. Dogs allow you to turn the tables on a sally force and immediately win the siege.

    On offense in the mountains, assume that the AI will set up on a hilltop. Never send your troops straight up a mountainside. There are almost always side routes for you to take to bring your men within range, and these side routes invariably allow you to reduce the difference in slope between your men and the enemy’s. I usually prefer to send my foots and missiles around one flank, and the cav around the other, with the intent of charging the enemy foots once they are engaged. Once within archer range, I sit and fire. The AI gets tired of taking damage and will usually dislodge its line. This is an opportunity to sneak your cav closer from the other flank. Occasionally the terrain is such that I can set my battleline on a ridge so that the enemy has to actually charge upslope to close to melee, even though they started on a superior defensive position.

    Note that your cav will have to charge uphill in most terrains in the mountains, which will reduce their shock effectiveness, so try to hold them back as long as possible until the enemy is really low on morale. Note that routing has a domino effect on an army. I often use heavy cav, or heavy + light cav simultaneously, to crash the first enemy unit, then use wedged light cav to send the rest of the enemy routing. The nice thing about a mono-type battleline that you will often be fighting against the Gauls is that they have similar battle experiences/losses, and thus similar morale levels. Generally, if you can get a second unit to rout, the entire army will quickly follow.

    These are all good tactics, but in all likelihood you are still going to be in for some scary times. In particular, the Gallic king will show up with a big stack, and probably a son or two (more heavy cav), in tow. You should do what you can with your diplomats to disperse any captained troops looking to merge up with this big enemy stack. You should also attack any small stack within reach before it can merge up with the Gallic king. After each battle, maximize your unit strengths and send the tiny remainders back for retraining if necessary. Resupply your army with a steady stream of troop builds from your cities. Still, you are probably going to be in for a big heavyweight matchup between approximately equal numbers of Gaul’s best troops against (hopefully, if you have prepared) your best troops.

    There is no magic bullet for winning this battle. Often you can entice the Gallic king into charging your missilers. His value is so important that you should spend at least a few seconds concentrating all of your units’ fire on him. While kings in RTW are not the superheroes they were in MTW, the Gallic king is still no slouch. He has 7 or 8 stars, the standard 2 HPs, and can fight like a mofo. Don’t hesitate to throw your princely heavy cav, and your light cav, into the fray to counter his charge. Do try to save out your own general until you are desperate, though. If your commanding general dies, you will lose the battle. Kill the enemy king, and you are most likely to win it—assuming you didn’t ignore the rest of the battlefield in the meantime.

    With the Gallic king dead, you have only to mop up any Gaul stragglers within the mountain pass, then proceed onto Massilia. The Gauls will have stripped most of their forces to attack you in the mountain pass, so Massilia should be a fairly easy siege/assault.

    I then proceed onto Lugdunum, regardless if the Gauls have managed to capture this city from the rebels or not. My reasoning is geographical in nature. Massilia is fairly easily protected by two bridges from Nabo Martius. Owning Lugdunum covers the flank of Mediolanium—you do not want to leave your major cities more exposed than necessary, and the Dacians might well decide they want Lugdunum if you don’t take it. Thirdly, Lugdunum gives you a straight shot at the Gallic capitol of Alesia.

    The Gauls may be barbarians, but they are better developed than you are. Alesia will be at least a class two city, and often it is a class three. That means that, once you capture it, you can build principi and archers out of this city. The crucial importance of the added range archers give you has already been discussed. Principi are basically beefed up hastati. Traditionally, the core of the Roman army was the basic infantry unit. The Romans excelled at fielding superior basic foot troops. In the game, I prefer a slight variation to the historical by adding somewhat more emphasis on technologically superior support missile and cav troops, because the AI often prepares most strongly to counter Roman infantry. However, you cannot avoid the basic fact that you need a strong, high-morale battleline of infantry to withstand the brunt of enemy attacks. As an ideal, always try to field 4 or more units of the very best infantry available in the center of any battleline. Principi are enough of an improvement over hastati to make the effort to obtain them worthwhile.

    Regardless of what you do, you are going to need some heroic victories, and very few lost battles, to survive on hardest difficulty. Try to play to your generals’ strengths. If you’ve got a defensive general, give him lots of missiles, run his army up to the red zone of the enemy, on a hill space or bridge, but don’t attack—let the enemy come to you. If you’ve got an attacking general, give him long range missiles, lots of cav, and lots and lots of foot troops. Within the battles, always seek the high ground, line your infantry just inside the treeline, and line your missiles just below the treeline—if the map allows such. Place your cav forward and pretty wide from the main line. I have gained some humongous victories simply by concentrating my missile fire (and often my hastati missile fire) on a single unit. In the meantime, a light cav unit can often draw off 1 or 2 enemy units from the main battle, then lose them by running away, then charge back into the battle in the rear of the enemy line.

    In the early stages of the game (before the Marius reforms), equites are true fighting units. But beware, they cannot single handedly fight enemy foot troops one-on-one from the front. If that happens, they will rout and die. You must encircle an isolated enemy unit with 2 or 3 equites and then charge all at once. Equites provide considerable shock power for light cav and they will destroy any isolated enemy infantry in this manner. Equites also provide significant shock when attacking from the rear. Wedge formation increases their shock value, especially when smashing into a square foot unit from behind.

    As the Julii, you will find that the Britons and Germans often war with each other, while the Carthaginians and Spanish do likewise. You can often stop the war between Britain and Germania by allying with both sides. As the Julii, you can’t ally with the Carthaginians without increasing the ire directed at you by your Roman allies. So, you can let the Scipii, Carthaginians, and Spanish duke it out, if you can’t get an alliance with the Spaniards. Briton and Germania, however, you want concentrating their efforts on Gaul.

    Macedonia typically goes after the Greek City States first. If they are successful, you will have to deal with them soon, especially if they manage to take Segestica. If the Greeks stomp them, they will quickly become a very minor faction. Dacia is potentially more dangerous, because the lands they conquer from the rebels stretch all the way to Tribus Alanni. If the Dacians conquer Iuvavum, look out! They will almost certainly come after you next, down the mountain pass into Venetia. You can forestall this by strongly fortifying Patavium, but you will likely not be able to do this on hardest difficulty, because the Gauls will be pounding on you in the East. This makes your alliances with the Britons and Germans even more valuable, because the Germans have a long border with Dacia, while the Britons can easily reach the northern provinces of Gaul.

    Fighting the Dacians is very similar to fighting the Gauls. Both armed forces are very heavy on warbands, with only 1 or 2 heavy cav provided by family members. The Dacians, however, often throw in an archer warband or two, and you should seek an opportunity to destroy these. You want to totally dominate missile warfare, not get into archery duels with the enemy. Another concern with the Dacians is the falx units. You must either rip these units apart with ranged fire, or administer severe shocks in terms of grossly outnumbering them and charging from several directions at once. Falx troops are sufficiently strong to whip your Romans on an even standing, and they are extremely deadly against cav troops. But, they don’t have any armor or shields, so they are quite vulnerable to missile fire.

    If you do not knock the Gauls out early, or at least greatly deplete their build capacity, they will soon field druids. Gallic druids, and Germanic screeching women, are not very strong combat troops. However, if left alone, they will reduce the morale of your entire army with their noises. These morale-busting units are often quite well protected in initial setups and advances, but you can often pry away their protection by feinting at their guards with your equites. Once you have an opening, a single charge from an equite company is enough to ruin these enemy troops for the rest of the battle.


    “Fee, Fie, Fo, Fum, I Smell the Blood of…”

    As the Julii, you should spend almost the entire game fighting barbarians. Once the Gauls are done, one of Spain, Germania, or Briton will go to war with you. Frequently, any AI faction will go to war with you as soon as you hem them in geographically. Thus, if you beat Germania, the Britons will attack on the next turn. If you take Corduba from Carthage and Numidia from the Gauls, the Spanish will attack straightaway.

    Spain is actually not too difficult to conquer, since they are almost exactly like the Gauls, and you are already geared up for fighting them. If you took Caralis from Carthage at the start of the game, Carthage is likely a minor faction by now, and taking Corduba should be a cinch. You don’t really want a prolonged, overseas war with Carthage, however, regardless of what the Senate encourages. So, always have a diplomat standing by Carthage to sue for a ceasefire with them. Since Numidia, Egypt and Rome are usually beating the stuffings out of them without Caralis, they will almost always accept.

    Germania and Dacia are very similar to other barbarian troops. Dacian falxmen have already been comment upon. The Germans have screeching woman that fulfill the same purpose as Gallic druids. I usually go after Germania fairly early, since they are often covetous of my lands and send probing armies across my territory anyway. You definitely want to hit the Germans before they can build nightriders, which are severe demoralizing troops. One unit can send your whole army fleeing in terror. Be a bit more careful of Germanic warbands than you were of the Gallic ones. Remember that German gods give added XP.

    As noted, once you defeat Germania, the Britons will attack you, alliance or no. Britons have some unique troops, again with terror bonuses. Headhurlers are the equivalent of velites, with demoralization added in. Chariots, both light and heavy, can be a serious danger to you. Chariots are basically drive-by weapons. They are very strong on offense and charge, but have no better defense than the average peasant. They are very speedy, very scary, and are quite good at charging a unit, causing it to rout, then chasing it down and killing everyone within 100 yards. The key to stopping chariots is to actually physically stop them. Use deep infantry formations to absorb their charge and then swarm them. Once you have a chariot at a standstill, it will quickly die.

    You will need a couple of boats to get across the English Channel. This does not have to be a huge armada. You just need at least one boat to survive the loading/unloading of your army. Depending on how long it takes you to get to Britain, the Britons may have colonized Ireland, in which case you will need a second ferry operation to send a minor force there and destroy the faction. The English Isles are mostly an afterthought. The main Briton power will be on the mainland, and once you defeat them there, the Isles should fall with minimal opposition. Exterminate each town there and basically forget about the British Isles for the remainder of the game.


    Rounding the Last Turn

    Once you have defeated the Gauls, Spanish, Germans, and Britons, you can easily start on the Dacians and head south. You will have 25-30 provinces, and the Senate will soon demand your faction leader’s suicide. If you agree, they will simply demand that the next faction leader also suicide right away, until you are left with a gibbering idiot on the throne and represent no threat to Rome. If you refuse, you are immediately outlawed and Roman civil war begins.

    The Scipii are likely mostly in North Africa and out of your hair. But the Brutii and SPQR are right next door. The Brutii have much more money than you and probably have huge stacks all over the map. Make sure you have built at least stone walls in your 4 core cities and stock 3 or 4 archers, in addition to foot troops and/or militia, in them for defense.

    Now that the gloves are off and civil war is in progress, bribe the Brutii profligately. Since their troops are Roman, they will all go directly to your army and you can use them to conquer southwards. This also means you are removing the arms that Brutii needs to fight you. The very best defense of your core cities is not walls and archers, but a diplomat parked a bit outside the city. Anytime anyone approaches, send to diplomat to bribe them and collect your new troops.

    Reserve any builds you perform in-house to the elite units like Praetorians and onagers. Send all new troops, if you can at all spare them, on a round of rally points to gain armor, weapons, XP, and morale bonuses, if you have them. At least one of your core cites should have a Ludus Magna to train new generals. One should also have a foundry to increase armor. Coupled with a visit to an XP and a smith god, you can send the slightly obsolete Brutii units you get from bribes back to the front as a formidable force.

    You will likely find a small navy handy at this point, though the AI only rarely lands troops on your territory from the sea. (Thus, the Scipii are relatively innocuous as civil war foes.) But to blockade Italian ports and such, you should have at least one full stack of improved quineremes. These will still lose to the 2 and 3 star admirals the AI pumps out, but if stacked together, at least they won’t sink immediately. So, dedicate a couple of cities to building advanced boats.

    You don’t have to conquer the other Roman factions to win; you just need to take Rome and 49 other provinces. The SPQR AI is very inactive and likely only owns the province where Rome is located. Note that if the AI leaves its main stack exposed without the leadership of the faction leader or heir, then you can usually bribe away all their generals in one stroke. Bribe any Brutii armies that the Brutii are audacious enough to send against you.

    Use your turncoat Brutii troops, matched up with relatively inexperienced generals to back up your main two attack stacks. During this last period, I typically run my empire at a deficit and depend on a city extermination each turn to provide my spending/bribing money. If I do not conquer a city on one turn, I am in the red on the next. This is a blistering pace, but you can do it because the Brutii have huge amounts of money and are just churning out the bribable troops for you. Most likely you will be using your entire income to pay for keeping your citizens’ happiness above 80% and to retrain your troops. Any remainder should go to bribing new troops, even if you do not need them at the moment.

    Stop your eastward expansion at Scythia, or whoever owns what used to be Sythia, and concentrate on bringing all your armies down to a single point of concentration at Sparta—leaving a sea of red behind you, of course. At a last gasp, the Greeks will likely wake up and attack you once you reach their borders, but it will be too little, too late.

    Greek hoplites are virtually impregnable from the front, and they will destroy any unit that tries to melee them from the front. You cannot let the AI fight hoplites, because the AI Romans will just stand there feebly waving their swords until they die at spearpoint and rout.

    Hoplites were created at a time when warfare consisted of lining up your guys against a line of their guys, then running straight at each other, and seeing who dies. It shows. Hoplites, and phalanx troops in general are exceptionally clumsy, and extremely vulnerable from the rear. When facing off one of your Roman infantry units against a hoplite, charge at a slight angle away from their front. The Hoplites will attempt to turn their front towards you, but will not be fast enough and you will be able to slip around behind them. As soon as you do, charge into their rear, and the hoplites will die.

    Hoplites are also extremely vulnerable to missiles and fire. A single fireball from an onager can immediately rout a hoplite company. From the front, hoplites can stop and kill even elephants. From the back, there is little so satisfying to see as even just a half unit of Roman cav charging in to mow down the hapless hoplites like so many blades of grass. Hoplites simply cannot defend themselves against missiles, and cannot turn fast enough to protect themselves. Any army with enough morale to hold its individual units together until they can circle onto hoplite flanks and rear will easily defeat even huge hoplite armies.

    As you near Sparta, you will likely pass the 50 province level, and all that remains is to take Rome. The Brutii in Italy have been stripped by your diplomats. Likewise the Scipii and, possibly, the SPQR. Your ships block at least the SPQR and Scipii harbors in Italy. Now just send in an army of superior numbers to besiege Rome, set up shop at their gates and wait for the win. I have never even needed to assault Rome, because there are no reinforcements coming to help the trapped SPQR army. Just wait a few turns and victory is yours, Emperor!
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    Last edited by Saint Nicholas; October 14, 2010 at 07:00 PM. Reason: updated

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