new player needs some help

[eldann]

anyone have any tips for me for RTW? i have played all of the total war games but have never really been good at them i just built big armies and auto resolved everything but now i want to play the game more strategically(spelt wrong i think). :hmmm:

There are a few main problems i get when playing RTW. i love the romans and always play as the julii but i cant ever get a steady income and in battels i always loose hundreds and hundreds of men if i ever win a battle.

i would be greateful for any help you guys can give me.

thanks

[Roman_Wolf]

anyone have any tips for me for RTW? i have played all of the total war games but have never really been good at them i just built big armies and auto resolved everything but now i want to play the game more strategically(spelt wrong i think). :hmmm:

There are a few main problems i get when playing RTW. i love the romans and always play as the julii but i cant ever get a steady income and in battels i always loose hundreds and hundreds of men if i ever win a battle.

i would be greateful for any help you guys can give me.

thanks

you lose hundreds of men in battle because you auto resolve battles. the thing with auto resolve is that it hardly gives you the required result, as I noticed no matter what, the casualties always seem close.
so i guess you should learn to fight your own battles. since when you get good at it, you'll start winning some impressive almost no casualty battles.

as fir the economy problems, i guess you should focus on building economic buildings (traders , ports ) and upgrade them. you could always get trade rights from other factions, as this improves your trade income.
furthermore, you could raise taxes in your cities (try going for very high tax rate as long as they aren't angry).

and you should not get carried away with your armies, as army upkeep is the greatest expence you have to pay. so i suggest using peasents as garrisons since they are cheap and hardly affect your economy. and use your good fighting units (hestati, principe, triarii, equite, and archers, and later on liggionaries) on the front fighting your enemies.

and that's about it.

btw there are lots of good threads to help you play RTW in this forum. so i i suggest you search this forum for a lot of help.

[eldann]

thank you i will check out the forum for other threads

[General Nuisance esq]

For the money read `a simple tip for the Julii` thread that I did a few months back

As for the battles always go for balanced armies IE hastasi/velites/cav, the amount of times that ai sends an unbalanced army for you to knock over is unreal

Very basic tactics are pepper then with missiles engage from the front with infrantry (use pila first) and smash into the back of them with cavalry (once the pila & missiles have stopped)
Go for the high ground if you can (IE defending) and best ever trick I learn't from here is when attacking with your cav general, seconds before impact blow your trumpet, this moves your general to the back and you hardly ever loose him

[Saint_jimmyz]

In my experince peasants are useless as garrisons. I use town guard with 2 units per city, unless more are required. Town guard can also defeat any bandits in the area. Keep and eye on your economy: If the total income does not exceed the wages and military upkeep totals you have too large an army. The easiest way to shed the financial burden is to smash some enemy armies and cities: This way you gain money and lose some of your upkeep costs.

[Kylan271]

Bro,oh happy birthday,albeit 1 month late,lol. I was in the same situation,from RPG AD&D computer games to strategic was a real headache. You can not just look at words here,you have to physically play the game to learn your joys and sorrows of gaming. My advice from experience is to play with the tutorial and learn from this,and do custom battles on different maps with different units. I never autoresolve or use auto city management,and play H/VH now.

The game is not just armies,it is your generals ancilliaries,traits and city buildings also to look at. Study the TRAITS,BUILDINGS and ANCILLIARIES text files in game to know what is available to help you with economies and dealing with conquest issues like public order,rioting,squalor etc. Okie.

[Entropy Judge]

Saint_jimmyz: Peasants are the best for internal garrison duty because they have the largest unit size and the smallest upkeep; therefore, since they won't be doing any fighting, you get the best deal.

Eldann: Without specific questions it'll be hard to give advice, simply because there are so many things that are player-dependant (for example, General Nuisance esq advised using balanced, combined-arms armies; I use infantry-heavy armies with some cavalry or archer backup a lot of the time, and I do just fine against the AI. Just different playstyles on that part.) and other things that are situational.

i cant ever get a steady income

Upgrade your Ports (in coastal regions), Roads, and Trade buildings, and keep your army upkeep (and therefore, size) as low as possible. Get trade rights with everyone you're not at war with. Make sure you attack profitable locations (eg, attack Spain before you attack north-eastern Europe).

in battels i always loose hundreds and hundreds of men if i ever win a battle.

As was said earlier, don't use Auto-Calc. The few times I do it it's always against small Rebel brigands that pop up, and I take ridiculous losses (not just numbers-wise - one time, I had a stack with two archers, three heavy infantry, and two cavalry, and auto-calc'ed against some Peasants and Warbands; took heavy losses in the cavalry, moderate losses in the archers, and moderate losses in one of the infantry - the other two did not participate.).

[NobleNick]

As has been said, fight battles yourself if you want best results. However, if it is given that you want a strategic game and are totally ininterested in managing the actual battles....

If you are auto-resolving, order your unit cards such that those with the best melee stats are first in order in your stack's roster. This will give you the best auto-resolve result.

If you are auto-resolving ALL THE TIME, then just fill your stack's entire roster with units with high melee stats, e.g. heavy infantry. To the best of my knowledge, balance means nothing in auto-resolve. If you are Julii, after the Marius Reforms, you want Legionary Cohort. That's spelled L-E-G-I-O-N-A-R-Y C-O-H-O-R-T, or "LC" for short. Not Hastati, not Early Legionary Cohort, not Urban Cohort (though they are good), not the fancy-schmancy-better-than-Legionary-but-obscenely-expensive Cohort. Just plain old LC: the most cost effective infantry in the game.

BTW: If you play as Scipii, and build the right buildings, you can upgrade your LC to gold sword and gold shield.