Easy seems too easy or...?

[Strategist]

I am testing strategy which follow these rules on Julii faction:
Make land clearence and don't upgrading it and don't making such in Patavium(pop growth on low taxes actually is 7%!!! without any bonuses by default for this village).
Specially each city for different kind of units:
Arretium - Infantry
Aruminum - Cavalry (because they have more move points and are far away from gaul which is a good strategy about movement)
Patavium - Range units
And making armory/blacksmith in some settlement along the way where i rally my troops and retraining them . It's simply cheaper with this strategy - very cheap!
First making roads and trades/ports.
Later infantry and replacing the town watch with peasants .
Check the attached picture! 267 BC like 5-6 turns passed and such a positive income! I play on easy but why so much? Where i get this food and trade from? After all i only have 3 cities.
Also on small unit size you use real number for population so it's useless transfering pop to other cities by disbanding the 30 people there because you don't get 240 but 30 .
What did you think of this strategy? What bonuses give me walls? Check my other post in the main discussion to see what i think about walls in the game and correct me if i am wrong.
Sorry for my bad English .

[Kratos]

Dedicating settlements to different unit types is always a good idea, especially early on.

[NobleNick]

You need walls. Walls are not just for defense. Upgrading walls is the only way to unlock higher tiers of buildings in a city.

[Trumanator]

Uh... thats in MTW2 In RTW you can have a Huge city w/out walls. Not necassarily a good idea, but you can. I almost never go beyond wooden walls, sometimes first tier stone walls.

[NobleNick]

Uh... thats in MTW2 In RTW you can have a Huge city w/out walls. Not necassarily a good idea, but you can. I almost never go beyond wooden walls, sometimes first tier stone walls.

You can maybe get huge city population (I will grant that as a theoretical possibility...not something I'd like to try); but, IIRC, you need to build the walls of a given tier in order to unlock the higher tier buildings.

It has been 18 months since my last RTW campaign, and I try to win my games before there are many huge cities in the game; so feel free to correct me (again) if I am wrong.

[Blorg]

You can maybe get huge city population (I will grant that as a theoretical possibility...not something I'd like to try); but, IIRC, you need to build the walls of a given tier in order to unlock the higher tier buildings.

It has been 18 months since my last RTW campaign, and I try to win my games before there are many huge cities in the game; so feel free to correct me (again) if I am wrong.

I don't think that you have to build wall upgrades to unlock other buildings, I think that you can get away with leaving them as stone so that the enemy siege towers do not fire at you.

[MooseUpNorth]

I generally do the first tier stone walls. The AI (at least on medium) seems to get lazy about siege equipment and builds only one set of ladders and one ram. Well, the gatehouse kills the ram every time. One unit of archers on the gatehouse will fend off any elephants they happen to have, and one unit of sturdy sword fighters, positioned to intercept troops climbing the ladder seems to be enough to massacre every unit the AI decides to send up, 5 soldiers at a time.

[Trumanator]

How good are phalanx troops at defending walls? As the greek states I usually just concede them and stick the phalanx right outside the gate and any tower door they're likely to take. If I manage to eventually get heavy peltasts I somtimes use them to defend against ladders.

[MooseUpNorth]

How good are phalanx troops at defending walls? As the greek states I usually just concede them and stick the phalanx right outside the gate and any tower door they're likely to take. If I manage to eventually get heavy peltasts I somtimes use them to defend against ladders.

Not very. Phalanxes don't fight very well without their pikes. I'd trust the heavy peltasts in melee on the walls sooner than most phalanx units. Armored hoplites or spartans might be useful over a ladder against the AI. Either way, Greece is effectively doomed to get owned on walls by a competent Roman player.

Thing is, conceding the walls to the AI is one thing. Conceding them to a human player is quite another. Your phalanxes guarding the gates will find themselves dealing with a hostile gatehouse and towers, an ever increasing number of archers and swordsmen on the walls, perfectly content to let your boys get whittled down by the arrow storm.

If you can't defend the walls effectively, it's probably better to concentrate on defending the plaza which will blunt the effectiveness of hostile archers.

[Strategist]

I have huge cities with biggest possible walls and sewers. Why I have -80% PO because of squalor?

[MooseUpNorth]

I have huge cities with biggest possible walls and sewers. Why I have -80% PO because of squalor?

Because you have huge cities. Huge cities have squalor. It'd be much much worse without the sewers.

[Entropy Judge]

I have huge cities with biggest possible walls and sewers. Why I have -80% PO because of squalor?

Because there's no way to permanently get rid of Squalor. It will keep increasing as the city size/population increases - which is one of the reasons that building up Farms past the first stage isn't generally considered a good idea. Squalor is in the game to prevent megalopolis-sized cities with gigantic populations.

[MooseUpNorth]

Vanilla does not require you to build walls at all. As the Scipii, I've just plunked down the Imperial Palace in Capua, and the city has its original palisade. I rarely bother with wall upgrades in Italy or Sicily until after Marius and I'm tooling up to deal with the CW.