Early Romani Strategy

[Aegyptus]

What would be your plan playing as the Romani for about the first 20 turns? Just wondering.

[Moosemanmoo]

In that time I usually aim to occupy southern Italy and dismiss the legions as Carthage is unlikely to be a threat by this point. I'll then develop infrastructure and the economy with roads, markets and ports and also mines in Rhegion. Sicilly is richer than northern italy though I usually allow the Punics to build up in order to provide a decent fight.

[ERE_Friend]

I'm playing my first EB game ever as Rome and I'm not really sure what to do with myself as it's so different from the medieval mods I usually play lol. I just blitzed the one city that green Greek faction has on the Italian Peninsula, and then when to take everything up to Rhegion. Apparently going into Sicily will annoy Carthage a lot, so now I'm just crossing the sea to kill of the remaining greeks from before. Honestly this mod is so fundamentally different from MTW2, I don't know what strategies I'm supposed to employ because you can only make one unit a turn in a city and building up armies takes forever. I honestly don't know how I would fight a major war, the computer runs around with lots of armies that they magically got, and I have my single stack that I can support. I can't afford to garrison cities so they could actually defend themselves. Although I like how the rebels are meant to represents lesser world powers, they provide a buffer to prevent unrealistic and boring nonstop/unprovoked/unrealistic wars between the entire world that usually occurs in total war games. In EB you actually go to war, as opposed to doing a blitzkrieg across Europe from the beginning that would make Hitler's conquests look stupid.

If I may say one thing that's annoying, I wanna fight people in the field, AI pathfinding during sieges sucks, but the rebels never wander around so I'm stuck fighting lots of annoying seige battles

[nhinhonhinho]

In RTW you can only train 1 unit/turn however you can retrain 10 unit/turn!!And there are no unit limit.It's mean if your cities can train that kind of unit you can train and retrain them wherever you want until you run out of manpower.Thing about this:you have 9 unit has suffer after the battle.Just bring them to your cities and retrain 9 of them and plus one new unit.After that turn you have full 10 units.

About AI RTW in H or VH will get free money (really a lot) per turn and they can churn out their troop.Another thing in many mod the AI get "auto spam units".It's mean when you besiege some special cities after 1 turn AI will get a full stack of terrible strong troop

[Siegfriedfr]

You'll need money to progress and carthage is the powerhouse and control sea trade in that area, clashing with them is inevitable.

Take down epiros in Taras, then rhegion, then Sicily then corsica and sardigna. Then the 3 rebel cities in northern Italy. Those 3 towns will be unvaluable military centers after polybian reform.

Whatever you do sharing borders with someone means war so be ready for gaellic and invasions from illyria. One stack should be enough to protect north Italy.

Then its all up to you but a sound strategy is to devote all your power in the total conquest of north africa to secure the southern borders and become rich.

Venturing into gaul requires a strong economy because you'll constantly be harassed by the green guys, and then the German, and will need to retrain in Italy which requires a bit of walking. Building regional barracks and getting gallic infantry is critical so you don't loose momentum (which is true for other areas anyway).
In non-italic conquered cities your top priority are military buildings after public order is in control. Developing economy in cities close to the war front is a loss in troop pumping and a great way to loose momentum.

Oh and set low tax in your low pop cities and develop growth buildings (including health : 5% health=0.5% growth) as a priority in them otherwise they'll be useless as military center and you might find yourself in a difficult situation later on if you didn't develop in that area.

If you don't like sieges... wait for the enemy to sally. As a rule I auto_win when the AI avoid field battles and attacks me with a full stack while I siege. Serves them right!

[MisterFred]

You certainly can blitz in EB! But I don't like to do it that often. Rather let the AI build up some kind of resistance.

Rome's a good faction to start slow with, though. Good Italian economy, pretty safe at the beginning. I like to take the two southern cities quickly... although Segesta in the north is a winnable siege. Taking Taras and Rhegion first is historically accurate too. Speaking of city assaults, if you don't like them there's really only two ways around it when you're fighting most rebels. Starve 'em out and wait for them to sally, or attack with a force weak enough they think they can win, and trounce them in the field anyway (not really that easy).

Garrisons, as a rule, are pretty expensive. But you shouldn't really need them. Virtually all of your cities, unless they border someone, can have one cheapo unit sitting in them. One of the downsides of not having the MTW engine is essentially not needing to worry about naval invasions (although they'll happen once in a blue moon if you have RTW-Barbarian Invasion installed).

Also, depending on the quality of your armies, you may find that you need less reinforcements than you expect while on campaign. Units are fairly durable, and I find most MTW2 armies suffer more casulties in victory than EB ones.

As far as producing lots of units fast, EB has a very different recruitment system, yes. The upside is that you don't have to settle with crappy units from towns while your castles do the heavy lifting. Insead of always recruiting heavily near the fight, think instead that you can recruit 6 units a turn from your empire. Eventually you get used to creating an army piecemeal and having it all arrive at a central gathering point in a timely fashion. (Let's see, I'll produce 2 cavalry units from the town farthest away from the collection point, 2 units from the town 2 turns away from the collection point, 3 units from the 2 towns one turn away from the collection point, and 4 units from the town at the collection point.) Boom - 14 unit army in 4 turns.

[Xerrop]

Well in the first 20 (or even 30 turns) you can only capture Taras and Rhegion. Meanwhile you should build up your economy to gain enough money for further troop recruitment and upkeep.
@Kschneides: EB is meant to be slowly progressing. Blitzing is simply not possible with all factions. But the Romans have a good economy, so you will not lack money once you have upgraded your cities a bit.

[Carpathian Wolf]

I got questions about the reforms. What happens to the old experienced units you have? Do they get converted or no? Can you retrain and maintain the pre marian armies or you have to disband them? What do you need to do for the reforms? I mean I know I can look up the technical aspects but suggestions to get to those things. Also did the early Romans always fight in checkerboard formation? What are some other early Roman formations?

[Mediolanicus]

I got questions about the reforms. What happens to the old experienced units you have? (1) Do they get converted or no? (2) Can you retrain and maintain the pre marian armies or (3) you have to disband them? (4) What do you need to do for the reforms? I mean I know I can look up the technical aspects but suggestions to get to those things. (5) Also did the early Romans always fight in checkerboard formation? What are some other early Roman formations?

1.No
2.No
3.No
4.Playing the game + Luck or + cheats. I don't tend to "groom" my FM's, I just play, so I can't help you with that one.
5.It was their main formation yes. They pretty much always fought with hastati first, then principes, and triarii in the last line; always rotating and bringing fresh men to the front.
Of course only a very bad commander would always set the same formation in any battle. Sometimes tactics or circumstances required to do thing differently.

[Aegyptus]

I started a game last night as the Romani. I kept all of my infantry but disbanded all of my Cavalry on the first turn because of their insanely high upkeep. All of my cities are making money, with medium tax rates on all of the settlements except the two northernmost ones because I want to encourage their growth. But on the second turn my faction leader died! Epeiros also sent up a little scouting force right next to my border. Should I neutralize the Epeirot force? I could easily kill them, but I am also planning to attack their city in the "boot heel" of Italy. Was disbanding my cavalry a bad choice? Just need some critique/advice. Thanks.

P.S.: I'm playing on H/M. I'm looking for a challenge, but its my first campaign. Also, I'm a terrible tactician [even in RTW Vanilla] on the field so I set it to Medium for battles. I play the game more for the campaign/visuals then field tactics.

[Moosemanmoo]

First of all disbanding roman cavalry is never a mistake lol. Yes do kick Pyrrhus' army out of Taras ASAP, Taras is wealthy and the sooner you conquer southern Italy the sooner you can disband your southern forces (=money saved from upkeep can be spent on developing your economy).

[Carpathian Wolf]

I never turn the battle difficulty itself up because it simply makes the enemy units better than mine so even though they could be the same unit, say hoplite, theirs is simply better and I don't think that makes sense. What I rather do instead is keep my armies small and go in fighting outnumbered for the challenge.

[ERE_Friend]

Thanks for the info guys!!!! I never responded lol

[Aegyptus]

Okay, so Epiros gathered up two small armies in Kalabria and attacked my medium-sized force. I fought the battle on the battle map and found it incredibly easy! I put the bulk of my force on a hill at the far side of the map so the enemy would have to march to me. Their main force of two units of levy pikes were peppered by my slingers/javelins. Then the reached the bottom of the hill and I charged them with hastati/princepes and they routed almost immediately. Meanwhile, some Hellenic cavalry charged my rear and pretty much annihilated a unit of slingers, but my bodyguard and some Samnite spearmen made short work of them.

After that the battle was pretty much won. A unit of mercenary hoplites gave me some trouble and fought to the death, but that was just a small pebble in my shoe. Why were those pikeman so weak? Why was the battle so easy? Not that I'm complaining, it just felt kinda weird that they outnumbered me but routed so easily.