Playing as Rebels

[Aemilianus]

In regular vanilla Total War, or any game which supports it, have any of you attempted to play as the rebels? I would say it definitely presents a big challenge I've never really seen before. Any opinions welcome.

[Slimshoom]

yes, and it is extremely hard and is pretty much impossible to have any success at without using some cheats. They have bad troops. their forces are spread out, and they have a very, very, very shallow amount of money.

[Gtathefanboy]

Can someone tell me how to get them playable?

[twnoob]

Go in your "Rome - Total War" folder, then World,maps,campaign,imperial_campaign, and go in "descr_strat". Move Slave into playable.

[Aemilianus]

I have a theory I'm going to try to test out, wherein I withdraw troops from almost every single rebel city that isn't contiguous and try to find "one homeland". This will also have the result of creating a couple 20-division forces in a time where most of the campaign map is relatively weak. Doing this might allow me to surprise a couple people. I'll post with info about whether this worked for me.

[hellheaven1987]

But I think it is ok if you don't have money for rebel... as the worst thing is rebel again, so what's the problem?

[Slimshoom]

I have a theory I'm going to try to test out, wherein I withdraw troops from almost every single rebel city that isn't contiguous and try to find "one homeland". This will also have the result of creating a couple 20-division forces in a time where most of the campaign map is relatively weak. Doing this might allow me to surprise a couple people. I'll post with info about whether this worked for me.

i dont think that will work, the armies and settlements are too spread out to move armies between them. Plus, the armies you start with are weak, usually peasants, warbands, maybe a couple of hastati or light cavalry unit here and there depending on where the army is located.

[Halie Satanus]

ive done this it was very hard, moved all rebel troops to greece had five or six full stacks and won several battles
taking five or six regions, but it all fell apart as the other factions improved thier armour and weapons while i was about
two million in debt,it was fun to play, but took ages to search the whole map every turn for new units,

if you give the slaves about half a millon to start it might be worth playing,

[Aemilianus]

Update-

It became apparent pretty early I wasn't going to be able to find "one homeland" so I used local areas to concentrate troops (Vicus Venedae, Massilia, Palmyra). The only time I had a real, useful army was in Palmyra, and I took Damascus from the Seleucids. However, the fact that I left cities undefended was a problem, people were capturing them (though the three divisions per city I did have is the same thing as undefended). So far, the Seleucids probably have 20 or 25 divisions in my face around Palmyra, I've lost a 10-division force at Sidon, and I've lost another reasonably large force through attrition in Greece, though I did capture Larissa. I looked at my troop counts and money and I realized there was just no way. Any Roman faction that wants it can take any of my regions and defeat any of my armies, even if its 20 divisions. I have no money, thus no coordinated backup. The only cities I can reasonably hold are Tara (where they're sending all the generals but I can't build a single boat, no money), Themiskyra (Amazons, which are now part of one of my field armies), and maybe Nepte. I will never be totally defeated by anyone because they'd never be able to hold all my cities, but there is also no way I'm going to win. Anyone that does win....or anyone that has opinions about it....feel free to explain how in the world to do this.

[ThermoBrave]

I play Rebels, but its very hard. When you lose a battle, you lose your army. And money...
But your armies come allways. :original:

[Aemilianus]

The armies do come all the time, but very spread out and only one division at a time, which got frustrating really fast....I was basically running from the Gauls, Scythians, and Egyptians at the same time, trying to combine somewhere, and this was in 265 BC....basically I'm going to have to agree with Slimshoom. I'm sure eventually I could hold 50 provinces if I really had a good run of it...but attacking Italy, as you all well know, requires over a hundred good quality divisions most of the time. I would say the Rebels would need close to two hundred (that's 10 stacks for those of you who measure them that way) and I simply can't get that from any of those provinces. I'll have to reluctantly agree...without cheats it's mission impossible with those guys...

[mike^_^]

also remember you might have to move a different faction to the "unplayable" slot, perhaps this isnt the case with the newer versions though

[Aemilianus]

Mike is right...they only have space for one less than the total number of factions- however...it doesn't matter, because SPQR is kind of a screwed up faction that seems to enjoy crashing to desktop. Thus you can take them off and it won't be a problem.

[hellheaven1987]

But "sometime" Rebel is fun to play... I have a recent campaign of Spanish, and after I conquer whole Italy, I find out that most provinces in the map has been occupied by rebel... and the faction left are really few... most are destoryed because the massive rebel...

[Slimshoom]

if u can get huge armies of decent troops, you can win a few battles and take a few settlements, but its extremely hard to get any real success in a rebel campaign.

[Aemilianus]

What I don't really understand is how it's even possible. A rebel army with 20 divisions would be totally destroyed by a Roman army of something like 12, and that's if you're good. Anyone with over 10 divisions in any force, no matter what you have (unless it's the Amazons) will rout your men off. You might get two divisions in any turn, you have no money to build troops, and you're in default warfare with everyone on the map. It's probably mathematically impossible to capture Rome, due to the nature of Italy (attrition and shock tactics are needed in combination, both of which the rebels are terrible at) and the fact that the Senate commands 50 divisions by the time you can get there, and the troops can easily defeat conventional forces that are even larger. Rebels also suck at holding territory, as we've all known. Bad offense + bad defense = not good.

[GambleFish]

Just play SPQR as rebels - you get massive armies in Spain and 2 more in Italy. You'll do fine, methinks.

[mike^_^]

does one get to control the brigands when they spawn, if one is playing the rebels?

[shadowarmy75]

I wish someone would make a rebel mod where you can train troops. I'm way too lazy to do it myself.

[faustus]

I tried playing as rebels a couple times a while back. The main things I noticed about it were that you have too many **** troops that cost upkeep (warbands at 200pt or whatever) and your cities are so far flung that corruption takes almost all the cash you make. Together, this makes massive negative cashflow. Combining troops does allow you to makes some advances, but your cashflow stays negative because as troops die so to do you lose a lot of settlements fast, dropping your income farther. To stay viable in any area, you need money to train troops, because you can't rely on troops spawning often enough to keep you supplied there (sometimes they do, sometimes they dont) Furthermore, because you cant go to peace with anyone (you can create diplomats, but cant say anything in the talking screens) and you can't move armies on ships (can load them on, but my game at least crashed if I tried to unload them) I was trying to get the cretan archers off of crete. You're further crippled on the spawning troops part, because as you conquer more territory, fewer troops spawn in that area.

The strategy I found, that allows you to be somewhat successful for a little while, involves concentrating on mainly greece and the middle east. Quickly replace your capital to athens (helps enormously over ireland, whatever it's called) And disband almost all your troops that are elsewhere. Take the few troops that are worthwhile and try to bring them together as quick as possible and bring them either to greece or the middle east. In the cities you can keep (the amazon one, athens, byzantium, various middle eastern cities, the ones in turkey) build financial improvements, and in the few cities that can train decent troops (athens, byzantium and the one in western turkey I think can do militia hoplites, some in the middle east can do eastern infantry) it is possible to get financially viable if you go hard enough on killing your far off troops, to start with by disbanding them (to increase city sizes and tax income) and later by suiciding them into whatever is nearby.

This keeps you viable for a while, but eventually you are crippled because the rebel tech tree is scattered, wierd and doesn't go up very far. Some cities are unable to train anything, no matter what you build there, you cant predict what things will allow you to build, and for the most part all you can get is the worst infantry of each tech type. For a while the advanced units you get spawning will let you make up the difference, with hordes of cheap archers, militia hoplites and eastern infantry for most of your forces, but once the enemy is mostly more advanced forces, you're pretty finished.
Someone who knows the txt files better then me, could probably go in and figure out why exactly this recruitment thing happens for the rebels, as if you had some sort of real tech tree and ability to train higher level units, you could do even more.

Faustus

apologies for the length of the post, I'd share my exact experiences, but dont want to make it even longer.