Am I Doing it Wrong?

[The Unknown General]

On several VH/VH Julii campaigns, I either fail taking Patavium and Mediolanium or I take both, but I have a hard time pushing forward.One campaign, I used the two starter armies to attack Patavium and Mediolanium, using the army in Arretium (the one with the heir and two units of hastati) to take Segesta. My goal, was to build up a navy to transport several armies to Spain, conquering Spain while taking France, so I would avoid Spain attacking me. However, Dacia decided to attack me and I was forced to move into France and close to Greece.

[dude21862004]

You probably aren't building your army up enough. Because of the spacing of the barbarian factions they have more time to recruit while you are still on your way.... I've never had any trouble with Patavium or Mediolanium, though....

[The Unknown General]

You probably aren't building your army up enough. Because of the spacing of the barbarian factions they have more time to recruit while you are still on your way.... I've never had any trouble with Patavium or Mediolanium, though....

It only happens, when I don't rush them at the start, because they will usually build up quite a force. That may be true, and I even did dismantle the two armies in Patavium or Mediolanium, because building the other armies was causing me to loose too much money.

[VikingOfSixth]

Don't neglect your economy even though it is VH/VH. I think there is often an inclination to rush and gain as much territory as possible on this setting, but considering the bonuses the AI will receive stretching your empire too thin too early is not the best option. I would recommend using bridges to guard the Alpine passes while a smaller force conquers the two Carthaginian islands. Try to develop your ports and trade partners as well to boost your income. The barbarians will throw a hell of a lot of stacks at you but Romans have superior units and this should be no problem if you know how to out maneuver and flank low morale warband. Whatever be the case having a solid economy and trade base in Italy will make possible success in your late European campaigns.

[The Unknown General]

Don't neglect your economy even though it is VH/VH. I think there is often an inclination to rush and gain as much territory as possible on this setting, but considering the bonuses the AI will receive stretching your empire too thin too early is not the best option. I would recommend using bridges to guard the Alpine passes while a smaller force conquers the two Carthaginian islands. Try to develop your ports and trade partners as well to boost your income. The barbarians will throw a hell of a lot of stacks at you but Romans have superior units and this should be no problem if you know how to out maneuver and flank low morale warband. Whatever be the case having a solid economy and trade base in Italy will make possible success in your late European campaigns.

I rush the two armies, while building nothing in my cities except economic buildings. I was thinking of doing that, but I'd have spend time building up the islands and defending them from the Carthaginians.

[tianzong]

Don't neglect your economy even though it is VH/VH. I think there is often an inclination to rush and gain as much territory as possible on this setting, but considering the bonuses the AI will receive stretching your empire too thin too early is not the best option. I would recommend using bridges to guard the Alpine passes while a smaller force conquers the two Carthaginian islands. Try to develop your ports and trade partners as well to boost your income. The barbarians will throw a hell of a lot of stacks at you but Romans have superior units and this should be no problem if you know how to out maneuver and flank low morale warband. Whatever be the case having a solid economy and trade base in Italy will make possible success in your late European campaigns.

Just like the real romans did

[dude21862004]

I usually conquer the three cities directly across from my starting two. Then I conquer at least one island, and the rebel city with the two bridges. All the while I make trade agreements with everyone I can and I build half economic buildings and half army. I've never had a problem with this strategy for the Juulii.

[Ngazi]

Economy wise and logistics wise the other Romans are much easier.

[Centurion.]

You need to find the balance between gaining territory and developing your economy, if you rush too quickly and take lots of settlements not only will you be unable to defend with your forces being so stretched but you will probably be losing money as well (plus you may have a lot of settlements rebelling if you don't have the means to govern them properly). If you just sit back and develop your starting cities too much enemy forces will (like you say) build up and taking settlements will be costly not just in money terms but casualties as well making campaigns more expensive and time consuming (the need to retrain troops).

I would recommend advancing at a steady pace taking a few turns out after you take a settlement to build a decent force to defend your new settlements and also start to build up its economy to a point where it is making money (ports, roads, markets etc.).

[NobleNick]

Agreed with the suggestion to focus on economy, even in VH/VH. (I must confess that I only played the Julii on N/N, as it was my first TW campaign ever; but most of my campaigns have been on H/H through VH/VH, and focusing on the economy has typically worked very well for me.)

Here are some tidbits, most of which I adapted from one of my very old posts on Julii strategy:

1.) Grab the cities north of the Julii starting position as buffers; so that when the Gauls come down to attack, they expend themselves trying to take cities that are not critical to your survival. Your starting cities *ARE* critical and you need to NOT lose them.

2.) The Gaul advantage is large numbers of (relatively low quality but tenacious) troops, led by high quality generals. They have high morale, but are not techie. In the very early game their units are not especially capable, and as you climb the tech tree, the capability advantage you have increases. Their troops, especially in the early to mid game, are weak against cavalry, and if you can get the Marian Reform early in the game and field half-stacks of Legionary Cavalry (and use them correctly), the Gauls are toast.

3.) Focus on economy for your starting cities, in roughly decreasing order of importance: the first farm upgrade; traders (markets); roads; ports; and mines are all good things to have. "The sinews of war are infinite money." So make sure you get your share. Things will go much more smoothly if you do. Do not build a standing army in your home cities: The upkeep sucks money away from your economy. Especially, do not build military units at all in the very early game (first few turns).

4.) In the first turn you will get an assignment to take Segesta. (or a name like that.) You should be able to take this with the troops you have at the start of the game. Next, you want Patavium; and then the town (Media-something?? forgot name) in between Patavium and Segesta. Taking these towns spreads your military upkeep over more towns, easing the economic pressure and allowing you to pump more money into building even better economic buildings and into training more troops.

5.) Train a few diplomats and send them out selling trade treaties to other factions.

6.) Build all cav armies and place them at choke points that the Gauls will have to pass to get to your cities. (Try to pick these spots as free of trees as you can.) When the Gauls attack, depending on the enemy strength and your tactical skill level, crush them, or simply run your cav around the battlefield until the timer runs out, avoiding combat except when you find opportunities to pick off straggling units. Either way, the Gaul army loses and is forced to retreat. This is good, since a Gaul army, just standing around doing nothing, is sucking resources away from their economy and army building.

7.) Be on the offensive strategically: Build enough troops to take a city and then go take it. Build one spy for each front, so that you can find out the make-up of your targets, and plan your own force composition to gain maximum advantage for the money spent.

If the enemy is heavy on skirmishers, build lots of heavy cavalry.
If heavy on light infantry build lots of heavy cav.
If heavy on heavy infantry, build lots of heavy cav.
If heavy on cav, build lots of heavy cav.
If heavy on Velites, build lots of heavy cav.
If heavy on archers, build lots of heavy cav.,
if heavy on anything besides spear/phalanx, build lots of heavy cav.

Really, this is like cheating: Almost any Gaul stack can be crucified by a half stack of heavy cav **IF** you are in the open field and know how to use the cav correctly.) Here is a Link to Cav Strategy if you care to look.

8.) For now, pick defensive positions in cities, choke points, or other favorable terrain, and win the defensive battles.

9.) Pick the fastest growing STARTING city you have, pump it's economy, lower its taxes (Just for that one city; keep the others as high as possible), and do not train troops there (retraining full units is O.K.) . You want to get to HUGE city status as quickly as possible to trigger the Marian Reform.

10.) Use just one city for production of each troop type (one for infantry, one for calvary, and one for archers) so that you do not have to build all of the same military buildings in each city. Do not use one city for ALL your military production, because your city will not grow well in the early game, and you need growth to get more money and to climb the tech tree..

Hope that helps.

[Feather]

Nick's post is very complete. He's pretty much summed up everything already, but I'd still like to add a few things I like to do. Just because.

Here's a screenshot of my 2nd turn playing as the Julii in VH/VH:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Gonna use pretty colors to get into the different points of the starting map.

- In red are two river crosspoints which I really like to use. Any forces attempting to move into your territory will easily be taken out at either of these locations.
Unlike forts, rivers are completely free to use. And when in battle the AI will limit itself to sending all its army through just one long passageway (Even if there's another one available!), meaning that you won't be overrun as easily as when defending a fort.

The passage through the north isn't really all that important yet. The Germanic tribes shouldn't really bother you at the start of the campaign. But you should still leave an army on the defensive just in case, and for future uses.
The one to the west is of huge importance though. This has been a place of slaughter for thousands of Gauls along my recent campaigns.

In the campaign, these defensive points mark my territorial limits at the west. I've never really liked going beyond them cause they'll get you engaged in conflicts with the Iberian tribes, the Britons and the Germanic tribes instead of just the Gauls.
All those factions are just gonna pester you too much as to just let them live. It's very easy for them to push you to the point of waging a long extermination war which will only leave you with a bunch of economically weak provinces and (If you've gone far out enough) the LOVELY city of Corduba.

Anyway,

- In blue are my current siege points:

Massilia
At the beginning of the game it never hurts to have a little extra money. So taking Massilia should help you from the start, although it serves a much bigger purpose for me whenever I've played.
Massilia really starts to shine once you've built a port and a militia barracks.
Ports generate a lot of trade. So having one in there is gonna help you boost your economy.
And the militia barracks will help you replenish your troops as they fend off the Gauls at the nearby crossing point.
If you don't occupy it early though the Gauls will beat you to it. And you'll have to pull off more efforts to take the settlement. So what I like to do is send Vibius and his two units of Hastati towards it through boat. Once they've landed on the second turn you can start the siege right away, and if you recruit an extra mercenary warband you can take the settlement by your third.

Patavium
This is kind of a no-brainer since you'll be taking the two towns at the north of Italy anyways. But it's important to go after it first 'cause if you manage to get a spy and an army to it on your second turn the city gates will ALWAYS be open.
Once you've taken the city you'll be close enough as to take the rebel town to the north pretty quickly, giving you your second anti-barbarian bridge. Just don't forget that Medolanum is still the priority though.

Patavium is gonna become your entrance point into Hellenic lands. These are some very rich provinces, so expanding on towards here will always be worth it.
The Danubian river is the perfect defense line. So conquering alongside it is always good. I always aim to do that and then place small armies to safeguard my borders.
Also, remember that the Brutii are also expanding in these very rich lands. So the more you manage to take here the less they'll have by the late game!

Just as a bit of a final note.-
Patavium's population growth is fairly large. So you can always use it to boost pop growth at your capital by training peasants (If you're not training an army) and then disbanding them within Arretium.
Once your town has grown large enough it'll trigger the Marian reforms!

So to end:

- In green are the positions I like to build forts in.
They really aren't that important, and chances are none of the AIs will ever bother to take those roads.
Still - It's nice to feel safe.

[The Unknown General]

I guess you guys missed it, but I do focus on economy buildings first, before building military buildings. Either Dacia or Germania always attack at some point, forcing me to the east or further north. This is somewhat offtopic, but every time I uninstall RtW, I always have Greek unlocked and my saves. However, I always make sure to delete everything related to it, but its always there. Is this a bug or what?

[Bonez]

I guess you guys missed it, but I do focus on economy buildings first, before building military buildings. Either Dacia or Germania always attack at some point, forcing me to the east or further north. This is somewhat offtopic, but every time I uninstall RtW, I always have Greek unlocked and my saves. However, I always make sure to delete everything related to it, but its always there. Is this a bug or what?

I'd say that it must be part of the %appdata thing, that holds some infromation if you have vista or up.

For the economic thing, if you focus on economic buildings in the beginning you should then work on, building smaller more efficient armies, squeezing every single penny out of the little buggers in cities, and bargaining hard for every single trade agreement for the AI.

[The Unknown General]

I'd say that it must be part of the %appdata thing, that holds some infromation if you have vista or up.

For the economic thing, if you focus on economic buildings in the beginning you should then work on, building smaller more efficient armies, squeezing every single penny out of the little buggers in cities, and bargaining hard for every single trade agreement for the AI.

I have Windows 7 and if thats the case, would it say it for RtW at the %appdata thing?

[Feather]

I guess you guys missed it, but I do focus on economy buildings first, before building military buildings. Either Dacia or Germania always attack at some point, forcing me to the east or further north.

The thread off-tracked into economy too much. But I think the reason most people went there is 'cause they wanted to give you the best advise in raising and upholding an army to take both of those Gaul settlements without facing any mayor problems or having to gamble a possible defeat.

I think you're a bit more like me though, and that your troubles don't lie in creating and supporting an army, but rather in taking those two settlements quickly with the armies you currently have at hand.

What has always worked for me is sending in the force shown in the picture straight off into Patavium. Since the gates are always open and the AI tends to draw its units from both Patavium and Mediolanum it doesn't take that much of an effort to occupy the city.
Then I just leave my army there for one turn while I build a shrine and recruit a unit of peasants. Meanwhile down at Arretium I'm already training another two units of Hastati to come and reinforce my forces when I attack Mediolanum. At Ariminum I'll be training peasants to move on over to Segesta in order to pull out the Velites and Archers I've left there as a Garrison (My general over at Segesta will remain inside the city though).
The turn after that I'll move my forces out of Patavium and onto Mediolanum. I leave behind two units of Hastati just in case, and order the construction of roads. This force won't reach Mediolanum in that turn though, they'll just get pretty close which gives me time to move my units out of Segesta (Through the right) and set them on their way to Mediolanum. I'll reinforce this small bunch with my first unit of Hastati and then go onto my next turn.
By the next turn my main force led by my faction heir will lay siege to Mediolanum. I then move my newly trained unit of Hastati on the path to Mediolanum and join up the rest of my force (Velites, Archers and Hastati) along with them. They won't reach the town by that turn, but by the next turn when the siege equipment is ready you'll find at the enemy gates a force composed of:
- Your faction Heir,
- 1 unit of Triarii.
- 4 units of Hastati.
- 1 unit of velites.
- 1 unit of archers.

This is what I do (Military-wise) at the start of my Julii campaigns. The method has always worked for me - Hope it works for you too.

[Willowran]

Well if you focus on your economy already, then that is good. Adviseable. However, (you said you could rush pergannum/mediolanum?) advancing quickly--or indeed advancing at all is not necessary. I play a very slow campaign, personally. Now, i will admit i rarely play romans, but when i play TW games my early game strategy is always the same. Cheap armies. Ignore the recruitment cost, look at the upkeeps of your units. Building the most long-term cost effective army is the best way to do it (for me). Take, for example, dogs. I am a large advocater for dogs early game. Yes, they are slow to recruit, but i suggest them for 2 reasons.

1: they have an upkeep of 50. Im pretty sure hastati have 160-170ish (its been a while since ive played rome). that means that you can keep 3 units of wardogs for every one unit of hastati.
2: they automatically retrain every dog between battles. You can lose every dog in a battle, and as soon as you return to the campaign map you retrain all the mutts. so long as you don't lose the peasant handlers you can fight longer and harder with dogs than any other early game unit.

early game, dogs are great. especially against barbarian warbands, who are poorly armoured.

your other killer early-unit is your general. As it has been mentioned, barbarians suck against cavalry, and general cavalry is a) pretty good both early and late game, and b)also retrain in the feild, between battles. I usually throw several generals in a single army and go on rempages. You had better be good at battlemapping, though.

if you've been having difficulties, i would reccomend avoiding traditional troops. Hastati will need lots of (re)training, for example, and have no fancy fighting abilities to minimise casualties. Archers are great (skirmish to avoid losing soldiers), and even equities can be very cost-kill-casualty effective, if micro managed effectively.

an effective early army for me is a single general and several warhounds. You will lose more often than you win (a lot more often), but each time your enemies will lose hundreds of men, while you lose (literally) nothing. as soon as the dogs start running loosly, retreat with the handlers to avoid casualties. the general chases down routers (to keep the dogs in play longer), and overall just avoids the enemy army. once the dogs are all dead, retreat. 0 losses to plenty of kills. cost effective and battle-effective. It is however, slow

your plan to use ships to head into spain sounds solid. or use ships to spread into greece, or (as was previously suggested) take the nearby islands. The ai rarely-never plans for a defense against a naval invasion. shorebound settlements are often poorly garrisoned. Of the three, i would personally suggest the islands, as they would not need as heavy defending garrisons to keep, and sea trade makes a hell of a lot more money than land trade. another possibility is joining scipii and heading down to carthage, as the settlements there are a tad larger than the villages of gaul. spreading north is unadviseable, or overland to the west, as that will make you have to garrison a larger number of settlements against a larger variety of barbaric invasions.

If offense is giving you difficulties, stick to defence. Defenisve seiges can shatter conisderably larger enemy stacks with very few defenders. (sally with dogs every turn and you'll whittle them down to manageable sizes). Avoid field battles (unless a bridge battle)...avoid any large scale conflict where you may lose a large chunk of your military resources. Hold them off, making the occaisonal (safe) settlement sacking until youre an economic powerhouse. Then you can pour out whatever soldiers you want, in any combination youwant without fear of losses. Speed is entirely unnecesary. advance only once you have trained enough to both advance and have a strong defending garrison. You can defend against nearly infinite dacian/germanian troops so long as you don't mind figting off a lot of seiges, meanwhile you can expand in a different direction where your empire can be easier expanded/defended.

[The Unknown General]

What I'm thinking of doing is using my faction leader to attack Patavium then Mediolanum, while using my faction heir and two units of hastati with the second army to take Segesta then take everyone, but the general and put them in a boat. Turn two either I layed siege or I'm attacking Patavium with the faction leader's army, while sending the heir to attackMassilia.

[Feather]

What I'm thinking of doing is using my faction leader to attack Patavium then Mediolanum, while using my faction heir and two units of hastati with the second army to take Segesta then take everyone, but the general and put them in a boat. Turn two either I layed siege or I'm attacking Patavium with the faction leader's army, while sending the heir to attackMassilia.

I think I see what your plan is.
It will take you one more turn to take Massilia, but you'll dispose of a bigger army as you set out to take Patavium and Mediolanium.

I know starting strategies can vary a lot, and so I'm aware that I'm stating the obvious when I say "It's all about finding the one that suits you best". Just felt like that had to be said at some point.

Even though you've got everything worked out already there's still something else I'd like to add:
Before using my current start-up strategy I used to play another one where I would take the Carthaginian town of Caralis using only Vibius (Cause it's possible. Plus it's quick. ).
Maybe this information will be useful somewhere.

[The Unknown General]

Screw it, I'm moving to the Scipii. I had the two bridges, but having mercenaries cost a lot and I was losing to much money to have two armies to send to the one city Dacia goes for and the one Brutii usually goes for as a mission. I cut the mercenaries, get attacked by the Gauls and Germans, lose both cities, and Spain somehow manages to attack Segesta (no navy in site). In hindsight, I might of been able to have one army, but Dacia could of attacked me while I went for the city that the Brutii usually go for as mission. For Scipii, I'll conquer take the Greek city, attack Caralisa (sp) and the island close to Spain and the Carthage city in Sicily at the same time, take the Rhodes and the other island, take Sparta and use it as a foothold in Greece, and thats all I can think of. I don't want to go to Africa, because its Africa, but I might get Carthage and the city below it.

[Willowran]

i wouldn't bother with the boat, massila is right next door. Save the boats for attacking islands or actual factions who do something with their cities. It is easily defended, though, assuming you are any good at bridge battles, so it sounds a sound move.