Roman Guide

[Applesmack]

Can someone please write up a roman guide..Cause im playing the Roman Campaign and am not really doing well taking back the Italian soil...Also im playing on the Campaign map med difficulty and the battles are in easy...Why???Cause when I tried to play the battles in Normal I got completely destroyed each time I tried it... So please can someone write up a Roman guide..Thanks

[Vanquisher]

Can you elaborate on "Roman Guide"? Plus, is it on a mod or the Vannilla Rome?

[Applesmack]

On the DM 8.0 Finally got it to work

[Vanquisher]

Oh, cool I'm playing that at the mo too as the Scipii on Europa 270bc. I havent really played the roman faction campain yet, but I'm sure i've seen a thread by Darth that gives a walkthrough for all his campains, i am looking fo it now.... For a start though, i'd concentrate on building up your settlements defences, and military and try to take those settlements to the north. keep a large force in the south, and when you are strong enough, banish Pirrus form italy, then go on to take the south, then i'd go for sardinia for the ports trading and then sicily, then you can either look north to the guals, or continue to go south into africa...then it just depends on how things go, am still looking for this thread....

[Spadicus]

Are you talking about the Roman provincial campaign? cos that really is a bugger ...

[Juus]

Yeah, I'd like a bit of help on the Roman campaign as well. Rome start off with only 15k and this is a big problem, IMO.

[Applesmack]

Yeah my treasure is crashing but I managed to take the greek city where that giant army was..And Destroy the Giant army in their counter attack...But almost all my cities are losing money...

[Juus]

Its the army upkeep. I suppose you have to disband one of them first.

[Applesmack]

HAHA!!! Im back on track...It took me a good 20 turns but I got my economy back on track

[Vanquisher]

Yeah, i've just tryed it myself, you just have to continue capturing settlements and building you economy and it should balance out eventualy.

[DARTH VADER]

see?...patience young DarthMod player...or you will be defeated by the superior force of DarthMod...

[ShotgunEd]

I'll give it a shot, not that I consider myself an expert.

I will split the guide up in to two parts, Strategical (Campaign Map) and Tactical (Battle Field).

I will write the Strategical part for the "Provincial Campaign ---> Roman Campaign" as I think it's the hardest.

Strategical Guide

The first thing to note here is that you will be loosing a large amount of money each turn, something around 5k I think. It is tempting to impliment a strategy similar to one needed for the WRE in BI, but this is a mistake. Your aim needs to be to take as many cities as possible as quickly as possible. Since you are surrounded by rebel cities this isn't really a problem. I suggest you avoid trying to take on the Greek army to the south as those highly experienced troops will tear apart your legions. The same is true about the Gauls in the north. Whilst you stand a much better chance of beating them you will not gain anything out of it.

I suggest you spend your first turn building one building in each city. Your choice is between roads, farms or temples. Roads will allow faster army movement, farms will increase population and temples will allow you to enforce higher taxes. Taxes need to be as high as possible.

Once you take one of the rebel cities you need to make a judgement call on exterminating the population on not. Exterminate too many cities and you will be left weaker in the short to medium term. Exterminate too few and it may become harder to get out of debt.

After you have taken all the surrounding rebel cites, up to Segesta, you should be in a position to build more and perhaps resupply your armies a little as you will need troops to hold off the Gauls in the north and push the Greeks out of southern Italy. Should you achieve this then I would suggest an expansion into northern Italy to try and secure the area south of the Alps. You can then fortify it then concentrate on expanding in your desired direction. Taking island cities for example or begining your own Punic War.

Tactical Guide

Manouver, flanking and pilum charges.

In my experience the Roman infantry will generaly just hold it's own in a head to head collision. It will not walk through everything before it like in vanilla RTW. Roman troops however do tend to do better than most when you flank your opponent due to their pilum charges and their high kill rate when they hit. So in general a strategy is to try and hold your front line with fewer troops than they attack with, they send your extras as quickly as possible to your flanks to do as much damage as possible.

I find it best to use your velites on the flanks of your army and not as a frontal skirmish unit. I often take them around the flanks guarded by some principes. If they get attacked then the principes engage them and the velites hurl javlins into their backs. Otherwise both the principes and velites attack the rear of the battle line.

Enemy skirmishers and archers can be a problem if left alone so you need to be able to deal with them. In vanilla RTW you can just charge one cavalry unit into one ranged unit and expect to win. This isn't so effective in Darth Mod. A better tactic is to run through the middle of the unit and when the enemy is in the middle of your cavalry, attack them. I prefer to send at least 2 cavalry units per ranged unit to deal with them quickly and with few losses. You can then move on to the next unit. Once they are dead you charge into the back of the enemy battle line.

[Jehuu]

Exterminate too many cities and you will be left weaker in the short to medium term. Exterminate too few and it may become harder to get out of debt.

Care to explain? How is exterminating too few population connected with getting out of dept? What abot tax money? Do u mean having to much poualtion early in a city causes too big garrisons upkeeps and the tax money is not just enough?

[DARTH VADER]

trully wise words...someone can add to this as well...then can wrap and send it to the guides...post your ideas similarily.
You have unterstood perfectly DarthMod Romans...this is what I intented to do.

[imthefrgt10]

geez ur playing on m/e im playing on vh/vh and expanding, lol, i must be a TACTICAL genius

[ShotgunEd]

Nope, I mean if you exterminate too many cities you may not have enough population to raise enough troops to defend yourself or it may take a longer time for your cities to grow meaning you will be fighting mainly with weaker troops. Having only one central high tech city (i.e. Rome) also means that reinforcing your armies can take a long time. If you do not exterminate enough cities you will not have as much cash early on, which will be needed to reinforce those two main armies of yours. Sorry if I havn't made the point the very clear. You need to strike a balance between earning fast money and keeping enough people alive to fuel your armies with men and make you money in the long run through taxes.

I would suggest keeping at least one city in the north intact and one city in the south intact as a minimum.

[Jehuu]

Nope, I mean if you exterminate too many cities you may not have enough population to raise enough troops to defend yourself or it may take a longer time for your cities to grow meaning you will be fighting mainly with weaker troops. Having only one central high tech city (i.e. Rome) also means that reinforcing your armies can take a long time. If you do not exterminate enough cities you will not have as much cash early on, which will be needed to reinforce those two main armies of yours. Sorry if I havn't made the point the very clear. You need to strike a balance between earning fast money and keeping enough people alive to fuel your armies with men and make you money in the long run through taxes.

I would suggest keeping at least one city in the north intact and one city in the south intact as a minimum.

Of course, I had forgotten all about cash gained when exterminating! Proceeding as adviced! Thak U wery much!

[Andy P]

Roman Provincial Campaign – My thoughts. Playing hard campaign, medium battle.

Obviously starting off in the Roman Provincial Campaign you do find yourself in a bit of a quandary. You have two full Legions that cost a fortune to maintain, you have an economy far too weak to support them.

Choice 1

Disband most of your army and try to build up your economy and hope against hope that you do not experience the attacks from the Greeks in the south and Gauls in the north the disbanding of your armed forces has left you wide open to.

Choice 2

Go aggressive. I disagree with shotguned here in that your first priority must be to destroy the Greeks in the south around Tarentum. Take both of your full Legions and smash the huge Greek army, (it will be one helluva fight). Then take Tarentum itself. This strategy has several benefits in that it firstly removes the threat of the Greeks in the south, if you leave them there they will constantly attack and harass you. Tarentum itself also gives your economy a boost, as it is a fairly well developed town. Also, as shotguned implied, the Greek troops are very strong and your two Legions will suffer heavy casualties in their attempts to destroy them. In my campaign I lost just over half my troops in the battles for Tarentum, the remainder I merged into one under strength Legion. Although it is a heavy price to pay, by using your two Legions to defeat the Greeks you not only remove the threat from the south, but also dramatically reduce your army strength in the process, thus easing the pressure on your treasury. At least their sacrifice is not in vain.

Tarentum in my experience does not require a heavy garrison so you can use what is left of your Legions to crush the rebels in the towns to the east and south of Rome. This will obviously help the money situation as most, but not all of the towns in the Italian peninsular will make a positive contribution to your economy.

After pacifying the south of Italy I would suggest putting a fairly heavy garrison into one of your northern cities, in my case Arretium. Build up its defences as soon as you can. From here you can defend northern Italy from the raids the Gaul’s will soon start to launch against you. They will either lay siege to you and attack, where the barbarians should be no match for your troops defending the walls, or you can sally forth and destroy any barbarian units that come too near. I would also suggest building up your road infrastructure ASAP, as you will need to be able to move your troops quickly to any areas being threatened by the Gaul’s. Roads and highways also give boosts to trade and hence your economy.

While all this is going on I would suggest investing wisely what money you have in the economic benefit upgrades to your settlements, as usual do not waste money building barracks, stables etc in all of your settlements, develop one city in an area as a military base only.

With the best part of Italy now settling into life under the Empire and your economy looking a great deal healthier your thoughts should turn to the conquest of Sicily. There are five settlements on the island, most of them well developed and will provide a great boost to your treasury once conquered. You will need at least one full strength Legion for the campaign, as once again you will come up against well-trained and experienced Greeks along with those pesky Carthaginians. Have your spies check out the towns on the island, pick the weakest defended and attack. Once this town is in your hands you have your toehold on Sicily. Do not exterminate the populace, as you will need manpower to retrain and develop your forces. You will probably have to spend several years simply defending your settlement against attack from the outraged Greeks who will throw everything at you in their attempts to throw you off the island. Once the Greeks have worn themselves out against your defences you can then proceed with your campaign to conquer the rest of Sicily, but be warned, just as I thought I had the island in my hands the Greeks carried out an amphibious landing and dumped a huge army behind me as I was laying siege to their last possession on the island. A particularly brutal and very close fought fight ensued.

With Sicily now under Roman protection you may be advised to take a few years out to consolidate your possessions, retrain and upgrade the equipment of your armies before you think about further conquest. The most obvious expansion route is to the north, conquer the remaining areas that make up modern day Italy and you have the bulwark of the Alps to help protect you from raids from the north. Once you have Italy fully under your control and your economy chugging along nicely the world as they say, is your oyster, north, south, east or west. Personally I chose north as Gaul is a very fertile land where good money can be made. However the Gaul’s are not giving up without a fight and I am now also having to fight off hordes of Germanic barbarians as they try to take advantage of my campaign against the Gaul’s.

Whatever you do enjoy. Remember you cannot win all of the time and experiencing defeat in a few campaigns only helps you learn and develop your strategies for the next time.

[Shaggy1973]

Hmmmm. Dont you guys like playing on the backfoot for once? There are many ways around the problems which occur in the roman provincial campaign, but none of them inlcude sitting back and trying to build up your economy. Rome is in a state of emergency after a huge veteran greek army lands on the southern peninsular. They have recruited two citizen armies to go and meet this threat, but they are part timers and far from the professional roman armies that conquered the known world.

Play ahistorically you should lose through lack of funds (unless you disband your armies - but there is no zero turn recruitment). The romans sent army after army after Pyrrhus and finally drove him off, never defeating his army. Therefore I made his greek army almost unbeatable (for those hardcore amongst us that really like a challenge).

How you eventually carve out roman empire is down to you..... there is no one definitive way.

I must admit I wanted the Gauls a little more agressive tho

Maybe a future little tweak really spice things up. My aim is to make it so that the player isnt certain to even take the Italian peninsular. The romans were very lucky to do so really, and were nearly wiped out several times.

Good luck dark ones........

[Andy P]

Hmmmm. Dont you guys like playing on the backfoot for once? There are many ways around the problems which occur in the roman provincial campaign, but none of them inlcude sitting back and trying to build up your economy. Rome is in a state of emergency after a huge veteran greek army lands on the southern peninsular. They have recruited two citizen armies to go and meet this threat, but they are part timers and far from the professional roman armies that conquered the known world.

Play ahistorically you should lose through lack of funds (unless you disband your armies - but there is no zero turn recruitment). The romans sent army after army after Pyrrhus and finally drove him off, never defeating his army. Therefore I made his greek army almost unbeatable (for those hardcore amongst us that really like a challenge).

How you eventually carve out roman empire is down to you..... there is no one definitive way.

I must admit I wanted the Gauls a little more agressive tho

Maybe a future little tweak really spice things up. My aim is to make it so that the player isnt certain to even take the Italian peninsular. The romans were very lucky to do so really, and were nearly wiped out several times.

Good luck dark ones........

In the campaign I described above I have never had more than 8000 in the treasury. Since writing my first post, my campaign has stalled and basically it is taking every penny I make to keep my armies at a state of readiness just to defend Italy. I have not sat back and built up fortunes, but have tried to be aggresive as possible, a tactic that has back fired on me as such because I now find myself on the defensive.

I do not know about making the Gauls more aggresive, they are all over me like a rash at the moment, and as for Pyrrhus, well Shaggy I can assure you that I have never known a more difficult fight in playting RTR. As I said it cost me the best part of two Legions to destroy him and I was lucky in that I managed to manouver a few unit of Princopes behind his phalanx wall while manging to keep his elephants busy with my skirmishers.

All in all well done with this campaign and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a real challange, just surviving the first few years and you will be doing well. It took me three serious beatings before I was able to develop my strategy for expanding the Empire.

Perseverance brings reward.