Organizing armies (noob)

**The_soviet_bear** · October 05, 2013, 07:08 PM

I would like start out by saying that I enjoy this mod very much and appreciate the hard work that has gone in to making this wonderful mod. My question is that how do you reinforce your armies? I find shipping them back and forth between Rome and their location very tedious, and I do not fully understand the building tech.

**Sar1n** · October 05, 2013, 07:17 PM

I recommend keeping a second stack behind your main army, with reinforcement troops, garrison troops and perhaps artillery if you're not fond of using it in field battles. Whenever you have time, like after conquering a city, merge units with reinforcements to get them back to full strength.

**GaussSoldier** · October 05, 2013, 11:15 PM

A second stack is always a good idea.

More important in my opinion, is to start creating recruitment centers when you expand. If you're talking about moving your soldiers by boat, then you're already to the point where you need more recruitment-focused cities closer to your lines.

The thing about that strategy though, is that you'll need to start replacing non-roman soldiers with those you can recruit in your new regions so you don't have to take them back home for the sake of a couple units.

About the building tree, what do you not understand? The more you tell us about your situation, the more we can help.

**Flaminus** · October 06, 2013, 04:07 AM

In RS 2.6, Roman legion could only be recruited in "city" or higher level settlements with a complicated building requirement, you can find some information in "#6" of this thread:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...nd-Information

My suggestion is to find a "Army Recruiting Base" when you planning conquer a foreign region, at least a "city". After capture it, you had better build "Client or Allied State" （requiring "Government determination" and a "Tribal Justice"）then the "client State Barracks". After that, you can recruit some interesting local units.

I think it's the fastest way to get reinforcement. Then you can merge your Roman units and send some of them back to Roma. The new local units will be good

supplementary of your army. Another way is to building "Annex" after "Government determination" in order to get Roman legions, but it require many other buildings and you have to wait a long time.

**Love Mountain** · October 06, 2013, 04:34 PM

The fastest way to get reinforcements is to simply plan carefully. When I am planning a major invasion of an area, I always do it with boatloads of units. However many stacks I need for fighting, Garrison stacks, As well as reinforcement stacks that are just full of units that I can merge with my depleted armies.

I am currently in 562AUC on my Seleucid Campaign and I've had the difficulty of organizing my reinforcements/offensives as you mentioned. That's simply because there's an enemy everywhere around me, and losses are hard to replace even when I plan for them. The importance of roads and whether you retrain or merge also comes into play here.

**meerkatology** · October 07, 2013, 02:57 AM

-it takes sometime to get new recruitment centers up in a new area, plan your invasions well, bring ample stacks to take a foot hold, the moment you land in enemy territory SEND BACK your fleet so get more troops from your recruitment centers.
you will reach auxiliary units prior to legionary units up the building tree, you can reinforce your army once you are able to make auxilia and later legions; however, as soon as you land you can replenish armys with mercenarys as well.

-in distant lands, i recommend DEPOPULATING big cities to keep public order, alternatively you can bring seasoned governors , or even move your capital to the new area temporarily to achieve public order

-learn which area can recruit which type of regional auxilia units, some are very overpowered such as elite thracian rhomphoi, sarmatian cataphracts in britain, and roman cataphracts in asia minor. however, realize that its harder to resupply armies if you invade a distant area, i did it for fun by invading asia minor without taking greece to get cataphracts, but actually failed due to both greece and seleucids becoming superpowers and having to go to war with both of them at once in asia minors

, later on i successfully invaded britain by sea.... from rome, took me like 20 turns to get there but for fun i wanted sarmatian cataphracts to conquer spain with.

-plan your borders so you don't go to war with multiple super powers at once this is very painful on 0 turn to fight 10 stacks every turn. you can check their status in the faction panel. the AI will generally go to war with you if 1. you share borders and 2. they they think they have enough stacks to overpower your stationed armies in the border cities. in general, if left unchecked seleucids and greece will become super powers.

**High Fist** · October 07, 2013, 02:37 PM

How far into your campaign are you? I envy your free time; I have only the weekends to play. :/

One thing I noticed (in 2.5 anyway) was that the Boii never bothered me as Rome. I took all the free cities around their city in Italy, then bought that city. I took that city in N Illyria and they never bothered me. They went north and bullied the Cimbrii, that was it.

Latest campaign I didn't go north fast enough so they conquered Patavium. Have to fight them now. Sigh.

**Sertorio** · October 07, 2013, 05:06 PM

As rome i believe is important to pay atention to oppidum building as they are the bases for campus martius and fortresses afterwards. Also i worked by layers on my test campaign. First making generic legions available on my border regions and only when my core cities could train early/late legions at ease, i extended the fortresses to the border cities. So my generic legions could be retrained at the borders to fight a defensive warfare while i kept a steady flow of newly trained early cohorts inbound to here my early legions were campaigning. On those i used merge over retraining. Off course i had to forfeit the benefit of retraining those units with that option (takes more time to get them experienced).

**High Fist** · October 09, 2013, 01:10 PM

You could probably rotate the armies around though - send an experienced army at your defensive front to your offensive one and replace it with whatever. Would be a nice boost to an offensive war.

**The_soviet_bear** · October 10, 2013, 12:42 PM

Thanks everyone for you replied I have learned allot, I have plenty of time to play a campaign. But I never really make it that far, the problem is mainly the erratic ai. For example after I defeated Hannibal and the Roman rebels some one always attack me so I never have time to plan anything. Macedon will offer a peace treaty I accept then they send 2 stacks to attack me next turn I defeat that then theft offer me peace again and attack me next turn this happens over and over again. Then the Greek city states always attack me after I defeat the rebels, then some times it's the averni or the boii will attack me all this time I'm am also being Harassed by Carthage, is this intentional?

**Sertorio** · October 10, 2013, 01:15 PM

It's the AI they are a bunch of backstabbers and will not wait for you to be strong enough to backstabb them. Always assume that sharing borders with a particular faction will lead to conflict. Keeping strong armies at your borders will delay, but eventually they will come for you. So after Hannibal and the south of Italy prepare for the road you want to take for your campaign but always assume that the Arveni and the Boi will come eventually. You can get peace with Macedon as soon as you loose Dyarrachium.

**The_soviet_bear** · October 10, 2013, 01:37 PM

Even if I lose Dyarrachium, the Macedonians still stacks to attack me in Italy.

**meerkatology** · October 11, 2013, 09:42 PM

like i said, you can take the upper italian settlements , the one right before the mountains, and then remove your army and let them turn into rebels, forming a barrier so that you don't border any superpower factions, if the rebels attack you its only a faction with 2-3 cities and will be easy to deal with.

macedon/greece wont attack that much once you give up dirrhachum + take over syracuse

carthage naval attacks are easy - make a small stack of ships and keep wiping out their ships.

**High Fist** · October 13, 2013, 02:29 PM

Originally Posted by The_soviet_bear

Even if I lose Dyarrachium, the Macedonians still stacks to attack me in Italy.

Weird, they usually eff off once you leave Dyrrachium. And once you kick the Greeks out of Syracuse and Masallia then they won't bother you 'till you go near them again.

Originally Posted by meerkatology

like i said, you can take the upper italian settlements , the one right before the mountains, and then remove your army and let them turn into rebels, forming a barrier so that you don't border any superpower factions, if the rebels attack you its only a faction with 2-3 cities and will be easy to deal with.

Another easy way to keep your land safe is to build forts at the choke holds in mountains or at bridges. Let's face it, they're never gonna leave you alone.