In-depth early-game strategy guide
1- Motivation and Aim
2- List of shortings
3- Starting position analysis, goals
4- Diplomacy
5- Province Optimization
6- WAR
7- RPG elements: Building up your people
1-Motivation and Aim
What I want to do is an exhaustive guide about general early-game strategies. Why? Because the early-game is often quite overwhelming, and can determine the outcome of the campaign, the resources you will be having, the troubles you will be facing, etc. Also, while early-game is the aim for this, I cannot avoid speaking about concepts that are perse not that meaningful early on, but will become so, and you have to wrap your mind around them to understand the logic of my decisions. This guide is all about optimizing, so while there are many, many ways to conduct a game, I will focus only on the ones I myself found the most effective.
This guide assumes that you are moderately good at fighting battles, so it concentrates only on campaign map-strategies.
I write this not because I think Iīm the best player around. But I have been watching quite a few “Letīs play” vids in the last months, and seeing some sub-optimum ways of handling the early-game. So even being a veteran Total War player you might be able to get some tips out of here (or, even better, add your own in the comments, for me to add them in the guide).
That being said; grab something to drink, get yourself some comfortable position, and letīs start.
2-List of shortings
2S: 2-settlement Province/ 2Sp: 2-settlement Province with port
3S: 3-settlement Province/ 3Sp: 3-settlement Province with port
4S: 4-settlement Province/ 4Sp: 4-settlement Province with port
NAP: Non-Aggression Pact
TA: Trade Agreement
3-Starting position analysis, goals
Once you start a game, invest some time in watching your surroundings. Have you a single settlement? Is it a capital or not? Have you more than one? An entire province maybe? Who is occupying the rest of your Province? Are you landlocked, or do you have access to a port-settlement? Which factions border you? Do they like you?
The answers to these questions often give you a good guideline for your opening moves.
4-Diplomacy
Diplomacy
Understand something: You are playing a Total War game. There are no BFFīs, only temporary allies. Look at every faction surrounding your starting position. You will eventually have to annihilate every one of them. Look at every faction surrounding your neighbors. You will have to eventually wipe them out too.
The only exception to this is if you are able to confederate with them. In that case, good relations are recommended, but nothing to cut your leg off for. While grabbing a factionīs settlements and armies without a fight can be cool, it can also be a burden. The A.I doesnīt min-max, so you have to rebuild settlements; the characters join the opposing political party and most of the units will have to be disbanded anyways. If they are stubborn, just kill them with the rest.
Sometimes, you start with an ally. Destroy him too, unless he is getting your back on some vital spot (if that is the case, deal with him later- but ASAP). The reason for this is that often allies seize the openings you generate, thus getting in your way, conquering settlements in provinces you want and such. And since they are allied with the smartest guy around, they tend to prosper. An ally can grow to be the most difficult enemy to handle.
Now, there are the rest. Often you start already at war with someone, or with neighboring factions declaring war 100% of the time in the first 1-3 turns (like Dacians and Thracians, or Epirus/Baktria and the rest of the world). This is rather obviously the first ones youīll have to wipe out, giving you a starting direction. Do not sue for peace, they will come back and you will have to begin anew. Try to complete provinces first (duh!) except if you have to start a new, parallel war or have weird forms (the starting province of the Arverni comes to mind… what the hell is that?!).
Donīt bother entering NAPs with your neighbors. If they want to attack you, they will do it anyways; breaking the pact when it suits them (e.g. Saka Rauka always breaks the NAP with Crimea in the first 8 turns, tops). You could do the same, but since this is about optimizing, and we donīt want unnecessary diplomatic hits, just donīt. As a side note, the probability of a neighbor accepting a NAP is roughly inversely proportional to the probability of him declaring war on you. So you can use the Diplomacy screen to watch out for troublemakers.
Donīt bother too hard with TAs early game (rarely someone accepts the deal at this point), unless you own a port. Then you should try to recruit an admiral to scout for far away factions. They tend to be more receptive.
Early game you most often fight at least one defensive war. Then things get messy. You piss of someone else in the process, or just decide you want to complete a province and attack. Try to complete the three-province-goal (see next section).
5-Province Optimization
Province Optimization
Generally, you will want at least: one province dedicated to military, one province dedicated to make food, and one province dedicated to make money (loosely in this order). I will enter on the specifics of each type in a sec. For now, keep in mind this goal, because once youīve achieved it, you are settled with at least 6 settlements (normally around 9), and the early-game is pretty much done, opening the way to mid-game (at least for you).
Achieving these three provinces is worth going into war for. All other stuff is secondary.
Military Provinces
The reason why the A.I. will ultimately have always worse troops than a human player. A military Province is dedicated to min-max the cost/bonuses of the buildings each faction have access to, to improve your soldiers far beyond the normal standard. Ideally, this should be a 4S, to have enough room for all the buildings needed to produce late-game killing machines and give you the maximum recruitment slots. If you are in a pinch or the next best 4S is better suited for making money (because of ports), you can also start with a 3S. If you start on a 2S, better go into war ASAP to grab a better one. Especially one-settlement factions suffer a lot from this, because few of them start on an ideal province.
Access to copper/iron (for better weapons and armor) should influence your decision too, as well as the AoR units youīll be getting. If all this comes together, you can pop out some really powerful units. Having a port is irrelevant, unless you plan on using a navy (something recommended only for cartage). The single best military Province (IMO) is Galatia et Cappadocia. A 4S, it has Iron, and it has some of the best AoR units in the game.
The decision will often depend on your surroundings, but if you are moderately good at managing your economy, you can always build up a better province later on.
Food Provinces
In early-game, food is- normally, more important than money for various reasons, the most important of them being:
- You wonīt get that much more money at this stage specializing in money rather than food anyways.
- Conquering new lands (which you should do) will often mean paying more food, often forcing you to disable taxes until you can feed the people. Thus, no food equals no money.
These provinces should be kept at minimum individual settlement level (except for the ones having food resources), to avoid the increasing food penalties. If your faction has a temple giving food bonus, this is the spot you want them to be, along with farms obviously. The buildings in the capital depend on each faction, most of them have something on the yellow line giving food, yet another food-temple, and whichever you feel is right. Keep in mind you want to produce as much food as you can and minimize the consumption.
Virtually every 2S and 2Sp should be turned into a food province. There are very few situational exceptions (like Baktriaīs two starting provinces), but as a rule of thumb, a 2S settlement wonīt give you much money, no matter how hard you try. Keep an eye on the Grain, Olives and Fish resources, those are no-brainers. No 4S settlements should be dedicated to this task, the only exception being Aegyptus for everyone other than Ptolemies, they should use it as military province, because of the Iron Resource… still, sometimes a hard call, because of the many food-producing buildings slots and Resources. But other than that, 4S food are just not worth it, which leads us to…
Money Provinces
The least important province type early-game; the most important mid- to late-game.
The way economics work in this game, you get more from accumulating money making buildings in a single province, rather than having them scattered around. More buildings slots equals more money, so every nearly every 4S and every 4Sp should be dedicated to money making, except the one you use as military province. Try to improve the ones with port first (as ports are essentially free building-slots, so the more ports a Province has, the more money you get). The focus on industry- or commerce-based income, depend on the factions buildings and the resources available. A few factions (eastern ones mostly), are able to make some serious cash out of culture too.
This type of settlements tends to be harder to manage, because they are heavily food consuming, as well as unhappiness producing. If you have temples improving your economy (e.g. Hephaestus and Hermes comes to my mind), you are golden. If not, you have to strike a deal between happiness and money producing. Remember that happy people pay more taxes. You want them at 100% all the time. Btw, here is where you want your Governors (agents) to be.
That being said, donīt worry about them too much in your early-game, but try to lay the foundations, a.k.a. conquer them, soon. The best 4S are by far Africa, Mauretania, Syria, and Bythinia-Pontus, followed by Asia, Mesopotamia, Britania and Magna Graecia. Gold producing provinces only come as 3S, but they are so OP that they rival with the second-best 4Sī.
You see, starting on the northern part of the world pretty much obliges you to sack your way to riches
Hybrid Provinces
You should never aim to “balance things out”. But certain factions tend towards hybrids, especially barbarian ones. Theyīll never achieve the kind of money “civilized” factions can, because of the lack of commerce ports. But they can mix good military and money producing provinces, via industry. With no access to salt (for the salt Kirin-line, thus- commerce), industry is your best shot.
Special mention to nomadic factions, they are probable the only ones who can make effective food-money hybrids, because they are the only ones with a real shot at getting lots of money out of cattle.
Miscellaneous Tips and Tricks
- While specialization early-game does not have the impact it later has, laying the foundations now is vital to build effectively. Building time in DeI is way longer than in vanilla, so converting buildings to suit your needs requires more time.
- Depending on your unit roster/AoR at your disposition, you might want to construct barracks in your first province, no matter the later specialization. This makes early battles a bit easier. A farm could be needed too in one of your settlements until you grab a propper food province. (suggestion by Hoplitus)
- Cities (orange buildings) cannot be fully destroyed. But when you conquer a settlement of another culture group you do get the option to either convert or destroy the city. Destroying it is for free, and will grant you a lvl1 city OF YOUR OWN CULTURE the very next turn. So if you conquer a lvl1 settlement from another culture (happens almost exclusively early-game, for obvious reasons), DO NOT convert it. Destroy it, and enjoy the saved time and money. Even a higher level city should be handled like this if you are building up a food province, to minimize food consumption.
6-WAR
War
We know who we are/will be battling, we know what for. Now, how do we do it?
Early-game wars are often tricky, because you donīt have the economic power to field as many full stacks as even just one of your enemies, most of the factions can just afford one and a half armies; your early-game troops are mostly levies, and you donīt have the money to poison theout of enemy armies… So you have to be smart about it and not overextend.
If the A.I. is not at war with someone else, enemies will always try to come to you with at least one full stack. Often they use a secondary army, with just a few units to lure you out, blockade reinforcements or reinforce the main army. So, up to a point, you can turn every war in a de-facto defensive war.
The A.I. is not suicidal (not always), so it will only attack if it thinks it has a good chance of winning. If you are within range of your lvl 3 capital, and have another reinforcing army hanging around, the A.I wonīt attack. In that case it would be better to go into ambush stance with your main army to catch them on their way to besiege you.
The best option by far is to blockade the road to your settlements with a fort. IMHO it is better than ambush (they may fail, if the enemy has way more troops he can turn the situation around) and better than river crossings (in those battle the enemy has 2 points of entrance, and you have to divide your forces in order to stop him. At a fort battle al your forces are close to one another, able to support each other in a heartbeat, while the enemy may have to split into up to 3 forces). Now, Iīm not sure about this, but the A.I doesnīt seem to take the fort into account when calculating the relative strengths of the armies, it almost always attacks. But the fort IS there, and you do use it to your advantage. One of my favorite strategies is to build a fort within range of an enemiesī full-stack AND settlement. They always take the bait. As long as you have some cav, you almost always can win the battle with a mass route and can just walk into the settlement in your following turn. Be careful though. If the enemy has an additional army out of your sight he will probably win (you will effectively be defending against 3 armies with early-game units…).
Try to not be at war with more than two factions at once (even two may be hard if they are at two different directions).
Sometimes you will get declarations of war from a lot of factions early-on. Often they do nothing after the declaration, either because it was part of a deal and they thought “well, whatever”, or because they are too far away (once I got a declaration of war at turn 40 something from the Suebi… playing as Parthia. I wasnīt even close to them, and we never actually fought). Whatever their reason to do it, donīt panic. Look if they can access your lands. Often they declare war on you, but have no means/interest to reach you, even if they are close. An example of this could be the helveti, sequani and raeti, having no access to Massalia, except by getting free passage through Ligurian or Arverni lands – or annexing them. Another one: Every single satrapy of the seleukidai declaring war on… whoever is pissing off the seleukidai. Even if they do come, you can beat them if they come from the same direction. Block bridges, build forts. Defend cities with your army. Learn to defend cities with just the garrison (in DeI garrisons actually are worth something).
And then there is the fun factor. By far, my two most difficult campaigns were also the most fun and engaging to play. Both times with Seleukidai, both times fighting against all my satrapies, ptolemies and Pontus at the same time. The only really annoying thing was the flood of enemy agents sabotaging everything in sight, other than that, I was always glued to my seat, trying to figure out the way to just hold them off with two full stacks and two “almost-half stacks”.
Miscellaneous Tips and Tricks
- It is not advisable to autoresolve early game unless there is absolutely no enemy around after the battle. This has 3 very good reasons. First, early-on every man is more valuable, because losing a unit hurts more when you barely can afford to substitute it, and reinforcing takes forever without 20 food and research bonuses. Second, the way autocalc works, units going first on the army selection screen suffer way more punishment than the ones at the end (especially apparent in siege battles). The way the army screen places the units, the first ones are always your general and the heavier units (first cav, then inf). So an autocalc estimated result of, say, 87% remaining forces might seem ok, but in practice, all your crappy levies might survive intact, while your general and the few heavy forces you have at this stage get seriously screwed up. Third, your aim is to utterly crush every enemy army. You cannot afford to fight them over and over again once they reinforce. Autocalc doesn't pursue fleeing enemies. But you can and should do it.
7-RPG elements: Building up your people
RPG elements: Building up your people
Characters can play a significant role, so it is important to take a look at them. Also Army traditions are in this section:
- Generals: The first ability any general meant for active combat should take is night commander (through the skilled tactician tree) PERIOD. It allows you to take the initiative in such an OP way, it should be illegal. As long as you are good on the battlefield and donīt lose too many men, you can battle (and win) against two to for full stacks in a single turn, eliminating them one by one. This is a very likely scenario early-game with quite a few factions.The next best ability probably is the Dreaded Commander (Commander of Men tree). The major debuff of -15% to enemies’ morale (the other benefits are highly situational), is just huge. After these two, all other skills are up to you, and should depend on the strengths of your unit roster (rather than alleviating the downsides). I often use the ones in the Ferocious Warrior tree.
I like to use “defending commanders” too, which is a fancy name for the ones I donīt trust and leave home. Since they shouldnīt be attacking anyone, night commander is useless for them, so I spent the few points they get in administrative traits.- Spies: early-on you wonīt have the money to unleash them, but after 30 turns or so, they should be poisoning everyone that looks queer at you (So yeah, go down the poisoning line). As you start, you should just position them somewhere nice, where you can see the enemy, and earn free XP by scouting.
- Veterans: They are probably the least important character early-on, because their main use is to train your troops, and that is a relatively slow process. Besides, you often fight quite a lot early- so XP will come mainly from battles. On the other hand, the zeal of veterans adds to the zeal of the general, which in turn heavily improves the unit and gives your general the best fighting ability: war cry. Another huge morale-debuff when you activate it. So, I would say if you have 2000 denarii available, go for it. But donīt invest in a veteran if you should rather recruit troops, or build up your settlements.
- Governors: DeI augmented the limit for governors, but keep in mind they get more expensive the more you got. So get one early (especially If your surroundings are mostly from another culture), and wait for your economy to grow to recruit more. Deploy him where ever you want, the thing is to level him up ASAP, so he gets the right skills by the time your first economic Province starts to grow. He should always have bureaucrat maxed (authority line), and additionally go down the cunning line. A governor meant for an industry-heavy province, should obviously max the industrialist line, a commercial one should get the export specialist (for which youīll need at least one point in industrialist OR farming expert). Early- to mid-game it could pay off to have a governor in your main food province going up the food chain. Farming expert slightly boost the growth and the food in a province, which can give you the edge you need. But mainly they should be making cash and, later on, reduce corruption.
- Army traditions: While every culture (sometimes even faction) has their own traditions, the most useful ones are loosely the same. The most significant advantage to have for any army meant to go out and do the fighting, are the movement points related ones. After grabbing all of these, take the ones that improve the strengths of your unit roster (like the skills of your generals). A defensive army profits from the stalwart defender-like abilities: improved defense and, even more important, more deployables. You can kill literally hundreds of enemies with flaming hay-balls without ever losing a single man. The tricky thing here is to deploy them right. They roll down (obviously), but not always on a straight line. Donīt activate them too soon though, they donīt kill once they come to halt. Normally for every faction there exist some deployable to slow enemies down (like sharp stones). They have a huge synergy with the flaming balls (and missiles, for that matter), because the enemy will blob on the stones (or whatever) for maximum ownage. Hay-balls are potentially the most OP deployable if you manage to position them right, but the other ones are useful too, to canalize the enemy force to where you are strongest.
I hope this guide has given you some insight, and helps you in the beginning of your campaigns. If you feel something I wrote is wrong or can be done better, feel free to comment. I will give it a thought and eventually edit the guide. If you have some tips and tricks to add, comment them too, I will add them in the miscellaneous sections and give proper credit to whoever gave the piece of advice.
Let's help each other to become better players and enjoy this awesome mod!
Cheers
Changelog:
19.11.2014: Added a suggestion from hoplitus in the Province Optimization section
Reply With Quote
):
Originally Posted by Hoplitus
Thanks!
