New player with a couple questions

[poisoned_burger]

I LOVE this mod but I am having a little trouble playing it it seems :/. First of all, how do I grow and economy? I've looked on here and people say that I need to look to build as many economic buildings as possible early, I have gone about dong that (as bithynia) and even though I've secured most of northwestern turkey, and only having built one military building all game I still decline rather rapidly ;-;. I do have a rather large standing army, most of it posted on the borders with pergamum in whats basically an ancient DMZ at this point and I fear if I disband some troops they will try to retake their land I forced them to cede to me after defeating a stack outside of Assos and forcing a harsh peace with them. Am I mising something?
Moving on, I know this is more tech. help issues but I figured if i'm making a question thread I might as well post it here. Is the crashing far into a battle something everyone gets? I get around 30-40 mins into a battle (I have a very defensive play style and let the AI break themselves on my phalangites so I take a VERY long time to fight) it just crashes with no error message this gets really annoying if I've already broken a barbarian host to a full rout but then I crash and have to do it all over again :/

Thanks for any help in advance, and apologies if these are questions that have all been asked before and I just haven't looked hard enough for the answers.

[Alavaria]

If you have enough troops that the AI won't attack, you should have more than enough to just wipe them out, take their cities and then have less troops as the enemy is gone.

For economy, getting a governor and tax rate to High is about the best I go for. After that, get Law% (reduce corruption) but ultimately it turns to getting more settlements without needing to hold more troops.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

On general background I can only suggest a bit of forum surfing of the stickies - lots of good stuff there. Do read the building(s) descriptions and look at their effects. Good Governors and actually 'managing' your characters will help a lot. Concentrate on keeping your citizens content and growing Trade (and population) will help a lot. Don't just build for the sake of it.

On the CTDs - if it's in the middle of the actual battle, this is normally because the graphics card starts to be pushed a lot and there's just too much going on. Reduce settings; don't play on Huge; reduce things you hardly see, like grass!

If the CTD is at the end of the battle, then this is more likely AV/Malware (or even Windows itself) products protecting your PC. The best thing to do is disconnect from the internet and turn them off.

I play using a standalone PC configured just for RTW/RSII - it never crashes (well, almost never - it may be that there are a few bugged squares remaining on the map - I haven't fought on each and every one)

[poisoned_burger]

Thanks, yeah i've been playing on some pretty big settings with huge unit scale, thought that my computer that I just built could handle it I guess :/. Thanks for the info though!

[dvk901]

A very good survival guide was written here:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...Survival-Guide

It's for the Romans, but should basically apply to any faction.

[Alavaria]

Bithnia like most factions around that place, are pretty well positioned to do Pikemen + ranged unit combos.

I've been using archers and mounted archers, but there should be places you can pick up slingers (especially Rhodian slingers) just south of where you start.