A noob crash test with the Romani

[Advenas]

Hello everyone,

So, for my first post on TWC, I'm going to put all shame aside, and admit that I can't get a good start with Romani on N/N in EUII.

Bit of an introduction : I'm much more used to the "modern" TW. I always liked the series, but fell in love with TW Attila. Its feeling of impending doom, chaos, and the fall of the Roman Empire is an exciting setting to me.

But I absolutely love the Ancient Times, and I tried EBII. It looks incredible, but I'm not used to this part of the series, in terms of mechanics.

I basically can't get past the first ten turns without feeling that it's turning into big, smelling feces.

I attack with my southern army on Rhegion almost directly, but I take heavy casualties, and the next year is almost spent on rebuilding the army. Plus, there are lots of ennemies on the north, and I can't bring my northern army or it feels like my cities will end up sacked.

To put it simply : I don't know how to start it all, I'm pretty much lost.

I won't ask a walkthrough of course, but do you have some tips, tricks, and general advices on how to run this campaign ?

Thank you in advance, and sorry if it hurt the sensibility of skilled and experienced players.

Kisses

[Shadowwalker]

Hey Advenas,


welcome to the TWC.

EB II can be a surprisingly difficult mod to people not used to M2:TW and/or EB in general.
Nothing to be ashamed about that.

Playing on M/M has two very important advantages for you - the Rebel AI doesn't attack your settlements and the AI factions in general never hire mercenaries, allowing you to use these pools exclusively.
(Once you get used to EB I'd recommend to play on H/M for those two reasons. For a first campaign - even with the easiest faction - it's completely alright to play M/M.)

Before I go into detail on the campaign, one general advice:
Read the player guide! Seriously, there's a lot of basic advice about EB II and the mechanics in that document. It's well worth the read.


Now, how to start a roman campaign?

I'd say that there are three crucial things that you need to do.

(1) try to get better roads in your settlements. Roads (and ports and mines) are the best ways to enhance your income.
As SPQR, your starting provinces are rich and with a bit of better infrastructure can support several armies and good garrissons simultaneously.
At least in Capua and Rome you should upgrade the roads as soon as possible.
Positive side effect: your armies can travel further, making emergency reactions to threats a lot easier.

(2) Use your southern starting army to siege Tarentum. Siege, not storm! Wait for them to sally, thereby minimizing your losses.
make sure to use a high influence governour after the conquest. Tarentum is a hornets' nest and will have high unrest for hundreds of turns.

(In general you'll probably have to readjust your playing style when playing EB 2. Conquest -> minimal garrisson - > next conquest is often not possible due to the much higher unrest levels. Blitzing is way harder, if not plain impossible in many cases.)

Gather a northern legion by combining as much of the garrissons (and recruit some additional units).

A proper Camillan era legion could look like that:

1 Family Member (Look out for Praetors/Consuls as the have Imperium which includes the right to lead a legion. Mechanically that means they don't have battle maluses.)
1 Leves
3 Hastati
2 Principes
1 Triarii
1 Equites Romani

Add in a couple Auxilia (for example 2 additional spearmen and an etruscan hoplite, 1 Sabellian and 1 Gallic light cavalry).

Use this army to attack the rebel stacks north of Arretium/Ariminum one by one. Do NOT autoresolve. Choose your battlegrounds very carefully as it's quite easy to get an unwanted uphill battle in the regions north of your starting realm.

You want to get rid of those rebel stacks as soon as possible - they cause huge devastation in your two northern provinces otherwise.
(And you need to fight them for the Polybian Reform anyway, see the players guide for details on that).

If you want you can take Felsina afterwards, it will become another rich province.It will be another rather unruly province at first, though.
Step away from Liguria, though! It has scripts that will - without spoiling too much - make a roman conqueror regtretting the conquest more than once. Leave that for later.

On your southern front you should attack Rhegion/Rhegium as soon as Tarentum is pacified enough to pull out the legion. You may have to recruit a halfstack of garrisson troops before. (A large garrisson is necessary, anyway, since both the Epeirotes and the Koinon Hellenon will come for Tarentum rather sooner than later.)

Once you conquered Rhegium you are set for the early game.
From there it should be smooth sailing.

Just be prepared for the Carthaginians breaking the alliance - or break it yourself by expanding into Sicilia.

I hope that helps, feel free to ask if you have further questions.

[Jurand of Cracow]

You've probably read a few relevant pages from the manual for 2.35. Also the Poppis guide to economy in the EBII is worth reading.

[Advenas]

Thank you, both of you.

@Jurand : I didn't know such a guide existed (the Poppis' one). It looks incredibly interesting, but I'm going to save that for this week-end, when I will have enough spare time to crush my head on all those complicated sentences. And I did read the player guide. It explained a lot, that still have to be put in practice in a "meaningful" game.

@Shadowwalker : I wasn't expecting an answer this detailled. It's been learned and understood, thank you.

I think that the part where I screwed up too much was at not taking my time. I usually play on H/H (sometimes VH/VH) on Attila, but the rhythm feels totally different. Where blitzing and being overly aggressive works on Attila (in some extent of course), this one feels much more slower-paced. Much more historicly paced, I'd dare to say.

Kind of funny, as I'm also an avid player of Grand Strategy games, and in those, I can take my time for ever.

I have another question, and I thank you in advance for it :

- In regards of the difficulty... You said that I won't be bothered by rebels armies, except by "raiding" my regions. However, if I kill them, will they spawn again? Or are they done for almost forever once I'm done with? Because (and that may be a big BS) I wouldn't see the use of killing them as a priority if you're just "wasting" men on killing stacks that can repop after ten turns.
And by killing them, I do get that you must erase it, not just make them flee.

[Septentrionalis]

Welcome on my behalf as well, Advenas. Shadowwalker did a grade A job of introduction, and there is little to add. You have not failed any more than most of us who have become accustomed to blitzing/steamrolling the map in the regular games with a powerful faction, such as Rome in Rome: Total War.

The beauty of this mod is that you actually have to bide your time, gather resources and prepare for your campaigns. I was at loss myself when I realized that Eleutheroi factions have full stacks at cities. How was I supposed to be able to conquer them? The answer was that I was not, at least until I have properly invested time and money into a war which ought to be costly. I think you will learn to love the added realism EBII offers.

Since you are only noob to the mod but not to TW games in general, I recommend playing for a while to learn the basic mechanics and then starting a new game with Hard campaign difficulty. I have played with medium battle difficulty because I did not like the idea of having enemy units of the same type being more effective than mine, but just recently Jurand of Cracow made a very strong case for choosing harder battle difficulty as well. Apparently the AI enemies tire faster because the AI is bad at preserving stamina, and I concur that the battles are not quite as challenging as I would like on medium battle difficulty. Perhaps play H/H in your first serious attempt. JoC's post is this one:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...1#post15743096

Another word of advice has to do with family member traits. The stars and whatnot are not very useful in the mod. Your influence stat, for instance, does not reflect very accurately on how well a general is able to keep peace in settlements. You need to make the calculations yourself. If you are pedantic at all, you would do well to keep records on how individual family members accumulate traits/stat after each turn. I am thinking of having a notebook for my next campaign in which I dedicate one page for each family member. It really pays to get to know your leaders and mind their strengths and weaknesses. The mod is incredibly detailed in traits.

EDIT: Maybe I just did not understand the player guide, but I realized too late that traits saying that the family member is eligible for a position (e.g. "Eligible for quaestorship") require you to send them to Rome for election. If you have someone eligible and can spare to send him away from where he is stationed, please do so.

Also, the scripted events urge you to attack factions, but you do not really have to. If you want to deviate from history, you can ignore those at least for a while. In my campaign, I postponed conflict with Carthage for a long time and took a part of Greece first, making a lasting alliance with Macedonia.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Kind of funny, as I'm also an avid player of Grand Strategy games, and in those, I can take my time for ever.

- In regards of the difficulty... You said that I won't be bothered by rebels armies, except by "raiding" my regions. However, if I kill them, will they spawn again? Or are they done for almost forever once I'm done with? Because (and that may be a big BS) I wouldn't see the use of killing them as a priority if you're just "wasting" men on killing stacks that can repop after ten turns.
And by killing them, I do get that you must erase it, not just make them flee.

As an avid player of Grand Strategy games I find the EBII to be the best of all TW games. I've much such fun only with WRE on Attila and some Stainless Steel games in M2TW. I think many of us are fans of Grand Strategy.

Eleutheori (the rebels) - you just need to win a battle, and they'll die, not flee. The regular AI factions - they'll flee. Actually, the sweeping actions of your lands are the priority - otherwise, you'll lose much income due to the devastation. The Rebels won't spawn but in the "difficult regions" (I don't have the link to the map handy, maybe somebody else will help).

Take your chance to play Romani and learn on-the-way - only one time you can be a noob, and later, with more experience, you're unlikely to be willing to play Romani as it's an easy faction. So play it now as far as it gives fun! I think H/H for you will be a good difficulty (given your experience in Attila)
JoC