So far, I’ve liberated the Italian peninsula. It seems almost…simpler and easier if you forget about all the fun skirmishers you have and just use principes as your artillery. They also double nicely as heavy infantry. I stormed through three cities with maybe…50 deaths combined with this fun little non-blend.
Does this mod require Barbarian Invasions?
Ah, how I love winning battles where the computer totally outnumbers me.
I remember one battle I besieged some Roman town with a small force of a few slinger and a few second-line infantry. I don’t expect to attack, I just want to trap the enemy army there until I bring up my heavy field army next turn. I had something like 200 men, he had 750. So of course he decides this is bullshit and sorties.
I have my slingers out front, out of range of his towers. His units begin to trickle out of the gate and march towards me. My slingers start pecking them…pecking them…they break and run back into the gate! More units move up, one or two at a time, get pecked to death and run. A few more form up and march through the sling stones, but my slingers retreat and my warbands hit them and they rout. His general comes out and every missile unit hits the general, the general is brave and doesn’t rout, but by the time he gets to my line he’s cut to ribbons and my wimpy warbands wipe him out. Now everyone’s running for the gate…so I follow them in and chase them away and I’m inside the city without a siege. My troops chase them to the plaza…we take the plaza from the routed rabble. Some of his troops reform outside and try to retake the plaza, but my slingers peck them to death as they come in piecemeal. Now my slingers have run out of ammo and are ultraweak infantry…except they’re happy and rested, the enemy is horrified and dead tired…my disarmed slingers and the remains of the warbands finish off the troops coming into the plaza. There are still troops out there, but I take the plaza on timeout.
So I take the city despite being outnumbered almost 4-1, and all my troops are second line, compared to his mix of hastati and principes. Good times, good times. Almost makes up for the time when the Roman onager hits my faction leader on the head in the first shot of a battle and half my troops decide to rout on the spot.
Hmm, I’ve never liberated the Italian peninsula.
Now, conquered, on the other hand… 
Nope, I don’t have it and the mod works fine.
One thing i’ve noticed as a bit of an annoyance; I’ll often get demands to become a protectorate from either Gaul or Carthage (whoever i’m nearest), along with a demand for all the territories i’ve taken from them, every other turn, despite doing pretty well for myself (and having taken a lot of their lands). Their confidence seems to have had a boost off the field, too.
Oh no. I mean liberated. I liberated it from those smelly rabble rousing rebels.
Lemur 866, I love killing the leader immediately. Flanking elephants are great for it. I’ve done that a few times and it makes me happy in the pants.
Yeah, it was the classic scene, “Come on men, attack! Forward! They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist-”.
Totally out of the blue a big rock comes down from nowhere and my general is street pizza.
My best was a siege. Two onagers firing at the battlements, and two siege towers advancing on their flanks. Like an idiot I didn’t think about the crossing trajectories, and when a tower crossed into an onager’s arc of fire, it got hit and immediately burst into flames. The sight of my little dudes pushing this flaming tower around had me laughing so hard that I forgot about the other one, which also got nailed. I lost the siege. 
I haven’t seen that, but I haven’t fought but two defenses so far. How do you get the AI to attack instead of starving you out? I akways assume that they’ll just wait, so I relieve the siege or attack from within. (My special bug is Marcus the Military Advisor poking his head in occasionally. No voice though, so I just see his face quietly mumbling in the upper left corner until I click him off.)
I read at RTR that you need to satisfy a couple conditions first. At least one of your cities has to have built the Imperial Palace, which means you need a high population. I forget the rest, but that was the main one. After the conditions are met, it can occur at any time, not sure what the calculation is though.
Strategically I’m doing very well this time. By keeping my borders from touching allied nations, they remain friendly. I’ve taken all of Carthage’s island holdings, and Gaul is now mine. The Spanish have one city left and I’m about to take that as well (them Spaniards have some damn tough cavalry). Carthage launched Punic War Part Deux as soon as our borders met in Iberia, so I’ll take the whole place before asking for a ceasefire with them. I share borders with Germania and Illyria, but large armies in the adjacent provinces have kept them friendly for years. On Alessan’s advice, I sent one of my more brain-damaged progeny with a large number of infantry to take and hold Crete. I’m building a naval base there that will come in handy later, the money from trade is decent and now I have a constant supply of archers. As soon as Iberia is subdued, I’ll have to choose between taking out Germania, or launching a massive invasion of Britain.
Long term strategy is to take all of Europe as far as Sarmatia before striking south at Carthage from Iberia and running the loop to Seleucia. I’d prefer to have the Marian reforms before I go back into hoplite country.
I’m at 150 BC now and STILL no new legion units. I’m starting to think they may not be part of this version. I’m nearly 100 cities now and most of the big foes are either completely destroyed or crippled. Just playing on to see if I ever get the new units (and what they are), and to see if I can conquere the entire map.
I’m debating what to play next…maybe the Bactria (I think thats how they are spelled) or maybe Carthage. I would be nice to get archers again so maybe not Carthage at that (though elephants are nice :)).
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Pyrrhus is a motherfucker. That is all for now.
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Once you break his back (i.e. once you finish off those damn elephants) its pretty much all over for the Greeks. You can romp through the rest of their settlements and then walk across to Sicily and take that as well.
No, in fact if you have BI loaded it will blow up if you patch the mod. I had this originally and didn’t realize that it would do this.
Yeah, I get that too. Think of it as bluster. Best way to shut them up is to crush their armies, take their towns, capture their women and rape their sheep!
Am I the only one who ever fights city defenses? I almost never sally out anymore but just let the siege go on until the computer gets bored or impatient and attacks. I get some truely amazing kill ratios doing it this way.
-XT
Well, I generally keep my cities garrisons as small as possible.
The key to vanilla RomeTW is that unit maintainence is truly truly huge. You absolutely CANNOT think in terms of buying units. You rent them turn by turn. The initial recruitment cost is only 2 or 3 times the per-turn cost, in some cases like slingers and archers the recruitment cost IS THE SAME OR LOWER than the monthly maintainence cost.
So if your slingers or second line troops aren’t fighting they are worse than useless. Disband them, send them on suicide missions, attack at bad odds, throw them away. And you’ll be better off. Only fully upgraded veteran troops are worth protecting.
So your rear cities should only have enough garrison to keep them from rebelling and to fight off a small rebel army. And you MUST not keep peasants and crap troops around. A first line troop costs about the same per month as a second line troop, and they are much tougher. It is much cheaper to recruit expensive mercenaries at the front than to ship or march troops several turns from the hinterlands. Those mercenaries seem expensive compared to regular troops, but they are cheaper than equivalent troops you have to pay even 3 turns of maintenence on. One general plunked down in North Africa can do a lot with just those naked javelin guys…and if they get killed, so what?
Oh, this was relevant to the above. Yeah, I hardly ever sally, because if I’m besieged it’s generally by a pretty big enemy stack against a pretty small garrison, except at the front. And then I’ve got a few garrison units and if I try to sally I’ll get killed.
But often those wimpy garrisons can kill 5 times their number.
I remember one time…I had an onager and hastati and I think two velites. And was assaulted by some ginormous stack. Pulled everyone back to the plaza. But the main plaza entrance was this loooooong straight street. Put the onager there, and start shooting as they try to come up the street. Total massacre, engines miss, but they miss either short or long, not wide. That one onager broke a dozen units, and anyone who got close got a rain of javelins from the velites behind the onager. Imagine your onager running out of ammo, but every time it had fired it had hit something, even a stack running away. The enemy just could not storm down that street, routing troops clogged the way for fresh troops, no one could move, they just milled around while I dumped flaming rocks on them. Sweet…
Ah, that does ring a bell. I have no Imperial Palaces as of yet. Rome is my most populous city at 22.4k, but population growth has dropped to 0 even with low taxes. I’ve embarked on a recruitment campaign of a bunch of cheap troops to disband in Rome to push it over the top, and then we shall see.
Yeah, I haven’t got an imperial palace either. Rome is probably my biggest city and its still one level down from the max. Thats a good idea about disbanding troops in Rome to see what happenes…I’ll give that a shot myself and see if I can get the new troops.
I don’t recall it being this hard in the plain vanilla game…not sure why it would have changed either.
-XT
Not that I actually NEED the full legion units to win as Rome. So far winning as Rome has been the easiest of the nations that I’ve played. I had the game essentially sowed up by something like 200 BC (IIRC)…and had doubled the necessary 50 provinces by 150 BC. I SHOULD have most of the world conquered by 100 BC…and this with the ‘old’ units. I’m thinking that either I’m some kind of military guru ( :dubious: ) or Rome is way over powered in this Mod. Still pretty fun to play IMHO.
-XT
Well, they’ve pretty obviously tweaked some stuff pertaining to population growth and public order, because in vanilla RTW all the big cities would grow beyond your ability to maintain control, and that’s not happening at all here. Not sure what the details are, but I presume this growth petering out early is a side effect.
I’ve definitely noticed that…only a very few cities (currently none in the game I’m playing) attain ‘Huge’ status. By the same token, as you pointed out, the cities don’t seem as often to spin out of control. I’ve had maybe 3 rebellions in my current game, and 2 of them were directly from cities under a series of sieges way out on the fronteer of my empire (i.e. far from the capital). Compared to the plain vanilla game where I would constantly be having rebellions or at least red/blue faces on my fronteer cities I like this a LOT better.
-XT
“Anything to declare?”
“Yeah, don’t go to England.”
Not an easy conquest. I’ve taken everything except Scotland, but I paid in blood. I sent three full stacks of my vets from Hispania, first stack to take Ireland so I’d have a secure base to launch further sorties. The general died chasing down a fleeing chariot (yes, the anti-kinematic chariots from hell are back), and in general it was just a really tough fight. I lost almost as many troops in the rioting city as I did in the battle. Fortunately the real commanders were a turn away and managed to restore order. There’s an easter egg unit in the Irish forces by the way.
Invaded Wales, took it, then Wessex. Open battles were brutal, the chariots pushed through to my archers and artillery relentlessly. Artillery upset me until I realized the Britons close too fast for it to be worth lugging around anyway. I had to bring in two more stacks to make sure the job got done. If you go there, take a full stack of Gallic warbands/slingers for city occupation and riot fighting, and keep your real troops parked in a camp.
Also, the Imperial palace in Rome is one turn from completion, so I’ll see what happens. I think the tip over population number was around 23,000, and I just kept building peltasts in Sicily and shipping them north. I still have the vast majority of the world to conquer, so it looks like I might get to do it with Marian legions.
I started a new game as the Greek Cities. I already resigned myself that I would lose the Italian Penninsula, so I took Phyrric’s army and attacked the Romans. Much to my amazement, I took one city, then Rome, and then I destroyed the Roman race and put them to the sword. I still have Macedonia to take out, and a few Rebels, and Cartharage is acting up, but once I secure my base, global domination shouldn’t be too too difficult.
Post script, playing this game, for some reason, has caused me to get interested in Greek history. As of now I’m reading Ancient Greece: from prehistoric to Hellenistic times by Thomas R. Martin. After reading that I plan on reading The Histories Herodotus and History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.
Quick update for anyone still interested. I’ve now pretty much played through as Rome…and still no full legion units. Its not 70 BC, and Rome is as developed as it can be. Its been so for at least 20 years in fact. So, if there was supposed to be a flag that is set when you have a city attain Huge, that will then set off the reforms that bring about legion units…well, its not working for me. Perhaps the version I’m playing (I’m still playing to 6.2 pirate version) is flawed. Anyone else played through as Rome and gotten the updated units?
I still haven’t figured out whats going on when trying to defend city walls as Rome (not sure if it happens with the other nations…I don’t recall it happening with Selucid or Macedon though) where the units placed on the walls seem to suicide by having about 5% of the regiment take a step back and fall off the walls to their deaths. You can fix it though by stretching the regiments out until they are only 2 or 3 ranks deep (this kind of sucks as it limits how many regiments you can put at the critical points of the wall…but it doesn’t suck as bad as having 5% of your archers decide to take a short walk off a high wall).
-XT
I haven’t gotten the reforms either and it’s pissing me off. I have an Imperial Palace in Rome, and I’ve been growing the other Italian cities to the 20k mark (I’ve finished about half). Once I get them all there, if I don’t get reforms I’m going to try and tinker with the preferences file to see if I can force them.
I don’t have much of a choice in it. I’ve been at war with Macedon for five years (they now control everything from Greece to Asia Minor). I’ve avoided taking any of their territory so as not to get sucked into an endless eastward progression like I did last time. So I send armies over to ambush along the coast, or to take and defend mountain positions against all comers…and then there’s my pirate general. He attacks from Crete, blows open city gates with a ballista, kills everyone in a town and sells the buildings in one turn. Then he sails away. But the AI is getting smart, and including more of those hyawhatever swordsmen in their armies, and they die very hard. I need real legions! Tonight I think I’m going to force conquer most of Macedonia, and leave just a thin shell of them remaining to protect me from war with Seleucia and parts east. If I don’t, these battles I’m fighting are going to start becoming real losses (I’m finally getting some cool city defense actions though, Patavium is under perpetual siege).
Spain and Gaul have been quiet. England/Ireland is a useless set of provinces, you can’t recruit any soldiers other than mercenaries. I’ve taken most of Germania, they’re not so tough. A few more provinces and they’ll be finished.
Stuff I’ve learned:
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Archers are worth importing. They really shine against poorly armored nations like the Spanish, Gauls and Germans. In bridge battles, a single archer unit will usually kill 200ish.
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An extended map makes influence in your governors their most important trait. Just like I build up governors for management, now I build them stocked with influence to control large cities in Farther Spain and Britannia.
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Using scorpions to blow Greeks off of mountainsides and send them tumbling half a mile to the valley floor is pure comedy gold.
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You can build an all inclusive Spanish/Gaul army with no Roman troop types and it will be both effective and cheap, but keep it separate to make reinforcement easier. Between Nearer and Farther Spain, you’ve got everything from spears to skirmishers to heavy cav, all recruitable.
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Peltasts and Gallic slingers are the police force of my Empire, I build and ship them everywhere. Bandits are controlled in a given area by a roving band of cavalry, allowing for smaller garrisons.
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Assassins suck. Build them up to a decent level by killing other assassins and army captains.
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We really need to ability to fire retainers. Anyone know a way, other than stacking them on an old dude who’s about to die? That doesn’t work too well anymore, the retainers pile up too fast and no transfers can be made.
If you figure it out definitely post it here. Like I said, I’ve pretty much conquered the entire board. About all thats left is one or two remote cities way up north (bitch to get troops up there with no roads), and a few far eastern cities on the outskirts of India (same reason)…and still no reforms. I have multiple cities now that are listed as ‘Huge’ with populations over 27k. I know that the new units are in the game, because when I played the Macedonians I took Rome…and the computer had regular legion units.
Not that it really mattered in the end. My Principes and Triarii formed the backbone of my armies, and they pretty much took out all comers. Once I got archers and better calvary (and elephants!) I really started to roll up the armies. And once I took out the Macedonians and captured all those juicy greek cities I had more money than I could spend. At one point I was getting something like 40k per turn…and with all the cities in the heart land built to the max there was nothing really to spend the money on.
You can get archers another way BTW. There are several cities in Turkey that, if you take them as Rome, you will get various archers (sort of like the elephants you get if you take cities in North Africa). Of course, if you haven’t beaten the Macedonians yet its going to be hard for you to get into Turkey. Still, its something to look forward too. You are right…they make a big difference, especially against the lower armered nations.
I actually don’t use them much myself. Its fun to watch, but IMO too much of a pain in the ass to try and keep your lines of fire straight (so that its not YOUR men flying backward in neat lines of death) while also protecting them from enemy units. Plus they really don’t do that much damage compared to a full regiment of something else. I really only use these things when I want to defend a bridge crossing from all comers. I’ll put a few heavy infantry units, perhaps a general, and whatever ranged units I have (peltist, slingers, archers if I have them) with 2 scorpions…and then force the enemy to cross the bridge into a hail of fire. I’ve found that the computer just can’t resist attacking you, even if its out of its way, if you put a small force on a bridge where it can see it. I’ve totally drained an enemy nation of troops by doing this. In fact, this was how I beat the Selucids.
Thats pretty much what I do. I don’t know of another way.
-XT
Ok, I did some research on the Reforms and I’ve got two items, neither of which I can vouch for. This first one is from what looks to be a FAQ for RTR, from a Russian forum. It was in the original English though.
And I haven’t tested it, but from some other forum:
Looks like we may be stuck on the Reforms. Bleh. I wish they’d re-open the RTR forums.