Germania [Archive]

Red Harvest

10-24-2004, 18:11

I'm about to complete a "short" Germania campaign that on VH/VH that requires the conquest of Dacia and Scythia as well as 15 provinces. In order to do that I had to first eliminate the Britons, and start eliminating Gaul. This brought me alongside the Julii, who promptly attacked...they are suffering for that now. In the end I will probably conquer 40 provinces before I am done, but the outcome is now certain.

Overview: Move FAST! Briton and Gaul are horrible neighbors, they will attack even if you ally with both of them. Start building armies to eliminate them both and keep them on defense rather than offense. There are rebel provinces all around. Be very aggressive in seizing them before your neighbors, it is the only way I could keep my finances positive while playing VH. Dacia makes a good ally if you have just enough forces on your border cities with them that they don't get any "bright" ideas. Scythia will also be a good neighbor.

Your Armies: Your problem is lack of cavalry accessibility early on. You only have one province that will be able to build them for many turns...and you must build the structure first. Buy merc cav and merc cav archers wherever possible. The spearband will provide the bulk of your forces. By maintaining 4 row/rank lines of spearband you can present a very wide front that is nearly impenetrable. I march them into the enemy as a contiguous line with my few units of cav on both flanks. I switch to phalanx as they close (guard mode on or off) and give them orders to march *past/through* the enemy line. I keep my cav tucked just behind the flanks and as they engage send the cav around the flank. The enemy end units crumple before or right at the time my cav hits them. The opposing line group routs and I chase down the remainder with my cav. (Typical battle on VH/VH will give me ~1,000 kills, with 20 or 30 losses. A close battle might cost me 150 men and once I even lost 250 because I had insufficient cav.)

Early Strategy: Take Bordesholm, Vicus Gothi, and Lugdunum ASAP. This will get you a nice income. I "occupied" because the province populations were low...and some time during the game I would like them to hit the next city size. Gaul will want Lugdunum, so they are going to attack. No matter, make it their honeypot. Keep a good army there to defeat their stacks repeatedly--you might need to reinforce it periodically, particularly with any cav you can get.

Send diplomats far afield. I sent one toward Dacia, then Scythia to secure alliances. I picked up alliances with Thracia and Macedon along the way. I also sent one on a long tour of Gaul and the Iberian peninsula. I managed to get alliances with all of Rome and trade with Spain and Carthage. The alliances with Rome unravelled when they attacked Macedon. But I was able to keep trade rights with some of their factions (although I don't know that I had much external trade.)

Midgame Strategy: Plan to take Samarobriva from the Britons ASAP. This will be their "honeypot" while you try to get a port so that you can invade and finish them. With the Gauls occupied in Lugdunum and Britons in Samarobriva, you can build a third army to take Alesia from the Gauls. It has lots of upgrades and population and will start producing some tough "chosen" archers and swordsmen if you don't. When you take it, "enslave" is a good idea: it sends population to your many small cities. Gaul will be on the ropes after this. Take Condate Redonum and you will have a port...this is how you invade Brittania without waiting for a port of your own. The hop to London is short, and the Britons will be busy in your neck of the woods, unable to defend their own. It will only take a few turns to finish them (exterminate or enslave as needed to balance money/population needs.)

Also, during the early midgame, you need to take Domus Dulcis Domus ("Home Sweet Home") and Vidus Venedae from the rebels. This will keep money flowing, and it will keep the Dacians in check since they run out of money with nothing to conquer. At some point in the midgame I had the money to build a small army to take Lovosice. I think it was in Dacian hands. After that Dacia was on the ropes. I quickly took Aquincom, and then sent some exploration to Iuvavum which was rebel so I took it as well. Dacia was wiped out by Thracia before I had a chance to finish them. Note: Dacia has falxmen, and when mixed with archers I've found them a bit tougher to beat on VH with spearband and cav. (Do not let Dacia hit you first! I got triple teamed by Dacia, the Britons, and Gaul in my first attempt at Germania. I could never get financial traction to finish any one of the three, and the Dacian falxmen eventually attrited my army away.)

Lategame: Take the rest of the Gaul provinces in France. You might want to exterminate to get some money from the larger population centers. Although enslave works better on some areas and especially if you need to rebuild stacks/build new armies with all those nice upgrades. Take a hop from the UK to take Hibernia. Take Cisalpine Gaul, Transalpine Gaul and Patavium. This will bring the Julii down on you. They hit me with three full stacks in Cisalpine Gaul, one for each of three turns. I had a powerful 1/2 stack army. After that I had finished the Gauls in Italy and turned my attention to the Julii. I hit them both in Italy and Iberia simultaneously.

Endgame. With all effective opposition silenced, turn on your Scythian allies. This will mean long marches. I am ready to start this phase.

Spartakus

10-24-2004, 20:39

Germania is great battlewise. Once you have managed to build a nice army, that is. Losses do not have to be heavy, just avoid autoresolve most of the time, as already pointed out by Magraev.

The key to victory, in my opinion, is spearmen and chosen archers. Form a solid wall of phalanxes, position some units of chosen archers behind these, and some cavalry on the sides to make sure they don't get any nasty surprises. The spearmen can be reinforced with night raiders and berserkers, great units for making the enemy rout. This makes them particularly useful against your neighbours the Gauls and the Britons, as these guys rout at the drop of a hat. I have yet to see this strategy fail.

Where to go? In my opinion every Germania-player's duty is to plunder Rome before Alaric. Which gives you hundreds of years, so no need to hurry, conquer Britannia and Gaul first.

Mightypeon

10-25-2004, 13:10

Well, I have something to add to the German Phalanx:
Add one unit of Axes or Barb Merc and one unit of screaming Women.
Let both use their abilites when the enemy gets close.
The combined effect of the scremaing + the warshout is almost enough to "shake" some units, and certainly enough to make the pesky romans run earlier.
It also gives you the edge in Phalanx vs. Phalanx as their Phalanx will run before yours does.
Always keep 2 units of Cavalry, the other germans arent that good in chasing routers and german cavalry is good in protecting flanks.
Oh, I noticed that some well defendet border forts can occupy the Dacian/Thracian/Skythian mongrels with very little troops while your guys spank rome.
Does anyone have some tips on Naval warfare?
I am unable to put any kind of dent into the roman navys, which is quite pesky, I cant even get a diplomant to africa for getting an Alliance with Cartage/Egypt...

Mightypeon

10-26-2004, 23:09

Well, I have saved the problem with the roman navy, by killing them all.
their navy is nto that scary if they dont carry any troops because soemone just spanked italy.
On hindisght, it was significantly more easier than anticipated.
The Julii armies were unxeperienced, my tpyical 4 Spears, 2 chosen Archer 1 general one gothic 2 Light Cav on Axemen on one screamer armies beat them up pretty well.
5 Star Spearman can still hold up Legions, mainly because they posses a bigger size and get a morale advantadge (well, you did use the scremaing women eh?)
I have engaged the Dacian/Thracian (the latter have absorbed Macedon), the Falxmen are somehow Cannon fodder (my Cav runs through them, they dont even get close to my spears and my Archers are shooting them up anyway.)
however the Thracian Pikes are pretty nasty, alas their small front size will mean their doom, in addition the AI cannot really use its Phalanxes.
I am doign a "Sitzkrieg" with the Skythians, pretty small garrisons (one General + 2 Spears +1 chosen Archers) are sitting in some border forts and protect the irver corssings, the Sykths dont even try to siege.
My Spy recently found out why the Skythies are so boring, the Scythies lost their leader + main army against the Amazons, however I dont have enough troops to garrsion the land which would be ripe for taking.

I have to confess that I dont like Berserkers, the require that you build a temple to Donar, however, Donar is inferior to Wotan in most respects (Wotan get more units and a better bonus) in addition, the priests of Donar help you helaing your wounded which I think is one of the best skills ever, the +2 command while using infantry is even better.

I can only recommend chosen Axemen coming from a level 3 Wotan temple city with a nice armour smith. Want to go toe to toe with the urban cohorts? Well, chosen Axes can do the trick, in additoon they are propably one of the best one turn units.

Spartakus

10-27-2004, 00:38

I have to confess that I dont like Berserkers, the require that you build a temple to Donar, however, Donar is inferior to Wotan in most respects (Wotan get more units and a better bonus) in addition, the priests of Donar help you helaing your wounded which I think is one of the best skills ever, the +2 command while using infantry is even better.

But they look SO cool! ~D

Seriously, Donar may be inferior to Wotan, but the berserkers do cream enemies in battle. I have seen these guys chase away Roman units many times their size. With the hitpoints, they don't go down as easily as you might expect either.

On the side, it's worth noting that the germanic god Wotan and the norse god Odin are one and the same, just a variation in the spelling from old norse to saxon. Same with Donar/Thor. So these fellas are actually the predecessors of the berserkers in Viking Invasion.

The_Emperor

10-28-2004, 10:07

Ok I started off a game as the Germans last night to have a bash at them.

Theya re hard on the battlefield with those spear warbands... To be honest I thought they would have been higher upt he tech tree than they are. I was really amazed that while the Britons and Gauls get the default "Warband" the Germans got a Phalanx... Still they do need it more than the Britons and Gauls do, their lands are so dirt poor you have to Blitz the map to avoid early game stagnation. Especially with the Britons and Gauls.

For my part I ended up at war with both of these factions very early on. I got agressive and took Alesia from the Gauls (it is their Capital after all)... Then the Britons joined in sending an army to try to besiege Alesia from me right afterwards.

So I scraped an army together and attacked their Gallic foothold. Fortunately the moment my army got close to their city, the Big Briton army lifted the siege to rush back to defend. It was a big mistake and I took the town while they were stuck on the road... That army was later destroyed in a heroic victory near the town.

My eastern flank though is extremely weak due to the dirt poor nature of Germanic towns, fortunately I am allied with Dacia and am pursuing an alliance with Scythia, to hold them at bay.

MadKow

10-28-2004, 13:14

I also started a German game. I play on medium so dont expect some genius insight from here. My very first target was the briton foothold which was promptly dispatched.
As soon as that was taken care of, i went for the gauls. At this point i still have to conquer the two mediterranean cities. In the mean time a full stack of brit troops lead by a 5 star general crossed the Channel and is menacing their former posession.

My biggest problem is population growth. The German cities grow VERY slow. Temples of Freya(?) may help there, but if you want berserkers and Gothic cavalry you have to please the other gods. The East so far is not a problem. I was slow taking the Helvetii town and lost the Tyrol to the Dacians. However my Eastern most provinces are providers of very interesting mercenary forces, namely Scytian Horse Archers and Samartian Cavalry. HA are useful as most of you can imagine, and Samartian Cavalry has an outstanding Charge bonus. Haven't used them yet, though.

The German spearband caused my very first defeat in RTW while playing the Julii and overconfidently assaulted a German settlement.
So far i've only used spearmen, cavalry and a few screaming ladies, besides the ocasional mercenary barbarians, when facing big numbers.
It's been quite fun, playng the Germans.

Oh.. watch your leaders... they can get some nasty vices from drinking too much ale.

Spartakus

10-28-2004, 14:00

I also started a German game. I play on medium so dont expect some genius insight from here. My very first target was the briton foothold which was promptly dispatched.
As soon as that was taken care of, i went for the gauls. At this point i still have to conquer the two mediterranean cities. In the mean time a full stack of brit troops lead by a 5 star general crossed the Channel and is menacing their former posession.

I can imagine. Conquering Britannia before heading southwards solves this problem. Less men in the north equals more men in the south, and of course, you need everything you've got to deal with the Romans.

My biggest problem is population growth. The German cities grow VERY slow. Temples of Freya(?) may help there, but if you want berserkers and Gothic cavalry you have to please the other gods.

Freya's correct. The key to this one is balance, I would suggest building the temple of Freya in about 1/3 of your cities (more or less). Which cities must be decided according to location, the safe towns which are (or will be) in the center of your empire and far from the line of battle would be my choice, as you wouldn't want to recruit your berserkers and gothic cavalry from these places anyway.

Now go get Rome! :charge:

The_Emperor

10-28-2004, 14:51

I have found that the Germanic towns need farms, its the only way to get them up to scratch I feel given their natural lack of food & growth.

At any rate when I took the Briton foothold it was very early on and they had that massive army running around... I can only think that the upkeep has killed them because I have yet to see them come back against me. Even their navy is out of sight at the moment.

The Gauls are more of a challenge, but given they only have 3 provinces in mainland Gaul (this side of the alps) and one of them is besiged by me, they won't be much of a threat for much longer.

Oh well time to get some ports & boats and paddle across the pond...

DojoRat

10-28-2004, 15:10

The problems facing the German player are money and population growth. In my latest game I built few troops at first and went for the rebel provinces of Bordesholm and Vicus Gothi to the north. They're not cash cows, but they are easy to get and hold so attack them first while you send out your diplomats and develope your provinces.

The majority of my temples were dedicated to Freya. I wanted the fertility bonus but also knew that the towns I captured would be well developed to produce high quality troop so it's there I put my temples to Donar and Wotan.

As you build up for war remember your diplomats. Ally with Dacia and Spain and whoever will join you. Travel the world, establish trade and sell map info. Try to use this cash to build farms, markets and ports. Go easy on the troop production because their upkeep will drive you into the red after the these diplomatic windfalls run out. Another good use for this mad money is bribing troops. I took out a couple of Brit 1/2 stacks early on, and the Brits never recovered.

Your early strategic goal is to take Alesia and defeat the Gauls in the field but then eliminate the Brits. Take Sambrovia and Condate Redoran (sp?) and then jump across the pond (don't stay on board!) to take London. Usually the Brits oblige and send whatever they have left back to Gaul (you can wave to them as you pass!) so taking Britain is a walk in the park.

I focus on troops in London but concentrate on trade in the rest. That is why Britain is good to take first. It has all that extra trade income, and besides the occasional rebel is easy to maintain. Once Britain is secure it's easy to roll up the rest of Gaul.

I usually enslave as I go, unless it's a tiny settlement, then I occupy.

On to Rome!

The Witch-King

10-28-2004, 17:57

Ah, Germania, always a lot of fun. Here's an interesting strategy I read on the boards at TWcenter and which I've pulled off with great success. If it works, you've won the game, it's as simple as that. When you begin take ALL your troops and gather them into two large stacks near the town below your capital, I believe it's called Mongotiacum. Don't spent money on your towns, you won't be staying in these worthless lands. Buy a couple of spearbands in Mongotiacum and Trier and send them to join your armies while you wait for the troops from Vicus Marcomanni to arrive. Build some diplomats too (another two will do), they'll be invaluable to get money, which you'll desperately need. Now march south into Noricum, but ignore the town, you have bigger fish to fry. Send your diplomats to sell trade rights and maps to everyone you come across, you can often make 5000-10000 denarii with this. March your two armies into Italy and cross the Po river into Julii lands. Attack the Julii and lay siege to both their main towns. Build some rams, attack the next turn and exterminate, you need the money and you an't afford to keep a large garrison. Make Arminium your capital, you are here to stay! By now all the Romans will be at war with so push on to Rome as soon as possible. The Senate army is your greatest foe, the Scipii are probably busy on Sicily and it'll take the Brutii some time to march some troops to northern Italy. Lay siege to Rome, but do not attack. Those walls are deadly! If you're lucky the Senate will do something stupid, like attack your besieging army (you did remember to bring as many troops as possible, didn't you?). Defeat the SPQR army (nasty buggers with good weapons and armor, so use your spearmen to hold the line and flank them with your cav), if you're lucky you can destoy the SPQR troops inside Rome as they join the battle and capture the city the next turn. Exterminate the populace. Congratulations, you've captured Rome, including some very nice 3rd tier buildings!.

By now the Britons will undoubtedly have attacked your deserted holdings in your old lands. Let them! The lands are worthless and you did sell all the buildings, didn't you? Let the Britons waste time and effort buidling up these tiny hamlets. The Gauls will also inevitably attack you with their crappy warband/swordmen combo armies. Easy fodder for your spearbands, just don't let them swarm you. In the mean time your diplomats are running all over Europe selling traderights and maps to everyone they meet. By now you will have built up a large deficit (-10000 k and you'll be losing money for some time) and you need to get out of the red fast! Your armies will have taken losses and you need pecunia to retrain and reinforce your troops!

Retrain and reinforce your army in Rome (be sure to build shrines everywhere, preferably to Wodan) and march on Capua. Be careful here, I suffered a nasty defeat when the Scipii faction leader sallied forth from the town. He's a nasty bugger who can devastate your army. I destroyed him in a second battle but he took a while to die, so don't overextend your forces!

The Brutii will keep sending small to medium sized armies to Arminium, so keep a sizable force there. Hastati and Velites are no match Spearbands and Barbarian Cav, so it's shouldn't be a prob. The Julii are effectively neutered with their two main towns gone. It's possible they've taken both Caralis and Segesta. Take Segesta from them to drive them off the mainland. They may land armies but it's probably just a ragtag band of Hastati, peasants and townwatch, easy fodder for your spearbands (great unit and the key to victory!) so ignore Caralis for now. After you've taken Capua reinforce your army and swiftly march on to Tarentum, siege it, take it next turn, exterminate and march on to Croton. Rinse and repeat.

By now the Brutii are stuck in Greece and the Dalmatian coast and the Scipii are probably holding all of Sicily. Keep a large army near Croton and Tarentum, both the Scipii and the Brutii will occasionally send armies to take those cities. In northern Italy the Gauls are probably making a nuisance of themselves, so help yourself and take the two cities they have there and reifoce the pass leading to transalpine Gaul. Your original homelands have probably been taken by the Britons or have rebelled due to unhappiness. No matter, you now possess all of Italy and you should be making a profit by now and have some cash in your treasury from all those sackings. Build up Rome to make all those highend units you normally can't build until 150 BC. It won't take long, due to the excellent infrastructure in the Roman towns. Now build up an army and a fleet. A small expedition will be enough to finish of the Julii. The Scipii will take more troops but shouldn't really be a problem. And what do you do when you've taken Sicily? By now you're in a practically unassaillable position to take over the world! Be sure to send the Gauls and Britons your regards, preferably by a large army made up of Gothic Cavalry! I'm sure their warbands will appreciate the gesture. :p

DojoRat

10-28-2004, 18:30

Interesting. It's also more historically realistic to have the Germans launch a huge raid on Italy than create a nation state in the forrests of northern Europe. But I just don't see it as a necessity.

It doesn't take to 150 bc to build highend units. As soon as you take London and build the temples to Wotan you can get Gothic Cav. That should happen in 20yrs/40 turns. It also only takes two upgrades to make chosen archers, which to me is a far more important unit and makes your slow moving spearbands truly devastating.

But the strategy does have a more barbarian slash and burn feel, so i might try it when I cycle through the factions again.

DojoRat

10-29-2004, 19:55

Rome fell with a whimper. You know Rome is weak when the Brutii and not the Julii have control of Massila in southern France. \

It was more a matter of logistics than tactics to take Milan and Venice (still Gaulish!) and the two Julii cities. I was surprised to see the "faction destroyed" flag when the Julii cities fell, usually they own Sardina/Corsica and survive till you get around to raising a fleet. The Brutii sent a few stacks out of Illyricum but they had little to guard their cities and they quickly fell. I besieged Rome until they emerged at the end to fall on MY swords. The Scipii but up a good fight and even brought troops over by boat to try to raise the seige. The second battle must have killed the last of their line because when Capua fell they were gone.

My anti Roman battle plan is a simple, one sided end run.

(OOPs wrong button.)

The side will change depending upon the terrain/circumstances but I find one overwhelming envelopment works best against legions. 4-5 spearbands with 4 archers, 1 screamer, 1 general, 3 lc 2 hc and the rest axemen and wildmen. I set my spears/archers in the center but only a few covering forces on the weak side and mass the rest on the other. I use my cav to keep the velites at bay because they can cut you up if you get bogged down fighting some experienced legions. They will also provide a final straw, if needed, to crack the Roman battle line.

Dacia is next, followed by Macedon. I wonder if Macedon will be tough.
I hope so.

Dragoncrusader

10-31-2004, 12:33

A guide to the Germans

Troops
Type No /Experience /Attack /Total /mele/missil /Charge /Weapon Type /Defence Total /Armour /Skill /Shield /Hit Points /Recruit Cost /Upkeep /Special factors
Barb Peasants 120 0 1 1 light 4 3 1 0 1 150 100 Woods Snow
Skirm Warband 80 0 6/9 4 missile 3 0 1 2 1 220 130 Woods Snow
Chosen Archer 81 1 12/14 5 Missile 13 8 5 0 1 560 180 Flaming wod/snw
Spear Warband 121 1 10 8 light 12 3 4 5 1 510 200 Phalanx Wod/Snw
Screech Women 80 0 11 7 heavy 1 0 1 0 1 320 130 Woods Snow
Hounds 40 0 14 4 light 3 2 1 0 1 612 60 Woods Snow
Axemen 81 1 12 7 heavy 10 3 5 2 1 450 120 Warcry Wod Snw
Chosen Axemen 81 1 20 9 heavy 7 0 7 0 1 522 200 Warcry Wod Snw
Beserkers 24 2 22 8 heavy 7 0 7 0 3 756 120 Warcry Wod Snw
Naked Fanatics 80 2 16 6 light 9 0 4 5 1 430 130 Warcry Wod Snw
Night Raiders 80 1 16 8 heavy 11 3 3 5 1 486 130 Warcry Wod Snw
Barb Cav
54 2 11 9 Light 12 3 5 4 1 400 90 Wedge Wod Snw
Noble Barb Cav 54 0 11 10 light 15 6 5 4 1 600 160 Wedge Wod Snw
Gothic Cavalry 54 3 17 10 light 23 10 9 4 1 632 190 Wedge Wod Snw
Generals 24 0 14 10 light 14 4 6 4 22 940 92 Snow
Hastiti 80 0 8/12 2 heavy 14 5 4 5 1 440 170
Equites 54 0 8 7 light 12 3 5 4 1 390 110 wedge

Tech Tree

Town Large Town Minor City
Govern Warrior Hold (Peasants) Warlords Hold (Diplomat) High Kings Hall (Gen Bodyguard +1)
Walls Wooden Palisade Stockade na
Barracks Musterfield (Spear Warb) Meeting Hall (Axemen) Hall of Heroes (Chosen Axemen)
Stables na Stables (Barb Cav, Hounds) Warlords Stables (Barb Noble Cav)
Rangesna Practice range (Skirm warb) Archery Range (Chosen Archer)
Smiths na Blacksmith needs trader (weapons +1) Weaponsmith needs market (Weapons +1 Armour +1)
Port na Port (1 trade fleet)(boats) Shipwrght (2 trade flt)(large boat)
Farm Land clearance (food +1) Commnl farming (food +2) X
Roads Roads (trade + travel) x x
Tavern na Tavern (Public Order +5%) Bardic Circle (Order +10% Nightstalker)
Trade Trader (populus + 0.5%) Market (populus +0.5% Spy) Great Market (populus +0.5% Assassin)
Freya Happy +5% Populus +0.5% Screeching Women Happy +10% Populus +1% Happy +15% Populus +1.5%
Donar Happy +5% Happy +10% Experience+1 Happy +15% Experience +2 Beserker
Woden Happy +5% Experience+1 Happy +10% Experience+2 Naked Fanatics Happy +15% Experience +3 Gothic Cavalry

Short campaign set at medium/medium. Objectives 15 provinces and outlive Dacia and Scythia. These factions are very similar to Germania but the Dacians have some armoured infantry and the Scythians lots of horse archers but neither have any spears.

Overview
Your starting position is good because you have five provinces in Central Europe and these are surrounded by rebel ones. But you are going to need it because you have a small population, low population growth and low level technology (Germania can only build up to Minor Cities) and this can present a challenge in a long game. So the plan is to expand widely and fast before the other factions can get established and to challenge the Romans early as possible.

Development
You have 2 large towns Damme and Mogontiacum with 3000 souls and a technology goal of 6000 and these should be developed first into your troop producing centres and you should aim to get at least one of them up a tech level to Minor City. I had Mogontiacum, as a cavalry and missile troops centre for Noble Cavalry and Chosen Archers so that there was less of a drain on the population and built it first into a Minor City. I built the temple line to Woden to get Gothic Cavalry. Damme became the infantry centre and had the temple line to Donar and developed more slowly. Develop the other towns with level 1 items such as a palisade, farm, roads, trader and a temple to Freya for population growth. Have a garrison of 1 Peasant in each and 3 spear warbands on frontier towns. I doubt if there will be enough spare cash or people to develop any of the Towns into Large Towns early in the game but if you can, build a musterfield in Batavadurum and use this to supply extra warbands. Later you can build a port here when it grows into a Large Town. You only get four family members so have a governor in each of the two large towns and two armies. In the early game I make it a rule only to spend the PROFITS from each year and to leave the balance as an emergency fund. You will have to more population into the three towns that you are developing and you can do this by recruiting peasants, sending them to the developing town and then disbanding them.

Economics
Normally your low tech level, would be offset by trade income and you would have plenty of money. Not Germania. You will be short of cash all the game and I only managed to keep two 20 unit armies in the game with a 10 unit reserve and three frontier garrisons of four units each. About 65 units in total and about 10 diplomats and spies. Your farm income is low at between 300d and 450d a province and less than 200d in internal trade (due to poor roads) and you only get one mine in Vicus Gothi another 200d. External trade is difficult to get as you only have a port onto the North Sea and can only trade with Britannia and Gaul, both of whom are at war with you most of the time. My trade with Londinium was worth around 700d when it got going. Trade does build later when you capture the Black Sea and Gallic Mediterranean ports but by then you are facing the Romans, so you are going to need it. I kept two diplomats full time selling map information, one in Italy and Spain and the other in Greece and Anatolia. At between 5,000 and 15,000d a time this was a major source of revenue.

Tactics
Your troops are some of the best barbarian soldiers and the spear warband in phalanx formation is very powerful. Coupled with some Barbarian Cavalry to run down missile troops and routers and some axmen to cover flanks of the phalanx that is your early game army. It will defeat all the barbarian opponents, often when you are heavily out numbered. Just roll the army forward into the enemy and watch their centre crumble! Later you can add Noble Cavalry to crush the enemy’s cavalry and their flanks. When besieged just roll a phalanx into the breach and wait for the enemy to kill themselves. I normally have just three spear warbands so that I can cover all the breaches and a missile unit to keep off their missile units. I have seen just such a force kill an entire army of besieging Britons.

Against the Scythians, you will need to take armoured cavalry to destroy their cavalry and infantry (and survive the arrows) and as many Chosen Archers (guarded by 4 spear warbands) and Mercenary Horse Archers as you can muster. You will suffer casualties but your firepower should keep the Horse Archers at bay and they are not a strong faction.

Against the Romans, you need to guard your flanks but again you just need to roll the phalanx forward to destroy their centre. A single unit of spear warband is on a par with a unit of Hastatii so try and get all the armour and weapon upgrades that you can. Keep your units tight in a line so that you get local superiority when the Romans are more spread out trying to outflank you. What I find odd is that the recruitment cost of the Spear Warband is 70d greater than a unit of Hastatii and the upkeep 30d more. They have about the same combat power but you have a lot less money and population than any Roman Faction so these are relatively expensive units. You will need to fight every battle yourself so that you do not lose any men that you do not need to.

Strategy
You have a central position and will have to fight a war on two fronts using your interior lines to mass your troops against any threats that develop. Luckily you have the Alps to the south and if you can capture Iuvavum you can put a fort in the Alpine pass to the south to stop the Gauls/Romans coming that way. That leaves Gaul and Britannia in the West and Dacia, Macedonia and Thrace to the east. My strategy was to keep an army in the West and fight a slow war against Gaul and to neutralise Britannia through diplomacy – in the end they fought the Gauls instead. In the East, I sent every spare unit (about 30) to capture Dacia with Macedon and Thrace as allies and then sent a two pronged thrust into Scythia, one prong going along the Black Sea coast and the other through Pripet. I had just finished that in 243bc when the Brutii attacked from Pannonia but I was able to bring the army back from Scythia and Gaul to stop them. Game won. Continuing the game, I will take Greece to improve my economy and population and then southern Gaul and finally move into Italy.

Starting Strategy
270 BC Mass all your troops at Mogontiacum and your spy as your Eastern Army and send them to capture Lovosice, Vicus Marcomanni, Vicus Gothii and Bordesholm from the rebels. Move south to capture Iuvavum and built a fort in the pass through the Alps garrisoned by 3 spear units to stop forays from Italy. 263 BC Use Lovosice as a base to build up and retrain the army and then move into as much Dacian territory as you can before the Brutti get there. Capture Dacia by around 245 BC and then strike into Scythia using Vicus Marcomannias a base. The distances in the East are huge, so split up into small armies and try to capture as much of the Scythian hinterland in the first strike. It is not well defended as the Scythian army is at Campus Scythii facing the Thracians. Concentrate again at Tanais and destroy the Scythians in the province of Scythia around 230 BC. You are then positioned to move into Greece or against the Brutii as you wish but you have now won the short campaign.

270 BC In the West send the diplomat to Alesia to get an alliance with the Gauls and sell them map information and then onto the Britons for trade agreement and map information. Build an army Batavodurum as the Britons will attack soon. When they do, counter attack and capture Samarobriva which should finish the Britons on the mainland for a while. If the Julii fight the Gauls, you may get peace there for a long time but if they go into Spain then the Gauls will attack you. They attacked me around 263 BC and I captured Alesia and sent about 1,500 of its population to Mogontiacum which finally became a minor city in 253 BC. The Gauls kept sending small armies up to Alesia which were easy to kill and kept the Britons under control with a diplomat. Around 240 BC having destroyed the bulk of the Gallic armies, I captured Lemonum and the British re-appeared on the mainland, got a bloody nose at Samarobriva and so went off to besiege Condate Redonum- a Gallic town! Captured Massilia around 230BC but kept other Gallic provinces alive as a buffer against the Julii.

Gave up trying to control rebel armies, as I always seemed to have four and I could never seem to bribe them, even family members.

I quite liked playing the Germans but got fed up with the lack of money and always having to scrape together units to get together a decent attacking army. Also the task of taking on Scythia was very dull as the distances were so huge and you were vulnerable to an attack back home. But they have the best barbarian army and can take on anyone. Am now going to try this emigrate to Rome strategy. Sounds like fun!

HopAlongBunny

11-01-2004, 09:16

Nice units but no cash.

I thought ppl were kidding when they said sell trade rights and maps for 10k or more...omg! it works ~:)

The Scipii refused my deal for map info for 10k (5k had been my highest attempt up til then) the counter offer was 1925k/turn over 9 turns :dizzy2: What could I do but (begrudgingly) say yes? ~:)

A common theme here, and something I have seen as well. The Romans seem to make no headway against Gual while you are fighting. My diplomat in Italy does not see many troops, perhaps the best plan IS the Roman Blitz detailed above.

edit:Lol, the only thing worse than your cash position is your population. It's now 230'ish and I have yet to see a city of 6000. When do these guys get archers? The Guals are spamming archers/foresters and chosen sword; despite losing every town outside Italy...none of which can produce archers btw ~:)

Also, I have been enslaving everything I get my hands on and the pop. in my main towns is still tiny.

Mr Frost

11-03-2004, 14:27

...edit:Lol, the only thing worse than your cash position is your population. It's now 230'ish and I have yet to see a city of 6000. When do these guys get archers? The Guals are spamming archers/foresters and chosen sword; despite losing every town outside Italy...none of which can produce archers btw ~:)

Also, I have been enslaving everything I get my hands on and the pop. in my main towns is still tiny.

Pick which towns you want to become your top production centres and don't build anything there unless you absolutely need to {ie , you need Cav and non is available for hire and no other town can build them} . Your spears are the workhorse , but at 121 men per can drop a small population fast , use your secondary towns to produce these .
You might try building peasants in a town you don't mind depopulating , and sending them to your chosen towns in a steady stream {disband them when they get in their new home and increase that towns population by 120 per unit} .
Try getting the spearment to mate with the screaming women ~D

Es Arkajae

11-11-2004, 21:44

Ah, Germania, always a lot of fun. Here's an interesting strategy I read on the boards at TWcenter and which I've pulled off with great success

Thats a good idea. ~:)

Playing as Germania I abandoned Germany after building roads and one unit of peasants in each province and a couple extra spear warbands, and then moved all my forces down to the mountain pass just above Mediolanium.

I took Mediolanium, built a fort blocking the road to Masilia to stop Gaul reinforcements and then took Patavium. Building up some more units over the next few turns (some axemen and naked fanatics), I also hired some barbarian cavalry mercs Then it was war against the Julii and other Roman factions. The battle against the combined Julii/SPQR armies was something fierce but from a good defensive position I let the Roman armies break on my wall of spears.

Overtime I lost all of Germania to the Britons, Gauls and rebellion but I have all of mainland Italy and just took Sardinia (a quick hop from Rome and the AI usually won't attack ships in port).

I couldn't have done it without the money gained from selling maps and sacking cities but now I have such an extensive domain I have money rolling in and two major armies in the field.

The Julii are gone, the Brutii have been reduced to Salona and Apollonia, Rome is taken and is now my capital.

The Scipii control all of Sicily, Thapsus and they're about to take Carthage, so I'll need to take them but it shouldn't be too diffcult with some smart transporting.

Of course when I start going up against some phalanx armies my battles will probably get more difficult but a spear wall works wonders against the Romans.

Great game, great idea mate ~:cheers:

Edit: as this is a guide I should probably add some better tips:p

Here they are.

* Spear walls are your friends, if on the defensive then find a place where you can protect your flanks and plant a wall and let your enemy come to you, place some axemen behind the line to send in as reinforcements to endangered parts of the line. Hold back your cavalry to chase routers or destroy missile troops that hang around after you've smashed their heavy infantry.

* If on the offensive then march your spear wall right up to the enemy and then stop, same effect instead this time the mountain is coming to Mohammed. Just watch their cavalry around the flanks, use your own cavalry to intercept these or pin them until something better can arrive, standard stuff.

* The AI will hardly ever attack forts, just four well placed forts in Northern Italy will help guard your back whilst your armies conquer their way South, at the worst case the enemy will attack, you won't be able to bribe them and you will lose the fort and the single unit inside. However you will have bought time to rush one of your armies north to reinforce your two northern cities.

* The AI will hardly ever (if ever) attack ships in port, Sardinia is just one quick hop away from Rome, Sicily from Capua and Carthage from Lilybaeum, you don't have to engage the Roman navies just avoid them when you transport an army.

* A tactic I considered when going up against the Julii/SPQR army, its a gross exploit so I didn't use it, by result the battle was much closer but I felt more manly ~D but if you're stuck then maybe its for you.

Plant your spear wall right in the corner of the deployment screen on defensive battles with a flank on each edge, as soon as the battle starts move them backwards so that there is no way around their flanks at all, stick all your other units behind them. Use screeching women/warcries whatever to buck up your line, maybe stick some skimirshers behind it too.

Unless you fight like 'an old woman or an idiot' you will not lose that battle.

Stefan the Berserker

11-14-2004, 12:39

Hurin_Rules

11-14-2004, 22:13

Just finished my first campaign as Germania on m/vh. Really fun. A few points I noticed:

First I tried smashing the Britons right off the bat. This did not work. The problem was that by attacking Samarobriva I overextended myself and invited attacks by both Britons and Gauls. I took Samarobriva, but had to fight off three major armies in about 6 or 7 turns. I defeated them all, but my army was battered and the Gauls immediately took the city back. I spent a lot of money and was back to square one.

I started again and went with the "let Trier be Verdun" strategy-- build up Trier as a defensive town to suck in the inevitable attacks by Gaul and Britannia, while concentrating on expanding into north and east into the Baltic in particular. Once I had some good incom from places like Bordesholm and Vicus Gothi, I could hold off both Gaul and Britannia. After building up a while I got Batavodurum to build a ship, landed and took Londinium. After that, the Brits slowly weakened and I turned my attention to Gaul. They were fighting the Julii so it went easier than expected. I took all of France and made some forts to guard the Pyrrennes and the Alps. Then I invaded northern Italy (taking out Dacia, which was one of the conditions for short campaign victory), pushed into and took about 2/3 of Italy, including Rome. Things slowed a bit after that as Marius' reforms meant his troops outclassed mine (and I was getting to lazy to fight each battle--autoresolve sucks!). Then I sent my fastest troops and mercenaries east to take Scythia. That took a long time, as he had stretched all the way to campus Alanni, and it took 15 turns just to get there!

In terms of tactics, chosen archer warbands are great against the Romans pre-Marius. I just set up my phalanxes and dared him to attack; if he didn't, my archers decimated his troops; if he attacked, my spears pinned him while my cavalry flanked. I hope they work on the AI for the patch, as it is pretty stupid.

Never found naked fanatics to be of much use-- too fragile. Gothic cavalry are good; I also bought some Sarmatian mercenaries but I was disappointed in their performance.

Mightypeon

11-16-2004, 22:33

I found out that it is possible to hold the western border, expand into Behmiea, civus Gothi and Bordesholm and crush rome in the same time.
However you would have to do some "phase spear" or deploy at the end of the field abuse for it.
For those who dont know: phase spear takes advatnadge of the affect that Phalanx troops can attack through Walls. Place you Phalanx directly beihind a gate (put guard on). You should see their spears sticking out on the other side.
The approaching enemy rams will not be able to do damage because your spears are long enough to kill the first 2 soldiers who man the ram.
The other abuse invloves setting up in the edges.
4 Phalanxes can esily strecht an edge, make sure that there is no room to flank you nad have a field day.

Jeanne d'arc

11-19-2004, 05:36

McDoogle

11-23-2004, 12:41

G'day,

I am new to this. However i would like to offer my oppion on the Germans..

I have been playing Rome total war for awhile and Germania is the best Culture. Why?

because of thier spear-warbands (i put unit scale to huge, which means spear-warbands are 241men). i personally only used these at the beginning. i am a peaceful player however when i am prompted into war i am ruthless. i made an alliance with the Dacians, the sythians, the britons, the Gauls. i knew from exprience that the Gauls and the Britons attack you, sooo i exploited the idea of forts. There is a bridge near Batavodurum, i put a fort within march of the bridge and that helped stop attacks from briton getting to far. than Trier. i built one fort with a small garrision where the gap in the forest joins Belgica. i than set up i think about 5 forts in a line along the border of Central Gaul. i set 400 men in each fort than placed another fort behind the middle on with 800 men to help reinforce any attack. this stops the Gauls. well, forwhile.

i took Bordesholm, Vicus Gothi and Lovosice before the gauls broke thier allaince and attacked me. they didnt get past my forts and were soon running home with very deep wounds to lick. Briton felt over confident and attacked me. i took Samarobriva, i massacared the poplace. i than left the town for the Rebels to take and the Briton to be pre occupied while i delt with Gaul. i than took Alesia and it suffered the same fate.

Soon i the Britons attacked again so as i recruited an army to destroy them, i sent emesarries to Rome. i gained all roman factions on side and i tried to convince Julii to attack Gaul, funnliy enough they would have none of it so i went to rome and offered them 10k gold and thus the Gauls had a very distracting nieghbour to thier soul.

Now i finally took Samarobriva. the british decided to drop men off with their navy i than saw a Gaulish navy near-by. so i searched and in Armorica had a port, thus i split my forces in Samarobriva and took Armorica with little trouble thanx to the Julli. i than created my navy, i destroyed the british navy. thus like some of you have said i thought it was safe and turned all of my armies south wards. the british snuck a small army over so i pulled all forces north and dropped them in britian. i currently hold all of Britian and ireland, however i am having trouble with Rebels. so if anyone knows how to stop Rebels appearing...

i have currently destoryed Gaul...well i control all thier terrioteries. i stopped the Romans from annoying me by building forts in the mountian passes in Transalpine Gaul and Iuvaum.

now while i was worrying about Briton Thrace and Dacia went to war. i didnt care about them so i let them settle it. Dacia was almost destroyed, Thrace descieded to attack me, every turn either Lovosice or Vicus Marcomannii is under siege. i than countered this but building 500 night raiders (tough lil buggers) and i use them to weaken Thrace i have currently weakened them by taking thier cities and massacring the and than leaving a brilliant stratergy, becase you dont always have time to take and settle the settlements to destroying them and giving them back is better because they are unable to attack you.

i am focusing on taking Rome and than Spain, than the Balkans, Russian, Greece because of thier huge trade income.i than plan on moving on to old Persia thand africa than finially Egypt...

if anyone has any comments they would be gratly aprrcienated... or if you wish to contact me McDoogle@toowoomba.com just tell me your from the forums..

thanx hope this helped..

LestaT

12-06-2004, 16:18

Just a question. When I played as Germania, after I sacked Roman cities which by the time they are very advanced and have buldings that produced seige/artilleries , why can't I use them ? I don't expect to produce German Legions but it would be nice to throw in some heavy artilleries once in a while. MAkes the sieges quicker.

Maltz

12-06-2004, 23:48

Hello: I think this is because Germania is a barbarian tribe, so you are not allowed to build such advanced units. You can check which units you can use by a unit guide (you can find the link in SP forum's index), or just go to a custom battle and see which units are available.

Slon

12-13-2004, 21:34

Germania is probably the best barbarian faction in the long run. However, they start out very poor, their settlements are small and their population growth is extremely slow. Your main unit of choice in the beginning will be the spear warband. Send a few units to Alesia as soon as possible to get some income. Once this is done, take some important gallic settlements (such as longdunum) and 1-2 Dacian settlements to cripple both factions. They will almost certainly stop attacking then. After that, make sure you take the British foothold and expand into Britannia, taking all of their provinces (even Tara). The british have fairly weak units in the beginning. From there it will be easy for a while. Your army should consist of lots of spear warbands, a few units of night raiders (the only large axe unit worth getting) and some berserkers. Then, Gothic Cavalry and chosen archers will greatly help, too. The key thing to remember as this faction is to avoid pulling punches with the Romans early on. They will destroy you. Once you take patavium and everything north of the Julii settlements, stop there. Place 3-4 units of spear warbands (and archers once you get them) on each of the 2 bridges to keep the julii from attacking once they declare war. The spear warbands will almost always hold bridges. The only time you might have trouble is when the enemy uses archers. To deal with this, bring some chosen archers. The Brutii will eventually attack from the east (if they already took those settlements) and might really mess up your plans. Hopefully you have enough of an army by now to attack the Julii's relentless attacks. Take their big settlements first and make sure you still have an army north of there to guard patavium! Also, don't launch an attack on rome across the bridges until you have a very good income. In my game, my faction basically became bankrupt while fielding a few units against the Julii. Expanding just isn't worth the risk of losing Patavium. If you aren't ready, just hold the bridges with spearmen while you expand farther into Gaul and Spain to take their settlements (and their money).

The key thing to remember is to take Patavium and those bridges as soon as possible. Once the Julii start their expansion, they will become truly unstoppable. Actually, they are already fairly difficult to stop even with their first 4 settlements under their control. I guess taking those might help with stopping them. In my game, I had a fairly sizeable army and I had to fight against a battle against the julii, brutii and the SPQR. ALL IN ONE BATTLE! I found a nice hilltop and just pelted them with arrows and flanked them. I lost about 90 units and they collectively lost around 1600. The next few turns, I became bankrupt and they beseiged 3 of my settlements in the same turn. I just gave up at this point.

Mightypeon

12-17-2004, 18:05

Well, it is true that the roman legions can get pretty nasty, however people are forgetting two things:
A) You tend to get your chosen Axes before they get their legions
B) If you have chosen Axes, you dont have to worry about legions that much.
C) However, if they get legionarys, they happen to produce hem faster than you can pump out your elites.

As the Germans you have 2 windows of opportunity to sack rome.
1: Right at the start: Take your spears, go south and show the romans the real meaning of Phalanx warfare, clever positioning can easily beat the senate army
2: If youre good with cavalry: As soon as you rpduce walour 2 weapon one Barb Light Cav from Damme and Montigiacum (+Aleisa if you took it)
This Cav is lightears ahead of anyhing mounted the romans can build, but it tends to be used against the pesky Britons, Gauls whatsorver.
3: If you have just enslaved Gaul (you have to, they will attack you and they wont make peace) grab some chosen archers get you vet spears and smack the romans.

Herakleitos

12-18-2004, 22:30

I took them on right after Gaul. The Gauls developed Mediolanum really well and have a +2 missile weapons temple there so I am just churning out chosen archers there. As far as I'm concerned those legionairs don't function all that well with lots of arrows sticking out of them... ~D

Only thing I wasn't aware of is the fact that Germans don't sap... I was besieging Arretium and built two sap points but couldn't get anyone to dig some tunnels! Fortunately my spy opened the gate for me (lost over 500 men though, most of them on the bbq).

Rurik the Chieftain

12-19-2004, 02:04

I love the Germans, in fact they're my favorite faction (would've never guessed, huh?)But...a serious issue with the Germans is their lack of siege weapons. They don't even get a single onager. Nuthin! But fear not, for most of the time this allows you to make more men than would be usually made due to the fact that you don't have to worry about siege equipment. Go out there and use those siege ladders!

Maltz

12-20-2004, 06:28

I just had some experience of Germania (Vh/Vh/Huge/patch1.1). I followed the advice of taking Rome very early on. Now it is 262BC and I have 21 settlements - Germania is invincible. I blieve with some practice, everybody can easily take out an little-missle enemy that is 3 times as large on an open field - or definitely more than that in a city as long as time is enough, and yes, on VH. The key is simple:

- Spear Warband is GOD!

Seriously I think spear warband should belong to at least the 2000 level town barrack, or even 6000. They are just way too powerful. It is the only melee unit that I could win, 1 vs. 1, in a 10 to 1 kill ratio in VH. In fact, I just routed 3 units of rebels (naked fanatics + 2 bar. warband) with 1 unit of spearwarband. All I did was camping them at the corner.

These phalanx are supposely to be the crap, but they turn out to be the best. They never switch to that f* little knife whenever an enemy comes close, and they come in great numbers. I defeated the Senate army with 7 units of spear warband holding everything - Roman generals, trarii, everything.

Against regular infantry on the field, you only need 3 rank deep of spears for them to become invincible, since only the first three rows will ever touch the enemy. The trick, as many others have pointed out, is to form a LONG, THING WALL OF SPEARS, and let them "walk to a distant point beyond the enemy in phalanx mode". Always works, always invincible. This way, the formation is not disrupted as they would when you order them to simply attack (annoying). To keep the wall continuous, you need to stop the advance of all other units when any one is engaged. This way, you have no weakness exposed. The AI is pretty smart somtimes, that it will try to flank your phalanx. So you really don't want to disrupt your wall or things will turn out to be very ugly.

Formation also tends to screw up when the engaged enemy routs. You might think "guard mode" will help - NO! When you leave the guade mode on you will see your spearmen do all the funny things, sometimes rotate 180 degres to show their back to the second wave of charge. They way I do it is to hit "stop" when the enemy routs, and point to their new movement destination. Just keep them occupied.

The greatest weakness of phalanx is missle - but you don't have to worry, you have chosen archer warbands - long ranged! If you take Rome early on, you can mass produce them off the bat. Barbarian cav. is good enough for all kinds of flanking and chasing purpose.

Germania does not have any weakness - just full of strength. With that only working RTW phalanx you only need to worry about "other phalanx", but you have long range weapons and cavalry - no worry at all. ~D

tnt_73

12-20-2004, 09:05

Yeah, the german phalanx is good. But i used them only 4 the beginning. Now i'm a german cavalery man. I use horses in masses, and some night raiders and berserkers to climb up the walls :D. And of course elite bow men :D 4 support.

afrit

12-21-2004, 05:38

I found Germania pretty easy on Medium/Medium

My experience has been a long blitz. Here's what I found useful:

TACTICS

- Spear warbands rule. In fact, they are overpowered. As other posters said, stretch them out a bit, then advance them to march beyond the enemy line. Their one downside is their lack of speed and maneuvrability. Try turning off phalanx to run, and then turning it back on just before engaging enemy. Even then they are still cumbersome. This lack of maneuvrability is compensated by Barbarian cavalry, one of the speediest units in the game. Barbarian cav is key to totally annihilating your enemies by chasing all routers. My armies consisted mainly of center line of 2-3 spears and the rest is flanking cavalry.

- I did not see the need to produce any missile units (in fact I hate them because of the friendly fire which causes more causalties than the enemy). A combo of spears and barabarian cav could annihilate anything. Most of your early enemies (Gauls/Britons/Early romans) do not deploy much long range missiles, so you can handle them with spears and horses. Avoiding the missile line of development saves money on the range buildings.

STRATEGY

- Early eastward expansion into Lovosice and Iuvavum will deprive Dacia of "lebensraum" while giving you extra money/land and potentially a way into Italy (via Iuvavum). I thought it was worth sparing some troops from the Briton/Gallic front.

- German towns are poor and low population. Trade income is meager. Since your main income is taxes, which depend on population, you must watch your population closely. I therefore used barbarian mercs liberally to avoid draining my population. Build all farms levels in Germany.

-Trier works as a great focus for conducting the war against Britain and Gaul. A single army there can threaten Samarobriva or Alesia while defending your hinterlands. I managed to pick off Gallic and Briton stacks one by one using one large army based around Trier . The spy you get early is key to keeping an eye on them.

-It is possible to blitz across Gaul quickly once you take Alesia. I took Alesia in 262 BC. 6 years later (256 BC) all Gaul, including Massilia was German. You incur no cultural penalty in Gallic lands, and their low population means you can garrison with one or two units and move on to the next town.

-Moving against Rome early is better than late. I captured Rome in 252 BC (and almost got it in 253 , having captured the town square 30 seconds before the darn timer expired). I did this with mostly barbarian cavalry and spears. The Julii and Brutii were still fielding Hastati and Velites mostly. Pretty easy targets.

I am now poised to strike at the heart of the Brutii and Scipii lands. I may run into trouble, but it is starting to have that inevitable win feeling.

tnt_73

12-21-2004, 08:42

Yeah, a little update. 2 huge armies are sitting in 2 forts in front of rome (at the bridges in front of the italian homeland). But i have time :D. First i conquer the world and than i destroy rome. The romans can't left their homeland *lol*. So i enjoy the harmless attacks with my german super men.

Tyrac

12-21-2004, 15:02

These spear phalanx are rediculously over powered.

Agravain of Orkney

01-05-2005, 19:18

* A tactic I considered when going up against the Julii/SPQR army, its a gross exploit so I didn't use it, by result the battle was much closer but I felt more manly ~D but if you're stuck then maybe its for you.

Plant your spear wall right in the corner of the deployment screen on defensive battles with a flank on each edge, as soon as the battle starts move them backwards so that there is no way around their flanks at all, stick all your other units behind them. Use screeching women/warcries whatever to buck up your line, maybe stick some skimirshers behind it too.

Unless you fight like 'an old woman or an idiot' you will not lose that battle.

Yep. In multi-player battles we have a name for this tactic -- "corner camping". Many tournaments have a rule which bans it. It is ok to use a feature of the map like a village, rock outcrop, or water to anchor one or even both ends of your line, but using the edge of the map is considered cheesy.

Rurik the Chieftain

01-12-2005, 16:52

Big object of emphasis for Germany: TAKE ROME EARLY. I decided to conquer all of Gaul instead of heading down to Italy, and by the time I got there, things didn't seem so bad. The Julii had idiotically allied with the Gauls and had about 3 provinces, so were no problem. The real problem was the Brutii. In my campaign, the Brutii had all of Greece up to Macedonia, and all of Southern Italy. The Scipii were all in Africa so not a problem. Apparently, 3 of the roman factions sat around and did nothing, while the Brutii became unstoppable. Right now I'm at around 173 B.C. and in a continuing deadlock with the Brutii. They are at the point where they can just send a continual river of full stack armies to my 3-4 cities in north Italy. I'm trying to go through their back door by sending armies through the balkans to greece. But right now they show no signs of stopping. Hopefully I'll make a breakthrough soon and deal with the other, weak romans. Believe me, fighting 20 legions every turn isn't fun. :dizzy2:

dismal

01-17-2005, 20:13

I finished my German campaign yesterday and am here to pass on the learnings.

The campaign was set on VH/H and resulted in victory around 200 BC.

The basic order of events was:

1) Grab nearby rebel provinces. I was able to quickly get up to 10-11 contiguous provinces bouned by Domus Dulci Doums and Vicus Venedae to the East, and the Gauls and Britons to the West.

2) Fend off the Gauls and Britons. Formed a big army to push the Britons off to into the sea. Fought scrambling rear-guard action versus the Gauls in my homelands until big army was done with Britons. Sent big army to take Alesia and the Gauls were on the defensive the rest of the way.

3) Taking Britain and France. As soon as a boat was available I got an army over to Britain and took London. A huge plus to the economy. The rest of Britain fell easily. As for Gaul, I pushed west first, taking the Atlantic coast of France. Avoided contact with the Julii, who were rampaging their armies all across the Mediterranean coast of France and Spain. While taking northern france, I built up some big "roman ready armies" of upgraded CAWBs and Spears in Alesia and Trier. Eventually, Julii attacked and I drove these armies to the southern coast of France, splitting the Julii in two.

4) Spain and Northern Italy. Most of the Julii's big armies started coming back from Spain. These were mosty pre-marian troops that were quite easy to defeat even in full stacks. Julii areas of Spain were defenseless and taken, around to Corduba. I would have left the Spanish alone - they only had two provinces in North Spain, but they attacked me so I dispatched them. While all this was going on, I sent a couple new armies through the Alps and took Mediolanun from the Julliu and Patavium from the Gauls. At this point, the Gauls collapsed, their one province in Spain going rebel. I took it, uniting all of Northwest Europe under my banner.

5) On to Rome. Actually taking Northern Italy and Rome was a piece of cake. I had 4 or 5 strong armies flowing back from France and Spain. Southern Italy proved to be the toughest point in the campaign. The Brutii, having taken all of Greece and most of Macedonia including Byzantium had full stacks of post-Marian troops everywhere around Tarrentum. Capua also was a struggle because the Scippii got some help from the Julii and shipped in a couple stacks. But I had a decent bank account from all the exterminating I had been doing, and good troop centers in Northern Italy so I eventually ground them down. The Italian penninsula added to my collection, but still need 10 more provinces or so to win.

6) Next stop Greece. Big problem now is I've built up a huge army paid for with all those 20,000+ denari exterminations that i can't afford straight up. Despite owning huge chunks of land, I'm losing 6000 per turn. I should have mentioned that the Brutii were actually up in my homelands attacking places like Iuvaum and Lovosice while I was busy in Italy so I've got troops up there too. Anyway, a big expensive army is the sort of problem that comes with its own solution. Soon I have 5 or 6 full stacks with good generals in the Greek country side. Again, some tough times with the Brutii, a few lost battles when they manage to get 3000+ guys in the same place at the same time, but eventually I get my 50 provinces.

Basic tips:

- Throw away everything you know about buildings from playing as Romans. Build Farms and fertility temples. Population growth is a big issue.
- Avoid building excess troops. Money is a big issue too. Your garrisons should be kept frighteningly thin.
- Avoid investing in all but a few military buildings you probably won't have enugh money to use them early, and you won't need them late.
- Early on, spear warbands plus a general can handle just about anything the Gauls and Britons throw at you.
- Take out Alesia ASAP. You get CAWBs and prevent the Gauls from getting those Forresters. Keep the Temple of Abdenola for the upgrades.

Fighting the Romans:

My basic Army was spears and archers. As the romans got tougher, it was more important to have Cav as well. A good mix for a tough Roman army would be 8-10 spears, 5-6 archers, and 3-4 cav.

Others may had some success using axemen or cav heavy armies, but I can assure you this one is capable of quite successfully taking on Rome's best. The beauty of it is, the tech-levels required for are so low it can be raised/retrained just about everywhere you go.

The eternal question is archers in front of or behind spears. This is compicated by two issues: 1) whatever CAWB's are "chosen" for apparently doesn't include being smart enough not to shoot spearmen in the back; and 2) nor does it include being able to skirmish their way back through a tight phalanx. Left unattended, either way you get an ugly mess.

Plan A is to leave the archers out front with Phalanx off and skirmish off. As enemies approach, you direct the archers back throughthe line, and when they reach safety, set the phalanx. Good in theory, but lots of micro-management Virtually impossible to pull off when being charged by horses.

Plan B is to put the archers in back of the spears, and let them fire at will until the enemy get close. At that point, turn off fire-at-will and individually direct the archers to safe or strategic ("strategic" meaning "I'm willing to shoot a lot of spearmen in the back to get this unit") targets. Of course, you need to watch out for archers wandering around after their targets this way.

After much experience, I generally lean to Plan B. Trying to get cute with the phalanx is risky, and the archers probably get off just as many or more rounds standing back (despite being a further distance) than they lose because of the need to skirmish back. As it is, they still keep the skirmishers and softer troops from even getting close. The harder troops (cohorts) are reduced somewhat by arrows, then left to the spear wall. After a little of that, unleash the cav from the flank and the rout is on.

I might use Plan A with a good hill and an enemy without much horse, and just try to shoot em all before they reach the line.

roman god's

02-18-2005, 01:17

I think the germans have a hard time. They have a lot of land but they can be bottlenecked in when enemys put forts between the forests.Plus the german towns basically have no buldings :furious3: in them, even your capital. It's very difficult.

Oh, yeah what i did was attack :charge: the britons and the gauls right away.(we all know it was to happen).we went to war and I took most of their lands (destroying briton and nearly wiping out the gauls) the gauls then accepted a diplomatic resolution. which favored me. I then regroped :book: for 10 turns, rebuilding towns, and rebuilding armys. That's what i did.

but i don't know what to do now. move south to finish off the gauls and take out the spanish. or move south and try and take out the julli and theirs allys.

Tell me what you would do. Write me your answer

Slug For A Butt

02-25-2005, 15:39

Even though I'm only playing medium/medium I've gotto say, I love the Germans. Even against the legions of Rome, a few spear units with archers behind and some heavy cav on the flanks works like a dream. Mind you, I've started experimenting with chosen axemen instead of spears and the results are highly impressive if you fancy being more agressive.
One thing I am struggling with though, is the culture penalties. Can anyone enlighten me as to which buidings impose a culture penalty when you sack a city (apart from the shrines obviously). This is driving me nuts, and it may be in the manual but the manual is that useless I stopped referring to it.
Any help would be appreciated.

One more thing, has anyone else noticed that if your town is beseiged, you only need to have a few units of archers inside to cut the enemy into pieces?
Just attack the beseiging army from inside the town as soon as they beseige you. Leave your archers behind the stckade or on the walls, use one unit to run outside the walls to entice them closer, and... blammo. They havent had time to build seige units but they will come too close for their own good and your archers can practise their archery with impunity. The real beauty is that you let the timer run down, then do the same thing again on the same turn. Not in the spirit of the game, but just wondered if others had noticed this.

RJV

02-25-2005, 16:22

One thing I am struggling with though, is the culture penalties. Can anyone enlighten me as to which buidings impose a culture penalty when you sack a city (apart from the shrines obviously).

Hi,

All buildings of other culture types (ie the non-Barbarian ones) impose the culture penalty. To reduce it, either upgrade them to the next level if possible, or destroy and replace (beware of destroying buildings that carry a happiness penalty, for example, as it may cause a problem while you are waiting for the replacement).

Cheers,

Rob.

Franconicus

03-24-2005, 20:37

Here’s my first post. The guide is an excellent work. Thank you, Mylady!!
It really helped my armies in many battles.

Germania is my third campaign, after Julii and Carthago. I played hard/hard with the unpatched version.

Germania has really strong spearbands, but it is poor and so you will not have much fun if you are passive. I tried first to be defensive in the west and start collecting the rebel provinces in the east. It didn`t work. I could easily win Saxones, Gothi and Locus Gepidal but that doesn’t help. I found myself in massive defensive battles against Gauls and Britons very soon. It took too long to win and conquer Gaul. When I finally made it the Julii were very strong and killed me. So I tried again.

De Bello Gallico

I gathered my armies near Trier. While waiting for the troops coming from the east I produced new units (spearbands, light cav, women) nearby, fought rebels and took Saxones. Then I marched directly to Alesia, the capitol of the Gauls and attacked it at once. I didn`t have many troops and they were inexperienced. But I made it after a tough fight. Holding Alesia breaks the backbone of the Gaulish and it is a good production center. If you get it so early, however, there is not much infrastructure here.

I refilled my army and rushed south the valley of the river the natives call Rhone. The garrison of Alesia was build by reinforcements I received from home. I took Lugundum. I didn’t go directly to Massilia, because I expected to meet the Julii there. So I took Narbo Martius. I had to reject an Gaulish attack near Alesia. The resistance was poor. I installed a steady flow of reinforcements from Damme, Trier and Alesia south. I also send an army towards Samarobria. They should watch and catch the Britons if they try to invade. Here I had my first major battle.

My armies used to have spearmen and light cavalry. First to hold the front line second ones to flank and attack. In this battle I had three spearbands, two light and two heavy (chief’s) cavs. I had also some naked fanatics, two skirmishers and one unit of screaming women. I attacked an army of the Britons that was twice as strong in number.

The battlefield: hills on the right and forests on the left. I told my fanatics to hide in the wood as well as the skirmishers and the women. I posted my spears in the middle of the field and my cav at the right.

The Britons had a longer frontline than I. They had chariots at both flanks.

I waited for them to attack. However, that was exactly what they didn’t. I advanced my spears a bit. Nothing happened. I grouped my cav in two pairs (each heavy and light) and let the first pair advance and the second follow. When I almost reached the enemy the chariots on this side attacked. Now there was a big gap between my cav and my spears and another gap between them and the forest. Fortunately my cav killed all the chariots on the right flank easily. The general of the Britons finally decided to attack. His infantry moved to my spears and the chariots from the left came to attack my cavs on the right. My cavs hit them hard and as soon as it was clear that the chariots would loose I sent one light cav in the back of the enemy’s infantry. My spears engaged them frontal and my forest troops attacked screaming on the left flank. Not many enemies left the battleground alive.

Then I attacked Massilia. I besieged it and took it. Then I built a fortress with a garrison at the mountain pass to Italy. They should protect me from the Julii. With new reinforcements I sent troops to the border of Spain and then north along the Atlantic coast. I walked over any Gaulish troops on the way.

When I besieged Condate the Britons came with another full army. Again they had more troops with a lot of chariots. The field was plain. I had 4 spearbands, 2 skirmishers and cav. We stood face to face but their frontline was much longer, especially at my left. So I sent my cav there. It was defeated. I send my chief and some skirmishers. My chief was killed. I sent a spear unit to support the left flank. Right then the Britons started to attack my center with chariots and warbands. The chariots broke through (!) and my spears flew (!!). This battle was a disaster. :furious3:

I was seeking for bloody revenge. The rest of my beaten army was strengthened by troops from the homeland and the victorious army coming from Condate. Together they had lots of spears, few cav. skirms, women and even some peasants. I besieged Samarobriva. They tried to burst with their infantry. I absorbed them with my spears, softened with skirms and flank them with cav. Their attack collapsed and only few men could run back to the city. I took the gate and send the women and peasant to chase the refugees. Right then the chariots attacked my troops outside the town. They flanked them before they could build their formation. Inside the town the women and peasants took the centre without losses, outside the rest of my army was slaughtered. They run away, followed by the chariots. So my troops in the town were left alone. I had lost this battle but won the town.

katank

03-25-2005, 03:15

Hi,

All buildings of other culture types (ie the non-Barbarian ones) impose the culture penalty.

That is not true. Not every building imposes a penalty. Razing and rebuilding the temple will usually reduce the penalty from 50% to 20%. Upgrading the governor's building as well will eliminate it outright.

It's truly not worth it to rebuild anything other than the temple and the governor's house should be upgraded ASAP anyhow.

Despite culture penalties, temples esp. high level ones can yield difficult to get bonuses and interesting ancillaries.

Similarly, getting a colliseum as other factions allow you to keep the population happy easier etc.

katank

03-25-2005, 03:26

@Franconius, you don't need to build up to attack Alesia. Sending the army in Trier is already sufficient. You can siege Alesia on the 2nd or 3rd turn (as fast as you can get there). Usually, most of the Gauls will be in a captain led stack outside and the faction leader with small force inside. During the AI turn, the captain led stack will attack you and you can easily shatter them, picking them apart before the faction leader's army arrives as reinforcements.

Note: it's very important to kill the faction leader and try to run down all the routers from the town as then the town will fall without needing to assault.

You should rely heavily on your spear warbands. stretch them out 2 ranks deep and have 2 right inside each other with skirmisher warband right behind with skirmish turned off and screechers behind as well. Keep your general in the center of the line. When the enemy general charges your line, they might break through which is troublesome. To prevent this, time a simultaneous countercharge by your general. This will throw enough mass to prevent the enemy cav from breaking through. The enem general will then get bogged down in the spear wall and subject to javs.

The screechers will cause warbands to rout practically the instant they touch your spear wall. Have the barbarian cav ready to give chase.

While one army is taking Alesia and gaul, send all the other troops down to Italy, sacking the rebel and Gaullic towns along the way. In this way, I took Rome in 263. Spear warbands and screechers are the best town level combo ever. They are also ridiculously easy to retrain.

Enjoy. Don't forget Temples of Woden which can turn your spearwarbands into even better meatgrinders.

In addition, Germans as well has Scythias have supersized wardog units of 60 instead of 48 base size. Fell free to abuse those. They can eat up unarmored units like warbands easily.

Franconicus

03-25-2005, 21:45

Thanks Katank! Good advice! I agree. Most important thing is to attack Alesia at once and then keep on pushing!! ~:)

Here`s the rest of the story!

Franconicus ante porta

I owned whole France now. I had an alliance with Dacia and agreements with Scythia. The Britons had to leave the mainland. I could not follow because I had no fleet and no harbors. Fortunately the Britons offered peace and I agreed. The Romans didn’t attack so far and all I had to worry were marauding groups of Gauls and rebels. I had now enough income to survive, but without sea trade I wasn’t wealthy at all. My original towns began to grow. Damme and Alesia were my manufactories for troops. The rest of the Gaulish towns were still poor after enslaving.

My diplomats told me that the Gauls still held the two towns on the other side of the Alps. I wondered what the Julii were doing all the time and decided to attack the Gauls in Italy. I expected to get in conflict with Romans there. I wanted to fight them asap. Mediolanium was the first town I attacked. I had to beat a relief army of the Gauls but then I took the town. Now the Julii attacked me, but not from Italy but coming from Spain. They had their main army in Osca.

Narbo Martius was attacked by two roman armies, from North and South. I sent reinforcements from Alesia and Samarobriva. The Romans attacked before the reinforcements arrived.
:duel:
They had one full army coming from South and a ¾ army from North. They had Hasati, Velites and one Generals cav each. They had no artillery. My troops were 4 spears, 2 light cavs, 1 women, 1 skirm, 1 axe + Chief. I divided my troops and placed 1 spear, one women and one light cav at the northern gate. The Romans here didn’t attack. They moved south to join their other army. My light cav. made a sally and attacked and killed the velites there. Then they got caught by the Roman general. Only few could retreat to the town. Meanwhile the Roman attacked the south gate. They had three battering rams and broke the walls three times. My three spears sealed the holes. Many Romans died trying to break the spear wall. They attacked even with their general’s cav. When the spears were tired my horses and axes attacked from the side and gave them a break. When the situation became critical my spears from the north arrived and could break the Romans attack. My cav killed many retreating Romans. When the northern army arrived, the battle was almost over. The rest of the Romans marched back to Spain. ~:cool:

I refilled the troops in Narbo. When the troops from Alesia and Samarobriva arrived I started a raid to Osca. I tried a new tactical element. I am not a fan of spies. I took light cavalry for reconnaissance. They are fast and they have some advantages. First they block the trade routes in the enemy’s backland. When they attack the cav. it retreats. This gives my army more time to keep the initiative. Occupying harbors with light cav. before attacking the town is very successful. Usually the enemy will send troops. If they are few your main army can destroy them, if they are many, you can separate them from the town.

:charge: This time I besieged the Romans in Osca. They attacked me. I had 5 spears, 1 skirm, 1 bows, 1 light cav and my chief’s cav. The spears formed one solid line with skirms and bows behind. My chief was on the left my light horses on the right. The Romans came through the gate, velatis first, then triari. It was the first time I met triari. Several hasati were following. My spear line advanced and my chief attacked the velatis. Most of them were killed but then my heavy cav was engaged by the triary and had losses. My light cav attacked the triary from the rear and the chief retreated. My light cav was closed in and abolished. Suddenly several units of Roman general’s cav came from the right. My spears at the right side marched to the city walls and smashed two Roman units. One had already passed. They changed to the left flank and attacked my spears from the side. I send my remaining cav to help there and finally the Romans went back into the town. I didn’t try to follow and the town capitulated in the next round. I sent the conquering troops further to the remaining Gaul settlement. I conquered my first harbor here.

After Mediolanium I took Patavium, the last Gaulish town and I won the first harbor in the Mediterranean. In this battle I could use special reinforcements – a cav army. I had sent a chief from Damme with one Gothic cav down the Sythian route. He hired all mounted mercenaries he could get and attacked all rebels he could find. When he arrived in Italy he had his own bodyguards, 1 Gothic unit, 1 heavy lancers and one mounted archers. They were quite experienced, but they had not full size, because it was impossible to refill them. :charge:

Roman counterstrike

Now I was in a good position to invade Rome. But first I had to secure my new colonies in Italy and stand a Roman counterstrike. There were small groups of Julii seen in my counties and sometimes Brutii. I decided to do some fore checking to interfere their offensives while I was preparing my invasion. My towns grew, I got some harbors at the coast of Germania, Gaul and the Mediterranian that boosted my economy. And I had some good manufactories in Damme, Alesia, Mediolanium and Patavium that produced spear bands, light cavalry and the new excellent archers and Gothic cavalry. I was also waiting for my Spanish army to come to Italy. ~:cheers:

The Brutii were much more active than the Julii. They sent a strong army and two independent family members to Dacia to invade my hometown directly. I tried to counter this. I took Noricum, which was still a rebel town. I built forts at all fords and bridges across the river Danube. I send a small army to help the Dacian. They were besieged by superior Brutii. I was not strong enough to attack the Brutii but I could keep them busy. I chased their smaller armies and retreated when the big army stopped besieging and tried to attack me. You can call it Mao Tse Tung strategy. So I managed to keep them from conquering the Dacian town and moving to Germania.

In Italy I besieged Segesta, just to keep the Julii busy. I also send an army to the Brutii town west of Patavium. I sent my horse army (+one spear gang) and besieged it. I didn’t expect to conquer this town, just tried to keep the Brutii busy. What a surprise when I found myself surrounded by three Roman armies (first the small garrison with gerneral :charge: , second a general with guard :charge: and a third a General with more than 3000 hasatii and velites :charge: ). My army was some 400 and I could withdraw. I decided to show the Romans how Germanians (and their mercs) die. I guess you learned about this battle in school - but here are details you may not know ~;) The battle was in winter. The terrain was a valley with high mountains on each side. There was some forest in the valley. The earth was covered with snow. I decided not to hide in the wood. I placed my troop on top of a mountain. Spears on the left, then mounted archers and lancers, gothic cav, light cav and chief. Then I saw them coming. It was just the third army and the 3,000 Romans filled the valley as far as the eye could see. They started climbing up the mountain. 3 units of velites tried to flank my left side. I attacked them with my chief and made them run away. Then the light cav attack followed. My horse soldiers dived through the hesatii which were already exhausted from climbing. Then my riders returned to the top of the mountain. All the time arrows were raining on the climbing legionnaires. The Roman general saw his right wing running and he tried to help him. Now I attacked with chief cav, light cav., gothic cav and lancers. The Roman general was killed and the complete first battle line run away. No I even sent my spears to keep them running. My cavalries dived several times into the mass of Roman infantry. The Romans had terrible losses and were running as fast as they could. I gathered my tired troops on top of the mountain again. The second Roman army was approaching. It was just one general with his heavy cav.. This time he was the one who was outnumbered and I was the one who was exhausted. I managed to kill him and his guard flew. The garrison didn’t arrive on the battle ground and so I was the winner. I lost about 100 men, over 2.000 Romans were killed. Although there were still other big battles especially against the Brutii this was the decisive one. The Brutii left the town. The Brutii in Dacia were cut off from reinforcements. I could kill them soon. The Brutii on the Balkan gathered and attacked me again with 2.000 soldiers. This time in summer. I had my horse army reinforced with troops (spearbands, light cav, archers, skirmishers) coming from Patavium and I could slaughter them again. Then this army moved south to conquer the Balkan.

In Italy the siege of Segesta was going on. I send a 2nd army to block Segesta from the south, but this army was encircled and killed. The Spanish army arrived and another one coming from France. So I was able to attack all three Julii towns simultaneously. Of course I took the harbors first, so the Julii had a significant lack of money! One town after the other capitulated or tried in vain to break through the siege ring. As soon as an army was free I send troops to Rome and built a fort there to stop reinforcement. First Scipii appeared as well as senate’s troops. Here I saw for the first times more advanced troops than hasati and velites. Although they were many they didn’t attack.

Before I could concentrate on Rome I had to deal with Albion once again. They send a small army to France and three round later they attacked. They defeated one small army but then were hit by a big one I had gathered from Alesia and Damme. Very good soldiers, even night raiders. While still fighting on the continent I landed at the British islands. I send another army to Londonium. The garrison tried to break out. Again a very hard battle against chariots. My army consisted of 2 and 2/3 spearbands, 1 screamimg women, 1 skirmishers and my chief. The Britons came with all kind of infantry, were stopped by my spears and killed by skirmishers and heavy cavalry. The rest flew back into the city followed by my chief and his guard. At the centre place they met the chariots, were encircled and slaughtered. My chief died. Battle luck changed. The chariots hit my infantry which had just passed a whole in the walls and was unorganized. They blow away two spearbands, the skirmishers and the women. My last 2/3 spearband hadn’t passed the wall yet. So they took their position and blocked the whole. The other troops had the chance to leave the town. The chariots attacked my spearband several times and had heavy losses. My spearband didn’t move. The rest of my skirmishers and the women saw this and decided to join the battle again. Together with the spearband they pushed back the chariots and conquered the town. The rest of Briton was easily done.

In Italy the last Julii town was occupied and the Julii blasted. Their towns were now manufacturing troops for me. I besieged Rome. The senate lost his nerves and attacked me at once. I killed many of them and Rome fell immediately. It was best troop production city. It was even producing berserkers. I pushed three armies south to attack the home towns of the Scipii and the Brutii. I besieged every town. When the garrison tried to brake I entered the town. Berserkers are excellent street fighters. So I rushed until I hit the tip of the boot. I moved my capital to Rome and called myself now Imperator Chief. My wealth was beyond compare!

Final

My Balkan army attacked the Greece and another army coming from Dacia attacked the Macedonian from the north. None of them could stop my armies. I had some troubles with Sparta. 1000 men burned at the gate when I conquered the town. But then they were eliminated.

I started building boats in France, Italy and Greece. I landed in Sicily and took Messina. The Scipii had lots of troop on the island and besieged me. I landed another army in the western part of the town and a third one to relief Massilia. The Scipii army was attacked from both sides and destroyed. I took Syracuse and besieged the last Scipii town on the island. I didn’t attack because it was filled with troops. I blocked the harbor, of course.

Meanwhile I landed on Crete and Rhodes and took these islands as well. This even increased my income. The Scipii on Sicily capitulated without even fighting. I landed with three half full armies in Africa. One of them was faced with a big Scipii army. The chief hired as many mercs he could get including some elephants. When the Romans attacked the elephants hit their flank together with other cav units. I could besiege the last three Scippi towns simultaneously. Two of them gave up and suddenly the game was over.

Resume

Blitz as fast as you can. Attack the Gauls first and aim their capitol. The rest is easy. Destroy the Britons on the continent. Then rush to Italy. Don’t bother with the Spanish. The Julii are very lacy. While I conquered whole France they just took Osca and Segesta. They still fought with hasati and velites. Brutii are more dangerous. They have already the Balkan and big well trained armies. The Scipii are easy even though they had the best troops (post Marius). At that time you have archers, Gothics, Berserker as much as you want. If you have Italy nothing will stop you. No faction ever had artillery against me!!

Tactics: Rely on your spear. They are excellent until they are hit from the side or from behind. They are even better with women and skirmishers behind them. You can use them even against the best Roman units. Only chariots were able to break the spear line. Light cav. is sufficient to flank, chief’s guard is excellent. If you have Gothic knights the Romans don’t have anything that comes close. Your archers are excellent. You can soften any Roman legion while hiding behind the spear wall. I read that they are excellent fighters too. In my game they never had to. Unfortunately Germania has no access to artillery. This really slows your blitz.

Craterus

03-25-2005, 23:54

~:cool: congratulations on that campaign, it sounds like a complete success! well done! ~:cheers: ~D

cunobelinus

03-30-2005, 20:49

i found germina a lot of fun they are the strongest babrian faction but i had a problem to begin with money they are a great team and bersekers are an amazing unit .i did some reasearch on these and apparently they use to get so anrgy they found sheilds with bits of them chewed off and they found heads with huge holes in from a blow to the head with an axe or other weapon they were extronary warriors.gettin back to the game to take areas around u it is easy u have the best troops around so u should take places easyly briton i found harder than the gauls because they have armies full of warband(crap units)so germinia are my favourite babrian faction. ~:)

Craterus

03-30-2005, 21:11

Good research on the beserkers ~;) Well done Littlegannon!

cunobelinus

03-31-2005, 22:32

Craterus

03-31-2005, 23:03

the germans killed a quater of a million leginories .the german even put julius ceasear himself into a hard battle at Vosges in 58 BC but were evntually beaten but did alot of damage to ceasears army.axmen were a strong part of there force they found hundreds of skuls shatered completely .

When you say "they found hundreds of skuls shatered completely"
who's they? the skull-finders? or do you mean archaeologists?

Franconicus

04-01-2005, 12:02

Just a short comment:

The warriors of Germanis were very successful against the Romans as long as it was cold. If you look at Cimbern and Teutons they beated the Romans even when they were outnumbered and circled. Note that they were one head larger than the Romans. So the bonus fighting in snow is historically correct.

When they managed to leave the Alps and entered Italy they had to fight in the sun and were beaten by the Romans. Note that they were strong and wild but due to malnutrition they had bad condition. :duel:

German cavalry seems to be more wellknown than the spearbands. Julius Cesar had mercenaries from Germania, when he attacked Gaul. The riders from Germania defeated the outnumbering Gaulish cavalry several times. So they guaranted the success of JC's campaign. After that Cesar always had cavalry from Germania in his army and so did other Roman emperors. :charge:

Brutus

04-07-2005, 13:59

That's right, the Batavians (from the Lower Rhine region in the modern-day Netherlands) were particularly known for their cavalry and the ability of their horsemen to swim across a river in full armour while accompagnied by their horse. ~:eek:

Most Romans seem to not to have been able to do that, so large numbers of Batavians were employed in Roman armies... In the year 69 (the year of the death of Nero and 2 other succeeding emperors), they rose up against the Romans and the Romans weren't even able to punish them properly (although admittedly also due to their political troubles at home).
:charge:

tibilicus

04-07-2005, 14:33

wow you guys are the best history teachers ive ever had........ Thanks guys !.........

pezhetairoi

04-12-2005, 01:24

Well, well. :-) Germania was the very first faction I played after I finished my first Roman campaign. I'm quite frankly in love with it, it's got something to deal with every single faction available. The berserkers are wonderful... *drool*

What's your opinion of Germans fighting in square in defensive battles? I used it often, my grandest victory was when three 20-unit armies attacked me at the same time (one Julii, one Scipii, one Senate) and I simply formed up into a...square? octagon? lopsided polygon? with my 12 phalanxes, stuffed my cavalry into the centre, and simply waited it out while the Roman tossed all they had at me... Admittedly, I lost a lot of men to velite fire, but eventually, after the hastati and principes, routed I just broke up my cavalry corps and destroyed what ranged units they had. A great victory, 3 full-stack Roman armies shattered (when you're playing on huge scale and only 25 men from each army escape, that's shattering) for about 30% casualties on my side. How's that? Go Germania!

Craterus

04-12-2005, 20:57

Well, that's a well fought battle for you. The Germans seem to be a quite balanced faction but they lack cavalry in the early game and that annoys me.

cunobelinus

04-12-2005, 21:14

but babrian cavalry are one of the best light cavalry groups and are very good so they dont have a big selection but i love infrantry more than cavalry so it dont bother me

pezhetairoi

04-13-2005, 01:17

Y'know, littlegannon, that love for infantry of yours is going to hand you some pretty bad defeats one day... I mean, I'm in love with infantry too, but I always have Valens and the battle of Adrianople at the forefront in my mind... You can't rely on barbarian cavalry forever, as good as they are. Though I do agree they rock :-)

Mmm craterus, I was mildly annoyed by the lack of cavalry too, but I made up for that by concentrating all my family members into my armies and making use of every horse they could give me. Risky, I know, I could lose the core of my faction, but it serves my purposes very well. I only needed to bear with it for awhile, because my Germanic strategy is always to abandon Germania and pour into Italia.

It's fascinating what an all-family-member cavalry army can do to Roman armies. Never lost a single family member, but I just took huge slices out of their hastati formation after steamrollering their generals, before withdrawing and bringing on the infantry to finish off in the next battle. I kept getting more family members all the time because I kept sending single spear phalanxes against the two-hastati armies the Brutii nuts kept sending up north :-) When I finished with Italy I had about 12-13 family members. How's that for the heavy cavalry :-)

The one thing that annoys me about Germania (and I mean REALLY annoys me) is the lack of siege weapons. I mean, even the Scythians have onagers. Come on!

Franconicus

04-13-2005, 09:20

I do not think that Germania has bad cav. They have barb. cav from the very beginning. This one is much better than everything the Gauls have. British chariots can become a problem but they are in a small number because they are much more expansive. The Romans: I could beat the Roman cav whenever we met. Most of the time they have only General's cav. So these should be your enemys in the beginning. Later in the game you have Gothic cav, and they outperform any opponent. Try and combine Gothic and barb. Let the Gothic attack first and break the line and the barb follow.They will finish the job and keep clear the back of the Gothics.

You only have a lack of range cav. But your enemys have none and you can easily hire some Scythian HA. They are effective like hell. I had one cav army of Gothics, barbs and one Scythian HA. Unstoppable!!

pezhetairoi

04-14-2005, 05:19

Well where range is concerned Chosen archers are good enough for me. My Germanic battles are always fought under the umbrella protection of my archers' fire, except when victory is already a sure thing upon which I let the cavalry leave the umbrella and skewer the fleeing cowards. It seems to me that the Germanic legion does not need a missile cavalry capability in their destined theatre of operations, i.e. the west, which fits me perfectly since as good as HA are, they are only available in the far east, so it may be a little inconvenient to bring up reinforcements when you are in, for example, spain.

Craterus

04-14-2005, 16:25

Mmm craterus, I was mildly annoyed by the lack of cavalry too, but I made up for that by concentrating all my family members into my armies and making use of every horse they could give me. Risky, I know, I could lose the core of my faction, but it serves my purposes very well. I only needed to bear with it for awhile, because my Germanic strategy is always to abandon Germania and pour into Italia.

I tend to use family members quite a lot with limited-cavalry-factions but there is always the worry that there may one day be a "drought" of family members resulting in the fall-apart of your faction but barbarian families tend to recover from losses incredibly well..

Franconicus

04-14-2005, 16:37

Well, in the old days, it was a question of honor that the generals fought in the first line. Remember what Julius wrote in his Bello Gallico? (Although he lied a lot!!) Or Ilias?

No soldier would follow a general that is not willing to risk his own life!

pezhetairoi

04-15-2005, 01:00

Aye, how historically true. RTW is just chock full of that historical sense I love so much. But anyways. It is extremely fun to send all-cavalry armies, especially when the Germans are so virile that they, pardon the expression, are like sows dropping piglets everywhere.

cunobelinus

04-27-2005, 18:50

i am a good all round commander but i just find i am better with infranrty and enjoy that more pezhetairoi but i did use gothic cavalry and that

pezhetairoi

04-28-2005, 01:17

Yeah, I'm an all rounder like you, really, though I don't particularly have any preference for either cavalry or infantry. If there's a summary of my battle concept it'll have to be you can only win with both. Which is why Scythia started out as a challenge for me because I kept using infantry tactics at the beginning. Gothic cavalry? I never got it--kept building the wrong temples. >.< Or was that berserkers?

Craterus

04-28-2005, 15:40

How many beserkers do you get in a unit on large unit settings?

katank

04-28-2005, 20:03

24 Iirc

Craterus

04-28-2005, 20:15

I thought it was low, so 48 on huge? They're good men though.

katank

04-29-2005, 00:04

True. They are very low. They have 3 hp each though. They have 19 attack and 5 defense. Making them yet another awesome flanker.

They are like unbalanced stat version of Roman gladiators.

pezhetairoi

04-29-2005, 00:58

With 48 men in a unit and 3 HP per man, it's like 144 unbalanced (both stats-wise and mentally) men charging at you. I bet they could even take down hoplite formations, though I haven't tested that hypothesis yet.

katank

04-29-2005, 03:42

It's not quite a matter of multiplication. The 48 guys can only attack 48 times. I'd rather have 144 men all with 1 hp with equal stats.

That said, multiple HP means that they can "heal" automatically between battles and need no retraining (ie. lose 2hp per men each battle evenly distributed doesn't show at all).

They can actually wade through the spears and reach hoplites in melee. However, frontal charging phalanxes still does not prove too wise a strategy.

Franconicus

04-29-2005, 07:22

I used Berserker as street fighters. There you have only a small line and the number is not as important as the skills.

tibilicus

04-29-2005, 15:58

Good tatic. I love beserkers great for geting Cohorts in the rear. Burn a whole right throught them.

katank

04-29-2005, 16:43

Franconicus, your tactics in this regard is much like mine.

I use galdiators, arcanii, and berserkers on the walls and in the streets. They are great for those cramped spaces since their individual melee prowess come through and they are less easily swamped by superior numbers.

Furthermore, those small units pop through the siege tower a lot faster. They also come out of the gatehouse down into the street a lot faster. Nice delivery of high melee power in small package.

pezhetairoi

05-03-2005, 01:36

Good point. Never thought of using Berserkers that way, though. I much preferred packing the streets from kerb to kerb with axemen.

katank

05-03-2005, 02:59

What about spear warbands, they are perfect for street fighting provided you don't move too much and have the phalanx roughly the width of the street. Packing units inside each other for maximum exploit effect.

Franconicus

05-03-2005, 09:08

pezhetairoi

05-04-2005, 01:49

Problem is, you have to get them through the gates first. I had the ill luck of having my spear warbands engage an enemy in their front contesting the breach, while two units pop out from nowhere and slam into their flanks, with a general's bodyguard completing the rout. I sent my cavalry in too late, and lost one barb cav as well to the white flag. Spear warbands are better than hoplites/pikemen in that they have no secondary weapon, so they don't drop spears and spread out to swordfight, but nevertheless they are extremely troublesome to wield as a unit in the streets. Only until the town square do they do nasty things to the garrison.

katank

05-05-2005, 00:25

That's depending on the type of siege. I frankly find the open nature of barbarian towns far more suitable for spear warbands.

I simply see neat rows of enemy dead when assaulting a barbarian settlement where they tried to make a stand and were mercilessly cut down by spears.

For civilized settlements, I typically have a barbarian swarm tactic where I have spear warbands with phalanx turned off mixed in with axemen simply swarming through the gates. The spearwarbands then try to engage phalanx when they start tangling with the enemy.

Also, don't forget that spears clip through walls, thus while fighting at the gates, some spear warbands might be able to "flank" the enemy while out side the town.

Once you get clear of the gates, then form a nice phalanx and let the killing machine rip.

pezhetairoi

05-05-2005, 01:10

eee, i hate the spears poking through walls trick. It's so cheaty :-P I feel guilty taking advantage of an AI bug.

avatar

05-21-2005, 19:39

Be aggressive. Do not sit in your forest and wait. Your easiest money makers are west and northwest. This will knock out two thorns in your side and provide the resources to complete the short campaign.

katank

05-22-2005, 18:51

True. Those are the easiest. however, the biggest are south. Make a beeline towards Rome is almost must have for any imperial campaign.

PreMarian troops cannot stand a wall of spearwarbands backed by screechers with flanking barb cav and extra size war puppies.

pezhetairoi

05-24-2005, 04:19

and if you do it right, there won't be a post-Marian army. Never used dogs myself, though, except when then AI gives it to me, then I'm like, 'but, but I never asked for it!' I do well enough with 10 warbands and four-five units of cavalry of any sort. I'd be a REALLY happy general if someone threw in two units of chosens archers into the bargain. On defensive battles this composition is sure to win you a whole bunch of heroic victories, and even on attack it probably will as well, if you play it on a defensive slant. Otherwise, replace 2 warbands with 2 axemen/night raiders and you've got your warwinning army. Perfect for a Mao army-cheap, spammed and human-waved.

IliaDN

05-24-2005, 14:11

So, I have decided to take Germans for this time.

katank

05-24-2005, 21:59

If you wanna talk cheesy, then 25% extra than normal warhound units are surely your ticket.

I built them out of a +3xp temple and a single unit can hold 4 warbands on their own.

Germania has one of the sweetest setups. Their town level combo is already very nice. A solid wall of giant phalanx units with screechers to demoralize and flank.

Later, throw in puppies for disruption, axemen to guard flanks and barb cav to provide shock.

Even later, you get night raiders to add to the fear element and just are all round nice melee troops, also fast for flanking. Chosen axesmen are armor piercing and good flankers. Berserks are again good flankers. Gothic cav are simply line crashers.

pezhetairoi

05-25-2005, 01:35

So, I have decided to take Germans for this time.

Hahaha, I was just posting on another thread about deciding to play Germans as well. Guess we'll be seeing each other again, no? I'm only 5 provinces away from the end of my Greek campaign...

IliaDN

05-25-2005, 11:49

So I started campaign with sending troops to Alesia , Samarobriva , rebel town near the capital , Campus Gothi.
So there are 4 main streams in my campaign.
1. After Alesia was mine I began slow expansion on Gaul's lands;
2. After conquering brit coastal town I took defensive position there eridicating all brit troops that came there;
3. After capturing rebel town near capital I sent troops on my western front;
4. After capturing Campus Gothi I moved to " Home , sweet home " and acquired it as well.
Then I moved one of my armies to gaulish towns near Italy and was attacked by Julii , so I captured those two towns and moved to Julii capital there I had grand battle with the Senate and Julii and was victorious.

Franconicus

05-25-2005, 12:08

You are really fast. How hard do you play?

IliaDN

05-25-2005, 12:09

VH/M , huge.
Now it is about 258 B.C.

pezhetairoi

05-26-2005, 01:35

Nice... I went into debt almost instantly, I abandoned all my home provinces. My starter units are now concentrated into two armies moving south into Italy. One will go conquer northern Italy, the other will take Iuvavum, Patavium and the south before moving into Sicily. I'm slower than Ilia, but things are about to get a lot faster (and a lot more profitable). It is now 267 BC and I have my starter provinces in addition to Mediolanum and Iuvavum. Patavium and Segesta follow in the next two turns.

katank

05-26-2005, 23:34

Into debt immediately? It's quite possible to avoid that.

Go for Alesia ASAP and I believe you can siege it on turn 2 (build roads to make it marginally faster, you need the very last couple of movement points). They will sally and get trashed. You will have it during the AI's turn. You can exterminate it for cash. Alesia army goes for southern sweep and sacks Lugundum, Massila and then Narbo Martius.

Leave all your towns empty on the first turn and queue temples and peasants.

After that, build traders whenever you can and have taxes on very high.

I expanded into Denmark with my faction leader's army and then went south.

Easternmost army went towards Northern Italy and sacked rebel towns along the way. Everything else went south.

I marched into Rome in 263 BC. Glorious days of Germania.

I personally did not war upon the Brits until they stabbed me in Alesia with a siege. A relief force was sent led by a lucky adoption candidate with 5 stars and only 18! ~:eek: He was a promising general who with help of spearband, puppies, and screechers became a great hero and the conqueror of Brittania.

pezhetairoi

05-27-2005, 06:04

Ah, I accumulated units into two armies and went south into Italy immediately. In debt from Turns 3 to 9, but after capturing Mediolanum it was all good. It is now turn 263 winter and I'm slightly slower than you (you're the master of katanking, after all :P), but I'm at most 2 turns away from marching into Rome. Could've been faster if not for the fact that I didn't have enough money to build roads in the Alpine provinces... I know the Brits were going to attack me anyway, so I decided to surrender my settlements to them if they attacked. I don't war the Brits until I cripple the Gauls. Meanwhile, I'm concentrating all efforts on a speedy conquest of Italy. Cities are falling about one every one to two turns.

Viking

05-27-2005, 21:47

After I read about all your insanely effetive expansions, I decided to try some blitz krieg myself.

The year 261 BC. I own 14 provinces, with Luvavum to join my migthy empire the next turn.

The Gauls are so weakened that I can just march into their lands without resistance, and that have never happened to me before, this is kinda freaky :freak:

Maybe all of my next campiagns will be blitz krieg campiagns. `cause this campaign have made RTW alot more funny.

But you guys never said anything about how many provinces you got, maybe I`m not that bad after all?

katank

05-28-2005, 16:38

Meh. I think my province count was something like 18 by 263. Blitzing was a strat that I found back in the days of MTW.

People used to complain that the MTW Turks were the hardest faction in early. I showed a blitz strat that would more than triple the treasury on the second turn (on expert mode, comparable to VH in RTW).

I did blitzing ever since. I've frankly found every faction to be fairly easy as it's quite possible to double or even triple your empire in the first 5-7 turns. The AI just cannot deal with blitzing.

Also, due to how little it is into the game, you can plan for exactly how many units you will come up against as starting armies are fixed.

The strat is a bit too effectively however. It really takes the challenge out of games.

bubbanator

06-01-2005, 00:06

100th reply to the german thread ~:cheers:

Anyways, I don't like the whole idea of giving up your homelands to other tribes.

What I did was I took Sambrovia as soon as I could. This kept the Brits at bay. I allied with the Romans in exchange for me attacking the gauls. I took their capital first. They allied with each other in a pathetic attepmt to save themselves. I had decided that I would wait to take out Rome until they were strong.

In the east, I went as far as Domus Dulcis Domus before setting up forts to keep the Scythians out. I sent a diplomat to get an alliance to free up my eastern front when I found that they were in an alliance with britian and gaul. I was considering attacking them when I realized how much like WWII this was like. The Gauls(French), Scythians (Russians) and Brits (Brits) were allied together but I was still at peace with Scythia. I was allied with the Italians. Hmm...

I was determined that my empire would end like the it did in WWII. I immediately invaded Britian with 2 armies and took London first turn with the help of my spies. I quickly took the rest of England when I realized they weren't dead. They had taken Tara. I had never, ever seen the AI take Tara before. I took the city and the Brits were dead. I got a ceasefire from Gaul and allied with the Scythians. With the British out of the picture, I have moved my armies back to the mainland. My next move is to take an army down into Dracia, break my alliance, and take their 3 towns in northern Greece. From there, I will wait until the Romans are strong enough to think they can beat me and attack. I will not start the war, but I will finish it. When they attack, my armies in the old Dracian provinces will attack the Brutii in Greece. My main attack force will come from the north where I am now producing Chosen Axemen and Gothic Cavalry with 3 xp. I will drive down, wipe out the Julii and plunder the Roman capitals before taking the Scipii towns on the Mediteranian Islands starting with Sicily. I will let them keep their African province if they ever get them to begin with. The Cartaginians just defeated a stack and a half of Scipii beseiging Lilybaeum. The Julii haven't gotten past Patavium, and they lost at Mediolanium. However, their full stack army is coming to finish that job now. The Brutii are doing about as I expected. They have Apollonia, Salona, and Segstica and are besieging Thermon. They are allied with Macedon who has the rest of Southern Greece.

A few things about the Germans:

Like it was said before, population growth is painfully slow. That make's it very difficult to get some boats to hop the channel into england. I had 2 full stack armies waiting around for a port to be built.

Economical, the germans aren't too great, but they more than make up for it with their superior military. You can go and take all of the towns around you without much struggle. Once you get your cities developed a bit, you get Chosen Axemen which can cut up the Roman Legions fairly easily. Also you get Gothic Cavalry which is most likely the best cavalry that you will encounter in your game unless you go to the far east. Berserkers are also nice shock troops, though they just don't have the numbers that you need to effectively fight the Romans.

Strategy Against the Romans:

I have found that if you have an army of mostly spear warbands, 4 or so groups of Chosen Axemen, around 4 Gothic Cavalry, and around 4 Chosen Archer Warbands, you can beat just about any roman army. In most cases, let them come to you. Have your spear line with Chosen axemen on the flanks and the Cavalry all together on one side. Have your archers behind your line with flaming arrows on. It is quite obvious what to do now. Have your spearmen engage when the enemy gets close with your Axemen cutting them down on the flanks. Have your archers focus their fire on A) any missile troops the enemy has B) if they don't have any, concentrate fire on the center of their line. Your cavalry must run to the rear of the enemy, and take out the enemy archers before they can destroy your Axemen. After the archers are dealt with, have them smash through the very center of Roman line. This lets your axemen kill more and more importantly lets your cavalry mash the enemy against a literal wall of sharp, pointy sticks. It is Alexander the Great's "Hammer and Anvil" Strategy adapted for use by the barbarians. The enemy line will soon rout and your main line will be saved. The whole line of the enemy will soon collapse, letting your Gothic Cavalry chase down the routing soldiers. Works like a charm.

Franconicus

06-01-2005, 06:56

bubbanator,

very good job and excellent report. Glad you were not one of Hitler's generals ~:)

roman god's

06-01-2005, 20:22

bubbanator

06-01-2005, 21:05

Let's not lie the germens suck. They get attacked by everybody. Dacia, britannia, romans (later), and the gauls. They also get no money coming in. So you got to be good with money and have some bad ass generals( with tons of luck). I'll finish this post later.......

They most certainly don't suck. They have an excelent military. Have you actualy played as the Germans? Because Dracia will gladly accept an alliance and will almost never attack you because they are being smashed between Macedon, Thrace, and the Brutii.

And besides that, you armies can crush Dracia, Britannia, and the Gauls easily. The Romans are more difficult and you need to wait 'till you tech tree is in full bloom before you can beat the combined Roman forces.

The economy is slow at the begining but it is fueled by your rapid expansionism. Once your economy gets rolling, it dosen't stop either.

orcorama

06-01-2005, 21:06

well mostly thats true but you have a kick @$$ army that can easily overun gaul and britannia
then you can turn your attention to rome and wipe their faces all over italy
then take out dacia, they arnt that strong, spain, they arnt that strong either, and then maybe carthage or greece
by this time youll have boatloads of cash to take on anyone left, maybe egypt or greek cities/macedon assuming you finished off the brutii

runes

06-01-2005, 21:14

what about MP?

i've found that chosen axemen and gothic cavalry are a punishing combo. as well as spears for that "anvil" effect. however, i haven't found much place for the "lesser" units

i find that most all light cavalry (except in huge 6 or more swarms) gets routed extremely easily. I've never really found the 'fear' bonus of night raiders to be all that helpful, and i've never tried to use screechers in mp.

I also find that because of their low armour, germans get wrecked on anything but forests (cut down by archers or swept by cav)

anyone have any interesting german mp techniques?

Craterus

06-02-2005, 00:13

You want to talk to Wishazu for MP German tactics. He's good with them. But I've only seen him in a forest with the Germans.

pezhetairoi

06-04-2005, 05:39

I crippled the Gauls in Turn 2-3, actually... Sold my map info for them, they were willing to pay thousands for it. And considering they were spamming swordsmen and warbands, and they only start with 5000d, well... They were soon in such immense debt they were in no shape to resist my Germanic legions :-D But they shaped up after I slaughtered a few of their spammed armies, but it was too late... :-D

It's now 241bc and I own 40 provinces because I slowed down to take in the scenery... I have 7 armies, all over 14 units in strength, crawling over Europe, and an 8th under construction consisting purely of cavalry for the steppes. Fun. While someone *points upwards* preferred Hitler's empire, I initially aimed for Barbarossa's, then tried to figure out the logical paths to take from there. :-)

Franconicus

06-06-2005, 08:47

Pez,

great success!

Just started a new game with the Britannian. Why don't you join us? You find us in the Colloseum!

pezhetairoi

06-10-2005, 09:34

Can't join you, Franc, holidays and I've been barred off the internet cos I'm not in school... this is the rare occasion I came back to school... Will join you once the hols are over, yes? Another week or two! ^_^"

pezhetairoi

06-10-2005, 09:35

btw, I'm playing spain now... :-P

Mightypeon

06-18-2005, 19:13

Well, for a change i diceded to keep the overpowered stuff (this means Spearabuse + Barb Cav madness) out of the game.
The game actually got challening:P
However, the fact that I actually got losses druning my battles significantly slowed down the expansion.

Muska Burnt

06-18-2005, 21:18

i haven't tried germania yet i did once and i got my but kicked but that was a while ago so i think im ready

crazybastard

06-18-2005, 23:36

Have anyone tried berserker + axemen combo + chosen archer warband combo? I smashed right through gaul and oblierated britan with two armies consisted nothing but axemen, berserker and archers, and of course, two 10-star generals. And when it is the julii's turn to suffer, I crushed their pathetic armies wave after wave, earning my about 10 famous battle sites down at Massila...
BTW I preferred axemen rather than chosen axemen because the later has too low of a defense regardless of their good attack and armour-piercing ability...
Here's how it works:
axemen=*
berserkers=^
archer=!
your kick-ass general+additional support calvaries=@
^ ****** ^
! ! ! !
@@
This works particularly good on the defensive. Set on flaming arrows. And when enemy troops come within 1o feet of your units, let out warcry! This will sure demorlizes them and boost up your units' attack, and flanking with berserkers+warcry, engaging with axemen+warcry and flaming rain of death by your chosen archer warbands will almost certainly cause an instant rout (98=99% of the time, everytime) and the rest is just mopping up the trash with your general and calvaries...
Oh and phalanxes only work well when you'er besieged...just place them as close to the walls as possible and they'll poke anything that comes near the wall...

katank

06-18-2005, 23:56

Yep, phase through wall spears kinda make sieges too easy.

Spear warbands are just generally overpowered. When fully upgraded with temple of Woden and weaponsmith, they are a insanely good phalanx unit that can almost compete with highend pikemen in melee.

All of this for a fort level or city level if fully upgraded is a bit much.

Deus ret.

06-19-2005, 12:50

Yes, they're fearsome. Even when the AI controls them. When I played Greeks and encountered them, the hoplites (not the armoured ones, though) had real difficulties in dealing with them, mainly because they are oversized. Oh, and did I mention that the AI had actually built a lvl 3 Woden shrine....those spearbands kick arse. especially in greater numbers which are easy to obtain even for the AI.
Germans are one of the strongest factions despite being Barbarians. The only perceptable challenge consists in playing on huge unit size: with all your crappy little settlements, it will take a while to level them up as long as you fight on all sides at once, even more so against opponents who don't have similar handicaps.

katank

06-19-2005, 14:05

But if you do something like blitz into Italy while crippling Gaul at the same time right at the beginning, then there is no handicap.

Dare I say overpowered?

Deus ret.

06-19-2005, 16:56

Dare I say overpowered?

mmh you're right. they should've been made somewhat weaker or at least more vulnerable, as the HRE in MTW was. very nice faction, back then. ok, Romans never conquered a lot of Germany, but outside their lands the Germans were not really up to them, either.

katank

06-19-2005, 17:01

Actually blitzing in general seems a bit overpowered.

Germania in blitzing gain the particular fast population necessary. By the time you hit Italy while blitzing, most places are already cities, thus giving you your best units in less than 10 years' time.

Franconicus

06-20-2005, 07:52

mmh you're right. they should've been made somewhat weaker or at least more vulnerable, as the HRE in MTW was. very nice faction, back then. ok, Romans never conquered a lot of Germany, but outside their lands the Germans were not really up to them, either.
~D ~D ~D ~D ~D ~D ~D
Germania was never united. It was always a collection of tribes. But nevertheless - it were Germanians that destroit and conquered western Roman empire

:charge: :charge: :charge:

katank

06-20-2005, 23:23

True, the widescale coordination of strikes makes the humans overpowered. Maybe we should make random AI mistakes like having armies wander aimlessly to simulate German disunity?

Mightypeon

06-21-2005, 18:17

Well, in regards to Blitzing: its 14 turns into the game and my Thracians are siegeing Athens after having killed Macedon-.-
For fun you could try the "Völkerwanderung", take all you germans and go for rome.
It could be that you have to do some linehugging against the Senate but it is possible to conqeur rome something like 12 turns into the game.
Oh, and the rest of the world happens to be in deep XBOX because you can now pump out High End german units like nothing.

Marquis of Roland

06-21-2005, 19:32

Man, I should have read this guide crap before I started Germans......

These guys are the poorest bastards I've yet to play (I haven't played Parthians but even if they start out poor there's a bunch of rich Seleucid provinces ripe for the taking). I've been trying to play this faction historically and so I left the Gauls and the brits alive, and so they still have all their richer provinces.

Plus these guys have the slowest growing provinces EVER. Compiled on top of this I built way too many units in the beginning so I ended up having to put most of my cities on growth build policy which made my money situation even worse. Its 234 or something and I barely just got a city into minor city category. I captured all bordering rebel provinces though, but it seems like they're just sucking more of what little money I have.

Spear warband was a pleasant surprise, their battle performance is pretty good. Definitely arguably the best in the first tier. Axemen are superior to Gallic swordsmen one on one and can take out hastati relatively easily as well. One thing I don't like about Chosen axemen is that they take too many casualties; the only way I will let them in my army is if they had considerable armor upgrades otherwise their survivability is too low. Therefore I plan to use night raiders as my main battle line. Judging from the stats of Gothic cav, they're even better than companions and cataphracts, if I remember the stats correctly (gothic got 17 attack and 23 defense I believe, cataphracts have similar defense but only 7 attack, companions have comparable attack but only like 15 defense or something), putting them as the best cav in the game??

Yeah, I probably should have rushed Rome, or at least Alesia, Patavium, and/or Mediolanum. This money situation is getting out of control. Capturing Samarabrovia from the brits helped out a little, but I need more, I can only afford 1 field army at a time and I have 3 borders to defend.....

Whoever said the Brits were backstabbing bastards was right. They betrayed my alliance three times and I even offered them peace after their armies were completely destroyed. I've had it with these blue people, I am going to invade and exterminate.

Gauls must be wiped out ASAP too; I didn't realize they made enough money to send 1 1/2 full flag armies at you every turn.....quite tired of fighting these weaklings....need those damn Romans to get Marius reforms so I can start fighting legionaires....

katank

06-21-2005, 23:42

Chosen axes are invaluable against legionnaires. They can even take urbans provided you time warcry properly.

Gothics will probably lose to catas in a straight fight due to armour piercing secondary of the catas.

Marquis of Roland

06-22-2005, 01:23

Yeah, I'm going to use the Chosen axes for flanks and night raiders for the main line. I'm just not gonna let the chosens get into the army unless they put a shirt on (preferably a mail shirt, i.e. need armor upgrade!). 6 night raiders, 4 chosen axes, 4 chosen archers, 4 gothic cav, and some berserkers plus general should make a fun army to play with.....

katank

06-22-2005, 02:01

Yeah. They need armor badly.

Try fighting in woods more and then they should be less afraid of missiles.

Mightypeon

06-27-2005, 21:47

The good thing about germans is that their Tier 1 stays usefull in the late game.
The valour 3 Spearman can contend with most high end phalanxes (well, Spartans are better, but your Spears will hold up their Spartan longer than their remaining force will hold up you remaining germans).
In addition, they can beat most Phalanxes when flanking them in straight mellee.
The reason seems to be that their propably is an additional malus when having phalanx activated while melleeing.
My lategame Germans look like this:
4-6 pupmped Spears
4x chosen Axes
4x Chosen Archers
Lots of varios cavalry.
Some puppys (Speed and Morale wins battles, not neccesarly stats)

Marquis of Roland

06-28-2005, 00:08

doggies are the best charge stoppers in the game (bar chariots and elephants of course). Anytime I see any kind of cav or infantry about to charge my flank, I send in the dogs and they cement the charging unit there and when my chosen axes get there its over.

pezhetairoi

06-28-2005, 05:20

I'm currently creating a mod where all missile units' missile attacks are doubled, and all units' armour is raised insanely high. Something like an SPQR mod. But melee attack will remain the same to slow down the battles. In this mod, too, Germania will lose its phalanx capability and its crazy 9-8 spear attack. They will still have an advantage in that they use spears like the Libyan spearmen, but they will be like any other ordinary barbarian gaesatae band (that's what I changed their name to) with 7-7 attack. Germania is too overpowered otherwise.

Strategy-wise I believe that the Romans must be conquered first in every single campaign, because they get too strong otherwise. In response to some of ther earlier posts, I have to say that you don't even run any risk fighting the Romans early on. It's not even difficult. I once took on 2 Roman full stacks (one of them the Senate) with 17 units of Germans, made up solely of spear phalanxes and generals' cavalry, and won a heroic victory with only 100 lost for over 4000. The discrepancy is even greater if you fight the Senate army one-on-one at the rIver ford immediately next to Rome. In that case all it takes is 5 spear phalanxes and you have a heroic victory against 4 times that.

bubbanator

07-01-2005, 17:49

^^

Quite on the contrary, Rome needs to be left alone so that they can expand and become powerful. This makes a much more challenging game towards the end.

Garvanko

07-01-2005, 19:12

Why give them a chance to grow and not the other factions?

Craterus

07-01-2005, 22:20

Rome are boring at mid/end-game. They pump out cohorts upon cohorts at you. *Yawn*

pezhetairoi

07-02-2005, 03:47

Yeah. And why would I want a challenging campaign? My objective is world domination, the streamlined, fast and painless way. Which means striking where the enemy is not, where the armies are not. Not using force against force, which is costly, painful, risky and not completely necessary. Hence my nick--master strategist. I like winning by strategy and moves, not by tactics on battlefields.

Garvanko

07-02-2005, 16:07

If you want a really challenging middle game, play rubbish at the start.

pezhetairoi

07-03-2005, 07:23

YES my god I did that the first time I played Germania. By turn 50 I was crashing in flames as Dacia, Brutus, Britannia and Gaul came knocking. Stupid German economy. :-/

Viking

07-03-2005, 18:52

Rome are boring at mid/end-game. They pump out cohorts upon cohorts at you. *Yawn*

The cohorts are funny to harass with your armoured elephants though, I simply love to do that. But yes, after doing that campaign after campaign it get`s incredible annoying :furious3:

That`s why I always mod the romans to pieces in all of my campaigns.
In one campaign I even managed to destroy the House of Julii the very first turn without lifting a finger.

katank

07-03-2005, 21:57

Harass with armoured eles? You mean use eles as horse archers? LOL.

With Germania, the money is tight and pre-Marian troops are no fun to fight. Better just kill them and get your better troops faster.

Viking

07-03-2005, 22:11

Harass with armoured eles? You mean use eles as horse archers? LOL.

Ah damn my english :embarassed:

I like to smash the legions with my eles :charge:

pezhetairoi

07-05-2005, 01:46

Germania is too overpowered, given its early ability to katank Rome, its unbreakable phalanxes and its awesome unit roster. I have decided to mod its spear warband stats down so it becomes a standard warband, strip it of its phalanx capability, and make it 7-7 instead of 9-8 attack. After all historically I'm sure CA justified their giving of the Germanic phalanx by the accounts of the Germanic battles at Aquae Sextiae where under Marius, the Germans formed a shieldwall with spears, and at Strasbourg where historians reported the Germans adopted a 'semi-phalanx'. But nowhere was it a real phalanx. If based on this they would give the Germans the phalanx, then they should give the same to Gaul and Britannia. Ergo, Germania must lose its phalanx--its people should not be disciplined enough to stay in the shieldwall.

Anyway. I don't know where this came from. But do you think it's a wise move given your campaign experience of Germania?

Skott

07-05-2005, 02:54

Howdy All. I'm an old timer having come back for more Total Warfare. I been playing again for almost 3 weeks now. Yesterday I started a German campaign. Playing it on VH. For strategy I decided on take out Britain and Gaul first before moving south against the Roman Legions.

As everyone knows the hardest part about the German factions is that they are poor. So I built roads first, then markets, and then farms. Basically get money into my treasury. Then I started on the temple stuff. Mostly Freya to get population going but added a couple to Donar and Wotan on some for variety and extra bonuses.

First I attacked the Denmark settlement and pushed east till I butted up against the Scythians. I also pushed south and southeast till stopping before modern day Italian and Dacian borders.

In the west I made alliances with Gaul and took the continental British town in the modern day Normandy area. Then I took the Gaulish captial. Then I marched on the town in modern Brittany that has a port. And thats where I am now in the game. My next move will be to invade the Brittish Isles and then turn my attention south against the Gauls and then the Romans.

Sorry about not using the actual town names. I'm at work and dont have my game map with me to read them off.

All of the rebel towns I just occupied outright since their population is low. Alesia and the British town I enslaved the population to help out my own German held towns. The northern Gaulish town that has a port on the English Channel I exterminated the population because I needed the money badly.

I havent been bribing because I dont like giving the gold to the enemy. Better to not give them a means to fund more units at this point. Besides, I need the gold more than they do. Normally when I do bribe in this game its usually to quickly move a rebel army out of my pathway so it doesnt slow me down or I'll bribe a army that might be planning to attack a army or town of mine that I feel I cant beat. Generally I dont bribe though.

So far my family of generals is sufficient and has a fairly steady supply of new members coming in so my leadership is looking pretty good.

I have my diplomats roaming the world making alliances and selling map info as fast and as much as I can. This has been a big help so far. Once I get to the point of having archers I will be set for world conquest. When playing these campaigns its pretty standard tactics. Have a solid line of spear, pike, or hoplites (hastati, principes, or legions if a Roman faction) out front, some archers for artillery support behind the front line, and some cavalry to screen, flank, and run down routing units.

So far my strategy is fairly straight forward in this current campaign. Spears out front. Keeping them 3 to 4 ranks deep. If I have swordsman or axemen I keep them on the spear flanks and then cavalry on their flanks and ranged units in behind as artillery support. March them up to the enemy line till the ranged units in back are in range. Once they start throwing that generally triggers the enemy AI to attack and I let the enemy waste themselves on my spearpoints. Then I use my cavalry to flank and pursue when the enemy flees. When on defense its the same setup and strategy except I let the enemy come marching to me. :charge:

pezhetairoi

07-06-2005, 01:15

Skott, the faction you bribe doesn't receive the money you give to the army. Just because you bribe them doesn't mean they will have more money, just that their upkeep falls somewhat. Bribe by all means. It only weakens the enemy, not strengthens it.

Germania is poor, but has a distinct military advantage (I'm sure you noticed). It also has incredible fertility for an infertile place, since you get factioners on the average of 1 every 5-6 turns, which is incredible.

You would be able to build up archers much quicker if you went straight for a decapitation strike on Rome. My style is to throw my line back and play defensive, forming a ring or semicircle, with my cavalry guarding the rear and my archers in the empty space in the centre, and let my enemy waste himself. But warning, this is not a good idea to be used against enemy hoplites. Attacking wise, I advance in the formation of my defensive ring, enough to lure the enemy to me, then I rotate units into the defensive ring and wait. Once they start routing I unleash my cavalry on a rampage.

Skott

07-06-2005, 02:52

Wow, all this time I thought the bribe money went into the factions' treasury. I knew with rebel armies it didnt matter but just figured giving the enemy troops money was later used to build more units or buildings against me. In any case with the German campaign money is too hard to come by to part with for bribes anyway IMO. Although today I did bribe away three different armies to give myself time to build up. I hated doing it but it was necessary to buy me time.

Anyway today I got an army over onto the British Isles and captured Londinium. Managed to get a ceasefire with the Gauls while I take out the Brits. Once I conquer the British Isles I'll start again on the Gauls and probably the Romans.

I read that blitzing the Romans early on was possible and a sure fire way to get lots of fast cash but I opted not to. Decided to go the slow way via Brits and Gauls first. Maybe next time I'll try a blitz into Northern Italy.

Actually I'm currently running two different campaigns. My German campaign and today I started a Egyptian campaign. These campaigns can be long and boring at times so my attention can shift alot. Running two at the same time gives me some variety to break up the monotiny. ~D

pezhetairoi

07-07-2005, 01:13

If you're already in Britain, consider capturing Deva-Tara and Londinium-Samaro at the earliest opportunity. These are excellent trade pairs whose trade income is OMG wonderful. It'll give a huge boost to your economy especially fi you build every trade-inducing building you can in them.

LestaT

08-22-2005, 08:04

Have played Germania vanilla before on M/M . Easy win , if I remembered my empires spans until the nile valley.

Now in RTR 5.41 will play again , after I finish my Armenian campaign. BTW when I was playing Macedon (RTR version) I'm at war with Germania but I found that they're an easy picking with my hoplites armies. Don't have much cav use except my Companion generals.

How does it fae in RTR ? Anyone played it yet ? Any advice ? Maybe any new units / tactics ? Is spearwarband still have the same stat ?

Cheers.

Skott

08-24-2005, 19:51

I havent had a chance to try Germania 5.4.1 yet either. Currently working on the Britons (Which I'm not enjoying very much) in 5.4.1. From what I heard they toned down some things for the Germans so they werent as easy. So far I'm finding 5.4.1 much more balanced than v1.0 vanilla overall.

If you get a German faction started before me let me know your impressions. I dont think I'll be starting a German campaign soon. Trying to get thru this Briton campaign first.

LestaT

08-25-2005, 05:32

I just started playing for a few turn. The first army consist of 2 generals and lots of axemen. Moving that arny down south towards Rome.

Still haven't had any battles yes. Both time encounter rebels but they retreat. Didn't pursue them , just clear them off the bridge and roads.

Have restarted my Armenian campaign so it will be a long time before Germania campaign kicks off.

buzzard

08-25-2005, 06:20

I'm in the middle of a grand campaign with the germans, and its a pretty fun campaign.

Right from the start i concentrated on wiping out the britons while trying to remain friendly with everyone else. After a few years, while i was tied up in britain, the gauls hit me without warning (they managed to sneak through an area where i had no watchtowers). A few towns changed hands, and about three years later i was able to get a ceasefire to buy to breathing room.

Britain is a great area to take over, as once you have it, you can forget about it, and it earns pretty good income to boot. Just needs a small garrison force to keep the peace.

Once you have britain, you then have the income to maintain a couple of standing armies, which let you move down to spain and italy. I haven't really touched any of the more eastern provinces, not sure if they are worth the hassle, and i'm beginning to need more money.

Craterus

08-25-2005, 12:37

Don't go east, provinces aren't rich and you'll find a lot of distance between cities. The steps are barren, leave them.

The msot effective tactic for Germania is the German Blitz. Basically, it's a beeline for Rome. Check back a few pages for all details. After you have Rome, and the Romans are gone, you can go whereever you want.

Seamus Fermanagh

08-25-2005, 14:10

In either 1.0 or 1.2, easily the most effective tactic for winning the game is the "blitz." Quick consolidation of your minimum "home base" followed (or accompanied) by a lightning stike on Rome with a powerful army. Whether or not this army ever comes home is secondary, so long as you have destroyed all 3 Roman factions and SPQR. Even if these provinces rebel, you have lost little and probably still have 240+ years to complete your objectives.

The point in striking Rome so hard and so quick is to strangle them like a wolf cub before they can grow. Since they are the factions with the greatest power to actually defeat you (or prevent the conquest of Rome), they are your prime target -- so don't wait. :charge:

This approach is also:

A-historical,

Strictly based on manipulating game mechanics to your advantage,

largely unrealistic,

anachronistic in that it utilizes military strategy and tactics which were not developed until after the development of the internal combustion engine,

and presumes a level of knowledge about geography, comparative strategic development, and a teleological orientation that would have been completely foreign to virtually everybody of that era. :embarassed:

Actually, I have always felt that some of the AI problems on the strategy map result more from these last two issues than any inherent "flaw" in the AI. The AI is set to be somewhat more historical in its methods/plan for expansion. All the players begin playing with all the lessons of the blitzkreig etc. already in mind.

Seamus

Craterus

08-25-2005, 17:14

Nice opinions there, and I have to agree. It is an effective strategy, and one of the easiest, but it takes a lot of things for granted. If you are up for a challenge, you should take an alternative route and take the Romans on later in the game. But, as I said before, the Blitz is the most effective start to the campaign.

andrewt

08-25-2005, 19:14

I'm currently playing the Germans after a long layoff from RTW. My broadband was down so I played RTW the past week.

I took out most of the troops from Germany then went after Britain then Gaul as well as the rebel tribes. While waiting for my cities to grow I hired tons of mercs to help conquer Gaul, Britain and some rebel cities. You should conquer Londinium and Samarobriva ASAP. Building a port in both cities will get you around 2000 denarii every turn via two-way trade. Conquering Alesia also weakens the Gauls a lot. Tara-Deva also has decent two-way trade.

The fastest way of growing cities is the destroy and replace strat which I remembered after a years of my campaign. Build shrines to Freyja, wait, then destroy and replace with Woden or Donar once your cities are large enough.

The phalanx warband is powerful but I'm frustrated from all the phalanx bugs I encountered in my previous Pontus game that I don't use them as much during my German game. They have this stupid tendency to keep switching to knives or stop attacking an opposing unit so I have to keep pressing attack to make them start attacking again then stop so they'll attack with spears instead of knives. Also, they take forever to get their formation, especially in sieges. One unit out of 121 gets stuck somewhere while sieging and they'll never form a phalanx.

pezhetairoi

08-26-2005, 02:04

Well observed, andrewt. I think you're the first one I've seen besides me who's observed the trade pairs, of which Corduba-Tingi and Athens-Kydonia add to the number.

Do not worry about the phalanx warband, and use them all you want. They do not have secondary knife weaponry, they only have that spear which does an above-average damage of 9. Which actually makes the Spear warband superior to any other phalanx formation save the elites since they will always maintain their spears which is their best bet for survival.

Craterus

08-26-2005, 17:39

I've always known about the Tara-Deva trade, and I know it brings in a nice income for Britain. Check back in the Britannia thread, I've mentioned it a few times there.

I think Germania are the "best" barbarian faction, and one of the easiest if you use the blitz at the start. They have the Spear Warband that can beat almost, if not all, first level units. They have great infantry later on, and Gothic Cavalry to sweep up. They're also one of the most unique factions, as they have a fair few unique units (Beserkers, Chosen Axemen, Spear Warband etc.)

Mightypeon

09-26-2005, 15:52

Having played the Germans on very hard very hard in rtr, i had to use pretty "tricky" tactics.
In General, although the German foot troops arent bad, on vh they arent going to beat anyone. (wtf, I lost 36 out of a medium axe unit while attacking some barb peasants...).
The Spear warbands can hold up an enemy, but will not beat them. (very hard bonus for the AI).
The fact that there are no puupies anymore kinda hurts your morale.
So, the only thing that left is the cavalry.
This adds the nifty fact that you dont bleed your population dry be rerecruting.

As blitzing rome without the phalanx was out of the question (lol, I would propably not get past the Julii), I had to contend with the Gauls. Well, i am in war with them anyway.
After some happy Cav abuse (i may play without the pause button next time, would make it more challenging) i quickly managed to get Alesia.
I also managed to rapidly expand into the east, just to give me more breathing space if the Scythies come knocking (they can have dmois dulcis dmous if they have too, but vicus gothi is mine).
I cnathed Behmia and Austira with a contignecy force (use your warcrys, and use them right. Managing to sperate enmy troops also helps), and desperatly hoped that the Dacians would start to come at me (if they would, I would have retreated, these lands are junk, so I wont sacrifze anything to hold em).
Some enslaving acutally got me to level 2 population in the major cities.
This gave me enough Cav to roll the Gauls straight back to Spain.
As the Roman/Italo Gauls attacked me with large forces at Massilia (bless these mountain passes, lots of oportunites to make the Romies really tired), i managed to hold in some desperate defense.
However, my accompaniyng infantry units actually had enough exp to beat/hold up considerably outexped Hastati.
Meanwhile, my central cities got to level 3, and it was time to scratch these Freyia temples, go Wodan! (the healing that coems from the priests is quite cool too). I happily employed hit and run tactics to stall Dacian prgoress (well, hit a bit, lure the Dacians out of their towns, introduce them to my eastern all Cav force).
The Brits (for some reasons, my light Cav cannot get their chariots...) where more of a problem, but deceid to strom Friseurum.
This lead to a wholesale hugging of their forces, incuding two of their generals (there arent many things that rtr German spears do accomplish on vh, but they can kill crappy british chariots if they charge them).

I managed to stablize my eastern front by getting the Scythies up against the Dacians (turned on me later though, however i had all of the river crossing protected by forts).
My first serios non all Cav army was completed, and went to greet the Brits.
Level 3 germanic Lancers are nifty, to nifty for the Blues to cope with.
I experineced that shooting the British cahriots is better than chasing them around.
I caprutred Brittain quickly (well, now I actually could assault a settlement instead of hacing to siege it to death), rerecreutied my army at London (thanks for the weaponsmith, now i am even stronger).
And, coupled with an All Cav army from Gaul, went to have a little chat with the Italo-Gauls.
Another mixed army took care of the Dacians, however, trouble with the Scythies disabled me from using my advandatge.
The Gaul resitance in Italy was light, but the romas (all allied with Gaul, sure)
countrattack in force.
Patavium had the experience of a full Bruti stack every 4 turns.
Sometimes it was so crass that I stared to give names to individual soldiers.
I manged to get silver chevron Bastarnae mercenaries out of them, the unit was 4 men strong (the famous heroes known as Hack, slash, Crash and Burn) and ended up as a decesive element in several desperate(1 to 5 outnumbered) siege battles.
The General leading the Patavium army got every single one of the last stand/defender traits.
Meanwhile, my high tech mainstack mucnhed through the Juli cites, and began sieging rome.
The Scippiee counterstrcuk, the SPQR sallied out and remaingin Juli also attacked me.
In true German facion, I instantly marched agaisnt the Scippiee army, while the SPQR/Juli were forming up behind my back.
The Scipii fled just in time (well, their General fought to the last man, alwthough my Gothics charged him in the back more than 3 times).
Just before the SPQR/Juli Cav could hit my back, i reformed. Although I could not construct a Phalanx, my chosen Axes and mellee fighting Lancers manged to dispatch their horses.
The now Cav less Juli/SPQR force was nasty, but, with a stupidly large amount of flank charges, some serios chosen archer mellee action (got no arrows left anyway) and continous cursing about that !"§$§" horde formation that prevented my chosen Axes from doing overlapping charged with my Axes, i somehow did it.
On a happy sidenote, Rome was mine:P.
As I finally managed to get the Juli cites and rome to somehting akin to production, my hold on Italy got tighter, and I succesfully beat the Romans out of Italy, they did put up some fights, however, a fully fledeged, upgraded and ably lead army of Germans is not going to be beaten, not even by post Marian scipii (suckers got Karthago to size 5-.-).
After this, my succesfully doom stack got to Sicily, which did not pose a significant problem.
Another Island hop later I was standing near Karthago.
This town needed some serios razing action before I establishe some kind of control over it.
Meanwhile, my Eastern front asnt idle.
After getting some small but nearly unbeatable (for Scythies at least) garrisons consisting of 2 Lancer + 3 archers and some light cav) river garrisons, the rest of my army swept trhough Dacia and is now attacking thrace.
their amries looked qutie imposing, but somehow got the idea to attack Germanic lancers on top of a mountain during a snow storm, which quiklcy lead to their total distrcution.
From now on, I quited.
I had Italy, Carthage, all of central Qurope and Britain.
I had 14 provinces capabe of prudcing level 3 German troops.
I had a signifcant cash flow.

The rest would be a basic amount of mopping up the rest.

Garvanko

10-04-2005, 08:47

I decided to give both myself and my pc a break from BI and started my first major Germania campaign. having previously only attempted a short campaign, and given recent expansions, I was interested to explore Barbarianism at its core once more.

First target, as always. was to weaken the Gauls. I hate the Gauls! Dirty, backstabbing, traitorous beings, who never hold alliances or trade agreements or even their protectorates! I went for Alesia. That meant Spear Warband, Barbarian Mercs, Cav, Skirmishers, my heir and the leader. 900 strong. I took the capital on turn 5.

Next up Sambrobriva. The brits decided to attack my capital at trier with a full stack full of their best units - so much for trade rights. They had however only left two units up in Sambrobriva. They had no chance. Wasn't too long before they came back for trade...

But you've probably heard all this before. The early game is straighforward for germania. Its a walk in the park against the Gauls. The question really is how soon do you want to face the Romans? Im prepared to wait for Noble Cav.

Ive got Alliances with Macedon, Greek Cities, Scythia, and Spain. Agreements with everyone else but the Gauls of course. The strategic map is clear, trade is flowing, money is not an issue.

But first, Im going to finish off the Gauls. All of them. :duel:

Seamus Fermanagh

10-04-2005, 12:41

Garvy:

Are you playing vanilla RTW, or is this RTW after 1.3/BI? If the latter, have you observed any differences?

Seamus

Garvanko

10-04-2005, 12:46

Playing v1.3. I'll post my observations later tonight.

Garvanko

10-05-2005, 16:29

Seamus..

Not much noticeable change in v1.3 that wasn't noticeable in v1.2. Even harder to bribe, perhaps?

I think they just fixed the save/load bug.

Others may have noticed more with different factions.

C-F

11-07-2005, 14:20

Hi,
while playing the German campaign, I made a tech tree with all buildings and their respective units.

http://216.77.188.54/coDataImages/p/Groups/240/240209/folders/178313/1729014techtreecompressed.JPG

The pic is somewhat 'blurred' as I had to compress it to fit my space available.

I'd like to upload the .jpg to share with the community if there is an interest.
:bow:

pezhetairoi

11-08-2005, 06:05

Heyyy that's really nice. By all means upload it. I never had the time to do it...

C-F

11-08-2005, 14:23

Well, to satisfy the overwhelming positive feedback (1) ~;) , I submitted it to the dl section today...~D

pezhetairoi

11-10-2005, 04:49

heehee. Do for the other factions too!

C-F

11-12-2005, 18:41

Well, apparently you can use pictures as a 'junior' in your posts ~D

(The 'no attachments' threw me off...)

So, here it is then:

https://img433.imageshack.us/img433/7886/techtree4ev.th.jpg (https://img433.imageshack.us/my.php?image=techtree4ev.jpg)

Enjoy,
:bow:

pezhetairoi

11-14-2005, 07:12

er, that's still the germania tech tree. :-P Do the Roman one! :-P

C-F

11-14-2005, 08:52

er, that's still the germania tech tree. :-P Do the Roman one! :-P

That one, my dear, came with the game...~;p

gardibolt

11-14-2005, 19:22

Yeah, flip over your map, Pez. ~:joker:

pezhetairoi

11-15-2005, 06:31

*slaps forehead* Man, you just made me dig out all my accessories all over again. I buried them in the backyard after I switched to Mundus Magnus. Now I'm so tired, that big big battle between my balanced 2nd Legion and the unbalanced 20--chariot-unit Pontus army can wait.

GrandInquisitor

11-23-2005, 00:34

has anyone ever dealt with a strong seleucid empire as germania? i did once, in the twilight hours of my last game with them. it was a fluke they managed to conquer the east and most of scythia -- although my removing of desert cavalry's armour piercing ability has changed things for egypt. my empire included gaul, dacia, western scythia, britannia, northern italy, and thrace. that was quite possibly the most fun i had fighting someone in any campaign...even though their mass pikemen and elephants cost me dearly with each battle. i was eventually smashed pretty badly in the mountains near tarsus,though. a loss i never really recovered from

pezhetairoi

11-25-2005, 05:57

Nope, never fought a strong seleucid empire in vanilla. That is an oxymoron, no such thing exists.

In Mundus, well, it's much harder not to have a strong Seleucid empire since I've modded down the egyptian chariot stats and desert cavalry, and elephant stats in general. And, well, they don't have to conquer much of the east, they own it. So nope, never. Did I mention as the Germans in Mundus, I took down all their elephant resource cities first thing? They never bothered me much after that, even though they DID have 5 full stacks in Asia Minor alone.

Andy Shadows

01-17-2006, 13:06

As it has been told, get rich or die trying. My personal opinion is that kill both britons and gauls as fast as possible. Then attack against rome and from there to macedonia and you are unstoppable. Don't bother to attack to russia area since the crappy cities cost you more than not having them at all. Dacia won't be problem either.

WildBoar ^^

01-20-2006, 07:44

Gothic Cavalry & Chosen Axeman

Hi gents

Me new to the forum and absolutely love RTW! Its awesome.

Gothic cavalry - do they suffer from only having 1 attack? Their only attack is the spear does it mean that they are not as good as other cavalry (say sacred band) in term of non charging combat with infantry?

Chosen Axeman - I wish to know who really use them?
Looks cool but poor defense, charge fast with similar use as cavalry. But Germania already have spearman to hold the line and gothic cavalry to smash the flanks, do we still use these axeman?

Thanks guys

Boar

Andy Shadows

01-20-2006, 09:45

I use chosen axemen since they are effective against armored units. They lack some scaryness (that I like to use against enemy) but yes, they are quite useful.

Watchman

01-20-2006, 14:35

Gothic cavalry - do they suffer from only having 1 attack? Their only attack is the spear does it mean that they are not as good as other cavalry (say sacred band) in term of non charging combat with infantry?Given that their sole spear attack is as good as (better really, since it has the standard spear charge bonus) the Sacred Band secondary sword attack, or for that matter about anyone else's secondary attack, I'd say no. The buggers have the attack stat line of Warlord Cavalry... now that's tough.

saxon_maik

01-20-2006, 17:36

Gothic Cavalry & Chosen Axeman
Chosen Axeman - I wish to know who really use them?
Looks cool but poor defense, charge fast with similar use as cavalry. But Germania already have spearman to hold the line and gothic cavalry to smash the flanks, do we still use these axeman?
Boar

As the Germans you will eventually clash with the Julii and other Roman factions. At that point chosen axemen are absolutely essential in dealing with the heavily armored Roman infantry. Properly upgraded at the weaponsmith and temple of Wotan, chosen axemen can smash even through the post-Marian reform troops. Give it a try in custom battles. Make sure to use the warcry, then enjoy the show.

WildBoar ^^

01-21-2006, 11:00

Hi guys

Thanks for the feedback! :)

Now more question from me ^^

Germania we have

Berserker - high hp, low armour (bad against archers), few in number but scary
Nightraider - fast moving (from custom they seems faster than chosen axeman and other infantry), higher armour, also scary to enemy
Chosen axeman - low armour and AP

How do you guys combin them together?
or you like to focus on 1 over another?

Thanks!

Boar :laugh4:

Watchman

01-21-2006, 21:21

Aren't the Night Raiders essentially an overall better version of the basic Axemen ? Unless their unit size is smaller, it would seem to me they're better in every respect.

Ought to make pretty good flankers especially against infantry, methinks.

Andy Shadows

01-22-2006, 16:47

As the Germans you will eventually clash with the Julii and other Roman factions. At that point chosen axemen are absolutely essential in dealing with the heavily armored Roman infantry. Properly upgraded at the weaponsmith and temple of Wotan, chosen axemen can smash even through the post-Marian reform troops. Give it a try in custom battles. Make sure to use the warcry, then enjoy the show.

Yeah, exactly what I said. Thanks for repeating

saxon_maik

01-23-2006, 17:08

Andy Shadows, here's your actual reply:

I use chosen axemen since they are effective against armored units. They lack some scaryness (that I like to use against enemy) but yes, they are quite useful.

Below is my post on the question by WildBoar ^^:

As the Germans you will eventually clash with the Julii and other Roman factions. At that point chosen axemen are absolutely essential in dealing with the heavily armored Roman infantry. Properly upgraded at the weaponsmith and temple of Wotan, chosen axemen can smash even through the post-Marian reform troops. Give it a try in custom battles. Make sure to use the warcry, then enjoy the show.

To which you replied:

Yeah, exactly what I said. Thanks for repeating

I felt it was useful to point out that they can be specifically used to counter the Roman units. This is especially true when dealing with their heavily armored post-reform infantry and siege battles. While barbarian chosen swords have decent defense stats, using chosen axemen against them is overkill in my opinion.

I also thought it would be helpful to point out that the potential usefulness of such specialty units can be investigated in custom battles.

Your post didn't mention either, so I'm not merely 'repeating' what you said.

Cheers,

S_M

Grand Duke Vytautas

04-15-2006, 10:28

Hi there fierce Germanic warriors wahaa *goes berserk*!:laugh4:

I found many good strategies in this thread I'm too playing as Germania on h/h v1.5 at the moment in DarthMod 7.0.3 and also would like to share my short experience :book: fighting as arguably best barbarian faction (imo among Britons and Scythians)

CAMPAIGN

Germania start with crapy economy so this is what I did:
1) conquer as much rebel regions as you can without overstreching too much
2) get money into your treasury via diplomacy: swap trade rights, map information, get aliances with first Dacia and Scythia (cuz I didn't want to wage war east) to secure peace on eastern front (ww2 hey? :skull: ). Send your diplomat wandering across the known world then and get as much denarii as you can.
3) aim for economy not military buildings first: build roads, farms, ports, mines, basic traders first.
4) Specialize your cities according to military units: germania is heavy inf faction so build few stables that cover some provinces, aim for barracks and archery buildings more.
5) Specialize your settlements according to temples: germans have
freyja (increase pop growth) - build it in low basic farming region
donar (grants chevrons and berserkers) - specialize according to situation
woden (grants exp and allows naked fanatics and later gothic cav) - my fav and most popular temple.
6) Aim your war machine west: the britons will be a real thorn in your side so make sure you take care of them first. I tried to make them my protectorate after taking Londinium but when they disagreed I completely crushed them muhahaha :furious3: After britons its gauls time to be anihilated haha, then comes julii.

BATTLEFIELD

EARLY GERMAN BALANCED ARMY (untill you reached 6000 pop)

Center inf:
Spear phalanx warband: these guys totally rock! :laugh4::knight: they can hold units with their phalanx ability at a distance for your flanking forces to attack, plus they have bonus against cav, they are defencive unit (like greeks phalanxes). Usually I have 4-8 of these units in stack according to offensive or defensive situation
Missile inf:
Skirmisher warband: place them behind your spear center or on the flanks as if you wish. I have mostly 2-4 of these in my army.
Flanking fanatical inf forces: now we are talking about real germanic killers wahhaaa :viking:
Axemen warband basic flanking force use this when you have no better flanking units. 4-6 units in stack
Berserker gang : 2 units in army, they are totally crazy :burnout: make sure you unleash them when center is engaged and watch the fun lol~;) They are vulnerable to cav and archers though, but in melee they can rout just about anything.
Naked fanatics - a substitute for berserkers, larger numbers can have almost the same effect as berserkers :skull: They go crazy too lol:viking:
Cavalry: you only have Barbarian light cavalry in early army so have 2-4 units per army and use them to kill enemy skirmishers, routing enemies or for rear charges but be careful of prolonged melee, cuz they are light cav:)

GERMAN LATE/ELITE ARMY (when 3rd class buildings are available)

Center inf:
Gothic infantry: same function as spear warband - holding center, but hugely stronger. Phalanx rocks!:duel: 4-8 units in stack
Missile inf:
Chosen archer warband: the 2nd best barb foot archers (after foresters) imo - long range deadly accuracy also can act as light flanking troops! have 2-4 units per stack
Flanking fanatical inf:
Night raiders better substitute for plain axemen, cuz they instill fear to enemy inf and better stats. 2 units in army
Berserker gang: good old crazy berserkers is always good to have unleash flanking hell with them muhahaha!!! :skull: Imo that's german coolest unit. 2 units
Chosen axemen oh I love this unit they are totally devastating with their 2 handed axes and effective against armour which means you can kick some roman armoured ass lol :2thumbsup: They are vulnerable to missiles and cav so be careful. 4-6 units
Cavalry
2 units of Barbarian Light Cavalry to chase routers
Barbarian Noble Cavalry standard barb heavy cav, heavy shocking charge, good melee 2-4 units
Gothic cavalry now these elite german horsemen totally owns :2thumbsup: They are probably the best barbarian heavy cavalry. Use them as a better substitute for noble cav.

Thats it! Hope I gave you quite good idea :book: how to kick ass as Germans lol
Wahaaaa! *berserker taunt*

Ludens

04-17-2006, 19:17

Grand Duke Vytautas of the Lithuanians, you are aware the Darthmod makes rather major changes to the game? While we appreciate your attempt to help, this forum is meant to provide guides for the vanilla game and the expansion, not for mods (off course with the exception of minor ones like Bug-Fixer and Darth Formations).

Craterus

04-17-2006, 20:18

Hmmm, there are still some relevant strategic points in there...

Tzar Dusan of Serbs

05-05-2006, 22:31

in your early game you must build trader and roads in every city you have.Than build pesants for garison(one pesant is enaugh in early game for controling the city).Move your armies west to meet briton army,defet them in the open field.Gaul will soon atack you but don,t worry,arky of 5spearwarbands with good general and sreaching women behind the battle line is capable to destroy much greater army of gaul(they always try to charge in your wooden wall).After that I advise taking Samorabiva and any gaulish city you can get.Do not go in to northern italy but you must take Noricum this is key province for later invasions.With your faction heir in the east go and take all province especialy those on north sea.You will see that Gauls have great but very stupid armies and they are easilly defeted.In batles against barbarians just build about 5-6sparmens and good general(I prefer screaching women in every armie couse they couse a rout with their screaching).Later take Britania this will not be so easy,you must know that you have to be patience and that you must be realy good general.Later in my batles with Jullii family I find Axeman are much beter then spearmen,also its great if you have nifht raiders or bersekers,they are best units against romans,and I think they are strongest units in the game becouse they couse fear in the ranks of the orher armies...

Bombasticus Maximus

05-17-2006, 11:15

I am starting a campaign as the germans and was wondering what building do the berserkers come from?

Craterus

05-17-2006, 15:53

One of the shrines. I forget which one.

GeneralHankerchief

05-17-2006, 20:19

Donar, I believe.

Wodin gives you Gothic Cavalry and maybe one other unit.

Freya gives you Screeching Women (kinda like Druids, really, only there's more of them) and population growth. Useful in barbarian settlements at the start.

Lorenzo_H

05-26-2006, 12:50

There is one temple that gives you both Screeching Women and Gothic Cav, but at different levels.

I've got a question, which are better; Berserkers or Chosen Axemen?

Roman_Man#3

08-09-2006, 01:54

:2thumbsup: OMG!!!!!!!!!!! I absolutley love the spear warbands!!!!!!!!!!!

:2thumbsup: i was playing a simple campaign, just fooling around. I saw a big british stack coming. they were a turn away so i ended my turn. i looked to see where they were, but thay had disapeared. i thought they were in the forest beside me waiting to ambush, so i marched a lone spear warband out there to investigate. they attacked me, and i thought i was gonna be totaly decimated.i marched to the corner, and they marched to me. they were exhausted when they got there.i ordered them into phalanx. they were walking around me and stuff so i couldnt really do anything. i decided to move towards the big bunch of troops hoping they would charge. so i marched around a bit. i attacked a group and they charged me. we kept fighting me killing more, they killing none. a unit of peasents then charged me in the side, i didnt break and they didnt kill anyone. it was sweet. then a unit of chariots attacked me in the side, i didnt break, i still held. another unti in the charged me in the back. i still held.:2thumbsup: somehow, i fought them all of.i attacked the last none routed unit, which was the chariots.:2thumbsup: they ran full on in my spears. they all died upon impact, it was sweet.:2thumbsup: i chased around a few units that had recovered. i finally routed all of them!!!!!! it was only a clear victory though, which wasnt great. i was hoping to get a heroic victory, to get a man of the hour. so a unit of spear warband killed 2 chariots, 3 or 4 warbands, 2 peasants, and 2 slingers. 122 vs 957. i killed 446 losing only 41.:2thumbsup:
i think this proves the spear warbands worth:2thumbsup:

l8s:2thumbsup:

Seamus Fermanagh

08-09-2006, 02:29

Battle difficulty level?

Nothing personal but they should have slinger'd you to death. The AI is not bright, but it shouldn't be quite that dumb.

Even when dumb, on VH it's hard to rout them off fast enough to survive that sort of swamping.

Roman_Man#3

08-09-2006, 02:34

umm, im pretty sure it was easy. i was just fooling around, so i didnt want a challenge. so it might make my point sort of faulty, but i still love them.

l8s:2thumbsup:

aWisler

10-03-2006, 21:13

anyone try expanding into greece for a nice profit? i tend to play on medium medium because i just got this and want to get use to it a little more.

Seamus Fermanagh

10-04-2006, 04:02

Two popular strategies -- regardless of faction -- are to:

1) send a powerful army right after Italy to smash the Romans prior to reforms kicking in.

2) attack into or physically decamp and move to the Aegean region in order to conquer the rich trade centers.

Both strategies are a bit "game" as opposed to realistic, but they work well.

Death Match

10-04-2006, 14:12

Be careful over there with your army.....

Death Match

10-04-2006, 14:13

Don't complicate the matter with Germania

Death Match

10-04-2006, 14:16

I think with Germania, the best thing you can do is defence. However to win, this is not the case.

Make as much army as possible from your towns, and with that destroy the faction House of Julii. Here I give options. If you want challenge, wait for Marius reforms. If you don't...... Recruit with Julii cities then, bang!!! Rome itself should be terminated OFF THE MAP. Then, what you have is two weak factions. Finish them off easily with help with Greeks and Carthage. (make alliances)

aWisler

10-05-2006, 12:00

i find that for a couple turns of population loss you can economy blitz, and have all settlements go very high tax rate. this tends to make me an extra 2000 in 3 turns.

aWisler

10-07-2006, 19:46

Well i started a campaign as germania. Terrible economy from starting time till about 240 BC.

i started off by slowly expanding into gaul, losing no battles but not being able to fund an army due to debt. i had alliances with thrace, greece, britannia, and all the roman factions. i was providing assistance against gaul for the julii in exchange for a bit of money. after i took over all of france and destroyed gaul, the britons invaded northern france.

i was going to move some troops up north to retake the town since i didnt have a navy to invade briton, and couldnt make new troops with my debt, but then the julii broke our alliance, bribed narbo martius, and sent a full stack of hastati, equites, and 3 velites with a faction heir over the bridge to take massilia. i met them on the bridge, absolutely crushing them. i killed an army of 1350 something including the faction heir with a loss of 34 spear warband soldiers.

I purposely made an exit in the top right so as the units routed they would be able to escape their easier, and easily be picked off by the cavalry. the Axemen used warcry during the fight.

3X=2 Spear Warbands right on top of eachother
C=Cavalry A=Axemen R=Romans |=Bridge
CC C A
AXXX CCC
AX RR XA
AX RR XA
X RR XA
|RRR|
|RRR|
|RRR|

Anyways, i know finally have a positive income and have control of france, britain, ireland, illyria, northern italy including rome, and my Western border ends at Vicus Gothi and the town below it. Soon i will send a small force to finish off the julii in corduba, finish off italy, and take over sicily, and spain. Spain is currently an easy couple of territories due to all the fighting going on there. Both spain and carthage have each others ports blockaded and barely any troops. once i do that ill control everything in western europe from spain to the end of present day germany, including italy and the towns inbetween germany and italy.

Negator_UK

12-29-2006, 23:07

Germania - One Weird Faction
--------------------------------------

Been Playing RTW for a few months on/off, playing all the short games on VH/M.

Most of the time, win or lose I get to fight in a distinct area or two getting to know the map, but not this one.

Although I needed to wipe out Dacia and Scythia to win a short game they were the only two groups that would ally with me, so I spend most of the game Fighting Gaul and Britannia, wiping out the latter, even though I'm supposed to be going the other way !!

Later on I'm getting fullstack after fullstack from the Julii and have to go south for a spot of Roman Pillage, but can't really hang on to my winnings so I abandon Patavium Segetsa and one of the Jullia start towns and leave them to the Gauls and Julii, although the Brutii take Patavium.

Getting fed up of doing well yet heading for a lost game I stab Dacia and start moving east at last. Run into Macedon around the Thracian Capital (now Macedonian) and soon I'm at war with them too - Arggh!.

After I finish off Dacia I pile over the Danube and the other river (don't know its name) onto the Scythian capital and declare war on them.

I build a single fleet in that city and attack the city on the Crimean peninsula and then move by boat along the cost to the next Scythian city, leaving and army on the bridge by the capital to keep the macedonians out.

By now I've had 3 warnings that someone is about to win the game, including Pontus, Egypt and The Scipii. My empire stretches from Lemonum, the British mainland and is expanding eastward. My net income is negative and the only way I can make money to build troops is exterminating citiea and selling the buildings in cities I'm about to lose.

Two armies crawl across the siberian plains, that region seems to have a movement penalty associated with it, but I take it and eventually head towards the last Scythian city by the Caspian sea (Campus Saki ?? I'm bad with city names as you can tell).

Then Scipii take Narbo-Thingy off me in southern France and then the spanish kick me out of Lemonum. The Brutii are now sending multiple fullstacks up into Germany and I can't afford to replace troops so I'm sacrificing regions in Gaul and Germania to buy time to finish off Scythia.

Finally my Cavalry advanced guard reaches the last scythis city, which is only lightly defended. I get a spy in and he gets the gates open so the Cavalry go in without waiting for the main army.

And I win !!! - I've got 22 regions total (only needed 15) but Gaul and Germania wouldn't have held out much longer.

Cracking game, took about 3 days, but now way will I be able to finish it off as a long game.

My advice to anyone playing germania is try to get alliances with gaul and brittania, but if you can't get them quickly wipe them out !!

Severous

12-31-2006, 01:25

Took me months to finish a German campaign. Played with a difference. Defend the homelands of Germany against all comers and last for the entire length of the Imperial campaign.

A long account of that campaign is here:
http://rtw.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=10,2435,,10

Ronaldinho the berserker

01-15-2007, 19:33

If u dont wonna have the pleasure in dealing with those Gaul forester warbands, expand towards Alesia and dispatch an army from there east towards patavium and mediolanium.Make sure u take the road through the mountains(less chanche in getting ambushed and in my game it was unprotected) , it leads right into the area of these 2 core troop producing cities.Use a spy to scope the area first though cause they usually have a field army nearby.Then attack and pillage both cities, it will make good money.Leave the cities for the Gauls while in the meanwhile u can expand your kingdom towards these cities and by the time u get there they might be rebuild making them ideal to help forge an army for your move towards Rome.
\

Berserkers are incredible units, close to the best if not the best unit in the game, and the germans can recruit them. To defeat the romans all you have to do is hold out against the other barbarians until you can recruit them and then you kill the Brits and Gauls, go on a rampage of spain then come sweeping down into africa with all your berserkers and generals and spear men, kill carthage, take over Sicily, go into Italy and knock down Romes big ston wall:wall:
Note: I have never played as Germannia but Im one settlement away from conquering them with the Julii and thats what I'm going to do! Die Romans! Die!

Ronaldinho the berserker

01-15-2007, 19:47

I agree with you fully, well almost. I think you should keep peace with the Dacians for as long as possible so if the romans try to attack you that way they have the Dacians attacking them, make the Dacians attack the Julii but not you. I on the other hand also think it is wise to take out Sythia, they are weak because they are spread out to far and their cities ar to far apart, therefore it is easy to take them and not much of anyone bothers you up there, and the more settlements the better.

Ronaldinho the berserker

01-15-2007, 19:56

I am starting a campaign as the germans and was wondering what building do the berserkers come from?

Bombasticus, it is wise of you to be wondering, they are the greatest unit, and they come in the sacred circle of Donar.

Ps.
Niether do I:help: :idea2: :furious3: :inquisitive: :laugh4: :juggle2: :oops: :skull: :shame: :wall: :whip: :yes: :beam: :clown: :egypt: :smash: :dizzy2: :idea2:

Caius

01-16-2007, 02:46

I was playing as Germania, and im going very far.
Some Gallic settlements are mine, and one Dacian.
I was betrayed twice, by the Greeks and the Romans.
I need help in how to destroy Romans!!
Please!!

Negator_UK

01-16-2007, 13:59

I was playing as Germania, and im going very far.
Some Gallic settlements are mine, and one Dacian.
I was betrayed twice, by the Greeks and the Romans.
I need help in how to destroy Romans!!
Please!!

Learn how to take out multiple large stacks....

Best way to do this is to stand a large army with plenty of bow support on a bridge. When they attack, put you bows on flame, put most of them on the left of the bridge to shoot at the unshielded part of the oncoming units.

Protect them with a couple of spear units on your side of the bridge.

The enemy charges, gets shot, hits the spears, routs and disrupts those who follow, getting shot all the while.

When all or most units are routing, unleash the calvalry:laugh4:

Rinse and repeat.

After the Roman numbers have been thinned quickly move a big army into italy, massacre what you can and withdraw.

Or just stay there if you are playing the long game....

Caius

01-16-2007, 15:42

I dont have archers...
But yes, spears are very good.
I won a crushing victory(thats says the speech)
Germania 1000 vs The Greek Cities 3000

guineawolf

01-26-2007, 05:28

after reading some post,i get a new ideal,i am going to use it in my germania campaign.

Since germans population growth and economic power is so low,then i decide to fight as gueriellas,don't waste your money on buiding(except military buildings),stockpile your denarii,every time you take a town or city,exterminate them for denarii.At the same time,leave your old town for most "civilized" faction,so they will upgrade them to huge cities,and building those advanced buildings for you.Leave those towns to romans(coz they can built laftifundia(level 5 farms)and city plumbing(higher population growth=now you can get troops supply from here).Of coz,to do this you need to maintain a large army(with highest equipment=armourer or foundry perhaps?,and high experience=temple with troops training experience plus 1 or 2?)

within the needs,you of coz will take the better cities(like huge cities?)as your settlement,(of coz,those cities will have the highest level building in it)

then,i am going to fight as germans!honor and glory for germans!!!:book: :2thumbsup:

Roman_Man#3

01-26-2007, 19:05

Caius

01-26-2007, 19:58

How can I do for beat the Romans before the Marian Reforms

Roman_Man#3

01-26-2007, 20:44

pin with phalanx, and use gothic cavalry to flank, you can also use berserkers, and axeman to flank. keep some axes in the rear to reinforce any spearwarband thats about to break.

good luck!

guineawolf

01-29-2007, 05:24

I wouldn't recommend that. The idea is good, but I think you are going about it the wrong way.

I would suggest putting family members in all the cities you can, preferably the smaller ones. When you take the settlement, enslave it. This will boost the population where you have governors, and you will get an economic boost. Do not give you cities to Romans, if you give them to anyone. By the time they will be able to build they highest end buildings, they will probably have hit the marian reforms, and you will be messed up.

Geurilla warfare, you got something going there. Take an army, and hide it in a forest to ambush the romans or someone else.

Good luck with you campaign and welcome to the Org.

RM3

i can beat the romans,i just need highest income only,that gonna need huge city and it's highest economical building.(coz i love to get more denarii to ensure i can fight enemy with numbers!!!!)

How to beat the legions??you can use your heaviest cavalry to charge in the legions line pull out,charge in again ,if roman didn't break and run yet ,repeat charge in until roman do so!!!I beat those mighty legion even they already hit maurius reform with Seleucid Empire's Cataphract(i use cataphract becoz they are cheap to keep compare to phalanx pikemen,110 to 250,which you will choose?),i kill those legions even with my highest record,1 to 50.with germans?i will suggest Gothic cavalry,or well use the germans infantry powerful charge,always charge in when those legions are unprepared,and don't let those legions get together when they got reinforcements!coz you will lower their morale with routing every each units.
(i recommend this becoz i do it before with using the phalanx pikemen of seleucid empire to defeat those mighty legions!!!mostly it works!!!and it can take out legions with 1 to 10,ofcoz i always spares some cavalry to ride those legions down after they breaks and run!!)

:2thumbsup: :2thumbsup:

guineawolf

02-07-2007, 14:24

I played Germania at hard/medium(large unit scale,coz standard legion unit size is 80 men a squad plus 1 centurion=81).After reading some post,i decide to played as barbarian (poor factions)as challenge.

At the start,i take a look at my town and buildings first,the population is so low.then i decided to build shrine of frejya,farms,trader for more population growth as fast as possible.Seems the Damme and Mogontiacum are the hightest population town,i build shrine of woden for army production.
I send my diplomat to Samarobriva(Briton town) to acquire trade right with them.

ok,since the management is done,then it is time to decide where to expand my germania kingdom(it is to small to be an empire),i send 2 army group to scout the area,1 to north,1 to east.After 2 to 3 turns,North army group found Bordhesholm and take it,after reconsider,i change my mind to enslaved the population due to my low population,coz at the same time it will add 0.5 population growth to neighbouring cities.My east army group take Vicus Gothi at next turn,enslave too.Now my capital Damme have extra 1 % population growth even without shrine of frejya and it is almost reach minor city population requirement.Since my Germania oredi have 7 province,i plan to build up my kingdom supply line first and save as many Denarii as i can before fighting a war(like the Saladin way,always get prepared before you fight)

At the same time my east army take Vicus Gothi,my diplomat oredi acquire trade rights from Gauls.But the Gauls attack my Trier at the next turn,too bad they failed becoz of the defence capability of Trier's garrison spearwarband.Since the Gauls broke the peace,i decide to send out army to
launch an assault on their Capital-Alesia.After defeat about 200 men near Alesia,Germans army sack Alesia in 2 turns,enslaved their population.Then a frontal scout send back a report ,that Britons attack my Batavodurum.Luckily that Briton army about 300 men have been crush,but it mean only that Germania need to fight with 2 factions at same time right now.

Since Britons broke peace with my Germania,i send 2 army to attack Gauls and Britons at the same time,1 to Samarobriva,1 to Lugdunum.2 battle at Samarobriva,Samarobriva taken and enslaved it.2 battle at Lugdunum,Lugdunum is taken when Lugdunum garrisons joined 2nd battle and lost,enslaved again.Britons send diplomat to me to ask for ceasefire,i accept considering to ease my financial problem(my stockpile denarii is between 10k to 20k in this period).

But then the Britons broke the peace again with sending 1985 men assault on Samarobriva with Samarobriva only have 1 spear warband garrison.I block the street near front gate with that spearwarband,Britons army charge in to my phalanxe after the gate is breached,my spearwarband hold on those britons.But with another 3 squads britons troops attack my back,my spearwarband all dead with taking 400 britons with them,Samarobriva lost.Britons army advance to my Batavodurum.

At the same time my army are surrounded Lemonum.When i retreating my army from Lemonum,Gauls taken Lugdunum.My army head straight to Lugdunum,then sending a general leading a small army with 2 spears,1 bar cav try to attack Samarobriva to lure the the large briton army that head to Batavodurum.But then that small army being ambuscade by that Briton army that head back to Samarobriva,it failed.This battle i check out that Britons oredi have 3 chariot archers with them and thousands of infantry.My spears can't fight with them face to face,so i decide to march my spears to a hill with watchtower at the left corner of the map,and the bar cav hide in the forest at the right corner of map.Battle start,Britons army advanced to my spears when my spears form a V phalanxe that covering their side on that hill with almost 70 degrees,general hide in that phalanxe.Britons army attack as soon as they reached the hill,their infantry's morale are shaken when they climbing that hill,their infantry keep routing just fight my spears for only 3 seconds.After 3 quarter of Briton infantry routing,my general decide to charge in to others Britons infantry to force them all routing,but this decision make him killed.I still killing those routing Briton infantry with bar cav that hide in right corner of map that oredi march to behind of Britons army.My spears charge when there is 30 seconds left to ensure that Briton chariot archers won't have enough time to kill my spears with their bows.The battle ended with Germans army crushing victory.

After that victory,i start to create an bar cav(coz Briton infantry can't stand a charge of bar cav,and their chariot archers can be take out by bar cav) army to launch a conquest to British isle coz i found out Briton defences at their British isle mainland very weak,only got 3 to 4 squads in each city.And the Dacia is start invading my land.

Taking back Lugdunum from Gauls,i oredi have 6 minor cities.I send 2 large boats sending that bar cav army in 1 turn at the time that i taking down Samarobriva with a medium army again.

My bar cav army surrounded Londinium just landed,the scout report that 2 others briton town only garrison with 3 to 4 squads each,then i decided to seperate that bar cav army to 3 group, main bar cav army surrounded Londinium,4 squads to Deva,4 squads to another town.Both 2 army group defeat 400 men each very easy on their way to other 2 town coz all of them just infantry.Since 3 of britons town oredi being surrounded,they can only send reinforcements from Tara.After 6 to 7 turns,my bar cav army take down Londinium.Deva taken next turn,only bar cav army surrounded Ebravum defeated when their captain get killed by a chariot.i send another 4 squads bar cav to surrounded Ebravum,take it down after another 6 turns.At the same time,my mainland army take down Condate Redonum,Lemonum,and is heading to Lugdunum seems it lost again.:no:

Then i sending my bar cav army at britons isle to conquer Tara after taking out all Briton navy.Taking down and enslaved it within 7 turns.My conquest on Britons territory finally done.:yes: Lugdunum regain.The Julii still remain at italy with segestica or segesta taken.

My main army are taking all Gauls cities with a port.Narbo Martius,Massilia and Osca.When i taking Osca,i soon find out julii oredi taking out Spain with Gauls city-Numanthia remains.I decide to leave Julii alone and deal with Dacia,taking Lovosice,Domus Dulcis Domus,Gaul's Iuvavum.I start to expanding east.

With those naval trade cities, my germania earned 10k each turn.After taking out Schytia,my Germania oredi stockpile more than 400k denarii,these denarii can ensure my victorious in long period war.

Caius

03-24-2007, 19:46

Im playing as Germania small m/m

Things are going very good.I have destroyed the Britons, capturing Samaobriva A.S.A.P.

But it wasn't enough.I take Londinium, and the other two settlements.But they werent killed.
Build boats, then started to train troops.Everything was going ok.A pirate boat attacked me, and I was destroyed.Everyone was in the end of the sea.
I captured the zone of Hibernia, killing the Britons.
One problem of two.
The other problem was the Gauls.Those Gauls lost a settlement, which was mine in that moment.I sieged Alesia, but they wont let me win so easily.They attacked me twice.They foiled twice.I had a Heroic Victory, 5 generals vs. 1 general.They werent stronger.I had Condate Redonum, then I trained troops to siege Lemonum.They were so few.A Family Member came with lots and lots of troops.Lemonum was going to surrender.We had to break the siege.We tried it again,but the same member did the same thing.We did lost that battle.The new capital of the Gauls is Narbo Martius.We were going to lose the Gaul settlements, unless we do something faster.We captured Ludgunum.

Everything was ok.Then, we saw the Romans, but we didnt started the war...yet.
We captured Massilia and Narbo Martius.Narbo Martius was hard.We were attacked for the same family member who broke the siege in Lemonum, but this time we won, and we captured it.

So here I am.Winning?with the Germans

BossMax05

12-26-2007, 06:16

Campaign : VH
Battle : M
Scale : Huge

After reading that the provinces of Germany are poor, I decided to leave and march to greener
pastures. And I know that the grass is greenest in the Balkan Peninsula. So here's what I did.
I trained one unit of peasant in every province I own, then put all my "military" units in one full
stack. With my lone spy leading the way, I marched almost straight to Athens. Not marched fully
straight because I besieged, for two turns, and occupied Lovosice[spell?] because I am afraid that I
might not reach Athens in time before all my provinces are captured. It took 10 years for me to
reach Athens because of the long march and sometimes I waited for other armies to go out of my
only army's way. I don't want to start a war with either Macedon or the Greeks. With luck, Athens
was still a rebel town when I reached it. And with more luck, two family came out of age in my capital, Damme, so I immediately used them to capture Bordersholm.

I let Athens starve because I don't want rebel armies killing my ONLY battle ready army.
By the time Athens fell into my hands, only two of my original provinces were captured by the Gauls, Trier and the one in Germania Inferior. Bordersholm revolted because I didn't left any garrison there.

Brutii kept sending full stack after full stack in order to capture Athens. Good thing is I just left one
governor in Athens at parked my army at its gates so Athens was never besieged. The battles against the Brutii happened on the field. My formation was one long line of spear warbands, skirmishers behind, two extra spear warband to guard the flanks and family members behind those
two spear warbands. Regarding with my diplomacy, I sold my trade rights and map information to everyone I met and also sold and forged an alliance w/ Macedon, Egypt, Thrace, Dacia and Scythia.
Although the alliance with Thrace was now in tatters because they declared war on the Dacians.

To cut the story, I defeated everything Brutii sent. I think they now gave up because they haven't been sending armies to Athens for a long time now. I tried to avoid war to anybody in Balkan.
I made Athens as my capital. Before the change, its income was 1000++, after the change it rocketed to 3000++. During peace time in the Balkans, I went overseas to capture Kydonia.
The Greeks attacked my army in Athens so I had no choice but to fight back.....
Now, four years after committing their biggest mistake, I own Corinth, Sparta, Rhodes and Halicarnassus, which all were previously owned by the Greeks. Their faction leader must now be banging its head against the wall haha.

I've built up a defensive navy so that the greeks, brutii and gauls cannot blockade my ports.
I'm planning to have a defensive stance in my "economic and military center" and then start
marching up north to reclaim our homelands, to reclaim what is rightfully ours....
Damme, the former capital, is still standing w/ five family members and a sufficient garisson.

Seamus Fermanagh

12-27-2007, 04:31

Nice "horde" campaign -- sounds fun.

Quintus.JC

01-06-2008, 21:00

Germany have the best army any barbarian faction could field. Spear Warband could form Phalanx, which is a great advantage over all the other nations. later on they'll get top-notch Axemen, including the fearsome Berserkers. and also they have one of the best cavalry in Gothich Cavalry. Their archers also have releatively good stats. overall the Germainan army looks very impressive. their early target should be Britain, conquer all Britain while the Gauls are holding the Romans at bay, ally yourself with the Dacians. after Britain you can gradually move your forces south into a weakened Gaul and then into Italy.

Quirinus

01-07-2008, 13:20

I read with great interest the unusual strategy The Witch-King put forth (abandon starting provinces, head down to Italy and Rome)-- it certainly sounds more attractive than slugging it out with Britannia and playing hostile takeovers with dingy rebel backwaters.

I have a question (two, actually), though-- wouldn't the culture penalty from all those high-tier buildings in Rome lead to intermittent riots without committing huge garrisons? And wouldn't that exacerbate Germania's chronic money problems? Or would Germania be no longer be poor due to Italy's wealth?

mrdun

01-08-2008, 17:04

I cheap shot way to eradicate that problem would be to make the temple of Juno availiable to the Germans. That halves culture penalty I think.

Good Ship Chuckle

02-04-2008, 18:59

An easy solution would be to move your capital to one of the newly conquered cities. That would ease public order in reference to the "distance from capital" penalty.

whtdoesitmatta

02-18-2008, 14:35

Wow, Germans are amazing.
Took me three tries to start a successful campaign... (VH/VH),(VH,H) :(
but now I'm rolling on H/H and loving it

There is nothing more fun, then taking a couple group of bezerkers and going rebel hunting! Bezerkers are the most fun I have had in this game in forever.

Key Points
-Spear Warband are the backbone of your army, and are amazing!
-Chosen Axemen are useful for ripping apart flanking roman infantry
-Gothic Cav is amazing, spend the turns and get it.
-Archers are nice, and very helpful, especially if they get flanked by infantry, as they fight very well.
-Night raiders are nice to have in every army to lower enemy morale.
-Naked Fanatics, Axemen, Skirmishers, barbarian noble cav, and screechers I don't find nearly as useful.

For defending have lots of spear warband. Sort of creating a little semi-circle in the corner of the map. Have Axemen and Night Raiders to cover the flanks (Don't forget to warcry before fighting). Keep Cavalry in reserve to hit weak spots in your phalanx, or on wide flank to attack enemy archers. In your little circle of protection keep your general, to rally your phalanx. When the enemy fully commits let lose your berserkers. When the first enemy troop routs release the hounds. If you have archers put them infront of the the Spear wall, to lure the enemy in and give you extended range. As they come close move behind the wall, and continue firing.
X-Spears, A-Chosens, N-Night Raiders,G-General,O-Rangers,B-Bezerkers
C-Calvary, W-warhouds
---OOOO
---XXXX
AX-BGB-XA
NA--C--AN
CC--W--CC

PS. Severous YOU ARE IN INSPIRATION! My next campaign, I'm defending with Macedonia(Taking Athens first xD) or Scythia(if it isn't too poor).

Quintus.JC

02-21-2008, 15:37

eddy_purpus

02-24-2008, 02:38

The best infantry in the whole game is in Germania . . .
The berserkers is the best heavy infantry unit in the whole game . . .
even fighting the romans . . .
those soldiers wont give up even fighting their Praetorian Guards . . .
only thing i had to say .
thanks :smash:

Edvard0:dizzy2:

Xipe Totec

03-04-2008, 21:41

Always found the Germania campaign to be rather frustratingly slow because I play on huge and their starting lands start small and grow so slowly. Being inevitably at war early on with Britannia and then Gaul means you have to recruit armies of spears to defend yourself which rapidly depletes your populations. I have always ended up conquering Britain first whilst holding off the Gauls, and then you finally get going. Even then the economy can barely support enough troops.

I was inspired by recent posts to try a different approach, and send most of the starting armies south to Rome and leave the starting lands to defend themselves and forget about growing or developing much. I took Patavium and Mediolanium quickly thanks to my spy opening the gates whichg helped to boost the army enough to quickly wipe the floor with the Julii, Senate and take Capua from the Scipii. Meanwhile I haven't lost anything I started with despite war from the start with Britannia and Gaul as usual. The extra cash from butchering Roman cities has funded the war up north as well as keeping them from rioting. So far most has been achieved by spear warbands with cavalry support from family and much barb cavalry. As always near Rome I find the best way to fight the Senate is to force them to attack you. The Julii were no problem but the Senate killed most of my army: those triarii are a nightmare. The good thing is you can retrain the survivors when you take Roman cities cause they have big populations and good buildings even early on in the game.

This has been a campaign where its all gone right so far but I've still had many very close large battles so its stayed interesting and Germania has a great set of unique and effective units I can look forward to using. Berzerkers are especially great fun if they don't get shot up by archers or javelins. Funniest thing I ever saw in RTW was when I met Carthage's elephants with some of these whirling maniacs! :laugh4:

The Wandering Scholar

03-05-2008, 22:20

Relocating to Italy is one of the best options for any faction, except maybe Egypt or Greeks/Macedon.

Quintus.JC

03-06-2008, 17:01

I just played slowly, first vanqishing Briton then Gaul. After that it's the Romans, even with their legions + elites they were no match for my superb axemen (chosen ones) and berserkers. Germanian cavalry is awsome and their archer is also class.

BetterDeadThanRed

03-31-2008, 22:03

Praetor Rick

04-03-2008, 06:49

A word on berserkers:

Besides just being a really cool unit, they are simply outstanding fighters and well worth the price. Why people don't seem to like them, I really don't know, but there is definitely a technique in using them. I always try to keep at least two of these buggers in my front line armies, sometimes more. Especially when fighting the Romans, battles tend to get into a giant mass of men pushing at each other until the other line gives: here is where the berserker shines.

Keep them held back for just such a scenario, and once the enemy is committed to a frontal attack, hit them hard on the side with the berserkers and watch the line crumble and rout. There is no other unit that thrives as well in the thick of it as the berserker can, and the moral penalties dealt to the enemy are harsh to say the least.

The only possible threat they face is a cavalry charge, but a little foresight can negate this threat all together.

Personally, I love Berserkers. They're what the term "shock infantry" is all about - nobody does better when the weapons are swinging and the blood is flowing and the body parts are getting severed willy-nilly than berserkers.

Of course, I also like Chosen Axemen for much the same purpose, and I've had some luck with Bastarnae mercs when no other shock infantry is easily recruited near the battle zone - Germania's campaign against Dacia is prone to boring, casualty-ridden slugfests over desolate mud-holes in the middle of nowhere. The provinces don't even qualify as fixer-uppers, some of them need a level 3 population growth temple just to stay above 6000 population, it seems like. Assuming you can ever get them up that high.

Still, if you can get a tier 3 temple of Donar going somewhere convenient to the fight, your Berserkers won't let you down.

Praetor Rick

04-03-2008, 06:53

The Berserkers are too powerful to be true. They kill generals for fun. bring a few Berserkers and you're unstoppable. I first noticed their invincibility when fighting the Britons. they're down to their last city. against their factions leader and heir plus 1 warband. 2 units of Berserkers slaughtered them all with only 1 casulty sustained. amazing.

Not so amazing as all that - a single unit of Spear Warband could do much the same, although it would probably suffer worse casualties. Mostly because chariots apparently burst into flames and explode the minute a phalanx-capable unit deploys on the battlefield.

Seriously, it's almost comical watching a dreaded unit of chariots just disintegrate as it barely brushed the spearheads. Especially if you read your spearman's attitude after and it says "frightened by chariots." If I hadn't faced chariots as Romans, I'd be thoroughly mystified as to why they're supposed to be good.

RLucid

04-03-2008, 11:46

Seriously, it's almost comical watching a dreaded unit of chariots just disintegrate as it barely brushed the spearheads. Especially if you read your spearman's attitude after and it says "frightened by chariots." If I hadn't faced chariots as Romans, I'd be thoroughly mystified as to why they're supposed to be good.
And if the Romans deployed Velites, and spearmen correctly you'ld still wonder. I had 2 Town Watch hidden in a wood (reinforcements) and they saw off chariot unit by themselves.

All units have some weakness, it's the combination in an army that really becomes formidable.

I doubt German Spear warbands would enjoy heavy archer fire from Forester Warbands, or chariots standing off, with mobile skirmishers, some infantry and cavalry to finish them off.

Praetor Rick

04-04-2008, 02:18

And if the Romans deployed Velites, and spearmen correctly you'ld still wonder. I had 2 Town Watch hidden in a wood (reinforcements) and they saw off chariot unit by themselves.

All units have some weakness, it's the combination in an army that really becomes formidable.

I doubt German Spear warbands would enjoy heavy archer fire from Forester Warbands, or chariots standing off, with mobile skirmishers, some infantry and cavalry to finish them off.

No, Germans don't like missile heavy armies at all. Chosen Archer Warbands are adequate to deal with them, but come fairly late in Germania's (admittedly front loaded) tech tree. There aren't many good solutions for a German army facing horse archers, especially not well played horse archers.

Generally, by the time I can recruit tier 3 stuff as a barbarian culture, assuming I haven't blitzed Italy or Greece, it's almost more economical to defeat my enemies by drowning them in the blood of my slaughtered tier 1 units. Eventually attrition wins the game, and I rarely reach tier 3 without also having a massive empire well able to weather a war of attrition.

As for town watch, I honestly never noticed them dealing well with chariots - but the only chariots I ever faced with them were Pontic, and the town watch were admittedly outmatched in numbers by the opposing army. Not a lot you can do with Town Watch who are already routing by the time the opposing cavalry is supposed to charge into them.

RLucid

04-04-2008, 12:33

Praetor Rick

04-04-2008, 16:40

In the Vanilla Play Balance Mod, Phalanx option is removed from German spearmen. I'm actually disappointed, as I love facing Phalanx armies, if they spear warbands become normal light infrantry their higher speed will make it hard to eliminate them without taking casualties.

Well, German Spear Warbands out of phalanx mode seem to move about as fast as any other normal 120 man unit. Now, against the AI, yeah, phalanx mode makes them easier to game around and slaughter without taking many (or sometimes any) casualties. The AI is mind-numbingly stupid on so many levels it makes my teeth hurt sometimes.

Praetor Rick

04-11-2008, 17:18

OK, I give up.

I can't win a short campaign as Germania. Scythia starts so big, with 5 provinces, each of which is huge, that it takes forever just to physically send armies to each of its provinces. Further, their archery heavy (and horse archer heavy especially) unit roster is murder on the early German armies, which tend to rely on generally slow moving Spear Warbands. By the time I can recruit enough Chosen Archer Warbands to really do well against Scythia, Egypt has already won because the Seleucids shrivel up and die from being attacked by 4 or 5 enemies at once.

Is there a good solution for Germania to conquer Scythia quickly? Holding the Britannia/Gaul front with minimal investment of money and units is pretty easy, and taking out Dacia is simplicity itself, but even being able to focus my efforts on Scythia, it takes forever to conquer them. My best efforts have been blitzing Italy and gifting the Seleucids with an extra province somewhere far from Egypt - it's even worked sometimes - but it feels cheesy, and sometimes the Seleucids refuse. My most recent effort looked good until Scythia took the Crimean peninsula away from the Seleucids after I gave it to them. In retrospect, I should have made the Scythian province just north of Crimea a top priority in my campaign, but I was trying to reach their furthest province in the east ASAP.

Any advice?

RLucid

04-11-2008, 19:58

Praetor Rick

04-11-2008, 20:19

Have you tried luring the Scythians into a town without the military recruitment buildings they need, and then immediately re-besiege it, so their cavalry are forced to fight to death in a confined area?

Might need a chain of forts to avoid attrition, which may be too expensive.

That is better than a field battle, and is how I've been dealing with them - fight them in sieges where their horse archer mobility is gutted and my shock infantry can destroy them. The problem comes from the size, both of their starting empire, and of the provinces themselves. The big provinces don't just mean that I have a lot of marching, they also mean that I have to spend extra cash to fort up every turn because I'm out in the field where their archery heavy unit roster will crush me. I have lost a few big armies that way until I started using forts, and Germania isn't a wealthy nation by any stretch of the imagination.

My goal, ultimately, is to win a short campaign without having to blitz Italy or prop up the Seleucids or Carthage. If I weren't a purist, I'd change my victory conditions to elimination of Gaul and Britannia, since those are the enemies I actually have to fight by inclination. Dacia and Scythia are uniformly peaceful neighbors until I attack them. Not sure why, either - Scythia, at least, never has anywhere to go for expansion other than Germania's extremely squishy eastern frontier. Dacia is usually pounded by Macedonia and Thrace, so I can see why they usually don't bug me.

RLucid

04-11-2008, 23:03

When I looked at the victory conditions I found them hard to believe. It seems ridiculous to expect the Germans to take out both Dacia & Scythia. I like the idea of Germania having to take out Britannia, as the Germans did become Dominant in England post Roman abandonment. Whilst their kingdoms in Spain, Africa and Italy all seem to hardly leave a trace.

I think the answer to the conflict points is that the strategic 3D AI has some ridiculous line of sight issues, which determine it's targetting. Picked it up from thread in the mods forum, and their model of game behaviour seems to fit quite well.

Dacia, heads off for Aquincum, and from there it sees Losice, and finds Luvavum, but it only explores southwards later on, and appears to respect strong factions, willing to trade with them and not attack southwards towards Segestica & Salona. The only non-Roman besiegers I've had of Segestica (excluding Gauls in early part of game), are the Macedonians, who appeared to find the weakly defended Salona invisible, due to mountains.

When the Germans go south of Danube, they eventually see Luvavum and that appears to be the trigger for conflict. I don't understand why the AI, given the victory conditions, appears to prefer moving westwards & south to Lugdunum, over rapid eastward expansion into rebel held territory (which would cause earlier clash with Dacia).

Presumably you're picking up the HA mercenaries (Northern) and Sarmation HC mercs available in Dacian heartland, to bolster cavalry arm. Hard to think what else you could try, as the LI missile element should be necessary to ward off Light missile cavalry, when you have a deficiency. The open steppe terrain is going to make setting an ambush with spearmen rather tricky.

Praetor Rick

04-12-2008, 03:08

I'm more-or-less resigned to just racing things as much as possible and hoping for the best. Scythia is even more dirt poor than Germania, so there aren't that many big armies. My next plan is to try out an army of all or nearly all light cavalry, which comes quite a few turns earlier than Chosen Archer Warbands. The missile-heavy Scythians seem like an ideal foe to face with such an army. When I don't have to tech up to tier 3 before I can get a well-suited force to fight Scythia with, I might be able to beat Egypt to victory conditions.

Basically, I'll sweep up field armies with my light cav, and bring a heavy assault brigade along to take down settlements. Luckily, Scythians are barbarians, so no heavy assault lifting is going to be needed to deal with their city walls. Simple axemen should be plenty to do the job.

RLucid

04-12-2008, 11:23

Had a look at one of my Bugfixer/Vannilla PBM games, and due to the play balancing, the Seleucids seem to be doing rather well in my Julii game. Actually at one point, they were the "Most Advanced Faction". That might make it doable to take the whole of the North, before another faction makes the short victory conditions.

The game appears to be coalescing into a number of larger empires, but not the same predictable ones as in RTW 1.5. The strategic position, actually looks like it might be interesting enough to take through civil war, with the Brutii doing rather well in modern Greece, and no obvious way to slow them up. The Seleucids have started fleet building and patrolling the Aegean.

Stephen B.R. Keller

06-24-2008, 18:59

Yes, Praetor Rick, you can win the short campaign as Germania. I have just won two, the first at H/H and the second at VH/H.

But you need a game plan. Mine has two phases. The first or Expansion Phase has three objectives, 1) grow your empire to meet the 15 settlement requirement - I go for at least 16, 2) stabilize your finances and defenses and 3) get some level three cities so you can build high-end units, esp., Gothic cavs and chosen archers. The second or Blitz Phase has one objectivre - to search out and destroy (not necessarily hold) Dacian and Scythian settlements.

So, in the Expansion Phase you start with 5 settlement in Northern Europe. Set all taxes on very high and build roads, temples (all to Freyja, except for Mogontiacum and the "special cases"), traders, and farms. In Mogontiacum build a Wotan temple, upgrade it to level 2 and build a blacksmith as soon as you have built a trader. Build spear warbands only in Mogontiacum and only after you have competed the second level Woptan temple (that it, from turn four on). And, upgrade all of your spears after you have completed the blacksmith. Your strategy depends on complete dominance on the battlefield which you will have in the early game with spears with two legels of experience and a blacksmith. You don't have a lot of money so you cannot affort a lot of spears at 200d a trun each. So, go for quality, not quantity. Don't build other military buildings until the end of the Expansion Phase.

There ar four early game special cases. In Trier, from the start, train peasants and disburse them in Mogontiacum. This will off set the training of spears in M and allow it to grow. In Damme, have Arminius take the spears north and a little west and take Bordesholm. Train a unit of peasants there to keep order, build roads, a Freyja temple, etc., and bring Arminius and the spears back to Damme. In Vicus Marcomanni, build a temple to Wotan and train a unit of peasants on the first turn. On the second turn, train a unit of spears and retrain the unit you already have. On the third turn, train another unit of spears and have Hariulfus take two spears south towards Lovocise. Train spears in VM for the next three turns. Take L the next turn, after which, leave the two spears there, and bring Hariulfus tack to VM. Build a warrior's hold, a temple to Freyja, roads, etc., in L and, when you get several free spears in VM replace the spears in L and retrain them in VM. In the meantime, have Hariulfus take two spears from VM north and a little west, and attack and take Vicus Gothi. Train a unit of peasants there to keep order, build a temple to Freyja, roads, etc. (don't forget the mine - good money) and bring Hariulfus and the spears back to VM. There retrain the spears and send Hariulfus, with the separs, off to the east and a little north to take Home Sweet Home. Finally, in Mogontiacum, when you get three free level two Wotan trained spears ("free" means that you don't need them for the war with Britain - did I mention that the Brits will attack you five or six turns after the gane starts?), take them with a general, maybe Vanius, south and east and take Iuvavum. You will be there for a while and it will be a key defendsive post later - so reinforce from M after you have blacksmit/level 2 spears. If you keep a general and five or six spears there, you will be able to defend against Gaulish or Roman armies several time that size.

These "special" cases will allow you to double your empire to ten provinces. But, they will not solve your cash problem and they will not get you a level three city - at least not right away. For that, you need to turn west to the rich North Sea trade and the developed cities of Gaul and Britain.
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As I mentioned, Britain will attack you within five or six turns. You defend with a smaller army in the north and a larger army in the sourth. In the north, build a unit of peasants and city walls in Batavadorum and take all of the other units and Richburgis and join Arminius in Dame, when he returns from Bordeshold. The old gentleman will die soon - to be reborn in 260 years to win the battle of the Teutoberger Wald and change history. But, for now, transfer his retrainers to Richburgis, a worthy successor. This is no insult to Arminius as history has great plans for him. You may wish to retrain your spears at Mogontiacum while you wait for the Brits to attack. In the south, build a unit of peasants in Trier, and bring Ariogaisus and his army to Mogontiacum. Retrain, build spears, and wait for the Brits. By the way, treat Ariogaises with respect - he will be your faction leader for may years and, like Hariulfus and Richburgis, has 10 star potential.

When the Brits attack destroy their armies, retain and go for Samarobriva. They may have bigger armies, but nothing that will stand up to level 2 Wotan spears trained with a balcksmith. From there, it is on to Londinium and the rest of the British Isles. You will need 8 or so spears and two generals when you go to the British Isles.

Often, after you take Samaro, the Brits will come to you with a cease fire offer. They will pay at least 3500d for it. You might accept and use the money build you cities and prepare your invasion of the British Isles. This would also be a good time to reduce the taxes on Damme, Mogontiacum and Samaro to help them build to L3.

At some point, Gaul will attack you, too. Not to worry. Your spears will fininsh them off. But, and this is important, all you want from Gaul is Alesia. It will probably be at or near level 3 when you get there, so build to level three, and then buld a level 3 Wotan temple, a Weaponsmith and an archery range, retrian your spears and start cranking out chosen archers and Gothic cavs. But, don't do anything more to the Gauls - make peace, if you can. Their elinimation is a victory condition for the Julii and they serve as an importand buffer aginst the Romans. Londinium will also be at or hear level three, so build up and start cranking out high-end units, there, too.

Establish defensive garrisons in Alesia, Mogontiacum, Iuvavum and Vicus Marcomanni - and you might build some watch towers to see what is coming.

This compeltes the first phase. In my last game, I got there in 243. I had 16 provinces. Alesia and Londinium were at level 3 as were Damme and soon Mogontiacum. The trade/total income figures were as follows:

Samarobriva 1354/1913 Londinium 2576/2271 Vicus Gothi 595/1384
Eburacum 430/889 Deva 1039/1722
Tara 417/697 Batavadurum 580/1095

All that was left was to search out and destroy the Dacians and Scyians. I recommend an army heavy on chosen archers and Gothic cavs: 6 spears, 6 chosen archers, 2 chosen axemen, 5 Gothic cavs, and your general. I also recommend a small "trailer army" with, say, 3/4 spears, 3 gothic cave, 3 chosen archers, a couple of chosen axemen, and a couple of generals. The extra cavs are important because you will not be able to retrain Gothic cave along the way., Extra generals are necessary if your general dies. The others can be important, e.g., to hold a city while you train locals.

Finally, you need spies to locate cities. The idea is truly to seek and destroy not hold - at least hold only long enough so that the Dacians and Scythians don't retake them.

So good luck.

SKeller

Stangler

08-06-2008, 22:54

A couple of tricks I used to great effect with Germany.

1) Waiting for Britain to attack me when I just happen to be hanging around on a bridge. Britain destroys itself trying to attack me and is easily conquered after suffering major losses and levelling up my family members. This works against the Juli too.

2) Cavalry. Lots and lots of cavalry. Using a lot of family members early is a common tactic but against Gaul, Spain, and Julli barbarian cavalry is enough. Especially when you have almost a full stack of them. The more family members the better but 2 or 3 will do fine. Cruising through Spain with a full stack of cavalry is fun. Easy but fun.

3) Population control. Don't go crazy making those awesome German phalanx troops. They are great but they take 120 people. Also use slavery to boost a city or two so you can make gothic cavalry and berzerkers.

4) Don't buy everything you see. Show restraint when spending your money and grow those cities. Once you conquer some better cities your production will ramp up. You can take your time a bit and build up your economy and armies.

I found this faction to be easier than Bruti. The reason for this is because there are so many easy targets for you to attack, you don't have to worry about those marian reforms, and you don't have to worry about Egypt (the only enemy that has ever really given me any problems). You don't have the money of the Bruti but you don't really need it as much.

dark@hunter

12-30-2008, 10:13

germania is the most powerful faction in the game becouse they have barserkers

Quintus.JC

12-30-2008, 15:05

germania is the most powerful faction in the game becouse they have barserkers

Germania is one of the most powerful faction in the game, and its not only because they have berserkers. :beam:

Germania's got some fearsome units alright; Berserkers, nigh raiders, Spear Warband (Phalanx), Chosen Axemen, Gothic cavalry.... These units even come to rival the Roman Legions, and with a good commander, conquering the Ancient World shouldn't really be a problem.

peacemaker

01-09-2009, 02:41

Gemania definetely has one of the best unit rosters, if only I could learn to like barbaric campaigns. The low population and the low level walls are a pain for me to handle, so I prefe the flexibility of the roman legions. Berserkers are a fearsome unit, but very uncontollable. They are pactical for an ambush, but remember, once they go berserk, they don't stop 'til they're dead or there's nobody left to kill. The trick to beating them is either with missiles(have no armo whatsoever) or by getting them to chage headfist into a phalanx. But remember:you're usually going to be fighting in the woods, so use ambushes to you advantage often.

Headhunter242

01-21-2009, 16:16

After diggin' out RTW again I started a new long campaign with these buggers on M/M (brutii wasn't much of a challenge). So far, it's a breeze. The key to success is the german blitz.
Didn't rely on missles much in early game, armies consisted mostly of spears and cavalry spiced with those cheerleaders-of-doom. Sold map info to this point with great success which made the early expansion quite comfortable, even though I could not built that much in my towns (roads and markets are a must).
I expanded west and south first, pushing britannnia from the main land and driving gaul out of france. Split my forces up to reinforce the north, screening the channel and driving british invasion forces back into the sea. My second force kept gaul busy and pushed them back to the mediterranian sea.
It took a while 'til i could invade britain as the provinces grew slowly. Finally I could build a port and the first ship. Britain sent in another wave of attackers, but a full-stack army of mine was just waiting for them. As soon as they were finished of, I took the war to the isle itself as their forces were weakened. Taking out britannia was not worth mentioning. The AI kept racing its generals into my spearwalls. Poor bastards. In the battle for eburacum three generals dived head on into my spears. Faction destroyed. The two armies I sent to britain were moved immediately to reinforce my southern front.
In the meantime greece was kicked badly by the macedons which were expanding with great success (and finished of thrace). They even managed to keep the brutii busy with ease. I suffered from being allianced with greece (which was reduced to a single settlement on rhodes), so ended the alliance to get one with the macedons, which I felt would distract the gauls. They accepted! Too bad, they also aligned with scythia and dacia. The gauls made friends with spain... I had the bad feeling of being ganged up upon very soon...
Meanwhile, the southern front was busy with julii trying an amphibious assault on narbo martius, which failed due to my standing army. Several other small forces followed, being crushed by my cavalry forces.
The east was quiet, much too quiet. I built a defensive force quickly to keep dacia and scythia from out of my poorly defended eastern frontier. Not a second too soon, as I found out.
Dacia sent a scouting force to check it's options. I followed them and soon they went back to friendly territory. Not much later a larger force came, sieged and was kicked by my army moving in for help.
Unfortunately, scythia sneaked a 3/4 stack into my territory the time I was busy with dacia, besieging a town right out of range of my intervention force. Bowmen, Axemen, Horse Archers galore. I took a deep breath as the settlement was only defended by 2 peasants and 4 spearmen (1 trained just before the siege was laid). I decided to leave the walls as the town centre was much more defendable. 3 spears front 1 in the back, peasants covered in between. Smelled like doom. Scythians poured in like water through the gaps in the walls and - were halted by my spears. The axemen were decimated, the bowmen concentrated fire onto the peasants. Thank the gods for the cover by the buildings left and right of the centre which saved the lives of many brave men. It was a good decision to stand ground there instead at the walls. The bowmen ran out of ammo soon, my spears did not move a foot back and stood tall, although many of them died. The horse archers charged and were anihilated, the archer warbands routed in an instant. The remaining axemen ran for their lives. Result: 1500 scythians dead, 400 germans killed. Heroic victory. Phew! Now THAT will teach them a lesson. My first leader died from old age (78 or something, sturdy ol' grampa) the same round. He can rest assured no scythian scum will flood german homelands.
The spanish have just joined the southern front and ran 2 full stacks into certain doom around narbo martius. Osca will fall for this!
The romans upgraded to princeps recently. Quite annoying, barb cavalry swarm is the only option to crack these canned cowards.
Still waiting for archers to counter the scythians... And berserkers to storm the roman stone walls. And noble cav or even paladins... Me want!

Short-term plans are: Push into italy to crush the weakened julii (Massilia already under siege) and get a foothold upon iberia 'til better forces are available. Take osca as a buffer city (invasion of iberia has to wait for now) and hold. Expand east to get dacia of my back, secure the border. Scythia won't return any time soon, I hope, as I'm doomed in the field against massed archers. Macedonia could pose a threat as the alliance broke due to dacia and scythia attacking me, but brutii keep them busy. Those romans have to be good for something, hehe...

Units:
Spearmen are the bread-and-butter unit of the germans (and a great garrison), cavalry can handle almost everything in numbers (get at least 2 of them for every army and flank like hell). Wardogs are good for distraction and to storm gaps in wooden walls but far from necessary, early axeman just are not up to par with spears. Don't over rely upon missle units 'til archers are tech'd. The odd women are just a gimmick, never put them up front. But it's fun watching screaming women chasing naked fanatics around the field. A must-see ;)

Regards,
Head

I of the Storm

01-22-2009, 08:59

Hehe, nice post.

And welcome to the forums.

Headhunter242

01-23-2009, 09:26

Thanks a lot. My short term plans worked out, osca is mine and spain is severely crippled, julii lost it's first city. Dacia pushed back into the steppes.
Wonder if I should kill of spain next, as the gauls are still holding the two settlements in the north (Mediolanum and Patavium) and they got a sizeable army there. Romans and gauls in a neat package is not doable yet, as I need to reinforce.
My spies report that spain should be no match for me as their armies left are puny. I don't think they will recover anytime soon. And I will not let them. So spain is next. That would also give me the opportunity to concentrate my forces on the east instead sitting half of them at a rather secure western border.

But I will put this campaign on hold in favor of the greeks who I just started playing. I should give the seleucids a try as well for a real challange and test of my skills with the phalanx.

Seamus Fermanagh

02-01-2009, 16:10

Units:
Spearmen are the bread-and-butter unit of the germans (and a great garrison), cavalry can handle almost everything in numbers (get at least 2 of them for every army and flank like hell). Wardogs are good for distraction and to storm gaps in wooden walls but far from necessary, early axeman just are not up to par with spears. Don't over rely upon missle units 'til archers are tech'd. The odd women are just a gimmick, never put them up front. But it's fun watching screaming women chasing naked fanatics around the field. A must-see ;)

Thanks for the nice chuckle about the battleaxes!

Minor ideas:

Wardogs are also great for clogging a bridge while your shooters hammer the mob at the far end -- plus you get them all back next battle!

I also like the axe girls for backing up my spear line. Once the scrum has started and the phalanx is being teased apart, these gals can feed into the scrum and add a good AP hit factor. Other than that, though, I agree they're more fluff than substance.

Headhunter242

02-04-2009, 15:37

The odd cheerleaders are nice for chasing routers and have somewhat of an impact on enemy morale if placed behind your spears. Apart from that they might be able to flank, but I'd use cavalry everytime - hands down. It's personal preference, I like screaming banshees on the battlefield just for the heck of it. But they are no game winners, far from that.

Dogs are nice early on (fire-and-forget, so to speak) but lose their effectiveness rather quickly and will become obsolete when high tiers come around. Waiting 2 turns for them to complete becomes rather pointless after mid-game.

Caius

02-06-2009, 02:27

The odd cheerleaders are nice for chasing routers and have somewhat of an impact on enemy morale if placed behind your spears. Apart from that they might be able to flank, but I'd use cavalry everytime - hands down. It's personal preference, I like screaming banshees on the battlefield just for the heck of it. But they are no game winners, far from that.
The Screeching Woman are prepared to reduce the enemy morale, no matter what.

Germania, for the win, needs to blitz against Brittania. If didn't, Brittania will be a pain granted for sure, plus the Gauls and the Julii which will be as powerful as a supernation.

Bellicin

03-07-2009, 13:20

Does the AI hate germans by default?

I must've put a good few thousand hours played into this game, and I'm currently working on my first real campaign as Germania. Previously I tried starting one at VH/VH after getting powerdrunk on playing the Brutii, but that proved hard if not impossible after a few years as I couldn't get enough money and population going no matter what. My new campaign is set on M/M, but so far I must say it's been all but medium...

Right at the start I decided to play it cooler than my previous campaign, trying to stay friendly with my neighbours and slowly expanding east and south by taking the rebel settlements. This worked for, well, perhaps two turns before the Gaul and the Britons decided to gang up on me. Luckily the germanian forces are some of the best in the game - by far the best barbarians - so I could push them back with ease, but seeing as my other borders were to hostile rebels I lost all forms of trade being at war with my western neighbours. Also what little populationgrowth I managed to get was put into retraining troops, and the poor rebel provinces I conquered didn't really provide enough income to supply the forces I needed to hold my western borders.

As time passed I grew weary of the constant attacks on my borders and decided to push westwards, and took Samobariva from the Britons and Alesia from the Gaul after some fierce battles. This did little to scare my friendly neighbourhood barbarians off though, and they both kept attacking me pretty much every turn. The Gaul had also managed to expand to Helvetia just south of my border and started sending large armies from Patavium against my soft underbelly. Reacting to that and taking that province and subsequently Patavium from the Gaul is what really started the problems...

Suddenly I didn't only have to face constant battles on my western borders, but the Dacians also attacked on the eastern front. Constantly. Not saying they sent any decent armies, but small forces of 1-10 units kept hitting my small eastern towns and took quite some defending to hold. In the south the Gaul fought desperately to take Patavium back, and if that wasn't enough suddenly huge armies of the Julii were at my doorstep. Of course they wouldn't fight the Gaul for anything in the world - they'd managed to only gain Segestica or whatever that little rebel settlement northwest of their startingposition is called - and started hammering Patavium with all they had, mounting up to 1 full army every other turn. And obviously the other romans decided to have a piece of the pie and declared war with me as well, all the factions.

Right now I'm having quite a blast defending each border and being at war with no less than seven factions (personal record by the way). Soon that'll be stretched to eight as I have ten units of thracian falxmen standing in my backyard waiting for... well, some queue to attack. My economy is not very stabile at all and relies heavily on me plundering a new town every five turns or so. Trading is close to zero with other factions as my only "friendly" border is my easternmost province against Scythia, and they have been nosing at my fortifications the last few rounds as well.

So, what I'm curious about is if anyone else is finding the germans to be this impopular? I can't recall having nearly this much opposition in any previous campaign, and no matter how many diplomats I send to offer sweet deals and how many of their armies I crush none of the seven factions will accept a ceasefire.

Kind regards

PS Pardon the lengthy post, I can't control myself once I've started writing :)