frogbeastegg's Guide to Rome: Total War and the Barbarian Invasion

[frogbeastegg]

frogbeastegg’s Guide to Rome: Total War and the Barbarian Invasion

This guide is entirely the work of frogbeastegg unless otherwise indicated. You may not alter this document without my permission, make money from it, or claim it as your own work. I worked long and hard to write this; don’t steal. If you want to translate this guide to another language, convert it to a printable format, add it to your website or anything else please ASK. I almost always give permission and I like to know what is happening to my work, if only because I might get comments or feedback based on a version I don’t know exists.

Written for: Rome: Total War version 1.5 and Barbarian Invasion version 1.6

A note on terminology: City, town, settlement, province – it’s all the same thing. Also when speaking of campaigns, RTW means the Imperial campaign of whatever version of the game; BI means the Barbarian Invasion campaign, also in whatever version. It doesn’t refer to the game, just the map you are fighting on and the factions available.

The screenshots in this guide require refers to be enabled in our browser and firewall; if refers are not enabled you will see little totalwar.org logos instead of images. The setting varies from program to program, and some firewalls (including zonealarm pro) call refers ‘private header information’. I can’t really offer much help in finding the setting if you find the pictures aren’t displaying, but a quick web search should find you some instructions for your particular browser or firewall.

This is the final version of this guide. I will not update it, expand it, or otherwise continue to work on it. I don’t have time, or, to be honest, the interest in the game necessary to support the several hundred hours work these guides take me. I freely admit this guide has errors and gaps; it’s a choice between a guide with those failures or one which still covers RTW 1.1. I thought this was the better way.

Gardibolt has put together a PDF version of the guide, which is available here: http://www.totalwar.org/Downloads/Rtw_Uploads/RTWupload/frogbeasteggrtwguide_pdf.zip.



Index.
1……………..Introduction.
2……………..Getting started, including veteran’s 101.
3.…………….Choosing your faction, difficulty and all those other options.
4……………..Your main aims (taking over the world and enslaving the populace to your evil whims, hahahaha!!)
5……………..Bread and Circuses: city management (and a bit about the map.)
6……………..Gold, beautiful gold! Running your economy.
7……………..Meet the family (but watch out for Lupus, he’s a little strange…)
8……………..A handy dandy guide to agents of all varieties.
9……………..Armies, the building and care thereof.
10……………Paddling on the big boating lake (navies, duh!)
11……………Bash for cash: how to use mercenaries for fun and profit.
12……………Extortion for beginners: aka diplomacy.
13……………Pretty in purple: The Senate.
14……………The Gentle Art of War: being a battlefield guide.
15……………Iz da r0x0rzz!!!1! I w1nn3d da camap1gnz!!11 Or in English: I’m not a newbie any more, now what?
16……………Assorted Bits On the Barbarian Invasion Which Don’t Fit anywhere Else (really good title, I know)
17……………Appendix A: A guide to the temples.
18……………Appendix B: A complete listing of retinue characters and their effects.
19……………Appendix C: Assorted stuff which doesn’t fit anywhere else.
20……………Credits.

All chapter headings are in large, red text and feature nice little Roman numerals to make them easier to find.

Since this guide is getting so big I will insert a small search tip near the beginning. Depending on your browser you should be able to hit ctrl+f to call up a search box. Type in the chapter name you want and it should take you to it, after first stopping on the main index. You can also use this to search the guide for specific terms if you want to find something smaller.

The BI bits and bobs are included in the main text, where relevant. I have clearly marked them all, so there should be no confusion, and a simple search for ‘BI’ should take you to each of them in turn. The rest is contained in a specific BI chapter near the end. It’s just not worth doing a separate guide, or even a separate section; BI is too closely tied in to its parent game. Unless specifically flagged as BI material most (maybe all) things I talk about will apply to BI too. However, all this said, BI is a separate … entity from the RTW Imperial campaign. While much is the same, some things are different. Troop balances, for example, the effectiveness of missiles. I’ll have to point out the differences as I go.


http://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/roman_i.gif Introduction

This guide is intended to help the bewildered newbie find their feet and understand the basics of Rome: Total War. Well, it was intended solely to do that but it has now grown far beyond that initial aim to become quite comprehensive, with something for all levels of play. That’s why I changed the name from “A Beginner’s Guide to Rome: Total War”. Please note that this guide is for singleplayer only; that is important and I shall repeat it – singleplayer only. While there is a section on the battlefield, and while many tactics and tips will work in multiplayer, this guide is written solely for singleplayer unless otherwise very clearly stated. I had plans for a MP section but they are dead and buried for assorted reasons, and will not be revived. Don’t ask.

Now for the obligatory rundown of the Total War series so far, for those of you who have just joined us. The Total War series is made by Creative Assembly, a British company.
* Shogun: Total War (2000) The very first game in the series, set in Sengoku Japan. A revolutionary masterpiece.
* The Mongol Invasion (2001) Shogun’s add-on pack, featuring the Mongol Invasion of Japan.
* Shogun: Warlord’s Edition (2001) This is a bundle containing both the original Shogun and the Mongol Invasion add-on. The contents are identical to what you get if you buy Shogun and Mongols separately.
* Medieval: Total War (2002) The second full game and sequel to Shogun. It is set in medieval Europe, but you already knew that because the name is a bit of a giveaway, right?
* The Viking Invasion (2003) The add-on for Medieval; it covers the Viking invasions and factional in-fighting of Britain in the 9th – 11th centuries AD.
* Rome: Total War (2004) The third full game and quite the departure from the previous games due to its brand new engine.
* The Barbarian Invasion (2005) The add-on for RTW, covering the fall of the Roman Empire, the appearance of the hordes, the conquest of Britain by the Saxons, and other such goodies.


http://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/roman_i.gifhttp://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/roman_i.gif Getting Started

Patch 1.5 fixes a great long list of bugs, issues, grumbles and adds a few tweaks. You can download it from the official site (http://www.totalwar.com/). If you want to play multiplayer the patch is compulsory.

I would suggest you read the manual; while it is lacking rather a lot of information, and can be sketchy at times, it does give you the basics and there are some amusing jokes in it. This guide is not a replacement for the manual, nor is it a replacement for the tutorials; it is intended to compliment them.

Now fish out that lavish map and tech tree that came with your game and take a good look at it. Get a feel for the world you will be fighting in; I found it very helpful to note the locations of the various cities to speed my early game exploration and diplomacy. Being able to go straight to the city of Dimmidi is much better than wandering around the Sahara for several years trying to find the place on your own. Veterans of the previous Total War games will be right at home with the tech tree; newbies can find an explanation of how it all works in chapter 5. You will quickly notice that there is only a Roman tech tree included on paper; the other factions have their tech trees available in-game. As of yet there are no printable versions of the other faction’s trees but I hope this will change shortly.

The official CA FAQ can be found here (http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotalwarfrm7.showMessage?topicID=11188.topi c); I recommend taking a look.

RomeWiki (http://www.kanwei.com/romewiki/) is a very handy resource for the RTW player and worth at least one visit. It is a kind of RTW encyclopaedia where anyone can contribute information.

I shall add a note about the Prima Official guide here; everything I have heard about it is bad. I didn’t buy a copy myself; I do own both guides for Shogun and Medieval and I was going to get a copy of the one for Rome until I saw all the complaints. It does not match the quality of the previous works and has a lot of wrong information, especially in the units section. Apparently many of the unit costs are wrong. I haven’t heard anything good about the BI guide either.

Obviously you need to tweak the game options to get good performance and nice eye candy; that’s your problem. A small note on screen resolutions: If you wish to use a resolution not in the game by default you need to open up your preferences.txt file in your main RTW directory, find the lines relating to resolution and edit them to whatever you wish to use. The change you edited into place will not appear in the game menu itself, so if you alter any in-game graphics options you will have to redo your resolution edit.

Now your choice is a little more limited; when you start the game up you are forced to do the Sons of Mars tutorial campaign. Playing the tutorial is a good idea; it acquaints you with the basics of the game. Sadly, and most frustratingly in my experience, you are forced to use the RTS style camera throughout the tutorial. If you hate using this camera you will hate the tutorial. Once the tutorial is completed (Victoria will tell you when you have finished, then give you the option of quitting or continuing to play) you can access custom battles, multiplayer, the Imperial campaign and all those other fun bits. Alternatively, if you are feeling sneaky and don’t mind missing all the lessons, you can just start the tutorial then immediately quit. This will also unlock all the other game modes.

If you played out the full tutorial then you are probably ready to begin a campaign, as long as you feel comfortable. If you don’t it would probably be a good idea to play a few custom battles to get accustomed to the controls, how units move and react, learn some basic strategies and so on. If you skipped the tutorial I do recommend playing a few custom battles, even if you are a veteran of the previous games. The new engine has changed the way cavalry behave for a start, and the interface is completely different. If you can’t fight effectively on the battlefield you will lose your campaign battles or have to rely on auto-resolve; neither option is much fun. Auto-resolve can be a bit wacky, generating poor results with a lot of losses on your side. It also has a penchant for getting your big, expensive units (such as elephants) killed. Finally it is very risky if you have a good general or family member involved in the battle; don’t be surprised if your general ends up dead or collects bad vices like coward.


Argh!! They changed everything!!

That’s the heartbreaking wail of many a Total War veteran on discovering the new camera, interface and so on. This is often closely followed by “How do I get the old controls back!?” So here we go, a section for all those disoriented vets who, like me, loathe the RTS style camera, green arrows and all that. We old timers are allowed to be crotchety; it’s our aching bones, tiny pensions and the disrespect of the younger generations that drives us to it. Why in my day we didn’t have fancy 3D men in our battles! No, we had 2D sprites and we were grateful for it. We fought our battles uphill, in the snow at 5AM, unlike you softies with all your sunny Greek islands and plains and other degenerate namby pamby rubbish! Back then we were real men (except for those players who are, like myself, female. We were real women back then) and we weren’t afraid of a bit of hard work. You youngsters don’t even know you’re born! Gah!

The spinny bits of this new cameras makes me feel sick
This one is easy; just go to options either in-game or from the front end menu and choose control options. Then click on the arrow next to the words RTS on the camera controls screen, et voila.

Left click, right click, I’m so confused.
There is no way to bring back the old left click select, left click move system. You have to use the left click select, right click move system. This is not a bad thing; it is now impossible to accidentally order a unit to move when trying to select another one. It only takes a short time to adjust and once you do you will never want to use the old system again.

Green arrows must die!
And die they shall. Simply open the RTW main directory, find the text file called ‘preferences’ and open it. Now look for the line “DISABLE_ARROW_MARKERS:False” and change it to read “DISABLE_ARROW_MARKERS:TRUE”. Now save and close the file. Done.

I hate the new banners! Feed them to the lions!
They don’t bother me, but I have seen others complaining. Open the preferences file (same as in above tweak) and look for the line “SHOW_BANNERS:TRUE”, change it to “SHOW_BANNERS:FALSE”. Save and exit. Done.

Cutscenes!? We don’t need no steenkin’ cutscenes!
I hate the assorted cutscenes the game spits in my face in battles, you know ‘general’s death’ cutscenes, ‘big gaping holes in city walls’ cutscenes, ‘opened gate’ cutscenes and other stuff which I ALREADY KNOW THANK YOU VERY MUCH!! There is an audio cue for all these events anyway, and I don’t appreciate having my controls disabled at key points so I can watch some rebel general drop dead. In case you have not got the idea yet I really do hate those cutscenes. This is why patch 1.2 is a God send; it’s worth installing for this one teensy little tweak alone. After installing the patch and running the game once a few new command lines are added to your preferences.txt file, including this gorgeous little line here: EVENT_CUTSCENES:TRUE Simply change the ‘TRUE’ to ‘FALSE’, save, and celebrate the death of the general’s death cutscene.

I also want that fancy pants intro movie dead and buried! NOW!
Yes, no matter how fancy the intro FMV of a game you only ever watch it a couple of times. Past that it becomes a minor annoyance. Right click on the shortcut to RTW on your desktop, choose properties and add “–nm” to the end of your shortcut, including a space between the ” which is already there and the -, e.g. "D:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War\RomeTW.exe" -nm

All this unlocking stuff is console crap and I refuse to do it!
Honestly it’s probably easier to just play an easy/easy short 15 province campaign, but if you insist on modding I shall quote Steppe Merc’s short modding guide:
“1) Find the file "descr_strat" in ...\Rome - Total War\ data\world\maps\campaign\desc_strat.txt

2)Open it up.

3)cut the faction you want to play as from the section its under (either unlockable or nonplayable, and copy it into the playable section, that should do it.

Also on that same file for those who wish to play a very long campaign, you have the start date and end date that can be modded there, it says start_date -270 summer and end_date 14 summer.”

Note: You really don’t want to unlock the Senate with this method. They aren’t a proper faction; they are a fancy pseudo faction covering over a lot of fancy coded trickery responsible for generating the senate missions and so on. The game always crashes if you try to play the Senate, and always will. They are unplayable.

The technique described by Steppe Merc also works for the BI factions. Don’t try to make an emergent faction like the Romano-British playable. It doesn’t work as you might expect.

The interface sucks!!!!
Yes, this one can now be altered thanks to the general loveliness of 1.2. The chunky, view blocking interface can be swapped for the svelte old version which featured in the old TW games. Simply open up preferences.txt and find the line MINIMAL_UI:FALSE and change it to true. Then go and sacrifice one small goat and a chicken in gratitude for this absolutely huggable change. For those who never played the old TW games I say give it a go. Once you try it you’ll never go back.

It’s too fast, it’s hard to see morale and fatigue, and other common vet complaints
I’m not going to deal with this kind of problem in this guide; half of this can’t be changed, and the speed issue is heavy modding.

There are several old Total War features that are dead and buried; sadly many of these features were useful. The time slider has gone; you are now limited to preset battle speeds. Remember how you used to break your fingers assigning units to numbers using ctrl+alt+[number], and again when recalling them with ctrl+[number]? The good news is that you no longer need to do this; the controls are now both customisable and sane. Use ctrl+[number] to assign and [number] to recall. Patch 1.2 has also brought back the ctrl+shift+number system for the sadists amongst you. The old right click battlefield unit menus are also gone, but honestly I don’t miss them. All the commands you need are on the interface and can be assigned to hotkeys of your choice. I never used the right click battlefield menus anyway. There is now no way to make all the units use identical ranks, so if one unit is smaller than the others it will deploy in a thinner formation. Hold formation and hold position have been merged into a new command called ‘guard’. Wedge is now a special formation limited to certain units only. Rally is also a special ability that only a bare handful of units (just generals, the Sacred Band cavalry had the ability in the demo but I haven’t used them in the full game) get. You cannot save replays in SP campaign battles. I think that covers everything important.

Patch 1.2 has also resurrected another feature from the old games, and again it’s quite simply a handsome little tweak that makes a world of difference. It certainly made this frog smile. They brought back alt+move. There; that will have got all the old TW vets jumping up and down with glee, but for the newbie it needs a little explaining. You know how you set up your nice pretty army, all neatly grouped with delightful unit arrangements and split into several hotkeyed groups? And then you need to move a bit because the dastardly enemy are not going to obligingly walk right into your front? So you try to move everyone at once while getting them to keep the exact same deployment and facing but somehow it all goes horribly wrong, and people end up backwards, scattered in strange locations, stood on top of each other and generally Buggered Up Royally? Not so any more! Just select all the units you want to move, hold down the alt button and give your move order. The units will deploy where you clicked facing in the exact same direction they were and deployed in exactly the same formation they were. Even if ordered to move backwards. Even if the units are not grouped at all. Even if you told them to move a long way sideways.

BI has brought back the little explanation of why a unit has whatever morale state, for example ‘Steady: Encouraged by the general’. Which is nice.




http://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/roman_i.gifhttp://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/roman_i.gifhttp://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/roman_i.gif Choosing your faction, difficulty and all those other important options

If you wish to turn off the battle timelimits there is a checkbox on the faction selection/campaign settings screen, but only if you have version 1.2 or higher.

To access the BI campaign you must use the BI shortcut on your desktop, in your start menu, or however else you start your game. If you use the plain RTW one there will be no trace of it.


Faction
Upon selecting the Imperial campaign for the first time you will notice you only have three factions to choose from, unless you modded your game in which case I will ignore you until much later. It is much easier to write a guide aimed squarely at the Romans than one which tries to cover all the different factions, and much of this advice will work perfectly for the non-Romans. There will be some notes and tips on the non-Roman factions near the end; these factions are generally considered to be harder than the Romans for various reasons. So, you can play as the Julii, the Scipii or the Brutii. All the Roman factions start with two cities and a bunch of preset main foes. The Roman factions start off in an alliance with trade agreements and they will keep this state until the civil wars start late in the game. All Roman factions answer to the senate, and will receive missions from them. They have the same units available to them, with the sole exception of gladiators; each of the three factions have their own unique kind of gladiator unit. Building wise they are identical with the sole exception of temples and shrines; each family has their own trio of Gods. While their long campaign goals are identical (hold 50 provinces, occupy Rome, and destroy or outlast the Senate) their short campaign goals are different.

The Julii are the red Romans. They start in northern Italy and are intended to fight the Gauls above all other foes. Their Gods are Bacchus (large bonuses to happiness), Ceres (small bonus to happiness, increased population growth) and Jupiter (small bonus to happiness, small bonus to law). Their gladiator is the Samnite; you can recruit them when you build an amphitheatre. Their short campaign goals are to destroy or outlast the Gauls and capture 15 provinces. Their game is quite easy; the Gauls are numerous but on a man to man basis they are inferior to Rome’s legions. The Julii will mostly be conquering inland provinces and this hurts their potential trade income as, shockingly, you need to be on the coast to build a port. However this does not mean they will be perpetually bankrupt; once you have five or so cities you can, with careful planning and construction, rake in significant piles of cash.

The Scipii are the blue Romans. They start in south-western Italy and Sicily. They are intended to take on the might of Carthage and the Numidians above all others. Their Gods are Vulcan (small happiness bonus, bonuses to armour and weapons of troops), Saturn (small happiness bonus, small law bonus), and Neptune (small happiness bonus, eventual ability to build the corvus quinquireme). Their gladiator is the Mimillo and you can recruit them when you have built a coliseum. In their short campaign their goal is to destroy or outlast Carthage and Numidia, and capture 15 provinces. The Scipii will be engaging in a lot of naval warfare, and Carthage is a tougher foe than the Gauls. However because many of their provinces will be coastal they will really rake in cash from trade.

The Brutii are the green Romans. They start in south-eastern Italy and they are intended to crush the Greeks and Macedonians under their hobnailed sandals. Their Gods are Juno (small happiness bonus, small city health bonus), Mercury (small happiness bonus, small trade bonus), and Mars (troop experience bonus). Their gladiator unit is the Velite; you’ll be able to recruit them when you construct an arena. In their short campaign you must destroy or outlast the Greek Cities and Macedon, and hold 15 provinces. The Brutii represent something of a middle ground between the other two factions. They will engage in some naval warfare and take quite a few coastal cities; they will also have quite a few in-land provinces. Their enemies can field strong armies but they do not have to contend with war elephants.

To unlock the other factions you need to finish any of the Roman campaigns on any difficulty; even an easy/easy short campaign will do. I did it on normal/normal with the Julii short campaign.

For the BI campaign your choice is far from simple. You have more factions to choose from, and some of those factions are quite difficult. I’ve only played a couple of BI games, and campaigns do turn out very differently indeed (I had one as the Saxons so easy I quit in disgust, wishing I hadn’t been talked into buying the add-on. I started another as the Saxons for experimental reasons, and found myself struggling to survive from turn 2 in the best game RTW/BI has given me) so I can’t advise too much. Generally the Western Roman Empire is the hardest, though it can be tamed within a few turns by an expert with a careful plan. The Eastern Roman Empire is said to be quite easy, and certainly the game I started with them was so tediously peaceful I quit. The Northern barbarian tribes like the Franks and the Saxons start with good, concentrated positions and easy rebel targets nearby. However, if the WRE turns its attention in force to these two factions they can have an incredible time surviving as hordes of superior troops from a far more populous and wealthy faction turn up at their gates turn after turn after turn. Most of the horde factions, like the Huns, are supposed to be fairly easy, I think. The Goths are, I think, another faction which can either thrive or be pasted to death early on, depending on how the horde factions do.

But really it shouldn’t matter so much. The BI campaign is not for beginners. Give it a go after completing several RTW campaigns.


Difficulty

Difficulty is split into two categories; campaign map and battle map. Explaining exactly how difficulty works is … complicated. See, there are unknown factors, there is the known set of factors CA themselves told us, and there are the things players have guessed at.

Battle map
Normal is a level playing ground with no advantage to either side. I shall quote CA developer JeromeGrasdyke on the effects of difficulty on combat bonuses: “The combat bonuses are easy; they apply to attack only, while on Easy the human player gets a +4 bonus, on Hard the AI is given +4, and on Very Hard +7. The morale bonuses are much more complex, as they work on a series of sliding scales.” Unfortunately the very hard bonus is rather ridiculous and it allows the AI do crazy things, such as smashing a phalanx head on with plain hastati. The AI achieves results which should never happen, and the general attitude I have seen expressed towards this difficulty is one of frustration. So for now I recommend sticking with normal; it might be rather easy for veterans but at least your phalanx works …

Campaign map
Given that I only play with this set to very hard a true comparison is a tad difficult. This does seem to differ depending on whether you play a BI or RTW campaign, for example you starting money in BI is always the same, regardless of the setting, whereas in RTW you start with less money on the higher levels. The AI in both should be more aggressive on higher levels, and will use agents more to bribe your armies and cities on very hard. On the lower levels I’m told the AI will only target diplomats.

The readme for the 1.1 patch says that campaign map difficulty affects the results of auto-resolved battles. Although it does not actually state what changes are made for each difficulty it seems logical to assume that on easier difficulties the battles are most likely to give you favourable results, whereas on the harder levels you will take more losses and lose more battles.



Other options

Advice level
This controls the advisors, Victoria and Marcus. Unless you want them nattering away at you like in the tutorial leave them on the default – off.

Arcade battles
According to CA developer Mike B arcade mode “turns off morale, fatigue and ammunition effects in battle.”

Manage all cities
Now this one is interesting, important and will have a big effect on your game. If the box is checked you will be able to manage the details of all your cities regardless of whether they have a governor or not. If you de-check the box you will have to have a governor present to give your cities orders. In a way it’s a case of picking your flavour of micromanagement; shuttling governors about and queuing orders, or handling all your cities each turn. Note that if the option is selected you can hand cities over to the AI to manage anyway, but if it is not selected the only way to gain control of your cities is to install a governor. I like to leave this one selected so I can manage all my cities personally all the time, and hand the less important ones over to the AI when I get too many.

Follow AI characters
If you want to see what the AI is doing leave this checked; if not de-check it. Default is on.

Short campaign
I outlined the Roman factions short campaign goals in their blurb above. Basically on this mode you will have to take 15 provinces and destroy or outlast set faction(s) to win, regardless of who you are playing as.

There is no short campaign for the BI game.

Unit size
A lot of people have asked me about this, and a lot of people have asked on the assorted forums I read. It’s actually an option under the graphics main menu, just check the ‘advanced settings’ box to reveal it. Unit size can ONLY be altered at the start of a campaign. It doesn’t matter what you get your options to after starting a campaign; you will be stuck with the unit size you had selected when you started. Larger units have more men (Oh golly!) and this has several …. Impacts. Firstly it makes them that little bit harder to control on the battlefield; they take longer to react to orders, especially when altering facing by 90 degrees. This is a Good Thing in my opinion. Secondly they take more men from settlements when being built; a Bad Thing. You see the starting populations of cities in the campaign are the same for all unit sizes, and so the AI tends to drain cities of people trying to build an army. That means it’s slower and harder to tech up, and so you tend to run into crappy units a lot. This can also happen to you, the super smart human player person thing, if you are not careful. Thirdly, and most obviously, larger units require more oomph from your PC. I use the largest unit size and point blank refuse to drop below the second largest size. Small units are not fun to me.



http://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/roman_i.gifhttp://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/roman_v.gif Your main aims (taking over the world and enslaving the populace to your whims, hahahahahah!!)

Yes, I can hear you saying “Look, you kill enough people of the right type, and capture enough provinces of the right type to fulfil your campaign victory conditions – it’s easy, you silly frog!” Shut up and stop throwing popcorn, you ingrate! If you want to conquer the world you must work in bite sized stages, achieving certain goals along the way. Alexander the Great didn’t go straight in India, did he? No, he united Greece under his size 7 boot, then went off on a foreign holiday.

Everyone always divides this kind of game up into three phases; early game, mid game and late game. I could revolutionise this and invent my own froggy division system but I’m lazy; I shall use the standard.

Early game
This is where you start. You have barely any resources, crappy units, very little cash or income, and generally everything needs doing.

Mid game
You have expanded a little and stabilised your situation. Your cash flow is healthier and you can now use better units. You still have some way to go, but now you are less likely to be smushed into pulp if you make a tiny mistake.

Late game
If you are playing the long campaign then this phase includes the Civil wars, and Senate killing, as well as collecting those final provinces with your high tech troops. If you are in a short campaign you will most likely just need to tidy up the last couple of provinces belonging to your specified enemy(s) and reach the fifteen province count. In the BI game you are probably just tidying off those last few provinces to reach your specified target while keeping the other factions from blasting your doors down. The BI early and mid games feel far longer to me than the same stages of the RTW game, and the endgame far shorter.

Roughly in order of priority you need to:
-Stabilise your existing lands.
-Secure your borders, by expansion if necessary.
-Sort out your finances so you have a positive income.
-Grow your finances so your incomes is larger.
-Tech up by building army related buildings when affordable and convenient.
-Organise your armies, which will probably be battered after the initial phase of expansion and battling.
-Slowly begin to expand, taking strategically chosen targets.

I will now bore you with a quick discussion of those points.

Stabilise your existing lands
This does not necessarily mean being all nice and building schools and kissing babies; it can mean kicking seven shades of hell out of the nearest threat. Basically in this category you need to identify anything that could do significant harm to you in the initial turns and this can include unhappy cities, ambitious neighbours, rebel armies or perhaps even badly placed family members who are either vulnerable to attack/bribery or are not helping you at all.

Secure your borders, by expansion if necessary.
Build however many armies you need to guard your lands. There is a snag with this one: money. Usually in the beginning you will be making a loss and only have a few thousand denarii in the bank. For this reason I usually use a more roundabout approach to getting my armies – I use the initial troops thoughtfully scattered throughout the territory. If a unit of decent troops is in a city then I pull it out. If it is required to act as a garrison I train a unit of peasants to replace it. I have found that I can usually get one or two decently mixed armies with around 7 units each this way. The exception to this being in BI with the Eastern and Western Roman Empires; there I end up with something like five armies, or more. It’s also worth noting that in the hostile world of BI (:sigh: hostile except when it is tediously peaceful at the start for reasons which remain a mystery to me) getting those armies up and ready ASAP is vital to your survival. Some factions in some games will be attacked in force before the third turn. Also in BI you need 2 units of peasants for every one normal unit you remove; peasants have a halved effect as garrison troops.

“By expansion if necessary” yes, this means that if the enemy has a city located in such a place as to be a real and significant threat you should do your best to capture it, removing the threat and boosting your situation. By threat I mean cities which are splitting your lands up, or are deep in your territory, or are very strong and likely to grow into a powerhouse pumping out army after army right into your back yard. A good example of this kind of threat is the city of Patavium at the start of a Julii campaign. This city is large and, if left for a short while it will send hordes down to attack the Julii on a regular, highly irritating basis. Look it up on your paper map and you should begin to see why the Julii really need to take Patavium ASAP.

Note that you don’t have to kick everyone all of the time; try to use your diplomat(s) to set up a few alliances with neighbouring factions so you will not be ganged up on.

Sort out your finances so you have a larger positive income.
Well, this takes several different kinds of approaches and you will find a more in-depth discussion in the economy section. For now suffice it to say you should consider building basic roads everywhere, ports wherever possible, and perhaps the odd trader in cities making the most money from trade. You may also need to be more proactive than that; you may need to capture an additional city or two. Unless you need to take another faction’s city to secure your position try to look for rebel held cities as you can capture those without starting a war. While your diplomats are doing the rounds trying to collect alliances try to get trade agreements as well. As outlined in the diplomacy section trade agreements are easier to get than alliances.

In the more advanced world of the BI campaign this takes a slightly different form. There are already roads aplenty, and ports, and a goodly number of very advanced cities. Basically you either have rich lands or you are out in the cold. Depending on which applies to you, you will either want to:

-Cut costs! This can involve some real slash and burn work. This is the sort of thing the ERE and WRE want to be doing, and probably other large factions too. Check each city’s religious status (double click the city, then call up the settlement details with the little scroll button), and then check the temple. If the temple does not match the dominant religion (the one with the largest percentage of followers, naturally) demolish it. Then queue up the first level building of the matching religion. This will reduce unrest immediately, and reduce it still further next turn, meaning you no longer need such a large garrison to hold that city. So get looking at those troops – any you don’t need to send to your armies, disband. Take it slowly though; check each unit can be done without before deleting it. You can do this by ordering it to move outside the city. When you find you do need a unit to act as garrison, train 2 units of peasants to replace it. This is far, far cheaper, usually less than half the upkeep cost of the single good unit, and provides exactly the same effect in terms of population control. If the city’s happiness stays within acceptable levels then you can get rid of the unit. Doing this across an entire 17 city empire can make one heck of a difference.

-Raid! This is for the smaller factions out there, the ones who don’t have the resources. It’s a bit slower to get going, because you need to have sufficient forces to reliably take whatever vulnerable, nearby settlement you can see without too many losses. Just capture the place, exterminate it, and retreat, moving on to the next target. Do this a few times and you end up richer than Richard Branson.

Grow your finances so your income is stronger.
At this point you being adding more trade buildings, upgrading roads and ports anywhere you can, seeking trade agreements and building mines. Again you can find more in the economy section. This applies to the land of BI-dom as well. Even those raiding barbarian thugs need to be adding in the infrastructure necessary to support standing armies.

Tech up by building army related buildings when affordable and convenient.
What is says on the tin. This one goes quite low on the priority list because you can often get by with your initial facilities for a short while, and by the time you require more advanced troops being trained in more locations you should have a steady cash flow.

Organise your armies, which will probably be battered after the initial phase of expansion and battling.
Again precisely what it says on the tin. You will probably need to merge and retrain units, as well as bring out a few freshly raised reinforcements. Since the retraining versus merging argument is a long, old, rambling topic I shall cover it later in the army section.

Slowly begin to expand, taking strategically chosen targets.
Right, you have money in the bank and a profit each turn, your armies are sorted out and capable of fighting, your cities are slowly improving and your initial position is safe. Now you can begin expanding out to take on those foes you deem most worthy of your attentions (clue: you will probably have several potential target factions to choose from. Try the ones who will either give you a real benefit now, such as rich cities, or ones who will get nasty if left to tech up.)

When campaigning against your faction’s main foes in the early game you can give yourself a boost and cripple them by targeting their best cities first. Here’s a few examples from Maltz:
Armania: Parthia
Dacia/Thrace: Macedon -> Greek cities -> Rome
Germania: Julii -> Rome
Numidia: Carthage -> Brutii -> Scipii -> Rome
Carthage: Brutii -> Scipii -> Rome

In BI this is much less possible. Either the faction in question is very big, with several important cities all well built up, defended, and stuffed safely away in the heartlands of their empire, or the faction will turn into a horde and punish you for your arrogance. Just because you can wipe out some of the barbarian factions by taking their single starting city doesn’t mean you should. Your half stack army is going to look pretty wimpy when four or more full stacks of displaced, furious natives turn up to ask where they are meant to live now. Constantinople may be the city of all cities, but it has epic walls, and they alone can (and do) mince sizeable armies without need for the big garrison of advanced Roman troops usually found relaxing and enjoying the sights. In BI you must be far more careful, and perhaps settle for lesser targets until you have reached a stage where you can field larger, more advanced armies.


http://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/roman_v.gif Bread and Circuses: City management (and a bit about the map)

Rome: the eternal city, the beacon of culture, the centre of the world, the jewel in the crown – you get the idea. Well, sorry folks but Rome isn’t for you, not until you have grown inordinately powerful. Instead think of Backus Waterus: the eternal mud pile, the beacon of yokels, the maggot in the apple – yup, it really is that bad. You have heard the saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day”? Well sadly it is true; to get Backus Waterus up to the level of Rome will take years, hundreds of them.

Because CA didn’t see fit to include Backus Waterus in the game, thus ruining my joke (shakes fist at CA), we shall have to scrutinise another city instead. Let’s look at Arretium, the capital of the Julii er, … tiny, cutely sized mini empire. Oh ok, the Julii two province backwater with empire potential and a nice view of the Alps. Why Arretium? Because I think red is a nicer colour than blue or green, so we use the Julii capital instead of the Scipii or Brutii, that’s why!

http://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/Arretium.jpg

Side note: While we have this convenient screenshot I will record a piece of information that is very handy. You see those four tabs labelled army, town, agent and blank? Right clicking on the first three tabs will bring up an overview for the relevant section. Army will bring up a list of all your armies, their locations and their leaders. City will bring up a lost of all your cities, their governors and civil order. Agent will drag up a list of all your agent (spy, diplomat, assassin) characters, their locations and mission, if any.

This screenshot shows Arretium on the map. Because the city has been selected it has a green hoop thing around it and the city information screens have popped up. Let’s start at the beginning, with the city itself on the map. The graphic shows the culture of the city; in this case Roman. If it were a barbarian culture the city would be made up of mud huts, if it were Egyptian it would be mud brick, and so on. Because these people are Roman they have nice tiled stone houses. Unfortunately you can’t tax them extra for that. The huge red banner sticking up from the city (which I would expect to be very unstable, and to blow over in even a mild breeze killing hundreds of innocent civilians) shows that this city belongs to the Julii; it is their colour and has their symbol on it. Notice how part of it is a nice red, while the rest is an unpleasant pink? That shows the size of the garrison. More red=more men.

Below the city is a little box with the city’s name (Arretium, for those of you with very short attention spans), a few numbers, and several funky icons. From left to right, the pile of coins with –19 next to it is the amount the city is making each turn. Right now it is losing money to the tune of –19 denarii per turn. Actually, to be pedantic, it is not losing money at all; more on that later. The little green face represents the city’s mood. Green is good; green is where you want all your cities. Yellow means there is some discontent but it’s not really a problem. Blue means people are very unhappy and are on the verge of becoming rebellious, so you should do something to turn opinion immediately, if not sooner. Red means they are going to storm your posh mansion, trample the flower beds and do unspeakable things to your pet kittiekat. The third symbol, the man with a plus sign next to him, means that the city’s population is growing. If population grow stabilises the man will turn yellow and the plus will vanish. If growth goes into a decline the man will turn red and a minus sign will appear next to him. There are several other possible icons that can appear which are not present in this screenshot. A little yellow man waving a sword means the city is recruiting or retraining a unit of some kind; military or agent. A yellow hammer and saw crossed icon means the city is building or repairing a building. A pitchfork on a flaming background means the city is currently rioting. A symbol with walls and flames means the city is under siege; this is also visible on the map as a ring of sharp stakes around the city and an enemy army waving a sword imposingly. A skull means the city has the plague. A gears symbol means the city is being auto-managed by the AI.

Looking around your city at its province will reveal details about trade and construction. Any roads present will be shown, with each upgrade visible. Plain roads, as in this picture, are brown dirt tracks. Paved roads are grey lines. Highways are deep grey lines. The roads will have little wagons travelling along them; these represent land trade. The more wagons you see the more trade is taking place. You will notice icons like giant pottery cups, jugs, chunks of stone and so on scattered about the map. These are trade goods. A good must be present in a province for that province to export it. Some goods are worth more than others and some provinces have more trade goods than others. If you look above the flag in the screenshot you can see a white block; this is the marble trade good. If you hover your cursor over a trade good it will tell you what it is. You can see pottery trade goods just across the border, between Arretium and the rebel city just disappearing off the edge of the picture. It is a very sound idea to look for trade goods on the map when deciding where to conquer next.

I should probably tell you about the slave trade good now. This good appears on the map as a pair of silver manacles. It is not permanent, instead it has a chance to appear when you capture and enslave a city. The good will last for approximately 20 turns and will increase population growth in cities receiving the slaves. According to thee 1.1 patch’s readme Roman factions and Roman allied factions will have 25% of the enslaved population go to the capital of the senate faction.

Just near the bottom left corner you can see a stone walled blob; this is a port. If you see this on a map you know the city has a port and can conduct sea trade. I think every coastal province can eventually build a port.

The thick red line snaking its way through the middle of the map is the border of the province and, since you don’t own any provinces beyond this one, of your empire.

Right, that’s it for what you can learn from just looking at the map; time to move on to the city information screens. If you look at the right hand side of the screenshot you can see a parchment; if you can’t see it you should probably get glasses. The grey box near the top (the one with the picture of the man and scroll icons) is the governor. If there is no governor in the city the box will be empty. The picture is not important; the other details are. Age is displayed in the top right corner; the older the guy is the more likely he is to expire and become a small pile of ash in a ceremonial urn. Dead governors are not replaced automatically; you have to send another family member out yourself, assuming you have a spare. Below this you can see the chap’s name; Lucius Julius. Command is battlefield leadership; this mewling infant only has one star so you’d better hope he never has to fight anyone with more skill than he has, i.e. anyone who is more skilled than a damp piece of canvas. Management indicates his ability to manage a city, to do the job you have given him. While he might be an utter moron on the field of battle this guy is seriously skilled at taxing people and oppressing the masses. Below that is influence, rated in snazzy laurel wreaths. He has three of them, quite good really. Most characters have low influence if they are not faction leaders/heirs or in a senate office. Influence helps a governor keep control over his citizens; a little awe really does help prevent riots.

Below that box is another labelled settlement details. This is your one-stop shop for the critical information about how your city is doing. Income is a simple repeat of the same figure on the map; to get the real meat you need to go to the detailed city information screen; more on that later. Public order represents how likely the city is to riot. Anything under 100% is bad; it means there is unrest. Ok, to be honest you can survive with slightly below 100% but it is really skating close to the edge of thin ice and any small problems will push you over into the happy little land of trouble. Having your governor die and your city revolt because public order was already close to danger point is severely not fun. Because this city is at 150% it’s as stable as a very stable thing. Population is the current number of souls stuffed into your taxation hellhole. Population growth is represented as a percentage; each turn the displayed percentage is calculated for the population, and then added on. In this case 2% of 4,000 is 80, so at the beginning of the next turn the city will have 4,080 people. Larger populations grow faster; such is the arcane magic of percentages. “Population required for next level of settlement,” means just that; when the current population hits the indicated amount (6,000 in this case) the city will grow to the next level. This is a Good Thing; larger cities allow you to build more advanced structures. Below that is a box labelled auto manage; if you get tired of managing the city yourself check this box and the AI will manage the city according to priorities you assign.

Next is a blurb labelled tax rate with two arrows next to it; click them to change the tax rate. Higher taxes slow down population growth and bring in more money; they also make people unhappy. Strangely people don’t like handing their money over to the government. Weirdoes. Low taxes increase population growth and happiness but hurt your income. You will have to choose your tax level according to a bunch of factors discussed later in the guide.

Below that is a box showing a bunch of buildings with the word ‘construction’ above it. Astonishingly this is where you choose what buildings you want the city to construct. If you right click on a building it will display a page telling you what it is and what it does. Very handy. The tabs behind this, recruitment, retrain, and repair, as well as how to build and queue items were explained in the tutorial, so I won’t repeat.

Down the bottom left hand side of the parchment are 4 buttons. From top to bottom they are:
-Tech tree for your faction. If you aren’t playing a Roman this is the only way you can see your tech tree, as there is no printout included in the game.
-Victoria’s advise on what to build next.
-Show detailed information on the city.
-Go to the city’s location on the main map.

Phew! Done. Anything else you need to know about this screen was mentioned in the tutorial. Now, on to the next screen; the advanced settlement details.

http://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/Arretiumdetail.jpg

Thankfully for my fingers, and your eyes, this screen will not take nearly as long to explain as the previous one. Population growth has three icons; a house with corn (farming), an ear of corn (er, general foody stuff), and rats (squalor). Foody stuff plus farmed food add up to give a boost to your population, given in a percentage. You can see an individual total by hovering your cursor over the little pictures; that applies to all the items on these screens. Squalor detracts from the total; people living in their own filth generally don’t want to breed for some very strange reason. If squalor gets too bad you can probably get negative population growth.

Public order is a breakdown of how likely the city is to riot. Factors are: prestige of the governor (laurel wreaths, assuming there is a governor and he has prestige), balancing scales (law, affected by certain temples and governor traits), garrison (the soldier, simply place military units in your city and they will act as garrison troops), and again you can see the squalor icon. Squalor is a big issue; it affects quite a lot of city aspects and is hard to pin down because it arises from several factors.

Below that is income. The scroll represents bonus income from the governor’s management talent; skilled governors can really bring you some money. The wheeled cart represents trade of all types; you can get a detailed breakdown on the trade screen. The bags of money are taxes; the higher your population and tax rate the more tax income you will get. The little house with corn represents farming income. The lower bar contains expenditures for this city. The little bit of paper is the upkeep of your armies; the total sum is divided amongst all your cities according to their wealth and population. The portrait bust is the pay for your agents and family members.

The length of time a city can hold out in a siege is dependant on its food stores. Food stores are influenced by the level of wall and governor’s building in the settlement; more advanced buildings enable a city to hold out for longer.

If you want this screen to open up automatically every time you click on a city tick the ‘always show city details box’. Down the bottom left side you can see three icons; from top to bottom they are:
-View this city in all its 3D glory on the battle map.
-Make this city your capital city.
-Show detailed trade information. And that leads me to the next screen …

http://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/Arretiumtrade.jpg

Trade is a marvellous thing; it supplies the lion’s share of your income and doesn’t cause any long term problems, unlike farming and taxation. But more on that later. In this screen you can see how much your city is making and which other cities it is trading with. Because trade needs roads or ports connecting the cities (you also have to know the city exists; you can’t trade with places you haven’t discovered yet … we think), Arretium is currently only trading with a handful of places, mostly by road. This screen is not glamorous or vital, but I find it handy to check how much a city is making from trade before building trade related buildings like the forum.

Right, now we have covered the various aspects of your city it is time to discuss what to do with them. Simply put you want your cities to grow, because then they make more money and you can build more advanced things in them. However you do not want them to grow too big or too fast, because squalor will get out of hand and things will get … messy. Cities max out in terms of what you can build at 24,000 people, and at that size they can get hard to manage, and the population keeps on growing. But in many ways getting to that size is a distant problem for most new players; instead the question is what to do with your dunghill 2,000 population town to get it growing and making money.

Population growth
The major population growth factor is food. All of the farm line of buildings increase the amount of food available, and that in turn increases population growth. Seems simple then, just whack down farms as quickly as possible, then upgrade them often, right? Er, not, not quite. You see you can never demolish farms; once they are built you are stuck with them permanently. Imagine the kind of population growth you can get with 5% of 24,000 and you will see why paving the world in big farms is a poor idea in the long run. Your population will run rampant, expanding faster than you can keep it happy and requiring larger and larger garrisons to kept revolt at bay, until eventually you can no longer keep pace and the city explodes. So, maximum farm upgrades are often a bad idea in the long term. However no farm upgrades can be as problematic; your population will grow at a crawl. This leaves you technologically, and financially, stunted. Also you will be using a small band of cities to recruit your armies from, and this reduces their population. You will need those cities to grow back fast enough to keep supplying bodies for your wars, but not so fast you end up with rioting. So far I have found building the first farm (land clearance) early on in each and every settlement is a good idea. If I plan on using a city to recruit a constant stream of troops I might build the second, but only if I am going to be recruiting constantly. So, most places have the most basic farms and no more. Farm upgrades also bring in a bit more cash, but farming income is never much compared to trade so it is not worth building them for financial reasons, especially when you think of the extra garrisons you may require to handle the booming population. The terrain of the province itself affects how much food is grown; some lush provinces have a naturally huge population growth while others barely grow at all.

Farms are not the only buildings which affect population growth; certain temples and other buildings increase population growth. Some people suggest building the population boosting temples to grow your cities quickly, then demolishing them in favour of a temple which boosts happiness and/or law. I haven’t tried this strategy personally yet, but I do wonder if you might have problems with unhappiness when rebuilding the temples. I also don’t like wasting cash and building time, but that’s stingy old me. The other population boosting buildings, such as the trade building family (trader, market, forum etc) are useful and they do not provide such a massive boost to growth. I always build them.

Taxes also affect population growth, as mentioned earlier. If you want your population to grow swiftly give them low taxes; if you need to arrest growth (with high unhappiness as a side effect) then stick taxes to the maximum. Note that if your city is about to revolt due to squalor pumping your taxes up may halt growth but it will also probably tip the city over the edge into rioting. Normal tax rate strikes a balance between income, happiness and population growth. I find it makes a good middle ground unless you urgently need to alter one of those factors.

Squalor will negatively affect population growth; if it gets bad enough then it will counter all the positive growth factors and halt growth. I think it is also possible to end up with a famine, which makes population decline. If you push your taxes high enough when the city is already experiencing slow growth you may push growth to a negative.

There is a final, rather abstract way to make your population grow: slaves. When you conquer an enemy city you are offered a choice between occupying, enslaving and occupying, or exterminating and occupying. If you choose enslave a certain amount of the cities citizens will be removed from that location and divided up between all your other cities that have a governor; no governor, no slaves. This is quite handy; it allows you to boost your core cities and makes the new city easier to control. You can also get some new characters for the enslaving general’s retinue this way. Beyond that initial burst of slavery there is a steady, on-going +1% growth bonus for any city connected to the newly captured settlement by road. This extra bonus lasts for 20 turns, until the slave resource on the map disappears.

Religion
This feature only appears in the BI campaign. The BI manual has a good section on this; I suggest you read it.

There are three religions in the game: Pagan, Christian, and Zoroastrian.

On the settlement details scroll in BI you will find a new bar added: religion. It’s simple enough to understand. It represents 100% of the population, and each religion present in that city will be followed by a percentage of the population. The more visible on the bar a religion is, the more followers it has. The dominant religion is the one with more followers, obviously. The important thing is it does not matter if your population is 49% pagan and 51% Christian – the city will still be happy with a Christian shrine. Put in a pagan shrine, and the city will start to get restless until there are more pagans than Christians or any other religion. The dominant religion is the only one which really matters.

Religion is affected in a few ways:

-Shrines. More advanced shrines have a bigger influence; where a small shrine might convert 5% of the population each turn, the largest could do 20%.

-Buildings. There are a few non-shrine buildings which have a conversion bonus, usually a small one. One example is the Christian hermitage.

-Governors and family members. Nearly all family member has a religion (they cannot convert to another one. Once they find their faith they stick with it. Faith is assigned along with the other starting traits, and is probably influenced by the father, the settlement the child is considered to be growing up in (i.e. the one daddy is based in), and maybe by the religion of the faction leader) and will exert a 5% conversion bonus at all times in a settlement. This bonus stacks; if you send enough people of the same religion it is possible to convert cities in a single turn.

-Agents. Nearly all agents also have a religion, and they also will never convert to another. They have a small conversion effect.

-Neighbours. Cultural exchange does not end with swapping recipes.

-Gladiatorial games. According to the manual throwing games can have a pagan influence. This makes sense, historically speaking.

The official religion of the settlement is determined by the shrine present. If it is a 99% pagan city and has a Christian shrine then it is still a Christian city. In the absence of a shrine of some sort then the governor’s religion is the official one. Lacking a governor, the faction leader’s religion is used.

As far as conversion, those percentages, and influences go, all you really need to worry about is making sure the religion you want to be dominant keeps the largest percentage. A city will only convert towards the largest bonus each turn, so if a city is subjected to a 5% Zoroastrian, 10% Christian and 15% Pagan, only the Pagan religion will gain citizens that turn. However, if the percentages changed so Zoroastrian went up to a 20% influence while the others stayed the same, say because some characters arrived in the settlement, then the Zoroastrian religion would be the one gaining.

If a city has a different official religion to its governor then there will be some unhappiness. Characters with extreme faith cause more unhappiness, and characters can grow more extreme when forced to live amongst the ‘heathens’.

Squalor and happiness.
Squalor is a major issue in Rome: Total War. Squalor makes your population unhappy; if unhappiness gets too high they will riot. Squalor is the main cause of unhappiness in many cases. Squalor represents the general ills and upsets of a city; think crime, inequality, poverty, overcrowding and so on. On the most basic level squalor increases in proportion to your population; if you have a large population then you are more likely to have squalor. Getting slightly more complex, a large population is not just one that is a big number. A city can have problems with squalor shortly before it reaches the required population to grow to the next size. A city can also begin to have problems with squalor because of the governor’s traits and retinue, but more on that in a bit. But if squalor has to be generalised I suppose it is fair to say that squalor is more common, and generally more of an issue, in larger cities with big populations.

The government buildings, such as the Governor’s villa, affect squalor and you should always build them the instant they become available. The government buildings also have the nice benefit of enabling you to access the new level of buildings that arrives with your new settlement size. You seem to receive a fixed squalor penalty when you do not have the appropriate level of governor’s building in a city. The government family is the only family of buildings which affect squalor. Other families may counteract its penalties, but only this family reduces the penalty itself. Certain character traits and retinue characters will also affect squalor, both positively and negatively. A governor with one of the stingy family of traits will increase squalor with his miserly spending, but a governor with a prim and proper family trait will reduce squalor. There are other traits and trait families which affect squalor but you don’t really need to know what they are unless one of your governors gets them. Just keep an eye on what traits your governors pick up and send them to high/low squalor cities accordingly. The same applies to retinue members; try to transfer squalor boosting characters to family members in a city where squalor is not a problem.

Happiness can act as a counter to squalor, so build temples and entertainment (arena etc) family buildings to help combat the effects of squalor. Garrisons help keep a lid on rebellions, so if your city has high squalor you may need to increase the garrison, but remember that the garrison effect maxes out at 80%. Health increasing buildings are a bit of a double edged sword; the health bonus increases happiness in the city, but it also increases population growth. The happiness will help counter the effects of squalor, but the population will grow faster meaning squalor will increase faster too.

Squalor inflicts a population growth penalty. You can counter this directly with farms, and indirectly with buildings that increase public health. Remember that squalor grows in proportion to your population, so it may not be a good idea to try and regain positive growth in a city where the population has stabilised or begun to decline.

The best way to handle squalor involves careful management and construction. 8% population growth is a magic number; by the time a city reaches 24,000 people that 8% growth will have been completely countered by the squalor growth penalty, reducing growth to zero. To get this magic 8% you need to take your city’s natural growth rate (i.e. the one it starts with when there are no farms or growth boosting buildings, governor traits and retinue characters in play) and carefully find a combination of buildings which will add to (you can find the bonuses they give on the in-game tech tree) that base figure to reach 8%. If there are already some farms and growth boosting buildings present just work from that number instead; so long as the end number reaches 8% it doesn’t really matter how you get there. As your city will stop growing at 24,000 people the assorted happiness boosting buildings, along with a garrison and a decent governor should be sufficient to keep everyone happy.

http://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/pop%20growth.jpg
Note: It is the clumsily circled figure in this screenshot you want to reach exactly 8%, not the number given on the main city information screen, and not the number added up at the end.

24,000 people is an important number because it is the last population level you need for a city to upgrade; basically if the city goes much beyond that then you will not be able to get big enough boosts from your temples and other happiness boosting buildings to counteract the unhappiness caused by squalor. At 24,000 or under you should be able to manage, except in a very few cases.

When squalor gets so far out of hand it becomes uncontrollable (such as if you have planned badly and growth continues after 24,000 people) some people like to pull the entire garrison from the city, park an army next door and push the city into rioting with high taxes. Then they simply roll in with the army and recapture the city. The deaths caused by this take the city down to a manageable population level while leaving the buildings intact. In this way you can end up with a highly advanced city with a relatively small population.

As of patch 1.2 squalor is capped at 100% public disorder penalty instead of the previous 125%. This makes life a lot easier when dealing with huge cities. Anything past 30,000 people will no longer inflict an extra penalty so long as the Imperial palace is in place.

Some people just don’t appreciate how good life is!
Some provinces are inherently more rebellious than others. Epistolary Richard has created this map to illustrate the problem provinces:
http://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/unrest2.jpg

Health.
Health is an unassuming but important thing. If city health is poor it is more vulnerable to the plague; plague is officially Not A Good Thing. Healthy citizens are happy citizens, and this alone makes the health line worth building. Good health can boost city growth; this can be good or bad, as discussed earlier. Logic would suggest that health related buildings would reduce squalor; this does not appear to be true, but as they also increase population growth any benefits will be temporary at best.

Game for a laugh
The Roman factions can host games in their cities when they construct an arena (or the upgrades) in a city. The games cost money but improve the host city’s happiness for a short space.

What’s that flashing!?
You may notice icons flashing on your city information screens, usually trade icons flashing. I can’t explain this any better than the official FAQ, so quote time: “These represent effects that are about to disappear in the next turn. It might be that a trade route no longer exists, a building has been demolished, the garrison has left town, or you've just conquered the place. Think about what has changed for the settlement, and you should soon see a connection.”

How transparent!
To follow on from the point about flashing icons, you may also note semi transparent looking icons in the same screen. These represent the effects buildings you are constructing will have when completed. For example if you are currently building a farm you will see a faded out looking food icon in the population growth sector. Hover your cursor over it to find out exactly what effect is about to be added. I love this effect, it’s great for working out which money making building will give the best return. I queue one building up, look at the increase, cancel it and put in the next building, check the figure, and so on until I have tried them all. I’m probably very sad …

[begin fake comedy British accent]That is a capital question, old thing, what what. [end fake comedy British accent]
Cities that are a long way from your capital receive a happiness penalty. There does not seem to be much you can do to relieve the penalty, so make sure your capital is in a central location in your empire and when your empire starts to get very big try to counter the penalty in your outermost cities with happiness buildings, good governors, garrisons and the like. Don’t be afraid to move your capital about as much as is needed; it has no bad side effects, unless you go and park it too far away from some cities, boosting their happiness penalty by a lot in one go and pushing them into revolt.

There are two distance to capital tools out there that I am aware of, d0t's (http://bbb.unknownnet.com/rtw/bestcap.htm) and Ravenous Bugblatter Beast's (http://www.ravenousbugblatterbeast.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/bestcap.htm). They are very handy if you wish to place your capital just so.

Garrisons do have a limit
I said it before but I will repeat it now: garrisons max out at 80% happiness increase. If you add more troops when you already have 80% you will gain nothing except a larger maintenance bill.

I will also repeat that in the BI game peasants are only half as effective as any other unit when it comes to garrison duty. You need 2 peasant units to have the same effect as one normal one. This doesn’t matter anything like as much as you may think – BI peasants are cheap, really cheap. You can have the 2 units of them and still be paying less than half as much in upkeep and initial build costs than even the simple low level infantry.

Military or trade?
It’s a simple question; do you build your city for military (troop and agent production) or trade (raking in cash)? You should only need a couple of troop producing cities, probably in your heartlands. Your fist few cities are excellent candidates for military settlements because you will have longer to build them up, they should remain well protected until/unless your empire collapses or the civil war begins, and finally they should have larger populations than all those towns you enslaved or exterminated. If you use your starting cities to produce troops you will be able to pour out units close to the other Roman faction’s homelands, and so when the civil war arrives it should be easier for your to strike and cripple their own core provinces. In my short, 15 province games 3 troop producing cities was enough to fuel an batch of active wars on several fronts without problems. It did take a few turns for the new troops to get to the front, but if I had recruited from newly conquered lands I would have been using town watch instead of principes and hastati. In longer games it can be nice to select a few large, nicely located cities near your assorted frontiers to provide troops for that area if your main troop recruiting cities are some distance away. These outflung cities will probably not be as advanced as your core ones, but sometimes using some less advanced units is far better than sitting about waiting for your elite to slowly dribble in.

That leaves almost all your other cities to trade, and trade is easy. Simply build roads, the trader family of buildings, and a port if applicable. Sit back and enjoy the cash. Military cities might pump out the troops, but it’s the trade cities that pay for them. A balance between the two is vital.

One note: All cities should have walls, regardless of function. Proper walls, not flimsy wooden ones. Large stone wall and epic stone walls I rarely bother with, but the massive defensive boost ordinary stone walls gives over wooden ones is not to be dismissed. Walls are one of those things you either don’t need or need desperately, and if you don’t have them then it is usually too late to do anything when you reach the desperate stage. This applies even more so in the BI game; the world is far more dangerous, and walls give out nice bonuses to law and happiness.

Bums on saddles.
Every unit you recruit takes population from the city; if you recruit a 200 man unit 200 people will be taken from the city. If you are recruiting a constant stream of large units from the same city the population is going to suffer; it may even go into decline. If the population is too small you will not even be able to recruit units. This means you need to tread a fine line between draining your military cities dry and letting population growth get so out of hand they become uncontrollable. Ideally you need to set things up so there is a tiny growth even when you are recruiting unit after unit after unit. Finding this balance is up to you; it will depend on existing population size, the natural population growth, city growth as effected by buildings, and all those other factors discussed previously.

Unit, dis-miss!
This is the opposite of the previous point. When you disband a unit the soldiers will head to the nearest city and add themselves to the population. If you disband inside a city then that city is guaranteed to get the people. Sneaky people may be spotting something here; good for them. If you recruit a unit of, oh, let’s say peasants from city A which has a large population and problems with squalor, then send them on a nice route march to city B which is newly conquered and has a small population, then disband the unit inside the city then city A has reduced population and city B has gained population. Think about this: a way to reduce overcrowding and build up those newly conquered cities that little bit faster. Yes, it does cost some money in recruitment and maintenance costs, and you do have to micromanage a bit but the benefits far outweigh the negatives.

This works even better in BI – peasants are far cheaper.

Strangely, disbanding mercenary units adds to the city’s population.

We don’t need no stinking foreigners!
Again, this point builds on the last few. So, your mighty Roman army under the command of general Julius had captured a settlement of Gauls. Gauls are nasty people; they tend to be hairy and they wear trousers. It is clear to any good civilised Roman that these people are undesirable. The fact they have happiness penalties due to cultural differences is merely the final straw – they must go! When general Julius marches into the Gaulish settlement for the first time you can occupy, enslave or massacre the inhabitants. Occupying the city will leave the population intact, along with all their nasty hair and Roman hating ways. Enslaving will take a proportion of the population and distribute them to all your other cities which currently have a governor in place. This is good; it boosts your other cities while making the new one easier to control. Finally exterminating the population will kill off a significant number of the Gauls and make the city easier to control because it’s hard to have a good revolt when everyone is already dead. Personally I usually go for number 2, enslaving. Now, remember those peasant units you were going to send from your core cities to other cities to boost their populations? Why not raise a few from your new ex-Gaulish countryside residence (assuming anyone is left alive to go …) and send them off to a nice Roman city. There they will settle and be classed as good Roman peasants, and good Roman peasants shave, wear tunics and love being ruled by Roman factions. Unrest from culture is tied to the buildings in the city, not the people, and sending the people away while you work to replace the buildings which give foreign culture is one way to help keep the chances of revolt down. The downside is that it will take that little bit longer for the city to grow to higher levels.

So I conquered this nice little place in Hispania …
Any conquered city will be harder to manage if it is not of the same culture as the new owners; this applies to the non-Roman factions every bit as much as the Romans. There are several things you can do to reduce the culture shock and make the city easier to hold. The first is discussed above: killing/enslaving part of the native population. The fewer people there are in a settlement the easier it is to control. The next most important thing is to destroy or replace as many buildings constructed by a different culture to yours. Each building from a different culture gives a culture penalty. Buildings from the same culture create no unrest, even if you did not construct them yourself.

CA developer JeromeGrasdyke gives a nice explanation of the culture issue here: “Culture penalty has a maximum of 50%. As a general rule of thumb, the amount is determined by the proportion of buildings in the settlement which have been built by factions of your culture - for example, if you're playing the Julii, and you take over a Greek city which is split 50% between buildings built by the Greeks and the Brutii, you should see something like a 25% culture penalty. Then when you replace the buildings built by the Greeks, the culture penalty disappears. Who last built a building-of-governance has a substantial influence as well.”

So there you go, any buildings not constructed by your culture cause culture problems. The penalty will disappear when you ‘overwrite’ the old building with your own culture’s version of the upgrade, for example replacing the palisade walls with your own wooden walls. Temples cannot be upgraded in this manner unless the city already had temples belonging to your faction’s group; this is why they need razing to the ground. Sometimes you are stuck with the penalty, usually in the case of roads and farms; you cannot demolish them and if they are already at the maximum level of upgrade, or if you are one of the factions which cannot build the higher levels of these structures, you can do nothing but leave them be.

You can find out which culture group a building belongs to by hovering your cursor over it on the little panel which displays the buildings present in the selected city.

Here’s a neat list of what culture group each faction belongs to, provided by Maltz.
Group I: Romans. SQPR, Julii, Brutii & Scpii.
Group II: Greeks. Greek cities, Macedon, Thrace, the Selucid empire.
Group III: Barbarians: Gauls, Germania, Britania, Dacia, Spain, Scythia
Group IV: Africans: Carthage, Numidia,
Group V: Easterns: Parthia, Armania, Pontus
Group VI: Egypt

I don’t have a comparable list for BI. Sorry.

Military service is good for the nation.
Queuing up units deducts the cost from both your treasury and from the city’s population immediately, even if it will be many turns before the unit is built. So filling your build queue with peasants can be a very good last ditch effort to control unrest, because it lowers the population with instant effect.

Damaged buildings.
Buildings damaged in a siege or by an assassin do not function until repaired, no matter how slight the damage might be. Repair buildings as a priority. Note that you can repair multiple buildings in the same turn, as well as begin construction on a new building. Repair cost is dependant on the damage, more damage costs more to fix up.

Bribing cities.
If you bribe a city, and this is far harder to do then bribing an army especially if there are enemy spies or family members in the city, you have precisely one turn, the turn you bribed them in, to bring a large enough army to quash the resulting unrest in. If you do not get that army in, or if the army is too small, then the city will revolt back to its former owners or to the rebels.

The plague.
I don’t really know much about the plague. All I can say is keep city health high and hope you never catch it. Do keep family members, agents, navies and armies away from cities with the plague or they will catch it themselves. If you have a family member, agent or army in a plague ridden city leave them there; moving them about will only spread the plague. Yes, this does mean you can deliberately infect a spy or assassin with the plague and then send them to infiltrate an enemy settlement, potentially spreading the plague there too. You evil person you. The plague reportedly burns itself out after around 6 turns as long as no new infection source is added, and units take 15 turns to be free of the infection, so quarantine, quarantine, quarantine!

The original capital of Macedon will always be hit by the plague sometime around 255BC.

Those of a … crueller persuasion may like to note that deliberately infecting an overcrowded city is a good way to reduce the population a little. You will lose a few people from your garrison too, but they can be retrained.

It’s like talking to a stone wall!
Walls are vital if you want your city to withstand an assault. Wooden palisades are flimsy and will be battered down in seconds, but epic stone walls will require dedicated siege equipment and time to break through. All three varieties of stone wall allow you to place troops up on the walls. Missile units gain more range because of the extra height and melee troops will be able to push off ladders and fight attackers as they pour out of siege towers. Note that any unit which requires space and/or good, disciplined formations to fight effectively will not work too well on a wall. Keep those phalanxes on the ground. Also any lazy unit which uses some poor animal to get around instead of walking on their own two feet will not be able to climb onto a wall. Walls also add to the number of turns a city can withstand being besieged. If you think a city is likely to be attacked, or if you want to secure a key city, then build walls. I try to get at least wooden walls in all my cities; I build the walls when I have run out of other options, unless the city is likely to need them sooner.

In BI walls give bonuses to law and happiness.

My city is making –256 denarii!! Help!
Actually, no it isn’t. Yes, I’m going to cop out and quote the official FAQ again: “They aren't 'earning' negative amounts of money. When a settlement is shown with a negative cashflow it's a sign that it is not 'pulling its weight' in your economy. If possible improve its trade income (improve the markets and ports), look at the governor's vices very carefully, or reduce the size of your military forces. Military upkeep is divided between your cities according to their population, so just reducing the settlement garrison won't have a direct impact.”

froggy’s rough build order for low tech cities.
1.Roads. Regardless of what and where this city is roads are number 1 if they are not already there. Roads allow your units to move quickly, bring in basic trade income, and best of all they are cheap. Plain roads only take a single turn to complete.

2.If the settlement has been recently captured or already has problems with unrest a shrine is a must because of the happiness bonus. If you conquered the settlement make sure any existing shrines are razed to the ground (right click on them in the city information screen, then click the hammer icon in the bottom left corner to destroy them) and replace them with your own. This reduces the culture penalty. If a shrine is not needed at this point I build a basic farm (land clearance) to get my population growing sooner.

3.Mines, if they are available. Money is nice. Reliable income at a preset level is nice. Mines are nice. Build mines wherever you can.

4.Trader or barracks, depending on what function the city is going to have. If I build a barracks I build the trader next.

5.I build whatever I have not constructed out of the items I have just listed. Walls are the final item. Now I wait for the city to grow.

6.When the city grows to the next phase I immediately built the new government building; this combats squalor neatly. From there the cycle repeats; upgrade roads then build trade or military depending on the city. I never build any more farms, so the level 2 farms are left off the list.

7.Repeat until you run out of stuff to build and need to wait for the city to grow, then repeat step 6 with the new building selection. Keep doing that until the city is maxed out.

The build order is quite flexible, for example if I am in a heavy attrition war and I need more troops than my military cities can supply I will build barracks in my trade cities instead of trade buildings. I also tend to add the occasional military building to trade cities anyway, just in case. I always build the trade buildings in military cities; you can never have too much money.

No such recommendations are possible for BI. The difference between factions starting conditions is too vast, and many of the cities are already developed decently.

Hit the road! (what did the poor road do to you anyway?)
Roads deserve a bit more in-depth coverage. There are four levels of roads: none, dirt, paved and highways. Only Romans can build highways. Barbarian factions can only build dirt roads. Civilised non-Roman factions can build paved roads as well as dirt ones. The effects of roads are best split in two:

On trade: dirt roads add nothing to trade. Paved roads give a 100% trade income bonus to all land routes. Highways give a 50% income bonus to all land routes.

On movement: This does not fit into neat, precise increases because there are some extra variables at work the research team working on this topic haven’t been able to isolate yet. Also different types of units (infantry, cavalry, artillery, agents) all have different movement rates, and so roads give slightly different bonuses to each type. The movement bonuses apply to all units using roads, friendly and enemy. To try and sum up concisely I shall borrow the results tables created by therother:

% Increase from dirt

=Dirt|=Roads|=Paved|=Highways
-|44.4%|88.9%|122.2%
-|42.9%|71.4%|114.3%
-|20.0%|60.0%|100.0%
-|50.0%|83.3%|116.7%


Progressive increase

=Dirt|=Roads|=Paved|=Highways
-|44.4%|30.8%|17.6%
-|42.9%|20.0%|25.0%
-|20.0%|33.3%|25.0%
-|50.0%|22.2%|18.2%

So, to tackle the conclusion in a slightly more advanced way: dirt roads are high priority items; they are cheap, beneficial and very quick to build. Construct them ASAP everywhere. Paved roads are also very high priority items as they give a big trade boost, a big movement boost, are still quite cheap and fast to construct. Highways are less important, more a midlevel priority. They are very expensive and take a long time to build, and their bonuses are smaller, making all this fuss too much for them to be honestly worth it the instant they are available.

Automanage.
Be careful in the priorities you set if you let the AI manage a city; you can end up with it pumping out loads of crap units and wasting your money. I have no experience with automanage, and I would not recommend using it.

A bit about the map
Nice title, no? Since I have already covered aspects of the map like trade goods and roads in this section I may as well finish it off and bung the last few details here too.

Watchtowers.
Watchtowers cost 200 denarii and are permanent; there is no known way to destroy them. They appear instantly; there is no build time. Watchtowers can only be built by generals. They act like upkeep free, stationary spies, revealing a portion of the map around them. If they are placed on hills or in clear areas they can see further than if they are plonked down in an area surrounded by tree and mountains. Use logic in placing them; if something would block your view in reality then it will do so in the game.

Contrary to popular enduring rumour, watchtowers do not reduce or prevent rebel stacks spawning. They can and frequently do spawn in an area not covered by the fog of war. They do, however, possess a strange attraction to rebels; stacks will often move to stand on watchtowers and camp there.

Forts.
Forts can only be built by generals and they cost 400 denarii. They also appear instantly, but they will disappear if they are left unoccupied by any unit of any faction for one turn. I have seen people saying that forts are bugged because the AI will never attack them. I can attest to my cost that this is wrong; I had an army of 500 wiped out by a massive marauding force of Gauls. I have also seen it said that the AI might attack some forts but never one in the Alps; well I can prove that wrong again. Guess where my army was located …

The idea behind forts is to give your army some extra protection in the case of attack; I find them to be death traps. Sallying out of a fort is extremely hard, the walls are very flimsy and the towers don’t put out nearly enough arrows to be of real aid. If you decide to be brave and wait for the enemy to come through your walls then you might die of old age first; if the AI had no units capable of knocking the walls down then they will stand outside and do nothing. Now I can confirm that the AI really does not seem to think of bringing some kind of siege equipment with it when attacking forts, and unlike cities there is no option for them to build machinery outside the walls. Remember how back at the beginning I told you about that option to remove the time limit? Well here is the one kind of battle where the time limit is handy. If I hadn’t disabled the timer I could have sat in my fort, listening to the shrieks of the Gauls picked off by my towers until the time expired and I won. Well darn; instead I had to try and sally forth, and that got incredibly messy. But anyway who wants a 25 minute battle involving sitting around doing nothing at all? Even at full speed that is tedious.

Famous battles.
Sometimes when you win a battle you will find a little crossed sword marker on the map. It appears being outnumbered makes it more likely that you will get a marker, and I personally have found I tend to get them when my battle is labelled ‘a heroic victory’, but the exact details of how the markers are assigned are still mysterious. If you hover your cursor over it then you will find a few details about the battle which took place there. It’s a neat little feature but nothing important; you gain nothing from it except a warm, fuzzy feeling every time you scroll past the marker on the map.



http://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/roman_v.gifhttp://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/roman_i.gif Gold, beautiful gold! Running your economy.

Money, without it your empire is doomed. Making money seems to be one of the biggest stumbling blocks new players encounter. It really is quite easy when you know how.

Money is spent on many things; the only on-going expenses each turn are wages for your armies, family, and agents. You will probably lose a bit of money to corruption as your underlings decide to give themselves a well deserved bonus without bothering to ask you; well you are busy conquering the world so it’s quite thoughtful of them, really … kind of. Money is forked out as a one off sum each time you order a building or unit to be constructed. Note that queuing up items takes the money from your treasury now, even if the item will not be built for another 20 turns. Retraining or repairing a building costs money; the amount is proportional to the work needed. Retraining a unit from 1 man back up to 160 and equipping them with better weapons and armour costs much more than just re-equipping a 160 man unit in need of no new men.

The Big 50k
As your treasury hits a certain preset limit you will find your family members becoming more corrupt. That limit is 50, 000 denarii. It’s a good idea to try and keep below this figure to limit the vices, unless you have a real passion for seeing your might empire run by a family of gambling addicts, embezzlers, collectors of expensive vases, and dirty old men who spend entire fortunes on dancing girls. Every night. For the rest of their lives.

The not so big 13k
In BI the preset limit for corruption is much lower, just 13,000 denarii. This was actually raised from the original even tighter limit by the 1.6 patch. The patch also made the corruption traits a bit harder to gain by making it necessary for a governor to be in a forth level city before the game starts rolling that virtual dice to see if any traits from these lines are gained. The chances of gaining each trait are also much lower than in the original BI release.

Farming.
Farming provides a small part of your income, but you don’t have to do anything to start tapping into it. Your cities will farm automatically, although you can upgrade the farms yourself to bring in more cash and boost your population growth. As we discussed earlier this is seldom a good idea. Farm income depends on the quality of the farm land; provinces like the Nile delta have great farmlands and naturally make more money than the Sahara. It is important to know that farm income is not stable; a bad harvest will reduce your profits and a good one will boost them. You will not be notified of the harvests your cities are getting; you can find out by calling up the city’s trade information screen. As with so many things to do with farming you cannot influence the kind of harvests you get.

Basically farming is a nice, steady earner with no input or expenditure required. Just sit back and let the cash trickle in. You will not be able to rely on farming income alone; you must supplement it with other forms.

The exact formula for farming income, courtesy of Zukarakox:
Farming Output = % gained from base farming x 200 + Numbar gained from farms. (Its listed in the info of farms)
Farming Income = (72 + 4 x Level of Town(Town = 1, Large town = 2)) x Farming Output

Taxes.
Taxes can be summed up essentially as more people=more taxes. Breaking it down further than that requires some rather unpleasant looking maths and it’s really not important for anyone but the numerically minded stat loving player. If you really want to know more check this thread (http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=37831). Increasing your tax rate gets you more money, decreasing it gets you less. How shocking. Your difficulty level also appears to affect tax income; harder difficulties get slightly less then the base rate (normal) and easy gives slightly more.

Taxes are a steady flow of cash; you probably won’t pay much attention to them as they hum along in the background nicely.


Mining.
Mining is simple; if a province has mining resources then you can build mines to exploit them, if there are no resources there can be no mines. Mining resources can be spotted on the map; they look like little nuggets of metal. There are two different kinds of mining resources: gold and silver. I think that they bring in the same amount when mined, although in previous Total War games the amount was dependant on the resource type. There are two levels of mines; mines and mines +1. Mines +1 will bring you more money than simple mines but you have to build the plain mines first and the city the province belongs to must be at size 2 or more. You outlay more and bring more back, trading cash in hand now for extra cash at the start of each subsequent turn. I find that to be a fair exchange.

Mine income is stable, unlike the other forms of income. Mines never have bad harvests, they do not get blockaded and war does not put an end to the income. If a mine says it will generate 200 denarii per turn it will do so until it is destroyed or upgraded. Small but steady are the key words when talking about mining income. I always build mines when I have the opportunity, usually as a matter of some priority just behind roads, basic ports and any buildings I need to get the city happy.


Trade.
Ah, now we are talking about real money. Trade is more expensive to set up and gets more expensive as you try to make it more efficient. It is unreliable; roads and ports can be blocked by enemy or rebel armies and this will hurt your income. You cannot trade with people you are at war with so it is easy to trash your economy with a badly timed war. Trade really requires you to send diplomats to pester people for trade agreements. Those are the downsides, now the upside: huge quantities of cash.

Salivating yet? Probably, the prospect of huge piles of cash to spend on cities and armies can have that effect. I would ask that you try to dribble into a bucket or something instead of making a mess on the floor; I only just had the slaves polish the mosaics.

Roads and land trade.
Roads carry out land trade. Land trade is represented by little caravans rolling along the roads on the campaign map. More caravans = more trade = more money. The better road types can take more caravans; therefore it is a great idea to always upgrade your roads. This also boosts your army and agents move speeds inside your empire, so that’s a win-win situation. Froggy loves roads; you should love them too. Um, ok if froggy is honest roads do have a single downside: they speed enemy movement too, so if someone invades you will have less time to react. However I do find this to be a tiny fly in a very big, pleasant smelling tub of ointment. Any enemy or rebel army parked on a road will halt the flow of caravans, cutting off part of your trade. Smack the army with extreme prejudice to restore the cash flow.

Land trade appears to take place between all of your cities automatically, as long as they are linked by a road. This nets you a small income which appears to grow depending on how good the roads are between the two places. It also seems that land trade will take place with neutral or allied factions if you have a road connection even if you do not have a trade agreement. It is suspected that you have to know about a city (as in you can see it on the campaign map, even if it is currently under the fog of war) before you can trade with it. Problematically you will not trade with all the cities you know about. Trading partners are selected automatically each turn by your merchants; they will select the partner who will bring in the most profit.

Ports and sea trade.
Each level of port can sustain one trade route up to a maximum of three when a dockyard is built. You will see a blue dashed line with tiny ships sailing along it flowing between your port and the trade partner. Trade partners are chosen each turn according to how much profit they will bring you; your merchants automatically select the best partner. You do not need to build any ships to trade. You may find the AI blockades your trade ports when you are at war; you will need warships to lift the blockade and restore your sea trade income to the targeted province. Shorter sea trade routes will make more money than longer ones. If an importing city is too far away no trade will take place, i.e. Londinium is not keen on selling to Alexandria because it’s a slightly long trip, especially when there is that nice Tara place right nearby. This does mean that cities tend to trade with the same partners, game after game.

Trade agreements.
A thorny subject and the main source of mystery. According to the manual a trade agreement boosts the amount made from trade between the two partners. Trade agreements increase the number of markets you can sell to, according to CA’s FAQ. I suspect this means potential markets you can sell to, as opposed to letting you trade with more people at once. Since your merchants will automatically trade with the most profitable market each turn having more to chose from is a good thing. Collecting trade agreements is generally easy and acts as good training for your diplomats.

Trade buildings.
The trade family of buildings (trader, market, forum etc) increases trade income in their home province. Thanks to the researchers over in the Ludus Magna we now know that the first trader building adds 10% to the trade income from land trade (the local settlement only), and 10% to all exporting routes. A further 10% is added for each increased level. So build trade buildings as and when you can, and rejoice in the extra benefits they bring, such as trainable agents like spies. Do note that these buildings increase population growth very slightly. The distance between land trading partners has no affect on how much the routes make, unlike sea trade.


So, to sum up trade: build roads and ports everywhere as quickly as possible. Upgrade them whenever possible. Get trade agreements, and try to remain at least neutral with most factions as war prevents trade. Build the trade family of buildings to boost profits. Keep your roads clear and an eye on your ports to spot those rare blockades. Combined with your farms and mines this should make you plenty of money, even if it is a bit vague and arcane.

[frogbeastegg]

http://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/roman_v.gifhttp://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/roman_i.gifhttp://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/roman_i.gif Meet the family (but watch out for Lupus, he’s a little strange)

Your family, a bunch of wastrels, drunkards, fornicators, perverts, and a general drain on your economy. I’m sorry, but if your family has ended up like that then it is your own fault for the most part. Discipline! Iron discipline! You are the head of the family, you are, in essence, the paterfamilias and you should damned well get off your backside and get on with paterfamiliasing!

In Rome: Total War your family collect vices and virtues to represent their personality, deeds and abilities. They are collected in a logical manner; if your general fights in each and every battle personally (he doesn’t have to lead the charge, just make sure he kills someone at some point, even a fleeing peasant is better than nothing) he will develop a reputation for being a hero. The more people he kills at once the more likely he is to be seen as a hero. If he keeps on behaving like a hero in battle after battle he will grow in stature, becoming a more famous hero. Conversely if you leave the same man to rot in a no hope frontier town with just a temple of Bacchus and the locals for company don’t be surprised if he takes to drinking, orgies and other less than desirable pastimes.

The best way to forge your family into a beacon of Roman virtues is to use your logic and make them do things likely to result in good traits, while steering them away from anything likely to give them bad ones. All your menfolk should get military experience from time to time, even your governors. You don’t have to send them into pitched battle against 10,000 screaming Germans with just a small knife and no army. No, a simple battle against 200 rebel slaves backed by an army of 500 veteran soldiers will more than suffice. You don’t need your governors in the field constantly, just the odd battle every now and then to stretch their legs and let them prove their Roman military prowess and general manliness. Make sure they kill a few people personally; you wouldn’t want them accused of cowardice, would you? Swap out governors of your frontier backwaters occasionally, spread the boredom and lack of decent toilet facilities fairly and you are less likely to end up with a handful of hate filled individuals and a bunch of soft plushies with a thing for over-eating. Make sure your generals kill someone in every battle they fight; this cannot be repeated enough times. Cowardly generals really hurt your army’s morale, and the traits fighting generals pick up are often very good.

One interesting fact is that many traits are not gained by a family member if he has moved in that turn, so if your governor pops out of the city and immediately returns he will not gain certain traits at all, good or bad. You don’t need to move much, just enough to deplete the movement points by a little. This does not affect those traits gained in battle; if your general fights well, or ‘fights’ like a coward, he will potentially gain a new trait even if he had exhausted his movement limit. Some traits do require your character to have moved in his turn, such as the harsh lifestyle family of traits. The traits which are blocked by moving seem to mostly be those exacerbated by buildings, such as the drinker line, and those to do with government, such as the farmer line. This is quite logical when you think about it; a chap sat around dealing with tax collectors for a full turn is more likely to gain some new skill, or lack thereof, in dealing with them than a chap who has been travelling for part of the turn, and has therefore spend much less time with his tax collectors. On the battlefield you are more likely to gain command stars and good traits if the numbers are even or against you. Vastly outnumbering the enemy hampers your general’s growth. Of course this does not take quality into account, so if you have 200 well equipped veterans against 500 peasants fresh from the fields …

When you reach the corruption thresholds (discoussed above, 50,000 for RTW and 13,000 for BI) your governors are more likely to pick up bad financial traits. This is officially a pain. It can be a good idea to give huge piles of cash to other factions when your treasury gets near the limit, at least in the RTW campaign. In BI the limit is too tight.

Every good Roman needs a family, as in wife and children, not as in pesky brothers to come over at 2AM and ask if they can borrow your chariot, only they’ve met this nice girl … Your male characters will marry on their own; you cannot control this. When they finally decide to take on that good Roman responsibility you will receive a special announcement at the beginning of the turn telling you. Typically they only tell you after the wedding, so you don’t get to go along and eat all the cake. Bah!

I have seen many people asking how you get children. :sighs: Well you see when there’s a mummy and a daddy and they love each other very much …oh, go ask your own parents! Yes, it works like that in the game too, but without the love. These are political marriages and love is an added bonus, not a prerequisite. Both your characters know what is expected, so just leave them to it. No, posting viagra pills into your PC via the CD ROM drive will not help matters, nor can you consult a wise woman, give them an educational puppet show, or anything else like that. There are some things your characters have to do themselves; and this is one of them. Note that, as in real life (what?! You mean the game isn’t real life?!), characters can be barren or have a hard time conceiving. It also takes time; generally your characters are not prolific bunny rabbit types popping out a child every turn. Look, it takes 9 months and each turn is only 6 months, so do the maths. What I am trying to say in a funny way is, don’t expect hordes of children and don’t panic if it takes time, even a long time. I had to wait 20 years for one couple to finally do something other than stare resentfully at each other at breakfast each morning. Hehe, whatever they had been arguing about for those 20 years must have been a real doozy; after the first child they had two more almost immediately.

Let me repeat once again for emphasis that breeding is slow, you will probably only get a couple of children from each couple, if that, and it will probably take them years to get that far. Don’t get impatient or worried if there are no children within ten years of the marriage. You know it’s all a bit perverse; in RTW older women seem more likely to have children when in real life it is the other way around. Confusing, no?

Now I lied when I said there was nothing you could do to help, well only slightly so put that axe down and stop menacing the frog! If you keep your general out in the field fighting away it seems less likely he will marry or have children. Well, you can hardly expect a good, respectable Roman matron to tag along into the middle of a muddy battlefield, can you? It quite simply is not proper. Family members in cities tend to have more children; this is quite logical. Actually, there is something else you should know about those prolonged campaigns. Well, you remember how I said this was not a love match? Well, just think of poor wifey at home, alone and married to some berk she might not even like. Now that berk is not in Rome, he is in Libya and doesn’t that present a marvellous opportunity to get a wee bit closer to that gorgeous Marcus who gave you a lift home in his chariot last week? Yes, it does. No, this is not the fevered imagination of a frog at work; it does actually appear characters are more likely to get the unfaithful wife series of traits if they are away from home, day after day, year after year, decade after decade. Actually I guess those who get the traits are only the ones who are unfortunate enough for their wife to be indiscreet in her indiscretions. Not all characters who are away from home get this trait, and not all characters who stay at home are immune. This one does actually swing both ways, and male characters who are away from home seen slightly more likely to pick up vices about their best friend’s wives, female slaves, and so on. Well, you know what they say about the Romans … Ahem, let your generals visit a city occasionally, even if it is one they are occupying; this does seem to reduce the likelihood of these kind of reputation destroying discoveries. Let me stress that the at home/out all day thing is not huge, it does not guarantee that your field generals will never have children or will end up with a bunch of bad family vices; it only makes it very slightly more likely in my own experience and letting them sit in a town once in a while did seem to help.

Certain traits and retinue members increase fertility. The retinue members can often be found by staying in a city with one of the population growth boosting temples.

The number of family members is possibly tied to the number of cities you control and the number of family members you already have. This is why sometimes you experience a massive baby boom shortly after taking a load of new cities or after a lot of deaths. The game seems to like you having enough people to play with, not too few or too many.

Children often either take after their parents or rebel and turn out their polar opposites. Picture young Gaius, “Gosh, Pater! They way you drank the whole wine cellar dry in one go was so impressive! Can I have a go?” or “Pater, you are a disgusting drunken lout and I hate you!” One version of Gaius will turn out to be a drunk; the other will have no drinking traits or will have sober traits. That’s not a cast iron guarantee though; sometimes young Gaius will say, “Oh Pater, I am afraid your drinking makes no impression on me at all; I just can’t be bothered to care.” and then not get any drink related traits. It does seem more common for children to react to their parents then blandly ignore their existence full stop. I wish the same applied to those noisy brats in my local shopping centre …

Daughters: these strangely dangerous creatures deserve special mention. They have no traits; you can never do anything much with them, er actually like all female characters they are almost non-entities. The one time you do actually get to do something with them is when they approach you about a husband. Usually they chose the first scumbag they meet … actually I think someone must choose for them - what sane 12 year old girl picks a 72 year old man with a bunch of pervert vices and no talent in anything? Now, you can turn down their choice or accept it. If you accept you basically never see your daughter again, outside of the occasional birth/death announcement. If you refuse the hunt goes on, and next time she might bring home someone a little better. Only let your daughters marry nice men, ones with some talent and good character. Their husbands will become part of your family; they will become your governors and generals, and fathers to your next generation.

And yes, I am serious about the 12 year old girl getting married; this is historical, if not entirely palatable to a modern audience. If you don’t like it keep refusing permission until she’s older.

Widows will never remarry, so if your darling girl marries someone at the tender age of 12 and he dies the next turn that’s it, she’s condemned to a singleton’s life. Don’t worry; I’m sure she’ll find something to do to pass the time and someone to keep her from getting too lonesome, but you won’t benefit at all from it.

Rebel without a clue
After 1.2 the rebels now appear to get many more family members, newly generated ones instead of just sad remainders of destroyed factions. In addition to these rather random chaps it also appears that if you turn down a suitor requesting your daughter’s hand in marriage he has a small chance of taking the refusal a bit hard and running away to join the rebels. Quite what he hopes to achieve by this I don’t know; perhaps the pain of rejection is so great he wishes to die, perhaps he hopes to impress you, perhaps he just can’t stand the humiliation. Whatever, he’s never going to be able to marry the girl, so it’s probably kindest to just kill him and crush his little army. Alternatively you could bribe in into your family and make him live the rest of his miserable life next to the woman he loves, watching her marry and live with someone else. Oooh, that is evil.

Adoption and training family members
In the RTW campaign you can adopt people into your family. In the BI one you can train new generals. These are exclusive details; you can’t adopt in BI, and you can’t train generals in RTW.

You can adopt characters into your family in two ways:
1.Bribe an army led by a family member, either from another faction or rebel. You will only get the troops if you can train that kind of unit yourself, but you will definitely get the family member and his personal guard.

2. Let an army lead by a captain win a few battles so the captain gains some rank stars, When he reaches around two stars you will be offered the chance to adopt him into your family. I keep encountering conflicting reports on what happens when you adopt a captain; I’ve never been offered the chance myself. Some say that the captain appears in your capital, leaving his army behind. Others say that he remains with his army and becomes a general without any travelling.

Adopted characters will be added to your family tree under a sponsor from your own family, as if they were that character’s child. I have seen people claiming that adopting someone will break your game and make it impossible for your characters to have children. This is FALSE; in all my games I have adopted people and had children born afterwards. Actually, in one (brief, for testing purposes and soon abandoned) game I had no children until after I had adopted someone.


Gaining family members by training is simple. Take a look at whatever unit serves as your general’s bodyguard. When you have constructed the highest level of stables in a city then, if your family is not too large, you will receive a unit headed by a family member each time you train a bodyguard unit.

Loyalty
In BI family members have loyalty. Only the two Roman factions have this attribute. When loyalty gets too low a general may revolt, taking all the men in his army with him and starting a civil war. Low loyalty generals may join in another’s revolt. Traits affect loyalty; some increase it, some decrease it. Winning battles also affects loyalty: it lowers it. Several battles may leave your general feeling overconfident and deserving of more than he presently has.

Titles also affect loyalty, increasing it nicely. Titles can be moved around in the same way retinue characters are (put the two family members in the same stack then drag and drop the title onto the person you want to have it). If a titleholder dies then the title will be given to another character who meets specific requirements laid out in the games files; sometimes no one meets the requirements, and sometimes the random chance factor of the trigger means it takes a few turns for the title to be given out, but titles cannot be destroyed. Even if one is dormant for 50 turns it is still there and can still return if its requirements are met. At this point it would be useful to give a list of what the titles are, their effects, and how you trigger their return. I don’t have that information, so sorry.

Making use of the useless.
Bad family members with rubbish traits do have their uses. Gather them up into one army and send them off alone into enemy territory. It’s a win-win situation. If they die then you save money on their upkeep and have an empty family member slot which should eventually be filled by someone who might be more useful. If they don’t die then they are mauling your enemies, possibly even to the extent of capturing cities and becoming decent fighters.


Retinues

Your characters will pick up retinues as they travel about the empire doing whatever it is they do. Generally those followers will be useful, and relevant to the character’s work. Generals tend to pick up drillmasters and other soldier types, governors pick up cooks and other peaceful types. Each character can have up to 8 retinue members at any one time, and the retinue members vanish without trace when their character dies. This means it is actually a good, but not nice, idea to strip elderly characters of all their close friends and leave them to die alone. You can swap retinue members between characters if they are in the same location, i.e. when it looks like they are in the same army. Simply open the character information screen for the character who has the retinue member you want to move, then drag and drop that member onto his new master’s portrait at the bottom of the screen.

Try to keep retinue members where they will do the most good; for example give those who gift a reduction in troop costs to the governor s of your military cities.

Academies and other education buildings have an effect on retinues, as described by CA developer JeromeGrasdyke: “The Academy generates ancillaries for characters which are inside a settlement which contains an Academy. If you examine export_descr_ancillaries.txt you will be able to spot them, together with a lot of other ancillaries which are linked to the presence of buildings.”

To find a complete list of retinue characters and their effects as taken directly from the game files check appendix B. The list was compiled by Ebannon.



http://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/roman_v.gifhttp://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/roman_i.gifhttp://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/roman_i.gifhttp://www.totalwar.org/strategy/frog/rtw/roman_i.gif A handy dandy guide to agents of all varieties.

The diplomat.
This section, dealing with the diplomat, is written by Tamur and taken with his kind permission from his diplomacy guide.

The Birth of a Diplomat

Diplomats are trained from cities that have a Governor's Villa, and take one six-month turn to train. They become available to you with only their name, possibly some traits, and a rating called "Influence" (which we'll discuss in gre