Roxolani (BI faction)

[frogbeastegg]

This faction requires modding before it is playable.

[Franconicus]

Mylady,
Why don't you just post how to mod too. This could save a lot spamming!:bow:

[frogbeastegg]

Because I don't know what needs doing to get them playable :shrug:

I just got a PM requesting the thread because the faction was now playable with modding. I was hoping someone else could supply the details of how, such as the person who sent the PM. Give them time ... :crosses fingers:

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

Roxolani: Campaign Objectives

Hold 10 settlements including: Pannonia, Illyricum et Dalmatia and Colchis.


Roxolani: Intro & Starting Position

In order to make the Roxolani faction playable, you will need to create a campaign description for them in the campaign_descriptions text file located here:

C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War\bi\data\text

For more details on this, refer to this thread (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=54822).

Alternatively, you can download a mod that does this for you, which includes plenty of other bug fixes and general improvements. player1 has a bug-fixing patch here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=55464). professorspatula also has a bug-fixing patch here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=54943).

I'd set the Estimated Difficulty for the Roxolani as Moderate, since they have to hold provinces in two main areas of the strategy map. I also set campaign / battlefield difficulties to VH / VH during my campaign with the Roxolani.

The Roxolani begin the campaign on the Steppes with a single settlement, Campus Roxolani, which is situated to the northeast of the Crimea. The only serious threat the Roxolani are faced with at the start of a new campaign is the numerous Hun stacks to the north and northeast. The Huns may pass by quietly, or decide to sack your single settlement, either way, you'll need to move down from the steppes yourself, so you should form a horde as soon as possible (even in the first turn). You will typically receive 3 horde-stack armies, which is more than enough to cause some damage amongst your adversaries (just not the Huns ~D).


Starting Position: Tactics

The objective provinces are cunningly placed, and you'll need to think about which province to go for first. This is because Pannonia and Illyricum et Dalmatia are held by the Western Roman Empire (WRE) and Eastern Roman Empire (ERE), respectfully. If you decide to go for these two neighbouring provinces first, be prepared to face powerful armies from both sides of the Roman empire, plus Barbarian hordes looking to settle in these areas, such as the Slavs when they appear in 410 AD.

Colchis on the otherhand is owned by the Rebels at the start of a new campaign, so would appear to be the easiest to take control of. However, it is situated between the warring ERE and the Sassanid-Persians (or Sassanids). If you decide to settle here first, you may soon find yourself involved in the fighting with both of these 2 factions. Also, they are both considerably wealthy empires, and can afford to replace losses with brand new full stack armies in next-to-no-time. This is something the Roxlani cannot afford to do near the start of a new campaign, so beware.


Finding A New Homeland, Settling & Expansion

Once you've made your mind up regarding where you're going to settle, the next problem is getting there with your armies intact. A good idea is to temporarily take control of a nearby settlement (from your starting position) that has sea access, build a port if necessary, then start churning out boats for transport fleets. If you're going for Colchis first, you could march your armies down from Campus Roxolani, but you will lose valuable campaign turn-time in doing so.

When you have enough boats to transport your hordes, move to your target province as fast as possible. Pirate ships are common in BI - they can be devastating to small, inexperienced fleets - which usually means your army could be lost at sea, and its game over. Land your forces prematurely if necessary, make them march the remaining distance.

https://img212.imageshack.us/img212/3484/illyriabeach3pr.th.jpg (https://img212.imageshack.us/my.php?image=illyriabeach3pr.jpg)
The beaches of Dalmatia, filled with some angry-looking Roxolani hordes ~D

Once you've arrived, unleash the hordes on the unsuspecting targets, take what you can, then aim to settle quickly. This is because you don't have the manpower to cause serious damage, unlike the Huns. Aim to build-up both your armies and defences quickly, as the nearby enemies you will encounter are both aggressive and powerful.

https://img212.imageshack.us/img212/2278/expansion9gt.th.jpg (https://img212.imageshack.us/my.php?image=expansion9gt.jpg)
Swift expansion is required in order to get a foothold on the mainland.

Survive the incoming onslaughts after settling, and the campaign becomes a lot easier. Use your spies to spot weaknesses in your opponents defences - poorly guarded outposts are ideal targets that you can sack quickly and easily. Always consider exterminating the population once you conquer a settlement because of cultural penalty, unrest and religious factors makes occupying a foreign settlement difficult. You can make a fortune from doing this on multiple large / huge cities, which can go straight into raising new armies.

https://img212.imageshack.us/img212/2391/italy4md.th.jpg (https://img212.imageshack.us/my.php?image=italy4md.jpg)
Settling around Illyria allows a quick expansion into poorly defended Italian provinces.

Focus on building a strong naval fleet too, as you will need to conquer the remaining province(s), depending on which one(s) you conquered originally. If you settled around Pannonia and / or Illyricum et Dalmatia, Italy awaits just across the sea. Usually it is poorly defended, especially central and southern regions, so you can easily take control of the rich economies in Italy even with limited armies.

https://img212.imageshack.us/img212/1415/greece4ha.th.jpg (https://img212.imageshack.us/my.php?image=greece4ha.jpg)
The provinces in Greece are also wealthy targets.

Otherwise, you can expand into Greece, Central Europe or Northern Italy. The level of resistance you face will depend upon which faction(s) dominate the surrounding areas. In my campaign, the Lombardi and Franks were dominant in Western and Central Europe, but this may not be the case in your campaign. Decide which factions you should make alliances with, and who to go war with.

https://img212.imageshack.us/img212/3597/victory8cy.th.jpg (https://img212.imageshack.us/my.php?image=victory8cy.jpg)
A black fmv victory screen - really rewarding after all those long hours of hard gaming...


Roxolani: Armies

The Roxolani have a solid cavalry and cavalry archer backbone, with some infantry and missile support. They also have access to special horde units when searching for a new homeland.

Infantry

* Runaway Slave Spearmen
* Bosphoran Infantry

Cavalry

* Sarmatian Virgin Cavalry
* Sarmatian Armoured Archers
* Alan Noble Cavalry
* Alan Horse Archers
* Sarmatian Noble Cavalry
* Recruitable Warlord / General

Missiles

* Sarmatian Virgin Foot Archers
* Virgin Horse Archers

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Nice post.

Side note: isn't a "seasoned" alcoholic more properly referred to as...marinated?~D

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

Nice post.

Side note: isn't a "seasoned" alcoholic more properly referred to as...marinated?~D

~D The joys of the English language, where a single word has more than one meaning...~D Its supposed to mean all-year round, or seasonal.

Anyway, I need to stick some screenshots in here (and re-attach ALL my others since ImageHostingUS (http://www.imagehosting.us/) is crap and always down ~:pissed:). Will edit this when they're uploaded and attached.

[EDIT:]Screenshots added to main post above.

[Tyrac]

I would set this faction estimated difficulty as Hard or possibly very hard. It is FAR more difficult then the WRE. I won the WRE campaign the first time I played BI and I had the setting VH/VH. Conversely I have yet to win the Roxolani campaign.

Their are many reasons for the difficulty of this faction.
Starting position.
They start in one of the least valuable capitals in the game surrounded by provinces of next to no value. Using this region as a base makes it so you must wait years and years before you can even produce your Bos Infantry, the only thing you have that can stand up to the cavalry you face. This region makes no money and by the time you start to get some cash your neighbors are very big and very rich and see you as very tasty.

The territories you must gain and hold.
Only hold 10 settlements, how hard could that be? The distance between the western territory and the eastern is tremendous. You HAVE to have your capital in between them or you simply cannot hold the due to unrest. Unrest will always be a huge factor for this faction. Bigger then most others. Why? NO PEASANTS! You have to garrison your cities with herdsmen or slave spearmen and this will cost you up to 5-10 times as much per man to garrison your cities as factions that can build peasants. Good luck holding a city in Italy AND Colchis. (Not going to happen on VH/VH.) :san_rolleyes:


Who you fight.
In the east you will be fighting the Sassanid empire. Hey its just the AI right? Even on VH/VH you ALWAYS slaughter the stupid AI. How tough can they be? The answer is their cavalry. If their was ever a unit that was built to cover for the mistakes of a stupid AI it was the BIG Sassanid Cavalry. They are Invulnerable to missile fire, half of them fire their OWN missiles, and they are heavy enough to take on your only real spear unit (which you cannot afford early game) head on. Yes it is the A.I. and you can defeat these armies but they hit you with a full stack EVERY OTHER TURN on VH/VH! Your main stack will be tied up fighting full stacks of sassanids as long as you are at war with them. If you are lucky then the ERE will fight the Sassanid and if you are not you will get to fight both of them at the same time.

In the west you get to fight ...... Well actually it is better to list who you will not fight in the west. The Celts and probably not the Alemani or the Franks. You will probably end up at war with everyone else at some point. ALL the hordes go past your western objective provinces at some point.

For variety the Roxolani are the most fun to be. You get to fight a huge variety of army types and often you face several different ones each turn.

The real downside is that if you are going to win you have to pull out the cheese tactics. You have to fight out all the battles on the map. You actually need to Pause like a wuss in order to win big enough to have your army able to beat the NEXT full stack. ( The A.I. can't pause so if you use pause then you are never allowed to say the A.I. sucks, try to do as well as it does without doing things it cannot do.)

Here is a summary of my 4 campaigns so far as the Roxolani.
1. Went straight west for Colchis. Took it while it was still rebel. Spent the next 100 years fighting full stacks of Sassanid around Colchis and was never able to get enough to move west. Time ran out.

2. Here I tried to move my horde at the start into the rich areas of Greece to take the fat rich cities there. Unfortunately there were other hordes that had this idea and I could not take my goal of Constantinople because the Sarmatians got there first and their horde is alot better then mine. Instead I took Thrace and Athens. The Roxolani Horde is a very weak one unfortunately and after taking 2 strong cities it is used up and does not have the strength to take another. Consant fighting in Greece weakened me and bad luck had a loyalist revolt in Athens. A full stack of gold sword, shield, and chevron Roman Heavy Infantry and Cataphracts ended any hope for me and I quit that campaign when they laid seige to my only good settlement Thrace.

3. This game I tried a new trick. I went horde right away but re occupied my city right away. This gave me lots of maintenance free troops and 2 more generals right at the start while still holding my capital. I swept the North eastern plains and began to develop my economy. After I could build Bos spears and had a very good stack I moved to Colchis and took it. Fighting the Sassanid full stacks but with a better econ then before I started to look west. In between me and my western goals were Huns, Sarmatians, WRE, ERE, and a bit of small hordes scattered about.
I started to move along the coast of the black sea to take advantage of Sea trade. Despite my best efforts the Sassanid were wearing my down bit by bit in the East but the new income from Sea trade was making up for it. That is until the ERE allied with the Sassanid and went to war with me, killing my trade at the same time as the Lombardi, who had taken out Burgundi and had most of that section of the map invaded me and sieged multiple settlements. The Sassanid broke me in the west and I went into deep debt.... fast. It was a hole I could not get out of and after many frustrating turns of things getting steadily worse it was game over.

4. My current campaign. Did the horde trick and sent my diplomats everywhere and tried to make alliances with everyone. I did not attack anything anywhere. Instead I allied with the Sassanids immediately and watched them war with the ERE. The ERE took colchis and they fought and fought to my great joy. I also allied with the huns and followed them in their rampage south west. I was able to occupy the territories they sacked and therefore expand without any real wars. I took all the slave territories and focused again on econ. I kept my armies very small and relied on diplomacy to keep me alive. It worked.
Also in this campaign I have pulled out all the stops. In the worst battles I have used pause as a tactic for the first time since I was first playing M:TW (Pause is cheating as far as I am concerned.) I have used pathing AI in sieges to lure the A.I. armies in range on my archers on the walls and decimated them and then let time run out and do it again ont he next turn. I build 7 or 8 siege towers in sieges and USE them as artillery when I assault the walls.
In this campaign I had strong armies and a decent economy. My powerful western stack pushed into Northern Greece and actually took some "real" cities while I was able to keep my trade relations with my neighbors on the Black Sea. That is until a war started with the ERE. They had lost all their non asian provinces so when they demanded that I become a protectorate I laughed and ignored them. Even though I lost some trade I had the Sarmatians and ERER rebels to trade with. I pushed towards Aquincum and took it from the Huns who held it. After that everything went to hell. The ERE made allies over the next few turns with EVERYONE that bordered me. The A.I. beat me with diplomacy. One by one each power declared war on me and invaded. Full stacks of sassanids and ERE in the east pushed up and took my capital. The Slaves appeared with his HUGE horde right on top of me and drove me out of Pannonia and Campus Campus. Burgundi invaded from the north west and the Sarmatians beat me out of the rest.

Right now I have one stack made up of almost all Untrained generals and the remains of all my armies mashed together. I am down to my original settlement and the one directly to its north.

I feel that at its heart the great weakness of the Roxolani is, ironically, its lack of peasants. With no option for any truly cheap garrison units cities will revolt constantly OR you are forced to tie up so many resources in garrisons that you cannot to take both the East AND the West.

So has anyone won as the Roxolani on VH/VH with out useing any Rome shell cheats or some personal Mod? If so please give details. :)

In my next try I am considering 4 possibilities.
1. Instead of trying to maintain a hold on cities I take with expensive garrisons I will allow the cities to revolt and then retake them and exterminate them. Cheese tactics? Yes but I have lost an awful lot. :san_grin:
2. Go by Boat to constantanople and take it as my capital. If I fail just restart right away.
3. Try to move to Italy for the easy pickings there and build up a huge warchest and then move back eastward.
4. Play a differenct faction just to make sure it is the faction and not me that is the cause of all this loss. Perhaps I will try the Sassanids. :san_cool:

[Nfilheim]

I'm playing the Roxoloni on Hard/Hard, and I have some impressions from my campaign that may help some people. First off, your biggest enemy is economic, not military. The Roxoloni have capable infantry (although it takes a while to get), great archers, and excellent cavalry/cavalry archers, and with some skill you can defeat most armies larger than your own that will be tossed up against you. The unit lineup is identical to Sarmatia, but they require 15 to your 10 settlements, so this is a good warm up if you want to challenge yourself with Sarmatia later on.

In my game, I built up an army of archers, horses, and spearmen, horded, and then headed for the city of Salona, sacking every ERE settlement along the way for that extra cash I knew I would need down the line. After that, I took Salona from the WRER, and dispatched my remaining horde forces to the city to the upper right, held by the Huns at this point. After kicking them out, I had a dinky little empire with enough forces to hold both from the retaliation by the WRE. The Huns were settled (and therefore weakened enough) to agree to a ceasefire (although I had to grease their palms) and trade rights.

The economy started to hurt me pretty quickly, though, since I was at war with the WRE, WRER, and the ERE. None would agree to a ceasefire, so I took the fight to the WRE and eventually took all of Italy and the island of Sicily. This gets the money pumping, and hurts the WRE enough that they might agree to a ceasefire.

The sea trade is your biggest asset, and maintaining friendly relations with the coastal factions nearby can help. But if they won't trade with you, simply acquire their ports for yourself, you need 10 provinces, anyway. Once you have enough income to keep a positive cash flow (exterminating cities you capture is virtually the only way to keep them happy, and gives you some temporary surplus to replace buildings if possible to reduce cultural penalties as well as hire troops), venture inland, but only so far as is required by your faction goals. Take Aquincum, garrison it, and then keep with the original plan of going after port cities.

Greece is an excellent target, as well as the city in Macedon, as they have ports and bring you closer to Colchis. That's going to be the most troublesome city to deal with, and I preferred to leave it to last to conquer. Going to war with the Sassanids, while inevitable, can be avoided til relatively late in the game. You need their trade for as long as possible! Ideally, you want to have at least 9 settlements other than Colchis between Italy and Greece. If the Sassanids have Asia Minor by this point (a likely scenario), why bother going to war when you can launch a raid on one city and attain victory? Holding Asia Minor is annoying at best.

One of the best things I did was sack the ERE cities, it left them rebel in my game long enough that after I took Italy and Sicily, I was able to take them from relatively weak rebels. And as a side effect of spending all of that time (I starved them all out), the other horde factions spent themselves or settled before I did, allowing me to get last choice of settling area.

And for Tyrac: I would reccomend your 3rd possibility, Constantinople is a good spot, but you are further away from Rome where you can expand the easiest. You need easy conquests in the beginning due to a lack of funds to make bigger armies. Plus the Roman cities allow you to train all of your best units as soon as you take them.

[Unforgivable-Fenrir]

I tried to mod it so that i could play as them, so i put them as playable. But when i started the game and went to the main campaign, i clicked on them but it shut down the game and went straight to the desktop. what should i do to stop this

[Aemilianus the Younger]

You need to add a faction desription to the faction and you also need to cut and paste the faction into the playable section in the descr_strat.

there are also a bunch of mods for this sort of unlocking but its easier to do it manually.

[WarLord of the East]

do the same what you do wıth sarmatıans at he battlefıeld theır armıes are the same but ınstead of movıng west you can try south agaınst sasanıd empıre or byzantınes
fırst byzantınes then sasanıds ıt wıll requıre a serıes of hard fıghtıng but ıf you can take anatolıa wıth ıts rıches you can move to the europe ıt wıll be safer sınce no horde enter anatolıa means that no fancy surprıse wıll occur relıgıon mıght be a problem but hıgh populatıoned cıtıes also provıde a lot of dınarı when slaughtered

[OlafTheBrave]

I think the Roxalani may be the best of the eastern hording factions being the most eastern and last so to say of the hordes. Use your capitol and possibly the Sarmation capitol for sea trade. It is imperative to sign a round 1 alliance with the Huns so they will immediately head west. You can get their former settlement for nothing. Grabbing the low value steppe territories have some hidden bonuses. These bonuses are in general development. You can easily hold all the eastern passed away settlements that the other horde factions do not want. But by holding these territories you will generate a large number of rebels. These rebels are all archer or General and archer units. 2 units of virgin cav for the larger out breaks and all others dealt with by a solo general can quickly upgrade you generals to 5 or 6 stars. Now those 3 bronze from the start Virgins are not so bad a s a cav unit becoming at least a medium cav unit. The herdsmen are a hidden unit aswell. While their stats blow and they suck, since they are horse they can quickly change settlements and upgrade the steppe settlements. I think Campus Barbicum is key for this and opening a second trading front in the north sea. I also think since you are following the hordes sailing to England with the idea of generating the Romano-British is there as well. You can initiate and latter trade with as your latter enemy will be the WRE. By fighting the Rebels in the steppes you can have some 6 or so star generals to kick dissipated horde or ERE?WRE booty in Greece/Balkans.
I think unless it can be grabbed ultra early which I do not see, Ally with the Sassinids and get Koralis latter. Your earliest expansion will be in the worthless abandoned steppes. Getting your generals up to speed and a few buildings built for them. Then start falling in on victims of opportunity from the westward driving horde factions. With decent cav and superior generals pushing this cav up it is no problem.

[Prussian to the Iron]

epic necro post 4 u!!!

[IceWolf]

Seeing as their capital was in east Jesus and in the path of the Huns I demolished all the buildings I could and horded into 4 1/2 stacks on the first turn. I marched down to Conmstantinople took it and Thessalonica then had to retake Constantinople. After exterminating them the city turned green and I had just enough of a horde left to take Athens. I set taxes to VH. I had to reduce these later but it worked for quite a few turns. I built my first army which had 4 generals 4 virgin cavalry, three mercenary commies and the rest HAs. I took Salona, hopped over to Italy found Tarantum besiged by the Vandals so went north and took Roime. By now I was able to support a second army which consisted of 2 generals 2 Alan cavalry (much sturdier than the virgins), three mercenary commies and one Bosphoran infantry. The rest HAs. This army went north and took Surinumand is heading west to Italy. The first army took Ravennna. Had a few fights with the Vandals which saw 3 of their stacks reduced to a harmless level. They then moved away so I'm heading that army south to retake Rome which rtebelled. I plan on taking Tarantum and Medioludunum then making an army in Greece that I will ferry across the Black sea in boats to take Colchis(Kotais) and fulfill the vicory condtions. In conclusion, the Rox are a lot of fun and turn the map a pretty shade of blue. Whatr's not to like?

Icewolf

Icewolf

[IceWolf]

Well I won. I got a pitch black screen as my triumph parade. I could make the entire world bow to the power of my Roxolaini if I had the time and patience. We own all of Greece and Italy plus a few more territories. HAs rule. I've disabled the Huns and Vandal hordes there's nothing to stop me.