Roman: Brutii

[Joszen1]

I've also just dusted off RTW and set out with the Brutti. I managed to nab Syracuse, Lilybaeum, Patavium, Mediolanum, Massilia and Caralis before the Julii and Scipii moved. Now I have all of greece while the Julii have a huge stack drink wine in Palma and the Scipii have Thapsus. Good luck to them during the civil war. (h/h).

[baydaway]

actually it is easier to win you just need to press ` in the game and poof you got your place to type cheats just type add_money 40000 (this is MAX amount) on the cheat sheet and u have extra denarii you don't nid to attack carthage............ if you attack they will crush your navy and use phalnx formation to cut throght your battle line...................




THIS IS WHAT I DID error T_T lol i went to use 10 min to pump up my money with add_money 40000 then i transferred aulus brutus to my capital and hired menceneries NEXT....... i build up my navy and train equites ....... guess how i buld my stable.... CHEAT ALSO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! type process_cq (city name) example:::: process_cq rome haha then i used add_population 4000 (max) and this guy called Gaius Marius went to help me upgrade my soldiers to legionaries and you can conquer the WHOLE Mediterranean.......... on my last campaign i did a mistake i left 1 unit of tranii on italy and rebels attacked me............... and i conquered all the lands in barbarian invasion with roman (eastern empire)

[baydaway]

I've also just dusted off RTW and set out with the Brutti. I managed to nab Syracuse, Lilybaeum, Patavium, Mediolanum, Massilia and Caralis before the Julii and Scipii moved. Now I have all of greece while the Julii have a huge stack drink wine in Palma and the Scipii have Thapsus. Good luck to them during the civil war. (h/h).

gauls will attack you and take pativium and miediolum from you

[vaytuds]

I managed to nab Syracuse, Lilybaeum, Patavium, Mediolanum, Massilia and Caralis before the Julii and Scipii moved. Now I have all of greece while the Julii have a huge stack drink wine in Palma and the Scipii have Thapsus. Good luck to them during the civil war. (h/h).

[vaytuds]

I managed to nab Syracuse, Lilybaeum, Patavium, Mediolanum, Massilia and Caralis before the Julii and Scipii moved. Now I have all of greece while the Julii have a huge stack drink wine in Palma and the Scipii have Thapsus. Good luck to them during the civil war. (h/h).
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[Sheogorath]

As if the Gauls are any threat. Nothing beats Roman infantry if they're organized and you guard your flanks. I once fended off a full stack of Carthaginians with nothing but two Hastati and a unit of Principes, just by setting my guys into defense mode and using town streets to hold the flanks.

[Verjigorm]

I find that a few units of Equites will rout most Gallic armies. The Gauls are very fragile when it comes to morale. Just being engaged by cavalry in the flank or rear seems to turn them into cowards.

[Myth]

I don't know what you guys are doing fighting Gauls as the Brutii, this faction has the best possible expansion prospects out of any Roman family.

Step 1: Take your good general and all the units, diplo and thief over to Greece. Milk the Greeks and Macedons for gold.
Step 2: Take Appolonia and subseqently the Greek controlled town below it. Jump on a boat.
Step 3: Build a solid navy and lurk around Sparta. The Spartan king has a habbit of sailing East most ofthen than not.
Step 4: Either wait for the Greek forces at Sparta to be divided or sail away. Isolate the peninsula with your navy, attack the stack of archers/peltats that has a habbit of walking around the hillside next to Sparta.
Step 5: If you can, bait the Greeks in to attacking you so that the units of Spartan Hoplites come out of the town and charge at your Hastati. Get some Veities at their backs.

After you capture Sparta head down and comfortably take Athens and then start a war with Macedonia buy taking Corinth. From then on I personally have not had any problems, as gold is plentiful and your two cities in Italy + Athens, Sparta and Corinth can supply supperior troops while you conquer the rest of the world.

[MajorFreak]

Plague bearing spies is certainly cool.
***
BTW, I don't think that spies can actually infect enemy field armies since they don't actually enter the enemy stack.

hehehe...build a fort near one of their stacks...the AI is a sucker for forts (and since a spy keeps it alive...well, you get the idea)

[MajorFreak]

I got my 10 eye point thingy super assasian over to Rome and tried to assasinate some of the family members. My assasian kept missing his targets. Over and over. I tried him on the Scipii faction heir and he killed him fine. I tried again on the Senate faction leader. He had a five percent chance. He died trying and I was outlawed. YES!!! Time to kill everyone

wow...never knew that. will have to try that next time i play...maybe i'll patch to 1.5...heck...i even have BI disk gathering dust. lol

[MajorFreak]

RE: vs britans Don't use a traditional three line apporach. Match them up in a line with your infantry (guard mode), with archer auxilia supporting from behind on skirmish. Then target their chariots with your Roman and Missile cavalry and skirmishers. AI chariots tend to charge alot, so keep them occupied while your Cohorts deal with their swordsmen and warbands.
It would however be best to attack them in their settlements where there is less space for their chariots, rather than in the field.
Im fast coming up to a confrontation with the Brits in my Brutii campaign so hopefully we'll be toasting victory together in Londinium soon!

I've belatedly realized the prime use for gladiators is to take out chariots - just amazing results! Although, uhm, as far as dealing with the missile fire from the damned things i'd go with merc elephants (more on that later...first off i got about 10 more pages to read. lol)

[MajorFreak]

I am not a fan of assassins. They fail far too often, and the really good ones that are left after a hundred turns or two are too few and far between to actually do much damage. I don't recommend using sabotage since damaged buildings can just be rebuilt in the next turn. Better agents. Lots of them.

good use for assassins at key points on the frontier, once they're too old for counterspying, is to run assassination attempts/sabotage to reboot the randomizer when reloading a save game cuz your best general got the plague when you hit 'end turn'

[MajorFreak]

Or you can get lucky. In my game, where the civil war hasn't begun yet, the Senate sent its entire army out of the city with just a regular family member in charge (not the faction leader or heir). One 45,000-denarii-bribe later, Rome is garrisoned by just the faction leader and faction heir. Can't wait for the civil war...

hmmmm...i did that too...about a HUNDRED years ago. lol. I don't think rome has hired any replacements. funniest thing ever i suppose...i'm assuming they're going to make troops once the civil war starts?

[MajorFreak]

....try to keep my denarii below 40k to avoid the trait penalties. Am I missing something?


Brutii are the easiest Roman faction (vanilla).

Your natural sphere of influence is the very rich Agean.
You can recruit Cretans in the pre-marian era to get long range missile and don't have to go far to pick up Horse Archers for skirmish/raid forces.
Of your early opponents, only Macedon fields decent cavalry.
Your temple set has the most useful mix of bonuses and you can add to these by maintaining Artemisian and Aresian temples in some conquered cities.
You only need boats for short hops, so you don't have to worry about out-building the AI fleets.
You still get to start by picking off 2 weak barb cities in 3 turns if you want.
If the Selkies get bumped from Sardis quickly, you may never have to face elephants in battle and have the option to "wall off" from the Eggies and get your 50 in the North if you want.

that's pretty much what i'm doing...with an emphasis of keeping below 50,000gp treasury. Although i "wall off" at Antioch just so i am in easy reach of elephant mercs or "ellies" as everyone here seems to prefer. I ignore the senate unless they offer up major exotic unit rewards.

difficulty is VH/VH. After rushing the Aegean and enslaving any large city (with all slaves going to only one city at a time), i pretty much turtled around the temple of artemis in Larissa (my new capital) while i built up my army stacks to keep the treasury contained. I next took crete then rhodes then rescued Pontus from extinction by taking the southern half of Asia Minor to Antioch then stopped. At that point Marius reforms took over (although i didn't retire my old style armies for fear of losing control of the revenue balance. I had about 6 stacks by then) After a while I overran Thrace after they'd built pantheons to Ares and a couple of theatres. Next it was Dacia for their temple of farming. It's currently 100BC and i'm wondering what to do next...do i try to please the senate which is begging me to attack Egypt for a few decades now in hopes of a 3rd first legionary cohort, or cause a civil war and play a defensive strategy in hopes germany/spain take out julii and Egypt counterattacks Scipii?

I'm also playing unpatched to simplify general generation. Oh, and i play with 'small' unit sizes just because i hate weird stuff happening to pathing in cities, although some of the bugs are really annoying it's mostly cosmetic. The capital being the only place heirs pop up creates a situation where i really don't let my generals stray, so all of my Seleucid holdings have captains only commanding. I'll probably end up leaving only captains in my northern territories as well, or maybe letting them all rebel so that germany or scythia start rampaging...hmmm

meh...all i know is i'm going to try the realism mods next game

[TomCS]

First of all, great guide, thanks to Doug-Thompson. Second of all, whenever the plague comes from Thessalonica, that's when you just go rampant and invade most of Greece in 5-10 turns, and end up with 200,000 denarii and Macedon's extinction, with around 150-160% public order in most cities, especially if you move the capital to Athens until the Civil War, because taking Larissa on turn 24 guarantees a plague-carrying general if he's in the city. And believe me, plagued cities do whatever you want, I was able to keep most of them at either High or Very High taxes, and they still had at least 150% public order.

[FlimFlam]

Greetings!

First I just want to say that the information in this thread is quite excellent, I have learned quite a bit reading only a few pages of posts! Thank you to the creator and all contributors.

I would like to submit my own strategy regarding The Brutii Family.

Firstly it's best to discuss some methodology, as i play the campaign with a high level of meticulousness.

Aside from the two starting cities, Croton and Tarentum, I don't like it when cities aren't pulling their weight, so the assimilation process of any city begins with setting up it's economy. I build roads, farms and traders as a priority. The earlier you get them the better off you are in the long term, though it puts a damper on military units you could have potentially made. However, these things quickly start to pay off as your trade, and population growth all benefit. If ports can be built, they are also seen as a priority. Later in the game things like sewers and arenas are also prioritized, as getting these things prevents riots and the plague. If you do these things early, later in the game you will find yourself able to take care of your entire domain and then make war with your excesses.

This is all probably common stuff, but it illustrates a philosophy of steady and sustainable growth. Now onto the strategy specifics...

Instead of fighting Greece and then Macedonia, pit them against one another. It requires playing a very thin political game with groups of allied nations. Flood the map as much as you can with spies and have diplomats available wherever you may need them. Secure trade rights with every nation, and ally with the allies of your enemies. (Thrace, Scythia for example).

Ally with Macedonia, even though they are treacherous backstabbers :) . If you can dissuade Greece from attacking Appolonia, tension will build between Macedonia and Greece, and with luck (or skilled bribery) they will begin warring with one another.

This involves ignoring a lot of senate missions, but to be honest i don't think it matters a great deal. They still seem to give me plenty of office positions anyway...

Politically you want good relations with Greece and better relations with Macedonia (as they have won in the past when i attempted this strategy)

While Macedonia and Greece fight it out, you are free to conquer Dacia, given the right political setting (If Greece is allied with Dacia, it might thin your relationship with Greece by attacking Dacia, but the Dacian regions are the natural place for the Brutii to secure once the Aegean port cities are secured (save for the one Scipii port). The senate will ask you to take Patavium, and after you take it recommend a ceasefire with Gaul.

Take any Barbarian cities that you can. (hopefully after Dacia takes them, thinning itself out in the process)

Ally with Germania and then Dacia will become completely surrounded by your allies, which is an excellent time to conquer it entirely. Because you are allied with all your new neighbors, the risk of invasion is a lot lower, so you can hold your new provinces with less.

Throughout the early, mid and late game, knowing where every other nation is at politically is essential to success. Most of the time for me, the choice of who to conquer next is usually made by finding out who the targets allies are and what network of alliances they are in, and then choosing the side which creates me the fewest potential enemies.

Once Greece and Macedon have thrown their stronger armies at one another, you can consider conquering them. Once i tried to actually ally with Greece and take out Macedon together, this didn't work very well as Thrace and Scythia seem to be pretty tight with Macedon.

Finish off Greece, and then you can take on Macedon.

Once fighting Macedon, the problems i have ran into are that Thrace and Scythia then decide they are my enemy, but I'm not sure if this would always occur.

The benefits of this style and strategy are that you can take out weaker cities with smaller armies and hold them with smaller armies. You take cities faster because you can do so with less, and your political arrangements make you safer and better off than any arms race with an opposing nation. Because you make sound investments early game, your relatively large number of cities equates to huge amounts of money. At this point, you can keep doing the same thing. Analyse political webs and extend yourself as far as possible wherever possible.

You will still likely need to create larger focused armies to take specific towns you want and manage your expansion campaigns, or to defend against your enemies, but for the most part you will operate with very thinly spread and strategically placed small groups of units, which primarily serve the function of routing rebels. When it comes time to turn on an old ally and conquer a new frontier, using all your wonderful paved roads and your relatively powerful navy out of the Aegean, swinging units from one frontier to the next can be done fairly rapidly.

Thrace and Scythia, Pontus and Armenia become enemies as you move into the black sea and toward the upper right portion of the map. Having the sea-line from the Aegean to around Tarsus represents a potent chunk of sea trade, and Securing the edges of the map provides a boarder that you don't need to defend. At this point you can expand down towards Arabia and over through Germania.

Personally i enjoy this style because since everything is so thin and meticulous, the decision making becomes more fun than the actual playing of battles (which i only do if i feel i need to to win, or if i need excellent attrition). In the mid and late game, there is so much going on that it can literally take more than an hour to play a single turn, and the level of complexity in your decisions depends on how thoroughly you choose to investigate things.

Has anybody else played a similar style? And especially, can anyone see any major flaws in this strategy?

[Craterus]

I've searched but apparently there's nowhere to boast about this:



That's the whole map in 80 turns. Could've saved several years if I'd thought to send a few idle stacks towards the steppes while I was mopping up Rome.

Started off with a blitz, hemmed the other families in by taking Sicily, North Africa and the Gallic provinces around the Alps. And after that, I just kept going. Alliances with Thrace and Armenia lasted a surprisingly long time allowing me to focus on other factions. Probably most useful in dispatching the Egyptians so quickly but I guess the sheer speed of the campaign meant that even they couldn't build too many of those pesky axemen and chariots.

And conquering Egypt went a long way towards providing an economy that could handle my large military spending.

[cutsdadestro]

I found the best strategy with the brutii is to take southern greece and use their usually superior infantry production facilities, inlcuding a shrine for weapons upgrades in sparta, to mass produce hastati. Send a few to mop up greece and macedon, then sned everything you can at egypt. Attacking jerusalem should give you a nice and easy foothold. Then continue this blitz to alexandria and the other nile territories. This will give you excellent cities for cheap for egypt usually has its armies far afield. After these territories are taken, The rest of the campaign is easy. This was on veryhard/veryhard btw. I conquered about 27 territories before the marian reforms.