Your Best Single Piece of Advice?

[Elvisius]

Been playing this game for a Year or so now, and still love it - Genius!!
But what's the best advice you could could give a new player?
My mate has just bought this and asked me this very question.
My two cents? Always manage your General's Advisors.

[RLucid]

Take your time on the battle field, don't rush, don't hurry and come up with a plan.

[Iñnsomñni]

Double Advice :yes:
Cavalry cant flank Pikes :no: :oops:
Bribery is the best form of corruption, so i must be corrupt :yes:

[Gaius Scribonius Curio]

Never underestimate the power of the humble cavalry archer!

[Quintus.JC]

My best piece of advice for a newbie is Read the Smackus Maximus guide. Then you're a newbie no longer.

http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/rome-total-war/551582p1.html

[Darkvicer98]

Never underestimate your enemy and if you know you can't win against a forcemuch biggerthan you,retreat and avoid fighting.

[Celt Centurion]

Never underestimate your enemy and if you know you can't win against a forcemuch biggerthan you,retreat and avoid fighting.

Darkvicer98 here gives good advice but I would like to take it one step further.

After you have tried to back up and avoid fighting, they will often take another step toward you and you can retreat no further.

Still fight smart. Make him pay dearly for attacking you the second time.

A few nights ago, as the Greek cities, a city revolted. Nothing unusual about that. What was unusual is that not one full stack replaced mine, 4 showed up. I took the city back quickly enough, but I also had a backup army about half a turn's march to the East. One of the full stacks attacked. I backed up. They attacked again and it was about 3,000 against 600. I lost the battle, but his victory was Phyrric with only about 400 men remaining. I was even more surprised to find that what remained found their way to another city and I was able to retrain them.

If you have no choice but to fight a much larger army, hurt them as much as you can when you do it!

Good advice Darkvicer98. I'm sure you would probably agree with my supplement.

Strength and Honor

Celt Centurion

[Quirinus]

Never underestimate the power of the humble cavalry archer!
By the gods, seconded! Persian cavalry is..... well, Persian cavalry.


If not, I'd say.... uh, use your common sense? One thing I find attractive about RTW is that common sense actually works remarkably well-- that forest of spears looking deadly from horseback? Right you are. That raving loon had another raving loon son? Makes sense: insanity, along with some traits, are hereditary.

[Gaius Scribonius Curio]

lol, thought you'd approve.

Using common sense does (I'm sorry) make sense as well, and in fact everything said thus far is much more useful than my flippant remark.

Something that has come in useful for me since I discovered it (Thank you Omanes) is that if you really want to avoid conflict with someone, or merely build up a good working relationship, annual gifts of 100-200denarii can persuade the AI not to attack/listen to you. It really does work! Several uneasily neutral stacks (being none to subtle in advancing into my lightly defended lands) have been deflected through a small gift to their rulers. Be consistent about it and the army may not set off in the first place. Its not foolproof, but if you're hard-pressed elsewhere then it can be useful.

[Praetor Rick]

Been playing this game for a Year or so now, and still love it - Genius!!
But what's the best advice you could could give a new player?
My mate has just bought this and asked me this very question.
My two cents? Always manage your General's Advisors.

Always attack one of the four power factions (the three Roman factions and Egypt) as soon as you can. They won't get any easier to defeat later on. Only delay if you just cannot handle a war at the moment.

[Darkvicer98]

Darkvicer98 here gives good advice but I would like to take it one step further.

After you have tried to back up and avoid fighting, they will often take another step toward you and you can retreat no further.

Still fight smart. Make him pay dearly for attacking you the second time.

A few nights ago, as the Greek cities, a city revolted. Nothing unusual about that. What was unusual is that not one full stack replaced mine, 4 showed up. I took the city back quickly enough, but I also had a backup army about half a turn's march to the East. One of the full stacks attacked. I backed up. They attacked again and it was about 3,000 against 600. I lost the battle, but his victory was Phyrric with only about 400 men remaining. I was even more surprised to find that what remained found their way to another city and I was able to retrain them.

If you have no choice but to fight a much larger army, hurt them as much as you can when you do it!

Good advice Darkvicer98. I'm sure you would probably agree with my supplement.

Strength and Honor

Celt Centurion
Yes i agree,though i was thinking about what happens when you retreat etc but when fighting 2 full stack army's,you can't not think that your not going to take many lives with you?

[Elvisius]

Wowser! Thanks guys! Didn't expect so many tips!
Playing as Brutii, I set off for Egypt tonight, to try and teach them a lesson so they don't over run me with chariots later in the game. But my first port of call (the Lybian Region - sorry it's name escapes me) had a full stack of Macedonians! And a second half stack which disappeared to the south while I was attacking their City. And I thought after seeing off the Greeks I only had to take Larissa, to wipe those pesky Macedonians off the map!!

Excellent input, thanks again!

[Quirinus]

Oh, Cyrene. That happens. The Egyptians or Numidians take the Greek city, they can't hold it, it rebels to the Macedonians. You're heading for Egypt straight away.... nice. I should do that someday too, lol, keep the Egyptians off their feet.

[Caliburn]

Don't underestimate the power of Archers.

They take care of those Egyptian chariots, scare Elephants, kill Horse Archers and cause casualties to key enemy units that would otherwise carve through your formation like it was butter.

Archers need support, though, so usually you need someone to actually take care of the melée. And of course to counter enemy archers.

Archers are a way of *not* underestimating the power of Horse Archers... HAs using Cantabrian Circle deplete Archers' arrows though, but if the enemy uses that, their HAs can be trapped easily...


The following is a bit off topic, but still relevant in that it shows the relevance of Archers.

I remember using very few archers in my first MTW campaigns, thus having to counter HAs the hard way, at least until Crossbows and Arbalests became available. In Medieval, the units have a much tougher armour and take fewer casualties from arrows than in any other Total War game.

In Rome especially the old Egyptian ueber chariots machinegunned me until I was forced to start using Archers.

These days archers have a key role in my Medieval armies as well, and I find them quite useful despite their limited killing ability. So you always learn something new from the new games you can try in the older games of the series as well...

[Subedei]

Look after your economy.....it pays off....

[Rolo]

contary to that advice Subedei, I would suggest using all of your resources early on to take as many cities as you can. That pays off.

[happymango99]

Sea trade is the key to enormous wealth