View Full Version : My Julii campaign hit the fan...
pants223
08-31-2005, 20:26
I am a total newbie and have been reading as much as I can and playing my first campaign. Here are the details.....
166 BC and Civil War has begun. I found myself streached over the entire western Europe, Spain and Africa. I own all the lands that the Spanish, Gauls, Britanii, and Germans once held. My armies are scattered everywhere maintaining garrisons in 30 countries and countering revolts. My profit after all expenses is around 4k per turn and I spend every penny of it. Now all of a sudden my allies are against me. No other country will offer me aid.
My first step was to blockade every major port I could of my former Roman brotheren to slow the economy. I defended several of my main cities within the Italian boot and was able to lure the Senate armies out of the city. I defeated them in two back-to-back battles and won easily. I beseiged Rome and took it that turn. Now I am surrounded by Brutii and am taking turns recapturing my cities from them, just to have another full stack army come and take it again. All my good units have been weakened or slaughtered in this madness and the future looks grim.
What is a good strategy to cripple the Brutii quickly? They own the tip of Italy and about 7 or 8 countries in a direct line north of there. (I have yet to learn all the names).
WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH THIS SCENARIO?
Thanks in advance for you replies.
Silver Rusher
08-31-2005, 20:31
It seems like you need to do a little raiding my friend.
Find a relatively big army that you do not need, a diplomat and a fairly rich but somewhat unguarded settlement belonging to the Brutii. Then, march the army over there and besiege the settlement, assaulting as soon as you can. Once you capture it exterminate the population and demolish all the buildings you can. Then, get the diplomat to give the settlement back to the brutii as a gift.
pants223
08-31-2005, 20:38
Pardon my ignorance, but why gift it back?
Silver Rusher
08-31-2005, 20:41
So that the brutii have another crap settlement on the brink of rebellion to look after. If you keep it it will just end up rebelling anyway and its just another city to look after isn't it?
Craterus
08-31-2005, 21:29
Your main objective is to kill the Romans now. Don't worry about province count (that will be easy after the others are gone).
Sack, pillage, burn!
Good Luck and Welcome to the Org ~:wave: :cool:
Mahrabals apprentice
08-31-2005, 22:33
What tax levels are your cities at? have you built temples, public bath etc?
Tarders, ports, roads?
I assume you have neglected your peoples happiness and ignored your economy completely to get your self in this mess.
Personally I would just launch spoilling attacks on the other roman faction until you sort out your economy and happiness. Happy people = higher taxes = more money = more building of economic buldings = even more money = mass, mass, mass, mass armies = victory.
pants223
08-31-2005, 23:46
I have most cities tax's lowered to keep squalour down. I demolish existing temples when I conquer and I upgrade my own. I have build every possible "happy" building I can and most cities are around 110% happy. I have rebels popping up all the time though. Some of the bigger cities I just can't figure out how to make money. Like Crete(I think) I have maxed out most buildings except Urban barracks, or Siege workshops. And I set the games to monthly, and still I loose something like -2800 per turn. Some of the cities on the italian boot also are big time in debt.
This is my first time playing and I am not a pro at building a successful economy but you would think I would figure this out. If I had money, defeating the Roman families would be easy.
Colovion
09-01-2005, 00:04
I find that simply building up the trade, roads and ports gets me a lot of money. Make sure each settlement at least has the basics of trade, mining and farming. Mining is great for fast money so if you have anywhere which can build a mine but hasn't - get on that quick. Trade is also great but it takes a bit more time to get the investment returns; though more income is reaped from trade in the long run.
110% of happiness is overkill in my opinion. Lower that and you improve your treasury. 90-100% is more than enough, you can go lower.
Check your governors. Sometimes they are useless and have to be taken out of their towns.
Check who are the enemies of your enemies and make trade agreements with them.
If you have the money, bribe armies that don't have generals, they are cheaper.
Assassinate enemy generals.
If I remember correctly the Brutii create armies with no obvious reason if they don't have enemies. They don't last forever though.
PS: Your training should be superb for your NEXT campaign!!
Check out their family. If they don't have many people, you can eliminate the faction via assassains.
Other than that, just keep at it.
Don't expect large cities to get an income; their large population means that they get a large share of the army upkeep, meaning that while they bring money in, it is outweighed by their upkeep.
Gustav II Adolf
09-01-2005, 08:56
You should also remember to lower the upkeep cost for your garrisons. in citys that are safe you can have only peasants in them which is cheeper. If you want you can keep one or two combat able units for defence, but when your city is far away from any enemies you will rarely need them.
pezhetairoi
09-01-2005, 09:15
Try to get at armies and settlements with faction members in them. That's important. It's a good complement to your assassinations too.
Try to sell maps, I am assuming your other factions not 'giving you aid' means you've been asking money from them outright.
Lower public order into the yellow or blue, as some others up there have said. 110% is a nice objective (and one that is easily achievable) but otherwise it is unnecesary for a first-campaign player.
Garvanko
09-01-2005, 12:20
Play defensive and consolidate. There's no way you can maintain an aggresive war with the Brutii (who are probably filthy rich as usual) on 4k per turn.
Increase the population and set tax management in most settlements as high as possible, preferably under Financial build, given you want to get micro-managment under control.
Considering how much you already have conquered, shouldn´t you have reached the fifty provinces already? With Rome taken, you´ve done it.
If not, and if the Bruti forced you out of Italy effectively, you should try and defend the alp passes, one army eack can hold out a long time there - provided you´ve built up some non-italian cities so you can get decent troops there.
pants223
09-01-2005, 18:07
Update:
Well I played until 158 BC last night and using a lot of the tips you guys gave me I have almost beaten the Brutii. They have 4 provinces left and I have defeated most of their large armies. I also tried bribing armies lead by captians and am pleasently suprised that I can buy a full stack army every turn for less then 3K and have a little left to buy things like seige units or heavy cavalry.
I just wish I had a better strategy for taking on those huge city walls! I loose a lot of men trying to take a city that is garrisoned by archers. They burn all my equipment!
Mahrabals apprentice
09-01-2005, 20:24
Be careful not to over bribe
If your ecomomy is not developed you will find that having many armies will drain your coffrers with all those troops to pay upkeep for
gardibolt
09-01-2005, 20:27
If you have a couple siege towers, supplement them with ladders. The siege towers will draw fire but the ladders will get through. You can then seize the enemy's towers and gatehouse and all is well.
If you do the gifting trick,don't forget to tear down the military buildings first. otherwise when you go back you're liable to find the rebel peasantry has turned themselves magically into a full stack of triarii.
antisocialmunky
09-01-2005, 21:49
Be careful not to over bribe
If your ecomomy is not developed you will find that having many armies will drain your coffrers with all those troops to pay upkeep for
Just throw the armies into oblivion if you don't want ot upkeep.
Zenicetus
09-01-2005, 22:29
I just wish I had a better strategy for taking on those huge city walls! I loose a lot of men trying to take a city that is garrisoned by archers. They burn all my equipment!
Take two ballistae on seiges. Before you do anything else, use the ballistae to destroy the two guard towers over the gate. Archers on the walls will still give you trouble, but you'll greatly increase the odds of seige towers and rams surviving if you take out the artillery in the towers. If you're using more than two seige towers at multiple points along the walls, you might bring along a third ballista to knock out the additional towers that might threaten them.
The disadvantage with this approach, is that you can't have those towers working for you, and shooting up the enemy after you run your troops through them. But I usually do it anyway just to improve the odds of my seige equipment making it to the walls intact.
Flavius Clemens
09-01-2005, 23:30
I have most cities tax's lowered to keep squalour down.
Low taxes can keep happiness up, but if anything they will increase squalor. Low taxes increase population growth and a higher population makes for more squalor. There's a long and detailed thread on squalor in the Ludus Magna - worth reading.
Take two ballistae on seiges. Before you do anything else, use the ballistae to destroy the two guard towers over the gate. Archers on the walls will still give you trouble, but you'll greatly increase the odds of seige towers and rams surviving if you take out the artillery in the towers. If you're using more than two seige towers at multiple points along the walls, you might bring along a third ballista to knock out the additional towers that might threaten them.
The disadvantage with this approach, is that you can't have those towers working for you, and shooting up the enemy after you run your troops through them. But I usually do it anyway just to improve the odds of my seige equipment making it to the walls intact.
I´m afraid ballistae won´t do you much good against stone walls, especially not large or epic ones, with the latter, even heavy onagers have a hard time.
Oh, and if you´re moving in with siege towers, don´t forget to set them to "fire at will" they´ve gout built-in weapons. Even if they get eventually destroyed, with luck they´ll cause some losses among the defenders.
Hold Steady
09-02-2005, 12:02
Oh, and if you´re moving in with siege towers, don´t forget to set them to "fire at will" they´ve gout built-in weapons. Even if they get eventually destroyed, with luck they´ll cause some losses among the defenders.
:dizzy2: ~:eek: :dizzy2: ~D
Gee, I didn't know that one!
About the archers, In addition to onagers (prefferably fire-missiles), you might try to sap some walls with archers on it. All small bits help!
gardibolt
09-02-2005, 17:43
How does one set a siege tower to Fire at Will? Set the unit in it to FAW? Or is there some other way to do it?
Zenicetus
09-02-2005, 18:27
I´m afraid ballistae won´t do you much good against stone walls, especially not large or epic ones, with the latter, even heavy onagers have a hard time.
Not true, at least from my experience. I just finished an imperial Brutii campaign where that worked 100% of the time, against all the stone walls I ran up against, including large ones. I'm not sure if any were epic. I'm not using ballistae to batter a hole in the walls, just to take out the towers that fire the arrows (or whatever those things are).
How does one set a siege tower to Fire at Will? Set the unit in it to FAW? Or is there some other way to do it?Just set the unit to FAW. Then stand back and watch the auto ballistas slay everything in front of them.
The historian
09-06-2005, 23:32
In order to deal with the archers try to bring down and take a undefended wall and send some units to clear the wall first while keeping a couple more to guard the hole or if most enemy units are on the wall clear the streets first and kill them as theycome down from the wall however you should do this carefully as it can easily turn the other way.
Good tip - put siege towers at 2-3 different points around the wall and only approach the least guarded section, shifting units to scale that tower as necessary to defeat the wall defenders.
ahem - you have to disable the timer to do this, but other than that it works great. Just keep the bulk of the army in front of the gate, and rush in when the gates are opened.
Not true, at least from my experience. I just finished an imperial Brutii campaign where that worked 100% of the time, against all the stone walls I ran up against, including large ones. I'm not sure if any were epic. I'm not using ballistae to batter a hole in the walls, just to take out the towers that fire the arrows (or whatever those things are).
Honestly, I haven´t tried it myself, I just applied common sense, but I´d be gladly proven wrong, because that means Ballistae actually do have a use.
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