How to get the good units, and fast

I noticed that in almost all of my games, I would tend to be mopping up around when I'm finally producing mid-tier units by a good number, but what I really wanted was to actually field armies of the more advanced units. Thankfully, I've developed a method of advancement that wont involve any cheating.

One thing to do is to try and slow the pace down of your fighting in the early game, but not by any great deal, just a little bit. This way you get to set up your economy set up for what will be a rapid advancement. Once you have your economy booming away, start your conquests. Whenever you take a city, remove all governors from every city but the largest one you currently own (typically your capital) and then enslave the captured city. The slaves will be transported to only this city, instead of distributed among several, giving you a much larger population boost.

As you continue to grow this city, focus entirely on building up improvements that allow for public health bonuses as well as some farming improvements. Once they are complete, build the barracks/stables/range that is available, then follow that by whatever you wish. To help keep your population growing, keep the taxes on this city as low as you can possibly get.

Pretty soon, as long as you keep enslaving, and especially if you happen to hit cities with rather large populations frequently, your city should reach max pop in no time. Once you have max pop, begin the process on the next most populous city you have and in no time youll be pumping out those silver shield pikemen, chosen swordsmen, bull warriors, and what have you to your hearts content.

Don't your cities cop a culture penalty when they're assigned slaves?

No not to my knowledge they don't.

One problem is that small villages with low base farming (not the upgrades, the hidden base value) grow very slowly. If you play on large or huge you will strip them of people in a short time. The AI is much worse about this and its smaller towns are husks by the time I arrive. In retrospect, populations probably should have been scaled to unit size settings in some fashion.

I am experimenting at the moment of kicking most initial city sizes including (including rebels) to 2000 or more. Most factions don't get any real units until the city is at 2000. I also am going to move infantry upgrades down one build level. That will allow a combination of decent infantry and some cav and missiles. The intent is actually to bolster the AI. If it can build better units, then it will be like playing a whole new era. I will get better units as well, but my experience is that the AI is much more dangerous when it has something other than lowest level soldiery for the bulk of its armies.

Early on (before ur city reach the 12000 lvl ... of course barbarians are different) focus a lot on building farms/trader and whatever else that can get ur population up, it helps a lot on getting ur pop up to the lvl you need. also putting a governor usually helps (not always but usually) in most ways (money, pop growth, order) mass enslavement also help getting ur pop up obviously. focus some of ur bigger starting city to particular production... for example as Carthage you don't need every city to produce elephant before going up to war elephant, obviously you only need to have one city go up to the highest stables fast, the rest can make do with medium lvl buildings. the thing is you need to set some priorities, some troops are good general troops that u would want to produce at many places while others u only need a few big towns producing it.

mod it in desc _buildings

Well Emperor I was talking about doing this the fair way, since if I modded this instead it would feel more like cheating, as now I wont seem to make any progress whatsoever as the game goes on and I have to use the same uints over and over instead of working towards something better.

yes it's true, games are less fun when cheating. but some games can't be played without cheats, cause you won't get past the first level. (hidden and Dangerous2)
but RTW isn't such game