Total War Anarchy- rebel faction- strategy .

This is sort of a strategy guide for playing the pure Rebels(as opposed to WRE rebels or emergent factions). I havn't posted in the strat section as I havn't finished the game yet. Please post suggestions comments

I playing Rebel Commander/unlocked factions(prof Spatula and Epis. Rich.) (with bug fixer-player1). Thanks to these guys for something completely different.

I choose to continue playing the pure Rebels and that is some challenge.

You start as the rebels with about 10-15 virtually non developed poor cities. All cities hopelessly under defended, economy absolutely hopeless.

Throw all your previous strategies out the window. Rebels require a complete rethink.


Everyone takes you on almost immediately. You really can never build any troops as you economy can never survive to positive territory. Once I realized the last fact I ignored my increasing negative balance and forgot about building anything anywhere.

You have no stated objective so mine is to wipe everyone else out. Absolute mayhem--- Total War Anarchy would be a good name for this game.


Sounds pretty dismal huh?

Well you have 2 saving graces. Your cities will never rebel(duh!) so you can forget about governors etc. Leave taxes where you like it makes no difference. Never build anything(though you probably can't anyway) You only have to garrison if you think you can put a strong enough one there to hold the city otherwise you may as well leave it totally underfended.


Saving grace #2 is a constant supply of troops all over the map, most of which get hammered and die immediately. ( there is no retreat, if you try you get loose straightway). But a few will survive if you're careful!

So I chose to consolidate my good rebel troops(forgot the peons of course) and amalgamated them together. I guess thats the hard part, avoiding combat till you can win a battle.

The tedious part is autocalcing the many hopeless battles. This is balanced by the occasional miraculous Heroic Victory when you try your luck.

So far I've trashed a few WRE cities, but yet to progress too far. I trust when the hordes really start getting going things will improove fast as I will automatically gain some choice rebel cities.

Anyone else who has a suggestion on strategy please post.

I thought I'd add a few more strategies I'm using and reflections on this pure Rebel faction.

1. Combining stacks is obviously key to getting significant concentration of forces. Your navy is formitable so keeping a group of ships near where you think rebels might appear allows you to take these to sea and wait for more units or transfer them to other stacks. I also guess removing the rebels also means new rebels can then appear in that province?.

2.Immediately a hordes trashes a town , I take the new stack usually of reasonable units away towards my bigger stacks.I encourage the hordes to plunder/sack so I get more stacks, purposely leaving towns completely undefended.

3.Its quite interesting to wait till your next turn to see what type of stacks turn up and where, its bit of a gamble everytime you turn the clock!, rebels have some very useful troops-eg. massed steppe raiders have taken out clibs/immortals without losses at all!.

4. Because you are negative $(now 200k down) watchtower building is not possible. Getting info on how to avoid big enemy stacks is crucial, so I tend to send some peasants ahead to try to keep my good guys till I can amalgamate them.

5.I think early on when you start with $10k you should build as many agents as you can before you go negative. You can then use these for info gathering. (Diplomacy is not possible- you only get bribe and you have no money).

6. When I occupy a town , I do not exterminate , this means if the town gets retaken then its more likely to revolt due to higher population.

7. I do not destroy buildings in towns taken. I think the better the troop buildings the better the rebel troops you get. I also leave temples-preferably crippled ones. I could destroy sewers/acacdemies/arenas type buildings, but these also contribute to cultural problem for occupiers(depends on their culture of course), so on balance I leave all buildings alone.

It sure is a challenge with many very close battles.(M/M)