Friends, Romans, Countrymen--Where's the Merchants?

Dear Fellow Citizens of Rome:

Greetings from my little corner of the Empire!! I hope this finds you and yours well. As for me, I could complain...yadda, yadda, yadda.

I have installed and started playing Rome: Total War this very day. Actually, I come to the Senate with two questions: 1)Where and how do I recruit merchants, if Rome has any. 2) Could somebody please tell me what does SPQR mean? I know it's Latin for something, but I'd like the English translation, please, if possible.

I'm finding this game very easy to play. I've also come to the conclusion that it's Med 2 with togas!!!!! :laugh4:

Live long and prosper, take care and thank you kindly!!!

Sincerely yours always,

Citizen Indy.

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Welcome to the Forum,

Set up your traders, markets, agoras, forums, and so forth. Then you will see little wagons moving slowly out of your towns. Those are, in a sense, your merchant's trucks, or lorries. They move to and from different settlements. Your diplomat can negotiate trade rights with non-hostile factions. As your trading partners declare war on you or get destroyed, your income will reduce, but if you keep the upgrades to temples and markets and so forth, that should compensate for it. As you upgrade your roads, the wagons will move faster.

Also build your ports, shipwrights, and docks. When you build a port, you get one trading fleet. When you upgrade to shipwright, you get another, and another with a dockyard. Look and you will see little boats automatically moving from port to port. Those are your trading fleets.

If you get blockaded, the trading fleets cannot get into and out of that port, and as a result, your income will decrease. The same thing with the roads. If they are blocked by a rebel army, or some other army of an enemy, again, your income is reduced. A small highway patrol of 1cavalry unit, two infantry, and one missile units can keep the roads clean of most rebel units quite handily. A full stack of Roman Legionaries requires more force, much more. If you can build up a strong enough army in striking reach, get rid of them because trade, crops, and some industry suffers as long as they are there. More often than not, they attack you and you have to break the siege. You also will need strong fleets near your ports to break blockades.

Most factions seem to have one temple available which helps bring income. You should have such a temple in at least half of your settlements. Example, Brutii would be Mercury. Another is Poseidon. Look for trade effect, and those will help a lot. Upgrade your temples when possible, and your income will also go up. If you try to have all temples to Vulcan and Mars, you will have mighty warriors, but your economy will suffer badly.

Economy temples bring money. Then cycle units through the settlements such as Vulcan and Mars temples as they are recruited, which will make the units stronger and better armored.

Fortitudo et Fides

Strength and Honor

Celt Centurion

too bad can't manage the production of any goods like CAESER 3.....
I love to see my warehouse is full with stockpile and selling them very quick.....and the stockpile of food here (RTW) can be provision of cities,if we can spy that if any city low on provision then we can take them down in lesser time...:yes:

i love to see my wheat,olive, apple farm growing too....

and i forget at least get something for "spoils of war",that lead greedy human player to more aggression?

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