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In my game Bylazorea just rebelled.
Guyus, let me tell you that fighting the Gauls will be as easy as pie once the Marius Reforms happen. The best Gaul unit, the Chosen Swordsman, while better than the Princepe, is easily beaten by Legionary cavalry and Legionary Cohort. Have the Marius reforms happpened yet?
I'm sure I'm quite a ways away before the Marius reforms. I don't characteristically have a problem with the Gauls, Marius or not. This was just a bad setting for the battle, and I was fighting an army that outnumbered me by 3-400 soldiers. When you can't see what you're doing, it's hard to react properly to the battle as it unfolds. I should have hit the pause button more, probably.
One of the things I have to learn to manage better is the extra sensitivity to panic that my inexperienced soldiers are susceptible to at normal/normal.
Another thing I need to do is lengthen my lines as I approach contact. You can make your army look bigger and meet the length of the opposing army's line by lengthening your own line, unless your strategy is to simply punch a hole in the enemy line. Then bulkier lines are what you want. I believe the '=' key is how you lengthen your line. I've done it before. I just handled this one combat badly.
In all my games so far, I don't think I've ever seen a chosen swordsman in my enemies' units. They usually just have massive numbers of warrior bands.
@diablodelmar, you have probably already figured this but the -1K isnt what Sparta is producing in revenue. Its just its equivalent of the running costs of your empire compared to the population there. Sparta itself isnt "costing" you 1K a turn to keep - without Sparta you would be generating alot less money.
Saw you post that Sparta wasnt making money despite ports etc but it is. Just had to let you know. Apologies if you found out already!
PS: If you have Sparta and other cities around there then take Kydonia on the island just below - now theres a real money spinner with ports built!!
I like your observation gmjapan. Kydonia is a real sleeper. In several games, I've noticed that the AI factions often ignore subduing this little island burg. So you can usuall pick it up for a "song", (the rebel garrison has never been formidable that I've experienced.) And once the port is up and running, it generates pretty good money.
Guyus, if you leave Alesia be for about 100 turns it soon will be pumping out Chosen Swords every turn. I'm afraid there is no post marius unit quite up to scratch taking it out. It was quite handy I only faought a handful, then Marius kicked in.
Quick Campaign Update:
I'm besieging Rome, what should I do with it once I've taken it? Should I enslave? Occupy?
There are about 8 stacks of Eygpt surrounding Memphis, Alexandria and Thebes. I have recently anihilated two (or three?).
dd, whatever you do, do NOT succumb to the temptation of asking for or granting a cease-fire or alliance with any of the other Roman factions. There is a bug in 1.5 (and possibly 1.3, I can't remember when it came in) that allows them to attack you and you cannot attack them if you give them a ceasefire or alliance. :wall: This has understandably negative results for your campaign. Fight way!:skull:
If you have enough troops, I'd say occupy. More taxpayers are generally a good thing. But enslaving may be more practical to free up troops to take out the rest of Italy.
dd-
If you take Rome, do whatever you want. It's yeehaa time :laugh4: even if the game isn't over yet. When I play a Roman faction and take Rome, I simply occupy. If' I'm Carthage, I put the city to the sword (as symbolic revenge for what they did to the real Carthage.) If you destroy that huge SPQR Roman stack of troops, you've accomplished something.
I've already destroyed the senate's puny army. All it consisted of was a mere few Hastatii, Princepes and Triarii. I only found an occaisional Early Legionary Cohort.Quote:
Originally Posted by Guyus Germanicus
My problem now is the fact that I'm on -25,000 treasury, with another -2,000 everytime I end the turn. This means I can no longer fuel my long campaign's which are underway currently against 1) The Roman factions 2) Dacia 3) Eygpt (probably going to have to pull out of here because I need the Legions, I currently control Thebes, Alexandria and Memphis. Should I level the improvements to the ground or leave the advanced buildings for when I come back? It is notable that these three cities are currently losing me loads of money.) 4) Spain and 5) Pontus.
Again, your cities are NOT NOT NOT actually losing money.
Yes they are! prove me wrong! I even went in and checked the advanced stuff for the city!
Your costs for your army and your family members are fixed. They do not change, so long as the number of units and family members remains constant. If you move your army and family members out of one of these cities that is "losing" money, and give it to another faction, you will lose the tax, trade and farming income being generated from that city, but your costs will not go down, because they are fixed. You will be losing even MORE money. QED
That does not prove your statement correct.
I think i will start a new campaign with the Juili and share it with you all here so you can give me some feedback and such if you like. Well i am going to go get started now, later.
@diablodelmar
Cities never lose money, as tax means that they are paying you not the other way around. Social services have yet to be invented in this game...
The only thing is that they can happen to generate too little money to pay up for empire maintainance costs. These costs are divided up according to settlement size, and so you constantly have to improve economic structures to keep writing good solid black numbers every turn. (If the place gets too huge, you eventually need to adjust taxes, and therefore lose income, and therefore need more of an economy structure in the area.)
But if you don't believe me, why don't you just check it with your settlement details scroll in game?
I assume your cities don't have proper trade partners in their area to generate sufficient income to pay up for your high upkeep costs. They don't have such partners, because you are either at war with a neighbouring faction or their main trade partners have fallen out due to blocades. (Check wether there are rebels obstructing the trade routes, either on land or at sea.)
Secondly due to all the wars you're in you probably have tremedously high upkeep costs.
There are a few things you can do to alleviate your money problems a little.
These include:
-replace Town Watch units with Peasants: send the free Town Watch into the wars with barbarian factions as they are if supported good enough to stand against Warbands or against other Town Watch (and if they are in optima forma they will do heavier barbarian forces in too), and you will probably need less units of peasants to garrisson a place in terms of public order;
-if you haven't done this already: tax every settlement to the max - indeed - till they are litteraly blue in the face;
-try to find places where you don't need your military buildings anymore: destroy everything military there (if you don't need town watch you can also destroy your militia barracks);
-seeing that you are mainly fighting by conquest and not by exhaustion (= strangling enemies with your navy and so on), abandon as much of your fleets as possible (it's actually a very risky thing to do since you won't be able to launch quick invasions but considering your dire financial situation maybe also the best thing to do);
-if you haven't done so already, get as much units out of your settlements as possible;
-lower your agents costs by sending them on missions: some of them may die but the good ones don't and only get better;
-try to get some ceasefire treaties combined with trade agreements (say with Egypt as that is a good trade partner);
-now this is when diplomacy fails: conquer some neighbouring settlements of your enemies and raze them: make absolutely hundred percent positively they will rebel and see: you've got a sort of 'bumper' against invasions (the enemy is probably busy retaking the place).
You might even decide to do the last thing to all of your newly conquered settlements to allow your armies to march on to victory ASAP. But that's another risky thing to do: especially in the Med you will see an increase in pirate fleets and you won't have the new tax payers paying you.
And at the end of my post I'd like to congratulate you with the conquest of Rome: :balloon2: :balloon2: :balloon2: .
These guys are right, Diablo. There is no maintenance cost for cities or buildings, only for family members, troops, ships and agents. Those costs get split up in proportion to the population of each city, so if your cities aren't all the same size, the bigger ones have to pay more. That's why it looks like they are losing money. Their share of the maintenance isn't as big as the money they generate each turn. The only way to tell if you're really losing money or making money is look at your financial tab at the very beginning of a turn, before you've allocated any building, recruiting or retraining. If it shows a projected profit, you're making money. If it shows a projected loss, you're losing money.
What does the -5880 on Arretium mean then?
That value is based on the number of peasants in Arretium and the average upkeep costs of your army. The larger the number of people in a settlement, the larger their portion of your army upkeep will be. If the income from the settlement is less than it's portion of the upkeep, then it will have a negative number, this does not mean it is losing money. If you train more units or disband units, you will see that value go up or down as your army upkeep costs change.Quote:
Originally Posted by diablodelmar
If you want to reduce the -ive number you can either disband lots of units you no longer need, as recommended earlier, or a longer process of increasing the garrison size with peasants then upping the tax rate to reduce population growth, or training peasants and moving them to the smaller settlements. By the value you have for Arretium, I would suggest you reduce the size of your armies, or use them to gain further lands to help even out the cost of your upkeep.
The -5880 on Arretium doesn't mean very much, frankly. The negative numbers on cities are very misleading. They're basically just an accounting device for splitting the cost of your army's upkeep across your cities, proportionate to the number of people you have in the cities. They have nothing to do with where your armies are, or what buildings are in your city. A couple cities in the red are no cause for concern. However, if most of your cities are in the red, that means your army is too large for your population to pay for it and you need to take action fast. Either reduce your army's expenses or conquer more lands to get more taxpayers and trade to get more income.
On Arretium: that has originally been your capital, has it?
Thus: you've had a governor in there, have you?
So: loads of slaves have gone to that place to make it the largest in your empire, haven't they?
Therefore: this is your largest city, isn't it?
If all is to be answered with 'yes' than we may conclude that this city has to pay up the largest portion of your upkeep costs. Due to the civil war it has lost it's main trade routes (those to the South, towards the other Roman factions), and therefore it has no means whatsoever to come even close to it's share of your upkeep costs. If you have however restored those trade routes, these will need some time to recover to full productivity (the probably reduced size of the settlements means also less income, as the trade has to pay up a larger part of the share of upkeep costs of the reduced cities).
Your money problems are never due to cities losing money, as cities can't possibly lose money: but if you have too large garrisons in your cities this will effectively drain your actual income - and cause huge financial problems.
Generally speeking a few units of extra garrison isn't all too bad: if it means one level higher tax rates (for example not normal, but high tax rates), than this will pay off. But one level higher tax rates is only as much as a few of them, and thus if you would need (even if they were peasants) 4 or 5 new units this means: far better to lower the tax rates, and reduce the garrison than to increase the garrison and maintain higher tax rates.
I lost my entire Julii campaign as a result of my brother messing around with my computer trying to install windows vista. I can't even play the game yet!
:oops:
Gosh, I hate when that happens. :)
Death to siblings. :skull:
I'll never ever get my game back unless I want to spend just as long editing the game!
Trust me, my brother would be dead already but for the fact that he's older than me and weighs about 50 pounds heavier than me!
Luckly my sister barely knows how to turn on a computer. I am starting my new Julii campaign now. I plan to rush out early and get rid of those pesky barbarians the Gauls and probably the Britains. Then i plan to slow off the attacking a bit and build up my econ and roads for the later stages of the game. Then once the Marius Event happens i plan to expand west through spain and east as far until the Brutii. Then the fun begins with the Romans. Well that is my plan tell me what you think.
Some thought:
You probably did this already, but seeing that one can play virtually all his WINDOWS 95 games by just changing the compatibility mode of the application or shortcut, you might as well try to do the same with Vista.
To do this:
Right click your shortcut, or application > Go to Properties > Compatibility > Left click the box saying: Run this program in compatibility mode for: > Choose your desired WINDOWS version > Try playing RTW.
I could do the same!
Alright here is my 270-265 B.C. story. I am playing VH/VH. No time limit battles, so no running around to win by time. I am going to manage all my settlements. Using 100 unit size.
On my first turn i seized Segesta with an assault with mininal loss using one of my two starting armies. I moved the other one by ship to caralias were next turn i took it by assault easily. That is all I plan on taking from Carthage for now so i am in the process of negiotaiting a ceasefire. As for my cities, i plan on my capital Aretium, being my main military city so i am focusing on all military buildings. I plan for arimmiun to be my main economic city so i am focusing on economic buildings. I also plan on making Segesta another economic city and making Caralias my main sea port if i can get it growing fast.
In the next few turns I turned towards Gaul. I defeated a few small armies with the army i took segesta with plus a few more hastai I trained. I have a main army of 3 hastati, 2 equites, 1 roman archers, 1 Triari, and my faction heir with about 50 bodyguards. I used this army to assault Mediolanum. I took it by assualt and killed their heir I think. Then i moved the army towards Patavium. While I was seiging it, an army of about 1000 gauls moved towards my capital. I had to move my army from the seige and my Capital garrison to fight them. I was outnumbered 700 to 1000, but i won fairly easily. (https://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h...aulVictory.jpg) So i just crushed the Gaulic presance directly north of me and I will take Patavium and then turn northeast to the heart of Gaul. Well that was my first five years, probably pretty typical, but not many other choices of starting.
Alright here is my 270-265 B.C. story. I am playing VH/VH. No time limit battles, so no running around to win by time. I am going to manage all my settlements. Using 100 unit size.
On my first turn i seized Segesta with an assault with mininal loss using one of my two starting armies. I moved the other one by ship to caralias were next turn i took it by assault easily. That is all I plan on taking from Carthage for now so i am in the process of negiotaiting a ceasefire. As for my cities, i plan on my capital Aretium, being my main military city so i am focusing on all military buildings. I plan for arimmiun to be my main economic city so i am focusing on economic buildings. I also plan on making Segesta another economic city and making Caralias my main sea port if i can get it growing fast.
In the next few turns I turned towards Gaul. I defeated a few small armies with the army i took segesta with plus a few more hastai I trained. I have a main army of 3 hastati, 2 equites, 1 roman archers, 1 Triari, and my faction heir with about 50 bodyguards. I used this army to assault Mediolanum. I took it by assualt and killed their heir I think. Then i moved the army towards Patavium. While I was seiging it, an army of about 1000 gauls moved towards my capital. I had to move my army from the seige and my Capital garrison to fight them. I was outnumbered 700 to 1000, but i won fairly easily. (results) So i just crushed the Gaulic presance directly north of me and I will take Patavium and then turn northeast to the heart of Gaul. Well that was my first five years, probably pretty typical, but not many other choices of starting.
Sorry for the double and i guess triple post. Please feel free to delete my first post and this one. I screwed up with the link, sorry if I slowed down the 56k people.
I've have mostly put my Julii campaign on hold, however I wanted to post here just to tell you how it went and to lament my own shortcomings when it came down to the Roman Civil War.
I hadn't played RTW for many months and this was my first long campaign since I took the Macedonians into Rome in 1.3. Iset the difficulty to Hard/Hard and left the battle timer on, while turning off camera restriction. My Campaign started out with a number of rapid conquests. Ignoring the Senate's Demand that I take Segesta, I instead took my entire army North into Gaulish territory where I defeated their Italian Armies and took the cities of Patavium and Mediolanium in quick sucession. Shortly thereafter I diverted a few troops to Caralis and took Segesta all within the first few years of play. These six regions became the nucleus of my Empire.
My expansion typically involved a northwest and southwest branch. Massilia and Lugdunum were targeted immiedately and Narbo Martius fell not long afterwards. I suffered few reverses militarily during this campaign, however Gaul has the unnerving capacity to field fairly massive armies at the ouset and I found defending Narbo Martius and Lugdunum at the same time to be quite challenging. Needless to say I continued my push Northwest, but decided for a time to not enter spain until conditions in Western France were more settled. Lemonum and Condate Redonum fell without too much trouble, and at that point I moved my faction captial to Medolanium.
Typically during this campaign I would field an infantry heavy army with strong cavalry support. Early on Archers were not abundant (nor triarii) so I managed to preserve the initial units I recieved as best as possible. Pila worked wonders against oncoming warbands and I found that breaking the morale of a Gaulish or British Infantry army to be none too difficult. I made ample use of mercenaries as well. My heavy focus on the development of trade in all of my regions (ports, markets, paved roads) allowed me to ammass a vast warchest which I used to fund my various conquests. With Alesia subdued I turned my attentions to the south and before embroiling myself with the Spanish I invaded Celtiberia and as the Gauls would not become my Protectorate I took their final city of Numantia.
I like to pursue a policy of maintaing a war on just one front and this policy held well even as I was making initial gains against the Spanish. That is, taking Osca and Carthago Nova. The Carthaginians would accept no help from me and naturally they lost Corduba after many Celtiberian armies had been lost against its walls. Anyway, I continued to pursue trade and profit upgrades while building enough armies to control the areas I've taken while conquering new ones as well. The campaign did get a little unnerving as at one point I had to fight the Spanish and the British on two fronts, fortunately a couple of hard fought victories at Alesia and Lugdunum freed my hand and I was brought into a very lengthy war that would take me from Samarobriva all the way to Vicus Gothi. I would move my capitol just once more, from Mediolanium to Lugdunum, I considered relocating again but I could never decide on a more centraly located city (Trier perhaps)?
Anyway, I finally did defeat the British, taking the Isles as well as all their mainland posessions and by the time I finally had to admit "defeat" I controlled the Iberian Peninsula, all of Modern France and Germany along with Britian, Parts of Dacia, the Baliares and Crete. What finaly did me in was the inferiority of my armies not versus the various Barbarian factions, but against the Romans themselves. I had done well in controlling squalor, I had massive money making capacity even once the Civil War had broken out. But I quickly realized that even with heavilly upgraded and experienced units of Auxilia and Early Legionary Cohorts I was no match for the full stack Praetorian and Urban Cohort Armies the Bruti were sending my way. While I can keep the Scipiones locked up in Africa due to my naval superiority I can think of no way to defeat the Bruti and their advanced armies. I'll keep this campaign saved, but at the moment I feel I must admit failure. At the least I did take Rome, and that was a very satisfying battle I must say. In the end I controlled 36 regions, had lost only 6 battles, and posessed a very healthy trade empire. At the least I can be satisfied with that!