Which Roman Faction is Best?

@SMZ

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Conclusion: Clear Advantage Scipii, Second Brutii, Distant Third Julii

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This is misleading. Consider a vanilla game, unmodded. Gaul is allowed to build a level 3 temple to Epona somewhere. The Julii take it. Suddenly they find that they can build the level 4 and 5 temples to Epona:

Julii
Pantheon Epona:
25% Happiness
XP Bonus 5

Brutii
Pantheon Mars:
25% Happiness
XP Bonus 3
Morale 1
Health 10%
Trade Goods 2

where 1 XP used to be (MTW) +1 attack +1 defense (non-direction dependent) +2 morale. [Most units have a starting morale value of 6-10].

Morale 1 could mean morale +2, so that Epona +5 att +5 def +10 morale is probably better than +3 att +3 def +8 morale.


If you play the Bacchus temple well (ie, without a governor in that particular city), you still have a good temple to Jupiter - creating good governors - and an early-growth temple of Ceres...

I hope this makes the argument complete. Most would disagree on the Scipii temples being better as well. My ordering is:
Julii, Brutii, Scipii

completely opposite to yours, based on one thing: Starting XP.
All other things are more or less irrelevant @already half-way through the game:
Money? Swimming in it. Ancillaries? How many do you want. Public order? Squalor got capped in patch 1.2, making this easier. Growth rate? All at 8%. Health? No problem for Romans. Law? Now thats nice for traits and reduction in corruption, but can only mean more money, see above.

Ultimately the question of which Roman faction is better is a non-issue. The 3 of them are so evenly matched that the difference is measured in milimeters not kilometers.

amazon77 thank you for your congratulations and points. I think however that the question you are answering is slightly different than the one I proposed. Many seem to be debating as to which Roman Faction is the easiest instead of the best. Let me offer an illustration.

Suppose you have two men. One is a Navy SEAL trained for years in all manners of combat, the other is a man who goes to a shooting range once a month. The Navy SEAL is armed with a pen, the other man has a pistol. Now in this situation the regular guy has the advantage. However, if you can get that SEAL a firearm he will unquestionably be superior.

Likewise, mayhaps if we let the AI play the campaign this or that faction might have the advantage. The point of the game is that we are given the power to change the situations however. Hence, it becomes not a question of who is in the best situation but who has the greatest potential. So yes, the Julii start in the best situation militarily speaking and the Brutii have the best economic outlook. But both of those aspects are subject to our influence. What we cannot change (without modding the game) are the dieties given to each faction and the gladiator units they recieve. The gladiator difference feels somewhat like a gimmick. Which means that the difference in dieties recieved the main focus of my deliberations.

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Your point concerning city size is certainly valid but in my gameplay I've always found that cities grow faster than I can build their improvements. Maybe this is not true for someone who plays a different style but my strategy of rapid expansion and wholesale enslavement or extermination has always left me with booming populations. My experience has been that my cities grow slowly from 400-2000. Depending on location they may grow slowly from 2000-6000. None of them grow slowly afterwards. After the first half dozen or so settlements, even settlements I raze are left with 1500 or more people. Which means I usually have no problem upgrading my cities and troops whatsoever.

The Velite being available earliest and occupying its own niche is true. I think you may be correct in your evaluation of those features making it the most useful. I suppose the other two gladiators have their duties performed just as well by the regular roman infantry.

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I suppose one can rule the seas with Triremes. My motto is potential though. If two stacks of Triremes is good, one stack of Deceres is better. (From the games I've played this seems to be true, Deceres destroy enemy fleets with minimal losses almost always.)

I didn't consider all stages of temples because 1. that would take a really long time and 2. that would take a really long time. Nah, the second point is that the end result means the most to me. Jupiter and Saturn start off with almost identicle stats all the way through lvl 4 temple. But in the end Saturn gives 5% more happiness. More is better.

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Originally Posted by sunsmountain

Gaul is allowed to build a level 3 temple to Epona somewhere. The Julii take it. Suddenly they find that they can build the level 4 and 5 temples to Epona:

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Huh? You can't upgrade a temple to Epona as a Roman in the vanilla game. You can't upgrade a barbarian temple past lvl 3 either.

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Originally Posted by sunsmountain

If you play the Bacchus temple well (ie, without a governor in that particular city),

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Generally speaking cities with governors make more profit and have order maintained better. A few points of influence from your Governor is worth more than the extra 10% happiness Bacchus provides.

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Originally Posted by sunsmountain

completely opposite to yours, based on one thing: Starting XP.
All other things are more or less irrelevant @already half-way through the game:
Money? Swimming in it. Ancillaries? How many do you want. Public order? Squalor got capped in patch 1.2, making this easier. Growth rate? All at 8%. Health? No problem for Romans. Law? Now thats nice for traits and reduction in corruption, but can only mean more money, see above.

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XP is useful, but doesn't appear to be the ultimate stat to me. It can be gained rather simply by merely using your soldiers and winning. They'll have plenty of XP in no time. I agree that money is one of the easier things to obtain too. (In game at least, lol.) Ancillaries however I find to be quite useful and valuable. Your empire is your family essentially. Having those family members be as fit as possible is surely important. A nice side effect to the law temples is their assisting in keeping enemy spies and assassins from meddling in your affairs. I personally consider little to be more annoying than for your empire to reach a state of power, enough to warrant a few years of peace, only to have a message pop up saying your leader has been assasinated.

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lars573 this is a question of academics, not meant to be applied verbatim. Come now, surely you find these millimeters to be somewhat interesting?

In my view the Roman factions are a 3 sided coin. Distinct, different, but equal. SMZ you used reason and logic to deduce which Roman faction was best, a valid approach if ever there was one. But a favorite Roman faction has more than just that, it has the human element. The element that prefers the Julii for no other reason than they are coloured red and put the smack down on un-washed barbarians. :bow:

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Originally Posted by lars573

put the smack down on un-washed barbarians.

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Now you understand why I fear the Julii!

Yeah, go redskirts! ^_^

Scipii and Brutii are both the same really. Just expand into each other's routes, and you'll dominate them in the later game. Money is no object for these two. And they both have great temples.

Julii need more micro-management on the economic side, but you do get to fight the stronger barbarian factions, which is fun.

Haven´t played RTW vanilla in ages but as I recall the Brutii is way to easy when you take Greece - the money just pours in. Scipii is initially fun - terminating the Carthaginians but after that...? The only fac for me is Julii: more battles, poor economy, wast expansion possibilities and the ability to adopt the barb Epona temple to get cool units plus their color is red - Romans should be red.
Will be cool though when EB comes out to try out the 3 Roman factions on that oversized map.

I have vanilla RTW.

Brutii are the best, hands down.

There is no challenge playing Brutii. I found the Greeks and Macedonians fairly more challenging than the poor Gauls, but starting off with Brutii is nothing compared to starting off with Seleucids, and once you can get through that (5 pretty good factions attacking you at once from ALL sides) Brutii facing just two factions, one with weak cav and both with weak missile, is not that bad at all.

I think their starting position is better than the other Roman factions. They have no borders with non-allies, allowing them to pretty much consolidate all their starting forces to take Apollonia (which should always be the first senate mission, with the cash you get from accomplishing this will support you till you take your next senate objective: Thermon). In fact with just a few hastati reinforcements from Italy I found will be sufficient in conquering the whole of Greece if you blitz them. However I found fighting falxmen with Hastati is not a good idea........

I don't necessarily want to sabotage the expansion of the other Roman factions either. I don't want to be fighting a weak Julii and Scipii faction during the civil war period, which, by that time chances are they're the only half-decent factions that can put up a decent fight, and I hate having to play the later stages with no one to fight, it can get rather boring.

Velite Gladiators are better than the others because they fill a specific hole in the Roman unit lineup, which is light infantry that are effective against chariots and elephants, the bane of any Roman army (along with horse archers of course).

The incredible influx of cash early in the game means you have power over any of the other factions in the entire game. You can decide who lives or dies, as you have more than enough cash reserves to send any number of diplomats, spies, and armies to bribe and kill whichever faction you please. I sent an expeditionary army to the Seleucids to help them against the Egyptians and now the Seleucids are the most powerful faction in the world. I will now have lots and lots of fun killing their way more fun units than had I faced egyptians. ~:cheers:

As far as temples, I didn't know about the Julii temple adoption. +5 experience sounds awesome! Next best thing (and purely Roman) would be Mars. +3 experience urban cohorts? Thats not fair. As the same in medieval, I rather have experience over weapon and armor upgrades.

Julii have the best expansion opportunities but those provinces are crap as far as money goes. I've spent many a turn not being able to build or retrain anything in the mid-beginning phase. Even after Julii are financially stable, once the civil war happens whatever cash reserve they had will vanish, as their best (and probably only) trade partners by that time will be the other Roman factions, who will have massive navies that will crush anything you have out there. When I played the civil war phas with Julii, my only hope was to capture as many rich cities from the Brutii and Scipii as I could as quickly as possible, as my meager 200,000 denarii cash reserve disappeared in 5 turns.

Scipii I haven't played with, but judging from my experience playing Carthage, they shouldn't have any money problems either, and won't be so rich as to have to give away 200,000 denarii every other turn or so to keep it under the 50,000 mark.

Julii are way too poor though, and don't get to fight the Seleucids. Just boring trouser-wearing bastards that break and run so easily.....

Hmm... I didn't know about adopting Epona either. Is that a loophole or did they intenionally put that in the game? Either way I wouldn't use it much. While more tempting than Mars my point remains the same as it did with him. Experience can be gained easily enough naturally. Upgraded weapons and armor can't.

well it is very hard, especially if you expand fast, to get a temple of epona from the Gauls.
In my case they always built temples to abnoba (sp ) for their forresters.
Only once have I seen them Built an epona temple, in their porvince in Iberia.
However it was just a level one temple...

:balloon2:

Also they need to have 3rd level of temple to make it possible to romanize it (since 4th roman level of temple requiries 3rd level buildable only by gauls).

I did know you could do that, are there any other temple lines that can be adopted by rome? or by any other faction for that matter?

Epona is the only one.

It has even nice flavour text:

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This Awesome Temple is dedicated to Epona, the Gallic goddess of horses and horsemanship, and a patron of all cavalrymen. Although originally a Gallic goddess, she is very popular amongst the cavalry units in the legions, and is quite often adopted into the Roman pantheon.


Religion also makes a people feel happy and content to know that the Gods are lavishly honoured.

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Huh? You can't upgrade a temple to Epona as a Roman in the vanilla game. You can't upgrade a barbarian temple past lvl 3 either.

Hmm... I didn't know about adopting Epona either. Is that a loophole or did they intenionally put that in the game?

well it is very hard, especially if you expand fast, to get a temple of epona from the Gauls.
In my case they always built temples to abnoba (sp ) for their forresters.
Only once have I seen them Built an epona temple, in their porvince in Iberia.
However it was just a level one temple...

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Yep, it's nice to see Epona still turns a few heads almost a year after release now... some content is just harder to get.

Not only can the Julii build a level 4 and 5 temple to Epona (needing a level 3 temple built by either Gaul or Spain), as per 1.2, so can the other romans!! So the Brutii and Scipii family can build them as well, but since the Julii are best positioned to conquer the Gaul/Spain, it's still fair, as in 1.1, to attribute them to the red guys.

And as Dutch guy says, the default AI played by Gaul and Spain doesnt prioritize XP buildings, making them somewhat of a chance occurence. Since this chance has to be rolled 3 times in favour of Epona (at level 1, 2 and 3), Epona appearing 'naturally' in the game is a given impossibility.

But Rome is moddable. If you mod the Gaul AI and the Spanish AI to favour XP buildings, Epona temples are built no problem. Shame CA didnt think of it, though. (as they didnt with many other things as well... ah the rushed game of Rome: TW... hope barbaric invasion contains a little more balancing/checking and a good AI)...

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Generally speaking cities with governors make more profit and have order maintained better. A few points of influence from your Governor is worth more than the extra 10% happiness Bacchus provides.

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well 15%, compared to Jupiter. You need a governor with at least +3 influence, which are harder to come by in the beginning than later, when you have enough ancillaries. It would be nice to see a range beyond which Law temples become better than order temples due to reduction of corruption adding to income.

And I usually expand faster than i get governors, so some cities will simply have to do without. There are other high level buildings as well which necessetate the vacation of the governor, most notably City Plumbing..

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It can be gained rather simply by merely using your soldiers and winning. They'll have plenty of XP in no time.

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I don't know on which difficulty level you play, but the only time i get a decent amount XP is when i either:
- use auto-calculate to resolve battles, or
- play on medium, with about equal or slightly lower odds.

On Very Hard xp is rare as hen's teeth, imo.

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A nice side effect to the law temples is their assisting in keeping enemy spies and assassins from meddling in your affairs.

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Yeah i agree, law temples are cool.

I've been playing on VH/VH, until quite recently when the issues regarding the difficulty settings was outlined somewhat clearly. I'd noticed that my generals seemed to die more easily than in 1.1 but I had taken to merely using them more carefully as a result. On my most recent campaign I therefore set the difficulty at VH/M based on the suggestion I saw somewhere on this board that this allows for slower kill rates and thus the AI is capable of responding to the players tactics somewhat better.

As far as obtaining XP, I've never noticed an issue with this. The important thing is to always take as few casualties as possible. Since the men have their stats recorded individually a soldier who kills five men and then dies himself is useless. With that in mind in any engagement I seek to use range and mobility to my benefit as much as possible. It is always my objective to be able to fire without being fired upon. Secondly, if I must engage the enemy hand to hand I wish to do so from the rear and flanks. Thus cavalry maneuvers figure in strongly and infantry can be of use in this strategy when facing phalanxes. Finally, when I must engage a unit in a frontal assault, then I only do so against an inferior unit. Phalanxes can thus attack heavy infantry directly, heavy infantry will attack light infantry, light infantry will attack peasants and charging missile units.

Calvary counters are alternatively facing with reinforced phalanxes or using more mobile infantry to form lanes and then collapse inward upon them. Elephants are reliably countered by javelin bearing troops. Chariots are countered by reinforced heavy infantry or fast missile cavalry. With that said, if you use your troops well, your kill ratios should always be 2-1 or better, with 10-1 ratios not being uncommon. Don't forget that your men get some XP from merely being in a battle where the odds were even or worse and surviving. So as long as you're fighting, winning and winning big... the XP will come. After the first ten turns my family members generally have silver chevrons, my archers have two or three bronze ranks and my infantry have one or two. Personally I have always preferred to dilute experienced men with a few recruits than to form new completely green units, as all the advice I have seen suggests. I'd rather have two slightly experienced troops than one veteran and one raw recruit.

sorry for the double post - I am unable to edit as of yet

I forgot to comment on your point about Bacchus. That is true concerning the governor shortage, which is something I've only had to deal with in 1.2, prior to the patch I simply did massive bribery campaigns and thus had plenty of family members. My experience has been however that the game will try to keep your family members in step with your number of settlements. So when I get a number of empty settlements I start getting adoption candidates and find that men of the hour are more likely to spawn as well as births increasing, although this takes 30 turns for the effects to be felt. But in any case, the vacancies are temporary and I don't feel like spending 15 turns and however many denarii to build a building which I'm going to have to destroy later and rebuild as something different.

The best Roman faction is Rome itself...

~:cheers: