Rome 2 Tips and un-/under-documented features

Hopefully people can add to these as they come up:

- When you unlock new units, you can upgrade existing units by selecting it and clicking the 'retrain' button. This will upgrade, for example, hastati to legionaries and principes/triarii to veteran legionaries. (Note that you might want to keep the triarii, since legionaries are sword-armed and not spearmen.) This costs 100 per unit.

- You can swap out retainers/items for your characters. Pay attention that some of these grant faction-wide bonuses (I think).

- What 'authority', 'cunning', and 'zeal' do for generals and characters is explained in mouseover text under their portraits when selected in campaign map (and nowhere else).

- If a city you want to take is blockaded by another faction (so you can't attack it), move your army away to make the defenders more likely to sally out and break the blockade.

As Rome you start with Legionaries use them!

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Originally Posted by Papewaio

As Rome you start with Legionaries use them!

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Brilliant insight I tell you! :yes:

It is once you realize that your starting Admiral has 120 Assault Marines er Legionaires that are your most mobile and best troops by far.

CTRL plus the left and right arrow keys make the unit turn left or right. Found that by accident earlier. CTRL plus the up or down arrows are supposed to increase or decrease unit width, but at least for me only increased it.

The benefits of having loads of excess food are not nearly as good as they were in Shogun 2, but don't get into a food shortage. It's nasty.

Before laying siege to a city, have a spy try to sabotage it by poisoning the wells. If successful, it'll damage every unit (sometimes severely) that is in the city, both garrisoned army and the free defending troops.

A champion doing an assault patrol before a battle can knock the bejesus out of a tough enemy unit. Between one sabotage and an assault patrol I managed to reduce a Helvetii noble cavalry general from 80 to 18 men before the battle began.

Speaking of champions, park one in your main armies doing military training. I have two armies of rank 6-9 troops just from champion training.

I think truces after ceasefires are back ... except now it doesn't tell you when you declare war.

Edit: Or maybe not. I have no idea now. But it does seem that your diplomatic reputation is now tracked individually for each faction.

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Originally Posted by quadalpha

... But it does seem that your diplomatic reputation is now tracked individually for each faction.

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It is, according to the printed manual.

"Every decision, every treaty made and broken, every army that pillages foreign land without consent, will be remembered when you approach another faction with diplomacy in mind. All factions will be aware of your past treatment of others, particularly their own allies. They'll assess your reputation and treat your approaches accordingly, meeting your requests as befits their opinions of you."

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Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

It is, according to the printed manual.

"Every decision, every treaty made and broken, every army that pillages foreign land without consent, will be remembered when you approach another faction with diplomacy in mind. All factions will be aware of your past treatment of others, particularly their own allies. They'll assess your reputation and treat your approaches accordingly, meeting your requests as befits their opinions of you."

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That sounds like it's talking about opinion rather than reputation, which is (or ought to be) a modifier independent of opinion, like in S2.

Siege weapons are excellent at killing enemy troops before an assault. When laying siege to Syracuse, a unit of Roman Ballista accurately killed 521 enemies before I entered the city. Normal shot seems to cause more casualties than exploding shot. Scorpions are also very effective, but need a clear shot.

[QUOTE=quadalpha;2053546257]Hopefully people can add to these as they come up:

- You can swap out retainers/items for your characters. Pay attention that some of these grant faction-wide bonuses (I think).

- What 'authority', 'cunning', and 'zeal' do for generals and characters is explained in mouseover text under their portraits when selected in campaign map (and nowhere else).
/QUOTE]
Retainers and items, are these the household retainers that become available from time to time?? And what about the items you mentioned?
I am still trying to anderstand how this character system works, with the bigest problem being, no matter how athoritative or cuning are the members of the family, the other families are doing whatever they want and their popularity is allways better than mine.

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Originally Posted by Papewaio

It is once you realize that your starting Admiral has 120 Assault Marines er Legionaires that are your most mobile and best troops by far.

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Well, you didn't say that the first time now did you?

Diplomacy really works. You may find it hard to make allies, but don't hesitate to give or ask for military access from a faction you have good relations with. At 84 BC in my Roman campaign and I have two allies and a dozen factions with military access. I have lots of armies constantly moving through my territory and haven't had anyone backstab me. In fact, those armies have come in handy helping out with slave revolts and even non allies with military access will still fight on your side if they are nearby when you attack or are attacked by an enemy.

Don't forget to promote your generals/admirals as they rank up. Use the "Secure Promotion" option on the family management screen as these promotions often come with faction wide bonuses.

Stay on the roads in the desert or your troops will die quickly.

Rotate your edicts as needed. They can boost happiness or income quite nicely.

Monitor your provincial happiness and what you are choosing to build. Many higher building upgrades come with massive public order hits. It's quite easy to build yourself into constant revolts and it's very time consuming to correct the situation. I did this and it took 50 turns, where Rome was completely at peace, yet had to keep all of its armies at home to deal with 1-2 revolts per turns.

The end-of-turn hunt for that general/agent you apparently haven't promoted is solved by the 'Forces' panel (one of the four buttons above minimap).

Ctrl + g = locked group which will maintain unit order & formation when moved.

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Originally Posted by Jacque Schtrapp

Diplomacy really works. You may find it hard to make allies, but don't hesitate to give or ask for military access from a faction you have good relations with. At 84 BC in my Roman campaign and I have two allies and a dozen factions with military access. I have lots of armies constantly moving through my territory and haven't had anyone backstab me. In fact, those armies have come in handy helping out with slave revolts and even non allies with military access will still fight on your side if they are nearby when you attack or are attacked by an enemy.

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Really? Ive been trying for many turns to get trade agreements with my neighbors but no luck, even with the ones I have good standing with.

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Originally Posted by Hooahguy

Really? Ive been trying for many turns to get trade agreements with my neighbors but no luck, even with the ones I have good standing with.

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Admittedly, diplomacy is VERY slow to develop, but you will start getting offers soon. One thing I did that seems to speed the process up, is to take a fleet and sail it along the coastline of the Med, revealing factions as you go. Then, choose factions far away that you are unlikely to go to war with any time soon, and offer them non aggression pacts. It's rather like asking a bank for a loan, you have to have an established credit history before they'll risk loaning to you. The same is true with Rome II factions, you have to have some calculable interactions with other factions before the trade agreements come rolling in.

You will also likely be asked to pay for your initial trade agreements and non aggression pacts. Unfortunately, this seems to be the cost of establishing diplomacy in Rome II.

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Another feature people may not have noticed yet, is that you can use the arrow keys to move a ghostly image of your selected troop(s) and they will move to that exact location in the exact formation in which you move them. Be careful though, they will start moving the very moment you take your finger off the key.

The start of turn notification system is wonky, at best. It gets confused if you ever (I think) use the zoom to location button and forgets to display some of the notifications but they still show as 'read' in the info panel. Best to check through them yourself.

Agents can sail across the sea too! Just like armies. They get their own little boat icon.

Unit Buffs and the Workshop/TrainingCamp Buildings

IIRC these are the Roman & Hellenic names - I haven't played other factions yet and their names for these may be different. Some buffs seem to be available to any of your factions units that move into the Province that contains the buildings (Workshop line). Others only seem to be given at the time of unit recruitment (Training Camp line). The first applies even if they aren't your faction's buildings - as Rome I conquered a barbarian region (Tolosa in Provincia IIRC) and was able to Upgrade to Weapons Level II from the structure there. BTW, to upgrade, you will see a gold arrow at the top of the unit card. Click on the card and a menu appears above it with an Upgrade command available (at normal times, only the Disband command is selectable in this menu).

How does this affect you? Your Workshop line buildings (weapons buffs/armour & shield buffs/etc) can be in any province you like and can be built in the provincial city or in towns. To spread Squalor problems more evenly, these should not be in your main troop producing province. Once units are recruited, just have them visit your Workshop province(s) for buffs.

Your main troop producing province should contain the infantry barracks and one or more (according to squalor pressures) Training Camp line buildings. The buffs from these only seem to be given at recruitment, hence why you want them in the same province. The barrack building can be in any city or town (so I make it a town) but the Training Camp line can only be built in provincial cities.

With a big enough empire (and if you are as obsessed with maximising outcomes as I am!) you can add missile producing barracks & training camp combinations and cavalry & their appropriate training camp buildings too - so far I have only enough to max out my melee infantry (Hoplites). But remember that Workshops can be anywhere but Training Camps have to be where recruitment takes place.

Other related stuff: I'm not sure yet about Siege Engines and the Workshop line building for them - am guessing that they can be recruited then moved and buffed but haven't tried it. As for ships - as far as I can tell, they can only be buffed with updated Hull Levels (from either their recruiting buildings Military Wharf and upwards or from a Shipwright line building of a higher level than they got recruited from. Anyone found any other ship buffs? I don't think that land unit structures affect ships but I could be wrong. Of course, I could be wrong about anything - I grudge taking too long out of playing to run experiments for too long ~:)

Payments in the Diplomacy screen

Weirdly, you cannot manually type in an amount of money in the Payments box (no doubt this will be fixed in a patch sometime). The decrease/increase arrows change the amount of your offer by 10% of your current treasury, clearly a daft system since you can take 120 turns to amass 200,000 coins and then be forced to offer another faction a minimum of 20,000 coins in a single payment.

To get round this: unless you are very unlucky, the other faction will have a different size Treasury to yours. When you select 'Demand' instead of 'Offer', the arrows will now decrease/increase the amount in the box by 10% of their Treasury. By repeated increases and decreases, with judicious swapping between 'Offer' & 'Demand' you can get the final amount to something suitable. Then finally select 'Offer' or 'Demand' as you intended and Accept to get back to the main screen.

Can anyone point me to a list as to what the different traits do for agents?

I mean things like zeal, authority and such. I know for generals, zeal means melee attack (for all units under him), authority is morale and cunning is melee defense.

Thanks in advance.

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Originally Posted by Sp4

Can anyone point me to a list as to what the different traits do for agents?

I mean things like zeal, authority and such. I know for generals, zeal means melee attack (for all units under him), authority is morale and cunning is melee defense.

Thanks in advance.

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- What 'authority', 'cunning', and 'zeal' do for generals and characters is explained in mouseover text under their portraits when selected in campaign map (and nowhere else).

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Authority: cost of agent actions
Cunning: line of sight
Zeal: chance of wounding an enemy in self-defence

The default value is 3, with bonuses for higher values and penalties for lower.

All of them also affect chance of success for agent actions.

While on the topic of agents, watch out for the champion line, and their assault patrol ability (as mentioned above). I have had many elephants killed off between battles, with the AI safely removing my trump card. And again, speaking of, elephants are way overpowered.... duh!

Again with the agents, you can now just disband an agent you don't want (or if you have one that happens to be several turns away from where you need him).

Once you put your army into a formation (or any number of units really), you can select them and then hold down the mouse button (left) on one of them, until it changes into a cross shaped button, which you can then move the entire formation with, wherever you want, without it changing facing. To change the facing, hold down control and move your mouse.

Also, I found out that all these trait things are explained in the encyclopedia but it takes a bit of digging/reading.

Use flame(ing) javelins against elephants.
A single unit of Roman Velites eradicated a rebel Carthaginian elephant unit in seconds when I helped my good friend Carthage reclaiming his lost settlement.

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Originally Posted by Lord of the Isles

Payments in the Diplomacy screen

Weirdly, you cannot manually type in an amount of money in the Payments box (no doubt this will be fixed in a patch sometime). The decrease/increase arrows change the amount of your offer by 10% of your current treasury, clearly a daft system since you can take 120 turns to amass 200,000 coins and then be forced to offer another faction a minimum of 20,000 coins in a single payment.

To get round this: unless you are very unlucky, the other faction will have a different size Treasury to yours. When you select 'Demand' instead of 'Offer', the arrows will now decrease/increase the amount in the box by 10% of their Treasury. By repeated increases and decreases, with judicious swapping between 'Offer' & 'Demand' you can get the final amount to something suitable. Then finally select 'Offer' or 'Demand' as you intended and Accept to get back to the main screen.

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So basicaly by use of a diplomat one can see the exact treasury amount of an enemy faction? Does the game have a faction rankings scroll as well? This would seriously impede hotseat play (if at all possible). Keeping tabs on enemy gold levels and production will tell you when they're gearing for war.

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Originally Posted by Myth

So basicaly by use of a diplomat one can see the exact treasury amount of an enemy faction? Does the game have a faction rankings scroll as well? This would seriously impede hotseat play (if at all possible). Keeping tabs on enemy gold levels and production will tell you when they're gearing for war.

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That's right. At least, you can see the treasury any other faction has but no info about number of regions (though you can find that out on the Diplomacy map if you have explored that area), nor about what they are producing, what military they have, etc. The main Diplomacy screen does show a map and you can see, for any faction you have encountered, who their allies, neutrals and at-war opponents are. The last bit of info you can get is clicking on a region settlement owned by another faction when sometimes (may have to be bordering you or you have an agent close to it?) it shows you the settlement's buildings.

Edit: no faction ranking list (that I have found).

This may be pretty obvious but it only just occured to me... you can sally out and break a siege with only your garrison and you don't need to have an army sitting in the town. :S

Things I would tell myself if I could go back in time 7 days:

Italics are more on thread

Characters
Champions are ace: chuck one in any main army you roll with asap
The character trees are deceptive - look them up in the encyclopedia and decide how you want to proceed
Using them is expensive - chuck spares in an army to keep them leveling when not needed
Using them is expensive - don't use them until you are sure you shouldn't be spending the cash elsewhere (dear god - the number of times I have poisoned a well only to find I should have ungraded a barracks!)

Generals
While its temping to go for bonus' pick someone in your family if possible
Do not adopt young new generals into your family - they will get awful traits (-1 gravita per turn! it goes to their head?) wait until they have 3 traits and then adopt them
Try not to make a general from a different house your main one - they will get awesomeness power which isn't good
Take a city and scatter their forces rather than battle piecemeal if at all possible - they will then come back in dribs and drabs and you can farm for levels for the 2-3 turns it takes for your army to recover

Armies
Zerg ftw - as pretty as it is to leave reserve armies and attack on multiple fronts - early game you are better making a mega army and rolling them
Don't be afraid to encircle/ siege even if you are 33% to win. The enemy may move units, you can always retreat if you don't like the look of it.

Cities
Carful you don't take cities with duplicated or unuseable buildings that you forget about
Do not expand cities unless you can afford a building (slums suck)

Trade
Sucks initially - as you take more provinces and upgrade they will bang your door down for agreements -
1 - make sure you check the amount and balance that with any cash demands - single city owner asking for 10x the turn trade up front = no
2 - if you knock someone back they usually/ may come back asking for less cash in a couple of turns
3 - oh and by the way you need sa capital to trade at all - sparta doesn't count :(

General
NEVER run out of food - its awful - everything sucks really badly.
try to keep over 1000 (750 min) per turn or you will stall and lose out massively on progress.
Look at your tech tree - some factions have good unit

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Originally Posted by benjywa

try to keep over 1000 (750 min) per turn or you will stall and lose out massively on progress.

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Do you mean income per turn?

Also I wish I knew what I know now when starting my campaign. My faction leader only has 60 gravitas while my main rival, a general named Karl, has a gravitas of 80 and rising (+2 per turn). I know hes a threat, but how much of a threat?