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!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Papewaio

As Rome you start with Legionaries use them!

---

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by quadalpha

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

---

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."

Quote:

---

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."

---

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.

Quote:

---

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.

---

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.

Quote:

---

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.

---

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.

Quote:

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

Quote:

---

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.

---

Quote:

---

- 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).

---

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.

Quote:

---

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.

---

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.

Quote:

---

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.

---

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

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by benjywa

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

---

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?

Things that might be obvious or explained in the prologue (which I skipped) but I only discovered after hours of play:

Tooltips - the panel to the left has tooltips if you mouse over most icons. When presented with three agents to hire, I didn't realize there was anything to differentiate them; then I discovered mousing over an icon on the info panel for each one showed me exactly what traits and associated bonuses they had. Same thing with armies: all active effects are shown when you mouse over the icons in the info panel.

Province Details tab - another easy to miss info panel, the Province Details tab shows you a breakdown of various effects influencing income, unrest, culture etc. along with projected values. Good stuff to know when planning builds.

afternoon chap.

700 - 1000 per turn is what I aim for. Not Romans because they start with loads of towns but with Iceni and sparta (starting with just 1) I tried to spend down to 1000per turn then go killing when I hit that mark. This seems to keep in good stead until I was up and running with trade agreements and a few provinces when Iit was more like 2kp/t just because I had x4 the income and only needed x2 the men to keep on trucking

I haven't had gravitas issues yet, you can't control the first ones you get so don't sweat it. I would like to know the answer to this too, I have asked for definitive answer but not found anything yet. From playing I have the following assumptions but would like them verifying

1 - leaving you faction leader in the pool seems to give decent + gravitas return
2 - having family member go killing in your main army means levels and + gravitas
3 - doing the same as 2 with other families isn't a great idea
4 - not using any other families is a non starter - they get grumpy and it gives you a -gravita penalty

So how I am rolling at the moment:
youngest family member is main general going out getting levels
trying to put competing family members in small homebound reserve forces so they are in armies but not fighting
recruiting young generals to go fighting and adopting them when they are up and running and have 3 traits

You can load armies onto fleets like in previous games. (you may need a large enough fleet, but you don't need a one-to-one army/navy unit ratio)
Saves you the trouble of moving the fleet and the transports separately.
In a naval battle the transports show up as reinforcements.

Naval artillery is great for taking out walls in those coastal provincial capitals.
I loaded my army onto a fleet and had lots of fun taking Alexandria.

Up to date additions to under documented things

1 - when you take a town the garison slowly builds up over 4-5 turns, highlight the picture of a castle under the relevent town in the province screen and it will say (plebs 80/160) etc. If there are enemies around you may want to sit in a city for a turn or 3.
2 - Naval battles are a joke - essentially ramming wins - 3 small 67p/t upkeep ships will kill 1 267p/t assult legionaires ship, you will lose whichever they board but 2-3 rams and its dead
3 - weak AI factions will try and defensive ally you - make sure you look at their enemies before you accept!
4 - when you caharcter fails but hinders the enemy agent it means they lose their next turn
5 - still struggling to find a decent use for dignataries other than helping convert population - they seem to suck
6 - noob error - I had 0 happiness per turn so didn't upgrade towns.... It was 0 because i was at +100 total and it doesn't show the +10 per turn once you get to +100. lost a lot of turns from that

Rome units wise
war dogs are amazing vs ai and cheap unkeep - they will slaughter any unarmoured unit which is always what they lead with - big battle last night (20 vs 20 I had 0 cav and he had 4 heavy cav + general) I had 2 dogs units kill over 300 slingers and pull all kinds of units out of the line vs gauls

Gladiators - I have new found love for the swordsmen - same battle last night I had a couple of units as a hangover from an emergency recruit from earler in the game

Javelins Javelins
dogs dogs dogs
spears legion legion legion spears
glads and couple of balista

as soon as I realised AI was holding cav back for flanks and back and I was facing a melee line the 2 units of gladiators ran through the legions and took a unit each... then another each and still had 50% left when I won

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by benjywa

5 - still struggling to find a decent use for dignataries other than helping convert population - they seem to suck

---

Here are their bonuses excluding traits, and typical manipulate , assassinate, demoralize stuff:

I'll break it down. All % or +/- will be at rank 3 (highest rank).

Deployed in your territory

• Cultural Conversion +9 / +18 (2 different skills one in the authority tree, the other in zeal. This also works in enemy territories)
• +15% tax rate to local province (When Deployed)

In your army

• -18 % Upkeep Cost on Military
• +18 % Movement Range
• They also give you a little defense versus enemy agents

Deployed in the enemy territory

• -15 % Tax Rate
• + 90% public order penalty due to local presence of foreign authority
• - 30% Wealth from all commerce buildings
  

My most common use is to deploy them in my highest grossing provinces for the extra tax. They usually end up with traits that will give bonuses to public order. After that, I usually go for evading enemy agents, and assassination since it's built into the "Politics" talent.


Edit: Also a cool thing I don't see mentioned yet. By way of manipulation you can have more than the maximum allowed agents. Dignitaries are the "Masters of Manipulation" and sort of the anti-champion. Other factions agents will also sometimes have specific bonuses that come from their faction.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Spoonska

Here are their bonuses excluding traits, and typical manipulate , assassinate, demoralize stuff:

I'll break it down. All % or +/- will be at rank 3 (highest rank).

Deployed in your territory

• Cultural Conversion +9 / +18 (2 different skills one in the authority tree, the other in zeal. This also works in enemy territories)
• +15% tax rate to local province (When Deployed)

In your army

• -18 % Upkeep Cost on Military
• +18 % Movement Range
• They also give you a little defense versus enemy agents

Deployed in the enemy territory

• -15 % Tax Rate
• + 90% public order penalty due to local presence of foreign authority
• - 30% Wealth from all commerce buildings
  

My most common use is to deploy them in my highest grossing provinces for the extra tax. They usually end up with traits that will give bonuses to public order. After that, I usually go for evading enemy agents, and assassination since it's built into the "Politics" talent.

---

they can also persuade an enemy agent to your side. You can actually exceed the agent number limits.
I have 4 military agents but my limit is 3.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by phred

they can also persuade an enemy agent to your side. You can actually exceed the agent number limits.
I have 4 military agents but my limit is 3.

---

I was wondering whether or not that was the case, cuz I haven't been able to do it when I'm at the limit even when my chance of success is 80%+. Thanks for clearing it up.

I also wanna mention that when you Loot a captured settlement, as opposed to Occupy or Raze, the slave populations in your provinces increases by as much as 30%. Since I don't see population totals tracked anywhere in-game this may have to do with population surplus? Not sure what affects this. It is mentioned in the Encyclopaedia, but no details as to specifics.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I was wondering whether or not that was the case, cuz I haven't been able to do it when I'm at the limit even when my chance of success is 80%+. Thanks for clearing it up.

---

If I have the same odds for assassinating and persuading, I feel as though I have a much better chance to succeed with the assassination than persuade them to join my side.
But that's purely anecdotal - I haven't tried tracking actual occurrences.

Usually which one do you use more? From the info above and from my previous experience it seems assassinating is usually the preferred method.

I like converting them. I only ever assassinate faction members.

Also on the point of dignitaries sucking... yeah there's a little too much they are able to do and be helpful with for them deserve to be called sucking =P They can help with public order, conversion, tax rate and that's only the sort of things they can do at home =P

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BroskiDerpman

Usually which one do you use more? From the info above and from my previous experience it seems assassinating is usually the preferred method.

---

As for myself, under normal conditions I'd prefer assassination cuz if successful that stops the AI from deploying an agent on another mission for at least 2 turns (since they can't be deployed when recruited), and when they do of course it'll be minus any abilities their previous agent managed to acquire. However, persuading them to your cause is really useful, especially in the early game, since you only have a single spy to work with. I've never been able to pull that off though even when the chances are high :confused:

There's also the consideration that if an agent is susceptible to persuasion once, they might be vulnerable to it again when working for you. Can a rat ever be trusted?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BroskiDerpman

Usually which one do you use more? From the info above and from my previous experience it seems assassinating is usually the preferred method.

---

I tried persuading and it often didn't work, and then just switched to assassination, which "seems" to work more. But assassination often just wounds someone and takes them off the map for a short period, so I could just be imagining more successes with assassination.
I think it was just last night or the night before that I tried persuading on a whim and it gave me military adviser over my limit.

Has anyone been using the agents to start rebellions?
There are a couple of regions I'd like to take without starting another war.
It was a bit overpowered in Shogun II (but fun).

RoTS agents were worth several elite armies if they're leveled up. (A bit weaker in Sengoku but still powerful somewhat)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by phred

Has anyone been using the agents to start rebellions?

---

Yes, constantly. I use the spy's that don't start off with wealth bonuses to rough up nearby enemies, and territories. Fully talented a spy will drop public order by 60 I think ? You will get negative diplomacy for agent actions against the nation, but I've never seen the penalty go past 15. Once the revolt happens its a bit of a coin toss if it will work out. On the first turn of a revolt they will only have 1 unit the General. Every turn after that they slowly start to build. Sometimes the AI will will act and snuff it out, sometimes the AI doesn't have an army in sight and it works out. Then you're okay to steam roll it. A good example of a place to use this is during a Sparta Campaign since going to war with Athens might not be something you want to do for your province capital.


And also to tack on to this tip.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by phred

they can also persuade an enemy agent to your side. You can actually exceed the agent number limits.
I have 4 military agents but my limit is 3.

---

Enemy agents sometimes have faction (maybe culture) bonuses that are unique to them. There's one of the celtic tribes (I think) that will give you increased charge bonus from a champion. When you convert them you get that unique bonus not. Not forever though , just as long as that agent is alive.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by phred

...Has anyone been using the agents to start rebellions?
There are a couple of regions I'd like to take without starting another war...

---

I was working on this very thing when my best agent kicked it from old age. Now I gotta work with a couple of rookies, I'll report if it goes well. There's a huge flashpoint brewing in my campaign that would literally draw 5 factions into war... and I'd like to engineer it :sneaky:

I do not know if other factions have access to these buildings, but at least as Rome there's one of the aqueduct line that gives extra agent levels to all agents recruited in the city. At the moment I have two of them in different regions, and those cities are where I get all my agents now. As it stands I'm getting rank 3 agents out of the gate, and in the campaign I'm closing in on being able to recruit rank 4 spies and dignitaries with rank 5 champions (I built the Colosseum).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Quillan

I built the Colosseum.

---

Good man.

I haven't used agents to make rebellions yet, or let's say I tried but didn't see any results. I was sort of trying to do it like in Shogun, where you make rebellions and then go in with your army to take regions without officially declaring a war but so far, that has not worked for me yet. I did go and conquer a few towns where I tried to make a rebellion before and suddenly had them rebel while I was there, which was a little amusing. It made my conquest of Italy a little more exciting, since the rebels put up more of a fight than the Romans >_>

Is it still possible to "stun lock" your neighbours with agent actions?
In S2 you could render opponents powerless with a combination of sabotage and "sales" of access.

Does the research upgrade from temples of minerva and libraries only count once or do the bonuses add up when more are built? Sorry if this is in the wrong area, haven't seen it addressed yet. Thanks.

Does the research upgrade from temples of minerva and libraries only count once or do the bonuses add up when more are built? Sorry if this is in the wrong area, haven't seen it addressed yet. Thanks.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by VAE VICTUS

Does the research upgrade from temples of minerva and libraries only count once or do the bonuses add up when more are built? Sorry if this is in the wrong area, haven't seen it addressed yet. Thanks.

---

They add. You can't have more than one in the same city, but you can build multiples in different cities/provinces, and the bonuses all add together. I think I'm about 176% research speed currently (two scriptorums, one archive, several Minerva shrines and one or two bonus traits).

An interesting read on what the parameters for difficulty setting are:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...pdated-9-11-13

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HopAlongBunny

Is it still possible to "stun lock" your neighbours with agent actions?
In S2 you could render opponents powerless with a combination of sabotage and "sales" of access.

---

I could stunlock enemy stacsk with my awesome ninja, I remmeber that. But it wa sexpensive and SII's economy isn't designed to spiral out of control. In Rome II money is not such a big issue so one could probably stalemate the enmy with such action. Plus, there is a limit to the number armies a faction gets, so it's entirely possible.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ReluctantSamurai

An interesting read on what the parameters for difficulty setting are:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...pdated-9-11-13

---

Good stuff, thx for link. Kinda surprising to me, the differences between difficulty levels are apparently quite mild, and in secondary areas. Impacts agent actions more than anything else. Doesn't seem to affect one's own economy very much. The AI factions obviously get some pretty good bonuses on higher difficulty levels, particularly in allowing the build of more (or rather, larger) armies...but then the AI is so wonky in using those armies, it's not a big deal. What the heck, I might try Legendary for my next campaign.

People have said 'put Champion in your main armies' but not why: Its because the Champion will train your troops, can be a level or two per turn -> quickly makes that army a powerful veteran force.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hoom

People have said 'put Champion in your main armies' but not why: Its because the Champion will train your troops, can be a level or two per turn -> quickly makes that army a powerful veteran force.

---

Just to echo this point, putting a champion in my main force brought everyone up to 3 gold chevrons very quickly. Seems kinda cheap to me, but oh well.

Also, the champion unit itself will level up and you can take a skill that improves movement points WHILE he trains your army.

Saw this in the loading text today:
You can set "flag-points" (don't remember what they actually called it) on the campaign map with shift+ F9-F12. After that you can jump to those points using the appropriate F-key. You can not delete these points but you can overwrite them.

Don't know if this is something new but I never knew this...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FesterShinetop

Saw this in the loading text today:
You can set "flag-points" (don't remember what they actually called it) on the campaign map with shift+ F9-F12. After that you can jump to those points using the appropriate F-key. You can not delete these points but you can overwrite them.

Don't know if this is something new but I never knew this...

---

It was in Shogun 2. I learned it the same way there, from a tip on a loading screen.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by benjywa

afternoon chap.



I haven't had gravitas issues yet, you can't control the first ones you get so don't sweat it. I would like to know the answer to this too, I have asked for definitive answer but not found anything yet. From playing I have the following assumptions but would like them verifying

1 - leaving you faction leader in the pool seems to give decent + gravitas return
2 - having family member go killing in your main army means levels and + gravitas
3 - doing the same as 2 with other families isn't a great idea
4 - not using any other families is a non starter - they get grumpy and it gives you a -gravita penalty

So how I am rolling at the moment:
youngest family member is main general going out getting levels
trying to put competing family members in small homebound reserve forces so they are in armies but not fighting
recruiting young generals to go fighting and adopting them when they are up and running and have 3 traits

---

Funny thing is I have a 60% rating with the senate, playing as Rome. I wanted to put someone from my faction in the lead army but the game doesnt always show where the army is at where u are replacing the general, so I was never sure which army was getting what. I now know you have to remember the army by name to know which is the lead army. Plus I didnt pull any tricks on the other family memebers. Where as the other families are pulling dirty tricks on me all the time. For whatever reason I seem to be getting a lot of gravitas!

It isnt really a trick but coincidence, where a faction is at war with the same faction you are. What happens even if you don't have any treaties going on, the AI will attack and the other faction will join you in the battle if they are within reenfocment range. Quite nice if you aske me. I think the AI can opt out but I'm guessing because it was a weak faction it did it to try to get good terms with me. So I'm guessing you could strategiacally park an army near another AI army and double team the enemy. How it happened for me was there was an army of a neutral faction on ships next to one of my cities and the opposing faction attacked my city and the rest is history.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Myth

Also, the champion unit itself will level up and you can take a skill that improves movement points WHILE he trains your army.

---

Yeah, and this is actually true of all one's agents.

A rather passive approach to using agents, but nonetheless effective, is to just stick ALL of them in your armies.

PROS:
- Keeps them all employed every turn, at no cost to treasury.
- Keeps them "auto-leveling" in skills.
- Every army always has an agent available if one does want to pull them out for a turn and execute a specific action vs enemy.
- Your general/army benefits from their passive traits...almost as if the general has an extra "super household member" slot.

CONS:
- Skill-ups take several turns, and therefore an agent levels slower than if performing successful actions several turns in a row.
- Tends to diffuse agents across the map, and able to concentrate for multiple agent actions only in areas where your armies themselves are somewhat concentrated.
- Obviously, lessens agents' independence and range.

Incase anyone is still wondering (I only just now found out =X)

Normal shot for ballistae is better at killing lots of stuff quickly as everything that is touched by the rocks they fling at people, dies. Literally everyone who gets knocked over by a normal shot stays on the ground. I am not sure if this is supposed to work that way because I have seen explosive shot land in the middle of a unit of heavy infantry, throwing them all around and making them fly everywhere just so everyone could get up and continue walking.

I am not sure about the advantages of using explosive ammo. I guess it has more of a morale effect, allowing you to use artillery as more of a close fire support for your own infantry without risking too many deaths from friendly fire but I am not totally certain on that. The casualties from explosive ammo are a lot lower than from standard shots. Either way, I wouldn't really use them to shoot at things that are close to your own units.

Sorry if these have been posted already:

Campaign:
It doesn't work well to try to have Tier 3 or 4 buildings in all of your settlements as these can be very costly in terms of squalor, food, or public order. Since food can be imported from other provinces, specialization by province is possible e.g. military, financial, etc. The beta 3 patch reduced some of the higher-level building penalties somewhat.

The strategic overview also has overlay toggle buttons to see: population growth, wealth, public order

If a third party is blocking the port of one of the enemy settlements you wish to take, you can place your army in the combat zone and wait for the third party to initiate an assault. Then just decline to take part. The third party is defeated and runs off and you can assault the settlement.

Great way to move troops really far: Have a forced march "relay" with your generals. One with bunch of troops force marches to merge with another general that has no or little troops. He takes them the rest of the way.

Battle:

Fun: hitting "Insert" or clicking the cinematic camera button after selecting a siege weapon allows you to control its shooting personally.

The "N" key is by default how you zoom from far away and how people are able to see the zombie faces. Doesn't work in cinematic mode, it kicks you out of cinematic mode.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TarheelDan

Great way to move troops really far: Have a forced march "relay" with your generals. One with bunch of troops force marches to merge with another general that has no or little troops. He takes them the rest of the way.

---

Nice find, I hadn't caught on to this...probably because I don't have any generals sitting on the map without troops. I could see where this could be useful, however, in getting some new troops from one's home army-production province up to the front. That said, I gotta say this strikes me as a bit of an exploitable bug, and obviously shouldn't be in the game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bramborough

Nice find, I hadn't caught on to this...probably because I don't have any generals sitting on the map without troops. I could see where this could be useful, however, in getting some new troops from one's home army-production province up to the front. That said, I gotta say this strikes me as a bit of an exploitable bug, and obviously shouldn't be in the game.

---

Very true! I remember that movement points for any army used to be limited to the unit within the army with the minimum number of movement points. Since individual units no longer have movement points, only generals...

Now that you point this out, I see it would be more sporting to refrain.

if you use the dignitaries ability Cultural Propaganda ( http://dsi0fanyw80ls.cloudfront.net/...ies_corruption ) the cultural penalty when taking over the settlement will be less, if not doing this the penalty when taking over a settlement is at normal differculty -15 depending a lot of things i dont understand it can go down alot most of the time i have it down to -9 in stability but one settlement i got it down to -3 after 2 or 3 successes (my army had a way to go before taking the setlement and i had my dignitary already there leveled upp only on zeal)

i will check if i can ad some pictures for a better explanation but i hope you guys understand, (not at hope right now)

the first screenshot is without the dignitaries notice the cultural differences is at -14
http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/...416F7F2571DA5/

And in this it is at -8
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/...C27E3D2D5754C/

might be small but every bit help for you guys on harder difficulties then me :)

Here's a little graphical option detail that maybe some have overlooked. I know I didn't understand what it did until I made the following comparisons by pausing the game and changing the options back and forth--then stopping to take a shot of each setting.

This has to do with the unit detail option in the graphics setting. The tool tip in game say that it determines the amount of detail of units, which is misleading.

See the shots below

The shot at the top is on the "low" unit detail setting while the shot below it is on the "extreme" unit detail setting. You will notice that there is absolutely no difference in the detail of the units in the foreground. However, if you look at the units in the distance you will see a difference. Sorry, but I had to reduce these pictures quite a bit to get both shots together.

https://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y7...ps7e037fae.jpg


Anyway the point is that changes in the unit detail setting have no effect on the detail of the units that are in the foreground. The effect has to do with the 3D draw distance of the units further away. What it really determines is at what point the 3D units are changed to 2D sprites. I'm guessing that the last two or three centuries (units) are all 2D sprites

Even though I have a beefy PC, by changing this setting to very high (below Ultra and Extreme) I was able to substantially increase frame rates with no real discernible decrease in how the game looks during a battle. One might be able to really notice it if they were playing the game on a large screen TV, but I have a 24 inch IPS monitor and can hardly tell the difference between the settings.

It's worth playing with just to see if it get you a few more frame rates.

Cheers

As far as I know, reducing the unit detail settings to anything below very high also makes corpses disappear at some point ^^

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sp4

As far as I know, reducing the unit detail settings to anything below very high also makes corpses disappear at some point ^^

---

That's possible, but since I am using "very high" I wouldn't have noticed it and of course I did this test in a static mode prior to any battle.

Cheers

I am not certain anymore that the campaign has a time limit at all. The original Rome would end in 14 AD. So far, I've heard speculation that the game would end at 0 BC, 14 AD, or 24 AD (300 turns from campaign start). However, I've been dragging one out just to see if this is the case (and also to see if it's possible to research all technologies), and at 28 AD the game is still going without a message and with victory still listed as possible.

I'm sure I read somewhere, possibly in the pdf manual, that there is no end date for the campaign. It also doesn't list an end date in the ultimate victory conditions, so I'm pretty sure there's no time limit.

Yup no time limit, official end date for cool events and such is 28 AD: 300 turns.

In my Sekigahara campaign 4tpy Domination till 1700 owning 40 provinces; it's only 436 turns till you loose though it's easier compared to vanilla so far but it's still a enjoyable experience.

Here's something that I don't think is documented.

An AI agent poisoned my army in the field and that army started the next turn with only half of its movement points available.
The next turn they hit me with either "harass" or "assault patrol" and my army didn't have any movement points that turn.

I couldn't find anything in the encyclopedia or the tooltips saying that agent actions reduce movement points.
Here's a link to the encyclopedia section on agents
http://dsi0fanyw80ls.cloudfront.net/en/characters

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by phred

Here's something that I don't think is documented.

An AI agent poisoned my army in the field and that army started the next turn with only half of its movement points available.
The next turn they hit me with either "harass" or "assault patrol" and my army didn't have any movement points that turn.

I couldn't find anything in the encyclopedia or the tooltips saying that agent actions reduce movement points.
Here's a link to the encyclopedia section on agents
http://dsi0fanyw80ls.cloudfront.net/en/characters

---

At least since Patch 3, the AI is capable of being fairly sneaky with this capability, appearing to actually coordinate agent actions with their armies.

Yesterday, I landed two Roman stacks in Sparta. I figured with two 16-unit stacks working in tandem, they'd be able to beat anything that Sparta threw at them. A Spartan champion-type (hero?), however, moved against stack #1 and sabotaged...not only removing its movement points but also rendering it incapable of reinforcing. THEN, a full 20-unit Spartan army, reinforced by another large army (something around 15 units or so), hit my now-unsupported stack #2. The balance-of-power bar was way to the left, maybe 15-20%ish. It's certainly possible to win outnumbered, especially as this is just Normal difficulty...but I figured being outnumbered that severely by Spartan phalanxes was certain defeat. So I retreated....which then left Stack #1 without support.

The two Spartan stacks now fell on these guys, who were unable to retreat, so had to fight the battle. I was pleasantly shocked to somehow win the thing, in a "close victory". Yeah yeah, the battle AI wasn't very smart on the attack, but pretty epic nevertheless just from the sheer numbers - of decent-quality troops - coming against the legionaries. Win or not, this legion was severely mauled and unable to replenish, so I was willing to concede the strategic victory to the Spartans and get these guys out, started moving my legions back to the coast. Next turn, however, the Spartan champ rolled in and they pulled the exact same tactic AGAIN, once more isolating my now-depleted legion against their two stacks. Of course, they had lost quite heavily in the previous battle as well, but they had a turn's worth of replenishment in friendly territory, so now the odds were even longer. Result: heroic victory. Not sure how/why...the legionaries just didn't break.

Bottom line, I was pretty impressed with the way the Spartans coordinated their agent/army actions. The fact that they did it two turns in a row seems to indicate that it was not a mere coincidence. And their tactic resulted in the two most interesting, adrenalin-pumping battles I've yet experienced in R2...and among the best I've encountered in any TW game.

Screenie from the first battle here. Added mainly just so I understand the process of saving, posting to Imgur, and then linking here.

https://i.imgur.com/pX9Y5d8.png

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bramborough

At least since Patch 3, the AI is capable of being fairly sneaky with this capability, appearing to actually coordinate agent actions with their armies.

Yesterday, I landed two Roman stacks in Sparta. I figured with two 16-unit stacks working in tandem, they'd be able to beat anything that Sparta threw at them. A Spartan champion-type (hero?), however, moved against stack #1 and sabotaged...not only removing its movement points but also rendering it incapable of reinforcing. THEN, a full 20-unit Spartan army, reinforced by another large army (something around 15 units or so), hit my now-unsupported stack #2. The balance-of-power bar was way to the left, maybe 15-20%ish. It's certainly possible to win outnumbered, especially as this is just Normal difficulty...but I figured being outnumbered that severely by Spartan phalanxes was certain defeat. So I retreated....which then left Stack #1 without support.

The two Spartan stacks now fell on these guys, who were unable to retreat, so had to fight the battle. I was pleasantly shocked to somehow win the thing, in a "close victory". Yeah yeah, the battle AI wasn't very smart on the attack, but pretty epic nevertheless just from the sheer numbers - of decent-quality troops - coming against the legionaries. Win or not, this legion was severely mauled and unable to replenish, so I was willing to concede the strategic victory to the Spartans and get these guys out, started moving my legions back to the coast. Next turn, however, the Spartan champ rolled in and they pulled the exact same tactic AGAIN, once more isolating my now-depleted legion against their two stacks. Of course, they had lost quite heavily in the previous battle as well, but they had a turn's worth of replenishment in friendly territory, so now the odds were even longer. Result: heroic victory. Not sure how/why...the legionaries just didn't break.

Bottom line, I was pretty impressed with the way the Spartans coordinated their agent/army actions. The fact that they did it two turns in a row seems to indicate that it was not a mere coincidence. And their tactic resulted in the two most interesting, adrenalin-pumping battles I've yet experienced in R2...and among the best I've encountered in any TW game.

---

I had something like that happen against the Nasomenes (sp?) in North Africa. I had been steamrolling everyone, got to their province, they assassinated my general and hit me with 2 1/2 stacks. I lost big time, remade my stack, protected my general and they did it again. They missed the assassination attempt, but they were able to swarm me with their two stacks.
I came back with 3 fully developed stacks and took care of them. it was fun.

This is how Macedon destroyed my two experienced legions after I had conquered Athens and Sparta. Denying reinforcing is someting the AI does well and I want to be able to do it too, gotta learn how it happens.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Myth

This is how Macedon destroyed my two experienced legions after I had conquered Athens and Sparta. Denying reinforcing is someting the AI does well and I want to be able to do it too, gotta learn how it happens.

---

Yep, me too. As usual, the encyclopedia is no help, and in-game tooltips aren't either. BUT...I seem to remember a couple times when a post-action pop-up report said something like "Your agent was successful, and their movement has been hindered"....even though "hindering movement" wasn't the action I'd actually tried. So I think the movement hit is a side-benefit of a successful Sabotage action vs an army (or Manipulation action vs an agent).

Hindering movement is a side-effect of successful sabotaging. You can mouse over a "buff" icon on the stack that has been sabbed and get an overview of how hard you've been hit by the sab. Its quite counterintuitive, but there is a system there somewhere that needs discovering (because, you know... can't just write it in the encyclopeadia)

Actually I feel pretty dumb about this, but when you try to perform the action and mouse over the option above assassinate (with a champion) it says you cut off the army from being able to reinforce and also inflicting ADDITIONAL effects based on what you choose (Show Strength/Assault Patrol etc.)