Tips and Tricks for New Players

[athanaric]

Here's the place for posting concise bits of advice regarding EB, but also unusual discoveries about RTW gameplay (that directly affect EB).
Issues that pop up again and again can be addressed here.
OP content is subject to change. This thread may require moving to the gameplay section.

Spam and off topic posts will be reported.


Advice so far (trying to keep up, thanks for everyone's input. Beginning to form a structure):


Units

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Every single cavalry unit in EB has a secondary weapon. Usually it's quite useful, too.

All kopeis and falcatas in EB can pierce armour. They're wielded by a majority of Hellenistic and Iberian units.

Many factions can bribe Uirodusios but only barbarian ones can train them.

Romans can bribe Rhodian slingers but can't train them.

If you want your units, particularly cavalry, to use their secondary weapon, press and hold alt when making the attack command. With Elephants, this will direct their ranged attack (arrows or javelins).

Elephants: Also cost enormous amounts of money in upkeep, if you have them at the beginning (Carthage or Epirus) use them ASAP in battles or disband them.

Cavalry: Expensive in EB, though a lot less so than elephants. Again, use them up in battles as soon as you can in order to save money for town-building.

Training experience: As the Sweboz, you can recruit 4 chervon units straight from some cities (build a Type III or IV government and a temple of Deiwoz), and the Getai can do likewise if they build a temple of Ares in Sarmiszegethusa.

The Germanic nobles (Dreugulozez Brunjadoi) can be upgraded to 3/1 defense with a blacksmith, rather than 1/1 as with most units. This includes the reformed ones and the mercenaries, but not the general unit. It is a glitch, though.

As anyone with boats in the sea, you can recruit tons of good mercenaries from the southern tip of the Peloponnesos (south of Sparta), but it's blocked off from a land route so you have to use a fleet.

Defensive skill protects units in melee but not range, and shields only protect the left and front of the soldier. Armor protects all from every direction but is cut in half against armor piercing units, take this in consideration when facing different types of opponents. Your Gaesatae will be destroyed by horse archers and your Legions will be wrecked by Drapanai.

Agents

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Counter-intelligence: Always leave a spy in any city that that is close to/bordering enemy or neutral factions. Your spy will often counteract enemy/neutral spies by ejecting him at the beginning of a round and he will also make that city harder for enemy/neutral spies to break into. An effective and cheap tactic (350 mnai a month per spy is nothing to keep your cities from revolting) to protect your cities when you are expanding halfway across the world from your homeland.

Keeping diplomats in your settlements, especially those without governor, reduce the chances of getting your settlements bribed.

Characters

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

You can transfer ancillaries from one family member to another by dragging the ancillary icon to the icon of another family member, given that they are in the same army/city. That means that you can give to one general "famous warrior", "armourer", "doctor", "herbalist" ancillaries and stack them, vastly improving the quality of that general. This also works with negative ancillaries: move them to very old family members or to those that don't gain penalties from them (e.g. a negative management ancillary to a field general).

Useless characters: If there is a family member or character that you really want to see gone, put him/them on a smallest possible fleet, and send it to be destroyed by pirates. Do this only if there is nothing else for them to do, but remember, FM bodyguard is usually one of the better troop types you have at your disposal.

Druidry:
Druid skills are fairly hard to obtain but they can enable Celtic generals to become very powerful. Temples are crucial for improving the odds of receiving druidic improvements, the higher level the temple, the higher level druidry can be attained. Stone temples of Tanaris, Cernunnos, Sucellos, and Andraste all help greatly to bestow druidical bonuses. Seventh level druidry is extremely hard to obtain but is perhaps the most powerful general bonus in EB bestowing something like +2 hitpoints, +2 morale, +2 command, greatly improved healing (something on the order of 45%) and an influence bonus. To get the best chance of receiving strong druid generals, build level four druidical temples all over Gaul and Britain, put all young FMs through the Ynys Mon education in Britain, and station them all over Gaul after completing Ynys Mon.

Tactics (battle map)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Deploying archers in rows 3 or less deep supposedly makes them more effective at range.

Watch how your cavalry uses their spears:
- If they use it overhand (like Equites Romani), they cannot charge effectively no matter what their charge value says. They can still be good in mêlée, though.
- If they have underhand lances or spears (like Hetairoi), watch when they charge to see if they are lowering their weapons or not. If you charge from too close a range they will not lower their weapons and cannot charge effectively. This happened in vanilla too, I think, but there cavalry crushed anything regardless.

Take your time with battles. Units don't die nearly as quickly as in vanilla and won't be routing immediately either (caveat: If heavy cavalry charges or falxes are involved they still die. If naked troops or ambushes are involved they'll still rout) so with most factions you can safely let your battle-line hold and fight for a few minutes whilst you wait for a good outflanking opportunity or for the enemy to commit their reserves before you expose your cavalry. If you rush this, chances are your flankers will get outflanked in turn and casualties will be higher.

Sniping heavy cavalry: Slingers are great against most enemy bodyguard cavalry. They're much better than in vanilla in general because they're armour piercing.
This is not only because of the armour piercing capabilities of the slingers (which foils the heavy cavalry's greatest strength), but also because the most heavy cavalry units don't use shields (because their lances are two-handed) and shields are the best protection against missiles there is.

Missile troops are quite effective against the right targets, but they will not massacre everything like they do in some other mods. When facing armoured troops with large shields like hoplites and especially falanxes, do not waste your ammo by shooting at their front. Javelins in particular are much better aimed at the rear of the enemy by your flankers.
- Conversely, if the enemy has a lot of missile troops it is relatively safe to just march your phalanx right up their throats. The AI usually won't even try to shoot pikemen with phalanx on. This also works with a classical hoplite phalanx. The enemy will exhaust their missiles but inflict negligible casualties, making life easier for your cavalry and flankers.

Horse archers are highly vulnerable in woods and will perform sub par. However, they rule the steppes. Bear that in mind when tackling steppe factions.

Units performing Cantabrian circle are less vulnerable to missile attack, but will tire faster. They also get caught more easily by cavalry.

Do not waste missiles shooting incoming enemies, shoot from the flanks or back. Unless they are unarmored or shieldless.

Things overhand spear cavalry are good at are:
-poking at other horses
-chopping other horses up with their secondary
-not overly expensive
-poking at people's back as they run, quickly (fast animation)
-chopping at people's back for repeated short intervals.

If you want to partly blunt a cavalry attack from the front, and you only have an infantry unit, thin your line.

Never attack with cavalry from the front, particularly against stubborn and fresh soldiers.

Make your archers a foot version of mobile shock units: i.e., make sure they continuously move around, looking for gaps in the enemy lines to shoot at.

If you are outnumbered as a Saba general, but have experienced troops, use your mobility: try to isolate enemy units, or slow them down so you can mangle them and maul them peace-meal.

Once the enemy line is broken, if you are using a phalanx in a wooded area, break you phalanxes up-phalanxes aren't as effective in thick woods.

Advantageous battleground: Look for "abattis" terrain. this is terrain like rocky escarpments, thick bushes or trees. these places ought to be in front of you, and you ought to use it on the defensive. they act to mangle, slow, and break up the areas.

Skirmishing/Guerrilla: Have small "freikorps" units ahead of your army, whose sole task ought to the disruption, mangling, and slowing the enemy.

Defending against cavalry: Infantry arranged in deep blocks are less susceptible to breaking under a cavalry charge. This might be crucial when fighting against a cavalry-heavy force.

Envelopment with infantry units: With a thin phalanx line, you pin more units which (when both armies have the same size) enables you to spare more (or some at all) units to flank and surround the enemy line. Flanking and surrounding causes more damage quicker with less losses than a deeper line phalanx. The only real prerequisite is a good general, so that your center doesn't rout. And couple of suggestions for flanking infantry: Thraikioi peltasts, Drapanai, every falcata/kopis/longsword/axe wielding infantry, as they tend to give much better results than "regular" infantry, without high lethality of AP attribute. Frontally, spears, pikes, shortswords. Ofcourse, they are all more effective when striking from back or flanks, but for maximum results, use the units previously mentioned.

If playing without time limit, if given opportunity, rest your troops whenever possible. Even when exhausted, by waiting for long enough, they will get back to fresh/warmed up, and their fighting ability raises significantly. This goes for all troops.

Saba tactics: they can defeat using standard units (arabian archer spearmen for me) equal number seleucid and ptolemic armies fairly regularly. Because they are made up of light units you can use your speed to ensure a local numerical superiority and decent numbers to fully surround isolated and semi isolated units. Also great for chasing down foot routers as they are sightly faster than most of the heavier units.

The effect of scary infantry units doesn't stack, so one scary infantry unit in an area of the battlefield is just as good as 2-3 for the fear effect. However, the scary infantry effect will stack with different types of scary effects, like fire arrows, chariots, and elephants.

Always try to have at least one squad of light cavalry to pursue fleeing enemy, since your heavy cav will usually be too tired to do this effectively.

You can widen/narrow down a unit/formation by pressing - or +.

Bridges: For many factions, it's a good idea to line up your formation in this way: \ __/ around the bridge exit. This gives the enemy units quite a lot of space to get through. Once the first few enemy units are out, your 6 units shower them with pila/javelins, which makes them rout almost immediately. Since they are pushed from the back by their other units, they normally try to rout through your units and get killed in the process. The incoming enemy units normally attack your units directly in front of them (which you should put in "guard" mode, to avoid them pursuing routers). Then you can just slaughter them by using your units on the flanks to attack and surround them from the sides.

Strategy (campaign map)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Although this is probably a given, place forts at strategic locations i.e. after or between bridges. It's surprising, a fort manned with 1-2 units can sometimes buy you 3 turns of time to recall forces and strengthen your defence.
Build forts in mountain passes, on hills, and before bridges. the more the area forms a choke-point, the better.

Anti-piracy measures: Fleets of three to six ship units do miracles against pirate fleets. Even Suebi fleets usually don't need to be bigger than six units (though they should be upgraded with a blacksmith and always retrained before combat deployment).
Use Covered Liburnes or Trieremiolai when available.

Ambushes makes miracle. Use them, do not despise them, you can beat a far superior enemy with the element of fear and surprise.

The Carthage AI army in sicliy always hides near Lilibeo in the forests right next to it.

Fleets: Ships cost an enormous amount of money in upkeep in EB, and only the ultra-rich civilised factions can afford them. When starting a new campaign, the only reasons you should have a ship is to immediately ship troops or a diplomat somewhere, or to immediately fight an enemy fleet. Otherwise, disband all your ships on the first turn of the campaign.

When playing as an Eastern hellenic faction - Arche Seleukeia and Baktria - don't underestimate the tactical potential your Iranian 'auxiliaries' have to offer - especially Nîzagân-î Êrânshahr (Persian Archer-Spearmen), which double as effective missile troops and cheap impromtu 'lineholders' and Tabargânê Êrânshahr (Eastern Axemen), which combine superior skirmishing capabilities with armor-piercing axes.
- Generally follow Hax' advice: '[...]Use whatever the land gives you; there are great units available in Iran and the steppes' - don't build 'factional-units-only' armies, but utilize the diversity of EB's many regional and mercenary units - it's much more effective (and much more fun).

Always investigate your regional troop options. For example Balaeric slingers, Cretan archers, Numidian cavalry, Indian/Persian archers, Belgic heavy cavalry, Iberian scutarii and British druids make for excellent troops when employed correctly.

Do not build roads on your borders if you don't intend to expand that way.
For example if you play as Carthage and leave Lepki a costal town the Ptolemaioi won't attack you, or it will take them a long time to get there...
Building roads at the beginning of your Casse campaign will cause the (otherwise "neutral") Eleutheroi to attack you.

The diplomatic A.I. is programmed to hate the player, regardless of how much this might damage them. For example: declaring war on a beleaguered faction will not encourage their enemies to like you. In fact, most likely they will make peace with your target.

We don't know how the diplomatic A.I. works in R:TW, but in M2:TW relations will decay automatically if there are no positive interactions; and this is worse at higher difficulty levels. It may also work this way in R:TW, as by paying neighbouring factions a regular but small tribute (200 mnai per turn) they are less inclined to attack you, more inclined to sign peace if their initial attack fails, and even make allies somewhat trustworthy.

Better idea yet - leave those garrisons where they are and offer the settlements to Baktria as a gift, along with a small sum of money or map information. For some reason, the AI only accepts this if the garrison is in place and not roaming around the province. If Baktria accepts, your garrisons will pull out automatically.

Rebel "armies" that spawn on your territory are cutting your trade income, destroy them as quickly as you can. And it can give your FMs experience and useful traits, as those armies rarely present serious threat and are generally easy to dispatch. Sometimes a few family members on autoresolve are enough, especially with nomadic factions who have very strong bodyguard cavalry.

By offering 1 million mnai to an enemy AI faction and demanding them to become a protectorate they always agree. The "cheat" is that a protectorate "always" gives all its money to the protector thus you get your money back the next turn.

"Deep Striking": To put the fear of God into the enemy, attack them in an area that is far from the front (preferably a city), with a large force. this will of course split enemy forces up, and cause massive damage to enemy cities.

Once you've conquered a city, if you think you cannot hold it, or do not need it, tear down all non-wonder infrastructure buildings possible: It's usually a good idea to also demolish government. This will cripple the enemy, and slow their progress.

Do not "exterminate" ("enslave" in EB) every city in the beginning of a campaign, only because it gives you more money at once. More inhabitants = more taxes = faster growing of the city = more money . For example, factions that start in underdevelped regions (like the Swêboz) should always "occupy" the surrounding territories of similar culture, instead of enslaving them. Bigger cities, especially those of different cultures, make for better enslavement targets.

"Expelling" the population of a conquered city is a great way to boost the population of your other territories, should you need it for upgrading your cities.

Playing with Aedui/Arverni: you have a useful possibility. You can rush into Britain and take Camulosadae by surprise, while most of the Casse armies are dragging themselves across the countryside doing nothing. Casse rarely blitz, and are fairly slow in most campaigns, so by taking Camulosadae, you can get rid of them quite quickly early on.

The city of Taras is an army maker for most factions. You have acces to a wide selection of excellent troops such as samnite HI, samnite spearmen, classical hoplites, bruttian infantry and so on. But that is not the only useful thing, it is positioned in such way as to provide a stepping stone to invading Greece/Balkans/Italy/Sicily.

Use bridges to your advantage. They are easily defendable and can safely secure your empire in the beginning when the budget is tight.
This works best with factions who can employ phalangites but spearmen would work as well, only not as effective. Usually two units of phalangitai can block a bridge to the point where it is impossible for the opponent to break through, unless he is attacking with massive bodyguard or cataphract cavalry. In that case have some AP units close by to counter this menace. In general: position your units in a triangular position, this will allow two units to form a narrowing path that will efficently cut down the enemy.
- This also works pretty well in city defenses.
- Especially factions like Pontos or Baktria profit immensely from this tactic and especially for Pontos this is a life-safer. If you take Mazaka in the first turn, deploy some phalangites and some archers/skirmisher or cavalry to hunt down fleeing enemies at the bridge south of Mazaka. With that strategy you will be able to kill everything AS is throwing at you and allows you to expand safely into Anatolia.
- Works just as fine with Horse Archers, or for that fact, any missile based army. This strategy is tremendously useful when deployed within the enemy teritory in a defensive-offensive way, because when they see a small army just standing arround, they will attack, and die. But beware: attune your troops to the nature of the enemy, meaning that it's not quite smart to deploy phalanxes on a bridge or crossing and expect that Saka will ram itself upon sarissae.

Don't fight factions on the steppes in the normal way with phalanx or other infantry based armies. Avoid the enemy armies entirerly and just charge for their towns. Attacking towns without walls defended only by horses is easy. If you are attacked on the campaign map you have 2 options depending on how much you like to exploit the game. Either draw your armies up defensively against any corner and just wait out the timer or if you want to be more realistic just sit on the highest hill and wait for them to back off at the end of time. Probably also a good idea to bring only heavily armoured units if you have them.

If you are attacked by overwhelming odds, do not use the retreat button on the battle pop-up. Instead, enter tactical combat. Once the battle loads, order all your troops to to withdraw by clicking the white flag button. Your troops will leave the field before a single blow is exchanged and the battle ends with 0 losses on each side. Your "defeated" army now retreats up to a full move towards the nearest friendly town or ship or something.
- Why do this? If you select the retreat button on the battle popup screen, your army will retreat only a few paces on the strategy map, and if the enemy has enough movement left they will attack you again. And when your army has retreated in this way they cannot withdraw on the tactical map anymore, and indeed you will lose all your men should you be defeated. Much better to retreat farther and make sure your men are safe to fight another day.

Healing and Immortals:
Casualties are healed after a battle in order of first to last: the first cohorts that suffered casualties get priority of healing, while the last to enter combat and take casualties receive little to no healing. As long as a general has a quality healer like a druidic surgeon or the like, it can enable one to create units of "immortals" by deliberately subjecting select cohorts to suffer casualties first, and thereby receive priority of healing after battle. Some quality strategies include fast moving long range skirmishers like celtic slingers: station them a little in front of the battleline, let them skirmish as much as possible, if they get caught and suffer losses, advance the infantry line and cut the enemy down, either way the slingers deal good damage and heal whatever losses they suffer after battle since they took the first casualties. It is funny in this way to see Celtic slinger cohorts get repeatedly cut down, and miraculously healed in full, battle after battle, gaining chevrons steadily. Another approach involves tough elite infantry like gaesatae, Germanic bodyguards, hypaspists/solduros and the like, have them spearhead the attack and receive enemy javelin volleys, whatever damage they sustain tends to get healed after the battle is over since they took casualties first. This approach is extremely strong with gaesatae, enabling them to gain many chevrons and fully heal, becoming extremely powerful.

When conquering an enemy town, make sure that you destroy any barracks that you cannot use (see the building descriptions). This provides you with some instant income, and also prevents enemy from recruiting new troops if he retakes the city.

Blitzing: at the beginning of your Campaign, use all of your resources to train as much cheap troops as you can. E.g.: Aedui, you start with 5000mnai. Full up you recruitment queue with Lugoae and Iaosatae, and they will train in the next 4 - 5 turns, respectively, regardless to your financial debt.

If you want to build a militarist empire and you want some blitzing war you have 2 logical options depen on your patience:
1- If you are patient enough always build level 1 & 2 local MICs. Your low tier troops are most likely levies who are cheap to recruit that may allow you numeric superiority the only problem is that you need population enhancing temples and other building and you should never exterminate conquered cities use exile.
2- If you are in a hurry and your native levies are hard to use against endless stacks of elites of your enemies, forget about recruiting hire mercenaries. That means you need money ... a lot of money and a lot of inevitable exterminations........

Economy and Infrastructure

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Economy: The hardest aspect of EB. When starting any new campaign, immediately ramp up taxes as high as possible in every town you possess - if the public order face turns blue, you've raised taxes too high. Green or yellow face is OK.

Paved roads make for awesome revenue, very likely the most cost-efficient building in EB. Build them as soon as you can and whenever possible, unless there are strategic concerns (see above).

Mining income for EB, as per province:
1 mining site - 600 mnai basic mines, 1500 mnai upgraded
2 mining sites - 1200 mnai basic mines, 3000 mnai upgraded
3 mining sites - 1800 mnai basic mines, 4500 mnai upgraded

What Government Building to build in newly-captured towns (Civilised Factions): Military Occupation first, as quickly as you can. Then, either Type III or Type IV Government to start with. Type III if you want to put your own family member in there as town governor, Type IV if you don't (you'll cause unrest if you put a family member in a town with a Type IV government). Both government types are cheap and quick to build, both types allow you to recruit basic units if you have the barracks for it, and both types can be destroyed later and replaced with Type II or Type I, once you've got money to burn.

Build Order: What to build in your towns to get the most money as quickly as possible: Road, Farming, and Port in that order of priority. Then Sanitation and Healer to reduce squalor, and Trader/Market to boost income further.

If in serious financial situation (and desperate enough to turn to barbarism), look for your wonders. Some bring small bonuses, but present an actual last resort to your finances. For example: Tolosa lake (20000mnai) and Persepolis (10000mnai). Do not destroy experience bringing monuments, like Kogainon.

Temples and building boni:
1 - The +morale bonus of buildings and wonders doesn't work. Thus +morale temples (unless they give a +experience bonus at the end, or some other significant boni) are inferior to other temples.
2 - Generally, the best temple is the one that gives the most +law, or in some way increases the combat potential of your army.
3 - Some wonders give you no bonus (or a +morale bonus......) and you're better off destroying them unless you want it for roleplay benefit.

In the beginning of the game spam troop buildings in the first few turns OR queue up economy buildings, the strategy differs depending on faction.
- For example, the Casse start out at peace with the Eleutheroi, so you might as well just disband most of your army (you'll need a few units in case the Eleutheroi attack you) and spam economic buildings, factions like Carthage that already start out with huge armies and don't have a serious threat looming can probably be fine with spamming economy and just using your current army.