RTW gold stole my joy

[jaspritsingh]

Hi all,

I am new to the TW franchise. I picked up RTW from a bargain website a month ago and have been playing it on weekends ever since.
I cannot play any other game because my system cannot take anything beyond RTW (even that plays on LOWEST settings) :wall

I played the Julli campaign , started out as short campaign, lost, extended it to the long campaign, captured all of Gaul and half of Spain
and some Dacian territories before the Britons and their cursed chariots made my life hell. If that was not enough Carthage showed up with those lousy elephants. :( Needless to say I dint win that campaign.

I edited game files to play as Carthage and was doing well. I had eliminated Scipii and Gauls had taken care of Spain. I had 11 regions, 4
more and I would have won and then my campaign file got corrupted. Whenever I load it I get a CTD :(

Ok Enough of ranting I had a few queries.

1. Can I salvage that campaign. I was winning it for the first time. I know its childish but I really want to win that campaign.
2. Regarding the Units.. no matter which unit I pick the other side bests it in a head on one to one fight
e.g. As Julli my Auxillia break when engaging in head to head fights with Iberian Infantry. Now I play Carthage the same Auxillia beat my Iberian Infantry !!! Can some one tell me whats wrong here.

[d'Arthez]

1. If the file is corrupted there is no chance of salvaging it. Hopefully the autosave will do the trick. If not, consider it a lesson learnt: always use multiple files for saves, just in case disaster strikes.

2. What difficulty are you playing on? Battle difficulty will give up yo +7 / +7 bonuses to attack and defence on Very Hard for the AI. Play on Medium to have the AI play without any bonuses.

[jaspritsingh]

Ok I started again with Carthage. This time I have beaten Scipii off the island to the right of carthage. The Gauls and Spanish are attacking me every turn on the single territory I have in Spain. Numidians are sending agents to my capital every turn.

Now I want to consolidate against Scipii and not go on the offensive. I have a decent collection of coin (around 40k) and I want to raise 3 new armies to mop up Numidia (2 armies here) and One army to send against Spain. (Gauls are allied with Julii !!! If I get into a war with them I draw the wrath of Julii Navy - can beat them but want to avoid disrupting my trade as I need the coin to upgrade my cities - Carthage makes trashy units in the barracks in the start)

Once Numidia is done I plan to send the 2 armies across the sea into Spain and have them hit Gaul and the remaining Spanish cities. By this time I hope to have enough ports that Jullii and Britons (Gauls are allied with them too :( !!! ) cannot possibly blockade all of them.

How is this strategy ?? Any comments ?

[jaspritsingh]

Update : I have captured all of western Africa, Spain is eliminated, the Gauls hold one territory in central spain and are fighting the Britons.

I have almost completed raising three full stack armies (War Elephants, Poeni Infantry, Sacred Band, Round Shield Cav, Iberian Infantry, Numidian mounted skirmishers and Hoplite mercenaries)

I planned to land these on the coast off Capua and use 2 armies as guard while one laid siege to the town. Any help could be fought with the 2 guarding armies leaving my siege army untouched.

Only glitch : Egypt has won the short campagin

Now should I plan to play this campaign or restart ??

I have to fight - Gauls (beatable) Britons (I will love to match my elephants with their chariots), Julli, SPQR, Brutii and possibly the Egyptians as I try to capture 30more regions along with Rome to win.

[Nowake]

A legitimate question, it is a dilemma one faces sometimes in a Total War campaign
The way you put it, it just now got interesting, so I would think you should definitely go for it, yet you have to weigh that against all the micro-management that will be incurred by a long campaign.
Still, as one of your first campaigns, seeing it through is the best way to learn the ropes of the end game, you may otherwise get a surprise in the next attempt at a "flawless" parcourse as well.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Only glitch : Egypt has won the short campagin

You will find this to be true for just about any short campaign you play....the Big E pretty much steamrolls any other Eastern faction (unless you play the Seleucids and stop them). Just play the long campaign from the start....there's really no advantage to playing the short one anyways..........

[jaspritsingh]

Update : Thanks to Nowake's encouragement I decided to keep playing. Played a real long game today (which was full of CTDs unfortunately) and captured 2 Brutii cities at the lower end of Italy. Eliminated Scipii and captured Capua. Meanwhile the Britons were busy too, they eliminated Gauls and came after me real hard.

I beat 2 sieges and besieged their Faction leader (who had just one more unit) in central Spain. The Britons abandoned their last siege (I was very weak there so I was pretty happy) and rushed their army to save their King. I had 2 armies there and I chose to put both under my control rather than putting 1 under AI. To my surprise I could only control one army (It was a full stack army) and every time a unit routed the stack got one unit from the reinforcing army. Can I not control 2 armies together ?

Anyways coming back to battle. My Basic Elephants were no match for the Heavy Chariots the Brits threw at me and quickly died but to my delight the Samnite Infantry mercenaries were superb. They were instrumental in breaking the Chariot units while I used 4 units of Round Shield Cavalry in a massive wedge shaped flank charge on the British Infantry routing them almost instantly. In the end I had killed them all (including their faction leader) but I found that I still couldnt end the battle. To my dismay at the corner of the battle square in the map (the square in which the battle takes place) surrounded by rocks on all sides was a British Light Infantry that I could not reach. So I waited for the timer to run out to win the battle (lucky for me the Britons had attacked else I would have lost on the timer running out)

Now coming to questions :

1. Has anyone else encountered this too .. where one unit is stuck behind rocks in the corner of a map and cant be touched ?
2. My Campaign in Italy is painfully slow. The Romans throw their best (and costliest units at me), I cannot control 2 armies at once and the AI control army takes a lot of damage. I cannot repair all units in Italy and have to replace them with fresh ones from Sicily or Carthage. How to tackle this :(
3. What to do of the damned CTDs. Even today the Autosave got corrupted but thankfully I had a Savegame ready.

[ReluctantSamurai]

one unit is stuck behind rocks in the corner of a map and cant be touched

Happens sometimes in rough terrain. If it's not a remnant of a unit that has already routed and left the field, then you can shoot it down with missile fire. OTOH, if it IS the remnant of a broken unit, and you can't reach it in melee, you're dusted.

the AI control army takes a lot of damage. I cannot repair all units in Italy and have to replace them with fresh ones from Sicily or Carthage. How to tackle this

One reason to fight your battles with the army you CAN control. There is a patch, I believe, that you can add that allows you to control any two general-led armies. The AI is always much worse at managing your troops than you are. Personally, I fight with just one army unless I'm attacked and have a second army as reinforcements...in which case I try to win the battle before my reinforcements can come to bear.

When sailing to distant shores for an invasion, if I cannot expect to train the type of troops I have in my army, I will bring a second fleet with units that can be used as replacements. This is particularly true if I have mercs in my army. Ellies can only be trained in very specific provinces marked by an elephant icon on the campaign map.

As to your CTD's, I probably can't help you much there, but perhaps you could be more specific about when the game crashes and what you were doing at the time......

[jaspritsingh]

Its getting worse ... Julli are throwing full stack armies of Praetorian Cohorts, Triarii (wonder how the are still left , marian reforms anyone ?? ) My depleted armies are being besieged and soon I ll be kicked off Italy. In Gaul, Britons are besieging me at 2 places. Can someone please tell me how to beat Chariots without Elephants ?

For the CTDs, the happen randomly - when a spy enters a city, when I scroll from one end of the map to the other, after I end turn when the moves of another faction are being computed etc. However it never crashes when I am changing from campaign map to battle map.

[Veles Shadow]

Its getting worse ... Julli are throwing full stack armies of Praetorian Cohorts, Triarii (wonder how the are still left , marian reforms anyone ?? ) My depleted armies are being besieged and soon I ll be kicked off Italy. In Gaul, Britons are besieging me at 2 places. Can someone please tell me how to beat Chariots without Elephants ?
.

The key is to stop them from moving. Try getting a load of Libyan Spearmen, or even Sacred Band (if you can get them yet), and waiting in formation for the chariots to attack. Otherwise beat them with sheer weight of numbers- when the chariots stop running around and you have a load of troops attacking them, they drop like flies.

Enjoy it! I find it fun when the AI presents a challenge like that. :)

[Brandy Blue]

IIRC part of the problem with fighting chariots is that they have extra hitpoints. Does that mean its an effective strategy to strip off as many hitpoints as possible with missle fire before fighting them hand to hand?

[jaspritsingh]

The key is to stop them from moving. Try getting a load of Libyan Spearmen, or even Sacred Band (if you can get them yet), and waiting in formation for the chariots to attack. Otherwise beat them with sheer weight of numbers- when the chariots stop running around and you have a load of troops attacking them, they drop like flies.

Enjoy it! I find it fun when the AI presents a challenge like that. :)

I try to make a long line and then throw it at them ... with Elephants shooting missiles at them. Will try your suggestion. Thanks :)

IIRC part of the problem with fighting chariots is that they have extra hitpoints. Does that mean its an effective strategy to strip off as many hitpoints as possible with missle fire before fighting them hand to hand?

A key weakness in my battleplay has been my inability to use archers. I simply cannot use them effectively so I gave up on them. I used the Numidian mounted mercenaries but they run out of ammo pretty quickly.

But what to do about the Julii ??

[puklo]

A key weakness in my battleplay has been my inability to use archers.

Ahh archers--my favorite... Maybe you could get a unit of merc hoplites, line them up so the chariots can't get at the archers, use fire arrows and--this is sneaky, darling--try to concentrate your fire on the Brit's general. Maybe it will succeed most of the time. Be bold! Plus you have other units in your army for your other uses, of course. Mrreeow!

[Nowake]

Julli are throwing full stack armies of Praetorian Cohorts, Triarii (wonder how the are still left , marian reforms anyone ?? ) My depleted armies are being besieged (...)
But what to do about the Julii ??

I’m not very clear on how you are positioned strategically there, yet I would suggest you refocus the aim of your Italian campaign.
Instead of using multiple armies to defend your possessions, establish which is the Julii’s most vital economic nerve or which spot is crucial to the free movement of their troops. Merge your armies and cut a path to it and headquarter there, in that single spot, forcing the AI to throw army after army towards you. I suppose that while you cannot reinforce multiple armies, you can swap between two army korps, one coming from North Africa to replace the other and vice versa. Just exhaust Julii resources there while you finish off the rest of your enemies and build up a more significant invasion force.

[Brandy Blue]

use fire arrows

I always thought that fire arrows are good only if the enemy unit is wavering because they hurt the enemy morale. I thought that until the enemy unit wavers (or if its something with really crummy morale like Eastern spearmen) you were better off using the more accurate ordinary arrows. Am I wrong?

[Myth]

Quick note. The Romans are pretty darn good in Autocalc due to the high defense of their infantry. Just spam legions and autocalc the Britons to death

[ReluctantSamurai]

The key is to stop them from moving.

Precisely! Spears in deep formation will do the trick. Hedgehog them so that the chariots contact two units at their edges and have a third move forward to engage frontally. As JD said, they will drop like flies.

Can someone please tell me how to beat Chariots without Elephants

You are using your Ellies against the wrong target. They are not very good against chariots. I may be wrong but I believe they are considered as cavalry when calculating kills/losses. Your Ellies should be used against infantry and followed up with a cavalry charge. Ellies don't directly kill a lot of soldiers but they do disrupt unit formation, making those units very vulnerable to a cavalry charge. I almost always stack my Long Shields directly behind my Ellies and as soon as the elephants have impacted the enemy line, I pull them back and send in the cavalry to decimate the disorganized formations. Even cohorts cannot withstand the repeated hammer blows......

A key weakness in my battleplay has been my inability to use archers.

Browse through the guides. There are a lot of suggestions and tactics for employing archers. The basic thing is to screen them with infantry and have them target units that are not engaged in melee with your troops. As Carthage, you have no archers of your own (which is an oversight by the devs, AFAIAC) but you can recruit Cretan mercs, one of the best archer units in the game.

[Brandy Blue]

There's a thread where someone says that onangers shooting fire are really effective against chariots but I haven't tried it and don't remember if Carthage gets those things or not.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...ht=fire+arrows post 23

[ReluctantSamurai]

Carthage does get to recruit onagers. IMHO, these are best used when attacking as you can move the onagers forward just enough to bring the enemy under fire and not precipitate a major engagement, at first. On the defensive, you might get several shots in before enemy units get too close to risk friendly fire. You'd have to be extremely lucky to hit the unit you want to. Not worth having one or more units slots taken up by units that will have little impact on the battle.

[jaspritsingh]

Carthage does get to recruit onagers. IMHO, these are best used when attacking as you can move the onagers forward just enough to bring the enemy under fire and not precipitate a major engagement, at first. On the defensive, you might get several shots in before enemy units get too close to risk friendly fire. You'd have to be extremely lucky to hit the unit you want to. Not worth having one or more units slots taken up by units that will have little impact on the battle.

I have captured Capua and 2 lower Italian towns .. they allow building onagers there (captured tech maybe)

One more thing .. to all the good people taking time to help a noob find his way .. thanks a lot for your support guys :)

[ReluctantSamurai]

I have captured Capua and 2 lower Italian towns .. they allow building onagers there (captured tech maybe)

The required building is the Siege Engineer, which Carthage can itself build, with the proper pre-requisites.