Rome 2 Tips and un-/under-documented features

[quadalpha]

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.

[Papewaio]

As Rome you start with Legionaries use them!

[Barkhorn1x]

As Rome you start with Legionaries use them!

Brilliant insight I tell you!

[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.

[Quillan]

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.

[quadalpha]

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.

[Barkhorn1x]

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?

[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.

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.

[nearchos]

[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.