Rome 2 Tips and un-/under-documented features

[Lord of the Isles]

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

[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.

[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.

[quadalpha]

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.

- 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.

[jbillybrack]

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).

[Sp4]

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.

[Sigurd]

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.

[Myth]

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.

[Lord of the Isles]

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).

[Sp4]

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

[benjywa]

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

[Hooahguy]

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?

[Stuie]

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.

[benjywa]

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

[phred]

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.

[Oaty]

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.

[benjywa]

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

[Spoonska]

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.

[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.

[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.

[Quillan]

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).

[Quillan]

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.

[Fridgebadger]

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.

[alQamar]

Patch 8 introduced an undocumented but welcomed fix for the unit size in multiplayer battles

here is my inital visualization about this issue, CA accepted some time ago.


http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...hosted-battles

[Slaists]

It seems, the effects of the new culture system have very different results for different factions. Playing as a Hellenic faction, for example, there is not much of a dent created by the new system. But try playing Galatia, for example, after conquering a few provinces you'll be stuck with clicking "next turn" for a looong time in order to get culture balance right and happiness to acceptable levels. This is on legendary difficulty, normal might be easier.