Rome 2 Tips and un-/under-documented features

[Slaists]

Maximizing your general's xp gain per turn: fight the armies camped outside the city first

Frequently, when you arrive at barbarian cities, they have one stack sitting inside the city and another one (or two) right next to the city. If your agent's carry out a sabotage mission on the army outside the city, it will not join the fight when you attack the town. However, that said army will retreat from the walls after you take the city. Your army led by the general whose xp you ant to maximize will be stuck inside the city for a turn and won't be able to reach the enemy stack (or two) that retreated.

In order to optimize xp, it is better to disable the army inside the city (and possibly also the one outside in order for it not to be able to retreat from battle) and attack the one outside first. That way, the city garrison will join (and can be annihilated in a field battle) but you will have at least one more battle for your general on that very turn: when you take the city. Of course, you have to plan your move points well to be able to pull this off. Even better if there are 2 enemy stacks next to the city. Then, you can have 3 battles instead of 1 (on the turn you take the city).

The disabling I mentioned above can be done by any of the sabotage missions of any of your agents. If you succeed at any sabotage attempt, the target army loses either half or all of its move points and cannot reinforce a battle. A side effect of a successful sabotage is that the AI seems unable to retreat battle either if it feels your force is superior.

Another tip: generals joining a battle as reinforcements earn gravitas too.

This is something I noticed recently. The generals who join your battle as reinforcements do not earn battle experience. However, they DO earn gravitas. Thus, if your main general wins the battle and earns gravitas, yet your reinforcing army was led by an opposition general who also gained gravitas, the total impact on your party's influence could be nil (both party's earned +1 gravitas creating a wash situation unless the ambition differential of generals skews it one way or another). So, better have your own party's general leading the reinforcing army if you have one.