Roman: Julii

[mzhang23]

The Julii start out with the worst potential economy, so the easy thing is to take what the Bruti and Scipio have:

1. Start out taking the Gaul towns north of you. Take enough and you'll cripple them for the rest of the game. As soon as you tech to wardogs, Gauls are no threat.

2. Immediately take the carthaginian town on sicily with an army as soon as you can make biremes. Use diplomats to bribe the Scipio army into reinforcing your attack force if necessary.

3. Move on down into Carthage. Wardogs here will make short work of most of their troops, including elephants. Meanwhile, pressure the rebels and gauls up north by taking a few more towns. Gaul towns don't generate much money, so don't spread thin and try to take too many towns. Once you take Carthage, exterminate the population.

4. Take the Carthaginian town south of Carthage. If the Scipio happen to be trying to seige it, wait a few turns and they'll call off the seige for no reason at all. Then move in and take it yourself.

5. Once Carthage is taken start building troops using Carthage's highly teched buildings (triarii, Legionary cav, etc) and be ready to ship them to Greece. Ready a huge force in mainland (bribe armies, as that's cheaper) and get ready to invade Greece.

6. Now it's simply a matter of taking Greece city by city. Try to go for Thessalonia then Corinth, Athens, Sparta, etc. Corinth first gets you the Zeus wonder, helping lower dissent in your newly captured towns. Always enslave or exterminate, and be sure to demolish their temples to reduce cultural difference.

7. At my point in this Julii game the Scipio basically have nothing while the Bruti only have the western Greek coast towns and Crete. I own everything else. This severely cripples the economies of the other two factions and lets your income soar by 240/230 BC when you own just about everything in North Africa and and Greece.

Good luck! Just because the Gauls and Germans are next to you doesn't mean that you have to take them.

And always remember, use and train diplomats! You can bribe over your allie's full stack armies for about 3-5k, which is a great deal when you need reinforcements out in North Africa and Greece.

P.S. Income is over 10-20k per turn by the end if you follow this strat and do it right.

It is 229 BC right now in my game. Greece, Carthage, Macedonia, and Gaul are now gone. But the most important thing is that the rival Romans only own 11 total provinces - they're asking to get trounced once I go for Rome.