Beginner's Guide to RTW - Question Collection

[frogbeastegg]

Can someone pin this, please? Things are moving so fast in here.

Yes, I am going to do a beginner's guide. The flood of questions, the craptasticness of the Prima guide, the way people keep asking ... ok, I'm convinced.

This time things are going to work slightly differently:
-Firstly it will take longer to write than MTW's because I only got the game yesterday. I'm also doing/writing other things. I am willing to put other things on the backburner for the few days of writing time it will take; research and upkeep are the two main drains aside from, and perhaps far above, that and they will be handled differently. Research is, well read number 3. Upkeep will be taken care of later when there is an actual guide to upkeep; I have a few ideas.

-Secondly beginner's is the key. This is not a unit guide, combat stat guide or anything else.

-Thirdly the game is going to have a patch, and patches tend to alter quite a bit. I am not going to spend forever building a detailed guide for 1.0 only to have it made redundant by the patch; design will be different to take this into account.

What you can do: collect beginner's questions, common questions, handy details like how to mod away the green arrows and other FAQ solutions and post them here. I am not going to do all my research for the initial research myself; I shall use the plebs () in the forum. You'll end up in the credits ...

I am highly interested in 'official' information, you know the old "CA guy X said command stars are worth ...". Collect it, bring it back with the dev's name and a full, proper quote. If any of the CA people want to volunteer information to fill our blind spots I would be very grateful indeed.

Yes, well that is it for now.

[Voigtkampf]

Our worthy blossom embarks on another dangerous, long and tiring journey for the benefit of our Total War community. I bow in respect and worship!

Though I have no questions - yet - I wish you luck and a lot of patience in this enterprise.

[econ21]

OK, here's some stuff I would like explored in a guide (from the point of view of a STW/MTW player new to RTW):

- How to make money: apparently, you can trade without trade buildings. And don't need ships for sea trade? Dorkus has done some research and come to the conclusion that the economic upgrades (not ports) are not so remunerative. Victoria pushes them in the early game though.

-Friendly fire: I fought a battle with the Gauls where I lost about 50 men but the Gauls only killed 8. The rest must have come from my archers and velites that were trying to fire over the heads of my front line, MTW style. EDIT: velites may best be used to skirmish in front of your lines; they may prompt an enemy charge, but the velites can withdraw allowing a counter-charge (in MTW you only got a charge bonus against the unit you targeted, so AI charging escaping velites may have lost their charge bonus). But beware - cavalry can catch skirmishers. Archers have greater range and so could be put further back, but ideally should have clear sight of the enemy.

-Roman pila: this is the primary weapon of Roman heavy infantry. Order them to attack and they will try to throw pila. Two problems: (a) if charged, the enemy may be on them before they get a shot off; (b) if out of ammo, they may waste time looking for it. Pressing alt-right click gets them to use their secondary weapons, swords. Dorkus says post-Marian units get their pila off more quickly. [EDIT]: setting hastati etc. to "fire at will" and keep them stationary should allow them to get off a volley before enemy infantry close.

-Dogs: seem to be like missiles; they regenerate after use.

-Marian reforms: seem to come after the Imperial Palace is built by any Roman faction (or is it just a city of 24000 population?).

-Squalor: something on how to deal with this would be nice. Some folk at the .com are saying use enslave or exterminate to avoid large captured cities with loyalty problems.

-Unit types: something on the importance of pikes (of varying lengths), spears, light vs heavy infantry (does it matter that hastati are light and princeps are heavy), heavy vs light weapons (does this mean AP?) etc would be good.

EDIT for some new stuff:

- Agents unlike MTW, they are not rent-free - 100 dinari upkeep per turn. Border watch towers are more economic ways of keeping an eye on a static frontier.

- Mercenaries unlike MTW seem to have no lower upkeep than comparable regular troops, but have a premium initial price. This means they should not be cannon fodder as in MTW, but are more worthwhile generally if they are superior or fill a niche your faction currently lacks. The type of mercenaries you depends on location - e.g. Dacia can give very tasty heavy cavalry (Samartian) and 2HP infantry (Basternae or some such).

-Retinues die with your general; best leave your aged generals to spend out their later years in solitude (or with mad uncles, etc), giving their retinues to younger folk. Stripping aged characters of retinues may actually lead them to acquire replacements quickly (e.g. a replacement priest of the temple in the two he is governing - this opens up the possibility of priest farming!). 8 retinue per character is the maximum.

- Ballistae can shoot down gates of some low level towns, meaning you don't have to wait a turn for a battering ram. Downside is that they slow down your army on the campaign map. Unlike MTW, they can be moved (slowly) on the battlemap.

[frogbeastegg]

Thanks for the pin

Thanks, voigtkampf.

Yes, that's the idea Simon. Now if more people can do that ...

[Braccius Augustus]

When I play the campaigne in RTW, the only factions I am able to choose are the three Roman families. Do you have to finish a Roman campaigne before you can choose the other nations?

[Krosword]

play the game on easy and quick campaign (outlast certain factions, take over 15 provinces) - you'll win in some 15 years on average. And you'll unlock every playable faction. It's a good way just to learn the game.

[SwordsMaster]

Hey, Froggy is taking the quill again!
Offers fame and glory in exchange for the sapientiae.... looks kike a good deal, but I cant help you right now, coz RTW wont run on my auld PC, and I need a Power supply to complete the new one. I will hopefully get one next week and then we´ll see.

But I promise I will critisize your work.

[SpencerH]

retinues Rentinues can be transferred from one character to another if they are at the same locale (just click, drag, and drop to transfer), but only between the same character types i.e. family members cant give to spies etc, and only if that character doesnt already have that rentinue type already e.g. a family member cant have two "drillmasters".

friendly fire II If a cav unit (maybe all types) moves through a missile unit while it is firing you will take friendly fire. So watch where units are going.

Battle timer The amount of time you have is dependent on the size of the armies. Dont delay your attacks with small forces, you may run out of time.

skirmish mode Unless you plan to use your missile units as skirmishers (given the speed of attacking units read 'suicide squads') turn off 'skirmish mode' before battle begins. Having your carefully placed cretan archers head for the rear as the enemy nears and contacts your front line troops is not conducive to victory.

Bridge Crossing Make sure bridges are clear of other units before sending chariots across. They are poor drivers and can fall off the side (I lost 4 of 9 chariots that way).

[donnybrasco]

how do you bribe naval fleets... if you can?

and when i tried to bribe an army there was only an opinion for the army to disband i think and return to the fields or soemthing? i want to bribe them on my side.....

anyone? thnx!

[therother]

I am highly interested in 'official' information, you know the old "CA guy X said command stars are worth ...". Collect it, bring it back with the dev's name and a full, proper quote.

Jerome Grasdyke has answered this very question quite comprehensively in the thread below, entitled "CA: what do command stars do?":

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=37001

It currently affects both morale and combat ability - we tried it for a while with just morale, but it ended up being not enough of a bonus. The combat calculations have changed so much from Rome to Medieval as to be unrecogniseable, so it's no longer easy to equate stars to experience.

As a rule of thumb it's one point of attack per command rank, up to a maximum of 10, and this can become negative for very bad generals. This combat bonus is applied to all troops under his command on the battlefield. Experience is one point of attack and one point of defense per chevron, plus a morale bonus as well.

The general's command also controls his radius-of-effect, which is set to 30 m + 5 m * command + 2 m * influence. This is used to award morale bonusses to nearby units (in addition to the combat bonus), and when testing which units are affected it tests the distance between the actual general's position and the centre-point of the unit being considered.

Edits:

Agents unlike MTW, they are not rent-free - 100 dinari upkeep per turn.

This is slightly inaccurate . Diplomats cost 50 denarii per turn, spies 100 denarii per turn, and assasins cost a whopping 200 denarii per turn!

how do you bribe naval fleets... if you can?

I don't think that you can.

and when i tried to bribe an army there was only an opinion for the army to disband i think and return to the fields or soemthing? i want to bribe them on my side

You can only keep units you could, in theory if not in practice just yet, train yourself. So if you are a Roman faction, you can keep armies from other Roman factions. You can't bribe an army/city led by a Faction leader or his heir. Similarly for barbarian factions, where you can keep barbarian units that you could train. Romans can bribe Roman peasants (say from a revolt in one of their cities), but not barbarian peasants and vice versa. If you want units from another culture, e.g. elephants as a Roman faction, they must be mercenary troops, either hired by a family member when he is outside a settlement, or given to you as a gift by the Senate.

Hope that answers your questions!

[frogbeastegg]

Ok, thanks people.

I've handled everything I can from this list and it seems no one has anything to add, so you can unpin this now.

[motorhead]

Retraining - From a dev at the .com (From his .com profile Dutch, Occupation :: Rome: Total War Lead Programmer, and he holds moderator status). Sorry, no original link, threads barely last a week before falling off the boards at .com.

Dutch
Moderator
Posts: 141
(10/5/04 1:55 pm)
Reply | Edit | Del Re: What's the go with retraining?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Retraining can do two things:

1) if the settlement can produce that type of unit, it will replenish the unit with new soldiers *at the units average experience level*; these soldiers are subtracted from the settlement population as normal
2) if the settlement can produce armour or weapon upgrades for which the unit is eligible and which it does not already have, retraining will add these to the unit being retrained

If the settlement can do both, it will do so. Replenishment costs a proportion of the unit's cost in denari, while retraining for upgrades costs a nominal amount per upgrade. You can retrain as many units as will fit into the recruitment queue in one turn, although you end up paying for all of them. Hence it is often better to retrain a lot of old units if you need troops quickly, rather than recruiting new.

Academies
Originally from here.

How does the Academy bonus work?

The Academy generates ancillaries for characters which are inside a settlement which contains an Academy. If you examine export_descr_ancillaries.txt you will be able to spot them, together with a lot of other ancillaries which are linked to the presence of buildings.

Culture and Unrest Penalties
From here.

Culture penalty has a maximum of 50%. As a general rule of thumb, the amount is determined by the proportion of buildings in the settlement which have been built by factions of your culture - for example, if you're playing the Julii, and you take over a Greek city which is split 50% between buildings built by the Greeks and the Brutii, you should see something like a 25% culture penalty. Then when you replace the buildings built by the Greeks, the culture penalty disappears. Who last built a building-of-governance has a substantial influence as well.

Turmoil on the other hand has quite a few causes; it includes unrest after a city has changed hands (which dissipates over time), problems due to a Governor's unpleasant habits and a bunch of other things. It can vary quite a bit.

Protectorates - broken. To be fixed in 1.2
Acknowledged as broken by dev here.

[frogbeastegg]

Excellent information, motorhead. Thanks.

[Claudius the God]

can you get retinue that prevents corruption when governing a settlement?
and how do you go about affecting the settlement details screen? besides building health facilities, improving agriculture and building buildings and having a competent govenor in place.

one thing that got me when i first played, i kept on running out of money because the settlements that were being automanaged were spitting out troops that i didn't want be careful about the AI assistance for managing towns people... better off turning it off entirely otherwise you'll have many extra unwanted Velites or somesuch unit