Dacia

[Tzar Kaloyan]

Chapter 1: Prologue

Soooooo, you have decided to play the Dacians. That probably means you are either incredible stupid or incredibly adventurous. But let’s leave this psychological profiling to Dr. Phil and rather than treating your symptoms, let’s aid them. Just a word of advice: before you play them, have some familiarity with RTW and read Kosak’s wonderful RTW guide. When you start with the Dacians, you will see that they aren’t exactly your ‘mainstream’ faction. For a full effect, I recommend playing on vhard/vhard.

Ok, enough mambo-jumbo introductory stuff, let’s get to the bone of it. You start with two provinces/cities. Notice that you have 3 family members. What a great setup! As if the develops are hinting: leave two members to govern the two cities, take the third member to war! And that is what you should do.

Your first decision is who to appoint governors and should do the fighting. I would recommend you leave the faction leader as a governor – he is a better leader AND a better governor, but having good governors is more important to you now; if you haven’t noticed, money does not exactly grow on trees in Dacia! Similarly, this should drive what buildings you choose to build (my choice was Shrine to Bendis – later on you can destroy it and get something more geared towards war).

Your second important decision is where to attack. Macedonians are way too powerful for you, so think about an alliance with them. Thrace and Scythia are slightly easier, but are still a tough battle, particularly since you won’t be able to build good armies this early in the campaign. Thus, I recommend signing alliances with the major powers and concentrating on growing your empire to the west – plenty of easy pickings there.

Let’s do it!

Chapter 2: Early Expansion

The chosen path took me first to Aquincum. On the way, a rebel army was slain giving my general 2 additional stars and couple abilities. From there, Segestica is a stone throw away.

If you have followed my advice and gone west, your emissary should by now have talked to the Macedonians and the Thracians and should have signed alliance, given them maps and trade rights, all for about ~15k dinarii. Not bad, particularly this early in the game, lol! Pretty much the only source of money for buildings! Now take this emissary to the Scythians!

Back in my home cities, economic buildings are slowing coming to fruitions. Not that I am making money, but at least not losing as much every turn.

Onward with battles for Aquincum and Segestica!