How to cause the "epic battles"

[Darius]

In my latest Brutii Campaign, I have accidently caused the biggest, most spectacular world war I have ever witnessed with RTW. All it took, was diplomacy, a good amount of denarii, and some patience.

After I'd begun to conquer the greek peninsula, I decided to put my money to good use for the Roman Empire. What I wanted was for the mother of all Civil Wars to occur. To get that to happen, I'd need to give some serious economic aid to the other two blundering factions who seem to go nowhere when they arent player controlled, the Scipii and the Julii.

Due to my constantly overwhelming income, I began by giving both factions a nice base tribute of a few thousand denarii for a few 100 turns. Then, whenever I found I was starting to get greedy generals again due to too much surplus funds, I'd spread around my cash with some healthy grants to both sides.

All of a sudden, these two factions just exploded into action, and began to actually conquer like crazy. After they had the ball rolling, I looked for some more distant empires that could do with some help, the Germans, the Scythians, and on a whim, I also chose the Parthians. A large deal of cash grants later and all three are going buck wild on their neighbors.

Was I satisfied? Hell no, I wanted to see what I'm really made of, I wanted to have a good chance of my butt getting kicked to the stone age. So I started giving money to the Egyptians. Then, once they started to get going crazier then ever I reinitiated my conquests and got to about 40 provinces when BOOM, civil war time. Now I had full stacks of Scipii and Julii duking it out with me and each other, the Germans have taken northern Gaul and southern England and are raiding northern Julii settlements, the Iberians took advantage of the Gauls crushing defeats and took two provinces from Gaul AND the two Carthaginian colonies. The Egyptians are just rampaging through Africa and the Middle East, while the Scythians are rumbling with the Parthians after having over run most of the Dacian lands. The Parthians have taken over Armenia and a good deal of what used to Pontic lands and are sandwiched between the Scythians and the Egyptians, but are STILL holding on to what they got. Carthage, Armenia, Pontus, Gaul, Greece, Macedon, Thrace, Dacia, and the Selecuids are just gone. The Britains are content with what they have left it seems and Numidia is down to a single desert province.

I have never before faced battles like these. It's utterly insane. You people HAVE to try this. Even when I lose, I'm still smiling, because the battles are all just so freaking cool.

[The Stranger]

bah i gave macedon and the seleucids 10's of millions macedon attacked me the bastards and the seleucids never used it i think the were still running on levy armies a waste of money epic battles oh sure but forces built from my money noop

[sunsmountain]

This actually works!! OMG, I prepared for big battles like this:

- lock your borders with forts, build up some military to compensate the graph of others. Small early wars for good provinces are good, but keep your total below 12-15 for a challenge.
- keep peace, not alliances, if romans declare war offer alliance to one of them (the others will offer cease-fire) and break alliance
- build up your cities to level 5, all of them, using the peasants train & disband to get population around (easy on setting: Huge)

Combining with Darius' advice:

- Give insane amounts of cash to other empires as your cities level out. Especially those you'd like to conquer.
- Build up your military, and BOOM, Total War!!

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Sounds like fun, but I am far too aggressive to try this. I would have trouble waiting for people to use my money and I prefer to get a little difficulty boost by fighting on 4 fronts far from any good unit producing cities. Sounds like fun though, maybe once I am done with my current campaign I will try it.

[Jacque Schtrapp]

Wow!

[Mikeus Caesar]

What, you people only just realised this? I've been doing this for a while...but yes, it is fun and it is brilliant, and it is probably the only way to make the game live up to its title of Total War. And anyway, it's nice to start world war one a few thousand years too early.