Need Some Help With RTW

[Roman_Man#3]

i can tell you it goes to 14 ad. and two turns per year.

[Discoman]

You also should try making an alliance with Spain and Britannia. Spain stays neutral and never really becomes a threat unless you let them be one. The Brits will eventually (well usually) end up fighting the Germans, which makes the Germania a good target after fighting the Gauls. I'd say your main mistake was going into spain. Just worry about the Gauls and remember to take the rebel settlements near the alps and southern Germany for future use.
In my opinion you weren't going too fast, you just weren't using your strength in the right places. I've gone at faster paces and took out Germany by the time Marcus Julius (3rd generation Julii) was in his 20's. Infact my orginal faction leader was still alive when I killed off the Gauls and took over France. When it comes to troops get hastia from your two starting settlements and upgrade your newer settlements economy/military strength while conquering. Use mercenaries and most importantly use calvary to flank Gaulish troops, considering they have very poor morale.
But go at any pace your comfortable with, during my first time playing it took me alot of time to take over spain, france, britain and germany. Also if you think these guys are threatning wait until you end up fighting the Brutii.

[Carl]

I went into Spain because that was where the last two Gaul settlements where and I wanted to wipe them out, the Brittanian's and Germanics where allied AGAINST me in the campaign that went wrong.

Tried a new campaign with the Juli, taken the Gaul provinces in Italy and then Built forts at all the ways in, then gone after the Carthaginians.

Had more luck developing this time, but a big part of my problem is that most settlements only have 500-100 population after I occupy/Enslave them, so as a result I never seem to be able to get the Hastashi building up. My Best City ATM is captured carthage, as it's the only place where I can Build Priceps or Cavalry Axuillia. I did use mercenaries, but by that point my enemy was never anywhere near my main army, so it didn't matter. This time I’m sending multiple Faction members into the field and thus can split my armies as necessary. Before I only had 1, (the army leader), outside of Italy.

The diplomacy is badly borked IMHO, even when I offer an even trade (map for map), it's saying I’m being too generous and they can't accept. I’ve now got 2 diplomats with NEGETIVE influence because of that. It also makes it impossible to keep allies happy and has started a couple of wars.

Fortunatly the forts are keeping them at bay.

[Roman_Man#3]

You seem to be doing better now, but I might suggest sticking to equites instead of cavalry auxilia. Equites are good flanking troops, and they are fast, while the Cavalry auxiliamight be fast, but they have a limited number of pila or javelins, they are bad melee. Use velites and equites instead in my opinion. After you play a while and get more experience, you should notice which sities have big populations. The larger the pop., the harsher your punishment should be. Small little towns deserve an ocupation, larger ones deserve enslavement, and the largest deserve extermination.

RM3


ps. Remember what culture they are, if they are your culture, occupy the small and larger cities, while enslave the even larger cities. Keep in mind this won't always work, so keep your ears and eyes open.

[Carl]

Actually I am sticking to Equites, I’m not much good with missile cavalry, however it is further up the tech tree than Equties and I was using it to help show my level of advancement. Just quit that campaign (it all went pear shaped after I posted that, with a couple of big Carthaginian armies wrecking Carthage and the region south of it rebelling). Tried a quick Gaul campaign and eliminated the Julii in 5 turns, with the option of moving on to the Brutii or the rebels around me. Apart from The Roman Senate I could probably have completed the short campaign objectives in another 5 turns, but I suspect 2 or 3 full armies would be needed for Senate army

Will probably drop that campaign and go back to the Scipii now I know what I’m doing better as the Gaul’s are a bit boring to fight with and against, mostly because of the small settlement size making it hard to get anything near the frontline up to speed. Carthage has good pop cities so I can use enslavement to get my cities up to speed in a hurry.

In general I agree with you though now. Enslaving small settlements doesn’t seem to do much good for my overall population and hurts the settlement taken. I might well have to exterminate some, although I'm preferring enslave, let rebel and enslave again in the case of big cities, much more fun IMHO.

[Roman_Man#3]

what ever floats your boat!

[Carl]

Well I wasn't sure if the rebel/enslave was going to work when I put that up, I’d done it experimentally once.

Tried it again just now and it works fine though. The thing was, I noticed that if I destroyed buildings to get rid of the culture penalty their was a tendency to rebel, so I figured if I encouraged it then got more slaves out of it I got to bring the natives down to size whilst getting my other cities developed at the same time.

The best point, Carthage has just rebelled and then the senate gave me a mission to take it. It's going to be so much fun getting money for doing what I was going to do anyway, (most of the time the senate give me missions I’m not interested in that get me into wars I don't want).

Scipii are a good faction too as they can get some big cities early on and thus good troops. on the downside they have bigger enemies and the Grab, Enslave, Destroy, Rebel, Grab Enslave cycle slows down the initial economy.

A lot easier than the Julii one I was doing though. Mostly because I actually can get access to decent troops and cities easily.

Taking Syracuse made me hate Hoplites though, their murder if defending a narrow space.

The only trouble is an annoying tendency for big elite armies full of top quality troops to spawn in the settlements. Gets annoying as they can be hard to dislodge. Fortunately, I use a big army, nearly a full stack when you add on the mercenaries.

Thanks for all the hep though, you pointed me in the right direction. It was a case of too much too soon, coupled with poor managment of setelments and armies ealry on that was getting me.

[jhhowell]

You seem to be doing better now, but I might suggest sticking to equites instead of cavalry auxilia. Equites are good flanking troops, and they are fast, while the Cavalry auxilia might be fast, but they have a limited number of pila or javelins, they are bad melee.

I could not disagree more. Missile cavalry dominates this game. Cav Aux can do everything Equites can, and they whittle down enemy units with javelins beforehand. The only down side is the higher tech building for retraining.

If Equites were tougher (Legionary Cav, for example), there's a legitimate trade-off to consider. But they're just basic light cav, if they do anything other than pursuit, charge missile troops, or do a flank charge to get a quick rout, they'll get chewed up very quickly. Same as Cav Aux (or the Greek Militia Cav, with whom I have quite a lot more experience).

For a new player, putting off the jav cav is plausible though. It takes some practice to get full effect from them (Carl, play a Seleucid or Greek Cities game to get that practice!).

Regarding other topics, you shouldn't need to let a city rebel once you've taken it. A large city should be manageable after one extermination, and small towns are fine to occupy as is. Bear in mind that you usually have to keep a decent army in place for garrison duty for a while, at least until your peasant/town watch numbers build up. It sounds like you may be too quick to destroy some buildings - remember you can also get rid of the culture penalty by "overwriting" the building with the next higher tech version, if applicable. Make sure you can keep the people happy before trashing the temple. Arenas can help, since you can buy games to adjust happiness. If you absolutely must let a city rebel, destroy all the troop buildings first, that way the rebels will be all peasants (playing the WRE in BI gives one some practice with this...).

As you're seeing, the Scipii are nice; I'd rate them a bit easier than the Julii (better temples, richer cities to take).

Don't worry about the diplomacy, there really isn't any meaningful diplomacy in this game. Get your trade agreements, maybe trade and/or buy maps if you want, and bribe enemy armies to taste. That's about all you can hope to do.

[Carl]

@jhowell: my main problem with missile cav, (based on experiences with Numidian horsemen mercenaries), is that as soon as they get into range they get attacked by enemy units, even foot units can cover the distance fast enough to prevent them getting a volley of and then escaping scot free. I have the issue even worse with Peltasts and such like, (they're good fodder in sieges though).

I tend to let it rebel because the time it would take to get the city under control enough to move a sizable force away, I could have let it rebel and retaken it and got it in order that way, doing that gives me more population in the rest of my cities and more loot too. As well as command stars and unit experience for my armies and generals.

Only trouble is I’ve just got a defeat immanent sign and am a long way off beating it. got 7 out of the 15 [provinces and can't find the last Carthaginian one and I haven’t even started on the Numidians.

ATM I was actually getting ready to start on the numidians, I’d just got a force of 5 Equites trained and 4 Ballista, was going to send that plus some of the retrained Hastati into one army to hit all the African territories east of Carthage. Whilst my 1/3rd stack of family member cavelry and the rest of the retrained Hastati plus some mercs hit the Numidians, Rebels and Egyptians to east of Carthage, (I got the one south-east of tharepes (bad spelling sorry)).

A Third army would be trained up one My legionary Barracks had finished on Sicily, (was dedicated each settlement to the production of a different unit class, Syracuse was archer, Liyrmidia was Cav, and the other was going to be Infantry), That would go by ship to where I needed it.

Trouble is I think the Egyptians have me.

Is their any way of removing the Fog of War so I can see where those Carthaginians have got to? and look at how everyone else is doing before I lose?

[Roman_Man#3]

To take out fog of war hit the `/~ button, then type toggle_fow, and hit enter.

there are numerous other cheats you can put in there, but we don't talk of such things at this most honourable of places.