House Rules

[CrazyGuy]

I've noticed this thread on the MTW Forum, but I don't think I've seen it here (apologies if it already exists). But what rules do you set yourself, i.e. are there some bugs that you've noticed but don't exploit?

The one rule i've adopted is very simple:

"I don't do anything that wouldn't be done in 'real' life'." So for example, I never let a town rebel just to gain exp/reduce population. Indeed, I spend a lot of energy preventing rebellions, as in history no governor would be allowed to encourage rebellion in his own province!

I would be interested to know what other people think and what other rules or checks they put on themselves?

[woad&fangs]

Welcome to the org. crazyguy The one house rule I play with is that I don't turn down marriage candidates for any reason. If adding another general to the payroll will bankrupt me and the candidate is 60 years old with all negative traits well then to bad for me. Who am I to stand in the way of true (digital)love.

[Bootsiuv]

Unless the dude is like 45 and your daughter is like 12....I turn those guys down...how many twelve year olds want an old dude?

I also don't build in any city without a governor. I have made exceptions to this rule once in a great while, but I try not to.

[gaiusjulii]

I have a few house rules which

1 not to break alliances not matter how much I want their lands.
2 only use the preatorians in the same stack as my faction leader as and my capital city sort of Royal Guard.
3 use urban cohorts in the cities only as police.
4. avoid using to much cavalry as a roman faction as a good 80% of their fighting was foot soldiers.

[I of the Storm]

When playing vanilla I stick to:

1. Senate missions have top priority.
2. Pacta sunt servanda, i.e. will never break alliances
3. Won't use unrealistic army compositions, no matter how tempting (ever tried an egyptian all-chariot stack on auto-calc?)
4. Never ever ever use the red line as flank protection

[rvg]

When playing a Roman faction I always occupy cities belonging to Hellenic and Roman factions, enslave Egyptian/Parthian/Carthaginian cities and exterminate barbarian cities.
As a Roman I use very little cavalry and not many archers.
As a Roman I try not to encroach on the turf of other Roman factions (i.e. I will not try to conquer Greece as a Julii)

I do not use diplomats to buy cities or armies (except for small rebels stacks).

[Revenant69]

Some pretty good house rools here that I like, especially about enslaving, exterminating certain factions. May need to think about applying some of them. Cheers...

My rules are pretty simple:
1. Never ever ever replay the battle, no matter the loss;
2. Never break alliances;
3. I usually do not attack a faction until attacked by it;
4. Don't exploit any game engine bugs;
5. Army compositions are based on cultural preferences (Rome - infantry, Parthia - cavalry), no matter how tempting it is to build patrolling cavalry stacks.

Well, these are the ones that I can recall off the bat.

EDIT: Right, forgot one thing...
6. Never use autocalc.

[Poulp']

#1 house rule if you find the game too easy

"Camera centered on your general", makes battles way harder to manage because you don't have an overall view of the battlefield anymore.
Your general will spend more time riding than fighting or chasing routers.
It turns high grounds into precious observation spots, and heavily wooded areas into nightmares.

edit

and sieges are nightmares too !
you can't scan the area before the battle to check where are the best roads towards the town square, you have to breach in and fight your way in the old way (with major losses)

[mrdun]

That is a good rule Poulp

[Poulp']

thx

that's a good rule, but quite an unforgiving one if you're playing a faction which lacks heavy cav (GCS for instance).
Sometimes, my general spends so much time riding left and right that he doesn't fight at all, and he earns some bad traits. I remember a general of mine, Philippos the conqueror, though he singlestackly took the whole italian peninsula, he was for a long time labelled as a coward. (and he ended his life as "the mean")

[mrdun]

Run away and keep running Philippos

[Poulp']

roger that

*disappears on his horse*

[Roman_Man#3]

I don't generally play with house rules, except I never use peasents for garrison.

[IceWolf]

I too don't play with more than 2 Roman cavalry units
I never break alliances
I never seige a city if I have onagers
I maintain Greek armies with <80% hoplite
I never willingly fight if I'm outnumbered by >500
I never allow a dude over 30 to marrry my daughters unless he has stars
I never use cheats

IceWolf

100th post woohoo!

[Caius]

I do this:

Automanagement.
I dont train low morale soldiers i.e. Town Watch. If the machine does, I disband.
Try to steal Roman lands being one.
Dont use ships, only if necesary.
I dont use cheats.
The enemy will resist the siege as long as they can.
I will use my hoplites to hold the enemies, not allowing them to come into my settlement.
If I use onagers, I will burn them!

Cheers

[professorspatula]

I've answered this type of question about 10 times but here's some of my rules again:

1) No retraining of units that aren't nearly full already. Units must be merged so as to not create veteran units from new recruits. A few exceptions are if the unit is inexperienced (under 3 chevrons) or if there are just a few men missing from the unit. In my opinion this is the best house rule : it makes you protect your veteran units because it means each man in the unit will have literally fought dozens of battles for you so you want to preserve them. It's great when a unit finally reaches high experience and you stick them in the back rows until they can be released to finish off the enemy.

2) Armies require a general to leave friendly lands. Armies also need a general to launch siege attacks. Armies without a general should be much smaller because without a leader they'll be unorganised and less effective. The only thing is fighting with a general and winning battles means you'll have a super general which makes things easier - that's why I've had to make it harder to gain command stars in my game.

3) Newly conquered settlements require the general to stay put for a few turns to control the population. He may not leave with his army during that time unless another family member arrives to assume governorship. Additionally, only militia level units can be trained for the first turns. Number of turns varies, but one rule could be 1 turn per size of settlement (Village/Town 1, Large Town 2, Huge City 5 etc).

4) Limited amounts of elite units and cavalry. I already use smaller numbers of men per elite and cavalry unit, but additionally I try not to have more than 4 cavalry units in an army and the same number of elite troops - if that. The AI cannot handle the player's use of large amounts of cavalry or elite troops so this handicaps you. Of course some factions like Numidia rely on light cavalry so they can have more cavalry units.

5) No reloading etc unless I did something utterly stupid like just selecting the general and forgetting to click on the rest of his men as I send him to attack an army!

6) No deliberate slaughtering/exterminating populations just to get cities under control.

7) If the General is a drunken commander, at least 4 beers for every level of his drunkenness must be consumed before leading his army into battle so as to fight the battle in 'simulation mode'.

8) Must control the battle whilst on actual horseback, thus a horse is required to play RTW.

[SpartanPhalanx]

8) Must control the battle whilst on actual horseback, thus a horse is required to play RTW.

I too play by this rule and wanted a noble steed on which to carry me to a grand Roman victory. I originally thought a Chestnut Thoroughbred Stallion would do the trick. Unfortunately my apartment is tiny so I settled for a Shetland Pony .

[CrazyGuy]

Presumbably if you play as Britannia you collect stray cats and a kids go-kart and fashion a rudimentary chariot?

[SpartanPhalanx]

Presumbably if you play as Britannia you collect stray cats and a kids go-kart and fashion a rudimentary chariot?

You put those kitties on speed and you should see em move

[Severous]

I tend to create rules, or objectives, or rules of engagement, for each campaign I play.

Current campaign:
- Senate missions must be performed asap. Will break other rules to do this.
- Must not attack an ally or neutral faction
- Must always offer ceasefire after capture of a region..with cash and trade rights given to try and encourage ceasefire
- No exterminating population of captured towns
- No eliminating another faction
- No building military buildings..except walls and blacksmiths.

This set of rules is designed to force a slower pace of expansion.

[ciprianrusu]

My house rules are as follows:

1.Never break an alliance
2.Attack only if you are provoked
3.Never bribe cities
4.Never accept marriage proposal from generals over 30 years of age
5.Use armies without a general only against rebel armies that spawn on your territory.
6.Never accept a ceasefire proposal from a former ally that stabbed me in the back.
7.Never party before a major battle. (there is nothing worst than to go onto the battle whit a hangover )

[CrazyGuy]

Here's a rule that I adopted without even knowing it.

I only just discovered that you can swap retinues around and hence create a 'super general'. This seems grossly unfair, hence I don't do it.

Pythagoras chose to follow him, who am I to interfere? Also it prevents one uber-general conquering the planet on its own...

[Charge]

Great campaign rule - play battles only with faction leader, others auto-resolve.

[mrdun]

A couple of house rules I adopt:

- Play all battles so I enemies cannot regroup and attack me again.

- If a family member is under 30 he has to be someones understudy whether commanding or governing.

- Only a Consul can command on his own.

- Where possible I recruit a large enough army to take settlements to natural borders like rivers or mountains. For example take Patavium, Mediolanium and segesta in one sweep.

[ShaiHulud]

I play with Darth Mod and that mod, besides providing the most capable AI, allows me to create for myself house rules that are more in line with historical actualities. Also, using the large map and starting the game confronted by Pyrhuss and a basically unconquered Italy, Rome(me) has extremely limited income for a long time and faces true threats to survival. The tests begin immediately.

1. Try to maintain 4-4-2 ratio of Hastati, Principe and Triarii in my armies.

2. No raising of ROMAN specific type troops (the three in rule one) outside of the beginning provinces. As the rest of the Roman penisula and Transalpine/Cisalpine Rome are conquered they can only provide these types after their culture is down to 10%, ie, they became Romanized. The same rule applies to Spain, Carthage, Gaul, Greece.

3. Until they are Romanized I can only recruit troops that are specifically titled 'auxiliary' in foriegn provinces. The use of auxiliaries is well noted in Roman armies. Mercenaries of any types are still allowed. In fact, they become almost mandatory due to rule 2!

4. All marriage proposals are accepted. Romans often married solely for political advantage or to ally with a prominent or useful family. Age was not considered for these types of arrangements.

5. No general under 25 can lead a Roman army. I make exception to this rule when dealing with rebel armies on the Roman penisula because recalling a general from a campaign to deal with minor disruptions would not have
been done.

6. Generals under 25 spend their time either with their father/sponsors, in Rome, with a senior general on campaign, or in the city in which they spawn.

7. Can't enslave within the Peninsula or Transalpine/Cisalpine Rome. Extermination is allowed only in Northern Gaul, Germanic provinces, and cities that rebel.

8. Can't bribe armies, rebels, cities.

9. Can't declare war without a Roman diplomat at the enemy capital to render the ultimatum.

10. Can't accept cease fire unless Rome receives substantial tribute. NEVER offer tribute of any kind.

11. All alliances are sacrosanct. Allies that break faith are to be conquered, period.

12. No fleet has more than 4 ships.

13 Can't send an army to Cathaginian Africa until Carthaginian Spain and Sicily are conquered.

14. I take Senate missions if they suit me. Some are unrealistic, requiring that one swing from one end of the map to the other. Take an island in the Med, then go take Patavium, for instance. There's not enough time or troops, early on, to do all the Senate wishes. Sometimes, they have to face frustration.

With Darth Mod, the large map, and these house rules, I find that Roman expansion has a more realistic pace and feel.

[CrazyGuy]

DarthMod sounds really interesting. Can anyone give me any more info.

Also where can I get it? How does it work? I am utterly clueless when it comes to modding!

[mrdun]

DarthMod sounds really interesting. Can anyone give me any more info.

Also where can I get it? How does it work? I am utterly clueless when it comes to modding!

Snap!

[ShaiHulud]

CrazyGuy- Try here for Darth Mod Info

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forum...php?f=71:book:


And, Mrdun...What does "Snap!" mean? :)

[guineawolf]

i engage my enemy with mass infantry only ,and cavalry to enemy missile infantry only.....

[professorspatula]

CrazyGuy- Try here for Darth Mod Info

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forum...php?f=71:book:


And, Mrdun...What does "Snap!" mean? :)

You never heard of the card game Snap? Where you been? I think in this case he means 'Me too!' as in he wants the link for the mod. Which you've given him anyway so everyone's a happy camper.