Rome 2 Patches, Hotfixes, Betas and Such (patch 17 live!)

[Slaists]

So far, on turn 75 with a VH Macedon campaign which started post patch IV beta release. I have 30+ regions and no AI has ever declared war on me: I am just steamrolling my way through same as before. Hey, Seleucids voluntarily became my vassals without any hostilities breaking between us. AI's Rome was at some point almost taken out by Epirus, but then Romans pulled themselves together and wiped out the pesky Italians. Now though, it seems, Northern barbarians are about to sack Rome itself.

Battles are a tad more interesting now that the AI is not starving as a rule. I am about to hit the threshold for the civil war start: I hope, that will heat things up a bit.

Patch 4 reduces the occurence of madness traits and reduces the number of slingers in AI armies. However, beating slingers with low tier infantry is a pain indeed. If your men are with weak base morale (below 50) they will take heavy casualties. Use cavalry to kill the slingers instead - even two units of equites will be enough.

later on, once your pretorians get to 90+ morale and a ton of defence/armour/shields you will just run them over. And by later I mean 10 turns after the start if you rush to Pretorians (which you should as Rome is one of the richest factions at campaign start)

Rush Praetorians? The Roman campaign is way too easy with Hastati + Principes + Triarii, no need for rushing Praetorians (or Legionaries for that matter), which I feel, should be allowed no more than 1 cohort per stack. When I play Romans I tend to have half my legion as auxiliaries for roleplaying (Italian auxialiary cavalry is better than the early Roman variety anyway).