Romani: Too many mercs to choose from?

[Silence Hunter]

The main problem I found while facing romans was that usually 50 or even more percent of the armies were composed of mercenaries. Romans simply stopped recruiting their factional troops, which I find highly ahistorical as romans had alae auxiliaries but not mercs. I also noticed that the percentage slightly depended on campaign difficulty. On VH it was higher than on H.

[antisocialmunky]

That is the Roman way, throw money and men at it until you win. Besides in EBII, we have recruitment pools.

[SwissBarbar]

What's that?

[bovi]

Romans simply stopped recruiting their factional troops, which I find highly ahistorical as romans had alae auxiliaries but not mercs.

No mercs ?

The ratio may be imprecise (and probably is for all AI factions, not least the Carthaginians), but we cannot control how the AI chooses to spend his money.

[mlp071]

AI mercs (over)recruitment is a plague of RTW.

There is several ways to "tone" down AI recruitment. However it requires lot of tweaking+ testing and can seriously imbalance whole campaign and it's definitely not perfect or historical.

As for Romani AI , if they don't have enough mercenaries available, they usually spam lower lvl regionals instead, so there is no good solution for them, or they will mass recruit Triarii and Pedites E.Some other factions do benefit from it though , like Pahlava, which tends to recruit more of their HA units that way.

If you are not happy with amounts of AI recruited mercs , you can(as quick semi-solution) :

- raise their prices significantly(at least 3-4x) in comparison to equal faction units
- lower number of units in Descr_mercenaries to 1 each and maybe(not to efficient) increase their respawn time.
- remove them all and give AI even more money to compensate for lack of mercs

Just be aware that any of those change could make AI campaign very different and can "nerf" AI's ability to counter human or other factions effectively.And i personally don't suggest any of them as great.

M2TW Kingdoms has recruitment pools and option of limiting numbers of units recruited, so that will hopefully resolve this issue.

[Dayve]

But what if you are fighting a pike phalanx spam with little cavalry? Or if your try to go against the Central European behemoths?

BTW, are you talking about Marian legions?

I'm talking about all 3 Roman legions. Camillian, Polybian and Marian. 4 hastati, 4 principes, 2 triarii, leves, rorari, general, cavalry. This army will defeat anything.

Btw - how can some people fund enemy with 30000 per turn? I am constantly low on money. I end turn with up to 2000 in treasury only... EACH TURN. The army and mercenaries is the best way to keep treasury down.

I'm playing as Rome now... I started the game, took Taras and Rhegion, created my 14 unit legion you see above, put taxes to high in 3 cities, normal in the rest, and i'm already pulling in 15,000 a turn. The only economic buildings i put up were roads in Rome and Capua, so i haven't been pumping up my economy or anything.

Rome simply makes a buttload of cash...

And the last - how can 14 units of legionaries can be overkill? I play VH/VH, there were really lots of situations were full legion of heavy infantry commanded by a good general was simply destroyed by smaller gallic, german, greek elite forces commanded by exellent generals. Of course when enemy comes with low cost and quality units - legions are deadly. And plus - enemy runs out of elites quite quickly, while romans never run out of legions ;)

On VH/VH the AI get unreasonable bonuses. On VH/VH, a unit of Akontistai will defeat a unit of reformed veteran cohorts. H/M is the way to play. They say play VH/M, but VH campaign difficulty frustrates the hell out of me.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

Playing Rome, or Carthage, and want a way to use up your excess gold?

Do what Rome and Carthage did historically, in the First Punic War.

Build a fleet. A GIGANTIC fleet! Of the largest and most expensive ships available!

Then, if you are still making a profit, build several more gigantic fleets.

Soon you will be broke!

[Ibrahim]

The main problem I found while facing romans was that usually 50 or even more percent of the armies were composed of mercenaries. Romans simply stopped recruiting their factional troops, which I find highly ahistorical as romans had alae auxiliaries but not mercs. I also noticed that the percentage slightly depended on campaign difficulty. On VH it was higher than on H.

honestly, some of those alae, (especially foederati) were a form of mercenary wing of the army (serve part time(ish), when needed, and so forth.)

and honestly, the romans are not that difficult to beat: any well used and professionalized army, with the right tactics and experiance, can, just as Irish hitman made clear.

[Cbvani]

Too much money? Forget ships - what you want is siege equipment. It moves slowly, you probably won't ever use it, and you can only ever build it in the center of your empire. Go for it.

[A Very Super Market]

Hell, how about those extensive trading ports?

[machinor]

The problem with those is that you cannot build anything else in that city for about 60 turns. Fleets and siege equipments are much better. I prefer fleets though; after all they were THE inferiority complex compensation of antiquity.

[desert]

The thing with fleets is, they could be used for some time, and then decommissioned in the docks until they needed to be used again. Unfortunately, you can't simulate this with the RTW engine, so you end up either rebuilding over and over again, which is retarded, or you end up with hundreds of ships perpetually floating in the sea, which is incredibly expensive.

[machinor]

Well, that's the reason in the first place. Using up money.