Do you enjoy playing Rome Total War, but are overwhelmed by the management of the various aspects of the game? Follow this guide and Caesar will look like a Gallic youth!
Steps
Part 1 of 7: Getting the Funds
Step 1. Start by maximizing your city's tax rate, but without causing a riot
If, however, you want that city to grow and you don't care that it happens less and less every shift, set the lower tax rate until you upgrade it.
Part 2 of 7: Construction
Step 1. Build
As long as you have money, make sure all settlements have at least one structure in production on the construction panel.
Step 2. Start by creating whatever religious structure you prefer
If you have conquered a city that already has a religious structure from a different culture, destroy it and build your own. The only exception to this rule is when that city's happiness score is too low and without that building a riot would arise after not even one turn.
Step 3. Build structures according to the number of turns required to complete them, from smallest to largest
However, if you have a chance to renovate the city and the citizens are getting too restless, delay the construction of any structure by giving priority to the new one that will advance your city.
Part 3 of 7: Establishing Contacts
Step 1. Create a diplomat and establish communication with as many cultures as possible
It's good to find some strong allies right from the start. Don't ally yourself with a faction, however, if you intend to wage war on them soon.
Part 4 of 7: Building your own Army
Step 1. Note that when building an army, you should always try to equip it with a wide variety of warriors
Include spearmen to defend against cavalry, heavy infantry to fight enemy spearmen and other types of infantry, cavalry to defeat the enemy or at least to counterbalance it, archers or javelin throwers to harass the enemy before engaging units melee and, when you have a city advanced enough to build a few, siege engines to attack a city without waiting another turn or more.
Part 5 of 7: Besieging the other Cities
Step 1. Remember that, during the siege of an enemy city, the weaker troops must manage the siege engines you have built for the city (siege towers, rams, etc.) unless they are at risk of be attacked from the outside:
you certainly don't want your best unit to be shot down by arrows even before colliding with the enemy! Once you have brought these war equipment, such as onagers and ballistas, try not to destroy all the buildings that appear on the war campaign map. When you have finally broken the city gates or a section of the walls, you should group the units you intend to send and press Shift + 8 to place them in the column formation. This is the best way to attack a city.
Step 2. After you have conquered a city, you need to check its happiness level before deciding what to do with its citizens
Look at the window in the space between the information scroll and the edge of the screen. If it's red, you should slaughter or enslave the citizens. In that situation, it is preferable to get rid of it. If it's blue, enslave them. If it's yellow, you may decide to enslave them if you think that's the case. If it's green, no force action is needed, but since you are the king, you can still do whatever you want with it.
Part 6 of 7: Reacting to Attacks
Step 1. When one of your cities is under siege, lead the battle alone, no matter what the odds of victory are
I once defended a city with 21 weak Greek knights against 350 Macedonian spearmen and archers, managing to win with my general and 15 surviving men. When your city is about to be stormed, place the troops with the strongest defense close to where the enemy entered and put them in guard mode. There are so many different ways you can try to save your city. It is often useful to place some spearmen a few meters from where the enemy has arrived and to make them advance. Then order the swordsmen, no matter how strong or weak they are, to attack from the flanks as the enemy will be trapped between the defense army and the city gates.
Step 2. Battles are often won before the opposing armies even see each other:
always try to put your army on a hill when it is about to be attacked. This hill will also be the battlefield and the slope could be the difference between defeat and victory.
Step 3. Check where your long range units are attacking
Leaving them set to "automatic" attack could cause them to attack and hit your soldiers if they are too close to the enemy.
Step 4. Distract your enemy with traps and diversions
Try to create situations where you can always come out victorious.
Step 5. Be careful when around chariots
Even running away, they can still cause you to lose due to the blades mounted in the wheels.
Step 6. Use "morale"
Morale can be a weapon like a conventional one, don't underestimate it.
Part 7 of 7: Expansions
Step 1. When choosing where to expand, always keep two factors in mind
The first is the military aspect: occupy a settlement to defend your empire more easily or to weaken an enemy. The second most important aspect is the economy. The main incentive for attacking a settlement is profit, the ability to open new trade routes and tax more people.
Step 2. Use the forts:
they can be invaluable for their ability to keep enemies out of your territory, to isolate mountain passes and close bridges. Only family members (generals with portraits) can build fortresses. These forts must always be manned by at least one unit or they will fall into disrepair and disappear. They can be used to prevent war and will also ensure that you can dictate the law once it begins.
Advice
- If a plague epidemic breaks out in one of your cities, do not move any man from that location to another, as it will facilitate the spread of the disease. However, you can spread it to enemy cities by leaving a spy in the plague location, and then move it to an enemy settlement. Since it will be the only unit that can enter the enemy city undisturbed, it will infect it.
- A rather effective way to repel an assault on a city is to group spearmen / hoplites into phalanxes (if possible) and place them in a narrow semicircle around the breach. Place the archers on the walls around the gap to fire arrows at enemy troops approaching your city and keep the swordsmen behind the spearmen to take on any enemies that break past your first line of defense. If the enemy begins to overwhelm your position, use the cavalry and the General (if mounted on horseback) to charge them and take out those few units. This will improve the morale of the troops and can therefore continue to slaughter the enemy when he is trapped between the spears and the troops approaching from behind. This method will be particularly effective if your commander is in close proximity to most of your troops as they are tightly packed: his morale boost and presence will benevolently affect many of your soldiers.
- An escort of commanders can be offered to another member of the family by updating the scroll with the information and dragging it over the other photos of the commanders. It is not possible to do this in a city. This is a useful method for creating even higher rank generals. When one of them is about to die of old age, simply get someone else to have their stash.
- In battle, use every chance you can to hide your troops in a forest (some can even hide in tall grass), even if you already have an advantage. Place your visible troops back, near the forest, so that the hidden troops ambush the enemy as he approaches, sandwiching him between the two forces you have deployed.
- Fire is particularly good at lowering enemy morale and can also destroy buildings within an enemy settlement. Just order the onager to attack the desired building and press "F" to ignite the flaming ammo. You can do the same with ballistae, but only when the line of fire is not blocked by a settlement wall or other obstruction.
- If you happen to have an extremely active city and you can't increase its happiness level, or it would be too expensive, get all the men out of the city and increase the tax rate to the highest level. It is used to deliberately cause a revolt, so as to conquer the weakest rioters and massacre the population, which is a much more profitable business. You can accelerate the revolt by destroying all buildings that bring happiness to citizens, such as colosseums or shrines, and weaken the rebels by destroying military buildings. But be careful: you will have to rebuild these structures when you acquire them again. Economically, this is a dangerous move, so it should be used as a last resort - you will shift the burden of paying for your troops to other cities. If you slaughter the rebels when you retake the city, your empire's economic power will be reduced.
- Naval fleets can be a very useful asset. Use ships to transport your men to foreign regions so they don't have to cross over into allied or neutral territory. You can also use your fleet to block a port, reducing income and troop movement.
- If you own the Barbarian Invasion expansion pack, this is a very useful option whenever one of your armies led by a fairly experienced general is about to engage in a map battle called "Night Fighting". It is very demoralizing for the enemy and will isolate the bulk of the enemy army from all others around it, unless one of them is commanded by another general with the ability to "Night Fighting", fight at night. however, as this feature will exclude your men from all reinforcement armies as well.
- Remember that foreign temples cannot be upgraded. If you have a single shrine in a huge city, your first action should be to build a new one.
- Many of these strategies can also work with Medieval 2: Total War, the sequel to Rome.
