Need Help Getting Started In Rome: Total War

[LookingGlass]

OK, I need help. Big time. I've never played a Total War (or similar) game before and I'm totally lost.

After getting to the point in the prologue/tutorial where you can (finally) save the game, I haven't been able to do anything right.

1) I tried continuing the prologue and I got into a fight taking a city and I got it to the point where I'd killed 80% of them and they'd killed about 30% of my troops. I went to try and take the capture point with their remaining troops and all of my guys got scared and RAN AWAY. WTF? I could have beaten them easily just because of my numbers.


2) I tried starting the imperial campaign and after one successful battle (taking the city just across the sea to the west) using just Hastati and Town Watch, I had no idea what to do at all. I had no money, wasn't earning any more, and didn't have enough troops to actually fight anyone and win. Eventually everyone rioted in my cities and took them out of my control, and my troops died in battles against stronger opponents.


So basically I don't know what I'm doing in the strategic component at all and I'm not much better in battles.

Anyone have any useful tips that helped them? How did you learn how to play? Tutorials? FAQs? Anything you found useful (links or your own tips) would be appreciated. Whilst I learnt a decent amount of "how" to do things in the game's tutorial, I have no idea about why/when anything should be done.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Generally, you've got to think in terms of running the empire as a whole, not just the military arm of your empire. So some of your troops need to stay home and keep people under control, you need to be focusing on building enough of an economic base to run your army, and so on. Don't be afraid to crank up taxes if you need more funds, or crank them down if you need population growth.

Besieging towns is kind of strange. Basically the town square makes the enemy army immune to routing, and routing is generally how you "kill" units in RTW. So they're at a massive defensive advantage when they're there. The trick is to do what the IRL Romans did - keep some of your troops in reserve (i.e., not engaged in combat) and withdraw tired troops to replace them with fresh troops. That strategy will pit the increasingly tired and weak enemies against your full-power soldiers, and you'll eventually grind them down. Cities are basically all bottlenecks anyway, so having people who can't make a significant impact on the battle to begin with tire themselves out doesn't do you any good. Honestly, it's often a better idea to starve the town unless you can easily roll over the other army or need to blitz for some reason.

Oh, and invest in some ranged units. You want mercenaries like Cretan Archers or Balearic Slingers if you can afford them. They wreak absolute destruction against enemies that bunch up in bottlenecks. Just be careful to not shoot at your own men.

Also, once you're comfortable with how the game works, get a mod - those are really the core of the game these days. I'd recommend RTR VII or Europa Barbarorum.

 

[LookingGlass]

Generally, you've got to think in terms of running the empire as a whole, not just the military arm of your empire. So some of your troops need to stay home and keep people under control, you need to be focusing on building enough of an economic base to run your army, and so on. Don't be afraid to crank up taxes if you need more funds, or crank them down if you need population growth.

Besieging towns is kind of strange. Basically the town square makes the enemy army immune to routing, and routing is generally how you "kill" units in RTW. So they're at a massive defensive advantage when they're there. The trick is to do what the IRL Romans did - keep some of your troops in reserve (i.e., not engaged in combat) and withdraw tired troops to replace them with fresh troops. That strategy will pit the increasingly tired and weak enemies against your full-power soldiers, and you'll eventually grind them down. Cities are basically all bottlenecks anyway, so having people who can't make a significant impact on the battle to begin with tire themselves out doesn't do you any good. Honestly, it's often a better idea to starve the town unless you can easily roll over the other army or need to blitz for some reason.

Oh, and invest in some ranged units. You want mercenaries like Cretan Archers or Balearic Slingers if you can afford them. They wreak absolute destruction against enemies that bunch up in bottlenecks. Just be careful to not shoot at your own men.

Also, once you're comfortable with how the game works, get a mod - those are really the core of the game these days. I'd recommend RTR VII or Europa Barbarorum.

Thanks for the tips so far.

I've got the taxes bit down... well, good enough. Beyond that though, I have no idea how to make any money. I never got to a point where I was earning more than about 150 gold net per turn (without spending anything on buildings or recruitment).

I know you can trade with other cities and that there are resources you can mine/gather/etc, but I'm not sure how these systems work. I know you can negotiate trading rights with other cities via diplomats, but I don't know what comes next. No idea at all about resources.

What are the simplest ways to start making money when you're just getting started?


I had no idea about the whole town square = immune to routing deal. That makes sense of some things. I was also kind of ignoring the tiredness levels of my troops so I should pay more attention to that.

How do you starve a town? I noticed that when I start a siege it says something like "enough food to last for 3 turns". Is that my troops, or the town? How can I tell if my troops can outlast the town? What happens if I do? Do the townspeople die or do they come out and attack me?

From the tutorial I noticed that the ranged units, particularly archers, are extremely useful. That much I did get. In the campaign I don't have the prereqs yet though. The tutorial mentioned something about being able to get mercenaries at siege time... but I don't remember exactly how that worked. But they said it was expensive and I don't have any gold anyway.

 

[SckizoBoy]

What Kahunaburger said, though at times, it is safer just to wait out the garrison (lossless and if they sally, you just need to last the battle time).

There are three main things you need to consider when developing the empire:

1. Your army (obviously, but don't go mad, in the un-modded game, early on you can typically field a full-stack balanced army without characters per four or five settlements controlled, taking garrisons into account)
2. Your finances (try getting trade agreements, ports, developed farmland, road networks etc. so always keep an eye on your finances tab, I have a general rule of thumb of +500-1000 per settlement controlled, or at least try to)
3. Public order (unmodded, this is every RTW player's pet-peeve, as there're only three ways to keep it under control without resorting to what I call a 'march-out-march-in': temples, waterworks & garrison, though some factions have propaganda outlets, mainly the eastern ones)

You need to get a balance of the three as you build buildings. It sounds like you've started as the Julii (red Roman faction, and the settlement you mentioned was Caralis?). If you're a complete noob, start with the Bruti (in-game 'Brutii', the green Roman faction) as they rake in a lot of cash early game. Have Crotona as your breadbasket (farmlands etc.) while Tarentum as your military base (barracks, ranges etc.). As mentioned, sieges are bottlenecks, so with the Bruti, you can recruit Hoplite Mercenaries and Cretan Archers. Once you get playing, you will learn to love the Cretan Archer, they're the best ranged unit in the game (artillery excepted). It's just a case of do you want the rewards the Senate give you, or do you have your own agenda? I typically go for the money alone, and perhaps the occasional unit.

Play the short campaign as well, (15 provinces plus destruction of one or two other factions) as you can unlock the other factions quicker and see how they play. And they play very differently. If anything though they're all a bit harder, Egyptians being the possible exception (though I don't really know about the barbarian factions).

PM me if you want further tips.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Thanks for the tips so far.

I've got the taxes bit down... well, good enough. Beyond that though, I have no idea how to make any money. I never got to a point where I was earning more than about 150 gold net per turn (without spending anything on buildings or recruitment).

I know you can trade with other cities and that there are resources you can mine/gather/etc, but I'm not sure how these systems work. I know you can negotiate trading rights with other cities via diplomats, but I don't know what comes next. No idea at all about resources.

What are the simplest ways to start making money when you're just getting started?


I had no idea about the whole town square = immune to routing deal. That makes sense of some things. I was also kind of ignoring the tiredness levels of my troops so I should pay more attention to that.

How do you starve a town? I noticed that when I start a siege it says something like "enough food to last for 3 turns". Is that my troops, or the town? How can I tell if my troops can outlast the town? What happens if I do? Do the townspeople die or do they come out and attack me?

From the tutorial I noticed that the ranged units, particularly archers, are extremely useful. That much I did get. In the campaign I don't have the prereqs yet though. The tutorial mentioned something about being able to get mercenaries at siege time... but I don't remember exactly how that worked. But they said it was expensive and I don't have any gold anyway.

Money - build farmlands, cheap and relatively quick early on. Mines, even better, ports as well (trading fleets = a lot of money).
Starving a town - don't assault, just end turn still laying siege, and the 'food for 3 turns' is for the garrison, since your 'supply lines are still open', sort of.

Your troops can always outlast the town and it depends on whether the defenders come out to attack you. If they don't, after they starve out, they die and you just occupy the town (I generally always massacre them, more money, less people, less trouble).

About getting mercenaries, you need to have a character in your army to be able to recruit them. Select the army, right click on the character's unit icon and in the bottom left of the tab, there should be a couple buttons, one's for the bodyguard and another's for recruiting. There you go, and you can do this at any time while the character is outside of a settlement.

Oh, and find some mod that you think might be cool (I'm about to indulge in SPQR because I enjoy the battles).

 

[LookingGlass]

Thanks a lot. There's a lot of stuff I didn't know in your two posts.

I actually didn't notice, or I just don't remember, being able to choose which faction to start as. I was the Julii and Caralis sounds right there.

I'm wondering whether I failed the tutorial or whether the tutorial failed me. Or perhaps the fact that the "Total War Collection" version of Rome I bought didn't come with a manual has screwed me over.

I'm not sure if I was supposed to figure this stuff out for myself but yeah that wasn't really happening.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Thanks a lot. There's a lot of stuff I didn't know in your two posts.

I actually didn't notice, or I just don't remember, being able to choose which faction to start as. I was the Julii and Caralis sounds right there.

I'm wondering whether I failed the tutorial or whether the tutorial failed me. Or perhaps the fact that the "Total War Collection" version of Rome I bought didn't come with a manual has screwed me over.

I'm not sure if I was supposed to figure this stuff out for myself but yeah that wasn't really happening.

No sweat, the manual doesn't really cover that much anyway (I've got the 'Gold Edition'), just the usuals as far as basics are concerned and little else. Granted, there's a lot there, but hey, learning's the fun part.

However, the tutorial campaign for Rome is probably the hardest out of all the TW titles, because the budget is more shoestring than any other and the time limits are ridiculous. I kept trying with it (even after completing the Imperial campaigns repeatedly) but couldn't get my charge south timed correctly. Maybe I just sucked, but it had no bearing on how I did in the main game (personal sucker for the Greek Cities, BTW, who have the hardest early game, but the best late game units: Spartan Hoplites FTW, eight units of those 2hp bad boys = pwnage!).

Anyway, once you play the un-modded game a bit, go here [http://www.twcenter.net] and have fun downloading, because their mod library is immense (a couple thousand, last count, though a lot of them are just plain stupid). I typically play R:TR, which is more geo-politically accurate for the time and the tech-tree is a lot simpler, in favour of resource/army management rather than development.

 

[Tharwen]

In-battle, you have to concentrate on your morale. If you have a patched version (I think post-1.1 or something like that), you can mouse over each unit and see exactly what's affecting their morale. To make the enemy run away, use tactics such as charging them in the rear while they're already engaged at the front, or firing flaming arrows at them. Also, if you concentrate on making one unit run away early on, they may cause the rest of their units to flee too, making a spiral of failure across the enemy ranks.

If you have any spare cavalry, chase down a fleeing unit so that they won't be such a threat if they regroup (you can't lose any soldiers killing fleeing units).

Other useful things:

Try to hold the high ground, since charging uphill is less effective.
Try to keep your ranks fairly intact so none of your units get surrounded.
Use cavalry to fuck up distant archers.
Keep your light units away from their heavy units.

If you're a complete noob, start with the Bruti (in-game 'Brutii', the green Roman faction) as they rake in a lot of cash early game. Have Crotona as your breadbasket (farmlands etc.) while Tarentum as your military base (barracks, ranges etc.).

I'd actually advise against starting as Brutii, since it tends to be very hard to cross over to Greece and hold the coastline for long enough to start to make a foothold. I think Julii is easiest personally.

 

[SckizoBoy]

I'd actually advise against starting as Brutii, since it tends to be very hard to cross over to Greece and hold the coastline for long enough to start to make a foothold. I think Julii is easiest personally.

Really? If you consider the Greek starting position, none of their five provinces are geographically linked, and Thermon only has a militia barracks. Only the Cretan archers & character make the garrison there any threat. With both characters and all troops bar about six for garrison duty, Thermon's an easy target. By that time, Macedon is usually at war with Greece (and the Macedonian early game units are not all that good compared to the Roman factions') and the Bruti can simply mop up whatever's left. The jump down to the Peloponnesus isn't that hard. And in the other direction, most of the settlements are rebel held, so you can take them at your leisure.

*shrug* Depends on your strategic play style, I guess. I get a bit OC with army compositions which is why I concentrate on easy early catches and resource management, build up a small number of large (and standardised... he says with clenched jaw) field armies, then rampage to my heart's content.

Slightly off-topic, how do you go about the Seleucid campaign?

 

[BelfastSpartan]

For money and map info make several 'senators' or whatever they are called....like politicians.

Then run them round the map, everytime you find a new army/town give them map information for their map information and ask for trading rights.
This opens up trade routes everywhere and also let's you see the whole map.

Keep attacking to a minimum at the start, try to build up a decent sized army and take 1 town, then build up another small army to take another town etc.

When you have several decent sized armies then you can start attacking more towns. Try to focus on attacking just 1 faction, you won't survive if you are warring against every faction so make alliance with everyone and then fight them 1 by 1.

 

[LookingGlass]

I'm doing much better this time after following advice from here. I'm really starting to enjoy the game.

The one thing I'm left wondering is whether they actually expect you to do all of their senator's missions, or whether you're just meant to do whatever you like. I found myself completely screwed when I tried to keep doing their assignments within the time limit because I'd end up having to fight large armies.

I haven't been using Diplomats at all... so maybe I should get onto that then for trading rights and map info. Sounds like a good idea.

 

[SckizoBoy]

I'm doing much better this time after following advice from here. I'm really starting to enjoy the game.

The one thing I'm left wondering is whether they actually expect you to do all of their senator's missions, or whether you're just meant to do whatever you like. I found myself completely screwed when I tried to keep doing their assignments within the time limit because I'd end up having to fight large armies.

I haven't been using Diplomats at all... so maybe I should get onto that then for trading rights and map info. Sounds like a good idea.

Doing the Senate missions isn't obligatory. It's just that completing them gets you rewards and recognition (fame/Senate rating etc.) in the Senate tab. You could call them R:TW's side missions. You can do them, but you don't need to.

I tended always to do the ones that gave me money, and the ones that gave 'games' or units, I rarely bothered with. It's up to you...

 

[LookingGlass]

I'd actually advise against starting as Brutii, since it tends to be very hard to cross over to Greece and hold the coastline for long enough to start to make a foothold. I think Julii is easiest personally.

You're right about that one. I attacked the Greeks for a senate mission early on and it's been tough trying to take their settlements because they can constantly reinforce themselves from the cities further east. I ended up going too far and getting my ass handed to me pretty badly by them. But it was fun trying.

This game is ridiculously addictive... I can't stop playing it.

 

[Tharwen]

I'd actually advise against starting as Brutii, since it tends to be very hard to cross over to Greece and hold the coastline for long enough to start to make a foothold. I think Julii is easiest personally.

Really? If you consider the Greek starting position, none of their five provinces are geographically linked, and Thermon only has a militia barracks. Only the Cretan archers & character make the garrison there any threat. With both characters and all troops bar about six for garrison duty, Thermon's an easy target. By that time, Macedon is usually at war with Greece (and the Macedonian early game units are not all that good compared to the Roman factions') and the Bruti can simply mop up whatever's left. The jump down to the Peloponnesus isn't that hard. And in the other direction, most of the settlements are rebel held, so you can take them at your leisure.

The problem is that Apollonia and Thermon are both very small towns, so they can't support an army. You have to push through them to somewhere more useful like Corinth or Larissa before the area becomes self-sufficient, which takes a lot of resources and transport. While you're doing this, you have to make sure the Greek navy doesn't get too strong or you won't be able to send any troops over. Also, I managed to piss off the Macedonians in my game so every city outside Italy is on the frontline for me.

I suspect I may end up building a fort on the little land bridge east of Corinth and using it to keep the foreigners out so I at least have a secure area in southern Greece.

One final note to the OP: If you're playing Brutii, Crete is a very good outpost to secure because the AI never seems to attack it and it makes an excellent naval base.

Also, phalanxes are evil. Avoid them if you can.

 

[SckizoBoy]

The problem is that Apollonia and Thermon are both very small towns, so they can't support an army. You have to push through them to somewhere more useful like Corinth or Larissa before the area becomes self-sufficient, which takes a lot of resources and transport. While you're doing this, you have to make sure the Greek navy doesn't get too strong or you won't be able to send any troops over. Also, I managed to piss off the Macedonians in my game so every city outside Italy is on the frontline for me.

I suspect I may end up building a fort on the little land bridge east of Corinth and using it to keep the foreigners out so I at least have a secure area in southern Greece.

One final note to the OP: If you're playing Brutii, Crete is a very good outpost to secure because the AI never seems to attack it and it makes an excellent naval base.

Also, phalanxes are evil. Avoid them if you can.

That's fair enough I guess. In my playthrough, I got to Thermon asap, before building up as large an army as my economy could maintain and taking Sparta. It took very careful timing (building army vs. Greeks recruiting armoured hoplites) but it worked out fairly well for me. *shrug*

Besides, phalanxes are not evil, they are just badass, though I find it odd how hoplite phalanxes can take on pike phalanxes and win (for the most part). The best way of dealing with phalanxes is thin out the centre and bulk up the flanks, since the Greeks won't have much by way of cavalry, and just do a Cannae on them, only outflank with wing infantry and attack in the rear with your equites, simples. If you time everything correctly, the centre only engages right at the end when their centre that hasn't broken yet is completely surrounded.

However, as someone who plays almost perpetually as a Hellenic faction: THIS IS SPARTA!! And Rome will fall! (sorry, had to be done)