Be Great at Rome Total War

Enjoy playing Rome but overwhelmed by all the different aspects to manage? Follow this guide and you'll make Caesar look like a Gallic catamite!

Steps

Getting funds

  1. Start by boosting your cities to its highest possible tax rate without having it revolt against you. If, however, you want that that city to grow and don't mind making a little bit less every turn, move it to the lowest tax rate until you upgrade it.

Building structures

  1. Build. As long as you have the money, try to make sure that all of your settlements have at least one building being produced on the construction panel.
  2. Start building by creating whichever religious structure you want. If you have conquered a city and it already has a religious structure from a different culture, destroy it and build your own. The only exception to this is when that city's happiness rating is too low to last a turn without that building without revolting.
  3. Build your structures in order of how many turns it will take to complete, from smallest to largest. However, if you have the ability to upgrade the city and the citizens are becoming too restless, delay whichever current structure you are building with the new one that will advance your city.

Forming links

  1. Produce a diplomat and establish communication with as many cultures as possible. It's good to build some strong allies early. Don't ally yourself with a faction though if you plan on waging war on them any time soon.

Building your army

  1. Note that when building an army, always try to equip it with a wide variety of warriors. Include spearmen to defend against cavalry, heavy infantry to combat the enemy's spearmen and other infantry, cavalry to outmaneuver your enemy or to match theirs, archers or javelin-men to harass your enemy before your melee units engage, and when you have a city advanced enough to build some, siege equipment to attack a town without waiting another turn or more.

Besieging

  1. Remember that while besieging an enemy town, make your weakest troops command the siege engines you build at the town (siege towers, rams, etc.) unless they are at risk from being attacked by the outside. You don't want your best unit to be cut down by arrows before even engaging the enemy. When you've brought siege equipment, such as onagers and ballistate, try not to destroy any buildings that appear in the campaign map. When you've finally broken the gate or a section of their wall, you should group the units you plan to send in and press Shift+8 to move them into column formation. This is best for storming a city.
  2. After conquering a city, see what the city's happiness level is before you decide what to do with its citizens by looking at its window through the space between the information scroll and the edge of the screen. If it's red, you should massacre or enslave the citizens. In that situation, massacre them. If it's blue, enslave them. If it's yellow, you could still enslave them just in case. If it's green, neither massacre nor enslavement is necessary, but then again, you are the king, so it's completely up to you.

Responding when under siege

  1. When one of your cities is under siege, command the battle yourself, no matter what the odds. It is possible to defend a city with 21 weak Greek Cavaliers against 350 Macedonian spearmen and archers and win with 15 men remaining and your general still alive. When you're the one whose city is about to be stormed, place the troops with the strongest defence near the place where the enemy has penetrated your city, and put them into guard mode. There are all types of different methods you can attempt to try to save your city. Something that often works is to put some spearmen a few yards back from wherever the enemy has come in and let them advance. Then, order any swordsmen, no matter how strong or weak, to attack it's now unprotected flanks since it is trapped between your defending army and the gate.
  2. Battles are often won before the opposing armies ever see each other. Always try to place your army on a hilltop when it's about to be attacked. This hill will be on the battle map as well, and the slope could be the difference between defeat and victory.
  3. Control where your ranged units are firing. Leaving your ranged units on fire-at-will can cause them to fire and hit your own men if they are close to the enemy.
  4. Manipulate your enemy with decoys and bait. Put yourself into win-win situations.
  5. Take care when around chariots. Chariots on the run can still cause casualties to you by the blades on their wheels.
  6. Use morale. Morale is as much a weapon as any conventional one, don't overlook it.

Expansion

  1. When choosing where to expand, always keep in mind two factors. The first is military, take over a settlement to make defending your empire easier, or to weaken an enemy. The second, and most important, is economics. Your main drive in attacking a settlement is to make more money, either by opening up new trade routes or merely adding more people to tax.
  2. Use forts, they can be priceless in their ability to keep enemies out of your territory, to seal mountain passes and shut down bridges. Only family members (Generals with portraits) can build forts. These forts must be manned by at least one unit at all times, or they will fall into disrepair, and disappear. Forts can be used to prevent war, and they also makes sure you'll be calling the shots once it starts.

Tips

  • If one of your cities ever catches the plague, don't move any men inside of that city into another one, as it will spread the disease. However, one thing you can do to spread it to your enemy is to build a spy in that city and then move that spy into an enemy settlement. Since it is the only unit that can penetrate a town without taking it over, it will infect that town.
  • A rather effective way to repel an assault in a city is to group spearmen/hoplites into phalanxes (if possible),and place them in a tight semi-circle around the gate/breach. Place archers on walls around the breach to fire into enemy troops approaching your city, and keep swordsmen behind your spearmen to deal with any enemies that penetrate your first line of defence. Should the enemy start to overwhelm your position,use cavalry and your General (if mounted) to charge into them and rout a few units. This will boost the morale of your troops, and you can then continue to slaughter the enemy as they are trapped between your spears and the oncoming troops from behind. This method is particularly effective as your General will be in close proximity to most of your troops (as they are so tightly packed),and therefore his presence and morale boost will benefit many of your soldiers.
  • A generals retinue can be given to another family member by bringing up their information scroll, and dragging it into the other generals picture (can't do this in a city). This is useful for making super generals. When your super general is going to die of old age, simply have someone else get his retinue.
  • In battle, use every opportunity you can to conceal your troops in a forest (some can hide in long grass too), even if you already have an advantage. Place your visible troops behind where the forest is and then have the hidden troops ambush the enemy when the come near, sandwiching them between your two forces.
  • Remember that foreign (not your own faction) temples cannot be upgraded. If you have a shrine in a Huge city, your first action should be to build a new temple.
  • Fire is very successful at decreasing the enemy morale, and can even destroy buildings inside an enemy settlement. Simply order your onagers to attack the building you want and press 'F' to turn on flaming ammunition. You can do the same with ballistae, but only when the line of fire is not blocked by a settlement wall or other obstructions.
  • If you ever have a city that is too restless and you cannot raise its happiness level, or if doing so will be too costly, take all your men out of the city and raise the tax rate to its highest level. This is to purposely have the city revolt so you can conquer the weak rebels and massacre the population so that it is much more profitable. You can hasten the revolt by destroying any buildings that make your citizens happy such as coliseums or shrines, and make the rebels weaker by destroying military buildings, but beware, you'll have to rebuild these structures when you recapture it later. [Economically, this is dangerous, so should be used as a last resort - you will shift the burden for paying for your troops onto other cities. If you massacre the rebels when you re-take the city, then you will have reduced the economic might of your empire.]
  • Many of these strategies can also work with Medieval 2: Total War, Rome's sequel.
  • If you can pull off a successful ambush, you can destroy an entire army with only a fraction of the men the enemy has. Do this in the campaign map by placing the units you plan to have take part in the ambush in a forest adjacent to the path you believe your enemy will travel in a next or upcoming turn. When the soldier representing your army is crouching but still holding up its sword, you know it is hiding. You can use something as bait to ensure they travel that path, such as a single weak unit that you don't want to involve in the fight, or an important family member with no reinforcements (make sure the enemy will not travel a different path to reach your bait. Otherwise, there will be no ambush and your bait is hopeless.). Your troops will automatically spring the trap during the enemy's turn when their army passes your hiding one. Sometimes the ambush will not work and the enemy will be able to prepare their men before the fight, but if your troops pull it off successfully, you can take as much time as you want to organize while your enemy automatically start out the battle in a vulnerable column formation. Before starting, organizing your troops into a single line formation with Shift+1 so that you are facing the enemies unprotected side. Have your men charge the enemy that is in a direct straight line in front of them. It does not really matter what troops you use and what specific unit you choose to attack, unless your choice is obviously suicidal, such as sending off a unit of peasants against some Spartan Hoplites. As long as your enemy is not too strong and you aren't somehow outmaneuvered, it should be an easy battles as the enemy will be running away at first so that they can get into a proper formation.
  • Naval fleets can be a very helpful asset. Use ships to transport your men to foreign regions so that they do not have to trespass on neutral or allied turf. You can also use your fleet to blockade a port reducing income and troop movement.
  • You can use magic to defeat the army. Use a holy cheat engine and hack the "world". Send your divine armies to war. Watch as the rest of the world crumbles before you; game over!
  • If you own the Barbarian Invasion expansion pack, a very useful option comes up whenever one of your armies commanded by an experienced enough general is about to engage in a battle in the campaign map called "Night Fighting". It is very demoralizing to the enemy, and will seclude the main army of the enemy from all other surrounding it, unless one of them is commanded by another general with the "Night Fighting" ability. Be careful though, as this feature will also exclude your men from any reinforcement armies as well.

Warnings

  • Attack the city of Carthage,Patavium, or Thapsus without a strong economy may have you spending thousands of denarii trying to keep the people happy. On the contrary, taking over Carthage early in the campaign can give you a lot of advantages. The city of Carthage is usually more advanced than the other settlements you start with. This gives you the advantage of being able to train more advanced units. It may be your first settlement to make it to "Huge" status. Also, Carthage can be a huge money maker. It's also a relatively safe place to raise up armies which you can export to Rome, Greece, and other places.

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