Tips for Rome: Total War

[Wondernerd]

The only non-Roman factions left where Thrace, Brittania, Rebels and Egypt. All of my cities were happy(other then the occasional "Romani ite domum" graphitti in governerless cities), and three missions in a row were to kill myself.

I'm thinking There must be some weighting to what missions you get at what power level and it pushes you to attack Rome. Now my cities are unhappy as I've put them all into military mode and running them close to bankruptcy.

 

[thenerd]

i got a question:

i started out with the default settings which means that my unit scale in campaign mode is large, so i only get 100 hastaties per unit. i know the max is 160, but i can't change the unit scale now. is there anyway to counter this? this problem makes me want to stop playing since i don't want to start over after taking france and half of spain.

 

[Bobsaysthis]

Bump for thenerds question, and also one of my own.

How the hell do I use re-enforcements?
If its an AI controlled ally, they automatically engage, but when I try and reenforce myself, say at a seige, my own house reenforcements sit out of bounds doing nothing. Help is greatly appreciated, as im stuck in this situation right now trying to re-take Carthage

 

[andypnb]

Bump for thenerds question, and also one of my own.

How the hell do I use re-enforcements?
If its an AI controlled ally, they automatically engage, but when I try and reenforce myself, say at a seige, my own house reenforcements sit out of bounds doing nothing. Help is greatly appreciated, as im stuck in this situation right now trying to re-take Carthage

of the ally or the reinforcements have a general, then the general will control the new army.
if not, then they will step in bounds only when one of your units routs. (since you can only control 20 at a time).

 

[sohcugy]

Slightly off topic but, does the actual game play smoother than the demo? I ask because I like the game from the demo, but it was kinda choppy with my fx5500. And was wondering if it's just my card or if the demo is choppier.

 

[m4rine]

I found having my own reinforcements with a general next to useless, as they are controlled by the AI, in fact I had two large armies attack in a seige on Athens and my other AI controlled one just sat there getting killed by towers. I actually lost more units in the AI army then in the army I was controlling while attacking. Screwy.

So if I have an army that has no general I can use it to fill out my ranks as long as im not controlling 20 units? That makes some sense.

 

[thenerd]

answer my question plz! is there someway to change the unit scale to huge AFTER i started campaign mode?

 

[m4rine]

no, none that we know of.

 

[Bobsaysthis]

of the ally or the reinforcements have a general, then the general will control the new army.
if not, then they will step in bounds only when one of your units routs. (since you can only control 20 at a time).

Gotcha, thanks a million! m4rine, that sounds booty. I noticed the AI usually sucks with reenforcements. One time I attacked Carthage (this city has givin me alot of trouble) I was aiding another Roman faction, each of us had over 1000 troops. Halfway through the battle they ended up all tucking tail and running, with thier general dead, pfft. I had to deal with all those elephants myself. Does anyone know if the AI control is any better if you use a more experianced general for AI support? If not, it should be that way. I guess Ill continue just using reenforcements to fill in my ranks. Thanks for the help!

 

[black_b[ ]x]

Yes, the AI is kind of dumb. I'm all for sitting back and letting my ranged units pound on a settlement or army before I move in, but the AI just charges right in. I had just broken 2 holes in the wall, ready to advance in carefully, and the AI army comes running around the settlement and charges past me. What a mess.

Another tip re: taking a settlement, it seems that if you break down a wall, you can get your units in faster than if they were to walk through the gate. However, you'll have to repair it if you actually like the town.

 

[arentol]

If your empire has pushed a lot in one direction, but not yet in the other (i.e. Having taken Spain already, but not gone east at all), and you are having trouble with controlling the more distant cities, simply move your capital over a couple cities closer to the middle of your empire and you will have more balanced distance penalties in all your cities.

 

[huxley]

I am finally getting into this game after having played it off and on for a while. Playing at Hard/Hard now...thinking of moving it up to very hard for a good challenge.

Anyway, I didnt even notice this until now. In the bottom left hand corner of your battle screen is a menu that gives you the ability to pause the game, play, ffx2, ffx4. The pause button is the best battle tool you could ever hope for and an option that IMO makes the game so much easier and semi unrealstic since real commanders cant pause their battle and assess the field.

Anyway, by pausing you can assess everything, set up routes for your cavalry to flank the enemy and have troops attack them from the front and pretty much any damn thing you want.

This is a pretty straightforward one but I will mention it anyway. Against the computer a nice band of archers is probably the deadliest force in the whole game. You just get in range, protect them with a nice line in front and basically demolish the enemy and they wont attack a lot of times since you are so far away. Another instance that archers excel at even more is sieges. You just take the castle wall to disable their towers, run a small group just past the door to lure the enemy to the entrance and let your archers just lay it on them. They will retreat and you can do the same trick over and over again.


If an enemy is attempting a siege it seems they will always simply attack on the last day before you run out of supplies and have to surrender. I do not know why this happens or if it is just weird luck that it happens to me every time. It is much easier to demolish an army when they try to rush in than rushing out the gates and trying to kill them.

 

[huxley]

The only non-Roman factions left where Thrace, Brittania, Rebels and Egypt. All of my cities were happy(other then the occasional "Romani ite domum" graphitti in governerless cities), and three missions in a row were to kill myself.

I'm thinking There must be some weighting to what missions you get at what power level and it pushes you to attack Rome. Now my cities are unhappy as I've put them all into military mode and running them close to bankruptcy.

You dont do the senate missions? I never used to do them but just started. It makes the game a lot more fun now that I started doing the missions...plus the rewards can be very cool and you get your leaders in high offices in the senate too.

 

[Wrench00]

I played the game very differently. Most of my armies consisted of 70%-80% Cavalery.

Trick of using a large cavelery army is to use the Formations. If charging a Hard target use the Triangle formations and then just run through the infantry. Use lots and lots of flanking tactics. But the easiest way to win a battle is to use cavalery is to kill the enemy general, once that happens moral of the enemy breaks very quickly, and becomes a mop up operatoin. Using special units like the assasin looking doods and Gladiators is an excelent way to break through hardned targets.

My armies also had a lot of attack war dogs. This is a cheap unit but very effective one. There realy isn't a good way to defend against them either. They are extremly good against infantry. I used them mostly against archers. Use dogs just to overwhelm your enemy unit. They also spread fear and break moral of surrounding units (just like the pigs) they are excellent at breaking moral.

Also if you are facing a lot of archers use the turtle formation on the preatorian units it will save you a lot of casualties. I primarly used preatorians and archers as my support units.

Also when fighting something like the phalanx use your units defend option this will tie up the phalanx against most infantry with shields then just use another unit to to flank and slaughter them all.

Best unit to break into a fort/castle I found was the triarii (these guys kick ass).

 

[huxley]

Wow, I finally was able to recruit archers. I cannot believe how easy a battle is with 6 sqauds of archers and a simple front line to guard them. You are so out of range the enemy doesnt even attack. On top of that, add 2-4 siege weapons and you are going to lose a max of 50 troops no matter who your enemy...not to mention making castle sieges even more of a joke. I just killed 1200 enemy troops and lost 0 guys myself it is laughable...and this is on hard!

 

[jgoewert]

I've been playing hard mode using the Realism mod. It's fun.

I had a decent game going as the Scripti, which are now a Very Hard faction to play as they have to deal with the Carthaginian right off the bat. About 30 turns into the game, the senate went loopy and started ordering me ot the ends of the Mediteranian. Since my forces were relatively weak from just taking Carthago, the second I started shipping troops out on senate missions, the Carthaginians decided that they wanted Carthago back and brought plenty of elephants with them. Elephants + troops + alleyways = massive smushing.

After restarting, I decided to go Julii and have had a much better time kicking the barbarians out of their homelands.

My new favorite tactic against small armies in cities is to surround them on all sides with missile units with a melee unit directly behind them. Then, I moved slowly in and pelted them. The AI units never moved. When the missile units ran out, I moved some Hasati up and let them toss their spears. When all missiles were used up and the enemy was down to 8 people, a quick charge on all sides ended it with no casualties.

 

[huxley]

I've been playing hard mode using the Realism mod. It's fun.

I had a decent game going as the Scripti, which are now a Very Hard faction to play as they have to deal with the Carthaginian right off the bat. About 30 turns into the game, the senate went loopy and started ordering me ot the ends of the Mediteranian. Since my forces were relatively weak from just taking Carthago, the second I started shipping troops out on senate missions, the Carthaginians decided that they wanted Carthago back and brought plenty of elephants with them. Elephants + troops + alleyways = massive smushing.

After restarting, I decided to go Julii and have had a much better time kicking the barbarians out of their homelands.

My new favorite tactic against small armies in cities is to surround them on all sides with missile units with a melee unit directly behind them. Then, I moved slowly in and pelted them. The AI units never moved. When the missile units ran out, I moved some Hasati up and let them toss their spears. When all missiles were used up and the enemy was down to 8 people, a quick charge on all sides ended it with no casualties.

I use similar tactics with most armies. I try to egg them to attacking me if at all possible and if that doesnt work I just have my archers line the front followed by either a group of hasati type people in the back or cavalry and some olagers. The archers attack them and will run back if they try to charge at which point I simply charge my units forward to meet them for a frontal assault.

Another tip

Olangers can win battles for you single handedly. They have such awesome range and scare the crap out of the enemy. Just aim a few of them at the enemy general and odds are you will have the whole army retreating in no time. When they are running away you can just have some cavalry come from the backside and do some hurt.


I never played a full game and am very pleased at how much fun it gets later on. Once you start getting 35k sized towns with the best units the battles are more fun and fighting another faction who owns 1/3 of the world ends up being good times. Towns get a lot more fun to siege when they have actual castle walls too. I recommend upgrading walls everytime you upgrade a town. Once you have a stone wall or better the town is very very easily defended. Hell, I had a huge city with good walls and the enemy couldnt even get to my troops in the center of town and the walls will destroy their siege equipment and you can rain hell from the top of the walls with archers...the senate also starts dishing out cool units and lots of cash for new missions.

 

[Alyosha]

I'm loving this game. And thanks for all the tips. I have been using pretty similar tactics as have been mentioned. 3-4 Archer units, 2-3 Onagers (pwnagers seems more appropriate though) and the rest split between infantry and cavalry. Make the enemy commit to charging you and then flank them with the cavalry. Otherwise, just pound them with artillery until they freak.

Artillery is a life save during a siege; at least in smaller towns. Once the enemy starts to panic inside the walls they end up clumped together and are easy prey for flaming onager rounds. Between those and my archers I've destroyed half of their army before entering the city.

The game has an intersting ebb and flow to it. You need to watch your family tree as it seems like you get new family members in fits and spurts. Sometimes I'll get 3 or 4 new memebrs in as many turns and you need to be ready to conquer new towns when you get them or they go to waste. Otherwise you end up out taking citys and don't have anyone to manage them. With careful planning you can build up your exsisting towns and armies and when you get an inlux of new governers you're set for some good conquering.

 

[jgoewert]

It wasn't until this thread that I found out that you could move people from town to town, move repatoir? (the people that follow a general), or move command points (I learned this today and will try it tonight.)

This may just be me, but every time I try to take a large city, while I'm putting up towers and sapping, the enemy always tries a calvary rush from the side. 99% of the time they come from the right hand side of my assault point.

To defend this, I place a very thin line of spearmen, usually triarii, up to defend. Usually, the enemy wall archers will attack the people going up the tower, so the defending triarii are relatively safe and can usually turn back the enemy. More often than not, it's usually the general's heavy cavalry that makes the initial charge. About 25% of the time, he falls on a spear and dies instantly.


Does anyone else kill of stupid generals or are they worth rehabilitating? One of my family had so many negatives, like "Unusual", that I really didn't want him around. So, I sent him on a suicide mission with another general and his unit led a charge against heavy war elephants they kept them at bay long enough for the rest of my army to do their thing with the enemy's main force. He didn't survive, but a few of his men did.

 

[huxley]

It wasn't until this thread that I found out that you could move people from town to town, move repatoir? (the people that follow a general), or move command points (I learned this today and will try it tonight.)

This may just be me, but every time I try to take a large city, while I'm putting up towers and sapping, the enemy always tries a calvary rush from the side. 99% of the time they come from the right hand side of my assault point.

To defend this, I place a very thin line of spearmen, usually triarii, up to defend. Usually, the enemy wall archers will attack the people going up the tower, so the defending triarii are relatively safe and can usually turn back the enemy. More often than not, it's usually the general's heavy cavalry that makes the initial charge. About 25% of the time, he falls on a spear and dies instantly.


Does anyone else kill of stupid generals or are they worth rehabilitating? One of my family had so many negatives, like "Unusual", that I really didn't want him around. So, I sent him on a suicide mission with another general and his unit led a charge against heavy war elephants they kept them at bay long enough for the rest of my army to do their thing with the enemy's main force. He didn't survive, but a few of his men did.

If I dont want them I just keep them in my home town and let them gain retinue and just use them as a guy to build retinue for better family members. Since they arent a governor they dont effect the population at all.

Weird, I am plaing on hard and I have never even had an enemy come outside their castle to fight me. I have about 6 groups of archers raining hell on them as well as three onagers firing at will and then once all is exhausted I sent in the cavalry to crush the rest of them.

 

[huxley]

I got banned by the senate and all of rome is attacking me . Thank god I have huge walls I can just massacre the enemy with archers