Rome: Total War

[Prince Toad]

^7/6/5 is good, but it isn't crazy. 10-star generals aren't that uncommon when you send them off on campaign and they conquer a lot of land, especially if they start with good military traits (Military Genius or something, although very very few people get that). I guess a sum total of 18 things is good, but those generals also usually get insanely high influence ratings-- usually higher than their command, in fact (though a lot of times they'll have "Great Infantry Commander" or "Superior Attacker" so you get 10 stars anyway.) Management's weird. I have one guy with 10 management, but he's the only one I've ever gotten, since I don't really try. Ideally you just leave people with good bureaucratic traits in good cities and they get better. I think it might help if they have to deal with crises like rioting. The hairy one (LU knows who I mean) got a general fully maxed out-- 10/10/10-- and my neighbor mighta, not sure. That's insane though.

LU, maybe you're just using skirmishers wrong. I never found them too useful with the Romans, although if you play Greece, peltasts work quite well with the hoplites that make up most of your army. The Julii don't have much use for them, except maybe in Brittania, since they fight enemies that are fast, numerous, and undisciplined-- they just charge and scare off the skirmishers. (Try taking skirmish mode off if you have your skirmishers behind your front line, that might help.) You'd probably find them more useful if you were the Brutii or Scipii, too. The Brutii get to use them vs. phalanxes, which are too slow to make them run away, and the Scipii get to use them vs. elephants, which is one of skirmishers' specialties. (Granted Carthage almost always dies before they get more elephants than that pack they start with on Sicily, but it's the principle of the thing.) There's a chance with both of them that you'd end up in lower Anatolia and Asia fighting the Seleucids, who by then may or may not be powerful. Egypt always becomes really good, and they're tough to fight. I'm about to invade them (for no reason) with Greece, actually. This is the first time I've outfitted a true army, you know, built all 19 units (slot for the general) for the express purpose of being in this one army. (With the Greeks anyway. Did it several times with Parthia and the Julii.) Got 12 armored hoplites, 4 peltasts, two Greek cavalry, a ballista (for fun), and the general. I haven't used heavy peltasts yet, since you need a catapult range and I've expanded insanely fast (21 years into the game and I only need 5 more provinces) but I imagine they're really good with hoplites.

[ March 02, 2005, 09:04 PM: Message edited by: Prince Toad ]

[d]

In MTW the Egyptians can get extremely powerful too.They don't start off that way, but they always build up their provinces which start off pretty rich anyway.In my games they usually stay the wealthiest for the majority of the game.Right now I'm playing as the Turks which just start off with 4 or 5 provinces in Eastern Turkey at the edge of the map.I allied with Egypt and pushed against the Byzantine Empire but they have me stopped cold at Constanople(the only remaining province in Turkey not belonging to me) by weight of sheer numbers.It also helps that they have a big ass castle and I can only build catapults at the moment.Other than the few fights we've had in Constanople, they've only put up one good fight for the 2nd richest territory.I won the fight, but I had about 86% casualties which is extremely high for me.They made me pay for it, but it was worth it.
Really I haven't paid it all that much lately because of being busy with PS.I'll probably put something up in the next few weeks, but I'm going to be busy with school work and a few PS outfit operation.

[Prince Toad]

I finished my game with the Greeks, and beat another one with the Brutii on N/H. (I know, I should probably put up the battle difficulty, but I don't feel like it. It just ups their stats anyway, not their tactics, so I don't want to.) Playing a game with Gaul on N/H. They start out huge and pretty strong, but their units kind of suck and they're in as bad a position as the Seleucids-- Brittania to the north (who, by the way, has nowhere else to go 'cept Germania), Germania to the east, Spain to the southwest, and Rome to the southeast. I've been attacked by all four, by the way, so there's no mercy there. At least I've been allied with Carthage for pretty much the whole time, so I don't have to worry about being attacked by sea from the south... for now.

I decided to cripple the Romans before they could get too strong-- I figured if they got too many strong units, I wouldn't be able to keep up with them using my Gallic crap-soldiers. It was tough, but I managed to destroy the Julii, march into Rome, and even take Capua, although I halted there. Brittania's been the most aggressive of the other barbarians in attacking me (since, as I said, it's either me or Germania once they take Hibernia) I decided to kick them off the mainland once they'd taken my capital, Alesia. As of now I've got a big ol' army sitting in Samarobriva waiting for a boat to get constructed (the places aren't even big enough for ports... I have to haul one up from Numantia, which should have been taken by now, but they keep breaking off the siege, lucky me) so I can eliminate them for good. Germania, I think, has other problems, so they only hit me once. Spain keeps sieging Numantia and then leaving. Maybe to protect some place against Carthage, I don't know.

You'd think having to fight with mostly Warbands would suck, but it's really not that bad-- they can fight better than they seem to be able to. The tactics shift from Roman-style fighting to barbarian-style fighting was surprisingly smooth, even though they're hugely different. With the Romans, your troops can outfight pretty much anybody up close, so you can more or less march up, throw pila, and kill. With the barbarians, you have to rout them-- especially if you don't have any swordsmen (or I guess other heavy infantry)-- so you use surprise, flanking, and cavalry charges a lot more. I never used to bother with ambushing from forests as Rome, but just today I've done it twice already, and I decimated both armies.

Damn. Love this game.

[ April 17, 2005, 02:48 PM: Message edited by: Prince Toad ]

[d]

Yeah well, I finally lost my first game.I lost my Turk game that I had been playing earlier and pissed Byzantine by conquering all the land in Turkey except for Constanople.I launched one attack against the city but the computer broke the siege with 2000+ units.They set there slowly gathering troops for an attack.I was also doing that but I had to defend two provinces.I figured I could still take them but than the worst thing possible happened, my allies, the Egyptians, went over to the Byzantines and attacked me from the south with 1000+ troops.It was mostly infantry but they had a few groups of camel cavalry.My forces there were severely outnumbered but I wasn't able to bring in reinforcements from my other two fronts because the Byzantines lauched a massive assault at the sametime from Constanople and the Novograds had worked all the way south to the territory just above Turkey.They too, launched an attack at the sametime.
All of my forces were heavily outnumbered and inflicted casualties completely unproportional in any of my games, especially on the Egyptian front, one of my armies killed 12 guys for every 1 lost.However, even that wasn't enough as my defenses just collapsed inward to my major production center.After Novograd encountered the Egyptians and Byzantines they entered their alliance.Eventually I was worked down to one territory and they launched a three pronged attack to finish me off.I had around 700 troops, Egypt had around 1200, Novograd had around 800, and Byzantine had around 2400.While I was defending in the field I managed to crush the Novograd army and send them running before I retreated off the map to fall back on my castle.
After two years they broke the siege and attacked.I used the choke points of the gates in the inner and outer walls to great effectiveness.Especially when they grouped up around it try to get in, I only wish that my archers had had more ammo.Eventually they managed to crush and completely slaughtered my force once they killed enough to get through the choke points.My kill ratio there was about 8 to 1.
Still having a hard time believing that I lost to the computer.

[Lord Umbra]

This is an old topic, but I consider news of an expansion pack worthy enough to bring it back up.