Fall of Rome Strategy

I've currently been planning to take another crack at winning the Fall of Rome scenario as West Rome on Diety. Out of curiosity, what strategies do you guys like to use for it?


Incidentally, I also save scum to get my legions' recruit ability to actually work. A percentile chance of capture is one thing with privateers on the high seas, but its a very different one when it's elite units on land. West Rome was kind of built around that ability, it's really painful not to have it working properly.

Well some general tips for Western Rome are let all your cities grow that aren't going to get taken over in the initial wave of barbarians. Don't lose your 2 (8 happiness) luxury resource cities. I think every single luxury resource (except one I think) is the only one you have. I believe West Rome only has 2, one on the African continent that is threatened by the vandals and one in the middle of the Iberian Peninsula also threatened by the vandals.
Infrastructure wise, get up your granaries (mainly to work a hill tile), circuses, water wheels (that one production counts), I would try to avoid walls because either you won't have enough time to build them for the initial wave in the cities that will get taken and the social policy that give -2 production in cities with walls. Also I wouldn't waste time with markets since you'll end up in negative gpt depending on what social policies you take and hardly any units will disband anyway. Build a couple of workers to improve tiles since a bunch of cities work unimproved tiles.
Also I think for winning I think you have to have the highest score and that the combined team score doesn't count for some reason.

I've been wondering -- How, exactly, does the whole "Lose units if gpt is under a certain amount" thing work? Because knowing how frequently units are lost to that would mean a great deal. I, personally, like to avoid having highly promoted legions disappear into thin air.

Also, is there any way to easily figure out where luxuries are located, or do I just have to look around for them?

Nonevah said:

I've been wondering -- How, exactly, does the whole "Lose units if gpt is under a certain amount" thing work? Because knowing how frequently units are lost to that would mean a great deal. I, personally, like to avoid having highly promoted legions disappear into thin air.

Also, is there any way to easily figure out where luxuries are located, or do I just have to look around for them?

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Units hardly ever disband and from my experience it seems to be the most damaged units you have so just keep your veteran units on high health and let your new units take the hits. As for luxuries I don't know besides looking for them.

SULOMON said:

Units hardly ever disband and from my experience it seems to be the most damaged units you have so just keep your veteran units on high health and let your new units take the hits. As for luxuries I don't know besides looking for them.

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The cheapest unit with the least xp will disband first. That's from experience, not sure how it is actually coded.