How do you win the RISE OF ROME?

its sucks, u when u taking care of carthage greeck will have double the size of his army than u its impossible ti win this game???????? anyone won it with Rome? if u cant say anything positive dont Respond to this thread..i warned u

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I've won domination victory with rome on this scenario but it was long ago.
What i remember is that i take Spain from Cartage and expand in western europe.At late game in cental europe too(even have 1 town in Britannia) . Lot of my towns were former barb towns. The biggest trouble were the barbs because they pop up even it your cultural borders.

So is it best to take carthage first? I usually attack Greek first because their capital is nearer.
I am also frustated with this scenario bc it's too difficult and I never won. Anyone has a good tip? What I did was: build barracks, forge, and some other building first, then switch to theocracy and start building army, put some troops in galleys and attack greece, take 4-5 cities. And then I stucked. No enough army to make further invasion, I need to produce more but I also have to build trireme to take care of greek navy who are trying starving your cities. Then the greek just need to build plenty of trebuchet to destroy my praetorians in their former cities

I don't think my strategy was best but it succeed. First i take some cities on french teritory, i have bribed Greece and Parsia vs cartage to keep the busy with long ride to the middle east. Then i take Spain because Cartage main forces were already on the other corner of the map. And till the End i only fight with the Barbs and expand in west nad central Europe. Sonn before the end i achieved dimination vicroty.(I can't remember the dificulty settings but they were price or monarch)

bribe them into war? OMG, but IIRC I was short on cash and greece was annoyed to me. is persia in the scenario?

Follow in the footsteps of the real Romans. First engage and defeat the carthagian forces on land, in sicily and tunis. Then rush-build a navy, and destroy their navy. Take sicily, and get gold/gold per turn for peace.
Next fight the Greeks to a standstill (objective is to destroy their units and tire them out. Use counterattacks to utterly destroy enemy stacks)
Then fight your second punic war. Take hispania, and obtain more gold for peace. Then some more territory gains in greece. Make a foothold on the coast there.
Finally destroy carthage utterly. Greece should be vassalized or otherwise neutralized. Now it's time to expand northwards. Destroy armies, maintain your core of superior troops. Clear out france, and make garrisons to defend from germanic invaders.

Try playing it on immortal, and get beaten. Then move down to prince or monarch or whatever, and mabye you can win.

Never tried it myself, though. Just remember; "Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam."

Thomas G. said:

Follow in the footsteps of the real Romans. First engage and defeat the carthagian forces on land, in sicily and tunis. Then rush-build a navy, and destroy their navy. Take sicily, and get gold/gold per turn for peace.
Next fight the Greeks to a standstill (objective is to destroy their units and tire them out. Use counterattacks to utterly destroy enemy stacks)
Then fight your second punic war. Take hispania, and obtain more gold for peace. Then some more territory gains in greece. Make a foothold on the coast there.
Finally destroy carthage utterly. Greece should be vassalized or otherwise neutralized. Now it's time to expand northwards. Destroy armies, maintain your core of superior troops. Clear out france, and make garrisons to defend from germanic invaders.

Try playing it on immortal, and get beaten. Then move down to prince or monarch or whatever, and mabye you can win.

Never tried it myself, though. Just remember; "Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam."

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Believe it or not i did it taht way and win haha i couldnt do anything but when i looked at a RISE OF ROME article on the internet i was like i m going to try this and first took carthage then sicily killing greeks colonies after carthage i took hispania after that i was ready to attack greece and france i did itconquered all of gaul then i was ready to take greece i took greece it was easy then i build galleys and praetorians send them to england lol and took the resto of brtain with greece and carthage on my place i won a time victory with most points and even if i were still gaming egypt was no thread i had a damn army of praetorian with half of europe .

My strategy was quite simple: I attacked Greece full-force as early and as hard as I could, took all of mainland Greece and some of their nearby colonies, and then signed peace (they had a few more colonies in the far east). Then, I alternated attacking the Celts and the Carthaginians...I fought two wars against the Celts and three against Carthage, each time taking a few cities, but getting bogged down and needing reinforcements. I went for a more direct attack on the islands and then a ground invasion of Carthage herself, and then mopped up as I pushed westwards.

I managed to win simply by the volumes of legions I was producing--by the end, I had Rome producing a max-strength legion every 1-2 turns with over 10 experience points.

To beat Carthage, you need a lot of formation-promoted legions to counter their cavalry. That is the key.

Many strategies could work, I'm winning on monarch level now;
* At the start I built Praetorians in about every city. Trebuchet, galley and trireme in one each. No other infrasrtucture needed yet.
* Revolted to the +xp civics.
* Gave away a health resource to brennus and pyrrhus of greece. (At least one of them was my sole resource, didn't need health yet.
* Research set to scientist, to settle in capital for speedier research of preatorian upgrades later.
* Gathered my navy, grouped it together.
* Waited about 10 turns, then declared on Hannibal. Had one or two spears by that time.
* Carthagian islands in the mare nostrum destroyed, then land in tunisia, defeat carthage and city SE. First victory point taken. Got favourable peace, later gave Hannibal a resource for free, and had no problem with him for the remiander of the game. Ignored spain.
* Declare on greece. Attack both through yugoslavia, and later by amphibious assault on the mainland. Took a bit more time, because Athens, Sparta and delphi all had to be taken to control the victory point. Made peace.
* Declare on Brennus. Advance up central france towards Gaul. Take Gaul, make peace, because I need to build galleys in Gaul to take Bibricate later.
* Ignored Spain in all of these battles.
* Greece declares again, allowing me to take away syracuse and thrace for their troubles. Capitulation.

I settled all Generals as military instructors, 3-4 in Rome and 1 in 2-3 other high-producing cities. Beakers from representation were welcome as the science slider went down and down. War weariness gets pretty bad, because my consular armies really killed a LOT of enemy troops.

Oh, it's probably a good idea to garrison the iron source permanently. Archer + spear + Praet. It's amazing how the enemy manages to sneak past pillagers when I'm busy elsewhere...

do you guys build forges and barracks? when?

In the midst of a game right now, and it's going well-- my strategy at the outset:

Rush forges and barracks and granaries and CHOP EVERYTHING. The idea is to build your infrastructure early and QUICK. Forums and libraries come later in cities which actually will benefit from them.

Settle the silver to the north and the deer to the North East before the Celts do. You will need to pretty much do this right away. Garrison them both against Barbs and Celts.

Praetorian V is pretty crucial-- the added bonus to mounted units makes them very useful and allows you to essentially build an entire army of only trebs, praets and some cats. The Numidian cavalry is a powerful unit and 9 praets with 50% vs mounted units is better than spearmen.

Build lots of triremes- the computer will suicide your ships and will nickel and dime you to death. A general on one stack of each will ensure that you will never lose a naval battle, however, and mean you can build less for defensive purposes. Never use galleys undefended.

Militarily I took Greece first for the VP, then went north and took Gaul. That wasn't the best idea though as it's difficult to defend France without completely eliminating the Celts altogether, and the war weariness adds up.

I think my next move will be against Carthage and the islands. It's all about the VP and being able to maintain defensive strongholds, and getting two VP's early is a good idea so you don't get far behind.

Overall this is a fun scenario, one of my favorites.

OsmarChito said:

its sucks, u when u taking care of carthage greeck will have double the size of his army than u its impossible ti win this game???????? anyone won it with Rome? if u cant say anything positive dont Respond to this thread..i warned u

Click to expand...

I was on Monarch or Prince when I did this strat:

1. Pile the Praets into the boats and immediately seize the Greek wonders, including the Colossus. Make peace.

2. Meanwhile: Chop a Stonehenge and a couple of additional Workers. Build up your Italian infrastructure: granaries, then forges, then libraries. Keep going for Great Scientists to build up academies (yes plural) until about the 15th or 20th great person, then crank out nothing but Great Engineers for the rest of the game (except for Praet upgrades), since production is key and after the very beginning of the scenario beakers aren't as valuable as hammers or even gold. At some point you need to take a break from the great people and upgrade your Praets to at least level 5 to get anti-mounted. Don't put too many Great Engineers in any single city or you'll waste hammers as they can only use 45/turn to make Praets or 60/turn for trebs.. try to get about 30 hammers/turn so you can use Police State more effectively. Put engineers in the cities with mil instructors first. Do not build mil acads; that's a waste when you can Great Engineers at will. Also put Great Engineers in cities that have low production so that they can hurry up with the buildings and then make troops. Later on you need lots and lots of temples so production is key. (Spread religions around and especially to your big cities; they will need all the religions they can get, for the +1 happy for each type of temple you build in them.)

3. Make a ton of trebuchets and support units (probably mass Praets) with a catapult or two to engage enemy stacks that aren't in cities. Make sure you have some chariots with Medic II or at least Medic I promotions. You'll need them later on. Vassalize Greece.

4. Since Egypt is freaking STRONG, you might want to knock it out next before it gets even stronger, but be prepared to spam an ungodly number of Triremes to escort a massive invasion fleet. (I think I had about 30 triremes and 15 galleys and I STILL didn't make it on my first try.. you need a LOT of triremes, some with Medic, and don't ever let your triremes travel in groups of less than 3. 50 triremes and 20 galleys ought to be enough for an invasion force that can capture and hold Alexandria and Memphis long enough for your navy to leave and then return with reinforcements.) Also I like anti-mounted promos for this scenario, but you WILL need some shock Praets and more catapults than normal, thanks to the buff Egyptian axemen. You could also walk to Memphis, but that takes forever. Capture the power source cities and send your ships back to fetch reinforcements. By now your Italian cities should all be mature and doing nothing but cranking out ships, Praets, and trebs.

You are probably running Vassalage + Theo and have sprinkled military instructors around (don't concentrate them all in one city; this isn't a regular game of civ and 10 xp Praets are strong)... and maybe you've even switched from Representation to Police State once you got the Praet VII upgrade.

5. Keep making triremes while this is all going on. Having one dedicated factory is enough once you have a clear cut naval supremacy.. don't stop producing them because your next target, Carthage, has very buff ships so you'll need an overwhelming numerical advantage and not merely a clear cut advantage.

6. Your second naval invasion should support your first invasion which is probably barely hanging onto Memphis at this point. Tell Greece to help out. Also march any troops that didn't fit on the ships to Egypt's northern borders and crunch your way south. The moment you can vassalize Egypt, do it. Their archers are way buff, especially if they are on hilltops, and you'll lose a lot of trebs taking them down.

7. Take a breather to set your economy to Representation for a while to make a lot of gold. Nothing but gold gold gold. Keep cranking out troops. Mass your troops on Carthage's eastern borders.

8. Go back to police state to increase troop production, then hit Carthage from the East while shipping a ton of troops to Carthage itself. Vassalize Carthage.

9. Continue moving your troops from Carthage to western north Africa while massing your troops in northern Italy. When the time is right, attack from all directions and use your huge trireme/galley armada to ferry your north African troops to Spain while you spread like an infectious disease from northern Italy.

10. If you run out of money or war weariness gets to be ridiculous, ask for a cease fire, shift to making money for a while and then attack again. Keep promoting Praets. I like anti-Mounted with a few Shock and a Siege or two to keep the AI honest.

11. Advanced Strat: In the initial stages of war against an opponent that has a MASSIVE army, don't actually capture his cities. Try to find a forested hilltop or at least a forest that's next to his city.. or at least near his city. Then bomb the city to 0%, attack until there is one defender left, then stop and fortify the rest of your units. The moron will then try to reinforce his city, so just whack it down to 1 defender again. And again. And again. (REMEMBER TO HAVE MEDIC II units to make this strategy work). Bleed his army down for several turns, THEN capture the city. If you capture it too early, you may face a TON of enemy trebs on the next turn and lose the city. But if you bleed him dry, you'll blow up his trebs while they are inside of his own city, or his trebs will try to attack your buffed-up Praets, and either way he doesn't get the +100% bonus for his trebs, while you get a +75% bonus for hilltop forest (and up to 25% for fortifying, too!). "Bleeding" the enemy like this also helps with war weariness because you have a lot fewer losses when you are defending on rough terrain than if you are defending a newly-conquered city.

12. Eventually Brennus will agree to become your vassal. Just demand his power source. Actually you don't even need to do that; you win by Conquest. But you COULD demand his power source resource as tribute.

Hope that helps. Happy conquests!

By the way I am finishing up a Rise of Rome game as the Carthaginians. You'd think that Charismatic + Aggressive + Financial would be strong, but when all of your best non-siege units are mounted, that Aggressive trait becomes pretty weak.

I went for scientist first to get an Academy to boost my capital's science output, then another scientist to get the +9 beakers (with representation), then engineers for a long time, then beeline to trireme-II and then to elephant-II. The moment my core cities were all maxed out in buildings, I went from organized religion to Police State/Vassalage/Theocracy. So this time I gave up with multiple Academies, I went mass engineers and it seemed to work just fine.

This time around, I went after Spain's neutral cities and colonized it before the Celts/Greeks could. That might have been an error because there were only about 90 turns left in the scenario before my first army reached Egypt and stabbed them in the back. In the meantime, Greece vassalized Celtia and Rome had stunted growth.

The idea was to march up Egypt on the east side and attack Greece, but with my armies getting bogged down in Egypt, and with Greece/Celtia DoW on Rome, I decided to abandon that plan and use my Spanish armies to knock out some Greek cities and sap away Greek strength so that Greece/Celtia could not just run over Rome.

When Egypt capitulated around that time and gave me their world map, I saw just how bad off Rome was and decided to vassalize it for myself, then ship my armies to Greece to attack their homeland while my Spanish army continued to bleed Greek/Celtic forces in France. Losing 2 cities was all it took for Rome to cry uncle, and with my forces pounding the crap out of Greek cities all over the map and my big navy killing any ship-based attacks, Greece capitulated. But not before I took all of their Wonder cities and captured so many Greek cities that it lost its vassal, Celtia. I cease-fired with Celtia during the last stages of my Greek Wonder city capture missions.

Then I promptly DoW on Celtia. There are 20 turns left in the game now and I know Celtia will surrender when diplomatic options are available again.

Lessons learned: yes it is possible and even easy to win without caring about the points. Don't let the points dictate your strategy, because they are irrelevant if you can vassalize everyone and thereby win by Conquest. It took only 60 turns or so to vassalize everybody except Celtia, and if all goes as expected, I will win easily with 10 turns remaining. If I had been more efficient (my galleys were a big bottleneck in the midgame.. too many damned seas and islands!) I probably could have done it faster, but I played very conservatively.

Also, I learned my financial lesson from my past Rise of Rome time as the Romans. This time, after I reached diminishing returns from research, I went 100% gold or as close to it as I could, for the rest of the game. I knew that later on I would need all that gold + captured gold + extorted gold to survive the crushing burden of war weariness (slider bar to 40% Culture or even higher).

Typical army: 15 Elephant-II with Formation, 5 Swordsmen with Shock (for stupid phalanx-type units), 5 Numidian Cavalry-III with Shock, 10 Catapults with Combat III (for non-city collateral though elephant-IIs can do that in a pinch), 20 trebuchets with CR-III, and 2 Medic-II chariots (1 typically stays behind in the city for a while to heal survivors; the other keeps marching with the stack). LOTS of trebs because I bleed the enemy. That is, I blow away the city's walls with the cats then CR-III trebuchets pound all but one of the defenders to death as I bleed the enemy armies for several turns before capturing the city. I stay in place and let the medics do their work. After enemy reinforcements arrive to "defend" the city I just pounded, I just pound them some more with CR-III trebs. This "bleeding" tactic works better with infantry defenders who can use rough terrain as cover, but you'd be surprised at what the Elephant/Formation + Numidian/Shock can defend against; only upgraded phalanxes and Praets with Formation can consistently kill that combo. I use large stacks because of the long-term bleeding... my army stacks typically take several rounds of pounding by cats and trebs and I want my stack to be so big that collateral damage is rendered ineffective.

If I am just starting a war for the first time in a long time, I will combine two, three, or even four of those stacks together because I know that I'll be attacked by dozens and dozens and dozens of enemy units for several turns straight.

Hope that helps!

Just build courthouses and units. I don't usually even bother with barracks because my front-line cities will soon become backline.

Yes, skip barracks even if you're the Celts. Because the first thing you'll do is pillage Roman iron and then destroy them very quickly.

I can't find the Celt victory point.. where is it?

OK, its turn 105 on monarch difficulty and I just secured the second victory point assuring a win. I may play it out longer since I have some serious conquest potential. I read most of the posts before trying and definitely borrowed some ideas. Here's a quick (read: interminable) synopsis:

1. Started by attacking Greece immediately (as soon as the ships from the east arrived at Brundisium). By then I had whipped out another galley and a couple trebs I think. I managed to grab delphi, sparta, and athens (in that order) fairly quickly. They just don't have much at this point. Make sure to have a few triremes in order to sink their invasion fleets (they will send at least one from the east as well) and destroy the fishing boats you don't need, reducing their ability to whip. I think I captured the victory point at turn 30 and made peace immediately. The wonders captured (parthenon and statue of zeus) are really helpful.
* Note: the victory points are treated like resources and need a specific improvement to get the points. I foolishly farmed over the one by athens for like 80 years. Stupid!

2. I've been generally running an SE or what passes for one in this low-food scenario (1 cow for Rome?!). Neapolis started running two scientists ASAP and popped my first GS. Rome followed soon and Brundisium after that. This was the core of my science for a long time. I also rearranged some of the tile assignments such as making rome work the Bronze. I left a scant few cottages (mainly just to balance growth rates) and mostly paved them with farms.
For tech I just went down the line with praetorian upgrades and kept just enough cash on hand to pay for the (cheap, I think twenty each) upgrades for all my praets every time they finished. With the money from plundering this normally meant I could run a small deficit most of the game, usually keeping the slider between 30% (war) and 50% (best periods of peace). I finshed the Praet techs almost the same turn I got the carthage victory point and am now building a great engineer every 3-4 turns (!).
I've already popped four GS's, 1 GP, and 4 GG's. I built an academy in rome with the first GS, settled the rest in rome. I pot the first couple GG's in rome as mil. instructors (as much for the beakers as for military XP). The other two went to Pisae where I built heroic epic.

3. I was absolutely brutal with the whip. All the cities south of rome were whipping constantly. Most stayed small for a long time. The granary was probably the most important part of my early infrastructure. I also chopped a lot but my main early weakness was probably lack of workers. I did not put off barracks as long as some suggested but whipped them instead.
The whipping took on new levels of depravity in Greece where I whipped\chopped EVERYTHING. Any newly captured city always whipped a courthouse first.

4. I also screwed up by not settling the silver early enough and Brennus beat me to it. I grabbed the deer instead but my next war would have to claim the silver as happy cap is a . .. .. .. .. .. I attacked Brennus and wailed on him, taking the silver city and one other before making peace.
* Full disclosure: I found out the hard way that this scenario does not allow razing cities, even ones settled after the start. Stupid Brennus built the silver city in an idiotic spot and my plan was, of course, to burn and rebuld it; I even had a settler with my attacking stack. When I realized I couldn't raze it, I used the worldbuilder to edit it out.

5. I next targeted Greece again in a 3-pronged attack. By now I had divided my military into a northern army, eastern army (based in greece), and southern army. None of these stacks were really big though, maybe 2-3 trebs, a cat or two for non-city stacks, and maybe 6-8 praets. The navy was divided between the eastern and the southern. The northern army marched west to massilia, the southern landed in sicily, and the eastern took Knossos for the colossus (a useful wonder with so many coastal cities and seafood).
I took these cities real quick and figured I would settle in for a capitulation as soon as he would talk. Unfortunately, Pyrrhus had been at war with Ptolemy for some time (which no doubt made my victory easier) and used the occasion to become HIS vassal. Crap!
Oh well, he didn't get a victory point out of it and on the plus side, Ptolemy and I are trading a bunch of happy resources, gold and have open borders which gave my economy a huge boost and prompted me to whip out harbors.

6. I brought the experienced core of my eastern army to sicily and prepared to put the death blow on carthage. (I had not fought them at all yet.) One army attacked Aleria by boat while the other attacked Gao by land. A combination force then took the 2 cities on the other island. My whole army then landed in northern africa taking carthage and crushing a sizable counterattack stack.
I used a lot of triremes to break carthage's navy which was far stronger than greece's. They suicide like crazy though which gave me a lot of upgraded boats.

At this point it is over score-wise since my point total will soon eclipse any AI's. If I were to continue I would keep wailing on carthage until war weariness becomes too much and then finish them off in a second war. Egypt could be attacked but it will require a huge amphibious force. They have some great territory though and a domination victory seems quite possible if I managed to hurt brennus again as well.

One troubling development though: Ptolemy has somethow shipped a ton of stacks across the mediterranean and just DoWed Brennus. I am afraid he may take land up there, complicating an attack on him. On the plus side, his army is divided and my northern army, though diminished because most are fighting in africa, is still no joke and could be easily strengthened (rome and pisae produce 1 high xp praet VII per turn).
A couple notes:

*I garrisoned the iron source most of the game. 1 praet was enough but without him it might have been dicey. I also garrisoned many of my seafood resources with a trireme for much of the game.

*My ending military strength (about turn 105):
35 Praet VII
5 Cats
8 trebs
20-some archers in cities.
2 horse archers
10 workers
13 galleys
16 triremes

*I spread my religion around as fast as i could, especially in greece where happiness was always a problem.

*At post I am running %40 science, %20 culture to manage war weariness, and netting +9 gold and 700-some in reserve. I could probably go more extreme since i don't really need gold for anything anymore.

*I ran representation, vassalage, and slavery the whole game, and switched between OR (early when I was building a lot of infrastructure), and theocracy (mostly later when i was just building units.) I had this early plan of switching to caste system later but by the time a had the happiness to run enough scientists to make it worthwhile, i didn't really need GS's or science anymore. I popped enough GP's to meet my needs and now i can absolutely crank them out.

*The diplomacy has been changed so that even a regular resource trade (1 for 1 or 1 for gold) quickly gives you a +4 "our trade relations have been fair and forthright. I gave away a few resources but mostly got good stuff for them (happy resources or gold). Even though I was never the highest on the power graph, no one DoWed me.

It may be a little late for posts on this one but I guess I answered the original question.

...and btw, the celt victory point is up in britain near bibracte.

I had little difficulty with the Romans, the Prat (4 if I remember) is just too strong--playing immortal.
Stage 1: build infra (no lib).
stage 2: build units and take out Greece and the wonders.
in the meantime Celts attack but I hold them off easily and then counter.
then take out Carthage.
I had enough Victory points at this point to coast to victory--I stopped there. Not sure if I could have finished off the rest in time.

I tried Carthage and Egypt but took it down to emp--I had little trouble with them either at that level. Since the AI will have a ton of units, the key is to have a way to kill them at good odds. Trebs do that on city attack, Egypt had the archers and axes, carthage the horseman. I think Celts would be tough--Greeks also a challenge.

I cant win as Rome?