What do you think of Rome

[Adam7Eight]

Legions don't need any buffs, that's for sure.

 

[whiplash27]

I was actually playing a game a few days ago as Rome. No Iron anywhere in sight. I felt betrayed by the game.

 

[Ryoga]

I dont agree that you should change romes bonus so that you are not forced to play a certain way .
I would say that your point of view is completly opposite to the purpose of UAs

Definitely agree with this, for the same reason you could say that Polynesia and Carthage are worthless in maps without sea, or that the Mongols lose their biggest advantage in archipelago maps. Well of course civs are meant to be different and to be best at something while not being good at something else.

The Roman UA is at least good in whatever map you play in, something that you cannot say of a lot of other civs. Moreover it isn't even tied to a particular victory condition. Before you could say that it wasn't quite good for cultural victories but since BNW you don't need to stay small anymore for that.

The roman UA is one of the best in the game, and if it didn't came with some sort of restriction it would be OP. BNW makes it even more powerful because you can send 2-3 trade routes with hammers to it so to speed up the production which then affects every other city.


PS: There has never been a game where I assigned my capital as the military city (with the exception of Venice obviously), it's always my second most productive city that gets the ironworks, heroic epic, brandeburg gate and that spams units.

 

[whiplash27]

I would still like a discount on road maintenance. It would fit perfectly with the current UA.

 

[Santa Maria]

Thanks for interesting opinions.

Maybe Rome could get a UB for the indifferent Ballista. I would suggest Blacksmith which would give 1 iron resource and some 10%-15% production bonus towards melee. It could be some kind of Stable replacement, as Rome didn't use mounted units much.
- this way you could get at least some iron.

 

[pilot00]

- this way you could get at least some iron.

Why though? As I said before every isn't every civ with a UU that requires resources eligible for the same treatment?

 

[Geredis]

I'd say that Rome needs a slight buff, but more through refining the details of their UA than anything else, similar to what Whiplash mentioned in Post #17, and also modifying the Ballista to essentially be more like the Hwacha, wherein you take cities with the Legions, but clear the areas around the cities with your siege engines. This'd create a better synergy I think for a Classical/early Medieval army, and also give the Ballista at least a more historically-accurate niche.

 

[pezit]

Japan, Germany, Denmark and America are civs that I feel actually need some help, rome might not be absolute top tier but they're decent.

 

[Browd]

I think an interesting update to Rome would be to change its UA to require a city connection for its secondary cities to benefit from the 20% build bonus (as others have noted, Rome was noted for its roads), but to compensate for that nerf, have each city connection (road or harbor) provide 2 food to Rome's capital (similar amount to a maritime CS friendship) without the need for a caravan. Rome's capital depended on food imported from the provinces (notably wheat from its North Africa provinces, but also a wide range of foods from around the Mediterranean) and this change would reflect that historical necessity.

 

[tat501]

I've never really understood how to play Rome well. I start by trying to build Rome itself up so it can quickly produce buildings - but I know I should be expanding - then I run out of room because of other AIs so I build legions and ballista's and destroy them - then I've got terrible unhappiness so I build courthouses - then I run out of money.

 

[pilot00]

I've never really understood how to play Rome well.

Thats the most common problem and why most people think that the Civ is week. I was believing the same till very recently. Rome forces its playstlyle to you not the other way around (Unless ofc you want to scrap a wonderful IMHO UA). Its a stubborn mule if I may compare it so.

 

[Light Cleric]

I'm going to echo pilot00 and others in asking why Rome should get a strategic resource guaranteed and not other civs that have Iron/Horse UUs. Between the iron reveal change with BNW and Ballistas not requiring Iron since G&K, no Iron as Rome is nowhere near the death sentence it was in Vanilla.

I think an interesting update to Rome would be to change its UA to require a city connection for its secondary cities to benefit from the 20% build bonus (as others have noted, Rome was noted for its roads), but to compensate for that nerf, have each city connection (road or harbor) provide 2 food to Rome's capital (similar amount to a maritime CS friendship) without the need for a caravan. Rome's capital depended on food imported from the provinces (notably wheat from its North Africa provinces, but also a wide range of foods from around the Mediterranean) and this change would reflect that historical necessity.

2 food per connected city could be an absolutely insane amount of food. We can(thankfully) only send 1 caravan for food to the capital, and this could very easily amount to 5 or more.

The bottom line is no one has really laid out why Rome needs help. Even the OP said the UA was okay. I hear complaints like "it forces you to play a certain way"; well yeah, most UAs do that if you want to maximize them. I don't go around asking for a China buff just because the UA and UU "force" you to go murder people.

The Legion might not come up in every game but it BNW it's MUCH easier to plan for; you can see where the Iron is before your free Collective Rule Settler comes out and plan accordingly if there isn't any. Even if it is melee, 17 Strength is the strongest in the game until Chivalry/Steel.

The one place where I can cede a bit of ground is the Ballista simply because they have to be hard-built for 75 hammers at Mathematics. But I think this is a problem inherent with Catapults which are just terrible in 90% of the situations; the extra omph of Catapults vs Composites on a city(24 vs 11) is not enough compared to Trebuchets vs Crossbows(42 vs 18) when the Composites can be built as 40 hammer Archers and then upgraded. I wouldn't be opposed to seeing Ballista(and the basic Catapult) slightly lowered in hammer cost. Still, the Ballista is actually worth the investment given that it's 8/10 strength and has a whopping 30 strength vs cities. The only comparable things are the Battering Ram(which has its own large drawbacks) and Siege Towers(which IMO are broken as hell because they can get to 42 strength vs cities + buff other units).

 

[Browd]

Ah, I really don't care about Rome -- they are fine.

One correction, though - you can only send one type of caravan PER sending city to another city. If Rome had 4 secondary cities with granaries and you wanted to feed the capital a massive amount of food, you could send 4 caravans (+4 food each) to Rome. Even better, if Rome is coastal, some (or all) of those could be cargo ships (+8 food each). Rome could work nothing but hammer tiles as its satellite cities feed it food, food and more food and build whatever buildings Rome has already built. And, as Rome's capital gets insanely huge, gold from city connections begins to rival and eventually far outstrip Trade Route income.

Of course this works with any civ (except for the Rome UA part). In my initial BNW sandbox game (Arabia, but no victory conditions--just trying to see how things worked), after a bit of conquering, I had something like 70+ cities (and Freedom as my Ideology -- gotta love happiness from mints, banks, stock exchanges and water mills and a reason to build Hospitals), but maxed out at the 10 trade routes. Once roads and harbors were in place, city connection gold skyrocketed (well over 3000 gpt, before tile, building and unit maintenance), while Tithe was contributing about 200 gpt and Trade routes, if all had been sent to other civs, might have generated another 300+ gpt (thanks to Bazaars). Instead, I used mostly internal trade routes (usually hammer routes, but a few food) to focus religious pressure (Arabia's UA doubles trade route pressure) on conquered cities that had other religions.

Pretty interesting mechanics.

 

[Light Cleric]

Yeah, I meant 1 caravan per city but I was not clear on that, sorry.

 

[pilot00]

Well to be honest I would be sending a s.tone of hammers in the capital as Rome, rather than food with caravans.

 

[Browd]

That works too.

 

[Arachnofiend]

UA needs a change, because as it is currently it only fits in some games. Say you have a game where your capital is MUCH better off as a military spammer or wonder spammer, no you are forced to spam buildings to use the UA.

You're doing it wrong. You're supposed to rush buy buildings in the capital so you can hard build them everywhere else, leaving your capital available for unit and wonder production.

 

[sidry]

I think UUs are good, but they need small changes.

Legioner shouldn't loose its unic ability (russian analog is stroibat ) after upgrade. And ballista need free promotion such as Volley or Bonus vs Cities (250 instead of 200 now), because it was more powerfull then catapult agains cities. It'll be enouhg.

 

[Light Cleric]

Legioner shouldn't loose its unic ability (russian analog is stroibat ) after upgrade.

This is a minor thing but it's actually a good suggestion. If Chu-Ko-Nu and Slingers keep their OP abilities when they upgrade we should at least let Legions do the same thing with road building

 

[pilot00]

This is a minor thing but it's actually a good suggestion. If Chu-Ko-Nu and Slingers keep their OP abilities when they upgrade we should at least let Legions do the same thing with road building

They could have included a general purpose unit during the atomic or modern. A combat engineer? That could build roads and some specific military improvements