-
We are currently performing site maintenance, parts of civfanatics are currently offline, but will come back online in the coming days. For more updates please see here.
Leoreth Plays Rome
- Thread starter Leoreth
- Start date
This was a short and easy one. I think I got lucky with a starting situation where you can conquer Greece.
That's about 90 BC I think. Basically my strategy was: spend a few turns after the start of the game building roads with the initial legions, and using my workers to chop forests to feed production to Rome quickly. I built a Granary and Barracks there and then focused on Legions and Ballistas. Founded Naples and Cartagena and built whatever I could there, they're not very useful early on.
The initial legions landed near Athens and captured it. Another stack of produced units attacked Salona from the north. After Athens, I moved to take Constantinople and Ankara. Then I spent some turns healing and used my ships to land in Egypt. They didn't have anything that could resist legions, but I made peace after taking two cities because that's all that's needed for the UHV. That turned out to be a mistake because it trapped a bunch of units in Memphis. I thought they'd collapse soon after but that turned out to be wrong.
Salona is a great production location actually, and I used it as my main military city. Rome would move to build all relevant buildings to get the most out of the UP, but never before any other city considered those buildings. Legions in the meantime. In that screenshot you can see those new units pushing into recently spawned Gaulish cities.
This is from around 200 AD, now with Egypt fully conquered, an additional city in Spain, and also one in Britain (not pictured). That only left Africa. I actually put that off because Carthage usually has like 3 war elephants and a bunch of other units there, so I wanted a proper force. Instead I was handed a convenient collapse, which made things a lot easier. Would have been able to take them anyway though.
Around that time barbarians showed up in the Balkans pretty consistently, tying up my reinforcements. I think that's pretty fun and thematic, and never too hard. One time I failed to stop them at the Alps and would up with a bunch of plundered improvements in Italy, that could have been done better. In general I was far from using my units optimally in this game.
The building goal also was a close call. Using the UP made things easier, and I also utilised Citizenship. Tech path was Currency, Law, Engineering. That meant Arenas came kind of late and I had to rely on my military production cities to quickly build them. I wonder if Engineering first would have been better considering how many Arenas are required compared to Markets, and how the latter can benefit from Citizenship. I also didn't really make a plan which cities were responsible for which buildings, and it still turned out fine.
The Empire in 320 AD, right before the Byzantine spawn. It kind of sucks that they show up to take everything right after you completely the goal, but then again it also removes a border to defend.
With the eastern half also goes 1/3 of your research, which kind of stings for the tech goal. I didn't do much to facilitate being good at research, although Republic helped: the AI was always running specialists and I ended up with one Great Scientist and two Great Merchants, who I sent to Persia for money. Which that I could run a decent number of turns on 100% and make good progress. As you can see, at that point there were only the two medieval techs missing. I went Scholarship first to have the option to build research if needed, but I don't think the order matters much. I don't think there was meaningful competition over these techs.
And the final turn of the Western Roman Empire right before completing the UHV. You can see that Gaul is threatened by a lot of barbarians at this point. I've also seen Horse Archers further east already, which suicided against my forested hill legions.
Spoiler :
That's about 90 BC I think. Basically my strategy was: spend a few turns after the start of the game building roads with the initial legions, and using my workers to chop forests to feed production to Rome quickly. I built a Granary and Barracks there and then focused on Legions and Ballistas. Founded Naples and Cartagena and built whatever I could there, they're not very useful early on.
The initial legions landed near Athens and captured it. Another stack of produced units attacked Salona from the north. After Athens, I moved to take Constantinople and Ankara. Then I spent some turns healing and used my ships to land in Egypt. They didn't have anything that could resist legions, but I made peace after taking two cities because that's all that's needed for the UHV. That turned out to be a mistake because it trapped a bunch of units in Memphis. I thought they'd collapse soon after but that turned out to be wrong.
Salona is a great production location actually, and I used it as my main military city. Rome would move to build all relevant buildings to get the most out of the UP, but never before any other city considered those buildings. Legions in the meantime. In that screenshot you can see those new units pushing into recently spawned Gaulish cities.
Spoiler :
This is from around 200 AD, now with Egypt fully conquered, an additional city in Spain, and also one in Britain (not pictured). That only left Africa. I actually put that off because Carthage usually has like 3 war elephants and a bunch of other units there, so I wanted a proper force. Instead I was handed a convenient collapse, which made things a lot easier. Would have been able to take them anyway though.
Around that time barbarians showed up in the Balkans pretty consistently, tying up my reinforcements. I think that's pretty fun and thematic, and never too hard. One time I failed to stop them at the Alps and would up with a bunch of plundered improvements in Italy, that could have been done better. In general I was far from using my units optimally in this game.
The building goal also was a close call. Using the UP made things easier, and I also utilised Citizenship. Tech path was Currency, Law, Engineering. That meant Arenas came kind of late and I had to rely on my military production cities to quickly build them. I wonder if Engineering first would have been better considering how many Arenas are required compared to Markets, and how the latter can benefit from Citizenship. I also didn't really make a plan which cities were responsible for which buildings, and it still turned out fine.
Spoiler :
The Empire in 320 AD, right before the Byzantine spawn. It kind of sucks that they show up to take everything right after you completely the goal, but then again it also removes a border to defend.
With the eastern half also goes 1/3 of your research, which kind of stings for the tech goal. I didn't do much to facilitate being good at research, although Republic helped: the AI was always running specialists and I ended up with one Great Scientist and two Great Merchants, who I sent to Persia for money. Which that I could run a decent number of turns on 100% and make good progress. As you can see, at that point there were only the two medieval techs missing. I went Scholarship first to have the option to build research if needed, but I don't think the order matters much. I don't think there was meaningful competition over these techs.
Spoiler :
And the final turn of the Western Roman Empire right before completing the UHV. You can see that Gaul is threatened by a lot of barbarians at this point. I've also seen Horse Archers further east already, which suicided against my forested hill legions.
Sorry if this is underwhelming, but I think Rome is pretty fun as it is as a rather short experience where you're doing a lot of conquering. You have so much territory and are barely able to develop it, with a lot of your research coming from conquest gold while the economy is pretty bad overall.
I think I set myself up for an easy game by managing to conquer Greece early. Admittedly part of that was combat luck: I only lost one legion attacking Athens, which made conquering the rest a pretty easy task. Still, I think the strategy of waiting to produce some additional units and then using a two pronged attack with the help of the naval was pretty good. Killing Greece first is probably a must, simply because of the amount of units they can get from their conqueror event.
After that it wasn't that hard. Yeah, I had to keep the building goal in mind, but it wasn't a question of carefully allocating scare resources. As long as you set some cities aside for the buildings, it works. This could be harder theoretically, but I think it's fine the way it is. Same with the conquest goals. Yes the time is limited, but imo everything after Greece is a freebie except Africa. The question is more the time required to move the armies and execute the invasions. I used veterans from the invasion of Greece to attack Egypt while simultaneously pushing into Gaul, which is fun. But again, there isn't that much pressure, and I was comparatively lax about using units effectively.
In concept, there should be a lot of competition between the first two goals because you have to prioritise between building units and building units. I fared pretty well with using high production cities for units and building the buildings in the other cities, save for Rome to make use of the UP, and some emergency buildings in high production cities as I was getting close to the deadline. That could have been avoided with better planning, but even so I always had enough units for what I needed to do. There is definitely room to increase the difficulty.
The only thing there wasn't room for is building wonders. I tried going for the Flavian Amphitheatre because it's actually quite useful for the UHV and pays for itself after like three legions, but got beaten to it by Phoenicia. Again, maybe prioritising Engineering would have been good.
I have the same thing to say about the tech goal: there doesn't seem to be much competition about it. I never really tried to do much to set myself up well economically for this either, I only built a few libraries and jails (besides the mandatory forums), and I definitely could have built more workers. In large parts of the empire only the most important resources were connected (in places like Gaul, not even them), and outside of Egypt I had maybe two cottages. Still, getting it is no big deal. India, Tamils and China were all alive during the whole course of this game, by the way.
So, in conclusion, I think this could be a lot more challenging in ways where the three goals are more in competition with each other and require much more planned and tighter play. Still, I think it's fun regardless to conquer the Mediterranean with your overpowered units, and I like the barbarian invasion aspect of it as well. It never would up threatening, but enough to dedicate legitimate armies to. Also, this game should be judged in the light of the relatively easy victory against Greece. In general I think if anything, Rome has the problem that its early game is very swingy, which is obviously not a good thing.
I often make changes after these playthroughs, but only to address glaring problems, not to make the goals a bit better. So here I will leave Rome unchanged. They could definitely benefit from another pass in the future. I wonder what the people asking me to play Rome think about this. Did you ask me for a particular reason, or to run into a particular problem? Did I just get very lucky?
I think I set myself up for an easy game by managing to conquer Greece early. Admittedly part of that was combat luck: I only lost one legion attacking Athens, which made conquering the rest a pretty easy task. Still, I think the strategy of waiting to produce some additional units and then using a two pronged attack with the help of the naval was pretty good. Killing Greece first is probably a must, simply because of the amount of units they can get from their conqueror event.
After that it wasn't that hard. Yeah, I had to keep the building goal in mind, but it wasn't a question of carefully allocating scare resources. As long as you set some cities aside for the buildings, it works. This could be harder theoretically, but I think it's fine the way it is. Same with the conquest goals. Yes the time is limited, but imo everything after Greece is a freebie except Africa. The question is more the time required to move the armies and execute the invasions. I used veterans from the invasion of Greece to attack Egypt while simultaneously pushing into Gaul, which is fun. But again, there isn't that much pressure, and I was comparatively lax about using units effectively.
In concept, there should be a lot of competition between the first two goals because you have to prioritise between building units and building units. I fared pretty well with using high production cities for units and building the buildings in the other cities, save for Rome to make use of the UP, and some emergency buildings in high production cities as I was getting close to the deadline. That could have been avoided with better planning, but even so I always had enough units for what I needed to do. There is definitely room to increase the difficulty.
The only thing there wasn't room for is building wonders. I tried going for the Flavian Amphitheatre because it's actually quite useful for the UHV and pays for itself after like three legions, but got beaten to it by Phoenicia. Again, maybe prioritising Engineering would have been good.
I have the same thing to say about the tech goal: there doesn't seem to be much competition about it. I never really tried to do much to set myself up well economically for this either, I only built a few libraries and jails (besides the mandatory forums), and I definitely could have built more workers. In large parts of the empire only the most important resources were connected (in places like Gaul, not even them), and outside of Egypt I had maybe two cottages. Still, getting it is no big deal. India, Tamils and China were all alive during the whole course of this game, by the way.
So, in conclusion, I think this could be a lot more challenging in ways where the three goals are more in competition with each other and require much more planned and tighter play. Still, I think it's fun regardless to conquer the Mediterranean with your overpowered units, and I like the barbarian invasion aspect of it as well. It never would up threatening, but enough to dedicate legitimate armies to. Also, this game should be judged in the light of the relatively easy victory against Greece. In general I think if anything, Rome has the problem that its early game is very swingy, which is obviously not a good thing.
I often make changes after these playthroughs, but only to address glaring problems, not to make the goals a bit better. So here I will leave Rome unchanged. They could definitely benefit from another pass in the future. I wonder what the people asking me to play Rome think about this. Did you ask me for a particular reason, or to run into a particular problem? Did I just get very lucky?
Edmund Ironside
White Rabbit Object
I had two main reasons for wanting Rome to get a play. Firstly because I failed to achieve any of the UHVs (to be clear I don't claim to be any good at DOC) and secondly because I thought the ancient era needed some love (all the other play throughs featured Civs whose focus was on later eras).
I've been slowly working my way though every civ in DOC (thirty games completed to date), and I make a brief note on how many UHVs I achieved, and how the game went. My comment for my Rome game was "Collapsed even though I stayed historical in conquests. Massive population of Greek cities a problem." In this game Rome collapsed before I had a chance to achieve any of the UHVs, so the main problem was just stability due to over expansion. However reading through your play through, this does not appear to have been an issue for you at all.
I've been slowly working my way though every civ in DOC (thirty games completed to date), and I make a brief note on how many UHVs I achieved, and how the game went. My comment for my Rome game was "Collapsed even though I stayed historical in conquests. Massive population of Greek cities a problem." In this game Rome collapsed before I had a chance to achieve any of the UHVs, so the main problem was just stability due to over expansion. However reading through your play through, this does not appear to have been an issue for you at all.
I was a little worried about stability, for example I mentioned only taking two Egyptian cities initially, and that was motivated by not having unnecessary additional population there to drag down my expansion stability.
My expansion stability was still negative, but it was manageable for most of the game. I think spacing out conquests helps, because you get a temporary stability boost from conquering historical cities. The rest was provided by the economy and civics categories.
I was shaky for most of the game, which netted me an appearance of Byzantium, and I have no idea how people can be solid as a Rome with historical borders.
My expansion stability was still negative, but it was manageable for most of the game. I think spacing out conquests helps, because you get a temporary stability boost from conquering historical cities. The rest was provided by the economy and civics categories.
I was shaky for most of the game, which netted me an appearance of Byzantium, and I have no idea how people can be solid as a Rome with historical borders.
johnfloyd27
Chieftain
- Joined
- Feb 22, 2015
- Messages
- 36
It’s been a while since I played Rome, but I remember running into too many barbarians and perhaps getting too many bad rolls defending against them to continue my conquests beyond Greece in time.
I probably could have streamlined what cities where building what, though. And maybe should have rushed out a settler for Gaul and Spain sooner.
I probably could have streamlined what cities where building what, though. And maybe should have rushed out a settler for Gaul and Spain sooner.
Last edited:
revori
Chieftain
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2016
- Messages
- 24
Rome is really fun on Marathon Speed. It makes Conquest and Building Improvements easier I think. Since you have more Turns but still the same amount of movement for every unit.
One change I would like to have is with Eastern Rome/Byzantine. With the Spawn of the eastern half of the empire you only lose those cities and units. They aren't even that friendly to you. Is there any possibility to make it more historical with the eastern-western relations which still were very close. Maybe make a Defensive Pact possible? Or good relations through events? Or make the Permanent Alliance system available for them if that is possible.
One change I would like to have is with Eastern Rome/Byzantine. With the Spawn of the eastern half of the empire you only lose those cities and units. They aren't even that friendly to you. Is there any possibility to make it more historical with the eastern-western relations which still were very close. Maybe make a Defensive Pact possible? Or good relations through events? Or make the Permanent Alliance system available for them if that is possible.
Make sure you are Solid and Byzantium doesn't spawn (in my experience). Get as much Republic bonuses and a mighty economy to get it. It is even possible to be early medieval even when they show up (though you need to conquer the greeks/egypt fast). Then go Monarchy/Vasslage/ manorialism etc for the big stability bonuses. Just try to get a Great statesman to switch to it.
FraggleJock
Warlord
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2017
- Messages
- 135
played a dozen or so games trying for a monarch/normal, finally got it.
I discovered Sparta is really bad for rome eventually just restarted if it turned up in the autorun
I kept finding if Greece disintegrates from stability then you get their holdings in anatolia, the levant and egypt, Certainly a nice boost but is it intended?
I discovered Sparta is really bad for rome eventually just restarted if it turned up in the autorun
I kept finding if Greece disintegrates from stability then you get their holdings in anatolia, the levant and egypt, Certainly a nice boost but is it intended?
revori
Chieftain
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2016
- Messages
- 24
It's a buff for the AI. As Human you have to do it on your own ;-)
Similar threads
