Navy in RoR

[LLXerxes]

I just finished RoR.
First, if you are at war with Macedon, get MA's to help defeat their navy. You shouldn't have even gone to war with them in the first place. Unless Hannibal MA'd with them
THen, build the Great LIghthouse, if somebody else built it, you will have a weak navy.
Carthaginian galleys didn't attack me, they just transported units.
I'll edit the post when I cone up with something else!

 

[a4phantom]

Try to avoid taking on Macedon until Carthage has been destroyed and Persia is chewing up their forces on the Eastern front. Before then, concentrate on filling in southern Iberia with new cities and maybe taking out the weaker Goths and Celts to the north, and conquering Egypt if you can get to it before Persia takes Alexandria. Remember, not only is Macedon fairly strong but they're also your buffer against Persia, the other super power. On the other hand, you should have forces ready to march and sail into western Macedon when the map starts shifting from green to purple in the east, because they have some really nice cities and almost certainly a Wonder in either Athens or Sparta.

 

[LLXerxes]

A4phantom, your wrong. It is usually Macedon defeating PErsia. They both never fight, they just send over troops every onci in a while. Plus, the Celts are usually a strong force. DO not finish them off unless you get a lot of help.
YOu were right about the weak Goths. They will eventually be destroyed in about any game. If you want to defeat Macedon and Carthage, you shall do Military Alliances with them. Try to Make peace with Macedon, then destroy them after you destroy Carthage. If they will not acknolage your envoy, scare them!

 

[Dell19]

Persia is vastly more powerful than Macedon when the AI is in control as Persia can simply build more units and the usual outcome is to see Persia eventually defeat Macedon...

 

[a4phantom]

A4phantom, your wrong. It is usually Macedon defeating PErsia. They both never fight, they just send over troops every onci in a while. Plus, the Celts are usually a strong force. DO not finish them off unless you get a lot of help.
YOu were right about the weak Goths. They will eventually be destroyed in about any game. If you want to defeat Macedon and Carthage, you shall do Military Alliances with them. Try to Make peace with Macedon, then destroy them after you destroy Carthage. If they will not acknolage your envoy, scare them!

You must have played RoR more often than I have, or perhaps you are confusing the game with real history? The two times I have played the scenario through, Persia and Macedon remain at a stalemate for some time and then suddenly the leaves that were green turn to purple and I've had to rush invasions in order to conquer Western Macedon before Xerxes or Darius does. When I have met up with Persian forces on their march west, it's been a force of well over 50 heavy cavalry. By the way, at the same time this happened in my most recent RoR adventure, Persia also consumed Egypt, which isn't hard but must mean their army was even larger.

The Celts aren't actually strong, they're just numerous. They're only difficult because they're at your rear and flank, and likely to attack you while your armies are engaged in Africa or Greece. If you buy them with wine until you can focus on them, they fall easily. They have no unit that can seriously threaten a legion, they're only dangerous to garrisons and to legions that are all alone.

A task force of just one legionaire army and a few spare legions pushing up from the Cartago Novo region, another pushing north-west from Italy and another heading due north from eastern Italy are plenty on Regent.

 

[LLXerxes]

OH... Sorry.
I usualy used the Celts for Military alliances.
But, Persia and I did consume Egypt.
And, it's tryue. In the game I played, Persia was loosing to Macedon. All of what is Modern day Turkey was in Macedonian control.

 

[a4phantom]

The only difficult thing about taking Egypt is the logistics and that fact that Persia is so much closer and can take the core cities while your legions are in route. Has anyone ever had a serious war with Persia on regent level or higher? Just curious how that would go.

 

[LLXerxes]

Nah... I had a war against them. THey military allianced against me with Carthage. I took 2 of there cities (this was on regent), they didn't want peace.
I finished off Carthage thenext turn, and they wnt crying for peace.
I went on to hold those cities for the rest of the game!

 

[Dell19]

Anyone who has tried playing as Greece will have had to fight Persia... Usually its helpful to create a large stack with an army to take cities whilst using catapults and small forces of heavy cavalry to pick off the Persian units and to get an ally that is close to them so that they send off aload of units in the wrong direction... The Macedonians have top strike early against the Persians or at least kill a large proportion of units without suffering many casualties in return whilst the Romans or Carthagians will probably have a large enough empire to take on the Persian empire in a serious war.

 

[a4phantom]

I've only played as Rome, does anyone else get a unit that comes close to the 6/5/1 with extra hp Legion III?

 

[sir_schwick]

I'm currently playing RoR on Monarch as the Carthagians. My Galleys are losing all the time. I even lost a full health Elite to a Regular with one HP left. I am about the end of my GA, which I used to build GL and libraries quickly in cities. I have Ivory and am building lots of Numidian Mercenaries on Sicily and the small island to the north. Rome took the one in the middle. My plan is too build mostly War Elephants/Heavy Cavalry for the main striek force. Two Galleys full of Veteran Numidian Mercenaries will land in Anzio(near Rome, this is a reference to an Allied diversionary invasion in Italy during WWII) and fortify on a mountain or hill. After Legions start moving north to attack the conscripts, a large strike force of War Elephants and Hannibal's Elephant Army(probably 16-20 units total) will land in Southern Italy. They will take as much land as possible while Galleys ferry across additional Numidian Conscripts. I would plan for a complete conquer but rome might have Legion III by then. With this plan I will make peace and then try to go MA against Macedon.

Question: Should I include workers with the diversionary attack to build a fort and possible barricade?

 

[a4phantom]

Can Carthage make peace with Rome? I believe they're in a locked war. If you have extra workers, sure, throw them in and let the Roman units expose themselves grabbing them, the AI is very stupid about that.

 

[Zandrew]

Carthage and Rome cannot make peace with eachother in RoR.

 

[Dell19]

Neither can Persia and Macedon.

 

[Justus II]

Getting back to the naval strategy, Carthage does have a naval advantage, for several reasons. First, they start with a larger navy. They tend to move galleys in groups, meaning it's harder to kill off a lone galley, as a damaged one is covered by fresh ones. As seafaring, they do get +1 move. This also makes it harder to finish off damages galleys, as they are more likely to get home to repair. Also, they start with more harbors, for more vet galleys. Taken together, they are a serious naval threat that continues to grow as the game progresses. In my game as Rome, they were flooding the seas for the first 40-50 turns. (This was on Diety).

The key is in fact catapults, but not from ships. I started by taking Sicily, Sardina, and Corsica. Once you take the three islands, Carthage tends to send a series of task forces to invade, usually groups of 3-4 ships escorting a troop carrier. I would keep pairs of galleys in certain ports for shuttling troops around, and then assemble a few task forces of my own to kill his, but wasn't having a lot of success. 4 of my galleys against a stack of 4 of his would probably sink one, damage a couple, and I'd lose one. But then he could get his damaged ones back to repair, and send enough fresh ones to finish off my damaged galleys, so I'd lose three for every one of his I killed.

So I started building and transporting catapults (and especially Fire Catapults) to the islands. Make sure all coastal tiles are roaded, and move them to hit any galleys that end adjacent to the islands. Keep a good reaction force, also, as he was landing multiple elephants. (I eventually had a legion army on Sicily and Sardinia, and a couple heavy cav). Once the invasion is defeated, the catapult stack moves up and pounds on his fleet, until all galleys are redlined. THEN you can move a stack of galleys out to finish them off. Once I had deployed the stacks of catapults, it only took another 15-20 turns before I had naval supremacy, as I was finally able to sink galleys faster than he was building them.

Then I was able to mount my amphibious invasion. I had invaded overland through Spain first, but wanted to land a second force in Libya to grab the luxuries and force him to fight on two fronts. Anyway, hope that helps!

 

[Zandrew]

The key is in fact catapults,...

I noticed this too. I was less systematic than you, but also found that the catapults were very effective at splintering the galleys. Gratifying sound and graphics too! I used them on Sardinia to weaken landing forces before finishing them off with legions. If I ran out of invaders to hit I'd try to hit the galleys. Next time I'll try to get more catapults and concentrate more on the galleys.
In my game I also got Macedon to ally with me against Carthage. They didn't help much with ground troops, but their sizeable fleet helped sink a few Carthaginians AND keep Carthage occupied with them at sea.

 

[a4phantom]

The first time I played RoR was on Warlord, and after losing about 90% of the galley fights with both Carthage and Macedon I tried using fire catapults, hoping because of the name and because of the lack of any true warships in the scenario that they would have lethal sea bombard. Alas, they do not. Fortunately, on both Warlord and Regent, Carthage shies away from attacking your ships most of the time, so you can land your armies and crush him without ever winning naval superiority. At least that's what I did, twice. Ships carrying troops from Sicily to Carthago were never attacked during their turn at sea by the larger and much luckier Carthegian fleet. My inability to destroy that fleet was a hinderance until the last Carthy city in Iberia fell because they would continue to land an elephant or two near cities in Africa or Sardinia that I did not have the resources to garrison properly.


By the way, if you are planning an invasion of Macedon, there is an unclaimed tile on the penninsula and an island to the west of the Sparta chunk. If you build cities on both of those, and also on the western edge of the Sparta chunk when your island city's cultural borders expand, you can have troops on their doorstep when you declare war. Striking from north, south-west and west will help you, rather than Persia, take the majority of Macedon. You also won't have to ferry troops during war in what everyone seems to agree are very unlucky Roman galleys.

 

[Dell19]

In my games the Roman galleys never suffered froma huge amount of bad luck... Just the expected defeats if you attack with too few ships as the enemy gets a defensive bonus.

 

[Alcamar]

Getting back to the naval strategy, Carthage does have a naval advantage, for several reasons. First, they start with a larger navy. They tend to move galleys in groups, meaning it's harder to kill off a lone galley, as a damaged one is covered by fresh ones. As seafaring, they do get +1 move. This also makes it harder to finish off damages galleys, as they are more likely to get home to repair. Also, they start with more harbors, for more vet galleys. Taken together, they are a serious naval threat that continues to grow as the game progresses. In my game as Rome, they were flooding the seas for the first 40-50 turns. (This was on Diety).

The key is in fact catapults, but not from ships. I started by taking Sicily, Sardina, and Corsica. Once you take the three islands, Carthage tends to send a series of task forces to invade, usually groups of 3-4 ships escorting a troop carrier. I would keep pairs of galleys in certain ports for shuttling troops around, and then assemble a few task forces of my own to kill his, but wasn't having a lot of success. 4 of my galleys against a stack of 4 of his would probably sink one, damage a couple, and I'd lose one. But then he could get his damaged ones back to repair, and send enough fresh ones to finish off my damaged galleys, so I'd lose three for every one of his I killed.

This is exactly what i have been facing. I managed to get a fleet of about 15 galleys which i send out to meet the Carthagian fleet constantly sailing around sicily. This was a complete disaster I destroyed 4 (and lost 6) in my atack turn and indeed in their turn they sent in some fresh ones and killed 5 additional ones. I managed to retreat the remaining 3-4 ships to harbors on Sicily where they are waiting to be useful.
I think I will follow up you advice on catapults, I do use themn as you describe but not on a large scale.

But, besides the naval war I think I am doing OK.
1) I destroyed the Celts, so I can spread across France, Germany and England.
2) I have conquered the southern parts of Spain, built a harbor and preparing for a hopefully easier invasion into nowadays Maroc.
The carthagians are left with 3 cities in Spain but within a few turns I expect that Spain will be mine.
3) In my initial war with Macedon I made peace after conquering some cities. After that i started to built up a huge force on the Balcan, just to be sure.
At a certain point I notived that Persia finally managed to break through the Macedonian lines. They conquered Byzantium and set foot at European soil. To prevent them from gaining to much i had to declare war on Macedon again. Now I am trying to cut of the Persians from the Macedonians by splitting Macedon in 2 halves. Untill now, this works perfectly.
Now the stupidity of the AI shows up once more, instead of focussing on defending their homeland they send a fleet to Sicily and try to invade. But since I have a huge army in Sicily waiting for the moment to invade Africa this attacks are easily dealt with, only upgrading all my troops to elite. So i have alternating invasions by Carthage and Macedon and in between I kill them

4) The only things worrying me are a) that i am now sharing a border with Persia, and I don't want a war with them yet. And b) I don't trust the presence of all these Teutonic warriors strawling around some of my northern cities.

 

[thetrooper]

First conquer and occupy spain and then use gibraltar as start point of my invasion?

That is the way I do it. Be sure to cross the gibraltar with an army. AI think twice before they attack an army. Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica are under my
control at that time. Also - build many catapults to bombard enemy galleys as
they prowl your coastline. Fortified galleys in your coastal cities can then take
them out (when redlined). Another option is to go directly for Carthago from
Sicily (an army is required). 6-7 galleys loaded with strong defense and offense should be enough to take Carthago and keep up with the counter attack. Carthago has harbour too, and civil disorder period is short because of
the trade benefit to your mainland. This works in 7 out of 8 times (I met
Hannibal with a fully loaded army (War Elephants) outside Carthago once, and
I lost ).

Break a leg!