Need a guide/help playing as Romans.

[lilsting10]

In my current game I have stayed with my first city and am trying to build buildings and wonders, and yet it seems that everyone else is shooting up the techtree and building higher wonders than I am, even though I've not wasted time building an army or anything.

I only have two workers in my city, should I have built a lot more before building buildings and wonders?

What am I doing wrong?

 

[Liegence]

Lookup MadDjinn's Rome "Let's Play" on YouTube. All you need to know.

 

[Dai]

Are you new to the game? What difficulty are you playing on? MadDjinn's LP will be useful if you're trying to win as Rome on a high difficulty level, and is probably worth watching regardless, but if you're relatively new to the game, some more basic advice might be in order.

 

[Haig]

I think with your single city you're not generating enough science, so the others advance quickly on techs and get the new wonders that unlock with some techs.
Also you maybe don't have the right Civ for your strategy, unless you really want to do that with Rome. For having a small empire or just a single city you could try maybe Egypt or Siam.

Rome's UA (Unique Ability) is that buildings built in Rome will construct quicker in other cities, meaning that you'd need some more cities to really take advantage for that Ability.
I'd recommend building a couple of more cities and some science generating stuff (library, national college).

Besides with your Unique Units you can build a magnificent army and just grab those wonders from others..

****

Here's a good basic conquer strategy for Rome:

Research Mining and techs that will let you build improvements over luxuries on your lands. Build warriors and two new cities, build libraty in all of them and then build National College so you'll advance quicker in science. Research Iron Working and you'll discover some Iron spots on the map, you'll need to have them on your Empire, it's vital for Rome!

When you have researched techs for Legions and Ballista, sell your luxuries and upgrade your original warriors (which have maybe collected exp from fighting barbarians) to legions and buy or build ballistas if you have enough Iron.

Conquer another Civ! An ideal invading army is maybe four legions and one ballista, fight your way one city at a time.
By now your legions are battle scarred veterans , research steel and upgrade them to deadly Longswordmen. You can then start a war with another Civ, but as you capture cities remember to have enough happiness.

****

Of course with Civilization the fun is that you can have any strategy with any Civ, a peaceful cultural Rome or Germany is possible, as is a warmongering bad ass Gandhi. Here's just some tips for optimal Rome play.

 

[chazzycat]

It sounds like you are playing Rome pretty much the opposite way that you should in order to make best use of their abilities. Consider:

- With only one city, you are getting zero benefit from the UA
- By building too many wonders and buildings early in the game, you are missing the opportunity to build and use Rome's fantastic early units

Rome can be a good builder civ, but only in a larger empire where the UA will help out. "Wasting time building military" is the wrong mindset when playing as Rome. Because their units are so good, but go obsolete somewhat quickly, it's wise to focus on the military early and try to gain some territory through war during this period of dominance. Then, using the UA, you can build up in a peaceful fashion from there.

 

[lilsting10]

Seems I took the UA of building up the main city to have buildings in other cities for cheaper too far, and now other Civs have surpassed Rome's abillty to create Science/get techs.

 

[Bamboocha]

In my current game I have stayed with my first city and am trying to build buildings and wonders, and yet it seems that everyone else is shooting up the techtree and building higher wonders than I am, even though I've not wasted time building an army or anything.

I only have two workers in my city, should I have built a lot more before building buildings and wonders?

What am I doing wrong?

Emphasis mine.
This is exactly the problem. I have finished a Rome game on Emperor, and the thing about Rome is that early on, they're a war machine. The Legion and Ballista are your bread and butter: they're much stronger than the swordsman and catapult and only slightly weaker than the longswordsman and trebuchet respectively. If you're not going to use those, you're wasting the biggest advantage Rome has over other civs in early play.

No matter what victory type you're going for, start by building an army. Of course you can try to pump out an early Great Library and/or Oracle for their tech and culture benefits, but for the rest you should mostly try to conquer other civs. If you get a good iron source, you can conquer two other civs with a decent group of legions and some ballistae.

After conquering another civ or two, you should puppet their cities and you'll notice that your culture and science output have significantly increased. By the time you enter early renaissance, which means your UU's are obsolete, you can settle down and truly focus on science.

So in short, I'd advise you to do the following from the start of the game:
1. You won't make it with Rome alone, their UA depends on you having other cities. Try having 2 - 4 cities
2. Beeline ironworking for your legion, and then research mathemetics for your ballista
3. Start looking for an iron source. If you don't have any, found a city near a good source
4. Start pumping out legions and ballistae. You can use the legions to connect your cities until your army is built up to a decent size
5. Start conquering a civ or two, puppet their cities
6. Make sure your happiness stays at a good level through luxury resources and buildings
7. Meanwhile, make sure you have all important buildings built in Rome so other cities (including puppets) will have +25% construction speed
8. Rinse and repeat until the renaissance, after that start pursuing a science victory with a much larger science output

Also, make sure you construct the National College ASAP in Rome.