Rise of Rome... What the... ?

[Dr Zlu]

Hello peeps
I have a hard time winning the Rise of Rome scenario on Regent. My score is always faaaar behind Persia's or Macedon's by the end of the game. I have tried different strategies and last time, I hardly managed to completely crush Carthage in 295AD.
I realise this scenario is on the opposite of my habits; it compells to expand and fight constantly... And as I am rather a builder...
Here is what I generally do :
1) Send almost all my legionaries to Sicily, take it, then take Carthago (using the Caesar's army filled with Legos I).
2) Rush to the GL.
3) Build lots of catapults in Sicily to crush Carthage's navy (it works wonders).
4) Have constant MA's with almost everyone (especially Macedon and the Celts) against Carthage.
But from here is where I falter: should I build cities in Spain, France and the Balkans? Should I send troops to crush Carthage's cities in Spain immediately?
As for Carthago itself, I found it very hard to expand quickly from here : the AI sends tons and tons of troops to take back its former capital city...

I am quite clueless. Any tip welcome.

 

[Cuivienen]

Crush Carthage utterly. The best plan seems to be to take Sicily early without using your Army. Send the Army first to Gaul and capture a few Celtic cities, make peace, then move on to Hispania and conquer Hispania very early. At some point, you are bound to get an MGL -- build another Army and fill it with Legionary IIs. Attack Carthago with this Army and take it. Then, mass the rest of your troops in Spain, and, while the AI is busy trying to recapture Carthago, sail across Gibraltar and crush Carthage. Afterwards, settle heavily in Hispania and southern Gaul. Conquer Egypt if it is still alive. Voila! You've won. Also, be sure to ALWAYS finance Macedon against Persia, or else Persia will eventually break Macedon and become unstoppable.

 

[Toaae]

Heres what I did:

Take sicily quickly, and fortify it (walls, Garrisons, whatever) Send legos to Spain, and take it. W/o spain, carthage becomes less of a threat (they can still use boats, but now they can't send troops up from spain to attack gual)

Once Spain falls, invade the celts. On you've pushed them a bit north, begin settling Spain and southern gaul.

After the celts and carthage are out of the way, sign a MA with persia agianst Macedon.

Make sure to control all of spain and gual. During your war with the greeks, remeber to build settlers from gaul and settle west and south germany.

 

[LLXerxes]

MA with everybody against Carthage.
Capture Sicily and the other two islands (West of the Italian Peninesula) with Legos
Fortify them.
Take spain with Legos and Caesar. Build cities there. Colonize Gaul, 2.
Build up a navy to defeat Carthages.
Take Caesar and Lego II and Lego III to Tingis. Take others to Leptis Magna.
Slowly make your way to Carthago.
Capture the Cities, garison them, and make them into troop factories. Capture Carhago last mainly with Caesar Augustus (if he's still alive. )
Then Destroy the Celts and Egyptians with help from Goth and Macedon.
Then destoy Goth.
Then MA with Scythia and Macedon against Persia. (assuming you havn't already won.)

 

[Bibor]

I finished the RoR with spectacular results on Regent, so I figure it can be done the same way on harder difficulties on time and same "base effect", if not spectacular

1. Attack Sicily with your Legions in Southern Italy. Use Caesar's army and clear Sardinia and Corsica at the same time.
2. Create Cities at Southern Alpes (bordering Celts), and in Dalmatia (to border with Greece. Create the city of Aquincum (today Budapest, Hungary) to get the sole available Silks luxury (needed for Bacchanalia).
3. You are in Golden Age now. Build The Great Lighthouse in that city north of Rome (dunno its name) and probably one other wonder in Rome, Oracle is excellent since its effects don't wear off with Monotheism

** use diplomacy as Rome did. Give gifts to barbarian tribes to make them happy, ask Celts to go to war with Carthage. Can't hurt your status, since you can't break this pact anyway Try to be great with Greece. **

4. Take Carthage, but don't raze it (as Romans Did). Survive their constant Elephant Rushes (they are in Golden age now since one of their elephants were victorious at some time, and elephants trigger Golden Age for Carthage).

5. Take All Carthagean cities to the South of Carthage. Also take their luxuries ASAP.

** at this point you should start building up your navy, since you have the sea movement advantage with Great Lighthouse, and Heavy Cavalry should be already researched. Build Heavy Cavalry and send them to the south gaul border (today france-spain border). **

5. Move ships (equivalent in capacity to your "Africa corps" units in Africa) to the Iberian Peninsula. For now, you can use these ships to defend from desperate counterattacks too.

6. Start creating a strong navy for the Eastern Mediterranean to prevent Persia from shipping units anywhere (they mast pass thru Greek that way).

7. Help The celts in Hispania to push the Carthageans back, at the same time move forward with your legionnares to the West to today Gibraltar. Crush the carthage on Hispania and Africa land at the same time. Load your "Africa Corps" on ships you sent in before.

** at this point start building a HUGE army of Heavy Cavalry. Possibly some Armies too. Send them to your South Dalmatian Cities (bordering Greece)**

8. Your now combined army goes north and crushes the Gaul. Then it Crushes one more barb nation on the east of Celts. Bribe the barbs north of persia to attack them. Declare war on Persia.

9. Your armies now ignore the rest of barbs and move down the Aquincum road (from modern hungary to modern Serbia).

10. Attack Greece from three fronts: navy at their shores, cavary army in Dalmatia, Northern Armies from modern Sebia. Reinforce the northern Army if necessary as Italy is not far from Serbia, and road already exists.

11. Crush Greece and take the critical "Marble Sea pass" at modern Istanbul.

12. Use some of your "Dalmatian Cavarly Corps" via your ships and deploy them to Egypt.

13. Crush babylon But after you take 2-3 his cities, the domination victory is at hand...

possible deviations from this formula: If Persia takes the upper hand on greece before this scenario plays out as planned, invest minimum forces to hold off the Iberian Carthageans, use those resources to build an army to attack Persia from Egypt (since Egypt will be crushed first by babylon). This way babylon will have to fight on three fronts (north with greece, on sea with you and greece and on south with you). Also, bribing the barbarian tribes that "can" annoy Persia also helps.

All in all, you should try to play not technologically, but with planned military campaigns which overlap in force and support, and can be redirected for a single "power punch" (like combining the two armies to crush the barbs). Once you get Legionnary III the research virtually stops for you. It does *not* pay to move from Republic to Empire since the scenario is too short to lose another 2-5 turns.
AND get a tons of cash, cuz you need it later for rushing units and buildings (especially barracks in "healing towns"). Also you can get all the needed tech from stealing from Persia If you played wisely, you now have all the needed luxury resources to keep the Romans happy.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Bibor: Lot's of good points, however, on the higher levels it may be problematic to fight the Greeks - if they are weakened, and Persia makes advances in Scythia as well, they win.

Some other ideas:

Settle aggressively into Spain as well, and prebuild/ Rush (if you happen to get enough MGLs) the FP there.
And settle towards Egypt already while fighting Carthage in Africa.

 

[HellboundHeathcliff]

Bibor:

You are correct about the extra anarchy in a short scenerio. It does pay however to bypass republic and switch right to Imperialism. The civilopedia is wrong about unit support. Imperialism as implemented has ZERO unit costs. Your whole military is free!!!

 

[Bibor]

Bibor: Lot's of good points, however, on the higher levels it may be problematic to fight the Greeks - if they are weakened, and Persia makes advances in Scythia as well, they win.

Some other ideas:

Settle aggressively into Spain as well, and prebuild/ Rush (if you happen to get enough MGLs) the FP there.
And settle towards Egypt already while fighting Carthage in Africa.

Good point on settling the Iberian peninsula, but I doubt if you play well that Persians will ever get to score a Domination victory. Reason: Persia has no FP. That means he has a lots of waste. And its capital is SO FAR AWAY (Persepolis). That should give you *some* advantage over Persia. If you can *secure* the city of Antioch (perhaps one-two more), Persia's stike on Greece and Egypt is very hampered. Dunno for sure. Will try again on Monarch or Emperor.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

This scenario was played as SGs on Deity, and it turned out that Persia nearly always wins. The Persian team had the easiest victory, the Makedon team coud win because the could beat on Persia early enough, while Rome barely won, and Carthage lost...

 

[Dr Zlu]

Well, thanks for all these tips.
I have restarted from scratch and so far, things get much better than in my previous game.
Nevertheless, even if I like this scenario, I can't help wondering about a few oddities. Why is the starting date 350BC while Rome was founded in 753? Ok, this is supposed to reflect the period of the real rise of power of Rome but... Rome became a republic quite early (about 500BC if I remember correctly; dropping monarchy) but in this scenario, this government is available very late. Bah.
Oh and Persia is frankly overpowered. Surrounded north and south by weak neighbours (Egypt and Scythians)==> VP's + almost free cities; while almost everybody else has to struggle to take cities or waste time building settlers... Besides, Perse was supposed to be conquered by Greece, not the contrary.

 

[Cuivienen]

The game is badly made in that aspect -- Macedon needs a much larger advantage in terms of troop numbers in the beginning. Some outlying Persian cities shouldn't even be defended.

Anyway, the game starts in 350 BC because any earlier comes look before Alexander the Great. As a matter of fact, Rome and Carthage were allies in 350 BC, but are locked in war that early for gameplay. I could see the game starting later (250 BC) with Seleucia replacing Persia and Ptolemaic Egypt stronger (controlling Palestine). Certainly the game can't start any earlier.

Anyway, I do have a few recommendations for better gameplay:

~ Reduce the cost of Hoplites to 30 shields from 40 shields.

Macedon can now keep up with Persia, who builds 30-shield Immortals faster than Macedon can build 40-shield Hoplites.

~ Increase the cost of the War Elephant to 55 shields and increase its stats to 5.2.2. Remove the Heavy Cavalry from Carthage's build list.

Carthage now has something that can fight back against Legionary IIIs.

~ Decrease corruption to 75% of normal.

While this strengthens Persia early on, its primary effect is to increase the strength of the civilized nations against the barbarians.

~ Give Macedon a few extra troops in Anatolia.

Self-explanatory.

 

[Bibor]

The game is badly made in that aspect -- Macedon needs a much larger advantage in terms of troop numbers in the beginning. Some outlying Persian cities shouldn't even be defended.

Anyway, the game starts in 350 BC because any earlier comes look before Alexander the Great. As a matter of fact, Rome and Carthage were allies in 350 BC, but are locked in war that early for gameplay. I could see the game starting later (250 BC) with Seleucia replacing Persia and Ptolemaic Egypt stronger (controlling Palestine). Certainly the game can't start any earlier.

Anyway, I do have a few recommendations for better gameplay:

~ Reduce the cost of Hoplites to 30 shields from 40 shields.

Macedon can now keep up with Persia, who builds 30-shield Immortals faster than Macedon can build 40-shield Hoplites.

~ Increase the cost of the War Elephant to 55 shields and increase its stats to 5.2.2. Remove the Heavy Cavalry from Carthage's build list.

Carthage now has something that can fight back against Legionary IIIs.

~ Decrease corruption to 75% of normal.

While this strengthens Persia early on, its primary effect is to increase the strength of the civilized nations against the barbarians.

~ Give Macedon a few extra troops in Anatolia.

Self-explanatory.

God help us, even the scenarios have to be tweaked. But yes, you are absolutely right.

 

[Pook]

Lots of good points. I agree with the idea of crushing Carthage utterly first, before embarking on other adventures. Last time I played this on Emperor level, and got the Celts to help me crush Carthage. Then I turned on them and crushed the Celts, leaving myself in control of 1/2 of North Africa, all of Iberia, and most of Gaul. From there I cruised to victory.
One point not mentioned yet- I've found that the Temple of Artemis (free temple in every city on the same continent) is the most useful wonder in this scenario. Regardless of what you may think of its utility in the epic game, in this scenario every land tile except for islands is considered to be on the same continent, so ToA is very helpful.

 

[socralynnek]

Yeah, ToA is very strong because it doesn't expire (although you won't need it that much in captured cities because of preservation of culture, but the happiness is still very helpful).