Roman - conquer without iron

[faron]

Is there a strategy for conquering with the Romans when you end up with no Iron?
Thanks
Faron

 

[Tabarnak]

Same as other civs with no early UUs.

 

[DaveMcW]

Buy iron from civs or city states.

You could go spear/horse/archer or pike/knight/crosssbow, but it's much harder.

 

[Tabarnak]

Buy iron from civs or city states.

You could go spear/horse/archer or pike/knight/crosssbow, but it's much harder.

He didn't say deity...

 

[faron]

thanks for the replies, I just tried a chariot rush with the romans as i had no iron and there only looked like there was 2 lots of iron on the whole map, i took 3 down to montezumas second city, it had defence of 7 was in amongst forest and had an archer and he destroyed my 3 units in 3 turns, i have seen good players do something very similar on much higher levels and kick ass, very frustrating for me, i guess its trial and error

 

[RedRover57]

I think you probably want about 6 chariot archers and several warriors for the rush. That way if one warrior gets shot up getting into place the other can cap the city. Replace the warriors with pikes or horsemen ASAP.

Archers are better though since you can eventually upgrade them to crossbows. CA's lose their promotions after upgrading, unless playing Mongolia.

 

[fmlizard2]

You could also concentrate on tech and wait to do your warring after the iron age has passed.

 

[Treso]

Playing at Emperor I saw going directly to the Hagia Sophia -> PT -> ND (with only one city) combo gives you a science win signing RAs with everyone and keeping some military. I cant say this at Immortal++ becouse I didnt play thats levels yet.

 

[puyo]

Ally or conquer a CS wich has iron. That will delay your conquest so be sure to go war quickly after this...
When I go war without iron, I wait AI near his borders before attacking. He'll go crush his head on my defenses then I can attack with my archers (or chariots) and lancers.

 

[Vo01985]

Conquering CS gives such a massive diplo hit though that I tend to NEVER conquer any of the CS

 

[Louis XXIV]

I wouldn't bother with Chariots. Build spears and archers. Buy from a civ or ally with a city-state that has iron. Ideally, you should try to have at least two (in which case, build two ballista). Either way, the entire goal is to conquer iron from a neighbor at all costs.

Otherwise, their UA isn't bad. You'll have an underwhelming game, but not a bad game.

 

[chazzycat]

found myself in this exact situation a few weeks ago. Was playing on immortal, and planned on legion rushing my neighbor. No iron and no CS though....crap. Instead of trying to attack I turtled hard and starting building mad wonders. Just played defense and survived until artillery...then went on a rampage and won with a puppet empire culture victory.

 

[fmlizard2]

Also, there are so many paths to Iron (allies, trading, conquest, settling distant areas) that there should be very few times when a Civ can't beg, steal, or borrow some type of Iron. Or any resource for that matter.

 

[Veshta]

The iron dependent civs (Rome in particular with twin iron UU's) are generally rolling the dice on anything but Pangea maps.
The way I do it now is start a game, beeline IW while exploring, if I have a deposit within 20-30 tiles or so I reload from 0 and play normally or restart game .. take about 35 turns per go, so not that bad but still crappy.

On a side note, just tried a Mongol game on Continents .. not a single horse on my continent, and that was with 8 civs (out of 12) sharing it with me .. never seen lack of horse before so was quite a jaw dropper