Rome Rules

[Smak]

ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME

-[Bronzeworking]
-CHOP worker and prechop for settlers as you make 2 warrior defenders, can also send initial warrior to kidnap nearby civs first worker...
-[Mysticism]
-CHOP 2 settlers, idle {Stonehenge} or {The Pyramids} if stone is nearby. idle on {Parthanon} if marble
-[Meditation] or [Polytheism] to found religion
-idle build on barracks'
-[Priesthood]
-CHOP {The Oracle} for [Ironworking]
-[The Wheel] or [Pottery] if scout found [The Wheel]
-CHOP barracks
-[Writing]
-CHOP 4-6 PRAETORIANS send the 3 warriors scouting to learn (Medic) by killing barbarians
-[Alphabet]
-trade any level 1 or 2 techs any level 1 or 2 techs, then rush nearest civ with 6+ praetorians and one warrior with (medic), take capital city first. shift workers to build 1-2 food tiles in each of the 3 cities, mine all hills, the rest cottages. Make roads in every tile in your culture, as you build cottages, mines, workshops, and collect resources.
-[Mathmatics]
-build more PRAETORIANS always promote (City Raider) 1, 2, 3 then (Combat) 1,2,3,4,5?(Commando) give them guns {Infantry} or {Mechanized Infantry} later in the game
-[Construction]
-from here till end of game make a steady stream of catapults, as your main stack of troops hits a city use them to bombard defenses to 0% then rush with collatoral damage bonus. most will die, some will withdraw or eliminate the defenders. catapults that live get the improved city bombard promotion and dont get used suicidally anymore, unless dire circumstances. after 1-3 catapults suicide bomb the defending stack, send in your green PRAETORIANS with their barracks trained (City Attack) 1, use the green troops till they stop dieing then send in your veterans to mop up last defenders for exp. Park the stack in the captured city, the troops will quell the resistors and heal from the old warrior medic you made. I consider him my general, scouts fill the role better if you like to use cavalry instead of rifleman/grenadiers.

Thats a basic strat for Roman conquest, after you take out the nearest civ your oracle should generate a Great Prophet you can use for the special building in the city you founded Hinduism/Buddism. That one building will support your civic costs from the civ you just wiped out. The next target should be whatever founded the other religion, then go for who got Judaism. I suggest taking the city it was founded in first as a suprise war. Then capture the capitol and raze smaller cities, for each of these troublesome religious fanatics out there. When you declare war, wipe them out completely or they will ally with your next target against you.

If you start near stone, chop out pyramids and stonehenge before your rush. If you start near marble, get the parthenon up but dont build in same city as oracle or you may not get prophet later. And share religions between your largest cities to build temples, and your state religion in all cities for the happy and organized religion bonus.

As you finish your first conquest you should be in full scale cottage spam, except for one city. One of your new cities should be set aside for production, hills and grassland are great for production. Build workshops and mines, no cottages here and only farm what you need to keep growing. After you get contruction you should get metal casting for the forges, build them everywhere. Only build libraries in cities with cottages and rivers at first. Make wonders, workers, or PRAETORIANS/catapults with the rest. After you capture 2 civs you should have tons of worker slaves. Build the heroic epic in that production city, and if you did make the pyramid earlier send all great engineers to this production city as super specialists. Although its ok to use the first one to rush the great library if you get that tech.

TECH, every time you are about to declare war you can and should trade for any and all techs you can get from them first. If you build your army right it only takes about 30-50 turns to wipe them out. Just protect vet units and keep making catapults to soften them up and fresh shock troops that are expendable. Dont trade any recent techs with civs you wont kill soon.

Get Code of Laws as you build forges, then use the production to make courthouses everywhere. Dont keep poorly placed enemy cities, if it cant grow large and isnt in good choke point then raze or leave undefended. Use slavery on these cities to grind the 1-2 population you can into more shock troops.

Go for liberalism just before or just after infantry i forget where it is on the tree. It gives good civics and a free tech. Use free religion once you got 3-5 [religion founding cities] and spread the religion to each of your 10+ pop cities. Let the money temples spread the rest automatically for you.

Once you got code of laws you should head for the Infantry tech, stop along the way to found religions (or capture enemy cities that do). Get nationalism on the way to tanks, if you havent gotten 75% of the map by tanks you are doing something wrong. BTW get railroad after infantry, the rail keeps your large empire closely connected for troop movements and also lets you place machineguns in freshly captured cities. Two machineguns can hold off waves of grenadiers. But most likely the enemy will only have knights as you start making mg's.

As you capture cities, chop down their forests to make wonders. Build granary, courthouse, forge, barracks (or wonder) in each new city then spam latest artillary or infantry/tank.

No civ can live near rome, for long...

With this method I gained such a huge early advantage in tech, wonders, number of cities, and gold on a huge monarch map that by the time I was preparing to clean out the 3rd or 4th enemy I was using tanks/artillary/infantry while the enemy had knights and macemen maybe musketmen. I always had thousands of gold (gained by great person temples) to grease the wheels of my tech trades or upgrade my old praetorian core to modern units. I had won a domination victory before so I held a little over half the planet and kept razing other civs until I could build my space ship. By the time I finished the ship in the 1700s (LOL) I had dropped about a dozen nukes on japan just trying to see how many global warming strikes happen before nuke winter...

The funniest part of the whole game was after I built the united nations. My population was over half the planet so every vote was me simply telling the whole world what it will do. Although my warmongering made it impossible for a diplomatic victory. (the red text "You Nuked My Friend" made it worth it)

I had a fleet of transports with 3 or 4 battleships and 2 destroyers hauling modern tanks, mech infantry, and a couple token artillary with one cavalry/medic (my general) from one fallout glowing razed jap city to the next one, using nukes on any city with over 5 population until I could ship my razing/pillaging/raping stack around.

 

[Oggums]

-[Bronzeworking]
-[Mysticism]
-[Meditation] or [Polytheism] to found religion

So...what level are you playing that allows you to still be first to meditation/poly, after you've researched bronze working?

 

[Smak]

I played that on the huge "earth" scenario at prince and then monarch.
Rome starts next to a fish and clam, so i drop workboat out for the added food and $ to make that first worker faster (food seems to speed up settlers and worker production). I use the starting warrior to go steal greece's initial worker too.
Rome starts with mining so Bronze is easy to reach fast with that added seafood commerce (bronze mainly for the chop power i dont build axemen).
Mysticism as a tier 1 tech is very quickly learned if my warrior scout didnt find it in a hut.
Then i go for polytheism, it lies before organized religion and priesthood. If i dont found hinduism then i will get judaism.
I have a saved that game around the point i started throwing nukes around. It shows i did found 1 or 2 of the early religions.
If you can tell me how to share the file through this forum i will.

Even if you tried this on a harder setting where ai's get the foundings first, you will still build the oracle first due to chopping and get ironworking fast enough to flood his "founding" city with praetorian legions.

 

[Lord Chambers]

Groundbreaking.

I don't quite understand the utility of sending hammers down the drain by sacrificing low experience troops just to use high level ones for mop up. Then again, I've never been good enough to found religions while building the pyramids and warring early.

 

[Smak]

The hammers never go down the drain. Anything you build faster is built before the ai, and creates a "turn advantage" in economic turns. In this case the chopping is primarily to build 2 settlers to start your 3 city powerbase, by prechopping 3 trees for the settlers as you make 2 warrior scouts/defenders then switching to settlers for last chops. Then some forests used to chop out the wonders, primarily the oracle, but if stone is nearby then make pyramids. If marble nearby then make the parthanon. The pyramids will allow you to have very high population in these 3 core cities or the parthanon will allow your oracle to spit out a great prophet faster, thereby creating the $ temple 50% faster. Just remember to build the oracle in a different city than pyramid or pathanon. Also, if no stone or marble is close, I would chop out stonehenge by prechopping and getting organized religion before the final chops. Then build oracle in same site as stonehenge for faster prophet.

The remaining trees in and around the three cities are used to create the 6-8 praetorian stack, after barracks in each of the 3 cities (that you idled some early on). They will take city raider 1 for a 25% str bonus. Thats over 10 str to attack the enemy capitol, but they will have a 40% culture defense by then. It is ok, since the first 2 praetorians (or one for each archerer he has, usually 2) will be expended to greatly damage their archerers. Allowing your remaining 4-6 praetorians to wipe out the defenders and capture the city. Most of the time i lose 1 or 2 praetorians, one of my initial attackers will survive but be heavy damaged. I promote him to city attack 2 and have him heal in the city. Two or three of my secondary attackers who mop up the weaker defenders will also take city attack 2 and end up full str after 1 rest turn. I then advance to the nearest suburb with 3 or 4 of my initial stack and easily take out the defenseless city as they dont have culture built up yet or not past 20% anyhow. All this time im building praetorians now, without chopping after i declared war with my first 6-8 stack, these move up as garisson troops for new captured cities and my healed up vets rejoin the initial stack to get more promotions. By the time i wipe out first civ and build some catapults i generally have 4 or 5 city attack 3 praetorians, some with combat 1 also. After combat 1 as the 4th promotion you have the option of going with melee bonus for 25% but i like to stick to combat upgrades so i have more options later and eventually commando, (lets you use enemy roads, very good for troops supporting tanks).

Back to your main concerns, about founding religions...

If you miss hinduism theres always monotheism for judaism, it also gives you 25% building bonus and will make your forges and courthouses pop out uber fast.

 

[Smak]

After the 4 ancient wonders have been chopped out, theres no reason to save the forests when they can each be turned into a praetorian. So it only takes about 4 turns to build a stack of praetorians when you get ironworking instead of 9 turns for every troop. It ends up around a 50 turn advantage, meaning you will capture german cities 50 turns faster. Thats 50 more turns they will develop into production centers, once you can shift your troop centers out of your core cities, you can focus on pure tech/culture/wonders/commerce and religion spreading.

This is a response from another site, it addresses the issue with founding religion. Basically I had been testing some praetorian rush strats a while back and forgot the first techs were: mysticism, polytheism, masonry (and if hinduism was missed, would hit monotheism for judaism)

Only after those 3 techs should you go for bronzeworking (on the "Earth" scenario), followed by the wheel to connect the stone/marble before the final turn of tree chopping on wonders. Also, it may be more efficient to idle the first 3 cities on barracks while connecting the stone. Then when you get the bonus on the 4 wonders should you begin them.

Starting spot has a fish, clam, a couple hills that can be mined(one of them contains iron later). It also has wine, wheat, and marble. To the northwest where france is there are 2 sources of stone, pig, wheat, horses, iron hidden in a grassland. To the west at spain is sheep, cattle, horses, clam, silver, and iron in a hill. France and rome each have rivers to start on and to boost commerce. All 3 spots have 2-3 hills or more.

imo the optimal tech path would be:

mysticism: (steal greek worker to start mining hills, make 2 fishing boats then 2 settlers, place first settler on the pig to the northwest)
polytheism: (start stonehenge in second city or idle barracks till resource connected for production bonus on wonder, or be making extra worker to chop it)
masonry: (quarry stone in prep for wheel)
the wheel (or monotheism if you didnt found hinduism, connect stone to 2 cities, start pyramids in 3rd city or idle barracks till resource connected for production bonus on wonder)
bronzeworking: (change to organized religion if you got monotheism)
priesthood: (start prechops for wonders in all 3 cities, you should have 2 or 3 workers no need for more)
writing: (use oracle to get ironworking now, finish chops [2 for stonehenge, 3 for pyramids, 1 for oracle, 2 for parthanon = 8 chops for wonders leaving plenty of trees to spam praetorians]
alphabet: (chop out remainder for barracks, chop spam praetorians. DO NOT pop slave, let these 3 cities grow past size 10 with representation + temples ect)
metalcasting: (trade away level 1 or 2 techs for level 1 or 2 techs. get pottery, animal husbandry, sailing, meditation, hunting, archery. The only tier 3 tech you should offer to ai is priesthood, it will get you good amount of low tech and wont give them any military advantage. Dont forget it takes 2 turns to trade for tier 2 techs, one to get hunting, one to get archery for example. Suprise germany with a stack of 8 praetorians. Take berlin, lose only 1 or 2 troops and get like 5 promotions to city attack 2.)

After metalcasting get mathmatics and construction, keep one city making praetorians then when you get construction shift to catapults, in other cities make libraries, monastaries, forges, wonders and cottage spam in tiles that dont have special resources. If you can, trade for happy resources with peaceful nations as you totally capture germany. Turn germany and hamburg into production centers, mine all hills, farm rivers, workshop flats, no need for commerce in these 2 cities. After contruction get literature and place heroic epic in a production center to spam your latest and greatest unit.

Before you can finish construction you will get a prophet, use it in your hindu/judaism founding city for alot of $. Turn france and italy positioned cities into religious/tech centers, each time you found a religion send the missionary to one of these cities then use the monastaries to get alot of tech and to make missionaries to share between them. I typically have 4 or 5 different religions in each of those 2 cities, and share with my larger subjugated cities like production centers for the happiness. After literature head for liberalism to get free religion 10% sci bonus and 3-4 more happy per city = huge tech centers. Turn your great artists, scientists, engineers, merchants into super specialists in these first 5 cities (the 3 you make and the first 2 german production towns).

As you tech up you can make more wonders, use your worker army to chop rush the wonders in freshly captured cities, make forge first and be on organized religion for 50% production bonus. With resources connected each tree chop yeilds over 200 hammers. And theres alot of forests in and around the north and east of berlin/hamburg.

By the time you are forced to research scientific method you should have a score 3 to 4 times the next best competitor, and control all of germany and egypt, pushing into persia (most of the time greece dies early on its own...)

 

[Gumbolt]

This is all good talk but lets see the game posted for 1ad. I dont personally understand why Rome needs religions when other AI will produce them for you. I find most AI develop the religious techs anyway at start and these can be taken when you reach Alphabet. Although priesthood for Oracle is a must for me. Codes of Law will always provide a religion if you bee line correctly or use Oracle.

For me Bw first followed by techs to develop road/ cottages and local food or quarry resources. Iron is a must if you aim to conquer quickly but axemen are always a good starter.

Good luck. If you win on Prince try this strat on Monarchy and let us know the result.

 

[Smak]

testing this link,

http://apolyton.net/go.php?forums/attachment.php?s=&postid=4407726

 

[Smak]

Thats me playing the "earth" scenario on monarch difficulty at marathon speed. The map is huge by default.

at 1500 bc i have 4 wonders, founded 2 religions, starting to chop out praetorians, and about to learn writing. The next tech is alphabet, when i finish alphabet i have my army made and i quickly trade around for tier 1 and 2 techs that i missed before i eliminate germany.

If you want me to play it again from that point i can show you where i am at 1 ad.

 

[a4phantom]

Rome rules against the AIs (I'm about to get the earliest domination victory of my career playing Rome for the first time), but if you came at me with those Prats I would bury them in cheap axemen.

 

[Smak]

Axemen base str vs melee is 5 + 50% vs melee = 7.5 str. With 2 promotions thats 5 + 85% when fighting melees = about 9.25 str.

Praetorians base str is 8. With 2 promotions thats 8 + 35% = about 10.8 str.

Using turrain to advantage can widen this gap, also i tend to toss a brand new praetorian at an axemen or city as fodder to lower the defenders str before my vet units finish them off without taking much damage.

Axemen may be cheaper, but praetorians tend to live longer.

In the long run i think you can generate 7 axemen for every 5 praetorians i can assuming we had the same hammers to work with.Axemen 70 and praet 90 iirc.

 

[a4phantom]

Yeah Smak, I looked at it numerically after I wrote that and you're right. A civ under attack by Rome might save itself by producing nothing but axmen, but is unlikely to overcome. I certainly conquered the world with Praetorians, and only had to upgrade a few of them to macemen to deal with axmen.

 

[Grifftavian]

Smak - I gave your stratergy a try and did pretty well in my first attempt. Noble, standard size continents world, temperate/high sea level, Epic speed. Space Race victory in 2025 AD = 6663 points. Started on a continent with Napoleon and Isabella. I had to go all the way to Monotheism to get an early religon because of the little tramp Isabella. Sent a few misionaries into France, and Napoleon converted to Judaism and was my best buddy. Maybe I should have killed him off, but I built the shrine and sent missionaries to the rest of his cities so he could help fund the building of my army! I had a nice spot picked out for a new city and had a settler & archer on the way, but just before I got there, Isabella built a city on the very spot I was heading for. Time for the March of the Praetorians! I razed that city and immediately built a new Roman city on top of the ruins with the settler I had waiting. Sent the Praetorians & Cats up the Spanish road and razed two more cities. Built a new Roman city on one of the ruins, but Napoleon build near the other before I could get a settler up there. After that I said no more razing. Captured a Spanish city with my initial Preatorian/Cat invaision force, plus a small Spanish coastal city by sending a galley with two Praetorians. Isabella came crying and begging for peace. I used the ten turns of peace to fortify my newly captured cities and heal up the invasion force. After the peace treaty ended, I captured the remaining Spanish cities and made Isabella the featured entertainer in my harem. Madrid turned out to be the holy city for both Buddaism and Hinduism, and had several hills and some floorplains nearby; turned out to be a very productive addition to my Roman empire.

The other continent had Monte, Genghis, Mansa, and Miss Vicky of the English. Needless to say, Monte and Genghis were the bullies in this schoolyard. They eventully killed off Mansa and pushed Miss Vicky back into the SW corner of their continent. Then thier egos got the better of them and they started fighting each other. I took the opportunity to build two new Roman cities in the former Malinese territory. Neither of them liked that very much, Monte in particular. They eventually made peace, and a few turns later, Monte had the nerve to declare war against Rome. I was able to defend my new cities without much problem, helped by the fact that I easily convinced Genghis to attack Monte again, keeping him distracted form my new cities. I captured an Aztec city near my cities (turned out to be another holy city) and sent an invasion fleet to the other side of that continent and took away two former English cities from the Aztecs. After that, Monte had had enough and begged for peace. To make Monte pay for his past trangressions, on the turn before I launched the spaceship, I launched my entire arsenal of nukes (grand total of four) at Monte, and watched his cities glowing in the dark as I flew off to Alpha Centuri.

I am definitely going to give you strategy another try.

 

[a4phantom]

Good job Grifftavian, although the beauty of having such a killer early game unit as praetorians is that you don't have to found religions at all if someone nearby does.

 

[Grifftavian]

Good job Grifftavian, although the beauty of having such a killer early game unit as praetorians is that you don't have to found religions at all if someone nearby does.

Yes, I realized that after I captured Madrid in that game; could have converted to Buddaism or Hinduism after the capture. Or since I was researching Writing and Alpahbet anyway, I could have continued on to Code of Laws and tried to found Confucianism. One of the great things about Civ4 (IMO), you learn something new almost every time you play!

 

[a4phantom]

Yes, I realized that after I captured Madrid in that game; could have converted to Buddaism or Hinduism after the capture. Or since I was researching Writing and Alpahbet anyway, I could have continued on to Code of Laws and tried to found Confucianism. One of the great things about Civ4 (IMO), you learn something new almost every time you play!

Haha that took me awhile to figure out too, because I always tried to found at least one religion. You have to specialize your early game. Peaceful builders should try to found at least one, but early conquerors should focus on metal techs and building an army to conquer holy cities (and then alphabet to extract techs for peace with your beaten enemies). The other advantage to capturing rather than building holy cities is that it keeps Great Prophet points out of your capital if you want to focus that on producing Great Engineers.

 

[obsolete]

-CHOP 2 settlers, idle {Stonehenge} or {The Pyramids} if stone is nearby. idle on {Parthanon} if marble
-[Meditation] or [Polytheism] to found religion

This does not make strategic sense to me. If you are Roman, it is YOUR job to capture these from other nations. Why are you wasting resources on those when you should be building up an army, expanding, and capturing them as freebies?

 

[vampy420]

This does not make strategic sense to me. If you are Roman, it is YOUR job to capture these from other nations. Why are you wasting resources on those when you should be building up an army, expanding, and capturing them as freebies?

Whats a good 'standard' build / tech order as Rome .. I know BW / Iron are early ones you need - but when to research IW etc? .. I can see building Oracle and getting MC as freebie for the forges to speed up Praet construction, but other than that - yea, capturing wonders is best.
I've been trying to develop a Rome strat but havnt had alot of success.

 

[Silver Marmot]

I'm not a huge fan of Rome because Praetorians are too easy to use against the AI. The AI simply defends with archers and later longbowmen, but any intelligent player would defend with axemen and then macemen.

 

[a4phantom]

Whats a good 'standard' build / tech order as Rome .. I know BW / Iron are early ones you need - but when to research IW etc? .. I can see building Oracle and getting MC as freebie for the forges to speed up Praet construction, but other than that - yea, capturing wonders is best.
I've been trying to develop a Rome strat but havnt had alot of success.

1. Build a barracks while bee-lining to Iron Working
3. Put your second city near iron (unless you're blessed to have it near your first city).
4 Build Praets.
5. Start conquering your neighbors.

Add oracle if you can.