Rome Total War: Barbarian Invasion

[FriendlyFire]

I heard that the AI uses flanking strategies often in BI...
Dont know if it really works though.

If you Fight a Lvl 4+ star general they will come head on then do a left-right flank attack. Instead of the standard battleline head on charge. The troops mass attack my left-right in an attempt to encircle the line. First time the AI pull this move on me I was taken by suprise.

Luckly I had placed all my calvary on a single flank which enable me to turn the tables on the AI.

From what i've seen so far the AI has been improved a notch. But falling short of expectations

 

[steviejay]

got it on the day it came out (UK) been playing it to death, still in my first game as the honourable Saxons. First thought was the Western Romans were pansies, they hid behind their stone walls with little garrisons like cowards and allowed me to capture pretty much all of France and push them back to the Alps but as my supply lies are stretched, theirs is shortened and I'm now beginning to see sizable stacks, An elite Saxon army of 900 warrior braves was defending a crossing of the river Elbe and was smashed by 2 Roman armies of equal size, although they was able to severely damage one of the Roman stacks. Many brave warriors sacrificed their lives to buy me time to bring my main army over from the Rhineland.

I've also had my first encounter with the Sarmatian hordes. Ugly, dirty creatures who seem to enjoy the presence of their horses over their women folk. Bah, they are numerous but they shall die easily. If they wish to settle in lands won through Saxon blood and steel they shall find they are most unwelcome.

The AI has been greatly improved in my opinion, they seem more up for a fight now, even feigning retreats to break my battle lines.

I miss the power of the solid mass of the phalanx which helped me greatly. Once my Saxon game is over I'll probably try one of the Hordes or perhaps even the Eastern Empire, we'll see.

 

[Riesstiu IV]

Well I finally broke down and got the game and I must say I’m impressed. I started my first game as the Western Roman Empire (Very Hard/Very Hard) and ended up completely annihilated by 376. A combination of Germanic hordes, a former general usurping the throne, and the Eastern Roman Empire landing several armies in southern Italy led to the demise of my family. That was the first time I ever lost a game to the AI. It’s actually interesting now.

RTW got was easy, boring, and repetitive. With the expansion this has changed BIG TIME. No longer are you able to have numerous awesome generals in your army who can be crafted by simply attacking a small stack of rebels. Good generals take time to craft and even then you may want to consider this because for the Roman factions, good generals may threaten the security of the empire. Part of the reason I lost my first game was that a low level general (who was extremely loyal at fist) won several victories and gained a lot of popular support in Gaul. Apparently all of this got to his head and almost all of Gaul and Spain joined his “rebel faction”. Unfortunately, I was unable to put down this usurpation since he was my best general (he had 6 command stars). My remaining family members were either idiotic drunks or cowards. I managed to prevent the rebel general’s armies from taking Italy by fortifying Milan and Ravenna but then a massive Vandal horde came out of nowhere and broke through my defenses. Not only that the Eastern Roman Empire decided it was time to kick my butt and took Salona as well as landing small armies in Southern Italy. I was completely surrounded with no hope of recovery. My final stand came when the Vandal horde decided to besiege Rome. My troops fought valiantly but in the end I was overwhelmed.

I’m seriously having to rethink my strategy as the Western Roman Empire. How do I keep low loyalty generals in line? What do I do with my vice prone family members? How do I prevent hordes from devastating the empire? How do I combat the Eastern Roman Empire?

I’m going to start a new game on medium. I’ll be lucky enough to retain Roman provinces in ten years let alone expand!

 

[steviejay]

Just completed my first game. Saxons. After a number of huge battles against the Sarmatians they finally settled in southern Italy. I was able to capture all of France and northern Italy. I didn't even attempt to capture Rome as it seemed they just massed everything they had in central Europe in that one city, not fun. After taking care of the Franks I stopped my progression East and rather focused on Britain. I sent over one army and was able to take control of England but once I done that it all kicked off, the Brito-Romans or whatever they're called arrived and whooped my army and captured my holdings there.

This time they were no half measures, 2 full armies, hardened by combat in Italy were sent to France for the short hop over the Channel which resulted in one last big battle with a 400 man Cavalry charge, was awesome.

Was quite disappointed in the ending, I was expecting something groovy but there was nothing really spectacular

 

[silver 2039]

Awesome reviews. Will get this ASAP.

 

[Riesstiu IV]

Just a thought but playing as a Roman faction you might want to consider having a good general as Emperor. As the Western Roman Empire, I made Nero Flavius, Count of the Saxon Shore (with a command rating of 5) heir to the throne and when Valentinus the Wrathful died, I had no problems with rebel Roman factions emerging after he took over. I think the fear of having a skilled general ruling over the empire was enough to put fear into potential usurpers.

In the original RTW, who you made faction heir didn’t really matter. Sullust the Baby Killer could be made faction leader and no one would care because loyalty wasn’t a factor. With Barbarian Invasions, loyalty is a huge concern. The Western Roman Empire starts with 2 or 3 governors/generals with questionable loyalty. Fix this by giving them political titles (found in the retinue) from Generals who already have good loyalty. For example, the holder of “Count of the Saxon Shore” was given to an idiotic gambler family member who was already loyal enough. So instead I gave the titles to Nero Flavius since he was a good general who lacked loyalty and this raised his loyalty enough to not rebel. If you feel that any family member will rebel, put them under the control of a powerful general who is loyal. This will keep them from rebelling.

Also, many Roman governors start out with terrible vices that wreak havoc on an already devastated economy. Consider removing the bad ones from important cities like Rome and Carthage and make them governors of economically poor regions like Londonium. Or alternatively if any family member has no redeeming factors whatsoever, just reduce them to cavalry officers under the command of a good general.

 

[Drakan]

RTW 1.3 patch is out:

http://www.sega.com/support/support.php?item=support_romepatch

I played with the Western Empire for over half an hour and was loosing 15.000-20.000 gold. Very difficult. After three turns had gone by from the start of the game 7 cities rebelled (with low taxes !!) !!

Played as th Eastern Empire and were easier but still losing massive amounts of money after a couple of turns in VH/VH.

Played as the Huns and they start off with nine (9!!!) fully loaded armies with plenty of cavalry and two or three generals with more than three stars. How can they possibly be stopped taking into account the initial troops the romans have and that you run into a massive deficit after two or three turns ?

Plus If they don't settle down in a conquered city the vast Hun Armies have no upkeep costs (except for the mercenaries) so you can continously advance, conquer and plunder. More gold= more mercenaries to be hired, more Roman cities to be sacked. Seems very unbalanced to me playing as either of the roman factions, specially the Western Empire.

 

[Gr3yL3gion]

RTW 1.3 patch is out:

http://www.sega.com/support/support.php?item=support_romepatch

Apparently RTW is released again without some serious testings and still buggy. Even the 1.3 patch is buggy as the two of the main roman factions (Brutii and Scipii) in the original RTW didn't expand until 220++ B.C. Seems like the developers now are prone to introducing new bugs to a patch that should address the issues related to previous patch.

Sigh, guess I have to wait until they fix all the bugs before I buy the game.

 

[Drakan]

I wanted to share these small collection of tips regarding the retinues and traits (I just stiched them together, the credit is due to other players, mostly OGGleep). If you have more strategies regarding on the "mechanics of retinues/traits" please post them because I want to understand better how to MM them in RTR.

RTW: Tips and Strategies

1 - Temples - I have no clue what Jupiter and Saturn are. I think one of them is "The one god" but I'm not sure. Mars and Mecury however are the gods of Violence and Trade respectively. Both of these can give negative traits (especially Mars). Be careful about parking a general in a town with lvl (LEVEL) 2 or greater temples. The trigger is if a general ends a turn with full MP (MOVEMENT POINTS) in a town.

2. A whole bunch of negative traits are associated with leaving a general in town with full Movement points. All of my generals were drunks before I figured this out. Basically that means if you have it lower the High, and have a happy green face, you can pickup the badtaxman trait....the first level being Useless Assessor, which is 10% penalty to tax income. The level 3 trait is 30% penalty to tax income

3. Never end a turn with a general in a town with Normal or Low taxes if the city is green. This will lead to the Useless Assesor Line.

4. You can pick up a negative trait line by continuing battle instead of ending it. If your general picks up the Bloody trait, stop continuing. It looks good at first, but the next level starts to get negative, hurting morale. If you kill MORE then 8 men as the general then you can get the bloodthirsty line. The thing with the bloodthirsty line, once you hit Bloody, be careful parking that general in a town with a temple of Mars. Mars also gives this line. Once you hit Sanguinary, you can't go back.


Level Bloody
Effect Command 1
Effect TroopMorale 1

Level Sanguinary
Effect Command 1
Effect TroopMorale -1

Level Bloodthirsty
Effect Command -1
Effect TroopMorale -3
am still figuring out all the triggers and such. There are apparently 3 triggers for general kills in battle.

1. General kills more then 6, you can pickup Roman Hero {or Brave)
2. General Kills more then 8, you can pickup Roman Hero 20 or Bloodthirsty 10 (or Brave and Bloodthirsty, same ratio)
3. General kills 0, you can pickup Coward 8



5. Make sure you use your generals to fight. I used to park my generals if I didn't actually need them. This can lead to the coward line. Very bad. I think the trigger is less then 8 kills. Its unconfirmed if killing routers count, or they have to be legit kills.

6. The more the battle is in the enemies favor, the better chance you have of picking up postiive traits. I have no idea how the game calculates odds....but a lot of times it will say that a unit of heavy calvary stands no chance against a unit of slingers.

7. You can pickup good traits by parking a general outside of a town and ending a turn with full movement points. Some really good ones actually.

8. If a general has +3 management is NOT in barbarian lands, and has 0 movement points at the end of the turn, you can pick up a really useful trait...it will take a while though, the % is really low.

9. Generals make babies while they are in town. There is a cutoff point where a general will no longer have children. I am not sure what that point is, if its the male, female or both that is the factor.

www.twcenter.net has a really good faq in the newbies section on the forums, and in the articles (under mods and tutorials), its a really rewarding part of the game imho.

Also, children can go either way when inheriting traits. If the father is a drunk, the kid can decide never to touch the bottle, or live in one.

10. Chirurgeon: Just have your family member sitting around in a settlement with an Academy. That's the usual method to guarantee a big entourage.

 

[DS_Legionary]

I just recently got the expansion, but haven't had much time to play around with it yet. I started a campaign as the Saxons, and has been pretty fun so far, but I've only gotten about ten turns into it.

 

[Bungus]

I never played multiplayer, but I heard that there were bad "out-of sync" errors. That sometimes two players fighting each other would view the same battle, but each could have different outcomes.
Did anyone here ever encounter this in multiplayer games, the vanilla RTW or with the expansion?

 

[OTE_Leader]

9. Generals make babies while they are in town. There is a cutoff point where a general will no longer have children. I am not sure what that point is, if its the male, female or both that is the factor.


Also, children can go either way when inheriting traits. If the father is a drunk, the kid can decide never to touch the bottle, or live in one.

I've had generals outside of towns - in friendly territory (you own) have babies. I've also had a general who was 60+ have a babie and that same turn died from natural causes (i call this the just in time effect).
As Roman - Juli
having cities with Patron God Bachus = Lot of Drunk Generals, who's children tend to not drink at all.
having cities with the Patron god Ceres = I've noticed the generals in those cities usually aquire the Fertile trait.

And if you Really Need your Generals to start making Children, theres always the cheater's way of making babies.
give_trait "First Last" Fertile 3
tested with Roman Juli
give_ancillary "First Last" physician
tested with Roman Juli
This helps a lot better than yelling at your generals to make babies.

If you need a General NOW! - Bribe one.

in BI - I'f im not mistaken the Generals you train from Circus Maximus (stable) do not have children or count as your family. However if they betray you to another nation and you bribe them back - they become Family.