Rome

Corsican

Chieftain
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Jun 6, 2009
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Salve!

I find this forum to be waning somewhat in discussion. So here's something to bring to the table.

Being in awe of its history, I've wanted to use Rome to get my highest score yet in my Hall of Fame. No doubt, many people find the Roman civ to be a bit disadvantaged, so I'm asking anybody to send their best advice and strategics on how to use Rome to its greatest abilities. One thing I've noticed in particular, since I have conquests, is that the legionary has a very limited use because as soon as I discover feudalism, the legionary automatically becomes a medieval infantry! Pointers such as this would be appreciated. Help me to recreate the empire under Augustus!
 
Salve!

I find this forum to be waning somewhat in discussion. So here's something to bring to the table.

Being in awe of its history, I've wanted to use Rome to get my highest score yet in my Hall of Fame. No doubt, many people find the Roman civ to be a bit disadvantaged, so I'm asking anybody to send their best advice and strategics on how to use Rome to its greatest abilities. One thing I've noticed in particular, since I have conquests, is that the legionary has a very limited use because as soon as I discover feudalism, the legionary automatically becomes a medieval infantry! Pointers such as this would be appreciated. Help me to recreate the empire under Augustus!

Since you are going for a Hall of Fame game, modifying the Legionary Unit to upgrade to something else besides Medieval Infantry is not an option then. One way to maximize the life of the Legionary would be to use MapFinder to locate a map with a good starting point for growth, and a nearby source of Iron, and then get the Iron Working Advance as soon as you can. As Rome, you start with Alphabet and Warrior Code, so if you are located on a coast tile, you can build the curraghs, and see about trading advances as well. Also, you do not have to upgrade your legionaries to medieval infantry, which in my opinion are a much less useful unit, especially after watching legionaries in a city mangle my medieval infantry unit attackers without getting their hair or uniforms mussed.
 
True, I do not have to upgrade the legionary, but once feudalism is discovered, the unit can no longer be built. It's replaced by medieval infantry in the production box...which I find to greatly reduce the legionary's value (it can only be used for less than one age!)...very disappointing.

In terms of competing with the AI, what is the best way for Rome to keep up in the tech race, culture, and production at regent level and beyond, while at the same time keeping balancing with financing the military (which is probably the only key to winning with them)? How bout government? Personally, I find republic to be a worthless government in terms of warmongering, especially with its 3 gpt maintenance cost (I always plunge into immediate debt with republic). For Rome, perhaps the government line should go despotism, monarchy, then fascism?

And in terms of starting strategies, to ensure Rome's dominance, what is the ideal number of cities to be built before focusing production on military? Should it be, build as many settlers as possible before discovering iron working? Especially in conquests, it seems Rome's building strategies is quite rushed, since legionary production has only a short amount of time before the discovery of feudalism (and if the Great Library is built, there is no way to prolong the production ability). I think this civ has potential, but it seems to me that it takes lots more thought than others and can be unforgiving if a mistake is made.
 
You might want to look at the following thread for some of what you are looking for. I have not used Rome, since I play Seafaring civilizations pretty much exclusively, and mainly in modified games. Your commercial trait will help with corruption, and from scanning the thread, since you are looking at Always War, Monarchy > Fascism is probably your best choice of governments.

As you are looking at a Hall of Fame game, you might want to check out any recorded games using Rome in the Hall of Fame thread and discussion forum.
 
Couple of points:

You are able to continue to build Legionaries after Feudalism, as long as you have not yet had your GA.

Unit support on Republic is 2gpt.
 
True, I do not have to upgrade the legionary, but once feudalism is discovered, the unit can no longer be built. It's replaced by medieval infantry in the production box...which I find to greatly reduce the legionary's value (it can only be used for less than one age!)...very disappointing.
The Medieval Age has 2 basic tech routes, the upper and the lower one. The upper one goes like Monotheism > Theology > Education > Astronomy and further. You can research pretty far up this tech tree while avoiding Feudalism. Feudalism is pretty useless for Rome, I can understand you want to avoid it. The only problem is that Feudalism is a prerequisite for Chivalry, and you don't want to be fighting knights while having none yourself. Well, personally I would probably want to be fighting with knights rather than legionaries anyway.
In terms of competing with the AI, what is the best way for Rome to keep up in the tech race, culture, and production at regent level and beyond, while at the same time keeping balancing with financing the military (which is probably the only key to winning with them)? How bout government? Personally, I find republic to be a worthless government in terms of warmongering, especially with its 3 gpt maintenance cost (I always plunge into immediate debt with republic). For Rome, perhaps the government line should go despotism, monarchy, then fascism?
Rome doesn't really stand out in anything particular, so it's up to you what you want to do with them. Your problems with Republic will be general empire management problems, not Roman problems. For Republic, build workers and road, road, road. Have you got 10 cities? Then you'd like 20 workers! Republic adds 1 gold to every worked tile that at least already makes 1, which is good money, but you need your tiles roaded.
This is something that most casual players have problems with. Also with creating enough settlers and workers in the early game. You'll need settler factories and worker factories to do this effectively. This involves graneries and some maths. If you don't like to get down to the nitty gritty of that, you can still play fine on Monarch and perhaps Emperor, with a bit of luck you can even wing it in a Demigod game, but getting the maths right does become more and more important as you move up level.
If you want to improve your gaming skills, there are several things you can do. There are articles in the war academy about empire management that can help. Also, you can upload a game save here, and you'll get more specific comments. You can also join in playing a succession game, where you play in a team, and you will learn a lot from the discussions in the team. In the succession game threads is a lot more discussion on strategy than in this part of the forum.
 
Corsican,

I have a feeling you have too many (defensive) units in towns you don't need to defend and that's leading to your unit support problems in a Republic, as well as not having enough roads (plenty of upper levels players war in a Republic, though ). I'd have to see a save to say for sure though.
 
if you want to maximize the efficiency and price of the legionary, then make sure you use them.

Legionaries are in a strange position. Having the same attack as defense, there isn't really a need to send in any defensive units to cover them (especially seeing as the only unit strong enough to defend them comes at the cost of making them obsolete) make sure you stage earlier wars. Once you get legionaries, make sure you're ready to mass produce them and go out and attack with massive forces to simply demolish your enemies. That means make sure you've got barracks in key locations (connections to iron made and established throughout you're entire empire) and do not let up on REXing.

Also, make sure you keep building up the road system, since having a large army will require all the gold possible. Monarchy would be a good choice of govt. Fascism, despite my personal opinions, isn't necessarily a good option for warmongering. If you're going to stay at war all the time and can definitely afford the turns of anarchy and massive empire population wipe-out once you become fascist, then it might be worth it, but if you're going to be at war constantly, I'm not so sure you'll be able to waste that time.
 
One thing I love about Rome (or any other militaristic tribe) is to go for the early archer rush and sneak attack a few AI cities to slow them down and extort techs in a peace treaty.
 
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