Suggestions for the Romans?

[Centurio]

I've read that Rome has been drastically weakened for Civilization V, and this concerns me greatly. I've really been looking forward to playing a game as Rome, but if it is much weaker, I would really like to know what I'm getting into. Could somebody please suggest me some strategies to use as the Romans? Which buildings should I build? What are research priorities? What sort of improvements should I build. Thank you for your help, whomever is kind enough to offer advice.

 

[alpaca]

Actually, both the Legion and Ballista are great compared to their normal counterparts. The problem is that the game currently favors horsemen in the extreme so the Roman units can't really shine. I can tell from first-hand experience that defending against an army that features three or four legions is pretty hard so if/when horsemen become more balanced, you should see an increase in "Rome is really strong" posts.

I didn't try the Romans out yet but my strategy would be to wage a few early wars with either Horsemen or Legion, then settle the land this frees as closely as possible with fairly small cities. These cities will allow you to make good use of your ability if you purchase in Rome all buildings you want to produce somewhere in your empire. I would favor production over gold for Rome. Make an exception to the "as close as possible" rule for Rome, which should have at least the full two inner hexes.

So the research priorities would be Iron Working, then anything you need to hook up your luxuries, then probably Construction to get these Colosseums up and running. Afterwards, you should be able to figure something out. Forbidden Palace is great if you have a lot of small cities.

Policy-wise Liberty should be great. I would also try to go for Order, which is very useful for this type of strategy (-50% unhappiness from number of cities and +5 production in each city).

Obviously, that's not the only possible strategy but I like trying to make the best use of my civ's abilities

 

[Centurio]

Actually, both the Legion and Ballista are great compared to their normal counterparts. The problem is that the game currently favors horsemen in the extreme so the Roman units can't really shine. I can tell from first-hand experience that defending against an army that features three or four legions is pretty hard so if/when horsemen become more balanced, you should see an increase in "Rome is really strong" posts.

I didn't try the Romans out yet but my strategy would be to wage a few early wars with either Horsemen or Legion, then settle the land this frees as closely as possible with fairly small cities. These cities will allow you to make good use of your ability if you purchase in Rome all buildings you want to produce somewhere in your empire. I would favor production over gold for Rome. Make an exception to the "as close as possible" rule for Rome, which should have at least the full two inner hexes.

So the research priorities would be Iron Working, then anything you need to hook up your luxuries, then probably Construction to get these Colosseums up and running. Afterwards, you should be able to figure something out. Forbidden Palace is great if you have a lot of small cities.

Policy-wise Liberty should be great. I would also try to go for Order, which is very useful for this type of strategy (-50% unhappiness from number of cities and +5 production in each city).

Obviously, that's not the only possible strategy but I like trying to make the best use of my civ's abilities

Thanks! I'll try that out in my new game as Rome. I think I'll select the 'Strategic Resources' option also, to ensure I can have some nice iron deposits at my disposal.

 

[delra]

I don't really like Rome. On low difficulties you can't get Iron early enough for Legions and Balliasta to matter because you are busy snatching best wonders. On higher difficulties you want to have Horsemen instead.

If you want to play them, you should make the best out of your civ bonus and settle in a perfect place allowing you to build all kinds of buildings. Near the coast, near at least one mountain, you want Rome to be a production city so you want a lot of hills and forests around her, but at the same time city itself can't be built on a hill tile because it disables some buildings - which kind of reduces role-playing value for those few people who have an idea about real history.

Ballista and Legion in general are excellent units and all you need to conquer enemy or to hold his invasion off - but with current balance of things swordsmen and siege equipment aren't really the optimal choice for those tasks so the whole thing doesn't fit much into the grand scope of things.

Maybe Rome will work better after a rebalance patch - but even then they will excel only in a longer game on a tight continent where a lot of warfare concludes in the ancient times before enemies get a chance to build their own unique units activated in later eras.

As far as policies go I'd go Honor early on to support immediate warfare when you are the strongest with your early units. Then typical Patronage and Piety route because I assume you will have many smaller cities at this stage. For research you want Iron and Wheel before you settle your 2nd and 3rd city (both production).

 

[ehrgeix]

Rome is just an average civilization. The UUs are not special but not terrible. Legions especially are pretty useful (skipping all swordsmen and running horsemen works, but archers + legions works even on deity). With the production bonus if you build a granary, monument and library in your capital you look at saving 60 hammers/city early. Convert that into 1.5 warriors (to later upgrade to legions), or most of an archer, and you can get some pretty good early military going while keeping your infrastructure up to date. Also useful later i/g for colosseums. They're no China or Babylon, but they're not America bad either. Very playable and it's totally possible to beat deity with them. If you're especially interested in the romans and want to have fun with them, you can definitely do so.

edit: If you're interested in getting the best out of legions you might want to consider running some early warriors that you later upgrade to legions, then longswordsmen, then riflemen. Even if horsemen are very good, riflemen are definitely much scarier than knights if you beeline for them, and having drill 3 when you get the initial rifleman upgrade is awesome. The honor double xp policy helps with this but does not necessarily synergize well if you're more into building empires than wars.

 

[Thry]

Keep in mind that the romans have the only UU who can build roads and forts.

 

[Gaizokubanou]

The road/fort build ability is very underwhelming though, since roads cost money and both take too long to build to be timely...

Instead of ability to build forts, it would've been cool if they got like extra 10% bonus while fortified or something along that line.

 

[qyll]

Actually, both the Legion and Ballista are great compared to their normal counterparts. The problem is that the game currently favors horsemen in the extreme so the Roman units can't really shine. I can tell from first-hand experience that defending against an army that features three or four legions is pretty hard so if/when horsemen become more balanced, you should see an increase in "Rome is really strong" posts.

Yep. Right now, horsemen are superior to swordsmen in every way except upgrade path. Horsemen come at an earlier and cheaper tech, they're stronger, they move faster, and they can move after they attack. Once horsemen are toned down a notch, Rome and Greece should be the go-to civs for early conquest.

 

[Thry]

The road/fort build ability is very underwhelming though, since roads cost money and both take too long to build to be timely...

Instead of ability to build forts, it would've been cool if they got like extra 10% bonus while fortified or something along that line.

You're forgetting that we're playing against an incompetent AI. Think of the possibilities if the AI was competent enough to wage a war.

 

[Bibor]

Tips for rome:
1. Have buildings made in Rome first and you'll get a 25% discount on making them elsewhere. This usually means designating another city for wonders and yet another one for units. It's a powerful bonus and basically means you can skip workshops (2g per city and lots of hammers saved).

2. Roman legions and Ballistae are a powerful combination (and will be extremely powerful once horsemen and Companion Cavalry get toned down) and you can use them well into the middle ages (waiting for Cannons to upgrade Ballistae is not uncommon).

3. The roman legion means you can use one worker less for every two you have. Also, the roman legion is the only unit that can dig itself in (a Roman legion fortified on a hill with a fort will have strength 26, slightly more than a Rifleman and a ballista will have str 8 meaning it can actually survive fighting contemporary units in melee).

4. Iron and horses (for Circuses and extra legions/ballistae) are your most important resources early game (trumping happiness ones even) because you can save up worker upkeep money with legions and build cheap Circuses in any city that works a horse resource. Extra ballistae means less or no archers (and in the long term very powerful and experienced artillery).

 

[Vordeo]

They're an average civ this time around, but really they were never likely to be as good as they were in Civ4, with the broken Praets.

Still a solid civ though.

 

[UncleJJ]

Tips for rome:
1. Have buildings made in Rome first and you'll get a 25% discount on making them elsewhere. This usually means designating another city for wonders and yet another one for units. It's a powerful bonus and basically means you can skip workshops (2g per city and lots of hammers saved).

I used Rome for my first Space Race which is a research and production race. That meant I was building and building in all my 6 main cities. The +25% bonus was huge and saved me thousands of hammers in total. But I don't agree about the workshop I built that in every city too, and the national wonder that releases. Stockmarkets and Research Labs both cost 600 hammers and the workshop and the Roman UA both helped speed those up, a 45% bonus is better than a 25% one. The space parts were rushed out in 4 different cities with factories, railroads and space factories during a golden age. The Space Race is now all about having buildings to boost the economy and production and Rome is very good at that.

2. Roman legions and Ballistae are a powerful combination (and will be extremely powerful once horsemen and Companion Cavalry get toned down) and you can use them well into the middle ages (waiting for Cannons to upgrade Ballistae is not uncommon).

The legionaries are good and worth building. I kept a couple around until the late game for the road and fort building ability. They had 30 exp from killing barbs and were ready for upgrade to mech infantry . But that brings me to another point. Upgrades have to go through each stage taking one turn each. So a ballista has to become a trebuchet before it can be a cannon so you may as well upgrade it as soon as you can aford it.

3. The roman legion means you can use one worker less for every two you have. Also, the roman legion is the only unit that can dig itself in (a Roman legion fortified on a hill with a fort will have strength 26, slightly more than a Rifleman and a ballista will have str 8 meaning it can actually survive fighting contemporary units in melee).

I found the road building very useful in the early game. My first war was against Songhai which was 9 hexes away from my second city. I had 2 legions and was building 2 more, so I sent my legions part building a road towards the Songhai. I had 6 tiles with 2 turns of road before the war started. After the war the road tiles only needed a few turns to spring into existance which saved a lot of gold at the expense of micro management.

 

[alpaca]

This thread actually inspired me to start a public game. Find the early game here (image-heavy thread)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=390302

 

[Bibor]

I used Rome for my first Space Race which is a research and production race. That meant I was building and building in all my 6 main cities. The +25% bonus was huge and saved me thousands of hammers in total. But I don't agree about the workshop I built that in every city too, and the national wonder that releases. Stockmarkets and Research Labs both cost 600 hammers and the workshop and the Roman UA both helped speed those up, a 45% bonus is better than a 25% one. The space parts were rushed out in 4 different cities with factories, railroads and space factories during a golden age. The Space Race is now all about having buildings to boost the economy and production and Rome is very good at that.

Oh I didn't know effects add up to 45%. It is indeed awesome.