Roman Empire

[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.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

Interesting post. Caesar is the best leader in the game IMO. He has the best UU, great conquering traits, and two of the best half price building available. I do disagree somewhat with the initial strategy since I don't think you are making the best use of expansive.

I like to beeline immediately to pottery and start cranking cottages/granaries. Then bronze followed by mysticism - priesthood. Then chop in the Oracle for IW (and stonehenge if I can get it). I think a direct IW sling is by far the best tactic with Rome. If you try to sling to COL or CS then you are not taking full advantage of Caesar's powerful UU and org trait. The early praetorians are simply unstoppable and conquering neighbors becomes ridiculuously easy if you have granaries set up to pop rush after an IW sling.

Shooting for an early religion might be worthwhile since it is on the way to priesthood, but I prefer to get pottery ASAP. I will be getting COL from my prophet anyway so the religion will most likely be taken care of (if not just conquer a holy city). COL is the next priority so you can gain the benefits of half price courthouses. Also, I would never go for the pyramids with Caesar (it justs wastes valuable conquering time). Once you get COL just start smashing your neighbors - don't wait for catapults as praets can do it by themselves.

By the way, in my games I usually make liberalism more of an early priority. I will research within 1 turn of completion and delay as long as possible, but I always have to grab it well before infantry.

[cynyck]

You summed it up quite well PPw, that is the strat in a nutshell. There is no better leader for a pure domination win, for sure. And it is a fun game.

The only thing that comes close for me, in terms of fun, is Huayna. Quecha with cover and city raider to crush one or two neighbors and then have three of your first four or five cities being starting cities is plenty of fun. Since the UU is pretty much outdated by that time, its nice to have financial to fall back on for the rest of the game.

[smak]

I find the early religion to be essential for many reasons:

1. The most important reason is to use great prophet to build the $ temple. This income is essential since you are about to absorb an entire civilization soon, allows you to maintain 100% research and a HUGE tech advantage throughout the game. Not to mention the ability to upgrade all of your bloodthirsty city attack 3+ praetorians with guns. I do generally pick up Pottery also to build cottages, usually after priesthood before I head for writing/alphabet. I do spam cottages in my first 3 cities sorta, but I first build 2 farms (3 if no special food resources) and mine all hills (the production is needed to keep the world wonder advantage in the first era, after that you can simply take their wonders.) the remaining tiles will be cottages as im constructing my road network. Dont forget the ability to add temples to any city who grows large enough to be unhappy.

2. Number two is the free happiness you gain. My strat calls for holding still at 3 cities to grind out applicable wonders and build the production base to allow a steady queue of praetorians and catapults. (I dont use catapults for my initial charge as I have just changed gears from researching alphabet to go get Metal Casting. You really do need Metal Casting for steady and exponential growth. In a standard newly conquered city I build granary, forge, courthouse in that order. Followed by a wonder if theres a forest present, barracks if not. You can use those workshops to basically build Mines in cities without hills/metal resources, this allows you to maintain the balance of 2 food tiles, 2 or more production tiles, and the rest cottages.

3. The early religion will spread itself to other civs, this increases your diplomatic relations with them allowing you to possibly get a gift tech as you smash the heathens to bits. Also means if you attack civ b, civ c who is your religion will have that bonus when you get the "you attacked my friend" negative. Makes it impossible for civ c to assist civ b against you if they are pleased with you. This becomes more important later when you target specific cities for religion founder enemies who may share a state religion with you and civ c.

4. You cannot ignore the power of increased culture. Initially its just 1 per turn from your state religion (making your new cities "ghetto creative" if you didnt have the stone or forests to support stonehenge. And after you wipe out a civ you will need the religious buildings to generate culture to push borders back against your (temporarily) peaceful neigbors.

(Hinduism is my favored since it lies before Organized Religion- provides second site for great prophet temple and 25%! construction bonus to buildings. Combine that with the forges you build before Courthouses and you can quickly set up the infrastructure for a growing empire.)

Religion, cash, happiness, diplomacy, and culture set aside for the moment... I disagree with the "Ironwork first, Code of Laws second" strategy.

Courthouses take a LONG time to build in newly aquired cities, and a long time to research. Time better spent going for Construction to build catapults for your second conquest. Time better spent getting alphabet before Mathmatics to trade for all the level 1 and 2 techs you skipped, and to trade for any last bit of brain juice before you invade next target...

I do get Code of Laws, after im starting to build catapults in my forges at a VERY high speed! The courthouse are needed after your initial loot starts to bleed 20 a turn from the 100% research we maintain after sacking 5-7 cities from the close civ.

I dont see the need to pop rush at all, since my cities are large, happy, and industrious its painless to grind out fresh shock troops in the normal build queue of 1 or 2 cities that arent building forge/courthouse/wonder at the moment.

Its true, if you do directly for ironworking you will come up against only archerers at first. But it slows your research down ALOT to not advance towards alphabet. You will not be able to keep research at 100% if you expand beyond 3 cities so early without $.

Another reason to delay the assault is to allow the enemy civ to grow in population and develop the land for you. The first city i take is their capitol and its usually over 7 population with farms and shiz built up for me. Even better are the roads everywhere the ai builds. That allows my workers to focus on cottages in my first 3 cities final tiles, and the special resources i can gather with the tech i got after alphabet trading.

If you like to attack FAST, just use bronze to make axemen and archery to defend what you take. I prefer attacking with overwhelming firepower and defending with praetorians. (8 str > 3 str + 75%)

[spammurabi]

I question your ability to grab Buddhism or Hinduism starting as the Romans and researching Bronze Working first. In my games (Prince and Monarch levels) they are both consistently founded before I can even finish with mysticism (if Mysticism is my 2nd tech) if I go BW first.

Still, though, most of the strategy is sound. Rome rules as an early warmongering empire builder. Praetorians are brutal.

[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.

[smak]

I went back and replayed the same settings, it seems you are correct about the initial 2 techs. But it does not slow you down one bit, ill explain.

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...)

[PaganPaulwhisky]

A couple of points:

1) I also question whether Hinduism can be founded in time on monarch +. It is a risky strategy and better to rely on COL (on lower levels it works fine).

2)

Courthouses take a LONG time to build in newly aquired cities, and a long time to research.

Not really. The courthouses are half price and rather cheap. They can be easily pop-rushed to speed construction.

3) Its true, if you do directly for ironworking you will come up against only archerers at first. But it slows your research down ALOT to not advance towards alphabet. You will not be able to keep research at 100% if you expand beyond 3 cities so early without $.

This is not a concern for me. I know my science will catch up after conquering more cities. In most of domination games, I have to drop my research to 40-50% and then recover. Organized makes this possible.

Besides it doesn't really slow the research that much since I will have long established cottages set up thanks to early pottery. My prophet will discover COL and then I can drive further research with scientists in my capital. I will easily be able to trade COL for any missing techs and then not have to give away alphabet.


5)

I dont see the need to pop rush at all, since my cities are large, happy, and industrious its painless to grind out fresh shock troops in the normal build queue of 1 or 2 cities that arent building forge/courthouse/wonder at the moment.

Again you are missing the power of the expansive trait. Sure it is not necessary to pop rush, but it is extremely useful. Since you will have the early granaries your cities will recover rapidly. Pop rush to avoid unhappiness or get crucial forges/courthouses faster or field a monster praet army with lightning quickness. It is a shame to ignore this tactic. This is what the expansive trait was built for IMO. Also works great with Genghis.

[Vynd]

Rome can often keep its research going at a reasonable speed despite expanding rapidly by using plundered cash from conquered cities. This works especially well if, like smak suggested, you let your target fatten up a bit instead of attacking as soon as you have the advantage.

Following this strategy I find that it isn't all that important to get a shrine going. Having religion can still be pretty important for happiness and culture reasons, especially since Expansive means you're liable to run out of happiness before you run out of Health. But it isn't necessary to found them yourself, let alone make getting a Prophet for a shrine a high priority.

[smak]

Just restarted on the same settings again,

Earth scenario, its a huge size map, set it to monarch and marathon. Playing rome.

by 1500 bc I had made stonehenge, pyramids, parthanon, and the oracle. Founded hinduism and judaism. And was starting to chop out a stack of praetorians to wipe out the germans.

Just got alphabet and was trading for low level techs i skipped. Since praetorians really dont need catapult support for a while its possible to go for code of laws before math and construction. But the army really takes shape with those catapults in there, allows you to quickly knock out defenses and weaken their stack before the praetorians sack the city.

Because i found a religion or two and have representation from pyramid i never have happiness problems. Why would you "pop rush" unless you are getting overwhelmed? It just seems to me like trading in a long term low interest loan for a short term loan with high interest...

I suppose if your only goal is to destroy everything, you can rush across the map with a stack. capture every city and slavery till its at 1 or 2 pop. leave undefended for barbarians to take.

I prefer capturing large cities and turning them into hammer factories, to grind out troops to continue the advance (or just clearcutting to make wonders). Lets face it, catapults die in this game. Until you get tanks they are the best way to trash enemy armies.

btw if you get a forge and heroic epic in a city its likely to make a catapult every 1 or 2 turns. That one city can keep your army moving forward.

I never said dont get code of laws, but your economy will be in much better shape if you fill your generic cities with cottages and get great prophet temples. If you are expanding large and fast you gotta make them anyway, to build the forbidden palace in the direction you are covering the globe.

one cottage can give ? 6 gold or so when maxed out. maybe 8 or so with techs later on. A single prophet temple can generate one gold for every city on the map. Its very effective on huge marathon games.

attempting to attack file...

[smak]

Here is a prince game, in this one i didnt found the religions. I think i did a more rapid attack. date on this save is 1700s and i stopped capturing cities. Started to nuke japan and raze cities as i finished space race. I was curious to see if i was gonna create a nuke winter before i blasted off. I flew away before 1800, leaving all of the japanese glowing or dead...

nm file is over 70000 bytes, wont fit.

[samspock]

I once played a game as Rome at prince level where I was able to found Hiduisim and Budisim after researching 5 other techs first! For some reason none of the ai's bothered going for them. It was quite a strange game.

It was a normal sized pangea map with the deafult number of civs.

[smak]

Maybe none of them started with mysticism and or werent spiritual traited.

Prince is definately easier than monarch though.

Emperor level the ai civs simply spread like the plague and spring up faster than barbarians do. I dont see how you can win a balanced playstyle in emp +.

You are forced to either be 100% agressive or 100% defensive. And defending wont work without extreme diplomacy skills if you hide out in 1 - 3 cities while they expand to 7-8.

[smak]

Testing pic, noob to this high tech stuffs...

[Yosho]

1) I also question whether Hinduism can be founded in time on monarch +. It is a risky strategy and better to rely on COL (on lower levels it works fine).

On monarch, anyone can found hinduism. The AI's always go for Buddhism first, and myst then polythesim is a lot cheaper then buddhism then polytheism.

Have not tried it on emperor, though, so I don't know about that.