Rise Of Rome Lemmings

[MINNJPN]

Playing Rise of Rome, Monarch, as the Romans. Your starting position has a half dozen cities on the mainland, and 1 island city that it shares with 2 Carth. cities. Rome is at war with the Carth. the whole game. I was going to take the 2 cities on the island early, but was blocked by superior Carth galleys(their only advantage). Throughout the next 60-70 turns the AI Carth would land 2- 4 units every other turn and attack the lone Roman city. The city had walls, and Legionaires with superior defence to anything Carth. had on offence, and the Legionaires were upgradable, which I did asap. The final tally for units defeated vs. units lost had to be 80 or so to 4. Any human player would have waited untill he/she had a dozen units and ransacked the city, but the AI would attck with 2-4 units, lose them, then do the same thing again and again. It is late in the game, I am at the gates of their capital, and ships keep dropping off units, and sending them to their doom. Anyone else encounter a situation where the AI keep repeating the same mistake over and over( I am sure it has happened often).

[Admiral PJ]

Try playing it on The highest game level.. The AI is slightly better there, though maybe too agressive. It may not be very good at using the New lock alliance system, where it can no longer sue for peace.. but has to stay stuck in a 'pointless' war.

[Chris Horscroft]

I just won Rise of Rome, Monarch level.

I moved legions from the mainland onto Sicily at the start, and captured the two Carthaginian cities in the opening moves. I did not allow my galleys to be caught by Carthage's fleet.

At the same time, I used second rate archery units embarked from near Rome, backed with one legion and captured Carthage's lone outpost on the northern mediteranean island.

A few turns later I shipped troops to the remaining Carthaginian island, and took both cities with minimal losses. At that point I engaged his fleet, using my galleys to prevent him from landing reinforcements to attempt recapturing the lost islands. Building a catapult or two helped by weaking his shipping.

Then it was a simple matter to march lots of troops through South France and Spain, and simultaneously invade at Carthago and across Gibralter. By game end, Carthage and Egypt were dead, I had captured Gaza from the Persians, and Rome had settled all of France, Ireland, and was picking off the remaining Celtic settlements in Britain.

The biggest factor was using diplomacy to get alliances with everyone against Carthage. The others will literally pay you all their cash, sometimes their maps, and all their workers to sign up with you against your foe. This also ensures that they have difficulty being bought by Carthage for use against you instead, so you get to fight one foe at a time. Right of Passage with Celts in the early stages is a big help in colonizing Spain!

The Greek Navy, added to the Roman one, (and with ocassional help from Persia!) will defeat Carthage at sea. Egypt will fall to Carthage, but will tie up his units in doing so. Carthages elephants come from near Hippo, which might be worth noting if you want to cut off those early on (I didn't - Hippo was Carthage's last home city to fall to Rome).

I didn't bother with wonders until the game was in the bag.

Based on this, I don't think the computer uses locked diplomatic states very well!