Winning as Rome on a Huge World

[Theseus]

Yahweh,

Previous posts on this thread have beeen excellent, in their own ways, and come from 'poly members that I totally respect.

But I disagree with all (Arrian, bear with me).

3a and 3d is a crux point... in my mind, these stats are meaningful up to Rifles and Cavs.

That is a long time.

Thus, we come to strength through number of units... fine. Floods of Legions are unstoppable.

Have a nice day.

[DaveMcW]

I agree with Theseus, floods of Legions are unstoppable. If you end up with too much cash from your golden age, disconnect your iron, prebuild some warriors, then reconnect and upgrade.

After you get a Great Leader and rush the FP you can switch to builder and go for cavalry or tanks or spaceship.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Theseus
Yahweh,

Previous posts on this thread have beeen excellent, in their own ways, and come from 'poly members that I totally respect.

But I disagree with all (Arrian, bear with me).

3a and 3d is a crux point... in my mind, these stats are meaningful up to Rifles and Cavs.

That is a long time.

Thus, we come to strength through number of units... fine. Floods of Legions are unstoppable.

Have a nice day.

Then what is the disagreement? I said they will not have trouble with acient units.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Well, all the advice so far is excellent in my opinion. I intended to come to work today (yes, I post from work, that's why I'm "warlord" and not "deity whose phone will get disconnected if he doesn't pay his bill soon") with several saves, all showing different things that can go wrong when playing as Rome, but I didn't have time, so forgive me and I will describe the games instead (and bring in the saves tomorrow).

BTW, I >always< have problems upgrading ANY unit as ANY civilization before I build Leo's Workshop. Does this happen to anyone else? I tried this morning... I had 3 warriors and about 500 gold, and tried to upgrade all:
"There is not a single warrior which can be upgraded!" I had iron working and iron, connected via road to my capital city.

ROME PROBLEM ONE:
Ok, life's grand. I've found a neighbor early in the game with my archer and have taken a capital city, say, Carthage, Thebes, you name it. I pursue the next city and destroy it, but still the enemy lingers on. I make peace so as to protect my workers in the field from marauding units, and then declare war and attack again. But after a while, even after crushing the civ in question, I find that unhappiness is a SEVERE problem throughout my entire empire.

ROME PROBLEM TWO:
Same as above, but worse: it's just me and the Greeks. I'm not surrounded by that many Civs, and hence, I'm neck-to-neck with the Persians (or someone) overseas.

ROME PROBLEM THREE:
My REX has made me a power to be reckoned with, but by overcompensating for lack of industry or culture by building as many cities as possible, my defenses are stretched thin. I am attacked by some jerk-off with a few swordsmen, and they take a border city. I fight back with my legionaries, trigger my GA too early, and take the city, but then are too far from the enemy to use my legionaries to full advantage.

ROME PROBLEM FOUR:
The Greeks and Carthaginians exist, PERIOD. If it's not one, it's the other.

If those Carthaginians weren't industrious, hey, no sweat. But that is a topic for a different thread.

Anyhow, I'll bring in those saves tomorrow, God willing. Keep this advice coming! It's all good!

[DaveMcW]

You need a barracks to upgrade...

The best way to deal with unhappiness is to capture or buy luxuries.

[vulture]

Originally posted by Yahweh Sabaoth

BTW, I >always< have problems upgrading ANY unit as ANY civilization before I build Leo's Workshop. Does this happen to anyone else? I tried this morning... I had 3 warriors and about 500 gold, and tried to upgrade all:
"There is not a single warrior which can be upgraded!" I had iron working and iron, connected via road to my capital city.

The unit also has to be in a city with a barracks before it can be upgraded.

ROME PROBLEM ONE:
Ok, life's grand. I've found a neighbor early in the game with my archer and have taken a capital city, say, Carthage, Thebes, you name it. I pursue the next city and destroy it, but still the enemy lingers on. I make peace so as to protect my workers in the field from marauding units, and then declare war and attack again. But after a while, even after crushing the civ in question, I find that unhappiness is a SEVERE problem throughout my entire empire.

War weariness doesn't disppear when you make peace, it merely doesn't get expressed. It slowly declines while you are at peace (I have a memory of reading somewhere that it takes 20 turns to disappear completely, but I don't know if that is true). If you declare war again before the peace treaty is up, you get a lot of the weariness back, plus an extra bit for being the one to declare war. Doing well in a war doesn't help you, as the presence of your units in enemy territory and engaging in battles all increase war weariness, and it never goes down while you are fighting. Fighting wars against different opponents in sequence is a little better. Better still is not to make peace too early, so you don't need to go to war within 20 turns.

ROME PROBLEM THREE:
My REX has made me a power to be reckoned with, but by overcompensating for lack of industry or culture by building as many cities as possible, my defenses are stretched thin. I am attacked by some jerk-off with a few swordsmen, and they take a border city. I fight back with my legionaries, trigger my GA too early, and take the city, but then are too far from the enemy to use my legionaries to full advantage.

Over-rexxing can get you in to trouble by inviting attack due to weakly defended cities. But in your case, although you lost a town, you got it back, so you're no worse off that before (minus a few gold stolen from you, plus possible loss of improvements) but you're still better off than if you'd not built the city in the first place. The only real problem you have is wasting the GA in despotism.

As a general rule, try not to expand beyond you ability to defend yourself, because you almost certainly will get attacked. Due to the way corruption works, expanding a little more slowly (once you've got your first 4 or 5 cities down quickly) will good military support will leave you behind in score, but in real power terms you'll still be up there with the best of them.

ROME PROBLEM FOUR:
The Greeks and Carthaginians exist, PERIOD. If it's not one, it's the other.

If those Carthaginians weren't industrious, hey, no sweat. But that is a topic for a different thread.

Anyhow, I'll bring in those saves tomorrow, God willing. Keep this advice coming! It's all good!

Play with cultural linking off

But with good defensive civs, there is a lot to be said for picking your fights very carefully. Make sure not to attack towns on hills or behind rivers. Aviod ones with city walls. Pillage lots, attack settler teams, try and kidnap workers, raze small, badly defended towns. You won't get any obvious benefit from this, but the damage it does to the other civs, without ever really havingn to fight them head on, is quite powerful, as you notice when you have 10 good cities and they still have 5 useless ones, no money and no techs. Kill them later when you have the chance to build up an overwhelming military to get past their good defenses.

[Arrian]

First off, upgrading:

You need a barracks and the appropriate resource connected. Thus, if you have a bunch of warriors you want to upgrade to Legionaries, you need to stick them in a city (or cities) that have barracks (you should be building those all over the place anyway - regular units are a waste) and you need to connect iron. Then you can upgrade. 800 gold will get you 20 legionaries. I still suggest some horsemen to soften the enemy before you throw your legions into the fray, though.

ROME PROBLEM #1:

It sounds like the civ you are hitting early on is "repopping" You can wipe a civ out, but if there is enough empty land around, it will pop back into existance with free units, gold and tech. Take advantage of it if you can: making peace right when this happens can get YOU free gold, tech and a worker.

Second, unhappiness could be based on 2 different things: 1) "stop the aggression vs. our mother country" and 2) "give peace a chance!" Clicking on your unhappy people in the city screen will tell you, actually. Solutions to "stop the aggression" : 1) starve captured cities to size 1 or build workers until they are size 1 and then allow it to grow normally - all new citizens will be Roman. 2) make peace, wait a while (20 turns should reset it) and then wipe them out quickly. Don't let them linger: make sure you get them. On a huge map, it may be best to wait so you and the other civs can settle the land so there will not be a repop. Solutions to "give peace a chance!" : this can only be an issue under Republic or Democracy. If you plan to do lots of fighting, go for Monarchy. No war weariness to worry about - just keep on fighting! Grind your enemies down under the red tide. Otherwise, you must fight short, decisive wars, punctuated by longish periods of peace (20 turns again, should reset WW. Gaining luxuries in war and building happiness related wonders of the world will also help, of course).

Problem #2 is tough: not much you can do but hunker down and fight later. Harrass the Greeks early (nail a settler team if you can) to stunt their growth, and then take them out with Knights. Aim to build a FP manually dead center in the continent, so that later on you can rush your palace on another continent if you wish. Go for a Cavalry invasion of the outside world. Select your target based upon how many luxuries they have relative to how strong they are (a weak civ with 2 or more luxuries should give you a mental image of a bullseye).

Problem #3: Do not allow your military to become too weak while expanding. It's tough to balance expansion with defense, but you need to do it in order to avoid the situation in question. I would urge you to have a mobile defense force of horsemen so that you can fight off random sneak attacks without your legionaries.

Problem #4: well, playing with Cultural linking on deals you those cards. It's a PitA, but hey, the real Romans had some issues with those guys too.

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Originally posted by DaveMcW
You need a barracks to upgrade...

See? The things you learn! That's why after I build Sun Tzu's I can upgrade (that's generally when I do it). Well, guess I'll invest in a barracks from now on.

Anyone have any ideas re: build order for cities?

Recently, I've been doing archer, settler, archer, settler, etc., until it's time to build, and then I do temple, spearman, library, spearman, with a worker thrown in here or there... any contradictions? agreements?

[Arrian]

Hah! Crosspost with Vulture!

Theseus,

A flood of legionaries may be unstoppable (if you have enough numbers), but that doesn't make it optimal. Legionaries are slow, and we are talking about a huge map here. Therefore, a combination of legionaries and horsemen strikes me as better (I still think that's true on standard maps, though).

-Arrian

[Arrian]

BUILD VETERAN UNITS!!! This means barracks. Sure, your first few exploration/garrison units will be regulars... and frankly, it's the attack troops that most need to be veterans.

3-4 warriors or 1-2 warriors & an archer from Rome for exploration and/or messing with neighbors. Then either a granary or a settler, depending on your starting terrain (definitely a granary if you do not have food bonuses... hell, even with them it's useful. ESPECIALLY with a lake or river so you can get over size 6. Especially on a huge map).

What happens next depends on lots of things. If you're alone with the Greeks, then you will most likely play a relatively peaceful early game. Temples, Courthouses, Libraries, Marketplaces, Aqueducts. Some barracks, some troops, to ward off the evil, opportunistic, Alexander (calls himself "the Great" or somesuch thing...).

If you have lots of neighbors and want to take a shot at serious early warfare... well, screw temples & libraries. Cities, Barracks, Units, KILL. Period. Priorities include death, destruction, trying to capture cities intact (over size 1 or having any culture in them), and the generation of great leaders. You're militaristic, so your units should get promoted to elite at a good clip. Protect those units... use them in battles you're relatively sure they will win... a Great Leaders early in the game are immensely powerful. If you get one, your first priority should be a well-placed Forbidden Palace (or a Palace move, if manually building the FP near your original start location makes more sense. See the FP+Palace Placement thread). Conquer as much as you can, but if things bog down, make peace and start stockpiling horsemen to upgrade to kights for the final kill.

If you are going the war route, get the key military techs (Bronze, Iron, Wheel, HBR - although you may wish to delay this some for chariot -> horseman upgrading) and then beeline for Monarchy. You can trade things like Polytheism to the AI civs usually, since they typically research up the writing - code of laws - philosophy route. This will keep you close in tech, while you stockpile gold for upgrading. Researching toward Monarchy at 10% science (or even simply making 1 citizen into a scientist) will make you quite a bit of gold, and you cannot research slower than 1 tech/40 turns. If 100% research gets you a tech in 30 turns, and 10% research gets it in 40 with a surplus of 20 gold per turn... I know which I'd choose!

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Whoa! I had no idea about the clicking on the unhappy folks. Good lord, that will answer a lot of my questions...

As for cultural linking, yes, well, the Romans DID have those problems, and I'm playing as the Romans not for personal gain, but to recreate the historical conditions, WITHOUT the flood of Germans into my borders of course, so I'll leave it on.

Well, I'm going to attempt to summarize what has been said so far:

* Don't try to take out the Carthaginians or Greeks utterly. Instead, harrass them, attack workers, settler teams, and maybe border cities, to keep them weak and extract techs and gold from them.

* Don't use legionaries on their own. Use them in conjunction with horsemen. Or bypass them altogether.

* Don't overexpand. Overexpanded empires will leave you weak, and Rome's role is the conquer, not settle (as much as other civs, that is).

* Build at least one barracks and upgrade your units rather than building new ones.

Which leads to the following questions:

* What are your harrasment tactics? What units do you use? How far afield do you venture?

* What is the best army arrangement for attacking civs prior to Chivalry? When do you start building this army?

* How many cities do you build?

* When do you build your barracks(es)? Do you put your ancient cities on wealth rather than build new units?

Keep it coming, boys and girls!

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Hmmm, interesting warmongering thoughts Arrian.

Would you say that, following this cruel and barbarous route, it's worth your time to venture out of the way to research Literature and build the great library? Or should every city be hell-bent on the war machine?

(despite my mocking language, I do see the value in the latter viewpoint. I often wonder if my top-producing city is better off producing an endless stream of military units, or building a wonder such as GL or HG)

[Arrian]

Yahweh,

Regarding building the GL... well, frankly, the absolute best thing would be to capture the GL. But other than that... once you have the key military techs and have gotten to Monarchy (and switched over), you should be beating on other civs. Hopefully, you will be able to knock them down to a few cities and extort their tech for peace. This may give you literature. A handy great leader can give you the GL. But remember: the Forbidden Palace is the most important wonder in the game. With an early, relatively well-placed FP, you don't NEED the GL. Not that it isn't nice to have...

Prior to extorting tech from your victims, you don't have tech to build anything but temples, barracks, maybe walls, maybe granaries, and units. Thus, there are no distractions. I actually use this to prevent myself from switching my productive cities over to things like libraries when I really need them to be pumping out reinforcements. Only when you figure you have your opponents beaten and are pretty sure you can finish them with units you have available do you switch production to peaceful things.

As for the questions in your prior post... numbers are hard for me to gauge since I play almost exclusively on Standard size maps, on Monarch level. Basically, I expand until I feel like any new cities I build will be 1-shield cities (due to corruption) for a looong time. Then I stop all expansion, build barracks all over the place and start pumping out units. Those units are typically warriors and chariots. On my normal settings, I'm trying for roughly 20 horsemen and 10 or so swordsmen. That requires 800 gold (400 for the horsemen, 400 for the swordsmen). But it allows me to use my meager shield output to field a huge (in comparison to the map size) army.

On a huge map, distance is more of a concern... so roadbuilding toward the civs you want to fight is much more important.

Harrassment tactics... it's just opportunism. If I see a worker I can grab, I may do it. If an AI settler team (warrior/settler) wanders next to me, and is on flat ground where I have a decent chance of winning, I may hit it. Provided I win, my warrior rests up and then goes and breaks any terrain improvements he can before getting killed. The workers beeline for home. Doesn't always work. Works better, of course, with an archer, but those are more expensive. It's a gamble, make no mistake. Well, the settler team thing is, grabbing a worker that is just inside their borders isn't really. You get a slave, they lose a worker (usually their only one, and they're bad about replacing them) and you may kill a unit or two and break stuff before dying. Hell, you may even survive. Peace should be favorable to you.

Do you put your ancient cities on wealth rather than build new units?

I almost NEVER use wealth. Wealth is a waste. Build units, build improvements, build damn near anything. But not wealth. Especially pre-economics (I think it's econ that improves the rate at which shields are converted to gold from 1/8 to 1/4).

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Oh - one other thing I generally do is try to build the Colossus. On a Standard map, one usually doesn't have to go far to hit the coast, meaning you will usually have a decent spot to build it. It's a small investment (200 shields, IIRC) and boosts my commerce during my military buildup stage, when my main objective is to prebuild a large army and upgrade it - which requires cash. On a Huge map, this probably doesn't work, since you may be nowhere near the coast. Plus, the boost you get from it will be proportionally much less than the impact on a Standard map.

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Hmmm, I'll have to give this a shot. I would worry about money being an issue when it's time to upgrade, but then again, the Romans never seem short on that... except after fighting vicous, unhappiness-inducing wars.

So, tell me Arrian, you don't REALLY start fighting wars until Chivalry comes around, do you? You really use horsemen heavily?

If so, give me an idea of how many you would use, along with what and how many of other units, when assaulting the following cities:

1. A just-built Greek/Carth. city with one hoplite/NM

2. A size 3 French/Ottoman/you name it city with one visible spearman, and who knows what else.

3. Same as above, but size 6.

4. Thebes, Babylon

5. Berlin, Entremont

6. Carthage, Athens

Of course, I know not all cities are the same in every game. But I've noticed similarities, especially among capital cities.

Thoughts?