Winning as Rome on a Huge World

[Arrian]

You really use horsemen heavily?

Yes, actually, I do. I used to use pure horseman rushes (nothing but horsemen: 25-30 of them). Now I mix my forces a bit more. But I remain a big fan of mounted units. Remember: horsemen aren't just 2.1.2 units. They are 2.1.2 units that upgrade to 4.3.2. units and 6.3.3. units! Sometimes better ones if you're playing say... China or Japan (big favorites of mine).

Taking on Carthage (or Greece) as Rome: I went in with a roughly 1:1 ratio of horse and legion. Roughly 15 each, I think. I think those were divided into to groups. The horsemen went in first. The hope was they would knock 1hp off a regular Num. Merc and then run away. To my surprise and wonder, that's what happened in most cases. It was great. Then I threw the legionaries at the hurt Mercs, and typically won (4hp legionaries vs. 2hp Mercs... advantage: legonaries).

I don't look at specific cities and decide what I need to take them. I build the biggest force I can muster and keep it concentrated in 1-2 groups. I take a city, put my troops in it and wait until they are healed (1-2 turns). Meanwhile, resistance should be quelled. I will either rush a spearman or bring one from home to garrison the city, and then my attack force will move to the next target. Concentrate your forces. The AI doesn't, and thus cannot properly counter a human invasion. Every non-capitol AI city will have the same garrison (on Regent, it's probably 1 spear/1 acher or 2 spear/1 archer. Outliers have less, "core" cities may have more. The capitol probably has 3-4 spears and an archer).

How to properly engage the enemy. First, assemble your forces on the border. Position them such that the horsemen can attack the city directly if possible (1 move, then attack). If you can't, so be it. Declare war and march in. Keep your horsemen and legionaries together at first. Keep to good defensive terrain if possible (forest, jungle, hills, mountains). If this is early in the war and you therefore have a goodly number of horsemen, you may wish to launch your attack with them then next turn (still out of range for the legionaries). If you have the numbers, you will take the city w/o legionary assistance. I will do this if I am march up an enemy road (with legionaries as cover, I'm not as worried about good defensive terrain for my guys... 3 defense is hardcore). You don't get the road bonus while it's in enemy territory, but if you horsemen take the city, it's now in YOUR territory, or in neutral territory, and your legionaries get the road bonus, allowing them to move in and protect the newly conquered city.

Otherwise, I must march my stack of troops up next to the AI city, making sure my attack will not have to cross a river (+25% defense). Again, horsies first, legions to finish wounded enemies.

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

So, 15 horsemen and 15 legions. How many enemy cities are we talking about here?

[vmxa1]

As Dave said you need to have a barracks in order to upgrade a unit that you other wise have the tech and resources for building.
I cranked up a game to your specs (btw I am unhappy with you for choosing huge) and ran into two big problems 1- no iron 2- no lux.
So if you have unhappiness, you want to hook up as many luxs as you can and have marketplaces in the bigger cities. In my case that could not be done for the longest time, so I was forced to use entertainers (or slider). For a long time, I was able to avoid it by cranking out settlers and workers to hold the pop down.
You will have to keep an eye on cities that are size 5, as when they go to 6, you will have unrest, if you do not have luxs, even with a temple. Once you get other happiness structures, then you can avoid it (coll/cath).
I am sorry I did not understand prob #2.
Issue three is really a matter of experience. You will learn to judge the timing and likelyhood of attacks.
I would have been moving horses forward all along to the borders that are the primary targets. Built barracks there and hopefully forstalled attacks, certainly by weak sisters. I can not make the UU, since no iron, but if I could I would not use them in the defense if I did not want the GA. I would expect to have made it to Republic and maybe the next age before a war was triggered by someone else in a huge map. This would not be the case if I was on a small land mass, usually there is so much open land, no one start a ruckus early.
If I have switch to republic, I am fine with a GA here as I will be able to crank out units and smash the bad guy.

[vmxa1]

Wow by the time I got my post done, a bunch of responses had come in.

[Arrian]

Re: how big was Carthage when I attacked...

Not very. For some reason (perhaps they lost a settler team to barbs or something) they got off to a poor start, despite having a pretty nice capitol location. 8 cities, maybe 10. I took most of them. I left them with 1-2 cities, and mopped them up later.

Like I said earlier, however, it is my opinion that I got good combat luck during that campaign. It could easily have been much bloodier than it was.

However, the main thing with me using horsemen & swordsmen is that I typically have time to do serious damage with those guys in the ancient era. On a huge map, the distances involved may mean you can only really beat on one AI civ before the world enters the Medieval Age.

We need an experienced huge map player (Aeson, perhaps?) to chime in for reference.

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

vmxa1, why are you "unhappy" to find me playing on a huge world?

The larger, the better! The real world is huge, after all... and I just spent eight years playing on a large world (CivII). I need something to do for the next eight!

Seriously, though, can someone tell me the exact effect a marketplace has on a city linked to 1 or more luxury resources? Assume that the luxury slider is still set to 0% (i.e., all my wealth goes to taxes and science).

Arrian, I would love it if you would play a huge world for me as the Romans, just once. Your advice is stellar, but I do wonder if it holds water on a huge world. After all, this morning I conquered Carthage and destroyed Leptis Minor, but I was left with a huge Greece to contend with.

I will go home tonight, or tomorrow morning, and begin to incorporate some of strategies everyone has posted here, of course. Keep it coming, folks.

[Catt]

Originally posted by Yahweh Sabaoth
Seriously, though, can someone tell me the exact effect a marketplace has on a city linked to 1 or more luxury resources? Assume that the luxury slider is still set to 0% (i.e., all my wealth goes to taxes and science).

Marketplaces act as multipliers for luxuries once you have access to three diferent types. Assuming control (through actual control or trade) of 8 luxuries, a city without a mrketplace enjoys 8 happy-faces because of those luxuries. The same city with a marektplace enjoys 20 happy faces. The progression is as follows:

Luxury 1:
Luxury 2:
Luxury 3:
Luxury 4:
Luxury 5:
Luxury 6:
Luxury 7:
Luxury 8:

You can see this in the "luxury window" of any city's city view (the luxury window being in the bottom left-ish of the city view screen).

Catt

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Hey, wow, I can't believe that! I guess I just never noticed! So marketplaces can act without the luxury slider but with luxury resources to increase happiness! Well, bring on the marketplaces I guess!

Can anyone verify Catt's math? Not that I don't trust you, Catt, I just want to double-check.

[Arrian]

Yes, Catt is correct. Luxuries are incredibly powerful when teamed with marketplaces.

Your advice is stellar, but I do wonder if it holds water on a huge world

So do I, but not enough to play a huge world game It would take too long. I like the pace of standard map games. I like the balance of standard map games (8 civ, 8 luxuries). Huge maps are too much for me, sorry.

-Arrian

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Ah well, I shall try your horseman/legion combination strategy sometime soon and report back.

Any other thoughts from everyone?

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Yahweh Sabaoth
vmxa1, why are you "unhappy" to find me playing on a huge world?

I am not unhappy to find you playing on huge, only that I had to run a game to match your settings and I hate those huge maps. I had to fired up a huge map as I had not played one in so long, that I needed to get a refresher. I am a nut that must finish whatever I start and I was not sure the victory conditions so I went with mine (Dom/Conq only). No short cuts for space or UN.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Good lord man... I wouldn't even dream of attempting and conquest or domination victory on a huge map. I generally win a cultural victory, or if push comes to shove, the space race.

Hey, who knows? Maybe the Romans will be my first domination victory. Help me make the dream come alive people!!!

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Saved Games

Alright, some one asked for this (Arrian I think), so here you go... hope this isn't overkill...

These saved games are all on the same settings: Regent level, max. # of civs, huge map, roaming barbarians, 4 billion yrs, temperate, continents. Cultural linking on. All victory conditions allowed.

As I'm not quite sure how to upload multiple files to this site, I'm going to chop this up into many small messages instead of one large one. Sorry for the inconvience!

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Contemptible Rome.SAV

Thrilled with discovering Egypt with my veteran archer early in the game, I spent most of the game building archers or settlers and wiping out Egypt. I did so, but at the cost of severe unhappiness throughout my empire, presumably caused by the duration of war and the many sneak attacks I launched as well. The Roman economy is poor and the empire is slightly behind in terms of tech. I wasted 2 elite and 6 veteran archers on an attack on a German city surrounded by incense (Hamburg, I think). The Germans block me to the North, but the real threat are the Celts, with whom I'm at war currently.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Glorious Rome

This is a game I haven't played in months. I launched a bloody war against the Persians and Arabs that left me with a large empire with many luxury resources, but behind everyone in tech. To my south are powerful Zulu, Ottoman and Babylonian states. I am at war with the Babylonians. I control 4 luxury resources, but they aren't even connected to my capital. My infrastructure is pathetic. I don't think I yet used my legionaries, however, so I might still have a GA in the wings.