Rome II

[Gusington]

They look to be kind of a paper tiger in my game too and already at war with another faction...hmm...I feel like I am on the verge of cracking the game open.

[mikeck]

Gus, just so you know, once you unlock legionaries and you build the barracks for them, you will see arrows on you soldier icons in the army view. If you click on the icon, it brings up options (like disband). One will be "retrain". If you select that, it will retrain your Hastati or whatever into a legionary

[mikeck]

Btw, how does army supply work? Why would I be out of supply? Enemy territory?

[Bison]

Btw, how does army supply work? Why would I be out of supply? Enemy territory?

Well you'll see it mostly if the army's city states are either captured or occupied by rebels.  I've also see in when you are in enemy territory where you have no home cities to provide the % of reconstitution you see when you hover over your food icon in the mini-map especially during sieges.

[Nefaro]

what does the red skull icon over the army mean?

FWIW a skull appeared over armies in bad terrain/weather in ETW and NTW, so I'm wondering - attrition?

Yes, as mentioned it means the army is suffering attrition.

You can find out the exact reason why by selecting the army and pointing at one of the units' skull symbols, in the top left of it's card.  A tooltip will pop up telling you the reason it is suffering attrition.  You'll need a spy nearby to check out the enemy army, of course.

When I was seeing all those enemy armies standing around near their cities, with red skulls over their heads, the reason has always been because the faction wasn't making enough income to pay their upkeep.  So they'd stand around and waste away to nothing.  I don't think the AI ever disbands any, if this happens.  As someone mentioned earlier, it's probably due to that faction losing a region or two and their monthly income dropping.  This tanked income problem also likely has something to do with the AI generally becoming inactive on the campaign side, because it no longer has any income due to the presently too large army knocking the income down to zero.  No income.

Btw, how does army supply work? Why would I be out of supply? Enemy territory?

I see attrition pop up in certain areas, by default, when it's bad terrain.  I suppose this is the supply issue?

It generally happens when you park your army in swamp or desert terrain at the end of a turn.

[Nefaro]

Gus, just so you know, once you unlock legionaries and you build the barracks for them, you will see arrows on you soldier icons in the army view. If you click on the icon, it brings up options (like disband). One will be "retrain". If you select that, it will retrain your Hastati or whatever into a legionary

It will also have an arrow indicator if you build one of the bonus armor/weapons buildings, and allow you to buy the upgraded equipment for each one.  ;)

[Nefaro]

On the flip side, Roman Generals who were Consuls didn't hold their positions for more than a year. To be Consul five times would be something of a record. With other nations, well I'm not sure how you'd justify it.

Didn't Marius get it.. six times?

There were some others that had it more than once, but the general rule was that they couldn't hold them consecutively.  Until Marius broke that mold, of course.

The regularly dying generals is a bit of a problem.  I've had a few that lasted into their 60s, but many of them die earlier.  Assassination attempts usually end up just wounding them, but perhaps some of the "natural causes" ones were just successful assassination attempts?  Your other political factions within your own State attempt assassination on you quite regularly, which gets tiresome.

[JudgeDredd]

I just upgraded my system to this...

Intel Core i5 4670K 3.40GHz Socket 1150 6MB Cache Processor
Asus Z87-K Socket 1150 HDMI DVI D-Sub 8-Channel HD Audio ATX Motherboard
Kingston 8GB DDR3 1600MHz HyperX Genesis PnP Memory
SanDisk 120GB Extreme SSD
Seagate 2TB Barracuda Internal Hard Drive
MSI HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 DVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Graphics Card
Iiyama Prolite X2377HDS 23" IPS Panel LED HDMI Monitor

Will it run Rome II?  ;D

Just kidding...but I did build a new system yesterday with the above components - and my average FPS for the game using the benchmark tool went from 25 on my old system to 65 on this. It was amazing! I'm one happy bunny!

[undercovergeek]

good skills, now get in, start as carthage and get killing the romans

[Gusington]

Thanks Mike. I actually squealed like a little girl when I saw that I was a few turns away from getting the legionaries. With the economy and morale coming together I will soon be ready to take on some larger powers and maybe even go campaigning beyond the Med.

[MengJiao]

I tried that and it didn't stick...no units went anywhere. I must have missed a step. If I get it right I am going to possibly move in for the kill on Syracuse and then on to...Carthage, if the time is right. Maybe Eprius. Obviously I need to think it through more :)

You get the green arrow on the transfer candidates and then you hit the check mark for them to do the transfer.

[MengJiao]

Well, I fought it again, this time he formed up and moved around my left flank.

  I did some refighting because (as Easy Egypt) I was going downhill so fast that I could not afford to lose another battle and city and army.

  The Cyrenians would come in rowing fast on the strategic map.  I would set up my 4 forces (two armies,one troop garrison and one garrison fleet) and the Cyrenians would come in and trounce them with Egyptian Infantry (high morale, phalanx-able).  The battles were lengthy and pretty elaborate.

   It turned out the best way to stop them was to hit them at sea with a small fleet.  They were in the "row hard" (negative mods) state at that point and a small force of small ships firing burning missiles into the transports inflicted enough loses to turn them back.  So in that alternative universe (upon which I later built the Easy Egyptian Empire) the battles on land never happened.  What struck me was that the AI was a very good judge of when it had enough strength to attack and it was a close judgement because just a few burning transports was the difference (in the AI's -- probably totally correct -- judgement).  and that is in the vanilla game.

[Sir Slash]

Another big patch/update today from Steam. Didn't get the details before it installed. I had a hell-of-a-time getting on Steam this am, a very long wait.

[MengJiao]

Another big patch/update today from Steam. Didn't get the details before it installed. I had a hell-of-a-time getting on Steam this am, a very long wait.

  It's a mystery.  Steam itself was updating itself yesterday and then there is this (patch 1.5 in beta):



    http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/88210-Patch-1.5-in-BETA-Today?s=b6ecc3c77d4e06dd394bfa79502cb50e

[Nefaro]

Another big patch/update today from Steam. Didn't get the details before it installed. I had a hell-of-a-time getting on Steam this am, a very long wait.

Really?  A big one?  I don't have anything listed in my downloads for Steam today, other than a Don't Starve patch. 

I'd surely notice if it downloaded because the a stinking 22MB patch takes 45 minutes to download on their PoS.  F'ing Steam client.  >:(   Guess I'll restart it and hope that it doesn't take forever to get back in.