Rome II

[undercovergeek]

ha - the opposite of my game, to north was Kirtli and another guy - forget their name and i traded with these and had non aggression pacts. This sealed the north and i went south to Parthia and all her Satraps, just cleared them all out - the whole lot are dead and subjugated..........

but half way through i lost contact with Kertli and saw that the Hoardes of the Steppe were indeed battering through the North, and they were angry with me, red face - no deals to be done. Checked the reasons for our hate and it was because i had pacts with Kertli. Couldnt sign a pact with the Hoarde so let them be for a while. In the meantime i swung east after Persia fell and started to come up from the South to finish off Parthias last allies. Happened to be checking the diplomacy screen and realised the Hoardes were on my border but were green now, theyd killed Kertli and all the reasons for our hate was dead - non agrression alliance and passage through Armenia.....

This was a big mistake as they were at war with Parthia and her allies too, i ended up having to race them to Parthian cities before they could take them - i lost once and nearly twice. So my whole southern kingdom has a big ass Hoarde province in the middle of it stopping the unity bonus. To the east they were almost about to take Bactria, but i had 3 spies with 12.5% troop destruction skills on 'poison the supplies' in range. On the eve of their attack, even though they were my friends, i attacked their camp 3 times and reduced their numbers by 36% without been seen, they called off the attack and i moved in and kicked Bactrias ass.

Needless to say the Hoarde is next which involves me going North and then west and then on through Dacia and into Anthonys Greece, i want Athens and Sparta back!

[Jarhead0331]

So I put Rome II down for awhile and just came back to it now that it is at Emperor's edition.  Is it just me, or is this game a whole hell of a lot harder?

[undercovergeek]

yup, AI is beefy and i feel resources are lower than they used to be

[Jarhead0331]

yup, AI is beefy and i feel resources are lower than they used to be

Not only that, but battles are real slug fests. They seem to last much longer and the AI is much harder to break. Seems like the morale values have been seriously adjusted.

[Sir Slash]

I had an interesting battle last pm as the Germans vs the Catairoi out by the Black Sea. Their army was made up almost of Steppe Archers and a few infantry. What are my infantry-heavy, forest-loving Germans going to do out in the open space against Steppe Archers? Well what worked pretty well was a first line of spear units in Shieldwall formation, missile units in the second line-- slingers and a ballista, and sword and shield units in the third, with my 3 cav. well to the rear. The Shieldwall minimized the archers fire effect and when they came closer, my missile units rained death upon them. If they got too close, my units with the Rapid Advance ability ran out to grapple with them and then used their Counter Cav. ability to make short work of them. Mostly they just stayed out of reach but by using 2 lines of infantry alternating between shieldwall and Rapid Advance, I was able to herd them into position where my guys could get to melee and then they melted like snow on the Black Sea steppes. 40+ Minutes later I had a very hard-fought and costly victory in which I lost more men than the enemy did. But hell, I'll take it against the fancy horsey men.

[Gusington]

Sounds like the EE is set to make me cry now. Unless you all just suck all of a sudden.

[jomni]

I'm still having a hard time controlling my economy and happiness.. what's the trick? And I had negative food all of a sudden. :/


And an intersting thing happened, I lost a province to rebels amd they set up their own faction,  but one of the peace terms is to become my client state.  Well I'm not complaining.   I appreciate the added income and less empire management problems.  His army also engages rebels for me. :)

[Gusington]

The secret is in building and settlement management. Balance.

[LongBlade]

The secret is in building and settlement management. Balance.

+1

You may upgrade a building that has a -8 on food. But the building may take six turns before it comes online. So it may look like you're good on food, so you upgrade another building at -8. And maybe another.

All of a sudden (ten turns later) you're out of food.

The first thing I like to do in this situation is pull up the provinces tab in the lower right. Look at all provinces and make sure their happiness is moving up. Then I look to see who is in the green as far as food production.

Some provinces simply don't produce much food. Others do. You can have a few of the former, but need lots of the latter.

Also, don't forget that you can destruct buildings that aren't useful any more. Your core provinces may be necessarily dedicated to troop production, but 100 turns later and five provinces in hand, go back and disassemble those - turn them into food and/or commercial buildings. You probably won't need to create a ton of troops way back at your home base after a certain time.

See if those tips don't help.

[jomni]

Thanks looks like I have to stop fighting and re-engineer my empire before the next push.

[Gusington]

Also, don't overlook religious buildings, whatever your religion is. They can become outdated and really be a drag on your production.

[Nefaro]

Food.

Public Order.

Your Culture.


Keep those things in the positive. 

If you want to put up a new building but it's Public Order penalty will put that settlement into the negative, you better think about improving another building in the province that gives an equivalent PO boost beforehand.  For example.  There are a few different building types that can give PO bonuses, but it's mostly Religious and Public (yellow, such as amphitheaters) buildings where most of it comes from.  Religious buildings are great because some can produce both PO and Culture, while the yellow ones usually produce PO and wealth (good idea if Culture isn't much of an issue there).

If you don't have enough Food, a few bad things happen.  Your armies will begin to slowly starve and soldiers drop every turn.  You'll get a Public Order penalty empire-wide.  It's bad stuff.  Whereas having a surplus gives you bonus happiness and troop replenishment rates.  So get as much surplus food supply as you feasibly can!  Even if you don't care about the food surplus bonuses, you will definitely end up using some of that extra food supply for improved buildings later on.  Getting ahead on food is usually the first building priority when I start a game, with Public Order coming in at nearly the same priority since you have a little time buffer before PO gets really bad, if in the negative.  The green food production buildings are what you want for these.  I tend to stick with straight-up Farms since they produce the most food per building slot.  Then research the Farm upgrades when it gets tight later on.

If the province's Culture is sliding towards one other than your own, you will slowly get an increasing Public Order penalty.  Notably so if your culture is the minority.  So check the province status screen to see which way this is trending and keep it increasing, or breaking even if you have a vast majority there.  Religious buildings mostly give Culture "Influence" bonuses.


Extra Tip:
Don't be afraid to switch over to domestic research to improve empire-wide Public Order bonuses and Food Production building techs after your first few military tech upgrades.  I'd rather fight on with tech 1 & 2 military units in the early game than have serious food and public order problems causing various issues (lower taxes, revolts, bad events, army attrition, etc, etc).  Get your empire administration a boost early and it can save a lot of headache along with squeezing out some extra taxes, replenishment, etc.  The empire-wide Public Order bonus techs, along with PO-producing buildings, can be a great boon for expanding more quickly since the PO bonuses can help offset the PO penalties for occupying captured cities, allowing you to march your troops out a bit faster later on.

[Martok]

I don't have as much as experience with the game as some, but I can definitely vouch for the importance of having a food surplus and keeping public order on an upward trend.  Planning ahead for building upgrades so that one or the other doesn't suddenly and/or catastrophically drop seems to be crucial. 

Gods, I'm such a slut for Pontus.  Started a new gam as them.  I really need to break out of my rut.  Maybe the Iceni?   


Incidentally, did anyone notice Armenia is playable in the main campaign as well (not just the IA campaign)?

Pontus was my favorite game thus far.

If you like their mix, I'd also recommend Egypt because it also has a mix of Alexandrian and native troop types.  Not so much the Eastern cavalry types but some unusual locals nonetheless.  There used to be a spending issue with some of the minor factions near Egypt; single city factions would build multiple full armies and still be economically fine.  But I saw fixes for that mentioned in patch notes a couple months ago.  So should be gtg.

Thanks for the recommendation, Nefaro.  Are they the same eye-roll-worthy "Hollywood" Egyptians that we saw in the original RTW, or are they closer to the true Ptolemaic Kingdom this time around?  (I'll admit, fear of discovering them being the former is kinda what's kept me away from giving them a go in the first place.) 

yup, AI is beefy and i feel resources are lower than they used to be

Not only that, but battles are real slug fests. They seem to last much longer and the AI is much harder to break. Seems like the morale values have been seriously adjusted.

I believe I did read somewhere that units belonging to AI factions do now have better morale.  I fought a smaller battle (my first in this new Pontus campaign) yesterday against the Cappadocians, and they did seem to fight harder and longer than I thought they'd have been able to. 

[Martok]

Oh, and for anyone who's interested: 

[undercovergeek]

some sexy looking fire

is the Atilla map going to extend as far west as England then? or am i just getting tied up with the London association