Bribing works great with other Roman factions, because you get to keep their armies (except their faction-specific elite units, but those are rare anyway), they don't just disband like those of other factions.

I don't know if the Egyptians are still in the game and how strong they are, but one word of advice: don't underestimate them. They're by far the hardest faction to conquer...I think I speak for everyone here when I talk of nightmares of chariot archers, constant rebellions and seemingly endless supplies of (strong) armies walking out of the desert.

A tip for conquering the Egyptians: Build a few full-stack armies and land in Egypt itself. Blitzkrieg is the way to go.
How are you doing with the senate J? Do they still like you or has the fear already set in?

I think Egyptians are the third most powerfull faction in my game, after brutii and myself. Not 100% sure, i'm not following the politics that much.

I think i'm doing fairly well with senate, although my popularity dropped last turn, haven't checked where i'm standing now. But they shouldn't complain, i've done most of their missions.

And i think as long as brutii are a match for me, they won't be too worried that i'm outgrowing them (i guess).

Should play now, but i've got tons of other stuff to do. Less fun like grocery shopping and ironing and such

I think the Senate will eventually go crazy on your ass anyway, no matter how strong the brutii are. You need to attack and capture Rome in order to win after all. I don't know the exact 'final date', though.

Yeah i know i'll need rome anyway. Still, i'll be needing 50 territories, that's enormous. I'm not even at 20 i think, and i already feel my empire is getting too big to rule comfortably.

Btw i noticed that i'm not doing so well militarily: there are several factions with stronger armies (according to the list).
Guess i'll have a look into that later, i've finished off Spain, now to find me a new target first. Probably the Brits, they're the closest. I've made them allies to be relatively at ease on my northern border, but that will soon change i guess.

Economy is booming really. I'm got over 5 times more gold than the second nation (over 300k gold). So if i need better armies, i just make them i guess

Any tips on army make-up? After the "reformation of armies" or something event, i'm a bit clueless on what to do with my 'old' units. Still i'm kicking ass in combat (against weaker nations though) with those hastati and such.

I've also noticed that good managers tend to make people less happy? I thought that was weird, guess people like to be corrupt.

Just checked: senate kinda likes me, i'm on the same level as brutii, the mass likes me slightly better. I've also been given 3 positions in senate last time. Don't know the benefits of this, but it can't be bad i guess

re: good managers causing unrest...it all depends on their traits, retinue and influence. Usually -not necessarily- governors who are stern and rigid rulers will be better managers but also less popular. Populists, otoh, tend to have extravagant tastes but appeal more to the people.

Do you manage everything by hand? I mean construction and recruitment. then you can fiddle with tax rates and games/races to keep everyone happy.

Don't worry too much about your overall military strength. As long as you have a lot of money (which you do), enough cities that can build elite units at a rapid tempo and a fairly well-developed roads network you can produce and ship elite armies anywhere before the AI will conquer 4 of your cities. it's better yo keep your standing army small, so that you'll make a lot of profit because of a lack of upkeep costs. The AI are probably paying huge sums to maintain their armies.


Army make-up...at this stage you just need to field a lot of Praetorian/Urban Cohorts, assisted by some bowmen and 4 units of heavy cavalry. You can work with Legionary cohorts too, but only build them when you need to raise an army fast. They're the inferior version of the P/U cohort but build in 1 turn as opposed to 2.

I only used urban cohorts in Italy. Most nations are not very advanced and it will take some time before conquered cities are big enough to be able to retrain them. With legionary cohorts you can mostly roll on, especially since you can retrain up to ten(?) units in one turn in a city, and building new ones only takes one turn. I'm normally a turtler, used to building only the best units, but in Total War games that doesn't always work.
Oh, and with the Brutii I conquered north-eastern Europe with a full stack army of only a few generals and Roman cavalry, the cheapest available cavalry unit. The opposition there is mostly on horseback, and even large towns can retrain these guys. They're not even that bad for horsemen. The only problem is that you can't assault cities with them, but I wasn't in a hurry.

I'm not sure how retraining works, i rarely retrain units. But that might explain why i can't retrain my triarii unit.

Just had to reload because i messed up. Brits (brittons, brittania, i dunno) offered me ceasefire if i gave them over 70k gold and 6 of their former cities. Lol.
After some bantering i convinced them to give up 5 cities for somewhere over 200000 gold. Never thought they'd go for it and I thought i made a good deal, but of course i didn't take into account that these cities rebelled before i got my armies to them. That and the brits would start besieging those that i managed to get under control obviously.

So i'll just keep killing them and might start negotiating again when i'm in a better position with my armies.

Btw they seem to have these chariot units as well. And they're annoying as hell. So i think i'm not going to mess with the Egyptians.

Roman senate is getting suspicious and roman people are starting to like me a lot. So i might try to take Rome and befriend Egypt. So that it's Egypt and me versus brutii/scipii/senate. But first to brits, they haven't really made a stand this far, and haven't discoverd that many armies either. Their chosen swordmen seem to be quite tough though.

I'm off to Christmas (eve) dinner now, have fun during these days!

You're off already? Wtf? Mine doesn't start before6 o'clock :p

The reason why you can't retrain Triarii is because they are obsolete with the army reforms. If they are down to just a few men per cohort you're better off disbanding them, really.

Retraining units is crucial in RTW. You can retrain an extemely experienced veteran unit (say, 2 golden 'stripes') back to a complete cohort if you have even just one soldier left in the original cohort. Very overpowered really...in MTW2 you can only retrain a limited number of units each turn and they will lose experience if they get too many 'new' recruits.

Hmm barbarian invasion is freaky. I chose the goths faction and on the 9th or 10th turn i was attacked by roughly 6000 enemy troops, (in a very low strong voice) GAME OVAA!!

Haha...yeah, I feel your pain. But doesn't BI let your faction go into 'horde mode' once you get booted out of your last city?

Indeed but i was in the wrong place at the wrong time coz two tribes attacked. So i ditched BI and started Rome.

I might try Barbarian Invasion once i'm done with this campaign. Still have a lot of work to do.

Currently there are only 6 or 7 factions alive, 1 or 2 are down to 1 city or so, i'm not too sure anymore. So we basically have the 4 Roman families and Egypt. Now with my next attack being on Rome probably, i'm in a though spot. I'll need Egypt to help me, because 3 vs 1 isn't really fair i think. I've seen tons and tons of Brutii armies, that's what worries me the most: I'll no longer be the military dominant force in the war i start.
My best course of action would probably be: dispose of SPQR and Scipii as quickly as possible. Then i can focus on 1 enemy. Unfortunately i've got lots of borders with Brutii. So i doubt they'll just wait for me to come to them.

On a positive note: i'm still by far the richest faction. I'm not sure how much the others have because they're at the bottom of the graph somewhere, no idea how much gold (denari) they really have.

I wonder if i could bribe a Roman family to be friends again. That would be .. convenient.

I guess that once you've conquered Rome and there no longer is a senate to tell the other families what to do, they might behave like normal enemies. But I've never bribed an enemy, so I'm not sure if it would work.

Haven't been able to play as much as i wanted to.
I launched my attack on Rome. I immediately (kinda) screwed up, since when i attacked (besieged Rome), my second army seemed to be too far to back me up. So when Rome retaliated, it was a single army with barely any urban cohorts against 3 (!) full Roman armies. I managed to dispose of the first one quite well, although all 3 armies had me outnumbered. But then the 2 reinforcements arrived at the same time, from 2 directions.
Needless to say it was a total massacre on both sides, in the end i came out victorious, thanks to my 2 squads of archers who ran out of arrows and tipped the scale in my favor when they joined the melee. I was left with less than 200 from the almost 600 units i think.
It was a great battle though, really enjoyed it.

Since i can't have control of the sea battles, i made a huge armada, and i'm using it to destroy all enemy boats i see and to block a LOT of ports. So basically i think i shut down the economy for Scipii and Brutii.

I've won a couple of battles, Brutii send some armies to me, but i fended them off with ease. And i discovered something nice: you can bribe armies to join you. It's costly (over 100k) but when they're besieging with 2 armies, the effect of bribing one army and then counterattack is devastating. Tried it once and since then i haven't seen a lot of brutii near that town. They also seem to have their hands full with rioting cities, probably lack of money + high taxes => big problems.

To my surprise it's the scipii that i'm having most difficulties with. I must have underestimated them, or focused too hard on the brutii. They've been sending waves and waves of armies to Cirta, coming from Carthage and the rest of Africa there. I've suffered some casualties there, nothing major, but 200+ soldiers who die is something that doesn't seem to happen that often to me. However, i think (hope) that by capturing Carthage in my last turn yesterday i will break their morale, if not at least break their waves of armies.

In the meantime, i've sent one army to Rhodos and from there on it has been capturing Sparta, Athens and another island there. Didn't really realise the existance or effect of the Wonders. Since their armies are busy everywhere but there, taking cities there is like taking candy from a baby.

I think i'll be needing 10 more cities to end it, which should go with relative ease i think. Still got 2 huge armies with mainly urban cohorts wating for the plague to stop.
Unless Egypt decides to go crazy, haven't seen them do much lately. But they seem to be bankrupt as well

Mm my text here seems longer than my playtime.