Thanks for the effort. I like a challenge. Rome total war isn't hard. It requires house rules to be entertaining. Here's some suggestions for future campaigns: 1) Retraining You can only retrain for experience, weapons or armour. It must be be full (160/160, 80/80). If you want to replenish a unit, you must merge it first. As far as i can tell, the AI never retrains. Retraining troops puts you at an incredible advantage because you can just take a town and retrain your units to full strength if it has the right buildings. Retraining makes your losses trivial. Slow replenishment is about the only thing later Total War games got right. 2) Recruiting You cannot use enemy buildings to recruit troops. Why should you? Imagine you just conquered Rome. Its population is going to willingly join your army? You're going to produce top tier troops from their population one turn after exterminating them? I have two ways of dealing with this: A) I cannot recruit until cultural penalty lowers to a certain point (depending on the campaign, the requirement varies) B) I must wait until my own building are in place. Both things delay my advance - which strengthens my enemies. It makes each fight more costly, and makes me think before i commit an army to a fight. 3) AI Control The AI is bad. But it's sensibly bad. No commander, even today, can direct its troops to move, defend, throw or warcry by GPS. Nor can he pause the fight, or see through hills. If you think about it, the AI is as good as a real commander might be. To put you on even ground with the AI, you cannot pause, you must play in General view (your camera is stuck to your general) and you must put your army under AI control (except for your general). If you play this way, you can have very entertaining campaigns without even needing to set battle AI to very hard.
Another hard won series of victories under your belt. Keep it up! The problem with Narbo Martius is it's basically a crossroads. There's nothing there save a small village, and it's a long walk to anywhere of note. It's a barely developed town at the start of the game, and has no natural frontiers to speak of. Massilia guards the gateway to the Alps and is behind a river, Lugdunum is the true gateway to Northern Gaul and is hidden within a hard to access valley, Osca of course guards the passages into Spain and can hide behind the Alps on one side and a river system on the other, and around Narbo Martius there's just... nothing. Nothing in Southern Gaul for literally hundreds of miles. It makes getting armies from Spain to Italy a logistical nightmare as you have very few towns to draw reinforcements from, and nowhere to hide from counterattacks. The region would be hard to defend even if you didn't have half the world knocking down your door on Very Hard.
I think you should make the drive to Rome as soon as possible. Can't let them get to the Marian units before too long. Once the Gauls and Britannia start going at each other, I think you'll see a slowdown on attacks towards you. A potential challenge campaign to consider for the future, what of an agricultural economy campaign? You can only rely on farming for your economy, and you must get to the irrigation building as soon as possible. Might present a unique challenge with the out of control population boom and dealing with potential revolts. Of course you can mix in some other challenges to make it even more interesting.
Another good episode. I guess at 50:00 /the end of the episode, you were confused by the number of units the Gaul army had. It is a normal 20 unit army but the UI shows in rows of 9 for armies that are not your own I believe (9+9+2=20). Sorry and please ignore if you were surprised by something else. Good luck with the rest of the campaign :)
Thanks for the effort. I like a challenge.
Rome total war isn't hard. It requires house rules to be entertaining.
Here's some suggestions for future campaigns:
1) Retraining
You can only retrain for experience, weapons or armour. It must be be full (160/160, 80/80). If you want to replenish a unit, you must merge it first.
As far as i can tell, the AI never retrains. Retraining troops puts you at an incredible advantage because you can just take a town and retrain your units to full strength if it has the right buildings. Retraining makes your losses trivial. Slow replenishment is about the only thing later Total War games got right.
2) Recruiting
You cannot use enemy buildings to recruit troops.
Why should you?
Imagine you just conquered Rome. Its population is going to willingly join your army? You're going to produce top tier troops from their population one turn after exterminating them?
I have two ways of dealing with this:
A) I cannot recruit until cultural penalty lowers to a certain point (depending on the campaign, the requirement varies)
B) I must wait until my own building are in place.
Both things delay my advance - which strengthens my enemies. It makes each fight more costly, and makes me think before i commit an army to a fight.
3) AI Control
The AI is bad. But it's sensibly bad. No commander, even today, can direct its troops to move, defend, throw or warcry by GPS. Nor can he pause the fight, or see through hills. If you think about it, the AI is as good as a real commander might be.
To put you on even ground with the AI, you cannot pause, you must play in General view (your camera is stuck to your general) and you must put your army under AI control (except for your general).
If you play this way, you can have very entertaining campaigns without even needing to set battle AI to very hard.
Sounds interesting :) Thanks for the comment.
Another hard won series of victories under your belt. Keep it up!
The problem with Narbo Martius is it's basically a crossroads. There's nothing there save a small village, and it's a long walk to anywhere of note. It's a barely developed town at the start of the game, and has no natural frontiers to speak of. Massilia guards the gateway to the Alps and is behind a river, Lugdunum is the true gateway to Northern Gaul and is hidden within a hard to access valley, Osca of course guards the passages into Spain and can hide behind the Alps on one side and a river system on the other, and around Narbo Martius there's just... nothing. Nothing in Southern Gaul for literally hundreds of miles. It makes getting armies from Spain to Italy a logistical nightmare as you have very few towns to draw reinforcements from, and nowhere to hide from counterattacks. The region would be hard to defend even if you didn't have half the world knocking down your door on Very Hard.
Thanks for the comment. Agreed. Furthermore, breaking the sieges is rather annoying as there are forests next to the city :D
I think you should make the drive to Rome as soon as possible. Can't let them get to the Marian units before too long. Once the Gauls and Britannia start going at each other, I think you'll see a slowdown on attacks towards you.
A potential challenge campaign to consider for the future, what of an agricultural economy campaign? You can only rely on farming for your economy, and you must get to the irrigation building as soon as possible. Might present a unique challenge with the out of control population boom and dealing with potential revolts. Of course you can mix in some other challenges to make it even more interesting.
Thanks for the comment. Agreed, and furthermore taking the bigger cities there might be beneficial. That farming challenge sounds intriguing :D
Another good episode. I guess at 50:00 /the end of the episode, you were confused by the number of units the Gaul army had. It is a normal 20 unit army but the UI shows in rows of 9 for armies that are not your own I believe (9+9+2=20).
Sorry and please ignore if you were surprised by something else. Good luck with the rest of the campaign :)
Ah, that explains it. Thank You! Didn't know that :)
@@qualityoldgames7721 You're welcome