My Roman Republic/Empire

[Zemke]

I wanted to give a short AAR/review of Game 3 playing Rome. And issues for things I have learned that may help others, and areas I still have not learned myself which will become self-evident.

Play the 3rd game as Rome, this time I slowed my roll so to speak. I took my time and consolidated the modern Italy area.

Timeline:
220BC I went to war with Carthage for the first time to secure Sicily. Once Sicily was secure I made peace. So far so good, consolidated and got to a Glorious Republic also shortly after.

200-190 Second war with Carthage, to take Carthage itself. I went fairly easy, far better than my second game, but I had a prepared much better. My military was fairly large, and forgive me I wish I had taken notes back when these things happen. This game I did not take Carthage out completely, only took enough to create the province. Learned that low pop, crap regions are terrible to own and take forever to build up to anything useful. Only took places like this if they were of MAJOR strategic importance.

Not really sure when, but soon after Carthage, about 20 turns I went for Greece. Go where the money is, right. Macedonia owned it and at the time was the leader in legacy points and was pulling away fast. This phase involved two wars, the first one went "not exactly as planned", but I did gain a foothold., then once the treaty ended I attacked again and took all of Greece and Macedonia. Played a lot of battles using FOG2, and high-end Greek phalanx units are very tough units.

150ishBC went to war with the Antigonids, they became the legacy leaders and owned all of Asia minor and pretty much most of the east as well. This was the toughest series of wars I fought.
During one long war, (they would not make peace), my Armies grew to the largest size I ever had in the game, over 1000 units in the Army alone. Many hard battles fighting Greek phalanx troops, and about 50 turns they collapsed. One turn they were there, the next GONE! I was like cool, except now there were little Greek rebels running all over the place setting up new Greek nations. I ended up with about half of modern-day Turkey. Most of the time during this period I stayed in the middle of the legacy rankings, falling once to the bottom tier, but recovered.

90BCish Following the long war against the Antigonids, the next goal was to change to an Empire. I was not really sure what exact benefits this would have but seemed like the thing to do. In hindsight, I am not sure it was the right move. To do this I need to take a few objective sites. One was in the Dacia area and this effort was a long drawn out affair that took forever, with constant battles with revolting regions and new or dead nations popping up over and over. This was a Roman Vietnam, and my already huge army got even bigger, but in the end, I took it and another objective in southern France and made the switch to Empire.

19BC I changed to Empire. The first thing I noticed was my "Emperor" was not very "helpful". I was getting a 20% increase to decadence and he was a poor administrator, but good with the military, which did not help me, as by not I was not trying to expand. I spent the next 20 turns or so just trying to consolidate regions and build roads and so on. Then the first of a series of events that pretty much put an end to my hopes of entering into a Golden Age for Rome, which was my next goal, and that is Civil War.

9AD the first Civil War takes place. I was not prepared. I still had a HUGE Army and Navy, never really cut back as it seemed I was doing fine with all those troops and they were all pretty battle-hardened. My treasury had about 11,000 gold about two turns before the Civil War, but some decision I do not remember what, came up and I spent most of it leaving me with somewhere around 2000-3000 gold. Civil War hits, the economy goes to hell, I have three different Roman Usurpers with 10 to 30 stack Armies all over the place. I was a little taken back by the extent of this Civil War but thought I have this HUGE Military, I should make short work of these guys. Well, that did not happen. My huge Army needs to get paid, I could not pay them because all my gold was gone and I was negative -5000 gold and not making any money at all. The economy was even negative so my deficit just got larger. The first few turns I was able to kill off a lot of these rebel Armies, but not before they each took a few Regions of importance. One took one in Italy, one took all of Carthage, and one took Greece and part of Asia Minor/Turkey.
Soon I had huge 100+ stack Armies with a combat power of 60, too weak to do anything, and I started to delete units trying to make money to pay the Army. It took a few turns but I got there. and started the long process trying to take back my regions. Italy was first, then Greece, did that, part of Turkey and did not take Carthage back....before the next Civil took place around 25 AD.

25AD Second Civil War: (Of note, I did not place much importance on loyalty at this time, had even deleted builds that helped loyalty but created decadence. I think this was a mistake in hindsight. But I still do not have a good understanding a good balance.) Back to the 2nd Civil War" This time I thought I was ready for Civil War. I had created internal standing Armies in important areas and made sure I had over 10 k in gold on hand. My Army was around 500 units, my Emperor still sucked, even though he was different. My plan of internal Armies worked pretty well, I made fairly quick work of the new Civil War Usurpers and went back to trying to deal with the first Civil War leftovers in Carthage and Asia Minor and Egypt. I forgot about Egypt. It got taken over and I never did get it back.

45ishAD 3rd Civil War: Again using my internal security Army model, I made short work of these Usurpers and made a major effort to get rid of all the remaining areas under 1st-3rd Civil War regions, starting with Carthage, and tried to take Egypt back, but in the process, some desert nation declared war on me and wiped out my Army, and that was the end of taking back Egypt.
Then Partha declared war on Roma due to a Treaty with some Alliance I had. Which a note on that, making Alliances seems like a good idea, but I don't think it is. They just drag you into wars and do not really help you much other than one too one of my provinces in Italy and did not give it back! Anyway, did not take Egypt, took more of the Asia Minor area due to the war with Partha, and took Carthage back. Partha attacked me with two armies of 150 stack units. I also had a large army and drew them into the interior and fought them on the mountains using mountain units and destroyed them and then took more of their regions before we made peace.

At this point, I am dipping down into the lower tier of legacy rankings, and trying my best to abandon some of these regions I took from Parth because they were not very well developed and were more trouble than they were worth. So now I am having legacy problems, and had lost all my white dots, and was barely able to keep the Empire in the middle of the legacy rankings, having to micro-manage every province to try and get as much glory points as possible out of every region. Oh and by the way, my Emperor still sucks, different guy, the same result hurting the Empire with more decadence and less gold.

98AD 4th Civil War and Dropped to "Old Empire" By now I was an old hand at Civil Wars, but this one was the last straw, and it pushed me into the lower tier of legacy rankings. This is where I am now, and not sure I am going to ever make it back up. Rome was in decline even though I was the leader in Legacy points by more than twice the closest Nation.

THOUGHTS
1. Battles: Up to the 2nd Civil War I was fighting a lot of battles using FOG2, but it became too much and taking too long. I started letting the in-game system do most of them, and having a better understanding of Army composition and units better suited to the terrain, I won most of those. So my first post here can be taken with a grain of salt, as I just did not really know what I was doing.
2. I kind of wish I had stayed a Republic, I was doing pretty good. Never really understood what the advantages were of switching to an Empire. I had Bad Emporers ever time. I never got one that did not cause more decadence or help other than things I did not need. You would think Rome would get at least ONE, Augustus or Tiberius, no I always got BAD Emperors. Not sure if this was bad luck or built into the game.
3. Regions: I wish there was a sure-fire way to get rid of Regions. The only way I could get an Army in there and Abandone them, but that option did not always work or was not available. If there is another way, I do not know about it and wish I knew.
4. I got so tired of moving population around my hand started to hurt. I wish there was an easier interface other than the Province method which does not always do what I need to do.
5. Larger Empires are a real pain in the ass in every way to play in this game. If there was not an active Civil War I always had some revolt somewhere to put down and never did retake all my regions I had lost to previous Civil Wars. It seemed the computer could take a region in 1-2 turns, then I would have siege it out, taking several turns. I was getting dragged into my allies' wars, which most of the time I just made peace as quickly as possible.
6. Commanders are Bad. Not sure how it should work, but I thought with several Military Academies I would start to get fairly good Commanders. That has not been the case. I have ONE 2-1 Commander and the others are 1-1 or mostly 0-1 types. Building Miltary Academies seems to do nothing. What is going on here?
7. Question: Does having a large military hurt with glory and help decadence?

I stopped playing now, I may continue, but I think I have the game won, but not sure I want to go to the end to see, as it has become a chore dealing with nothing but problems, bad emperors and constant civil wars. I will be a Decadent Empire soon, and things will just get worse. I am wondering if I could let Regions just fall, and maybe recover, but I don't know. I really wanted that Golden Age too.

[Zemke]

Any comments or thoughts on what I should have done or can do would be great. I mean Army size and some of the other things does anyone know what I should be doing? Still playing and cleaning up the mess of CW#4.

[kokkorhekkus]

yes becoming an empire is not surely a good thing because of civil wars, and the fact of a primary hasardous emperor is not a good thing to help to decide this ! (it may always be a VERY GOOD one because he just replaces a glorious republic ; a "primus inter pares" like Augustus). 2 tries to become an Empire and civil wars are a little boring for result with no so much advantages, i will try only with 90% regions with +80 loyalty level in the future ! )

Marvelous game but for Rome it seems with a single line for strategic decisions and no big variations from game to game : Taking Italy for sure and Cisalpine (for a decent cavalry), then Sicily and at least corsica and half of sardinia, perhaps Creta (for skirmishers), Africa Province against Carthage (for elephants) then go to fight and annihilate macedonia and take greece regions with lot of skirmishers, heavy infantry and elephants...Macedonia is the number one concurrent. In III level game with rome (experienced) Rome wins on turn 168 for me. Exception : in my current game with an exceptionnal leader faction (very good administrator...so 20% less decadence etc) I take Africa and Maghreb and South Spain against Carthage because of objectives, only to maintain that faction in command for the first 60/65 turns, before turning back toward Macedonia. I don't know if less or more than 168 turns will be sufficient to win, it's in fact my challenge to have interest in this game and not to restart another with another country ,-)

I don't think taking gauls provinces or dacia is a good strategy,. Greece and macedonia and hellenistic regions / provinces first, for many many reasons, is the only efficient strategy to "easily" win. Sometimes i will try to fight Macedonia even before taking islands or Africa and we will see...

But I'm not 100% sure...it's like 15 mens on the moon with no sunburn or astral radiations injuries ,-)