Today we discuss strategy, tips and advice for the Western Roman Empire campaign for Rome Total War Barbarian Invasion Second channel: / @lugoreviews2805 Discord: / discord
Hi everyone, I finally uploaded to my second channel for the first time: th-cam.com/video/zi4uqBWAsCw/w-d-xo.html it would be really cool if you guys could check it out (its not what any of us expected me to upload). Last time I plug the channel lol (probably)
@@lugotorix6173 They did it even better in Attila, Where you have to constantly defend border settlements against Germanic Hordes with a single unit of mid-tier spears and light cavalry.
@@freerbx793 it's so hard, the recommended strategies for people newly attempting WRE Attila on harder difficulties is to literally pick and choose which settlements you want to keep (mainly Italy, and if you're really good and lucky you can keep the Gallic and Spanish coasts), then withdraw and abandon everything else. It's insane. And it's also exactly the strategy some people recommend for _this_ campaign. I love Total War.
There’s a general in Acquincum that has a HUGE Christian conversion ability. Any province he enters gets a conversion boost by something like 40%. I move him to Salona, lower the taxes, destroy the pagan temple there, and build a church. Boom, public order is yellow in a turn, and you stabilize a region that has lucrative gold mines, which means money. Salona’s Large Walls and decent recruitment buildings also make it a good defensive position from Goths, Huns, and the ERE. Then I move the general west towards pagan parts of Italy, then Gaul, and Iberia. This turns all of them Christian within a few turns. All my pagan generals are consolidated into an army that I use to get them killed off in battles with barbarians or rebels so that all pagans are gone. Refuse the marriage/adoption of more pagan generals and you’ve got Christians administering a Christian empire, and public order gets a huge boost.
Ah yes, "cathedral on horse", the worst city administrator imaginable. Initially I wanted to get him killed so I sent him to barbarian territories. Then I realised he would convert swathes of savages to christianity in places held by factions that cant build churches giving them the same public order crap I was getting and that he had the coveted night fighter trait. Ultimately he had strong cavalry only army that would hide in forests converting the local wildlife, ambush whatever army that disturbed his sermons and almost sigle handedly beat Goth horde (ambushing night fighter cav army is very good). Still wasnt allowed on Roman soil though.
i honestly dont think a christian empire is that great... much harder to deal with almost all other factions as they are almost always pagan...so going pagan is much easier. christian traits can really hurt income later which is annoying. the bonuses are not much worse overall...actually the pagans get the experience bonus.
@@cobrazax I’ve got RTWBI on my iPad now, and I’ll play a few campaigns as WRE. Lately I’ve used a neutral approach to religion, especially in the first few turns where you’re trying to stabilize public order. If the city is majority pagan with a pagan General and pagan temples, it stays pagan. Britannia is a great example. Converting Britannia in the early game is completely pointless. If I play as ERE, then every settlement gets Christianized, due to the sheer number of Christians and the public order boost you get from having everyone on the same page.
My strategy in one game was to literally delete all of the recruitment buildings in all settlements, but one. When the entire empire revolted all they had was peasants and I literally sacked every city to restore my economy lol
@@murderbus actually I went well overboard there (what happens when you write on a semi-serious matter when not sober) - I only sacked 3, I somehow managed to generate cash to start constructing money-making buildings fairly early on
Come on out, you coward Lugotorix! You may think that you’re the « rightful » ruler of Gaul my brother, but it is me, ME Eporedorix son of Brennus « Greater than the gods » the real ruler of Gaul ! If you dare rebel under my rule, know that I shall send you as but food for the dogs! So Lugotorix, you will not win this fight so easily!
If changing to Christian, look into the settlement details for every city. It may show up as pagan on the map because of a temple but it's actually over 50% Christian. Good way to improve public order in at least a couple cities
It happened in 410AD when the Romans abandoned/left Britain for good, prior to that though over the previous 50 to 30 years the Roman troops were slowly but by bit being removed from Britannia and redeployed in other more valuable and thus vulnerable parts of the Empire(ie the Barbarians were now threatening Italy directly itself)
step 1: ruin and leave Northern Gaul -Brittania , economic region is Southern Gaul- Hispania- Salona , Heavy Millitary regions are Rome-Ravenna, trade rights to Barbarian step 2: if you choose Chritianity , kill all paganism emperor and generals. if you choose Pagan, kill all Christianism Emperor and generals, put your religion constructions in every city step 3 : give all elite army in whole empire go back to Italy , you get 2 stack army , just recruit 6 Missile Horse units, step 4: raze and loot one city every turn for exp until your empire get income 10K- 20K money , 1 Roman stack can kill 2.5 barbarian stack in bridge. step 5: enjoy, reconquer Gaul and Britannia , sack Constantinopolis and Alexandria in the East . decent army in Corduba go to Berber 's Capital. the End .
you need Happiness is low , you can raze and loot money easily, you ensure population reach 96% -99% religion, then destroy religion building and kill all with their population is too much.
8:30 Collapsing it and then regrow it is what the real western roman emperors did. And it would have worked too if they could have relied on their subordinates more. Majoran is a great example of this. He could ahve reunited the west if not for Ricimer.
other than Rebels and France, my favorite campaign. its so desperate and epic trying to survive those first few turns and then scrounging a decent empire out of it eventually. while fighting off endless hordes on top of that, and an inevitable betrayal by your Eastern brothers
In my recent playthrough as WRE (still playing) all hordes moved to ERE while ERE attacked to Salona. I am just dealing with Celt/Frank/Allemani neighbours, and endless horde of ERE soldiers while ERE itself is being partitioned. I think I broke the game when I made that good christian general the Emperor and moved the capital to Messana.
Ive played the total war games since I was a kid and only now did I learn that the rebel level was based on what military buildings are in the settlement haha. When I played these older games I was always annoyed that rebels had high tier units and I never knew why, I assumed since they were rebels that they should be peasants and low level troops.
The unit I was most disappointed with were the Foederati Infantry. Everytime I tried to use them, they would rout way earlier than the Limitanei units, despite being better stat-wise.
I once managed to quasi stabilize the WRE (lost like 3 settlements to Rebels but still) with a primarily pagan system, growing in size constantly. Got a good economy, most settlements in the yellow public order or even green. Then the vandals showed up.
I also held Rome as the capital and began making it pagan too. Wiped out the Alemanni first turn and focused on trying to sort out my differences with most other Factions to leave myself in a good position.
I can't agree. Pagan religion is better overall, and in west Rome is almost mandatory. Mithras give you a very big advantage in terms of unit experience and Sol Invictus helps with law order bonus to avoid corruption. To fully become christian as East Rome is a good idea, but as Western Rome is a waste of resources and in vh/vh difficulty is almost suicidal
Personal tip of mine: Never EVER! Use Foederati infantry if you can avoid it. Their stats being better than the limetani is unnoticeable, they are better by 1! Yet they are a lot more expensive, and their morale is absolute garbage. There is in my opinion absolutely no reason to ever get them, they’re nothing but a huge waste in my mind.
Wrong. They kill cavalry better than limitanei because they have a bonus against them. Use Iimitanei in the center, Foederati on the flanks or behind, use them to kill enemy cav, specially the general.
@@Kanovskiy so still very limited (in a way). But still, that’s a good point. Though how good? Because I’ve noticed that most Calvary charges crack them easily.
I wish that Foederati come the ability of not drawing away manpower from the settlements and that you can get discounts on them for each barbarian tribe you have allied
I recently played as Western Rome and I must say that this guide helped me a LOT to finally stabilize the situation and go on the offensive against the enemies of Rome. :) Many, many thanks!
Why didn't you go over the units that are unique to the Western Roman Empire, like the Foederati cavalry and infantry, the Sarmatian Auxilia, the Auxilia Palatina and the Praevetorines? Also you made a mistake when you said that the Western Roman Empire didn't have a horse archer unit when they clearly do (I know that the unit sucks but it is still there...).
@@azumarzi6305 Foederati cav is mostly useless, except for chasing routing units and charging round their back, but you should use foederati infantry early on, since they're your only spear unit at hte start of the game.
I went the pagan route and found it to be superior, since the early game is what really matters. The bonus xp is also great, and you can change your family back to paganism.
you SHOULD talk about the unique units of the western empire. some are very cool and useful, like the sarmatian cavalry (some of the best in the gamea and easy to get), as well as the auxilia palatina which are great spearmen.
Recently I ended campaign as Western Roman Empire. I had curious strategy. First I brought all generals who had many stars to fight to Rome. Then I let to revolt all towns without Rome. I did with Rome my main base. I had a one army in Rome. Then I attacked fast Tarentum, Ravena, Caralis, Sicily, Carthage. I had to be fast, because was a problem with cash and build some farms, docks, markets and churchs. Then I eliminated guys from deserts and defend only Italy from barbarians. Next to Ravena and Mediolanium is a great bridge to the defence with many catapults, archers and legions. Then I destroyed Huns and Gots I captured Spain and Galia, next Britania and Celts. On the end Germany, Greece, and Constantinople. Level Hard. I think that build Western Roman Empire from zero is a good strategy too if you are fast. Sorry for my English but I hope, that somebody maybe understand a something.
destroy any building you don't have any tangible use from, this gives you some money, also, some cities will inevitably revolt, make sure to destroy the military buildings so that you're only fighting peasants, then sack at capture. Use the income to start constructing money making buildings, you can do well financially as WRE
Try this on remaster, was able to keep all settlement and have 20k income every turn just by moving the capital and disbanding almost all my troops. WRE is awesome fun, trained a crazy amount of bonus exp limitarnei and archers with one priest each cause they cheap to maintain and can take down any other stack 1v1. Pagan better for troops experience and not that hard to keep your settlement happy compare to not being able to train +2 bonus exp troops
I always start my empire at the default religions and have no public order issues by turn 2. This allows me to build ports assuming I sell map information to the berbers and Alemani the first turn and disband my armies in Rome and Spain. I also change my capital city to masilla. By turn 3 I have lost no cities and gave like 10 to 15 thousand and have 15 thousand to spend and n buildings each turn
I will say, when i was playing i played a bit of the abandonment, particularly i abandoned Africa, But i didn't abandon a lot, i tried to hold on to as much as possible.
It is a tough campaign, but you absolutely can maintain the west without losing a single province. Key to a good start is to be very aggressive. Attack immediately the Celts in Britania, as well as the Alemani in central Europe and the rebels above Carnuntum. That is three cities that could be exterminated, which would boost the coffers hugely. Got to be careful that all family members of the barbarians are inside the settlement - this way they will not respawn when u take their city. The Berbers in Tingi are also an excellent target in the first 10-15 turns. Dismantle traders and build ports rapidly and stay Pagan, keep the Christians where they dominate. That would be just fine.
My strategy, which I believe is called out in the video: I destroy all pagan shrines, build Christian shrine in all settlements. Then destroy all military buildings in the far reaches of the empire so when they rebel they only spawn peasants. Move all garrisons out to empty the cities and let them rebel. Then they will either rebel again back to you when they finish converting to Christianity or you can conquer and exterminate the cities to pacify them and make the money back. Also eliminate celts and berbers since they don’t horde and it secures corners of the map The key is to have churches in every city because the big bonus comes from bordering settlements having churches and the rebel faction doesn’t demolish them
@@dandixon7400 But generally the church in both the west and east were basically the same. It was only during the later centuries of the early medieval period did major differences form between the Church of Rome and the Greek Church which lead to the Schism of 1054
@@RocketHarry865 in the game it doesnt matter which type of Christianity you have, if you will conquer any city with other type - there will be no penalties.
@paladin De Lupi Nope, Adam Baker is right. The differntiation between Catholicism and Orthodoxy is a product of the 1054 Schism. Catholic comes from the greek "ho katoklos" = "all embarisn" and was used together with "orthodox" = "right/true believe" as epiteton for the followers of the niceno-constantinopolitan creed. So while the words were used already back then, they didn´t had the differentating meaning they recieved after the Schism. What was used to lable the differences between western and eastern Christianity would be Latin, Greek, Syriac but not those two words, as they were the attributes of the claim of having the correct faith.
Nice summary of the campaign! Which religion is best will always be a subjective topic. Imo your actually better to go pagan throughout the campaign. It's a bit of a pain at the start, but utilising Sol Invictus temples in the larger cities, and putting Mithras in your frontier settlements, means you can actually retrain your elite troops for extra chevs when they reach the front lines. A Sol Invictus temple provides more stability than the Christianity temple, and constructing an additional hermitage building will only equal the Christian stability to what Sol Invictus provides (for half the cost). You do get a nice bonus with Christianity in huge cities, but tbh, in Barbarian Invasion when cities are huge they are far harder to control. On harder settings, imo it would not be advisable to go for huge cities. The extra chevs Mithras provides can make a big difference in key battles against the horde. best wishes piper :D
Thanks! Yeah honestly there are really good arguments for going either way in terms of religion, and I think both are viable for a WRE campaign. I personally prefer Christianity is this context, but the argument you made about sol invictus and mithras is certainly a good one!
I always go Pagan. Mithras is ok for troop recruitment, but Sol Vinctus has better public order buffs. One thing you didnt mention is if you did go Pagan, you want to change your faction heir to a Pagan general, then put your christian faction leader on a cheap ship and sink him to rebels. You also want to get rid of any other christian generals as they will increase the christian conversion in your settlements as well. You want to do something similar if you are rolling a christian empire.
Generals are in fact very good units. Rather than that, just send them all together to fight celts/saxons/alamanii/berbers, you can get rid of them but killing some enemy units at the same time
(update) I gave it a try, and it's quite easy to keep all settlements. It requires to move the capital on turn 1 and again on turn 2, but it's manageable. As I said in previous post: not the optimal start, but doable.
It is possible to keep every settlement. I've done it. Main thing to keep in mind is that 65% on public order might be red but it doesnt result in riots. My toolbox was -Taxes -Games -Garrisons -Moving religious governors around so that religious conversion between turns cancels out the rioting.
Starting with an empire I didn’t build up is always gross, I always just allow some to fall apart to regroup and then retake. For this game I usually tear down the temples and put in churches and then let those places fall so that they’re calmer when I take them back once I’ve regrouped. I use my Christian generals to sit in settlements and my organs to do battle
Paganism has certain advantages in terms of corruption law reductions and unit veterancy buffs. Personally I've always found christianity slightly destabilizing due to the negative traits and pop growth boost.
I agree, especially the fact you need veterancy to help counter the barbarian hordes. This has what saved my game, my units held the line while I built the empire in the rear.
So any news on a slavic campaign or guide as I said I do have some videos on my channel how to make them playable I would love to see you interpretation on how to use them as I'm having some trouble and I was the one to code them in to my personal copy of the game plus I would like to see a campaign about them cheers and keep up the good work I loved the video it should help in a Roman campaign
Bam 432226 the problem with the Slavic campaign faction guide is that I know very little about the campaign and I'm also prioritising the main playable factions first as that is what most people are interested in. I can do it at some point, but I wouldn't expect it for a while I'm afraid
@@lugotorix6173 ok I understand the thing about the slavic campaign is that you can make them start any where you just have to put the character on the right xy coordinates so you can make them start anywhere and have any unit so a guide could help people since you can put different unit combos and you could put them a a certain spot so that also gives the campaign versatility put thank you for considering the campaign as I would love to see others interpretation of the faction(plus someone could do a alternate reality campaign)
Sarmatian Auxiliari are fast moving! Also armoured and have a strong attack! They are better units to face the faster horde units than clibanarii and cataphracts of the Eastern Empire. You don't go into much detail about the differences in cavalry and advantages of western vs eastern cavalry!
last time I tried this campaign i ended up consolidating much of my forces and aborning cities followed by downsizing the forces and adjusting taxation and entertainment. It was a clusterf* and I accidentally deleted that campaign even though I was doing okay despite enormous losses. I came here bc I wanted to start it up and know that there are tips and tricks i am unaware of that could not only make me more efficient but.....I really don't have a lot of time to spend figuring it out for myself. So I thank you for saving me time. Ah i see looks like you mentioned this tactic, i guess its a popular tactic. I don't necessarily agree with just hopping on another faction with that attitude bc we intend to take it back. Plus western empire is the most popular Just like Juliii was in the base game. You consolidate to Rome, fall back and then reclaim the empire. However it is annoying to lose all the territory... so id like to know your tactics. Well I see what you mean. You're essentially roll playing if you attempt to preserve the empire, so you go with the mentality that losing territory is not an option, I get it.
I never gave up any settlements either in Barbarian Invasions or in Attila. Not a single one, however small it may have been. No downsizing, no withdrawal, just find the right algorithm and beat the fuckers to a pulp. Stopped playing Barbarian Invasions when I started reaching the stage of inevitable victory by turn 20 smth.
Not only possible but very ideal also, on my second playthough, I find the best stretegy is to keep all your settlement and just blitz the whole map. Conquering in all direction and spam cheap unit like limitanei and archer with bonus ex p. They hold up much better comparing the cost and ex p bonus really help with moral.
The WRE is actually pretty easy if you aren't trying to hold your empire together. Just abandon everything to the barbarian tribes and consolidate somewhere like the British isles to start fresh. By the time you reconquer Rome all the hoards should have run their courses and you'll be much stronger than before.
The berbers are actually the hardest in this game, prolly impossible even on hard let alone vh. Useless units snd NO economy. Ik they werent meant to be playable but jesus
Maybe. I know beating the game on normal wasn't the worst experience I've ever had in a video game, but I tend to like horse heavy armies. I just wish they had more to rely on than Moorish raiders.
Actually, I'm not sure Christianity has that great of a public order advantage. The up to 1% bonus population growth causes the cities to max out larger, and I think that's often detrimental. For the same reason I see the agrarian buildings as something you need to carefully consider building. You can keep your citizen counts lower by thousands if you just keep the growth bonus a couple percentage points down. Since you can't tear down agrarian buildings you have to take care with them so you don't regret things later down the line. It's not as bad with religious buildings, but switching religions in a city is still not a choice to be taken lightly. Also, parishes are once again a mixed bag - they have the onfortunate habit of giving governors a desire to be charitable, reducing ... trade? tax? income. I think some levels of that trait can be pretty devastating. Also, I believe the maximum amount of public order you can get is if you actually have a city be Christian, build the parish as far as you can, then convert the city to paganism but let the parish stand. I'm 90ish percent sure that's possible.
I never like to completely destroy a faction. Then it gets boring. Alamanni still going in 417AD in my current play. I already secured victory but choose to keep playing to hopefully reunite the whole empire.
I don't understand what is so hard: you just start the game by scrapping a whole bunch of stuff and redeveloping - you are still left with a TON of stuff so a great beginning; the mistake is starting with a classical mindset trying to hold on to everything on turn 1
Historically they moved the capital in the Western Empire several times, from Ravenna to Mendiolanum, before it was split it even had 'Nova Roma' as the capital (before it was the city of Byzantium, but became 'Nova Roma' with Constantine, then renamed to 'Constantinople'. That being said Rome is still the *cultural* capital.
Hey Lugotorix, you always mention that you don't normally turn FoW off because you consider it cheating. It clearly is, but I'm curious where you stand on more nebulous "cheats" or abuses of game mechanics. One example that comes to mind is taking a settlement with a single unit of calvary by baiting out the troops, routing a single unit of missiles and following them through the gate to capture the city centre and win (this can be used to take Byzantium turn 1 as Thrace). Another example that I've not tried that is used by speedrunners is abusing AI diplomacy to buy settlements from the AI en masse. I'm not 100% on how this works, but it results in 75% of conquest being through diplomacy. Would you consider these abuses of AI to be cheating? Or is it just console commands that are cheating in your opinion? Also curious what the other viewers believe.
So, are you telling me that you never use ingame mechanics at your advantage? Some of the things you said are lame, like capturing the city plaza, but think about it: if the people that created this game allowed this, why not to use it at your advantage? This campaign in particular has been created to make you lose, if you don’t use the mechanics like slaughtering your own people after sacking a rebel city with too many inhabitants, you lose the city and you also go broke. Is this cheating? No, I’m brutally menaging a situation: it’s not good to see, but as long as it works... I think everything is allowed to win as long as you do not open the console or glitch the game.
@@alessandrobenvenuti6551 That's basically how I feel about it too Alessandro, but it definitely feels gamey to abuse poor AI, especially in as extreme of cases as I listed. I for one DO abuse poor AI such as the Byzantium example I gave, though sometimes I run playthroughs without gaming the AI and trying to face them head on. I was just curious how others felt about it.
No problem, by the way... If the AI is abusable the one to blame is the developement team. However they learned from the past and now they fixed a lot of AI problems in the new games
@@alessandrobenvenuti6551 That's true! The battle AI has gotten leagues better compared to the classic Total War games. It's night and day between Romes 1 and 2.
Abuses of game mechanics is kind of hard to comment on. Personally, I try to avoid them because I want an authentic and challenging experience of warfare, but I wouldn't condemn anyone who does them because I feel each person should play the game how they want to. Generally, I strive for realism and fairness so I tend to avoid exploiting broken mechanics when i can
There was no such thing as catholic or orthodox back at roman time. It was still the unified primitive christian church. I tend to call it the chalcedon church based on what it was pre-split during the medieval period. ;) At least as far i know.
IB1 and IB2 mods, fond memory for me as I made some of the unit skins and 2D unit cards ect! Not played the mod for years but I'd love to see a let's play on here! I'm modding Attila now but RTW BI is still the best game, in my humble opinion anyway. Although the units in the base game are historically inaccurate 😁
A 1 thank you for your service to the TW mod community : D and yes unfortunately there are no let’s play of invasio barbarorum although there are some videos of it on yt
Playing it for the first time right now (IBFD 1), and its so painful to look for where the hell can I retrain Legio Lanciarii for Imperium Romanum Orientalis (WRE)...
I'm kind of surprised this is the hardest faction. They were the first BI faction I could win with (I'm talking VH/VH, of course). I disagree that Pagan is short term strategy. IMHO, pagan is the long term strategy. Temple of Sol Invictus has +10% hapiness/+20% law, while the christian basilica has only 15% happiness and 10% law. Law contributes to both reduce corruption (thus more $$ and less likely rebels) and reduce disorder (same as hapiness). With a large faction, I take Law over Happiness any day. And in settlements that start christians you can still build the hermitages, monastries... then switch to paganism to get the best of both worlds. From my experiments, it's not so hard to prevent revolts in all settlements but one. I have the feeling it should be possible to prevent all revolts, but that would certainly not be the optimal start. My best start is to let 4 settlements revolt and abandon only 2 of them: Aquiricum and Salona. Turn 1: Make Massilia my Capital. Disband a bunch of expensive troops, and most fleets. Destroy all buildings in Aquiricum and Salona; destroy the Siege Engineer in Rome for max $$. You may destoy the barracks in Avaricum, or not. Recruit only peasants. Replace the pagan shrine in Lepcis Magna with a christian one. Build a shrine to Sol Invictus in Carnuntum. With the money left, check which ports have best ROI and build them. Evacuate Rome, Avaricum, Aquiricum and Salona to let them revolt. Keep the troops from Rome and Avaricum near by, send them reinforcement from neighbouring settlements. Send the troop (and the christian general) from Aquiricum toward Salona, their mission will be to take Salona back. Set the taxes in the 4 unhappy settlements to the highest. Start gathering units toward the Alemani settlement. Change your heir to a pagan leader (I chose Marcellus Flavius) and hope the old christian faction leader will die soon. Keep all spanish and british settlements. Correctly managed, british and North Sea settlements bring in a lot of $$. Turn 2: Lay siege to the Alemeni Settlement. Recruit more peasants and possibly disband more expensive troops. The 4 rebelious settlement should revolt at the end of the turn. Turn 3: You're broke, because of the revolts. But don't worry.Assault and extermine the Alemani settlement on turn 3 (Do NOT auto resolve, it will fail 100% of the time!!! You NEED to fight this one yourself). This will destroy the Alemani faction right away, and allow you to finance that 3rd turn. Turn 4, assault and extermine Rome, Avaricum and Salona. You are now out of the red, you have enough cash (50k, iirc) to build your economy wisely. Abandon Salona with all but your puniest unit. Let it revolt again. Evacuate you christian leader there to Italy (you kept the boat in the adriatic)
In fact, christian path is not recomended by experienced players, as it's very short sighted, taking into consideration only happiness bonus. Pagan path is better for West Rome. Most of their provinces are pagan and early game is the most crucial part. Also, the Mithras temple bonus for experience turns better as the game goes on. Same with Sol Invictus, that will give you public order bonus due law, very necessary to avoid corruption. Christianity is in fact better only for Eastern Empire just because most of their provinces and the most important ones are christian, but the christian religion is overall worse, as the happiness bonus given is not as profitable as the unit experience or the law bonus given by pagan temples.
Hot take but western is better than eastern. Even economy. Go economy keep religion as their default and focus destroying celts, berbers and alrnani simultaneously. You can keep all cities without rebellion too from turn 1 and onward
You dont even know, that the finances change with the difficulty, neither did u explain the units, that the easter roman empire DO NOT have ... what is this a guide definetly not ...
It wasn’t that hard. I’m playing Western Rome on Very Hard Campaign. Just sack a few of your revolting cities, build ports in every city and attack instantly your immediate rivals. Alemani, Celts were dead in 5 turns. Attack the Franks Capital after they expand east. And then move your forces from Sicily to North Africa and battle and defeat the Berbers with Mercenaries. Then move a general from Spain to Attack the city of Tingris and you knock out the Berbers. Sail and sneak attack Athens, and Crete. And Laugh lol.
I did the exact same thing, blitz the entire map in all directions, spam limitanei and archers to take those hordes head on is so much more fun then bridge or city fight
@@heresit Yeah I should make a video, on how to win. Its not very hard. The enemies aren’t very tough and pitched battles never feel like if you lose, your going to lose a region. I avoid battling the hordes in the open fields, because its just horse archers or other units. Id prefer it if they were more infantry based. I wouldn’t mind losing 1 20 unit army to try to beat an entire horde of 60 units. But horse archer armies are just annoying to deal with.
In all fairness the names are in Latin (a language I do not speak) and are nearly 2000 years old, so it's understandable that I find it difficult to pronounce (especially as it is subjective how names are pronounced, and vary given dialect etc)
@@lugotorix6173 Maybe you are right. I speak a latin language so most likely I have a subjective opinion. Anyway, my comment wasn't supposed to be so negative when I first wrote it. Sorry if I was a little harsh :D
the christian traits and retinue that you get can be really bad...thats why i dont like them. also, with paganism u get xp bonuses, AND far more easily take settlements.
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Hi everyone, I finally uploaded to my second channel for the first time: th-cam.com/video/zi4uqBWAsCw/w-d-xo.html it would be really cool if you guys could check it out (its not what any of us expected me to upload). Last time I plug the channel lol (probably)
Cool
*Noice*
Hey Lugotorix i was playing on normal difficulty i lost no settlements
Western Wroman Wrebels. Do you know a Wroman named Biggus Dickus?
I won with 0 settlements lost vh/vh no diplomacy exploits. Its usualy suboptimal, but its fun to do.
Step 1: hope
Step 2: pray
Step 3: lose
Yeah, but... pray to whom?
@@LehySnek To Constantine himself
Allah?
@@charliekassyk8357 *Sol Invictus
Jesus Christ.
I really like how "Ca" managed to pertray the situation of the Western Roman Empire at that time, with so little at their disposal.
Raphy C yeah I agree they did a really good job with this faction!
@@lugotorix6173 They did it even better in Attila, Where you have to constantly defend border settlements against Germanic Hordes with a single unit of mid-tier spears and light cavalry.
@@freerbx793 made me want to blow my brains out with those 40 minute battles tho
i agree
hope and pray to Constantine as germanic hordes try to break through
@@freerbx793 it's so hard, the recommended strategies for people newly attempting WRE Attila on harder difficulties is to literally pick and choose which settlements you want to keep (mainly Italy, and if you're really good and lucky you can keep the Gallic and Spanish coasts), then withdraw and abandon everything else. It's insane.
And it's also exactly the strategy some people recommend for _this_ campaign. I love Total War.
There’s a general in Acquincum that has a HUGE Christian conversion ability. Any province he enters gets a conversion boost by something like 40%. I move him to Salona, lower the taxes, destroy the pagan temple there, and build a church. Boom, public order is yellow in a turn, and you stabilize a region that has lucrative gold mines, which means money. Salona’s Large Walls and decent recruitment buildings also make it a good defensive position from Goths, Huns, and the ERE.
Then I move the general west towards pagan parts of Italy, then Gaul, and Iberia. This turns all of them Christian within a few turns. All my pagan generals are consolidated into an army that I use to get them killed off in battles with barbarians or rebels so that all pagans are gone. Refuse the marriage/adoption of more pagan generals and you’ve got Christians administering a Christian empire, and public order gets a huge boost.
Yeah, Spurius Flavius, the most Christian man who ever christianed.
Karel Špinka lmao
Ah yes, "cathedral on horse", the worst city administrator imaginable. Initially I wanted to get him killed so I sent him to barbarian territories. Then I realised he would convert swathes of savages to christianity in places held by factions that cant build churches giving them the same public order crap I was getting and that he had the coveted night fighter trait. Ultimately he had strong cavalry only army that would hide in forests converting the local wildlife, ambush whatever army that disturbed his sermons and almost sigle handedly beat Goth horde (ambushing night fighter cav army is very good). Still wasnt allowed on Roman soil though.
i honestly dont think a christian empire is that great...
much harder to deal with almost all other factions as they are almost always pagan...so going pagan is much easier.
christian traits can really hurt income later which is annoying.
the bonuses are not much worse overall...actually the pagans get the experience bonus.
@@cobrazax I’ve got RTWBI on my iPad now, and I’ll play a few campaigns as WRE. Lately I’ve used a neutral approach to religion, especially in the first few turns where you’re trying to stabilize public order. If the city is majority pagan with a pagan General and pagan temples, it stays pagan. Britannia is a great example. Converting Britannia in the early game is completely pointless. If I play as ERE, then every settlement gets Christianized, due to the sheer number of Christians and the public order boost you get from having everyone on the same page.
My strategy in one game was to literally delete all of the recruitment buildings in all settlements, but one. When the entire empire revolted all they had was peasants and I literally sacked every city to restore my economy lol
I did the same bloody thing, word for word. Stroke of genius! :D
@@chelsblue7370 it's stupid right? Oh you thought you were sacking Rome you fool? Tis I, Rome, who sacked Rome
@@murderbus actually I went well overboard there (what happens when you write on a semi-serious matter when not sober) - I only sacked 3, I somehow managed to generate cash to start constructing money-making buildings fairly early on
Yeah the amount of money you make by reconquering and re sacking is abissmal
@@thessop9439 abissmal
Come on out, you coward Lugotorix! You may think that you’re the « rightful » ruler of Gaul my brother, but it is me, ME Eporedorix son of Brennus « Greater than the gods » the real ruler of Gaul ! If you dare rebel under my rule, know that I shall send you as but food for the dogs! So Lugotorix, you will not win this fight so easily!
He ignores you in cowardice but his blind eye will be his downfall
Hail Eporedorix, son of Brennus! I cast my lot in your circle! may we weather storms together as allies!
If changing to Christian, look into the settlement details for every city. It may show up as pagan on the map because of a temple but it's actually over 50% Christian. Good way to improve public order in at least a couple cities
Exactly.
A little tip: At turn one you can send your diplomats to sell map information to the Alamans and Berbers for 2000 each
That attitude of abandoning fringe territories is actually historically accurate.
that happen to britannia actually
It happened in 410AD when the Romans abandoned/left Britain for good, prior to that though over the previous 50 to 30 years the Roman troops were slowly but by bit being removed from Britannia and redeployed in other more valuable and thus vulnerable parts of the Empire(ie the Barbarians were now threatening Italy directly itself)
I've never struggled with a campaign until this one. I lost half of my empire and went into -50K in debt in just a few turns.
A good tip is to put the ai on save and if a city is green happy riase its taxes but don't let it get below yellow
step 1: ruin and leave Northern Gaul -Brittania , economic region is Southern Gaul- Hispania- Salona , Heavy Millitary regions are Rome-Ravenna, trade rights to Barbarian
step 2: if you choose Chritianity , kill all paganism emperor and generals. if you choose Pagan, kill all Christianism Emperor and generals, put your religion constructions in every city
step 3 : give all elite army in whole empire go back to Italy , you get 2 stack army , just recruit 6 Missile Horse units,
step 4: raze and loot one city every turn for exp until your empire get income 10K- 20K money , 1 Roman stack can kill 2.5 barbarian stack in bridge.
step 5: enjoy, reconquer Gaul and Britannia , sack Constantinopolis and Alexandria in the East . decent army in Corduba go to Berber 's Capital. the End .
you need Happiness is low , you can raze and loot money easily, you ensure population reach 96% -99% religion, then destroy religion building and kill all with their population is too much.
8:30 Collapsing it and then regrow it is what the real western roman emperors did. And it would have worked too if they could have relied on their subordinates more. Majoran is a great example of this. He could ahve reunited the west if not for Ricimer.
Attila Total War should have used the chi-ro symbol for Rome, not for any historical reason necessary I just think it looks way cool!
other than Rebels and France, my favorite campaign. its so desperate and epic trying to survive those first few turns and then scrounging a decent empire out of it eventually. while fighting off endless hordes on top of that, and an inevitable betrayal by your Eastern brothers
I like the Romans. They have mighty fortifications.
In my recent playthrough as WRE (still playing) all hordes moved to ERE while ERE attacked to Salona. I am just dealing with Celt/Frank/Allemani neighbours, and endless horde of ERE soldiers while ERE itself is being partitioned. I think I broke the game when I made that good christian general the Emperor and moved the capital to Messana.
Ive played the total war games since I was a kid and only now did I learn that the rebel level was based on what military buildings are in the settlement haha. When I played these older games I was always annoyed that rebels had high tier units and I never knew why, I assumed since they were rebels that they should be peasants and low level troops.
The unit I was most disappointed with were the Foederati Infantry. Everytime I tried to use them, they would rout way earlier than the Limitanei units, despite being better stat-wise.
Barbarian. What do u expect lol
Don't speak bad about Limitanei. I've seen a few instances when they held longer than Comitatenses.
The limitanei are a hell of a upgrade from Town watch
@@christianarchambault6111 imagine town watch with pila.
i mean, that's not much but it's pretty significant!
@@blazethefox1621 any crap unit with ability to throw spears/javelins (except skirmishers of course) becoming extremely useful in vanilla.
I once managed to quasi stabilize the WRE (lost like 3 settlements to Rebels but still) with a primarily pagan system, growing in size constantly. Got a good economy, most settlements in the yellow public order or even green. Then the vandals showed up.
I also held Rome as the capital and began making it pagan too. Wiped out the Alemanni first turn and focused on trying to sort out my differences with most other Factions to leave myself in a good position.
Barbarian invasion really wants you to walk the Historical route like the Religion/public order bit.
I can't agree. Pagan religion is better overall, and in west Rome is almost mandatory. Mithras give you a very big advantage in terms of unit experience and Sol Invictus helps with law order bonus to avoid corruption. To fully become christian as East Rome is a good idea, but as Western Rome is a waste of resources and in vh/vh difficulty is almost suicidal
Personal tip of mine: Never EVER! Use Foederati infantry if you can avoid it. Their stats being better than the limetani is unnoticeable, they are better by 1! Yet they are a lot more expensive, and their morale is absolute garbage. There is in my opinion absolutely no reason to ever get them, they’re nothing but a huge waste in my mind.
I should've seen this tip before my playthrough. Thankfully I tried using mostly comitatenses (and later plumbatarii).
Wrong. They kill cavalry better than limitanei because they have a bonus against them. Use Iimitanei in the center, Foederati on the flanks or behind, use them to kill enemy cav, specially the general.
@@Kanovskiy so still very limited (in a way). But still, that’s a good point.
Though how good? Because I’ve noticed that most Calvary charges crack them easily.
I wish that Foederati come the ability of not drawing away manpower from the settlements and that you can get discounts on them for each barbarian tribe you have allied
I recently played as Western Rome and I must say that this guide helped me a LOT to finally stabilize the situation and go on the offensive against the enemies of Rome. :) Many, many thanks!
Why didn't you go over the units that are unique to the Western Roman Empire, like the Foederati cavalry and infantry, the Sarmatian Auxilia, the Auxilia Palatina and the Praevetorines? Also you made a mistake when you said that the Western Roman Empire didn't have a horse archer unit when they clearly do (I know that the unit sucks but it is still there...).
Yeah I'll admit I slipped up there and missed some units, I'll be more careful next time :)
@@lugotorix6173 No problem, love your videos :)
The Western horse archers were doing a good job for me, despite their shorter range, they were better in melee than the Hyppo Toxotai.
All the foederati units (for me) are trash. I always use the sarmartian cav.
@@azumarzi6305 Foederati cav is mostly useless, except for chasing routing units and charging round their back, but you should use foederati infantry early on, since they're your only spear unit at hte start of the game.
Your gaming is NOICE
I went the pagan route and found it to be superior, since the early game is what really matters. The bonus xp is also great, and you can change your family back to paganism.
The force is Strong with you. Pagan Rome all day!
How do one changes family? Just by waiting?
@@hannibalburgers477 I sent the Christian ones off to die gloriously in battle I think?
Thank you. This was the most needed guide for this game.
you SHOULD talk about the unique units of the western empire. some are very cool and useful, like the sarmatian cavalry (some of the best in the gamea and easy to get), as well as the auxilia palatina which are great spearmen.
Recently I ended campaign as Western Roman Empire. I had curious strategy. First I brought all generals who had many stars to fight to Rome. Then I let to revolt all towns without Rome. I did with Rome my main base. I had a one army in Rome. Then I attacked fast Tarentum, Ravena, Caralis, Sicily, Carthage. I had to be fast, because was a problem with cash and build some farms, docks, markets and churchs. Then I eliminated guys from deserts and defend only Italy from barbarians. Next to Ravena and Mediolanium is a great bridge to the defence with many catapults, archers and legions. Then I destroyed Huns and Gots I captured Spain and Galia, next Britania and Celts. On the end Germany, Greece, and Constantinople. Level Hard. I think that build Western Roman Empire from zero is a good strategy too if you are fast. Sorry for my English but I hope, that somebody maybe understand a something.
Really cool
I tried it today. I'm now drowning in debt. I'm thinking of redoing it again.
I'll be honest, I was careless I just wanted to check it.
destroy any building you don't have any tangible use from, this gives you some money, also, some cities will inevitably revolt, make sure to destroy the military buildings so that you're only fighting peasants, then sack at capture. Use the income to start constructing money making buildings, you can do well financially as WRE
Try this on remaster, was able to keep all settlement and have 20k income every turn just by moving the capital and disbanding almost all my troops. WRE is awesome fun, trained a crazy amount of bonus exp limitarnei and archers with one priest each cause they cheap to maintain and can take down any other stack 1v1. Pagan better for troops experience and not that hard to keep your settlement happy compare to not being able to train +2 bonus exp troops
The longest 1st turn I have played in any total war.
I always find the toughest part is actually taking new land from the Eastern empire. After the first 10 or 20 turns things often stabilise for me
Thank you!
Thanks for the video
you're welcome!
Thanks for this.
I always start my empire at the default religions and have no public order issues by turn 2. This allows me to build ports assuming I sell map information to the berbers and Alemani the first turn and disband my armies in Rome and Spain. I also change my capital city to masilla. By turn 3 I have lost no cities and gave like 10 to 15 thousand and have 15 thousand to spend and n buildings each turn
Only grip would be about reatreating from britain. It's pretty valid I think, speacialy considering it's pretty much what historical romains did.
epic game! thanks!
Western Romans have horse archers, the Equites Sagitarii, but you need very advanced stables to get them
They have hippo toxotai from early cav buildings...
@@dariusgreysun that's the eastern romans
I will say, when i was playing i played a bit of the abandonment, particularly i abandoned Africa, But i didn't abandon a lot, i tried to hold on to as much as possible.
Never retreat or abandon, not even the lowliest town/poorest province, it's all Rome to me and you never ever abandon Rome.
It is a tough campaign, but you absolutely can maintain the west without losing a single province. Key to a good start is to be very aggressive. Attack immediately the Celts in Britania, as well as the Alemani in central Europe and the rebels above Carnuntum. That is three cities that could be exterminated, which would boost the coffers hugely. Got to be careful that all family members of the barbarians are inside the settlement - this way they will not respawn when u take their city. The Berbers in Tingi are also an excellent target in the first 10-15 turns. Dismantle traders and build ports rapidly and stay Pagan, keep the Christians where they dominate. That would be just fine.
My strategy, which I believe is called out in the video:
I destroy all pagan shrines, build Christian shrine in all settlements. Then destroy all military buildings in the far reaches of the empire so when they rebel they only spawn peasants. Move all
garrisons out to empty the cities and let them rebel. Then they will either rebel again back to you when they finish converting to Christianity or you can conquer and exterminate the cities to pacify them and make the money back. Also eliminate celts and berbers since they don’t horde and it secures corners of the map
The key is to have churches in every city because the big bonus comes from bordering settlements having churches and the rebel faction doesn’t demolish them
WRE does get Horse Archers, an error on your part Lugotorix. They are called Equites Sagittari.
I think the priests should be renamed to Latin priests as Catholicism did not exist at this point
If you’re looking for historical accuracy, Rome Total War is not the game for you.
It did exist and was referenced to as early as 107AD but it was only a small group at that time. It grew a lot by the year 325AD.
@@dandixon7400 But generally the church in both the west and east were basically the same. It was only during the later centuries of the early medieval period did major differences form between the Church of Rome and the Greek Church which lead to the Schism of 1054
@@RocketHarry865 in the game it doesnt matter which type of Christianity you have, if you will conquer any city with other type - there will be no penalties.
@paladin De Lupi Nope, Adam Baker is right. The differntiation between Catholicism and Orthodoxy is a product of the 1054 Schism. Catholic comes from the greek "ho katoklos" = "all embarisn" and was used together with "orthodox" = "right/true believe" as epiteton for the followers of the niceno-constantinopolitan creed. So while the words were used already back then, they didn´t had the differentating meaning they recieved after the Schism. What was used to lable the differences between western and eastern Christianity would be Latin, Greek, Syriac but not those two words, as they were the attributes of the claim of having the correct faith.
"You have chosen to play as the Western Empire, you are in trouble now!"
Nice summary of the campaign!
Which religion is best will always be a subjective topic. Imo your actually better to go pagan throughout the campaign. It's a bit of a pain at the start, but utilising Sol Invictus temples in the larger cities, and putting Mithras in your frontier settlements, means you can actually retrain your elite troops for extra chevs when they reach the front lines.
A Sol Invictus temple provides more stability than the Christianity temple, and constructing an additional hermitage building will only equal the Christian stability to what Sol Invictus provides (for half the cost). You do get a nice bonus with Christianity in huge cities, but tbh, in Barbarian Invasion when cities are huge they are far harder to control. On harder settings, imo it would not be advisable to go for huge cities. The extra chevs Mithras provides can make a big difference in key battles against the horde.
best wishes piper :D
Thanks! Yeah honestly there are really good arguments for going either way in terms of religion, and I think both are viable for a WRE campaign. I personally prefer Christianity is this context, but the argument you made about sol invictus and mithras is certainly a good one!
I always go Pagan. Mithras is ok for troop recruitment, but Sol Vinctus has better public order buffs.
One thing you didnt mention is if you did go Pagan, you want to change your faction heir to a Pagan general, then put your christian faction leader on a cheap ship and sink him to rebels. You also want to get rid of any other christian generals as they will increase the christian conversion in your settlements as well.
You want to do something similar if you are rolling a christian empire.
Sending your general to ship and get killed by rebel ships sounds savage and messed up but hilarious.
Generals are in fact very good units. Rather than that, just send them all together to fight celts/saxons/alamanii/berbers, you can get rid of them but killing some enemy units at the same time
(update) I gave it a try, and it's quite easy to keep all settlements. It requires to move the capital on turn 1 and again on turn 2, but it's manageable.
As I said in previous post: not the optimal start, but doable.
It is possible to keep every settlement. I've done it. Main thing to keep in mind is that 65% on public order might be red but it doesnt result in riots.
My toolbox was
-Taxes
-Games
-Garrisons
-Moving religious governors around so that religious conversion between turns cancels out the rioting.
Starting with an empire I didn’t build up is always gross, I always just allow some to fall apart to regroup and then retake.
For this game I usually tear down the temples and put in churches and then let those places fall so that they’re calmer when I take them back once I’ve regrouped. I use my Christian generals to sit in settlements and my organs to do battle
Paganism has certain advantages in terms of corruption law reductions and unit veterancy buffs. Personally I've always found christianity slightly destabilizing due to the negative traits and pop growth boost.
I agree, especially the fact you need veterancy to help counter the barbarian hordes. This has what saved my game, my units held the line while I built the empire in the rear.
Soudout from Holland i like the video’s
So any news on a slavic campaign or guide as I said I do have some videos on my channel how to make them playable I would love to see you interpretation on how to use them as I'm having some trouble and I was the one to code them in to my personal copy of the game plus I would like to see a campaign about them cheers and keep up the good work I loved the video it should help in a Roman campaign
Bam 432226 the problem with the Slavic campaign faction guide is that I know very little about the campaign and I'm also prioritising the main playable factions first as that is what most people are interested in. I can do it at some point, but I wouldn't expect it for a while I'm afraid
@@lugotorix6173 ok I understand the thing about the slavic campaign is that you can make them start any where you just have to put the character on the right xy coordinates so you can make them start anywhere and have any unit so a guide could help people since you can put different unit combos and you could put them a a certain spot so that also gives the campaign versatility put thank you for considering the campaign as I would love to see others interpretation of the faction(plus someone could do a alternate reality campaign)
Weird that the Romans would go to war at this point, Valnentinian and Valens are brothers, Valentinian appointed Valens to rule the east for him.
Still haven't played BI, WRE campaign looks pretty challenging though
Yeah it sure is challenging!
The most frustrating things in this game is squalor pls help. In battle with the hordes are Ez but squalor mind floating.
Sarmatian Auxiliari are fast moving! Also armoured and have a strong attack! They are better units to face the faster horde units than clibanarii and cataphracts of the Eastern Empire. You don't go into much detail about the differences in cavalry and advantages of western vs eastern cavalry!
My favorite faction. :u
Tbh the real start it to give up allmost all of your land and start over
Of course at this point in history there were very few pagans elft what really was the religious issue was the Catholics versus the Arianists.
Melkor have guide how to survive with no rebellions
last time I tried this campaign i ended up consolidating much of my forces and aborning cities followed by downsizing the forces and adjusting taxation and entertainment. It was a clusterf* and I accidentally deleted that campaign even though I was doing okay despite enormous losses. I came here bc I wanted to start it up and know that there are tips and tricks i am unaware of that could not only make me more efficient but.....I really don't have a lot of time to spend figuring it out for myself. So I thank you for saving me time.
Ah i see looks like you mentioned this tactic, i guess its a popular tactic. I don't necessarily agree with just hopping on another faction with that attitude bc we intend to take it back. Plus western empire is the most popular Just like Juliii was in the base game. You consolidate to Rome, fall back and then reclaim the empire. However it is annoying to lose all the territory... so id like to know your tactics.
Well I see what you mean. You're essentially roll playing if you attempt to preserve the empire, so you go with the mentality that losing territory is not an option, I get it.
I never gave up any settlements either in Barbarian Invasions or in Attila. Not a single one, however small it may have been. No downsizing, no withdrawal, just find the right algorithm and beat the fuckers to a pulp. Stopped playing Barbarian Invasions when I started reaching the stage of inevitable victory by turn 20 smth.
Bro i am having trouble fighting horse archers make video how to counter unites pls.
That's a good idea I'll look to make a video about that soon
Sarmatian Auxiliari
It is possible to micromanage WE to such a degree that you don't lose any settlements or very few.
Not only possible but very ideal also, on my second playthough, I find the best stretegy is to keep all your settlement and just blitz the whole map. Conquering in all direction and spam cheap unit like limitanei and archer with bonus ex p. They hold up much better comparing the cost and ex p bonus really help with moral.
It's annoying that you can't sack a settlement without occupying it.
I Paganize from the start and march my Emperor into the teeth of the Hordes in the east. Good Times!.
The WRE is actually pretty easy if you aren't trying to hold your empire together. Just abandon everything to the barbarian tribes and consolidate somewhere like the British isles to start fresh. By the time you reconquer Rome all the hoards should have run their courses and you'll be much stronger than before.
Its not that hard to hold everything, just know game mechanics, "feel" it and you wont lose any province.
The berbers are actually the hardest in this game, prolly impossible even on hard let alone vh. Useless units snd NO economy. Ik they werent meant to be playable but jesus
Maybe. I know beating the game on normal wasn't the worst experience I've ever had in a video game, but I tend to like horse heavy armies. I just wish they had more to rely on than Moorish raiders.
Good to see people still playing and discussing this wonderfully challenging campaign, but changing the capital to Massilia is also cheating IMO.
Actually, I'm not sure Christianity has that great of a public order advantage. The up to 1% bonus population growth causes the cities to max out larger, and I think that's often detrimental. For the same reason I see the agrarian buildings as something you need to carefully consider building. You can keep your citizen counts lower by thousands if you just keep the growth bonus a couple percentage points down. Since you can't tear down agrarian buildings you have to take care with them so you don't regret things later down the line. It's not as bad with religious buildings, but switching religions in a city is still not a choice to be taken lightly. Also, parishes are once again a mixed bag - they have the onfortunate habit of giving governors a desire to be charitable, reducing ... trade? tax? income. I think some levels of that trait can be pretty devastating.
Also, I believe the maximum amount of public order you can get is if you actually have a city be Christian, build the parish as far as you can, then convert the city to paganism but let the parish stand. I'm 90ish percent sure that's possible.
I also destroyed quickly Celts (in 4 turns) and Alamans (in 3 turns). Game is much easier
I never like to completely destroy a faction. Then it gets boring. Alamanni still going in 417AD in my current play. I already secured victory but choose to keep playing to hopefully reunite the whole empire.
I don't understand what is so hard: you just start the game by scrapping a whole bunch of stuff and redeveloping - you are still left with a TON of stuff so a great beginning; the mistake is starting with a classical mindset trying to hold on to everything on turn 1
That kind of ruins the fun though.
So what the point of playing as wre in the first place?
Best campaign
pagan WRE
I did that. It was the only campaign that I ever played all the way through to total world domination.
I wonder how modern world would be if Roman empire never adopted Christianity.
@@jarskil8862 Religion would be like in Raised by Wolves, Sol invictus as sole God of mankind, and they would call themselves Mithraics.
WRE also have horse archers......
How does this compare to the WRE in Atilla?
I’d say harder, but it’s easier to convert to Paganism
I like keeping my capital Rome because of historical reasons
Historically they moved the capital in the Western Empire several times, from Ravenna to Mendiolanum, before it was split it even had 'Nova Roma' as the capital (before it was the city of Byzantium, but became 'Nova Roma' with Constantine, then renamed to 'Constantinople'. That being said Rome is still the *cultural* capital.
You’ll make 2000 less a turn and you’ll lose like 2 maybe 3 cities. Massila is your best bet
Why do I feel like we'll be getting RTW:Alexander guide next april 1st? XD
JustSammy haha yeah I'll be honest I know little about Alexander so I wouldn't expect it for a while
That would be the joke I think, "and here we have...I have no clue how to pronounce this, it has...stats...and numbers! Look at those numbers!" XD
@@justsammy2023 These lads have pointy metal sticks!
Ah yeah... Alexander TW... The expansion where archers can kill everything since most of the units has poor def. stats.
Hey Lugotorix, you always mention that you don't normally turn FoW off because you consider it cheating. It clearly is, but I'm curious where you stand on more nebulous "cheats" or abuses of game mechanics. One example that comes to mind is taking a settlement with a single unit of calvary by baiting out the troops, routing a single unit of missiles and following them through the gate to capture the city centre and win (this can be used to take Byzantium turn 1 as Thrace). Another example that I've not tried that is used by speedrunners is abusing AI diplomacy to buy settlements from the AI en masse. I'm not 100% on how this works, but it results in 75% of conquest being through diplomacy. Would you consider these abuses of AI to be cheating? Or is it just console commands that are cheating in your opinion? Also curious what the other viewers believe.
So, are you telling me that you never use ingame mechanics at your advantage? Some of the things you said are lame, like capturing the city plaza, but think about it: if the people that created this game allowed this, why not to use it at your advantage?
This campaign in particular has been created to make you lose, if you don’t use the mechanics like slaughtering your own people after sacking a rebel city with too many inhabitants, you lose the city and you also go broke. Is this cheating? No, I’m brutally menaging a situation: it’s not good to see, but as long as it works... I think everything is allowed to win as long as you do not open the console or glitch the game.
@@alessandrobenvenuti6551 That's basically how I feel about it too Alessandro, but it definitely feels gamey to abuse poor AI, especially in as extreme of cases as I listed. I for one DO abuse poor AI such as the Byzantium example I gave, though sometimes I run playthroughs without gaming the AI and trying to face them head on. I was just curious how others felt about it.
No problem, by the way... If the AI is abusable the one to blame is the developement team. However they learned from the past and now they fixed a lot of AI problems in the new games
@@alessandrobenvenuti6551 That's true! The battle AI has gotten leagues better compared to the classic Total War games. It's night and day between Romes 1 and 2.
Abuses of game mechanics is kind of hard to comment on. Personally, I try to avoid them because I want an authentic and challenging experience of warfare, but I wouldn't condemn anyone who does them because I feel each person should play the game how they want to. Generally, I strive for realism and fairness so I tend to avoid exploiting broken mechanics when i can
There was no such thing as catholic or orthodox back at roman time. It was still the unified primitive christian church. I tend to call it the chalcedon church based on what it was pre-split during the medieval period. ;) At least as far i know.
So consolidating geographically is cheating but the destroy buildings tactic isn't? XD
This is hard but in the mod “invasio barbarorum” it’s almost impossible
Bruh.
GAHD DAMN IT brah
IB1 and IB2 mods, fond memory for me as I made some of the unit skins and 2D unit cards ect! Not played the mod for years but I'd love to see a let's play on here! I'm modding Attila now but RTW BI is still the best game, in my humble opinion anyway. Although the units in the base game are historically inaccurate 😁
A 1 thank you for your service to the TW mod community : D and yes unfortunately there are no let’s play of invasio barbarorum although there are some videos of it on yt
Playing it for the first time right now (IBFD 1), and its so painful to look for where the hell can I retrain Legio Lanciarii for Imperium Romanum Orientalis (WRE)...
I'm kind of surprised this is the hardest faction. They were the first BI faction I could win with (I'm talking VH/VH, of course).
I disagree that Pagan is short term strategy. IMHO, pagan is the long term strategy. Temple of Sol Invictus has +10% hapiness/+20% law, while the christian basilica has only 15% happiness and 10% law. Law contributes to both reduce corruption (thus more $$ and less likely rebels) and reduce disorder (same as hapiness). With a large faction, I take Law over Happiness any day. And in settlements that start christians you can still build the hermitages, monastries... then switch to paganism to get the best of both worlds.
From my experiments, it's not so hard to prevent revolts in all settlements but one. I have the feeling it should be possible to prevent all revolts, but that would certainly not be the optimal start.
My best start is to let 4 settlements revolt and abandon only 2 of them: Aquiricum and Salona.
Turn 1: Make Massilia my Capital. Disband a bunch of expensive troops, and most fleets.
Destroy all buildings in Aquiricum and Salona; destroy the Siege Engineer in Rome for max $$. You may destoy the barracks in Avaricum, or not.
Recruit only peasants. Replace the pagan shrine in Lepcis Magna with a christian one. Build a shrine to Sol Invictus in Carnuntum. With the money left, check which ports have best ROI and build them.
Evacuate Rome, Avaricum, Aquiricum and Salona to let them revolt. Keep the troops from Rome and Avaricum near by, send them reinforcement from neighbouring settlements. Send the troop (and the christian general) from Aquiricum toward Salona, their mission will be to take Salona back.
Set the taxes in the 4 unhappy settlements to the highest.
Start gathering units toward the Alemani settlement.
Change your heir to a pagan leader (I chose Marcellus Flavius) and hope the old christian faction leader will die soon.
Keep all spanish and british settlements. Correctly managed, british and North Sea settlements bring in a lot of $$.
Turn 2: Lay siege to the Alemeni Settlement. Recruit more peasants and possibly disband more expensive troops. The 4 rebelious settlement should revolt at the end of the turn.
Turn 3: You're broke, because of the revolts. But don't worry.Assault and extermine the Alemani settlement on turn 3 (Do NOT auto resolve, it will fail 100% of the time!!! You NEED to fight this one yourself). This will destroy the Alemani faction right away, and allow you to finance that 3rd turn.
Turn 4, assault and extermine Rome, Avaricum and Salona. You are now out of the red, you have enough cash (50k, iirc) to build your economy wisely. Abandon Salona with all but your puniest unit. Let it revolt again. Evacuate you christian leader there to Italy (you kept the boat in the adriatic)
6:25 America in 2023 be like
70% and it wont rebel yeah?
Yep
some barbarians dont horde, especially to the north west.
Yesterday I ended this campain. Only in africa my towns were christian. Europe was pagan.
And get rid of most of your navy they cost loads in upkeep
Veni. Vici. vinidi.
In fact, christian path is not recomended by experienced players, as it's very short sighted, taking into consideration only happiness bonus. Pagan path is better for West Rome. Most of their provinces are pagan and early game is the most crucial part. Also, the Mithras temple bonus for experience turns better as the game goes on. Same with Sol Invictus, that will give you public order bonus due law, very necessary to avoid corruption. Christianity is in fact better only for Eastern Empire just because most of their provinces and the most important ones are christian, but the christian religion is overall worse, as the happiness bonus given is not as profitable as the unit experience or the law bonus given by pagan temples.
Just can't accept going Christian. Paganism Rome is the true Rome!
Wow I am amazed how bad and desolate these vanilla maps are, Spain and Thrace are a disgrace.
It really hurts the eyes after playing mods.
What do you mean You say that it doesn’t have enought settlements?
Christianising is for weaklinks, pagan is only way to go for a true roman
Hot take but western is better than eastern. Even economy. Go economy keep religion as their default and focus destroying celts, berbers and alrnani simultaneously. You can keep all cities without rebellion too from turn 1 and onward
Also carriage ballistae are how you easily handle the cataphracts for eastern Rome
You dont even know, that the finances change with the difficulty, neither did u explain the units, that the easter roman empire DO NOT have ... what is this a guide definetly not ...
Most annoying 1st turn so many to do... In any total war ever
It wasn’t that hard. I’m playing Western Rome on Very Hard Campaign. Just sack a few of your revolting cities, build ports in every city and attack instantly your immediate rivals. Alemani, Celts were dead in 5 turns. Attack the Franks Capital after they expand east. And then move your forces from Sicily to North Africa and battle and defeat the Berbers with Mercenaries. Then move a general from Spain to Attack the city of Tingris and you knock out the Berbers. Sail and sneak attack Athens, and Crete. And Laugh lol.
I did the exact same thing, blitz the entire map in all directions, spam limitanei and archers to take those hordes head on is so much more fun then bridge or city fight
@@heresit Yeah I should make a video, on how to win. Its not very hard. The enemies aren’t very tough and pitched battles never feel like if you lose, your going to lose a region.
I avoid battling the hordes in the open fields, because its just horse archers or other units. Id prefer it if they were more infantry based. I wouldn’t mind losing 1 20 unit army to try to beat an entire horde of 60 units. But horse archer armies are just annoying to deal with.
moving the capitol is just exploiting the game mechanics.
Western Womam Webels
Win in 2 turns and you wont have to deal with all this nonsense 😎
Come on man it's not hard to pronounce the settlements names. You are exaggerating
In all fairness the names are in Latin (a language I do not speak) and are nearly 2000 years old, so it's understandable that I find it difficult to pronounce (especially as it is subjective how names are pronounced, and vary given dialect etc)
@@lugotorix6173 Maybe you are right. I speak a latin language so most likely I have a subjective opinion. Anyway, my comment wasn't supposed to be so negative when I first wrote it. Sorry if I was a little harsh :D
No worries man! I always appreciate feedback on my videos anyway so there's no hard feelings :)
the christian traits and retinue that you get can be really bad...thats why i dont like them.
also, with paganism u get xp bonuses, AND far more easily take settlements.
Everyone’s talking about the religion and I’m over here suffering -45000