Overview
Notice: This guide is out of date, and I doubt it will be updated with anything short of a rewrite. I will be making more focused guides anyways.Some of the stuff in here is useful, just don’t take it for granted.
How do I start?
Before playing the campaign, I reccomend you do the Prologue, which you can see in the campaign menu. It can break, however. In that case you can still use resources in this guide and others to scratch up a first-time trainer.
The Starting Factions
The following factions are in the vanilla Rome 2 game (not including any DLC expansions), with small descriptions and first target suggestions on each:
The Iceni
Celtic, Southern edge of the British Isles.
Easy for starting players, very good starting focus (take over the isles), faster access to siege weaponry.
The Arverni
Gallic, near the west part of the modern day French coast (but not on it).
Similar to the Iceni, but in a worse starting position in that you are surrounded. However tempting it may be to pull an Alexander, it is not a smart idea to take your armies and blitz across the map. Make a good center base, preferably by the coast, first. This is harder to start than other factions. The isles and spain are some decent places to go once you have a good foundation.
Rome
Latin, smack in the middle of Italy, with control of Rome and the rest of the land below it.
Easy for starting, your first priority is to take out the Etruscans and secure a good base, then go from there (Greece, down to Carthage, up in the chaos of the germanic tribes, etc)
Carthage
Punic, spread out with territories around Italy, the capital in africa, a couple of islands, and a rather isolated position in spain.
This is a lot harder for starting than other factions. First of all, most of the nations around you, including rome, hate you and are liable to attack you within 10 turns. You start with two client states, which unless you want to break client state status will drag you into wars on even more fronts and contribute to a dogpile of enemies. I would start off securing what you have, and making sure you can make as many friends as possible early on – you need it.
Egypt
Hellenic, not changed a bit in location from modern Egypt.
This faction has quite a bit of opportunity for expansion and friends, and is moderate in starting difficulty. On the first turn, try to make as many trade agreements, alliances, and non-agression pacts as possible. It is a little easier to do this with the Egyptions. First targets would include right below you and the Seleucids, who will have a lot of enemies quickly regardless.
The Seleucids
Hellenic, squeezed between modern Turkey and Jerusalem.
This is not a newb-friendly one. You will quickly notice that you have about 8 client states. Expect a lot of them to break off early on, and the rest to drag you into war. Take out the little guys below you (next to Egypt) for starters, then expand up north or into Egypt is my suggestion.
Parthia
Eastern, out in the middle of nowhere, squeezed between a small sea and possible foes.
The information here was provided by gasoline1970. Start by recruiting mostly horsemen units (this is the strength of the faction) and attacking satrapys of the Seleucids when they break away. You will know when they do this by a notification when you start the turn that they broke it on. Focus on Parthava first, when they break off. The goal is to knock off satrapies as they break away from the Seleucids, as they break fairly quickly. Do not attack ones that are still connected, or you will get more than you bargained for.
Pontus
Hellenic, below the Black sea, northwest part of modern Turkey.
Pontus is of moderate difficulty, and has some weaknesses in troop strength. First targets are the two nations right below you, either one is fine. Expand to make a good base and then expand east or west as you wish (or hop on the bandwagon and take on the Seleucids).
Baktria
Hellenic, far eastern side of the map, right on the edge.
I consider this nation to have a very good starting position, as it is on the edge of the map, which means you do not have to worry about anything east of you. My suggestion is to kill off any faction that is too stuck up for it’s own good to make trade with you and work from there.
The Getae
Balkan, west of the black sea, above Macedon.
The starting units are not impressive at all, but buffer your army with some mercs and you should be able to take out some neighbors quickly before they grow powerful. After that, try to make as consolidated of a base as possible, and make sure you have some good alliance bases.
Macedon
Hellenic, right above Greece.
This is a well started bastion of potential. Take down Tylis and then hop on the bandwagon to wipe out Epirus with Athens and Sparta, and make sure you get some alliances along the way for starters.
Suebi
Germanic, right below modern Denmark.
You have a very easy target below you (the Boii) who have two settlements. Take them both out and you will have a small, but effective, base. Upgrade for a while after that, as the starting units suck.
The Provinces
Provinces are collections of settlements, about 3-4 a province with a minimum of 2.. Various things are shared across the entire province. The decision to tax or not to tax, for example, is province-wide, which means it will apply to each settlement you own within the province. You can own an entire province, or share a province with another faction (example: the romans can have the bottom two settlements of lower britain while the iceni can have the top two)
Food levels are also based on the entire province, not a single settlement alone, as well as public order (although the problem could very well be within the border of a settlement, such as a newly conquered one).
There is a single provincial capital, which has access to most buildings and can have walls. The rest of the settlements are wall-less villages. Full control of a province will allow you to issue an Edict.
Settlements
Settlements are individual cities or villages. Villages have a maximum of four building slots, including the settlement itself. Provincial capitals can have five including the settlement itself, and possibly six if it has (or can have) a port. Construction happens on a per-settlement basis.
Be sure to always have enough food, and not overstock on buildings that detract from food. The little face you see when you click on the settlement on the side shows you what is helping and what is killing public order. Remember that even though construction happens within each settlement, the effects are province-wide. Make sure that you have some sort of recruitment building in every province so you can restock armies as needed. Right-click on the options within building menus to see what you get, although hovering over them usually gives enough details. If slums develop, dismantle them immediately unless you want big food penalties and the ability to make 29 gold each mob units that run when they see a unit better than themselves (that includes slingers in melee.)
Recruitment
You can also recruit agents. Spies are typically free to start with, and you begin with one. Champions and dignitaries (which may go by different names depending on the faction) will require you research the right technology. You can see which one by the red symbol right in the corner of the greyed-out agent portraits in each tab. You have a choice of three, and they usually have little to no difference with the exception of age (the one farthest right is the youngest, which you will probably want if you do not feel like re-recruiting the agent anytime soon).
Public Order
Public order… a fickle beast. First thing to do to keep it up is to make sure you are not taxing the province through the roof. Sure, you will see some skyrockets in profit, but then you get to spend them putting down those blasted rebellions. Remember, PO is on a province basis, not settlement basis. There are buildings you can make specialized for public order. Passing the Bread and Games edict gives a public order bonus (if you have the entire province). Culture has an impact, which you will notice when you conquer, say, a celtic settlement with a latin nation. A big thing is when you conquer settlements – do not sack them, and definately do not raze them. That will be hell on earth for your public order. Occupation is the only safe way to do it. You can see which variables are influencing your settlement with the little face on the side.
Public order is based on what settlements you own in a province. You can have a different rating than your neighbor in a province. See more on this topic in some of the guides on the bottom of this one.
Rebellion
This happens when your public order goes to complete crap (-100). You should start preparing for rebellion when you get to a red -80 when you hover over the settlement (or doing everything in your earthly powers to avoid it). Make sure that you have an army beforehand, or it will get out of control quickly. The rebels start off with four elite-type units, and it only grows the longer you delay wiping them out. If they run the first time, pursue them! Make sure your army is decent, too – you can have an equal sized army in early game and be annihilated.
Slave revolts are an even greater pain in the ass because unlike the standard rebellion, they start off with high level, full stack forces. Avoid these by not enslaving too many enemies in combat.
Civil war is later in the campaign. It is not caused by and has no direct effect on public order. In it, multiple groups of enemies spawn and attempt to take your empire for themselves. Deploy all your armies to squash it, and oh well if those two armies were holding back the hordes of Baktria, you have a civil war to fight! After that, the politics mechanic fades out of the game and has no more point.
Being raided?
Raids are nasty things when they happen to you (especially when you just got done raiding someone else). You take public order penalties and lose trade in the province. As such, it is your duty to eliminate the raiding forces asap. I suggest moving a full stack (or as big of an army as you have) over to beat them out of your lands.
The heck is an Edict?
Edicts are little perks to stats within your province. If public order is good for you, you can decide not to go with Bread and Games. If your public order or food situation is bad, Bread and Games is without question, as it helps both.
Previously, for simplicity’s sake, I said you can only pass them in provinces you fully control. Technically this is not correct, you can pass them in provinces where you control some territies and the rest are held by client states/millitary allies as well.
The World of Diplomacy
Diplomacy, which you access through your diplomacy menu, is a key way for you to keep your empire running effectively.
There are three levels of acceptance. Low means you will not be accepted. I have never seen a low chance be taken. Moderate means it will go either way, and is a bit fickle. You can reword your offers without diplomatic penalty, so you can make your initial offer and see what the other party does not approve of in your proposal by elimination. For example, if there is a high chance with just a trade agreement but it drops to moderate when you also put on millitary access, that means they are not fond of the millitary access part. You can still propose it, just be prepared to call it quits or take that part off if they refuse. A high chance means that they will accept, and I have never seen a high chance refused.
In summary for success chances, Low = no, Moderate = maybe, and High = yes.
Two major factors affect success chance.
The first is what the other faction thinks of you, which you can see by the little face below the faction name. Hover over it to see what values go for or against you. War drops you down to the negative hundreds, which make it so there is a very low chance of you getting them to do anything. Cultural aversion (different culture types) have an effect
.
The second factor is your own reliability rating, which has a major influence regardless of what another faction thinks of you. You can be best friends with a faction and still be turned down due to bad reliability. You always start off with a green Steadfast rating. I advise you keep it that way if you want things to get done in diplomacy. You can do this by not attacking factions that you made a non-agression agreement with recently (within 10 turns) and ones you are trading with. Attacking an ally, naturally, will drop you down to red very quickly. Sometimes it goes down just because you did something that you do not think would have any effect at all. Your reliability can go back up by reversing what you did wrong, if possible, or by waiting a while for it to slowly get back up to yellow, then green once again.
These are the following possible diplomacy actions:
- Trade Agreement: a way for you and the person you are trying to trade with to make money.
- Defensive Alliance: A building block to bigger and better alliances. No you holding half and they holding half for passing an edict.
- Client State/Satrapy: They are both just about the same thing to me, the said faction will join any war you join and pay you a little bit every turn. These do count when you share provinces.
- Millitary Alliance: The ultimate alliance, and the one you ought to strive for. Also can be a hard one to get.
- Non Agression Pact: A way to earn some easy diplomacy points with another faction. Can bundle up well with a trade agreement or millitary access treaty.
- Millitary Access: They can trample your land and you can trample theirs without worrying about diplomatic penalties.
- Join war against…: You ask the other nation to join one of your wars, or you join one of theirs. Unless they are offering it to you it is doubtful that you will get this to happen if you do not have very good relations with the faction you are trying to get to agree with this.
- Break (x) treaty with…: You ask them to break some sort of treaty with another faction, and vice versa. Unlikely that this will ever pop up when they offer, much less be accepted if you offer it, but it is possible for them to accept as I managed to get Macedon to break an alliance with Sparta once for no price.
Chose Your Buddies Wisely
If you can, try to make a trade agreement/non-aggression pact with as many countries as possible when you start. You might notice that some countries say screw you and always give you low chance of success whenever you offer them something. I would just ignore them.
When you are in diplomacy with a faction, you will notice an aggressiveness rating and a reliability rating. the more agressive the country is, the more chance it will drag you into wars with others (although sometimes even those with a defensive rating can do the same thing), and the worse you see for reliability, the more chance that they will screw you over. You might notice that countries with a red one-or-the-other have many enemies. Try to stay away from those unless you are at a point where you can take on various countries around you, which I seriously doubt a newer player can do. Try making friends with those who either have plenty friends or do not have any or many enemies.
A defensive alliance is a very basic and somewhat meaningless form of alliance, and is little more than a building block for stronger alliances (in my opinion). A millitary ally is something you should go for, although you might notice it is hard to get them unless you somehow managed to impress them (joining war with a mutual enemy, killing prisoners and raiding the enemy seems to help with this). Sometimes factions offer alliances to you, although you need to seperate money-grubbers from those who are more serious about it.
For the most part, if an ally is attacked, you can join the war in the side of your ally and completely ignore it.
Client states are what older total war games call vassels, and are essentially your puppets (although they can break it at any time and are largely useless). Some nations start out with client states. They are known as satrapys with eastern nations. They join any wars you make, pay you a little bit per turn, and can get you into wars you do not want to have. If you get an offer or consider making a client state with someone who had tons of enemies, don’t do it unless you want the old enemies to not only come after them, but you as well.
If you get the option to subjecate a settlement, I advise against it, especially if you are about to make war on someone next to the nation you subjecated, as they could just as easily turn on you and start the whole bloody circle all over again. That, and they end up making scary looking full stacks on the edges of your borders.
“Just a small amount of gold!”
You will notice over the course of a campaign that you get various offers (defence alliance, non-agression pact, etc). Some of them come with a price – anywhere between 100 to 8000+ gold. These are the money-grubbers. Sometimes you can remove the gold cost and still make the same treaty, but if there is a high price it means that they do not actually want to be your friend/trade partner/peaceful neighbor, they just want your money. This is evident if you take the gold price off and the chance of acceptance drops to low. I do not suggest paying them.
The Glorious Armies
The millitary power you wield is the one thing keeping those rapidly growing stacks of the enemies away from you. Keep your millitary sharp and who knows, you might rule the world someday.
Your Generals
The general is the leader of your army, and especially in early game is the best unit you can field (for a good price, too). There are three major categories for generals based on the three stats – Authority, Cunning, and Zeal. High authority gives morale bonuses to your men. Cunning helps them in more subtle ways and at high levels enables night battles, which give you large advantages described later. Zeal generals do nasty things to the enemy morale, which is very useful when you are using blitz strategies.
When you are leveling your general, try to stay focused on one of the three categories. Level your general by winning battles.
When recruiting a general, try to have him be of your faction’s main party for reasons described later on in the section about politics.
The Army
This section is a bit subjective, as the composition of armies is largely varied across the playable factions. Still, some basic army-building tips and knowledge:
- You can have a maximum of 20 units in an army, which makes a stack.
- If you plan on fighting out battles, make as balanced of an army composition as possible. This means mixing cavalry, infantry, spearmen and ranged units.
- If you can, put some ballista/elephants/chariots in your army, as they are excellent at blowing the living heck out of the enemies in one form or the other.
- Right click on units to see strengths and weaknesses, as well as abilities they might have.
- If you are playing Rome in late game, it is possible to win just by recruiting only preatorian guard.
- Armies gain ranks, and therefore traditions (which act as buffs to various things in your forces) for each battle.
- When inside your territory, your armies regenerate. Be sure to keep them there if your men are down to yellow bars or worse.
=The Navy=
I will make this section in the same way as the last one:
- Do not just make some transports and call it a navy, especially if you plan to fight it out (real navies have good ships, and are thus more effective at ramming)
- Make artillery ships as soon as possible, they are a godsend in battle for your men – sink the enemy before they reach you!
- Focus on ramming enemy ships, getting wrapped into a melee sucks when they are trying to board 5 ships on your poor marines, or a transport holds elite soldiers that outnumber and outrank your men.
- Troop quality is not necessarilly better, do not expect your marines to 1vs1 and win against a heavy melee infantry transport.
- Navies gain ranks the same as armies do.
- Ships will regenerate in ports only (right click on a settlement with a ship to move it into the port, make sure it is on the coast).
- Ships will regenerate in ports only (right click on a settlement with a ship to move it into port).
My advice in this area is lacking as I am not so good at it.
Agents
Keep in mind that an agent action for a newly recruited agent is sort of an initial test. Build up levels by exploiting actions that have the best chance of success, and then put skill points into the categories you wish to max out (zeal, authority, cunning).
Spies: Spies can commit arson on buildings, poison armies, and wreak all sorts of havoc. My suggestion is to poison enemy armies, the bigger, the better. Be sure to do it consistantly or they may regenerate enough men to make your efforts naught. Remember that each action you take has a cost to it. Deployment of a spy makes it so you can detect enemy spies easier in an area. It ihas the most useful deployment option that I have seen for agents.
Champions: Champions can deal morale penalties, public order penalties, immobilize enemy armies, and deal nasty damage to individual units in an enemy army. What I like them for, though, is the fact that when merged with your army they slowly give your units experiance ranks, which are useful perks in battle. Select your champion and right click on the army to merge. You can do this with spies, although the use is not as evident to me and it is best to keep them on front dealing damage to enemy lines, wheras champions will provide buffs over time, and gain levels in the process.
Dignitaries: These have the least use to me. When in your lands, they do admitedly give public order bonuses, especially when deployed, and in enemy territories increse corruption. The effects of these agents are very subtle. When merged with an army, they buff the general’s authority rating a bit.
They Are In My Backyard!!!
When the times comes – oh yes, it will come – there will be a stack or more of enemy armies that come into your territory with the purpose of slaying your cattle, taking your women, blah blah blah. To deal with them, you should:
-Be sure to have armies waiting for them.
-Make sure your garrison is ready as much as you can.
-Send some agents to make the lives of the enemy as miserable as possible.
-If you are in a forest area… set some ambushes.
Striking from the Shadows…
There are two ways to do this: Ambush or night battle.
Ambush: This is a battle stance option where the enemy cannot see you unless they have specifically sent a spy to find it (unlikely) or if they, by a stroke of luck, miss the ambush altogether. It is still worth doing, as ambushes are rediculously favored to the ambusher. This can make that big, scary full stack run with tails between their legs… if there are any left to do so. Cunning helps with this, as well as being in the forest (cover, better place to hide).
Night Battle: This is an option when your general attains high numbers of cunning (7+), and allows you to attack so that the enemy cannot have any reinforcements and suffers a morale penalty.
Both of these methods can give you a large edge in a battle.
Economy, Your Money Grinder
If there is one thing that is more important than your millitary, it is your economy. The garrisons can run without large armies backing them, wheras your armies will slowly die off of via attrition without any money. It is thus critical to keep this part of your empire fully operational.
Settlement Costs/Gains
Buildings do not have economic upkeep, however they can help your economy tremendously by building ones with the proper bonuses. Taxing a settlement will get you good money (just make sure it does not kill your public order). If you are being raided or have a rebellion in your territory, money you get from the settlement decreses a lot, and should be dealt with for the good of the order.
Army Costs
Your armies are the big money suckers. Make sure that you keep enough armies to defend and do some attacking, but it is essential to make sure they are not killing your economy in the process.
Mislery is the Method
I say this because you should not accept every single deal that charges you money (or any at all, see the section on “just a little bit of gold”).
Taxes
Tax level is set province-wide. It is important to keep a balance – lower taxes in peacetime for public order, but not too low, or you will not have any money. In war time, raise them but if you raise them too high your public order will fall like a stone in a pond. Toy with the tax slider to see various bonuses you get at each level. You can decide to not tax a province if it gives too little money and causes too much PO trouble.
A Short Section on Technology
Technologies are little perks and unlockers for agents and some units in the game. Your first goal ought to be researching the technologies that unlock champions and dignitaries. After that, I personally prefer to go down the ranks in millitary and then civil tech trees (millitary first so you have good units later on). I would check some of the guides on the bottom of this one for technology research strategies.
The Political World
The politics system is fairly small, with the exception of Civil Wars, which are caused by variables in this section.
Why do I need Gravitas?
Gravitas of a general (which can be attained through victory and traits that he attains) affects your party influence, which shows how much your nation likes your rule. If it is low and it stays low for too long, expect a civil war. You can reduce the gravitas of other generals to boost your influence (or eliminate your own if you have too much, which can cause a civil war by itself), but if you are not worried about the Civil War mechanic (which happens regardless of public order) you can ignore this most of the time. The entire (small) political system has no effect on public order – not even with civil wars.
Other Parties
“Other parties”, which in Rome and Carthage also includes houses that are not your own, are your opponents and will occasionally do things such as assasinate generals in your party or downgrade their gravitas. You can keep them in check by having generals of your party do most of the big jobs such as invasion, and then keeping the other party generals at home.
The Multiplayer Campaign
Multiplayer campaigns are limited to 2 players, and have a tendency to be glitchy. It is not too bad if you are playing with someone in the same house, but over the internet you can have desyncs anywhere from 2 to 100 turns of gameplay.
Two players can play on different difficulties in the same game. All the factions that you can play in the base game are playable in multiplayer (but no more than that unless it is modded, which is even worse on multiplayer). Be sure to save the campaign often. In the middle of turns, it is not the best idea to tab out because the other player might be fighting a battle, which requires input from you.
There are two modes:
-Co-op: This mode is where you work together with your ally (who you cannot attack) and take over the world in a millitary victory. In this mode, there is the ability to gift units to another player for use over the course of the battle.
-Head to Head: This is the PVP mode where you can still do diplomacy with the other player, but the end goal is to be the last faction standing. I do not reccomend this for you if you have a problem with losing/fighting to the end.
You can check in campaign chat or the steam forums for multiplayer partners, or you can just open one up and see who comes in.
You cannot join a game with a different version than yours.
What About Mods?
Mods help spice up your campaign a bit, but be careful when using them, as updates can break them and render your campaign unusable, or they can cause instability. Browse around the workshop to see mods that catch your eye, if they are something you are interested in.
General Tips
- You can shoot ballista in the cinematic mode option during battles.
- When auto-resolving, try to chose the option that has the most remaining troops for your forces, but if the odds are against you, it is best to fight it out.
- If you expect to be fighting out battles, make a balanced army composition. Spamming freemen might work on auto resolves early game, but if you fight it out and the enemy has slingers… you are screwed.
- Try to keep your general in the fight for morale bonuses, but if he is a charioteer and the enemy has tons of infantry, such situations would call for a few runs through the enemy lines. It also helps that the general (usually) is good with morale and does not run away.
- Watch out for enemy oathsworn generals… they can turn the tide of the battle in seconds if you have spearmen fighting them. Even two full units of hoplites ran after fighting 40 weakened oathsworn in my campaign once.
- If the enemy has tons of slingers, do not send in elephants without support, or you will lose control of them. Still, if that happens and your men are farther back, do not kill them as they can still trample the enemy.
- Swordsmen>Spearmen, Cavalry/chariots/elephants>swordsmen, spearmen>calvalry/elephants (if done right), light cavlary>slingers, ballista>everything that is at a distance.
- You can ask questions in campaign chat, there is usually someone there to answer.
Conclusion, Credits and Contact
This is just about it for my guide. Below this section is a list of guides you should check out that are more specifically focused.
If you have any suggestions for improving this, post them in the comments and you will be credited in this section. The guide is fairly new… so there is much to improve. I would like to put more stuff in the General Tips section in particular, but I go brain dead after a point when I am typing stuff like this out at 9:00 at night… so I end up forgetting things.
Feel free to PM me and I will try to help you if you need something, or post on the steam forums right here, or even the forums at totalwar.com. In game, the Campaign chat can be of use to you.
If you want to be in a chat room just to sit around and forget about it, I suggest that you join the Graveyard Chat, or if it is not open make one.
Credits to gasoline1970, for helping me fill in a blank with Parthia starting suggestions, and even elaborating when I had a brain fart and did not understand a slight typo. Double credit for that.
Other Guides
Here are some guides for further reading and will help you understand things beyond my simplistic explanations. Before you ask questions, please review these guides too, as they might answer them for you.
ROME 2… Easy public order and money income guide
Written by Guan Yu
A very good, general, easy enough to understand guide which I suggest looking at next, if you have not already done so.
Running an Empire
Written by Lafferty
Another well written guide on the basics of the game, and a must read for newer players.
Civil War
Written by Voth
A good guide regarding civil wars.
Rome 2: Managing Your Provinces
Written by GFTDphoenix
This is a good provinces for dummies guide that should clear up any more questions you have regarding them.
Rome 2: Making Money
Written by GFTDphoenix
Another very well written guide by phoenix regarding how to manage money, trade, and everything else you need to know about it (plus some extras!).
Guides by LowFatMilk:
Egypt Millitary Strategies
Roman Millitary Strategies
Both very good guides on how to make an army structure for Egypt and Rome.
Basic Gameplay: Generals & Nation Influence
Written by Moonship
A simple explanation of generals and some ways they affect your faction.
Agents upskilling!
Written by Sober_Bender
A short and simple guide on how to use agents.