Overview
Tips, tricks and detailed strategies to conquer the world with rocks and sticks.
Introduction
Another fine rainy day for a pure-blood Briton. Centuries of autarky, general xenophobia, poor living conditions, awful weather, ever-shallowing genetic pool and close proximity to sheeps turning worryingly more and more intimate have molded you: a human being filled with pride whenever he manages to stand on his two feet without staggering.
You spent the day like any other day, the routine you, your family and neighbours (which are often the same) preserved for generations and generations of blond apes being more than enough to fulfill your basic needs. You woke up when there was a sun in the sky, ate some of a squirrel corpse a wolf was kind enough to leave for you (your people are in close relation with nature and your lazily made up gods in general). The rest of the meal will be consumed throughout the day. Most of the time it will be grass or plants you didn’t sow nor cultivate that you’ll graze like a filthy animal, and water you’ll “lap with the tongue as a dog laps” (Judges 4:5). Upon treading on the “blue grass that cannot be eaten”, you’ll smear it on your skin, forming mindless spirals, the highest form of artistic expression found in your culture.
Your reason to live? You don’t know any better. The daily cult of Andrasta (praised be Her name) keeps you very busy, since She can be praised only by ritual fighting (a regular brawl, but with tatooed opponents). Otherwise, no one is bothering you too much (since you hit really hard), and the sheep don’t mind the occasionnal shagging. From where you stand, life couldn’t get better.
“-Hello, amice (buddy)!”, he says. “We are roman settlers, and we hope to be as good neighbours as we can!”. He then explains to you (figuratively, this is a metaphor, you don’t know latin and you’ll never learn it) that he comes from beyond the sea in an effort to colonize the island, and bring its inhabitants the benefits of the republic.
Imperialism! The end of your independence! The death of your gods! No more smiled-upon zoophilia! Before they can utter SPQR, you’ve killed the settler, ate his wife and shagged his pet.
The event has left you so shaken, you and the rest of the island (like all vermin you share a hive-mind-like ability) decide to commit random acts of violence all the way to Rome. What’ll you do when you reach your goal? Probably go play Medieval Total War 2 or something to wash up the sick mental image of the UK R:TW cultivates. But for now you chose to destroy the first great occidental civilization with troglodytes, let’s see how that works.
Assessing our Strengths
To truly understand what we’re getting ourselves into, let’s list the characteristics of the Britons which without a doubt determine them as the most backward faction in the entire game:
- Biggest building is the size of a roman inn, biggest temple is some uncarved raised stones with a tree growing nearby
- Two kinds of boats: normal boat and big boat
- Most technologically advanced missile unit just throws stones
- No siege unit, no advanced siege tactics (no sapper team nor siege tower)
- Soldiers too scared to mount a horse, all horse units are chariots, which are easily defeated at melee range by town militia
- Taverns bring happiness to town but give Slubberdegullion to your generals, a permanent -1 to influence and -1 to personal security
- Elite melee troops are worse than civilized elite melee troops
- Barbarian buildings mean no armourer, no brick wall, no advanced trade, no health structure
- No stealthy units
- No flaming pigs
- No real Spearmen
- Start the game on an isolated island being bullied by pirates who have clearly better boats than you
Do note that all other civilizations have archers, or at least skirmishers. However, the strengths of the Britons are such that the destruction of everything beautiful in the world may still be in your reach:
- Low tech faction means you reach your full potential pretty quick
- Little squalor malus thanks to low demographic raise (no health structure nor advanced farms)
- Chariots are vastly superior to cavalry once properly used
- Head hurlers hurl heads to your soul
- Generals only need to have good fighting strength and to spawn a lot of babies to be efficient
Playing Britons is living the first tentative steps of the military strategy which is shaping our modern world. When your people are willing to fight, but are mainly composed of sheep shaggers with poor equipment, against an organized force with top-notch technology and extended resources, what is the most efficient tactic available to you?
That’s right
To conquer Rome, we’re going to have to resort to TERRORISM
War by Terror: Units and Battle tactics
If you prefer to auto-resolve battles, you can skip most of this section.
Battles in Rome Total War start and end the same way the Thunderdome does:
Two armies enter, one leaves.
Britons don’t have good enough equipment to defeat other armies, so we will have to use the competitive Thunderdome rules:
Two armies enter, the last one who leaves wins.
In other words, Britons win by ring-outs, using their repulsive nature to scare the adversary out of the killing field, and swarm the remaining elite units who decided to stay and fight to the death. This is a cheap tactic, but the hobo from Mulholland Drive can’t win a fisfight with John Cena by playing fair.
Let’s see every unit we’ve got, and decide how to use them:
Peasants, warbands, swordsmen and chosen swordsmen are all listed here. They all follow the same strategy: move towards the most immediate enemy and hit him with the good end of the sword. They’re easy to replace, and whatever grunt you’ll chose to use depends largely on your funds.
Peasants are extremely useful in the late game to move your population from regions to regions (check the steam guides to know how). Being barbarians, they’re a bit tougher than other peasants, but since you’re not going to face hordes of roman peasants their main use on the battlefield is as meat shields to break a cavalry charge.
Warbands have spears that are a third of the size of regular spearmen’s, so they’re not that useful against cavalry. Notice that they’re more numerous than swordsmen, and ideal to use battering rams or place ladders during a siege. Chosen swordsmen are the only barbarians who understood that bringing armor to the battlefield could actually be useful, your late game army will be full of them.
While none of those units are of particular interest, they’re the only in your army (save for peasants) who’ll survive a full frontal assault for more than three seconds. They must always be the main part of your troops.
They can use Warcry (bonus damage for 10 sec and morale for 30 sec for the unit only with a 40 sec cooldown, spam it), and despite what the description says they’re actually okay at following orders.
Peasants (they cost the same) who throw stones. The only unit the archery range can produce. Cheap, mobile, numerous, their rocks are the 9mm of ancient civilizations (half the damage of arrows).
If facing enemy with shields, try to make them attack TO THE RIGHT (from the left of the battlefield, that is to say the right of the enemy), the shield-bearing side being actually important to counter missile damages. Stones fly lower than arrows, so don’t put your troops between the enemy and your troops or you’ll soon see why friendly fire isn’t. Keep them in skirmish mode, they’re even more worthless than normal archers at melee range.
Slingers won’t destroy entire units by themselves, they’re just here to bugger the enemy and make him hesitate between which target they should run to. They’re not even that good at defending cities, since Britons don’t have walls large enough to put units on them and stones fly too low to pass beyond palissades.
We’re now getting into the TERRIFYING units
Chariots will be among the first units you can control, since your family members all use chariot units, and the blacksmith produce the rest. They’re all the cavalry you’ll have and some can fire arrows, hence they should be present in every fight.
Main rule of chariots is: DO NOT RIGHT CLICK ON THE ENEMY. When a regular cavalry unit charges the enemy, it first skewers the frontmen with a spear, then they use the swords. If Brennus Connardox and his friend (two men per chariot) decide to go hit the enemy Hastatii with their sword (no spear on the chariot), they will first have to park the chariot next to their target, with absolutely no possibility to protect the horses.
A chariot unit will die to EVERY melee unit in the game in melee combat. Even Barbarian peasants have more armor than them. To properly use chariots, you have to DOUBLE CLICK BEHIND THE ENEMY. The main blades of the chariot are placed on its wheels, so you’ll have to constantly micro-manage chariot units to keep telling them where to drive.
You can put them somewhere far from the battle when they’re too tired to go on (which means they already killed a good chunk of the enemy troops and made several formations rout), but remember that they’re like cars: near invulnerable while moving, easily destroyed when motionless.
Do not worry about chariots being stuck in the middle of the enemy army. I once sent a heavy chariot unit through 5 legionary cohorts units to see what would happen, they stopped at the 4th one because there were too many enemy units around them and got scared. Some variations may occur because chariot drivers are not born equal in intelligence, but they should have no problem running through an unit like butter.
Light chariots are the only chariot units who can shoot arrows. Their main goal is to quickly take care of disturbing units far away from your troops (like siege or missile units). Mounted archers are the most mobile missile units in the game, so they’re a bit less vulnerable to cavalry. When they’ll run out of arrows, use the regular roadkill strategy and send them at full speed in the back of any infantry unit. Use the cantabrian circle with them only when facing multiple missile units, otherwise it will tire them too quickly. They only take one turn to be trained.
Heavy chariots (also the general’s unit) are the Tommynators of Rome Total War. As long as they’re moving, only spearmen can stop them. Even a full frontal cavalry charge on them won’t hurt them too much as long as they keep going fast. Manage them constantly, and they’ll be invincible. Their stats aren’t that much different from the light chariots (one more hit point, a bit more attack), they take longer to be trained (2 turns) and are more expensive: you’re not forced to use the heavy version if you don’t want to.
The only unit produced by Briton stables, War Dogs are rarely seen, since you need an entire building solely for them and they take two turns to be trained.
War Dogs are to be used as a support unit. When you tell the dog handlers to release them, you lose all control over the dogs, which will bite anything not in your camp. This means no maneuvering, no tactical retreat, no skirmishes. The quickest way to kill your dogs is to send them alone on spearmen (dog kebabs).
If I were to use them (I didn’t on my campaign because I don’t like animal cruelty), I’d keep them for after the two armies have begun to clash together. They’ll go fast to their goals, and will give your troops that terror factor which has the power to change everything (animal cruelty as in cruelty from the animal). Handlers are useless morons, the moment they do their job send them at the far end of the map: if they survive dogs respawn next battle. All in all War Dogs are heat-seeking missiles: good to help your troops, not good enough to have a predominant role like infantry and chariots.
Hurrrr huuurrrrr
War by Terror part 2 : Holy War
I never quite got the utility of Woad Warriors. They’re the Brit equivalent of Naked Fanatics, yet manage to have less armor than their impudic counterparts. They hit as hard as Chosen Swordsmen, while having Peasants armor and one of the best charge bonus among Briton units. Ideally you’d use them to hit slow units like spearmen in the back, since WW are quick, but you could get the same result with another infantry unit, although a bit more slowly. If the attacked unit is still alive after the charge, the WW fierce assault will get turned into a suicide attack, which, while both theologically loaded and destructive, isn’t economically practical.
Furthermore you can only get them with the Andrasta shrine (lvl 1), and they take two turns to be trained. In the late game there’s no reason not to train Chosen Swordsmen instead (unless you have no money and a lot of time).
Cable TV was nearly non-existent in ancient times. Terror by decapitation was already very well implemented, but unless the act was performed under the enemy walls at the risk to suffer heavy retaliation, it only reached terrorized peasants. Fortunately, a prodigal mind invented a new way to instill head-severing related fear into the heart of the enemy army: throwing the head directly at them
Head Hurlers are easily the best Briton units. They’re produced in only one turn in Andrasta groves (lvl 2 temple) and should be present in every army. While throwing a head at someone should yield no bigger consequences than a headbutt could cause, Britons gave them a special treatment which turns them into the second best missile thrown by an infantry unit in the game, behind the Urban Cohort’s (Rome’s finest) pila. You can only carry around so many heads though, and after something like ten volleys they’ll have to keep fighting mano a mano. Good news: their melee damage is very good, and they have THE BEST charge bonus for all Briton units.
So what’s the catch? The unit with the lowest armor in Briton units are the Chariots (1 armor). Then come the Head Hurlers (2 armor). Then, the dog handlers (3) and the peasants (4). Head Hurlers will get absolutely ruined by quick-moving targets, archers in a loose formation, or cavalry. When they’re out of ammo, use them just like you would Woad Warriors.
Druids are present in every western barbarian civilization. They’ve got good stats, aren’t very numerous, and can chant in ultra-low tones that makes your troops’ blood boil and your enemies’ pants fill. You can make them chant as much as you want, but they can’t do anything meanwhile, so a good strategy is to put them chanting behind your fighting troops, and make them charge only when you’re sure it’ll result in the enemy routing.
Druids can only be produced in the last tier of health-related Brigantia temples. This is bad news: health makes your population grow, which produces overpopulation and squalor. As a result, while druids are actually okay on a battlefield, I rarely got some trained.
The Fall of Rome was an Inside Job: Siege Tactics
Britons are the worst civilization to seize cities. All they have available as siege weapons are rams and ladders, chariots can’t climb on walls, slingers and head hurlers can’t throw their projectiles very high. It’s all fine when all you have to conquer is the smelly heap of huts of your barbaric neighbours, but it turns into a nightmare if you try to breach Epic Stone Walls without preparation.
I’ll say it right here: most of the time it’ll be more efficient to Auto Resolve battles. I conquered many cities but did maybe two manual sieges (both worked). All strategies here can be improved.
No matter what happens, your troops will be unable to damage enemy structures. Unlike Roman Onagers, which will force you to pay the repairs for aything you touched, Britons will only have to pay for the door if they break it with a ram. Even better: it’s possible to get the door open with an option available to every civilization, spies.
Here you’ll need:
- Spies
- Chariots
- Grunts
Before attacking any big city, plant several spies (2-4) in it. You’ll get a varying chance of them getting the doors open, which means you’ll be able to attack right away, without the risk of another army backstabbing you. However, this also means no ladders or rams. If you plan to kill the entire garnison right at the door, that’s no problem. However, how are you going to deal with a more subsequent force?
It’s very simple: take your grunts to the door, to keep the enemy force busy. Then select your chariots, double right click on the center of the town and speed up the game: your chariots will procede to run through everything (they can stun your troops but won’t damage them). Sometimes the enemy won’t chase you to stop the capture because they’re morons; sometimes they’ll only send one or two companies, which are easily routed even by just one of chariots. If they’re sending everything, use your grunts to clear the door, capture the walls with two companies, send the rest to help your chariots.
Spies can botch their job. In this case, you’ll have to build siege equipment!
You’ll need:
- 1-2 ladders and a ram
- Chariots
- A lot of grunts
- Time
In the best case scenario, the enemy filled their walls with archers or low infantry. In the worst case, they got some elite soldiers. You read right: melee soldiers on a wall are actually a good strategy, since this means the defender will have a lot of trouble to pass hrough them to capture the towers.
In essence, same strat as above. Move your rams and ladders with your low level grunts (so that enemy towers target them first), then your best melee troops just behind to do the actual fighting. Use your lower melee troops either to engage the enemy (and send melee troops just after), to capture other towers or to attack missile units.
#1 priority is, here again, to send your chariots to the center of town to conquer it. Do NOT decide to keep on fighting once the city is conquered, enemy troops can still fight to the death and do important damage to yours, and members of a defeated besieged army all disappear after the city is lost anyway. The goal is always to make the enemy army surrender first, not to slaughter all of them.
A siege is much simpler when your opponent is barbarian, since you won’t have to face Stone Walls. It will procede as a normal battle (palissade towers do little actual damage), with a chokepoint at the door of the town. Use your chariots the same way you did with other sieges.
Long Term Strategy
Britannia faces the same problems other civilizations encounter during the late game: squalor, lack of money because of the cost of the troops, multiple fronts to fight on, with another disadvantage: The best Briton units produced in their best buildings cannot beat the best Roman units. Conquering barbarian lands should prove itself to be quite easy, but the game turns a lot harder when you have to capture and keep Rome. Defeating the Julii first is enough to get to Rome without much trouble, but then you will have to fight the Brutii and the Scipii, who are likely to be at their full strength after having conquered Africa and the Greek regions.
I chose in my game to conquer the entirety of Italy, then Spain, then the mandatory other 50 regions, which proved to be a mistake: I’m trying to fight on several fronts the Brutii (who keep sending troops in the Apula region, on the west of Italy, and are still very present in Dalmatia and Eastern Europe) and the Scipii (who still own northern Africa). I think I’m still able to win the campaign, but it’ll be only through a slow war of attrition, with the constant risk of losing half the land I own in a single enemy offensive.
i will then present here global conquest strategies that I used and that I wish I used:
Diplomacy in R:TW is akin to signing a peace treaty with a wasp nest. Alliances exist only so that the player can have the feeling that he found his place in his autistic hugbox, and will end the very moment you and your “ally” find yourselves to have common borders. Fortunately, the same is true for your enemies, who will betray and ally successively with each other, the very same way an abusive relationship carries on.
Throughout the whole game the main threat will be the roman civilizations, it will therefore be safer to keep at least some barbarians alive and well between you and them; Spanish barbarians will serve as a meat shield against the Scipii (who conquer Spain after they’re done with Africa), Gauls against the Julii, Germans more or less effectively against the Brutii. If you conquer the whole continent, you will be the only target available to the Romans.
After you conquer enough of Gaul to have a secure access to the continent, you will have approximately four targets to attack : Germany, Julii, Brutii, Spain. I recommend to attack Brutii and to conquer Greece first.
First of all, you won’t be able to destroy both Julii and Brutii before the middle game: they’re a lot better than you, they have allies and you will have to fight through walls of barbarians to finally reach them. Julii will at most conquer Italy, Spain and the south of Gaul, which delimits the territory they’ll be in. Brutii can conquer Greece, all of central and eastern europe, plus Turkey: you WILL have to destroy them before they become an unstoppable powerhouse whose capital is thousands of miles deep in the east.
Greece also means the Statue of Zeus in Olympia, which some players consider to be overpowered, as it gives a loyalty bonus to all of your settlements. It is essential when playing barbarian civilizations: the best way for a roman civilization to pacify a city is to build a new Governor building when the population reaches a certain level, as it will decrease greatly the “Different culture” penalty, and upgrade or destroy buildings to replace them by roman ones. Barbarians can’t do that because of their low tech level, so the cities you conquer will look like great and splendid capitals with one or two smelly huts in it surrounded by foreigner buildings. This means a 10% to 15% public order disadvantage to EVERY settlement you own, which is why you’ll need the statue. Sea trade roads will also bring you a lot of money.
Barbarians, as evoked precedently, have an awful late game, but a very good early to middle game. They’re also bad at defending cities (no real archers, chariots don’t defend well, poor walls) but good at taking them. They also have worse ways than the other nations to make money. So what can you do to get a fair chance against multiple enemies on more ground that you can cover?
First of all, you will need to capture an enemy city. Plant spies in it, then either wait in ambush for the garnison to leave (you can bait them with a general) or just attack the city. Now you’ve got the city, good.
Destroy every building in it, exterminate the population (retrain your troops if you have time)
If the city has stone walls, leave a single unit in it and move your army when you know the enemy army is coming back to capture it. When the city is besieged, do the fight manually, place your unit at the center of the town, and let the walls kill the very persons who built them. You will obtain something like this:
Then you can either re-capture the city with the chariots and spy strategy, or attack and pillage the next one. Capital points for this strategy to work is to have plenty of watchtowers (the ones you can build on the land with your generals), as well as spies implanted in every enemy city. The goal is to know where they are, as when as when they will move.
Do note that if you don’t overextend your frontiers this strategy loses its interest. It is designed to quickly capture and leave cities while evading enemy troops, and is to be used in lands where you can easily run away from your pursuers (next to the sea, in the desert, with wooden lands and big plains).
The Invisible War
As a last note, do keep in mind that while not versed in the subtler arts, Britons still have Diplomats, Spies and Assassins. They’re here to avoid surprises and make sure the enemy will never lead a quiet life
Diplomats are very useful at the start of the game to exchange map information with other countries and establish trade route. When you get some money, they can buy entire cities (troops inside will disband), give money to enemy troops to make them disappear, buy enemy characters (generals included). If you’re poor and in the late game, they’re proper useless. Be careful when using them: if he messes up your diplomacy attempt, the diplomat’s stats will permanently decrease
Spies are among your best assets. Not only do they give information about enemy troops, they also decrease order in a city. Plant 3 or 4 in a city far away from its capital, and they’re likely to spawn angry peasants in it, which will force the enemy either to kill their own people and repair the buildings damaged in the riot, or to decrease taxes to keep their towns happy. The enemy WILL follow the same tactic; their spies can be spotted by characters with high enough Subterfuge, that’s why if your town is having low public order for no particular reason you should put a high-ranking Spy and an Assassin next to it.
Their knife is however fake, and they can’t actually harm anyone (they can kill thousands indirectly though).
The Assassin is also an arsonist: in one strike he can slay a general and all its bodyguards, or with a torch severely damage a hippodrome. Don’t count on him too much to conquer the world, the AI creates random generals whenever it wants and repairs every building you attack. The Assassin is just like an amoeba in that agari.io game : before he can assassinate emperors and kings, he has to kill losers and morons, then slowly gain experience.
Train your assassin by savescumming and sending him attack the captain of any troop (if the chance is less than 100% he’ll get experience), then move up the ranks. Ideally, you want him to attack something every round, to decrease a bit of your opponents’ money due to repairs (or a lot by attacking ports and public order buildings).
Check the graphs which detail the progress of the players, your goal is to make those representing enemy finances go rock-bottom. At this point they won’t be able to produce anything because of too high upkeep costs, and you can either let them be or conquer their cities without much danger.
That’s it! Now you have everything to conquer the world as Britons several centuries before the 19th century. Congratulations!