Overview
This is a Rome 2: guide, specifically on how to get the elusive economic victory. On July 29th, 2020, only 1,2% of all players have earned this achievement thus far and the game has been out since 2013. It is a guide specifically for the barbarian factions, with extra emphasis on the Iceni (the most logical choice) which are also used as the example playthrough.
Index
1) Introduction and why the Iceni?
2) Overal Strategy
3) Sacking and razing settlements? … Wait, what?
4) Details on the Strategic Trade Resources
5) Additional Information for the Endgame (final 3rd of the playthrough)
6) List of Goals (specific to the Iceni and with some key details)
1) Introduction and why the Iceni?
The economic victory is one of the harder victories to achieve in Rome 2. Personally, I strongly recommend playing for the Iceni as I did. The Iceni have some specific perks that are particularly helpful as can be read here or in more detail in online sources:
“Cultural Asperations: Moderate diplomatic bonus with all non-barbarian tribes”
Diplomacy will be key to your victory and the Icenti are particularly gifted at getting along with all non-barbaric civilisations. The Averni have a similar (though inverted perk: they have a diplomatic edge with fellow barbarians. Since barbarians form only a fraction of all the different cultures, I went with the Iceni with no regrets (I started an attempt as Barcid Carthago before this, but I got frustrated at the start of the endgame). Too many factions were upset with my expansionism which cost me too many trade partners.
Another important perk as any barbarian tribe is the ability to “liberate” (revive) defeated factions. When you conquer a town that was formerly the capital of a defeated faction you’ll have an extra option (occupy, enslave, raze and now liberate). When you select liberate, the previous owner will reappear with an army. Their leaders will be eternally thankful for your assistence of their governent in exile. They won’t become a client state as such, but they will be military allies with military access. Even when the rest of the world hated my faction for being a little too aggressive / expansionist, these liberated towns loved me regardless of popular opinion. This is obviously extremely valuable when you have to meet all of the requirements mentioned.
The beauty of liberating towns is that this will help you maintain a stack of semi- permanent trade partners who love you unconditionally (as long as you don’t take action against them). This becomes important in the endgame. You need at least 15 active trade routes at the moment of victory. Liberating towns also helps limit your empire’s size. These new states usually don’t expand much as they are scattered and surrounded by your own civilization. In my experience, they would never attack their liberator. If they are determined to fight a war with another liberated state, don’t get involved and let them duke it out. Maybe this isn’t the most prudent course of action. Maybe siding against the aggressor will help maintain a better diplomatic rating. In my playthrough, I steered clear of the mess and let them fight it out on my own turf even. The revived Etruscans were attacked by the Ligurians whom they later defeated by forming a confederation with another tribe. Liguria kept asking for my assistance but I suggest not to get involved in their petty bickering.
Here on the final map, you can see that my empire has many gaps. Those are all liberated factions I trade with.
2) Overal Strategy
Basically, there are some key things you’ll want to do. Firstly, you’ll want to sent out several agents to the far corners of the globe at several moments in the game to find as many factions as soon as possible. Start by sending one into France when you can afford his / her recruitment. Later send one to Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula and towards Bactria. Also, send some toward Eastern Europe. If your agent starts walking from London, don’t expect him to reach Bactria in his lifetime, which is why you should send another by the time you get close to the center of the map. One of my guys walked from Sparta through Turkey down to discover Kush and Saba. Another walked from Kush to Bactria then north to the Steppe tribes.
On the far east of the final map, you can see my last scout’s route, discovering additional factions.
Establishing a strong economy, capturing strategic resources (trade goods) and establishing as many trade routes as possible will be the key to your victory. Try to keep people as friendly as possible. Be diplomatic but also fair. When you encounter new factions, open diplomatic relations immediately. Get a non-aggression pact and trade agreement with everyone you can. Some barbarian tribes won’t like you so much, so just focus on that trade route. Extended periods of trade will help them like you better. You could get into defensive alliances with everyone but this could obligate you to go to war later on for their sakes. You’ll want to avoid all unnecessary wars in this playthrough.
Military alliances are even less useful in our strategy. I made the mistake of occasionally indulging my favorite neighbors but they always end up dragging you into their own wars. Military alliances obligate you to declare war on whomever the ally decides to attack or suffer a diplomatic penalty with the rest of the world. You want to keep your reputation as high as possible (steadfast or dependable) whenever you can and for as long as you can as seen here.
If you let your reputation slide, you can rebuild it over time. The problem isn’t so much getting your reputation back; it’s what happens while you’re considered unreliable. Leaders of other factions will start dropping their pacts and agreements with you one after another because they will not trust you anymore. Renegotiating these agreements may prove costly and even difficult or impossible. This will be even more so on higher difficulties. Also, I noticed the further I got in the game, the harder it became to keep up relations. Eventually, I realized it’s okay not to be loved by all, as long as your liberated states keep trading. That’s all that really matters, and that has never been as much of a problem as I feared.
I suppose if you fully understand what exactly causes diplomatic penalties you could avoid losing your steadfast rating all together and play a very clean playthrough. Mine got messy in the end, but it still works and that’s what really matters.
How to start justified wars
Attacking formerly allied empires is a common practice for casual TW gamers, especially on easy. This won’t fly for economic victories though, so how do you expand without getting in trouble? Firstly, establish defensive alliances with small nations bordering big empires. Before you know it, wars will naturally develop across the world and you’ll be dragged into them, and you’ll want to be on the losing side!
Why the losing side? Because this allows you to take on the big players after your allies get wiped out while looking like the good guy. You get to liberate your allies, which only gives them one of their regions. By the time they’re ready for war, you’ll have completely taken over their attacker. If you side with the big dogs, you’ll run into two mistakes. Firstly, the spoils are very meager. The one or two regions your ally’s target owns will be quickly taken over by the attacking bully before you can swoop in with your armies. It is so easy to blitzkrieg and in Rome 2, the AI knows how to use it to outrun you. Never wait when you’re in a war. Prepare before hand and keep rolling.
Standing up for the underdog improves your public image. Siding with the victims makes you the good guy. Not only that, your much smaller allies can field fewer armies then you, which means you can beat them in the race for the most wanted enemy settlements. Also, they won’t stab you in the back like bigger empires can. That happened with Carthage and Libia. Someone else owned most of north Africa. The three of us declared war together, and they swooped in, leaving me with only two little towns. Then they turned on me. And finally, taking on a big empire means you get involved in fewer wars. They do last longer, but you can plan better. Small short wars are harder to plan and improvise with. No one likes the big bullies anyway, so no one will complain when you wipe them of the board.
But the cornerstone reason of course why you side against the big empires is so you can liberate the nations they previously conquered. A small city state that hasn’t had a chance to expand yet (like Rhodes and Pergamon often) could be conquered by you, but they have no cities or towns that you can free! Ideally, let empires develop until they reach you or start to decline. In my game, Armenia ended up having everything from Bactria to the Black Sea and Egypt. You’ll get notifications of which factions cease to exist. You could even take note of these on paper so you know how many factions you can liberate by wiping out certain empires.
Also, try not to make peace once a war is declared. Diplomatically, once you’re at war, you have a free pass to wipe the floor with your opponents. Sometimes when enemies have multiple wars going on, I even let them keep some territory so they expand outward away from me into people I can’t afford to declare war on myself. As long as they were the last owners before you attack, you can take and keep any settlement. If you do declare peace, it will take some turns before you can declare war again without repercussions. Not to mention, you may need to find another good excuse. I suppose if you never make any alliances, you could attack with little or no repercussions. Maybe that can be your free ticket to start wars. If you have defensive alliances all around like I did, you need to plan these things well. Especially in the early and middle playthrough you want to get the maximum territorial gains from any war. Later on you may want peace (for example if you just need one of their settlements to complete a province for one of the goals (like collecting a resource or owning a certain province). If you’re trying to hold off the imperial penalty for growing too large, or if you don’t want to damage relations too much, you could snatch a territory and sue for peace. Especially when you run a strong empire and when they lost half of their territory, they will readily accept peace and trade, but don’t expect to form any type of alliance with them any time soon.
Trade routes can even be used to explore! For example, if you discover Egypt and open trade with them as the Iceni, the route ships will take travel right by others like Libia, Carthago Nova and Numidia. You can immediate open a trade route with these newly discovered people, which can in turn help you find new factions. See here just how far your trade routes can really go. The sky is the limit.
You can see here, by trading with people around the Black Sea, I discoved Pergamon, Bithynia and several other city states.
3) Sacking and razing settlements? … Wait, what?
That’s right! As a barbarian faction, or at least as the Iceni you’ll need to sack or raze a minimum of 25 settlements! Personally, I hate sacking and razing settlements because of the effects it has on population happiness and diplomatic relations (much like the effects of genocide in real life). In Rome: Total War (1) it had it’s uses if the locals really hated you and if you didn’t mind lowering the local population. In Rome 2 I never used it until now. Historically it does make sense that barbarian factions have this as a requirement, but it’s never cost effective on the long term.
The first couple of turns when you start your campaign you shouldn’t sack or raze any settlements in my opinion. You shouldn’t anger the locals unnecesarily. You don’t have enough armies to station in cities in order supress the public unhappiness. Not only that, you don’t have the financial reserves to exempt taxes. You could sack a city and not occupy it, but why would you? It’s a quick cash source, but it’s not sustainable. You may as well occupy and build up the economy for turnly profit. Personally, I ignored this objective until ten or twenty turns into the game. Then I sacked (never razed) every city I encountered one time until I did so twenty-five times. After each sacking, I would immediately occupy the settlement immediately. One important detail to remember when sacking or razing settlements: just like when you execute or freeprisoners after a battle, this effects your relations with the enemy faction’s enemies and friends. Sacking and razing settlements will make your enemies’ allies very angry but their enemies will appreciate it. Even after 100 turns, I still haven’t managed to salvage certain relationships; I killed and sacked too many of their allies. Many of these are also barbarian however. Being the Iceni means it was never going to be easy anway. In any case, just remember somewhere in the back of your mind that sacking and razing settlements will have some kind of impact on many of your other diplomatic relations.
As you can see here, I was very precise about when I could finally stop sacking settlements. I had sacked 24 when I did my final check. I sacked the one I was currently besieging and that was that. After that, I only occupied.
4) Details on the Strategic Trade Resources
Also, let’s not forget that you need to gain access to all 10 strategic trade resources. Here is a quick list of what they are:
– Timber
– Lead
– Spices
– Leather
– Silk
– Olive Oil
– Glassware
– Wine
– Iron
– Marble
There are others too, like horses and gold, but these are the ten “official” trade resources. The other resources are used by your people; they are not used for trade. You can see which strategic resources you import, export and which you don’t have access to yet in the Trade and Finance tab (press 7) under the middle section (Trade).
If you start your conquests in the same pattern as I did, you’ll find leather in Britain and wood and iron on the western shores of France. This is where I landed before getting included in a war with Massilia and Spain where you’ll find olive oil and marble. As far as I could tell, you don’t need to hold each resource: you can import them through trade routes. The main problem as the Iceni will be either importing or seizing spices and silk. These are located on the far side of the known world by nations which are landlocked. They have access to the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea but not the Mediterranean. As far as I can tell, all trade routes needs to go through the Mediterranean Sea except when sharing a land border directly with the trade partner. Spices can be found on the Arabic peninsula which is usually held by Saba and sometimes by the Seleucids. Nonetheless, every playthrough is different when it comes to who lives where. In one war I witnessed, Sparta and Athens conquered each other’s territories, completely swapping empires. Silk can be found in the Middle East, to the north east of Jerusalem / due east of Damascus. If you want to know exactly where each resource is located, I suggest you search other online sources. You’ll encounter all resources eventually during your expansion across the Mediterranean and when following the instructions provided, so I don’t feel the need to include further details in this walkthrough / guide.
Due to the location of spices and silk and the fact that they are inaccessible by trade in my playthrough, the most logical route to expand along that I could find was from Britain into France, Spain, North Africa, East Africa and from there you cross the Red Sea to take out Saba. After that, eventually I headed north to secure the silk. Naturally, there may be other more diplomatic ways of obtaining these goods. In another playthrough, I raised my diplomatic relations with Syracuse so far that they gave me all their territory except their capital. Unless you want to sit around and wait for people to just, hand you their lands, you’ll need to get on that horse and conquer some lands. Let’s not forget you’ll need a total of 50 settlements to win. If you’re going to have to expand anyway, you may as well take the route I suggested. The more resources you hold, the more eager other factions will be to trade with you and the higher your trade income will be (to quickly see your trade total, go to London and aim at the trade route. Most of you know that, but it can’t hurt to mention it). I’m not sure if you can create monopolies on these goods. The trade and income details are a little basic for the real accountants among us who like to know the exact numbers.
Trade, trade, trade. That’s another important key to use at all times. Almost every turn open up your Diplomacy tab and see if there are any trade opportunities that can be put to use.
32,199 talents sailing into London per turn… that’s 1/3 of the total objective per turn, by trade alone
5) Additional Information for the Endgame
Having completed the economic victory myself a day after I started on this guide, I have to admit I modified my endgame strategy. My rating had dropped to unreliable, and after waiting around for 25 – 40 turns, never attacking and having my family tree erode from inaction, I finally regained one step on that reliability ladder. By then, I had already given up on the waiting and was training new armies for new campaigns.
I was going to ignore my diplomatic standing from here on and just openly declare war on all the regions I still needed. I took on Armenia, which in my playthrough had conquered most of Turkey, the Middle East and all the way to the north of the Black Sea and Bactria. By doing this, I finally secured silk. I also attacked modern Switzerland and Denmark, liberating those territories in the process. Many former liberated states started acting up, but not at all as harshly as I feared. They weren’t green smileys anymore but they didn’t turn red either. They would regularly cancel their military access agreements with me, and sometimes trade for a few turns (especially the remaining barbarians, including the Irish and the Scottish). Regardless, I pushed on and by doing so freed approximately an extra fifteen factions which did still love me. By conquering the extra territory, I didn’t even have to tweak my economy all that much to max out the profits. My income nearly doubled as I expanded by conquest and disbanded my unnecessary armies and navies when I was done in a region. Ultimately, finishing this wasn’t all that difficult after all. Just save regularly and clearly it helps to play as the Iceni.
I finished with a total of 35 trade partners (15 are needed). Yes, I had more trade partners in reserve then that I actually needed to begin with. I do want to point out though that if I didn’t have the barbaric ability to liberate settlements, I would really have struggled like I did with my Carthago attempt to keep everyone happy whilst also keeping my faction whole and meeting all the requirements.
6) List of Goals (specific to the Iceni and with some key details)
Hold 50 settlements
Once you get close, limit your conquests if you’re worried about your imperial penalty. After all, if you want to claim the entire world, consider going for a military victory
Maintain 15 trade relations at the moment of victory
Create and nourish as many trade relationships as possible. Personally, I have around 35 at the moment. Sometimes trade partners are eliminated which is why spares are useful (not to mention the extra income). Conquered trade partners can reappear (probably) when population loyalty is low enough. When this happens, they seem to still think as well (or poorly) of you as before they left, which means you can instantly open a new trade route with them. Trade will make you both wealthier and stronger!
Raze or sack 25 settlements
As mentioned before, just do this when you can afford to and keep an eye on when you reach the 25x point. Then you can go back to whatever it is you usually do.
Control through direct ownership or through military alliances the following provinces:
– Britannia (England)
Easy enough, your direct unfriendly neighbors
– Provincia (southern coast of France)
Landing in France, you’ll encounter Massilia and Rome before you know it. It is most likely that they’ll own Provincia when you get there
– Reatia et Noricum (Austria)
An easy segway when taking on Rome you’d think. Personally, I have saved it for last. I did one attempt, but since it is owned by two very well liked factions and because my armies were fighting other wars, I decided to go to a previous save game and focus on my current wars in the Middle-East. Not hard to find though.
– Asia (west Turkey)
From Italy / Rome, you should wait until one of the Greek states grows bigger then the others (Sparta, Athens, Epirus or Macedon most likely). Use this as an excuse to invade and reestablish the local states, with the exception of the one you’re attacking. Use that one’s homelands as a fall out base into Asia.
– Mauretania (Morocco / north Africa)
If you take Spain, Mauretania will be right next door. Sooner or later, you’ll get dragged into a war involving Cartago Nova, Carthage, Numidia or other factions.
– Suebia (Poland)
Suebia is easy enough to get to, either through modern day Germany, Fresia (the Netherlands) or by heading NNE (north north east) from modern day Venice (north east Italy)
Hold at least one of every strategic resource (10 total)
As I mentioned in the introduction, spice and silk may be a bit of an issue to get your hands on. The rest will be readily importable or available to conquer
These last three goals I have grouped together because 1) they are likely the final goals to reach, and 2) they effect each other
A) At the end of your final turn, have an income of at least 90,000 talents
This is why expansion is important, as is researching the tech tree, with extra emphasis on the civil upgrades. If you want to minimize the size of your empire, it can’t hurt to maximize each provinces’ financial output. Focus on buildings with the highest wealth but make sure each province also produces enough food and happiness
B) At the start of your final turn, have a treasury of 500,000 talents
This is an end game goal. Personally, I got up to 300,000 talents, but I quickly spent most of that fixing some diplomatic relations and making peace. If you’re close to earning the 90,000 talents per turn, it shouldn’t take more then six or seven turns of little or no spending to get this amount.
C) Maintain 150 units
When you’re done conquering, dismiss all those expensive armies and navies (provided you are at peace with all the neighbors), leaving eight generals in the field. Fill these stacks with your cheapest units (the final stack needs only 10). This should minimize army upkeep costs, thus maximizing your net profit per turn. Do make sure you are close to finishing A though (turnly income). If you can’t earn enough per turn and you can’t max your economical output any further, you may need real armies to conquer more territory.
All goals completed
7) Outro and Recap
Done… This is the first guide I have published on Steam. I have written guides for myself and others for many games in the past. This is probably not the final edit. Basically, it’s a rough draft I have checked twice now. The second time, I rewrote much of it. Writing this guide took me quite a few hours which is why I am not going to edit any further for the time being. Basically, just read and use it as it is, and if you find some crucial details that are wrong or need improvement, drop me a line on Steam chat and I will likely reply and edit this guide that very week.
I hope this guide will help at least some people. I know there are probably many similar guides out there, some will be better, some will be worse then mine. Personally, I wasn’t satisfied with the guides I found myself, which is why I wrote this one. I mainly wrote this for myself, for my friends and for anyone who comes across it who is struggling to get this achievement. Personally, I enjoyed playing as the Aceni. They were one of my favorite factions in Rome: TW (the first). In Medieval 2: TW after the Spanish, the British were my favorite. Even in Empire when I could play my own people (the Dutch) I liked the British just as much. There is such a strategic advantage to uniting all the islands under one rule (or even with alliances or confederations). Who has managed to invade and conquer the entire British islands, historically? The Spanish tried, the Germans tried. It’s like occupying Moscow, it can’t be done. If you do manage it, it’s not sustainable on the long term.
But I ramble on about history again. As I was saying, I enjoyed this particular challenge and am proud to have earned the achievement. I hope you will too, whichever route you choose.
Enjoy and game on.
Daniel, aka dshodaw
P.S.
To sum up most briefly, if you want to get the economic victory: play as the Iceni, liberate every settlement you can, trade with anyone you can, and try to tip toe through the map instead of flooding it with your armies. Don’t just start playing and check on your objectives in the midgame. Regularly check your goals and focus on achieving them.
Victory is mine
