Rome total war 2 fighting styles of different factions and overview

Welcome all to my first guide! In this guide i will be going over MY ideas of what tactics are the best to use and the ones that i have found most efficient at taking out the enemy, this in no way represents the gaming communitys opinions as a whole. I will start by looking at different factions fighting styles, their prons, their cons etc. I will then try to decide which in MY opinion is the best faction. I hope you all enjoy this guide thanks!

In this part of the guide i will be going over how the romans fight or the best ways i think they can fight. The romans fight in tightly packed groups, wearing heavy armour and carrying enoumous shields. They do this because it is much easier to train a man to stab through a gap then it is to train him how to fight 1 vs 1. This is what made the romans army decimate any they came acoss. Most tribes they came across in their conquering of the world belived in honour and 1 vs 1s so it was no surprise that the romans decimated them.

To start with i will talk about how i like to structure my army. i usually have 10 core units such as leginarys/preatorians, 4 ballistas, 3 cav and 2 specials either dogs or giant ballistas. And a general

When i play rome i like to take advantage of , what i belive, to the strongest weapon/unit in the game. The ballista. The ballista is a huge crossbow that can fire exposives or rocks, if yur playing rome in the base game. These can absoloutly destroy enemys in sieges and avoid your loss of life, you can chuck rocks at partitions of the wall where you enemy hide to break down the walls where they are taking cover/guarding. This will not only create an entry point but also kill the enemys stationed on top of the wall. This is a great way of taking out enemy sligers that can outrun your heavily armoured romans. Once yurballistas have opened up one or two holes in the wall and mabye a double hole, and have taken our about 300-600 people, you want to get a unit of cav prefrablly auxillery cav in through the holes to take our the rest of the low morale low armours troops that were and are on top of the walls, that would be a waste of a heavily armoured romans time. Once you have done this with 2 of your cav units, keep at watchfull eye out in case any more heavily armours troops that would massacre your cav come into the fight, once you have killed most or all of the lightly armour troops, you want to split your core into 3 groups of 3, march them to the different entry points and make their units advace through one by one, once all nine are through, having dealed with enemy soildiers, you want to line them up to take advantage of romans united power. You will keep your last unit of your core out of the fight in case any soiliers come through the gate and/or attempt to take out any of your other core from behind. You can from this point push your 9 core units forward to capture points or kill the rest of the enemy.You just won yourself a seige!

In open battles ballistas are not as usefull, but you want your core to put them selves around them in a pattern i will put after this paragraph. You want your 3 cav to stand at the behind and slightly to the right of your main army, they will them take out any cav that want to cahrge or they can run forwards turn and run into the enmy that are fighting your troops, this will put them in a sandwhich type battle that they have a minimal chance of winning. you want to keep a unit spare again at the back just to help any sides that seem to be taking the most losses.
Your roman core will almost never loose a unit if you have your full 20 army, because if you use these tactics time and time again your troops will get more and more experienced therefore making it even possible to win agasint 40 units.

Although the romans likes to fight using swords, the egyptians fav method is to fight using spear. I like to sturcture my egyptian armys by having an 8 core such a karrian axemen or hoplites. These will be able to take out most units. YOu then have 4 specials such as chariots or elephants, your general should be an elephant or a chariot also although to not include him in the 4 specials, so overall you will have 5 speicals including you general. 3 ballistas,4 cav. I highly recommend getting mostly chariots for your specials as this will allow you to mow down the native african tribes surrounding you, hwen you star tt fight the greeks and the romans who are more heavily armour you want to start moving towards galliticain swordsmen and elephants rather than axemen and chariots.

When you go into a siege you want you ballistas to knock holes in the walls and do everything they did with the romans, but this time it would be better if you could sacirfice a chariot straight off the bat to take our hundreds of the enmy men and lower their morale considrably. You then want to march your low end troops such as axemen up to the holes to engage the enemy,as soons as they have fought open a gap big enough to fit a chariot through, drive your chariot through, this is why you needed low end troops just in case they didnt get out of the way quick enough. At this point the native african tribes shuld be running or just about to be dead, you can withdraw your current chariot if its still alive and your axemen and totally break the enemys moral with a cav charge. The egyptians require much more micro managment than then romans as you will have to move slightly all the time to avoid being sliced by chariots or trampled by elephants.

In open battles you should line your chariots/ elephants up and charge them through the enemy, this will lower their morale a lot and they should be on the verge of running, you can make them run by following up your chariot/elephant charge with a cav charge.
This method works best in ambushes but it does still work on the open battlefield. In my opinion egyptians are not as strong as many other factions on the battlefield but that doesnt mean that they can win in ambushes and seiges.

Ah what can i say about hundreds of warriors running across a filed to slaughter your enemy. When i was building my gallic/british tribes i found that unlike the people surrounding the egyptains and romans, the gallic tribes wore little to no protection with exception of oathsworn and there counterparts in the other gallic tribes. This meant that i liked to include more archers and slingers in these armys than i liked to with other factions.

So when i was building the army i went win 11 core units such as spearmen and swordmen. 4 units of cav and then 4 units of longbows or slingers. as well as your general who should be oathsworn because their super duper OP.

When you are fighting battles (sieges are fought in much the same way as open land battles). You first want to weaken the enemy with your fast moving missile troops and just harrass them and lower their moral a little. You then want to just charge with your core. How ever if you can manage to get some core troops around their sides then that is very good. That is why i use 11 core instead of 10 so you can have 2 to run into the sides. Although gallic cav are not as strong as roman/egyptian cav they can still be formiddiable if charged right into the back of the enemy, so what you want to do is run them around the sides of the enemy, taking out the enemy missile troops as you go because although your missile troops can kill the enemy your troops arnt that heavily armoured either so you will loose a lot of troops if you dont take out the enemys missile troops with your cav. so once you have killed the enemy missile troops you want to charge the rest of your cav into the back of the enemy that are fighting your core. This will completly enclose the enemy as you will have units fighting from the front sides and rear. Battle won.

Although i have tried these tactics and find them to be very good i still have to stress that as gallic and british tribes you will loose a LOT more troops than you are accustomed to losing with rome or the egyptians. This is because the egyptains and romans troops are unique to they often have an advantage somehow over the enemy. But you faction is surrounded by factions thta have almost exactly the same troops that you do.

I sense this is going to be my most contrioversial part so far. I have gone over the factions that i have played a lot and have enjoyed playing, so if you havnt really played any of them i highly suggest that you do. I am only going to be deciding which is the best faction from the faction that i have reviewed. I did not do a greek guide as i found the greeks VERY repetitive and boring, because you have almost no cav and mainly hoplites.

Out of the factions i have reviewed i think the romans are the best. They have a uniform look which i love, a nice diciplined army that fight as a whole. They are arguably have THE strongest troops in the game, which you cant really argue with. Egyptains are better at fighting less advanced factions such as gallic tribes and african tribes. However they are quite weak against heavily armoured opponents. The gallic tribes were almost not even a contestant, They WILL get destroyed agaisnt the army builds that i have shown, whether you use the tactics or not. However gallic tribesare INCREDIBLY fun and rewarding. Having hundreds of battle frenzyed warriors running across your screen all at the same time is just awesome and it looks amazing when they fight enemy tribes because they are just savage and they fight individual battles rather than huge joint battles. The egyptains didnt win because they arnt as fun as either the gallic tribes or the romans in my opinion and it doesnt matter if they are the strongers or best faction there is no point in playing them if you find them boring and less entertaining than the other factions. Now dont get me wrong i did enjoy playing them in the campaign but after you have take over much of the weak tribes you kind of get to a stalemate agasint greece and the romans. The romans got top spot because they are extremly fun and i loved every second i played as them. They can take out anyone using the army build and tactics i have shown. However it is more fun when you are fighting gallic tribes because its just so rewarding to see your roamsn surrounded by the enemy and then they end up winning the battle, it is the just so rewarding. Again when the romans start to fight harder opponents such as the greek states, egyptians etc it gets a little more boring as it is a slight stalemate but no where near as much as the egyptains was because with rome at least you can still end up winning a battle against the spartens whereas with egyptians you will have to rely more and more on numbers to start winning your battles, which isnt a bad thing but it sort of ruins your economy and if you lose a battle thats 40 units gone, so it takes such a long time to rebuild your army.

I hope you guys have enjoyed my first guide/overview about rome 2. Please dont go racing to the comments section telling me i was wrong about my decision because i have already said that the romans are MY fav not yours. And whos guide is this? thats right its MINE now yours so please think before you type.