One of the most important thing to do is to swap out all of your garrissons to peasants in all thouse settelements that are not under threat of enemy attack. The upkeep of peasants units is something like 50 denarii per turn. You will save huge amounts of money by doing that.
I've done multiple playthroughs with this faction, and had the easiest time of it when I made religious decisions based on whatever gave me the most public order. Just letting settlements be Christian or pagan let me complete the campaign in the shortest amount of time. Paganism empire wide was less optimal, and Christianity took the longest. Christianity *can* give the best public order, but only for huge cities with a fully upgraded hermitage and church. A large temple of Sol Invictus by contrast is only ~5 - 10% public order less for much less denarii and build turns. Christianity does have better retinues for generals though, things like the Spear of Destiny. Pagan temples also give better law bonuses, which helps with the huge amount of money you lose to corruption. Guard the bridges, because hordes lose a lot their advantages when crossing bridges. Building forts is really helpful for slowing the hordes' advance, and can be used for a couple of exploits which are admittedly not very fair. Even if you don't use exploits, forts are probably more beneficial for the WRE than any other faction. Although Ravenna was the capital of the WRE historically in this period, Masillia is usually the better choice.
Thanks for the suggestion. I can and will, but I have some other wishes still to fullfill. :) I guess in several weeks I will be able to start either of those campaigns.
Actually, there already is :) You can find it from here: ua-cam.com/play/PLzgwn6yANNZyxs3f1IsYVbzToqrIJkqOP.html My goal there was to conquer the whole map and wipe out all other factions.
Ok, first thing you have to do wnen playing as WRE is to not panic. Yes, you are dead broke, most of your generals are hot garbage, people across the empire hate your guts, there's a religious division between the empire and your bloated army consists of poorly trained but expensive fat cats and barbarians that will run away from battlefield the moment they face the enemy. It seems like a lot but all of it can be fixed quickly in a single turn, two tops. First thing first, you have to stabilise PO situation. Lower the taxes, increase games, shuffle governors, as they might be the cause of trouble, but most importantly switch your capital to Massilia. You always want to keep your capital at the center of your empire. You will probably end up with only a couple of cities that will revolt, but it's ok. If they revolt just have your army ready to retake them. Don't bother with having "One faith" in your empire. Italy and Africa, especially Africa, are hardcore Christians. Don't bother turning them into pagans. Same goes for Spain and Gaul. You'll save yourself a lot of trouble. Do not destroy buildings. Ever. They are expensive to build, it takes a long time to build them and their destruction won't ever give you enough money. Instead, delete your armies. At the start of the game your army is filled mostly with Foederati infantry and cavalry. Each regiment of FI costs you 280 dinari. Each FC costs 307. They are NOT worth the cost. They have rather poor moral and aren't great at fighting. In fact, most of your starting army sucks hard. Not only they are incompetent, but they are overpayed. So, cut them down. Check the PO status in cities when you do it though. You have to get rid of them in first few turns gradualy. Trust me, your treasury will thank you for that. Your go to units should be Sarmatian cavalry and Comitatences First Cohort. They are incredible units and, unfortunately, one of the few that are actually good among all WRE roster. At least SC aren't that hard to get early. With CFC you have to wait a bit. Another reason why extensively exterminating your pop in cities is a bad idea. You need your cities at level five and you need them to produce CFC and SC on industrial level. Cutting population down in most of your cities will leave you exposed to attacks of barbarians with inadequate troops.
Thank you for the detailed comment. I can understand most of your points, in some cases I think we have somewhat different play styles :) For instance, I like to get money from allowing cities to rebel and then recapturing them, and in the process make the public order quite a bit better. I also think that you need to have military facilities only in several cities and in couple of others e.g. in Italy.
I always change my capital to massila sell map info for 2000 to alemani, berbers, on the first turn and destroy the archer building in Rome. Then build ports in all of Spain, France and Italy as well as only change to Christianity in carnuntum as well as lepicus magna, and then lower tax rate for those about to rebel and games, also 70 percent is the safe zone and move that general spurious Flavius to carnuntum, and disband the armies in Spain especially as well as Sicily and if your feeling froggy Rome as well and you have to get your faction leader out of Rome with only priests as garrison, if done correctly you can save all your cities as well as have build your infrastructure and turtle up. Make sure you build up sarmatian cavalry in the settlement north of Salons as well as Rome and utlilize your generals to kill the brigands. By turn 2 or 3 you should keep all settlements and make like 12 to 15K a turn
Sounds reasonable. I kind of like to let the cities rebel, so they can be captured, and the public order will stay in check for quite a while + you get a really nice amount of loot from recapturing them. Are you playing on hardest difficulties? And thanks for the detailed advice :)
@@qualityoldgames7721 I play in very hard campaign difficulty but medium difficulty in battle. Typically I like the looting but preventing rebellions and not exterminating the populace generally nets me about 12 to 18K profit a turn which allows me to focus on my infrastructure. I use that spurious flavius character to convert all my settlements to Christianity one at a time.
Imagine having gladiatorial games being outlawed as it was in the Late Empire - the impact on the PO would be enormous!
Agreed on that. Every major city would have an uprising immediately - at least in my campaign :D Thanks for the comment.
One of the most important thing to do is to swap out all of your garrissons to peasants in all thouse settelements that are not under threat of enemy attack. The upkeep of peasants units is something like 50 denarii per turn. You will save huge amounts of money by doing that.
Thanks for the comment. Absolutely agreed on that. :)
I've done multiple playthroughs with this faction, and had the easiest time of it when I made religious decisions based on whatever gave me the most public order. Just letting settlements be Christian or pagan let me complete the campaign in the shortest amount of time. Paganism empire wide was less optimal, and Christianity took the longest. Christianity *can* give the best public order, but only for huge cities with a fully upgraded hermitage and church. A large temple of Sol Invictus by contrast is only ~5 - 10% public order less for much less denarii and build turns. Christianity does have better retinues for generals though, things like the Spear of Destiny. Pagan temples also give better law bonuses, which helps with the huge amount of money you lose to corruption.
Guard the bridges, because hordes lose a lot their advantages when crossing bridges. Building forts is really helpful for slowing the hordes' advance, and can be used for a couple of exploits which are admittedly not very fair. Even if you don't use exploits, forts are probably more beneficial for the WRE than any other faction.
Although Ravenna was the capital of the WRE historically in this period, Masillia is usually the better choice.
Thanks for the very thorough comments. :)
Can you play as the goths or the franks?
I love those factions
Thanks for the suggestion. I can and will, but I have some other wishes still to fullfill. :)
I guess in several weeks I will be able to start either of those campaigns.
@@qualityoldgames7721 thanks a lot
I will be eager to see your New campaigns
Oh boy. We gonna see a campaign?
Actually, there already is :) You can find it from here:
ua-cam.com/play/PLzgwn6yANNZyxs3f1IsYVbzToqrIJkqOP.html
My goal there was to conquer the whole map and wipe out all other factions.
Ok, first thing you have to do wnen playing as WRE is to not panic. Yes, you are dead broke, most of your generals are hot garbage, people across the empire hate your guts, there's a religious division between the empire and your bloated army consists of poorly trained but expensive fat cats and barbarians that will run away from battlefield the moment they face the enemy. It seems like a lot but all of it can be fixed quickly in a single turn, two tops.
First thing first, you have to stabilise PO situation. Lower the taxes, increase games, shuffle governors, as they might be the cause of trouble, but most importantly switch your capital to Massilia. You always want to keep your capital at the center of your empire. You will probably end up with only a couple of cities that will revolt, but it's ok. If they revolt just have your army ready to retake them.
Don't bother with having "One faith" in your empire. Italy and Africa, especially Africa, are hardcore Christians. Don't bother turning them into pagans. Same goes for Spain and Gaul. You'll save yourself a lot of trouble.
Do not destroy buildings. Ever. They are expensive to build, it takes a long time to build them and their destruction won't ever give you enough money. Instead, delete your armies. At the start of the game your army is filled mostly with Foederati infantry and cavalry. Each regiment of FI costs you 280 dinari. Each FC costs 307. They are NOT worth the cost. They have rather poor moral and aren't great at fighting. In fact, most of your starting army sucks hard. Not only they are incompetent, but they are overpayed. So, cut them down. Check the PO status in cities when you do it though. You have to get rid of them in first few turns gradualy. Trust me, your treasury will thank you for that. Your go to units should be Sarmatian cavalry and Comitatences First Cohort. They are incredible units and, unfortunately, one of the few that are actually good among all WRE roster. At least SC aren't that hard to get early. With CFC you have to wait a bit. Another reason why extensively exterminating your pop in cities is a bad idea. You need your cities at level five and you need them to produce CFC and SC on industrial level. Cutting population down in most of your cities will leave you exposed to attacks of barbarians with inadequate troops.
Thank you for the detailed comment. I can understand most of your points, in some cases I think we have somewhat different play styles :)
For instance, I like to get money from allowing cities to rebel and then recapturing them, and in the process make the public order quite a bit better. I also think that you need to have military facilities only in several cities and in couple of others e.g. in Italy.
I always change my capital to massila sell map info for 2000 to alemani, berbers, on the first turn and destroy the archer building in Rome. Then build ports in all of Spain, France and Italy as well as only change to Christianity in carnuntum as well as lepicus magna, and then lower tax rate for those about to rebel and games, also 70 percent is the safe zone and move that general spurious Flavius to carnuntum, and disband the armies in Spain especially as well as Sicily and if your feeling froggy Rome as well and you have to get your faction leader out of Rome with only priests as garrison, if done correctly you can save all your cities as well as have build your infrastructure and turtle up. Make sure you build up sarmatian cavalry in the settlement north of Salons as well as Rome and utlilize your generals to kill the brigands. By turn 2 or 3 you should keep all settlements and make like 12 to 15K a turn
Sounds reasonable. I kind of like to let the cities rebel, so they can be captured, and the public order will stay in check for quite a while + you get a really nice amount of loot from recapturing them. Are you playing on hardest difficulties?
And thanks for the detailed advice :)
@@qualityoldgames7721 I play in very hard campaign difficulty but medium difficulty in battle. Typically I like the looting but preventing rebellions and not exterminating the populace generally nets me about 12 to 18K profit a turn which allows me to focus on my infrastructure. I use that spurious flavius character to convert all my settlements to Christianity one at a time.
@@johndigiovanni5343 Nice! Thanks for the info :)
@@qualityoldgames7721 tried the western campaign again on both very hard difficulty in campaign and in battle. The moral debuff and is insane
@@qualityoldgames7721 I finally beat it on very hard very hard difficulty without exterminating any cities or enslaving by 400 AD. It was a pain lol