One thing I found for the Western Roman empire is that it is okay to lose province to public order at the start just get them back later and to flip to Christianity as quickly as possible

MANY A TRUE NERD WRE CAMPAIGN EPISODE 1 PROVIDES GREAT ADVICE

With the WRE i tend to abandon North Africa and use the troops taken from there to put down the early Rebel Romans - you can also scrounge some many troops from around Italy and elsewhere.

Ah, the Eastern Romans. Though when I play them, I call them Byzantines. For the Byzantines, I usually just try and recreate Justinian’s reconquests and the campaigns of Belisarius, while also holding off the Persians.

"Know this, all roads lead to Nilfgaard"

Finished my ERE run yesterday. EZ. Playing my HUN run today. Hardest game I have ever played. What happened is, I was sacking other horde faction and triggering a migration, at this time sassanids conquered Anatolia and hordes marched on Balkan Peninsula, heaving WRE alone to their shinenigans. And I have settled to Constantinople because A: I was low on manpower B: All my family passed away in suspicious circumstances and I could do nothing. Now me, Huns, on Thracea, Slavs on Dacia, all other factions conquered because almost all of them moved to balkans and fough with each other, (I know) A gigantuan WRE on west owning all of the Mid/West Europe, and Sassanids owning all of the Asia and Eastern Europe, Berbers on Africa, and me Huna on middle, owning 3 settlements, low on cash and manpower. My horse archers can't defeat Cataphracts and late game Roman Cav. Help.

@@hannibalburgers477 you are meant to seek out the enemy armies, then take three cities.

ATK Productions haha yes that's very true

If I rush to get archers and onagers to join my field troops on a bridge, I've destroyed so many barbarian civilizations on that bridge.

Allister Jeffery yep haha I've suffered many similar experiences with them as well

Lugotorix I think that you are not using them properly, they are garrison troops in real life and I find them to be effective defending high ground or bridges. I have screenshots of battles in the first part of my campaign we’re 20 stack Sassanid armies would lose there entire army to an 7-8 stack force mainly of limatanei and equites. Late game they’re useless but early game for defense rather than conquest they are a good go to as they can be recruited across the empire for almost half the upkeep of comitatenses

(Hard difficulty)

I think that is the reason why the romans have the priest units to give the easily scared off cheap units a morale boost

Most effective way to use limitanei is to place them in walled frontline cities. Bolstered by some bowmen they are able to defend cities against horde factions. If the attacker fails to break the gates, 5 or 6 units of limitanei will easily beat a full stack hunnic army (which comes with only 4 units of infantry).

But the western empire has the Palatine Guard.

And the east has cataphracts

A bit unfair agianst the AI, they never do that.

they go through several roster rework until they finally go the way of the dodo.

The army that stood in Byzantium even a couple centuries later was much different.

Because they mostly use mercenaries in their lifetime, the serfdom ruined the ere after many plagues and losses in battle they can't recover their manpower easily. That's why the ere mainly used mercenaries, blame this to diocletian, they could last more than 1000 if diocletian didn't reform the roman empire.

@@peterongan9655 Not at all. The Byzantine Army were mainly Roman born during the reign of Antasius. When the Arabs took the Levant, Egypt, Carthage they lost everything that made them an Empire. But as a Greek Kingdom they were pretty powerful as Constantinople as its center.

@@alexandrostheodorou8387 Idk about the "greek kingdom" but the Byzantine empire is pretty diverse there're some emperors from Armenian, Macedonia, Syrian, and Anatolia. They hardly used greek as their main army, mostly they levied the Anatolian, and before the Huns arrived the majority of their army were from the Balkan because of their culture. Then they were massacred to almost extinction, and this is why the Slavic tribe easily colonize the Balkan. They're very hostile to the ERE making it harder to be levied by the ERE and one of them is the ferocious Bulgarian empire, they beat the sh*t out of the ERE most of the time. Their rivalry is one of the long ones, second to the Persianised empire(parthia+sassanids). When the Seljuk Turk conquered most of Anatolia ERE empire should've collapsed but because of Alexios Comnenos, they didn't yet. The fall of ERE is at 1204, the rest is just history.

*REBEL DIPLOMAT WOULD LIKE TO KNOW YOUR LOCATION *

If men forgot how to use axes, Rome stands. When even a toddler can use axes, Rome cannot stand.

ahh yeah I must've accidentally misspoke. I meant to say that I agreed with the game's description

If you can survive until later in the game, Eastern Archers and Lanciarii with some cavalry and artillery support do a LOT of work, though. In the terms of having hundreds of kills and only a dozen or so losses.

Rafa Calero glad you enjoyed the video! Yeah I'd definitely recommend getting it on steam

Thanks for the support man. what do you mean by you can't see the video?

they are a cav faction

I do it for religious reasons. I’m a devout Christian

@@marcuswoods2006 I also definitely enjoy crushing those Zoroastrians and Pagans.

Being Pagan, I convert totally to Paganism!.

@@Anaris10 in game, go as you like. In life, paganism is a silly game

​@@naponroy paganism is a completely fine religion.

Spathas were superior in every way

@@thessop9439 cavalry yes, because you had more space, but the infantry usually found it moderately cumbersome, and the gladius was already capable of a variety of things, and more.

@@lostvayne3977 In a melee, spathas are superior due to its lenght. Just consider how the longsword became so popular later

What is there not to understand? Almost every single historian and weapons enthusiast explains why. A large square shield and short sword combo is great when you are fighting in formation with very disciplined soldiers that knows the strength and the weaknesses of short sword / big shield combo. It is great against fighting against spearmen, it is great against pushing enemies on one side, it is great against tightly packed battlegrounds. Spatha and Oval shield combo is great when fighting against cavalry, as the swords are longer. It's great when fighting off formation as you can swing the long(er) sword in various ways. It is told to be much easier to teach compared to the gladius. You can give a random untrained man an arming sword or a spear and he will use it good enough against an angry mob. You give a large shield and short sword to a guy and he will be trembled under the feet of the horde. Edit: added (er)

because they are better. What do you mean the infantry found it moderately cumbersome? Every fighting men in history abandoned short swords for longer ones whenever it is economically and technologically possible.

Slavs is honestly the faction I know least about because it isn't playable without serious alterations to files, right? But I would certainly consider doing a guide on it once I've finished the more obvious factions. Doing a guide on the slavs would require me to do quite a lot of research though :)

@@lugotorix6173 Thank You! I've been looking towards Barbarian Invasion. So viewing your faction guides will help me out a lot.

Playing my Hun campaign today, I was never able to use Plumbatarii effectively before. But AI cleans the floor with me. Their armor stops my arrows and their range is so large that every hit melts half unit of lightly armored Hun Cavalry.

Nathan Williams ahhh fair enough, this period of history isn't my strongest haha. Thanks for letting me know!

I think you meant the Eastern Romans were the Byzantines, the Western romans died out long before the eastern ones.

The eastern romans were called Byzantines throughout the medieval era in recent years.They called themselves Romans.The city was called Byzantium in ancient times but Constantine the first called it Constantinople (meaning the city of Constantine).The eastern part was influenced alot by Greek culture

@@jhmmgf4236 Yes, they called themselves the Romans, but did it in Greek (at least after the age of Justinian as Greek replaced Latin), which is a bit ironic, but the name stuck around to be applied to medieval Greeks as well as subsequent, Islamic states in the area, such as the Sultanate of Rum and the Rumeli region of the Ottoman Empire.

If you interested in this topic and haven’t heard it yet, I’d highly recommend the ongoing podcast series “The History of Byzantium”, which covers the history of the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire from its beginning and has currently reached roughly the time of the First Crusade.

They do have a bonus against cavalry. It just does not show up in the unit description for some reason. Shows up in the game files.

You should build a full army of elite ERE calavlry, 10 generals + 10 cataphracts can destroy the entire Hun horde

@@arnaudh2082It's how ERE fought the Huns IRL

Yeah idk why anyone would recruit Scholae Palantinae, not only are they worse, but they are more expensive than Sarmatians aswell.

I know, it’s a literal scam. And these were the replacements for the Praetorian Guard.

Spatha*

Caleb Evans Christianity gives huge public order boosts and allows you to build another religious building, the Hermitage. It also allows you to recruit Orthodox Priests into your army. Paganism gives boosts to settlements/units, this includes experience boosts, recruitment of bezerkers(exclusive to the Alemanni and Lombardi), missile attack boost for the Saxons, etc. They have poor public order boosts, and if the state religion differs from a city’s religion, it gets negative debuffs to public order. In my opinion, if you aren’t playing as the Western Romans, Eastern Romans, Goths, or Franks, don’t bother with Christianity, for those are the only factions that can recruit Christian Priests. With the WRE, it should be a priority to convert your cities to Christianity, since you’re going to need that public order bonus if you want to keep the empire together. As the Franks, however, even though you can recruit Christian priests by converting, your main priority as them is to handle your squalor and the Alemanni down south. I hope this helps you in your next campaign.

@@polpo8342 Thanks. I usually just convert to Paganism but I can definitely see the advantage especially for the Western part of the Empire.

Wolfogre buying the game on steam is what I would recommend :)

U can download it on your phone now xD

Wth? Wdym Ayeguptis? It's pronounced as "æ geep toos" in latin. Scorpio pronounces it like "Æ geep toos"

yes!.

All of them are pretty good, apart from Rome II(imo). Shogun 2 with a couple of tweak mods is awesome by the way.

@@raized943 Rome 2 crushed my soul I started playing it in 2018 and was still crushed my DLC.

The Warhammer games really brought back the wonder of the original Rome Total War, where every faction is seriously different. I don't like the microtransaction h*** you have to slog through to unlock all the factions, but at least you are getting a game with a lot of replay value. Sadly, I didn't find much of that in Empire, Rome II, Shogun II, or most of the other historical games after Medieval II. Faction variety is key to a Total War game, IMHO, and R:TW has a ton of it. But so do the Warhammer TW games.

​@@richardkenan2891 Ah yes, that game where I walk through corrupted lands and take attrition while the AI doesn't. Awesome mechanics.

I don't know a lot about the SPQR campaign, but rebels campaign I'd certainly like to do soon!

The SPQR is a really interesting faction, it's like your standard Roman faction but with some very odd quirks (since they're supposed to be unplayable, and are ironically more broken than the Rebels) -- They, like Rebels, cannot have their settlements revolt. I assume this is so that the SPQR can't lose Rome before the civil war starts -- The SPQR can't build any temples. While you don't really need happiness or public order, it does kind of suck that you can't build temples to gain population growth or military bonuses -- Trying to click the "Senate" tab in the factions menu crashes the game :P -- For some reason, if the player takes control of the SPQR, the Italian peninsula enters "Battle Royale" mode. Every game I've played, after even just a handful of turns, the civil war will suddenly trigger incredibly early, most often by a Roman faction attempting to attack you. I don't know why this happens, and this is obviously impossible when playing as other Romans -- You have easily the best starting army in the entire game, and when Battle Royale mode inevitably breaks out, you will already have experience 3 Principes and Triarii while the other Romans will still be using Hastati. My strategy is usually this: 1) Secure Sardinia and then move to Sicily. You have an incredibly strong starting army, the Carthagineans will absolutely be no match. You will also want these areas for when the civil war fires; just in case Rome should fall, you'll still be alive and relatively safe 2) From Sicily and Rome, push straight to the Scipii and wipe them out early as soon as the civil war starts. They're not the strongest, so it's best to get them out of the way as soon as possible 3) Position some troops on the defense at the bridge on the Tiber river near Rome to hold off the Julii while you send the rest of your armies to remove the Brutii from Southern Italy. The vast majority of their army will be in Greece, so they will be very easy to push out. There is a good chance they will still be alive in Greece though, but the AI almost never launches naval invasions, so you'll be safe. 4) After surviving the Julii assaults, launch a counter attack. They probably will not expand into Gaul while they're at war with you, so they'll be small. 5) You should now have dominance of the Italian peninsula, and you can basically play like a normal Roman faction. Be sure to never destroy any religious buildings you come across, since you can't build your own

@@BetaDude40 I think it triggers because you have Rome, I am pretty sure having Rome triggers civil war.

I don't have much experience with Alexander but if I do i'll make guides for it :)

could just skip it ngl

Five centuries too early bro.

Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion Expansion