I have not gotten to the late game yet, but my sense of it is that AI factions face the same problems maintaining their glory that you do, and that turn 100 is much too early to worry about a couple factions ahead of you. You and they will face major hurdles. (From what I read about difficulty levels, this is the main thing that is tougher at higher difficulty levels – there, AI nations will face diminished internal threats.)
Of course, part of this is also a matter of personality. If I took a minor faction, created a secure empire, and finished with the third most legacy at the end of 500 turns, I would feel like I did pretty well by them. But even if you have to see a victory screen to be satisfied, I think there is a lot of water to pass under the bridge.
I’m hoping to take my current Nubia game as far as I can to see where I can end up in the rankings. I’m less than two hundred turns in and have conquered all of the parts of Egypt that matter. From here I can stabilize but also hopefully have some influence in the Mediterranean against the powers that are ahead of me.
I now have two decisions that are more like quests And can only be triggered if I move a fleets to one of two very far away areas. There’s no way I’m going to conquer my way from the Balkans up to Scotland, so I suspect there is some way of getting long-distance naval supply. Unfortunately I have no idea what is
I’ve been doing well as Rome but my decadence has really been spiking up over that past 10 turns or so. I’m trying to combat that by building more culture buildings in my regions and moving citizens there to work them. Are there any other strategies? Maybe stopping expansion for a bit and building infrastructure will help?
There may be a better way but I got a fleet up north for the quest by simply making it large enough that the ships didn’t all die before they got there
Has anyone else been unable to get a province governor set to focus on a specific building type to keep all regions building reliably? It seems like sometimes when one building finishes another will start, but not always. The interesting thing is that if I change the building focus, sometimes the regions with nothing building will start building something from the new focus. It’s almost like it’s deciding there’s nothing in its focus worth building so it… doesn’t build anything.
Yeah you can safely ignore those decisions most of the time, but as long as you keep your ships moving, a fleet of 3 small ships should be able to sail to any sea zone.
It offered 150 legacy so I really wanted to do it worth losing a few ships. I’m surprised that three is enough though, I Will have to try some experiments
There are some excellent building chains that result in major decadence removal effects. Oration Tribunes may seem useless, but they lead to courthouses which are ace (to the point where I’d consider building them anytime they turn up) and finally Tribunals. Also, Preceptor House -> School -> Academy.
I restarted my game as Rome, so haven’t gotten much past turn 50, so haven’t noticed any real issues yet (biggest issues was the first 20 turns, where it was hard to balance production with culture). Will see what happens when I get to Empire. I did take it a bit more slowly this time - depending on your situation, I definitely think it make good sense to take a few pauses to buff culture and loyalty.
In my experience so far, the AI governors are pretty useless. Haven’t tried the builder yet as I don’t find that too onerous, but I’m far from happy with the pop allocator which would have been nice if it was actually useful as moving pops isn’t particularly fun or interesting decision-wise.
I like the complexity of the various systems in the game but it just takes too long. I’m at turn 125 now, I hope I manage to win long before 500 because that won’t happen until next weekend . If and when I do play again I am going to be more aggressive are using the shuffle option so that I can specialize the region
I had a chance to start some proper game as Rome. Previously started as Sparta and failed in a great way.
Rome is easy mode of course. Unlike Sparta your legions aren’t terminators from space but they usually overwhelm everyone around you. Rome itself is the only place to get proper legions, I also liked that some Samnium village to the north, near Boii, has an archery range and thus is a great source of velites (skirmishers). Tactical combat shows you what everybody does in a great way, it’s also good at highlighting that your big stack isn’t that useful on its own, especially when you go fight in the mountains.
I’m yet to properly understand what to do with loyalty and economy but I like the economic system. UI leaves a lot to be desired, of course: for some reason many buildings don’t have thier effects listed in the left panel but in the right one where you usually see a historical description. It’s be also nice to be able to get a screen with unit stats (previous AGEOD games had this), not just tooltip. There are also some obvious mistakes like diplomacy screen doesn’t actually show your relationships value which is bizzare.
Overall I look at this game and see the right level of granularity and abstraction. I think Imperator Rome suffered from a desire to have everything as detailed as possible. Here Rome start is defined economically by specific buildings, populace and access to some natural resources as well as trade sources. In Imperator Rome most countries start with a dozen of provinces, and thus dozen of trade goods, and provinces mostly don’t have any special buildings. Here I can see that for hundreds of turns I’ll be very interested in what exactly is happening in Rome even though now I have 11 cities. In Imperator any decent country has hundreds of cities and it’s all a blur.
Legions pretty much are terminators - though they can struggle in mountains against good leaders. Pack plenty of velites/skirmishers.
Form provinces. You want to recruit provincial cavalry in Cisalpine as they’re superior to your own, and provincial slingers in Sardinia-Corsica and Sicily. Italian Legions seem inferior to Alae, but having them means you can recruit more cheap medium infantry to bulk up your Legion-based armies.
Exploit your Legions ability to build public works/roads. Fantastic way to kickstart production in an otherwise weak region and allows you better mobility.
The game tries to drag you into early expansion in Germania/Gaul by assigning you objectives to the North, and having the idiotic German/Gallic AIs declaring wars on you constantly. Ignore the temptation to march North and crush their weak armies - their provinces are depopulated and worthless. Strike West for the Gold/Silver of Iberia, East for the riches of Greece, or South into Carthage.
My Building Tips:
Food:
So far, my experience has been that you generally want to have farms in most places. Build cattle/sheep in select regions (remember their effects benefit neighbors), and you get +4 food everywhere, often meaning +12 food farms. You can then later upgrade to Large farms (at +20 food), which open up the grain-based building for even more crazy food production.
Coastal Market is great if you have “free” fish resources available; I’ll rarely build a fishery just for that. Orchards are great if you can get +15 food; if it’s at +10 or less, I’d usually prefer farms.
Infrastructure:
Public Works any time they’re available (basically 6 free infrastructure at no slot cost). Apart from that, you’re either going for a lumber or a stone-based infrastructure building bonus. Again, a quarry or woodcutter can support multiple neighbors. Exploit any special resources, of course (marble is particularly great).
Culture:
Build oration tribunes and cult sites - a lot, especially once the regions have gotten their food/infrastructure engines running. They lead on to great buildings. Once things are looking good, I’d add some preceptor -> school -> academy chains. I also tend to build monuments - seems worth it, even with the decadence penalty.
Other than that, you should be constantly looking to exploit bonuses. If in doubt, look whether you can build a building that triggers bonuses in two or more neighboring provinces (this is one of my main UI gripes - doing this is a chore, but a key decision parameter). You will quickly run out of slots, so except for the 0-slot buildings, never build something that doesn’t trigger a bonus either now or in future. Once you reach the latter tier buildings, you’re looking at massive bonuses if you’ve built up right.
Finally, note that any building that “Needs” a good, and has it within trading range (it says that it can trade from XX) actually brings the trade good to the province, allowing it to trigger bonuses in neighbors. This is important for bringing spreading the rare goods around your empire.
This is probably a biggest concern for me at the moment. AI seems to be very trigger-happy. And there seem to be no way to have some sort of cease-fire agreement. I’d expect there to be some way to pay other countries for non-agression pact or for them to stop raiding. All you can do is send them gifts and hope they’ll agree to cooperation agreement. I’d also very much prefer AI to be more deterministic, telling you whether diplomatic answers are yes or no. Spamming them with requests can be replaced with some sort of smooching.
In my starting game as Rome it made sense that I was attacked by all of my neighbours. You can argue they saw me expanding and decided that it’s now or never. But then they didn’t actually attack: I had one big stack and could maybe split it and fight 2 of their stacks, but some of them could get a province from me. As for now I only lost a single province (Umbria) to Tarentum and later one of Tarentum provinces was lost to rebellion, but those were quickly reclaimed.
What you’re saying is that resource produced in a province can be used in neighbouring provinces without “trade”? And local trade uses money too, just like trade between states? Also is it “infinite”? E.g. my single iron mine can service blacksmiths in every province around?
It would be nice to have some sort of separate resource screen, to see which resources stop your buildings from working at all, which would bring you more resources, which you can explore in the future.
This all is a little convoluted but for once it makes for interesting economic system, something more akin to Colonization than what we usually have in empire building games.
Yep! This is outlined on pages 50-54 of the manual. It is, unfortunately, a bit scattered. (I find this is typical of the manual – it contains almost everything you need to know, but it’s often dispersed over a number of pages and had to pull together into a concise understanding. It’s unfortunate for a system as rich in detail as this one is.)
In short:
NEEDED goods are either present in the region or must be brought in via trade
BONUS goods are either present in the region, or adjacent regions, but are never traded for.
A good brought into a region (or adjacent region) because it is NEEDED can be used as a BONUS good as well.
If you trade with yourself the buying state only pays half of the trade value, while the selling state gets the full value.
If a NEEDED good is not within trade range, you pay 3x its cost to have it present.
Yes, this is central to the trade mini-game, and I find it really interesting.
However, one crucial point to add: that last bullet point, “if a needed good is not within trade range” you get it but pay extra… You need to remember that unlike bullet point 3, this does NOT make the good available to other buildings within a one region distance.
So… paying for a good from some other faction is very often highly advantageous. You pay for it, but get it in a whole area of your empire.
Paying extra for a good that is not available is usually not advantageous. You pay triple, and can use it only for the one narrow purpose.
