Barbarian invasion manual

The Sugdhian warriows are better but they are slow to train and can only be trained at specific cities. The desert archers have long range but are very weak defensively. Your hope lies in elephants and cavalry with archer support. The other thing which makes this faction dull is that you only need to capture so few cities to win the game. If you hold Arabia, Egypt up to Cyrene, Asia Minor, and Armenia, you only need to capture Constantinople plus maybe 1 more city in Greece to complete the game.

You don't need to face the horde or the Western Roman Empire. Capturing Constantinople is easy because if the Romans still hold it, it is usually very poorly defended. A real anti-climax. The spearmen are very weak and has poor morale. They will always break from a direct cavalry charge. The desert archers are weak defensively but have the advantage of long range.

Also note that their missile points are rather low compared to other long range archers and therefore you will likely lose more in a direct archer to archer shootout. The cavalry are decent and they are the battle winners. Elephants are my all time favourite and still provide the extra power. I am not a big fan of camels as they don't have the speed of horses, are clumsier, lose their bonus outside the desert, and most importantly require too high tech a building to make a big difference in the game.

If you want to use camels, merc Camel Raiders are easy to come by to supplement your horse killing tactics. Camels do make cavalry killing much easier. Onagers are helpful for attack in sieges as your units are quite good in attacking in narrow streets with the exception of the spearmen.

Elephants just clear a path easily. Use this mobility well and do not hesitate to change formations or positions often in a battle. A lot of outflanking moves. Mobility isn't so much an issue and therefore they can fight easily in all terrains. At the start you have to face conflicts from 2 fronts while only able to afford 1 good army.

The spearmen cannot be relied on to win battles and my army is mostly made up of cavalry and desert archers. Horse archers are great skirmishing units to lure and harrass the enemy who will tire out faster in the desert. From the start I consolidated the small armies into one big one and sent all extra 'useful' troops to the front.

Using bridges to attack or defend is not great as it restricts the cavalry movements. Fighting in the open desert is ideal as you can easily isolate the enemy cavalry from their infantry support. I only march on Antioch after I got my first 3 onagers.

If you wait out a siege, your army is very vulnerable on the bridge attacked from 2 sides and your spearmen will often rout defending the bridge.

Yes, the archers are great to kill the enemy who try to cross the bridge but what happens once your spearmen are gone?

Archers become less useful once you lose the holding troops. Then it's all a mad dash with your cavalry. You can still win, but can you hold for a few battles? With your infantry so much reduced after the first battle?

I also captured the rebel city in Armenia as means to create a defensive city and create some sea trade income. This city I concentrated to get stone walls and archery range to fill it up with desert archers. Cavalry can be sent from nearby cities. It is also preferably to use more than 1 general in your advancing army to help increase conversion rate to Zoorastrianism.

This is to make less unhappy cities after you capture them. I left a defence force in Antioch archers and horse archers to sally forth if sieged and headed south. The cities south are poorly defended and they fall easily all the way to Alexandria. I avoid all rebel provinces as I don't want to waste time or resources. I also let Cyrene be as it's too far to travel and it's mostly a low tech city which won't be able to threaten Alexandria. Archers and horse archers defending Alexandria will do.

Fill it up with peasants too. As I was attacking south, I started to train up elephants while Antioch produced onagers and heavy cavalry and Hattra produced spearmen. So my force in Antioch became my second army and quickly captured Tarsus and Ceaserae. From there I advanced to capture all Asia Minor.

I also prepared a third army by then which invaded Salamis and into Asia Minor by sea. The first army in Egypt was used to mop up the rest of Arabia. The defence in Armenia was seldom threatened due to the long distance to get to it.

Even when the enemy sends an army to Armenia, you can spot them early and train up enough defences by then, by training infantry based units in the city and sending cavalry from the other cities cavalry alone in an army moves faster. And then I crossed to Greece and captured Athens and Constantinople to win the game. Elephants and heavy cavalry win in the streets. Don't depend on infantry to win walls. They are only good as support units and cannon fodder. I send them ahead, let them get attacked in the streets and then charge the cavalry into the enemy.

The other way is to let the elephants lead followed by the cavalry. Elephants are great to capture city centres as their arrows force the enemy to charge out making weaker targets for your charging cavalry.

If you use skirmish mode for your cavalry archers, they will scatter like hell leaving the rest of your troops defenceless. I recommend you disable the skirmish mode on all units. Only use skirmish mode for the 1 or 2 units you send ahead to harrass the enemy. Do not worry if the enemy gets too close to your cavalry archers as the arrows pounded into them should drop their morale making them rout just when they clash with your cavalry archers. Elephants just make my day.

My line up is made up of 6 levy spearmen, 3 onagers, 4 desert archers, 2 clibinarii, 2 cataphracts, 2 elephants, and 1 general. There is no most memorable battle as they are just plain sailing once I got my onagers and elephants. No brainer. Defending early is out of the question as your neighbours will overwhelm you sooner or later.

They are a poor faction too with little trade. So, what's their saving grace? What is the one thing they have the upperhand over their neighbours?

Lombard archers! Man, these archers rule every other projectile unit in the region. Pair them up with the lancers and you have a powerful force. The spearmen are just so-so. Once you get to train up chosen axemen and onagers, then you are set to win the game. Playing this faction requires a lot of running around to send your army to capture a city in one direction and then sending them to another direction to defend a city. Frustrating at times.

They are excellent city defenders. The lancers are very fast and can stand on their own most of the times. They also have good charge bonus to break enemy lines.

The infantry are dependable if you can get your lancers to relieve them, and gets better up to chosen axemen and berserkers. Golden Horde units are just too high tech for a not so great unit. You can get merc Golden Horde earlier if you want to try them.

Onagers are great for capturing cities without stone walls. Most of their units move fast too. Overall a well balanced faction to play. Schiltrom just makes your spearmen vulnerable to projectiles and make them isolated unable to reinforce anyone.

Use speed and repeated charges and archers to win the battles. My first target is the Franks capital. I get all available troops to march on the city. I get as many mercs I can recruit too. I managed to siege the city in 3 turns from the start. The Franks have a strong roaming army made up of mostly lancers.

Fortunately for me they were beside the city when I siege it in ambush mode. At the end of the fourth turn the Franks made a big error, they decided to sally forth from the city. Like most sally forths the AI does, they send the infantry out the front and cavalry out the side. So I killed all their infantry and then threatened the gate. The cavalry then went back inside, including the reinforcements and I drew the battle.

My plan was to wait out the siege as I have less cavalry and the spearmen are no match against their cavalry. The Lombard Archers are not the units to win the siege. Luckily, the roaming Frank army decided to leave to pick on some rebels. This gave me the chance to attack during the siege the city was only defended by 1 lancer and 1 general unit as I killed all the infantry earlier.

I made short work of the siege though I lost quite a number of spearmen to the paladin unit. The Franks then went into horde by turn 5. What about the Romans? Well, they are too thinly spread out to threaten me at the start and the Lombard archers with lancers defence killed off their sieging armies all the time during sally forth.

The Frankish horde decided to head further west like all good horde should, and was out of my hair for a while. I then reinforced both my cities with Lombard archers and lancers. What a good combo. Then my army headed west to caupture the large Roman cities. As soon as I captured a city, I fill it up with Lombard Archers and lancers. Then the army headed south to capture the city just North of the Alps. There was a period of shuttling my army northwards and southwards due to threats from the Romans in the north and the Samartian, Vandal and more Roman from the south.

I managed to kill off the Vandal horde when they siege my south cities with careful use of onager, lancers and Lombard archers. I was attempting to raise my second army for the north then.

My first army captured Mediolanum from the Romans only to be sieged soon after by the Samartian horde. I killed off thousands of the Samartian when I sallied forth practically destroying more than half their total horde. They never recovered from that. Second army then headed west into France only to be chased from behind by the Goth horde. So I had to quickly attack during siege at Samarobriva to then set up siege defence against the Goths. First army captured Rome next Ravenna was a rebel city after getting sacked by the Samartians and was too poor for my liking.

From Rome I headed south to Tarentum and then into Sicily. My third army was ready and that captured Ravenna thus sealing Italy. Mediolanum was a vital defence city against the west for quite a while before I captured Masilla and Arles.

It's then just to capture enough cities to win. I captured the Roman cities in England and Spain to win the game. Other notes: I avoided conflict with the Saxons at all cost. That's why I did not capture Campus Frisii in the north. I let the Romans keep that as a buffer. The Saxons proved a useful trading ally in the North and Londinium became my richest trade city.

I tried to preserve the Eastern Roman Empire as a trading partner but once I captured Italy they declared war by port blockades. I thus added Salona to my empire. For sallying forth you have the speedy lancers and lombard archers. Onagers make siege attacking easy.

Therefore I don't know how the Noble cavalry performs, perhaps better, but I preferred the speed of the lancers. Most of your units are speedy and can get into position fast. Though there are no horse archers, the lombard archers themselves can be used as skirmishes with speedy lancer support. Usual line up is 5 chosen axemen, 3 onagers, 5 lombard archers, 1 general and 6 burgundian lancers. Most memorable battle is the crushing of the Samartian horde when I sallied forth at Mediolanum.

It's a very fun faction to play! But it is not an easy faction to play. I would not recommend experienced players to play this faction with out any cheats. The most important period for this faction is the first 5 turns. If you get it right, you won't have any trouble from any other factions. Once I had my 'homeland' secured, it became quite a breeze to win the game. I finished the mini objective even before my second emperor passed away.

I was doing this even without rushing my play. The mini objective is just too easy just needed 10 more cities including Constantinople to win. The reason I said I would only recommend experienced players to play this faction is because I had to use every trick I know to play this faction well.

I had to have good skills in religious conversions, economy building, military logistics and battle skills to make it happen.

Lacking any of this skills and you will struggle more. The infantry is dependable from the Liminatei, Foederati Infantry till the praeventores, though I mostly use Comitatenses and Plumbatarii in my main force.

Palatine Guards are redundant as the other two have the advantage of projectiles. Praeventores have excellent killing ability but not staying power.

Their small numbers make them easily overwhelmed by larger numbers. So don't make up a whole infantry front line with them even though it is tempting to create an invisible front line that can spring ambushes every time. Oh, don't forget the peasants. They are the best to fill up cities to keep them happy. The cavalry is good too. Samartian Auxillia is strong.

The Equites Sagitarii is good as support melee though don't expect them to break enemy lines with their charges. Foederati Cavalry is decent in the early game. They make up their lack of power with speed. The siege units are excellent. Heavy Onagers and Carraige Ballistas just rock. I had a few single gold chevron Carraige Ballistas. The highest were 3 double gold chevron Carraige Ballistas. Somehow could not get them to triple gold. My best 3 Heavy Onager was 3 silver chevrons.

I get to rout the charging enemy often with the first volley of projectiles. I would recommend you disable the Skirmish mode of the Carraige Ballistas and pull them back manually. The problem here is that the carraiges are not very fast and will get run over by light cavalry. Skirmish modes also somehow pushes the carraiges away from my main army. What I do is to manually withdraw the ballistas behind my front line and send the cavalry at the side to kill the enemy cavalry chasing the ballistas.

Works all the time because the enemy cavalry would have low morale from the siege weapon and you don't need to kill much for them to rout. Keep to bridges. Faction strong points: 1. Large starting total army and 2 strong starting armies one in Rome and another close to Samarobriva 2.

Lots of sea trade cities 3. Rome is a high tech city 4. Have one secure front in Spain Faction weak points: 1. Scattered armies 2. Underdeveloped cities 3. Large size of empire make reinforcements difficult 4.

Multiple potential conflict fronts 5. Starting deficit in economy practically bankrupt 6. Plenty unhappy cities 7. Religious divide So, from the start, I needed to address these issues all at once. The first 5 turns is essential that I don't screw up. My initial plans were: 1.

Send strong armies to fronts 3. It's worth it in the long run. There will be certain cities which will remain unhappy red faced including Avaricum, Carthago Nova, Salamantica, Carnuntum and Lepcis Magna. Check each city's info seperately. Lepcis Magna has higher majority Christian and the unhappiness can easily be solved by razing the temple and getting the pagan general out of the city.

No need to build a church there yet. You can build it later. Carnuntum has majority pagan by has a Christian religion. What you need to do here is to build a temple so that the unhappiness will settle next turn. Train a peasant there. So, Carthago Nova is safe. Salamantica takes 2 further turns to resolve as you need to train 2 peasants to keep it content. Avaricum is the tough one. You need to send as many foederati cavalry from Burdigala to garrison it and send the general with high influence points from Massila.

You also need to send the army west of Avaricum to garrison there. There is an army outside Tarraco. Send the cavalry to Burdigala and all the infantry into Tarraco to reduce the setting from Daily Games to Monthly Games save denarii spending.

You only get denarii to start with. You have to be very careful with your cash. Now, move all the troops out of Rome expect the general. This army will be your first army. Get this army towards Salona. The Eastern Roman Empire will attack Salona soon. The army will not arrive before the siege but this first army will be your most important army to kill the coming hordes and the Eastern Roman Empire.

Now in every non-frontline city, try and disband as many foederati cavalry, foederati infantry, Liminatei and archers in order of highest maintainance cost to lowest while keeping a close eye to happiness. Just get it to blue faced. Check the settlement details to see what the predicted happiness changes will happen next turn.

You can tell this from the blinking happiness modifiers. You can get more detail by placing your cursor over the crosses.

The blinking icons are modifiers that will either appear or disappear during the next turn. So you want to make sure that you get less unhappiness next turn when you disband troops.

This ship will transport your troops from Rome to Salona. You can disband it after you do the crossing. Disband ALL naval units. Now the disbanding troops is nothing new. I've had e-mails from players who told me that they have done this for this faction.

My next step may not be new I cannot be sure if this is an original idea because I don't go into strat sites or forums but it gave me the Eureka feeling when I tried it for the first time.

In every non-frontline city, I razed every ground unit training building and armouries this included Rome to raise cash for the first turn. I rationalised this logically What's the use of armouries in Rome? So with the added cash, I then build up ports and traders in coastal cities and any emergency happiness buildings like in Avaricum.

The result was 3 riots at the start of the 2nd turn at Avaricum, Carthago Nova and Salamantica. Then 2 riots at the start of turn 3 and no more riots at turn 4. This is because the general with the high influence have arrived in Avaricum. I have repeated this start twice and I got the same result.

There's rioting but no rebellions. The Western Roman Rebels only appeared close to the end of the game after capturing Campus Sakae up in the far Northeast reaches because I could not be bothered to keep Campus Sakae happy as by then the game was ending with 1 more city to capture.

What about income? Anyway, I also get all available general without causing unhappiness towards the Eastern front in preparation of the horde advance. As I said above, the general units are the best cavalry units. One general in particular is my favourite.

He starts in Aquincum bordering the Goth lands. The Eastern Roman Empire sieged Salona in the 3rd turn of the game but I successfully sallied forth with inferior units. My battle tactic was to kill off their eastern archers so that my own archers will have the advantage. It was a tough battle and I could not take another siege after that but thankfully the reinforcement from Rome arrived just in time.

So, that concludes the first stage of my strategy of securing my homelands. Let's begin stage two of fighting the hordes. Once I had my homelands secure and free from Rebel Western Roman Empire, all I needed to do is fill up the secured cities with peasants while continuing to disband foederati cavalry, foederati infantry and liminatei. I keep the comitatenses, samartian auxillae and archers so that I can send them to the front. This is because most of the frontline cities can't train any of these 3 units.

Then I made Salona and Aquincum into Comitatenses training centers. Augusta Trevarorum became a Foederati Infantry and Liminatei training center while Colonia Agrippa provided the archers.

These 2 cities are symbiotical and are perfect to cover each other as troops need only 1 turn to reinforce each other. That should cover my continental Europe front. In Carthage and Lepcis Magna, I filled up with peasants and only later on used Liminatei, Foederati Infantry and Archers as the Berbers take a long time to organise themselves before proving any threat.

I managed to defend Carthage a few times with the starting units and at Lepcis Magna I defended it a few times with 1 general, 2 archers and the rest peasants.

At this point I had battled the Alemanii and the Franks. Not tough battles but always manage to weaken them. I used my starting assassin to continually assassinate the Frank and Alemanii generals to make beating them easy.

I had the strength to destroy them then but I did not want to release their hordes I didn't realise then that Alemanni could not horde.

So, I dealt with the Franks and Alemanii by assassinating generals and just keeping them weak. I even sieged the Alemanii capital with crappy units and then quit the siege before the city fall and resiegeing it again. Chances are you've taken a look at your Financial page in the Overview menu. If you haven't you should, even though it hurts. On normal, you have a positive denarii. On Very Hard you have - denarii. Either way you look at it, you control half the known world and you are virtually bankrupt.

Here's how to turn this around. First of all Use the Financial Tab. This will be shorter than the economy section I swear. Okay, time to go over how to hold onto what you have and maybe expand a little! Roman Roster. Aside from basic strategies you should have learned in vanilla R:TW, the main thing to cover is what battles to fight and what armies to deploy.

This is written for your first turn of gameplay! Lousy barbarians, being a pain to kill. Think they'd just do honest Romans a favor and drop dead. Sadly, you'll have to work harder to get things done. Your focus will be on the hordes the majority of the game, rightfully so. But there are scumsucking backstabbers right next to you who can ruin your day if you just think you'll be buddy-buddy the whole game.

If you've done right, the Roman Empire in the West should be secure. No more hordes, rebellions are infrequent and insignificant, and your trade network nets you anywhere from 15 - 20k or more a turn. Things are good.

Surely, you can just ride out the turns and work towards your Campaign goal at your leisure. How can it go wrong? Here's how it can go wrong. Economic Disruption. Thanks for entertaining my delusions that I can actually write, you one or two people that actualy read this. If this sucked, lemme know. If you think this was awesome, quit lying.

Panda Tacos 20 May, am. Carthage is a large city and also Christian, so I move Decius Flavius, who is a Christian and superb administrator, from Caralis to that city.

He greatly helps to reduce corruption in there, plus you will need a general to help defend the settlement. Saenes 6 Feb, pm. Amazing guide, really helped me a lot, although some things are different for me e. Should i upgrade my dock early? Great guide tho, got me further than ever before. Panda Tacos 5 Feb, am. I have an advice: Tarentum is in a similar situation as Carthage in terms of maintaining public order, income and general upkeep, it's best to move him out of the city, as he costs more to maintain than what he gives in income and public order.

Great Job It's amazing. I great job on this guide. They will begin the campaign in their native lands. Vandals Also a Germanic tribe, the Vandals made a long journey from their native lands, in modern-day Poland, across most of Europe. Attacks by the Huns forced them continually westward, and eventually drove them into Iberia.

From there they continued their trek into North Africa, and they eventually settled around Carthage. Like most of the German tribes, the strength of the Vandals will lay in their heavy infantry. Burgundii Also a Germanic tribe, the Burgundians too took a piece of the decaying Roman pie.

They begin in the Baltic Region, but end up. Like the other Germans, they are fierce footmen, the most fearsome of which is the Berserker. Come, check out the Burgundii, and see if you can bring them to rule the world. Repeated invasions and assimilations of barbarian tribes greatly weakened the Empire's finances and cultural stability. The army was becoming less and less professional and more and more a mixture of poorly equipped and trained barbarians and Romans. Under the constant pressure of foreign invaders, the Empire's infrastructure collapsed, ending the life of the Western Roman Empire for good.

Their strength will lie in their heavy infantry; the legions may not be what they used to be, but they've still got the potential to win Rome many great battles. Like the Eastern Empire, the West will start with a large number of provinces, but it will also be afflicted with instability within its borders.

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