Rome Total War – Western Roman Empire Guide and Tips

Introduction

I just finished a vh/vh campaign on the Western Empire (currently uploading the videos), and someone on Reddit asked for some tips since they were struggling with their campaign. Since I coincidentally finished a campaign as the WRE I typed up quite the essay on surviving/expanding the WRE campaign. I thought someone here would appreciate these tips, so here it is! A full guide with pretty much everything I know about the campaign as the Western Roman Empire.

Screenshot of the end of my WRE campaign. All big garrisons you see are legions with a similar troop strength as seen on the army tab.

Start of the campaign

The start is where it’assis: if the start sucks, many turns after will suck too. So you need to get a few things right, mainly finances and military (which are closely related of course since most expenses will go to army upkeep). Prenez votre temps, a lot of things need fixing all at once so don’t be surprised if the first turn takes ages.

Starting positions of the WRE Camapign.Ici’s a breakdown of the most important things to keep in mind and pay attention to. They are listed in order of importance, with the most important things at the top.

Public Order

By far the most important thing to worry about at the start of the campaign! Ce n'est pas le cas’t matter if your settlement makes a lot of money if it revolts all the time! Spend the little money you have on public order buildings. Enfiler’t be afraid to drop taxes left and right, it is better to have a settlement that earns a bit less than to not have the settlement at all.

There are a few settlements at the start of the campaign that are going to have riots no matter what (some can be prevented, mais ça’ll cost a lot more money than it’ça vaut). These settlements are:

• Avaricum
• Lepcis Magna
• Nova Carthago
• Salona

All other cities can easily be prevented from rioting by dropping taxes and in some cases (like Mediolanium) by also putting on the games.Après 1 turn of rioting Nova Carthago and Salona can be salvaged if you really want to, but it slightly depends on luck. Si tu 100% WANT to save them you’ll need quite some garrison and you need to keep your fingers crossed that the rioters don’t damage the arenas in these settlements, comme toi’ll have to put daily games on in order to fix public order. If the arena is damaged after the first turn of rioting, il’c'est fini! The city WILL revolt.

Avaricum and Lepcis Magna are lost causes, and Nova Carthago and Salona can with a bit of bad luck join this list. Since you know for a fact that these settlements will revolt because there’s nothing more you can do about it, it does give you a bit of an edge. Tu vois, if you know a revolt is going to happen, you have the time to prepare for it carefully to make sure its impact is as low as possible and it’ll be back under your control in notime.

Public order in Avaricum at the start of the campaign. Even with peasants in the que and low taxes a revolt here is impossible to prevent.In order to prepare for an iminent revolt, you need to identify the problematic cities (listé ci-dessus) and do the following things. During the first turn take all troops out of these settlements, put the taxes on very high and destoy all military buildings. Putting very high taxes on slightly speeds up the process of the riots and also squeezes every last bit of money out of the city before it revolts. Destorying the military buildings gives you a bit of extra cash, but most importantly it will help you to retake the city with ease once it has revolted.

Avaricum, after preparations for the revolt have been made. Taxes are on very high, the garrison is waiting nearby and the military buildings are demolished.When the revolts happen, the Western Roman Rebels get a randomly generated army during the end turn when the revolt takes place. With all military buildings detroyed before the revolt happens, the only unit they will have access to is peasants. En plus 1 family member which will always spawn as the leader of the revolt, you just have to deal with an army of peasants. And with the big garrisons of Avaricum and Nova Carthago you can even auto-resolve these battles. So taking the city back will be a piece of cake.

Avaricum, après le ‘controlled revolt’ took place. Only peasants to deal with.Retake the cities and exterminate the populations. Toi’ll get extra money and public order will be under control for the foreseeable future. You can then move most of the garrison off to fight battles (especially the garrison of Avaricum, which is full of Comitatenses).

In order to prepare for the future it may also be a good idea to destoy the temples in these cities when you’re destroying military buildings. If you want to go for Christianity it obviously gets rid of a building that spreads the wrong religion, but if you want to go for Paganism it can also be beneficial since there are temples to Mithras in these cities. Temples to Sol Invictus provide more law, which means more public order and less corruption. So if the settlement will revolt regardless, might as well use this time to get rid of the temple and rebuild it to Sol Invictus once you take it back (or build a church if you go for Christianity). Like mentioned before, you will exterminate the population once you’re done so it will be easy to either switch the temple to Sol Invictus or convert the population to Christianity due to the small about of people present.

Finances

Loads of settlements have way too expensive of a garrison for the wealth the city provides. Some settlements in Spain and Gaul for example have like 3 units of Foederati cavaly as garrison, each one costing nearly 400 denarii in upkeep every turn! Peasants do the exact same job as expensive units (the quality buff was added in medieval 2) and they are dirt cheap. So over time you will have to swich out your expensive « garrison » with peasants which will save you tons of money in the long run. Send these expensive troops off to fight wars, or disband them (Personnellement, je ne’t even bother with Foederati infantry and cavaly, they are such a bunch of expensive losers that I just disband them and focus on getting the good stuff like Sarmatian Auxilia).

Finances of the Western Roman Empire at the start of the game.Like mentioned in the previous chapter, you will be spending the little money you have for the most part on making sure your settlements stay under control. For the majority of settlements this will take a few turns, as most immediate problems can be solved quickly by training some peasants, but that obviously won’t mean the public order is magically fixed. So for the first few turns you will be mostly busy with the previous chapter.

Once the dust of the first few turns has settled, and public order isn’t the biggest point on the agenda anymore, il’il est temps de gagner de l'argent! A lot of cities are underdeveloped at the start of the campaign, so a lot of work needs to be done to make them financial powerhouses. Since the amount of money you’ll be making will not be too much, not all cities will be building something at all times. So divide your attention across your empire. It will take a while until you make enough money to build anything in every city at any time, so until you reach that point you have to be careful with how you spend your money and on what.

There are two prime ways of making more money with your own settlements:

• Increasing income
• Reducing expenditure

Like mentioned earlier, you start with a lot of underdeveloped settlements. Even settlements that can make a ton of money just due to their position will barely break even at the start. The income of a settlement is earned in three ways:

• Agriculture
• Taxes
• Commerce

This list is in ascending order, since trade (even internally between your own settlements) is extramely powerful. Send diplomats to start up as many trade routes as possible and focus on building ports and roads in your cities around the Mediterranean. These cities will become your financial powerhouse if developed correctly. Take the city of Caralis for example. At the start of the campaign it has just a wooden wall… que’s'asseoir! Just building a level 1 port here will make you a couple hundred denarii already!

Farms and taxes kind of go hand in hand. The better your farms are, the more people arrive and the more taxes they’je vais payer. Increasing the population by upgrading the farms will also ensure the city will grow faster, meaning you can upgrade the city quicker. This does come with the issue that more people means more squalor, which in turn means less public order. So only focus on increasing the population in cities if you know for sure you can handle the problems that come with it.

I will also advise you to spend most money on financial development in the cities that are least likely to come under attack. Espagne, Gaul and the islands of the Mediterranean are quite far away from any immediate action (with the exception of the revolts mentioned in the previous chapter) and can be developed rather safely. The cities in Italy are a bit of an exception, as they will most likely see fighting rather early on, but developing them (financially and militarily) is kind of important since you don’t want to lose these huge and important cities!

Besides the expensive units used as garrison mentioned in this guide already, corruption is the biggest reason your income will be low at the bottom of the line. The key ingredient to fix this issue is

law. The law bonus not only gives public order, but it also reduces corruption, so increasing law in a settlement actually tackles two problems at once! Academies and walls give law in BI while they do not in regular RTW, so use this wisely. Pagan temples provide more law than Christian churches, especially the temple to Sol Invictus. Focus on building these types of buildings in order to reduce corruption. You can even tackle multiple issues at once, like building a wall for the law it provides but also because there is a group of barbarians on the way that will have to assault a stone wall now, à titre d'exemple.

I already mentioned the reducing of expensive garrison a bit, mais je’ll mention it properly here. Lots of cities have Foederati cavalry or infantry as garrison. They are WAY too expensive for providing the simple garrison tasks that peasants can execute just as well. Replace all the Foederati with peasants over time, it will save you thousands of denarii per turn. Ideally you want all cities, with the exception of cities located on the frontline, to just have peasants as garrison. If you feel a little unconfortable having just peasants, you can also go for Archers or Limitanei as additions to the garrison. They are not too expensive and give you a bit of flexibility.

I will talk more in depth on this topic in the military chapters of the guide, mais ça’s nice to mention it here briefly, as conquering stuff will always provide an increase in wealth. All I’ll say is, là’s a reason the Eastern Roman Empire has an easier and stronger start than the Western Empire: their territories are wealthier! After dealing with internal struggles first, expanding into Greece and Asia Minor will yield the most financially. The Eastern Empire will most likely have their troops at their borders with the hordes in the North and the Sassanids in the East, leaving everything in between up for grabs. Focus on taking these regions, they are worth a ton!

Disbanding all/most boats at the start of the campaign is a useful trick, Depuis que tu as gagné’t really need them in the beginning and they are going to be constantly attacked by pirates anyway. That will save you a few hundred denarii in the first turn already. Keeping some boats near Britannia for easy access to the Celts is useful, mais toi’ll barely be using the vast number of ships in the Mediterranean. So these can easily be disbanded to save some early money.

Gardez à l'esprit, in order to disband a fleet, it has to be in a port!

Finances of the Western Roman Empire, still on the first turn but with the taxes on low in all the cities that require it, most of the fleet disbanded as well as a few expensive garrison units. Went from a profit of 21 denarii to a profit of 1315 centimes. It may not be the biggest difference, but keep in mind all of my settlements have their public order fixed as well!

Militaire

As briefly mentioned above, toi’ll probably downsize in military a bit in the beginning. Disband expensive crappy units like the Foederati, or send them to their death on the frontline. The start is key, beause you start out at war with a bunch of factions that can be taken out very quickly before they get a chance to snowball out of control. You start at war with the following factions:

• Alemanni
• Berbers
• Celts
• Sarmatians

Enfiler’t bother with the Berbers, their army roster is terrible and you’ll have to be beyond incompetent to lose Carthage to them. The Sarmatians will accept a peace treaty at the start of the campaign (and sometimes even pay you for it), so send a diplomat over there asap. Which just leaves the Alemanni and the Celts.

The great thing about these guys is: they cannot turn into a horde! If you take their final settlement, even when they have other familiy members on the map the faction dies anyway! The Alemanni have only one settlement, and you start with quite some troops nearby, so they can be killed in 3 tourne. Move the army that you start out with, standing nearby their capital, to get the job done. You can boost the ranks of the legion with troops from Augusta Vindelicorum if necessary.

The legion that will take Vicus Alemanni. A few units from Augusta Vindelicorum have been added.The Celts are in a similar situation. You can take Dal Raida in 3 tourne, leaving just Tara left. Là’s 1 fleet near Gaul that can’t be disbanded right away, so you can use that to quickly hop your army across to Hibernia and finish off the Celts. Then you can move that legion out of Britannia and make it fight for more important regions.

The legion that will take Dal Raida and Tara. Some units from Londinium have been moved to Eburacum so that all units of the legion could leave the city.Savoirthat there’c'est un 99.99% chance that the Celtic diplomat standing near Hadrian’s Wall will bribe Eburacum over the end-turn if your general leaves! This is annoying, mais ça’s better to take the fight to the Celts and destroy the faction rather than having the general and most of the legion wasting their time (and your money) sitting in Eburacum because of that one diplomat. Just take Dal Raida, then double back to retake Eburacum if it is bribed. The Celts won’t have time to reinforce the city fast enough and it’ll also give time for your fleet to arrive from Gaul to take your legion to Tara.

It has been 3 tourne, and the Alemanni are dead. Tourner 1: Assemble and move the legion. Tourner 2: Lay siege and build rams. Tourner 3: Assault and exterminate the city.

Comme mentionné ci-dessus, you can quickly get some units together to take on the Alemanni and the Celts. In the beginning of the campaign this is very important, because most of your cities are not developed enough to train your best (or even the most basic) unités. Even if your cities were, your economy wouldn’Je ne le permets pas, meaning that for the majority of the start of the campaign you have to

use what you got! This is why it is important to replace garrisons in cities with peasants. Every unit higher tier than peasants is valuable in some way and is used 10 million times more efficiently when it’s on the frontline fighting wars than when it’s sitting in a random settlement waisting loads of denarii every turn in upkeep. Look carefully where troops can be pulled from and assemble some legions to fight your wars!

A makeshift legion created from troops found in Italy. Various settlements like Syracuse for example have large garrisons that can be used better pretty much anywhere else other than there. Find these troop concentrations and get them on the move to the front!

While you build up your economy you can also slowly work towards better quality soldiers. Like mentioned before, Foederati suck! They are expensive as all hell and don’t perform at all! The Western Empie has good units in their roster, but they are expensive and require advanced barracks/stables. In my opinion the best units of the Western Empire you should be aiming for are:

• Auxilia Palatina
• Carrige Ballistae
• Comitatenses
• Comitatenses First Cohort
• Equites Sagitarii
• Sarmatian Auxilia

Que’s where it’assis!

Although most cities in the empire are very underdeveloped, this is not the case for some barbarian settlements across the border. Using the tactics mentioned above, you can get yourself not just some additional territory, but some cities where you can (concernant)train Comitatenses and Sarmatian Auxilia which are right at the border, where they are most needed!

Legions filled with Comitatenses commanded by an alright general are enough to keep the borders of the empire in check for good while.

Dealing with the barbarians

Comme je l'ai dit plus tôt, take out the Celts and Alemanni early on and fast. Ils peuvent’t turn into a horde and provide some quick new lands for taxes/recruitment/defence. The real problems lie with some of the other barbarian factions. The Saxons will always send a fleet to Britannia (they have victory conditions there), sometimes either the Franks or the Burgundii can be noisy/untrustworthy neighbors and of course there are the hordes thundering towards Europe. The Eastern Empire will also most likely betray you at some point. So here are some tips for each of the most troublesome factions:

Send an army preemptively to their lands (or let it sit on a boat near it). Once you see they’ve loaded up their army on their ships and sail to take Britannia: declare war and attack! Just like the Celts and the Alemanni, the Saxons cannot turn into a horde. Quickly take weakly defended Vicus Saxones and the whole army out at see will disband!

A huge Saxon army is loaded on this fleet, ready to take Britannia…

Meanwhile Vicus Saxones is under siege and will fall easily, destroying the faction before their big army has a chance to do anything.

Kinda depends on the situation. Parfois ils’ll be peaceful neighbors, other times: REEEEEEEEEEE. If you have that army you used to kill the Saxons still nearby, use that to keep them at bay while you move reinforcements over. Be mindful that both the Franks and the Burgundii factions

PEUTturn into a horde, so make sure you kill all family members before assaulting their final city.

Astuce rapide:If the faction can turn into a horde, and their final family member is hiding in the final city, attack the city, kill the family member but then lose the battle on purpose by retreating. The city will turn rebel, the faction will die and there won’t be a horde to deal with!

These faction can be generally summed up in 2 mots:

archers à cheval. They can be a massive pain to deal with due to these mounted mobile turrets, since your own horse archers are a little difficult to come by at the start (et cher). Meanwhile your main troops will most likely be heavy infantry, which will just get shot apart from a distance. If you want to hunt down horde horse archer factions, either design legions specifically for this purpose, or choose the site of the battle very carefully. River crossings or other maps that limit the mobility of the horse archers will even the odds in your favour.

While your armies aren’t fit to deal with large hordes of horse archers you can let them grind themselves to dust against you city walls. Ici’s how that works. When they lay siege to a city, sally out (il’s best if you have at least 1 unit of cavalry in the city, like a family member (archers can also help to speed up the process)), let the arrow towers shoot the everloving ♥♥♥♥ out of the enemy (provoke them with cavalry to make them move close to the towers if need be). When the enemy refuses to move send all your cavalry back inside the city and quit the battle. The game will call it a draw and you’ll be back on the campaign map. Repeat this until the hordes give up or die.

Loads of dead Vandals outside the walls of Salona. Notice the experience on the archers from shooting thousands of men down below.

Bring the cavalry back inside after a job well done and quit the battle. The game calls it a draw, mais toi’ve done loads of damage on the enemy. Repeat this process and let the towers do most of the heavy lifting.

Have you ever noticed that when the AI sallies out during the end-turn and the battle results in a draw, ils peuvent (et je le ferai) sally out again during the same end-turn? This is something that the player cannot do. You can only sally out once per turn, while the AI does it as many times as they please. A bit unfair right? Bien, luckily you can do the same thing using a little bit of saving. Ici’c'est comme ça que ça marche. Sally out and fight the battle like mentioned in the hordes section above. Pull all cavalry back inside the city and quit the battle. When you are back on the campaign map the game will say you cannot sally out again. Then quick save and quick load the game (crtl+s and ctrl+l respectively) and you can sally out a second time while still in the same turn! Using this combined with the power of the towers during the battle you can wipe out full stack horde armies in 1 tourner! It is by far the most time efficient way of wiping out large horde armies!

Dealing with the Eastern Roman Empire

They will most likely try to take either Aquincum or Salona off of you. You can let them have it, but make them fight for it at least a little. Toi’ll most likely not have many troops there to defend these cities (si tu le fais, what the hell are they doing there?). Le truc c'est, Aquincum especially is right in the middle of the

Horde Highway. Pretty much all horde factions are going to pass through there and attempt to sack it at some point. The Huns, Vandales, Roxolani, Sarmatians, Goths, Ostrogoths and with some bad luck also the Slavs will all come through there and want to have a little pitstop at Aquincum. Just let the Eastern Empire deal with that.

The Eastern Empire can be easily repelled if they want to expand further into your lands, because the passages to Carnuntum and Mediolanium are narrow, so they can be defended easily by small forces and by using forts to block them off. Forts can slow down the enemy significantly, especially when built in narrow passageways. The enemy cannot walk around them, and so must take the fort. Même s'il y a’c'est juste 1 random unit of peasants in the fort, the enemy will have to waste a bunch of turns to take the fort giving you some time to get prepared in the city they were actually trying to attack. With these safeguards in place just wait out the storm a little bit and after a while you’ll have your finances in order to build some proper legions to mount a counter-attack.

Defending your lands West of Aquincum from the Eastern Empire (and hordes) is easier due to the narrow passageways that give access to it.

A rather basic legion like this can easily deal with a large Eastern Empire legion.When taking the fight to the Eastern Empire, try to hit them where it will hurt the most. You can go for a frontal assault and go up against the big legions of the East, but a more sophisticated approach may work better in this case. Go for their lands in Greece and Asia Minor, or through Lybia to Egypt and Palastina. All of the legions of the Eastern Empire will be either at Aquincum and its surrounding area dealing with the hordes, or in the East dealing with the Sassanids. Anything in between (all very rich settlements) will most likely be very ill defended. If you hit them there, you will hit them right in their financial heart! Take out these cities and soon they won’t be able to affort all the expensive legions they have on their borders. And if they recall these legions to deal with your invasion, the enemies on their borders will have an easier time which is beneficial for you!

So consider this option when preparing an invasion of the Eastern Empire. If you go head to head against the locations where the Eastern Empire has most of their troops, tu peux (and probably will) come out on top eventually, but is that really the fastest/most effecient way to go about bringing them down? Keep in mind that not all campaigns are the same, so your situation may require a different approach since the hordes/troop concentrations of the Eastern Empire are in different locations.

While Aquincum is constantly under attack by hordes (in this case the Huns), the Eastern Empire has to defend it like this.

Meanwhile Athens, a very wealthy settlement, is defended like this.

If the Eastern Empire (or any faction you are at war with for that matter) asks you to become their client state, accept but demand they pay you regular tribute of a couple thousand denarii for a bunch of turns. The AI will most likely accept this and then declare war on you a few turns after, meaning you just got some free money for a bunch of turns. Donne juste’t be afraid to accept vassalisation in Rome 1, it doen’t do a lot. The only thing you have to worry about is making sure you don’t have too much money in the bank. If you are someones client state, all money over 10.000 denarii will be paid to your protector at the end of the turn. So just make sure that before you end the turn you que up a few buildings in some cities to get under 10k. When the turn is over, just cancel the buildings you qued up and you’ve got your money back. Obviously only accept being someones client state when it benefits

toi, not them. If you already make tons of money and have lots of good quality troops there’s no need to accept becoming someones client state.

Religion

In the beginning of the campaign don’t bother with religion too much, no matter wether you want to go Pagan or Christian. You have way more important things to worry about. Just make sure your cities don’t revolt and worry about the religion later. Il’s not worth losing an entire city for a bunch of turns because it revolted due to you wanting to convert it to a different religion. Il’s much easier to just deal with the 10% public order penalty due to « different religion than faction leader » or whatever for a couple of turns. Spend your time and money on public order, army upkeep and the other things mentioned above, not religion.

Once you have the time (and money) to worry about religion, there are lots of options. Si tu’re going christian: là’s a guy in Aquincum at the start of the campaign that has so many christian artefacts in his retinue, he can convert any city in a matter of days! Just use him as a sort of missionary and let him travel the empire converting places. Once the population is mostly christian, destroy the temple and replace it with a church and move the guy to the next area.

Spurius Flavius is young and gives 55% Christian conversion all on his own! A valuable asset if you want to convert to Christianity. A noteworthy obstacle if you want to convert to Paganism.In general the same thing goes for when you want to convert to Paganism. Just leave Rome and the other Christian cities Christian for a while until you have proper time and money to deal with it. Then put Pagan characters in the region, build up the Paganism among the population, smash down the church, replace it with a temple, move to next region. Repeat this process until Christianity is eradicated from the empire. Also make sure you kill Spurius Flavius in Aquincum as soon as possible when going Pagan, because he’s just going to cause a lot of problems otherwise.

Important things to keep in mind

The chapters mentioned in this guide aren’t checkpoints that can be tackled one after the other. All things mentioned here will constantly be in play until of course you reach a size and strength where you can just snowball out of control and steamroll your enemies into defeat. Just because you survived the public order debacle in the first few turns doesn’t mean you never have to worry about it ever again and can now fully focus on improving the finances. Switch your attention to a different matter after ending each turn. You end the turn, but a settlement that was fine in the previous turn is now angry. Spend the money you were saving up for a port on this settlement to make sure the public order is fine again. That port will have to wait. Il’s a constant balancing act until you have the money to just throw it around everywhere. Mais d'ici là, stay on your game!

Vidéo

If you want to see these tips in action, you can watch the video listed below. Bear in mind this campaign is slightly modded, with a few different buildings, but all tips mentioned in this guide still apply and are being applied here.

Fin

Bien… thanks for coming to my TEDtalk about rebuilding the Western Roman Empire. Des questions?

Emperor Augustus Aurelius ‘the Butcher’ takes Constantinople, the final city needed to unify the empire.

Victoire!