5 Things I Wish I Knew About - Rome Total War - Earlier

Welcome, to 5 things that I wish I knew about the game, Rome Total War, much much sooner.

I am not saying that all these you will not know, or took a while to figure out, but it is just my list of 5 random things, in no particular order, about stuff I wish I know earlier.

Enjoy : )

[MelkorGG]

I want to make it clear, all 5 of these people have commented about before telling me that they never knew them, that is also why they are on this list.

Next Episode should be about Barbarian Invasion Total War, the Expansion for Rome.

Also, sorry for my mistake at the start. You hold down ALT and click attack to change to a melee, not CTRL    : )

[JRD]

"Pikes are longer"
Phillip II, battle of Chaeronea 338 b.c.

[AudieHolland]

You can create lots of peasants units, move them out of your overpopulated major cities (every peasants unit decreases the city's population level slightly) and move them all the way up to the frontier. Disband inside a new settlement and you get instant colonist settlement growth.

[emperorkarlfranzprinceofal]

15 years of playing RTW and I only just now learned about the retinue thing lmao

[tomaszlosinski]

The pikemen one is actually in the traits of the units. Pikemen have a trait called "very long spears" while hoplites do not. As a consequence however pikemen have low armour so can be considered inferior to something like armoured hoplites.
Also one thing a surprising amount of people don't know is that if you have a unit of elephants, you can destroy wooden walls and so can attack a town immediately after besieging it which is pretty useful if there's a big army that could attack your army during the end turn.

[cangooz]

5.retinue
4.elephants can be routed with fire arrows
3.alt atack mele unit(same units have secondary mele weapons)like cataphracts have AP mace
2.chariots are soo powerfull vs cavalary units
1.pressing hold button to quikly drop pikes for phalanx unit

[roberttaylor]

here's a tip about replenishing your troops: say you have 3 of the same unit that need to be replenished, and they all have experience chevrons. if you retrain them, the soldiers that replenish the unit will have 0 experience (unless that city has a temple that gives experience for troops trained), which will lower the experience of that unit. instead, use the troops to replenish each other. some people may not know that in the campaign map, when you have the unit roster of an army pulled up, you can drag and drop unit cards onto other unit cards for the same kind of unit (2 hastati cards, for example) and the troops will be consolidated. if the total is more than 1 unit, you'll have a full unit and the remainder will be in a second unit. by replenishing experienced units this way with other experienced units, you will ensure that this experience is not diluted and effectively wasted by retraining these units at settlements. you can also 'steal' experience from units that are almost non-existent. say you have a full unit of 80 men with 2 chevrons, and you have another unit of 10 men with 5 chevrons (2 silver). if you use the 80 men to replenish the 10, it will reapportion all of the men, potentially increasing the experience of the 80 man unit. you can just keep doing it over and over back and forth until the 10 man unit has as few chevrons as you can get it to - this means that as many of the most experienced men are in the 80 man unit. one last thing: say you have a frontier town that you need to retrain the troops but that settlement can't make decent troops yet so you have to take the whole army back to another city. instead of sending a bunch of half full units, use them to replenish each other ensuring that each unit keeps at least 1 man (this way the unit can be retrained). this way you can keep some fully stocked units while getting the rest retrained.

[alexmcd]

One thing I never saw in anyone else's video that I'm glad I discovered. If you let a unit sit still for a while on the battlefield, they'll recover their fatigue, all the way to fresh if you wait long enough. Great for that final charge. Writing this part way through your video so let's see if it's one of your tips. Cheers!

[Lycurgus]

I had to put a part of my brain back in my head after hearing about the retinue.) I thought i knew every trick in book. Thanks!

[zackg]

If i am not mistaken alt also changes the weapons melee troops attack with. Example spears will attack with their sword if unit has one

[lordblenkinsopp]

The way I found out about the spacebar thing was in M2TW when I was still new and I had the advisor on and he said “hold down the spacebar to see where your troops will be”

[emperorofthegreatunknown]

My top 5 things:

1. Disbanding troops replenished population in region.
2. You can view the city battlemap in the campaign.
3. You can move retinue.
4. Rebel stacks cause unrest.
5. Gladiator Uprisings spawn giant elephant units!

[timothyernst]

Protip that took me years to discover: retinue that lower unit training costs also lower unit training time. I don't know how many you need to stack on a governor, but I would assume you need a 100% or greater reduction in cost on a single governor while he recruits in a settlement. This allows you to train units that ordinarily take two turns to train like Spartan hoplites, elephants, and urban cohort, in one turn. I've only ever pulled this off with the Sassanids in BI though.

[tariver]

You forgot to mention that there are unique retinues, they have personal names instead of general ones.

[pyroman]

Here is a useful one for "retraining" mercenary units. If a mercenary unit has sustained casualties, then take another unit of the same type and drag the unit icon over the damaged unit. Works great for Cretean Archers and Scythian Horse Archers. Hope that helped!

[carlcotten]

Very interesting. These are things that will make your RTW battles a thousand times better

[WTFisDrifting]

Also with pikes if your men switch to their swords hit backspace they will reset and point more pikes forward. Makes a difference trust

[praetorian]

I’ve always found that the best counter to chariots was actually charging them with Calvary before they get a chance to charge themselves.

At least from my experience, be aggressive with Chariots people, they have 2-3 defense, so if you send your Calvary at them before they can get ready for a charge you’ll absolutely decimate them, but make sure you send more than 1 unit.

Oh, and hit them in the flanks when you do it, breaks them that much faster.

[Lord.Kiltridge]

Regarding retraining/replenishing units. You can get a lot more done in less time if you merge units. Instead of five units with 10% casualties each, you can merge them and retrain one unit with 50% casualties.

[grantrobinson]

This was so needed. I’ve played for over four years and three of the five I had no idea 💡