Could a mod please change the name to: Rome total war guide please.
Thanks in advance.

Yes, I know that there are guides on the site that tell you the starting moves but i think thats playing as if someone else is telling you what to do, which actually it is but its no fun at all. So i thought that I would make this thread and post some of my strategies on here and add in good ones that other people think are good. And take my ones out that people dont think are very good! :P


Contents-just basically press ctrl+f and copy+paste the chapter you would like to go to.

1-Campaign strategy

2-Build order

3-Campaign map tips

4-Army Composure

5-Nation guides

6-Battle strategies and experiments

7-defending cities:all factions

8-RTW recommended mods
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1-Campaign strategy
Basically, the general thing you should always be striving for is to have no money or hardly any at the end of the turn, whilst having a decent amount of troops on the field, being trained, being retrained and garrisons. And also enough to build up your buildings to train armies. Here is a general rule to go by when building up your city.

2-Build order

1-roads. These are first because you can move your troops around really quickly compared to no roads. It also helps trade alot

2-palisades. only the first one(stockade or whatever its called)

3-Ports. this will give you your first ships and also will add in a nice little 400 denari bonus if you have a couple more trade routes.

4-trader. Trade...

5-land clearance

6-basic barracks. well, atleast the troops are better than some stupid little peasants!!

7-Shrine of your choice.

8-upgrade your town

9-paved roads

10-ship wrights

11-market

12-stables, then better barracks, then practice range.

Whatever you want after that, but jsut remember to keep building up your economy and THEN upgrade your barracks. And !DO NOT! upgrade you farming to over the 3rd level or populations become HUGE!! AND THATS A BIG PROBLEM!!

Ok. so by following these instructions, you should have a halfway decent economy. You should also be trying to focus on your military, but that doesnt matter too much yet, unless you know you wil be under a lot of pressure. I generally only use my capital for building units if i am tight on money at the beginning, because it will be a lot more built up than my other cities and economy wont be AS much of a problem.
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3-Campaign map tips

When you have 3 fairly well developed cities(one with cavalry stables, another with archery range, and another with a good barracks, and they are close together, start churning out their respective units, and set waypoints at the same place so that when they train they go to that spot and merge with the army. In theory, in a quite compacted area you could use 6 cities, (perhaps having 1 making light infantry, 1 making heavy, one making light cav and 1 making heavy cav and the other two could be either artillery and archers or javelin and archers, it doesnt really matter.
-thanks to mr hankis throne for reminding me to put this in here

"Destroy anything you can't upgrade such as temples and taverns for barbarians. Other stuff you just replace with your own buildings. What I tend to do is get trade rights with my neighbors as soon as possible, and make anyone who wants something from me (alliance, trade rights, etc.) pay for it. Don't do anything for free, if they want something, they're likely willing to break out their wallet for it. Never let any city go without upgrades, constantly have them building. Try to take cities as quickly as you can. Raise your taxes to the highest possible without riots. I tend to hit a slump in empire building at times, which I use for building (aka when I don't have the forces to take something) Try to make military units in all of your cities if you can afford it."
-Hyperkill
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4-Army Composure
Note that these are ONLY guidelines and would HAVE to be changed if you are playing a faction that focuses solely on 1 type of unit. Or if they have chariots. Then...you need to work that one out.

These are what my armies generally compose of in all the stages of the game, and also when you know you have hit the next stage...or dropped which you shouldn't...


Early game: you start in this part of the game at the very beginning. The main armies that i would train compose of these, and there are different types of armies, so be careful which ones you use:

Assault.
General
5 of the early units you get(such as warbands, militia and the like)
2 units of skirmishers
1 unit of early cavalry if you can get it
This should be enough to clear out most cities of their armies at this stage in the game.

Field armies. You will not need as many of these as you will assault armies, however they are quite useful if you have a 2:1 scale of assault:field

General
5 units of early units
3 units of skirmishers
3 units of early cavalry which is rather important

Relief armies. 1 Relief army to every 4 provinces on average
2 units of early cavalry
3 units of early units
1 unit of skirmishers

Middle game
You will know when you have about 10 territories and have the largest military, largest prodcution and most advanced faction.
Everything is the same jsut swap the early units for newer ones. except with cavalry. keep that the same and add some missile or some light cav, whichever you are missing


End game
it doesnt really matter what you build here because you can just send thousands of troops at the enemy and replenish them in a few turns with hardly any damage to your economy, because it is such a big economy but, the type of troops you can use here you can use anywhere, but if you want a smaller army keep the scale the same. For example if I have 10 units of infantry and 4 units of cavalry, it would be a 5:2 scale. And that is how you would keep it for the rest of your army.

You should have:
1 general(if possible, if not swap it for some heavy cavalry)
The best infantry you can get, apart from things that take over 1 turn to build. 10 units of these.
Then you will need about 5units of archers.
Add 2 units of light cavalry and 2 units of heavy. For the light cavalry try to make sure that they are missile cavalry. They help a lot.
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5-Nation guides

Phalanx nations



Romans
Troop types by hyperkill
"The Romans in my opinion are the best all around faction, they have great infantry, cavelry, and archers. They are however a bit lacking in spearman, they have auxiliaries and triarii, but these aren't good for much unless you can put a lot of them in a choke point and only be hit by cavelry. The Roman infantry also have an advantage in their secondary wepon, the pila, the throwing of which hurts morale (I think), and thins out the enemy before the lines meet. Hestati are in my opinion, crap. They have poor morale and break rather easily, and it's hard to get anything done against a civilised army, such as the greeks unless you spam them onto a phalanx and surround it. Principes, however are what you realy want in the early game. They're the best you can get, with better armor, and in my opinion, better morale. These are the guys you want fighting a phalanx. Once you hit the Marius Reforms, that's when things get interesting. You get access to all of the nice Roman units, the ones that make the enemy fear your very name. As soon as these come start replacing your old army with Early Legionary Cohort. They're just all around better then Principes, with better armor, morale, defense, attack, missle attack, better everything. Then comes the Legionary Cohort. These are the guys you hold cities with. These guys can beat nearly any infantry in a strait fight in the game. I've seen a unit of them surrounded by three units of enemy infantry and they fought their way out. Trust me, they're worth the extra cash. Then comes the Praetorian cohort, the guardians of the emperor himself. A full stack of these guys is pretty close to cheating. They'll slice through any infantry in the game, and many cavelry units if used correctly. Urban Cohorts are the next up. It is almost impossible to break these soldiers, often fighting into the single digits, and that's only if there is any enemy left by then. Then come the Gladiators. I only know about one kind, the Julii gladiators, but in my experience with them, if you need a wall taken, send these guys in, they'll hack their way through just about any guards on it. Arcani are next. They can hide ANYWHERE. Dress them in Christmas lights, and put them in the middle of an empty Wal Mart parking lot at noon, and you still wouldn't be able to see them. The very sight of them can route some units, and they can take several units on at once in a fight."


Campaign tactics by cheesekiller
Ok. So you want to be the romans do you? Well, of course you do! Otherwise you won't be reading this!
Well. Basically, the romans have the best troops in the game, they can spam good units cheaply, and, unforunately, do not have much cavalry. But mercenaries will compensate for that.
Your first moves will have to be something like this.
turn 1- Take the place the senate asks you to. build 1 bireme in your capital. build a governors house in your newly conquered settlement. The scipii should attack apollonia sraight away, and that will make the brutii just build up in italy, and they will only have about 2 full stacks to fight you with later on. build a militia barracks in the city that doesnt have one
turn 2- merge all your boats together and set sail for one of your roman brothers targets. The places to hit are as follows:
As the julii:thermon and carthage
As the scipii: patavium and apollonia. hit apollonia first turn. then go for where the senate mission told you to go to
As the brutii: patavium and carthage.
When you reach either cities, start expanding straight away. You CANNOT let the other romans expand too much, otherwise later in the game they will start to spam full stacks, and thats never good.
After you have taken your roman brothers targets, you should be able to expand where-ever you want. The first place you should go to is greece, to get a nice, welcoming cash boost. If you have greece early on, by turn 20 you should have a lot of spare cash to throw around, even after building troops and economy up.

-note. If you play RTR then the first thing to do is treat the greeks in the south like romans. Take your two armies and send them to take the towns below, the ones they can get to in 1 turn. lay siege to them and take them on the first turn, whilst still building up your armies in rome, capua and the other place.
more by hyperkill
"Beginning strategy can differ quite a bit between the Roman factions. As the Julii, you will find money is pretty tight in the beginning, and it will be pretty much until you break through to Normandy, and take Spain. You'll want to nab the two cities above you right off the bat. Then there will be another one that is owned by the Gauls, take that too, you'll wind up fighting them anyway, so you might as well start out with the advantage before they raise an army and fortify it. Send diplomats northward to get trade rights with anyone you find. I allied with Germania so I could focus solely on destroying Gaul. In the beginning the Gauls will send army after army to lay seige to your northwestern most city. Don't worry about this, just hold it. As soon as you build up about a stack, move into Gaul and take one of their cities, I took the Sothern most one so I didn't have to deal with a pincer attack from the other two. There will be another city to the west of it owned by Gaul, so take it, not only will it damage Gauls economy, it will give you a foothold for your invasion of Spain. The whole time you're doing this you need to be pumping your money into your city that are in and around Italy, you should be trying to build an economic base for future operations, and build better military buildings as well. The basic idea is to have a center for your empire that can support a large army financially, as well as support your economy should you lose a city or two. Try as hard as you can to hold your city in Gaul, and continue to train troops in Italy. When you think you have enough troops, send them into Gaul and take the other two center cities. Once you've nabbed these you should have a pretty nice base in Gaul. I also moved into Greece, and managed to steal everything but Appolonia from, the Brutii. You'll find a city on the opposite side of the sea from Italy in the east, pretty much just walk a spy around to the other side of the sea and you'll see it. If you get there early enough, you should be able to take it from rebels and use this as a jump off point into Greece. You'll find that there are several of these jump of points which you can use as a base to take certain areas of the map, such as Tingi in Northwest North Africa, or another city in northeast Spain (can't remember the name) When you take a city, you might want to enslave it, and just have one general in a city of your choice to give it a population boost. In the later game you may want to exterminate to make public order better and get more cash.
As the Brutii money won't be quite so tight. Build temples of Mercury early on to increase tradeable goods, and get the finances for larger armies. Your first mission will be to take Appolonia, gather the troops from your Capital, and load them into the bireme in your port. Send them across to take the walless and poorly defended city. Once that's over, gather any spare troops you can and take the city to the north, on the Greek coast. Keep making troops in Italy. Once you've got about three or four units, ship them to sothern Greece to take Sparta. Once you take Sparta, don't destroy the temple, it will give your troops a rank boost. Train some soldiers here and take Athens. Try to keep Greece from taking it, even if that means sending a suicide attack to thin out their numbers. You should have a spare fleet at the beginning which you can send to blockade Crete. Sooner or later the Senate will ask you to blockade the Greek city in Sicily. The idea is to bankrupt them before they become a financial power. Once you take Athens you should be rolling in money. Use it to bribe away the armies of the last remaining Greek armies and take their cities. Once you knock out the Greeks, you'll be in position to blitzkrieg Macedon. Once you knock them out, you will have united Greece, and have nearly too much cash to spend. After Madedon is gone, you can replace the temple in Sparta with your own temple of Mars, something I would recommend for all of Greece as well as making it your main military zone. You can send troops south to take Kydonia, east to take Rhodes and Turkey, or north to take Thrace. You can go both ways. I made sothern Greece my base for training troops for taking Turkey and Crete, and designated northern Greece for taking Thrace."
Enjoy playing the Romans!

Parthia

Pontus

Seleucid

Armenia

Scythians

Barbarians
by zomgoose
One thing I like about Barbarians is that lots of their units can hide in a forest. So if you're fighting in a fairly foresty place, you can make whole armies dissapear from the enemy's view. If you're playing against the AI, they'll get really confused. Sometimes they'll run around trying to find you, sometimes they'll stand still, and once my friend's game crashed because the AI couldn't locate the enemy.

This is a really good strategy, but pretty pointless unless you get something to lure them into the area you're hiding in with. You can use your general if nothing else, but ideally your army is made up totally of units that can hide, right? Well, just get a warband or something to go out into the open, basically say HILOOKATME, throw a spear/shoot an arrow or 2, then run abck into the forest.

This also works with Arcanii-I watched my friend defend a bridge with a forest nearby, and that he did was hide like 4 units of them in the forest that the enemy would have t owalk through to get at his units, and then BAM, the enemy was bogged down in all sorts of crazy knife people.

Also, be careful with archers in forest combat, because you can't really keep an eye on what your guys are shooting at in there and once my Forester Warband unit shot my general in the back, allowing him to get killed by a peasant with a pitchfork. Ouch :/

Greeks
By zomgoose

One thing I was kind of upset with is that the Greeks don't start with Greece, while the Gauls get all this random land that wasn't historically theirs to begin with. Whatever.

WHen you start off, you REALLY (and I do mean really) need to pull out of Syracuse. Like, immediately. I can't remember if the city starts with a port, if not build one, get a Bireme, load EVERYTHING ONTO IT, and get the heck out of there. Why? Because if you don't, the Scipii are going to be mighty POd, and one thing you DON'T need is a full-scale war with the Romans on Turn 2. BTW, if you make the Romans work a little harder for the city by making it revolt first, that's nice too-just get rid of anything that does anything to increase public order and it may go rebel.

After that, well, you have pretty much immediate access to the Aegean. One thing you'll want to do is to beat Macedon to Athens while simultaneously keeping them off your buttocks while your Syracusians arrive (should be turn 4 or so). Also, build up that city you start with in Asia Minor (I'm really bad at remembering names, bear with me here), and march south to capture the Mausoleum as well as Halicarnassus. Over near Sparta, capture Thermon, Corinth, and the really small coastal town that the Brutii likely have already. If you can hold this from the Brutii and possibly the Gauls (usually they don't bother with this place, but sometimes they really hand it to the Julii attacking them and start getting interesting ideas) you can limit Brutii expansion for a long time.

If you're doing that, feel free to step on some Macedonian toes, because they start off really weak and if you leave them they're just going to be an annoyance later on, so you can feel free to take all their land and maybe bribe their armies as well, because you share some units. If you don't manage to completely eliminate them after you take Thessalonica, well you'll at least confine them to some hilly backwater place to fight it out with Armenia's horse archers *sadistic laugh*.

By now it'll be mid-game, and you'll have made too many enemies to shake Alexander's sword at, so cool it for a while. At this point I was holding off Romans, Seleucids and Egyptians, but I see what I did wrong here, so I'll tell you how not to.

Seleucia and Egypt are eternal enemies, because both are fairly wealthy palces and they both want each others' lands. Plus, Egypt can't be reasoned with, and they're steenking rich. So the idea isn't to help Egypt crush Seleucia (this WILL happen, sooner or later), but to fund them any time they need help. GIVE THEM MONEY. LOTS AND LOTS OF MONEY. This way you won't need to deal with Egypt until you can really afford it.

With the Romans, if you successfully blocked the Brutii in their own 2-3 cities, then they're weak, but the other Roman factions likely aren't. If you've got the cash to spare, form an army, cross over to Italy and wipe the Brutii off the map while bribing the Senate's huge stack of units. If you've taken Rome itself, prepare for the elephant droppings to hit the fan-Romans will start popping out of absolutely nowhere as the Scipii and Julii recall their units from the far reaches. Sit there for the long run, by now you should be producing either Armored Hoplites or huge quantities of Hoplites. Any time you get a chance, go on a raid to grab one of their cities. If you've captured italy, you've basically won-you're rich enough to let Seleucia fall and to crush Egypt, which is possibly the only faction with its $#!^ together that can still oppose you. After that, just go any which way-you basically win.

Egypt
By zomgoose
My GODS, could this be any easier? You start off rich, powerful, rich, with a Wonder of the World, rich, next to weak enemies, and rich.

Ok, well you've got a choice. You can go north or west. West is the quicker way to getting Rome, but all that North African desert isn't great for income or time management. Also, have fun getting all those silly Numidians to come out of their silly deserts to fight you-you can take their land, but you won't defeat their faction.

North is the way to even greater riches and in my opinion a more fun game.

What you do is you want to get Nile Spearmen and chariots of all sorts pretty fast, so do that. Make sure you do things to limit your growth in the Nile Delta, because that's going to shoot sky high.

I can't remember if you start with Jerusalem or not, but if you don't, get it, it's rich and generally a good city. Nice place to have your capital too. What you want to do is grab Seleucian land before Greece does it, which shouldn't be hard considering the sheer scope of resources you have. If you want to avoid corruption for your governors, once you start going over 50,000 every turn make friends with Numidia and give them lots of money. This will help hold off the Scipii once they're done with Carthage. Not that you really care, you could hold them off yourself.

Anyway, grab everything east of Jerusalem while at the same time slowly advance north into Sidon, Damascus and Antioch. If you happen to hit the Thracian expansion attempts, you can just declare war, you're rich enough to handle it. Even if you can't get units out there fast enough, have a couple decent diplomats to bribe anything they send at you.

By midgame, Seleucia should be so weak that you can move north to Thracia and Dacia or northwest to Pontus and then Armenia. Or you can go with the sea route and take Rhodes and Crete, and then move on to the Aegean and from there to Rome. There are so many possibilities that it doesn't matter. In fact, once I did an interesting campaign where once I started, I packed up and sailed off to Spain, and I STILL won really quickly. Egyptian units don't seem to have any problems with anything if used intelligently-you have fine phalanx units, awesome chariot units, Pharaoh's Bowmen are a candidate for the best archers in the game, and you have so much money to fund all of this it's not even funny. And if you say you have no real cavalry, well you start in a place where you can just hire good desert-related cavalry mercenaries WHENEVER YOU FEEL LIKE IT! I mean, I can understand why the Egyptian AI won't do much in the way of diplomatic relations-they never really need to!

Brittania

Germania
By thegoldchevron01

Currently doing a campaign with them at the moment, and against any early opponents (Gaul, Rome and Britain) this army generally can take on anything that any of them can throw at you:

General,
As many Spear warbands as you can get, 6 or 7 is great,
1 unit of screeching women for the morale boost - (DONT use for fighting, they have defense worse than peasants),
3 or 4 barbarian cavalries for flanking and rout chasing,
2 units of axemen and Naked Fantics (if you can be bothered to wait for them - NF take two turns to recruit) just to cover the spear warbands flanks and shock charges.
Skirmishers are optional, spears and cavalry do the job fine though.

Battle Strategy:

Against the AI its not all that hard, just line up your spear warbands with the enemy line and send each spear warband to attack one other unit one on one, the ability to form phalanx really helps here as it keeps the enemy at bay while you can kill them with hardly any problems.
Usually the spear warbands do a great job and you can reserve your shock troops, but if a unit looks as if it is in trouble just charge your shocks into the fray (flank preferably but doesnt realy matter) and that should even the odds. Against Rome its a bit harder since they use many more missile troops than Gaul, Britain or Dacia, bring extra cavalry if you can to counter velites and to flank the romans more. When the enemy start to break send your cav to chase the routers and theyre usually fast enough to take out most, if not all, the enemy.
In Defense, generally just line up your spear warbands into one long line and let them waste themselves on your spearpoints.

Campaign Strategy:

Germany starts with really rubbish land to put it bluntly, and it needs some TLC urgently, so before anything else, build roads in all unroaded settlements first turn, and recruit a spear warband in your capital (Damme). Take the rest of your troops (except general) out of Damme and Batavodorum,adjust taxes as necessary, making taxes in all other cities very high if possible. Use these troops to take Bordesholm in southern Denmark, then afterwards move these men to the east and take Vicus Gothi. This gives you a (albeit small) powerbase you can build up for a time. DO NOT remove ANY troops from Trier, as the Britons will wander around here and wil seige it if they think they can win, in fact build up spear warbands in this settlement, meaning that rather than economy here after roads build a muster field, then a shrine to Woden is recommended. The rest of your empire should concentrate on economy for now, but if you see other armies wandering around (they shouldnt however), then just toss up a muster field to get spear warbands, they should easily see them off if they attack.
When you build up about 11 spear warbands lead them with a general and take Samarobriva from Briton. Then it is advised you build a stable in Damme and anywhere else you have sufficient population to get some cavalry to support your spears at Samarobriva. When the cav gets there, leave a garrison of about 3 spear warbands at most, then go on and conquer Gaul, their mere warbands against your spear warbands have no chance, and the AI usually just charges its generals into your phalanx anyway, while your cav chases routers. Even swordsmen have very little luck against your battle line. After this its up to you. If you feel ready, Rome is a worthy target, however Dacia is also a choice if you dont quite feel ready yet.

Shrines:
I suggest builing Shrines to Freyja most of the time since you want the areas to grow quickly for chosen archers, and this shrine grants growth benefits, however you will want a shrine to Woden in Trier and either Vicus Macromanni or Vicus Gothi for naked fanatics and experience (these are your borders for now and this is just incase someone wants to attack you have experienced troops ready, plus naked fanatics). and put one next to the Romans somewhre as well ( like Massilla or Mediolanum). Shrines to Donor eventually allow Beserkers, however i believe they need level 3 cities and 6000 pop which you wont see for a very long time in your homelands, thus i didnt build many, they also give XP but need level two whereas Woden needs only level 1 for XP so i build these instead.

Navy:
Hopefully by the time you conquer Condate Rendorum from the gauls it has or is close to 2000 population, which will allow you to build a port. From this build about five boats to see off the Briton navy to stop them landing armies at Samarobriva and also to transport your own army to Britain itself. This army should have mainly spears because chariots will rip through anything else. No other of your settlements will see 2000 pop for a while yet so boats wont be available anywhere else. For this reason OCCUPY Condate Rendorum only. Dont exterminate or enslave.

Well i hope this helps anyone who tries a German campaign in the future and good luck

Please send in more info and i will copy + paste it in here for other people to read. thanks
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6-Battle strategies and experiments

Send them in please
Any way. Here they are!!

"Chariots

Most know that chariots are slaughtered when they are at a stand-still. But this is only done when you throw unit after unit in it's path, correct? Yes, it works. But you have many devastated units in the process. So, instead of sending them one-by-one, overlap your units, and put as many as you can into the exact same spot.
I did this to protect a breach in a siege.

Two units, an Auxilia unit and Early Legionary Cohorts. Before, the chariots kept plowing through my Legionary Cohorts, so I stacked them together. Before, the chariots ha plowed all the way to the other side of my ELC's. This time? It was like they hit my defensive walls themselves, instead of a group of men. The ENTIRE unit of chariots took maybe 3-10 men out before they came to a dead stop. Easy pickin's

The Phalanx

Ahhh, yes. That ever annoying Phalanx. With its longer pointy things with more reach then YOUR pointy things, it's somewhat of a...well, bitch to overcome in many situations.

When attacking a phalanx, it is know that the best ways to kill it are to hold it in place and flank it, or disrupt its formation. You need to get in close, but their spears prevent this. So, I had the idea...

I was attacking a city, and my Legionary Cohorts were about to face a phalanx, when I had a spark of genius. I told my infantry to stand in front, and throw their pili, as most people would. Then, I told them to run. PAST the enemy phalanx. They did so. Once a good number of men were inside the formation, I told them to attack, and thus they did. My plan worked, and the enemy routed to to sqaure, but they had a single digit number of men remaining, and were no longer a challenge."
-Sonicdahedgie

"As for formations, I like to have my infantry units out front in a long line with cavelry on the sides, and with archers behind. I have the archers pelt the enemy with flaming ammo until the lines meet. Recently I have begun running my archers around the lines and firing into the flank and rear of the enemy. I use the cavelry to hit the flank and rear of the enemy formation, or to knock out their cavelry (wait until it says they're ready before you charge them in, hold the mouse pointer over them and you'll be able to tell, prepared charges are several times more effective than unprepared ones) Don't forget to set your infantry to fire at will, sometimes it can mean the difference between victory and defeat. When an enemy unit routes, don't chase them, take your freed infantry unit and cavelry, and fold them over onto the flank and rear of the adjacent enemy unit, if you continue doing this you should get a domino effect of routing. If I have artillery I have them fire at the front center of the enemy, the units that are in front of the general, this way an overshoot tends to take him out, and if it doesn't a destroyed center is extremely disadventageous. If you're siegeing try to bring more than one ram. Make the holes pretty far apart so that the enemy can't cover both holes, and you have the ability to flank a force that is covering another hole when you break through (they tend to pick one to realy pile it on) If you're defending, try to cover the holes with three units of infantry, one a few feet back from the wall facing it, and two units facing inward toward each other conected to the first unit at either flank (Note: This is best case scenario, if you don't have enough for this, you can form a lower case r with two units, or just put one unit right against the wall to cover the hole made by the enemy. I've never realy defended stone walls as by that time I'm usually destroying everyone around me by that time. Also, don't be afraid to use wardogs, they respawn if you keep their handlers alive. They will chew up most lower infantry and lower cavelry."
-Hyperkill

Using chariots effectively by Zomgoose
"If you've successfully bogged the enemy down in a field battle with their units vs. your phalanxes and have some chariots, here's how you speed things up. Make your chariots line up in really thin, long lines a bit before the back of the enemy line and STOP. Then have the chariots charge across their back to cause massive casualties. If they rout back INTO the chariots, you'll be able to cause even more casualties as they run away.

The horrible con of this is that if they coutner the chariots in any way (their infantry turns around, heavy cavalry attacks from the other side, etc), your chariots will be BOGGED DOWN AND DEMOLISHED. Use this tactic with care."
Using your Horse archers effectively by zomgoose

"If you've played with horse archers at all, you've realized that the best way to use the horse archers is to skirmish their infantry to death with your superior movespeed. You especially have the overpowering advantage over phalanxes, because those turtles CAN'T MOVE PROPERLY. However the best way to stick a fork in the enemy infantry if you've got them chasing you is to take some of your melee cavalry and repeatedly charge their backs and then out again. Not only is this demoralizing (arrows from the front, spears from the back), but this will reduce the enemy number very quickly, and will almost always even out the odds cavalry nations face on a regular basis.

About cantabrian circles:

People seem to ask a lot what the proper usage of this is. Some people will say that it's to hold infantry inside one while shooting them to death. Don't listen to those people, that's silly, the circle isn't nearly large enough to hold a full infantry unit inside without them breaking out. The appropriate usage is to run archers out of ammo as they shoot at it. Just make sure to turn skirmish mode off."

Troop usage by zomgoose
"The phalanx is superior in its defense, and vastly inferior in its movespeed. Which means, if you're a Spartan fan, or just simply want to play as the Greeks, Seleucids, etc, your aim is to be defending as much as possible in as many fights as you can, because if you have your units march around the map chasing, say, horse archers, they'll end up tired and simply be shoved over by any old Equites, leaving you without the bulk of your force.
When deploying before a battle in a relaively flat environment, you want to start close to the enemy, with your cavalry covering your flanks and your missile troops behind the main phalanx. If they're Skirmisher-type troops, such as Peltasts, you'll want the front of these almost touching the back of your hindmost phalanx, because otherwise they'll never have range. If they're archers, you don't need to be so close and can be a bit behind. Whe nthe battle starts, don't charge the enemy with a phalanx. EVER. It won't work, trust me. Let them come to you. If they don't, just set the game to triple speed and wait till they do.
However, if it's not too much out of the way or you're really patient, whenever possible defend hilly areas. You'll want to have phalanx units surrounding the summit of the hill on every side, which is where you put your missile troops. MONITOR YOUR MISSILES CLOSELY, BECAUSE THEY MAY START TO SHOOT THE FRONT RANKS OF YOUR PHALANXES IN THE BACK.
I've noticed that the individual soldiers of phalanx units are a bit more vigorous than their sword-using cousins, in that the individual soldier of a phalanx will start swinging away with their spear if within range, and the Hastati or other unit will swing once every few seconds.
This means that if your phalanxes are up against other phalanxes and they're standing in a literal stalemate with neither unit getting close to the other, you might want to order your phalanx unit to position itself perpendicular and overlapping the other unit, like in a cross shape.
Remember to take your units out of phalanx formation bfore the start of every battle-in phalanx they cannot run are they're slow enough as it is. If you made a positioning error, you'll be able to restructure your formation more quickly. Also, don't move long distances in phalanx formation either.
What I've found a lot of newer players doing is charging their general, cavalry and missile forward and leaving their poor phalanx units to catch up. DON'T TRY AT HOME. As a phalanx nation, your main advantage in combat is your phalanx, so if it's 20 miles behind all your other units just marching, you've effectively killed it off for that battle-it'll never catch up and your other units will most likely get killed.
At the start, you may have the urge to make lots of Militia Hoplites. Don't, they become really bad really fast. Instead upgrade your towns to support the next rank of phalanx unit-Hoplites, Levy Pikemen, Nubian Spearmen, etc.
If you're defending a town, your phalanx is best off in one of 2 places: at the gates spearing anything that tries to come in, or in the streets being a meat shield for your archers in the back. However with the gate scenario I find that the AI tends to kind of mass all of their melee in the gate, and you might get overwhelmed by the sheer bulk of units. In the streets, your phalanxes will excel at everything-they'll hold stuff at bay, provide your ranged units with room to fire, and protect your center square from being captured. Just make sure that no individual enemy soldiers are sort of slipping through the cracks between your phalanx and the wall, because your archers may be weakened by this.
In city fighting, the best way to use your cavalry is as a support unit for a phalanx-if it's being overwhelmed or if things are moving too slowly, have them charge through the ranks of your spearmen into the enemy. Remember not to do this with chariots or elephants-with those, just wait till your phalanx either routs or stops being a challenge for the enemy to charge them."
also by zomgoose-

"If you're fighting a huge mass of various enemies, let's say they're trying to get at a gate, one way to double-flank them to get them off guard is to use shock troops (heavy cavalry being the best, but really anything with a nice charge bonus) to separate one half of the mob from the other, and then wedge a single unit of Phalanx in there facing the half that's now going to be surrounded, you've just effectively killed half the enemy army.

To stop them breaking out or the otehr half murdering your phalanx, just swing your shock troops around and have them keep the other half occupied, or as reinforcements for the single phalanx. If you get your shock troops killed, I think that's acceptable losses for one half their army, don't you?"

The echelon formation
by maximus_decimus9
The echelon formation particularly when used by the Romans, can decimate the enemy. An army of under 1000 Hastati with a General can take out a Gaul full stack with fewer than 200 casulaties if you remember 2 crucial things, put on gaurd mode so you don't lose formation, and do not get flanked. The advantage of this formation lie mostly with the Roman Pilum. 1 volley from this formation will DESTROY many early game units. I've had Warbands start a rout before the lines even met. Typicaly, I have my best most expirenced troops form the middle, as they will have to hold the line longest. Have 3-4 units on either side of your center, more if you can still cover your flanks. I usually put them 4 deep and still have a line nearly as long as I could normally. As you begin fighting, have some men in reserve to protect your flanks. If allgoes well, you can let your opponent do the actual attacking, while your forces slowly circle around and start a chain rout. I haven't tested this against higher up units than hoplights and warbands, but it's performance in those situations was far better than I had hoped, given my own low level infantry. Archers pose the biggest thrat to this plan, but some light cavalry should suffice to counter them.
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7-defending cities:all nations
So the enemy has assaulted your town with some decent troops. Dont think you can handle it? Do not fear! cheesekiller is here!

After all that random stuff, here are my tips on how to keep your towns safe from enemy invasions, and how to prepare yourself incase it happens. also you will learn how to protect your city incase of attack
Securing your land.
On average, you will need about 4000 denari for every 5 cities in civilised areas, which will last you the entire game, while in large provinces, about the same for each one, which isnt worth bothering about. If you are in a really large province, just get all your troops out, let the enemy take it and then besiege it again.

1- your first priority is to make sure that most of your towns have a market. Now this may sound stupid, but from the market you can train spies, which can inform you of incoming enemy stacks. you should only need 1 to every border province but make sure to send them to regualar patrols around to places that are covered in fog of war. this gives you valuable time to
a)make a run for it
b)train up a small extra army to counter it
c)send one of your relief forces to combat the enemy in the field
Alternatively you can build watch towers but with the amount you have to build to cover the area, it is not really worth it

2-build stockades and a wooden wall. If you want you can build stone walls, which actually are devastating to rams and light infantry and cavalry, because of the boiling oil, but you should need them too much.
the reason for this is to give you another 2 turns whilst the enemy builds siege equipment, and so that you can bring in another defending force giving you a total of 4 turns to prepare yourself so far.

3-build forts at choke points(ie. river crossings, mountain passes and inbetween dense(impassable) forests)
This gives you yet another 2 turns, bringing the total up to 6 turns to prepare. Not bad, eh?

6 turns of prepartaion will give you time to build 6 units of your choice. they could be phalanxes(reccommended), archers, peltasts, heavy infantry, whatever.
Your best bet will be to get phalanxes, or heavy infantry and archers or peltasts.

Phalanx tactics
line up your phalanxes so you have 1 phalanx facing down each street leading to your town square. if you have enough left over, put them so that they reinforce the ones that will be attacked most, or directly infront of the gate/breached wall. The enemy will massacre themselves on your spear points and you will have hardly any casualties. Look out for peltasts though, and if you can put missile units behind your phalanxs thats good. Just dont use slingers, whatever you do.

Heavy infantry and archers.

Basically the same as phalanx tactics, put the archers behind the infantry, make the infantry really deep(as deep as possible, providing the flanks cannot be attacked). concentrate on 1 street only though, and move infantry back to counter the enemy if they go through another street. dont train them, but if you have any spare ones nearby or orginally in the town, unleash them when the enemy is wavering to send them running like little rabbits.

Using these tactics you shouldnt lose any cities, and if you do you were severely outnumbered.
Good luck
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8-RTW recommended mods
RTR platinum version 1.9. Not only is this mod only 122mb to download, it also has many options to toggle like sinuhets formations mod and it also has some very good mods in progress, based on this mod. Rise of Rome is an example that I personally am looking forward to downloading and playing. It does have a very noce Zone of Recruitment You dont need an extremely powerful computer, but the better it is the smoother it will run. Uses the mod switch command, thus allowing you to play rtw and rtr

XGM, or Extended Greek Mod
I personally have not played this mod yet, though I am trying to and my download wont work for some strange reason, so I can only base it on what other people think.
It sounds like a very good mod, and the main thing that it does is change the greeks and add some more units to them so that they are portrayed in the same depth as the roman factions. It also expands the map, and uses the "mundus magnus" map, which is worth downloadingm, because it doesn't over write your Rome:total war files, just adds in an extra campaign. Also uses the mod switch command, which allows you to play rtw and this mod.

If you want to have a look at the site type "total war center" into google, they have a subforum in the "hosted modifications" section there. From what I have heard this is well worth trying out.

[This message has been edited by cheesekiller (edited 08-08-2007 @ 04:34 AM).]