The latter of these often gets the most attention, but the former is equally important. There are two elements to economic growth in Rome Total War- and I'm sure if you've played any Total War game more than once you're already familiar with them: population, and money. Trust me, it can be done- I made it as far as taking Apollonia once without a single unit of Phalanx Pikemen- and took Tarentum with just 2 or 3 in a largely militia army.) Although most of the Roman factions don't vary much in their unit rosters, the Scipii pose a MAJOR exception to this rule with their strictly late-game naval units, as well as their superior gladiators- which are also only available late-game. The ability of a faction to train excellent troops won't do it any good if those troops don't become available until you develop a Huge City barracks, and you never make it past a Large City (it is for this very reason that the Secleucids, while excellent tactically, are in a terrible position strategically- their best units don't become available until late-game, and they're usually either dead or already steamrolling the world at the hands of an excellent tactician who took Militia Hoplites to world domination by then.
platemail-equipped Legionries armor upgrades and the like) the number of missile troops you assign to your armies and surprisingly for some players, the stamina values of your troops and your level of use of tactical reserves (defense skill decreases RAPIDLY with increasing exhaustion levels). Princeps "early", chainmail-equipped Legionaries vs. The most important factors affecting this are the level of armor you decide to equip your troops with (Hastati vs. The fact of the matter is, different strategic plans will lead to different levels of attrition on your forces. That fancy word everybody likes to throw around for, basically, men getting killed. There are three basic elements that should be accounted for in any grand strategic plan, and differ between each of the Roman factions: Note the repeated use of the term "grand" strategic- there *is* a difference between specific, localized strategy to win a war against an individual opponent, and grand strategy- which can be best defined as a larger overarching plan guiding your decisions on what to build, when (and how quickly) to expand, and what types of units to train.
The first thing most Total War players fail to understand when playing as any Roman faction is that each of the three factions has a different overall grand strategic path, which when properly exploited can make them significantly more effective in their wars and expansion. *However*, if you can efficiently manage your empire, and squeeze the most out of ever last settlement you will have a lot more money to play with to expand your empire that much faster, and you will also inevitably have an easier time finding the resources to divert to properly protecting what you already own. It is true that unless you're a truly atrocious administrator and empire-manager, you can almost always make up for poor economic strategy to at least some degree simply by conquering more territory- and indeed this is the strategy that even many veteran Total War players knowingly (or unknowingly) follow in their path of expansion and imperial Roman glory much as did many of those ancient Roman leaders who lacked keen economic minds. Therefore, I decided to create a simple guide to help players to better understand the 3 factions- especially the Scipii, the most under-appreciated Roman faction:
Original Thread: Roman Economic Strategy: A GuideĪfter a long time of haunting forums like this one (mostly *cough* other forums, that are now dead), I realized most Rome Total War players don't have the faintest clue how to play to the economic and administrative strengths of the 3 different starting Roman factions- at least not beyond the Brutii (arguably the simplest of the three from an economic standpoint).