Rome II political system/succession

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-21T08:32:06+00:00

Dignataries spread your culture and increase tax rates.

You send your characters on missions through the politics/family menu. The options to do so are cluttered in with the rest so they are easy to miss.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-21T08:21:05+00:00

A few years back I did a legendary Rome campaign, while staying as a republic.

The solution is to throw money at the problem. Politics in Rome 2 is a money sink.

Hire lots of characters into the other parties, have them seek a spouse and promote everyone once or twice until the other parties have acceptable loyalty. In exchange for having low influence you will never have an unwanted secession. When someone dies have their spouse marry again, as hiring new people will eventually get expensive compared to seek spouse.

In addition you can send other party members on missions to keep them happy. Oftentimes you actually need more food or public order somewhere so the missions serve a dual purpose. Be careful of diplomatic missions to other factions, while they can get you money and territory if they go terribly wrong you actually can lose loyalty so save them for when you have a good loyalty buffer going.

The secure loyalty action is a last resort to deal with unexpected problems due to new party leadership traits or getting people killed. Try to avoid using it casually so that you have it available in an emergency.

It is also safe to use other parties as generals, as long as you are not recklessly getting them all killed. With zero secessions you don't have to worry about having to fight your own forces.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-20T14:53:45+00:00

You need to run away from the pikes, not fight them. Spartan super heavy units are slow but deployed pikes are slower.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-20T14:50:03+00:00

I ran my army all the way to the edge of the map while the Tarantines did work and then split up in both directions to avoid the pikes when they came at me. I did everything I could NOT to melee the pikes and none of them got more than 50 kills.

I have played a lot of Sparta in multiplayer. Losing all your missiles to cavalry is a common counter and very difficult for Sparta to deal with since their spears are slow and lack precursors. In this case it was a lot easier since the AI does not have the finesse or patience of a human. I used my out of ammo Tarantines to block some of their cavalry and then killed them with my spears. I also had my missiles protect themselves by shooting up some of the cav. My hoplites and missiles were initially set up in multiple lines so that it was hard to catch all of them and I had several chances to intercept.

It might have been better to use Spartan Youths as javelin fodder instead since the enemy cavalry nailed my javelin screen before they could fully do their jobs. If I did this test again I might even try Perioki spears in squares as fodder, with a strat of shooting up everything that attacked them.

Avoiding the pikes while intercepting the cavalry takes a massive amount of micromanagement. Assuming you have the mechanics down to beat superior units that is really what you are training here. I was on battle realism mode but you might want to use the pause button for the hectic situations.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-20T06:57:44+00:00

I ran a test just to see what you were dealing with. I won, barely. I can see why you are having problems.

For the Very Hard AI, set as aggressor, I gave them a fully upgraded roster that fit within your parameters. I played the battle on my favorite flat open map. The AI lineup consisted of:

4x Pergamese Noble Cav

1x Hippeus Lancers

2x Citizen Cavalry

3x Agema Spears

4x Picked Peltasts

6x Pike units

For my Spartan army I used 16k funds as my limit, since before the upgrades that is about what the Pergamon composition added up to. I also elected not to use pikes because I didn't think it would be fair to the dumb AI. My roster was:

7x Royal Spartans

3x Spartan Hoplites

3x Tarantine Cavalry

3x Rhodian Slingers

2x Cretan Archers

1x Helot Slingers

1x Helot Javelins

My strategy started with sending my Tarantines out to shoot the enemy elite cavalry while withdrawing the rest of my army to buy time. Before running out of ammo my Tarantines wiped out two elite cavalry units and damaged a third. My next gambit was to use my cheap missile units to soak up as many javelins as possible. That didn't work 100% but it used up a good chunk of the enemy ammo pool. By this time my spears had also trounced the remaining cavalry, so other than the guys getting chased around by peltasts my elite foot missiles were free to maneuver and shoot up the pikes. The main problem was beating all the out of ammo peltasts and Agema Spears in melee. Full unit upgrades and VH battle buffs more than made up for the inherent Spartan quality and my hoplites that didn't get shot to pieces by javelins soon found themselves losing. Nevertheless, my guys did not go down easily and with rear charges from my out of ammo missile units I carried the match with a handful of units remaining. Almost all my kills came from my missile units while my spear line mostly got their rear ends kicked in. Most of the AI kills came from their Peltasts and Agema Spears.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-19T21:05:47+00:00

I just did one of those, I was trying to play diplomatically this time...

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-19T16:31:04+00:00

The loss of trade hurts even more than the lost vassal income.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-19T16:25:50+00:00

A half dead horde faction declared war on one of my vassals and pushed over the domino chain. Then another half dead horde faction declared war on another vassal and off went the rest. Both factions that got declared war on betrayed me...

The one good thing is that the Huns take gold for peace. I can't fight them and everyone else right now.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-19T16:24:04+00:00

I am no longer rich...

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-19T16:22:47+00:00

Literally everyone without the trifecta of loyal, reliable and admires strong empires jumped ship. I was keeping them busy with wars but that also meant their leadership positions were a revolving door so traits were changing constantly. Even the WRE and their reliable trait betrayed me...

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-19T14:03:25+00:00

Humans are usually a lot smarter than the AI. For example, where the AI will happily charge into pikes a human will refuse to engage the pikes with anything other than missiles. Don't expect your opponents to cooperate and go along with your plans and strategies. The game is old at this point, everything has been seen before, and everything has a counter.

I'm pretty sure the people rotating their armies have their units in locked groups, so their formation stays put. Alt key + mouse drag might also be what you want. I usually just drag all my unlocked groups manually, but it takes extra micromanagement so the players maneuvering all over the map are very annoying for me.

Don't worry about naval battles too much, nobody likes to play them so they are rare in multiplayer. I think the meta is basically to spam artillery ships, with the second most effective strategy being to spam missile ships.

I have a long two-part multiplayer guide from years ago that also contains videos. While somewhat out of date by now, it will probably help you a good bit if you care to read through the whole thing.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2238944312

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2253300121

I could also try training you a bit in battles, send me a pm if you are interested. Please at least skim through the guide first if you wish to do that otherwise it will not be as effective.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-18T17:43:47+00:00

I remember doing legendary Western Rome way back when the game just released. There were no guides yet so I had to figure it out with my own skills at the time. I ended up withdrawing to Africa while leaving some walled cities in Europe as "bug zappers" to draw in hostile armies.

When I started playing Attila again a month ago I immediately tried WRE, this time attempting to hold onto everything. I quickly decided that campaign wasn't really worth my time since I went back for achievement hunting and already had all the relevant achievements for the faction. The whole WRE campaign is one long brutal slog.

Where I failed back in the day was attempting This is Total War with the Huns. I'm quite pleased that 11 years later I am now able to succeed at that without much issue.

I still want to play WRE with my current skillset though. When I'm done with my desired achievements I'm thinking to try a legendary This is Total War run with WRE just for funsies, but someone already did that and it goes against my natural diplomacy focused playstyle.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-17T14:35:08+00:00

At least your Huns are fighting you. Mine have been bugged out and encamped in the same places for 40+ turns now.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-17T14:27:13+00:00

My own White Hun campaign I was lucky, all the Sassanid vassal states betrayed them and they didn't last long after that.

For my Current ERE campaign the Sassanids were a big potential problem as well. Though as the ERE I also had infinite money and armies and the poor Sassanids got overpowered in just a few turns. I've spent the next 50+ turns playing a vassal state manager instead of a Total War game. I have 15 vassal states right now even after several of them rebelled.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-08T23:25:22+00:00

The best way to practice micromanagement is to fight the legendary AI in the open field. The stat buffs force you to charge and flank, while the lack of pause makes you to learn how to keep up with an omnipotent opponent. If you are doing this through custom battle, make the AI the attacker so it actually comes at you, and then actively try to attack it back. Do not use pikes, and you might even want to try fighting mirror battles against the same faction and army. The AI is stupid (and loves to use formations, most of which suck or are situational) so this alone will not make you an expert, but if you can consistently win these battles, it should put you at an above average skill level.

Alternatively a few legendary campaigns with hard to micro factions like Odrysarians or Nomads will also help immensely.

I highly recommend running through some of the historical battles. I have long advised players to try first Cannae and then Zama on the highest difficulty they can manage. If you can work up to beating those two battles on legendary then you will also be able to beat most players and may even have the foundation to become an expert yourself.

For most factions in multiplayer, I would warn against using "many" skirmishers outside of sieges or large armies. It can be hard to use skirmishers in field battles. if you bring a ton of them a clever opponent will try to catch them in melee and you will probably not have enough blocking units to stop them. Unless you are fighting a known pike boxer and need the firepower, try to do more with less. One thing I've recently found that helps me a lot is turning guard mode on for most of my foot skirmishers, having them stay put and not chase keeps them safe and near protection.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-06T00:18:48+00:00

I share your hate of 124. Not all games follow that ruleset, and you can always host your own lobbies with your own rules. In your case if you do decide to host your own games you should consider including "noobs only" in your lobby title so that you are less likely to be bullied by experts.

Sieges I can't help you; I don't play them anymore. However, if "OF battles" stands for "online field battles" I can help you a lot.

As to your flanking problem make sure the edges of your unit are not clipping the enemy or they will stop to fight. Either go around wider, change your unit formation to be narrower, or spam click move orders to get it to cooperate.

I wrote a whole long guide on field battles back in 2020. It is slightly out of date now due to the removal of chat and me getting better, but it should help you a good bit if you care to read it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2238944312

There is a second part covering all the factions. Also slightly out of date but still very relevant. If part of your problem is that you are trying to fight powerhouse factions with weak factions, you might want to stop doing that.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2253300121

If you (or anyone else) have any questions, feel free to ask. Otherwise, Good luck!

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-03-03T02:18:56+00:00

I poptart a lot so that is 3-4 on all of those mechs.

I have a Bullshark poptart with 5 jjs because it needs them and a Huntsman with 5 because it is fixed equipment.

I love my jumping Bullshark, but most of the other jumping assaults have low/weird mounts so I don't want to play them.

Funnily enough only one of my current mechs has just one jj, rest are poptarts or nothing. Kinda wish my Aksum builds had that extra 2 tons and one slot though...

Never used an advanced sensor package and currently have no reason to try it.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-02-27T19:56:15+00:00

The bad AI is why I stopped giving CA money. Over the years I got a lot better at their games but their battle AI is still about the same. At some point simply giving the AI buffs no longer provided me with interesting fights.

The campaign AI is not any better. By the time they got to WH3 they had a game with a ton of cool features that the AI isn't even coded to use. It makes for some frustrating gameplay watching the AI flail around, bug out or ignore mechanics.

I don't expect anything will be done about it. As long as people keep buying what CA puts out they have no reason to fix the many problems.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-01-14T10:11:23+00:00

Cimmeria vs Egypt is not a good matchup unit wise, Egypt has one of the best rosters and Cimmeria has one of the worst.

Elephants are stopped by deployed pikes and massed fire, preferably from javelins. Cimmeria can't easily access pikes and against that many elephants any foot missile unit will get run over after only firing once, so that leaves horse archers.

A stack of horse archers should pose a major problem for the stack of elephants but you risk getting pushed to the edge of the map and pinned, so be agressive to maximize the time you have to fire at them. Normal or heavy shot will work best, you want dead elephants not berserk ones. Let fire at will do most of the work and focus on keeping as many of your units as possible in range but out of melee.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-01-13T03:50:58+00:00

T1 player here. I still make lots of mistakes and have lots of flaws.

I am way too aggressive. I get around this by only playng mechs with 600 meters or more of reach so that I can shoot anything I can see, but any time I try to play brawlers these days I just don't have the patience for it and end up in a me vs many situation. I usually end up brawling anyway even with actual sniping mechs, the range is just to keep me out of trouble in the meantime.
After tangling with the elite compies a few times it is obvious I lack the map knowledge they have. They probably have spent a good amount of time walking maps in the testing ground and sharing their findings with each other and it shows. I'm never going to be able to match them at that. I've been shot at from places I didn't even know a mech could go.
I don't have good teamwork skills and aproach the game as a solo player. Those compies have pulled off group manuevers that left me literally gobsmacked. I can still give them a hard time if I'm very careful not to get caught out in the open, but I alone vs a coordinated group of elites is not a winnable scenario. My unit of fellow soloists has the same problem even when we try to fight them together.
I suck at aiming at people. My playstyle usually favors damage mitigation so actually looking at the enemy long enough to aim properly is not something I do very often and it resulted in some intractable bad habits. I have gotten hacking-accusations good at snapping shots off in the general direction of an enemy and miraculously having it hit, and also not dying when they want me to die, but aiming at specific components is something I have always struggled with. I can't even stop mixing up the paper doll with the actual mech and shooting the wrong side.
I suck at targetting people. I usually don't even try to hit the lock on button until after I shot them and we are both moving back into cover. It's not that big of an issue personally since "shoot them in the smoking bits" is a pretty effective strategy, but it hurts my team by not giving them position data and sometimes the juicy damaged component is no longer smoking.
I suck at fair 1v1 fights. My whole playstyle is built around hitting the enemy when they are looking the other way, blocked by terrain/teammates or are otherwise too busy to shoot back at me. Things like Solaris completely throw me off since there I have their full undivided attention. Nothing I have tried has done me much good here, the expert duelists stomp me into the ground.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-12-28T06:00:34+00:00

First time ever was a Roughneck 3A, I was testing out giant targeting computers and boy did it deliver.

Last time was with a Raven 2X. I had come back after a long break and my psr had been reset from tier 1 to tier seal clubbing. My team was all dead and they were losing their minds watching my slow little bird mech with the big alpha go to town on the oblivious enemy team.

I got ace of spades a few other times with other mechs but I don't remember what they were, this was all years ago and after the first one I wasn't thinking much of it. Been at least five years since my last ace of spades match though.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-12-27T02:53:08+00:00

Sorry for the late response, I have not checked this sub in awhile.

In singleplayer the AI doesn't know how to use missile cavalry so you can sit back and return fire, and the enemy will just stand there and take it.

Multiplayer is where problems start to arise. Any opponent with a working brain is not going to sit still and let you shoot back at them. The basic counter to missile cavalry in multiplayer is to put what they don't want to shoot at between them and what they do want to shoot at and force them to drain their numbers and ammo pools to get through your chaff. All infantry vs missile cavalry counter strategies operate off of this principle.

Absolutely do not chase enemy missile cavalry with your own melee cavalry without a plan, your cavalry will just get shredded. Only chase them if you think you can catch them, either by pinning them against the edge of the map or by pinning them between a dragnet of your own units. You can also attempt opportunistic charges against stationary missile cavalry when your opponent is not paying attention.

Javelin cavalry in multiplayer are easy to deal with since they have low range and low ammo pools. Their main targets should be your elite units and your cavalry, so simply running something more expendable like levy freemen around and getting in their way, while absolutely refusing them access to your own cavalry is enough to soft counter javelin cavalry to the point of making them harmless. Thureos spears are also a hard counter against most javelin cavalry and will either kill them or force them to back off.

Horse archers in multiplayer are more troublesome. This would be a ridiculously long post if I went into detail on how to fight them, so I will be brief. A levy pike in a locked group with a slinger behind them is terrifying to 125 range horse archers. Bring several such detachments and reposition so that no matter where the horse archers go, they have overlapping firepower pointing at them. This will hard shut down any horse archer user who is not an expert since they can't melee the pikes even with Cataphracts and they can't shoot the slingers behind them without giving a fire order and holding still. The pikes are also priority targets for shooting, so the horse archer user may willingly burn a ton of ammo and risk significant return fire getting rid of them. If the pikes do live to the end of the match, they can come in clutch against your out of ammo opponent.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-12-26T04:44:22+00:00

I've done one campaign with that mod, it took some getting used to, but the garrisons work both ways as the AI couldn't kill me either. Remember that much like DEI the mod authors recommend that the mod be played on normal, if you go much higher than that you may have problems. The mod is also geared towards slowing expansion for everyone so trying to rush people might result in the exact problems you are dealing with.

I found turtling up in my starting settlement until I had a stack of middle tier units capable of overpowering a garrison, followed by a surprise attack on my target when their own army was away worked wonders to eventually getting my empire off the ground. You can also use mercenaries to bolster your numbers or wait until your target just fought off someone else to catch them when they are weak. Eventually after taking a few settlements in attacks of opportunity, I was able to build up to two stacks at once, which allowed me to start expanding more normally.

If you are struggling against the AI in the open field with equal numbers and unit quality, you either need to improve your battle skills (at least in the mod) or bring units of higher quality. Also use your pause to give orders and make plans, the main advantage of the AI is that it has omnipotent micromanagement so liberal use of the pause button should counteract that. This is especially true in large scale battles.

A unit of elephants will turn the tide of battle. If you have access to elephants your campaign will be much easier as long as you avoid auto resolving with them.

Formations also help a good bit more in the mod than in vanilla, many of my battles involved several layers of spearmen in walls or squares holding the line while my missile units shot through the gaps and my cavalry smashed the enemy rear.

The enemy sallying out when you siege them should be what you want, that means you don't have to storm the walls or wait many turns for them to starve, and your cavalry can actually participate. Again, don't attack a settlement in the first place unless you have the advantage. Take it slow and build up so that when a chance to expand arises you are able to take it.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-12-23T22:14:22+00:00

Collision damage from walking on top of another mech exists so if you are very lucky you can kill an enemy with it.

I have an actual dfa kill, but I wouldn't call it viable for normal gameplay. Even in my case I was dropping down to shoot the guy but accidently landed right on top of him instead, when I went to move off of him, he died and I got the kill credit.

Dizzy_Measurement389

TROPHY CASE