Sample provinces | Strategic map TW: Rome II Guide

Last update: 11 May 2016

Below you'll find two sample Roman provinces: Italy focused on recruiting new troops and Magna Graecia generating high income.

In the first case the expansion is very easy: you have to take care of feeding people (farms in Neapolis and Velathri - marked in green, settlement in Neapolis - orange) and public order (yellow school of gladiators being built in Rome). Next you'll have to invest in cohort and auxiliary barracks and blacksmith and shieldmaker (red). In the perfectly organized province you should also build a training field, which increases experience of your troops. The most useful edicts here are Romanization, reducing recruitment costs or Bread and Games, which is some kind of replacement for farms and shrines.

In contrast to Rome, Magna Graecia served me with its trading ports (blue) and farms and herding grounds (green). I was generating most of food here, which was later sent to newly conquered, overseas colonies. There was also a high income generated here from trade and taxation. In addition, there is plenty of shrines here (pink) enhancing public order. Two of them are devoted to Neptune, because those objects increase income from sea trade in addition.

As you can see there are plenty of possibilities. The most important is to keep particular law and order and make sure that you have enough food in the province. The second thing is to generate surplus in population - with maximum expansion of all regions you can give up this option and move the entire production to industrial or agricultural.

Sample expansion of the province

Since each faction starts the game in the different position and with various number or start provinces, it is not possible to make one "recipe" for expanding the country. However, the game start can be made somehow easier.

Your first goal should be building military buildings in the central province (it is the one, from which your troops can easily get to any corner of your empire - e.g. Italy for Rome or Gartaginensis and Africa for Carthage). This will allow you to temporarily gain military advance over your neighbors. In early game turns it will be needed to have more advanced troops than your opponent, so you can quickly conquer surrounding lands. Before you attack the enemy, I suggest also generating a surplus of food in empire - if the conquered province is starving, it won't be a big problem for entire country.

Subsequent buildings to be built will largely depend on which lands we've captured and where they are located. It is possible to attack a region within your province (for example an assault on Velathri, located like Rome in Italy) and to expand beyond your current territory (for example assault on Cisalpina, where you do not have any settlement). In addition it is important if your neighbors are related with you (for example when Epirus invades Macedonia, two Hellenic factions fight) or is it a completely new cultural circle (the above-mentioned barbarian Cisalpina). Below I will try briefly describing different options:

Another region in your province: in this case you usually have cultural dominance and high rate of residents' satisfaction. In most of cases you'll be able to continue expanding the city in direction you've chosen, whether it is constructing additional military buildings like training fields, blacksmith and armorer or developing your economic or trading facilities, building additional ports and farms.

New province, same culture: first assault always decreases satisfaction in the region, so it is usually necessary to build a shrine increasing public order. If you intent to fortify the location and your army will continue stationing in the city, the one shrine is usually enough. Once the public order is stable, you can get back to your expanding path. In this case you could even destroy redundant shrines.

New province, new cultural circle: in this case the situation is more complicated. You need not only to deal with cultural based conflicts (with help of shrines and dignitaries working in the field) but also often feeding people and rebuilding all existing constructions - those from a different cultural circle can't be upgraded or used). Unfortunately, even with the army in the city, shrines have to stay in the given location for at least a dozen of turns, until you get the full cultural dominance. Only when your culture each 100%, you will be able to destroy redundant shrines and switch the region to trade/agricultural or recruiting new troops.

Together with expanding your empire, provinces located in the center can slowly transform into big granaries - built there farms, market which increases income from agricultural buildings and provide the location with an adequate number of shrines and aqueducts. If the public order is little under the norm, you can leave a champion in the location - he will improve the mood of inhabitants. I suggest leaving in some provinces at least one military building, so you can quickly raise a new legion in case of rebellion.

Border provinces are more complicated. You will need constantly new troops, so therefore you have to build there military buildings. In addition you have to have there also shrine complexes, in order to continually expand the influence of your culture and reduce resentment in the war zone.

In summary:

• In the first phase of the game focus on military constructions and food
• After conquering several regions, transform center of the country into granary (shrines are built only for keeping public order) and move military buildings toward the front line
• Always have food surplus. In the first phase of the game it could be +2, and later on even +10 or +20. This will allow you to maintain several conquered areas at once
• Shrine complexes should be built mainly in border provinces (spreading the culture) and in the center of the country when needed (maintenance of the public order). You should also constantly use dignitaries and champions, who will propagate your culture and decrease social unrest.
• In case of provinces with many ports (Corsica et Sardinia, Hellas, Magna Graecia), you can try to increase trading income by building appropriate port types.