u/ProfileSubstantial16

this is one of those mechanics i technically knew existed but clearly didnt actually understand, because i kept making the same mistake for way too long.

my assumption was basically more cohorts = more damage = i win. so id stack a big stack, catch a smaller enemy army, and then just... lose, or win but take way more casualties than i had any right to. and id blame the dice or the commander or whatever.

what finally clicked is combat width. the battle is fought on a line and the terrain decides how wide that line is. so if im in narrow terrain with 30 cohorts against 20, we might start with almost the same number actually fighting, because the rest of mine are stuck in reserve doing nothing on day one. they fill in as units drop but theyre not applying my numerical advantage up front. so 30 vs 20 was never 50% more damage, i just assumed it was.

the part that actually changed how i play, if youre the smaller or weaker army you WANT narrow defensible terrain, because it caps how many of the enemys cohorts can engage and stops them surrounding you. and the reverse, if youre the big army dont go attacking someone sat in a mountain province, youre throwing away the one advantage you have.

also learned maneuver is range not damage. i used to crank preferred flank size to max thinking more flanking, but if the units on the flank dont have the maneuver to actually reach anything theyre just standing there looking pretty. the setting gives them space, the maneuver stat decides if they can hit from it. two different things.

and the fort thing got me more than once, if youre besieging a fort and a relief army shows up you count as the attacker, so all the defensive terrain is working against you not for you.

anyway now i actually check the combat width of the province before i commit to a fight. feels obvious typing it out.

whats the worst one youve lost with the bigger army. i want to know im not the only one whos fed a doomstack into a mountain pass and watched it evaporate

posting this because it took me way too long to connect the dots and maybe it saves someone else.

for ages i basically integrated every culture i conquered. felt like the right thing, more accepted cultures, bigger levy pool, everyone promotes higher, seemed like pure upside. i genuinely thought integration was just the good option and assimilation was the lazy one.

what i didn't clock is that every culture you integrate lowers integrated culture happiness for ALL your integrated cultures. including your primary one. so citizen rights is like a 4 point happiness hit each time in the base numbers, and i was stacking that penalty over and over by integrating a bunch of tiny cultures. my romans were quietly getting less productive and i was blaming it on everything except the actual cause which was me being generous for no reason.

the framing that fixed it for me was thinking of integration as a budget not a reward. you integrate the big concentrated cultures where you actually need the manpower right now, like i integrated etruscan because its large and sitting on good provinces and i wanted the levies. but the little scattered ones, umbrians in my case, theres no point. leave them and they assimilate into roman over time for free, no permanent penalty, and you end up with a more unified core anyway.

the other bit i was doing wrong, wrong religion slows assimilation hard, so if youre relying on a culture assimilating you kind of have to convert it first or its just going to sit there forever.

so yeah. big culture you need now, integrate. small scattered stuff, be patient and let it turn roman. stop paying the happiness tax on cultures that would have converted themselves.

curious where everyone else draws the line. do you integrate on population size, on whether they have a unique tradition or decision you want, or something else. and does anyone just integrate everything and eat the penalty on purpose

so this is one of those things that's probably obvious in hindsight but i genuinely didn't know and it's been costing me for ages.

my habit for years: war ends, peace signed, immediately stand down every levy to get my economy back. felt responsible. get the pops back producing asap.

turns out theres an eight month rule. a levy has to have been raised at least 8 months before disbanding it actually gives you military experience. dismiss it at 7 months and 29 days and you get literally nothing back, doesnt matter how many battles it fought. so all these quick wars where i disbanded the moment peace hit, i was getting zero of the cohort experience those units had earned. just throwing it out.

and it's not nothing when you do it right. i disbanded one levy and watched national military xp go from like 7.98 to 12.83 in one click. that's just from the experience the cohorts carried back. do that across a whole campaign and youre unlocking traditions years earlier.

the catch that stopped me going full exploit mode though, raised levies cost you. the pops stop producing so tax manpower and research all dip, war exhaustion kicks in after 6 months which is BEFORE the 8 month reward threshold, and if the levy takes heavy losses theres a cooldown that can be up to like two years before you can raise it again. so keeping stuff mobilized forever isnt free.

also learned the hard way that a big fresh levy is worth way less than a smaller battle tested one, since the rewards from actual cohort experience not headcount.

anyway now i actually check the raise date before i disband anything. what about you all, do you time your disbands or just stand everything down the second the wars over. and does anyone treat this as a straight exploit or keep it to levies that fought real wars, cant decide where i land on that

might be old news to veterans but this genuinely reframed how i do trade.

for the longest time i picked capital imports purely on commerce value. line goes up, more money, cool. and i knew capital surpluses gave national bonuses in theory, i'd read that, but i clearly didn't actually understand it because i was doing it wrong the whole time.

the bit that got me: importing one copy of a good into your capital does not give you the national bonus. it just establishes presence. you need a SECOND total copy to hit +1 surplus, and only then does the empire wide modifier turn on. so i'd been importing single copies, seeing the good sitting in latium, and assuming i was getting the country wide effect. i wasn't. getting nothing nationally on half of them.

other thing i didn't clock, the national bonus doesn't stack. so me proudly importing like 4 copies of one good was pointless past the first surplus. variety would've been way stronger. one surplus each of a few different goods buffs way more of my empire than a pile of the same thing.

and the part that actually stung. a foreign country can request your last surplus copy in a trade and if you let it go you lose the national bonus across your whole country. so somewhere in one of my runs i probably clicked accept on some trade spam and quietly nuked an empire wide modifier without noticing. theres a block surplus toggle for exactly this, wish i'd known.

anyway now i manage latium totally manually. salt route alone gave me legion maintenance reduction across every army which is nuts for one trade line.

what do you all prioritize for the capital. i keep going back and forth between a military surplus and just permanent research. curious if theres an obvious best one im missing

Long Rome run on Invictus. This session was supposed to be a quiet economy tune-up while I wait out a truce, and instead the reaper just went through my entire cast of characters.

In the space of one session I lost the head of the Corneli family, then the head of the Fabi family, then my Praetor who was only 34, then my Optimates party leader, then my Censor. And I am not exaggerating when I say at least three of them died from the exact same cause: "ate a particularly rotten herring." Same event text, over and over. At one point I was just sitting there laughing because a fourth guy keeled over from the cursed herring while I was still trying to replace the third.

The annoying part is it actually mattered. I'd recently opened up offices to a bunch of new people to fill gaps, and because most of them had never held a government position before, their statesmanship was rock bottom. So I'm scrambling to refill Praetor, Censor, Vulnerarius etc all at once, and the best available bodies are all green. That immediately triggered a dissatisfaction event about my new Praetor mismanaging the treasury, purely because her statesmanship was too low. So one unlucky death chain basically exposed how shallow my experienced bench was.

Takeaway I'm sitting with is that I've been totally ignoring character development this whole campaign. I treat officers as interchangeable slots, never groom anyone, and then a bad RNG streak hits and I've got nobody seasoned to promote. Going to start actually paying attention to who's gaining experience where.

Anyway, mostly posting because the herring thing genuinely got me. What's the dumbest death chain the game's ever handed you? And does anyone actually manage their character bench properly, or do you all also just yank whoever's got the highest number when someone dies?

ok this might be obvious to some of you but it took me embarrassingly long to get it.

every time i took something rich i'd win the war, feel great, then like 4 years later the whole province just goes. and my reflex was always to go hunting for anything that added loyalty directly. harsh treatment, more harsh treatment. band aid on a band aid.

what finally clicked is that loyalty isn't the problem, it's the readout. the province was yelling at me the whole time and i was basically muting it.

the thing that actually got me was trend vs the number. had a province sitting at 60 so i ignored it, 60 sounds fine right. meanwhile it was bleeding a couple points a month, and a province at 40 right next to it was climbing and totally safe. i had it completely backwards.

then i finally opened the happiness tooltip (which, yeah, i almost never did) and it was my nobles. under 50% happy, dumping most of the unrest into the province on their own. one unhappy pop type in the biggest city doing more damage than three quiet territories put together.

harsh treatment stops the bleeding but it doesn't make anyone happy or roman, so the second you stop babysitting it, it's back. the real fix was way more boring. convert the religion first, then assimilate, plus the buildings that speed it up. not exciting. actually works though.

feels heavier in invictus too with how the pop stuff shakes out.

anyway curious, what's the worst rebellion any of you have had. like which single province actually ended a run. want to know if mine was pathetic or pretty normal

Hi everyone!
Any of you experienced this? I suddenly stopped being able to play with mods...
I tried to play as usual, but didn't upload any mods.. I've tried EVERYTHING...

Anyone went through that? Please tell me this is temporary!!

Long Rome run on Invictus. This session I finally passed the Punic reforms and made my first actual legion. Legio Italia. Felt like a big deal, you get siege engineers, sub commanders that can pick up distinctions over time, way more control over the composition than levies. Game even gives you a "new era has begun" popup so it really sells it as this milestone.

Thing is, right before that I went to war with Boii (tiny one province nation) plus some barbarians that showed up, and I was so relaxed about it I didn't even bother raising my army maintenance. Total brain fart. Went in with cold troops and still stomped them, barely lost anyone. So then I turn around, pass the reforms, take a 15 stability hit, do a divine sacrifice just to get some of it back, and pick up the ongoing legion upkeep... for what exactly? My levies just handled everything fine while I wasn't even paying attention.

I think I just did it because it felt like the "proper" thing to do at that point in a Rome game, not because anything actually forced my hand. And the annoying part is the thing that SHOULD have had my attention was Carthage, who went and annexed most of Massaesilia while I was busy fiddling with unit ratios. They're sitting at like 2000+ pops right on my border now. So I basically played dress up with my army and let the actual monster next door get scary.

Anyway I'm curious when you all actually make the jump to legions. Soon as you unlock it like I did, or do you wait until you've got a specific war that needs the siege engineers and the extra control? Because in hindsight I think I went professional a bit early and turtled way too long on Carthage, and I can't tell if that's a real mistake or just me being paranoid.

Long Rome run on Invictus. This session I finally passed the Punic reforms and made my first actual legion. Legio Italia. Felt like a big deal, you get siege engineers, sub commanders that can pick up distinctions over time, way more control over the composition than levies. Game even gives you a "new era has begun" popup so it really sells it as this milestone.

Thing is, right before that I went to war with Boii (tiny one province nation) plus some barbarians that showed up, and I was so relaxed about it I didn't even bother raising my army maintenance. Total brain fart. Went in with cold troops and still stomped them, barely lost anyone. So then I turn around, pass the reforms, take a 15 stability hit, do a divine sacrifice just to get some of it back, and pick up the ongoing legion upkeep... for what exactly? My levies just handled everything fine while I wasn't even paying attention.

I think I just did it because it felt like the "proper" thing to do at that point in a Rome game, not because anything actually forced my hand. And the annoying part is the thing that SHOULD have had my attention was Carthage, who went and annexed most of Massaesilia while I was busy fiddling with unit ratios. They're sitting at like 2000+ pops right on my border now. So I basically played dress up with my army and let the actual monster next door get scary.

Anyway I'm curious when you all actually make the jump to legions. Soon as you unlock it like I did, or do you wait until you've got a specific war that needs the siege engineers and the extra control? Because in hindsight I think I went professional a bit early and turtled way too long on Carthage, and I can't tell if that's a real mistake or just me being paranoid.

Been doing a long Rome campaign on Invictus and hit the Italian Colonia mission this week (the colonia specialization one once you've got the peninsula locked down). It gives you four payoffs and three of them are basically free money — building slots + local tax, commerce value, or extra recruits. I genuinely sat there for a few minutes because the tax one is so tempting when your treasury is sitting around 450.

Then I actually opened my assimilation map and most of my provinces were still under 50%. A couple in the teens. And it kind of clicked that the reason my older saves always start to feel sluggish around this point isn't money, it's that I've got a huge unintegrated pop base quietly dragging happiness and stability everywhere. So I took the Romanize option and the assimilation/primary culture happiness bonus instead.

The part I didn't fully clock until this run: the Roman Hegemony follow-up actually slows your integration speed, so if you enact it while you've got feudatories mid-integration you're shooting yourself in the foot. I ended up just sitting on it until my current integrations finished. Felt obvious in hindsight but I'd never paid attention to the timing before.

What I'm not sure about is whether I'm overrating assimilation here. Part of me thinks taking the +10% tax and just brute-forcing assimilation through governor policies would've snowballed harder long term. Curious how the rest of you handle that fork — do you take the economy reward and fix culture later, or front-load Romanization the way I did? And does anyone actually find the recruit-focused option worth it, or is it a trap once you've got Italy?

doing a rome invictus run and had something happen mid-session that I'm still a bit annoyed about

one of my neighbors — and the game specifically says it could be any of them — paid saboteurs to attack one of my fortresses. the sappers got driven off before too much damage was done but the fortress still needed repairs. the event gives you two options: fix it and spend 87 gold, or don't fix it and lose popularity. no third option where you investigate or retaliate or even narrow down who did it.

I took the repair option. lost the gold. war score was at 99 against insubria so it's not like I was in a position to open a second front anyway, but it still bothered me that there was no resolution.

I'm wrapping up in the north now and starting to position for the thurii war in the south. aggressive expansion is sitting higher than I'd like which is making me hesitant to rush the next declaration. thinking about waiting a few more years to let it decay but I'm not sure how long that realistically takes in invictus.

two actual questions if anyone knows: does the sabotage event ever fire a follow-up that reveals who did it? and is there a way to speed up AE decay beyond the normal diplomacy options in invictus, or is it just time?

doing a rome invictus run and had something happen mid-session that I'm still a bit annoyed about

one of my neighbors — and the game specifically says it could be any of them — paid saboteurs to attack one of my fortresses. the sappers got driven off before too much damage was done but the fortress still needed repairs. the event gives you two options: fix it and spend 87 gold, or don't fix it and lose popularity. no third option where you investigate or retaliate or even narrow down who did it.

I took the repair option. lost the gold. war score was at 99 against insubria so it's not like I was in a position to open a second front anyway, but it still bothered me that there was no resolution.

I'm wrapping up in the north now and starting to position for the thurii war in the south. aggressive expansion is sitting higher than I'd like which is making me hesitant to rush the next declaration. thinking about waiting a few more years to let it decay but I'm not sure how long that realistically takes in invictus.

two actual questions if anyone knows: does the sabotage event ever fire a follow-up that reveals who did it? and is there a way to speed up AE decay beyond the normal diplomacy options in invictus, or is it just time?

not my proudest moment

had my armies split on two flanks, veneto called in as ally, claim on liguria ready to go. declared war, started moving everyone toward genoa. then noticed morale was sitting at 3.19 out of 3.78 and just kind of stared at the screen for a second.

army maintenance had been on minimum since the last war ended. never raised it back up. just forgot. so now i've got a full-scale northern invasion running on morale that's recovering but nowhere near full, with sieges already ticking.

war ended up going fine — genoa fell, forts taken, lingonia swept, most of their allies didn't even show up. but it was genuinely uncomfortable for the first few months and i got lucky their stacks weren't bigger than they were.

what actually surprised me was the civic advance i got mid-war: roman concrete, 20% build time reduction. small thing but it stacked on top of a martial advance for professional training in the same session which means discipline went up and i can finally raise a proper legion. so the session wasn't a disaster by any means, just started badly because of my own carelessness.

anyone else have a habit of forgetting to reset maintenance between wars? feels like such an obvious thing but i always get caught up in the declaration screen and just forget to check it

not my proudest moment

had my armies split on two flanks, veneto called in as ally, claim on liguria ready to go. declared war, started moving everyone toward genoa. then noticed morale was sitting at 3.19 out of 3.78 and just kind of stared at the screen for a second.

army maintenance had been on minimum since the last war ended. never raised it back up. just forgot. so now i've got a full-scale northern invasion running on morale that's recovering but nowhere near full, with sieges already ticking.

war ended up going fine — genoa fell, forts taken, lingonia swept, most of their allies didn't even show up. but it was genuinely uncomfortable for the first few months and i got lucky their stacks weren't bigger than they were.

what actually surprised me was the civic advance i got mid-war: roman concrete, 20% build time reduction. small thing but it stacked on top of a martial advance for professional training in the same session which means discipline went up and i can finally raise a proper legion. so the session wasn't a disaster by any means, just started badly because of my own carelessness.

anyone else have a habit of forgetting to reset maintenance between wars? feels like such an obvious thing but i always get caught up in the declaration screen and just forget to check it

doing a rome invictus run, just wrapped up taking corsica from etruria, and somewhere around the midpoint of the war I got two events back to back — melancholia and then dysentery. checked the character screen and it still said "healthy" which I don't really understand, but the events were pretty clear about what was going on.

thing is I had 21k men already at sea so it's not like I was going to turn around. just kind of accepted that the consul was having a terrible time and watched corsica fall anyway. took about 18 months total which honestly felt fast.

what I actually can't figure out is whether stacking conditions like that does anything mechanical in invictus or if it's mostly just flavor events. like is there a hidden health threshold where you start risking losing the character, or does "healthy" on the tooltip mean you're fine regardless of what the events say? I've never been clear on how that system actually works.

also unrelated but the vendes event fired for me this session — freed slave from brundisium basically campaigns his way into rome on popular support. ended up letting it play out and he became praetor. curious if anyone's seen a follow-up event for that or if it just kind of stops there.

been a good run overall but the consul really needs a holiday

doing a rome invictus run, just wrapped up taking corsica from etruria, and somewhere around the midpoint of the war I got two events back to back — melancholia and then dysentery. checked the character screen and it still said "healthy" which I don't really understand, but the events were pretty clear about what was going on.

thing is I had 21k men already at sea so it's not like I was going to turn around. just kind of accepted that the consul was having a terrible time and watched corsica fall anyway. took about 18 months total which honestly felt fast.

what I actually can't figure out is whether stacking conditions like that does anything mechanical in invictus or if it's mostly just flavor events. like is there a hidden health threshold where you start risking losing the character, or does "healthy" on the tooltip mean you're fine regardless of what the events say? I've never been clear on how that system actually works.

also unrelated but the vendes event fired for me this session — freed slave from brundisium basically campaigns his way into rome on popular support. ended up letting it play out and he became praetor. curious if anyone's seen a follow-up event for that or if it just kind of stops there.

been a good run overall but the consul really needs a holiday

So I've been doing a Rome run with Invictus for a while now, just finished the Epirus war on the peninsula, and I made a pretty embarrassing mistake that I figured someone here might relate to.

I get to 99 war score. Hipponion just fell, I've got boots on basically everything I wanted. Open the peace screen ready to clean up — and Bruttium is blocked. Overextension cap. I'm already too close to 100% with what I was taking and just... didn't check.

I've been so locked into watching the war score tick up that I never stopped to do the math on whether the territories actually fit. Rookie mistake after 12 episodes of the same campaign, which is the embarrassing part.

So now Bruttium, Croton, and Hipponion are sitting there for a future war. In 481. Eight years in game time.

What made it worse — while all this was going on, the Antigonid Kingdom just silently ate the rest of Epirus. Like, the country I just spent two episodes dismantling on the peninsula? Gone. Absorbed. The Antigonids are now sitting right across the Adriatic with everything Epirus had left.

Won the war, got less than I wanted, and accidentally made my next problem bigger. Good session.

Does anyone do manual overextension math before opening the peace screen, or is there a ledger view in Invictus I keep missing? Genuinely asking because I can't be the only one who's done this.

So I've been doing a Rome run with Invictus for a while now, just finished the Epirus war on the peninsula, and I made a pretty embarrassing mistake that I figured someone here might relate to.

I get to 99 war score. Hipponion just fell, I've got boots on basically everything I wanted. Open the peace screen ready to clean up — and Bruttium is blocked. Overextension cap. I'm already too close to 100% with what I was taking and just... didn't check.

I've been so locked into watching the war score tick up that I never stopped to do the math on whether the territories actually fit. Rookie mistake after 12 episodes of the same campaign, which is the embarrassing part.

So now Bruttium, Croton, and Hipponion are sitting there for a future war. In 481. Eight years in game time.

What made it worse — while all this was going on, the Antigonid Kingdom just silently ate the rest of Epirus. Like, the country I just spent two episodes dismantling on the peninsula? Gone. Absorbed. The Antigonids are now sitting right across the Adriatic with everything Epirus had left.

Won the war, got less than I wanted, and accidentally made my next problem bigger. Good session.

Does anyone do manual overextension math before opening the peace screen, or is there a ledger view in Invictus I keep missing? Genuinely asking because I can't be the only one who's done this.