Sega PC GAMES ROME: TOTAL WAR (2 OF 3) User Manual

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• Diplomats can be attached to your armies like other characters. Simply move
them to the same location as an army. This makes it slightly safer for them
to travel. They can be removed from the army by clicking on the

Characters tab, selecting the diplomat and then right-clicking a spot on

the game map.

■ The Diplomacy Scroll

You’ll see the Diplomacy Scroll every time you
send a diplomat to negotiate with another faction.
You’ll also see it when a rival’s diplomat comes to you
with an offer of friendship (or even to threaten you).

Diplomacy Scroll summarizes your current

relationship with another faction, including earlier treaties, and allows you to make
new deals. The center panel is the treaty that’s being proposed. Build up a treaty
by selecting items from the two lists:

•

Left-click on offer and demand items in the lists to add them to the

treaty. These include land, cash and information.

• Left-click on an item already in the treaty to remove it.

• The offers and demands do not have to be balanced, but treaties that are
unbalanced will be rejected more often than ones with some give-and-take.

When you’re happy with terms, click on the
treaty text. The other party will respond. He’ll do one of three things:

The

Offer button below the

refuse outright, accept immediately or make a counter-offer.

If you’re offering money, territory or map information and not asking for
anything in return, these can be a gift. Offers to attack other factions
can also be a gift.

• It’s quite possible that your proposed treaty was interesting, but not quite
what the opposition wanted. In this case, they’ll make a counter-offer
to you.

• Once a counter-offer treaty is on the table, you can accept it or make your
own proposals in response as a counter-offer. Again, you can change
the treaty by clicking on either offers or demands and on the treaty itself
(delete items).

• It’s quite possible for negotiations to go through several rounds of offer and
counter-offer before a deal is reached. Be mindful, though, that not
everyone’s patience is endless and one man’s haggling is another man’s
waste of time!

How to Use Assassins

Assassins are trained in settlements that have a forum, agora or bazaar
or larger trading structure. Assassins can assassinate characters or
sabotage buildings.

• Move an assassin onto an enemy army, settlement or agent to attempt a
mission. An assassin can only attempt one mission per turn. It doesn’t matter
when during the turn the mission occurs.

• An

assassination can be carried out on any character at the location. You’ll

be presented with a target list including a chance of success for each “hit.”

Sabotage missions can only be carried out in settlements. You’ll be given

the choice of an assassination (if there’s a character in the settlement) or
sabotage. Again, you’ll be presented with a target list on the

Mission Target

Unrecognized buildings in a settlement appear as “?” which can be sabotaged.
Use the tabs to move between the assassination and sabotage targets.

Scroll, including a chance of success for the mission.

Select

Left-click on the target and then click on the assassination or sabotage

buttons. You can always cancel the mission by clicking on the “X” button.

• There are no guarantees that an assassin will succeed. Assassins who fail might
get killed in the process.

How to Auto-Manage Settlements

Settlements in Rome: Total War can be left to run themselves if you prefer to
concentrate on the military side of the game.

If a settlement doesn’t have a governor it’ll be auto-managed. Moving the last
character out of a settlement turns auto-management on.

When you conquer a settlement, you’re given the option of auto-managing it. The
conquering general can be the governor, but the settlement can still be left to look
after itself.

■ The Settlement Scroll

In the set policies section of the scroll, click on the Auto-manage check box to
toggle auto-management on and off.

When it’s on, you’ll have the chance to pick a build policy for the settlement. This
gives the administrators some basic guidance on where they should concentrate their
spending. The policies are all straightforward:

• Balanced—Results in a well-rounded settlement.

Financial—Trade and income-producing buildings are favored.

•

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• Military—Buildings that train or upgrade troops are constructed.

Defensive—Walls are given priority.

•

Cultural—Temples, amphitheaters, arenas, academies and other buildings

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that make people feel happy are favored.

The amount of money invested in new buildings is determined by the overall AI

spending policy

Overviews scroll can be accessed by left-clicking on your Faction icon in the lower­right corner of the control panel.

When auto-management is off, you’ll be given the choice to alter the tax rate in
the settlement.

, which is set on the Faction tab of the Overviews scroll. The

How Not to Go Broke

Simply put: have more income than expenditure. Running out of money is a sure
way of losing the game. Without money, no new buildings can be constructed, no
new troops recruited and existing forces cannot be paid.

■ Low-Level Tax Management

Each settlement with a governor can have its own tax rate, varying from very

high

to low. This is changed in the set policies section of the

Settlement Scroll.

Left-click on the arrows on either side of the tax rate to change it.

•

• As you change the tax rate, you’ll see the settlement’s income, public order
and population growth change. In general, the lower the taxes, the happier
the people are likely to be!

Click on the
to see the contribution that taxes make to the overall state of
the settlement.

Click on the
in the Control Panel) to see a financial projection for the current turn.

The End of Turn Report Scroll gives you the details of the last turn’s
actual spending.

These two reports allow you to review the current state of your treasury. You can
also make sure your AI assistants aren’t spending money too quickly by altering
the AI Spend Policy on the Faction tab of the Overviews scroll.

Show Settlement Details button if you want

Financial tab on the Faction Overview (click on the faction symbol

How to Manage Your Faction

Clicking on the faction symbol in the lower right-hand corner of the Control Panel
brings up the Faction Overview.

■ The Faction Overviews Scroll

This scroll is the key to understanding all the political, diplomatic and financial
details of your faction. Click on any of the tabs across the top of the scroll to bring
up the Senate details, Diplomacy details, Financial details and/or Faction overiew.

The Faction overview allows you to set global auto-management options for your
entire faction. These are the underlying defaults for any settlement that’s being
auto-managed:

• Click the
auto-management to do everything for you. If not you can:

• Click Enable Auto Train Units if you want the game to produce the best
available military forces.

• Click Enable Auto Construct Buildings if you want the game to
manage the building policy in settlements.

• The AI Spend Policy Slider lets you set the relative balance between
building up your cash reserves and immediate spending.

Three buttons in the lower left-hand corner bring up more information about
your faction:

Automate All Production tick box if you want

Faction Rankings—A summary graph that shows you how well each

faction is doing compared to the others.

Family Tree—A convenient summary of your faction’s available senior

personnel: your generals, their wives and their children.

Click here to bring up the
greater detail shortly.

Senate Officials Scroll. This is discussed in

■ Faction Ranking Scroll

This scroll gives you a way of seeing your progress in the
game and comparing your strength with that of your rivals
in several different ways. The graph shows your faction’s
power over time as an
the proportion of the world’s “power” that you control.

• The ranking choice allows you to choose an aspect
of your faction’s power: production, territorial,
financial, population and overall.

• The faction choice lets you choose which collection of factions you wish to
compare: your own, all factions, the top five, neighboring factions or a
custom selection.

absolute value; it doesn’t show

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• You can click on the faction symbols to toggle the graph lines on and off for
any particular faction(s). This can be very useful when reviewing your
progress in a war.

■ Family Tree Scroll

The family tree scroll shows all the important characters in
your faction—the men who can be generals and governors.
It also allows you to decide who’ll be the faction
leader’s heir.

• Portraits in color are living characters. Characters
shown in gray are dead.

• The most important characters are the faction

leader

and the faction heir; their status is

marked on their portraits.

• All the larger portraits are generals and governors in your faction. Move the
cursor over a portrait to see the character’s name and abilities. The smaller
portraits are sisters, wives and children.

Left-click on any large portrait, and two buttons in the lower left of the screen
become available.

Set Faction Heir button allows you to designate the heir to your

The
faction leader.

The Show Me button displays the character’s location on the current
campaign map.

■ New Members of the Family

In the normal course of events, sons and daughters will be born to various
members of the family. As sons come of age, they ’ll become available for use as
generals and governors. All new characters (including adopted sons and those who
marry into the ruling family) always appear in the faction capital. Daughters
become available for marriage when they come of age.

Adoptions and Marriages

Unmarried sons in your family will find wives and, hopefully, start producing a new
generation of leaders without you having to worry about it.

From time to time—when there’s an eligible woman in the family—a suitable
husband will appear. If you accept him for marriage into your family, he’s adopted,
too, and treated like any other male family member.

Attributes

All family characters have three attributes that affect their performance in the
game. These are
measured on a scale of 0 (poor) to 10 (almost divinely inspired):

command, management and influence, and they’re

• Command is the ability the character has to lead and inspire men in battle.

High command has a positive effect on the morale and fighting quality of
soldiers. A low command rating has some effect, and is definitely better than no
command rating at all.

• Management is the ability of the character to run a settlement and conduct

the business of government.

• Influence is the ability of the character to sway others by argument and the

force of personality. This has an effect on public order when a character with
influence is a governor.

Other characters in the game also have attributes:

Admirals have command ratings, but only for sea battles.

•

Diplomats have influence, and this affects their chances of successfully

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negotiating with another faction.

• Spies and assassins have subterfuge ratings. Subterfuge is a measure of
sneakiness, double-dealing and underhandedness.

Retinues: Ancillary Characters

Retinues are made up from ancillary characters. These are the
assistants, aides, secretaries, mistresses, fixers, lackeys, drinking buddies
and assorted hangers-on that always seem to be found with great men.

included a few famous historical characters as ancillaries—if you can find them, maybe
they’ll help your cause!

Ancillaries usually give bonuses and penalties to a character in the same way as
character traits. Unlike traits, ancillaries can usually be moved between characters, but
some combinations are not allowed.

• The two characters must be part of the same army or in the same settlement.

•

• Drag and drop the ancillary you want to move from the scroll onto the unit card

■ Character Traits: Vices and Virtues

Over time, characters pick up a variety of personality quirks and traits. Some of these
are good and some are bad, but if a man is worthy, he’ll develop a good character.
A man who runs from battle or is left to rot in a provincial backwater may develop a
nasty personality! It’s probably a good idea to have a look at your characters every
once in a while to make sure they don’t have a taste for the good life (at your
expense), or turn into blood-soaked loonies!

Ancillaries are added to a retinue as a result of game events. We’ve also

Right-click on the unit card in the review panel that represents the general

with the ancillary.

of the receiving character in the Review Panel.

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