Western Roman Empire

At long last, after a good amount of effort and learning on my part, I have completed one of, if not the, hardest campaign that the Total War series has to offer.

It certainly was trying at times. I changed strategies, adapted to new situations, and otherwise had to up my game in order to win against the odds. Truly, the Western Roman Empire on Legendary difficulty has been the most challenging and fun of the campaigns I have ever played in Total War, and I’m glad to say that it is (mostly) over.

I will continue on to Divine Victory, but this is certainly the beginning of the end.

I haven’t been writing as much because I have been busy, in particular my legendary Western Roman Empire campaign. I finally figured out a good strategy and it’s worked great so far, with me at turn 80, on the tail-end of a long war which had me out-maneuver and destroy many enemy army stacks.

12 factions have been wiped out so far. I personally wiped out the Marcomans, Quadians, Visigoths, Vandals, Ostrogoths, Suebians, and Iazyges. The only major opposition in Europe are the Saxons and a mishmash of British factions who are all fighting each other as well as me. A lot of the land to the east in Illyria has been razed by the constant fighting, only the Illyria and Macedonia factions are left. The Eastern Roman Empire fell to a combination of barbarians and the Sassanids.

I have about 20 turns until Chapter 2 finishes and Attila can potentially spawn. I was planning on writing a guide but the further I get into the campaign, the more I realize I can only provide tips and best practices for optimizing your empire, but how you survive is up to you. With so many factions at war with you at the start, WRE can be a little bit of a toss-up. I would not go so far as to say there is luck involved, but favorable outcomes and “being at the right place at the right time” is a huge factor in whether you’re fighting 10 battles a turn and barely surviving, or cleaning up quickly and surviving.

I have been really busy with Total War: Attila, particularly playing the Western Roman Empire on legendary mode.

I have tested a few strategies, and I am testing some. Something I’ve found that was interesting is the sort of “peak income” for a high corruption faction. When you start your WRE campaign, corruption is about 75%-80%, which results in you pulling in about 600 denari a turn in income, despite owning a third of the map.

Ideally you want as little corruption as possible, but that is a natural function of the size of your empire itself: As your empire gets bigger, corruption increases. Corruption can be decreased by decree, governor, or technology.

For the WRE, you must abandon/lose territories, which has the effect of increasing your income. How many to lose is the key to min/maxing your starting income, so you have to choose carefully. So far, the most ideal corruption is roughly 40%, give or take 5%.

I have found that giving up more territories to go below 40% actually decreased by income, as the trade-off between corruption income loss did not make up better returns on income from having the territory.

The 40% number is a rough guess, which I arrived at by simply creating a game, taking note of the amount of corruption I had at start, then simply desolating territories in chunks, then seeing how much income I was generating next turn.

There is probably a better corruption number, but as it stands, it is ideal because it allows me to keep the right amount of good territories to survive the early game. Basically, I keep Spain, Italy, and Africa, while dumping the rest (almost all of Gaul and all of Britain).

That’s it for now. I’m still refining my strategy, and I plan on writing a more in-depth Western Roman Empire guide in the near future.