How do you know what's good?

[Rosario]

I want to get into Rome 2, I actually like the system, but I cannot for the life of me tell what units are worth making, or when in a battle how to tell what units to send to fight other units. Then there's the city buildings and research, no clue what's good, and what to pass.
Medieval 2 is pretty staightforward peasant -> militia -> tougher military units -> advanced military units. It's easy to tell what's good and what should fight what in M2. Rome 2 you have fretatas, tortellinis, martinis, Kevins, basically units all look like guys in cloth with beat sticks of various kinds with (albeit historically accurate) gibberish names, which on their own would basically make sense to only dedicated Roman history buffs. Is there an easy way to make this stuff make sense that I just overlooked?

[닝닝 공주님의 기사]

always spam expansive units

[Rosario]

Originally posted by Pinkie Pie:

always spam expansive units

How much is expensive?

[닝닝 공주님의 기사]

THE MOST Expansive units

[76561198120390739]

For military units it is actually come down to the same principal as Medieval 2, sword beats spear, spear beats cavalry, cavalry beats light infantry and missile units. My advice, don't mind their names, look at what weapon they carry and use your Medieval 2 logic.

I'm gonna give you an example, this is the easy part. While yes i agree their name would sound alien to player which not a Roman history buff but all those Roman units like Hastati, Legionaries, First Cohort, Evocati Cohort, Praetorian all of them just sword units, just look at their unit card (their icon). So the logic would be they are good against spear and other sword units, right?

Now, this is some example of irregular units, should you encounter them, lol. There is this guy called Agrianian Axemen, the name and the unit icon suggest that it is a melee unit carrying an axe, they actually a javelin thrower. Also there is this Persian Elite Archers, the unit icon, their appearance, their unit stats suggest that they are just a regular light infantry with bow and arrow, any cavalry charge will trample them to the ground, right? Wrong, they carry spear as their melee weapon and would absolutely melt any light even medium cavalry charging at them. Lmao, this is just a joke tho'. In the end the same logic of Medieval 2 also applies here. But let's see if anyone here could add to those irregular list.

[Alwyn]

Generally, Rome II's system is similar to Medieval II's - there are peasant-quality units, militia, regular units, better regular units and elites. It takes a bit of time to work out which are which, but after a while, it becomes obvious - for example when you realise that 'Chosen' in Celtic factions means better regular units, and 'Nobles' means elite units. For a Hellenic faction such as Athens, you've got militia (Militia Hoplites), regulars (Hoplites), better regulars (Thorax Hoplites) and elites (Picked Hoplites).

Honga.net is a good place to look up a faction roster and compare unit statistics to their price for example here's the Arverni one:
https://www.honga.net/totalwar/rome2/unit.php?l=en&v=rome2&f=rom_arverni

Heir of Carthage provided videos for new players:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7wceACVq1Q&list=PLgD7g4nZBibfNcWunu4SC_6QgcDXV0txu

You wrote that you're not sure about which unit to use against which one. Even though I play singleplayer campaigns, I learned about using units in battle from watching multiplayer battle commentary by Heir of Carthage and Maximus Decimus Meridius, in videos like this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoTqt-o4Y24&list=PLr7HLoRrUHO6cevYtW-cZ8sb9hDtO9m2G&index=14

[Wayz]

The ones that are standing are the end of the battle, they are the good ones

[Aslan Ponto]

This game has a similar system in terms of the tier of the barracks each unit is available from. That said, there're extremely good cost effective units which can , if not winning, at least give a run for their money to more expensive and technically superior units. This is especially important for multiplayer battles. In campaigns you'll be usually fine recruiting the highest tier units available for your faction (unless you're playing with population mods and have to balance population classes).

It takes some time of researching and testing units until you figure out many things. I can tell you that for melee units it's normally better to choose those with superior melee attack and armour penetration, although the melee attack value decreases the more tired the unit is, so sometimes units with higher melee defense will start losing the match but eventually win... it's tricky. Remember that it's a sinergy, units don't win battles alone and sometimes you only need that some units gain time whilst you're whipping the enemy in other flank or whatever.

As others have pointed out above, the game has a sword, spear, cavalry system, in which a lower quality spear could, if not defeat, at least perform well against elite cavalry for instance. And indeed, comparing stats at Honga is really useful, especially if you're methodic.

[kekkuli]

?? Just make the best units.

[✚ Mariel ✚]

Hastati then Principes for infantry, Rorii then Triarii for spears, Equites then Praetorian Cavalry for Cavalry, Levs then Velites for ranged. For Rome its usually best to just spam hastati and then principes, maybe bring a couple triarii for cavalry

[Wayz]

I think the better question is what units fit your tactics & play style let alone what units you think you will be fighting that area.
In general as said above the price to recruit and maintain is a good general indicator of quality but for myself for example, even though elite shock cav is "elite" and very good at what it does I hardly ever use it as its vulnerable to melee cav and decent melee cav will charge well enough in a pinch in my experience and has much greater versatility.
Then there are infantry, spear and pike to name the most common unit types for the main stray of your army and all will get the job done if used right. Do you prefer any particular tactic to play or mixed forces for versatility etc as to any of the above.
Some factions will make this choice for you as they favour whatever units historically but in the case of say the Seleucid you will be presented with a smorgasbord of options ranging from cheap levies to elite of many unit types and this versatility is there to combat the share range of forces their neighbours can field and you may want to tailor forces to counter specific factions.
You can write a small book on all the different unit types and their uses, what factions use them & what counters what but I am not willing to type that much and the above is just food for thought.

Mostly though for me at least it comes down to what I enjoy using and I generally choose a faction depending on what I am in the mood for and how mixed my forces are depends on how much micromanagement I can be bothered with.

[Red Bat]

It's actually not very straightforward compared to a lot of other TW games, especially since you need to factor in cost effectiveness and whether the building chain to get the units is worth it.

Generally you start with access to a bunch of cruddy militia units with around 1-2 actual soldier units who are around twice as expensive while doing a similar role to one of the militia units (and might have an extra ability or trait), and you'll later get an even more elite unit of that type once you upgrade the barracks.

However you get into some weird situations where multiple building chains seem to give you access to similar units that all seem to do the same role. For example Suebi can get very early access to Spear Brothers, Spearwomen, and Wodanaz Spears. Of the three, Wodanaz Spears are effectively the elite version of the other two, with higher stats and a unique formation ability, but they also cost significantly more and require a very expensive temple to get. Spearwomen are probably the most cost effective, but require you to build a different not particularly useful temple, and there's a very limiting cap on how many you can get total. So you'll usually be using Spear Brothers, who come from your barracks building which you'll build anyway, have close to the same stats as Spearwomen, and aren't as prohibitively expensive as Wodanaz Spears. However once money isn't as much of an issue or if you build one of those temples anyway, the other two units will start to look a lot less impractical and you'll have to play it by ear to figure out if it's worthwhile for you to start investing in trying to get them.

But even then you'll eventually get bored and check the unit list only to discover Suebi has a few other spear units who seem to do the same role. Spear Walls and Night Hunters are going to have to be compared to the other units and you are going to have to use some cognitive skills to figure out which to build. Especially when you factor in that Suebi has a lot of non-spear infantry that also seem to perform similar roles.

[wcbarney]

Originally posted by Rosario:

I want to get into Rome 2, I actually like the system, but I cannot for the life of me tell what units are worth making, or when in a battle how to tell what units to send to fight other units. Then there's the city buildings and research, no clue what's good, and what to pass.
Medieval 2 is pretty staightforward peasant -> militia -> tougher military units -> advanced military units. It's easy to tell what's good and what should fight what in M2. Rome 2 you have fretatas, tortellinis, martinis, Kevins, basically units all look like guys in cloth with beat sticks of various kinds with (albeit historically accurate) gibberish names, which on their own would basically make sense to only dedicated Roman history buffs. Is there an easy way to make this stuff make sense that I just overlooked?

I have a couple of thousand hours playing Rome II, and have been fairly successful building armies of nearly every faction. I always recruit the ones with the highest melee attack & melee defense numbers; I prefer infantry, but the same idea works for all melee units. My usual army consists of 16 infantry + 4 ranged units. With some factions you can get good units right from the get-go, with others you have to wait 10-20 turns to build up your recruiting buildings.

[BRAN MAC BORN]

Just spam archers or horse archers-will destroy most enemy armies.

[totalwar360]

hold enemy blob with your own blob of spears and go behind them with swords or cav thats it

[Iommonaut]

The bird knows what's good