Demise of Nations: Becoming an Emperor

The aim of this guide is to give the player extra information about the game Demise of Nations: Rome in the form of Basics and Tips & Tricks based on personal experiences.

Introduction

Welcome to my guide, and more importantly to the world of Demise of Nations: Rome! I will try my best to explain some things about this game and hopefully you'll understand the game and its mechanics a bit better afterwards. That is my intention at the very least. I'll even throw in some jokes here and there, you may not notice them. Just like...yeah I'm not going there yet - hehe.

DoN:Rome

This guide refers to the game of version date april 25th 2015. Make note.

Well, as the game name states, its about Rome, its enemies, era, units, buildings etc.

There are a lot of buildings and technologies, a smaller count of units and a good several factions. But generally, you need technology to develop certain buildings to recruit the good units to vanquish the factions. And in order to keep researching fast, you'll want to grow your empire - yes you get it. It is the vicious circle of life demise.

For this guide I will explain by using the ROME faction as example. I've tried several factions and Rome appeared to me to be a good starter for newcomers.

Game stages

In order to explain the game a bit better, I'm going to segment the game's mechanics into stages. It is what I noticed that what you're looking after in specific moments in the game.

Food

So, you picked Rome and you notice you're immediately thrown into a war with the Samnites. This is not bad. Total War: Shogun 2 starts that way too - one faction at war and the option to make an ally with another faction. As Rome you'll have a couple Swordsmen and a Cavalry at your disposal and perhaps a Spearman or Barbarian/Peasant somewhere. Then you go through your governing options and you notice your food supplies are dwindling. You check the map and see some extra crop fields in the backyards of the Samnites. Crops and Potato fields keep your armies and villages running. There is an inquiry informing you of an "amazing deal" to get some extra food at a somewhat hefty price.

Food will be the bane of your worries for like a major part of the beginning of struggle to entice all the map world under your command. It will become easier with food the more technologies (for higher lvl / yield fields), money (for trade), fields you have. And eventually, somewhere middle / end of your game you'll be selling food by the thousands. Or trying to.

Practically though, you wage war to gain access to more fields. You'll want crops over potatoes, because of higher yields. Fields that are OK have 100% yield, fields of <26% yield are experiencing drought. If you lack materials or funds then only raise level of the OK fields, or only the Crops. You can submit a buy order from the Trade window for food for up to 600 every turn (R).

At some point you'll also notice fish swimming off the coast in the water. And yes, that's where your Fishing Boats come in. And yes, you need a harbor to build fishing boats. And then when you have one built, you can immediately move it out of the harbor towards the spot. Once on the spot it will start harvesting the food resource (25 per turn). Considering the majority of crop/potato fields are experiencing either drought (<26%) or winter freeze (n/a = 0%), those 25 yields are pretty good. There are only a few of them though and the other nations have fishing boats too. Fishing boats only have 2 life and the Lumber cost may prove difficult if you're struggling to come by.

Tutorial Units

This section details the units found in the tutorial when I played it and as such may not be relevant to other games you may start / join. Be advised.

Besides Food as obstacle you have...the other factions. It is a cutthroat world out there and every faction is out for blood. And you are too of course. There is no becoming emperor of this side of the world without the shedding of a few million liters of blood.

To shed blood you'll need units. Most villages have access to at minimal the Peasant and the Barbarian. Well, unless you're extremely desperate...you can skip the peasant.

THE UNITS

- Swordsmen: I found these to be the most useful mid/late game. Expensive but grow with you, can be upgraded twice and can dish out good damage. The easy healing will make them be your veteran, real force.

- Barbarians: They are the mean & lean sneaky cousin: will receive bonus when hidden; cheap and useful as scout or fodder unit; but can not be upgraded. This is most likely the bigger part of your military force.

- Spearmen: Sometimes you see a neutral approaching your village and you want to stay on the safe side of diplomacy? That is where you could recruit the Spearmen. Don't confuse with Superman. Can be upgraded once and should be in camp mode. The Spearmen are relatively cheap and best as defense, not terribly good in offense.

- Horsemen: These are the most expensive units and have the most health (12 as opposed to 10), can be upgraded once, have a bit more action radius and are best used in offense. Even so, I don't find them thát remarkable for their price.

- Archers: Archers are the only units that can fire from distance (any 1 tile distance). Very useful in trapping and adding additional firepower and can be upgraded once.

- Fishing Boat: Fishing boats have 2 life and can gather the fish resource for food. They can attack, but will most likely die doing so. Attacking another fishing boat, by example, means death for both. Don't bother trying to use them as scouts, as they will get homesick very quickly.

- Transporter Ship: Transporter Ships have 10 life and therefor are much better to hunt enemy boats. On top of that, they can carry 2 units. Just move the ship next to land, move the unit on the ship, move the ship to another location, select the unit on your ship and move him on land in one go! Be aware though that Transporter Ships also have homesick mechanism.

Homesick mechanism: the blue bar will drain the more you venture out into the sea until it depletes and the unit ceases to exist. The only remedy is having it enter a harbor once a while to make it recover (recovered fully in the next turn).

Happiness

What is that? In this game it means Willingness of your population to comply. When a village is unhappy, e.g <50 rate, you will notice you can't recruit soldiers, build or receive income. You will need to appease them with edicts if you want them to work for you. Edicts are instant but can be costly depending on the population of that village / edict chosen. Keep in mind that not all edicts regard happiness.

A good way to negate Happiness becoming a problem is by engaging (and defeating) the other nations 1-by-1. You can ally your surrounding nations and they will just slaughter each other and leave you free to swoop in (cancel a relation, wait 2 turns, start the war), kill the stragglers, get the "loot" (read: villages and resource locations).

Mind you that dropping a long-time friend may cost you -25 happiness and another -15 happiness after 2 or 3 turns of cool-down period to start the actual war. If you started that at 100 happiness, then it is not really a problem. But that is generally not the case. Stone is the resource needed for buildings required to increase village happiness over-time and Food to enable edicts to increase happiness instantly. You'll be buying Stone by the tens of thousands in 1 game. Bakeries at first (mid-game) and arena's (late-game).

So what makes Happiness the deciding factor and not Stone, Wood or Iron? Well, in terms of resources: Food>Happiness>Stone>Wood>Iron. Considering Food has already been discussed, if your population's happiness isn't properly managed, and you don't have the resources, you're dead in the water for quite a few turns and may not recover altogether.

Buying Wood is slightly more apparent in the beginning. But once you start racking up Lumberyards (not that there are many, its just that you don't need many) you'll notice you don't need as much as you did in the beginning. And Iron is the least of your worries. One upgraded Iron Mine and the occasional purchase from market will be enough. Stone as a material resource, however, is required to make the majority of the buildings. Unit buildings and Happiness buildings. There's economy buildings too, but that's really a sideshow to your problems.

Trapping

This section details gameplay regarding the map-setting "Zone-Of-Control".

Now that I've discussed the 3 corner stones of Demise: Food, Units & Happiness, let's discuss trapping. Please think of that movie 300. Yes, that's the angle.

Trapping the enemy in the we-go mechanic is not really a skill per-say, it is more a technique for keeping the other nation in check. Sort of like a leash.

Trapping requires a certain amount of units, which in turn require that you keep a good sum of gold and food always available, which should be of little concern by mid-game. Trapping reduces unit loss on your side because of outnumbering the trapped unit and being in control of the battlefield. It is quite possible to reduce a top 5 nation to smithereens in just 1 turn by use of unit trapping and setting up your units near their villages beforehand.

Considering the stages, trapping early game is best used in conjunction with choke-points to make most use of your few units. With choke-points you'll want a combination of Barbarians or Swordsmen + Archers. This combination will allow you to get good damage in while the enemy can not. Choke-points are: bridges, mountain-passes and valleys, river banks & dead-ends. This because units can't traverse rivers, mountains or other nations' villages.

Choke-points allow you to use fewer assets to "trap" a nations' units that are not hostile to you (and therefor can't attack you). They also can't move through you and thus become trapped by you. They can't traverse where they want to and you will know where they are and may even be able to trap them further if needed by encircling or placing units on both ends of a "gauntlet". Once you enter war with them it is just a matter of eliminating the forces you have trapped.

You can check a nations' score, village & tile count by clicking their profile (logo) in any of the diplomacy screens if you want to verify their survival. A nation is only defeated after every unit has died and every tile and village has turned (though this depends on the map settings and whether that faction has enough food to sustain its troops - if not, this can cause enemy troops to disband).

Miscellaneous

Information that you may have missed while playing the game.

RESOURCE TILES
There is research that allows you to build farms, lumberyards and mines on the map and research that allows you to level-up those.

1. Farms
   To build (food: crops, rice, potatoes, grains) Farms, look for grass tiles that look "dirty", select it and hit the +. A menu will pop up where you can select the Farm and build it. Once built and having researched it, you may upgrade it to increase the yield capacity (max level is 4).
   
   
2. Mines
   To build Mines (iron mine and stone quarry), look for mountain/hill tiles that are "shiny", select it and hit the +. A menu will pop up where you can select the Mine and build it. Once built and having researched it, you may upgrade it to increase the yield (max level is 2).
   
   
3. Lumberyards
   To build (lumber) Lumberyards, look for forest tiles that look like they have been visited by a "lumberjack", select it and hit the +. A menu will pop up where you can select the Lumberyard and build it. Once built and having researched it, you may upgrade it to increase the yield (max level is 2).

DOCKS & VILLAGES
There are 2 researches that allow you to build settlements on the world map:
- the Dock
- the Village
However you can not build them just anywhere. Just like resources, they require a specific tile graphic. A Dock can be build upon a sea tile with a 50% transparent star on top, while the Village can be build upon a land tile with a 50% transparent star on top. Both require a lofty sum of stone and start with only 500 population, so choose wisely.

BORDERS
You may notice that the borders you come across come in different colors. Note that border colors signify the relation between the 2 nations and not the relation to you necessarily.
- a Blue border signifies allied relation between the 2
- a Red border signifies warring relation between the 2
- a White border signifies cease-fire or no relation between the 2

UNIT EXPERIENCE
You may notice that some of your soldiers have gained Stars. You will see 3 stars, of which one or more are white, over the icon of your unit. This signifies they have amassed significant experience through combat with hostile units. One white star activates at 125% (25% bonus strength), another at 150%, etc.

UNIT UPGRADES
Some units can be upgraded. For this the prerequisite research needs to be completed. Once researched, you will be able to select the unit (that has not moved or battled yet) then click the upgrade you want (extra defensive armor or more offensive power) and purchase the upgrade. The purchase will end the turn for this unit.

DIPLOMACY
You can ask other nations a number of things: Peace, Cease-fire, Submission, War, etc.
Most, are fairly self-explanatory.
- Demanding Submission of another nation means you ask them to become your vassal. They will become your follower and pay tribute to you. Not just any nation will comply to this; you generally ask this of a nation that is very weak and about to be destroyed.

WE-GO
This game utilizes a We-Go mechanism, which means that when you execute your planned army movements, the other nations will do that the same time. This means that when you plan you should do your trapping and battling moves first, prioritize which unit you want to attack what unit first and keep a few units containing the areas you want contained. Then once you did all the important movements you can do your less important army or resource movements (such as fishing boats / transporter ships and units that aren't part in any battles).

--
This is the guide for now. I hope it was useful somehow. If needed I'll change sections when I've played the game more and find more things to discuss.

[Mk Z]

trapping sounds cheesy

[miller.matthew1987.01]

When you click on a unit, and it brings up a bunch of yellow buttons and one red button at the top. I cant find any thing that explains what these buttons do. Can some one help explain them to me?

[Comrade_Commissar]

Food used to be a thing in this game?

[arvedui78]

Thank you for this. While it is out of date in some some aspects, it has cleared a lot of my doubts, like the stars that signify unit experience, the blue bar that means home sickness, etc.

[Vinh Petrol]

NICE

[Xam Huad]

I shouldn't write guides. They're the death of adventurers.

[noblemaster]

Great guide :-D

[zeal]

Very nice guide, my hats off to you sir!

[Xam Huad]

Considering new mod/map bundles allow for more units to be introduced, this guide may forever be incomplete, hence why this guide only highlights the units found in the tutorial map (of version date April 25 2015).

[OLIVEIRA(PT)]

good job mate
you miss some land units and some ships but dont mater
good work anyways