COMPLETE ROADS GUIDE - Game Guides - Rome: Total War

New episode of Game Guides every Thursday at 2:00pm EST!
Want to know what the different roads do in Rome: Total War? This video goes deep into the mechanics of roads and examines the major benefits of each level of road in the game.
The game guides series consists of short, to-the-point gaming commentary / strategy / tips and tricks videos that teach players how to accomplish certain tasks in many games in a more effective way.
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[@ardademirkale9858]

I like making roads, because zooming onto the map and watching all these carts walking after one another can be really fun.

[@BlueMatona]

I love all the ships on the sea trade paths too

[@michaelweston409]

I love it too. They get busier as your empire gets larger and richer.

[@stevenhale2935]

This is so wholesome:)

[@decanusseverus8773]

I too am a simple man who wishes to lead all roads to rome

[@philpants44]

zoom in? how?

[@cdcdrr]

One thing I don't like about roads is that they retain the culture of whoever built them, and cannot be deleted to replace them with your culture's roads. So unless you're the romans, you'll inevitably end up with a bunch of roads from another culture, making the people angry. "We do not like Parthian rule! Your roads are muddy and crude, and unpaved!" "They're the same stinking dirt paths you Gauls built!" "Yes, but they're Gallic dirt paths!"

[@sauromatae9728]

good thing in medieval2 they removed buildings' cultures. you get penalty only for different religion/culture.

[@wireshrub]

Culture doesn't count when it's just roads and farms.

[@Inquisitor_Vex]

After a while, you stop getting the culture penalty. I had a city that had a foreign port and roads but stopped having culture penalty.

[@napoleoncomplex2712]

I like when my enemy builds roads, because it makes finding and burning their cities sooo much easier. >)

[@spencertaylor-sputtaylor3937]

Macedon is actually included in the list of factions that can build paved roads

[@102728]

Yup, went and checked, surprised to find that most eastern factions can't build paved roads

[@smanegeri1penukalutara892]

There is a trick related to road to win battle for phalanx based faction. 1 Build basic road only. Place your phalanx infantry on a bridge. 2 When enemies attack that army and entering battle map, there should be a wooden bridge. 3 Block the bridge with one unit of your phalanx infantry. Position it very next to bridge, facing the enemy. 4 Watch the instant death for all enemies unit that come into contact with your phalanx once they try to cross the bridge. However, when you upgraded to paved road or higher, this trick won't work since the wooden bridge would upgraded into stone bridge. I tried playing Germanic, Greek factions, Egypt, and Carthage and all of them successfully won every defensive bridge battle. Even against 10x more enemy units.

[@nicoangelobado9913]

Back in the days, their were no KZbin guides or anyway of learning Total War guides. You are a God send Mister. Revisiting this old classic.

[@brarra8090]

They are very usefull to defend towns. Establishing a good road network from Pannonia all the way to the black sea helped me a lot in defending my border from the barbarians early in the game as i rushed the dacian lands. My garissons were very effectively supporting each other which was very cool and satisfaying gameplay-wise.

[@noscope7809]

hello. I just found u. i saw the GENERAL guide made 1 year ago. i learned a lot of things. Ur a good man keep up the good work

[@theocyberskunk4815]

But I played as Macedon and I was capable to build paved roads

[@sjonnieplayfull5859]

I think he missed that. Macedon and Greece are quite alike, so when he named the factions i was like: forgot one?

[@HouseOfAlastrian]

Only the barbarian factions and middle-eastern factions can't build paved roads.

[@cobrazax]

@@HouseOfAlastrian of course eastern factions can build paved roads... ONLY barbarians cant build them.

[@HouseOfAlastrian]

@@cobrazax Well Carthage can pave their roads... as far as I can tell Numidia can too since they're in the same culture group as Carthage. But I don't remember ever being able to pave roads as Parthia, Pontus or Armenia.

[@cobrazax]

@@HouseOfAlastrian He said they can too. Im just saying all non barbarians can

[@laszlokiss483]

roads not making a difference on islands makes no sense to me youd be able to transport more stuff on said road to a port which should boost sea trade imo but oh well I only learned this 15 years too late lmao

[@BlueMatona]

I was surprised to learn that also I actually had no idea roads don't affect island trade until I made this video. It really doesn't make much sense haha

[@michaelweston409]

15 years late lmao

[@sjonnieplayfull5859]

Was thinking the same, better roads to the Harbor makes for more trade, but i found out on the income details screen there is no future money when starting to build roads, so i quit using them on islands.

[@michaelweston409]

sjonnie playfull just like building farms doesn’t doing anything beneficial either:

[@sjonnieplayfull5859]

@@michaelweston409 i think it did yield more money from farming.

[@Mahfireballs]

Another real important feature of building roads is that it spreads the population growth bonus from enslaving settlements to all cities connected to it for 20 turns. And it stacks so you can get real large growth boosts just from enslaving settlements and connecting up the provinces with roads. So it's most definitely worth to build lv 1 roads in any province connected to another province by land*. As that is a "rather large" growth boost and that for only 400 gold and 1 turn and it has the benefit of faster travel and is required to upgrade the roads. (Upgrading the roads beyond that have no influence what so ever on this growth of slaves it always just remains 0.5% growth from every settlement connected to it for those 20 turns after enslaving) *(So everything beside the Island settlements like Crete, Salamis, Tara, Caralis and Palma. (I think those are all XD)) Anyway real good video and probably the best and most concise guides on Rome Total war on yt to date. And it being so new it makes sure it's quite accurate and not the first released version or something. And with the Remastered version releasing for public next week there might be a lot more views incoming for people to fresh up their memory or learn how it actually worked exactly as they never knew when playing x years ago. Or just people who are totally new and interested in the mechanics.

[@Pachongchong]

Thanks, these guides really help with my campaigns :D

[@Adszdosya]

When i first saw the thumbnail i was a bir surprised to be honest. This turned out to be a pretty neat guide, well done!

[@tenchimuyo69]

Barbarian Invasion has an amusing bug where the Swiss region (Augusta Vindelicorum) has no roads constructed but on the map it does.

[@TheSilentsaw]

But Augusta vindelicorum is augsburg in germany and not in switzerland 😢 dont tell me the devs put my hometown to switzerland ind barbarian Invasion 😭😭😭😭

[@tenchimuyo69]

@@TheSilentsaw The town itself could be but I don't quite remember. The region definitely goes into Swiss a bit.

[@bundlesofjoe]

I played this as a kid but never understood the campaign so I just did battles. Now that I'm playing it again as an adult I was losing over and over again. Every campaign I couldn't get to the civil war and I was playing on easy. Turns out I was playing the game fundamentally wrong. I was trying to build population size, all construction, and army size up right from the beginning. At first I'd have a great start, plow into the gauls and conquer half their territory before id start getting revolts in the starting cities which would snowball my mismanagement and cause me to go broke and slowly lose city after city until I lost the game. Never occurred to me to slow the heck down. This is a 30+ hour campaign no need to try to conquer everything in the first 6 hours. Glad I discovered this channel.

[@iwilltrytotry]

fucking thank you! honestly, after years and years and years of playing this, i didn't think there was much else to know, but i learn MANY new things in every one of your videos. amazing!

[@Sssniperwolf1996]

Very helpful video thanks, continue the good work. But I bild roads to peep seeing those dinari coming in to my treasury and investigating those dinari in to my military Campaigns!

[@IceniTotalWar]

Yep roads bring in a lot of money, some mods also tax you for maintenance costs .

[@assets259]

Realy good KZbin Channel, your tutorials are helping me a lot

[@messi2.1]

👍👍👍👍👍👍

[@frisianmouve]

A point I missed, highways have to connect to at least paved roads to increase trade income with another settlement. In this video Antioch and Mazaka increased its income from trade with Tarsus as well because Tarsus built paved roads, the increase seems to be 50%. If you then build highways in Tarsus the trade Antioch and Mazaka make from trading with Tarsus won't increase any further, only the trade income for Tarsus will be affected.

[@davidwickman7543]

What about trade caravans and traders? How exactly do they work?

[@michaelweston409]

Had to play the campaign dozens of times over the past 10 years to learn all this crap. It’s nice to learn this stuff years later again tho. Lol

[@sjonnieplayfull5859]

I think you missed one detail: the settlements your roads connect to..... Their trade goes up as well, or at least it should. And as the other guy said: Macedon has paved roads as well. Funny detail: playing as rebels lets you build different levels of roads, depending on what origins the army capturing the town had. Capturing Carthage with troops from a ship (becomming pirates) means i can only build normal roads there

[@frisianmouve]

Their trade with the settlement that builds roads only increases if there's more than a 2 level difference in roads between those settlement. In this video Antioch and Mazaka increased their income from trade with Tarsus when Tarsus built paved roads, but their income won't increase when Tarsus builds highways

[@Salvation.047]

tyvm u r the best

[@steffens260]

I look forward to seeing you next time too 😔 you haven’t posted in over a year

[@IceniTotalWar]

Luckily he's back to recording/uploading.

[@eniotanaka2229]

Thanks a lot

[@lijger1]

If you capture paved roads/highways as the Scythians then the bonus works for them right?

[@James-rm7sr]

It is interesting that road trade doesn't bring in much money vs sea trade. It is still an okay amount, but not great

[@IceniTotalWar]

Considering how dangerous sea trade was i would think you would get more from road trade. But i do like seeing all those ships/carts increase as you build your infrastructure.

[@IceniTotalWar]

All roads lead to Rome, maybe that's why traffic there is so bad 🤣🤣🤣

[@Qladstone]

I wonder if these calculations hold true in M2TW too. Considering that dirt roads don't increase trade, all the factions that can't make paved roads are significantly hurt economically.

[@IceniTotalWar]

Or whether they're changed in any way for the Remaster. I don't feel after upgrading roads that i'm making as much money as the original.

[@leto1178]

Hi there. Do you know whether or not trade income in RomeTW is only dependent on neighbouring provinces. Like for example, if I own the neighbouring provinces myself, is that the same as if someone else owns them yet I have a trade agreement with them? Is there no land-trade if there is no trade agreement? Is there a difference if a neighbouring province is a rebel town or a neutral faction without trade-agreement or an enemy town? How does sea-trade work, what determines which shipping lanes are established, is it to maximise trade income? Which trade resources bring in most of the money, how does all of that work? I guess what I'm saying is that should you ever run out of ideas for guide videos, trade is an interesting and not immediately transparent subject. Trade seems to be most of my income throughout the game, especially once my empire grows so I think it's also quite an important element of the game and should also guide expansionist plans. Thank you for all these guide videos.

[@aresu.8480]

Afaik macedonian can build paved road(1200d) and i was in 1.5v cuz macedonian is also greece culture

[@BlueMatona]

There were some updates to the steam version of the game that I didn't have on the mac app store version this was filmed with I think, may have to go back and edit these videos

[@cobrazax]

@@BlueMatona all non barbarian factions can build paved roads. it has always been like that

[@mcmudkipp]

You're not supposed to pronounce the second i in Denarii.

[@BlueMatona]

Oh shoot really? Haha I guess I just started saying it with two i's when I was younger and it just stuck

[@SuperMoodyyy]

BlueMatona same with julii brutii scipii

[@tsarchasm1499]

Yes you are. I’m Latin, double i makes the first on pronounced short and the second long, amounting to the it sounding like an ‘ih - ee’ sound, denar ih ee.

[@sjonnieplayfull5859]

@@BlueMatona not in english maybe, but in latin.... See the comment above mine.

[@TheExpresslonac]

In Latin every character in word should be pronounced, exceptions are th, rh, ph (its "f" if i am not mistaken), ae, oe ( pronounced "e" if there is absence of two dots above them, otherwise both should be read), cc (there is set of rules when it should be read as "c" or "kc", same goes for "ti" and "ngu"). That double "ii" is suffix for male noun genitive or nominative of plural noun. Tell me if i missed somethig... it has been some time :D

[@frostdearwinter4642]

For most cheat built buildings you need to end turn for effect

[@NinjaSushi2]

For some reason my trade carts and ships aren't showing. :( 3:13 How do you get the trade routes to show? I've turned all my settings up and everything but nothing works. Edit: WOW!!! So it turns out unit size affects the trade animation on the campaign map... *face palm* I spent about an hour scouring the internet and messing with settings. If you use small unit size it disables the trade carts/ships but normal unit size shows them.. Damn did I miss those trade indicators!! Unit size?! REALLY?! lol

[@BlueMatona]

I had no idea that was the case, wow! Thank you for the edit!

[@jackmanatawa5212]

Are these rules valid for all sorts of Total War games?

[@pedrotoledo8362]

Macedo, Pontus and Armenia also can build roads

[@Septimus_ii]

@BlueMatona can you do a video on market buildings and other buildings that affect tradable good

[@BlueMatona]

I'm actually already working on a trade video!

[@Qladstone]

@@BlueMatona Trade video bring it!

[@Shermuel]

5:12 I forgot there were even mercenary pirate units in this game.

[@ETIMOSLAETUS]

Good job mate. I have a question. When I hired mercenary elephants playing as parthia I moved my units to conquer Carthago, then I noted how the elephant unit number decreased from 24 to 19. Also in a campaign with greece I took Spartans to Alesia and over a couple of turns they started to decrease in number. I think it was not for a plage or besiege.

[@BlueMatona]

That's strange. Two questions, did you auto resolve any battles (even against some weak rebel units) or did you move the troops into a province with the plague?

[@ETIMOSLAETUS]

@@BlueMatona Hard to remember, but I don't auto resolve, and I never put troops into any city.

[@BlueMatona]

Maybe the troops are receiving damage because a city is revolting on the turn after you take it (carthage for example), and therefore the unit size shrinks a bit? It's a confusing situation because troops on the campaign map outside of cities should not decrease in size unless in a battle or if they move into a revolting city

[@sjonnieplayfull5859]

@@ETIMOSLAETUS did you have enough money for the upkeep?

[@frisianmouve]

Could've been a flood or an earthquake

[@maxdecphoenix]

been playing this game for like a week straight and i never used the trade screen :/ i watched this and thought it was like an addon or something... So i loaded up the game to check, and sure enough, it was there. Staring me in the face. So i started looking around at different cities and checking the comings and goings for trade, when i noticed that the Ports really aren't as effective as i thought. For my julii faction, i have ports at Patavium and Ariminium ( i mean i have ports in every city that can have ports), but the port at Patavium isn't doing ANY trade. I mean none. No imports. No exports. All the trade is going through Ariminium. I also noticed that Segestra (owned) trades with Rome (not owned) and Narbo martius (owned), but doesn't trade with Massilia (owned, and closer than Narbo). This is interesting too because Segesta doesn't land-trade with Massilia either (no direct road connection). So they are completely separate both on land and sea. It got me wondering about the actual mechanics of how ports work, because it's apparently not just 'build a port and make $$' like i assumed. As it stands now my ports at Patavium have been a complete loss and i've been upgrading them. So i loaded up various instances of campaigns at varying degrees to check different things. One thing that seems consistent is that no port will trade with it's two immidiate coastal neighbors. There's some exception to this with a few islands with very short (sometimes very long) sea routes. And it seems that despite having 'trade rights' with other sea-faring nations, this doesn't appear to actually mean you trade with them. There seems to be a maximum distance between ports beyond which they won't link up. Some oddities are that Narbo Martilius should trade with cartho nova, but it doesn't (atleast in this campaign), Massalia is trading with Osca and Cartho Nova. And despite having trade rights with Carthage, i don't see where any of my ports are linked to any of theirs. I bring this up because Carthage owns Palma, which is much closer to Massalia than Carthago Nova, so you'd assume they would be linked. This is making me wonder if the 'Block ports' factions that Senate gives you don't permanently damage your trade. I started to assume that ports, like land regions, are just hard linked to default routes, but then I loaded up a very early game and looked at Patavium (which was owned by Gauls) and it has sea-routes to opposition cities which i don't have to allied cities. Edit: Okay so i found the cause of my confusion with Patavium. There was a modest rebel army near by. As soon as i cleared them with an army, and regarrisoned the settlement, sea trade resumed. I was able to test this 3 times with auto-save, and clearing the rebels fixed the trade. I then looked around the map for other rebels in my domain, found a small group, and noticed that no trade caravans were moving on the campaign map between the nearby cities. I looked at the cities and very little trade was occuring. I then used a nearby diplomat to just bribe them off to quickly test (i wouldn't do this in a real save), and i looked at the settlement details and trade showed a faded trade upgrade (like it would when you start a new building) showing that the trade between those two cities would increase the next turn. It jumped from $40 to $170 as soon as i changed the garrison. Not only must you keep the roads clear of bandits, but if they're too near a port, they can shut it down completely!

[@rohanhart8867]

It’s been awhile but I’m pretty sure you need roads to get slaves to other towns after enslaving an enemy town.

[@Mahfireballs]

Yeah fairly sure that the lv of road doesn't affect the growth by slaves in any way. But you only get the 0.5% extra growth if you are connected to a settlement that was enslaved 20 turns earlier or less. So it's most definitely worth to build lv 1 roads in any province connected to another province by land*. As that is a "rather large" growth boost and that for only 400 gold and 1 turn and it has the benefit of faster travel and is required to upgrade the roads. And on top of that it stacks so you can get real large growth boosts just from enslaving settlements and connecting up the provinces with roads. *(So everything beside the Island settlements like Crete, Salamis, Tara, Caralis and Palma. (I think those are all XD))

[@retrosrobloxreviews9564]

I can build highways as Greek Cties :/

[@KitchenFSink]

Whats the building to build first in a new small settlement?

[@BlueMatona]

If the settlement is a border town, starting off with the first level of walls will really help you defend the town or maybe some military producing buildings so that you can train troops in the city. If the settlement is not contested (as in its not vulnerable to attack) then I would recommend roads for faster troop movement, the first level temple for public order, or a port to get the economy going. Depends on what the immediate need of the town is but those would be my recommendations for a few possible situations

[@KitchenFSink]

@@BlueMatona Ok, thanks.

[@sjonnieplayfull5859]

@@KitchenFSink are you steamrolling the enemy? Then roads first for troop movement, temples second to keep the town happy. Are you hardly holding the enemy? Then dont build roads, their armies use them too. Need money? Build a harbour, when there is another land you own, connected by sea only. Other town does not need a harbour to receive trade. Need your empire to grow? Build traders and markets. A little more money, but more important, more population growth. Farms dont make the population grow, contrary to what the fluff says. Large enemy forces close, ready to attack you again, and no friendly army large enough to do something about it for several turns? Exterminate the population, destroy all buildings, so the enemy has nothing usefull and can not rebuild his army after capturing it, will even spend money on buildings.

[@frisianmouve]

@@sjonnieplayfull5859 Farms make the population grow by 0.5% each level, look for farm upgrades built in the settlement info screen

[@sjonnieplayfull5859]

@@frisianmouve gonna try that again. Last thing i remember was no population effect from farms. Back from holliday next week, after i greet warhammer 2 i will try this out.

[@jackcharlton1375]

Please drop the intro

[@ragnarlothbrok222]

Have you got a new recording system? The sounds seems better in this video....

[@BlueMatona]

I don't actually. I've been trying to up the quality of my videos recently now that I have finally been consistently making videos for this channel. I'm glad it's showing!

[@ragnarlothbrok222]

@@BlueMatona yeah it's awsome! Keep it up man!

[@messi2.1]

@@ragnarlothbrok222 hi mimas. Is. Rayyan

[@lf2208]

Wait, you can upgrade Rhodes? Does it get a better Colossus?

[@alcoolamus4208]

Do the roads have an effect on movement speed on the battlefield ?

[@sjonnieplayfull5859]

If the defending army is on a road, its on the Battlefield, and im sure it gives faster movement, but didnt try yet.

[@D0pamine.3091]

i dont think so

[@BukanSatyaAlfiSyahr]

First

[@dot2562]

dirt roads r not built or cost money...its were ppl walk 😂..in real life that is ..not in RTW 😅😅

[@dot2562]

where...