Note: This guide assumes you have all game-altering DLC and expansion packs (all Civ packs, Wonders of the Ancient World, Gods & Kings and Brave New World)



You rule the classical world's mightiest empire, headed by the legendary city of Rome founded over two and a half millenia ago. Starting off as a kingdom, the monarchy was to be overthrown at the end of the 6th century before the common era, establishing the Roman Republic. Over the next three centuries, Rome would grow to dominate what is now Italy, defeating mighty Carthage along the way. The Republic expanded across the Mediterranean, and Julius Caesar in the 1st century before the common era would conquer Gaul (France) and bring the Romans into Britain. But his monarchistic tendencies led to his assassination, ironically leading to the Roman Empire.

Gaius Octavius, or Augustus Caesar, adoptive son of Julius Caesar, would gain the loyalty of many Roman soldiers, defeat the assassins of Julius Caesar and become the first Emperor of Rome. Under his rule, Rome would essentially take the entire Mediterranean, and establish the Pax Romana, two centuries of relative peace. It was then the Roman Empire would be the largest and most populous in the world, but it would be followed by less stability, and would face a growing threat in the new religion of Christianity. Eventually Rome would convert (and have a major influence on the interpretation of the religion) but it would split in two - the Greek-language Byzantine Empire of the east, and the Latin-dominated Western Roman Empire. The Western Empire in turn collapsed from threats from essentially every angle. But the empire lives on in the great influence it has on the cultures of Europe, the wider Mediterranean and the wider world. And into a brave new world, Rome can dominate the known world as it once did. Bring civilization to these new lands. Build a civilization that will stand the test of time.



Before I go into depth with this guide, here's an explanation of some terminology I'll be using throughout for the sake of newer players.

Beelining - Focusing on obtaining a technology early by only researching technologies needed to research it and no others. For example, to beeline Iron Working, you'd research Mining, Bronze Working and Iron Working, and nothing else until Iron Working was finished.
Builder Nation/Empire - A generally peaceful nation seeking victories other than domination.
GWAMs - Short for Great Writers, Artists and Musicians - the three types of Great People that can make Great Works.
Finisher - The bonus for completing a Social Policy tree (e.g. Free Great Person for Liberty.)
Meatshield - Soaking up damage on behalf of something else. This can be on the small scale (like a Legion taking damage for an Archer) or on a large scale (protecting a capital city with less important cities)
Opener - The bonus for unlocking a Social Policy tree (e.g. +1 culture for every city for Liberty's opener)
Tall empire - A small number of cities with a high population each. "Building tall" refers to making your empire a tall one.
Uniques - Collective name for Unique Abilities, Units, Buildings, Tile Improvements and Great People
UA - Unique Ability - The unique thing a Civilization has which doesn't need to be built.
UU - Unique Unit - A replacement for a normal unit that can only be built by one Civilization or provided by Militaristic City-States when allied.
Wide empire - A high number of cities with a low population each. "Building wide" refers to making your empire a wide one.
XP - Experience Points - Get enough and you'll level up your unit, giving you the ability to heal your unit or get a promotion.
ZOC - Zone of Control - A mechanic that makes a unit use up all its movement points if it moves from a tile next to an enemy to an adjacent tile next to the same enemy.

Rome has no start bias.


The Romans have two complementary classical-era UUs, both with a strength boost but no keep-on-upgrade advantages. Their UA will be very useful throughout the game, however.

• +25% in all cities towards buildings that already exist in the capital
  
  • This bonus applies to all your cities besides your capital - puppet and regular alike.
    
  • The capital used is your current rather than original capital, so you can still use the UA if Rome is captured.

A standard melee unit
*Assumes a normal speed game.
**Has no 1st column prerequisites, but the technology has the cost of the 2nd column of the classical era.


Positive one-off changes

• 17 strength, up from 14 (+21%)
  
• Can construct roads and forts like a Worker (with the respective technologies; cannot remove them)
  
• Obsoletes with Gunpowder instead of Steel (Medieval era, 2nd column, 7th column overall)

A ranged siege unit
*Assumes a normal speed game.


Positive one-off changes

• 8 strength, up from 7 (+14%)
  
• 10 ranged strength, up from 8 (+25%)

Note these scores are a matter of personal opinion based on experiences with the Civilization. You may discover a way of utilising the Civ more effectively in unconventional ways.

Cultural: 6/10
Diplomatic: 6/10
Domination: 9/10
Scientific: 7/10

Domination is what Rome does best thanks to their two same-era UUs, and the fact the UA can get buildings like Barracks up faster. However, the cultural path also places lots of emphasis on building plenty of buildings, and the fast construction of science buildings offered by the UA can more than compensate for the increasing science costs for every city you have.

On very high singleplayer difficulties, (Immortal and above,) domination is less viable due to the significant advantage computer opponents start with, and the small window of time for your UUs. It may be easier to use a different victory route instead in that case. This guide generally focuses on the conventional domination route, but many things such as Social Policies and mid-game gameplay are similar between the different playstyles.


Overall

The Iroquois, like Rome, have a Swordsman UU, (and with it decent early war potential,) strong production potential even in smaller cities (the Iroquois bonus works for everything, not just buildings, but is dependent on you having a forest-heavy area) and has a way of connecting cities without using up Workers' time (Legions can build roads, while forests and jungles within Iroquoian lands act as roads.)

Same start bias

Rome's lack of a start bias is shared with America, China, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Greece, the Maya, Persia and the Shoshone.

Similar to the UA

The only other unique production bonus that can be used immediately in newly-founded cities is Russia's UA (which adds +1 production to strategic resource tiles.)

For another strong production multiplier, Germany's Hanses offer you a 5% stacking production bonus for every trade route you have with a City-State. Even if you don't own the Colossus and Petra, you can get a 25% production bonus through it very easily - as good as Rome's, but it applies to everything - not just buildings. Theoretically, you could get up to a 50% bonus, but you'll need to be late in the game with both trade route wonders.

Similar to Legions

Other Swordsman UUs include Indonesia's Kris Swordsman and the Iroquoian Mohawk Warrior.

Legions are one of three front-line UUs to have a higher base strength than the generic unit; the others being France's Musketeer and Tercio.

The closest thing to the road and fort-building abilities of Legions is the ability of Japan's Samurai to construct fishing boats while embarked. While Legions take as long as Workers to build anything, Samurai have a distinct advantage over Work Boats - they're not consumed when constructing an improvement.

Similar to Ballistae

The other Catapult UU is Assyria's Siege Tower. Both are more effective than the generic unit at their core job of destroying city walls, but work in very different ways - Ballistae just build on the strength of Catapults while Siege Towers are melee units which increase the power of other units to attack the city they're threatening.

Other ranged UUs with which are stronger compared to the generic unit and lack downsides include Babylon's Bowmen and England's Ships of the Line.

No matter what route you want to take with Rome, their UA will really come in handy. Any building in your capital will be produced faster elsewhere, saving a significant amount of production and allowing you to develop new cities much faster. To save even more time, simply purchase the building in your capital as soon as it's available.

• Playing culturally, you can really chew through the cultural line of buildings quickly, giving you all the Great Work slots you need.
  
• Playing diplomatically, it helps develop a wide empire quickly (which tends to have higher cash potential due to less emphasis on food and production tiles) and get those gold buildings up faster.
  
• Playing scientifically, you can get weaker cities to get through scientific buildings faster and start contributing sooner.

But generally for Rome, (with the possible exception of if you're playing on the highest difficulties) it's a good idea to keep the momentum of your UUs going and head for a domination victory. This UA can really help out there, too...


You'll want to work towards your two UUs and get them going early on, as despite their strength and effectiveness, the window of usage is fairly small. Getting Bronze Working right away or very early on will reveal iron, so you know where you need to settle. The Liberty tree's policy Collective Rule can be picked up early on, granting you a free Settler to grab that iron, and it'll your capital precious production.

After Bronze Working, clean up appropriate Worker technologies and Writing, then head to Mathematics and Iron Working. Don't spend lots of time building wonders; you really can't afford to delay this attack.


So, how can your UA help you out at war? Well, for a start, building up an infrastructure in your capital makes it significantly faster for your other cities to get it up and running, which in turn will allow them to produce units at a reasonable rate. Prior to Mathematics and Iron Working, your capital should be spending most of its time constructing buildings, and maybe the odd Warrior which can be upgraded to a Legion later.

Your capital should be constructing lots of buildings, but don't be excessive about it - all those buildings cost you in maintenance, for a start. Once at least one of your UUs is avaliable, it's alright to dedicate your capital to producing them - you need them quickly, after all. Even when you're launching your attack, it's fine to carry on producing units in your capital as reinforcements. You can get back to supporting your UA later - for now, it's all about your UUs. Switch back to building production once you clearly have enough units built.

While at war, work towards the Steel and Physics technologies, and make sure your gold supply is good. Aside from the fort and road-building abilities of Legions, both your UUs are completely outclassed by the units they upgrade into, so it's a good idea to keep the edge. If you want to end the game with a domination victory, that's the way to go - keep pushing new front-line and siege technologies, and make sure you don't neglect science.

But let's take a step back and consider why Rome's UA works so well for domination. The answer: puppeted cities. Taking cities as puppets is a good move as they don't have the short-term unhappiness of occupied cities (nor the high maintenance cost of Courthouses) and they don't raise the cost of Social Policies or National Wonders, but crucially, the downside that they only construct random buildings is greatly lessened by the Roman UA.


Above: I own Venice as a puppet. Annoyingly, it's building Walls despite no threats being nearby, but thanks to having Walls in my capital already, it'll spend less time on production and hopefully more time for more productive things, like happiness buildings.

Due to the relative randomness of puppets, it's a good idea to build most possible buildings in the capital, even if they may not be necessarily appropriate to the capital itself. In the mid-game onwards, units and world wonders should be mostly built outside the capital in order to allow this.

• Keep unit and wonder-building in the capital to a minimum (except around the time of your UUs)
  
• Research Bronze Working early and take the Liberty tree to help take iron spots quickly
  
• Make sure you can get to Mathematics and Iron Working fairly quickly
  
• Puppet conquered cities too good to burn; faster production of buildings means they can more quickly cover unhappiness or gold problems
  
• Use the momentum of your conquests to go for a domination victory, or work on your advantages and go for a different victory (culture will probably be the most effective)

Note: Your two Unique Units complement each other very well, and it doesn't particularly matter which order you get them in, so long as you get them out sooner rather than later.


Legions are the ultimate in early front-line units. With a strength over double that of a Warrior, unprepared enemy units can be cut through rapidly, ready for Ballistae to tear down their city walls. But they also have another use, in that they can build forts and roads - the only unit besides a Worker able to do so, and hence the only road and fort-builder that can defend itself!



Above: It may not be perfectly clear, but by attacking the Shoshone capital this early on, its strength is pitiful and so is the damage it does to my Legion.

Legions make excellent meatshields, taking hits on behalf of your Ballistae. They're also very good at cutting through enemy units (they're actually more effective against mounted units than Spearmen are!) though their low speed will make them relatively vulnerable to ranged units. Giving your front-line Legions Cover promotions helps to lessen that problem.

A crucial advantage of Legions' strength is that they're slightly stronger than Pikemen (1 point of strength, or 6%) while being cheaper to construct (75 production vs. 90, that's 17% cheaper.) Typically, Pikemen are thorns in the side of classical-era warfare due to the fact they're resourceless, on a technology pretty much everyone will pick up fairly early on and stronger than all non-unique classical-era units. But Rome can keep the momentum going. Just make sure they don't send their Pikemen after your Ballistae.




When not fighting, Legions can get to work building roads (with The Wheel) and forts (with Engineering.) A hilltop fort with a Legion defending it is hard for enemies to take out, but building roads is the more useful advantage here. Both of which are affected by bonuses to Worker speed (the Pyramids wonder and the Citizenship policy)

While you're building up your army, you can use Legions to connect up your capital with other cities while your regular Workers focus on other tile improvements. While Legions and Workers can stack on the same tile, they cannot work on improving the same tile at the same time.

Because Legions don't need escorts, (unlike Workers,) they're great for building roads to distant puppeted cities for half the maintenance cost of an escorted Worker, or for connecting up City-States which ask for it as a quest.


Above: Well, I was heading that way anyway...

In wartime, keeping a Legion behind the rest of your army to build a road will not only help get reinforcements to the front lines faster, but it's also good for checking for enemy units seeking to attack your Ballistae from behind, and it'll additionally help set up CIty Connections faster once cities are conquered. Note that you can build roads in enemy territory (though you can't take advantage of the speed bonus.)


Legions keep no unique bonuses on upgrade.

It's a good idea to keep at least one Legion around until railroads (Legions can't build railways) as they can't be captured unlike Workers, making them excellent for building long roads in neutral territory.

Ballistae might not be quite as good at tearing down cities as Hunnic Battering Rams or Assyrian Siege Towers, but Ballistae have the advantage that they can attack from range, safely protected from melee hits by your Legions. Additionally, any promotions you earn will still be still highly relevant when you upgrade them to Trebuchets and beyond.

Like Legion units, the Ballista is a stronger version of the generic unit. Defending slightly better, Ballistae can survive attacks from cities which would usually destroy a Catapult, giving it time to pull out and heal up if need be. This is especially useful against Civs taking the Oligarchy Social Policy (+50% city ranged strength) or the Goddess of Protection Pantheon (+30% city ranged strength.)

As always with siege units, take more than one (the more the better, but bring plenty of Legions to back them up) so you can keep up the pressure on enemy cities while keeping your Ballistae alive. Increased survivability is really important as you can work towards the powerful Range and Logistics promotions. Typically Range is the better of those two promotions for siege units (before Artillery come around) as it lets you attack cities outside their attack radius.

Now, let's consider the increased ranged strength. Ballistae have a ranged strength of 10 instead of the 8 of Catapults, making them nearly as good as Composite Bowmen against other units (though Ballistae have to set up to attack and Composite Bowmen don't.) Against cities, it's an effective strength of 30 rather than 24, which can tear through them fairly quickly.

Essentially, you can use Ballistae the same way you'd use Catapults.


None. Once you've got Physics, upgrade all your Ballistae - Trebuchets are better than Ballistae at both attacking and defending.

While Honour has a good synergy with early combat, for Rome I'd advocate starting with Liberty to help take iron spots and handle a wide puppet empire. Tradition can help to make a strong capital to produce buildings your other cities can produce faster, but I'd personally stick to Liberty.

Beyond that, if you're going for a domination victory, dipping into Commerce provides a bit of useful cash to back up your armies, and going into Rationalism as soon as possible will ensure you don't fall behind tech-wise. Science is something puppet empires aren't great at, so the more you have, the better.


Opener

All your cities will be able to start expanding their borders on their own without necessarily needing cultural buildings. This includes puppet cities - as you can't buy tiles in them, helping with border expansion is the best you can do there.

Republic

Even 1 point of production makes a major difference to new cities. The 5% production bonus to buildings is small, but it complements your UA for a 30% building production bonus for buildings already existing in your capital with no prior buildings in the new city required.

Collective Rule

Use the free Settler to grab a good iron spot. At least 4 iron resources will be good for building a Legion army.

Citizenship

A free Worker and faster Worker speed helps develop your cities faster and hence helps out at building the Legion/Ballista army, but remember Citizenship also makes your Legions faster at building roads and forts. This allows you to bring a Legion back to the front lines faster if you're using one to connect up a newly-conquered city, for example.

Meritocracy

City Connections are worth 1 happiness each, now, which gives a good incentive to spare a Legion to connect up your cities (or a Worker at least if you need all your Legions at the front lines.) The reduced unhappiness from population may not affect occupied cities, but it does affect puppets.

Representation

With Legion/Ballista conquests, you may not need to bother founding new cities (except maybe to establish a presence on a new continent or secure a new resource.) Still, the Golden Age will come in handy, and so will Liberty's finisher.

Finisher

There's a few options here, but three are particularly potent. A Great Prophet can help secure you a religion if there's one still avaliable, a Great Scientist can help make sure you keep up with technological process or a Great Engineer's Manufactory near your capital can ensure it can construct buildings quickly once they arrive, maximising the gain from your UA.


Opener

You don't need to go very far in Commerce, and it's worth switching to Rationalism as soon as it's available. The main point of going into these policies is for the gold to support your army. Gold, such as that from this Opener, which makes your capital produce more cash.

Wagon Trains

All those Legion roads draining your economy? Not any more. Caravans are more effective now, too. They're cheaper production-wise and a little easier to keep safe (for Rome at least) than Cargo Ships, so that's nice.

Mercenary Army

Super-cheap Super-Pikemen, good for getting the last hit on a city (especially when upgraded to a Lancer, which is cheaper than just buying a Lancer directly.)

Mercantilism

Still not in the renaissance era yet? Well, this policy offers a little boost to science to help keep up, and makes it cheaper to buy items with gold. Buying buildings in your capital with gold takes some of the pressure off its production for doing other things, while still providing the production boost for your other cities.

Entrepreneurship

Either you hit a culture gold mine or you've finished Rationalism and your tenets and don't know where else to put your policies. Great Engineers and Scientists are more useful to you than Merchants, though any puppeted cities you have don't know this, so you can still squeeze something out this policy. The main point of getting this is for Protectionism.

Protectionism

If you need more happiness in the end-game, finishing off the Commerce tree is one possible way. Protectionism essentially makes luxuries 50% better, which is a great source of global city happiness.

Finisher

More effective trading posts means a good backup source of end-game gold if everyone's pillaging your International Trade Routes (or you're focusing on internal ones.)


Opener

Start with Rationalism policies as soon as you're able. Immediately you'll get a 10% science boost so long as you can keep your people happy. This 10% science boost is taken after all other multipliers, so it'll always be noticable.

Humanism

Great Scientists are, well, great. Wide puppet empires can have problems with keeping up tech-wise, and more Great Scientists helps out somewhat there.

Free Thought

Wide empires don't need to work quite so many food resources, freeing up some citizens to work on trading posts for extra gold, and now science as well. Universities are also more effective, and this means more for you than most wide Civs seeing as your UA makes it easier to get them up in even small cities.

Secularism

Secularism's science bonus for specialists is more suited to tall empires, though all the buildings in your capital should be able to host a few specialists. Plus, puppets maximising gold, science or production will likely fill specialist slots and hence give you more science, too.

Sovereignty

Less maintenance for science buildings makes a significant difference for a wide empire with an advantage to building construction, freeing up more cash for maintaining units with.

Scientific Revolution

If you can actually manage to get a Research Agreement going after all that earlier warmongering, this policy will improve that, but the main point here is to finish off the Rationalism tree and get that free technology.

Finisher

Throughout the game, military technologies tend to have a relatively low number of requisites and as such a free technology can really help strengthen a military edge. Plus, you can now faith-purchase Great Scientists, which is, once again, great.

Wide empires tend to work best with Order, and that's the approach I'm taking here. I'm assuming you're going for a domination victory here (using your promoted ex-Legions and ex-Ballistae among other units.)

As is usual, I'll be covering the best tenets in the first "inverted pyramid", so that's three tenets from level 1, two from level 2 and one from level 3.


Skyscrapers

Seems odd, but there's a method in the madness here. You can now affordably buy buildings in the capital as soon as they become available, giving all your other cities the production bonus right away. Plus, it's useful to quickly give newly-conquered cities defensive buildings to prevent recapture (or an Airport to allow airlifts in.)

Socialist Realism

Even the most pitifully small of cities can build a Monument quickly now, and take advantage of the happiness. In a wide empire, the increase is rather substantial and allows you to take quite a chunk out of enemy lands without going into unhappiness.

Young Pioneers

Take Hero of the People instead if you're fine for happiness. Otherwise, all your cities constructing lots of buildings will pay off with happiness for Workshops, Factories, Hydro Plants and either Solar or Nuclear Plants. It's a great way for puppet cities to contribute more to your empire.


Workers' Faculties

Factories are very useful buildings, but they're rather expensive for small cities to build, even with your UA. This tenet gives Factories a science multiplier bonus, making them even better, but also makes them significantly cheaper. Together with Young Pioneers, you can have a happiness, production and science-boosting building (three of the most important resources for warmongers) roughly in the amount of time it'd take for a different Civ to build a University.

Five-Year Plan

Chew through those buildings like there's no tomorrow. Once puppets exhaust all their possible buildings, they'll produce gold or science, and your non-puppeted cities can develop faster and produce new military units faster.


Iron Curtain

In the late-game, it's very useful to be able to rapidly buy buildings in a newly-conquered city (rather than puppeting it) so you can get an Airport and defensive buildings ready. The one problem is that annexing cities has a high happiness penalty, and Courthouses have a high maintenance cost. Not any more - now, annexing cities will be no worse for happiness or gold than puppeting them.

Additionally, internal Trade Routes are now more effective. Wide empires tend to be fairly good at providing gold even without much international trading (due to all those trading posts worked) so using them to provide production is both viable and effective; helping you to get any more military units you may need up and running.

Religion isn't strictly speaking necessary for the Romans, but like with any Civ, it helps out. Here's a selection of the best beliefs.


Note that highly situational Pantheons aren't covered here. Faith Pantheons in particular are useful for reaching a religion sooner.

Messenger of the Gods

The science on offer here really helps to offset the increased technology costs of having more cities. In fact, in the early-game, you can more than cover the 5% increased cost with this Pantheon and even get a brief technological advantage.

Faith Healers

Bringing a Missionary along with you to war allows you to rapidly heal up after conquests, and keep the war machine rolling.

God of Craftsmen

An easy-to-achieve production bonus which helps to develop new cities even faster than would be the case with your UA alone.

Religious Settlements

You can't buy tiles in puppeted cities, so there's a use for this Pantheon. Still, appropriate situational faith/culture Pantheons or one of the Pantheons listed above this one are probably preferable.


Church Property or Tithe

Both of these Founder beliefs provide gold to help maintain your army (or to maintain all those buildings you may end up constructing over the course of the game) making them generally the strongest options.

Interfaith Dialogue

The science contribution from this belief may not be massive, but it's better than nothing. Consider this in conjunction with the Faith Healers Pantheon, so when you convert newly-conquered cities to heal up your units faster, you'll get science out of it, too, without having to send Missionaries into unfriendly territory.

Initiation Rites

Again, a reasonable choice in conjunction with Faith Healers to reward you for converting newly-conquered cities. A quick bit of gold's particularly useful for when the time comes to upgrade your army.


Pagodas

The classic wide-empire building. While puppets can't faith-purchase buildings and your UA is useless on faith buildings; unlike Asceticism and Religious Centre, strong rival religions can't steal your happiness from Pagodas or other faith buildings.

Mosques

An alternative or complement to Pagodas, with more faith but less happiness.

Cathedrals

A backup religious building (unless you're after a cultural victory, though in this guide I'm generally assuming you're after domination.)

Asceticism

Puppeted cities will eventually go through all the buildings, and Shrines are often built fairly early on. Getting more happiness out of them means you can support more conquests.

Guruship

A fairly easy production boost to complement your UA.


Religious Texts or Itenerant Preachers

Helps to reinforce your cities against rival Missionaries, so you can use your Missionaries elsewhere.

Holy Order or Missionary Zeal

Makes Missionaries cheaper and stronger respectively. This works well with the Faith Healers approach to religion (rapidly convert a newly-conquered city to heal up your units.)

Just War

A possibility if you have enough faith - instead of converting cities after taking them, convert them beforehand and take advantage of the combat bonus.

Here's a list of the decisions and brief notes on importance of some. Ones missing depend greatly on the situation you're in. Voting choices may vary depending on your game - if everyone's pushing for a policy you don't want, but your strategy doesn't rest on it, then it may be better just to abstain (or vote for it for possible diplomatic bonuses.)

Note "priority" refers to how high you should prioritise your votes if it comes up, not how much you should prioritise putting them forward.

Arts Funding

Medium priority
Vote no

Great Scientists, Merchants and Engineers are more useful for you than GWAMs.

Cultural Heritage Sites

Medium priority
Vote no unless you've captured lots of wonders

Embargo City-States

Medium-High priority
Vote no

City-State trading is vital if you've been warmongering enough to turn every full Civ against you.

Historical Landmarks

Low priority
Vote no

International Games

High priority
Vote no

Best to avoid giving cultural Civs a chance at that 100% tourism boost.

International Space Station

Medium priority
Vote no

Natural Heritage Sites

Low priority
Vote no unless you have Natural Wonders of your own

Nuclear Non-Proliferation

Medium-High priority
Vote yes if you have plenty of nuclear weapons, you lack uranium and other players have them or you're the only player with nuclear weapons. Vote no otherwise.

Wide empires mean more uranium, which means more nuclear weapons potentially.

Scholars in Residence

Medium-High priority
Vote yes unless you're in the lead technologically speaking

Sciences Funding

Medium priority
Vote yes

You can get more out of Great Scientists and Engineers than GWAMs.

Standing Army Tax

High priority
Vote no

World's Fair

Low priority
Abstain

You can vote yes if you want, though the need to dedicate production to it could distract from building an army or buildings to help support that army.

You should try to build wonders in cities besides your capital, so it can focus on constructing buildings. Early wonders will be hard to pick up, and generally you shouldn't go for more than one wonder before you launch the Legion/Ballista attack (and even building one could waste precious time.) However, later on, wonder building shouldn't be so much of a problem thanks to your ability to quickly develop cities.

Here's a selection of the best wonders (not including Social Policy or Ideology-specific wonders which aren't on the paths I mentioned in the respective sections, and not including Wonders highly terrain-situational either) for Rome arranged alphabetically per era.


Pyramids (Liberty Only)

A very uncompetitive wonder as a whole (so it's easy to pick up,) the Pyramids make your Workers more effective so you can develop cities faster. More interestingly, it also affects Legions, so you can safely and rapidly build those roads you need.


Terracotta Army

This greatly increases the size of your army, which is excellent for making your threat to other Civs even more pronounced.


Alhambra

A free Drill I promotion works well for any new melee units you're building. With an Armoury, you can get straight to Drill III, just one promotion off March, Blitz or Woodsman.

Angkor Wat

Good for helping out your puppet cities, which can only expand their borders culturally, or just new cities in general (where buying tiles more cheaply is great for quickly seizing resources.)

Machu Picchu

Rome's great at getting City Connections going thanks to Legions. Machu Picchu makes them stronger, giving you more cash for army or building maintenance, or that kind of thing.

Notre Dame

10 points of global happiness! Basically means a free city conquest.


Porcelain Tower (Rationalism Only)

Okay, maybe you can't get those Research Agreements going because everyone hates you over the whole warmongering thing. But a free Great Scientist will still be very helpful.

Taj Mahal

Golden Ages mean culture, gold and production. All of which are useful.


Big Ben (Commerce Only)

Reducing the cost of purchasing can be used in your capital to buy buildings, getting the production advantage for other cities sooner rather than later. It's also good for rapidly sorting out newly-annexed cities (such as giving them an Airport to airlift units in.)

Brandenburg Gate

Add a Military Academy and new units in the city can choose three promotions - enough to get a new siege unit straight to March, or one promotion off Logistics, for example.


Kremlin (Order Only)

You may or may not build lots of armoured units, but a free Social Policy is still useful.

Neuschwanstein

Eventually, your puppeted cities will chew their way through the defensive buildings. They're maintenance-free, but unless the city's being attacked, they won't do that much good. Enter Neuschwanstein, which gives them gold, culture and happiness. Gold and happiness are important to warmongers, and puppets don't raise the cost of Social Policies but can only expand their borders through culture making extra culture particularly useful.


Pentagon

You'll probably have some veterans of the Legion/Ballista days around, but all that upgrading costs money. The Pentagon helps save that money, freeing up more for purchasing units, for example.


CN Tower

An unhappiness-free point of population for every city goes a long way in a wide empire. Add a Broadcast Tower in every city, too, and you can defend more effectively against cultural Civs.

While Rome has a flexible UA, it doesn't mean any playstyle will work well. Here's a few possible mistakes to avoid making.


The window of time for classical-era combat is rather small (compared to medieval UUs, which generally last all the way through the renaissance.) Spending all your time on Water Mills and Caravansaries rather than preparing for war will make that window of time even smaller and make your two UUs much less effective.

Think about building choices this way: Is it going to help your Legion/Ballista war in some way, whether directly or indirectly? If not, you can probably hold it off until you've finished building your army.


The only thing Legions can do that Longswordsmen can't is build roads and forts. You can carry on building Legions until Gunpowder, so you might as well upgrade all the ones on the front-lines, and build a new, less-experienced Legion to build roads.


Trebuchets are better at attacking and defending than Ballistae. There's no reason not to upgrade them unless you can't afford the gold cost. Generally, if you only have the gold to upgrade either your Ballistae or your Legions, I'd advocate upgrading your Ballistae first as your Legions can hold up reasonably well against medieval-era units.


The more time you spend building wonders in your capital, the less time you have for constructing buildings, and hence the fewer buildings you have there. The fewer buildings that exist in your capital, the less effective your UA is. The occasional wonder is alright, but generally other cities should take on the burden of wonder-building.


Sometimes domination victories are unviable. You might be up against Ethiopia with lots of allies and a tech bonus. Rome's UA can adjust for this - you can instead build lots of gold buildings for a diplomatic path or Great Work buildings for a cultural route. Diplomacy will generally be easier, as it needs less preparation than culture.

Rome has powerful early-game warmongering potential but otherwise relies heavily on its capital to support its empire. Through their UA and road-building potential of their Legion UU, they can develop new cities quickly.


Rome can develop cities rapidly, so long as their capital is dedicated to building construction. If they're forced to instead build units (or even wonders) there, they'll weaken the potential of their UA. If you're at war with Rome, pillage roads around their capital so they can't easily bring in backup and are forced to construct units in the city. Mounted units can quickly pillage plenty of roads and will be reasonably effective against upgraded equivalents of Rome's UUs.

The Glory of Rome UA gives Rome a good incentive to puppet conquered cities, seeing as puppets can only build buildings, work towards World Congress projects or convert production into either gold or science (in practice, they'll spend most of the time constructing buildings.) Threatening a puppet city nudges Rome to annex the city so they can quickly produce a defence. Threatening a lot of puppet cities forces Rome to either leave cities vulnerable or take a huge happiness hit.

Don't assume conquering Rome's capital will put an end to their UA (though, if you can get that far, you've probably won the war.) Their new capital will count towards production bonuses instead. Instead, it may be easier to target their main unit or wonder-producing city first (as, again, their UA discourages unit and wonder building in their capital and hence they'll use other cities to focus on those tasks.)

Overall, it's hard to stop or weaken Rome's UA, but fortunately for you they lack other unique bonuses once Legions and Ballistae are obselete.


Like any resource-dependent UU, one way to stop Legions is to prevent their construction by seizing iron spots before Rome can. That'll also give you access to Swordsmen, which can stand up reasonably well to Legions despite their lower strength.

Be wary of using Horsemen against Legions (though they'll be effective against Ballistae.) Legions are actually slightly more effective against mounted units than Spearmen are. Instead, use Composite Bowmen or Chariot Archers, defended by rough terrain or a front-line of Swordsmen to stop Legions attacking your ranged units back.

Pikemen are a little weaker than Legions and more expensive in production costs, but other medieval-era units will perform well against Legions. The window of use for Rome's UUs is small, and researching Chivalry, Steel or Machinery quickly will make that even smaller.

Now, what about their road-building and fort-building abilities? Well, a long road can very easily be pillaged, and a lone Legion building improvements won't be too hard to pick off if need be. Not at war with them? You can still pillage their roads and forts if they're outside anyone's lands. And you can disrupt the building of a long road by planting a unit in the way (forcing them to build around it hence taking longer.)


Ballistae are slightly better at defending than Catapults, but the difference is minor enough not to have to greatly change your strategy. Horsemen are particularly good at damaging Ballistae (so long as you don't let Roman Legions attack them,) but if you lack horses, Swordsmen and Composite Bowmen will both work well too.


Early-game Aggressors - Rome is one of the last early-game aggressor Civs to get going due to having two classical-era UUs. If you're fast enough, you can stop Rome before they can properly piece together their UU army, though often it'll be easier just to hold off attacking them until their UUs are rendered obselete.

Mid-game Warmongers - Rome may have trouble upgrading all their UUs in time for mid-game warmongers, so while they may have a large army at this point, there's a good chance it's outdated. Knights and Crossbowmen are effective against Longswordsmen and Trebuchets (which they'll end up with plenty of from upgrading their UUs.) Sea-based warmongers shouldn't find Rome a particularly hard opponent to face.

Late-game Warmongers - Go after Rome's wonder or unit factory to weaken them, then go for their capital. They won't have a good "second city" then for the capital to move to, making their UA weak.

Cultural Players - Don't neglect early defence. Rome's fast building construction could get them a lot of culture by the end of the game through all those cultural buildings and captured wonders, though the best thing to do is wait and see how the culture/tourism trend is going before you send in Great Musicians.

Diplomatic or Scientific Players - So long as your defences are good, Rome shouldn't be any more of a problem than any other Civ.

If you like these guides and want to send a tip, you can click here![ko-fi.com]


These guides cover every Civ in the game and can be used as quick reference guides.

• Civ summaries (Gives a brief overview of how each Civ plays)
  
• Civ-specific tricks, secrets and clarifications (Compiles the lesser-known features of each Civ)

All 43 Civs are covered in in-depth guides linked below. In brackets are the favoured victory routes of each Civ.

• America (Domination)
  
• Arabia (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Assyria (Cultural, Domination and Scientific)
  
• Austria (Cultural, Domination and Scientific)
  
• Aztecs (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Babylon (Scientific)
  
• Brazil (Cultural)
  
• Byzantium (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Carthage (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Celts (Cultural)
  
• China (Domination)
  
• Denmark (Domination)
  
• Egypt (Cultural)
  
• England (Domination)
  
• Ethiopia (Cultural/Scientific)
  
• France (Cultural)
  
• Germany (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Greece (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Huns (Domination)
  
• Inca (Scientific)
  
• India (Cultural/Scientific)
  
• Indonesia (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Iroquois (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Japan (Domination)
  
• Korea (Scientific)
  
• Mayans (Scientific)
  
• Mongolia (Domination)
  
• Morocco (Diplomatic)
  
• Netherlands (Diplomatic, Domination and Scientific)
  
• Ottomans (Domination)
  
• Persia (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Poland (Domination)
  
• Polynesia (Cultural)
  
• Portugal (Diplomatic)
  
• Rome (Domination)
  
• Russia (Domination)
  
• Shoshone (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Siam (Diplomatic/Scientific)
  
• Songhai (Domination)
  
• Spain (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Sweden (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Venice (Diplomatic)
  
• Zulus (Domination)