Julii (RTW Faction)

House of Julii Faction Symbol.

The Julii are one of the three playable factions in Rome: Total War that are playable from the beginning (the other two, of course, being the other Roman Houses, the Brutii and Scipii).

Gameplay

Being one of the three Roman families, the House of the Julii will receive missions from the Senate, and will be forced to deal with the consequences of not completing them.

At a certain point during the game, the Senate will demand that your faction leader commit suicide. If you accept their demand, the heir will become the faction leader and the process will be renewed several years later. If you refuse, you will initiate the Civil War, a gameplay mechanic unique to the Roman factions. It should be noted that, once your popularity with the people is high enough, you can simply initiate the Civil War by attacking another Roman faction. Also, if you are playing as another faction the Civil War will not take place.

Starting Position

Julii Starting Position (Click to enlarge)

The Julii are originally based in northern Italy. They hold two settlements, Ariminium and Arretium (their capital city).

Victory Conditions

• Long Campaign: Hold 50 provinces including Rome.
• Short Campaign: Hold 15 provinces and outlast or destroy Gauls.

Units

House of Julii General's Bodyguard.

All of the Roman factions share the same unit roster. The Roman factions are unique, however, in that once you construct an Imperial Palace in any of your Italian cities you will receive a message informing you that the Marian reforms have taken place. The Marian Reforms introduce a more powerful roster of heavy infantry units (such as the Legionary Cohort), which replace your older-style legions. Any older units will not be automatically replaced, they will simply continue to exist, but you are not able to train any more.

• Pre-Marian Units
  • Infantry
    • Peasants
    • Town Watch
    • Hastati
    • Principes
    • Triarii
    • Samnite Gladiators
  • Missile
    • Velites
    • Roman Archers
    • Ballistas
    • Scorpions
    • Onagers
    • Heavy Onagers
    • Repeating Ballistas
  • Cavalry
    • Equites
    • Cavalry Auxilia
  • Special Units
    • Arcani
    • Wardogs
    • Incendiary Pigs

• Post-Marian Units
  • Infantry
    • Auxilia
    • Early Legionary Cohort
    • Legionary Cohort
    • Praetorian Guard
    • Urban Cohorts
    • Early Legionary First Cohort
    • Legionary First Cohort
    • Arcani
  • Missile
    • Light Auxilia
    • Archer Auxilia
  • Cavalry
    • Roman Cavalry
    • Legionary Cavalry
    • Praetorian Cavalry
    • Armoured General's Bodyguard

Unique Units

Samnite Gladiators: Every Roman faction has its own unique type of gladiator. Samnite Gladiators are can be recruited once you build an Amphitheatre in a settlement.

Arcani: The Arcani are a unit unique to the Julii. They are able to hide anywhere on the battlefield and can have a frightening effect on enemy units. They are also powerful warriors, though units of Arcani include very few soldiers, as a result.

Urban cohorts: They are the strongest sword unit in the game with great defense and stamina. If you use these for flanking actions you will win against any fhalanx unit. From the front against you dont use their full potential. Urbans are so strong that when they are upgraded that they can counter almost any infantry in a head on figt.

And when attacking enemy flanks or rear they are even more deadly!

Legionary first cohorts:These cohorts bring more men to the battlefield than the other cohorts and as a result have higher firepower punch than the other cohorts. They also inspire other units to stand firm longer they have also more men this unit is ideal pila fodder in loose formation. The reason they are ideal pila fodder is because they are ordinary legionaries not urbans or preatorian cohort. However the pila is still deadly and you can kill better men with lesser men.

Praetorian cav is the best roman cav availible to the romans they can take on almost any cav unit in the game. When they have infantry cohorts in support they are almost invinsible in a 1 vs 1 cav figt head on figt.

Praetorian cohort is almost as strong as urbans with almost the same pila damage as urbans use this unit to kill eagles or use them to exchange pila with urbans saving your own urbans giving you superior infantry quality compared to the other roman player.

Strategy Guides

A campaign strategy guide for the House of Julii written by morble can be found here.

Occupy small towns enslave large towns.

Have cheap garissions 4 townwatch. be aggressive with the army you have by in the beginning combine all experienced troops into 1 army and then go for Gaul!

Make sure to have a govenor in every town and to develop your trade before you go to war.

Be patient and build up your economy recruit peasants from Ariminum and disband them in Arretium to speed up your development and get acess to better troops.

Your early army should consist off 2 familymembers they are a lot stronger than equites and retrain themself for free!

Lots of hastati and remember velites can also figt well in melee if they attack the flank or you can use them as distraction.

That is Andre Lemgards advice good luck!

Best roman multiplayer army by Andre Lemgard

Remember that the strength of a roman army is its flexibility and everyone must admit that every faction fights in a diffrent way.

Hellenistic factions like Macedon Selucid empire relies on hammer and anvil strikes.

Babarian factions relies on morale benefits from druids and flanking actions with its infantry being the hammer and cavalry as the anvil on the flanks.

Roman factions has one key advantage and that they have strong archers strong infantry and strong cavalry that is also well protected of course i am talking about the late roman army. And this is what stands out compared with the other factions.

The roman army is very versitle and can counter almost any army in the world.

The soul of the army is its heavy infantry cohorts with cav and missile units in support.

In a Rome vs fhalanx nations the roman player should scatter his cohorts and not deploy them side by side. The reson for this is that you want to create gaps in the enemy fhalanx line so that the roman infantry mans superior sword figting skills can be used,you dont want the infantry to face a unified fhalanx line were the cohorts after pila cant figt back.

Remember to place some cohorts in cav support so that your cav can annahilate the enemy players cavalry after that have been done you can use both cohorts and cav in flank and rear attacks.

Against another roman player you want to have some pila fodder in front of your elite units and the ideal unit for this task in a high money game is a legionary first cohort.

In a low money game i use an archer auxillria i dont use the cheaper archers simply because i want to deny the enemy player easy kills and i know how to counter this cheaper unit archers, run a generals bodyguard against those archers and they will unless suicidal fall back they are not firing at my archers at that point.

Then its all about firing volley after volley against his archers while my general keeps the enemy archers away from a missile dual.

The enemy player can counter this by sending his cav in front of his archers i counter that by sending up my cohorts and begin the pila exhange with my archer auxillria in front against a roman player.

The melee will start and the enemy player will use his superior numbers of cav against my flanks i counter this by moving my cav so that they face the enemy cav but without attacking. However my cav protects the rear of my infantry and a cav figt will begin.

My cav are in most likely superior to the enemy cav because the enemy players often takes superior numbers against me he has therfore less money for upgrades on each unit while i know that all my units exept my archer unit are reliable.

After the enemy cav has been beaten back and my infantry is also winning its all about driving enemy archers away from the melee area so that they dont shoot my units in the back and then the rest of my cav do rear and flank attacks.

Routing units die alot easier than allowing them to stand a figt in a frontal engagement with my superior infantry. Even when i know i would win anyway i still do rear and flank attacks too free up that infantry units so i can use that unit against other units on other places.

That is how i win i dont force enemy players to play like me i know how to counter copycat actions but its a dam good tactics and getting daily 20-30 victorys in a row and losing only 1 or 3 times a day is dam good dont you agree?.

if you face a square of fhalanx units dont worry you can break the enemy fhalanx units by forming a testudo in guard mode and march rigt tru the enemy spears when the enemy soldiers turn to their swords you know that now is the time to untestudo and unguard mode.

Roman cohorts are the best swordfigters in the world use it!

Place your units in a way that pin down the enemy units so that if they move they open a gap this locks the enemy player in place while you can use units at will.

The enemy will have some cav and missile units thats ok ignore the cav but make sure that the engaged units rear and flank is secure,use your archers aganst his mostly bunched archers that are packed togeter and that threat is soon removed and if the enemy archers are long ranged units dont worry it is the melee that will be desisive as long as you dont offer those archers rear targets!