Expeditions: Rome, guides, tips & help

I'll start with a simple scale of the morale system. It's really the same principle as Viking: some of the dialogue answers trigger a reaction from the praetorians, depending on their traits:

• Hedonistic vs Stoic
• Superstitious vs Sceptical
• Honest vs Cunning
• Conciliatory vs Warmongering
• Humble vs Arrogant
• Sexist vs ?
• Generous vs Greedy

There are several levels of reactions too. Those reactions add up and the praetorians will have their loyalty go up or down, which influences them during combat. They may even leave you if it becomes too low.

Contrary to Vikings, we don't see the numerical value of the morale anymore, I'll just annotate each level with the corresponding values in Viking (which may be wrong)

• Unwavering (10) = Heroic for the Player character
• Devoted (8 .. 9)
• Loyal (5 .. 7)
• Pleased (2 .. 4)
• Indifferent (-1 .. 1)
• Hesitant (-4 .. -2)
• Disgruntled (-7 .. -5)
• Appalled (-9 .. -8)
• Mutinous (-10)

The traits and current morale/loyalty levels are visible on the character page for party members (screenies below).

In the recruit/party list, you can also see morale/loyalty levels but not traits.

A heads-up, while the difficulty levels can be adjusted anytime during a game, the initial choices of Combat Death (1) and Iron Man can only be chosen before starting a new game.

EDIT: If you own the Death or Glory DLC, don't miss the 3rd switch (2) which allows you to select the gladiator class instead of princeps for Deianeira. This can only be chosen when starting a new game.

As we have seen before:

Combat Death is recommended, it's more compelling
- if it is ON and a character goes down in a fight, there's a bleed out timer. When it reaches 0, the character is killed permanently (as mentioned before)
=> if they're not story companions, they'll just be gone and will have to be replaced
=> if they're companions (or MC), game over

- if Combat Death is OFF, they'll just be incapacitated and back on their feet after the combat. If they get an injury when going down, that will have to be treated, otherwise it will deteriorate and ultimately the character will die, with the same consequences as above.

- it's also possible to die with some choices in the story

Mortismal Gaming gives an overview of the combat system. It's really just the basics.

VirtusIncognita made a review of the skills as they were in the demo, so the system may have been tuned since then, and it's not complete.

Still, it can give some good insight on the system if you want to dig.

The thread is on Discord, I see they've archived it (maybe it's automatic).

Skill discussion

Here's the invite to their server in case it's needed: https://discord.gg/expeditions

I forgot to recruit non-story characters early enough and failed a chance encounter.
So add a few characters as early as you can to your party.

Class introduction by Mortismal Gaming.

A note on sector pacification:

When the quest journal tells you to talk to your "Pontus Pilus", that refers to Orestes, who is hanging out near the command tent. There's no quest marker. But once you've sent your legion to take the local camp you'll get this message. Talking to him will place pacification missions on your map. To see pacification missions, your legion has to be garrisoned in that sector and your conturbinium (your party) has to be there as well.

I had some confusion and frustrating what-do-I-do-now floundering around this stuff, so I thought I'd add that here.

Another thing that tripped me up: you can purchase troops for your legion, something I didn't know how to do for 12+ hours. If you click on the tent in the center of the camp you get the screen that allows you to recruit Praetorians for your party/to lead your legion. At the top is the "party" tab. Clicking that allows you to put Praetorians into your tactical group. Over on the righthand side you'll see a "refresh" option. That's how you buy new dudes. I didn't see that for a long time and my numbers kept dwindling. I would just let manpower refresh over time, but since your camps get attacked all the time in addition to you needing to go on the offensive to get new territory, I was gradually losing men overall and wondering wtf.

Siege - I should have written this earlier, I'll do it before I forget again. It's for end of Act I but I think it applies to others as well.

You have time before launching the final siege, make sure to finish all you have to do in the region since you won't be coming back (there's a warning in the game). Make sure to craft enough items for the siege too, especially the tactical items.

You'll find tactical items on the way though, but not for everything.

The siege is a succession of combats, there is no time between them to use the inventory or to heal, so make sure you have correctly equipped your companions and your praetorians - and make sure you have enough of them, in Asia you can use 12 characters split in two teams.

This also means you should avoid injuries, since the party will start the next fight with the same status. Manage your health and your tactical items.

Pay attention to the victory conditions, it's not necessarily "kill everyone". And pay attention to what and who is on the map during the preparation phase.



You can save anytime, use it. The game will auto-save at the start of each preparation phase.

When you select praetorians for a fight or to enter a location, you can drag and drop them, but you can also click on the destination spot on the right side, which takes the next praetorian there.

The first time I tried to click on the praetorian since it seemed natural, but it didn't work so I didn't even know we could click on the right side .. and used the tedious drag & drop for almost the entire duration of the game .

The devs chose to use this counter-intuitive method because it doesn't always work to click on the praetorians (in sieges, there are several groups on the right, where should he/she go then?).

As @Feist advised in another thread, when you are near the end of act 3 (Gaul), make sure to save the game when you arrive at the Rubicon, preferably before even talking to your companions.

Or even better, at the start of the last fight before that - you'll certainly know when and if not, there's an auto-save that you can reload to make a permanent save.

It will allow you to explore different endings more easily. It's worth seeing a few of them.

Just started playing the game and yeah it's very confusing at first. So thanks for the tips.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Just stated playing the game and yeah it's very confusing at first. So thanks for the tips.

Have fun, I hope you'll like it! (despite the TB thing… wish there was a way to accelerate the enemy's turn)

I feel a bit empty now that I have finished the game, how silly. Looks like I'll have to do a 2nd run.

Originally Posted by Redglyph
I feel a bit empty now that I have finished the game, how silly. Looks like I'll have to do a 2nd run.

IMO, that's the best solution when you feel empty after finishing a great game - jump straight back into it again As you said in another thread, maybe its good time to try out female PC this time

I feel tempted to do a second run myself, but I think I'll try to hold off until the DLC is about to be released, since I think it's supposed to add content somewhere in the middle of the campaign.

I romanced Deainera so I'll choose Calida for the second run.

Originally Posted by daveyd
I feel tempted to do a second run myself, but I think I'll try to hold off until the DLC is about to be released, since I think it's supposed to add content somewhere in the middle of the campaign.

I romanced Deainera so I'll choose Calida for the second run.

Depends if you can wait or not. I'm not sure myself. Will the saved games be compatible? It's unlikely unless it's entirely independent. If they are, it should be possible to restart before the DLC takes effect, and make other decisions just for the pleasure of comparing the outcome.

Calida is a good choice, there is a nice development and she has an interesting personality. Ah, they're surely all good choices, it's just that I can't trust Cleopatra.

I think it's pretty clear in general, the 4 specializations which were not really visible during the battles are now expressed with scores.

At the start of a battle, the scores of the centurions' specializations are added (only the fully acquired specializations, not the ones in progress). So for example, an army could have 2 Artillery (catapult), 1 Cavalry, 2 Infantry (shield), 1 Logistics (wheel).

When you click on the enemy outpost, you can compare your scores with the enemy's, along with the manpower. For example:

The battle screen shows the current situation at the top, in the middle. It first subtract the enemy's scores from yours, to show your relative advantage (or disadvantage).

You choose your commander, which adds his scores again, so he has twice the weight of the others.

Then for each phase, the points of the enemy's stratagem are subtracted, and you can choose your stratagem to add points. The important ones are Artillery and Infantry, which have a big impact on manpower, and Cavalry should not get too negative:

• Artillery kills enemy manpower (Enemy Scatters at 9)
• Cavalry increases aggression, which inflicts higher casualties during attrition phases (too negative => risk to centurions)
• Infantry increases defense, which reduces manpower losses during attrition phases (too negative => risk to commander)
• Logistics increases morale and gives better loot

The overview of the effects vs scores is summarized here. You can see that the artillery has the Enemy Scatter effect, if you reach a score of 9. This means that at the end of the battle, the enemy army is destroyed. It won't be destroyed anymore when their manpower goes below 1200 like before, though it may if the manpower gets very low like 100..200 (I don't know the precise value, I've only seen it happening once).

During the battle proper, there are several attrition phases during which both sides lose a few men, depending on the respective strength (the values in the blue/red bar at the top like before). In the previous version, those losses were very random, now it feels fair. The current effects are shown, and the indications are much clearer:

Monitor the specialization scores and make sure the AI doesn't push too hard in one of them, because once an effect is reached, it cannot be undone! So if Infantry reaches -9, your commander is dead, even if you increase this score in the next phase.

Here's what victory looks like, despite the enemy army being greater at the start That was on insane difficulty, so the battles are not too hard. Note that the morale effect that were previously on "Show mercy" cards has disappeared, now it's mostly done through the Logistic specialization score (it's still on "Celebrate" though, maybe an oversight) - anyway, you can boost the army morale by putting the right praetorian in the baths, so don't focus too much on that.

It's hard to rebuild the centurions' specializations if you have to hire new ones, so look what you want to target. For ex. in a small run I targeted Artillery to wipe out the enemy's armies and avoid to see them regroup and form larger armies at the end. So I hired centurions based on that and nurtured them.