14 DAY TRIAL // Lepidus’ Rome starts off with provinces on both the Mediterranean coast of Spain and in the North of Africa, which are both relatively far away from the center of the faction, located in the middle of Italy, and that’s both an advantage early on and a problem for the gamer who wants to take this relatively unknown character and make him the successor of Caesar.
Octavian and Marc Anthony have territory that’s much closer together and they tend to quickly come to blows, although in actual history they tried to outmaneuver each other for a while before resorting to full warfare, and my own faction can sit out for a while and see what happens.
My first thought was to move in order to try and secure Sicily, which is controlled by Pompey and his relatively small forces, and create both a rich province and a base of operations that gives me quick access to the heart of Italy.
The perils of a three-sided war
There are outside factions included in the Imperator Augustus for Total War: Rome II – Emperor Edition but they feel like minor players, mostly there to be conquered and to offer a full historical situation for gamers to deal with.
The experience is mostly geared towards the four Roman powers that are trying to claim the legacy of Julius Caesar using the power of their weapons, and one of the big decisions that gamers need to make is whether they want to focus on balance initially or to simply strike hard at one enemy.
In one early campaign, I focused on my own provinces and on capturing all of North Africa while Octavian and Marc Anthony went to full war.
As the game progressed, I felt I was in a good position, but a series of major defeats means that soon the Eastern civil war faction and its Egyptian allies became very powerful and I was facing an uphill struggle to defeat it.
I restarted and then decided to try and hit both enemy factions from time to time in order to prevent them from focusing their power on one another and to make sure that the power levels remained relatively balanced.
Unfortunately, I lack a clear border with Anthony at the moment, so my next moves involve taking Sicily as fast as possible while also attacking Gaul past the Pyrenees in order to keep Octavian busy to some extent.