Centurion: Defender of Rome

Some tips and hints for playing at the Emperor Level:

GAME START
- As tempting as it is to start conquering provinces, the hard truth is that you won't conquest much without a Consular Army. Remain in Italy and promote yourself through charriot races and gladiator games until you reach the rank of Consul.

CHARRIOT RACING
- Mastering Charriot Racing is the single most important skill in the game. You can earn as much as 100 talents a turn, and it also promotes your rank in the early game.
- Always pick a Light Charriot, and avoid racing against Light Charriots. If rival Light Charriots are present, exit to DOS and load the game again to restart the random seed (just loading game will not suffice).
- Aggesive rivals are faster than Steady or Cautious ones.
- The racing game is desinged to make the U-Turns decisive for overtaking rival charriots (or for rival charriots to overtake you).
- Rivals will try to block you on U-Turns. Likewise, you must aim to block rivals trying to overtake you at U-Turns.
- On U-Turns, the red line in your speed gauge marks your speed limit. If you go over it, your charriot breaks apart.
- The red line lowers the closest you are to the left side of the track.
- The third lane (counting from the left) is where the red line matches your charriot's cruise speed (your top speed without whipping), and is usually the best spot to be when on straight sections.
- In order to overtake a rival charriot, you must either enter the U-Turn one lane right or one lane left to him, to avoid him blocking you. Usually it's easier to overtake him from the right, as trying to do it from the left forces you to slow down.
- Whipping your horses reduces their stamina (the red bar over the blue bar). If your horses run out of stamina, their "cruise speed· will remain the same, but the temporary boost by whipping will be greatly reduced. (Keep whipping anyway, a small boost is still better than no boost).
- Rival charriot boxes hitting your horses reduces your horses' stamina. Rival charriot boxes hitting your charriot box reduces the blue bar. Running out of blue bar breaks your charriot apart. Avoid clashing with rival charriots for as long as you can.
- Don't resort to Skulduggery. It costs money and thus reduces your net benefits. Real winners don't cheat.

GLADIATOR GAMES
- To host Gladiator Games, you need 50 talents to build an amphiteather. It only needs to be done once.
- It doesn't matters if you win or lose the game, the only thing that matters is the white bar at the top, which marks how exited is the crowd.
- The crowd excitement rises each time any gladiator hits his opponent, without regard of the blow being parried or not. Drag on the fight for longer by parrying.
- At the end of the fight, spare the loser if the bar is above half. Thumbs down if the bar is below half (though you don't want a fight to end with so low excitment achieved).
- The more you expend on the gladiator's training, the more life they will have, and the more often they will strike or parry, therefore providing better amusement for the public. Hire two veteran gladiators (40 talents each) to ensure the crowd will be pleased.
- The happier the crowd, the more rank you earn for hosting the games.

DIPLOMACY
- About half of the provinces can be annexed through diplomacy if you march into them with a Consular Army.
- If you can talk the enemy leader into asking how much tribute Rome will require, always answer "Low". You can raise taxes later if needed.
- Annexing a province through Diplomacy is preferable to conquest, as it begins already at "Ally" status and, thus, paying higher taxes. Provinces annexed by force beging as "occupied" and seldom pay any tax until their status improves.
- Some provinces whose leaders won't accept terms can be persuaded to do so by thinning their numbers in battle then marching in again with a second full-strenght Consular Army. That will require losing the first battle, though. If you chose to do so, it's preferable to lose by ordering a general "Retreat" rather than by letting the enemy wipe you out.
- You can't talk with Rebel provinces. When you march into a Rebel province, you proceed automatically into battle.
- You can't talk to Marauding armies. Provinces lost to advancing Marauding armies count as Rebel provinces.
- Italy is the sole province you can never talk to, as you start already in control of it, and you can only ever fight it if you lost control to a Rebel or Marauding army.
- If you annex Aegyptus by talking, you get a single chance to score with Cleopatra.

PROVINCE MANAGEMENT
- Leave the province with tolerable tribute and all will go well.
- Provinces have 4 levels of relationship with Rome: Occupied, Ally, Colony and Citzens.
- The higher the level, the more taxes they pay.
- Extempt the province from tribute if you want to improve it's level faster. It's always a good idea if it's Occupied and paying 0 taxes, as you aren't getting a dime anyway.
- When you march your armies into an unconquered province, you are given a report of it's wealth. That report has nothing to do with how many taxes it will pay, it's only related to how much money you will get if you punder it.
- Never plunder a province, it's not worth it.
- In general, don't be greedy. With your charriot racing skills, you don't need to get much money from provinces.
- Right click on a certain pixel around the Normandy coast to find an Easter Egg.

RAISING LEGIONS
- Raise legions in provinces with fierce or good morale, as the starting morale of the Legion will match that of the province it's raised in.
- Newly raised legions will be assigned a random commander. Your first legion (already in the board at game start) is always commanded by Scipio Africanus, who is the best commander in the game by far. The next best are (in that order) Cornelius Scipio, Pompey the Great, and Marius. Mark Antony has good charisma, but his voice is too low to adequately give orders. All other generals have either too low charisma, too little voice, or both. Reload if your new legion gets a lousy commander.
- I usually run with 5 legions: Africanus and Cornelius for conquests, Pompey to garrison Italy, Marius for border defense against marauders, and Mark Antony as second-line reserve.
- When strenghtening a legion, the new morale will be an average between the morale of the remaining men in the legion and that of the new manpower added. Therefore, send your depleted legions to provinces with high morale.
- Legion morale slowly raises each turn it's left to rest. It will take three or four years of resting for a legion with good morale to improve it to fierce.

FLEETS
- Sooner or later you will need to build a fleet, if only to transport legions to Sardinia and Britannia.
- You need 42 Galleons to transport a full Consular Legion (30 Galleons for the infantry, 12 Galleons for the cavalry). Quinqueremes count as half a Galleon, Trirremes count as a quarter.
- The total cost of the basic transport fleet will be, therefore, 840 talents.
- You do not need to battle the Carthaginian, Macedonian and Aegyptian fleets already present in the Mediterranean at game start. Those will not move, and vanish the moment you annex their home provinces.
- Likewise, do not bother to battle Marauding Fleets. Those will make a beeline for Italy, so wait for them there with a Consular Legion. Replacing dead men is cheaper than replacing sunken ships, and is definitely cheaper than replacing dead men AND sunken ships.
- On a pinch, you can defeat an enemy fleet without embarking a legion, if your fleet is large enough. Don't expect your flagship to survive the individual engagement, though.

LAND BATTLE!
- At Emperor Level, your units are at a disavantage on 1-to-1 combat. You usually have an advantage in number or units, which you must exploit to achieve flankings.
- Micromanaging units is a must. You won't get far by just issuing general orders.
- Your commander's Voice is vital to give individual orders to cohorts. Do not hesistate to move him closer to units when needed.
- A general order to all units will also be followed by units outside your commander's Voice range.
- You can beat any province by attrition, sending in succesive waves of legions, as enemy casualties remain and it will take several turns for the enemy army to get restored to full strenght. In order to make the game more challenging, I do not take advantage from this, and I force myself to attack only once, reloading if I don't win the battle.
- Kill the enemy commander as soon as possible, that will automatically put a lot of enemy units into panic.
- Sometimes, the enemy will be so gentle as to put his commander at the first line. Choosing a Wedge formation is ideal to take maximum advantage from such a chance.
- Sometimes, the enemy commander simply withdraws from battle and can't be killed. Enemy troops do not panic when that happens.
- The Parthian army is the hardest to beat in the game, as it's full cavalry with Fierce morale. Your best shoot is to kill their commander early on the battle, but even then it will be a tough fight.

That's all. Good luck, and Beware the Idles of Mars!

I used to play this game all the time as a kid. I loved how you could bypass certain battles by picking the right diplomatic response.

Had problems with no sound in DosBox 0.74 for some reason. In Dosbox-X it runs perfectly with sound.

I love this game. Some simple tactics: against a barbarian horde, concentrate your troops in the middle. Against elephants, use flanking tactics as they will make short work of you.

They say Dune II (1992) is the first real time strategy game (mouse assumed) but I think it is this one.

Me and my cousin used to play this game massively to his Amiga 500. I found it really innovative, and highly addictive! The only problem was that, it gets repetitive after 2-3 hours and somehow easy to master it. Still, I remember it with warm feelings...

First-time player here, and in 2021 no less. I have to say, this is fun and charming little game. If you're into strategy games I'd say give this a try. It's like a distant ancestor of Rome: Total War. 5/5.

I used to spend way too much time playing this game on the Amiga. I tried to attack an enemy army that were riding elephants instead of horses! Note: The last ADF in the archive (Teacher/Centurion disk #2 has a checksum error on the file: race.cat). The other versions are ok).

The message:
"Gaul was divided into three parts... No, four parts. One indomitable village still held out against the Roman invaders"
is true. I just made it show up.

All Centurion For Java

To Scipio & Scipio's Defence
There is effectively an easter egg with Gaul... you should find and click a SINGLE pixel in France (about the position of the Asterix village) that show this phrase!
"Gaul was divided into three parts... No, four parts. One indomitable village still held out against the Roman invaders"

I cannot make it sound!!!, Well, is not like it had lots of music and sound and music, but is a little sad to play it soundless at all... Any Suggestion?

Windows XP sp3 machine with 2 GB ram, 1 TB HDD, dual core stuff and blah, blah, blah, sound is internal to board and is "fully soundblaster compatible"

Guys, this issue has been cursing me for almost 20 years, please help!!!!!!!
1. open up OVL0.OVL with windows notepad or any text editor
2. search "Gaul"
3. the third reference is "Gaul was divided into three parts... No, four parts. One indomitable village still held out against the Roman invaders", like the story of Asterix and Obelix!!!!
Did anybody ever manage to let such sentence appear? I tried thousands of times with alliances, rebellions, re-conquests etc., but no success with those Gauls.....

Super

I cannot play this game because I've a 64 bit system and this game support ony the 32 bit... :'-(

This game is excellent. Even now it captures my attention. There are few games like it. I may try out some of the harder difficulty settings, since I always played as Galley Slave as a kid.

Love this game so much when I was a kid could not stop playing it