Awesome / Rome: Total War

• As per Total War tradition, winning a heroic victory is always epic.
• If you're defending a bridge or a river pass, it is completely possible to annihilate a much larger attacking force, as it more or less cancels their numerical advantage. Just place a few units of spearmen and/or heavy infantry in front of the crossing, pin down their archers with yours, and watch the enemy break themselves against your wall of spears and armor as they try to cross.
• Youtuber, LegendofTotalWar, has a series called "Saving Your Disaster Campaigns", for Total War games, where folks send him their campaigns, which must be, quite literally in many cases, one turn away from defeat, as in the campaign is down to one army, one settlement, massively in debt, and everyone around them is an enemy. Sometimes the disaster occurred honestly, and other times it was clearly done on purpose. In many cases, LoTW is able to salvage the campaign, take over several decent settlements, rebuild the faction's army, refill their coffers, and set that person up to be able to pull off an effective war. Here's one where he started the rise of the Frankish Empire in the Middle East area, starting with, literally, 1 Frank left. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmZXRbURPVI
• Youtuber, PrinceofMacedon, is known for having a lot of battles, where he tends to win. For the most part however, he doesn't play under his Youtube name, so that people don't just seek him out. But, there are impostors that do use his name and more common aliases. In this video, he's up against an impostor who is using the Greek City States, specifically, a ton of Spartan Hoplites, and the rules are No Artillery, No Archers, No Elephants, No Pila (the javelins used by Roman soldiers), on Massive Scale at 50K Dinari. PoM responds by playing as the Selucids, with Silver Shield Pikemen, and some Cataphracts. What happens is quite awesome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgjNRaTgW10&t=411s
• If, as a Roman faction, you horde up money for a number of turns before starting the civil war, your opening attack can be with a single peasant unit. Then, bribe every captain-led Roman army you can. Conquer the other houses with their own troops.
• If one doesn't mind cheating, there's plenty of awesome things that one could do. But, if you're an honest player, don't do the following things. Some common cheats are to give yourself infinite dinari, instantly build the settlement's buildings, spawn top-tier units in cities and under a general's command, improve the quality of your generals while decreasing the quality of the enemy's, and just steamrolling the enemy in general, especially with extra-large elephants. (Actually, forget the extra-large elephants, as those make the game crash. The regular ones you can spawn do the job just fine.) That being said, these tricks involve cheating, so use at own risk.
  • If you're playing as one of the Roman factions, only to piss off the Senate, probably because you've been cheating, and get outlawed, at which point the other Roman factions come after you. Well, if you use the money cheat, with a whole lot of money, and have a few ambassadors, just go around bribing those Romans into joining your side, both in terms of armies and cities. The only ones this trick doesn't work on are the Faction Leader, the Faction Heir, and the army/city that they have with them/are staying at. Still, when you've got the rest now under your command, just crush them with their former comrades-in-arms. After that, knock down the Senate's doors.
  • If using the money cheat, and you have an ambassador in Anitolia, and you see a lonely general, who has a decent command rating - Greek, Eastern, Rebel - bribe them over to your side, and send them around to recruit the local mercenaries - Greek, Barbarian, Eastern, Pirates - and they will easily have a full army within a few turns. After that, start taking over.
  • Using a combination of the Money Cheat, Insta-build cheat, and Add Population cheat, it is possible to increase your villages on up to large towns, to recruit basic cavalry, skirmishers/archers/slingers, and infantry, which are way better than those peasants and militia troops everyone else is stuck with.
  • While the regular Insta-Recruit Cheat, that is, instantly recruiting those in your city's recruitment cue, doesn't work, it's possible to summon up to 5 units of the same type into an army, fleet, or city, and have them have Gold Swords, Shields, and Experience for free. Thus, if a small army, or city garrison, is attacked by a far larger force, it's possible to give them these exceptionally tough reinforcements, which don't even need to be recruit-able by that settlement or faction, and fend off the attack.