Recently I started playing the Civilization 5 Scenario “The Fall of Rome”. As all Civ 5 Scenarios this scenarios comes with a lot of customizations and unique units and leader-abilities.
One Steam-Achievement that particularly drew my attention was “I Missed That Day in History Class” – Capture any Sassanid city as the Celts in the Fall of Rome scenario.
Emperor difficulty attempts
As I usually play scenarios on emperor difficulty I also tried this achievement on this level. And miserably failed.
First try: The land route
That meant passing the territory of the Franks. Using the unique ability of the Celts to only need 1 movement point to disembark, I conquered and razed Betuwe. I continued, embarked my troops again only to head for Duisburg right after that. I figured time was essential, so I retreated and headed east (Duisburg falling to the Franks again). I stayed closed to (but not crossed!) the Goth border until Olbia, which I razed. That was already turn 44-48. I boarded my troops and crossed the Black Sea. Unfortunately the Mongols didn’t give me a warm welcome on the east coast:
Seeing that and the fact that I had only 14 turns remaining, I abandoned this strategy.
If the land route doesn’t work, there’s only one other way to get this Steam Achievement with the Celts:
Second try: The sea route
The sea route is a much more straight-forward approach considering the unique ability of the Celts to disembark using only 1 movement point. If you place your troops next to the coast and disembark the next turn, you can have catapults (and other units) with 5 movement points! This means you disembark, move your catapult in city-range, set up for ranged attack and fire! Using this strategy, you can conquer cities without your ranged units even get damaged.
So I used this strategy, to conquer the Roman Atlantic coast of todays France and Spain and captured Caput Vada. Then I wasted time capturing the 2nd starting city and the continental city of the Vandals. Continuing east towards Carthage I realized: The Vandals had not taken the Roman-African cities! This is a major set-back for this strategy, as the Romans now still controlled the sea between Carthage and Sicily.
With the Roman triremes attacking my units, only one Pictish warrior made it to Kyrene:
Conclusion: The sea route is NOT the way to go if you want to make the “I Missed That Day in History Class” Steam Achievement.
No more experiments: Settler difficulty
Using the above described strategy, but playing on settler difficulty I managed to capture 2 Sassanid cities as the Celts within the 100 turns. Here are the main milestones:
- embark all troops, pointing SW on Britain, don’t embark in range of Coriallum
- raze Coriallum ASAP (or keep it – I usually raze it as it will never produce much and has no luxury)
- Portus Namnetum should fall within 3-4 turns, attack with ranged units + 1 trireme + 1 Pictish Warrior, heal the 2 damaged units, the others embark again
- same strategy applies to Mediolanum and Brigantium, make sure your 2 catapults are always close to the city before landing – bowmen only need 1 movement point to fire, catapults need 2
- I managed to take Olisipio in turn 16. By then I had almost all cultural social policies.
- Meet the Vandals around turn 24 – your catapults can fire on Caput Vada from the Spanish side, no need to take the risk of melee attacks.
- I disembarked at Kyrene (the first Eastern Roman city) at turn 45. You can easily speed up your land units by disembarking, using the coastal road in Northern Africa for 7 tiles, and embark again! This way you can make much more of your 5 embarked movement points.
- Taking Kyrene, Alexandria and Caesarea I met the Sassanids in turn 56.
- Eager to make the Steam Achievement I took Damascus in turn 58. Unfortunately to get “I missed that day in history class” you have to take an original Sassanid city.
- No problem: There’s plenty of time left – I took Nisibis in turn 66 and even managed to take a second Sassanid city (Singara) in turn 68.
By the end of the Fall of Rome scenario I had entirely conquered the Franks, the Vandals, taken 2 Sassanid cities and conquered most of the Western Roman Empire:
The German name of this Steam Achievement is “Geschichte hab ich geschwänzt” as you can see on this last screenshot. By now I switched both Steam and Civilization 5 language to English so the next posts will be more consistent.
New challenges
I think it is possible to get this achievement on higher levels of difficulty. The Celts have another unique ability: +50% combat strengths against civilizations with more cities. So I will give this another try, maybe on prince, and: Raze all Roman cities I conquer and immediately go for the military social policies. This should give the first units +50% flanking bonus and +50% for having less cities. The Pictish Warriors get an even higher flanking bonus. It should be possible…
Seconding that you can get this achievement after the game “ends”, just got it today on turn 88. No need to worry about dumbing down to Settler and rushing below 70 turns if you want.
Appreciate the guides!
Thanks for the flowers and good to hear this still works post-scenario-deadline 🙂
Just move everyone east high north all the way across the map. Avoid unnecessary combat. Next head south take out Mongol capital keep going south .Bingo
Hah! Nice! Never thought of taking out the Mongol capitol. I thought it’d be too long a delay on the way south. Thanks! 🙂
I got this achievement on my first try, but it took me 79 turns. I wasted time clearing out all of Italy, Greece, and Turkey because I didn’t know exactly where the Sassinid homelands were. Instead of taking 45 cities and having a supply chain nightmare (200+ units), I wish I had only taken all the coastal cities in France, Spain, and Italy until I got to Rome, then made a beeline East to Antioch (North of modern day Syria/Isreal).
Hehe, of course, it’s super easy if you do it on a low level of difficulty 😉
I have most of the other achievements, now working on Missed that day in history class. Playing at chieftain level. Currently trying the water route; have captured and razed most of Spain and now working my way east across the top of Africa. Don’t think I will finish in time; the other barbarian tribes could not care less about the Romans, they focus on me. The Franks haven’t caused much problem yet, but the Vandals hadn’t captured a single Roman city, and they had a huge navy to attack my units. Caput Vada was ridiculously strong (28, I think) so the battle there took a long time and cost almost my entire navy and a few land units, even bombarding the city constantly from the coast of Spain with 2 catapults. (I’m sending new triremes to replace them but it will take a while)
I’ve run into the same problem (the Franks not attacking Roman cities and units but coming after me instead) trying the northern land route. Maybe I need to drop back to settler-level. 🙁
BTW, I really enjoy your scenario guides. Thanks.
Thanks for the feedback! 🙂
I’m always particularly happy when people comment on this post, because it was the first I ever wrote.
And reading it again, I might re-try this achievement following the hints at the end. Curious how that’ll go. Until then: No worries about settler level – after at least trying several times, there’s no shame in that 🙂
Even at settler-level, I get stuck at the Caput Vanda. So I decided to go thru the Franks and Goths to Constantinople, then continue east. Totally destroyed the Franks, but it took over 40 turns to do so; that’s probably not the right route. Perhaps I need to go south and west just to the Pyrenees Mountains, razing almost everything, then start moving South East to Narbo Martius (sp?) and buy a second navy there, bypassing the Vandals and the Franks…
Tried that, and the Franks ignored the Romans again and sent their entire army to attack Gesoriacum, the one city that I kept because it had all those cattle. I can probably fight them off, but that will take quite a few precious turns and a lot of units that should be fighting the Romans. Or I can raze Gesoriacum and give up all that production…
This is gonna take a while 🙂
Note that you can get the achievement after 100 turns
Thanks, Jacky, for sharing this. I think it changes a lot, since now one can play Deity, dominate Europe and basically do this after the “official” end of the scenario.
No, you must capture a Sassanid city before 70th turn. I tried to do it after (85th turn) and failed.
But i managed to do it by land way – captured all northern cities in the map and quickly went to east – to Black sea and unlicked this achievement in 47th turn,
Difficulty – Settler.
I can share the save, if somebody needs.
that’s odd vladiaz, after I lost too much time capturing Caput Vada, I knew it was going to be difficult to finish in time, but I continued to play, and still got the achievement turn 76?
Will you do Pax Romana Aeterrum?
Hi Sam, well… I already have the Pax Romana Aeternum achievement, but I made it years ago. And didn’t take notes. Hard to write a guide for it now. I’ll see what I can do on the Fall of Rome Scenario in general though! 🙂