Start to finish: 'Make haste slowly' (3) in Citadelum

In the first two missions of Citadelum, the basic gameplay has been shown. 

It means there are no secrets left in this third mission of the campaign The Rise of the Roman Empire. We can now focus on the story, extend our cities and defeat the enemies we face. 

Story

Rhegium, 36 BC. After reaching peace with Marcus Antonius by the treaty of Brundisium, Gaius Octavius turned his attention to Sicily. The island had been occupied by Sextus Pompeius, who had rebelled against the triumvirate along with a group of senators, equites and slaves.

After suffering two severe naval defeats in 38 BC, Octavius has requested the support of Marcus Antonius' fleet and is preparing to invade the island. Your orders are to gather equipment and building materials to prepare the offensive from Rhegium.    

Objectives

• Reach prestige level 4 in your city
• Produce 25 Armour
• Discover 2 cities
• Win 1 battle

In short

• Difficulty: Easy
• Region map: Big
• Trading routes: 8
• Initial resources:
  • 25.000 Denarii
  • 1400 wood
  • 1100 stone
  • 200 wooden planks
  • 200 stone bricks
• Enemy presence: 4 armies
• Fighting required: yes

Walkthrough

This map has a bit of a weird shape, which makes planning a city only a little more challenging. You will have to work inside the bend of the river, at least for your city. But this piece of land is stretched out enough. Of course, production buildings can go on the peninsula in the south or across the river in the north west. 

Other than that, this mission revolves around exploring the region map and fighting some battles against stronger armies than you faced in the last mission. Let's get going!

Start with building a basic city layout. What this layout is, is totally up to you. There is enough money and space to fund anything you like at this stage.

A basic city layout in Citadelum

Start with 8 Plebeians' houses. That gives you space for 40 workers as long as they remain at level 1, which is plenty to reach Prestige Level 3 and start Patricians. 

Build 2 production areas. At the gap between the 2 rivers to the east, a stone deposit and iron deposit are next to each other in an area with trees. Excellent spot for producing the basic materials you need to build your city. Build a Logging camp, Stone quarry and Iron mine, together with a Warehouse, Engineers' post and Fire station. Don't forget that the fire station needs a water supply. This does not need to be provided by a reservoir, a Well will do the trick just fine. 

Find some open space to build a Wheat farm and Granary. This will be the start of your food hub. Don't forget an Engineers' post and Fire station on this side of the map as well.

Prestige Level 2 & 3

As soon as you hit 20 Plebeians in your city, you will unlock Prestige Level 2. This will give you access to building Patricians' houses. Build 8 Patricians' houses and a Tax office.

For 8 Patricians' houses, you will need 1 Cabbage orchard and 1 Melon orchard, both with 2 workers. This will give you an output of 160 of each per day, exactly the same as the consumption. If you have 2 workers spare (which you should), assign a third worker to both orchards. This will increase your stock of cabbages and melons, which will be good at the start of every day to avoid lack of stock at the markets.

We already know that there will be fighting and that we will have to produce Armour. Assign extra workers to the iron mine. This way, once you unlock Prestige Level 4, you will be able to start those straight away. 

To reach Prestige Level 4, you will need 60 Plebeians and 25 Patricians. You now have an option: either build 8 new Plebeians' houses, or increase the desirability of the area around the existing ones to increase their capacity. 

At Prestige Level 3, you only have access to the garden, a tree and hedges. It is incredibly hard to reach any decent kind of zone desirability with this. The decorative elements that actually pack a punch only unlock from Prestige Level 4 upwards. So, your best bet is to build the extra 8 Plebeians' houses.

Gardens and trees barely add any desirability.

If you hate waiting (trust me, I do!) build another cluster of basic production buildings: Logging camp, Stone quarry and Iron mine, covered by a Warehouse, Engineers' post and Fire station. Assign some extra workers to get some decent numbers added to your stockpile. 

Also build a Sawmill and a Stonecutter near to one of your production hubs. Sooner rather than later, you'll need to start building temples. 

Prestige Level 4

By now, your growing population will mean that your city has reached Prestige Level 4. Check! First objective reached. ✅

It unlocks the fountain decoration elements. Build a few next to your Patricians' houses. It will level them up, opening the need for bread and fish fillet. On the other hand, it will increase your income immensely. 

If you have 8 Patricians' houses, build 1 bakery and staff it with 4 workers. Make sure you have enough workers on the grain farm to supply both Plebeians as well as the bakery with wheat.

Also build 1 Fishing dock with 1 worker and a Fishmonger with 4 workers. This will produce 80 fish fillets per day, enough to feed 8 Patricians' houses.

Even if you have built more Plebeians' houses, you're going to run out of workers by now. It's start to place down some decorations to allow the houses to level up, creating room for more Plebeians to move in. This requires you to build a Carrot orchard and Onion orchard, both staffed with 3 workers. This provides enough carrots and onions for 16 Plebeians' houses.

Both Plebeians and Patricians in a level 2 house require access to baths. This is a service building with a pretty decent range. Building 1 Baths at a central location is often enough to cover all your houses. 

Now with all the food requirements taken care off, we can start to focus on our military. But first, build 6 temples, one for each God, to keep them happy. You might have to amp up your production for stone bricks, as the 6 temples will cost 240 stone bricks. Also build a Grape orchard and Medicinal herb orchard. You will need grapes and herbs to celebrate festivals in honour of Pluto and Minerva.

Building up military & exploring the map

Next, build a Swordsmith and a Shield workshop and assign an extra worker to your wheat field. You will need grain to train infantry, so an excess of wheat is required. 

From the Military building menu, build a Recruits' barracks and a Infantry training building. In this level, any kind of legion will do. If you are patient, queue up 100 infantry at the training building. If you are less patient, build another training building and queue up 50 in each. If you're even less patient, train less soldiers. You should be good with just 50 or 60 infantry.

Somewhere along the way (or maybe you already passed it) you will produce your 25th set of armour. Hooray! Second objective made. ✅

Visit the region map. You always get a single explorer provided to you, you can use this one to explore the map. 

To the south, you'll find the city of Taisiai. This settlement is buying stone, while selling you bread and gladii. If you have the overproduction on stone, feel free to set up a trade route. Buying bread shouldn't be necessary. We have 4 workers for 80 Denarii wages producing 80 bread. Buying 80 bread from Taisiai will cost you 240 Denarii per day. Do the math.

Your city in the 3rd mission of Citadelum, showing the 2 nearest city and an enemy army.

While exploring, if you do find a relic, try to pass it on to Mars. His blessing will give you soldiers. This works best if you have multiple training buildings though. If you can spare the resources, build some extra training buildings (any kind) to receive free soldiers.

To the east, you will find the city of Scylla. They buy olive oil, which you can't produce. Scylla is selling wooden planks. You won't need any of those any more, so this city is pretty much useless. Except: this is the second city you discovered. Check! Third objective made! ✅

Victory!

One territory down you will find the first enemy legion on this map, consisting of 24 archers and 18 cavalry. Deploy your own legion of 100 infantry to Scylla and take the charge. With 100 infantry, you will be overpowered enough to just charge and forget about battle tactics. If you decided on less infantry or different units, just try some different battle tactics. Try to take out their archers while keeping the cavalry tied up.

Battle formation for a battle in Citadelum.

Defeating this legion will be your fourth and last objective. ✅ This means you will now get the choice to either continue on to the next mission, or remain here and explore the rest of the map. 

Continue after finishing the objectives

This choice is yours. If you want to expand your empire, here are some pointers:

• 2 territories to the east of your legion is Namertion. They sell olive oil for 4 Denarii per unit. Remember Scylla? That city buys olive oil for 5 Denarii per unit. Easy money!
• Travelling east along the coast will first bring you Tibur, a city buying wheat and selling fish.
• One territory to the east of Tibur, you will find an enemy legion of 32 infantry and 20 cavalry. 
• Heading south from Scylla, you will find Palizzi. This city buys wood (some easy money too) and sells medicinal herbs and armour. You shouldn't need either of those. 
• Continuing down the coast, you will find an enemy legion of 40 infantry protecting the city of Hortona. They will buy cheese and sell iron. 
• To the east of Hortona is Sutrium, a city buying clothing and selling stone bricks.
• One territory more east than Sutrium is an enemy legion of 22 infantry and 24 archers waiting for you.
• Last but not least, to the far east is Blera. This city sells cheese at 4 Denarii per unit. You don't need it yourself, but can sell it to Hortana for 7 Denarii per unit. At 675 Denarii daily profit without having to do anything, that's what I call a great deal!

Region map

This is the full region map of mission 3, Make haste slowly, in Citadelum.

The full region map for the 3rd mission in Citadelum.