Best and Worst Factions to Start With in Total War: Rome Remastered

Picking your first faction in Total War: Rome Remastered is the most important decision you'll make before the game even starts. Choose well and your opening hours will feel manageable, your economy will hold together, and you'll have room to learn the game at your own pace. Choose badly and you'll be firefighting from turn one, trying to keep a crumbling frontier together with a roster that was never really designed for beginners.

This guide covers the three factions that give new and returning players the best possible start, and the three that will make your life significantly harder than it needs to be. The rankings are based on starting position, economic stability, army quality, and how forgiving each faction is when you inevitably make mistakes early on.

The three best factions to start with

Julii

If you're new to Rome Remastered, start here. The Julii begin in northern Italy with Gaul directly to the north, giving you a clear and rewarding expansion path right from the opening turns. The Gallic tribes are beatable without needing to optimise your army composition, and the territory you take from them is fertile and generates solid income once developed.

What makes the Julii particularly good for beginners is that their starting position keeps them away from the Senate's attention for longer than the other Roman factions. The Senate will eventually become a headache for any Roman player, but the Julii can usually build a strong foundation in Gaul before that political pressure starts to bite. Their unit roster is the standard Roman one, which means excellent heavy infantry, reliable cavalry, and a good mix of ranged support. You won't be fighting around weaknesses the way you would with some other factions.

Scipii

The Scipii start in southern Italy with Sicily and Carthaginian North Africa within reach. Their expansion path is slightly more naval than the Julii, which means early investment in fleets pays off, but the rewards are worth it. Sicily is a relatively easy first conquest, and the North African territories are among the most economically valuable on the map once you control them.

The Scipii's starting position also keeps them clear of the most intense early conflict zones. There's enough breathing room in the western Mediterranean to grow steadily without being constantly on the back foot. Like the Julii, they field the standard Roman roster, so you're learning to use what is genuinely one of the strongest unit sets in the game rather than working around something weaker.

Brutii

The Brutii start in central and southern Italy with Greece as their primary expansion target. Greece brings both challenge and reward. The Greek city states are better organised than the Gallic tribes and require more tactical thought to overcome, but the territories you take are wealthy and the region is strategically important for pushing east toward the richer parts of the map.

The Brutii are the hardest of the three Roman factions for a complete newcomer purely because the Greek campaigns demand a bit more tactical awareness than the Julii's Gallic wars. But if you've played a Total War game before and want something with a bit more texture to the early game, the Brutii offer the most satisfying opening path of the three. Still an excellent choice, particularly once you've got a few hours under your belt.

You'll notice all three best factions are Roman. That's not a coincidence. The Roman factions are almost certainly over-tuned in their favour because they're central to the game's identity, and their unit roster reflects that. If you're looking for an easier start, Roman is simply the right choice.

The three worst factions to start with

Spain

Spain sits at the western edge of the map in a position that sounds defensible but isn't particularly rewarding. Their settlements are spread across a large area, many of them poorly developed, with slow travel times between them that make responding to threats genuinely frustrating. The military roster is limited and lacks the heavy infantry that makes early expansion feel controlled.

The bigger problem is the economy. Spain starts with weak income and the territories available for early expansion don't dramatically improve that. You'll spend your first thirty turns just trying to stabilise finances rather than pushing outward, and that's not a fun way to learn the game. There's a version of a Spain campaign that's deeply satisfying for an experienced player who wants a challenge, but for anyone still getting to grips with the fundamentals, it's the wrong place to start.

Parthia

Parthia is a faction that rewards very specific knowledge of how to use them, and punishes everyone else. Their infantry is genuinely poor, among the worst in the game, which means the standard approach of holding a line with heavy foot soldiers and supporting with cavalry simply doesn't work the way you'd expect it to.

What Parthia does have is exceptional cavalry, particularly horse archers and the late-game cataphracts, which are devastating in the right hands. The catch is that getting to the late game as Parthia requires navigating a brutal starting position surrounded by hostile Middle Eastern factions while fielding an army that can't hold ground in a straight fight. Experienced players who understand how to use horse archers offensively can make Parthia sing, but new players will find the early game overwhelming and the learning curve unforgiving.

Numidia

Numidia gets more mockery than it deserves from the Total War community, but that doesn't make it a good starting faction. The economy is the main problem. Numidia begins with one of the weakest financial situations in the game, and their starting territory is both difficult to develop and slow to generate meaningful income. Without a solid economic base, you can't field a decent army, and without a decent army you can't expand, and that cycle is exhausting to break out of when you're still learning.

Their military is also underwhelming at the unit level available in the early game. There are some interesting options deeper into the roster, and their light cavalry can be effective on the right terrain, but none of that changes the reality that Numidia asks you to solve a financial crisis while simultaneously defending a large and underdeveloped frontier. Leave them until you understand the game well enough to appreciate the challenge.

A note on faction strength

Every faction in Rome Remastered has a ceiling high enough to win the campaign, and experienced players have completed the game with all of them. The recommendations above are about which factions give you the best environment to learn the game rather than which ones are objectively unplayable. Once you know how sieges work, how to manage public order, and how to use your cavalry effectively, many of the weaknesses in the harder factions become much more manageable.

Start with the Romans, get comfortable, and then branch out. The game has a lot more to offer once you know what you're doing.

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