Similar to capital surplus and technological innovations, traditions are the way of boosting your army’s military capabilities such as offense, defense, morale, and discipline. Okay, that’s neat. But which military traditions are the best in Imperator Rome? All tradition trees are ranked from best to worse below.
Oh, by the way, always employ a capable Tribunus Militum and build military training traditions wonder to gain lots of military experience. Because military experience is what you need to unlock more traditions.
Also remember, you need to integrate key cultures to unlock the locked military traditions.
Now let’s get this military traditions tier list started.
1. Roman Traditions / Italic Tribee
Roman traditions are superior to every other army tradition in Imperator Rome, the game is called Rome after all.
Just rush free innovations and heavy infantry bonuses. Then go for levy size and discipline. You field the strongest army in the game after completing Roman traditions as Rome.
4 free province investment bonus is just another bonus.
Finally, simply by integrating Macedon culture, you can unlock Greek tradition tree via Roman tradition tree.
2. Persian / Persian Rural Traditions
Persian rural traditions give heavy cav / horse archer modifiers. Needless to say, horse archers are the strongest legion units in Imperator Rome as default.
Roman heavy infantry units excel via traditions but as default and with Persian Rural Traditions the horse archers match and most of the time came on top.
So, have steppe horse resource surplus on your capital, unlock Persian Rural Traditions, and become the scourge of earth via space marines / space horse archers!
3. Greek Poles / Greek Kingdom Traditions
Historically Greeks had the world’s strongest military traditions before Romans. Greek hoplites were a menace. It’s the same in Imperator Rome, Greek military traditions are very strong in Imperator Rome. Just not as strong as Roman traditions.
As Greeks, you don’t even need cohorts. Because levies are mostly made of light infantry and Greek traditions boost light infantry units a lot.
4. Indian Traditions
Is pretty balanced and has good bonuses for Elephant and archer units. In fact, Indian tribe traditions have the strongest Elephant bonuses in the game.
Needless to say, Elephants are very strong as default already. Indian traditions allow you to field strongest elephants and decent archers to back them in battle.
5. Celtic / Britanic Traditions
These are what’s called barbarian traditions in the game. Celtic traditions mainly boost archers and Britannic traditions boost chariots.
The thing is archers and chariots aren’t very good in this game. So, boosting them is good but they’re not comparable to other boosted superior legion units such as heavy infantry, heavy cavalry, horse archers, and elephants.
6. Punic / Numidian Traditions
Punic Traditions are all about mercenaries and ships. Therefore, it’s pretty much useless. Mercenaries are only useful at the very beginning of the game.
As for Numidian Traditions, it’s semi-decent at best. It highly boosts light cavalry units but that’s just about it.
7. Levantine Kingdom / Maritime Traditions
Levantine traditions are even worse than Punic / Numidian traditions. Just look at this, entire tradition tree committed to maritime… Naval warfare is a joke in this game and almost non-existing. Thus, making Levantine military traditions the worst on tier list.
As for Levantine Kingdom, it only gives bonus to the camel unit which is literally the worse legion unit in the entire game.