To start, you will first need to choose your player background. For a brand new player, the "Merchant" background will make starting off significantly easier until you learn how to budget and the basics of gameplay. Ex-gladiators can do quite well by finding good young prospects and training them up quickly, but money will be more of a challenge. Like many choices in the game, each background is viable and each caters to a different style.

Before you recruit you first gladiator, you will need some scouts to find talent for you. Scouts are hired from the staff tab. Each scout will find a number of gladiators based on their network skill, and give you a rating of the gladiator's abilities based on their evaluation skill. I typically value scouts with a good evaluation skill over a large network, but hiring all of the available scouts at first is cheap and will give more gladiators to choose from. The scouts can easily be fired or replaced later as necessary.

Initially you will want gladiators that are capable of fighting right away to help generate money. In my experience, the most important stats for this are dexterity, strength, and a decent health pool (450+). Any weak stats can be fixed later through training, although health pool is the most difficult to improve. Fighters age relatively slowly compared to game speed, (each turn is one day) so even a fighter that is in their mid 30's will be viable for many hours of gameplay. You shouldn't be too picky in the first month, I reccommend hiring 3-5 of the best looking gladiator prospects.

After you have waited a few turns for your gladiators to arrive, we will need some staff to take care of them. First, we will need trainers. The "training" skill improves fighters every day, while the "coaching" skill only improves fighters when they fight. Because new fighters tend to get injured or fatigued and take long time to recover, it's better to initally hire trainers with good "training" ability, and complement that with good coaches later on. I would recommend hiring 2 or 3 trainers now.

You will also want a doctor with good "injury" skill and a doctor with good "sickness" skill. This helps fighters to recover faster and be healthy and ready to fight. The last staff member you need is a blacksmith. For now I would reccommend hiring a smith with good weapon skill, as armor does not become too important until later in the game. The smith will constantly improve weapons and armor in your armory, however they cannot repair damaged items. When staff with a good mix of both skills become available (400+ in both), it is recommended to always hire them if possible and fire existing staff if necessary.

The next step is to get some weapons for your fighters. Under the stable tab, if you click on "view" next to a fighter, you can see their weapon specialty. This is also visible by hovering over the fighter's name on the stable tab and in fight prep screens. Fighters take a penalty for fighting with a weapon they do not have specialty in. Now go to the market tab and buy up some weapons that match up with your gladiator's specialty. Your new fighters will not yet be trained in using armor, but if there is some cheap hide or leather armor you may want to buy it now anyway. To equip your new weapons, go back to the stable tab, view your fighters, and click on the appropriate weapon to equip it. New weapons and armor become available quite frequently and prices fluctuate, so check back often and you can often pick up good weapons for a bargain to use later. This also gives your smith time to buff them up before use.

Arena fights are very dangerous for untrained gladiators, so it is recommended to first do some exhibitions. Go to the office tab and on the left there will be a button to choose exhibition. This is a fight against an animal of your choice, in which your fighter is spared from death. Your fighter will get a good experience reward whether they win or lose, and you get small gold reward for victory. Initially, your fighters will only be able to handle a wolf, as they level up you can try tackling a more difficult animal. While bears and lions can provide great xp, keep in mind that fighters will often end up severly injured after a difficult fight. After level 10, fighters cannot fight in exhibitions any longer.

Once your fighters level up, you can improve their stats and choose a perk to assign to them. Stats are improved by clicking on the up arrow next to the stat in the view menu for the fighter, and perks are chosen by clicking on the "expertise" button under the fighter's portrait. Gladiators max out at level 40, and most stats can be improved up to 150. At low levels, most human opponents in the arena are sloppy and have a hard time hitting anything for significant damage. For this reason I prioritize dexterity to at least 30 first, so that we can hit the enemy and actually do damage. After that I make sure strength, stamina, and agility is also at least 30. Animals at the exhibition tend to have relatively high dexterity, so fighters with low agility and reflexes can struggle in those fights, but should be ok in real fights. Later on, I tend to stick to the same priorities, although I don't necessarily keep all stats in line. A good mid-level offensive fighter build might be 100 dex, 100 str, 80 stamina, 50 agi, 50 reflex, 40 int, and 500 hp. Fighters that are sick, injured or fatigued have lowered stats which can make it difficult to assign points correctly, therefore I usually wait until the fighter is healthy to train them up.

When choosing perks, it is wise to consider a long term plan. When starting out you will want to be fighting these gladiators in the arena as soon as possible to start winning some big purses. Armor is one of the best returns on investment, as the damage reduction is significant and armor is relatively cheap. If you have some cash reserves built up and are not struggling with early fights, investing in "fast learner" perks can pay huge dividends. Each perk point invested in this will eventually return (39-current level) extra stat points. This will make a mid or high level fighter significantly better than rivals of an equal level. Investing some points into flair is often worthwhile to protect good fighters from death, or if you have a great low-level fighter that you are planning to put into some risky high-level fights for a big payout. I tend to like the quickness and deftness traits, and the crit perks can be good in some situations. Lastly, try to save at least 10 points when your fighter reaches high/mid level for one or more of the "special" skills at the bottom of the expertise page, as they can be very powerful.

When starting out, it is easiest to focus on a relatively balanced approach. As your fighters progress, you may want to consider specialization. For instance, a fighter with high strength and dexterity, with perks in critical chance and critical damage, using the "Out Of The Gate" perk, the Aggressive stance, and a high quality buffed weapon might be able to quickly overcome their opponent despite having low stamina and defenses. On the other hand, a fighter with high agility, reflexes, and stamina might want to invest in the Quickness and Deftness perks, and fight in a defensive stance with good armor, to exhaust their opponent and drag out the fight.

After your fighters have gained a few levels and you have assigned stats and perks to them, you should be ready for your first real fight. When you visit the office, you can see the fights that are scheduled for the next few weeks. If you click enter you will be presented with a choice of house owners to fight against. The hype on that day determines the purse size and enemy fighter strength, so for now it is recommended to save your best fighters for massive or strong fights and use your weaker fighters on average or low hype fights. In the future you may want to take more risks for a bigger betting payoff. Fighters that are fatigued or injured will take a penalty to their stats, so it is recommended to only use healthy fighters if possible. You can back out of the fight screen and come back later up until the point you have chosen your fighter. If you are curious about what fighters the enemy boss might have available, you can go to the "Bosses" screen at the top of the Office screen and check out their current fighters.

After choosing a fighter, you will be presented with some choices about money. If you are struggling for money then you may want to suffer the morale hit for sharing only a small percentage with your gladiators. I have found that if they fight and win frequently, and the conditions of my stable are decent, then my gladiators stay pretty happy. I typically set the slider to share ~20%.

Betting odds can be a bit confusing. 2:1 means that fighter is the 2 to 1 favorite. Therefore, if the fighter wins, you will gain 50% of the bet amount. 1:1 means you would double up. 1:2 means the fighter is an underdog and you would win 2x your bet amount. Fighters with a high fame seem to be favored in the odds, although I think it also takes level into account. Betting against your own fighter reduces morale of your other gladiators somewhat. Personally, I like to train and equip my fighters as best as possible and therefore almost always bet heavily on their victory. For a new player I would recommend getting a few matches under your belt before placing big money on the betting purse.

If you want to hire more than 5 gladiators, you will need to go back to the stable table and upgrade your compound. This has both an upfront cost and an increased cost per day. Once you have won a few fights and made some money, it is wise to also upgrade some of the other amenities at your stable such as food, shelter, and bedding. Not only will this increase morale, but it also increases experience gained from training. Be careful however, as expanding your facilities and roster too quickly can drain funds rapidly over time. Keep in mind that gladiator and staff salary increases over time, so as your people level up they will cost more and more to maintain. It is highly reccommended to expand slowly, and build up a bankroll to fall back on if you unexpectedly lose a good fighter. If you are having success then you may also want to invest in sponsoring more fights to be scheduled next month from the office screen.

There can be times where you lose a few difficult fights that you took a big bet out on. Or, perhaps not enough fights are being scheduled for you to cover your rapidly spiraling upkeep costs. In order to recover you should immediately consider your staff and your existing roster of gladiators. Depending on how deep the hole is, you may be able to fire a few staff and free some of the gladiators. You can also contact one of the other town bosses (from the "Bosses" tab at the top of the screen) and sell some of your fighters. If you are in really deep, you may need to execute some of your staff or gladiators to claim their savings. You can check how much a gladiator has saved up in their view screen.

Even if you are totally broke, if you still have good fighters then one of the best (but risky) ways to make a lot of money very quickly is to go to the market and take out a loan on the day of a massive fight. You can then use this money to place a large bet, and hopefully use the profit to pay back the loan quickly. Keepr in mind that if your funds become negative, you will be unable to pay salaries of your fighters and staff. You only have a couple days before the staff will start to leave, but depending on your gladiators happiness and security level of the compound they may stick around longer. Sooner or later though, they will all leave unless you can win back the money somehow.

If you continue to win fights and kill enemy gladiators, eventually you will start to run out of people to fight in the initial city. At that point the game will send a mail telling you that you can advance to the next city, where the fights will be more difficult. There are 4 cities in total, with the final challenge being Rome.