Rome : Total War

[NowhereMan]

I've got say this game is just fucking beautiful. Playing as Scipii I've had some fun moments in battles, normal/normal is easy enough to not be tense while still giving interesting battles. Not challenging but its entertaining, biggest problem I've run into so far was when Carthage built a 15 ship super fleet with a triremes and began a naval campaign against me. Carhago delenda est indeed.

I actually found the camera was fairly easy to get used to, left-click to select units and right click to make them do stuff is the general rule. Getting your units to face a different direction or choosing the depth of formation is a simple matter of right clicking, hold and drag to get the desired formation.

I know you can swap retinues but I haven't figured out how yet, I've picked them up but there seems to be nowhere to drop them once I've done that. I've also run into the "expand to avoid being broke" problem, fortunately I've been getting Senate missions that actually help with this, apart from the odd go and piss off the Greeks because we hate you missions. The replayability with the Roman factions alone seems pretty high, factor in all the other ones and this game looks like it's got some enduring appeal.

Hopefully they'll fix the bugs and balance it out a bit more, having to put all my cities to the flame every few years isn't particularly appealing. Friend of mine is still complaining about the lack of any campaign multiplayer, he really enjoys TBS ones and he's now holding out hope for a fan made mod. Not too likely though I'd say.

[Ralence]

I know you can swap retinues but I haven't figured out how yet, I've picked them up but there seems to be nowhere to drop them once I've done that.

  You need to have both people at the same location to move the retinues, either in the same army, or the same city, then just pick them up and drop them on the other persons portrait.  I've been swapping them whenever governors start to near 50ish, or whenever I get a decent family member that comes of age.

[HaemishM]

Hopefully they'll fix the bugs and balance it out a bit more, having to put all my cities to the flame every few years isn't particularly appealing. Friend of mine is still complaining about the lack of any campaign multiplayer, he really enjoys TBS ones and he's now holding out hope for a fan made mod. Not too likely though I'd say.

Tell your buddy not to hold his breath. The multiplayer campaign game was one of the promised features of Shogun: Total War, and they scrapped it when they couldn't figure out how to make it work. Seems most people had problems waiting out their turn when other players had to have actual battles, which can sometimes take up to 30 minutes or more. Considering I've had campaign games of both Medieval and Shogun that lasted 10-20 hours and still not finished, I can see how that would be a problem.

Still, it'd be one helluva multiplayer game.

[Slayerik]

Anyone see the history channel show, Decisive Battles? It uses the R:TW engine to reinact great battles from that era. Pretty damn cool, and the host is Cpt. Spears from Band of Brothers! Woot!

[HaemishM]

I watch that show. My buddy and me usually play miniature wargames on Friday nights, and we make sure to catch the show when we can remember it. Nothing like a fine wine, a game of DBM and Decisive Battles.

[WayAbvPar]

I finally picked this up over the weekend. I fucking hate RTS games, but I am really enjoying this. I still get stabby when real time battles get hectic and things are happening offscreen, but for the most part it is fun as hell. Does anyone know if there is a patch out yet?

[HaemishM]

I think there is a 1.1 patch, that doesn't change a lot.

Total War Download Page.

[Rasix]

Yes, there's one. It reduces the effectiveness of elephants and patches in multiplayer.  

Ohh btw, never try Spain on hard/hard.  You just get fucking mauled.  Gaul and Rome attack you at the same time.  It's just brutal.  I just can't see any way around it because you're losing money right off the bat.  Ohh and Carthage is sitting right below you.  Uck.

I think it might just be the difficulty settings. For some reason, I completely destroy any game's AI if it's at the normal setting.  Once I bump up the settings I immediately start getting shitkicked.  I think there needs to be a setting inbetween normal and hard called "Not as stupid but not cheating.  We swear."  One would think I'd get better and start trouncing that difficulty as well, but no go.  Heh, I think never having enough time to devote yourself like you did as a kid to a game means you're always going to be exceeding above average just not any good.  /Ramble

[Paelos]

Yeah Civ III needed that difficulty mode badly. Everytime I played on a hard I'm like, why do they have three times as many cities as me in the first 20 turns?

[Shannow]

 I think there needs to be a setting inbetween normal and hard called "Not as stupid but not cheating.  We swear."  

Good luck cause that would require the devs to actually, you know, code a smarter AI. Civ IIIs difficulty levels are distinguished simply by how much of a head start the AI civs get...I've never noticed the computer actually playing smarter on the hardest levels it just gets more shit so it takes me longer to catch up and win.


edit: I do remember one game though, War of the Lance, where I would actually turn the AI to its lowest level for a better challenge. I found that if the AI got the right alliances it would attack my main powerbase early on before I got established..at the highest AI it would dick around attacking periphals letting me get well prepared for its forthcoming attacks. Go figure.

[Krakrok]

I'm still on my first campaign to 50 provinces playing as the red Roman faction with campaign on hard and battles on very hard. I have 44 provinces so far and I've won 214 battles and lost 14 battles. I usually play the battles (instead of autobattle).

The key for me seems to be "use lots of cavalry". As for managing cities I usually exterminate the populous when I take it over but now that I am nearing the endgame some of the cities have grown enough where they are starting to rebel. I just keep large garrisons of troops in all of them and destroy any new rebel armies that show up with 3-4 cavalry units. Any new faction generals that show up I ferry out to cities that don't have one yet.

The only units that seem to be able to give cavalry grief is chariots. So far my strategies for taking them out seems to be: have 4-5 times the number of cavalry or use missle troops (preferably missle cavalry) on them.

The Egyptians give me some serious grief though (especially in sieges) because they max out their walls and have missle chariots running around inside rendering my 80% cavalry armies useless. It won't be long now though.

I don't think I've used any diplomats or assassins the whole game so far.

[eldaec]

I love the improvements to the battle engine, the way units turn (or fail to turn) seems much more 'realistic', and units like the elephants, the wardogs, incendiary pigs etc seem to add more vareity than the usual cavalry < spears < missles < cavalry game of previous versions, also the battles seem to revolve less around the need to find a really big hill and fit everyone on it, which I always felt dominated the earlier TW games a little too much.

The campaign map is an obvious gain, the squalor and family member governor rules seem espeicially impressive.


And finally, Onagers with flaming rocks fucking rule.

That is all.

[Paelos]

I got this recently and I'm playing through my first Imperial campaign thus far. Here are my impressions.

The battle engine is awesome. Tactics play a huge part in success of every battle, but this is moreso the case on the sieges (attack/defend) rather than the open field conflicts. The highest level archers with flaming attack seem to be the best counter to cavalry that I've found so far, provided you can stick a few spearman in front of them to take the early assault. It demoralizes the cavalry units quickly. On offense, a steady does of cavalry can remove infantry attacks of 3x or more depending on your commanders.

If you haven't messed around with spies or assassins you are missing out on a big portion of the game. Spies are very very key in assaulting large cities since they can give you a breakdown of the army you are up against, and they can give you a good chance of taking the enemy gates without a fight. Assassins are awesome because they can eliminate pesky diplomats wandering around, and they keep your enemies in certain cities leaderless in a fight. I've been slicing up enemy diplomats like a hibachi chef, and nobody can get any alliances done against me. Plus, your assassins level up and take on retinues like any other character, so they improve their killing percentages with each successful kill.

The downside of the game by far is managing finances. This is probably the clumsiest part of the game that I've seen thus far. Money is a huge issue through the game, even if you hold numerous continents. I blame this mostly on the fact that army upkeep is ludicrously high, and in some cases as much as 66% of unit cost per turn. If I'm running 26 provinces I don't think I should be trying to scrape together enough money to keep my empire from going broke. That's just stupid. Also, despite best efforts, some provinces won't break-even ever. They are just sucking chest wounds on the empire. I've actually let cities be conquered because they were such a pain in the ass. Again, that's stupid. The game needs to find a better way to divide up the upkeep of the army if taxes on the population in the city won't cover it even on "very high".

All in all, the biggest obstacle to the game is trying to manage your family so your empire doesn't go broke, which I find to be a rather unworthy pursuit over trying to manage armies to fight for you. Other than that, the game is pure gravy when you get the chance to attack something.

Also, a few things are way too overpowered.
1) Cavalry, as stated above they will run over anything with impunity
2) Chariots, they are way too fast
3) Sapping points, there is no other reason to bother with siege equipment, these are an unstoppable way into the city, i've never used a ram on any stone wall.

Perhaps future patches will even that out, but I doubt it.

[HaemishM]

The downside of the game by far is managing finances. This is probably the clumsiest part of the game that I've seen thus far. Money is a huge issue through the game, even if you hold numerous continents. I blame this mostly on the fact that army upkeep is ludicrously high, and in some cases as much as 66% of unit cost per turn. If I'm running 26 provinces I don't think I should be trying to scrape together enough money to keep my empire from going broke. That's just stupid. Also, despite best efforts, some provinces won't break-even ever. They are just sucking chest wounds on the empire. I've actually let cities be conquered because they were such a pain in the ass. Again, that's stupid. The game needs to find a better way to divide up the upkeep of the army if taxes on the population in the city won't cover it even on "very high".

Again, this is very historical. The Roman Empire was definitely a victim of its own success. The costs of running such a large empire eventually outweighed the benefits. They gave up the British Isles because it was too expensive to maintain, leaving it to be conquered by the "barbarians." It's the reason most armies have real issues keeping what they conquer. Napoleon, Genghis Khan's successors, Alexander's successors, the British empire et. al. all found it difficult to hold onto these massive conquests for long.

[Paelos]

So wait, I'm supposed to be happy about dicking around with my finances the whole game because its "realistic" to the period?

Thanks, but I'd rather have fun trying to play war instead of accountant. I do that at work.

[HaemishM]

Just saying that's the reason for what you're saying. I'm not saying it's an insurmountable issue, only that attrition through over-expansion is historical. And they've built the Total War series to be all about the history.

[eldaec]

'Dicking around with finances' in Rome, like in most games of it's ilk, really just consists of doing a quick scan of your existing armies and disbanding all the obselete spear thowers, or never used training facilities once every 20 turns or so.

Personally I feel they need to crank up the upkeep costs even higher.

In general wargames that work on the basis of upkeep rather than construction cost being the limiting factor work better. For a start they punish people who just sit and build a gazillion tanks before attacking anyone, and tend to lead to more balanced tactical battles.

It also prevents everything after your first 20 provinces being an enormous waste of time with an all too inevitable outcome. Like, for instance, in M:TW.

Sapping points

Onagers are just as effective, and you end up with spare ammo to fire at the bad guys.

Walls in general need an upgrade, whichever siege method you use, you'll generally get through the wall with few losses.

[Sky]

really just consists of doing a quick scan of your existing armies and disbanding all the obselete spear thowers

Just another example of trying to keep the black man down imo.

[Paelos]

I suppose in reality its not the finances part that bothers me as much as the clunky interface of trying to get things to happen. The reality of my town's income is buried deep in menus that took me a while to even find, and they aren't even that clear when you do get to them. The financials page is nice, but there is no real information there that you can change on the fly. A quick menu of all the towns listed where you could change the tax rates without scrolling all over creation would go a long way. There is no way to allocate your troop costs except the way that the game does, which is by population. I would much rather be able to set higher percentages of overhead to higher income towns rather than stare at one town that's losing $2K every turn due to troops. There is no upgrade function to obsolete units even though there is a retrain option available to restaff depleted forces. That was a key feature of Civ when your tech increases made spearmen useless, yet in this game you must disband and start over from scratch.

If there is an army total menu, I haven't found it yet, but that could be because the manual is a total POS. I'm finding most of the key stuff on my own. I'd like to see what my breakdown of total troops is in comparison to cavalry, missle, and infantry so i can better equip my units. I also agree that walls need an upgrade because unless you have epic walls with flaming archers manning them, they are useless.

[HaemishM]

If it's anything like the other TW games, there is an army list, but it's a bit useless for anything other than informational purposes. Controlling the economy can be a bit tedious, having to click on every single province to control individual tax rates. Whether by design or accident, I have no idea.

[eldaec]

There is no way to allocate your troop costs except the way that the game does, which is by population.

I'm intrigued as to why you care how such costs are allocated, but I do agree that there should be a summed total of all your towns' operating profit/loss projections in the bottom right corner of the screen.

Most of the financial summary tools are utterly useless because they fail to separate out capital expenses and windfall payments below the operating profit/loss line.

Telling me I made a 1359 loss last turn when that included construction & recruitment costs as well as diplomatic and looting one-off windfalls is not helpful.

The whole issue is somewhat moot, however, because I have yet to see anyone play Rome and not end up with at least 25% of their army and 40% of their buildings standing idle and eligible for disbandment at any time.

How many of those conquered territories of yours still have tier 1 barracks sitting around going nothing except draining the exchequer?

[Paelos]

Well, I can see what you are saying. Keeping a staffed army in every province isn't practical, and that makes sense. I'm in a very Civ mindset of play where upgrading all cities to the gills was extremely helpful, but I need to retool my thinking to play this game. This game seems to put more of the focus on intensifying your military production to a few key areas and letting the rest of the world go on its merry way. Just a different style than I'm used to I suppose.

Still, my main problem is that when I'm on auto govern, cities without governors keep cranking out crappy units and military buildings even when they are on orders to culturally or growth build. Again, this makes the tedium of placing family members everywhere an issue, but I suppose that is an intended barrier of conquest for the game. That's something that took me by surprise a little.

My newest issue is with fleets. They are a little on the uninspired side. Very very cheap to build and they play no real part except as shuttles. You can blockade ports, but I haven't seen how that has a big effect yet. Also, why am did they always make fleet battles an auto option only? I would have enjoyed conquest on the high seas as well, but not its just a side game I hardly bother with unless I need to get to one of the islands.

[Sky]

My friend the eqholic just gave me his copy of the game, not sure why he bought it as he doesn't like strategy games, I'm betting he thought it'd be like the one strat game he's liked: Myth. That's the usual reasoning.

Anyway, after reading this thread I might have a fighting chance ;) Now I just need TIME to play, heh. Played through the tutorial, nice enough looking game. Wish you could slow down gametime a bit, though. Missing lots of cool little bits, like the little celebrations when a unit is victorious and whatnot.

Like Paelos, I'd probably have approached it like Civ, which isn't the best way to approach a lot of games. Hey, how about a Colonization sequel? Been playing the emu of that excellent game a bit...

[Rasix]

Well, I can see what you are saying. Keeping a staffed army in every province isn't practical, and that makes sense. I'm in a very Civ mindset of play where upgrading all cities to the gills was extremely helpful, but I need to retool my thinking to play this game. This game seems to put more of the focus on intensifying your military production to a few key areas and letting the rest of the world go on its merry way. Just a different style than I'm used to I suppose.

Do buildings have upkeep on them? Heh, I never actually bothered looking.  A good strategy for empire building, especially on the frontiers is to maybe build up one or two cities on the far reaches, but leave the rest of them bare minimum development with a minimal garrison.  This allows you to use on or two spots to keep your borders replete with fresh/upgraded troups and it also allows you to keep unrest due to squallor down to a minimum.  Of course I burn down their temples and slaughter their populations when I take over, but I just want to keep the savages in line.

Still, my main problem is that when I'm on auto govern, cities without governors keep cranking out crappy units and military buildings even when they are on orders to culturally or growth build. Again, this makes the tedium of placing family members everywhere an issue, but I suppose that is an intended barrier of conquest for the game. That's something that took me by surprise a little.

You can turn automanage off in the settings.  If you do this midgame, you have to uncheck automanage on the settlements that currently are being automanaged.  It still helps to have family members at your more significant areas for their management and combat skills.

My newest issue is with fleets. They are a little on the uninspired side. Very very cheap to build and they play no real part except as shuttles. You can blockade ports, but I haven't seen how that has a big effect yet. Also, why am did they always make fleet battles an auto option only? I would have enjoyed conquest on the high seas as well, but not its just a side game I hardly bother with unless I need to get to one of the islands.

Blockading ports has a big affect on trade.  Unless you haven't noticed yet, naval trade is possibly the biggest earner in the game.  This is why I make it a prereq to conquer as many coastal towns as I can and upgrade their shipyards as far as I can.   I think their reasoning for the uninspired naval portion of the game, is that they wanted the focus to be on the ground battles, which they pulled off spectacularly (imbalances aside).

A couple other random points based on your posts:

Don't worry about individual town income.  The game portions out the costs of maintaining your empired based on population.  Your big population centers will always have 4 digit losses, this is a given.  Ports will do a bit better than some, but not by much.

Walls, especially stone become a must in the late game.  I've never lost an assault, no matter badly outclassed if I have stone walls.  The computer rarely brings onagers to the field.  Also, seiges become much more difficult later on as it becomes a necessity to field seige engines as storming walls and using rams is for suckers.  Onangers do a spectacular job of softening the defenders while avoiding those icky losses from arrow towers, archers, boiling oil and heavy infantry poised on the walls.

It's a fun game, but some of the imbalances are just ridiculous.  You'll find this to be evident if you end up battling a Gaul army that's stocked with 6 family members. Yes, that's 6 groups of heavy horse that you're going to have to contend with.  I barely beat an army of just over 1200 with 2000 when they pulled that crap (well, I had to field a lot of mercenaries).  Cav, elephants, chariot archers, and some other units tend to make the battles a little fucked up a times where army balance just gets thrown right out the window.

[personman]

Just another example of trying to keep the black man down imo.

All of the sudden an old SNL skit with Chase and Pryor comes to mind...

[Paelos]

Yes you could fill a warehouse with what I haven't noticed yet about this game. Mostly because it does involve a lot of unscripted exploration. Like I just figured out how to build forts and watchtowers in the field. Forts are pretty stupid unless you are a straggling general waiting for reinforcements, but watchtowers are so key in big provinces where FOW lets rebels run rampant. The downside is that only generals can build them, not just regular units.

As for the blockades, I can see how that would disrupt trade, i should delve a little more into my displeasure with boats. The main fact is that even when I'm winning battles, it's too easy for me not to do heavy casualties to the enemy and they row away. You almost need a ridiculously overwhelming margin to destroy their fleet, or just a low number on their side. Either way, I find myself playing tag on the high seas instead of being able to control the kill count. When i auto battle in the field, that's normal, but I can take control and reduce the army to a number than could fit in a Volvo if I want to. Such is not the case with naval battles, and it irks me.

I know it sounds like I'm nitpicking the game, but I really do enjoy it. These items are meerly things I've noticed that cause me minor grief but aren't at all gamebreaking. Overall, the game is a triumph on many levels, trumping many of the gameplay successes that Civ has released in III. It's not perfect, but close enough that I'm playing an RTS for the first time since WCIII and not hating life.

[eldaec]

Forts do have purposes, though limited ones.

You can use them around settlements to delay a siege starting, or when a city is building up to more than 20 units and you want to be able to build more without having to leave small numbers of units outside the walls and vulnerable to attack, as well as for controlling choke points.

Remember a general is required to build a fort, but a captain can maintain a fort just fine.

[Zane0]

Word is that forts will also reduce the frequency of those brigands who sometimes pop up in your provinces.