ROME: Total War

[Stealth Hunter]

Finally, after years of playing, I have conquered every single empire AS every single empire and ruled for a thousand years. So, I liked it, but I wanted to know what everyone else thought of it. Personally, Greek Cities beat just about every other faction in the game, especially the Spartan Hoplites due to the fact they can survive just about anything thrown at them (except rage-infected elephants and flaming stones).

[Rilder]

Its a good game but the Europa Barbarorum mod really makes it a great game. :D

[HunterICX]

:up: I've turned the RTW campaign inside out on Hard settings

also I used a trick to unlock the unplayable factions in the campaign (look on a cheats website for the instructions)

I recently play RTW 1.5 online from time to time , good fun , but the exploit of the real game is just too much. cheap tricks to win fights in a dozen

[CCIP]

Its a good game but the Europa Barbarorum mod really makes it a great game. :D

:yep:

RTW just ain't half what it should be without mods. EB, RTR or other high-quality mods will do ya good!

[Stealth Hunter]

True, but I have yet to conquer under the other two expansion packs: Barbarian Invasion and Alexander. I've got a long ways to go it looks like...:huh:

[Syxx_Killer]

You conquered every territory with every faction? Wow. The farthest I was able to get was about half of the territories before getting bored with it. I applaud you. Good work!:up:

[Biggles]

Wow....never got that far...playing MII:TW as England and it's not going too bad actually...France is fallen! Denmark on the other hand....naaasty....:lol:

[Dowly]

Just started playing it after I saw the "300" a week or so back. Atm, using a great mod called 'S.P.Q.R. Total War'. Isnt hard to guess that I choose the Greek Cities as my factions. There's two reasons; 1) I've never really played any other faction that the Rome 2) Them Spartans are just über-killers. 600 (4 formations) of them held out enemy that outnumbered me by thousands. Oh and I just love to wake up my neigbours in the middle of the night by yelling: "THIS IS SPARTAAAA, YOU ROMAN NUTSACK!!!!" :rotfl:

[HunterICX]

Do not make foolery out of the romans Dowly
I will kick those spartans back to the hellhole where they came from with the mighty Romans!

:p

[SUBMAN1]

Do not make foolery out of the romans Dowly
I will kick those spartans back to the hellhole where they came from with the mighty Romans!

:p

Agreed. The game may be too stupid to deal with Hoplites effectively, but the Romans easily defeated them through smaller and more manuverable units. The hoplites can't turn to match the smaller Roman legion and simply forcing the hoplites to break formation is all you need to easily defeat them.

By the time the Roman legions showed up, the hoplites became obsolete practically over night!

-S

[Dowly]

In the game (not IRL), the spartans can take ALOT of beating. They will never flee and even archers can unload half their arrows to the formation of spartans with very small effect. But remember, it's the SPQR mod I'm talking about. In it, the spartans are more flexible, there's no phalanx formation button, they form it automatically when enemy is attacking. Also, they can charge at the enemy now, with their hoplites being somewhat smaller than they were in the vanilla game. Anyways, you gotta love them. Now, back to kick some butt. ;)

http://xs316.xs.to/xs316/07261/Sparta1.jpg

[SUBMAN1]

In the game (not IRL), the spartans can take ALOT of beating. They will never flee and even archers can unload half their arrows to the formation of spartans with very small effect. But remember, it's the SPQR mod I'm talking about. In it, the spartans are more flexible, there's no phalanx formation button, they form it automatically when enemy is attacking. Also, they can charge at the enemy now, with their hoplites being somewhat smaller than they were in the vanilla game. Anyways, you gotta love them. Now, back to kick some butt. ;)


Hmm. That is one mod I'll avoid. Hoplites were never as manuverable you would suggest, and the Romans bested them by using bait and switch type tactics, and their was little the real hoplites could do about it. Back when the greeks were the world power, hoplites were the world power, but Roman Legions were designed to exploit their weaknesses, and it worked, allowing Rome to pretty much conquer the known world. Their only real nemesis were the Carthaginians with their elephants, but they would fall in time as well. Rome was the right force for the right time. Hoplites were the right force for the time after the fall of the Egyptian empire.

Some days, maybe I'm too hard core in the realism department.

-S

[Dowly]

In the game (not IRL), the spartans can take ALOT of beating. They will never flee and even archers can unload half their arrows to the formation of spartans with very small effect. But remember, it's the SPQR mod I'm talking about. In it, the spartans are more flexible, there's no phalanx formation button, they form it automatically when enemy is attacking. Also, they can charge at the enemy now, with their hoplites being somewhat smaller than they were in the vanilla game. Anyways, you gotta love them. Now, back to kick some butt. ;)


Hmm. That is one mod I'll avoid. Hoplites were never as manuverable you would suggest, and the Romans bested them by using bait and switch type tactics, and their was little the real hoplites could do about it. Back when the greeks were the world power, hoplites were the world power, but Roman Legions were designed to exploit their weaknesses, and it worked, allowing Rome to pretty much conquer the known world. Their only real nemesis were the Carthaginians with their elephants, but they would fall in time as well. Rome was the right force for the right time. Hoplites were the right force for the time after the fall of the Egyptian empire.

Some days, maybe I'm too hard core in the realism department.

-S
True, but the thing I like about the S.P.Q.R. Spartans, is that the Hoplite spear isnt 10m in lenght like in Vanilla RTW. AFAIK, the Spartan Hoplite spear was ~2,5m long.

http://hellenic-art.com/armour/ah3529.jpg

Same goes for the stance of the Spartan Hoplites. From what I've read, the stance was; Shields at front and spears would be thrusted from above, not from the side of the shield. Cant honestly remember how it was in vanilla RTW. :hmm:

Anyways, here's few photos of the Spartan Hoplite stance I found from Re-enactment forums:
http://www.4hoplites.com/PropPory.jpg

http://www.larp.com/hoplite/rcRD27.jpg

[SUBMAN1]

Yep - they are 10 meters long about in RTW. Crazy, I know. Maybe this is why they are nearly invulnerable from a frontal assault? Still, they can take attack from two different sides very well.

Of course, RTW was a little liberal in applying some of the special units in the Roman legion, such as the praetorian units who would only accompany the Emporer in very small numbers, yet you could make divisions of them in RTW. Also, some of their unit structure is way off too, such as who made up the bulk of the forces - they were not as they are depicted in the game.

-S

[Dowly]

RTW kinda reminds me of IL2. In RTW the Roman Legion gets special attention. Like you mentioned, lots of different troops compared to the rest of the factions. The same thing's in IL2, the Russian side planes are made with more detail than the rest.

Ok, back to Spartans. Did I already mention that I just love them? :rotfl:Anyways, I made a little test on my campaign. Mixed formation of Numidian infantry & archers were heading my way and as they were still far from any of my cities, I put my Spartans to a test. One of my Spartan formations were nearby, so I chose two of my veteran Spartan hoplite squads (150+150+1 Captain) and attacked the Numidians.

4000+ Numidians Vs. my 301 Spartans. The result was... umm... surprising. :smug:

http://xs116.xs.to/xs116/07262/Sparta3.jpg

[Biggles]

You didn't let the computer fight now did you?:rotfl:

[Dowly]

You didn't let the computer fight now did you?:rotfl:

Hehe, nope. Nor did I move the formations after pressing the START button. The Numidian infantry was literally walking on me. That's why I like the Spartans, they will never flee, so a handfull of them can make even the largest enemy army to run away.

[Heibges]

I love RTW.

I play a self-modded SPQR, and I don't know if I like tweaking the game or playing it more.

If you like RTW you might like Imperial Glory, which takes place in the Napoleonic Age. But is is not as good as RTW in my opinion.

[SUBMAN1]

You didn't let the computer fight now did you?:rotfl:
Hehe, nope. Nor did I move the formations after pressing the START button. The Numidian infantry was literally walking on me. That's why I like the Spartans, they will never flee, so a handfull of them can make even the largest enemy army to run away.

Nice, but up against a human player, the outcome would have been the opposite!

[Reaves]

MTW:2 is what I play nowadays. Even with RTW I wanted to get back to MTW. Great game all the same. Can't say I finished it with all factions, well done.

Certainly a label i'll happily purchase the next game for. Total War is just great.

[GlobalExplorer]

I got STW in 2000 and since then no other TW (or other) game has impressed me that much. STW was the perfect game for me, since then it's gone downhill. I am not saying that the sequels (MTW, RTW, MTW2) were bad, but they never reached the old standard.

CA have made the mistake to release the original TW concept to death, and now they really have to find something new.

[NeonSamurai]

As for the Hoplites, well you are both right and wrong about the spear length. They did use a shorter spear for the period of the Greek city state wars and the Greek Persian wars. However Philip II of Macedonia changed all that and reworked the Phalanx making the formation deeper, and also changing the spear to a 6+meter long lance and making the shield smaller. Greece at the time was under the control of Macedonia, so the Romans faced mainly Macedonian phalanxes.

The Macedonian phalanx with the long lances were virtualy unstopable from the front. Weaker on the sides and totaly open from the rear, they were also moderatly vulnerable to archers (the lance forest helped protect against arrows some what), and very vulnerable to flanking cavalry as they could not move very quickly other then forward and it took time to change its facing with out rotating. The unit also can fight for maybe an hour maximum before the soldiers would pass out from over exertion. The Roman Legion did not want to attack them head on, but would harry them with archers, calvalry and spear throwers, and try to lead them into rough terain or hills which would break up the coheasion of the phalanx, or just plain exhast them.

The Spartan phalanx however would have been eaten alive by a Roman Legion unit head on as they were designed to kill up close in a shield to shield fight with their short stabbing swords (gladius) and large shields. The Spartan phalanx relied on shield pushing and spear attacks from the second rank (which was difficult as the back ranks would push against the back of the ones in front giving the front line no ability to move) Add to that the Roman pilum which was designed to render shields worthless (by penetrating the shield and often the person behind it, then bending so the shield would become unwieldly and get hung up on the ground or other shields.) which were all thrown before engaging in close combat.

The Roman Legion was designed to defeat and destroy their adversaries which pretty much all relied on spear and long sword weapons along with shields.

Btw agree with STW being the best, the only thing it realy lacked was good castle warfare (and maybe a better political system), I do kind of hope they remake it at some point, if they just left the gameplay as is, updated the graphics, improved castle sieging, and added to the political system it would be perfect.

[GlobalExplorer]

I read that in their new add-on (Kingdoms) CA have worked really hard on the AI .. so there is some little hope imo. Rome with improved AI would have been a much better game than it actually was, cause the graphics were already fantastic, mods could make up for the arcadishness, but they couldn't really improve the AI.

Btw I already saw MTW2 as a step in the right direction but what I really can't stand any more is the scale of the game/map. Instead of trying to squeeze the whole world into the campaign game (and therefore making it overly abstract), they should create smaller, shorter, much more detailed campaigns (that also means seasonal or even monthly turns for me), very much as they did in STW. I think a lot of my frustration with TW began in late 2001, when CA changed the scope from the original "Crusader" to Medieval TW - certainly a successful move to widen their audience and please their publisher - they sacrificed detail for scope and have continued to do so since then. It is also strange that sales went up with the first MTW, when I found it was a big step back from STW.

[Boris]

Yeah something that has always seemed strange to me in RTW and MTW2 with the AI is that I can fire arrows at a defending enemy army till I'm out of arrows, and they won't move and just take it while I'm decimating their units. Still entertaining though.

[Biggles]

They're making smaller more detailed campaigns for Kingdoms. One of them is in the Holy Land....man, that's gotta be fun to play....

[TheSatyr]

I have to say that I'm another one who felt that STW was the best of them all.

As for MTW2,I've never been able to get into it at all. It just feels like an expansion of RTW. I was hoping for major changes but it just seems like the same game with different skins.(Yeah it has better graphics,but that seems to be about it.). I'm also not too happy about them dropping the close in city view like they had in RTW.

[TwistedFemur]

:up: I've turned the RTW campaign inside out on Hard settings

also I used a trick to unlock the unplayable factions in the campaign (look on a cheats website for the instructions)

I recently play RTW 1.5 online from time to time , good fun , but the exploit of the real game is just too much. cheap tricks to win fights in a dozen

I know what you mean I rarely play online games except for eve and wow because of all the cheats

[TwistedFemur]

Yeah something that has always seemed strange to me in RTW and MTW2 with the AI is that I can fire arrows at a defending enemy army till I'm out of arrows, and they won't move and just take it while I'm decimating their units. Still entertaining though.

I think thats been fixed with the lateest patch:yep:

[Cybermat47]

RESSURECTION TIME!

Anyone here got the Roma Surrectum II mod? It makes the game look a lot better :)

[Skybird]

Link?

[Feuer Frei!]

Google is your friend Skybird:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/roma-surrectum-ii

[johnpera]

Most thorough stragegy game ever.

[Otto Fuhrmann]

I have to say I am more partial to playing Europa Barbarorum, for the first Rome. It feels much more like it should be, in my humble opinion of course.