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cfmdobbie
High Emperor
Joined: 01 Jul 2002
Posts: 1859
Location: London, England |
| Rome: Total War, one day in |
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So Rome: Total War came out on Friday, I bought it on Saturday, and was playing it until 2am this morning. Here are my thoughts on it so far:
Firstly, I'd like to assure everyone who's been waiting a long time for this game to come out - your wait was not in vain! This is a very good game, and anyone who liked the previous games is sure to love it.
However, this is not your daddy's Total War - on the campaign map at least this game has a lot more in common with Civilisation than Shogun. You're still vying for control of provinces, control of a province is still tied to capturing that province's city, but units do not move on a per-province basis. Units have a certain movement allowance, so if the provinces are small and the allowance large, you could transverse several provinces in a single turn. Much more likely, however, is that your allowance is barely sufficient to get from the city to the border in one turn. Movement in hostile territory is severely hampered, by the inclusion of Civ-style "zones of control".
Your generals are no longer just a star against a unit - they are members of your family, are units in their own right, and each travel with bodyguards. Also, your generals are now critical to city management, but more on that later.
The passage of time has been simplified - turns are six months long, so it's either Summer or Winter. While I mourn the loss of Spring and Autumn, I haven't played nearly enough to say whether or not it'll make a difference.
Your ruling class is now viewable in family-tree form. You can pick sucessors, keep an eye on the family maidens, and arrange marriages to bring powerful characters under your control. Unfortunately, they haven't included a "divide up the family silver" module, and there's no way to write grouchy uncle Ned out of your will - but I'm sure there'll be a Sims 2: Total War crossover adding these essential features to the game.
If anything, Rome: Total War is a game about death, but not only in the limbs-hacked-off way, but also in the he-had-a-wonderful-life way. All your family members have a finite lifespan, and so do your unique, named units. I had three spies in an enemy city, ready to open the city gates once my army had been built up enough, but I tarried too long. In time, your spies will die off in natural or unnatural ways. It's quite annoying to have a well-trained Diplomat who's handling critical negotiations with an advanced power just keel over and die on you, but it does accentuate the city-building side of things more - as your units won't be around forever, can can't rely on training them up over time. Start your education earlier, train your generals better, and you'll be better off in the long run.
On the city side of things, this is going to take some practice - I haven't worked out how to turn a decent profit yet. The generals I mentioned earlier double up as your city Governors - having a governor in a city allows you to set tax rates etc, and generally make the city work more efficiently. However, when your governor keels over the city invariably decends into anarchy. This happens a lot more frequently than I'd like! The obvious solution is to keep two generals in each city, one to rule and one as backup, and this works initially when you have a couple of cities in a small area. Quite what I'll do once the empire begins to thin out and the size of my family tree is eclipsed by the number of cities, I don't know. Pick up my pitchfork and join the anarchists, I guess.
The graphics are fantastic! Sunlight glitters off snow-capped peaks, clouds are reflected in the waters of the Med, and tiny little trees sway in the wind. Marvellous.
How are the battles, you ask? Well, we're back to proper Total War territory here. Roman Archers pelting savages from long distance, legions advancing slowly on the primitive Greeks, seige-weaponry hurling blocks of stone into the massed hordes. Great fun.
The Elephants turn out to be a nice addition - in one historical battle I was rampaging the streets of a Greek city trying to kill anything that didn't speak Latin. My band of heavily-armoured elephants came around a corner to find themselves in a long street with no side-roads, filled with Greeks. I did the obvious thing: double-clicked on the other end of the street. My elephants ran straight though the lot of them, trampling everything in their way. Then I told them to go back again...
I've spotted a few UI bugs, places where clicking doesn't do what you expect it to, but these will be addressed in the first patch, I expect.
Early days, but I can safely say that this is a GOOD game. I hope to find some more time today to play it.
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Charlie Dobbie
=Member of The Nonflamers' Guild=
=Moderator of the Morrowind/Oblivion Forums= |
Sun Oct 03, 2004 12:55 pm |
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Patriot
Small Tiger
Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 1421
Location: Athens,Greece |
| Re: Rome: Total War, one day in |
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Great game.I've played the demo and I'm waiting to buy it till it hits the stores here in Greece.
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Sun Oct 03, 2004 2:17 pm |
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X-dANGEr
Unknown Destiny
Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 2383
Location: The X place |
Alittle ques.
How many teams is there in it(factions)???
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Sun Oct 03, 2004 3:45 pm |
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Lord_Brownie
High Emperor
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
Posts: 575
Location: Unfashionable arm of the spiral galaxy |
Sounds good. How does it compare to Lords of the Realm 2 which I liked? I dont play too many rts/turn based combat games because I still get alot of enjoyment out of Lords 2 and the 1st Panzer Genral, and I didnt like Warcraft 2.
LB |
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Sun Oct 03, 2004 5:07 pm |
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xSamhainx
Paws of Doom
Joined: 11 Sep 2002
Posts: 2192
Location: San Diego |
Thanks for the heads-up on this game, cfm 
Ive seen a few of the History Channel's excellent "decisive battles" series using the Rome:TW engine, and was pretty darn impressed by what I saw graphics-wise. I think the prior titles were nothing to write home about on the graphics, glad they seem to have improved vastly in the one area I felt the TW series had been sorely lacking thus far. I wasnt big into Shogun, but I did like Medieval, and Im glad the generals and lineage have been fleshed out alot more than they were before.
As far as the economy goes, Ive always had trouble with that one for a while. Nothing a few hundred hours of gameplay cant fix 
I was at best buy getting a birthday gift for a friend, when of course, I end up buying myself a little something while Im there! It came to a choice between R:TW and Warhammer 40K, and WH40K won out. I noticed R:TW was roughly 15.oo cheaper than WH40k here locally, but I notice it's "brand new full game price" online.
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“Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.”-Mark Twain |
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Sun Oct 03, 2004 6:23 pm |
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cfmdobbie
High Emperor
Joined: 01 Jul 2002
Posts: 1859
Location: London, England |
quote:
Originally posted by X-dANGEr
Alittle ques.
How many teams is there in it(factions)???
Only the one that you can play, as far as I can see. The technology tree hints at other faction's tech trees, but this appears to be informational - they aren't playable.
quote:
Originally posted by Lord_Brownie
Sounds good. How does it compare to Lords of the Realm 2 which I liked?
Haven't played that, I'm afraid. I can say that it's nothing like Warcraft, though!
Having managed to find a little time last night, I gave Rome another go. I'm spotting quite a substantial number of UI bugs - things that auto-select that shouldn't, things that appear that shouldn't, places where clicking doesn't do what it should etc. Feels like they could have done a lot more testing on this - some of these bugs are really obvious, and should never have got through the most basic UI walkthrough. But anyway.
The secret to money is buildings! There are a lot of buildings that either improve happiness (allowing you to bump up the tax rate) or make trade proceed more smoothly. Another good money source is to build a huge army, stomp across the map capturing cities as you go. Exterminate the population of each one and not only do your cities become relatively more powerful, but you get a load of cash - I guess it comes from selling off the body parts? Yuck.
Sea battles are a little disappointing. In land battles you can do one of three things - command the battle personally, automatically resolve the conflict, or withdraw. There's no battle mode for naval warfare, so the first option is greyed out. You can't withdraw from naval battles, so the third option is greyed out. Yes, it's an exercise in accurate mousing! 
There's not enough feedback on what's going on. The computer moves go by so fast that there's no chance to see what faction the units belong to, let alone what the units ARE or what they're DOING. When you get attacked you have to decide how to resolve the conflict based entirely on the numbers of troops. How hard would it have been for a forward scout to provide more info about the enemy? Or even to glance through your OWN camp on the way back so he knows whether your 300 troops happen to be highly-trained Legionaires or a scruffy band of peasants?
The "Where's my general" syndrome is a bit annoying. Had a general in a ship at some point? Don't know where he's gone? Ah. Maybe he went down with his ship, at some point in the past? That kind of info just didn't seem important to the designers.
In all the Civs there's a function whereby you can tap W to "wait" or Space to "end turn" the current unit. This enables you to have multiple units in the field, cycle through all of them and ensure that everyone who needs more orders gets them. No such feature in Rome. Giving more orders to your roaming Diplomats depends on good eyesight and a good memory.
But given all that, it's still a great game. I captured a city yesterday. My battering ram took too much damage from wall-mounted archers and burst into flames (?). Moving to plan B, I used my gigantic siege towers to insert infantry onto the walls, and got them to open the gates from the inside. All my troops went down one street to attack the enemy from the front, while I ran two packs of war dogs rapidly down a different street and attack from the back. Marvellous fun, and a complete success!
Wardogs are great - they can chase down routing units, and are highly effective against lightly-armoured infantry.
But beware the Greeks! They'll turn on you in a second, and send their vast fleets and ruthless Hoplites against you! I recommend hordes of assassins sent against the ruling family, and crossed fingers... 
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Charlie Dobbie
=Member of The Nonflamers' Guild=
=Moderator of the Morrowind/Oblivion Forums= |
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Wed Oct 06, 2004 11:13 am |
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Badger
Stripey Forest Dweller
Joined: 18 Mar 2002
Posts: 924
Location: UK |
quote:
Originally posted by cfmdobbie
quote:
Originally posted by X-dANGEr
Alittle ques.
How many teams is there in it(factions)???
Only the one that you can play, as far as I can see. The technology tree hints at other faction's tech trees, but this appears to be informational - they aren't playable.
Actually, I think that all of the factions in the game (not sure how many in total, but spread across the globe) are playable eventually. But not until you have completed at least one imperial campaign as the Romans. After you do this, you can play as anyone from Cleopatra to Astrix the Gaul.
(Late Edit: I have just discovered that there are something like 11 playable factions in the game, after the above campaign has been won.)
quote:
Originally posted by cfmdobbie
There's not enough feedback on what's going on. The computer moves go by so fast that there's no chance to see what faction the units belong to, let alone what the units ARE or what they're DOING. When you get attacked you have to decide how to resolve the conflict based entirely on the numbers of troops. How hard would it have been for a forward scout to provide more info about the enemy? Or even to glance through your OWN camp on the way back so he knows whether your 300 troops happen to be highly-trained Legionaires or a scruffy band of peasants?
Despite my humble capacity as complete newbie, I suspect that the answer here is to have a number of spies scattered across the land. With this in place, effective surveillance is then the key.
The same "Civ" style movement restrictions that you mentioned in your original review, apply to AI players as well as yourself. So in theory it should be possible to see an enemy coming in previous turn. You can then set your spy loose on it not only to get the gen on the army's composition, but also to assassinate it's dog of a general.
Hail Badgerus!
Stripus Badgerus. |
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Wed Oct 06, 2004 11:46 am |
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MoonDragon
High Emperor
Joined: 25 May 2002
Posts: 1254
Location: Waterloo, Canada |
For me, it was this thread that finally made me give in and buy the game.
quote:
Originally posted by Badger
You can then set your spy loose on it not only to get the gen on the army's composition, but also to assassinate it's dog of a general.
Assassins and spies are two different types of units. Spies cannot assassinate (at least not that I've managed to get them to).
But, you can put spies and diplomats as part of your military group. So, add a spy to your army and voila... and instant information giver.
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Fri Oct 08, 2004 8:27 pm |
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X-dANGEr
Unknown Destiny
Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 2383
Location: The X place |
I can ensure all and everyone of you that it is the greatest strategy game ever, i like a whole lot more that Warhammer 40k DoW, it is just unique, i didn't get it yet, but i will, maybe in the next few week, as MTW was great for me, but this one will be with a lot more quality graphics and actions and units.
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Sat Oct 09, 2004 7:36 am |
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Beliarsclew
Victim Of The Greed
Joined: 15 May 2004
Posts: 581
Location: Jordan-Middle East |
Wow, That's cool! 
Does anyone know when It'll be released in Middle-East?
Thanks Cfm..
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<Sigh>.Time.Passes.Quickly. </Sigh> |
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Sat Oct 09, 2004 7:18 pm |
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Patriot
Small Tiger
Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 1421
Location: Athens,Greece |
I've played the roman campaign(red one)and now I'm playing the Greeks.I'm an imperialistic pig.I’ve reached Londinium today and I'm ready to kill every Britain cause cfm did that thing with the elephants buahahahahah.After that I'll exterminate the population .
When I was a roman I've played the big campaing(conquare 50 regions).I like the worlds you general says just before you start the battle.
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Sat Oct 09, 2004 11:18 pm |
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DzD
Unknown
Joined: 12 Mar 2002
Posts: 7140
Location: Sweden |
I love the pre-battle speeches (don't read below if you want to hear 'em yourself):
"I know we all don't want to be here. I know I don't. But, my mother said I had to make a good show of things, so here I am!"
"There are those who call me a philosopher. They ask me, 'why are we here?' Its not an easy question to answer sometimes, but today we are here to kill all those bastards."
"I want to see thier blood, I want to be covered in it, I want to SWIM in it!!!"
"The enemy have the advantage...I think."
"You all know me to be particularly cunning in battle. I do not intend for this to be a fair fight... (blah, blah, blah) ...I will strike at their weakest points! This will not be a battle, it'll be a kick up the toga!"
Awesome speeches! Although kinda distracting when you're pumped up for a large battle and all of sudden you're rolling on the floor laughing so hard your stomach hurts... *Returns to playing*
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There once was a youngster, DzD
Whose avatars numbered infinity
But I must admit
His latest, a hit
Cuz the Little One's a mystery to me
Written by - dteowner |
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Sun Oct 10, 2004 1:05 am |
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Badger
Stripey Forest Dweller
Joined: 18 Mar 2002
Posts: 924
Location: UK |
quote:
Originally posted by MoonDragon
Assassins and spies are two different types of units. Spies cannot assassinate (at least not that I've managed to get them to).
Quite right of course, thanks MoonDragon. IN fact I've not come across an assassin yet in the game. Spies are great for sneakily opening gates for you though. As well as hopefully stopping enemy spies from doing the same to you.
quote:
Originally posted by Patriot
I’ve reached Londinium today and I'm ready to kill every Britain cause cfm did that thing with the elephants buahahahahah.After that I'll exterminate the population .
Um...... no offence taken 
UK Badger.
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"Ducks are Dumb!" Badger-2005. Go ahead... quote me! |
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Sun Oct 10, 2004 6:47 am |
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X-dANGEr
Unknown Destiny
Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 2383
Location: The X place |
quote:
Originally posted by cfmdobbie
Units do not move on a per-province basis. Units have a certain movement allowance, so if the provinces are small and the allowance large, you could transverse several provinces in a single turn. Much more likely, however, is that your allowance is barely sufficient to get from the city to the border in one turn. Movement in hostile territory is severely hampered, by the inclusion of Civ-style "zones of control".
You mean every unit has it's own movement, but how is it decieded, as i know from Medieval, there is armies, what unit decides the movement.
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Sun Oct 10, 2004 2:37 pm |
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DzD
Unknown
Joined: 12 Mar 2002
Posts: 7140
Location: Sweden |
quote:
Originally posted by X-dANGEr
You mean every unit has it's own movement, but how is it decieded, as i know from Medieval, there is armies, what unit decides the movement.
Every unit has a X number of 'movement points'. Infantry has less then cavalry and cavalry often less then ships. Infantry merged with cavalry will only be able to walk as far as the infantry would. The infantry is dragging down your mobile horses.
However, from those unit points, several different factors can effect how any of those unit points are used to go from one spot to another. Roads are the largest factor. Roads, paved roads, highways or whatever upgrade you have will determine how many of your 'movement points' are used to from one point to another.
How many movement points do I have? Klick on the unit, look on the bottom-right of your screen. There will be something blue indicating how many unit movement points you have left. The blue will be full before you move, and decrease depending how much you move. When it reaches 0, you must change turn to get new movement points.
_________________
There once was a youngster, DzD
Whose avatars numbered infinity
But I must admit
His latest, a hit
Cuz the Little One's a mystery to me
Written by - dteowner |
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Sun Oct 10, 2004 5:10 pm |
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