Rome: Total War

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Tue Jan 13, 2004 6:01 am

Looks like it'll be pretty sweet. There's elephants that like overrun lines and toss people around. Generals and such will be individually targettable and I guess there's also like one on one fights or something. It's different from the previous games in that it's much more cinematic now. Hopefully that doesn't detract from the overall quality of the game.

http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/589390.asp

One thing though, they're adding RTS-style control as an option. I'm not a fan of that style (click-drag to select multiple units, etc.). The original TW control style will remain though, so I guess that's good. I guess it's matter of flexibility vs convenience. I just hate having to assign my own groups and then have to remember what numbers are what groups. And I hope that the pace remains like TW games and not RTS ones. RTS is too twitchy for me. And basically, I hate RTS games.

^
|
|
|
|
|
My comments about why I hate RTS games.

Vinny's comments about how great Warcraft III is, and why RTS games in general rule.
|
|
|
v

Post by **Jonathan** » Tue Jan 13, 2004 6:08 am

So, having never played any of the Total War series, I am intrigued by your distinction between it and regular RTS. Assuming I know how products from Blizzard are played, how does a TW game go?

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Tue Jan 13, 2004 6:33 am

You give commands to a large group of units instead of each unit individually. A TW unit is comprised of something like 10-100 or so individual soldiers, depending on the type of unit. The general's elite guard obviously will be fewer in number than peasant spearmen. In TW, formations and battle lines are crucial. Battles last longer, because your units don't die in seconds before you can react to save them, so if your infantry is getting overrun by cavalry you have time to pull them back and bring your spearmen forward, if you left some units in reserve.

In TW there's the basic underlying triangle, swordsmen kill spearmen, who kill cavalry, who kill swordsmen. Of course, there are also archers who kill lightly armored units easily. There are also some cavalry that are better than other cavalry against spearmen, mounted archers, infantry that are great when charging downhill but poor at defending against charges, super heavy infantry that are spectacularly good but fatigue quickly, especially in the desert, etc etc etc.

TW also models morale. If a unit is getting crushed and there's no support anywhere nearby, they'll rout. If a routed unit runs through another unit, it lowers that units morale and increases the possibility of that unit routing as well. Units that are heavily fatigued will rout. If an army's general is killed, units may lose heart and rout. But on the other hand, seeing their general on the front lines cutting down enemies left and right will increase morale.

Terrain makes a difference. And not just charging or firing downhill either. You can camouflage units in forests, which adds a nice twist to your planning. Do you deploy your reserves nearby so they can enter the fray immediately or place them further away but out of sight, so you can wreak havoc on your enemy's formation as they march toward you?

Archers aren't part of the main triangle, but they play a huge role, both in terms of actually killing units as well as demoralizing the enemy. But they're very susceptible to cavalry, so you have to decide how many spearmen you want to take away from your front lines and take babysitting duties.

Basically, TW involves strategy (moving armies into regions), deployment of your armies in those regions and pre-battle planning, and finally tactical combat - making things happen and reacting to things that happen when your armies actually clash. There's also an economic side during the strategic phase, where you develop regions under your control and produce new units. In previous games the strategic part took place on a Risk-style board, but it seems that in Rome: TW this will be done using the same 3D engine in the actual battles, but I'm not totally sure how this will work.

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Tue Jan 13, 2004 6:51 am

Oh, and TW also has historical battles, where you play the role of a famous general (King/Shogun/etc.) of an army in a famous or decisive battle. So like you'd take control of Richard the Lionheart's crusading army when he defeated Saladin in Arsuf in 1191 (I swear I didn't look that up).

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Mon May 03, 2004 6:45 am

Dude it looks fucking sweet:

Post by **Jonathan** » Mon May 03, 2004 7:00 am

Eat hot oliphaunt!

TW will probably come out way before this game.

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Mon May 03, 2004 7:02 am

I wonder how much money it costs to outfit so many damn elephants with bronze (?) armor.

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Mon May 03, 2004 6:39 pm

Man, it would really suck for those infantry in front of the elephants if they weren't part of the same army. Being driven into battle by a host of elephants behind you must be pretty inspiring. Of course, I'm not sure I'd want to be behind them and have to charge into battle battle through heaping piles of elephant dung either...

Post by **Jonathan** » Mon May 03, 2004 9:50 pm

http://www.firingsquad.com/games/rome_t ... efault.asp

A positive preview.

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Mon May 03, 2004 10:34 pm

Dwindlehop wrote:http://www.firingsquad.com/games/rome_t ... efault.asp

A positive preview.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this will be the best game ever.

Post by **Jonathan** » Mon May 03, 2004 11:55 pm

TW is kinda Lords of the Realm style, ain't it?

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Tue May 04, 2004 3:48 am

I've never played Lords of the Realm but judging from the screenshots, TW's formations are much more strict - units are actually forced to be in some formation unless they're routing - and it seems to be larger scale than LoR.

Post by **Jonathan** » Tue May 04, 2004 5:22 pm

Well, sure. The original Lords of the Realm was published in 1997 or 1996, and I don't think the sequels improved it much. Rome seems to be a much more ambitious title.

Dave · Post by **Dave** » Tue May 04, 2004 9:01 pm

I like LOTR, i could raise my herd of sheep and force all my peoples to live only on milk! lol NO WHEAT FOR THEM

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Thu May 06, 2004 1:53 am

Time Commanders

A BBC show, "re-enacting" historic battles using a beta version of R:TW. What they do is have one guy act as a general, and issue commands to captains who are actually in control of a unit in the game. Interesting concept.

You can download the episodes by registering on these forums and going to the Downloads subforum:

http://www.legiontotalwar.com/

The files are 150-250 MB, but the site is pretty fast, I was downloading at about 300 kb/s

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Wed May 12, 2004 2:01 am

With every new trailer, I am more amazed and sexually aroused:

http://www.jonathan.pearce.name/mohtali ... r59_qt.zip

Post by **Jonathan** » Mon May 17, 2004 6:07 pm

http://wired.com/news/games/0,2101,6345 ... page_prev2

Decisive Battles, a new History Channel series debuting on July 17, will be pretty much like the BBC's Time Commanders. It uses the TW engine to stage historic battles. The example in the article is Hannibal's victory over the Roman legions at Cannae.

Post by **Jonathan** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 5:42 pm

http://www.firingsquad.com/games/rome_t ... interview/

Looks like it's "I go you go" turn-based play instead of synchronous. That's too bad, because I'm a big fan of synchronous.

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Sat Sep 25, 2004 5:11 pm

RTW is out, and getting massif ratings. Not that I was expecting any different.

Dave · Post by **Dave** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 9:24 pm

aight