Empire: Total War - FUCK. YOU.

[Stark]

Well, I'd rather they concentrated on making a game that wasn't broken instead of historical accuracy, but being more historically accurate actaully made Rome a better game (more interesting units, better 'faction diversity', etc).

I was a slut for the Seleucids too, back when I could be bothered fighting a thousand battles I was guaranteed to win.

[Samuel]

I really don't care about the history that much. As long as it has verisimilitude, I'm right.

The Egyptian army was fricking ridiculous, though. First of all it really should've been Ptolemaic Egypt. But then, I never bothered playing as the Egyptians - only Rome and the Seleucids.

Well, you can justify alot of differences with the player mucking up the timeline

However, they changed the Egyptians because of marketing- they didn't want to have another Greek style group. Than they made all the Barbarians the same...

[GuppyShark]

Flavour is more important than accuracy. The crazy Ancient Egyptian guys made the game more entertaining. I also enjoyed the challenge of playing as them.

[RazorOutlaw]

I'm not sure if I understand the outrage. Money grubbing is distasteful but you still get a full game to play without spending the extra $20? I think the price is, ahem, outrageous but if they aren't locking you out of the full game it just seems like a stupid package that most people won't buy anyway.

[Ghost Rider]

I'm not sure if I understand the outrage. Money grubbing is distasteful but you still get a full game to play without spending the extra $20? I think the price is, ahem, outrageous but if they aren't locking you out of the full game it just seems like a stupid package that most people won't buy anyway.

I think the outrage could stem from how much would these things stilt gameplay, and then add why is $20 being charged for a measly six extra bits. If it's pure wallpaper, it pisses off people that did get it, if their advantage is "I have Nelson's ship, cower in fear BITCHES!!!", then the opposite.

Mike's point is my main of any and all PC games really. Can my rig take it, and if not...how much is it going to cost me to upgrade. Yes, usually you do it anyway, but it easily blows any extra amount of cash I'd spend on the extra shiny glass eye bauble.

As for historical accuracy versus gameplay? I would prefer they stick gameplay first, but would like they give a cursory accuracy since it's not asking for gun shooting properly but actually not butchering a historical period given that the series does pride itself on real conflicts and times.

[bobalot]

Who would actually buy this when there are mods going to come out with extra units anyway?

As for historical accuracy, I'm not all that worried. The real issue I was hoping they would fix up is the AI. RTWs AI was totally shit. It was crap at battles and diplomacy in RTW was a joke. Every ally would back stab you as soon as possible. Countries never surrendered, even if they were totally beaten and their armies crushed.

[Thanas]

Which of course brings up the question of whether you ever played the "Total Realism" mod? If you have I know they did a huge number of unit, map, building, and other changes but I have no reference poitn to figure out if it truly is a more accurate protrayl (game mechanics aside).

I am actually the member of the board who usually tries everything to promote RTR, EB or the IBFD/ RIO mods. Yeah, I played them all and some of them even incorporate a few suggestions of mine.

[Darth Wong]

RTR was a very cool mod, although of course, the game it's based on is growing long in the tooth. However, I didn't really like the very slow speed of expansion. I know it was deliberate, and maybe it was more realistic to increase the workload for expansion and cut down on the "juggernaut" syndrome that could crop up in regular RTW, but it increases the tedium factor. Adding all of those cities and forcing people to spend ages building population conversion buildings just slows everything down and I don't think it really adds anything as far as gameplay.

[ray245]

RTR was a very cool mod, although of course, the game it's based on is growing long in the tooth. However, I didn't really like the very slow speed of expansion. I know it was deliberate, and maybe it was more realistic to increase the workload for expansion and cut down on the "juggernaut" syndrome that could crop up in regular RTW, but it increases the tedium factor. Adding all of those cities and forcing people to spend ages building population conversion buildings just slows everything down and I don't think it really adds anything as far as gameplay.

EB seems to be more fun and interesting to play.

Although if you really want to look for a good gameplay game with some sense of historical accuracy and graphic improvement, you should try Roma Surrectum.

When you can build armies and legions at a fast rate, it is damn fun to play.

[Thanas]

^You are correct - it was a direct choice to cut down expansion in order to make the players appreciate the struggles the Roman empire went through. I guess it comes down to player type - everyone of the realism mods I listed makes expansion harder. Which is fine by me since I like it to be more of a challenge, but it can be off-putting if someone wants to expand fast and just kick ass. Not that there is anything wrong with that.


Maybe you should try the RIO mod for BI - it allows you to raise huge armies relatively fast, of course the downside is that huge armies are very expensive (a roman legion costs at least 1000 denari upkeep) so you have to dismiss foederati in peacetime while trying to hold on to your core roman troops.

[ray245]

^You are correct - it was a direct choice to cut down expansion in order to make the players appreciate the struggles the Roman empire went through. I guess it comes down to player type - everyone of the realism mods I listed makes expansion harder. Which is fine by me since I like it to be more of a challenge, but it can be off-putting if someone wants to expand fast and just kick ass. Not that there is anything wrong with that.


Maybe you should try the RIO mod for BI - it allows you to raise huge armies relatively fast, of course the downside is that huge armies are very expensive (a roman legion costs at least 1000 denari upkeep) so you have to dismiss foederati in peacetime while trying to hold on to your core roman troops.

Well RS seems to allow you to maintain a huge number of legions though. You can not only recruit large number of legions, but also able to form Auxiliary legions following the Main legion.

Other than that, cheating a little bit in the early stages can help you to some extend.

[Thanas]

^WTH is RS? And auxillary legions?

And cheating is for losers.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

This kind of thing isn't even unusual; check out Deadspace, where you can buy better guns, and Endwar where you basically buy upgrades and better units.

Better guns, with a very, very shitty paintjob. (They seriously look like they just slapped decals all over them...)

So, yeah... Most DLC is a rip off. Hell, I've sunk probably 50$ into planes for AC6... A few are decent items that actually do expand on the base game beyond what they thought of in production... But anything within a month to half a year after the game is released is likely a milking, or features deliberately left out or neutered in the original package.

[ray245]

^WTH is RS? And auxillary legions?

And cheating is for losers.

Well, cheating allows me to save some time to do other stuff.

When you share the PC with your family, they get annoyed if I played too much game.

RS is a mod that grant you unique legions individually. Meaning every legion will have different name and number that is historical, and each legion will look unique to some extend.

Other than that, you have regional Auxiliary units. Meaning you can recruit an Auxiliary unit from Gaul and another from Spain, and the Auxiliary unit will look different for example.

Other than that, they have zero turn recruitment, which makes raising an army really easy.

You can wait for RS 2.0, which really improve the battle map texture, lighting and etc.

Other than that, the detail on their uniques is awesome.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=134165

[Thanas]

Oh, Roma Surrectum. Still, they do not have auxillary legions, they have auxillaries.

[ray245]

Oh, Roma Surrectum. Still, they do not have auxillary legions, they have auxillaries.

Well, there has been rumors saying we are going to have them in RS 2.0 . And given that their auxillaries are different to began with, it is an interesting experience.

When I lost a complete legion, I was basically banging myself at the door, due to the huge lost I have suffered. An entire stack of experienced Roman legion, all gone! An unique legion I may add, one of my favourite legions.

And there will be more historical units in the 2nd version.

Many modders noticed that the game engine written for RTW is not fully completed, with tons of scripts and files not fully written.

[Dominus Atheos]

Mike's point is my main of any and all PC games really. Can my rig take it, and if not...how much is it going to cost me to upgrade.

What parts does your rig have now?

[Darth Wong]

^You are correct - it was a direct choice to cut down expansion in order to make the players appreciate the struggles the Roman empire went through. I guess it comes down to player type - everyone of the realism mods I listed makes expansion harder. Which is fine by me since I like it to be more of a challenge, but it can be off-putting if someone wants to expand fast and just kick ass. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

It's OK, I just edited the RTR files so that all of the auxilia_phase buildings took only 1 turn to build. Now expansion is a lot more like vanilla RTW, but I get the neat features of RTR like regional auxilia. I just find it perplexing that the RTW mod community seems almost unanimous in its desire to slow down expansion; surely I'm not the only one who finds it tedious and annoying to expand so slowly.

PS. I tried EB. It seemed cool enough and I was getting into it, but then I ran into some kind of bug. The date suddenly jumped from ~260BC to 14AD in one turn, thus fucking up the entire history. Worse yet, I didn't notice until I'd already saved the game, so my savegame is all fucked up. That's pretty damned annoying; I think I'll go back to RTR.

[ray245]

^You are correct - it was a direct choice to cut down expansion in order to make the players appreciate the struggles the Roman empire went through. I guess it comes down to player type - everyone of the realism mods I listed makes expansion harder. Which is fine by me since I like it to be more of a challenge, but it can be off-putting if someone wants to expand fast and just kick ass. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

It's OK, I just edited the RTR files so that all of the auxilia_phase buildings took only 1 turn to build. Now expansion is a lot more like vanilla RTW, but I get the neat features of RTR like regional auxilia. I just find it perplexing that the RTW mod community seems almost unanimous in its desire to slow down expansion; surely I'm not the only one who finds it tedious and annoying to expand so slowly.

PS. I tried EB. It seemed cool enough and I was getting into it, but then I ran into some kind of bug. The date suddenly jumped from ~260BC to 14AD in one turn, thus fucking up the entire history. Worse yet, I didn't notice until I'd already saved the game, so my savegame is all fucked up. That's pretty damned annoying; I think I'll go back to RTR.

Perhaps you should really try RS? It is extremely easy to expand, especially with the 0 turn recruitment for instance, and reasonable building time I think.


By the way, ETW has a new trailer released, a multiplayer trailer. With Steam, I can finally have a decent match!

Also, ETW is finally giving us an multi-player campaign map game, which is why it got delayed.

[Thanas]

It's OK, I just edited the RTR files so that all of the auxilia_phase buildings took only 1 turn to build. Now expansion is a lot more like vanilla RTW, but I get the neat features of RTR like regional auxilia. I just find it perplexing that the RTW mod community seems almost unanimous in its desire to slow down expansion; surely I'm not the only one who finds it tedious and annoying to expand so slowly.

I guess some players do by the comments I have read on TWcenter. However, when I play the game, I do not just play a game - I remember the struggles the roman faced and how slow and deadly a road it was for them...and then I am glad that the game makes it as hard for me.

I guess it is hard to explain and in the end it does come down to personal preference - what type of player you are. For me, a victory over Carthage is supposed to be tedious and long-winding. But then I only play 2 games a year, so they always take up a lot of time.

PS. I tried EB. It seemed cool enough and I was getting into it, but then I ran into some kind of bug. The date suddenly jumped from ~260BC to 14AD in one turn, thus fucking up the entire history. Worse yet, I didn't notice until I'd already saved the game, so my savegame is all fucked up. That's pretty damned annoying; I think I'll go back to RTR.

Hmmm. Did you click on the female advisor to activate the script? That might do the trick.

[Darth Wong]

The background script was running. Actually, I suspect that a bug in the background script caused the problem. I've never even heard of such a massive date jump in a regular un-modded RTW installation or any other mod, for that matter. All of a sudden there were hundreds of messages in my side-bar telling me what happened in 259BC, 258BC, 257BC, etc all the way up to 14AD.

[Alferd Packer]

It's OK, I just edited the RTR files so that all of the auxilia_phase buildings took only 1 turn to build. Now expansion is a lot more like vanilla RTW, but I get the neat features of RTR like regional auxilia. I just find it perplexing that the RTW mod community seems almost unanimous in its desire to slow down expansion; surely I'm not the only one who finds it tedious and annoying to expand so slowly.

I did the same thing (I actually think I followed your recommendations for cutting build time), and it makes RTR basically my ideal mod. Huge variety, fucking huuuuge map, plus you get all the local auxiliary units spicing things up, allowing you to create innovative strategies with local troops as you march across the map. Also, some of the far-flung factions were really cool, like the Iberians or Greco-Bactrians.

[HamsterViking]

I'm really tired of the people who whine that a game isn't 100% historically accurate. I'm looking to play a game, not take a fucking history lesson. I don't want it to be completely ridiculous (Napoleonic tanks, for example, would be too much), but yeah, entertaining gameplay takes precedence over strict historical accuracy.

Oh I'm with you on that, but sometimes the Total War series just pisses me off when it comes to historical accuracy. Rome was the worst offender to me. It's all good though, there's always the Total Realism mod

[GuppyShark]

Just started playing a Crusades game as a warmup for the upcoming release of Empire.

Had a hilarious moment.

The key thing about the Crusaders campaign is that there is a "power centre" for each faction - a city or castle that you need to possess in order to build your best units.

I'm playing as the Principality of Antioch with the Kingdom of Jerusalem to my south, my allies.

I've been kicking Turk butt up and down and suddenly discovered that the Kingdom was failing me and had lost half their settlements. I sent a stack of Knights Hospitallier down to retake all those settlements, using the diplomacy menu to gift the cities back each turn, after moving my army out of the city.

I retake Tripoli, Acre, and Tyre (IIRC) with no issues.

I take Jerusalem and try to give it to the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

"Sorry, we don't trust you to not just take it back. Refused."

It's a really good thing I still had movement points on that stack. I moved my force back in, and have decided to keep it.