Rome: Total War

kheegster · Post by **kheegster** » 2004-12-13 11:06am

Has anyone tried this yet? Was TOTALLY addicted to Medieval and Shogun, and have winter break to kill

.

Post by **Ghost Rider** » 2004-12-13 11:19am

We actually have a number of topics on a number of nuances of this game

Latest one being

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=57424

The Prime Necromancer · Post by **The Prime Necromancer** » 2004-12-13 11:29am

My question is, is it an improvement over its predecessors in more than just the graphics department? Or would Medieval or Shogun give me a better game with less advanced graphics for less money? I ask because I haven't bought any of these games before, and I'm interested in buying one.

Captain Cyran · Post by **Captain Cyran** » 2004-12-13 11:34am

I've seen like, 6 threads on R:tW now. Can we just make an official page? And yes, Rome is crack that is good for you. At least I think it is.

Chardok · Post by **Chardok** » 2004-12-13 11:57am

The Prime Necromancer wrote:My question is, is it an improvement over its predecessors in more than just the graphics department? Or would Medieval or Shogun give me a better game with less advanced graphics for less money? I ask because I haven't bought any of these games before, and I'm interested in buying one.

Whis is addressed in the previous threads, yo.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2004-12-13 12:01pm

How good is this game? I have been regualrly going to bed at 3am and haven't done much in terms of updating my fics or anything else extra curricular since I bought this crack pipe called a videogame.

You will find yourself plotting strategy in the shower, You will talk to the screen as your leaders vanquish all comers. You will shout in exasperation as your legendary leader dies just short of his goal. You will roll your eyes at the audacity of the Gauls in challenging your power. You will find yourself wondering just how badly you rewrote history as your Germanic horde sacks Athens and ends the game controlling all of Europe and Russia.

That is Rome Total War in a nutshell.

It will own you.

And yes...these threads are starting to get ridiculous.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2004-12-13 06:09pm

True all that Stravo, and you will evan find it converting your FPS friends, having your parents find excuses to stay in your rome to watch the battles, and manipulate everything to twisted extreams.

This is crack, only digitized, and hyped with smart pallets.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2004-12-13 06:12pm

Anyone know how to get the music files out of the game as MP3's? Some of that music is pretty cool and would love to listen to it outside the game.

Azazel · Post by **Azazel** » 2004-12-13 06:13pm

Yeah, it's awesome.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2004-12-13 06:14pm

Stravo wrote:Anyone know how to get the music files out of the game as MP3's? Some of that music is pretty cool and would love to listen to it outside the game.

P2P has tons of it *sets to download*

kheegster · Post by **kheegster** » 2004-12-13 06:15pm

Sorry for starting a repeat thread....checked the top couple of pages of this forum and didn't see any threads on RTW. I haven't touched or thought of any games in ages, but winter break is starting up.

*Promises to do a proper search next time*

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2004-12-13 07:45pm

kheegan wrote:Sorry for starting a repeat thread....checked the top couple of pages of this forum and didn't see any threads on RTW. I haven't touched or thought of any games in ages, but winter break is starting up.

*Promises to do a proper search next time*

Eh, don't worry about it. I don't think anyone ever gets tired of talking about cool videogames.

Post by **Vympel** » 2004-12-13 08:01pm

Re: Rome's music, Stravo, if you haven't played Medieval, you just haven't seen the best music from the Total War series. It is unbelievably good, and faction-sensitive- the Muslim factions have a whole different set of music from the European ones, even in battle. They're all in MP3 format too. I think I'll put it on CD ...

SecondStorm · Post by **SecondStorm** » 2004-12-14 09:50am

Awesome game, digitized crack etc etc.

I would recommend people to mod their R:TW. There are some really really good one like the SPQR mod by the Trivium Organization and Rome: Total Realism.
link

SPQR is completely bug-free (it should be it has 450 hours of modding hours put into it) but R:TR 4.1 is so full of them to the point of making the game unplayable for extended periods of time.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2004-12-14 02:50pm

Finished a campaign as the Germans. You will have little to no money throughout the game but I didn't seem to suffer anywhere near the revolt issues that I had as the Romans or the Selucids. However, that being said the Germans POWNED all the other barbarian tribes. Their cavalry is good - try to upgrade to Barbarian noble and best of all Gothic cavalry as soon as possible.

Also, try to keep a core army throughout your conquests of the Gauls and Britons for an assault on the Romans. By the time you finish sweeping trhough the barbarian kingdoms you should have many units with mutiple silver and even gold chevrons. They will be invaluable when dealing with the Romans in the initial assaults.

Also a large standing army will kill you financially but will be neccessary as numbers are your friends. You wil take heavy casulaties sometimes because many barabarian units charge on their own sometimes or wade in mercilessly into a fight.

Best battle was a heroic victory outisde of Rome. My weaker commander (4 stars) was backing up my legendary commander (8stars) for the siege of Rome. The SPQR forces jumped us outside of Rome in a sortie that for some reason got my 4 star commander as the lead and AI'd my legendary commander.

The SPQR were more numerous and had ballistas and ALOT more infantry but little to no cavalry.

The initail clash was fucking bloody and I started losiong spearmen and axemen at a very alarming rate but I managed to finally get my cavalry behind their lines and directly assualted their general then went on to slaughter their ballista crews.

At this point my legendary commander showed up on the horizon with a massive army and the Romans began to break. My cavalry was waiting for them as they tried to head for the escape zone. My poor infantry was in no condition to pursue.

But I never needed my legendary commander. I won all on my own and took Rome, but it was exciting almost felt like a movie as I faced the superior Republic forces and won through sheer barbarian courage. In the end over 900 Republic dead - one of the highest kill counts I can ever remember from a single battle.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-12-14 04:36pm

Actually, one thing that bugs me about RTW is the sheer length of time it takes to max out a city. You would be lucky to have a single maxed-out city by the time you finish a campaign. They should reduce the build times for a lot of those structures, as well as certain units; does it really make sense that it would take two YEARS (4 turns at six months per turn) to build medium cavalry stables? Or that a huge city can't recruit troops any faster than a small one?

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2004-12-14 04:51pm

Darth Wong wrote:Actually, one thing that bugs me about RTW is the sheer length of time it takes to max out a city. You would be lucky to have a single maxed-out city by the time you finish a campaign. They should reduce the build times for a lot of those structures, as well as certain units; does it really make sense that it would take two YEARS (4 turns at six months per turn) to build medium cavalry stables? Or that a huge city can't recruit troops any faster than a small one?

It sucks in that sense but I loved it as the Germans because I find that when a city maxes out too quickly it tends to suffer from revoly problems because frankly I don't have the cash or the time to upgrade to the new city's needs.

For instance I find out Alexandria has Grown. It takes 4 turns for the Governor's villa or what have you. In that time I could have built a sewer and a temple to help add to public order but nothing gets a populace more uppity than not getting the next upgrade right quick. But if I choose to upgrade then now I have a much larger city that lacks some of the more basic public order and squalor needs.

Build times get really annoying especially in the early game. Frankly an Imperial campaign that strecthes on for a week can get real annoying espeically when you know you've already won. The end game needs to be sped up a bit. I'm the strongest richest faction and own the Italian boot and Europe. C'mon now...why do I need to play out four more hours to capture the last 8-9 provinces to complete the arbitrary 50 province goal. There should be rewards like taking Rome particulalrly early in a campaign reduces the number of provinces you need to hold, etc.

Post by **Vympel** » 2004-12-14 07:10pm

What I find annoying is that the only city to start out remotely accurately for the time period is Rome. All the other faction cities are laughably small and under-developed- take the Seleucids- a successor state of Alexander the Great, with two capitals (Antioch and Seleucia), yet it takes *decades* to build the facilities required for Companion Cavalry, and you have *no* facilities to build phalangites? I mean ... huh?! Realistically, you'd already have Silver Shields, war elephants, etc.

Pablo Sanchez · Post by **Pablo Sanchez** » 2004-12-14 07:50pm

Vympel wrote:I mean ... huh?! Realistically, you'd already have Silver Shields, war elephants, etc.

The early game is shit in all the TW games, because they meticulously carried over the RTS tradition of "building up your infrastructure" to get the fun units and such. Ordinarily speaking, this isn't too annoying, because in other games the build-up period doesn't last very long at all. But in the slow-paced TW strategic level, it takes hours to get to your ideal army composition, by which point the game is a foregone conclusion with you just bashing the shit out of the AI.

Logically speaking the way it should work is your core territories begin the game built up, and you repair (or build from scratch) the infrastructure of the new provinces you capture. But it's been the same in every game from the TW studios. Shogun begins with silly pathetic armies of Yari Ashigaru bashing into eachother, Medieval with it's ass=tastic basic spearmen and shite cavalry (though, with the ages system, Medieval picked up much faster), and Rome, making your initial advances with militia and such.

I just found it intensely stupid when I loaded up my first Greek Cities campaign and admired my lone unit of Spartan hoplites... and then waited until the game was effectively over before I could build one myself (Syracuse, btw, was the first city to produce Spartan hoplites

).

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-12-14 10:40pm

I just discovered a one-turn build mod, which makes every structure in the game buildable in just one turn. It changes the game quite a bit; you can now build structures at such a rate that you routinely run out of money, so money management becomes the primary issue.

The bog-standard game tends to favour Rome pretty heavily in its playstyle (which shouldn't come as a surprise because it is called Rome: Total War after all) because you can generally build Hastati at almost all of your cities even at a pitiful tech level, and Hastati are a more effective early-game unit than most of the other factions seem to field. With the one-turn build mod, I imagine it would be easier to get some of the other factions to a level where they can build some of the more dangerous units.

Post by **Vympel** » 2004-12-14 10:51pm

Darth Wong wrote:I just discovered a one-turn build mod, which makes every structure in the game buildable in just one turn. It changes the game quite a bit; you can now build structures at such a rate that you routinely run out of money, so money management becomes the primary issue.

Can I have a link to that? I was resorting to using the process_cq [settlement name] cheat in the last game I played, which finishes all buildings in your building queue immediately- a sub-optimal solution since that wasn't realistic either (somewhat ameliorated by the fact that for some reason you have to exit out to desktop and start the game again the next time you want to use the code ... annoying).

Although 6-months to build say, a Pantheon doesn't sound realistic either. At best, the highest construction times for the absolute largest structures should be two years- three, max.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-12-14 10:57pm

Vympel wrote:Can I have a link to that?

http://www.twcenter.net/downloads/db/?mod=263

There's also a "fix the flaming arrow performance lag" mod:
http://www.twcenter.net/downloads/db/?mod=267

Just unpack the contents into the RTW Data directory.

I was resorting to using the process_cq [settlement name] cheat in the last game I played, which finishes all buildings in your building queue immediately- a sub-optimal solution since that wasn't realistic either (somewhat ameliorated by the fact that for some reason you have to exit out to desktop and start the game again the next time you want to use the code ... annoying).

Most annoying, although you can also fix that if you get the patched EXE from http://gamecopyworld.com

Although 6-months to build say, a Pantheon doesn't sound realistic either. At best, the highest construction times for the absolute largest structures should be two years- three, max.

I suppose you could dig through the file in order to figure out how they did it, and then set your own preferred build times. The quick-build mod is just one text file.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2004-12-15 01:22am

The recruiting system annoys me more than the construction one; if you've got 125,000 bucks, and you want 500 peasants, TOO BAD. If you've got the largest barracks, and you want 500 peasants, TOO BAD. A simple system based on each barrack level producing a certain number of 'recruit points', with better units requiring more, would be a way to allow developed cities to crank out large numbers of low quality troops or smaller numbers of better troops, instead of simply 'unlocking' the next level of troop types.

I wish there was a 'holy shit' button, to raise a pile of scratch units for emergency defence during the next turn. I've only ever lost city defences because of insuffcient troops to hold the line.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2004-12-15 03:24am

Stark wrote:The recruiting system annoys me more than the construction one; if you've got 125,000 bucks, and you want 500 peasants, TOO BAD. If you've got the largest barracks, and you want 500 peasants, TOO BAD. A simple system based on each barrack level producing a certain number of 'recruit points', with better units requiring more, would be a way to allow developed cities to crank out large numbers of low quality troops or smaller numbers of better troops, instead of simply 'unlocking' the next level of troop types.

I wish there was a 'holy shit' button, to raise a pile of scratch units for emergency defence during the next turn. I've only ever lost city defences because of insuffcient troops to hold the line.

Personally, thats the best thing I like about the SPQR mod, aslong as you have the money, the build que for units will run, even to 9 units at a time.
And suprise suprise, the population keeps growing.

Watching battles of 4K+ barbarians hitting my puny Roman Legions was one was of the best experiances of the game

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2004-12-15 03:50am

Its kewl, but I'd like some kind of ratio between output of good units and crap ones... but in vanilla you NEED to build shitloads of guys just to keep the squalor down.