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A thread a while back suggested that various memebers of this forum play Rome: Total War. I thought said members would like to know that the mod Rome Total Realism v6.0 is now out (downloads here). For those unfamiliar with the mod it changes the game in order to make it more realistic, chanllenging, and expansive. Features include:

• Area of Recruitment (AoR) - A means by which the assimilation of foreign peoples is simulated. Essentially if you are the Romans, you can't capture say, Carthage, and imediatly start using it's military and other facilities to pump out Roman troops. Instead you must first assimilate the conqured population via three buildings which succesively let you build native Auxilary troops and eventually troops belonging to your nation.
  
  Elimination of ahistorical units - This is kind of subjective, since certain things which where eliminated had been actually used in war at some point or another. Mostly the fact that units such as attack dogs, screaming women, chanting druids, and flaming pigs never were never part of organized military forces led to them being removed.
  
  Unified Rome - The Senate and Roman Houses are gone. Though I kind of miss playing politics with the Senate, the game is better for it.
  
  Earlier starting date - Now the game starts on 280 BC. The Romans have to work to unify Italy, and they have to deal with Greek presence in southern Italy as well as Phyrrus of Epirus at the head of a large army.
  
  Larger map, many more provinces - Not only are more provinces added to the original map, it has also been expanded to the north and east. Scotland is now whole, and you can see the full extent of the Selucid Empire.
  
  Different factions - The Britons are gone, Thracia and Dacia have been merged, Illiria appears, Scythia is replaced by Sarmatia, and now you can play the Bactrians. All previously unplayable factions are playable (exept rebels). Also the factions themselves have changed. Carthage is now bigger and more powerfull, as opposed to the wimpy version in vanilla RTW. Egypt is now the historically acurate Ptolemaic Kingdom with apropiate units. The Selucid Empire is now gi-fucking-gantic, but a pain to keep toguether (think Holy Roman Empire back in MTW). Various other changes.
  
  More realistic units - Self-explanatory. Examples include: no Lorica Segmentata (shiny armour made from metal bands) for Roman troops as it is inapropiate for the time period. The Parthians only have archers for foot units, any other foot soldiers they need will have to be raised from conquered populations. You can no longer use peasants with daggers and pitchforks as troops, good ol' poorly trained militas are still available. Elephants not so invinsible provided you have javelinmen handy. Etc.
  
  Mercenaries are more plentiful, and thus play a bigger role - Need a lot of soldiers in a hurry? Have lots of cash laying around? Short on expandable cannon fodder? Hire yourself some Mercenaries! You can now also regain lost merc troops at you local barracks, take advantage of this new feature now!
  
  Other stuff

This post is beginning to get long. I didn't intend for this to happen, but bear with me, it should be over soon.

I heartily recommend Rome Total Realism for everyone and anyone playing RTW. It truly enhances the gameplaying experience. Though by the looks of things, Europa Barborum (I suggest you look at the "Countdown to Open Beta" threads) will blast RTR out of the water and render it obsolete. However, RTR is pretty good while we wait for EB to be released.

Good news! It's over a lot sooner than expected!

It's the best shit ever.

But many R:TW players here are allergic to mods, so they won't even try it. Vanilla Rome sucks.

How's the recruitment and unrest issues in this mod?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

The recruitment is interesting. They explain it well on their site, but it basically means that you have to assimilate a province before you can recruit units, and different areas have different units availible (ie, I'm playing Pontus, and my Aegean coast cities recruit Greek units, whereas my Caucasian cities recruit Cyrtians etc. Growth and squalor are fixed (well, not broken).

Unrest doesn't seem to be much of a problem (aside from the 'cultural penalty), and the game actually seems to flow better: I'm at 240 BC and I've only been playing for 8 hours or so. Less jiggery pokery micromanagement, I guess.

My main problems with Rome Total Realism are these:

1. One of the things I immediately liked about RTW over its predecessors was the faster troop movement. RTR sets this back the way it was.

2. One of the things I immediately liked about RTW over its predecessors was that the troops don't get so damn tired from relatively short marches at normal pace or small skirmishes. RTR sets this back the way it was.

3. In vanilla RTW, a full speed cavalry into an enemy unit's rear caused that unit to disintegrate like it should. In RTR, the infantry unit will often take minor losses and then immediately start inflicting big casualties on the charging cavalry. I'm talking about infantry with swords, not spearmen.

4. RTR slows the pace of the strategic portion considerably, even setting the starting date earlier. As far as I'm concerned, it was already too slow.

5. Similar to #3, it slows the rate of combat, thus failing to reward good tactics with large enemy casualties and a panicked retreat.

I really wanted to like this mod, but it carries over a lot of the worst attributes of STW and MTW into RTW. I wish they had restricted the mod to making it more historical and left the combat engine alone.

You apparently aren't very familiar with the Total War community (the target audience of this mod). Ever since Rome: Total War came out there has been this huge uproar about how the game is way too fast paced. Units move too fast over the tactical map, battles are over too fast, it feels to arcady, etc. Personally, I enjoy things either way.

2. One of the things I immediately liked about RTW over its predecessors was that the troops don't get so damn tired from relatively short marches at normal pace or small skirmishes. RTR sets this back the way it was.

Since I am a defensive player, managing to alway be on the defensive even when conquering enemy territory (hard to explain, but mostly involves letting enemies come to you), the faster troops get tired the better it is for me. In other words, if the enemy becomes dog-tired marching half-way through the map, it automatically gives my fresh troops a huge advantage. On the other hand, I don't need a huge advantage, the AI is stupid enough as it is. So I both agree and desagree with you on this.

3. In vanilla RTW, a full speed cavalry into an enemy unit's rear caused that unit to disintegrate like it should. In RTR, the infantry unit will often take minor losses and then immediately start inflicting big casualties on the charging cavalry. I'm talking about infantry with swords, not spearmen.

Doesn't happen enough to bother me, though that it happens at all is somewhat bothersome. For the most part I use cavalry to chase routing units, so its not like my tactics are really affected.

5. Similar to #3, it slows the rate of combat, thus failing to reward good tactics with large enemy casualties and a panicked retreat.

Well here is an interesting point. For the most part everyone agrees that the slower things go, the larger your reward for good tactics such as proper positioning troops, timing of attacks and manouvers, etc. Indeed, the Chilvary Mod (aka Mediaval mod for Rome) is going to be very slow paced. The whole idea is that during a real life battle you can't move reserves on your right flank to help struggling units on the left, in order to simulate this movement speeds need to be toned down a lot.

Since I usually play the sarissa-heavy successor states, most of my tactics are based entirely on briefly holding a battleline, then charging the rear with cav to break units. Complaint 3 is nonsense: I regularly break battlelines with rear-charges using *archers* or *javs*. Just HAVING my Sarmatian Mercs behind the enemy cause their crapper units to run away.

Total Realism 5.4 (or whatever the pre-6 version was) was broken in this regard - I could use 40-man heavy cav to rear-charge sarissa units, and they'd get SLAUGHTERED. It's all fixed now.

I don't mind the slower movement speed at all, and I can march my guys around entire large cities (to cap the towers, natch) and they'll be 'winded' at the end.

Hmn... nope, nothing to make me leave my sweet precious SPQR mod.

Keep your realisim and give me 8000+ unit battles.

My only disappointment is no zero-turn recruitment for the units that should obviously be. Levy units specifically.

Adrian Laguna wrote:You apparently aren't very familiar with the Total War community (the target audience of this mod). Ever since Rome: Total War came out there has been this huge uproar about how the game is way too fast paced. Units move too fast over the tactical map, battles are over too fast, it feels to arcady, etc. Personally, I enjoy things either way.

I'm very familiar with the RTW community's views. I just disagree with them. Game communities almost always make sequels more like the previous games in their mods, for better or worse.

5. Similar to #3, it slows the rate of combat, thus failing to reward good tactics with large enemy casualties and a panicked retreat.

Well here is an interesting point. For the most part everyone agrees that the slower things go, the larger your reward for good tactics such as proper positioning troops, timing of attacks and manouvers, etc. Indeed, the Chilvary Mod (aka Mediaval mod for Rome) is going to be very slow paced. The whole idea is that during a real life battle you can't move reserves on your right flank to help struggling units on the left, in order to simulate this movement speeds need to be toned down a lot.

Maybe I'm just not as good a Total War player, but I sucked at Shogun and Medieval, mainly because in the time it would take my pondering unit move a very short distance and attack an enemy on its flank, my head-on unit was already running away. And in RTR, I've had an enemy unit in a sandwich, and seen it still manage to drive off and kill both of its attackers.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying RTR is a bad mod. I'm sure for a lot of people it's the best thing they've ever played. I just greatly preferred RTW's style of combat to its predecessors, and RTR by and large sets it back the way it was. Personally, I'm still waiting for someone to take the historical units, campaign layout, nations, etc. without the changes to the combat engine or the pace of the strategic game.

Tiger Ace, if you set unit size to 'huge', units are 240ish. 20 units per player means you've got 8000 guys in vanilla 1v1 battles. Whats your point?

Huge breaks the population system, but hey.

Adrian Laguna wrote: Different factions - [...] Thracia and Dacia have been merged, [...] All previously unplayable factions are playable (exept rebels). [...]

What is the name of this new faction? Have they finally given me the chance to forge the Great Dacian Empire?

Stark wrote:Tiger Ace, if you set unit size to 'huge', units are 240ish. 20 units per player means you've got 8000 guys in vanilla 1v1 battles. Whats your point?

Huge breaks the population system, but hey.

Thats the idea, breaks down better and prettier.

And even if their huge, its a pain in the ass to set up armies when every unit takes turns to build.

Realisim, blow me, fun can kick your ass.

Comosicus wrote:

Adrian Laguna wrote: Different factions - [...] Thracia and Dacia have been merged, [...] All previously unplayable factions are playable (exept rebels). [...]

What is the name of this new faction? Have they finally given me the chance to forge the Great Dacian Empire?

Whoops! Forgot, they are merged into the Great Thracian Empire. Sorry!

Tiger Ace wrote:And even if their huge, its a pain in the ass to set up armies when every unit takes turns to build.

Realisim, blow me, fun can kick your ass.

Actually, one unit per turn is highly unrealistic. Twenty units is roughly equivalent to one legion (keep in mind that the game isn't working on a 1-1 scale). The Romans could easily raise an entire legion just from Rome and surrounding cities within 6 months. Hell, I think they could raise half-a dozen legions in six months, if they were desperately needed*.

*Last claim made from scketchy memory of when Hanibal Barca invaded Italy. However, the first is most definitely correct.

You can simulate proper recruitment times by using the SPQR mod

But Legions then were essentially levy troops. Not a professional army whatsoever. This is why it was a lot easier to raise them, as they actually didn't provide excessive training. This is why I tried to fight for levy troops to be zero-turn recruit, low cost but deadly maintenance as opposed to professional troops being one-turn recruit, very high cost but very low maintenance. This would better reflect realism in terms of the game.

All of that would be perfect, if you didn't take the AI into account. The AI will not disband troops to support their economy, so essentially it was impossible to do short of breaking the game.

As an interesting side note, it was the citizen army that built an Empire, and when replaced with the professional army, the professional army is what helped cause a lot of later problems. Go figure.

I decided to give this mod another chance and downloaded the new version. It seems they addressed a lot of the things I was unhappy about before, and continued their changes of the graphics and settings to more historical ones. It's too early to say whether or not I prefer their combat model to the vanilla one, but I definitely don't hate it like I did version 5.4's, and I really like the way the map is set out and the way the units look and feel.

This new version gets my stamp of approval.

Adrian, I AM using SPQR.

Does SPQR have an unified Rome?

Also, I saw that RTR 5.4 had an SPQR mod for it - any info on if 6.0 will as well? I'd like to give SPRQ a try.

Right now I'm trashing Carthage in RTR 6.0 and tangling with the Egyptian navy.

SPQR has split Rome, and is rather unrealistic. The whole point of it is to make it fucking impossible for a Roman faction to play, because your enemy builds full stack armies almost every turn while you face them. This usually means big battle after big battle.

Bugger unrealistic from my point of view... its more FUN.

And unless your a fucking retard, the enemy never has enough money. Blockade blockade blockade.

Tiger Ace wrote:Bugger unrealistic from my point of view... its more FUN.

And unless your a fucking retard, the enemy never has enough money. Blockade blockade blockade.

Rome can't blockade the entire world. Have you gotten to many late games in SPQR? Scary.

I've gotten to enough mid games to completly blockade my enemies.
For example kicking gaulish ass requires 4-5 fleets, medium size, 3-4 full size armies.

Suprisingly, it works.

Large battles, eh, so what, their FUN.

Set up lines, flank, javalins, archers, you know the drill better then I do.

RTR may be more realisitic, more challenging, but to me, its no fun.

Doesn't "Legio" mean levy?

Personally, I'm waiting for Europa Barbarum's eyecandy. Can't help it - it really immerses me in a classical world, of bronze plates for some units, mail even for Greeks of celtic influences, and so on...

Ypoknons wrote:Doesn't "Legio" mean levy?

Nope. It's Legion. Though the word comes from a latin word 'legere' which means "to gather". So you could argue it means levy, but for all practical purposes it doesn't. They called their armies Legions when it was still the citizen army, but when they had the professional army they actually named them permanently like Legio I, Legio II etc.

Adrian Laguna wrote:

Comosicus wrote:

Adrian Laguna wrote: Different factions - [...] Thracia and Dacia have been merged, [...] All previously unplayable factions are playable (exept rebels). [...]

What is the name of this new faction? Have they finally given me the chance to forge the Great Dacian Empire?

Whoops! Forgot, they are merged into the Great Thracian Empire. Sorry!

Waaaaaaaaghhhhhhh. Infidels.

When you think that one of the main reasons I tried RTW was to play the Dacians. I was denied the chance the first time and it happens again. Damn it!.