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STW: Never played it.

MTW1: Never got the chance to play it, although I really wanted to when it came out.

RTW: The Julii. Its the hardest Roman faction to play, so when you have built your empire up, you reflect on your hardships and endeavers and you realize what you have accomplished. Moreover, there's nothing like seeing hundreds of legionairies marching across a battlefield, kicking up dust.

BI: The Western Empire. Again, they're the hardest faction and there is a great sense of accomplishment when you have stabalized the empire, strengthened the boarders and moved on the offense. Plumbatarii and carriage ballistae are just unstopable. A few units of these and any advancing unit won't even make contact.

MTW2: First faction I will play will be the Eastern Roman Empire (its not the Byzantine Empire damn it!) followed by the French. I'll actually be trying out more than one or two factions this time around. IN RTW and BI, I just never liked the barbarian factions.

Shogun: Never played

MTW1: Holy Roman Empire (Germans): Halberdiers, Swiss Armored Pikemen...I love long pointy weapons. I was also partial to the Spaniards and Danes.

RTW: The Seleucids, and then the Scipii, since the Scipii could build the Decere ships and rule the oceans.

Haven't played BI or Alexander yet.

I imagine that in M2TW I'll still be partial to the afforementioned factions, although I hope to take most of them out for a spin.

You people who use the vanilla-Rome three families make me sad.

Stark wrote:You people who use the vanilla-Rome three families make me sad.

Ha! I would use them solely to see the legions in their glorious period-inaccurate lorica segmentata armour.

I only just got Rome a few days ago, so I've only played the Julii so far. I guess that means I default to them.

Though it's really not that great; I'm rampaging through Gaul, and in the meantime the Senate keeps telling me to put blockades on just about every port in the Aegean, and the last thing they tried to have me do was take Salona. I'm sorry, my armies are out rampaging towards the Gallic capital; I have better things to do than scramble my garrison forces to get crushed by the three or so armies they have hanging out there. I tried anyway, and got horribly destroyed. Twice.

I use Brutii in RTW because of the added experience due to their temples. There after I trample the Carthaginians first, Greeks next and the Asia Minor thereafter.

For BI, the ERE. Their cavalry is strong and powerful, and their troops are good for forming the anvil and the cavalry the hammer. Had a fierce fight against the Sassanids who threw like several full stack armies against Antioch and I had a slowly building army that took many turns to build up. Had to fight a 1000 strong army with only.. 250 troops once.. won it with my troops routing...

Wait, doesn't the ERE also use Plumbatarii? They are the Comitenses with those darts right?

Rogue 9 wrote:I only just got Rome a few days ago, so I've only played the Julii so far. I guess that means I default to them.

Mods. MODS! Kill the three families bullshit and playing as Rome actually becomes hard (since you can't leave the other families to deal with your flanks). Total Realism kills the stupid Senate bullshit too. Vanila = teh suck.

Darth Wong wrote:Ha! I would use them solely to see the legions in their glorious period-inaccurate lorica segmentata armour.

Oh, my antiquarian soul...

Hey, I'm all for mods, but I usually at least try the default first.

This is by far my best battle so far. I thought I was totally fucked when I saw all those Gauls outside with four rams, but I managed to rout them and trap them at the wall. Cavalry encirclement for the win!

Rogue 9 wrote:Hey, I'm all for mods, but I usually at least try the default first.

I think I played Vanilla R:TW maybe three times before playing R:TR and never going back. Being able to use the other factions, the larger map, the combat tweaks, all good.

Pfft. Mods schmods. There's always a feature of a mod that sucks and puts me right off. I love vanilla. I know it's inaccurate in many ways, but pfft. Humbug.

You don't use a mod because of a feature, but you play vanilla despite piles of features. Vanilla Rome sucks, that's enough for me to mod and never look back.

Pfft. Another thing about the TR mod- just where the heck is their list of changes? They've got a web-page but no damn list.

Vympel wrote:Pfft. Another thing about the TR mod- just where the heck is their list of changes? They've got a web-page but no damn list.

Their page doesn't even seem to be updated anymore. I thought you'd like it just for the 'imaginative' units added to the end of the buildtree for historically weak/assimilated groups. And Bactrians, I mean seriously, Bactria rules.

I'll be honest R:TR isn't that much better than vanilla. Its nice, but it isn't a hugely different game. By and large, it is still pretty simple to win battles. The AI is still too retarded to capture walled cities. And having a large powerful empire takes gold. R:TR is just a spice to an already delicious game, you can enjoy it with or without. I perfer R:TR, but it isn't a hugely different experience.

You do appreciate that R:TR is about fixing it historically and such, right? They can't fix the AI, but they can make the Macedonians and Greeks as distinct militarially as they should be. The retardedly large additional Russian and Central Asian land means lategame Rome is still challenged by reasonable enemies. It's still the same game, it's just not stupid and anachronistic like vanilla, and there's more (and more interesting) units. You know, not 'Rome is teh rule' like vanilla?

Are you one of those people who think mods should fix all of a game's flaws? Like, it doesn't matter if a game has x huge flaw, because mods can fix it?

R:TR is almost..to changed. SPQR for the massive battles, no families and great combat.

InnocentBystander wrote:I'll be honest R:TR isn't that much better than vanilla. Its nice, but it isn't a hugely different game. By and large, it is still pretty simple to win battles. The AI is still too retarded to capture walled cities. And having a large powerful empire takes gold. R:TR is just a spice to an already delicious game, you can enjoy it with or without. I perfer R:TR, but it isn't a hugely different experience.

Tell me about it. The Macedonians tried to take Patavium from me a couple rounds ago. The army composition? Two phalanxes and six units of light cavalry. That'll work against a stockade, but not stone walls. If they'd done it intelligently, I'd have been boned; the city had a squad of principes and two squads of hestati in it.

SPQR is simplistic nonsense.

The AI can't DEFEND cities either: the ole 'run peasants around the walls capturing towers' thing only works so well because they defend the walls poorly and keep marching their units past the towers.

SPQR is simplistic perfection. No more dealing with ordering up large armies, no more small battles that just waste time.

Uh huh. Where might I acquire these mods?

I agree, cavalry's biggest advantage is their ability to cut down essentially the entire army as it routs, and its ability to flank enemies. My favorite tactic which works with pretty much all the Total War games was to have a line of infantry capable of withstanding a charge, with missile troops firing away at the enemy, and cavalry sweep around and kill everything. The first target for my cavalry is always the enemy cavalry which is always the biggest threat, then I go after the missile troops because they are easy targets and their usually in the way of the infantry. Usually my infantry and missile troops can break the enemy infantry so all my cavalry has to do is wipe them out as they flee. The Seleucids are an almost perfect combination of infantry and cavalry. The English in Medieval are great because of their combination of longbows, billmen, spearmen, and knights. I like the Franks because they have both powerful cavalry with their Paladins, and their powerful heerban infantry like the Francisca Heerban.

Stark wrote:

Rogue 9 wrote:Hey, I'm all for mods, but I usually at least try the default first.

I think I played Vanilla R:TW maybe three times before playing R:TR and never going back. Being able to use the other factions, the larger map, the combat tweaks, all good.

You lucky bastard.

I bought the "Gold Edition" of RTW, out of the box it is v1.6. No mods for me.

Rogue: http://www.rometotalrealism.com/

I play the Macedonians. They get kickass cavalry at the start, and the AI just cannot effectively counter phalanxes. Short of highly advanced infantry (Praetorean, Urban) cohorts, nothing gets through the good old Wall 'o Speary Doom. Or, not fast enough to actually matter. 2:1 cavalry advantages + great cavalry really rocks. That, and the AI tends to like throwing its general away in a frontal assault on that wall of spears.

Basic strategy: Phalanxes lined up, flanking regiments tilted backwards or forwards 45 degrees, depending on numbers of infantry. General in the middle to keep my men from breaking, and all other cavalry on the flanks.

I'd like to point out that I made all the buildings take 1 turn to build, and the units 0 turns. In addition, I use the largest unit sizes possible, just BECAUSE. Sure, I sacrifice some graphics quality, but oh well. Suffice it to say, I like my large battles. Multiple full stacks just 10-20 turns in rule.


@Gandalf: Really? I bought that and it was 1.3. Besides, the latest patch available is only 1.5.

Cavalry is done a bit differently in R:TR: the initial hit is powerful and they're good fighters, but they're not quite as overwhelming. If a comparable-quality unit can take the charge without breaking, they'll tie up the cavalry for ages. In vanilla, cavalry is like tanks, slaughtering and overrunning wherever they go.

They still work fine with flank charges, which is basically all I do with them anyway. The R:TR Macedonian missile/light cavalry is really neat ('sassanaphroi cavalry' or something, a few javs and a spear).

HSRTG wrote:@Gandalf: Really? I bought that and it was 1.3. Besides, the latest patch available is only 1.5.

Ah, my bad, it is indeed v1.5.