Rome: Total War is Out

[Kassiopeia]

Ack! I had a unit of equites returning from a scouting trip to a frontier city governed by one of my old fogies and great Gaul crushers, Decius the Mighty, who had 4 in Command skill and got +3 when attacking (!). From the past tense you can already see what happened - the equitees had just parked outside the city, out of movement points, when the Gauls attacked. I got control of the 100 or so equites while the AI ran the massive army from the town to my aid as "reinforcements". My courageous equites managed to kill twice their number of enemies before their morale broke and they fled, all the while the AI squandered my beatiful troops.

I've never felt as helpless in my life as when I watched the AI charge time after time with the General's crack cavalry unit at the enemy... they broke away after only eight were left, and the General was one of them, yet they charged back at them, and I screamed at the screen "DO NOT ATTACK!" but it was too late - Decius the Mighty perished in battle at the ripe age of 56.

Even the AI managed to win the day with the infantry, but at the cost of one of my best Generals.

[Kassiopeia]

Yay. I had an army run by a Captain crush a rebel army - he had 550 men, the enemy had 650 (first time I've ever seen naked fanatics, btw - and they're NOT naked ), and dear Captain killed every single one of them for a Heroic Victory, and I could adopt this "man of the hour". I love this game

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Thanks to all for posting the screenies, I should have my copy this weekend, and will hopefully be firing it up for the first time saturday


Dont think the wife and kids will see much of me this weekend

[SpencerH]

I had exactly the same situation against the germans but my general survived (not Decius). My "Decius" was "the mad". He was a pretty good general too so I used him to punish the germans with a cav army.

[Flip McWho]

ooo How do you get "the mad". Hmm I suppose I have a guy at the moment that could probably qualify. I'm just leaving him in charge of one of my good cities, hopefully he can't do too much damage to it.

(100% casualties actually aren't all that unusual in sieges, but are relatively unusual for field warfare)

I can usually get very close to 100% casualities in field battles. I try to keep my equites out of battle till the enemy is routing, then I chase and kill every single enemy with my fresh and eager equites. Its an excellent way of getting rid of any reinforcements for other enemy armies. Well this works well with Gaulish armies anyways, haven't managed to fight others yet. I'm very slow at this game.

Thanks for the tip about Captains being promoted into Generals. I rarely use Captains cause when I did once he got bribed and disappeared, after that I've always questioned their trust.
How do I adopt people into my family? I take it there's away besides Captains into Generals to get more family?

[Kassiopeia]

Adoptions happen either by well performing Captains like described, or completely at random (you get a prompt with a "yes" and "no" button and info on the candidate). The random adoptees tend to be utter losers (no points in any skill), but there can be some gems, fortunately you know before you decide. I've adopted several generals with a natural command skill of 2 or 3, nice to build up on that.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by General Ludd
Anyone know what exact;y unlocks the different factions? After playing as the Julii and wiping out the gauls I can now play as them. I'm just wondering if you have to fight the last battle against them as they are wiped out, or if there is some mroe complicated trigger?

An alternative to winning the campaign is just to use the hack (mod) that unlocks the other factions.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Flip McWho
ooo How do you get "the mad". Hmm I suppose I have a guy at the moment that could probably qualify. I'm just leaving him in charge of one of my good cities, hopefully he can't do too much damage to it.

He just appeared that way. I was looking over the family tree and there he was as heir. When I looked at his traits it said he bit people. Needless to say, I named another 'heir to the throne'.

[General Ludd]

I started a new game as the Julii on hard/hard difficulty. Much mroe fun. The enemy seems to build more variety of troops and is more aggresive or pro-active on the map. I've had the computer succesfully break a siege of mine, and launch some good attacks of their own. They also perform much better on the battlefield.

[General Ludd]

Oh, and Chariots are ****ing cool.

[Arnelos]

The generals' personalties seem to develop based upon their actions in-game (beyond what they start out with randomly or by inheritance). So if you have a general that you give a particularly nasty post and you have him using lots of troops to quell riots, he might turn into "the harsh" or "the cruel" or even "the mad".

Most of the time, it looks like the generals' personalities do indeed respond to in-game situations. What exactly goes with what is not entirely known to us (still under the hood), but I think they did a pretty good job of it from what little I've seen of action-reaction so far.

[Flip McWho]

Yeah I agree.

All my generals that become the faction leader usually end up "the Mighty", I don't tend to field much in the way of armies as I don't like leaving the city management up to the AI.

[Kassiopeia]

Originally posted by General Ludd
I started a new game as the Julii on hard/hard difficulty. Much mroe fun. The enemy seems to build more variety of troops and is more aggresive or pro-active on the map. I've had the computer succesfully break a siege of mine, and launch some good attacks of their own. They also perform much better on the battlefield.

You mean difficulty levels do not mean the enemy getting just more and more troops, the AI itself actually improves?

[alva]

If so

Could just be that because of more numbers, the AI becomes more aggresive.

[Traianvs]

The strategic map looks cool. If only they had implemented some citybuilding aspect like Caesar II. The game would have been complete then