Rome: Total War is Out

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
I wonder though, you can have only so many unit cards in an army, how are you supposed to get really big battles with thousands of soldiers? Do the numbers represented by a card get bigger later on or something? Or will you have to use the reinforcements trick to bring in several different armies (does make sense)?

As was said you can increase the unit size. Plus, you can have more than two armies on the same field of battle. I'm guessing that if the numbers of units are very large in any battle, some may come on as reinforcements.

[Cookie Monster]

Got the game and it really is captivating! If you thought M:TW was a huge improvement wait 'till you try R:TW!

Now I have a Geforce 64MB video card. What is the benefit of anti-aliasing and should I try it with my card?

[SpencerH]

Anti-aliasing is a way to make digital objects look smoother than they are by adding shading to hard edges.

[Traianvs]

it eats up computer speed performance though

[Flip McWho]

Man. I'm was going through quite nicely taking out the Greek cities and then Macedonia decides to declare war. Well they seige a place which I lift and then I go and attack them and well defeat them thanks entirely to my general. Having a really good general actually has a lot to do with the eventual outcome.

Does anybody know where I can find battle tatics out? Hmm I suppose they have a forum. But yeah, I definitely need to learn how to become a better general myself. At the moment I suck. Please don't tell me I need to sit down and read The Art Of War

[Kassiopeia]

You get a feel for it quite quickly, I've found (of course I've watched all the eps of Time Commanders and know this stuff in general ). Making it rout is the best way to drive away an army, be it defence or offence - and the best way to do this is to try to isolate the enemy force so that you can overwhelm a part of it. The part overwhelmed will panic, and especially with barbarians, this'll cause their entire ranks to just collapse. I love it when I have infantry matching wavering infantry on the city gates and throw in some equites to mess them up - their morale buckles and suddenly you have thousands of Gauls turning tail.

Taking cities is of course a bit more tricky, as they'll fleet to the city square where they may be more resistant to cavalry charges. Another thing is cities with tall walls, as you're mostly going to have ladders and towers which don't carry cavalry, so you'll have to take the walls by footmen alone. That's when it becomes a battle of attrition, a meatgrinder on the walls so to speak.

[Flip McWho]

Yeah the gauls seem reasonably easy to defeat. I started a new game as the Julii. Going against the Macedonians is much harder, they are a lot more disciplined than the gauls, and their armies match yours too.

[alva]

Originally posted by Trajanus
it eats up computer speed performance though

Modern cards handle it fairly well performance wise.

No need to go 8x or 16x mode though.

[child of Thor]

How does it come across in comparison to the other Total war games(Shogun+Medieval)? How is the strategic level of the game in comparison? Does the better battle engine make up more of the games interest now or is the strategic part of the game just as important?

in a nutshell has any other part of the game other than the graphics been improved upon?

[Kassiopeia]

I haven't played Medieval, alas, so I can't tell, but what I've heard from other players is that the campaign game has been improved on enormously. There aren't any huge errors in the battle engine that I've witnessed, the Gauls are ridiculously easy to beat but then I suppose they're supposed to, being smelly barbarians and everything.

Screenshot galore!

First battles with the Huge unit scale.

http://kotisivu.dnainternet.net/anttinor/images/rtw/big_numbers.jpg

http://kotisivu.dnainternet.net/anttinor/images/rtw/massive_attack.jpg

A Gallic attack on one of my cities.

http://kotisivu.dnainternet.net/anttinor/images/rtw/gallic_attack.jpg

Roman defenders.

http://kotisivu.dnainternet.net/anttinor/images/rtw/roman_defence.jpg

My general defence plan when I have hastati or watchmen against, well, about anything. The "H" are Hastati, light infantry, while C is cavalry and V is velites (javelineers). The green rectangle is the Gaul force pushing through with a siege ram.

http://kotisivu.dnainternet.net/anttinor/images/rtw/wall_defence.jpg

The big idea is to allow the Gauls to march through a bit through the opening, after which they'll be crushed on three sides with hastati. Add a random quick cavalry charge, and the meatgrinder will spit out dead barbarians like nothing.

http://kotisivu.dnainternet.net/anttinor/images/rtw/fighting_at_the_breach.jpg

http://kotisivu.dnainternet.net/anttinor/images/rtw/fighting_at_the_gate.jpg

http://kotisivu.dnainternet.net/anttinor/images/rtw/the_flying_frenchman.jpg

The aforementioned strategy in action.

http://kotisivu.dnainternet.net/anttinor/images/rtw/routed_gauls.jpg

http://kotisivu.dnainternet.net/anttinor/images/rtw/gauls_in_flight.jpg

http://kotisivu.dnainternet.net/antt...ar_victory.jpg The results. Winter screenies from a similar battle where I employed the same strat.

http://kotisivu.dnainternet.net/anttinor/images/rtw/fish_in_a_barrel.jpg

This is from my conquest of Sparta (they left it relatively unguarded, busy with the other Roman factions). The archers were helping with a wall battle but they started to do more harm than good for the hastati fighting the Greek spearmen - then I noticed the phalanx sitting on the street doing nothing. Tee hee.

http://kotisivu.dnainternet.net/anttinor/images/rtw/overview.jpg

This was a tricky affair. The enemy army was equal in numbers and was throwing at me in two parts, both coming down at me to a valley. I was too busy fighting to take screenshots, but I had most of my hastati charge at the closer, smaller force while my cav harassed the charging gauls behind my lines. The smaller force soon get enough and took flight, that's when I threw everything including my new toys, war dogs, at them...

http://kotisivu.dnainternet.net/antt...ogs_of_war.jpg

[General Ludd]

What's the hotkey for taking screenshots? I was slamming print screen all through a battle thinking I was taking screenshots but I didn't get any.

[Kassiopeia]

It's Print Scrn, but you have to Alt-Tab out and paste it to a graphics program and save it, i.e. it only puts it on the clipboard. A game like this really, really would need them to be saved automatically in a directory in sequence so you wont' have to alt-tab all the time.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by child of Thor
How does it come across in comparison to the other Total war games(Shogun+Medieval)? How is the strategic level of the game in comparison? Does the better battle engine make up more of the games interest now or is the strategic part of the game just as important?

in a nutshell has any other part of the game other than the graphics been improved upon?

The strategic component has been completely re-done with game complexity comparable to a civ scenario. With STW the ratio of strategic to tactical was 5:95. With MTW 35:65. With RTW its more like 50:50. I'd guess that you could easily play RTW at the strategic level, auto-resolve all combat, and still have an interesting game.

The graphics have improved but for many of us the tactical combat is not as good as previous versions because of unit speed issues and other changes that didnt need to be 'fixed' (kinda like not including firepower in civ3).

[SpencerH]

The site to go to for all things TW is

https://www.totalwar.org

[child of Thor]

thanx for the info Kassiopeia+SpencerH

I've been having a good look at their website, but as always hearing from the people who have gone out and bought it gives the best idea of whats really going on

Strangely i found Shogun a better game than Medieval, when i was expecting the extra levels of complexity in Medieval to win the day - oh well, maybe more isn't always better
Still RTW looks amazing - if the other part of the game is as good as the battle screens then i might be forced to upgrade my pc, which i've been fighting against for a long time