This thread is on the order of an FYI to anyone (like me :)) who is STILL playing RTW. There probably aren’t a whole lot of folks, but just in case I wanted to share a mod with anyone who hasn’t gotten the Total Realism patch(s). Its quite possible I’m the last to find out about this and you guys have already been playing with it…but if not, here is the link.
Basically the patch is an almost complete overhaul of the game. New skins for the units, new units (I’ve played Rome so far, and there are already about 6 new units for Rome alone), and new playable nations. Also, they have rebalanced things a bit (supposedly its more historically accurate), with new starting territories for the various nations.
Anyway, if you are still playing RTW, or are an RTW fan and think you might like to fire the game back up, and if you haven’t gotten the Total Realism mod, I highly recommend it. One thing I would suggest is making a copy of your current RTW game directory, then make sure you have the 1.2 patch, then follow the directions on the link I gave you. Why? Well, in case your system doesn’t play the mod (it has higher systems specs than the original game). Also…another official RTW mod is coming out this month (Alexander)…and you may want to play that (though the TR mod allows you to play the Macedonians :)).
Anyway, enjoy…hopefully someone will be able to benifit from this thread anyway.
Sweet, I’ll have to fire this game back up. I haven’t played it in such a long time, I’m still playing Civ IV and Battlefield 2. I’m also waiting for MTW:2.
Yeah, I’m still playing Civ IV as well…and can’t wait for MTW 2 either! But…I have to admit I’m pretty excited about this mod. Its almost like a whole new game…even the fundamental game play is significantly different. Units are much less disposable, as they cost more…and you make less money, at least I have so far (I’m still on my first new campaign with the new mod…playing Rome of course :)). Also, the battles seem to take longer, at least so far…units fight harder and it takes more to break them than I recall in the old game.
Anyway, give it a shot and come back here and give your thoughts if you like. I’m rather a fantic about this game so I can endlessly talk about it.
If anyone else does install it, let me know if you notice a bug with the flags/banners on the main strategic map. Its the one flaw I’ve noticed in an otherwise kick ass mod. It might just be my video card though…or my drivers might not be correct. Not sure.
I’m finding it way cool to get some spear units for Rome early on. One thing I’m puzzled by is the lack of any archers for Rome so far. They simply aren’t in the tech tree. I wonder how historically accurate that is. I SEEM to recall that Rome did in fact use archers quite a bit.
One funny thing is having to fight King Pyrrhus right off the bat when you play Rome…and his having elephants!! Luckily (for me) it was NOT a, um, pyrrhic victory, though it was quite costly with those freaking elephants (they are SO devastating when you don’t have fire archers…yurk!).
I’m hoping Tamerlane wanders in and gets the mod…I’d like to know how much more historically accurate this mod is compared to the original (which wasn’t very historically accurate at all). Off the top of my non-historian’s head, I’d say that at least the various portions of Alexanders old empire seem more accurate now…for instance, Egypt seems more historically accurate than in the original.
Anyway, I just am coming up for air after a marathon session playing the Romans. Since I basically have this week off I’m going to be playing a hell of a lot of this to see how all the other races work out. If anyone has any questions or comments feel free.
BTW, one recommendations I’ll make is this…I would have paid for this mod! Glad its free though.
Also, I installed the optional music patch to 6.2, but it doesn’t seem to be working for me (I still seem to have the original music/voices…the patch is supposed to have the commanders speaking in Latin when they are Roman, for instance). If anyone else installs it, let me know if your music patch is working or not. Hopefully I can troubleshoot this and the banners thing…if I know it works on someone else’s system it would be a help.
This seems like a good place to repost my unanswered question, reposted here:
I’ve started playing the game recently, and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it.
I value realism in war gaming very much, and while I’m very knowledgable about modern war, technology, tactics, and weaponry, I know very little of the Roman era.
So I’m curious - is this game considered generally realistic, a real reflection of what Roman era battles could be like?
It strikes me that the pace of battles is very fast, much faster than I’d expect is realistic. But to some extent, that may be a result of where I’m at in the game - I’m fighting against Gallic light infantry, which I gather is more like a group of warlords gathering their men together than a trained, disciplined army. And in that context, it might be realistic that I can break them easily and inflict pretty ridiculous casualty ratios. Rome did have a lot of military success, after all - especially early on. Perhaps the flow of the game will change as I get further in the campaign.
Well, I’m not one to answer this question as I’m no historian…maybe Tamerlane will wander in though (he plays RTW).
I’ll take a WAG though using my vast History Chanel knowledge.
I think its GENERALLY realistic, and does a decent job of portraying ancient warfare as it happened…but in such a way to translate into a fun game at the same time. Its certainly not a grognards game…but then, those aren’t as much fun to the general public.
Certainly…its like a lot of the sub simulator games. It compresses time and distance in order to make sure you aren’t bored to death waiting for something interesting to happen. Also, the battles are set in such a way that, though you cna choose your ground, its a small battle field. The unit ‘regiments’ are also much smaller.
And they all move MUCH faster than I imagine in RL. Take the phalanx units for instance. IIRC when Rome faced the Macedonians in one of the decisive battles (I don’t remember which one off the top of my head), the Macedonians were only able to get about half of their phalanx into formation for the battle…because it took so long to form them up properly. While the phalanx units in the game move a hell of a lot slower than other units, and while its a pain in the ass sometimes trying to keep them from getting flanked, they are still orders of magnitude more responsive than their RL equivelant. But then…this is a game, and supposed to be fun. Hell, I get frustrated enough with the way they work in game…I’d probably be tearing out my hair if I had to command REAL troops that moved like that.
The Gauls are certainly one of the weaker nations…and they do tend to break fairly easily against the various Roman troops (especially the Princepes and Roman armored spearmen in the early game…later on its no contest even against the Chosen guys). But then JC was able to conquere all of Gaul fairly easily in RL…and with a realitively small force (compared to the numbers the Gauls had).
If you set the tactical game play to ‘hard’ they will usually not break as easily btw. And some of the other races are quite challenging…at least until you develop different tactics depending on the force mix of the enemy and whatever your standard mix is. Wait until you have an elephant charge, for instance…especially if you don’t have a lot of archers!
Definitely it becomes more challenging…though from my perspective the tactical battles are the least of my worries. I generally win those by fairly high margins (especially if I’m playing Rome, who are a bit over powered IMHO). The main challenge for me is on the strategic map…trying to keep cities viable, making money, plague free and happy…especially as they get further away from the capital. I like to play the long game, and toward the end and at the fronteer of my empire things generally start to unravel, as the computer throws massive regional plagues and civic unrest my way at the most inopportune times.
The mod I describe in this thread does seem to have tweaked the underrlieing game mechanics…I have noticed battles SEEM to take longer, and the enemy units SEEM to fight harder. For example, I am playing Rome (there aren’t multiple factions in this mod btw…you start off in control of Rome with 2 other cities and work from there), and I’m also fighting the Gauls. Wasn’t really my idea, as I was already at war with the Greek states and the Republic of Carthage but what can you do? Anyway, in a battle I just fought I basically surrounded an entire wing of the Gaul’s army (in a rather clever pincer move, if I do say so myself )…and the Gauls basically fought on until they were nearly wiped out before breaking. Thats something I NEVER remember happening in the pre-mod game. Usually as soon as you put a unit on the flank of anything but one of the elite regiments its going to break. Another example was the Greeks. Imagine my surprise when I sent in a cavalry regiment against a fully engaged Phalanx unit…and the damn thing not only didn’t break but chewed up my calvary WHILE fighing off 2 hastati units!
If you are only just getting into RTW I recommend playing through at least a few full games before getting the mod (if you are even interested in it). The changes are pretty fundamental to the game…even the look and feel is somewhat different. There are tons of new playable nations…but I haven’t tried them yet and some of them look difficult in the extreme. One good thing though is there are a LOT more cities…I’ve taken basically the Italian boot, Sicily and Corsica and a few other islands and already control 20+ towns…and I haven’t even gotten to North Africa yet!
-XT
I haven’t played the Total Realism mod, but it is certainly true that in un-modded RTW the battles are very fast, and units break very quickly - especially when flanked. Now, it may be true that units really will crack quickly when flanked, but it’s so ridiculously easy to do it in RTW that it kinda ruined my enjoyment of the game. In the vanilla game you can make the Romans run away using Gallic troops nearly as easily as vice versa, because the AI is too damn stupid to cover its flanks. And once you have one unit running, it’s usually pretty easy to get a chain reaction going through the entire enemy army.
I’m really tempted to reinstall and download the RTR mod now. Damn you, xtisme.
I didn’t find it to be so, and I’ve gone back to playing MTW, though I may give Rome Total Realism a whirl. In addition to the problems already mentioned, the units in RTW are pretty ridiculous. I think I counted like four different types of Roman cavalry? And the urban cohorts are the elite troops? Then you have what are basically flatout fantasy units, like the ‘Arcani.’
They should have taken the graphics down several notches and combined the hastati, principes and triarii into combined big recruitable centuries. At something like 120 men per unit on even the largest size, the most you’ll ever fit in a RTW battle isn’t even close to what just one full strength legion brought to the field in real life. A legion had 5,000 men in it; and a half dozen legions might show up for a big battle. The enemy might bring three times that number. So a real battle of decent size would see the deployment of tens or hundreds of thousands of men. Sadly, RTW never even comes close to that and it’s more like Rome: Total Skirmish, with a sad one thousand little dudes running around. It looks especially poor during city sieges with these giant walls and epic-sized siege towers…and relatively no one to fight.
Not a bad game, and actually pretty addictive at times, but realistic it wasn’t. I also missed being able to marry my sons to my daughters so as to raise a dynasty of mutant freaks to rule the world, like I can in MTW.
Thats why I’m so looking forward to the new MTW 2. I’ve seen the screen shots, and a friend of mine who works for Sega showed me the beta. Its definitely a must have game for this year.
I think you’ll be happier with the units in the TR mod if you didn’t like the ones in the original. The scope of the battles is about the same though…unit size is still fairly small (so you still won’t get your 5000 man legions unfortunately). I don’t recall that MTW unit size was all that much more though so I’m unsure why this is a major problem. Myself, I just pretend that every individual unit is aprox a ‘regiment’ in actual size, and is simply represented as 10x less that the total for the sake of game play…so if the stack says 80, I read that as 800. This makes the game more interesting for me…YMMV.
I did check out some of the other races last night and was surprised at the depth of the changes. Its not just the units that change, but even the opening territories controlled has been radically changed (I should have known since the Romans are so different). Also, the types and classes of units available to a given nation has changed quite a bit. One thing I noticed is the Ptolemies (Egyptians) now get Elephants. The Selucides start out with a truely staggering assortment of unit types too. And of course the Romans get several different spear units, a specialized sword unit, several (weak) cavalry units, several types of skirmisher units (one, interestingly enough, with that reverse swashstika (life symbol IIRC) on the shield. They also start off with a slinger unit (no archers though).
You still can’t marry off your spawn though to control the world.
I’m enjoying this patch a lot. I’m generally a “solid front line, pour shitloads of arrows into them from behind” type of guy, so of course I picked the Iberians who only have slingers. :smack:
On the plus side, the A.I.'s tactics have certainly been given a boost. Cavalry units in particular are annoyingly smart. And I learnt very early on not to march an army through forests in Gaul.
The issue of unit size has simply to do with computer performance. If you multiplied unit sizes by 10 and still drew every soldier in 3d, you’d bring every computer on the market today to its knees. I for one am quite glad to trade smaller armies for battles that run faster than slide shows.
I think they did tweek the AI a bit…it seems smarter (marginally), and a bit tougher too…it doesn’t bolt as much at the first sign of trouble. Elephants now are pretty fricking freightening…at least the Greek ones (Asian Elephants) and the Carthaginian (Tower Elephants) have come as a rather nasty surprise to my poor Roman troops thus far…I’ve actually had some pretty grim attrition battles, where I’ve won against their ground troops then had several regiments chewed up by the damn elephants before I could drive them off.
I’m also a wide front, shit load of archers behind kind of guy…I only use calvary to protect my flanks or maybe to distract the enemy in the rear. Try the Selucids…they start off with 2 types of archers that I noticed. I think the Egyptians also start off with multiple archer types. Haven’t tried the Macedonians yet…waiting to finish this first campaign before trying out all the other nations. I think this mod will hold me until MTW 2 comes out later this year…though I’m eyeing my copy of MTW and thinking of re-installing it. I just don’t know if I want to go back to the risk style strategic map…I really like the 3-D implementation where you move your armies on the big map and the terrain you are on translates into the tactical game. Still, swiss armored pikemen may be calling to me (though not for a while now that I have my hands on this mod)…
My friend seems to think it will be in the November/December time frame…though its hard to gage at this stage. They are pretty well done at this point, but they have to troubleshoot all the bugs and there are supposedly serious balance issues.
Definitely…I just use my own imagination to envision the units as larger than they are. Beats the hell out of moving lead figures representing regiments or divisions on a table top, I’ll tell ya that.
Arrghh, this is making me want to play RTW again. I remember I had this whole clan of Julii, and I kept every tavern I captured and then built a temple to Bacchus in every town. Naturally, the entire clan was composed of violent, drunken sodomites. My second generation patriarch was a carefully cultivated guy who grew steadily more insane as the game progressed, his pre-battle oration was the one about how he’d eaten all the bees and how the enemy hadn’t had honey for weeks, & etc. He was completely nuts but his troops loved him, and he took all of Western Europe and most of Northern Africa before dying at the staggering age of 103.
I’m re-enjoying MTW though, the more stately pace of the battles allows tactics to be more of a factor, I think. MTW2 can’t come soon enough!
As one who never thinks to do this (and the one time I did, I was playing an Islamic faction with no princesses), what’s the result of this? I know the manual warns against it but never tried it.
But…I have to admit I’m pretty excited about this mod. Its almost like a whole new game…even the fundamental game play is significantly different. Units are much less disposable, as they cost more…and you make less money, at least I have so far (I’m still on my first new campaign with the new mod…playing Rome of course :)). Also, the battles seem to take longer, at least so far…units fight harder and it takes more to break them than I recall in the old game.
