Rome Total War fans: FYI

Cafe Society
21

[QUOTE=xtisme]
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.
[/QUOTE]

There’s very little they can do to directly manipulate the AI, but a long while ago I read a bunch of stuff on the Total Realism forums, and iirc what they’ve done is boost hitpoints and morale without adding offense, with the effect that troops take longer to die, and don’t break as soon. In addition, there’s some formation mod which alters what formations the AI uses and how strictly it stays in formation, which supposedly improves the AI somewhat.

I broke down and reinstalled and downloaded the patch. Started as the Romans, and I just trounced Phyrrus, although he kinda handed me a huge terrain advantage. I was able to set up defensively on a steep slope, which gave my velites enough range to neutralize his elephants before they did too much damage, and his hoplites were all dead tired by the time they got to my lines and went down fairly easily. So, too early for me to pass judgement on the battle difficulty yet. Crunched for money, though, so I’m going to have to sack a couple rebel cities to boost my treasury.

22

I’ve been meaning to try the Total Realism mod for ages and I have no doubt it’s more historical that vanilla overall. Lord do I hate the vanilla implementation of Lagif Egypt. But I haven’t gotten around to it yet for a couple of reasons:

  1. The truly dedicated MTW grognards ( or pseudo-grognards, I don’t know if any TW series have ever been hardcore enough for the true strategy nuts :smiley: ), loved the long, epic battles and missed that in RTW. In MTW a single large battles could literally take hours. I can sympathize with that view - certainly it allowed a lot more scope for careful battlefield maneouvering and a great feeling of satisfaction when it was a good one.

But often they were endurance contests ( ugh, those Mongol battles exhausted me ) and I like the fact that I could fire up RTW and play for a quick hour before work, without having to worry about having time to either finish up a key fight or refight it all over again. Total Realism deliberately seeks to slow the pace of the fighting and that sounds attractive in one respect and less so in another. It’s helped me hesitate.

2.) While more provinces on the face of it sounds great, I’ve heard that what you gain in accuracy, you may end up sacrificing in gameplay. Apparently the AI functions at its best with fewer provinces, which is part of the reason it appears to behave a bit more intelligently/unpredictably on the Barabarian Invasions map than it does in vanilla. One issue with the TR mod is that apparently the increased provinces present too many choices for it’s poor little brain to manage, leading to sluggish or even paralytic behavior.

'course that could be an issue with an earlier build and maybe that’s been addressed.

3.) Gamewise, I’ve lately been pre-occupied with build 1.05 of Crusader Kings ( which I LOVE - finally that game has approached what it should have been to start with ) and haven’t explored the BI expansion as much as I’d like to yet. I’ve found BI to actually be an excellent and altogether more challenging game than vanilla RTW.

But xtisme is tempting me ;). Maybe when I get some more free time in a few weeks, I’ll give it a shot.

Oh and re: army size limitatons - doesn’t bother me a bit. In most of these games I multiply troop numbers by ten in my head anyway :p. Trying to track 50,000 actual bodies on a 1600x1200 screen would be impossible without making them boringly tiny sprites.

  • Tamerlane
23

[QUOTE=Tamerlane]
Lord do I hate the vanilla implementation of Lagif Egypt.
[/quote]

Lagid. I can live with the other typos, but not that :).

24

[QUOTE=Gorsnak]
There’s very little they can do to directly manipulate the AI, but a long while ago I read a bunch of stuff on the Total Realism forums, and iirc what they’ve done is boost hitpoints and morale without adding offense, with the effect that troops take longer to die, and don’t break as soon. In addition, there’s some formation mod which alters what formations the AI uses and how strictly it stays in formation, which supposedly improves the AI somewhat.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I’ve noticed a subtle difference in the games so far. It seems that (with the exception of the Greek phalanx type units) that troops fight longer and harder when taken in the rear…and also they generally fight longer in straightup fights. It seems that casualties accumulate slower as well…is that something they have done or am I just imagining it (maybe the tweeked damage downward or something)?

[QUOTE=Gorsnak]
I broke down and reinstalled and downloaded the patch. Started as the Romans, and I just trounced Phyrrus, although he kinda handed me a huge terrain advantage. I was able to set up defensively on a steep slope, which gave my velites enough range to neutralize his elephants before they did too much damage, and his hoplites were all dead tired by the time they got to my lines and went down fairly easily. So, too early for me to pass judgement on the battle difficulty yet. Crunched for money, though, so I’m going to have to sack a couple rebel cities to boost my treasury.
[/QUOTE]

Money seems to be more of an issue in this mod than in the original. I found myself constantly strapped for cash so far…and unable to build a huge fleet, a huge army and add all those nice improvements to every city and town like I could in the original. One good thing (IMHO) is that they have done something to tweek the city morale or whatever it is…my cities, even newly conquered ones, don’t seem to rebel anywhere near as often. And while I’ve been hit with a few plagues, its nothing like I remember from the original game.

Since you’ve downloaded and patched, are you having any video wierdness on the main strategic map with the various banners/flags? On my computer ever flag, reguardless of nation, is simply a grey box. Interestingly enough, on the tactical battle map, all the banners on the various units are perfectly visible and correct.

-XT

25

City and army banners on the strategic map appear fine to me. Not sure what your issue might be.

26

Ok, gave it a go with the…Bastus? North of the Selucids, anyway. Nice archery options, but i’ve gone up against elephants for the first time with this mod… holy crap. They can be taken down, but they’ll do huge amounts of damage before they do. Probably a lot more realistic, but damn. I think they may have upped the costs for them, though; i’m sure the upkeep for them is much higher.

[QUOTE=xtisme]
It seems that (with the exception of the Greek phalanx type units) that troops fight longer and harder when taken in the rear…
[/QUOTE]
I would have though the Greeks would put up less than a fight against that… :stuck_out_tongue:

27

I believe the best anti-elephant units should be your various javelin troops. I think most every faction should have access to them.

28

Probably video driver or some such. I’ll have to look into it…since I now know its with my system and not the mod. Thanks :slight_smile:

[QUOTE=Tamerlane]

  1. The truly dedicated MTW grognards ( or pseudo-grognards, I don’t know if any TW series have ever been hardcore enough for the true strategy nuts ), loved the long, epic battles and missed that in RTW. In MTW a single large battles could literally take hours. I can sympathize with that view - certainly it allowed a lot more scope for careful battlefield maneouvering and a great feeling of satisfaction when it was a good one.
    [/QUOTE]

Yeah, I recall those marathon (no pun intended) battles in MTW. While the mod does seem to make the battles a bit longer, I have yet to fight one that takes as long as those epic MTW battles of full stacks crashing together.

[QUOTE=Tamerlane]
2.) While more provinces on the face of it sounds great, I’ve heard that what you gain in accuracy, you may end up sacrificing in gameplay. Apparently the AI functions at its best with fewer provinces, which is part of the reason it appears to behave a bit more intelligently/unpredictably on the Barabarian Invasions map than it does in vanilla. One issue with the TR mod is that apparently the increased provinces present too many choices for it’s poor little brain to manage, leading to sluggish or even paralytic behavior.
[/QUOTE]

Not sure about this. There are a hell of a lot of new cities/provences, but its still to early for me to judge if the game is more sluggish or not. I thought the original game was fairly sluggish to be honest, especially the end game…a lot of the time it seemed that after several vicious offensives early on the AI would then just sit back and wait to be slaughtered in their cities.

[QUOTE=Tamerlane]
3.) Gamewise, I’ve lately been pre-occupied with build 1.05 of Crusader Kings ( which I LOVE - finally that game has approached what it should have been to start with ) and haven’t explored the BI expansion as much as I’d like to yet. I’ve found BI to actually be an excellent and altogether more challenging game than vanilla RTW.
[/QUOTE]

Heard a lot about this game, but haven’t tried it myself. May have to give it a shot if this mod doesn’t hold me through until MTW 2 comes out. :slight_smile:

[QUOTE=Tamerlane]
But xtisme is tempting me . Maybe when I get some more free time in a few weeks, I’ll give it a shot.
[/QUOTE]

beckons Come back to the Dark Side Tamerlane…

:stuck_out_tongue:

If you do decide to give it a shot definitely come back here and give your thoughts…if you are up for it Tam. They would be greatly appreciated, especially with reguards to whether the starting location, units, etc are more historically accurate (they could hardly be worse than the original, but still, inquiring minds want to know).

-XT

29

[QUOTE=Gorsnak]
I believe the best anti-elephant units should be your various javelin troops. I think most every faction should have access to them.
[/QUOTE]
Wasn’t a real-life counter-elephant unit flaming pigs? Shame they didn’t make it into the game.

30

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
Ok, gave it a go with the…Bastus? North of the Selucids, anyway. Nice archery options, but i’ve gone up against elephants for the first time with this mod… holy crap. They can be taken down, but they’ll do huge amounts of damage before they do. Probably a lot more realistic, but damn. I think they may have upped the costs for them, though; i’m sure the upkeep for them is much higher.
[/QUOTE]

They are a lot more expensive…and if you noticed there are a lot fewer of them in a regiment now (usually only 4 actual elephants). They are pretty friggin devastating though I admit. I’ve been using my javelin throwers to soften them up…putting the skirmishers way out in front and directing them to attack the elephants as they come in. I’ve gotten a few regiments chewed up that way by enemy cavalry…but hell, thats what skirmishers are for, and better them than my main line units. Fire arrows also do wonders…you can generally panic the elephants with fire (if you have archers that shoot that kind of arrow of course).

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
I would have though the Greeks would put up less than a fight against that…
[/QUOTE]

:stuck_out_tongue: !! I suppose it would depend on the Greek…

-XT

31

BTW, did anyone download and install the optional music/voice mod? If so…well, have you noticed any difference? To me it sounds exactly the same, except for one song when the credits show.

I was reading…part of my problem may be that I didn’t do a fresh install of the game but installed it over the game I had (which had the Barbarian Invasion expansion on it).

-XT

32

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
Wasn’t a real-life counter-elephant unit flaming pigs? Shame they didn’t make it into the game.
[/QUOTE]

Well, it made it into vanilla ;). Actually, if you read the Total Realism FAQ they address this. In short it wasn’t ever a “unit”. It was just in one battle where an enterprising commander hit upon that novel tactic. Squealing pigs apparently ( and unsurpringly, really ) having a disconcerting effect on elephants, it was decided that setting the pigs alight would be a nifty way to guarantee plenty of squealing ;).

But it was never a regular tactic or unit or even used other than that once. Keeping such an…uh…specialized unit permanently on hand just to deal with the very rare elephant incident no doubt seemed excessive.

Hannibal, in his post-Punic War days, supposedly hit upon the clever tactic in one particular naval engagement of catapulting live poisonous snakes in clay pots onto opposing warships. A live viper in a clay pot being propelled at high velocity towards them apparently ( and again, unsurprisingly ) having a similar effect on sailors that a flaming pig charging towards them had on an elephant :p. But it doesn’t appear to have entered anyone’s permanent armory after that one time.

I suppose we should just be grateful that asp-launchers didn’t make their way into RTW as an advanced naval armament :D.

  • Tamerlane
33

lol…don’t give them any ideas!

-XT

34

[QUOTE=Jophiel]
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.
[/QUOTE]

You begin to see a large increase in the freak traits. Chinless wonders, extra toes, and just general retardation. And you get a secret incest vice that can be made public. Since MTW becomes too easy at a certain point, I upped the challenge by sending gibbering inbreds to lead my armies.

Almost as good as sending waves of assassins after the Pope, only to watch him degenerate into a paranoid madman with every passing year. :slight_smile:

For my part, I found RTW elephants brutal enough in vanilla, though not as bad as chariots (wtf was up with those? If chariots were that good we’d all be speaking Egyptian). Advance ranks of velitae supported with ballistae fire seemed the best solution to elephants. It all evens out when you can hire them as mercs though.

35

[QUOTE=Grossbottom]
though not as bad as chariots (wtf was up with those? If chariots were that good we’d all be speaking Egyptian).

[/QUOTE]

Argh. Don’t get me started. I HATE chariots in RTW. Not only are they as anachronistic as hell, but I never could get the hang of using them myself. Those fast-moving battles worked against me here - damn chariots required too much micromanagement for me to be able to concentrate on everything at once.

Another reason I disliked the Egyptians ( along with with their absurdly overpowered archers and desert axemen ) and not incidentally, the Britons. I hated having my generals be chariot-bound. Meanwhile get a little careless ( or have the wrong troop mix ) give a chariot-heavy AI an opening and they’d slaughter you, especially in earlier patches.

Stupid chariots.

  • Tamerlane
36

You can increase the size of units.

Go to C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War.
Open the text file “preferences”
Find the line “UNIT_SIZE= 80” and change the number to a higher one. The site I got this from suggested to increase/decrease by a factor of two, so I set it to 160. Much nicer! Slows down loading times a bit, though.

37

I played RTR about six months ago - I won as the Romans and as the Bactrians. The latter were an interesting factio:n possibly the best troop mix in the game (good phalangites, elite swordsmen, excellent archers, cataphracts and elephants), but it’s also at the ass-end of the world, which means I had to spend 80 years fighting Seleucids until I reached the Mediterranian. Those Indian hordes were something elase, though.

I like the new recruiting system. It forces you to be more careful with your troops, and it leads to some wonderfully polyglot armies on long campaigns.

38

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
You can increase the size of units.

Go to C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War.
Open the text file “preferences”
Find the line “UNIT_SIZE= 80” and change the number to a higher one. The site I got this from suggested to increase/decrease by a factor of two, so I set it to 160. Much nicer! Slows down loading times a bit, though.
[/QUOTE]

Interesting. Does it scale all units accordingly? 54-man/horse cavalry units become 108? Does it screw up the balance? What about units with equipment like onagers? Do you get double the catapults?

39

[QUOTE=SenorBeef]
Interesting. Does it scale all units accordingly? 54-man/horse cavalry units become 108? Does it screw up the balance? What about units with equipment like onagers? Do you get double the catapults?
[/QUOTE]
As far as I can tell, it doubles the units. Only some infantry units used 80, I think that’s only the “standard” amount. I’ve only been playing as “barbarian” sides, so I haven’t had a chance to check out units with equipment yet.

I’m very tempted to set it to 800, which would probably be a more accurate number. I think it might break my computer though.

40

Oh, and the most significant effect i’ve noticed (other than having a lot more visible troops) is that battles are significantly longer. I thought beforehand that it might have little effect on that, but since you never have all soldiers attacking at once (unless you’ve got your infantry in a single file line) they’re suprisingly longer.

Also, the effects of flanking with cavalry are much more noticeable and devestating. I haven’t fought (or used) elephants yet, but there’s a good chance that elephants are pretty unbalanced with higher unit counts.