I found that when I did the extra large unit sizes they had real problems negotiating the streets in the villages and cities, YMMV.
You can change unit size in one of the in-game option menus (possibly at the start of a game - I know you can’t change it mid-campaign). There’s no need to edit the preference file for that. Other effects of large unit sizes not yet mentioned - will kill framerates on lesser computers, and forces you to watch population growth very carefully to avoid recruiting your entire population.
Sigh
My will has broken, downloading the mod now. Roma victor!
Oh, and it looks like Creative Assembly is putting together a monster anthology set, with all the Total Wars up to and including RTW and both expansions. It looks to be a nice release with lots of extras.
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THe board has been down for me for quite a while, but yes…I was going to mention this but since you already did I’ll just say its been a feature all along. In fact, I think you can do the same thing in MTW.
I’ve been playing the Selucids and have been pretty happy with the game thus far. I kind of like the Phase buildings you now have to create to integrate cities into your empire. Also, its cool that as you change from region to region the unit mix in your towns changes…no longer generic unit mixes that are the same from one end of your empire to the next. Its also kind of neat to get enemy units after you conquere and integrate their cities into the empire (and I am guessing its more realistic too).
I actually do fight mostly in line abreast, all my front line infantry in line. But I noticed the same effect you did…namely that regiment to regiment the battles last a LOT longer. I’ve been working on tactics this weekend and am pretty much back to where I was in the old game wrt the tactical battles. You just have to take more care in moving his units around and setting up tactical situations where you can hammer his units from behind. The computer seems to at least try and guard its flanks now, but you can usually draw off the flanking forces with feints and then strike his rear.
It is a bit more of a challenge now though. 
Haven’t tried them yet. As the Selucids though I’ve had them pick off several of my territories in the ‘ass end of the world’ though…I’ve been concentrating on Egypt and Turkey mainly. I’ve just beaten the Ptolomies down though and have most of Turkey so its about time to spank them hard I’d say.
Started a game as Macedonia btw…I’m thinking they are going to be one of the easiest new races to play. Good troop mix, good starting location and tons of money to start with.
-XT
Has anyone else noticed that elephants are MUCH more decisive in this mod than in the original game? I still have the original elephants that I got at the beginning of the game (now double gold bar of course :)). I think in the entire game I’ve lost one elephant (not one regiment, but a single elephant).
Of course, the cost is so high for them (especially the armored type…over 6k just to recruit, and takes 4 turns!), and the upkeep the same, that I can’t afford to have but two regiments in my entire empire…and they are constantly with the field army.
-XT
Yeah, but there’s no reason they couldn’t have done that. Any game of RTW are going to diverge from history in a lot of ways, just in terms of what gets conquered, and when, and by who. The idea of flaming pigs was available to the Romans. Wether or not it gets used is up to the player. I don’t think including them in the original game counts as ahistorical. I feel the same way about a lot of the “inaccurate” units. I think it’s cool that this is reflected in the units you can recruit units that, while possible for that time period, were never widely used.
It’s a pretty great mod, I have to admit. Elephants are nasty, when I battered down the walls that Pyrrhus was hiding behind, he charged them out and flattened my poor principes. I had to run them around the field and pelt them with javelins to be rid of them.
I miss my war dogs. But at least there’s no more Senate, and I love that I have to pacify these Italian scum before I can even think about charging off into Greece or Gaul.
Random R:TW discussion continuation:
I finished my long (loooong) Julii campaign, and decided to play some short ones for different factions. I started with the seleucids, because they have an interesting force mix.
It’s pretty much impossible on medium campaign difficulty and hard battle difficulty. Everyone is attacking me from every direction constantly. I can’t build anything, buildings or army, because I’m constantly under siege.
I’ve held out for a long time, because the computer is bad at realizing that running into a phalanx during a siege is bad, and inflicted thousands of casualties, but they just keep coming.
Also, of note, I don’t really like the low recruiting cost that the game uses. Unit maintenance is usually half or so of what the unit costs originally - so every time I kill a unit, two turns later they’ll have saved enough money from not having to maintain that unit to make another one. Makes winning battles and killing units feel useless. You kill the hell out a nation’s army, so their incoming gold shoots way up, and because of the low unit costs, they can mass produce the army you just killed in a few turns. Just too frustrating. Does total realism chang that?
Something I forgot to ask:
Are the wall defenses different for different factions?
As Romans, I’d get boiling oil with stone walls. As the seleucids, though, I don’t. I looked, and it graphically displays the nozzles for it, but it never fires. Kind of important, if I’m going to be fighting zerg rushes through my gates as I have been.
I took over an Egyptian city with walls, and it seemed to work there - so is it just a matter of boiling oil being available to only some factions?
Ahhh, sorry, one more post. Things keep popping into my head.
There was an advice bubble that popped up as my elephants were crushing peasants. It said something to the extent that while many of them will die, light troops were the best counter to my elephants, so I should be careful.
Is that true? Is light infantry a bigger threat to elephants than the heavier stuff?
You have to be even more agressive than usual with the Seleucids - specifically, you have to take the Egyptians out as fast as you can. They have more resources than you and no-one to use them against but you, so every round that passes thy’ll get relatively stronger nd you’ll get relatively weaker. You have to strike at them right away. First turn, leave enough troops behind up north to slow the Parthians and Armenians down (You can afford to lose the Messopotamian cities; once you have that sweet Egyptian moolah taking them back will be a piece of cake), gather up everyone else and start your push towards the Nile.
Of course, you’ll be outnumbered, so you’ll have to display some good generalship. But tactical acumen is the only way to win.
The advice givers aren’t worth a damn, case in point. Here it’s talking specifically about javelin-throwing units, like velites. To have a javelin unit take out an elephant squad, set formation to loose and turn skirmish mode OFF. Then order them to attack on the double. Casualties will occur but skirmishers are cheap and elephants are not. Any other unit that tries this will get hammered, and archers take forever to whittle down an elephant stack.
If you can engage with two skirmisher units, leave skirmish mode ON. This will reduce casualties because they’ll be able to pingpong the elephants between them.
It’s a good idea check the enemy’s units before engaging (I’m lazy about this). If you see elephants or chariots, always keep at least one squad of skirmishers with its ammo fully loaded until you can take them down. Once you get in the habit of including one or two skirmisher units in every army, you’ll find them useful for all kinds of stuff.
I’m doing Selucid on hard/hard…is possible. What you have to do though is basically write off the eastern half of your empire…you just can’t put any money into it at all. Just let it fend for itself…eventually most of those cities will be swallowed up. What I did was basically hammer Egypt (Ptolomy) until I had all of the Nile cities, then turned my armies to the region of Turkey. It helps if you can keep the Macedonians at least neutral until you pretty much have Egypt on the ropes. You just have to try and put defensive forces into your cities in Turkey and let them fend for themselves until you are ready to send significant troops there. I’ve found that a few swordsmen, backed up by archers/slingers and a few phalanx type units, with perhaps a calvalry unit for sally does pretty well against small raids at least. If they send something major…well, just write it off until you can get to them.
I have to run to a meeting but will be back to continue my own thoughts asap. I’m always willing to babble on about this game of course.
-XT
Units in TR seem to cost a great deal more…especially for the high end powerful units. Not only the capital costs but the recurring costs are high. As I said in an earlier post I have only 2 elephant units in my entire empire…one of the heavy Thoraksmenoi units and one of the cheaper tower elephant units. Its all I can basically afford. In the old game I usually had 2 elephants in each of my field armies…and I generally had 4-6 of these armies at any one time. In THIS mod though I have exactly 2 field armies…and sometimes I have only one if the other army gets unexpectedly chewed up. It definitely gives a new perspective on things. Perhaps though its different with some of the other nations though…I’ve played the Selucids so far and money is a constant worry.
Actually I know for a fact that some of the Selucid towns have oil…I’ve seen them drop it on folks attacking the gates. I’ve also seen some towns where no oil is dropped. Beats me why this is…might have to do with who owned the town previously, might be a bug…or something else I can’t think of.
As for town defense, I will say it seems to be much harder in TR than I recall it being in the original. At least the tactics I used in the original game aren’t as effective in this version. Basically what I would do is pull back from the walls and defend the town center. I would put up perhaps some skirmisher units on the walls, maybe an archer or two, and any swordsmen I may have…but I’d pull everything else back to the middle and use phalanx type units in the narrow passages through the town. This ALWAYS worked. It is definitely not as effective now though.
I never follow the advice bubble myself…to me it gives either obvious or bad advice. IMHO the best counter to elephants is fire arrows, followed by like skirmisher units that are (hopefully) mobile enough to get out of the elephants way until they kill enough of them to break their spirit…or send them into panic.
A quick random thought as I have only a few min between meetings: The nastiest unit I’ve found in the game so far (besides the elephants) seems to be something called a Hypaspistai…basically a Macedonian light infantry swordsman. Gods know WHY this unit is so over powered, but I have thrown up to 3 heavy calvary units at one of about 35 soldiers…and had my cavalry completely chewed up in the process! The first time I saw them was when Macedonia attacked me after I finished off Egypt and was moving back into Turkey. One ran way out in front and on the flank of the Macedonian advancing phalanx and I was thinking ‘Ah! Fresh meat!’. I sent my flanking cavalry (3 heavy cavalry units) straight at it…it wasn’t a pike unit so I didn’t think anything of this. I then turned my attention elsewhere, confident that they would chew said unit up in short order. I was shocked when I turned my attention back, noticing that 2 of the 3 units were down to less than 10 and the other was down to something like 15 (these were full strength cavalry units of 40 each to begin) and thought perhaps the idiots had blundered into an unbroken phalanx or something like that. But no…they were still fighting the damn light sword unit!
And this wasn’t a fluke…its happened to me now several times. So…my advice is, watch out for those damn Hypaspistai units if you come up against the Macedonians in a dark alley some night…they are killers! 
(Anyone have any idea what the hell these units are btw? I read the description of them in game, and it just says they are elite sword units…but gods are they over powered!)
-XT
They are the elite footguard(shieldbearers) of Alexander The Great. (Well not the same men obviously :). And yes, they are bad news. The reason for them being so extremely powerfull is that they, in addition to excellent stats, also have 2 hitpoints, meaning that you have to kill each man twice so to speak.
Wikipedia has a short text on them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypaspist
In order to play other than the Julii, I have to beat the game, am I correct? Because I downloaded everything and when I play it, they have “Play total realism” or something like that greyed out and all I can click on is “Disabled.”
Which makes me wonder how anachronistic they are as a unit. I know Eumenes appointed new hypaspists while fighting his campaigns against Antigonus. But this was in the immediate aftermath of Alexander’s death and he was just replenishing the ranks of the original units. Although the Antigonid kings of Maceconia continued to have , for example, “silver shield” phalangists ( as well as “bronze shield” and “white sheild” ), they definitely had next to nothing to do with the original Alexandrian units. I don’t know id hypaspists as a distinct unit type survived the wars of the Diadochi.
I believe so, yes, though there might be a mod that allows you to avoid that whole issue. Just make sure you pick the short campaign and it’s not too bad.
- Tamerlane
What I did was go into the directory and changed “First Game” or whatever it was called and put “False” so I skipped that part and now playing the Macedonians.
Grumble stupid Greek cities won’t die grumble.
Ah…thanks much. That explains things then. They are quite nasty…almost as bad as charging a fully formed phalanx regiment head on. Its like going into a buzz saw.
I found out that the Selucids get these units as well…but only for the first few years. After that you get the Legion like units (forget what they called it now)…and its no where near as capable, though still a decent unit for city defense and flank guard.
You only get they fairly early in the game…so its probably not TOO much of a stretch (it is a game after all…at least they were real units at some point, ehe? :)). Did the Selucids field legion like units?
-XT
Possibly - I’m not as up on the literature of the late Seleucid armies. I know that Antiochus III supposedly had at least one unit armored like Roman troops at a parade review. Whether they were actually structured and organized like Roman units is another question. On the other hand Mithridates VI definitely made use of a Romanized units, with an actual cohort-structure.
Meanwhile…I got interested enough late last night to try downloading the mod. Which I did. Haven’t played it yet. But here’s the thing…
Were you aware that there are TWO Rome Total Realism sites? The second one that comes up on google is this: http://www.rometotalrealism.org/
Note the disclaimer: Our former website rome total realism . com is no longer connected with this site or the continued development of this mod. We are not responsible for its content. Material shown on that site has been copied from out of date material without our consent.
It appears the current version per the .org site is RTR 6 Gold ( which is what I downloaded ), which is more mature than 6.2 version you linked too earlier. Given the forums are diabled at the .com site, I’d be inclined to think the .org site is in fact the real deal.
Wonder what happened with that original site? Disgruntled former team member/s? Piratical former hosting company?
- Tamerlane