Is RTW really that bad

[KSEG]

If you don't like RTW so much why are you still here?
No one is pointing a gun at your head and saying "play this game, or else".

[Hold Steady]

Indeed. 'Is RTW really that bad'? Hell no

[womble]

"...its pretty much common knowledge that the game sucks more than Michael Jackson in a boyscout meeting..."

It's not without its flaws, but I spent 36 hours straight playing it when it first came out, and I am not an eyecandy fan, except in as much as clear graphics helps me see precisely what is going on (troop facings, etc.).

The AI isn't much of a challenge. Some people reckon it's the same AI as MTW, others think it's worse. I suspect that it's the same AI, but put in a more variable tactical situation, where some unit types need to maintain inter-unit cohesion to even survive, it does a worse job. the new freeform nature of the map doesn't do the StratAI any favours either. Casual MP is broken because units can stack one on top of the other and the uber tactic (sans self-imposed restrictions) is the blob-of-all-your-cavalry-charging. The challenge for me is to achieve my conquests with the minimum loss of troops possible, and win battles by the maximum margin.

I dispute the assertions that "you only get siege battles". I've fought over 120 battles in my Julian campaign, and less than 50 of those were sieges. Some of the field battles were reliefs of sieges, but the cities are what the strategy is all about, so this is hardly surprising. Personally, I despise the concept of a province-based map.

If you don't care about history, you won't care about the liberties that have been taken in the name of 'game play'.

As a game, it's better than EU2, my previous addiction and has held my interest far better.

[TB666]

If you don't like RTW so much why are you still here?
No one is pointing a gun at your head and saying "play this game, or else".

Yeah very true.
Sure they have the right to express themselfs but most of them have already done that, several times even.
Say how you feel one time and then move on.
Stop beating on a dead horse because CA won't change the game to your liking.
The majority of the buyers like the game(with or without mods) so CA won't do anything.

Me, I love the game.
I bought it the day it got out and I still play it and is having fun still.
I say I got my 40$ worth of fun so I'm very happy with my purchase.

[caesar44]

The sad thing is the fact the RTW is the best strategy game (ever?) , but only 8 out of 10 .
Again , it is a good , almost very good game , but the bugs , the bugs , the poor AI , the poor diplomacy system , the Generals storming like idiots...the ...the , well , it was said before .

[womble]

"...the Generals storming like idiots..."

People have maundered on about 'suicide generals' on the various fora... and I'd never seen it happen, more often finding the General sat idle at the back while I devastate his formations. Then, last night, for the first time, the general came at me on an ill-considered charge. I was a bit worried that the weak (8 men) EL cohort which I'd forgotten to leave out of the fight would crumble before help could arrive in the form of a Legionary Cavalry pincer. Imagine my surprise when, after the enemy's bodyguard disintegrated and the general's blood mingled with that of his failed defenders, there were still 8 men left in the cohort. Tough guys.

[Doug-Thompson]

The reason people who don't like the game keep posting here is because RTW is just about the only historical strategic simulation game in town. They're hoping the series will veer back. I think some of the criticism is overly harsh, but can see where it's coming from.

First and foremost, RTW lost much hardcore fan support because the attempts to make battles more exciting, cinematic and less time-consuming misfired badly. The "Flying Horse" or "Pegasus" problem is my personal favorite: Horses charge a wall of spears and go flying, landing in the middle of the spear formation and disrupting it, resulting in the spear unit's defeat and rout. It might look cool to somebody who never ridden a horse, I suppose.

The second major reason is, RTW is a strategy game where the strategy is pretty obvious and settled. That's the biggest difference between it and MTW.

I bought RTW. I installed it. I took one look at the map and faction descriptions and realized I wanted to start with the Brutaii, conquer Greece, use that as a base to capture Asia Minor and then sweep down into Egypt before conquering Rome. Within days, I wrote a strategy guide for the Brutaii that still stands with little refinement and tweaking.

I could play the Turks or the Almohads in MTW over and over again, because there was a randomness and variety to the games: Crusades and what-not kept you on your toes. You'd try one strategy, get burned and try another. Opening moves and general strategic direction were known, but less predictable in execution. Furthermore, you discussed that strategy in the forum. Stategy discussion was meatier and more enjoyable. One of my favorite threads on any forum was one on how to defend Naples as the Byzantines. In that one, we came up with the idea of just abandoning Naples, deleting all the buildings and invading Sicily. Nobody had ever posted that, and MTW was years old at that point.

The second time I played a Brutaii campaign, there was a definite "been there, done that" feel that wasn't there in MTW. The game's attempts to introduce some inpredictability ranged from ineffective to annoying. You can ignore many Senate missions, for instance, or just pre-empt them. I routinely wipe out factions rather than negotiate Senate-ordered protectorates, and often conquer cities rather than blockade them.

As for the RTW diplomacy system, it isn't broken so much as over-elaborate for this game situation. It's like having a toolbox when all you need's a hammer.

It was all a Catch 22. The strategic obviousness of the game would have been all right if it gave us great tactical battles. The flashier combat would have been tolerable if all those new strategy tools, including that wonderful map, had more purpose and use.

All this is why I'm very hopeful that "Barbarian Invasions" will add more fluidity and impredictability to the game. The barbarians should provide the creative chaos that RTW lacks.

[LittleRaven]

It doesn't make my list unless it is something I want to play again; RTW isn't, unlike its siblings. I have many old games that can't hold a candle to RTW based on looks, but they are ones I still like to play (and I'm still doing scenario development on one from 1998.)

And herein lies the source of our disagreement. (which isn't nearly as large as the size of our posts would suggest.) You aren't comparing Rome to computer games as a whole. You're comparing it to a tiny subset of games: your favorites from almost a decade of game development.

I'm quite sure that in that company, Rome may not fare so well. Heck, I don't think Rome would make my top 10 games of all time, and it certainly wouldn't make my top 5. Rome has great potential, but you are correct when you point out that the execution did not quite live up to the promise of the engine. From double-counting victories to charge bugs leading to the 'mob of cavalry WIN,' Rome has been haunted by flaws that prevent it from being a truly great game.

However, go to your local Gamestop, and pick out 9 games at random plus Rome. Come home and play them each for 20 hours. Then tell me that Rome isn't one of the top 2.

I play a LOT of games, from a lot of genres. And believe me when I say that Rome is not a terrible game. Very, very far from it. Even with all of its shortcomings, it's still one of the best games released in recent years. You can, I suppose, view this as more of a statement on the quality of video games in general rather than Rome, but the fact remains regardless.

And finally, for those of us that enjoy historical strategy, I don't think pushing the idea that Rome is a terrible game not worthy of purchase is going to be very productive. If we do a very good job of that, we may just convince the suits at CA that the Total War line is not worth continuing. But that's about as good a result as we're going to get. Something about Pyrrhic comes to mind.

[Red Harvest]

If you don't like RTW so much why are you still here?
No one is pointing a gun at your head and saying "play this game, or else".

Who says I'm playing the game? I gave up on it back in March. Doesn't mean I can't come in here and give an honest review of it.

I've pointed out where it needs work. I spent a lot of my own time trying to fix what I could. However, there is NOTHING I can do to fix broken AI.

[Colovion]

I've played incredible amounts of video games in my day. Too much, some would say.

I've never come across a game with such high superficial accolades as RTW with so many bugs and so many broken features.

The whole game reeks of mellowdramatic conclusion to a revlotionary change.

[Red Harvest]

And finally, for those of us that enjoy historical strategy, I don't think pushing the idea that Rome is a terrible game not worthy of purchase is going to be very productive. If we do a very good job of that, we may just convince the suits at CA that the Total War line is not worth continuing. But that's about as good a result as we're going to get. Something about Pyrrhic comes to mind.

I'll take a Pyrrhic victory over an outright loss. Simply walking away is the only option open other than maintaining pressure to fix the problems. I've walked away from ones like this before: Age of Sail II is an example.

Frankly, if they are not going to do any better than RTW, I would rather they hung it up or sold out to someone who wants to make better strategy games. Trying to move historical strategy gamers to the wrist flicker market hurts us as a whole. Right now historical strategy gamers are on the losing side either way.

[screwtype]

People keep saying what a heap of potential the game has, but I don't think there's sufficient recognition of the fact that the game is as CA wants it to be.

What they have basically done is dumb down their earlier format to the nth degree to try to appeal to a wider audience. The superfast battles, the ridiculous kill rates, the breaking of the earlier rock/paper/scissors paradigm in favour of flashy horse charges - it's all been done to make the game easier to beat.

We even have the ridiculous situation that CA won't provide any more than the most basic options for fear of confusing the dummies. You have other games like Imp II or Civ III which have literally dozens of different settings which impact the difficulty rating so you can adjust it to exactly how you want it - with RTW you just get easy, normal, hard and that's it. And we see that sort of dumbing down in every area.

RTW is a crap game because there is no challenge in it, particularly when it comes to the battles which are just a walkover. But probably the biggest disappointment for me was the lack of development of the strategy game. Like the previous titles, there is no real economy to play with in RTW - just the ability to set tax levels at different levels and that's about it. I wish CA would take a look at a great old game like Lords of the Realm II to see what a sophisticated economy can look like - but we are never going to see that in the TW series. It might be too hard for the kiddies to figure out.

[Mongoose]

Screwtape

I suggest that you download SPQR 4.0.

1:slow battle sppeds

2:Slow run speeds

3:Not a push over(for the roman at least...)

4:Higher morale, but units still rout.

5:Fixed the broken trait system

6:new formation settings. the AI no longer send units at you one at a time.

For more details, see the official forum at Totalwarcenter....

[Puzz3D]

People keep saying what a heap of potential the game has, but I don't think there's sufficient recognition of the fact that the game is as CA wants it to be.

True, but let's hope they change load/save, suicide generals and the difficuly settings to something they don't want them to be. Those three things combined with the improvements to charge and phalanx, which have apparently already been done, would constitute a major improvement to the game, and I don't see how it would cost them any of their RTS market. However, it all has to be carefully debugged, and that means checking the whole game. We saw how the v1.2 patch inadvertantly broke the Parthian shot. They certainly don't want the release date for BI to slip, so I would hope they have closed the window on feature changes by now and are debugging at this point.

Multiplayer is a hopelessly lost cause, but in SP mods can be used to slow down the gameplay which helps the battlefield AI provide more of a challenge and gives the player more to do during the battle. It puzzles me that CA chose parameter values that doesn't show off their AI to best advantage.

[Veresov]

Yes, Rome is pretty bad. The AI provides minimum challenge and the hard settings are messed up

Knights of Honor is a much better game. There are many more countries to play. It has much much better strategic play. The battle system is more simple than RTW but the AI gives a pretty good fight.

[screwtype]

I suggest that you download SPQR 4.0.

What I should probably do for a challenge is mod the game myself to my taste. I should probably start by giving every unit two or three hit points.

However, I've been discouraged by the fact that even the modders complain that they haven't been able to do much to fix the quick battles. I did play RTR for a while, which was a better experience than vanilla RTW certainly, but the kill rate in that is still pretty unchanged.

[Mongoose]

LOL. You should play one of the current SPQR mods as the bruti...battles with phalanxes can be very long. Lt got very long battles by using huge defence values. Example: a spear warband has 20+ defence

Some battles can still be a little too fast(but still nothing like vanilla RTW). the trick is too let the AI build up for about 10 turns or so.

[screwtype]

True, but let's hope they change load/save, suicide generals and the difficuly settings to something they don't want them to be. Those three things combined with the improvements to charge and phalanx, which have apparently already been done, would constitute a major improvement to the game, and I don't see how it would cost them any of their RTS market.

Yes I'm hoping the changes are going to improve the battles, but I wasn't too impressed by the comments about the demo. Maybe the changes that have been made will give the modders something better to work with. I'll wait and see what sort of reception the xpack gets.

...mods can be used to slow down the gameplay which helps the battlefield AI provide more of a challenge and gives the player more to do during the battle.

Yeah, what I should probably do is go back to the RTR mod and add a hit point to every unit. But I don't know, all this fudging has caused me to lose interest. I haven't really got the time or inclination to work on trying to fix things. As the saying goes, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and there are plenty of people who've spent far more time than I ever could trying to fix it and ended up expressing their frustration.

It puzzles me that CA chose parameter values that doesn't show off their AI to best advantage.

Me too. I simply can't understand why they think this absurdly fast combat is a good thing. I can't understand why *anyone* would think that. And yet, the game got rave reviews and sold by the truckload. Go figure.

[screwtype]

Knights of Honor is a much better game.

Yes although people say the combat isn't much of a challenge in that either.

All the same I will probably take a look at it at some stage. I did actually try to download the demo a couple of weeks ago but it's 400 megabytes in size and after I dl'd it the darned thing turned out to be corrupted.

[Puzz3D]

Yeah, what I should probably do is go back to the RTR mod and add a hit point to every unit. But I don't know, all this fudging has caused me to lose interest. I haven't really got the time or inclination to work on trying to fix things. As the saying goes, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and there are plenty of people who've spent far more time than I ever could trying to fix it and ended up expressing their frustration.

If you want the best battlefield gameplay try MCM-v0.11 English This mod also makes improvements to the SP campaign, and it doesn't overwrite your vanilla RTW install. The mod doesn't make major changes to the game, but it does try to balance all aspects of the battlefield gameplay and I think it does it as well as can be done given the limitations of RTW v1.2. I've played the SPQR mod, and the fighting time in that was increased so much that fatigue becomes excessive.

[screwtype]

Thanks for the recommendation Puzz. I might give that or SPQR a go, but quite honestly, I feel I've had my fill of the game for the time being and have no desire to fire it up again to try out something new. I'd rather go play another campaign of Shogun :). Or at least wait and see what BI adds to the fray...

[Daveybaby]

I really like the new campaign map. The trade mechanism is much better, naval combat is much better, and the AI can actually put up some kind of a fight at this level (load/save bugs aside).

But i dont enjoy the combat as much. Too fast paced, the AI isnt as much of a challenge as in the previous games, and cavalry is overpowered.

Its still a good game though, and well worth the money. Hopefully the BI addon will improve things further and fix some of the bugs.