Is RTW Still Worth 95%?

[derF]

PC Gamer, thinks this game is worth a rating of 95%. I beg to differ.

Post your thoughts and give a rating.

[The Stranger]

i'll rate it 50% i'm just had it with RTW.

[derF]

Thar ye go Emperor, post a vote.

[Old Celt]

Why didn't you give a rating and justify it to start out this thread?

I think the rating of 95% is justified. Most people really do enjoy the game and unlike the more sophisticated users found on this forum, the average player will never get into enough depth with the game to have issues that detract from their fun. People play games for different reasons and expect different features from a game to make the experience fun.

My impression from reading the grognard postings here is that die hard Total War series fans just won't ever like RTW much because it isn't enough of a carbon copy (with new skins) of MTW. The public at large though, people like me, who never played the other games in the series, and expect a 3D interface in 2005 games, enjoy the game tremendously.

It boils down to how you measure success. The standards used by PC Gamer obviously consider RTW to be an outstanding success. Your standards seem to be different. Again, I think you should come forward and say what your rating would be, and justify it yourself.

[Jambo]

I love the first few posters' well thought out reasons! lol ~;)

I'd still rate it in the 90's based on ingenuity, graphics, sound and immersion. What brings it down in my opinion is this ridiculous two patch policy that CA/Activision follow.

All strategy games require more than 2 patches. As is plain to see, a patch will fix things as well as introduce new bugs and the "one patch to cover it all" mentality is simply ridiculous. Consider Civ 3 and EU 2 as fine examples of what I mean.

[Helium God]

I think that this game probably deserves 85-90%... this is a truly great game -- I really enjoy it, and find myself often drawn to play one more turn simply to see which band of bozos are going to invade me next. :)

However, with that said -- the "two patch policy" is definitely a crutch on the games' rating, because there are a lot of relatively minor problems (that seem major because of the sheer potential of the game!) that sort of bring down the experience a bit.

Of course, with the diligence of the mod community here, I wouldn't be surprised if we end up with a game that is far more deserving of the original 95%. :)

[tai4ji2x]

i agree with jambo. still, i'm probably more frustrated than him at this point, so i gave it 85%

[hrvojej]

My rating is 85-90%. Even though I very much like playing it, the feeling that it could have been more polished never really leaves me.

[Red Harvest]

I compare it to its siblings, and how much doesn't work right, and how much time I've had to spend modding it. 75 to 80% looks about right.

The battlefield AI problem alone hacks off a minimum of 10% probably more like 15%. Then there are the number of unpatched remaining flaws and bugs, with essentially a single patch policy... I was probably too generous with my score.

[SpencerH]

I gave it a 50-55. Its catchy but ya just cant dance to it.

[The Stranger]

it's just it didn't lived up to my expectations, after MTW (wich wasn't perfect either) i thought they would come with a exploding game, just one thet would make you sneak out bed at night like MTW did. so i gave it a 50-55%. the game is good but they didn't made it perfect, it's just better to loose with 8-0 than with 1-0.

[Tricky Lady]

I gave it 75%.

RTW is a good game, it's fun, it looks nice, but so far RTW didn't manage to ruin my social life like MTW did (I bought MTW only in Feb. last year).... which is a good thing in fact :wink:
MTW was much more addictive to me, but that has smth. to do with the depicted time-frame ...

Anyways, very good but not sublime.

(Just checked the other votes, and it seems that I'm a bit harsher in my rating.... oh well....) 75% is good for me, apparently it is not to other people

[The Stranger]

RTW is a good game, but there is just the small things that screwed it. MTW was a game for the lovers, and not for the money as RTW seems to me. just like Fifa 2004-2005 till 2003 it went great but 2004-2005 are just screwed on the PC.

[Mikeus Caesar]

I compared it to MTW recently. I thought i was playing two totally unrelated games. RTW definately isn't worth 95%, so i thought i'd be harsh and give it 35-40%.

[Barbarossa82]

I gave it 75-80%. There are maybe 4 or 5 games in my collection to which I would give a higher rating, including MTW.

It seems like it's becoming increasingly hard on these forums to express a view which is taken as a whole and not characterised as being either religiously pro-RTW or pathologically anti-RTW. Criticise any poor aspect of the game (no need to enumerate them for the 1,000th time), and certain people immediately leap to the attack to describe it as an unrealistic, juvenile, counterproductive rant by socially crippled, Total War-obssessed history nerds.

Equally, any praise for the game as being highly enjoyable, visually spectacular and very replayable (all true in my estimations), is seen as evidence that the author is clearly a member of the despised, staggeringly ignorant "mass market" for whose benefit the game was reduced to a facile parody of previous Total War incarnations.

For examples of this, see the later end of the "initial patch thoughts" thread!

I suspect I am like the majority of RTW players in that I am glad to have bought the game and glad to be playing it; I rate it comparatively highly, but I am surprised and very disappointed by the multiplicity of bugs, omissions and retrograde steps from STW and MTW. The game was hugely ambitious and seems to have been rushed out of development faster than it deserved, but is still overall a very enjoyable game. It had the potential to hit 95% at least, and it's a real kick in the teeth that it didn't fulfil its potential, but that doesn't somehow make it a terrible game.

[The Stranger]

to me the patch made the game worse. with 1.1 i also thought like you, but with 1.2 i haven't stopped modding the game, what's really bothering me is the campaign map turning black and that kind of stuff. Rtw is good but it just failed my expectations.

[derF]

@ the first few people who replied complaining about no explanation:

I didnt want to influence anyones decision.

[Bhruic]

I gave it 75-80.

Right now, the fundamentals of a good game are all present. There just are a number of factors getting in the way of that enjoyment. The bugs are highest on that list, and I would probably say a competitive AI is second. Fix those areas up, and it would deserve a 95.

Bh

[Puzz3D]

I think the rating of 95% is justified. Most people really do enjoy the game and unlike the more sophisticated users found on this forum, the average player will never get into enough depth with the game to have issues that detract from their fun. People play games for different reasons and expect different features from a game to make the experience fun.
Ignorance is bliss. Until I came here and read about the AI forgetting it was sieging on a reload and all the VnV's that don't work properly, I was having fun with the campaign. I'm not now because it's important to the gameplay that those features work properly. I don't play RTW multiplayer because cav beats phalanx which is backwards. If you started at 100% and took 1% off for every problem, you wouldn't even have 90% let alone 95%. The magazine reviews came up with their high ratings by ignoring the problems. The magazines are in bed with the publishers, and the objective is to dupe the consumer. Apparently, the average gamer doesn't know his ass from his elbow.

[nokhor]

Barbarossa82 speaks for me, and much more eloquently i might add.

[Orb]

I gave it 85-90% because I still think that it is a fantastic game but the AI and the amount of irritating little issues (elephants, triarii in three ranks, phalanxes etc) knocked the 10-15% off. I just have to mod little things so often. It is so annoying to have to modify all of these little things and the fact that I discover so many more every time I try the campaign.

[Quietus]

Compared to other games in general, RTW is worth 95%. As a TW fan, the game is 90% with the patch (much, much better than MTW, but still not as polished [read: fun and balanced] as the origiinal STW). :charge:

[Colovion]

I compare it to its siblings, and how much doesn't work right, and how much time I've had to spend modding it. 75 to 80% looks about right.

The battlefield AI problem alone hacks off a minimum of 10% probably more like 15%. Then there are the number of unpatched remaining flaws and bugs, with essentially a single patch policy... I was probably too generous with my score.

I voted the same way, and felt I was too generous as well... but I was mainly voting for the potential, not the actual game... ~;)

[Old Celt]

You are absolutely right Puzz3D, the average gamer DOESN'T know his ass from his elbow. The people posting on this forum are many cuts above the average gamer (for the most part). We aren't completely satisfied because the marketing is to the masses, not to us in particular.

But I still have fun with the game, and there is nothing better out there. I bailed out of the "initial patch" thread because I felt it was becoming too divisive and a rant fest for both sides. I have no problem with people rating the game low or high, it really is a personal thing. Some people will still rate a game very high simply because they enjoy it even though they know there are plenty of flaws.

[Ser Clegane]

80-85% for me

The game fell a bit short of my (admittingly very high) expectations, however it is still a game that I regularly come back to to play a couple of hours and in the end that's what makes an 80+ game for me.

My major dissappointment is not even the AI or some bugs - it actually is the fact that CA failed to live up to the promise that there would be fewer battles than in MTW and that the battles you fight would really matter.
It turned out that it is the other way around - the endless battles are somehow anti-climactic.

But again, just because a game does not live up to high expectations, does not mean that it is automatically a bad game - I still have fun playing it ~:)

[SpencerH]

If one gives version 1.2 a 90-95%, I wonder what scores will be given to a version without the many many bugs (some of which are just beginning to be described), with all factions unlockable without modding (can you say expansion), and that fixes the overall game speed and individual unit stat issues? That game might deserve a 95% from players who play the game (as opposed to testers who play for game mags).

[Spino]

It really pains me that I have to downgrade my initial opinion of RTW which was quite high. Now that the excitement and hoopla surrounding Rome's graphics and new strategic map & gameplay has worn off we're left with a decent game that is marred by disappointingly mediocre tactical AI which on its own is bad enough but when coupled with the strategic element seriously affects Rome's long term replayability factor. Tactical battles are the heart and soul of the Total War games and to see such a revolutionary step in the series coupled with such shockingly lackluster and regressive AI is depressing. The handful of welcome improvements the tactical AI did receive are offset by the fact that it is, on the whole, less challenging than in the last patched version of Medieval: Viking Invasion.

What's worse is that there is no relief from the bad tactical AI in Rome's MP game. Thanks to the higher paced movement & killing rates and the serious lack of unit balancing Rome's multiplayer battles are not nearly as fun or balanced as Medieval's.

I gave Rome Total War a 75-80 with a strong bias towards 75. Thinking purely on a scale of 1-100 I think 75 is still quite good.

[Puzz3D]

You are absolutely right Puzz3D, the average gamer DOESN'T know his ass from his elbow. The people posting on this forum are many cuts above the average gamer (for the most part). We aren't completely satisfied because the marketing is to the masses, not to us in particular.

But I still have fun with the game, and there is nothing better out there. I bailed out of the "initial patch" thread because I felt it was becoming too divisive and a rant fest for both sides. I have no problem with people rating the game low or high, it really is a personal thing. Some people will still rate a game very high simply because they enjoy it even though they know there are plenty of flaws.
I'm not really disparaging the average gamer. I think the average gamer wants all the features to function correctly. For instance, most players would assume that savegames save the full state of the game needed to resume a campaign. People who have been around here for a while know better than to assume that anything in a CA game works correctly because it's painfully obvious that there is inadequate testing being done, and the game is now more complex than ever. I don't think CA should be let off the hook by saying the average gamer doesn't care if features don't work. Fixing existing problems isn't going to hurt the players who aren't aware of those problems. It's going to give them a better gaming experience. Also, CA depends upon people posting at forums like this one to identify problems in their game. I think everyone who posts is part of the development of the game even though they are also the consumer of it. So, a comprehensive list of problems is going to be useful for getting them corrected in the add-on, but I don't know how they are going to get around the problem of inadequate testing.

I didn't rate the game because SP campaign was looking pretty good to me before this savegame issue, but now I don't know where to rate it. The only reason for me to keep playing SP campaign now is to look for more problems. Who knows what other parameters aren't being saved.

[Ellesthyan]

85%. I was tempted to give them higher (the game rulez with a decent mod), but the inability to add more factions is staggering enough to keep them below 90%.

[maru]

This is a fantastic game, and when I first got it, I was hypnotized with the graphics and the realism of the whole thing. And the campaign map is quite beautiful, then there's the music. Amazing, litterally hypnotic experience. But, as I kept playing I started noticing bugs that bothered me, and after a certain time (and this is much sooner than I'd like it to be for a game with such huge potential) it rapidly loses its grip. Bottom line is: it's not well balanced for very long campaigns, and it is not nearly so addictive as MTW.

After you conquer maybe 15 or 20 provinces, why keep going? It's just more of the same. I'd like to hear anyone who has conquered all the provinces in one single campaign. Half of them? It seems like hard work to me, while doing it in MTW was great fun. In MTW, there were events and units that you could get only towards the end of conquering the whole map, and there was always something else that kept one going for more.

Like some have already said or hinted at, there is the rating where you compare the game to the overall quality of the games out there, and secondly, when you compare it to the days and months of fun that MTW provided.

Bugs and inconsistencies detract from the overall experience, but more than that, it's the fact that this game was made for those who want to play for only a weekend or two. I sort of wanted to play it for a very long time, just like I did with MTW and enjoyed it. With RTW, however, that's not really possible. After you finish your tech-tree upgrades, and with less "civilized" factions this happnes in virtually a few hours of gameplay, there is nothing else to do. Nobody can beat you, (if you prepare your tactics for the battle map relatively well) and nothing new happens in the world. It's just boring. Killing the same legionary cohort with the same horse archers unit over and over again is not so interesting after a while.

So when it comes to grading it, this is really a big paradox. Where else can you find what RTW offers? A unique gameplay experience, great graphics, music, idea. It really does deserve a very high grade. 95% doesn't seem unrealistic.

For a dedicated fan, however, all that seems to be left is to weep at the sad situation in which this game is not even half of what it can be. Or... get to modding and add those changes which will allow everyone to enjoy the game even more.

I also wonder if it is possible to reach somene in CA who would want to pay heed to these and similar lamentations and change these things for the expansion, if not for another patch. :=)

[Duke John]

Don't care about the official game, but R:TW despite its bugs and bad AI is still a great engine. And the TW series are the only games I have played the past few years. 90-95% for me. There is room for improvement, but I think that CA did its best despite Activision.

[The Stranger]

the only thing that's keeping me from not breaking the game is EB and the 50 bucks i payed for it.

[MacBeth]

I don't play it anymore but I gave it 60 - 65% for the first few campaigns worth of enjoyment.

The 'two patch' policy should take a good 30% off any rating.

[NicSO]

95% without AI, bugs, stupid battles, with those things 45%.
Where are massive attacks from MTW???
battles are also far more interesting in MTW, more realistic I would say.
I also played Shogun and I can say that 3 boggest problems in RTW are:

1. BUGS, thousands of them;

2. "AI".....in fact NO AI;

3. Battles (again AI, morale, chain routing...etc.).

Battles in Shogun and MTW were interesting, longer, challenging and AI was better....

This game sucks big time with all those thing like AI, stupid battles involving chain routs, low morale....etc...

I was outnumbered 2.5:1 and i won the battle, killet 2900 of 3600 bastards and lost 17 men....its called C R A P ! ! !

After STW and MTW RTW seems like childplay!!!

[buujin]

I Emplore all of those who game the game over 80% to actually try playing the previous total war games, just for a day.

You will see how badly rtw lacks tacticly , eccpeccially in multiplayer.

Also the unit balance and battle mechanics are a JOKE compared to its predeccessors.

i gave it 60%

[The Stranger]

95% without AI, bugs, stupid battles, with those things 45%.
Where are massive attacks from MTW???
battles are also far more interesting in MTW, more realistic I would say.
I also played Shogun and I can say that 3 boggest problems in RTW are:

1. BUGS, thousands of them;

2. "AI".....in fact NO AI;

3. Battles (again AI, morale, chain routing...etc.).

Battles in Shogun and MTW were interesting, longer, challenging and AI was better....

This game sucks big time with all those thing like AI, stupid battles involving chain routs, low morale....etc...

I was outnumbered 2.5:1 and i won the battle, killet 2900 of 3600 bastards and lost 17 men....its called C R A P ! ! !

After STW and MTW RTW seems like childplay!!!

Definitly for me i never lost a battle where i had a army that could put up a fight. I'm a MTW veteran and in MTW my greatest victory was when i was outnumbered 1:10. 2000 of my soldiers vs 20,000 Egyptians. it was a Massacre. and now i have to take my mighty armies against small forces that you don't even want to attack. i want the old mass attack battles back, even if it takes the 3D map out.

[Malrubius]

I'd say about 85% (I never played STW or MTW, FWIW). I'm nearly finished with my first campaign. It's great to look at, I've always loved strategy games and thought they had died out (I think Real-Time Strategy is an oxymoron and an incorrect description for that genre of games. Real-Time Tactics, maybe). I enjoy the Senate, the strategy map, the diplomacy, spies and assassins, and the battles. I love my family and how they can grow and develop. I'm going to be heartbroken when Flavius the Cunning dies (he's 65 now and I hope he'll live to become Emperor).

But...

1) The serious bugs that still exist after two patches are too numerous. There's the Horse Archer skirmish problem, the awarding of VnV's being messed up, and the AI lifting sieges upon loading saved games - finding out about that one was a killer because I play in short spurts and do a lot of saving.

2) The AI is not performing too well, tactically. I feel sorry for the computer and have to limit myself. For example: using a 4-man barbarian cav unit to make 60 warband run all over the map chasing them is just not fair. The AI will split its forces so that you can eliminate their numerical superiority too easily. The end result is that they can outnumber you with great odds and you can still flank them and rout them very easily. I try to never outnumber the AI so that the battles will be a bit more challenging for me.

3) I'd like more complex naval combat, or at least something so you can't load 1000 men on one boat. This part of the game is about the same as most other strategy games, no great leap forward here.

4) After a couple dozen provinces, there's not much difficulty in getting more. The end game needs to be more exciting. This would be the chance for more intrigue opportunities, with some Choose-Your-Own adventure stuff dealing with the Senate and other factions. Maybe have options come up at the beginning of the turn to handle family disputes that might trigger certain VnV's or affect your family in other ways, deal with the Senate and other factions, problems with provinces, or taking action as part of your official duties as Quaestor, Consul, etc. Basically add some more role-playing options. I know there's the thing where the Senate tells you to commit suicide, but I haven't seen it yet. The same goes for the Marius reforms. My current game isn't going to last long enough to get to them. I've had one unit of Triarii the whole game, and am just getting Principes here at the end. (This campaign was started pre-patch, so this might be different with a new campaign, since with the pri/sec fix my hastatii aren't so all-powerful).
Marius and conflict with the Senate are things to look forward to, but I'd like a little more to happen between getting 10 provinces getting 40.

Really, at this point, I've beaten the game and I'm just in the mopping up phase to get the 50 provinces and see what happens at the end. I was planning on saving the Senate and Rome for last--one big climactic battle.

Summary: A good game with the potential to be great, with the right mods and some more bugfixes. I've definitely gotten my money's worth, though, so I don't regret getting the game.


:rtwyes:

[derF]

Very interesting results. But they fared how i would have expected. RTW has dropped significantly. I expect PC Gamer to realise this also and drop the rating. After all, i think this marks a new age in computer games because any game can sell brilliantly and have awesome ratings as long as it fools people until they realise...Hold on, this isn't 95%!!!

[Crazed Rabbit]

70-75%
All the glaring problems, but mainly, for me, the shallowness of it. A bigger problem than anything else is the generic barb factions and the super fast, no tactics battles.

Yesterday, I played BKB's super mod for MTW:VI, and in one battle, while my archers where dueling, the enemy cav came out towards my archers to attack. I pulled my archers back and rushed up spearmen...and the enemy pulled his cav back!! In RTW the AI just says "There enemy. Me rush there now."

Crazed Rabbit

[Senta]

i love this game but it hurts me to realize that it could and should have been so much better... better AI, less bugs, more polished and complete... right now it's 80% in my books...

[Colovion]

remember when one of these came out during the release and almost everone voted 95-100%

[Red Harvest]

Current stats with 67 responses show an average short of 81% if you use the average of each range. If you use the higher value in each range it comes out to 83%; and if you use the lower value in the range, 78%. It was very similar yesterday with about 60% as many total votes, so the sample might be stabilizing.

[derF]

I'm happy at the amount of exposure this thread has achieved. I've also just realised that a great many number of topics people open on this forum are related to the problems and bugs of the SP game. As opposed to just things like strategy and story talk.

[Grumfoss]

I gave the game 80-85%. I really do enjoy playing Rome, great graphics, lovely sound effects and music, however ( as already stated) there are lots and lots of bugs.

I first started playing the TW series with Shogun. It was just what I was looking for, in a strategy game. Then came Medieval, again a step forward however it still wasn't the same to me, the game seemed to big. In Shogun the game felt compact and intimate MTW and RTW are way to big. In my first camp. as the Roman Julli I never went anywhere near the Egyptians or anywhere east of Greece there was no need. To me this is a huge waste of resources which could have been better used to put more detail into the lands around Italy, Greece and Western Europe.The east and to some extent the North should have been saved for an expansion. GET the basics right and then add the exras later.

I really wanted my battles in RTW to be like Time commanders ( big and impressive), but the battle areas are way to small I really can't see the point in having a large map area if your not able to use it! Just a small square in the middle!!

Oh well

[SpencerH]

I've also just realised that a great many number of topics people open on this forum are related to the problems and bugs of the SP game. As opposed to just things like strategy and story talk.

As was pointed out in another thread (now closed), the lack of discussion of strategy/tactics is because there is very little of that required in RTW. If the bugs and problems were addressed we might see a return to those topics.

[Colovion]

As was pointed out in another thread (now closed), the lack of discussion of strategy/tactics is because there is very little of that required in RTW. If the bugs and problems were addressed we might see a return to those topics.

hear hear!

[screwtype]

I compared it to MTW recently. I thought i was playing two totally unrelated games. RTW definately isn't worth 95%, so i thought i'd be harsh and give it 35-40%.

Same here, I played MTW just before voting in this poll and the difference between the two games is so huge I could hardly believe it. MTW is so much more fun it's not funny.

There are a few improvements in RTW, for one thing battles in MTW are just too long, I've played three battles in a row that took more than two hours apiece, the routing period especially is much too long and takes forever which is stupid considering you've essentially won the battle at that point. Also I completely forgot when going back to MTW that the "skirmish" routine is broken and ranged units do not run out of the way the way they are supposed to, which is a bloody nuisance. But the battle phase itself is much longer which not only gives you more time to employ tactics but also more time for TENSION to build. Tension is what I find really lacking in the RTW battles - especially when even if you lose it's a matter of just whipping your army back to the nearest town and repairing all your units right away.

RTW does have one or two subtle improvements which were glaringly absent in the earlier games which I really like. These include (1) the ability to select a particular sequence of troops in a line or group by clicking on their icons in the desired order. The ONLY way to do this in MTW or STW is to click on the units themselves, and even then if you try and group them the AI will group them randomly in the wrong order. And (2) the way grouped units in RTW will maintain the exact formation you selected them in after a move, which is quite handy.

But apart from that, it's very obvious when going straight from one game to the other just how much RTW has been "dumbed down" for a mass audience. I really thought those old grognards who complained so much about the dumbing down were exaggerating, but going back to MTW after playing RTW for a while makes it palpably obvious that they were right.

I think some "dumbing down", or rather streamlining, was quite in order (like the shorter post-routing phase in RTW for example) but CA went too far and threw the baby out with the bathwater. Just as you say Mikeus, they are like two different games.

Other changes in RTW have been improperly thought out. It was fine to go to a more detailed campaign map, but the problem is that now you have heaps of little half stacks roaming around that are no contest to whip. In my last three MTW battles I fought against armies THREE THOUSAND strong - that is, the equivalent of three full stack armies in RTW! How often do you get a battle against a triple-stack army in RTW?

Also, the campaign game is still as one-dimensional as the previous games.

And finally, RTW still has many, many minor little bugs and glitches and also problems with the AI that make it seem, if not quite beta, then not fully "finished" either.

So I could only give it 50-55%.

[professorspatula]

I was tempted to give RTW no more than about 80%, but even though I've lost much faith and patience with the idiocies of the game and the fundamental flaws and lack of polish, I've still played it for hundreds of hours since I got it way back in the end of September last year. And the 3D battles (despite being more and more unsatisfying) are way ahead of anything else on the market. So a 85-90% rating is not out of the question.

Modding the game yourself (or using someone else's mod) to up the challenge is probably one of the few things that really have kept me interested though, as well as the 1.2 patch. Although I tired of that about a week later. CA's attitude to 'this is the last patch' and their inability to improve on basic errors and bugs and gameplay balancing issues is perhaps another thing that had me consider a lower score rating.

[Trousermonkey]

The implementation doesn't live up to it's potential. Developers are going after the dollar rather than the gameplay experience.

As a matter of fact, I dont' know why I'm still haunting these forums, I've moved onto other games where the developers appreciate their fans more.

[screwtype]

What other games trousermonkey? Just curious.

[Mikeus Caesar]

After you conquer maybe 15 or 20 provinces, why keep going? It's just more of the same. I'd like to hear anyone who has conquered all the provinces in one single campaign. Half of them? It seems like hard work to me, while doing it in MTW was great fun.

Tell me about it....in MTW, you'd play for hours on end, until there is only you and 3-4 other fractions left, all engaged in one big world war....now look at RTW, and it's just your one big empire steamrolling everyone. After all, have you seen the speed some people can complete it in? Just look at Maltz's short stories, he conquered the entire map in 30-40 turns. Now try doing this in MTW. Impossible!!

[BDC]

It's good, I love it. It has flaws, and needs a couple more patches and an expansion or two. When it gets to the VI-style expansion (ie expansion of RTW2) then it should rock. :P

[Sundjata Keita]

I don't know why people are just comparing it with MTW. That is not what the poll is asking. The 3d battles are amazing and much more spectacular than previous totalwar games. Everyone is saying MTW AI were amzing but they weren't that great - all they did in my game was run to the nearest hill and then charge cavalry down at me even if it was spearmen that were advancing on them.

Campaign has suffered a bit which brings down the rating to about 85-90% but the ability to mod brings it back up to 95-100%. Also (seen as I'm having a bit of a tantrum ~;) ) I'm sick of people saying that the ability to mod is even less in RTW than in previous games. Well of course it is because now the game has moved into 3d so it's no wonder that new people find it harder to mod. But overall I think it is less work once the model is complete rarther than having to make sprites.

Yes it has glitches but so does every other new game now and after nearly half a year it is still way better than any other game out there.

[Atreides]

Well, why all that complain? You should compare the game with other game’s note with ‘the ultimate game in your mind’. So I guess 90% - 95% is still acceptable (most comments I did read gave this level).

[Quietus]

The 3d battles are amazing and much more spectacular than previous totalwar games.

I especially enjoy the siege battles. They keep getting better and better! Whew! :charge:

[hellenes]

I don't know why people are just comparing it with MTW. That is not what the poll is asking. The 3d battles are amazing and much more spectacular than previous totalwar games. Everyone is saying MTW AI were amzing but they weren't that great - all they did in my game was run to the nearest hill and then charge cavalry down at me even if it was spearmen that were advancing on them.

Campaign has suffered a bit which brings down the rating to about 85-90% but the ability to mod brings it back up to 95-100%. Also (seen as I'm having a bit of a tantrum ~;) ) I'm sick of people saying that the ability to mod is even less in RTW than in previous games. Well of course it is because now the game has moved into 3d so it's no wonder that new people find it harder to mod. But overall I think it is less work once the model is complete rarther than having to make sprites.

Yes it has glitches but so does every other new game now and after nearly half a year it is still way better than any other game out there.

Well the game isnt as moddable as the developers want us to believe and it has nothing to do with simple model making:
In MTW VI 2.01 we could:
Have 100% separate campaigns, prouction files, unit stat files in the same game directory so you could play MP SP various mod in the same game WE CANT DO IT IN RTW!!!
We cant:
Add more factions!!
Add campaigns without affecting the original!!
Add more than 300 units (500 skins its not much if you think of making 30+ factions, standardbarers officers generals etc)
Mod the Senate (make more "senates" for shatterd factions like barbrians Greeks etc)...
Modify AI build units orders (we could do that in MTW)...
Modify the phalanx animation wich is hardcoded...
And the list goes on and on just visit the Europa Barbarorum forum...
The bottom line is that they keep things hardcoded so they can sell the expansion...

Hellenes

[Sundjata Keita]

. Well of course it is because now the game has moved into 3d so it's no wonder that new people find it harder to mod.


Well the game isnt as moddable as the developers want us to believe and it has nothing to do with simple model making

I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just saying it's very moddable compared to some games out there

[The Stranger]

i think most people here bought RTW in MTW's legacy and are dissapointed atleast i am. i'm playing MOHPA now

[screwtype]

Mohpa?

[mxlm]

i think most people here bought RTW in MTW's legacy and are dissapointed

Yeah, well...I played STW (vanilla 1.0), but not MTW. And I have to say, RTW is a far, far better game than STW was. Not as difficult, no--for one thing, all the rebel provinces/armies don't work together to form one uber faction that dominates everyone--but that's not too important. So I'm not disappointed at all ;)

[Quietus]

Mohpa? Medal of Honor Pacific Assault.

[screwtype]

OK, thanks ~:)

[Nelson]

The bottom line is that they keep things hardcoded so they can sell the expansion...

Hellenes

I don't pretend to know why CA made some things easy to mod and other not. However, I can't see how selling an expansion is the reason anything is hardcoded. How many buyers do you suppose mod the game? Very few I'd bet. Over at TWC the RTR mod has less than 12,000 downloads. I'll grant you that 12,000 is a nice number for a mod but compared to Rome sales it is insignificant.

[hellenes]

I don't pretend to know why CA made some things easy to mod and other not. However, I can't see how selling an expansion is the reason anything is hardcoded. How many buyers do you suppose mod the game? Very few I'd bet. Over at TWC the RTR mod has less than 12,000 downloads. I'll grant you that 12,000 is a nice number for a mod but compared to Rome sales it is insignificant.

But if they made the game with 0 hardcode the "mods" would be gigantic conversions literally different games and nobody would be bothered buying the expansion and vice versa...

Hellenes

[Colovion]

But if they made the game with 0 hardcode the "mods" would be gigantic conversions literally different games and nobody would be bothered buying the expansion and vice versa...

Hellenes

If if if if

/neverhappen

[NicSO]

I don't know why people are just comparing it with MTW. That is not what the poll is asking. The 3d battles are amazing and much more spectacular than previous totalwar games. Everyone is saying MTW AI were amzing but they weren't that great - all they did in my game was run to the nearest hill and then charge cavalry down at me even if it was spearmen that were advancing on them.

Campaign has suffered a bit which brings down the rating to about 85-90% but the ability to mod brings it back up to 95-100%. Also (seen as I'm having a bit of a tantrum ~;) ) I'm sick of people saying that the ability to mod is even less in RTW than in previous games. Well of course it is because now the game has moved into 3d so it's no wonder that new people find it harder to mod. But overall I think it is less work once the model is complete rarther than having to make sprites.

Yes it has glitches but so does every other new game now and after nearly half a year it is still way better than any other game out there.


Games that are rated 90% and higher must be without single bug, PERFECT.

Games rated above 80% can have few bugs, good replay value, good gameplay, graphics, sound...etc.

Rome:TW has very good graphics, very good sound, hundreads of bugs, low replay value and bad gameplay (ORIGINAL GAME).

So, some of u are giving this game high ratings because of what.
Or u find this game challenging and u lose every second battle????

This game is CRAP, BIG CRAP, thanx god for modders and RTR MOD, but even with RTR mod I just cant lose single battle.
I wanna be defetaed in some battles, not this SHIT.

Gamplay score is 10%, replay is also 10% only graphics/sound can get 95% and I dont play game because of graphic....

[Red Harvest]

Wish I could change my vote. After doing some more testing. I'm ready to knock off another 10-15% for the AI and the trait problems that are leading to general stars imbalances.

I am just about to the point of punting. The AI is so hopeless that this just isn't fun, despite a lot of effort to make it so.

[Colovion]

Wish I could change my vote. After doing some more testing. I'm ready to knock off another 10-15% for the AI and the trait problems that are leading to general stars imbalances.

I am just about to the point of punting. The AI is so hopeless that this just isn't fun, despite a lot of effort to make it so.

True enough. I wish I could vote 60% now.

It's annoying because with MTW I played it for a good 4 long and drawn out campaigns before I gave in and bought VI - which lasted until I'd played out the Viking campaign a few times and then went and enjoyed it again on the vanilla campaign; and then with MedMod that enhanced my enjoyoment ten fold.

With RTW the patch only got me to play it again for only a few days before throwing up my hands with disbelief. I sorely hope that EB can save this game, for otherwise we're going to be waiting for the XP; and though this might seem callous to say - I think that the EB mod is going to have more worthwhile content than the XP will.

[Khorak]

Having just deleted the game in frank disgust, I'd only give it fifty percent. The people they had working on the AI? Geniuses. It takes enormous talent to be able to so comprehensively thwart the efforts of everyone else working on the game, and gradually wear down a mans ability to continue trying to mine the fun out the huge turd pile they've farted out.

It's one of those very, very few occassions where'd I'd actually tell them they're shit to their face, because everything else was so good. Campaign map, good. Models and textures, good. General game design, good. Absolutely every facet of the AI, from unit pathfinding all the way up to the campaign AI which they didn't so much make intelligent as throw infinite money at? A train wreck. An Indian train wreck, where hundreds of people were hanging onto the sides of it so the death toll is extra high. And the survivors got attacked by a herd of elephants.

My only regret is that there's no direct pipeline to them which they can read, so they know how low I rate their efforts. If the staff at my local McDonalds did this badly, I'd order a Big Tasty and get nothing but the top half of a bun and a punch in the face from the cashier.

[mxlm]

But if they made the game with 0 hardcode the "mods" would be gigantic conversions literally different games and nobody would be bothered buying the expansion and vice versa...

Not quite. See: Half-Life

[Paul Peru]

It takes enormous talent to be able to so comprehensively thwart the efforts of everyone else working on the game, and gradually wear down a mans ability to continue trying to mine the fun out the huge turd pile they've farted out.
ROFL
Quite a rant. ~:)
Well, that's the unforgiveable thing, really.
The capability and dedication of the fun-miners in the TW-community is astounding. Yet they constantly bruise their brilliant foreheads on arbitrary hardcodedness and limitations they encounter within this glorious turd pile called desire, and so - ultimately - despair.
:bigcry:

[screwtype]

Having just deleted the game in frank disgust, I'd only give it fifty percent. The people they had working on the AI? Geniuses. It takes enormous talent to be able to so comprehensively thwart the efforts of everyone else working on the game, and gradually wear down a mans ability to continue trying to mine the fun out the huge turd pile they've farted out.
All I can say is, it's a good thing the guy who scored the game 0-5% didn't post :laugh4:

[MrWhipple]

Best RTS ever bar none, true blue, through and through!!!

[Khorak]

All I can say is, it's a good thing the guy who scored the game 0-5% didn't post :laugh4:

There are three possibilities as to the reasoning behind his rating, and I could enact them for you:
1) Click 5% because I don't like it and can't be bothered to actually put in the thought required to establish a reasoned percentage weighing up the pros and cons.
2) I'm an asshat, and think that it's funny somehow. Later I may eat all the crisps in the cupboard and cry myself to sleep.
3) Someone saw me leaving my house and called the police. I was stopped at the entrance to CA's building by about fifty armed police, and was killed after a three hour shootout (I packed a lot of rounds) when I took my final opportunity and stood up to throw a grenade through an open office window.

[Sundjata Keita]

:laugh4:

I think it was probably option 2 but 3 is quite plausable also

[Colovion]

did the nade make it into the window?

or was there severe lag?

I swear the CA Office map is totally Police biased.

[Spino]

True enough. I wish I could vote 60% now.

It's annoying because with MTW I played it for a good 4 long and drawn out campaigns before I gave in and bought VI - which lasted until I'd played out the Viking campaign a few times and then went and enjoyed it again on the vanilla campaign; and then with MedMod that enhanced my enjoyoment ten fold.

With RTW the patch only got me to play it again for only a few days before throwing up my hands with disbelief. I sorely hope that EB can save this game, for otherwise we're going to be waiting for the XP; and though this might seem callous to say - I think that the EB mod is going to have more worthwhile content than the XP will.

Just what do you think EB is going to bring to the table? Sure, it'll look brilliant and bring its own unique brand of modding to the table but don't forget there is only so much any modder can do before they run face first into the code.

Modder > :wall: < RTW's hard coded limitations

RTR is a brilliant mod and EB looks to be even moreso but neither of them will be able to address the core issues many of us have been complaining about.

I still can't get over the sad state of RTW's tactical AI. It's an incredibly depressing feeling to load up a Total War campaign game knowing that the only way you can truly be challenged is by Auto-calcing all the battles!

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I enjoy playing rome and a few bad points aside it is an awesome game and any one who deletes the game from their hard drive is insane to be honest. Even as a modder for medieval i rarely go back to it nowadays because Rome is a better game and i enjoy playing it more