RTW ahistorical

I was interested in what appears to be an aspect of ancient warfare in real life which is neglected by RTW engine.

It would appear in a number of battles (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Munda) that a decisive victory has been made where by only a proportion of the combatants are actually killed.

Compared to RTW where most crushing victories involve annihilating 95%+ of the enemy army on the field.

I was wondering if (and correct me if I am wrong here) that a large part of the "victories" in ancient warfare actually involved scarttering the enemy army so that your army could not be opposed in force rather than literally killing all enemy combatants. Consequently the victory was the disruption of the superstructure of the opposing army rather than the killing of the enemy. Thoughts?

If this is the case it is a pity that it can not be represented using the RTW engine.

This is to do with RTW rather than EB yes, and I think they realised this, by reintroducing prisoners in M2TW. Rather than killing routing enemies they become prisoners of your army, so that a large victory would often end up with something like 300 odd enemy deaths with say. 1000 prisoners, rather than in Rome, where it would be something like 1200 enemy deaths and 100 escapee's.

i think quite a bit about R:TW is ahistorical now... especially the instant romanisation of a captured province...

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Originally Posted by duncan.gill

I was interested in what appears to be an aspect of ancient warfare in real life which is neglected by RTW engine.

It would appear in a number of battles (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Munda) that a decisive victory has been made where by only a proportion of the combatants are actually killed.

Compared to RTW where most crushing victories involve annihilating 95%+ of the enemy army on the field.

I was wondering if (and correct me if I am wrong here) that a large part of the "victories" in ancient warfare actually involved scarttering the enemy army so that your army could not be opposed in force rather than literally killing all enemy combatants. Consequently the victory was the disruption of the superstructure of the opposing army rather than the killing of the enemy. Thoughts?

If this is the case it is a pity that it can not be represented using the RTW engine.

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Most kills still always came in the rout anyway. Want more realistic victory margins, don't click on "Continue Battle" when the message pops up. Maybe even don't chase down routers. And definitely don't play on higher battle difficulties, where the enemy stay and fight even after heavy losses.

In any case, Munda is not a good example of "most battles". You've got two bodies of identically-trained, identically-equipped, heavy infantry slugging it out. Even when one side turned to run, they're still well-armoured against casual attacks.

If you choose not to chase routers, the enemy army will escape and regroup. *None* of their surviving numbers will desert, in fact some of their dead soldiers may come back as recovered casualties. In RTW the saying "a man who flees will fight another day" holds literally, leaving you with only two options to end the threat caused by enemy soldiers:

A. Destroy them
B. Bribe them

The exception is starving by siege a city where the garrison is too scared to make even the last desperate sally. That is the only occation in RWT when troops will surrender.

For me the most unhistorical aspect of RTW game mechanics is the way siege warfare is represented.
I think a great deal of revision is in order here. Observing the great preponderance of sieges in ancient times, it's clear to me that artillery played an extremely marginal role and was not the great siege-winner as it's often made out to be. Case in point, the inefficacy of the vast array of artillery used at Rhodos by Demetrios "Poliorketes", inside his gigantic "Helepolis" siege tower.

Also noted are excavated walls in Iraq, that survived an apparently futile bombardment by Roman artillery.

That said, there were many instances where artillery played a major and decisive role. And their efficacy and use improved with the years, along with their experience in using the machines.

Most sieges were won by "investment", a term that means building siege ditches and banks around the settlement, and waiting it out. And in the investment phase, deceit and bribery were the most common forms of success. In the event that the besieger lost patience and wanted to attack, mostly brute force was utilized. Romans would simply use ladders, and theres no evidence of Romans using siege towers until 210 BC. Romans could also build a ramp of dirt up to the wall, underneath rolling houses, and simply walk right over it. Artillery was used in the Greek, Middle-Eastern and Carthaginian world, but artillery took a lot more time than represented in RTW. A great deal more shots to get a section to collapse, and even then the collapse might not have been useful.

Also, the sapping of walls in RTW is represented in a way that makes you think your soldiers have become molemen. The speed of sapping would best be represented in a turnbased or phase-based manner, not in real time. Also counter-sapping should be possible. The investment of a settlement could also involve building walls around it, as Greeks often did in the Peloponnesian war. The so-called "periteichismos" and "aperiteichismos."

Well, there's a lot more, but you get the idea.

Not only that, a lot of sieges were won by treachery and surprise. Assault was generally a last-resort that often failed.

Yep. Already mentioned.

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Originally Posted by Shigawire

And in the investment phase, deceit and bribery were the most common forms of success.

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My bad, teach me to scan-read and post while on conference calls...

if that's not multitasking i don't know what is... :P

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Originally Posted by QuintusSertorius

My bad, teach me to scan-read and post while on conference calls...

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Tell your conference peers to wait while you argue how retraining units is ahistorical. If they are upset by that, tell them that silver-chevron units disrupt the game-play balance anyway. When in the end you get fired, be happy as you've got more time to play EB.

I tend to starve cities to submission as I feel it gives a more "realistic" time scale to a siege, this is a personal choice.

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Originally Posted by Swordmaster

Tell your conference peers to wait while you argue how retraining units is ahistorical. If they are upset by that, tell them that silver-chevron units disrupt the game-play balance anyway. When in the end you get fired, be happy as you've got more time to play EB.

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"David come upstairs its dinner time"
"Wait, hold on"
"Hold on for what"
"Someone is WRONG on the internet."

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Originally Posted by Tiberius Aurelius Cotta

if that's not multitasking i don't know what is... :P

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try playing EB on a laptop , chating via messenger in the desktop computer besides your lap, and keep up with the television show ,not to mention the ocasional sms text message....

it looks harder than it is :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by ||Lz3||

try playing EB on a laptop , chating via messenger in the desktop computer besides your lap, and keep up with the television show ,not to mention the ocasional sms text message....

it looks harder than it is :laugh4:

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add one over: do all that, translaing the thoughts in your head from vulgar Arabic into perfect Ohio english (or midwestern, whatever...). now you are playing with headaches...like I do.

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Originally Posted by ||Lz3|| View Post
try playing EB on a laptop , chating via messenger in the desktop computer besides your lap, and keep up with the television show ,not to mention the ocasional sms text message....

it looks harder than it is
add one over: do all that, translaing the thoughts in your head from vulgar Arabic into perfect Ohio english (or midwestern, whatever...). now you are playing with headaches...like I do.

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Hahahahahah :clown: