Posting fun Multiplayer battles (RTW Vanilla)

Hello there.

For the last two weeks I have been playing Multiplayer battles through Gamespy and with RTW vanilla (I have used the name Randomer 10), where I have collected my own battle replays against all kinds of factions for the purpose of introducing Multiplayer to those players here in EB forum whom mainly play Single player campaign. For there is too little activity here in EB multiplayer community, which is a shame since the EB mod has the best potential for helping people improve their science/art of tactics in battles since it is the most historical accurate in regard to units and gameplay.

These battle replays do involve fun 2v2 battles, Rome v.s Rome battles, Rome v.s Nomads battles, Rome v.s Macedon battles, along with other battles which have been interesting in other ways. I only used the Rome faction and wanted to teach people a basic tactics in order to beat other Rome factions, phalanx factions, and Nomad factions. But other 2v2 battles were very fun and sometimes very strange, like when one player cheated by bringing almost full army of armoured elephants but still lost the battle or how in other 2v2 battles then at first we seemed defeated but we managed to outlast it in the end.

For me then I am not sure there is anything more to be learned from these RTW vanilla Multiplayer battles via Gamespy, like how most people apply the same tactics and can be beaten by the same tactics. Those who view the battle replays should take note how Noobs use too single extended line with their infantry which can easily be routed with cav or tired out with inf, they have missile duel against enemy archers even that they have a fewer archers so they get massacered before the infantry clash, and how noobs send their cavalry unsupported behind the enemy lines so they get outnumbered by enemy cav and infantry.

So I am trying to make the EB MP community more active by appealing to those whom are mostly in Single player.

Here is link to the battle replays:

http://www.filefront.com/17898267/Battle Replays.zip

When you have started RTW vanilla and have chosen to load the battle replays, then those files at the top are the most recent while those at the bottom are the oldest, so it would be better to view first the latter since it will give a better picture of that how I managed to adapt to the enemy factions.


In Win XP then I think you should put these files to the replays folder in the Creative assemly folder in Program files.

In Win 7 you need to put it to the:

C:\Users\(Username)\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\The Creative Assembly\Rome - Total War\replays

Or

C:\Users\(Username)\AppData\Roaming and try to find the Creative

What were the rules? Money Limit?

At first I think it was 50.000 denari so that all armies were fully upgraded.

Later it was 35.000 denari so that all had armour and attack upgrades (for my part) but no experience (except cav).

But at last it was mostly 15.000-16.000 denari and rules said no upgrades.

Most of the rules were no art and no ele. But against Nomads it was something like max 12-14 cav, max 6 horse archers. When fighting against phalanx factions then it happened too often that the players brought about 8 cav and only 10 phalanx, so later I changed rules to max 5 cav and max 5 archers.

I know that too begin with it was very high money, but that was mostly based upon my former experience 1 year ago when many played refused to play me when I said that no upgrades were allowed. So the high money limit was mostly to encourage players to field full army with all units upgraded. But later when I hosted a battles which asked for clan-members as opponenst as Rome, Macedon, or Armenia, then there was no problem having low money and with rules which said no upgrades. For I want players to field full armies with low money.

May I ask which clan was it?

I can't remember all of these names, but you should find most of these clan-players in the 1v1 battles (Rome 1-4, Macedon 1-4, Phalanx 1-3, Nomads 1-4, Fun defeat 2, Tough 5...).

Just the clan tag is what I ask. No serious clan plays these formats. 99% are 15k CWB on grassy flatlands

I really don't understand why the clan-members are obsessed with playing low money with only half an army upgraded.

Like one player tried to dissuade me from playing with huge setting as Rome against him as Macedon because he said it was too hard to control such a large army.

I think many players owe their success more to irrelevant game mechanics like upgrades rather than from any good overview of tactics and in making the units act in harmony with each other.

The difference which many clan-members have over noobs/casual gamers is that they dont use single extended line and they at least let their infantry support their cavalry to some degree, while there are however no innvoations like the Romans applied as infantry tactics.
(see wikipedia about roman infantry tactics and that pictures).

People don't have to belong to some clan in order to acquire good sense of tactics, since it is rather based upon the inner source of intuiton.

Don't even get me started about "big money" vanilla multiplayer battles.

I refuse to play with anymore than 10k (greatly preferring 8k) because it makes people choose between lots of cheap units, or a few expensive units, or a mix. When you play with big money, basically it greatly limits the units that are actually useful. Upgrading units doesn't help morale, which is the real key to victory in vanilla.

I have tons of good replays though, they are all small money games however.

But vanilla is just pretty cheesy in general. Massing low tech archers in low money games gives an instant win for your opponent if you went for a balanced army that didn't have tons of cavalry, or an instant loss if you went for fast moving army. The battles simply don't replicate how the anicent battles really went.

Because its a GAME. Hear that ?? a GAME. a COMPUTER GAME. Meant for ENTERTAINMENT. It is NOT EB. If you look at it from a pure gameplay point of view, its Gold, I dare say it beats Starcraft in every aspect and is a whole different genre. I f wanted Historicness in MP battles id play a mod.

I do agree with you other points though. But I play 15k, nothing higher than that , mainly because 10k is played on large scale :(

Imo low money on vanilla is uninteresting as well. Both sides pick as many archers as allowed since those are by far the most cost effective units. If I wanted ranged duels I would play Empire or Napolean. On the clan recruiting websites moreover, some of the clan leaders/members deride players who play other amounts of money and call people noobs for not taking enough archers and regularly make fun of newer players. Part of the reason I would never want to join a clan. People say you will play more competitive games against clan members which is true, but it doesn't necessarily make them any more gracious or polite.

As far as CWB rules go, I don't deny that they are the best for competitive online play, but the fact that clans have limited themselves to these rules takes away some of the fun aspect of competitive online battles. To say anyone who plays otherwise is playing incorrectly is just being obstinate and arrogant. These are the reasons I avoid the online community in general and just play with friends who are in it for fun.

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Originally Posted by Lazy O

Because its a GAME. Hear that ?? a GAME. a COMPUTER GAME. Meant for ENTERTAINMENT. It is NOT EB. If you look at it from a pure gameplay point of view, its Gold, I dare say it beats Starcraft in every aspect and is a whole different genre. I f wanted Historicness in MP battles id play a mod.

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You said it best yourself. Re-read Viking's OP. EB is a modification last I checked, and it's the one for whose MP scene Viking is campaigning to bring into the limelight.

And what is historicness? :inquisitive: Do you mean historicity?

P.S. BroodWar beats Total War any day...

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Originally Posted by Lazy O

Because its a GAME. Hear that ?? a GAME. a COMPUTER GAME. Meant for ENTERTAINMENT. It is NOT EB. :(

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The rage flows easily from you...

Anyway, I fully understand (and stated that) and I enjoy vanilla RTW. That said it isn't a good game, because it isn't balanced, it is just purely entertainment. The game doesn't reward people for picking a balanced army. And when you have no idea what your opponent is going to pick for units it literally becomes a coin toss... if A beats B and B beats C and C beats A, and you pick B and he picks C, you'll lose, but if he picks A you win. End of story, most games are decided when you pick your units sadly. It would be more enjoyable if you picked one unit, and your opponent knew what you were picking, then they picked one unit, and back and forth.

Low level money games becomes this: Mass Cavalry beats Mass Archers which beats Mass Spears which beats Mass Cavalry. If you try and mix your army, you'll end up not having enough archers to kill the infantry off or not enough cavalry to chase and kill the archers, or not enough infantry to hold the cavalry. If you honestly think there is some kind of skill involved here, play against me, I haven't played for months and I'll tear you apart if you tell me what units composition you're going. It isn't only about using this or that unit correctly, but also whether you have this or that unit in sufficent number, which is again decided blindly at the unit selection phase.

High money games become wars between only a few decent units. There is no reason to buy standard hoplites when you can afford armoured hoplites, absolutely none, and this makes so many units (and even worse entire nations!) useless. At least in low money games there is reason to use cheap units, and it adds a lot more variety to the matches.

Finally the balance is just poorly done in general. Bull Warriors are really expensive heavy infantry, but lose straight up to less expensive Roman heavy infantry (who are armed with swords and pilum too). It would be one thing if Spain had a similar advantage over the Romans in cavalry or ranged units, but they do not. If you pick Spain and your opponent picks Rome, you are at a disadvantage, which in and of itself is ridiculous. But it is entertaining.

I disagree about Starcraft completely. Starcraft is well balanced, and there is no coin toss element to it. You can scout your opponents build for instance. You have no one to blame but yourself in Starcraft if you lose, and the same goes if you win. Play at the GSL shows this.

@Robin; What you speak of is a noob clan. I can understand as they give quite a negative image.Respactable clans that have been around for a long time e.g Sith do not flame.

We play 10,12.5,15k because beyond this, the game gets horribly unbalanced. And yes, I know quite alot of great clanless, it is not a sin to be without a clan. The main reason I joined was to get playmates who didnt flame like retards so weve hit common ground :).

@Fallen; Thats the beauty of a game, lets take starcraft, if I told you exactly what I was going to do ofc considering both players equally skilled id get hacked to pieces, the same applies for ANY game. Mainly what you are talking about is countering, which also exists everywhere, EB included.

And the units issue, well yes,Hoplites are useless, but so are many others, while I do think this should not have been done, bear in mind this is a 6 yr old game with many other flaws. The only "useless" faction I see are gaul and spain.

Every faction does something against another faction . Except for egypt which can beat any faction.

Well I just said its better than Starcraft because I tend to dislike clickfests but thats just me so I agree, Starcraft is a very good game.

@vartan; no that was just in reply to the attitude that has been seen around here towards vanilla, people who think that RTW was a historical take rather than a game.

And yes making up words is fun :D

Lack an understanding of Starcraft. It isn't a rock-paper-scissors games. If you think of the game of units and counters, you will lose. It goes so far beyond that.

I love Starcraft and go to tournaments to play it. My style is I put so much pressure on you, if you wanted to tech to a certain unit (Banshee's for instance), you'd die to my pressure. I force my opponent into a small set of strategies that can hold my pressure, and if they don't do one of those, they die. You can't do anything like that in RTW, it is all about unit positioning, and that means it depends so heavily on the balance between units, which I pointed out with Bull Warriors is garbage. The game should punish people (as Starcraft does) for building too many of X or Y, regardless of whether or not it is trying to be historical. But since some units are simply overpowered it does not, and the games comes off being ahistorical and unbalanced. So it isn't a good game on any front. It can be entertaining, but there really isn't any skill involved, even if both players played the same nation, there is still the blind rock-paper-scissors unit selection phase that has nothing to do with skill. Only if both players select the same units and same nation and play a balance map (like the Grassy Flatlands) can you attribute a win or loss directly to skill.

In Starcraft you can know what your opponent is going for units if you scout, and scouting and attempts to deny scouting or decieve your opponent becomes an entire game in and of itself.

And in Starcraft at a high level, you don't build a unit to counter another unit (he has Roaches, let me get some Immortals), you build a unit to reduce the chances of him building another unit. Great players simply don't mass unit X or unit Y. That of course doesn't happen in RTW too. I speak of Starcraft 2, but Starcraft 1is more the double the age of RTW, so age isn't really a reason for a game to unbalanced.

That is an insult to anyone who has ever played RTW, to say that its all due to luck

Hell with StarCraft. We're in a Total War forum in a Total War sub sub forum. We're not looking for APM cos it don't apply here. We're discussing a game in which a player's tactical choices prove more deadly than his carpel tunnel-inducing finger magic. Regarding the dialogue about an almost inherent trend toward fights between specifically composed armies that tend toward one unit type or another, I don't buy it. Idea behind EBO is you don't know what Mr. A is bringing to the field, so that's why y'all bring balanced armies, so that you don't put all your eggs in one basket. 'sides, I've seen full Libyan Spearmen armies. Ain't no fun bro. Bring on the diversity. It's rad.

@fallen851: LOL. Surf's up bro. Time to ride the Total War waves.

Just curious: How well does EB do in MP?
I've played a bit of MP vanilla RTW many years ago, but never EB

Where does the game stand between 'you need to build a balanced (and hopefully historical) army to win' and 'you have to find the most cost effective unit for your faction and spam it' ?

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Originally Posted by Drag0nUL

Just curious: How well does EB do in MP?
I've played a bit of MP vanilla RTW many years ago, but never EB

Where does the game stand between 'you need to build a balanced (and hopefully historical) army to win' and 'you have to find the most cost effective unit for your faction and spam it' ?

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Games like EB and even vanilla don't really stand anywhere in the false spectrum you mention. In fact, it's my honest belief--and I've seen this in action--that this phenomenon which you're exemplifying with a spectrum actually derives from the rule-set players apply. Change army composition rules and you've got yourself a whole different ballgame. Even in Rome the most simple of rule-sets call for limitations on certain unit types. This in and of itself prohibits a spamming of certain units. One may argue that one may play with less of a certain unit but simply upgrade them. We anticipated that, hence the prohibition of upgrades, save for one chevron per unit (which is grossly inhibitive in some cases).

Some things are definately better in EB as well. Yes im talking about thorakitai(me)/Legion(Ycarus) spam

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Originally Posted by Lazy O

That is an insult to anyone who has ever played RTW, to say that its all due to luck

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Not every battle is decided by luck. But if I went for all archers and you went from a bit of cavalry with some infantry and some archers in a "low" money game, I would win. The "skill" in a battle like this is in the unit selection, which is totally blind and therefore the game becomes luck , much like a game of rock-paper-scissors. However, if we both picked armies of archers, opportunities for skill would arise.

I really can't speak to high money games, the fact that 75% of the units and nations become useless really annoys me, and speaks to the poor balance of the game.

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Originally Posted by vartan

Regarding the dialogue about an almost inherent trend toward fights between specifically composed armies that tend toward one unit type or another, I don't buy it.

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We should play a game and post it here. And these comments in your very next post contradict the portion I quoted above:

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Originally Posted by vartan

Even in Rome the most simple of rule-sets call for limitations on certain unit types. This in and of itself prohibits a spamming of certain units.

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Don't hate the player, hate the game. There is nothing stopping people from spamming any given unit except for "pre-defined" rule-sets which aren't part of the game. Fact of the matter is, if the majority of people who really understand this game were to play in a tournament for a large cash prize and the only rules were the ones the game itself forces upon players, there would be tons of spamming the same few units from a small pool of nations.

That is because the game is poorly balanced. End of story.

I do agree that diversity is rad (which is why I play low money games), I enjoy playing games with balanced armies, but they are simply not as effective as spamming certain overpowered units, and this is why people have to impose rule-sets. However, if you impose some kind of rule-set, it isn't Rome Total War, it is Rome Total War + your rule-set, which is now a different game (like saying that we are now playing basketball, except you don't have to dribble, dribbling is a part of basketball and without dribbling the game ceases to be basketball and becomes something else). Finally, stating the idea of rule-sets to limit spamming, is admitting that game is flawed, which I am arguing. The limits should be built into the game, or better would be to balance the units.

Again, we should play a game so I can show you in vanilla, but don't hate me, hate the game when I win with a max cheese army. Redharvest put it best when he said that Rome Total War wasn't a game, it is a do it yourself project.

99.999% of all battles I played are 15k CWB Rules. And I have never encountered a situation like yours unless it is a complete faction disadvantage/advantage. I really dont play 10k so Idk. 15k i dont think is considered high money since most games use it.
And btw I need an example of what you consider a "Cheese" Army.

fallen851, I wholeheartedly agree with your post (#20 in this thread). I don't blame anybody for the armies they choose in any war game online. Issues may arise for those of us actively interested in quasi-historicity in video gaming and this is why we make rule-set propositions. Ideally, as you put it best, the game would be built in such a balanced manner as to incentivize the diversity of multiplayer armies. No Total War game or mod of a Total War game that I know of completely incentivizes. There is an inherent partial incentivization in RTW that we must not forget. That the system was programmed to take a handful of unit types (e.g., heavy, light, spearmen, infantry, cavalry, missile) shows that there is some chess-like promotion of the syncretic use of differing types of force, if you will. Yet, you are right, Total War leans more toward the non-diverse end of the spectrum. This carries over into EB's multiplayer scene. This is why we don't play EB online, we play EB Online. For those of us, as yourself, who are rather keen on getting the semantics and the word-choice politically correct, sure, we may dub EB Online a different "game" from EB and, certainly, RTW. That's beside our issue. And yes, the game is flawed in more ways than one (I mean RTW and TW in general, not EB the mod), with our current issue at hand being one of the more particularly irritating issues. It is one of many reasons why some people, myself included, are seeking ways in which a battle engine such as Total War could have been approached differently from the design perspective in order to provide a more innately diversified atmosphere.