The Prologue gets on my nervs sometimes. :(

I started playing RTW last night (got it for Xmas), and have a few questions regarding the Prologue.

It isn't possible to save the game until you have occupied your second settlement, which is really annoying, because when I started over again I had to go through the very basics (tutorial battle, Victoria guiding you through the Campaign map interface) before going on. The second time playing through it things turned out differently from the first time I played, e.g. did the Senate start to hate me while I was sieging Tarquinii... so I started over again. Playing through the same basic stuff over and over takes loads of time, which I rather would have spent on going further.

Anyways, later on, I encounter a number of various problems that not always happen.

1. My generals and their wives don't produce children for me. Most of the times they remain married for ages, but still don't love? Do I have to move my general to any of my settlements to let him and his wife bear me a future heir or girl?

2. Ok, so I wage war against a settlement, and finally try to hold the plaza. Once I wasn't able to win, although I had cleaned the plaza from defenders trying to get it back. The flag would turn to my color and badge, but it didn't My general and his bodyguard were looking everywere for hiders, and I failed the mission for no reason. I'm pretty sure this was a bug, please correct me if I am wrong here.

3. When I was maintaining a siege of Tarentum, my blue allies claimed my settlement to the north of Tarentum (can't recall its name)... and I can't get it back without attacking them! How do I tell them them to move out?

(Oh by the way, I began to shed tears when getting to know that my favorite general Gaius Julius died, at the age of 59. :( What would I be without his presence?)

It is just the prologue finish it quickly and then move to the Imperial Campaign and play as Julii then if you want. I do not know about the heirs thing. If you cannot see remaining enemies just leave a unit in the plaza and wait 3 minutes.

Sometimes there may be some stragglers in the plaza. A lone peasant may not be carrying a flag, and still be denying your hordes of cataphracts from claiming the plaza as your own. Look carefully for them

there isnt any point playing the prologue until you own the whole of Italy. If you pay attention i think there is some point when your advisor tells you that the tutorial is over and you can go and play the imperial campaign now. Besides, there are only a certain number of triggers in the prologue script and it does have an ending (i checked) and besides, i heard that you can simply quit after starting and its the same thing. I assume the imperial campaign is already open to you. Then just get on and play it. I'll wager that after the script finishes the rest of the campaign is riddled with various bugs since you arent actually expected to play it so maybe not too much attention was paid to it by the game testers.

I only played the prologue the once when I got the game and you can quit right after your first siege, possibly even before that.

Start the game and then exit it at the main screen

open C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War and open preferences (a text file)


near the bottom you will find FIRST_TIME_PLAY and if it says TRUE change this to FALSE. Now save and voila!
You can now do the Imperial campaign without needing to do the prologue