Confession time

[King Kurt]

As many of you will know, I have been an ardent MTW player and contibuter to these boards for some time. Just recently I have had to replace my PC at home and a consequence of the upgrade is that I can't play MTW on the new machine. Now, like many others on this forum I have held a slight disdain for RTW - seemed like a flashy up-start and so many people said that it was flawed etc etc etc. But as I couldn't play MTW any more, I thought I would give it a go ( My previous machine was not up to it)

So I went down the local Game shop and brought the 3 in 1 version - RTW + BI + Alex - loaded it up - well RTW only at the moment - and gave it a go - expecting to be a bit disappointed.....only to be really surpised!!

I haven't played a lot, but the game seems to have a lot more in it - more subtlety in the strategic movement, more diplomatic posabilities, no mega naval moves moving units from Norway to the Holy Land in an blink of an eye. The game has a lot of roots in MTW so an old hand can get stuck in quickly, but enough differences to make things interesting. It obviously looks very nice and the few battles I have fought produced no major surprises.

So I suppose my question is - where are the areas of contention?? what causes so many people to be so dissmissive of it?? I shall miss playing MTW - I expect to get back to it eventually as our old machine has been passed on to our 10 year old son but is in need of a monitor - but I see at least a couple of years of interesting gaming to be had with RTW and its add ons etc, let alone mods.

What do people think??

[Sabinus]

I honour you for your honesty, may you be glad of wonderful, fruitful years of Rome fever you shall receive. May you end your days a contented hammer.

[Jxrc]

I have not played RTW that much (something like four campaigns) and it was a while ago (only played the vanilla version) but as far as I can remember the main negative points were:

a. Strategic map
- AI can fundamentally not manage it and it's difficult to make sense of some AI move;
- micro-managing assassins, diplomats, etc takes even more time than in MTW
- AI cannot cope if you send assassin on sabotage mission
- too many meaningless skirmishes against bandits and orther faction (nice wy to get new generals but tedious after a while)
- almost impossible to keep track of too many v&v
b. battle map
- AI very stupid (quite a few times it will stay idle while you are peppering its troops with javelin and arrows)
- sieges are a big joke due to AI incompetence

as far as I remember I lost one battle in four campaign and that was the first time I had to deal with the celts and their chariots (as a matter of fact they pretty dealt with me on that occasion cause that was one of my most crushing defeat ending up wondering WTF had happened long after the very short fight has ended)

Not saying there is no fun possible with RTW or that MTW is just perfect but just enjoy MTW a lot more

[I of the Storm]

It isn't as bad a game as everybody is describing it. Especially the vanilla version of RTW with the civil war can be fun, as long as noone expects realism or historical accuracy.

AI can fundamentally not manage it and it's difficult to make sense of some AI move;

I don't know, I've seen the AI handle mountain passes and bridges quite well, and with BI.exe most of the times they know how to invade your hinterland by sea with decent stacks.

AI cannot cope if you send assassin on sabotage mission

Well, the assassin can fail, and at least there are sabotage missions, no?

too many meaningless skirmishes against bandits and orther faction (nice wy to get new generals but tedious after a while)

Agreed. Those rebels are quite annoying. I always make them turn up very rarely in the files.

- almost impossible to keep track of too many v&v

Agreed. There is an enormous amount of them compared to MTW and not even a few seem to be redundant.

- AI very stupid (quite a few times it will stay idle while you are peppering its troops with javelin and arrows)

Agreed again, although I notice this mostly with enemy captain-led armies. What's more annoying to me is the fact, that the battles are to quick, units morale breaks too fast in vanilla RTW.

- sieges are a big joke due to AI incompetence

Depends, I mean the AI does the best it can, i.e. creating as many "holes" where to enter as possible. The human brain just happens to be able to prepare better for such a situation. MTW1 sieges aren't exactly breathtaking either...

[macsen rufus]

I give it three months - that's how long the "ooh, pretty" glitz took to wear off on me, after trying RTW & BI. It dawned on me eventually that I was pretty much fighting the same battle every time, and I really yearned for the old MTW days. I rolled back my video drivers for the older games and haven't taken RTW out of the box since. One day I will, just to try EB, but till then I'd rather have MTW and STW than RTW. But, hey, that's me - your tastes may be different

[Sabinus]

Macsen has hit the nail on the head there, each to their own. Everybody has their own oppinion on everything.

What is v&v?

[I of the Storm]

vices and virtues

[Darkvicer98]

I find RTW a long way much better than MTW. RTW has settlements,not lands and is less complicated in my opinion. Try RTW and you might like it. Another thing if you have XP the game seems less stupider but was that vanilla version you played?

[Martok]

Hey Kurt, good to hear from you mate. You may not want to read the rest of my post, though, if you're currently enjoying Rome -- I might put you off the game otherwise.


To start out, I wasn't thrilled with a lot the game's gross historical inaccuracies. Not that MTW isn't guilty of this as well, but at least they're generally not as obvious. With Rome sporting units such as wardogs, Archanii (sp?), screeching women, and the infamous flaming pigs, it's enough to make me weep. This in and of itself doesn't necessarily kill the gameplay, but it certainly went a long way towards ruining whatever immersion and atmosphere the game might have had.

I also very much disliked that you're forced to play (and beat the game) as one of the three main Roman families in order to unlock the other playable factions. This is a completely unnecessary limitation. Yes, I know it's supposedly easy to mod the game so that all factions are playable from the start, but you shouldn't have to do so in the first place.

In addition, I didn't care for the frenetic pace of battes in RTW, or the new combat mechanics. Units -- including infantry -- move around the battlefield at the speed of light, even when they're only walking. The combat engine was also dumbed down from the Shogun/MTW engine, as things like the "unit squeeze" penalty were removed. The end result is that battles feel more like an arcade game....and they're usually over in a mere 5-10 minutes. During the time I played Rome, I never once had an epic battle where it took me half an hour (or more) to fight out -- the outcome was nearly always decided well within the first few minutes of combat.

In addition to the previously-mentioned fantasy units, a lot of units in RTW were simply very unbalanced. Chariots were overpowered, cavalry was generally *way* overpowered, and even archers get far too many kills with their arrows. It's ironic that infantry -- the backbone of not only the Roman army, but many of the barbarian tribes as well -- ends up taking a backseat to most of the other unit types.


And last, but definitely not least....

Far and way the game's single biggest turn-off was its absolutely atrocious AI. At the strategic, tactical, and diplomatic level, the computer-controlled factions are all brain-dead or (at best) schizophrenic. I'm not going to bother listing all the examples, as there are simply too many to pick from.

Now in the interests of fairness, I have heard the Barbarian Invasion expansion pack improves the AI somewhat, so your experience may end up being better than my own, Kurt. For the sake of your own enjoyment, I hope that's indeed the case.

[Kaidonni]

Hmmm, I liked RTW a lot. I guess it was just playing it too much that made me tire of it. Of course, to get a real challenge out of it, it's fun to reduce the upkeep of all the units to, say, a quarter of what they would be (including recruitment costs and armor/weapon upgrades). Then, with a few of the AI-enhancement mods, play on VH campaign map. Should be facing hefty stacks of enemy soldiers that way. I did it once (without any enhancements to the AI), and found numerous sizeable armies heading for my settlements. LOL.

[Sabinus]

For a bit of fun (make backups) only allow the factions to recruit their best units, with reduced upkeep and harder difficulties. That is a lot of fun.

[bondovic]

The end result is that battles feel more like an arcade game....and they're usually over in a mere 5-10 minutes. During the time I played Rome, I never once had an epic battle where it took me half an hour (or more) to fight out -- the outcome was nearly always decided well within the first few minutes of combat.

I know! There's no grind in the battles. Terrible. What's the use of building a fancy army if you're only getting a couple of minutes of watching them fight?

In addition to the previously-mentioned fantasy units, a lot of units in RTW were simply very unbalanced. Chariots were overpowered, cavalry was generally *way* overpowered, and even archers get far too many kills with their arrows. It's ironic that infantry -- the backbone of not only the Roman army, but many of the barbarian tribes as well -- ends up taking a backseat to most of the other unit types.

And once you get War Elephants it's just stupid how boring it gets. Those behemoths can trample any army into the mud. I actually beat the entire Brutii faction with nothing but 3 of them, my general and 3 units of Arab Cavalry. "Whoopie."

After that I decided the game was unplayable.

[Raz]

I play MTW and RTW (and played M2TW). I enjoy playing MTW more so than RTW because of it's gameplay, simply. RTW has nice graphics, pleasing to the eye and what not. With graphics tuned right up, it is like candy to your eyes (obviously with less FPS though (It's amazing how much grass can lag you PC )). But MTW has that distinct edge to it that I can't put my finger on. To keep this short, I find that RTW has a slower CampMap, and repetitive battles (Not nearly as repetitive as M2TW ). Something very trivial that really does get on my nerves with RTW is how slow it is to end your turn. Especially when there're plenty of factions and you've got to wait for every one of them to take their turn. MTW is really quick when loading the next turn - Thus keeps me interested longer.

After thinking about it, I realise that MTW has more of that roleplaying portion that is lacking so much in RTW. Rather than saying "One of your heirs has now matured" in MTW, it now says "An heir to your leader has now matured" in RTW or something along those lines. Something very trivial and ever so tiny, it's got the same meaning, it gets the same point across, but it doesn't make me feel like I am the leader of this faction, it just makes me feel like I'm controlling the leader of the faction (like more as a step above the leader rather than actually being the leader).

[Timsup2nothin]

Now for a different point of view...

A few months back some computer mag posted a list of what their editors called 'the best 25 PC games of all time'. To keep their list from filling up they only allowed one entry from a series, and picked what they said was the 'best representative'.

Being an old timer, and a very game centered guy I had owned and played 24 out of their 25. Much to my surprise their number six pick was an alien to me. Somehow I had never discovered Total War. Their representative choice, btw, was Rome.

Me being me I did some quick research and ordered 'Eras'. I had some other things going and it took a month or two before I loaded up Shogun. What a great game!

After being very satisfied with Shogun through a lot of failures and one success, and without exploring the numerous alternatives of starting time or even all the factions, I loaded up Medieval. Much to my surprise I was immediately so impressed that I loaned Shogun to my son.

Now I've loaded up Rome, and it has dominated my playing time for a week or so. In no way whatsoever did it make Medieval obsolete for me. There are great things about it, but there are some steps backwards too. I can't really say which one is more likely to provide more TW binges in the future. Truthfully, there will likely be some Shogun binging down the line too.

So, from someone who 'discovered' MTW and RTW at about the same time, it's pretty much a dead heat.

[bondovic]

(It's amazing how much grass can lag you PC )

Then don't smoke it so close to the processor.

[Jxrc]

even archers get far too many kills with their arrows.

Pre-patch archer killed more of my own troops than ennemies.

Know that it has been made better since then but probably one of the thing that got me to leave the game behind since that was pretty much it for me when the pacth came out.

[Martok]

So, from someone who 'discovered' MTW and RTW at about the same time, it's pretty much a dead heat.

Which is totally fine; I completely respect those who enjoy Rome as much or more than Shogun/Medieval. I just (admittedly) can't quite understand why.

Actually, no that's not really true. I do understand the game's appeal -- the upgraded graphics, the city management, the new traits/ancillary system, the period setting (which I suspect is probably the biggest reason for its appeal), etc. -- it just doesn't appeal to *me* personally.

For me, RTW is like a woman that intellectually I know is good-looking, but I'm not actually attracted to.

[Timsup2nothin]

Upgraded graphics...not my thing, really.
Period setting...I'm old, but both Rome and the dark ages were well before my time so pretty even on that.

But...the city management, more complex trait system, and strategic positioning on the strategic map...those are winning points with me for Rome.

I explained it to my son like this:

If I was setting every battle to auto-resolve and strictly playing a TBS game, Rome wins, hands down...BUT, and it's obviously a big but, I never auto-resolve even the most lop-sided silly battles, and the real time tactical game in MTW is way superior. Hence he can't have either one, and by the way I want my Shogun disk back pretty soon.

[Raz]

For me, RTW is like a woman that intellectually I know is good-looking, but I'm not actually attracted to.

Eh, that analogy again?

[I of the Storm]

Eh, that analogy again?

it seems to be a famous one among all these old men...

[Wasp]

it seems to be a famous one among all these old men...

And a good one, too

[King Kurt]

Good to see my original post has sparked so much debate.

Having played a bit more and reflecting on the comments in the thread, it seems to me that your feelings about each game are where you sit on the strategic to tactical scale. MTW has excellent tactical battles - there are a wider variety of troop types and a wider array of army types/ styles as well. You have to be able to face the heavy infantry/ heavy cavalry armies of the catholics through to the light HA armies of Islam. Also you are likely to come across all army types as well. Battle AI seems OK and armies are not so brittle. RTW tactical battles are OK - I like some of the new aspects and control mechanisms, but they are likely to be a bit samey as the oppolents are likely to be similar.
With the strategic game, I think RTW is the winner - the movement system is better, more economic management to consider and the diplomacy is much improved. MTW has some things to recomend it, but there are more challenges with RTW.
So with the above in mind, my style of game is more in the strategic camp as opposed to tactical. With MTW my strategic approach of concentration of forces leads to a situation after the first 10 - 20 years of me auto resolving most battles as they are a foregone conclusion - so I often don't fight many tactical battles after 20 years worth of move - so the challenging part of the game is early on. In RTW things are more strategically challenging and concentration of force is more difficult to do so ironically I end up fighting more tactical battles. However these battles are not long, present some challenges and add to the flavour. But more importantly the strategic challenges are just as daunting when you have a reasonably sized empire as they are when you start the game.
So it is not surprising that the 2 games have two camps of supporters - because they appeal to different areas of play.
A couple of other points - Matok raised the issue of unhistoric units in RTW - dogs, pigs etc - a fair point I would say. However, they did exist - just not so widespread as they seem to appear. The concept of gimmick weapons was quite widespread - but they tended to be "one shot weapons" and they always seemed to fail. The simple answer is to impose a personal rule on yourself and not build them. In my current campaign I have one unit of Wardogs which came as reward from the Senate. I haven't added to them and if they get wiped out I will not replace them. Are they really anymore unhistoric than Irish Kerns fighting Mongol cavalry or units of Vikings jumping on a boat and moving to Egypt in a blink of an eye?
Finally RTW is glossier with its fancy graphics - but is that any different from comparing MTW with Age of Empires. RTW does look nice and the improved grahics do help, in my opinion, in the tactical battles in simple unit recognition for example. But for me, it is the game which is always the most important thing.
So, all in all, currently I am enjoying RTW. I still love MTW and look forward to returning to it. My only bugbear with RTW is all the twiddly bits added as eye/ear candy - the first time your unit shouts "Unleash hell" as it charges is quite cool, but the 30th time you hear it in the same battle it really grates - and why do the spies have to move so slow, looking this way and that, mumbling something sinister - what is all that about!!!!

[bondovic]

I think Kurt brings up a good point, that at least I need to consider harder, namely the one about historical accuracy vs gameplay. Lots of things to get straight regarding this. It'd be neat to hear peoples thoughts on this. I would kick it off, but I have to give my daughter a bath!

[macsen rufus]

I would kick it off, but I have to give my daughter a bath!

Then this thread needs you

[bondovic]

Then this thread needs you

Intrigueing. Alas, I cannot access the goodies.

[Jxrc]

Thsi thread got me to re-install RTW and give it another go (BTW is patch 1.3 the last available for the vanilla game - to BI and Alexander for me).

Started a Brutii campaign but I had not the time to play a lot so I could not test everything that has been written down here.

Nice things are:

- graphics (enough said)
- speeches before battles (they become a bore after a while but its nice at the beginning how they evolve depending on the situation and your commander's previous successes against the same foe)
- family tree, office assignation, adoption, etc.
- senate requests
- unit description is much better than in MTW


No so nice are:

- tactical battles: honestly troops were moving so fast and the results was so quick that I though that I had enable the "Arcade" option (is there a way to slow things there ? I did not remember that things were so confused)... I had no precise idea of what I was doing but won every battle ... Roman infantry deals relatively well with everything including cavalry so you just need to move your own cavalry around to smah it through the enemy's rear (AI never tought to oppose such cunning moves). The roman javelin throwers are a bunch of silly men since they seem to fancy throwing their javelin into my troops.... Note that I played on normal difficulty level and faced the Greeks most of the time and, IIRC, they have one of the worts unit selection to oppose the Romans (phalanx flanked = phalanx dead)
- siege are a bit weird, had to attack my firts city with a wall and build just a mine to have the wall collapse ..... AI Army stayed on the main square and kept idle. Got the wall breach and move ahead ... Had forgotten the arrow tower so lost quite few man on the way downtown ... Then I remembered that I just had to move into the tower to stop that peppering ... Next siege, I brought a couple of ladder and the walk in the park resumed...
- did not get the time to start a proper game on a harder difficulty level but things seems too easy on normal .... Not really remembering anything about the game mechanics, I manage to lead an army from Capoua to Sparta in just a few years just dealing with small armies of dodgy troops that the AI sent peacemeal ...


Temporay conclusion: honestly I had a good time but I really doubt that the game would have the same re-playability as MTW and that I could play a campaign with all the factions. Will try a gain next week-end with a harder difficulty setting.

[amritochates]

Since I have never played vanilla for more than couple of days- my comparision will be:
a.MTW-VI-XL mod with Tiberius Expansion
b.RTW-BI-Europa Barbarorum1.1 with force diplomacy + sinhuet.

To encapsulate till recently I was playing (a.) but after a recent computer upgrade was forced to shift to (b.) due issues in MTW with the most recent drivers+hardware.

Simply put I prefer MTW-VI for the superb tactical ai and the semi-decent canpaign ai, but for an intense roleplaying campaign focussing more on the campaign map RTW is clearly superior due to the fact that traits and ancillaries are moddable and force diplomacy allows me to play a GA style campaign,so I can play a very defensive game with minimal expansion something not possible on MTW since I am forced to conquer a province in every reign to mantain decent influence(plus having 199 provinces helps). On the flip side battles are without any challenge for me even in Hard, even with the latest battle formation mods unlike MTW-VI.

Ps. my observations are based on very to moderately modded versions of the above mods- for ex my version of the XL mod has my own building mod which adds above 20 unique buildings featuring infinite build time and a RTR/EB style AOR system.

[Roark]

RTW has battle pigs??

Wow, I feel like I'm on drugs or something...

[Raz]

Not battle pigs... flaming pigs.

[Jxrc]

OK did give RTW a try again last week-end but this time as the Scipii.

Was lucky to a fault in the very first moves cause:

- my spy managed to open the gate in Syracuse, which I took first round (with havy losses though - arrow towers ...)
- Cathaginians were to lazy to walk and took a ship to, presumably, go mess with me the other side of the island. Lazy people got punished since their single ship loaded with the almost all their troops in Sicily met two of mine and was duly sunk. Their city was guarded with one unit of militia only and became mine in turn 4...

Then few naval battles (which I mostly won), few blockade assignmet, took Sardigna and the Balleare ...

Landed a rather small army near Carthage, bought all available mercernaries and assaulted the city. Killed all inhabitants to keep them quite.

After a few re-orgnisation turns, took the three city the Carthaginian had left without much problem after having bribed their last sizeable stack...

Quite fun all the way but no real challenge (playing very hard on the strategic map and moderate for the tactical one).

Pre-battle speacjhes get a bit boring after a while as expected ... Now it's up for the Senate to decide if I am to go after the Egyptians or the Numidians (as far as I can remember, Egyptian should be more fun than walking over the Numidians and Spanish ....)

Conclusion remains unchanged except that using strategic agents really becomes tedious due to the boring animations ....

Will try to finish the campaign and have a go with another faction for a bigger challenge (legionnaries are way too powerful and versatile IMHO).