Confession time

**bondovic** · 05-02-2008, 17:15

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** · 05-02-2008, 17:51

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

Then this thread needs you

**bondovic** · 05-02-2008, 20:38

Originally Posted by macsen rufus

Then this thread needs you

Intrigueing. Alas, I cannot access the goodies.

**Jxrc** · 05-13-2008, 16:16

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** · 05-13-2008, 20:46

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.