How did you get interested in RTW and then in EB?

[Julius Augustus]

I got started with RTW when I saw this video on youtube. It just looks so darn Epic! The only bad thing is that the Romans won. However, fellow Romaioktonoi, please do not spam on this thread or it will get locked. After I started playing RTW, I got more interested in ancient history, and then began to hate RTW for being innacurate. One day I was looking up on cataphracts when I saw a picture of an EB cataphract wielding a 2 handed lance. When I looked into EB more, I realized it was a history buff's dream come true.

[APX]

RTW: No clue. It was too long ago to remember.

EB: After reading all the RTR vs. EB threads.

[Skullheadhq]

I think because i liked the name Total War a lot, and found EB when I was looking for a good mod, found RTR, was to easy for me, saw EB and fell in love.

[Molinaargh]

A friend told me about it when the demo was released.

As for EB it was probably by seeing it in the Hosted Mods section here or at TWC.

[mlc82]

I adored Medieval TW 1 and played it religiously, so bought RTW as excited as a kid at Xmas when it came out. A week later I was back to MTW while RTW and it's total lack of any AI combined with combat on speed collected dust on the shelf.

Tried out a couple of RTW mods that were very impressive (like Total Realism) but still would rather play MTW.

Somehow found EB in it's late .7 or early .8 state, and got hooked on it as being able to roleplay with some real credibility (thanks to all of the character traits and such, along with tons of historical atmopshere) finally made the game really fun. EB 1.0 was the first game release I've been really excited about in a LONG time, and I think it was the last one too. Once I found the EB Alex.exe mod and it's AI improvements, it became the most played game I own. Ironic isn't it?

[Apázlinemjó]

I got RTW as it came out, because I always liked the RTS games and played it for a long time. Then last year I found RTR on the internetz. Played it a few months then I checked other mods for RTW... I found EB and fell in love.

[Azathoth]

I first got interested in RTW way when I saw it reviewed on X-Play way back in the day, and though "That looks pretty cool". They gave it a 5 out of 5, btw. I finally got it in 2008 and after a month of playing nonstop checked out the mods for it as presented in Gamespot. I saw RTR and appreciated the possibility of much more historically accurate gameplay and downloaded it. I first played an historical battle, but it lagged like CSS when a guy with 765 ping joins the server and I uninstalled. While researching RTR I heard the name EB (maybe in a Youtube comments section)and decided to see how that worked, and there you have it.

[Andronikos]

Strategy has always been my favourite game genre and have discovered MTW first, I have seen some pre-release info that it will be awesome game, something new with armies massive like never before, vast diplomacy possibilities including marriage aliances, so I bought it. I totally liked it. Than I got RTW, but it didn't impress me so much and when reading a review, in discussion sb posted that RTR mod improves the game. I played it for some time and than I found a comparison of RTW mods where was stated that RTR is the best mod but new EB project is very promising (0.80 was a beta version, they wrote that it is very unstable), I read the forum and liked it, tried and haven't stopped.

[A_Dane]

i had bought medieval 1 some time before rtw came out, played it day and night, then saw in a science magazine about rtw, which i ofcourse wished for my birthday.
the only challenging thing about it was the civil war between the romans or ofc fighting them with inferor units, not like in med 1 where i got my ass handed to me more often than not :P
i found eb when it was in the beta stages but the install and forgot about it again :/
got it to work later in the .8x stages though and played it a bit on and off since :D
EDIT: sorry bout the bad language if it offended anyone, thanks for the reminder ludens :)

[Ibrahim]

I had read about RTW when I was in Kuwait, in a website. but I couldn't find the game in Kuwait at the time, in 2004 (it was after release). then, a couple of years and some later, in 2007, I found the game in wallmart. so I waited till I got my laptop, and I got it the same day I got my laptop, june 28, 2007.


I got EB, mostly because I found RTR first, and for some reason, couldn't install it without crashing the game, and when I found EB afterwards and tried it, it workd.

as to why I wanted either: because I love accuracy.

[Lanceari]

The History Channel used to run some documentaries of ancient battles where the use the RTW engines to recreate parts of those battles. ...this got me interested in RTW: Rome.

After I started playing Rome, I found out about EB through RTW's forums.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

When RTW first came out everyone said it was the greatest game of the type ever made, and since I liked the history of the Roman Empire I bought it.

After a while I got bored with it and looked for mods. After playing RTR for a while, I got interested in EB from one of those RTR vs. EB threads. I thought I wouldn't like a mod "focusing on the barbarians", as everyone called it, but I was pleasantly surprised when I checked it out.

[APX]

The History Channel used to run some documentaries of ancient battles where the use the RTW engines to recreate parts of those battles. ...this got me interested in RTW: Rome.

After I started playing Rome, I found out about EB through RTW's forums.

That's actually the same way I learned of RTW, through watching the show where they use the game to recreate ancient battles. After watching the show I immediately bought it at Bestbuy.

[lonewolf209]

I've always had a moderate interest in history so when I saw RTW on the store shelf I just had to give it a try. Then I saw a youtube Video of EB and had to give that a try and i completely fell in love with it. I've probably spent more time playing EB then all my other games combined.

[Owen Glyndwr]

I saw it reviewed on a TV show. I remember they were comparing it with Battle For Middle Earth, as a matter of fact, and said that R: TW was the better game. I remember being really put off by that because I was really interested in buying BFME. Then I watched Decisive Battles on the History Channel, and instantly decided I wanted it. So I picked it up and fell in love. I still have memories of getting up at 5 AM to play BI before school started.

I started looking at mods because I got tired of how the north of Great Britain and The Eastern edges of Persia got cut out in vanilla so I looked around and found R: TR. Then, when I got bored with that, I started looking around and found EB. I decided I'd give it a try and here I am.

[vartan]

Is it just me or is everyone showing some trend that goes R:TW ... RTR ... EB? It's very interesting. But guess what? I have just a similar story.

My closest friend, a few years ago, sometime in 2004 or 2005, lended me his Rome: Total War CDs, knowing how much I loved history and how much I loved strategy games (e.g. chess, StarCraft). You won't believe this. I installed the game that night, went to quick battle, had no clue how the camera worked, sent peasants to attack some legionaires or something, and got screwed hard. Uninstalled, gave him the CDs the next morning and told him it's junk. "The game's flawed!! How can someone work the damn camera!!!" Something of the sort. A couple of years passed and sometime while we were watching the HBO series "Rome" we decided to re-install and play R:TW. I gave the necessary effort this time and finally achieved victory. Of course, as you all know, I was soon bored with the repetitiveness, predictability, and inaccuracy of the game. Foraged through forums, discovered RTR, made it work, played till I realized (or formed the opinion) that it's simply a pruned and beautified version of R:TW (don't get me wrong, it's a great mod). I found EB, compared it to everything else (and there was NO comparison). EB was and is awesome. Awesome as in I was in awe of how comprehensive and 'fully loaded' the modification was. To this day I am amazed at the amount of work the team has put in.

Great job guys. You've more than set the bar, you've made many gamers happy. Here's one of them!

-Vartan

[Raygereio]

Is it just me or is everyone showing some trend that goes R:TW ... RTR ... EB?

I'm the same. I picked up RTW when I saw it in the bargain bin (having no previous knowledge of the rest of the total war series).
I liked it: it has decent gameplay. But as I have at the very least some knowledge of history I quickly became annoyed at the inaccuracies (and I don't know how it was marketed in other countries, but the version I have praised RTW's stunning and unprecedented historical accuracy on the box, hrmbl).

I did a google search for mods and RTR was simply the first on the list I found back then. Played it for a while and when I searched for more mods, I found EB.

[keiskander]

I got my hands on MTW1 by an accident and loved it so i tried out shogun aswell. As i was familiar with the developer and title name Total war Rome was a clear purchase when it hit the stores. How i found the forums for total war was when first skin of a spartan was released by the devs. I then google the internet for more and found my way to the mods first one i tried out was Barebones mod then Roma Surrectum. Then abit dedicated to MTWII and Stainless Steel and Broken Cresent i was away from RTW awhile but found my way back to the era and decided to try out EB which i regret i havent done much earlier...

[Atraphoenix]

I was a MTW maniac. I remember playing 8-9 hours a day when it was released.
I have played Viking invasion shogun after I started to play mtw.
When CA released RTW I did play it without any mods for around two years then I met in the internet about Rome Total Realism around 2006 then I finished my university. started to work and finished martial service so I get back to RTW after CA released M2TW when ı was searching net for tools of m2tw, I tried RTW mods again nearly all of them, then I quit playing m2tw and started to play rtw mods. I caught EB very late around 1.0. So I haven't had any chance to play with yuezhi/Kushans.

[Andy1984]

My brother showed me the game when he had it, but at first I wasn't even remotely interested in it. Too much graphics, 3D-camera,... not exactly my kind of thing back then. Two or three years later - I'd been playing Shogun - I gave it a try and quite liked it. The first mod I tried was xgm, followed by xgm-diadochi. After that, I found out about EB because of it's sheer amount of units. Having experienced the great diversity of units and the massive amount of history and the stress on construction and economy (I find myself less rich than in other mods), I don't think I could ever go to another rtw-mod.

[Moosemanmoo]

RTW: I bought shogun and really liked the format.
Heard all the hype for Rome years later so I bought it for £20 (way cheaper than my mates got it for).

EB: Signed on to these forums and kept seeing references about it until finally I looked it up. I downloaded it when v1.0 came out and have been hooked since.

[The General]

Bought Shogun: TW way back in 2000 and liked it a lot. Samurai? Kee-yai!

Bought Medieval: TW when it came, and liked it quite a bit. I liked the dark, brooding melancholy of an atmosphere the game had.

Bought R:TW... And didn't really like it. Overpowered cavalry, way too easy battles (M:TW was already on the easier side of things...) and too bright, clean graphics/units, no atmosphere to be found.

While surfing on the net, I once happened to stumble upon a forum dedicated to *:TW games and mods for them, and on the site I found about an upcoming mod to R:TW dedicated on presenting the 'barbarian' factions more realistically... Then, I forgot about the thing for quite a while.

Then, once again, surfing on the waves of the inter-web of nets, I found myself at the very same forum and decided to check out whether progress had been made upon that.... mod called "Barbaro"-something, and to my pleasure I found out that not only progress had been made, but the mod was already downloadable. The version was of the 0.8x series, as I recall.

However, EB's made my purchase of R:TW&BI worthwhile, and I've never felt like trying out other mods. I'm a history buff, and I prefer realistic battles over arcade ones, so... 'Twas love a first play.


(Since, I've bought M2:TW, didn't like it all too much, but Broken Crescent was okay-ish... My brother bought Kingdoms, which is a wee better than the original, Third Age: TW is pretty fun. Still, for me, EB reigns supreme, followed by fond memories of Shogun and Katafraktoi/Varangian Guards from M:TW...)

[General Aetius]

I played the demo of RTW (from a PCformat magazine) years back and enjoyed the massive armies and different campaign map system. I wanted to get it instantly but we didn't have a good enough computer so I had to do without it for a couple years. But I still wanted to get it. Later on while on a TW forum I stumbled on EB. I went to EB's site and and found a treasure. I got membership here and soon I was desperately wanting to get a RTW just so that I could play EB. I used up all my families cap* downloading EB (my family wasn't very happy) but still didn't have RTW. Shortly afterward my family upgraded our computer and I went searching for RTW but by then none of the shops here in South Africa had it. Luckily some people I knew were returning from England and I was able to get them to bring the game down. Finally I got the long awaited game, installed it, played for a day and the next day installed EB. EB is virtually the only game I play now and I've never bothered to play any more RTW. EB is just too amazing.

General Aetius

*In South Africa we pay a monthly amount for a fixed amount of broadband. We only had 1 gigabyte back then. Now we have 2.

[Sdragon]

Found RTW when i saw it on the TV program Time Commanders. Found EB on the RTR forum in an EB bashing thread.

[HunGeneral]

Well it looks like I will only increase the accuracy if the rule: R:TW then RTR and then EB

I first heard of Rome: Total War from a friend of mine back when I was still in Gymnasium and had (more or less) a lot of free time in the afternoon. Before that I liked to play First Person shooters and Role-Playing games a lot (like TES III: Morrowind which I still play from time to time) and disliked real-time strategy games (of these I knew Age of Empires II and it didn't fit to my taste).

So I asked one of my friends/classmates who was very interrested in video games if he could suggest me a good strategy game with more depth then the average RTS out there. He suggested I try R:TW upon the articles he read in gaming magazines and his own experience with the demo.

I got it as a christmas present some time later from one of my relatives and fell in love with it - it was by far the best game I had seen till then (I didn't know M:TW or S:TW before). I enjoyed the vanilla version for a very long time - most of my completed campaigns are from thoose days.

I first heard about Rome Total Realism from one of my friends who had become a RTW fan aswell, but he said it "just made the barbarians units stronger and that's all". However I looked after the Mod and found it interresting. I downloaded it and with some difficulty got it working - I quess it was RTR 6.2 an old version even then, but I liked it alot. (That was the first time I heard of Baktria and saw a zone of recruitment system in process )

When my old Rome disk died from exhaustion I stopped playing for a while because I was nearing graduation. In summer I was lurking around in one of the hungarian TW fan community websites and came over a large anouncement that EB v1.0 had just been released. I was gathering money for R:TW anthology so I joined the Org. for the EB forums (after lurking around and joining TWC and reading the great AAR of Theodotios I: "Across the Waters") for extra info. I had learned by then that the RTR mod was down alot so I tried EB and found it great and I still do.

Since then I have also seen the RTR mod resurrect and I aso intend to try there sub mods "The Iberian Conflict" and "Fate of Empires" (when it gets released). I have also tried the "Fourth Age: Total War" mod with BI and find it very good aswell.

Still EB is my favourite and I am prepearing to buy Med II with Kingdoms (haven't found it in any gamestore I know yet, but hope tha they will load up in fall or winter ) as a preperation for EB II

Thank you alot for this great Mod EB Team!!!!

[GenosseGeneral]

well i got rome as a birthday present... and since then i really liked rtw. i gor EB because i was bored of medieval and rome vanilla and so i started looking for some mods. i just downloaded EB because it sounded to be much more realistic than vanilla and after reading about it i heard that it should be much
more challenging than vanilla so... alea iacta est! i downloaded EB and started my first campaign.

[Aemilius Paulus]

Splendid thread

Back in spring of 2005, while I was in 8th grade, our school distributed a monthly catalogues with all sorts of interesting gadgets, books, games, or anything that would be appealing to a middle school student (grades 6-8). The catalogue came from Scholastic, a company that donates a book to the school of the origin of the order, per order. So basically, I buy an item, my school gets a book; I buy two items - my school receives two books from Scholastic.

So one day, I was viewing the catalogue by chance (I never bothered with it before) and spotted RTW. Being an ardent RTS fan, the ad interested me, and I order RTW. Too bad I was due to embark on my annual trip to Europe, and so I had to cancel the order.

Then in autumn of 2007 a friend of mine gave me his RTW discs and I gave him a load of my games. He was a RTW fan himself and he got me into this game. So installed and played it, and then I found about EB through HeavenGames, a site which I always visit before and when I am playing a certain RTS game for tips, hints, strategies, mods, etc.

I read about all the RTW mods and then went to all sorts of sites, including .Org to find out which mod was the best. In the end it was RTR vs EB, although based on the videos and screenies, plus descriptions of the two, it was clear that RTR was merely another mod which changed only the outside appearance, such as map, skins, and a tiny bit more. EB description, on the other hand, blew me away with the depth of this mod, right down to each seemingly insignificant (to others) details. Even the EB skins were the best historically and aesthetically speaking.

So I DL-ed EB and began lurking on these forums in March of 2008. I was going to register in April, but then I remembered about the annual Euro-trip I have, so I decided to wait until coming back. Oh, and as yet another bonus, I got to play EB in its most refined form - 1.1 (as 1.2 was a minor tweak in comparison).

[DaciaJC]

I am an avid reader of game reviews/previews (coming mainly from Gamespot and Gamespy), particularly those concerning historical real-time strategy games. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that I learned of RTW from reading a critic's review.

I was impressed with the author's description of the manner in which RTW was played, both from a strategic campaign POV and a tactical field-of-battle POV. Alas, it was nearly four years between the time I read that review and the time that I actually was able to obtain a copy and play the game (I needed a new computer).

I played a campaign with each of Rome's three families before I very happily learned that all of the factions could be made playable with some minor editing. Thus I continued playing RTW as the Dacians and then Thracians. All together, it came to about five or six months.

I don't quite recall the first time I heard of EB. I do remember reading of various mods for some time before finally setting RTW aside. I installed RTR first, played it for about two hours, realized that the mod retained much of its core from vanilla, and then downloaded EB 1.2. I remember being very excited that EB changed every possible facet of vanilla, but also somewhat worried that the mod would be so alien to be that I'd be put off. Happily, this was not the case.

[Alsatia]

I was told about it by a friend at a birhtday party, then bought it. I loved vanilla untill I decided to go onto the forums a few months later. EB was the first mod I ever downloaded and I despised Vanilla and praised EB since then.

[grendelfreak]

Well I got the demo of a PC gaming magazine and loved it and played vanilla for quite a while when it came out, even hanged around at the rtw.heavengames site for a while complete with writing some crappy Roman fiction (I even got my first year Ancient History essay up on that site somewhere ).
Took a break for a while then I found the Mundus Magnus map (I think that is what it was called) and I followed EB on and off since then.