Questions about Rome Total War.

[Doc Holliday]

Can't post in the RTW forum so I guess I'll put this here.

One thing that would really add another element to RTW would be the inclusion on populations in provinces (Or however the map is to be divided up). So for instance...you have x amount of people in the province. You need Y number of people to run all the farming/mining/trading etc. So you have Y amount of people. Your army guarding the alpine passes was just routed by the Gauls. The barbarians are descending on Italy. Now you have to scrape together an army out of the Y people.

Rome faced population shortages throughout it's rein. An entire class of citizen was virtually wiped out by constant warring (The free farmers) and so Marius's reforms drafted the poor to fight in the army.

Now things like plagues, famines, and floods have a huge effect because it could wipe out your manpower reserves(Not to mention a tax base).

Then you might consider things like uprooting populations from barbarian provinces and moving them into yours to replenish your numbers. Rome was forced to do this on a few occasions after having been hurt by plague. After mistreating one group, Rome had a huge rebellion on its hands and suffered a humiliating defeat at Adrianople.

Will something like this be included? What do you guys think. Maybe if it is too much micromanagement for some people we could have the option to turn it off.

[Doc Holliday]

http://pc.ign.com/articles/402/402725p1.html?fromint=1

This preview refers to the Turn Based Portion.
I had thought that they were going with a real time strategy map. Has this changed?

[Jacque Schtrapp]

None of the previews I have read have mentioned anything of that type. However, CA did a really good job of including auto management features for nearly every aspect of the game. I'm sure RTW will appeal to both those who want meticulous control and those who simply want to wage bloody war

[Doc Holliday]

Quote[/b] (Jacque Schtrapp @ June 09 2003,13:41)]None of the previews I have read have mentioned anything of that type. However, CA did a really good job of including auto management features for nearly every aspect of the game. I'm sure RTW will appeal to both those who want meticulous control and those who simply want to wage bloody war

Is there some way we could get their attention and ask them if it's possible?

[Sir Robin]

A very good idea and something that should be included.

However, this goes more into strategy/management than tactics/fighting around which the Total War series has been previously based.

I don't know if this feature has been included or not. Nothing official or semi-official has been said about this.

The battles are real-time. However the strategic/campaign portion is still turn based.

No polite way of getting them to cough up an answer. They just may not know either. While the battle engine looks well on its way to being finished, the strategic engine is apparently still in the works.

So there may be significant portions of the strategic game that have not been decided on or finalized yet.

[Jacque Schtrapp]

Quote[/b] (Doc Holliday @ June 09 2003,13:48)]Is there some way we could get their attention and ask them if it's possible?

You could try sending them a geisha....

[Doc Holliday]

If you wanted to get even more advanced, you could go farther with this for some interesting options. Say you have a really powerful unit...like Gaulish nobles. Historically they had much better equipment/training/discipline than their normal footsoldiers and usually went mounted. Maybe they are more powerful Than anything else so producing allot would be unbalancing. A solution to this would be population

If the population is 50,000, 80% would be free farmers. Another 15% would be slaves or the poor. Only the remaining 5% would be rich nobles capable of affording that equipment necessary to be made into a mounted noble unit. Thus, you have a very effective and historically realistic way of limiting powerful units.

[A.Saturnus]

I like the idea. It would be cool if population restrictions would influence the use of special units or the army in general. When you recruit all of the people in your province, there`s no one left to produce food

[Gregoshi]

I've posted on this idea a few times over the past 6 months. I'm glad to see others sharing the same views. Nothing like fighting constant wars that bleed your population to death - to the point that there are few left to take up arms or or ploughshares. Talk about feeling vulnerable. Of course, this would kill the global-conquest-rusher type players.

[Sir Robin]

And that's a bad thing right?