Interesting Activision Statement

[ElmarkOFear]

Someone at the .com posted this link. Makes me wonder what else may have been changed to make the game "more accessible to new users?"

https://activision.custhelp.com/cgi-...PVJvbWU*&p_li=

Could this be a joke? I certainly hope so.

[Thoros of Myr]

Another "more accessible" mess to clean up...So why not just mod it right?

[Mr. Juice]

I cringed when I read that.

[khelvan]

Yeah, I believe we can mod this to be more realistic. I hope so.

Why, however, couldn't they have included a "fun" mode and a "realism" mode? How would this make it any less accessable for new users?

What a bunch of crap.

[Colovion]

I threw up in my mouth when I read that.

[Mr. Juice]

I threw up in my mouth when I read that.

That made my night.

Too bad its true though...

[Captain Fishpants]

Oddly enough, I don't believe this to be the case.

But then I only worked on the game.

[The_Emperor]

If terrain and fatigue have little effect doesn't that mean tactics suddenly become very limited? Suddenly having the high ground means nothing anymore as your supermen fight the same going uphill as they do on the plains...

Looks like troops in RTW are like the Duracell Bunny, they keep on going on and on, and on...

Anyway I hope the Captain is right and it is not the case, because if it is then the essence of TW (realistic battles with terrain and fatigue having a major impact on tactics) has gone.

[Captain Fishpants]

Don't panic!

Your troops will definitely get tired and then exhausted in battle. They may keep going a little longer if they're winning or feeling particularly enthused, but they are definitely not 'Duracell bunnies'. OK?

If terrain and fatigue have little effect doesn't that mean tactics suddenly become very limited? Suddenly having the high ground means nothing anymore as your supermen fight the same going uphill as they do on the plains...

Looks like troops in RTW are like the Duracell Bunny, they keep on going on and on, and on...

Anyway I hope the Captain is right and it is not the case, because if it is then the essence of TW (realistic battles with terrain and fatigue having a major impact on tactics) has gone.

[Oaty]

The big difference is troops can be exhausted rest and become fresh again. So when its a long haul to the enemy, I'll stop within a decent distance from them rest the troops and if I feel/have missle superiority over them I will make them come to me. And if I do'nt have missle troops I'll just sit there and wait,if they want to come to me that's fine but I'll sit there and rest. Decisive battles was a good example of fatigue with pompei vs caesar. Pompei let caesar's troops rest after the initial charge wich probably proved to be second decisive factor for the battle.

Another thing is you still can force exhausted units to run, although they run slower they can still run. So if you keep equitites in reserve the enemy cavalry is just about doomed if they route and even then exhausted equitites are no joke.

Whereas in MTW you could have tired units in normal terrain before any engagement begins and you could not rest them to recover. So this kills camping on a hill exhausting the poor A.I.

Now I have'nt had any battles in the desert but I do wonder how that will be

[CBR]

Could we get a list of combat/terrain/fatigue modifiers like we had for MTW?


CBR

[The_Emperor]

Don't panic!

Your troops will definitely get tired and then exhausted in battle. They may keep going a little longer if they're winning or feeling particularly enthused, but they are definitely not 'Duracell bunnies'. OK?

Thats a releif, given i don't have the game yet I can only go by what I have seen in the demo... So I am understandably anxious about what I will read.

And do us a favor guys, the next Total War title you make... Get Activision to release it in a better way! I could get a batch of RTW CDs imported from the states in the time it takes to wait for this release to hit the UK.

C'mon its not like you need to translate the game or anything!

[econ21]

Could we get a list of combat/terrain/fatigue modifiers like we had for MTW?
CBR

I would second that. I've just got the Strategy Guide and assumed that it would have this information, as it did for STW and MTW. However, it only has some qualitative pointers, not the numerical information available for the previous TW games.

From the qualitative information, I would say, however, that a working assumption that everything was the same as STW and MTW would not be too far wrong. One thing I did not spot was anything about rank advantages.

There do appear to be a few new things:
- missiles are particularly effective against cavalry
- javelins (on loose and skirmish) are recommended vs elephants;
- woods make all units not trained for them suffer (esp. those in formation like legions and phalanx);
- the phalanx formation is said to best anything other than another phalanx in a head-to-head melee.

[GilJaysmith]

Can we ask everyone who reads this thread to help us stamp on this little bit of misinformation anywhere else it crops up? Chances are it's already been repeated as lore in another thread.

Ta.

[SpencerH]

Don't panic!

Your troops will definitely get tired and then exhausted in battle. They may keep going a little longer if they're winning or feeling particularly enthused, but they are definitely not 'Duracell bunnies'. OK?

I wonder if part of this opinion isnt due to the difficulty in seeing the energy levels of the troops. In STW and MTW it was very easy to see that level and the effect of charging. It may be just me, but I havent noticed any obvious change to indicate energy level during the battles, so it may be a matter of perception.

[Encaitar]

I think people are misinterpretting that answer. It doesn't say "the combat advantage from terrain has been reduced". What it says is that "the terrain's fatigue impact on troops was reduced". i.e. Walking up hills and mountains doesn't exhaust your troops as quickly as it did in M:TW.

[Kraxis]

Exactly Encaitar.

I think CA needs to send a message to Activision so that they make the statement more specific so we won't ge any more misunderstandings.

And Gil, I'm on it.

[Osbot]

I've been playing probably pretty much non-stop since Saturday afternoon. Your troops do fatigue, they fatigue faster going up hills trudging through snow etc. The difference is, as in the real world. When you are at the top of your game, you know a cornflake-eating-out-of-someone-elses-hollowed-out-skull-Germanic-barbarian-warrior-studmuffin. You have a quick recovery time. So while you may be breathing hard by the time you get into position, it will only take a short breather untill you're "warmed up" again.

[Hamburglar]

Personally if this is the case I find it an improvement. Sometimes guys got tired a bit too easily in MTW.


My problem in RTW is that my Marian units get exhausted way too easily.


During a siege on small town my Praetorians and Legionnaries got Tired just from walking from my deployment zone into the gate. Flat ground and good weather... The Marian troops seem to get constantly exhausted all the time and I find them kind of useless. I've even had a few battles where some of them STARTED OUT exhausted. They weren't reinforcements or anything so I don't know if it was a bug or what.

[Puzz3D]

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Question to Activision customer support: In Medieval and Vikings, fatigue played a big part of my battle tactic and when I had an army on an incline I knew I had the advantage. How come being on an incline in Rome: Total War does not seem to give me an advantage?

Answer by Activision customer support: The terrain in Rome: Total War does still give some advantage, however its fatigue impact on troops was reduced to make the game more accessible to the new users.
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Captain Fishpants and GilJaysmith have said that this answer is incorrect, but the fatigue impact of moving may in fact be less because the running speeds have been increased. That will effectively reduce the amount of fatigue because it takes you less time to move between two points even if the fatigue rate hasn't been changed from MTW. There were lots of complaints about fatigue being excessive in MTW on the largest maps so maybe a reduced effect would work out well, but the faster running speeds makes it harder to control multiple units.

Right now in RTW I can only effectively control 2 or 3 units at a time because the enemy can close with you so fast. RTW seems to have a much stronger rock, paper, scissors gameplay and when you combine that with the faster speed of movement it means supporting units have to stay very close. For instance, skirmishers cannot advance without supporting spearmen very close to them. I was in the Prologue tutorial and took a skirmisher and spear unit and advanced. I was concentrating all my attention on only those two units. My skirmisher was less than 30 meters in front of the supporting spear unit. An enemy cav unit came charging into my field of view from the right, and decimated the skirmisher before my spearmen could close the distance. I would estimate the cav were 100 meters away when I saw them coming. I ordered the spears forward immediately, but it was too late to save the skirmisher. The spears did engage and defeat the cav after the skirmisher was killed. My tactical adjustment to this in the future will be to keep a spearman immediately behind within 10 meters of each skirmisher.

[Spino]

I think the new fatigue model is a huge improvement over the previous Total War games. In Medieval my troops would get fatigued much too quickly, especially on desert maps where my entire army would become exhausted simply from marching from one edge of the map to the other!

[Blodrast]

Well, I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I believe that the fatigue factors for uphill/downhill may be different from the terrain fatigue factors in the export-descr_unit.txt file; there, you only have the factors for weather/terrain, but nothing about downhill/uphill. Would be nice to know how one can interpret that stuff, too.

[Thoros of Myr]

I like that troops can regenerate stamina by resting.

[bhutavarna]

I think i believe CA's comment on fatigue. It's true that fatigue is not very obvious at the beginning of the game, especially on light units. Fatigue only becomes more obvious when heavy or armored units are used.

Unfortunately, since there is no time limit in the very hard mode, all you have to do is rest your soldier until they regain strength because AI will not attack you unless they are clearly superior or on attack. Therefore I don't think that units should be allowed to completely restore their stamina after marching and they should at least loose some of them if they have been in the field for a while, like MTW.

Or AI should be able to take advantage of the fatigue on your units by attacking you after you march, not allowing you sit on your ass until your unit staminas are restored.

[ElmarkOFear]

It is not the change to fatigue that bothers me. It is the idea behind the change . . "To make the game more accessible to new users." What else has been changed, that we are unaware?

The fatigue needed to be reduced slightly, but I still haven't heard any hard figures to say by how much. Nor any other information, that normally, we would have found in the Prima Strategy guide. It appears to have been left out (on purpose?) since all the other guides listed, in detail, how the battle results were computed by the game. Lack of information, especially given the supposed "ease of modding" this game, is leaving the community in the dark as to the capablities of the new engine.

Lot of promises made, yet little which indicates it wasn't just hype. Hopefully once CBR and gang get ahold of the game, they can make some sense of it and let us know what can be done.

[Servius]

"I think people are misinterpretting that answer. It doesn't say "the combat advantage from terrain has been reduced". What it says is that "the terrain's fatigue impact on troops was reduced". i.e. Walking up hills and mountains doesn't exhaust your troops as quickly as it did in M:TW."

Reducing the fatigue caused by moving uphill, and increasing the rate at which fatigue is restored while resting DOES diminish the combat advantage of high ground because wearing an attacker out by forcing him to climb a big hill is a combat advantage. If the penalty is reduced and it's easier to recover from, the advantage is reduced.

[Encaitar]

That's the fatigue advantage though, not the combat advantage (i.e. attacking uphill is harder than attacking downhill).

[Del Arroyo]

I always thought that units fatigued a tad fast anyway. I don't disagree with the change.

[SpencerH]

Its funny, but I've finally had a battle where fatigue was a factor. 3 hastati + generals heavy cav against a gaul inf unit on top of a steep hill at the far end of the map. Despite marching my forces, all four units were 'winded' by the time they reached the enemy. After rest, the hastati recovered enough to attack but the cav never did.

So to me, it looks like the fatigue is maybe a little higher than MTW especially for horses. It was hard to tell how steep a hill it was (maybe it was a mountain) though since I couldnt get the camera tilt to work.

[econ21]

In the demo it seemed to me that my horse became "winded" rather easily. In fact, I can't recall that state being in MTW at all.