Is the fighting in Rome Total War too quick? Perhaps not.

[Morindin]

The pitched battle, though not as conclusive as in Hellenistic times, still played a major role during the Punic Wars. Battles still had a ritualistic element and armies might camp near to each other for an extended period of time while skirmishes and individual combats took place. When the decision was finally made on the part of both armies to fight, a ponderous deployment into battle line would take place. As the sides approached each other, sight and sound would be used to attempt to win the battle through sheer intimidation. Failing that, the armies would halt about thirty yards apart and exchange missile fire. . Assuming that one side did not withdraw under the hail of javelins, the attacker would eventually advance for a close assault. The assault was apparently not a closely coordinated advance of the whole line, but a series of separate combats , with much give and take and usually lasting less than a half hour due to the physically exhausting nature of the combat. If a stalemate did not ensue, one side would make a penetration of the others line, leading to a general retreat that often turned into a rout and resulted in most of the casualties. The Roman ability to feed the fresh troops of the principes and even the triarii into the line was seen as an improvement over the single line formation of most other armies.

A quote from the history section in totalwar.wargamer.com

So there you have it, each line of battle would fight for around less than 30 minutes, and remember each line of battle of their troops is about the equivalent of huge unit sizes (160 men per "unit", stretched across 400 yard per legion)

Now I havnt had a melee in RTW that lasted 30 minutes, but most melee lasts around 5-10 minutes on "large" unit sizes, provided you dont break a flank and rout the enemy forces, and you're not fighting useless gauls :)
Increase the unit sizes to huge for more realism and I wager the melee would last even longer.

Yes the melee's can be over quite quickly if the balance of forces is heavily lopsided, however the question is, is RTW to scale? It's probably still too quick, but no where near as unrealistic as many people think.

Also take note the comment where it says the majority of casualties is when a rout happens, this is true too in RTW.
Fighting Gaul and other such rabble armies and they will rout quickly, leading to the "10 second fight" scenarios we experiance - but remember the article even goes to imply combat wasnt even joined on all occasions, implying enemy armies would rout at the mere sound of another army, or under a hail of javelins.

[DisruptorX]

Now ask yourself this question: is the standard kill rate in RTW fun?


The answer is no, therefore accuracty etc is irrelevant.

[Murmandamus]

Now ask yourself this question: is the standard kill rate in RTW fun?


The answer is no, therefore accuracty etc is irrelevant.

Your answer is no. Mine is that it's fine. Some of my more enjoyable/satisfying battles have been very quick. Maybe you could try larger units if you haven't already?

The only units I've seen die quickly were either fleeing or massively underpowered. i.e. archers vs heavy cavalry. I don't find the battle speeds to be all that different from past games.

"therefore accuracty etc is irrelevant"

Careful saying that around here. You'll get lynched. :)

[Sethik]

I love the faster killing rate. No more hour long battles of MTW! (Is that even grammatically correct?) The slow killing rate was one of the reasons I almost always auto-calced because I didn't want to or had the time to sit through a battle that might take 30 minutes to 5 hours (see: Golden Horde)!


I'm for the souped up killing rate. So there.


edit:

Your answer is no. Mine is that it's fine. Some of my
The only units I've seen die quickly were either fleeing or massively underpowered. i.e. archers vs heavy cavalry. I don't find the battle speeds to be all that different from past games.

Don't forget flanking.

Flanking with cavalry almost always leads to slaughter, especially when the Cav is formed up. I've seen a Levy Phalanx unit literally evaporate when hit with a direct rear flank cav charge from a Roman General.

[Morindin]

That answer to the fun question entirely depends on who you are and besides that, that question is irrelevent to this topic.
This topic isnt wether or not your personal self deems the kill rates fun or not, but rather to add some light on the due to many "expert" opinions on the "realism" of RTW, a point that has been bought up many times by the critics of the RTW kill rate.

Until we all get super computers we will never know if RTW is realistic or not, we can only make assumptions based on MTW (which is wrong), or on wether it is to scale or not.

Many people here cite examples of battles lasting "all day" and so forth, but that is the entire battle made of many lines, many armies, and many engagements. This article points out that the reality that melee between single battle lines would rarely last longer than 30 minutes while involving armies the size of consular forces. Wether they would regroup and go at it again is another story. Because our armies in RTW are far too small to ever get consular army size, we can never simulate this.
I bet though if we could bring on over 16,000 more reinforcements to a battle in RTW to simulate the "lines" reengaging our battles would certianly last a few hours.

Also in terms of routing, this article certianly implies a rout is completely realistic in under 30 minutes if one line breaks the other, i.e. lopsided forces.

Now having said that, in the game itself it does seem too quick, it is DEFINATELY quicker than MTW, but MTW should not be used as a basis for realism. This is the trap many people have fallen into. Different Eras, different armours, etc.

Of course, thankfully the developers have given us the tools to change the kill speed so we can play the game at our own pace, wether it is to scale or not. I personally use the kill speed mod so I can savour the battles a little more, I might even slow it down more, but that is the question of fun, not realism.

[DisruptorX]

I personally [like] the kill speed mod so I can savour the battles a little more, I might even slow it down more, but that is the question of fun, not realism.

So... your entire first post was just playing devil's advocate?

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

I don't find the battle speeds to be all that different from past games.

ROFLMAO

If you think so... ...who am I to disagree?

"therefore accuracty etc is irrelevant"

Careful saying that around here. You'll get lynched. :)

Correct. He could be lynched. However, the quote from the history section in totalwar.wargamer.com is incorrect regarding History, so he won't be lynched, because, in fact, DisruptorX is right about the gameplay problem.

[Morindin]

ROFLMAO

If you think so... ...who am I to disagree?



Correct. He could be lynched. However, the quote from the history section in totalwar.wargamer.com is incorrect regarding History, so he won't be lynched, because, in fact, DisruptorX is right about the gameplay problem.

Incorrect? Well then, care to enlighten me?

Also, gameplay problem ? It is not a bug, problem, or any such thing, it is a feature that is easily modable if you dont like it.

I might not like the Gauls wearing stripey pants, but I dont call it a gameplay 'problem'.

[Kraxis]

This is the first time I have heard about 30 minutes, everything else I have read have mentioned hours.
If the reason for the 'short' battle is fatigue due to the strains of melee, then I would set the battle at about 10-15 minutes. Even a highly trained and strong man with great stamina can't do much better than that.
The 'short' battle also forces us to accept that there was hardly any changing of the rows of men (they get tired from combat not when they don't fight), this in turn results in the fact that for even the victor the entire first line would have been killed (number of losses for the victor. Imagine being told that you have to be in the front row, practically a deathsentence! Morale would suffer and the army would hardly march with great determination towards the enemy.

No when fatigue sets in it is natural for the human to pull back, and if your opponent begins to pull back and you are tired you will let him.
At some point both sides are tired and pulls back, or one side is more tired and the enemy pushes on, creating a decisive situation. In the former the two sides retire a little and redress their lines, take a break, have a drink of water, pass up javelins and other missiles and of course retires the fatigued fighters. Then the fighting resumes with one or the other side charging and/or firing missiles until one point one side has an advantage.

This is of course only fitting in a battle where at the tactical level the troops are even to an extent.

[Morindin]

This is the first time I have heard about 30 minutes, everything else I have read have mentioned hours.
If the reason for the 'short' battle is fatigue due to the strains of melee, then I would set the battle at about 10-15 minutes. Even a highly trained and strong man with great stamina can't do much better than that.
The 'short' battle also forces us to accept that there was hardly any changing of the rows of men (they get tired from combat not when they don't fight), this in turn results in the fact that for even the victor the entire first line would have been killed (number of losses for the victor. Imagine being told that you have to be in the front row, practically a deathsentence! Morale would suffer and the army would hardly march with great determination towards the enemy.

No when fatigue sets in it is natural for the human to pull back, and if your opponent begins to pull back and you are tired you will let him.
At some point both sides are tired and pulls back, or one side is more tired and the enemy pushes on, creating a decisive situation. In the former the two sides retire a little and redress their lines, take a break, have a drink of water, pass up javelins and other missiles and of course retires the fatigued fighters. Then the fighting resumes with one or the other side charging and/or firing missiles until one point one side has an advantage.

This is of course only fitting in a battle where at the tactical level the troops are even to an extent.

Id like to point out that melee does not equal battle, and infact I pretty much supported what you're saying here.

Melee = Melee. A hand to hand engagement between one unit and another.

Let me quote myself from a few posts up.

Many people here cite examples of battles lasting "all day" and so forth, but that is the entire battle made of many lines, many armies, and many engagements. This article points out that the reality that melee between single battle lines would rarely last longer than 30 minutes while involving armies the size of consular forces. Wether they would regroup and go at it again is another story. Because our armies in RTW are far too small to ever get consular army size, we can never simulate this.
I bet though if we could bring on over 16,000 more reinforcements to a battle in RTW to simulate the "lines" reengaging our battles would certianly last a few hours.

Now if we could simulate 20,000 troops vs 20,000 in RTW the battles would surely last a few hours.

The closest I have gotten is a multiplayer game (2v2) of that Historical battle with about 2000-3000 Romans vs 5000 or so Gauls. I cant remember the exact numbers, but they were massive.

The Melee in that battle was extremely intense and lasted extensively, and it comprimised of one (thick) battle line on the Romans side and two thin battle lines of Gauls on the other side. The Gauls broke through our flank on the right but our forces broke through the Gauls left flank, resulting in a bloody melee in the center.

The entire game lasted approximately 40 minutes with a good 30 of that melee between units, with not much manouvering initially as you start very close to each other. It involved Huge unit sizes so breaking through formations took a while. Getting around the flanks was quite difficult too due to the masses of infantry everywhere.
It was quite unlike any single player campaign battle ive ever had, I did record a replay, but it was nothing like the actual game.

[Degtyarev14.5]

I did record a replay, but it was nothing like the actual game.

I'd love to see it. Care to host and post?

A.

[Del Arroyo]

Historically I believe it was DENSITY of troops, not actual troop numbers, which most affected TIME. So, to the extent that numbers affect density, this is accurate.

However, I do not think it is valid to say "Well we don't have 50,000 dudes so it's cool for things to last 10 seconds." Real battles were not crack-fed killfests-- even MTW was considerably too fast to be realistic.

If you want to get a good feel for the rhythm of ancient combat, read the Illiad. Very complete and accurate depiction of war in every aspect from the physical to the emotional, despite all the mythology and a bit of deus ex machina.

DA

[Longasc]

1.) The killing speed, running speed and walking speeds are not historic

2.) The scissors-paper-stone-system is neither existent nor historical

3.) I got the impression you were looking for a justification for the quick battle speed.

It pleases the "crowd" perhaps, but it even dumbed down the flawed system even more.

Heck, their best bet would have been to stay with the formula of MTW. Slower Speeds and actually some more tactics involved.

Why did they dumb it down even more -> Infantry - Spearmen - Cavalry - Archers worked fine.


Well, Rome is not too bad either, but suicidal Generals all the time, even less tactical understanding than the MTW AI and quite often quickly routing AI armies are still rough around the edges -> especially the 99% casualty quota of the losers.

I hope they address at least some balancing issues in a patch! Otherwise Rome will have no longer lasting replay value for me.


Hey, it would be so simple: Give MTW the siege options and looks of RTW plus its strategic map. Give a 2 battle speed settings, "wargamer", the other one "RTS junkie" or whatever. :)

Hey, I do not want to know how arcady the ARCADE style battles are right now! :)

[Kraxis]

Id like to point out that melee does not equal battle, and infact I pretty much supported what you're saying here.

Melee = Melee. A hand to hand engagement between one unit and another.

You haven't got what I said, I guess I wasn't very clear about it.
The troops fall back on a tactical level. From the commander's viewpoint the fight is still going on more or less, the troops are commited and can't be pulled out easily. We are not talking about a full retreat to size up the enemy but merely a break. Full retreats usually only happened when night fell.

Also, the lulls in battles if they made it into a game would ruin the battles. They would disrupt the flow and the player would and scream at the screen to get his men to charge in again. So naturally the units are shown to duke it out all the time. The melee in the game has to at least try to accept that fights lasted a good while.

Also, the TW games are scaled fights. The armies are much smaller than the real armies, about a factor of 10:1. They represent much larger armies and should act acordingly.

[Lord of the Isles]

Incorrect? Well then, care to enlighten me?

I doubt I have sufficient time.

One point that may shed some light on a few disputes is this. Morindin treats TW battles between two armies 1,000 strong as .. well, real life battles with 1,000 on each side. Some of his views on fatigue and killing speed make more sense than I first suspected based on this viewpoint.

Others, and I include myself among them, consider TW armies of a thousand or two as representing larger armies. Multiply by ten or twenty if you like (I've always liked 9, each man being a 3x3 man square). For us, a battle involving such large armies is unlikely to be over in 10 minutes, and so the current killing speed, swarming cavalry and evaporating units are a problem.

I can't speak for others but for me this "1 man represents many" idea is a natural one when your background is wargaming with metal soldiers. At the prices they cost, you could only ever afford a few hundred, not to mention the hours it took moving even that small number around the battlefield. Ah, happy days. But it makes sense from a game persepective as well. I can imagine conquering Gual with a few armies of 20,000 men. I can't imagine doing it with a few armies of 2,000.

[Morindin]

I'd love to see it. Care to host and post?

A.

Sure, but it was nothing like the game we had (it went out of sync). The game we played we won, the replay the barbarians win quite quickly, which results in them standing around for an absurdly long time with the general rally horn going off periodically.

I did some tests last night, quite a lot actually, trying to use as many numbers as possible to simulate large scale battles. One annoying thing is you cant simulate lines of battle as the AI will always spread his infantry out into one thin line.

All 0 valour units.

Test 1:
3220 Histari vs 3220 Iberian Infantry, simulating a typical "Carthagian Battle" between the first two lines.

Well, at first I put the Histari on fire at will and the Iberian Infantry routed on the first (massive) volley of pilum. They eventually regrounded and came back hitting my center quite hard, but were easily routed by Histari in the end.
Battle over in 5 minutes, melee lasted about 3 minutes

Conclusion: Routing very quick, with green troops under a hail of pilum not entirely unrealistic however. Melee was very one sided.

Test 2:
3220 Histari vs 3220 Iberian Infantry, simulating a typical "Carthagian Battle" between the first two lines.

This time I took the Histari off fire at will and let them engage in melee. The Histari are clearly the superior infantry here and after 5 minutes of melee the Carthagian line broke on the flanks after sustaining roughly 33% casualties. I rolled them up shortly after.
Battle over in 8 minutes, melee lasted about 3 minutes.

Conclusion: Routing way to quick (33% casualites). Could be improved with higher experiance. Overall still too fast.

Test 3
3220 Legion Cohort vs 3220 Poieni Infantry.

Well the Poeini infantry used a Phalanx formation and it took a looong time before casualties started to take their toll. The legion (161 man formations as opposed to the bigger 244 formations) eventually wrapped around the Poeini's flanks due to wider spread and they routed not long after.
Battle over in about 15 minutes, melee lasted around 10 minutes.

Conclusion: The rout was fairly realistic here, with your formation being wrapped around and flanked you'd probably rout too. The killing speed however was exceptionally slow here compared to the other fights. When the battle engaged the two high defensive units took a long time to kill anyone, and it was only when the legions wrapped around the Poenini formations did they start inflicting casualties. With added lines of battle for a general to send in to plug the gaps, im sure this fight would have gone on for a while. Still too quick however.

Test 4
4880 Legion Cohort (the big ones) vs 4880 Legion Cohorts.

Well these guys couldnt even fit in the deployment section. Anyway, I put my guys in deep formations trying to simulate a Roman cohort, but the damn AI put his in the default 4 line very wide formation. One eventually happened was he hit the flanks with superior numbers but my much deeper formations in the middle overwhelmed his. The fighting on the flanks raged on for quite a while, but due to his center collapsing he eventually was overwhelmed on the flanks. My units held up quite well on the flanks despite being outnumbered.
Battle lasted about 23 minutes, melee lasted around 19 minutes.

Conclusion: This is getting more like it, these guys hacked away at each other for ages. They didnt rout easily either, getting down to 80 men from 244 before they'd begin to waver (on 0 valour).
If the AI deployed his men in a deeper formation and didnt let his center get overwhelmed this battle had the potential to last a lot longer than it was. When zoomed up and watching the Legions would slug it out maybe killing one guy even 30-40 seconds, but every once in a while, a whole heap of them would turn around and put their backs to the enemy for some absurd reason and get cut down like flies.
This odd behaviour from the unit AI was the major contributor to casualties.

Test 5
7000 odd romans (3 factions) in a pre-marius roman army formation (5 units of Histari, 5 units of Principes, 4 units of Triarii, 3 units of Velites, 2 units of Cavalry, Generals Unit) vs 8000 Barbarians (Gauls, Britons, Germania) of mixed unit types.

Well at first this really chugged. Graphics settings made no difference so Im guessing it was my CPU (P4 3.0GHZ) just couldnt handle over 14,000 units. Pausing the game made it run fine, so it obviously was the CPU bottlenecking the game. Anyway, when the units got cut down a bit it ran fine. My army got destroyed against the Britons and routed, while the two CPU Roman armies after a hard fought battle destroyed their counterparts.

Conclusion: Routs happened too quickly on the lesser units (Histari, Princepes) for this battle to be realistic. These units were pumped up with valor and they still routed after taking 50% casualties despite inflicting heavy casualties on the enemies.
At the end, pretty much most of the infantry on both sides had routed and combined with cavalry charges and all missile fire the pre-marius infantry and barbarian infantry sucked. Mostly cavalry was left in the end. The whole battle lasted a meager 40 minutes. Way too quick for the size.
If moral was improved this battle had the potential to go on a lot longer, but the lines of infantry were much smaller than previous tests due to the mixed army types, so the results can be misleading.

Its fairly obvious to me the weaker units die far too quickly. The units with high defence/low attack however really slug it out for a period of time (when watching up close) would deem realistic.
I actually made a video recording using a screen capture program of the fight between the Legionares, to post it here so people could see how realistic it looked (until the units would turn their backs on each other!) but unless recorded in anything less than 10fps (which looked crap) it made my whole computer chug.

Tonight I plan to test with against a human so we can emulate proper formation depths, add some valour (I guess a lot of the tough fights witnessed in history were between veterins or at least decent troops), and see how it goes.
The AI spreads itself too thin which results it fairly quick routs from my tests tonight, and usually after 33% casualties. Having said that, the units were green (0 valour). In history, Green units probably didnt stand and fight for very long before breaking anyway. I think putting units to 3 bronze chevrons would be appropriate and perhaps a unit or two on a silver one to emulate the crack troops. Most units in my campaign games I've had have never gotten up a couple of silver anyway.

[Morindin]

I doubt I have sufficient time.

One point that may shed some light on a few disputes is this. Morindin treats TW battles between two armies 1,000 strong as .. well, real life battles with 1,000 on each side. Some of his views on fatigue and killing speed make more sense than I first suspected based on this viewpoint.

Others, and I include myself among them, consider TW armies of a thousand or two as representing larger armies. Multiply by ten or twenty if you like (I've always liked 9, each man being a 3x3 man square). For us, a battle involving such large armies is unlikely to be over in 10 minutes, and so the current killing speed, swarming cavalry and evaporating units are a problem.

I can't speak for others but for me this "1 man represents many" idea is a natural one when your background is wargaming with metal soldiers. At the prices they cost, you could only ever afford a few hundred, not to mention the hours it took moving even that small number around the battlefield. Ah, happy days. But it makes sense from a game persepective as well. I can imagine conquering Gual with a few armies of 20,000 men. I can't imagine doing it with a few armies of 2,000.

The real question is wether or not it is to SCALE. This means if we could magically multiple the numbers of our forces by a factor of X, the other factors such as time and fatigue would also be increased by X.
Would this end up realistic?

Oh and yes, when im playing RTW, I think of it as 1000 vs 1000. I pretend the world was severly underpopulated at the time with much smaller armies.
And when you look at the populations of the cities, indeed it is!
If you want to think that one guy is actually a squad of 10, then yes I agree the killing speeds are absurdly fast! I've never looked at it that way though.

I do plan to play on huge next time though in the hope of getting more than one battle line, however the AI will probably spread its entire force out into one line again. This is why I plan to test against a Human opponent with multiple lines of battle (to plug wavering troops and holes in formations) tonight.

[dlundie]

Well i have had a good chance to get to know this game and so i would like to put in my two bits, i think its a great game and should not be campared too much with Medieval. Both are fine games in thier own rights. As for the game speed and fighting speed, well its nice to see such carnage is so little time. I recall some one complaining about lack of tactics becuase of it, i tend to believe that you get out of a game what you put into it ie{imagination}. If you wanted to play a Roman Conquerer than Rome Total War is your baby.

[Steppe Merc]

It's always difficult to figure out the sizes of Ancient armies, since they always lied and multiplied there armies to insane levels after they won.
But no matter how you look at it, the units still march and die to quickly. It's a historic fact, and a physcial fact. The battles were slow, and should be way slower.

[DisruptorX]

The percentage dead in RTW is ridiculous, to say the least. Take a look at casualties pre-WW1. Even bloodbaths like antietam and Gettysburg which were fought with guns did not have more than 50% casualties. In RTW, I routinely win battles with 1 or NO survivors. In MTW, even a crushing victory left the enemy with a sizable amount of survivors, it felt like a battle, not a video game. 100% losses is absurd.

[Morindin]

80% of those loses is when they rout, the only difference between this and MTW 1.1 is the fact that the RTW maps are much larger meaning you can chase down every last routed unit (and you take no prisoners of course).

With smaller armies, wiping out 1000 completely (say you took no prisoners) isnt entirely unrealsitic, hell even the larger battles, Crassius only had 8000 suvivors from 80,000, who were later killed/sent off to slavery.
That's 10% that got away from the battle in an infantry vs cavalry battle, and when you have cavalry and they have mostly infantry, of course you're going to be able to mow down most of their routing units.

In the larger more hectic battle (my last test) each side would end up with a few hundred units getting away, you know what - I even think I took a screenshot of it.

Your MTW example isnt that great either, because in the "larger" battles you ended up basically chainrouting enemy units before they'd come onto the map anyway, while your hapless units sat there "watching" because of some imaginary boundry they couldn't cross. Either that or you were always hesitant to chase down routing units due to the regularity of AI reinforcements which is sorely lacking from RTW (How many of us have had multiple stack battles in RTW? :( ).

Besides, what the hell does that have to do with this thread?
Is this just "Lets bitch about RTW post #3353" ?
Oh wait of course, *slaps forehead* in MTW VI you'd have cavalry units getting stuck on routing units killing mabye one or two, that's obviously reality and how its meant to be!

[DisruptorX]

With smaller armies, wiping out 1000 completely (say you took no prisoners) isnt entirely unrealsitic, hell even the larger battles, Crassius only had 8000 suvivors from 80,000, who were later killed/sent off to slavery. !

RTW is supposed to be a simulation of larger armies. Or did you think that it is "realistic" for the army defending Rome to be 1000 strong? The mechanics of the total war system are designed to simulate the kinds of battles that were fought with tens of thousands of men. Your initial argument therefore is pointless, RTW isn't simulating armies of the 1000 or so troops you can actually field.

You can't take prisoners in RTW, so I'm assuming that you are killing them all. I have no idea why the dumbed it down here, as selling them into slavery for a profit would have been a nice feature.

[Morindin]

RTW is supposed to be a simulation of larger armies. Or did you think that it is "realistic" for the army defending Rome to be 1000 strong? The mechanics of the total war system are designed to simulate the kinds of battles that were fought with tens of thousands of men. Your initial argument therefore is pointless, RTW isn't simulating armies of the 1000 or so troops you can actually field.

You can't take prisoners in RTW, so I'm assuming that you are killing them all. I have no idea why the dumbed it down here, as selling them into slavery for a profit would have been a nice feature.

Where does it say its supposed to be that? I dont think its supposed to be that. I think its supposed to be a computer game, with realistic limits on what can be acheived in a game with current computing technology.
The rest is up to our imaginations.

If thats what you want it to be, fine. But that doesnt mean it SHOULD be that or the developers have any obligation to make it so just because YOU feel that way.

Why dont you just "imagine" that those units "killed" could have been captured and sent off to slavery.

Hey I imagined in MTW that units dissappearing like they'd been abducted by aliens as cavalry ran through them were being sent to the back of my army with a guarding force, but I didnt invade peoples threads in the MTW forum to bitch about how "unrealistic" it was either.

If 90% of the units died in combat - you'd have a point, but they dont so you dont.