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.

[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'.

[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]

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?

[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.

[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.