I finally figured out why!!!

[KiOwA]

Unless you are playing as a roman faction, there is no larger goal than 'take 50 settlements and crush Rome. In the meantime fight lots of repetitive battles.' Even the Senate missions are kinda unimaginative, after a while. My opinion is that players need to have some bigger goals, or at the very least have working AI alliances. For example, if my empire expands to something like 30 states, several AI factions will drop their old hatreds, ally and gang up on me. Abit like Risk, where being the biggest faction was akin to painting a big bull's-eye on thy butt.

[lt1956]

Well I dont think any new people realize how bugged some of the features are in the game. Its really not wise or fair to jump to conclusions without first checking out the mod sections. TWcenter is a good place for mods.

I know CVP fixed the triggers for the game, The hardy and heat bug have been fixed by modders. as well as balance issues and different gameplay.

Really I usually dont even post in a thread about this and just laugh to myself that no one did a search or bothered to download and try a mod. Most of the time you will find a mod makes the game BETTER!

The patch will be out and those of us who a wise make or use mods until the patch. Now if the patch is CRAP. thats different. lol But until the patch comes out we have all heard enough of this "Crap" to last 10 Rome total wars to come!

Lt

[Attalus]

Each to their own I suppose...

I agree with alot of issues raised in this thread,the AI, Diplomacy and some of the more obvious bugs.

I'm still enjoying the game, though.

I have a fairly extensive game collection, and I constantly drag 'em all out from time to time...too much of any one thing can get repetitive.

Well...maybe not everything...

Rome TW is a good game...and perhaps, after the much lauded patch, a great one.

-Attalus-
Fool me once...shame on you
Fool me twice...prepare to die

[Servius]

I guess I agree that improving the AI would make the biggest improvement in the game. To do that, as a programmer, you'd probably have to...

1) Design an optimal standard army for each faction and time/tech period, taking into account the units you can make and their strengths and weeknesses. For instance, Roman armies would have more infantry than, say, the horse kingdoms.

Create a set of preferences for those units in the given conditions (factions and time/tech periods) such that the AI produced those units in the right proportion. So like 8 Hastati for every 4 Velites and 2 Equites, etc. You'd also have to create a preference for the AI to assign a good general to these armies

Once you did that, at least the AI would be producing the right balance of troops. Next you have to teach the AI to group those units into army stacks and to replace/retrain units that take casualties.

Then you'd have good, balanced armies, led by decent generals, moving together in army stacks. The last step is to provide the AI with a system of choosing targets, but that shouldn't be too hard. Armies want to blockade ports, destroy your armies, kill your faction members, take your cities, and defend their own. The AI should be able to distinguish which targets are more valuable than others. For instance, measuring the value and difficulty of taking a rich city of yours vs the value and difficulty of defending a poor cities of theirs. In naval combat, the AI's first priority is to destroy my fleets, then to blockade my richest port, followed by the next richest, and so on...

All of that is at the Strategic level. I really have no idea how to tell an AI how to use each type of unit in combintation with the others. The tactics of Combined Arms took humans a good while to figure out, but I believe the Greek Phalanx was the last time any human army consisted almost entirely of just one unit type.

Warcraft III's AI did a pretty good job of making balanced armies that supported each other. Tanks were in the front, casters in the back, Heros were in the front or back depending on their type, and they withdrew when it looked like they might die.

The Tactical AI should be able to determine preferable terrain to fight on, how to keep archers behind infantry, it already keeps cavalry on the flanks, and even our own cavalry are already predisposed to ignore the shortest route to an nme unit in preference to circling round and hitting them from the rear...

Much of this seems possible. I think it just depends on who CA is making this game for. It obviously seems like it was NOT made for TW veterans, seeing that it stripped out lots of good things (rank bonuses, sturdy spearmen, morale scale icons, maps with prominent geographic possitions, etc.). The game has been dumbed down, streamlined in certain things (those others have been made cumbersome for some reason). I believe if/when CA decides that their most important market is TW veterans, many things in the game will change. Until then, we're just whiners and we can mod the game if we want. Once they see veterans as the target audience, the game will have bugs and balance issues and they'll be patched.

[SwordsMaster]

Challenge? Play Seleucids and let the brutii expand in your direction as I did

At some point around 200bc the clash was inevitable....
SO I landed my best army near Tylis (sp?) in Thrace. I had to fight 7 battles in 1 turn with my 1480 men against multiple brutii stacks. I didnt move my army, I didnt have time to refill the depleted units.

All the roman rmies I faced were more than 1000men strong and 5 times they brought another stack as big as reinforcements.

The worst moment was fighting 3 1400 men armies in the same battle. All my ranged unit run out of ammo, my Bastarnae mercs were reduced to 20 and my militia cavalry to 18 men out of 160. And I lost all my elephants.

But I survived with some 1100 men in my army and a gneral that went from 3 to 9 stars in 1 turn. (That was funny, he got all the military traits except good attacker).

That was a hell of a turn.

[dismal]

Challenge? Play Seleucids and let the brutii expand in your direction as I did

At some point around 200bc the clash was inevitable....
SO I landed my best army near Tylis (sp?) in Thrace. I had to fight 7 battles in 1 turn with my 1480 men against multiple brutii stacks. I didnt move my army, I didnt have time to refill the depleted units.

All the roman rmies I faced were more than 1000men strong and 5 times they brought another stack as big as reinforcements.

The worst moment was fighting 3 1400 men armies in the same battle. All my ranged unit run out of ammo, my Bastarnae mercs were reduced to 20 and my militia cavalry to 18 men out of 160. And I lost all my elephants.

But I survived with some 1100 men in my army and a gneral that went from 3 to 9 stars in 1 turn. (That was funny, he got all the military traits except good attacker).

That was a hell of a turn.

If the game played like that consistently, no one would be complaining.

I play the game and enjoy it, but I think all of the criticisms are fair.

The campaign map seems far less engaging than M:TW. I remember really having to think about map decisions like whether to build economy or troops and whether to risk war to take a key border or economic province. In R:TW most of the game is spent making troops, advancing troops, and taking territory. No decisons required.

The battles I like better, but I wish they were fewer and more meaningful.

[dedmoroz]

Thank you for all replies
In my post I didn’t mean to be rude or unconstructive.
Just want you to know that I am a big fun of TW series for many years now. And I have a big respect to the org community.
I do aware about different RTW mods which can enhance the gameplay (last mod I used was RTR 4.1).
I think I do give enough support to both CA, by paying for 2 games (one for my 13 years old bro), and the community by using mods, reporting bugs and making, hopefully, constructive and interesting posts.
I don’t know how to mod by myself, guess I have no talent for that, but I do aware about what can be changed through modding and how easy it could be done, if at all.

Unfortunately, my thoughts and feelings about RTW in its current state can't be changed by a post or a single word.
But it can be changed by a good solid patch. Till then, I will continue to lurk here and there on this forum, because it is the best thing I can do about RTW for now