Quote Originally Posted by dedmoroz
why so many people (including myself) never finish a whole campaign
Sign me up!
2. Easy, arcade style battles. 2 lines against each other, clash, and one army run away. Hey, don’t bother flanking with that cavalry unit – it won't be there in time anyway…
Amen to that. As TS states in more detail, you don't get much reward for your tactical skillz.
4. Oh yes, and if you play on VH, never auto resolve if you don’t want those 2 units of Velities to cut your balls (never mind if you have 5 star general and 10 units of Hastati). I mean auto resolve is ridiculous
Amen. Why do I loose half my krreshian arsers when I autoresolve against a vastly inferior enemy?
5. Campaign game seems to be scripted – Armenia always destroyed, Egypt always a power horse, Rome factions will rule eventually... I am bored even as I write this GAH!!!!!
Maybe it's more of a balancing issue? A combination of starting position, unit roster etc.? I've played Armenia, and I'm not surprised that the AI doesn't fare well there. The units are good, but the economy is not, and the population growth is near nil. No scripting needed to snuff it early.
7. Diplomacy – scripted, bugged and broken. AI will attack with no reason, refuse to make ceasefire when all they have is 1 sieged town left, sell its virginity for stupid map information and so on.
There's a lot to dislike with the diplomacy. I've yet to patiently, painstakingly groom relations with other factions (in accordance with the diplomacy guide) to see if that yields results, but as discussed a lot there are so many other factors detracting from the pleasure of playing a proloned campaign... I have serious issues with the seemingly hard-coded animosity towards the player-controlled faction. Even if I'm not the biggest threat at the time or anything, they seem to mob up on me a lot. Maybe it's just the pot making me call the kettle collect.
It almost feels that CA had too many ambitions about this game, but dropped the ball in the middle.
Amen! They took some time to finish it, but there's a lot of semi-donkeyed stuff in there. This is apparent both from glaring bugs/issues, and from the content of many files in the game directory. Not a perfect crime... Though the strategic AI faces challenges of a greater magnitude given the nature of the map, I' can't get over how they've made this game so much worse in many ways.
For now, RTW will earn its place on a dusty shelve of mine, in a desperate wait for better times to come. I waited so many years for this game, I guess I can wait some more.
Argh! I still can't stop playing...

PS TS: I don't play all hardcore, and I've never seen monks flapping. Other than that it's mostly "yes, yes, yes". Please don't hurt me!