Realism vs gameplay balancing?

[SwordsMaster]

Another bit about Cannae and roman battlestyles

Romans were taught to fight in formation. i.e. Either the whole line moved forward or noone moved forward. If they did, you can imagine that an individual soldier one step further forward than the rest of his line is a much easier target and can be taken out easily. All roman equipment was designed to fight as a block. Thus the big shields, and short swords. (One would imagine that a smaller round shiel is better for 1to1 fighting).

In Cannae, the romans had no possibility of moving forward, thus expanding the circle as they were surrounded by spearmen with much longer reach and have lost their momentum as someone pointed out before. The celts, with longer swords and charge momentum had also a good advantage as they could charge-retreat-repeat for as long as they wanted.

I would say that the few romans that escaped, managed to do that in the last moments of the battle, as their group would become smaller and smaller everytime, and thus more maniobrable, and they could chose a direction towards which to move, a thing that a 70k men army could not.

My 2cents

[Zanderpants]

Hahahaha, This is the best post I've ever gotten.
giorgio666:

I was not bashing the Romans, I was saying that they are men, and men are basically the same. I also said that with incompetant leadership, no army will triumph. Does that remind you of anything in our current date and time? Iraq? You're a fool, and if you'd PMed me, you would've seen that I am no fan of America. To put it nicely. I myself greatly admire the Romans as they were the civilization that got me interested in history when I was a little kid.

[QUOTE=BTW, Custer, like so many Americans of those days, was an asshole. And I'm not saying this because of envy. The politics of the American goverment of that era were responsible for one of the greatest genocides in History: the slaughtering of the North American Indian populations. 5 million across North America in the end of 17th century, less than 500000 at the end of the 19th century. And nobody talks about those dispicable actions. Like the American Governmental policy of incentives to kill all praire bisons. This to destroy the food resouces of the greatest obstacle to colonial expansion in the great plains area: the Sioux. Like the random genocidal attacks to villages implemented by the "glorious" US Army. Or like every other promisse made by the white men and always broken.

Parapharasing one American Indian Chief:

"...what promisse have we made that we've not kept? None. What promisse the white men made they have not broken? Not one..."[/QUOTE]

Exactly!


Oh, and by the way, most of the people "bashing" the Romans, are not Americans, and guess what? I'm not American, I'm French. I'm in Los Angeles becasue I'm going to school here. Oh, and I disagree. I think that everybody is bashing Americans because the ruling party (Republicans) tend to be bigoted, ignorant, overly-opinionated, assholes, and the world thinks that all of America is like that. I find Democrats to be quiet good-natured, albeit lacking leadership. Also, my ancestors were not living in tents and huts when this happened as my ancestors were most likely to be living in South Eastern Gaul at this time. One question: Why are you so damn jealous of America?

[khelvan]

Ok, the next person who posts a personal attack, insult, or anything but nice reasoned discussion gets this thread locked, their post deleted, and me wagging my finger at you.



Act like mature adults and you will be treated like mature adults.

[SigniferOne]

Prometheus, I'm with you buddy. I don't know what you are doing at Europa Barbarorum - this is a group organized around 2003 for the purpose of spreading propaganda and making the barbarian nations seem superhuman, while at the same time spitting at Romans and Greeks. These are the people who say that Germans had a phalanx comparable to the Greeks, and that Romans are mindless brutes who had no creativity and stole everything from everyone else. Just look at the title of this Mod, for confirmation.

Nowadays, especially in America, bashing Romans is very fashionable, and very popular. Ever since CA announced that the title of their game was ROME: total war, these people have been complaining about the unfairness and prejudice against the noble and enlightened barbarians who were not respected. They have subsequently flooded the www.totalwar.com official RTW forum, and have been spreading propaganda for their side for many months before the game. Psycho V himself had a 20-page thread where he explained to us, the ignorant public, that the Gauls and Celts were the height of human civilization and achievement. Myself, along with a very few other people, have attempted to give a counterbalance to this avalance of mispreresentation, and have fought with this 'barbarian horde' :) for many months on the forum. Now they are all here, working on this Mod. It may be true that, just as they announced, they want to work on all factions and make general game modifications. But you have to admit the fact that the core, the nucleus, the leaders, and the major contributors to this Mod, are of this one mold - the people who hate Classical civilization, and don't mind that the barbarians destroyed it.

So, don't be surprised that you've found yourself in minority here, and are practically the only one defending Romans against 'scholars' on the barbarians. Frankly I'm surprised you've lasted this far. Why can't you go back to TWC and release skins like you used to? I agree that the barbarians in RTW haven't been presented very well, and are kind of generic and boring, so you can work on them as you have been now, and also release your incredible Roman skins there for general use. Why don't you leave these miserable people here to their own designs?

[SaFe]

Prometheus, I'm with you buddy. I don't know what you are doing at Europa Barbarorum - this is a group organized around 2003 for the purpose of spreading propaganda and making the barbarian nations seem superhuman, while at the same time spitting at Romans and Greeks. These are the people who say that Germans had a phalanx comparable to the Greeks, and that Romans are mindless brutes who had no creativity and stole everything from everyone else. Just look at the title of this Mod, for confirmation.

Nowadays, especially in America, bashing Romans is very fashionable, and very popular. Ever since CA announced that the title of their game was ROME: total war, these people have been complaining about the unfairness and prejudice against the noble and enlightened barbarians who were not respected. They have subsequently flooded the www.totalwar.com official RTW forum, and have been spreading propaganda for their side for many months before the game. Psycho V himself had a 20-page thread where he explained to us, the ignorant public, that the Gauls and Celts were the height of human civilization and achievement. Myself, along with a very few other people, have attempted to give a counterbalance to this avalance of mispreresentation, and have fought with this 'barbarian horde' :) for many months on the forum. Now they are all here, working on this Mod. It may be true that, just as they announced, they want to work on all factions and make general game modifications. But you have to admit the fact that the core, the nucleus, the leaders, and the major contributors to this Mod, are of this one mold - the people who hate Classical civilization, and don't mind that the barbarians destroyed it.

So, don't be surprised that you've found yourself in minority here, and are practically the only one defending Romans against 'scholars' on the barbarians. Frankly I'm surprised you've lasted this far. Why can't you go back to TWC and release skins like you used to? I agree that the barbarians in RTW haven't been presented very well, and are kind of generic and boring, so you can work on them as you have been now, and also release your incredible Roman skins there for general use. Why don't you leave these miserable people here to their own designs?

Is this guy real or not?
Just making a post to spit on others work is...
No, thats not good manners.
If you don't agree with us - you don't have to play the mod, but please stop the unkindness of your behavior.

[PSYCHO V]

Psycho V himself had a 20-page thread where he explained to us, the ignorant public, that the Gauls and Celts were the height of human civilization and achievement. - dsyrow1

LOL !

Ah ..yes. My dear friend dsyrow1! I was wondering how long it'd take him to turn up and start dissing this mod.

He always seemed to have a problem when I posted infomation on the Celts and Germans, esp when it didn't line up with his preconceived ideas. All I did was submit huge slabs of text written by notable scholars... he came to the "height of human civilization and achievement" conclusion all by his lonesome

Don't let him get to you guys / Prom. Besides, it's always good to have some 'pro-Roman' peeps to "give a counterbalance to this avalance of mispreresentation"

*sigh*

[khelvan]

But you have to admit the fact that the core, the nucleus, the leaders, and the major contributors to this Mod, are of this one mold - the people who hate Classical civilization, and don't mind that the barbarians destroyed it.

As someone seen as a "leader" of this mod, I can say that the statements you present here as fact are categorically false. The Romans happen to be my favorite faction, and the one I am doing my best to see become as historical as possible within the RTW game system. To each his own.

You are free to make statements that are false, such as this; everyone is entitled to their opinion. The moment it turns ugly, however, I shut the conversation down. Let this be a warning to everyone.

I will make sure that personal attacks stay out of our conversations. This goes for everyone. EB members, you should know better than to reply in kind. Don't do it. We tolerate ignorance here; educating people is a good thing. We do not tolerate flame wars. So don't even think about starting one.

-khelvan

[Zanderpants]

God, do the people that browse the EB forum even read the preceeding posts? Sheesh. If people would simply read more than one thread, then they'd realize how silly their posts are. As was asked many times earlier: Why do people come here and make anti-EB posts? Go do it in the Tavern or something.

Lighten up guys. It's just a game.

[Dooz]

So um... I have a question that's kind of off topic (?), or rather... back ON topic of what it originally was.

In vanilla RTW all factions' units are balanced so the different armies more or less stand an equal chance against each other in multiplayer.
My question is, how will you deal with factions that historically were stronger than others (romans for example)? Will you nerf their units to make all factions stand a reasonable chance against each other or will you go for realism in this case as well? I'm hoping the latter but you never know.. :p

And you guys said it's gonna be historically accurate, not necessarily balanced. So that leaves me to wonder if there's a chance there'll be an option where u can have some more balanced forces if you so choose, instead of necessarily 100% historically accurate, so that you don't get decimated in 10 turns if you play as a weaker nation.




Can't we all just, get along?

[khelvan]

And you guys said it's gonna be historically accurate, not necessarily balanced. So that leaves me to wonder if there's a chance there'll be an option where u can have some more balanced forces if you so choose, instead of necessarily 100% historically accurate, so that you don't get decimated in 10 turns if you play as a weaker nation.

Some nations will simply be more difficult to play. You start in a bad position, or have weaker units, or a bad economy...these will be challenges you will need to overcome if you choose some of the lesser factions. Also, you may find it much easier to play a faction such as Carthage, due to the same reasons.

[PROMETHEUS]

Prometheus, I'm with you buddy. I don't know what you are doing at Europa Barbarorum - this is a group organized around 2003 for the purpose of spreading propaganda and making the barbarian nations seem superhuman, while at the same time spitting at Romans and Greeks. These are the people who say that Germans had a phalanx comparable to the Greeks, and that Romans are mindless brutes who had no creativity and stole everything from everyone else. Just look at the title of this Mod, for confirmation

AltoughI have to thankyou for your support , I have to tell you that the thing isn't so dramatic as you got it , I just perceived an antiroman feel around that once in a while turned out with stupid posts on superiority of this or that faction and so on....but as long as I saw the other guys are doing their best to make the factions properly historical , well germans had a "sort of phalanx" as well as the helvetii if you read caesar , I even can tell that the romans had copied "most" but not all of their adversary succesfull things , like greek art , and sience, foreigners deities , celtic helmets and armours , samnite warfares , iberian swords , and merged all of those things , all of the countries in the first really multiethnical political entity that the world ever saw , succeding in what others didn't like law, incredible architectures, politics and of course the first modern organized army in the real sence of the word....

So the only thing I feel to say is that Give to Caesar what is of Caesar , so every country gived the contribution to make Rome what had been in history .... plus the only thing I can agree with you is the name of this mod that is a bit confusing , but none except me seemed to agree on a possible change so we keep it....

[Valuk]

Christ people in every topic so far you guys start arguing about faction superiorety
But really how can you guys even compare the Romans to Celtic tribes; you just cant compare the Roman development to the "barberions"....
But Rome wasnt perfect full of corruption, life of a non roman didnt mean a lot, and romans had really wierd sex habits (sex with little boys was nothing bad)

[PROMETHEUS]

and romans had really wierd sex habits (sex with little boys was nothing bad)

Sorry this is another ignorant statement....

[khelvan]

Do try to avoid sweeping generalizations, they tend to anger people.

Now, keep it civil, or I will shut down this thread that seems to have no point other than to bash each other quicker than you can say "Drwmcydau."

[PROMETHEUS]

Just close it since there is nothing more to discuss here....

[Big_John]

i agree, you now have my permission to close this accursed thread.

droomseedoo... droomseedow? do-see-do?