Initial Patch Thoughts

[Bhruic]

Can the game run in 1280x1024 yet? I'm stuck with 1024x768 post patch. I have'nt had the chance to snag the patch yet.

The game could always run it. It just doesn't give you the option. You can manually set it at that resolution in the preferences.txt file.

Bh

[LordKhaine]

Loving the new patch so far. Though I found an easter egg that I've never heard of before (if you can call it that, it's not exactly hidden). Egypt demanded I become a protectorate, and the Pharoahs words were, and I quote, "All your base are belong to us". Also noting a scarred trait too that I never saw before. One of my generals is now "cruelly scarred", and he's now known as Demetrius "Scarface"

[Red Harvest]

So... We all know that AI gets humongous bonuses to attack and defence on VH. Not anymore. I have tried fighting 1v1 with triarii against AI on VH, won three times in a row. Apparently AI is only smarter on harder difficulty levels, but without bonuses. At last..

I can't figure out what is going on. It is bizarre. It almost looks like skill level doesn't "take" for custom battle. I also won easily with triarii vs. triarii on VH. I've tried cav vs. cav and was winning, then my unit suddenly routed despite losing only about 20%. I fought one triarii vs triarii on easy and the battle took a longer time, but was very even. Did some other tests from easy to very hard and saw very scattered results.

I really wonder if this works the same way in campaign mode.

CBR, any idea what is behind this?

[CBR]

I wish I had something clever to say...but I have no idea if there is a difference between custom battles and campaign.

Anyone tried some campaign battles at VH?


CBR

[Quietus]

Quote:
Originally Posted by GFX707
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeWee
Personally I'm glad they didn't change the kill speed. If you want the battles to last longer bring more men to the grinder...

Sorry, that comment was just stupid.


Wouldn't it be better to explain why you think it's stupid instead of making a stupid comment of your own?

GeWee. You got to understand why a lot of peeps are frustrated as heck. First of all, the word "grinder" is not what is normally associated with tw games (pre-RTW anyway). There's no more tactics in RTW, it's basically the best units vs. the best units. I enjoy using balanced armies. With this "grinder" battles, it's not doable and practical any longer. One heavy cavalry easily rout 5 of my units! They basically erased the Rock-Paper-Scissor balancing. Also, cavalry jump and swish all over like there is no gravity, momentum or friction. They move like fish! Try defending your archer units with your Spear units. Watch those cavalries either penetrate or skirt between your defenses. It degenerates to a quick and mindless melee.

@topic. I'll give this another "shot", although I'm already sick to my stomach Last time I did try was early december, and I literally stopped after one battle.

[Jacque Schtrapp]

Fascinating development. I started my first post patch campaign as the Julii. I've sent diplomats all over the map trading maps and signing alliances. I was surprised to see the Seleucids still in possession of all of their territory two dozen turns in. I was even more surprised to find them allied with Egypt. Anyway, I'm now over 70 turns into the campaign and Armenia declared war with the Seleucids and for some reason Egypt sticks by the Seleucids. This starts me to wondering just who the Egyptians are fighting. In west Africa they share a border with Carthage with whom they are not at war. To the North their territorial borders are below the Seleucids. They border no other factions. Now I'm really curious so I pull up the diplomacy screen and go look to see who the Egyptians are at war with. The answer? No one. They have only one ally: me. But wait, what about the Seleucids? Well, it would seem the Seleucids are a protectorate of Egypt. That's right, the Seleucids, still in control of every single one of their original provinces and with massive stacks of troops all over Asia Minor, are a protectorate. Weird.

Well, back to the

[Gawain of Orkeny]

I dont care about all this stuff. What has it done for MP? I refuse to buy the game again until its playable like MTW.

[Locklear]

Also noting a scarred trait too that I never saw before. One of my generals is now "cruelly scarred", and he's now known as Demetrius "Scarface"

One thing I've noticed is that the scarred trait is MUCH easier to get now. All of my generals, if they do ANY fighting, become scarred, it's bizarre (but not bad, I guess).

[Colovion]

I do enjoy them. I'd enjoy them more if it was possible to fight 50,000 vs 50,000 battles that would last half an hour but until we have computers capable of that I'll settle for what I have. IMO it's better to have realistic kill speeds than to nerf them to simulate that each unit is 10 times larger than it is...

Ok. The current kill speeds are not realistic. Read that again. not realistic.

Remember all the battles in ancient/medieval times which took hours upon hours and sometimes even went into the night time? No? Well, maybe you need to do some research.

[Colovion]

One thing I've noticed is that the scarred trait is MUCH easier to get now. All of my generals, if they do ANY fighting, become scarred, it's bizarre (but not bad, I guess).

I get the same thing. As long as this happens with the enemy then it's fine by me.

oh wait, the enemy still doesn't have generals leading their armies...

[Sheep]

Egypt demanded I become a protectorate, and the Pharoahs words were, and I quote, "All your base are belong to us".

Heh... that was in the original game.

[hoof]

One of my favorite parts of the patch is that Hoplites can now take on Hastati and the like with 2ndary weapons in a fair fight. I did some controlled tests yesterday, and Hoplites vs Hastati, with the Hoplites having both guard and phalanx turned off, were quite effective vs the Hastati. Didn't test other troops, but it appears that the Hastati using the pila stats for h2h combat put h2h combat more in line with them. I never quite believed that the Greeks would not train their soldiers to fight with the sword and shield. I'm guessing that either the attack bonus Hastati got for using the pila stat, or the spear was labelled as the 2ndary weapon for Hoplites and had a lower attack value (thus meaning the attack value for the Hoplites were lower in swordfighting thatn it should have been). Either way, it's much better now.

I'm wondering how the Barbarian units will fare vs early Roman infantry now. I might have to do a Julii campaign again just to see.

[BDC]

The game could always run it. It just doesn't give you the option. You can manually set it at that resolution in the preferences.txt file.

Bh

How? I change it but it just changes back...

[Dutch_guy]

well barbarians still rout in about 5 seconds after melee starts against Roman hastati, but still I was pleased to see that the Romans actually used their cavalry to atttack my sides which caused an instant rout in some of the battles( versu warbands vh/h )
and I now know what a storm looks like.
and is it me, or is the senate a little more active, 5 years in to the game (as gaul ) I attacked/beseiged the last remaining Julii settlement with my army ( mostly warban with 2 units of swordsmen ) and the senate army actually attacked me...
however don't know if that is new , never played a barbarian faction before.

thank god the FF has been tuned down... was really decimating my own armies in my pre-patch Julii campain.

[The_Mark]

Well, Roman infantry doesn't seem to be doing anything else than running as fast as they can when against Gauls, on VH. Seems that they removed those diff bonii from AI in custom battles but didn't touch campaings.

Tested this against brigands, they had 1 hastati, 1 velites and 1 peasants. I had 5-6 hastati, some archers, velites and a 1* general (forgot him in the stack). So I tried to pit one of my hastati against theirs, trying to get it as fair as possible. Results:

Closed on enemy hastati with mine, waiting for pila exchange. Enemy closes in to firing distance. My pila fly, enemy sits there. My hastati charge, enemy runs 30 metres backwards, tries to face my charging hastati, got caught half-way the turn in one big lump. At this point the odds were 135 to 160 for me. Then a short melee ensues, my hastati rout with ~100 men left. At the same time my 3 other hastati, who were keeping their peasants and velites from joining the melee slugfest, rout. End of battle with my general charging right through them all. Battle resolves in a clear victory for me, with them killing ~240 of my men.


Another battle report, but not as "scientific" as the above one.

I had another "quick rout"-battle against the Gauls the turn before. Numbers were quite equal but my general had a few stars versus enemys 0. Gauls were defending in some woods near Patavium.

First the Gauls close quite conveniently just inside my archers firing range, a few warbands, 1 barb cav and their general. They were still partly in woods, and at this point I can confirm that keeping units in woods protects them almost completely from missile fire. Not having caused ANY significant casualties (1 killed bodyguard, 1 barb cav, ~30 spearmen, which were just outside of the woods, and 1000 of my soldiers with me killing only ~200. I'd be pleased if they'd won me with an ambush or some other *tactic*, but them charging frontally through hastati and triarii isn't something that I'd like to see.

It's bizarre, as previously stated.

Conclusions: VH AI bonii apply still in campaings, or a morale penalty is applied to your units. Unless, of course, these battles had something in them that I didn't notice.

[Wishazu]

i would just like to apologise for my rant about the new patch ruining multiplay, as it happens ive been told by numerous people that all the problems i experienced when trying to play online last night were due to Gayspy being, well.... GAY!!

[Carinus]

Had an enemy spy open the gates of one of my cities for the first time. Haven't seen that before.


Carinus

[Wishazu]

ok im now retracting my apology. i still cant get any games to work but i can see plenty of other people playing happily enough and they all have the patch. this is all very frustrating!

[Quietus]

I just started a new game to try out the patch: So far it has rekindled some interest in this game.

Some preliminary observations (VH/VH):

Pros:
-Saw AI build a fort. Oh yes.
- Extra graphics in adjacent regions (although, with those soreeyes gray area in seashores).
- Minimum interface is a nice change (with drop down controls).
- AI doesn't seem to charge as much (Although I'm being cautious since I'm playing Brutii. I've attacked a stack of Germans in my old Julii save game (after patch 1.2) and it didn't attack until I got close as well).
- some minor bug where fleeing enemy unit get stuck inside an alley, and the siege never ends, until they die. It can't be reached by my skirmishers. I eventually killed the guy with my horse whom eventually managed to fit in there. This probably dates back to 1.0.
- Scrolling through the campaign map is smoother now.
- AI actually exchange maps now.
- Ships have longer range (which is good for transporting units).

Cons:
- HORSES are still way overpowered! They have a sick charge and still penetrate through my defensive units (Hastati and Triarii). If they get through, at least half should die. Instead, whole units are nearly intact....
- Machine-gun towers are still overactive. Even the sound is irritating.
- It is still difficult to navigate units that are in loose formation (i.e. Velites) on the streets and alleys.
- Units still rout too quickly.
- Pause button is hard to select. I click and it pause and unpause at the same time. When I try to unpause, the same thing happens.
- Build points seem to be disabled.
- I tried the widescreen option and It is very hard to click on anything! (anybody know how to use 1280 x 800, just holler).
- The AI general actually parks upfront during siege but they move when you shoot them.

I'll have to do some more battles to see if it is still unplayable to me.

[Bhruic]

How? I change it but it just changes back...

The trick is to make sure it's the last thing that you do. That is, if you need to modify the video settings at all, do that first. Then exit the game and modify the video settings in preferences.txt. Make sure that you don't modify video settings in the game again, or it'll change it back. Seems to be because the video settings doesn't "recognize" 1280x1024 as a viable setting. But that's what I've been playing at since the beginning, so I know it works.

Bh

[Maltz]

I installed patch 1.2 last night, and fired up a new Greek campaign Vh/Vh/huge unit size.

The first thing I did was that I marched the initial army in Syracuse, Sicily against the Scipii armies, with two units of mercenaries. This is what I would do in a Greek blitz campaign.

I layed my archers out and try to shoot at some hastati. The AI Scipii marched their archers forward. I thought they were trying to start an archery duel. In the pre-patched version I could almost 100% expect a duel happening next, so I spread my formation wide and get ready to enjoy my height advantage.

Yet these blue archers never stopped marching uphill. They walked so fast towards me that I thought I wouuld have no time to fire. So I quickly ran my Artemis's bowmen behind my phalanx line and turn fire at will off.

These Roman archers walk straight into the pikes, all the way from way downhill! Their number reduced from 160 to 23 in 3 seconds, and started to rout. They were soon followed by the rest of Roman army, all walked uphill and eventually clashed with my pikes. (I had to walk into them so they would fire only 1 or 2 shots of pila)

There is something really wrong with the patch 1.2 AI. At the start of the battle I am weaker, but the AI shouldn't just walk everything towards me. That's not a good improvement...

[Red Harvest]

Maltz,

Yes, the RTW AI is still a bit stupid with archers. It seems to think the best employment of them is in hand-to-hand because it sends them way too close. Too bad we can't create some sort of match between the MTW AI and the RTW AI. That would be a riot. The little MTW 2D sprites would byte it to pieces, spit out the broken pixels, then dance over the little 3D RTW corpses.

[aw89]

Why couldn't they just have uppdated the it to 3D, check the move speeds to be realistic and developed the AI?

[hoom]

Good:
Diplomacy -Gauls will do just about anything to secure a ceasefire from my Julii.
After a periodic payment for ceasefire ends, diplomat comes back for a renewal
Battlefield maps -There's a sun now. Lens Flare too.
Terrain seems less bland.
Stuff in the distance is great.
Phalanx shuffle -Gone!
Min UI -mostly good
Speeches & loadscreen quotes -seems to be a wider variety

Bad:
Min UI -No gamespeed indicator.
Popup buttons at top are a pain for me since I use the mouse for camera movement. Would be nice to have an option for permanently on.
Battlefield maps -That grey sea bit...
Kill Rate -still too high
Left/right click -still no option to go back to the better way of STW & MTW ~(
Grouping -still doesn't order groups by first made, 2nd made etc like STW & MTW. Units still leave their group when routing
Auto preferences -still there, still stupid, still won't let me use 1280 * 1024 without altering the file

All up, fixes a whole bunch of things & fleshes out some barren bits.
Still leaves a bunch of things that need fixing though.
I still expect that after the expansion patch its gonna be a damn fine game but I wish they'd managed to be closer to the refinement of VI by no so that patched RTW expansion would be even better...

[econ21]

I started a Julii campaign on med/med and found it better. The AI is putting up a better fight - perhaps because it saves money not buying excess boats. Plus the Iberian infantry seemed a better match for hastati - presumably, as due to getting rid of the missile attack in close combat bug. [Confession time: the Spanish intervened to aid the Gauls and wiped out my second army. Never had my butt kicked pre-patch.] AI diplomacy was more active too. I really appreciated the check box to control your own reinforcements.

On the minus side, all my combat generals get cruelly scarred. Also extermination or enslavement may still be smart - an occupied Alesia was a bear to keep loyal, so I abandoed it to face the Spanish. (But then again, I suspect Caesar did enslave or even exterminate Alesia).

I'd given up on RTW as it lacked challenge, but with the patch, I'll give it another go.

[monkian]

Theres no line in my preferences.txt to minimise the GUI

I have patched the vanilla version of the game from 1.1 to 1.2

Has anybody else had this or is there a line I could add myself ?

Cheers

[CBR]

monkian:

Try and delete the file and then run Rome again. It should make a new pref file with all the new lines in. If not you can add them but try deleting it first.


hoom:

The buttons at top can be made to stay: just hit F6 once when deployment/battle starts.


CBR

[R3dD0g]

OK, I've finished the GCS game I was running before I updated to v1.2.

The AI is definitely more aggressive. I've fought off more blockades and sieges in the past 4 hours than I have in the last 4 months. The sieges were actually using real armies. Unfortunately, the blockades were 1 or 2 severly depleted ship fleets. Does the AI send units for retraining? It would seem not.

The AI is using it's agents hard!!! I've had more spying missions than I know what to do with.

My main complaint is that you can't keep the city details open when clicking through the unit & city completion screens. It's very easy now to miss a city going into revolt because I have to explicitly click to open and close the city details. This is most definitely a step backward.

[Macattak1]

I have not read this whole thread as yet. Just the first page.

But I can not even play now since I installed. Had to uinstall all and then re-install to get it to play fro a 15 turns of a new Camp. Then I went to bed, got up and did the same thing it originally did.

Loads to Task bar but never splash screen. Whether I put in the CD rom to initiate the auto play or just double click. No go.

I uninstalled, wiped C:\, checked in Reg HKLM\SW but nothing there. Then did fresh install. I hate this!

I updated my 9600 drivers. Defraged again. Tried compatibility mode. NOthing works. SP2? Been on their for a while.

P4 2.8, 1 gig, 9600 on a fairly fresh build with only 5 games and MS office and thats about it...

Any help appreciated. Buyt that is my thoughts and experience on the patch.

That there does not seem to be an Add/Rem for the patch is odd...

[Bartman]

My main complaint is that you can't keep the city details open when clicking through the unit & city completion screens. It's very easy now to miss a city going into revolt because I have to explicitly click to open and close the city details.

Left click on the Cities tab to get a list of all your cities.
Right click on the heading "Public Order" twice.
That will sort the cities by Public Order, starting with the lowest.