Initial Patch Thoughts

[Colovion]

So the patch came out today (yay) and I downloaded it and tried out a few custom battles. I must say I am impressed with only the impressions I got from playing a dozen or so custom battles in trying various things out.

1. Phalanx units seem much more formidable, instead of pivoting their entire unit to one side to have just one section of the line coming in contact with the enemy the whole unit is more fluid and will pivot to face and push into whichever unit I had them attack.

2. Battles are still over very quickly. I guess before I stopped playing I'd been using a kill/runspeed reducer so it just shocked me when the first battle was over in 5 seconds (or less) once melee had initiated... and that was with just vanilla Gaul and Roman units up against eachother with no Cavalry.... I tried many battles, and never got one that lasted longer than 60 seconds (or even close to that).

3. I couldn't test the Battlfield AI because there's no time - it's just charge = death = end of battle. In the phalanx testing though, there was a buildup of units on one side and the AI pulled that around to flank me - so that was a good sign... unfortunately by the time that he got around my flank his entire army was routing....

4. Javs really need to be thrown immediately once in range - there's still the problem of not being able to get a volley off because the skirms will halt, wait, get ready to throw - oh no, the enemy is too close - back up and try again... etc etc.

So far, I like - but I won't be able to play it without more modification. There's no point to a good Battlefield AI if it's nullified by the speed of battles.

[Shottie]

I dont want to make this a big deal, but everyone complained about Rome without a patch, and now that its out, people are still complaining. You should thank everyone in the CA team for making this, even if it isnt up to your standards, they cant make everyone happy.

[Bhruic]

The AI is still pretty stupid on defense. I attacked a group of 5 falxmen with about 6 armoured hoplites, 4 units of archers and 2 generals. Admittedly, I was going to win, but the AI still did nothing. I moved my archers into range (they were out front) and started shooting. Took out 2 units completely. I moved one of my archer units forward, and finally they decided to attack with 2 out of the 3 remaining units. Of course, they took about 10 steps before they routed. Why a unit is set to stand under archer fire and not do anything, I don't know.

And now for my big rant... Why is it that companies insist on breaking things when putting out patches?? I had my keyboard configuration setup just the way I like it. Install 1.2, and suddenly it's broken. I had "1", "2", and "3" set as the keys to control gamespeed. Not only were they removed, I can't even set them again. Having to go back to pushing the stupid-hard-to-click buttons is a real pain. Minor point? Maybe. But there was no reason to break my key configuration, and even less reason for me to be unable to set them. A patch is supposed to make a game work better, not introduce new annoyances.

Bleah. Ok, I'm done.

Bh

[Red Harvest]

I've played a bit of custom and campaign mode.

Good stuff:
1. Storms are working now (right on the clock tick, but working nonetheless.)
2. Phalanx mode seems a bit more natural, but haven't tested enough to fully confirm it.
3. Pri/sec bug seems to be fixed.
4. Friendly fire seems to work intelligently now.
5. Cav charges seemed a bit weaker--not sure of this though.
6. Fire arrows did not kill frame rate.
7. Amok elephants are now a very bad thing!
8. Desert Axemen have taken off half of their transparent aluminum armour.

Not so good:
1. In my 2nd campaign battle an enemy captain charged right into my line. And the AI still sent in forces piecemeal.
2. In the same battle the AI let me march up the hill and take away its high ground.
3. The AI also sat there and let me pelt it with archer fire for awhile before it moved forward to attack, then withdrew. Then turned back and finally attacked.
4. Archery is still in sore need of a good nerfing.
5. Fire arrows still work during thunderstorms.
6. Archers still fire from multiple ranks deep (haven't checked it they still shoot from 16...but I suspect so.
7. Cav upkeep is still cheap.
8. Almost all erroneous Egyptian stats have been left as is.
9. Light auxilia (and I think cav auxilia) still appear to have pila in their animations and unit cards. Stats show javelin figures though.
10. Battle is still much too fast.

All in all, it looks like an incremental improvement getting it a bit closer to MTW. Still a long way to go. I'm going to try to hold off from modding it for a few days, but there is a lot that needs to be done.

[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...

[Boudicca]

Just a short experience analysis, didn´t have much time for testing....

I' ve struck several AI controlled villages in Gaul with my Julii Army. Whenever the AI had only several troops assembled in the central square, I tried to shooot those trooops down with my Archer units. The nice thing: The AI units in the central square ran towards my Archers and attacked them, so that I had to draw them back. I' ve never experienced this before. Still, the Computer is without a chance, but it at least takes a challenge.

I will analyze the patch during the next few days and see what other users experience...so far I'am happy to have it, even though I would like to continue my Campaings in SPQR, RTR and VLAD mod....

It is so stupid that it is already 23.37 h in Germany...damn it!

@totalwar.org: thanks for the additional downloads...I had 90kb/s download speed!!!

[Red Harvest]

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...

Uhhh...yeah...it actually works the opposite of that. Single unit match ups often melee much longer. Big battles happen fast and you don't get much opportunity to issue orders.

Guess it keeps those with short attention spans happy though.

Sheesh...

[Maltz]

I am honored to spot the good news today. Haven't played RTW for a while...

I just browsed through the readme and didn't seem to find:

(1) The reversed stamina bug fix. Spartan hoplites got tired like little whiny girls. Is this done?
(2) Replay campaign battle (as in custom). Guess hope is gone...

Thanks.

[HicRic]

My initial patch thought was "Wow, 56.2mb???" Most patches I've downloaded for games are much smaller.

I don't think the patch was supposed to turn the AI into a godly general, but more aimed at fixed numerous niggling issues, which judging by the readme, they have. They never intended to stretch battles out longer by reducing the kill rate or anything. I'm disappointed to here a tale of another suicidal general already though.

While battles in RTW don't last as long as MTW or STW battles, I've not had a battle melee last five seconds unless it's heavy cav. vs. pesants. And in a fair, matched fight the battles I fought (this is in 1.1 btw...I'm still downloading 1.2) my battles don't seem incredibly impossibly fast. Faster than MTW/STW, and faster than I might like, but never lightspeed. I've not tried the Total Realism mod, either-perhaps my perspective would change if I had.

[Jambo]

Well spotted RH! The charge of cavalry was indeed reduced a little. :)

Phalanxes are lethal now btw!

[Red Harvest]

Well spotted RH! The charge of cavalry was indeed reduced a little. :)

Phalanxes are lethal now btw!

Jambo,

What did they change to weaken the cavalry charge? Morale effects? The reason I ask is that the basic charge/melee stats look unchanged for the units I've seen in action thus far, but they did seem a bit less inclined to sweep away infantry in frontal charges (I was on the receiving end even...)

[Barbarossa82]

So far I'm impressed. My initial oberservations from starting a new campaign as Pontus:

1) Battle AI is smarter. No suicide charges as yet, and it seems to react more intelligently to the flow of the battle, attacking in a more co-odinated manner too rather than rushing for a single flank.

2) Diplomacy is much, much better - not only do AI diplomats work a lot harder than they used to, but the faction's responses seem more accurately to reflect their military/economic situation. Plus, they are offering much more imaginative deals off their own backs, rather than simply being restrained to ceasefire, alliance etc.

3) Carthage and the Seleucid Empire seem to have been beefed up. Not sure if this has been done directly or whether they are benefiting incidentally from improvements to Phalanx (Seleucid pikemen) and the resolution of the missle bug (Iberian Infantry now more effective in early game). Anway Carthage is giving the Scipii a run for their money on Sicily and the Seleucids are actually expanding better than Egypt!

4) Saw my first storm within a few years - yay!

Well, I would have liked kill speeds toned down a bit, but it's not a massive problem. As far as I'm concerned, the game is now worth the near £40 I paid for it on October 1st!

[Jambo]

I don't think the change was a straightforward stats change per sé, unless maybe their mass has been reduced a little to lessen the impact (haven't checked tbh). It's more likely a hardcoded aspect.

[Red Harvest]

I don't think the change was a straightforward stats change per sé, unless maybe their mass has been reduced a little to lessen the impact (haven't checked tbh). It's more likely a hardcoded aspect.

The mass is unchanged, I checked that too. Like you say, it is probably hardcoded as part of the combat engine.

[afrit]

Best upgrade:
Right click on your towns tab, and now you get much more information. MOst importantly, you know which towns are recruting and building at a glance.

Worst non-change:
No campaign battle replay.

[Bob the Insane]

MINIMAL_UI:TRUE

Memorise your hotkeys (make sure to bind the time controls to keys) and toggle off all the UI for full screen RTW...

Bloody brillant....

[Lemur]

I see they have not fixed the idiotic sytem-sensing routine. Since I did a clean install, lo, behold, RTW will not scale to 1600x1200. Now I have to go back and dig through the archives, trying to remember how to unlock my preferences so that I can run the game at full power.

This seems like a simple one, and an odd thing to leave broken. Oh well. Just glad to have the patch.

[CeltiberoMordred]

I am honored to spot the good news today. Haven't played RTW for a while...

I just browsed through the readme and didn't seem to find:

(1) The reversed stamina bug fix. Spartan hoplites got tired like little whiny girls. Is this done?
(2) Replay campaign battle (as in custom). Guess hope is gone...

Thanks.

1 - The reversed stamina bug has been fixed, as well as reversed heat_stat

2 - No, replay campaign battle is not available, but at least now they are accurate.

[CeltiberoMordred]

The mass is unchanged, I checked that too. Like you say, it is probably hardcoded as part of the combat engine.

Yes, it's hardcoded: IIRC, now it's less likely to see horses jumping over your troops (specially if you use a deep phalanx formation with pikes aiming the sky), so it's more difficult that they could break your formation or attack from the rear after a frontal charge.

[AntiochusIII]

Oh no, now my Parthian generals can't beat the phalanxes in city battles anymore.

Yes, I've modded it personally to ensure Parthian generals have cataphracts... unfortunately it must be done at the start. Man, that WAS easy with every general become 20-50 extra cataphracts in the early game ... rechargable!!!!

Never mind. Where should I download it faster than at the official site? I mean, it's very slow, you see..

Repeat : Where?

[Simetrical]

Here is the first mod for 1.2 (I think). It's basically an adaptation of adonys' kill rate mod, and it should help with too-fast combat.

-Simetrical

[zbrenhz]

First off: I'm sure there is a lot of good in the patch, but the first thing that you notice tend to be the bad things, so [rant] is on:

Rebels everywhere after the patch. I get them mostly in provinces where loyalty is below 120%. These little scrimishes against the rebels are really tedious. You have to every turn check every corner of your empire for them, after finding one send some amount of town militia to attack them, run to them for few minutes (time accelerated) and see how the battle is over in two secs when the rebels rout.


Too boring... I trained diplomats in every town and send them to bribe those rebels off. It costs about 5k to bribe a few units, but I have money to throw away.


Building is slower now, because the game doesn't bring you back to the "buildings completed in this turn" -page after selecting one town from the list and closing the town-page. Doesn't sound that bad, but that extra click sure annoys me.


In battle units jerk just a bit in every two seconds or so now....


It sounds like a good idea to have the offspring to appear to the town where their father is, but it causes more work to hunt them down and because I don't have Ludus Magna in every town yet, I have to ship them to some town that has one for training.

[/rant]

[Murmandamus]

Where should I download it faster than at the official site? I mean, it's very slow, you see..

Repeat : Where?

http://www.3dgamers.com/games/rome/downloads/

[Oaty]

Friendly fire is fixed but if you order the fire to be executed it works like it used to. So Hastati/Prinipes and legionaires will cause friendly kills if you right click because it sees it as you ordered fire onto an engaged unit. So altclick a unit unless it is not engaged.

Overlapped units seem completely immune to FF

They seemed to up the speed of javelins that are thrown.

Unfortanately the A.I. still tries to horde the gate when under fire during a siege.

Very hard campaign dificulty(normal battles) the A.I. attacks me across the bridge with 2 to 1 odds in my favour. A.I. should not waste an army against a bridge except on easy diff and maybe norm.

When A.I. uses cavalry against skirmisher it seems to be closely followed by melee units unless the skirmishers are isolated but that was only 1 battle.

So far I've only seen 1 Carthage ship and the rest are Romans. So it seems it's really toned down or at least in the early phase when troops are more important.

[The_678]

The patch seems good but I'm only a few turns in my campaign. I'll play more tomorrow and I am really impressed with the FF now, and The Temple of Zeus seems to be working now, I'm in 267 and still getting a wonder bonus everywhere.

Oh ya also the Minimal UI kicks ass and should default or easier to access for people who don't know how with the preferences.txt

Also I'm not sure if anyone else noticed but the unit card background is now grey and I really like it better than the white of before.

[Tocca]

I'm very happy with the patch so far, many things are fixed or bettered.
Most of the small things i don't like can be fixed with modding, well done CA!

However, one thing that can't be fixed by modding that irritates me (and others from what i've read) is the lack of campaign battle replays.
Replays in custom game is a good thing, but i would much rather have it the other way around, replays in campaign but not in custom.
Or better still, replays in custom and campaign!!

Well it's tough to please everyone, thumbs up to CA for a job well done.

[Red Harvest]

Adding to the "good" category:

It is good to see the AI armies fighting decisive battles vs. rebels and each other (rather than the old huge army chases little army...but never going in for the kill.) As a result, I'm seeing noticeably fewer rebels. Before the AI Bruttii always chased rebels into my territory as Scipii. They haven't done it a single time so far.

Navies are *much* reduced. And when the AI has a fleet, it uses it! I've been blockaded many times already.

Storms can be more of a threat than navies now. I've avoided any sea battles, but got nailed by a storm while launching a senate mandated naval invasion of Caralis. It took out 25% of my naval crew, but no ships, and no troops. Note: The lack of troop losses looks like a weakness of the sea storm implementation. Has anyone lost troops to a storm *without* losing any boats from the troop fleet?

Carthage has launched several naval attacks against me after I took away some territory.

AI armies so far are more likely to be led by a family member...although I'm still seeing some strung out AI armies.

The AI is smarter in sieges. I've even had it slam reserves into my flank from God knows where as I was heading toward the square. They were parked on a side street.

Potetial New Bug:
Sometimes the strategic map pathing "detours" to run into a unit you can't see. It looks like the mouse click is clipping the hidden banner of an army and then doing a 90 degree turn to intercept it. It has happened to me several times

Remaining weaknesses:
AI still uses bizarre formations like spearmen and phalangite units stacked in a column. Example: Enemy consisted of Carthaginian family member, two Libyan Spearmen, two Poeni Infantry. It stacked them with spearmen one in front of the other with Poeni behind? I advanced my javelins and remnant of a slinger unit and chewed up the spearmen. Then I advanced my 1 hastati and threw pila at poeni as the AI tried to change to line. At that point I charged with my single cav, single hastati, half size merc peltast, my velite, 1/4 size merc hoplite, and general to overwhelm the AI.

Carthaginian AI has been building stacks of crap troops (not the little army above.) Lots of town militia--reminds me of the early MTW version's peasant or ballista armies. Numidia has a lot of peltasts too in its stacks. For some reason the AI is not building its better troop types as often as it should. I'm hoping this is just a quirk of this campaign.

The AI is still suicidal about charging the player's skirmishers/archers with its cavalry. It won't just chase them back and withdraw, it charges right into the player's formation and loses its cavalry.

On the battlefield the AI is still bad about not consolidating multi-army forces before attacking. They need to be brought together and rested before attacking. The only time this wouldn't make sense is if they were forced to fight, or if they have the player sandwiched between them.

[Orvis Tertia]

A couple of positive things in my campaign game tonight (so far):

1. An enemy army that was between me and the city I was trying to lay seige to built a fort and blocked my path at a chokepoint while reinforcements came up to help. Almost turned the tide of battle, actually, because after I beseiged the fort plus its reinforcements, my army was almost too depleted to attack the city. Then, when I did attack the city, they tried to break my seige with reinforcements from another province. WEll done, AI! (hard/hard)

2. The increased movement for diplomats and spies ROCKS! It has a surprisingly significant effect on the pace of the game.

3. Overall, enemies are more aggressive and appear a bit smarter in battle, especially city defense.

[Red Harvest]

Friendly fire is fixed but if you order the fire to be executed it works like it used to. So Hastati/Prinipes and legionaires will cause friendly kills if you right click because it sees it as you ordered fire onto an engaged unit. So altclick a unit unless it is not engaged.

Overlapped units seem completely immune to FF

They seemed to up the speed of javelins that are thrown.

When they overlap they each shoot/throw fewer missiles to avoid FF. So it has penalties as well. First, impression is that they have gotten this part right.

Not having to micromanage ranged units is a massive improvement. I'm still suffering some FF kills, but for valid reasons. I am having a time adapting, LOL, I keep forgeting I don't have to do it all manually! It's like when you move the trash can from one place to another...you keep walking over to where it used to be...GAH!

I think you might be right about javelins although I didn't do a timing before the patch and after. My guys are actually using their allotment of missiles in combat...of course it helps that I can leave FAW on and allow them to do their job now.

[Red Harvest]

Something cool:
During a battle near Caralis I noticed that I could see ships sitting in the water where the AI fleet was. And all the extra trees and such visible in the distance is a nice touch. I am looking forward to fighting near wonders or volcanoes (especially during an eruption.)

Wonder if they fixed the "incredible shrinking boulders?" (Boulders that shrank from vehicle sized to small box size as you approached them.)


Question:
Are the battlefields slightly bigger? I feel like I have a bit more room to chase men down.