Happy Thread

[Rapidly]

Rome is my first exposure to the TW series, and I love it! Sure it has flaws but just about all of it is great, in particular: the music is awesome! The designers had a good subtle sense of humor, e.g. all the little easter eggs from funny speeches to offbeat traits or retinue members to even the occasional city name ("domus dulce," or "home sweet home".) Great battle effects, e.g. saw a first the other night: in scanning across my battle line where the action was fast and furious I saw a guy go flying up into the air from a cavalry charge. Seen it before but never that dramatic, and it seems to be different every time. And so many strategic options! (I was going to say "so many ways to skin a cat" but thought that might be lost on our non-U.S. members...) Fantastic game.

[screwtype]

Rome is my first exposure to the TW series, and I love it! Sure it has flaws but just about all of it is great, in particular: the music is awesome! The designers had a good subtle sense of humor, e.g. all the little easter eggs from funny speeches to offbeat traits or retinue members to even the occasional city name ("domus dulce," or "home sweet home".) Great battle effects, e.g. saw a first the other night: in scanning across my battle line where the action was fast and furious I saw a guy go flying up into the air from a cavalry charge. Seen it before but never that dramatic, and it seems to be different every time. And so many strategic options! (I was going to say "so many ways to skin a cat" but thought that might be lost on our non-U.S. members...) Fantastic game.

must...say...nothing...this...happy...thread...

[Wilbo]

I've been playing Total War since Shogun v1.0 and although Medieval never really grabbed me, Rome has some great features!

I really like how the different factions have such different playing styles e.g. from Phalanx warfare to tactical Roman infantry to the brute strength and numbers of the barbarian Gauls and Germanians. I also love the way the units smack into each other, their formations melting away. Especially with a decent cavalry charge to the rear of a static unit.

This also seems to be the first game in the series where using different formations (well, more than one unit thick) really does make a difference!

[red comyn]

see folks wasnt all that hard was it

[Quietus]

Thx for opening the thread red comyn. The siege-bug was really a downer.

[red comyn]

Awe shucks Spreading joy and happiness is just what i do. Its the buddhist in me. always fancied being one of the choppy fighty ones from STW though , dont think the afore mentioned dear old (buddhist) maw would like it though.

Now if we all hold hands and shout that we belive in fairies, then tinkerbell wont die!!!!!

Well keep em coming folks, just remembered i didnt put what i liked. For my tupance worth I really liked the abilty to move freely on the campaign map far better than the province system of STW and MTW. Also the inclusion of the siege machines and buildings in the built up areas as you built them, or destroyed them with the sweet as siege machines were a joy to behold.

[Franconicus]

What I like:

it has a very good balance berween the building and the fighting
the battles are really cool
attacking towns is much better than it was in MTW
the units and tec trees are very colorful
the whole scenario is very realistic and close to history

[HarunTaiwan]

Because I've been bitchin' now I feel I need to some praisin'

I am happy today that an army with lots of Pontic Scythed Chariots won a heroic victory against my Roman forces.

They carved me up something fierce. It felt good to lose. It was cool that the two AI armies came at me from two sides.

[screwtype]

Here's some other features I like. I like the way the messages drop down in little floating boxes at the side of the screen. That is cute.

I like the way skirmishing units run out of the way of ANY enemy unit, not just the one they're firing at. That is very definitely an improvement over the earlier games.

And although combat is too quick in vanilla RTW, I must confess I like the relative speed with which you can clean up routing enemies after you've broken them. In MTW/STW it could take an interminable time. When I went back to MTW I couldn't believe how much longer the battles go for - two or three hours of real time, and a lot of that can be just chasing down routing enemies.

Also, in STW/MTW (perhaps we should just call them S&M for short? ) you could sometimes lose a battle because of one single soldier hiding somewhere you couldn't find. Or you'd spend an hour looking for the bugger so you could win.

You're able to avoid that in RTW because the "End Battle" button comes up as soon as you've got all the enemy routing. You don't have to chase down every last one to win. Even selecting Continue Battle, which I do most of the time, I've yet to lose a battle in RTW because of a handful of enemy troops somewhere I couldn't find. So I think that is an improvement too.