Like many historically minded people here, I've despised the Egyptians in RTW for their ahistorical attire and rather pumped up stats. Consequently, I've shunned them - even deliberately avoiding battling them when playing other factions. However, as Scipii, I was finally drawn into a full-blown war with them and it was such fun, it made me wonder why can't more factions can't be like them. Only Roman civil wars in RTW have provided a comparable challenge.

Specifically, the Egyptians tend to have large armies and large resources which almost no other non-Roman AI force can muster. Moreover, on the battlefield, they have units that can pose a genuine threat even when marshalled by their AI. However, ahistorical, it is rather exhilarating to face the lightning fast strikes of their heavy chariots, crashing through multiple lines of your men in crazy hit and run attacks. Their massed archer units, elite infantry, invisibly armoured axemen, infuriating archer chariots etc all mean that if you face them, you are going to lose men - unlike many other match-ups when you can escape almost unharmed.

I don't see why other large non-Roman factions could not be pumped up like this, at least on some difficulty levels. Carthage is the obvious example which historically was formiddable but in the game is underpowered when played by the AI. But Gaul, Germania, Greece and some others would also be plausible candidates for an injection of steroids. I guess what I'm asking is for the AI to be allowed to "cheat" more often - which I seem to remember was what makes some other strategy games (eg Civ2) challenging on higher difficulty levels.

Reply

i never have a problem with the ai egyptians, and thats on hardest difficulty settings, they take too many chariots which all rout at the first sign of a flaming arrow. i have suffered my worst SP defeats to the armenians of all factions, they just seem so well balanced and their cav rocks!

Reply

The Ai doesn't have to cheat necessarily, it just has to have a stronger grasp of military tactics and formations. I would love to see more formations like I've seen in history books such as the slant formation or box formation for phalanxes. The whole system of the AI choosing a formation based on priority level and unit composition is stupid because it favors one or two formations regardless of terrain, objective, or opponent. It also has to stop controlling units of men as if they were individual soldiers in an RTS running around pell-mell.

Reply

If people are desperate enough to make an uber-cheating faction that is completely unbalanced (and thus, boring same map every game) only to create a challenge, the AI needs improvement.

Reply

seemingly, the factions given the most effort, besides the Romans, was the Egyptians.

It shouldn't make your eyes widen when you realize that the Egyptians are totally wrong, that's obvious. It should, however, give you pause when you consider that CA spent all that time making the faction be totally different than they were historically and didn't give the same amount of effort to the Cartheginians who were, historically, Rome's supreme adversary. Well, besides where they're located on the map.

Reply

I agree. Carthage was not given enough oomph in my book.

Reply

carthage in RTR can also train huge'amounts of armies, and britannia is good too. if you don't stop the macedonians they'll overun everything.

Reply

Carthage by far was the biggest disappointment in Rome: Total War. What should have been the most formidable faction in the game after the Romans ended up being one of the weakest. The game utterly fails in recreating the power struggle between the Roman & Carthaginian Empires.

Reply