How RomeTotalRealism saved my affair with RTW

[Spartiate]

Even though it has been out there now for months i must admit that i only recently down-loaded RTR(5.4 i think).What can i say about this game.Does anyone know if they have tampered with either the strategic or battle-field AI,because i was pleasantly surprised by the challenges this game presented to me.Enemies allying against me.AI controlled factions forcing other factions to become protectorates.Naval warfare is no longer your domain......the AI will contest every blockaded port.Imagine my horror when the Julii sailed a 20 unit army of seasoned veterans by the toe of Italy and Sicily, which i control,ignoring my cities and armies there and landing a force near Thapsus in North Africa to assist their Ptolemic allies.Bastards!
On the battle-field i am noticing improvements also.When attacking against the Ptolemics i normally send my cavalry around the wings of their formation to attack from the rear whilst they are engaged with my infantry.I was delighted(sort of)to see them deploy their phalanxes in a kind of U formation.By this i mean that they had at least 3 phalanxes on either flank that turned to face my cavalry threat with-out engaging.As i was attacking uphill i had to pause my infantry to re-think my strategy.
I had a general named Hamalcar the Conquerer who spent 20 years(40 turns) driving the Ptolemics away from Lepcis Magna and had no less than 5 of those sword cross symbols denoting famous battles in the desert but never reached a Ptolemic city.His son did however.
For these reasons and many more i am now in love with RTW once again.Bring on EB.
Oh i'm playing as my favourites by the way........Carthage.

[bubbanator]

I agree with your favorite. Carthage was by far the most enjoyable campign I've had. I have never played RTR but it seems to me that the AI fighting for every blockaded port would get to be very, very annoying. The U shaped tactic seems interesting though.

Does anyone know of a mod that would just give the AI more starting formations without messing with anything else? I think the basic game setup is good (with a bit of tweaking) but the AI really needs a more diverse option of unit placement.

[AntiochusIII]

I agree with your favorite. Carthage was by far the most enjoyable campign I've had. I have never played RTR but it seems to me that the AI fighting for every blockaded port would get to be very, very annoying. The U shaped tactic seems interesting though.

Does anyone know of a mod that would just give the AI more starting formations without messing with anything else? I think the basic game setup is good (with a bit of tweaking) but the AI really needs a more diverse option of unit placement.

Darthmod - look at twcenter.net forum. Find a news section as the website post an article about it. He (Darth Vader at twcenter) change only a few things from vanilla apart from his superb formations, which, according to many, makes a real army out of the AI.

[Wishazu]

i agree whole heartedly with you spartiate, since i downloaded rtr a few months ago ive never gone back to vanilla except for multiplay. However when you can get it to work, rtr is online enabled and puts vanilla rome completely to shame.

[Colovion]

I, also, can't play RTW without it being heavily modded first.

[Ldvs]

In RTR, I especially like the beginning of the game as the Romans. You only control a small area in Italy and both the Greeks and the Gauls are powerful. They have also managed to balance the units fairly. I've rarely lost as many men in battle as I do when playing RTR. I hope EB will be as good.

[tibilicus]

Ok question time:
1: Is this safe to download sore it on a site looks amazingly realistic
2:Does it take the old fun out of RTW by making it to realistic?
3:Is it now balanced out fairly so that teams such as Egypt dont have an unfair advantage?

Asking about this because RTW at the minutes starting to run fin campaign wise.

[Rubber Ducky]

Ok question time:
1: Is this safe to download sore it on a site looks amazingly realistic
2:Does it take the old fun out of RTW by making it to realistic?
3:Is it now balanced out fairly so that teams such as Egypt dont have an unfair advantage?

Asking about this because RTW at the minutes starting to run fin campaign wise.

1: Yup definitely. I had great enjoyment from this mod too. You can get it at the official site http://www.rometotalrealism.com

2: Nope it doesn't. In fact it adds to it :) Some find it more tedious coz there are considerable many more cities and more tightly packed (micromanagement).

3: I haven't tried playing as the Egyptians (or renamed to Ptolemaic Empire in the mod), but from my experience as other factions fighting em, its pretty balanced.

[Dutch_guy]

Tiblicus you should really try the mod , really adds a whole new dimension to the game.
Now I actually like to play as The Ptolomaic Empire, which I just hated doing before RTR.

[PseRamesses]

Yup, RTR saved the day for me too. I´m currently playing the Seleucids. In 30 years I´ve fought 178 battles (not counting rebels), concuered Ptolemy, Asia Minor, Parthia and Armenia plus the pesky 3 cities in India with a staggering 11-12% growth rate!!!! Even if I build a peasant-unit with a city-size of 2000 it will still outgrow me by 80 citizens/ turn so imagine when it hits the 6, 9 or even 12.000 I´´ be outgrowed by the thousands... each turn! I´ve solved this problem by letting each city there build a full stack of 20 peasants, then let it rebel, take the city back (make cash) and enslave them to be sent to other cities in my empire that needs to grow. I just take out the govs from the cities that I don´t want to re-direct slaves to. Although I own the east, from Pergamum and Cyrene to the Indus I can only afford three armies that I keep in Libya, Phrygia and Media because thoose peasant-filled cities of the east are draining my economy, hmm.

A note though is the three full stacks of rebels in India packed with eles. My first battle against them my commander, Alexander, encountered them in a forrest and I must say that flashbacks to Alexander - the movie was eminent. I took out 1700 of them but lost well over 1100 pikemen and Alexander was cruelly scarred.... hmm, more flashbacks to the movie.

The only way you can survive with the Seleucids is to hit Ptolemy and take Damascus, Sidon, Tyre and Jerusalem before they know what hit them and take your army in Seleukia directly to Ecbatana, although they´re your ally even in turn one they´re sending an army towards Seleukia.

I haven´t had this much fun in ages so now I´m waiting for the Romans to arrive while I´m building up my infastructure, he he!

[Spartiate]

One of my favourite things about this mod is the willingness of the AI to hurl huge armies at you again and again.Plus they also seem to have unlimited family members.I'm surprised my army in the Nile Delta can move what with all the dead Ptolemies lying around.The Greeks are in a stalemate with Macedon who i believe they could beat if they didn't keep landing armies in southern Italy behind my frontline with the Romans whom they are allied with.This is what i have craved.My enemy factions who are allied to each other are now assisting each other...........oh the joy.A Seleucid army (protectorate of Egypt) slipped by my lines on the Nile Delta and laid siege to Lepcis Magna.That was a shock.What was worse was that they had a highly advanced stack of troops.This is just great stuff as i always operate close to my budget and any setbacks could see me losing money for quite a few turns and will give the AI an even better chance.

[screwtype]

I'm glad you're enjoying the mod. I've enjoyed it too, but let's face it, the mod cannot fix the game's serious underlying flaws - the superfast battles, the weak battle and campaign AI. And I don't think RTR has got the unit balance right either. Cav are far too cheap, and with a little bit of experience, the poorest quality units are almost a match with the very best, due to mainly I think to the higher morale they were given to try and rectify the superfast battle problem.

That the campaign AI still has serious flaws is evident in the last two RTR campaigns I fought, where in the first my enemies the Macedonians built up nine full stacks on my borders but never even bothered sending them to attack my weakly held cities, and in the second where I discovered on expanding my Thracian empire that there were still rebel provinces everywhere in the middle of the game. Someone on this board informed me that is not because the AI lacks aggression, but rather because it is too stupid to even garrison its own cities adequately, resulting in their frequent loss to rebellions.

[Spartiate]

Don't get me wrong.I'm not suggesting that the mod has corrected all the problems with this game.What i am saying is that this mod has brought the game up to an acceptable standard.If CA had given us this as the original release there would have been far fewer complaints.
I thought the battles were much slower in RTR...........maybe i have just adjusted to the speed if this is an incorrect assumption.As for the AI on the strategy map,i recently used the toggle_fow cheat to see how the game was developing and noticed that there were NO rebel provinces left.The Ptolemies aggressively attack my cities and army stacks and as i stated in previous posts in this thread i have noted the AI slipping armies in behind my lines several times by sea.

[tibilicus]

The only thing puting me off RTR is nore provinces. I find campaigns at the moment can dwindle on for long anoth. A lot of the time i never finish the campaigns as it just gets boring. thats my only problem if it wasnt so big the map then i would of got it already.

[Dutch_guy]

The only thing puting me off RTR is nore provinces. I find campaigns at the moment can dwindle on for long anoth. A lot of the time i never finish the campaigns as it just gets boring. thats my only problem if it wasnt so big the map then i would of got it already.

well it's not really that trhe map has become bigger ( wel to the east it has ) but city's are closer to each other in Italy allone something as 13 citys maybe more.
So you will probably be finished campain wise faster due to more citys a province , but with more of a challange, as an example you can't just retrain your troops everywhere, you first need to built the neccesary military building, you need to Romanise citys first, that adds to the challange.
And I find that given time some factions will grow to be exeptionally strong, Carthage Egypt and Macedon and probably also the Romans, this makes for more exiting battles.

[PseRamesses]

One of my favourite things about this mod is the willingness of the AI to hurl huge armies at you again and again.

Yeah! In my Seleucid campaign Carthage broke the alliance an invaded Libya with stack upon stack upon.... he he, the desert is littered with famous battle crosses. I fought 7 major battles in two turns just to get into their province Tripolitania Superior and another 13 battles in just three turns there and depleted them severly with an all around 20:1 kill ratio. My 9* general and his phalanx pikemen, bedouin archers and sarmatian cavs with 2-4 gold chevrons are an unstoppable force. Initially I had planned to sack Lepcis Magna and move up the coast towards Carthage but this is draining my patience so I fortified two armies on the Libyan border, boarded my general on a fleet and I´m now sailing towards Carthage.... "Carthago delenda est!"

[screwtype]

I thought the battles were much slower in RTR...........maybe i have just adjusted to the speed if this is an incorrect assumption.

I think you're right, battles do last longer in RTR, but still not long enough.

The reason they last longer, I think, is because the morale of all units has been considerably pumped up so they don't rout so quickly. For example, my base unit in my current campaign is the humble Greek levite, in vanilla RTW they have a morale rating of just 6 but in RTR they are pumped up to 11. Add a general with a few extra morale points and these guys just will not rout. I've frequently noted they will fight on until there is just one guy left in the unit! - which is pretty silly given they are just a militia.

The problem is that just pumping up the morale doesn't really solve the problem of fast battles because (a) it unbalances the game and makes cheap units almost as good as elites, and (b) because higher morale doesn't fix the real problem which is the superfast kill rates.

As for the AI on the strategy map,i recently used the toggle_fow cheat to see how the game was developing and noticed that there were NO rebel provinces left.The Ptolemies aggressively attack my cities and army stacks and as i stated in previous posts in this thread i have noted the AI slipping armies in behind my lines several times by sea.

What can I say? It's not my experience. I'm 40 turns into my current campaign, I already have 30 provinces and am the most powerful faction by quite a margin. After 40 turns there really shouldn't be any rebel provinces left and yet they are everywhere.

Part of the problem seems to be that the game just appears to "forget" stacks altogether. For example in the first couple of turns of this campaign Pontus sent an army over the straits to park outside my city of Byzantium. Suspecting it of being about to lay siege, I thought perhaps I could change its mind by offering trade rights, which I did. Pontus accepted, and since then that Pontic army has sat outside Byzantium doing absolutely nothing for 38 turns, and ditto with the ships that transported it.

I also noticed that the Sarmatians were advancing on a rebel city on the Black Sea coast quite early in the game. But instead of conducting the siege, the army appears to have forgotten why it moved adjacent to the city and has now just been sitting there doing nothing for dozens of turns. I can't help wondering if the loadgame bug actually causes the tracking of AI stacks to be totally lost, so that they are no longer even in the AI "loop". (I have only rarely needed to load a savegame in this campaign).

[Dutch_guy]

The reason they last longer, I think, is because the morale of all units has been considerably pumped up so they don't rout so quickly. For example, my base unit in my current campaign is the humble Greek levite, in vanilla RTW they have a morale rating of just 6 but in RTR they are pumped up to 11. Add a general with a few extra morale points and these guys just will not rout. I've frequently noted they will fight on until there is just one guy left in the unit! - which is pretty silly given they are just a militia.

hmmm never seen that before, in my experiance they usually do rout, not as soon as in vanilla RTW but i've never seen them fight till the last man, Spartans mybe but not Greek levies, you sure they were not fighting to death ?

What can I say? It's not my experience. I'm 40 turns into my current campaign, I already have 30 provinces and am the most powerful faction by quite a margin. After 40 turns there really shouldn't be any rebel provinces left and yet they are everywhere.

well human players will always be the best , after 40 or 100 turns.
I know what you mean though , after 25-30 provinces it's just kind of mopping up, and more citys in the provinces only speeds this up.
Strange though about the rebel provinces , in my RTR game, there is only 1 rebel province left'.

And about hte forgetting of stacks, i've only really seen this in the vanilla game, in my game now I haven't really noticed this.
As an example , I'm at war with Macedon and they are one of the most powerfull factions allong with me ( Romans ) , Egypt and maybe even Spain.
And they never seem to hecitate with attacking me, that's my experiance anyway.

[screwtype]

hmmm never seen that before, in my experiance they usually do rout, not as soon as in vanilla RTW but i've never seen them fight till the last man, Spartans mybe but not Greek levies, you sure they were not fighting to death ?

I've had numerous instances of Greek levies fighting right down to single digits without routing. Happens all the time in fact. I'm only playing on standard size, so there's only 40 men per unit, but when there's only five or six left it's still a nearly 90% loss, and much of the time they won't rout even then! In fact in perhaps my last 50 battles I can only remember any of my units hoisting the white flag on two or three occasions.

And I've had at least one battle I remember quite clearly where a Greek levite fought right down to the last man. And the unit wasn't fighting to the death - it was field battle and they weren't trapped, they were only fighting the unit in front of them.

It was an especially tough battle, I had to leave my levies unsupported for longer than usual and was expecting them to rout any moment, but when I finally got back to the enemy with my cav and routed them, I noticed that this one levite unit was down to just a single guy and he was still fighting - with a whole warband, all by himself!!!

Strange though about the rebel provinces , in my RTR game, there is only 1 rebel province left'.

Perhaps I should post a screenshot. There are rebel provinces all over the place, in fact I was so disappointed to find this it's discouraged me ATM from continuing the campaign.

[Simetrical]

I'd just like to note, by the way, that we'll be scrutinizing unit balance carefully for 6.0, and combat will be further slowed down for it. 5.2 was really a rush job to bring the mod up to 1.2 compatibility. A 6.0 preview can be found here.

-Simetrical

[Laridus Konivaich]

Just curious... what difficulty settings are you guys playing on? I don't think that you said.

[LestaT]

I use to gave up to RTW before , then I go out and try others games. At first I was quite sceptical as to MODS which at first all have to change manually.

Then I found out that RTR have an installer so I gave it a try . Now the only game left on my pc is RTR 5.41 & SIMS 2 (my wife...) Eheh.....

[Goatsong]

Never tried RTR. i was waiting for EB, but it appears they have been delayed by a hard-coded building limit problem, so i will check out another mod.

Does anyone know which one has the most MTW like battles i.e. lower speed, AI formations (other than straight line), skirmishers that get to throw more than one javelin before getting overrun - RTR, SPQR or Dartmod?

Thanks