Is RTW really that bad

[econ21]

Like i said before...any game is hard if you nerf your own soldiers badly enough.
Roma mod is good, IMHO, but it's not harder. It's more unbalanced.

And i am not quite sure how the RTR battles are supposed to be harder...the AI is the same.

Maybe your playing as the romans...they are nerfed alot in RTR...

Yeah, I'm playing the Romans in RTR. In your second paragraph, you seem to be implicitly defining "harder" as "harder because of better AI", whereas "harder because my troops have weaker stats and/or the AI has more troops" would also seem to qualify in my opinion.

Yes, I agree RTR seems harder in part because it tones down the Roman stats a little - or at least boosts the Greek civ. units a lot. The Romans also lose archers and powerful cav, which both were extremely (and ahistorically) potent against the AI in vanilla. Their heavy inf. can still get the job done, but you do have to try a little harder.

Perhaps more importantly, all non-Roman factions seem to have significantly larger armies and capacity to rebuild armies too. In vanilla, as Romans, you tend to have or two big opening battles against an enemy faction, then it's a mopping up operation. In RTR, I'm always pleasantly surprised when I stumble into another full strength army when I thought the faction was on its knees.

In terms of improving the cleverness of the AI, there are clearly limits to what the modders can do. However, I have not found myself so frustrated with the battlefield AI in RTR as I did in vanilla. In fact, I find it no more objectionable than I recall the AI in STW and MTW being (let's face it, it was never that great). Clever modders can make some ingenious compensating adjustments. For example, the powerful Greek type units in RTR nicely compensate for the AIs abysmal handling of the phalanx formation. In the Roma mod, I think the designer changed the starting formations (and maybe build priorities?) of the AI so they are a little harder to fight. I like the way in the Roma mod, your weaker Roman stats mean it pays to worry about things like an elevation advantage[1]. In MTW and STW this was tactics 101 - get on a hill or maneouvre the AI off one - but in vanilla RTW, I started not to bother. In Roma, it really pays and even in the RTR mod, I'm starting to do it.

[1]Or an even more extreme example, one RTR vet even advised me to flank from my left as the enemy units got shielding bonuses from the right!

[Mongoose]

Well, i agree. Having soldiers with awful stats does make the romans harder to play as.

The point i was trying to make was that the game is not harder, the romans are harder. Play as the gauls in roma mod and you will see what i am talking about.

[Mithrandir]

Let me move this into Hostile territory...the colloseum.

[Mongoose]

GAH! Not really sure what the point of this is...looks like an roman-arena style flame war in the making...


Their releasing some thin looking tigers over there...

[ChaosLord]

I don't get these people who play M:TW and say they have a harder game then R:TW, both of them are easy. I mean I was brand new to the Total War series when I started M:TW and I was kicking the AI around on hard and expert in just a couple of days. Does noone remember the vast peasant/archer/spearman armies? How easy it was to lure the enemy into traps? How dumb the AI could be at times(I remember in the Almohad PBEM I was in, I killed the Spanish king with arrow fire while he sat there, unable to figure out what to do).

It took mods to get any sort of real challenge beyond the artificially induced mass rebellion trigger. Jihads and Crusades were a joke since 90% of the time they had no good general and would become rout fests. The Mongol hordes just needed you to kill their leader, then keep up mass routs and you could kill/capture 10,000+ in a single battle. Added to all this was the ease of mass hiring mercs to scare the AI into retreating or to use as expendable troops in sieges.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying I didn't like M:TW. I loved it, as I love R:TW. But M:TW was barely and just barely harder then R:TW when it came to battles, and it was brain dead when it came to the strategy map. R:TW like M:TW is slowly getting better as the mods are worked on, mods like R:TR and hopefully EB as well as Senjoku Jidai(sp?) and Zhao Total War in the future. I win a good portion of my battles in R:TR with the same ratios I did in M:TW mods, and often times the battles are harder(fighting phalanx civs with barbarians or such).

Oh and Simon, you should check out the MedMod for M:TW. Although it does focus alot on balancing things it also changes the lineups to be more historical as well as the factions. WesW and the people who have contributed to the mod have done an amazing job on it.

[econ21]

Oh and Simon, you should check out the MedMod for M:TW. Although it does focus alot on balancing things it also changes the lineups to be more historical as well as the factions. WesW and the people who have contributed to the mod have done an amazing job on it.

Yeah, RTR is making me realise this. I parted company with MedMod when it started changing the units in ways that made them not obviously more historical or defensible than those in vanilla MTW. I prefer the philosophy of the RTR and EB mods where I find I can't fault the history (not surprising as they seem to be led by real afficionados of the period). But I know the MedMod vastly improved the challenge.

[Azi Tohak]

Hey, I like RTW...but it is the same kind of like you have for those news shoes mom made you get. They are good, they work...but with just a little more time they could have been great!

That is how I feel about RTW anyway. RTR on the other hand...nearly everything is fixed (all that can be fixed is fixed). THAT is what a labor of love can do for you.

Azi

[katank]

To be honest, I did find MTW harder though.

Shoggy wasn't really harder than either. I fought tons of battles where I just used my faction leader's cav to lead the enemy in circles while my archers rained hell from above.

I kept winning battles of 5:2 odds in Shoggy except it came every turn and became annoying.

Vanilla RTW is even more a joke.

MTW still had some sense of tactics.

[TheDuck]

I don't get these people who play M:TW and say they have a harder game then R:TW, both of them are easy. I mean I was brand new to the Total War series when I started M:TW and I was kicking the AI around on hard and expert in just a couple of days. Does noone remember the vast peasant/archer/spearman armies? How easy it was to lure the enemy into traps? How dumb the AI could be at times(I remember in the Almohad PBEM I was in, I killed the Spanish king with arrow fire while he sat there, unable to figure out what to do).

It took mods to get any sort of real challenge beyond the artificially induced mass rebellion trigger. Jihads and Crusades were a joke since 90% of the time they had no good general and would become rout fests. The Mongol hordes just needed you to kill their leader, then keep up mass routs and you could kill/capture 10,000+ in a single battle. Added to all this was the ease of mass hiring mercs to scare the AI into retreating or to use as expendable troops in sieges.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying I didn't like M:TW. I loved it, as I love R:TW. But M:TW was barely and just barely harder then R:TW when it came to battles, and it was brain dead when it came to the strategy map. R:TW like M:TW is slowly getting better as the mods are worked on, mods like R:TR and hopefully EB as well as Senjoku Jidai(sp?) and Zhao Total War in the future. I win a good portion of my battles in R:TR with the same ratios I did in M:TW mods, and often times the battles are harder(fighting phalanx civs with barbarians or such).

Oh and Simon, you should check out the MedMod for M:TW. Although it does focus alot on balancing things it also changes the lineups to be more historical as well as the factions. WesW and the people who have contributed to the mod have done an amazing job on it.

I so agree with this. I have a very clear memory of M:TW reshuffling its troops during battles.. I'd normally walk my battle line up to arrow/bolt pusher distance and start wailing on them.. if the enemy army was significantly horse heavy they'd just mill about in range of my troops getting killed. The AI has no concept of certain tactical realities.

I've seen the R:TW AI do precisely the same thing. I think the AI is totally transplanted, with only a few changes to accomodate the new units and wierder maps. Just don't see that much that is different regarding how it organizes/decides what to do next. Both AIs are very susceptible to intelligent play, even in greatly outnumbered situations.

And for the record, I really love both games.. I play them less now than before, but any game which clocks above 40 hours of interest in my book is outstanding (about 40$ for the game against 40 hours.. thats about 1$US per hour of play.. MUCH less $$/hour than going a $$ equivalent number of movies (4).. ). I've played both M:TW and R:TW to the tune of about 100 hours each.. what rockingly good games at a fantastic value.

[RomanCavalry]

not taking anything away from your 40 hours of gameplay, but I do not consider 40 hours of gameplay that much man.

the great games of today are having people log hundreds, and at times, thousands (and in some cases tens of thousands) of hours of gameplay.

look at MMO's...some people play those 35-50 hours a week for 5+ years.

sports games...for example, "madden football"...man, people log in THOUSANDS of hours on these games (which cost the exact same as RTW) over the course of the year.

look at online shooters: same thing, hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of hours put in on these games over the course of 6-50 months. Look at socom2 for example. Half life 2.

Strategy games? ...starcraft? warcraft? some people played warcraft for 7 years. I'm sure they put in hundreds, if not upper thousands of hours.

sorry, this just isn't the NES days...40 hours on a deep strategy game is peanuts. I personally think any game that can only keep someone's attention for 40 hours in this day and age is a total flop.

I myself have easily spent hundreds of hours playing RTW already and I know the majority of people who bought the game are in the same bought.

[RomanCavalry]

perhaps one day mods will realize that an "edit" button would save a tremendous amount of space...

I see now that you say you've spent around 100 hours on both MTW and RTW...ok cool. But that doesn't change your idea of the "benchmark" hours for a great game.

If you look at what kind of titles are hot sellers in this generation of gaming, it's ones with virtually unlimited replay value...obviously the reason online gaming took off the way it did.

Quake, Doom, Unreal...all those shooters were amazing because they were "real" as opposed to scripted 1 player vs AI events. Unlimited replay value.

Look at RPG's...they're almost dead...entirely due to the influx of great MMO's. These games provide infinite replay value.

Although I've already spent hundreds of hours on RTW, i've played in very very small clips lately. The absolutely silly AI just cripples the replay value.

My point is just that there are many many games out there that exist for the purpose to "keep us busy" and I do not consider RTW one of the "classics" in this sense.

Look at Halo2 for the xbox...there are people 40 years old who are traveling the country, paying out of pocket to do so, and playing 50 hours a week in prep for money tournaments. RTW just doesn't draw that kind of following....

(again, look back at sports games...mmo's, etc....even WARCRAFT in the same genre as this...others have accomplished high replay value, I just don't think TW has.)

fix the AI and it will...it has everything else...but the Ai is what separates this game from those others and makes the experience seem "phony" after a period of time. This is exactly why people want a multiplayer campaign: Rome's concept is sound, but the unconvincing AI just bogs it down.

[ChaosLord]

I don't get these people who play M:TW and say they have a harder game then R:TW, both of them are easy. I mean I was brand new to the Total War series when I started M:TW and I was kicking the AI around on hard and expert in just a couple of days. Does noone remember the vast peasant/archer/spearman armies? How easy it was to lure the enemy into traps? How dumb the AI could be at times(I remember in the Almohad PBEM I was in, I killed the Spanish king with arrow fire while he sat there, unable to figure out what to do).

It took mods to get any sort of real challenge beyond the artificially induced mass rebellion trigger. Jihads and Crusades were a joke since 90% of the time they had no good general and would become rout fests. The Mongol hordes just needed you to kill their leader, then keep up mass routs and you could kill/capture 10,000+ in a single battle. Added to all this was the ease of mass hiring mercs to scare the AI into retreating or to use as expendable troops in sieges.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying I didn't like M:TW. I loved it, as I love R:TW. But M:TW was barely and just barely harder then R:TW when it came to battles, and it was brain dead when it came to the strategy map. R:TW like M:TW is slowly getting better as the mods are worked on, mods like R:TR and hopefully EB as well as Senjoku Jidai(sp?) and Zhao Total War in the future. I win a good portion of my battles in R:TR with the same ratios I did in M:TW mods, and often times the battles are harder(fighting phalanx civs with barbarians or such).

Oh and Simon, you should check out the MedMod for M:TW. Although it does focus alot on balancing things it also changes the lineups to be more historical as well as the factions. WesW and the people who have contributed to the mod have done an amazing job on it.

To go back on my statement, i'd like to say I was wrong. I actually need an advantage to get R:TW kill ratios in M:TW, whereas in R:TW it really doesn't matter. I'm actually having hard fought battles and even defeats after going back to M:TW. So it was my bad memory, and perhaps too many heroic victories in R:TW that had convinced me otherwise. After going back to M:TW i've since unistalled R:TW, no reason to go back now until the expansion. Where i'll optimistically hope they'll make the game somewhat challenging.

[IceTorque]

To go back on my statement, i'd like to say I was wrong. I actually need an advantage to get R:TW kill ratios in M:TW, whereas in R:TW it really doesn't matter. I'm actually having hard fought battles and even defeats after going back to M:TW. So it was my bad memory, and perhaps too many heroic victories in R:TW that had convinced me otherwise. After going back to M:TW i've since unistalled R:TW, no reason to go back now until the expansion. Where i'll optimistically hope they'll make the game somewhat challenging.

You will need to reinstall soon because the AI's Revenge Mod is almost done.
Humans should be very afraid.

Some features.
1.You will experience a level playing field
1.You will have consistently challenging battles the best that you have ever had.
2.you will suffer many defeats. (unless you are Alexander reborn )
3.You will experience a free flowing campaign. With the focus being on battles
and not micro management.
4.This is all possible with simple balancing, no cheats and no tricks.
5. I guarantee you will be humbled by the AI.

e.g. In vanilla you see a seemingly suicide cav charge.

Last night while playtesting I witnessed.
Two cav break from their advancing army and charge towards my frontline, The first cav charged one of my infantry, The second cav made a sharp turn before hitting my line and headed towards the first cav.
the first cav then withdrew forcing my unit to persue, The second cav smashed into the flank of my persuing unit. The first cav then charged again. Timed to perfection.
An obviously deliberate opening gambit.

Just one example of what you can expect. From truly the greatest TW game of all.

[Servius]

@ Little Legionaire: I think I read that the team that made RTW actually began working on it before MTW was done. If that's so, then it's certainly possible that two different teams were working independently on the games, which would help explain why the two are so different.

In general, I think that RTW definitely extended the potential of the game because there are more options in RTW (gameplay-wise, not modding-wise unfortunately), but the AI they built is terrible. So, when you compare AI skill with the potential of the game, the two are much closer in MTW (perhaps mostly because there were fewer variables for the AI to get distracted by) than in RTW.

IMO, CA could do nothing better for their game than to improve the AI, because it's the weakest link in the game overall. The next-best thing I think they could do would be to un-hardcode (if that's even possible) many of the variables in the game so that at least the modding community could make more if not all aspects of the game better. Lastly, cities should be less of a hassle to manage, and battlemaps should be more like MTW maps. Right now the hardest (and most annoying) part of the game is micromanaging the cities.

[Gaius Magnus]

I don't get these people who play M:TW and say they have a harder game then R:TW, both of them are easy. I mean I was brand new to the Total War series when I started M:TW and I was kicking the AI around on hard and expert in just a couple of days. Does noone remember the vast peasant/archer/spearman armies? How easy it was to lure the enemy into traps? How dumb the AI could be at times(I remember in the Almohad PBEM I was in, I killed the Spanish king with arrow fire while he sat there, unable to figure out what to do).

It took mods to get any sort of real challenge beyond the artificially induced mass rebellion trigger. Jihads and Crusades were a joke since 90% of the time they had no good general and would become rout fests. The Mongol hordes just needed you to kill their leader, then keep up mass routs and you could kill/capture 10,000+ in a single battle. Added to all this was the ease of mass hiring mercs to scare the AI into retreating or to use as expendable troops in sieges.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying I didn't like M:TW. I loved it, as I love R:TW. But M:TW was barely and just barely harder then R:TW when it came to battles, and it was brain dead when it came to the strategy map. R:TW like M:TW is slowly getting better as the mods are worked on, mods like R:TR and hopefully EB as well as Senjoku Jidai(sp?) and Zhao Total War in the future. I win a good portion of my battles in R:TR with the same ratios I did in M:TW mods, and often times the battles are harder(fighting phalanx civs with barbarians or such).

Oh and Simon, you should check out the MedMod for M:TW. Although it does focus alot on balancing things it also changes the lineups to be more historical as well as the factions. WesW and the people who have contributed to the mod have done an amazing job on it.

I agree wholeheartedly.

I played STW and MTW before playing RTW.

I vividly remember the problems of the AI in MTW, such as reshuffling their stack right as I approached, or sitting just out of their range with Pavise Arbalesters, causing them to run back and forth in a small area until they were exhaused. I remember defeating the Mongols with a fraction of their strength even though they just showed up one turn with multiple stacks in each of my Eastern provinces. Oh, and the ever popular 'MTW Parade' where the AI would send units in a long string one-at-a-time.

Oh yes, and I also remember the Peasant Armies. Wow, those were challenging.

I just don't understand the desire to return to the boardgame style map. That's what Risk and checkers are for.

I think RTW is a great game and I will continue to play it. (I also enjoyed STW and MTW) I have now begun playing RTR 6.0 and it is a great mod.

I really don't understand why some people spend so much time on an RTW forum complaining about a game that they don't like.

[kongxinga]

Boy am I glad that I was right about sitting this incarnation of TW out. It seems most of the vets found the game dissappointing. The demo raised enough doubts for me to wait before purchasing, and after the game was released the fact it got high reviews from gaming sites, and complaints from hard core players just set off more warning bells ringing. When has a serious wargame ever gotten good marks from a mainstream review site? The large number of complaints after so many months is probably enough for me to pass a verdict on this game, although I might pick up the bundled pack in the end if BI fixes the complaints.

Oh and to the original poster. If you found Roman, Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Asian (that's a word I loathe. Asia is too big a place to generalize) history boring and not worth your time, that is most likely due to you not having studied them deeply enough. It is also better not to disparage other people's history, as some people may take offence.

I might have to migrate to Legion Arena and Legion 2 by Slitherine. The funny thing is that there is already a lot of TW vets there already. Now if these low budget games get better gameplay then RTW ......

This is a perfect example of the stagnation, leadership and coordination problems of larger corporations. For example, if IBM was not that closeminded, there will really be no Bill Gates today (may be good or bad according to your POV).

[Slyspy]

The attraction of the Risk-style map is that the AI actually functions on it. The free space of the RTW map merely highlights the AI's weaknesses.

I too remember those aspects of MTW. In fact I was astonished to find many of the same problems (features?) in RTW as well. That is why I consider the uncluttered simplicity of STW to be superior to both the sequels.

The AI has barely changed since STW while the game itself has changed a fair bit, and that is why RTW is flawed and a waste of potential.

RTW is no longer on my hard drive.

[Silver Rusher]

I think that whilst the AI is quite bad, the advent of mods for the game will bring more and more replay value every time one comes out. EB looks like it will be a treat for us, doesn't it?

The way to enjoy RTW is to use your imagination. Imagine being some Macedonian general, and attempt to recreate the Macedonian empire to its fullest. Once you star using your imagination and stop playing the game for the sake of completing it in the smallest time, it will become a fun and enjoyable game.

[Intrepid Sidekick]

[1]. In MTW and STW this was tactics 101 - get on a hill or maneouvre the AI off one - but in vanilla RTW, I started not to bother. In Roma, it really pays and even in the RTR mod, I'm starting to do it.

[1]Or an even more extreme example, one RTR vet even advised me to flank from my left as the enemy units got shielding bonuses from the right!

It's interesting that you atribute sheild bonuses, flanking and elevation bonuses to a mod when in fact they are features of RTW.
Of course modding units stats, as in RTR may very well have increased the noticeablility of these features and added value to them.

[HarunTaiwan]

Yes, in RTR the effects are noticeable and have added some value to the product.

[hoom]

Yep, thats right.
The shield effect is largely invisible in the basic game because there are other factors that have a larger effect on who wins.
The modded stats change this so that the shield effect is quite important.

A lot of the great features of the game are hidden like this by weaknesses elsewhere.

[Colovion]

A slower battle pace also adds to the effect of said features the game holds. In vanilla it's harder to notice such components to the battle system because the battles are over much faster. When the battles are drawn out longer it makes for a situation where you can really see what works because of the longer timespan to view the battle playing out.

[econ21]

It's interesting that you atribute sheild bonuses, flanking and elevation bonuses to a mod when in fact they are features of RTW.
Of course modding units stats, as in RTR may very well have increased the noticeablility of these features and added value to them.

Yes, that was my point. When you quoted from my post, you omitted the preceding line: "I like the way in the Roma mod, your weaker Roman stats mean it pays to worry about things like an elevation advantage". I was not attributing the bonuses to the mods, but the vanilla game means that some factions like the Romans can coast through their battles without needing to pay heed to them.

For the record, I'm not a fan of the Roma mod - I haven't given it a fair go, but from what I've experienced, it is so stacked against the Romans, you have to exploit the AI to win. Consequently, the battles & campaigns seem more "gamey" and ahistorical to me than those in the vanilla game.

But RTR does improve on the experience for the Romans, IMO. I suspect its largely by pumping up the size of enemy armies (boosting their economies?).

Even in the vanilla game, it can be a challenge fighting a faction with a strong economy and decent units like Egypt or a well developed Roman faction (e.g. in a civil war). But some factions such as Gaul and Carthage could do with a little boost in BI if CA can find the time.

I believe my basic point - in response to the thread title "is RTW really that bad?" - was that nearly all the great things about STW and MTW (e.g. the tactical bonuses and modifiers) are still present in RTW. I think it's pretty self-evident, but mods like RTR make it blindingly obvious. The slowed-down battles in RTR feel just like the MTW ones to me (without the tedium of dealing with waves of AI reinforcements).

I can't see how someone can love MTW and not find a lot of value in RTW. I'm still playing it SP and it's been out for the best part of a year. The negativity towards RTW in some threads seems excessive. I fear I may be the closest thing to a fan boy CA has here!

[Productivity]

It's interesting that you atribute sheild bonuses, flanking and elevation bonuses to a mod when in fact they are features of RTW.
Of course modding units stats, as in RTR may very well have increased the noticeablility of these features and added value to them.

Nobody is saying the mods introduced those effects. Just the standard game is so easy that nobody cares about them.

Why should I bother to try and take a hill? I'm going to slaughter the enemy anyway, and it will just add another ten minutes to the battle.

As for those saying Rome is the same as Medieval in terms of AI, why then does the AI sometimes smack you round in Medieval? I've lost quite a few games with M:TW, and I'm not a particularly bad player, it's just the AI was better. I have never looked close to loosing in R:TW, no matter who I have played with. Armenia, Numidia, Pontus, standard Seleucids, Thrace etc. I've managed to come out on top iwth little difficulty.

Maybe you guys are just gods or something when it comes to strategy games, but Rome to me is stupidly easy, where as Medieval is not.

[KSEG]

Nobody is saying the mods introduced those effects. Just the standard game is so easy that nobody cares about them.

Why should I bother to try and take a hill? I'm going to slaughter the enemy anyway, and it will just add another ten minutes to the battle.

As for those saying Rome is the same as Medieval in terms of AI, why then does the AI sometimes smack you round in Medieval? I've lost quite a few games with M:TW, and I'm not a particularly bad player, it's just the AI was better. I have never looked close to loosing in R:TW, no matter who I have played with. Armenia, Numidia, Pontus, standard Seleucids, Thrace etc. I've managed to come out on top iwth little difficulty.

Maybe you guys are just gods or something when it comes to strategy games, but Rome to me is stupidly easy, where as Medieval is not.

Have you played MTW recently?
Maybe you feel MTW AI is better because you were not so good when playing it, and when playing RTW you were a veteran.

[Productivity]

Have you played MTW recently?
Maybe you feel MTW AI is better because you were not so good when playing it, and when playing RTW you were a veteran.

About three weeks ago... After giving up on ever seeing a challenge in R:TW

[Martok]

Have you played MTW recently?
Maybe you feel MTW AI is better because you were not so good when playing it, and when playing RTW you were a veteran.

I'm not a brilliant player by any stretch of the imagination, but I like to think I still qualify as a TW "veteran". I've had Shogun for over 4 years, which I still play it now and then. I've also had Medieval for over 2 1/2 years, and still play it daily. (No disrespect to the Shoggy players, I'm just more of a Jihad/Crusades kind of guy, that's all. ) And I've had Rome for almost 9 months (although by now I haven't really touched the game since early spring). So I think I can say with some authority that yes, battles in Medieval are still tougher than in Rome.

I discovered long ago when I first started to play strategy games (and the TW games in particular) that my military skills are very average--not terrible, but certainly not great--and even I steamroll Rome's AI way more often than not. I've stated in other posts that in Rome, the only battles I've ever lost were ones where I was ridiculously outnumbered. (Okay, I've also lost a few while drunk, but that's neither here nor there..... )

I'm not saying the AI in Medieval was perfect; far from it. As other people have pointed out, Medieval's AI doesn't always know what to do with its calvary. It also isn't the greatest at fighting bridge battles or defending castles. But it's still far more competent than Rome's AI. When playing Rome, there have been very few battles where I felt like I was in any real danger of losing, even when playing one of the harder factions. With Medieval, I still get combat jitters if the enemy's forces are even remotely comparable to my own. Why? Because I know Medieval's AI can outsmart me--and it does.

I will credit Rome's combat with at least this much: The battle maps are beautiful with a lot of room to maneuver, and the pre-combat unit placement and battle controls are generally more user-friendly than in Medieval or Shogun. Unfortunately, it still does not make up for the lackluster AI. It honestly gives me no joy to say so, but it's the truth. Rome's AI is simply the weakest out of all three Total War games, and provides no challenge for me.

[Red Harvest]

Have you played MTW recently?
Maybe you feel MTW AI is better because you were not so good when playing it, and when playing RTW you were a veteran.

You don't give the vets enough credit. We have gone back and made some comparisons.

[Red Harvest]

It's interesting that you atribute sheild bonuses, flanking and elevation bonuses to a mod when in fact they are features of RTW.
Of course modding units stats, as in RTR may very well have increased the noticeablility of these features and added value to them.

Nothing new on two of them, never had much trouble flanking RTW's AI or taking away its elevation. However, my understanding is that some of the mods use higher ranges for shields. I've always thought RTW failed to give much credit for shields. And we've also learned that the charge is based on armour (I had it as part of defense, Kraxis ID'ed the armour as the specific contributor), with very little contribution from "charge bonus" or mass. Don't know if that was addressed in later mods.

[Quietus]

The AI of both MTW and RTW are essentially the same. In MTW, I just shoot the AI to pieces with my vanilla archers while they walk back and forth in front of my spears.

The battles are just too fast in RTW (due to kill-rates and running speed). That's the main difference.