Is RTW really that bad

[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.

[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!

[Garvanko]

What I hate about Rome...

Odds completely in your favour.. 10:2.. You can't be bothered to slug it out at 3 am. You're tired. You need to sleep. You just want to win this one big battle.

You decide to auto-resolve.

You lose half your men.

Average defeat.

[Volstag]

It's not a bad game. It has a ton of potential... but, sadly, potential doesn't necessarily make for good gaming. The engine is absolutely fantastic. Massive kudos to CA on that regard.

That being said, however, the biggest detractors to (vanilla) RTW: glitches/bugs and the fact that it's relatively easy. Fixing the former might take care of the latter but, as it stands, there isn't a whole lot of challenge. Contrast that with a typical game of Civ III (for me): there will be games, and occasions within games, where I'm not sure if I'll be able to win, or not. There'll be occassions when I desperately do NOT want to go to war with certain civs, etc. There'll be occassions/games where I'm at the bottom of the leader board, trying desperately to claw my way to the top. In short: games where I'm periodically/perpetually getting my ass kicked.

In RTW.... that really hasn't happened. I've had a couple scares, but, generally speaking, it's not that difficult to obliterate everything in your path (but since I generally only get to play for 1 to 1.5 hours at a time, this might be a symptom of the save/load "feature")

-V

[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.

[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.

[Ab Urbe Condita]

My advice to you would be to not base your buying decisions on messageboards.

[Productivity]

My advice to you would be to not base your buying decisions on messageboards.

It is hard to do otherwise, when no demo is released for the strategic game, and the tactical demo is setup so you can't lose...

[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]

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.

[player1]

... and buggy VH battles, giving bonus to attack to both player and AI, making things even more faster.

[Little Legioner]

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

Too fast right but also narrow too... Just try big/huge setting you will understand what i mean. Too fast, too narrow: TW for clickfesters

[HarunTaiwan]

Battles suck because of poor AI.

I remember being hard pressed in STW and MTW...now it's all formality.

[PyrrhusofEpirus]

I have first learn of TW series 2 years ago. A friend introduce me the M:TW( )!. I've stuck with this game, it's realism, the pioneer things that brought in my gaming life, and spend countless hours on LAN battles and SP games. Because of the M:TW, I looked at every other strategy game rather childish (no offence, I still playing EE, AOE2 and Civ series).

I remember myself being impatient and looking forward for R:TW, because that's one of my favorites historic period (Hellenistic Era).

When it was released I even bought an new PC so I can relish my whole new game!
I call my friend to share our views of the new game. I bought the game 2 months later after it released cause of the local dealers policy !
He told me how disappointed was about the R:TW, the unbeatable war elephants, the continuous revolt of some cities, the unvaried flat battlefields, the unchallenging battles, the endless siege battles, the lack of replay campaign battles, even the new strategy map and how exasperating is that you can't call back slip movement etc.

He catch me by surprise! I argue that R:TW has a lot new features, like much more user friendly interface, a handy diplomacy, great variety of different troops (in M:TW factions was pretty much the same) etc, and for the rest, is matter of being unaccustomed. (but agreed with the annoying repeal thing)

I played the game for a couple of months. I finally get used with the new strategy map-I like it now-but at end find the R:TW far less enjoyable than the M:TW ! What was wrong? Is this because I'm getting older? NO! something else! I search the internet for TW discussing forums.
That how I find out the .org ! I downloaded the 1.2 patch (until that time, I didn't realise that even exist !)

So, farewell to unbeatable elephants, the continuous revolt of some cities, the endless bribing etc.
But on the other hand I found out some very new to me bugs/issues: the notorious save/load issue, the Seleucid armoured elephants being available everywhere,and many other that player1 tries to handle (BTW player1 mnogu fala! ).

Now I share most of my opinion with the majority of people in this community. I found not R:TW is a bad game, I found it simply inferior of its hype. Don't know what went wrong. Maybe the CA's transition among Activision to Sega. Maybe the CA's budget overrun. Maybe the deadlines. Maybe the whole project was unattainable.

I wish all these sad things will change in BI.

This is my little(big) story. Sorry for being tedious. But I think this story could apply to many others besides me.

Thank you for time

[Red Harvest]

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.

Jeez, here we go again a gross oversimplification to hide the truth. If the AI were exactly the same (and I don't buy it) then RTW would get far the worst of it because the game changed so much that the AI should have changed too, this blows a hole the size of Texas in the "AI is the same" argument. There is certainly no analog of the phalanx mess we presently have. The scrambling of the the AI line before engagement handicaps RTW many fold with or without phalanx. Plus I found that MTW actually used its long range units rather than charging them into my line. The RTW AI improved a degree in skirmisher tactics, unfortunately, it also has tendency to charge them into infantry--again destroying the skirmish aspect of battle. I also found MTW rarely charged the general headlong into my line--until the main part of the army had engaged.

The MTW AI would not attack at times, true, and would be shot up. Much harder with vanilla archers in MTW, unless you were facing unarmoured rabble. In which case, the AI wouldn't attack because it could see it couldn't win. Once the human won the ranged missile duel it was over for the AI. Arbalesters were deadly, archers weren't worth much.

If on the other hand the AI had a good force it would hurl it at the player and was far more likely to overwhelm the player than in RTW. I've also seen the AI camp quite well on high ground in MTW, something it can't seem to do in RTW.