How to make RTW harder

**econ21** · 10-11-2005, 14:04

You might try Barbarian Invasion - the hordes seem to add an element of danger, although it also seems to be rather random whether they hit your faction.

RTR is a little harder than vanilla. Slower, certainly. However, I still found I needed to play with a few house rules - notably only building troops from my capital and having historically balanced armies. If I wanted a greater challenge, never retraining might be a good additional rule.

**Drisos** · 10-11-2005, 14:07

Decide which unit is the weakest, and play a campaign at the hardest level using only that one.

I can't win when I do that in shogun... perhaps you can't either in rome?

**Slicendice** · 10-11-2005, 15:12

hmmn. I wanted a challenge not total frustration. I haven't bought BI because I hear it isn't very hard and I don't to invest more money in a game I can beat easily.

Anymore suggestions?

**PseRamesses** · 10-12-2005, 12:47

Originally Posted by Slicendice

hmmn. I wanted a challenge not total frustration. I haven't bought BI because I hear it isn't very hard and I don't to invest more money in a game I can beat easily.

Anymore suggestions?

The mods mentioned above are really good and you don´t need BI to play them. However, if you don´t want to play a mod, why don´t you try and role-play your empire?
Ex: City-state game: abandon all your cities and just keep one. During the game you may never hold more than one city. Only way to win is making others protectorates which is darn near impossible.
Ex: Turtle-game: No expasion, no conquests. The lands you hold at start are the only one you may hold. You may ofcourse protect yourself and launch punitive campaigns against your enemies but not destroy any faction.
Ex: Historical game: Re-play history.
Serach the forums for RP and you´ll find tons of ideas, tried and non-tried.

**Puzz3D** · 10-12-2005, 19:49

Originally Posted by Slicendice

hmmn. I wanted a challenge not total frustration. I haven't bought BI because I hear it isn't very hard and I don't to invest more money in a game I can beat easily.

Anymore suggestions?

I'm playing a Julii campaign (M/M) with RTW v1.3, and it's not that easy. Although I wouldn't say it's really hard either, but then again I could use higher difficulty levels in future campaigns. I play with no retraining. It's not that the AI is aggressive, except in naval actions, but I think what's making it harder is that the battles are harder due to improved tactial AI.

For example, I had 850 Julii men, all hastati and 4 equites, under a 3 star general and went against 850 Gauls under a 2 star general, and the Gauls won killing 800 of my men including the general and only loosing 400 themselves of which 100 recovered. In another battle, I had 1100 men, mostly hastati and principes, under a 2 star general go against 1400 Britannians under a captain, and I lost loosing 1000 men including my general and killing about 700 of which 150 recovered. I also failed to take a city from Carthage on the first try, and same thing happened at a Macedonian city. I win a lot of battles, but casualties are a bit higher. Coupled with the losses it has the effect of slowing down my expansion, and I couldn't complete all the senate missions either which lowers my popularity.

It's 190 BC and I have 25 cities, and squalor is a problem because I garrisoned these cities with good troops to fend off attacks. As it turned out, only Gaul was really aggressive towards me, and I'm in the process regarrisoning most of my cities with town malitia which will save money. I'm definitely turning a profit now each turn, but Brutii has 16 full armies in Greece and there isn't a single peasant in them. In fact, they are all composed of good units and quite a bit of artillery. Brutii has a larger military than I do,and they are compressed into a smaller area. I only have 2 decent armies positioned to counter them, and these are tied down garrisoning cities. I don't know what will happen when the civil war starts. Egypt is now expanding against Pontus who has all of Asia Minor. Once Egypt conquers Pontus they will be very strong. Maybe I would have done better if I had been more aggresive early in the campaign. Egypt certainly wouldn't become so strong if the campaign was over sooner, and Brutii wouldn't be so strong if I had taken some of the cities they were after.

There is no need to buy BI just to get RTW v1.3 since it's supposed to be released as a patch. RTW v1.3 still has a rather conservative strategic AI, and I don't know any way to make it aggressive. MTW had a more aggressive AI, but it didn't make the campaign harder because the AI factions beat each other back into the stone age, although MedMod did improve on that.

RTW v1.3 also has a bug which stops most naval invasions. You can fix this by saving and reloading the game just before ending your turn. The broken AI sieges on reloading have been fixed. AI units not throwing their pila has not been fixed, but phalanx units now work properly and spears are effective vs cavalry. The AI maintains it's battleline better, and the AI general waits until later in the battle to engage. A bug with the charge bonus has also been fixed, and the jumping horses have been tonned down.

I'm playing this the way CA intended which is that I can only play factions which I eliminate. I always thought the people who modded the game to play any faction took some of the longjevity out of it for themselves.

**Kekvit Irae** · 10-12-2005, 20:15

A good way to mod RTW to make it harder is to remove the upper-level buildings (Army/Urban Barracks, etc) from your faction of choice. Lower grade buildings mean lower grade troops, which means you will be using mediocre troops against the AI's stronger troops, without having to buff up the AI.

I also suggest buying BI, since the 1.3 patch included fixes a lot of AI problems, including the save/load bug.

**Slicendice** · 10-13-2005, 19:41

I am thinking now that I could eliminate most of the factions on the map and leave the Romans, Greeks, Seleucids, and Carthage. I would divide the world up between them and then go after them or just try to defend myself. I would be limited in the faction that I play because I want to start off with what I normally would start off with. I'm thinking Germany because they have so many rivers that they can defend at. This way if I wipe out a Roman army there will be plenty of money for Rome to buy more and come after me.

What I am really wanting to experience is the massive armies in Shogun Total War. It was so cool having 10,000 units coming at your army of well trained and outfitted soldiers and then slaughtering them all or going down gloriously.

I am playing RTR right now but there are some graphic glitches that cause the screen to flicker and it is very annoying. I might try re-installing it.

Keep them coming guys.

**econ21** · 10-13-2005, 19:51

Originally Posted by Slicendice

I am playing RTR right now but there are some graphic glitches that cause the screen to flicker and it is very annoying. I might try re-installing it.

Are the flickers on the opening menu pages, not the actual game? If so, I and others hear experienced that. Uninstalling Windows Media Player and reinstalling it worked for us.