Comparing EB and RTR

[Arman616]

What are the main similarities and differences, you guys? thanks.

[Malrubius]

Oh, no!

[Reenk Roink]

Do not do this friend .

[Copperhaired Berserker!]

Agrh! Get the fort up, the flamers are coming!!!


Men, get the sandbags!




Good work!

Ok. Look, for comparing, check the EB VS. RTW thread in the guide.

[Leolinus]

I would say both mods improved RTW. RTR extended RTW, EB took it to another dimension, and showed us the potential of the game engine.

[khelvan]

These sorts of comparisons are inevitable. Please keep it civil and do not denegrate the work of any modders, regardless of what team they work with.

[Stormy]

Wow... did you create those sandbags, Copperhaired Berserker ?
We are looking for a few modelers, you know.

[econ21]

It's a legitimate question, although not necessarily one best discussed on this sub-forum. However, there is a fairly well mannered and informative thread on EB in the general chat forum of the RTR website, so why not discuss it here?

For what it is worth, my impression so far is that the mods have a very similar underlying philosophy. They aim at making RTW more realistic, both by altering the content (maps, units etc) and the combat system (kill speeds, morale levels, balance of arms etc). In this, I think they both succeed very well. I've played both and greatly admire them for this. The units look great and the combat feels "right", as well as having the more deliberate feel of the combat I enjoyed in STW and MTW.

My impression so far is that EB has more historical research and work so that it deviates rather more from vanilla than RTR. However, RTR is still in progression. For example, RTR 6.2 has done a lot of work on the Romans and Germans, but the Gauls for one could use a little more love and will apparently get that in 7.0.

In terms of the combat system, they use different ways of getting there but I have found RTR 6.0 and EB rather similar in terms of how long heavy infantry melees last and how effective missiles are etc. If anything I'd say cavalry is rather more powerful (and relatively cheaper) in EB than RTR 6.0 but I am happy with either representation. My impression is that move speeds are slower in RTR, but as lover of the pause key, I like EBs speeds.

Both mods also aim to restrict or slow the recruitment of units outside of your factions natural "homelands". Again, they have different ways of doing this but they both work to a similar effect and add to the game's realism, and difficulty level. They also do some other stuff to raise the challenge - e.g. making the economy tighter and giving the player's general's less command stars.

Both mods alter naval combat to make it better. In RTR 6.0, tweaking the stats has made naval combat more bloody and decisive. In EB, fleets are very expensive and so again the combat is more decisive. Different means, similar result. I guess that's a theme of this comparison?

The mods have rather different campaign maps. IIRC, RTR took the area covered by the vanilla map and increased the number of provinces. My impression is that EB has a roughly similar number of provinces in the original RTW area but has extended the map south and especially east. Again, different approaches but similar result - a bigger sandpit to play in!

Both mods have unified the Romans and dropped the Senate (reviewer sheds a quick tear at the loss of the fun Senate missions). They have rather different faction line ups - they both represent the "big players" of the period but, if you want to play the ancient Britons, don't play RTR. If you want to play the Numidians, don't play EB. etc

EB have done some very fun things with the trait system and related stuff. Some generals can compete in the Olympics, others get triumphs etc. Some factions don't even have offspring anymore but choose generals through a "man of the hour". RTR seems more like vanilla in these respects, IIRC. On a related point, EB have changed the faction victory conditions whereas RTR still requires "conquer 50 provinces" (making playing the 40 province Seleucids rather a short game).

Finally, EB is a beta whereas RTR is a more finished product that has been patched many times. I can't recall encountering a CTD in RTR (well, I lie - I think it was in 6.0 - I won as Rome and was rewarded with a CTD! anti-climatic at the time but at least, I'd finished my campaign). However, I am getting daily or more crashes with EB (I'm around 243 BC in my Roman game). I can work around them, but it is taking a lot of willpower to keep playing. There are also other aspects of EB that seem frustrating because it is a beta - for example, AI bribery of my towns is making my game not fun (taking a city once is fine, but having to keep retaking it due to some diplomat is not so great).

Bottomline - I think they are both amazing mods. Incredibly ambitious and with ambitions that perfectly suit my tilt. They are both massive endeavours, involving many people and changing RTW in a myriad of ways. They transform RTW from an ultimately unchallenging and occasionally annoyingly ahistorical strategy game into a serious historical wargame that is fun to play. To some extent, they are the Pepsi and Coke of RTW mods - they are really remarkable similar. If forced to identify differences, at the moment, I would say RTR is more polished and playable whereas EB is more ambitious and promising. But I don't wish to offend either team, whose works have given me a lot of pleasure now and will continue to do so in the future.

[Thorn Is]

Trust me Arman616 - you could be a fan of both mods. I know I am
My advise get the generic mod enabler
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...84#post1009484
and try them both
though for some reason i had trouble getting the beta of EB working on it - but after some fiddling and installing over and over i did get it to work
actually i have a ton of mods (I've even tried some of the fantasy mods)
i tend to play one campaign in one, then one in another... Everytime its a new experience.
of course thats just me
right now im playing a RTR campaign as Illyria - then i gotta do a vlad mod campaign - then hopefully the full EB will be ready...
Simon's explaination of the two mods is really well done.

[Shigawire]

A wise post by Simon Appleton.

[Arman616]

It's a legitimate question, although not necessarily one best discussed on this sub-forum. However, there is a fairly well mannered and informative thread on EB in the general chat forum of the RTR website, so why not discuss it here?

For what it is worth, my impression so far is that the mods have a very similar underlying philosophy. They aim at making RTW more realistic, both by altering the content (maps, units etc) and the combat system (kill speeds, morale levels, balance of arms etc). In this, I think they both succeed very well. I've played both and greatly admire them for this. The units look great and the combat feels "right", as well as having the more deliberate feel of the combat I enjoyed in STW and MTW.

My impression so far is that EB has more historical research and work so that it deviates rather more from vanilla than RTR. However, RTR is still in progression. For example, RTR 6.2 has done a lot of work on the Romans and Germans, but the Gauls for one could use a little more love and will apparently get that in 7.0.

In terms of the combat system, they use different ways of getting there but I have found RTR 6.0 and EB rather similar in terms of how long heavy infantry melees last and how effective missiles are etc. If anything I'd say cavalry is rather more powerful (and relatively cheaper) in EB than RTR 6.0 but I am happy with either representation. My impression is that move speeds are slower in RTR, but as lover of the pause key, I like EBs speeds.

Both mods also aim to restrict or slow the recruitment of units outside of your factions natural "homelands". Again, they have different ways of doing this but they both work to a similar effect and add to the game's realism, and difficulty level. They also do some other stuff to raise the challenge - e.g. making the economy tighter and giving the player's general's less command stars.

Both mods alter naval combat to make it better. In RTR 6.0, tweaking the stats has made naval combat more bloody and decisive. In EB, fleets are very expensive and so again the combat is more decisive. Different means, similar result. I guess that's a theme of this comparison?

The mods have rather different campaign maps. IIRC, RTR took the area covered by the vanilla map and increased the number of provinces. My impression is that EB has a roughly similar number of provinces in the original RTW area but has extended the map south and especially east. Again, different approaches but similar result - a bigger sandpit to play in!

Both mods have unified the Romans and dropped the Senate (reviewer sheds a quick tear at the loss of the fun Senate missions). They have rather different faction line ups - they both represent the "big players" of the period but, if you want to play the ancient Britons, don't play RTR. If you want to play the Numidians, don't play EB. etc

EB have done some very fun things with the trait system and related stuff. Some generals can compete in the Olympics, others get triumphs etc. Some factions don't even have offspring anymore but choose generals through a "man of the hour". RTR seems more like vanilla in these respects, IIRC. On a related point, EB have changed the faction victory conditions whereas RTR still requires "conquer 50 provinces" (making playing the 40 province Seleucids rather a short game).

Finally, EB is a beta whereas RTR is a more finished product that has been patched many times. I can't recall encountering a CTD in RTR (well, I lie - I think it was in 6.0 - I won as Rome and was rewarded with a CTD! anti-climatic at the time but at least, I'd finished my campaign). However, I am getting daily or more crashes with EB (I'm around 243 BC in my Roman game). I can work around them, but it is taking a lot of willpower to keep playing. There are also other aspects of EB that seem frustrating because it is a beta - for example, AI bribery of my towns is making my game not fun (taking a city once is fine, but having to keep retaking it due to some diplomat is not so great).

Bottomline - I think they are both amazing mods. Incredibly ambitious and with ambitions that perfectly suit my tilt. They are both massive endeavours, involving many people and changing RTW in a myriad of ways. They transform RTW from an ultimately unchallenging and occasionally annoyingly ahistorical strategy game into a serious historical wargame that is fun to play. To some extent, they are the Pepsi and Coke of RTW mods - they are really remarkable similar. If forced to identify differences, at the moment, I would say RTR is more polished and playable whereas EB is more ambitious and promising. But I don't wish to offend either team, whose works have given me a lot of pleasure now and will continue to do so in the future.

Wow, what a sexy post, and thank you. Yea, I want to stick with one mod, and I'm sticking with EB! It's only BETA, and I hear it's just as good as RTR full. So wow, imagine what the future holds. Plus to me, EB feels really ethnic and cultural, and the map expanded eastwards is great. I'm now a EB fanboy. Yaay.

[LestaT]

Everything as Somon says, though currently I'm holding on playing EB until a later version. As of now, I'm kinda dismantling both mods and merging them, taking the best parts of both and making for my own .. ehhe.. Eeer.. do I have to hire bodyguards now ? :-)

[Kull]

Bottomline - I think they are both amazing mods. Incredibly ambitious and with ambitions that perfectly suit my tilt. They are both massive endeavours, involving many people and changing RTW in a myriad of ways. They transform RTW from an ultimately unchallenging and occasionally annoyingly ahistorical strategy game into a serious historical wargame that is fun to play. To some extent, they are the Pepsi and Coke of RTW mods - they are really remarkable similar. If forced to identify differences, at the moment, I would say RTR is more polished and playable whereas EB is more ambitious and promising. But I don't wish to offend either team, whose works have given me a lot of pleasure now and will continue to do so in the future.

Excellent post, Simon. At the risk of spouting heresy, go ahead and play BOTH mods. Each team put their heart and soul into the work, and the results in both cases are MAJOR improvements over vanilla RTW. But DO remember that EB is really pre-beta, so any comparison at this stage is inherently faulty. The true test will be the heavyweight bout between final release EB (ported to 1.5) and RTR 7.x (also ported to 1.5). And who will be the winner?

That's easy - YOU guys who get to sit back and play both of these awesome mods!

[Copperhaired Berserker!]

Wow... did you create those sandbags, Copperhaired Berserker ?
We are looking for a few modelers, you know.

uhm, I searched it on Yahoo! image search?

Uhm...........

DANG IT!

Another chance ruined to be a member!

[dark]

Excellent post, Simon. At the risk of spouting heresy, go ahead and play BOTH mods. Each team put their heart and soul into the work, and the results in both cases are MAJOR improvements over vanilla RTW. But DO remember that EB is really pre-beta, so any comparison at this stage is inherently faulty. The true test will be the heavyweight bout between final release EB (ported to 1.5) and RTR 7.x (also ported to 1.5). And who will be the winner?

That's easy - YOU guys who get to sit back and play both of these awesome mods!

Just a minor correction, RTR 7.0 will be made for 1.6.

[Cheexsta]

I've been a long-time fan of both mods (probably about a year and a bit for each? I don't know...). Here's my breakdown.

Both: Excellent improvement over RTW. In fact, it's often hard to say it's the same game when you compare either mod to RTW. Both mods have put in a collossal effort and have achieved great results.

RTR: Fun gameplay, much harder than RTW but still fairly easy to win a campaign. Simple enough to not require much relearning of the engine, and is a "complete" mod. Have lots to look forward to in 7.0, having seen the Dev forum for a while...;) Having said that, the campaign is a bit too easy, DarthFormations needs heavy tweaking to work properly with RTR and some of the factions in the campaign game expand extremely wildly (especially Macedon and Greek Cities - whoever's luckiest tends to end up owning half the world).

EB: Far, far more detailed than RTR, and a much more difficult campaign. For the first time I can think of while playing RTW, I'm actually stuck in a stalemate and am incapable of expanding my empire any further. Eyecandy-wise, EB is better in some respects and worse in others than RTR. Some of the skins are of lesser quality, but the detail gone into the models and animations is astounding. The trait system is more immersive for the game, and the cities are less congested in places. However, it's still a Beta and has lots of things to add and fix. The best thing about EB is, of course, the scripts. From the AI enhancement scripts to the Victory Conditions script, it's all awesome.

Conclusion: They're both awesome mods. EB's sheer detail is both a blessing and a curse; it feels like you're micromanaging too much and need to concentrate more on the traits your generals get, as many are received without you knowing it (such as "Forced March" and "Confident/Unconfident Troops"), but on the other hand it helps make you feel like you're actually running an empire. RTR seems more geared towards conquering, while EB seems more of an empire management game. Both are good in different ways, depending on my mood. As for units, in general I prefer RTR skins but love some of the new anims for EB (especially the two-handed Sarissa anim, despite the bugs). So, while I'd say EB has the most potential, it still feels incredibly incomplete, as one would expect in a Beta. For completeness, RTR is the way to go.

[Kralizec]

RTR 6.X is already a finished product. It's well polished, immersive, and generally a damn fine mod. EB needs a lot of tweaking, but the level of detail is amazing when it comes to scripts, traits etc. The OB already exceeded my first expectations, and I'm looking forward to future versions

[Danest]

EB has a sometimes fascinating, sometimes intimidating (to me) use of other languages for things like troops and city improvements. I'm not sure why, but I seem to be able to handle some languages, like latin, easier than greek or a few others. Neither mod (I think) has druids or arcani, and though I miss the druid's abilities and the arcani's look, I fully agree with their non-existance in the game.

[Bartix]

Mostly what Simon says!
RTR map is also expanded east to beyond Bartix/whatever

EB take scripting to new different level compare to anything!! Amazing stuff.

Think also models and animations more different from vanilla in EB.

But now EB is beta, very buggy.
RTR is in best shape ever with 6 "Gold".

Currently RTR for play, EB to help find problems and so help most ambitious project to success, or to glimpse some exciting new thing.

[Bar Kochba]

think there both wicked mods one thing i like about EB is the Uninstaller but all in all i think Rtr have better battles at the moment but then again this is only the beta version not completed so who knows?

[Geoffrey S]

Right now, I'd say RTR is really what RTW should have been in a number of regards, and is a most excellent and ambitious mod. EB however takes detail, accuracy and the campaign gameplay mechanics to a different level, doing a large number of things that alter the way you play significantly; it's needing a lot of work still, but at the moment to me it's the more promising of the two. EB changes a lot of things quite radically, whilst RTR improves the original RTW formula immeasurably. Both are very good mods.

Though, as has been stated, RTR is far better at the moment if you want to play a proper campaign without CTDs.

Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to play either, particularly over the last few weeks.

[Chester]

They are the only two playable (both ready to play and worth playing) mods for RTW. Both are good, EB is better.

The end.

[AntiochusIII]

They are the only two playable (both ready to play and worth playing) mods for RTW. Both are good, EB is better.

The end.

Not really. I can't say EB is better just yet. It is still incomplete, after all, and the team has made it clear that they are sending this baby out for bug-hunting, not completely worry-free enjoyment. RTR is awesome, as always, and EB is, of course, awesome as well. Why would one even need to say "better?" Can't both be "great?"

It's like comparing apples to...apples, but they are both sweet!

Also, there are other mods worth playing. For example, SPQR is very unique -- a few fans have become SPQR fanatics as a result -- and some of their/his concepts just touches my taste, like the 0-turn thing and the supremely unbreakable Spartans.

*waits for people to burn his effigy for saying that last phrase, which is historically incorrect*

Besides, I am enjoying Extended Greek Mod on Mundus Magnus right now which spices up the vanilla game a lot especially for the Greeks. It's fun to go playing around with lite mods like that one.

[PSYCHO V]

In a nutshell whilst trying to be as unbias as possible
(nothing against RTR but when one has laboured at a project like EB for so long one needs to be very careful, sure some of the RTR lads would be able to relate.)

Currently at this stage of Eb's Beta...imho:

RTR vs EB

Pace vs Purpose
(strategically)

Pretty vs Particular
(graphically, historically)

Polish vs Potential
(In totality)

my2bob

[jerby]

RTR is good no doubt. But i like EB better for their
-victory conditions (dunno, last RTR i played was 6.0..maybe this is also new for RTR)
-script
-21 factions
-recruitment
-government

and i somehow don't like RTR recruitment policy, last tiem i checked i had to wait 4 turns for a hetairoi....

still, I geus steh main difference is aproach:
-RTR just started modding and gradually upgraded teh version public...starting at 3.0 with just fixes. ending with 6.x including a lot of skin-fixes and historical fixes
-EB just tore down RTW and started all over, form the groudn up...wich enables them to overhaul everything, but also give sthem a lot of bugs....some perhaps unfixable(though i doubt it)

[Zero1]

While RTR is definately more polished and such, I prefer EB because I find it to be more challenging and immersive. I don't mind micro management, and the occasional CTD doesn't bother me very much. I also like the attention to detail that EB has put into the "barbarian" factions, something which I find to be lacking in RTR.

All in all, I prefer EB mostly due to my playing style and preference in factions.

[Chester]

EB is my favorite for one reason alone. It's not the great skins, the factions, or the scripts. It's the fact that I've lost 3 campaigns. I got far but lost them eventually. Never have I lost to the AI since first playing the game with rome way back in the day.

RTR is great. But I never felt challenged. This is all I really ask for, a challenging game that will keep me coming back for more.

VH/VH settings on EB is a dream come true to this seasoned RTS player (warcraft 1!)

[Danest]

One thing for sure about EB, the number of neighbors you have reduces your chances of success drastically. I mean this in a good way. :) As Carthage, I'm being ripped by Rome and Egypt at once, and I don't know that survival will be possible. Again, a good thing. Back in vanilla, I remember fighting 4 or so at once and not worrying. Oh, and the Makedonian Companion cavalry... I wasn't paying attention to them, and they flanked me! Very nice.

[cunobelinus]

how about RTR is so much better than EB mainly because RTR is more historically accurate and EB seems to add pieces of crap that isnt needed and RTR is just a much better mod.Also again the names of all the factions are a load of absoulote crap .

[Ajantis]

Well then, feel free to think that but do you want to actually state some real reasons why you feel its better? The faction names were put there because there historicaly accurate. In history class, if you have a test question and the answer is Rome, nobody cares that you don't like the name Rome. Your answers wrong.