RTW - First Impressions

[rasoforos]

Ok...

...first things first...

...you probably have heard about all this 100 times now.

I was introduced to the world of TW through Medieval and soon after that I bought Sogun as well. I have finished at least 30-40 campaigns of Medieval and needless to say I love the game.

I could not buy Rome because it would not run on my PC but since last December I am a proud owner of a rather powerfull laptop. I saw the RTW gold edition on the shelf last week and I set aside all the issues I had with RTW (Inaccurate units and english speaking factions mostly) and bought the game.

I installed it and I launched it with enthusiasm. First thing I met was the fact that I could only play as a Roman for my first campaign, but I knew that already, so I set it aside.

As the game progressed my enthusiasm was getting less and less. I have to say that I might change my mind after I complete more campaigns but the first one was a dissapointment.

Wanting to get accustomed to the game I started an easy campaign.

My observations follow below:

1) Language

English really kills the game.Its worse than I expected. Especially that strongly american 'battering raaahm'. How difficult would it be to have a choice?

I started a second campaign as the Greek Cities. This made the AmericaRomans sound like perfect examples of liguisting correctness! Couldnt they find someone with an at least decent aproximation of a greek accent ???

- Is there a language mod by the way?

2) Diplomacy

If it isnt broken, dont fix it!

What was wrong with MTW drag and drop diplomacy and agent system?

Its a pain to even see your agent units on the map. This was one of the elements that made TW a success!

...And when u finally locate a unit...u discover that the diplomacy system is laughable. Its not even worth it to bother with it. Having played CIV4 just before RTW made this impression even worse...

3) Bugs

I am there, besieging a city and my units are having a little party below the tower and are not really keen on climbing the bloody thing. I would have thought that a Gold Edition game would have bugs sorted out by now.

4) Fighting system.

I like battles, I am not too keen on sieges. I HOPE that the phainomenon I experienced was because of the easy difficulty level. It appears that 80% of my battles were siege battles. A big thumbs down!

5) Public Order

When a city is unrully then u bring the troops in, simple as that. It worked wonders in MTW and RTW. But noooo , they did have to wreck havoc with it didnt they?

It went a bit like this: I got a city riots. My gut instict told me to bring in reinforcements, I also built stuff that would increase public order....

...End of story:

a)They had their baths and theaters and hippodromes and were even watching the Osbournes on satellite and would get free food and Vestal Virgins on demand....

b)A garisson powerfull and numerous enough to destroy a medium sized faction was guarding the city...

...and?...

...I kept getting revolts. How realistic is that? It grew extremelly tedious and boring. What was wrong with the MTW system?


Well thats all. I do hope that it will get better and that I will take some of the things back but at the moment I feel like RTW is nowhere near as good as MTW or STW. I really doubt that, if those two great games had not existed, RTW would ever become a popular game.

If any mods correct any of these issues then I d like your advice...

[Monarch]

Well tbh, the 'if it aint broke dont fix it' line has been taken by games such as AoE, and oh look everyone moans that they're not trying to advance the game and add new content (me included) when developers such as CA try to change things and add stuff to it people moan. It's a dammed if you do dammed if you dont scenerio. I'm not bothered about diplomacy, I own Civilization IV and all the micromanaging get's rather annoying, I accept it can/should be better but it's not a big issue. And yes, I agree about too many revolts.

I didn't realise gold edition contains the 1.5 patch, this gives you the siege tower bug. And my oh my that is so very annoying, it only happens when attacking large stone walls though. So when you attack them. the simplest fix is to use ladders/artillery/sap instead.

The language doesn't bother me, but I can see why it might bother others. Though if they spoke in ancient languages nobody (ok, almost nobody) would understand them, so they'd be little point. And I'm sure we could all pick apart how they where speaking latin.

Anyway, you can game edit factions so you can play with them without the console crap unlocking system, search the forum.

Anyway, have you installed BI yet? (thats comes with gold right?)

[orangat]

The micro managing of spies/assassin and family members is tedious, boring and the tower bug is a pain (hear that CA?!) but the rest of your grouses are really minor.
You don't have to fight sieges, just walk out and fight outside when you see an army coming (spies and diplomats are keeping an eye out).
Bad PO is part of the game, I think the AI suffers from them too although its much less or even close to zero at high difficulty levels.

[rasoforos]

Anyway, have you installed BI yet? (thats comes with gold right?)

Yes it does. They install as one and create two different icons. I ll probably try it after I finish a few more campaigns of RTW though.


I agree about what you say about developments ( we do live in a world of 'annual edition' games with little or no development ) but it is sad to see things moving backwards. The STW/MTW agent systems could improve and diplomacy should be advanced to a decent level...but...it seems to me that they were just substituted by barely workable new systems. I can bet that not many people were too happy there in CA about releasing the game with its current diplomatic system.

Thnx for the editing advice. I should have thought of that.

[econ21]

I agree with your observations, although I am not sure they are that important in the wider scheme of things. If you play a little longer, you might find bigger grumbles: the lack of challenge was the killer for me.

I must confess my view of RTW oscillated dramatically - initially, I thought it was brilliant; I adored the freedom you get on the map and had a blast marching through Gaul and Civil War in my first Julii campaign (a 9/10 at least). Then it seemed to quickly get tedious and I lost interest (6/10 or worse). And now I am back to thinking it brilliant (9/10), after modding it to Rome Total Realism (EB promises to be even better - 10/10 - if they fix the CTDs). I find RTR (and EBs) representation of battle to be exceptional - it "feels" much more right than vanilla RTW, MTW or STW ever did. I can't think of a better computer wargame. The mods are also like wonderful history lessons in educating me about the geopolitics of the period.

However, a lot of the issues you raise do still remain. The prevalance of sieges is a quite big one, as are the sheer length of the campaigns. I think BI gets the balance rather better in both respects - there are less cities and the campaign is fast paced (it's a solid 8/10).

[dagiz]

just to show that you learn something new everyday, that bug about the sieges was driving me nuts, now I know why. ladders...must use them more.


I agree with quite a bit about what you said, especially on the battle front - I kinds miss a lot of the open field battles.

the diplomacy thing has taken a while to get used. the hard part is when you get a bunch of diplomats, send them out in the world, and you "forget" about them and they all die within a year of each other and you have to start over. that was a tad annoying.

I will say, despite all of this, its not that bad, I've played worse - much worse.

[Monarch]

IMO there needs to be some sort of interface in m2tw listing all your agents, and giving you their location. Because I too lose track of them often. Plus now they're adding more agents (merchants) to add to it all.

[hellenes]

Check This out...not perfect but a huge jump from vanilla RTW...
BTW Welcome back!!!

Hellenes

[doc_bean]

IMO there needs to be some sort of interface in m2tw listing all your agents, and giving you their location. Because I too lose track of them often. Plus now they're adding more agents (merchants) to add to it all.

There is iirc, right click on the agent tab at the bottom.

[GFX707]

The language doesn't bother me, but I can see why it might bother others. Though if they spoke in ancient languages nobody (ok, almost nobody) would understand them, so they'd be little point. And I'm sure we could all pick apart how they where speaking latin.

Accentless English would be good enough for me. Anything but that horrible "The day is oouuahhharrs" nonsense in a thick yank accent.

[teja]

Hrum, I cannot judge the English Version, because I use to use my native language in, so all is fine :)

About the micro management: Yes, in later phases of the game this micro management of characters and cities is a lot of work and it has some flaws for sure. Handling big cities is a pain. I always wounder why the AI often has really small garrisons in and their cities are almost quite.
On the other hand all the installations like colloseum, sewers and stuff have some use! They often offer good traits for your charakters, making your city stronger against plages and other stuff too. It is in many ways inspirated by usual strategy games as for example Civilization and is in general fine. If you only poke on a rush, you will later have problems in what case ever. There are fractions and areas that use to have more civil unrest but others. In vanilla for example Germany and Palestine are very often rioting. That represents their ancient population unwilling to bow down for any conquerors. If you dislike it, leave them alone. Simply use!

I also played MTW and STW as you did. I really loved the klick and drop diplomaty and spywork. This is now harder to manage, but represents a more difficult way to use your men. What I really hate at MTW was the sea trading (which is much better now) and always the same battlefields in any province. Now YOU decide where in a province you want to strike. YOU can improve forts and towers, you can ignore rebellous forces and go straight to your targets. This is a really great improvement I love. Yes, the AI is not too great with such details, but they have other points to be favored.

If you dislike the new armys to improve, go straight to BI expansion and choose a HORDE. You will have outstanding armies with that and have no provinces to handle. Go and sharp your leadingship and fight other Hordes. No need to manage cities early on if you want to. Then go deep inside of Roman Empires and take well prepared cities for the second part of the game.

One of the biggest favors of RTW compared to early MTW are the very difficult military styles of some fractions. The Greece-fractions use to use very strong hoplite foot spearmen which can build walls of men. First time I played them I hate them for being so inmanoverable, but later I used them fine. They are supported by good footarchers, many siege stuff and a fair cavalry. Greecs can do anything, but they are always slow on the battlefield.
The Romans have one of the best, multiple used infantry what had been expected. No need to talk about. Their support units are extreme flexible. The Marius reformes was a point I worked hard for and changed the military system a lot. Normally in the middle of the game you have already build your favorite army in general, but with Marius you have a new techtree and it is worth to reform your army soon. Barbarian fractions are very spread. Any but the Scythians have lots of ligth, but furious infantry and a pretty fair cavalry. Special units like Bersekers, Druids and stuff offer a complete new feeling. Against the Romans they are very useful. The mighty cavalry they use in BI is awesome and you will love it! Eastern fractions like Cartage and Parthians use mighty elephants. It is pretty easy to counter them when you know how, but if YOU use them correct they are hard to stop...

I can add tons more. What made MTW so great? Armies usually had pretty poor infantry and outstanding knights. If you call it extreme, you collected a lot of nice balanced support forces and then you attacked with your knights and killed them all over a very long period. Christian European armies had not been that different from each others. The Islamic fractions had a better infantry and better archers, so I liked them more in general, because their 'knights' had not been much worser... Completely new had only been the Vikings and the Mongols, but apart of that only the development of gunpowder units and the comeback of line infantery (helbards for example). Usually MTW units run later but now, but this makes battles much faster.

As for the fractions, look around at downloads and stuff in here and unlock ANY fractions from begin on. I am sure you will love it. In MTW it was not too much different if you had choosen a Katholic- or an Orthodox- fraction. The diffrence to Islamic fractions was not much either. Now choose the completely different military traditions in RTW and enjoy! There are no so much uber units left as in MTW, which I loved too. Give RTW a chance ;)

[gardibolt]

Actually, I was poking about in some AI cities last night and saw that although their public order was 30-60%, they didn't seem to be suffering rioting or any problems at all as a result. So perhaps the AI city system doesn't work by the same one as the player's does.

[teja]

...So perhaps the AI city system doesn't work by the same one as the player's does.

Yeah I saw similar cities very often, seems to be normal.