So what DID you like about RTW ?

[Monarch]

For me, Medieval's battle maps look better overall--they're darker and drearier, and fit the tone of the game much better. It's true that Rome obviously renders trees, grass, and other vegetation much better than MTW, but the RTW's bright and colorful battle maps always made me feel like I should be going to the circus instead of engaging in the grisly task of war.

Hmm, I was thinking about that and perhaps this is deliberatly put in as in Roman times man was all progressing, war was all shiny and heroic, portrayed in a glorified state (ofc, I'm not saying that war wasn't dark and gritty, but how it was portayed). But in Medieval, well they didn't call it the dark ages for nothing.

Just an idea, but I agree I'd still rather have it all dark, adds more atmosphere.

[Mount Suribachi]

Graphics - though when zoomed out fighting a battle you can't tell units apart as easily as MTW, and the battles are over so quick that you rarely get time to admire your men close-up

Campaign Map - An enormous leap over MTW. The AI doesn't always use it very well (especially sending units in piece-meal), but still, it gives a MUCH deeper strategic gameplay experience than MTW

Agents - no need to have a priest in every province, a bishop in every province, an inquisitor in every province, a spy in every province, an assasin in every province.....very tedious in MTW. And, NO ALL SEEING WATCHTOWERS!!!!!!

Family Tree - great stuff, and should really improve MTW2, makes it that much harder to wipe out a faction due to lack of heirs.

The Mods - I'm not massive into mods, but RTW has attracted a much greater number of modders, and a much greater range of mods than MTW

Ancillaries - Gives that bit extra flavour to your characters, and ones like the actor and comedian are quite funny.

Sieges - Nice to have men on the walls and stuff. Though the siege towers are more annoying to use than they need be, and the +470 morale in the town square bores me....

The Senate - really liked the missions & the way they got the Cursus Honorum in there, even if most mods get rid of it.

[Orda Khan]

Shoot on the move horse archers.
At last

Projectiles.
Arrow cast look much better, very realistic but RTW introduced flaming arrows too, what a shame. I will not repeat what has already been said about this horrible addition.

It is nice to zoom in and see better graphics but this is a waste of time for anything other than replays, unless you want to lose control. And campaign replays were abandoned!!

That's about it

.......Orda

[Ciaran]

The improved battle controls. I´ve played RTW before getting MTW (which I also like very much and honestly I couldn´t call one game superior to the other), and having to put up with the left-select/left-move syste of MTW took quite a time to get used to.

The campaign. Not flawless, certainly, and for MTW2 I hope for improvements on the AI use of the campaign, but I´d consider it a step into the right direction, especially with the option of having more than one army attacking (allows encircling strategies and reduces the battle length - I remember fighting three hour battles in MTW, one wave of reinforcements after the other, arriving in piecemeal to be dealt with) an enemy, ambushing, etc. Oh, and I can actually use spies and assasins.

The diplomacy. Again, not flawless, but again a step into the right direction, I like having more options than just allying, being at war or being neutral.

The sieges, finally one can use a variety of siege engines, although here as well there are some flaws, mostly due to poor AI, but in parts to poor implementation as well (city labyrinths and the siege tower bug - and the latter didn´t even exist in the versions prior to 1.3. How it´s possible to implement such a crucial bug in a patch when it worked previously is honestly beyond my imagination).

[Zimfan]

1. Obviously, and as many have already mentioned, the graphics are far superior in RTW, and I think more noticible when zoomed out than some think.

2. pathfinding on the battlefield is much approved. When playing MTW I'm constantly annoyed to find my nice, neat battleline ruined if I try to move it over a hill or through trees. This still occurs once in a while in RTW, but with a much lower frecuency.

3. As many have also mentioned, the AI does quite a reasonable job managing horse archers, and I've been tempted to utter many a curse word while fighting Hun hordes.

4. Every once in a while, the AI manages a truly brilliant move on the battlefield. Unforetunately it's consistency is much weaker than MTW's, but I'm hoping since MTW2 is the second game to use the new engine, that will be fixed.

5. The campaign map is much more realistic and calls for greater thought on the part of the human player, and since patch 1.6/1.5, the AI has done much better navigating it and I've rarely encountered those tiny stacks that plagued the earlier patches.

6. Better unit makeup on the part of the AI in SP, albeit with worse utilization of it's units on the battlefield.

7. Much greater variety between the units availible to each faction, resulting in different strategies needed to fight them.

8. More diplomatic choices. Pity the comp is too stupid/suicidal to allow much use of them. I'm hoping with the way the comp will record past behavior between your faction and the relative strenghts of your and it's faction will enable it to act a bit more brightly in diplomacy.

9. Right clicking to move attack with units has saved me from many a frustrating sigh I would have uttered if I'd been playing MTW.

10. No giant AI peasant armies.

11. The WRE in BI. As Econ21 said, the single best campaign premise in the game, challenged only by the Byzantines in MTW(in my opinion).

That said, I find the MTW AI more consistently challenging in SP battles, more sane in diplomacy until you hit that 60% mark, and in many other ways an equally great game in it's own right.

[screwtype]

NO ALL SEEING WATCHTOWERS!!!!!!

Speaking of which - I also kind of liked the way building a watchtower will gradually cause the surrounding terrain to become revealed. A small detail, but nicely done.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

What do I like better?

Control interface is better, much better than MTW; left click-select/ right click-do is a much better mechanism than left click-do it all/ right click-vomit.

I also like the green arrows to figure out which unit is selected.

And I like additional unit abilities, such as phalanx, or pila throwing, or shooting while moving. Javelin in MTW were really bad, it improved a bit in RTW.

If you care about SP, then the campaign map and hordish behaviour are somehow some sort of improvement (although... I guess AI need to figure out how to move on a campaign map)

Pretty much it. Considering that I have shelved RTW, that list can't be too long

Louis,

[SirGrotius]

First off, I liked the graphics.

I liked the click and drag option.

I liked the city populations (if only they made more sense).

I liked the campaign map.

[The Wizard]

The concept of the campaign map. Like the doc said: one step forward and two backwards, but I loved the idea. I'm hoping they finally put the polish onto it that it so desperately needs to reach its full potential. If they could pull that off in MTW2, I'd wager we'd get an enormously more interesting game, with the introduction of strategy into the mix at long last.

[sunsmountain]

That polish (read Polish the first time ) takes time and effort. During the past two years, they have been busy programming:

- RTW: Barbarian Invasion (new content and slightly improved AI)
- RTW: Alexander (mostly content)
- 2 big patches for Rome (both improved the AI, though 1.5 did so better than 1.2), 2 minor.
- MTW ideas: Princesses, religion, pope, nobles and all their missions, crusades, recruitment pool, debugging for new content, improving campaign map AI (though we have no proof of that yet, BI already seems to show it).

That still leaves quite some time for an improved battlemap AI, and getting multiplayer balance right. I hope they get it done before October/November, but I'm a little sceptic. That's already in 2 months, and the battlemap is just very, very complicated.

[Darth Nihilus]

Among other things previously listed, one of the minor features that I liked was the factions listing scroll that gave you a good indicator of how the other factions were doing.

[Vuk]

Seriously? Men when struck with a flaming arrow would burst, head to foot, into flames and colapse in a blacken heap?

Why in the world did we ever start using firearms???

Seriously I don't have a problem with the in the rain thing, but small explosion and immediate buring to a blackened husk of the target is a little overdone...

Now personally I really like and still actively play RTW and BI especially with the latest patches. After a bit of introspection I even gave up using the mods (other than Player1's bug fixer) and returned to the vanilla game after I figured out I was not really having more fn with the mods, just a slightly different experience...

That is to signify a death by fire: RTW cannot have them running around, tearing off their clothes screaming as the flames slowly take hold. I kinda like CA's way better...That's just me.

I here that term alot. What exactly is the vanilla mod?

[Duke John]

Vanilla icecream is the most boring and basic ice cream in the world -> Vanilla R:TW is R:TW without any mod installed, i.e. the official game.

[Vuk]

1. Graphics.
2. Improved ballistics.
3. Cavalry charge affects...nuf said.
4. Better unit balance/more realistic representation of units.
5. More realistic battle map/campaign map options.

Sum = More realistic = More fun = Better game.

I've made enemies.

[Hermano]

4. Better unit balance/more realistic representation of units.
...
Sum = More realistic = More fun = Better game.

You're talking about graphics again, right? Otherwise I don't see where you find the realism...
At least no extreme fantasy stuff appeared in BI afaik, so I'm optimistic for M2TW.

I've made enemies.

Not everyone disagreeing with you is your enemy, unless there were multiplayercampaigns - what you wrote would be the death sentence for your faction .
h

[Bob the Insane]

That is to signify a death by fire: RTW cannot have them running around, tearing off their clothes screaming as the flames slowly take hold. I kinda like CA's way better...That's just me.

I guess I over stated the thing, I don't really have an problem with the abstraction of the men bursting into flames, I just think it is a little over the top.

Just like going "OMG, they still have fire arrows in the game this is the more unrealistic piece of *&^% ever, and therefore it must suck" is a little over the top too...

By the way I like your idea. The men running around with flaming arrows suck in them, hair on fire and rolling around on the ground or running for the nearest river to put themselves out... Good fun...

[JR-]

not a great deal, nothing that sticks in my mind.

*starts re-installing MTW*

[Darth Nihilus]

One thing that quickly came to my mind was the fact that towards the end of the game in MTW, you would have major cash problems because you couldn't trade between your own provinces, in RTW you can. I'm playing a long campaign at the moment and I almost have the whole map so I just had to post this as it came to my mind.

[sbroadbent]

Having played RTW for almost a week now I have to say that I've been converted. I'm mostly interested in the single player game, but here is a short list of things I liked about RTW.

At first it took a bit of time to get used to the campaign map, and how units move. I like it in the sense that it is less abstract, though I don't like the limit of one stack of 20 units per tile.

I like how the terrain that your units are on will determine the layout of the battlefield. Many complain that the battlefields are too small. I agree. I really think that the battlefield should've been made up of not only the tile that the battle will take place on, but also the eight tiles surrounding it. Each army would start on it's particular tile. What annoys me is that there is a chance that if you have reinforcements that they simply don't show up. I had a battle that I was easily going to dominate the computer. I overwhelmed the computer in numbers with a couple separate armies, but the army that I used to initiate the battle consisted of a general (13 or 14 cavalry) and one unit of wardogs. I had atleast a dozen cavalry as reinforcements. I faced off against 2 peasants, 2 warbands, and a cavalry general. I was fortunate that the AI wasn't very skilled as I managed to route all but the cavalry. Unfortunately I was down to 10 cavalry vs 22 light cav. My general died.

Carrying on, I much prefer RTW's ships, and the less frustrating ship combat. In MTW one fast enemy ship would have no problems blockading your trade routes, and cutting your general off from your distant colonies/expansions. It still takes time for your ships to travel from one port to another.

Trade, both land and ship based is so much better. Your merchants decide who they want to trade with, and you have to negotiate for trade rights. I also like trading for map information, so I can figure out who owns what (or who owned what at the time the map information was received), without spamming units and sending them to different provinces.

I also like how you can send armies out through your allies and enemies territories without having to fight a battle to decide who controls the province, although I was somewhat nervous when the Spanish (who were my allies) sent a force through my provinces to hang out with Germania.

When it comes to province happiness, income, and population growth, I like how it breaks it down to explain what factors go in to the various levels. I don't particularly like that there is no Very Low level for taxes. Squalor is also bothersome, and only gets worse as the town grows.

I also enjoy sieges and the fact that the units that handle the siege equipment are your regular troops and that once the wall has been breached, they can drop the equipment and join in on the battle.

As others said, the diplomacy options are a good addition, though M2TW's diplomacy should be a big boost. Knowing beforehand that an offer simply wouldn't be accepted will be nice to know. After all, your agents are trained to identify what your rival might be interested in, and what is the best thing to offer to get a particular result. Knowing that I have to offer a huge sum of money in order to entice the AI to do some action for me makes things interesting. I have one interesting story about something that happened in my current Julii campaign.

I was allied with Germania and they had the settlement of Iuvavum. I had Patavium. They came down through the pass, and struck with a large army. They sieged Patavium breaking our alliance, and I managed to bring some reinforcements to relieve the siege. Not only did I devastate their force (none remained), but I lost relatively little. It was something like 600 of theirs to 150 of mine in losses. The following turn I got organized for an a move north. Before I could send them north, they sent their diplomat asking for a ceasefire. Knowing I didn't want to give them that, I changed the terms.

They gave me:
- Iuvavum
- 200 Denarii for 4 turns (something small)
- Map information

In exchange I gave them:
- Threat that I would attack

They accepted. Try that in MTW! I think there might've been a ceasefire thrown in there as well. I subsequently moved a force north, built two forts (one northwest of the settlement and one to the east at the borders). They had another army of troops near Iuvavum, which they subsequently withdrew. They haven't returned, but a few game years ago they asked for that province back. What they probably don't realize is not only did I eliminate the Gauls, but the Britons in the north, and then more recently the Spanish. I also took Palma from Carthage which even though they had one last province, the faction was eliminated. I've been told numerous times that I have the greatest military and have the best tech. Once the last rebels have been dealt with I shall have to deal with them.

Anyway, back on topic. I'm quite enjoying RTW right now. I loaded MTW to show a friend, but I found it hard to return to the abstract risk style campaign map, the horrible ship combat (even if both games have autocalc for naval combat), atleast in RTW one fast ship doesn't cause complete frustration

My final note is that I like RTW's two turns per game year, though I thought STW's 1 turn per season (4 per year) was the best. I like really long games in which I can play for as long as the game will go. It'd be interesting to play/mod M2TW to somehow have 4 turns per year instead of the supposed 225 turns over 450 years. Imagine, M2TW with 1800 turns

In all seriousness, in my MTW games I felt rushed in early when I would try to tech up (primarily focusing on building my trade network and fleets that by the time I would start on a land based invasion force, I'm already well into the High era, meaning that I mostly miss out on the early units. I tend to build slow at the start and turtle when possible until my financials are stable and I can start producing for larger military actions.

[maestro]

I'd love to see the new TotalWar to be compatible with Windows XP x64.

And it sure as hell better work on Vista and DX10!!!

[Spino]

- Gorgeous 3D graphics and animation

- The look and feel of the strategic map

- Random map generator for tactical battles

- Music - Simply spectacular (Jeff Van Dyck never seems to disappoint)

- Visible trade routes on land and sea and the fact that they are automatically generated (less stuff to micromanage)

- Mounted missile troops that fire on the move

- Overhauled siege battles (men on the walls, assault ladders, siege towers, etc.)

- 3D free camera preview of your settlements

[Servius]

Things I liked in RTW:

1) RTW had Romans!
2) Ancillaries were a good idea (just too damn many of them - management headache)
3) Forts. They were unnecessary in MTW because you were either in a territory or you weren't, but they were a cool idea all the same.
4) Cavalry occasionally charges THROUGH an opposing unit.
5) Javelins had longer ranges and were more deadly. Unfortunately, they were also more deadly to your own guys.
6) Roads. Again, unnecessary in MTW, but a good idea in RTW.

[DisruptorX]

Here's what was good in Rome:
-Increased ranged attack power. Missle units were harder to use in MTW.

-improved skirmish mode for horse archers and javelins, you don't need to micromanage them so much, makes them much better in multiplayer.

-Phalanxes

-SEIGES! This is the big one. Seiges in RTW are wonderful and oh so fun. The best part of the game.

I don't care what anyone says, though, the campaign map was lifeless, empty, and boring. I wouldn't list it as an improvement. The graphics may have been amazing when it came out, but now their flaws stand out, and they don't seem all that great over Medieval's.