Re: Alexander: Total War

**Guyus Germanicus** · 11-28-2006, 01:19

To whom it may concern,

I'm back after a 6-7 week hiatus. I had cancelled my Internet service provider at home and had not found a replacement until resorting to going back to netzero.

Back in September I had mentioned on this thread that I was having trouble playng the alexander expansion because as I was going into a limbo in the combat phase. After the narrator would do his shpeel and I pressed the "start" button to begin the combat, as soon as I used the mouse to pan the camera overhead, the scamera would pan into blue sky and my mouse would go haywire. I could never recover from that and have to power down my PC just to get control back.

I have downloaded and installed all the RTW updates including 1.5 & 1.6. But I'm thinking that the Alexander game requires a better video software than I have. I have a 128MB ATI Hyper Memory, Radeon x300SE setup.

I welcome any useful feedback.

**Comrade Alexeo** · 11-28-2006, 02:46

Mind you, I don't actually own Alexander, but if you can run RTW fine on your graphics card, I'm not sure why that would affect Alexander, given that its the exact same engine.

It might just be a bad copy of Alexander, I'm afraid

Good luck!

P.S. You're in Colorado too mate? Huzzah! Whereabouts?

**Guyus Germanicus** · 11-29-2006, 02:43

Comrade Alex -

Yes, I'm a Lakewood denizen. It's on the west end of the Denver metro area. I've been doing RTW since April. I had been a Civ IV player - found the game fascinating. But I've always been an ancient history buff. On the Civ IV CD they had a game sampler add on that was an ancient Rome setting. It whetted my appetite for something more substantial. Then I discovered RTW in the Gold Edition at a local WalMart. And that was all she wrote. I haven't been able to leave this game alone for very long ever since. I'm in a Carthaginian campaign even now.

I found out, however, that some of the Gold Edition copies of RTW released to North America were only updated to release 1.4. So I had to download patch 1.5 and 1.6, supposedly, so that the Alexander expansion would work. I bought my Alexander copy via the Eras package so I could have the CD along with the other eras if I wanted to play them someday. But, I 've been having this strange problem with the alexander game ever since. Given the fact that I bought my desktop PC just this last February, I wouldn't naturally think that I was behind the power curve on Windows, CPU features or video cards, etc. Nevertheless the doggone Alexander pack hasn't worked for me. Oh well . . . I figure I will be able to figure this problem out eventually. I have a 2.8 gighertz machine, 1 gig memory, 2 gig virtual memory, etc etc., so I'm not wanting in the PC department.

It appears that The Guild has revised their forums presentation categories reducing the number of topic threads. Don't know if I like that or not. But . . . I ain't in charge and don't think I'd wanna be.

One would think you're right as it concerns the RTW engine. I didn't think the graphics in Alexander appeared to be any more sophisticated than in vanilla RTW. I suppose I could try to reduce the game's video settings to show less detail and see if that doesn't resolve the problem. As it is, I can't quite identify where things are going wrong.

Nice to meet you, CA.

**econ21** · 11-29-2006, 02:55

Not sure it is relevant, but I did find ATW lagged terribly on my machine - it was painful and I had to lower the setting right down (no grass etc) to get something half way playable. Never had a trouble with RTW. I confess I have not gone back to ATW after upgrading my graphics card for M2TW.

**Guyus Germanicus** · 11-29-2006, 03:55

Thanks Econ. Sounds like I should pursue my hunch.

**Lorenzo_H** · 11-29-2006, 11:46

Hey Guyus!

I remember you from these forums...you gave me some help with my Julii campaign.

So you play Civ IV? So do I, and I like it as well.

**Guyus Germanicus** · 11-29-2006, 23:08

Thank you for those very kind greetings, DD.

Yes, I remember those long, windy disquisitions I wrote. I sometimes reread some of my past postings and wonder: "How could you be so arrogant, Guyus?"

I'm glad you found some of the things I wrote helpful.

I've learned a lot about RTW over these last few months. The more I play the game, however, the less I can see hard and fast rules to follow. Sometimes when I'm playing a faction that is making huge amounts of cash, I have no corruption problems. In other games, all my faction members get corrupted.

I've found the counsel of some of our compatriots in the Guild - Empirate, Seamus F, and Rotogun to name a few - to be very helpful.

I used to think putting off farm development a good idea. Many of the experienced veterans of the game have advised that, seeing no need to promote a population/squalor problem. But upgrading farms can have a beneficial affect on profitability of the city. And eventually your city is going to develop a squalor problem anyway in the long run. So, I'm not as stingy about developing farms as I used to be. And that's just one thing I think I've learned over the last few months.

I've actually had a game where I was earning 6800+ in Athens. I have a screen print in my tgas file to prove it. (Wish I had snagit software to post the picture.) Also, in one game where I was playing with the Scipii, I captured Corduba and was making 4500+ in THAT city. Amazing. I've got a screen print of that as well.

Eventually, I'll get back to Civ IV, I'm sure.

I have to credit both games with motivating me to expand my reading in ancient history.

So, I count the RTW/Civ IV fun as a positive learning experience.

Good to hear from you, diablo.

**Comrade Alexeo** · 11-29-2006, 23:57

Nice to meet ya too, GG :D

I'm on the other side of Denver, in good old Littleton. I also used to play Civilization a lot - specifically Civ 2 - but, as good as those games are, they just seem so lacking compared to the Total War games. I got Shogun on a whim a couple years ago and the rest, to be terribly cliche, was history.

I nearly died from excitement when I first heard about Rome. In fact, I'll be the first to say that it was RTW that inspired me, already an avid amateur historian, to look more into ancient/classical history, an area which has now become one of my better ones and actually inspired me to look into Roman reenacting. Actually, depending on how much you really do like ancient history, how much free time you have, and how deep your wallet is (that's only half a joke), I can let you know some more about our group if you want; drop me a PM.

To get back on-topic though: Your rig sounds like a good one, so I can't imagine why it'd be schvitzing on Alexander. A thought came to mind though: have you tried lowering or removing shadows? Those always seem to be one of the biggest affectors of performance.