Are the Romans too Powerful?

[guineawolf]

There are a few problems with this theory.
1. Romans enjoy having cav break you side flanks.Any attempt to run away would end in more casualties than normal.
2.Having troops that could be in combat sit and rest seems kinda crazy to me.

yes,it is posible when you are defending a street,mostly i put 3 line of phalanxe waiting for enemy come for slaughter so when they pass through the first line there will be second line of spearwall waiting for them.You dun need to cover all streets,coz enemy won't move a lot to go to your back,mostly they attack from front and your side.

i idn't tell you to run away,but you can wait for the gap that enemy fall back and regroup,in that time,you are free to fall back,let the full strength squad to replace your duty.

[OliverWKim]

I retried the battle experiment, this time with the Spartans upgraded to the max in terms of armor, weapons and veterancy, and suffered the same results. The Spartans' flanks were definitely secure, as they clogged up the streets with unit after unit. However, even then my Romans were able to cut down the Spartans in the flanks until a little vacuum appeared in the flank, and then I ordered them to pour in and cut down the Spartans from the sides.

[guineawolf]

I retried the battle experiment, this time with the Spartans upgraded to the max in terms of armor, weapons and veterancy, and suffered the same results. The Spartans' flanks were definitely secure, as they clogged up the streets with unit after unit. However, even then my Romans were able to cut down the Spartans in the flanks until a little vacuum appeared in the flank, and then I ordered them to pour in and cut down the Spartans from the sides.

perhaps you should try using spartan hoplites to siege roman legions defenses,try set phalanxe off,guard off and use your sword......
coz phalanxe get bonus fighting cavalry,but get penalty fighting infantry...... i think still the 12 armor problem..........

[OliverWKim]

perhaps you should try using spartan hoplites to siege roman legions defenses,try set phalanxe off,guard off and use your sword......
coz phalanxe get bonus fighting cavalry,but get penalty fighting infantry...... i think still the 12 armor problem..........

I was playing as the Romans, not the Greeks.

[guineawolf]

I was playing as the Romans, not the Greeks.

what i trying to say here,you will find out you will slaughter those romans with spartans as simple as you slaughter those spartans with romans..

experienced it,you will find out why.....

[Ossie The Great]

I think the romans are to strong as i had taken a good part of eurpoe with britan but when it came to fighting the romans they seemed to be impossible to beat and had armys everywhere. All though saying this i managed to beat 1023 romans with armina and did not even lose one man

[Plebian#10]

I have only played the Greeks and the Macedonians but I have had only a little problem beating the Romans on medium battle difficulty. I believe the true weakness is only the AI. While I agree that historically the Romans were at best weak in the calvary and archer departments before the Marius reforms how can we explain their historical expansion before the Marius reforms and not include their superb tactical ,logistical, and engineering capabilities. This is not to say that the Romans were unbeatable as pointed out by Noir but they just kept coming - tenacious is a word that comes to mind.
IMHO the game is as balanced as possible with the weak link going to the AI ability to play against a human. If a human versus a human game is conducted the results would be much different than a human versus the AI.

[Noir]

Originally posted by Plebian#10
IMHO the game is as balanced as possible with the weak link going to the AI ability to play against a human. If a human versus a human game is conducted the results would be much different than a human versus the AI.

Indeed they are different - and they most likely indicate that the balance you describe is not there. I've read that RTW Multi Player is effectively dominated by certain factions (as two players cannot take the same one to my understanding) - that is there is a process in finding out the best units and use only them in order to win, as far as understand. Someone that has experience in playing RTW online might give us a better insight relative to the truths of my sayings - because i just played RTW Single Player and read the forums for MP.

If you ever try the older TW games, most notably the original STW and the VI expansion for MTW, you'll find that they are (most likely) better balanced for MP, that is units give more equal chances to both opponents and this means that the game is not decided by taking "the best" units, but by playing with the most skill.

It is also indicative that many mods nerfed the Roman units considerably.

As i posted before the TW AI is actually quite good IMO if he is given equal armies and plays in flat terrain (that is how a multiplayer opponent would play you anyway) - at least he was so in STW/MTW and i find it very difficult to believe that it radically changed or had been dumped down since then. The new battle engine in RTW is in my opinion way more responsible for the "bad" AI in RTW, rather than the AI himself.

Many Thanks

Noir

[Ludens]

As i posted before the TW AI is actually quite good IMO if he is given equal armies and plays in flat terrain (that is how a multiplayer opponent would play you anyway) - at least he was so in STW/MTW and i find it very difficult to believe that it radically changed or had been dumped down since then. The new battle engine in RTW is in my opinion way more responsible for the "bad" AI in RTW, rather than the AI himself.

Back in the early days of R:TW I had a discussion on this subject with several members that have investigated R:TW engine thoroughly. Unfortunatly, I can't find the thread, but we identified many situations in which the R:TW A.I. underperformed compared to M:TW and S:TW. My own contribution to this discussion was to point out that the R:TW A.I. never uses ambushes on the battlemap. If it's units are hidden, it's just because they happened to be between the trees. Also, if the player's units hide, the A.I. forgets about them. I recently saw the A.I. chase one of my skirmisher units through the forest. I ordered my unit to halt, and they went into hiding. The A.I. broke of pursuit, and ordered it's units to return to the collunm. For all intents and purposes, it acted as if it had forgotten about my skirmishers.

Another example is the use of height advantage. In M:TW and S:TW the A.I. would move to gain as much height advantages as possible. If you moved to negate this, it would reposition itself to maximize height advantage again. This could lead to an elaborate dance with the player in which both tried to turn the terrain to their advantage. The R:TW A.I. also likes to take the hills, but if you move around it to gain the higher ground, it does nothing to prevent that. It merely swivels to face you. If the hill it positioned it's army on is very small, you can sometimes make it swivel it's army of the hill .

From this and several other examples we concluded that the A.I. in R:TW was not the same as the one that powered M:TW. This was back in the 1.1 or 1.2 days, and the A.I. did improve in the mean time, but both of the above arguments are valid for R:TW 1.5.

[IceWolf]

Is it just me or do the Roman General's bodygaurds (heavy cav) turn into the stormtroopers of death after Marius? They are just unstoppable now, I've seen them slaughter ridiculus amounts of my Scythians lately. My Scyth Generals can't stand up to them anymore.

IceWolf

[Rascal]

Game balance is great but look at the facts here. The Romans were a superpower unlike the world had never seen before. They conquered almost all of the known world and dominated it for hundreds of years. They are not overpowered in the real scheme of things, they were in fact that powerful. Nobody could withstand a full scale Roman invasion for very long. They lost battles and legions and left some regions alone for lack of profit, but when they rallied their armies all fell before them. Game balance only goes so far and thats what difficulty levels are for. I still lose a rare battle from being too cocky and trying to prove my might with small forces, so be it. If I want more balance I play another faction who are not as powerful and let the romans do their thing and build into their normal superpower then take em head on. That makes a long campaign with a lot of angry Romans sending wave after wave of troops at me...

[Noir]

Originally posted by Rascal
...but look at the facts here. The Romans were a superpower unlike the world had never seen before. They conquered almost all of the known world and dominated it for hundreds of years. They are not overpowered in the real scheme of things, they were in fact that powerful. Nobody could withstand a full scale Roman invasion for very long. They lost battles and legions and left some regions alone for lack of profit, but when they rallied their armies all fell before them. Game balance only goes so far and thats what difficulty levels are for.

I object this view for the simple reason that Rome didn't started as an superempire - it started as a bunch of little villages around a larger village that were trying to protect themselves from raiding Gauls and other local competitors such as the Samnites and the Greek City states in the South.

The Romans were expert at assimilating other cultures and peoples and that was a major strength and reason for their growth, that was slow, difficult and far from predestined. In many cases they were "drawn-in" to the conquest game that they didn't really intend to play until some advanced point.

The vanilla game fails to portray all these struggles and ups and downs because it lacks subtlety in the details - it sets forth to the predestined conclusion that is the "from our time" view of Rome as a superempire.

I also very much doubt that you get play-balance by the higher difficulty levels and playing the other factions.

Many Thanks

Noir

[Ludens]

The Romans were expert at assimilating other cultures and peoples and that was a major strength and reason for their growth, that was slow, difficult and far from predestined. In many cases they were "drawn-in" to the conquest game that they didn't really intend to play until some advanced point.

True. Some of Rome's greatest victories (conquest of Greece and Asia, Gallic wars) happened again enemies weakened by infighting. During the Punic wars, when the Romans were up against an enemy at the peak of its power, they often got trashed pretty bad. You also notice that as soon as the veterans from the second Punic war retire, the Romans suddenly suffer from a string of defeats in Iberia and Africa. Their legions were strong, but not invincible, and the Punic wars were won more due to their ability to field army after army in the face of defeat, rather than any superiority at fighting.