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- Dec 16, 2019
Total War thread
- Thread starter Strelok
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- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
It was too in EB. Getting a properly supported Hellenistic pike line was a steam roller. You just couldn't afford to skimp on the supporting units. Keep those Thureophoroi and Thorakitai on the flanks or else the Romans/Celts/Fucking Falx wielding Getae will flank and destroy you. I remember when EB started because a bunch of history buffs got pissed at CA saying that actual historical units would be boring. Then Rome II looks a awful lot like EB, but somehow not as good.
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
Meanwhile CA gave us the facewrecking Urban Cohort... Only heard talk about it but no specifics, sadly. Got anything you'd love to share?
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2014
Yeah, they were making EB II using the Medieval II engine a while back. I played around with it for a while a year or so ago but it was just a bit too unstable at the moment.
I legit wouldn't be shocked if they or some dedicated fan tried to port it over, since Remastered's mapping is pretty much identical to the original Rome.
Yeah, Pike lines were stronk but quite breakable if you knew how to flank and/or break them up. I liked that aspect a lot. You had to know some basics with classical warfare to do a decent job with things.
For EB, I loved that as Rome you actually gained your unit advancement when you lost. Your reforms and gaining stronger units required you to lose some battles to define its need. Otherwise you just got stuck with the Camillan stuff. I also liked how your type of government determined what you could build, and it was often better once you got out of lands you could core to make puppet rulers.
Oh, and Armenia can form Persia and gain a good roster out of it alongside Pontus or the Parthians, that's pretty awesome. The "barbarians" like the Gallic tribes and Sweboz also actually were reworked to be interesting and slowly reform into a more complex and developed society.
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2014
The Bronze Age period Egypt conquering the map in light speed in R:TW is on the same level of being iconic as nuclear mad Gandhi of the Civilization games.
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2014
It's so cursed but this is true. I even get why they did it, since another greco faction would be samey... though EB does a great job at adding flavor to each Diodochi without breaking from history. Egypt gets some fairly unique variants of pikeline and has the better in terms of gallic mercs for example.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
I played so much EB, I hardly even remember the vanilla Roman factions. I'm typically a more defensive minded player, so I played a lot of the Hellenistic and Greek factions. Trying to survive Rome wrecking you was always more fun than being Rome and wrecking everyone.
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2014
Legions in Rome were among the best units in unmodded Rome due to being armored, high morale, able to fight in both melee and range, and Urbans were the best of those to boot. Though I seem to remember Elephants and Chariots also wrecked face, hence why Egypt usually did so well, since it had those and a pretty flexible line of infantry. Basically, Egypt had almost no weak spots in its roster.
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
Yeah. That's my one main complaint about the Marian Legionaries in the Divide et Impera mod for Rome 2. Everything else is great, but once Rome hits the Marian reforms its an unending tide of cheap, armored, high morale, and good stamina heavy infantry. Historical? Sure. Fun to be on either side of? Not really. You pretty much have to be as dumb as Varus or Crassus to lose a fight as Rome once you've got the best damn infantry in the game.
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
Never played, really. I'd like to know more about it.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
I loved the time period and the units were neat but the AI in campaign or skirmish was always incredibly stupid. I never found it all that enjoyable because of it, though I know there are a number of mods that improve that. Though they also come packaged with rebalances that are usually pro-whatever nation the modder is from.
Nerfer
kiwifarms.net
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- Feb 7, 2021
That is why I play vanilla multiplayer with good friends B)
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2014
Its been awhile since I played it but I enjoyed it since it was more focused than that messy Empire Total War.
- Joined
- May 5, 2020
The campaign feels too small but I absolutely love the gameplay as gunpowder-era games fascinate me to the core.
DarthMod just makes the experience a lot more enjoyable with more units and factions to play as in campaign.
AI is kind of cheesable though but it is an old game so I let that slide
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2018
I've been playing the Alexander submod for DeI and it's damn good fun. For anyone who's played it, is Roxana in the mod as an event or something? I'm trying to recreate his conquests as much as possible and it would suck if I had to marry some literally who Macedonian woman.
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2017
None of you autists want to talk about the Rome remaster? For shame...
I've played it. It's fucking great. If you liked the original, you'll like this (and you get it half price on Steam if you have the original in your library). For those who are only used to the newer TW games, this (along with Medieval 2, which I really hope they remaster next) is a sandbox experience rather than the curated theme park of the more recent games, particularly in the strategic mode, where you simply have so much more freedom to do things how you want. You can have as many armies as you want, and they don't have to be led by a character. Characters can hire mercenaries depending on where they are in the world - so you can be a Roman army with a bunch of phalanxes, or the Germans with war elephants. The position of hills, rivers, armies, buildings and other things on the strategic map are reflected in the tactical map, so you can plan to have high ground, pin an enemy army against the sea or set an ambush for enemy reinforcements because you know what direction they're coming from. You can build any building you like in any settlement, provided it's of your faction and the settlement is big enough. Do war your way.
This is how you remaster a game:
- Every single DLC is included, everything is unlocked, right from the start.
- The mechanical changes they have made are almost all big improvements to the original without wrecking what made it work.
- You can turn each and every one of them off anyway if you want a vanilla experience, just with better graphics, everything unlocked, and better stability and performance on modern machines.
- No woke bullshit. Slavery, Nubians, gloriously racist pre-battle speeches, it's all still here.
There's lots of small changes, these are the ones that stood out to me:
- The units have been rebalanced and many fewer units (though not none) are either broken or useless. Skirmishers have had a range upgrade, chariots have much less morale and may go bezerk if you break them. Several units get new bonuses against elephants and chariots, most of which can be acquired as mercs, meaning that you're not at a huge disadvantage against Carthage or Parthia if your army roster doesn't have a hard counter to them.
- It looks prettier, obviously, though not as good as the newer games. But it still has the dynamically generated maps from the original, which link the strategic and RTS game modes together much more.
- The strategic AI is much better and the AI no longer cheats. The AI will be forced to disband units if they run out of money, making economic warfare a viable strategy in a way it isn't in any other TW game I've played. It's also more aggressive and will send doomstacks after you rather than just a string of weak armies one at a time. Not only is this more challenging, but massive doomstack-on-doomstack bloodbaths are FUN AF.
- Diplomacy is much better and the AI is less dumb and exploitable. They will also honour their treaties for much longer, and there are penalties for you if you break your word.
- The UI is improved, in particular you can swap followers between generals without them having to stay in the same place to do it (the followers just take time to arrive depending on distance). It's much easier to get access to the game's information, and there's even an integrated Steam wiki that gives you detailed unit/building information, even in battle.
- If an army, city or agent has been idle for a while, the game reminds you when you end the turn.
- There are merchants now, and unlike in Medieval 2 they're worth getting.
- You can play as any faction in the game except the rebels.
Some problems weren't fixed, and there are some new annoyances:
- The devs claim the battle AI has been improved, but I don't see much improvement. You can still kite enemy units into your towers, and the AI will still just stand there under fire until they all die. They will also still march infantry up and down inside palisade walls when you assault them until they are torn apart in a hail of javelins and arrows (the buff to skirmishers actually makes this worse). Even when you break the walls/gate down, they won't come out and fight you (apart from chariots for some reason). Enemy cavalry will still hurl themselves into your phalanxes, but that's just funny to watch so I give it a pass.
- The Easy and Very Hard battle difficulties are still broken. Rather than altering the AI, they just give the AI units or your units huge morale penalties respectively. On Easy, there's literally no challenge, and no need for strategy or tactics. Pretty much whatever you throw at the enemy will make them run away, even if they outnumber you AND have better troops. On Very Hard, battles are more about managing your army's morale than fighting the enemy, and cheese rules the day as you try to draw out and blob individual units, and even then your army might step in some horse poo or something and all decide to run away for no good reason. As a consequence, these two modes are still not fun. Stick to Normal or Hard. Normal is still pretty damn easy, and Hard is a good challenge.
- Naval combat is still autoresolve only.
- Whilst the unit pathfinding is improved, they will still occasionally ignore your orders, or move at single speed when distinctly told otherwise (this seems to happen in particular when you are trying to get your cavalry out of the way of advancing spearmen - "Nah, we'd rather hang around and get turned into horsemeat kebabs, thanks all the same."
- The load and save game dialogues are on the same screen. Double-clicking a save file will load it, not over-write it. You will be constantly saving when you meant to load and vice versa. Quicksave often.
What's sad is that this isn't a CA product. R:TWR was done by Feral Interactive, who have done Mac ports of the TW games before. They clearly actually love and care about the original, which is more than you can say about CA these days.
I've played it. It's fucking great. If you liked the original, you'll like this (and you get it half price on Steam if you have the original in your library). For those who are only used to the newer TW games, this (along with Medieval 2, which I really hope they remaster next) is a sandbox experience rather than the curated theme park of the more recent games, particularly in the strategic mode, where you simply have so much more freedom to do things how you want. You can have as many armies as you want, and they don't have to be led by a character. Characters can hire mercenaries depending on where they are in the world - so you can be a Roman army with a bunch of phalanxes, or the Germans with war elephants. The position of hills, rivers, armies, buildings and other things on the strategic map are reflected in the tactical map, so you can plan to have high ground, pin an enemy army against the sea or set an ambush for enemy reinforcements because you know what direction they're coming from. You can build any building you like in any settlement, provided it's of your faction and the settlement is big enough. Do war your way.
This is how you remaster a game:
- Every single DLC is included, everything is unlocked, right from the start.
- The mechanical changes they have made are almost all big improvements to the original without wrecking what made it work.
- You can turn each and every one of them off anyway if you want a vanilla experience, just with better graphics, everything unlocked, and better stability and performance on modern machines.
- No woke bullshit. Slavery, Nubians, gloriously racist pre-battle speeches, it's all still here.
There's lots of small changes, these are the ones that stood out to me:
- The units have been rebalanced and many fewer units (though not none) are either broken or useless. Skirmishers have had a range upgrade, chariots have much less morale and may go bezerk if you break them. Several units get new bonuses against elephants and chariots, most of which can be acquired as mercs, meaning that you're not at a huge disadvantage against Carthage or Parthia if your army roster doesn't have a hard counter to them.
- It looks prettier, obviously, though not as good as the newer games. But it still has the dynamically generated maps from the original, which link the strategic and RTS game modes together much more.
- The strategic AI is much better and the AI no longer cheats. The AI will be forced to disband units if they run out of money, making economic warfare a viable strategy in a way it isn't in any other TW game I've played. It's also more aggressive and will send doomstacks after you rather than just a string of weak armies one at a time. Not only is this more challenging, but massive doomstack-on-doomstack bloodbaths are FUN AF.
- Diplomacy is much better and the AI is less dumb and exploitable. They will also honour their treaties for much longer, and there are penalties for you if you break your word.
- The UI is improved, in particular you can swap followers between generals without them having to stay in the same place to do it (the followers just take time to arrive depending on distance). It's much easier to get access to the game's information, and there's even an integrated Steam wiki that gives you detailed unit/building information, even in battle.
- If an army, city or agent has been idle for a while, the game reminds you when you end the turn.
- There are merchants now, and unlike in Medieval 2 they're worth getting.
- You can play as any faction in the game except the rebels.
Some problems weren't fixed, and there are some new annoyances:
- The devs claim the battle AI has been improved, but I don't see much improvement. You can still kite enemy units into your towers, and the AI will still just stand there under fire until they all die. They will also still march infantry up and down inside palisade walls when you assault them until they are torn apart in a hail of javelins and arrows (the buff to skirmishers actually makes this worse). Even when you break the walls/gate down, they won't come out and fight you (apart from chariots for some reason). Enemy cavalry will still hurl themselves into your phalanxes, but that's just funny to watch so I give it a pass.
- The Easy and Very Hard battle difficulties are still broken. Rather than altering the AI, they just give the AI units or your units huge morale penalties respectively. On Easy, there's literally no challenge, and no need for strategy or tactics. Pretty much whatever you throw at the enemy will make them run away, even if they outnumber you AND have better troops. On Very Hard, battles are more about managing your army's morale than fighting the enemy, and cheese rules the day as you try to draw out and blob individual units, and even then your army might step in some horse poo or something and all decide to run away for no good reason. As a consequence, these two modes are still not fun. Stick to Normal or Hard. Normal is still pretty damn easy, and Hard is a good challenge.
- Naval combat is still autoresolve only.
- Whilst the unit pathfinding is improved, they will still occasionally ignore your orders, or move at single speed when distinctly told otherwise (this seems to happen in particular when you are trying to get your cavalry out of the way of advancing spearmen - "Nah, we'd rather hang around and get turned into horsemeat kebabs, thanks all the same."
- The load and save game dialogues are on the same screen. Double-clicking a save file will load it, not over-write it. You will be constantly saving when you meant to load and vice versa. Quicksave often.
What's sad is that this isn't a CA product. R:TWR was done by Feral Interactive, who have done Mac ports of the TW games before. They clearly actually love and care about the original, which is more than you can say about CA these days.
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- Joined
- Sep 22, 2019
I'm actually tempted to get this solely for the fact that it is one of the only recent TW release I know that didn't come with fucking Denuvo.
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2018
Got in at Shogun 2 before tapering off until the warhammer series. Interesting point on the remaster. Maybe I'll give it a try. That description by @Spunt seems interesting.
On Warhammer 3 though, newest trailer/gameplay drops this Thursday. Somehow humans are able to go right into the Brass citadel without getting mulched. That's going to likely be out late this year.
On Warhammer 3 though, newest trailer/gameplay drops this Thursday. Somehow humans are able to go right into the Brass citadel without getting mulched. That's going to likely be out late this year.