A few questions and complaints

[jabarto]

I hate to come off as angry, I really do, but to be honest this post is going to be pretty rantish. Also, I apologize if what I'm about to mention has been addressed before, but reading back 10 pages and several searches have not produced results.

I first heard about RTR: Gold a few months ago, installed it, and enjoyed it a great deal. Then my play disc broke, and since I didn't have most of the other Total War games, I decided to get the Total War: Eras collection. Since that includes RTW: Gold (and thus include Barbarian Invasion), I knew I would need RTR: Platinum. So I downloaded v1.8, expecting things to be more or less identical with RTR: Gold. While I admittedly haven't played it very much - I've only played a few games with the Romans, none of which got very far - I have seen a few things which both perplex and infuriate me in equal measure.

Chief among these is naval warfare. To put it simply, I am thoroughly convinced that the outcomes of naval battles are determined completely randomly. All too often have I pitted 5- or 6- member quinquireme fleets against 3-member bireme fleets and lost utterly. Even if I did win, my fleet would usually lose half of it's men at the least, regardless of the skill of the admirals (or lack thereof) involved.

I quickly learned that quinquiremes were a waste of money, as they were more expensive than triremes but died just as quickly. I now use triremes exclusively, and don't even consider attacking enemy fleets unless I outnumber them at least 4:1, and I still lose about half the time.

And then there's cavalry. According to one of the stickies, they had they attack power reduced greatly but their charge bonuses increased, in order to reflect the fact that they didn't have stirrups and thus were useless once they stopped moving.

Wouldn't it be the other way around? My history isn't what it should be, but I thought that ancient cavalry couldn't charge because the lack of stirrups to brace against, and in fact didn't often use lances for that reason, preferring hand weapons like spathas.

Aside from that, I had a little incident involving cavalry and slingers earlier to day that simply shouldn't have happened. I was playing as the Romans, and was in a battle with the Greek Cities. They had a unit of Rhodian Slingers (60 men, little if any experience) off on the sidelines. The battle was more or less won, so I charged my Praetoria (the early-era kind, 17 men, 3 bronze chevrons) to mop them up. I watched them close to the slingers with no casualties, and considering it a done deal, turned my attention away. Not 30 seconds passed before I got a warning that my general was fleeing. I panned over to where I had last left him, only to see 2 Praetoria fleeing in panic form about 40 slingers.

What happened here? The intial charge should have slain quite a few, and the rest would either run or die from the cavalry. But somehow, a band of unarmored men armed only with daggers defeated a unit of the best troops Rome can muster. I admit cavalry might have needed some toning down, but honestly, slingers should not be in the business of crushing heavy cavalry in melee.

My last issue is with hoplites. Doesn'et removing their phalanx ability leave Greece vastly underpowered? Their primary units are spearmen. With few heavy cavalry or phalanx units, how can they be expected to beat swordsmen of any kind? I know they get skirmishers and a pike unit, but I've noticed my job as a Roman was much easier than it had been, simply because my principes weren't getting skewered on sarissas. I know there are historical reasons for removing the phalanx, but do hoplites have anything that can contend with the pike units that every other Hellenic factions gets?

Again, I don't want to sound annoyed, but having lost three decades worth of production in the form of a quinquireme fleet and nearly losing my general to a pack of slingers makes it a bit difficult, especially since these things don't happen in RTR: Gold.

[Preskinn]

First of all, I have no problem with fleets, just have several ships. Let the mfight against small fleets, kill them, gain stars, retrain, and there you go, a two-three star admiral with say six quinquireme is very superior...
It isn't as bad as you say, though I do agree that it can be a pain...

The cavalry, I cant say much about the Historical correctness. But I think that you ar most likley playing on VH Battled dif right? that gives all enemy units something like 7+ in attack and deffence (and morale?) this is why peltasts and slingers kill of cavalry. This is hardcode I think, but I urge the team to tone down the Roman Faction among others for balancing reasons, they are to superior in battlemap imo, you have to play with h/vh to get the chalange you need... and that destroys the balance of the units...

They removed the Phalanx from HOPLITES so that the could run and fight acordingly, if you put hoplites in Gaurd mode, they will fight kind of like a phalanx (isn't this a 1.5 feature rather than a RTR: PE one btw?)
The Phalanx units such as Agema and Peozi (who fight more than 3 rows deep) still have the phalanx formation ability, and still are very clumbsy and strong. Let me tell you, I have played as greece, and their Hoplites ROCK!!! try it, the new mobility just makes them very very good.

And as I remember it these things did happen in RTR:Gold, is it possible that you played another diff? Maybe I am wrong, someone please correct me if that is the case, it's been ages since i played Gold.

// Preskinn

[jabarto]

First of all, I have no problem with fleets, just have several ships. Let the mfight against small fleets, kill them, gain stars, retrain, and there you go, a two-three star admiral with say six quinquireme is very superior...
It isn't as bad as you say, though I do agree that it can be a pain...

The cavalry, I cant say much about the Historical correctness. But I think that you ar most likley playing on VH Battled dif right? that gives all enemy units something like 7+ in attack and deffence (and morale?) this is why peltasts and slingers kill of cavalry. This is hardcode I think, but I urge the team to tone down the Roman Faction among others for balancing reasons, they are to superior in battlemap imo, you have to play with h/vh to get the chalange you need... and that destroys the balance of the units...

They removed the Phalanx from HOPLITES so that the could run and fight acordingly, if you put hoplites in Gaurd mode, they will fight kind of like a phalanx (isn't this a 1.5 feature rather than a RTR: PE one btw?)
The Phalanx units such as Agema and Peozi (who fight more than 3 rows deep) still have the phalanx formation ability, and still are very clumbsy and strong. Let me tell you, I have played as greece, and their Hoplites ROCK!!! try it, the new mobility just makes them very very good.

And as I remember it these things did happen in RTR:Gold, is it possible that you played another diff? Maybe I am wrong, someone please correct me if that is the case, it's been ages since i played Gold.

// Preskinn

Maybe I just have horrible luck, but even when the odds are overwhelmingly in my favor, it's still a chancy proposition because I never know how much I'm going to lose. To be fair, I did get a small fleet of quinquiremes in one of my earlier games that made it to the silver chevron range, but three of them died at the same time in one battle against a lesser quality (though slightly larger) fleet. My admiral was the only one who survived the game.

Or maybe it's just the difficulty. I did play on the Hard/Hard settings. Maybe they just ramped the difficulty settings up a bit and the unpredictable battles are a part of that.


That would explain a lot about the cavalry. I only play on Hard, but even a small bonus to attack/morale would tip the odds quite a bit, especially in a large unit stack like the slingers.


I noticed that the hoplites still arrange themselves in phalanx-like fashion, but I thought all spear units did. They did that in Barbarian Invasion, too, but I never played vanilla RTW 1.5, so I don't know when that was added. I'm curious as to just how much it helps, though, as the enemy can close to melee range with them just as easily.

Maybe I should give teh Greeks another shot. They were my favorite facton in vanilla RTW.

You may be right about the difficulty. I'll tone it down a bit and see what happens.

And good call on the Roman units, by the way.

[Preskinn]

Maybe I just have horrible luck, but even when the odds are overwhelmingly in my favor, it's still a chancy proposition because I never know how much I'm going to lose. To be fair, I did get a small fleet of quinquiremes in one of my earlier games that made it to the silver chevron range, but three of them died at the same time in one battle against a lesser quality (though slightly larger) fleet. My admiral was the only one who survived the game.

Or maybe it's just the difficulty. I did play on the Hard/Hard settings. Maybe they just ramped the difficulty settings up a bit and the unpredictable battles are a part of that.


That would explain a lot about the cavalry. I only play on Hard, but even a small bonus to attack/morale would tip the odds quite a bit, especially in a large unit stack like the slingers.


I noticed that the hoplites still arrange themselves in phalanx-like fashion, but I thought all spear units did. They did that in Barbarian Invasion, too, but I never played vanilla RTW 1.5, so I don't know when that was added. I'm curious as to just how much it helps, though, as the enemy can close to melee range with them just as easily.

Maybe I should give teh Greeks another shot. They were my favorite facton in vanilla RTW.

You may be right about the difficulty. I'll tone it down a bit and see what happens.

And good call on the Roman units, by the way.

About the naval battles, we all know they are "funny" I just have much larger fleets than my enemies and it works fine all the time... just beef 'em up I'd say :p

Just try to flank units more, and use heavy cavalry, or lower the difficulity to M, doesn't matter mucch, just make sure you do not explot the AI to much, try limitiong yourself to have just the necesary number of units in your stack. You evaluate the situation: I need so and so much archers pikmen adn so forth, and then send only the bare minium, that way you conserve money or have more armies in diferent places, and get challenging more fun battles all the time! (use hose rules)

I don't think H/H shouldn't be any problem, I usaly play H in Battle because I like the AI to have some form of compensation for me being human and all... And then I play H Camaign to so that they get some bonus cash to take over the independenst rebell citys with.

Play the Greeks H/H that should work just fine! You won't regret playing as them, just be sure to have lots of spartans, and crush those macedonians quickly!

I don't think all spearmen use that formation, but they might. I see it only as a positive thing though, the hoplites fight phalanx style butare more mobile than their big brother the Phalanx, just like I presume they where. I think that sword infatry and the like got close up with the hoplites, the phalanx in rome is very hard to penetrate and it made things unbalanced... the roman vs carthaginian fights in vanilla before was utterly boring, now they are more balanced i think. The Hoplites still stand their ground very well against all types of enemies!

These are things that I try (not allways that easy to hold myself back) to do to make the game more fun, hope they work for you to!

[Darviathar]

Quite honestly, I've not seen evidence of this as Rome. My current game is on VH/VH. I use only the corvus quin's in 3 ship fleets. They rarely lose a battle. The only danger is the odd chance that the computer has decided to stack 10 ships in a fleet and I attacked it without bothering to look at the size, and get sunk automatically upon losing the battle. As for Roman cavalry....Its bad. Equites are basically worthless, and I honestly don't use them. They cannot charge a fresh archer unit from the front and win. Especially on VH setting. As for my generals and their bodyguard...Much different story. They typically level up so fast that they are capable of sustained combat. Especially using generals with the "hale and hearty" line of traits that grants extra hit points. Typically I get a heroic savior after every combat unless my general already has one. I don't use them as cavalry unless the battle is so close that I simply have to. But in those circumstances in my current vh/vh game (to about 240 bc) they've performed very well.

[jabarto]

Earlier today, I started a new game on Normal/Normal, and good lord did it make a difference. My navies worked as well as they did in RTR: Gold - that is, a pack of corvus quinquiremes, properly maintained, practically owned the Mediterranean. Maybe it's just a bug in my copy of the game that screws things up on Hard?

In any case, things are going smoothly. Thanks, all, for replying!