how do u play all factions?

[Lord Thesaurian]

well, the name of this thread is pretty much my ? ive heard of people playing Dacia, Thrace, etc. so how do u unlock all factions on vanilla RTW? i know theres a game file somewhere, but where? how do u get there?

[D.B. Cooper]

I'm going to copy and paste from that " FAQ: Ask All Questions about Rome: Total War Here!" thread at the top of the forum page .

Tutorial for Editing files to play all factions.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

First of all go to your Rome folder which is normally situated in;
Program files\Activison\Rome - Total War
Then to find the file go to:
Program files\Activison\Rome - Total War\Data\World\Maps\campaign\imperial_campaign
Then select descr_strat this will open a page where it starts off like this:

; Custom campaign script generated by Romans Campaign Map Editor

campaign imperial_campaign
playable
romans_julii
romans_brutii
romans_scipii
end
unlockable
egypt
seleucid
carthage
parthia
gauls
germans
britons
greek_cities


end
nonplayable
romans_senate
macedon
pontus
armenia
dacia
numidia
scythia
spain
thrace
slave
end

Now simply all you need to do is copy and paste these in to the top ones so it looks like this:
; Custom campaign script generated by Romans Campaign Map Editor

campaign imperial_campaign
playable
romans_julii
romans_brutii
romans_scipii
egypt
seleucid
carthage
parthia
gauls
germans
britons
greek_cities
romans_senate
macedon
pontus
armenia
dacia
numidia
scythia
spain
thrace
end
unlockable


end
nonplayable
slave
end

Then just Save as over the original descr_strat

And off you go!

[Lord Thesaurian]

thanx

[SonOfAlexander]

I found a youtube video which took me through it step by step happy days...

[daxypoo]

yeah i dont know exact file... descr_strat maybe? but lots of info to do it still have to win default campaign to unlock everything though

[Selifator]

Uhm no, you can immediatly after installing the game edit the descr_strat file without ever playing the campaign. I'm not sure which file it is, but you can change the option for playing it the first time to FALSE, thereby skipping the prologue.
Was this perhaps in the preferences file?

[Scutarii]

It is preferences.txt you need to edit for the PLAY_FIRST_TIME:TRUE to FALSE change. Easy stuff. It might be FIRST_TIME_PLAY though, something like that. Anyways.