A Pillar of TW Gameplay

**St Naffatun** · April 02, 2010, 12:13 PM

A key part of TW games is knowing your units and how to use them. You want to be punished for doing stupid things and rewarded for using them properly.

In the quest to keep a game fresh we all want to increase difficulty, but there can come a point where the unwise move to violate this key dynamic of TW games and battles is taken. Namely when evenly matches units (stats wise) are deployed and used correctly (in a historical way) and one side gets hopelessly pasted you know that line has been crossed. The pic below is from a Medium/Medium campaign.

The 1 casualty my velites managed to cause was an elephant. One elephant for the entire stock of ammo, not bad going. I will let the guys left over marry my daughters.

The post is not about losing or winning, its about the variety of units and their unique abilities being rendered irrelevant by an overzealous pursuit of a challenge.

P.S. The music is horrific, RTW music mods invariably are a lot worse than vanilla music but I like the building trees. Back to ExRM for mee *waves*

**Arkaeyn** · April 02, 2010, 01:17 PM

You know, the Romans lost that battle historically too. As soon as you manage to train your troops a bit to even the odds with Pyrrhos' veterans, the battles do exactly what you say they do.

**Caligula Caesar** · April 02, 2010, 01:21 PM

That's Herakleia, right? Well, as Arkaeyn said, you aren't meant to win that. It might help for you to fight a few more battles, preferably not against Pyrrhos' veterans, before you make any judgements...

**St Naffatun** · April 02, 2010, 02:31 PM

*spits dummy out*
*throws toys out of pram*

It's pretty funny reading back my own post, that was some controlled raging

I even forgot to crop the picture which is not like me.

**King Pyrrhus** · April 02, 2010, 04:12 PM

lol nice.

I haven't tried the Romans yet. Perhaps I should?

Do they have a cool little government/office system?

**lelouchx99** · April 02, 2010, 07:21 PM

it's impossible to beat pyrrhus under the condition in H/H. I had a full stack of retrained troops station on the bridge next to heraklia. The result was 1000 kills while my entire legion of 3000 becomes 400...

**Arkaeyn** · April 02, 2010, 07:34 PM

Yep. You gotta be smart about it and grind him down. He can't replace his troops. You can replace yours.

**DukeCanada** · April 02, 2010, 08:17 PM

The best way to win is to lose smartly

**~~Tony83~~** · April 02, 2010, 08:37 PM

That's a very moot statement Duke. Few generals, if they have the option will stop and fight to the last man in a battle where they are hopelessly outmatched, they would withdraw and try and preserve their army as a fighting entity. This is what we have tried to achieve with Heraklea. King Pyrrhos of Epeiros was probably the finest general of his day, indeed, his contemporaries compared him with Alexander, something he did nothing to dissuade. Not only that, but his army was the best and most professional available in the Ancient World, at that time, and Pyrrhos was a skilled practitioner of the dying art of combined arms tactics with the sarissa armed phalanx armies.

The opening battle is meant to be tough (after many tries, I've only won it on M/M once!), historically, Pyrrhos did win it. In the process he lost so many men that his campaign stalled and he had to withdraw to replace his losses, thwarting his march on Rome. In fact this happened more than once. He would get his army together, march on Rome, meet an intercepting Roman army, fight and beat it, but lose too many men to make a continued advance towards Rome a viable option.

So don't think you are doing anything wrong when you lose as Rome, ideally we want you to! And it's not because we hate you and want to make a fool of you, but to put Rome's survival on a knife's edge. The challenge is to see if you can win the war of attrition between Rome and Epeiros. They have the class, experienced troops but you, as Rome, can replenish your armies much more effectively than they can. The Romans winning the Battle of Heraklea spoils the game dynamic, in my opinion, the Epeirote threat being nipped in the bud!

**DukeCanada** · April 03, 2010, 02:17 PM

Originally Posted by Tony83

That's a very moot statement Duke. Few generals, if they have the option will stop and fight to the last man in a battle where they are hopelessly outmatched, they would withdraw and try and preserve their army as a fighting entity. This is what we have tried to achieve with Heraklea. King Pyrrhos of Epeiros was probably the finest general of his day, indeed, his contemporaries compared him with Alexander, something he did nothing to dissuade. Not only that, but his army was the best and most professional available in the Ancient World, at that time, and Pyrrhos was a skilled practitioner of the dying art of combined arms tactics with the sarissa armed phalanx armies.

The opening battle is meant to be tough (after many tries, I've only won it on M/M once!), historically, Pyrrhos did win it. In the process he lost so many men that his campaign stalled and he had to withdraw to replace his losses, thwarting his march on Rome. In fact this happened more than once. He would get his army together, march on Rome, meet an intercepting Roman army, fight and beat it, but lose too many men to make a continued advance towards Rome a viable option.

So don't think you are doing anything wrong when you lose as Rome, ideally we want you to! And it's not because we hate you and want to make a fool of you, but to put Rome's survival on a knife's edge. The challenge is to see if you can win the war of attrition between Rome and Epeiros. They have the class, experienced troops but you, as Rome, can replenish your armies much more effectively than they can. The Romans winning the Battle of Heraklea spoils the game dynamic, in my opinion, the Epeirote threat being nipped in the bud!

Agreed

But actaully Tony, I consider a victory a smart loss as well, because all war can only end badly and I henceforth classify it as defeat

. So winning is just a defeat with less negative consequences

. I probably phrased my statement incorrectly lol.

I think I have won this battle once. I forget how I did it, I remember thinking right away that the Cavalry had to go, but that was about it. I also remember the battle being a very very close affair.

I usaully just lose the battle and am forced to fight the war of attrition for a while.

**Arkaeyn** · April 02, 2010, 08:31 PM

At this point, I just auto-resolve that battle and start the game proper. Let the pieces fall where they may.

**Carados** · April 03, 2010, 03:56 AM

Yeah. He defeated the Romans twice in major battles and fought to a draw in a third at the end of his campaign. He almost took over Sicily in it's entirety in a few years as opposed to the 20ish that the Romans took. There's a reason for him being placed second (or first...) between Hannibal's and Scipio's little exchange of great commanders.

**King Pyrrhus** · April 03, 2010, 09:22 AM

Of course, we all know I was a beast...

**algorath** · April 03, 2010, 02:53 PM

"The best way to win is to lose smartly"
"So winning is just a defeat with less negative consequences"

You should go into print with those, would look great on a shirt or a mug^^. Also, i might wanna steal those on occasion