Unified Rome

[Venom]

Ok it's not like I'll make any difference with this post, but I want to speak my mind.

A Unified Rome campaign is good, as long as the Senate is still in the game in some way.

That's one thing that REALLY bothered me about the Unified Rome campaign in RTR. It's a good idea in some ways, but removing the Senate completely short-changes the Romans, who were once unique, by making them the same as every other faction. The game is still Rome: Total War after all. Removing the Senate isn't even particularily realistic either. They did have significant influence during the Republic era especially, and completely ignoring their wishes was not a good idea.

As for the three family system though, that was totally unrealistic and dropping that is just fine with me. That freed up slots for the addition of new factions anyway.

[hsimoorb]

Rome is still quite unique. They don't need that silly senate there to make them so. And the senate as it was in RTW was very unrealistic. About the only thing CA got right about that was that there was a senate of rome at some point in time. Beyond that the whole thing is hogwash. It messed with the gameplay, gave unfair advantages to the roman players, was ahistorical, and it made rome go berzerk and conqure the whole map in very few turns. Ever play RTW and when the civil war happens you end up going to egype to clean up the Scippi resistence? Also, in 7.0 I beleive the senate faction is being used...for something other than the senate FYI.

[Cheexsta]

This may be "Rome: Total War" but "Rome: Total Realism" is simply a name born out of convenience more than anything. In other words, having "Rome" in the name does not make it totally Rome-centric; it is simply a game covering the time period in which the Romans rose to power.

And why should they be any "different" to other factions? What makes them special? They should not go ahead and conquer the empire in twenty years that took them three hundred historically. Indeed, in history the Romans were extremely lucky, IMHO it should be hard for them to gain the power they did.

As an aside, however, the team is looking into different ways to make all factions more historically-minded; that is not to say that factions will only do what they did in history, more of how they thought in history. For example, making Rome more inclined to attack Sardinia before it rampages through Germania would make them more historically-minded. Taking Bactria before Sicily, however, which is something that Rome would more readily do in RTRGold, is not.

I hope that made sense...

[Venom]

It doesn't need to be totally focused on Rome. Give the Carthaginians a senate for all I care. I just don't see the need to remove such a cool and unique function from the game. Rome only "goes berserk and conquers the whole map" in vanilla because they start with a very large number of territories and resources, as well as very strong units. It has little to do with the Senate itself. I think you could keep the Senate in the game like it is in XGM or RTR versions 5.x and everything would be just fine.

[Maximus Lazero]

They should not go ahead and conquer the empire in twenty years that took them three hundred historically.

1. Interestingly enough, in the two games I played in Vanilla, at least one of the three Roman families were complete wusses. When I played as the Brutii, I tore through the Eastern Mediterranean, the Julii advanced moderately through Gaul, while the Scipii had barely scratched a foothole in Africa.
As the Julii, I made a huge rip through Western Europe and into Germany, the Scipii obliterated Northeastern Africa, while the Brutii barely made it into Greece!

2. Still, I guess the RTR team did their job well. I haven't conquered the Empire in 20 years, but I certainly have gotten a lot in 100....

[Mihail]

I'm tired of the argument of "it's rome total war", the less focus on rome the better, spread out the gameplay.