What I Love About This Mod

[Anthropoid]

I've played strategy games for years, but had just sort of put off getting into the TW series for various reasons. A lot of my experience has been with various Matrix Games titles, such as:

http://www.matrixgames.com/products/....War.1861-1865

http://www.matrixgames.com/products/...perors.Edition

http://www.matrixgames.com/products/...'s.Edition

Most of these games are highly strategically oriented, though the FoF and CoG series do have a tactical battles engine too. It is hex- and turn-based and visually 'painful.' Not to mention that the tactical AI is remarkably gullible compared to the AI in RTW. Great games, but that are more akin to board games, but lots of fun.

Another one that I enjoyed was one that is probably on the verge of dying now, a turn-based modern mercenary combat simulator with a bit of a campaign to it.

http://www.matrixgames.com/products/...he.Jagged.Edge.

Imagine RTW set in a make believe 1990s African nation, and instead of commanding a 20-card "army" you command up to 10 mercenaries, each of whom has a certain number of slots for weapons, armor, ammo, etc. Then also imagine it is turn-based instead of real-time (which honestly is not such a bad thing given how often I tend to pause against the AI).

The other game that I've played the hell out of over the years was Civilization. I was a big fan of the series up to Civ 4. I couldn't do Civ 5 because of the Steam Exclusive distribution, not to mention it sounds like it was a real dog of a game

Probably my most favorite Civ experience ever (and I suspect Dvk will know what I'm talking about based on the centurion image in his signature pic) was the Rise of Rome scenario for Civilization 3 Conquests. It was an exceptionally well-balanced game that did a fine job of striking that perfect balance between playability, realism, challenge and winnability. I replayed that scenario many times to 'perfect' my grand strategy for the quick and efficient expansion of Rome.

So I've had a lot of fun with strategy games and tactical games (oh! another good tactical game is

http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-TWMBW/m...-blade-warband

RTW vanilla did an amazing job of blending virtually all the things I love about the games from these genres: historical realism, strategic dynamics, a turn-based element that allows for a 'meditative' analytical gaming experience, reasonably challenging campaign AI, reasonably attractive campaign map, intriguing growth/build/expand ecology to understand and master, and engrossing tactical dynamics.

So what about this mod? Roma Surrectum II?

Basically everything above, upped virtually to the max:
1. Much more enriched historical realism

2. Much more complex, compelling and yet (most impressively) balanced! and playable (esp. in the sense that the AI seems to 'get it') strategic dynamics

3. The campaign part of the game is _just_ the right amount of richer (the recruitable generals, the additional trade stuff, the additional buildings all the rich lore). Points two and three really must be highlight as exceptional accomplisments because, in my experience an all too common pitfall that really productive and capable modders tend to suffer from is 'throwing in the kitchen sink.' In sum, just including too much stuff, or stuff that somehow imbalances the game, esp. as regards the AIs ability to incorporate it into its 'thinking.' You guys have done one of the best jobs I have ever seen in my ~10 years of computer gaming at striking the perfect balance here! *applauds*

3. The vanilla campaign AI is reasonably challenging, but with the changes you guys have made, he seems to _know_ how to be a real pain in the ass! To be fair, it is true that with the zero turns production there does seem to be a -tad- too many new troops churned out, but then there were hundreds of thousands killed in the 2nd Punic War so maybe it is not really that imbalanced . . . Having said that, the ebb and flow of buiding and transporting troops to the hinterlands, restocking and preparing supporting 'armies' and coordinating their movements with the availability of commanders and the timing of city projects is just about the most perfect reflection of my understanding of how ancient era warfare really worked that I've yet seen. The only thing we are really missing here it seems is 'logistics,' but given the tendency of armies in this era to live off the land, perhaps that is not such an issue

. . . . Oh! BTW, for an EXCELLENT little strategic wargame that does a great job of reflecting Prussian era logistics and seasonal campaigning, check out

http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-ROP/rise-of-prussia

Difficult! game!

And then of course, we have what was clearly a major focus in the development of RSII (though quite commendably not THE focus!) the improved graphics . . . ASTOUNDINGLY WELL DONE gentlemen!!

I don't know if you guys touched the code for the tactical battles or not, but given that there are SO MANY new units, and that the AI can truly HANDLE them, you certainly did something very VERY right there too!

In sum, everything that Vanilla RTW did great, you elevated to superlatively great, and things that RTW vanilla neglected you brought in! Things that RTW included and which did not add much, you took out. All in all, you perfected this game.

I say all of this because, I love computer games. I'm convinced that we are at this stage in history at a watershed that is comparable (if not greater) in intellectual, artistic, philosophical and social signficance to the development of Writing / Alphabet in the ancient world, or the development of the Printing Press in more recent times. While this Information and Creativity Revolution is true of Information Technology as a whole, I believe that where it is really fascinating, and shows the greatest potential to transform and improve the human condition is in computer games. While tis true, RTW is 'just a silly game,' RSII is an example of just how rich, textured, engrossing and compelling one of those 'silly games' can be, and that precedent can be expanded to a wide-array of topics and themes, not all of which are strictly 'entertainment.'

I was very surprised to learn a year or so ago, that MMORPG game designs are being used in educational and training contexts: to train foreign language, to train emergency disaster preparedness personnel, to train emergency room staff, and of course, various branches of the military have been using games for literally centuries.

I believe that with the flowering of computer games of myriad genres, the potentials for this form of interactive learning to expand to a more and more broad diversity of niches is great. Imagine for an example, a sophomore in college (or high school for that matter) who instead of simply "taking Introductory Statistics" _Plays Introductory Statistics!_ I know it is hard to imagine how a topic like statistics (or chemistry or biology, but hmmmm, NOT history eh!?) could be captured in a computer game and harnessed into an educational context, and I admit I don't have all the details worked out, but I do think that we are at the dawn of this sort of thing happening.

While your mod does not directly lead to this sort of efflorescence of gamer culture as Modern Englightenment, by virtue of being an exemplary piece of art/science it sets a standard and undoubtedly plants seeds of high expectations and dreams into the minds of thousands of players young and old.

Plus it is a helluva lot of fun to play!

[AgentGB]

'throwing in the kitchen sink' never heard that expression before? but i think i know what you mean in london its a cockney expression, means somthing else thou, but i agree Roma Surrectum is just great, i know of no other mod for any of the TW series that cover the history, unit apperances, trait system upgrading, and depth of the economy of the game so well, plus its frickin hard too, which i like and ive left a load of other stuff out too, its just one heck of a mod!

btw i see you mentioning matrix games, if you ever tried out a close combat game, especially "a bridge to far" since i think its the hardest imo, but there all great! your probably jizz yourself! Company Of Hero hasn't squat on the CC series, infact the american army asked for a training version of the game to train young officers, called CC modern warfare, since the game is an excellent simulator

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_Combat_series

[menawati]

'throwing in the kitchen sink' never heard that expression before? but i think i know what you mean in london its a cockney expression

Well people sometimes say 'throwing in everything but the kitchen sink' but that's not cockney slang.
Cockney slang uses rhyming - like 'I'm going for a jimmy' - Jimmy Riddle - piddle - urinate.
Or "having a butcher's" - butcher's hook - look - going for a look.
My fave is 'look at the aris on that' when referring to a girl's posterior - Aris - Aristotle - Bottle - Bottle and Glass - Arse (yeh I know, sexist and all that but it's such a great example of double slang that evolves over time).

I wonder what slang the Romans used. Latin was the official language but a lot of the commoners spoke Greek didn't they ?
I suppose they must have evolved their own street talk and slang phrases just like any other civilisation.

[Ferdiad]

tl;dr=The mod is awesome.

[Anthropoid]

I played one or two of the Close Combat series and really did enjoy them a lot. My only real complaint there was that the resolution on the map was way to tiny and it was not zoomable enough.

[Lt.Speirs]

I played one or two of the Close Combat series and really did enjoy them a lot. My only real complaint there was that the resolution on the map was way to tiny and it was not zoomable enough.

Ahhhh close combat did you play close combat 2: a bridge too far?? Those real black and white movies between battles were just awesome.

Oh and they developed 2 new games lately. Close combat the longest day (remake of both close combat 1 and 5)

And close combat: last stand arnhem(remake of a bridge too far) only a thousand times more awesome

[AgentGB]

Ahhhh close combat did you play close combat 2: a bridge too far?? Those real black and white movies between battles were just awesome.

Oh and they developed 2 new games lately. Close combat the longest day (remake of both close combat 1 and 5)

And close combat: last stand arnhem(remake of a bridge too far) only a thousand times more awesome

dam you speirs! not long bought it of matrix games, cost a bomb, because of this comment, loving it! seems a heck of alot harder, only 2 days into the game, and the 1st airborne division are already running low on manpower lol

[dvk901]

Don't think I've seen a more eloquent complement for our work on RS2. Much appreciated, and thank you.

I have also dabbled a bit in CIV games, and my youngest son and nephew were really into CIV III and IV. The thing I missed was the battle part of the game, though the main interface part or 'strat' was very absorbing. It was that more absorbing part of CIV that made me want to make RS more 'interesting' in terms of the strat part of the game. It always seemed that at some point you got to an 'impasse' in the campaign where there was nothing more you could do in your cities, and if they were rebelling all you could do was kill them all. Seemed kinda pointless. Now at least you can keep building things almost forever.

[Anthropoid]

I want to say I've played two of the Close Combat series, but the only one I can remember for certain is Wacht Am Rhein (Battle of the Bulge). They are awesome and, as with Campaign RTW, do reflect that delicious balance of theatre level military management + tactical battlefield execution.

I was quite engrossed in Wacht Am Rhein for a good while. The way fields of fire, line of sight and so forth were handled in that game were awesome, though also sometimes a bit tricky. My only complaints that I can recall: not able to zoom in closer to the maps was a pain.

I don't know if any of you guys are familiar with War in the Pacific, but if not click that link above and check it out a bit. The original was quite literally mind-boggling; basically almost EVERY battalion, almost every warship, every warplane, base, etc. in the ENTIRE Pacific Theatre depicted in one gigantic turn-based strategic game. Hex map at about 60 nautical miles in the original if I recall. Literally THOUSANDS of units to control and coordinate and HUNDREDS of bases (airbases, ports, garrisons). The rule book was like a tome.

The expansion (which, if I understand correctly, is basically fan-made, but published) takes the detail, and volume and complexity of the original and multiplies it by about 2.5 or 3!!! In the Admiral's Edition the hex map resolution is dropped down to about 40 nm, more cities and bases added, some units are broken into smaller components (support elements mostly represented separately) better AI, better game dynamics, etc., etc.

It took them literally forever to finish it, and that was with testing for about a year or more. Still there were some pretty serious imbalances and bugs when it came out. I got distracted shortly after that, but will go back and tackle it one of these days; I figure they will have the bugs and imbalances all worked out by about now.

Virtually every major weapon system used by all the combatants in the Pacific WWII theatre is represented in WiTP. A particular warship has literally a score or more 'characteristics' that the game accounts for including: belt, deck and tower armor; speed; manueverability; radar or other enemy detection capacity; number of guns, which of course vary by range, damage type, damage amount, accuracy, etc. The same is true of the land combat units; battalions are composed of individual elements such as: machine gun company or trucks, etc. This is similar to the way land units are represented in The Operational Art of War III. Basically, instead of just having a 'card' as in say Civ with a 'unit' that has Attack/Defense/Movement, each naval, air and land unit in the game is characterized by dozens of different variables.

Might just sound complicated but the thing is, an UNDERSTANDING of these variables is necessary because they are influential in how battles resolve. It is mind-boggling how complicated it is and I cannot recall everything that I learned about the original, but as an example: there were certain early American aircraft that were very fast but only below a certain altitude; deploy them above that altitude and they will underperform.

One of the enjoyable things about the Hired Guns: Jagged Edge game was that it went into similar detail on weapons, armor, and soldier characteristics but at the squad level so and with modern small arms weaponry (M16 family; FNFAL family; AK family, etc.) . . . that was such an awesome game I REALLY wish someone would get inspired by it and either redo it or make a new version of it.

So anyway my "dream" for strategic/historical computer games (bear with me cause this is going to sound crazy).

A game that 'throws in everything AND the kitchen sink!' (there I think I got the saying right that time); most likely it would be necessary to develop it in phases dealing with historical eras in sequence or something, but imagine . . .

A Civ style game, that depicts not just military units, but terrain, trade, culture, religion, arts, famous people and leaders, etc., all at the same sort of detail as WiTP depicts WWII era military units! Turn duration can be as slow as one week or as fast as one year, depending on player setings. You start at the dawn of civilization and can play the array of cultures/societies that are represented in the traditional Civ games. The game would have to be heavily scripted (along the lines of that one mod for Civ that tries to keep the game going more along with historical constraints), famous people would tend to be born and (in the absence of other factors), live and die as they did in history; as long as the antecednet conditions that led to a war in real history are approximated in the game (even at different time periods) said conflict or something similar will happen . . . It would literally take years to play it to completion! and evolve your early Neolithic band of settlers into a modern Civilization. All the resources that have ever mattered in history would be represented in the game and they would all be characterized in terms of their actual abundance (be they finite or replenishing) rate of harvest, quality, transplantability, etc.!

Now, lets up the ante even higher! A campaign map that covers all of inhabitable Earth (obviously the polar areas could be excluded) at a hex/tile scale of about 20 miles. The closest modern day major cities are about 20 miles apart so by depicting earth in 20 mile chunks would allow for maximum settlement development (no two settlements could ever be closer than one "tile" apart). All rivers, mountains, hills, forests, etc. would be represnted roughly as they were at 10,000 BC! (the truly inaccessible parts of mountain ranges or other places that large military formations just cannot go could be excluded). Digitizing something like Google Earth maps into a game map might be the way to go?? (yes I know this is all 'impossible' right!?). Now to make you salivate ever further . . . Imagine if every single one of those 20 x 20 campaign maps had a tactical map to go with it!! You see where I'm going with this right?

Civ 4 + Rome Total War + War in the Pacific !!

[Anthropoid]

OMG . . . just to check out a bit more of this astounding mod; I fired up a Carthage campaign and realized . . . you guys did not it seems focus totally on fleshing out Rome in this mod!

So I wondered . . . hmmm what about one of the peripheral cultures? Say the Cimbri for example?

Just started it up and skimmed the Campaign text. Amazing

So I assume I'd be better off playing the Cimbri with the BI engine??

[dvk901]

OMG . . . just to check out a bit more of this astounding mod; I fired up a Carthage campaign and realized . . . you guys did not it seems focus totally on fleshing out Rome in this mod!

So I wondered . . . hmmm what about one of the peripheral cultures? Say the Cimbri for example?

Just started it up and skimmed the Campaign text. Amazing

So I assume I'd be better off playing the Cimbri with the BI engine??

Although some aspects of faction's traits (mainly the class and tribal names part) isn't working right in RS2.5, it will be fixed in 2.6.

And yes, a great deal of time, research, art, etc. was spent on 'other factions' than the Romans in RS2. RS2.5 brings also a whole new trait system of some sort for all factions....basically, everything we could come up with that was as historical as possible, along with new an more meaningful descriptions of certain buildings, temples and other things for all factions. It just means that every faction has some neat stuff and depth....I'm particularly proud and grateful for the ton of work done by our Greek historian 'Kervanos', who laid the foundation for all the Greek traits. I tried to include as much as humanly possible of what he contributed.

[Ybbon]

Makes no difference per culture as to which AI you use. Alex is supposedly the best, persoanlly I use BI because I don't have Alex. There is a little bit in the FAQ's about which engine provides what.

And yes, the focus of the devs was not simply Rome. It is a fully fleshed out mod.

[Ferdiad]

You should try out Macedon or the Seleucids.

[Hamilicar]

Or even the Spartans as in they werent even in vanilla outside of one unit.

[menawati]

My kid has learned more about ancient military history from playing RS than he ever will at primary school.
Funny conversation I overheard him talking to his mum asking her if he could go to his friend's fancy dress party as a 'hoplite' and she said 'what the hell is that, what's wrong with Batman !'.

[dvk901]

My kid has learned more about ancient military history from playing RS than he ever will at primary school.
Funny conversation I overheard him talking to his mum asking her if he could go to his friend's fancy dress party as a 'hoplite' and she said 'what the hell is that, what's wrong with Batman !'.

That is just a special moment, isn't it?

[Anthropoid]

Great stuff guys!

[Anthropoid]

Loving the Cimbri

[fableofsea]

Loving 2.5 It's a real challenge over 2.1 and I can't wait to play 2.6 Thank you for the amazing mod and I hope to play through it many times.