Back After 1 Year... So, What's Up?

**Orolinwe** · August 02, 2006, 12:30 PM

Hmm hello.

I've just returned to TW after over a year away from all of this, and from computer games in general.

I was backpacking. India mostly. Little bit of Nepal. Little bit of Thailand.

It was fantastic. Highly recommend it to anyone with a bit of adventure and romance in their soul. Also to anyone who needs therapy. Cuz that's what extended travel is, really: Damn good therapy!

So anyhoo, I decided to install RTW last night. It's funny as hell: First thing I notice is, there is now a 1.3 and a 1.5 patch!

This part is crazy to me cuz when I quit the game last year it was right in the middle of all the Save/Load Bug "controversy." This was when CA was denying the bug even existed and they were saying 1.2 patch would be the LAST patch for the game and everyone was freaking out on both sides. If you even mentioned the bug on the TotalWar forums then it was like an instant ban. There were flaming articles all over the place, petitions being signed and sent to Activision. LOL, it was a crazy mess and I pretty much stopped playing the game at that point cuz the bug was a killer for me.

HAHA! Glad to see we won that one, and CA finally saw the light. I know this is probably REALLY old hat but it cracks me up good to see in the 1.3 patch ReadMe that it says "The Load Save bug has been addressed." They finally admitted it!!! As soon as I saw this, I was about 100 times more excited to install Rome and get into it all over again.

So I started a Scipii campaign to familiarize myself with everything again. After that, I was thinking of installing Total Realism and going with that. This was my favorite mod from before, to which I made some small changes of my own (got to relearn to mod this game, ugh).

I guess I'd just like to know what's been going on with this game for the last year... I see the BI expansion came out. What's the word on that? I see it's quite cheap now on Amazon, so I suppose it's worth it, eh? Also I see an Alexander expansion is on the way, but I suppose I can learn about that on my own. Other than that, it'd be nice to know which mods are the best, and whether the battle AI has been brought up to snuff (or which mods help bring it up to snuff), as the ease of the battles was my biggest disappointment with the game from before.

Anyway, it's good to be back. I'm excited to get back into this game now that it (and the mods for it) has had time to fully mature.

Cheers.

**Pra** · August 02, 2006, 12:34 PM

Where did you go in India, Nepal and Thailand? What did you see?

(Sorry for off-topicness.)

**Trajan** · August 02, 2006, 01:57 PM

Please don't talk about India, Nepal, etc. in this thread guys. Use PMs or the TD for that.

Welcome back Orolinwe. If you're going to use RTR, be sure you have the 1.5 patch installed and check out RTR: Platinum Edition. A lot of bugs that were in the 1.2 patch have been fixed and the mod contains some really cool features. Head over to the RTR sub-forum to check it out. The A.I. is a little better in the 1.5 patch so that's the one to use. Darth Vader has been doing wonders with his A.I. formations and the battles are becoming better than before. Check out his Darth Mod sub-forum for full details. Prometheus, one of the best modeler and skinners around, has released the first pack of many for his Resgestae mod. It's the Roman pack and it features new Roman models and skins, some new animations for the Roman units, a few new Roman units, new strat map cities, characters, and etc. Lusted has released his Terrae Expugnandae 5.1 mod and I highly recommend that one. It's almost like a mix of RTR and SPQR mod where it contains some realism and great gameplay. I'm currently at home with that mod and I don't plan on switching anytime soon. That's just a few mods out of many that I mentioned so you should check out the Hosted Community Section Forum for the latest and greatest if you haven't done so yet. With all that out of the way, were all just waiting for Medieval 2: Total War to come out on Nov. 16 or so.

**Orolinwe** · August 02, 2006, 06:14 PM

Yeah I remember Darth Mod as well. I never tried it but I did take some of the modifications and do them myself.

I guess the ideal would be combining Darth Mod with RTR. Is this possible?

And yes, I got the platinum edition and the patch for it, ready to go. But currently I am just using vanilla 1.5 patch with player1's bugfix patch on top of that.

Just wanted to check out the vanilla mode a bit before installing a mod right away. Having fun so far, and I got spanked in one battle by Carthage. I noticed the enemy army moved UP to the high ground before attacking me, on the strategy map. Pretty sure they didn't do this before, and it made a difference. Nice.

**The Black Reaper** · August 02, 2006, 06:34 PM

Darth mods formations have been implemented in many mods that have been released since Darths formations enhances the AI a little bit more and it makes it harder for you to win... RTR PE also has the darth formations in it so you dont need to do any of the combining two mods together

**imthefrgt10** · August 02, 2006, 06:44 PM

i dont recommend buying alexander total war but do recommend barbarbarian invasion. darthmod is a great enhancement to the rome totalwar series. and terrae expugnandae has to be the greatest mod. i personally have many problems with total realism.

**Orolinwe** · August 03, 2006, 03:33 AM

Well, I installed RTR and uninstalled without playing a single turn. Took one look and decided I didn't like it. Started as Pontus and just hated the way there are 3 different unit types for every choice... I mean c'mon guys, keep it simple. Making 3 different types of archers or skirmishers or missile cavalry with minor variations is just dumb. Who cares if it's more realistic? Do I really need to choose between several different units that are almost exactly alike every time I recruit?

Also the recruitment costs were absurd for many of the units. 1500 gold to recruit and 600 upkeep, and then I begin with a whopping 3k!! Ummm... And what's with being able to build 15 different types of temples that all do the same thing... All so you can FINALLY get to the decent temples that really aren't all that great. Ugh, what a waste of time. Talk about a confusing build tree.

So yeah... looks like RTR has become too complex for it's own good over the last year.

So I downloaded this Terrae Expugnandae and I suppose I'll give that a try tomorrow (it's bedtime now). The one thing I REALLY like about RTR is the enlarged map and how crowded it is with lots of small settlements and tons of armies to fight. Does TE have an expanded map, or does it keep the same old (way too sparse) map of the original game?? Guess I will find out myself when I try it, but just curious, maybe another mod is going to satisfy me better before I install...

**imthefrgt10** · August 03, 2006, 03:42 AM

TE is more crowded and if u do intall it u will see alot more settlements, and with darth's formations on it if you play on VH/VH you will def have a great time just trying to stay alive!

**Zuwxiv** · August 03, 2006, 04:05 AM

My favorites are EB - Europa Barbarorum, a very well done mod. But recently (yesterday) I tried Terrae Expugnandae, and I was blown away. I'm trying Epieros (I must have destroyed the spelling of that) right now and it is very fun.

RTR is for those who really like realism, it can be a bit confusing but it is still fun. I think I like TE a little bit over EB because it is a bit more user-friendly, although EB has more detailed changes and maybe a bit more workmanship (although I'm pretty sure the team behind EB is vastly larger than TE). Whatever works for you.

Check out the new podcasts, and you missed an awesome April Fools joke.

**Lusted** · August 03, 2006, 05:23 AM

My mod TE features the Mundus Magna campaign map which has nearly 200 provinces, and covers a larger area than the vanilla RTw map. It also has more expensive troops s battles happen less often and are more decisive when they do. The latest version out is 5.0 and the 5.1 patch, Gold edition should be out relatively soon, its release is being delayed a bit as im improving the roman skins for it.

**imthefrgt10** · August 03, 2006, 12:29 PM

Originally Posted by Lusted

My mod TE features the Mundus Magna campaign map which has nearly 200 provinces, and covers a larger area than the vanilla RTw map. It also has more expensive troops s battles happen less often and are more decisive when they do.

i think there are the same amount of battles a vanilla rome, but thats me

**Trajan** · August 03, 2006, 05:06 PM

Originally Posted by imthefrgt10

i think there are the same amount of battles a vanilla rome, but thats me

In my current Roman campaign, the AI factions do create a lot of armies at first but I noticed after crushing many of them, the A.I. is not so fast to create more because they are expensive which leads to more decisive, important, and less battles in the long run than vanilla.

**repman** · August 03, 2006, 07:49 AM

@Orolinwe
I have just released BareBoneswars 7.0 and i propose to have a look at it. It combines a great mixture of skins , unique strategic challenges due to a 4 Season scripted (reduced wintermovements, spawn armies, roman carreer system) campaign from 280 BC - 180 AD on 6 possible maps and with an ruthless AI on the battlefield (thanks to darth) + many minimods.
Enjoy 6 provincial campaigns maps of different sizes (big/small) and start conditions (3 roman Families, Unified rome, Rom civil war).

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=150

repman

**westy159** · August 03, 2006, 06:27 PM

You should look at Napoleonic 2 Total War if that era is your cup o' tea. Im sure you remember there was a Napoleonic mod for MTW, well they are back and the mods looking great. Thread Link