Some advice...

[eunuch lust]

Hello all

I've just decided to start playing Rome again after a long absence. The reason I stopped playing was that I found the battles became quite similar after I figured out a strategy that I could rely on to win everytime.

My reason for posting is that I'd like to start playing and enjoying the game again. I've looked at some of the mods in the forum, and they do look interesting, but I'd like to know what you'd reccomend for a truly different experience? But perhaps the problem is mine and I'm just not exploring the game enough, so I'm wondering what campaigns you've found interesting/challenging.

And I just have one last question. How are fights determined? Are the strengths of the entire units contrasted against one another, or is it based on actually how many individual men you can manage to get into contact with the enemy unit? This always bothered me because I'd see my men just standing around as the rest of my unit was engaged, and wondered whether it mattered or not.

I'd really like to start over with this game. Please help me figure out how.

[Meldon]

One thing that made my campaigns quite a lot more fun when I started getting slightly annoyed by the repititive battles was to enable the General´s Camera instead of RTS camera and then play all battles with the camera zoomed in right into the back of the general.
Thus it got much harder to always know what is going and makes it more crucial to keep your general out of the battle if possible and maybe even find an elevated position for him nearby so you can stand by and give orders, which makes the battles feel a lot more realistic. Also you should try never to pause the game during battles as the AI already is disadvantaged enough anyways.
And for your question: if you mean what I think what you mean, then yes, it does matter how many of your individual soldiers in the unit can fight at the same time, after all the killing is done by the individual soldiers, they don´t just randomly fall dead because they´re fighting a superior unit of which only one soldier can fight at a time.
That is also why a unit standing at the end of a bridge has a vast superiority over an enemy crossing the bridge, because the attacker can only have so many people fighting at the same time.
That doesn´t neccessarily mean that a unit drawn out in a long line will always do better than one in a more compact bulk though, as the soldiers in the line will risk getting spread out along the front and flanks of the bulk, thus making it possible for the more compact bulk of soldiers to keep more fighters on one spot and mob the attacking soldiers one at a time on a small scale because they´re packed together more tightly. Or at least that´s what has been my impression during fights

[Brusilov]

Although it's possible to find a battle tactic that works it won't necessary always work when you fight a different faction. For instance a Roman Army setup can fight a certain way against Greek style (Macedons, Greeks) armies, however, if you fight against an Eastern style army (with lots of horsearchers etc) then there is a good chance that you will need to change the setup of that army, due to the way that the horsearchers are difficult to 'pin' (either add more slingers and/or archers).

You could devise some 'house rules' (e.g. only attack a faction if they've attacked you first) that will restrict what you can do.

Which factions have you played? I've attempted to play a number of different factions. The northern barbarian factions are different to the Roman or Greek ones.

I've been playing RTR (based on RTW 1.2) for quite a few months and have enjoyed that (the map is a lot larger than RTW, has more settlements in a region and is a bit harder to play - you can't start churning out your own factions units from the settlements). I have also played RTR 6 PE (Platinum Edition) which is RTR 6 Gold over the RTW BI engine. I have also run Troy Total War and EB.

If you start playing different mods I would suggest that you keep a clean copy of RTW patched to 1.2 and only apply mods to copies of that game. This will save time re-installing the game over and over. If you are going to add RTW BI then I'd also suggest keeping that in a seperate folder from RTW patched to 1.2. I think that if you install RTW BI you will need to take a copy of RTW 1.2 and put it somewhere safe as RTW BI will only install over the standard directory.

Whatever you do - enjoy.

[eunuch lust]

Thanks for the suggestions. Hehe I've actually tried the idea with the camera zoomed in on the general, but I found it was just too crazy and had no idea what was going on.

I've played as most of the European countries, maybe I should try the East or Africa? I hear Numidia is hard. Good idea about the house rules, maybe I'll try that. I downloaded the Darth Mod and I've got to say that that's made quite a difference. Need to meet the enemy with an army of comparable size now!

One thing that bothers me is that although I win I really don't have any idea how the combat system works. I mean, what do the attack and defense numbers mean? Do the individual soldiers have hitpoints or does does a unit of 10 attack going up against a unit of 15 defense just create certain odds on who will be most likely to hit and kill? And also (I kind of asked this question before) how much of what I literally see can be trusted. As Meldon said a wide line is not always good as it can create situations where soldiers can gang up on fewer men, but how much of what I see is to be trusted? Half the time it looks like the guys aren't doing anything, but apparently they're in combat. So how much of it is visual and how much of it is statistical? If anyone knows a thread where these kinds of basics are talked about I'd like to know please, or just help me here!

[Furin]

After playing Vanilla for ages I just started with RTR-Platinum and I can recommend it so far. My first campaign is the republic of rome (only one roman faction), city growth is slower, expanding takes more tactics due to the auxiliary system, the campaign map is beautiful and at least double the size of the Vanilla campaign map. Battles last longer (I started with VH/VH) due to the higher morale and defense/armor of infantry troops and because I have not seen a single archer unit yet (I am still pre-marius although I am in the third generation of Generals already) my usual tactics of just peppering the enemy with missiles does not work either. Its all about flanking and keeping some fresh troops in the second line now it seems (troops get exhausted very fast now, especially cavallery). Runs stable too, so I would suggest this as first mod and different RTW experience.

edit: I forgot to mention the completely customized units (stats/skin everything, and beautiful too)

[IXlegion]

well not cheating is a good one try and do a campain youd never relly do like over seas faction