Everything Rome 1 had that Rome 2 doesn't
1000th post! Happy Guy Fawkes night everyone
As a return to this site after a busy month when I haven't been able to post, I thought I'd like to weigh in on an ongoing debate that I've seen since the release of Rome 2: whether Rome 1 was more feature-rich or deeper. Most of the arguments I've seen are quite subjective, or made by assertions, like 'Rome 2 has way more stuff' or 'it's massively streamlined now'.
Though there were some good arguments on both sides, particularly in these threads: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-II&highlight= and http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-is-it-just-me I haven't yet found conclusive answers
So finally, in a slightly different direction to those threads, (please don't merge this with them) to bring some conclusive evidence to show what the series has lost, this is an attempt to definitively list everything that was in the original 'Rome Total War' and is not in Rome 2 (features not units or buildings). The counterpart thread for everything in Rome 2 but not Rome 1 can be found here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-Rome-1-didn-t. I personally find the older TW games to be a deeper (if somewhat less historically accurate, but don't make that the subject of this thread) experience, but there are valid reasons to prefer today's games, not least the graphics.
This is a comparison between vanilla RTW and vanilla R2, no mods
If I have missed anything please post it as well as debate and I will put it in the OP (I have added some of the ones in blackberryalpha's post and alQamar's which were not in mine, and a few from the Reddit thread, which incidentally, amended some of what I said, particularly on character immersion, so is not to be trusted as my full opinion:http://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/com...snt/?limit=500). Also, please post, I'd like to know what people think! If you disagree with me then especially do post, it will make the thread more interesting.
Here goes:
-taxation controls for every individual province
-roads of differing sizes and qualities were build-able on the campaign map (after all, what the real Rome was famous for)
-trade happened between settlements within a faction as well as between factions, this internal trade giving the map a more 'living' feel as your empire's commerce circulated
-unique faction intro videos
-city view for every settlement
-new engine for the game
-a range boost for missile troops on high ground (R2 has damage boost instead)
-fire at will for all units with missiles, including legionaries
-guard mode and loose formation for all units
-set capital
-family tree and set heir
-permanent forts that looked like a fort on the campaign map, not a ring of spikes
-watchtowers
-towns rioted a few turns before rebellions or revolts, and rebels would be unhappy citizens, not just slaves
-some of the wounded on the winner's side recovering immediately after each battle, and casualties could be dead or wounded, not just always dead
-formations were more cohesive, though patches have brought Rome 2 close
-% of each side that were dead displayed by hovering over the balance of power bar
-diplomatic options: give region, map information, attack faction, threatening diplomacy (accept or we will attack)
-you could set the exact amount of money offered or demanded in a diplomatic transaction
-all buildings constructed shown on the battle map
-building sites on the battle maps of towns in the process of constructing something
-senate missions, with rewards including money, gladiator games or races, public offices, senate standing, naval and land units
-politics had more of an impact on the campaign (in my experience you can ignore Rome 2 politics with no adverse effects)
-contextual and lengthy pre-battle speeches
-characters last long enough to become useful before they die
-immersive deep traits system with unlimited traits to give detailed characters, all traits came from experience not rpg-levelling
-nicknames 'the brave', 'the mad', 'the great' etc.
-more variation in portraits: it was very unlikely you would have two generals with the same face, even though you would have many more generals
-character portraits aged and there were traits to do with age
-more building freedom, with the ability to construct as many buildings as you liked in towns (up to about 30) and not limited to 5 in Rome itself, or 3 or 4 in minor settlements
-normal buildings such as markets that would have been easily and regularly constructed don't require R2's protracted research research, so you are less constricted in your building options
-more period-inspired HUD (not gonna get involved in the row over the unit/building cards though)
-historical event messages, and historically timed natural disasters
-plagues that made sense (from squalid places) and that occurred more often to liven the campaign map up as did all natural disasters
-more detailed breakdown of income with lots more factors in income per settlement
-more trade resources, multiple trade resources per region
-graphs displaying progress of all factions in general terms as well as financial, military, territory, population and production.
-more detailed breakdown of public order with more factors for both positive and negative
-all three of the post invasion options gave tangible benefits, as opposed to occupy being the only viable option in R2: slaughter gave public order as they were terrified of you and instant money; but destroyed the population size, occupy gave a large population but had potential public order problems, enslave provided long-term money and trade resources so was kind of a half-way house
-no crippling attrition when besieging (subjective whether this is a good thing or not, but encouraged you to build lots of siege engines for epic battles)
-casualties actually mattered as you couldn't just stand in your territory for a turn or two to replenish them for free (and replenishment is much faster now than in NTW or S2 - this one is up for debate as to whether it is a good thing, but it is a fact that you couldn't heal your armies as quickly or at no cost in Rome 1)
-unit experience decreased when fresh recruits were used to refill it, making casualties matter even more
-retrain was available in every town with the relevant barracks
-If units are completely surrounded with no hope of escape, they fight to the death and cannot rout
-music composed by Jeff van Dyck (matter of opinion as to whether he is better, but he did win awards, including a Bafta)
-music that reacts quickly and dramatically to events on the battlefield for immersion and 'hollywood' drama, as opposed to sometimes imperceptibly changing track on the OST
-tunnelling under town walls to bring them down (sap points)
-wall sizes were not automatically changed with settlement sizes: they were built independently, so large cities could have meagre defences, and smaller ones (if maxed out) could get decent ones e.g. stone walls. This led to more diversity and different challenges between cities
-religion (especially in Barbarian Invasion)
-all buildings in towns were flammable, and those destroyed had to be repaired on the campaign map
-much easier unit merging (click and drag) to refill units, balance casualties or balance experience
-slower paced battles (though patches have made this much better than at R2 release)
-general can be seen ordering the units about with every command you give: signalling with his sword for movements and rearing up to order a charge. Rallying also caused him to rear his horse. (In R2 he only signals when moving his own unit, and then only sometimes)
-no limits on armies
-military forces not glued to generals, and captains could be promoted from the ranks to become generals if they served well
-not broken up into piecemeal dlc
-pirates as actual naval forces that can be fought not percentage penalties on income (an Illyrian pirate queen is one of the R2 loading screens, and fighting pirates was the main occupation of the Roman navy - where are the pirates?)
-no automatic transports, so navies more useful
-pikemen that use their pikes, in R2 the AI generally uses its pikemen as swordsmen (though gradually improving with patches)
-bigger bonuses from traits and retainers ( unlike '5% better melee attack')
-needed siege weapons for town assaults, gates couldn't be burned down by infantry, bigger walls required better siege engines, ladders had to be constructed
-the abilities could have come come from training e.g. formations and attacks, they were not magical stat boosts like +10% attack or remove all fatigue
-more land battles (as opposed to settlement battles)
-civil war actually against the other families not generic 'senate loyalists', especially inappropriate if the player wants to preserve the republic
-ongoing cutscene to show senators' reaction to you
-brigands appeared on the map on rich trade routes
-scorched earth from armies in hostile territory, devastation shown on map and had public order and income consequences
-primary and secondary weapons for cavalry
-units stayed closer together when routing, not turning into weird massive long single-file lines, and chasing routing units was not a micromanagement-fest
-banners stayed above routing units so you could track them down and see their numbers and the factors affecting them, routing enemies were also shown on the minimap ('radar map'), so didn't require the chore of searching the battle map and examining the landscape to find them
-it was much harder to 'shatter' units (rout but terrify them so much they cannot be rallied)
-battle damage e.g. to walls had to be repaired afterwards on the campaign map, or it would remain in future battles
-marginally bigger units: infantry 160 standard/240 largest, missile 160, cavalry 108 compared to R2's infantry 160 standard/200 largest, missile 120, cavalry 80
-full page displays when needed (settlement details, diplomacy) and not obstructive when not needed (R2's massive tall empty unit cards box)
-population (and the ability to do migration tactics by recruiting units and disbanding them elsewhere)
-a more dynamic base for modding: it will be much harder to change core game mechanics with R2
-units could disengage without massive casualties or men 'locked into' time-consuming combat animations that ensured they would be caught and killed
-a video showing you the death of the general on either side, and a video showing wall and gate breaches
-more spaced units so you can see the fighting
-lots of (orangey-yellow) torches carried by troops in night battles to provide light, not one weird bright white spotlight on the unit commander like in R2
-smoke trail behind torches and more visible one behind fire arrows
-horses try to leap over spears and shields when charging
-artillery is (realistically) less accurate
-there are 10 historical battles, compared to the 4 in R2, 3 of those 4 have you playing as the Romans (+1 more historical battle with DLC. You play as Rome.)
-more populated cities have related problems, like squalor, and related benefits, like a large recruitment pool, unlike R2 where settlement size and squalor are not linked, only specific buildings
-elephants have more animations and throw men into the air with tusks and trunk
-mounted units have more impact, and units look like they have more weight: the men sent flying from cavalry charges flail like men, rather than flying 10 feet like a paper doll
-there is more room for tactics: usually you can manoeuvre with infantry and skirmishers and deploy cavalry in flanking attacks, and battles progress in stages. In R2, once one line breaks somewhere, the whole battle line routs quickly and there is little room for tactics (admittedly this one is quite subjective, feel free to dispute if this is not your experience)
-agents have more distinct roles, less crossover between them (possibly more intuitive but again, that is opinion, not fact)
-you have the option of a short campaign as any faction which is less of a long-term commitment, and can be completed in a few hours, or 1-2 days. Thus Rome 1 also catered to the casual gamer, addressing more directly than R2 both the casual and the hardcore player
-videos for capturing a wonder
-much less distorted map projection
-distance to capital
-map areas: sahara desert, tip of Sweden, modern day Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia, more of modern-day Ukraine and Russia
-you could zoom out much further on the campaign map
-fertility varying between regions, and the ability to get a good or bad harvest instead of a set income
-the year and faction displayed when loading a campaign
-cities with more than one culture's buildings in them
-units visibly pushed siege engines to the walls, as opposed to just walking behind them while they magically move forwards
-save battle replay saved exactly what happened (patches are improving this, but it is not yet fully fixed in Rome 2)
-culture-specific advisers
-culture-specific music
-campaign map animations for natural disasters: volcanoes erupted, floodwater could be seen on the map, and the ground convulsed in earthquakes
-far longer unit and building descriptions, with historical information
-you could have multiple generals within one army
-trade to every settlement, not just the capital, isolated settlements could still trade
-disciplined troops such as Romans would form columns, stepping aside to allow other units to move or rout through them, so the cohesion of your formation was not disrupted when this unit crossover happened
As a little aside, I'd also like to remind you of the things that have been removed that were in Medieval 2:
-agent videos
-armour cleanness deteriorated over the course of a battle, troops did not start out filthy
-armour and weapon upgrades visibly changed the appearance of units' equipment
-prisoner count displayed on in-battle HUD, not just victory screen
-diplomatic options e.g. marriages
-recruitment cool-down, limited pool of units to recruit from, as though reflecting a trained reserve
And here is the full text I posted in the other thread as the opposite balance to this list:
''Right, as a counterpart to this thread: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...Rome-2-doesn-t
Where I listed all the Rome 1 features not in Rome 2, as I stated I will do, this thread is an effort to go through everything that is in the new game but wasn't in the original, to show why many prefer it. There is an impressive array of features added, even if a lot has been cut. In fact, despite being the game that cut the most, Rome 2 is also the game that invented the most new features since the original Rome. I also here endeavour to combat the flak aimed at me in the other thread as not able to see both sides.
Please contribute if you see things I've missed out (I have added some that Pontic Pontus and Dunadd suggested), or discuss the relative merits of the two games
To highlight what is completely new, features that have not been seen before are unformatted, those that have been in TW games since Medieval 2 are in bold, features that have been in since Empire/Napoleon are underlined and features that were in Shogun 2 are in italics
So here, all in one place is my comprehensive 'in Rome 2 but not in the original Rome' feature list:
-Legions and legion legacy/history
-Army naming and banner customisation
-Cinematic camera without HUD
-Line of sight
-Stances: forced march, muster, raiding, fortified (though RTW had forts separate from armies, that could be garrisoned by different armies)
-Transports (debatable benefit)
-Wonders not included in original 7 e.g. Stonehenge
-Political parties
-Territorially unified Rome
-Slums
-Some faction-dependent mercenaries
-Differentiation between client states and satrapies, not just generic vassals
-Ability to levy soldiers from satrapies
-Ability to select upgrades, specialise armies
-117 factions plus rebel and slave emergent factions
-More playable factions: every playable Rome 1 faction (3 Romans, 1 Carthage becomes 3, Gallic tribe, German tribe, Brittanic tribe, Seleucids, Egypt, Greek cities, though DLC, are 3 playable factions (Athens, Sparta, Epirus) and 3 non-playable ones (Syracuse, Rhodes, Pergamon) instead of 1, Parthia) plus Macedon, Pontus, 3 steppe tribes in DLC, 3 Gallic tribes in DLC
-Playable barbarian factions are real tribes: Iceni, Suebi, Arverni instead of Britannia, Germania and Gaul
-Families and civil wars for all factions
-Carthage a republic
-More units (around 3x as many)
-200 naval units
-Navies can attack and capture coastal settlements, as well as reinforce land forces near a coast or besieging a coastal city
-More factors affect diplomacy e.g. you were nice to my ally/you had a war with my trade partner
-Ability to give general orders to AI-controlled allies e.g. ‘defend here’
-Edicts
-Recruit directly into armies rather than from settlements
-African and Asian elephants (since patch)
-Province/region system to aid management
-New formations, such as shieldwall (but this was in BI), defensive testudo and differentiation between hoplite and Macedonian phalanxes
-More city variants and 5 unique cities based on their historical counterparts
-Option of Republic or Empire after civil war, not just Empire
-Cultural and Economic victories, and victory conditions include allies, client states and satrapies
-Full-screen strategic overview map
-Multiple capture points in cities
-CoH-style victory countdown for capturing cities and victory points
-Limited armies intended to give bigger, more decisive battles (and I have found I am fighting larger battles, though some have not)
-Navigable rivers
-Sea regions, that can be neutral, hostile, contested, shared or controlled, each with different bonuses and penalties
-Seleucid, Ptolemaic, and Carthaginian Empires broken up into satrapies/client states
-More weather and lighting effects
-New siege engines e.g. wall ram
-Historical storyline to follow with money rewards
-Map effects e.g. clouds
-Replenishment for fleets at sea in friendly regions
-Barbarian confederations
-Selection of generals' bodyguards and admirals to choose from, in Rome 1 there were at most 2 different generals' bodyguards per faction and you could not choose between them
-Female Agents
-Naval mercenaries
-Better graphics
-Battle Prisoners, enslave prisoners, more detailed slavery mechanics
-1 v 1 animations and wounded animations
-More historical figures
-New ammunition types: poisonous or exploding catapult ammo, flaming javelins etc.
-Height, appearance and equipment differences between men within a unit
-Dirt on units and (with dlc) blood
-Deployables in battle e.g. caltrops, spike pits, barricades, stakes, burning bales (fireballs)
-Bigger map, including Upper Egypt (counter-intuitively further south) Arabia, Caledonia, Media, Parthia, Persia, Bactria, Indian Ocean and Aral Sea
-Warscape
-Save campaign battle replay
-'Intelligent zoom' (N)
-Exempt provinces from tax
-Automatic garrisons in towns, separate from the field armies
-Cavalry mount/dismount toggle
-Attrition in harsh climates, when starving or when besieging/under siege (only attrition under siege was in the original Rome)
-More graphical effects and shader options
-More cultures (e.g. Illyrians, African Tribes, Sarmatians, Arabs) with their own units and building varieties
-Diplomacy with every faction, not just the ones you have an agent nearby (Rome 1 diplomats)
-Agents can do more actions and have crossover roles
-Villages on battle maps not in a settlement
-Numerical breakdown of diplomatic relations
-Soldiers and horsemen leap over (and break) low walls, fences, hedges and market stalls
-Better researched units and equipment
-Tech tree – 3 branches, and faction-specific
-No areas start out as rebels (no faction cap)
-Slow motion
-Unit replenishment instead of retrain, though units can be retrained to upgrade them
-New battle modes: coastal battles, port sieges, naval battles, more developed ambushes
-Diplomatic options: join war against, non-aggression pact, defensive alliance, war target, satrapies or client states instead of protectorates
-Prestige (now called Imperium and resulting in agent, edict and army cap boosts)
-Remove HUD option for screenshots
-Torches to burn down gates (debatable benefit)
-Bars as well as numbers to show health of units
-Indicators on flags of morale, active effects and fatigue
-Dilemmas and subjects
-Ability to give control of some units to the AI
-Wildlife (other than birds)
-More group formations and grouped-units options
-More abilities and generals’ bonuses are dependent on their attributes
-Food supply in campaign
-Ability to move units while hidden
-DX11
-General and agent skill trees''
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Re: Everything Rome 1 had that Rome 2 doesn't
Originally Posted by Sharpe
