Rome: Total War, does anyone have enough time to play this?

That's a really bad description so I'll ask questions ;)

What do you control? Do you build towns? Is it mission based or does it just sprawl on forever? Is there experience gained etc?

Will post more as I think of them.

Don't forget, away Gauls count double in Europe. ;)

Fucking postman, hurry up!

Not seen this mentioned round here yet (though if I'm honest I haven't looked hard), but anyway: Rome 2 Total War, out on 3 September.

So does anyone round here give a toss about these games? This thread would suggest not rly, but if I’m honest I’m absolutely on tenterhooks for this’n. Had a wee crack at Empire but haven’t played Napoleon or Shogun, so I’ve not really done much with the franchise since Medieval 2.

After an extended break I’m now so ready to just throw myself into this whole thing again. It can be a bit of a time-sink but I have no friends in the city right now and as such I have next to nothing to do each evening after work / on weekends, so y’know, what the hell.

Exciting new things that this game has:

- way better graphics, lovely visuals in the battles, a new first person view where you can drop into any one individual unit to see what’s happening on the ground – could be v. fun to do this when leading a cavalry charge / coming under heavy artillery fire / whatevs

- a better-rounded and more extensive diplomacy system which apparently enables you to succeed without actually committing to constant wars with everyone on the map, which would be a first for the franchise.

- Kinda connected with this, your faction is now gonna be comprised of competing families with loads of in-fighting and underhanded tricks going on to try and gain the ascendancy – the Game of Thrones / Hilary Mantel fan in me is fucking relishing the prospect of a little bit of Machiavellian politicking when one family or another gets too big for their boots

- a more refined / slightly RPGish experience system where your generals and units earn points and you use them to “buy” traits – enables you to have specialised units (i.e. upgrading a particular legion to be able to don out in sieges, as an elite heavy cavalry unit and so on)

– feeding into this, you now get to pick a banner and name all your units, so that even after all the original men are dead the ‘tradition’ of the unit is maintained so new troops fighting under that banner benefit from all the traits associated with it. My inner history nerd is losing it at this shit basically

– integrated land / naval battles, several of the gameplay vids highlighting this feature have made it look pretty righteous if you manage to keep on top of several theatres of conflict at once

All this and much much more.

Couple of fun looking gameplay videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKSkBEJ_wrM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaDlihIqPws

Surely I can’t be the only one round here sad enough to want to spend my free time sending hordes of my personalised legions storming across Europe, using all manner of oily diplomatic intrigue, fantastically organised violence and merciless torture, pillage and extermination to achieve my ends? Financing the whole thing off the back of a logistically immaculate trade empire?

Get on board you guys, I can't be the only history dweeb at the party

I played Napoleon a lot, but I only liked the skirmish games. The full campaign I just couldn't get along with.

Ship battles were fun for a short while, that was until I realised I could complete the Battle of Trafalgar by just not doing anything.

^This looks fantastic though, not sure my pc could handle it unfortunately

i was so bad at the original Rome: Total War I didn't even beat the tutorial

someday someone is going to combine europa universalis level macro stuff with total war level micro and then finally we will be living in the future

oh man

haha, Total War with 400 countries and 2000 provinces to be conquered and held. Through the looking glass folks. I'd end up not sleeping, just hunkered down in my room with a map on the wall over my desk, a tumbler and an expensive bottle of whiskey, wearing a ridiculous military hat and smoking endless cigarettes as I meticulously plan my route through the Białowieża (nb this is probably what'll happen when I play Rome 2 anyway)

my computer won't even handle Medieval 2 so regretfully i'm out

or alternatively i cd rob a post office and get a new computer. tempted.

should set that game in the 70s and call it KISSINGER

difficult to have a modern grand strategy game when the big hitters have got their fingers on the nuke button tho

just cos the civ games are garbage doesn't mean it couldn't be done

Ah NV, I was viewing your earlier contributions to this thread and hoping you'd come in w/ me on this, just so I don't end up talking to myself in here.

Obviously you'll know the limitations of your pc better than I do, but I feel it's worth mentioning that the team behind this game have gone out of their way to clarify that this game has specifically been built to run on even old and knackered machines, just at lower levels of detail, to try and ensure that they don't lose out in terms of sales.

Hey ho, I'll probably end up in here on my own, liveblogging my way across North Africa and the Middle East. such is life

oh jeez i'm checking it out then

tbh there was no reason why Medieval shd have run so badly, maybe it was just shit coding

Teutoberg Forest looked amazing but wrong weather conditions iirc

i played the hell out of the first medieval, don't have a PC now. that's my story. that game was boss.

arab & muslim units were so much fun; i don't think i got anywhere playing as a christian prince.

I was still a nipper when I played the original Medieval, so I always ended up being England out of some youthful and misguided sense of national identity, I suppose. Branched out a bit more on Medieval 2, Arab units were indeed boss. Springing ambushes with mounted archers was great gaming.

Though tbh I preferred playing various mods on that game, Third Age Total War was the business. A pity that they never really got the Westeros mod properly sorted, that had loads of potential.

I'd like to play these but I don't think my computer could handle 'em.

So this has got problems and glitches up the wazoo, huh? Battles in it are hella fun, the improved graphics / cinematic first person mode are absolutely fantastic. Just an immensely frustrating game, there's SO many good ideas here, but an awful lot of bad ones too and a number of changes that they've made aren't for the better. The army limits feature is some bullshit, only being able to have three armies to defend twice as many provinces whilst still trying to expand? Whose fucking idea was that?

haven't gotten this game yet. are the patches fixing it up?

Haven't been playing it very much at all, but I think the mods are making it more playable if not the patches. Making turns count for 6 months rather than a year, slowing the battles down / improving battle ai, alleviating the limitations imposed by army restrictions etc. just trying to make it feel more like the original, wherever possible.

I may come back to it at some point, but it was a pretty colossal let down in the end. Couldn't recommend it

so these are all free to play this weekend on steam and i thought about installing one to try it out but they're like 24 gigs big!

Had fun with Rome II when I finally got it a few weeks ago. But I'm kind of shit at these games so I didn't notice the massive problems plaguing it.

none of these have worked properly on my puter since the original Rome, wd really like to have had a go on something more recent

Not really into the limited viewing angle during battles but I guess fog of war is kind of the point. Super buggy for a 3 y/o game. I also enjoy LESS grafix in games like this w 1000000 moving parts in every shot so the little animated talking heads don't do anything for me. I figured out most of the movement techniques after a few hours (?????). Spies do a LOT to soften up the insides of a foe