A Little Disappointed!

[[GG]ThinRedLine]

Hello All,

Well, It is here, I've played around with it for about 6 hours and though I had an entertaining time, I must admit to being a little disappointed.

I love this period a great deal. I play Marian Rome and EIR as well as Late Rome in my table-top gaming all of the time. I particularly love the Slave Revolts, the Punic Wars, the Fall of Rome in the West and Sub-Romano British/Dark Ages (Arthurian) History the best.

This is a game that I will play for sure, but for me, NTW is still the superior game. I have stated my preference for NTW even though I have not yet had a chance to play RTW MP. Perhaps that may change my current disappointment, but I sort of doubt it.

This may just be a simple case of me getting my hopes up too high, but Napoleonics just really seem to lend itself to the kind of people I like to associate with and the kind of warfare that seems strangely familiar to me.

Ahhh....I'm probably just a reincarnated Highlander from the Fields of Quatre Bras and Waterloo and am just living in the wrong time...hehe.

Let me know what you guys think. Perhaps you can convince me that this is better, but I doubt it...lol


[glow=red,2,300]S![/glow]

TRL

[[GG] Lord Ashram]

I agree, actually. I played around with it for a while, and am not all that impressed. The pathfinding seems weak at times, the strategy map is not that easy to use, and honestly, while the graphics are beautiful up close, I think the units look crappy the moment you zoom out.

MTW, and of course NTW, are, in my opinion, a LOT better.

Oh well... still got Dawn of War:)

Ash

[SaxonWarlord]

Argh! LOL I can't believe you two!

Well lets bring on everyone's most anticipated and well respected opinion!..........mine ofcourse

So far I have only played through the prologue (tutorial), some on the campaign map and fought a few battles/sieges. I must say I really love the look and feel of this game. I don't think the campaign map is is at all hard to use, it might just take some time to get use to since its so dynamic and freeform compared to what we are use to. Pathfinding, it still needs some work in close quarter enviroments in cities, although not near as bad as M:TW. Not sure what you mean by the graphics looking crapy zoomed out, its not suppose to be eye popping, it gives you a better strategic view of the battlefield.

Ok, few things that have caught my eye. I love the way your cities on the map function. You can build units and buildings at the same time and they are seperate operations for the city. Also at the same time, you can retrain units in the same city and its also a seperate operation, and when you retrain units, you can retrain as many units in a single turn as can fit in the retrain unit que. This alone is one of the greatest improvements I see as of now.

Also, concerning population, your cities have a specific population that grows by a percentage according to certain factors. The population of a city is very important. When you train units in a city it uses part of the population in the training of the unit. The other important part of population is how it affects the growth of a city. As you know in the previous Total War games you just built a fort/keep/castle ect to open up the advanced buildings and defences. You still do that, with the construction of a governors villa/palace ect. But you can only do it when a city's population is high enough. For instance I could not construct and governors palace unitl the population of my city was 6000+.

When attacking an enemy city, you can choose to maintain the siege, in which case it will tell you how many turns before it falls, or you can assault the city. If you choose to assault it shows you both generals and some other usefull information like in VI, but you also have something called building points to make siege weapons with. A siege ram for instance is 50 building points, and I had 184 building points at one time. If you choose to make a siege engine it will take 1 turn for a siege ram, not sure on the other siege engines though. So if you do this you will have to maintain the siege for 1 turn while the siege ram is being constructed. So assume you made one ram and you then assaulted the city, when you enter the battle that ram does not take up one of the 20 unit spaces, its an independent piece of siege equipment in which case any foot unit in your army can man it and put it to use, and also at any time unman it and leave it where it is.

When you take over a city you can choose to occupy and develop this city, send off a majority of the population into slavery to your other city/cities, or exterminate the population and get a hell load of loot from the city . If you occupy the city you will get some loot still, and also I believe if you choose to sack the city there will still be some left, not sure on this as I have not done it. It tells you how many people will be killed and how much loot you can get when it shows you these options.

There is a family tree screen that shows you your original faction leader with his name and age and unique portrait, who his wife is, and their children. Your eldest son does not have to be your heir either, when one of your sons turns 16 he is elgible, but you could choose your youngest son to be your heir if you think he is the most capable and the one you favor. Maybe you decided you made a bad choice so at a later time you could name your eldest son your heir therby taking the title from your youngest son. This has effects on the one who looses the title of heir. Gives them a negative trait basically saying that they proved uncable of being the heir. The son who is named heir has a positive train called "Faction Heir".

Well I stop here for now, this is not everything in the game ofcouse, just some cool things I thought I would point out. Most of this information is for anyone that does not have the game yet.

[[GG]Buxford]

Very interesting indeed. I have been very busy this week and haven't gotten a chance to go pick it up at EB. May I ask what the minimum system specs are for the game?

[[GG]Remi]

Buxford said:

Very interesting indeed. I have been very busy this week and haven't gotten a chance to go pick it up at EB. May I ask what the minimum system specs are for the game?

On the Box it says:

Windows 98/ME/2000/xp

P3/Athlon 1.0 ghz

256 megs of ram

3 gigs of hard drive space

A 3d hardware accelerator card compatiable with directx 9.0, with at least 64 meg video ram.

This includes any nvidia geforece 3 card or higher or ATI radeon 8500 or higher

[[GG]Remi]

Well even though i've spent quite a few hours playing i'm both pleased and a unsure about the game thus far. The strategy part of the game is great.

The map and toolbars present you with loads of information, giving you engrossing information into your empire. One of my favortie parts is the map depicts trade in the form of little carts and boats which show you where exactly your goods are going. This is just eyecandy since you can access this info in a city toolbar, but it does immerse you into the feeling of a living empire. I'm currently in a Long campaign as the julii faction and i can see me trade caravans stretch from the baltic to the bay of biscay. Also if an rival army is sitting on a road, it effectively cuts the trade that would pass on it. I'm have trouble right now in some of my provinces with this at the moment. But rest assured i have an army on the way to deal with the rebel slaves ;D

I have really just begun to touch the diplomatic tools. However i've forced the Carthaginians into a paying a 800 dinar tribute every turn. This probably because carthage has bee weakened by the scipii and my forces outnumber carthage at least 3:1. I'm going to be attempting coaxing the Bruti family into going to war with the Thracians, who after defeating the greek city states, have become a real power in the Aegean. If i can bring those two factions to war i believe i can seize the bruti's larger citys without a fight and maybe also sneak a few citys away from the Thracians from my army based in Crete and Ionia.

The senate is also something i'm not quiet sure about. I mean, how serious should i take this faction? I've been sitting on the border of the iberia waiting to launch an invasion, however the senate wants to stay friendly with the spanish. But the Iberia is full of rich provinces, which i will need to support a larger navy if i ever want to challenge the other roman factions. Thus far i've folllowed every senate mission and completed it in a timely manner. I've gained 2 or 3 titles in the senate and the majority of senators are in my favor. If ignoring the senate here leads to civil war, my trade income will be cut. My army outnumbers the other romans but it is spread across the Mediterranean sea. My navy is pathetic. So i'm wieghing my choices at the moment what exactly should be my next move.

I guess you can see that i'm just a little absorbed in my virtual empire, so yea i like the game

However when it comes to the tactical battles i'm still a bit unsure about the game. The graphics are gorges, and really something great to watch with all the bells and whistles turned on. But i dunno, something just seems off... i can't exactly put my finger on it at the moment.