Rome: Total War

I downloaded and played the demo.

It was somewhat fun, but it didn't really do it for me.

Go download the demo and try it out.

 

Bought it a couple of days ago, but haven't played it yet. May play tonight if I have time.

 

I love strategy games! Civ2 Civ3 Tropico AOE AOE2 Starcraft Warcraft all that good stuff!

I'm gonna read one of the reviews, thanks for the heads up!

 

I have always loved civilization. That is the only game that has had me sit there and play for like 10 hours straight before.

I used to play starcraft online all the time i mean none stop and i used to be fairly highly ranked on there as well.

 

haha...I thought this was gonna be a Jim Rome thread...

 

Damn, Stack, did you get fired? lol. You're everywhere all of a sudden.

 

Read the review on Gamespot.com. It's what finally made me go get it.

 

Na..kinda hard to fire myself hehe...when the bar is not completly slammed i am usually working on promotional stuff in the office or editing The website for Live so i tend to be on the Net until at least a good Astros game or something comes on.

 

Man, I was looking forward to this game coming out after all the hype over it.

My PC Gamer mags were praising the game.

ANyways, let me know how it is. When did it come out? I might get it this weeked.

 

There is a show on History channel every Friday night that uses the video game to display Roman Battles.

It just looks so amazing.

 

The guys at TotalWar have made some of the best RTS games ever. They started with Shogun, then Medeival, and now Rome. In each case, the big deal was seeing lots and lots of individually rendered units fight it out. Now the term 'lots' means thousands, I think- thousands of fully 3d rendered soldiers- rendered well enough for you to zoom in real close and it looks pretty sweet.

What has always set TotalWar apart for me is that actual battlefield strategy counts more than anything else. You do your major political and financial maneuvering in turn-based time, and the battles in real time. Every other RTS I know pales in comparison to TotalWar when it comes to real time battle strategy, because with others you spend all your time dicking around with resources and building more crap while at the same time deploying troops and patrols and fighting battles, etc. In TotalWar when you fight a battle, that's it, the only thing that matters is that single battle. And strategy actually matters. There are other RTS's that are wonderful, but frankly things haven't changed much since Command&Conquer in the mid-90's: develop tons of resources, build a ****load of troops and tanks and deploy them. There's actually a lot more mental multi-tasking than actual strategy, if you know what I mean.

In total war the weather matters, whether you're uphill or downhill of an opponent is a big deal, how long they've been running or walking, where your general is, etc. Surprise attacks are actually possible. Most important of all- you can still win a battle if you have inferior forces with superior strategy. This just isn't the case in most other RTS's. Might always wins. In this game brains really count, so the challenge is far more gratifying.

My computer could barely handle Rome at the lowest resolution settings (1.6 P4, 768MB ram, ATI Radeon 64MB video.) What I did see was awesome though- oceans of individually rendered warriors- the demo campaign involves the pivotal battle of Hannibal vs. the Romans- with his war elephants! Awesome. You can zoom in and literally watch these elephants toss Roman soldiers through the air like they're stuffed animals.

 

If it is anything like Midevil: Total War

then, its a great strategy game. The battles by themselves are awesome. however, you could play an entire campaign without ever commanding a battle. The politics, taxes, foreign relations, religion aspect, infrastructure are fun to play with, and are a game by itself.

 

Maybe I haven't played it enough... I bought Medieval, but had gotten into Rise of Nations, and the followup, too much to really get into it. What put me off from diving into it was all the keys and stuff you need to remember in order to move things around, etc. I downloaded Rome, and it looks great, but still appears to have a more complex set of commands than what I grew used to with Starcraft, Age of Empires, Rise of Nations, and so on.

Am I just missing something? Do I really need to remember all those keys and stuff? I know it probably sounds silly to many of you RTS fans, but as much as I love these games, and the more complex the better, strategy wise, I prefer a simple command structure... mouse, arrow keys, and not much beyond that.

I feel like there should be a Seinfeld quote that would describe my goofy attitude towards these games, but I guess I prefer the commands simple, because my life is so complicated.

 

I know that when i used to play starcraft you didn't have to use the keyboard but it really did help when you were in a fast battle and stuff. if you knew the key combos and all.

 

Well I've played it for all of about 20-30 minutes (the tutorial/prologue). This really isn't my type of game, yet I find myself enjoying it. I haven't gotten too deep into anything yet, but while the potential for micromanagement is there, they have provided ways for the game to auto-manage itself. I haven't been absolutely wow'd by the game, but I do like it, and keep in mind this is from somebody that is not a huge fan of this type of game. The graphics are great as are the details. I have a Radeon 9700 Pro on an AMD XP 3000+ with 1 GB of RAM and there were a few herky jerky points, but nothing too bad. To top it off, this is after I turned everything to "high detail". For me, it was a $40 well-spent so far and I've only played about 20 minutes.

Regarding the controls that Deckard mentioned - yeah there are a lot of controls, but it's not completely overwhelming or anything. I use combinations of the mouse and keystrokes to get stuff done. It may take a day or two of playing to get used the controls, but nothing too bad. I do think its control is more complex than Starcraft, AoE, or RoN, so he's right about that. But even after playing for just 20-30 minutes, the strategy in the game is way more "serious" than any of those games.