Total War: Rome
 

I know most people here don't give a shit.

And I know those that do have already played (and moved on from) Total War: Rome TWO.

I have a Mac,so all I got is the original, which is fine with me because it's a ****ing great game.

I did some modding to make the AI play better and make some gameplay changes like slowing down city growth and stuff.

I'm kind of a history nerd so rather than conquer the entire map, I like to play to the "50 provinces and conquer Rome" mark. I like to take a screenshot of my empire, just to see what my empire would look like in a history textbook.

I finished my first full campaign today as Macedon.

Great work, man.

Did you enjoy the game?

Whoops, thought you were talking about Rome 2.

My bad.

Yeah, with the modded info I'm using, the game is a lot slower and more deliberate. With fatigue turned off, the AI presents a decent challenge without having to give them the ridiculous bonuses that come with turning up the difficulty. You don't have to blitz and you don't have to finish off every last faction, they'll actually leave you alone if you build right. With things like slower city growth, you can actually enslave, setup frontier boundaries, and build a more realistic empire.

For example, as got close to the mid-game, I wiped out the Brutii and pushed into Italy so that I wouldn't have to face a post-Marian Rome. I crushed the Julii and forced them west, leaving them with the territories that they had taken from the Gauls, west of Massilia. They didn't attack me again for the rest of the game. I knocked the Scipii out of Italy and Sicily and left them with their African holdings.

They sieged me on Sicily once in the next 100 years. I fought 3 or 4 battles with them very late in the game because as you can see, I conquered Carthage to make it an even 50 provinces and win the game.

However, contrast that with the fact that I established a northern frontier by conquering Thracia in the first 5 years of the campaign. I was STILL getting sieged at Campus Getae by Dacians AND Scythians when I got my 50th province.

In other words, I subdued several "civilized" factions like the Greeks and Romans but was constantly besieged in my hinterlands by "barbarians".

My next campaign I'll be playing as the Gauls. I got REALLY comfortable with phalanx warfare in this campaign and started rolling. I had an especially easy time with the Romans. I kept the pressure on them and they just couldn't adjust.

I had some crazy stuff with Egypt and Pontus though. I ended up having to hole up in Halicarnassus and Pergamum and force the Pontics to fall on my pikes. Finally drained their economy to the point they couldn't afford troops but it took almost 25 years.

Sounds ****ing epic. Sounds like mods made the AI way more realistic. That's been an issue for me at times when playing the Total War games, but it's usually just minor shit that I can turn a blind eye on or find a way to justify the silly AI antics in my head. :)

Actually, the mods are more to enhance the overall campaign and balance a few things here and there, like swapping 2 starting provinces for Greece and Macedon so they actually have a chance to resist the Romans and tweaking Britannia so they don't blitzkrieg across Europe in every single campaign without fail.

What ultimately makes the AI more realistic (outside of a tiny formation file mod) is to TURN OFF FATIGUE. Yeah, it's sounds so ridiculously simple it's stupid. The AI simply doesn't know how to manage fatigue so by the time armies engage, the AI is already exhausted so they get their asses kicked. You have to make sure YOU don't abuse it (because now you can sprint anywhere without penalty) but the AI is just so much better with fatigue off.

Oh my, was I high last night.

LMAO

It's a fun, FUN game.

But Jesus Christ, that's the message board equivalent of eating an entire bag of Cheetos and then wondering where all the yellow powder on my fingers came from...

I hope you somehow remember to write down the notes of how you would solve all the universe's problems when you're higher than a mother****er. That would be fantastic reading. :D

Rome 2 is laughably garbage, doesn't hold a candle to the original. Total War has become the Madden franchise for PC ROFL

Rome 2 is garbage?

LMAO

This (and a couple other things) are in the humble bundle weekly sale this week.

Came here to post exactly this.

https://www.humblebundle.com/weekly

I think I'm gonna pick up Total War: Napoleon next.

I still play Rome total war.

Right now I have XGM loaded.

Without mods it can be annoying because it's predictable. The factions that have chariots slaughter everyone on autoresolve and dominate the campaign map. Doesn't lead to much variety without the mods.

As far as the RTS combat goes, I don't think they've made a better engine yet.

I played XGM a lot my first time with the game. I even did a massive Cyrenaica AAR on TOTALWAR.org. I'm playing vanilla now but heavily modded. I can't get XGM to run on the Mac.

The chariot problem is easily rectified by changing secondary hit points for non-chariot units in the EDU file.

With fatigue off and Darth's formation mod, the RTS battles are the best of any game ever made.

I take it this is a PC game?

Yeah. Windows and Mac.

Yes. There's a reason why it's a 4/10 out of 3000+ reviews on metacritic. They completely neutered the game. Shogun 2 was one step forward and Rome 2 was two steps back.

Rome 2 was better than Shogun 2, IMO. Shogun 2 campaign map was stripped down to bare bones.

You're saying I should believe random people scoring the game, which I spent countless hours on, instead of judging it off of my own personal experience? OK.

No, I'm saying it's shit and that most people agree. Even AngryJoe shits all over it and he's a Total War fanboy.

Is he not allowed to like the game? Stop hijacking my thread.

Okay, just bought the humble bundle. htismage--what site do you get your custom mods for Rome from? Thanks!

Yeah, changing the HP also makes the battles longer and more awesome. :D It does kind of nerf chariots more than I desire though. I like the depth XGM added. I played a few mods but that was my favorite. What stand alone mods for vanilla are really good?

I also loved medieval 2, but the battle engine is simply not as good as Rome IMO. It looks neater...but it's dumb. Peasants can slaughter elite units simply because of a faster animation. It really screwed the Danes over, as their 2 handed axmen should be a murder machine.

I haven't played Rome II as I've heard modded OG Rome is still a funner game. Gameplay vids are also far less impressive than the promotional videos that were being floated around prior to release, which is kinda bullshit. I might buy it on a crazy steam sale when they start packaging all of the DLC into a single purchase.

Opinions are subjective. Stop acting like an authority on what someone else should or should not like.

I can't point out enough how people sound like ASSHOLES when they do this.

TOTALWAR.org and twcenter.net.

I recommend Vanilla Essentials for starters. Once you are comfy with the game, I would recommend XGM or rome:total realism

I play Vanilla Essentials with a few other tweaks.

Shogun Total War 2 Fall of the Samurai, in my opinion, is the best Total War game to date. And I do own Rome 2.

But I also like line infantry and cannons over swords and arrows.

/you just can't beat having your ships rain death from the sky onto the battle field. Nothing like a well timed artillery strike on the enemies line right before your line infantry engages them.

Hey WhiteWhale, after much effort, I've gotten XGM working on my Mac!

I can't wait to play it.

Awesome. I love it. Macedon is my fav faction.

I'll play as Rome if I want to just wreck everyone. The initial challenge is hard but after you build up the cities and start pumping out legions it's steam-roller city and can become very boring and redundant.

The only thing that I dislike is that after a while enemies start spamming stack after stack. Playing on higher campaign difficulty can be annoying because you will need to fight 5-10 battles per turn.

Macedon is my favorite faction on Vanilla. I think I'm going to play XGM as the Greek Cities this time, just for a change of pace. I want to use phalangites AND hoplites together.

By the way, I finished my Gallic campaign. It was horribly boring.

Right off the bat, I knew I had to secure my borders so I attacked the British settlement on the mainland, the Spanish settlement in the Pyrenees, and the rebels at Massillia. I shored up my defense in Mediolanium and Patavium in hopes that I could stall the Romans long enough to give myself a two or even one-front war.

It worked...TOO well.

Within the first 20 years, I had conquered the entire Iberian peninsula, all of Britannia, and had reduced the Germanic holdings to just two territories in the very east, near Scythia.

I had conquered 32 of the required 50 territories with spear warbands and javelin skirmishers. By the time I conquered the Julii and Rome, I only had 2 or 3 cities built up enough for level 2 troops and I didn't own a single city outside of Italy that could build level 3.

I beat the entire campaign without ever getting to use the Gallic uber-archers.

The cool thing about XGM is that you can play as several different Greek city states rather than just pretending they were all ruled by Sparta.

Also, Macedon doesn't use sparta's symbol for a flag. That annoyed me in vanilla but the faction was a fun play through.

Those archers are ridiculous. The right temples and training locations and they are totally broken.

Yeah, I actually think I'm going to play the Pergamon provincial campaign.