Rome: Total War

"As smooth as i am with my pants off."

Do you love strategy but hate simple small RTS games? Do you wish to command gigantic armies, fight gigantic battles and use actual battle concepts, such as flanking, charging combined arms, skirmishing and formations? Do you hate how build orders rule in click fest RTS games? Then the Total War series is what you're looking for and RTW couldn't be a better way to start it.

Rome: Total War is a wargame on a massive scale. Taking control of one of the major nations (factions) in Europe, from Rome, to barbarians, to Greeks, to eastern forces like Egypt, you must manage your cities, train your armies, fight battles, organize your economy, foster great generals and take and hold land by any means necessary.

Rome: Total War's gameplay is divided into two parts, like the previous game.

There is the overarching campaign map where you construct buildings, train troops, move armies and formulate your plans for world domination

When a battle begins you are taken to the battlefield and fight the battle yourself in massive, 3d battles with thousands of troops in real time, where you use tactics and the troops you recruited to defeat the enemy

The two parts are linked as you only have the troops you had in the army when the battle began and you cannot train more troops on the field unlike other RTS games.

The campaign game is quite involved. Besides constructing buildings, like barracks and archery ranges, you also must keep an eye on public order and counter unhappiness by building happiness buildings like shires or, if squalor is becoming a problem you can construct health buildings like sewers to lower squalor.

Squalor is a representation of overcrowding and pollution caused by a high population and it can be partially countered by construction of the next governor's building, such as a Governor's Villa or palace to expand the city to make room for more people.

Squalor is somewhat badly designed however. There is always a point when the city is so big that you've constructed all available happiness and health buildings and the population is still increasing, causing it to rebel since you have no way of keeping public order. You can always allow the city to rebel and then kill off the rebels and exterminate the city to kill most of the population so the cycle starts over.

There are many other buildings to construct, such as farms and mines for increased population growth and income, to sewers and walls for higher public health and better defenses.

You also need to decide on tax rate and how often games and races are held, if you have an arena or hippodrome. The tax rate rather obviously makes you more money if you hike it up but it upsets the population. Providing entertainment, such as gladiatorial games will distract the population, making them happy, however it does cost money to put on such festivities.

You also need to decide who the governor of the city is.

And this is where Rome's best aspects is: the games personality. Every general, governor or named char in the game has their own traits and stats, as well as followers.

You may have a man who is brave in battle, is good using infantry, is impotent, is a drunkard, is a sexual deviant, is a berserker, or one of dozens of other traits, all of which are visible on his profile along with a funny description and their effects on his abilities.

Characters also can collect followers or ancillaries, who are the hangers on and friends that great men tend to collect, such as writers, bodyguards, priests or even drunken uncles.

Each character also has a rating for his ability to command armies, how much he inspires fear, how well he manages running a settlement and how much respect he garners from his fellow man.

All these factors combine to create a character and it is though these you decide what he would be best used for, such as high command men to lead armies and high management men to govern settlements. The characters traits also come into play, as a coward trait will lower morale across your entire army, while a commander with a lower command rating but morale boosting traits might be better for the job. Characters also improve hugely with experience, so a young man with low stats will eventually become a feared conquer after a lifetime of battle experience.

Each character is part of your family tree, as all your characters, leaders and such are related so you need to have men marry and have kids to produce the next generation of leaders. A faction that loses all their family members is destroyed and their land becomes rebel territory that any faction can take.

This personality and individuality makes generals and leaders feel much less like currency to be spent on expanding your borders or bland robots, as every man has a history and personally and its great fun to see your generals improve and evolve as they age, depending on where life takes them and really adds to the feel and satisfaction of the game.

RTW also features an advisor, Victoria who pops up and offers help on just about every aspect of the game with voice acting and text. You just click her icon and she will tell you about the dialogue box or activity you are currently doing or she will appear with warnings about things you should know about. The advice is very clear and concise and is acted well. There's even a few jokes and remarks thrown in just for fun. Victoria adds personality to the game and shes great for new players.

A similar advisor for battles named Marcus does a similarly excellent job. The game also features two tutorials to help you get started.


The campaign part of the game has a few faults however.

Top of the list is diplomacy; its mostly useless. You have diplomats in RTW and they can be used to ask other factions for trade rights, alliances or peace. You can also demand and or gift money or territory. The problem is that the AI just doesn't react to diplomacy realistically. An ally will often attack you and all factions tend to hate you and declare war on you as soon as you share a border with them, even if you are vastly more powerful than they are. It is largely impossible to stay friendly with factions in RTW and the middle game is always a slaughterfest, as everyone takes on everyone in all vs. all world wars. It is also difficult to get peace, even if you are crushing the enemy and some things like military access are way too hard to get. The AI also doesn't provide feedback on why something was refused or what they would like.

Public order is also a real problem later in the game; when you haves large numbers of massive cities, as it becomes a balancing act to keep everyone happy because of annoying loyalty penalties.

The most annoying of th penalties is Distance to Capital. DTC is a loyally effect that lowers public order depending how far away your faction's capital city is to the city in question. Outlying cities on the borders of your empire will suffer the most and often it's almost impossible to counter this, no matter how many garrison troops or happiness buildings you use. The end of the campaign is usually a rush to finish conquering what you need before your other provinces rebel and one hiccup can collapse an empire. The rebellions can get very obnoxious and the game would be better if the penalties for distance to capital and squalor were toned down a bit.

To be fair however it would be very difficult to hold together an empire than spawns half of Europe, and the game shows that.

And now we come to the centerpiece of the series for many people: the battles

If you're played the previous games in the series RTW's battles will leave you absolutely gobsmacked with utter amazement. RTWs battles are fully 3d and feature thousands of troops, all individually rendered. You can zoom right in and see individual men slashing and stabbing and fighting for their lives. The sheer scope and scale of RTW's battles is electrifying when you first experience it and you will be absolutely floored if you have come to the game from the previous 2d efforts such as MTW.

The impact and epic feel of RTWs battles is hard to describe in words for somebody new to the series. Every solider attacks and fights individually and there are 120 or 200 of them in a unit for infantry, 80 for cavalry with a maximum of twenty unis a side along with reinforcements. The game features dozens of different units, such as legionaries, swordsmen, archers, javelins, axemen, siege engines, elephants, war dogs, phalanx, horse archers and chariots. The many different factions in the game require vastly different tactics, as your armies may be infantry based, cavalry or horse archer based, phalanx based or a mix of all three.

Battles in RTW are realistic to an extent. Each unit has morale, which is its will to stand and fight and it is raised and lowered by various factors, such as frightening enemy berserkers, flanking attacks, wining or losing a melee, having a good general and so on.When a unit dips below wavering morale it "breaks"; it flees the field and becomes uncontrollable unless it rallies.

Each class of troops requires vastly different tactics and there is a huge amount of difference between, say slow lumbering phalanx troops and faster lighter barbarian swordsmen. Archers and siege engines require thought to use well and you have to be tactical since you only have what men you had on the campaign map. There is no recruiting in battles. The game also features thrilling sieges, with siege towers, ladders, sapping points and battering rams, as well as catapults and the like to batter down your enemy's walls. Ladders allow your men to simply climb up and take the walls from the enemy, fighting their troops on the walls, while sapping points allow you to dig under the walls and make them collapse, leaving an easy way into the city.

Sieges are almost like chess and are nicely strategic. The AI isn't anything amazing in battles but its good enough to make the game fun and decidedly better in some ways than its future versions.

RTW's battles have some minor flaws, such as sometimes stupid AI, some units like general's bodyguards being rather overpowered and for some factions, too many generic troops like “Barbarian Swordsmen” and “Barbarian Cavalry”.

RTW's graphics are very good for the time and still hold up even today. The campaign map is bright and colorful, with a good interface and easy to understand dialogues. The map is fully 3d and armies appear as large soldiers, like mtw's "chess piece" style unit markers.. Other characters such as diplomats are visible as people as well, making it easy to see who is where at a glance.

In battle units are well detailed and the animations for attacking and defending are very good and different for each weapon.

Battlefields are varied, from lush green fields and forests to mountains, beaches and arid deserts. The game bases the battlefield's contours and valuable high ground on the location of the battle on the campaign map, so chokepoints like bridges and high ground become very important. Small details like how corpses are left after battle so you get to see the enemy blanketing the field and soldier's corpses drifting down river if they are knocked off on a bridge battle add to the games polish.

The sound in RTW is some of the best you'll ever hear. Voice acting is top notch and there is loads of it, as every character talks and their voices really suit their characters, particularly Roman voices.

In battle the general makes a speech before every battle depending on his traits, the enemy and the situation, each part of it can be vastly different and troops scream battle cries and yell in pain like they should. The thunderous sounds of thousands of troops charging, yells of pain and the clang and crash of melee weapons really drive the epic feel of the game home and every unit has their own speech and acknowledgement.

The music is amazing and there are some awesome heavy battle themes, as well as themes for marching and some for deploying your forces which is laden with dread and foreboding. The music is picked at random and all of them are perfectly suited for the game.

The campaign map features lots of soft string and flute music that changes depending on what faction you play as and there are many good sound effects and voice acting.

You will be playing RTW for a very long time, as the wealth of factions and troops and different tactics as well as the online multiplayer will keep you coming back. There are also a multitude of mods to download for free to totally change the game or increase historical accuracy so the game will never get boring.

All up RTW is a mammoth achievement and a huge improvement over the previous games in the series. It sets the bar for games that come after it and it is a wonderful fully featured wargame.

Fin

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/12/09

Game Release: Rome: Total War (EU, 10/01/04)