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I know Steel has some interest in playing this game. Anyone else have RTW? I have RTW + Barbarian Expansion and I would not mind getting together for some sword swinging, spear jabbing, horse galloping fun in MP. Now that I think about it, I have never played RTW in MP. I will have to check around, but I think there is a realism mod for RTW, but I don't know if it has been updated for the Barbarian Expansion.

If anyone is interested, please post here and we can arrange a skirmish or two.

"I will have to check around, but I think there is a realism mod for RTW, but I don't know if it has been updated for the Barbarian Expansion. "

there are more mods than you can shake 10 fingers at... most of the folks that have been playing for a while do not hold much for the BI expansion. most stick with R:TW plain - plus mods.

i am currently playing BI with the one mod out for the BI 1.6 patch. it is Invasio Barbarum - Flagellum Dei or some such silly thing... if you want to try it i can point you to the correct files. it does enhance BI quite a bit.

i am waiting for the RTR mode to be brought compatible with R:TW 1.5 (latest patch)... I prefer the time period before 1AD...Macedonians, etc...

but we can give it a shot - i do not know how MP works and have been curious. is it battles only or can you do campaign?

"i do not know how MP works and have been curious. is it battles only or can you do campaign?"

Have never played MP, so let's find out!

Sure thing on the BI Mods, go ahead and post the links so I can DL and we are on the same page as far as installs go.

Steel and I played this last night, and it was VERY VERY fun! The game ran very smooth and no problems to report. We played 2 (Steel and myself) vs 1 (the AI) just so we could get the hang of the game (I haven't played in months).

We played two battles, the first one being open field fights (we slaughtered the AI in the first battle) and the 2nd was a city seige (not planned), the map I chose put the computer as the city defender. Fortunately Steel brought some seige weapons, as I thought it was another open field battle and didn't bring seige weapons. I started on the south side of the city and Steel on the North. I moved all of my troops to the East side as Steel took out the North side gate and later the East side gate and wall section for my troops to attack from the East.

I can't speak for Steel, but I had some interesting battles at the East gate. I sent in a group of Spear Elephants to attack a group of Light Infantry. In my opinion, I should have crushed the infantry with my elephants. To my surprise, they held their ground and held me off long enough to route my elephant squad causing them to retreat. I then brought my Phalanx troops through the open gate and mercilessly slaughtered the infantry, along with the AIs failed attempt at ambushing me with a calvary squad. Calvary + Phalanx = dead calvary.

I didn't have any archers (I forgot to take some, oops) but I did have Spear throwers. I placed all of my spear throwers in a line outside the wall, parallel to the path inside the city that the AI was attacking me from. As the AI approached to attack me, my foot soldiers and Phalanx troops fought just inside the walls, as my spear throwers chucked spears over the walls at the enemy troops. Was fun to watch them cower and run in fear. I then moved all of my troops inside the city walls and made my way to the center, eventually meeting up with Steel and his army. We closed in on the AI troops and captured the city.

Now you may think that it wasn't a fair fight, 2 vs 1 and such. When you setup the match, you can adjust the number of points each team gets to choose troops from. If you are on the same team, you split the number of points among each other. So, we played with 20000 points, Steel got 10000 and I got 10000, the AI got 20000. The AI team definately had more troops to use against us, and they had city walls to hide behind. I had the difficulty setup at Medium, I think it should have been set higher. The enemy AI wasn't making the smartest decisions IMO. (Sending Calvary after Phalanx troops for example) I would say the city seige battle lasted a good 30 - 45 minutes at least.

I wish I took some screenshots or video, it would have been nice to show some of the battles. Ah well, maybe next time. If anyone else here has RTW, speak up and maybe we can all get together for some battles. Steel and I ran the 1.5 version of RTW (No expansion, no mods). We talked about giving the RTR (Rome Total Realism) mod a try, but it would require some file maneuvering. The RTR mod requires version RTW version 1.2 to be installed. As Steel suggested, I backed up my version 1.2 install so I can easily switch between 1.2 and 1.5. There are also some mods we are going to try out for the 1.5 version.

I played SHOGUN TOTAL WAR and I absolutely loved it. I may have to give Rome Total War a shot.

i can not recommend this game enough... i can't believe i did not discover it sooner...

SB,
we should play on at least hard...

we can implement a couple of formation mods that will make the AI smarter - very easy to do. we still have to manage our own formations.

the one thing that stood out in my battle last night was after entering the town the enemy sent his elephants at me... i eventually got them to retreat, and then to my surprise one of his went rougue (prolly pissed at getting wounded and having other elephants killed nearby) and started tossing his own troops around like ragdolls...

being i am an animal lover, the only animals i use in this game are horses for cavalry... the incindiary pigs are a joke (not real) and i refuse to use dogs... i might use elephants, but i could probably do just fine with infantry...

Steel wrote:and i refuse to use dogs... i might use elephants, but i could probably do just fine with infantry...

why not use the dogs? Are they very inefficient against the enemy?

no, i am an animal lover that has had dogs (and cats) most of my life. can't bear to see them killed - even in a simulation. the thought of it is not pleasant.

do you have the 4.1 of the flagellum dei mod?

not impressed with flagellum dei...

been trying XGM for now, and testing adding in one of the formations mods along with it. i did a custom battle and will play it stock RTW, stock XGM, XGM w/senuhets formations, and XGM w/darth's formations 10.8.

i need to do all battles over as i am not sure what happened on the first one i played, but i did play the last two above and had a much tougher time with senuhet's formations. not sure why...

you should use the generic mod enabler.... available in the downloads on twcenter.net:

http://www.twcenter.net/downloads/db/?mod=687

comes with instructions for some other game, but works quite well! just extrapolate the instructions for RTW...

if you are installing from scratch or have rtw at 1.2, save a copy of that folder as well...before upgrading with the latest patches. ;)

OK, now I am confused.

I installed the stock RTW (3 cdroms) from the gold set. Started it up, it says it's version 1.5 (Their website says the gold version is already patched and no need to patch)

Now, I install the BI expansion from the gold set. I start BI and it's at version 1.4.

Now, I restart RTW and now it's at version 1.3. Why did it go back a version and do I need to now repatch it back to 1.5 with a downloaded patch?

I've downloaded the BI 1.6 patch., but I haven't installed it yet. Does this thing have patching order issues?

*BUMP*

Got 1.5 installed, backed up 1.2 just incase. Ready to roll.

A couple of things i've noticed in this thread. First off, incendiary pigs apparently were a genuine weapon used by the Romans..used to break up enemy formations.

War Elephants vs Light infantry (which i assume were skirmishers). Light Infantry will usually win. The theory is that they can dodge out the way because they're not in rank and file, and just lob spears/javelins at the elephant.

Cavalry vs phalanx. Slightly surprised that the phalanx won, unless the cavalry charged straight at the front of the formation. Accepted cavalry tactics against a phalanx is to attack from the side or the rear, as the unit can't turn effectively due to the long spears (unlike a roman legionnaire formation) and the cavalry should mince a large portion of them.