[Tapper]

beru, on Mar 26 2009, 01:19 PM, said:

and if you win a campain you might (i hope) be able to play all nations... (i want to try Order of saint jonh for the lolz)

This won't happen. The 12 you can pick are all that's in the game.
There's a mod to unlock them, though... not all of them have techs, some have only 1 unit, some have a more or less complete roster. Knights of st.John don't have a lot of options, seeing how they don't have a city with a place for barracks, naval school, theatre and gunnery school at the start of the game, basically forcing you to conquer Tunis.

I think

Haven't tried it myself, currently busy getting my ass handed to me in Dawn of War 2 online play.

[beru]

for not all nations... WHY DEVELOPERS WHY ME!!

[Tapper]

beru, on Mar 27 2009, 03:34 PM, said:

for not all nations... WHY DEVELOPERS WHY ME!!

The game world is about three times as large, the way of warfare is very alike already (so they would just be carbon copies of one another) and turns already take long enough. Making them playable would also mean giving them a full AI, I read somewhere, and they couldn't do that without it becoming a real monster in size & requirements.

[beru]

shhh
i realy wanted to try to play the knights of st john... malta vs the world...

[Stalker]

malta v. the world = loss. They were just saving your time heh.

I've been playing as Prussia, and doing ok, except for the part where every surrounding faction hates me so I get a different country declaring war every other turn, no allies either.

[beru]

you clrealy got it all WRONG (the no allys part)

when the war is OVER make alliananses (SP)

greek proverb

[Stalker]

well I don't need them, I'll take them all out. They have different religions and dislike me so I tell em DIE. and they fall before my armies. Line infantry FTW in the beginning lol, so good.

[beru]

well the proverb does not state that its your enmy y ally with is it? (like intriges at court and the like insted...) the greeks were sso versile... not realy

[Stalker]

anyone having problems downloading updates from Steam?

I can't play because it is trying to update, but it has been doing that for almost 2 days now. Occasionally it flashes 99% complete but it never ends. And I want to play.

[beru]

my friend got a similar problem... but he got a to damnd good firewall (it CANT let anthing download ecsept som few programs steam not included)... i dont have thise problems... as i cant play the damned game

played it at a friends place and found that russa owns... hard... how to stop them?

[Stalker]

well I fixed it after hours of messing around. It wasn't my firewall since my game ran perfectly until now so I eventually fixed it by completely uninstalling Steam and Empire Total War. Then it worked.

[cerveza_fiesta]

Well my p1r4ted copy of Empire didn't work. No surprise.

I did download Rome Total War off steam over the weekend though. It was only 10 bucks for it and all expansions. Empire is still pretty expensive but I figured I'd try out Rome and pick up Empire if I end up liking the game style.

I find it almost identical to Lords of the Realm II, which I played to pieces back in the day. Realtime combat and turn-based world map. It makes for an entertaining game IMO. I've only gone through the tutorial so far so it'll be awhile before I'm good enough to actually get through a campaign.

The main thing that holds me back on these games is getting to know the research / build trees. I'm too impatient to learn it sometimes and end up overlooking games I might otherwise like a lot.

One question for the Total war experts out there RE difficulty levels

-How do difficulty levels compare to game AI? Does hard mean harder AI or just advantages given to the AI players like higher starting cash / buildings / armies. I remember in Galciv II you could turn on the hard AI algorithms, but keep even starting resources for instance.

I just don't want to end up getting into a campaign and finding out after 3 missions that I'm playing against criminally stupid AI just cause I chose medium difficulty or something.

[Tapper]

Adjusting Campaign Difficulty makes them more agressive.
Battle AI makes the AI's morale incredibly high and your own elites behaving like a nerd in a modeling agency's dressing room: running away from underdressed pretty women, and thus, at twice the speed for sword wielding, spear slinging barbarians.

I always prefer hard to very hard campaign difficulty and medium battle difficulty, that way, you fight with level stats and can enjoy a plan coming together, as opposed to seeing your entire elite infantry flee before your cavalry can circle around the enemy.

I'd also advise to just dive into the campaign. As the romans, you have spectacularly good infantry and a very good money flow, anyway. The building browser is your friend for seeing what's coming up, unit wise, but things only get better anyway.

This post has been edited by Tapper: 30 March 2009 - 03:03 PM

[beru]

the romans got two unit trees the second one beeing vastly superior to the first one its unlocked when you get your first imerial palace so in the start enslavment is good

my friends got a nother verson or somthing so when they play at wery hard battle the ai is smarter not the units... on verry hard my macedonian cavalry loses to greek cavalry... :

[cerveza_fiesta]

So I started a Brutii campaign and played pretty much all day yesterday. Holy shit does that EVER suck you in. Just....one.....more......turn.......

Anyways, playing hard campaign and mid-difficulty battles just to get my feet wet with full intention on cranking that up on my second go-round. So far the AI hasn't been criminally stupid at all. In fact its giving me a pretty good run for my money. It is damn hard to keep track of all the stuff once you get about 5 cities though.

One thing that really surprises me about this game is how far you can move in a turn. Its perfectly reasonable for an enemy to come running out of the black and take a city without you having any advance warning, meaning watchtowers are a good idea.

Trying to squash the greek and macedonian bastards at the moment, but I'm having cash flow problems already. Its expensive to keep the navy going while you're moving units too. The greeks have got 1000's of ships and for some reason I can never sink them. Even when I go against them 5 to 1 the pussies continually run away. I did just get Sparta a few turns back though and owning that point of land has gone a long way toward keeping the greek ships at bay.

Another question:

I always have troubles keeping the unrest down in the captured cities, which makes sense, but I'd like to be able to replace a populace with my own...or build settlements. Is there a function for building your own settlements? What character makes it happen if so?

Also, I put up a few forts to keep neutral raiders away from my shit, but they aren't seeing much action. When you're playing the more land-based characters like Julii, do you make much more use of forts / are the battles at the forts cool?

When building up cities, does the advisor usually give sound advice? I wasn't listening to her much and now my cashflow is tight.

[Tapper]

cerveza_fiesta, on Apr 1 2009, 01:48 PM, said:

So I started a Brutii campaign and played pretty much all day yesterday. Holy shit does that EVER suck you in. Just....one.....more......turn.......

Anyways, playing hard campaign and mid-difficulty battles just to get my feet wet with full intention on cranking that up on my second go-round. So far the AI hasn't been criminally stupid at all. In fact its giving me a pretty good run for my money. It is damn hard to keep track of all the stuff once you get about 5 cities though.

One thing that really surprises me about this game is how far you can move in a turn. Its perfectly reasonable for an enemy to come running out of the black and take a city without you having any advance warning, meaning watchtowers are a good idea.

Trying to squash the greek and macedonian bastards at the moment, but I'm having cash flow problems already. Its expensive to keep the navy going while you're moving units too. The greeks have got 1000's of ships and for some reason I can never sink them. Even when I go against them 5 to 1 the pussies continually run away. I did just get Sparta a few turns back though and owning that point of land has gone a long way toward keeping the greek ships at bay.

Another question:

I always have troubles keeping the unrest down in the captured cities, which makes sense, but I'd like to be able to replace a populace with my own...or build settlements. Is there a function for building your own settlements? What character makes it happen if so?

Also, I put up a few forts to keep neutral raiders away from my shit, but they aren't seeing much action. When you're playing the more land-based characters like Julii, do you make much more use of forts / are the battles at the forts cool?

When building up cities, does the advisor usually give sound advice? I wasn't listening to her much and now my cashflow is tight.

the east is RICH. with Greece in your hands, you should get money by the bucket.
Disband ships when you don't need them for transport duty, that is my usual course of action. the war is won on land, anyway.

For keeping cities you just conquer happy: exterminate the population the second you conquer the city. Its buildings will remain on the level it was and happiness is secured for ages. Adding governors also helps - characters are a lot better at keeping order than just letting the AI do its job. population is, iirc, unrelated to its cashflow.

Also, bringing up the settlement details will show you what the problem is. Sanitation and farmlands are a good reduction of unhappiness through good food and health, adding temples & theatres is another but neither will really improve your tax income.

building and upgrading traders and ports is a sound strategy - the more trade routes, the better.

[Traveller]

Also, if you're playing an unpatched Rome, the ship battles are always grossly in favour of the enemy, who for some reason can generate huge, unbeatable fleets all through the game.

Don't underestimate assassins either - build up quite a few, get them to complete some easy missions to build up their skills, and then you can use them to take out enemy generals, or disrupt their settlements through sabotage.

[Imperial Historian]

If your having trouble with happiness conquer corinth (i think it's in that province anyway) and get the statue of zeus, it gives a sizable bonus to happiness for all your cities. Exterminating cities can be a bad idea as you need high level of population to get the higher upgrades, and population affects, usually enslaving a city will do enough to make the city more easily controllable, though you have to watch out that your big cities don't get too big and hence difficult to control. Building temples leads to useful traits for your leaders (usually) and should help keep the population in order.

For money build roads, ports and markets as your first order of buisness in any new city and you should be rolling in money. Athens, sparta and corinth are three of the richest cities in the game, so if you end up capturing those 3 your money worries should be over soon.

[beru]

and get rodos (the island south of turky) to get 40% more seatrade... and selucia (far to the east) to get the hanging gardens of babylon (20% farming)
and you think its hard to control when you have gotten yourself 5 regions? try geting 40...

[cerveza_fiesta]

frak, the stupid ass scripii captured corinth like a turn before I was going to. I don't even know what they're doing there since their campaign is supposed to go the other direction.

I did have a really good battle for sparta though. There was a pretty good sized garrison, but he had a guy parked outside the fort as I started the siege with a few small armies, another dude came down from athens to start the fight and then got reinforced by the guys in the city. Made for my 700ish army against (I think) about 1100 enemies. Problem with them was that they came in waves (as reinforcements do) so I wiped the first 200 guys clean off the map right away, wheeled around and took out the middle chunk (about 600 guys, 20% peasants) and then had to wheel around again to take out the final charge from the third set of reinforcements from the city. Made for a pretty cool fight on 3 successive fronts.

Another question relating to the above, what determines whether or not you get reinforcements in a battle. Do adjacent armies of yours just automatically join even if you don't want them to?