DavidGriffiths's Full Review: Rome: Total War for Windows
I'm a sucker for historical fiction. From the time I read Robert Grave's I, Claudius at 14, I've been hooked.
Shogun (James Clavell) was inspiration enough to buy the original in this series, Shogun Total War, and I eagerly awaited Rome: Total War when I'd read that it was announced.
The game holds true to the original formula, but with much nicer graphics, a better interface, and more options in the game.
In reality, it's better to pluralize the word "game", as there are actually two games in one.
The first is the turn-based macro management of cities, armies, navies and economies. This plays out on a 2D map of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Each faction takes a turn at constructing buildings, adjusting the tax rate, raising/moving/attacking-with an army, and so on. Here, you can send diplomats to sue for peace, offer alliances, grant trade rights, or demand tribute. You can also send spies to figure out what's going on in the cities of the other factions, and train assassins to sabotage buildings or kill powerful enemies.
The second game is what happens when two armies collide. If you choose to command the battle yourself (and not let the AI quickly resolve it for you), you're transported to a stunningly realistic battlefield, where your general gives the traditional pre-battle speech. It's often amusing to listen to this speech, as the individual attributes of the general affect what he'll say (the speech of a general known for his dullness and lack of wit had me laughing). From there, you set up the initial formation of your units, and then, once satisfied, you start the battle.
When you begin an imperial campaign, you have the option of playing several factions. Three of these are Roman (there is a fourth, unplayable Roman faction, the Senate). Other factions are there initially as well, including the Greeks, Carthage and the Gauls. If you win an imperial campaign with one of these factions, more open up.
Each faction is quite different. The Romans start out with expansion on their mind, while Carthage and the Greeks are immediately beset by aggressive neighbors. The Romans build Hastari (light infantry) initially, while Carthage builds Iberian light infantry and the Greeks build their famous hopolites. Each culture creates different units as they climb the ladder of civilization. The Greeks never really outgrow the phalanx of spearmen, and they never develop a heavy cavalry, but in Rome, Marius will (eventually – historically, about 108 BC) revolutionize the Roman military by recruiting from the lower classes (rather than from the landowning classes) to build a professional army. Once this happens, Rome is definitely the premiere military power in the region.
Moral, weather, physical exertion, the qualities of your general, and the experience of your units all play a factor as well. Units under an untested general are more likely to run away when the going gets tough, as are tired units (or your entire army should your general perish during the battle). A general that's a legendary commander who has seasoned troops can get his army to do the impossible.
Generals are either family members that come of age, or husbands to your daughters (you can accept or reject these potential suitors). They come with traits both good and bad (their influence, management ability, and command ability) and pick more up along the way. A family member with a high management rating makes a perfect governor (influence is a close second). A family member with high command ability is more fearsome to your enemies on the battlefield, and will likely be idolized by his troops.
Units that survive many battles become veterans, and this is noted by the number of chevrons and their color. New units have no chevrons. Throw them into a few battles, and they start to accumulate bronze chevrons, up to three. After that, they start to get silver chevrons, and then gold. The more experienced a unit, the less likely they are to run in the face of overwhelming odds.
Well Done
This game overall is very good. Very, very good. It's highly addictive, and offers the arm-chair general/faction leader many ways to show his or her cleverness. Hiding cavalry in the trees, luring the strong enemy units into a trap by offering up your weaker skirmishers, using flaming catapults and flaming pigs to disrupt enemy formations, etc. In fact, the game is so well done, several TV shows are using the engine to recreate historical battles (Decisive Battles, on The History Channel, and Time Commanders on BBC).
The interface and controls are much better than the predecessors. For example, the scroll wheel on you mouse allows you to zoom in and out in both the turn-based macro mode, and the real-time battle mode. You can zoom right down to where two units are fighting, and watch the fighting between individual soldiers.
Needs Work
This turn-based stuff. It's been here since the original Shogun Total War. Why is it bad? Because Creative Assembly (the developers) only offer a multiplayer option for battles (recreating historical battles, and so forth). That's somewhat interesting, but it would be more interesting if I could play Greece, and someone else could play a Roman faction. With a turn-based game, I might be waiting 10 minutes for someone to finish their turn, which clearly is unacceptable. A truly disappointing game came out not too long ago, Lords of the Realm III, which showed how real-time could be applied to the macro-management portion of a game. Perhaps Creative Assembly should look at that implementation, and try to work it in for the next game.
The artificial intelligence of the game is not perfect. It's good, but has some serious flaws. Path-finding inside the cities is terrible. On several occasions, I've sent my cavalry to some point inside the city. Half decide to march back outside the gates, and expose themselves to more arrow-fire from archers on the wall. Others make it half way, and then decide to turn back to take another route, again exposing them to more enemy fire from towers, and what not. That's very frustrating. Also, units seem to have a tough time running inside the city, even when they have what appears to be a clear path to their destination. Sometimes speed is critical, and it's annoying to watch a troop of cavalry walk towards the cavalry that's destroying your archers when you know you told them to charge.
Of all the units I've commanded, I hate trying to get the Greek hopolites to do anything. They often march the wrong way, and won't run unless you remove them from the phalanx formation (and then you have to remember to put them back in formation, or they get slaughtered).
You also have to be careful about moving units through skirmishers. If your archers are happily firing away at some foe in the distance, and you march your infantry through them, your archers will happily fire when their comrades are right in front of them. You would think that the archers would be smart enough to hold until there were no friendly units immediately in front of their bows. Archers have two settings – fire-at-will, or don't. It would be nice to have some more control. Like, fire only when there is no chance of friendly fire.
And then there are the crashes. I am unfortunate enough to have a video card that seems to dislike Rome Total War (an ATI 9800 Pro). There's lots of advice on the Total War forums about resolving these issues, but none of it has worked for me yet. Every other time I play, my whole computer locks up and I have to hit the power button. I am not sure it's Creative Assembly's fault, but it's still annoying.
Finally, I'd like to see regions become Romanized. If I conquer a new city, I can expect revolts. The reverse should be true for long-held cities and regions. If I conquer the Iberian peninsula early in the game, and hold it for one hundred years, they should be quite loyal to my faction.
Conclusion
Many of the annoyances can be fixed with patches (one patch is already out at the time of this writing), and the turn-based issue only really affects the ability to play a full game in multiplayer mode.
This game has consistently received “near perfect” reviews, and I whole heatedly agree.
If anything in my review has perked your interest, you'd most likely really enjoy this game.
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