Rome: Total War - A reflective review
I am a fan of history, especially the period that Rome: Total War covers so I bought it soon after it came out. There were rave reviews for the game and many people were amazed with the various improvements made over the previous game, Medieval: Total War. I do think it is a good game but I don't think was ever as good as reviews said it was (9.1 score on gamespot, etc...). Here's why:
When I first bought the game, I was amazed with the graphics and the work put into all the different factions. However, I don't think there is as much quality replay value in this game as in say Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings or Starcraft (two classic strategy games in my opinion). There is a simple reason for this: the AI.
The AI in this game is seriously flawed in the campaign and battle modes. The longer you play the game, the more you notice it. In the campaign, the computer will repeatedly attack huge armies of your's with one or two units. Then, after the battle loads, the computer will withdraw from the field and effectively waste a few minutes of your time loading and unloading the battle stage. The AI seems to be happier to continually harass you with very small armies regardless of how large your forces are. This makes the game very monotonous in later stages as you have to continually load the battle mode only to surround one lone generals unit with a 1000 man army.
The diplomacy is also pretty useless in my opinion due to a bad AI. I was expecting to be able to be able to forge alliances and play political games to advance my faction. However, the computer doesn't seem to respect or even pay attention to alliances or ceasefires. I have often had computer players offer ceasefires (which I accepted) and then attack me on the same or next turn. Computers will frequently make ridiculous demands; a common one is they will demand all of their conquered settlements back in return for a ceasefire after you have nearly wiped them off the map. :rolleyes2 Rarely have I accomplished something useful with diplomacy because of these bugs.
There are also a host of minor and very fixable bugs that become more and more annoying as the game goes on. For example, computer AI players seem to be horrible at handling phalanxes. They will lift up their spears and break the phalanx formation for no reason and allow you to slaughter them. During large sieges, the battering ram is relatively useless due to (1) the fact that the gatehouse archers catch it on fire and destroy it 100% of the time and (2) how horribly destructive boiling oil is. You never ever want to fight a battle over the gatehouse on the ground while your troops are getting slaughtered by boiling oil. This effectively eliminates the most classic way to siege a city (with a battering ram) in larger cities. Another siege flaw is that the computer will sometimes stand in range of wall defenses and allow themselves to be slaughtered for no purpose.
In summary, I never really played this game as much as I expected to. It had a whole lot of potential and it did fulfill some of it. It is enjoyable to a point. However, a host of flaws like the ones I've described make for monotonous and sometimes frustrating gameplay. In my opinion that's what prevented this from being one of the best strategy games ever released. All good single player strategy games have to have good computer intelligence. I find myself challenged with the Starcraft and Age of Empires II: Age of Kings AI and both of those games are very polished (despite being much older than Rome: Total War). That's why I find myself coming back to these games despite the fact they are a decade old. I think Rome falls short of these classics because of the many AI issues I've described. Enough of my rant. What do you think? Is the AI as bad as I'm making it out to be? Many people seem to disagree with me on this so I'm interested in what other Rome: Total War players think.
When I first bought the game, I was amazed with the graphics and the work put into all the different factions. However, I don't think there is as much quality replay value in this game as in say Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings or Starcraft (two classic strategy games in my opinion). There is a simple reason for this: the AI.
The AI in this game is seriously flawed in the campaign and battle modes. The longer you play the game, the more you notice it. In the campaign, the computer will repeatedly attack huge armies of your's with one or two units. Then, after the battle loads, the computer will withdraw from the field and effectively waste a few minutes of your time loading and unloading the battle stage. The AI seems to be happier to continually harass you with very small armies regardless of how large your forces are. This makes the game very monotonous in later stages as you have to continually load the battle mode only to surround one lone generals unit with a 1000 man army.
The diplomacy is also pretty useless in my opinion due to a bad AI. I was expecting to be able to be able to forge alliances and play political games to advance my faction. However, the computer doesn't seem to respect or even pay attention to alliances or ceasefires. I have often had computer players offer ceasefires (which I accepted) and then attack me on the same or next turn. Computers will frequently make ridiculous demands; a common one is they will demand all of their conquered settlements back in return for a ceasefire after you have nearly wiped them off the map. :rolleyes2 Rarely have I accomplished something useful with diplomacy because of these bugs.
There are also a host of minor and very fixable bugs that become more and more annoying as the game goes on. For example, computer AI players seem to be horrible at handling phalanxes. They will lift up their spears and break the phalanx formation for no reason and allow you to slaughter them. During large sieges, the battering ram is relatively useless due to (1) the fact that the gatehouse archers catch it on fire and destroy it 100% of the time and (2) how horribly destructive boiling oil is. You never ever want to fight a battle over the gatehouse on the ground while your troops are getting slaughtered by boiling oil. This effectively eliminates the most classic way to siege a city (with a battering ram) in larger cities. Another siege flaw is that the computer will sometimes stand in range of wall defenses and allow themselves to be slaughtered for no purpose.
In summary, I never really played this game as much as I expected to. It had a whole lot of potential and it did fulfill some of it. It is enjoyable to a point. However, a host of flaws like the ones I've described make for monotonous and sometimes frustrating gameplay. In my opinion that's what prevented this from being one of the best strategy games ever released. All good single player strategy games have to have good computer intelligence. I find myself challenged with the Starcraft and Age of Empires II: Age of Kings AI and both of those games are very polished (despite being much older than Rome: Total War). That's why I find myself coming back to these games despite the fact they are a decade old. I think Rome falls short of these classics because of the many AI issues I've described. Enough of my rant. What do you think? Is the AI as bad as I'm making it out to be? Many people seem to disagree with me on this so I'm interested in what other Rome: Total War players think.
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Comments
Sewer Trooper came to the LAN a few years ago JUST to play Rome and taught us some SERIOUS tactics and then wiped our butts. He even took the worst army and beat two of us. It was funny....
If I am not mistaken, the AI is the same for all the levels of difficulty, it's just the handicap that changes. I like a fair fight so I always play games at the highest difficulty where the AI doesn't cheat. I believe this is Moderate in RTW.
As for mods, I haven't tried many of the ones that just try to make the game better. However, my main issue with Rome is the AI which I don't think many mods touch.
I guess I built up big expectations for the game and it didn't quite meet them. For example, I expected epic sieges but instead about 50% of the time of the average siege is taken up by marching my army down loooooooong streets to the town square (in big cities) on triple game speed. Usually the AI is too dumb to protect the city effectively or even put up much of a fight. They send out little armies one by one to get massacred in the field (on the campaign map) so I guess they don't have troops left for a decent garrison.
It seems like these issues I'm talking about would be addressed in a patch but I have the latest patch installed...
The AI still does plenty of stupid things for me.
I meant to say on higher difficulty levels, the AI acts more intelligently. On moderate the game is rather droll.
Hmmm... maybe I'll try that but I still don't like the idea of the computer cheating...
(you dont understand now, but you will soon. lol)
you may want to buy the other expansion off of steam that has barbarian invasion AND the alexander extension. same price for more, its awesome.