Or maybe youve just smoked some of that stuff again?

Elephant Dung, Grade A stuff.

digging up an old topic

I managed to con my dad into buying this in the Boxing Day Sales. It was on a half price table and my jaw almost dropped! managed to get it for about 40 bucks.

Loving this game! I'm learning as I'm going, everything is new for me as I've never played any Total War games, but I'm picking up pretty quickly.

I'm a bit unco with the battles, so i'm a bit lazy and just automatically resolve some, but I'm having loads of fun with it!
I'm playing the Julii family (is that the red & black one), and so far I'm doing okay. I'm slowly taking out Gaul, i have some kick arse assasins, they are definately my favs! I'm really enjoying the retinues and traits of the characters too, and the family tree. It all adds so much to the game.
I had a mad ruler for a little bit, hehe he was so funny! I'm loving those crazy speeches too Ox. But i managed an awesome heir, about 6 or 7 in all three aspects, and he was only about 30, so all is going well so far!

I'll check in later with any updates, but a quick question, are there any patches out at all?

There sure is ma'am, download it here:here


Cool that you're playing it too now! The Julii are the reddish Roman faction yeah, I myself played Scipii as you might have read. What year are you in, and what's your main tactic for battles? Don't worry if you don't play them all yourself, I didn't either. When I'm facing a unorganized rebel army of 200 ppl with my elite army of 500 soldiers I'm not gonna waste my time chasing them over the battlefield lol.

So you're mainly facing barbarian tribes like the Gauls there eh? Make sure to use wardogs and onagers once you have them...they rip apart the large but badly armored bands of ppl. The cool thing about advancing in this game is that you'll eventually meet peoples that are completely different from the ones in your region. Get ready for a complete change of tactics once you're facing Egyptians (missile chariots etc.) or Cartaghinians (elephants, heavily armored cavalry). Maybe not in this game, but after finishing this one you could always start a game with another, non-Roman faction. Good fun. Or fight historical battles, but some are wickedly hard.

I loved the family system...in the end my family got SO huge, you wouldn't believe it. And, i had noticed that "true" scipii (by name, I mean) had died out a long time ago, so my family consisted out of ppl I married in, adopted or bribed. That was somewhat of a bummer, but blech. Everyone has one or more of rulers like you mentioned...it's awesome. The sort of guys that become leader of your empire at 16 and go on to last until they're 80 and have left a huge legacy. I usually send my young (15-25) family members out to war and if they survive and become a bit experienced I station them in a city. At first in frontier areas, when they become older in my 'inner cities', sort of a quiet retirement you could say. Anyway, see to it that your leader doesn't get affected with the Plague or gets assassinated!!

P.S. are you aware that you can switch around retinues? Just wondering cos a lot of ppl I know didn't realize until I told them they could.[/url]

Thanks Ox! Downloaded and Installed

Woot! I got the family name right. Thanks for the tips fighting the Gauls, I hadn't really looked at wardogs etc. yet, I'll have to try this theory of yours out

I noticed that the Julii name might die out, so I'm trying to keep at least a line of them going. My current ruler is a Julii, and he had 2 sons, adopted and a daughter, so hopefully his two sons will be "fruitful". lmao i love that character trait!

I figured out how to change the retinues around, and i generally try to give my newbies some so they don't totally botch up whatever they do. One of them has a drunken uncle... hehehe too funny

lol..a lot of my governors were drunks themselves, I don't know how that happened. Then again, I used to have territory stretching from the Middle East to Moscow, Spain and Danmark. (I'll try to find some pics of that) So a lot of them were corrupt frontier governors.

And yeah, wardogs are very useful...I used them all the time. And the best thing is: It doesn't matter if the dogs get killed themselves, it's the tamers that you need to keep alive (and they don't attack together with the dogs, as you can imagine). So if all your dogs get killed but your tamers stay alive you'll have a fresh and complete batch of wardogs next time you fight. And if not for killing, the dogs are good for keeping the first infantry line busy or chasing down any fleeing troops.

Good luck keeping the family name alive...i'm thinking of starting over now to do the same hehe...but I still got Battle For Middle Earth lying around so prolly not. I just hope his sons aren't infertile or have the 'minion' character trait lol. Or have the "Sexual Predator" trait.

P.S. if you get down to North Africa: there are some mercenary war elephants for hire there. You'll have to look around but in the end you'll find them I suppose. The Gauls don't know wtf an elephant is, so they get scared out of their minds by them. It's prolly scipii territory by now so you could send a family member on an exotic-mercenaries-chase. I had guys spend their entire lives travelling the known world for cool mercenaries. (Elephants! Cataphracts! bedouin archers! Camel cavalry!)

Ooooh spiffy, I'll probably end up playing again as a diff family.
lmao, there is a "sexual predator" trait?

Yeah, iirc. It's a degree worse than 'adulterer'. You've got occasional and regular adulterer or something, with sexual predator as the pinnacle. Boosts troop morale iirc, too.

EDIT: A bit long, grab a cup of tea or summin.

RINOX!!!

I got this game for my dad at Xmas for his computer. I assumed it wouldnt play on mine. I couldnt resist installing it anyway on my computer . I was surpised to find out that after turning down all the graphics options to minimum, it runs good!

THIS GAME r0x0rz!!!

I dont know where to begin. I started a new campaign as the Scipii (they seemed like my style). I started off pretty slowly (having skipped the Prologue), but eventually understood the strategy map.

-STORY-

Started off with somthing like 2 provinces: Capua & Messina. First thing i did (and always do) was to build an economy, the wise will know that money = army = power. The senate instructed me to take the Carthaginian province nearby. After about the 3rd try i succeeded (probably only cos the Carthags were under pressure from the Numidians). Then i took the rest of sicily from the Greeks. So i had at this point Capua and all of Sicily, not bad!

I continued to build and trade while the Julii and the Brutii warred east and north. For the moment i was ignoring the missions of the senate (which resulted in a slight loss of Senatorial favour).

Then, realising i needed to expand across the Med, i build a mighty fleet to dominate my area. My economy easily supported this.

I allied with the Numidians (they seemed like nice fellows), and drove on to wipe out the Carthaginians. Elephans are a fucking nightmare!!! My advances would halt entirely if there was a Carthag Elephant nearby. I simply didnt know how to kill them!

But it was ok, with a lot of learning and improving i besieged the Carthaginians without a proper fight.

I was playing a very sneaky strategy at this point. I would choose my enemies one-at-a-time, to conquest territory, and would only fight battles i KNEW i would win with minimal losses.

At this point my standard army would consist of:

Triarii
Velites
General
Onagers
Principes
Hastati

I was still learning the game though, (so i was still making mistakes). I had rebellion problems, but sorted them out, financial problems also, but got out of them by earning 10k denari from a Senate mission.

The Julii were progressing through Gaul, the Brutii East, and although were were allied and bound by the senate, i couldnt help but feel we were enemies. We never talked and i was starting to get jealous of their conquests (i was much more of a pacifist). So i have long reminded myself of the possibility that one day, when all the lands are taken, the Romans may turn against eachother.

So i decided that in order to prevent this, i need to conquer vast lands as well. Due to our geographical starting position, i would have easiest access to Africa and Spain. So i deployed a couple of naiive armies to occupy rebel provinces in North Africa. This is where i came to learn of lots of things about the game, like how hard it is to keep people happy. One method, was to enslave them. The way i think, is that...

If these people are too stupid to undertand that under my Roman rule theyre lives will become better, then they will understand through slavery. Hopefully setting an example to other people that if they assimilate withough incident they will be treated at true Roman citizens.

I dont think the AI comprehends this, but hey.

*TIME WARP*

It is now circa BC 170, i have almost half of N.Africa, some of Turkey. I am the richest faction, i have the most advanced technology. I have radically developed my tactics both domestic and military (if you want to know - let me know). There are still a few problems within the Empire that are being resolved, and so i am still learning.

-THE CRITICISMS-

Good game yes, but it has a handful of criticisms from myself.

- The AI in-battle is quite dumb (normal difficulty). I was fighting as a Romans force of c.600 against a greek force of c.400 (mostly pikemen/hoplites). I had managed to pummel them with 2 onagers until they dropped to c.80 men. They didnt move or attack me. I was a bit dissappointed.

- The invulnerability of elephants is obsurd. I remember pummeling a group of 5 elephants with javelins and arrows for a good while and NOT ONE fell to the ground. If i had a Javelin right now and there was an elephant in front of me, im sure i could though it on some flesh and cause it scamper, but no! "Elephants" should be renamed by a future patch to "M1A2 Abrams".

- Squalor. Is a nice touch to the game. It stops you from getting UBER-1337 in a short space of time. But i get angry because there is very little you can do about it. There is little control and personally i think that it is somewhat exxaggerated. Life back then was better off than the dark ages - the game seems to think otherwise.

- Disease. I only leared this yesterday. THIS IS A FUCKING NIGHTMARE. Family members who catch the disease cant lose it and become cured! Thus you need to isolate them in the country and build them a fort or somthing for Sympathies sake and watch them eventually die. However, it get even worse when one of your armies get infected!!! I sent an emergency elite relief force to W.Africa, only from somewhere (probably the infected boats) the elite army started dying turn-by-turn rendering it useless and an utter waste of money. IS THERE A CURE?! I have learned to (rather like the film - Outbreak) isolate the hosts, quarantine them, and exterminate them.

- There seems to be a lack of a terrain analysis for battles on the stratgy map. It shows hills and rivers... but you cannot know or have the choice to camp at the top of a small elevation, incase you get attacked. I am therefore unrewarded for the choice of terrain.

- I have another 10 in mind, but ill spare them.

-CONCLUSION-

8/10. Fun game, more criticisms than problems. But overall, and once boiled down, not much has improved since medieval total war. Again they provide a stupidly thin manual with about 10% of the game content. The advisor is shit.

But what makes it "r0x0rz". Is the fact that its Rome and secondly the AMAZING BATTLES!

derF, out.

W00t, another one

I recognize a lot in what you said, and maybe I can help you out with some stuff, dunno.

->The Plague: afaik characters can get rid of it after a while, but older and weaker family members will slowly die. And there's no cure, again afaik. Only thing to do is what you did: quarantaine that shit.

->


lol. Well, they are supposed to be hard freaking bastards, there's a reason why a batch of elephants costs a good 4k. As for tactics...keep your horses and camels away from them, they'll get scared. However, spear cavalry (Lybian mercenaries or summit? Also cavalry auxilia) can be very effective in distracting them and wearing them down in a cantalabrian circle, as long as they don't get too close. The second and only other thing you can do is frightening the elephants, preferrably with fire. If you've got syracusean pigs, use them. But best of all: use bowmen with fire arrows. They might not hit much, but they'll often be succesful in scaring the elephant(s) before they reach your lines. And hopefully make them stampede into their own troops.

Don't expect ANY sort of infantry to stop a war elephant on full speed. I've seen elephants make mincemeat out of my insanely experienced Hoplites, the only thing I ever saw breaking a phalanx head-on. :O Remember, the patch I linked above tones down elephants a bit.


->I agree, the AI sometimes just lacks in reponsiveness, but at times it is diabolically smart. Really depends on the general, I found. A bunch of 400 hoplites without a general is like a blind buffalo: you still don't want to get caught in its way, but you could just as easily walk around it and smash and axe in its head, know what I mean? The greek cities sometimes leave all-hoplite armies like you mentioned hanging around, prolly easiest fights in the game.


->Squalor: well, when your empire gets REALLY big squalor gets insane, I'm afraid. You should know that apart from lack of water/sewers, distance from capital, size of city guard etc. the buildings from other cultures add to it too. taking over a Roman city will be less likely to go rioting on your ass than an Egyptian one, for example. You could gradually tear down the old buildings and replace them with Roman ones, but that gets extremely tedious. What I did was make sure I had a decent army in each city, together with some sort of siege material (onager or whatever). Each time a city rioted my troops got kicked out by rebels, but thanks to the siege weapon I could immedeately counter-attack next round, usually letting the pc automatically resolve the battle. (let's face it, rebels aren't a challenge) Seldom fails if your army's ok. Then I chose to exterminate the city resistance, effectively cutting down population and with it a large part of squalor. Also, you got a huge amount of cash from looting. So, rinse and repeat. It's impossible to keep the frontier cities at bay anyway, barring a competent governor EVERYWHERE. And like you said, always enslave, never occupy. And exterminate when rioting.



Bleh...don't wanted to sound like I know everything better there, but I already played the game a lot so I thought I'd share. I played Scipii, like you. I was mostly a pacifist too, focusing on trade. I even got the Numidians to become my protectorate without killing one of their soldiers. Cartaghe, alas, had been virtually destroyed by the deceitful Egyptians when I gained a real foothold in N-Africa. Then I was forced to change my ways into an elite-troop spewing war machine in an epic battle for dominion against Egypt. Fighting them off near Lepcis Magna etc. I feared that I was going to be kicked back to sicily, because hordes and hordes of them bastards kept coming...but as it turned out they were 'just' sending troops from every corner of their empire which, little did I know, stretched from Lepcis Magna over Memphis to Tarsus. So once I broke their last few troops I started marching on Memphis. When i got there I was in for a second war on Egypt, much harder because the provinces down right on the map are lots of desert with a distant capital, no fun for my whitey Roman troops.

Anyway, long story short: I drove them back and annihilated them after looong and haaard wars. After that i had one half of the medditeranean (and all the naval trade that came with it) and I became night unstoppable. What i would have wished for was the ability to actually make the enemy elite troops. I mean, you've got the buildings, the local knowledge and the Roman wealth, what's to stop you?


EDIT: i was gonna post some pics but upload thing is still acting up...i'll head over to the other forum and report on it. So how are you guy and girl doing with your family? Still got "real' scipii/julii?

Everything you said there i agree with. Except maybe the thing about infected generals. Ive had an 18yr old catch the plague and he is now 50 and he still has it.



Huh?

Anyway, ive contained the plague problem and now its gone. Im currently in position you were a little while ago with the Egyptians. That is, just collected enough manpower to push toward Memphis (4 armies).



Ive got another 2 armies working away nicely in Turkey against the Greeks, and perhaps if ive got enough money, i may build armies and dispatch them to the rebellious Iberia (spain).

Hey, have you attacked the Romans yet? I have a feeling its something inevitable. And what year does the game end?

[Ed - Some screenies of mine i took last night:]

feegw

Sweet pics Now I wish I didn't go ahead and uninstalled the game...think I lost most of my screens. Still got the savegames tho, so i'll try and post some pics later on. Among one of them I lost was a pic of an all-family member army. I was too busy conquering and some 12 or more ppl piled up at my capital, so i decided to band them together and transform them into an elite killing machine. Sadly, nothing but heavy cavalry will get pretty much destroyed by a half-decently balanced army...it only lasted one battle and afterwards I sent them out on solo missions, half of them got killed in that battle. Still, it was worth it to see 12 generals and their personal guards attack the enemy.


With "original family members" I meant for you to check your family tree Derf and see if there are still any 'real' Scipii (ie, with the last name) left. My lineage ended in like 3 generations. Suga is trying to keep hers going.

There's no end-date I think...i've had a game run into 41BC after beating the objectives, so I think you can go on a looong time. And yes, you get to fight romans later on. The senate obviously won't like a powerful general and will try to get rid of you, either resulting in you killing your entire family (if you do what they say ) or you being declared an enemy of the Roman ppl. So get ready. I found it easier, in some ways, to fight romans. You can bribe their armies into fighting for you...which is insanely effective.

Some pics attached, among which my best one, "overconfident". Check out the world map and their response. Not all pics are mine tho, some are from mates.

Some of me and mates this, 'contest' of having the best governor or general etc., you know.

Cool screens, theres some pretty 1337 guys in there. My rigorous re-supply system doesnt allow for such troops to get experienced above 3-bronze.

I checked the family tree and yes, the current ruler is still a true Scipii. I dont pay much attention to marriages and that stuff though. If a "potential" comes up i always select yes because theyre usually useful as Governors of Generals.

Why did you uninstall it? Got tired of all the bugs?