Great battles, shoddy AI

User Rating: 8.1 | Rome: Total War PC
By Framnk | Review Date:
Rome: Total War is one of the better games to come out so far in 2004 in my opinion. Turn-based strategies that also have decent graphics seem to be few and far between these days (when was Civ III released?) so R:TW makes a welcome addition this year. It is nice to be able to have the change of pace between turn-based and real-time when fighting battles. I haven't played Shogun: Total War or Medieval: Total War but from what I can tell the game play of R:TW is similar although with better graphics. The part of the game most people will jump into is campaign mode which lets you take control of three roman factions (at first) which each have some slight differences. While one faction may be more war oriented another will be more culturally oriented. In practice, however, it doesn't seem to make a huge difference which one you choose. In campaign mode you basically try to conquer as many provinces as you can and eventually Rome itself. Rome and the other factions appear as allies to you at first and later become your enemies as you march into Rome. There are MANY other factions in the game and a lot of them become playable once you beat them in a game. Battle mode can happen when you decide to duke it out with an army or conquer a city. The game offers you the ability to auto-resolve conflicts however battle mode is where most of the fun of the game lies. The real-time battles take place on dynamic maps that include terrain features seen in the campaign map. If you are the attacker you have the option of deploying your forces how you see fit within a specified area before the battle begins. Once you are done deploying you start the battle and the fun begins. I find that the control scheme during the battles is very good although it takes a while to learn. Once you get the hang of it you can position your forces exactly the way you want them and even force them to maintain certain formations by creating groups. By right-clicking and dragging you can control how your forces will be lined up at a destination position. You can also set waypoints before reaching each position. Unlike a lot of real-time strategy games, I don't feel overwhelmed when fighting the real-time battles. The pace is slow enough that you really can use strategy and control your units effectively. A couple of tips that I've found: 1) Use the spacebar when moving around large armies. This lets you know where other units you've moved will be positioned so you don't bunch them together. 2) Go into the option and remap the control scheme to FPS style! This let's you use the mouse for selecting and dragging while also using the ASDF side of the keyboard for camera movement and rotation. The game got a LOT more fun after I discovered this! Most of the game revolves around city building and managing your various family members which are your generals and governors of the game. Your family members can take on good and bad traits as they live their lives and although some of these seem random (especially "coming of age" traits) other traits appear as a direct result of your actions or the circumstances you put your family members in. Now for my biggest complaint with the game so far - the AI can be really shoddy sometimes. I haven't played on the hardest difficulty setting yet but both allied and enemy AI really seems clueless most of the time. On the campaign map the enemy AI seems incapable of putting up any kind of strategic defense against your troops and will group together in odd combinations. During real-time battles it gets worse. Usually the only time you have to worry in a real-time battle is when the enemy abushes you or has overwhelming odds. The enemy doesn't seem to have any idea how to use their forces to their full effectiveness and you usually only find yourself in a tough situation when you've made a mistake. The allied AI is even worse and frustratingly so. The game incorporates the ability for nearby allied units to appear as reinforcements when you start a battle. Supposedly these reinforcements appear off the screen and join the battle in progress controlled by the AI. In reality the AI reinforcements seem to always appear immediately, do a full charge with every unit straight towards the enemy. Since fatigue is a factor in this game and some valuable units such as your general's cavalry move faster than infantry this usually means the ai controlled allies take huge losses when before you can get there to help them out (if you're not following the same foolish tactics). Even in the most basic AI shouldn't send the most valuable unit (your general) charging into the thick of a fresh enemy force. That's just plain stupid AI. On the campaign map the AI fairs somewhat better but not much. Diplomatic agreements such as alliances and cease fires don't seem to mean little. Rarely will an ally attack your enemy for you and cease fires are usually broken in a few turns with no consequence (Civilization had a nice model for consequences of broken agreements that would have worked well in this game). Therefore the diplomat unit seems only useful to enforce missions given to you by the Roman Senate and to buy off barbarians appearing in your territory when you have no large force with which to attack them. If you can get over the AI issues, Rome: Total War makes for an entertaining and visually appealing game. The music and sound effects are excellent. There's one haunting melody that you'll hear a lot but it's so subdued it doesn't become annoying. One lasting memory I'll have of this game will be the stirring speeches given to your troops (ala Braveheart) that are customized to the battle conditions and your general's traits. Nice twist!

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