Rome total war (Rome - Total War (PC))

Member Name: ross88guy

Product:	Rome - Total War (PC)
Date:	24/06/05 (178 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Amazing gameplay, Highly addictive, easy to get into

Disadvantages: No naval battles, Hard to master!

ome: Total War obviously focuses around the city of Rome and its deeds in the Mediterranean basin. The game starts in 270BC, shortly after the last Samnite War and the Pyrrhic War, when Rome seized control of southern Italy and a corner of Sicily, and ends at – don’t quote me on this – 6AD, with the historical ascension of Caesar Augustus. Each year is divided into two turns, meaning there are about 550 turns total.

The player is initially forced to play a Prologue campaign that covers the establishment of the Julii holdings in Etruria and the repulsion of the last Gallic invasion of Rome. With the prologue completed, the Imperial Campaign can begin. There are three factions available at first, the aforementioned Julii, the Brutii and the Scipii.

Since, initially, the Roman factions are unable to attack each other, each tends to focus its expansion efforts in the natural direction. The Julii face the Gauls to the North, the Scipii have Sicily to unite, then look across the sea to take on the surprisingly weak Carthaginians. The Brutii have the unenviable task of fighting the Greeks and Macedonians. Having started all three campaigns and finished the game with the Brutii, let me suggest that new players stay away from the old greentags. They fight too many powerful civilizations, like the Greeks, Macedonians, Seleucids and Egyptians Otherwise, the differences between the three factions are nominal.

The Imperial campaign comes in two flavors – full campaign and mini campaign. A full campaign requires that the player hold Rome and 50 provinces. This is true for all factions, even non-Roman ones. The mini-campaigns, also available to the alternate civilizations, require the player to defeat or outlast one or two enemies, and to hold 15 provinces.

However, that’s not to say that all’s perfect with Rome.

The game includes an option to scale unit sizes. At its smallest, a cohort will contain 40 men. At the largest scale, it will have 160. There are even larger units, like peasants, that can get up to 240 men in one unit. This is all fine and dandy, but it has huge strategic consequences in the campaign.

Since units are built out of a city’s population, it’s very possible to depopulate a city with the huge unit sizes. The AI seems to be very poor at realizing this and appears to build units at the regular rate, without consideration for future city growth. Unfortunately, since it is so aggressive, this usually means that the player is forced to play ball on the same terms, also depopulating his cities in order to defend himself.

The game is also unclear on quite a few concepts. The Senate, for example, has policy settings to each existing nation in the game. Should you ally with say the Thracians, the Senate might endorse a conciliatory policy towards them, suggesting peaceful Romanization. Oddly enough, there is no way to peacefully subjugate a people. Protectorates can only be established through overwhelming military might and a few displays of force against a foe’s cities.

However it is still probably the best strategy game to date.

Summary: