Rome demands victroy from Her Generals

One of my all time favourite games.

An exelent game. Dated graphics but good battles an campaigns.

Imperitor!

As a huge fan of the Total War game series, i decided to write a review about every game, starting from Rome and ending to Rome 2. As far as i've seen from the research i did, there has never been any other "Collection" of Reviews about the Total War games on Steam and thus this will be the first ever Collection of TW Reviews on Steam. Just keep in mind that the Reviews will not be like the reviews you see usually but they will have a personal sense. By that i mean that they will be reviews/guides for the game which i think is the ultimate combination for anyone who wants to knows every perspective of a game before he purchases it.



Rome Total War is the title which got me into the TW series. The game was released in 2004 by Sega, developed by Creative Assembly and it was voted as the best Strategy game of 2004. It introduced a huge number and variety of new features in every category in comparison with the previous TW titles (Shogun and Medieval TW). It is a turn based strategy game with real time elements in the land battles.


Concept

In the Imperial Campgaign the player is allowed to pick among a variety of factions. Your goal is to drive your faction to victory and success through the conquest of other faction's areas. A faction is a group of ancient people. The game takes place in the old known world of 270 BC to 14 AD around the Mediterranean Sea and the factions/groups of ancient people you can control
are the historical ancient people of that period. You can control the Roman Families, the Greek States of Southern Greece, the Carthagian Empire, the Greek Kingdom of Makedons, the Greek Empire of Seleucids, the Great long lasting Egyptian Empire, the Barbarian tribes of Gauls, Germans,Britons, Dacia and Spain, the Eastern Kingdoms of Parthia, Pontus, Armenia, Scythia and Thrace along with the African Kingdom of Numidia. The number of factions is so big and the variety of the units of your army so huge that it is going to take you dozens of hours to fully explore all of them! As the ruler of your faction you need to create a great army along with a strong economy to support it in order to conquer every other nation. In your effort you will face treacherous allies, sneaky agents and a clever Al which will be proven to be a worthy opponent.
In the beginning of the game you will be allowed to play with a few factions only and the rest of them will be unlocked as soon as you complete your first campaign. This has been done to help you understand the game better as the starting factions are the easiest and most powerful ones. There is a way to overcome this legally but i wouldn't recommend it to newcomers.


More about the Campaign

As soon as you choose a faction, you begin by controlling a few settlements. These settlements are the capitals of the areas of the game. Each area has its own settlement. As soon as you conquer a settlement, you conquer the area it controls along with every useful and important resources it may have. The settlements are also commercial and administrative centers of the area they belong to and the place where units and agents are being created.
You should always try to maintain the balance of the money on each settlement you own in a positive level in order to have a healthy economy.

There are many different types of land units. Each of them has its own traits and its own offensive and defensive values. Consider to check them all and decide which you will use to guard in your settlements, which you will use to attack settlements and which to defend them. In addition, there are 3 naval units for the sea battles.

Then we have the Generals. Generals are the leaders of your empire and your army. Each of them has his own traits (some are positive, some are negative). Some are good at commanding armies, some at commanding settlements while others ... well they aren't good at anything. :) Use your Generals as leaders of your armies in order to give to your army the traits the assigned General has. It's very crucial the pick the appropriate General for your attacks and to keep behind in your capital or other important settlements the Generals who are good with administration.

Finally, there are the Agents. There are 3 types of Agents: the Spy, the Assassin and the Diplomat. You will use your Spy in order to spy the enemy's armies and settlements. Your Assassins will be used for the assassination of enemy Generals, destruction of certain buildings in the enemy's settlements or for the cause of casualties to enemy armies. Finally, the Diplomats are being used for diplomatic purposes such as the trade agreements,
the NAPs, the Alliances or the exchange of Map Information.


Battles

There are 2 ways to fight your battles: the automatic one where you leave the fate of your army to the computer and the manual one where you will be transfered on the battlefield where you will command your army and try to lead him to victory. The naval battles are all being done automatically while the land battles or the settlement sieges allow you to pick the way the battle will happen. I advice you to pick in the vast majority of your battles the manual way as it is pretty common to suffer high numbers of casualties if you let the NPC handle the fate of the battle. Moreover, there is a high chance that you will be able to win a battle which the NPC would lose simply because you use a better strategy than the NPC.

In your battles you shall decide the deployment of your units. Put the archers in front of your melee units in order to cause casualties to the approaching enemies and the move them back and behind the safety of your melee units so that they can continue their job from a safe distance. Consider to use pikemen against cavarly, cavarly against archers or light infantry and heavy infantry against pretty much anyone. Be careful though! Your General must survive
the battle if you wish to have chances to win. Guard him carefully, lead him away from the enemy's archers volleys or the attacks of the enemy's units in order to protect him. You can use him to flank the enemy's light units but never let his unit alone. If your General dies, your army will start to lose its courage and will eventually flee from the battle. Your General is also in position to raise the courage of a fleeing unit of yours which is another reason to keep him
behind your units and protected until the very last momment. If you understand that you are losing a battle, command your General and the rest of your forces to flee from the battle. It's better to leave and fight another day than die meaninglessly in a certainly lost battle.


Your Empire

The more settlements you conquer, the harder it will be eventually for you to keep your empire safe. The more you expand, the more the enemies will become. Consider to begin wars which you think you can win and also try to narrow down to the lowest possible amount the number of your enemy factions. It is easy to have the situation get out of hand if one of your enemies creates an Alliance with another strong faction and invite them over to the war with you. However, for me this is where the joy hides! The game, although old enough now, has such a realistic system in this sector that it manages to recreate Real Life's conditions in the field of Diplomacy extremely accurately! This very fact will keep your interest high for a long period of time and in addition will keep its replay ability high enough, especially if you are someone who gets excited from games which offer a mixture of emotions.

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great g ame to recreate the roman expereince also good mods incluidng

end of days 1: fight satanic legions as christian, islamic, or buddhist nations
end of days 2: reunite vampire empire or rebel as werewolf or purify the world as templar order crusader

blue lotus: ancient chinese mythology with great soundtrack if you ever s aw the movie "big trouble in little china" you will love this mod

roma sur♥♥♥♥♥♥ 2: improves expereince of real life history

fourth age: lord of the rings post return of the king very cool!

lord of the rings: play as the ending of the third age, fight sauron or darkness conquer world.

viking invasion 2: raid british isles as viking or defend it as the natives

all in all 10/10 especially with mods im very proud

And remember this above all.. Our Roman gods our watching; make sure they are not ashamed!

One of the best game i've ever played.

Amazing. It might be old, but is still fun as anything!

Awesome Game! Never Gets old!