Total War: Rome Remastered - Return the Eagle!

Having access to the functionality of the keyboard arrow keys to shift formations fowards, backwards or sideways been a blessing in disguise for commanding phalanxes. Never has marching a nigh impenetrable wall of spears into the face of the enemy battle line been easier.

For all the foibles of the battle AI, you have to admit that they still have one very specific leg up over the more recent Total War games. They can actually conduct a tactical retreat from the battlefield if they sense the situation does not favour them fighting it out. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valour and the AI is not afraid to live to fight another day, where the terms of battle might be more favourable.

Playing through some of the Historical Battles today to re-experience them and unlock the associated achievements. Consider the Macedonian phalangites well and truly crushed after that showdown at Cynoscephalae, with Philip V’s plans to rewrite history strongly denied. A prompt smashing of the Macedonian left flank making the task of tackling the rather more prickly Macedonian right a much easier proposition.

Looking back at my screenshots, you can tell there was a heavy morning fog on the day of the battle.

Following up from a recent episode where Rob interviewed two CA developers about working at CA and on the development history of the original Rome: Total War. The latest episode of the Three Moves Ahead podcast, released about four days ago, is all about Rome Remastered itself. Apparently Rob had a Chick Parabola experience with the original Rome: Total War where he started out enamored with it and then became less so as he noticed began noticing weaknesses in the game’s AI and such. An interesting debate about how the older games compare to the new modern Total War titles, how the series has evolved over time, and what lessons\features the modern Total War games might be able to gleam from the trip down nostalgia’s road with the remastering of Rome.

It might be heresy but i wasn’t a huge fan of Rome Total War, though i loved the campaign mechanics which, for the time, were more engaging than the typical game. Medieval Total War had these wonderfully long battles and some insanely balanced situations, like the time i held off 4 full stacks of Mongols by camping a hill with crossbows. Rome TW by comparison was almost like sprinting so fast your feet got out from under your legs. I really disliked how “fatal” battles were, effectively once you lost a battle you lost your army.

Rome 2 is a much more robust game by comparison, though i understand it has issues as well. But Rome 1 is a far more “pure” experience and isn’t such a giant grind as the later Total Wars. The AI is still kind of trash though.

The campaign map editing isn’t perfect just yet but the modding community are another step closer to unlocking the modding potential of the remaster. The Mundus Magnus campaign map that a lot of classic Rome: Total War mods were based on, extending the map to reach further eastwards and such, has been recreated\ported into Rome Remastered.

Additionally, the game’s first patch is current going through public beta. According to the patch notes it shall be including a number of stability/crash fixes and other such improvements.

Some pretty hefty improvements to the game’s modding potential coming down the road for the next patch. My favourite coming change has to so far be:

Combined Mode
Merged unique game features from Barbarian Invasion and Alexander into the main game for easier, and more powerful mods.

Patch 2.0.4 has entered a beta period before release. As well as containing some fixes and improvements for the game it more importantly unlocks a vast array of potential for the mod community.

Where to even start? Well the faction cap is now near limitless, you can assign different weapon and armour levels their own unique models (akin to M2TW), the “super faction” function of the SPQR has become highly moddable and can be used outside of just the SPQR and the three Roman “sub-factions”, the Marius Reforms event is now highly moddable and can be used for non-Roman factions, and the list goes on and on.

For people not into Total War modding, it’ll probably take a few years before you see the full effect this will have. For people into Total War modding, the realm of possibilities just expanded exponentially and I can’t wait to see what kind of awesome ideas people will now be able to do with the new freedoms gained.

If you have roughly 40 minutes to burn then this video provides a pretty good breakdown of each change\improvement being introduced:

RTR 0.5 just dropped with the biggest map in TW history.

Don’t know if we’ve got any Total War Rome or Rome Remastered experts lurking about, but I figured wouldn’t hurt to try.

I’ve a rather innocuous question about the programming of the Roman factions.

I’ve played all three recently and come away with an impression I’d like to run by you because I’m wondering if anyone else gets the same feeling I do.

And yes, I’m not finally getting around to my question: Does it feel like the Roman AIs are programmed to stay w/in general striking distance of you militarily? Thereby making it so the inevitable civil war proves a challenge not unlike the future iteration of Realm Divide in Shogun 2?

Because I’m having a good run as the Brutii, taken out the Greeks pretty early in the campaign, got a good batch of armies recruited, close to 20k a turn coming in and when you add it all up, I’m in pretty much the same proximity on the military ranking graph that I was in my prior campaigns as the Julii and Scipii (neither of which started as well as this one).

I don’t know if they specifically stay near you but I do think they get some bonuses. Many a True Nerd did a Rome campaign a while back on YouTube where he shadowed the other two factions with a single unit of cavalry each, even “helped” in some battles. Was pretty interesting to see.

It is not scripted per se but rather a result of how Rome: Total War’s themes, balancing, and gameplay systems coalesce to create a kind of Roman manifest destiny. As you can neuter the other Roman houses (factions) by directly hindering their attempts to expand territoriality. Thus, creating the conditions for a fairly mundane mid-to-late game Roman civil war, when compared to if you let them expand unhindered.

Often even when the player isn’t one of the three Roman houses; if left unchecked the Romans, as a collective, will typically expand to become a powerhouse. The reasons behind why that happens are long and varied, especially compared to how Rome sometimes fares as just one faction in Total War: Rome II.

In essence though, for all its historical inaccuracies, Rome: Total War really nails its thematic goal of Rome being the ascending military power of classical antiquity. Whether that be due to having better troops compared to many of their nearby foes, senate missions to help guide and spur the AI forwards, being locked into a mutual cooperation pact until the civil war that makes Italy a rather secure base to expand from for the AI, and so on so forth…

Thanks for the responses! I’m really enjoying playing this again. I prefer TWR to the Rome 2 GC (but did love Caesar in Gaul and Wrath of Sparta).

The general strategy of boxing them in to keep them in check feels sound, but I struggle to understand how I’d go about it. I took over the Greeks because they’ve got bonus wonders and a good many cities that are profitable and grow big. I needed pretty much all of my resources to accomplish that, and while I was about it Julii and Scipii are of course busy expanding themselves

So I don’t see how as one of the Roman families I could box them all in?! I mean SPQR is trivial because they start with no where to go. I can sort of cut off Scripii from going east once they head north against the Gauls but stopping them from heading north and west to continue eating the Gauls and then Britannia, Germania or Spain is challenging as I would necessitate splitting forces all of which were needed to take on the Greeks and Macedon (the latter of which were no push over at all).

And the Scripii beeline south, taking over Sicily in like 5 turns and then jump the med to Carthage etc rather quickly while I was still sorting out the Greeks.

Net: If I’d tried to box them both in I wouldn’t have been able to expand to the most profitable section of the map myself. The boxing in as it were would have been at the expense of my own expansion.

My destiny with this game I guess will always feature a big bloody civil war! In my previous campaign as Julii I took out Gaul, Britannia, Germania and Spain, but when the Civil war kicked my scale did nothing to prevent getting absolutely crushed in Italy itself as swarms of armies for Brutii and Scipii descended on me and made easy work of it.

It might not be historical accurate and CA has always said these are historical settings rather than simulations, but it does feel like a challenging and interesting game to play and I value that more. Unlike Rome 2 where everyone just ponderously wanders around the map aimlessly, here you know everyone works at expanding and regularly make opportunistic attacks.

Ah interesting, I’ll have to go track this down and take a look.

Edit: Also I’ve been idly thinking of trying to intentionally delay the Marian Reforms because unless I’m not understanding this right it makes it impossible to recruit or replenish most of the units I’ve spent the time building up. That feels like a real set back coming at a point fairly contemporaneous to the impending civil war. I won’t have the time to build the new armies and I won’t be able to replenish the ones I put into battle. Am I missing something here?

I think this would be a pretty hard thing to do, TBH. You can slow them down certainly; the MATN campaign I mentioned features him doing just that (as the Scipii). But fully boxing one faction in probably would require seriously compromising your own expansion.

The “single unit of equites” trick is one option though. Not to actually box them in, but to force the AI to fighrt battles. In general the AI will fare worse on the battle map than they will in autoresolve; by having your allied equites nearby to “help” you’ll trigger battles and can thus slow them down that way.

That is ultimately where meta knowledge of RTW’s grand campaign comes into play. Taking Caralis from Carthage before the Julii, which requires bee-lining for it as the Scipii, often throws the Julii AI for a loop. It’ll usually result in either the Julii expanding more slowly or, more rarely, the Julii AI failing to expand at all.

You can often trip up the Brutii AI in a similar matter by beelining for Apollonia. Though that one is far more likely to just slow the Brutii down for a bit rather than complete halt them. Once you know the typical senate missions and avenues for expansion you can throw some real delays into the AI’s workings, for the original RTW at least since Rome Remastered may have improved\fix it.

The way things have played out SPQR are a non-event, which looks to be typical for them as they start boxed in.

The Julii did what you expect them to do and expanded north taking out Gaul and Britannia and over into Spain. They’re the problem, they’ve got like a good 10 or so stacks running around the map at this point.

The Scipii went Sicily and then Carthage but the fact there’s not much worth taking in North Africa means they just don’t scale their army as much and I don’t anticipate them being a problem.

You’re right about chokepoints, I do think if I had diverted an army early to Carthage the Scipii would be forced to consider altneratives and might well be stymied by it.

The best I’ve been able to do with the Julii is right now I’m as quickly as possible circling back north of Greece to cut them off from taking all of Germania.

Plus I’ve not built an Imperial Palace on the Italian Peninsula and as a result the Marian Reforms haven’t triggered, so I can put my entire seasoned army to use and replenish them. Of course so can the Julii.

I’m liking the Brutii, they were well positioned for taking Greece which I wanted. But if I played as Scipii I could see that working out fine the same way, take Carthage and then divert everyone to take out Greek States and Macedon and thereby cut off Brutii.

Side note: the victory condition is too high. 50 should be 40 imho

I don’t think SPQR is ever supposed to expand? They’re just supposed to sit on Rome and wait for the Civil War, I believe.

That makes sense. I mean there really is nowhere for them to go.

I recently got an alert saying my popularity with the masses was sufficient I should go grab Rome from them.

I’ve politely declined so far because that would immediately trigger the civil war and I’ve not yet properly positioned my armies for it.

Just as a curious aside: I moved my capital over to a huge Macedon city I took. Does that change the other Roman faction reaction to civil war? Or do they still bee-line for anything on the Italian Peninsula as their starting focus of attack?