[hoom]

I've been quite surprised to have not seen any references to this here yet.
So here's some info & linkies:
Rome is the sequel to Medieval & the original Shogun & it takes it to real full on 3d at about the character detail level of Half-life but with up to something like 20,000 of them on screen at once.
Its still mostly the same turnbased grand strategy with realtime tactical battles, but now with much more integration between the turnbased & realtime modes.

This game ain't about flashy shaders & its not yet another minor expansion to the C&C genre.

What it is about is loads of polygons & magnificent depth of experience in the way that PC games traditionally blow away consoles.

The Total War series provides the best realtime army battles I know of.
From bloody meatgrinder battles through glorious charges through to the enemy taking one look at your magnificent army & running away in fear without you having to take a step

Its gonna be soo great

Soo great its even been/being used in two TV series (the first game to be really used in TV as far as I know), Time Commanders on BBC & Decisive Battles on the History Channel.

Homesite
http://www.totalwar.com/community/rome.htm

Gamesite stuff
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/...ex.html?q=rome
http://www.firingsquad.com/games/rom...l_war_preview/
http://ugo.com/channels/games/features/totalwar_rome/
http://www.avault.com/previews/previ....asp?game=rome
http://www.actiontrip.com/previews/rometotalwar.phtml
http://pc.ign.com/objects/498/498739.html#previews

A couple of screenies via Firingsquad





PC gaming is dead? Long live PC gaming!

[rainz]

You saw the videos ? The textures are horrible

RainZ

[hoom]

Horrible in what way?

Don't forget this is a game where you get like 10,000 guys on screen at once, hacking & stabbing & stuff.

Yes, most if not all of whats going on is only directx7 grade, but there's like 10,000 guys, huge cities that actually look like they are cities...

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Originally Posted by arrrse

Soo great its even been/being used in two TV series (the first game to be really used in TV as far as I know), Time Commanders on BBC & Decisive Battles on the History Channel.

I think "Time Commanders" has been the most successful TV show based around a computer game I've ever seen. It just works really well, and it's certainly piqued my interest in "Total War: Rome". I like the way they have the historical experts commenting on the team's performance, and giving a sarcastic analysis of their performance at the end.

[rainz]

Originally Posted by arrrse

Horrible in what way?

Don't forget this is a game where you get like 10,000 guys on screen at once, hacking & stabbing & stuff.

Yes, most if not all of whats going on is only directx7 grade, but there's like 10,000 guys, huge cities that actually look like they are cities...

Yeh i know looooooooooot of guys .. but still horrible .. If you cant admit .. there's a problem

RainZ

[L233]

I love all Total War games, they are hand down the best strategy games available. Complex but yet very manageable, easy to learn but hard to master and the battles feel very epic.

Can't wait for Rome. I don't give a shit that the textures don't look that good, Shogun and Medieval use horrible, pixelates sprites but both games are still awesome (Medieval more so than Shogun).

The tactical battles in the Total War games are a very different experience from all the run-of-the-mill real-time strategy games. You're really directing tactical battles instead of amassing a bunch of units to zerg the enemy to death.

I've defeated armies of 10,000 with not even a fith of that number as well as getting my ass kicked by the mongols who swept away all I threw at them with their heavy cavalry (until I adjusted my tactics and army composition).

The Total War games are a welcome change from the endless stream of worthless RTS clones.

[Zapp$ter]

who cares if the textures aren't brilliant. It's not like any of the previous game have been about brilliant graphics. It's their gameplay that kept me coming back for more. It's not like in the heat of battle I'll be thinking "omg...those GrApHix On Teh PoNiez are tEh SUX"

[Sxotty]

Well I didnt really like them much in the past, but who knows.

[rainz]

Originally Posted by Zapp$ter

who cares if the textures aren't brilliant. It's not like any of the previous game have been about brilliant graphics. It's their gameplay that kept me coming back for more. It's not like in the heat of battle I'll be thinking "omg...those GrApHix On Teh PoNiez are tEh SUX"

Cause you can say the gameplay will be so brillant ? For now i can say 2 things ... lot of units + crappy textures .. cant say something else .. you can ?

RainZ

[hoom]

Absolutely the gameplay will be exceptional.

If you haven't played Shogun or Medieval yet then you're missing out on something really good.

You have the turnbased strategy where you do diplomacy/spying, infrastructure building, build your armies, deploy armies, reinforce depleted units, make strategic advances etc.
Then when two armies meet, it zooms to a realtime battle in the terrain shown on the strategic map (at the province level in Shogun & Medieval, but local terrain in Rome).
In the realtime battles, you are the general & you command your army at the unit level.
Total War on the battlefield is about flanking manouvres, cavalry charges, capturing/holding tactically strong positions, combined arms tactics & such.
Each unit in your army consists of up to 200 individual people kept in formation automatically by the game.
You only actually deal with 20 units at once (16 in Shogun & Medieval) thus making the battles about your tactics as a general rather than about how fast you can click as in C&C clones.
The beauty of the Total War battles is that each of the people in the units is actually somewhat individual, with their own individual stats (unit stats are the average of the entire unit) & each individual, while generally trying to keep to the unit orders, gets into individual battles & can even get seperated from the unit in the melee.
Another reason that Total War kicks ass is that it models morale, so a unit of peasants is likely to bolt & run rather than face death at the hands of an elite unit, while an out-numbered loyal elite unit is likely to fight to the last man.

Sure, it doesn't have the level of polygon/texture detail of a modern fps but a modern fps has what, a max of 20-30 characters on screen at once?
To get Half-Life quality characters into a game thats about having 10,000 of them visable at once is a pretty damn impressive feat & frankly, its contrary to good gameplay to spend more than very brief periods zoomed to the point where you will be able to see the texture resolution, because you need to be keeping a tactical overview of the battlefield & at a distance where you can do that, those guys are going to be looking just fine

[rainz]

Originally Posted by arrrse

Absolutely the gameplay will be exceptional.

If you haven't played Shogun or Medieval yet then you're missing out on something really good.

You have the turnbased strategy where you do diplomacy/spying, infrastructure building, build your armies, deploy armies, reinforce depleted units, make strategic advances etc.
Then when two armies meet, it zooms to a realtime battle in the terrain shown on the strategic map (at the province level in Shogun & Medieval, but local terrain in Rome).
In the realtime battles, you are the general & you command your army at the unit level.
Total War on the battlefield is about flanking manouvres, cavalry charges, capturing/holding tactically strong positions, combined arms tactics & such.
Each unit in your army consists of up to 200 individual people kept in formation automatically by the game.
You only actually deal with 20 units at once (16 in Shogun & Medieval) thus making the battles about your tactics as a general rather than about how fast you can click as in C&C clones.
The beauty of the Total War battles is that each of the people in the units is actually somewhat individual, with their own individual stats (unit stats are the average of the entire unit) & each individual, while generally trying to keep to the unit orders, gets into individual battles & can even get seperated from the unit in the melee.
Another reason that Total War kicks ass is that it models morale, so a unit of peasants is likely to bolt & run rather than face death at the hands of an elite unit, while an out-numbered loyal elite unit is likely to fight to the last man.

Sure, it doesn't have the level of polygon/texture detail of a modern fps but a modern fps has what, a max of 20-30 characters on screen at once?
To get Half-Life quality characters into a game thats about having 10,000 of them visable at once is a pretty damn impressive feat & frankly, its contrary to good gameplay to spend more than very brief periods zoomed to the point where you will be able to see the texture resolution, because you need to be keeping a tactical overview of the battlefield & at a distance where you can do that, those guys are going to be looking just fine

Everything you said sounds good but i'll prefer half of the units with twice better textures instead of the actual ... Well that's just me.

RainZ

[Nappe1]

well, I don't know about Rome: Total War, but Settlers V: Heritage of Kings looks excelent and was voted as Best RTS of the show at E3 lately. The thing why I have always liked the settlers over the other RTS games, is the depth in the incredible small ecosystem that has to be efficient enough before you can start even dream about starting the war with the others. Based on screenshots I have seen so far, it looks like that 3 years which Bluebyte has been using transforming the game in 3D has really paid off.

Settlers 5 english web pages aren't open yet, but there's some material available in german: http://www.siedler.de/

[cthellis42]

The "Total War"s are pretty cool. My only real issue with Shogun was being unable to play the campaign mode multi-player... (Didn't play Medievil personally--since my LAN crowd doesn't seem to swing that way--but I know a lot of others who loved it to death.)

[MfA]

Ground texturing is important, but for the rest you will almost always be zoomed out too much to notice.

[hoom]

Rome has grass 'fins' (as they are called in the ATI Bear fur shader demo) & plenty of other foilage.

Unfortunately still no multiplayer campaign
One of the devs reportedly said it would take something like up to 8 years to finish one in Rome... though I don't really think thats a good enough excuse.
Multiplayer Campaign seems to be about the only thing thats really lacking.

[IgnorancePersonified]

Heh.. don't know about you guys but the people in the screenshots are looking a little bit inbred

Looks a great game.

[cthellis42]

Originally Posted by arrrse

Unfortunately still no multiplayer campaign
One of the devs reportedly said it would take something like up to 8 years to finish one in Rome... though I don't really think thats a good enough excuse.
Multiplayer Campaign seems to be about the only thing thats really lacking.

Le sad...

I can't see how this would at ALL be hard to implement. Granted, considering the way the game plays out, it would be torturously slow by most people's standards, but hey--just open up the option and let people play how they want. Civ and MoO and all sorts of games get played the same way and have been very popular. So long as there are lots of options and the ability to save at any point, people could play at their own pace in their own manner.

[hoom]

Umm... correction replace 8 with 2 in my last post (omg how did I type 8? :? )