At 9/25/05 10:00 PM, RavenGage wrote:

At 9/25/05 02:16 PM, Nomader wrote: They aren't completly invincible... they cost tons of dough,

If you did your economy right, by the time you're able to make armoured elephants you should have tons of money. And if you have over 50k corruption comes in so high cost can sometimes be a plus not a setback.

Ah see, but this is coming from someone who hasn't played the game for 2 months... you see, I dumbly uninstalled it, trying to make my computer faster (to no avail... I upgraded it recently though), but I played for around 8 months straight... but I simply don't have the time to re-install it again...

At 9/25/05 10:07 PM, Nomader wrote: Ah see, but this is coming from someone who hasn't played the game for 2 months... you see, I dumbly uninstalled it, trying to make my computer faster (to no avail... I upgraded it recently though), but I played for around 8 months straight... but I simply don't have the time to re-install it again...

Ahh I see. Well in that case it's good that you remember as much as you do. Most people forget what a phalanx is 2 days after uninstalling :P

At 9/25/05 10:13 PM, RavenGage wrote:

At 9/25/05 10:07 PM, Nomader wrote: Ah see, but this is coming from someone who hasn't played the game for 2 months... you see, I dumbly uninstalled it, trying to make my computer faster (to no avail... I upgraded it recently though), but I played for around 8 months straight... but I simply don't have the time to re-install it again...

Ahh I see. Well in that case it's good that you remember as much as you do. Most people forget what a phalanx is 2 days after uninstalling :P

lol... no don't worry - I could probably name all of them - heck, I could even range from Cretan Archers to Roman Principles... I remember it very well :D
The only things I seem to forget are those worthless mercenaries, that you sort of pick up here and there- like the one's on the Roman peninsula... can't remember their name... oh well.

Personally though, I find that llberian infantry (hope I spelled that right...), from Carthage, with a few elephants in the crowd, make a very formidable foe vs. any enemy. It's actually entertaining to have the elephants rip through the lines, followed by phalanx, infantry, or cavalry... it's cruel, but fun.

Also, I was curious if Spartan phalanx are the best?

At 9/25/05 10:23 PM, Nomader wrote: lol... no don't worry - I could probably name all of them - heck, I could even range from Cretan Archers to Roman Principles... I remember it very well :D
The only things I seem to forget are those worthless mercenaries, that you sort of pick up here and there- like the one's on the Roman peninsula... can't remember their name... oh well.

I usualy can't remember almost any mercenary's name. I remember the unti and their strenghts and weknesses, and their uses but I suck with names.

Personally though, I find that llberian infantry (hope I spelled that right...), from Carthage, with a few elephants in the crowd, make a very formidable foe vs. any enemy. It's actually entertaining to have the elephants rip through the lines, followed by phalanx, infantry, or cavalry... it's cruel, but fun.

Cruel yes :P Especially with companion calvalry.

Also, I was curious if Spartan phalanx are the best?

That depends. Their main strenght is the 2 Hit Points as opposed to other hoplites (who have only one). However they don't have as much armour and are therefore weaker against arrows. And of course regardless of stats, they'll loose to elite pikemen units due to the shorter spears.

Overall they're better than other hoplites 90% of the time but they're nothing amazing.

I played a custom battle once on medium difficulty. One unit of Spartans against one unit of Urban Cohort. THe Urbans were loosing unti I pressed the loose formation, then they spread out and eventualy defeated the spartans.

Lol, I love the Parthians. They are so fun to play (once you actually manage to get some cities).

I usually have an army of Eastern Infantry and slower units and one of my Persian Cavalry and Horse Archers. The Horse units move off ahead and destroy anyone I find in the open (I really have destroyed hugely larger armies with just Horse Archers and Persian Cavalry, they are practically impossible to kill if you can manage to keep the cavalry units that always invariably chase you down from cornering you) and siege the towns I find. Then the Eastern Infantrys and Onagers and Elephants catch up to end the siege and start the battle. And what if they sally, you say? Park my horses at the gates and shower them with arrows at those bottlenecks.

And its funny. I keep my armies so well intact that in one game near the end, I had armies of Eastern Infantry that were stronger than Urban Cohorts (or at least their counterparts in Total Realism) from all their experience fighting. It really was amazing to watch them fight, my pajamamen and the Legions. And the Pajamamen won most the time to :P

And its to bad in the expansion they wont have any of the Muslim hordes that eventually wipe out the Sassanian Empire and Byzantines even later. I really would love to pretend Im going Jihad on everyones ass.

Sometimes enemies are real cowards. Sometimes they start marching towards the edge of the map to leave the battle just after they got hit by some arrows. That really sucks, because if you sent some units to intercept them they suddenly start fighting and only light units can get to them in time, so then you loose many men. And some other times some units suddenly start routing after they just started fighting. Sometimes they just stop their charge when they are a meter for your units and then suddenly rout. I then send some units after them. The fun thing then is that when more units rout, you allready got men behind them, so you can corner them and kill them all. That just happened to me, i totally owned the Germans. I have to add one thing though, the enemy mostly had spear warbands and axemen, and i had mostly chosen swordsmen.

At 9/26/05 01:44 PM, D34M0N wrote: Stuff.

Sorry, forgot pic.

I hate fighting as the barbarians >:(

They are bad at listening to me. And Ive beaten armies of chosen swordsmen and such with ambushed peasants and archers. They stink.

At 9/28/05 06:37 PM, FAB0L0US wrote: They are bad at listening to me.

You mean charging without orders? That pisses me off so much its no even funny.

As for the cowards, I've experienced that too. Especially if you peper them with onager and arrow fire (litteraly, fire arrows/boulders) then their morale is patheticly low.

But then that happened to me sometimes too. For example I was defending a city, with barbarian warbands on the gates to absorb the impact, and then preatorians on the side to do the killing. And then suddenly they all start routing. 4 preatorian cohorts running away before they even land a single blow.

i think it was against those british chariots that it happened. That's when I started hating to fight against them :P

At 9/26/05 01:44 PM, D34M0N wrote: Sometimes enemies are real cowards. Sometimes they start marching towards the edge of the map to leave the battle just after they got hit by some arrows. That really sucks, because if you sent some units to intercept them they suddenly start fighting and only light units can get to them in time, so then you loose many men. And some other times some units suddenly start routing after they just started fighting. Sometimes they just stop their charge when they are a meter for your units and then suddenly rout. I then send some units after them. The fun thing then is that when more units rout, you allready got men behind them, so you can corner them and kill them all. That just happened to me, i totally owned the Germans. I have to add one thing though, the enemy mostly had spear warbands and axemen, and i had mostly chosen swordsmen.

Heh... I was once Parthia, and was in heavy persuit of a unit of horse archers, with three units of cataphracts - it was a pure slaughter once I caught up to em...

I find it rather annoying though, when missile infantry, missile cavalry, or plain ol' cavalry flee - their so hard to catch up to...

And you know those good ol' Equites? You know how your supposed to use them to chase down enemies? I never used em' that way - they were always at the center of the charge...

At 9/28/05 07:56 PM, RavenGage wrote: i think it was against those british chariots that it happened. That's when I started hating to fight against them :P

But fighting with them is fun. :)

At 9/28/05 09:19 PM, Nomader wrote: And you know those good ol' Equites? You know how your supposed to use them to chase down enemies? I never used em' that way - they were always at the center of the charge...

They don't fight really well, but against light units they're ok. Specially if you let them charge and then retreat.

As for the barbarians charging without order: that didn't happen often to me. But all fights i sent some light chariots to the enemy to start cutting their numbers down and i keep my main force at a distance. Mostly the light chariots are enough to drive the enemy from the field. When there is a full scale battle my units sometimes charge without orders, but that never really matters, since i would have let them charge a few moments later and most of the times they retreat if i tell them to.

I think it's really annoying that the family members hardly get children. I think the ideal number of family member is to have one in every city, and some reserve to take new cities, but almost never i have that number. Now abput half of my family is 55+, of which many are 60+, which means that just about every turn one dies of old age, that's really annoying. Specially if i loose a young one in battle, or if i just bribed an enemy family member and he dies the next turn in battle. Usally i replay the battle if a family member dies, but those 2 battles went so well that i didn't want to do them over again.

At 9/29/05 03:13 PM, Britkid wrote:

At 9/25/05 02:16 PM, Nomader wrote:

At 9/24/05 11:36 AM, Britkid wrote: Wow, now I'm going to go play Carthage with my invincible Armoured Elephants.

They aren't completly invincible... they cost tons of dough, and can easily be killed by other elephants (best defense against them). Also, if they run out of control, you have to kill them... a dead investment... it's horrible when that happens too... and don't get to over confident - you need units other than elephants, as I believe some units are especially good at scaring away elephants... yep...

Not the way I use them, once I defeated a Roman army of 1000 soldiers with Armoured Elephants and one unit of Town Militia.

Lol - sure the armoured elephants did all the work, and the militia was simply backup

But, if you threw in Cataphracts vs. Elephants, I'm pretty sure it would be evenly matched there...

I was thinking back - Once, I was the Greek Cities - I was able to ally with Carthage - the Romans had my city, Syracuse under seige - so, the Carthaginans attacked the Roman army. Our strength combined made it 2:1 ratio.

However, it didn't work out very well... by the time my hoplites made it to the front where the battle was, I could see the slaughter of llberian infantry the Romans had left - they were all dead or gone...

My men weren't much against the entire Roman army...and they simply cut my army into pieces - everyone was routing.

However, three units turned around, equaling about 50 men. So, I sent them against a rock, waiting for the Romans to attack. It became around that "30" seconds left, before the Romans would win, so I sent them out against ineveitably horrible odds.

Before they were even halfway, they turned tail and ran.

It was horrible.

At 9/29/05 03:51 PM, Britkid wrote:

Before they were even halfway, they turned tail and ran.

It was horrible.

I hate it when that happens. War Elephants can be killed by phalanxes but not Armoured.

Iberian Infrantry aren't one of the best Carthaginian infrantry by a long way. Libyan Spearmen, Poeni Infrantry and Sacred War Band Infrantry are all better.

The only good thing about llberian infantry is that they can be made cheaply and quickly en masse...

At 9/29/05 05:05 PM, Britkid wrote: But they can only hold a battle line for a short time.

True, but one must rely on the weak in the beggining...

Damn, Chosen Swordsmen are amazing, specially against cavalry.

True, but their too costly - I'd stick with good ol' Warband - even though their horrible

At 9/29/05 05:21 PM, Britkid wrote:

At 9/29/05 05:10 PM, Nomader wrote:

At 9/29/05 05:05 PM, Britkid wrote: But they can only hold a battle line for a short time.

True, but one must rely on the weak in the beggining...

Damn, Chosen Swordsmen are amazing, specially against cavalry.

True, but their too costly - I'd stick with good ol' Warband - even though their horrible

That was me whinging, I haven't even played with Gaul yet, but the Chosen Swordsman always kill about 200 men before they all die.

lol - I find Gaul's advantages that they have in the beggining, quickly diminish in the end - I much prefer the Jullii faction of Rome.

I really dont think the Chosen are to well against a well formulated plan. Just get them stuck in a line with some shit units then hit them from the side with cavalry or good infantry or even just ram them up the middle with cavalry while they are occupied. And make sure the cavalry keeps on moving through so they dont get bogged down and lose mobility.

Yall get the feeling that once you play the game long enough, the battles are stupidly easy and the only hard part is gettin the cash to pay for armies? I guess that is realistic, but I still kinda wish the battles were tougher for me, even at the highest settings.

On the subject of equites. They tend to get slaughtered in higher difficulties. I send them full charge in the rear of an armoured hoplites unit (very hard), and they killed 17 hoplites while suffering 39 casualties in the first 5-10 seconds or so.

I think they're still better than greek calvalry though.

Also, does anyone else love those Sermatian mercenaries? They're not all that great, it's just their charge that I love. Charge of 17. Light lancers and some others have 16 but only one unit in the entire game has 17 and that's Sermatian knights.

At 9/29/05 04:39 AM, D34M0N wrote: As for the barbarians charging without order: that didn't happen often to me. But all fights i sent some light chariots to the enemy to start cutting their numbers down and i keep my main force at a distance. Mostly the light chariots are enough to drive the enemy from the field. When there is a full scale battle my units sometimes charge without orders, but that never really matters, since i would have let them charge a few moments later and most of the times they retreat if i tell them to.

Yes sometimes it's like that. It's just that i was playing Germania at the time and they have no chariots. It's no big deal it just gets annoying at times.

I think it's really annoying that the family members hardly get children.

Yeah that's one of the worse things about the game. In all my games I think 90% of battles I fight without a general cuz they're all governors.

At 9/29/05 03:13 PM, Britkid wrote: Not the way I use them, once I defeated a Roman army of 1000 soldiers with Armoured Elephants and one unit of Town Militia.

Well that depends on the roman army. Against 1000 archr auxilia....well you know. :P

At 9/29/05 03:35 PM, Nomader wrote: But, if you threw in Cataphracts vs. Elephants, I'm pretty sure it would be evenly matched there...

3 units of catas VS one unit of A. Elephants might be pretty even. But there's also a good chance that the elephants will destroy the catas. I gotta test it out.

It was horrible.

That's enemy AI for ya. Damnded enemy never wait for your army to get there and provide reinforcments.

At 9/30/05 12:27 AM, FAB0L0US wrote: I really dont think the Chosen are to well against a well formulated plan. Just get them stuck in a line with some shit units then hit them from the side with cavalry or good infantry or even just ram them up the middle with cavalry while they are occupied. And make sure the cavalry keeps on moving through so they dont get bogged down and lose mobility.

Well yeah if the AI controls them. If its a human they might not let you do that.

You do have a point though. They definetly can't stand up to Urbans or Preatorians.

Yall get the feeling that once you play the game long enough, the battles are stupidly easy and the only hard part is gettin the cash to pay for armies? I guess that is realistic, but I still kinda wish the battles were tougher for me, even at the highest settings.

With the Selucids definetly. But with barbarians on very hard it's still a challenge. So are the historial battles.

At 9/29/05 05:10 PM, Nomader wrote:

At 9/29/05 05:05 PM, Britkid wrote: Damn, Chosen Swordsmen are amazing, specially against cavalry.

True, but their too costly - I'd stick with good ol' Warband - even though their horrible

I rather pay some more money and have a good army. Chosen swordmen totally own warbands.

At 9/30/05 01:42 AM, RavenGage wrote: I think they're still better than greek calvalry though.

Me too. Greek cavalery sux, they don't have shields.

Also, does anyone else love those Sermatian mercenaries? They're not all that great, it's just their charge that I love. Charge of 17. Light lancers and some others have 16 but only one unit in the entire game has 17 and that's Sermatian knights.

I never used them. I hardly use mercs at all, they're so expensive.

At 9/30/05 02:17 PM, Britkid wrote:

At 9/30/05 01:42 AM, RavenGage wrote:

At 9/29/05 04:39 AM, D34M0N wrote:

At 9/29/05 03:13 PM, Britkid wrote: Not the way I use them, once I defeated a Roman army of 1000 soldiers with Armoured Elephants and one unit of Town Militia.

Well that depends on the roman army. Against 1000 archr auxilia....well you know. :P

No, they were Urban Cohorts, Hastati, Principes, three generals and some velites.

That's sort of depressing - but let's face it - Hastati aren't the best unit out there...

And nor are velites.

But, if there was more cavalry, I think it would've been better matched - when I'm Rome, I often have merenary Hoplites in my armies- some of my most effective units XD

At 9/30/05 01:42 AM, RavenGage wrote: With the Selucids definetly. But with barbarians on very hard it's still a challenge. So are the historial battles.

Ahh, good point. Ive never really played much as the barbarians cause I hate their stupid warbands so much >:( They rout easily, dont listen to me, and generally suck.

Ive played basically all the Empires but the barbarian tribes that use mostly infantry and chariots. I despise chariots. I mostly go for mounted archers and the thundering charge of my Cataphracts and Elephants. Everything else is to slow for me.

And about those equites charging hoplites from the rear. Hoplites for some reason always slaughter my horse units, no matter how savage and whar direction I come form. I just dont understand it, they anhillate mounted units. Im either thinking its bad coding or they are overpowered.

And I once did a battle of 20 Armored Elephants vs. 20 Spartan Hoplites, both had as much spending as I could afford. The Spartans whooped ass on my elephants. Those are some savage motherfuckers. I would charge them, kill a bunch, but they wouldnt route, just sit there and then anhillate my elephants. It probably helped I had the diffculty on super hard or whatever it is and I couldnt really flank them to well.

Spartan Hoplites are SAVAGE motherfuckers.

At 9/30/05 05:53 PM, FAB0L0US wrote: And about those equites charging hoplites from the rear. Hoplites for some reason always slaughter my horse units, no matter how savage and whar direction I come form. I just dont understand it, they anhillate mounted units. Im either thinking its bad coding or they are overpowered.

It's because they turn around fast. I odn't know how but their spears seem to pass through the other hoplites like they were ghosts and then they turn real again when they face the horses and slaughter them.

And I once did a battle of 20 Armored Elephants vs. 20 Spartan Hoplites, both had as much spending as I could afford. The Spartans whooped ass on my elephants. Those are some savage motherfuckers. I would charge them, kill a bunch, but they wouldnt route, just sit there and then anhillate my elephants. It probably helped I had the diffculty on super hard or whatever it is and I couldnt really flank them to well.

Spartan Hoplites are SAVAGE motherfuckers.

You shouldn't have made them retreat and then charge again. Just let the elephants saty still on some hill and shoot arrows. Then when the spartans come charge and let the battle go by itself. Elephants aren't like horses, they're not meant to charge and retreat repeadetly. At least I THINK that would have worked.

Oh jee! If only my best friend Longbox40 were here, he loves RTW! He doesn't like to post though because he doesn't feel he can trust "Internet scum," as he calls it. Finally a reason for him to post!

I was thinking - why is it that they always make you play as the loser in historic battles?

I find it unfair that in the Battle of Canae, I have to play as Rome, when it would be much more entertaining to slaughter them with horse archers with Parthia XD

At 9/30/05 11:10 PM, Nomader wrote: I was thinking - why is it that they always make you play as the loser in historic battles?

Maybe so you can change the outcome.

At 10/1/05 02:42 AM, Britkid wrote:

At 9/30/05 11:10 PM, Nomader wrote: I was thinking - why is it that they always make you play as the loser in historic battles?

I find it unfair that in the Battle of Canae, I have to play as Rome, when it would be much more entertaining to slaughter them with horse archers with Parthia XD

I found that one really easy, specially with the Elephants.

Hang on... drat this is when I regret uninstalling the game - not that one - it was this one where your playing as Rome, and your deep in Parthia - the Parthians ambush your cavalry and slaughter them, and then the horse archers attack your legions, with the cataphracts coming your way...

At 10/1/05 08:23 AM, D34M0N wrote:

At 9/30/05 11:10 PM, Nomader wrote: I was thinking - why is it that they always make you play as the loser in historic battles?

Maybe so you can change the outcome.

or to make you download other hist battles where you hope to be the one with the advantage

At 9/30/05 11:10 PM, Nomader wrote: I was thinking - why is it that they always make you play as the loser in historic battles?

I find it unfair that in the Battle of Canae, I have to play as Rome, when it would be much more entertaining to slaughter them with horse archers with Parthia XD

also i think that if you would be parthia or any other advantageous faction in the historical battle you wouldnt have to play all that tactical, and i think the whole point of the historical battle is to play as tactical as you can, or else it would just be like a custom battle

srry for double post by the way i missed nomdaer post :P

I only played one historical battle, of Egypt against the Seleucid empire. One unit of chariots got crushed under the elephants when i let them charge at them. The battle was a complete choas, i was using the whole battlefield. Some units were fighting at one end of the map and some other on the other side of the map. But eventually i won. For the biggest part that was because i played on easy difficulty, but i just had RTW when i played that battle.

At 9/30/05 06:44 PM, RavenGage wrote: It's because they turn around fast. I odn't know how but their spears seem to pass through the other hoplites like they were ghosts and then they turn real again when they face the horses and slaughter them.

Its not even that. I sometimes dont even see the spears, sometimes I am attacking them from one direction with infantry and then attack the rear with horses and they still beat the shit out of the horses if it is a powerful hoplite unit (hence, they dont route).

You shouldn't have made them retreat and then charge again.

Oh, I really had no choice past a certain point. I shot arrows as long as I could, but they cornered me somewhat after awhile so I tried to time it just right to charge them when their spears were up and they were running at me but it just didnt work. They got them down, I charged, killed a bunch, tried to get all the way through, skewered my elephants, game over.

I didnt really think of just sitting there letting the Spartans attack them. Ive never used Elephants that way. Usually I use them like I use chariots and cataphracts, to fuck up formations and then attack with something else. I usually always charge with them.

Maybe I will try that next time I sim that battle :P

At 10/1/05 03:16 PM, D34M0N wrote: I only played one historical battle, of Egypt against the Seleucid empire. One unit of chariots got crushed under the elephants when i let them charge at them. The battle was a complete choas, i was using the whole battlefield. Some units were fighting at one end of the map and some other on the other side of the map. But eventually i won. For the biggest part that was because i played on easy difficulty, but i just had RTW when i played that battle.

I did that one too on easy difficulty... it was rather interesting though when you were trying to save your general - I saved him with 3 men left, but then my elephants saved the day XD

So many hoplites though were my main problem - I personally prefer infantry, despite the fact that hoplites could simply walk through an enemy, I'd rather have it so I have swiftness and meunervarability.