![]() ![]() Building a network of roads is the key to being able to respond quickly. With more places to go, your armies need a way of getting around more effectively. More importantly, this new movement system places a strong emphasis on one of the key accomplishments of the Roman Empire: roads. The battle map that you fight on is based on the local terrain that your armies occupy on the strategic map… there are a lot of different battle maps in this game. There is a strong incentive to send troops out into the countryside to secure choke points and defensible terrain. In order to conquer a province you have to take its capital, but it’s not enough to place defending armies in your settlements and leave them there. It also gives you time to respond to an army that has encroached on your territory. The map is still divided into provinces, but armies can now travel around within them, adding a novel element of operational-level strategy to the game. The grand strategy portion of Rome has less clutter and more strategic depth than Medieval and Shogun. The battles are good fun, but as slick as they are, the real star of this show is the new campaign engine. This guy thinks he can take on 400 men by himself! The town center is the last line of defense for the enemy army. You can scale them or knock a section down. ![]() Notice Mount Etna erupting in the background. Sieges are of particular interest – you can try to starve an enemy into submission, attack, or (if the besieged town is protected by walls) build siege equipment that can take several turns. Archers can light their arrows on fire, charging cavalry can form a wedge formation, druids can chant to increase morale, and all generals can turn routing men back into the fray. Many units, regardless of civilization, have at least one special ability you can use. Drill through the complex tech three and you, as the Romans, will be able to build lumbering Onagers – large catapults that hurl rocks at town walls or troops, and are essentially the super-weapons of the game. More interesting units include dogs that rip and shred once their handlers release them, and flammable ‘war pigs’. The disciplined Roman factions have some of the most organized units at their disposal, like the Triarii (they can place their shields together in a Testudo formation, essentially becoming impervious to arrows). The units are incredibly diverse within each civilization, ranging from the expected Roman, Gaulish and Germanic hordes to more exotic Greeks and Egyptians. They’re devastating but not very accurate. Onagers send flaming projectiles into the enemy. But you can also zoom in, and even see individual soldiers marching, fighting or dying en masse like good lemmings. With the camera pulled back to a bird’s eye view high above the landscape, it’s easy to keep tabs on the battle, set your lines, and direct your troops on open terrain. Particularly impressive is how well the battles hold up—visually and functionally—at any scale. Creative Assembly has tightened the pacing, streamlined the control, and given the interface a more intuitive design. The battles in Rome: Total war are amazing. It’s that the game has all of those things, and so much personality besides if there’s a magic formula for how to make a great strategy game, Creative Assembly has figured it out. It’s not just the immaculate presentation and attention to detail. It’s not just the new campaign system, which is by far the best in the Total War series. It’s not just the incredible real-time battle engine. Little details like these are a large part of what makes Rome: Total War an amazing game. He managed to climb the walls, and was kind enough to leave the front gates open when my armies attacked the city. Once I sent the man into a heavily fortified city. Supposedly, it helps him with his subterfuge… that sounds a bit unlikely on the face of it, but given some of the daring missions he has pulled off, maybe it’s true. He has a pet monkey in his personal retinue that follows him wherever he goes. Casius is an unusually skilled spy, but that’s not what makes him memorable.
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