This game is part of the Total War series, which I have never played before. I received this as a birthday present back in November 2005 and as a result is the reason why there was a hiatus in my Ciao career for over six months! So what's it all about and why did I spend a long time playing one PC game? Well the game is basically a strategy game where you control a historical faction and use it's resources, characters and armies to battle against other factions. The game map consists of an area of land based around the Mediterranean Sea with Italy or Rome as it's centre and covers as afar a field as Britain in the northwest corner, North Africa, the Middle East and The Black Sea.
~The main menu~ As you might have guessed by the title the game involves the Roman era from around 220 BC onwards. After the initial load up the game runs through a quick introduction sequence which gives you a nice feel for how the battle scenes look in the game. After this impressive start you will have a menu screen which I will describe and explain quickly.
The 'Single Player' option will give you three options of further choices. A quick battle, a historic battle or an imperial campaign. For the quick battle you can pick any army any type of unit and then set up the opposition force as you wish. A historic battle will give you a choice of battles, with a set situation and two armies to choose from, you cannot change the units here. The imperial campaign is the main game with two types of campaign a short one or a long one. I'll come back to each mode later.
'Multiplayer' will link you up with an opponent over the Wicked Wild Web and you can do battle against them and their faction. I cannot comment on this too much as I have not played it over the web, but I did try it over a LAN network and it was good fun.
Other links on this main page allow you to change the graphic, sound and control settings to suit you own preference or load a previously saved game. I personally turn down the graphics and sound quality to increase the speed of the game during the battle scenes as my PC is low spec. Also you can continue a campaign or quit and go back to windows.
~Quick and Historic battles~ These two single player modes allow you to have single battles with the computer controlling one side and you the other. Historic battles are set and are the harder ones to play as you normally have some sort of disadvantage to battle as well as the opposing army. Quick battles are better if you want to muck around or test out formations. I use it to see how cavalry work against infantry units and vice versa. That said I have used both of these modes very little when compared to the main game.
~Imperial Campaign~ This
is the main course so to speak where you control a faction against the rest of the world. Here you can choose a short campaign which involves conquering 15 regions or a long campaign which involves conquering 50 regions and taking over Rome. Once you have chosen your campaign you move on to choose your faction. Initially you have only a choice of three, however later this increases. The three initial factions are the three great Roman families of Julii (Red), Scipii (Blue) and Brutii (Green). There is a fourth Roman faction called SPQR which is the Roman senate's faction, but you can never control them as they always start with Rome as their one and only region. Later as you interact with other factions they will appear on this faction screen and you can play the game as a civilised fraction (Greek Cities) or a barbarian faction (Britannia).
On choosing your faction you start the game with three regions under your control. From here you play the game using two game modes, the strategic map and the battle map. The strategic map covers a small area of the main map and is where you will spend the majority of the game. Here you can zoom in or out, move around and view the world map, select towns to view their statistics and move your characters around. Also there are many other items you can do in the main strategic map mode such as construct buildings in your towns, recruiting army units, looking at the building types, checking you faction's family tree and asking your advisors what to do. You are given a period of six months to move your units, allocate resources and recruit units, this is what the game calls a turn. After you have finished all your moves you hit the end turn button in the bottom right hand corner and all your rival factions will do their moves.
There is a very strong management slant to the game which may be your thing, however if it is not you can do no worse than hit the 'Automanage everything' button that appears on the town information scroll. This hands over control to the computer, but you still have control over whether to have a spend or save regime. This in effect means the computer will deal with the running of the regions and leave you free to do other things.
If you are into management you have numerous scrolls and information bars to check and see what is going on. There are financial scrolls where you can see your factions cash flow, or a diplomatic scroll where you can see lists of who are your enemies or allies and the diplomatic ties of other factions. The management of your faction is quite a small thing to start with when you have only three regions, but later it will be a major part of the game.
There are four types of characters within the game that you can control individually and move around on the strategic map. There are you family members which consist of a Faction Leader, a Faction Heir and other family members. You can set these as Governors of your towns or send them off to war as generals of your armies. Next there are your agents which consists of three types, a spy, an assassin and a diplomat. Then there are you armies which can be as little as one unit or up to 18 units and finally there are ships which are your navies.
Moving these characters around the map is easily done by selecting them and clicking on the strategic map to move them to it. For the military units the you can select them individually and move them about the map or select various units of differing types and bring them together to form a large army. The military units can be used to attack a town or another army if you wish and lets face it this is what you are playing the game for.
On attacking an army you will be shown the statistics of your army verses the other army. If the opposing army takes up the fight you are given three choices, you can fight on the battle map, get the computer to resolve the battle automatically or withdraw from the battle. I always fight on the battle map, but navies can only have a battle resolved automatically. Pressing the auto button allows the computer to do a quick calculation and then display the result of the battle in seconds. This is good if you don't want to deal with minor skirmishes or don't rate your battle skills. Withdrawing will let you pull out of a battle if the opposing army is bigger than you thought or one of your units has been attacked and you want to get them out of the situation.
If like me you want the battle and you want to control it the game will change to the battle map. Here you get a chance to deploy you troops on your half of a square map before you battle with the opposition. In battle map you can control units individually or group them together. There is a radar map in the bottom left showing the position of units on the battle map and control buttons on the bottom right for unit actions. Moving units is a case of selecting them on the map or from the centre tab and clicking to where you want them to go.
Armies versus army battles are good, but I prefer the siege battles where your armies are assaulting a settlement. Here you can use your artillery units or onagers if you have them or failing that rams, ladders, siege towers and sap (tunnel) points. This is want the game is all about and despite my advisors warnings I love to send a large volley of flaming missiles against my foe, just to burn his settlement to the ground. Unleash Hell!
~Controls~ With all there is to do in the game I'm amazed at how simple the controls are you could get through the whole lot just by using the mouse. Yet the games designers have added 'hot keys' that you can use in the battle map which are really good if you want a unit to do it's special ability or make a unit run to a particular location. You don't always need to use the mouse, but you cannot get through the game without using it. On the strategic map you select your unit with a right click and move it where you want with another click. You can even move the camera with the arrow keys rather than the mouse.
In the strategic map you can move the camera around, but you cannot spin it. This in not really a disadvantage, however in the battle map you are allowed to spin and move the camera to different positions which allows you to see beyond trees and walls to pin-point the opposition. Overall the controls are good, fluid and at no time do I curse the game if I cannot control or view something.
~Graphics~ The graphics in battle mode are good and crisp, however as my PC is a low specification rig I had to reduce the quality of the graphics to speed the game up. I don't think that it affected the graphic in anyway as I tended to control my units from wide angles and the difference was not noticeable unless I zoomed up onto a group of figures to see that the figures were basic shapes with no hands or feet.
The graphics in strategic mode are just as good with little wave movements of the sea even in the lower settings. Overall the graphics are good, there are subtle changes of colour for similar units depending on their faction, with hues of red, green or blue for basic barbarians through to brighter colours or purple for the Romans. Other factions also have specialist types of units like the Germanic 'Screeching Women' or the Carthaginian 'War Elephants' that are well detailed and designed. Even the background building or scenery items are well shown and structured.
~Sound~ In strategic map mode there are lots of background sounds, with wind, birds, dust storms or the sound of the sea. The sounds of the game are just as good as any other part of the game. The main music even changes depending on which faction you are controlling, I noted about three different types, but then I have only controlled three different factions, there could be more.In battle mode the sounds are just as good with shouting, death groans, the grinding noise of the onagers, clashing of swords and more. There is a lot going on and if you put the sound up loud enough it sounds like you are really there.
~Conclusion~ I have only really scratched the surface of what this game is and what you can expect. There is really a lot more in the game that I have omitted to tell you to keep the review a sensible length. As you might have guessed from the review I like this game, but I like it from many different reasons. First I like the depth and number of the sounds as they are quite realistic. Next I like the vastness of the game, it has a huge replay value that has seen me play this game for over six months, which is for me very rare. I like the way the advisors helped you to start with, but then you can turn them of later in the game to stop them repeating themselves. Finally I really enjoyed the way the game was set out. You can play it fully controlling every unit and character, or you can hand over some controls to the computer to make your life easier.
The only thing that I would throw into the disadvantage box is that the long campaigns can get very long and eventually each turn will take around half an hour or more. In this time you will move your characters and organise your settlements as your number of regions your faction controls increases. This doesn't include for any battles which can run for about half an hour again. That said I personally like it that the length of the campaign can go on for a long time, it's just that others might find the main campaign too long.
According to the blurb on my box this game was #2 out of the top ten games of 2004 and I would say that it is definitely within that calibre. A full five stars for this one.
Two of my mates have spent Ages playing this and the sequel, but for some reason I've not been tempted yet. Maybe it's the prospect of losing as much of my life to it as they did! Good review! John
With the glory days of the real-time strategy game now nothing but a distant memory, ... more
ActivisionsTotal Warseries has come to totally dominate the strategy market andRomeis such a huge leap above the already impressiveMedievalandShoguntitles that the ser...
Postage & Packaging: £1.93 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Advantages: Brilliant gameplay, huge battles, seriously addictive. Disadvantages: Seriously adictive, occasionally dodgy AI, has been superseded by Medieval II
Oodlenoodle9 20.10.2007 (20.10.2007)
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