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I found that I liked playing Spain, actually... which is a bit odd, but I suppose it makes sense give ntheir relative isolation.

 Melissia wrote:

 Dunwich wrote:
I don't understand how you can feel this is some rehashed old tale. This is history.

And the most fun part of historical games is fething it up and going an entirely different direction, not merely emulating it. Make your own history! Make an empire GREATER than the greatest conquerer's!

Hell, that's part of the reason why I find the Rot3K games passably fun; with the ability to create your own character and nation, they practically encourage you to do just that.

Total War has always been far more limited than that. You're limited to historical characters and nations only, even if you can break from history in certain ways.

You CAN take it in an entirely different direction, that is completely up to you. You ARE making your own history, even without trying, it's almost impossible you would do things the exact same way they actually happened (this is especially true if you play any faction that isn't Rome as having them conquer the world in this time period is not historically accurate at all). So yes, everything in your first paragraph is exactly what the game is about.

As for being limited, your only limitation is you use a faction that actually existed. That's hardly limiting when there are so many factions to choose from. This game is set in REAL history. What you do within that setting is completely up to you. As I said before, if you think you should be able to create your own nations, you really are missing the point of Total War games. I can't understand why you are so obsessed with this one aspect when it's never been in a Total War game.

 Dunwich wrote:
As for being limited, your only limitation is you use a faction that actually existed. That's hardly limiting

According to you, maybe. But I find it a stifling limitation.

 Dunwich wrote:
I can't understand why you are so obsessed with this one aspect when it's never been in a Total War game.

Given that the post above yours directly contradicts this statement, I'm going to have to ask you to stop being a liar and claiming I'm "obsessed" with the idea. Calm down and all that jazz.

Just because you don't have the desire for that particular feature does not mean that it would be a bad feature. I have absolutely no desire to play Greece, but having them in the game doesn't take anything away from it.

If you find a historical setting limiting (even though it's the entire purpose of the franchise), then there are games that cater directly to you. Take the Civilization games for example. You can customize the map and your nation exactly how you want. As far as I can tell, it contains all the options you are asking for.

If people feel strongly about having these options in Total War games, then the modding community will be all over it. Clearly the Total War developers aren't concerned and nor should they be.

Given you can take over the world with any faction, you're not really constrained by reality.

I always wanted a real total war fantasy game. It would be a monster to balance it properly though I bet.

I remember seeing a Mod for Medieval 2 that converted the game into Warhammer Fantasy. Including several playable factions, heaps of Warhammer units and new campaign map.

A quick search shows that there are several.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/call-of-warhammer-total-war
http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/3730-Call-of-Warhammer-Total-War
http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?240166-Warhammer-Mod-for-Medieval-Total-War-2-Kingdoms

The modding community for Total War really is huge.

Yeah, I rather liked those mods. I'll see how far they've progressed since I last played them.

 Testify wrote:
Given you can take over the world with any faction, you're not really constrained by reality.

And yet you are.

Just being able to add in your own faction somehow would be a great boon to its replayability.

Rome total war was renowned as being incredibly historically inaccurate, the team that made it said that if a faction didn't have enough units/not filling a role, they made some up, not to mention the 3 'Roman Families' but that really does not matter.

What made Rome great, was that it was the first to do something like that, take the RTS genre, who was focused on base building and micro/macro, and turn it into a grand strategy and tactical thing, where actual strategical skill would win you the battle

Rome was more historically accurate than is typical of a video game but no one should pretend it was accurate. The depictions of the roman legions and their precursors in Rome were way off, as was every single Barbarian faction. And as mentioned we had a Pharoic Egypt rather than Ptolemic Egypt (developers admit that one though because they didn't want another Greek successor identical to Selucia and Macedon). The game also ignored there was no Greek nation in that time period.

Even Rome Total Realism which did an even better job at realism, wasn't that accurate.

But I also agree that there's a lot to be improved on in Rome. Hell they never even fixed the grain glitch that made Scythia unplayable without messing with the game files, not to mention that Scythia should have been Sarmatia. All the minor factions (and even Carthage) could use reworks and I'd like to see them improve on the territory system they developed in Shogun 2 with maybe a little more of Empire's system in there. Having generals gain experience and have skill trees was a great addition to the series as well.

What the Total War series really needs though is to remix its combat mechanics which have remained pretty much unchanged since Rome 1. Adding the abilities to launch fire attacks would be a nice start, or to build field fortifications (which Rome was probably the best in the ancient world at doing).

 Melissia wrote:

 Dunwich wrote:
As for being limited, your only limitation is you use a faction that actually existed. That's hardly limiting

According to you, maybe. But I find it a stifling limitation.

 Dunwich wrote:
I can't understand why you are so obsessed with this one aspect when it's never been in a Total War game.

Given that the post above yours directly contradicts this statement, I'm going to have to ask you to stop being a liar and claiming I'm "obsessed" with the idea. Calm down and all that jazz.

Just because you don't have the desire for that particular feature does not mean that it would be a bad feature. I have absolutely no desire to play Greece, but having them in the game doesn't take anything away from it.

Then I would suggest you, staying away Pride of Nations and Victoria 2 then. I would highly reconmend Crusader Kings II, it has create your own Leader. You are restrained by land and titles a lot more though, so you can't steamroll through the game as easy. The only RTS strategy game I would have any interest in would be an RTS version of Heroes of Might and Magic. Rome: Total War 2 will feel a lot more different than number #1 due to the new ammount of options. It won't feel the same, the AI will actually have brains rather than waiting to be taken over, you will have to worry about religon and other facters more than the original Rome: Total War.

Victoria 2 is gak. Victoria 1 was awesome though

I do actually have Paradox's Rome game, but not really played it too much. It looks pretty cool though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dunwich wrote:
I remember seeing a Mod for Medieval 2 that converted the game into Warhammer Fantasy. Including several playable factions, heaps of Warhammer units and new campaign map.

A quick search shows that there are several.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/call-of-warhammer-total-war
http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/3730-Call-of-Warhammer-Total-War
http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?240166-Warhammer-Mod-for-Medieval-Total-War-2-Kingdoms

The modding community for Total War really is huge.

The mods I tried for Rome were absolutely rubbish. The guys making them tried to shove in as much "historically accurate" stuff as possible, with no regard for gameplay whatsoever.

IIRC, the most popular mod was one that didn't allow you to reinforce your guys. You had to march them back to their home city to reinforce them...yeah, that sounds fun.

All of them put in far, far too many units. You don't need 5 javelin units that are essentially identical but with completely different names. The Lord of the Rings mod was pretty sweet though.

I'd like to see instead of one Gaul, Britain, Spain, Germania etc seperate tribes. So in Gaul you could have Aedui, Santones, Helvetians etc. It would not only be more historically accurate but because the nature of each tribe was different it would be really really fun.

To counterbalance that in the larger empires there could be greater unhappiness in recently conquered cities.

 Testify wrote:
The Lord of the Rings mod was pretty sweet though.

Yes! Third Age Total War is one of the best mods ive seen (disclaimer: im not too experienced with mods, but this one impressed me a hell of a lot), its for Medieval 2 though, as opposed to Rome, and does have its issues (no ships for example, but you still get blockade missions....*sigh* as well as siege equipment being totally fethed, only ladders work as the player, and the AI cant seem to make them work properly either), buts its done in incredible detail (from changing the map/factions/units to the loading screens and sound effects when selecting units...)

 Revenent Reiko wrote:

 Testify wrote:
The Lord of the Rings mod was pretty sweet though.

Yes! Third Age Total War is one of the best mods ive seen (disclaimer: im not too experienced with mods, but this one impressed me a hell of a lot), its for Medieval 2 though, as opposed to Rome, and does have its issues (no ships for example, but you still get blockade missions....*sigh* as well as siege equipment being totally fethed, only ladders work as the player, and the AI cant seem to make them work properly either), buts its done in incredible detail (from changing the map/factions/units to the loading screens and sound effects when selecting units...)

I've tried the Third Age Total War mod and whatever the mods called for Rome and TA is much much better. Some of the units in the Rome mod just retextured old units and add some new animations, it's really breaks immersion when you see a fell beast fly over a unit and the unit gets pushed apart like an elephant has walked through them.

 LordofHats wrote:

What the Total War series really needs though is to remix its combat mechanics which have remained pretty much unchanged since Rome 1. Adding the abilities to launch fire attacks would be a nice start, or to build field fortifications (which Rome was probably the best in the ancient world at doing).

Both of these have appeared in late TW games so I wouldn't be suprised if these we introduced.
What I would like to see is customisable units, at least to a degree. Historical realities aren't nessicarily realities in the game. You could be rolling in money after conquering half the known world yet still having to use poorly armoured 'militia' troops becuase thats all your faction could field in the real world.

There may be issues with Rome 2 mods, Shogun was very difficult to mod due to how the game is structured and while mod tools were recently released Creative Assembly have been very silent on if they will work with Rome 2. CA have also said that they will be actively blocking mods which infring on IP (so third age for example).

 Testify wrote:
Victoria 2 is gak. Victoria 1 was awesome though

I do actually have Paradox's Rome game, but not really played it too much. It looks pretty cool though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dunwich wrote:
I remember seeing a Mod for Medieval 2 that converted the game into Warhammer Fantasy. Including several playable factions, heaps of Warhammer units and new campaign map.

A quick search shows that there are several.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/call-of-warhammer-total-war
http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/3730-Call-of-Warhammer-Total-War
http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?240166-Warhammer-Mod-for-Medieval-Total-War-2-Kingdoms

The modding community for Total War really is huge.

The mods I tried for Rome were absolutely rubbish. The guys making them tried to shove in as much "historically accurate" stuff as possible, with no regard for gameplay whatsoever.

IIRC, the most popular mod was one that didn't allow you to reinforce your guys. You had to march them back to their home city to reinforce them...yeah, that sounds fun.

All of them put in far, far too many units. You don't need 5 javelin units that are essentially identical but with completely different names. The Lord of the Rings mod was pretty sweet though.

I forget the name of the mod, but my favorite was one that extended the playing area into northern india, got rid of some of the more ridiculous units (flaming pigs, arcanoi or whatever - the roman battle ninja guys-), and changed egypt into a greek state. I still remember the very first time I played Rome, and my biggest WTF moment was getting to egypt and having to fight chariots and guys with bronze axes.

40k will take a backseat to this game for probably at least a solid month.

I forget the name of the mod, but my favorite was one that extended the playing area into northern india, got rid of some of the more ridiculous units (flaming pigs, arcanoi or whatever - the roman battle ninja guys-), and changed egypt into a greek state. I still remember the very first time I played Rome, and my biggest WTF moment was getting to egypt and having to fight chariots and guys with bronze axes.

Rome Total Realism or Europa Barbarum probably.