Slitherine

lol, I said it before, it is better because of better AI. If AI is not important to you, then good for you.

Hi all,

there??s ONE obvious reason why there are not much mods for Slitherine games.

These games are so good out of the box so there is no real need for any...

Regards, Oldtimer

nah I dont think so oldtimer =) , hehe , the Comunity of RTW is bigger thna Slitherine , and the game is more friendly to mod , that is something that I love of TW games , and for the AI , well , RTW has a loth of diferent civilizations , barbarians , hellenic , eastern , roman , its dificult to make strategies for all of them ! phalanx , horse archers , legions , and Legion Arena is RPG and dont have a lot of civilizations .

Hi lol,

The combat mechanism for the Hellenic phalanx is a TOTAL failure.
The Hellenic phalanx used to charge for a distance of 25-75 meters and this action was the decisive factor that gave them the victory over the barbarians.
In TW:R the phalanx is nothing more than a very slow unit with NO "charge" ability.
Now if you take into consideration that the Hellenic phalanx was the ELITE unit of its era then you will understand that the people who developed the game didn't do very well their "homework"...

cheers,
Pyros

Hi pyros:

You are wrong my friend , this is ROME TOTAL WAR , nor Alexander or greek , in the time of this game the phalanx is old and ineffective , now we enter to the times of the roman Legions , Im not justifying the AI , but dont say lies =) , they do their homework very well , but as all of us , have errors .

The phalanx charge??? you must be talking of the greek phalanx , in the game they use the macedonian phalanx and that one was used to hold the enemy until the cavalry arrives to crush them for behind =) , study my friend .

You are wrong lol. The phalanx, including the macedonian version, was used to attack. The fact that it wasn't as manouverable as later legions, plus the lack of knowledge from some computer game makers have managed to make many (you perhaps) believe that the phalanx was only used in the way you mentioned.

Hi,

In the game there is the

Macedonian Phalanx
(Fighting formation of 256 men, the Syntagma. Its hoplites were armed with the 6m/20 ft long Sarissa long-spear) and the,

Hoplite phalanx:

Phalanx organization.
(copy/paste)

The Greek phalanx was a column formation of heavy infantry carrying long spears, or pikes, and swords. The pikes were six to twelve feet long, much longer than spears of the past. Men in the phalanx carried a round shield called a hoplon, from which the infantry took their name, hoplites. The hoplites wore metal armor on their chests, forearms, and shins at least, plus a metal helmet that covered the head down to the neck. The addition of armor classified the hoplites as heavy infantry, as opposed to light infantry that wore little or no armor. A typical phalanx unit was ten men across the front rank and ten men deep, but many such units were combined into one larger unit.

At the time (Era) the game starts the Greek Hoplite Phalanx was still in use from all the Greek city states and alliances.
The only modification of its tactical use was this:
(copy/paste)

Changes made by Ifikrates.

He changed the traditional outfit of an hoplite to give him more chance while he is in combat with an peltast. The hoplite had superior armour and weaponry, but he was so heavy because of all this that he was really slow on the battlefield. Ifikrates believed that he had to find a proper balance between both aspects. He changed the panoplia of the hoplites in such a way that they were not so heavy any more.
The panoplia of the hoplite is now much lighter, but he also had much less protection. That is why the length of his spear is increased to 3.6 metres (!) so that he could attack hostile hoplites before he was in the reach of their traditional spears. This new panoplia proved to be effective but nevertheless did it never manage to replace the traditional panoplia. The Greek warriors valued armour most likely higher than speed.

__________________________________

Now, what you fail to realize lol is that in R:TW the Hellenic Hoplite phalanx that the developers created is based on the pre-Ifikrates era, which means that they represent the heavy hoplite phalanx.
If you examine better the size of the Oplon (shield) of the hoplite phalanx represented in the game you will understand.

__________________________________

As an example of an epic battle of that era, I recommend you read this:
(copy/paste)

The Second Battle of Thermopylae, (279 BC)

Brennus, the leader of the Gauls, called for a campaign against Greece, and pointed out the weakness of the Greeks at that time, their great public wealth, and the even greater wealth in the sanctuaries in dedications and in coined silver and gold. He persuaded the Gauls to march on Greece. The army that gathered was 152,000 infantrymen and 20,400 horsemen.

Greeks deployed:
-10,000 foot and 500 cavalry from Boeotia, under Cephisodotus, Thearidas, Diogenes and Lysander
-3,000 foot & 500 horse from Phocis, under Critobulus and Antiochus
-700 Locrian hoplites under Meidias
-400 infantrymen from Megara
-7,800 men from Aetolia under Polyarchus, Polyphron and Lacrates
-1,000 Athenian hoplites & 500 cavalry under Calippus
-The new Macedonian King Antigonus Gonatas sent 1,000 men under Aristodemus & Telesarchus

cheers,
Pyros

p.s epilogue: the hoplite phalanx is not the strong point of R:TW

im not defending the point , Im only saying that the phalanx used in RTW is THE MACEDONIAN PHALANX , no charge , and Im saying that its very dificult to make an AI for Greek Phalanx , Roman Legions , Barbarian Hordes , Siege Assaults , Eastern Armies , etc , but even with the poor AI , Ca made an excellent game! one of the best =) , I really like the features of legion 2 , i want my own cities =) , you can create new cities , I will love that .

It's is nice to see some intelligent debate going on rather than usually forum fodder of "X is better than Y", always amazes me how much you guys know about your subject,

The formations in RTW suffer from the fact that their densities are ridiculously sparse. Remember when you say that the phalanx was "old and ineffective" by the fourth century B.C., that the dominant formation up until the early 18th century was a dense arrangment of men with pole-arms, and even into the 19th century, a dense formation of men with bayonets fixed achieved several of the same basic aims of a hoplite phalanx. RTW's battle mechanics suffer in general because momentum counts for very little when it was often the deciding factor in a fight. There's also the sad fact that auto-gen battlefields are so generic and terrain modifiers don't count for much. Archers have way too many arrows, though they are perhaps underpowered at close range. Fleeing units get killed when the enemy doesn't even stab at them, they sometimes flee into the enemy, they often don't fight to the death even when they are 95% surrounded. Units can't perform basic military manouvers like right face, left face, or about face. Et cetera. Now, obviously I couldn't make such a detailed critique if it weren't a great game that I've played many times

Some advice for anyone who doesn't already know; Creative Assembly is not a good source of history lessons

Lol,

the MOMENTUM of the macedonian phalanx easily makes up for the lack of charge you imply.
And the phalanx was far from outmoded by the time of RTW start time, remember Pyrrhos?

The reason Romans subdued Greece was more of unlimited economic staying power compared to the small greek states then military superiority. The decisive battle actions that led to Roman victories over Greeks/Hellenistics were carried out by Greek allies of Rome.
Also the Macedonian/Hellenistic commanders of the time were not on the level of Pyrrhos or Alexandros. The roman legionary was very allround and could more or less fight without any generals, I admit that.

Why, I seem to recall there was a battle abt 140 BC when skirmishers and traditional hoplites without sarissas annihilated at least one roman legion...

Returning to RTW, IMHO, any game that relies on such a massive cheating, including revealing the identity of the human led faction to the AI and ganging up against him to provide a semblance of a challenge cannot be said to be a good game. A pity really, because
RTW has a LOT of excellent ideas. It`s the execution that fails.

Regards, Oldtimer

I think everyone agrees that RTW does not perfectly simulate an ancient battle, but we have to bear in mind that no games do. Legion Arena may be more realistic, may be not. Neither however is perfect. We do model momentum in a number of simple ways, but not nearly in enough detail to create the pushing match that most pre gunpowder battles became. In reality very few men died in the shield wall, it was all about confidence. It's very hard to model this sort of thing, as battles could turn on a really small event. A man in the line stumbles in a hole in the ground, he opens himself up to attack and gets cut down - an enemy moves in to the gap created and attacks an undefended flank, cutting another man down, widening the gap - this could be the event that decided a battle. Similarly it could have had no significant effect at all. Battles are a very difficult thing to model because you have thousands or tens of thousands of unpreictable factors involved - the soldiers!

Lets leave this argument about realism for now and all be friends

iainmcneil wrote:In reality very few men died in the shield wall

I don't know about that, contemporary sources often cite heavy losses and large numbers of men being slain. One Persian source exaggerated the carnage to so many as 9 in 10 participants in Greek battles getting killed! Another consideration is that if there wasn't a significant chance of being maimed or killed, then why did citizen soldiers spend fortunes buying so much armour?

I understand why you wouldn't want battles to be shoving contests, but what makes momentum so difficult to simulate? Mass X Velocity right? I mean, even if I have a super elite line of Spartans 5 men deep, your 30 men deep column of peasants should shove my Spartans back into last tuesday. You can counterbalance the advantage of deep blocks of soldiers by having a bunching penalty when guys are packed together like sardines.

While I have to agree the RTW AI is awful, and the campaign has all kinds of problems, it's still an excellent engine for multiplayer.

p = mv if you're talking about nearly dimensionless particle, but you've got solid body here, with depth, width and everything so the problem here is more complex. it is not only about mass, it's about angular momentum and lots of other things. how can you simulate the inertial momentum of a line of hoplites? Are they "continous"? No, you've got a discrete system of hoplites/peasants, every one of them being a continuous solid body.


More on this later.

Since I Am crap in math or physics or whatever this is, how about this, each hoplite (in a game) has his own mass and speed etc, and when two units collide then both unit and soldier physics are taken in account (something like that). So while 100 soldiers pushing/crashing into 30 might manage to push them or hold them as a unit, the individual soldiers will have different calculations so that we can have one unit of hoplite perhaps even going a bit back but actual soldiers from the say light infantry are getting killed by the hoplites. I think it makes sense, though not sure if it does as I type it (ie my english). Now, yes I wouldn't be able to write it but I believe that it is not so far away from the capabilities of someone with some good (ish) knowledge of maths/physics. (not me again).

Its a really complex issue. The simple example is 2 squad blocks pushing directly against each other. You can easily move one backwards & the other forwards based on their momentum.

Lets make this a bit more complex and have 1 block with a momentum of 5 and one of 15 vesus one larger one of 20. Say the larger block is split half and half vs the 2 smaller block. That would give a force of 10 vs 5 & 10 vs 15. In this case should the big block push the small one forwards or be pushed back by the medium one?

In reality what would happen is the blocks would deform and both would happen. This is where it gets really complicated. Now add in terrain features, other squads pushing in at odd angles and you've got a very complex problem! At some point a formation has to become so deformed that it reduces its ability to fight, and then eventually will fall apart into individuals. Then take into account the casulaties being inficted and received, the morale and training of the men and you've got a real head ache!

I'm sure it could be done if someone put enough time & effort into it, but you'd end up spending so much time on it, that the there would no game around it. For now we abstract things to keep them manageable so we can create an acceptable simulation of reality, yet have enough time to make the game fun to play and the UI easy to understand!

Lets make this a bit more complex and have 1 block with a momentum of 5 and one of 15 vesus one larger one of 20. Say the larger block is split half and half vs the 2 smaller block. That would give a force of 10 vs 5 & 10 vs 15. In this case should hte big block push teh small one forwards or be pushed back by teh medium one?

if the collision is frontal (with angles is even more difficult), then

5+15-20=m1V1+m2V2+m3V3+m4V4

assuming you know m1, m2, m3 and m4 (m3+m4=m of the larger block), you've got 1 equation for 4 unknown velocities.

Even if you use the kinectic energy conservation principle, you've got 2 equation vs. 4 unknown velocities.

And what about angular momentum? If the collision is not simetric, the hoplites line would rotate, instead of breakin' up entirely...


Ok,ok, I leave it

I think it is a funny and interesting point that this thread that someone could say was created solely to troll (not saying that that was the real reason) the community here (including the developers) have not only absorved (sp?) the hit but are now discussing game mechanics and physics. The people here are uber cool.

Interesting discussion.

Played RTW a lot and like some parts of the game. The main disadvantage is the lousy diplomacy interaction. No matter what you do you have to fight battle after battle which become repetative in the end. I also play Europa Universalis II and wow what a difference in that respect!

Played Cow a bit but did not like the 2 D graphics after playing RTW with 3 D. However the coming project is looking highly interesting indeed. I hope to see a good "diplomatic AI" to get a more complex game than RTW.

On momentum...

There are still many things you need to consider. If we just have pushing, we aren't considering how the impact is absorbed. When two squads of huge guys with great big sharp weapons run into eachother, much of hte impact goes into mr and mrs front rank.

On top of that, there is the friction to deal with, as well as the amount of force the squad can pump out. Momentum means nadda if you dont keep pushing.