Slitherine

Hi,

i saw Legion Arena lately at a friend of mine but he hasnt been progressed very far in the campains.
When i watched him during these first battles there was always something i would call rediculous.
Every map has its own penalty ...... win within x minutes (which are actuallly seconds i guess) , dont loose that amount of troops, kill these amount of troups etc.
Now my question is .... is this just something like introducing players to the game or is the whole game this way. I mean when i check the page they are talking about epic battles from the past .... are there real epic battles coming which take much much much more time and strategy far away from the 'win in less then a minute' penalty ?

well forgive my bad English, as I'm not born English speaker.

There are two points in your question, I suppose.
The first point is what the simulation Game is. And the second point is what the Simulation is.
The first point is, to put into another words, how to understand certain game, and how to win it.
There are maybe two elements in playing game. One is pure Luck, the other is Skill.
All the condition is to improve your skill, and with some limitation, there are some kind of object to play toward to.
And if you try same map several times without changing enaything, there are not so much random factor in this game.
For example, a legionary without NCOs always rout at certain degree of unit's strength is lost.

And the second point is what the historical battle is, and how to simulate it into game.
Well, there are many battles in this game, so maybe Siege of Alesia can be good example.

Firstly, Alesia is in the heart of enemy territory, so if you lose too much troops, there are less hope to see Roma again.
And if enemy succeed in occupying the battlefield, it means you fail to siege Alesia. Again the way to Roma far away.

Well, I'm not a good historian, so there are better explanation for this. But this is what I think. Thank you for reading these.

As Tora says there are a mixture of objectives. The most common is to defeat the enemy army with no restrictions. Then, depending on the historical situation abjectives may be added.

For example, at the Claudine forks the Romans were surrounded and completely destroyed. To replictae this we give you the objective of holding off the enemy attack for about 150 minutes while the Nobles escape to freedom. Other missions require you to kill the enemy general & when you do this the enemy army will disperse. Others require you to protect your general. If you are on an extended campaign without hope of reinforcements you will be required to minimize your casualties.

If you don't like the objectives the other way to play the game is multiplayer. It's really starting to take off now we have the ladder up and running

The game is a mix of straight-up battles and limited conditions. If they were all just a matter of "beat the snot out of the enemy", they'd all begin to seem alike, since your army doesn't change that much from one battle to the next. A few of the bigger battles have no conditions, and those tend to inflict a lot of casualties on your troops, but once you've learned a few techniques the game would be boring. RTW has that problem, because there's little incentive to do anything differently once you have something that works. This way, you are forced to constantly change your tactics to suit the conditions, and your strategic mix in order to deal with the variety of situations which you know will change by the next battle.

Most real battles had "hidden" conditions or problems, either internal competition, dissention, or disobedience, fatigue from long approach marches, eroded morale because of some event or portent of disaster, or reduced capacity due to unreplaced losses, starvation, or illness. Generally though, if the forces were too badly mismatched, the one side would usually attempt to avoid battle, or barricade itself inside of fortifications or a city. Since realistic conditions are nearly impossible to "program", the artificail kills/casualties tallies and time limits are an attempt to create the same feeling of desperation that most armies probably fought under. Ideally, the game would have a strategic/empire framework that the battle outcomes would affect, and would in turn affect the armies, but that will have to wait for Legion II, I suppose.

I see posts from a number of novice players who ask, "I've got an all Praetorian army, why can't I win with the best troops in the game?" The best troops for one situation may be poorly suited for another, and you seldom solve a problem just by throwing more men and money at it. This game requires you to do something different from most other games: to THINK. Enjoy, and be glad that those annoying and somewhat ahistorical victory conditions are there.

Well said, Honvedseg!

And why aren't we seeing you playing MP???

Sorry, no internet connection at home, and not allowed to load software at work. I'd love to, but it won't happen for a few months at least.