Shogun: Total War surprised the strategy game world with its Risk-like turn-based campaign and its real-time battles that took many battlefield factors such as terrain and weather into consideration. Its follow-up, Medieval: Total War, added political and religious intrigue into the formula, making the turn-based portion of Total War more complex.
Rome: Total War would upend its predecessors with even more sophistication in both segments of gameplay in the Total War franchise.
At first glance, Creative Assembly has just exploited yet another period of war and turmoil in the history of humanity as the thematic fodder for its next game. The Romans were an imperialistic civilization, eager to expand their borders and bring the prosperity of Rome to anyone, even if they do not welcome it. There were also other would-be empires existing alongside Rome, though they compete – often violently - for territory and glory. Then, there are the remnants of past empires in the European region, namely the Greek descendants of Athens and Sparta, refusing to die out quietly.
All these historical occurrences gave Creative Assembly easy ideas for most of the content of the game. However, the mechanisms of the game appear to be mostly Creative Assembly's own ideas, and these are the true appeals of the game.
Like its predecessors, Rome: Total War has the player taking control of one of the factions in the game and attempting to establish superiority over opponents either on the battlefield or all over a region of the world, or both, in the case of campaign games. For the player that wants a long-term experience, there are grand campaigns where he/she has to juggle the economy and stability of his/her territories with efforts for war against enemies. For those who want quick gratification, there are one-off battle scenarios that can be played.
The main differences that Rome: Total War has compared to its predecessors are mainly in its campaign mode, which appears to have been inspired by Sid Meier's Civilization games. Territories are no longer clumps of land that can be conquered completely in a single battle, but are now actual landscapes which armies have to move over. Forests and hills are no longer defensive bonuses or thematic embellishment for territories that are being fought over, but are now actual locales that can be occupied in the campaign map for purposes of ambushes, screening other nearby forces from attacks, and/or observation.
Settlements, ports and resources are now actual nodes on the campaign map, and can be separately attacked. Players can occupy mines and farms to deny their incomes to the owning player, or just raze them if they are being. Roads are actual features on the map and are the lifeline of trade, so a patient player can choose to simply park armies on enemy roads to starve the enemy of trade income; roads also happen to accelerate the movement of armies (owned or otherwise), so hogging them is also of strategic value.
(Roads, however, cannot be violated, which is a bit of a disappointment considering that every other man-made edifices and facilities on the campaign map can be damaged.)
Ports, which are important for the raising and maintenance of navies (more on naval combat later, which is underwhelming, it has to be said first) as well as trade over the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf and Arctic seas, can also be occupied to prevent either activity (and will often be the first target of attacks from the sea).
Indeed, the changes can seem very overwhelming for veterans of the previous Total War games. Therefore, thankfully, there is a tutorial mode to help the player familiarize oneself with the changes. The tutorials are surprisingly deep and numerous, which would be much appreciated by those who like very sophisticated gameplay, but from just a glance of the list of tutorials, the less patient of players would realize that campaign mode is probably not for them.
The tokens and figurines that represent armies and agents in previous games have been replaced by human-looking models that appear giant-like when compared to their surroundings. This is, again, likely inspired by Civilizations. Such visual contrasts can seem a bit silly and less believable than the board-game-like visuals of previous Total War games, but they are still welcome as they make it more convenient to discern armies and agents from the rest of the campaign map.
Models representing armies and leaders hold banners, which make it very easy to spot them and their allegiances if they come within the player's sight. Unfortunately, Creative Assembly has not done the same for agents, so a human player may overlook the presence of an opposing agent, much to his/her detriment. The A.I. has no such problem.
The use of actual models for armies also means that armies can now be outmanoeuvred in the campaign map, and not just on the battlefield. A big army can be broken into smaller ones and moved in clusters in an attempt to surround an enemy army and thus attack from multiple directions, a consequence which will actually occur in the real-time battle that will ensue.
Unfortunately, the promise of sophistication of this option is dashed by the fact that the player can only take direct control of only one army at a time, namely the one that would launch the attack; the other flanking armies are taken over by allied A.I. players, which do a poor job of coordinating attacks with the player. The player can send orders to the A.I. players and they will obey, but the game should have transferred control of these flanking armies to the player anyway.
Consequently, the player is likely to just resort to large armies when playing on his/her own in campaign mode. However, as in previous Total War games, there are limits on the numbers of units that a player can have in the battlefield at any one time; there will be more elaboration on this later.
All armies and agents have movement allowances that limit how much ground that they can cover in a single turn; this would seem familiar to players that have played titles in the Heroes of Might & Magic franchise, or Civilizations. Moving over roads is the most economical way to expend movement allowance, but this is only possible in developed territories. In backwater ones, players will have to move armies on terrain that gobble up movement allowance and also waste movement allowance in order to keep armies in coherent formation.
Armies with diverse units tend to end up getting separated from each other, due to a game design that has armies moving at the same pace as the slowest unit in the army (which is another design hold-out from Heroes of Might & Magic). Thus, they become vulnerable to waylaying. While this is unpleasant to the careless player, this is to the game's benefit as it adds one more facet to warfare in campaign mode.
As in previous Total War games, players may be able to spot other players' armies in the campaign mode when they come into sight, but the exact composition of said armies will not be clear to the player without additional reconnaissance. The composition of said armies will become clearer after every subsequent turn that they stay within the player's sight. The rate of revelation increases if the player can get his/her own armies or agents (preferably agents) closer to these other armies, though at the risk of revealing them to the enemy player.
In previous Total War games, sieges on settlements can only play out through the real-time battle aspect of the game, i.e. sieges are little more than battles pitting siege engines against fortifications while soldiers either try to protect siege engines while they do their work or try to sally forth and wreck them before they bring down walls that keep the rest of the enemy out.
In Rome: Total War's campaign mode, sieges are now truer to their historical counterparts as they now include the blockading aspect of sieges in addition to the battle to breach fortifications. Siege armies can choose to blockade a settlement, regardless of whether it has fortifications or not. Blockading will starve the settlement of sustenance, eventually leading to surrender in a few turns if the owning player does not do anything to lift the siege.
This additional sophistication is very welcome, especially to the sieging player. This is a good alternative if the sieging player (and defending player) knows that forcing a breach would lead to defeat, but also knows that the defender cannot sally forth without being defeated.
The siege also gives the sieging player time to make preparations for any battle to breach the fortifications. Depending on the type of fortifications that the player is facing, he/she can construct battering rams for the crashing of gates or siege towers to get infantry on the enemy's walls. There will be more elaboration on siege battles later.
As long as the siege lasts, both players will gain intelligence on each other; the sieging player gets to know how well built-up the settlement is, including even how long it has been in the control of the owning player (which can give away a lot more secondary information), while the besieged player can make out the composition of the sieging army and whatever machines that it has constructed.
If there is any issue with the sieging mechanic in campaign mode, it is that only one army can siege the settlement at any time. If the besieged player can rout this one and prevent any other from continuing the siege in the other player's turn, the siege is lifted. On the other hand, this is a minor issue that the sieging player can address simply by having other armies close by for support.
One more way that the campaign mode in Rome: Total War differentiates itself from its predecessors is its depiction of seasons. As in the previous games, every four turns equal a year, each turn associated with a season. The change of the seasons are much more apparent with the livelier-looking campaign mode in Rome: Total War, compared to the rather dull table-top board visuals of the previous games. Furthermore, which regions are affected by the change of the season is also more immediately apparent in this game than in its predecessors.
The campaign mode is the only game mode that allows the player to make use of sea-based units. These sea units – which are of course ships - are mainly used to transport land units from one place to another, especially when travel over water can be used to circumvent natural barriers like mountains and opposing armies that have been set up as sentries.
The mechanics of doing so would not be unfamiliar to players that have played Heroes of Might & Magic games: putting land units into ships will completely consume their movement allowance, though the ships retain theirs, thus allowing the player to possibly cover a lot more distance than either land units or ship units if he/she can time the embarking and sailing wisely.
Other than transporting units, ships can be used to blockade trading routes over water, which are marked by faint lines connecting ports with each other. Trade over water can be lucrative as it allows island-based settlements, which tend to have access to rare goods that are valuable to trade, to be connected with mainland ones; thus, sly players can cheaply and efficiently inflict harm on enemies' economies by simply parking ships on said routes.
Considering how handy travel over water is and how important trade over water is, it is inevitable that ships from opposing factions would come into conflict with each other. Unfortunately, this is one spot in the game where the game designers falter.
All naval battles have to be resolved through automatic computation, which is certainly outside the control of the player. There are no real-time naval battles to be had, likely because Creative Assembly hasn't the time to develop them. In other words, naval battles are reduced to number-crunching, with some factor of luck thrown in (which may upset players who despise luck-dependent mechanics). Players who regularly opt for real-time battles over the sometimes fickle automatic results computation would not be pleased by this limitation.
Overall, the re-design of the campaign map gives the player more strategic options, e.g. grand-scale manoeuvres to surround and choke the enemy over the course of many turns to eventually weaken him/her/it enough for a series of civilization-crushing blows. This is a very commendable overhaul.
Moving on to the nitty-gritty of the numbers-based mechanisms of the game, the campaign mode typically has the player worrying about managing the statistics of his/her holdings and armies along with the decisions to be made in his/her turns and cash reserves (which are measured in the currency denominations of the time, which may or may not be a nice-touch to a player who concerns himself/herself with historical accuracy).
Depending on the faction that the player takes for the campaign mode, he/she starts with a handful of settlements in various states of development, with the capital usually being the most advanced (and usually the best protected). The player's first few decisions are likely about investments in more facilities/buildings/districts for existing settlements. These have functions that are clearly mentioned in both their brief descriptions, which is convenient for those who want a quick briefing on what they do. There is also some historical literature, which would be an indulgence for those who have a bookworm streak and/or a taste for trivia.
These functions include simple matters like the improvement of the revenues of said settlements and the unlocking of more advanced military units for recruitment at said settlements, as we'll as more sophisticated matters like propagating the influence of the official religion of the player's faction and increasing the settlement's culture (the mechanics for which will be described later).
More often than not, a building would have more than one function, such as the port and its upgrades, which not only maintain trading routes but also raise navies. Another example is the Roman cavalry-training buildings, which enable races to be held in the settlement. Races occur every several turns, which will substantially increase the prosperity and happiness of the settlement during that turn.
If there are issues to be had with the development of settlements, they include a minor exploit with the purchase order for additional facilities and the dearth of any limit on the development of a settlement.
Upon placing an order for a facility, the cost for the facility will be paid in full; the facility will be completed after a number of turns (the more expensive ones take longer to build). However, the player can recoup all the cost by simply cancelling the order, as long as the facility has not been completed.
This means that players are likely to spend cash on improvements as soon as they have it, converting said cash into building orders even if the player is certain that he/she does not need these additional facilities urgently. These orders can be cancelled at any time for a quick infusion of cash when it is needed for something else other than constructing new buildings in settlements. The only loss is the turns that have been spent on the cancelled building order, but it is still a cheesy and easy exploit.
Players are likely to resort to this exploit sooner or later, after discovering that having too much money in the treasury causes corruption to fester, leading to long-term income loss, even after the treasury has been drained. Furthermore, leaders that have been set as governors may gain bad traits, namely corruption-related ones. (There will be more on leader traits later.)
Oddly enough, once the buildings have been completed, they cannot be destroyed to recoup all of the costs that have been expended.
Yet, players are not likely to consider demolishing buildings to make way for new ones. The reasons are that there appears to be no limit on the buildings that a settlement can have, and generally every building always contribute a net positive benefit to the settlement. Of course, having more buildings in the settlement will reduce the income provided by the settlement due to the costs of the maintenance of these buildings, but generally these are outweighed by the revenue that a settlement can produce.
The most common scenario where a player may consider destroying existing facilities to make way for another is when a temple dedicated to one god of the faction's pantheon is no longer of use to the player's strategy, and the player wants to swap it out for another because there can only be one type of temple in any settlement.
This means that any settlement can be heavily developed into a super-settlement, capable of doing many things. The rate of development of a settlement is held back by many factors, such as population, any existing bonuses to building rates and maintenance costs for the settlement, but otherwise there are no ingrained restrictions on having multiple settlements of high versatility if the player can develop the economy to support them.
It is likely that a cunning player would concentrate important operations in settlements that are located in easily defensible areas, or concentrate them among settlements that happen to be very close to each other and therefore always within a couple of turns' reach. Over time, if the player has enough money, he/she can develop the others to help him/her raise massive armies in just a short time, if only to throw them at the enemy in overwhelming numbers.
Moreover, the player can devise troop-delivering routes to ship reinforcements to the frontline instead of developing the fringe settlements so that they can train troops to be sent as reinforcements, which is not a good idea as the short-term costs and opportunity losses can be unacceptable. Furthermore, the player can get a better deal for money spent raising troops if he/she develops a settlement to specialize in training quality troops, which further discourages the development of the frontier cities.
On the other hand, concentrating operations will render the fringe settlements difficult to be used as forward bases for forays into enemy territory. While the player can set up reinforcement trains (figuratively speaking), he/she cannot reinforce depleted units so easily. Any settlement with the right training facilities can provide replacement soldiers for depleted units.
The replacement rookies will have the same enhanced armour and weaponry as the veterans in a depleted unit have, but the unit loses experience levels as the accumulated experience of the unit are distributed among the rookies. Nevertheless, reinforcing is still a lot more efficient and faster than completely replacing the depleted unit.
However, to prevent exploits, even the right tier of training facilities have to be available for units of different tiers to be replenished with fresh troops. Therefore, although a player can kit out an army with elite units, this army will be particularly vulnerable to attrition. This also means that the player has to raise armies with balanced composition, e.g. a core of elite units supported by more expendable and replaceable fodder, which is a good consequence of this game design.
Of course, the previous Total War games also had unit replenishment mechanics, but they were simpler to use (and exploit) due to how simple the campaign maps are. In Rome: Total War, the need to physically hike or ferry the depleted unit over to the right settlement adds further complication and much appreciated sophistication to said mechanics. Yet, the game could have benefited from more user friendliness; the player has to remember which settlement can train which troops, as the game will not help the player to do so in any way (which further encourages players to concentrate military improvements on just a few settlements).
Furthermore, replenishments are drawn from the settlements' populations, which may affect its productivity. Before elaborating on this, it has to be mentioned here that facilities within a settlement must employ the populace so that they can function properly; the populace can then have jobs, thus leading to improvement in the settlement's prosperity and in turn its revenue turnover. Certain facilities can require many, many citizens to run, such as siege-works, which produce siege machines like catapults. Being understaffed causes these facilities to produce what they make at a slower rate, e.g. being less efficient.
This means that a player may not draw reinforcements from settlements that are underdeveloped (which tend to have low populations) without stagnating their growth for many turns, and that long, drawn-out and costly wars will eventually cause even the more populous settlements to become rather deserted.
If a player is not able to replenish depleted units and yet needs to have as many units at full strength as possible, he/she can merge a unit of the same type into another unit; the resulting unit retains any equipment upgrades from the latter, but its experience is obtained from the average of those of the original two. Any remainder from the unit that has been scavenged to reinforce the other would still be around, albeit as a very diminished and vulnerable unit.
This is a very handy alternative, though the player ultimately does lose one unit or cause it to be severely under-strength, which may not be desirable if the player is attempting to have numbers on his/her side. Also, if there is a complaint to be had with the user-friendliness of this option, it is that the game does not automatically consider the unit with the superior equipment to be the unit that should be retained.
Speaking of superior equipment, in addition to unit experience, units have statistics for equipment upgrades that may be obtained from settlements that have armouries. Units that are raised from these settlements gain upgraded equipment permanently (and for free) and will not lose it as long as they are still alive, unlike their experience statistic. Units that lack said equipment can be sent to the aforementioned settlements to receive upgrades for a small fee, which is a very welcome option.
A unit gains battle experience as it survives more battles (either victories or defeats); the amount of experience gained mainly depends on how many enemies said unit has slain, so units that sit around and do nothing much throughout a battle gets little experience, if any at all. Once a unit has enough experience to breach a threshold, it gains a level, leading to subtle improvements in its statistics, though the greatest and most noticeable improvement is in their morale. Morale determines how stalwart they are as battles grind towards blood y resolutions, so it is in the player's interest to keep morale as high as possible to prevent units from simply breaking and running off the battlefield.
In addition to "regular" troops that can be raised from settlements, the player can also hire mercenaries from the current region; this has to be done through leaders with high influence (more on this later) who happen to be roaming the country-side and not holed up in the settlement of that region. Mercenaries are irregular troops that have capabilities that are different from those that the player can raise from settlements, though this is mainly because they happen to be variants of units from other factions.
For example, a Roman player may hire mercenary hoplites (which are units that the Greek remnant civilizations can raise from their own barracks). Hoplites use long spears that are not in the Roman arsenal and use phalanx formations (which prevent enemies from attacking from the front), which is not in the Roman military doctrine.
Considering that mercenaries are hired and added to a leader's army on the spot, hiring them is very costly in order to balance this advantage. A leader with high influence, traits and retinue that contribute to mercenary hiring can reduce the cost however, making this leader very versatile in maintaining momentum against an enemy civilization, provided the player has the money to finance the hiring of mercenaries. Mercenaries also cannot be reinforced, making them especially vulnerable to attrition.
Of course, developing settlements, raising armies, hiring mercenaries, repairing damage from war and sabotage and maintaining all of these require the expenditure of resources. These resources would have been diverse, but they have been simplified into one single form: currency. This has always been the case with the Total War franchise thus far, but one who is looking for more sophistication in the resource mechanisms of the game would be a bit disappointed that Creative Assembly would not take the risk of introducing more discrete kinds of resource, especially when the other improvements to the sophistication of the franchise are considered.
Still, the mechanisms for gaining the one single primary resource of the game (money) are plenty varied. There is trade, as mentioned earlier, and it is especially lucrative if the player goes to great lengths to maintain good relations with neighbours. It can be improved simply by improving port facilities and roads, which also serve to improve the player's naval capabilities and army mobility, respectively. The player can also improve trade by building the right amenities, which also serve other purposes such as increasing population growth and unlocking the recruitment of certain agents (more on these later).
All settlements under a player's ownership will automatically trade with each other, though the income from this is gained indirectly through taxes on the settlements. Generally, settlements which trade with each other share each other's prosperity, though the factors that govern this are rather subtle; the player would only notice how important it is to have settlements connected with each other when he/she has an isolated settlement, which would likely be impoverished and difficult to develop.
Direct trade income has to be obtained from trading with other factions, and how lucrative a trading deal with a potential trading partner is depends on how prosperous his/her/its settlements are, and also how connected they are with each other (the player with lesser holdings stands to gain more than the other).
Considering that the trade deals that a player can have are limited by the number of ports that a player has, the upgrade tiers of these ports and the land connections between settlements, the player has to consider getting the best deals over the rest. Unfortunately, the game will not give the player estimates on how much one can gain from a new trading deal until after it has been inked. Breaking trade deals to get new ones can be done, but at the cost of making the previous trade partner rather angry.
Trade is vulnerable to raids and blockades, but if the player can prevent these with skilful policing of his/her territories, trade is the only revenue that can be preserved in war; the other main source of revenue, taxes, will eventually be affected by war fatigue, which appears as a detrimental penalty on settlement happiness, which in turn limit the taxes that can be imposed on the populace.
Speaking of taxes, this is a source of revenue with a rate that can be controlled by the player, in contrast to trade, which can wax and wane according to the fortunes of either partner. In fact, even if a player can maintain his/her trade holdings, he/she can still lose a trade deal when his/her partner's trading capability becomes so damaged through war that the value of their mutual trade deal plummets; when it does, the trade deal is automatically cancelled and a new deal cannot be signed between the two of them until after some time.
This would frustrate players that are inclined towards trade, but it is one more balancing design that is intended to prevent mercantilist players from becoming too rich and powerful; after all, any money that is gained does not deteriorate over time if it is not spent.
Anyway, returning to taxes, the player can control taxes on an empire-wide scale, which is handy if the many settlements are more or less of the same happiness levels. If that is not so, the player can still apply taxes settlement by settlement, where convenient. There would be increasingly more wrangling as the player's empire grows however; this eventually consumes more of the player's time, which would otherwise have been spent doing activities that would lead to victory. The player can of course set tax management to automatic, but the A.I. isn't very good at managing settlements on a case-by-case basis.
It has to be mentioned here that the amount of taxes gained from a settlement is proportional to its wealth, which is not immediately clear to the player. The player has to dig into the statistics of the settlement to know this, and even so the equations that contribute to it are not entirely clear. Regardless, the player can change tax rates as much as he/she likes within the current turn: the effects of the change are only felt in the turn after.
Taxes can also be used to control the population growth – or reduction - of a settlement. More population generally means more potential prosperity for a settlement and more troops for recruitment. Population is also used as a "level" threshold for a settlement; the settlement's "level", which is denoted by its categorization as a village, town, city or so on, determines the kinds of facilities and amenities that can be built into them, with higher "levels" allowing the building of the more advanced kinds.
However, higher populations also cause more discontent through squalor. Raising taxes is an immediate cause for more discontent of course, but it will also restrict population growth, which may be desirable.
The most developed settlements, especially the ones that are far away from the capital to benefit from its order-improving influence, may continue to grow in population anyway, regardless of the player's taxation rates. Fortunately, there are other ways to restrict population growth, or at least handle it in one manner or another (though the latter can be cheesy); these will be elaborated on later.
In addition to the revenue provided by a settlement, there is the happiness rating of its citizenry. It is in the player's interest to keep happiness high whenever possible, as consistently happy settlements appear to gain bonuses to their productivity. They also gain higher population growth, as more immigrants come over to live the happy life over at the settlements.
However, the player will find that keeping people forever happy is not possible. The main sources of discontent are high taxes and dense populations, both of which the player would rather prefer to be high so as to have momentum for the growth of his/her empire. The latter in particular will ever be a perennial problem, especially in the heartland of the player's empire, which tends to be safe and prosperous enough to be conducive to uncontrollable population growth.
Eventually, developed settlements will have populations so high such that the discontent from squalor would leech away at any sources of happiness (more on these later). This also means that the settlement will be especially vulnerable to sources of short-term discontent, such as the machinations of rivals' agents or the threat posed by an enemy army that is too close for comfort.
Settlements with consistently unhappy populations can suffer revolts, which cause the player to lose control of that settlement and may even spawn a rebel army that may move to engage other nearby settlements to propagate the revolution. Therefore, the player would be wise to consider keeping an eye on volatile settlements, though thankfully the game also provides some help by informing the player of any settlement that is in danger of revolt. The player can also bring up a list settlements, ordered according to happiness or other ratings.
Discontent can be suppressed by having an army occupying a settlement, though this means that the army would be tied up in garrisoning the city instead of being committed to wars.
However, this is also where a player may discover a cheap exploit. The bonus to keeping order within a city with an army does not appear to be determined by the quality of troops, but the number of units within an army. Therefore, a player is likely to just raise plenty of very cheap peasant militia, just to keep costs low and have a block of meatshields to be thrown at the enemy.
Furthermore, the player gets to reduce the population of the settlement by recruiting them as cheap military units. Like currency, population is automatically expended when purchase orders for military units have been placed, which can be exploited for rather cheesy advantages.
It has to be mentioned here that when military units are decommissioned in a region under the player's control, the region gains a population increase equal to the number of soldiers that have been retired. The player may soon learn that he/she can simulate a forced migration by recruiting excess population as cheap peasant militia and sending them over to under-populated settlements. The upkeep costs can be hefty while these units are still in transit, but migrations like these can grant very lucrative advantages, namely being able to increase the levels of fringe settlements so that they can be developed as forward bases.
Although it has been mentioned that sources of happiness are easily counterbalanced by squalor in the long-term, it is still in the player's interest to consider attaining them as they tend to provide other simultaneous benefits.
Religion/Culture (these two appear to be thematically inseparable) contributes to the happiness of a settlement, presumably by making the populace more pious or (more likely) distracting them with religious/cultural activities and pastimes. Religious/Cultural buildings may unlock special units or agents, or grant peculiar miscellaneous benefits.
For example, a Roman city that adheres to the cult of any war-affiliated Roman god, like Mars, can build a glorious temple dedicated to said god. In addition to the improvement to public order from the religious influence of this grand edifice, the city will also be able to train Arcani, which are very durable and hard-hitting light infantry that is almost always hidden from sight if they stay still, thus making them great ambushers. Another example is the sacred groves dedicated to primal gods of the more savage of civilizations, which grant experience bonuses to units that have been trained in the settlements that have them.
However, religion/culture also poses a problem when the player is on the warpath against other civilizations. Other civilizations have different religions/cultures, which cause their conquered populace to resist occupation by armies of foreign character. This so-called "culture penalty" to the happiness of conquered settlements will require the player to occupy it with some troops, thus tying up his/her armies. If the player fails to suppress any uprising, the settlements will revolt and likely return their ownership to the original player.
Diminishing culture penalties is long-term work, because the player apparently cannot resort to genocide or ethnic cleansing. The player has to remove the locals' religious/cultural buildings as these will slow down assimilation, and replace these with those of the player's own civilization. Then, it is a long wait as the player's own people displace or absorb the conquered.
Furthermore, conquering a settlement often causes damage or destruction of certain buildings due to the sacking and looting committed by the conquering army; this further slows down rebuilding, though the player is compensated by gaining some money as the result of the post-battle mayhem. In addition, even though the settlement may have buildings that train units from other civilizations, the conquering player cannot use them to raise such units. Instead, he/she only has the option of replacing with military buildings of equivalent levels from his/her own civilization.
Perhaps the most useless of upgrades for settlements are the government buildings (oddly enough). This building has to be built when a settlement gains a level in order for the player to be able to build more advanced buildings in it. Otherwise, it appears to have little other function, other than to train peasant militia and recruit diplomats, which other settlements can do anyway. The only exception is the Roman factions' most advanced government building, which is required to train their most powerful units in the campaign mode.
Certain facilities do not improve the settlement in any way, but are associated in the improvement of characters, namely leaders and agents. For example, the Academy building, once built, allows leaders and diplomats that reside at the settlement over the course of several turns to increase their management skills and possibly even obtain certain beneficial traits that make them better at governing settlements. Enhanced leaders can be overwhelmingly powerful in campaign mode, so these facilities have rather complicated pre-requisites.
Yet, the observant player will notice here that for the sake of gameplay balance, Creative Assembly has given such buildings to all civilizations, even if some of them historically do not have such buildings. In other words, the Scriptorium and Ludus Magna buildings (which are upgrades to the Academy) can be built in any settlement of any civilization, even if it is not Roman. In fact, this design convenience is not just restricted to academy buildings; many other buildings, like ports, have also been given the same treatment. Therefore, the thematic quality and authenticity of the game are a bit diminished.
In addition to armies, navies and settlements, the embodiments of the player's will on the campaign map also include leaders and agents.
Leaders are the most important individuals that the player has, as they contribute the most to the player's efforts to achieve victory. Also, the player needs to have at least one leader, or he/she is considered as defeated. This is because leaders are members of the player's ruling family. The player would want to keep this family as extensive as possible, if only to prevent defeat from having the family wiped out. However, keeping this family large is not easy, as even the loyalty of family members is not assured, especially if they are obtained from disparate sources.
Of these members, the most important are the ruler and heir. The ruler is little more different from the rest, but gains bonuses for being the ruler (more on these bonuses later); the same can be said of the heir, who gets slightly lesser bonuses. The most critical of these bonuses is that they are both impossible to be subverted by the honey-tongued agents of other civilizations. The others can be, leading to gaping holes in the player's ruling family tree if they defect.
The player can attempt to improve their loyalty by developing them such that they gain traits that make them less likely to defect. Alternatively, they can concentrate on just increasing their statistics; a more formidable and capable leader becomes increasingly costlier to bribe over (there will be more on bribing later).
Of course, try as the player may to prevent losing leaders due to defection, death is a certainty for each and every one of them, as they are mortal. While leaders don't seem to automatically degrade in capability as they become older (though they may gain traits that reflect their advanced age), they will expire sooner or later. The player may also lose them due to deaths in battle, though this is a lot more avoidable compared to what is essentially a luck-based mechanism that will determine whether any leader simply keels over in the next turn or survives.
(The probabilities are very, very small for relatively young leaders, but once past their prime, these chances increase.)
If the player does not want to commit leaders to battle, he/she can still stash them away in settlements to act as governors. Setting up a leader as a governor is as easy as simply stashing him over a turn in said settlement; removing him from governance is just as easy, as the player needs only to move the leader out and have him stay out over a turn.
(As a side note, a leader will always be male. The era that this game portrays was not exactly egalitarian.)
Settlements that do not have leaders acting as governors can still run, presumably through regents or stewards, but without the oversight of leaders, some of the wealth of the settlement would be lost due to corruption, which is an ever present risk that only increases as a settlement becomes more developed and prosperous. That is not to say that the leader won't pinch money for himself, but a lot more would be lost if a settlement is not governed.
Anyway, if a leader is set to govern a settlement, his management and influence statistics come into play. A leader's management skill not only decreases the losses due to corruption, but also may provide a bonus to tax and trade incomes if his management skill is high enough. His management skill also accelerates the process of recruiting troops and constructing buildings.
However, only one leader may ever be the governor of a settlement. The game automatically picks the leader with the highest management skill, understandably, but ultimately the other leaders' management skills are wasted.
A leader's influence is not wasted if he is not the governor of a settlement but is one among a few leaders staying in a settlement for whatever reason (which is usually to recuperate losses in battle). Any leader's influence contributes to public order, which is desirable. A leader with high influence also has the necessary contacts to gain access to mercenaries in a region as well, which in turn contributes to efforts at warfare.
If the settlement has an Academy or its upgrades, the governor may gain increases to his management skill over the course of several turns, depending on the upgrade level of the Academy building. He may also gain traits and retinue that further contribute to his ability at managing settlements. The same buildings also appear to negate losses due to corruption, even if the settlement is not governed by a leader.
Speaking of traits and retinue, a leader may gain traits and retinue seemingly randomly as long as he lives, though actually the mechanism depends not just on luck but also the circumstances. For example, a leader that stays at a settlement with an academy and which has a lot of projects queued for many turns is likely to gain traits that are of benefit to these projects, such as a trait that makes the governor thrifty and thus reduce the costs of projects.
However, the same leader may still gain bad traits or at least double-edged ones. For example, the same leader mentioned earlier may become overly thrifty, thus gaining the trait of a miser. Project costs are tremendously reduced, but the leader loses influence points as a trade-off, thus detracting from public order.
In a contrasting example, if a leader has been set as the governor of a settlement that lacks facilities that contribute to public order but is otherwise of high income (and is being milked by the player for tax money), he is likely to turn corrupt, gaining traits like simply corrupt, or supports cronyism (siphons away money but gains influence when set as a governor). He may even get useless hanger-ons as part of his retinue, adding to his worthlessness.
Speaking of retinues, a leader can gain followers that essentially act like additional traits; there appears to be no limit on the numbers of retinue, like traits, though it seems that as a leader gains more retinue, the likelihood of gaining another decrease.
It would have contributed to the game's sophistication some more if they are as mortal as the leader is, i.e. they can die before the leader does, but they remain in service until the leader dies, upon which they simply disappear.
Retinue can be exchanged among leaders that happen to interact with each other on the campaign map, which is a very handy feature, especially when used to prevent retinue from being wasted due to leaders' deaths. However, wily players can exploit this to create very powerful specialized leaders, Anyway, it would have been a lot more convenient if there is a pool of retinue that can be used to store spare retinue to be re-distributed at leisure.
It has to be mentioned here that the conditions and probabilities of gaining traits and retinues are not given to the player in any documentation, presumably to prevent the player from gaming the system to develop powerful leaders. The curious player has to look into the scripting for the retinues and traits, which require some programming knowledge.
Leaders are also generals for armies, which appear to be more effective when under the influence and command of a leader than when they are not (regardless of how actually terrible the leader is at commanding armies). Leaders appear as heavy cavalry units on the battlefield. These units are led by differently equipped individuals, which are of course the leaders themselves.
They have their own hitpoint counters and run the risk of being slain in battle, though it would appear that this is only possible after their bodyguard units have been depleted severely such that there are many enemies that the leaders have to personally fight all at once. Their contribution in battle itself will be elaborated on later, when it is more relevant.
When in battles, the leaders' command ratings bolster the morale of units under his command; those within his sphere of influence (visually represented as a circle on the map) receive the best bonus to their fortitude. This appears to be the only benefit of having a high command rating – there are no other bonuses – but having units stay in battle a lot longer instead of breaking and running for the hills (or the edge of the map) can mean a lot of difference.
Independent of trait and retinue, leaders can improve their statistics by engaging in activities that make use of these statistics. For example, a leader can improve his Command rating by winning battles and improve his Management rating by having projects complete while they are governing a settlement. Influence is gained through both war and governance, and comes rather naturally to leaders. For the Romans, they can accelerate their influence-gaining through holding offices in the Senate (more on this later).
It has to be mentioned here that the game also has some amusing alternatives to getting new leaders, other than the usual methods of breeding more male members for the family or bribing enemy leaders into the family.
One way to get new leaders is by elevating an army captain to a General. Before explaining this, it has to be mentioned here that the game assigns one unit as the captain unit if an army lacks a leader; this unit is usually the most valuable of the lot. The player can attempt to have this army win several battles while keeping its captain unit alive as long as possible. For every battle won, the probability of the captain unit's top man to be elevated to the position of a leader increases.
A very shrewd player can technically produce many leaders this way, though the probability for doing so successfully drops as the family increases in size. Still, a lucky player can have a lot of leaders, which can grant a tremendous advantage in both economy and war. However, leaders obtained this way will often be oriented towards war and not for governance; grooming them for the latter may take a while.
Getting new family members through breeding is best done by stashing a leader with a fecund wife as a governor, instead of sending him on a General's career. The latter is very likely to result in him not having any offspring at all, not to mention a violent death.
Female family members, when they do mature, will attract requests from suitors, who can marry them and thus marry into the family – if the player allows them to. Unlike the other methods, except bribing perhaps, this method gives the player some choice in picking the best leaders to add to the family, though only as long as the female family members have not gone past their prime, after which the requests start to fall in frequency.
Agents are also characters with statistics like leaders, but they can be obtained much more easily than leaders as they are simply recruited. However, the types of traits and retinues that they can have are far reduced compared to those that leaders can get. For example, it appears that the only retinue that the Assassin (one of the types of agents) can get is the Poisoner. This can seem disappointing to players who had been hoping that agents can be as sophisticated as leaders.
Still, the player will use agents anyway, as they can do what leaders cannot. There are mainly three types of agents: the diplomat, spy and assassin, in the order that the player is likely to obtain them.
The diplomat is the main way for the player to communicate with other civilizations. Although the player can bring up the diplomacy screen (which is now a must in pretty much all strategy games with 4X elements), this screen only allows rudimentary diplomatic options, like breaking existing deals and declaring war (and these options are not to be taken lightly, as A.I. players have a long memory for treachery). To seal alliances and trade deals and other negotiations, like threatening another civilization with war, the player needs to use a diplomat. The diplomat is also needed for under-handed shenanigans like bribing opposing armies.
The diplomat's influence is the measure of his skill. This influence is very different from those that leaders have, as they do not appear to contribute to public order when the diplomat drops by in a settlement. Instead, this is used to calculate the probabilities of success in his diplomatic endeavours.
Trade deals, alliances and ceasefires are deals that are made with entire civilizations, so these are dependent on the demeanour of the other (A.I.-controlled) players towards the player; the diplomat's skill is not likely to do much. However, for other deals, such as bribing other civilizations' armies, leaders and agents, the diplomat's influence comes into play. A diplomat's influence determines the range of troops and levels of leaders and agents that he can bribe over; in other words, a more skilled diplomat can sweet-talk even the most high-ranking leader over.
Yet, although a player may have the option of bribing over a leader, an army or even a settlement, he/she has to pay to take that option. The cost is proportional to the quality of the target being bribed, so for example, a very high-ranking valuable leader would costs thousands in currency to bribe over. Not all of the soldiers bribed over will change allegiances too; some of them simply disband on the spot, apparently willing to take coin to desert their former masters but unwilling to join a foreign civilization.
Moreover, the other (A.I.-controlled) player would know of what has happened, and would not take kindly to such an act. Furthermore, bribing over anyone from a faction that is not at war with the player is considered as an act of war.
This means that diplomats won't have much to do when there are no more trade deals and ceasefires to be signed, and the player is not at war with anyone. Still, the player is likely to use the diplomat anyway for scouting purposes, as agents can move practically anywhere without much repercussion (unlike leaders and their armies). Furthermore, diplomats are the only ones that can ink deals on trading map information in return for much more substantial rewards, such as currency. However, trading map information of course gives away intelligence on the player's holdings.
The diplomat is also less likely to alarm the A.I. players too when he is discovered to be travelling in foreign territory, compared to the skulking assassin and spy. (That is not to say that the A.I. would not try to get rid of foreign diplomats roaming around within its holding by sending assassins after them, if it is not inclined to let the player perform reconnaissance for free.)
The spy has further sight range than either the diplomat or assassin. More importantly, he is hidden from other players' view. This makes the spy quite ideal for scouting, assuming that the player is lucky enough not to have his/her spy bump into an enemy. That is so, until he is bumped into by opposing agents or even leaders and their armies; this tends to happen if the player did not end his turn somewhere that has little traffic, such as off the roads. Other players' spies may also be able to detect spies, though this of course works both ways.
Other civilizations do not take kindly to having spies skulking around their regions of Europe, if they are discovered. They are very likely to send assassins after spies, which apparently are fair game, and will raise this annoyance in diplomatic communications if the spies are still around.
Once a player has gotten spies within foreign territory, he/she can have them infiltrate cities, which essentially reveals information on a city and its garrisons. The Spy's Subterfuge skill determines if he is successful and if he is, how much is revealed. Otherwise, the player may have to try again to reveal more, if he hasn't been caught and immediately executed (which is the price for failure).
A particularly good spy will also be able to plant traitors among those that handle the gates of a settlement, such that if the player's armies come over to conquer, they will find that the gates are wide open, thus rendering unnecessary the need for any siege equipment to breach or overcome the defences with. (On the other hand, the gates are still rather small structures and there are ever only four at most. A sly defender is more than likely to use them as chokepoints if he/she has been subjected to the treachery of spies.)
The assassin does what his namesake says: assassinate targets. Like the spy, he does not appear in the vision of other players, unless his presence has been detected by agents and armies that are just too close for comfort. The assassin can be used against foreign agents that have been detected, with the outcome being either the removal of the target or death of the assassin, with the latter possibly causing a diplomatic incident if his allegiance to a player has been discovered.
It is unfortunate that there appears to be no special cutscenes or mini-movies that play when assassins successfully (or unsuccessfully) terminates their targets. This was a peculiar touch of Shogun: Total War, so it is a bit disappointing that Rome: Total War does not continue this. On the other hand, considering how huge the game directory can be, it is perhaps for the better that there are no movie files that add to the game's size on the hard disk.
The assassin can also sabotage the facilities within a settlement of another civilization to slow down its development efforts, though the player must know about what facilities are there before he can attempt to damage them (this is where the spy can support the assassin).
All agents, leaders and armies are given movement allowances so that they can move about in the campaign map. For armies, their movement allowance is dependent on the slowest unit in them. Therefore, for example, an army with Onagers would be awfully slow on the move; this means that if the player wants to use them for sieges against faraway enemy settlements, it is going to take a while to hike the army over there on land. Certain leader traits can improve the movement allowance, but regardless of how far an army can move, it can only ever engage in battle twice in a turn.
Having a battle once depletes the army's allowance by half the maximum allowance, while having another right after simply removes any remaining allowance. This is perhaps an adaptation of the move-limiting system from the previous Total War games, but inspired by the system in Civilization. Anyway, it prevents armies from being able to roll over enemies that happen to be quite weak in the region being assaulted, thus giving the latter time to organize a counter-attack.
An army that is retreating from the enemy – either after a defeat in battle or simply retreating when prompted by their owner - will move some distance away towards a location of its own choosing, and not the player's; the army also can no longer move in that turn until the start of the owning player's next turn. This can be frustrating if the army retreats to a terrible location, such as the roads, which will conveniently give the attacking army an opportunity to go on the road and run down the fleeing army. Fleeing armies are typically tired and demoralized by default, making defeat a high certainty.
Armies being attacked can choose to retreat from battle, or when battle starts, simply sound the general retreat and run right off the battlefield. This could have been be exploited in cheesy manners if not for the undesirable penalty of casualties incurred as a result of some soldiers being left behind. Some players will likely still exploit this anyway, especially if their armies are being attacked during other players' turn, but the retreating move will be subtracted from the army's allowance in the next turn.
The campaign mode is mainly a single-player affair; there appears to be no multiplayer option for this. This is unfortunate, but it might have been too terrifically ambitious for Creative Assembly to attempt to accommodate it in multiplayer. The player initially can only pick from one of the three Roman factions, which are the Brutii, Julii and Scipii. They appear to have almost the same designs but with slight and subtle differences, such as the Julii being a little more diplomatic than the rest; these differences manifest as minor bonuses that the factions get.
This variation of the main designs of the Roman civilization in the form of the three Houses can also be seen in the other factions in the campaign mode, which can be played after having finished at least one campaign with any of the Roman factions. Many of these other civilizations share the same designs with each other, especially if they happen to be neighbours. For example, the Parthians and Carthaginians are very similar to each other, with subtle differences in capabilities and troop make-ups.
In other words, playing these civilization variants may seem to lead to the same experiences, which may lead to tedium quickly as well as the realization that the content of the game is actually much smaller than what was advertised. Still, there are at least five distinctly different "core" civilizations with variants, which can still be a handful to most players. There will be more elaboration on these "core" civilizations later.
Unfortunately, the other civilizations would turn out to be quite underpowered compared to the Romans in the campaign mode.
Initially, the Romans resort to very old military traditions of having every soldier finance his own equipment and sustenance while serving, thus leading to very archaic soldiery that although unexciting, are still somewhat balanced against those of other civilizations.
After some time into the campaign mode, which is about a few decades of game time, the Romans experience a renaissance in their military development, switching to state-sponsored professional training and equipping of their armies to produce very powerful units like the astonishingly durable Legionary and Praetorian Cohorts. They are very expensive to train, but appear to be, man-for-man, worth a lot more than any other units with the same roles.
That they have access to special formations that allows for more versatile strategies for the player makes them even more preferable than their counterparts in other civilizations. For example, Legionary and Praetorian footsoldiers can adopt a formation that makes them slow but next to impossible to be brought down by archer fire. This lets the player distract wall defences, which are not under the control of the owning player, away from the more important units, like those that are bearing a ram or siege tower. No footsoldiers from other civilizations have this formation.
Of course, the Legionnaires and Praetorians are ultimately just footsoldiers, so they are best used for general melees and other situations in battle where numbers and/or durability prevail. Nevertheless, the Roman army designs do include some specialist units for situations where the Legionnaires and Praetorians are not efficient for, such as incendiary pigs (simply pigs that are lit on fire and sent charging in one direction) and wardogs, which are both terror weapons that are a lot better at spooking enemy troops than even the already intimidating professionally trained Roman troops.
The Romans also have access to many kinds of war machines, being the only civilization at the time that has no qualms with encouraging engineering advancements, if only to craft weapons of war with. Some other civilizations do have some of the Romans' siege weapons, or variants of them, but overall, the Romans have more options for siege weapons, especially once they have built the necessary siege-works in campaign mode. For example, the Repeating Ballista, a technological marvel at the time, is only unique to the Roman factions.
Furthermore, the inclusion of the Senate mechanic, which is unique to the Roman factions in campaign mode, makes the experience of playing as the Romans more sophisticated than the experience of playing other civilizations.
The Senate's seat is in Rome, a city that will ever be out of the player's reach – at least until his/her schemes to take over Rome, either through politics or outright conquest, succeed. The Senate is a body that will bequeath orders on the Roman factions (all of them appear to get the same orders), and the first to fulfill them will gain favour in the Senate, and thus one step closer to dominating it.
The Senate will often demand that the Roman player take action against other civilizations, such as conquering their cities, blockade their ports or, rarely, sign peace deals. The Senate will often look like it is setting orders that when fulfilled, would have consequences that are most counter-productive against the dominant Roman faction – not without good reason of course, as all three Roman factions have the desire to end republic rule and install themselves as autocrats of the Roman Empire.
This acts as a balancing mechanism to prevent a dominant Roman faction from winning the race to Rome too quickly, but this would also mean that the player would be facing a major hurdle when he/she has become the dominant faction. Refusing to comply with the Senate's