Well, there wasn't a post on the Friday night Scavenger match last week because I was in Rome. So apologies for that...
Rome is a fantastic place, it's like a city that was built around an archeological dig. You can wander around the frankly amazing coloseum, marvel at the Pantheon... Even see the chariot racing course that used to be the circus maximus - though there's no stonework left.
I found the short break quite inspiring and I decided to crack open a golden oldie upon my return - Rome : Total War.
Now most people who play RTS games have a familiar system, you build your resources up - make troops and attack. These games tend to be won very much on who can control the resources and deploy a bigger force. I'm talking about all the derivitives of the early Dune 2 : Battle for Arakis, throught the Warcraft games, Command and Conquer, and Lord of the Rings Battle for Middle Earth.
If for example you are playing Saruman on Lord of the Rings, the strategy is to upgrade all your troops at the earliest stage and build a strong enough army with a decent balance of troop types and send them in. These games are more about managing resources.
Rome is too - to a certain degree but in a very different way. It's a hard game to play - people familiar with RTS might feel lost in the see of men you see on the battlefield the first time you play fielding a large army. There is resource management, but it's seperate from the battles. The battles themselves are far mroe realistic than the traditional resource gathering RTS. You have various troops types of course - with their own strengths and weaknesses, but you also have morale to consider, fatigue, the general who is commanding an army. If you field a six star general your troops are far less likely to route and will fight better than if you field an army led by a 1 star general.
With Rome, using the terrain to your advantage it is very possible to defeat a much larger army with good tactics.
I could write pages and pages on Rome tactics, but you might as well read 'The Art of War' because it works more or less how ancient battles did work! There are some things which don't apply realistically - historically the Romans would have sent light troops like the Velites in to soften up enemy infantry - in Rome the computer will auto-deply your troops in a formation which facilitates this (You can change it thankfully before the battle starts.) but a more effective tactic is to field any missile troops behind the infantry - and get them to shoot over the heads of their comrades. If you are enganged in this sort of encounter and you can hit the block of enemy troops from both sides at the same time with a cavalry charge - it's an instant route. You have to be careful though - if you pen the enemy troops in, they will fight to the death. You do want to kill all the enemy troops - but they are easier to kill when they are fleeing for their lives than when they are surrounded and in full fight mode.
March your men too far they get fatigued, they don't fight as well, morale goes down - if they see your general fleeing, morale goes down, seeing enemies routing morale goes up. You can swing the tide of a battle immensely by killing the enemy general.
Off the battle field it's a matter of managing towns all over your empire. The further from your capital a settlement is = the harder it is to keep them from rebelling. Governs with good management skills will help but a large empire is incredibly hard to run anyway. If you take a settlement you can either occupy, enslave or pillage. Occupying keeps the settlement runnning smoothly - but they will revolt soon, unless you can do something to stop them. Enslaving boosts the population of other settlements with the slaves you export and pillaging give you a big gain in denari but the population goes right down as most of the settlement is killed. Keeping your empires economy running optimally is critical but challenging.
Tuesday night I finally managed to take Rome from the Senate. Wary of my faction leaders popularity the Senate had ordered he take his own life or our faction was an enemy of Rome - seeing as I already had all of western europe and Russia, it was a no-brainer, I now have 100 years to take 14 territories in order to claim victory.
Rome is a fantastic game, that's detailed, fun and educational - historical information about all the troops and buildings is given to you as you play the game. Overall I would say Rome:Total War is possibly the best strategy game I have ever played. The only criticism I could give it - is that it takes a long, long time to play. You could spend entire days playing it, I've been working on the single player campaign for literally years now... But I've enjoyed every minute.
I did manage to have a quick go of Expert Realism the other night on Left 4 Dead 2, and I managed to get through to the second part of 'Dead Centre' on my own - it's not that hard a campaign if you think about what you are doing. We got very close to beating the second part too, but time was not on my side.
I did get a quick go of Scavenger - we played No Mercy:The Hospital Roof, which I'm finding a very popular Scavenger Map. I think I know why too - the multiple layers, the risk of being knocked off or falling off the building and the high number of canisters available make it an interesting map. Particularly as it takes teamwork to a new level - there are times when a friend can throw canisters up to you and you can catch them -speeding up the collecting process, but also tying up two people from the fight.
It was a fantastic match actually - the first round, the other team played first and scored 13 canisters and we fought tooth and nail to get 14 winning the first round. The second round, our opponents got 21, we simply couldn't lock them out - but when we took survivors we managed to nail 21 in less than 4 and a half minutes, winning the round and the match.
All in all, it's worth downloading 'The Sacrifice' just so you can play the No Mercy Scavenger map.
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