Rome Total War Demo - Monday
August 19th, 2004
IGN has broken news of a RTW demo that will be public distributed Monday, August 22nd.
I cannot express how happy this makes me. Medieval Total War has consumed my life for 2 Years ( I’ve been playing it since release. Yes, still). It’s my modern X-Com.
RTW promises to be bigger in all departments, from the strategy map, new diplomatic system, Cityscapes, unique factions and cultures, and of course, those gorgeous battle scenes.
Rome Total war is a hybrid strategy game the incorporates both a turn based strategic map and massive real time strategy battles. The number of unit types is somewhere in the hundreds. Battles can have 10,000 soldiers on the screen at once, controlled in units of 100 or so.
As you progress through the campaign you can reasearch new technologies for your faction to unlock stronger, more armored, or more specialized troops. You also build cities, citadels, roads, the works.
The demo includes all of the tutorial missions that will ship to retail. The tutorial is capped by a sizeable training battle. There’s also a historical battle between the Cartheginians and one of Rome’s Houses. Cartheginians means Elephants people!
I’ll be home early on Monday to try the demo out. I’ll try to post something on Tuesday, with screen captures.
In case you didnt put 2 and 2 together, this is the game that “Decisive Battles” is using to do their rendering of battles. Dont miss it on the History Channel.
Comment by Russell — August 19, 2004 @ 3:43 pm
Yes, Decisive Battles is on the History Channel Fridays @ 9:30pm. Also on Saturdays at 1:30pm.
Gamespot has a bew RTW designer diary here: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/rometotalwar/preview_6105211.html
It details the new Family Tree, your Entourage, and the vices and virtues for each of your generals/captains.
Medieval Total War had a similar Vices & Virtues system. Each time you played things “went” different, not from just the different a battles you won and lost, but also on how the game assigns character to your generals. Some generals had Weak Principles, others were Inbred, and sometimes you would have the occasional Natural Leader.
In MTW there were somewhere around 100 of these vices and virtues, and that was enought to make a dent on replayability. RTW has over _700_ vices and virtues, holy freakin smokes.
There’s more in that article about the game’s social scene. Great read.
Comment by Della Bitta — August 19, 2004 @ 11:04 pm
And if THAT’s not enough reading for you, IGN has another faction preview, The Parthians:
http://pc.ign.com/articles/540/540447p1.html
Other faction previews can be found here:
http://pc.ign.com/objects/498/498739.html?fromint=1
Including the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Britons, and on of the Greek factions The Seleucids.
The game lets you play all of them, as well as, Parthia, Gaul, Germania, the Greek City States, or three individual Houses of Rome, the House of Julii, Brutii, or Scipii.
Oh baby.. if all that sounds like a mouthful, or if you want to see some killer faction preview videos, check out the Rome Total War Flash site:
–> http://www.totalwar.com/game/# <--
Ignore the 3 Roman Houses that first appear, click on “The Game” and “Factions”.
Comment by Della Bitta — August 20, 2004 @ 9:38 am