Rome: Total War Preview

Conquering your Empire

An elephant? Now that's a sweet ride.

If city building seems in-depth, you'll be blown away by the battle aspect of the game in Rome. By the end of the game you could fight against 20 unique factions (3 Roman ones depending on the progression of your empire and 8 that get unlocked), including the Carthaginians, Armenians, Gauls, Greeks, Persians, Brits, and Celts. The units from each faction function under the typical rock, paper, scissors countering style that's prevalent in most RTS games, though each faction does have some fairly unique units when comparing armies; the Carthaginians have lumbering War Elephants, the Greeks have heavy hoplite warriors, and the Brits have elite Druid soldiers in their armies, to name a few.

Most units in Rome have still more stuff to set them apart from their counterparts from other civilizations, unique abilities and formations can be used with effective results. Cavalry can charge, legionnaires can go into the testudo formation, certain soldiers can hide just about anywhere, etc. The special formations and even regular formations are fairly important in fighting. For one, testudo formations make legionnaires impervious to arrow fire but vulnerable to melee; each formation has its own pros and cons and managing them well can mean the difference between victory and defeat.

Charge!

Fighting is heavily geared towards gameplay, but at the same time is surprisingly effective as far as realism goes; cavalry charges are powerful, especially in flanking moves. Flanking is an interesting part of fighting, it adds quite a bit of tactics to Rome in that hitting an enemy formation from the rear or flank will incur a penalty to their defensive capabilities. Of course, different formations and different troops incur different penalties in flanking; flanking Greek hoplites in a box formation won't incur the same penalties as Roman legionnaires in a standard formation.

Morale is another realistic factor in fighting that makes it a hell of a lot more fun, too. Units that are losing a fight or at least appear to be could try to run away from the battle, meaning it's never a good idea to put any group of units in a wary situation for fear of losing them altogether if they retreat. There are certain ways around that however, in particular the General being able to save routing troops depending on how battered and bruised the soldiers are.

The general has a number of other purposes in the game. It brings along a retinue of characters - doctors, engineers, etc - with the army it leads, each character having a different ability. Engineers repair siege engines and doctors heal the wounded following a battle (if you win), though other characters should have some more interesting or at least different abilities. With all of the benefits Generals bring to you or your enemy, they can also be assassinated, severely impairing the army's ability to fight a battle.

Laying siege to a Roman city

While most strategy games have pretty shallow siege warfare, Rome's sieges are pretty damn cool. There are 3 levels of defense that you must get past in order to take a city in Rome, starting out with the obvious walls. Defending troops can fire arrows or any other projectiles from the wall while you try to in some way make it possible to get your own troops on the other side of that wall; either blowing the wall to bits by catapults or letting said troops climb over it with siege towers. As soon as your guys are going at a breach or weak point in the wall's defenses, the area will be inundated with enemy soldiers that are trying to push them back. So the wall is secure, what now? Well, you've got to get to what I assume to be the government center of the city while fighting off the remaining troops that are holding the routes to said center. After all that is done, Rome's got one more city and that's not too bad of a deal, is it?

Next: Campaign Map, Graphics, Sound, etc.
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