Rome vs Empire vs Medieval II Total War?

[Whiskey]

Which is best?

[Xautos]

RTW all the way, empire has guns in it and it makes cav and sword wielding infantry units completely pointless, it is a different type of fighting as it focuses more on ranged fighting. Medieval II's fighting isn't anywhere near as good as RTW, only a few of that unit are fighting on the front and the rest are all streched out giving room to each other and blocking the whole passage, meanwhile horsemen don't charge very well when you can make make em do so and even then only one or two horsemen run up to the infantry unit and engage in combat instead of using the full force of the horse to knock down infantry units with a KO.

RTW is merciless when it comes to cav charges, and numbers of infantry fighting on the front line.

[Dog (Dog) [Dog] {Dog}]

I personally love all three, but they all scratch a different strategic itch. Empire is great if you like 18th century warfare, as I do, but the seiges do suck. The open field battles are very fun and require different thinking than Med 2 or Rome. You need to set up overlapping fire zones and have decent artillery positions.

Medieval 2 and Rome are very similar combat and campaign wise. Rome has vastly varied cultures which can make for some very interesting battles. In Rome, each faction is quite different from eachother, while in Med 2, the cultures are much less varied and the factions have only a few things to differentiate each other.

However, all things said, I think Rome is the best. For me, its just the time period and factions, but Medieval 2 is not close behind, and Empire isn't close behind Medieval 2.

[Goose]

Medieval 2 has good mods like the lord of the rings

[OneDeadLombax]

Easily Rome, then Medieval 2 and then Empire. Honestly, I don't like empire...at all.

Rome, aside from my bias toward the time period, is best due to varied factions, soundtrack, and it hit the perfect balance of simple and addictive gameplay on both strategic and tactical layers, but still offered a great amount of strategic and tactical depth.

[Goose]

I hated empire because it was so so so so buggy for me. Every possible bug that people could experience, happened to me every 10 minutes. Getting my infantry to line up normally was half the battle.

[clean carp]

All of them are good, it depends on what type of combat and historical timeline you enjoy more.

[Preacher Jonson]

Empire will always be my favourite due to the setting (really hope we get an fleshed out Empire II after the next two historical games). The game was unfinished, unfortunately, and remains so to this day which means it relies upon modders to make it playable. (♥♥♥♥ you CA).

However, Rome 1 will forever be one of my favourite games of all time. It wasn't historically accurate in places and took artistic liberties with factions (which worked in its favour in my opinion) but out of all the games it is so much fun. 100x better than Rome II in every way barring graphics (irrelevent). The battles are so much fun, the campaign is perfect with interesting features that have gradually been removed in more recent titles. It really is THE Total War title that made the series what it is today. A true ground breaker.

Medieval is pretty damn good too but not a point of interest for me. The Settlements and Castles system was the best feature in that game and I wish they'd stuck to it (where it made sense of course)

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

You are, of course, asking in the R1 forums.

I view M2 as a "more polished" version of R1 - you can actually see diplomacy chances, large settlements can actually train units quicker than villages, as well as settlements having very nice boiling oil, siege towers no longer have those pointlessly OP toewrs on them.

Also, M2 runs better on modern machines and has a wider mod selection.

But I do like R1's setting more - it's much nicer and more varied than the M2 Catholic infighting.

[piper.spirit]

Rome>Medieval 2>Empire

[MetGreDKo]

Best to worst from what I've played
Good
Medieval
Shogun
Medieval 2

Mediocre
Napoleon
Shogun 2

Bad
Rome
Empire
Rome 2

The original games were a novel concept with the least brain dead AI. The strategic AI was greatly helped by the it taking place on something of a Risk board with provinces rather than free movement but this also lead to the most interesting and fun battles in Medieval. These were battles in which you would engage with 20,000 Golden Horde troops to fight over Kazakh on Expert. I always made sure to capture that province and flood it with troops in anticipation of that epic show down. In subsequent games there have been more battles but they're less decisive due to how few troops have been involved. Either stacks are spread outor there is too a small range for when the game decides to include an army in the battle. The most I've managed to get since then was in Rome when invading Britain. I purposely positioned 5 stacks of mine next to 5 of them, taking multiple turns to make sure it would end up a massive battle. That only occurred once however. The only other occasion has been in Napoleon after the game was won as Russia I permitted a few factions to survive, such as Spain. With continued economic growth I built up my armies on the border of Belgium, then owned by them. When I finally went to engage them it was a battle with 20,000 troops which would always crash before even their first stack was defeated. Without scale, exhaustion is generally irrelevant where as unit sizes never becomes an issue as a competent player will tweak their stacks for maximum combat effectiveness between battles. The games were not without issues however as they shared the same diplomatic non-system as Rome and Medieval II in which the AI would hate you and backstab you regardless of anything you do.

Medieval 2 greatly improved on the AI from Rome. It still suffered from a few poor design decisions not least of which the utterly moronic Timurid artillery elephants. Couple it with a papacy mechanic which can be easily abused and ignored and the still stupid random rebels popping up regardless of anything and gameplay suffered. The test of cities versus castles was an interesting one but I don't really feel that it added anything as it become a tedious chore having to rework captured cities.

Napoleon improved on the engine and gameplay of Empire greatly and brought it into an interesting era for war. The multiple different campaigns was a nice touch but whether due precisely because of the era or inadequacies of the team felt as bland as Empire. Technology like in Empire was misused, being utilized in part to unlock buildings.

Shogun 2 brought back an immersive style which was desperately lacking in Napoleon and Empire. It has a central theme which better immerse the player but gameplay still felt rather bland due to how samey all of the factions felt. The game had such a small map that often times you would fight one open field battle before besieging and assaulting leading to very dull gameplay. This wasn't helped by the greed of CA putting factions behind pay walls which is a practice they should be ashamed of. It's where their move away from being consumer friendly is plain to see.

Rome was the first game with a new engine that promised to allow free strategic movement. It brought the series to the mainstream as the develops focused more on eye candy, making it look nice and getting it on the history channel than polish. The game suffered from a myriad of issues which were later seen in Empire and Rome 2 with indecisive AI who would initiate a battle and then either sit there or run up to your lines then back away from them. Phalanxes would engage the enemy units but then turn around offering their side and rear to be cut down as they now face away from the enemy. The strategic AI was passive and indecisive often sending out smaller units to seige cities. Faction inbalances were also severe with Rome roflstomping others, more easily bribing their settlements and having a senate system which you could ignore without real consequence due to how horrendous the AI was. In order to be truly playable you require BI expansion and total conversion mods. Even then you'll experience a lot of these same issues. Also crashing, it's a major issue even still.

Empire was the introduction of a new engine after Medieval II and saw many issues in AI pathfinding, decision making, performance issues and a slew of other issues. The introduction of technology was a pleasant addition but both under used and misused. For a more complete overview go read the uncyclopedia article. It hits a significant number of the issues I'd had with it.

Rome II I'm getting angry just thinking about it and can not rationally explain how terrible it was. Angry Joe's video covers a small number of the issues with the game but I'm sure it's recent enough in memory that most here know about them.

[Æðelflead Ðe Bad At ðis Game]

I like empire but it doesn't capture your attention like Rome does. I think Rome is the best for me

[nhaK niveK]

RTW > M2TW >>>>>> ETW.

[Steed]

Rome TW has the best battles, but M2 has a better map/campaign systems. Empire, I loved but burnt out taking the entire map and can't face the scale of it any more. I'd go for Napoleon (an excellent game) over Empire.

Empire/Nappy are so different I can't really compare them ot R or M. Shogun 2 I never really got in to, R2... was an awkward game, didn't really enjoy the systems of it that much. I can't even remember if I own Atilla.

[Xautos]

I have dedicated some time to ETW. an interesting game but the ranged aspect makes horse charges almost wasted, however i find the sea battles easy to translate from assassin's creed games and naval action from the past, so it isn't hard to win out in that end.

in the end melee units are resigned to an auxillary role, archery is an extinct skill with all those rifles. Horse units have little to do on the battlefields except being targets to artillery rounds to a suspicious amount. it is all rather unbalanced.

[Steed]

Originally posted by AussieG:

Concur RTW greatest and with EB1 mod. Full stack of SPQR troops marching in formation (proper 2 cols, aux and cavalry support) is mania inducing with vol cranked up.

I love that description, 'mania inducing'. Please could you share a screenshot of your army formation, possibly a video of the whole experience?