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Son of Moose
05-18-2004, 04:26 PM
Forgive the seemingly spurious linkage.

CoN is a City Builder game with some (largely unspecified) military activity while Rome: Total War is a TBS game with a seemingly predominantly military focus.

My major questions are as follows:

Does Rome: Total War feature ANY citybuilding activity as several structures appear on the official webpage? (I seem to recall --- perhaps I am mistaken --- that the cities developed largely by themselves).

What sort of military focus would CoN have --- would (fairly) large battles be conducted within the game map?

It would be brilliant if CoN could combine the best of BOTH of these genres (i.e. the creative challenge and artistic endeavour of the classical city building games that we all love --- perhaps somehow linking aesthetics with military and building hitpoints in order to offer RTS and TBS fans an eventual alternative endpoint to the game).

Imagine somehow being able to combine the city building features of Pharaoh and Cleopatra (upgraded by the farm and marketing models employed in Emperor) with the military model (especially the defensive structures such as ballista towers) appearing in Age of Empires and Rise of Rome. This would be an awesome prospect --- as players could adopt 3 potential strategies:


# Strong economy and strong defensive infrastructure to ward off early aggressors.
# Strong military with strong offensive capacity in order to try to score a (fairly) early "knock-out".
# A combined strategy featuring a fairly good economy with appropriate military support. (This would probably be the preferred option).

I hope that my question (and resultant suggestions --- which can probably be read in conjunction with my earlier post) is not considered to be too irrelevant to this forum. Indeed, I really hope that I will receive some informative responses!!

With kindest regards

Mouzafphaerre
05-20-2004, 03:28 AM
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AFAIK, RTW will have deeper focus on building than the preceding TWs but still, it's not a CB game but a military strategy. The diplomacy in MTW is so caricaturistic that Emperor beats it single handed. That's expected to be workedaround in the upcoming RTW.

I've been anticipating RTW, CotN, Cossacks 2 and Sea Dogs 2 recently (the last being a sailing RPG, thus irrelevant).
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Son of Moose
05-20-2004, 04:26 AM
Dear Mouzafphaerre

Thank you so much for your reply :)

Do you (or any of the other forum members) know whether Rome: Total War will contain a fully functional scenario editor (as Age of Empires, etc) where one is able to build a detailed landscape (with buildings) independent of the campaign map? [Having read the fairly sketchy details appearing on the official webpage, the developers proudly claim how "modable" their game is. However, is this "modability" restricted to the game rules and/or units rather than the ability to create a map of one's own?]

I must admit that I love building large, detailed and tactically challenging maps (my dream would be to have an infinitely larger version of the original Age of Empires scenario map editor to be able to create a map with several tactical bottlenecks --- imagine being able to conduct large battles in your own map!! :) ). I would love to possess a game set in the classical period featuring a scenario editor capable to making maps of an unrestricted size (Supreme Ruler 2010 --- set in the near future --- will apparently possess such a feature).

However, from the global nature of the game, I doubt whether this will be possible. Maybe (even if it is restricted to purely city building purposes) it will be possible for CoN to have such a feature --- which should encourage unbridled creativity.

By the way, I still think that it could be possible to mix the City Builder and military models to form an extremely interesting and challenging hybrid. After all, it would surely to appropriate to incorporate some form of military benefit (increased unit hit points as well as increased villager and building hit points) for a highly aesthetic nation. Therefore (if one were interested in actively pursuing a military agenda as an eventual long term outcome for a scenario) it would be in the player's interest to build as elaborate and attractive a city (or series of cities) as possible. [This philosophy ties into my earlier post ;) ].

As previously stated, I would really appreciate any feedback :D

With kindest regards