WARNING FOR WINDOWS 10 USERS AND POSSIBLE OTHERS: The game got a post-Gamespy update that will cause the game to do all kinds of crazy display stuff and crash. What you need to do is turn off anti-aliasing by default by going into the game's installation folder, preferences folder, then preferences file and make sure AA_QUALITY says AA_QUALITY:AA_ OFF. This should let you launch the game. If you wish to turn on AA from there, you can do so in NVIDIA Control Panel or any other equivalent program, as turning it back on in the menus will cause it to crash again.

IF YOU GET REALLY BAD FRAMERATES AND LAGGY INPUT NO MATTER YOUR SPECS: Right-click the game in your library, click properties, then click Set Launch Options. In the text box, type the three characters "-ne" without the quotes and press okay. This should fix that problem for most people out there.

With that done, I'd like to say that although this game is a bit primitive compared to modern TW games, it still can be a very fun game.

Pros:

-The Campaign map is very no frills compared to modern TW games. You can build any building in any city, public disorder is easy to maintain, and it just lacks feature bloat of later games. The game is all about the battles, something I'd wish would come back after games like Attila.

- The battles can look and play better than modern TW games in some ways. Losing units will actually be beaten back and enveloped by superior forces, soldiers will respond to orders at different times, and the engagements can have some real clash and weight to them.

-There's actually strategy to the strategy map. I wasn't a huge fan of M2/Empire/Napoleon/Attila's maps because they tended to have lots of wide open plains, while Rome 1+2 and Shogun 2 had lots of limiting terrain features where you could create chokepoints and use terrain like mountains and rivers to your advantage.

Cons:

-Battles can be over a little too quickly. I kind of get whiplash at how fast I go from marching, to melee, to routing an enemy army.

-The flipside to things like independent unit movement is that response can be sluggish, sometimes often so bad that I can't tell if the game knows if I ordered them to do anything.

-Pathfinding can be garbage sometimes, especially in cities.

-You can still get cascade moments where your empire is powerful enough that you're just auto-resolving your way across large swaths of the map at some points.

Overall, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the game despite not playing it since roughly around its launch. Once you get over some usability issues, there's a game here that's aged better than it has any right to.

Old but good!

Rome: Total War is the third Total War game from England's Creative Assembly, and, to make a long story short, it's the best one yet. It was naturally expected to build on its illustrious predecessors, which featured epic-scale real-time battles and impressive attention to historical realism and detail. Shogun: Total War was a promising start for the series, while Medieval: Total War built on that promise to create an even more engrossing strategy game. With Rome: Total War, Creative Assembly takes the next step, and it's as much a revolutionary step as it is an evolutionary one, thanks to a beautiful new 3D graphics engine that makes the series' tactical battles--featuring thousands of soldiers--better than ever. The results are nothing short of spectacular, helping make Rome: Total War the very definition of an epic strategy game.


Where do you want to go today? The ancient world beckons, if you're brave enough to take it on.
As in the earlier Total War games, there are essentially two distinctly different types of gameplay in Rome. There's the overarching turn-based campaign in which you conquer cities and provinces, make improvements, and move armies around the map as you expand your empire, and then there are the real-time battles in which you use tactics and maneuvers to crush your enemy in combat. After the helpful and informative tutorial campaign, you can tackle the main imperial campaign. You play as one of three powerful Roman families--the Julii, the Bruti, or the Scipii--attempting to increase the size and glory of Rome and shore up your faction's power and influence. As all three factions are Roman, there's literally no difference between them in terms of units and building types, though they do have different responsibilities. The Julii must deal with the Gauls and Germania to the north in a difficult, landlocked campaign. The Bruti are required to deal with the remnants of the Greek city-states and expand the empire to the southeast. And the Scipii are tasked with subduing Carthage, Rome's great nemesis to the southwest.


At least, that's the principle goal of each faction. But there's a fourth, unplayable Roman faction, one that can influence your course during the campaign: the Roman senate. The senate will order you on missions, from blockading a hostile port or conquering a city (and perhaps exterminating the populace, depending on the level of enmity between Rome and the faction in question) to forging a trade deal or an alliance with a foreign faction. It's up to you whether you actually obey the order, as sometimes the senate will try to stretch you thin on purpose. If you carry the orders out successfully, you stand to gain a monetary reward, a useful new military unit, or influence in the senate. Failing to carry out missions earns the displeasure of the senate and affects your standing with that body. By and large, though, the senate missions help to focus the otherwise huge scope of the campaign--instead of being faced with the monolithic task of trying to conquer Europe, you can instead look forward to accomplishing a long series of short-term goals.

It's helpful to perform senate missions because they can affect an improved feature in Rome: Total War--families. Each of the three Roman factions is essentially one huge family, and your generals and governors are related to one another by birth, marriage, or adoption. These are the leaders of your faction, and they all have traits--strengths and weaknesses--that define their abilities. A strong general may have an excellent command rating, but his disdain for bureaucracy would make him a poor governor. Meanwhile, an otherwise strong governor may have a dislike of farming, which would affect the agricultural output in the province he's in. But if your family members are selected to hold important senate posts, they'll gain influence and abilities once out of office. This introduces a limited role-playing component in the game, as you actually care about trying to further the careers of your family members so they can serve you better.

In addition to traits, family members--not to mention your spies, assassins, and diplomats--can all attract retinues. These are the hangers-on who surround important people, such as advisors, mentors, bodyguards, lackeys, sycophants, and more. Each of these can affect your characters' abilities. For example, a wrestler can improve a character's influence (by being able to literally twist arms), as well as provide added protection against an assassination attempt. You can actually collect and trade retinue members among your family, so you can transfer them to where they're needed the most.


You'll draw your faction's leaders from the family tree. Make sure not to kill off your heirs in battle.
Families are also critical because only family members can serve as generals. You can assemble armies without a general, but they'll be poorly led and will likely fare badly in battle. But with a general, the army's fortune can change. A general with a high command ability is a powerful force in battle, as a well-led smaller force can defeat a poorly led larger force most of the time. On the other hand, the fact that generals are drawn from the ruling family can be dangerous, because you need to make sure there are future generations of leaders and generals. A disastrous battle can wipe out whole branches of the family tree, cutting down promising young sons before they can sire heirs. This can have a crippling effect later on in the campaign, when you find yourself short of qualified generals and governors with a huge empire to manage. It makes for an excellent incentive to try and preserve your generals, rather than treat them as easily replaceable fodder.

Thankfully, when you're short of governors, your cities will be taken over by the "automanager," which is represented by an appointed official who runs the city in your name. You can give the automanager certain priorities, such as to follow a military or financial policy, and it will go about constructing the building and units required. (You can also turn on the automanage functionality in cities that do have governors, if you don't want to micromanage at all.) The computer is generally good at doing what you tell it to do, and this should appeal to players who don't want to spend a lot of time on the campaign map. But if you're a fan of grand strategy and want to control every detail, you'll want to make sure you have plenty of family members at your disposal.

You can choose to autogenerate battle results or fight the battles personally. In most cases, it's easier and simpler to autogenerate the smaller fights.
You can choose to autogenerate battle results or fight the battles personally. In most cases, it's easier and simpler to autogenerate the smaller fights.
When you're not busy trying to crush your opponents, you can try to spy on, trade with, and subvert them. The diplomacy system has been completely overhauled since Medieval: Total War, and you now have a lot more options at your command. These include forming alliances, bullying your neighbors into becoming protectorates of Rome, and bargaining for trade rights. You can also dispatch spies and assassins to probe for weaknesses in enemy defenses, or to take out a key enemy general before a crucial battle. And in a nice twist, you can plant spies in your own cities, where they'll help keep unrest in check by acting as a secret police of sorts, rooting out the troublemakers.


I definitly recommend this game to people who enjoy a good, long, legendary campain.

This is one fantastic RTS! A great part of the Total War game series. WORD OF WARNING, DOES NOT WORK ON WINDOWS 10!

best total war game in the series

Well, since I can't install the game hard to write a review. Support has not answered my help requests for now 50 hours. I tried a number of things, verify cache, they tell you about. I run win 10 and tried using a combatibility mode, ng. I play Tropico 4 and 5 on my rig so I'm pretty sure its not my machine. So wizards of help please answer my ticket, maybe refund next step always an option. TY for brief rant

Arguably the best PC game ever made and it is still a classic. At the time was a massive leap in realism and content, better than anything I had played. Still play often. All true gamers own this game! 10/10

>Be playing as the Scipii in Campaign
>Destroy Carthage and Numidia, empire borders Egypt
>Small Egyptian army enters my territory
>NotEvenWorried
>We're neutral with each other and have trade rights
>Egyptian army leaves
>Larger army returns, captures one of my cities, kills entire garrison of glorious Roman soldiers
>Very Upset
>Build up army, recapture city, slaughter populus
>F**k Egypt
>Decide I haven't dished out enough punishment to Egypt
>DisIsGunnaBGud
>Takes a long time, but I build up several enormous armies and naval fleets
>Wasn't at war with anyone else, only thing I had to worry about was making sure my people were happy and weren't rioting
>I have several large armies loaded on ships bound for the Egyptian empire
>DisIsGunnaBGudPt.2
>At this point in the campaign, the Marian Reforms had come about, meaning I had the glorious Legionnaires
>TestudoAF
>Takes several turns to get all ships into Egyptians waters, had to fight off Egyptian and Rebel naval fleets
>Eventually have several dozen Roman ships loaded with armies floating off the coast of Egyptian terroritory
>DisIsGunnaBGudPt.3
>Land every single army on their shores at the same time
>OhSh*tSon
>First target: Alexandria
>Assault city
>"Setllement Captured!"
>Slaughter populus
>F**k Egypt pt.2
>Take Memphis and Thebes within next few turns
>Split Egyptian empire in half
>Parthia, Egypt's neighboor, is fazed AF, they don't want it
>DisIsGunnaBGudPt.4
>Continue moving my armies inland, capturing more cities and territory
>Egypt couldn't handle the Ancient Roman blitzkrieg
>More turns go by, Egypt is down to one settlement left
>I have three armies poised on it, ready to strike at my command
>Approach Egypt with a diplomat, offer to become their protectorate
>"Our freedom is much more valuable yada yada yada."
>NextTurn
>Give them the same offer once more, adding on "Accept or we will attack"
>Egypt basically tells me that I'm not about my sh*t
>Lol k
>Attacks city with the three armies I had at the ready
>"Settlement Captured!"
>Slaughter populus
>Receive message: "Egypt has been destroyed."
>Roma Victor

10/10 Would blitzkrieg Egypt again

Just wanted to write a review so you could see my hours played. Game is too fun

Absolutely amazing game.. If you can get it to work.. For no apparent reason the game won't work on some computers even if the specs are met (I checked) 10/10 game, 1/10 job on Steam's part. Seriously guys, I've looked everywhere on the Steam forums for help and plenty of people have this problem but the steam "support" team doesn't seem to care.