Total war games

Rome: Total War is the best PC game ever made. Ever. Buy it immediately, play it, have fun. Great game.

Go to twcenter.net, go to the forums, Rome/Hosted Mods and download the Extended Greek Mod (XGM). It sounds like it is all about Greeks, but it fixes every faction and gives them all a solid roster of units, like the Romans do, plus it eliminates the funky units (flaming pigs? WTF) and has a better map - plus Rome is 1 faction now!!! SO you can do Rome vs. Carthage, etc. Amazing mod community for the game - PM if you want more info.

So if they backed off on the pigs, how do they balance elephants?

I ran over my opponents in almost every battle, with kill ratios that were hard to imagine, except when I faced elephants.  They were too crazy.  As the Julii, I took over all of Europe.  As the Brutii I took over all of Greece, Asia minor and Palastine and kicked butt on the Egyptians (all without using War Dogs).  As the Gauls I took over Europe and wiped out the Julii, and took all of Italy including Rome of course.  I did the same thing with the Germans.  But I never could get a good roll going as the Scipii (only tried once) because of the elephants.  I had to use Pigs and Velite <sp?>to fight elephants.  Triarii were good too but I never had enough of them.

Rome is an awesome game.  The depth with the retainers, and the family members traits was supurb too.</sp?>

Very easy to beat elephants - use archers and javelins, you will eliminate the riders and cause the elephants to run amok. Historically elephants were almost a non-entity in combat - Alexander and Scipio faced them, and handled them easily. XGM nerfed them a little bit, so they are a little less lile “battle tanks”

The trick with a unit that has javelins is to make them hold their fir until the elephants are within range, then let loose with a mass javelin volley. Also, with velites, put them in skirmish mode and have them retreat in front of the elephants. Horse archers rock vs. elephants too.

XGM is also amazing for mercenary depth - you have Cretan archers, Balearic Slingers, Syrian Archers, Galatian Swordsmen, and literally dozens more mercenary types.

Yeah, use an expendable skirmisher unit to draw the elephants away from the main battle.

I never use pigs.  I can never time it right when I light 'em on fire.  elephants simply retreat, and the piggies burn out.

My current favorite is Empire. I love playing in all the different theaters. I also enjoyed Medi two. I found Napoleon too much like empire, nice graphics but not as much fun to play (missed India and North America).

Shogun 2 is next upcoming title.

Recently the Total War Series has been tied to STEAM which I find annoying. While the updates and options through steam are interesting I really hate having to always be signed in to STEAM to play.

Yah Rome is the best so far, while I bought MTW 2 and empire and enjoyed both of them they lack in a number of areas.

My bet is Shogun 2 tops Rome though.

Shogun 2?! Awesome.  Haven’t played the first one, but heard it was awesome.

I also tend to hear that the AI for Medieval 1 was the best.

I got the demos for Empire and Napoleon off Steam after I got Portal for free.  They use cloud computing.  Not really my style.  I like having solid copies as well, and Steam charges the same for both “cloud” and hard disk versions.

There are reasons you pay same price -

Convenience
Redundancy
Operability (compatibility and patches/fixes/etc. always good)
Associated costs with hosting your game

Just to name a few.