I just got Rome: Total War today so I was playing it. I started on easiest level as the Scipiians... I'm not talking about the battles because I didn't bother with them (I'm just there for the empire building).
So I thought I'd play this game in a kind of intelligent way. First thing I noticed was how huge the revenue was from each town and that you could put taxes right down to lowest and still have enough income to recruit new troops. That along with taking over independent towns with my one big attack army was my basic strategy:
Take over a town, don't kill or pillage anybody and start investing in farms, roads, public health etc.
Anyway by 240 BC I have eleven towns. About six of them are 20,000-25,000 people (others 10,000-15,000). Every five turns I get a plague breaking out somewhere and public disorder. Meanwhile my income is about 30,000 gold a turn (this is still with lowest possible tax everywhere).
My treasury is 280,000 gold even though I basically throw money out of the window. (I paid some tiny greek city I was tired fighting with 30,000 just to sign the cease-fire). All my kids are fat, corrupt retards because of growing up with so much money and only the worst generals want to marry my daughters.
I go on gamefaqs and the guy there says that the number one priority is to keep population and money both down . Cities should never go above 20,000 and you should never have more than 50,000 in cash. What the fuck?
The last thing I did before uninstalling was try to reverse that. I made a save game called 'Population Control' and put all taxes up to the max, recruiting millions of thugs and gave about 250,000 gold as a 'gift' to the other Roman factions. Finally four cities revolt... I go in and slaughter maybe 60,000 innocent townspeople (oh, and all of a sudden the 'proletariat' loves me
).
Take over those towns again (reduced to about 5,000 each) and put taxes up to the maximum. Public order is good, then I look at population growth... at 9% per turn (!) (turn = six months) it's obvious I am going to repeat the slaughter every ten years.
Over the whole of my gaming time I am sure spent more of my time trying to deal plague and revolt in towns due to growth than on anything else.
I wonder why everybody raves about Total War. Did Creative Assembly just forget to pay somebody to playtest the campaign side of the game?
So I thought I'd play this game in a kind of intelligent way. First thing I noticed was how huge the revenue was from each town and that you could put taxes right down to lowest and still have enough income to recruit new troops. That along with taking over independent towns with my one big attack army was my basic strategy:
Take over a town, don't kill or pillage anybody and start investing in farms, roads, public health etc.
Anyway by 240 BC I have eleven towns. About six of them are 20,000-25,000 people (others 10,000-15,000). Every five turns I get a plague breaking out somewhere and public disorder. Meanwhile my income is about 30,000 gold a turn (this is still with lowest possible tax everywhere).
My treasury is 280,000 gold even though I basically throw money out of the window. (I paid some tiny greek city I was tired fighting with 30,000 just to sign the cease-fire). All my kids are fat, corrupt retards because of growing up with so much money and only the worst generals want to marry my daughters.
I go on gamefaqs and the guy there says that the number one priority is to keep population and money both down . Cities should never go above 20,000 and you should never have more than 50,000 in cash. What the fuck?
The last thing I did before uninstalling was try to reverse that. I made a save game called 'Population Control' and put all taxes up to the max, recruiting millions of thugs and gave about 250,000 gold as a 'gift' to the other Roman factions. Finally four cities revolt... I go in and slaughter maybe 60,000 innocent townspeople (oh, and all of a sudden the 'proletariat' loves me
). Take over those towns again (reduced to about 5,000 each) and put taxes up to the maximum. Public order is good, then I look at population growth... at 9% per turn (!) (turn = six months) it's obvious I am going to repeat the slaughter every ten years.
Over the whole of my gaming time I am sure spent more of my time trying to deal plague and revolt in towns due to growth than on anything else.
I wonder why everybody raves about Total War. Did Creative Assembly just forget to pay somebody to playtest the campaign side of the game?
.
