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Early Praise For Empire: Total War
CVG had a chance to preview Empire: Total War, the latest in Creative Assembly's popular strategy series. This installment focuses on a time period which includes the Industrial Revolution and the struggle for US independence. CVG praises the intuitive interface and the improved AI, as well as the level of detail shown in large-scale battles. Quoting:
"With a single mouse click I changed my troops' attack orders to melee and sent a sea of blue uniforms sweeping down the hill at the enemy. Zooming into the action revealed a previously unmatched level of battlefield realism and detail, with each motion captured soldier actively seeking out an opponent before engaging in a mortal shoving and stabbing match. Men toppled into the mud, squirming with terror before receiving a deft bayonet jab to the windpipe. After a titanic, 20-minute struggle the tide turned my way with the enemy hightailing it thanks in no small part to a bullet to the British general's head that broke his men's morale."
Actually, you could manage cities in Rome: Total War by making sure you could micromanage build orders without a governor (admit it; you moved all your family members into the field to bolster your ranks with free heavy cavalry units, right?) and then built nothing but basic agricultural upgrades. As long as you maximized the health/public order buildings and minimized the number of buildings that would add to population growth rate (agricultural upgrades, fertility temples, etc) you could get a city with stagnant population growth in most instances without missing out on any of your city upgrades. Usually the city would crap out on population growth at around 20-30k people which was manageable. In those pesky cities that would keep growing, either due to favorable conditions or due to the AI building up agricultural upgrades that you could not tear down prior to your conquest of said city, you could depopulate you city peacefully by recruiting tons of peasants (it helped if you had units sizes set to the largest size) and using them as garrison forces on the edges of your empire to keep down rebellions. Peasants were the best, cheapest unit for garrison duty. With sufficient experience (Temple of Mars anyone?) they made halfway-decent troops when deployed correctly.
Also, you had to remember to NEVER take slaves or otherwise you'd have infusions of populace throughout your empire which could make growth sporadic and difficult to control. Not historically accurate for Roman growth but eh, whatever.
The Total War games are each set in a single time period. All of the units are drawn from the same general technology level and the cities are in fixed places. Sure, they don't hit the mark every time, e.g. the chariots and scythes being the primary weapons of Ptolemaic Egypt but they deviate to make the game more fun, not because they are ignorant. I think you're referring to the Civilization series here, Civ 3 to be precise since you have 3 units under the one general, though you should have upgraded your chariots to cavalry before you put them in McArthur's army since they cannot be upgraded when they're in there.
They did. They had always had auxiliary archer units and/or Roman archers called sagiterii. The Roman military during the Republic and early Empire was built around a core of heavy infantry but they realized early on that they had to field a diverse and flexible army or face devastation.
The Romans employed large amounts of cavalry units, originally mostly supplied by allied kingdoms. In fact the word "ally" comes from the Latin "allae" meaning squadrons of cavalry. The Romans won the favor friendly chieftains in places like Germania in order to supply units that the Roman legions lacked. The Tutonic Knights themselves were a later military founded well after the fall of the Western Empire and the Germans at that time were more likely to fight on foot, however the idea of a Roman general commanding German horsemen is very possible.
You mean Celtic warriors wearing nothing save a torc and a liberal coating of woad on their faces? Much was exaggerated about the "barbarity" of the northern barbarians by classical Roman and Greek historians, but they certainly did have some quite unorthodox battle tactics.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem