If video games were Roman defeats, Total War: Rome II would be Manzikert, which was a pretty bad showing for the Romans, one with a high cost. But the long-term effects of that battle are complex and far-reaching, over-analyzed and often over-weighted. Some historians go so far as to describe Manzikert as the event that kneecapped the Roman Empire, which is ironic because the part of it you know about was long gone by 1071 and the other part would totter on for another four hundred years. Me, I don’t buy it. Manzikert was bad, but post-Manzikert misgovernance did more damage than the battle itself. Byzantium could have recovered, it just failed to. Total War: Rome II has ample opportunity to recover from the scattershot problems of initial release and turn itself into a genuinely remarkable game. If Creative Assembly bungles that opportunity, then Rome II, like Manzikert, will be remembered as the beginning of the end.
I have an actual, paid-for, honest to god degree in Roman History. In what will doubtless come as a galloping surprise to you, it’s not useful that frequently. But people ask questions when they hear I have it. A psychiatrist once told me that the most boring patients were the ones who hear voices. “You know what? Those voices always say the same things.” Who knew? Similarly, the questions people ask upon hearing I have a Roman History degree are… let’s say predictable. And, inexplicably, they all begin with the word “so” and end with the word “anyway.”
- “So, why did Rome fall, anyway?”
- “So, why did they kill Julius Caesar, anyway?”
- “So, what was up with the gladiator shows, anyway?”
I’m happy to answer, but as anyone who actually knows will tell you, the answers are rather complex. Not structurally; a couple of sentences will do – if the asker has an understanding of the Roman mind. Since people who ask those questions never do, the answers require an enormous amount of supporting explanation, to the point that anyone who asks has long since lost interest by the time I’ve finished the preamble to my answer. Which is why I’ve taken to simply saying “it’s complicated.”
The Roman mind is different from the modern one; it took me four years of study to really nail it.
Most people who play Rome II, the latest in the venerable “historical” combat simulation series from Creative Assembly, have no interest in understanding the Roman mind. For whatever reason, people who are into video games seem more interested per capita in Roman history than people who aren’t (it’s just something I’ve observed), but interest isn’t the same as willingness to spend four years of study on it. Recognizing this, Creative Assembly doesn’t try to make a wholly accurate Roman world in Rome II, any more than it tried to accurately recreate feudal Japan in Shogun II. It takes accuracy as far as is reasonable and stops, because past that point you get into a situation where your very efforts will diminish your audience.
I have no choice but to look at a game like Rome II through the lens of my education, and that might result in impressions somewhat different from others you’ve read… and, maybe, surprising to you. So bear with me. In return, I’ll treat you to something: a shortcut to understanding the Roman mind. You can find it in practically every living room in the Western Hemisphere, on the Fancy Books shelf, in volume 3 of a series bought on sale at the drugstore and never opened. Yes, if you’re ever baffled or confused by something you’ve learned about Roman history, try to remember the following, from Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization:
…the typical Roman of this age was orderly, conservative, loyal, sober, reverent, tenacious, severe, and practical… He distrusted individuality and genius. He had none of the charm, vivacity, and unstable fluency of the Attic Greek. He admired character and will as the Greek admired freedom and intellect; organization was his forte. He lacked imagination, even to make a mythology of his own. He could with some effort love beauty, but could seldom create it. He had no use for pure science, and was suspicious of philosophy as a devilish dissolvent of ancient beliefs and ways. He could not, for the life of him, understand Plato, or Archimedes, or Christ.
He could only rule the world.
Puer, qui omnia nomini debes.
You owe everything to a name, boy.
—Mark Antony
As admirable and well-received as Shogun II was, Rome II is divisive and mysterious. To my eyes the game isn’t as bad as some have implied, and it’s far from the worst Total War game (if video games were Roman defeats, the plodding and over-ambitous Empire: Total War would be Arausio), but no one has called it the best. Superior (in some ways) to the first Rome, inferior (in others), mostly I think it’s disappointing not because of anything it does, but because of the many things it fails to do.
Much of what bothers me isn’t what bothered most other people. I have not found it unbearably buggy, though I suspect bugs behind the scenes, where subtle things happen that aren’t supposed to. On my mid-range machine, it runs just fine with the graphics cranked up to optimus maximus. Other reviews complain that you have little to do in early turns and spend a lot of time ending them; I have not experienced this. A couple friends and I played as the Gallic Averni for like twelve hours straight and had plenty to do each turn, even though this faction starts with just a single region to work with.
What I dislike is the tenacious failure to fix some things that should have been fixed four or five Total War games ago, plus the odd strategic shortcomings, poor information flow, sizable gaps in places where things ought to be clearly explained, major strategic elements (I’m looking at you, faction management) that are semi-functional at best, and a fair amount of Roman History Degree stuff that getting right would’ve been just as easy and would have certainly made for a far better game. Mostly it does not make me feel very Roman, it does not make me feel like I’m guiding a civilization whose sole capability on this earth is to rule the world. Rome II doesn’t do that, nor did Rome I. But do I think Rome II is bad? No, not really. It’s absolutely not the game I wish it were, but it’s okay, one that will while away a lot of my hours in coming weeks.
However, it’s not one I recommend you buy, because “not bad” isn’t the same as good.
Total War has always been an RTS series at heart, which stacks the deck against it to some degree. It is not a political simulation on the level of Crusader Kings 2 or Europa Universalis, two games that eschew battlefield granularity in favor of shockingly complex political machinations. They also show us that the more complex a simulation you build, the faster your “casual” audience is going to fall away. Those who’ve undertaken to learn those games enjoy them, but the curve is unbearably steep, and once you do understand, you inevitably wish for… well, for some of the Total War tactical content. I believe there’s still a best of both worlds to be made, and for selfish reasons I’d like to see it set in the classical period which I actually know something about and would therefore feel at home, but Rome II is not it and to my knowledge no developer has come close.
Carthago delenda est!
Carthage must be destroyed!
—Practically every Roman politician of the period, but mostly Cato the Censor, to the point where it got really irritating and people would basically “yeah yeah” him whenever he wrapped up a speech with it, in fact I bet probably the main reason they destroyed Carthage so utterly was to stop Cato saying this line
It’s best to play your first campaign game as the Romans, despite the mouth-watering array of other choices. This is Rome: Total War and it’s heavily geared toward the descendants of Aeneas. It’s not Suebi: Total War or Macedon: Total War, and non-Roman playable factions still use Roman tech trees, Roman tactics, and Roman governance – the first wall-breaker you’re going to encounter.
Campaigns start in 272 BC, a very interesting time for Rome. Its star is rising, but nothing is guaranteed, and the game opens with the Romans already fighting their Etruscan neighbors. Greece has a strong foothold in southern Italy; barbarian tribes mill in the foggy north. But the greatest danger looms across the Mediterranean, where the mighty African nation of Carthage is at its apogee. For the next 150 years, if you live on the Med, you will be at war.
Rome II has a strategic quirk that makes a lot of sense but takes a lot of getting used to. In most games (think Civilization), control of cities is what matters. In Rome II, it’s regions. Each has a settlement, and three or four regions make up a province, but the settlement itself is less strategically important than the whole of the territory it’s part of. Cities happen to be where you build buildings, and control of them indicates who controls their region, but it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking in terms of cities when you need to think in terms of provinces: armies muster and reinforce in regions under your control, not (necessarily) in cities; income and happiness are calculated across the province rather than on a settlement-by-settlement basis, meaning a clever player can mess with neighbors who share regions within a contested province.
It’s a good system somewhat hobbled by simplifications elsewhere in the game: you set taxes nationally, for example; you can exempt a province from taxation but can’t tax at different levels based on provincial wealth or loyalty or ability, limiting mid-level provincial tactics. As such it mostly is something you have to get used to rather than something you can use to your advantage. The same problem exists with military maneuvers at the strategic and tactical level.
On the lusciously rendered campaign map, units are limited to narrow, predefined passages surrounded by impenetrable landscape. This Total War mainstay is especially bothersome in Rome II, particularly given the huge pre-release marketing blitz reminding players of Hannibal’s Alpine traversal during the Second Punic War. The Carthaginian general took a massive army over the Alps into Italy, a feat so utterly suicidal that the Romans had never even paused to consider it. Hannibal paid a high price: of 40,000 heavy infantry, 12,000 heavy horse, several hundred elephants, and about 75,000 auxiliaries and noncombatants, more than half were lost to falls, freezing, and avalanches. Those who made it materialized in northern Italy and thundered down on undefended Roman positions, leading up to the colossal Roman defeat at Cannae, one so devastating that if Hannibal had marched on Rome itself instead of bumbling around Italy for a further fourteen years, he’d have destroyed the Republic in a stroke and rewritten the whole of western civilization in the Carthaginian image.
In Rome II you can cross the Alps in less than a turn.
There is no way to do what Hannibal did because the Alps – and plenty of other geography, including plain old forests – are simply impenetrable except where the game allows you to go.
Stuff like this takes the oomph out of strategy. Hannibal was a smart man. He knew the price and crossed the Alps anyway, because the potential advantage was so huge. Even then, the logistical and command skill required to do so with only 50% losses is unbelievable. Hannibal wasn’t a military genius because he crossed the Alps, he crossed the Alps because he was a military genius. Similarly, Caesar didn’t circumvallate Alesia because he had to; there were easier ways to take the town. He circumvallated Alesia because he wanted the defenders to look at Roman engineering and tremble. He wanted them to know, at their end, that they’d never really had a chance against him. The investment of Alesia was a statement. It said to the Gauls: you are an inferior people. You always have been, you always will be. Look upon us and despair. Since you can’t do stuff like this in Rome II (or, to be fair, in any other game), you lose something.
While we’re on the bad stuff, let me relate the single biggest pet peeve I have about this game. You won’t give a shit about it, but you do get to watch YouTube.
Barbarian tribes tended to value individual courage over unit tactics, so their warriors would go tear-assing off into the fray to prove their valor. Many of Rome’s other enemies, Carthage included, had more discipline than that, but the Romans could only rule the world, and they lived for discipline. At a time when most civilized foes were still using the (horribly outdated) phalanx, Romans had devised legionary tactics such as the Maniple Switch, which HBO demonstrates for us around the forty-ish second mark of this:
4,200 combatants, give/take, in a legion. Four to ten legions in a normal army. Array your legions in checkerboard. Lock shields. Wait for the barbarians to come screaming in. Centurion blows whistle. Kill several barbarians. Whistle again. Unlock shields, front row moves to rear, protected left and right, second row to front, lock shields. Same barbarians, new line of Romans. Whistle. Switch. Whistle. Switch. A dozen or more rows, each completely fresh to the fight while the same exhausted (but very bold) enemies hurl themselves against the shield wall, and by the time the first row gets back up to the front, they’ve had a nice breather and a chance to wash the blood off.
One of Rome’s enemies – Pontus or the Cimbri I think – called it “the Roman millstone.” Back again and again, Rome just ground you down, season after season, year after year, never stopping or changing or seeming any the worse for wear after a defeat. And for all that Rome II does well, it misses an ineffable Roman-ness. Most gamers may not be bothered by that, but I guarantee all strategy buffs are bothered by this – speaking from a position of knowing how Roman formations worked it’s rather infuriating to order an attack and see my cohorts assemble into the “globby mishmash” formation:
Creative Assembly worked so hard, in so many ways, to capture certain elements of historical accuracy in Rome II. So why exactly, after like seven Total War games, can they still not get formations right? Why does every battle devolve into a bunch of dudes just sort of milling around, not fighting as a unit if they’re fighting at all? Why don’t the Romans fight light Romans, the Gauls fight like Gauls, and so on? Instead not only does everyone fight exactly the same way, that way is stupidly unrealistic. Forget even historical accuracy, if you must; give me an AI that behaves intelligently. Intelligence is what the I is short for in AI.
It doesn’t end there, either: why, when you issue waypointed move commands, does the unit move to the waypoint, come to a complete stop, rotate in place, move to the next, come to another complete stop, and repeat? Why can’t I draw curved lines on the battlefield to indicate the path I want them to take? And while we’re at it, why can’t I issue various speed up and slow down points right there on those lines? Why does cavalry not do what’s arguably the core of cavalry maneuvers and wheel itself after a charge? Absenting that, why is there no fucking Wheel Cavalry button? Why do I have to manually move them away after they charge and inevitably stop to engage in melee combat, manually turn them around, manually reform the flying wedge, and manually charge again? That’s not how cavalry works. The impetus of the horse does the work and the rider knows not to stop and fight some dude on the ground.
These (patchable) issues represent the most significant granular problem with Rome II: it doesn’t matter whether you’re playing as the Romans or the Bactrians, the fundamentals of historical strategy don’t work because a retarded toilet brush is Stephen Hawking compared to Creative Assembly’s asinine AI and pathing. And this has gone on, game to game, for years.
And you know, I freely admit I’m more forgiving of it in, say, Shogun II, because I know fuck-all about how Medieval Japanese warfare worked. Maybe they did stand around waving their katanas, never repositioning, never moving to the front or rear or retiring because they’re tired versus running because they’re losing. But you give me this in the classical period, which for reasons still befuddling to my parents I actually know something about, and it breaks the crap out of the suspension of disbelief.
Marmoream se relinquere, quam latericiam accepisset
He found a city of bricks and left a city of marble.
—Suetonius, describing Augustus Caesar
I’m reminded of a line in Apollo 13, when Ed Harris’s character says, “let’s look at this from a systems perspective. What do we have on the spacecraft that’s good?”
And he’s met with dead silence. Nobody knows what still works, because the spacecraft has already broken in a way that is supposed to be entirely impossible.
So what do we have in Rome II that’s good?
A lot, actually, and therein lies some of my frustration and also my hope for a turnaround the likes of which the Romans were never able to pull off after Manzikert. First and foremost, it passes the Strategy Test. I’ve spent hours and hours playing, turn after turn, despite the maddening flaws described above. If you play longer or later than you should, that’s a passing score on the Strategy Test.
I’ve learned to follow the bizarro use of tooltip popups for key information. I’ve learned to roll with the frustrating insistence on applying dozens of often contradictory traits and qualities to my commanders (one general is both a sadist and a genteel administrator; another drinks too much and doesn’t drink; all of them have about a dozen hangers-on conferring various stupid bonuses, but not one of them has gotten married).
I’ve learned to accept that someone wrote a HUGE and largely correct encyclopedia explaining the difference between Hastati and Principes, breaking down the fundamentals of the Marian military reforms, but that nowhere does the game explain how to improve other cultures’ affinity towards yours. It’ll tell you why a trireme is useful but it won’t tell you how to get the God damned Athenians to agree to a trade deal.
And all of this, all these turn-offs, are sublimated, because it passes the Strategy Test, the tried-and-true method of judging quality in a turn-based game: do you look up and realize it’s three in the morning? Do you often think just one more turn? If so, it passes. And it does.
It’s also beautiful, simply beautiful, and I know we’re supposed to be “above” graphics but the graphics are lovely. Irritating as my brain-dead cavalry may be, it’s thrilling to watch them thundering down on a hapless mob of stick-wielding civilians press ganged into defending their town. It’s breathtaking to stage a great naval battle at dawn, the glassy surface of the Mediterranean reflecting the orange sunrise, to see the cruel underwater ramming beaks just below the waves, to watch marines hop around to shake the sleep from their minds before the battle is joined. During battles, most of your time is going to be spent looking at dots – it’s necessary to be zoomed out to get the whole picture. But you will regularly treat yourself to a serious zoom-in to see what’s going on in the regular soldier’s sandals. The first Rome was amazingly detailed in this, and they’ve only gone farther with it. Of course, perhaps some of that attention would’ve been better spent on artificial intelligence, since it’s impossible and undesirable to play the game zoomed in so far you can see a legionary’s facial stubble, but it’s cool that you can.
Veni, vidi, fuit ista destituta
I came, I saw, I was kind of disappointed
—Steerpike
Have you heard of Pharsalus? It was the decisive battle between Julius Caesar and his frenemy Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. The Caesarian victory broke Pompey’s back (figuratively) and ended most of the organized resistance against his government. Given how important it was, it’s natural to assume that the Battle of Pharsalus was this huge epic thing with all kinds of heroics and stuff.
Pharsalus was over in less than an hour. It’s unlikely that Pompey was even in command. Militarily it was dull as dust. The battle didn’t end the civil war, but it ended the civil war, if you know what I mean; sometimes Very Big Things end with a fizzle rather than a bang. Interestingly it happened again in the decisive battle between Octavian (later Augustus) and his frenemy, Mark Antony, at the Battle of Actium. For being such defining moments of western history, Actium and Pharsalus were awfully blah. They just kind of were what they were.
Maybe Rome II is more like that than Manzikert; those two battles are more properly Roman anyway. While I find myself playing for hours at a time, and enjoying those hours (especially since I haven’t encountered the serious technical deficiencies described by others), I also find myself with almost nothing positive to say about Rome II when I am not playing. Ultimately I feel like Creative Assembly checked a Total War box with Rome II. They did nothing unique, nothing special, nothing innovative. They fixed practically nothing that’s been long-broken, added practically nothing of real note, and took no risks at all.
Rome II is forgettable, which makes me sad.
I can’t say for sure whether I want Crusader Kings set in the Roman world, or whether I just want Rome II to work the way it should, though my gut says it’s a combination of both. I want more political machination and better thought-out strategy options – even at the expense of variety in faction choices – and I want Creative Assembly to get off its ass and fix its now-unforgivably broken combat AI. The studio has issued a couple semi mea culpas (culpae) as regards Rome II; the game is selling well but general consensus is that it’s a failed opportunity and Creative Assembly bears the responsibility for that. They have promised weekly patches and major changes in coming months. We’ll see what actually occurs.
Oddly I set out to write a much more positive article about Rome II. But I can’t, I can’t even think of much that’s good to say about it. I have a section above that’s supposed to be about good stuff and, rereading it now, I see I just slumped back into new complaints instead.
I remember I was reviewing Evil Genius in 2004 and remarked something along the lines of “Rome: Total War, which came out the same day (as Evil Genius) and is a triumph in every respect, has sat idle while I play this flawed game…”
Total War: Rome II is a triumph in absolutely no respects. It’s not a disaster. It’s Manzikert… or Pharsalus, I guess. A battle that everyone expected to go a certain way and wound up going the opposite. Depending how the world (and the developer) reacts to the outcome, that’s what’ll be the triumph or disaster. But if you’re reading this as impressions and not as typically wordy Steerpikian lecture on Roman history, I can close with a hard solid condemno. It just ain’t worth it right now. And I have a feeling that if it ever becomes worth it through Creative Assembly’s patches, it’ll be too late and people will have moved on to other things. Save your sixty Denarii.
To understand some of the seemingly odder aspects of Roman history, you need to understand the Roman mind, which actually is kind of simple: the Roman was rigid, strict, disciplined, unimaginative, cold, organized, and clever only in certain ways. There was much he couldn’t do; he could only rule the world. Creative Assembly is very Roman. What it does, it does quite well. But it cannot do anything beyond the rather narrow scope of those capabilities.
Our mistake – my mistake, at least – was expecting more of it than it’s capable of. Creative Assembly can’t really innovate, can’t rock the casbah, can’t knock socks or sandals.
It can only make passable RTS games.
So, why did they kill Julius Caesar, anyway? Ask at Steerpike@tap-repeatedly.com.
1. Am I the only person who’s absolutely sure that Caesar and Christ is the greatest history book ever written? I could read that book cover to cover and back again five times straight.
2. The Byzantine Empire was ruined by incompetent administration, as you said, but the damage was done several decades before Manzikert. They key to the Byzantine’s survival from the seventh century to the eleventh was the Theme system by which small plots of land were leased to soldier-farmers who pledged hereditary military service. By basing their military upon peasant smallholders instead of a landed aristocracy they had a much larger and more reliable pool of manpower available to draw from for their armies (not to mention a better tax base), and up until the death of Basil II (who I with no evidence believe was the inspiration for Bhelen in Dragon Age Origins) in 1025, the central government very aggressively resisted the growth of feudalism in the empire at the cost of numerous aristocratic revolts (they’re one of the few western societies of the pre-modern era with a government that actually gave a shit about the welfare of the lower classes or had any real success in protecting their interests, which is one reason why they fascinate me so much). Alas, Basil died without a son and his successors became puppets of the gentry and did nothing as the core of the freeholder grants in Anatolia were gobbled up into feudal domains. The result was that Romanus Diogenes went to Manzikert with a sorry bunch of unreliable mercenaries. Treachery took care of the rest.
3. Hannibal had about 40,000 men after Cannae, which was just not enough men to take Rome. His plan was to either get Rome to talk peace immediately after the battle or wait for aid from Carthage (which never came and I hope you can give me an explanation why the hell they didn’t send him reinforcements after Cannae, other than Neville Chamberlain was one of the Suffets that year)
4. Sorry, but I refuse to believe that Caesar would ever try something as insane as a combined circumvallation and contravallation unless he absolutely had to. You show off when you outcome is not in doubt.
5. The Macedonian army mauled the manipular legions at Cynoscephalae and Pydna in the initial stages of those battles but the phalanxes weren’t able to hold a continuous battle line as they advanced and the Romans poured into the gaps. This was as much the result of poor generalship as the natural weakness of the phalanx (especially with Pydna, which the Macedonians would have absolutely won if Perseus had been remotely competent as a commander). They weren’t THAT obsolete and ideally were meant to pin the enemy in place for a cavalry charge on one of the flanks rather than serve as the focal point of an attack.
6. Is it just me or do infantry units run ridiculously fast in this game?
Working backward:
6. I hadn’t noticed that infantry runs fast until you mentioned it, Arouet, but thinking on it now I agree. What I’d really like to see is a slider at my settable waypoints allowing me to manually set how fast I want them to get there, faster contributing to higher fatigue obviously, and speed adjusting dynamically based on terrain and weather. That’d be cool! To tell the truth, I’m much more annoyed by the fact that all units sort of randomly choose whether to run or walk and constantly switch between the two states regardless of my orders.
5. The phalanx was probably still useful during the Punic Wars, but by the time of the Marian reforms it was pretty seriously outdated. In my opinion this has less to do with the legionary reorganization and more to do with increasingly aggressive use of battlefield engineering to defeat the phalanx (much like those rolling fireballs, and elephants of course, were pretty good at defeating cohort arrays, maniple switch or no).
4. My theory about Caesar’s circumvallation of Alesia is my own, so I’ll happily agree to the spirit of what you say. I haven’t asked Caesar why he went that way. But I still say there were less troublesome ways of investing the town, and the dramatist in Caesar would have appreciated the visual shock of circumvallation on such a scale. By that point in the Gallic campaign I see much of it as a personal conflict between Vercingetorix and Caesar, a battle of wills between two very different men who knew each other only through one anothers’ tactics, like Patton and Rommel.
3. 40,000 men is about 39,000 more than you’d need to march on Rome. I exaggerate, but with no permanent garrison and few good fortifications, it was hardly Praeneste… or Carthage. Besides, Hannibal didn’t need to hold it, he needed to take it, sack it, and head home. Incidentally this is a tactic I’m using more and more in my game of Rome II.
2. I always felt bad for Romanus Diogenes, who history seems to remember as a bad administrator when really he was pretty good. He certainly didn’t deserve his fate. I tend to agree with Lord Norwich on the subject; had Romanus Diogenes regained and held the throne, a Byzantine recovery after Manzikert would’ve been much more feasible. As you say, it was the loss (and failure to regain) Anatolia that hurt them most; the primary source of their manpower was gone. Byzantium seemed to suffer from the same curse as the leaders in that game Armed & Dangerous – one generation of king was a brilliant, somewhat evil Machiavellian administrator, the next was a good-natured imbecile. Except the House of Angelus, that was pretty much an unbroken line of evil imbeciles.
1. It’s too bad that The Story of Civilization goes unread because it’s sprightly and fun and easy to read. People look at that wall of pages and think it must be as dull as Dianetics, but it’s not. Not sure I could read it five times straight though. Very few things I could do five times straight. 😉
4. Oh I have no idea, that just seems like a completely insane thing to just do for show given the stakes.
3. The Romans couldn’t have mobilized an army at least big enough to man the walls before Hannibal arrived? After Cannae they began enrolling every male who could pick up a weapon, free or not.
2. It’s fascinating to read Norwich’s history which focuses more on the moments of intrigue and individual personalities, and then read Ostrogorsky’s much higher level analysis and see how differently they interpret events and reigns. Romanus I is a mediocre emperor who chief virtue is friendliness to Norwich; to Ostrogorsky he is one the greatest statesmen in Roman history (and seeing as he initiated the agrarian reforms that would have saved the empire had they been continued after 1025, I’m inclined to agree with him).
But seriously man, fuck the Angeloi.
1. Everyone quotes Durant, most people praise him, but I feel like I’m alone in thinking him the greatest historian ever. He makes everything else look like either a banal chronicle of events or a little collection of factual trinkets tucked away in a corner. History has tried its damnedest to escape from the partisanship of its early years and resemble the real sciences in the level of specialization and while I’ve no doubt that that’s great for accuracy, the whole point of history IS making sense of the whole. Even if you disagree with his conclusions you need to think like he does if you want to make sense of how we got here and where we might be going. Devaluing holism in history has given ideologues everywhere a free hand to make up their own conclusions and package them to a miseducated public.
Speak of the devil! Patch 2 reduces infantry movement speed and increases the morale penalty to being flanked, amongst many other changes. They may yet make a game out of this.
And people say smaller game sites aren’t influential! Let’s break it down, people. Arouet posts that infantry moves oddly fast this morning. A brief discussion ensues. MERE HOURS LATER we learn that Creative Assembly is on it! I dare you to find another site anywhere with that level of clout. SUCK IT IGN!
Well done, you two. I have little interest in the Total War series but this was a delightful read in spite of my non-interest.
I have a hard time determining what my favorite game of all time is, but Rome: Total War is always in the discussion. Particularly with a couple of the Mods that were available (Europa Barbarorum comes to mind). It’s disappointing that Rome II isn’t getting as good a reception, but I’ll probably end up getting it anyway. Looks like much of the bigger issues are being patched. However, I completely agree with you Steerpike, that there is a general failing in unit AI in all (and particularly the Rome) versions of the Total War series. The tendency for battles to degrade into shapeless mobs of exhausted individuals is maddening, particularly in the Rome title, because the game is supposed to be highlighting Rome, whose very military strength was its unparalleled discipline. *sigh* Still undeniably fun to play. Also fun to read you guys completely geeking out over the history, which I know only enough about to nod and agree thoughtfully, and then decide that you’re both right.
I’m ashamed to say I didn’t make time for this until today, but it’s really great. Not my area of expertise so it’s good to read a video game article and learn so many things.
You say Roman Manzikert I scream ‘GREEK EMPIRE! GREEK EMPRIE!’ cuz medieval Spain (and partially Al-Andalus) is my bag. And that’s probably why, while I’ve enjoyed Shogun and Empire, Medieval II ATE MY LIFE FOR 2 1/2 YEARS.
Then again, if you’re disappointed with Rome II wait for EBII. *snicker*
Also, Arouet I remember Norwich saying that while he was “colo(u)rless” he actually ruled extremely well. But then, I’ve only read the abridged version.
Hi MNP, welcome to the site!
The name of “That” nation is always a fun dilemma. They called themselves Roman and could legitimately trace themselves from Rome; an unbroken (if quite zaggy) line can be drawn from Augustus in 40 BC to Constantine IX Paleologus in 1453 AD.
Most other contemporaries called them Greeks because they lived in Greece (generally) and spoke Greek and acted Greek and by the way they didn’t actually OWN a city called Rome. That’s fair.
I prefer calling them Byzantines because that’s what practically every modern historian calls them and it addresses everything. But for the purpose of this article calling them Romans seemed wisest. 🙂
I haven’t played Rome II in a while because I’m prepping to return to the Dark Souls Diaries (and playing Tomb Raider), so I’m not sure what recent patches have done. Still, you’re probably right – one of the fan mods is what’ll really fix the game. I liked Rome: Total Realism back in the day.
@Kthugha: go ahead and buy it, my friend. I know your tastes and you’ll be okay with the flaws. Just go in knowing they’re there!
MNP – Norwich gave a less favorable review of him in the unabridged version.
Also, the awful framerate problems may have to do with the decision to load certain tasks (such as unit detail) onto the CPU in the new engine. In which case, this may be less of a Manzikert and more of Adrianople-level catastrophe, because it’s much tougher to mess with that part of the code.
Matt, I am a huge Dark Souls fan who has recently come back to the game after an absence of a few months (just pre-ordered the CE for II yesterday) and I believe I read one of your previous diaries so I am definitely looking forward to that. Also really really enjoyed the New Tomb Raider, so I guess you’ve got a new reader for your work. I confess I only found this site because I follow old GIA alums whenever I can because GIA was quality.
I actually haven’t played Rome II because I don’t have a compatible operating system with the game. Personally in terms of technical issues, I’m most concerned with loading times. Shogun II was fun, but the transition between battles and the campaign map took forever. I like to tease the EB guys because of how long they have been working on EBII but I admire their work. How amenable is Rome II to mods? I did a lot of modding in Medieval 2 but Empire was limited and aside from a few mods (season/years, AI cheating) in Shogun II I never used them.
Completely familiar with the controversy over names. I am a member of AlternateHistory.com which has a high number of history enthusiasts and they (Rhomans/Byzantines what have you) have a lot of fans there. I refer to it as the “Greek Empire” sometimes. I’m one of those people who like to use Heraclius as a transition point. But when discussing them seriously I like to use Byzantine.
Thanks for your reply!
Well thank you very much! New visitors to our site are always welcome. Stay and make yourself at home.
Personally, I can’t speak to performance problems in Rome II. For some reason it runs fine, even with most everything turned up, on my machine, which is good but far from top of the line – Core i7 2600K, 16GB, GeForce 560 Ti on Windows 7 x64. I ran the benchmark first thing and it returned about 40fps, which is plenty.
It does do the annoying “go make a sandwich while it calculates AI turns” thing, but most games are guilty of that. I haven’t made it VERY late into a game yet, and that problem always gets worse at the end, so it might be infuriating. But frame rate and general performance seem to be case-by-case without much rhyme or reason to it.
I think Arouet and I are of one mind in that we both really wanted Rome II to be great, and we both think it’s not. Maybe our reasons are different, but the result is the same: it’s not the game we hoped it’d be. Does this mean you shouldn’t buy it? No… just… like I told Kthugha above, go in knowing what to expect. Depending on what bugs you it might be intolerable or perfectly okay.
I liked it a lot more until I started thinking about it.
Norwich spoke at the University of Michigan when I was a student there, back in 1995 or so. It was kind of neat, to have a modern Edward Gibbon still living and talking at your school. I was a sophomore and never took much Byzantine history anyway, so I actually only just read (technically, am still reading) his trilogy, which for lovers of language is every bit as fabulous as critics have said. He focuses exclusively on emperors, which is a little narrow, but he writes with such casual British wit that you can tell he’s winking at the reader half the time. If you can find cheap copies of the unabridged, definitely go for it. I actually started with volume 3 and worked my way back, which creates an interesting feeling as you go along. I’m now into territory in vol 1 that I actually know about.
Rome II makes me want to play Crusader Kings 2 more. I did love that game, though the learning curve was simply too much. Someone find a way to combine it (and even more depth, like a system where you can actually make and pass your own laws instead of using a menu of four), glue it to a (better) Total War battlefield, and it would be nine kinds of awesome.
This is really cool. Not for the stuff about the game (I have learned enough about the game from other sites for that decision to have been made long since, although as a review qua review it was extremely good).
But I mostly loved it for the Roman history. So, for real:
Why DID Rome fall?
Why Did they kill Caesar?
And what was the deal with the gladiators?
I’m genuinely curious; I kept hoping I’d get to the end and find you have a different blog wherein you get into such issues (hint: you should do that) but failing that, I really want answers to those questions. Or a few good, lucid books on Rome. Especially its military history and development. I know at least a TINY bit about the political history of Rome. Although if you have a good one volume primer on that, I would love that two.
But really, I hope you answer my questions; you have a good style for it and the subject is fascinating.
James A: I found Peter Heather’s A New History of Rome and the Barbarians very readable on the subject for the most part, and his reasoning doesn’t necessarily crowd out other theories. Very synergistic.
Matt: Agreed about Crusader Kings 2. I have it and am slowly learning it via a mix of trial and error and youtube videos, but I was pretty surprised at some of the mechanics. Take war making. As one of the Spanish realms for instance you can’t attack the Taifas without a reason. What ever happened to “they’re weak, they’re Muslim, let’s raid them…” C’mon, a little nuance.
Hi James A, welcome to Tap! Come for the wordiness and stay for the Roman history lesson. : )
Why did Rome fall: there is no one cause, or even a single moment when it “fell,” though most consider the sack of Rome in 455 as the fall.
…it was old, so old that repairing the system was difficult if not impossible. A string of bad administrators and bad laws weakened an infrastructure already tottering from flawed policies that made true reform almost impossible.
Roman culture also always believed it was doomed. The “Punic Curse” was part of their creation myth. Even after the Empire Christianized, most people still believed they’d been cursed by Queen Dido of Carthage for an ancient offense. Psychologically there was a desire to accept that their days were numbered.
On top of that, migration of the Huns under Attila forced once-distant barbarian tribes to flee into the Empire, and nobody adopted a uniform policy to deal with this immense influx. The Legions – underfunded, badly generaled, and never full of patriotic zeal – couldn’t stop a trickle that became a flood.
455 was momentous because the Emperor was deposed and was not replaced. The city was sacked by a barbarian tribe called the Vandals, nine year old Emperor Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate, and – crucially – Genseric the Vandal sent the imperial regalia to the Roman Emperor in the East, thereby stating that he had no intention of assuming the throne himself or putting someone on it.
So Rome “fell,” and the Roman Empire “fell,” only it didn’t. The Empire had been partitioned a century before into Western and Eastern administrations. Both were Roman; the city of Rome was in the West but that’s irrelevant. Rome hadn’t been a capital, or even strategically important, for 100 years. We say Rome “fell” in 455 but that’s pretty patently untrue.
The Eastern Roman Empire (modern scholars call it the Byzantine Empire) carried on from Constantinople for another thousand years, until it reached a much more hard-stop collapse on May 29, 1453. Why did Byzantium fall? That one’s more concrete: it was Western Europe’s fault. Western Europe disliked Byzantine Christianity and so kept it at arm’s length; in 1204 the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople so savagely the empire never fully recovered; and finally, Western Europe didn’t provide aid at a critical moment.
Why did they kill Caesar: not because they feared he was getting to powerful, which is the common error I hear. Caesar held – less-than-legally, but he held it – an office that granted him absolute authority and immunity. You don’t kill someone who already has total power to stop them from getting more power.
The real reason has to do with the Roman mind.
He was trying to repair a broken system, but to the Roman mind, change is usually bad even if it’s for the good. Romans didn’t applaud innovation or optimization, which is alien to us but very fundamental to them. Reform violated the mos maiorum, “the way things are done.”
There were 34 consipirators, and if you asked each why, you’d probably get 34 separate answers, all boiling down to “he had to die.” Many believed this even though some some were his friends. Indeed, mastermind Gaius Trebonius (Brutus and Cassius were barely involved, despite Shakespeare) had served as a lieutenant under Caesar in Gaul for years and neither had any particular animosity toward the other. But he was violating something they held sacred.
There were other reasons too, none as weighty as the one above. Caesar was trying to fix Rome. That’s why they killed him. It wasn’t that they didn’t want Rome fixed, it’s that in the Roman mind you don’t fix things just because they’re broken.
What was the deal with the gladiators: Roman mind. Life was not that valuable but entertainment was. It’s true the Romans were a rather savage people, and rather violent, but it’s important not to apply modern sensibilities to ancient cultures. This is actually a harder question than the other two because it’s a much more immense, cultural thing.
Books? If you don’t mind inaccuracies here and there, you can do worse than fiction. I know that’s blasphemy but it can be a lot more pleasant, especially if you’re more interested in a general picture than becoming a college professor (just remember they’re fiction and might be inaccurate or make changes in the interest of drama). Robert Graves’ I, Claudius and Claudius the God are great (so’s the Masterpiece Theatre miniseries). Colleen McCullough’s The First Man in Rome series is a little purple but exhaustively researched. HBO’s Rome is fiction based on fact, but I love how well it shows off these small aspects of Roman life and culture, especially religion, that I’ve never seen done right elsewhere.
I can’t remember author names right now, but for nonfiction reference – “Spectacle Entertainments in Ancient Rome” and “The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans” are good for gladitorial stuff and the feeling of doom. “The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome” is good for daily life. Primary sources are great and easy to read! Plutarch, Suetonius, Livy, Tacitus. Will Durant’s Caesar & Christ. John Julius Norwich’s “Byzantium” trilogy is loooong but really fun to read.
Normally I recommend Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe, but he has a lot of factual errors in his Roman part. Plus he’s sort of an eastern-ophile and covers most of Rome in about fifteen pages.
Phew! Now my fingers are tired.
Phew! Now my fingers are tired.
If by “tired” you mean “just getting warmed up”, then I agree with this statement.
I prefer good old Marxian economic analysis to find the real reasons why Rome fell…
..which were:
1. A Latidunfia-based economic system was doomed to failure. For starters, given the horrible conditions on many of the great estates the only way that the slave population could be sustained was by more conquests, and those dried up after expansion ended after the death of Trajan. Secondly, the explosion of slave labor made it impossible for the free peasantry to make a living and they fled to the cities. Remember that the Roman economic was still based primarily on agriculture; the flight to the cities robbed the empire of its most economically productive citizens and left itself dependent upon the Latifundia. The middle class was wiped out by the extended disruption in trade during the barbarian invasions of the third century, and the falling slave supply and inability of the state to maintain the dole sent the proletarian back the countryside, not as free farmers, but as serfs to replace the slaves. Feudal societies are not conductive to the survival of large centralized states; it’s very difficult to effectively tax an entrenched landed aristocracy or persuade them to lend the state their serfs for the army. So the Western Empire couldn’t find and pay for enough loyal troops to defend its borders and collapsed.
2. Population decline. This is Durant’s favorite explanation; the simple fact of a higher standard of living inside the empire, and a higher birthrate outside it. Children are an economic asset to a farmer but a liability to a city dweller; the decline of the yeoman accelerated the spread of family limitation from the patricians to the lower classes. And the empire never really recovered from the Antonine and Cyprian Plagues in the second and third centuries. Germans were imported into the empire as early as Aurelius as farmers to work lands whose former owners had died out or fled to the cities or become serfs of powerful landowners, and the empire failed to assimilated them into Roman culture.
3. Persistent trade deficits between Italy and the rest of the Empire. Politically Italy was the Empire’s primary political base to the very end. The problem with Italy was that it never developed much industry despite the flight of the free peasantry to the city slums, which in our time is the perfect scenario for sweatshop labor. Italy made its money by robbing it from its conquests in the East, but eventually the Eastern provinces recovered and precious metals flowed back to their origin through trade.
And I will add the following non-economic problem of
4. The failure to respond to the Marian reforms. Not only did the empire never come up with an effective long term method of peaceful succession, they never even solved the issues that brought down the Republic. From Marius onward the army was a professional force depending upon its generals to obtain their pay and severance allotment of lands. The success of Augustus merely papered it over and convinced everyone that the problem had been solved. It had not. The economic interests of the troops repeatedly undermined their loyalty to the state.
The Eastern empire escaped from most of these problems because of its better developed urban economy until the early seventh century, at which point it saved itself from destruction by completely remaking its social system.
Hey, you should check out the upcoming mod Europa Barbarorum 2 for medieval 2 total war. I’m not sure if it would be your taste exactly, but it is an attempt to create a historically accurate ancient conversion and has been in the works for years now.
Also, interesting and fun read, thanks!
You can find info on the mod here
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?454-Europa-Barbarorum-II