Grats on beating him. I wasn't able to do it. He had the 5k or so units all on Rome. Rome was very far from my current areas of activities, so I had only a light garison there and in all the surrounding areas. By taking all of the troups in all the surounding areas, I was able to get around 2k soldiers, about 100 of those were Royal Knights, while the rest were mostly Spearmen and Militia Guards. The pope's army was way more advanced, His was made of chivalric sergents, men at arms, and way more Royal Knights than me.

My Spearmen and Militia was getting butchered in melee, so I reloaded, and decided another tactic. I positioned my Royal Knights so that they flanked the Pope's army and I put my crappy foder in the front. When the fight started his army went for my foder, while my Knights went for the pope. They killed him, then I took my 100 grouped Royal knights, and had them charge the same ennemy unit. They'd capture some, and I'd execute them. They'd panic and start runing away, then I'd do the same with another unit. It didn't take long for the panic to spread, and all of his troops were running away from my knights.

I was able to make about 4k of them run that way, but each new wave of units had to be attacked for a while before they would panic, and by the time I had routed that many, my knights were out of stamina and almost all dead. The last wave destroyed my knights and my Spearmen ran away.

Thas was a very heroic fight, but I only killed maybe 100 or so of his units, and they just named a new pope, while I had lost all the units in that area of the map, so I reloaded, destroyed everything in Rome and surounded it. :D

[ 08-23-2004, 02:30 PM: Message edited by: Luvian ]

I never use that execute enemies tactic, because it seems that whenever I do my general ends up with a vice that say something like he resorts to drastic measures whenever he's fighting a losing battle.
Doesn't matter if he's winning or not.
Otherwise I'd use it every single time just to prevent the enemy from buying his captured troops back after the battle, I rarely need the money anyway.

[EDIT] WHOA! Those lancers rock, they pretty much run down anything in a charge, I charged into the back of a group of chivalric sergeants and they all ran, allowing me to just scoop them up as prisoners.
I really should have a way to say "take no prisoners, kill them all" [img]smile.gif[/img] [/EDIT]

[ 08-23-2004, 04:16 PM: Message edited by: StigTC ]

You do.. down in the lower right corner of the screen should be a small square image of a hand holding a knife with a number right by it. The number is how many prisoners you have captured. If you hit this button you will kill all the prisoners and increase your dread or gain a vice/virtue of merciless or something like that. If you don't kill them you might be able to ransom them off after the battle.

It's not a bad vice, your general will only get one more Dread point. In fact, I get it for all my generals.

Just don't do it again if you are winning a fight, or your general will get a upgrade to that perk, it's going to be +2 Dread, -1 Morale. Of course sometimes it's worth it. I had a Max Command Max Dread general I called "The Butcher". The only role of his army was to destroy the ennemy units.

I know about that button Djinn, but it has the unfortunate side effects described by Luvian.
I just want my troops to do it automatically, so that it doesn't fall back on my general.

Ah well, I guess I'll just have to do it when it's an army that might actually be able to fight back if it's sold back to the enemy. :(

And just a bonus question. :D

What troops do you consider to be the best of each kind (Cavalry, infantry, spear and archers) in each era (Early, high, late)?

The Rome Total War Demo is out btw. Sadly it's only available from fileplanet so far, with a huge download queue.

I tried my luck getting from a p2p program. If all goes well my download will be complete in 2 hours.

Edit: I found a website with a Direct download link and I'm downloading at 260ko/sec ! I'll test it when it's complete in 10 mins and post the link here if it work.

Edit 2: Here are the Minimum System Requirements for Rome Total War:


English version of Microsoft(r) Windows(r) 98SE/ME/2000/XP

Pentium(r) III 1.0GHz (1000MHz) or Athlon(tm) 1.0GHz (1000MHz) processor or higher

256MB RAM

8x Speed CD-ROM drive (1200KB/sec sustained transfer rate) and latest drivers

300MB of uncompressed free hard disk space

100% DirectX(r) 9.0b compatible 16-bit sound card and latest drivers

100% Windows(r) 98SE/ME/2000/XP compatible mouse, keyboard and latest drivers

DirectX(r) 9.0b

3D hardware Accelerator Card Required - 100% DirectX(r) 9.0b compatible 64MB Hardware Accelerated video card and the latest drivers.

Eidt 3: The file is working. Here's the link to it. The website is in french, but the demo in english http://www.clubic.fr/t/jeux/demo/829.html

It's the first Download link.

[ 08-23-2004, 08:26 PM: Message edited by: Luvian ]

Great! Thanks for that link, Luvian. Downloading it right now. [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

This is gonna be sooooo cool! :D

Played the demo, it's totally awesome. Oh man this game is going to be great. it runs better for me than Medieval does! :D

I've just started to download it now, gee it's a big file. [img]graemlins/wow.gif[/img] Thank goodness I'm downloading at 200Kb/sec - it'll only take about 10 mins. I have a feeling my video card won't be up for it...I've only got a MX400...

[ 08-24-2004, 01:10 AM: Message edited by: Memnoch ]