Non-Fiction
'Zulu Rising: The Epic Story
of iSandlwana and Rorke's Drift' by Ian Knight
This book was brought back from Durban as a gift for me, apt given that it features the KwaZulu/Natal region of South Africa where Durban sits. This is the best history book I have read since 'The Killing of SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich' by Callum MacDonald (1990) which I read in 2011. Knight takes a very complex situation looking at the background and then the events of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879-80 and makes them enthralling. After reading the first 25 pages of over 700 in the book, I realised I had already learnt an immense amount, and yet it was written in a way that was as engaging as a good novel. There is a great deal of detail and learning the Zulu names can be a challenge. However, by both looking from the strategic level and getting down to the story of individuals on all sides of the conflict you are really drawn into it. You learn about the complexity of Zulu politics and culture; the rise and fall of various tribes and their rulers. You see the detail of British imperial policy from London and the local initiatives taken by politicians and commanders in southern Africa. You see the experience of the massacre and receive a balanced view of how the British could have made such grave errors. It also puts in context the inaccuracies of the movie portrayals 'Zulu Dawn' (1979) about iSandlwana and 'Zulu' (1964) about Rorke's Drift; in the latter not least that the bulk of the battle took place at night rather than during the day and with heavy rain rather than glorious sunshine; plus very fewer of the defenders were Welsh. This is a very dense book, jammed full of information, but you are carried along by the writing until you are surprised by how much you have got through and how much new you have learnt. I certainly wish I could write as well as Knight. This is an excellent book that I am thoroughly delighted to recommend you read.
Thursday, 31 October 2013
Sunday, 13 October 2013
The Arrogance of Sports People in Public Places
Today I read a story that did not surprise me. It was that the Olympic athlete Mo Farah has admitted to beating up a man who apparently 'got in his way' while he was running in Richmond Park in 2009. The man was walking with a woman with a pushchair and Farah insisted that they moved out of his way as he was training along the path. The path is in a park that is open to the public, it is not a sports arena not even a sports centre, it is free to people to walk around. Farah called the police and tried to get the other man charged, arguing that he had started it. However, Farah had left the man so injured that the police would not believe Farah's version of events. Now Farah is black and the other man's ethnicity is not given. Typically, if I had heard the story I would have assumed that a white man had punch Farah and the police sympathised with the white man. However, Farah condemns himself by his own words in his autobiography. Yes, he may be a nationally recognised athlete, but that gives him no authority to order members of the public about and then to attack them viciously if they do not comply with their wishes.
The fact that Farah cannot see what he has done wrong and how he has bullied and then attacked people going about everyday business, it was Christmas Day when you expect many people to be walking in Richmond Park, shows how far removed from reality his mindset is. Can you imagine his indignation if he had been out with his family and the story had happened in reverse? Yet, the reason why he cannot see it this way is because we live in an increasingly divided society. Many people think they are better than everyone else. In part by writing this blog, I am subscribing to that view, because I feel my words are right and are worth reading. However, the lauding of sports people as with members of the military, leads to them having an inflated attitude of themselves. Yes, instruct people where they are to go if you are on a running track or keep them off a military installation, but do not think that extends to a park. It has rules which are enforced by officials connected to the park and in many parks in London even by a specific park police. However, that power does not extend to every individual who is upset that someone else has happened to choose at the same time. That is life, just get over it, do not attack people.
You might argue that Mo Farah has such recognition and status that other people should do what he wishes. I feel that no-one not even the Queen has such a right. If people are acting within the law, then no-one can censure their behaviour. Pushing a pushchair in a park is not a crime. Even if you feel that people like Farah should have special privileges, this does not mean they extend to every sports person whether they compete at a national, country or local level or are just hobbyists. However, as I have noted before, Farah might be at one end of the wedge, but there are thousands of others who see his kind of behaviour as acceptable for them too. I have written here before about abuse I have received from 'proper' cyclists in all the expensive kit as if I was contaminating their space, simply cycling along a public road (not in a velodrome or along a cycle race route). They feel they constantly have to assert that they are better. The same applies to runners especially alongside canals but also on pavements and even on roads. I remember cycling down a hill in a residential area that was poorly lit suddenly to find tens of runners coming right the breadth of the road towards me. Unlike them I was lit up, they were the ones who shouted at me to get out of the road. They felt they had the privilege to run where they liked and somehow I should know this was their route. I just hoped a 4x4 would skid around the corner and collide with them to reduce their arrogance.
There are case after case that I could cite and more come to mind as I write this: swimmers who feel that the lane rules (i.e. swimming clockwise or anti-clockwise and keeping to a certain speed in specific lanes) do not apply to them and power up and down the centre of the slow lane. Yes, be confident, but putting on your running kit or getting on to an expensive bicycle does not make you better than me and certainly not better than the elderly people you terrorise. Yes, it is admirable that you are doing some sport, but it is admirable that that couple are walking with their child or that elderly person is getting to the shops and back. I used to respect Farah. I have worked in the area he lives in and have met people who have trained with him. He seems a joyous, friendly, family man who has achieved a great deal for Britain. Yet, when running in a public space, he needs to remember that he is in fact no better than the rest of us. To assume that you have rights above that of other ordinary people is bad enough; to beat up someone for simply walking in a park is something utterly shameful and he has lost my respect by his own confession.
The fact that Farah cannot see what he has done wrong and how he has bullied and then attacked people going about everyday business, it was Christmas Day when you expect many people to be walking in Richmond Park, shows how far removed from reality his mindset is. Can you imagine his indignation if he had been out with his family and the story had happened in reverse? Yet, the reason why he cannot see it this way is because we live in an increasingly divided society. Many people think they are better than everyone else. In part by writing this blog, I am subscribing to that view, because I feel my words are right and are worth reading. However, the lauding of sports people as with members of the military, leads to them having an inflated attitude of themselves. Yes, instruct people where they are to go if you are on a running track or keep them off a military installation, but do not think that extends to a park. It has rules which are enforced by officials connected to the park and in many parks in London even by a specific park police. However, that power does not extend to every individual who is upset that someone else has happened to choose at the same time. That is life, just get over it, do not attack people.
You might argue that Mo Farah has such recognition and status that other people should do what he wishes. I feel that no-one not even the Queen has such a right. If people are acting within the law, then no-one can censure their behaviour. Pushing a pushchair in a park is not a crime. Even if you feel that people like Farah should have special privileges, this does not mean they extend to every sports person whether they compete at a national, country or local level or are just hobbyists. However, as I have noted before, Farah might be at one end of the wedge, but there are thousands of others who see his kind of behaviour as acceptable for them too. I have written here before about abuse I have received from 'proper' cyclists in all the expensive kit as if I was contaminating their space, simply cycling along a public road (not in a velodrome or along a cycle race route). They feel they constantly have to assert that they are better. The same applies to runners especially alongside canals but also on pavements and even on roads. I remember cycling down a hill in a residential area that was poorly lit suddenly to find tens of runners coming right the breadth of the road towards me. Unlike them I was lit up, they were the ones who shouted at me to get out of the road. They felt they had the privilege to run where they liked and somehow I should know this was their route. I just hoped a 4x4 would skid around the corner and collide with them to reduce their arrogance.
There are case after case that I could cite and more come to mind as I write this: swimmers who feel that the lane rules (i.e. swimming clockwise or anti-clockwise and keeping to a certain speed in specific lanes) do not apply to them and power up and down the centre of the slow lane. Yes, be confident, but putting on your running kit or getting on to an expensive bicycle does not make you better than me and certainly not better than the elderly people you terrorise. Yes, it is admirable that you are doing some sport, but it is admirable that that couple are walking with their child or that elderly person is getting to the shops and back. I used to respect Farah. I have worked in the area he lives in and have met people who have trained with him. He seems a joyous, friendly, family man who has achieved a great deal for Britain. Yet, when running in a public space, he needs to remember that he is in fact no better than the rest of us. To assume that you have rights above that of other ordinary people is bad enough; to beat up someone for simply walking in a park is something utterly shameful and he has lost my respect by his own confession.
Saturday, 5 October 2013
'Total War: Rome II': The Same Old Problems
I have been playing the Total War series of computer games, produced by The Creative Assembly, and latterly sold by Sega, since 1999. I have realised that I am not at all good at them and I struggle to win even on the Easy level. No-one has told me how to win on any higher levels and despite playing these games for many hours, I have never improved. In fact, I am now worse at the original 'Medieval Total War' than I was ten years ago. However, I love to engage with the possibility of changing history. I am utterly useless at shooting games, whether first person or third person, but I have enjoyed computer gaming for the last thirty years. The Total War games are certainly immersive. I love the attention to historical detail, even the scenery that you fight over. Naturally, I had pre-ordered 'Total War: Rome II', despite the fact that these days you really just rent it from Steam and if your internet connection slows or decides to go down you cannot play a game you actually have the disks for (hence sometimes being compelled to go back to 'Medieval Total War' which was free-standing).
Lots of people will tell you that games sales now exceed movie watching. This is why even quality newspapers now cover the industry. In particular 'The Guardian' got very involved in discussing 'Total War: Rome II', though the debate was less than that around 'Grand Theft Auto V', which always attracts attention in part for the twisted morality of the game. The Total War games, are, as this coverage shows, seen as standing above your average purchase. In part, I guess because they are bought by reasonably well-educated, forty-something men like me and to some degree we are stronger opinion shapers than men twenty years younger than us with perhaps a lower income.
Though I love the game series, I have always had gripes about them. I was not alone with 'Rome Total War'. It functioned well enough and had innovations of its predecessors, but historical accuracy was sacrificed for playability. There were Egyptian troops centuries out of their time and the Gauls had their territory cut back to provide more room for Roman factions. The Total War games always have a lot of amateur built content and many of these variants, usually free to download, tend to have a greater impact on the next phase of the series than many thousands of comments by gamers. Thus, 'Total War: Rome II' has a far larger map stretching outside the Mediterranean area right to modern day Pakistan allowing the building of empires to rival those of Alexander the Great. Territories have been made more complex and cities have more points to hold so making an attack or the defence more challenging.
Graphics are very good though there has been some simplification on the interfaces to speed things up, the images look appropriate for the era portrayed (the game starts in the early 3rd century BCE). There were issues, and it must embarrass Sega that they have had to release three patches in the first month. In part this stemmed from over-ambition as so many factions feature that running through all of them at the end of each term really slowed down the game. The patches seem to have got the game back on track and it loads up and progresses faster than 'Total War: Shogun 2' despite that having a smaller geographical spread and fewer factions.
If the game is at least half-decent, why am I here writing about it rather than playing it? Well, the simple answer is that there are core flaws in the Total War game that utterly exasperate me. Foolishly, game after game, I think they will address these. They never do and so pretty soon I ended up downloading an amateur-produced variant from Total War Center: http://www.twcenter.net/ You can find numerous small-scale modifications, but I look out for ones that redraft the game to the way it should be. I do not know whether it is worthwhile reprising my gripes or recognise that The Creative Assembly never pays attention and keeps including the same flaws in game after game.
My experiences of playing against real people online have always been unpleasant. I enjoy playing against the computer. However, in the Total War games, this is always an imbalanced experience. It is one aspect that almost every Total War Center variant resolves. Perhaps I like historical accuracy too much. I cannot accept anyone pushing a trebuchet uphill in a storm to precisely hit my troops sheltered by the trees with rocks shot after shot. In Rome II, you now even get conflicting advice. It tells you holding a hilltop is a good position, but then points out you can be shifted from it by missile fire from below. Perhaps with a 19th or 20th century mortar, but have you ever tried firing slingshot uphill and even arrows lose effectiveness. Yet, I find ranks of my troops being swept away by slung stones from far below.
I cannot accept a ship even from the 20th century let alone the 14th or 1st centuries, being able to locate another ship on the other side of the Mediterranean precisely and move to sink it with exactly the correct number of ships. The thing that angers me most is that the rules for me as the human do not apply to the computer. Of course, it never makes mistake. While my troops set off around the long way because I have not spotted a single spy 'blocking' my army's route, the computer's troops move exactly correctly and rapidly.
Yet, how come if I have a small, poor territory I can only raise a few weak troops whereas my computer opponent with the same land and lack of cash can conjure up huge, well equipped armies? If you push back an opponent and seize his resources, surely he should become poorer, but no, these rules do not apply. It is far harder and requires far more troops for you to defeat an opponent than it does for them to do the same to you. I do not expect an advantage, I just expect equal treatment. You will find that the morale and skill of an opponent especially in the early stages is far higher than anything you might achieve through experience or research. One commentator to 'The Guardian' noted that even after many game years, his Spartan force simply fled when opponents appeared, totally anachronistic to what we know about the Spartans when faced even with overwhelming odds.
As in previous games, you find that rebels in one of your territories suddenly appear with a large army with troops that go way beyond the level that can be recruited at that time or in that region and with experience far higher than your most experienced armies, making it almost impossible to defeat them. This has been a problem across the Total War games, but seems to have returned to the situation of the original 'Medieval Total War'. Rebellions are common as you can do little to please the population. Squalor from enlarged settlements is the main cause of dissent, so you have a choice of not to develop the cities or face unrest. There are a few cultural buildings to alleviate the unhappiness, but confined to the capital of a province meaning unhappiness can develop elsewhere. You can run your taxes at the lowest level possible (in this game unlike previous ones, you cannot exempt territories from tax) and people are still unhappy; neo-liberal attitudes persist here as in many city-building/strategy games.
One improvement is that your agents such as spies and dignitaries are not slaughtered almost immediately as they are recruited. In preceding Total War games this happened constantly making it that there was really no point in paying for such people as there would be a high-level assassin waiting to eliminate them the moment they stepped outside the town. Thus, you could never get any increase in skill. This was at its worst in 'Medieval II Total War' in which recruiting merchants was an utter waste of time, but still persisted as recently as 'Total War: Shogun 2' made worse because newly-recruited agents appear outside rather than within the city, making them prone to attack before they even could move.
A problem which does endure in Rome II as with all its predecessors is the fact that whilst your opponents have a 'zone of control' for each army, which you cannot march through without triggering an attack, you do not have this in return. Thus, opponents can simply walk past you even if you are in a narrow valley. This is one flaw which if corrected would make a lot of play against the computer far less imbalanced. One advantage of Rome II, is that a city can raise a decent garrison force, including of ships if it is a port. Thus, if your opponent slips passed the army guarding the road to the city, they cannot simply just walk in and claim it for themselves.
Co-ordination between different armies is far harder for the human player than the computer. You find it difficult to move two armies close enough so that when the battle comes they can support each other, the computer never has such a challenge. The reason why I abandoned playing tonight is that I faced a combined attack from an army on land and another invading from the sea at night in a thunderstorm. Such a combined attack would be challenging even today with modern technology, satellites, etc., in 260 BCE it would be impossible to co-ordinate let alone in a way that allows the armies to sweep right into a city.
The invisible army problem is far worse in 'Rome II' than any of the preceding games in the series. From 'Rome Total War' onwards it was quite common when moving around the strategic map to suddenly find an army appearing right by one of your settlements or you running into in a valley without seeing it until the last moment. I can accept you can be surprised and ambushed, but I cannot accept your spies and armies would not notice if a few thousand men was marching towards them, especially in their own lands where they would have agents and a largely loyal population to inform you. This problem became far worse in 'Shogun 2'. You could march back and forth across a forest but it was able to conceal many hundreds of men. Of course your computer opponent always knows precisely where your army is an marches directly to attack you now matter where you might try to hide.
I can accept that in forest or even particular grasslands, that some units can conceal themselves, particularly if they have special skills. However, in 'Rome II' you witness entire armies that you have begun firing at suddenly disappear, even on wide open plains or in deserts. In reality you would hear their marching and their clanking weapons and armour, let alone the amount of dust an army typically throws up, even if you could not see the troops themselves. Again, of course, they can see you as clearly as you would expect in such terrain. However, I have had tens of units suddenly appear and disappear within a few metres of my troops. Once they disappear your troops stop firing at them and it is impossible to gauge how many troops there are or who you are fighting. This is exacerbated by the fact that fleeing troops no longer appear on the radar map. The invisible forces make battles incredibly difficult even if you use scouts on horseback to try to find them. Why this ability has been introduced, I do not know. Even more than the imbalance in morale and the laser-guided artillery, the invisible army factor makes it very hard to fight any battles and stand a chance of winning.
Attacking cities is much harder. Since you have been able to do city assaults in these games, they have often been fixed towers which fire out missiles. These can be challenging to take and can wreak a lot of damage on your attackers. In 'Rome II' such towers are limited to provincial capitals but their speed of fire has been ramped up greatly and you will lose unit after unit trying even to get close to the towers to knock them out of action. With fewer artillery weapons available than in the medieval games and needing you to research to pretty high levels, this makes attacks on cities far harder. Defending the provincial capitals is easier, but defending the bulk of towns for which you cannot build walls is very difficult. In previous games you could build up the garrisons of towns and naturally would do this in contested areas. In 'Rome II' you can build only a limited number of armies and as you generally need three to be invading others' territory you cannot leave too many behind. As your empire grows they move too slowly to be able to march to cover towns. Each town has a garrison generated by its size and the specific buildings it has, but these are generally poor quality troops and certainly are no match for any rebel army that appears with its high level forces; indeed some slave revolt armies are better equipped.
I wish that The Creative Assembly would look at the basics of their games. With greater balance between the human and the computer players their games would be far better. Instead, they keep wheeling out the same flawed assumptions that were prevalent as far back as 'Medieval Total War' and have not been addressed in all the rush for better graphics and more downloadable content to sell.
P.P. 24/05/2015
Talking of downloadable content I was interested to play 'The Wrath Of Sparta' set in the 5th century BCE allowing you to play one of four Greek factions. It seemed to be a challenge because each of them has fragmented territories spread across modern day Greece, its islands and what is now western Turkey. However, it is a useless expansion. As has happened in the past with 'Total War' games, the developers have created invincible forces. In the past they did this with the Mongols and the Byzantine Cataphracts in 'Medieval II Total War'. Now it is the Spartan hoplites. You can have a thousand men attacking a single unit, throwing hundreds of javelins and thrusting at them on all sides (Greek troops were always vulnerable on their right hand side where they held the spear) and yet you will not inflict a single casualty on them. With the fragmented territory you will simply run back and forth trying to hold individual cities. The requirement of 'Rome II' for generals in order to have armies and the pathetic garrison armies means a small naval fleet can capture any old town it fancies.
As usual, play is imbalanced against the human player. Fleets converge perfectly over hundreds of miles magically. I played as Athens which is supposed to have the strongest navies, but with my enemies knowing precisely where my ships were and co-ordinating to trap and destroy them, they were eliminated in the first few turns of the game. This download game has no skill element at all. It is very easy even on the Easy setting to have lost within a few turns of beginning. There is however an additional bitter twist. You cannot go against your opponents' capitals, despite the fact that they lie close to your starting point. You receive constant warnings against doing this and severe penalties if you take one. Thus, this game is simply a process in humiliation. You have one hand tied behind your back as you dodge around the capital cities and an array of fleets and armies turn up to crush you wherever they fancy no matter how skilled your defence. That is even leaving out the usual unrest due to food shortage and squalor. I do not really understand the motive of making such a hard game. They would get the money if it was dead easy and in fact are liable to damage future sales through piling up the imbalance game play and the anti-historical approach. If Sparta had been that strong in reality, we would not have Greece but Sparta.
Lots of people will tell you that games sales now exceed movie watching. This is why even quality newspapers now cover the industry. In particular 'The Guardian' got very involved in discussing 'Total War: Rome II', though the debate was less than that around 'Grand Theft Auto V', which always attracts attention in part for the twisted morality of the game. The Total War games, are, as this coverage shows, seen as standing above your average purchase. In part, I guess because they are bought by reasonably well-educated, forty-something men like me and to some degree we are stronger opinion shapers than men twenty years younger than us with perhaps a lower income.
Though I love the game series, I have always had gripes about them. I was not alone with 'Rome Total War'. It functioned well enough and had innovations of its predecessors, but historical accuracy was sacrificed for playability. There were Egyptian troops centuries out of their time and the Gauls had their territory cut back to provide more room for Roman factions. The Total War games always have a lot of amateur built content and many of these variants, usually free to download, tend to have a greater impact on the next phase of the series than many thousands of comments by gamers. Thus, 'Total War: Rome II' has a far larger map stretching outside the Mediterranean area right to modern day Pakistan allowing the building of empires to rival those of Alexander the Great. Territories have been made more complex and cities have more points to hold so making an attack or the defence more challenging.
Graphics are very good though there has been some simplification on the interfaces to speed things up, the images look appropriate for the era portrayed (the game starts in the early 3rd century BCE). There were issues, and it must embarrass Sega that they have had to release three patches in the first month. In part this stemmed from over-ambition as so many factions feature that running through all of them at the end of each term really slowed down the game. The patches seem to have got the game back on track and it loads up and progresses faster than 'Total War: Shogun 2' despite that having a smaller geographical spread and fewer factions.
If the game is at least half-decent, why am I here writing about it rather than playing it? Well, the simple answer is that there are core flaws in the Total War game that utterly exasperate me. Foolishly, game after game, I think they will address these. They never do and so pretty soon I ended up downloading an amateur-produced variant from Total War Center: http://www.twcenter.net/ You can find numerous small-scale modifications, but I look out for ones that redraft the game to the way it should be. I do not know whether it is worthwhile reprising my gripes or recognise that The Creative Assembly never pays attention and keeps including the same flaws in game after game.
My experiences of playing against real people online have always been unpleasant. I enjoy playing against the computer. However, in the Total War games, this is always an imbalanced experience. It is one aspect that almost every Total War Center variant resolves. Perhaps I like historical accuracy too much. I cannot accept anyone pushing a trebuchet uphill in a storm to precisely hit my troops sheltered by the trees with rocks shot after shot. In Rome II, you now even get conflicting advice. It tells you holding a hilltop is a good position, but then points out you can be shifted from it by missile fire from below. Perhaps with a 19th or 20th century mortar, but have you ever tried firing slingshot uphill and even arrows lose effectiveness. Yet, I find ranks of my troops being swept away by slung stones from far below.
I cannot accept a ship even from the 20th century let alone the 14th or 1st centuries, being able to locate another ship on the other side of the Mediterranean precisely and move to sink it with exactly the correct number of ships. The thing that angers me most is that the rules for me as the human do not apply to the computer. Of course, it never makes mistake. While my troops set off around the long way because I have not spotted a single spy 'blocking' my army's route, the computer's troops move exactly correctly and rapidly.
Yet, how come if I have a small, poor territory I can only raise a few weak troops whereas my computer opponent with the same land and lack of cash can conjure up huge, well equipped armies? If you push back an opponent and seize his resources, surely he should become poorer, but no, these rules do not apply. It is far harder and requires far more troops for you to defeat an opponent than it does for them to do the same to you. I do not expect an advantage, I just expect equal treatment. You will find that the morale and skill of an opponent especially in the early stages is far higher than anything you might achieve through experience or research. One commentator to 'The Guardian' noted that even after many game years, his Spartan force simply fled when opponents appeared, totally anachronistic to what we know about the Spartans when faced even with overwhelming odds.
As in previous games, you find that rebels in one of your territories suddenly appear with a large army with troops that go way beyond the level that can be recruited at that time or in that region and with experience far higher than your most experienced armies, making it almost impossible to defeat them. This has been a problem across the Total War games, but seems to have returned to the situation of the original 'Medieval Total War'. Rebellions are common as you can do little to please the population. Squalor from enlarged settlements is the main cause of dissent, so you have a choice of not to develop the cities or face unrest. There are a few cultural buildings to alleviate the unhappiness, but confined to the capital of a province meaning unhappiness can develop elsewhere. You can run your taxes at the lowest level possible (in this game unlike previous ones, you cannot exempt territories from tax) and people are still unhappy; neo-liberal attitudes persist here as in many city-building/strategy games.
One improvement is that your agents such as spies and dignitaries are not slaughtered almost immediately as they are recruited. In preceding Total War games this happened constantly making it that there was really no point in paying for such people as there would be a high-level assassin waiting to eliminate them the moment they stepped outside the town. Thus, you could never get any increase in skill. This was at its worst in 'Medieval II Total War' in which recruiting merchants was an utter waste of time, but still persisted as recently as 'Total War: Shogun 2' made worse because newly-recruited agents appear outside rather than within the city, making them prone to attack before they even could move.
A problem which does endure in Rome II as with all its predecessors is the fact that whilst your opponents have a 'zone of control' for each army, which you cannot march through without triggering an attack, you do not have this in return. Thus, opponents can simply walk past you even if you are in a narrow valley. This is one flaw which if corrected would make a lot of play against the computer far less imbalanced. One advantage of Rome II, is that a city can raise a decent garrison force, including of ships if it is a port. Thus, if your opponent slips passed the army guarding the road to the city, they cannot simply just walk in and claim it for themselves.
Co-ordination between different armies is far harder for the human player than the computer. You find it difficult to move two armies close enough so that when the battle comes they can support each other, the computer never has such a challenge. The reason why I abandoned playing tonight is that I faced a combined attack from an army on land and another invading from the sea at night in a thunderstorm. Such a combined attack would be challenging even today with modern technology, satellites, etc., in 260 BCE it would be impossible to co-ordinate let alone in a way that allows the armies to sweep right into a city.
The invisible army problem is far worse in 'Rome II' than any of the preceding games in the series. From 'Rome Total War' onwards it was quite common when moving around the strategic map to suddenly find an army appearing right by one of your settlements or you running into in a valley without seeing it until the last moment. I can accept you can be surprised and ambushed, but I cannot accept your spies and armies would not notice if a few thousand men was marching towards them, especially in their own lands where they would have agents and a largely loyal population to inform you. This problem became far worse in 'Shogun 2'. You could march back and forth across a forest but it was able to conceal many hundreds of men. Of course your computer opponent always knows precisely where your army is an marches directly to attack you now matter where you might try to hide.
I can accept that in forest or even particular grasslands, that some units can conceal themselves, particularly if they have special skills. However, in 'Rome II' you witness entire armies that you have begun firing at suddenly disappear, even on wide open plains or in deserts. In reality you would hear their marching and their clanking weapons and armour, let alone the amount of dust an army typically throws up, even if you could not see the troops themselves. Again, of course, they can see you as clearly as you would expect in such terrain. However, I have had tens of units suddenly appear and disappear within a few metres of my troops. Once they disappear your troops stop firing at them and it is impossible to gauge how many troops there are or who you are fighting. This is exacerbated by the fact that fleeing troops no longer appear on the radar map. The invisible forces make battles incredibly difficult even if you use scouts on horseback to try to find them. Why this ability has been introduced, I do not know. Even more than the imbalance in morale and the laser-guided artillery, the invisible army factor makes it very hard to fight any battles and stand a chance of winning.
Attacking cities is much harder. Since you have been able to do city assaults in these games, they have often been fixed towers which fire out missiles. These can be challenging to take and can wreak a lot of damage on your attackers. In 'Rome II' such towers are limited to provincial capitals but their speed of fire has been ramped up greatly and you will lose unit after unit trying even to get close to the towers to knock them out of action. With fewer artillery weapons available than in the medieval games and needing you to research to pretty high levels, this makes attacks on cities far harder. Defending the provincial capitals is easier, but defending the bulk of towns for which you cannot build walls is very difficult. In previous games you could build up the garrisons of towns and naturally would do this in contested areas. In 'Rome II' you can build only a limited number of armies and as you generally need three to be invading others' territory you cannot leave too many behind. As your empire grows they move too slowly to be able to march to cover towns. Each town has a garrison generated by its size and the specific buildings it has, but these are generally poor quality troops and certainly are no match for any rebel army that appears with its high level forces; indeed some slave revolt armies are better equipped.
I wish that The Creative Assembly would look at the basics of their games. With greater balance between the human and the computer players their games would be far better. Instead, they keep wheeling out the same flawed assumptions that were prevalent as far back as 'Medieval Total War' and have not been addressed in all the rush for better graphics and more downloadable content to sell.
P.P. 24/05/2015
Talking of downloadable content I was interested to play 'The Wrath Of Sparta' set in the 5th century BCE allowing you to play one of four Greek factions. It seemed to be a challenge because each of them has fragmented territories spread across modern day Greece, its islands and what is now western Turkey. However, it is a useless expansion. As has happened in the past with 'Total War' games, the developers have created invincible forces. In the past they did this with the Mongols and the Byzantine Cataphracts in 'Medieval II Total War'. Now it is the Spartan hoplites. You can have a thousand men attacking a single unit, throwing hundreds of javelins and thrusting at them on all sides (Greek troops were always vulnerable on their right hand side where they held the spear) and yet you will not inflict a single casualty on them. With the fragmented territory you will simply run back and forth trying to hold individual cities. The requirement of 'Rome II' for generals in order to have armies and the pathetic garrison armies means a small naval fleet can capture any old town it fancies.
As usual, play is imbalanced against the human player. Fleets converge perfectly over hundreds of miles magically. I played as Athens which is supposed to have the strongest navies, but with my enemies knowing precisely where my ships were and co-ordinating to trap and destroy them, they were eliminated in the first few turns of the game. This download game has no skill element at all. It is very easy even on the Easy setting to have lost within a few turns of beginning. There is however an additional bitter twist. You cannot go against your opponents' capitals, despite the fact that they lie close to your starting point. You receive constant warnings against doing this and severe penalties if you take one. Thus, this game is simply a process in humiliation. You have one hand tied behind your back as you dodge around the capital cities and an array of fleets and armies turn up to crush you wherever they fancy no matter how skilled your defence. That is even leaving out the usual unrest due to food shortage and squalor. I do not really understand the motive of making such a hard game. They would get the money if it was dead easy and in fact are liable to damage future sales through piling up the imbalance game play and the anti-historical approach. If Sparta had been that strong in reality, we would not have Greece but Sparta.
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