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which is about making your philosophers and scientists excellent and thereby making other future developments easier. Some allow new troops – for example, the move from hoplites to pike phalanx – others are social, such as ‘illumination’. Each faction has its own technological and social development tree. A simple mechanism that gives the feel of the computer game as you have to decide how much to invest in your regions versus into armies.Ģ.
#TOTAL WAR ROME 2 HOSTS GAMES VERSION UPGRADE#
So in the game, you can invest to upgrade a region’s value – so they grow – and they get easier to defend with thicker walls as a result. A board game cannot be so detailed, but I am sure everyone found, like me, that there was a general pattern to them. In R:TW you invest in markets, universities, etc. Regions are rated for tax income in millions of denarii. SH: You can probably tell that I love R:TW so I have tried to capture all of them, but in a simple way each time. What elements of the original videogame have you tried to capture in the board game? Indeed, it is rare you don’t have a vested interest, so you find much banter where the non-fighting players are groaning or encouraging people to throw skulls! Tough tactics: These are the best strategy board gamesīetter generals mean that you get to see a few enemy cards before you choose what to put against them, and then you can add a skirmisher or artillery card to a play.Įven in the StratPlay version, you get really interesting decisions and 2-3 minutes of fun that every player wants to watch. Go to fight in the Alps without any terrain troops and you will be in trouble. On each card are different dice for fighting in terrain, so pikes would get only a ‘black’ dice. Each region has a terrain level from zero to four, and the first fights have to be in terrain up to that level. Then we have simple, but interesting, ways to bring in other key features. A fast-play battle – which we call StratPlay – will be up to 8 sets of dice rolled against each other. So, for instance, some pikemen may get a ‘red’ dice against troops but have a effect of ‘cancelling any damage from cavalry’, as the long spears keep them at bay. Players play cards against each other blindly, and the card shows the dice rolled against an enemy. SH: The game uses my proven system from MeG, which is based on a set of coloured dice called the skull dice. But each action is simple, so a turn moves rapidly through phases, and each phase goes round the board so you are rarely quiet for long. So anyone who loves R:TW will immediately see that it builds on all the main themes. You end with a spending phase where you buy troops, upgrade towns, seek technological developments, or save money for future use. You then have two campaigning seasons, which keeps the focus nicely towards the military conquest, supported by the economics and development. Phase 2 is the tax collection phase where you get money from your regions. Phase 1 is the agent phase where you do things with your two agents. The turns are quite interactive between players, as they circulate through phases.
#TOTAL WAR ROME 2 HOSTS GAMES VERSION HOW TO#
You then fight battles using card-based armies and we have two levels of how to do that, just as in R:TW – a fast resolution version and a ‘play battle’ version.Īnyone who loves R:TW will see it builds on all the main themesĭesigner, Total War: ROME: The Board Game All of these are in a simple form that allows a rich tapestry of options for the players. You can upgrade your villages, towns, and cities your agents can create alliances, trade or cause trouble for opponents you spend to get technological developments, and you spend to build armies and navies. SH: You do all the non-battle things in R:TW in a simplified way. How does the game play – what will players be doing turn-to-turn? In testing so far, we are finding it works really well and you get a pacey game in about 3 hours to a conclusion. Then MeG cuts in to provide a slick combat mechanism when armies meet. My aim was to produce a fast-moving board game where you keep the feel of all the things you do in R:TW, but with simple high-speed mechanisms so the game moves at pace. Simon Hall: It’s a merger of two much-liked entities: a) the components and feel of Rome: Total War, which I love, and b) the mechanisms and historical realism from my Mortem et Gloriam tabletop wargames rules. How would you describe Total War: ROME: The board game?