what link???

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=253976
sorry

I've given up on Total War ever since the Empire:Total War debacle. I think the upcoming Shogun 2:TW is a significant step backward from the complexity attempted in E:TW.

The mods are the only thing that make those games worth playing. They make the games what they should have been from the beginning.

I have bought Empire:TW, but haven't played it. What's wrong with it? I've looking for the Third Age mod, I play SS4.1 (no Kingdoms).

Yes, without mods, these games wouldn't be anywhere near as popular.

heh, I'm still hanging around on RTW, which is a great game with an incredibly annoying bug - every now and then when processing nations it gets to the rebels, crashes my computer and corrupts my save game.

Figle, the med II / kingdoms mods are the best thing in total war world- For euro med warfare fans - Stainless steel for middle east for Broken C resent, for LOTR fans- Third Age. Europa Barbarorum is a popular mod for Rome
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=31

Does one need Kingdoms for Third Age?

Playing the mods is like playing a totally different game that only has some graphical similarities. Unfortunately, the mods do have limits although they do push them tremendously. I preferred Stainless Steel for MTW2 as the total all-around mod.

I started playing RTW about a week ago, but I got to say, I'm already tired of the campaign. Maybe I should try out different factions or a different difficulty (I hear it was a waste of my time to start on Medium), but it's the same siege battles over and over. =/

Yeh, I play it for two completely different games.
I do the campaign on the hard settings (can't remember what they call it), but rarely even bother with the battles - most of the time I just autoresolve them. Infact, the only times I fight them personally are generally when I've sent a general on his own from city-city, he's been ambushed and I want to make sure he survives.
However, hands down the best part of the game is playing the massive battles. For that I tend to use the custom battles or scenario's options to give a decent fight (and I'll admit I'm not great: comfortably win on medium, but going up it becomes more hit&miss).
I would agree though, playing the main campaign for battles is a bad idea - after all if you get a decent battle then you've gone wrong with your campaign anyway since if at all possible you should always be entering battles you can't loose.

But auto-resolve usually leads to too many casualties, even in cases of WTF?

Maybe, but its arguably more realistic. As I said, I don't enter fair battles on the campaign anyway - and indeed I don't normally declare war on Rome when playing a faction: they normally declare war on me!

Patches really help with AI stupidity on the campaign map. With M2, if battles are put on a harder setting, the enemy becomes (marginally smarter).
While I see what you're getting at with realistic; if I'm storming a city, I'm not likely to send my artillery to storm it, yet auto resolve has them taking casualties.

And the enemy aren't going to do anything about it when you have a catapult attacking?
I see your point, must admit I never read the reports too carefully and yes, if I have very important units in an army I will lead the fight personally.

For the campaign, I often find myself having to massacre my own population because in RTW no matter what you do over time the population still grows, and so squalor increases.

I just got (as a birthday present) Napoleon - Total War, and I haven't played any othe TW game since Rome.

Anything I might find substantially different?

As a side note, damn you, Steam, it's telling me the CD Key of the package I just opened is in use...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY XAPI :D :D

Well, given the age of Rome, I expect Nap will be very different indeed.

Happy fucking Birthday dude
a song for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaiJhYjbWe8