The game campaign also includes 4 episodes of training, in which we have to play as the legate of Caesar. In order not to lose all the first missions, we advise you to complete the training in advance: in it you will receive primary skills. It is surprising that all the missions described in the game were found in the personal diary of Guy Julius Caesar "Notes". Here are all the campaigns from the conquest of Gaul to the end of the war in Rome, where Caesar defeated the sons of Pompey.
The series of missions continues if you can complete the next episode on one of three difficulty levels. Transitions between missions are shown in cut-scenes or chronological sketches of video format. Separately, the developers dedicated several missions to Mark Licinius Crassus, because his name is closely associated with Guy Julius Caesar in historical reference books.
The higher the difficulty level, the more units the enemy will receive and you at the beginning of the battle. The gameplay is no different from the rest of the games in the turn-based strategy series. Management takes place in detachments of units, similar in abilities, skills and name.
Individual units have no health, because it is reflected through the state of the entire squad: the fewer living units left in the squad, the lower the health of the entire squad. By comparison, the Barbarians, a general amalgamation of Gaul, Celt and Germanic tribes, are completely different, being strong, fast and prone to rushing in en masse.
Whereas Roman leaders can make use of a number of special formations, the Barbarian chief can employ skirmish tactics, or simply command his troops to shout a lot as they rush into the fray. The Egyptians are, as you would expect, somewhere between the two extremes, with perhaps a greater emphasis on ranged and cavalry combat. Apart from the different sides and the tactics that they specialise in, Praetorians also introduces a number of unique and interesting units.
The backbone of any army is its rank and file grunts, but in Praetorians they also double a to es or fotress. Instead of going through the palaver of guiding a lone cavalry unit across the map to lift the fog of war, you have scouts that are accompanied by animals that can be used to scope out the land ahead.
Clearly inspired by the cinematic classic Beastmaster, scouts can either release a trained hawk to spy from above, or a wolf that will pad into the forest and sniff out an ambush hiding within.
We're willing to let historical accuracy slide on this one. Graphically, of course, Praetorians looks splendid, perhaps not as wildly attractive as Battle Realms or as detailed as the imminent Age Of Mythology, but far more impressive in terms of landscape and the sheer numbers of soldiers that the 3D engine can handle.
Lines of troops wheel around the meandering tracks like finely drilled soldiers on parade, and if you care to order a group of engineers to build a siege ladder, they'll hunch over its construction, pick it up when complete and carry it to the front line through massed ranks of infantry - who'll actually shuffle out of the way to boot. Though relatively small, the maps are tightly packed with dangerous forests, scarred with rocks and awash was beautifully flowing water. March across a stream and your troops will leave ripples in their wake.
Take them though the forest and wildlife will scatter, with deer taking flight and birds flitting into the sky. Apart from looking superb, such actions have an important bearing on the action - if you see branches swaying and birds suddenly taking to the sky, you can bet the enemy are in there somewhere waiting for you to stroll by.
Perhaps most impressive of all are the siege battles. If they make it, gangplanks are let down and the soldiers pour out to engage the enemy on the battlements. Rather than gold, iron or food, generals simply have to look after their supply of troops, which means sallying forth and securing a local village from which to recruit fresh blood.
Each village is home to around people, and by building a garrison on the outskirts of town and sending your Centurion in to take over, you can bleed the population dry by press-ganging every able-bodied man into service. Auxiliary Infantry, the mainstay of your force, are relatively quick to train, while pikemen, archers, legionnaires and praetorian guardsman can take at least three times longer to train up.
Ideas touted back when the game was first announced included horses as well as soldiers. To create cavalry units you had to find and train wild horses, or perhaps even massacre them to keep your enemy from making use of them. There was also a feature planned whereby you could take enemy prisoners and either conscript them into your front line force or use them, quite literally, as cannon fodder. Though Praetorians perhaps lacks the scope of the Total War series, the prospect of another game on a similar scale, yet with smoothly animated 3D units, impressive ease of use and tactical opportunities that even Medieval lacked is certainly one worth savouring.
But Javier Arevalo thinks Praetorians has still more up its sleeve: "The initial perception of the game is that of a classic RTS, with intuitive interface and control system," he says. Our novel approach to resource management and the effect of terrain features in the approach to battles creates a wholly new type of game. Many strategy gamers will recognise stuff that they have always wanted to do in other RTS games but never could. Couple this with the very attractive historical setting and the powerful graphics engine that allows us to portray the terrain and units with great detail, and you have a game that I believe most strategy gamers will enjoy from beginning to end.
There are many who shy away from 3D strategy games, generally because you have to battle with the interface just as fiercely as the enemy.
Few 3D RTS games have managed to get the balance right, and no matter how good the interface, none have ever matched the simplicity offered by 2D or isometric games like Red Alert.
Praetorians, despite being in full 3D, is very much a 2D game in terms of the control method, since the camera is fixed in one direction. Still, it seems clear that 3D fixed perspective is the way ahead. Of all the empires to have straddled this globe, it is perhaps the Roman that is the most widely admired. Of course, the fact that those of our ancestors that weren't fed to the lions ended up hand-feeding grapes to lardy landowners as house slaves tends to get obscured in our rose-tinted recollection.
Regardless, joining the list of bounties bequeathed to us by Pax Romana, although somewhat belatedly, comes Praetorians, a nice little tactical RTS from the same Spanish developers who brought us the Commandos series.
A game all the more timely given the unveiling of the fantastic-looking Rome: Total War from the makers of Medieval and Shogun, due out hopefully at the end of this year. The question is. Or has the announcement of the latest Total War meant that Praetorians' reign will be a mighty short one? Only careful reading of the following four pages will tell. That or a quick look at the verdict box at the end. Praetorians, like Medieval before it, does away with traditional RTS resource gathering, and arrays your troops into permanently fixed formations.
Which, in our book, is no bad thing. The odd mission campaign is like a whirlwind tour of the ancient known world. Next up is Germany, home of many a ferocious barbarian tribe, and then on to the Middle East and North Africa before returning for a climactic showdown in Rome itself. There are three distinct forces represented in the game, the Romans, the Gauls and the Egyptians, and you get to command troops from each of them along the way.
The viewpoint in Praetorians is somewhere between isometric 2D and full 3D. You can raise or lower the angle of the camera which works as a basic, but somewhat throw-away zoom function, and the direction the camera faces is always fixed. For the most part, this works fine, as it prevents the confusion that a fully 3D engine can create. But on occasions, such as when you want to rotate and see where the ladders are on the other side of a wall, it can feel a little constricted.
Your troops are organised into units of anything between 16 and 40 or so men. You can divide a formation into two, combine two smaller ones, or balance the numbers between two of differing strength. Supporting these larger formations are a number of specialised units. In every mission you will have at least one commander, useful for recruiting new soldiers in villages as well as bestowing a combat bonus on nearby troops. Physicians and druids are also on hand to heal the wounded, and scouts are there to keep an eye out for the enemy.
And, lest we forget, a small variety of siege engines and primitive artillery such as catapults can be called upon. But more on this later. As mentioned earlier, there is no resource gathering in Praetorians, which is not to say that there are no resources.
In fact, almost every mission as well as multiplayer encounters and skirmish battles revolves around a number of villages. Once a village is captured and garrisoned, you can use it to recruit new formations. While this recruitment reduces the population of the village, it slowly regenerates, in effect meaning each offers an inexhaustible amount of men.
These troops function on one level as basic infantry. With a small amount of battlefield DIY, some of the number from a unit of auxiliaries or their Gaullic and Egyptian equivalents can be turned over to the construction of siege weapons, as well as defensive towers and bndges. Terrain is all-important in Praetorians, for line of sight and for combat modifiers. Be the first to leave your opinion!
Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos. Laws concerning the use of this software vary from country to country. We do not encourage or condone the use of this program if it is in violation of these laws. In Softonic we scan all the files hosted on our platform to assess and avoid any potential harm for your device. Our team performs checks each time a new file is uploaded and periodically reviews files to confirm or update their status. This comprehensive process allows us to set a status for any downloadable file as follows:.
We have scanned the file and URLs associated with this software program in more than 50 of the world's leading antivirus services; no possible threat has been detected. Based on our scan system, we have determined that these flags are possibly false positives. It means a benign program is wrongfully flagged as malicious due to an overly broad detection signature or algorithm used in an antivirus program. What do you think about Praetorians?
Do you recommend it? Praetorians for Windows.
0コメント