Time Commanders: The battle of Cannae - 3/3

Time Commanders is a series of programmes made by Lion TV for BBC Two that ran for two seasons from 2003 to 2005.
It uses an edited version of the game engine behind the real-time strategy game Rome: Total War by the Creative Assembly to recreate famous battles of the ancient world. The battles are replayed by 4-player teams from diverse backgrounds. The teams are unfamiliar with computer games, to make sure their gaming skills do not influence their success. After a brief introduction of the battle, including an overview of military units, terrain and available forces, the players have to develop a strategy and then deploy their forces. Two of the players are selected as generals, who will direct the battle and have access to a strategic map. The other two players are designated lieutenants, the units are indirectly controlled by the lieutenants, who issue commands to program assistants, who in turn use the game interface to control the units.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• time
• commanders
• rome
• total
• war
• ancient
• famous
• battles
• hannibal
• carthage
• game

[rugbart11]

lol I love how one of the proffessionals pushes troops in neatly and the other one just chucks them everywhere.

[PrUnEJuIcEtHeThIrD]

@Arjakuru Well the problem is that real generals know what historically would've worked. So any real general would know about the double-envelopment strategy and that it would work well against the Romans.

[MrMyers758]

Anyone else realise that the historians where the ones playing the Romans?

[guilemaster147]

@TheWillSter57 I dunno man, Shogun 2 is really great, definitely the best one so far. Medieval 2 is right behind it in my opinion.

[MrMyers758]

I hope that senior lecturer is still at Sandhurst when I get there!

[SgtAndrewM]

@jeevesthepunk its a great game.

[TheWillSter57]

@petkol yeah awful micro by them

[TheWillSter57]

@jeevesthepunk it is really good, i would get it before any other of the TW games

[jeevesthepunk]

Is this game (RTW) any good? I've never played any RTS games before, is it a good place to start?

[Dbirkin1]

All the time I am thinking...your horses ..what about your horses?! Make them do something..they are coming at you with spears ffs...run..skip...jump...fly..­.do something......and now they're dead

[rulercoo]

Hannibal's tactics don't work in RTW. First, there is no gradual pullback. Second, It is designed to be played fast, each battle only lasting 10~15 mins. This means No matter what you do, Carthage army will be broken before cavalry can envelope Grand Roman Army. in this clip Roman army was clearly controlled by another gamers, there is no way they will engage supririor carthage cavalry with pure cavalry. RTW AI is stupid, but they know how to count.... tad bit disappointed.

[rulercoo]

So fake.... They should have put that glib 'professional' guy at commanding position and tell him to do what he bragged about. In ROTW, armies cannot step backward(they should turn around to move backwards) which means once you draw back from the battling front Carthage infantry is slaughtered.

Any people who read some history can explain Hannibal's tactics as that prof guy did. The problem is, how the hell is he going to hold Rome infantry when gradually pulling back simply doesn't work in TW?