Imperial Civil War vs. Republic at War?

[Pentastar Enforcer]

Hi folks, just downloaded Republic at War and I'm going to attempt to start seriously playing it now. I've played plenty of ICW and have gotten extremely used to how it works. What are some of the ups and downs between the two? How are they different other than the more than obvious Era differences, etc. including popularity and what not.

I noticed that they have made it so you can have more platoons of units on planets past 10, which has been a problem for ICW for a while now I think? Don't really know, but yeah, let's get a discussion started here folks, shall we?

[RallyToMe]

RAW is more similar to the regular EAW. There are only two factions, which is really what killed it for me. The battles are a little larger than ICW (50 for space, I think, versus 40), and units are more rock/paper/scissors counters. I found a lot of the matchups to be unfair when playing it, with the Republic lagging behind in tech for pretty much the whole game. Small ships are pretty much worthless unless used in massive swarms with huge casualties.

[Pentastar Enforcer]

RAW is more similar to the regular EAW. There are only two factions, which is really what killed it for me. The battles are a little larger than ICW (50 for space, I think, versus 40), and units are more rock/paper/scissors counters. I found a lot of the matchups to be unfair when playing it, with the Republic lagging behind in tech for pretty much the whole game. Small ships are pretty much worthless unless used in massive swarms with huge casualties.

I played with it some, and yeah, other than the models and general design, the gameplay is rather sub-par. Can't stand being constantly smashed by giant Separatist fleets on easy made it rather unfun. BTW its really easy to change fleet size for ICW, i have mine set to 250 or something. What I do like about RAW is the special buildings and what not you get from certain planets. Otherwise ICW is superior.

I honestly expected more from that popular a mod.

[Pali]

RaW's land battles do indeed have maps that allow over 10, but this number is somewhat misleading, as a number of RaW ground units have more than 1 pop cost - particularly the higher tier units.  So while it may seem like the battles involve more units, they usually actually don't - except in that a planet can often have more than ten garrison units, making taking some planets on the ground nearly impossible; there's not much you can do when a planet has a dozen hailfires and thirty droidekas that it sends at your 3 pop-limit starting ground force, which will happen late-game annoyingly often.  It'll also often mean that the AI's ground attacks against your planets are easily repulsed if you plan for them, which can turn them into a grind after the fifth time you've defended a place and built it into a fortress that the AI just won't stop throwing units at.  That said, the ground battles are still a huge improvement over the original game's, and while the just-mentioned annoying massive defending force can happen, I've had a good time trying to grab and hold landing zones with limited forces at points as well.

In space... it's got good and bad.  I don't like torps going through shields (if nothing else, too much micromanagement needed), but ICW's the only mod I know that stops that anyways, so I could deal.  It's definitely got the somewhat more arcadey feel of vanilla EaW to the space battles, and there's definitely a bit too much rock-paper-scissors to the units, but I still found them mostly enjoyable.

As has been mentioned, the Republic starts with a disadvantage in tech (in space; on the ground I'd say it's stronger), though it does have an advantage in numbers and concentration of planets.  The Republic has to play aggressively defensive - have most of your planets fortify on the ground while you consolidate your ships into a main fleet and use that to take or defend important planets (high income or special bonuses).  Else, cede space to the CIS early on.

The main selling point of RaW, I think, is that it TOTALLY nails the feel of the Clone Wars show.  If you're a fan of that, it'll be a good time for that reason alone.

[Slornie]

I noticed that they have made it so you can have more platoons of units on planets past 10, which has been a problem for ICW for a while now I think? Don't really know, but yeah, let's get a discussion started here folks, shall we?

Have they made it so you can have more than 10 actual units, or have they just added options to have units with more in them (e.g. platoon, brigade, company, whatever for infantry) which then for the game's purposes still only count as one unit.

[Pentastar Enforcer]

Have they made it so you can have more than 10 actual units, or have they just added options to have units with more in them (e.g. platoon, brigade, company, whatever for infantry) which then for the game's purposes still only count as one unit.

Yeah they made 15 the top unit cap on ground planets.

[Katarnstar]

I liked playing RAW too.

But I was rather pissed to find out that I couldn't built Imp Star destroyers when playing Republic, but the AI can (when I'm playing CIS).

Didn't like trops going through shields either.

[Pali]

You can build ISDs as the Republic, but only in the Fall of the Jedi campaign - it's one of RaW's few bits of story scripting, where researching tier 5 gets rid of all the Jedi, turns Anakin into Vader, and allows ISD construction.

[Corey]

RAW is more similar to the regular EAW.

This is what the (frankly, in my opinion, sociopathic) founder of RaW was going for from what he told me, although I'm not sure how much that goal has changed since the other people took over, never talked to them and haven't ever actually played more than 15 minutes of RaW.

More than 10 ground units

This is playing with fire. We used to have a ground population limit of 15 ourselves, and allowed 15 different companies at once. The problem is that if you end the battle with more than 10 on the planet, the GUI for the units in Galactic view breaks, hence almost every mod wrking within that 10 limit and scaling company sizes based on a pop value of one.

[solarflare]

The new team are slowly making changes to the mod and plan to fix some of the issues in particular the torpedos

[Pali]

This is playing with fire. We used to have a ground population limit of 15 ourselves, and allowed 15 different companies at once. The problem is that if you end the battle with more than 10 on the planet, the GUI for the units in Galactic view breaks, hence almost every mod wrking within that 10 limit and scaling company sizes based on a pop value of one.

Yup, this is a problem in RaW indeed.  After a ground invasion with more than 10 units in my army, if I zoomed in on the planet before pulling my forces off, the game would crash.  Had to redo far too many ground slogs because I forgot and zoomed in first.

[darthavora]

I think ICW is the better game, but RAW can be a lot of fun. I agree with the contributor who wrote that if you like the Clone Wars TV show, you'll like RAW. I love warping in a fleet of Lucrehulk battleships (although they're really underpowered in RAW, imho) because I think they look awesome in an invasion force a la Episode I. The Republic has great Jedi heroes to play with on the ground that can raid planets, bypassing space defenses, along with teams of ARC troopers. The Venator-class SDs are cool, too. I've had some really epic battles in RAW against the AI where two fleets meet in space and relentlessly assault each other and warp in a seemingly endless number of ships. That's a lot of fun. But I noticed RAW is more buggy than ICW. In campaigns with large maps there's a bug where when you get over Day or Week 100 you lose the ability to select your units in battle which means the campaign is over because you can't play anymore. I think there's a fix for this, but I haven't implemented it yet. The Republic and CIS also have superweapons in the Pride of the Core and Malevolence dreadnoughts. I've definitely been raped by the Republic AI with the Pride of the Core plus the Victory-I class SDs that can act as space artillery, shooting missiles from long distance out of range of the Malevolence and other ships' shooting range.

[darthavora]

What's also cool, is that if you've played Star Wars Starfighter and Jedi Starfighter there are unique units from those stories that the modders added  . On worlds with a Hutt Palace, the CIS can build Sabaoth Squadron units such as the Sabaoth Destroyer, starfighters, and Hex bombers and deployers. On the Republic side, you can build Naboo N-1 starfighters at Naboo and Wookie warriors at Kashyyyk. Nym, Vana Sage, and Mere units are available in Skirmish mode on the Republic side, but sadly not available in campaign mode.

The effects, designs, and default position of the screen (I mean how far away you are by default from the action) are superior in ICW, imo, though. Laser blasts are larger and more colorful, which makes it easier to see and more fun. I just played RAW last night and laser blasts are more difficult to see and the default position of the screen/zoom is very far away. Your units also seem dumber in RAW in the sense that if you leave them alone for a second they won't engage the enemy. ICW also gave most units the "hunt" special weapon so your units are you usually sitting idly around while action goes on not too far away. RAW doesn't have this same feature which is irritating.

[turtle225]

The biggest appeal of RaW to me was the difficulty.

Playing the full GC as the Republic (or even harder, Outer Rim Siege) has been one of the very few experiences I've had in EaW where I've been legitimately challenged by the ai. In the base game, and many mods I've played, the AI either has no teeth, or loses its teeth very quickly into the GC. RaW ai is strong enough (cheats enough) that it really feels like a prolonged conflict and you really have to pull out all of the stops (except cheesing with hero raids because even RaW isn't that hard). Only TR from the ground up as the Empire has come close to this experience.

One of the main problems I had with RaW is that the ai is hopelessly inept on the ground. Anyone who has played the mod knows how tough the ai is in space so as the Republic, any hope of survival involves consolidating your space forces around the Core worlds and abandoning space in the outer rim. However, since the ai sucks in land, you can very easily maintain the outer rim planets by just buying a bunch of land defenses. By doing so, you will probably only lose Dantooine and Eriadu. However, the problem is that the ai will relentlessly (hopelessly) attack the rest of the outer rim planets (looking at you Tatooine) and it just takes forever to deal with.

Another problem I had with the mod was the lack of interesting GC scenarios. The 2 full GC's are essentially identical, Outer Rim Siege just eliminates the core and puts a couple extra venators on Kamino but otherwise the planet/unit distribution is the same. Core Assault just doesn't really work because you can (have to) cheese it as the Republic and just steam roll as the CIS.

Overall I consider TR to be a much better mod, but I still really enjoyed RaW.