need help with rome total war
 

I try to install the patches for RTW, but they dont work. I think im doing something wrong, I have the RTW cds and ive installed a fresh copy of the game. Any help on how to install them correctly would be great,

Elaborate on "dont work": explain behavior, quote error messages if any, exactly.

ok, dont work, I install them and nothing in the game changes. Its like I didnt do anything. Could it be something with windows vista?

So you applied an official game patch and it won't install and no progress bar or anything comes on screen?

Some patch program looks for the original game's EXE file, it won't patch the game if you have a fixed/no-cd EXE file.

Go to Task Manager (press CTRL+ALT+DELETE just ONCE, not twice) and see if the patch installer's EXE is still running, if yes then something causes it to freeze.

Try searching in Google about the problem, chances are someone else have already encountered it and know the fix.

My own experience:
For some EA games the installer program froze when I run it, turns out the EA Registration app (ereg.exe) caused the problem and after I shut it down with Task Manager the installer proceeds fine. Every EA game I installed, the ereg.exe file is always broken, either an error message comes up or the installer just froze.

What do you expect? A giant screen which congratulate you for installing a patch?
Try to find the version-number in the game. Mostly it's shown in the options menu.

Isn't that the difference between an official patch and trojans disguised as a patch? :P
Real one tells you "THANK YOU FOR UPDATING THE COPY PROTECTION AND THE GAME" and fake ones just screwed your PC and didn't even say thanks.

Well I fixed the problem, it was putting them in an activision floder instead of creative assembly. Thanks for the help though.