Definitely Carthage. I have an elephant cavalry fetish that was never satisfied by AoE or Civ ('cause the elephant units there weren't particularly good).
TheSGC wrote: Definitely Carthage. I have an elephant cavalry fetish that was never satisfied by AoE or Civ ('cause the elephant units there weren't particularly good).
TheSGC wrote: Definitely Carthage. I have an elephant cavalry fetish that was never satisfied by AoE or Civ ('cause the elephant units there weren't particularly good).
Just means you didn't use enough of them...
Never said I did. But there was always a better unit, and they were very niche imo.
TheSGC wrote: Definitely Carthage. I have an elephant cavalry fetish that was never satisfied by AoE or Civ ('cause the elephant units there weren't particularly good).
Just means you didn't use enough of them...
Never said I did. But there was always a better unit, and they were very niche imo.
That just means you need more elephants. Maxim 6: If elephants weren't your last resort you failed to resort to enough elephants.
Urbans were single-handedly the most ridiculously powerful units in Rome (Not that I'm complaining, lol)
I'm thinking Pontus, Carthage, or one of the Greek City-States. I played as Rome often in the first game, and I like the starting positions for these factions.
MarsNZ wrote: It's a single player game, why do I care how powerful things are. I take what I want and play how I like.
Legionaries were the most powerful units in Rome 1 anyway.
Not really. Unless you think running up to the enemy, then stopping to get out a javelin thus allowing the enemy to assault you, is powerful. Plus they'd lose to the Greeks easily, hoplites were insanely OP. The powerful Roman units were late-game and expensive, you can get Armoured Hoplites as Greece from the get-go and from then on you just crush the game. A stack of armoured hoplites with a few flanking cavalry units won't lose a single battle throughout the entire game, and most players had 5 or 6 of them.
MarsNZ wrote: It's a single player game, why do I care how powerful things are. I take what I want and play how I like.
Legionaries were the most powerful units in Rome 1 anyway.
Not really. Unless you think running up to the enemy, then stopping to get out a javelin thus allowing the enemy to assault you, is powerful. Plus they'd lose to the Greeks easily, hoplites were insanely OP. The powerful Roman units were late-game and expensive, you can get Armoured Hoplites as Greece from the get-go and from then on you just crush the game. A stack of armoured hoplites with a few flanking cavalry units won't lose a single battle throughout the entire game, and most players had 5 or 6 of them.
Not my experience at all. I'm currently playing VH battles as the Greeks, and Romans (pre-marian) I'm going 50/50 on. Post-Marian I am probably going to get steamrolled, if I don't managed to get one of the three families down at least before then. Hoplites are very easy to win with if you can get a funnel situation going, but in a line to line battle with the Romans, it's never a certainty.
Am I the only one not getting worked up about this game? I just feel like I'm going to be doing the same things as in the first game just with better graphics.
I played the crap out of Rome. I guess I'm just burnt out on the period. (Even after all this time)
Define "worked up". I'm excited and looking forward to it, but not in a sort of "ONLY X MORE DAYS! SQUEEEEEE!" way; more of a "Huh, I'll be able to play R2:TW soon. =)" way.
MarsNZ wrote: It's a single player game, why do I care how powerful things are. I take what I want and play how I like.
Legionaries were the most powerful units in Rome 1 anyway.
Not really. Unless you think running up to the enemy, then stopping to get out a javelin thus allowing the enemy to assault you, is powerful. Plus they'd lose to the Greeks easily, hoplites were insanely OP. The powerful Roman units were late-game and expensive, you can get Armoured Hoplites as Greece from the get-go and from then on you just crush the game. A stack of armoured hoplites with a few flanking cavalry units won't lose a single battle throughout the entire game, and most players had 5 or 6 of them.
Armoured hoplites weren't cheap either, the Greeks also reached their best units by about turn 10 whereas the Romans continued to improve throughout the game. If you let slow moving unmanoevarable hoplites charge you you were doing it wrong. You could get all the Pilae thrown before they'd even reach you. Unless you mean the Hoplites were 'spears up', in which case it was a whitewash for the Romans.
Is anyone else a bit uncomfortable with this trend of making playable factions DLC? I remember being able to play literally every faction in Rome and Medieval II for only the price of the game.
GangstaMuffin24 wrote: Is anyone else a bit uncomfortable with this trend of making playable factions DLC? I remember being able to play literally every faction in Rome and Medieval II for only the price of the game.
Not if they're free, because I'd prefer to have factions added through free DLC if it means they have more time spent on them other than rushing factions for the release and having to spend time updating or patching them instead of having the devs work on other stuff.
GangstaMuffin24 wrote: Is anyone else a bit uncomfortable with this trend of making playable factions DLC? I remember being able to play literally every faction in Rome and Medieval II for only the price of the game.
Not if they're free, because I'd prefer to have factions added through free DLC if it means they have more time spent on them other than rushing factions for the release and having to spend time updating or patching them instead of having the devs work on other stuff.
That's a fair point, I don't mind as long as it's free. I just don't see the justification behind paying for them (if they decide to go that route).
GangstaMuffin24 wrote: Is anyone else a bit uncomfortable with this trend of making playable factions DLC? I remember being able to play literally every faction in Rome and Medieval II for only the price of the game.
Given how much more goes into each faction then they did in Rome 1, no.
The game is a lot more complex, so you can't expect to see the same level of openness. The fact that they are continuing to provide new playable factions though, shows that they intend on eventually providing us with as many, if not more options, then we used to have.
The DLC factions are likely the result of trying to get the game out as soon as possible. Im sure there is a magic number for completion of the playable factions to make the game "ready for release" then you can continue working on the stuff that gets left out and release it via DLC
Carthage! The Second Punic war was an underrated turning point in history, in my opinion. Imagine Rome had fallen, would Carthage have expanded as far north as Rome did? Would Carthage have persecuted Christ? Would the Arabs have been able to take North Africa? Far reaching stuff...
Having pre-ordered, I'm gonna go with Sparta first off becuase... well Sparta. But second replay of the campaign? Probably the Icenii - gotta love barbarian rage!
Either Rome or Sparta. While I love me some organized ranks of Roman legionaries I am also a big fan of hoplites! After that I will probably go for something more exotic, never really mastered the use of cav armies or what to do with elephants so maybe Pontus or Carthage?
The game is going to be a big change for me. I have only ever played Rome 1 and skipped out on all the other total war games ever since. Not sure what will be the biggest change, probably naval warfare as the first game just auto resolved them. There should also be a teensy change in the graphics I guess!
Now if you will excuse me, I am off to watch all the trailers again...
Its seems to be basically like I expected, good but not as good as it could have been. The Battle AI in particular seems to be as dim witted as it always has been, at least the strategic AI seems to be worth the name now though.
barbarians, probably britons. their just so simple to use. no bullshet city management, ESPECIALLY SQUALOR, my oldest foe.
also helps how like a third of all factions were like barbarians in the old game, no cultural difference always a win
djones520 wrote: I preordered through gamestop, just to learn that I'd get a steam code from them, so I've still gotta wait till the 3rd to get the code...
I was told we get a physical disk. WTF is the point of getting a disk if there is only the steam code on it?
djones520 wrote: I preordered through gamestop, just to learn that I'd get a steam code from them, so I've still gotta wait till the 3rd to get the code...
I was told we get a physical disk. WTF is the point of getting a disk if there is only the steam code on it?
Maybe differant stores are doing differant things. I might be getting a disk and the guy at the counter was just an idiot (that's very likely as well). I'll find out tomorrow morning.
djones520 wrote: I preordered through gamestop, just to learn that I'd get a steam code from them, so I've still gotta wait till the 3rd to get the code...
I was told we get a physical disk. WTF is the point of getting a disk if there is only the steam code on it?
Maybe differant stores are doing differant things. I might be getting a disk and the guy at the counter was just an idiot (that's very likely as well). I'll find out tomorrow morning.
indeed. Either way, we will probably be in the same quinqiereme. and in this case, Good luck to us both.
Argh... why did I see this thread... I'm trying to resist buying this game till it comes on sale... now I want to get it when it releases tomorrow... to be 'part of the conversation'... or something like that.
djphranq wrote: Argh... why did I see this thread... I'm trying to resist buying this game till it comes on sale... now I want to get it when it releases tomorrow... to be 'part of the conversation'... or something like that.
Give in to the dark side. Let your nerdom flow through you.
I'm unfortunately not really going to get to play it until Friday. I'm working mids right now, so simply going to get the game tomorrow is going to be rough.
i preordered the game on steam so its already "loaded" on my system and conveniently enough I'm working from home tomorrow as some people are coming to work on my house....the stars are aligned
djones520 wrote: I'm unfortunately not really going to get to play it until Friday. I'm working mids right now, so simply going to get the game tomorrow is going to be rough.
Due to the idiotic (and wholly pointless given that the game has probably been cracked already) online activation requirement I won't be playing it until November at the earliest. I also can't play Europa Universalis IV for the same reason.
Tried a custom game to see how the fights felt. LoS-based sight is an interesting concept, and means terrain might actually play more of a part in fights, and flanking manoeuvres will actually be flanks rather than trying to sneak cavalry units past without the AI simply turning to face.
That said, the AI hasn't impressed me at all. I marched some 8-10 units of fully experienced Spartans up to pretty much spitting distance of a force of Levy Spears more than 4:1 larger without them even moving. For the entire game, not one of their units so much as sneezed.
Is this how it's going to play out in every fight? Going back to the times of M2 where the player has to make all the effort and the AI only has to wait and respond, even if they outnumber and/or outmatch the player several times over?
I'm tempted to try another custom fight to see if switching around the roles works, or see if making the enemy army OP works, but then I don't want to waste my time.
One of my issues with the game is that it just looks too cartoony. The projectiles look cartoony, the way the units move aod turn so quick looks cartoony.
Way to difficult to get my game installed today. Gamestop, despite my asking when I picked my copy up, did not give me my Greek States DLC, so I didn't get the game fully installed until the evening. I got to play 5 turns as Sparta. Captured Larissa, and researched a couple of techs.
Sparta is definitely not started in an enviable position. He shares a province with Athens, and given the trade agreement between the two I decided to just go after Epirus since we were already at war. But even then, if I want to capture a full province, I'm going to have to break my alliance with Macedon and take them down.
I'm so far going to let the Spartan natural combat bonuses stand, and work on economic techs to build up my cash flow so I can support the armies I need to tackle 3 powers in early game (Epirus, Macedon, Athens).
lord marcus wrote: Gamestop didn't give me my culture pack either. did you pay for it via steam? I would, but I'm going to go to gamestop tomorrow to ask first.
No, I contacted Sega and Gamestop and asked WTF.com because Total War's webpage specifically says Gamestop was supposed to provide it to me. Both companies got back to me and said they where supposed to give it to us. So I went back into the store, showed them the email, and they spent ten minutes trying to figure out how to get me the code.
I'd suggest leaving a nasty review on the matter. If this is a wide spread issue, they certainly dropped the ball on it.
I've been playing it on and off since it released last night... and I don't think I'm going to be playing it for very much longer. The game is, quite simply, terrible, and in ways that can't be fixed by mods or by patches. There are bugs, to be sure, but the problems that are killing it for me have nothing to do with bugs and everything to do with the design choices made by CA.
The battles, the heart of the game, are horrible. There is no flow to them, no pacing. There is very little maneuver, very little reason to want to maneuver, because as far as I can tell there's little to no effect from fatigue. On top of that, the run speed of units is incredibly fast, with heavily-armored spearmen running like linebackers and turning on a dime. Where in Medieval II and Empire, units took time to approach and you could feel the various stages of a battle playing out, and a battle between two large armies would take a satisfying 30 minutes or more to play out, I'm having battles lasting no longer than 10 minutes, with most ending up at 5 minutes or less. Units break too quickly, but if you try to play the Roman game of accepting a charge and then wearing down the enemy, you'll lose half of your troops because defense just doesn't work due to a total lack of unit coherency. Romans, the most disciplined force ever seen up until the time of the game, won't hold their lines. The game has essentially been made into a standard low-level RTS: you just throw units at the enemy, you mash a few special ability buttons (with freaking cooldowns), some fight animations happen, and they run away. It's even worse in naval battles, where the ships accelerate and stop like they're tanks rather than rowed ships, where there's no feeling of inertia or weight like there was in Empire's ship combat. It takes away the potential drama of a ship lining up for a potential ramming attack and wondering if the enemy ship is going to get out of the way in time. Instead, you just click once on the enemy ship, hit the "row faster" and "use the whip" buttons, and in five seconds your ship has blown through the side of the target.
Another entirely disheartening thing is that you can research the ability to deploy Legionaries in something like 10 turns. I loved playing with the old maniples (the Hastati-Principe-Triari trio) for decades in the original Rome, and the Marian Reformation was a major event that you spent time working through and getting used to. Now, Legionaries are the 3rd tech up the first military tree... and that's it. You can deploy them before you even have the ability to field Principes and Triarii. An epoch-defining change in military history is reduced to an early-game mouse click.
The game is, as expected for a project of this size, buggy. I don't hold that against anyone in this day and age, and anyone buying a game on day one sort of expects that. It's just the poor design choices that feel like they're intended to make the game easier to grasp... but just end up making the game bad and not fun to play at all. There are a number of other changes to the game (a lack of a family tree, a confusing and very random-feeling political structure, the reduction of tactics in favor or giving units and generals what amount to magic abilities) and old Total War bugs (the usual lack of the campaign AI to accept a peace treaty) that just make the game a chore rather than something that will possess you to keep playing one more turn.
The game is, as expected for a project of this size, buggy. I don't hold that against anyone in this day and age
I do, small bugs are fine and completely expected but grapics bugs and the like should really have at least been noticed in playtesting. Day 1 patches are not a good thing either. I will never accept a buggy game form a AAA developer, better to spend the time getting your game to a ready state than release it early in a flawed condition.
I really hope that this game is widley modable, but I have my doubts. Shogun 2 isn't very mod friendly and while CA has been proactive on the modding front during Rome 2's development I don't expect the see the diversity of mods that appeared for medieval 2. This is a shame as Medival 2s mods are what really kept the game alive and interesting.
The more I read about this game the less I want to play it.
I actually quite enjoyed playing the game for a few hours. I played as the Iceni and in a few turns conquered Wales. I really like the naval and land system, it was pretty fun. Also the ability to name and personalise armies was pretty cool, I hope my Iceni Invictus ends up conquering Rome!
The game also runs well on my very low end computer.
I do have a few niggles with the game though:
* Battles, as someone before me said, aren't as good as they used to be, but you get loads of space on the battlefields
* I hate the way that cities and surroundings are grouped into provinces, even as the Iceni I manage my empire as "Britannia"
* The prologue is really bad.
The nerdrage out there is amazing. I'm already seeing calls for lawsuits. It helps brighten my morning.
I have no major beefs with the game yet. Anyone following knew that this was going to be DRASTICALLY different from Rome 1. So far nothing I've encountered in game play is different from what they showed us in video's. There have been no broken promises, or anything like that.
So I'm enjoying it for what it is. A new game, that combines the strategic and tactical levels of strategy, in a time period that I love.
ExNoctemNacimur wrote: Really? I haven't even bothered to read any opinions about it before I played!
It is quite a different game, but it's a nice change, not a weird change
Actually I have one more niggle: you can't zoom out far enough
Yeah, that's probably my first real complaint.
But yeah, there is a ton of angry folks out there. If you check the Total War Center forums, and the Total War website forums, it's pretty ugly. I'm not sure why they are so militant. I'm seeing a lot of people complaining about the game being unplayable, saying their PC set up is much much better then mine, and it can't handle the game. Mine is a touch laggy, yeah, but it's perfectly fine IMO, so I don't know what their issue is.
Ive really enjoyed the game so far, its not realistic but its just a game. I'll be eagerly awaiting an announcement on the rome total realism mod as that made me love the first game. I do wish the game did a better job explaining city management though
My only major problem so far is that it barely runs on my laptop. Lag is pretty severe and really detracts from the game experience not to mention that I have no fluid control over my units.
Another niggle that I am sure is an easy fix for modders is that all the tabs on the battle map take up FAR too much space. Granted they can be minimized but the tab that shows the units takes up a good chunk of the screen.
I think I might just carry on playing my newly bought Civ5 and wait for some fixes to come out before going back to play Rome 2...
So I got a little more play time in today. I've captured a couple settlements, at war with a few factions, and so far done the general Spartan thing with walking around and kicking people in the face.
Things I've noticed? Mercenaries are EXPENSIVE! I was running in the negative after buying 3 units of them, so I disbanded 2 after taking Appalonia and it ended up freeing up nearly 1000 denarri a turn.
Noticing more about the physical demands on my machine. I've got a 3ghz dual core processor, 1gb vid card, and 4gb's of RAM. I had to make sure all of my Chrome windows are closed to keep the game from getting laggy. Otherwise though, the game is still working decently for me.
Got my copy today, still no code for the extra factions. Amazon already has a "note" saying all the missing codes will be delivered by September 8th. I shall wait and see.
First impressions after the prologue: Oh dear, I really don't like this at all. I really hope I get used to it.
I like most if not all of the Strategy changes. I reaaallly like the Confederation ability of the Barbarian factions - fits really well, historically. I do not like how comically fast everything moves in the tactical battles, but I tend to autocalc anything that isn't close anyways, and given my playstyle the only time I fight close battles is if I have made a mistake.
I've only fought one battle on the map so far, and it was differant.
It was against Epirus, and they split their army in three, and it was pretty easy for me to destroy it piece by piece. I thought it was odd, but I haven't played any others so I can't really share any thoughts on it yet.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Got a bit more in this evening. Destroyed Epirus, and have thrown down with Athens. My control of Greece is almost secure. I'm content with the game. I don't get all the que que'ing that everyone is doing over it.
lord marcus wrote: Fixed the graphics issue on mine. and got my greeks. Fun to be had.
I set all of my graphics to medium, and I'm running smooth as can be, and the game still looks just fine to me. Can't wait till Friday night. I'll be home, family will be asleep, and I'll have a full night of uninterrupted gameplay.
suppose to have a patch on Friday aswell, but other than some gameplay problems, my game has run very well
, that said I still cannot wait to see what the modd community will be able to do with this game, I expect it to be on my comp for a very long time.
Probably because Rome:TW was the game that really made the series. Shogun and Medieval were good but the expanded map, complexity and actual 3D models of Rome really kickstarted the TW series and made it properly mainstream. This, combined with the usual hyperactive hype machine meant that too many people were expecting Rome 2 to have the same effect on the series as Rome 1 did and this just isn't the case. People shouldn't believe hype, I know that and you know that, but they do and when they do they are inevitably disappointed so they vent though the worlds favourite method of complaining; the internet.
Apparently at least some of the graphics problems are to do with video memory on high performance machines so its quite possible that people with better specs than your PC were getting worse performance.
got this game day1 from steam and i must say i am enjoying it doing what i see a lot of people are on here and going with SPARTA!!!
There are a lot of confusing aspects to the game that i think will become more apparent with time and i seemed to have broken the tutorial prologue by going to gung ho (see Sparta suits) and had capped all the provinces but to no avail and it kept saying the target is in sight (I know I just bloody capped it!!!!!) not that im complaining im pretty sure its mark strong who voices it haha oh well it gives you hints when you start anyway!
I like how it’s not as easy to get allies you can’t just go up to some1 and say OI U!!! TRADE!!!, you have to take them on romantic walks flowers and such. Combats good I like the hidden aspects of the game allowing for a bit more strategy!
I like the way cavalry have seemed to get a slight boost i see myself using more and more as compared to shogun 2. I also half like that if your unit weapon damage isn’t enough you can’t harm a unit, for instance defending a settlement from a sizeable force wiped out all the units except the "very heavy cavalry" unit body guard so 1 had 2 slingers pelting them with stones they just stood there (for the whole 60 mins mind you) wondering what I was trying to achieve! (FYI reason i didn’t charge out is i had about 30 spear men left and 20 slingers total VS 80 very heavy cav and didn’t want to lose the settlement).
Over all i think it’s good and will be playing for the foreseeable future and it is the weekend so i expect to be glued to the PC!!
I just finished taking half of Spain in my hard Gaul playthrough. I got pretty far as Macedon on my normal 'get to know the game' game, but it was getting a bit too easy - had most of Greece over to Armenia, and Egypt, with the Seleucids as a client state controlling the coastal cities of the middle east, and Sparta as a client stat controlling Sparta, Sicily, and southern Italy.
Magc8Ball wrote: I've been playing it on and off since it released last night... and I don't think I'm going to be playing it for very much longer. The game is, quite simply, terrible, and in ways that can't be fixed by mods or by patches.
I think you seriously underestimate the level of dedication of the Total War modding community. Which is, arguably, the best community of modders there is in the entire gaming industry. The Darth Mod for Empire simply left vanilla in the dust. By now, there must have been more hours put into Europa Barbarorum 2 then in the original. Most of the complaints you voice over Rome 2 features were also implemented in Shogun 2, and there's a lot of mods to fix them (unit movement, shooting, fatigue).
Vanilla Total War games are generally passable, but its the mods that make them shine.
I'm sorry but the mods for Rome 1 were crap. If you really really like having 30 different types of javelin throwers, 60 types of hoplites, and a billion provinces, then yeah they were great. But in terms of playability they sucked ass.
Magc8Ball wrote: I've been playing it on and off since it released last night... and I don't think I'm going to be playing it for very much longer. The game is, quite simply, terrible, and in ways that can't be fixed by mods or by patches.
I think you seriously underestimate the level of dedication of the Total War modding community. Which is, arguably, the best community of modders there is in the entire gaming industry. The Darth Mod for Empire simply left vanilla in the dust. By now, there must have been more hours put into Europa Barbarorum 2 then in the original. Most of the complaints you voice over Rome 2 features were also implemented in Shogun 2, and there's a lot of mods to fix them (unit movement, shooting, fatigue).
Vanilla Total War games are generally passable, but its the mods that make them shine.
I really hope they do shine again but I'm really hating the combat now. I had my first major battle and I'm a bit shocked seeing the enemy army doing a LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEROY JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENKINS from their side of the map, bum-rushing my army. They just ran non-stop.
Really, don't units get tired now?!
I didn't mod any of my previous Total Wars because I was quite happy with the vanilla version but this one is making me a sad panda.
Edit: No, actually it's making me a mad panda. I really dislike the new UI, the lack of family tree, how I don't seem to be able to have separate armies around the map without a general and the overall direction of the game. This is really frustrating and right now I consider the first Rome far superior. Medieval 2 and Shogun 2 and leagues better.
The only thing they seem to have really improved (for me) was the diplomacy. It actually looks fluid, with allies actually helping and proposing treaties where they offer gifts in an attempt to sway me.
xruslanx wrote: I'm sorry but the mods for Rome 1 were crap. If you really really like having 30 different types of javelin throwers, 60 types of hoplites, and a billion provinces, then yeah they were great. But in terms of playability they sucked ass.
Have you tried Europa Barbarorum? Is that the mod you call crap? Because that mod created the bestest, most historically accurate, most involved Ancient experience ever wrapped into a game format.
Magc8Ball wrote: I've been playing it on and off since it released last night... and I don't think I'm going to be playing it for very much longer. The game is, quite simply, terrible, and in ways that can't be fixed by mods or by patches.
I think you seriously underestimate the level of dedication of the Total War modding community. Which is, arguably, the best community of modders there is in the entire gaming industry. The Darth Mod for Empire simply left vanilla in the dust. By now, there must have been more hours put into Europa Barbarorum 2 then in the original. Most of the complaints you voice over Rome 2 features were also implemented in Shogun 2, and there's a lot of mods to fix them (unit movement, shooting, fatigue).
Vanilla Total War games are generally passable, but its the mods that make them shine.
I really hope they do shine again but I'm really hating the combat now. I had my first major battle and I'm a bit shocked seeing the enemy army doing a LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEROY JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENKINS from their side of the map, bum-rushing my army. They just ran non-stop.
Really, don't units get tired now?!
I didn't mod any of my previous Total Wars because I was quite happy with the vanilla version but this one is making me a sad panda.
Edit: No, actually it's making me a mad panda. I really dislike the new UI, the lack of family tree, how I don't seem to be able to have separate armies around the map without a general and the overall direction of the game. This is really frustrating and right now I consider the first Rome far superior. Medieval 2 and Shogun 2 and leagues better.
The only thing they seem to have really improved (for me) was the diplomacy. It actually looks fluid, with allies actually helping and proposing treaties where they offer gifts in an attempt to sway me.
/rant
Really they attacked you? Without you moving your light skirmishers with in 6 inches of their cavalry? I wish I had your problems!! But I am still loving the game.
Most of the changes that irritated me playing as Macedon don't seem so bad with my Gaul game - my "armies" are warbands going around - They are more characters than the generals that lead them. My generals dying of "natural causes" is them getting old and losing to a young upstart challenger. The weird fast paced battles? My entire force is melee infantry smashing forward in an unstoppable tide, so it feels kinda cool.
I'm enjoying the game most as Parthia. Peppering down the enemy with archer cavalry then riding them down is a welcome change of pace from charging forward and bashing face. Plus once you conquer one side of the map you don't have to worry about getting suprised.
My biggest, albeit it minor, gripe is the lack of "historical events", like Empire: Total War had. I thought it was pretty neat to know when the man in the iron mask died or when the last witch was burnt in England and such. Seems like a missed opportunity, since they have dozens of cultures and centuries worth of game time. I like a little history with my raping and pillaging!
Right well ermmmm yea does any1 no how to get there influence better as i just lost my home town to a civil war because the other houses decided they didnt like me much i eventualy gave them the spatan like kick to the face but would rather it not happen! lol also how does that part of the game work it confused the hell outa me!!!!
I just had my first experience with opposing factions in my faction causing issues. They tried to blackmail one of my admirals. I don't yet know how to deal with that yet myself.
I haven't had a lot of time to play around with the game lately but it would be nice to find a list of some of the better mods as they start to show up. Personally I want someone to whip up a LotR mod, I know that there was already one made for a previous game (shogun 2 I believe) but having it for Rome 2 would be fantastic!
TheSGC wrote: No, it was Medieval II: Total War.
Patience on the mods, the game's only been out for like a week.
I think the Third Age mod team (who made the Middle Earth mods for Rome and Medieval 2) have disbanded as well. Mods will take a great deal more work with the newer Total War games due to how they are made, its not just a matter of altering text files anymore.
TheSGC wrote: No, it was Medieval II: Total War.
Patience on the mods, the game's only been out for like a week.
I think the Third Age mod team (who made the Middle Earth mods for Rome and Medieval 2) have disbanded as well. Mods will take a great deal more work with the newer Total War games due to how they are made, its not just a matter of altering text files anymore.
Well darn. I'm just going to have to find this Middle Earth mod for Rome 1 in that case!
That was the place to go back in the day for Total War mods. Dunno if they're still at the top of their game or not, but it looks like they've already got some stuff for Rome II out.
I played about five hours and just have no interest in doing more. Not sure why.
It's not as bad as the doom criers make it sound, and the patch on friday does seem to have helped fix some issues. AI is more aggressive now, battles seem a little slower, and the turns take a lot less time.
The strategic side of things is pretty well done, honestly.
To be fair, only this last patch made the game playable for me, so here's hoping they keep on fixing the game so it stops being a beta and it's a full TW game.
So yeah, I dropped the Greeks, now I'm conquering the ancient world with SPARTA!
Yeah, I've got the steam roll going with Sparta now. Conquered all of the greek peninsula now, and starting to make my way through the Balkans.
Carthage has been destroyed by Libya, Rome has been pushed to the ropes by the Estrucans. Once I have the Balkans covered, I'm gonna cross over to the Italian pensinsula and pick a fight.
Trondheim wrote: Would anyone playing this game say its worth getting, or shoukd it be shunned like the redhaird evil stepchild of the TW series?
It is not a purchase I regret. Bit of a learning curve for me, since MTW2 was the most recent game I had played, and it's changed a lot since then, but it's still a good game.
Trondheim wrote: Would anyone playing this game say its worth getting, or shoukd it be shunned like the redhaird evil stepchild of the TW series?
It is not a purchase I regret. Bit of a learning curve for me, since MTW2 was the most recent game I had played, and it's changed a lot since then, but it's still a good game.
Ah i see, well then I may be buying it then.Time will tell if it was a wise move though
Trondheim wrote: Would anyone playing this game say its worth getting, or shoukd it be shunned like the redhaird evil stepchild of the TW series?
It is not a purchase I regret. Bit of a learning curve for me, since MTW2 was the most recent game I had played, and it's changed a lot since then, but it's still a good game.
Ah i see, well then I may be buying it then.Time will tell if it was a wise move though
Before the patch, I would tell you to stay away from this piece of gak. After patch, it's better. Still not perfect, but better. There's still far too much "consolization" for my tastes.
Here, this has to be one of the most honest and best reviews I found about Rome 2. It's the biggest one he ever did (according to him) and he could still go on if he wanted. He really loves the TW series.
And yes, I can vouche 100% every single thing he says. Remind you, this is all BEFORE the second patch, currently still in Beta, I think. Again, it's better. Not perfect, but better. CA still has lots of work to do if they hope to quench the flames of hate of their long time fans.
Yeah, just been playing the game for a day and I've already noticed the AI is wierd.
And its sooooo easy to win battles. Heck, even some of the tutorial battles show the auto-resolve meter as being "impossible" but they are still easy to win.
And they REALLY need to nerf transports. Who needs warships when your transports can just board and defeat any warship you tell them to?
Still I like the game and hope the future patches will fix stuff. Seems to be a theme with games lately. Its not really full game till about 6 months after release.
Yeah the only time I lost a battle was when one of my cities was under siege and the enemy just ran straight through my lines and captured the center. I don't like control points...
Ship battles are also broken which is a shame as I was quite looking forward to them.
My first ship battle I was fighting a Quinrieme with a Quadreime and a couple of small javelin ships.
The enemy boarded and sunk one of my small ships, then I rammed it with my Quadreime. They then rowed away to the very edge of the map and just sat there.
3 rams later they sank.
The annoying thing was, the enemy ship survived the battle. I had to do an auto-resolve to actually destroy the "fleet".
After Angry Joe crushed my hopes for this game, I don't think I will be picking this up for a long time if ever. The sickening money grab with the Spartans just really grinds my gears.
Besides, GTA V will be taking up all my game time for a long while anyways.
The patch notes for Patch 1.3 are up here. It's absolutely huge with some "corrections" that really show how rushed this game was, but there's one that takes the cake.
Ladies and Gentleman, I just want to quote the winning fix:
Attacking AI is now more likely to prioritise taking Victory Points in Siege Battles / City Assault Battles.
I hope, I truly hope this is a typo, something that happened with the previous patch: they wrote incorrectly at least one fix. Currently, my Garrison army has been able to kick ass and chew bubblegum because the attacking AI almost exclusively ignores my army and just rushes for the flag. My Phalanx formations have a field day attempting to hold the tide while other units charge in for the kill. I have no idea how they could have made the AI even more aggressive.
They should have just copy-pasted the AI from Rome.
Yeah, the AI from Rome was pretty decent. No hanging around and running in circles anyway. If they made them change up their attack style every so often and stopped suicide charging the generals I think they would work just fine.
Well, the one buggy thing I think was wrong with Rome was with Phalanxes.
If a Phalanx was ordered to move backwards, after disengaging Phalanx mode, they would move to the location fine, but after you reengaged Phalanx mode they would run around in circles for about a minute before finally forming up.
@Grey Templar - Phalanxes and, to an extent, fixed with Rome II, they tend to behave more like a real Phalanx in that the Ai maneuvers them around like regular infantry, before closing up in the synapsimos (close order) prior to attacking. The only problem is that the AI tends not to have them stand on the defensive, where their traits are put to best use - it's got them spread out far from other flexible units that could hold the flank.
I must say, having played Rome II a fair bit (And all the other Total Wars except Medieval TW 1 and it's expansions), the thing that narks me the most is that they seem to have dumbed it down a fair bit. They talk a great deal about 'less micromanagement' and more scale and to an extent the newer province system with the interactive cities is great and the map is huge - but regarding the military aspect, it's too simple. Those of you who know your stuff about warfare in general will know the advantages of dividing up or detaching your forces to counter specific threats or take strategic points without severely weakening the overall campaigns direction. A corps detached here, a brigade there, all in the effort to tie up your enemy or shore up your weak points- so why does Rome II require me to send a full 15-20 unit legion to put down a 3 unit raiding force of the enemy? I could be better off using the full legion to assault weak points in the enemies defenses, but oh no - Rome II has other ideas, and obstinately refuses to let me just send a small infantry force to put down a rebellion...
It's just little oversights or removals of previous Total War concepts that have irritated me the most. Don't get me wrong Rome II is still a great game - despite what it's detractors will say, but it isn't as flexible as Rome I. For instance why cannot I command my siege weapons to attack ground? (A valid tactic to force the enemy away from certain pieces of ground) Similarly, why am I restricted to my legionaries throwing Pila only on the attack? Rome I allowed me to set when they could fire at will. My final, major point of annoyance is how I can take away all of an opponents lands, but his fleets and armies insist on still existing way off in some obscure area of the map nigh on forbidding me to fully destroy the faction! Nice Braveheart-esque concept that 'you may take our lives, but you will not take our freedom!', but it's irritating as hell when you have better things to do than pursue Carthage's 'The Will of Yam' fleet halfway round the map and back...
But don't let my rant put prospective buyers of Rome II off - it has faults, they are getting patched (Well, I may add) and it's still one of the best of the Total War series.
One thing that I've noticed is Totally Random Realm Divide is still in. Much to my irritation. I managed to keep my faction happy, have 100% approval in all provinces and (as Egypt so it works the reverse of Rome's balancing act)) my nobles still rebel. And instantly have just as many armies as I do, but all in the same place, and all of them are carbon copies of my existing armies.
I finally got around to the game and I'm going to go there: Sega, did you not learn anything from that whole Alien's Colonial Marines thing? No? Okay. Bye bye.
I'm pretty sure the game they previewed the entire time leading up to this release isn't this game. Angry Joe is right. The graphics in their 'pre-alpha' look nothing like the actual game. The textures, maps, units, and pretty much everything but the cities are blander than in Shogun II (and Shogun II didn't have cities so its not even a comparison) and the fun part is that my high settings, look worse than my friends high settings. Same settings, nearly identical machines, and somehow, mine looks like the graphics were lifted from Medieval II. No idea what's up with that. Redownloaded, verified files, updated drivers, the textures still look like crap.
I can say I haven't encountered any of the terrible AI or unit bugs insanity some videos show (but then I didn't play on launch day so *shrugs*). The AI is terrible though. I don't think I've fought a single land battle and the overworld map is quite bizarre at times. I attacked a city and then immediately retreated because the city owner had 3 half stacks hiding around a hill where I couldn't see them. My army didn't run back very far and I resolved myself to loosing them. I didn't cause the enemy armies, walked off and declared war on someone else and started attacking him... While I just walked up and sieged the city which surrendered the next turn. And that actually hasn't happened once. I've stumbled on large enemy armies several times and I only played for like an hour or two, just to watch factions I was at war with not attack me, walk off declare war on someone else and attack them while I happily skip along and take all their cities (which is usually just one because there are too many damn factions).
Battles are equally boring mostly just because they end so quickly. Also disappointed that economy management doesn't matter much anymore (my big issue with Shogun II). I never had trouble making money, never needed to cut back on units to keep my treasury up, and unlike Shogun II, I never had food problems (but again, just a few hours here I never made it past turn 60). If I needed more troops I just made them. Managing my resources seemed irrelevant.
Pretty much all that pre-release stuff they talked about seems like a lie to me. This game is worse than Shogun by a fair margin in execution. Joe asks where all the budget went (marketing). Cause that's my answer. I suspect this game will be great eventually, either cause Darthmod will fix it or CA will get their act together but I'm honestly surprised that this appears to be Sega's trend now. Release promotional material in complete contradiction with the actual product. Honestly surprised there hasn't been some grand revelation that someone else made this game and CA just slapped their name on it.
Rant over (seriously though its annoying just because it seems half assed. This game would be worth $30-$40 so if it goes on sale and you don't have it there are worse things to spend money on. It really seems so bad mostly because Shogun II was so much better... But then maybe my advice should be to just get Shogun II instead XD).
LordofHats wrote:the fun part is that my high settings, look worse than my friends high settings. Same settings, nearly identical machines, and somehow, mine looks like the graphics were lifted from Medieval II
What specs have you got? The thing about the performance issues is that even that *tiny* difference in machines may be enough to tip the balance. Optimization isn't fixed for the myriad hardware and software setups that people have, and even when it is *fixed*, it still may not suit everyone - that's just the way of IT. I mean, I am with you on it a bit, My PC has an old Duel Core 2.6 ghz processor, 1gb Graphics and 2 GB RAM and it ran Empire and Shogun on the highest settings, but can only manage Rome on Medium. However, that said, Rome II is light-years ahead in it's scalable graphics - problem is that most people don't have high end gaming rigs to take advantage of that. If I may humbly suggest, it would be better to direct your ire towards the game-play issues, as performance issues are very much an individual thing, in which the blame cannot solely (But can to some extent) be placed at CA/SEGA's door.
LordofHats wrote: I didn't play on launch day so *shrugs*
Again, this all depends on PC specs - I did play on Launch day, as I pre-ordered it, and whilst I got a few of the bugs that CA knew about, I wasn't getting a great deal of grief (Although I still have the persistent black squares appearing on the battle and campaign map - the one real bug I got).
LordofHats wrote:I never made it past turn 60
Thats the biggest problem then. I fully accept what you're saying here - I trounced Sparta within the first 50 or so turns, with battles regularly occurring where I would cause 1700+ casualties for a loss of (no joke here) 42 men. Madness. But I'm on turn 150+ and things are getting harder. The AI has a sort of mad rush in the first 50 turns, then settles down to getting a bit more tricky as things start stacking up.
LordofHats wrote:Darthmod will fix it
No he won't. He's pretty much said he's down and out of modding TW games. I've never played a Darthmod, but I gather they were good. He's off making his own independent game now.
My main advice is not to get too worked up. Yes SEGA rushed it out, ahead of CA's prediction of an October release, but it should be pretty much fixed by October in patches anyway (Thus proving CA's point). Don't blame CA, if anyone blame SEGA - but give it a second go, it may surprise you when you get in depth. Pretty much all PC games have glitches on release, even to this scale. People seem to forget just how much effort and time it takes to program, script and render a full blown game. I know from experience having seen my own father in the past sit up till the small hours of the morning battling with programming having spent an 8+ hour day fighting with it already (Although that wasn't gaming programming) - it's not pretty or easy.
GTX295, Core i7, eight gigs of ram. Only difference between our machines is that his ATI processor is overclocked. High is probably pushing it really, but his machine managed it and mine suddenly had a hoard of graphics glitches which is just weird.
No he won't. He's pretty much said he's down and out of modding TW games. I've never played a Darthmod, but I gather they were good. He's off making his own independent game now.
That's too bad. EDIT: The no modding thing. I'll keep an eye out for a game made by that guy XD
My main advice is not to get too worked up.
Mostly I'm just shocked that apparently, publishers aren't learning. I fully expect that eventually the game will be fine cause at its core it seems fine. I doubt they'll fix some of the core watering down of the mechanics though. I expect that to be fixed as much as I expect ANet to fix how borked the Ranger's pet mechanics are. The game is playable right now and if I hadn't just gotten sucked back into GW2 I'd probably be playing it. I'm just disappointed because as Angry Joe has said (and I'm not exactly a fan of his), sequels are supposed to be improvements. Even once the problems with this game are fixed, I think it'll be inferior to Shogun II.
No it wasn't. The AI in Rome Total War is fething awful. Entire armies will run up to a yard away from you, then run away. On siege battles it will simply stand outside your walls with its seige weapons just sitting there being shot by towers. Half of an enemy's army will *always* make a bee-line for your general ignoring everything else on the battlefield.
See, I wasn't overly impressed with Shogun. Not that it wasn't a polished game, It was more so that Rome II I reckon, but it's just felt short, and small - not good for a game that isn't meant to be all about epic scale.
I'd be interested if you could get a screenshot of your 'bad' graphics if you wouldn't mind - just to compare them against what I can run on extreme (IT lags bad on extreme, but I can at least render the graphics). On my PC, there is no visual difference between extreme and high - so I run it on high as it lags far less.
On a different tack, I'm disappointed that there are only three naval tactics to use - boarding, ramming and siege weapons. What about oar rakes? CA could easily have put in a button that commands oarsmen to pull in their oars. Then, you glide by your enemy at close range and shear off all their oars to disable them. It would be just like replacing the chain shot of ETW and NTW with the same effect of disabling an opponent - and to boot it was a major historical tactic of the time!
Frankly, AI in Total War has never been that grand. Functional at best, but never brilliant. Usually the series' solutions to difficulty is simply to increase the AI's resource handicaps. very hard in Rome was really just the AI throwing a full stack of twenty at your nearest city every two or three turns, and then you just sally force and let your horde of archers gun the enemy army down from the walls cause the AI is gonna stand there and let you.
Warpig1815 wrote: (IT lags bad on extreme, but I can at least render the graphics).
I interestingly only have lag on the over map, and not that much. I turned the to clouds way low (lowest setting whatever its called) and the lag went away which works for me cause I found them a little distracting. If you've watched the Angry Joe video it's pretty much that minus the weird faces on some of the character models. Haven't seen that. Spaces where textures don't fill in properly EDIT: To clarify not black spaces, rather they seem stretched.
Ughh - Nah I get black squares - they look almost like the animus boundaries on ACIII... Problem is that they pop up everywhere - it's the one major glitch I get
LordofHats wrote: Frankly, AI in Total War has never been that grand. Functional at best, but never brilliant. Usually the series' solutions to difficulty is simply to increase the AI's resource handicaps. very hard in Rome was really just the AI throwing a full stack of twenty at your nearest city every two or three turns, and then you just sally force and let your horde of archers gun the enemy army down from the walls cause the AI is gonna stand there and let you.
Yeah every city in Rome just ended up with three gold chevron archers, and three gold chevron hoplite varients. It was sweet.
LordofHats wrote: Frankly, AI in Total War has never been that grand. Functional at best, but never brilliant. Usually the series' solutions to difficulty is simply to increase the AI's resource handicaps. very hard in Rome was really just the AI throwing a full stack of twenty at your nearest city every two or three turns, and then you just sally force and let your horde of archers gun the enemy army down from the walls cause the AI is gonna stand there and let you.
Hmmm. Thats odd, because thats not been my experience with Rome1 AI.
Sure, they'd toss massive stacks of dudes at your cities at you could see them off with 3-4 Phalanxes and a bunch of archers, but at least you had to smartly place your units and pay attention because the AI could actually manage to outsmart you(or you'd have an inopportune morale crisis)
They'd wait a turn, build some rams, ladders, and towers, and then assault you in grand style. And if they brought onagers you could actually have a real fight on your hands.
And if you play as one of the minor factions you could actually have a tough time of it, even on easy mode. I still can barely win the game with the Selucids on Easy mode, everyone has it out for them it seems. Egypt, Armenia, Parthia, and Greece all have it out for the Selucids. The rewards of course are having armored elephants, legionaries, and phalanx troops all in-faction
At least it always looked like you were fighting a real army. Even if the AI did only know the Single Line formation.
All I wanted from Rome 2 was better graphics and some sweet new features. A direct gameplay lift of Shogun 2 would have been sufficient. But then again I didn't find anything substantially wrong with Empire so what do I know
They'd wait a turn, build some rams, ladders, and towers, and then assault you in grand style. And if they brought onagers you could actually have a real fight on your hands.
Don't let them what a turn. Of course, this strategy obviously doesn't work if the faction doesn't have archers. You want hard mode? Scythia (Sarmatia for the historically correct) baby Horses armies only and the glorious wheat glitch! Try fighting 3 full stacks of phalanx troops with only charge cavalry, carefully manuevering the AI to turn its back to you so you can shove a spear up its butt from atop your mighty steed! Now there's a challenge... Until you've beaten Macedon, Greece, and Selucia. Then it becomes sort of a cakewalk.
LordofHats wrote: Frankly, AI in Total War has never been that grand. Functional at best, but never brilliant. Usually the series' solutions to difficulty is simply to increase the AI's resource handicaps. very hard in Rome was really just the AI throwing a full stack of twenty at your nearest city every two or three turns, and then you just sally force and let your horde of archers gun the enemy army down from the walls cause the AI is gonna stand there and let you.
Hmmm. Thats odd, because thats not been my experience with Rome1 AI.
Sure, they'd toss massive stacks of dudes at your cities at you could see them off with 3-4 Phalanxes and a bunch of archers, but at least you had to smartly place your units and pay attention because the AI could actually manage to outsmart you(or you'd have an inopportune morale crisis)
They'd wait a turn, build some rams, ladders, and towers, and then assault you in grand style. And if they brought onagers you could actually have a real fight on your hands.
And if you play as one of the minor factions you could actually have a tough time of it, even on easy mode. I still can barely win the game with the Selucids on Easy mode, everyone has it out for them it seems. Egypt, Armenia, Parthia, and Greece all have it out for the Selucids. The rewards of course are having armored elephants, legionaries, and phalanx troops all in-faction
At least it always looked like you were fighting a real army. Even if the AI did only know the Single Line formation.
All I wanted from Rome 2 was better graphics and some sweet new features. A direct gameplay lift of Shogun 2 would have been sufficient. But then again I didn't find anything substantially wrong with Empire so what do I know
I conquered the world as the Seluecids because the AI would assault my cities by ramming holes in them and then running at my phalanxes until they died. That would wipe out their armies, then I could auto-resolve my stacks against the enemy's tiny garisons and hey presto.
Take off your rose tinted glasses dude, the AI in Rome 1 was terrible.
Sure, the AI wasn't amazing, but it certainly wasn't horrible. How else would you have the AI act when faced with Phalanxes hiding behind walls?
Send in my infantry first.
The AI in Rome Total War 1 would assualt first with light cavalry, then whatever heavy cavalry it had. And I say this as someone who has played Rome Total War regularly until very recently.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Grey Templar wrote: I usually have at least 6 Phalanxes per city. It would have to punch at least that many to bypass me.
I've had AI punch up to 3 holes in the wall plus the gate and towers.
Yup. Sometimes it'd charge light cavalry through all of those holes. Sometimes it'd simply stand there getting shot by towers for the entire battle. Sometimes it'd make 3 breaches in the walls then all run towards the gate anyway.
But never, ever was challanging or clever. Seiges could be fun and challenging when you were *hugely* outnumbered, 10 or 15 to 1, and it became a frantic struggle at the gates to see if the enemy would break through. But the AI was still as dumb as a plank.
I hate the mandatory civil war thing. Realm divide made sense for Shogun - there was an external arbiter. Forcing twelve armies to appear around my capital even when I've been perfectly juggling my faction politics is stupid. Luckily I had moved my military stuff out of my capital long since, and crushing them was fairly easy, it was just annoying to have to shift four armies from Anatolia and Parthia back to Alexandria.
I like the game but after patch 3 i cant end a turn!! im on turn 100 odd kicking ass an taking names as sparta rome is all but gone and everytime i click the end turn it crashes to desktop with no warning had no other technical issues (other than the weird black terrain thing that alot of people get) its frustrating!!
My game keeps getting stuck on the red intro screen and has been for the last several weeks. That fact that I haven't been bothered to fix the problem by now speaks volumes!
It makes things more interesting - a lot more armies (basically I consider 3 armies to be a legion - 2 of 'regulars' and 1 of 'auxillia'; and it basically makes economy much easier - as a net result you have less of an economic challenge as the player, but it also makes it easier for computer factions to grow and become a challenge.
The additional patching, and Radious, has made R2 playable for me, but truly, all it makes me want to do is re-install Europa Barbarorum, or the Invasio Barbarorum mod for M2.
My biggest gripe has to be the extremely simplistic empire management. There's a handful of building types which do a, b, or c with very direct, and sometimes arbitrary "negatives" to balance them out, no infrastructure development whatsoever, no family tree, politics is a joke.
Aside from that, I really did wish the AI knew more than the single line formation in open battle, gets a wee bit predictable at times.
I gave the game a C+ after a week of playing after launch. Granted I ran into very few game breaking bugs, unlike some evidently, but it just didn't feel finished. The bugs, coupled with piss poor AI and just general changes to core gameplay seem like steps back for the series.
With it patched up and new content rolling in, I'd say its a solid B. Even patched up, it still doesn't have the endearing qualities that the first Rome:Total War had.
Not the most thorough review of where the game stands at the moment, but nothing really else comes to mind.
The game is pretty much where it should have been at launch. A fair number of bug fixes and implementation of features has rendered it into a pretty decent game. As stated, I like playing it with the Radious Mod - rebalances a few of the tech and gives you more armies to play with. It's hard to compare it to the other games - it's semi close to Shogun in style, but absolutely dwarfs it in scale. And I can't fairly compare it to Rome 1, because I almost never played Rome 1 without heavy modding.
- Oh, and in case anyone missed it, Rome II now has workshop integration on Steam.
Bromsy wrote: The game is pretty much where it should have been at launch. A fair number of bug fixes and implementation of features has rendered it into a pretty decent game. As stated, I like playing it with the Radious Mod - rebalances a few of the tech and gives you more armies to play with. It's hard to compare it to the other games - it's semi close to Shogun in style, but absolutely dwarfs it in scale. And I can't fairly compare it to Rome 1, because I almost never played Rome 1 without heavy modding.
- Oh, and in case anyone missed it, Rome II now has workshop integration on Steam.
Well, I'll be damned, maybe it's finally time to try it out again. I was waiting for that moment when the game stopped being a beta. I guess I'll give it a go once I'm done with Sleeping Dogs.
It's been pretty problem free for me since day 1. *shrugs* The game has gotten smoother with the patches, but always was playable for me.
BTW, they have a free faction pack for download until the 29th. After the 29th you've gotta pay for it, so get it downloaded. It's for the horse tribe barbarians. I tried playing them last night... their not easy. Let me give you a hint. Focus on food structures before anything else.
Yeesh, so I finally reached the highest tier on my very hard game as Rome using the Radious Mod - you can have 10 edicts, 5 of each type of agent, 30 armies and I think 18 fleets. And I was still making something like 75k a turn and had a 50 food surplus when I was nearly maxed out on armies and had seven or eight fleets.
Controlled basically all the Mediterranean, Hispania, the Levant, Northern Africa and Gaul, but I had never gotten involved in the patchwork of tiny feuding Hellenistic city states in asia minor.
Well, their sybaritic excesses offended me, so I crossed the Hellspont from my Macedonian provinces with twelve legions, moved north from Antioch with another eight legions of eastern veterans, and had two more move in from Rhodes supported by a couple of my fleets - one of which was an entire fleet of Assault Hexaremes (Try taking that out with transports).
It was a damned inspiring time to be Emperor of Rome.
- and it wasn't as much of a steamroll as it could have been, even one territory factions had at least two full armies - and I basically declared war on all of them at once. Except for Pontus, those plucky little bastards get a pass, they can be a client state.
Wish I had your attention span Bromsy. I'll get halfway through a campaign and want to try a different faction. Done it about 9 times now. Currently about to invade Rome with my Spartans, after taking over all of Greece. I'll probably run into a Carthaginian army and want a faction that has Elephants. Its a vicious cycle.
My biggest annoyance with the game at the moment is that whenever you get an abundance of cash, every Tom, Dick and Harry wants a piece.
Random Minor Civilization: "Hey dude! Pay me for a non-aggression pact, even though you have more people in 3 full stacked Armies than I have actual people! "
Me : "Aren't protection rackets supposed to work the other way around? No thanks."
RMC: "Oh, okay! Well, I'll give you some time to think about it and hit you up again next turn."
Me: "Seriously? If you aren't trying to trade, declare war or be a client/satrapy stfu"
Rinse and repeat, damn near every turn. I don't remember Empire or Shogun having this problem.
Is there a "Do Not Call List" mod out there?
Also, I absolutely love the campaign map Army avatars fighting it out after the battle. I love the one where after you have a brief back and forth,you stab the dude, he falls to his knees and you contemptuously bash your shield into him and he flops to the ground, dead. I look for that one every time.
NELS1031 wrote: Wish I had your attention span Bromsy. I'll get halfway through a campaign and want to try a different faction. Done it about 9 times now. Currently about to invade Rome with my Spartans, after taking over all of Greece. I'll probably run into a Carthaginian army and want a faction that has Elephants. Its a vicious cycle.
My biggest annoyance with the game at the moment is that whenever you get an abundance of cash, every Tom, Dick and Harry wants a piece.
Random Minor Civilization: "Hey dude! Pay me for a non-aggression pact, even though you have more people in 3 full stacked Armies than I have actual people! "
Me : "Aren't protection rackets supposed to work the other way around? No thanks."
RMC: "Oh, okay! Well, I'll give you some time to think about it and hit you up again next turn."
Me: "Seriously? If you aren't trying to trade, declare war or be a client/satrapy stfu"
Rinse and repeat, damn near every turn. I don't remember Empire or Shogun having this problem.
Is there a "Do Not Call List" mod out there?
Yeah, it does get irritating. Plus I wish the cash payouts weren't tied to your overall amount of cash. Why should the minimum amount I am able to offer to some backwoods barbarians to trade with me be 56,000 bucks?
- but that's why you have to stick with it - everyone is either a client state, hates me far too much for diplomacy to work but is terrified of me, or is at war with me.
NELS1031 wrote: Wish I had your attention span Bromsy. I'll get halfway through a campaign and want to try a different faction. Done it about 9 times now. Currently about to invade Rome with my Spartans, after taking over all of Greece. I'll probably run into a Carthaginian army and want a faction that has Elephants. Its a vicious cycle.
My biggest annoyance with the game at the moment is that whenever you get an abundance of cash, every Tom, Dick and Harry wants a piece.
Random Minor Civilization: "Hey dude! Pay me for a non-aggression pact, even though you have more people in 3 full stacked Armies than I have actual people! "
Me : "Aren't protection rackets supposed to work the other way around? No thanks."
RMC: "Oh, okay! Well, I'll give you some time to think about it and hit you up again next turn."
Me: "Seriously? If you aren't trying to trade, declare war or be a client/satrapy stfu"
Rinse and repeat, damn near every turn. I don't remember Empire or Shogun having this problem.
Is there a "Do Not Call List" mod out there?
Also, I absolutely love the campaign map Army avatars fighting it out after the battle. I love the one where after you have a brief back and forth,you stab the dude, he falls to his knees and you contemptuously bash your shield into him and he flops to the ground, dead. I look for that one every time.
I've been like that to. I've probably had about 12 differant games going so far. Sparta is the furthest along I've gotten conquering all of Greece and the Balkans, as well as all of Italy. I deleted all my saved games, and started fresh, and I've not got a Seleucid game going (talk about easy mode...), Egypt (not so easy), Athens, Sparta, and Roxallanni (these buggers are TOUGH to get going).
Bromsy wrote: I haven't messed around with the nomads at all, how are they?
Damn tough against other nomads. I am not that familiar with horse armies, and my micro suffers because of it. The AI seems to frequently out maneuver me, and the fact that other factions don't seem to pay upkeep like we have to means i'm often times facing better equipped armies (armored horse archers vs my unarmored).
I think if you can survive the other nomad tribes to get out to factions that are more infantry based, you'll steam roll, but I've found that initial survival is the tough part.
Ahahahaha, so I got a mod that changes pike armed units - makes the unit size 256 for most of them and changes around their stats some - while also making them more expensive to train and upkeep. My garrison army just fought an equal sized enemy main force - they charged straight into my beautifully deployed phalanx of levy pikemen, sixteen ranks deep. It was glorious slaughter.
I might get it eventually, but I don't have any desire for it. I'm glad that their doing a good job on all this DLC though. CA may have had some issues with the launch, but their customer service since then has been absolutely stellar.
THe faction i'm playing atm is the miser faction as i have to buy a new comp before i can really play the game :(. Back to rome total war XGM i guess...which is the best mod I have played...I will beat it soon as egypt! soon...maybe
Grey Templar wrote: Well they seem to have fixed the aggression problem with the AI. I nearly got overrun by Persia and other assorted eastern friends.
Combat AI is still sub-par but they make it up in numbers.
My biggest problem with the combat AI is #1 Numbers, and #2 Improbable happenings. I'm sick and tired of my veteran Spartan Hoplites getting crushed by spear warriors with no upgrades...
Grey Templar wrote: Well they seem to have fixed the aggression problem with the AI. I nearly got overrun by Persia and other assorted eastern friends.
Combat AI is still sub-par but they make it up in numbers.
My biggest problem with the combat AI is #1 Numbers, and #2 Improbable happenings. I'm sick and tired of my veteran Spartan Hoplites getting crushed by spear warriors with no upgrades...
I thought Hoplites were just generally sub par in this game? I don't know, I haven't ever played as one of the greek cities, and in my successor kingdom games I only use 1-2 units to hold the flanks of my pike wall. Have you tried any of the mods out there? I know one of the Radious unit mods gives 6-7 new units to each of the greek factions. It's part of the overall Radious mod you can get off the workshop.
Or there is a Hellenic Revival mod that is geared toward the greeks and just gives them a ton of new units and buildings, looks like; if you don't want all the other changes Radious brings to the table.
Grey Templar wrote: Well they seem to have fixed the aggression problem with the AI. I nearly got overrun by Persia and other assorted eastern friends.
Combat AI is still sub-par but they make it up in numbers.
My biggest problem with the combat AI is #1 Numbers, and #2 Improbable happenings. I'm sick and tired of my veteran Spartan Hoplites getting crushed by spear warriors with no upgrades...
Then clearly you are using them wrong, secure the flanks with cavarly and employ the phalanx ability. Also plant your general in the middel of your lines. Soften the enemy with peltasts also helps. So far with both Sparta & Macedon I have yet to loose a battle against Barbarian hordes using said troops. Although those damned Romans have prooved a bit harder.
I like what the last patch did with the game, fianly the AI goes on the offensive, and it reall can be felt when you have three full stacked banner armies bearijg down on you and your trusy soldiers. Its at those moment veterancy & the resarch really helps.
Grey Templar wrote: Well they seem to have fixed the aggression problem with the AI. I nearly got overrun by Persia and other assorted eastern friends.
Combat AI is still sub-par but they make it up in numbers.
My biggest problem with the combat AI is #1 Numbers, and #2 Improbable happenings. I'm sick and tired of my veteran Spartan Hoplites getting crushed by spear warriors with no upgrades...
Then clearly you are using them wrong, secure the flanks with cavarly and employ the phalanx ability. Also plant your general in the middel of your lines. Soften the enemy with peltasts also helps. So far with both Sparta & Macedon I have yet to loose a battle against Barbarian hordes using said troops. Although those damned Romans have prooved a bit harder.
I like what the last patch did with the game, fianly the AI goes on the offensive, and it reall can be felt when you have three full stacked banner armies bearijg down on you and your trusy soldiers. Its at those moment veterancy & the resarch really helps.
See, I crushed the Romans with no difficulty, it's the barbarians that have given me the stiffest fights. I guess your mileage may vary.
It's not as bad a game as I had heard, its probably not as good as Rome but in reality its a completely different.
I have played 4 games now (to various stages) so around 30 hours all told. The Strategic AI is much improved over previous games (but its still not amazing), the diplomatic AI is finally functional and while the Tactical AI isn't exactly stellar at least its not as bad as previous games.
The balance seems a little off though, the Romans in particular. Principes are all but unkillable, I was able to capture a city using nothing but 3 units of principles and a cavalry bodyguard suffering a grand total of 12 casualties in the process. Barbarian battles seem to be quite a lot more interesting.
For Hoplite armies I use the strategy that I perfected in Rome:TW. A core of the best Hoplites/Pikemen that you have available (at least 7 units) which are set up in a line in phalanx formation with the 2 end units in a square and slightly behind the main line to catch any flankers. 3-4 units of the best skirmishers that you can field set up immediately behind your hoplites with a further 3-4 units of bowmen behind them, all with skirmish turned off. Your general (I always use cavalry) and a couple of units of heavy cav are stationed behind your lines to act as a fire brigade and to drive off enemy missile units once their melee units are engaged. Skirmishers in Rome 2 are quite poor so I have started to replace at least a couple of units with ballistas which are set up behind the archers.
It doesn't work well attacking as its quite hard to micromanage but defensively it is all but impregnable if you set up somewhere where you can't be flanked (I often use the corner of the map).
Grey Templar wrote: Well they seem to have fixed the aggression problem with the AI. I nearly got overrun by Persia and other assorted eastern friends.
Combat AI is still sub-par but they make it up in numbers.
My biggest problem with the combat AI is #1 Numbers, and #2 Improbable happenings. I'm sick and tired of my veteran Spartan Hoplites getting crushed by spear warriors with no upgrades...
Then clearly you are using them wrong, secure the flanks with cavarly and employ the phalanx ability. Also plant your general in the middel of your lines. Soften the enemy with peltasts also helps. So far with both Sparta & Macedon I have yet to loose a battle against Barbarian hordes using said troops. Although those damned Romans have prooved a bit harder.
I like what the last patch did with the game, fianly the AI goes on the offensive, and it reall can be felt when you have three full stacked banner armies bearijg down on you and your trusy soldiers. Its at those moment veterancy & the resarch really helps.
See, I crushed the Romans with no difficulty, it's the barbarians that have given me the stiffest fights. I guess your mileage may vary.
I think barbarians tend to have better basic stats due to having less unit choices, at least that seems to have been the trend in Total war games.
Palindrome wrote: For Hoplite armies I use the strategy that I perfected in Rome:TW. A core of the best Hoplites/Pikemen that you have available (at least 7 units) which are set up in a line in phalanx formation with the 2 end units in a square and slightly behind the main line to catch any flankers. 3-4 units of the best skirmishers that you can field set up immediately behind your hoplites with a further 3-4 units of bowmen behind them, all with skirmish turned off. Your general (I always use cavalry) and a couple of units of heavy cav are stationed behind your lines to act as a fire brigade and to drive off enemy missile units once their melee units are engaged. Skirmishers in Rome 2 are quite poor so I have started to replace at least a couple of units with ballistas which are set up behind the archers.
It doesn't work well attacking as its quite hard to micromanage but defensively it is all but impregnable if you set up somewhere where you can't be flanked (I often use the corner of the map).
My hoplite army is pretty similar. I generally have 6-7 hoplite/pike units. I'll then have 6-7 slingers. 2-3 Citizen Cav, and 2 Greek Ballista.
Slingers range just trumps everything IMO. Sure arrows do a lot more basic damage, but slingers are also armor piercing, so they'll penetrate shields, where arrows don't. So better range, better penetration, wins out over better damage.
Can slingers fire over friendly troops in Rome 2? In my Iceni game most of my missile troops were slingers and i was less than impressed by their damage output.
Palindrome wrote: Can slingers fire over friendly troops in Rome 2? In my Iceni game most of my missile troops were slingers and i was less than impressed by their damage output.
Not as effectively as archers. I usually maneuver them to the flank once melee starts in earnest.
Grey Templar wrote: Well they seem to have fixed the aggression problem with the AI. I nearly got overrun by Persia and other assorted eastern friends.
Combat AI is still sub-par but they make it up in numbers.
My biggest problem with the combat AI is #1 Numbers, and #2 Improbable happenings. I'm sick and tired of my veteran Spartan Hoplites getting crushed by spear warriors with no upgrades...
Then clearly you are using them wrong, secure the flanks with cavarly and employ the phalanx ability. Also plant your general in the middel of your lines. Soften the enemy with peltasts also helps. So far with both Sparta & Macedon I have yet to loose a battle against Barbarian hordes using said troops. Although those damned Romans have prooved a bit harder.
I like what the last patch did with the game, fianly the AI goes on the offensive, and it reall can be felt when you have three full stacked banner armies bearijg down on you and your trusy soldiers. Its at those moment veterancy & the resarch really helps.
See, I crushed the Romans with no difficulty, it's the barbarians that have given me the stiffest fights. I guess your mileage may vary.
Well yes, Barbarians can be damned hard if they get the momentum going, or they outnumber you by a large margin. However they do tend to have somewaht poor moral for their cheap troops like levy spearmen and club levy. Hit these with fire attacks and repeated charges with ligth cav from the rear. Also It never hurts to have a sword or axe units on hand to support the phalanx.
Wasn't sure if it deserves its own thread, so I'll just leave it here!
First paid expansion, with bonus reference to WH40k.
Caesar in Gaul.
Total War: Rome 2 will add its first paid expansion, Caesar in Gaul, next week. The expanded map includes "Gaul and Southern Britannia," which for those of us in the modern era is known as southern UK-dia and Franceland.
"We've released a number of DLC packs and free content updates for Rome 2, but this is our most substantial so far," said Total War Creative Director Mike Simpson. "We've also improved the game considerably since launch, and that process continues as we move onto substantial feature and gameplay improvements."
Caesar will march upon Gaul on December 12 for $14.99 (£9.99/€14.99). The game also includes Vercingetorix, chieftain of the Arverni, which is just the coolest name you'll get outside of a Warhammer 40K game
I want to be excited, but I burnt out on this game fairly quickly, compared to previous Total War games. I'll probably still purchase it , to see if it re-ignites my interest.
Thats good news, and well I am still playing this game often. the last few patches really worked magic as far as I am concernd. Also I look forwards to killing Gauls
djones520 wrote: I'm still playing regularly. I just can't seem to finish the game up. I just again started a new campaign yesterday...
This sounds like a neat expansion, and I'll most likely pick it up.
I know how ya feel, I got something like six or seven different ones running at various stages. The one I have gotten the longest is my Macedonians, but seeing how invading Turkey was a somewhat bad move of mine with all the various hot heads in that part of the world it will take some time. Pontus, Sardes, and all the other "greek" states are dead though.
djones520 wrote: I'm still playing regularly. I just can't seem to finish the game up. I just again started a new campaign yesterday...
This sounds like a neat expansion, and I'll most likely pick it up.
I know how ya feel, I got something like six or seven different ones running at various stages. The one I have gotten the longest is my Macedonians, but seeing how invading Turkey was a somewhat bad move of mine with all the various hot heads in that part of the world it will take some time. Pontus, Sardes, and all the other "greek" states are dead though.
Sparta is mine. I've got the greek peninsula, italian peninsula, egypt, most of the selucia/persian region, and am now conquering Gaul. I just started an Athenian one up. I kinda wanted to start a fresh greek campaign, but didn't want to have to waste time conquering athens to unlock trading with other factions.
Trondheim wrote: the last few patches really worked magic as far as I am concernd.
Indeed, although they kinda screwed Phalanx vs Phalanx up a little.
Well yes, but that is something I can live with, and beside. battels seldom last more then 15 minuts for me, cavalry charges from the rear works wonders. Particulary Sarrisa cavalry or companion cavalry.
Yea, those satrapies can be a real ballbuster sometimes. Particulary if they get togetter as you said, they always seem to mess up my start up phase whenever I get a game going with the Selucid. Well until you get the proper army going and what not, and yes, Rhodes seems to go into overdrive in my games too.
Haha yea...Those units do clean house it seems, I have had the same experience with the Royal peltasts for Macedon. Those really do slaugther just about anything, and yes. The battels should really be longer and more challenging, but I suspect that its more to with the poor quality of much of the levy troops and what not
Grey Templar wrote: Nah, even elite troops seem to cut and run quicker than they should.
In Rome 1 I could rely on elite units not breaking till they had suffered at least 75% casualties. Often more.
And Royal Peltasts are ok, but they really suck as a general's Bodyguard. Especially when all your generals start as them.
Well yes that may be the case, indeed Rome 1 really had some good mechancis when it came to actual combat. Yea they are good when you get to train them but not as general bodygard. But then again upgrading armour, weapons and shields dose wonders for how long your troops hold out. Same goes for the army traditions you give them(although I suspect that you know this)
With the Seleucids, I just wait a few turns and then drop all my satrapies except cyprus or whatever. If you try to keep them their only options are - declare war on you or remain loyal, and their starting hatred is so high you probably can't keep them loyal. If you drop them then they maybe declare one or two at a time instead of all at once.
They are in a good position, but then again they need to be that strong because they're sandwitched between the aggressive eastern factions, Egypt, and the various desert factions. Plus all the greek states. Especially with the Eastern Culture diplomatic penalty they have.
One thing I will say, Diplomacy really matters in this game. Which is something the Total War games have had problems with in the past, diplomacy was always a meh thing till now. Trade agreements are VERY important.
Shogun 2 was the first to have trade be important but I think Rome 2 finally brought it up to speed.
Yeah, I really like the diplomacy system so far. Rome 1 always annoyed me when some podunk one territory faction would as for an alliance, and I the worlds super power would be benevolent and grant it, and the next turn they declare war on me.
Grey Templar wrote: Its also the first time I've ever had a faction offer to become a client state.
In all other Total War games the AI never EVER offered to do anything even remotely close to that.
Yeah! That's happened to me as well. It was odd cause they were on the other side of the world, I had no territory near them, but I figured what the hell, it's cool of them to offer that.
Grey Templar wrote: Its also the first time I've ever had a faction offer to become a client state.
In all other Total War games the AI never EVER offered to do anything even remotely close to that.
yea I was somewhat suspicious when that first happend to me, but then I realized just how nice its to have a few of those acting as a bufferstate between me and anything hostile that happens to come along. And beside the tribute they pay also helps the wheels go around a bit better.
CA just opened up the Baktria faction for play, for free today. Damn them... a new faction I want to start now.
Anyways, Facebook is a hoot. Such a hate storm on there. Someone told me I like to lick CA's butthole because I simply pointed out that people are hating on them for giving us free stuff.
djones520 wrote: CA just opened up the Baktria faction for play, for free today. Damn them... a new faction I want to start now.
Anyways, Facebook is a hoot. Such a hate storm on there. Someone told me I like to lick CA's butthole because I simply pointed out that people are hating on them for giving us free stuff.
Wat.... Is that so? I will never cease to be amazed by some folks.
On a side note, just had a quick spin with Bactria and well. yet another hellenic faction. Although it was nice to start with some decent troops for once. But I had hoped for something a bit different than a another Alexander sucsessor kingdom. But ti seems to be good, will definitly sink more time into it when i get the time to do so
It's not like there aren't mods that open up pretty much every faction if people really cared.
I just find myself running out of steam on the game because I hate the forced civil war. I play with the Radious mod, so by the time the civil war hits the traitors spawn 16 stacks of dickholes and it's just a big pain to stamp them out.
In lieu of offering yet another downloadable content pack for Total War: Rome 2, developer Creative Assembly has opted to let fans roll their own units, factions and conflicts with the release of the Rome 2 Assembly Kit.
Though still in the beta stages, the Assembly Kit is a full-featured suite of tools useful in modding the historical strategy game. According to publisher Sega, the Kit includes everything necessary to modify the game's existing assets, as well as import/export tools for pulling artwork, audio and character models into the game from third-party programs. The Kit also includes a swath of "example data" which should be useful for nascent modders.
The best news, however, is that the Assembly Kit is available free of charge to anyone with a copy of Total War: Rome 2 and an Internet connection. Full details on the Kit and information on how to download the tools can be found on the Total War Wiki.
Get us a Warhammer mod stat, modders! I know one exists in some form already, but I want a new one! I'll give you a month for a fully functional map of at least the Old World and a few related factions, or I'll take you mom out to a nice steak dinner and never call her again!
I bought the Caesar in Gaul expansion and didn't really feel grabbed by the actual campaign. Just seemed like more of the same. Admittedly I didn't get deep into it, but I did enjoy playing as the Galatians in the main campaign and conquering everything to the east of mordern day Turkey, but now I'm too lazy to turn my armies around and conquer the west now.
Hmm, sweet. I only just started playing the game (was waiting for the bugs to go) but it will be nice to see some proper mods appearing soonish.
Also the fact that it will be free is is very decent of them. Honesty I was expecting CA to be trying much harder to grab our money than this, kudos to them.
I think the bad PR of the release is the biggest reason its free. They need to make up for all the bugs.
They still haven't quite fixed the combat AI. And morale still needs tweaking. A battle between 2 full stacked armies should last longer than 3-4 minutes, of which 3 minutes was running to engage.
).
