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Thats not being aggressive, thats being single minded.

They should have just copy-pasted the AI from Rome.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Thats not being aggressive, thats being single minded.

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.

 Warpig1815 wrote:


What specs have you got?

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.

Don't blame CA, if anyone blame SEGA

I did blame SEGA XD

 Commander Cain wrote:

Yeah, the AI from Rome was pretty decent.

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.

On that note, what do you think of the victory point system? I'm... not convinced lets say

 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

 Grey Templar wrote:


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.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 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.

I assure you, I am not wearing rose tinted glasses.

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?

 Grey Templar wrote:
I assure you, I am not wearing rose tinted glasses.

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?

Do what I did and punch more than two holes in the wall.

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.

I only packed four phalanxes but only on occasion did I need more than 3.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I assure you, I am not wearing rose tinted glasses.

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!!

Seleucids are live today, for anyone still interested. For free, along with the obligatory weekly patch.

I enjoyed them in the first Rome, so I'll give them a swing.

Seleucid Empire all the way.

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!

I started playing with the Radious total war mod

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?618817-Radious-Total-War-Mod-%28Updated-13-10-2013%29

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.