Rome 2 Total War

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Well, it's out. I figured there would be a few people here looking at it, and the old preview thread was buried on the next page, so I hope a new thread is alright.

I've played it for a few hours, but I'm reserving judgement until I give it a bit more time and see if my technical issues are on my end or not.

I would also say, "let's try to keep the mindless CA bashing to a minimum," but I may very well end up eating those words.

[Raesene]

So far (barely into the tutorial campaign) I like it; I still have to get used to the interface as I didn't play Shogun II.

I am considering to reinstall it in english; the german texts and language have typos etc that are annoying.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Some tweaks later and I've gotten it into a playable state, though it looks like a giant pile of ass. Empire/Napoleon both run and look better. Large battles are painfully sluggish.

I like the strategic layer, for the most part. The internal Roman political system is byzantine and obfuscated, so I can't really tell if it actually has a point or not. The dynastic system is weaker (read: non-existent) compared to Rome 1, which is a shame. It doesn't need to be Crusader Kings, but the family management in Rome 1 was cool so it's rather bizarre to not see it here.

Other than that, I like it. I feel like the agent system is finally good. It's reasonably transparent, with a cool blend of variety and flavor in what you can do. So far I like sticking my Patricians in my armies to keep costs down and help Romanize the rabble, while keeping my Spies and Veterans around to rough up enemy agents and generals.

The settlement/province/building systems are all pretty cool. Not much to say except I find it fun. The tech tree is nice too. Gives you more control over when and how you want to reform your legions.

I like the representation of various culture groups. My only complaint is that the cultural conversion system feels weak as piss. Conquer a city, have massive unrest problems from culture penalty, wait a few turns, entire province (not just the one city) becomes Roman in 5 years. Yay?

Unit variety is fun. Started conquering bits of Gaul and now have various Celtic-flavored Auxilia units, in addition to "generic" Auxilia. Thanasian quibble: Way too many generated Legion names came out masculine, which had to be corrected. Thankfully, you can rename your armies at least. (Thanasian query: What would be the proper name for a legion raised from Noreia? It came out 'Noricacum' or somesuch and I renamed it to 'Norica')

Tactical layer... eh.

As mentioned above, looks worse than Empire (worse than Medieval 2 on its max settings, actually) and runs like ass. After some driver tinkering and graphical tweaking small battles are playable, but mid-large ones chug to an unreasonable degree. I play heavily-modded Empire (the mods drive up the needed system resources considerably) on high settings just fine, why is Rome 2 choking even on low settings?

Tactical depth feels lacking. Click your blobs into the other blobs, then wait to win. Or click your blobs on the AI's slinger-spam armies and watch as you get kited to death and there's nothing you can do about it unless you brought a ton of cavalry. I mean, there's clickies, which are nice I guess, but I'm not sure they add much.

Missiles in particular are pretty horrible. Missile exchanges are like watching two groups of people fling nerf darts at each other. It's not that it won't kill you (fight one of the AI's slinger-spam armies if you don't believe me), it's just incredibly uninspiring to watch. None of the impact that was present in Medieval 2 or even Rome 1. Even Empire felt pretty kinetic if you got down on ground-level to watch a few musket volleys be exchanged.

Controls suck ass. The formation/maneuver wheel from Empire is conspicuously absent. It's technically still there in the form of keyboard commands, but that's pretty shit. Your units, I find, also have a curious way of either running or walking, chosen primarily by deciding to do the opposite of which you want them to do at any given moment.

The pathfinding is a little better, at least. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my units would walk around village streets like people who aren't mentally handicapped. Hooray! Good luck running down a fleeing unit, though: that's just as godawful as it's always been.

Oh, and legionary pilum stuff is 100% obfuscated from the player. Don't want your legionaries to waste their shots? TOO BAD. Want to throw a coordinated volley at the right instant? TOO BAD.

[Steel]

It looks very interesting so far. I'm only on the prologue campaign, just got to the bit where it suggests you take a boat to go capture a city. I took a boat and then the enemy came and captured the city I just vacated. Thanks tutorial advice.

They've made some quite significant changes, like armies have to have generals, you can only have a fixed number of generals, and recruiting straight to generals. Stances of armies is another thing, explicitly specifying what you want to happen ambush, fortify, reinforce, forced march.

The battles have a major mechanical change with needing line of sight to see enemy troops. This makes ambushed much more effective and logical. It also appears that finally, after 13 years there is a way to have a bunch of troops in a formation and actually keep them in that formation (some previous titles appeared to have this, but would fuck it up royally if you tried to use it) this means you can actually move your whole army at once if you want. A lot more data on units is exposed during the battle, all the stats for friendly and enemy troops on mouseover.

I don't know how the AI is in this as I haven't played a real campaign or battle yet, the only large battle in the tutorial so far the AI was doing something scripted so you could learn. Could this be the one where they finally have a smart, rational AI? Probably not, but we can hope.

Might be worth waiting for the initial patch/bug storm to pass and for some of the early mods to improve balance. I don't think I'll have much time to play in the next month or so anyway.

[Thanas]

I like the representation of various culture groups. My only complaint is that the cultural conversion system feels weak as piss. Conquer a city, have massive unrest problems from culture penalty, wait a few turns, entire province (not just the one city) becomes Roman in 5 years. Yay?

I find it quite sad that mods have done a much better job for 10 years now.
I can see why they did it from a design standpoint though, given that they want the game to have an easy flow and cater to casuals "HURR DURR CULTURE TAKES TOO LONG AND IS TOO HARD" gamers.
(Don't ask me why an allegedly complex game should be geared towards casuals, but hey, SEGA).

(Thanasian query: What would be the proper name for a legion raised from Noreia? It came out 'Noricacum' or somesuch and I renamed it to 'Norica')

The Romans named their legions after the province, so it should be Legio [Number] Noricorum.

Tactical depth feels lacking. Click your blobs into the other blobs, then wait to win. Or click your blobs on the AI's slinger-spam armies and watch as you get kited to death and there's nothing you can do about it unless you brought a ton of cavalry. I mean, there's clickies, which are nice I guess, but I'm not sure they add much.

This has always been a problem

Oh, and legionary pilum stuff is 100% obfuscated from the player. Don't want your legionaries to waste their shots? TOO BAD. Want to throw a coordinated volley at the right instant? TOO BAD.

What? Even Rome 1 had this.

[Esquire]

Guess it's a good thing I didn't shell out for the preorder bundle...

A better question than "why are mods better than TW games" might be "why doesn't Sega hire modders to make TW games." Obviously there are people who are disappointed in TW games because of their ridiculous historical inaccuracy but who want something like the strategic/tactical experience they offer; that's the audience for mods in the first place, as well as games like HOI and EUIII (inaccurate as those are). Why not hire the Darthmod fellow, say, to make Rome 2 Total War: Realism Edition?

[The Vortex Empire]

I've only played the Prologue so far. My impressions are that it's decent, but the major Rome I mods blow it out of the water. Echoing Gaius, the decision to not let you turn off fire at will for Legionaries when they have limited ammo is bizarre.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

The Romans named their legions after the province, so it should be Legio [Number] Noricorum.

Thanks.

I can see why they did it from a design standpoint though, given that they want the game to have an easy flow and cater to casuals "HURR DURR CULTURE TAKES TOO LONG AND IS TOO HARD" gamers.

I dunno, it's just weird. There's no point of equilibrium in the system; that is, you can't have a province hold steady at 57% Celtic and 43% Latin, or something. It will quickly see-saw 100% of the way to one or the other. And this is province-wide, rather than just the local regions within that province, so it results in the odd spectacle of Greek-controlled Syracuse becoming Latin in a couple of years just because Roman-controlled southern Italy is in the same province and the Roman culture bonuses quickly take over.

What? Even Rome 1 had this.

They caught a bad case of UI Minimalitis. Don't really see what was wrong with Empire's. Rome 2 tries to squeeze half the amount of functionality in half the amount of space and... technically succeeds, I guess. Unless you're the kind of player who wants to use the other half of that functionality... want to rotate your lines 35 degrees and then march forward? Heh... good luck.

[Steel]

They caught a bad case of UI Minimalitis. Don't really see what was wrong with Empire's. Rome 2 tries to squeeze half the amount of functionality in half the amount of space and... technically succeeds, I guess. Unless you're the kind of player who wants to use the other half of that functionality... want to rotate your lines 35 degrees and then march forward? Heh... good luck.

I think you can now do this better with the formation groups, as you can group an arbitrary formation together, then when you go to drag it out it will ACTUALLY deploy in the same formation that its currently in, as opposed to every previous game where you would get every unit in an absurd columns mashup. So you can now take a group (or everything) in your custom formation, trivially rotate and then a normal move forward order will actually advance them in formation. Only took 13 years.

I'm not terribly grabbed by the game so far. Had some ludicrous things in a naval battle. My Principes were boarding and massacring some skirmishers until the skirmishers "routed", at which point my troops turned their backs on the skirmishers and headed back to their ship, leaving the dozen or so "routed" skirmishers stabbing them in the back and throwing javelins until all my men were back on their own ship at which point the skirmishers actually flee. I lost about 25% of the unit as they ambled back to their own boat, having lost about 3 men in the actual fight.

[RogueIce]

I find it quite sad that mods have done a much better job for 10 years now.
I can see why they did it from a design standpoint though, given that they want the game to have an easy flow and cater to casuals "HURR DURR CULTURE TAKES TOO LONG AND IS TOO HARD" gamers.
(Don't ask me why an allegedly complex game should be geared towards casuals, but hey, SEGA).

A better question than "why are mods better than TW games" might be "why doesn't Sega hire modders to make TW games." Obviously there are people who are disappointed in TW games because of their ridiculous historical inaccuracy but who want something like the strategic/tactical experience they offer; that's the audience for mods in the first place, as well as games like HOI and EUIII (inaccurate as those are). Why not hire the Darthmod fellow, say, to make Rome 2 Total War: Realism Edition?

Because I want my legionaries, damn it!

But as a more serious answer, just how much of the general playerbase really does care, or just wants their dudes in lorica segmentata? Sure mods like EB and RTR are plenty popular on TWC and such, but does that really represent a majority of the people who buy these games, especially as they're AAA titles and all that jazz? Is it enough that CA should cater to them?

Their current methodology seems to be working, after all. Design vanilla in a way that appeals to the casuals, let the modders go hard core on the realism. Those same people will buy anyway, "I got it for the mods" and such, so might as well maximize those sales.

[The Vortex Empire]

Okay, this game is incredibly poorly optimized. I can run Shogun II with nearly everything on Ultra at ~60 fps, but to do the same in Rome II I need to turn almost everything down to low, despite very little difference in graphics quality between the two.

Also, if I'm not mistaken, it appears that not only is there no fire at will button for melee infantry with javelins, but they will only throw javelins before charging. If they're holding position and being charged by an enemy, they won't throw javelins at them. What in the hell was CA thinking?

[The Vortex Empire]

And what happened to being able to play every faction in the game, like in Rome I or Medieval II? What's the point of having hundreds of factions if you can only play a few of them?

[Thanas]

But as a more serious answer, just how much of the general playerbase really does care, or just wants their dudes in lorica segmentata? Sure mods like EB and RTR are plenty popular on TWC and such, but does that really represent a majority of the people who buy these games, especially as they're AAA titles and all that jazz? Is it enough that CA should cater to them?

Their current methodology seems to be working, after all. Design vanilla in a way that appeals to the casuals, let the modders go hard core on the realism. Those same people will buy anyway, "I got it for the mods" and such, so might as well maximize those sales.

Oh, it works. It just is IMO a poor way to go about it. It is not only the realism aspect - and I can live with casual stuff and sacrifices there - but a lot of the design elements just seem sloppy. I think CA has become the new cash cow for SEGA, who is milking them for all their worth.

And what happened to being able to play every faction in the game, like in Rome I or Medieval II? What's the point of having hundreds of factions if you can only play a few of them?

CA have decided that forcing you to play a great power first will apparently make for a better game. Which is ok if you are new to RTS, but sucks for everybody else (read: the vast majority).

[The Vortex Empire]

I miss starting as a weak, pathetic underdog, like the shattered ERE in the Stainless Steel mod 1220 late era. Hordes of crusader forces occupying Constantinople and most of Thrace, the Turkish menace to the east, and you just have a few cities and some meager forces to work with.

[Fire Fly]

I've been playing the game for a few hours now but it suddenly occurred to me if it was possible to assign offices to your family members. Rome 1 sort of had it and Shogun 2 had it. Does anyone know the answer? I'm still trying to understand the political faction stuff, which doesn't seem to be very clear.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Heh, no, it isn't.

When one of your characters ranks up, you can go to their thing in the faction screen and click Secure Promotion. This costs exorbitant amounts of money, usually. 4000 to go from Tribune to Aedile, I think, money which is usually better spent on buildings since your character is just going to keel over dead in 3 turns anyway.

[The Vortex Empire]

Fortunately there's already a mod out to make it 4 turns per year.

[Steel]

My navy had the commander die or be assassinated for 4 turns in a row. Not so keen on investing in my characters...

Using veterans feels like a cheat, in about a decade my full stack army went up about 5 ranks and then steamrolled a Greek army of 6200 with about 300 casualties. Maybe their troops were all trash but it does seem a bit obscene.

I had hoped that limiting sides to a fixed number of armies and fleets would have meant the end of being spammed with hordes of little crappy armies all over the place, and to an extent it works. I'm still getting lots of tiny ai stacks harassing me though. With the fact that armies can become navies at will its harder than ever to use the sea as a barrier too. I do like the decent and proportional to militarisation garrisons though. Enough to see off small raids but not a threat to major armies.

I had random windfalls of 2500 for 2 turns in a row, but no idea where they came from. I didn't go into debt and I didn't have any missions. Nor did I complete and objectives,even though it says those are only paid when you complete the main objective.

[Vympel]

I've played 12 hours so far - I really like it. It helps that I've encountered no major bugs, but there are annoyances that need to be fixed. For one thing, the old thing that CA keeps fixing and then breaking rears its ugly fucking head yet again - fucked up pursuit of routing units.

In Shogun 2 (what a good game Fall of the Samurai was!) they had fixed it. Routing units were largely easily wiped out except for the single digit stragglers near the end, which took a bit longer because they had a tendency to scatter.

In Rome 2 - for some goddamn reason - a: you can't see routing units on the tactical map, and b: your cavalry just sort of sit there, clinging to them, and cause hardly any casualties apart from the initial charge. Its incredibly annoying.

I too would've preferred the dynastic system making a return - they had it all ready from Shogun 2, I don't understand why they removed it. The political faction system is a poor substitute IMO - and it makes no account for running the empire if you choose to create an empire after civil war, I imagine.

Full disclosure the game runs very well on Extreme settings at 1920x1200 (forest benchmark in the options ran at 38.6fps on Extreme) on my PC but that's certainly because a: my specs were pretty good to start and b: I just upgraded my video card to a GTX 770 a few weeks ago in preparation for this game

I think I lucked out there though as its clear others are having issues. In any event there'll be a nvidia driver coming out today I think that'll further improve performance, whilst CA has committed to weekly patches (the first just came out) to hunt down bugs.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I've been plagued with said technical issues. My campaign has become unplayable - the campaign map itself is painfully sluggish now some 50 turns in, and some battles just inexplicably chug while others run fine. No amount of graphical tweaking has yielded anything remotely resembling a consistent result.

I've been running CA's beta patch and the latest nvidia beta drivers with no help. It doesn't even seem to be GPU related - the forest benchmark is happily reporting 20-30 FPS... even when the screen is visibly a slideshow! (approximately 2-3 actual FPS!).

This same machine runs heavily-modded Empire with 300-man unit sizes on max settings with no trouble whatsoever - I can watch a massive bayonet charge at eye-level in full, brutal detail - which makes these Rome 2 issues mind-bogglingly infuriating.

[Vympel]

I've been plagued with said technical issues. My campaign has become unplayable - the campaign map itself is painfully sluggish now some 50 turns in, and some battles just inexplicably chug while others run fine. No amount of graphical tweaking has yielded anything remotely resembling a consistent result.

I've been running CA's beta patch and the latest nvidia beta drivers with no help. It doesn't even seem to be GPU related - the forest benchmark is happily reporting 20-30 FPS... even when the screen is visibly a slideshow! (approximately 2-3 actual FPS!).

This same machine runs heavily-modded Empire with 300-man unit sizes on max settings with no trouble whatsoever - I can watch a massive bayonet charge at eye-level in full, brutal detail - which makes these Rome 2 issues mind-bogglingly infuriating.

Is the campaign map sluggish whilst navigating it, or is it the long wait time in between turns due to all of the eleventygillionfactions being reported?

The issue with the slideshow reminds me of Empire actually - remember that bug the fuckers never even bothered to fix, where if in a fort siege you breached more than one hole in the wall, everything would turn into a slideshow and it was actually a pathfinding bug with no relevance to performance whatsoever.

On the plus side, diplomacy is so much better in this game so far.The enemy doesn't act like a suicidal shithead and makes logical requests - I smashed the Gamasomethingorothers so I could grab the entire Africa province (they came from further south, outside of Africa province, but had taken Lepcis and Thapsus) and they grew so frantic once I had done so they repeatedly requested peace and ever increasing sums of money to make it happen. I kept saying no, but then they upped their offer from 2300 bucks to 4600 bucks, and offered to become a client state. I took it - partly because I didn't really feel like copping attrition in the desert to take their podunk regions and have another province to pacify for little gain when there are so many richer prizes.

There was still one part of Africa held by yet another minor faction, so I attacked them too and took it from them - they had one region in Libya left after that (the rest of Libya being held by Egypt) and they offered me a peace treaty on the basis that I pay them 120 bucks. I said no, fuck you, you become my client state. And they did. Which is how they should behave when faced with the power of Rome.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Is the campaign map sluggish whilst navigating it, or is it the long wait time in between turns due to all of the eleventygillionfactions being reported?

Yes. Heh.

The AI-turn wait is painful enough that I dread pressing End Turn, but by itself it doesn't make the game unplayable.

Getting ~5-10 FPS just trying to navigate around the map, and worse when I actually click on anything, is the real kicker. In fact, it's disturbingly similar to the early issues with Empire, where clicking a fleet would cause massive slowdowns as it calculated its movement. I so desperately want to believe that it's a totally different bug, because the alternative makes me want to cry at the pathetic level of software development professionalism that would be implied.

[RogueIce]

I really don't like the number of Generals/Armies determined by province mechanic. I'm also disappointed at "Armies must have Generals" but I could adapt to that, and if it means fewer mini stacks I have to clean up, so much the better. I suppose in its way the limited Generals thing is also supposed to help with that, but I think that the old family tree, with new Generals being born, coming of age and/or adopted/married into your family was better than a hard limit based on territory.

[The Vortex Empire]

So I was defending a city from a naval invasion, and the enemy landed three separate armies at once and attacked my forces. I beat the first two forces with heavy losses, but didn't have enough men to defeat the third army. Luckily for me, the third army just disembarked onto the shore and sat there doing nothing while I killed the first two armies, so I had to fast forward for the next ingame 45 minutes until the battle ended. Great AI, CA.

[RogueIce]

Are those timed battles mandatory? Or can you turn them off? If yes to the second, is it something you can do in-battle in case the AI bugs out on you or are you basically fucked if you turned off the timer?

I've never really liked the battle timer in RTW1. Even though I doubt I've ever taken anywhere near long enough for it to be an issue, I still don't enjoy being under the clock.