[Cause]

If there is a thread for this I just could not find it. Surely the people fo this forum have played it?

I understand that when this first came out it was a buggy mess, I cant speak to that. What I have played so far is a brilliant refinement of the Total war formulae as well as a return to the best era of the game in my opinions. With a few minor design choices that both delight and frustrate me.

First off the graphics have really approved, I don't mean the battle graphics but the campaign map. It looks more vibrant, the way cities are represented is a huge improvement as well. Lots of new changes to the campaign map. I really enjoy how provinces are divided into four territories and only the capital has walls. I love how the cities, their walls and their roads automatically improve. The new garrison system is a great evolution over that from shogun. Every building can have a positive or negative effect on a cities moral, security, garrison and income. That said battles can become a little insane. Capital Ports are a huge pain. I have attacked what appear to weakly defended cities only to meet a resistance of a few army units, more than ten garrison units, one or two attack ships and again several more garrison fleets. Often two armies are needed to balance out this number weakness. Oh right, having a big city also spawn fixed artillery is pretty sweet.

I also like how the ocean is divided into provinces, but you need to dominate a large area with several ports to take ownership. Its a powerful advantage once you get it though. That said fleets are crazy and need to fixed. Any army can become a fleet just by walking onto the water, I was shocked when I finally realized this. I was more shocked when I learnt that their transport ships are not only capable of defending themselves, they can also attack enemy fleets and what's more they fight just as well if not better than some actual naval units. After all they have twice the numbers of men which tells in every boarding engagement! I cant help but think that armies should only be able to transform into navies by departing actual ports. There should also be a small fee! Its so annoying when armies escape my wrath by magically flying off in their boats.

Lastly the AI is siege retarded. I have won 3 heroic victories against the AI so far as they amphibious assault one of my provincial capitals. They bring no siege equipment and just sit outside the gate waiting for it to burn down while my ranged units annihilate them with javelins! Athens has lost 3 mid to full sized armies, I lost 30 men so far. Diplomacy is borked, as ever. I'm only thirty turns into the game but I would say that by turn 5 I had been declared war on by the Etruscan league, Carthage, Libya, Sparta and athens. Only neighbours I am not at war with are the barbarians to my north but they refuse to trade with me! Its a really horrible position to be in as I am torn between two fronts. I managed to conquer Carthage (I regret not just razing it and moving on) but the faction was already in Spain and Libya is making moves to get it back. I have just begun an offensive to raze Greece but it will be a tough fight. Meanwhile Carthage has no big armies but their small fleets keep harrasing me and blockading or taking down any coastal city I leave unguarded.

[Macros]

its pretty but I found it to be a very annoying game, I would have preferred an upgrade of th eold engine and a boost to AI over the full rehash they've done.

[Cause]

This game is infuriating, I think I have to restart. I am at war with carthage and Libya in Africa! I am at war with Athens Sparta Macedonia Egypt and whatever place Pyrrhus came from. The one place I was secure has finally turned on me and now the barbarians are descending. I'm winning every battle and have even managed to conquer pella but I don't think this is sustainable. Enemy agents outnumber mine ten to one and every turn I suffer sabotage and unrest. Egypt has crossed half the world to attack me? Why?

Also this game is absurd! My own vassal refused to trade with me!

[Garak]

Weird. When I played, every treaty I had was kept. I had trouble expanding at one point because my allies never gave a reason to break our treaty and attack them.

[Cause]

My vassal has not broke the treaty but her ejected my trade offer the first few times. He should not even have the choice! Vassalage should create a trade agreement by default!

Also I'm convinced the computer does not play fair. Athens has two cities left, Sparta one. I destroy whole stacked armies and yet two turns later there is another one. It should not be possible to recruit or afford that many soldiers that quickly from two towns.

I also find armies have a much greater chance of reforming after defeat them before. I defeat rout and always choose to chase down the enemy army but almost always have one to four units with twenty men or so left. Just annoying since they then run around retreating but seldom leave my territory

[Garak]

I'm annoyed that all batters degenerate into giant blobs almost instantly.

[Cause]

Yes I recently noticed that as well. The collision mechanic is borked. It creates some serious problems since it means flanking often fails to register properly and units sometimes move to freely through each other.

I have realized what every TW game needs. Not just a measure of how much a faction hates or likes you, with hate meaning war but a measure of how much enthusiasm a faction has for the war. Repeatedly destroying a factions armies and navies in one sided heroic battles should slowly crush their will to the point where they will sue to peace or at least accept your offer of surrender. Not fight it out to the better end over centuries.

[Garak]

That would be something.

Something I actually hate in Rome 2 is that I can't besiege a city that someone else is blockading. I mean, I'm attacking the walls not the harbor, what the hell guys?

[Gothos]

Cause, on 26 February 2014 - 11:46 AM, said:

Yes I recently noticed that as well. The collision mechanic is borked. It creates some serious problems since it means flanking often fails to register properly and units sometimes move to freely through each other.

I have realized what every TW game needs. Not just a measure of how much a faction hates or likes you, with hate meaning war but a measure of how much enthusiasm a faction has for the war. Repeatedly destroying a factions armies and navies in one sided heroic battles should slowly crush their will to the point where they will sue to peace or at least accept your offer of surrender. Not fight it out to the better end over centuries.

May I present to you:
Crusader Kings II
Europa Universalis IV

You're welcome. Since you find tactical battles annoying blobs anyway, there's nothing keeping you with TW.
Unless you just want the pretty, shiny graphics.


The issue of TW games is atrocious AI masked by AI bonuses like creating armies out of thin air and overall hostility. In TW games nobody tries to run a country
or win for themselves, they're just bent on defeating the player.

[Cause]

Civ 5 and Europa Universalis are next on my list. I quite enjoy RTW and some of the battles. Does not mean its perfect or I have no complaints though. Problem as I see it is they add in good new ideas but do so by taking out good old ones.

[Garak]

The first Rome:Total War and the Medieval 2 are the ones I played the most.

[tiam]

Can Crusader 2 run on older laptops or only newer ones? thinking about giving it a go if its not too pricey given the amount of praise it gets on here

[Imperial Historian]

I've run it on a basic 4 year old laptop, but it was quite slow (though just about playable). You need reasonable processor speed and ram, but not having a video card didn't seem to affect me.

In other news eu4 is on sale for $10 at humble bundle if anyone is looking to grab it. Though eu4 does require a newer computer.

https://www.humblebu...lis4_storefront

[Cause]

Fuck Rome 2! I am at war with the planet! I managed to snuff out Greece but this somehow trigged off the barbarian invasions of hell! Crushing Sparta and making it my client state angered some barbarian faction who hates sparta. Worlds apart! Makes no sense! Since they hate me, all barbarians hate me a little more. Im only allowed 5 armies or so! How must I wage a war in greece, Italy, the islands and africa like this! I give up

Also your my client state! How can you refuse me the offer of trade? and how on earth can you remain in alliance with half my enemies? Making sparta a client state magiced up a giant spartan stack of soldiers, I was really expecting them to nuts on my enemies.

I'm embarrassed! I have not been defeated by a game in I don't know how long! Situation is simply untenable!

This post has been edited by Cause: 27 February 2014 - 10:30 PM

[tiam]

Cause, on 27 February 2014 - 10:15 PM, said:

Fuck Rome 2! I am at war with the planet! I managed to snuff out Greece but this somehow trigged off the barbarian invasions of hell! Crushing Sparta and making it my client state angered some barbarian faction who hates sparta. Worlds apart! Makes no sense! Since they hate me, all barbarians hate me a little more. Im only allowed 5 armies or so! How must I wage a war in greece, Italy, the islands and africa like this! I give up

Also your my client state! How can you refuse me the offer of trade? and how on earth can you remain in alliance with half my enemies? Making sparta a client state magiced up a giant spartan stack of soldiers, I was really expecting them to nuts on my enemies.

I'm embarrassed! I have not been defeated by a game in I don't know how long! Situation is simply untenable!

I dont know the mechanics for Rome 2 but id simply cut my losses on one continent, burn entire cities to the ground and get what money I could for whatever buildings I destroyed, offer the cities as a gift (though I think I read somewhere you cant do that anymore which is odd) to whoever im trying to appease and then re use the armies on a different front.

Im also a bit put off by the sheer stupidity your describing about the diplomacy.

[Garak]

To be fair, Total War diplomacy was always crap. The AI would just randomly attack you for no reason (Hungary you have one province left and you decide to attack the Holy Roman Empire which has the rest of Europe under it's control? Are you completely insane?). The game was always about the battles and the wars but in Rome2 even the battles are less fun because of giant blob syndrome and the that damn kill moves that every unit executes on another (seriously the battles look silly - give me Medieval 2 or Rome 1 any day).

[Werthead]

Rome II is definitely borked. They fixed some problems but introduced others, but more annoying are the underlying gameplay issues. My primary issues are:

1) No short campaign option.
2) The map is quite ludicrously huge, 3 or 4 times the size of the Rome I map which covered the same area.
3) The combination of the above, which means that doing a full campaign will take you a colossal amount of time.
4) The quite irrational AI.
5) The magically-appearing fleets, which renders building naval units pointless.

There were a few things I liked. The legion system reflects how the Roman military exists and forces you to focus on post-conquest social and religious integration, which is exactly what the Romans did. They also got that bit just about right: after taking a new province you need to keep your army there for a few turns to help integrate it before moving on. I also liked the use of civil militia as defensive forces, which is again how the Romans operated. They didn't keep legions based in friendly cities for years at a time and actually treated the presence of a legion in a city as a potential sign of rebellion (hence that whole Julis Caesar crossing the Rubicon mess). Of course, some may argue that more fun gameplay and being able to tailor the defensive make-up of each city should trump historical accuracy, especially in a series that's always played fast and loose with real history.

In general terms, I had a much better time playing Shogun 2 and even the infamously broken Empire compared to Rome II, but the high-point of the series for me remains Medieval II, its Kingdoms mods and its quite amazing collection of mods.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 01 March 2014 - 10:47 AM

[Gothos]

TW I played most was Medieval 1, and I have a lot of sentiment for it, even if it was outrageously exploitable. Medieval 2 was great as well, though with time the AI's failings become more and more apparent. I simply can't stomach more than an hour of a TW game at a time anymore.

GoT mod for M2TW: K was seven kinds of awesome, though. KRAKENS FTW!

[Cause]

No idea why I bothered but I started a new game as a different roman faction and the game is working normally now. I chose the faction that gets greek love. I am now defensively allied with sparta, and allied with Athens and have non aggression and trade alliances with with every eastern faction! People beg me every turn for trade or non aggression pacts. I have had to start saying no since otherwise their is no one to conquer. Having a cultural affinity with Greece and not a penalty as I had with everyone with the last faction has made the difference. Diplomacy is still messed up though. I can betray an ally, I break the alliance a turn or two early and attack them, and receive the untrustworthy diplomacy penalty. A turn later I am steadfast again. It could be because I have so many treaties going that they outweigh breaking one but it still seems weak. Also trade is practically worthless, I don't think any faction earns me more than a 100 bucks a turn. In old TW games trade was the lifeblood of the economy. I remember in empire when I conquered too many nations my economy practically went bankrupt since no trade meant no armies!

Still while this game will always be more tactical than strategic at least this time round its playable. In fact I am enjoying myself immensely.

Still there can be no doubt that this game was rushed to delivery. Wardogs are an unbalanced mess 9 patches into the game? One unit of wardogs will destroy a full stack of low quality troops. Its nonsense! Also Roman praetorians (not hard to get) are like walking tanks and V8 powered blenders combined. I can march a unit of Praetorians into javelin fire, slinger fire and then into the maw of three enemy infantry units and come out victorious with maybe 6 losses? Considering my normal stack at this point is one general 4 cavalry 4 Velites and 11 praetorians I roll through anything. Annoyingly the auto resolve function is nothing but a numbers calculator! I regularly am told the situation is hopeless but go onto win decisive victories.I may be outnumbered but the calculator does not take into the account that praetorians are better than militia spear-men, that further they are rank 6 or higher, or the fact that reinforcements enter the battle late allowing you to defeat the enemy piecemeal. Also it calculates that low numbered units are weak and so will suffer the most meaning specialists like cavalry or siege equipment always take losses, even though in real battles they are protected. Rome is not unique in this regard though. Oath sworn are monsters and royal peltasts I have discovered are actually elite heavy infantry that are Macedonian praetorians. Was this play tested? I should add both of the latter are also so dangerous because while praetorians can be built by say turn 40 both of these other units can be built turn one as part of a generals retinue!

Also the AI must be cheating! No other explanation. They are too passive so they often just turtle. Problem is at imperium one you may have 3 armies and two navies. So I often see a one settlement faction that should be easy pickings except they have 3 armies and two navies plus a garrison parked on their walled settlement. How can they afford that? Also a faction that powerful for its size should be trying to expand!

Worse I have learned that when the civil war pops they deploy as many armies as you can, which means the civil war can pop as many as 25 full stacks of armies. Which apparently all promptly starve to death. Thats stupid in itself but also what's the justification for such a large force appearing literally overnight? if they didnt starve it would also be unstoppable since they are all concentrated together! Nothing can beat 25 stacks of praetorians!

Last complaint! Sieging small towns annoys the crap out of me! They took away wars to avoid too many siege battles okay! But now I have to try and cram an army down two pathways to capture a point that one unit can stand on? Sparta or macedon must love this kind of battle! Als I like the garrison system, its clever and what not but its also kinda pointless in its current incarnation. 1 legionaire 3 roari and 6 plebs cat stop any determined assault without the benefit of walls. I would literally kill to be able to rather have a cash pool and decide the force make-up of a garrison. Id rather have one legionnaire than 6 plebs! In fact Id rather that a garrison was shared between a province and was semi mobile within that province. Rather one force that means something than 4 forces that just speedbum the enemey. Only exception is ranged units on a wall against the AI who often ignores using siege equipment.

This post has been edited by Cause: 03 March 2014 - 09:56 AM

[tiam]

[quote name='Cause' timestamp='1393840293' post='1112767']
No idea why I bothered but I started a new game as a different roman faction and the game is working normally now. I chose the faction that gets greek love. I am now defensively allied with sparta, and allied with Athens and have non aggression and trade alliances with with every eastern faction! People beg me every turn for trade or non aggression pacts. I have had to start saying no since otherwise their is no one to conquer. Having a cultural affinity with Greece and not a penalty as I had with everyone with the last faction has made the difference. Diplomacy is still messed up though. I can betray an ally, I break the alliance a turn or two early and attack them, and receive the untrustworthy diplomacy penalty. A turn later I am steadfast again. It could be because I have so many treaties going that they outweigh breaking one but it still seems weak. Also trade is practically worthless, I don't think any faction earns me more than a 100 bucks a turn. In old TW games trade was the lifeblood of the economy. I remember in empire when I conquered too many nations my economy practically went bankrupt since no trade meant no armies!

Still while this game will always be more tactical than strategic at least this time round its playable. In fact I am enjoying myself immensely.

Still there can be no doubt that this game was rushed to delivery. Wardogs are an unbalanced mess 9 patches into the game? One unit of wardogs will destroy a full stack of low quality troops. Its nonsense! Also Roman praetorians (not hard to get) are like walking tanks and V8 powered blenders combined. I can march a unit of Praetorians into javelin fire, slinger fire and then into the maw of three enemy infantry units and come out victorious with maybe 6 losses? Considering my normal stack at this point is one general 4 cavalry 4 Velites and 11 praetorians I roll through anything. Annoyingly the auto resolve function is nothing but a numbers calculator! I regularly am told the situation is hopeless but go onto win decisive victories.I may be outnumbered but the calculator does not take into the account that praetorians are better than militia spear-men, that further they are rank 6 or higher, or the fact that reinforcements enter the battle late allowing you to defeat the enemy piecemeal. Also it calculates that low numbered units are weak and so will suffer the most meaning specialists like cavalry or siege equipment always take losses, even though in real battles they are protected. Rome is not unique in this regard though. Oath sworn are monsters and royal peltasts I have discovered are actually elite heavy infantry that are Macedonian praetorians. Was this play tested? I should add both of the latter are also so dangerous because while praetorians can be built by say turn 40 both of these other units can be built turn one as part of a generals retinue!

Also the AI must be cheating! No other explanation. They are too passive so they often just turtle. Problem is at imperium one you may have 3 armies and two navies. So I often see a one settlement faction that should be easy pickings except they have 3 armies and two navies plus a garrison parked on their walled settlement. How can they afford that? Also a faction that powerful for its size should be trying to expand!

Worse I have learned that when the civil war pops they deploy as many armies as you can, which means the civil war can pop as many as 25 full stacks of armies. Which apparently all promptly starve to death. Thats stupid in itself but also what's the justification for such a large force appearing literally overnight? if they didnt starve it would also be unstoppable since they are all concentrated together! Nothing can beat 25 stacks of praetorians!

Last complaint! Sieging small towns annoys the crap out of me! They took away wars to avoid too many siege battles okay! But now I have to try and cram an army down two pathways to capture a point that one unit can stand on? Sparta or macedon must love this kind of battle! Als I like the garrison system, its clever and what not but its also kinda pointless in its current incarnation. 1 legionaire 3 roari and 6 plebs cat stop any determined assault without the benefit of walls. I would literally kill to be able to rather have a cash pool and decide the force make-up of a garrison. Id rather have one legionnaire than 6 plebs! In fact Id rather that a garrison was shared between a province and was semi mobile within that province. Rather one force that means something than 4 forces that just speedbum the enemey. Only exception is ranged units on a wall against the AI who often ignores using siege equipment.
[/quote

Youve really put me off this game. Sounds like a rushed mess. Maybe a game of the year edition somewhere down the line.