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Rome Total War 2

Samhain said:
The Ars review was not kind.....

Total War: Rome II review: A total mess | Ars Technica



Apparently, as you open up more of the campaign map, it gets slower and slower between turns.
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Depends on your system, and on what's happening in the game. There are a LOT of factions at the beginning, so naturally the computer has to process a lot of peoples' turns. However, as they get wiped out, there are fewer factions, and therefore less for the computer to do. I'm probably about a third of the way through my first full campaign, and I've explored about 80% of the map so far. I haven't really noticed any increase in lag (or really any "lag" as such - it's just lots and lots of npcs running through their turns), and I'm playing on the highest graphics settings. Full disclosure: my computer's a powerhouse and was purchased about a month ago.
 

Speaking as someone who's a fairly obsessive fan of both the Civ series and the Total War series, I can tell you that they are two very different animals. The game maps look cosmetically similar (esp. if you're just seeing random screenshots), but that's pretty much where the similarities end. For starters, the Total War games are much more narrowly focused in terms of time/location than Civ. This has a huge impact on your overarching strategic, economic and technological goals. The interface is very different. Moving around feels very different (Total War isn't on a grid/hex map, so the movement on the campaign map feels more fluid and natural). Rather than having a small number of representative fighting units a la Civ (e.g. swordsmen, archers, spearman, cavalry), Total War games (and especially Rome) has hundreds of (generally) historically accurate units, many of which have their own special abilities and more or less unique strategic strengths and weaknesses; as well as individual generals and admirals who live and gain experience and eventually die as the game progresses. This leads me to probably the most important distinction: a lot of the fun of a Total War game happens when a fight breaks out. Unlike with Civ (with its computer determined battles), you play out full-on large scale battles in real time with individually rendered troops. I've played battles involving as many as 8,000 troops (with their own faces, slight variations to their uniforms, and expressions of rage/fear), and I just started Rome II yesterday. There's a staggering degree of strategic variety on a Total War battlemap, and that's more true for Rome II than for any previous Total War game.

Re: the army cap - that actually makes more sense than one might think. Personally I have yet to use or need anywhere near the total number of armies I have available (to be created), and that number does increase as you expand your empire.
 

Thanks for the review! I'm planning on getting a new rig in order to run it on max as well.

Seems like they have pretty much the same problems they've had in the past in the series.

Hopefully the internal politics does ramp up in the later game. I was looking forward to that new feature. The one in the original Rome was kind of "meh". Was just a way to create a massive civil war wrench into the game.
 

Ha! What you posted is so true. It's particularly true for more niche games like war games and grand strategy games.

It seems to get criticized every new release with "bad AI" or bugs. It's a big game with a lot of moving parts. I think you're right as well...I think people have these unrealistic expectations. I'm sure the majority of those putting those bad reviews will still put in 100 hours plus in the game. I though the new Tomb Raider was fantastic but didn't put a fraction of time into it.
 
God, I got to upgrade my PC.
 
First impression of the game? Eh, it's okay.

The graphics are nice. The units manage to look very crisp, colorful, and varied without coming off like they're wearing colored "team jerseys" like in some previous TW games. It's just a shame that, on a mid 2012 laptop with 16 Gigs of ram and a fairly high end graphics card, I am still stuck running everything on high (which is really only medium on the game's scale), and that the game runs kind of sluggish. However, I guess I was kind of expecting that, so I don't have much room to complain. :shrug:

They've made a lot of advancements to the battle maps which actually seem to be kind of impressive. I also like how you can specifically select the terrain for custom battles. This is a nice touch.

Naval battles also seem to be pretty cool, and I like how you can bombard enemy armies with seaborne artillery off shore now. This can come in handy for safely picking off enemy elephants from a distance before your soldiers engage. :mrgreen:

However, as much as I hate to say it, they've also definitely "dumbed down" the battles. The unit facing controls from Shogun 2 and Napoleon are gone entirely (which sucks), and you can't order your units to go into loose formations anymore.

Everything also feels like it moves waaaay too fast. It's almost like everything is in fast forward by default. Units practically fly towards the enemy, and begin to waver and rout within seconds of contact. Even large battles tend to be over within only a few minutes; 5 to 10 at the most.

The phalanxes have also been massively nerfed, and aren't even called "phalanxes" anymore. Legionaries, as far as I can tell, don't throw pilla anymore either.

As I'm sure you can imagine, this offends my nerdy history buff sensibilities to no end. :lol:

Overall, it's about what I'd expect out of a Total War Game. There are some annoying elements, but I'm sure that patches and the modding community can fix most of those given a few months to work on the game.

I haven't tried the campaign yet, so I'll let you know how I feel about that later on.
 

Thanks for the review. Disappointing about the speed aspect

I think that was a major criticism for Empire and Medieval total war....that getting set took so long. I personally liked it.

Hopefully they do make improvements if units get demoralized and break too fast.
 


I've been noticing a fair amount of variability with that. It depends a lot on who's fighting whom. A bunch of basic levy spearmen are going to break pretty quickly if they're facing off against seasoned Roman heavy infantry, but I'm far enough in now that I'm starting to see stuff like Spartan hoplites and some of the stronger Celtic forces. They're pretty good about holding their own. I think things still move a little faster than they did in Empire or maybe even Shogun, but it depends a lot on the details.
 

It almost feels like they're trying to turn Total War into StarCraft in some regards. I honestly can't think of any other reason why they would speed up the battles to such a large degree other than to appeal to the multiplayer strategy game crowd that games like SC already draw.

It bothers me because it basically robs the battle simulator of most of its strategy in favor of hurried click fests, and leaves the game feeling less than "epic" on the whole.

The battles feel more like skirmishes than campaign deciding confrontations.

To each their own, I suppose. I simply would've preferred that they include some kind of setting to change the speed of gameplay.

You can never go wrong giving players more options, after all. :shrug:
 
From what I read of the Steam Forums, the game is a HUGE letdown.

Diehard Total War Fans are reporting the game, outside of some game breaking technical problems has been severely dumbed down. Diplomacy, family trees, tech, blob fights and no tactics whatsoever it's all screwed up from the older games. And then you have the AI problems. Angry Joe has a video of two battles of truly incompetent AI. Roman soldiers just stand there after being ordered to attack, and do nothing as they're slaughtered. Creative Assembly appears to have seriously blundered this release.

I'm SUPER HAPPY I didn't pre-order. Game looks like a hot mess from the videos and posts about it.
 

I think some people may be overplaying the negatives (or maybe had some unusually bad luck). A lot. I've been playing pretty regularly since it was released, and aside from the usual inevitable occasional AI glitches (e.g. ships failing to properly unload troops) the game runs quite well and is at least as tactically interesting as its predecessor. I've found in general that the AI is as smart as its ever been in a Total War game. The AI effectively uses superior ranged units to pelt you, melee units will attempt to flank your line and go after weak units like archers, spearmen will direct their energies towards cavalry etc, etc. In fact, with the new line of site system, the computer will now occasionally pull off ambush maneuvers. Naval battles are largely a cluster****, to be sure, but the land battles play out much like every other Total War game I've ever played, only a little bit smarter and much more varied. I'm not sure why anyone would have a problem with the tech tree. It operates much like the ones in Shogun or Empire. The diplomacy system - while far from perfect - is no worse than in previous Total War games, is more transparent, and arguably a tad more rationally responsive. The internal family system is pretty much irrelevant, but it's also new, so I can't see how it could possibly be construed as dumbing down the game. Overall, Rome II is a Total War game like any other, just a little bit smarter and a lot prettier.

I'd recommend checking out the professional reviews, rather than the fan forums. The loudest, craziest voices tend to hold sway in that latter context. I've just been taking a look, and some of the angriest comments appear to be coming from people who haven't figured out how to use the game yet. For instance, there are customizable attributes for generals and special units (e.g. spies), they're just not organized in a "tree" a la Shogun. I wouldn't be surprised if much of the anger is from similarly confused people.
 
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Aderleth said:
I'd recommend checking out the professional reviews, rather than the fan forums.
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I stopped believing in professional reviews after Sim City, Alien Colonial Marine and IGN's paid advertisements. The videos people post of the game are really the best information for me. Angry Joe's are hilarious as to how bad the AI has gotten. You can't fake that.
 

All I'm saying is that I've been playing rather a lot since the release, and I've seen nothing of the horror stories you're referencing. :shrug:
 

It was kind of like that with the first one. When you were fighting the barbarian soldiers vs Greek soldiers. The Gauls in the first game were pretty much a "gimme"
 
iliveonramen said:
It was kind of like that with the first one. When you were fighting the barbarian soldiers vs Greek soldiers. The Gauls in the first game were pretty much a "gimme"
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Yup. This time around I'm getting the impression that they've made some effort to give every culture at least the possibility of building a powerhouse army, but first they have to develop the infrastructure and the tech to build the hardcore units. Consequently in the early game your mostly just going to run up against basic levy units. Later on, some of that Celtic and Hellenic infantry can actually hold its own against Roman legionaires.
 
aww the game crashes during the prologue. waiting for patch to fix...
 

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why they can't seem to fix these kinds of problems.

How freaking hard is it to get the computer player to form his men up in a straight line or two and march the directly towards my army?

I'll freely admit that I'm not any kind of expert on computer programing, but this just strikes me as being ridiculously basic.

Tightly held formations were, for all intents and purposes, the entire focus of Greek and Roman warfare. Given that fact, what the Hell kind of sense does it make to have enemy armies basically break into a mob of different units all moving on completely separate vectors the minute the action starts?

You know people in old timey war movies are always shouting "Hold the line?" Yea, sorry Sega, but that's not just for show.

The AI pretty desperately needs to have an actual "line" to hold for the combat to be in any way challenging. Ever since Empire, it simply hasn't.

This makes the battles absurdly easy for a savvy player to exploit, especially when phalanxes are involved.
 

It's odd considering that Shogun 2 didn't have this problems, neither did MTWII or RTWI.

I guess MTWII COULD go blob fight if you let it go long enough without reforming, but I never did that as I'd always reform units or at least flank and let my front units recover and reform.

I'll freely admit that I'm not any kind of expert on computer programing, but this just strikes me as being ridiculously basic.
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Especially when they already had the code for it in previous TW games.

I'm guessing I'm just going to wait 6 months to a year for this one to get patched into playability. If I ever get it.
 
Nah I hate this game. Glorification of the fall of Illiria. Illiria Total War sounds much better!!!
 
Just started playing it, finished the prologue, seems they have been patching it steadily so quite a few bugs have been fixed. I was really looking forward to this since Im a huge fan of RTW1 and have played it endlessly, I didnt like the other Total War series except Shogun 2 and its a pity they didnt try to build on Shogun 2's strengths like animated cutscenes of spying or assassinations and the diplomacy part needs to be spruced up. The other thing I didnt like was that there was so many battles you have to fight since bandits plague your newly conquered cities incessantly and they appear out of nowhere so this means you have to autoresolve battles more than ever which I do not like.

So far I would give it a 6/10 but since I only finished the prologue I hope it gets better.
 
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