Rome Total War II

[Jick Magger]

Yeah, most of them are just cashing in on the B-B-BLUNDER OF THE CENTURY #94574864 hate train, or the mindless THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS GAME THE TEXTURE AND AI BUGS ARE A FEATURE FUCK THE HATERS drones, as it is with most controversial releases out there. My two-year old laptop is able to run the game fairly well when lowered to high. Metacritic as a whole is admittedly unreliable as fuck for both the reviewers and the users, and this is probably just the initial backlash for an admittedly lacking game rearing up.

This still isn't anywhere near as disastrous as Empire's launch.

 

[Spectacle]

I've been playing this game a fair amount, every night since the release, and my main complaint is the lack of challenge in field battles. The roman units seem to be completely overpowered, you can just charge them straight at the enemy lines and win with minimal losses.

I guess I can try playing as a barbarian tribe and see if they are more balanced, but this is Total War Rome goddammit, Rome should be a fun faction to play, not just map paint!

 

[Cyberarmy]

It is healthy to do some warm up before sieges.

 

[Caim]

Come on guys, cut the game some slack. After all, Rome was not build in one day and we can not assume that 2 Rome 2 Total War will be done after a single one.

Spoiler

Now, this is how we conquered Istanbul!


This game is a total mess Strangely I haven't got any FPS drops or deadly bugs yet. PB version is superior perhaps

"Unit: Shai-hulud Triremes

Can travel through sand

Bonus against Roman spice harvesters

Ya hya chouhada!"

Usulicus! We have Triremesign the likes of which even Jupiter has never seen!

 

[Disgruntled]

Its friday here, seen some good work done by modders, but it hasnt reached the threshold where I can deem the game playable.

2/4 tpy (x)
Increased troop morale (x)
Slower combat run speed (x)
Some sort of hindrance factor to transport ships ( )
Smart Campaign AI ( )
Decreased attack and/or increased defense values in combat to stop 5min arcade battles. ( )


3/6 for my must haves before I touch the game again. Not bad for 3 days. CAs beta patch is mostly minor shit unfortunately.

 

[Crevice tab]

I don't know how much this game can be improved really. Some UI work would help but the main problem is the AI who just can't deal with all the new features added- since it totally fails with victory points, merging with reinforcements, any sort of dynamic siege defense and pretty much every situation where you don't throw your entire army straight towards its troops. The campaign AI is better but the campaign map is hopelessly fragmented between far too many small factions which not only increases the time between turns but also prevents any sort of serious AI power from emerging before turn 30- 40 and by then any decent player will already be far too strong for the AI to bother.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Myself, i'm looking into buying Total War Shogun 2 gold edition and start a fresh campaign with everything patched up, all the dlc and some choice mods. But so far, haven't seen any worth while deals to buy it.

 

[Emily]

Myself, i'm looking into buying Total War Shogun 2 gold edition and start a fresh campaign with everything patched up, all the dlc and some choice mods. But so far, haven't seen any worth while deals to buy it.

Shogun 2 is a really really good game, the best tw there is. And judging by reviews of Rome2 so far the best tw for a long time to come

 

[General Maxson]

Myself, i'm looking into buying Total War Shogun 2 gold edition and start a fresh campaign with everything patched up, all the dlc and some choice mods. But so far, haven't seen any worth while deals to buy it.

Shogun 2 is a really really good game, the best tw there is. And judging by reviews of Rome2 so far the best tw for a long time to come

Too bad I have crap computer.

I hope they won't fuck up the inevitable Medieval 3, although judging by Rome 2... I'm looking forward to it the most.

 

[Vibalist]

...far too many small factions which not only increases the time between turns but also prevents any sort of serious AI power from emerging before turn 30- 40...

It takes far longer than that, friend. In my first campaign I must have played at least 150 turns, and by then no other faction than mine had more than 4 settlements. The AI simply doesn't expand.

 

[JarlFrank]

I've been playing this game a fair amount, every night since the release, and my main complaint is the lack of challenge in field battles. The roman units seem to be completely overpowered, you can just charge them straight at the enemy lines and win with minimal losses.

I guess I can try playing as a barbarian tribe and see if they are more balanced, but this is Total War Rome goddammit, Rome should be a fun faction to play, not just map paint!

It wasn't much different in Rome 1 once you got the Marian reforms.

 

[JarlFrank]

Back to waiting for EBII. Not even gonna bother pirating this turd.

Just get De Bello Mundi if you want a Roman timeframe mod for Med2

 

[Raghar]

Actually I know what happened here. That texture is designed to be oval-mapped. They didn't applied proper transformation and mapped it as a plannar texture.

 

[Jick Magger]

One other problem I've found with the game so far; friendly fire is non-existent. None of my skirmishers seem to kill any of my men when they fire into a melee, and non of my infantry are fazed when it happens (I even checked their unit tabs when it happens, it doesn't even come up as a factor in morale).

 

[Space Satan]

• Higher average frame rates with out-of-the-box settings (more conservative settings)
• Fix for DirectX 10.0 Lighting issue reported - environment map wasn't being created leading to black reflections.
• Fixed a sunken Samothrace temple complex world wonder on the Campaign map.
• Fixed defender being able to create encampments when involved in a combined battle.
• Added some localisation fixes to audio packs in French, Russian, Italian, German and Spanish.
• Fixed lock up in Multiplayer Campaign battles when a desynchronisation occurs. Players are now notified of the desynchronisation, and the battle ends.
• Fixed Multiplayer Campaign battle "overrun" prompt, which was not being shown to a player if they were a reinforcement and the other player was spectating.
• Fixed corrupt loading screen when changing to fullscreen / windowed mode after a battle, and then going into another battle.
• Fix for Multiplayer Campaign host being unable to move the camera in campaign, after reloading a save game on some rare occasions.
• Safe guards added to prevent a very rare crash in coastal assault battles.
• Fix for game lock up during end turn sequence / Celtic AI faction turn in single player campaign.
• Improved AI use of walls on Athens large settlement battle map.
• Improvements to Auto-resolve balancing in Single Player and Multiplayer Campaign modes.
• Aligned ship unit upkeep costs with land units - made mercenary ships more expensive and non-mercenary ships cheaper.
• Fixed slow turning rates for transport ships.
• Improved civil war balancing in relation to campaign difficulty.
• Fixed vehicle ground pipes, to prevent Siege Towers becoming immovable when they are left empty during the Deployment Phase of a Siege Battle, then units were moved into the Siege Tower when the battle has started.
• Fixed bug when ramming sideways into moving ship, which caused the ramming ship stick to target and strafe along with it in battles.
• Reduced the chance of Naval units sometimes clipping through the ground or harbours / ports during Port Assault battles when attempting to disembark.
• Fixed issue where armies would be stuck in Muster stance and could not exit that stance in Campaign modes.
• Fixed case where spies could get stuck on top of fleets in Campaign modes.
• Fixed rare post battle lockup in Campaign modes.
• Improved unit pathfinding in Barbarian village battle maps (fixed no go zones).
• Fix for Multiplayer Campaign lock up when the player was reinforcing an AI ally who was victorious in battle, causing the player to become stuck with no victory / continue / exit battle user interface functionality.
• Fix for cultural influence bonus from the Shrine of Neptune building
• Fix for “Zone of Controls” of hidden armies being visible to both players in head to head Multiplayer Campaign mode on mouse-over.
• Assorted minor fixes to city battle maps.
• Fix for "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day" achievement failing to unlock when its requirements were met in some situations.

Wow. They are trying to fix AI per map. PER MAP!!!!!

 

[Spectacle]

One other problem I've found with the game so far; friendly fire is non-existent. None of my skirmishers seem to kill any of my men when they fire into a melee, and non of my infantry are fazed when it happens (I even checked their unit tabs when it happens, it doesn't even come up as a factor in morale).

Lucky you, my velites killed my best general with their javelns when he charged a fleeing enemy enemy unit.

 

[SmartCheetah]

If anyone would have some sweetFX, nice looking settings, please post 'em here. I don't care about all the SSAO, Antialiasing and other bloomy/GPU killing stuff. I just want more realistic colours.

 

[bonescraper]

Meaning, oversaturated overly bright cartoony shit. SweetFX is good only for SMAA.

 

[Crevice tab]

...far too many small factions which not only increases the time between turns but also prevents any sort of serious AI power from emerging before turn 30- 40...

It takes far longer than that, friend. In my first campaign I must have played at least 150 turns, and by then no other faction than mine had more than 4 settlements. The AI simply doesn't expand.

It took 'only' 37 for an AI to have 4 in mine so perhaps it's difficulty related? Still too slow though: by the time the AI managed to reach an epic 4 towns I already had 14.

It wasn't much different in Rome 1 once you got the Marian reforms.

The Marian reforms were a middle-late game thing in Rome 1, the buildings required to build top units were a lot harder to build and by that time you'd have problems keeping control of your really big empire and conquering further regions and you'd probably get attacked by the other two roman factions (if that hasn't happened already). You could deal with stuff even without the Marian Reforms since the AI was shit but getting access to legionaries made the game less tedious and felt like an achievement. By contrast in Rome 2 I had praetorians running around before turn 20... Lol

 

[Branm]

Well... after leeching it and trying for a bit... its okay for a free game... I wouldn't spend a cent on it though considering the AI is as shitty as every recent Total War game.

 

[KoolNoodles]

Here's the run-down for people who don't know TW games or have forgotten and are looking for something "good" from best to worst.

1) Medieval Total War 2 - largest scope(fuck Empire), best engine(screw warscape, evolution of RTW), best support, and best mods(SS, DLV, BC, TATW). Once EB2 comes out there will be no comparison even with RTW.

2) Rome Total War - Right now the best classical period game, because the base allowed for some great mods. RS2, EB, RTR. The scope is pretty good, there was a lot of support, expansions were decent. Just not as polished as MTW2(and less features).

3) Shogun 2 - Very polished, nice feel/art style to the game, great music, better AI(nothing that the bigger MTW mods haven't done however), etc. Unfortunately it's still Warscape, it's still the poor implementation of characters/family, silly tech tree, and relatively poor mod support. Mods are needed for a good campaign experience btw, if you want a challenging CAI and some more diversity.

4) NTW - ETW condensed into a size that can actually work, with a fairly stable game that looks good and does Napoleonic warfare somewhat well. Unfortunately it's Warscape again, and the small scope gets really old really fast. Would debate putting it below RTW2 because it's so limited, but unfortunately RTW2 is a mess right now.

5) RTW2 - Right now the game is a huge step back from RTW. All the things that seem to "expand" don't make up for what was taken away. Oh we have provinces and edicts now? Well who cares, because family tree and politics are severely limited. Oh there are Naval Battles? Well who cares because the "tech tree" and city expansion is pathetic compared to RTW. And the list could go on for some time, research it yourself. Oh, and it's a Warscape game(will never do melee combat well).

6) ETW - Everyone should know about this turd. It's still broken.

If you like fancy graphics in weak games, pick 4-6. If you like fancy graphics in a good game pick number 3. If you want passable graphics on the best, 1-2.

Seperate category for original Shogun and Medieval. If you like more of a board game feel, don't care about graphics, slightly simpler gameplay, but fairly well done, try them. The CAI can be quite challenging on hard difficulty, it doesn't have to think as much. MTW+ Viking Invasion is still on my HD and it was one of my favorite games for a long time. STW brought me to the series so mostly just nostalgia(although I enjoyed the heck out of it at the time).

 

[Raghar]

6) ETW - Everyone should know about this turd. It's still broken.

That's bullshit. ETW 1.6 warez edition is completely playable. And Maratha isn't overpowered because they didn't get majority of EU improvements for line infantry. So they must hope for artillery hit with theirs crappy cannons, elephants, or sikhs.

Well... after leeching it and trying for a bit... its okay for a free game... I wouldn't spend a cent on it though considering the AI is as shitty as every recent Total War game.

Open map AI is fine. AI in sieges is quite bad, and performance during sieges is bad as well.

 

[KoolNoodles]

6) ETW - Everyone should know about this turd. It's still broken.

That's bullshit. ETW 1.6 warez edition is completely playable. And Maratha isn't overpowered because they didn't get majority of EU improvements for line infantry. So they must hope for artillery hit with theirs crappy cannons, elephants, or sikhs.

Well... after leeching it and trying for a bit... its okay for a free game... I wouldn't spend a cent on it though considering the AI is as shitty as every recent Total War game.

Open map AI is fine. AI in sieges is quite bad, and performance during sieges is bad as well.

Did I say ETW wasn't playable? No. I said it was a turd and is still broken, those statements are both true. When after all this time the game still has crashes, MP campaign is a joke, still poorly optimized, still has BAI bugs even with the best mods, trading is still a joke, naval boarding combat is finicky at best, and the campaign map design is pathetic, then yeah....it's a broken turd.

Edit: I forgot siege mechanics, don't make me puke.

 

[Vibalist]

So CA has released a beta patch now. Not only do they want us to beta test the game proper, they also want us to be beta testers for their fucking patches. Beautiful. Fucking amazing. Why can't they just release the shit (both the patch and the game) when it's done? Ugh.

 

[Morgoth]

Why can't they just release the shit (both the patch and the game) when it's done? Ugh.

Because impatient manboons like you are cheaper more competitve betatesters than a hired army of paid betatesters.