Rome Total War II

[Jugashvili]

The economy is a joke. Most people will outright refuse to trade with you, even when offered substantial bribes, but that's OK because you can maintain big armies with taxes alone as long as you spam industrial / crafting buildings. Public order is laughably easy to manage -- I don't think I've ever had a single revolt. And so far I've played Arverni on Hard and Barcid Dynasty Carthage on Hard -- both of which are supposed to be challenging, but I lost interest in both campaigns around turn 80 because the countries essentially ran themselves.

One particularly aggravating feature is the fact that auto-resolve is horribly broken, as it gives a huge advantage to sheer numbers. A stack of 2000 full Gold-xp troops with upgraded weapons and armor, led by a five-star general, vs. 3000 levies that break almost instantly when playing manually? Crushing defeat.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Thats way most of the "powerfull" countries get early defeats. Barbarians defeating Rome with tier 1 levies and slingers...

 

[Malakal]

The economy is a joke. Most people will outright refuse to trade with you, even when offered substantial bribes, but that's OK because you can maintain big armies with taxes alone as long as you spam industrial / crafting buildings. Public order is laughably easy to manage -- I don't think I've ever had a single revolt. And so far I've played Arverni on Hard and Barcid Dynasty Carthage on Hard -- both of which are supposed to be challenging, but I lost interest in both campaigns around turn 80 because the countries essentially ran themselves.

One particularly aggravating feature is the fact that auto-resolve is horribly broken, as it gives a huge advantage to sheer numbers. A stack of 2000 full Gold-xp troops with upgraded weapons and armor, led by a five-star general, vs. 3000 levies that break almost instantly when playing manually? Crushing defeat.

To trade you actually need different resources with your trade partner so both sides can make money out of that. And good relations obviously. Usually you need to invest some into resource production before trading. But yes, taxes are the main income source every game.

Province management is more tricky than you make it out to be. The balance between food and happiness isnt easy to achieve on higher city levels. Early game its easy to produce enough food and have enough happiness but with higher level settlements that have penalties to food and happiness its harder. Especially since there is only one really good designated happiness building and some happiness from temples to be had.

AI always starves its armies and provinces tho. Makes the game way easier.

 

[corvus]

Anyone try patch 3? Can you chase down fleeing troops reliably without the cheering animation taking priority over the player's actual commands? Is this "the patch" that fixes the game?

 

[Vibalist]

I think the game has gotten a lot better with the patches. I don't know if it's patch 3 specifically, but the AI seems to have done away with most of its flaws, as it now plays more aggressively in campaign mode, doesn't starve its armies (as much) and seems to be more intelligent overall. This lends credit to the theory that the AI was decent enough to begin with, but unfinished and simply needed to be ironed out and worked on a bit more. That alone, for me, makes this a much more enjoyable game. The AI still isn't exceptional, mind, but simply better.
As for the complaints about trading, it's true that factions don't want to trade much. Initially. I got to around turn 100 with Rome in a campaign, and by then I must have had about ten or fifteen trading partners, if not more. It seems to get easier with time and as you acquire more resources. After a while it even ended up being so that they would frequently request to trade as opposed to the other way around.
The province management is also more difficult than some of you may think. Like Malakal pointed out, it gets harder and harder the bigger you get, when you begin to expand more rapidly, leading to fewer armies covering more territory, more newly conquered provinces with a different culture and high tier buildings that contribute to squalor and drain food resources. And there's always those civil wars to spice things up too, even if they aren't related to province happiness as such.
I do agree about the autoresolve thing, Jugashvii. But now that we've seen that CA are actually fixing their issues relatively quickly, hopefully this will get resolved as well.

 

[Brayko]

But seriously how do you go from Shogun 2 to, this? I hate to use the dreaded "C" word so I'm hoping there's a more enlightening explanation.

 

[Dreaad]

I think the game has gotten a lot better with the patches. I don't know if it's patch 3 specifically, but the AI seems to have done away with most of its flaws, as it now plays more aggressively in campaign mode, doesn't starve its armies (as much) and seems to be more intelligent overall. This lends credit to the theory that the AI was decent enough to begin with, but unfinished and simply needed to be ironed out and worked on a bit more. That alone, for me, makes this a much more enjoyable game. The AI still isn't exceptional, mind, but simply better.
As for the complaints about trading, it's true that factions don't want to trade much. Initially. I got to around turn 100 with Rome in a campaign, and by then I must have had about ten or fifteen trading partners, if not more. It seems to get easier with time and as you acquire more resources. After a while it even ended up being so that they would frequently request to trade as opposed to the other way around.
The province management is also more difficult than some of you may think. Like Malakal pointed out, it gets harder and harder the bigger you get, when you begin to expand more rapidly, leading to fewer armies covering more territory, more newly conquered provinces with a different culture and high tier buildings that contribute to squalor and drain food resources. And there's always those civil wars to spice things up too, even if they aren't related to province happiness as such.
I do agree about the autoresolve thing, Jugashvii. But now that we've seen that CA are actually fixing their issues relatively quickly, hopefully this will get resolved as well.

Sadly I'm pretty sure you are just being affected by a placebo. Thinking things are better when in reality the patches just put sellotape all over the broken mess to hold it together. If the battle AI has changed and I'm not so sure, then it's probably because they made it even more retarded so it doesn't try any fancy feints and just moves forward like it has for the past 6 games.

 

[Raghar]

I do agree about the autoresolve thing, Jugashvii. But now that we've seen that CA are actually fixing their issues relatively quickly, hopefully this will get resolved as well.

Actually as long as battles are quick, who need autoresolves? They are useful only when you have superiority.

 

[Tigranes]

I have no idea why any of you bought/pirated this game, it was about as guaranteed to decline as Thiaf.

 

[Raghar]

I have no idea why any of you bought/pirated this game, it was about as guaranteed to decline as Thiaf.

It's next game in the series. It's for the same reason why people are reading Dostoyevski, or watching Dr. WHO.

 

[7/10]

Somebody had to betatest this shit, so I can get it for 3 bucks next year.

 

[Bradylama]

Province management is more tricky than you make it out to be. The balance between food and happiness isnt easy to achieve on higher city levels. Early game its easy to produce enough food and have enough happiness but with higher level settlements that have penalties to food and happiness its harder. Especially since there is only one really good designated happiness building and some happiness from temples to be had.

It's not so hard if you build nothing but farms and livestock in 4-region provinces and just use one army to put down the constant rebellions. Barbarians can build agricultural tiles in their walled cities too.

 

[Malakal]

Province management is more tricky than you make it out to be. The balance between food and happiness isnt easy to achieve on higher city levels. Early game its easy to produce enough food and have enough happiness but with higher level settlements that have penalties to food and happiness its harder. Especially since there is only one really good designated happiness building and some happiness from temples to be had.

It's not so hard if you build nothing but farms and livestock in 4-region provinces and just use one army to put down the constant rebellions. Barbarians can build agricultural tiles in their walled cities too.

Well yeah if you ignore happiness and just squash revolts you can invest in food and not care. But I wouldnt call such provinces "self sufficient".

 

[Bradylama]

They're not supposed to be self-sufficient. Food production all gets dumped into a national stockpile anyways, so if you aren't using some provinces as food mills the others won't be as specialized in other areas. Agricultural provinces don't even need high tier towns and settlements since the only thing that matters are farms and fisheries.

 

[Raghar]

Well then you risk an army destroying your food provinces, and basically mauling your economy.

 

[Malakal]

They're not supposed to be self-sufficient. Food production all gets dumped into a national stockpile anyways, so if you aren't using some provinces as food mills the others won't be as specialized in other areas. Agricultural provinces don't even need high tier towns and settlements since the only thing that matters are farms and fisheries.

What? Global food gives bonuses but each province depends on its own production for food. I am sure I had local starvation issues. If food was global your armies would starve all over the map not in specific provinces.

 

[Bradylama]

They're not supposed to be self-sufficient. Food production all gets dumped into a national stockpile anyways, so if you aren't using some provinces as food mills the others won't be as specialized in other areas. Agricultural provinces don't even need high tier towns and settlements since the only thing that matters are farms and fisheries.

What? Global food gives bonuses but each province depends on its own production for food. I am sure I had local starvation issues. If food was global your armies would starve all over the map not in specific provinces.

The armies I leave parked in industrial provinces never starve. I could leave a legion parked in Rome while Italia had -33 food drain and nothing happened. Armies and cities are fed on the global food supply. They only ever become self-sufficient when you end taxes, and even then food-negative provinces don't starve. Maybe you're confusing starvation with attrition from desert and snow spaces?

Well then you risk an army destroying your food provinces, and basically mauling your economy.

This is also what the defensive army is capable of doing. Fending off assaults. It's even easier when your factory farms are deep behind the front.

 

[Vibalist]

Sadly I'm pretty sure you are just being affected by a placebo. Thinking things are better when in reality the patches just put sellotape all over the broken mess to hold it together. If the battle AI has changed and I'm not so sure, then it's probably because they made it even more retarded so it doesn't try any fancy feints and just moves forward like it has for the past 6 games.

Maybe I should've been more specific, because you're right about the Battle AI. It's still kind of shitty (though many of its glitches do seem to have been ironed out. It no longer bugs out as such, it's merely just kind of stupid now). I wasn't thinking so much about the BAI however, it's the Campaign AI and all the issues that came with it that seem to be improved. Factions do expand more and are far less passive than earlier. This is no placebo effect, it's clearly evident when you look at how the AI plays. Same thing is true for those game breaking glitches, like enemy armies starving because the AI didn't think to build farms. It happens far less frequently now. So no, it's not all just something I'm imagining. The glitches and issues that were the worst ones to me have mostly been solved. The BAI remains sub par, but when wasn't it ever? I'm sure you didn't like Shogun 2 for its brilliant BAI either.

 

[Spectacle]

I had local starvation issues. If food was global your armies would starve all over the map not in specific provinces.

Food production and consumption is global, thankfully. Half the reason for Roman expansion was to secure the grain supply for the hungry, growing population of Rome.

 

[Morgoth]

Patch 4 Beta notes: http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_4

 

[aris]

1. I hope the will fix the long time that the computer uses on its turn. Right now, that's my biggest beef with this game.

 

[Santander02]

I'm sure you didn't like Shogun 2 for its brilliant BAI either.

I haven't played this game yet but I clearly remember people here praising Shogun 2 because the Battle AI was actually pretty competent, if they've managed to take a step backwards and make it dumb again instead of improving it then that's a very justified reason to rage imo.

 

[Vibalist]

To call the Battle AI in Shogun 2 competent is to tell half a lie, really. It was competent in certain situations, such as in open field battles where it knew to steer its cavalry free of enemy spearmen and placed its units on hills when defending. On the other hand it had no idea how to handle sieges and would use the same brain dead tactic every time it attacked your settlements, making all its units climb your walls every time, which was ridiculously easy to defend against. In Rome 2 the AI is similar in that it does some things reasonably well and other things not so well. It's especially bad at defending unwalled settlements this time around (of which there were none in Shogun 2, so who knows how it would've fared there), but there are certainly also plenty of situations where the BAI is perfectly competent. It has the basics down in open field battles and acts stupid in sieges (both offensive and defensive ones), which makes it on par with Shogun 2's BAI. The reason it has been perceived as worse is because it was bugged before the patches, meaning it would sometimes do ridiculous things such as having its units run back and forth without ever attacking or simply just stand still and do nothing. But that was bugs, and these bugs seem to have been fixed. So what we have now is a BAI that is neither worse nor better than seen in Shogun 2. Which means we have a BAI that's on the slow side and is definitely not a master of tactics in any sense, but it's not a regression from Shogun 2 either. The only people who would argue that are S2 fanboys, R2 haters or people who have not played with the newer patches.

And by the way, I'm not trying to argue that Rome 2 is a great game (even though I've sunk about 80 hours into it already. I guess I'm easily entertained). But the patches have fixed some things.

 

[Raghar]

Fuck. I can't turn off battle realism. And all these 40 enemy units are massacring my armies.

 

[Malakal]

Fuck. I can't turn off battle realism. And all these 40 enemy units are massacring my armies.

Battle realism is on by default on higher difficulty levels. You are stuck with it unless you change difficulty.