Rome Total War II

[Rahdulan]

Those fuckers are releasing an expansion

Some gaul campaign. http://www.vg247.com/2013/12/02/tot...-gaul-expansion-announced-first-details-here/

“We’ve always planned to focus more closely on some of the key conflicts of the ancient world, and Caesar’s war in Gaul is the ideal place to start"

Sounds like we'll have quite a few of these.
Eh, If I had to put a positive spin on this, Id look forward to all of these campaigns eventually glued together to improve the depth of the base game.

Not holding my breath.

I guess patch time is over for the original game. Rejoice.

 

[Caim]

Ah, good thing that Age of Empires 2 HD was on sale on Steam today so I can enjoy a good RTS without any bugs where ships plow through land like a wooden Shai-Hulud. Verily, bugs like that could never have happened in classics such as tha-

... son of a cockcobbler.

Well then, it does seem we have Galleon sign even God has never seen.

 

[Nekrosis]

Is this game still bugged and is the KI still poor? I heard the critics a while ago and I think about buying it in the upcoming Steam Christmas sale if it will be avalable for low money?.

 

[Malakal]

I am afraid its working as designed mostly - it was designed to be dumbed down tho. Few bugs here and there.

 

[spectre]

The game's main appeal so far seems to be raining fiery death on barbarians from 20+ ballistae. Unfortunately, this gets old fairly quickly. Worth a torrent, I guess, but not worth any real money, IMO.
I have a love/hate relationship with this game, it's a bit like a guilty pleasure, on the one hand I kinda like the presentation and some of the new additions, like the province system, on the other, it has its share of inanities
(which could have been easily fixed by a simple mod, way to add insult to injury CA).

What I can't wrap my head around is how seven patches in they don't seem to address the obviously fucked things - like the in-battle controls, uninformative unit cards, the silly "flashlights" units get during night battles
(I should probably list the AI and other stuff here as well, but I'm inclined to think that it's actually filed under: did our best, works as intended)

So, I'm seeing the new expansion pack will bring back weather and seasons. good thing we have talented modders out there to add it to the main campaign... oh wait.

 

[mikaelis]

The question is whether the weather gimmick is incorporated into the original campaign? And if it changes anything strategy-wise?

 

[Raghar]

The question is whether the weather gimmick is incorporated into the original campaign? And if it changes anything strategy-wise?

On theirs forums I heard, they adamantly refused to add seasons to original, because it would increase numbers of turns. Now with that shorter campaign, they would definitely have too few turns for an expansion, and weather had influence on whole campaign, thus fans would yell loudly.

They would definitely use seasons MAINLY for increasing a number of turns per campaign.

 

[spectre]

I think the official blurb says there'll be 24 turns per year in the DLC. Nice leap right there. Wonder if they bother to scale unit movement and build times.

 

[Cyberarmy]

I think the official blurb says there'll be 24 turns per year in the DLC. Nice leap right there. Wonder if they bother to scale unit movement and build times.

I don't think so, they are making 1 year 24 turn because this new DLC happens in a small time gap. 15-20 years if I read right.

 

[Nekrosis]

I am afraid its working as designed mostly - it was designed to be dumbed down tho. Few bugs here and there.

hmmm ok that sounds not good. Dammit and I waited for this game for so long...

 

[Brinko]

Well they pushed back that lulzocalypse of a Mod Summit to late January. And I was looking forward to a hilarious vacation by the fire with my family laughing at the incompetency of the CA staff.

Oh well I guess I can laugh at the ginger cunt suffering from eating a pepper like a tard.

 

[Trash]

Well, at least it's nice to see them actually bothering with a new patch that seems to be focused on the AI. If they actually manage to make it act the tiniest bit less moronic in sieges it should be incline. Then all we need is a myriad of gameplay mechanic fixes to make this game decent. Yeah, like that's going to happen.

Do hope modders will at least manage to incorporate seasons into the main campaign. Although I'd be very surprised if they can.

 

[Brinko]

I think what honestly galls me the most about Rome 2 is the no manually throwing pilla shit. FFS the fucking ninja in Shogun 2 threw grenades before the would engage in melee so why the fuck can't anyone in the western world do that shit?

I just hope the one glitch from Shogun 2 translates over to Rome 2 once those unit packs hit the market. It's pretty sad when your AI is so shit it produces nothing but peasant troops so you have to run a script to transform them into samurai but now the AI rushes cav and barely builds anything but spears and cav.

 

[Trash]

The game is too much of a mess in pretty much every aspect apart from general aesthetics. It doesn't just feel rushed. It feels rushed, poorly thought out and shoddily made. They won't be able to improve that through mere patching.

 

[fastjack]

The game is too much of a mess in pretty much every aspect apart from general aesthetics. It doesn't just feel rushed. It feels rushed, poorly thought out and shoddily made. They won't be able to improve that through mere patching.

This. After improving with the Shogun 2 games I'd hoped that the worst thing I could expect from the series with Rome 2 was those mmo-style ability buttons, but the truth is that most of the design is a downgrade from Rome 1 ( which I thought was a decline from MTW 1).

 

[Brinko]

Spoiler

 

[Brinko]

Also this got posted to reddit by CA's PR department.

Hiya guys,

Just a heads up to let you know that we’ve pushed back the release of the Caesar in Gaul Campaign Pack slightly to Tuesday 17th December in order to give us a bit more time to squeeze in some additions to the accompanying patch. The good news is that the extra changes we’re squeezing in will have a knock-on benefit to the main game, so even if you don’t purchase the DLC you’ll still see improvements.

Patch 8 will be hitting at the same time as the Caesar in Gaul DLC and as well as activating the DLC will bring with it some improvements, including:

• Technical and performance issue updates including crash fixes.

• New culture system – culture no longer works on 100%-0%, instead aiming to achieve an equilibrium between the cultures present in a province, relative to their respective culture points.

• Additional AI fixes.

• The Post-battle loading screens for Custom/ Multiplayer battles are now interactive, after load so the player can see kills/losses of other armies in battle.

As Caesar in Gaul has moved back slightly, the patch after it is going to go into Public Beta quite soon. We plan to put Patch 8.1 into open beta 48 hours after launch of Caesar in Gaul, which will bring additional improvements to the main game, including:

• Improvements to siege artillery using flaming projectiles appropriately (when attacking walls and towers).

• Additional fixes to AI and pathfinding.

• Fixes to issues with AI’s interaction with walls in siege battles, enabling a more effective use of siege towers and ladders.

 

[Brinko]

PATCH 8

Gameplay Improvements

Campaign

• It is now possible to levy units from satrapies and client states. This works in a similar manner to mercenaries, but these units have normal recruitment and upkeep costs, and come from the locally available unit roster.

• Infantry and cavalry units now have different campaign movement extents. Infantry units are slower than before, while cavalry units are faster than before. Armies always move at the speed of the slowest unit. Now cavalry-only armies actually move faster.

• Cinematic borders can now be displayed in campaign and battle by pressing [ALT] + [K] keys (by default).

• New industrial building chain: Quarry and mine buildings are now available for construction in minor settlements for all factions.

• Fixed an issue that prevented the AI from blockading the Brundisium port.

• Improved cultural conversion mechanics.

• Exempting a province from tax now sets its food consumption to zero (this wasn’t previously registering).

• In Multiplayer Campaign mode, when a player-owned settlement is attacked by the AI, the player will no longer have the option to sally forth, when the ‘fight manual battles’ option is disabled.

• Improved disembarkation areas in some coastal battle maps.

• Special abilities in battle have undergone rebalancing.

• Changed victory conditions in grand campaign for all playable factions. The number of regions the player needs to control in order to win the game has been reduced.

• Removed a number of misleading treachery types from Diplomacy, so now a faction that breaks a treaty and then signs it again within 10 turns won’t get treachery penalties.

• Campaign AI is now less likely to declare war on too many factions.

Battle

• Added new Barbarian major port battle map.

• Enemy reinforcement banners no longer begin battle as visible, thereby initially hiding the units’ positions in battles.

• Added visualisations to denote the range of targeted abilities in battles, so the player will know which units will be affected.

• Fixed a bug which caused the frame rate drop when it rained during battles.

Usability Improvements

Campaign

• After researching a technology on the campaign map, the zoom-to-location button on the Research Complete message will now zoom to the correct location.

• Faction list in Diplomacy now sorts alphabetically by default.

• The Toggle UI shortcut ([K] key by default) now works with Campaign modes.

• Treachery warnings now show reliably when you are declaring war and have current treaties with that faction. The warning also shows when the player breaks a treaty and tries to declare war, while the treaty is still in the process of being broken.

• Fixed the top and bottom of the Campaign tactical map to prevent it from being clipped at high resolutions.

• Added borders to the campaign tactical map so regions at the edges can be seen more centrally and are not blocked by the diplomacy user interface.

• Fixed a conflict which meant automatically constructed siege equipment prevented the player from building anything else.

• General’s skills and army traditions which lower upkeep costs will now update the recruitment panels correctly.

• Agent ability Intercept Orders success event-messages will now display which specific armies/settlements are revealed.

• Improved trees on the Campaign map.

Battle

• Post-battle loading screens for Custom/Multiplayer battles are now interactive, so the player can see kills/losses of armies in battle.

• When reinforcing an ally in a campaign battle using multiple armies, the unit cards in battle will now be adapted correctly to the number of unit cards and fit the screen correctly.

• It is now clearer in the battle UI when auto-trigger is enabled on ability buttons.

• Improved lighting and vegetation in Atlantic climate battles.

PATCH 8.1

Gameplay Improvements

Campaign

• Improved AI parameter balancing: increased tactical focus and aggression, especially for major factions in both Grand Campaign and Gaul Campaign.

• Improved campaign AI raiding behaviour. AI factions are now more likely to raid during campaigns.

Battle

• Siege artillery now uses flaming projectiles appropriately (when attacking walls and towers).

• Fixed an issue in siege battle AI which could lead to the general's unit exposing itself to attack when trying to use its special abilities to support assaulting units on walls.

• Fixed a pathfinding issue which could cause units to retreat from siege towers and ladders once they had docked to walls. This was most common with AI units due to the sequence in which it issues unit orders.

• Fixed a range of issues with the AI's interaction with walls in siege battles, enabling the AI to conduct a more effective assault using siege towers and ladders.

• Improved the tactical co-ordination between different sub-groups of units when assaulting the walls in siege battles. When the AI attempts to enter the settlement via the gates, it is now able to do a better job of first eliminating the threat of boiling oil.

• Fixed an issue which caused units to march off in a random direction when reforming on a siege tower.

• Improved the behaviour of units when a unit on the ground is ordered to melee-attack a unit on the walls.

• Boiling oil no longer causes incendiary damage (so won’t burn battering rams for example).

• Improved pathfinding when attacking units on walls with units on the ground or vice versa.

• Improved attacking siege AI’s interaction with walls, and its use of battering rams.

Only thing I can say is that I do like the pulling levies from Client States and satrapies to make some diverse armies. The culture mechanic revisions I expect to be a mess and no real changes to the retarded AI.

 

[Santander02]

Finally starting to work on the retarded siege AI I see

Also:

Gameplay Improvements

Campaign

• Infantry and cavalry units now have different campaign movement extents. Infantry units are slower than before, while cavalry units are faster than before. Armies always move at the speed of the slowest unit. Now cavalry-only armies actually move faster.

Is this for real? So it takes them months of patching to add a feature that has been in every total war game from the beginning?! Does putting units inside ships makes them move farther now at least?

 

[Brinko]

Hell they still haven't fixed up campaign mechanics to make them usable, the new levy client states mechanic the introduced all but makes mercs fucking worthless because right now you have 2 choices and you'll never use them in either one: 1. you are too damn poor to afford the upfront cost and upkeep or 2. you are rich as fuck and its a goddamn waste of money because you can get far better for much cheaper off your own roster.

Slavery is also fucked up so much you'll never use it. They provide so little economy boosting for such a severe pain in the ass you just kill everyone after every battle to save yourself the trouble of stomping the eventual slave revolt because of how extremely fast slave unhappiness spirals out of control.

 

[Trash]

At the very least it seems that even with the last patch the siege AI has been patched up a bit. There's a lot less grumbling about it on the various forums than there was before. Will wait for 8.1 with all the promised siege AI updates and try the game out once more.

Plus mods like Divide et Impera seem to be on to the right direction. What speaks volumes on the fanbase however is how absolute rubbish like Radious his mods are still the most popular. Whining about the AI and game in one thread and then downloading a mod that consists of tossing together random changes to the AI plus a shitload of fantasy units 'coz they're fun' seems tarded at best.

 

[Brinko]

GOTTA GO FAST

 

[Malakal]

I love how they are faster than horses. And that leg movement. Simply hilarious.

 

[titus]

Still too slow! Make it faster!!!

 

[Brinko]

Just read this off of reddit in regards to the 8.1 patch that dropped today

4 siege towers and a ladder - utilised. They even tried a different angle for one of the towers and the ladder - attacked a different section of the wall. Sweet! The rest of the army, however, stood at the starting point and didn't move until they stormed my walls. Next, the battering ram broke my gate and they poured in, killing my folks (seems that the boiling oil has been nerfed). Finally, they stood at the gate, working out what to do. There's some improvement!

So it seems the Rome 2 siege AI is on par with Rome 1's siege AI, launch all siege engines at the wall and if gates is broken open zerg rush the fuck out of it.

Now they just need to fix the other 9000 things wrong with this turd.