Rome Total War II

[Caim]

Thirdly, 9 patches in the game is still piss poor.

Holy cow, this must be some sort of a record.

Nope.

 

[hiver]

After dealing with some youtube copyright bullshit the second part of the Sane Critique video is up, watch out, it's a long one!



And apparently CA has been deleting links to his videos in the official forums, cause he dared to use the word "Cunt". This after they made a video of a guy liberally swearing at a camera while eating chilis. Hypocrites.

Man, thats such an awesome video. Its actually ten times more entertaining to watch that then to play the game. Love the dudes voice and the way he talks. i kinda even start to think in that language and accent while im watchin the fucking thing.
so awesome.

Wish he would do more stuff. He would be like my type of an angry joe
so i dont have to watch anything else but that and MrBtongue dude. And Cinema sins.

 

[Morality Games]

Hm. I played Medieval Total War and Rome Total War and loved them both, but only just managed to get through Medieval War 2. What the series has calcified into bores me.

Still, I had such fun times with Rome Total War I thought about buying this launch day. It appears I lucked out not doing that.

 

[Brinko]

Mod summit has been pushed back to the first week of March. Damn you CA for denying me my lulz, I was to spend 3 hours driving to Raleigh, spend 6 hours meeting prospective employers, spend 3 hours driving back, then get home and laugh at the wreckage that was the mod summit on the 31st.

To keep on topic I am disappointed with Carthage as why the fuck does the temple that improves agricultural economy use food? Fucking dumb.

 

[Santander02]

Hm. I played Medieval Total War and Rome Total War and loved them both, but only just managed to get through Medieval War 2. What the series has calcified into bores me.

The base Med2 IS pretty bland, mods are the one thing that save that game. It indeed says something about CA that whereas the most popular modifications for Rome 1 and Medieval 2 are total conversions, leaving the base mechanics mostly like they are and moving them to a new setting, the "big" mods for every Warscape Total War have been about fixing their freaking game for them (Even shogun 2 got this).

 

[Jick Magger]

In all honesty, the real death keel to the game is that it just isn't really fun. Battles are just a bland chore (which is a shame, because the sight mechanic is probably one of the better innovations in the series), campaign is a boring series of micro-managing to ensure that your settlements don't rebel for inane reasons, generals and family members have lost all their uniqueness and fun due to the dumbed down political and trait system (even Shogun II, which severely drew back the intricacies of the trait system introduced in Medieval II, still got it right), the entire game just feels like a chore to play from start to finish. Since mods can't save it, the game's pretty much dead in the water, even if they fix all the bugs.

Which is a real fucking shame, because if they had just basically just remade Shogun II in the antiquity, while bringing in the sight system, it probably could've been one of the best games in the series.

 

[Kattze]

Hm. I played Medieval Total War and Rome Total War and loved them both, but only just managed to get through Medieval War 2. What the series has calcified into bores me.

The base Med2 IS pretty bland, mods are the one thing that save that game. It indeed says something about CA that whereas the most popular modifications for Rome 1 and Medieval 2 are total conversions, leaving the base mechanics mostly like they are and moving them to a new setting, the "big" mods for every Warscape Total War have been about fixing their freaking game for them (Even shogun 2 got this).

Kingdoms is p. cool though but it could have been better. One of the most annoying shit is that in the Americas campaign, Aztecs, Tlaxcalans and Tarascans have basically the same units except for the fucking colour. Also, for some reason in the Brittania campaign, the Irish had the best roster of all factions for some reason.

 

[Commissar Draco]

If they remade Kingdoms or RTW on new graphics it would be blast; the new engine fails at portraying melee combat.

 

[Declinator]

If they remade Kingdoms or RTW on new graphics it would be blast; the new engine fails at portraying melee combat.

The graphics of RTW and Medieval 2 are just fine and in many ways the clarity that their graphics offer easily trump the higher fidelity and questionable "prettiness" of RTW2 graphics. If they wanted to remake them the thing that could do with improvement the most is the AI.

 

[Commissar Draco]

If they remade Kingdoms or RTW on new graphics it would be blast; the new engine fails at portraying melee combat.

The graphics of RTW and Medieval 2 are just fine and in many ways the clarity that their graphics offer easily trump the higher fidelity and questionable "prettiness" of RTW2 graphics. If they wanted to remake them the thing that could do with improvement the most is the AI.

Problem is that this team can't into Coding of AI so I gave them realistic objective; but you're right if you're not Grahic/Achievements Whore RTW is the game for you.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

Some improvements in those engines would be great. Just give me that, an updated map with more provinces, make sure the game runs smoothly and bug free and throw in something extra for the modders.

Instant success, no huge amount of marketing needed since you already have a large and fanatical playerbase, no huge development cost and you won't have to hire Mark Strong to voice your legion$.

Instead, you raped your player and consumerbase. I can tell you a lot of 'em aren't gonna be buying the next one

 

[Santander02]

Yeah, When I am playing a tense game I don't have time to screw around admiring all the pretty details , I need to keep the camera zoomed all the way out to get a full view of the battlefield, so graphics do not matter at all in those situations, and since in Warscape you can no longer get rid of those pesky 2d sprites then one might as well be playing shogun and Med. 1 if that is all that one considers important.

Of course that doesn't mean I think that they should never have improved the graphics beyond the 2d total wars, only that Mechanics and AI should take top priority. And speaking of priorities, Voice Acting(tm) can go eat shit and die, such a money sink that could have gone to improving many other areas of the game wasted on some Hollywood 'tard voicing a few lines, Ugh.

 

[spectre]

I share this sentiment. I never cared for purdy animations, cause I just don't fucking see them when I'm zoomed all the way up to... I dunno inspect the battlefiled, do the whole commandering shebang, like in a strategy game of sorts.
I realize it appeals to tards who want to play their movie experience - each one of them is worth 50$ on release.

It's a vicious circle, that, these misplaced priorities is what gives them the publicity and sales and keeps the whole franchise afloat... for whatever it's worth. Not much without the mod support we used to get.

 

[Rahdulan]

Don't forget unit lip-sync. Because that's what I need in a Total War game and in the end it doesn't even work properly because fuck effort. If we decide to do something we might as well half-ass it.

 

[Brinko]

All I could focus on watching this is that ginger cunt's noodly arms. I don't have much muscle because of my shit upper body strength but jesus christ my arms are twice as muscular and all I do is carry my bag walking to and from my shitty apartment to my university.

On the phalanx balancing they talk about with Patch 9, are phalanxes even useful outside of siege battles? I know my only defeat was against the Odrysians as Macedon because I assumed they would mindlessly charge like every other TW game but I guess the AI had a stroke of sanity and melted my 5 phalanx troops with their 5 javelin units. Plus when the AI doesn't have good missile troops to kill them off they just go around them and fuck them up anyway.

 

[Dead Guy]

Wait, don't the pikes instantly teleport in the opposite direction whenever the phalanx feels threatened?

Is there actually an improvement over RTW in this gaem guise?

 

[Average Manatee]

Why does the site www.isrome2goodyet.com not exist? Would save me a lot of time if someone could set it up.

Is there any chance of this ending up fun, and are any modders getting shit done?

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

the AI had a stroke of sanity and melted my 5 phalanx troops with their 5 javelin units. Plus when the AI doesn't have good missile troops to kill them off they just go around them and fuck them up anyway.

All they do is spam missile units. Facing off against an army of javelinmen is pure horror with the new retarded projectile/armor mechanics.

 

[Brinko]

Well I jumped into this septic tank at patch 8.1 and comparing the earlier videos from release on how the AI build their armies to now is a stark difference. I actually suffered some grueling losses because the Arab factions were fielding armored swordsmen and one of the eastern factions had swordsmen, hoplite, slingers, and cav all with gold weapons and armor so they have made the CAI no longer kill itself through starvation with dumb building choices and I've seen it readjust building choices if a food crisis does come into play. We'll see with this newest patch if the CAI is smart enough to build more siege equipment with the stated ability for the AI to wait and research into siege tech.

http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Politics_Guide

Politics guide finally got dropped. Pretty much the same bullshit we've known for 5 months but with the added promise of fixing it so patch 10 being the unfuck the half-assed mechanics patch.

 

[Brinko]

Just got through playing a Seleucid campaign and fuck is that shit super easy. Thought it would be difficult with how people have said the entire eastern half of the map just war decs you but I kept half my vassals and since they put in that recruit troops from vassals mechanic it probably has made the Seleucids one of the most broken factions in the game where the only major factor comes from your best buildings creating eastern influence which is manageable if you don't over indulge. Also whoever thought it was smart for half the eastern factions to have access to lvl.3 greek barracks units from their lvl.2 barracks should be shot. By turn 8 I had grabbed 6 thorax swordsmen and 4 thorax pikemen from Media alone. If recruiting your own soldiers with training fields in the province didn't make them unstoppable I would never even invest in military tech and just outspend all my enemies with an army of vassals and mercs. The only challenging part of this whole game was outpacing my vassals for land so I could get a complete province to work with and not half.

Also siege AI still downsie as fuck, no real surprise, but this was turn 12 so I don't know if the AI spent time to research rams and shit. I will say that looking at the workshop upgrades I don't see the AI ever building ballistas when they can get ancient space marines instead.

 

[anus_pounder]

Playing Parthia atm. Rather than expand south, I decided to move against the nomad hordes in the north. Big mistake. Not because they're hard, but because the AI builds literally nothing but 'Steppe Horse Archer's with them. So basically prepare to fight the exact same fucking battle all the damn time. Settlement fights are a breath of fresh air since I can face off against some units that aren't horse archers. Thinking of restarting and going south instead. The southern kingdoms have better unit variation, start off stronger than you and have a tendency to create mega alliances. Could be fun taking them on, relatively.

 

[Brinko]

Playing Parthia atm. Rather than expand south, I decided to move against the nomad hordes in the north. Big mistake. Not because they're hard, but because the AI builds literally nothing but 'Steppe Horse Archer's with them. So basically prepare to fight the exact same fucking battle all the damn time. Settlement fights are a breath of fresh air since I can face off against some units that aren't horse archers. Thinking of restarting and going south instead. The southern kingdoms have better unit variation, start off stronger than you and have a tendency to create mega alliances. Could be fun taking them on, relatively.

Right now I'm dicking around as Baktria and to avoid getting war decced by the nomad factions later in the game I'm just steam rolling them just by the virtue of rushing in my eastern spearmen with their frenzy charge and the light cav and noble cav i started with. Just bring another army of spearmen and have your generals be cataphracts and I guarantee that you will wipe them out. I'm dicking around on hard and only use traits, talents, and toadies and 2tpy mods. Which I will say gets broken fast as a general i want to adopt has the sword of alexander which is +2 to every stat and the excellent starting trait which is +1 to every stat at lvl 1.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Can't believe you guys are still playing this turd.

 

[Brinko]

I'm just burnt out on most TW games at this point. I've burned through all the big mods on M2, grown bored of just researching fire by rank and winning in Empire, Shogun 2 has become too easy for me having played it to death, so all I have left is Rome 2 though I will admit if I bought this day 1 I'd still probably be pissing blood about how shit it was. That and it's an excuse not to update my LP which has become my own prisoner of Ice.

 

[anus_pounder]

Apparently I have 52 hours logged onto the game. No idea how. I vaugely remember playing a few hours on release as Rome then leaving the game when I realized how badly it needed a patch (at minimum). Then I kind of just jumped from faction to faction until settling in for a game of Parthia. huh...

Playing Parthia atm. Rather than expand south, I decided to move against the nomad hordes in the north. Big mistake. Not because they're hard, but because the AI builds literally nothing but 'Steppe Horse Archer's with them. So basically prepare to fight the exact same fucking battle all the damn time. Settlement fights are a breath of fresh air since I can face off against some units that aren't horse archers. Thinking of restarting and going south instead. The southern kingdoms have better unit variation, start off stronger than you and have a tendency to create mega alliances. Could be fun taking them on, relatively.

Right now I'm dicking around as Baktria and to avoid getting war decced by the nomad factions later in the game I'm just steam rolling them just by the virtue of rushing in my eastern spearmen with their frenzy charge and the light cav and noble cav i started with. Just bring another army of spearmen and have your generals be cataphracts and I guarantee that you will wipe them out. I'm dicking around on hard and only use traits, talents, and toadies and 2tpy mods. Which I will say gets broken fast as a general i want to adopt has the sword of alexander which is +2 to every stat and the excellent starting trait which is +1 to every stat at lvl 1.

Noted. Though I never really had any problem fighting the nomads. Just incredibly dull facing army after army of 'Steppe Horse Archer's. I'm playing Parthia dammit, I want to create a full stack of cataphracts and just charge the enemy over and over again!11!!

In an AI vs AI game, I wonder if the nomads wouldn't end up conquering the world? I remember beating a full stack and half stack reinforcement of greek phalanx (and a few slingers) using nothing but a handful of entry-level horse archers, a cataphract general and one mercenary light cavalry. Horse archers took out the slingers early on then spent the rest of the battle pelting the phalanxes and leading them on a merry chase. End result is a large army of exhausted phalanx who can't stop taking the horse-archer bait and get anus pounded by a single unit of cataphracts.