Total War: Rome II (video game)

[Tricky]

Looking good so far, I can see this being a must buy in 2013! :cool:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaDlihIqPws

[shootemindehead]

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

[EvilNed]

Aaaaawww - the fucking - yeeeaaaah!!!

[AcesandEights]

I preferred the earlier games before they got all sparkly and graphically intense. However Rome eventually became a great game, especially after modders got to it, so this should kick butt, or eventually kick butt after its optimized and patched.

[EvilNed]

I know what you mean, Medieval: Total War is their crowning achievement to a lot of people. I've had good blasts with all their games (sans Napoleon and Shogun 2, I just cant keep up). I loved them all, and put down hundreds of hours into each one. But I'd say that the problem with the newer games was probably the tactical AI. While it wasn't very advanced in Shogun or Medieval, it's often downright stupid in Rome and beyond. There's pathfinding and script bugs in the unit behavior in Medieval 2. For instance, melee fighters will simply not charge the way any ordinary unit would! They'd stop a few feet from the enemy, and then the first rank and the first rank only would charge, whereas the rest would simply linger back with drawn swords. An annoying bug that was, to my knowledge, never fixed.

Rome suffered from overpowered cavalry and a campaign AI that was pretty stupid. Remember how diplomats would just stand next to your cities and engage them yet do nothing? It was usually a sign that an attack was imminent.

In Medieval 2, the campaign AI was just unreliable. No peace or truce could ever be counted on. Pretty annoying too.

However I have to say that I really enjoyed Empire. But damn, what an ambitious game? Like hundreds of units, over 20 factions, feature Europe/Middle East/India and a big chunk of western america? I only ever played one, but I put like 70 hours into it, having a vast trade empire that encompassed all of india and a path all the way up to Scandinavia. Lots of small bugs throughout, but no deal breaker. As I understood it, the indian factions always, always go on a conquering spree, however.

[Christopher Jon]

I know what you mean, Medieval: Total War is their crowning achievement to a lot of people.

+1

I still play M:TW

[shootemindehead]

I only hope they don't use steam. I'm fucking sick of it.

I'm nearly 20 hours downloading a patch for Shogun II and it's a patch I don't even want. I even had the "Don't automatically update blah blah" button checked. Steam just automatically decides that it's going to patch the game anyway....fuck you user!

Stupid bleeder...


@Ned, I think somebody did a revamp of Medieval II's AI recently enough. I haven't played the game in ages meself, but a friend of mine swears by it.

[EvilNed]

@Ned, I think somebody did a revamp of Medieval II's AI recently enough. I haven't played the game in ages meself, but a friend of mine swears by it.

If you could ask your friend more about that, I'd be so amped to play that game again. It was pretty shitty, no?

[shootemindehead]

Ah, I thought it was grand. I got rid of the Pope and played on hard.

But, while I love the period, 'Napoleon' captured me more. Couldn't get enough of that game.

But, you're right, the treachery of other nations regardless of how you schmoozed them was a PITA.

I'll get the name of the mod for you.

[AcesandEights]

But, while I love the period, 'Napoleon' captured me more.

I never picked up Napoleon, but I did (eventually) love Empire: TW, even though it was pretty wretched at release.

Now I'm feeling like I'm going to install some of these games on my current rig and start playing again...

[Tricky]

Medieval 2 was my favourite despite its flaws, that period of history fascinates me and I lost countless hours in that game. It'll likely be 3 years or more away but I hope they go back to the Medieval period again.
Really fired up for Rome though!!

[Eyebiter]

After watching that video, better start saving up for a new video card...

[shootemindehead]

@Ned: The name of the mod my mate is using is called Retrofit 1.0.

I haven't used it myself now, so I can't say if it's any use. But, I might get it down and fire up the game with it. My try a different Nation this time, instead of playing the English.

But, I'm just so used to playing the bad guys....

:shifty: :p

Anyway, the Shogun 2 update finished last night. 22 hours for a bleedin update! Shogun 2 and Steam's patching is fecking mind blowing. Steam downloads the whole 15 gig of game when it patches.

Absolutely ridiculous.

I bloody hate Steam... :mad: :barf: :dead:

[EvilNed]

I usually play the Danes, but once I conquered the world with the french. Some of their late game stuff is great.

In the original medieval I used to play either the Danes or the Almohads (Moors in MTW2).

Gonna try the Retrofit. I wonder if it's compatible with Stainless Steel?

[Tricky]

I always played as either the English or the Holy Roman Empire on Medieval 2, the English was relatively straight forward barring the Danes always attacking Antwerp, (though I never completed it within the amount of turns it gave you) but the Holy Roman Empire was very hard I thought, they had great gear and strong units, but were constantly under attack from all sides which always depleted my forces and left me struggling for cash to reinforce and advance!

[Wyldwraith]

Just wanted to pop in,
I don't get all the Steam-hate. Everything DLs and patches for me lightning-quick (admittedly probably because of RR-Lightning, a 5-8MB/S connection) and the prices go rock bottom so much faster than retail boxed games. I bought the THQ collection a couple days ago for 25$ and got like 15 games (of which about half are really enjoyable) + all the DoW II add-on stuff.

Now Steam would be a nightmare without a fast broadband connect, but are there still ISPs that are anything but out there?

[Neil]

Just wanted to pop in,
I don't get all the Steam-hate. Everything DLs and patches for me lightning-quick (admittedly probably because of RR-Lightning, a 5-8MB/S connection) and the prices go rock bottom so much faster than retail boxed games. I bought the THQ collection a couple days ago for 25$ and got like 15 games (of which about half are really enjoyable) + all the DoW II add-on stuff.

Now Steam would be a nightmare without a fast broadband connect, but are there still ISPs that are anything but out there?

I agree! I don't generally buy titles at full prices. I just put them on my wish list and wait for a reduction, which Steam kindly informs me of. Furthermore, multiplayer online play is made a breeze by it!

[Tricky]

I've no problem with Steam either now, I downloaded Far Cry 3 within about 5 hours last week which isnt bad, and have bought quite a few games through it over the past couple of years. Its irritating when the servers are down or when Steam does a big update when you just want a quick game on something, but it doesn't happen that often.

[shootemindehead]

All the Steam love is about buying games cheap, which is grand.

But it's a f*cking awful pain in the arse and does things that's infuriating. It's patching policy is the worst. Even if you don't want to patch a particular game and click the "don't keep this game up to date" (or whatever it's called)... well f*ck you, it'll patch it anyway! And in the case of 'Shogun 2' it's utterly wretched and with some games it'll download the entire game, even if you bought the disc!!! WTF is up with that?

The only way to keep steam out of the way is to stay offline, which I do.

It's an awful piece of crap bit of software and it really needs an overhaul.

[Neil]

^^ Odd, I have Shogun 2 and not seen that sort of problem.

To be honest, I find it all beautifully seemless...

[shootemindehead]

I thought it was just me, or that I'd managed to screw up my install somehow. But there's a large thread on the TWC and the Steam forums about it. Seems a lot of people were having that issue.

Worst thing about it though, is the nobody from Valve/Steam addressed the situation. They don't give a tinker's. Some poor guy from CA had to listen to all the complaints. Their support is absolutely awful.

Perhaps, it's just 'Shogun 2' that's affected like that, here's hoping. But the game has been out for a long time now, you'd think something like that would have been dealt with by now.

If something like that happens again, then I'm out. Waiting a day for some game to patch, a patch I didn't want, just so I could have a quick bash is ridiculous, no matter who's involved.

The ideal situation would be to have a Steam version and a disc version that doesn't require Steam...and fix the god damn patching issue. That alone is just desperate.

...and in the end what happens to all your games when Steam goes belly up?

You lose them all, because you don't actually own any of the games that use the Steam system. So, when Steam ceases to exist in the future, so will all the games that you have running through it.

[Neil]

^^ We're going off topic :(

I thought you could buy the DVD version of a game (that can be supplied by Steam), and then sync it to Steam for updates?

[shootemindehead]

So I click on the Shogun2 exe today for the first time after my unwanted update and lo and behold, the exe won't work. The game CTD's every time.

FFS.

[Neil]

zXdsSwowol8

[EvilNed]

I need this. I need this and I need Oculus Rift. I need it.

edit. Odd battle to choose for a tutorial, isn't it tho? it was more of an ambush and massacre.

[Tricky]

I'm all over this when it comes out, I can see it eating large chunks of my life!

[Neil]

http://www.cdn.actiontrip.com/images/features/e32013totalwarrome25.jpg

[Tricky]

So has anyone played this yet? I see it's now available on Steam. I daren't download it till I've upgraded my graphics card though, I want to play it as it's meant to be seen and my GTX275 just won't cut the mustard on this one.

[EvilNed]

I put in around 6 hours or so yesterday.

I'll write more indepth later but this is the bottom line:

If you are not a die hard TW fan, wait til next week. It is very poorly optimized and a lot of people (myself included) are experiencing very low FPS on even low graphical settings. And I can run Shogun 2 on ultra high without a hitch. There's just something wrong there that they need to fix (and they've already said a patch is coming friday or something like that).

The game itself is great, with a few minor gripes. But again, more on that later.

[shootemindehead]

Ah crap. Was going to pick this up tomorrow.

Is there a definite patch out soon Ned?

[EvilNed]

Ah crap. Was going to pick this up tomorrow.

Is there a definite patch out soon Ned?

Yeah, I checked now.

Friday is the first update.

What graphic card and processor do you use?

The FPS drops seem to be most common amongst people with AMD processors.

[AcesandEights]

Yeah, I checked now.

Friday is the first update.

What graphic card and processor do you use?

The FPS drops seem to be most common amongst people with AMD processors.

I also didn't realize this was out. I'm guessing this would make my laptop explode, so I'll be waiting till I get a new rig to play. Good news is, by then there'll be a ton of mods and DLC to flesh out the game.

[shootemindehead]

Yeah, I checked now.

Friday is the first update.

What graphic card and processor do you use?

The FPS drops seem to be most common amongst people with AMD processors.

It's Intel and the card's an Nvidia Geforce GTX460

[EvilNed]

It's Intel and the card's an Nvidia Geforce GTX460

Well the CPU should be fine then, but I can't speak for the graphics card. If I were you I'd post a thread in the official forums about it, asking what people there think. Refer to the "low standard" of the launch release and that it has you worried.

- - - Updated - - -

Ok, so my mini-review so far. There's good things and bad things.

First off, the game is what you'd expect pretty much. It's a Total War game. You choose a kingdom, you start training armies, you expand, you train generals and spies. You sometimes get to fight awesome battles (I've had a few memorable ones, so far, more on that below). I often find that each Total War game is an improvement over the last in the matter of features, unit rosters and skill levels. This is no exception. The factions are huge compared to Rome 1 and provide much greater variety than Shogun 2 (a great game, as well). Each faction has a great variety in itself, which the first Rome did not. I'm playing as Macedon currently, and you can train various hoplite, pikemen, skirmisher and heavy infantry units. And that's not counting the cavalry or siege engines. So there's definetly enough here to make any historical geek fullfill any dreams of creating that "realistic" army you've always dreamt off.

Regions work a bit differently. There are fewer of them, but they are larger and have 2 - 4 cities in them. Two factions can share a region, which makes it contested. For instance, Tarentum, Syracuse and Capua are all in the "Magna Graeca" region and not until you control all three do you control the entire region and there are even bonuses for doing that. But each region has sub-regions as well, which work more or less like the regions in older Total War games.

Generals work a bit differently. Depending on the faction, a general can be different units. Spartan generals are all various types of hoplites, whereas Macedon offers a wide variety of bodyguards for your general. Armies can not move around without generals either, but they are easily recruited. There's also a faction tab with possibilites for inner strife, so deciding which general you recruit is important. If you recruit a general from a rival family than the ruling dynasty, and that General proves his worth in several battles, then his family might become the dominant one in your faction, and a civil war might ensue.

Diplomacy is enhanced in a variety of ways. There's also no more "rebels". Every region is controlled by a unique faction. That means that underdog factions, like Pergamom for instance, might actually defeat a major faction and take their place in the balance of power that will eventually ensue. I also have to commend the AI on being thoroughly "random". For a variety of reasons, I've reloaded turns only to find that the AI does something different each time. Small variations that makes them unpredictable. Trade is enhanced as well, and securing a trade agreement can be difficult but rewarding. Overall, I really enjoy playing the diplomacy game. Whom do I ally? Should I support these guys in that war? My trade partner is under attack, should I intervene just to protect my interests?

The battles are beautiful and just as fun as usual. If I have any gripes it's that they've changed some of the controls, and that once a melee ensues the battle is soon over. The battles are short... Much like in Rome 1.

Now, that's plenty of good stuff right there. But there are a few drawbacks.

The most obvious one is that a wide variety of people, myself included, are suffering from very low FPS despite having decent gaming rigs. I can play Shogun 2 on the highest settings and I won't have any problems with the FPS, but here I'm forced to play on medium settings, and even so the FPS is pretty bad. What's weird is that the FPS is ESPECIALLY low in the campaign map. That makes no sense, as that's fairly standard stuff. All this lends itself to a pretty frustrating experience as the game just doesn't flow like the way you're used too and want it too. You can't really sit back and enjoy a game that's as slow as this one is.

Speaking of slow, the number of factions makes the end turn wait a chore. It's something like 30 seconds before its your turn again. Sometimes, the wait inbetween turns are longer than the actual turns themselves. There's little to do about this, I guess, save from eliminating all the dozens of small factions out there.

Gameplay-wise, there's one thing that's bugging the hell out of me. Chasing AI armies. You see, the AI armies always force march, which mean they can march a hell of a lot longer. You can do this too, but an army that's force marching cannot attack. Which means that an enemy army can enter your kingdom, and you can give chase, but you cannot attack until the next turn - by which time they're much deeper into your kingdom. Also, an army has a "zone of protection" around them that means that you cannot approach an army if you don't have enough movement points. What I mean is; lets say you have 10 movement points, and the enemy army is 11 movements away. So you should be able to get right up next to him, right? Wrong. Because every army has that little zone of protection around them, that means that once you reach that zone, and do not have enough movement points to reach the army, then you cannot even enter the zone. So your army will stop dead in its tracks 5 movement points away from the enemy, even though you could technically get right up next to him. But since you only had 10 movement points, and not the 11 that would take you all the way, you can only move 5... Also, attacking an enemy army allows them to attempt a withdraw, as usual. The AI does plenty of this and whenever it withdraws, it withdraws the HELL out of there. I mean, the movement a withdrawing army moves is extreme! It's like half the movement points of a regular army on a normal turn!

All of this makes it such a chore to chase down armies. Because there are so many roadblocks and obstacles that prevent you from catching up to a army (any army). But for the avoiding army, it's just such a piece of cake. I've had armies march right through my kingdom and capturing a few towns on their way, and I can't even keep up with them. So frustrating! And since this is part of the gameplay, this will probably not be fixed.

Speaking of moving armies, whenever you click on a spot, the army moves there. Makes sense. But the problem is that when you want an army to move from A - B, and there's something in the way, so the army detours around that mountain over there and suddenly what would take 1 turn is now gonna take 3. And the only way to "redo" that movement is to reload your last autosave - and the load times are pretty heavy too. This is why I reload so often - the idiot pathfinder system doesn't have a "undo" button. If it did, it'd be much simpler.

Anyway, for all it's problems, we can only hope the performance ones will be fixed soon. And the battles are top notch, even though they are quick. My most epic one yet was when I was gonna take a city on the coast of the Black Sea. There were transport ships offshore, with a rather large army, and they reinforced the defenders.

So I organized my army in a wedge formation and charged the port. I knew I had a time limit, and I could see the reinforcing ships coming for the port. So I killed the defendors at the port and set my army up in formation along the beach, waiting for the reinforcements to storm the port from their ships. Pretty epic stuff. So there's some nice stuff in there. I do enjoy the siege battles, but the new "control point" system makes them kinda easy to win. Distract the defenders with half your force and send the other half straight for the town square and capture it - wait a while - and win.

Here's a picture from a recent battle. It's the only screenshot I got. It shows a doomed pike unit about to get pierced. It's one of those damn armies I finally managed to chase down, after they had suffered major attrition casualties from my agents poisoning their supplies.

http://www.filmklubben.eu/bilder/00001.jpg

[AcesandEights]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Ned! That was a lot of info and the bits about AI (which I never try and expect too much from) was great to hear.

Also, that screen capture is AWESOME!

[EvilNed]

Game update! There was a patch today, but to be honest the game still runs like crap. But at least CA (the developers) have acknowledged that the game is a mess (http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/82496-Sorry-From-CA-Current-State-of-the-Game-and-What-Happens-Next) and there's a much bigger update coming next week. I am becoming more and more convinced however that, aside from these performance issues, the game is great. The world feels very much alive, compared to previous Total War games, and that's such a bonus. I'm posting my campaign map below, and I'm playing Macedon. As you can see, Rome is nearly wiped out by some celtic tribes that swept down from the north. Carthage and Syracuse have been going at it for awhile now, as well (Syracuse are the blue ones in Sicily and Carthage are the white ones... Come to think of it, the way they're displayed on that map they've actually switched starting positions). A lot of people are giving the AI a bad mouthing, but to be honest I really enjoy it. There's the occasional city state that will just sit around and mass militia troops, but the game would just be a pain if every faction was as aggressive as some turn out to be.

http://imageshack.com/scaled/large/829/61wb.jpg

Here's another battle pic, this time with me (orange) fighting Pergamom (blue). Historically, Pergamom and Macedonian were contending for hegemony over the Aegean in a post-alexandrian world, so invading them felt natural. I love how the heavier troops engage each other with their spears and pikes, and the lighter troops are engaging each other on the sidelines.

http://imageshack.com/scaled/large/41/7o63.jpg

Here's my current empire.

[Neil]

I've heard a lot of complains regarding the actual battle engine where they've possibly dummed it down? And it's more just down to how much you can bring to bear at one moment than strategic movement/timing/planning?

[EvilNed]

To be honest, no Total war battles since the very first Medieval have been that tactical. People are complaining, but they always do. I've followed this series for 6 releases now and people ALWAYS complain about how fast the battles are. I read somewhere on the official forum longing for the "epic 40 minute battles of the original Rome", to which I just posted a youtube video of a Rome 1 battle lasting a little over 7 minutes: just as a Rome 2 battle by the way.

[shootemindehead]

Been hearing some dreadfull reports about this game. So many bugs as to render it a joke.

Although I can't stand the fecker, Angry Joe's video on 'Rome II' is worth a watch.

[EvilNed]

Game is running pretty well now, actually. Patch 5 is out. I'm actually having a really good time. Played lots yesterday (sunday is gameday).

[Neil]

Game is running pretty well now, actually. Patch 5 is out. I'm actually having a really good time. Played lots yesterday (sunday is gameday).

And how fun are large battles now? Do you still have to do this stupid capture the flag nonsense, rather than the more realistic and traditional battles of the original Rome?

[EvilNed]

And how fun are large battles now? Do you still have to do this stupid capture the flag nonsense, rather than the more realistic and traditional battles of the original Rome?

"Capture the Flag" is now only present in siege battles, and the points needed to take them have increased heavily. It's more or less the way it was in the old games, where the cities had a town square and if you held that for an extended period of time, you won. The larger cities have three flags, all of which you need to take to win.

I had a battle with 12000 troops yesterday. 5000 of mine invading Cyprus, who defended with 7000 of their own. It was eeeeeeeepic. The battle itself lasted for a good 25 minutes.

[Neil]

I had a battle with 12000 troops yesterday. 5000 of mine invading Cyprus, who defended with 7000 of their own. It was eeeeeeeepic. The battle itself lasted for a good 25 minutes.
That was another criticism of the initial release wasn't it? Battles were too fast?

[AcesandEights]

That was another criticism of the initial release wasn't it? Battles were too fast?


God, I can remember the old first gen TW games and they could give you battles that lasted forever, which was both a good and bad thing. Nothing like destroying the 1st few wave of a horde of desert nomads only to have them keep coming, subsequent waves being more likely to route before even fully coming over the horizon.

[EvilNed]

That was another criticism of the initial release wasn't it? Battles were too fast?

In all honesty, the battles are just as fast as they were in Rome 1.

[shootemindehead]

There's no way I'm touching this til it goes gold.

[EvilNed]

Ok so CA released Patch 8 and 9 these last few days. Patch 9 in particular is being hailed as making the game playable
I've had a good time playing it since release, but now I feel I can recommend it as well. Most bugs are gone. Only optimization issues remain, but it's still playable.

[Neil]

^ Still concerned after all the bad press and talk of untactical battles. I used to love the original's battles, which seemed fairly tactical.

I'd also ideally like to be able to play battles with 5 or more humans vs 1 or more AI, like you could in the original. But I don't think they support this :(