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Grey_Seer76 wrote

cannot find the final download despite searching the site and the date given for release was yesterday, help please 

The currently released version (not the final one) has it's own thread in the forum here. It doesn't have the full range of unit types for some factions and you sometimes get crashes you can't reload from in campaigns, but it's still fun to play.

The final version isn't finished yet - Jubal might still send you a play test version of it by message here if you ask him.

If it's too late for that don't worry, final version should be released soon.

Played as Araby. Fought tomb kings a lot.

Tomb king Bone Giants seem massively hard to kill/ a bit OP, unless they're meant to be? didn't have djinn mages in that battle but likely couldn't have used them if i had due to the bone giants' speed and apparently area effect combat?)

Djinn mages seem to be able to wipe out Tomb King chariot bodyguards a bit too easily - after softening the chariots up a but with camel or horse archers i can destroy a tomb king chariot bodyguard unit almost instantly with a single volley each from two units of Djinn mages.

A single unit of djinn mages can mostly destroy or rout most other units with a single volley too.

( I was playing on huge unit sizes which might make the mages more powerful)

The chariots seem weaker and less aggressive than they were before, only using archery and almost never charging - maybe need more hit points and/or higher archery rating?

Finally tomb kings units need to all get 100 morale so they're proper undead that don't rout (if they've not got it already - i have noticed tomb kings units routing many times but only when they took very heavy casualties first)

Apparently you can change unit depth/width in battles by hovering the left mouse over a unit and using the + and - keys  - but i only know because someone replied to my post on the Total War Center forums - and i don't see why there aren't buttons for it like there were in Rome I.

EDIT actually you can wheel units left and right using CTRL along with Home and End or left and right arrow, strafe them left or right by not using CTRL - and change depth/width by using CTRL along with Page Up and Page Down or left and right arrows.

You have to go to the main total war screen, then Options, then Controls to find this out - no mention of how to do either in the manual or encyclopedia at all.

In battles there's no longer any way to make a unit's formation deeper or wider, no way to wheel it left or right. Can't believe how many steps backward Rome II has taken compared to Rome I. About the only really big improvement is the automatic raising of militia garrisons when a settlement is attacked. Everything else just seems to be inferior to the original - ten steps backward for each step forward. Was hoping that if i tried harder i would come to enjoy the game but it's just an inferior game - will go back to Rome I mods and EBII when it comes out.

I thought initially that i just hadn't worked out yet how to vary taxes in individual cities or provinces, but no the Advisor helpfully explains that taxes can't be set on a city or province level but only on a faction-wide level. WTF? Who thought this was a good idea? Does it make the game more fun to play? No. Does it make it more interesting? No. Is it historically accurate? No.

If the Carthage "client states" Libya and Nova Carthago's cities were made either Carthaginian or neutral as they were historically it would be entirely possible to play Carthage, if still tricky - they make it impossible to expand without going to war on your allies. Putting them in has turned Carthage from the major faction it should be into a minor player that stands little or no chance.

First two times i tried playing it i got so pissed off with how hard it was to work out what the buttons did that i switched it off. You really have to play the prologue campaign to understand how it works, because the icons don't look enough like the thing they're meant to be the way they mostly did in the original Rome Total War.

Unit cards are annoyingly slow to load the first time you go to look at one, but slightly less slow after that.

I played as Carthaginians twice and there are some improvements compared to the original Rome. If one of your cities is attacked it automatically raises a militia and levy garrison which has a size and composition based on what military buildings you have in it.

You can move armies by sea without building ships to represent commandeering merchant vessels as transport ships (the problem being that if it's a big army it can beat warships, which it shouldn't be able to - should get sunk by warships automatically as in Rome I with transports).

The biggest problem is that each city gets only one or two building slots for each size level it has - so you end up having to choose to build certain buildings, you can never build the whole range in ever city. This seems unnecessarily limited. And if it's possible to build city walls i never got the technology or buildings needed.

The technology tree is not bad - there are different tech advances available for each of the four types of faction (Roman, Hellenistic, Eastern and Barbarian) and a lot of buildings require both other buildings built first and technology - and the buildings available are different for the four types too.

I found the limited numbers of buildings per size level of the settlement made it almost impossible as Carthage. Build military buildings to get good garrisons and armies? You run out of food and your armies and people starve and lose people and soldiers. Build food production buildings? You're well fed but your small armies get massacred and enemy armies take your settlements.

Characters get only 3 or 4 retinue members each (courtesans, mercenary captains etc) which seems a very small number.

I think there may be a multi-player campaign though i've never checked properly. I'm wondering if the limited numbers of buildings and retinue sizes are to do with that?

There are far too many factions and many of them were nowhere historically.

Playing as Carthage it very annoyingly only gives you 4 settlements at the start and gives all the rest to 'Libya' and 'Nova Carthago' - AI factions which are Carthage's client states. In practice all this gives you is an alliance and trade rights with them. You can demand money from them but they'll tell you to sod off, though they will declare war on anyone who declares war on you.

Maybe if they gave Carthage control of more starting cities and took out the stupid AI client state allies in a mod it would be possible to win as Carthage.

The graphic, which were supposedly going to be amazing look considerably worse on my laptop which is less than a year old and high spec with a high end graphics card. In graphics options Rome II won't let me set graphics quality higher than Medium. Everything is also very very dark in battles - don't know if this is some copy Europa Barbarorum thing - liked EB but never understood why turning the brightness way down in it was supposedly "more realistic". It's often pretty sunny in the Mediterranean and it was in 272BC too.

[Jubal wrote]

Jubal wrote

Most provinces don't have their trade goods placed on the campaign map, which may be an issue with trade? Not sure.

Any chance of adding a few in for each province?

Playing the campaign as wood-elves and i noticed that trade has been nerfed down to practically nothing, making it almost impossible to maintain garrisons and a field army once you get a bit into a campaign. I took two Brettonian cities and it was the same with them - never got trade income of much over 100 gold for any city no matter how many markets, bazaars, ports, trade caravans etc i built. Does not make for fun play in that respect. I do love all the wood elf units and all their buildings other than the nerfed trade buildings though.

Has trade been nerfed for all factions or just for wood elves? Either way, would prefer it un-nerfed.

p.s why do walking woods only have attack and charge bonus 1? I thought they were meant to be some kind of ent/treant/huorn type thing, though i havent bought any warhammer army books since 3rd edition in the late 80s.

Ah right - ok, i see - will check

[Talonmaster wrote]

Talonmaster wrote

Diplomacy is obviously still a prob and funnily there are more alliances and ceasefires each turn than in vanilla

That would actually be an improvement if evil and good factions weren't allying with each other all the time.

The Dwarfs even offered me Trade rights

Again probably down to no good Vs Evil in  the Rome Total War Engine. Maybe it'd be possible to make all the good/neutral factions permanently allied for the whole game? I don't know. You could count Araby and Middenheim as evil even though they're not really so they could still be at war with Altdorf , Brettonia and Tilea if they're AI controlled.

Ive played Skaven quite a lot in custom and they should,I think,definetely be cheaper and faster in combat
In all the books Ive read Skaven are lightning fast which is one of their main advantages

Definitely agree on both price and movement speed. Wages especially for skavenslaves should probably be zero and clanrat wages low.

Skavenslaves and clanrats seem to have the same pay as wood elf units which are many times superior to them. Don't understand why. Thought it was better in the beta when skavenslaves and clanrats cost peanuts - they are very poor units and skaven are meant to come in huge hordes after all.

What do you mean by repeatedly allied?

I just mean in two different games, both of which i was wood elves, Altdorf allied with Orcs and Goblins in both of them.

Playing as wood elves the Empire repeatedly allied with orcs and goblins in two different games - which seems pretty wrong.

On top of that while i was able to save games fine in my first wood elf campaign, when i changed the options to Huge units and started again the save and load game buttons were greyed out and couldn't be clicked. They stayed greyed out even when i quit that campaign and restarted with large and then normal units again.

EDIT : Save works again after quitting Rome Total War and starting a new campaign with options set back to Huge Units again

Oh also why aren't skavenslaves and clanrats zero turn recruitment and very cheap to recruit any more? I really liked that in the beta and it fits very well with skaven being able to bring up hordes from underground suddenly.