Exilian
Site Questions & Governance: The Citadel Quarter => Misc Archived Boards => Site Archive => Questions and Suggestions - The High Court => The Great Forum - Rome II Discussion => Topic started by: Will on September 03, 2013, 08:11:43 PM
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Anyone else got it? My computer shuts down every 30 minutes because the PSU fan is not working, but I can still see the beauty in this game! I'd like to hear what other people think since my experience has been limited by a broken PC. Have only completed a few prologue campaign battles.
I think it is living up to the hype, and there was no great shortage of that.
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Weird, I've had no problems on my fairly mediocre rig and all settings on Extreme with 8x anaikofjaidfuhaosgh filtering. Runs alright on x16 but I take fps hit every time theres a clash in the middle of the field.
I think that it's amazing! The political side is so much more in depth, the unit management is such a step up. However the UI especially for buildings is armadilloe, it takes a while to actually knw what you're building and what benefits it has. You need to keep refering to the encyclopaedia to see which buildings produce units...It's a mess. once you've figured that out though, it becomes an amazing game.
Still hoping for a minotaurs/cyclopes DLC...
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Are there warpigs? :)
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Weird, I've had no problems on my fairly mediocre rig and all settings on Extreme with 8x anaikofjaidfuhaosgh filtering. Runs alright on x16 but I take fps hit every time theres a clash in the middle of the field.
I think that it's amazing! The political side is so much more in depth, the unit management is such a step up. However the UI especially for buildings is armadilloe, it takes a while to actually knw what you're building and what benefits it has. You need to keep refering to the encyclopaedia to see which buildings produce units...It's a mess. once you've figured that out though, it becomes an amazing game.
Still hoping for a minotaurs/cyclopes DLC...
Oh the crashing is just my computer, nothing to do with the game at all. It has been borked for a year, but I got Rome 2 because HELL IT IS ROME 2! I'm running the game fine but my computer overheats and crashes or just crashes and crashes.
The graphics are gorgeous though, and generally the battles feel right. I agree on the buildings though.
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What about the unit cards?
And the UI in general?
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To say the minimum requirements are similar to Shogun, my computer sure struggles to run it :( . I can only play on low or medium (depending on what seems to be random luck of how the game feels like running at any given point in time), rather than high on Shogun. I'm also not a fan of the unit cards, they are ugly and not great for glancing at to see what you have.
In fact, the whole UI in general is bad. Information is hidden in expanding boxes at best, or hidden in the encyclopedia in the case of trying to figure out what buildings do. I also still do not like the building system that has carried over from Shogun, that is the one extra building type per settlement size thing. However, my frustrations at this from Shogun are alleviated somewhat by the up to 4 regions = 1 province thing. Basically up to four regions (and therefore settlements) make up a province. Public order, building effects, recruitment etc. is on a province-wide basis, and all of the settlements in a province can be seen and expanded/constructed in on one interface, which lets you decide how to specialise each town to make the province run smoothly easily. A vast improvement on Shogun, where having to specialise each town individually frustrated me no end.
Another thing with recruitment is that it is done via generals now, rather than by cities. This was odd to me at first, but now feels natural and a good change. Units also replenish over time while in friendly territory, which is nice too. The army stances seem interesting, although I've not put them to much use yet. However, I have one huge issue with the units side of things. Each army must be lead by a general. And there is a limit on how many generals you can have. I hated this in Imperial Glory, and I hate it here too. Not only does it have the obvious implications of needing to have a small number of large armies on your frontiers rather than lots of smaller forces on the move to defend strategic points, it makes rearranging your forces between armies a lot more tedious, to the level of barely seeming worth it, and more worthwhile to just train new units instead.
Upon clicking the end turn button, another problem rears its head. I am forced to sit a good 2-5 minutes between turns once a campaign gets going a little. When you are in a consolidation phase of "set some things building/training->end turn multiple times" this is horrible. Then the campaign map camera starts throwing itself around and changing orientation to follow the opponent turns, leaving you with little idea where it is actually looking in relation to your lands (at least at a glance). This mixed with the vast size of the map (not really a bad thing, although the zoom is so limited a good overview is difficult to get outside of the "tactical view", which is effectively an expanded minimap) make it easy to get lost. Not to mention all the weather effects causing random fps slowdowns as a particularly big cloud floats across screen.
As far as I can see, the reason for this huge time between turns is the sheer number of factions in the game. That is, almost every region in barbarian lands is owned by a different tribe, each represented by a unique (in name at least) faction. Great, you would think. Except of this ocean of factions, a raindrop's worth are actually playable. Obviously there is Rome, wherein you choose which of 3 families to head in the in-faction politics. Carthage is similar in this set up with the politics as well. There are then the Iceni (for Britannia), the Aedui (for Gaul) and the Suebi (for Germania). Two eastern factions and two successor kingdoms (Macedon and Egypt) make up the rest of the core game's lineup. You can play as 3 of the numerous Greek City States for the extra price of the Greek Factions DLC (£5.99). This is a decently wide spread across the cultures in the game, but why can I not play as say the Etruscan League and try to reverse the history books by eliminating Rome instead of vice-versa? Where are the Selucids? (coming in DLC soon I think). Why not add some of the many barbarian factions/tribes to the playable list, and add a bit of variety between them? Otherwise it feels the same as fighting one large faction (ie Rome's Gaul) but with the added annoyance of long turn waiting and having to negotiate diplomatic treaties with each settlement...
I can get past the annoying changes, I can mostly get over having to pay for DLC to unlock factions, but a release with the number of graphical glitches and other bugs this game has is not good. The crazy amount of texture pop in is annoying too. I'm sure after a few patches there will be a good game here, but it will not ever be as good as the original. I hope it is very moddable.
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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.
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Yeah, I tried Carthage too and had the same issue. With Rome however the limited building options are less frustrating due to the speed with which you can unify a couple of provinces. It mostly seems pretty unbalanced against widely spread factions.
I have a similar problem with the graphics, I find that Rome on max settings is more aesthetically pleasing than this on low ish settings, simply because it is brighter and far less washed out. I had a similar issue with my old laptop and Medieval 2, and as I enjoy the battle mechanics and it feels good except the washed out graphics and sometime frame rate issues I am hopeful that when I get a new computer it will be better, as Medieval 2 was.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Taxes are stupid now, I agree. My main problem with unit movement in battle is the lack of wheeling around and also the way that right clicking with everything selected just moves it into a stupid straight line... But that was in Shogun also iirc.
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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.
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I'm also not a fan of the unit cards, they are ugly and not great for glancing at to see what you have.
They look like they were made by a 6 year old.
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yeah i don't like the unit cards at all - very poor and take far too long to load when looking at them. Makes it difficult to compare unit ratings.
Another thing i dislike about Rome II is the music, which is just mediocre and way inferior to the original Rome Total War music. It doesn't change as much according to what's happening in a battle as the original did either.
There don't seem to be any sounds of marching feet or horses neighing or hoofbeats when units move either, nor do elephants trumpet.
This all really damages the atmosphere of the game and makes it kind of dull.
The combat animations are also very poor. Makes troops look more like they are trying to shoulder their way through a crowd than fight.
Hoping modders will improve on all this eventually. I've tried very hard to like Rome II and keep playing it only to just switch it off because it's so dull, buggy and annoying. Hopefully mods will be great in the end though.
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This is why I don't tend to buy on day one and wait for steam sales :P
Although it seems the few mods out there really help. I remember seeing quite a few that helped a bit with performance, which seems to be a widespread issue
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This is why I don't tend to buy on day one and wait for steam sales :P
Although it seems the few mods out there really help. I remember seeing quite a few that helped a bit with performance, which seems to be a widespread issue
I pre-ordered on Amazon and it cost £25.
Also, there is a tournament going on right now with a few youtube Rome 2 players. It is being streamed on twitch with the semifinals and finals tomorrow.
http://www.twitch.tv/readyuptv (http://www.twitch.tv/readyuptv)
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Yeah, I think I heard a bit in some videos (specifically PoM), but I guess I'll save it for whenever I'm bored :P
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I probably won't get it for a year or so tbh :P
I just don't want more game modding possibilities hanging over me if nothing else...
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Also, you wouldn't have to spend all your time in updating your modded files after every patch :P
EDIT: I just cannot BELIEVE they have announced a Blood & Gore pack, especially by the part of "Featuring hundreds of gruesome animations that play out in combat between multiple different unit types (...)". SERIOUSLY? If I recall correctly, the reason why there isn't a fire at will option in R2TW for pila/javelins (what would have been the "prec" attribute in RTW) was because they didn't have either time or space for it's animations. And they are really charging 3$ for animations that will make all the 300 fanboys whoop in glee?!?! Really pissed about it.
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If you read the piece from the devs they explained why they needed to charge for the blood separately (to do with age ratings and availiability in different countries or something...). They have fire at will option and have done since the start for javelins. Pila are thrown before the charge, there is no fire at will button with them because the range of the pilum is so short there would be no point.
I bought the blood pack today and it makes the game so much better and adds to the character of it.
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I might be really, really tacky, but I find almost 3 dollars too much for what it's supposed to be. But well, I won't be buying it, so I don't care that much... still pissed about the fire at will thing. Not all nations used a throwing weapon as heavy as a pila, so it's a really gross simplification. I do really think it was in part to simplify the game for the many newcomers to the TW series (which seems to be pivotal in CA's current policy, as they have shown in that interview where they said they would delete features based on Metacritic reviews, or something like that... TotalBiscuit had a video on that), as they don't have the "Loose Formation" in the default game, although it is within the game files (there is a modder that enabled it). In any case, I was checking the forums again, where I had read the comment on disregarding the pila-throwing animations, and it seems it was just a pun from a user...
I'm just worried that the game is changing to favour a wider audience: rather than making them adapt into the pretty good mechanics in former games, they are trying to introduce elements that could make it more attractive for newcomers. That's the perception I've been getting anyways, and I know it isn't entirely fair for me to comment on a game that I don't even own (more by the fact that my current pc barely handles RTW on "Large" unit settings, rather than skepticism).
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Yeah there are so many things that have gone downhill only from S2. Building menu won't be looked at and there are still huge imbalances in the units but I'm hoping those will be addressed. I think the reason for them dumbing down R2 is actually because of the next game they want to release, Total Warhammer (name pending :P) which requires a couple of layers of global strategy to be taken out. I believe they'll be hoping that this game will smooth the way for the more 'streamlined' next total war game instead of recieving a ton of backlash if they had made R2 a strategy behemoth then completely turning that element around for the next release. Makes little sense from a business point of view and absolutely none from a gamers, I know but I can also sort of see the logic.
With patch 5 I think loose formation is an option also. Though that it needs a patch a week says something about the game in itself.
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I'm glad to see that I am considered a gamer, because I have trouble in understanding that logic :P I wish they would have done a different series for a more streamlined experience, but that would never happen... I just wish they had some kind of real competition, I can't think of any other war game that encapsulates all of TW's mechanics in a good way, especially for the roman period (I do believe there seem to be good "clones" of medieval times and the napoleonic wars)
And yeah, I can understand the frustration of a weekly patch... it sounds good in theory, but not at all for the player... I guess campaign savegames get corrupted? Or do they remember the state of the game from when the campaign was initiated (it keep whatever is changed later on in the patches?)
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Probably just my rambled interpretation of it :P
saves are compatible with each patch, just not most mods xD
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Oh, that's nice... shame about the mods. From what I see I wouldn't be able to play without mods, and having to start a new campaign everytime a new patch comes out
Yay for Steam Sales and buying games two years after release, once everybody stops playing them!
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There's already a 25% sale on at the moment.
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It is kind of lame that there are so many DLCs that you have to pay for, really this kind of stuff should be free.
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That's why you wait for 75% or bundles (or both!)
I think the argument is that they replace the expansions... not sure really
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Well I've been playing this game again a fair bit recently, now its been patched a little I felt I'd give it another chance. This time I went into it expecting less than the first time and I feel that at its heart is a good enough game to keep me entertained. However it feels like it is missing the "spark" that made the original Rome so good, even to the state where it feels more like a game that some company made to cash in on the TW style of strategy/tactics mix, rather than a bona fide TW game from Creative Assembly.
I've also found myself giving up completely on fighting battles on the battle map. I did a similar thing with Medieval 2 (although that was because the fps was unplayable, not because they are so riddled with crashes its not worth trying) and felt a similar way about the game until I played it on a new computer that could run it properly. I'm hoping that the worst of the battle map issues (namely it freezes up and then crashes my video card every now and then) is due to my computer, rather than another of the random bugs in the game, and that the purchase of a new computer will allow me to get the best possible experience.
I still take issue with some of the feature/design changes, but overall it just feels different - not necessarily vastly worse. Public order is a pain, but on the whole the multiple regions per province thing is good. Unit variety is good, and the recruitment system is fantastic. However the biggest let down of all is the UI. It is badly designed and feels frustrating to use. I also miss family trees, and feel like they would have fitted in really well with the internal politics stuff (ie multiple families per faction vying for power). Also I wish that there was more than one turn per year, simply because I am sick and tired of just when my agents and generals get really useful they die of old age.
It would also be a damn sight easier with regards to having to autoresolve most battles if the small one-city AI factions would freaking do something other than train two full stacks and camp their city with them both and a garrison army...
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The new DLC will make there be 24 turns in a year!
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Yeah for a price and only in the DLC campaign -.- .
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I don't feel that the extra turns per year will really be a big addition to the game. I feel a lot more can be said for the ability to levy troops from client states. Sadly, the guys that made the latest "Let's Play" for CA don't feel the same way. I think it's a pretty good representation of how much CA, as well as the customer base they seem to be aiming for, seem to care more about graphics rather than actual gameplay.
It's really stupid for me to give my opinion on the topic without even owning the game, but I feel I've read and seen so much I can actually say something. The 1TPY wasn't a bad idea at all, it fits the map scale very well, and aids to properly represent empire expansion, in terms of the space-time relation (at least, from my point of view, better than RTW). The thing was that they didn't add anything really important to make up for it. Sure, they added politics, but it seems to be that it's entirely possible to run a campaign by barely paying attention to it (I believe that some players even play around it to have the civil war at a point of their choosing). Therefore, family members are barely 30-turn-faces for your armies, and not much more than that. With a family tree, and a real politics system (not as complicated as the EU series, but it would be a nice source of inspiration) individual characters (with their family history and their life achievements) could really feel as if they're doing something in your campaign, as if they're real people doing stuff in your empire.
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Just an update now that I've had a chance to play Emperor Edition.
Generals and agents now live longer (roughly 25 turns more on average).
Combat has slowed down a huge amount, instead of battle being over in minutes (seriously, around 5 for 2 full armies to hash it out) they now take roughly 20 to do the same. I have no real opinion on whether this is a good change, I guess it's ok but leaves my favoured charge units nerfed back into oblivion.
New building system. Too complicated to post here. Long story short, it makes armouring your units a pain in the nutsack while giving them small buffs has become ridiculously easy. No opinion here either.
Hoplites have become horrible. I am sad.
Archers are the new meta, they just kill everything now. I like.
Playing as Mark Antony is cool. As is playing as Lepidus and Octavian. But Antony has Cleopatra and thus tv/movie/music references that the others lack. Much to the pain of my co-op campaign buddy.
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Hoplites have become horrible. I am sad.
Please explain? I still think they are quite effective and as they are my favourite classical units I was wondering why you think they have been made horrible? As far as I can see they are very effective at holding a line and in a battle of attrition they are difficult to beat, the new morale changes have really helped that imo. I know that they're not killing machines but neither do I think that they should be.
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They used to be killing machines though, which I miss :P Regularly I would field my prized Spartan Hoplites against barb/roman/punic spears and swords and the hops would generally kill them. Now they end up with 40-50 kills a piece and thus take ages to level, severely gimping their usefulness. Plus with the changes to how upgrades work, its much more difficult to get an army of tooled up hops with the gear advantage to be able to kill said barb/punic/roman masses.
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Recently I played a Sparta vs Rome online battle and with practically unlimited funds I took loads of royal Spartans fully upped with experience. They took on a similar number of fully upped Pretoria guard and held them with very few losses for long enough that my cav could win the cav fight and rear charge them. They're great at being an anvil that isn't as susceptible to flanking as pikes.
Sorry about spelling errors, my Chinese phone doesn't like words.
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If you're using Citizen cav, you're doing it wrong :P
Any Rome infantry from veteran legionaries upwards have ripped through any hoplites whenever I've played against them. Maybe I'm hopliting wrong? :P
The reason to choose Spartan hops over pikes (unlike regular hops/pikes) is the versatility, the hops are actually amazing on the counter charge. Nobody else can get away with that though :D
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Maybe the highest veteran royal spartans are a little more durable than regular spartans? I took 10 units of full experience citizen cav if that explains the cavalry victory to you whereas the enemy didn't take very good or upgraded cavalry.
If you want to use your hoplites to hold the enemy always engage them in hoplite phalanx for that defensive bonus as well.
Quick question, what has your experience been with picked and thorax hoplites?
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Thorax hoplites are just an upgrade of regular hoplites as far as I can see, Picked are too pricey for a battle line but they make a nice unit for refused flank if you want those peasants to hold a little longer.
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I often find my trouble is that I take too many elite units and get outflanked or outmanoeuvred by a numerically superior foe. I always hear about making your armies cost effective and it seems that I'm struggling to do that.