Rome 2 - Impressions

So, I've been playing for a couple of hours. First the prologue camapaign, then a Rome as the house of Julia ( I know that i wrote I'll won't buy it immediately because i was pissed about pre-order DLC, but who was I kidding?).
My feeligns are very mixed. I see a lot of potential and many good additions. I really like the new province management system and the bigger role of random character traits.
It looks like a pretty good compromise between the semi-random traits in Rome Total War and the skill trees in Shogun 2.
I'm not so sure what to think of the way that public order works right now. On the one hand it allows me to neglect a province for a short time and offers more choice, on the other hand it feels a bit too gamey.
Unfortunately there's one thing that keeps this from being a really grat strategy game. It's the old bane of Total War games, but what's really baffling is that it got better with Shogun 2 and is much worse now: The AI. The biggest problem is the strategic AI. The computer opponents seem incapable of ammassing armies. I am constantly attacked by forces that are numerically so inferior that I can safely autoresolve 90% (not an exaggeration) of my battles. What's worse, so many buildings now give additional troops to a city's garrison that I rarely need armies to defend, and low order becomes almmost a non issue because all it does is spawn a couple of rebels who promptly break themselves in suicidal attacks. My conclusion after seven hours is that this game could be the best TW yet, but until the AI is fixed it's far too easy.

Don't know if it is because I play in the highest difficulty but....

I have a completely different game experience, for me the AI has been challenging and rather smart about its moves and strategies, they have defeated several larger forces because I failed to notice that they had moved several units behind a mountain or through a forest on my flanks. Though I won't argue that it does sometimes make stupid mistakes that most commanders never would never make, such as charging cavalry into a wall of spears.

Love the battles though, the more realistic movements and using terrain to your advantage. I have sent numerous cavalry forces around a mountain or forest to strike at a Gallic rear which throws them into confusion. To keep Gallic forces from occupying said mountain/forest and seeing my cavalry maneuvers I had to sacrifice my light troops to keep them engaged until my main force arrives to anchor down the line and await the hammer.

Also love that it is easier now to shift a unit of foot from one flank to another easily and without hassle. In earlier games they almost always got tied up in the center along the way, now they simply ignore any fights except when attacked themselves or their orders have been completed. Making my job as commander much easier when I need a critical gap plugged.

I like the garrison idea, frees up my armies, can only support 4 to begin with anyways, to do what they are designed to do. Wage war and defend the frontlines preventing your enemies from penetrating deep into your territories, not defend towns and cities and keep the population content.

Before reading this thread (to avoid possible influences), my impressions so far are sadly very disappointing. Little is new compared with Shogun (even graphically), however for that we sacrifice interface attractiveness and utility. This is however based on a short run at the Prologue. Even the opening cinematic is a bit of a let down and curiously disjointed - much of it seems good, but interspersed with less well-rendered pieces (like the chariot attack) that look as though they're close-ups of gameplay footage. Most of the fantastic cinematic stuff from the trailers is missing.

Short because of the opacity of raising fleets and the unhelpfulness of the encyclopedia - I spent several turns building a dock, which unlocks the first ships, expecting it would allow me to raise a fleet. By the time I realised that it didn't, and that armies now do the Civ V turning into transport ships thing, Samnite fleets were blockading me so I couldn't leave by sea anyway. That's when I found out that it helpfully autosaves over the previous autosave, and that for some reason the stages of the Prologue other than the first are locked even though they've been completed, so I have no way out aside from either restarting or abandoning the suggested naval attack angle.

That however is not a major reason for my disappointment, which had set in earlier. But first the pros:

- The new line of sight system in battles that makes units invisible if blocked by a hill or other terrain feature (rather than just in terrain that their rules allow them to hide in).

- The new vertical camera modes in battle, although the 'first person' mode for artillery is wholly pointless.

- A (heavily simplified) version of the older games' population growth mechanic is back, after being absent from Shogun 2 - now you can't expand a settlement until you've reached a specific population surplus.

- Characters have more attributes and somewhat varied traits, including randomly-generated ones and at least one ("survivor") that triggers after battle. It's not quite what it was in pre-S2 days, but it looks a good compromise at first glance.

- The tech tree has something of the structure of Empire's, with multiple branches to follow in both civic and military fields. These are however much reduced in size; while Empire's was overly detailed, this one's not fundamentally much different in size from Shogun 2's, and with similarly arbitrary 'gamey' upgrades rather than the effort at historical approximation in some of Empire's.

- Varied and quickly accessible unit formation options, a significant improvement over S2.

- A better system of unit flags that makes it easier to see at a glance what type of unit is what - it's not just "swords", "spears" and "bows".

Now the downsides:

- The battle interface. I can't stress how significant this is. The unit roster sheet is gigantic (vertically), to the point where it actively interferes in unit control. For no good reason unit size figures are gone, replaced by a health bar, and there's no indication on the unit card of morale status any more - for both you have to check the tooltip, and in TW games these are not minor considerations. You need to know when the optimal time is to pull troops out of the fight to recuperate or to keep the unit alive. Added to that, the actual unit commands are awkwardly placed. A minor niggle is the default setting of the tooltip to show unit status (fatigue, morale etc.); minor because changing it in the settings was the first thing I did.

- As above, the opacity of some gameplay elements when first learning the changes to the system.

- The campaign interface is decidedly unattractive, and the city labels detract from an otherwise quite pretty map. The encyclopedia is even worse - the actual historical text seems to be cut-and-pasted from the first game, but most of what's presented is game info in a much less concise form than the typical Empire or Shogun 2 cards.

- I'm far from a historical purist where this sort of game is concerned; I'm as happy as anyone to use wardogs, barbarian berserkers and "repeating scorpions" in my quest to conquer the Pyramids of Alexandria.

But even for me, having seen CA's opening cinematic declaring "You have been warned" (chariots fighting in city streets not bad enough? How about an accurate map of Eurasia in a Senate war room about a millennium before the invention of cartography?) and happily accepting - despite the fact that the Romans now speak English with their authentic English accents rather than Australian ones - that the only historically accurate feature of this game is its use of the Roman alphabet (except for J, W and U, of course) - I have to ask: "a cavalry testudo? WTF?"

- Maybe this is a prologue thing, but the keys for ending turn don't seem to work (even when I change from Enter to Space to fit my Shogun 2 keys), so I'm forced to just press End Turn each time. This can be very irritating.

- Minor niggle again, but only four historical battles?

- The game seems to have lost a lot of character - the old game's Senate opinions on different factions don't seem to be there, for instance, and the whole seems humourless (right down to the achievement names - come on, can't we have "Up Pompeii!: Leave the game before finishing the Prologue"), and we have dry labels for such things as discontent (come on, if Crusader Kings can include Blackadder jokes Rome 2 can at least have the discontent description "What have the Romans ever done for us?").

- Retraining units is back, but instant and with a nominal gold cost; together with much accelerated unit reinforcement, very quick experience gains and the retention of promotions in an army, this seems to provide much less incentive for tactical play that keeps your units alive in the long term, a form of roleplaying that's always been a key part of the Total War experience.

Things I thought I'd dislike but am ambivalent about:

- The province system. Provincial happiness and tax work like city happiness and tax in Shogun 2, but there only ever seem to be two cities per province, so all this really amounts to is having an S2-type province with extra building slots (nothing seems to work at the city level, other than conquest), not very different from villages in Empire provinces.

GoodSarmatian said:

So, I've been playing for a couple of hours. First the prologue camapaign, then a Rome as the house of Julia ( I know that i wrote I'll won't buy it immediately because i was pissed about pre-order DLC, but who was I kidding?).
My feeligns are very mixed. I see a lot of potential and many good additions. I really like the new province management system and the bigger role of random character traits.
It looks like a pretty good compromise between the semi-random traits in Rome Total War and the skill trees in Shogun 2.
I'm not so sure what to think of the way that public order works right now. On the one hand it allows me to neglect a province for a short time and offers more choice, on the other hand it feels a bit too gamey.
Unfortunately there's one thing that keeps this from being a really grat strategy game. It's the old bane of Total War games, but what's really baffling is that it got better with Shogun 2 and is much worse now: The AI. The biggest problem is the strategic AI. The computer opponents seem incapable of ammassing armies. I am constantly attacked by forces that are numerically so inferior that I can safely autoresolve 90% (not an exaggeration) of my battles. What's worse, so many buildings now give additional troops to a city's garrison that I rarely need armies to defend, and low order becomes almmost a non issue because all it does is spawn a couple of rebels who promptly break themselves in suicidal attacks. My conclusion after seven hours is that this game could be the best TW yet, but until the AI is fixed it's far too easy.

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Further thoughts:

After the shock of the poor interface, I'm mellowing to the game somewhat, but I think mostly for nostalgia reasons - it does try to re-add several features from earlier games in the new, simplified Total War format (and how can you not love a character getting a trait called "Casually Adulterous"?). This has both good and bad sides: the thing is, Rome wasn't as good a game as Shogun 2. I'm coming to realise the same is true of Rome 2.

I really hope the Prologue AI is made unnecessarily bad just for the tutorial - granted I'll play at high difficulty levels in the main game anyway, but whatever your difficulty, AI code should not tell you to sit exactly where you are while that exact spot is bombarded by ballistae. Shogun 2 actually had a moderately challenging 'Advanced Siege' battle in its tutorial campaign, this one's more of a walkover than Rome 1's (even without transport ships - I just went the long way round).

On the tactical side, again from only these prologue battles the pace is frenetic even compared with Shogun 2, giving little scope for tactical manoeuvring or the skirmishes that made Rome 1 tactical play more dynamic than that of most succeeding entries in the series. It seems we're back to the Blob vs. Blob bumrush, and what's more unit type seems less important than in Shogun 2 - I've hit unengaged spears with cavalry and won, much as I could in older TW games where the counters weren't as "hard" as they are in S2.

Positively, cavalry actually seem relevant even in siege battles - since most TW campaigns revolve around sieges (given the territorial acquisition victory conditions), and cavalry don't have much to do in sieges except sit outside, you could get through most games with little more cavalry than the generals and light cav starting unit, and it's a shame that such a fundamental part of warfare seemed mostly relegated to multiplayer matches.

Like you, I'm not a fan of the new disorder system, which seems generally easier to manage than the old one (and military repression doesn't play a big part, so you don't need to hold units back as a police force) - only foreign culture seems to cause problems, and I'm not sure I'm yet sold on how this system works either. Rebel bands in S2 were at least large enough to pose a threat to an unguarded town (those in Medieval II and Rome less so), but the combination of small size and automatic garrisons does, as you point out, make rebellions irrelevant. Nor does rioting seem to have the semi-serious effects it had in earlier games (in Empire particularly, riots could be a real pain as they were often persistent and caused property damage).

I think Fall of the Samurai had a fine garrison system; the lack of any trade-off in Rome 2 between 'economy buildings' and 'garrison/public order buildings' of the sort prompted by Shogun 2 is disappointing, I agree.

Regarding the character traits, having played a bit more I'm less convinced. The arbitrary restriction of 3 traits per character makes them feel less individual than they could have been, and while I've said I'd have preferred more traits that reflect a character's actions, I think they're just too easy to get and nearly all traits now fit into that category. There's not a lot of randomness that I've yet seen. Obtaining a key trait should be an accomplishment for a character, not an all-but-guaranteed reward (for example, I had two spies, both of whom got traits relevant to their last mission immediately upon completion, and one of whom then did it again).

I'll definitely have to play on a 'real' difficulty (at least Hard, though I usually default to Normal for my first playthrough), but I feel at this point that even if it has much better AI at higher difficulty levels, it's some way from earning the 'best TW ever' accolade. Then again, playing a full campaign with varied factions might well change my opinion - politics weren't relevant in the Prologue campaign for starters.

From what I see everywhere, RTW2 seems to be pretty horrible.
I'll see for myself soon, but I'm pretty disappointed by some design decisions already.
From the game I most anticipated this year, this is a gut punch

I wouldn't say pretty horrible. I think it's very good but rough around the egdes, and the prologue campaign is much more bugged than the actual campaign which might leave people with a very poor first impression. YOu just need to play on high difficulties and hope the AI is improved. I think the biggest problem that people have is that CA changed too much at once, but imho they've done a pretty good job.

Akka said:

From what I see everywhere, RTW2 seems to be pretty horrible.
I'll see for myself soon, but I'm pretty disappointed by some design decisions already.
From the game I most anticipated this year, this is a gut punch

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I can't deny that the anticipation is what's left me quite as disappointed as I am - as a TW game it is, well, a TW game, and so perfectly serviceable albeit with dreadful AI. There are just better entries in the series, including its immediate predecessor.

It's also struck me just how much difference aesthetic choices make. This is the first TW game that doesn't have a period-appropriate aesthetic for its interface; the spartan (not in a thematically appropriate way) translucent black panels look borrowed from XCOM (where they're still ugly, but not so wildly out of place). TW games need a sense of place and character, and despite being in most technical respects fairly faithful to its predecessors, R2 just doesn't have that even before the odd decision to add unnecessary fantasy features like the "cavalry testudo" and explosive ballista bolts. Sure, TW audiences are used to anachronisms - staple abilities in the series include fire arrows that are more effective against soldiers than standard arrows, and a wedge formation (a medieval European heavy cavalry formation) in Roman times or in Sengoku Japan - but basic abilities for archer and cavalry units are needed to add variety in the way you use otherwise rather static unit types (for all that fire arrows have always been overpowered). I don't see any equivalent need for these new options, which are in any case not merely anachronistic or inappropriate against the types of target they're good against in TW, but are complete fabrications.

Even seemingly minor changes like showing public disorder as a numerical value without the associated population icons for the amount of discontent/happiness makes the whole seem more impersonal and, yes, "gamey" (and if you don't want to be reminded you're playing a game, you'll have to autoresolve every battle so as to avoid the loading screens with "Total War: Rome 2" emblazoned over literally half the screen. On the plus side, autoresolved battles actually seem to work - a first in TW history).

Then there's the lack of flavour touches. In S2 you could see in the trade screen the goods you were importing vs. exporting, and there was a full screen devoted to showing you the trade prices of different commodities. This screen had absolutely zero game effect (and the trade goods nothing the system can't do without), but it helped give a sense of a 'real' economy and - because it didn't do anything - didn't add any complexity. It was just for flavour. Anything like that has been ruthlessly purged from Rome 2 - everything has to be functional and minimalist. To some extent I can see why, since it was confusing for me when playing TW games for the first time that I had all these screens with trade information and the like that I couldn't figure out how to relate to gameplay, but I'm not sure there needed to be quite such a complete break with thematic touches.

EDIT: Looking elsewhere, a common target for criticism in this regard is the loss of the family tree diagram, found in most TW games (except perhaps Empire, which wasn't dynasty-based).

The advertising too sold the game on things that mostly haven't lived up to the hype:

- a politics system, we're told. I can't comment because I have no idea what "gravitas" etc. stats do, and there's no Senate screen or a place for one that can be unlocked. I was particularly looking forward to this since Shogun 2 was the first TW game I've played (never played the original Shogun) with no 'government' system akin to the MII Pope, Rome Senate or Empire, well, government (although the latter was extremely badly-implemented), and it seemed obvious to revisit the sort of Senate system R1 used. But no such thing appears to exist.

- Faction variety. Less than expected - rather than 12 factions with subfactions, we have 8, each of those having subfactions a la Rise/Fall of the Samurai (Macedon and Egypt, for example, are not two factions but two subfactions of the "Successor States" faction). The types of faction/subfaction bonus also seem very similar to those in FotS - so more varied in character than Shogun 2 vanilla, but not unique play experiences by any means. Can't yet comment on the differences in unit types since I've so far only played vs. Italian factions.

- Graphics. We should have been warned by all the emphasis on "wow, every soldier's an individual" - this may be the case but when playing no one zooms in that close so why care? Basic graphics seem worse than Shogun 2, but possibly I'm experiencing the reported low resolution bug. The scenery is pretty to be sure, but that's also true of S2.

- Multilayered siege battles. So far not seen any difference with R1 - you still have gatehouses etc. to capture, but taking them appears to have no meaningful game effect as you still only need the core central victory point. S2 almost got this right, but R2 feels a step back.

- Provinces. Maybe there's potential here, but in every respect except capturing cities all cities in a province act as a single city - all happiness, economic and unit recruitment effects act at the provincial scale. So you just basically get the Shogun 2 system only with more build slots. Culture (R2's religion mechanic, working very much like S2's but with less of a diplomatic impact) is worked out per city, but its only effects are on provincial happiness so that too is irrelevant. The only effect of having partial control of a province appears to be that you don't get to issue "provincial edicts", which seem to be province-scale versions of army stances. For this we lose the Empire/Shogun 2 system of farms and docks spread through the landscape, which is replaced by a generic army "raiding" stance (not even the R1/MII system where an army in enemy territory automatically raids). So this whole system as implemented is essentially wholly pointless, and I for one found the E/S2 system more characterful.

Just started my first proper campaign, and what I noticed right away is that you start the game absolutely swimming in cash. This was as the Junii, who like the other Roman factions claim an "easy" starting challenge and also have a boost to commerce income, but I have nothing I need that much money for except buildings that produce more cash. In Shogun 2 on the same difficulty (Hard), even with an "easy" faction like the Shimazu or Chosokabe, you have a familiar TW situation - not many units, not much cash to buy or support more, overall game strategy is basically "build your economy, buy units, go smash things, in that order".

In R2 you're given a pre-built economy, and seemingly incapable AI that isn't helped by the fact that the standard garrison buildings produce a poor selection of units (not enough archers, very low-quality units when higher-tech ones unlock for attackers far more quickly and cheaply than in S2) and walls come with a higher level of city. It's not just the AI; the system itself seems designed around the philosophy that the "go smash" phase is the totality of the gameplay experience.

Akka said:

From what I see everywhere, RTW2 seems to be pretty horrible.
I'll see for myself soon, but I'm pretty disappointed by some design decisions already.
From the game I most anticipated this year, this is a gut punch

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Where have you looked? A quick online search seems to reveal mostly positive impressions (including, curiously, praise for the interface and it's supposed period-appropriateness).

PhilBowles said:

Where have you looked? A quick online search seems to reveal mostly positive impressions (including, curiously, praise for the interface and it's supposed period-appropriateness).

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Maybe he checked TWC Centre.

Babri said:

Maybe he checked TWC Centre.

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Ah, checking a game's forum and accepting their views uncritically - the recipe for believing that all computer games ever made are unplayable.

Indeed, I've had that in mind with my preliminary thoughts on Rome 2, particularly in reference to complaints about Civ V (and my own initial impressions of that game, which saw me put off getting it for a year following one glance at the interface), "feels gamey", "lack of character", "seems simplified" seem common generic complaints aimed at sequels - I've seen exactly the same levelled at Civ V and EU IV on the relevant forums. Not to mention complaints about the tactical AI...

Again bearing in mind that my impressions of R2 are very preliminary (in particular I've had only one "real" - i.e. post-prologue - battle, and that a siege where TW AIs are historically weakest, or were until naval combat came along), more objectively where does it sit in the TW pantheon?

It certainly seems much less ambitious than the last two and a half entries in the series (Napoleon is effectively a Fall of the Samurai-style "standalone expansion", not a full game). Shogun 2 made fundamental changes to the series' mechanics to streamline the experience, while Empire made the most attempt to add new features. I've yet to see anything in Rome 2 that seems new, other than the amended public order and army recruitment system - it's mostly based on a combination of Shogun 2 and Rome, with choice imports from Empire such as the tech tree design and "spare building spot here" flags over cities where upgrades or slots are available.

But comparing it with its conceptual predecessor rather than its actual one, I can't really pin down anything it doesn't do as well as Rome - yes I miss the Senate system, but honestly Rome didn't execute it particularly well (only the Medieval games have really hit upon a workable "government" system in this series in the Papacy). Agent-free diplomacy, the Empire/Shogun trade system, and the Shogun 2 streamlining are all indisputable improvements. No one's seemed to much miss Rome's or MII's clunky building chains or half a dozen flavours of unhappiness that all had identical effects; Rome 2's temple chain system is a definite improvement over slight differences in the type of unhappiness reduced.

Rome also suffered from a too-high cash flow and weak tactical AI. Rome and Medieval had no faction diversity beyond differences in units; the Shogun 2-style faction modifiers certainly add variety missing from the original, while R2 also has greater unit diversity than Shogun 2. The traits seem somewhat broken in both games, in different ways (Empire actually handled these better than other games in the series, in my view) - in my R2 campaign, my spy's first action (using Cunning) immediately netted her two traits that boosted her Zeal to 6 (from a default of 2); agents seem as hard for the AI to handle as in Shogun 2, and level up much more quickly, but their effects are less gamebreaking.

Naval combat might well be poor (haven't tried it yet, but based on Shogun 2 experience this is almost inevitable), but it is there - is autoresolving Rome 2 naval battles going to be any worse than resolving naval combat in Rome? The fact that autoresolve seems to work in R2 shouldn't be underestimated given how tedious smaller engagements, sieges against empty cities and naval battles often are.

EDIT: The game has been very poorly-received on Metacritic, but then this is common for newly-released games, and the negative reviews are (as per usual) bug reports and the like, although there are a fair number of UI complaints as well. I haven't actually encountered noticeable bugs (except for the hotkey issue, but that does just seem to be with the prologue). It's the first TW game I've played immediately post-release, but while it's possible some of the more glaring interface problems and the AI may be fixed, there are a whole lot of "features", not to mention the art style, that will take a FotS-style expansion (which did have overhauled interface aesthetics) to resolve.

After checking out steam forum (why do I keep going there...), I was half expecting complete trainwreck of a game.

Turns out it's pretty much how I originally expected it to be. Fun, bit of improvements and questionable changes here and there, with lot of bugs.

Province system looks good so far. Much better than vanilla Shogun 2 but I'll have to spend more time to see how it works compared to FotS. Combat is looking good as well. I love the new line of sight rule and how javelin throwing doesn't freeze your soldiers inplace for 3 seconds. But man the engine is so unoptimized. Siege battles are complete lag-fest. It does look pretty, but even on lowest setting, it looks and performs far worse than Shogun 2 ever did.

Gaizokubanou said:

After checking out steam forum (why do I keep going there...), I was half expecting complete trainwreck of a game.

Turns out it's pretty much how I originally expected it to be. Fun, bit of improvements and questionable changes here and there, with lot of bugs.

Province system looks good so far. Much better than vanilla Shogun 2 but I'll have to spend more time to see how it works compared to FotS. Combat is looking good as well. I love the new line of sight rule and how javelin throwing doesn't freeze your soldiers inplace for 3 seconds. But man the engine is so unoptimized. Siege battles are complete lag-fest. It does look pretty, but even on lowest setting, it looks and performs far worse than Shogun 2 ever did.

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The new line of sight rule is great, certainly.

Played more of my campaign (through to the final conquest of Etrusca). It feels more Total War as I play, and the economy does start to become relevant (though the slum system, while a nice idea, could have been better than "pay 500 gold to remove this effect"). Further thoughts:

- The AI is problematic, but having now seen a couple of AI-built armies (not just garrisons), there's still the same pattern as in the Prologue: the unit mix is completely wrong. I saw something like an 8-unit Syracuse army with only two ranged units. It's no wonder I hadn't noticed that the 'toggle loose formation' button is gone, since the AI doesn't use enough archers/javelins for it to be relevant.

- Difficulty is certainly easier than Shogun. I have lost units in land battles (and generals, one through carelessness and one sheer bad luck when he was one of only a couple of casualties in the unit), but not the battles - and this is on Hard while the level of challenge I'd associate with Normal in the previous game. The lack of walls in early settlements makes them a walkover as well.

- The combat AI seems to sit around doing nothing for a long time. Normally I'm attacking outnumbered enemies, and past TW AIs would often behave the same way, but units seem to react to my moves very late, and they'll also stand in the open rather than making any effort to head for cover. I've yet to see anything much resembling tactics - the AI knows to try and hit cavalry with spears, but that's basically it.

- Odd AI behaviour re moving armies and particularly embarking. It sends one-unit transport ships off to random places (often several unit flags together, but only one unit per army). An outnumbered AI army will invariably flee (even if not outnumbered by much), even when a province is in danger. A small army will never move into a settlement to reinforce its garrison.

- Only diplomacy I've had so far was surprisingly positive - a beleagured minor faction actually approached me offering to become a client state as its only way to survive. Unfortunately for it I wasn't going to tangle with a 20-unit Veneti army while still finishing off the Etruscans... I also saw something new - you can invite your allies to attack specfic 'war target' provinces, which is welcome given that TW allies very rarely coordinate well with the player.

- Ramming is a lot of fun, and you certainly won't have the Shogun 2 situation where ships will never, ever sink unless you burn them. It does not however owe anything to the laws of momentum, which produces decidedly strange situations - I had my ship hard-rowing from a distance to attack, only for the enemy (which was slightly off-centre) to turn slightly and whack me with the side of its prow. My ship sank instantly - it seems a ram is a ram even if right next to you, which makes trying to board essentially suicidal (and bow ships won't get many shots). In one battle we each had one assault ship, the two ships rammed simultaneously, and everyone on both ships jumped ship. There's also no difference in damage depending on either the facing you hit or how much momentum you have when you do. Needs improvement both for realism and gameplay, since right now there seems to be no viable tactic with naval combat except ramming, and as facing isn't important you aren't rewarded for tactical positioning such as 'flank' attacks.

- Ran into an odd bug in one naval battle where the enemy had two javelin ships and a large transport fleet, and I had two melee ships. My melee ships easily destroyed the javelin ships with rams, but crashed into the transport fleet and stuck. Graphically the transports floated along towards the edge, carrying the melee ships attached to the sides, but the ships wouldn't either disengage or board, and the ram itself had no effect.

- I've decided I'm not a fan of the general recruitment system, and prefer older games' army flexibility. I've started seeing political-type messages, such as senators favouring certain replacement generals, but still haven't come across the Senate itself and have no idea what game effect taking or refusing the senators' favoured choice has.

- Also not a fan of the "magic boats". This mechanic was added to Civ V for gameplay reasons that don't exist in Total War, mainly to avoid wasting time and resources tediously building units whose only purpose was to transport other units, and so delay naval expansion. In Total War you could (and still can) embark armies onto any fleet you happen to have, so this isn't an issue. Gameplay-wise it causes the problem that you have free transports (all identical whatever the quality of the transported unit) that you can control and attack with in naval battles - and which are actually highly resistant to ramming while pretty good at dishing out damage that way themselves.

- I've captured a full province and tried out the 'edicts'. These turn out to be very basic - essentially, you get a reward of your choice for having captured the province (of four options, all available immediately - you don't need to research new edicts); unlike stances they have no downside, and there's only need to change them if circumstances change (for instance once your public order balance is positive you can switch away from Bread and Games - almost certainly your first choice since you'll claim a province by capturing a settlement and so increasing public disorder - to wealth generation). If this is, as it seems, all the new province system actually offers, I could definitely do without it.

Despite the interface problems, I'm starting to see more promise in R2, but for now stand by my earlier assessment that likely improvements will at best make it a good TW game, they won't make it as good as Shogun 2.

Hmm, you mean in terms of singleplayer? Because Shogun 2 campaign had a major problem in that the campaign wasn't well balanced so it boiled down to 3+ weapon ashigaru spam with building nothing but farms. Throw in ninjas to lock down armies for more lulzy-ness.

But man, I'm having such major performance issue so I'll probably not touch the game til Friday. Sucks to be me for now :/

Havent done uch yet (still studying for exams), but the game is quite stable with me. Still have to get quite used to the mechanics though. Im pursuing an army, when it suddenly goes into the sea and sails away

And never read forums after a release its always full of ragers who threaten to sue the publishers and 5 days later are completly hooked on it.

My CE didnt have a manual for the onager though. Or is it hidden smewhere in the case?

Gaizokubanou said:

Hmm, you mean in terms of singleplayer? Because Shogun 2 campaign had a major problem in that the campaign wasn't well balanced so it boiled down to 3+ weapon ashigaru spam with building nothing but farms. Throw in ninjas to lock down armies for more lulzy-ness.

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"Building nothing but farms" is an intended feature - the TW strategy layer has always been very simple and mostly about making enough money to buy and support your units. Farms are S2's commerce buildings (for some odd reason). I'd always thought the general feeling was that Katana Samurai spam was the way to go (plus matchlock ashigaru as defensive armies in towns).

And yes, agents - and probably particularly ninjas - were drastically overpowered, I agree. R2's agent approach is interesting and less game-breaking, but the options seem poorly-balanced (my zealous spy, for instance, is most effective at damaging unit upgrades, but especially at this early game stage - and against an AI that seems not to build upgrade builidngs anyway - that's of no value, while poisoning wells - basically, sabotage in Shogun 2 only with more damage and no effect on army movement - is always helpful).

But man, I'm having such major performance issue so I'll probably not touch the game til Friday. Sucks to be me for now :/

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Aside from that one bug I mentioned, I'm not having particular performance issues. The game loads much more quickly than S2 did, and while resolving the low resolution issue did hit turn times, those are also not as slow as S2's on my machine.

Anyone played this yet? Any good? I have read reviews and its fair to say they are rather mixed. You have the usual idiots on Metacritic giving it a "0" which isnt much help, so i thought i would ask here instead.

Well, there's this therad , but it's in the Total War sub-forum on this site and most posters ignore su-sub-forums.

My verdict is that it has a lot of potential and interesting additions, but it still needs work, particularly in the performance and AI department

Expect tons of bugs. However, the first patch is being released tomorrow and there will be a small patch every week, so it seems like support for this game is much better than previous games (I'm looking at you, Shogun II).

A couple of my friends got it on pre-order and they tell me that the game is brilliant minus bugs and whatnot. Can't say from first hand experience though.

There's a thread in the TW part of the Other Games forum.

Initial reaction was very disappointing, mostly because of regressive steps taken with the interface and a sense that the game has lost a lot of the typical TW character and flavour (not least with its bizarre obsession with adding completely fictional elements - sure, Rome 1 was the least historically accurate game in a series which has never exactly prized historical accuracy, but is that one area where Rome 2 really should have aimed to outdo its predecessor?).

Other than that, however, and playing further, it's pretty much the same old Total War experience - much less ambitious and with less new material than advertised, but with some welcome reintroduction of features missing in action in Shogun 2 (settlements expanding via population growth, mercenaries, random traits, and a 'stance' that mimics the effects of the thematic but essentially pointless Rome/Medieval II ability to create forts in the landscape. They've even brought back the speech bubbles in the diplomacy window).

The political system is undeveloped from what I've seen so far, the big new combat innovation (ramming in naval warfare) needs serious work to make alternative tactics - and actual tactical positioning - viable, and most egregiously (apart from the interface) the AI is bad even by TW standards at the tactical level, compounded by its failure to build up armies (you can see the same stack for game year after game year and it seemingly won't ever recruit new units) or use appropriate unit mixes at the strategic level. The province system isn't detectably different from S2's system except that you have to conquer more cities to capture each province - which means, yay, more siege battles! Just what every TW fan was clamouring for, because there wasn't enough tedium in Empire!

EDIT: Also, the political system such as it is is oddly asymmetrical and ahistorical. The advertised '9 factions plus the Greek states" are not, in fact, 10-12 factions, but eight: Rome (with 3 family subfactions), Carthage (with 3 family subfactions), Successor States (with two subfactions: Macedon and Egypt, and presumably also the Seleucids come next month), Eastern Empires (with two subfactions: Pontus and Parthia), Britannia (Iceni subfaction only), Germania (Suebi subfaction only), Gaul (Arveni subfaction only), and The Greek Cities (with 3 subfactions: Athens, Sparta and Epirus).

The thing is, the political system is based on relations between each of the subfactions within a nation (even though, if playing as a Roman or Carthaginian family, the other families do not appear as territory-holding factions). This makes sense for Rome and Carthage, but presumably means that Egypt and Macedon compete with each other for favour in their political system, and that there's no political system at all for the tribes (or if there is that it relates to the influence of non-playable factions). Only having played as Rome's Junii family so far I can't confirm this, but it's implied by the description given of the political system and makes exactly no sense.

This is a particular shame since the one worthwhile and well-implemented new feature R2 does bring to the table - the new 'true line of sight' system that makes hiding units much more relevant - can't really be seen to best effect. You always know where the AI units are because they cluster and never seem to move, particularly in siege battles - at least in Shogun 2 the AI adopted formations (it was always the same formation, but still).

Also, and this is not an exaggeration, my average times for battles on Hard range from 3 to 6:05 minutes - I know the latter precisely because I took a screenshot. Of the results of a siege battle. This is partly a comment on woeful AI performance, but if you're expecting the tactical game to be, well, tactical ... don't. There are more special abilities than ever, standard TW options like toggling tight/loose formation are gone (though you won't notice since the AI uses virtually no ranged units), contact is made quickly, and individual battles are over very quickly and very one-sidedly. In Shogun 2 and indeed most TW games, in an average battle I would have some of my units routing even when I won, unless I massively outnumbered the other side - I might need to keep units in reserve as replacements for units I had to withdraw from combat to recover their nerve, and so forth. Not in R2 - it seems that everything is very one-sided and decided quickly, although I have yet to play any major set-piece battles (not least because the AI doesn't build enough units and runs away on the strategic layer whenever you try to engage).

You can flank, and indeed withdraw units and charge with them again, but there's no actual need to do so to win battles - it seems you can even merrily charge headlong into spearmen with your cavalry and expect to win, albeit with more losses than you'd take using other units. The best "tactic" still seems to be getting a big blob and hurling it headlong into the enemy blob.