Rome 2 - Impressions

[scheva007]

And when you negotiate peace with one of those enemies shouldn't the treaty also extend to your Client State? (The game did not do this when I sued for peace. They stopped fighting me but continued to fight Carthage.)

You can ask factions to join wars, but not to end them, its been like that for quite a while. Its indeed a gap, cause it often leads to a client state being at war with someone, and that someone isnt at war with you.

 

[PhilBowles]

In S2 it made sense because it was mostly wooden structures + little siege equipment. there were also ramps leading up to the door which means you usually take more losses burning the gate, than in rome2.


also tried the new 1.5 beta patch:

performance on campaign map is better especially much less texture pop in, but it is still on too low fps. i want it as smooth as S2.

That, and the AI actually put archers on the walls...

 

[PhilBowles]

Beta patch ? Did it do anything about the turn times ?
I've started to read a book while playing, which turns into playing while reading a book around turn 20.

Seems it did a grand total of one thing: improve frame rates on the campaign map. Not impressed. I'm not very interested in how pretty the campaign map looks (or indeed more significant changes like turn times) if the game isn't worth playing to begin with.

Turns out I put as much time into the game as Angry Joe did before shelving it; for me playing a newly-released game of this sort for only 30 hours indicates pretty strong disapproval. Sure I played Company of Heroes 2 for less, but I've only played that for the campaign and you can have many individual matches in that time. The only recent strategy game purchase I've spent less time on is Endless Space, which is frankly pretty dire. Given that R2 is a Total War game, and so fundamentally should be at least moderately good by virtue of the core system, I'd have expected to sink a lot more time into it.

 

[PhilBowles]

New patch out today - disappointingly few changes to AI and general gameplay, and an overly heavy focus on graphics. On the plus side, having played since:

- Turn times are faster.

- Units do indeed look a lot prettier in tactical battles - close to what preview shots suggested we'd get.

- Battles now play like TW battles - pace is slower due to the changes in movement speed and morale, tactics can be used, and flanking does actually have an effect (instant wavering - possibly too much of an effect. In S2 you usually had to hit, retreat and hit again to cause a unit to break with flanking cavalry, which promoted dynamic play. Units do still seem to fall apart too quickly, but that may be because I'm fighting low-tech enemies).

On the downside, with no meaningful AI battles adding tactics just makes them easier still for the human - so they still take about 5 minutes, and you're less likely to lose units and even soldiers. I've had sieges where the enemy just stands around (and did the same in the one pitched battle I played). In one I had a grand total of one Egyptian slinger unit - it shattered three enemy units that just stood around (two mobs and an Egyptian Infantry) without me ever advancing my melee troops. All the AI did was retreat the first unit a little way and move the general unit forward, sticking it in a shieldwall stance. I just retargeted to hit the soft squishy stuff behind and stamped on the general in record time once the ammo ran out.

Supposed changes to public order vs. squalor aren't apparent - at least, province management is still trivial and I can build buildings more or less at whim without having to care much what they are.

I also haven't seen any change to AI recruiting behaviour, however have played very briefly (a couple of provinces captured as Iceni, before deciding that my lead in this campaign was too great to begin with to test the patch - no experience against actual armies, which kept running away; and a new campaign as Egypt).

AI still uses stances very badly, and still seems to use Forced March as its default stance - which of course means that it will never actually start a pitched battle, and if attacked will be at a morale disadvantage that exacerbates its other problems.

Egypt probably isn't the best test for a new campaign with the patch, I'm finding, because the Egyptians start in a frankly ridiculous position (one full province, plus two thirds of another, two Wonder bonuses, and much more varied starting unit selection than other factions - including elephants among the half-dozen starting general choices; two armies and a fleet, with the full 6/4 available to build; a first military tech that unlocks several mid-strength units; a set of neighbouring factions who will instantly agree to trade routes being established; and judging by relative power bars in diplomacy higher initial military strength than every rival faction they have contact with). Any suggestions for a possibly challenging faction? I've tried Rome (Junii), Iceni and Egypt so far.

EDIT: There may also have been an apparently undocumented improvement to naval warfare. Ramming now seems to kill soldiers (even when the ship survives) rather than just damaging the ship, making transports much weaker. Ships also seem to be destroyed correctly on the campaign map - no more surviving with a couple of people when they've been sunk. However, this comes from one, very small (two ships a side) naval battle so I need to test this more.

 

[tesb]

the new patch does little for my performance issues. although turn times are shorter (still too long though) and texture pop in on the campaign map is not as bas as i was, although it is still there to some extend.

i started a new game with egypt and difference of autoresloving battles vs. what happens in actual battles is glaring. i constantly get under 10% battle odds (i use war elephants and elite cavalry), yet win every battle with under 100 losses.
i guess if you want to win in autoresolve you just have to spam evy spearmen and slingers and if you win in combat you need elite troops.

no wonder then that the ai uses slinger+spearmen spam

after playing a bit further even with ignoring all the performance issues the game is just dumpster trash to me. i try to ignore terrible performance and brain dead ai, but even then there are so many glaring issues that could easily be fixed. it may be decent in a couple of months.

edit: i mean primarily the campaign map ai, because the battle map ai has no real chance because its units rout in seconds of contact. i could train an army of ferrets and still win.

 

[PhilBowles]

the new patch does little for my performance issues. although turn times are shorter (still too long though) and texture pop in on the campaign map is not as bas as i was, although it is still there to some extend.

i started a new game with egypt and difference of autoresloving battles vs. what happens in actual battles is glaring. i constantly get under 10% battle odds (i use war elephants and elite cavalry), yet win every battle with under 100 losses.
i guess if you want to win in autoresolve you just have to spam evy spearmen and slingers and if you win in combat you need elite troops.

no wonder then that the ai uses slinger+spearmen spam

after playing a bit further even with ignoring all the performance issues the game is just dumpster trash to me. i try to ignore terrible performance and brain dead ai, but even then there are so many glaring issues that could easily be fixed. it may be decent in a couple of months.

edit: i mean primarily the campaign map ai, because the battle map ai has no real chance because its units rout in seconds of contact. i could train an army of ferrets and still win.

The third patch notes look promising for the tactical side (though are mostly mechanical rather than the promised AI improvements). I tried on Legendary to see how the game played, and on that you do get things like sensibly-sized (but still low-tech) AI unit stacks and declarations of war, but there's no AI coordination and the whole is killed by the recruitment system, which lets you replenish more losses earlier (or, if not taking losses, simply spam more units earlier) than in any other TW title. Athens killed my army as Epirus (which I tried on a tip that it's the hardest faction to play)? Here's another one, and the Athenians are now out of position - goodbye Athens.

I think a little more work can make R2 good tactically and probably great as a multiplayer battle platform, but the campaign mode is sadly unsalvageable due to core design decisions. It's also disappointing that - except Parthia, which is actually great fun but monstrously overpowered (you know those Warrior Monk heroes you had to tech to in Shogun 2, the ones with whistling arrows? They're a Parthian basic unit. No, no, you don't get the exact same unit as a basic Parthian unit - that would be ridiculous. The Parthian ones ride horses) - there really isn't any functional difference between the factions, and they've even been homogenised compared to the equivalents in Rome 1 (in Rome 1, barbarians didn't get Roman siege engines and ballistae. They do now. And everyone gets classical naval ships - even barbarians. And yes, even Parthia - you know, the horse archers who live in the middle of the steppe).

As for Egypt - you know, the guys who start with 6 settlements, including one whole province, two Wonders, trade deals or potential trade deals with all the neighbours (all of whom are weaker militarily), and half a dozen unit types you can use at the start of the game instead of the usual 2-3, plus as many general types (elephants among them), and who can get up to 6 armies and 4 navies from turn 1? Yeah, if you're looking for any kind of challenge forget it - their starting position is so completely insane it makes the Maratha in Empire seem underpowered.

 

[tesb]

with Egypt you get into conflict with the Seleucid rather quickly, i.e. ~9 factions will gang up on you = lots of full stack slingers + levy spearmen to crush in forced marsh stance (great ai work CA).

if you could not pick Elephants as a general unit from the start it would actually be a challenge, because you are fighting the whole east very early on. sadly elephants are a so op that one general can conquer libya on its own and another with some weak units can conquer Ethiopia. from a gameplay design standpoint they need to fix three things asap:

-autocombat results should resemble manual combat
-elephants and most elite units should have a unit limit, it is ridiculous to recruit a full stack of elephants/praetorians/...
-fix to the cai so it always rushes at least for tier2 military units asap (~7 turns investment how hard could it be to hard code that). how can anyone claim the cai is any good if i still see hastati and triari by turn 50? one the other hand one could argue those techs are way to easy to get and i would agree.

then we can talk about removing the internal politics system (or replacing it with something good), balancing units, removing torches that can burn down bronze gates and so on.

this whole game gives me the impression the CA guys spend all the money (40% bigger budget) on cocaine and hookers. It is not just the horrible programming, but especially the awful design decisions that leave my jaw dropped every time i try that game. i can totally understand some design decision i might not agree with but other are just plainly stupid.

 

[PhilBowles]

with Egypt you get into conflict with the Seleucid rather quickly, i.e. ~9 factions will gang up on you = lots of full stack slingers + levy spearmen to crush in forced marsh stance (great ai work CA).

Yes, that would potentially be a challenge if the AI had any idea of coordination, rather than just having each enemy throw stacks at you one at a time at seemingly random intervals.

 

[Peck of Arabia]

I can't help but feel I dodged a bullet with Rome 2 looking at what's been said here and elsewhere on the internet, which is sad because it was the first game I had actually been looking forward to in aaages (probably Civ4 was the last one, maybe EUIII)

I'm going to wait six months for the weekly patches to fix the issues that some basic play testing should have fixed before release and see if it is any good then but, honestly, I'm fairly convinced I'm going to be disappointed.

 

[PhilBowles]

I can't help but feel I dodged a bullet with Rome 2 looking at what's been said here and elsewhere on the internet, which is sad because it was the first game I had actually been looking forward to in aaages (probably Civ4 was the last one, maybe EUIII)

I'm going to wait six months for the weekly patches to fix the issues that some basic play testing should have fixed before release and see if it is any good then but, honestly, I'm fairly convinced I'm going to be disappointed.

Patches have improved tactical battles a lot, and the bug mentioned earlier in the thread about being unable to besiege/blockade if another faction has forces besieging or blockading has reportedly been fixed in an update today to the current beta patch.

However, there are fundamental design problems with the campaign, and little has yet been done to improve campaign play, AI, or difficulty (I'm currently playing on Legendary for an occasionally challenging experience - and am used to struggling in Shogun 2 on Hard when Realm Divide hits. R2 has no equivalent of Realm Divide).

I think that, with substantial improvements, the tactical battles could become some of the best in the series, as the new line of sight system is good and the terrain in maps tends to be more varied and better-realised (more variety in density and distribution of forest, and of slopes, shapes and sizes of hills), combined naval/land battles have potential (and ambushes are atmospheric if incredibly one-sided), and they are now at a speed and a point where tactics are relevant, but the campaign system will remain fundamentally inferior to that of other TW games.

 

[scheva007]

Main problem is the campaign is way, way, way too long. I'm on 1/3 of the required regions, and ive already had civil war 30 turns ago. Combine that with a very passive campaign AI, and you got extremely long and boring mid to end games.

 

[PhilBowles]

Main problem is the campaign is way, way, way too long. I'm on 1/3 of the required regions, and ive already had civil war 30 turns ago. Combine that with a very passive campaign AI, and you got extremely long and boring mid to end games.

Not just too long, there's very little to do. Public order is a non-issue, and even on the rare occasions it leads to rebellions among player settlements that's a net positive effect anyway. So you don't need to manage it. Growth mostly just happens, without needing to actively focus on building growth/food buildings. The tech tree doesn't scale with the campaign length, so you even run out of things to unlock fairly rapidly. I'm in the 120s BC (not sure what turn that is), with two of six victory provinces for two of the victory conditions, and haven't yet even had a civil war despite having the two named families in my faction with much lower representation than me for most of the game.

Only two major factions survive (although a third, Egypt, was recently resurrected) aside from me - Rome is down to one province and a few armies since it never expanded past its initial two provinces, lost Roma and Brundisium to slave revolts (I took Roma from the rebels, Apollonia took Brundisium) and I finally declared war and took Neapolis, Arminium and Velathri in three turns. Everyone is far weaker than me of the known factions, except for the Seleucids and Armenia - both of whom are about as strong, but I have no obvious need to go to war with either and the Seleucids have lost at least two territories to rebels reviving their factions.

So it really is just a case of me deciding which provinces to take next and grinding by this stage - I'm still seeing very few AI units above tier 2 (Rome had one Praetorian and one elite cavalry unit in Neapolis, but every other Roman army I've seen is a bunch of tier 1 stuff plus a Legionnaire unit or two). I've started autoresolving some of the land battles just to save time, but I'm determined to see the campaign to the end (and hopefully see a civil war). At least my next steps are clear - Cyreniaca declared war on my client (while they were my client, which was a bit tricky...) and still has one province left, and Rhodes cancelled its non-aggression pact with me for no clear reason so I have the perfect excuse to obtain the remaining settlement in Hellas (plus Sparta, which Rhodes also possesses).

 

[Mouthwash]

I saw the whole fiasco coming. It's the Civ V of the Total War series. I suppose that advertising a game with incredible graphics, the "underlying mathematics almost invisible" combined with new hybrid forms of battle and the best AI that TW has ever had tipped me off. So did the hordes who screamed "OMG best game evar." But fanbases don't actually learn. It's like vaporware.

I seriously wish there would be a whistleblower site or something.

 

[schlaufuchs]

I saw the whole fiasco coming. It's the Civ V of the Total War series. I suppose that advertising a game with incredible graphics, the "underlying mathematics almost invisible" combined with new hybrid forms of battle and the best AI that TW has ever had tipped me off. So did the hordes who screamed "OMG best game evar." But fanbases don't actually learn. It's like vaporware.

I seriously wish there would be a whistleblower site or something.

ciV, much like cIV, turned into a remarkably good game once it got fully patched and expansion'd.

 

[Mouthwash]

ciV, much like cIV, turned into a remarkably good game once it got fully patched and expansion'd.

Good sir, you are not ever to speak the two in the same breath.

In all seriousness, it might actually be something vaguely like "fun" these days, but it certainly isn't Civilization. I have a lot more hope for R2TW, because the nature of the game makes it really hard to create fundamental, unfixable problems. Still, there are limitations to modding AI (and even with mods ETW is apparently broken in some respects to this day, so I doubt this will fare better).

 

[calad]

I'm sorry to ask this but why do you even care? Wasting time on game that is clearly broken and made by company that has bad history of fixings bugs and updating must be frustrating. I don't have luxury of having lot of free time so had I bought this game I would wait year or two of new expansions before trying again.

However I don't believe Rome 2 will ever be fixed. Don't hit your head on the wall.

 

[schlaufuchs]

Good sir, you are not ever to speak the two in the same breath.

In all seriousness, it might actually be something vaguely like "fun" these days, but it certainly isn't Civilization.

???

So you're weighing in on ciV + expansions without actually having played any of them? Did you even play vanilla? You may not remember cIV when it first game out, but it was a pretty terrible game. It was only once Beyond the Sword and its subsequent 3.19 patch were released that cIV became a truly good game. ciV is much the same: vanilla was a pretty meh showing, and the game was riddled with bugs. However, BNW and G&K turns it into a truly awesome game, arguably the best of the series. I absolutely love it; they did a good job capturing that board-game feel of the original civilization, only with waaay more complexity than you could possibly hope to capture in a traditional board game.

I just find it strange that most people give paradox the benefit of the doubt when their vanilla games are released in a verifiably unplayable state, but don't do the same with civ even though the civ series has essentially had the same modus operandi (mediocre showings on initial release that are patched/expansioned into truly great games) as the paradox series of games for a good chunk of its tenure as a game series.

 

[Mouthwash]

???

So you're weighing in on ciV + expansions without actually having played any of them? Did you even play vanilla? You may not remember cIV when it first game out, but it was a pretty terrible game. It was only once Beyond the Sword and its subsequent 3.19 patch were released that cIV became a truly good game. ciV is much the same: vanilla was a pretty meh showing, and the game was riddled with bugs. However, BNW and G&K turns it into a truly awesome game, arguably the best of the series. I absolutely love it; they did a good job capturing that board-game feel of the original civilization, only with waaay more complexity than you could possibly hope to capture in a traditional board game.

I did indeed play vanilla, and I cannot imagine how to possibly describe the sheer emptiness and the unbelievable lack of balance or fun. I recall imagining multiple ways to make it more dynamic and add to the gameplay before realizing that most of them were in Civ IV already. And I've have never heard of anyone claiming that Civ IV was "terrible" on release, either.

I don't think I'll ever be interested in playing Civ V. Maybe heavily modded, but the only Civilization I'm interested in is one where I can distract Rome's death stack as it comes towards Berlin by capturing Rome itself with my own stack from the other side of the alps, then giving it to Spain. Have you played any of the serious mods for Civ IV? The stacking system is incredibly tactical once S&D is added and the AI is the product of 9 years of modding.

I once played on an Earth map starting in Sweden, colonized Finland and the Baltic area, and as I was moving a stack of defensive axemen and chariots in my capital north in order to deal with barbs, the civ in Denmark (forgot what it was) struck. There was no sign. It simply made a surprise coastal landing from Denmark (even though we were on the same continent) and placed two stacks in perfect defensive positions around my core cities. My chariots couldn't do anything, my axemen couldn't do anything, and my city defenders couldn't do anything despite the fact that I heavily outnumbered his invasion force. It was a long time ago and I don't have the save, but I had to reload because the game was essentially lost. Have you experienced anything close in Civ V?

 

[PhilBowles]

I did indeed play vanilla, and I cannot imagine how to possibly describe the sheer emptiness and the unbelievable lack of balance or fun. I recall imagining multiple ways to make it more dynamic and add to the gameplay before realizing that most of them were in Civ IV already. And I've have never heard of anyone claiming that Civ IV was "terrible" on release, either.

I don't think I'll ever be interested in playing Civ V. Maybe heavily modded, but the only Civilization I'm interested in is one where I can distract Rome's death stack as it comes towards Berlin by capturing Rome itself with my own stack from the other side of the alps, then giving it to Spain. Have you played any of the serious mods for Civ IV? The stacking system is incredibly tactical once S&D is added and the AI is the product of 9 years of modding.

I once played on an Earth map starting in Sweden, colonized Finland and the Baltic area, and as I was moving a stack of defensive axemen and chariots in my capital north in order to deal with barbs, the civ in Denmark (forgot what it was) struck. There was no sign. It simply made a surprise coastal landing from Denmark (even though we were on the same continent) and placed two stacks in perfect defensive positions around my core cities. My chariots couldn't do anything, my axemen couldn't do anything, and my city defenders couldn't do anything despite the fact that I heavily outnumbered his invasion force. It was a long time ago and I don't have the save, but I had to reload because the game was essentially lost. Have you experienced anything close in Civ V?

It sounds as though you're basically only interested in Civ as a wargame, and in that regard it's quite possible that Civ V isn't for you - the AI is notorious at warfare and BNW in particular added exactly nothing to the military side of the game. Previous Civ games, however, had AIs that were hardly capable of winning by non-military means, so this sort of pile-on was necessary to present the player with a challenge. In Civ V I've lost games to the AI at higher levels to each peaceful victory condition.

Although yes, situations like that you mention do occur - in one of my games I suffered a last-ditch naval invasion from the Ottomans (much to my surprise, since it's received wisdom that the AI can't do naval invasions and this was - just - pre-Gods & Kings). I had higher-tech units, but fewer of them, and while I had a pretty good body count in my favour, good coordination by Ottoman and Songhai forces, and a good choice of initial landing site, gave me no chance of doing more than delay the enemy - when I finally thought I'd done it, a new invasion fleet turned up outside Persepolis. I got my spaceship off a turn before the city would have fallen.

 

[Akka]

It sounds as though you're basically only interested in Civ as a wargame, and in that regard it's quite possible that Civ V isn't for you

Considering how Civ5's main reason of sucking was that it was entirely thought as a wargame and the "Civilization" part was mostly forgotten, inverting the "wargame accusation" toward Civ4 is mindboggling to say the least.