Total War: Rome II

[NowhereMan]

I love TW games, plenty of people seem to think that Shogun II is one of the more fun 'games' in the series, if not the best strategy game. Most of the people who loved Shogun II think Rome II is kind of dull. I really want to try this but am currently limited to a laptop and I'm not convinced that it would handle it that well graphically plus it sounds like a lot of the better gameplay elements from Shogun have been stripped down or replaced with less interesting mechanics.

[March]

66% off on Steam... but still $20 - after 12 patches is this a yes or no?

[Phildo]

I want to say that it's still a no, but I haven't played it in 6 months.  A little cheaper and I'd be more inclined to say yes.

[Paelos]

No

[brellium]

No

Is it better or worse than Empire?

[Paelos]

No

Is it better or worse than Empire?

Worse.

[brellium]

No

Is it better or worse than Empire?

Worse.

I've always found the criticism leveled towards Empire a bit unfair, it is regarded as the black sheep of the developer.  To hear that Rome II is worse is a good reason to stay away.

[HaemishM]

I enjoyed Empire, but Shogun 2 totally killed the series for me. All the worst bugginess of Empire with streamlined combat and extra crashiness. Rome 2 apparently still hasn't been unfucked from all accounts I've heard and the game's almost a year old.

[brellium]

I enjoyed Empire, but Shogun 2 totally killed the series for me. All the worst bugginess of Empire with streamlined combat and extra crashiness. Rome 2 apparently still hasn't been unfucked from all accounts I've heard and the game's almost a year old.

The complaints leveled at Empire were that sea invasions didn't work well (which is a problem for many engines) and that combat was essentially park your mean with guns opposing the other side with guns and shoot until the other side breaks.  The second one is pretty much how wars were fought at that time.

[Paelos]

Rome simply doesn't work. There's still crashes. That alone should be a warning flag. Still, the AI hasn't worked either in a way that people wanted.

[NowhereMan]

Reading on the SA forums people do seem to enjoy the game but it seems like once every page or so in the megathread there's someone who can't launch it. There's also a general acceptance among people that enjoy it that sometimes the AI will bug out and your enemy will stand around not doing anything (or your skirmishers won't actually use ranged weapons or somethingsomething). The other complaint is stuff like upgrading past level 2 throws food/squalor bonuses out of wack so, counter-intuitively for a game, you should only upgrade buildings when you need them for units/tech. Basically upgrading public order buildings still results in an overall decrease in bonuses, which seems hugely dumb but if it hasn't been changed yet must have been intentional.

I also bought it in the last day sale, I don't think I'll finish a campaign or anything but I really, really want a Rome fix and to watch my armies massacre barbarians. How bad could it be?

[Paelos]

Play it for 5 hours and then report back, soldier.

[NowhereMan]

Well I'm only 2 hours of play time in so things could change significantly (so far still in the prologue/tutorial but have been taken off rails for, so can research/recruit/build whatever). Battles have been fun, reminding me more of older Total War games than Empire (I think I fundamentally didn't like gunpowder combat) but it definitely feels more gamey than Medieval or the original Rome. Generals have get abilities to use in battle and their stats matter a lot more, so based on descriptions of Shogun 2 if you hated that there's just as much of it in Rome.

I so far prefer the Empire style army/recruitent mechanic and I think it actually suits the period better to have the general/army be the focus of recruiting rather than the cities. I'm interested to see some more of the naval combat, so far its been limited to garrison units being able to dump a couple of skirmisher units on the beach to try and flank. Line of sight having a role is cool, doesn't seem to have much of an effect in regular battles but in fog it does actually make having scouting units an advantage.

Since I"m living in Malaysia right now I don't have a desktop, playing on a laptop that definitely meets the minimum specs. First long play attempt ended in a memory leak issue that actually managed to crash Windows 8 outright pretty much (game didn't have sufficient memory so it stopped, desktop wouldn't load properly so I restarted and the machine just hung at the insufficient memory, restarting screen until I pulled the battery out). That's only happened once but...

Opinion might change but it looks like if you hate the Shogun 2 type game you'll not love this but one game crashing bug in 2 hours isn't exactly a ringing endorsement this early into playing it. I'll probably carry on with it but would love to be able to rampt the graphics up a bit more. Playing in 1024 results in the menus taking up way too much screen real estate in battles.

[Paelos]

I fixed my computer, so I've fired this up after patch 14 hit. That's right, they are up to 14 patches now, so don't let it be said that they are giving up.

I finished the prologue and will play through a campaign in full. It's not crashing at the moment so I take that as a positive spin. I will say the prologue is way too long for what it is, and I still encountered a bug where it halted my progression. I had to give the Greek Cities a trade agreement. I did that, and the game didn't recognize it. The prologue wouldn't advance without the trade agreement so my only option was to cancel it, reissue the agreement, and only then did the game move forward.

In patch 14. Ugh. You really can't have shit like that happen in the fucking prologue. It's the first hour and change of your game.

[Speedy Cerviche]

I can only hope they have learned something from this debacle. When ETW was a similar release disappointment (though in hindsight, not nearly as bad as RTW2), they patched it a bit but rushed out Napoleon TW in about a year.

They really fucked up this time though. 14 patches, a year later and it's still a giant mess of bugs & AI issues. Lots of hate over at twcenter.net, heavy censoring at the official site. Guess the patching is a desperate way to show fans they are trying. Meanwhile there doesn't seem to be a new game ready, maybe they realize they can't do another shovel job and actually have to fix the fundamental problems for whatever TW game they have next (or warhammer universe version, don't want to screw that up).

[Mortriden]

Having only played as Rome, one of the things I have noticed is the difference between AI restrictions and Player restrictions.  Or at least, what I perceive to be a difference.  As Rome I am limited in the number of Armies and Fleets I can deploy.  Even with a massive empire I can finally field 8 armies at once.  The computer as Carthage, seems to be able to field 8 all the time, with only 6 broken settlements and one province.  I could be missing something, but it appears that the restrictions between the AI and the Player are different.  Now, given the fact that the AI is generally dumb, and the game is once again MY DOOMSTACKS ARE BIGGER THAN YOURS!!!1!1  Maybe this was their way of trying to balance it. 

[Paelos]

Having played only 2 hours of the campaign as Rome, my first observation is that public order is a fucking PITA, and they do a shitty job of telling you how to fix it.

I do like garrisons over the old way of just cramming cities with troops though.

[Paelos]

About 5 hours into an actual campaign now.

Things that pop out to me:

1 - Having limited armies means you have limited options protecting your empire. Garrisons are laughably shit so far in the early game. I mean like if somebody decides to attack, you have zero chance at effectively commanding a defense. The towns don't have walls, nor can I see an option to build walls outside of a capital in the province. This sucks for defensive-minded people because there's no way to shore up your borders within the town that I can see.
2 - Town attacks are now forgone conclusions if you don't have an army nearby, because see above. I've almost never fought a battle in a town, because I can autoresolve the things with about 95% of my troops left.
3 - I do like the fact that troops auto-regen inside your borders. You can't have to go to cities anymore to retrain new troops. They do that over time now.
4 - Public order is a massive problem in this game. Massive. You'll find yourself destroying items in conquered towns to put up temples so you can steam the culture problem. The culture problem feeds the public order problems, and if you let public order get out of hand, you get large rebellions against poorly defended garrisons. Did I mention how useless garrisons are? They are fucking useless.
5 - You research tech now, so you have some control over your military v. cultural expansions. It's about 6 trees under 2 headers, and you'll probably want to focus on culture first or you run out of cash or patient citizens.
6 - When you control a whole province, you get to issue a special order that gives you a huge bonus. This is a nice feature and also feeds into the "I need that city" aggressive play style the game demands.

[NowhereMan]

I've played this a bit now too and have been lucky enough to avoid hitting any particularly noticeable bugs. On the other hand between living somewhere that's usually around 30C and using a laptop this thing can cause my laptop to crap itself and lock up. The game itself is pretty good fun but my god the prologue does a terrible job of actually explaining how the mechanics work. They pretty much just make you do a couple of basic tasks (ooh unrest, reduce taxes in the empire!) without ever explaining how those tasks actually tie into the game or what kind of feedback they have. Ok taxes wasn't a great example as that is a fairly straightforward once with pretty immediate effects. However at no point do they explain what different technologies are about or what those promotions you give agents/generals are actually doing. The 'manual' isn't much better, telling me that taking this upgrade increases my spy's zeal doesn't help me when I don't know what the fuck 'zeal' does (for anyone else confused, actions are grouped into types so sabotage will have 3 choices, assassination will have 3, etc. and each of these will skill check against a different attribute. Also characters targetted by agents will have checks against their authority, zeal or cunning).

One of the main areas that isn't explained is the importance of food surplus. Seriously every guide I've read about this kicks off talking about keeping an eye on food surplus is crucial, you get bonuses for having it (up to +20, then it caps the bonuses) and massive public order penalties if you don't. At no point is it even mentioned in the prologue, which is a bigger problem since buildings above level 2 tend to give a greater penalty to food than bonus to public order so if you're following traditional play patterns and responding to public order issues by upgrading temples and entertainment places you are actually making the problem worse. Which may be intentional (encouraging players to build up major cities and limiting them from turning every town into a hulking megalopolis) but not making that kind of change clear to the player at any point is just so careless.

Battles themselves are fun though and I'm really enjoying sending my troops all over the place. Capital sieges are so far good fun too, provided you're not in any kind of hurry. All I need now is a better rig to play it on so I can start really enjoying the graphical goodies when I'm in cinematic mode watching my legionaries massacring peasants.

[Paelos]

Okay so they just released patch 15 which is an enormous balancing patch. It brings new features to the political game, making it actually semi-important. It also rebalances garrisons which were total shit previously. Buildings have their negative penalties reduced so you can build more in cities and provinces.

I've played on a new save (it won't work on older saves) and I like it a lot. My biggest complaint was that buildings were too much of a balancing act of negatives, and that nobody fought actual battles in cities since the garrisons were terrible. This fixes that, and more.

I'd go as far as to say the game is playable now. It's by no means perfect, but it's actually fun to build and play where the old version was a pointless slog.

[Speedy Cerviche]

Does the AI deploy and move its units properly in battles or do they stay still? Do they path properly in sieges?

[Paelos]

Does the AI deploy and move its units properly in battles or do they stay still? Do they path properly in sieges?

Of the sieges I've done (early game), the AI tried to hold the city center because there were no real walls. There were reinforcements but they arrived late. In both cases, they tried to use units to get to my guys, but they had no real shot due to overwhelming force.

Wall attacks are on the list of fixes, I haven't tried them yet. So far the AI hasn't done anything really stupid yet.

[Speedy Cerviche]

AI problems with walls have plagued the series since the beginning. That's why in I think it was Napoleon TW they just gave every infantry unit some hooks to climb them, and in Shogun 2, any footmen could climb castle walls. Unfortunately defensive sieges are usually a big part of the game, especially if you pick a smaller nation next to a larger hostile one and are outnumbered 2:1 or greater.

[eldaec]

Steam have this on 'play for free' this weekend, they are also doing 75% off on the earlier, less broken games.

[HaemishM]

I love that they are discounting every game and DLC, except the game that is the most broken even after a bazillion patches.

[Mithas]

This is on the Steam sale at 75% off. Worth $15 at this point?

[Paelos]

It's playable at that price, but it's not as engaging as the previous one.

[Speedy Cerviche]

I think I might give Attila TW a chance. CA has done well before on these mulligan releases, and I am not so bitter like most of the TW community is because I never purchased RTW2 (I know the feeling when I bought Empire TW on release, didn't even want to touch Napoleon).