Rome Total war 2

TheDoc · 06-09-2013 4:30pm

Like many, playing the series since the first shogun. It's oddly enough what got my Da into video games aswell, he is not 58 and still plays the Total War series, and was dieing for this, me aswell.

I don't think we have any major issues. Sure a few issues here and there, but generally minor. I've not encountered anything game breaking yet. Actually the opposite, find it to be pretty difficult when I ramped up the difficulty.

I quickly moved to secure the cities in my provinces under enemy control on the game start, once I had built a relatively strong force. I took two cities with relative ease, but civil unrest started to sky rocket, along with last ditch attempts from the Erucian League to hold themselves from extinction. A massive naval battle ensued that I barely won, but took massive losses. The League are becoming desperate, a wounded animal backed into a corner, they lashed out engaging one of my legions on the open field. Again I was successful but was taken by suprised, my unit comp was not entirely balanced and I lost alot of men.

Now I have their last general laying siege to a city in the south, as I try to move my forces down to relieve the city, all the while, The Celts have been making moves around my northern border.

The city needs relief ASAP, if I get my main legion down there, I'll eradicate the Erucian League and have total dominance in my region. But moving my strongest legion south leaves only a small inexperienced force up forth defending the border, where a large force of Celts are looming.

All this within the first 4 hours of the campaign. This is more tough decision making then I had in alot of other total war games, and so far I'm loving the challenge. I don't know what difficulty you lads are playing to say the AI is dumb, but I can assure you on the high difficulties, they are anything but stupid.

coolguyrko · 06-09-2013 4:50pm

TheDoc wrote: »

Like many, playing the series since the first shogun. It's oddly enough what got my Da into video games aswell, he is not 58 and still plays the Total War series, and was dieing for this, me aswell.

I don't think we have any major issues. Sure a few issues here and there, but generally minor. I've not encountered anything game breaking yet. Actually the opposite, find it to be pretty difficult when I ramped up the difficulty.

I quickly moved to secure the cities in my provinces under enemy control on the game start, once I had built a relatively strong force. I took two cities with relative ease, but civil unrest started to sky rocket, along with last ditch attempts from the Erucian League to hold themselves from extinction. A massive naval battle ensued that I barely won, but took massive losses. The League are becoming desperate, a wounded animal backed into a corner, they lashed out engaging one of my legions on the open field. Again I was successful but was taken by suprised, my unit comp was not entirely balanced and I lost alot of men.

Now I have their last general laying siege to a city in the south, as I try to move my forces down to relieve the city, all the while, The Celts have been making moves around my northern border.

The city needs relief ASAP, if I get my main legion down there, I'll eradicate the Erucian League and have total dominance in my region. But moving my strongest legion south leaves only a small inexperienced force up forth defending the border, where a large force of Celts are looming.

All this within the first 4 hours of the campaign. This is more tough decision making then I had in alot of other total war games, and so far I'm loving the challenge. I don't know what difficulty you lads are playing to say the AI is dumb, but I can assure you on the high difficulties, they are anything but stupid.

Glad to see someone else is having the same experience as me. I think it's been a great addition to the total war series. Isn't it the Etruscan league :P

Celtic Tiger · 06-09-2013 5:01pm

This is the first total war game i havent bought on release since Shogun and im glad i held off. Tired of getting excited everytime only to be burned with the non existant ai. And from what ive read and videos ive watched its deja vu.

The campaign map mechanics havent changed since the first Rome, so thats 9(!) years and countless sequels and expansions CA have had to refine it yet its the same problems over and over with the ai. Hell even going back to the first Shogun land battles theres the same problems with this game 13(!!) years later. Every game CA just seem to give it a lick of paint, and throw it out the door.

Why don't they just do a valve and hire the lads from Darthmod, they might actually learn something.

I know i will buy the game in a few months because even for its flaws i do love the TW series. I just wish CA had some competition because at the moment they are the only ones making these types of games.

TheDoc · 06-09-2013 5:09pm

coolguyrko wrote: »

Glad to see someone else is having the same experience as me. I think it's been a great addition to the total war series. Isn't it the Etruscan league :P

Probably is , goes to show. Treating them with zero respect when I smashed two of their legions, and now their last army causing me alot of grief.

I think its cool the way they have reacted like that, they arnt sitting in their city waiitng for me, they have launched a counter offensive realising that the Celts were taking my attention up north, and that I'd left small forces south.

That is the subtle decision making that is really good AI. The computer realises an opportunity for a counter offensive. Knowing as they siege, I'm going to have to try relieve my city. Ther city is safe. I'm not going to go just take theirs, and risk loosing my bridging point to the southern continents.

Thats just clever play that has me gonig " wow that was smart"

coolguyrko · 06-09-2013 5:17pm

TheDoc wrote: »

Probably is , goes to show. Treating them with zero respect when I smashed two of their legions, and now their last army causing me alot of grief.

I think its cool the way they have reacted like that, they arnt sitting in their city waiitng for me, they have launched a counter offensive realising that the Celts were taking my attention up north, and that I'd left small forces south.

That is the subtle decision making that is really good AI. The computer realises an opportunity for a counter offensive. Knowing as they siege, I'm going to have to try relieve my city. Ther city is safe. I'm not going to go just take theirs, and risk loosing my bridging point to the southern continents.

Thats just clever play that has me gonig " wow that was smart"

yeah I used all my legions to hit them hard early. I subjugated them and now they are still my client state. Tho they have dragged me into a war with Carthage tho I can live with that because I'm just after smashing the Carthaginians all at once. They have no cities now :P

Anyone think there's any significance int he fact that Im in the year 118 BC and one of my generals is called Gaius Marius. Could I be close to Marian reforms?

ZeroThreat · 06-09-2013 6:40pm

bizmark wrote: »

They are chargeing 7 euro for the city state dlc and you can bet they will charge as much for something else like dlc that reinstates basic functionality like guard mode

I'll rely on mods in the future for that sort of stuff

Sure, didn't someone already creat a mod unlocking the Selucid empire?

btw arrived home today and game had finally arrived, so entered code and had it downloading from steam as I was eating dinner, it's just about done now...

karma_ · 06-09-2013 7:25pm

ZeroThreat wrote: »

I'll rely on mods in the future for that sort of stuff

Sure, didn't someone already creat a mod unlocking the Selucid empire?

btw arrived home today and game had finally arrived, so entered code and had it downloading from steam as I was eating dinner, it's just about done now...

In truth the game would need a complete mod overhaul and I mean from top to bottom. Even at that I'm wondering if there are some issues which cannot ever be fixed.

It's so badly designed that they even enforced a game play issue that allows Armies to become instant navies JUST because they haven't been able to ever work out effectively how to get the AI to be able to conduct deployments across bodies of water?

They spent 40% on this game from any previous version when all they had to do was port the original and pump more resources into AI.

ZeroThreat · 06-09-2013 10:26pm

karma_ wrote: »

In truth the game would need a complete mod overhaul and I mean from top to bottom. Even at that I'm wondering if there are some issues which cannot ever be fixed.

It's so badly designed that they even enforced a game play issue that allows Armies to become instant navies JUST because they haven't been able to ever work out effectively how to get the AI to be able to conduct deployments across bodies of water?

They spent 40% on this game from any previous version when all they had to do was port the original and pump more resources into AI.

Well I've just spent the past 2 hours playing through the prologue - until it crashed....

Definitely glitchy at first impressions. Another annoying thing was there were no notifications at start of each turn telling me tech had been researched, just a warning about it if you attempted to end a turn with no more research in progress.

Then just in the turn before the game crashed I finally began getting notifications about research being competed.

I was told to attack an enemy city from the sea, built a shipwright and was couldn't see an option to build ships anywhere, until I realised you just had to move army to sea and it transforms into a fleet full of transports....duh

I'm not that comfortable with the interface though, it could have been designed better, just doesn't feel as intuitive as with previous games and each unit seems to have lots of 'special abilities' so its a bit of a clickfest, not sure where guard mode is either.

Also, it's 300bc and how the hell am I able to recruit legionaries???

07-09-2013 2:35am

ZeroThreat wrote: »

I was told to attack an enemy city from the sea, built a shipwright and was couldn't see an option to build ships anywhere, until I realised you just had to move army to sea and it transforms into a fleet full of transports....duh

Did that myself. Though when it had built and I had started on some ships, there was some enemy ships on my doorstep, decided to restart it.

A thing I dislike, is that once the enemy routs, they disappear from your minimap, makes it a bit harder to search and destroy those pesky rebels, when I wish to ground them to dust.

ZeroThreat · 07-09-2013 2:01pm

Deleted User wrote: »

Did that myself. Though when it had built and I had started on some ships, there was some enemy ships on my doorstep, decided to restart it.

A thing I dislike, is that once the enemy routs, they disappear from your minimap, makes it a bit harder to search and destroy those pesky rebels, when I wish to ground them to dust.

Another thing I didn't mention in above post, is that you can't actually see number of units remaining in a unit at first glance, just by looking at the bottom panels :mad:

07-09-2013 2:24pm

Yea, I have been annoyed by that, ever since seeing the first game plays of it.

grizzly · 08-09-2013 2:19am

I'm really enjoying the game. Since the patch my fps went from 28 to 35 on Ultra. Which was nice, but the downside being it killed my Roman campaign, a 51 turn game that won't load. Reloading my 50 turn save file works, but crashes on the next turn. Going to wait to see if the next patch fixes it.

I'm finding that I'm more fond of my armies then my generals. You can name the armies and they live on. Generals die like may flies so I don't bother remembering their names.

Gonzovision · 08-09-2013 1:19pm

The turn times are starting to kill me. I'm 127 turns in and hold around 25 settlements. Not sure how much longer I'll be able to stick it out. Pity because I'm really enjoying it.

Outkast_IRE · 08-09-2013 4:02pm

Ok got it on launch day and have played about 5 hours worth now including prologue.

Initial impressions, Very good game, im loving the legions and needing to move the entire army , and garrisons defending the cities.

Diplomacy seems improved from shogun so far, I have made non aggression pacts with some other factions and have progressed to trade agreements.

In game battle, same old story really, I find the unit formations improved a bit, the battle maps are detailed and its cool to see re-enforcements from the sea disembarking etc. Enjoying them.

Glitches . Have just encountered my first , basically I have a spy embedded with one of my legions and he earned a skill promotion, and when I go into his promotions menu I cant promote him , and it reminds me each turn to pick the skill. Will have to try removing him from the legion and see can I pick the skill promotion then. EDIT. Not sure if this is a glitch or not, just took a turn and suffered attrition from every legion and garrison on the map, I have loads of surplus food and money , and am not sieging anyone etc, literally every unit I own in the game took attrition, im puzzled at the moment.

Also I agree with turn times being ridiculously long. They need to tighten them up

grizzly · 08-09-2013 8:01pm

The next time I play I'm going to try this mod that's been getting a lot of praise;

Radious Battle Mod

Changes:

Moral effects edited. Therefore i lowered tons of crazy effects which resulted in soldiers retreating when they still had 60% or more units and whole army run away after loosing like 50% men. This should be fixed and armies should fight to about 70% casulties. Common units usually retreat with last 35-50 men and elite units with 25-35.

General aura radious increased from 75 to 100.

Units speeds reduced - running speed, acceleration and charge speed reduced about 20-30% depends on the unit type. Higher differences between very light, light, medium, heavy and very heavy units.

Unit Mass changes - light and medium infantry and cavalry got small mass increase.

Capture Points Timer doubled - for single flag from 50 to 100, for multiple from 100 to 200

Projectile changes:
Arrows - Range increased from 120 metres to 135 metres (long bows 145, towers 135, very long bow 160)
Javelin - Range decreased from 80 metres to 70 metres, damage reduced from 9 to 8
Sling - Range decreased from 150 metres to 130 metres

Transport Ships changes: Mass reduced by 30-35%, hitpoints reduced by 25%.

All units got reduced melee skill by 15% - Longer battles, not so fast kill rate.

All units got increased defence skill by 15% - Longer battles, not so fast kill rate.

Addtional balances between units, some got reduced damage, some slightly improved, same for defence.

Experience bonuses reworked - units wil lnow get +1 melee skill, +2 defence skill and +2 moral per chevron

Shields reworked - game has many different type of shileds, each type gives bonus to defence and armor, these bonuses were slightly improved and balanced to create larger variety between different shields.

Armors reworked - game has many different armors (clothes), each is providing different armor bonus, these bonuses were slightly increased and mor balanced for wider variety between all types of armors.

Unit spacing and rank depth changed - spear units have now rank depth 8 instead of 12 and spacing between units slightly increased, against balanced properly for different unit types and cultures

Got to load up this mod. A great improvement. Your infantry engage long enough for you to position cavalry/ranged units and make proper use of them.

Sierra Oscar · 08-09-2013 9:29pm

I can't launch the game anymore after having played for over twelve hours. It just hangs at launch, there are an awful lot of people reporting the same issue on the official Total War forums.

Outkast_IRE · 08-09-2013 10:55pm

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

I can't launch the game anymore after having played for over twelve hours. It just hangs at launch, there are an awful lot of people reporting the same issue on the official Total War forums.

That exact problem happened me with Shogun 2 , cant remember the solution now though, dam it must of been a good few years ago at this stage.

Sierra Oscar · 08-09-2013 11:21pm

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

That exact problem happened me with Shogun 2 , cant remember the solution now though, dam it must of been a good few years ago at this stage.

It seems to be a widespread issue, developers have pretty much admitted that the recent patch screwed things up and there is nothing that can be done on the users end to solve the problem. It seems that they are working on a fix.

bizmark · 08-09-2013 11:23pm

they are such a disaster of a developer

ZeroThreat · 09-09-2013 12:00am

Apart from about 2 hrs of the prologue until the game crashed, I haven't played RTW at all. Just gonna wait for a while till all the major crap is sorted.
Found a little gem of a strategy game on steam, Wagame European escalation for on €5, been busy with that this weekend

Sierra Oscar · 09-09-2013 12:02am

bizmark wrote: »

they are such a disaster of a developer

They just seem to be a bit unfortunate with post release issues ... reminds me of the issues that over shadowed the release of Empire Total War.

BlitzKrieg · 09-09-2013 12:42am

I'm trying to give the game a chance but frankly I find the changes they've made to the campaign system so unintuitive that its proving difficult.

A lot of people gave empire crap and it deserved a good chunk of it (no AI naval invasions for how long?) but to give the game credit, I found the village system visual and functionally very clear and effective and they seemed to improve on it greatly with the two shogun 2 games.

But this system...I like the idea of breaking the provinces down more, but so much of your city building is squashed into that little box at the bottom its bloody frustrating. I find myself menu diving far too often for my own liking. If we were not in an age of digital downloads and the game came with a tech tree building/units breakdown sheet like the old Total wars did I might be able to handle a lot of this better, but with the digital era on us we dont get such trinkets.

perhaps I'm just too into the previous system to give the new a chance, but the transition from the classic chess system of shogun 1 to Rome 1's graphic system wasnt as difficult as this.

Doesnt help the game is also crushingly hard in comparsion to others even in normal. Perhaps I'm too use to my neighbours being push overs in the initial turns of a total war game, but I just got royaly spanked by some north english celts very early into my british campaign.

EDIT
One other thing my memory isnt great, but did they always auto run when you used right click to lay out exactly how you want your troops to line themselves up?

Also new tactical map *shiny*

double edit:

f*ck the ai on the campaign map.

one really large nation has blockaded the port of the last town in a small nation I need to conquer to complete a Provence. Course the small nation despite having only one small town left and its blockaded has no intention of liberating its own town and has opted instead to blockade one of my many ports or raid my lands with numerous little armies that run in forced march if any of mine move even slightly their direction. Now I cant kill off this nation cause the much bigger nation is blockading their city and the game wont let me attack it until they stop blockading.

Which they wont.

So I'm stuck either being forced to declare war on a nation I dont want to fight just to kill off a nation we are both at war with, so I dont get raided every 3 turns. Of course the big nation wont nut up and actually attack!

f*ck them!

Outkast_IRE · 09-09-2013 8:00am

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

one really large nation has blockaded the port of the last town in a small nation I need to conquer to complete a Provence. Course the small nation despite having only one small town left and its blockaded has no intention of liberating its own town and has opted instead to blockade one of my many ports or raid my lands with numerous little armies that run in forced march if any of mine move even slightly their direction. Now I cant kill off this nation cause the much bigger nation is blockading their city and the game wont let me attack it until they stop blockading.

Which they wont.

So I'm stuck either being forced to declare war on a nation I dont want to fight just to kill off a nation we are both at war with, so I dont get raided every 3 turns. Of course the big nation wont nut up and actually attack!

f*ck them!

Encountered something similar, had an army waiting to take the final town in the provence, it was held by rebels with carthage blockading the port.
I noticed I couldn't attack the city with my army from land while it was being blockaded. After waiting paitently for around 12 turns, I eventually attacked the blockading ships, it seemed to be the only choice, it was pretty stupid since they were a sea blockade and my troops were attacking from land, it shouldn't effect them.

blatantrereg · 09-09-2013 9:30am

Celtic Tiger wrote: »

I just wish CA had some competition because at the moment they are the only ones making these types of games.

King Arthur, the Roleplaying Wargame and its sequel are very similar types of games. Think Total War with magic spells, mythological creatures and hero units. Add in the occasional choose your own adventure section.

Played them both and liked them both. There were flaws in both, though the only one I remember specifically was the teleportation spells in the first one making things a bit easy once you accessed it: Especially since the AI didn't use them properly and control points on maps offer bonuses.

nesf · 09-09-2013 9:52am

It's a CA release. Really, if you expected a stable game at release...

They do fix stuff/give the community enough tools for modders to sort things out. Give it a few weeks and then get stuck in, the game isn't going to go anywhere.

shoutman · 09-09-2013 10:35am

I've played about 6 hours so far and thankfully haven't come across the game crashing or similar.

Am having problems with the AI attacking big armies with two or three units continuously which is quite annoying, and the load times are very slow.
AI in battle is also still pretty awful and will be looking at installing the mod posted before - I'm playing with the Iceni and find that battle's are too short to encounter having to make any strategic decisions, it's very much, plough ahead with your melee troops and hope that the enemy route before you do.

I'm also not a big fan of the city building layout - and also the fact that your armies can automatically transport on water is a bit of a let down.

That said, i'm still enjoying the game, I like the idea of forming confederacies - currently control all of GB having managed to get three settlements to join me through confederacy.

Griffin87 · 09-09-2013 11:18am

i have had this problem since launch. cant play at all. I read on the CA forums that it can have something todo with having the game installed on a different harddrive. I have steam on its own Drive. its a complete farce.. Sega are to blame shoving the game out the door when its not ready..

I wish they had some competition.. I really do..

Sierra Oscar · 09-09-2013 11:56am

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

Encountered something similar, had an army waiting to take the final town in the provence, it was held by rebels with carthage blockading the port.
I noticed I couldn't attack the city with my army from land while it was being blockaded. After waiting paitently for around 12 turns, I eventually attacked the blockading ships, it seemed to be the only choice, it was pretty stupid since they were a sea blockade and my troops were attacking from land, it shouldn't effect them.

I also encountered the same issue. Carthage has been blockading the port of the last provincial capital for Syracuse. They have been sitting their blocking the port for over twenty turns now with nothing happening. Syracuse has its troops garrisoned in the city, while there is also a massive rebel army placed adjacent to the Carthaginian fleet blockading the port. The rebels are there because Syracuse has essentially collapsed due to the blockade and the province is in rebellion. However the rebels are not attacking Syracuse because Carthage is blockading the port, and I can't attack Syracuse because I am just after settling a major war between Rome & Carthage and I cannot afford the diplomatic penalty for breaking the peace treaty.

It is a game breaking bug.

nesf · 09-09-2013 12:47pm

Griffin87 wrote: »

i have had this problem since launch. cant play at all. I read on the CA forums that it can have something todo with having the game installed on a different harddrive. I have steam on its own Drive. its a complete farce.. Sega are to blame shoving the game out the door when its not ready..

I wish they had some competition.. I really do..

It's launching for me with Steam on one drive and the game installed on another.

*shrugs*

karma_ · 09-09-2013 1:09pm

What I don't understand is that CA have over a decade of experience in making these very successful games, or watching the ones that were not as successful (looking at Empire) being modded into great games and they turn around and essentially gut some of teh best features they ever had and release a game that looks very much like a Total War game but misses the target so wildly.

Rome Total war 2

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