Rome 2, Total War. Has it been fixed?

[Lictor Face]

I'm a great fan of the TW franchise, and I have intended to grab Rome 2 when most of the optimisation and AI issues have been ironed out. To those people who have had the .....misfortune to buy it from launch, has the problems been mostly fixed?

I have tried reading the Rome 2 patch notes online, but they seem a meaningless pile of gibberish since I don't own the game.

Can anyone help me out here? Or should I just avoid buying it?

 

[BLAHwhatever]

3rd patch is in beta
2nd patch improved some things.
AI still sucks though
I'd wait

 

[aPod]

It's a decent TW game, and the battles are enjoyable. However, it's always good to wait for a price drop or so if you've held off this long anyways.

 

[Lictor Face]

3rd patch is up. Mostly its fixed, the AI is more aggressive.

AI wasn't too smart in any total war in the first place. Only thing left is the upper level optimizations, but its perfectly playable. It just lacks variety if you play some factions that aren't rome however.

The seubi get crap for troops, and others aren't much better. The Seubi feels unfinished because it has no variety beyond two decent units.

Does it still stutter? I don't own the best gaming rig around so to speak. If top end rigs are still stuttering. Mine would probably crash and refuse to budge.

 

[Darks63]

Is that rush for the flag Mechanic still in? Cause from the vids i've seen its a pretty bad feature. Also is the ship and siege issues still in where units won't fight until every unit is done disembarking?

 

[Guy from the 80's]

3rd patch is in beta

AI still sucks though
I'd wait

This x100 billion.


I've uninstalled the game already (the game is bad and I got a ssd harddrive with limited space) because playing was absolute pointless. Heres my campaign on normal :

-Conquer neighbours while other factions sits still and watch.
-Conquer neighbours neighbours while other factions sit still and watch.
-Outnumbered? Sue for peace, build up forces, declear war rinse and repeat.

I've conquered most of Europe without breaking a sweat.

The AI attack each other though, but theones that are hostile to me just got their stacks sitting in one place doing nothing. Being used to Paradox games the lack of AI made me rage quit.

 

[Antari]

If you want to save yourself the trouble, wait for the bundled edition. Usually once they work out all the bugs they repackage everything and throw it into the limelight again.

 

[Subscriptism]

It's most of the way to fixed. AI is still pretty stupid.

 

[katuysha]

The upcoming patches seem to address pretty much all the problems the game has as far as I've read. You have to play on very hard for the AI to even build units though.

 

[GundamSentinel]

For me it's only gotten worse with the patches, in terms of game performance. It's gotten a bit more stuttery, especially during battles, which were running quite well on my PC. In terms of gameplay, there have been some improvements. Slightly more aggressive AI, some improvements to tooltips and such.

It's a decently playing game (I haven't seen too many bugs), but I'd wait for more patches. I think I'll uninstall it for a while.

 

[Floppertje]

I haven't played the series much so I can't comment on how it relates to previous instalments. I'm enjoying this one though. the few complaints I have: campaign map AI seems happy to sit and let you do whatever you want. compared to say... civ 5 where they'd attack if they thought you were expanding too rapidly, it's a bit weird. the power indicator seems a little weird. I've won multiple land battles where I had 95% power disadvantage and I've lost multiple sea battles where I had 95% advantage. maybe I'm a strategic genius who gets seasick a lot?

 

[Realitycrash]

3rd patch is in beta

AI still sucks though
I'd wait

This x100 billion.


I've uninstalled the game already (the game is bad and I got a ssd harddrive with limited space) because playing was absolute pointless. Heres my campaign on normal :

-Conquer neighbours while other factions sits still and watch.
-Conquer neighbours neighbours while other factions sit still and watch.
-Outnumbered? Sue for peace, build up forces, declear war rinse and repeat.

I've conquered most of Europe without breaking a sweat.

The AI attack each other though, but theones that are hostile to me just got their stacks sitting in one place doing nothing. Being used to Paradox games the lack of AI made me rage quit.

What difficulty setting are you on?

I can't get a peace treaty no matter what I do. I've managed to sue for peace like twice in my entire campaign and that usually involved offering ludicrous amounts of money.

I play Very Hard, as I always do, because the AI sort of demands it. I have played as Rome, Egypt, Carthage and Athens. I expected it to be a brutal gang-rape and semi-save scumming like Shogun 2 was, when the AI spawned massive armies after turn six and every battle had to be fought on Manual, as Auto-Resolve would get you crushed.
Well, sorry, but that didn't happen. The game is laughably easy compared to Shogun 2. In Shogun, no matter which faction you chose, you get CRUSHED unelss you play aggressive yet manage your allies well (and ally frequently) to keep them off your back. In Rome 2, the AI..Well, like stated, ignores you, more or less. Sure, they can build massive armies for free, but they do nothing with them. They sit with 80 units of basic infantry/slingers and guard their tiny little village, content with doing nothing at all.

And, though this might only be a problem with the Roman faction, by turn 40, I was making 10.000 every turn and had nothing to spend it on. By turn 70 I had 200.000 in the bank and could still rarely bother to spend anything, as you can only have so many armies at the same time.

Shogun 2 is a challenge. Rome 2, so far, while a nice game with new ideas, isn't. And I LOATH what they have done to Shogun 2's diplomacy. It isn't Epic Fail. It isn't "Worst. Game. EVAR!". It's just not as interesting as Shogun 2 in terms of hanging-on-by-a-thread-at-the-egde-of-your-seat-challenge. It's not even regular challenge.

I'm a great Total War fan, by the way, and have spent hundreds of hours in every game released since Medieval 2 (Except Empire), so feel free to ask me anything you wonder.

Edit: Actually, I am going to continue to muse a bit over how easy the game is compared to Shogun 2. Shogun 2, the first twenty or so turns on VH, you did best to save every turn. You were often at war with several factions at once, and if you didn't move to capture a new city in order to get the economical growth to keep up with the AI, if you played peacefully and slowly, then the AI would simply out-grow you and then step right over you in a few turns.
You had to backstab your neighbor while using an alliance to keep your back guarded while using a Ninja to keep a third clans army stationary so it couldn't capture the very city you left defenseless.
Left defenseless because the only way to take on the AI was to pool all your resources and mount a massive balls-to-the-wall attack. Shogun 2 was all about playing factions out against each-other, because you could never, ever, take more than one or two on at the same time in the early stages (and sometimes not in mid-game either).
In Rome 2, alliances are once-again rather laughable.

 

[Madgamer13]

When I played Rome 2 initially, before all the patches, I played in an aggressive manner without occupation. This let me see quite a lot of behaviour of the AI on the British Isles. I've been playing as the Iceni with every game and I noticed that AI builds up damn quickly in the first few turns, then fights among themselves for a bit, before occupying a few cities near me.

Things get rather hairy after an AI takes a little more land than I do, every time I try to move my forces outside my borders, an enemy tribe will intercept if they are at war with me, which will almost be always.

Before long there will be three or more armies per city, defending their ground, which makes for some heavy entrenched gameplay.

I get my most fun when raiding an enemy territory though, I would put two armies into their lands, watch them build briefly and then put both of my armies on raid mode just outside their city. Watching their public order destroy itself and their defending armies fall apart due to lack of money is hilarious. This makes me wonder on the claim that AI can build units for free, as I've noticed evidence that not only can an enemy army not recruit troops when there is no money in the city, existing armies also desert if there is no money in the AI city, evidence of which I've tested by repeatedly sacking an enemy city.

The hilarity reaching it's peak when I cause an enemy region to go into outright revolt due to my raiding parties and constant sacking of enemy cities. It's awesome.

I'm also playing on Easy, I wonder what it would be like on hard?

 

[Realitycrash]

I play Very Hard, as I always do, because the AI sort of demands it. I have played as Rome, Egypt, Carthage and Athens. I expected it to be a brutal gang-rape and semi-save scumming like Shogun 2 was, when the AI spawned massive armies after turn six and every battle had to be fought on Manual, as Auto-Resolve would get you crushed.
Well, sorry, but that didn't happen. The game is laughably easy compared to Shogun 2. In Shogun, no matter which faction you chose, you get CRUSHED unelss you play aggressive yet manage your allies well (and ally frequently) to keep them off your back. In Rome 2, the AI..Well, like stated, ignores you, more or less. Sure, they can build massive armies for free, but they do nothing with them. They sit with 80 units of basic infantry/slingers and guard their tiny little village, content with doing nothing at all.

The AI is fucking passive, I'll give you that. I've had like 2 factions declare war on me in my entire Rome campaign.

While I'd rather they were more aggressive, it isn't a game breaker for me. As I said, factions in my campaings did a rather good job of getting allied with others, and since you're obviously going to want to expand your empire, it never took me too long to get into a challenging war.

And, though this might only be a problem with the Roman faction, by turn 40, I was making 10.000 every turn and had nothing to spend it on. By turn 70 I had 200.000 in the bank and could still rarely bother to spend anything, as you can only have so many armies at the same time.

Same here, but I'm not going to mention this as a criticism of Rome 2 because I've pulled this off in every Total War game except for Shogun 2. I have Medieval 2 campaign where I'm in the mid game making 20.000 florins (profit) per turn.

If a player goes through the trouble of properly upgrading towns while keeping an eye on public order and garrissons he should be rich later on. That's the point.

Shogun 2 is a challenge. Rome 2, so far, while a nice game with new ideas, isn't. And I LOATH what they have done to Shogun 2's diplomacy. It isn't Epic Fail. It isn't "Worst. Game. EVAR!". It's just not as interesting as Shogun 2 in terms of hanging-on-by-a-thread-at-the-egde-of-your-seat-challenge. It's not even regular challenge.

Maybe you're not thinking big enough. Shogun 2 was boring for me. I steamrolled Japan in every campaign I played with the exception of the first. Not once was I stretched out or outnumbered despite taking little to no care in choosing my enemies and allies. Rome 2 is different, if only because I have more wars and factions to worry about, not one linear strip of land that's 5 provinces thick at the thickest part.

You always steamroll Japan in the late-game. But it's the Early-Early-Mid that makes the game interesting. And the lack of money to just build everyone at once, which is part of the challenge.
Rome 2 is bigger, and I applaud it for that, I truly do. And I applaud it for having so many unique units. But the diplomacy is ruined, and I so far really haven't found any challenge worth mentioning. Also, the barbarian early units are god-awful boring. But I'm going to give it another go. Maybe play as Macedon again and see if I can be arsed to give a shit..

 

[Realitycrash]

I get my most fun when raiding an enemy territory though, I would put two armies into their lands, watch them build briefly and then put both of my armies on raid mode just outside their city. Watching their public order destroy itself and their defending armies fall apart due to lack of money is hilarious. This makes me wonder on the claim that AI can build units for free, as I've noticed evidence that not only can an enemy army not recruit troops when there is no money in the city, existing armies also desert if there is no money in the AI city, evidence of which I've tested by repeatedly sacking an enemy city.



I'm also playing on Easy, I wonder what it would be like on hard?

Uh, yeah. One of the biggest and most notable differences between difficulty-levels is that on Hard/Very Hard the AI doesn't need to pay full price to recruit, or even bother with upkeep. It's not at all uncommon to see a tribe holding just one pointless, impoverished village, but guarding it with three full armystacks, who's upkeep the AI should have no way of paying based on its buildings.

 

[Stephen St.]

I wonder if the "bad AI" is actually a conscious design choice to make the game look hard ("look, I am outnumbered three to one") but still easy to beat ("I must be a military genius"). Either that, or there is just no way to make a decent AI on a large scale map with current technology.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Can anyone help me out here? Or should I just avoid buying it?

It's still baking.

It's starting to smell nice, but it's not quite ready to eat yet.

 

[kingthrall]

Can anyone help me out here? Or should I just avoid buying it?

It's still baking.

It's starting to smell nice, but it's not quite ready to eat yet.

actually smells kind of burnt. Feels like they forgot they actually had to take it out and look after their games.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

actually smells kind of burnt. Feels like they forgot they actually had to take it out and look after their games.

Mm. I think there's a functional core there with some nice features. The game mostly suffers from missing elements (family tree/lineages, seasons, etc) and half-finished elements (combat and diplomatic AI, bugs). It feels like a game that could've been excellent given another 6-12 months of development, as opposed to a game that went wildly wrong at the conceptual stage and is now irredeemable barring a total reconstruction from the ground up.

I think an eventual combination of mods and patches will leave it in pretty good shape. Your mileage may vary, of course. I know you were a big fan of Empire, so I don't know what the series has lost in transition from Empire to Rome II. I hated Shogun 2, so all departures from it are gravy for me.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

I'm running beta patch 3 and my only real complaint is that the campaign AI is in no way aggressive. I've had civil wars I can handle in peace because no one will attack me for some awful reason. Diplomacy isn't as deep as it could be and there are a lot of factions I'd like to play, like the Thracians or the Scythians.

I'm still enjoying it, personally. The battles are as fun as ever and, on hard, the AI actually can pose a threat sometimes, and not due to bullshit boosted morale, but to actually being better. Oh, and don't let pikemen's mediocre stats fool you, charge them from the front and you lose half a unit before they lose a man.