The Total War: Rome 2 Thread

[Nickolai77]

Bit disappointed with it i have to admit- but i did take a what some would say foolish risk in buying it to play on my mediocre specs laptop.

I expected to play the game comfortably on lowest setting but I can't because the units look horrendously grainy, frame rates slow and chunks of the battle map turn black randomly.

On the plus side, you can finally see what's going on inside a forest, and the diplomacy system is a lot better. I also like the detail they've put into factions- so instead of playing as "The Britons" as if they were on political entity you play as one tribe which is more accurate. It does however mean that ending a turn takes an epically long time. I also like how units and technologies appear more tailored to your faction rather than generic to all.

I would have preferred it though if they had a more similar province management system to Empire, and maybe made the tech tree similar but i don't mind the current one.

The main thing stopping me enjoying this game is the graphical requirements sadly, my laptop can't cut it. It can play Empire Total War on medium settings with comfortable ease, and i think that embolded me to get Rome Total War 2, especially because i remember hearing somewhere that they'd designed the game so it can still play on lower spec computers. It's system requirements didn't seem that much more demanding that Empire, so i thought i could play it.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Five hard crashes last night, every time immediately after a battle had loaded in. I've messed with some settings to see if I can prevent it again. Presently running it in shader 3.0. Not terribly thrilled by this turn of events, obviously.

As it stands, aside from the crashes, there are two MAJOR issues with the game right now, that can potentially be fixed by mods, and one minor one that most probably cannot.

MAJOR ISSUE #1 - The battles are WAY too fast, at least with lower ranked/leveled troops. I've heard high rank troops or veteran troops help repair this issue somewhat, but at least early on the pacing of the battles is disastrous. Two units clash, fight for 5 seconds, and one routs. If you even say the word "flank" half the army will rout in a second. Every battle I've fought has ended in cascading routs within 20-30 seconds of combat being joined. There is little to no opportunity to actually exercise any TACTICS, as just blobbing all your melee together and triggering routs is pretty much the gold standard for battle success early on. There's no tension, no catharsis when a unit finally breaks...just blink and you miss it battles. Mods apparently fixed this issue in Shogun 2. I assume they can do the same here.

MAJOR ISSUE #2 - Passage of time is now 4x faster. You level up generals, and they get traits, and then poof they are dead because holy FUCK does time go by quickly. This is terrible. I hired a new general. He's 60. In something like 5 turns he'll be dead of old age. Woot. Mods can most likely fix this as it would be straight number tweaking.

MINOR ISSUE - No family tree really does suck. With the cult success of CK2 I would've hoped they'd beef this element up, instead of abandoning it entirely. I have a hard time imagining this will be easily fixed by mods.

 

[Eduku]

Patch notes for tomorrow's patch:

- Higher average frame rates with out-of-the-box settings (more conservative settings)
- Fix for DirectX 10.0 Lighting issue reported - environment map wasn't being created leading to black reflections.
- Fixed a sunken Samothrace temple complex world wonder on the Campaign map.
- Fixed defender being able to create encampments when involved in a combined battle.
- Added some localisation fixes to audio packs in French, Russian, Italian, German and Spanish.
- Fixed lock up in Multiplayer Campaign battles when a desynchronisation occurs. Players are now notified of the desynchronisation, and the battle ends.
- Fixed Multiplayer Campaign battle "overrun" prompt, which was not being shown to a player if they were a reinforcement and the other player was spectating.
- Fixed corrupt loading screen when changing to fullscreen / windowed mode after a battle, and then going into another battle.
- Fix for Multiplayer Campaign host being unable to move the camera in campaign, after reloading a save game on some rare occasions.
- Safe guards added to prevent a very rare crash in coastal assault battles.
- Fix for game lock up during end turn sequence / Celtic AI faction turn in single player campaign.
- Improved AI use of walls on Athens large settlement battle map.
- Improvements to Auto-resolve balancing in Single Player and Multiplayer Campaign modes.
- Aligned ship unit upkeep costs with land units - made mercenary ships more expensive and non-mercenary ships cheaper.
- Fixed slow turning rates for transport ships.
- Improved civil war balancing in relation to campaign difficulty.
- Fixed vehicle ground pipes, to prevent Siege Towers becoming immovable when they are left empty during the Deployment Phase of a Siege Battle, then units were moved into the Siege Tower when the battle has started.
- Fixed bug when ramming sideways into moving ship, which caused the ramming ship stick to target and strafe along with it in battles.
- Reduced the chance of Naval units sometimes clipping through the ground or harbours / ports during Port Assault battles when attempting to disembark.
- Fixed issue where armies would be stuck in Muster stance and could not exit that stance in Campaign modes.
- Fixed case where spies could get stuck on top of fleets in Campaign modes.
- Fixed rare post battle lockup in Campaign modes.
- Improved unit pathfinding in Barbarian village battle maps (fixed no go zones).
- Fix for Multiplayer Campaign lock up when the player was reinforcing an AI ally who was victorious in battle, causing the player to become stuck with no victory / continue / exit battle user interface functionality.
- Fix for cultural influence bonus from the Shrine of Neptune building
- Fix for "Zone of Controls" of hidden armies being visible to both players in head to head Multiplayer Campaign mode on mouse-over.
- Assorted minor fixes to city battle maps.
- Fix for "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day" achievement failing to unlock when its requirements were met in some situations.

 

[Dogstile]

Note for tomorrows patch: It won't fix your frame rate and AI problems. Not even close. Trust me, i've already got the patch.

 

[Bombiz]

I love how every time I play Rome 2 my Computer sounds like it's going to explode and my GPU starts heating up like crazy. has anyone else had this problem? and if so did you fix it?

 

[LetalisK]

Well, after playing Rome 2 for awhile, I'm going to rule out this game as shit and quit wasting time on it. There is just too much that is busted and some of the stuff that actually works still feels like it's busted because of how they made it. The sad part is I see the makings of a good game underneath all the rubble, but it's just not worth the dig. Even though some of the issues may be addressed in patches later on down the road, I don't accept that as an excuse for putting out a shit product in the first place.

 

[Undead Dragon King]

Much digital ink has been already spilled with the gameplay issues. All I can say on that front is that I've experienced very few issues in my quest to rebuild the Macedonian Empire with more of a Mediterranean aspect, with either a bit of lag on the campaign map and not fully realized textures in battle, even on the highest graphics settings.

One thing that I've found really enjoyable about the character of Rome 2 are all the little quips and cultural references that found their ways into the descriptions.

Here were some of the most obvious/enjoyable that I've come across in Rome 2, and I'm sure there are many more. Feel free to add to this list:

Pharos of Alexandria: "May its light be a beacon when all other lights go out."
Guardsman trait: "The night is dark and full of terrors."
Despoiler trait: "I like to kill my enemies, take their gold, and enjoy their women."

 

[ERaptor]

While they didnt fix the abyssmal waiting times in MP-Coop Campaigns, the first patch improved my Framerate a lot. I also recommend getting new drivers, since Rome 2-compatible driver-releases were a bit slow.

I find it funny how a lot of people, especially in the official Rome 2 forums, are announcing the death of the franchise. Quite a lot of people are also bombarding Metacritic with 0/10 or 10/10 Reviews (Which translates into haters and Fanboys desperately trying to counter each other. But it's not like Metacritic is even a remotely acceptable site to actually judge a game.). The lack of neutral Reviews, who actually take a obejctive look at the game, is quite sad. Personally, looking back to earlier games in the franchise, i think CA will improve the game quite a lot with future patches. And if those dont suffice, Modders will surely fill the missing gaps. Im really hoping they correct some of the casualized aspects, Battles seem really easy atm and the AI is horribly passive and doesnt expand enough.

 

[Hawk eye1466]

I like it so far but the fact that if the computers sieging a city you want you have no way of taking it while it's being sieged forever, the other problem is the general I know having him near is a moral boost but when he has to run up and down the battlefield because every damned unit is threatening to rout because he hasn't run past them saying good job it can get tiring. It feels like the game is trying to restrict how big your battles can be.

Bottom line fix the ai and the cities that never surrender to the ai so I can take them myself because otherwise I have to attack the besieging faction as well just to take one town.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Using the 4 turns a year and Radious' Battle mod has turned Rome 2 from a near disastrous 2 or 3/10 into a surprisingly engaging 7/10 for me. I still sorely miss the family tree and find the new politics system impenetrably strange and less than compelling, but the actual meat of the strategic game actually seems quite improved over what I'm accustomed to. As is typical for Total War, the AI isn't exactly a mensa candidate, and I rough it up more often than not, but wars on multiple fronts have kept me hopping, and twice now my main army has been ambushed in enemy territory...the second time with a pincer attack that almost ended me...I won the day with maybe 10% of my army left standing.

Major remaining issue, aside from the no family tree and relatively sparse traits section for generals (robs them of personality), is the technical side of things. Game could still look better for how it runs, and I crash every 5-10 battles or so. The game autosaves regularly, but also takes a long time to load back in, so it's pretty annoying to crash.

I'm also finding the AI just LOVES agent spam. Maybe this is a side effect of 4 turns per year, I'm not sure, but the battlefield is awash with agents attacking and counter attacking one another. I can't decide if this is a good thing (extra strategic layer) or bad thing (they're expensive to use and seemingly endless).

Turn times are currently around 1 minute per AI turn. Not great, but still tolerable.

 

[kingthrall]

Using the 4 turns a year and Radious' Battle mod has turned Rome 2 from a near disastrous 2 or 3/10 into a surprisingly engaging 7/10 for me. I still sorely miss the family tree and find the new politics system impenetrably strange and less than compelling, but the actual meat of the strategic game actually seems quite improved over what I'm accustomed to. As is typical for Total War, the AI isn't exactly a mensa candidate, and I rough it up more often than not, but wars on multiple fronts have kept me hopping, and twice now my main army has been ambushed in enemy territory...the second time with a pincer attack that almost ended me...I won the day with maybe 10% of my army left standing.

Major remaining issue, aside from the no family tree and relatively sparse traits section for generals (robs them of personality), is the technical side of things. Game could still look better for how it runs, and I crash every 5-10 battles or so. The game autosaves regularly, but also takes a long time to load back in, so it's pretty annoying to crash.

I'm also finding the AI just LOVES agent spam. Maybe this is a side effect of 4 turns per year, I'm not sure, but the battlefield is awash with agents attacking and counter attacking one another. I can't decide if this is a good thing (extra strategic layer) or bad thing (they're expensive to use and seemingly endless).

Turn times are currently around 1 minute per AI turn. Not great, but still tolerable.

its odd you say this because a faction usually can only make 1 agents depending on the size of the faction.

Family tree is a bit meh, I prefer what you have stated about them aquiring random traits though actions but at the same time the system of branching out into 3 different styles Authority/command/zeal is interesting.

The thing that I hate the most is the AI turns take way too damn long, and more importantly the seige flag has such tiny amount of capture Exploit time limit as a player you can rush the town, take the flag and any reinforcements will not be able to get there in time resulting in their defeat. You can just then send your cavalry in continue Game mode, to mop up their automaticly retreating forces and consider that faction defeated. It works both ways two and in conjuction with the rediculous waiting time for the Ai Between turns you have to wait even longer to take back the city.

Without a doubt the game feels rushed, and the fact they didnt provide a auto-detect graphic settings for a game. that is commonly accociated with high end Pc's is further proof. The forest fps testing is not auto-detect its a very very rushed alterntive.

Oh and it seems to me there is one set of rules for the player and another for the AI, the Ai noticbly never take into account food stores and are always starving, diseased and have issues which is really annoying when you find a faciton camping with 3 full stacks of units starving wondering how the hell they are even still exsisting after all that time.

 

[Yeager942]

The game gives me the opportunity to recreate the Punic Wars. That's an instant 10/10 in my book.

 

[Saxnot]

So this is my list of what i feel are the good and the bad changes in RT 2, compared to Shogun as well as some of the older TW games. I haven't included any bugs, or some of the crazier AI behavior, since i assume those will get fixed, but just those things i assume are meant as they are in the game.


The good

Diplomacy. Better than ever. A great improvement. Except for the fact you cant offer or demand territory.
Graphics. looking great. Better even than shogun 2, and with more cultures you get much more diversity of outfits. The faces look realistic and varied. A huge improvement.
Battle animations. During melee, on arrows, javeling, boulders and slings, just about every part of the fighting between units looks better. arrows get stuck in armor and shields, weapons react to one another, and rocks roll through units. Better in every way than what came before
Naval battles. Quite good. except for the magic rams, an interesting interplay of different types of ships with different mechanics, with the ramming making it that much more interesting than Shogun 2's naval battles.
Research system. Lots of interesting context, and a much better system for providing unit advancements than the infuriating population growth system.
Marking targets for your allies. This finally allows you to do some actual coordination with your allies, which was very hard previously
Provinces and edicts. an interesting way of making the strategy element more complex, though the borders between what areas are or are not part of a province seem somewhat artificial
Agents are better, much better than ever before. where the agents (especialy the ninja) where perhaps a little too powerful in shogun 2, here they strike a very good balance between too much and too little effect on the campaign.
Politics. A good addition. I would have liked them to keep the family tree, but this new system gives you much more interesting interplay inside your empire.Certainly a better way to represent roman politics than R1's three families and a one region senate. Nevertheless it might be a bit more prominent in non-republic factions.
Tribal Confederations. A good way to represent a barbarian tribe extending its influence rather than conquering and subjugating other tribes. Apart from nice flavour and a better narrative, it also provides an extra layer of diplomatic complexity for the barbarians.

The bad

The interface now has many more menus and tabs, making it more difficult to get a full picture of everything affecting a province or settlement.
Armies/fleets Cannot be led by captains, and invidual units cannot move on their own across the campaign map.
Two generals can no longer be present in the same army. Only one general unit per army
You cannot give or take territory in negotiations, making it very hard to force an end to a war, especially in a narratively interesting way.
You can no longer switch between loose/tight formations
The game has the very worst kind of objective gameplay during field battles (defend this random, unremarkable piece of grass. why? reasons!)
You can no longer capture and use intact ships after naval combat
You can no longer drag unit cards (alone or in groups)
When an enemy's defense score reaches zero, regardless of situation, every enemy unit shatters (enabling you to kill a massive reinforcing army with a couple of cavalry units and a quick capture)
When an enemy army reinforces from the sea, and defense score reaches zero, their transports will not flee via the sea, but will instead land, leave their ships, and flee on foot, Making them vulnerable to being chased down by your units.
There is a maximun of 4 buildings per normal, and 6 per capital province, forcing you to limit yourself to a very few buildings.
Magic freezing rams ( I understand that it would be hard to get a succesful ramming off with everything moving about freely, but this is the worst solution, absurdly freezing your ships in place while an enemy ship slowly comes at them)
Satrapies/vassals. In itself a good and interesting mechanic, but for some factions (Carthage, Egypt) it means that you either have to give up on directly controlling some of your core territory, or accept an enormous diplomatic reputation hit. A mixed bag.

The minor complaints

Singing by sailors is gone
Cutscenes for conquered wonders are gone
Cutscenes for agent actions are gone
Beaches look quite bad. The waves dont roll over as much as slosh along the sand
There are no longer pictures of the buildings or description of every tier of a building chain. A little more context would have been nice
The colors for parthia. Really? Purple, Cyan and yellow? they look a **** clown troupe. Get a color map, CA.

 

[franticfarken]

The AI is retarded, ridiculously easy unless they outnumber you 2/3 - 1.

(I'm playing on max difficulty on the Germanic tribe)

United Germania under my flag, spreading to Rome, Carthage and Persia as I type in fact. Hopefully Carthage gives me a run for my money.

 

[Danny Ocean]

On the lowest settings I benchmarked at an average of 13.1 FPS. The game is simply unplayable. I really hope the new computer I am building (Almost purely for Rome. With Watch_Dogs being another game I am hyped for. Also, Video/photo editting.) will be able to run it properly.

It all looks pretty fucking good. From what I saw at least. Also, the friend I have who is playing it pretty much constantly, he is loving it.

Oh sweet Watch dogs is gonna be on PC too? That's the one that's all about hacking and stuff with the lines right?

~~~

OT:

I like it so far. Bit of a learning curve for a Rome I player.

The thing I find most annoying is that in new rome, if I hold shift while the game is paused and moving units, I can no longer see the little dots marking where the units are moving to. I used to find that really useful to create solid front lines. Now I need to rely much more on the formation tool.

And it's harder to triple-stack phalanxes in streets.

 

[Mr F.]

On the lowest settings I benchmarked at an average of 13.1 FPS. The game is simply unplayable. I really hope the new computer I am building (Almost purely for Rome. With Watch_Dogs being another game I am hyped for. Also, Video/photo editting.) will be able to run it properly.

It all looks pretty fucking good. From what I saw at least. Also, the friend I have who is playing it pretty much constantly, he is loving it.

Oh sweet Watch dogs is gonna be on PC too? That's the one that's all about hacking and stuff with the lines right?

~~~

OT:

I like it so far. Bit of a learning curve for a Rome I player.

The thing I find most annoying is that in new rome, if I hold shift while the game is paused and moving units, I can no longer see the little dots marking where the units are moving to. I used to find that really useful to create solid front lines. Now I need to rely much more on the formation tool.

And it's harder to triple-stack phalanxes in streets.

I believe the button you are looking for is "Spacebar."

Because the button you are looking for is spacebar. xD

About a fortnight till I have my new PC and can play the game. The excitement is building.

As for the whole triple stack Phalanx, you mean the old "Meat Grinder" where three phalanxes can annihilate an entire army, including elephants. Actually, an entire army, ESPECIALLY one including elephants. Cause they never send the elephants in first. So they go crazy due to all the running people. In the middle of a river of people.

Ah, the good old days.

 

[Dogstile]

So this is my list of what i feel are the good and the bad changes in RT 2, compared to Shogun as well as some of the older TW games. I haven't included any bugs, or some of the crazier AI behavior, since i assume those will get fixed, but just those things i assume are meant as they are in the game.


The good

Diplomacy. Better than ever. A great improvement. Except for the fact you cant offer or demand territory.

Wrong. Enemy factions want nothing to do with you unless you give them the majority of your money. This may be due to the bugged power bar or because factions see themselves as stronger than what they are

Graphics. looking great. Better even than shogun 2, and with more cultures you get much more diversity of outfits. The faces look realistic and varied. A huge improvement.

Battle animations. During melee, on arrows, javeling, boulders and slings, just about every part of the fighting between units looks better. arrows get stuck in armor and shields, weapons react to one another, and rocks roll through units. Better in every way than what came before

Naval battles. Quite good. except for the magic rams, an interesting interplay of different types of ships with different mechanics, with the ramming making it that much more interesting than Shogun 2's naval battles.

Also wrong, ramming is not only bugged to shit, but if your ship is even a tiny bit smaller than another ship, getting rammed by the bigger ship is an insta kill. I might be ok with this if a ship had to build up speed, but right now they just love tap their way across the sea

Research system. Lots of interesting context, and a much better system for providing unit advancements than the infuriating population growth system.

Guessing you didn't play shogun 2 where they fixed the growth and actually had a decent tech tree. Now if I want to pick out what's most beneficial to me at the time I have to click the research button and then click through six different tabs. Shogun had one button. Who was the asshole who designed the backwards UI?

Marking targets for your allies. This finally allows you to do some actual coordination with your allies, which was very hard previously

I agree this would be a good idea, except your allies will just blockade port cities and never take them, which means you can't attack the enemy without going through your ally first

Provinces and edicts. an interesting way of making the strategy element more complex, though the borders between what areas are or are not part of a province seem somewhat artificial

Agents are better, much better than ever before. where the agents (especialy the ninja) where perhaps a little too powerful in shogun 2, here they strike a very good balance between too much and too little effect on the campaign.

Champions can give 180xp a turn to armies fairly early in the game. This means full experience armies before you even have two provinces.

Politics. A good addition. I would have liked them to keep the family tree, but this new system gives you much more interesting interplay inside your empire.Certainly a better way to represent roman politics than R1's three families and a one region senate. Nevertheless it might be a bit more prominent in non-republic factions.

Tribal Confederations. A good way to represent a barbarian tribe extending its influence rather than conquering and subjugating other tribes. Apart from nice flavour and a better narrative, it also provides an extra layer of diplomatic complexity for the barbarians.

Both of the above can be safely ignored throughout the game with little negative effect. This is probably a good thing as the game doesn't teach you how to get to these screens, even in the tutorial

The bad

The interface now has many more menus and tabs, making it more difficult to get a full picture of everything affecting a province or settlement.

Armies/fleets Cannot be led by captains, and invidual units cannot move on their own across the campaign map.

I'm conflicted about this. On one hand, it makes you think a bit more. On the other hand, its completely fucking artificial

Two generals can no longer be present in the same army. Only one general unit per army

This is because generals use end tier units and you can pick what unit you want them to be. More than one per army would make you even more overpowered

You cannot give or take territory in negotiations, making it very hard to force an end to a war, especially in a narratively interesting way.

You can no longer switch between loose/tight formations

The game has the very worst kind of objective gameplay during field battles (defend this random, unremarkable piece of grass. why? reasons!)

You can no longer capture and use intact ships after naval combat

You can no longer drag unit cards (alone or in groups)

When an enemy's defense score reaches zero, regardless of situation, every enemy unit shatters (enabling you to kill a massive reinforcing army with a couple of cavalry units and a quick capture)

When an enemy army reinforces from the sea, and defense score reaches zero, their transports will not flee via the sea, but will instead land, leave their ships, and flee on foot, Making them vulnerable to being chased down by your units.

There is a maximun of 4 buildings per normal, and 6 per capital province, forcing you to limit yourself to a very few buildings.

Not that it matters, considering the building upgrades are screwed. A level four farm needs a level four sacred grove to ensure no negative effects. You get a net gain of 0 food and 0 public order from this, etc

Magic freezing rams ( I understand that it would be hard to get a succesful ramming off with everything moving about freely, but this is the worst solution, absurdly freezing your ships in place while an enemy ship slowly comes at them)

Satrapies/vassals. In itself a good and interesting mechanic, but for some factions (Carthage, Egypt) it means that you either have to give up on directly controlling some of your core territory, or accept an enormous diplomatic reputation hit. A mixed bag.

The minor complaints

Singing by sailors is gone
Cutscenes for conquered wonders are gone
Cutscenes for agent actions are gone
Beaches look quite bad. The waves dont roll over as much as slosh along the sand
There are no longer pictures of the buildings or description of every tier of a building chain. A little more context would have been nice
The colors for parthia. Really? Purple, Cyan and yellow? they look a **** clown troupe. Get a color map, CA.

I'm gonna go through and tell you about the wrong parts in bold.

 

[ERaptor]

Interestingly enough, diplomacy worked fine for me, at least for the most part. I was able to get some good relations going as the Suebi. I allied with the Lugii and was able to stomp some of the bigger Dudes in the Area. I do agree however, that theres a lot of money being thrown around. Usually, even a much weaker Tribe will charge an arbitary amount of GOld, maybe around 100,for a trading agreement. Relations and Alliances work fine tough. My main issue is that the AI seems to be unable to judge its own strength. Since this worked back in Shogun 2, im guessing this will be fixed relatively soon.

One thing i noticed jsut recently, and which is rather annoying, is the Public Order stuff. There is literally no counter to public disorder other than spamming Shrines. This involves waiting for City Growth, so you get more room to balance out Order and Disorder. It's a bit sad, since i wanted to Specialize provinces to certain tasks. Also, it forces you to camp after most succesful Sieges, waiting for the Order to balance out. Especially with Bararians, this feels awkward.

I autoresolve every Naval Battle. Couldnt stand them in Shogun 2 and never will. Compared to Fieldbattles, i find them hideously boring. So i cant say anything about the Ramming issues.

I do recommend Raidous Battlemod, i've got 2 friends playing it confirm that it makes the Battles a ton more enjoyable, since it prolongs fighting long enough for some advanced tactics. As a personal preference, i will try the 4 turns - year mod, i wasnt able to get a Agent to Max Level yet, because they die so fast.