Rome 2: Total war is coming!

[datalink7]

It's also been like this with TW from as far back as I can remember. So the community also knows what it's getting. There are no new bugs with this AI, it's the same easy to cheese out on AI that we've always seen.

I don't find it particularly broken, it's simply TW.

Yup. Even Rome I, which everyone is remembering fondly now, wasn't that great vanilla. The battles went way to fast (sound familiar?) and the AI sucked. Once Rome: Total Realism rolled around (at least for me), it became one of the best games of all time.

 

[Bateluer]

First fix is out. I can't find a changelog, however :/

File size?

Also

http://www.ibtimes.com/total-war-rome-2-patch-1-patch-notes-released-1403136

"Total War: Rome 2" Official Patch 1 Patch Notes

• 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 localization 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.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

The update I got was 23MB. Not sure if it's The One, though.

 

[Ruptga]

I agree that a good game is good in its own right, but I am cautiously interested to see what the community comes up with, since they've done this before.

My problem with games that requires mods is that they normally require a shitton of small mods, and those mods don't all mesh on interface, balance, or even game philosophy. But, if they can come up with a good comprehensive package (and the creators of said package don't get egos, go MIA, or bog down in minutiae), then a game really can be saved by modders.

 

[Regs]

I haven't heard the word "minutiae" in a long time, and that makes you awesome in my book ADDAvenger.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Ok I need to take a break, as in sleep...

Picked the game up Friday morning at 2:30am, today at 3PM Steam says 35 hours played.

I must be getting old. ^_^

 

[Nintendesert]

Ok I need to take a break, as in sleep...

Picked the game up Friday morning at 2:30am, today at 3PM Steam says 35 hours played.

I must be getting old. ^_^

Ha. So I'm finding Rome more challenging than I thought it would be. There's a lot of coast to defend. Unlike the first Rome where I just went North into barbarian land or off to Spain, I am compelled to deal with Carthage.

After watching a lot of history shows on YouTube I like that I am. It's nice to see that in this game. I recommend watching Carthage, Roman Holocaust. Rome never forgave for Hannibal and literally destroyed every single structure in Carthage! Decades later. A dish best served cold indeed.

 

[BigDH01]

Huge fan of the TW series, but I haven't really been able to get into a game after the later revisions of Empire.

- No family tree. What? In Rome and M2, I loved having the family tree to arrange good marriages and good lineages. I liked following the family line and knowing what generals I was going to have coming of age. Now my generals just sort of appear and, of course, die quickly as every turn is one year.

- I don't really understand the political system. Maybe I just haven't been playing it long enough, but I'm not sure what difference all the stats really make. Also, I often don't really know what to do with the random events. In M2, your family members would sometimes get random traits based on where they were stationed, but now it seems completely random and you have to choose from a bunch of opaque choices. Feels more like NCAA football on the XBox than an empire building game.

- I have not yet made a single trade agreement or treaty that didn't require me bribing the AI, no matter how much more powerful I was than them. I don't get this.

- The battle flags. WTF is with that? Why can't I use tactics?

- I like the idea of not having to build naval transports specifically, but then the army on the ocean needs to be weak. There needs to be some reason to build a navy.

- I do like the persistent armies, but I sometimes miss having small groups with the occasional man of the hour.

I'd have to say that for me, it's just not that much fun. I feel like I'm basically just balancing happiness/food, ignoring diplomacy and politics, and marching my armies against a broken AI. I just don't feel much "connection" to it. Definitely not worth $60 in my mind when you can get Rome and M2 with some awesome mods and have a more impressive experience.

 

[Nintendesert]

You know all the ships used by Carthage and Rome were mass produced, built from prefabricated parts? All the pieces were prefabbed and even numbered so they could be quickly built. I'm not sure what you're wanting from a Navy, the reality of it was sheer numbers and tactics. I think it was stated in a documentary that Rome built over 300 ships in about a month to attack Carthage. Rome of course using the copied plans for mass produced ships from a captured Carthage ship. I don't think there were these amphibious landers the same way we view modern navies.

 

[tenpole]

My wife now hates the game officially!
Too much time on damn computer playing stupid rtw2 scenario.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I found a game breaking "AI" fail...

I researched tier IV barracks or else it was hitting turn 100+, but the "civil war" began.

Spata switched to this new faction and spawned 6 or 7 20/20 armies and I was like "Mother Of God!"... Because at this point I was trying to play conservative with only a few armies. I had one in Asia, and 2 1/2 in the northern area (Phalanx + trees = fail). So anyways right away I force marched my best northern army toward Macedonia, where I figured I would have to make my stand. I only have one military city group in my Empire. It churns out upgraded units for calvary/foot/ranged units for me and has been my breed basic for world domination since I took it around turn 40.

Lost track of where I was going with this... Anyways, I force marched my top army/general to Macedonia to make my stand while churning out five units a pop from my unit factory in the province one over.

So I did what I could do, then I ended my turn knowing full well that at least 2 cities were going to fall almost immediately. First up was Athens, I had it upgraded to tier 3 I think since I was going for an economy based on large cities instead of econ buildings....

Anyways, instead of sending several armies for a joint assault (first fail).. They sent only one, and began the fight during the rain which made their no siege army take a long time to burn down the door. After they got the door down they were meet with several units of youths backed by pikemen in phalanx... I watched in sheer awe as they came crashing in through the gates getting crushed by the oil and suck in a wall of Spartans. Between the spears and the oil and the hail of arrows and javelins they just melted away...

I was pretty disappointed they assaulted a large city without an army, all they needed to do was hold out until surrender.... But they also had no siege which I found odd, nor did they have the general ability to make any it seems. So I stop that attack and prepare for the next... This time they're on the other side and rinse repeat crush the second army.

Keep in mind this is basically town army vs close to 3000 spartans.

3rd Army comes, once again alone... This time he's far to the right so I set up over there... Except he runs back towards the gate the last army destroyed which completely caught me off guard as the AI seems to be that stupid when assaulting a town..

I make it over just in time to meet the first few wakes at the gate, but I can't get them into formation so I take heavy losses but manage to hold out.

Next wave comes, beat it..

Next wave, I think I'm on the sixth one and I'm down to basically nothing left. In a war of attrition the only way I could have held out was if I had not make the mistake on the 3rd wave.

Still it's comical but it really cheats the joy I had been experiencing. Going from basically being at the point where I might lose everything, to watching the AI completely and utterly fail to take a town, a total lack of strategy, and zero use of any siege on a main city with walls and towers is pretty depressing.


/sadness

Waiting for mods now I guess.

 

[Regs]

Yeap! And I have never seen an iron gate get burned down from torches either. Something tells me they had to add that in because they knew the Siege equipment was broke for the AI.

 

[Red Storm]

I found a game breaking "AI" fail...

I researched tier IV barracks or else it was hitting turn 100+, but the "civil war" began.

Spata switched to this new faction and spawned 6 or 7 20/20 armies and I was like "Mother Of God!"... Because at this point I was trying to play conservative with only a few armies. I had one in Asia, and 2 1/2 in the northern area (Phalanx + trees = fail). So anyways right away I force marched my best northern army toward Macedonia, where I figured I would have to make my stand. I only have one military city group in my Empire. It churns out upgraded units for calvary/foot/ranged units for me and has been my breed basic for world domination since I took it around turn 40.

Lost track of where I was going with this... Anyways, I force marched my top army/general to Macedonia to make my stand while churning out five units a pop from my unit factory in the province one over.

So I did what I could do, then I ended my turn knowing full well that at least 2 cities were going to fall almost immediately. First up was Athens, I had it upgraded to tier 3 I think since I was going for an economy based on large cities instead of econ buildings....

Anyways, instead of sending several armies for a joint assault (first fail).. They sent only one, and began the fight during the rain which made their no siege army take a long time to burn down the door. After they got the door down they were meet with several units of youths backed by pikemen in phalanx... I watched in sheer awe as they came crashing in through the gates getting crushed by the oil and suck in a wall of Spartans. Between the spears and the oil and the hail of arrows and javelins they just melted away...

I was pretty disappointed they assaulted a large city without an army, all they needed to do was hold out until surrender.... But they also had no siege which I found odd, nor did they have the general ability to make any it seems. So I stop that attack and prepare for the next... This time they're on the other side and rinse repeat crush the second army.

Keep in mind this is basically town army vs close to 3000 spartans.

3rd Army comes, once again alone... This time he's far to the right so I set up over there... Except he runs back towards the gate the last army destroyed which completely caught me off guard as the AI seems to be that stupid when assaulting a town..

I make it over just in time to meet the first few wakes at the gate, but I can't get them into formation so I take heavy losses but manage to hold out.

Next wave comes, beat it..

Next wave, I think I'm on the sixth one and I'm down to basically nothing left. In a war of attrition the only way I could have held out was if I had not make the mistake on the 3rd wave.

Still it's comical but it really cheats the joy I had been experiencing. Going from basically being at the point where I might lose everything, to watching the AI completely and utterly fail to take a town, a total lack of strategy, and zero use of any siege on a main city with walls and towers is pretty depressing.


/sadness

Waiting for mods now I guess.

lol reviews of this game should always be done by tales of battle. I will definitely be waiting a while before buying.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I think the main issue is how easy it is to abuse the AI when it comes to Pike Phalanx with a meat shield buffer - aka Spartan Youths - when you can setup in at a choke point.

Spartan pikes are garbage out of Phalanx and get melted if flanked or hit from the rear... I mean melted as in slingers could kill them in a few seconds with melee if they charged their rear...

It was like the perfect storm...

Stupid AI...

Squishy infantry funneled down small corridor to meet probably the most lethal formation in the game head on... All the while getting peed on my burning oil...

I don't think a phalax could be any stronger than it is in that situation, not chance to flank, the only direction you can go is straight into long, and devastating pikes.

So I think maybe I abused the system, but the AI needs to be smarter, it needs to bring up Armies to help assist in taking cities, and it needs to use siege so it can have multiple points of entry instead of one narrow fully defended pathway.


Thing is though, if I was playing as Rome this tactic wouldn't have worked. I would have gotten crushed.

 

[BigDH01]

You know all the ships used by Carthage and Rome were mass produced, built from prefabricated parts? All the pieces were prefabbed and even numbered so they could be quickly built. I'm not sure what you're wanting from a Navy, the reality of it was sheer numbers and tactics. I think it was stated in a documentary that Rome built over 300 ships in about a month to attack Carthage. Rome of course using the copied plans for mass produced ships from a captured Carthage ship. I don't think there were these amphibious landers the same way we view modern navies.

I'm not necessarily against the idea that a land army can transform into a seaborn army for transportation purposes (done quickly, in the span of a year), my complaint is that this renders navies useless because those transport ships are just as good, if not better, than naval ships. So why bother with a dedicated navy? If I see an enemy transport ship, I lose nothing by just marching a land army out to sea to meet it.

 

[CrackRabbit]

I found a game breaking "AI" fail...
[Snip]

Had the same thing happen to me with the Mongols in Medieval 2.
They managed to breach a wall with a single army and then sent everything into the breech, right into all of my waiting, fully upgraded swordsmen.
Defeated them and the next 6 armies they sent one by one through the breach.
By the end of it I had whittled the mighty Mongol horde into a single general + some mixed cavalry.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

They should rename the move Troy to Athenai...

They managed to take the city though, for whatever it's worth...

I googled Total War: Rome 2 AI Siege Fail and lets just say I'm not alone, though compared to what I've seen this here takes the cake


Edit: 9 20/20 Armies... Note to self... Do not upgrade to IV Barracks until you are ready next time.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

I just can't get the hang of naval battles...

 

[tenpole]

I just can't get the hang of naval battles...

Me neither, to save huge losses I auto resolve.

 

[Dumac]

30 hours into my Roman campaign.

I have 20 trade partners and make 20k a turn.

I have ~200k in the bank.

I feel like the game should just tell me 'you win' at this point. Still fun to continue through. I don't even have research done for Tier IV cities or the highest tier infantry.

 

[StinkyPinky]

I just can't get the hang of naval battles...

Yeah, I'm another. I just auto resolve.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Another tactic the AI always fall for is having a staggered "U" shaped line. Put your weakest infantry back and have your strongest on the sides but ahead of your weak units. The AI just seem to run right into the "breach" and you can surround them by bringing in your units from the side. PRetty basic trap but the AI can't handle it.

The AI is way too easy to exploit.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Another tactic the AI always fall for is having a staggered "U" shaped line. Put your weakest infantry back and have your strongest on the sides but ahead of your weak units. The AI just seem to run right into the "breach" and you can surround them by bringing in your units from the side. PRetty basic trap but the AI can't handle it.

The AI is way too easy to exploit.

Maybe after the Battle of Cannae the AI will cotton on...

 

[BrightCandle]

I am also finding you can use natural funnels in the towns. Just setup a defensive line on the shortest route from where they start to the objective flag and you can guarantee they will charge their entire army through there, slingers first usually. So some nice swordsmen up front and a load of javelin throwers in the rear and you will chop there entire army up and watch it run away soon after as the units stupidly charge into your trap.

 

[Bateluer]

AngryJoe's review is up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_QK-lcW8a8