Rome 2: Total war is coming!

[Phynaz]

Ars calls it a total mess

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/09/total-war-rome-ii-review-a-total-mess/

 

[Chaptorial]

I haven't had any bugs so far but I'm still in the prologue. Game has been a tremendous amount of fun for the 3 hours I played.

+1

Finished the first of three chapters in the prologue and once again as has been the case in previous Total War games, I looked up at the clock and wondered where did those last 3 hours go? :biggrin:

When I loaded up the game for the first time it auto configured the graphics option to "Extreme" and so far the game has been running very smooth. Battles have been a lot of fun and while the prologue really shows off most things that Total War fans are used to, I've been getting familiar with the new interface and game play mechanics on my own.

Overall the game appears to be very polished however the AI as usual is prone to making some boneheaded moves.

Do you earn more armies as the game progresses? How many armies can you raise to begin with?

You start out able to raise 3 armies up to a maximum of 15 as you gain more territory.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Ars calls it a total mess

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/09/total-war-rome-ii-review-a-total-mess/

I must be playing a different game because the AI is quite aggressive to me.

 

[Bryf50]

Ars calls it a total mess

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/09/total-war-rome-ii-review-a-total-mess/

The single biggest problem with Rome II is that it's bloated. The campaign map, as good as it looks, is simply too damn big. There are around 200 different cities, and every one of them is controlled by a faction. Unlike many previous Total War games, there are no independents. Most of those factions are tiny, composed of one or two cities. This makes diplomacy incredibly annoying, as clicking on 30+ factions just to see if they might want a trade route is the opposite of entertaining

This just makes me want to play more. Complexity and scale are good and what was missing from Shogun 2. Seeing all these reviews making this point actually makes me really sad. It means the next TW game will probably be smaller and simpler.

 

[StinkyPinky]

I think they may also be worried about the turn times, which is a fair complaint. I've heard people saying it takes 3 minutes in mid game which is too long.

I've only played a couple of hours so unlike most game "reviewers" I think it is too early to give a strong opinion, but I will say the UI is poor. They don't make use of the screen. Everything is crammed into corners and using scroll bars or buttons. Why the tech tree needs to take up 6 separate windows is beyond me. If they full screened it like shogun they could probably fit it in one. It's not like you can do anything else at the same time anyway, so make use of the screen space. The same goes for all the campaign map UI. Every single thing is small windows for some weird reason.

 

[Genx87]

Heh does Ars believe global trade was something that happened in 270BC?

Trade was regional back then at best. Most of it was local. Why the hell would anybody be trying to trade with 30 factions in 270BC?

 

[Grooveriding]

Don't know what the hell they are on about, I am really enjoying it. Only complaint is performance is shit.

 

[Dumac]

Ars calls it a total mess

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/09/total-war-rome-ii-review-a-total-mess/

Ars has some of the worst gaming journalism. They often says things that are just plain wrong, and even if they don't their opinions usually strike me as the opposite of what makes sense.

I think they may also be worried about the turn times, which is a fair complaint. I've heard people saying it takes 3 minutes in mid game which is too long.

The solution is to turn off seeing what enemy AI is doing. Sure, you miss out on information, but you can't have your cake and eat it to.

It is like reviewers want to see what everyone is doing but not have to spend the time watching it? Well I'm sorry that they can't just beam the info to your brain.

I must be playing a different game because the AI is quite aggressive to me.

Same here. I'm still in the prologue though, so this could be specifically setup, but the damn enemies keep attacking from all kinds of directions on both land and sea.

 

[Regs]

+1


You start out able to raise 3 armies up to a maximum of 15 as you gain more territory.

Thanks! Given that it seems easier to reinforce the armies, that does not seem limiting since you no longer have to worry about 100 small AI armies nibbling at your feet all the time. Maybe something we can mod latter if we want a more "epic" feel. Can you adjust the unit scale to four different sizes like the previous total wars?

 

[datalink7]

My quick review without details:

1. It isn't as good as I had hoped.

2. It isn't as bad as many people are making out to be.

3. I'm having fun with the game.

4. See you later, going to go back at it

 

[Regs]

Steam just took another dumb argh.


Isn't as good as you hoped? You mean in terms of depth, game play, or UI?

 

[StinkyPinky]

So far I'm a little disappointed but it's still fun.

For me I find the UI is pretty bad and the graphics aren't quite the quality I was expecting (in the battles, the campaign map looks fantastic). I haven't played enough to really comment on the gameplay. The battle AI seems decent though, no worse than Shogun 2.

 

[datalink7]

Note: if you have a good graphics card, make sure the "no limit to graphics memory" option is checked. If you don't, it appears to have some sort of limit on the graphics settings. So, you might have it on 'Ultra" but if you don't have that block checked, it's going to run it on "medium".

 

[irishScott]

Note: if you have a good graphics card, make sure the "no limit to graphics memory" option is checked. If you don't, it appears to have some sort of limit on the graphics settings. So, you might have it on 'Ultra" but if you don't have that block checked, it's going to run it on "medium".

That's a weird option. You'd think it would use most available graphics memory by default.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Note: if you have a good graphics card, make sure the "no limit to graphics memory" option is checked. If you don't, it appears to have some sort of limit on the graphics settings. So, you might have it on 'Ultra" but if you don't have that block checked, it's going to run it on "medium".

Interesting. Will give that a shot. Thanks.

And yes, that's a weird option.

 

[Nintendesert]

That Ars review is total trash.


The first thing my brother asked me when I played was how big was the campaign map. When I told him how big it was he was excited. Real Total War fans love a big campaign map to take over. Those little factions mostly fade away ingame as they get gobbled up by more powerful empires.

This game has some minor flaws but it's way better than any other Total War game they've done and it's a worthy successor to the first Rome Total War.

 

[Zenoth]

Very excited so far from the user reviews I've seen around, including in this thread (well the first impressions anyway).

With this said, however, all Total War games I've played since the original Rome were buggy upon release and following patches usually fixed quite a good bunch of bugs and rebalanced a few things around (but mostly fixed bugs). I remember Rome (original) wasn't "really good" until patch 1.2 hit, and exactly the same happened with Medieval 2 (patch 1.2 brought an enormous amount of fixes). So before I buy it I'll wait a month or two, for at least two or three patches to resolve the important things, then I'll jump in. And, side note, I've seen some freshly-released game-play footage on YouTube as people get to play and really I don't get most of the "professional" reviews around, what I'm seeing isn't exactly what they seem to describe, almost as if there was some sort of a smear campaign to discredit the devs and their reputation in the industry.

There's no point to that, we all know all TW games - at release - had issues, some of them major, but most of them were fixed in due time. And regarding the long turns during mid game, that should be tolerated by the fans (the newcomers to the series should adapt). The TW series was never meant to see everything happen in the blink of an eye. I wouldn't mind pressing the turn button and go make myself a sandwich in the meantime. Well, maybe 30 mins is long, sure, and maybe it's related to a bug or something, who knows. But what would be the point of hurrying things up? If people want everything done right away they need to go play a recent RTS like C&C where skirmishes last about 10 minutes and ends when the A.I. wipes out your base with their super weapons.

So anyway I'm glad to see what I'm seeing from the videos so far and I can't wait until the first patches fix things up a bit.

 

[BrightCandle]

Well I played it most of yesterday and my initial thoughts are that its in need of quite a lot of polish:

- Performance is definitely a problem in the campaign map. When you start to see more factions, it goes past really slowly due to the size of the map and the number of factions. Its not a question of seeing the movements its that the calculation time is quite high.
- Performance in the battles can also be really poor. I have had frame rates as low as 10 fps when running high graphics on a pair of 680s. The data from gamegpu.ru tells me its not using SLI at all but even so that is kind of rubbish for a high end machine, especially considering it chose "extreme" as a setting to start with which honestly didn't run well at all.
- Performance on the campaign map when zooming out for the overview is very poor indeed.
- Loading into a battle is a lot quicker which is a welcome performance improvement.
- The AI isn't actually any better about small armies. I spent quite a lot of the end of the prologue chasing after that army you had an objective to kill and that was just annoying. I have still fought just a general or a couple of units when the battles were more 15 units so the reduction in units isn't solving the problem the AI has with throwing small armies your way to harass you.
- The AI in the battles is doing well. It beat me in a battle I was expecting to win and on the campaign its certainly willing to run right past my armies and attack my towns and allow me to take its towns in response. Not sure if that is a good change but its very noticeable that it will avoid combat to hit me instead of defending itself.
- The new UI is bad. The new tech tree is rubbish, it would have been better on one screen. UIs that appear as toolbars are for functions that are about the main screen not something you just do. I still haven't worked out where my food current excess count is on the new UI (is it even shown?!).
- The new unit cards with no colour aren't as good. For quick selection in the heat of battle I much prefer to have colour on the unit cards to help distinguish between them, it just takes longer with an all white background to do it.
- I have come across a few bugs. My unit cards went blank, I have had the game crash, my advisor has been messed up, received wrong audio for a hint. Quite a few very obvious bugs.
- The mechanic for getting out of ships is dreadful. If you attack a town through the dock then you do this big battle where your troops end up in the centre of town and then on the campaign map they are still in their ships. What is worse is to get them out you need to wait a turn and then click on the ground near the town so your guys get out of the ship and then you have to move them back to town to occupy it. If you don't do this and get counter attacked you'll find yourself having to land your ships again and I lost a battle I should have won because of this. I consider this a bug but it looks like they meant for this to happen.

So while I like the fact that the game is bigger in scale than shogun 2 and doesn't seem to have that nonsense where everyone turns on you its not as good as its predecessor in a number of critical ways. I don't think this is very playable at the outset, it needs a patch or two to at the very least fix the performance problems before I recommend anyone buy the game. After that its an OK game but let down by some of the changes they made in the series which means the battles are lacking compared to Shogun 2.

 

[Sulaco]

I've bought every single Total War game on release day. Yes, every single one. All the way back to the original Shogun.

I'll be waiting on this.

Get a few patches, a few AI rebalances (which are usually terrible on release, and you don't even realize it until several hours in), and hopefully performance improvements.

 

[CPA]

Played some of the Prologue last night.

Yes, it set the graphics options to extreme for my single 660TI. Ran the benchmark and only got about 27 frames on average. Set a bunch of things down to High, and I believe Shadows to normal, and got about 41 fps. That's good enough for me.

Had no stuttering, graphical issues in the prologue, but it's obvious that the textures and such take a hit when not on extreme.

Kind of cool watching the troops run through and over fences and barricades. they will actually destroy them on their way to their objective.

It's awesome to be able to man and use ballistic weapons. I was launching ballista missiles at the enemies, then trailing the missile as it slammed into the enemy. Was hoping for a greater effect, but you still get to see a couple guys go flying if the missile is on target.

Unlike others, I accept the new coloring of the unit cards and such. I think the artists were going for a more authentic look, plus there are times that the cards are colored (like when a recruit is available). The contrast helps the player know the difference.

Haven't really dove into tech upgrades yet because I'm in the prologue.

Map is visually appealing, but RPS was correct when they said the map was less open and more about chokepoints and forcing players into certain routes. This could be because the prologue is set in Rome (Italy). I haven't seen the rest of the map.

AI in prologue is meh at best. Had to attack a town and the AI left their town center point wide open. When I captured it there was no reaction by the AI, even though they could have spared to some troops to double back and try to re-secure the town center.

Only play about 2 hours last night. Will probably play some more tonight.

 

[Genx87]

Played for about 3-4 hours last night as the Suebi tribe.

The good
1. Game looks great. Campaign map is very pretty. Easy to figure out. And it appears you can defend territory using the rivers.
2. Battles look superb.
3. Diplomacy seems to be pretty solid
4. Love all the playable factions

The meh
1. City building feels like it went backwards. For each tier you get a single line of buildings that can be upgraded.
2. If you siege a city and assault the city, it will have walls that need to be breached. If they come out of the city and attack you. There are no walls.
3. Not sure if I like the objective based victory in city battles. Feels gamey to me. Camp the flag and win.

 

[Regs]

Played for about 3-4 hours last night as the Suebi tribe.

The good
1. Game looks great. Campaign map is very pretty. Easy to figure out. And it appears you can defend territory using the rivers.
2. Battles look superb.
3. Diplomacy seems to be pretty solid
4. Love all the playable factions

The meh
1. City building feels like it went backwards. For each tier you get a single line of buildings that can be upgraded.
2. If you siege a city and assault the city, it will have walls that need to be breached. If they come out of the city and attack you. There are no walls.
3. Not sure if I like the objective based victory in city battles. Feels gamey to me. Camp the flag and win.

I'm not sure about the city siege problem you have, as I besieged one city in Rome that did not have outside walls. The graphics aren't as polished as I thought they're were going to be but they're still effective enough for the type of game it is.

The UI is in definite need of TLC though. Everything is a little overly complicated for the sake of it being new. Some things will just take a little time to get use too like the General info screen, tech tree or lack thereof, or the building screens. Switching from one menu to another just seems like a PITA right now. Trying to move around the screen also compares to moving a large pirate ship at the helm. That could be just because I need to adjust the sensitivity settings.

There is a lot to love in this game though. I have only managed to play an hour or two and had not seen any slow downs yet, but I imagine as the game progresses it will start to crawl. I had one crash so far when I had an agent try to sabotage a AI army. I'm not too sure yet about the AI, but my last siege battle had their reinforcing navy units land and not actually move up off the beach. Unfortunately they only came after I slaughtered the AI in the middle of the town. This is all on Medium difficulty however. No point talking about the core of the game which any Total War fan would love, and it promises to give you many days and months of replay value.

For me it would be hard to compare ratings of this game to any other because the Total War series has always had their niche in the market and there is simply nothing out there like it to benchmark it with. Which it is why it's difficult to look at review sites and take their word for it. I think a rating of "80" for a game of this scope and compare to a FPS shooter rating of "95" like Crysis, does not mean to me that a game like Crysis is more fun than Total War at all. I would take an 80 in TW over Crysis any day.

 

[thm1223]

I'm really enjoying play as one of the Greek City States. The strategic situation of the region at the beginning of the game makes for some very interesting diplomacy, and requires a great deal of thought to successfully expand without getting your ass handed to you.

 

[Genx87]

I am looking forward in trying out Sparta.

 

[datalink7]

Sparta is more fun than Rome, IMO. Rome is always my favorite faction but in the game it is essentially easy mode. You start at war with the Etruscans who are really weak, so that's three easy territories for you right away. Plus, by taking them out you complete a Region which gives you region bonuses.

Then Italy is pretty easy to defend, with the only land route from the north and limited beach landing locations. And the economy is really good. I quickly got up to making 3k/turn.

Sparta, on the other hand, starts with only 1 territory. And it isn't even the main territory in the region, which severely limits your growth. To actually get an economy up and running, you have to capture Athens, which immediately puts you at war with Macedon as well.

To get a whole Region, you have to go capture Knossos, which means an invasion fleet which is harder to support. Plus the island if Knossos is a big city, so it can sustain a siege for 7 turns. I had to retreat the first time after 3 years as my army was getting too small.

With Sparta, I've got two decent sized armies right now, but am only making about 150/turn. I'm sieging both Knossos and Athens right now, but Macedon is capturing some of my other cities (I took out Epirus earlier) and I can't do anything about it because I have no money until I make those captures. If I can't take out Athens and Knossos, it is game over.

Much more tense game.