They are supposed to show off a live demo of the campaign this weekend at Rezzed and let people play it. I'm hoping for a lot of footage come Monday.
Oh poo - there are limits to the amount of army stacks you can have and you need a general at all times to move it. Basically a general becomes the military's infrastructure of your faction. No more juggernauts. This is intended to make the results of your battles have much more of an impact on the strategic management of your campaign. Armies are now raised on the fields with their generals than built at the barracks in cities. That's all great, but the Total War series always demonstrated the AI having unfair advantages just so they won't be steam rolled over. Not sure what exactly raises your general recruitment cap, but one mentioned it is your factions fame and popularity. I'm obviously not a big fan of artificial pop caps. I liked TW because it gave you the opportunity to become godly in a time period you could only read about in books and all other gaps filled using your imagination. Though one more game falls victim to the Pop Cap to keep it "balanced" which to me really means : we restrict your usage of the game design, so we don't have to spend the time making the design work on a larger scale.
http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/68061-Jack-Lusted-s-clarification-of-army-cap
He has some good points. I remember FOTS becoming auto-resolved most of time as I would march a full stack against 6 settlements with 2-3 units guarding them. Experience, general attributes, and logistics play a larger part in the armies. So if you have a well equipped, experienced, and properly lead army, you could likely do a good bit of damage. It just seems like the whole point of Total War was battles in numbers which no other game offered. It kind of diminishes their uniqueness from other turn based games.
Here's the video from Day #1 at Rezzed. They replay the same Battle of the Nile that was demonstrated at E3 with basically the same results. The first half however is spent on the campaign map and we get to see some new stuff like diplomacy and the family aspect of factions.
Rezzed Day 1
The campaign map looks fantastic and my only concerns so far with Rome 2 are with the battles. The splash effect caused by ballista's and chariots seem a little extreme and could be toned down a bit. Many people are commenting on the fast pace of the battle(s) but overall it appears to be similar from past iterations of Total War games.
Still a day one purchase for me so far.
It got tedious to keep squashing little armies while invading someone and there was maybe 1 or 2 really decisive battles that determined the outcome of the invasion.
Here's the video from Day #1 at Rezzed. They replay the same Battle of the Nile that was demonstrated at E3 with basically the same results. The first half however is spent on the campaign map and we get to see some new stuff like diplomacy and the family aspect of factions.
Rezzed Day 1
The campaign map looks fantastic and my only concerns so far with Rome 2 are with the battles. The splash effect caused by ballista's and chariots seem a little extreme and could be toned down a bit. Many people are commenting on the fast pace of the battle(s) but overall it appears to be similar from past iterations of Total War games.
Still a day one purchase for me so far.
Yeah Rome TW (the first one) had fast paced battles as well. It was the modders that made the game amazing. So while the battles, as is, have some issues from my perspective it's really the mods anyway that are going to make the game shine IMO.
People complaining about the game being so much faster than it used to be must haven't played an older vanilla TW game recently. Also for the battle they showed to say that terrain was advantageous to the Egyptians would be putting it mildly. There was no way the Romans were winning that.Yeah Rome TW (the first one) had fast paced battles as well. It was the modders that made the game amazing. So while the battles, as is, have some issues from my perspective it's really the mods anyway that are going to make the game shine IMO.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/06/28/rome-ii-will-conquer-35-gb-of-your-hard-drive/
A beast, 35GB
Minimum:
OS: XP/ Vista / Windows 7 / Windows 8
Processor:2 GHz Intel Dual Core processor / 2.6 GHz Intel Single Core processor
Memory: 2GB RAM
Graphics:512 MB DirectX 9.0c compatible card (shader model 3, vertex texture fetch support).
DirectX®:9.0c
Hard Drive: 35 GB HD space
Screen Resolution: 1024×768
Recommended:
OS: Windows 7 / Windows 8
Processor:2nd Generation Intel Core i5 processor (or greater)
Memory: 4GB RAM
Graphics:1024 MB DirectX 11 compatible graphics card.
DirectX®:11
Hard Drive:35 GB HD space
Screen Resolution: 1920×1080
I am hoping this is better than the last shogun ...
i was a bit undecided on this, but rome II is the only reasonable matchup for the big gta v release. totally different type of games on different platforms... these two should hold me over until 2014 holiday season. lol
Wonder if this is gonna be the one that finally makes me give up the ol' 4870.