Rome 2: Total war is coming!

[AHamick]

My GMG codes arrived today too, pre-loading now!

 

[Chaptorial]

Creative Assembly has announced that as of 10am PST today you can begin to preload the game on Steam. The game consists of a 9.9gb download and then when uncompressed will roughly be around 18gb on your drive.

Also the "unlock" time for this game will take place at Midnight Tuesday September 3rd Pacific Standard Time, 3am EST etc..

Can't wait!

 

[StinkyPinky]

I've been playing Shogun 2 to prepare my body for this. It's a decent game, but the era doesn't interest me. The clans seem to use similar units and I know nothing about their history.

Now Rome...that's a different story. Fascinating era with lots of unique and awesome factions. I cannot wait. GMG sent me my key.:awe:

 

[Nintendesert]

I agree, Shogun 2 is a great game and I like it, but the era isn't nearly as interesting as the Roman one. I'm really looking forward to it and looking to try my hand at rebuilding a stronger Sparta!

 

[Midwayman]

I picked up shogun 2 recently and am having a hard time with it. Like how do you maintain more than one army? The upkeep costs are so high that I have to strip my towns in order to successfully attack, and then me and the enemy just end up trading cities a lot. Also I wish there were an AI battle function where I could watch the battle and maybe make corrections, but let the general handle it most of the time. Or maybe I'm just missing something.

 

[Chaptorial]

I picked up shogun 2 recently and am having a hard time with it. Like how do you maintain more than one army? The upkeep costs are so high that I have to strip my towns in order to successfully attack, and then me and the enemy just end up trading cities a lot.

When you're just starting out you want to concentrate on recruiting the basic and cheaper units like the Ashigaru. Avoid recruiting Samurai units until you get yourself up and running as they cost quite a decent amount in upkeep.

It's been awhile since I've played Shogun 2 but an informative guide to the game can be found here: Total War Shogun II Guide

 

[Chaptorial]

In anticipation of Tuesday I've taken a trip back in time and have been playing Centurion: Defender of Rome from my Sega Genesis days. I remember being too young to really grasp this game and would watch my older brother play for hours.

Going back and playing it now, I realize how enjoyable this game was and how much detail the game contained for its time. This was definitely Rome Total War circa 1990. :biggrin:

 

[Midwayman]

Preloading at 56 MBytes/s Geez steam has a nice host.

 

[ElFenix]

that point in time where you realize that the hard drive you just bought 6 months ago is now full of stuff downloaded from steam so you have to clear it out before you can download more

 

[CrackRabbit]

that point in time where you realize that the hard drive you just bought 6 months ago is now full of stuff downloaded from steam so you have to clear it out before you can download more

Been there, the solution is to buy another, larger, hard drive.

 

[StinkyPinky]

In anticipation of Tuesday I've taken a trip back in time and have been playing Centurion: Defender of Rome from my Sega Genesis days. I remember being too young to really grasp this game and would watch my older brother play for hours.

Going back and playing it now, I realize how enjoyable this game was and how much detail the game contained for its time. This was definitely Rome Total War circa 1990. :biggrin:

I played the crap outta that game. It was great

 

[ElFenix]

Been there, the solution is to buy another, larger, hard drive.

already in process of copying everything over.

i've bought 10TB of drives in the last 3 months, which is probably more than all the other hard drives i've bought combined.

 

[Nintendesert]

that point in time where you realize that the hard drive you just bought 6 months ago is now full of stuff downloaded from steam so you have to clear it out before you can download more

I already cleared out plenty of room on my SSD for Rome 2 and for the Star Citizen hangar module. :thumbsup:

I'm so tempted to dump BF3 since I don't play much and move it off, damn 40 gigs of space on that thing!

 

[ElFenix]

tangent:

windows' (terrible) support of large disks has lead to really crappy results. enclosures somehow fake 3TB to windows as 1 partition, but (apparently) don't run GPT internally. so if you pull the drive from the enclosure, windows shows it as 3 partitions using MBR. and, oh, your data is gone.

glad i ran into usb/disconnection trouble 100 GB in rather than after all 900 had copied.



ok why is this thing slower on SATA than on USB?

 

[Genx87]

I heard one turn equals one year? That sounds pretty crappy.

 

[irishScott]

I heard one turn equals one year? That sounds pretty crappy.

Huh? It's exactly like the original RTW. Honestly I didn't find the "seasons" in Shogun II added that much outside of immersion.

 

[Chaptorial]

Medieval Total War 2 was two (2) turns per year and even that worked fine.

The biggest change I've read about so far with Rome 2 is the limit on the number of armies you can field at any given time based on the number of regions/provinces under your control. You (and the AI) can no longer have dozens of "small" armies containing a few units running around the map. All units, minus your agents and such, have to be attached to an army led by a general making each battle much more important then in previous Total War games. In my opinion this is a plus.

Also you no longer garrison your cities by recruiting units. Now cities automatically garrison units based on the level of building types in that city. It has been said that the level and quality of units far exceeds the usual "city garrison" from previous games. If an army is nearby then obviously, like in previous games, that army will help in the defense.

Also cities with ports that are besieged can hold out much much longer if that port is not blockaded by the attacking Faction.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Huh? It's exactly like the original RTW. Honestly I didn't find the "seasons" in Shogun II added that much outside of immersion.

Original RTW was 2 turns a year, and it was really silly from an immersion standpoint. For example, Julius Caesar conquered most of Gaul in 10 years, but in the game it took most of that time just to move an army from one end of Gaul to another.

 

[Dumac]

It is lame that steam doesn't let you choose your installation location when preloading a game. I have steam defaulting to my HDD, but I want Rome 2 on my SSD.

 

[Dijeangenie]

Original RTW was 2 turns a year, and it was really silly from an immersion standpoint. For example, Julius Caesar conquered most of Gaul in 10 years, but in the game it took most of that time just to move an army from one end of Gaul to another.

Yeah, but nearly all the games have been like that, you can mod the original game to enable armies to travel much further (based on how far they would actually be able to move), but I've forgotten the name.

 

[Nintendesert]

It is lame that steam doesn't let you choose your installation location when preloading a game. I have steam defaulting to my HDD, but I want Rome 2 on my SSD.

I still use steammover so I can move games back and forth from my SSD. :\

 

[Chaptorial]

Creative Assembly released some new videos to help introduce players not familiar with the mechanics of a Total War game. Everything from campaign movement, battle controls and tech research is covered in the How to Play TOTAL WAR: ROME II - The Basics wiki page.

 

[BrightCandle]

I do like the look of the click and dragging of units. That looks like a very useful mechanic for putting a unit somewhere and making sure its not in disarray the whole time its travelling there.

My disk arrived today but alas its steamworks through and through so I'll have to wait just like the preloaders.

 

[Bateluer]

that point in time where you realize that the hard drive you just bought 6 months ago is now full of stuff downloaded from steam so you have to clear it out before you can download more

This was a problem I addressed in my Haswell system refresh.

 

[Chaptorial]

In the Rock Paper Shotgun review the writer confirms the existence of a day 1 patch (no surprise here) that addresses some bugs. Total War games have been notorious for having some release day issues, RTW2 will be no different. Overall however the reviews have been positive so far:

IGN Review In Progress (Video)

Rock Paper Shotgun

PC Gamer - 85/100

NowGamer - 9.5/10

Gamesradar - 4.5/5

GamesVillage - 9.4/10

CVG - 9/10

GameReactorUK - 9/10

PushStartUK - 9/10

Electronic Theatre - 90/100

Vandal - 9/10

GameStar - 89/100

EGM - 8.5/10

The Sixth Axis - 8/10

VideoGamer - 8/10

One Hit Pixel - B/A+

Beefjack

Digital Spy - 4/5

Eurogamer: - 7/10

PCgamesn - 7/10

Joystiq - 3.5/5