I've watched Angry Joe's review and... I don't quite know where I'd begin, or if it'd ever end. I agree on pretty much everything he said. I'd like to add that something is definitely completely messed up and wrong in the gaming industry. If they released cars out of the assembly lines as broken as the game is on release people would die (actually maybe they just wouldn't be able to even start up the engine, nvm). You can't turn out every single game franchises into yearly sport releases. You don't... you DON'T rush a Total War game out, you just don't do that.
And that A.I. coder we saw in Joe's review? That's public relations and promotional bullshit, and I don't know how much he was paid to give his "let's praise the A.I. that basically doesn't exist" speech in whatever interview that was, but he should have had the guts to at least refuse to speak about it in the first place, but sure money talks louder, let's give an interview and let's talk about something I clearly can't make anyway, but people at home won't know and they'll think we'll be able to patch everything anyway.
There needs to be a "police of gaming", or some laws... or I don't know, something out there that forbids or simply punishes companies (publishers and/or developers) from/if releasing clearly unfinished products (games, software, whichever way you prefer to put it) in no less than alpha states. There needs to be an end to obvious cash grabs like the DLC they made for it (as Joe explained in his review). There needs to be an end in expcting the consumers to pay $60 for a clearly incomplete game. There is zero chances that the actual team "wasn't aware" about the game's state at release, and internally they must have braced themselves for a good month+ prior to release with epic flame shields fully knowing how incomplete the game was and how the community would react to that. That, especially considering that they somehow managed to put out a beautiful game like Shogun 2 right prior to Rome II, which makes Rome II's situation even less acceptable.
But the problems are so bad in Rome II's case specifically that for that one I feel that both SEGA and CA too really did fuck it up (there's basically no other way to describe it, not to me anyway). I mean SEGA surely had no word on "let's put a damn flag in open field battles so the A.I. focuses on that and ignores your army", that's plain CA decision-making right there. Also, they supposedly had a 40% bigger budget than anything else before in the franchise, but I bet that extra 40% went to MOCAP'ing the crap out of the game, and probably some went for that OST and the voice acting, too. Let's THEN give some of that budget for graphics, sound and, perhaps, if we have time and any of them pennies left... the A.I... oh wait, nvm, we need to pay that guy working on textures and animations, too, looks like A.I. will have to wait.
Anyway, might as well just stop right here. I wasn't expecting THAT much of a failure but right now Rome II is even worse than Empire was at release, and I can't believe I'm saying this. There's a one-liner I like in Unreal Tournament 3 coming from a female combatant (when she kills you), she says "A new low!". That's what CA managed to do, get to a new low. You know, when you have "a low" you think you can't get any worse than THAT point, right? Well, it got so bad it's a NEW low, that's like finding out that there's a point lower than the singularity in a black hole and you don't even know how to name it.
So what's next, screwing up Medieval 3?
I'm about as angry as Angry Joe right now. The game is so bugged and unpolished and broken I don't think that this time around the community's best work would do much. If A.I. is broken at its core and if ships can literally pass through terrain how can you expect people to modify incomplete and untested assets? Before seeing Angry Joe's review I genuinely thought that the issues I had seen myself and read about would be patched in about a month and the community would release at least one major mod by the 2nd or 3rd month post release. But now... I can't even imagine WHAT "mod" would even WORK to begin with. I feel sorry for everyone who bought it full price at release, I really am sorry for you guys, that companies that do this to you consumers. It infuriates me, but it works, and they keep doing it. It should be illegal.