Rome II: Total War

[NoemiChan]

^this game is remaking history!!!!! Weeeehhhh!!!!

[4Tran]

Well, Rome II is out, and it's been pretty cool so far. I've only dipped into trying out Epirus, but early expansion seems to be a lot tougher in this game than in the previous Total War games. That may be just because of the hugely concentrated forces in Greece though.

Right-clicking and -dragging defaults to run instead of walk as in the other games. It's a bit annoying as I'm fond of constantly cleaning up my lines and formations. I can't say much about the rest of the combat as I haven't used slow-moving phalanxes for a long time, and it's going to take some getting used to.

On the Seleucid note, they're supposed to be released in October as free DLC.

[NoemiChan]

^ so you actually played the game. Darn, it may take me years before I can get my hands on the game. Here, still stuck on couple of MODS.... ^_^v

[4Tran]

If anyone is on the fence about buying Rome II, you may want to wait a bit. There are lots of reports of the game being buggy right now, and it's using textures poorer than the ones in the demo videos. These don't bother me much, but I would hope that they get cleaned up within a few weeks. Then again, other than the odd visual glitch, the only bug I've noticed is that the encyclopedia doesn't work.

Also, Rome II is going to need a fair bit of horsepower to run. I've got a Core i5-3570K and a Radeon 6950, and I'm getting just decent performance (23-46 fps at Extreme settings). Also, I've heard that the campaign map can be really slow with certain setups. I'd imagine that even gaming laptops might have difficulty with this game. On the plus side, the main screen and the battles load a lot faster than they did in Shogun II.

Originally Posted by GenjiChan

^ so you actually played the game. Darn, it may take me years before I can get my hands on the game. Here, still stuck on couple of MODS.... ^_^v

The key to dealing with backlogs is to pretend that they don't exist! To be honest, I'd have held off from pre-ordering Rome II if I didn't find out about the Greek states DLC offer. Athens and Sparta were has-beens in this period, but Epirus was too juicy to pass up.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Sparta's faction bonus appear to make it possible to have massive slave populations with little downsides, from what I see of livestreams. If no one else can do this, it makes Sparta a special faction for that playstyle. Instead of growing economy by population, you just enslave all the defeated armies.

[MrTerrorist]

Rome II is Busted. Hopefully This Patch Can Help.

[risingstar3110]

Was playing today, and honestly they really have to tone down that general morale boost thing...

True i played on Very hard, but every time my general is away from certain squad, even fighting next to squads of full men, position up-slope and even surround enemy from two side, they won't even last 10 secs before they start to flash on retreat. End up spending most of my time in battle bring general run back and forward. Played 4-5 hours and couldn't even zoom close down to enjoy the graphic fighting once, because have to keep having the general run along the front line.

I mean i get several heroic battle earlier on when my army is still small, even when have to fight 1.5-2 times my army size. But every time i mass a large army myself, the battle becomes decisive based on where do i let my general stand along the frontline, which is just ridiculous. These developer guys should really read the manga Kingdom to realise the squad leader was much more crucial in keeping the squad morale in tact

Furthermore, hope they get rid of that defensive strategic point thing. Why do I have to defend a grassland which hold no strategic value whatsoever, while nearby there is a massive hill slope that i can set my army up and strategically defend my position with? This is not a castle defending where your village leader are holing inside town hall and need protection from being captured. Finally, encircle an enemy town results in you losing your army instead? Why can't they do it like in Shogun 2, standing in army territory means your army can't recover the loss, but if you siege enemy castle, they will have to come out to engage in battle?

PS: a bit frustrated. Was planning to play the game without reloading lost battle. Conquered almost all Britain and Wales, but all these new annoying features made me have to break my own promise in the end. Also was annoyed at the fact i player 4-5 hours and still don't even know my own troops graphical design, because unless i press pause, constantly have to control my general run back and forward

[SoldierOfDarkness]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

Sparta's faction bonus appear to make it possible to have massive slave populations with little downsides, from what I see of livestreams. If no one else can do this, it makes Sparta a special faction for that playstyle. Instead of growing economy by population, you just enslave all the defeated armies.

Not really.

Playing as Sparta right now the thing that bugs me is the slave unrest so about 70 turns in I've stopped enslaving and just resorted to killing slaves to keep it under control.

The problem is now under control. As Sparta I am currently conquering Asia right now.

One thing though that's keeping my economy from going up is the fact that Athens is my main port so unless I take that I can't set up trade agreements. Given that Macedon is almost dead I'm thinking about taking out Athens with little repercussion.

And like previous games I believe once things have been patched a bit more I think I'll try hard simply to give the AI the extra money bonuses it needs to match the player. It's fine right now and I believe by the time I reach 100 turns the AI factions remaining will be powerful since I'm hitting Parthia and they got massive armies as they haven't been touched yet.

Furthermore, hope they get rid of that defensive strategic point thing. Why do I have to defend a grassland which hold no strategic value whatsoever, while nearby there is a massive hill slope that i can set my army up and strategically defend my position with? This is not a castle defending where your village leader are holing inside town hall and need protection from being captured. Finally, encircle an enemy town results in you losing your army instead? Why can't they do it like in Shogun 2, standing in army territory means your army can't recover the loss, but if you siege enemy castle, they will have to come out to engage in battle?

Because the battlemap represents your location on the campaign map.

it's to prevent you from running to a corner of the map and hiding there.

Think of it this way, if you want a good position you make sure you head to a good spot on the campaign map. If the enemy catches you out of position then why should you be given a free pass to fix that?

[NoemiChan]

Originally Posted by risingstar3110

Conquered almost all Britain and Wales,

That was rather fast. I might waited until 53 B.C. before I could at least raid it... I think the game will be more challenging if we will follow a timeline..... if you're playing the Roman faction that is...

[barcode120x]

Originally Posted by MrTerrorist

Rome II is Busted. Hopefully This Patch Can Help.

Been browsing the TW forums (that hosts all the mods and stuff for the series) and a majority do say it's busted right now; however, majority of those people do say that the game should be good and stable enough within the next month or so which I believe to be true as well.

I've only played a few hours so far (completed the prologue) and started playing on Hard as Rome (House Julia). I haven't hit any "bugs" graphical or non-graphical at all yet as a lot of people have been complaining. I DO notice though that when my troops enter a city and go around the buildings, they tend to get kinda stuck, or rather run off in a different direction despite the enemy right in front of them. Aside from that, I haven't hit any bugs yet. I'm lovin the game so far. It definitely needs to update, but I've been waiting too long for this game to "put it aside and come back in a month." I'll be playing till those updates come out and beyond.

My first major qualm with the game right now is AI in-game difficulty. I'm playing on Hard and I squash EVERY single army I come across with average units in game INGAME and AUTO-calc. I too also have just average units. I remember reading somewhere at the TW forums that the Roman troops are too OP right now in terms of stats that the starting armies of the nearby factions cannot compete->so true. The AI has no strategy in game, they just rush the middle and get flanked so easily. Also, it doesn't seem like the AI trains decent troops, they always have the same basic units in their armies. I'm going to wait until tomorrow to see the update notes and hope they ramp/fix the AI difficulty, if not I'm going to try and play it on Legendary.

My 2nd qualm with the game is the turn queues. My bro was telling me that people with epic PCs have been running into 2-5min turn queues. At first, the turns only took like 20-30 secs, but I'm about 50 turns in and it's up to about a minute. I think some of the factors are the bigger cities and more troop movement across the map despite the FOW. Anyways, they seriously need to fix the turn queues because I'm pretty sure when I'm 100 turns+ in the queues will bet at least 2 minutes. I've always had the same issue in Shogun 2 where the first 50 turns were fast turns, but later in the turns, they were super long.


Btw does anyone know how to get the multiplayer working? I was browsing the rankings and there are people that have played a lot of games but almost no games pop up either in the a multiplayer battler or the multiplayer campaign (I did try to join one but it said versions were incompatible...even though there are no patches yet lolz)

[Hooves]

Can anyone update me on what the patch fixes on Friday? Since it's said to fix all the problems that consist within Rome 2 Total War because of the hasty release like the past TW games? I've seen Angry Joe's video and wish for those to be fixed.

[risingstar3110]

Originally Posted by SoldierOfDarkness

Not really.

Playing as Sparta right now the thing that bugs me is the slave unrest so about 70 turns in I've stopped enslaving and just resorted to killing slaves to keep it under control.

The problem is now under control. As Sparta I am currently conquering Asia right now.

One thing though that's keeping my economy from going up is the fact that Athens is my main port so unless I take that I can't set up trade agreements. Given that Macedon is almost dead I'm thinking about taking out Athens with little repercussion.

And like previous games I believe once things have been patched a bit more I think I'll try hard simply to give the AI the extra money bonuses it needs to match the player. It's fine right now and I believe by the time I reach 100 turns the AI factions remaining will be powerful since I'm hitting Parthia and they got massive armies as they haven't been touched yet.



Because the battlemap represents your location on the campaign map.

it's to prevent you from running to a corner of the map and hiding there.

Think of it this way, if you want a good position you make sure you head to a good spot on the campaign map. If the enemy catches you out of position then why should you be given a free pass to fix that?

The slope is literally 10 seconds march away in that specific example... They could wait day and night for the weather condition. But could not take 10 seconds to march uphill and station in better spot?

[barcode120x]

Looks like they're doing 3 major patches in total over the next 3 weeks. This is directly from the totalwar wiki. I was expecting a "bigger" patch but they can only do so much in 4 days since release haha. There's a ton of people QQing hard because it was a 27mb patch lolz. Tbh, a lot of this stuff doesn't seem to be major, but it better than nothing. I was hoping there would be a fix on the long azz turns queues

Here are the patch notes for Total War: ROME II- Patch 1 (06.09.13):

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 localisation 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.

[SoldierOfDarkness]

Originally Posted by risingstar3110

The slope is literally 10 seconds march away in that specific example... They could wait day and night for the weather condition. But could not take 10 seconds to march uphill and station in better spot?

That makes no sense.

Why would a defender have the ability to wait day and night for weather conditions for a better spot when it's the attacker that decides when to attack?

Looks like they're doing 3 major patches in total over the next 3 weeks. This is directly from the totalwar wiki. I was expecting a "bigger" patch but they can only do so much in 4 days since release haha. There's a ton of people QQing hard because it was a 27mb patch lolz. Tbh, a lot of this stuff doesn't seem to be major, but it better than nothing. I was hoping there would be a fix on the long azz turns queues

This whole thing is blown out of proportion it's ridiculous and I think these kinds of attitudes is what pushes game developers into consoles which TW will probably head to down the road.

First off
Ever since ETW I've stopped playing it because of crashes and such it was ridiculous. I'd be 67 turns in and then end of turn crash.
With NTW it was sorta better.
With Shogun 2 I had lags and horrible loading times. It took nearly 5-10 minutes to load the game and another 5 minutes for battles or load saves. The game simply didn't run very well on my computer.

Now enter Rome 2
Well first off the game runs VERY well on the exact SAME rig I have. 1 minute to load up the game.
2-3 minutes to load up a load save. After that it's less than a minute to load a battle and any other save.
AI turns take only a second so with a full roster I have to wait 1-2 minutes but given how many factions there are I do not see any issues.
Game runs decent FPS.

So what does that mean? My computer couldn't run Shogun 2 very well but it could run Rome 2 well? That's just how optimization works. CA cannot optimize for each and every single computer.

[barcode120x]

Originally Posted by SoldierOfDarkness

That makes no sense.

Why would a defender have the ability to wait day and night for weather conditions for a better spot when it's the attacker that decides when to attack?



This whole thing is blown out of proportion it's ridiculous and I think these kinds of attitudes is what pushes game developers into consoles which TW will probably head to down the road.

First off
Ever since ETW I've stopped playing it because of crashes and such it was ridiculous. I'd be 67 turns in and then end of turn crash.
With NTW it was sorta better.
With Shogun 2 I had lags and horrible loading times. It took nearly 5-10 minutes to load the game and another 5 minutes for battles or load saves. The game simply didn't run very well on my computer.

Now enter Rome 2
Well first off the game runs VERY well on the exact SAME rig I have. 1 minute to load up the game.
2-3 minutes to load up a load save. After that it's less than a minute to load a battle and any other save.
AI turns take only a second so with a full roster I have to wait 1-2 minutes but given how many factions there are I do not see any issues.
Game runs decent FPS.

So what does that mean? My computer couldn't run Shogun 2 very well but it could run Rome 2 well? That's just how optimization works. CA cannot optimize for each and every single computer.

True true. You might start to feel the long turn queues past turn 50. Even a Kotaku reviewer mentioned waiting 3-5 minutes per turn when his actual turn was less than a minute. I started to run into 1minish turns when cities got bigger of all the factions and armies got larger. Tbh, I'm having a lot of a fun and I love the game, opposite of the majority haha, but it does need some beef-ups and I'm sure within the next few weeks things should get fixed. It's just a lot of people were expecting too much and/or are not liking the graphics issues and bugs (I wouldn't either), but it will be fixed.

I just wish AI combat difficulty is fixed! I'm getting tired of just 1-2 minute battles and tired of fighting crappy azz armies. The AI doesn't even defend their territory and I'm playing on Very Hard. I do notice they send their armies to my states, but they never have troops garrisoned as they do in Shogun 2. It's pretty bad, but I do love just squashing the armies lolz.

I doubled the unit sizes and it makes combat so much more fun and realistic (well of course, much larger armies)

Dev post on the main TW forums. Good to know they're doing what they can, even if it's just posting a reply

Hi All - I’m just posting this on behalf of Mike Simpson, Creative Director on Total War here at Creative Assembly - Bart CA

--------------------------

Hi everyone and thanks for your attention.

We just wanted to reassure you that we do know it’s an extremely annoying and frustrating time for some of you at the moment and we are working around the clock to sort out those issues that you are having. The first patch has just gone up - it's not trouble-free we know and are fixing with a hotfix, but there will be another next week and every week after that till the problems are gone.

At the moment it may seem that the changes are slight, but they aren’t the only ones we are working on currently and bigger changes are happening now for future patches.

If you are having a problem, it is totally unacceptable and a big deal for us, please know that we are spending all our dev effort on fixing outstanding issues.

I realise in our rush to do that we haven’t updated you on the situation, so if you are interested, please read on.

Scale of launch issues
First and foremost let me say that if even one person has a problem running the game we would want to fix it, this is why we’ve set up 24 hour support and if you post in the support forums you will get an answer or discover a solution that’s already posted for your issue.

I appreciate that it doesn’t help to know this if you are somebody having an issue, but the vast majority of people are running the game without problems. At the moment we are seeing 2% of people playing reporting a technical issue. Let me be clear, that is 2% too many and we will be helping them into the game and working very hard to make sure they get the best possible experience.

To these people we are really very sorry that you are having problems, we really want to get you enjoying our game, please do take the time to post your issue in the Support Forum if there isn't a fix for you available in there already.

Technical Issues
ROME II is a big and complex game and, especially on PC, we are always conscious of the wide variety of different combinations of hardware out there and, while we do test extensively before launch, it is clear that we have failed some of you and we will look at the way in which launch games in the future. Again, I know this is scant comfort to you if you have a set-up that is not performing well, but we do intend to fix your specific problem – whoever you are and whatever it is - as soon as we can.

Many issues have been alleviated by the workarounds and system tweaks posted about in the Support Forum, please do head to this thread as your first port of call http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...support-forums, if your issue is not solved by stepping through these solutions please do post your issue in the Support Forum and one of the team will get back to you.

Gameplay Issues
If you have concerns on the actual features and mechanics, like gameplay balancing and AI behaviour, we do want to hear about them. As mentioned before launch we absolutely intend to support ROME II post-release with plenty of content, further development and comprehensive balancing through-out – and no I’m not thinking of DLC you have to pay for. We have already planned for some very interesting stuff and we wanted to do that with advice from the community.

Please do keep posting your concerns, our code team are focussing on tech issues to get people playing, but our design teams are very aware of your concerns and are already looking at ways to add further options and rebalance aspects of the game.

You will see our community team dropping into threads to ask questions, please do chat to them, but even if you don’t see a response please do know that we look at the forums every day here and do appreciate what you have to say.

Thank you for reading,

Mike Simpson

[SoldierOfDarkness]

Originally Posted by barcode120x

True true. You might start to feel the long turn queues past turn 50. Even a Kotaku reviewer mentioned waiting 3-5 minutes per turn when his actual turn was less than a minute. I started to run into 1minish turns when cities got bigger of all the factions and armies got larger. Tbh, I'm having a lot of a fun and I love the game, opposite of the majority haha, but it does need some beef-ups and I'm sure within the next few weeks things should get fixed. It's just a lot of people were expecting too much and/or are not liking the graphics issues and bugs (I wouldn't either), but it will be fixed.

Again different rigs because I'm at 119 and am still getting reasonable turn times.

And I'm not so sure about the majority.

After things like Pacific Rim, Mass Effect 3, Dredd 3D, Scott Pilgrim, I learned that while the internet can be loud it means nothing in the long run or big picture.

I just wish AI combat difficulty is fixed! I'm getting tired of just 1-2 minute battles and tired of fighting crappy azz armies. The AI doesn't even defend their territory and I'm playing on Very Hard. I do notice they send their armies to my states, but they never have troops garrisoned as they do in Shogun 2. It's pretty bad, but I do love just squashing the armies lolz.

Usually I have to amp the difficulty up to H/VH to get any challenges. I'm playing on normal and it's only the stronger factions that survived mid-game that are sending full stacks at me that have been barely touched. Once more things have been patched up and the game is a lot more stable I may play a Hard campaign as Rome.

One thing I should point out in regards to the battles is they still feel similar whenever I'm dealing with an equal opponent which is why I'm having a hard time seeing the 30 seconds battles people keep talking about. I've seen thorax swordsmen and legionaries fighting to the death when surrounded.

I doubled the unit sizes and it makes combat so much more fun and realistic (well of course, much larger armies)

Dev post on the main TW forums. Good to know they're doing what they can, even if it's just posting a reply

Because they want to make sure the game is great and unfortunately the internet is a very harsh place.

[Chaos2Frozen]

[Hooves]

Very nice that Creative Assembly gave money to Extra Credits to teach about history.

[FlareKnight]

That is a fun way to get a refreseher on the subject. Sure already learned it, but hey entertaining cartoons .

[MrTerrorist]

Great job with the guys of Extra Credits.

And now Creative Assembly presents..... BRIAN BLESSED!