First Impressions

[quadalpha]

Okay, just did the prologue and about twenty turns of the Roman campaign (finished off the Etruscans, Syracuse, and Veneti).

Everything about the game seems weightless and floaty and inconsequential. Others have mentioned this in connection with battles (speed, units melting, etc.). For me, it extends to every part of the experience:

- The strangely sterile UI. The minimalistic black panels oddly incongruous with the archaic pottery icons, which are especially bad for buildings. Where previously, there was always some attempt to represent what the building looked like, now it feels like just clicking on icons to make numbers go up. Even if I understand intellectually the implications of what I'm building, it still feels intuitively like groping in the dark.

- The campaign map does not zoom out enough. You can barely see two provinces at once. There is of course the strategic view, but that is another layer of abstraction that doesn't connect viscerally with anything else. It's just another screen added on because the main system does not do the job.

- The tech tree. Someone mentioned getting to Marian reforms in 10 turns. A large part of the problem is how all the branches of the tech tree seem completely independent from each other. Again, systems which aren't interconnected but piled haphazardly one upon another, free to float past each other without interaction. In MTW, tech and economy were inextricably intertwined. FOTS does a decent job of this as well, with the clan development levels. Here, it's like there was no one sat down and thought about the game as a whole rather than as a checklist.

- The representation of armies. I'm talking very basically about the figures representing armies. They change from a dude to a horse to a ship without so much as a frame of animation between them. When Civ V did this (armies can simply embark without the need for transports), there was a very specific effect as the unit changed to a ship. Granted, it was a bit cheesy, but it showed awareness that the representation of a unit needs to have a certain weight. The sudden change from dude to horse and back again whenever you moved an army is the worst offender here. I know (I heard somewhere) that it's supposed to get rid of the silly fast-walking animation, but the effect now is not of an army but a few numbers being changed in the simulation. The way armies simply float past cities does not help.

- The lack of seasons. Everything feels the same from one turn to the next. In a game that represents history and the long passage of time, it's inexcusable to leave the player feeling like the only thing that changes is the turn counter ticking over.

Hm, is there more? I could complain about how early ranged units are basically useless. My Roman armies are mostly hastati, and slinger projectiles and javelins just bounce off them. Same with hoplites. There was a distinct moment, while I was drawing out hoplites with skirmishers, when I asked myself what the point was when the Roman heavy infantry (i.e., 90% of the units in the army) would just chew through everything anyway with no trouble at all.

I never managed to get very excited about this, for some reason, but I thought that would go away when I'm actually playing it. I guess it's still vaguely enjoyable, in an automatic kind of way, but it feels like the TW experience distilled to its most repetitive and inconsequential elements.

[ReluctantSamurai]

A good player still won often but you actually had to TRY, and even battles where the AI had better units than yours could be really scary. I still play a lot of M1 to this day, so I don't think this is just me rambling nostalgically- my 1st time back to M1 (after several years of an nvidia card that wouldn't run it), the computer HAMMERED me in an even battle, simply because I went into it hardly paying attention and apparently had become soft from being used to the RTW and beyond AI performance.

I still remember the times after the ETW fallout when many players were falling back to play earlier TW versions. Many of those coming back to play Shogun very quickly got their heads handed to them by the AI (My Lord! Your cowardly general has forsaken his honor and is running like whipped dog!).

[Dimeola]

...started my first campign as Athens and Sparta cut me off, so i`m making a hook around them to grab some land. Havent really played enough to have an opinion on specifics but it looks good, runs well on my machine and am looking forward to some multiplayer. One thing I wonder tho, they said it was very moddable but if they plan on dlc content will that interfere with modding? IE if we get some great mods will that cut into their dlc sales?

[Sir Moody]

I finished the prologue last night and I intend to start a campaign next week (when I have more time).

I sadly have the same impression as many here - it feels rushed and poorly planned.

A quick list of my problems (I will come up with a more detailed list once I start a proper campaign)

1) It runs really poorly on my system which is no slouch - it is fine on the campaign map but in battles it can REALLY lag at points and looks terrible - this may be a driver problem (wouldn't be the first time for nvidia...) but time will tell

2) Everything is too quick in the battles - fighting is over in seconds rather than minutes and unit cohesion is utterly non existent - I found my units finishing an engagement and then milling around in a clump rather than reforming into formation

3) cavalry is utterly devastating which makes NO sense - Roman cavalry was rubbish it should not be blitzing through formations with frontal charges... - I can understand the more cavalry heavy factions being this good but not Rome

4) The tech tree is just terrible - it seems to have no depth...

Things I did like

1) Naval battles are fun and Naval invasions work quite well

2) The New recruitment system works well and it feels right - this is how it should have always worked

Hopefully when I start a proper campaign and get to try out diplomacy it will get a bit more interesting but right now it isn't as good as Shogun...

[Shaitan]

Last TW I played was M2TW. ETW and S2TW is just not my scenario.


I played some turns into the prologue to get a feeling for the new TW.

I cannot save during the prologue. Why is this?

Campaign map runs well. We will see in the standard campaign. Cannot zoom enough out.

Graphics at the battle field look unfinished/unpolished. Flicker, jagged edges (despite activated AA) and low FPS. My system is well above recommended specs.

After 2 battles I already saw flaws in pathfinding, unit cohesion and battle speed.

I like the option to turn off selection circles and similar things (Is this new in R2TW?).


So I share the impression of others that the game feels unfinished and tuned to appeal to the masses. I feel the urge to fire up M2TW to see if it's only nostalgia or not what makes me thinking the old TW is/was better.

[benjywa]

Lets bring it back chaps
There is a lot of negativity going on and it's starting to read like a WOW forum!

I don't know how people are having lag issues - TURN DOWN THE GRAPHICS - I have a 2 year old i5 with what was a decent graphics card back then and it runs fine
Its not CA's fault your comp can't run high graphics games, they stated from the start, if you can run S2 you can run R2.

1 - Its beautiful - the battlefields feel so so much better, how LOS works and hiding units is way more realisic . Not worse... different
2 - Speed - I love the fact battles are faster, the units feel like they are walking/running and charging at the right pace. The old games always seemed slow, units were slow to move around. You haven't played a full campaign with so many more regions/ provinces and had to fight 2-3 battles per turn - not worse.. different
3 - The tech tree isn't worse either chaps - they are different for grecko romans and barbarians, You cant get and +happiness with Iceni until way into civic which I found to my detriment last night. S2 was 1 tech tree for all and most of it was junk like +1 attack - Not worse... different

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE play a full campaign before you start playing the negative cards

over 50 seasons into an Iceni campaign and I haven't even started to hit the continent yet! This feels a lot like S2 in many ways but 2 big differences so far
1 - It's absolutely HUGE in comparison
2 - the depth of units - there are a lot of variations in look and playstyle which is what I didn't like in S2 and missed from ME2

+ dont slate skirmishers - embrace them
1 - they scout now which is what you would have needed irl
2 - noone ever won a war with bows back then. The main 2 historical examples of bow pwnage are:
Longbows - mainly due to bodkin arrows and the french charging armoured knights up hills against dug in armour piecring bowmen - it was a new tech, machine guns did this in WW1
Mongols - this was down to a number of things, China and japan used to send out champions for 1v1 fighting as a big part of war, the mongols just shot them!

If you OP ranged DPS you trivialise everything else.

My impressions of skirmishers and iceni went
1 - these suck - they couldn't kill cattle
2 - ahh scouting is good they will stop me falling into traps, expensive but necessary cannon fodder
3 - holy cow when attacking you can break up formations with them and make them come to you, if they dont their infantry slowly die and rout
4 - omg if I tie up infantry they will sit on the flanks and slowly chew through units - way better to have 1 infantry holding a unit and skirmishers hitting them than 2 infantry units - it stops them getting in each others way and bogging down

Now I am up to 33% skirmisher - early days and I am sure it will change but I am liking them

[Shaitan]

I don't know how people are having lag issues - TURN DOWN THE GRAPHICS - I have a 2 year old i5 with what was a decent graphics card back then and it runs fine
Its not CA's fault your comp can't run high graphics games, they stated from the start, if you can run S2 you can run R2.

Some comments to that.

There are people can run S2TW just fine but R2TW lags considerably.
My PC is above recommended specs and the experience is not smooth. Also it will not get considerably better if I turn down the graphics. CA advertised it as very scalable. At the moment it's not.
The "Enhanced for Intel Core" looks like "runs bad on AMD".

At the end I'm pretty sure (read 'hope') the performance issues will be adressed via patch or new graphic drivers.

[Sir Moody]

Lets bring it back chaps
There is a lot of negativity going on and it's starting to read like a WOW forum!

I don't know how people are having lag issues - TURN DOWN THE GRAPHICS - I have a 2 year old i5 with what was a decent graphics card back then and it runs fine
Its not CA's fault your comp can't run high graphics games, they stated from the start, if you can run S2 you can run R2.

I have a 6 month old I7 and a GTX 680 - the game detects I should be playing at extreme but the game looks terrible and runs terrible - while it may not effect you there IS something wrong with the graphics - as I said it could be a driver issue and thus not CA's fault but the problem is there

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

The graphical glitches are very weird and slightly irritating. When I started the prologue battle I was a gasp at how terrible it all looked (I surely can't be the only one?)

I've been playing as Macedon and to be fair I'm enjoying parts of the campaign. Had some decent battles vs the Thracian tribe directly above right (not sure of the name) but some of the defending sieges I'm finding very easy even on legendary. The AI just mass themselves at the door with infantry throwing incendiaries at the gate, pour in and I deal with them with very little men. Its happened twice now with the Thracian lot and an Iberian tribe when I was playing as Carthage.

Also I think the power of Spartan needs to be altered slightly in a patch as they seem to be running riot especially against the Ptolemies.

I like to see my army march - I'm not to enamored with the new horse galloping effect.

[benjywa]

Ohnoes - I am so sorry - I had no idea

lagy graphics you can't fix will just ruin the whole experience... if you have been as excited about this as I havebeen I would be properly ****** off

Spartans - I started a campaign with them just to have a look at the units... English start with awful units (essentially peasant infantry and ranged, you need a few turns of teching just to get something that does any damage) and the only decent stuff is merc and x4 the upkeep, the spartans start with a bunch of pimping hoplites that would roll over most things

[Spoonska]

Played it for 16 1/2 hours yesterday, and most people here do a good job of voicing my frustrations and likes. So I'll keep it short and simple : Good not great, needs some TLC and it will get there.

[Barkhorn1x]

Lets bring it back chaps

I don't know how people are having lag issues - TURN DOWN THE GRAPHICS - I have a 2 year old i5 with what was a decent graphics card back then and it runs fine
Its not CA's fault your comp can't run high graphics games, they stated from the start, if you can run S2 you can run R2.

My battles run smooth as silk - but I get lag on the Camp Map during certain actions. So that's not my PC but poorly optimized code.

[Barkhorn1x]

Double post - deleted.

[Barkhorn1x]

I have a 6 month old I7 and a GTX 680 - the game detects I should be playing at extreme but the game looks terrible and runs terrible - while it may not effect you there IS something wrong with the graphics - as I said it could be a driver issue and thus not CA's fault but the problem is there

Officially CA has stated that Extreme is FUBARed - run on Ultra - it's much better.

[Sir Moody]

Officially CA has stated that Extreme is FUBARed - run on Ultra - it's much better.

I will try it when I get home and report back

[Kagemusha]

Based on few of the first impressions.Maybe better wait until some time next year before getting this one.

[rvg]

Judging by this thread, Rome 2 might become a decent game to buy on sale about a year from now.

[B-Wing]

Looked around the encyclopedia and it was a pain in the ass to navigate. Not to mention that scrolling and selecting is sluggish.

Whole-heartedly agree. I don't understand how they went backwards from Shogun 2's encyclopedia, which had its faults but was extremely helpful. And it actually had clickable links! There's really no point in ever opening the encyclopedia in Rome 2; it's borderline useless.

[Barkhorn1x]

Whole-heartedly agree. I don't understand how they went backwards from Shogun 2's encyclopedia, which had its faults but was extremely helpful. And it actually had clickable links! There's really no point in ever opening the encyclopedia in Rome 2; it's borderline useless.

I agree as well.

[Sir Moody]

I will try it when I get home and report back

Ultra does indeed run better but it still looks terrible... I am going to try a few more things...

[Sir Moody]

Ultra does indeed run better but it still looks terrible... I am going to try a few more things...

Ok running the new Nvidia Experience Optimisation for it has MASSIVELY improved my fps and it looks "better" (though still not great)

With Extreme I was getting ~20fps during the fighting at the end of the benchmark
With Ultra that increased to ~40fps
With the Nvidia Optimisations (which seem to be a mix of Ultra and High) I get ~60 with the lowest drop being 51 briefly

this would suggest there is something massively wrong with the high end graphics settings as my system is no slouch and usually the NVidia Experience profiles max my settings...

[BroskiDerpman]

Hmmm game seems ready for some sort of sale later like that Amazon one for Shogun 2 where it sold from 7.49 USD to 2.49 USD with all dlc halved in price.

:D. Win.

[Jacque Schtrapp]

Obviously there is a lot of work left to do in order to get the game up to the high standards we all have. I'll just share some of the more odd things I've seen so far in my Roman Normal campaign 150ish turns in:

Carthage lost Alalia to the Italian Rebels, then blockaded their port for 100+ turns. If someone else blockades a port, you apparently cannot siege the associated city and capture it.... even when you ally with the blockading faction (Carthage allied with Rome, I know, I know). Even after Carthage was eliminated on land, there was still that lonely Carthaginian fleet dedicated to blockading those dastardly Italian Rebels.

Sparta hates the Delmatae. Hates. In fact, Sparta hates them so much, they've sent the worlds first 20 stack against the Delmatae which has sat beside their city for nearly 100 turns. Just to be certain they had the most lopsided victory in history, Sparta sent three full fleets as reinforcements. Don't bother with silly things like a blockade. I like to think their daily conversations went like this: "Good night, Delmatae. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning." ~ Sparta.

Instead of a flood of single spear unit armies marching everywhere, we now have a flood of armies compromised of just a general. It seems every faction, including the single province factions, recruit the maximum number of generals available at all times, even if they have no units to go along with the general. The they march those general units everywhere.

Where are the large armies at? I've begun auto-resolving battles because I've only had two encounters in 150ish turns where the enemy had enough units that I didn't have a 90% + chance of winning through auto-resolve. Most armies are 10 units or less, often of poor quality (especially barbarians).

I'm sure it is explained somewhere, but what is with clouds swirling around fleet, armies that appear shrouded in green or red mist, and cities that have a hammer over them when there is nothing to build, upgrade, or repair?

Unless there is some trick I haven't figured out yet, enjoy the never ending hunt for the general, admiral, spy, champion, diplomat, whatever that just leveled up and spawned the "Are you sure you want to end turn without promoting, backslapping, huzzah-ing <hard to find idiot's name here>?"

In the early game, you will struggle with food and money. In the late game, you will struggle with happiness. And it won't matter. Every region of my empire is at or near max unhappiness, despite building and researching every positive order tech/building/unit in the game. I get 1-2 rebellions or slave revolts every turn. Rebellions usually consist of 5 or so weak units that are simply annihilated by whoever is close at hand. And I literally mean whoever. All of my allies and factions with whom I've agreed to military access have sent their troops to the areas where I am having rebellions. In fact, even Sparta, will trespass onto my territory, defeat a rebel army, and re-embark leaving me to try and figure out why I'm getting a trespass message about a Spartan fleet well outside my territorial waters (I caught them and another faction actually trespassing to get at the rebels a few turns later). The AI factions evidently H A T E rebels with a passion.

I do not understand the political functions at all. In the beginning, I had to deal with numerous intrigues and plots. Lately... nothing.... for over 50 turns. At present, my sole family member has enough odd traits to reduce his gravitas to zero and I still have a 73% approval rating. Other factions with leaders who have gravitas in the 20s have dropped from the teens to single digit approval. I have 5 armies and six fleets, only one of which has the family scion and dunce leading it and yet my popularity soars. Real life politicians everywhere will be closely monitoring Rome II TW in order to find out how to accomplish this feat.

The diplomacy feature is wonderfully beefed up. You can form real, that's right, R E A L alliances and your massive behemoth of an empire will not get stabbed in the back 2 turns later by single province faction XXXXii. It still has it's quirks though. A dozen turns after meeting the powerful Seleucids, they tried to sell themselves to me as a client state. I refused and they tried again a few turns later. I've ended more than a few wars, where I was assisting an ally, by taking my ally's enemy on as a client state as part of the peace agreement. Big mistake. That simply begins the barrage of both the ally and client state asking me every couple of turns when I will pull my head out of the great beyond and assist them in making sweet sweet war upon their former foe. You will also get oodles of trade offers from factions on the far side of the world who would love to trade with you if only you honor them with 50% of your net worth (non-negotiable). Then there are the tribes on the Baltic Sea that want you to buy them as client states, or later in the game, try to give themselves to you for free as client states.

Lastly, major factions get murdered far too easily. Egypt died in the first 20 turns. Carthage, destroyed. Seleucids, annihilated despite having a dozen satrapies still in existence. Suebi, done for. All have re-emerged, but so far done nothing and usually get wiped out again. I can attest to that personally, Carthage is like a cockroach that you keep having to kill over and over again. The thing is, they lost to a handful of Iberian factions, most of which never had more than a couple of provinces.

Final Grade = Incomplete. Need improvement.

[Veho Nex]

My personal rundown goes like this;

The good:
-A lot of people are complaining about compatibility but in my own experience the only lag I get is in battles with 10,000 men or when I'm streaming on vh graphics or higher.
-I enjoy the look and atmosphere of battles. Ive had more interesting fights against the AI in this in hard than on legendary and I think I might stick with that.
-My favorite part of the game at this moment are the combined naval land battles. The management can get a bit much when both fights are going at the same time and naval battles are a bit wonky but the tactical level it brings to the table more than makes up for it.
-The campaign AI has actually caught me by surprise a few times when it moved a large stack by my armies to besiege one of my vulnerable cities or attack me from behind.
-The campaign map is massive. When i first started I was shocked when I first moved the camera to the edge of the map. You can go pretty far east and north which would allow for some crazy empires
The Bad:
-The research trees are way to small for the scale and scope of the game. When I go from hastati to first cohorts by turn 20 I feel like I'm teching faster than anyone can keep up. With the ability to just keep researching into higher tiers without having any requirements allows for one to max out the military by turn 50 and work on economy after that.
-Spartans are all but unkillable. I understand they are a warrior elite, but, when a unit of war elephants hits them from behind while they are being worked over from the front by Macedonian pikes and they still come out on top with minimal losses it just makes you go batty.
-Some factions dont have enough unit diversity while others, e.g Rome/Carthage, have way too many. I hate to say it but Rome's 60 different auxiliary units get kinda old fast.
-Naval battles are odd. Maybe I just dont understand how they work or ramming doesnt do as much as it should. Either way they are weird.

The Ugly:
-Factions are missing units that they should be able to make. Athens, despite showing in the in-game wiki, has no ability to make low level melee ships. Their Assault Diremes - Militia Hoplites don't exist in any area except for the wiki.
-The battles are a blob of units looking at each other with 1 or 2 of 160 attacking at once. I don't understand how the units die so quick when so few on either side attack.
-Turns take too long to complete.

All in all I'm enjoying the game but I'm definitely waiting for a patch or two before I will recommend it.

[quadalpha]

I'm sure it is explained somewhere, but what is with clouds swirling around fleet, armies that appear shrouded in green or red mist, and cities that have a hammer over them when there is nothing to build, upgrade, or repair?

Unless there is some trick I haven't figured out yet, enjoy the never ending hunt for the general, admiral, spy, champion, diplomat, whatever that just leveled up and spawned the "Are you sure you want to end turn without promoting, backslapping, huzzah-ing <hard to find idiot's name here>?"

- I think the city with the hammer also appears when you can expand a city, which doesn't cost anything except population (or whatever that number that fills up with food is supposed to represent). Does that explain what you're seeing?

- All your generals should be visible in the politics screen and it'll tell you their locations too. And I think there's an agent map view somewhere.

[BroskiDerpman]

I got to thank you guys for stating your thoughts on the game. Now I know (confirmed) Rome 2 if bought is either when it hits gold edition or a dirt cheap sale.


Metacritic seems to be on rage mode as so far it dropped from 6.3 to a 5.0 quite fast! Wow!

[Liberator]

- The campaign map does not zoom out enough. You can barely see two provinces at once. There is of course the strategic view, but that is another layer of abstraction that doesn't connect viscerally with anything else. It's just another screen added on because the main system does not do the job.

That was my first impression. can't...zoom...out...
Really stupid, after a day of hard choices and bloody battles, it was a great feeling to zoom out and look at your realm from a distance. Seems like these days are gone.

[CaptainCrunch]

@ Jacque Schtrapp - LMAO!! Great review man, my favorite so far

... Spartans are all but unkillable. I understand they are a warrior elite, but, when a unit of war elephants hits them from behind while they are being worked over from the front by Macedonian pikes and they still come out on top with minimal losses it just makes you go batty...

Were these the standard ones or the Heroes of Sparta? Were they leveled up at all? Just curious, so far I've found them to be positively average along with some of the other heroic units. Then again inconsistency has been the name of this game so far for me. Anyway, I hope all the play balancing and magic weapons stuff will get addressed by the first realism mod.

[Hooahguy]

Right now my main complaint is a dumb AI (though campaign AI seems to be at least half competent- enemy noticed a giant hole in my defenses and struck my capital. Just barely saved it) and the UI, at least for battles. I mean by the Gods, I cant have the unit section open and see whats going on at the same time! Its way too large! At least make it scalable.

Graphics seem to be fine for me, no problems.

[BroskiDerpman]

Seems like Seleucids are mostly done. Seleucids have been unlocked!

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...leucid-Faction

Though other factions are locked causing errors if you enable them. CA use to during Shogun 2 would say its unintentional but it's all planned. (True, was reading old threads)

Let the dlcs roll baby!