State of the Mod Address, Fall 2013: We're Almost There

[gstephenopolous]

It's not nostalgia that makes Rome 1 (and the wonderful EB mod) better than Rome 2, not at all. It's the same as how the first Pokemon games (Blue, Red and Yellow) were better than the most modern ones (X and Y). This isn't nostalgia at all, the games back then were more lovingly made. Nowadays the ultimate goal of most games is "How can we design this to make as much money as possible?" whereas back then it was "How can we design this to give the best experience of ancient civilizations trading and fighting with each other?".

I bought Rome 2 the day it was released almost a year ago and I've still only played it for 19 hours. 18 of those hours were in the first 3 days of it being released, 1 of those hours was last week when I reinstalled it again to see if it was good yet (it's not, I uninstalled it again).

So a few weeks ago I installed Rome 1 again, no mods, just vanilla Rome 1 fully patched up. I played for a few hours and enjoyed it a million times more than Rome 2. The music is better, there's a family tree, my generals and family members all have tons of traits and retinues, there are more buildings, I can connect my empire with roads and naval battles are way better in Rome 1. HOW CAN NAVAL BATTLES BE BETTER IN ROME 1 WHEN IT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE NAVAL BATTLES!?!?!? Because naval battles in Rome 2 are horrendously boring, tedious AND pointless.

Then I installed the EB mod (which I have played for thousands of hours since it was released back in 2006 or 2007) and got so immersed in it that 5 hours of real life passed by, even though all I had done is started a game as the Seleukids and played about 8 turns (2-years). I was reading building and unit descriptions, character biographies and traits and retinues, installing different types of governments in my provinces (I absolutely love how you can have homeland and vassal type provinces with the government system in EB1) and so on and so on. I can barely play Rome 2 for 30 minutes without getting bored. I can play EB1 for 5 hours just reading the unit and building descriptions and listening to that beautiful music, imagining the way people lived back then quite clearly thanks to the detailed descriptions of everything which just suck you right in to the game.

Can't wait for EB2!

I wish I'd given my $60 to the EB team instead of buying Rome 2. Still hurts to see it on my Steam games list.

[moonburn]

got the same experience with the seulekids but my 1st 2 years lost me 8 hours