General impressions

[V.T. Marvin]

Hello EB2 fans,

hopefully your download and installation proceeded without too much trouble. Now we are eager to hear about your first impressions from playing the game for the first time. Your feedback is important for us to fine-tune various gameplay mechanics in order to provide even better experience in our next official release. So have fun and share your thoughts!

[I_damian]

Alright, been playing for 2 hours, though the vast majority of it was spent reading unit/building descriptions. First of all, I had no problems installing and I love everything. It's perfect.

The loading times are really fast, faster than I expected. I don't have an SSD but they're really fast compared to EB1.

I love how every province has a region description detailing the geography and history and any wonders there. I spent about an hour reading these alone!

In vanilla M2TW there was a feature in battle where you could "ping" all friendly and enemy troops, highlighting them. It's gone in EBII (unless I just can't see it) and I'd really like it back if possible. With each unit having so many different types of soldier (this is great) it can get really difficult sometimes to see who is who.

Bug - in battle, when sending a second unit up a ladder after the first unit has gone on the wall, the second unit stands on the parapets of the wall but does not move down on to the wall to fight. They get stuck as far as I can tell.

[moisesjns]

Just got done installing it. Got it running im installing your grahp mod. Game starts at first with small screen went to options changed it to my resolution. Restarted game after applying changes game starts full screen now. I have 2 crossfire 7850 amd and this may be exclusive to dual graph set up but nothing thats hard to fix.

second update. Game crashes for me at custom battle. odd. But oh well.


Everything is up and running. Im playing along in my campaign as Saka Rauka. Im hoping for indo greek units. But i doubt they are in.

Game is running great no slow time speed or nothing and im not even on SSD. Thank you very much EB 2 team i am really enjoying it. You guys are great at this modding.



4th Update. As of playing a battle and using campaign map. I have to say the blur from the EB 2 grahpics submod is too much for me to handle.

[kdrakak]

nope... here is what I got

Kingdoms disk in DVD drive. Correct Kingdoms install path... I guess

[I_damian]

I didn't install to kingdoms path, just the M2TW path (the one already in the box in the installer). Also you don't need the Kingdoms disk in the drive, just the normal M2TW disk.

[bovi]

nope... here is what I got

Kingdoms disk in DVD drive. Correct Kingdoms install path... I guess

Try this.

[Tonno]

Runing it for about 10 mins... this mode... everything Rome 2 should have been.

Tried Tutorial campaing, it crashed. :)
Grand works perfectly.

[kdrakak]

I didn't install to kingdoms path, just the M2TW path (the one already in the box in the installer). Also you don't need the Kingdoms disk in the drive, just the normal M2TW disk.

That seems actually wrong damian. You DO need the Kingdoms CD. Bovi Thanx for the fix. That worked. Had grant write permissions to the EBII folder to extract there. But it worked. I think I'll enjoy my drink now, seed, catch up on a sitcom or other series. I can play EBII... the world is now right (more or less) and I need to change me signature. :)

[I_damian]

That seems actually wrong damian. You DO need the Kingdoms CD. Bovi Thanx for the fix. That worked. Had grant write permissions to the EBII folder to extract there. But it worked. I think I'll enjoy my drink now, seed, catch up on a sitcom or other series. I can play EBII... the world is now right (more or less) and I need to change me signature. :)

Yeah I just realized I have the M2TW GOLD edition, so one CD which is both M2 and Kingdoms. Glad you got it working!

[kdrakak]

and now for the general impression: I think I am in love again but dont tell my wife plz. Played the custom battle. Completely out of my element in MTWII battles after so many years on EBI. Played as the Kelts (yes Brennus... the Kelts) and won but I really had very little control of what was going on. I need to readjust my tactical awareness skills. Having a buzz going didn't help... or did it?
All hail the EBII team!!! in deed damian.
This game is trully beautiful
BIG thanx from all of us... really.

[Kull]

Runing it for about 10 mins... this mode... everything Rome 2 should have been.

Tried Tutorial campaing, it crashed. :)
Grand works perfectly.

Hilarious - completely forgot that we left the Tutorial campaigns in there. It was an idea whose time never came - Not sure if they ever worked! Thanks for spotting that, will make a note to remove these

[The Outsider]

Hey guys, first of all thank you for all your efforts over the years. The mod is great. It installs and runs fine, however, for some wierd reason it runs in a small window, not full screen. I tried changing video settings but it doesnt help. I have installed the graphics sub mod so maybe thats the problem though i dont know how to uninstall it. Any help would be appricieted. Thanks again.

[Skald]

Wow im at a loss for words guys (for once lol). Install went smooth as silk. Played a few custom battles with my sweboz against boii and others and was like wow this is what i really was waiting for when i bought rome2. Now Im only a few minutes into the grand campaign but its just so rich and polished...i like the intro movie at the beginning of each campaign. Great job guys. I had 1 ctd so far but it may be related to clicking too many faction icons like someone else already said. You boys did good Thank You All again. Now to disappear for a few days into my mancave.

[Leon the Batavian]

Its just beautiful.

Smooth install.

The real EB feel.

Working so far as I can see.

Thank you EB team for yet another brilliant mod!

(steam user)

[easytarget]

ugh, download speeds are slow and i don't torrent, guess i'll have to wait till tomm to see it, oh well, can't wait

[rickinator9]

I love it! Installation went smooth. The campaign map looks gorgeous. I do have some issues though:
- Ephesus uses Latin spelling in a sea of Greek spelled cities.
- I am not sure if it is working as intended, but running Phalangites are very slow and the running animation for them looks a bit odd in my opinion.

[Tux]

ugh, download speeds are slow and i don't torrent, guess i'll have to wait till tomm to see it, oh well, can't wait

We made some mirrors:
http://www.moddb.com/downloads/europ...-first-release
http://www.gamefront.com/files/files/24436562/EB2.zip

Enjoy!

[moisesjns]

Tux. I believe you may want to let the Users know that by turning off their google chrome or web browser and just let the game download the speed increases drastically. I was going a steady 50 kbps untill i turned off steam and google chrome and was getting 500 kbps.

[adishee]

It's amazing, so nice to have this game back. I haven't noticed any bugs yet, it's far more stable than EB1's beta...

[Bambi]

I think it's just great. I play the Pritanoi and had no crashes or the like.

[a completely inoffensive name]

First impression is that this is more amazing than I imagined. So much text to read brings out the uniqueness every region and makes me feel for the people living there.

I have played for about an hour and the only thing to suggest so far is tweaking the temple bonuses to make them more diverse and specialized.

[Moros]

First impression is that this is more amazing than I imagined. So much text to read brings out the uniqueness every region and makes me feel for the people living there.

I have played for about an hour and the only thing to suggest so far is tweaking the temple bonuses to make them more diverse and specialized.

This happens, but requires the higher level of temple buildings.

[olly]

Due to missing this last night I only managed to play twenty mins before work so did a quick turn as pergamon as it is new and small.

Loved that you could recruit some elite units from the start and also the music was marvellous. Not sure what to do with those minor settlements though, are they just forts?

Played one battle against rebels and that seemed good but I play on a laptop so the controls were not right and I need to sort that out next time which may not be for a day or two. At a distance the units all looked brilliant.

Install was the easiest I've seen on a mod and I am playing on Steam. The intro video was brilliant as well.

All in all it is a fantastic game I'll drop more hours into then I can remember.

Also I started reading more history when I start playing EB1 (a lot more) and not sure I can increase the ammount again unless the descriptions in EB2 are included. If not please suggest a good book about the successor kingdoms which is affordable!

Thanks again it's brilliant!

[mmiki]

I spent 2 hours mostly reading province and building descriptions. Brilliant stuff.

[bovi]

for some wierd reason it runs in a small window, not full screen

Because the loading times are... not the best, particularly when starting the game, I believe most people will want to have it windowed so that they can do other stuff while it's loading.

I think you should be able to get it fullscreen by editing M2TW/mods/EBII/EBII.cfg, and setting windowed = 0 instead of windowed = 1. But we've got an issue with the game overwriting the changes you do, so it may not work. Hopefully we can get rid of that problem soon.

[Lysandros]

I just fought a battle on the campaign map as Ptolemaioi against an equal force of Nabataens (Med./Med. difficulty). I'm very happy that most of the time I didn't know whether I'd be winning, though I started out on a low hill and shamelessly took advantage of the higher ground. But even then, it was a hard fight! Some units of mine were routed, and equally some of the enemy's. Battles seem much more exciting now! What an advancement!
Regarding the game's look, all the buidlings, the government system and appointing philoi and all that, you have surely done well. I like it very much so far!
Now... give me Kataphraktoi and Argyraspides!

I crashed to desktop while clicking through all factions in the campaign menu, and the game froze/didn't react anymore (but surprisingly wasn't listed as "not responding" in the task manager) after much clicking of mine through settlement menus. This was a Seleucid campaign. The icons were replaced with some other picture files (perhaps a unit or menu background/icon? I saw grass and spears where the "settlement details" and other buttons were supposed to be) just before. I try to make a screen when it happens again, reminded me of the blank unit cards of RTW which here were filled out with something.

[I_damian]

I've had the same freeze, except mine was when I was clicking on factions in the screen where you select which faction to play as. I clicked on them really quick to look at their position on the map (was trying to find Pergamon) and it froze. Perhaps it's due to clicking on too many things, too many times, too fast?

Siege battles take a looooooooooooooong time. I just took Rhegion as Roma. They have 4 units of Samnite Hastati, a Leves and a Toxotai. I had a full legion... took me like an hour to take the city. That was even with attacking the town center from 4 directions and speeding the game up to 6x speed.

[Skoran]

It looks great, it feels great, it plays great.
Encoutered some bugs but nothing mayor.

Couple of questions:
- Is their a way to remove the HUD with 1 key? It was possible in EB
- Can you remove the banners that float above the soldiers?
- How do you remove the cutscenes (like gate breached and stuff)?

[Lysandros]

Played further as the Seleukids - couldn't resist. And I now see how you made it difficult for them, I think... relations get worse and worse... and I refused to give up settlements... let's see who is the mightiest king! I first invested in shrines to keep up order at reasonable levels. Then I got into debt. Into debt! I cannot remember when this had happened last. I wasn't prepared for it happening and only realised the red number a few turns later. One really has to take decisions on what to build and where. I did not disband many units as I thought I'd rather use them, but I guess one could have an easier start if one does - at a reasonable scale - and then invest the thus gained surplus into economy. Anyway, I'm building a Didaskaleion in Antiocheia now in the hope of gaining better traits and more profit by that for my philoi and other generals and family members.
Further remarks:
1. Eastern skirmishers seem quite expensive in relation to other units, how comes that? I can imagine they are more useful now, but is their upkeep intended to be as high as it is now?
2. I'm rather confused by the public order value. It seems far less affected by garrisons than in RTW, I knew that from plain MTW2. But I still don't know what affects it most. Is public unrest caused mainly by the different culture value? Because I placed spies in some towns who frequently rebel, but it seems not to have any impact.
3. Forgot the most important thing: it's great fun to play, thank you all very much, and I didn't have another crash! It was well worth waiting for wonderful EB2.

[Elminster12]

I just put in about an hour or so with the Bosporan Kingdom. Looks nice. Coming from EB1, it was easy to sort things out. Fought a few minor battles, built a few structures, nothing major.
I do have a criticism of the UI: it's all but impossible to read your treasury balance on the main screen if it's negative(i.e. red text) because it's on a reddish-brown background(at least with whatever UI the Bosporan Kingdom uses). I either need to strain my eyes to read it, or crack open the treasury page. The yellow text for a positive balance shows up just fine though.
Other than that, it seems pretty great.