Unbelievable problems...

[VersusAllOdds]

I've played every single TW game, from release. I've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours on each of them.

So, introduction:

-I loved STW for being the first, for pretty much opening the genre. It was somewhat arcade comparing to the future TW titles, but it was awesome, just as every first timer is awesome.
-MTW? The religion, the multitude of cultures, factions, crusades, fleets, trade... It was great! The impredictability of campaign AI, and the true difficulty was great. Diplomacy was pretty insignificant, but it was fun fighting everyone.
-RTW? The first 3D game. I'm sure we drooled quite for a while being stunned by the graphics, and by the new things the game implemented. RTW battles were never ever surpassed, and I'm speaking about the multiplayer element. I played hundreds of those battles in LAN with friends. The AI wasn't that smart, diplomacy was non-existant with the perma-port blockade, but the game had a great feel.
-M2TW? Ok, now this is where the series started stagnating. Very few improvements from RTW. But ok, it was cool. The diplomatic backstabbing was back, and the ridiculous autoresolve was there (3x Mailed knights vs 2x Muslim archers, I win with 50% of knighst surviving), but meh, it was playable.
-ETW+Napoleon. Now, this game had bugs, and I mean bugs. What bothered me the most were the fleets, the game crashing upon their merger... The battle AI was idiotic. The campaign AI was as passive as passive gets, all it did was sending one unit stacks and perma-destroyed your minor settlements... you could annihilate the entire France by just taking 2 settlements. The trade and the size of the map were good, but the game was a clear step backwards.
-S2TW. The bright hope! Many things were fixed, and battles were playable first time from RTW. For the first time since MTW, defending a fortress was actually a pretty good thing. The realm divide, the attrition, agents. It was pretty good. A step forwards.

And now we have R2TW.

So, okay, let's ignore the obvious bugs and glitches. They alone are enough to destroy this game's rating, but let's say CA will fix them one day, no matter how the release was unacceptable.

I want to talk here about 2 things that have been haunting all the TW games.

1) The lack of diplomacy

Being a TW fan, I always thought it was quite hard to make good diplomacy. I thought CA did their best. I thought, "what the heck", it's Total War, you're supposed to bash everything and everyone. And then I met Crusader Kings 2, and in fact Paradox Interactive.

In CK2, this is how it basically works. You declare war upon someone, for say a chunk of his land. Then you both call in allies if you wish, and you fight and all. The more of his troops you kill, you get better warscore. The more regions of his you hold, you get a better warscore. If you occupy the region of interest, you get bonus warscore. Once warscore reaches 100%, you enforce your demands and sign peace. Logical, right?

What happens in R2TW? Well, let's assume AI takes 7 regions. AI is, as we all know incapable of doing that, because it is completely idiotic, but let's be generous. So you attack him, and take 5 regions from him, and decide to spare him? Nope. Unacceptable. It doesn't matter you are an empire with 80 regions. Fight on. So you're either left in an eternal war, or have to completely destroy him. Idiotic. As if he doesn't want to live!

It's also spectacular, how the AI demands 20% of your entire budget for, say, a trade agreement. Or for a ceasefire, when you have 80x more power he does.

The funniest thing is, THIS HAS BEEN GOING FOR 9 YEARS OF TW GAMES. As far as I'm amazed by CA not doing ANYTHING to fix this, I'm further amazed by fans not even addressing this. Who gives a **** about graphics, when there's no strategy in a STRATEGY game???

2) The lack of AI

And I'm not talking about battle AI. It's incredibly buggy, it's as if we played a game in the 90s, when AIs had to cheat to make balance. Having it circle around like sheep is painful to watch considering it's 2013 and it's CA.

I'm talking about campaign AI, and it's complete lack of... of ANYTHING. It doesn't use armies at all. It either suicides it on your own city walls, or keeps them at his own settlements. I have had ONE large battle, where I had my 15-20 units pitted against enemy's same number. All the other battles are like 20vs3 units. This AI is even more passive than Empire's, if that's even possible.

Playing as Macedon, I keep Illyria, Thrace, Macedonia, Hellas in Europe. I also have everything from there to Susa. So I decide, what the hell, let's just transfer 7/9 armies east, I want to follow the steps of Alexander. Yeah. I quickly realized that I don't have to keepn ANY troops on the European CONTINENT. It doesn't matter that I have 6-7 AI barbarian factions around me, that have 2-3 stacks in their single settlements dying of hunger... Why in the world would they want to take the rich, undefended fruits of the Greeks? It's unbelievable. No challenge whatsoever.

You know how they managed it in CK2? You play as the father and have 2 sons. You are old and they are in their prime, with the first son set to inherit everything. But the second one is sure not gonna sit around and watch. He plots to kill his older brother. The game is designed so that he clearly sees what's standing between him and more power. He may fail, but he's gonna try! Isn't that simple enough to implement? AI wants more power, and sees a clear way to do it. Why not just do it?

Why not just send your 3 stacks and take 5 of my unoccupied settlements?

----

I am perplexed that CA have not made this game to be the first one with actual usable diplomacy, and competitive AI.

Oh and yeah. Try Crusader Kings 2. Try any other Paradox Interactive's strategy. You will laugh at your own self for ever playing the Total War franchise.

[Myth]

The campaign AI is being fixed with patch 3, they said it's because the AI is getting erroneous feedback and thus is stumped for what to do.

I agree that after so many titles they should have polished the games and worked out the formula. However, I think M2TW is better than Rome 1.

[Hooahguy]

Like Myth has said, Im fairly certain that the brain is working, its just not always getting the correct signals from the nerves. Ive been in a number of battles where the AI showed competence, and of course, others where its been so brain-dead I was pretty sure it was in a coma.

Same with the CAI. Sometimes its smart, like realizing that their 10 unit army wont stand a chance in an open field battle against my 20-unit elite stack, so they fell back to their fortified city where they can defend much better instead of wasting their units in a small town battle which I will almost surely win. Another time they drew out my armies, then snuck past and attacked my now undefended towns. But of course, other times they do stupid things like besiege fortified towns with 4 units.

Considering that I have seen competent AI, I am fairly convinced that it is something that can be fixed.

I also think it is unfair to compare CKII and the TW games. One is a turn based-world domination/real time battle game and the other is a family survival game. The political system in CKII is unmatched, in my opinion, but the battles are very, very shallow. Its merely a numbers game and there is very little that you can do to influence the tide of battle once the ball gets rolling. Dont get me wrong, I love CKII, its one of my favorite games, but in no way does it satisfy my itch that the TW games do. And the warscore thing can be annoying at times. Want only one or two of the enemy's territories? Okay, fine, defeat the enemy army, lay siege to the territory in question, capture it. Warscore at 35%. Great, now what? Now I have to invade the enemy lands to lay siege to even more towns just to get the warscore up to 100%. During which time the enemy can raise even more armies to attack you. Annoyed me at times. And when I got rich enough and large enough, mercenaries were essential to keep up an empire, as your tiny retinue is laughably unable to protect your realm. And dont get me started on long wars.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Maybe it was the CAI designers that were stumped and/or getting erroneous feedback:inquisitive:

You would think that some communication and play-testing could have prevented this:


have 2-3 stacks in their single settlements dying of hunger

I'm not sure if the passive AI is a design decision or something to do with the 3D map, because you know full well that a STW/MTW AI would find that weakness and continually hammer at it until it got what it was after, or you destroyed them. For anyone who played an Oda 1580 campaign in S1 on expert setting, you know what I'm talking about~:eek:

I long ago gave up on the idea that there would actually be something called diplomacy in TW games instead of a steady diet of "THE BLACK KNIGHT". If it hasn't happened by now, more than likely it won't ever happen.


Considering that I have seen competent AI, I am fairly convinced that it is something that can be fixed

I'm not so sure:shrug: I'm beginning to think that those who point to the inherent flaws in the Warscape game engine might have some valid points concerning the AI.

I've said this before...when the honeymoon is over, can you see yourself still playing R2 in 6months or a year?

[Hooahguy]

I've said this before...when the honeymoon is over, can you see yourself still playing R2 in 6months or a year?

Not sure, because some games I was convinced I would play for years (ArmaIII) I dont really play anymore, and other games which I thought I would play once and never touch again (SR3) I still play.

Only time will tell.

[Jacque Schtrapp]

So you're either left in an eternal war, or have to completely destroy him. Idiotic. As if he doesn't want to live!


I think this may depend on the personality of the faction you are fighting. I've had a few factions fight until the bitter end. I usually have to be the one to ask for peace and often they won't accept unless you offer them something, even as simple as making them a client state/satrapy. The larger my empire grows, the more I have factions actually asking for peace. In fact, if one of my client states is attacked and I join the war, I always get a peace request from the offending faction that same turn.

I haven't actually given any thought to looking at their personality until I read your post and began to theorize on why our experiences might be different. Now I'll have to keep an eye out and see if "aggressive" factions fight differently then "defensive" ones.

[Sp4]

I really don't like that the campaign AI is so passive but maybe it's a good thing, considering they don't do much better in the battles =P Now you can avoid them by just not attacking them. Soon it will be annoying XD

[VersusAllOdds]

I have yet to see campaign AI doing anything but holding out in the settlements. I had 1 field battle in ~140 turns of my first (and last) campaign. My game crashes at the very end of the turn time (I waited the 3min AI turn for three times to make sure it wasn't a one time thing). Good bye, CA!


I'm not sure if the passive AI is a design decision or something to do with the 3D map, because you know full well that a STW/MTW AI would find that weakness and continually hammer at it until it got what it was after, or you destroyed them. For anyone who played an Oda 1580 campaign in S1 on expert setting, you know what I'm talking about~:eek:

The also knew how to defend strongpoints. I remember how half of my STW games were revolving around holding Shinano, the most important province in all the series combined!


I've said this before...when the honeymoon is over, can you see yourself still playing R2 in 6months or a year?

Heh, nicely put :)

I'd also like to add that this corporate bs about DLCs and stuff is really, really low. I mean, now you have to pay for the Greeks, or preorder crap blindly? More DLCs will come, be sure. It's like selling you a car without wheels, and then selling a wheel at a time.


... about Warscore...

I only wanted to point out a logical way of resolving wars. Maybe CK2's warscore is off, but it's a much better idea then being at war with the Etruscan League that I haven't even seen for 80yrs just because they jumped in defense of a faction that's long gone.

And that has been going on in every TW game so far, the state of perpetual war.

[Hooahguy]

I do agree with you that diplomacy is way off in the TW games, although that comes with a shallow diplomacy system. You dont declare wars for a certain province or title like you do in CKII, you just declare war. Which I think is a failing of the TW system- war ambitions arent clearly stated for the AI, so while you really just wanted that one province, the AI is thinking that you are going for total annihilation, and as such, wont stop until either one of you is dead, even if you offer peace. For instance, in my current game, Im at war with two tiny Celtic tribes that I havent really gotten around to defeating yet, and even though I offer peace, they refuse, even though I have 7 armies and they have 1.

What I think needs to change is the diplomacy options when it comes to war. Not jut declaring war, but picking a specific reason why might be better when it comes to AI decisions. For instance, when you declare war, if there was an option that said "I am claiming such-and-such territory" or "I will kill you all," then maybe when you actually got that territory, depending on the characteristics of that faction (peaceful, warlike, etc) they would either sue for peace or do everything they can to take it back. And if you were going for total annihilation as you stated in your declaration of war, then they wouldnt accept peace unless they were winning or something because you made your intentions clear beforehand. As for allies of your enemies sticking to their guns, yeah, its another problem that I personally havent encountered, but I sympathize with.

[AntiDamascus]

Not gonna lie, all those issues sound "believable"

[BroskiDerpman]

Since I believe this is the right thread to have some repetition from my previous posts.

To further simplify my posts I'll say: The game needs a ton of patches, the dreaded dlcs, and mods. Even then the game imo won't be completed and polished enough. So I won't say this is an awesome game but it's ok imo, fun for a while before I move on to greener pastures.

[komnenos]

I remember that CA before releasing R2TW said that when you play as an barbarian faction and start a war, it would increase your popularity and make your people happy. But when I play as Arverni I didn't see this feature.

[MadKow]

Not jut declaring war, but picking a specific reason

IIRC, there used to be the option of trading territory, and the threat of war as bargaining tool. This could lead to something like you sugest: "Give territory X, or we will declare war". Theoretically one could bully lesser nations into submission.

[Sp4]

I remember that CA before releasing R2TW said that when you play as an barbarian faction and start a war, it would increase your popularity and make your people happy. But when I play as Arverni I didn't see this feature.

Try again and look closely. It's not a huge bonus.

[BroskiDerpman]

How much of a bonus is it? Just a few points or so?

[Sp4]

It's a really tiny bonus BUT... if you manage to be at war with 20 factions that somehow border you, it's like having a free colosseum or something.. Free as long as you don't count the cost of being at war =S

Actually it's kind of crap because some barbarian factions get a public order hit, simply from being.. you know, unwashed, unshaved, uncivilised savages that live in trees.

[Suraknar]

Nice posts all.

VersusAllOdds...

Your mention of Shinano, put a smile in my Face, this is a province name I will never forget! LOL Epic Epic battles in Shinano (STW).

I am also one to dislike this DLC marketing approach. Because instead of adding value, they simply take value out of the release product only to sell in parts...

I think the big plan with Rome II is to sell Playable Factions, some people report that many factions are under developed in terms of unit variety/diversity...so I would not be surprised if that is their plan.

On the other hand, over at TWCenter some people already unlocked all Factions to be playable... So not sure how all that will fit together. Again I simply feel it is a bad marketing approach with a game that has such a following (it has been over 10 years imagine), AND a modding community...

It feels like they are selling us oranges without Vitamin C inside ;) And we have to buy the Vitamin C separably.


Now for the AI, I think it will be addressed as are all the various Bugs, for that I have no doubts. Rome II will, when fixed be a great game to play for a very long time.

I absolutely LOVE the revamp of the strategic map play and all the little details revolving around t. Heck even the economy is, for once Great for the pace of the game (and my style of play).

The only thing I miss in this one, is the ability to have a Custom Formation in battles. I mean, as much as I loved the formation Types in STW, in Rome and also in Rome II I like to make my own formations with units on deployment...

I am hoping it is a bug (or that I am missing something), but the formation I group the units with simply does not hold...I have to choose one of the preset formations for the units to hold their positions...

Also I do agree with the sentiment that diplomacy is missing something in Rome II.



Cheers!

[Shaitan]

...
The only thing I miss in this one, is the ability to have a Custom Formation in battles. I mean, as much as I loved the formation Types in STW, in Rome and also in Rome II I like to make my own formations with units on deployment...

I am hoping it is a bug (or that I am missing something), but the formation I group the units with simply does not hold...I have to choose one of the preset formations for the units to hold their positions...

Also I do agree with the sentiment that diplomacy is missing something in Rome II.



Cheers!

Did you try Ctrl+G?

[Myth]

Play with Patch 3. If it's too easy, start with a facion other than Rome which is by design - overpowered when controlled by a human player. Play on Legendary. If you take a 1 settlement faction in the middle of freakin' nowhere that doesn't have wine, olive oil, glassware and tons of grain at it's disposal (resources and upgrading minor settlements to produce them is the best way to get lots of money in the early game. More resources = more trade and more factions willing to sign trade agreements = more money) you will see how difficult the game could be.

Even in my 130 turn Rome game I had some sneaksie Gauls using mutliple agents to incite rebellion in my province, hoping that if the rebels took it they could come and liberate it and i'd let it slide. Seriously, that is some next level stuff and a trick usually people ( Andres) do!

Starting as the Avernii has shown me that R2 can and will challenge you. A 1 settlement faction with 2-3 settlement provinces around it (mostly 2 settlement) where your early game units consist of low morale levies (unlike the disciplined principes/legionaires/pretorians). You can't autoresolve because you will get smeared and your low defence and armour values mean you can at most, hope for a phyrric victory. So you must lead, and lead well! The AIs all clump up to fight you if they tink you overextend. You don't have money to throw around into province development and you can't afford liberties with the tech research because if you stay at spear warband and slinger level sooner or later someone will come with his elites and crush you. Yet you need to research architecture and fields too...

As far as battles are concerned the AI is OK. It doesn't let you go inside a city easily and beware if they have boiling oil. If it has access to high morale units and the fight drags out it can really exploit gaps in your broken down lines to flank you.

If you don't beleive me, pick a fight with Sparta early on. Their infantry has enough morale for a battle to last almost 20 minutes and then you will see how they encircle isolated units and shred them. You will never scoff at Heroes of Sparta again.

[fallen851]

Play with Patch 3. If it's too easy, start with a facion other than Rome which is by design - overpowered when controlled by a human player. Play on Legendary. If you take a 1 settlement faction in the middle of freakin' nowhere that doesn't have wine, olive oil, glassware and tons of grain at it's disposal (resources and upgrading minor settlements to produce them is the best way to get lots of money in the early game. More resources = more trade and more factions willing to sign trade agreements = more money) you will see how difficult the game could be.


I want you to think about what you are saying: Don't play the game to win, play it to lose and then you'll see how difficult it can be.

I agree that the game CAI is getting somewhat better, but RTW II is no different than any other TW I've played in that the game is downright easy. Be nice if they had defined AI profiles. Like this faction never techs much, it just produces low level units and takes territory. Once it has X amount of terrority it stops and gets rich, then hires a lot of Mercs to supplement it's army and keeps expanding (merc prices need to come down for this to work). And another faction techs and turtles until they reach this milestone, then take X amount of territory and then continue up the tech tree until they reach another milestone, and so on. These are very simple AI profiles, and while I'm sure CA tried to something along these lines (probably far more advanced) it is just doesn't seem to work.

If every TW game, the AI just seems to try to do everything, and ends up doing nothing well.

[ReluctantSamurai]

If every TW game, the AI just seems to try to do everything, and ends up doing nothing well.

Amen to this. Scripting may be used now, or not, but if done in a logical manner, might help point the AI in a direction that allows a particular faction to gain strength and development. I remember the scripts from R1 like "Fortified Stalin" or "Craftsman Caesar", etc. which influenced what temples got built and what troops got created, but did little to affect aggressiveness, which IMHO is one of the biggest shortcomings of TW AI's.

[Myth]

I want you to think about what you are saying: Don't play the game to win, play it to lose and then you'll see how difficult it can be.

Where did I say that ? I said: play on the highest difficulty level and don't take an easy, large and rich starting faction like Rome if you want to be challenged.

I'm tired of people who played a Medium campaign with Rome on patch 1, loaded their arses off, and now come back to tell me how dumb the AI was and how bugged the game is.

[easytarget]

Honestly, you need to seriously re-think your point here.

If you think you're making a valid argument by telling players how they should play the game, and make the absolutely absurd suggestion they shouldn't play Rome in a game called Rome 2, you've gone completely off the rail.

[antisocialmunky]

Honestly, you need to seriously re-think your point here.

If you think you're making a valid argument by telling players how they should play the game, and make the absolutely absurd suggestion they shouldn't play Rome in a game called Rome 2, you've gone completely off the rail.

Please calm down guys, I'm pretty sure he was just saying: "If you want a more challenging game pick a harder faction or harder settings on the latest patch." Rome is the intro faction so it has a strong starting position, I don't think you can say its harder than Parthia or one of the other factions.

[Myth]

Honestly, you need to seriously re-think your point here.

If you think you're making a valid argument by telling players how they should play the game, and make the absolutely absurd suggestion they shouldn't play Rome in a game called Rome 2, you've gone completely off the rail.

I am not telling players how to play the game. I myself have an ongoing Rome campaign. I am telling the whiners to quit their whining if they haven't dared fire up Legendary and try another faction. It's the same AI but with less starting bonuses for the player and with a more equal playing ground unit wise, it's much more difficult. And the inability to load (for the most part, you can reload battles if they start going south) you are forced to adopt a large scale strategy for your lands.

[AntiDamascus]

Yea Rome is in the best setting with some good troops. It's going to be pretty easy by default. That's why it is labeled as Easy

[Myth]

The Pretorians which come available at 10 turns after the start + the economy to mass produce them + no real threats right next door + the option to own Italia/Magna Graecia/Africa/Aegyptus which are I think the richest provinces in the game all relatively early + access to lots of grain and other valuable resources = easy faction.

[AntiDamascus]

I tell you what if I started playing this game and Rome was a hard faction, I'd be pissed.

[Lord Benihana]

I agree completely with the OP - how can a small indy get AI right and a huge company like SEGA/CA mess up so badly? Also, sadly, playing a game like CKII drains the fun out of TW for me... the latest game is really pretty, but the most fun one to play is still MTW1 imo

[Suraknar]

Did you try Ctrl+G?

No I did not before my post, I discovered it a few hours later :P I have been playing many of the latest games in the series solely through Mouse...but then it hit me to check the Keyboard Controls...Yet, thanks for the Reply nevertheless appreciate.

And It was really something I was missing, I am so glad now, as I can do custom formations to fit my tactics!

Cheers :)

[Shaitan]

No I did not before my post, I discovered it a few hours later :P I have been playing many of the latest games in the series solely through Mouse...but then it hit me to check the Keyboard Controls...Yet, thanks for the Reply nevertheless appreciate.

And It was really something I was missing, I am so glad now, as I can do custom formations to fit my tactics!

Cheers :)

You can also do this via mouse. There is a pull down (or rather pull up) menu. But it's much faster to use the keys.

[antisocialmunky]

Formation units are stupidly broken because they will break formation to turn the whole unit to face the attacker. This makes is stupidly easy for the AI who tends to do a last minute swerve into your lines to screw up your line and get flanking bonuses on everything. It really hurts phalanx units. Additionally formation units suck at surrounding enemy units because they seem to be unable to wrap so the optimal defensive deployment now seems to be a line made up of short squares rather than multiple lines of thing units. Now battles tend to become massive moshpits compared to even shogun because of this crap.

[Azi Tohak]

The game dearly needed more play testing. However, I believe it's getting better. Whether that's because of CA or the brilliance of the Radious mod, I can't say, but I'm enjoy the game a great deal.

Azi

[Sp4]

I never use the ingame formations and unless you can save your own custom formations, I think I will never touch to buttons because half the time, the formations may have been a good idea at the time and in real life but in the game, all they're achieving is a confused me. Battles are very very simplified anyways and don't really need fancy formations and at the speed they are happening, I doubt there is a single answer to everything formation anyways.

[Bramborough]

I never use the ingame formations and unless you can save your own custom formations, I think I will never touch to buttons because half the time, the formations may have been a good idea at the time and in real life but in the game, all they're achieving is a confused me. Battles are very very simplified anyways and don't really need fancy formations and at the speed they are happening, I doubt there is a single answer to everything formation anyways.

Yep. I used to tinker with my formations during deployment phase a lot. After a while, I started noticing that the default formation into which the game plops my army was getting closer and closer to what I was doing myself. Now pretty much the only change I make is position of my few spear units (I included them in composition mainly for flank protection against cavalry end-runs vs my siege arty...the game never puts them there).

[Sp4]

Yep. I used to tinker with my formations during deployment phase a lot. After a while, I started noticing that the default formation into which the game plops my army was getting closer and closer to what I was doing myself. Now pretty much the only change I make is position of my few spear units (I included them in composition mainly for flank protection against cavalry end-runs vs my siege arty...the game never puts them there).

Playing as Rome, the game puts anything ranged into the first line, which is fine, spears into the second and then melee into the third and forth if there's enough with cav behind and on the flanks. The only thing I change is moving all cav to one side and the spears behind my melee to guard flanks.

[antisocialmunky]

I never use the ingame formations and unless you can save your own custom formations, I think I will never touch to buttons because half the time, the formations may have been a good idea at the time and in real life but in the game, all they're achieving is a confused me. Battles are very very simplified anyways and don't really need fancy formations and at the speed they are happening, I doubt there is a single answer to everything formation anyways.

I expect a line of units to stay in a line. It would be better if formation was just stripped off everything but pikemen so making a line of units doesn't lead to a ton of sideways facing hoplites

[Sp4]

Sideways facing hoplites?

[bthizle1]

I myself am amazed (and not in a very positive way). Naturally having been a TW fan since something like 10 years old playing the original Shogun for hours on end and having played every TW game since fairly avidly, I was well aware of the fact that CA doesn't usually release a " decent" vanilla game, from my point of view at least. I was considering holding off on purchasing it until it'd been out for some 6 months to a year (patches, and more so mods), but I was not sure if I'd even have access to a computer in that time frame so I made the purchase and have played a campaign as Pontus with the beta 3 patch. I tried to be fair in my judgment, and tried convincing myself that although I was not too keen of the new "style" and rather lackluster indepthness as it seemed, but I just couldn't do it and decided to make a brief list while playing only some say 50 turns of the pros and cons. My con list was immensely larger than that of my pros.

To name a few cons:
Handful of crashes, enemies reinforcing a city from sea landed then didn't even move from beach, the morale is horrible, the throwing of javelins is absurd, no family tree, the building method, overly fast paced battles, poor movement on battle field, not being able to see garrison of city even with spy without having to specifically look at the structures one by one, autocalc is horribly done, AI in general is absurd (nothing new).

A few pros:
Men look winded when fatigued, many interact-able factions......really nothing else I can think of that I was actually impressed with.

And of the cons those were just a few and from a very brief campaign as well. I expect this from CA at this point, but I just feel that in particular with this game they have really created a game that at least in my opinion is simply not my cup of tea and that being said TW is my favorite game series of all time (followed by a handful of paradox titles).

[nafod]

Playing beta patch 3 overall it's a game I can play, but with the other demands on my time it doesn't warrant much attention.

Going back to Shogun 2 I just feel the game was much more finished, as in, it possessed all the bells and whistles, and polish, of a delightful title. Rome 2 lacks all of this. It's functional, it plays ok, but that's it.

Even going back to Rome Total War I feel the game hasn't really improved other than visually.

I wouldn't discourage anyone from purchasing it, and I don't want my money back, but I feel like I've been sold another ETW.

[Sp4]

not being able to see garrison of city even with spy without having to specifically look at the structures one by one

You can actually mouse over the little garrison icon when you select a town (it's a tiny icon that sometimes seems like it wants to hide behind the bottom UI) and see even the exact numbers of men left in your or any settlement's garrison army. It does not work for navy though I think.

[Kamakazi]

There is a reason I have 451 hours clocked on TWS2. The Diplomacy is complex if at time irritating. The combat is realistic and exciting and over all the game is graphically stunning. When I heard that TWR2 was coming out I almost died of excitement. I figured after the shining pinnacle of S2 that R2 would be better and far more detailed. I have to say that im disappointed. All diplomacy if for the most part GONE. Graphically it Is a step backwards. Im playing on highest settings and all I get a bland models of the same soldier over and over. Combat is broken I have battle time limits off because I like the full win or die feel of it. But when the AI attacks from the sea or with big armies at least one but up to half of the units it uses NEVER MOVE. So I have to do 1 of 2 things. A quit the battle and reload my quick save with a time limit or slowly run my troops back and fourth through static unfighting units to win. Not to mention half the time people just die for no reason at all. What happened to the cool fluid fights with epic kills like in TWS2? I want to see personal battles down to the last roll or parry.

Overall I think Rome 2 is a step backwards not one to the front of the series. Its still a decent game and ill clod my way to at least one win... But if nothing gets fixed soon im going back to TWS2

[AntiDamascus]

I'm not gonna lie. I did not like Shogun 2. Every city I took was way too easy. Is it better than R2 to me? I don't really know yet. But compared to other games I've played more of, Rome I and M2, I like those way better. I guess it's just funny watching everyone post about how much they loooooved S2 and I just kinda shrug my shoulders at it.

[Hooahguy]

I'm not gonna lie. I did not like Shogun 2. Every city I took was way too easy. Is it better than R2 to me? I don't really know yet. But compared to other games I've played more of, Rome I and M2, I like those way better. I guess it's just funny watching everyone post about how much they loooooved S2 and I just kinda shrug my shoulders at it.

Agreed. I also was very bored with the game, only had 3 hours in it before I had to put it down. You want to talk about cookie-cutter? I mean come on, Shogun 2 couldnt get any more cookie cutter. Everyone was Japanese so everyone had the same swordsmen, same spearmen, and a small variation in some elite units, and even then it was primarily just their banners and names. Why should I pick the Oda clan, or the Chosokabe, besides some random faction bonuses like better farms or swordsmen? I mean come on. Taking a town/castle was the same thing over and over, little variation. And dont mention the incredibly gamey climbing the walls mechanic. Why bother with rams or whatever when you can just climb the walls. Kinda similar problem with the torches in R2TW, but I think its worse in S2TW. And personally I prefer the graphics in R2 but thats just me.

[Sp4]

If your R2 is looking worse than S2 it is because you don't have the power to run R2. It downgrades the graphics until you can by default. I guess S2 did that too but it was less demanding. Even on medium settings, R2 looks better than S2.

[Kamakazi]

no there is no graphics downgrading.. ive checked all my settings and its easily running highest graphics... it just doesn't look as good as S2

[Hooahguy]

Resolution plays a big part of it, by the way.