Hannibal at the Gates Campaign Pack

[The Outsider]

Aaaand what did I say about crappy patches followed by rip off dlcs....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBGVKscdG2Q

[Hooahguy]

A DLC that expands politics in the existing game would be much better, I would actually pay for that.

[fallen851]

Don't worry guys! Hannibal may be at the gates, but he can't get in because the Siege AI is still broken!

[Myth]

Don't worry guys! Hannibal may be at the gates, but he can't get in because the Siege AI is still broken!

I laughed.

[The Outsider]

Posted on twc by Craig or Will, not sure which it was. And everything aside, I also hate how they are completely ignoring the org. They don't even bother to come around here anymore. This is where it all started back in the day. Am I wrong?



Hey all,

Some news from the studio!

We’re delighted to announce the next major Campaign Pack DLC for Total War: ROME II will be centred around one of Rome’s most fearsome adversaries: Hannibal.#

Dropping players into the Western Mediterranean at the outbreak of the 2nd Punic War, Hannibal at the Gates features a new campaign map focused on the tinderbox geopolitical situation that brought two ancient world superpowers to all-out war; with sworn rivals Scipio and Hannibal at the very heart of the conflict.#

Five playable factions will feature a wealth of new units. Main protagonists Rome and Carthage will benefit from a new civil tech tree based around diplomacy, while the challenge in the shadow of these mighty empires for newcomers Syacuse, the Arevaci and the Lusitani will be formidable.

In addition to this, another significant free content update for ROME II will also drop soon, benefitting all players regardless of whether they own any DLC. Details will be revealed in the next episode of Rally Point, coming soon.

[Hooahguy]

Posted on twc by Craig or Will, not sure which it was. And everything aside, I also hate how they are completely ignoring the org. They don't even bother to come around here anymore. This is where it all started back in the day. Am I wrong?
I tried hard to get them to come back permanently but it seems like most of their social interaction is gone, completely gone from this forum at least.



In addition to this, another significant free content update for ROME II will also drop soon, benefitting all players regardless of whether they own any DLC. Details will be revealed in the next episode of Rally Point, coming soon.
Hmmm, they have me cautiously optimistic.

[Sp4]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTSA_sWGM44

[easytarget]

Don't worry guys! Hannibal may be at the gates, but he can't get in because the Siege AI is still broken!

Actually this particular hannibal brought a lighter, so he's just one torch away from you at this very moment if he is in fact already at your gates.

[edyzmedieval]

The trailer looks nice though, and so is the screenshot from the game. I love those Carthaginian detailed shields.

[nearchos]

I was hoping that the next major DLC with a new campaign would be a Barbarian Invasion like the ROME I, with the same map with the core game, transfering the player to the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, fighting to save the empire.

[nearchos]

Don't worry guys! Hannibal may be at the gates, but he can't get in because the Siege AI is still broken!

Very good!!

[Myth]

Actually guys I think I just might get this one AND CiG together if I like how it's done. The major obstacle before Hannibal (apart from the logistical nightmare of sustaining his army in northern Italy) was political opposition back in Carthage. In fact, had he received the proper reinforcements he asked for, Rome would have fallen.

He destroyed several Consular armies and managed to outmaneuver the biggest one, which had set sail to Spain. Upon returning to Carthage and dumping a miniature mountain of equestrian rings, and asking to get more troops, the politicians replied that "he obviously was doing well enough as it is". And Rome was notorious for her ability to churn out full fleshed out armies within the span of months to a a few years. I daresay as brilliant as he was as a strategist and tactician, he lacked Caesar's political cunning.

Not to mention that Scipio was just a brilliant a commander, who had the full backing of Rome and her armies.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Don't worry guys! Hannibal may be at the gates, but he can't get in because the Siege AI is still broken!

LMFAO!!:bounce:

[CaptainCrunch]

LOL, CA's totally lost it. I quite literally cannot believe the balls on these people. This game can't even provide players with working fundamentals 6 months after release and they wanna charge for more expansions that add a few trinkets to the game that should've already been there from the start? What happened to this company man?

I can't even have a battle with the AI that provides me with a reasonable facsimile of warfare from the period. A battle. The fundamental feature the series was built upon. Every engagement results in an all out zergrush from the AI as soon as skirmishing units come within range of each other. No order of battle, no support between units in the same army, no esprit de corps among disciplined units. Phalangites simply breaking ranks and chasing cavalry units all over the battlefield like some mindless berserkers totally oblivious to the fact that they're abandoning their battle line and exposing their backs to the enemy. Phalangites! AI cavalry charges directly into the front of spear units bracing for it! How can this crap still be happening all these years later?!

I mean, they can't even program the AI to attack in a coordinated fashion. They don't have to code in genius generalship, just the damn basics. March together, attack together, units support other units, protect the flanks, etc. Yes, there should be undisciplined units that are impetuous and attack regardless, but every AI unit?! 2 full stack AI armies assault a settlement and I can take a force of 11 units along with the garrison and march out to meet them and defeat them one at a time or pick off their units one after the other as they come running from the other side of the battlefield as the faster units leave the slower ones far behind. They have no sense of each other on the battlefield. I'm not even gonna get into all the other well known problems this game has, they can't even fix the most fundamental problem.

We're all such huge geeks for the material that we put up with it for the most part cuz there's nothing else out there like this. But there's absolutely no way in Hell that I spend one single dime on anything else this company ever creates until they prove they're competent developers. I'm tired of being a sucker for this crap no matter how much I like the subject. That's why they never reply to the big threads about serious issues over at the official forum, cuz they can't fix them. They're not competent enough to. They're just trying to string everyone along with patches that improve the optimization a bit and fix a few bugs (no doubt necessary as well) while releasing more expansions every couple of months (CiG 2 months ago right?) to milk as much money out of this soon to be dead horse. There will always be players willing to open their wallets for them, so why should they care about fixing the difficult stuff? What a sad way for this series to go :shame:

The only hope left for this game is that CA abandons the Warscape engine for their next release (if they don't I think it'll be DOA) and releases a full SDK to the community (the only way they'll ever do it).

[easytarget]

Actually guys I think I just might get this one AND CiG together if I like how it's done.

You know I've given a big thumbs up to CIG. I like it so much more than the main campaign. If they would just tone down the agent spam a little, I'd be hard pressed to say I didn't like it almost as much as ROTS (to use a similar DLC expansion for comparison).

[The Outsider]

http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Factions

Scroll to the bottom of the page and you will find the three "new" factions. Ok, I know that this will sound like whining randomly but I cant help but notice that this time around they werent even bothered to make faction icons "old" or antique looking..

[Kamakazi]

Looks interesting.... but id like new factions without having to buy a dlc

[Alcibiade]

Rome's embassy wearing an armor ! No wonder the weak rhetoric : why didn't they copy the best parts of this brillant speech, it would have provide the kids some interesting lines. Not talking about the unsheathed sword in a sacred place.

Why does every TW trailer have to look like the 300 trailer with the same kind of build up and the same kind of climax and punch line always.

Alcibiade's angry, going to write some graffiti on Hermes's road signs to express my discontent.

[Myth]

Rome's embassy wearing an armor ! No wonder the weak rhetoric : why didn't they copy the best parts of this brillant speech, it would have provide the kids some interesting lines. Not talking about the unsheathed sword in a sacred place.

Why does every TW trailer have to look like the 300 trailer with the same kind of build up and the same kind of climax and punch line always.

Oh come on, you know why.

[lars573]

Oh come on, you know why.
That the company hired to make the trailer knows it's business.

[dge1]

I like the looks of this one, and intend on getting it.

[easytarget]

Same here, I like the smaller campaigns better in Rome 2, they just seem to work better all around, I love CIG (agents still need tweaking).

[Alcibiade]

Same here, I like the smaller campaigns better in Rome 2, they just seem to work better all around, I love CIG (agents still need tweaking).

I agree. But then there is this transport boat issue that wasn't in CiG.... They claim they fixed it but I can't take their word for granted anymore. I'll wait for the player's reviews.

[easytarget]

Yeah, that is a legitimate concern I'll admit. Why CA would "borrow" such a bad idea from Firaxis is a bit of a puzzle, someone I guess got it in thier head this simplified the game. Which is a bit ironic because most of what the players have identified as simplification game design efforts have failed to either simplify (usually they are just confusing like politics, which is so stupidly simple minded everyone ignores it) or make the game fun (this would be something CA should steal from Firaxis, the game design testing phase should figure out whether the game, cause this is a game after all, is even fun to play - I would suggest the back half of R2's grand campaign was never played before released by CA, and if so, it was not with an eye towards checking if it was fun, because it most certainly is not).

Creating games is tough stuff, I'll never say it's not. Where I hold CA at fault is the fact they don't take advantage of their rabid fan base and get some of them to sign an NDA and beta test. There is ABSOLUTELY no excuse for this. They have been given a gift from the gods, free feedback about your game design. And what do they do with it? Ignore it completely. It shows really poor business management runs the company now. And it highlights the growing gulf between the players and the company. Before warscape there was much more interaction between the two and a vibrant mod community literally dying to help CA. Now, you can't even get CA to bother to show up and say anything in this forum about anything.

[easytarget]

FYI, given the topic heading I thought it only fitting to drop back by today and announce this DLC is live.

Too early to tell about it, but once I've worked through the campaign for a bit I'll circle back here with initial impressions as I'm sure others will as well over the course of the next couple of weeks.

[Alcibiade]

Yeah, don't rush it, early impressions shouldnt be too early

[The Outsider]

Well I havent played the Hatg yet, but I have started a new campaign with iceni. I must say that for some reason I think the battles look much better, closer to the shogun 2 level more than ever. It also seems that the performance have increased for me, didnt experience any lag on extreme settings, I used to have lag when I speed up the game, now there is nothing. I cant comment on siege battels yet though since I havent tried it yet. Overall I think that its getting better. I definetely hope so anyway.

[Alcibiade]

So how is this DLC ? How does it play compared to grand campaign oder CiG ? Is it fun, immersive ?

[easytarget]

For my money both DLCs are better than the GC.

[Kamakazi]

is it bad that I only bought the last 2 DLCs for the new factions?

[easytarget]

Nah, whatever floats your boat man. But like I said, I do consider them more fun than the GC, so there is that additional upside should you decide to play them.

[Spoonska]

I was hoping to hear some feedback on HatG. It's been a long time since I've played, and since I've posted here, so forgive me for the length.


To make a long story short, I think it was Patch 4 that broke the game for me around Christmas time. Patch 5 made it worse and I uninstalled, sad day.Anyways, newer system + 5 or 6 more patches and it works again. I decided to roll with HatG because I guess my Sparta GC (that was about 85% done) didn't want to work.

I like how small and concise the campaign is. When I think about starting a new GC I get exhausted. HatG is a nice break from that. I'm not sure if CiG is the same way. I bought that as well, and I might try that next. That or a Lusitania campaign. Overall though I'm a little let down.

After 7 or so hours of playtime I keep asking myself: "This it?".It's really just a short victory conditions GC with only a handful of factions. I haven't really kept up with Total War since I stopped playing Rome 2 in December, so I didn't have a lot of information about the expac going into it. I expected it to be more history driven. I know the game is revisionist history, but I was expecting the goals to be much more historically focused... I guess. Like why not have a little Hannibal in the top left instead of a Roman telling me what to do?

As a disclaimer I am playing on Normal just because it's been a while, but to my surprise the AI still has potato brains? Early on in the campaign I was stressed to no end because you start out at war with almost everyone, and your client states are at war with everyone and asking for your help to fight... everyone. That stress would quickly fade because no one ever attacked me. It seems like the campaign AI is just building stacks in their city, and that's about it. There was a good bit of AI on AI aggression, but I've never really felt challenged. Again this could totally be because it's normal, and don't worry next campaign I'll do legendary all the way. The only real aggression I've incurred has been rebels because I've gone back to the old ways of -- Leave 2 units of pike men in the city and F happiness F squalor, who cares. The campaign has essentially been; Make a stack and scorch earth until you're bored.

I guess I was just hoping for a little more or a little uniqueness. The new civil tree is, okay, I guess. Kinda like going to a convention and getting a pen as swag. This might change some when I play as another faction, but the factions all seem to be similar relative to there geographical spot. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone at the $15 price point. It feels more $8.99 or even $9.99.

It's fun to be able to actually load the game again though. I still really enjoy the simplicity of city management, and how recruiting and agents work. It just still feels like I'm playing an unfinished game though :(. Which is a heart breaker 6 months after release. It's giving me a real hankering to play some Shogun 2.

[Wilbo]

I purchased Hannibal at the Gates last week. I was tempted by CiG, but that's been out for a while so is likely to be on sale sooner than HatG. I'm 75% through my first campaign as Carthage on Hard and am really enjoying it - I've had some really good mini-campaigns against small tribes.

When I moved against Massillia, in a single turn I ambushed two medium armies, eliminating them. Then I moved against two full armies in a field battle, catching and destroying one army as they crossed the field as reinforcements, before choosing to retire from the field. I immediately assaulted and destroyed the remaining full army, before assaulting the town.

The new diplomatic tech tree is a good idea - but still no-one will be my friend! On the plus side, with the reduced map, it's filling out my desire for Short Victory Conditions!

[mini]

LOL, CA's totally lost it. I quite literally cannot believe the balls on these people. This game can't even provide players with working fundamentals 6 months after release and they wanna charge for more expansions that add a few trinkets to the game that should've already been there from the start? What happened to this company man?


greed happened :)

and it's working. people keep buying this crap.
So don't expect it to get better with future games

[The Outsider]

No no you are right. It's not going to improve at all. What they are doing now, cheap eye candy games without souls, is working best for them. With the minimum amount of labour and passion they are making big money. So they will just keep doing that. They have managed to create a new gamer base formed by young people and casual gamers so they don't care about the old, core fans of the game. We are a dying breed and they know it. So they are just shovelling up the dirt over the grave. I mean look at the org. It's sadly becoming a ghost town. That's because it had the oldest and most mature total War gamers since the beginning. They are dropping out now, because it's not the same thing anymore. I swear With all the technology and their so called huge budget, I'm not getting half the satisfaction i had from the original medieval. That was ten years ago for God's sake. And I can't even play my old copy of medieval because ca does not support windows 8 for it. I am not buying a single future total War title until I see solid reviews from the real total War players.

[Alcibiade]

No no you are right. It's not going to improve at all. What they are doing now, cheap eye candy games without souls, is working best for them. With the minimum amount of labour and passion they are making big money. So they will just keep doing that. They have managed to create a new gamer base formed by young people and casual gamers so they don't care about the old, core fans of the game. We are a dying breed and they know it. So they are just shovelling up the dirt over the grave. I mean look at the org. It's sadly becoming a ghost town. That's because it had the oldest and most mature total War gamers since the beginning. They are dropping out now, because it's not the same thing anymore. I swear With all the technology and their so called huge budget, I'm not getting half the satisfaction i had from the original medieval. That was ten years ago for God's sake. And I can't even play my old copy of medieval because ca does not support windows 8 for it. I am not buying a single future total War title until I see solid reviews from the real total War players.

Well I wanted to thank you for this post but in the same time its difficult to be thanksfull for such bitter truth :end:

I think I won't buy HATG. I had more fun with CiG than with GC for sure but compared to what I get when replaying FOTS or even modded RTW its weak.

And yet the game is playable and the AI impressive. But CA's team has killed too many features that were TW's soul for me !

Oh no I complained again !