So its been over three weeks since launch. How are people's campaign's going?
You know how mine is going from my AAR, but I want to hear about yours.
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So its been over three weeks since launch. How are people's campaign's going?
You know how mine is going from my AAR, but I want to hear about yours.
Finished first Rome (Junii) campaign, which was essentially the "learning curve". Hopefully briefly (I know I often go TL;DR without really meaning to), some quick bulletized highlights and take-aways:
*** Ended 10BC, so 262 turns. Military Victory. Normal Difficulty.
*** CW occurred just as I entered 4th Imp level, spawning 6 armies / 4 fleets of Loyalists in Karalis. They took Alalia and Lilybaeum before I corralled them up; took 10-12 turns. I took "Republic" option at CW end (-10% recruitment cost, +2 recruit slots each province), which is a good bonus for building more legions rapidly. But not NEARLY as good as the Empire option (-10% upkeep, -25% corruption).
*** Used MAs and CSs pretty extensively (26% of total settlement count at game end). As game wore on, gradually realized that they were more a butt-pain than they were really worth. During endgame when I was trying trying to get last few settlements, kept fluctuating between 125-135 because MA/CSs would lose territory to rebels, or DW each other, making me choose between them.
*** Rome starting family attributes aren't well balanced...Junii is clearly much better than other two (ag & PO bonus best of the families, while Junii negative trait is less of a big deal than the others). Wanted to try different family for 2nd go...but after looking at them, just couldn't bring myself to do it.
*** Never built Level IV barracks for the top troops, never really felt I needed it. Even with just Level III barracks, I didn't use Praetorians or 1st cohorts either, very much. Veteran legionaries worked just fine all the way through the game as backbone of my armies. That said, I never had to face larger Hellenic or Eastern factions in mid-late game. I had CS'd Sparta and Athens very early. Macedon and Egypt just disappeared before I ever met them. Pontus agreed to be my military ally fairly early, and grew very friendly. Seleucids, Parthia, and Persia just did the endless arise/destroyed/arise/destroyed cycle and never got powerful. Pontus actually did quite well for an AI faction; they never had to respawn, and slowly grew...up to 15 settlements by game end, which I think is pretty good. If they'd been an adversary instead of a friend toward the end, I'm not sure my only-halfway-developed unit tech would've fared very well against them.
*** Kinda fumbled my way through trying to learn economy...overbuilt temples, didn't emphasize commercial ports enough. Myth's guide helped tremendously. By campaign end, could also have easily met all the requirements for eco-victory, EXCEPT the "20 trade agreements" requirement...easily the toughest of the economic conditions.
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Even though I got to a victory before 0AD, didn't really feel like I'd "mastered" Rome as a faction, and wasn't tired of playing them yet, so Rome again in current (2nd) campaign. As mentioned, going Junii again...to my mind, really the only viable choice. About halfway through now (actually a little further than halfway, at about 110BC).
*** Just for RP reasons, trying to match historical limits of Roman expansion. i.e., don't intend to go beyond Rhine and Danube (except maybe Dacia late), will take Britannia at some point but not go up into Caledonia, etc.
*** With experience of last campaign and Myth's guide, economic development has been much smoother and more robust this time around. The basic format: 1) Use Africa as the "breadbasket"; maximize this province for food (including fish ports), and you just really don't have to worry about maintaining a food surplus anywhere else. 2) Build commercial ports in every port slot (other than fleet production province). 3) Build grain and resource towns up as high as feasible, but leave non-resource minor towns at Level I (or II at most). 4) Typical provincial capital build: 1x circus, 1x temple (usually Sacred Grove line), 1x wine market. Final slot is Amphora Factory for larger coastal provinces (ie., 3+ commercial bldgs), or library-line for smaller or landlocked provinces.
*** Prioritizing military tech development this time, just to see if I can tell a real difference between armies of Evocati Cohorts vice Veteran Legionaries. Hoping that Pontus does as well this game as last, will leave him alone for a while so I can have a big dust-up with him in late game, replicating the Mithridatic wars. Perhaps a decent-sized Parthia or Persia will be around as well. Also, have built a Level IV aux barracks in Hellas, just so I can have a few Cretan Archers...loved those guys in R1.
*** Already had CW. Paid very little attention to politics this time, just decided to let it come whenever. Only real preparation I made was ensuring I had 9 full legions as soon as I entered 3rd Imp level, and always trying to keep a couple of them under-committed only 1-2 turns' march from Rome. Also limited myself to only one active enemy at a time. Once I had that, I just took my 3-ambition family general and turned him loose in Spain to get lots of victories and precipitate CW. The war erupted 129BC about halfway through 3rd Imp; the Loyalists spawned in Massalia. 5 armies / 3 fleets this time (appears to be tied to Imp level). They took Tolosa, Genua, Alalia, and besieged Medhlan before I could get to them...strangely, they took 3 full stacks and just parked them up in that mountain pass heading toward Switzerland (which wasn't mine, it's still Helvetii/Raetii); they could easily have taken Velathri and threatened Rome before my legions caught up. Also, Loyalists were aggressive enough in taking under-defended settlements, but then blithely ignored defending them. In any case, they were history by 123BC; definitely took Empire this time. Thought: one loses agents when CW erupts...but Loyalists don't seem to get them. Bug? AI factions can be pretty slippery in using agents to immobilize one army so their stacks can gang up on another un-reinforced army. Loyalists would be a bit more challenging if they had agents and could do this.
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After this campaign, will definitely be time to try someone else. Don't know yet who that'll be. Probably a Hellenic faction with good missile units.
Originally I started one as Gauls but I abandoned that cause it was too easy and since they were patching/changing things every day, I did not feel like continuing it at the time.
Here's my only current running campaign: Rome, hard. I started about two weeks ago.
https://i.imgur.com/Nx0eKbk.jpg
In Germania, I'm at war with the Lugii but they're dying now. Lupfurdum was taken by rebels but the Suebi are dead as of a turn ago or so. The Lugii are actually giving me quite a fight and as I push into their northern territories, they started pushing into Pannonia as you can see. In Hellas/Macedonia, the Odrysian Kingdom just died and then I killed Sparta which had owned Athens for about two years. The only thing I am fighting there now is public order and rebellions after conquest. Another legion is on the way to Pannonia to push back the Lugii that way.
The war in Britannia is about wrapping up now after about 20 turns of us just peacefully coexisting there after making someone my client state and trade agreements with the others. Then the remaining two 'free' factions on the islands went to war with each other, leaving only one of them standing, which I am fighting against now. Originally, I had dropped two armies, one in Camulodunon or whatever you spell that and one in Eborakon or Eildon, whichever the capital is and took both provinicial capitals in the same turn. Then I built them up to convert the rest of the island to my culture as soon as possible, while sending all but one legion to go and help in the East.
Mesopotamia was a stupid call on my part and the only reason I am there is because the game gave me this stupid objective to go and rampage around there. Politically, I am now at war with all but two or three remaining factions down there, which is not making the push East any easier. 2 Legions are trying to hold on to the province, but every battle they are fighting, it's usually a combined battle against multiple armies from the Seleucids, Dahae, Pergamon and somebody else. With the way the province is right in the middle of the three powers though, my legions are stuck there, running between settlements to try and hold on to them while a legion from Alexandria is going to fight its way through to them and taking out the Seleucids on the way. (I had that plan originally with the second legion that is now in Mesopotamia but I needed to hurry them up and just force marched through the Seleucid territory)
3 Legions originally in Northern Africa were sent off to modern day Greece and are wrapping that up now while I am probably going to use my navy that is all sitting around there as well to go and conquer the islands between Athens and Antioch.
Economically, I am doing fine although I could probably be doing better but between figuring out how stuff works, I'm running into public order issues and even food shortages now and again since I am in the process of teching up to level 4 farms and level 4 everything else.
My biggest fear is that the public order problems get out of hand and I start having rebellions in Spain. My most stable provinces are Italia, Aquitantia, Mesopotamia, Africa and all of Britain. Spain is not sure whether it should rebel or not, Germania is a mess after lots of back and forth and blitzkrieging entire provinces in one turn, which spawned rebellions behind my legions, stalling progress a lot.
Militarily, I am doing pretty well. I usually don't make armies that are made up of 90% praetorians, even though I could probably afford it and I have the tech. Most of my legions are in fact pretty old and could use overhauling while only 4 of my 15 actually have armoured legionaires and the like and I am only now coming up to equipping some of them with fancy artillery (ballistae really did the job for the entire campaign so far but I wanna play with the big guns so I am making a point of having at least two 'high tech' legions running around).
Usually my armies are made up of 5-7 legionaires, including a unit of Eagle Cohort for lol RP ^^, 2-4 auxiliary infantry (or anything with spears, some of them have by now swapped the auxiliary for gladiator spearmen, since those are the units I can recruit everywhere and they can replace losses quicker than me running the legion all the way back to rebuild it), 2-3 cavalry, usually legionary at this point, though there are some that have Socii Equites. Most legions have a couple of units of velites or some other auxiliary ranged stuff but it's not a strong point and then all of them have 1-2 ballistae which are probably the biggest killer of my campaign.
I did apparently capture a Dacian onager while conquering the Odrysian Kingdom. No idea how that worked and I wasn't paying attention but that is sort of cool ^^ Or at least it was until it got destroyed during the siege of Larissa, where some Scorpion killed it.
My greatest defeats.. and so far I can count them on one hand, which is a little meh, but okay... I lost one of originally three legion sent to Britain by fighting a horde of Ebdani in a 6500 vs 1700 situation. The problem there being that even though I was outnumbered, which I usually am, the quality of my army was ten times that of the Ebdani but yeah... I guess I sort of drowned in the masses rather than actually being defeated.
I lost a legion to a similar horde of Germans coming over the Danube in what should have been an easy defend this river crossing and be home for dinner situation but the Germans had a Scorpion that just did not want to get hit by my Ballistae and the stupid thing forced me to pull my units away from the river crossing and then they came over and it was a lot of them... In addition, for every unit of theirs I shattered, another came in from the edge of the map for about 20 units or so and sneaky and devious as they were, they saved the berserkers for last.
There were some other defeats but these are the two that cost me the most and ended up with me losing lots of territory.
-E- Oh yeah civil war... civil war happened when I was invading Gaul as my first major goal after taking Italia, Cisalpina, Magna Graecia and kicking the Carthagenians out of Northern Africa. The civil war started in Rome with 6 full stacks of legionaires and stuff, no fleets. The rebellion was contained and dealt with over the course of 5 or 6 turns. Magna Graecia spent the next 20 years being annoyed about my rule with several rebellions but eventually it all came under control.
I've been playing a bunch of short versions of campaigns over different factions to see what I can do in terms of economy and military. I'll try to go to war with a side and then not the next turn and see what happens. I've gotten a lot of good tests done but I'm basically waiting for the end of the major patches before I try an honest campaign all the way to the end.
My Rome campaign is pretty well in, around 130 turns from the start I own Africa, Greece, Macedonia and am preparing to invade Egypt and push past the alps.
I'm now tinkering with the Gauls (Avernii) but I want to really refine my starting strategy.
Anyone who says the Avernii are too easy hasn't tried them on Legendary after patch 3.
No, I haven't. Problem? The game is too unstable for me to not be able to save after doing anything essentially.
No problem but you talk and talk how the game is too easy and people who don't have the game yet get the wring idea. I consider myself a total war veteran and I can tell you that on Legendary and on patch 3 the Avernii have a hard start. Not impossible, but not a steamroll either.
As to stability issues, the game autosaves on Legendary, and actually it is more likely that you will have to replay more battles if you rely on yourself for saving than the game itself, since Legendary saves before and after each battle, before ending the turn and after the new turn starts.
I don't really complain about the game being too easy. It's not much harder or different from Medieval 2 and I loved that. It was the first TW game I ever really got into. I did not know it autosaves before and after each battle on legendary, so I'm going to apologise for that. I should really try it before talking too much. I just assumed it didn't let you save and just saved at the end of every turn.Quote:
Originally Posted by Myth
No, more like it saves all the time so you can just "resume campaign" but you can't load abuse if you walk in enemy territory and find yourself in an "oh crap" moment because suddenly you see their 4 full stacks and you didn't bother to scout.
Or you move your army south to go and conquer someone and the sneaky Ai comes out of the bush and sieges your city. Normally you'd load 1 turn back to go and find them and kill them, but no in Legendary - you have to manage a lot more crisis situations than when playing "softcore".
It does remove the minimap and the TAB button overview in battles so it's actually more of a chore to lead them, but it also makes them more reallistic and less arcade-y.
Hehe, sounds like half the time you don't actually know what is going on ^^ I kind of like the idea.
First, one thing about how i play the game (and has been like this since the very first Shogun). I don't think i ever finished a campaign. I normally play for as long as i get to the point where i have the top units, money is plentiful, and victory appears inevitable. On shogun 2 i never got to Realm Divide though, so i may have skipped what CA created to challenge precisely that invencibility threshold. I also usually play on normal. So yes, not at all a hardcore veteran, but i guess all those years playing TW did gave me enough skill to consider Rome 2 easy one Normal, now im seriously considering moving up on the difficulty bar.
Now, i am still starting campaigns with various factions in order to learn about their diferences. One thing i always liked in TW games was "solving" the initial moves game. I find Rome quite easy and linear, especially with the early pretorians. The Arverni were a different matter altogether. I did conquer almost all of Gaul (all but Cisalpine), but all that time i have been juggling with the tech tree trying to figure a path for having efficient armies. I seems we have to kind of choose between iron and bronze. Or not, but then we have to choose between unit pumping buildings and happiness buildings. Maybe Gauls are ment to be happy by waging war, as per their bonuses...
Anyway i find Rome 2 entertaining enough, and certainly not less that other iterations of the series (i remember putting Barbarian Invasion, the original Rome Expansion, on hold because the bright colours hurt my eyes, and only really played it for long hours with the RTR mod). Easy perhaps but since i've played on normal i don't feel i have the right to complain. I'm moving to hard next.
I also found a crash bug i handt before, while loading a fort defense battle with the Iceni, that my only technical issue so far.
As others have said before, Rome is probably the easiest and most OP faction, which probably happened by design. I think if you are used to normal on the other games, try hard on this. It's kind of similar.
I've played the Rome campaign long enough to wonder why my units always seem to take so many casualties and stumbled across this:
http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...-is-why/page7?
The only two stats that matter are attack and defense. Its like everything in this game is intentionally set up to be unintuitive to fans of previous total war games. I might check out Rad's mod with Macedon eventually but I think I'm going to be playing FotS in the meantime.
I guess looking back at my playthrough, it seems like this game is a mess because they tried to reinvent the wheel, not because they shot for the moon and missed. There's actually a lot of similarities between R2TW and Diablo 3 or MoO3. It feels like my choices don't matter: Getting information is a pain, the tech tree and buildings don't make me want to build anything in particular, everything feels like the game wants me to crunch numbers, and the battles just feel so off putting at times.
This doesn't feel like Total War to me, it feels like a Modern-Day Blizzard knockoff to Total War.
It always seemed to me that heavily armoured troops, or what is supposed to be heavily armoured takes a bit too much damage from ranged weapons, be it thrown spears or stones.
I preffer having an underperforming AR mechanic which forces me to lead 1 in 4 battles, than having a super biased AR like in Shogun 2 where 3 fullstacks of crap ashigariu units were able to mow down samurai because they had chevrons. Complete Legendary Chosokibe came in SII - only had to lead 2 battles. I ARed everything, and won mostly by spamming Ashigaru. I only made samurai fullstacks because I wanted to, not because I had to.
Trying to autoresolve with levy spearmen and and slingers in Rome II will get your killed in 2 turns by comparrison.
These are the only two stats that -seem- to matter because they had a pretty cool idea but failed to actually test it, I guess.Quote:
Originally Posted by antisocialmunky
Essentially, what they are trying to simulate is soldiers being worn down by being under fire or in melee combat, not just fatigue wise but I guess, equipment and health wise (read this as actual health wise, not hitpoints) but the way AP damage behaves now makes it so that certain units are very strong against armoured units (or any type of unit really but it is easiest to see with armoured ones because your intuition tells you that a bunch of legionaries with shields up should not get killed by slingers from 500 meters away).
This, by the way is also why testudo or any other form of defensive formation that is supposed to protect people against missile damage does not work. A simple way to fix this would be to take away the slinger's armour penetration completely and lower the value for all other units -OR- (and this is a very big 'or' and should probably be a much smaller 'and') to make armour penetration depend on range to target.
I totaly agree, to much damage, especialy from slingers, and also to many ammunition for jav units.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sp4
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This, by the way is also why testudo or any other form of defensive formation that is supposed to protect people against missile damage does not work. A simple way to fix this would be to take away the slinger's armour penetration completely and lower the value for all other units -OR- (and this is a very big 'or' and should probably be a much smaller 'and') to make armour penetration depend on range to target
I dont know where they saw that a sling could penetrate an armor or a heavy shield,but i havend read about slingers in ancient warfare to penetrate armor or even shields, of heavy armoured units.
Of course i learned to respect them, since during my first major encounter against them, my 15 unit Macedonian army, of pikemen, hoplites, merc veteran hoplites and cav. was anihilated by an army of Rhodes half militia hoplites half slingers.
I had 50% casualties before my units come to contact with their hoplites pnly by sling fire.
Yeah the problem about slingers is not necessarily their damage. It's the tiny amount of AP damage that will always, regardless of targets, the target's facing or distance or whatever, seep through and into the hitpoints of the unit that is being shot at. Coupled with the slinger's rate of fire, range and ammo, that tiny amount builds up to lots of dead people over time. Have you ever noticed how the first one or two volleys from slingers or archers seem to not do very much, yet each volley following that seems to get more and more devastating?Quote:
Originally Posted by nearchos
That's CA's idea to have units under fire 'wear out' at work.
Spartan Campaign. Easily spread north almost to the top of the world map. Had to rush back south because of a Spartan rebellion. Quashed that in about 3-5 turns. Then Knossos wanted to get llippy so I had to root the out of the eastern Med. Now pretty much mopping up small states. Only real contender is Royal Scythia to the NE
What difficulty?
I took Rome as the Avernii! There is a cool cinematic that plays, labelled "Roma falls!", it's quite dramatic. It appears that Rome had trouble with the Etruscan league, having Ariminum and Neapolis in their hands. I took Cisalpina very easily. Basically I did get lucky with some key NAPs and and two early factions that I needed dead anyway declaring on me instead of me on them, thus their iberian allies forsaking them.
https://img850.imageshack.us/img850/6108/c7xz.jpg
The AP weapon idea was fine yes, but it should not be on missiles. It needs to be toned down to near 0 on non-javelins.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sp4
I always play on very hard and on rare occasions on legendary, at least with the previous TW titles, exept for STW where played on normal difficulty.Quote:
Originally Posted by Myth
I think that, if the game is desined to be softcore in any difficulty lower than legendary, there is something wrong.
Then there should be only two levels, the legendary and the easy.
I m saying that because, i completed the first campaign as Macedon on very hard, but the actual difficulty was easy and to be honest i havent try the very hard with patch 3 to see how the AI behaves, i curently play as parthia on legendary.
As i remember STW, MTW, and in some extend RTW, MTW2 AND STW2 a very hard level was hard.
To be honest i didnt bother a lot with ETW or NTW.
My poit is that, you shouldt be in a position to decide either to play in legendary in order to have some hard time against the AI or play in lower DL and practicaly playing against the clock.
As for the save and load, i believe that when you come in a dificult situation, there are two cases, either you have saved just in previous turn or a couple of turns ago, so even if you load probably you will be in the same situation again, or you quick saved some turnes ago, where you lose some turns of gameplay and there is always the posibIlity for the AI to act in a diferent way.
I m not in any means want to compare the legendary level with any other difficulty level, im just saying that the only difference between the legendary and the Very hard should be the save and load option, since in battles there is the option of realism mod in order to have the more realistic feeling.
I will try a campaign on very hard ti see the changes with the patch 3, when i decide that i had enough hammering from the AI as parthia on legendary....ohh it hurts..
I'm playing on normal as the Roman Junii family. Around 200 turns in, I have everything north and west of the black sea, North Africa to Egypt, and western Anatolia.
I have around five full-stack Legionary Cohort armies in Anatolia to finish the job there; 2.5 armies on the Egyptian border waiting to take on Persia for the rest of Africa; 1.5 armies in Britain to finish the job there; and a million in the bank.
The Senate Loyalists were crushed in a series of ambushes. Looking forward to the end now so that I can try someone else!
Yes ive noticed since the first battle i gave in the first campaign, where as macedon fought the thracian faction just to the east of my borders.Quote:
Have you ever noticed how the first one or two volleys from slingers or archers seem to not do very much, yet each volley following that seems to get more and more devastating?
I had 4 units of slingers in the army, i remind you also the problem with the units speed on the first days after the release, so after two rounds, my slingers started the retreat, since the enemy was already upon them??? with only 1 dead among them..
They definately must do something about the casualties inflicted by slings, ecpecialy among armored units.