First Impressions

[CaptainCrunch]

oh god... please increase movement range by like 300% atleast for navies and armies in friendly territory... it takes me 8 years to move an army from one side of my empire to the other, playing as carthage.

[Sp4]

Coop campaigns are a lot of fun at 2 turns per hour because the AI spends ages doing whatever the hell they are doing.

[Hooahguy]

oh god... please increase movement range by like 300% atleast for navies and armies in friendly territory... it takes me 8 years to move an army from one side of my empire to the other, playing as carthage.

Thats why I use forced march and turn it off right before I need to fight. Is it risky? Hell yes, but the benefits outweigh the risks.

[phred]

Didn't want to start another thread for a simple question so hoped I could get away with it here: am I the only one who has no pictures in the Encyclopedia? I have all the info but none of the boxes in any page has any pictures in them. Which makes the whole thing just a mass of empty black boxes. I can move the mouse over and get a tooltip which answers (most) of my questions but I can't help feeling this is not quite right.

I bought a DVD of the game but used the preload feature to download all the stuff last weekend. Perhaps that has caused the glitch.

Are you playing offline?
I noticed that when I was playing offline, but the pictures came back when I was back online.

[Barkhorn1x]

Are you playing offline?
I noticed that when I was playing offline, but the pictures came back when I was back online.

Hmmm...will check on that.

[The Stranger]

Thats why I use forced march and turn it off right before I need to fight. Is it risky? Hell yes, but the benefits outweigh the risks.

i do that too, its still taking me hella long.

and worst part is, cant defend the minor settlements since there are no walls and you can only have so many armies. and while it takes you ages to get a decent one, the minor AI nations just spam 20/20 stacks of cheap shit units. they melt against any decent opposition but they will swarm your minor settlements... and since reinforments take like a billion years to get from a to b...

i quit in frustration and im now playing EB... nuff said.


also, javelin troops throwing FLAMING missiles... really CA? REALLY? And wardogs are op... dunno if anyone used them XD

[Hooahguy]

i do that too, its still taking me hella long.

and worst part is, cant defend the minor settlements since there are no walls and you can only have so many armies. and while it takes you ages to get a decent one, the minor AI nations just spam 20/20 stacks of cheap shit units. they melt against any decent opposition but they will swarm your minor settlements... and since reinforments take like a billion years to get from a to b...

i quit in frustration and im now playing EB... nuff said.


also, javelin troops throwing FLAMING missiles... really CA? REALLY? And wardogs are op... dunno if anyone used them XD

Yeah that annoys me too. I do worry about the small settlements.

Which is why I do think there needs to be a way to make it more feasible to defend those settlements, maybe like increased defenders that automatically replenish or something.

And Im with you on the flaming javelins.

[Furunculus]

doing the tutorial.

about to beseige busputiam of whatever its name is.

how do i attack the city, i seem to have nothing that will attack the walls to get my chaps through.

i have researched seige'y stuff, and i requested two seige'y units at the start of the seige.

and yet they do not appear in the seige, so my troops just wander about aimlessly.

am i being stupid?

[Hooahguy]

how do i attack the city, i seem to have nothing that will attack the walls to get my chaps through.

i have researched seige'y stuff, and i requested two seige'y units at the start of the seige.

and yet they do not appear in the seige, so my troops just wander about aimlessly.

am i being stupid?

Cant really help you there as I have yet to be in a serious siege with battering rams and stuff like that, but any unit can throw torches at the gates. Though I definitely loved the ninja-style way the STW2 units climbed up the walls, which was insanely gamey but looked funny and so useful.

[Furunculus]

how?

[CaptainCrunch]

doing the tutorial.

about to beseige busputiam of whatever its name is.

how do i attack the city, i seem to have nothing that will attack the walls to get my chaps through...

Definitely no need for any of that, you can just burn down the gates like Hooahguy said and it's open sesame.

At this point it's actually surprising CA didn't add any magic spells. True.

[Hooahguy]

Definitely no need for any of that, you can just burn down the gates like Hooahguy said and it's open sesame.

At this point it's actually surprising CA didn't add any magic spells. True.

Though the problem with burning down the gates is that its costly if the enemy has any ranged units on the gates. Unless you have a reserve of cheap units to just throw at the gate, I dont recommend it unless its a last resort.

[Nelson]

doing the tutorial.

about to beseige busputiam of whatever its name is.

how do i attack the city, i seem to have nothing that will attack the walls to get my chaps through.

i have researched seige'y stuff, and i requested two seige'y units at the start of the seige.

and yet they do not appear in the seige, so my troops just wander about aimlessly.

am i being stupid?

No, not stupid. The siege equipment appears as white symbols on the map. I didn't notice them at first either. Build ladders because the sheds won't help get in if you don't burn the gates. The units will climb the ladders and if you can get to the the wall above a gate you will eventually capture it and be able to enter.

The flaming missiles have always bugged me if a building or ship is not the target. I won't use them in a field battle but of course the AI never passes on a chance to "Flame On!".

[FesterShinetop]

Yep, also took me some time to figure out too. But it IS in the help text during the siege. You have to pick units to man the ladders.

The game certainly has it flaws but I am very much enjoying it so far. I am sure they will polish it some more with upcoming patches!

[Furunculus]

cheers, will have another look today.

[Lord of the Isles]

Are you playing offline?
I noticed that when I was playing offline, but the pictures came back when I was back online.

A good spot - pictures are there when I go online. Thanks.

Ahha, it is more complicated than that I find, having experimented a bit. In summary: the pictures (hyperlinks?) work when in online or offline mode in Steam. But they don't appear in offline mode when your computer has no working internet connection. Not Steam, but the TW:RII program itself is using the network if it can while running.

Background (not meant to be a Steam rant, really):

For years I knew that Steam's "Offline Mode" was nothing of the sort, since it 'phoned home' on the sly. That meant that it could discover there was an update and then refuse to let you play a game until you applied it. Which sometimes left you unable to complete an unfinished game (if the update wouldn't work with saved games) or unable to use mods (until the mod maker updated their mod). In addition, sometimes you would find that despite having set a game to "Do not keep this game up to date" in the Steam game properties, from time to time Steam would silently reset that back to the default.

To get around that, I have for years been setting Steam in Offline Mode and not letting it start up when I log in. Then I always manually disable my network adapter before starting up Steam. That stopped the b****r phoning home I managed about 10 months at one point playing mods and a game version I liked without updates (while the forums were moaning about side-effects of updates). But this last year I haven't managed it since every month or so Steam complains about "no login information on your computer" or similar and refuses to let me run any games until it has been online. I doubt there is any technical reason for this - Steam is just trying to force people to run online. Sigh. And now the games themselves are being designed to expect a working internet connection. No doubt for good and worthy reasons but I'd prefer to manage my own system (but am clearly a dinosaur).

[nearchos]

I dont know if anyone have noticed, but i think that the slingers units of the game are causing more damage than they should.
For example, in a battle against Rhodes, playing as Macedon, four units of rhodian slingers, desimated 2 units of hoplites, ( the one was veteran), in falanx formation, you know, bronze cloud men behind huge bronze shields,so these units finaly were defeated fron militia hoplites and these were my haviest armored units, you can imagine what hapened to my other units.....
The same have happent, many times and with my slingers too, against well armored units.
Among thousants of thinks that need fixing..

[nearchos]

Or

Capture points in open battles = Much less difficulty to design battle AI

I'd wager a very nice bottle of Irish Whiskey that this is exactly why it is so.

Yes, this makes sence, meke the bottles two.

[Quillan]

I dont know if anyone have noticed, but i think that the slingers units of the game are causing more damage than they should.
For example, in a battle against Rhodes, playing as Macedon, four units of rhodian slingers, desimated 2 units of hoplites, ( the one was veteran), in falanx formation, you know, bronze cloud men behind huge bronze shields,so these units finaly were defeated fron militia hoplites and these were my haviest armored units, you can imagine what hapened to my other units.....
The same have happent, many times and with my slingers too, against well armored units.
Among thousants of thinks that need fixing..

Slings seem to be armor piercing in game. Doesn't the entry on slingers say something like "average damage but good armor penetration"? Javelins do as well, but are much shorter ranged. I have a very healthy respect for slings in this game; even with armored legionaries they can't sit still under fire from slings and just shrug it off without major casualties, even in testudo formation.

[Jacque Schtrapp]

Just lost my initial campaign to an unavoidable crash at turn 236. Not enjoying the beta so far....

[Drakarys1402]

Extremely frustrated by the army cap. I am earning 20,000 denari a turn and have 5,000,000 gold yet I am relying entirely on garrison units to defend my historic roman empire as I need all of my 16 armies to be holding provinces I've just taken. Rebellion wouldn't annoy me at all if it didn't cancel all of my decades of romanization efforts at a stroke as th rebels convert my stuff to their culture and cause a decline in public order across the province. Worse is that CA is doing the bizarre thing where rebels get access to hellinic cataphracts and silver chevron elite units for no reason. I would like to know how the rebels have the infastructure and facilities to put better armies than most of my actual rivals into service?

If you build lots of farms everybody starts rebelling (because obviously the population is going to instantly go up: sigh). If you build loads of temples everybody is happy as they starve to death. It can be a very fiddly system and the subsistence crisis really adds to the difficulty. But it is so annoying and difficult to balance those scales especially as you take new provinces which messes the system up as the AI hasn't balanced his right at all.

[Hooahguy]

Slings seem to be armor piercing in game. Doesn't the entry on slingers say something like "average damage but good armor penetration"? Javelins do as well, but are much shorter ranged. I have a very healthy respect for slings in this game; even with armored legionaries they can't sit still under fire from slings and just shrug it off without major casualties, even in testudo formation.

That is correct. Historically it was like that. Thats what I learned from Europa Barbarorum. Slingers were fantastic units, but were limited that they couldnt shoot over a unit in front of them. Hence they made excellent skirmishers, but not very useful once the main engagement starts as you will undoubtedly hit your own men.

If you build lots of farms everybody starts rebelling (because obviously the population is going to instantly go up: sigh). If you build loads of temples everybody is happy as they starve to death. It can be a very fiddly system and the subsistence crisis really adds to the difficulty. But it is so annoying and difficult to balance those scales especially as you take new provinces which messes the system up as the AI hasn't balanced his right at all.

You might want to look into some campaign mods which reduce the penalties of squalor and food shortages (and their likelihood of having). I posted some links in the mod subforum.

[Hooahguy]

Please delete.

[Drakarys1402]

Also one major thing. Not being able to save during the AI turn when there is a battle. When you have a large empire and might have to spend half an hour or more to fight the five or so battles is just too much of a slog. Sometimes I want to be able to leave my campaign and this just gets annoying.

[Hooahguy]

Also one major thing. Not being able to save during the AI turn when there is a battle. When you have a large empire and might have to spend half an hour or more to fight the five or so battles is just too much of a slog. Sometimes I want to be able to leave my campaign and this just gets annoying.

As far as I can remember you have never been able to save during an AI turn, or during a battle.

[Drakarys1402]

Not during a battle. But when the AI attacks you and you have the option to click auto-resolve or to fight it you can press escape and get to the menu to save the game. This means you can leave if you want to. Now you can't.

[quadalpha]

Not during a battle. But when the AI attacks you and you have the option to click auto-resolve or to fight it you can press escape and get to the menu to save the game. This means you can leave if you want to. Now you can't.

Fear no more! I just found the quick save button on the upper left part of your army panel in the battle deployment screen (when it's zoomed in on the campaign map).

[Hooahguy]

Ignore

[Drakarys1402]

Odd. It was shaded out on mine. Plus I usually just press escape and that works. Being locked out of that made it seem like it doesn't let you.

[quadalpha]

No, random-one-province-minor-on-the-other-side-of-the-world, I don't want to buy your non-aggression for 16k. For the 5th time.