First Impressions

[nafod]

Anyone else having extreme lag in Rain?

My rig is quite dated, (3.16 Ghz Core 2 Duo, Nvidia 470, 8 GB ram) but I can get away with decent settings (think medium with a select high) and yet keep fps in the 20-30 range. Rain battles are at 2 fps. Can't even play.

I must say I started to get a little pulled in by this game, but the fact that I cannot play a battle in rain at all is a little troubling.

And I can't stand flaming javelins......

[The Stranger]

Anyone else having extreme lag in Rain?

My rig is quite dated, (3.16 Ghz Core 2 Duo, Nvidia 470, 8 GB ram) but I can get away with decent settings (think medium with a select high) and yet keep fps in the 20-30 range. Rain battles are at 2 fps. Can't even play.

I must say I started to get a little pulled in by this game, but the fact that I cannot play a battle in rain at all is a little troubling.

And I can't stand flaming javelins......

i had it once. really sucked :S had to quit game in taskmanager. and ya wtf flaming javelins =_=

[The Stranger]

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.

you still can i think, but not when you are playing on legendary

[CaptainCrunch]

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.

Flip it on them! When this happens to me I counter-offer with the suggested amount as a payment to me instead, and usually the offer has a High or Moderate chance of success still.

[ShadesPanther]

I agree with everyones points here but one i havent seen mentioned is on the campaign map.

The way main factions get wiped out quickly and one city nations become superpowers. In my Macedon game Cimmeria has conquered all of ancient Asia minor (modern day Turkey) except for peraganum and ephesus.
Namomemes has conquered all of Eastern North Africa with a border at carthage with the numidians (begins with M) holding the rest and lillybaeum.

I've seen similar in all my other games. How have they not picked this up in playtesting?

[ReluctantSamurai]

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.

One of those scalable issues that has never been resolved correctly (IMHO) since the introduction of the 3D map and the reduction in the # of seasons.

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

I have always detested RTW demographics. Cities always grow way too fast (or too slow if you're wanting to get to the next tier of development) and squalor has always been much too much of an issue. In RTW 1, once you figured out how to achieve ZPG, all such problems went away. I wonder how it's to be done in this game without resorting to 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)

This makes at least two of us......which is why I wait until the Gold/Platinum/(or whatever) Edition comes out.

[BroskiDerpman]

Shogun 2's Gold Edition was win unless you bought the US edition like I did. Since the US edition has no dlc (Only expansions) and was only cheaper many of the times by a few bucks. Meanwhile the Euro edition got the cool cover and all dlc except for blood dlc for only a few more USD. (Cool cover, nuff said)

[ArcturUs]

Hey everyone, I think I'm a bit late to give the first impressions. I got it on the release date (with Greek State DLC for free as I pre ordered ) Been a little out of touch with TW for quite some time, so started with prologue. Here's my first impressions.
Love the new game mechanics. Still trying to figure out how everything works. Graphics are nice, but could have been better. Some bugs have been reported, like ramming in naval battles. But also heard that they were fixed in the patch that was out on friday. Yet to test them out. I do like the new setting, provincial governance in the campaign map. Playing the Roman campaign under the Julia family. Overall well worth the money. I also heard that the bugs that are currently not fixed will be done so in the upcoming patches.

[Bramborough]

Background: not a TW fanatic, but have played and enjoyed several of the earlier titles: MTW, RTW, M2TW, ETW, and NTW. As I've read through others' comments in this and other fora, it seems significant to point out that I have NOT played Shogun 2 (although am now very tempted to go back and give it a try). In addition, Rome 2 is the first TW game (heck, actually the first game of ANY kind, I think) that I preordered in advance and began playing on release. So...these comments are made in the context of not having played CA's most recent (and apparently very worthy) effort, as well as not being able to compare to the typical upon-release state of a TW game.

So, all that disclaimer aside, I'm 150ish turns into Rome Junii campaign, and also did full Prologue "tutorial" campaign. Here's a few thoughts.

*** Game looks pretty awesome. I did have some annoying visual glitches, but bumped from "Extreme" down to "Ultra" graphic setting, haven't found much about which to complain since.

*** For first 100 turns or so, the end-of-turn wait didn't bother me much. Now that my empire is bigger, have a couple of client states, and more trade partners, however, I see much more of the map, and that wait time is starting to get annoyingly long. Turning off AI moves doesn't help much.

*** I think the mechanics of internal politics (Roman at least) are interesting and well-done. What is not apparent (yet) to me, however, is why it matters in the first place. My Junii have ranged between 9% to 62% influence, and I haven't discerned any significant penalties/rewards for low or high influence. I assume that 0% means one gets fired and loses game. I also understand from pre-release reviews and others' posts here that civil war occurs if one's influence gets too high. Therefore it appears that the goal is to stay in a "happy medium" which happens to be extremely wide and very easy to maintain with little effort (something like 10-60% range). Outside these extremes, I see very little point thus far in paying much attention to politics. The political rank bonuses (for aedile, praetor, etc) are nice, but don't necessarily seem worth the treasury cost of obtaining them. What am I missing (if anything?). EDIT: Right after I posted this, Civil War occurred, with 55% senate influence...a level I'd taken care to maintain +/- 5% for at least 75 turns. I'd been deluded into thinking that not letting my influence get too high had mollified the other families enough to avoid open conflict. It now appears to me that civil war is either a random and/or eventually inevitable event. So now I'm feeling even less motivation to pay any particular attention to internal politics; I have yet to see any positive outcomes worth the effort, and now also don't feel that it's a way to avoid negative events (i.e., civil war) either.

*** AI blockading cities (particularly Rebels). Very annoying, seems to be an issue with port cities under rebel control. You want to take out a city, but it's rebel, so neutrals (or even allies) are ganging up on it. But they don't assault, they simply put a naval blockade on the thing in perpetuity. Had to go to war with Cyrenaica and Nasomones just to take my last settlement to finish out Africa province, whereas otherwise my plan had been to stay somewhat friendly with them once Africa was completed.

*** Naval-only presence in city. Easily the most frustrating gameplay issue I've run across yet. I had a non-walled minor settlement which happened to be occupied by my medium-sized fleet (maybe 8 ships). It was newly-conquered and had a relatively small inherent garrison. Enemy comes along to attack. They easily overwhelmed the small land garrison, but were definitely beatable by my fleet hastati, IF I'd been able to get them ashore quickly. I could not do so in time to prevent their capturing the central victory point...landing beaches were too far out and (counterintuitively), the ships could not go alongside the port wharves to unload troops (this ought to be allowed in cities which one already holds and is defending). So the attackers easily capture my city. So far, merely annoying. I'd lost the settlement, but could get it back pretty easily in a turn or two. My fleet was very lightly damaged, because most of the ships had been unable to engage at all. BUT...in end-battle results, I'd LOST THE ENTIRE FLEET. WTF?!? Why couldn't they have merely sailed out of port? Obviously I learned to be much more careful about where/when I put fleets into port, so lesson learned there. But my point is that this is a goofy mechanic in the first place. I'm okay with making fleets horrible for settlement defense vs land attack...but they ought to be easily withdrawn back to sea rather than destroyed.

*** Garrison effects on Public Order (or lack thereof). I like the new "inherent garrison" mechanic whereby each city's buildings provide troops for defense. Much more streamlined than the old mechanic where one had to hire low-end troops in each city (which was tiresome, took up unit slots, and mounted upkeep costs). So far so good. These garrisons, however, appear to be only valuable for defense, and do nothing for public order...which in older TW games was often the most important consideration in establishing a garrison in the first place. Rather frustrating that I have to park a field army (which are capped in numbers) to impact public order...when that settlement already has a fairly robust garrison. In the game of trade-offs, I think it would make more sense to have some sort of "Mobilize Garrison" or "Martial Law" option for a city or province, which it costs food/money but increases public order.

*** Small troop movements. Overall, I don't have a problem with the army/fleet cap and requiring a general's presence in field armies. This makes sense to me. I do think, however, that one ought to be able to move smaller non-general-led troops about. Perhaps in forced-march only mode, where these troops cannot initiate battles and are at a disadvantage when attacked. I'd like to be able to build infantry in one province, cavalry in another, missile/siege in a third, and then have these component units come together to form a combined legion under a general. This would allow me to spread out the military buildings a bit instead of having to concentrate them all in the slots of one province. OR, alternatively, perhaps they can't move, but I could still build them in a city where'd they contribute to the garrison and public order until a general came along to pick them up for campaign.

*** Champions a bit OP in terms of military training bonus. I've got several field armies running around with all units maxed out for XP. Some of this came from battle of course, but most of it came from simply parking a champion in the army.

*** Household. I like the pool system whereby one can pick an appropriate follower for a general/admiral. Good small way to tailor a general, especially as he bounces back and forth between field campaign and province garrison. I'd like to see a few more "administrative" household cards pop up (+public order, +commerce, etc). I'd also like to see each general perhaps have two household slots rather than just one. Separate-but-closely-related, it doesn't make sense to me that one can arrange marriages to OTHER families' generals, but apparently no way to initiate marriage for one's OWN generals. Thus far, the other families have been quite reticent about arranging marriages into the Junii, so almost all of my generals are apparently bachelors (and therefore empty spouse slots which could otherwise have a trait associated).

[BroskiDerpman]

Play Shogun 2 with the UAI mod...


Waiting for Gold when CA finishes the beta finally. Then the game to me will be somewhat bearable, hopefully.

[ReluctantSamurai]

@Broski....play Shogun 1 with the 1.02 patch installed. Then prepare to get your ass kicked
@Bramborough

Thank you for that analysis. As one who has a love/hate relationship with micromanagement, it's good to see some 'nuts & bolts' commentary on how the game works

[Myth]

I'm getting the game and then I suspect I'll spend an entire afternoon at work writing an in-depth, diehard geek, TW bread and fed review. BTW @ReluctantSamurai why haven't you obtained Rome 2 yet?

[ArcturUs]

@Bramborough Nice review. Regarding garrison armies, I would advise you to not park armies in the cities unless they are vulnerable to attack(borders). You can increase public order by other means, such as edicts, lower taxation, etc. I play the Julia campaign, and actually right now I have only one army in all of Italy(which I will be using for the invasion of Gaul in a few turns), even the cities to the north like Velathari and Ariminum are quite unguarded, as I haven't gone into war with Helvetti tribes in the north yet. So you need not park an army in every city that you capture.

One thing I discovered is that the cash flow at the start of the campaign is quite low so you will have to watch where you are spending that money. But as you progress through the turns and capture more cities, get trade agreements etc, your income increases considerably.

[ReluctantSamurai]

BTW @ReluctantSamurai why haven't you obtained Rome 2 yet?

I NEVER buy any game upon release (and this includes Paradox, Bioware, etc.)
I don't like Steam telling me what I can or can't do............

[The Stranger]

Background: not a TW fanatic, but have played and enjoyed several of the earlier titles: MTW, RTW, M2TW, ETW, and NTW. As I've read through others' comments in this and other fora, it seems significant to point out that I have NOT played Shogun 2 (although am now very tempted to go back and give it a try). In addition, Rome 2 is the first TW game (heck, actually the first game of ANY kind, I think) that I preordered in advance and began playing on release. So...these comments are made in the context of not having played CA's most recent (and apparently very worthy) effort, as well as not being able to compare to the typical upon-release state of a TW game.

So, all that disclaimer aside, I'm 150ish turns into Rome Junii campaign, and also did full Prologue "tutorial" campaign. Here's a few thoughts.

*** Game looks pretty awesome. I did have some annoying visual glitches, but bumped from "Extreme" down to "Ultra" graphic setting, haven't found much about which to complain since.

*** For first 100 turns or so, the end-of-turn wait didn't bother me much. Now that my empire is bigger, have a couple of client states, and more trade partners, however, I see much more of the map, and that wait time is starting to get annoyingly long. Turning off AI moves doesn't help much.

*** I think the mechanics of internal politics (Roman at least) are interesting and well-done. What is not apparent (yet) to me, however, is why it matters in the first place. My Junii have ranged between 9% to 62% influence, and I haven't discerned any significant penalties/rewards for low or high influence. I assume that 0% means one gets fired and loses game. I also understand from pre-release reviews and others' posts here that civil war occurs if one's influence gets too high. Therefore it appears that the goal is to stay in a "happy medium" which happens to be extremely wide and very easy to maintain with little effort (something like 10-60% range). Outside these extremes, I see very little point thus far in paying much attention to politics. The political rank bonuses (for aedile, praetor, etc) are nice, but don't necessarily seem worth the treasury cost of obtaining them. What am I missing (if anything?).

*** AI blockading cities (particularly Rebels). Very annoying, seems to be an issue with port cities under rebel control. You want to take out a city, but it's rebel, so neutrals (or even allies) are ganging up on it. But they don't assault, they simply put a naval blockade on the thing in perpetuity. Had to go to war with Cyrenaica and Nasomones just to take my last settlement to finish out Africa province, whereas otherwise my plan had been to stay somewhat friendly with them once Africa was completed.

*** Naval-only presence in city. Easily the most frustrating gameplay issue I've run across yet. I had a non-walled minor settlement which happened to be occupied by my medium-sized fleet (maybe 8 ships). It was newly-conquered and had a relatively small inherent garrison. Enemy comes along to attack. They easily overwhelmed the small land garrison, but were definitely beatable by my fleet hastati, IF I'd been able to get them ashore quickly. I could not do so in time to prevent their capturing the central victory point...landing beaches were too far out and (counterintuitively), the ships could not go alongside the port wharves to unload troops (this ought to be allowed in cities which one already holds and is defending). So the attackers easily capture my city. So far, merely annoying. I'd lost the settlement, but could get it back pretty easily in a turn or two. My fleet was very lightly damaged, because most of the ships had been unable to engage at all. BUT...in end-battle results, I'd LOST THE ENTIRE FLEET. WTF?!? Why couldn't they have merely sailed out of port? Obviously I learned to be much more careful about where/when I put fleets into port, so lesson learned there. But my point is that this is a goofy mechanic in the first place. I'm okay with making fleets horrible for settlement defense vs land attack...but they ought to be easily withdrawn back to sea rather than destroyed.

*** Garrison effects on Public Order (or lack thereof). I like the new "inherent garrison" mechanic whereby each city's buildings provide troops for defense. Much more streamlined than the old mechanic where one had to hire low-end troops in each city (which was tiresome, took up unit slots, and mounted upkeep costs). So far so good. These garrisons, however, appear to be only valuable for defense, and do nothing for public order...which in older TW games was often the most important consideration in establishing a garrison in the first place. Rather frustrating that I have to park a field army (which are capped in numbers) to impact public order...when that settlement already has a fairly robust garrison. In the game of trade-offs, I think it would make more sense to have some sort of "Mobilize Garrison" or "Martial Law" option for a city or province, which it costs food/money but increases public order.

*** Small troop movements. Overall, I don't have a problem with the army/fleet cap and requiring a general's presence in field armies. This makes sense to me. I do think, however, that one ought to be able to move smaller non-general-led troops about. Perhaps in forced-march only mode, where these troops cannot initiate battles and are at a disadvantage when attacked. I'd like to be able to build infantry in one province, cavalry in another, missile/siege in a third, and then have these component units come together to form a combined legion under a general. This would allow me to spread out the military buildings a bit instead of having to concentrate them all in the slots of one province. OR, alternatively, perhaps they can't move, but I could still build them in a city where'd they contribute to the garrison and public order until a general came along to pick them up for campaign.

*** Champions a bit OP in terms of military training bonus. I've got several field armies running around with all units maxed out for XP. Some of this came from battle of course, but most of it came from simply parking a champion in the army.

*** Household. I like the pool system whereby one can pick an appropriate follower for a general/admiral. Good small way to tailor a general, especially as he bounces back and forth between field campaign and province garrison. I'd like to see a few more "administrative" household cards pop up (+public order, +commerce, etc). I'd also like to see each general perhaps have two household slots rather than just one. Separate-but-closely-related, it doesn't make sense to me that one can arrange marriages to OTHER families' generals, but apparently no way to initiate marriage for one's OWN generals. Thus far, the other families have been quite reticent about arranging marriages into the Junii, so almost all of my generals are apparently bachelors (and therefore empty spouse slots which could otherwise have a trait associated).

LOL i'd rage so hard if that happened to my fleet... I quit the game over less XD

and ya the ancillary slots are too few :S need more!

[Ituralde]

I was finally able to play the game yesterday. Five hours in so these really are my first impressions.

I played the Prologue just to get back into the series. All in all it was a mixed bag for me. The province happiness system was really difficult to grasp for me and except for my Rome provinces all others had massive Public Order problems and the only two provinces I ever taxed where Rome and Campania. I also lost Salernum, becaue I moved out immediatelly to capture Butaxium (or something like that) in the south by sea. The naval invasion was fun, but during the battle the AI reared it's ugly head for the first time. I split my Equites from my main force and rode them in a column along the coast, while naval reinforcements came in from the sea. The defenders initially positioned themselves between the town center and my main force, but when my Equites passed them they wheeled around with their whole army to chase after them. The path to the town center for my main army was clear, so I ran ahead and captured it. My Equites safely avoided the main force and the town was taken with probably 10 casualties on each side.

Afterwards I had one army in Capua staving off the Samnites and attempting to retake Salernum, while my initial army went around Salerno and just captured all the settlements leading up to Bovianum. The siege of Bovianum was atrocious! The AI only gives you one turn to build siege equipment and I chose Gallerys, mistaking them for rams from the picture. Once the battle started my units would not attack the gate itself and my galleries were utterly useless. The enemy sallied forth through one gate and I thought I could push them back inside, but there was some kind of invisible wall holding my troops back, they just would not enter the city, even when the gates were wide open. Instead there was some massive blob fighting it out in front of the gates every time the defenders actually moved out with one unit or two. One nice thing about the new line of sight mechanic came to light though. A unit of Spearmen was able to surprise my Slingers and dealt some heavy damage. I was distracted by the battle and a hill had shielded their approach. This has never happened to me in any of the previous titles. In the end I couldn't take the city and had to withdraw.

On my second try I was prepared and built some Ladders. Stormed the wall and killed everyone on it. But then what? The gate is still closed. I need to capture it, alright. But I can't capture it, while there are still enemies on the other side of it. Just attack them then? Sorry, no can do. Unlike in previous titles your troops can't use gate houses to get off the wall. So I had to walk around half the town to find one of the towers, where I was finally able to climb down, take one of the victory points and then kill all the remaining defenders! The Prologue was done, and so was I. Battles happen without cohesion and you loose any kind of control over your troops five seconds after impact. It's a constant running around and you never know where your units end up or how far they'll spread around the map. Then there's the infamous hotkeys, flaming javelins for crying out loud! Also once your general has a certain rank there are literally ten different hotkeys with abilities that are so small it was hard to distinguish them. I also had some lag so activating them was a lot of hit and miss, especially for those where you had to target an enemy unit. It's hard to make them out in the massive raging blob in front of you. Also no actual keys are assigned to the abilites by default and F will no longer toggle Fire At Will and S for skirmish is gone as well (Why change it?).

Since the Prologue put me off of playing Rome (No defensive Pilae from the Hastati!), I went ahead and started a campaing as the Suebi! I had a lot of fun setting my armies in Plunder stance and just going to town on the Boii. I even harassed one of the german tribes north of me, without declaring war, thus gaining favour from the Lugii, who are at war with them and signing a defensive alliance with them. It felt really immersive and responsive from the camaping AI side. I even managed to sack the Boii Provincial Capital, though I was a bit surprised that it didn't belong to me afterwards. It fit with the pillage and plunder narrative, but I won the battle for the town fair and square (By just rushing everyone at the main gate) but the Capital was still in Boii hands.

Unfortunately I forgot everything I learned from playing Shogun II and plunged my one province into a massive food shortage by immediately building the next level of town. One more reason to plunder my enemies territories, as my armies were starving at home. I went with some food Shrine that took forever to finish though and made the choice too late to switch from a horse enclosure to a farm for more food! The Boii came at me with a vengeance, wiped out one of my armies and nearly took my Capital! It was a really intense fight in a forested area, where in the end only my general with his Wodan Spearmen was left and had to tackle several roaming slingers in the forest, before I won.

Now I finally have food again and am swimming in gold, as I couldn't recruit anything while under siege. Unfortunately I can still only recruit the three units I had from the beginning, as I have not figured out where military units come from in barbarian building chains (The Encyclopedia was no help at all!). But despite all of that I am really looking forward to putting some more turns in. I always had that next goal to keep me motivated (Build that army, plunder that guy, get trade rights with him, eliminate the food deficit) and the Agents are a lot of fun to play around with as well.

So Rome II has its ups and downs. It pulls me in, but it annoys me at every corner as well. A few patches and balancing will really help with this one, but it won't keep me from enjoying my Suebi campaign some more!

[Bramborough]

@Bramborough Nice review. Regarding garrison armies, I would advise you to not park armies in the cities unless they are vulnerable to attack(borders). You can increase public order by other means, such as edicts, lower taxation, etc. I play the Julia campaign, and actually right now I have only one army in all of Italy(which I will be using for the invasion of Gaul in a few turns), even the cities to the north like Velathari and Ariminum are quite unguarded, as I haven't gone into war with Helvetti tribes in the north yet. So you need not park an army in every city that you capture.

Totally agree. And indeed, in my more "settled" provinces such as Italia, Cisalpina, Magna Grecia etc, I maintain zero military presence. My comment pertains more to recently conquered provinces, while dealing with the cultural differences and slowly decaying unrest. This typically takes around 10-15 turns to resolve (and yes, I know dignitaries help..I use 'em). During this "assimilation period", however, I feel like I have to keep my field armies parked in these settlements until they cross back into the "green" for public order. Lends a rather "start-stop" dynamic to the ongoing Roman juggernaut.

[Lord of the Isles]

Lends a rather "start-stop" dynamic to the ongoing Roman juggernaut.

Very true. I particularly noticed the assimilation problem when launching a war against Thrace (IIRC). A 4 region province and I sent 3 armies against 3 of the regions in one turn. Forgetting that the -25 one-off hit to public order in the province would be cumulative. Thankfully my characters and the armies just kept public order to -97 at the end of turn and I was able to build it up to about -70 so I could finish off the last region 4 or so turns later. Then I had to wait some more turns till public order came down enough to let my armies leave to go rampaging elsewhere.

But I quite like it as a slight brake on expansion. In fact, while there are numerous big problems with the game, I like the whole region/province mechanism and how CA have done faction management and the economy (though not the tech tree). Some tradeoffs to decide on every so often but not impossible to build an empire. And about the right amount of micromanagement.

[quadalpha]

Also, letting public order go all the way down to -100 isn't catastrophic. All it does it spawn a smallish rebel army that gets reinforced every turn until you take it out.

[ArcturUs]

Totally agree. And indeed, in my more "settled" provinces such as Italia, Cisalpina, Magna Grecia etc, I maintain zero military presence. My comment pertains more to recently conquered provinces, while dealing with the cultural differences and slowly decaying unrest. This typically takes around 10-15 turns to resolve (and yes, I know dignitaries help..I use 'em). During this "assimilation period", however, I feel like I have to keep my field armies parked in these settlements until they cross back into the "green" for public order. Lends a rather "start-stop" dynamic to the ongoing Roman juggernaut.

Ya when you capture new regions it is a bit of a problem. But even then I usually park my conquering army for just a single turn(by which the one turn political instability will be over) and move on to the next settlement. Like quadalpha mentioned even if it does get to -100, it just spawns a rebel army which you can defeat relatively easily, in most cases. What I do is, if I notice that the settlement is going to rebel soon I'll keep my conquering army just on the borders of the settlement so that I can take care of the rebel army when it spawns. One good thing when you beat a rebel army is that it restores public order and the people will know who their true masters are

Another thing I noticed is that factions that were destroyed previously can make a comeback if their previously owned territories rebel. I noticed this when I destroyed Libya, but after a few turns one of the towns that I captured from them rebelled and a Libyan army spawned. Although I did decimate them in the very next turn

[BroskiDerpman]

@Broski....play Shogun 1 with the 1.02 patch installed. Then prepare to get your ass kicked
@Bramborough

Thank you for that analysis. As one who has a love/hate relationship with micromanagement, it's good to see some 'nuts & bolts' commentary on how the game works

Once I got used to the ui I rampaged through Japan till the game derped out on me and I had to uninstall the game.

[ShadesPanther]

Apparently civil war is linked to the ambition of your generals. If it is too "high" it can trigger it.
What is "too high" is unclear though

[BroskiDerpman]

I wonder if civil war and rebelling generals are hard to deal with, if not sad Panda is sad.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Once I got used to the ui I rampaged through Japan till the game derped out on me and I had to uninstall the game

Are we talking Shoggie I or II here? cuz no player I've ever know could rampage anywhere through Japan in the original on expert setting

[andrewt]

Also, letting public order go all the way down to -100 isn't catastrophic. All it does it spawn a smallish rebel army that gets reinforced every turn until you take it out.

I prefer blitzing provinces and getting public order go all the way down to -100. In fact, I sometimes put one of my armies to raiding stance to help it along. It spawns a 4-unit rebel army. Each turn, the province gets a +20 modifier while the rebel army gets 4 more units. I believe this happens until -20. The moment the rebel army spawns, I can park an army in the settlement it spawned close to. That frees up the rest of my armies. I kill the rebel army once happiness hits -20.

[Bramborough]

I wonder if civil war and rebelling generals are hard to deal with, if not sad Panda is sad.

From the Roman perspective (not sure what happens with other factions): One of your regions (single region, not a whole province) remains Roman, but rebels against YOU. This region is treated as a newly arising faction called "Senate Loyalists". In my case it happened to be Sardinia, just across the sea from Italia & Sicily. I'm guessing that the civil war faction will probably always spawn in an older region in or near Italia, rather than out on the fringe somewhere. And this does break up province cohesion, so it negates any edict you had, and may affect recruitment, depending on what buildings are in the rebelling town. For example, my most advanced fleet recruitment port was in Sardinia, so I didn't have access to recruit these vessels until after I retook that town.

In my case, I didn't lose control of any of my army/fleets (although I suspect this might happen if there's one actually stationed in the affected region). I did, however, lose all my Cornelii and Julii general/admirals, and had to replace them. The "Other Houses" general/admirals stayed loyal. So...six armies and four fleets (all 12 units each) insta-spawned in Sardinia, and proceeded to fan out toward Corsica, Sicily, and Magna Grecia from there. And they're all Roman troops, with access to the same level of units (in this case, legionaries with a sprinkling of veteran legionaries among them, with accompanying velites and equites). I did, however, have access to praetorians and 1st cohorts, but did not see any among the opposing legions.

So anyhoo, 6 armies and 4 fleets of Roman troops rampaging around the home provinces, yeah, it was a pain in the butt to deal with, and took quite a few turns to contain. I had enough power to do so, but had to call a lot of legions home so it took some travel time. Meanwhile, they ate up 3 provinces (Sardinia, Corsica, Lilybaeum) and *should* have taken Syracuse (not sure how/why they didn't, they were a step ahead of me and could've done so). They also landed a couple of legions in Italia, but by then my guys were closing in on them. In general, my sense is that the Campaign AI roughly marches toward Rome, although not necessarily in a straight line (thank goodness). And yes, you do have to deal with unrest and conquest public order penalties all over again when you retake those settlements (at least there's not a cultural assimilation though).

I don't remember exactly when it started, I'd say it took me 8-10 turns to get legions home, retake provinces, etc. As I type now, the civil war is still technically going on, but there's only a couple of small beat-up fleets I need to chase down and eliminate. I assume that once they're gone, the "Senate Loyalist" faction is eliminated and that's that. I don't know yet if there's some other event triggered like an internal peace treaty, or establishing the Empire (vice Republic) or whatever.

So bottom line, is it "hard" to deal with? Not necessarily, but harder than any other faction, I'd say. Derails your ongoing plans, takes time, causes some chaos on your core provinces, etc. The battle AI isn't really any smarter than for any other faction, but they are Roman troops, your units don't possess any inherent qualitative advantage over them, so they can't be taken lightly.

[BroskiDerpman]

Sounds interesting but if you could beat them even with your legions marching all the way back (Perhaps it's possible to keep any reserve legions?) them I'm sure the rebellion could get destroyed and be considered a minor set back.

Though it seems quite fun to be able to fight Romans with Romans.

1 duty to me just seems to little, perhaps CA should've given more to the rebels so they start of already well developed and you'd be in even bigger trouble.

[Fluvius Camillus]

Personal rundown for anyone who is interested (Macedon, Normal campaign, around turn 80).

Good:
- Awesome look
- Province system
- The used cities and minor factions (good research or did they take a good look at EB?)
- Diplomacy options
- The option to travel over water by transport.

Bad:
- Autoresolve is very bad at killing whole units (very annoying when a faction without towns repeatedly attacks with trash).
- Battles are over way too fast.
- Hoplites overpowered? In hoplite phalanx mode my standard hoplites absolutely butcher every enemy they meet.
- Going to land/sea mechanics sometimes have problems so you waste movement.
- Transports are no easy pickings, largely even better than naval troops.
- On normal, the campaign AI is INSANELY PASSIVE. While I loathe the braindead AI who suddenly attacks you in past TW's, some challenge by being attacked by a destined enemy is welcome. The AI never builds their forces to a decent level in terms of quantity and quality. The campaign has been made extremely boring since I just use 1 fullstack to destroy the faction which I decide is ripe for the taking.

That is all for now.

~Fluvius

[Suraknar]

First Impressions, 12 hours of play, Rome/Julia House.

I am wowed, I really like all the changes to the game, and the streamlining of mechanics.

Graphics are great as well, even with some glitches here and there (albeit I am playing on DX9, due to my aged GF9600 GT, all else is on x64, windows 7 etc)

The New Strategic map and also Compbat areas, and the fact that the Battlemap is actually a Huge Map mirroring the Strategy map is simply Amazing!

What i particularly lie is the pace of the battles, this is as Good now as it was with STW and MTW (the originals), it is much much better than RTW(1), really good job there. Tacticas are back onthe menu, it is not long a Rush with everything you got.

Combined Naval/Land battles are awesome!

Economics seem to be fine as well, this must be the first MTW game that I play with default economy (I always moded the treasury previously from MTW onwards...it was simply "Much Koku" with STW).

I like the way Provinces are structured with one main city etc very much.

Overall very happy with Rome2, kudos!

I foresee many many many many many hours of play here :)

[gedingradski]

So far I haven't noticed anyone mention (and sorry if you have) the total lack of battle map variation.

This is a pet hate of mine. You know, back in RTW days you could forgive them for having fairly bland battle maps during sieges, but at least back then the maps outside of settlements actually kind of represented where the battle took place. It just seems to be the same maps, maybe with a different orientation. And the settlement battles? I was soooo dissapointed that after waiting 10 turns or so after my first settlement capture, getting ready for the next one... patiently tolerating all the glitches and performance issues... finally ready to take my second settlement and lo and behold it was the exact same map as before.... Considering how modular these maps are already I think it wouldn't be too much of an ask to put a bit more effort in to actually make it interesting to take a town, and actually require some, even a teeny-tiny amount of strategy on how best to take the town instead of the exact same way you took this one last time. It makes it worst that the defenders just sit at their defence flag (don't even get me started on those...) waiting for you slice them up, or that their actual army decided to jump in a boat and hang out in the dock so that I'm just breezing through their garrison troops before they even turn up.

Considering that the game is already 9 gB, I wouldn't mind an extra gB or two if that meant more battle maps, not that I think it would require anything near that amount of space...