First Impressions

[Myth]

Historically is a very broad term. Ptiched battles and bloody city assaults happened more frequently in antiquity than during the middle ages. In the times of knights and chivarly, long, drawn out sieges were the norm. They would most likely end with some form of parlay and a relinquishing of this and that between the nobility involved in the fight.

Pitched battles and siege assaults were bloody and costly business, and your dirt farmer levies were going to break morale and run at the first hint of trouble. These were not disciplined Roman troops or blood thirsty proud warrior societies like the celts, gauls and the germanic tribes. That's why in the middle ages the most prominent battles we remember were actually the most rare type of battle - like the siege of Acre, the fall of Jersualem etc.

That being said, settlements do, in fact, turn into deathtraps for the AI in R2TW. Since unlike in games like Rome 1 and Medieval 2, here the conquering army loses all it's movement points upon entering the settlement. In the previous games you gould go in, sack and run away. Here you go in and you're stuck, and the next turn the player comes with two stacks and splatters you. I know that's how I play. Especially now in my Avernii campaign, I'm making great use of the Celtic Ballista units, raining fire on the clumped up low morale barb units just sitting there inside a settlement or fort.

[Spoonska]

With the latest patch came the "Sally Forth"ability. For those unfamiliar what it does is: gives you the option while under siege to meet the enemy in battle, AKA have a field fight instead of a siege fight. This might be one of my favorite changes. I even had the AI use this option last night. I was taken off guard by it.

[ShadesPanther]

With the latest patch came the "Sally Forth"ability. For those unfamiliar what it does is: gives you the option while under siege to meet the enemy in battle, AKA have a field fight instead of a siege fight. This might be one of my favorite changes. I even had the AI use this option last night. I was taken off guard by it.

It should at least force them to fight a field battle now. Is the Garrison army included in the battle?


Although for me I have had lots of field battles, the difference between normal and hard is huge.

[Spoonska]

Yes, it is.

[Ituralde]

This is probably a bit late, but as I don't get to play as much as I want to, this is my first impression of the province system and I love it!

In my Suebi campaign I own 4 to 5 provinces and finally have the money and technology to build the third to fourth tier buildings. I've never had this much fun just tinkering around with my buildings in any previous Total War title. I'm trying out different specializations trying to get as close as possible to my happy cap and reducing my food surplus, which was around 30 at one time, to get more money. Now I've raised my income by 3000 to 4000 just by shuffling buildings around. It's really fun to discover all the synergies between the different kind of buildings, find the right shrine to go with it and not have food or happiness problems. There's just so many buildings to choose from and this has added a whole new scope to the game for me.

Also the Unique Ability of the Suebi to get happiness from war declarations plays into this very nicely as well. I declared several wars and declared on enemies where I don't intend to attack just to retain the happiness level back home. Gotta love those blood-thirsty Barbarians!

[Vuk]

Well, my sister got me RII as a Christmas gift during the Steam sale, so I installed it and gave it a whirl. I gotta say, this is worse than I ever imagined. This is it patched? I thought they said that it will run nearly as good as SII. I can play SII on nearly the highest settings without issue, but this barely gets 6 fps on the lowest settings. The animations are retarded and glitchy, the game is horribly unrealistic, and there is just no joy in playing it. It feels like it was made for 8 year olds. (or it would, if it were not so unecassarily sexualized)

I will probably never buy about CA game in my life after this disappointment. Back to the classics for me; I don't need this garbage. Congratulations on losing a fan of nearly a decade CA. I hope you are proud of your work.

[Mhantra]

Bummer, I am almost 300 hours in, still learning and enjoying.

[Hooahguy]

Sucks for you, Ive really enjoyed it and I only have lag when Im in a battle of over 12,000.

[BroskiDerpman]

I feel bad for your sister Vuk.

Going to go save up my money for something else. I can just see others play Rome 2 and already know what it's like. (Plus some of my friends from RTK see it as mediocre at best and some highly recommend me to spend my time on something better, I take their word; and no they're not from TWC)

[Kamakazi]

im over 300 hours in... still enjoying it myself

[easytarget]

I don't necessarily equate time spent playing a game (apparently) with the quality of it.

[easytarget]

But I have noticed a high propensity in the TW crowd in correlating the two.

[Hooahguy]

Because generally I think the reasoning is that if you dont enjoy it, why still play? Logically it makes no sense to play hundreds of hours in a game that you dont enjoy. Unless you are a masochist.

[easytarget]

Yeah, that's where your logic fails you a bit, plenty of gamers spend a lot of time in games I consider complete shite. And in many quite a lot of time. COD comes immediately to mind.

[Hooahguy]

plenty of gamers spend a lot of time in games I consider complete shite.

Well, maybe they dont think its shite?

[easytarget]

Indeedy, there is that.

And I'll freely admit over the course of more than a couple decades I've wasted way too many hours in way too many just ok games, because for me 9 out of 10 usually are just ok.

Point being, time is simply not a gauge one would use to determine quality. And that goes well beyond just reviewing game content, it applies to a whole lot of things in life.

[Hooahguy]

Nothing about quality and everything about enjoyment. It is possible to enjoy a sub-par product. I happen to enjoy Rome 2, which is in most cases a sub-par product. IMO its an overall good game, but still sub-par in many places, and with a combination of mods I think it brings it up to par. Of course, the mods shouldnt really be necessary, but thats the way it is.

My point is, time spent is more indicative of enjoyment of the game and not whether or not it is an overall good game.

[Myth]

I think the horrible performance is what's throwing you off. I suspect the video card or processor as the culprit. Can you post your specs, Vuk?

[Sp4]

I've played some with the DeI mod and now I can't play the vanilla game anymore even though the DeI mod has one flaw and that it, it either makes the game way too easy or way too hard.

[Buzghush]

I'm over 350 hours and still enjoying the game. Yes, there some bugs but game still playable and enjoyable. Also, they keep patching the game.

[Andres]

I think the horrible performance is what's throwing you off. I suspect the video card or processor as the culprit. Can you post your specs, Vuk?

That's what I was thinking as well.
@Vuk

[Vuk]

It is not just the performance. In fact, that is the smallest part of it.
The specs on the computer I am using are not that good, but like I said, it ran SII just fine.
3 Gigs ram
2.4 ghz dual core processor
GeForce 9500 GT

They said that if you could play SII you should be able to play this, but this is unplayable and SII runs just fine. I am calling BS on their claims.

[Sp4]

It seems to be the biggest issue.

[Beskar]

It is not just the performance. In fact, that is the smallest part of it.
The specs on the computer I am using are not that good, but like I said, it ran SII just fine.
3 Gigs ram
2.4 ghz dual core processor
GeForce 9500 GT

They said that if you could play SII you should be able to play this, but this is unplayable and SII runs just fine. I am calling BS on their claims.

This game is far more demanding on the CPU than Shogun 2, especially on the turn phases and the like, it is foolish to have 'show turns' as the computer goes into melt-down and by the looks of it, my Q6600 is more powerful than your own processor. From the experience, it left me with a "I think I need a new computer" is one of them. When I get one of the 'lightning storm' weather patterns (some seem fine, but now and then...) I have to consider opening taskmanager to close the game.

However, I am able to play a majority of games on Ultra+, such as Skyrim where I have tons of extra graphical enhancements on top.

Strangely, a game which I have felt hitting my computer hard is Starbound, which is a 2D side-scroller, which had several memory leak and other software-side issues to contend with. So how much of it is "My computer" vs "Poor Programming" does make you wonder with Rome2.

[fallen851]

Strangely, a game which I have felt hitting my computer hard is Starbound, which is a 2D side-scroller, which had several memory leak and other software-side issues to contend with. So how much of it is "My computer" vs "Poor Programming" does make you wonder with Rome2.

I've found that most TW games are poorly optimized.

[Hooahguy]

Thread merged with the first impressions thread. All threads dealing solely with user reviews will be moved to this thread.

[ichi]

So is it possible to necro a sticky thread? Regardless, here goes ...

I completely missed the release of R2TW, because I was still dabbling with S2 (DLC and Radious mods) and I disliked the original Rome soooo much.

and I'll admit I wanted to hate R2, but I got it for free and its summer so I loaded it up. I'm running a comp that can handle R2 easily, so a lot of the previous comments in this thread don't apply.

I read a few bits of guides but really played this one 'in ignorance', which led to a false start when I realized that unlike Shogun I had to have a General/Admiral to build an army, I couldn't garrison a few Ashigaru to boost order and couldn't build replacements in Rome and have them come meet me in Sicily. OK.

Once I got the food/order/income stuff figured out and understood how which buildings to pursue, province management seemed straightforward. Early Roman units are pretty strong so no problems with my campaigns. Actually later Roman units seemed way OP and there wasn't a lot of challenge crushing most settlements.

My big complaint about S2TW is that I end up fighting a high proportion of castle battles compared to field battles, and while there are a lot of settlement fights in R2 it didn't seem as bad, especially early on. The naval battles between fleets was interesting, but I still don't fully understand the fights between fleets and armies in transport. There didn't seem to be the issue of factions loading up armies on fleets and showing up in the heart of my territory, something those damn daimyo were notorious for trying, but the small army harassment was constant and tied down my armies effectively at times.

Diplomacy felt consistent with previous TW titles, in that no one wanted to be my friend at the beginning. At some point I guess I got big enough that everyone wanted to trade, and then my income shot up to the point it was irrelevant to my gameplay - I had so much cash I could pump up every legion and fleet and upgrade every building. I even threw cash at some diplomacy, which worked well.

I found the Client State aspect lacking, in that my clients never acted like anything I said mattered to them. One wouldn't trade, and at one point two of my clients fought to the death, and there was nothing I could do diplomatically to make them play well with each other. None of my enemies respected any of my clients either, several of my clients got wiped out and the aggressor didn't get any penalty or even an acknowledgement.

There's a lot more content to R2 than Shogun IMHO, the game lasted a long time (I may be slow too, so YMMV). I really liked the lack of any time constraints, something that made S2TW seem rushed and never allowed for pleasant province building. The provincial building chains in Rome seem rather dull and basic tho, there was a lack of a goal or target building. The simple research chains worked for me, I was able to unlock stuff at an appropriate pace and felt like I had a lot of choice about which priority to go after.

The characters seemed to die too fast, I'd just get them skilled and then bam natural causes. I finally figured out the leftmost choice was usually younger and lasted longer, but still seemed to cycle too quickly.

The games not as pretty as Shogun, but it does look good on Ultra. They did include the classic TW meme - "A Shamefur Dispray" which is cool but it lacks the overdone accent. any latin scholars?

I used Google Translate English to Latin for Shameful Display and got turpis Lorem ipsum dolor

I then used Google Translate Latin to English for turpis Lorem ipsum dolor and got Lakers fan

how funny is that?

The units of the various cultures also play well, I still feel like arty is too powerful tho. Fortunately the AI doesn't protect their arty from my cav (an old Shoggy trick was to order your cav to run through arty to the other side, they'd engage on contact but the AI doesn't react as quickly as when you order cav to directly attack).

In the end I found the game worthy of the TW series, probably my fav after STW, MTW, and S2TW. I looked forward to getting on and was challenged enough and rewarded enough that it made for a pleasant experience. I'm thinking I might go once more as some obscure faction, but probably not as Rome anymore. Maybe I'll set it on impossibru. If I do I'll report back, if not I'll see you all when the next TW drops.

[ichi]

OK tried to go again with an obscure eastern faction, two turns and I'm done, no enthusiasm for it (and I played S2 through every faction).

See you next game

[Myth]

I'm not much unto client states unless I'm a barbarian faction that can form a confederation.

[Sp4]

All allies in this are pretty useless and incapable because the AI sucks or maybe it does so purposefully to make it harder for you. Allying with a bunch of people or making them client states is actually a pretty good way to weaken them in the long term and it gets them off your back in the meantime.