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.