The Rome 2: Screenshot thread.

[Veho Nex]

I haven't seen this thread yet so I figured I'd start it out with my favorite battle from my Roman campaign.

*Spoiled for size*

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Being a walled city I decided to try a daring marine invasion rather than wait on siege equipment to be made. Under the cover of a heavy storm my fleet sails along the coast while my landed army distracts the garrison at the front gates.


A view of my waiting men from the ramparts as my fleet rounds the final bend and finally comes into sight of the city.



As my troop ships enter the harbor the enemy stands fully ready to repel my invasion. My fleet wasn't as hidden as I thought it would be. The landing goes ahead as planned and I'm hoping the weight of my legionaries will be enough to break the rebel lines.


Our lines connect in a clash of death. As i was too busy commanding to take screenshots I finally get some screens of my men fighting before the land army can break through. The enemy is already on the route when my land army connects from the opposite direction.

[Veho Nex]

Couple more from my Rome Campaign.

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[Hooahguy]

Some from my Suebi campaign:

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About to storm a town


The enemy came out to play!


In another battle, my general runs into the fray as my frontline units begin to waiver.


The results of that battle. I gotta say that the AI performed well in this battle, I was impressed. Or maybe it was because I was fighting only with spear and club levies and they had some high-tier soldiers.

[Spoonska]

Story behind this image

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While most of my battles are only 3-7 min long; I did have a 54 min battle that brought back a lot of old great memories. No bugs or anything like that it was a real struggle the full 54 min. I had sieged a city with about 4500 troops, I had 2300 maybe. Anyways the story goes like this

I deployed on their main gate where I shot down (I had 3 units of ballista) a siege tower that I thought could really hurt me. After a few shots I noticed that the reinforcements were coming by boat, and couldn't land in the city because there wasn't enough room. They had to land to the left side and run in through the main gate. So I turned my ballista towards them and started shelling them with explosive shot. This goes on for a while and I end up getting around 225 kills average with each unit of ballista. First person ballista mode is fun as balls by the way.

At this point however, I was really low on ammo. I was thinking because destructible walls act a little differently in Rome 2 maybe the gatehouse will have a special animation / texture / graphic. It doesn't. With my batista's on empty the only opening into the city was through the gatehouse. Luckily though, I had shot down any towers that would give me a headache, so meaningless casualties from them wouldn't be a factor. There were some ranged units on the tower walls, but all in all with my Spartans they shouldn't be a factor. I get my troops into position, and begin my death march into the city.

My first two or three units of men manage to get past the gatehouse, but once the ai sees what I'm doing all 4,000 of them set up on the other side. This would result in a 45 min tug of war for the gatehouse.I tried a many different tactics, and this actually looked really cool... like setting up 4 spartan hoplites (the core of this army), on my side of the gate outside in square formation kind of close together. The idea was that, I would pull out my 1-2 units (Perioikoi spearmen and hoplites) and run them through the squares, hoping that the enemy would give chase. Don't do this by the way. Because of unit mass they screwed up the square formations. It kind of worked, but in a 20/80 sort of way.

Once my Perioikoi Spearman and Hoplites were out of the way I decided to send in the wreckers (Spartan Hoplites. If you're playing as Sparta... You know what I mean ;) ).I went easy by sending in 2 units for 2 reasons. #1) Ease up on the fps. Even though this battle was fun I was getting a lot of chop. #2) In theory I was thinking... Taking mass into consideration : Less # of men in a very small confined space (Arches of a gateway) = more space to move around right? It might have worked. I would have to replicate the experience to get more substantial evidence / results, but between the 2 units they got 900 kills (a 700/200 split) before routing. Those men go down as heroes in my book. Even though we gained very little ground in the swing of things they were a virtual meat grinder, and if you were a light unit caught between them and the swordsmen you were on death notice.

Once it became clear they were not going to punch through, and their numbers started to wane, I decided to send in 2 more Spartan Hoplites and my General. Quick side note if you have a Spartan General with enough Zeal they are a supreme fighting force, and can easily take on 2-3 units at a time. These three combined started making a little headway. Which was really cool to watch because my general was out on the front line. He was easy to spot with that big corinthian helm. At this point I was pretty confident we were going to punch through and get the numbers in our favor
.
That's when the cavalry charges started to happen. Periodically the enemy would take all the cav they had, and just charge at the gate. Sounds like a dumb idea in theory, but again because of mass they would push me back. And not only that but they would separate individuals from formation and pick them off. At this point I gave up on my less is more strategy, and I did everything possible to get my Perioikoi Spearmen back into the fight.

It took a good 5-10 min for them to reach the front line with all the pushing, and shoving. We lost about 50 men in the process, but once they got there they were able to pick off the Merc Cav and Camel Riders that were starting to give me headaches. Once the cav were out of the way the battle strength bar was finally in my favor, and my Spartans whittled down the remaining swordsmen.

And then I had my favorite moment of the game so far. The enemy broke, and went into full retreat. Spartans started flooding into the city like a tidal wave. I give the order to chase down the fleeing cowards, and hit the insert key. What I got was a view of thousands of Spartans all running and cheering in joy with the sun bright in the sky and a destroyed Gatehouse in the background.Screenshot It was surreal almost. incredible.

[Forward Observer]

I'll start it off. I also posted these over at SimHQ. Most only cropped, but some may have been lightened up in Windows office picture manager

Occasionally, you get a red sky effect. I think the new patch mentions removing this


D day, sixth of June, 153 BC


Nobody's throwing up yet?


Off the boat


OK, What's going on up there, I can't see from the back row


These Gaul's mean business, and they are dressed for it


Somehow these almost look like Illustrations from an Osprey book


Horses look good too


Those Mastiffs are scary looking dogs


Waiting for the Ememy


Surprise attack on the stockade


and from another angle

[Hooahguy]

Threads merged.

[Hooahguy]

Off moderator mode- Great pictures FO! Eager to see more!

[BroskiDerpman]

Amazing screenshots! Especially the angles plus the graphics. May I ask what are the settings?

I'm convinced to buy the game and plop in a few mods to fix some issues I have.

[Hooahguy]

Amazing screenshots! Especially the angles plus the graphics. May I ask what are the settings?

I'm convinced to buy the game and plop in a few mods to fix some issues I have.

Yes, thats it... join us... join the dark side!

[BroskiDerpman]

Is there any cookies?

(I asked this before but forgot if you responded, are you in the army?)

[Hooahguy]

Only if you play nice.

[BroskiDerpman]

Y-y-yes m' lord...

Trembles in fear.



I made a thread about what faction to play first but that drowned down so now I'm going to make a thread: What faction do you like. I know mine is different now, I voted for Epirus but now I like Averni better so...

[Hooahguy]

As you can probably tell Im partial to the Suebi. Though I do want to try Epirus when the Suebi campaign finishes. Though I do want to try Sparta too as there are a lot of awesome re-skinning mods for Spartan units that make them look awesome.

[BroskiDerpman]

I'll create the thread once I'm off this darn traction chair and get on the PC again. It'll be interesting for me to see the opinions of the .Org post release favorite factions.

Oathsworn just look cool, reminds me of Marian Romans and Dominate Roman soldiers.

[Hooahguy]

Though to be fair, Ive only really experienced one faction, and a bit of the Romans from the prologue. And I imagine that its similar stories for most of us here as well.

[BroskiDerpman]

I was watching online footage and compared it to the complaints on the forums.

There are claims that Pikes are too weak and many screenshots showing troops going through Phalanxes. It's a Warscape thing with all those 1v1 animations but the Phalanx is in formation and counts the other ranks too.

So perhaps the levy pikes get shredded to pieces but Hellenic Royal guard, even when it looks like they've been disrupted they'll shred anything to the front of them with a few losses.

Even Oathsworn, the best non pike heavy infantry will get mowed down. Spartan pikes win just because of efficiency to their cost value and numbers.

If you catch phalanxes on flanks, behind of off guard your men will make quick work of them. So I'd say that part of combat is decently balanced.

Sorry for derailing the thread quite a bit but I was thinking about how phalanx factions are viable compared to what people say on TWC. (Thus making them chosen more in my soon to be made thread)

[CaptainCrunch]

@ Forward Observer; Those screens are deeeeeeluxe!! I must say, top of the line graphics look nicey-nice!

And yeah, those Arverni horsemen do look like something from the cover of an Osprey Men-At-Arms book.

... Hellenic Royal guard, even when it looks like they've been disrupted they'll shred anything to the front of them with a few losses. Even Oathsworn, the best non pike heavy infantry will get mowed down...

Hellenic Royal Guards actually have trouble beating Oathsworn unit vs unit with no support. Only phalangites I've seen do it are Mak Foot Companions, but I think the Oathsworn are one of the bugged units that never suffer exhaustion penalties. The collision model is also to blame, cuz yes... men walk through sarissa and pikes all day. What then happens is that the formation gets disrupted as enemies actually walk past the phalanx, for example, and the pikemen are pointing the wrong way and start taking serious losses. It's actually very difficult to get them to turn when this happens unless you disengage (which brings more losses). Even 'about face' doesn't work. The collision detection problems are responsible for a lot of the battlefield wackiness we see, so I hope it gets addressed.

I play as Epirus, and I think it's one of the coolest factions. Awesome selection of heavy cav (Aspis Companions! ), heavy infantry, decent navy and map positioning that offers the player a host of early game possibilities.

[Myth]

Amazing screenshots! Especially the angles plus the graphics. May I ask what are the settings?

I'm convinced to buy the game and plop in a few mods to fix some issues I have.

[BroskiDerpman]

Oh crap you caught me now!

I'll have to rethink about my life again... You know it always helps to rethink...

[Hooahguy]

A quick picture from my Suebi campaign. Here my light cavalry is charging an enemy heavy ballista, and as you can see, its firing at my cavalry. You can even see the projectile in the air. Literally a second after I took the photo it killed about 10 of my cavalrymen. I tried to capture the moment of impact, but all I got was before and after.

[Sp4]

A quick picture from my Suebi campaign. Here my light cavalry is charging an enemy heavy ballista, and as you can see, its firing at my cavalry. You can even see the projectile in the air. Literally a second after I took the photo it killed about 10 of my cavalrymen. I tried to capture the moment of impact, but all I got was before and after.

They're quite good at screwing cav that goes for them. I had 2 units of equites run around looking for some reinforcing ballistas during a battle because I didn't want them to suddenly turn the tide. From finding the things to actually getting my horses there to kill it, it managed to rout one of my cav units.

[Veho Nex]

Here's a few screenshots from my Roman Campaign and one from my buddies Roman campaign that I thought was pretty sweet looking.

This is why we can't have nice things and why its a pain in the ass that missile units aim for the flanks of units instead of center mass. Ladies and gentlemen I present the most evil tree that ever blocked my men from Pilum throwing.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

"Lucius, I can't see anything." "Shut up Gorgidus, if we stand still maybe the Sgt. won't see us slacking."

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

My buddies Campaign when he invaded the lands of the Gauls with his legion.

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[Bramborough]

Here's a few screenshots from my Roman Campaign and one from my buddies Roman campaign that I thought was pretty sweet looking.

This is why we can't have nice things and why its a pain in the ass that missile units aim for the flanks of units instead of center mass. Ladies and gentlemen I present the most evil tree that ever blocked my men from Pilum throwing.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

"Lucius, I can't see anything." "Shut up Gorgidus, if we stand still maybe the Sgt. won't see us slacking."

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

My buddies Campaign when he invaded the lands of the Gauls with his legion.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Epic legion pic, that's awesome. The "pilum tree" is pretty funny.

[Forward Observer]

A few more of some mix ups with the Gaul's:



The mounted Gaul in the middle has a pilum or javelin stuck in his shield


The attempt to make the Roman's arm look soiled comes off looking a bit like a tattoo


another view of the second shot


New death animation--very Hollywood


Mix up on the ground in front of the barbarian stockade


End of repelling the first wave in a 2 to 1 defense of a recently captured enemy village. The first of two armies is retreating in the distance. One hapless mounted attacker got caught and after his horse took a spear to the neck, they both went down in a heap. My forces then had to turn and take on a 2nd army approaching from the other side of the village.. It was close, but my boys held on.


Cheers

[Veho Nex]

Viridrovix only just now realized that maybe charging into battle with his gag pilum was a bad idea. Yes he kept fighting with that in his head.

[CaptainCrunch]

@ Veho Nex

Here's an R2 nature shot made possible with the Battlefield Camera mod;

A pod of Humpbacks watch a battle at sea on a foggy morning off the coast of North Africa

[Myth]

Has anyone gotten the game to look like this pre-alpha "screenshot"?

[Sp4]

How are we going to get into this city?
Here's an idea! We'll pile up enough dead horses in front of the gate for the weight of the dead horses to become too much for the gate to hold back!
Sounds good, let's do it.

3 seconds later... The enemy general is dead.

[AntiDamascus]

When ding dong ditch goes wrong

[Barkhorn1x]

Has anyone gotten the game to look like this pre-alpha "screenshot"?

Probably was a painting!!