Is the game in its current state worth installing?

[quadalpha]

I think being on the fence is for those who haven't bought it yet. Just install the thing and find out for yourself!

Re: authority, zeal, cunning. If you select your army on the campaign map, your general's face should show in the bottom left. Mouse over the attributes there and it'll explain exactly what each one is doing.

[Quillan]

With regards to question 5, units can only go from land onto transports at certain points on the coastline. Usually it requires a port or a specific section of beach. They cannot magically sail across a river. Early in my Rome campaign, I took the two northern cities from the Etruscan league and found that two small remnant armies sneaked past one of mine running south through Italy. I pursued them, only to have them run way down towards the tip of the boot before they found a port on the coast that wasn't part of a city, where they went sailing back to Corsica to get away.

[Akka]

For now, the game is just not good enough to bother. I've barely played it and was bored nearly immediately.
The repulsive interface and questionable (read : retarded) design decisions like the "magic ships" completely gutted my desire to play.
And the cramped zoom just make it annoying to look at the map.

[BroskiDerpman]

Decided to post the link in a few threads in which I believe is relevant;

https://youtube.com/watch?v=tjzd5ilKzMM

I want to try out Spartan Pikemen spam now for lulz.

[Spectre867]

After 50ish hours of playtime over 2 1/2 campaigns, I'd have to answer your question with a capital N.O.

Not to beat this mutilated horse anymore, but the main issues preventing playability in its current state in my opinion are:

-Battle AI and mechanics in general are so bad it makes them basically worthless; even with mods, (kudos to Radious) the battle AI is still extremely retarded and glitchy, especially in siege battles... pathfinding for even your own troops is the worst in any total War Game besides maybe pre-patch Empire and the collision/spacing issues give one the impression they took the model for all those other "real-time war strategy" games that no one buys/plays and used that as their model to "improve" battles.

-Navy battles need serious work but might turn out alright with major modifications, but I'm not sure they'll be able to fix the flag issue or Battle AI in general, especially in sieges, without major help from the developers. I basically am to the point where I auto-sim 100% of naval battles and about 80% of land battles in my campaigns...

-Shogun II seemed to mark a huge step forward over Empire in terms of stability where as Rome II seems to have taken another step back. So far, I've had 6 crashes - 5 during loading battles (3 of those against the Roman Senate Loyalist faction that rebels, the other 2 when there were large reinforcing armies from allied factions supposed to participate) and one that basically ruined a campaign for me - the game crashes during Rhodos' turn and it seems to be something to do with a glitch where the Celtic Confederacy faction owns Rhodos' only province (Rhodes) on the diplomacy screen but Rhodos' forces are still in the city on the campaign map (but taking attrition, as if their last city had been taken)... hopefully these get fixed with patches but if not, this game can basically be put in the same category as Empire (playable but not really)

-The campaign itself can probably be salvaged to a degree with mods as with every Total War game since Rome I (again, Radious to the rescue by saving my campaign from an endless game of moving my armies from province to province trying to prevent/respond to rebellions and only going on the offense every 10-20 turns or so) -- the TW campaign AI has never been particularly great and the diplomacy seems to be actually moving in the right direction (mods should be able to help the AI's passivity) but in its state right now, there is no challenge whatsoever - just frustration from dealing with massive squalor and food penalties from every upper-level building if you don't use Radious' mod to tone it down

-While I'm trying to remain optimistic that patches and mods will able to make this game playable, I'm fearful that instead we will just continue to be promised major upgrades in the form of DLC expansions that will continue to promise much more than they deliver.

Frankly, this experience has soured me to the point where I'm trying to avoid buying any new SEGA/Creative Assembly games for the rest of the year, and avoid any DLCs until I've heard all the negatives first (and not from the sellout "professional" reviewers and "critics" who all gave this POS an 8/10 or higher). I MIGHT give this game another shot in a couple months after mods have had time to develop and if this Imperium Aquilarium thing turns out to be anything of any substance, but I think the TW community (at least those that are disappointed in this half-finished game after all the hype it was given) needs to realize that ever since Medieval 2, this franchise has been going down in quality (and the only reason RTW and M2TW were so great were thanks to the modding community; S2TW was good because it didn't have the issues Empire did & it was such an upgrade over original STW, which along with original Medieval and original Rome, were excellent games for their time)

[Foreign Devil]

If you hadn't already paid for the game, my advice would be to wait. I've been a fan of the Total War games since I bought the original Shogun, but I haven't bought one at release in many years and got exited and kind of jumped the gun on this one. I'm having fun with it, but it is more than a bit disappointing to see that the classic failings of the series have not been addressed. You can't unbuy the game, so why not go ahead and install and try it out for yourself?

[BroskiDerpman]

Not yet, wait for patches, sales, and Gold Edition.