Rome II 50% off on Steam

[Hooahguy]

I would say its now very worth it at $30.

[easytarget]

Definitely a deal worth taking advantage of for anyone that hasn't picked it up yet.

Do they have S2 related stuff on sale too?

[BroskiDerpman]

I hope they do have some s2tw stuff on sale too, I need to get the Ikko Ikki and Sengoku Jidai dlc a clear rip off but many mods seem to require it.

(You can edit several values from the db tables I believe to get the same results or perhaps better for custom units. Only problem is creating your own unit cards which requires some drawing to fit into s2tw. Now you can import custom models and textures to create much better units just like how Imperial Splendor and Steph's work puts the vanilla units to shame, no joke; there's a clear difference in quality. )

As of now I'm enjoying Napoleon Empire Realism and some other stuff for Warscape TWs. Rome 2 hasn't really caught my interest that much to be honest; even pre release I wasn't hyped up at all. I'm just going to let the price drop further and perhaps buy it but then I'm anticipating quite a few mods so perhaps I don't need to buy Rome 2... Oh, the many choices annoy me greatly.

It's good to see the prices drop, a good deal is mostly Gold Edition for me. If CA splits it into Euro and American I'll go with Euro as last time in s2tw they included all dlc except for blood in Eurp but the American edition only has the two other expansions at only a small price difference if you covert pound to dollar. Then when the price drops for Gold then the margin is even smaller and you might as well go with Euro with the cooler box art.

Edit: Any thoughts about what the Gold edition will be like if there is one? Would it be like Shogun 2's?

[Sp4]

Today someone told me Rome was 50% off and asked what I thought about it and being honest as I am, I told them to not bother with it unless he really likes the setting better than feudal Japan.

We had quite a long argument about it as well and beyond liking the setting and fancy graphics more than the ones in Shogun, there really isn't much this game has. They even managed to make the biggest ever campaign map in a TW game feel tiny compared to that of titles like R1 or M2.

[Hooahguy]

Though I feel that the small campaign map feel is due to not being able to zoom out very far and the strangely large characters on the map.

[Sp4]

Though I feel that the small campaign map feel is due to not being able to zoom out very far and the strangely large characters on the map.

It just has loads of artificial limits that the campaign maps in older titles didn't have which frankly makes them boring once you've played one campaign. I had this problem with the Shogun 2 one as well, which was even worse to be honest.

[Hooahguy]

It just has loads of artificial limits that the campaign maps in older titles didn't have which frankly makes them boring once you've played one campaign. I had this problem with the Shogun 2 one as well, which was even worse to be honest.

What kind of artificial limits? Im not really seeing anything much different from the Rome 1 map, except that all the pieces on the map are bigger.

[BroskiDerpman]

Though I feel that the small campaign map feel is due to not being able to zoom out very far and the strangely large characters on the map.

There's a zoom out mod and when the person zooms out it looks pretty empty, like if everything turned into a wasteland.

Then the proportions aesthetically when zoomed out look quite awkward too, it's like if the whole campaign map was meant to be zoomed in pretty close or else things will look strange to the eyes.

About the restrictions, I believe sp4 is speaking of the artificial choke points on the campaign map, it becomes a corridor supposedly to help the ai.

Shogun 2 had this but in that game it made a lot of sense as Japan is an island and judging by the amounts of mountains it was formed through hotspots. Thus the mountains provide the chokepoints.

In Rome 2 they do the same thing though it doesn't really make that much sense as Europe also has more flatter terrain in many parts, larger areas thus less natural chokepoints.

The cliffs imo look funny.

[Hooahguy]

There's a zoom out mod and when the person zooms out it looks pretty empty, like if everything turned into a wasteland.

Then the proportions aesthetically when zoomed out look quite awkward too, it's like if the whole campaign map was meant to be zoomed in pretty close or else things will look strange to the eyes.

Eh, looks fine to me. You want an empty map? Try the NTW map. That was an empty map in my opinion.

In Rome 2 they do the same thing though it doesn't really make that much sense as Europe also has more flatter terrain in many parts, larger areas thus less natural chokepoints.

lol wut

Depends where you go. Northern Germany, Eastern Europe, and Western France are flat, yes, but everything else in Europe is not. The Alps, the Pyrenees, the Carpathians, the Apennines, and the list goes on. Thats not to say that you are totally wrong, as they did put in unpassable forests in many areas which is kinda cheap I agree.

[BroskiDerpman]

Eh, looks fine to me. You want an empty map? Try the NTW map. That was an empty map in my opinion.


lol wut

Depends where you go. Northern Germany, Eastern Europe, and Western France are flat, yes, but everything else in Europe is not. The Alps, the Pyrenees, the Carpathians, the Apennines, and the list goes on. Thats not to say that you are totally wrong, as they did put in unpassable forests in many areas which is kinda cheap I agree.

That is essentially an elaboration of what I just said. Note how I said Europe is larger so that makes for more flat land; of course there is mountains but there is also more flatter areas thus more room for maneuvering.



Note that from a far off view there is more varied terrain and much more of flatland compared to Japan. Even on rough terrain there is more variety and not as much chokepoints as one would think. Closest thing to a Shogun 2 map design is Italy.



The empty map was more like ETW, NTW has more province concentration since it focuses on Europe solely, that's not counting the provincial campaigns (Notably Italy) which have even more density of provinces.

[Hooahguy]

Yes, that is correct, those are the areas where there is mountains. Also, the Rhine is another barrier, which can be navigated with a fleet but cant be directly crossed.

Now then, lets look at the areas that are circled:

If you have ever played any campaign in Rome 2 that dealt with that area of Europe, you would know that a huge chunk of the action takes place within the circled areas, as per my experience with my Suebi campaign. So do I agree that all forests should be able to be traversed? Yes. But do I think its a critical design failure? No, not really.

[BroskiDerpman]

When was it a critical design failure? teehee!

I linked the response to Sp4 who spoke of the more restricted feeling of the map compared to M2TW for example.

[Sp4]

What kind of artificial limits? Im not really seeing anything much different from the Rome 1 map, except that all the pieces on the map are bigger.

The same happened for Rome 2, but I can't find it. What I mean is.. you can't take random routes, they are all predefined, 'natural' chokepoints, impassable forests.. bla bla.

[Myth]

I like the map. The choke points are logical for the most part. I'd like to see about 25% more traversable forests or better yet - army traditions and general skills related to forset warfare.

[Nelson]

The map in Rome 2 is fine. And this is first hand experience talking since I've bought the game and played it!

[Sociopsychoactive]

I like the map. The choke points are logical for the most part. I'd like to see about 25% more traversable forests or better yet - army traditions and general skills related to forset warfare.

I played as the Germans and found too many of their skills and traditions require you to fight in forest, usually in ambush and often at night. It meant a huge portion of the skills available where useless to me as soon as I left germania (which was pretty soon). If the majority of forests were traversable, as we are all suggesting, then this would have been a much smaller problem. I would have hapily parked on the edge of a dense forest to ambush enemy stacks rather than having to walk arund on the road and then go off-road to find some forest cover to plan my attack in.

Just my two pence.