How's long is your "normal" campaign / How many campaigns have you completed?

[Stuie]

I just finished a Rome 2 campaign for the first time this past Thursday. Played Rome on Normal and got a Military Victory in 132BC. The last 30 turns or so were strictly mopping up, and I only went the distance so I could get the achievements. I think the entire game went 40 hours or so. I auto-calc'd a lot - whenever the screen showed I would have 90%+ survival rate.... which brings up a good follow-up question: How often do people auto-calc, and under what circumstances? I always feel like I'm cheating if I auto-calc, but I guess it's part of the game. That's why I made up my 90%+ house rule.

Funny thing is, I never finished a game of Shogun 2 except for a FOTS campaign that I finished last Wednesday. Before that, the last Total War game I actually played to completion was the original Shogun.

[Slaists]

I just finished a Rome 2 campaign for the first time this past Thursday. Played Rome on Normal and got a Military Victory in 132BC. The last 30 turns or so were strictly mopping up, and I only went the distance so I could get the achievements. I think the entire game went 40 hours or so. I auto-calc'd a lot - whenever the screen showed I would have 90%+ survival rate.... which brings up a good follow-up question: How often do people auto-calc, and under what circumstances? I always feel like I'm cheating if I auto-calc, but I guess it's part of the game. That's why I made up my 90%+ house rule.

Funny thing is, I never finished a game of Shogun 2 except for a FOTS campaign that I finished last Wednesday. Before that, the last Total War game I actually played to completion was the original Shogun.

Roman armies are good for auto-calc (little cavalry, lots of infantry). I autocalc whenever I have no cavalry, no dogs, no artillery and no elephants (or chariots). Otherwise, the mentioned units suffer unreasonable autocalc losses despite having a 99% chance of winning. Come to think of it, all cavalry armies are also OK to autoresolve: since all units are cavalry, no one gets disproportionately damaged.

[Kamakazi]

Ive completed Spartan, Parthian, Pontus, and Macedonian campaigns. all in the 200 turn range... all on hard or above except my normal Spartan campaign. Im working now on a Arevaci campaign, a Nervii, Royal Scythia, and Iceini campaign, with the former taking precedent. and ive got 379 hours total play time.

[Myth]

Honestly, the last 30 or so turns in any TBS game are a chore. You know you've already won, and there remains the tedium of clicking end turn and killing mooks. It was like that in HOMM3, it is like that in Civ5 and Rome 2.

[Sp4]

I finished one campaign.

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/...74111C95BB4E1/

It lasted until 60BC, no mods, so 213 turns?

[CaptainCrunch]

This thread is hilarious. I've got +700hrs into this damn game and I only finished my very first campaign (Epirus - V.Hard). The continuous patching process, and consequently, the continuous updating process of the mods I play has had me restarting campaigns within 75-150 turns on average. I also mod myself, so I'm always testing and restarting. I think the last time I completed a TW campaign was when I was playing EB religiously in '09.

[Sp4]

This thread is hilarious. I've got +700hrs into this damn game and I only finished my very first campaign (Epirus - V.Hard). The continuous patching process, and consequently, the continuous updating process of the mods I play has had me restarting campaigns within 75-150 turns on average. I also mod myself, so I'm always testing and restarting. I think the last time I completed a TW campaign was when I was playing EB religiously in '09.

This pretty much.

[Alcibiade]

Honestly, the last 30 or so turns in any TBS game are a chore. You know you've already won, and there remains the tedium of clicking end turn and killing mooks. It was like that in HOMM3, it is like that in Civ5 and Rome 2.

In FOTS the thrill remains almost til the end. I'm always surprise when I find myself praising this game considering I have no interest in its historical context. But the short campaign has a perfect pace, there's enough time to endure one or two essential backstabings that completely change the face of the strategic situation and you have time to attain a level of tech that makes army composityion interesting.

This is the only unmodded CA campaign I ever finished (did it 2 or 3 times).

I wish I could find this perfect balance in another CA title : with R2, even modded, I always stop as soon as my faction can breath after the difficult beginning. At this moment the only interest I find in going further is recruiting cool units or seeing my veterans get silver chevrons. I bnever experienced such poor motivations in the previous titles.

To me the problem lies in the absence of this kind of continuity the family tree was providing. Hence the lack of affective bond with a general. And the generals are actually the only link wbetween the battle and campaign maps, plus the only human character you can build a narration on (if u're interested in role play). If you don't know where they come from, and if there is npo continuity after they die, you can provide as many psychological traits to define them, there's no care in what they will do or how they will ened. And then the game is just a matter of numbers. It is sad.

[al Roumi]

I don't know how many hours I've played but I only finished one campaign, with Rome. I had campaigns with Carthage and Seleucia which were borked by updates. My current Bactria campaign seems to be ok but it looks like the tech tree has changed for some buildings over the last 2 patches.

With the combination of how diplomacy now works (snowballing coalitions) and military allies counting as "owned" territory, it seems fairly easy to control massive swathes of the map - admitedly after knocking out rival coalitions, which probably count as titanic clashes. In my Rome campaign I was faced with either invading the British Isles (and upsetting some allies) or just allying the friendly Iceni. This is where the roleplaying makes the game, although I did ally as I thought that if I was friendly with ze german tribes then why not the british barbarians too?

So, er, not really role-playing as a very upstanding Roman at all!