State of the Game

[Slaists]

Yes, most definitely, very unreasonable diplomatic AI... khm... the same, legendary Ardiaei Total Hugs (237 BC):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Sarcasm off.

[easytarget]

Not sure you've noticed yet, but you're carrying on a conversation with yourself at this point.

[Kamakazi]

if it makes him happy let him be ;)

[Sp4]

Not sure you've noticed yet, but you're carrying on a conversation with yourself at this point.

So that means he's right? Diplomatic AI is not entirely unreasonable and impossible to be friendly with?

[Kamakazi]

impossible for me...

[Slaists]

Rome, Junia, legendary, vanilla game, started version 13.1, around 210 BC

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Sp4]

impossible for me...

Then you're not trying :p

[easytarget]

So that means he's right? Diplomatic AI is not entirely unreasonable and impossible to be friendly with?

My guess, it does in his mind, a place much more black and white than where I live and play.

[Sp4]

Raaa, this is the internet, I am always right by my own definition! ^^

[Slaists]

This is a campaign by wealthmonger, not mine. Athens diplomacy on legendary, vanilla game, year - 272 BC (turn 1):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[edyzmedieval]

State of the game - playable, enjoyable, waiting for further patches to round up some of the unfinished ideas.

[Sp4]

More diplomatic goodness:

The end, I have conquered everything that is somehow even remotely Greek... next it's 300 Persians against 1,000,000,000 Spartans.



Then there is this:



RAWR! Civil war!

On second thought though....


I am now an invasion of Italy away from military victory.

-E- Wheeee, I finished my second ever campaign in Rome 2. Next up, some Barbarian faction...
And I realise again and every single time I play this game that any mods that aim to make it last longer are a little silly. If anything, mods that make the game last longer, in the current state of the (otherwise vanilla) game probably just make it easier.

[Slowly-Slowly]

@OP

HatG is a great DLC and also they keep patching the main game. Pirates and Raiders adds fantastic factions -especially Odrysian Kingdom and her beast-like warriors-

So, game is quite enjoyable, IMHO.

[Slaists]

I am actually quite pleased with the state of the game (some issues still remaining as always). Look at this Junia legendary campaign. Don't pay attention to Junia (taking my time), look at the AI's. Pontus, Egypt, Arverni

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

This is no mods either. At least, no mods modifying AI behavior, just 4 TPY mod.

[edyzmedieval]

By now, after 14 patches or so, the game is actually quite enjoyable. It's fun, and it can keep you awake until early morning pretty easily.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Even after reading all the "love" some folks have for the game, I'd still rather play RTW 1 mods. How many of you AR a majority of your battles, especially the naval ones? And agent spam...this isn't supposed to be Spy vs Spy. It's Total War for cryin' out loud. Let's win or lose on the battlefield please...

[Hooahguy]

Personally I auto-resolve just as many battles as I did in previous TW games, but then again I do AARs so thats a factor I think. I have yet to have a real naval battle. The agent spam is pretty bad I think, havent had a real chance to check out the agent spam so far with the newer patches.

[Sp4]

Even after reading all the "love" some folks have for the game, I'd still rather play RTW 1 mods. How many of you AR a majority of your battles, especially the naval ones? And agent spam...this isn't supposed to be Spy vs Spy. It's Total War for cryin' out loud. Let's win or lose on the battlefield please...

Do you use agents yourself? They are pretty powerful. I can't even make some sort of invasion without a spy and a hero around. Their abilities to kill commanders before battles or prevent entire armies from taking part in a battle are pretty great and useful.

I do get what you are saying though, I guess. In terms of playability, it is great, mostly. There are some things that plague the game now and by now I am pretty certain that they cannot be fixed without doing a few things all over again, which CA already said they wont do. One of those things is the internal politics minigame. It is 'playable' and you can do with it what you are meant to be able to do with it but it just feels incomplete or half arsed. Another thing is the AI, or siege AI in particular.

I made a thread about this pretty early on: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...%29&highlight=

What I saw there wasn't that the siege AI was bad or made bad decisions or stupid stuff like that but I realised that the game was released with an unfinished AI. There was no scripting for the siege AI, no programming. It arrived on the battlefield and that was it. End of line. Program over. I would have to imagine what they've been doing over the last year or so but I guess an awful lot of CA's patching was not actually patching. Instead, they just completed the game to the point it would have been completed to anyways, had they released it 4 or 5 months later. I'm a little tired of them making it look like they were patching and working on the game and wheee, we're so awesome, look at us, we're even giving you free stuff!

No, they were merely finishing the game... doing stuff they would have done anyways, no matter the state the game was in at the time.

At this point, Rome 2 is an alright game as long as you don't try to compare it to other TW titles. In fact, just assume Rome 2 is not a TW game. Just assume that Rome 2 is an experiment. That's what I feel like anyways. Rome 2 is or was an experiment by CA or Sega or whoever is in charge of it, to see what they could get away with and clearly, the marketing and promotion department did an absolutely perfect job and gave us what we wanted to see and promised us what we wanted promised and then they gave us the game we'd been waiting for since I don't know when... medieval 2 probably for some people. Personally, I do not understand how anyone can defend that sort of thing anymore.

If this happened in any other industry, whoever is responsible would have been slapped on the hands a couple of times for various things. Imagine a car manufacturer pulls this kind of stunt, or a movie is hyped up to be the best movie ever for half a year and is then released without digital editing and scenes missing... but worry not, you can always buy the missing scenes and wait 40 years for the digitally remastered version of the film.

[Slaists]

Even after reading all the "love" some folks have for the game, I'd still rather play RTW 1 mods. How many of you AR a majority of your battles, especially the naval ones? And agent spam...this isn't supposed to be Spy vs Spy. It's Total War for cryin' out loud. Let's win or lose on the battlefield please...

I very rarely AR any battles in RTW 2. Mostly because AR is broken: you lose most of any reduced size units (elephants, cavalry, dogs, artillery) even when the AR calculator promises 99% survival rate. AR works alright only if one has 100% one unit type armies (100% cavalry or 100% infantry).

Agent spam? I have not seen it for quite a few patches now (playing on legendary difficulty). Probably the reason is that I do not play total-war style and always try to limit myself to one-front war through diplomatic means.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Do you use agents yourself? They are pretty powerful. I can't even make some sort of invasion without a spy and a hero around. Their abilities to kill commanders before battles or prevent entire armies from taking part in a battle are pretty great and useful.

I've used agents since STW 1 (never got tired of the ninja cut-scenes), but they were always a very minor part of the game, for me. To need agents in order to carry out an invasion other than opening the gates prior to a siege is absurd, IMHO. And disabling an entire army is even more absurd...

There are some things that plague the game now and by now I am pretty certain that they cannot be fixed without doing a few things all over again, which CA already said they wont do.

And this is, despite the big improvements made by CA, the crux of the matter for me. I simply can't see myself playing the game several months later, after the novelty of it wears off. For 15 or 20 dollars US, I suppose that might still be worth it. One can blow much more than that at a movie theatre for a single evenings entertainment

[edyzmedieval]

Mods are always made to improve the original game, which is why some of them had and still have strong replayability and "pull" factor to make you play them over an over again.

[easytarget]

Did CA really just break every single MOD for Rome 1 and MTW2 today?

These guys are easily the biggest clowns in the gaming universe. I'm currently staring at MTW2 in steam and it appears to now be downloading the entire game again, and all of this just so handful of players can still play MP, meanwhile the vast majority of the people still playing this game are playing SP, using MODs, all of which are pretty much orphaned at this juncture, and once broken will not get unbroken. Bet you money when this F'ing download finishes and I try and start this game it will not work.

Truly, beyond belief.

[Hooahguy]

Is there confirmation that the MP update broke SP mods? Im looking around and Im not seeing anything yet about this breaking SP mods. Besides, plenty of people were annoyed how there wouldnt be any more MP for those games so I guess it was damned if they do, damned if they dont for CA?

I think you should calm down and see what happens before getting all angry. Since it was an MP only update it is still in question whether or not it will break things.

[easytarget]

I will be really surprised if this doesn't break everything. Go look for yourself, the entire game is re-downloading just because I clicked on play just now.

[Hooahguy]

Well I would hold off on freaking out until its proven that the update broke mods. So far, no confirmation that Ive seen.

[easytarget]

These are the times I'd prefer the choice not to go along with CA and Steam on an update be presented. Some of us were just fine with the way things were when it came to playing decade old games. ;)

Everything I had was set up and working fine in MTW2 and Rome 1. Now, regardless of your assurances, I know for a fact when I click on the custom replaced launcher that allowed me to select any mod I wanted to run for MTW2, or when I try to run EB in Rome 1, neither is going to work w/o me trying to manually sort out why.

[Sp4]

I've used agents since STW 1 (never got tired of the ninja cut-scenes), but they were always a very minor part of the game, for me. To need agents in order to carry out an invasion other than opening the gates prior to a siege is absurd, IMHO. And disabling an entire army is even more absurd...

The thing with disabling an entire army become pretty necessary at some point (for me at least since I am bad and I can't win battles of 1 vs 3 stacks 3 turns in a row). I am willing to blame the whole thing with the limited number of armies, or rather, set number of armies for mini factions for most of the major battles essentially being 2-3 armies vs 2-3 armies. It gets to the point where the armies that initiated the fight are doing skirmishing while the actual armies get into position so that 20 minutes later, we can start shooting or hitting each other with swords.

[Hooahguy]

So apparently it does break some mods, but there is any easy fix apparently.

It seems if the mod used a separate folder for the mod to launch from and not just replacing one of the Kingdoms campaign folders then you just gotta rename the mod to replace one of the Kingdoms folders and you are good to go. Though it seems like most mods just replace a campaign folder so it should be no issue, thats what Im reading.

Anyways Im not understanding the anger over this. No mods seem to have been really broken other than a couple of renaming fixes and it allows the people who do want to play MP to play. Can you really blame the devs for putting the base game above add-ons? I mean personally if I was a game dev I would want to make sure the base game is all in working order first, then work with the modders to help them get their mods up and running.

[easytarget]

Yeah, I use the replacement launcher to avoid this nonsense with editing kingdom directories, I'm hoping this does not break it.

[Kamakazi]

Back to the agent area of things. Ai is crippling with all their agents. Typically they are well coordinated in order to mess you up the most... its gets very annoying at times