Rome 2: Empire Divided (DLC)

[Cazbol]

I got all excited, bought this and tried to play it. All my attempts at recruiting agents make the game crash to desktop. Does this actually work for you guys?

Edit: Never mind that. I came to think of verifying the files, which solved this.

[JhudielTheOne]

I Think This DLC Is Really Awesome :)

[hoom]

Cool, care to expand on that? What improvements are you seeing? Or is it mostly the setting/time period you're liking?

[lars573]

Well since all of the GUI and other gameplay changes are in every other campaign since the pre-release patch, the only thing to get excited about is the setting.

[hoom]

With all the recent action I've started playing again

Trying Galatians.
First time thought I was doing OK until a Seleukid stack came out of the FoW & captured half my fledgling empire
Rebuilt a bit only to get stomped again by Seleukids with Pergamon joining in for kicks.
Pretty sure is basically a repeat of what happened last time I tried Galatians many years back

Was going to fall back on one of my favs with easier start pos like Cimmerians or Baktria but thought a bit, had a poke round tech-tree & figured out a way to start without aggravating Seleukia, seems to be working & I've got Asia-Minor nearly secured

Edit: so of course a wild Rhodian stack appears & captures the Western parts just as I was heading inland and as I move back the damn Pergamene stack reappears on my East

Anyway, regarding recent changes there are definitely some improvements but the increased dilemma stuff is pretty annoying micro stuff.
Feels like there may be excessively much in the way of female characters, early on had 2 female family members, no males other than my King.

One thing that still bothers me: basically never get good terrain to defend on, always seems to be a hill that'd make a good defensive spot just outside the boundary, meanwhile computer player seems to almost always get a good hill to defend on

Edit2: I mean the dilemma stuff isn't horrific, its just that they come up like every 4-5 turns.
Some of them do give handy bonuses if you choose right but already in the relatively early stages of one campaign I seem to have cycled through the options a couple of times. (possibly a short list because Galatians are a minor faction)
It does have the advantage of encouraging regular checks for promotion availability & I'm actually making an effort to optimise retainer allocation which I've never really done before

On females: with about 8 faction members I'm getting constantly about 3 female.
From recollection Gauls did historically have relatively high female political participation so possibly some of the more paternal cultures will have fewer/none.
I'm not against female leaders, there were a bunch known in historical references & its good to have that represented
I just don't want them suddenly over represented, like while there were some politically active Roman females I don't recall any female Roman generals so it'd be dumb to constantly have several.

Couple of things with Sieges: Not that CA said anything about fixing them but I wish they would.
AI Cavalry never dismount to attack walls & defending infantry never tries to climb up walls to defend.

From recollection there was an older TW game with dismounting cavalry where AI always dismounted & wound up needlessly sending cavalry up ladders to their deaths but in battles where the AI has cavalry whose dismount is strong infantry that could easily clear the walls of garrison levies/slingers its annoying to see them just sit at the back until all other infantry is dead/routed then stand infront of the gates getting shot giving me a win that should have been easy AI victory.

Similarly you can just send missile units up on a wall once its cleared of initial defenders & they'll be left alone (other than by missile units on ground) to shoot safely at superior infantry below.

Campaign progress:
Pergamon had expanded East along the South of asia-minor, pushed the Seleukids away from Syria & I was able to destroy their mainland empire while the main force was taking Crete, Rhodes sent 2 very annoying expeditions that set me back, Pergamon 1 but I was able to fend them off & take Rhodes, expand east to the Caucausus Mts, now down the Levantine coast (Nabataeans dominate inland Desert areas) and I've just secured Crete while the Pergamene main force has been off trying to raid, should be destroying that force soon when they try to take a coastal city, I've got armies ready & waiting.
After that I should be pretty much free to expand as I see fit, my economy is booming, my Empire core secured from nearby threats, I've got plenty of armies available & pretty decent mid-tier troops.

Edit again:
Hotfix today apparently improves the seige AI, earlier pathfinding changes apparently broke it

Edit4: been reading some good suggestions for things that CA can improve over on the official .com forum. (ugh my eyes gonna take forever to recover from reading all that white text on black, one of the reasons I came here all those years ago)

I'd add I wish there would be a return to pushback in combat.
One of the coolest things (& generally handy visual cue to how combat is progressing) about older TWs is watching the front line bend/buckle as the battle progresses, heavier/deeper formed infantry pushing back lighter armed/weaker/thinner lines of infantry, breaking through the middle or themselves getting mini-cannae'd by the lighter unit wrapping round the flank.
In some of the Rome1 (in particular) mods there were light units with very good defense stats who could often win that way, giving lots of ground but not suffering huge losses, while other weaker stat units would get steamrolled with quick big losses.

[hoom]

So a bit of an update on the Female leaders.
I've finished the Galatian campaign & pretty consistently had 3-4 female leaders at a time, some of my best Faction Leaders were Queens.

Have started an Emperor Augustus campaign as Armenia, with 6* important characters 1 is a female, came via an event with the option to adopt or not, has a Trait "This character can't lead armies or become a party leader" so that is I guess how WG dealt with that problem, seems reasonable.
I do have another female in the Hire Politicians list but she doesn't show up in Raise Forces so presumably has same Trait.


Also the siege AI fix does seem to have made a good improvement:
Defending AI now not only tries to hold the wall (bug was causing them to run away, you could take walls without a fight) but it actually sends up reinforcing infantry which is a big improvement over previous R2 behaviour where you only had to fight the initially deployed units, its not even just zerging in all infantry, it sends some in but holds several units in reserve at the city center which is cool :)
AI also supports with missile units on the ground which can be very painful when you haven't yet secured a stair down.

[hoom]

Wow so without the nearly constant General turnover in Grand Campaign & with the female character who can't become a General I've been doing the Diplomatic mission a bit.
I'd thought the point of the Diplomacy missions was just to try to boost their attitude to you but apparently there are a bunch of interesting outcomes from it.
Its a bit annoyingly vague what exactly happens in game terms, really needs a line showing what the actual effect is but I've witnessed some of them.

Supposedly one got executed (not sure who because it wasn't the lady & I had another one but he didn't disappear)
Other times when it goes bad you get penalties to stuff like research & I even had -10 happiness for 3 turns faction wide (it just said 'happiness' but I found it in the faction screen) from one, at a time when I was really struggling with happiness
The positive outcomes can be pretty huge though, I seem to have scored some quite big tributes eg balance after turn 15k when my income was under 10k -> 5-6k tribute which is cool.
I've even had a huge surprise when Anthony handed over Jerusalem, not sure I'm super happy about it
At first I was like 'yay a port on the Med' since I've allied with the small factions in asia-minor and expanded East, taking out Parthians & Satrapies, but then realised that its not actually a port and even if it was one its not linked up to my other territory so wouldn't have helped with trade routes anyway...
But then a couple of turns later Pontus handed me Trapezus which is both a port and connected to my other territory

Edit: this may be a bit broken, Anthony just handed over Tyre as well, its still not connected to my territory but its one province closer & is a port :)

Edit2: well he executed her next turn, guess I pushed too hard

Edit3: and then a few turns later in successive turns my allies Pontus and Kartli have handed over a city each north of the Caucuses which is really handy as I've been expanding there & those cities were blocking me having contiguous territory