Rome 2: A constructive wishlist

[Sp4]

PLEASE get rid of the flags in single player field battles

There is an option for that.

[jbillybrack]

There is an option for that.

Sorry, I meant the victory points, not the markers for units... And while I'm here, I'll say multiple auto-saves are also very good things that no one has mentioned, as far as I've read anyway.

[Sp4]

Sorry, I meant the victory points, not the markers for units... And while I'm here, I'll say multiple auto-saves are also very good things that no one has mentioned, as far as I've read anyway.

Oh yeah victory points are a bit crap in some situations, like when the game decides to put it on an open field or at the bottom of a hill or some crap like that.

[andrewt]

I agree with slowing down killing speed. I don't agree with slowing down movement speed. If you do both, we're back to the current problem where it is almost impossible to maneuver because reinforcing units can't arrive fast enough to help.

Flaming stuff destroying gates wasn't a problem for me ever since I researched boiling oil. It turns gates into a deathtrap without siege engines. Like another poster, I suspect it was done because siege weapons need to be researched. It also takes multiple turns to create siege equipment. Personally, I find it too long. If they gave us some siege equipment at the start of the game, they could remove this.

Transports are too powerful. Similarly, ramming is too powerful. It's one thing to ram the sides of a ship but too often sea battles devolve into ships ramming into each other's front and hoping the other guy's ship sinks first.

Tier 3 and 4 improvements need less penalties, tier 4 especially. Improvements whose major benefit is public order/food need to be more efficient at doing so. What's the point of building a +12 food improvement that gives -12 public order when I have to offset that with a +12 public order improvements that gives -12 food? These improvements have little in the way of income or other bonuses. Their major reason for existence is providing food or public order but they are terrible at doing so.

[Alcibiade]

Something I prefered in RTW1 is experience. Units keep all their experience when they replenish even if most of the seasoned soldiers were slaughtered. Army traditions and champion's training points are already there to maintain experience in the ranks.
Another problem with that system is that units get experience proportionally to their killing rate so phalanx get experience much slower. Plus the faster units get more experience as you get as much from killing shattered units too.

[Veho Nex]

My 2cents:

1. Marine units should receive a combat bonus when fighting at sea. Land units in their brand new massive transports should receive a combat nerf when fighting at sea. Substantial bonuses and nerfs to allow your 90man unit to take on the 160 men that are suddenly sailing on the largest ships to set sail.

2. Turn transport ships into smaller multiple ship units. So instead of having 160 men on 1 massive ship have 160 men spread between 3 trireme size ships. It would require a rework or a better work around for Naval invasions allowing for more than 10 ships to land on a stretch of coast.

3. Add the Avatar Campaign map back to MP. I thought it worked well in FoTS, I imagine it would actually work better in this. You can create custom legions with custom setups.

4. Change the provincial happiness to set up on 2 levels. Level 1, City happiness: City happiness is increased if you are conquering other cities in the province and by other general means. When city happiness gets too low you experience rioting which causes units to take damage over time. When city happiness gets too low it starts decreasing provincial happiness. Level 2. Provincial Happiness: Provincial happiness decreases over time while a province is owned by multiple factions. If factions are at war with each other happiness goes down faster, if they are trading it doesn't move, if they are allies it will start going up. Making provincial happiness a slow changing thing so its more over a period of 20 turns to get it from extreme hate to extreme love. Provincial happiness can also affect provincial income. A province in turmoil will have more trouble getting goods out due to brigands and robbers than a province thats happy.

5. Fix shields vs ranged units. Right now it is not effective to slowly march forward in Testudo formation against archers because you end up taking more losses on the way there than if you just had them close the distance on foot.

6. Phalanx and Pike walls need a rework. Either they need a buff to frontal defense and attack or they need to hold their formations better.

7. A tech tree with limitations and more substance. Right now the tech trees in Rome 2 are the laughing stock of ETW, NTW, and all of Shogun 2. They laugh because its tiny and not very satisfying. Its the worst 3minutes of anyones lives when they look at the tech tree and realize all the late game tech is in all intents and purposes useless. You can conquer the world with Legionaires and Pre Marion units, all the economy buildings provide most bang for buck at level 2 or 3, naval and siege research is a joke since you dont need a whole lot of either. Philosophy is about the only line where the bonuses over time seem like they are good.

8. 2 turns a year please.

9. AND MY BIGGEST CONCERN. These "random" maps make it seem like every single battle was fought over a dried out hunk of hillside on the coast. Every battle looks like the middle east on the slopes of Mt. Everest. Even though there were fewer maps I really enjoyed the custom made maps of Shogun 2 and the beauty they had.

[Bramborough]

Awesome job, OP. I agree whole-heartedly with 99% of what's been expressed in this thread.

Some comments:

- Naval transports. From a "streamlined gameplay" perspective, I rather like how armies can go to sea on their own...I don't necessarily think removing this feature is the best idea. Furthermore, I don't think this is the real problem, for me or for most others. The issue isn't their ability to do so, but rather how powerful they are at sea relative to true warships. This does need to be fixed. Right now it's perfectly feasible to play an entire campaign and never sink money into a single naval unit, even as a maritime-focused faction that spends a lot of time trucking around the Mediterranean. It's also a secondary issue that armies seem to be able to go waterborne too easily...there does need to be a bit more of a "cost-benefit" decision involved. There's several ideas already posted above that sound pretty sensible to me for resolving these issues. Personally, I would advocate:
1) Greatly increase movement penalty for going waterborne, something which reflects an army sitting on the coast for an extended time, cutting down trees, building/procuring ships, etc. Perhaps requiring them to sit still for an entire turn to go to sea; no land movement allowed prior, no sea movement allowed til next turn. Meanwhile on subject turn, the army is in an increased vulnerability state, similar to "forced march" mode.
2) Substantially decrease transports' at-sea combat capability, perhaps to the point of nearly eliminating it. Bottom line, a fleet of true warships ought to be able to destroy any similarly-sized fleet of transports with impunity, and to be at least on even terms against a transport fleet 3 or 4 times larger. Right now that isn't the case.

Victory Points. Don't get me wrong, I'm not necessarily a supporter of victory-point flags in open-field battles. It wouldn't bother me if they went away. I gotta say, however, that I just don't understand the huge problem so many folks seem to have with this. I've played 200 turns by now, and fought dozens of open-field battles...and I've never once had to defend a stupidly-placed flag in a field engagement. Why not? Because I've been pretty careful about not force-marching armies in areas where there was a reasonable chance they might get attacked. A few times I have had the enemy army have to defend a flag...because I was lucky enough to catch them in forced-march mode. The solution to avoiding the victory-flag problem seems pretty simple...don't put an army in forced-march mode in areas where they might get attacked. I certainly agree that the feature could have been implemented much better, and definitely support ideas to improve such...but I don't see this as nearly the game-breaking, top-priority issue that so many seem to feel it is. What am I missing?

[Nelson]

I generally like the new regions/province thing but it does lead to an issue that bugs me somewhat. Since only capital cities have walls, there can never be great sieges in places like Syracuse. That was one of the most famous sieges of all time! I was planning to build ships with stone throwers to pound the place from the sea before I realized that the mighty walls of Syracuse weren’t there and never can be. Archimedes will need to find employment elsewhere I suppose…

I wish Syracuse had walls.

In addition, during a turn, when an ally asks for me to attack his enemy, I need to know my current diplomatic situation with the target. That is not reported, I can’t look and I may well not remember if I have a non-aggression pact or not.

I wish we would be reminded of treaties when the strategic turn demands that we make an immediate decision.

[Hooahguy]

I do wonder why they made Brundisium the provincial capital and not Syracuse.

[Nelson]

I do wonder why they made Brundisium the provincial capital and not Syracuse.

Puzzled me, too.

[Antonius Rex]

Great thread so far guys! Hopefully CA sees this and gets some ideas. Some of what I'll list here might be a bit repetitive from earlier posts on the thread but hopefully that will make them see how some issues have widespread consensus:

Bring back loose formation (unless it's hidden somewhere I haven't found yet) or some other common anti-missile formation, as well as fixing Testudo.

Fix unit formations in general so that they don't break and blob as easily except for maybe lowly militia or disorganized barbarian warriors. Ordering my Phalanxes or Roman columns to move shouldn't shatter their formation, especially when their success relies on it. I've been defending towns that by all rights I should have been able to hold even with smaller numbers, however enemy units have literally walked unharmed straight through my phalanxes that were blocking the street and taken the capture point while my own units refused to obey the movement orders I gave them because they were now stuck in melee with the other units that attempted to walk through after the first wave.

Pikemen shouldn't default to their swords. We're recruiting Pikes for a reason, they shouldn't only use their primary weapon while in a Phalanx that will immediately break when given any movement orders.

Battlefield AI glitches such as running back and fourth like turkeys over the same ten yards or remaining stationary while they are supposed to be attacking the player.

Armies/feets from destroyed factions dying much more quickly from attrition/lack of funds or scattering after a certain number of turns being homeless. I have too many issues with two or three unit militaries hiding and returning to harass behind my current lines years later against garrisons that should destroy them. Also if autoresolved these armies seem to almost always survive with a few men and return indefinitely.

^^^Along the same lines as the previous suggestion, a notification of when there are rebels. I've received these occasionally but the vast majority of the time it is simply an army randomly spawning in a relatively content and peaceful province (that gives no signs of revolt) and hiding unnoticed while it gathers its forces to attack undefended cities while my few armies are busy conquering. Again, if these defenses are autoresolved a handful of men will infinitely survive and return to hiding while they gather troops for another attack.

Again, open battle victory points must go or be significantly altered. Maybe taking/losing a victory point could be a moral buff/debuff instead of ending the battle even when the defending side is winning by a good margin.

Adding another slot or two for the household would be nice. One doesn't seem like enough especially with the horde of random people the generals seem to find. (And stop making all of our generals babbling psycopaths)

Changing/rebalancing the army traditions system. It seems like the bonuses from traditions are a bit random and underpowered compared to the stat bonuses from reaching even a couple of experience levels. Also adding a traditions tree and general skill tree that you can see all at once while choosing bonuses (Like in Shogun 2) so that the player can better plan them out.

Definitely have to agree with you guys about the family trees, Republic vs Kingdoms running differently, and most especially more turns per year and short campaigns. It seems like as soon as I get a couple of levels for a general he dies of old age and is replaced by some nobody. Not that I really care though because I've got almost no attachment to the former commanders. Also I'd like to have the entire system explained in more detail (or at all) and have benefits and negative consequences spelled out more clearly.

There are issues I and others have with our own army unit AI and orders not always going through. If I click for my units to attack or retreat they should do so. When I lose battles it's almost invariably because my units do not respond and therefor sit idly while their hard counter plows through them or the unit they were supposed to reenforce as I'm distracted at another part of the lines for 5 seconds. Mots of my battlefield time is now spent with the game paused so that I can be absolutely sure that every order was received and that the units are moving at the appropriate speed. Also I (personally) have had occasional problems with my own superior armies breaking and running for seemingly no reason even while winning and taking few losses. I have no idea how it happens. They aren't flanked, nor outnumbered, and facing lesser quality troops, they just for some reason mass route just before the AI's last unit breaks and give the enemy a victory.

Rebalance stats like HP and skirmishing. There are frequent situations where enemy units numbers will hold or drop slowly, and then all of a sudden in a few seconds 3/4 of their troops will be dead. I can only assume it was because I leeched their HP with lightly hitting skirmishers first (like slingers that never seem to get their own kills for me even when they practically unload on a single stationary enemy) and then the bulk of them were finished off around the same time in melee. I understand where the idea is coming from but to kill so many men in a standard melee so quickly without flanking seems sudden and awkward.

Agreed with whoever proposed adding directx version options earlier. My little brother is having huge compatibility, menu, and lag issues. He says he had the same thing with Shogun 2 until he changed Dx versions so that option would be a lifesaver.

I know this one is a bit much to ask but at some point I'd like to see certain factions unit rosters balanced out. Sparta for example seems to be one of the strongest militaries in the game, and mostly based on hoplites, as they should be. However Spartan hoplites have been able to mow through spectacularly bad odds with little problem in my playthrough, even against units that have better stats (and what's with standard Athenian hoplites having better stats that Spartans?). I'd like to see them being a bit less like supermen and balanced out with a few more unit options. I'd like a unit of dedicated swordsmen or something of the sort to be able to assist in situations where the obligatory spear units might be at a disadvantage.

Someone mentioned in another threat, and I agree, that the Roman units specifically need huge rebalancing. The stat/cost/upkeep ratios are such that there is almost no reason to use mostly Hastati supported by elite Principes or Lengionaries with a few veteran legions units in reserve when you could have a horde of the vastly superior troops for only a few coins more upkeep per turn.

Diplomacy wise I'd like to see the AI automatically making peace with your allies and other client states when you subjugate them, and subsequent attempts of them attacking each other would count as the attacker betraying you. There is little point in making someone a vassal if two turns later they are absorbed by another vassal or ally who joined the war in your defense and is still hostile towards them.

I like the province system but strongly agree that conquering (or uniting) provinces that you already have a foothold in should add to public order, not hurt it. The two-seperate-levels of public order idea that someone posted earlier sounds like a particularly good fix.

Overall still a decent game but one that has much more potential. There are a lot of things that could be fixed, added, or improved to make it great. There are issues but I still enjoy it (most of the time). In fact I'll probably start it up in a few minutes and see if the new patch fixed any of these complaints.

[Sp4]

I do wonder why they made Brundisium the provincial capital and not Syracuse.

Cause Rome and all that.

[Hooahguy]

Cause Rome and all that.

Can you explain that a bit more? Is it because the game is Rome-centered?

[CaptainCrunch]

... I wish Syracuse had walls...

I do wonder why they made Brundisium the provincial capital and not Syracuse.

This was a terrible omission in my opinion and needs to get sorted. They should make a system within the province where you can change your central city, like the way you could change your capitol in RTW. I actually like the fact that every settlement doesn't have a wall, but the larger & more economically powerful settlements should all be capable of building fortified walls regardless.

Also, CA needs to sort out the bug/feature where you kill and sink every enemy ship in a naval battle and the general just sails away afterwards like he's pleasure boating in the Med. I have to chase down dead men resurrecting their boats out of the abyss after most of my naval battles, this becomes insanely tedious. Naval battles in general need immediate attention, they're just absolutely busted right now and I think this can be a really key feature of the game if it gets sorted.

One other thing, 'Rotate' in the new camera mode does no such thing. It has the exact same function as Camera Up/Down. This is because in the new mode the camera orbits around the object you're focused on, as compared to the Classic Mode which orbits around an axis. This is fine when you're dealing with horizontal adjustments, but doesn't work in the vertical at all the way it's been implemented. Please fix with an actual feature to let you pivot your viewpoint up and down like the classic TW cam. If we could get the cam to go a bit closer to the ground on some maps that'd be nice too