So how is your campaign going?

[Myth]

No problem but you talk and talk how the game is too easy and people who don't have the game yet get the wring idea. I consider myself a total war veteran and I can tell you that on Legendary and on patch 3 the Avernii have a hard start. Not impossible, but not a steamroll either.

As to stability issues, the game autosaves on Legendary, and actually it is more likely that you will have to replay more battles if you rely on yourself for saving than the game itself, since Legendary saves before and after each battle, before ending the turn and after the new turn starts.

[Sp4]

No problem but you talk and talk how the game is too easy and people who don't have the game yet get the wring idea. I consider myself a total war veteran and I can tell you that on Legendary and on patch 3 the Avernii have a hard start. Not impossible, but not a steamroll either.

As to stability issues, the game autosaves on Legendary, and actually it is more likely that you will have to replay more battles if you rely on yourself for saving than the game itself, since Legendary saves before and after each battle, before ending the turn and after the new turn starts.

I don't really complain about the game being too easy. It's not much harder or different from Medieval 2 and I loved that. It was the first TW game I ever really got into. I did not know it autosaves before and after each battle on legendary, so I'm going to apologise for that. I should really try it before talking too much. I just assumed it didn't let you save and just saved at the end of every turn.

[Myth]

No, more like it saves all the time so you can just "resume campaign" but you can't load abuse if you walk in enemy territory and find yourself in an "oh crap" moment because suddenly you see their 4 full stacks and you didn't bother to scout.

Or you move your army south to go and conquer someone and the sneaky Ai comes out of the bush and sieges your city. Normally you'd load 1 turn back to go and find them and kill them, but no in Legendary - you have to manage a lot more crisis situations than when playing "softcore".

It does remove the minimap and the TAB button overview in battles so it's actually more of a chore to lead them, but it also makes them more reallistic and less arcade-y.

[Sp4]

Hehe, sounds like half the time you don't actually know what is going on ^^ I kind of like the idea.

[MadKow]

First, one thing about how i play the game (and has been like this since the very first Shogun). I don't think i ever finished a campaign. I normally play for as long as i get to the point where i have the top units, money is plentiful, and victory appears inevitable. On shogun 2 i never got to Realm Divide though, so i may have skipped what CA created to challenge precisely that invencibility threshold. I also usually play on normal. So yes, not at all a hardcore veteran, but i guess all those years playing TW did gave me enough skill to consider Rome 2 easy one Normal, now im seriously considering moving up on the difficulty bar.

Now, i am still starting campaigns with various factions in order to learn about their diferences. One thing i always liked in TW games was "solving" the initial moves game. I find Rome quite easy and linear, especially with the early pretorians. The Arverni were a different matter altogether. I did conquer almost all of Gaul (all but Cisalpine), but all that time i have been juggling with the tech tree trying to figure a path for having efficient armies. I seems we have to kind of choose between iron and bronze. Or not, but then we have to choose between unit pumping buildings and happiness buildings. Maybe Gauls are ment to be happy by waging war, as per their bonuses...

Anyway i find Rome 2 entertaining enough, and certainly not less that other iterations of the series (i remember putting Barbarian Invasion, the original Rome Expansion, on hold because the bright colours hurt my eyes, and only really played it for long hours with the RTR mod). Easy perhaps but since i've played on normal i don't feel i have the right to complain. I'm moving to hard next.

I also found a crash bug i handt before, while loading a fort defense battle with the Iceni, that my only technical issue so far.

[Sp4]

As others have said before, Rome is probably the easiest and most OP faction, which probably happened by design. I think if you are used to normal on the other games, try hard on this. It's kind of similar.

[antisocialmunky]

I've played the Rome campaign long enough to wonder why my units always seem to take so many casualties and stumbled across this:
http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...-is-why/page7?

The only two stats that matter are attack and defense. Its like everything in this game is intentionally set up to be unintuitive to fans of previous total war games. I might check out Rad's mod with Macedon eventually but I think I'm going to be playing FotS in the meantime.

I guess looking back at my playthrough, it seems like this game is a mess because they tried to reinvent the wheel, not because they shot for the moon and missed. There's actually a lot of similarities between R2TW and Diablo 3 or MoO3. It feels like my choices don't matter: Getting information is a pain, the tech tree and buildings don't make me want to build anything in particular, everything feels like the game wants me to crunch numbers, and the battles just feel so off putting at times.

This doesn't feel like Total War to me, it feels like a Modern-Day Blizzard knockoff to Total War.

[Sp4]

It always seemed to me that heavily armoured troops, or what is supposed to be heavily armoured takes a bit too much damage from ranged weapons, be it thrown spears or stones.

[Myth]

I preffer having an underperforming AR mechanic which forces me to lead 1 in 4 battles, than having a super biased AR like in Shogun 2 where 3 fullstacks of crap ashigariu units were able to mow down samurai because they had chevrons. Complete Legendary Chosokibe came in SII - only had to lead 2 battles. I ARed everything, and won mostly by spamming Ashigaru. I only made samurai fullstacks because I wanted to, not because I had to.

Trying to autoresolve with levy spearmen and and slingers in Rome II will get your killed in 2 turns by comparrison.

[nearchos]

It always seemed to me that heavily armoured troops, or what is supposed to be heavily armoured takes a bit too much damage from ranged weapons, be it thrown spears or stones.

I totaly agree, to much damage, especialy from slingers, and also to many ammunition for jav units.

[Sp4]

The only two stats that matter are attack and defense. Its like everything in this game is intentionally set up to be unintuitive to fans of previous total war games. I might check out Rad's mod with Macedon eventually but I think I'm going to be playing FotS in the meantime.

These are the only two stats that -seem- to matter because they had a pretty cool idea but failed to actually test it, I guess.

Essentially, what they are trying to simulate is soldiers being worn down by being under fire or in melee combat, not just fatigue wise but I guess, equipment and health wise (read this as actual health wise, not hitpoints) but the way AP damage behaves now makes it so that certain units are very strong against armoured units (or any type of unit really but it is easiest to see with armoured ones because your intuition tells you that a bunch of legionaries with shields up should not get killed by slingers from 500 meters away).
This, by the way is also why testudo or any other form of defensive formation that is supposed to protect people against missile damage does not work. A simple way to fix this would be to take away the slinger's armour penetration completely and lower the value for all other units -OR- (and this is a very big 'or' and should probably be a much smaller 'and') to make armour penetration depend on range to target.

[nearchos]

This, by the way is also why testudo or any other form of defensive formation that is supposed to protect people against missile damage does not work. A simple way to fix this would be to take away the slinger's armour penetration completely and lower the value for all other units -OR- (and this is a very big 'or' and should probably be a much smaller 'and') to make armour penetration depend on range to target

.
I dont know where they saw that a sling could penetrate an armor or a heavy shield,but i havend read about slingers in ancient warfare to penetrate armor or even shields, of heavy armoured units.
Of course i learned to respect them, since during my first major encounter against them, my 15 unit Macedonian army, of pikemen, hoplites, merc veteran hoplites and cav. was anihilated by an army of Rhodes half militia hoplites half slingers.
I had 50% casualties before my units come to contact with their hoplites pnly by sling fire.

[nearchos]

No, more like it saves all the time so you can just "resume campaign" but you can't load abuse if you walk in enemy territory and find yourself in an "oh crap" moment because suddenly you see their 4 full stacks and you didn't bother to scout.

Or you move your army south to go and conquer someone and the sneaky Ai comes out of the bush and sieges your city. Normally you'd load 1 turn back to go and find them and kill them, but no in Legendary - you have to manage a lot more crisis situations than when playing "softcore".

It does remove the minimap and the TAB button overview in battles so it's actually more of a chore to lead them, but it also makes them more reallistic and less arcade-y.

I always play on very hard and on rare occasions on legendary, at least with the previous TW titles, exept for STW where played on normal difficulty.
I think that, if the game is desined to be softcore in any difficulty lower than legendary, there is something wrong.
Then there should be only two levels, the legendary and the easy.

I m saying that because, i completed the first campaign as Macedon on very hard, but the actual difficulty was easy and to be honest i havent try the very hard with patch 3 to see how the AI behaves, i curently play as parthia on legendary.
As i remember STW, MTW, and in some extend RTW, MTW2 AND STW2 a very hard level was hard.
To be honest i didnt bother a lot with ETW or NTW.

My poit is that, you shouldt be in a position to decide either to play in legendary in order to have some hard time against the AI or play in lower DL and practicaly playing against the clock.
As for the save and load, i believe that when you come in a dificult situation, there are two cases, either you have saved just in previous turn or a couple of turns ago, so even if you load probably you will be in the same situation again, or you quick saved some turnes ago, where you lose some turns of gameplay and there is always the posibIlity for the AI to act in a diferent way.
I m not in any means want to compare the legendary level with any other difficulty level, im just saying that the only difference between the legendary and the Very hard should be the save and load option, since in battles there is the option of realism mod in order to have the more realistic feeling.

I will try a campaign on very hard ti see the changes with the patch 3, when i decide that i had enough hammering from the AI as parthia on legendary....ohh it hurts..

[Wilbo]

I'm playing on normal as the Roman Junii family. Around 200 turns in, I have everything north and west of the black sea, North Africa to Egypt, and western Anatolia.

I have around five full-stack Legionary Cohort armies in Anatolia to finish the job there; 2.5 armies on the Egyptian border waiting to take on Persia for the rest of Africa; 1.5 armies in Britain to finish the job there; and a million in the bank.

The Senate Loyalists were crushed in a series of ambushes. Looking forward to the end now so that I can try someone else!