General impressions

[Skoran]

It looks great, it feels great, it plays great.
Encoutered some bugs but nothing mayor.

Couple of questions:
- Is their a way to remove the HUD with 1 key? It was possible in EB
- Can you remove the banners that float above the soldiers?
- How do you remove the cutscenes (like gate breached and stuff)?

[Lysandros]

Played further as the Seleukids - couldn't resist. And I now see how you made it difficult for them, I think... relations get worse and worse... and I refused to give up settlements... let's see who is the mightiest king! I first invested in shrines to keep up order at reasonable levels. Then I got into debt. Into debt! I cannot remember when this had happened last. I wasn't prepared for it happening and only realised the red number a few turns later. One really has to take decisions on what to build and where. I did not disband many units as I thought I'd rather use them, but I guess one could have an easier start if one does - at a reasonable scale - and then invest the thus gained surplus into economy. Anyway, I'm building a Didaskaleion in Antiocheia now in the hope of gaining better traits and more profit by that for my philoi and other generals and family members.
Further remarks:
1. Eastern skirmishers seem quite expensive in relation to other units, how comes that? I can imagine they are more useful now, but is their upkeep intended to be as high as it is now?
2. I'm rather confused by the public order value. It seems far less affected by garrisons than in RTW, I knew that from plain MTW2. But I still don't know what affects it most. Is public unrest caused mainly by the different culture value? Because I placed spies in some towns who frequently rebel, but it seems not to have any impact.
3. Forgot the most important thing: it's great fun to play, thank you all very much, and I didn't have another crash! It was well worth waiting for wonderful EB2.

[Elminster12]

I just put in about an hour or so with the Bosporan Kingdom. Looks nice. Coming from EB1, it was easy to sort things out. Fought a few minor battles, built a few structures, nothing major.
I do have a criticism of the UI: it's all but impossible to read your treasury balance on the main screen if it's negative(i.e. red text) because it's on a reddish-brown background(at least with whatever UI the Bosporan Kingdom uses). I either need to strain my eyes to read it, or crack open the treasury page. The yellow text for a positive balance shows up just fine though.
Other than that, it seems pretty great.

[I_damian]

Played about 20 hours now so far, mostly the first 10-50 turns as various different factions so no in-depth campaigns yet.

Much as I love the slow pace of battles, I think it's way too harsh in sieges. I assaulted a city that had just one unit of Hoplitai (Greek classical Hoplites) as its garrison. It sat in the town square. I attacked it from in front and behind with two units of Principes. Both unleashed their javelins first and both charged and completely surrounded the Hoplites. This battle took more than 10 minutes to end and that was with battle speed on 6.0x. Siege assaults are quite painful to play through due to the time battles take. I don't even bother to assault cities anymore, I just besiege them until they give up or sally out to attack me.

Also I think the happiness of conquered cities is too harsh as well. In a Rome game I conquered Tarentum on turn 4. I had my faction leader and 19 units garrisoned there, allied government + allied democracy governments built, level 3 temple (15% happiness) and I still had to have low taxes and an enormous garrison like 20-years later. I'm scared to even imagine what this will be like toward the middle of the game when every city has max population.

Bug - if you're besieging a city and the enemy attacks you with an army and the garrison of the city joins in, if you win this battle the game crashes.

Bug - Persepolis (the wonder) isn't in Persepolis, it's in Halicarnassus. (Or the city next to it, one of those two in the very south-western tip of Anatolia that are under Ptolemaioi control at game start).

[Ibrahim]

many things to note: will be fixing them.

[a completely inoffensive name]

So I am now about 120 turns into my campaign as Rome. There are a couple things I wanted to mention.

Campaign AI does seems a bit passive (only dl the new CAI just now), I was never attacked at all until my last 5 turns, but that may be because I made sure to place lots of troops in my border settlements and "minor settlements" so the AI was probably hesitant to attack.

Problem I see with making the CAI more aggressive is that by the time I am ready to expand beyond my next door cities in any campaign I am afraid it will all be taken up by other factions. Not once have I been able to attack Syracuse when it was rebels, Carthage takes over all of Sicily within 40 turns every campaign and leaves me having to immediately start the Punic Wars when I am still struggling to maintain control over southern italy filled with greek citizens.

I know that the command stars might be bugged, and I dont know if it has been affecting the AI generals as well. But I would say that if you are going to make the CAI more aggressive, (which it should be just a tad more) try to make certain rebel cities that have a history of independence have generals with lots of command stars.

I would say to not change in any way the current happiness of recently conquered cities, because otherwise the campaign would be too easy (in terms of choices) and would be over very quickly. See, I feel like there is a point in having the campaign be 1000+ turns, if campaigns are only going to take 100-400 turns then just cut the time period down anyway because otherwise its a waste of resources. That was actually my biggest complaint in EB1 actually was that there wasn't enough penalties for conquering other cultures, so I could have taken the known world as Rome before Caesar was even born. The choice between military occupation/assimilation and allied state depends on CAI to a large extent, too aggressive or too passive makes the decision a non-choice.

Ideally I would want to see a campaign AI that attempts to take over cities more frequently but is constantly losing and regaining control over border cities as people of different cultures rebel and slowly acclimate to spheres of influence over long periods of time. Otherwise, I would say design wise, its wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. The factions you have chosen seem to balance each other out wonderfully. It's funny because I actually like sending my expensive spies out into germania just to keep an eye on the three way battle between the Boii and Sweboz and Adeui. They all like to go for cities just north of the Alps.

[Moros]

So I am now about 120 turns into my campaign as Rome. There are a couple things I wanted to mention.

Campaign AI does seems a bit passive (only dl the new CAI just now), I was never attacked at all until my last 5 turns, but that may be because I made sure to place lots of troops in my border settlements and "minor settlements" so the AI was probably hesitant to attack.

Problem I see with making the CAI more aggressive is that by the time I am ready to expand beyond my next door cities in any campaign I am afraid it will all be taken up by other factions. Not once have I been able to attack Syracuse when it was rebels, Carthage takes over all of Sicily within 40 turns every campaign and leaves me having to immediately start the Punic Wars when I am still struggling to maintain control over southern italy filled with greek citizens.

I know that the command stars might be bugged, and I dont know if it has been affecting the AI generals as well. But I would say that if you are going to make the CAI more aggressive, (which it should be just a tad more) try to make certain rebel cities that have a history of independence have generals with lots of command stars.

I would say to not change in any way the current happiness of recently conquered cities, because otherwise the campaign would be too easy (in terms of choices) and would be over very quickly. See, I feel like there is a point in having the campaign be 1000+ turns, if campaigns are only going to take 100-400 turns then just cut the time period down anyway because otherwise its a waste of resources. That was actually my biggest complaint in EB1 actually was that there wasn't enough penalties for conquering other cultures, so I could have taken the known world as Rome before Caesar was even born. The choice between military occupation/assimilation and allied state depends on CAI to a large extent, too aggressive or too passive makes the decision a non-choice.

Ideally I would want to see a campaign AI that attempts to take over cities more frequently but is constantly losing and regaining control over border cities as people of different cultures rebel and slowly acclimate to spheres of influence over long periods of time. Otherwise, I would say design wise, its wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. The factions you have chosen seem to balance each other out wonderfully. It's funny because I actually like sending my expensive spies out into germania just to keep an eye on the three way battle between the Boii and Sweboz and Adeui. They all like to go for cities just north of the Alps.

It seems you and us have the same goals.

Thanks for trying out the mod and giving some constructive criticism. I hope you post again after trying out he new CAI, mate!

[alex16]

в модефикации eb 1 у фалангистов были мечи а в eb 2 их нет почему?

[Arjos]

потому что в M2TW когда фаланги с мечами трогают врага, они уронят пики.

Простите, что я плохо говорю по-русски.

[GenosseGeneral]

So I could spend my first couple of hours with EB2 today and can now provide my first impressions

I started a brief campaign as Ptolemaioi on H/M, I am not sure whether I was using the new AI or not since I had briefly started a game before installing it, but without deleting the map.rwm in between. I also installed one of the quicker battle submods, for increased lethality. I have played now a bit more than 40 turns in a mildly aggressive playing style, conquering Damaskos and now heading for a campaign to capture Sardis.

Since the 2 posts above were about Phalangitai, I will start my comment with them. They have certainly changed a lot, in my eyes it is a major improvement over EB1.2 that the phalanx is not the static square anymore it used to be. Instead, the formation can bend, be disrupted etc... I really like, how the EB team has managed to overcome the aweful performance of the original MTW2 pikemen. However, this came at a price as they lack the dagger. Even in EB1.2 Phalangitai were not exactly effective when fighting on walls or in closed quarters, but the sheer numbers, good morale, high pushing power and decent armour of Pezhetairoi/Klerouchoi Phalangitai meant that they could at least be of some use in sieges. In EB2, there seems to be only one use for pikemen: Being the anvil in pitched battles. Thanks to their formation, they take little causualties, but they do not cause any amongst their enemies in turn. In fact, I felt like someone had taken the points from their sarrisae, as I watched two units of Phalangitai fight each other for about 20 mins (on 6x speed!) on the city square of damaskos. Another unit was unable to take out the enemy general, I had to throw my own general's BG cav into the fight in order to finally kill theirs. But I guess this is something that I can easily fix myself, by changing some stats.

Another thing I have noticed, is the somewhat lower overall level of morale, compared to EB1.2. It is not as low as in MTW2 vanilla, but I have never seen a Hoplite unit routing from a fight on walls after taking little more than 50 per cent causualties, not being encircled, while they actually won the fight. Again, something that can easily be tweaked by changing the stat files.

What also caused trouble for me was the enhanced graphics mod, as it caused the loading times to become endless, despite switching it off in menu and campaign map as recommended. In battle, it just blurred my view. I guess I will have to give another try after reading a bit more about recommended settings and see whether it still causes hobbles my game experience.

I love the new culture system, since it gives way more flexibility and choices when it comes to empire building. Especially playing as the Ptollies, I can literally feel how important the degree of hellenisation was for the Eastern successors since only hellenised provinces can be developed and only hellen colonists can provide me the loyal troops my kingdom needs. I think this system really overcomes the somewhat static system of EB1, in which for instance the Ptolemies were never able to raise Hetairoi in Antiocheia (unless capturing the city with a developed MIC), simply because it was only a type 2 region, regardless whether it was under their control. I hope this also somewhat fixes the yellow fever/silver death, since the 2 cannot anymore spam Klerouchoi phalangitai from every single city under their control. Instead of just building one rather abstract building, the player now truly has to develop his provinces, with certain governments requiring certain civic structures and cultures. That adds a lot of immersion to the game and it is a great mechanism, especially since the "empire building" of EB1.2 was always a bit less developed than I would have liked it to be. Great job, really a MAJOR improvement!

Also, the PSFs add to the same effect: In peacetime, the army can disperse and the the klerouchoi can work at their estates. When the king wishes to campaign, he has to gather them first - and pay, since it is not cheap to keep an army in the field! Another detail which illustrates how much thought has gone into the recruitment/army management system of this mod are the increased number of recruitment slots in winter season. All in all, I think EB2 does a great job in that section!
As announced, one thing that is lacking yet is the enormous number of regional and factional units one could raise in EB1.2. That system will possibly even more profit from the new culture system... after all, one can only raise Parthian archers if there are Parthians to recruit!

After all, this unfinished mod done by enthusiasts seems to be more finished on many aspects than many "finished games" thrown onto the market for 50+ euros at release, then delivering the lacking units etc. as DLCs.

PS: After reading the whole text I just wrote, it sounds a bit harsh to me, since it contains so much criticism... but I know you guys have been working hard on this and this can be seen in every detail of the game!

PSS: Wow, that is a long text. I hope someone reads it to the end :D

[Ibrahim]

Another thing I have noticed, is the somewhat lower overall level of morale, compared to EB1.2. It is not as low as in MTW2 vanilla, but I have never seen a Hoplite unit routing from a fight on walls after taking little more than 50 per cent causualties see my comment , not being encircled, while they actually won the fight. Again, something that can easily be tweaked by changing the stat files.

just for the record: Hoplites =/= Japanese soldiers from WW2. 50% casualties is pretty high by any standard. yes, this was on purpose.

Though I do see a reason to change the battle_config, as well as some other stats.

[Shadowwalker]

I've started a couple campaigns (Rome, Boii, Brits) and more or less given up on all of them because I can't give anyone that's not my faction leader an army. They always end up defecting if they're away from a city for more than a turn or two. There seems to be no way to raise loyalty and I've never seen a family member that had more than 4 loyalty ring thingys.

Meanwhile I've seen multiple AI family members with mostly full ranks in every stat.

I have found that with the "Positive Traits" submod by Goth the situation improves quite a bit - but for certain factions only.

As the Romans for example I have never had a Praetor/Propraetor/Consul/Proconsul defecting anymore, since all of them have at least 5 points of loyalty. If I move armies around I always assign a family member who is at least Praetor. And the armies who are out to conquer usually stay 5 turns + outside cities because I always starve out garrisons. I simply can't storm cities due to the new combat system and the better BAI. )
I didn't play a prolonged campaign with them yet, though (just unified Italy from Rhegion to Medilanon, turn 82), so maybe it's different in later stages.

With the Aedui on the other hand I can have only one army in the field, and it has to be led by the faction leader. I have about 20 family members in that campaign, plenty of them had 4, 5 or even 6 points of loyalty when they were adopted. But within a few years they all drop down to one or at best 2 points. And none of them gave me a hint about why it happens. Maybe I'm just blind, but I read their trait descriptions (the usually have 0 or 1 ancillary only, so not that much to read in that part, hehe) several times and didn't find anything that would explain that. So I'm as clueless as probably everyone else about it. The traits and ancillary files didn't enlighten me either.

The campaigns are still very playable, though (and fun, especially with the Aedui I had recently a lot of fun unifying Gaul, just because their units are so beautiful). They're just slow. Which is not a bad thing in any case. If anything I'd just like to see the possibility to have a few more commanders with a bit of loyalty, so that I can have field armies defending my borders (Ilibarri/Tolosa/Massalia/Medilanon and the Rhine). At the moment I have to put a full stack in each of the border cities to defend against the bloody Qart-Hadashtim which continue to attack Massalia and Tolosa and the Boii who attack the provinces just north of the Alps.

Having large walls (awesome sight by the way!) doesn't help as much as I hoped since the range of celtic slingers and archers has been cut down so severly (and the damage they deal, as well, although I already raised the hit rates to 0.30, don't want to go higher because the casualties started to really grow already with this change).

I'm pondering about giving the celtic slingers their EB I range of 160+ again (since other slingers got a way better range too, compared to EB i - Shepherd Slingers and Balearic Slingers have 190 for example).

I would also like to ask if there really is no possibility anymore to raise faction and regional troops at the same time in a given province anymore. As the Aedui I can build either the Confederation chain (or better, that government is available in all of Gaul and most of Britain right from the moment I conquer the settlement) or the "Allied" chain. And therefore I either have the complete Aedui factional roster available or (in Massalai for example) hellenic troops. I miss the often mentioned new government complex options, as it stands I am able to build a gov I or a gov III (speaking in EB I terms) in any given city, and that's it. I can't help the feeling to simply play the whole "government" part of the game wrong.

Related to that: I suppose that the availability of regional troops will be reconsidered for all factions once there are more units available?
At the moment every faction has the same regional troops in any given province as far as I saw, and that feels a bit odd. Understandable of course, given the number of missing units, but still a bit . . . well, odd.

Unrelated: Settlements grow much too fast still for my liking. In the mentioned Aedui Campaign (turn ~170) Gergovia, Bibracte, Massalia, Uiennos and Uesontio already have the largest walls and are nearing the last construcable building.

[Hm, I shouldn't have started writing this before I have to leave to work . . . a longer, more detailed post will be added once I get home again. ]

[Mithridates]

Spent a few hours playing various campaigns (Kart Hadast, Pergamon, Takshishilia) and a few things jumped out at me:

First the problems:

1) something is up with unit stats. I'm not sure if the numbers mean nothing or if they mean more or less what they meant in EB I, but they're off. For instance, the charge bonus on the Akkadian Infantry (mercenaries) is about 30, while for most cavalry units it's under 10.

2) archers and javelins are more or less useless now. In EB I they were a mainstay of my army, usually about 1/4 to 1/2 of the army (esp against lightly armored troops). In EB II, my archers can't even kill half a dozen unarmored enemies before running out of arrows.

3) lethality is a bit low. I like realism as much as the next person, but 90 minute battles are a bit much. I know there is a mod for that, but I don't know where to find the mod files (not mod savvy)

4) trade by sea seems significantly nerfed. Trade in general seems nerfed. My poor Kart Hadast campaign saw me with 1-2 units in each city and one half stack army barely pulling in 5000 mnai per turn while having trade agreements all over the place. In EB I, I would be pulling in 10-20k and have a nice economy going by turn 50-75.

5) Peragmon seems overpowered for its size. I was able to take almost all of anatolia within 75 turns and my revenues are between 10-30k per turn depending on how many armies I have going. That's the kind of economy Kart Hadast should have given its historical significance and position.

6) the AI is either too timid (the Seleucids and Egyptians let me take their cities in anatolia without a single counter-attack) or too hell-bent insane on destroying you (the Lustoann and new celtiberian faction for Kart-Hadast). I'm not sure if there's a way to rebalance this or if it's just hard-coded.

7) Diplomacy is still awful although people do actually ally with me. I'm thinking diplomacy is hardcoded and that's why we get the forced diplomacy mini-mod.

8) the cultures thing is confusing and so is the government types. I'm not sure what each will allow you to do (i.e. oligarchy vs. democracy) in terms of development of a city (unit recruitment seems fairly straightforward).

9) character traits are nerfy. My top general gets 2 stars after winning every single battle then gets fat and lazy and loses them five turns down the line. Again, I know there's a mod for this, but I wouldn't even know where to find the file to edit for this.

Now the good stuff:

All that aside, the mod is awesome.

For being the beta release, it's very polished.

Seems that a lot of the descriptions could be dropped from EB I directly into EB II, if that's possible.

The Indus cities look incredible and I'm very happy to see that elephants are actual tanks now as opposed to being death fodder and backfiring like in EB I.

The mining, industry, and farming income almost makes up for the nerfed trade if you can focus on those areas.

Not sure what the small towns are supposed to do (or if it's not implemented), but having static forts in territory adds some strategic depth as the AI likes to hole up in them after I take their cities.

The scripting for the Mauryan empire's punishment was brutal, but awesome. The only thing is that the stacks were way off in the Himalayas and striking at nothing then suddenly (with the same strike animation) attacking my cities. I was hosed since my army was in the field trying to engage the stacks in the alps.

All the new factions look very interesting and I'm looking forward to trying them out. I especially like the Bosphoran kingdom and Maessylia (though I imagine having to fight Kart Hadast with mostly skirmishers will be awful given their low kill ratio).

Thanks for the awesome mod. And thanks for EB I. I've logged more hours on that game than probably any five other games in my life combined.

[Ibrahim]

1) something is up with unit stats. I'm not sure if the numbers mean nothing or if they mean more or less what they meant in EB I, but they're off. For instance, the charge bonus on the Akkadian Infantry (mercenaries) is about 30, while for most cavalry units it's under 10.

the low charge bonus for some cavalry has to do with the way they use their spears (and it should be ~11, not under 10: add it to the attack, and you get the total charge). other cavalry have the higher charge bonus, and on top of that the ap and power_charge attribute.

as to the akkadians: that is on purpose, and you'll find it with almost every hoplite style army (I suspect you'll realize the intent there). might have to lower though if it proves too strong. let me know: This is still in the testing stage, and I do have a backup value in case it is too high (in this case, around 11).

2) archers and javelins are more or less useless now. In EB I they were a mainstay of my army, usually about 1/4 to 1/2 of the army (esp against lightly armored troops). In EB II, my archers can't even kill half a dozen unarmored enemies before running out of arrows.
3) lethality is a bit low. I like realism as much as the next person, but 90 minute battles are a bit much. I know there is a mod for that, but I don't know where to find the mod files (not mod savvy)

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...or-EB-2-0-0%29

yeah, I agree: it might have worked a bit too well in this department on the original settings

[Kολοσσός]

Love the game but it's highly unstable on my current rig. Will not play until patched. Strategic map is stable, but trying to enter a real time battle mode causes crashes to the desktop. The crash rate is like 50%, if not worse...

[Thoras]

The crash rate is like 50%, if not worse...

Not for me.

[Gneisenau]

hello to all .. due to work commitments, and sea, I have not had much time to play and I have not written just my opinion ...

your work was superb, extreme care in details, beautiful unit, beautiful animation, and it's really convincing way in which the new factions have integrated the balance of the campaign! one of the things that surprised me most was how the fact that the minor settlements provide 1 free upkeep unit, has revolutionized their strategic utility and roleplayng in the game

I played the first version of vanilla, 100 turns with saba, vh / vh,
then 80 turns with Pergamon, vh / vh, with the second version of the CAI, faster battles, and positive characters.

now I'm playing a Roman campaign, using the AI piter, the BAI, positive characters, fastest battle, but I've only played a few turns and a few battles.
# I will speak only of the campaign with Pergamon (the saba was less convincing)

do not take it as a wild critical to your work, but as a starting point to improve a game that I love, but I would love more;)

here's what I do not like:

1) economic management too easy
2) battles too easy (in clashes at par my losses are about one tenth of those of the enemy)
3) system of agents unnerving (for spies is impossible to enter enemy cities, and each round had to cope with two assassins attempts against my FM, from ptolemaics) edit. and each turn i kill the 2 assassins with mine!
4) enemy factions too passive
5) some units have an upkeep cost too high in relation to their effectiveness
6) morale too low

i also hope in future, in a chavalry charge a little more effective!!!

sorry for my english

PS no encountered ctd!

edit: i suggest, for increase the difficult and the realism (simulating the high cost of a war campaign), one script like in bellum crucis, that generate an another special upkeep cost for each army in enemy territory (600 mnai/turn), and one special upkeep for each army sieging (2000mnai/turn)

[joshmahurin]

Love the game but it's highly unstable on my current rig. Will not play until patched. Strategic map is stable, but trying to enter a real time battle mode causes crashes to the desktop. The crash rate is like 50%, if not worse...

This is not usual for most people, you should open a thread in the bug reports section so that we can try to help you figure out what is wrong. For your initial post I would try to make it crash again and then paste your log file into the post (your log file being in C:\(wherever you installed M2TW)\mods\EBII\logs\log.txt

[moriluk]

I like that you have not changed too many things, you have simply added more (even if the game is incomplete with reforms and other bells and whistles). You have fully captured the essence of the original game. I have only played about 100 turns with the British faction, I wanted to watch the AI unhindered by human distractions.

Here are some of my observations:

Benefactors always start off starving.

Even without a family tree, I do wish I could select/change faction heir at my leisure.

I do not think disbanding my armies puts them back in the population of the cities (this may be a me2 thing though)

Early British armies are very weak and population growth is slow. I am assuming I will get better troops at some point but it may take a while, and while this may stop me from unrealistically conquering an empire easily, I fear that AI controlled Briton will be easy to steamroll with a mainland army be it whatever faction (I have spied most of the worlds armies and they are all vastly superior thus far).

Many diplomats conglomerate at the English channel and walk back and forth as though they are trying to figure out how to get to Briton.

Briton seems to be missing one or two cities. Eremos is the region in south Ireland and also the uppermost part of the Briton and I can find no cities in either province with that name (I found only one city in Ireland).

Hayasdan makes more of an attempt to expand their homelands and expand south, unlike eb1 where they blitz north.

There are ample naval invasions. Carthage has made two into Spain but both times could not pull off long term occupation. Rome has set up a base of operation in Thermon. Saba invaded Axum. I wonder too, if someday someone decides to invade the little paradise up north.

I am hoping, if it is possible, we can see a return of the Isle of Darkness training. Also, most of the unique buildings in Briton offer no bonuses (at least not in description). I would also love to see the return of unique troops for Ireland and the various regions of Briton.

I am still getting used to ME2 battles. I think the troops sometimes respond slowly and the battles are very long. I have appreciated the faster battles mod. Also (and this is more of an ME2 problem) I am sad I may have to bring back the ugly green arrows for in rtw games your troops still light up when you select them and here they do not making it difficult to understand what is going on, especially at the center of town.

I love that every province has a write up.

I am still ignorant of all the nuances of recruiting but I feel like there will be less spamming and perhaps a deeper campaign can be enjoyed.

I am watching Rome's legions and while I still see some armies of randomly selected troops, I am seeing a decent amount of armies that, to some degree, can pass as a roman legion (this may be to the different recruitment system which I am thinking may be superior). Same goes for Makedonia and Epeiros whom both (along with Rome) were guilty of putting up some very unrealistic/historically inaccurate armies in EB1. This should lead to better battles.

I have only had one CTD and that was on the faction screen menu. I had my game freeze once during end turn, I went back one turn, it happened again, then I went back a few more turns and it did not happen again. The only other times I had problems with when I alt/tab (windowed mode does not always seem to work).

It would have been easy for me to be disappointed as I was never a big fan of ME2 (always felt like a clunky version of rtw with better graphics) and my excitement of this release has somewhat subsided the last few years. I am not disappointed. Thanks.

So now I am wondering if you have worked out a preliminary release date for EB3? I hear Khelvan is currently dismantling Rome 2 as we speak. Just kidding.

[Mithridates VI Eupator]

The Eremos region is a "wasteland" region that incorporates parts of the map that are either uninhabited/very sparsely populated, ungovernable, or of very Little importance during our timeframe. Thus, apart from parts of Ireland and Caledonia, this also includes the Arabian and Saharan deserts, the Horn of Africa and Finland/Scandinavian inland. The capital of the province is Therazza, which is imposible to reach, and located deep in the Saharan desert.

The crash on the faction selection screen is a known M2TW bug, that occur in most mods that have many factions and a dynamic map on the faction selection screen. It occurs if one clicks too many faction Icons in one session. It can be avoided by going back to the main menue within regular intervals in looking at the factions. This bug should really be in the "known bugs" section, @Kull, if it is not already there, due to its pervasive nature.

[adishee]

So now I am wondering if you have worked out a preliminary release date for EB3? I hear Khelvan is currently dismantling Rome 2 as we speak. Just kidding.

[Freka]

Hi, have played EBI since 0.something and enjoyed it a lot (a mod I always come back to).
And when I stumbled over EBII 2.01 I immediately dusted off MTWII and installed the game an mod.

Have put a lot of hours into the game already and can only give you the team the highest kudos for a beautiful and exciting mod.

Love the new factions (haven't played them all yet), they really give something to the game play (ex Ptolemaio don't blitz the hole of the eastern map anymore)

Things I have noticed during my game time in EBII:

In the diplomacy screen for some factions, when accepting an amount of mnai to pay, the accept and decline symbols have been swapped (Baktria and Bosporos)

In a Carthage game my starting ship unit (can't remember the name) ended up as a land unit when entering Cartago (got the save game if, if you are interested).

The aforementioned ship unit is described as a siege engine in its unit card.

In a game playing as Rome, I had 4 neutral Epiros army stacks standing around roman controlled Rhegion for over 50 turns as they tried to come over to Carthage controlled Messana. Really missed an option to expel the armies without going to total war with Epiros

I have noticed that the late Sweboz armies just sweeps the other ai factions off the map like flies. And when I attack a late Sweboz controlled city/camp whit 2 or 3 units in it whit a full army stack I loose around 45% to 60% on auto resolve. And in battle mode against the Sweboz the late german spearmen seem "almost" invincibly. So for me it seems like the late Sweboz are a bit overpowered.
Haven't played the Sweboz yet, so don't have the whole picture.

EBII seems slower paced than EBI, which I like. Love to build up my cities in my empire before releasing my legions/hordes on the known world.

So kudos too the EB team for a great mod and for all the hours they put into this greatest of mods

[TheWildHost]

I have noticed that the late Sweboz armies just sweeps the other ai factions off the map like flies.

Same for me, They control most of Europe North of the Alps. Also I've never seen anyone but Makedonia win the war for Greece

[Kleitos]

Same for me, They control most of Europe North of the Alps. Also I've never seen anyone but Makedonia win the war for Greece

true, mostly Makedonia prevails in Hellas Proper. But take a look at this one:



Happened in my fifth Pergamon Campaign - i was delighted to see the Koinon Hellenon in that Situation. ...dont know how this happened - since most of Makedonias Armies remained i guess their Dynasty was wiped out in a major Assassin Attack.

[TheWildHost]

Yeah I've seen Ep win once and in my Current Bosp. the KH just cleaned house and is the current ruler.

[Ibrahim]

I have noticed that the late Sweboz armies just sweeps the other ai factions off the map like flies. And when I attack a late Sweboz controlled city/camp whit 2 or 3 units in it whit a full army stack I loose around 45% to 60% on auto resolve. And in battle mode against the Sweboz the late german spearmen seem "almost" invincibly. So for me it seems like the late Sweboz are a bit overpowered.
Haven't played the Sweboz yet, so don't have the whole picture.

they're not: the stats are generally only slightly better than earlier versions of the Sweboz. The near invincibility I suspect is due to the generals: they have a nasty feature when fighting them (the things you learn about Germanic military culture ).

if you want to reduce casualties and ease your life, I would suggest one of two possibilities:

1-hit the general's unit from its left flank (i.e. where the general is), and kill him. while you do that, hit the rest of the army hard--very hard. the combined effect of pressure and the loss of a general should send the regular units packing. then focus on the rest of the late general's bodyguard, and surround them and give them everything you got.
2-bring lots of missiles against the Sweboz: they are not well armored, so are vulnerable in the extreme.

either way, I find it fascinating that this mirrors what did happen historically (sort of): Germanic peoples did come to dominate central Europe culturally and politically, and later spilled across the Rhine and Danube.

[kdrakak]

About 2- ....missiles do not generally do damage in this version of the game... practically none in my experience. Practically the only thing that works in the tactical combat map is maneuvering. Again in my experience it is no use attacking a unit for the kill before it routes... effort is better placed attacking morale more than anything else.

[Harkon]

About 2- ....missiles do not generally do damage in this version of the game... practically none in my experience

That's because you're clearly not interested enough to explore this very forum to find out a fix for skirmisher units that makes them quite deadly and useful as you are interested to type about it.

[johnhughthom]

It looks great, it feels great, it plays great.
Encoutered some bugs but nothing mayor.

Couple of questions:
- Is their a way to remove the HUD with 1 key? It was possible in EB
- Can you remove the banners that float above the soldiers?
- How do you remove the cutscenes (like gate breached and stuff)?

Screen lock removes the HUD. The other two should be fixable through the EBII config file in the EBII folder, but it appears the game overwrites it, so I'm not sure it's changeable at the minute.

[kdrakak]

Just ran a test campaign with Takshashila. Now that I know what to expect I can prepare myself for Indian domination! Great script with the Mauryan tribute! I don't know how it ends yet but it feels role-playing-y!
A beautiful game guys... congrats!