Recommended Posts

Apologies if there is already a thread. I didn't see one when I started writing this 4 hours ago. I type like your great, great, great gandmother's father.

 

Sega and Creative Assembly released a game last week titled Total War: Rome II, which they say is a sequel to something called Total War: Rome. I'm pretty sure they mean Rome: Total War, but it's possible we have a Prince situation, so maybe we should be calling this the sequel to the game formerly known as Rome: Total War. This is a serious matter that warrants discussion. Maybe the next patch is Rome II: Total War II?

 

Anyway, has anyone else fired this up? I've played 2 campaigns and have been having fun despite the innumerable complaints I have. Ignoring the bugs, like the weird AI problems and units practically ignoring my orders, I don't like the direction they took the game in a lot of ways. It feels much more like a video game than I would've thought, especially given the promotion this game has received.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've been having a really complicated relationship with Total War: Rome II. The first night I played it, I wrote something in the Quitter's Club thread about how I was going to wait for a patch (or maybe even an expansion) to play more. Then I've kept playing it every single night, hating every moment of it. I suspect, like Napoleon: Total War, this'll be a game where I finish one campaign and then never play it again, although with Napoleon I was overwhelmed by the scale, rather than underwhelmed by the design.
 
Here are a couple of comments I posted on Tom Chick's review of the game, one of two that dared to give it a failing grade:
 

The fact that most reviewers were only willing to damn such a mess of a game with faint praise has been really frustrating.
 
The game is completely and totally broken. It puts on a brave face, so if you're new to Total War games, strategy games, or just games, it plays pretty for baby. Most people take it all in good faith and assume that the depth is there if they just start digging. Well, I've put in thirty hours of digging and the depth is nowhere to be found. Creative Assembly obviously had some cool design ideas about limited resources with the agents, provinces, and armies, but it's all lost in an empty game that scrambles at every turn to assure you that nothing's of any real consequence. Don't worry, those stats don't matter. They all give similar bonuses and your general will be dead soon anyway. Don't worry, that defeat doesn't matter. You can resurrect the army with all its upgrades intact back home. Don't worry, the diplomatic AI doesn't matter. You have no real control over what it thinks, it's just there to be conquered. It's impossible to make a mistake in this game because nothing really matters.
 
The list goes on and on. Things like Gravitas, Influence, and Ambition, which should be at the core of the design, make zero sense in execution. I started out with 93% influence in Macedon. Now I have 43%, which worried me for a while, but I couldn't really do anything to change it, no matter how many promotions, adoptions, or bribes I performed, so I ignored it for the past fifty turns and am better for it. Nothing connects and you don't know why because the game won't tell you. I don't think it even knows itself. In those respects, Europa Universalis IV blows this out of the water. The only things that Paradox's latest might be said to lack are Total War's increasingly frantic and floaty tactical battles, which should shame CA to no end. But no worries, they're already hard at work on DLC packs for the Seleucids and the steppe nomads. That's what the game's missing, more factions.

Side note: a civil war finally erupted in my Macedon game.
 
Well, that's not strictly true. Before and after the revolt, my influence was still at 43%, with no change in the gravitas or ambition of any general, whether part of my family or not. In fact, none of my generals actually took part in the revolt, so it's not quite fair to call it a civil war. It's more that the game just decided that 164 BC was time for a civil war, so eight full-stack armies and four full-stack navies materialized out of thin air on top of my capital city. My loyal armies (that is, all my armies) have set up ambushes on all the outgoing roads, so I don't foresee much of a fight. Still, I'm glad to know just how much the game respects my time and input.

 
To finish the story from the second comment, I killed all eight armies and four navies, enslaving almost three thousand of my own people. The civil war then ended and, as a reward, the faction politics have been stripped out of the game completely. There are now no longer any valid interactions to be had on the faction screen, neither promotions nor marriages. It's very, very odd. Honestly, I think my enjoyment comes from my love of video games and my love of ancient history, both of which Rome II captures imperfectly. There are just so many boneheaded decisions present, like the battlefield capture points and the navy system, and I don't doubt there are even more hidden by the abysmal documentation that CA fanboys are mistaking for "complex gameplay."
 
I'd really like to see Creative Assembly pull something out of this. It sounds like they were on an impossible timetable from SEGA and had to keep an eye on a future console port, so I don't know if it's possible, but I still hope. What factions have you played as, Hero?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I played as Macedon in my first campaign, but after completing the first set of objectives I swapped to play Sparta, motivated purely by "I like the way they look." That suit commercial guy guaranteed I was going to like the way I would look too!

 

I agree with you, a lot of the mechanics are illogical and seem to make no difference. A lot of the new features feel really dull or uninspired, and they really went in the opposite direction that I hoped they would. They shifted focus more heavily toward settlements and cities, the only battles I've had outside of sieges have been as a result of raiding, setting ambushes, or fortifying narrow passes... and don't get me started on the ability for any army to just become a boat and cruise the aegean. Why build fleets at all, especially given how irritating I've found the naval combat.

 

With that said, I am having fun playing with the realm development, creating heroes and using them to train my armies to amass crazy zealots. I like marching my armys into enemy lands to raid and force open-field conflicts, or retreat and lead them into my ambushes. I still find the battles fun. Conversely, autoresolve feels awful.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Conversely, autoresolve feels awful.

 

I actually like the changes to auto-resolve. There's a good chance I wouldn't be playing the game right now if not for them, simply because siege battles are (still) awful (always have been, always will be) and they constitute most of the military game now. The ability to set the stance of the simulated AI in my auto-resolve means that I usually trust it to give me an adequate outcome, although it's very confusing when an "aggressive" stance saves you casualties or a "defensive" stance costs you them.

 

I also like the army/navy stances, though the province edicts along the same lines are much less well-realized. The main problem (which is the problem of every Total War game thus far) is that the AI has no idea how to use them and so just uses "forced march" all the time, meaning that every army I fight in the field is at half morale and easy to beat. The AI in general is a lot worse at playing Rome II than earlier games. I don't think I've come across a single AI settlement that wasn't deep into the red in terms of happiness and income. Radious' mod, which is one of the first to come out for Rome II, relieves the food and squalor penalties across the board, which actually helps the AI more than the player, since the former can't game it like the player can. Stuff like that makes me wonder how much testing actually happened at CA.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

In my... let's see... wow, okay... 40 hours of Rome 2 the only time I've ever resolved has been blowouts in my favor.

 

The problem inherent to the system, as I see it, is if the battle chances are anything below 70%-ish, auto-resolve is almost certainly going to sim worse than if I were to control the fight myself. Conversely, if the fights are over 70% they're a complete snore and should be sim'd. The only exception I've had here has been I was too far into german territory using macedonian armored peltists against entire armies of mounted archers, where my forces were so out-technologied and out-numbered that whether I sim'd or played, it was a huge defeat.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

In my... let's see... wow, okay... 40 hours of Rome 2 the only time I've ever resolved has been blowouts in my favor.

 

The problem inherent to the system, as I see it, is if the battle chances are anything below 70%-ish, auto-resolve is almost certainly going to sim worse than if I were to control the fight myself. Conversely, if the fights are over 70% they're a complete snore and should be sim'd. The only exception I've had here has been I was too far into german territory using macedonian armored peltists against entire armies of mounted archers, where my forces were so out-technologied and out-numbered that whether I sim'd or played, it was a huge defeat.

 

I guess I think about it a different way. Especially with phalanx formations, it's so easy to massacre the AI with only ten-percent casualties on my side that I auto-resolve to both save time and put an extra brake on my progress.

 

But seriously, what is it about pike phalanges? All you need are a couple of cavalry units to distract the AI from its original battle plan and then a couple of archer units behind your lines to make them decide to charge you. Nine times out of ten, they'll thrown themselves against the pikes and rout in under thirty seconds. It'd almost be boring if it weren't the most satisfying thirty seconds of the game.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Apparently, since after a dozen patches the base game still can't produce anything remotely resembling the iconic moments of ancient history, Creative Assembly's just going to package them into DLC instead. First we had Caesar in Gaul, now we have Hannibal in Italy. I'm really not sure how I feel about it. I replayed an entire grand campaign a couple months ago and found it still to be the most bland Total War experience I've ever had. I know these DLCs add some much-needed specificity and endgame, but still...

 

 

EDIT: For those keeping score at home, I played through an entire twenty-hour campaign as the Suebi and had maybe an hour of fun total. The game is still so bland and unfocused, full of gameplay choices that are meaningless but insistent. But wait! I've just been turned onto the first big "total conversion" mod for the game, Divide et Impera, which looks to have ambition on par with the original Rome: Total Realism, so maybe when they release their next big patch I'll try again.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

After Sim City this was the game I wanted most that completely disappointed me :(

 

I think CA invested so much into graphics (without optimizing them) that they lost sight of what their game was supposed to be about. And thus the core dynamics suffered, it was impossible to have fun with anything other than Rome and they simplified the campaign map too much. The battles are awesome but if the point of TW games is that the campaign map is supposed to give context to the battles, which I think in Rome 2 it fails to do.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

After Sim City this was the game I wanted most that completely disappointed me :(

 

I think CA invested so much into graphics (without optimizing them) that they lost sight of what their game was supposed to be about. And thus the core dynamics suffered, it was impossible to have fun with anything other than Rome and they simplified the campaign map too much. The battles are awesome but if the point of TW games is that the campaign map is supposed to give context to the battles, which I think in Rome 2 it fails to do.

 

 

I agree with you about CA losing sight of the what the game is supposed to be about. There are a few key features missing that makes the game feel as if they've forgotten what made Rome 1 so appealing in the first place. 

 

I think the first Rome: Total War encouraged a connection with your generals and family members that made the battles feel really intense and encouraged the player to create stories about the characters on the map. There was a family tree, which made me feel like I was a part of a greater legacy. It was cool to look at all the dead characters that were once your heroes and villains, and it made it seem like your accomplishments were a family thing that just kept going.

 

A new family member was the son of a current character instead of just appearing from war academy or something like in Rome 2. Having that new character pop on the map alongside his father made me care about them; it encouraged me to create stories about them that have stuck with me for years. The second game doesn't do this - I couldn't care less if the new Julii general lives or dies because he essentially came from nowhere. The son of Cassius the Mighty (my greatest general for 30 years) was somebody. Even when he was a useless 16 year old without any sort of stats that boosted him in battle he mattered to me. 

 

I remember being up against a wall when defending Athens from the Macedonians and agonizing over the decision to commit the son of Cassius (who fought the Macedonians his entire life and died of plague within sight of their capital) to a fight that he probably wouldn't win. From a pure game logic perspective it was the only thing to do - he was my only available general and Athens is an important city. But it wasn't that easy, because he had a legacy to uphold - I didn't want to throw his life away here and let him die without heirs. I didn't want to rob him of the opportunity to avenge his father. I was horrified when he died in a hopeless cavalry charge trying to kill the enemy general and cause a panic among the Macedonian troops. I remember almost reloading the save and thinking better of it, as if it would dishonor his sacrifice somehow. There was a real sense of legacy there, of lineage. I felt like a Roman.

 

I've played Rome II for a long time, and I can't remember a single character. There's no reason to; they're disposable. It really disappoints me that features like this were left out. It felt like such a core part of the experience back then, and it was really the thing that kept me coming back. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've played Rome II for a long time, and I can't remember a single character. There's no reason to; they're disposable. It really disappoints me that features like this were left out. It felt like such a core part of the experience back then, and it was really the thing that kept me coming back. 

 

Reading interviews, the family tree was deliberately removed for two reasons: first, to keep it from distracting players from the laughably buggy and broken "politics" screen of which CA was so proud; and second, to keep players from noticing how fast the game's timescale is. To expand upon the latter, I remember someone close to the team suggesting on the forums that the family tree got unreadably huge and sprawled after just a hundred turns, so they got rid of it and doubled down on "family" and "non-family" groupings in the UI instead.

 

Why they weren't clued to bigger design problems by the fact that a game in large part about dynastic and clan politics didn't work with a family tree is really beyond me, but I assume it's got something to do with sunk-cost fallacy.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yes, so much of Rome II appears to be fallaciously derived from sunk costs -- e.g. the sprawling, tumor sized cities, the use of torches to burn gates in siege, inability to capture enemy naval vessels, armies that float endlessly at sea on the campaign map, minor nomadic tribes destroying powers like Egypt and Carthage in a few turns, passive campaign AI, arbitrary civil war, lack of walls for Syracuse and Jerusalem, etc. etc.

 

Some of this may be because SEGA appears to demand an annual Total War standalone game from the developer, with scads of DLC in between.  It's become more of a cash cow for a cash starved corporation.  The developer may not have time to make complex, good games any more.

 

p.s. Gormongous I am told it's impossible to re-create Hannibal's Italian campaign in the Hannibal at the Gates DLC.  Predictably it's the Rome II grind on a differently scaled map, with a somewhat different mix of factions and forces.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Rome II shocked me. I skipped playing it. Seing the triremes plowing sands and camels and shit... I just pretended the game didn't exist. I wanna play it but I would probably still become shocked with the bugs if I bought it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well....your only a year late commenting....

 

 

The version that is on steam now, Emperors something is actually....ok....they've patched out lots of the issues listed in this thread, its still not great, but, its serviceable..

 

 

Civil wars are actually dependent on numbers now, etc, but that's also made it easy to game the simple system into never having one, they also take generals and armies under your control away from you and split the provinces between you and the rebels...this is one example of how things are better

 

 

Is this the Rome 2 we wanted? no...but its much better now than what it was when released...lots of patches have made the game...........enjoyable, its not a super deep strategy game, but none of them have been....the campaign has always been a means of setting up the battles, and it does that now adequately enough to over look some of the built in shallow aspects....

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now