# [Rome Total War 2] - Vae Victis!



## Artaxerxes (Sep 2, 2013)

Less than a day until Rome 2 lands on our digital shelves.

Played the crap out of Shogun, Medieval and Rome: Total Wars back when they came out.

I've tried to enjoy Shogun 2, Medieval 2 and Empire: TW but they've all lacked a certain something so I'm hoping that this fixes a few of the issues those games had and its also my favourite time period so I'm looking forward to smashing the crap out of the Romans as the Celts.


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## agricola (Sep 2, 2013)

Cant wait, but I hope they make a better job of it than the original (lets face it the total conversion mods EB and RTR were vastly superior to the vanilla game).


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## Artaxerxes (Sep 4, 2013)

Well played a good 4 hours last night and enjoyed myself a lot.

Its a good game but its not revolutionary, if you've played TW you've played this really. They've also made a few simplifications that don't work to well. (No family tree, the city screen is very basic and manages to confuse with a lack of information and transparency on what causes things like Squalor)

I think the game mostly falls down on the strategic map, ever since they moved away from the single tiles of the original M:TW game the games have felt very similar and the "clean" ui and general snipping away of information is a part of that.

I think its time they chose, they can be a battle simulator at which they excel but in terms of grand strategy Paradox has them very much beaten with CK2 and the EU series.

Need more playtime I think to come up with a definite opinion but so far its very very pretty, its good to fight and I look forward to seeing what modders and future DLC brings out.


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## Santino (Sep 4, 2013)

There's a tie-in book, which just appears to be a straight historical novel:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Total-War-Rome-Destroy-Carthage/dp/0230770940/


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## DotCommunist (Sep 4, 2013)

Game tie in books are invariably shit and written by hacks. I own the first tie-in novel for 'Eve online' and its a load of cobblers


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## Santino (Sep 4, 2013)

With old games sometimes you got a novella in the instruction manual.


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## Stigmata (Sep 4, 2013)

Frontier Elite had a whole anthology of short stories


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## treelover (Sep 6, 2013)

getting mixed reviews and steam users are venting on the forums about bugs, etc.


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## DotCommunist (Sep 6, 2013)

Santino said:


> With old games sometimes you got a novella in the instruction manual.




presumably to invoke the consumers imagination in a way that simple pixels on a 286 RM Nimbus machine would not be able to


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## agricola (Sep 6, 2013)

The Roman troops seem far too strong, at least in the early game, and the naval battles arent all that.  However I do like the army system.

Finally did Matt Berry do some of the voice acting?


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## Epona (Sep 6, 2013)

DotCommunist said:


> presumably to invoke the consumers imagination in a way that simple pixels on a 286 RM Nimbus machine would not be able to



  Also the manual gave you something to get excited about on the bus back from town - these days I'm into digital downloads (not bought a game on DVD for a few years now) so I can look at the internet or play another game whilst it's downloading.  I do appreciate it when digital versions of games are released with a good digital version manual though - when Skyrim was released on Steam there was no digital PC manual on release, they'd simply forgotten to make the arrangements with Steam to make it available - and some of the controls were different than in previous games (and the Xbox version manual that had been leaked a few days earlier was no help!)  There were quite a few slightly frustrated posts about that on the official forum!


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## Chz (Sep 7, 2013)

I'll have to bookmark the thread so I'll know when at least the second patch is out. I can buy it on sale then. I've been fucked over by CA too many times.I still can't forgive them for the time they refused to put out another patch to fix some more serious issues and insisted you had to buy the expansion pack to get it fixed! 

I think that might have been Rome 1, actually.


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## maomao (Sep 7, 2013)

Have been a massive Total War fan since Shogun 1. Despite having this on preorder didn't get a chance to play it till today. Had about 2 and a half hours this morning and not particularly impressed. Battles are very pretty, better than the identical forts that every battle took place in in the other games* but the AI seems dodgy. I defeated an army twice my size on my 2nd turn just by forming one group and charging them. They were defending as well.  I just do not like the campaign GUI. Not enough information. What's the point of a technology tree if you can only see the next two choices? The building tabs are far too abstract. If I build a farm I want a little picture of a farm not some tiny abstract symbol. There's no family tabs and there's not enough information on the city and settlement tabs.

I can't decide whether to have another go at this this afternoon. I'm sorely tempted to fire up Shogun 2 (never finished Rise or Fall of the Samurai anyway) get deep in that for a couple of weeks and then go back to this to see if they patch anything fundamental. It's unlikely though, hopefully they'll have it sorted out better by the time they do Empire 2.

*I remember being terribly disappointed with Empire Total War after spending 15-20 hours building my Indian empire, sailing 3 giant armies with elephants and everything round Africa and up the Western coast of Europe, landing somewhere near Brighton and marching up to London only to fight the English army in a bloody fort that looked like all the bloody forts in India. The bigger disappointment was that I lost.


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## Cid (Sep 7, 2013)

Ship combat balancing is weird... Had a 3 ship military fleet and used it to intercept a transport fleet of 4 units. Autroresolve gave me great odds, but tried out ship combat anyway... Thing is you're then commanding three ships against 4 other ships stacked with enemy troops. Their missile units still work, and as soon as you get a proper ram on they can board you. The whole ramming thing is quite fun, ship battles become essentially chaotic land battles with possible fire, but the balancing changes completely.

Also not sure about the settlements, and generals instead of family etc. Probably play a bit more this eve, see how it develops.

e2a: Yeah, magic transports is really a bit stupid. Also totally ahistorical.


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## Cid (Sep 9, 2013)

Fuck's sake - lost my prelude saves, so started a campaign... Now lost campaign saves and regained prelude.


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## agricola (Sep 10, 2013)

Having given this almost a week, my conclusion is that it is by far the worst of the Total War series.


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## Artaxerxes (Sep 11, 2013)

I just cant be arsed playing it, the end of turns especially put me off.


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## TopCat (Sep 11, 2013)

My laptop is not up to it apparently.


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## treelover (Sep 13, 2013)

agricola said:


> Having given this almost a week, my conclusion is that it is by far the worst of the Total War series.


 

was going to pre-order it at first, glad I held off

Though, tbh, I only really play the battles side of things in the TW series.


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## Garek (Sep 26, 2013)

So how is everyone doing? I don't really understand chapter objectives. Do you have a set number of turns for each chapter?


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## agricola (Sep 27, 2013)

Garek said:


> So how is everyone doing? I don't really understand chapter objectives. Do you have a set number of turns for each chapter?



Stopped playing it until someone comes up with a decent total conversion mod, like RTW or EB.


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## Garek (Oct 4, 2013)

I think war dogs may be _slightly _unbalanced. I just had a battle where out of 2000 men I killed, half were killed by war dogs. Just two units of dogs is enough to basically annihilate an army. I use them on missile troops as they break really easily.


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## treelover (Oct 18, 2013)

Is it playable yet?, mods, patches, etc, was so looking forward to this.

just noticed new Patch recently, so is it ready?


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## treelover (Oct 26, 2013)

anyone?


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## Psychonaut (Nov 20, 2013)

its up to patch 6 or 7 now, i think RELOADED have no plans to crack the game beyond update 4. 

Based on previous releases, is the purchase price likely to drop any time soon? like a seasonal steam sale or something?


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## Dexter Deadwood (Jan 10, 2014)

Just bought the first one £6.99 on Steam. Have not got a clue what i am doing but just won my first settlement in tutorial.


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## treelover (Jan 12, 2014)

just bought it for 13.50, really disappointing atm, graphics are worse than Shogun, armies look rubbish from a short distance, they all bunch together blobbing, I have a high end machine and am only getting 9 fps!


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## Chz (Jan 13, 2014)

I'd just checked on it a few days ago since patch #8 (!!) had dropped, and people still have loads of problems. The primary one seeming to be that it's not _fun_.


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## treelover (Jan 13, 2014)

For me its the graphics, I never really got into the complexity of the game, family trees, etc, when its raining the screen distorts and as for the vegetation, why did they not use Shogun's game engine. though the AI comes second...


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## treelover (Feb 5, 2014)

Well, patch 9 has largely limited the lagging, there are still texture issues buts its very playable now, time for CA to wok on graphics improvements now.


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## Kaka Tim (Nov 19, 2014)

got the latest update on my brothers advice - and enjoying it muchly. We're planning on doing a multiplayer game on a big wall projector so we can _'Ave' _it large (sorry). 

Want them to do medieval 3. The graphics for rome are ace - but now I want to see french nobles being mullered by english yobs with longbows in high-definition with surround sound.


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## treelover (Nov 20, 2014)

well, the last patch has fucked up my copy, lag is back, foliage looks rubbish..


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## maomao (Nov 20, 2014)

Kaka Tim said:


> Want them to do medieval 3. The graphics for rome are ace - but now I want to see french nobles being mullered by english yobs with longbows in high-definition with surround sound.


Or Empire 2. Empire's still my fave. Though I've still not managed my ambition of turning up on the South coast of England with a winning Indian army. Once managed to land 3 armies there, took the British on at Oxford with elephants and everything and got mullered.


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## Santino (Nov 20, 2014)

Next one's Attila the Hun.


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## maomao (Nov 20, 2014)

Santino said:


> Next one's Attila the Hun.


Sounds like a campaign game on the Rome II engine ala Napoleon Total War. So no cannons or decent artillery.


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## Santino (Nov 20, 2014)

I'd like something new like China or Charlemagne or even Fantasy.


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## Santino (Nov 20, 2014)

Or the Seventeenth Century. Thirty Years War!


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## maomao (Nov 20, 2014)

Warring states era China would be great fun tactically but the weaponry wasn't up to much. They had great sieges though. I would favour a much broader medievalish game with options to cover a range of time periods say 500-1500.


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## Kaka Tim (Nov 21, 2014)

Santino said:


> Or the Seventeenth Century. Thirty Years War!



And/or English civil war.


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## treelover (Nov 21, 2014)

There is a MTW2 mod for that, its pretty good.


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## treelover (Nov 25, 2014)

Well, at last for some reason, I am getting about 25 fps instead of 11fps at low level, with 17,2500k and hd6990, it now looks quite impressive.


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