Rome Total War 2 looking likely!

But where is the promised rant?

I heard that not only did the latest patch create a whole new set of bugs, but even though seasons have been added, a turn is still one year.

A turn is still only one year yes. If you don’t like that, there are mods that changes this from the Steam Workshop. As for bugs - well…I haven’t seen any myself yet.

Downloading right now so it should be ready for me to check out some time tomorrow.

I’ve been playing as the Parthians and I’m having so much fun. They start in a pretty harsh place with enemies on almost all sides. The Greek factions in Asia start forming alliances immediately. The Persian factions do too as soon as they turn on their Greek masters. You’re left with two choices: Either ally yourself with the new Persian alliance and limit your expanding options to the south or turn on them and fight both the Greeks and the Persians. To the east are the Bactrians that seem to have an endless supply of armies and to the north are Steppe tribes that rain down on you with thousands of horse archers Mongol-style. The way these two factions interact with each other determines your chance of survival. If they decide to form an alliance or a non-aggresion pact you’ll be the only thing between them and the road to Babylon. The first 10 turns either make or break your campaign.

Once you have a few provinces you can start making archer armies.
My current standard army is:
1x General (Cataphract)
2x Noble Blood Cavalry
2x Armoured Horse Archers
7x Parthian Swordsmen
8x Elite Persian Archers.

Those Elite Persian Archers are like the MG42’s of the ancient world. They cut trough the most heavily armoured units in no time. As long as you can keep them safe you should be able to win most land battles.

It is such a different experience from Rome or the Greek factions. Everybody should try to complete a Parthian campaign at least once.

I started a new game after the patch went live, and the first two sieges – both at Rome – went much like the others in my previous games. In the first attempt, the enemy moved one of its four ladders up to the wall, while the other three, along with the general, a few squads of slingers, and about five squads of spearmen meandered about a few huts on the outskirts of the city. Another ladder eventually crossed a bridge towards another entrance, but it stopped at the wall, where the accompanying soldiers stood in place until they were wiped out by arrow fire. The second attempt was similar, except that the ladder being moved across the bridge stopped before completing the crossing. Reinforcements attacked another entrance both times, and both times succeeding in burning the gates down, but they were repulsed, which meant the computer ignored undermanned open entrances. I’m also having units deselect during combat, which continues to be frustrating.

On the upside, the agent spamming that seemed to be introduced in the third or fourth patch seems to have died down. I also really like the seasonal weather system, and its affects on unit movement and health, and slower troop transport speed.

Does the political stuff work at all now? Have they changed the civil war mechanic? Or does it still just spawn a dozen armies and a dozen navies from some random province once you hit the trigger?

I am actually thinking about getting one of the DLCs for this reason. I don’t have that much time to play lately and will probably enjoy a tighter campaign (and smaller map) more. Which one of the two (Ceasar vs Hannibal) would you guys recommend?

I have both but have only had time to delve into Ceasar, but that one is VERY well done and a ton of fun. Honestly, I’d say whichever one has the most interest to you historically :-)

I know that I have more than enough cause to drink the haterade on Rome 2 but I have to admit the AI is kicking me around pretty hard on Legendary difficulty - the only difficulty level as far as i’m concerned. After Hannibal came out I revisited Rome 2 having set it aside for many months and resumed my Egyptian campaign, and recent patches have only made things difficult for my poor Egyptians, beloved of all the Hellenistic kingdoms, to complete the conquest of Arabia. Arabian armies repeatedly ambush my hapless armies - seriously, like three ambushes in a row - giving the spear chunkers the ability to crush my composite phalanx and slinger armies, with one such army almost slaughtered to the last man with hardly any casualties inflicted. I’m forced to advance slowly and without forced march in order to not be continuously ambushed. The AI still remains an excellent flanker and adept at using skirmishing troops - the bane of every single freakin’ battle I fight are the javelin men, not the main line troops, yet I find it nearly impossible to actually beat those javelin troops with something like an efficient solution, and it’s not common to find them open enough to send some cavalry crashing into them, or too late in the battle to have saved the 100-200 troops each one of them ends up killing, so I end up having to trade ranged unit for a ranged unit.

Anyway, i’m having fun and are not anywhere close to dominating the game. Most of the larger empires are much higher rated in power, and i’m literally swimming in money thanks to the trading empire I’ve built. And this is with Egypt, the easiest of the Hellenstic empires to build up. Trying to make something happen with Pontus has been, let’s say, amusing.

What does Legendary do for the AI? More money? More cheat-y stuff? Or just more aggressive and less nice?

I’ve been looking and am not exactly sure what bonuses it receives, but it clearly receives a lot.

The most obvious change is that it’s an “ironman” sort of mode, where after any battle the game is automatically saved. It’s not a perfect ironman because you can redo a turn if you haven’t engaged any foreign troops; that is, if you just move things around on the map, you could in theory restart the turn and undo a mistaken move or something. But overall it’s fine in that it upon engaging an enemy or after a battle the game autosaves, so there are no redos. There is also no radar in tactical mode.

As far as the campaign goes, basically every single power in the game can manage to field three stacks or so, by default, so even tiny one province minors will be annoying to defeat (even if the troops composition still leaves a bit to be desired). Even so it doesn’t increase the aggressiveness beyond the bounds of reason, and in fact in my Egyptian Legendary campaign i more or less have no enemies; even the Seleucids want to buddy up with me, mainly i suppose due to the fact that i’ve never betrayed or done any overt transgression, and that i have no alliance chains that lead to natural conflict, even though i still feel as though the Seleucids will betray me at some point. But the AI is aggressive if not particularly brilliant, however i have suffered several total defeats, and the AI is particularly good at beating me when i have a mobility disadvantage. OTOH the AI remains a dullard when it comes to sieges and if you have any sort of pike infantry at all you can almost surely hold off any invasion, but since you’ve got only one walled city per province the AI can rampage across the land in a way that it really wasn’t able to do before, sacking cities and causing all sorts of problems.

Legendary is the ultimate cheat for the AI. AI dislikes you from the start and doesn’t like to trade with you, all their troops get morale bonus’s and free upgrades They get like 100-200% extra income per territory. Their troops cost less to maintain. “Time to build” is reduced I think as well. It’s pretty ridiculous a person should need to play at that difficulty to have a challenge.

I can’t tell what you what the AI is “really” doing, but it does seem to follow the rule that “natural” enemies and allies tend to act accordingly. If you start as Bactria, more or less everyone is going to hate you because it’s almost impossible to expand without stepping on someone’s allies toes (btw, did you know a recent patch allowed Bactria?), and everyone allies with each other the moment you start to expand. OTOH the minor powers that surround Egypt are friends of no one, and so no one cares if you squash them.

I get quickly bored with games that present no challenge, I’m not accustomed to grind gameplay or achievement play, only a challenge keeps me happy.

What is the state of this game now? Have the patches helped to fix many of the launch problems and is it worth playing and picking up some of the recent DLC?

Thanks,
Todd

I think it’s pretty awesome, all things considered, especially now that Steam Workshop mods are integrated right into the launcher, letting you find fixes to problems relatively painlessly. But i haven’t played a single campaign not on Legendary difficulty, so even stupid one province minors put up a fight, and because of that, they swap provinces with one another like musical chairs. EU4 does a better job of guiding history down a believable path, but then again, they’ve been making the same damn game for 15 years so at this point they ought to have a pretty robust handle on how to guide the AI down the well worn path.

I have a compromised loyalty to Creative Assembly though, because no developer who makes such nerdy historical games can be all bad, despite all the very real problems that crop up. The only completely bad thing is naval combat, tragically, since naval combat in Empire was actually kind of ok, and it was better even in Shogun. It’s hard to see how they messed up ram-and-board naval eras, but they did, probably because naval combat back then is actually kind of boring and there isn’t the kind of scope for greatness and strategy like the land battles have.

New Emperor Edition announced!
For people who already own R2, this brings in a new mini-campaign, (Augustus!) as well as (they claim) an update to buildings and politics & civil wars. Details are thin on the ground, but I like new stuff.

Civil wars:

  • No longer guaranteed
  • Involves your own troops and generals
  • Can happen more than once
  • Kept in check by your gravitas

Expansion increases cost of political actions, making it harder to contain unrest as your empire grows.

I like the sound of this, specially that it’s free!

Honestly, they released an unfinished game (that I nonetheless enjoyed a lot) but it seems they finally finished! Of all the problems with the main campaign (the DLC is better) the civil war mechanic was the worst (very badly implemented). I love your own troops and generals might (it seems) revolt against you…

Time to install the game again, it seems…

I’ll definitely come back for more, I never finished the 2nd campaign I started, just got bored with the Brits.