Incline Rome 2 Total War with Divide et Impera and a few other mods isn't totally dogshit

[Mr. Pink]

After receiving r2tw as a gift in 2012 and experiencing the most broken game at launch I've ever played, I uninstalled and didn't touch it again until yesterday. Watching some sword and sandal stuff made me want to subjugate Gaul again, so I reinstalled since I heard it got fixed in patches. It was still terrible. My "disciplined" hastatii would immediately blob up and overlap into each other when issued attack orders, and cavalry charges would stop moments before meeting the enemy, pull out swords and then die to infantry. Shameful display.

So I looked at the workshop to find mods that would alleviate this issue. Tried a few mods (radious is shit. SHIT!) and then installed Divide et Impera, the massive overhaul mod. Testing in custom battles, not even DEI would stop the blobbing. The solution I found was actually a submod for Divide et Impera called More Visually and Historically Accurate Battles. The mod prevents blobbing by removing the "matched combat" system that has ruined every TW since empire. "cinematic" 1v1 scripted fights between soldiers don't happen, and only short animations like single stabs and slashes were left. This means that multiple soldiers can attack the same enemy, making numbers more important. The removal of 1v1 matched combat also fixes the issue of cavalry wasting time after charging into the enemy. For the first time ever, I could actually execute proper roman tactics (oblique and checkered formations for example) and have them not fall apart instantly upon first contact. Sadly, it doesn't fix TW AI from being brain dead, but no TW game has good AI anyways. Would highly recommend this mod if you want to larp as Rome.

most civilized troops do not break formation when attacked or attacking. walk-attacking has them march forward with their shields up.

pikes are no longer death machines. a pike vs pike battle between two high tier units will last for an hour if uninterrupted.

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

Even if they more or less fixed battles, campaign AI in DeI is pants on head retarded any way. It's hyper aggressive in the early game, but then after a certain level of power it's just like somebody flicking a switch and it becomes the greatest pussy in history and will never ever attack again. Not to mention that faction power comes almost entirely from base income instead of number and quality of cities, so a one province minor can field as many armies as a large empire. Hell that even means that the large empire is actually weaker than the one province minor since it's few armies are spread all over the place. Just play Europa Barbarorum instead, it's actually good, even if it still has a tendency to crash ever now and then.

 

[Commissar Draco]

So Why Sega did not fixed it earlier? I can stand stupid AI... it was always between suicidal and bitchy stupid in all TW games but atleast the battles were fun till the turd called Empire and warscape came. So is this worth demo-ing now comrades?

 

[Mr. Pink]

Even if they more or less fixed battles, campaign AI in DeI is pants on head retarded any way. It's hyper aggressive in the early game, but then after a certain level of power it's just like somebody flicking a switch and it becomes the greatest pussy in history and will never ever attack again. Not to mention that faction power comes almost entirely from base income instead of number and quality of cities, so a one province minor can field as many armies as a large empire. Hell that even means that the large empire is actually weaker than the one province minor since it's few armies are spread all over the place. Just play Europa Barbarorum instead, it's actually good, even if it still has a tendency to crash ever now and then.

Watching other playthroughs and AI only campaign maps, I notice that vanilla DEI AI really likes to declare war on each other, but never actually win. In my playthrough, syracuse and epirus were at war for over 20 turns, sending full stacks of boats at each other and getting destroyed by the other sides garrison every time. I think it may have something to do with the cAI tweak I installed that lowers the diplo relation threshold for wars. I cheated and took a look at the rest of the world to find the selucids still alive and powerful with all their satraps at turn 60, and the iceni blobbing pretty fast with 9 territories. Barbs declared war on me twice despite having neutral relations. One criticism I have that's also in vanilla is how easy it is to get factions to sign non aggression pacts, especially if you have one of those cultural affinity traits.


I'd play EB if the early portions of the game weren't so passive and if the map wasn't covered in cities, making every battle a siege battle. It might have gotten fixed in patches, but when I played EB, the cAI was pretty retarded and couldn't adapt to all the economic changes. I tried EB2 once and uninstalled because it kept crashing

 

[Maggot]

DeI has too much dumb shit like garrisoning troops in cities hurts public order, besieging still gives you a big attrition penalty, every siege battle being a double stack fight even in tiny villages, and instant sieges with the army limit still in place. Some are fixed by submods and some are hardcoded. Still fun if you want to jerk off to muh leejuns since they have a bunch of formations and abilities you can't do in EB.

 

[Vibalist]

The problem with Rome 2 was always the campaign AI. I can deal with that other shit, but watching the AI just passively stroll back and forth on the map, never really expanding, acting completely irrational both diplomatically and strategically just made me want to crush something with my bare fists. Preferably a CA dev.

I'll never play this shit again, no matter what mods become available. I put over 100 hours into this game and never once did I run into a faction with more than 6 or 7 areas, even late game. They were just completely timid. They only ever overwhelmed you in numbers, but even then they'd just sit back half the time despite declaring war on you, or hit you with endless blockades or tiny stacks that required you to micromanage absolutely everything.
Every faction felt samey despite having different units, at least when the AI controlled them, because they'd never act like a unique entity. They didn't have different levels of aggression or strategic dispositions depending on who they were, they just meandered about like the headless chickens they were.

AI has always been bad in Total War games, but this was truly something else. Maybe Empire was worse, but I never played that game. Warhammer somewhat redeemed the series, but it wasn't that great either.

 

[Maggot]

Warhammer somewhat redeemed the series

Really? The only positive things I can say about it are the graphics are nice and it's not as bad as launch Rome 2. It's not a very good strategy game and the AI is as dumb as ever, still abandoning settlements to do stupid shit while I go around and take them. I've been replaying Medieval at the same time and the AI is more competent there. They've streamlined every aspect and cut corners everywhere and the new features like the magic system are pretty shit.

 

[kreight]

Divide et Empera has been updated.

https://divideetimperamod.com/divide-et-impera-1-2-7-released/