Rome Total War II

[Raghar]

While Rome 2 has better graphics than Rome 1, I still think Rome 2's graphics are shit.

Spoiler

That was GFX glitch.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

4X,Rome II better then original,looked bad...twilight zone.Stop posting total vomit.

Biggest decline was the free movement 3d campaign map,all problems come from there.The AI can't path,defend cities,move armies and coordinate attacks properly since Rome.OTOH The battle AI is identical in all games(except Empire,where it was totally broken),it just takes the high ground and waits,if attacker and have cavalry will flank you,sometimes will bug itself and just stay frozen,in all of them from original Shogun to Atila.Sieges are always coin flip where you prey it does not bug and while attacker just sits frozen again,or bugs the gates,or the ladders,in all of them from Shogun to Atila.If you think in some of them the battle AI is better you are wrong it's constantly mediocre.At lest pre-Warscape there were big battle AI mods.
If you want scripted story Total War try Third Age campaign mod and if you like it more then kill yourself as that goes against what make TW/Paradox open map ,do what you want design so alluring.No they don't need to scale down ,they need to make everything bigger,more grand as all decent mods are doing every fuckin time->more complex recruiting system,more provinces,more units,more cultures,more religions,more trade,more more more.Just ditch the fuckin 3d map.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

I tried DEI recently and it does improve the battle AI I noticed. The only mod I know that really made a breakthrough was Germanicus' AI for medieval 2. Which was used in most of the big mods. Medieval 2's vanilla AI was abysmal, definitively worse than Rome 2. Medieval 2 received a grand total of 3 patch, these were the pre always online days where not 10% of the user base would download the patches.

Last I checked the third age campaign mod was broken, not that it looked very thrilling from the looks of it because controlling a unit of infantry and pretending it's a hobbit is a bit hard. I never found the risk map particularly thrilling, it suffers from the same problem as the new titles, that is it's a tedious grind through hundreds of the same battle, with the same dumb AI and no escalation in difficulty. Total War has never improved or worsened its formula, it still feels like the same limited sandbox than it did in 2001.

A scripted campaign, with custom maps, enemy armies and historical context, with some degree of freedom, and escalation, provides the game with what it always needed. I think most just want a context and a sense of progression for the Battles they play, instead of just playing custom battles.

 

[Trash]

Whoever would pretend Alexander wasn't a cashgrab is wearing nostalgia goggles.

Dunno. Bought a boxed copy for under a tenner. Also, interestingly, the expansion apparantly had someone at CA tinker with the AI. Extensively. Alexander has the AI do a lot of stuff that makes it a much better opponent. Unfortunately these changes where never ported into Barbarian Invasion or the vanilla game. Which means that you miss out on a lot of the features from BI when using that AI. That's why a lot of the mayor newer mods have you choose the exe file for either BI or ALEX. It really is a pity the ALEX AI never got properly patched, and modders aren't able to without the source code.

Loved the original Rome. It felt like an evolution of the genre. Past that it quickly got stale again. Don't think WTW is going to change that.

 

[Silva]

4X,Rome II better then original,looked bad...twilight zone.Stop posting total vomit.

Biggest decline was the free movement 3d campaign map,all problems come from there.The AI can't path,defend cities,move armies and coordinate attacks properly since Rome.OTOH The battle AI is identical in all games(except Empire,where it was totally broken),it just takes the high ground and waits,if attacker and have cavalry will flank you,sometimes will bug itself and just stay frozen,in all of them from original Shogun to Atila.Sieges are always coin flip where you prey it does not bug and while attacker just sits frozen again,or bugs the gates,or the ladders,in all of them from Shogun to Atila.If you think in some of them the battle AI is better you are wrong it's constantly mediocre.At lest pre-Warscape there were big battle AI mods.
If you want scripted story Total War try Third Age campaign mod and if you like it more then kill yourself as that goes against what make TW/Paradox open map ,do what you want design so alluring.No they don't need to scale down ,they need to make everything bigger,more grand as all decent mods are doing every fuckin time->more complex recruiting system,more provinces,more units,more cultures,more religions,more trade,more more more.Just ditch the fuckin 3d map.

I'd rather have a small-scale 3D world map that allows for ambushes, zones of control and smart use of terrain like bridges, passes, rivers, etc. than a huge tile-based world map that's basically a flat board that provides little to no interaction.

AND I'd rather play a game limited to the Peloponnesus with just a handful of generals to pick with minutiaely researched historical background/traits/troops/etc in story-driven (but multi-path) campaigns...

...than play a totally open-ended immense game with little to none historical fidelity and generals whose names are little more than placeholders holding generic entities in place.

But that's me.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

There are other games that do that.King Arthur,Hegemony,The King's Crusade,XIII Century and Real Warfare comes to mind.All total war expansions focus on that too-Alexander,Kingdoms and Napoleon.

I'd rather have a small-scale 3D world map that allows for ambushes, zones of control and smart use of terrain like bridges, passes, rivers, etc.

This will never happen,you are delusional if you expect any AI to pull that.Only bogs down developers to waste time on some kids imagined film scenario.Just look what 300 did to Civ V.There is still retards that thing it's cool to block passages with hoplites on abstract strategic map.
All this things can be made on turn based risk style map.Like when attacking/defending province choose to try for ambush and pair the stats of the generals or the troops with special traits ,stuff like that.One cool feature in King Arthur is that you can select the type of map if you are attacker,so if you have a lot of archer go for woods,if cavalry go for planes.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Yeah let's keep the tedious part and remove any opportunity for the campaign map to be not tedious.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

 

[Silva]

BlackAdderBG, there is another point that goes against the idea of huge continents-sprawling maps:

The premise of constant warfare, which is central to the game.

The bigger geographically the map is, the least plausible it is for a given nation to be in a constant warfare through the game entire time span. That's why entries like Shogun feel right in a way Medieval or Empire doesn't - a smaller scope like sengoku jidai fits the premise of "constant warfare" without disrespecting historical plausibility. The same can be said for focused scenarios like The Last Roman and Napoleon campaigns. The more you keep it small and focused, both temporal and geographically, the better it fits the game formula; the more you go for Civilization-like planet Earth, the more you stray from history and into pure fantasy.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

What can I say,some people like the "total war" aspect,but some don't.I'm in the latter camp and contrary to the name of the game and how the series started with Shogun(after all Sengoku era is fitting for that) constant warfare is not that interesting and can fast become chore.All the mods I like are those making armies super costly to recruit so losing stack feels meaningful.Diplomacy in all games of the series is criticized for the impossibility to make peace or maintain alliances.Except in first Medieval where the campaign AI was capable of making decent decisions,accept reasonable peace offers and honor alliances.I have zero programming knowledge ,but I will bet that 2d map with easier pathing is the reason for that.
Yes short more focus or even story driven campaigns can be fun ,but the design must be focused on that.I love King Arthur games for that especially the first one ,only if they had the budget and the tech to polish the battles.But in Total War I feel people that liked more the campaign aspect always felt disappointed with expansions like Napoleon and Alexander,as oppose to Barbarian Invasions.

More on the side note.A lot of people are dreaming for EU3/4 diplomacy with Total War battles,but I'm not delusional.Maybe there will be some future studio pulling game like that ,but I reconciled with that not happening,as focusing on both aspects(campaign and battle)will not make for better overall game.Some people will find the battles chore ,some the campaign play trumping battles or vise versa.That why there is difference in the people that like more Paradox games or Total War.Maybe is strategy and tactics issue,can give more detailed analysis,but my english is not good enough for expressing my thoughts more eloquently.

 

[Silva]

I think merging EU4-like grand strategy with TW tactical detail would be a mistake. In fact, Sid Meier has a quote for that: "If you make a game, make ONE game, not a bunch of games meshed together" or something. You increase your risks exponentially the more different games you bundle together. (which is exactly what fucked up TW series by the way: when the strategic layer went from a simplistic justification for battles to a full-blown game by itself, things went downhill. but Im repeating myself at this point ).

 

[Lone Wolf]

In fact, Sid Meier has a quote for that: "If you make a game, make ONE game, not a bunch of games meshed together" or something

It's funny that one of the best games Sid Meier worked on in his early career (Sword of the Samurai) was, like, four separate games in one; tactical battle, hack'n'slash, dueling and clan management minigames comprised the gameplay.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

It's the "dream game syndrome"™ and if we lived in ideal world all games would had been like that.One feature from this game,that feature from that game and bam the super awesome dream game.But all that require masterful design work ,ambition,passion,vision and money,so wanting games to strive for that is always desired ,but I keep my expectation low and most of the time pray CA to not gut the features that are good from one game to next.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

The campaign map is shit you don't need to dream to expect something better instead.

 

[Ventidius]

So apparently, the older mods that allowed you to zoom out the campaign map camera are incompatible with the current version of the game. I guess I'm kinda getting used to this game's zoom range, but I'd still like to know if there are any mods that allow you to zoom out like you can in other TW games.

 

[Angnomynous Wasp Scholar]