Rome 2, Total War. Has it been fixed?

[Realitycrash]

I play Very Hard, as I always do, because the AI sort of demands it. I have played as Rome, Egypt, Carthage and Athens. I expected it to be a brutal gang-rape and semi-save scumming like Shogun 2 was, when the AI spawned massive armies after turn six and every battle had to be fought on Manual, as Auto-Resolve would get you crushed.
Well, sorry, but that didn't happen. The game is laughably easy compared to Shogun 2. In Shogun, no matter which faction you chose, you get CRUSHED unelss you play aggressive yet manage your allies well (and ally frequently) to keep them off your back. In Rome 2, the AI..Well, like stated, ignores you, more or less. Sure, they can build massive armies for free, but they do nothing with them. They sit with 80 units of basic infantry/slingers and guard their tiny little village, content with doing nothing at all.

The AI is fucking passive, I'll give you that. I've had like 2 factions declare war on me in my entire Rome campaign.

While I'd rather they were more aggressive, it isn't a game breaker for me. As I said, factions in my campaings did a rather good job of getting allied with others, and since you're obviously going to want to expand your empire, it never took me too long to get into a challenging war.

And, though this might only be a problem with the Roman faction, by turn 40, I was making 10.000 every turn and had nothing to spend it on. By turn 70 I had 200.000 in the bank and could still rarely bother to spend anything, as you can only have so many armies at the same time.

Same here, but I'm not going to mention this as a criticism of Rome 2 because I've pulled this off in every Total War game except for Shogun 2. I have Medieval 2 campaign where I'm in the mid game making 20.000 florins (profit) per turn.

If a player goes through the trouble of properly upgrading towns while keeping an eye on public order and garrissons he should be rich later on. That's the point.

Shogun 2 is a challenge. Rome 2, so far, while a nice game with new ideas, isn't. And I LOATH what they have done to Shogun 2's diplomacy. It isn't Epic Fail. It isn't "Worst. Game. EVAR!". It's just not as interesting as Shogun 2 in terms of hanging-on-by-a-thread-at-the-egde-of-your-seat-challenge. It's not even regular challenge.

Maybe you're not thinking big enough. Shogun 2 was boring for me. I steamrolled Japan in every campaign I played with the exception of the first. Not once was I stretched out or outnumbered despite taking little to no care in choosing my enemies and allies. Rome 2 is different, if only because I have more wars and factions to worry about, not one linear strip of land that's 5 provinces thick at the thickest part.

You always steamroll Japan in the late-game. But it's the Early-Early-Mid that makes the game interesting. And the lack of money to just build everyone at once, which is part of the challenge.
Rome 2 is bigger, and I applaud it for that, I truly do. And I applaud it for having so many unique units. But the diplomacy is ruined, and I so far really haven't found any challenge worth mentioning. Also, the barbarian early units are god-awful boring. But I'm going to give it another go. Maybe play as Macedon again and see if I can be arsed to give a shit..

 

[Realitycrash]

I get my most fun when raiding an enemy territory though, I would put two armies into their lands, watch them build briefly and then put both of my armies on raid mode just outside their city. Watching their public order destroy itself and their defending armies fall apart due to lack of money is hilarious. This makes me wonder on the claim that AI can build units for free, as I've noticed evidence that not only can an enemy army not recruit troops when there is no money in the city, existing armies also desert if there is no money in the AI city, evidence of which I've tested by repeatedly sacking an enemy city.



I'm also playing on Easy, I wonder what it would be like on hard?

Uh, yeah. One of the biggest and most notable differences between difficulty-levels is that on Hard/Very Hard the AI doesn't need to pay full price to recruit, or even bother with upkeep. It's not at all uncommon to see a tribe holding just one pointless, impoverished village, but guarding it with three full armystacks, who's upkeep the AI should have no way of paying based on its buildings.

 

[Stephen St.]

I wonder if the "bad AI" is actually a conscious design choice to make the game look hard ("look, I am outnumbered three to one") but still easy to beat ("I must be a military genius"). Either that, or there is just no way to make a decent AI on a large scale map with current technology.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Can anyone help me out here? Or should I just avoid buying it?

It's still baking.

It's starting to smell nice, but it's not quite ready to eat yet.

 

[kingthrall]

Can anyone help me out here? Or should I just avoid buying it?

It's still baking.

It's starting to smell nice, but it's not quite ready to eat yet.

actually smells kind of burnt. Feels like they forgot they actually had to take it out and look after their games.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

actually smells kind of burnt. Feels like they forgot they actually had to take it out and look after their games.

Mm. I think there's a functional core there with some nice features. The game mostly suffers from missing elements (family tree/lineages, seasons, etc) and half-finished elements (combat and diplomatic AI, bugs). It feels like a game that could've been excellent given another 6-12 months of development, as opposed to a game that went wildly wrong at the conceptual stage and is now irredeemable barring a total reconstruction from the ground up.

I think an eventual combination of mods and patches will leave it in pretty good shape. Your mileage may vary, of course. I know you were a big fan of Empire, so I don't know what the series has lost in transition from Empire to Rome II. I hated Shogun 2, so all departures from it are gravy for me.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

I'm running beta patch 3 and my only real complaint is that the campaign AI is in no way aggressive. I've had civil wars I can handle in peace because no one will attack me for some awful reason. Diplomacy isn't as deep as it could be and there are a lot of factions I'd like to play, like the Thracians or the Scythians.

I'm still enjoying it, personally. The battles are as fun as ever and, on hard, the AI actually can pose a threat sometimes, and not due to bullshit boosted morale, but to actually being better. Oh, and don't let pikemen's mediocre stats fool you, charge them from the front and you lose half a unit before they lose a man.

 

[Gennadios]

The hybrid naval/land battles and the capital city wall assaults are still a piping hot mess. Ships, units, and siege engines still tend to get stuck in geometry and can't be attacked, if that happens battles can only be resolved by running the timer down.

Battle speed was dropped a bit so it has a slower, more TW feel to it, but units still can't maintain formations worth shit so you just end up with a giant multicolored mosh pits with flags sticking out.

Um, they've fixed most of the units not following orders... you'll actually have units run and charge when you ask them to now...

Overall, the battles still aren't worth fighting and the World Map gameplay is boring as hell because the map AI isn't aggressive. My verdict is a pass.