What do you wish to see in Rome 2: Total War

[Fimbulvetr3822]

My big 3 are

1: No unit caps, seriously. There is nothing more frustrating than spending 150 turns building and researching all the things you needs for your ultimate units, only to realize you can only have 1.

2: More aggressive campaign AI, A seige attack is nice, but it gets dull when all you ever do is siege attacks because no army of more than 2 unit cards is ever outside cities. They largely seemed to fix this in Empire/Napoleon but it came back in shogun

3: Greater movement distance, especially from artillery/siege weapons. again, this was something that Empire and Napoleon got right, so just do that.

Slightly off topic: What was everyone's problem with Empire? I got it on launch day and must have put well over 1000 hours into it over the last 3 1/2 years and in all that time it has crashed once, and that was when I first started playing around with mods and managed to break everything (good times). the only issue i ever had was with the fixed size recruitment pane that limited the size of any Unit mods (I'm looking at you Swiss Halberdier)and that was hardly game breaking.

 

[Kargathia]

Snip

I hope it's going to be more streamlined and cinematic as to please to a wider audience. I hope they will manage to integrate a first person mechanic, allowing to play as a first person archer or something like that. I hope the maps will be smaller and a fewer units, making it really more streamlined and easier to play.

you know, thats just mount and blade in a nutshell, with some of the best melee combat in a game. Either that, or that was sarcasm around TOTAL WAR.

What if, instead of Rome, they place it in the Middle-East. And put it in Modern times, where you play as Americans trying to fight Middle-Eastern terrorists. At a later time they could sell us some extra missions in the form of DLC, where you also fight Russians. I hope they take almost all the colours out, because I want it to be brown and gritty as to increase realism and make it more immersive, you know ?. Seeing as it is in modern times, how about making the armies smaller, and making it squad based.

Look, even trolling requires a semblance of sublety to be done well. Just sayin'.

 

[Lord Kloo]

Things I would like to see:

An AI that can conduct naval invasions, it happened somewhat in Rome but in later games it seems the AI can use navies and armies but separately..

In seige battles and urban fights, make the path-finding somewhat decent, it was good in Shogun, but the castles were basically fields in that anyway.. I don't want my troops to have to run onto a road, spin around and rearrange themselves before climbing onto a wall, all whilst in-front of a tower.. grrr

I do not want to see a return to stupidly massive siege equipment that fires ballistics out of its top levels, honestly, if you were going to try and assault a wall that is at least 20 stories high then use ladders and ropes, not huge ass siege towers

Also, let me attack the Senate when I want to, I don't give a shit what the 20000 odd people of Rome think of me, it doesn't matter to me, when I take Rome I will exterminate it like every other settlement, people problems solved..

And naval battles with ramming, boarding and lots of fire arrows will be much appreciated, as will being able to use Archimedes 'claws' in Port Siege Battles, if they implement them from Shogun 2

 

[A_Parked_Car]

[quote="Fimbulvetr3822" post="9.380629.14968684"
Slightly off topic: What was everyone's problem with Empire? I got it on launch day and must have put well over 1000 hours into it over the last 3 1/2 years and in all that time it has crashed once, and that was when I first started playing around with mods and managed to break everything (good times). the only issue i ever had was with the fixed size recruitment pane that limited the size of any Unit mods (I'm looking at you Swiss Halberdier)and that was hardly game breaking.[/quote]

If you have played Empire since launch and only crashed once and have not run into a serious, game-breaking bug then you are very, very, VERY lucky. I have also owned Empire from launch and have put 644 hours into it (which is my most played game). It used to crash like crazy until after six patches and now it only crashes maybe once an hour instead of once every 10-20 minutes. That isn't even talking about how broken the AI was, which wasn't such a huge problem for me since I largely learned to play Total War with Empire, so I wasn't very good anyway. To this day I can't finish a campaign because the save file keeps corrupting at a seemingly random point during the game. It could be 10 turns in and it could be 85, but it always happens. All those problems still don't make me hate the game. It is still amazing, which is why I have sunk so many hours into it.

The announcement of Rome II was unsurprising, but still cool. I never held the fascination with Rome that many people seem to. I suppose it was because I bought it right before Empire and I found the interface and such to be overly clunky when compared to latter Total Wars. I really want to see land and sea forces being combined in a single battle, which according to interviews, is actually going to happen in certain cases. =D
My biggest request is that they don't dumb it down for "broader appeal." I'm fine if they streamline a bit, but once they start pulling out strategic and tactical elements I will get highly annoyed. Also, they better have a whole lot more unit variety.

 

[RobotDinosaur]

Stability. I'm a long time TW fan who tried Shogun 2 and couldn't get it to run for more than a half hour or so without crashing. If they do nothing else, fix that.
Honestly not sure what else I could demand that wasn't in Rome 1. That was when they switched from the old style map (where everything was just divided into Risk-style provinces and each turn you could move to an adjacent province, as seen in Shogun 1 and Medieval 1) to the new, full 3-D. And they added missions, which were cool. Maybe add research like they used in Empire/Shogun 2? It's a system that adds complexity without being needlessly complex itself. And the AI could always stand to improve, both in and out of battles, but I usually don't complain much about that because deep down inside I like my empire to be an unstoppable conquering machine. I can scarcely find the time for a full TW campaign these days, I don't want to spend 30 hours on a save file just to have it be conquered by a computer.

 

[Shilefin]

1. Keep archers as lethal or make them even more lethal then they were in Shogun 2.
2. Expand political options. Make personal unions and et cetera possible.
3. Return to the game with much more character building. More traits and retinue, which I have seen such a small amount of in Empire Through Shogun 2 in comparison to say Medieval II.
4. More units variety. I sort of understand why there was so little unit variety in Shogun 2, since even though Japan was divided it was still Japan. You don't have this problem here, so please, give us something more then just 'Peasant attacking unit', 'Standard attacking unit' and 'Advanced attacking unit'.
5. Improve even more on the hand-to-hand combat between troops, though it is very good as of now.
6. Make the map bigger, with more cities, regions.
7. Make the siegies actually sieges. I have no clue why you resorted to making us attack some random forts away from the cities that we were technically attacking.
8. Keep the Naval Battles, try to work something out for the time period.
9. I'd rather have the game be less-cutting edge graphically to enable to us to have bigger more awesomer battles.

 

[Guy from the 80's]

If its any way like Shogun2 or empires....in any way then I wont play it. Come to think of it, considering how shitty CA acts towards their fan base I wont buy it until it on Steam weekend madness.

And if it cant be modded as well as MTW2 was, there is simply no point as vanilla CA games are horrible.

edit : "we promise to fix the bugs...here purchase some DLC"

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Not so much emphasis on building and tech trees. I don't want to have to play all my major early battles with only "tier 1" units because I didn't waste 50 years researching and building shit. This is a historical battle game so why not give me access to the historical units.

Challenge from AI being not so much "AI is a cheap dick" but large scale battles that need you to pay attention and make the right moves.

Heavy cav and elephants really need to feel like they are crashing into infantry like a truck and causing mayhem.

Light units need to be able to do hit and run attacks without sticking like glue to the enemy.

Archers other range units need to cover an area in arrows and suppress them, not be snipers.

I really hope they don't go too populist and add too much shit like blood and gore effects on screen or direct control of units aiming. I want a strategy game.

I hope they keep the combat speed from Shogun 2.

And small unit size battles are bad, they should not be an option in MP, at least not to force people into playing small unit size on matchmaking.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

Wait, this is an actual thing!?!?!



Fucking YES! I have been waiting for this day since I started playing the original!

I love the Roman time setting, but I couldn't get over the clunky mechanics of it. (Why do I have to garrison a whole army in a city just to replenish its numbers)

Nut with all the new features they have added to other games since then, I can see this being the best thing since sliced panem!

But what I want is the recruiting of generals (no waiting for them to spawn) and the recruiting of governors to manage cities, which won't take up slots in the army grid but will behave like a character.

Family members will still be powerful, though and will play a major part in politics. I by no means want Crusader Kings levels of complexity but being able to win over Rome and other factions without attacking seems interesting.

EDIT: Just saw the trailer. I didn't know there were Roman Geisha assassins. Anyway, it looks like the emphasis is going to be on capturing Rome and have much more focus on politics than the last games.

 

[sinterklaas]

I absolutely LOVED Rome. This is literally on my "looking forward to things in life list", which brings the total number of things on it to five.

Not so much emphasis on building and tech trees.

I want lots of emphasis on tech trees and developing regions.

 

[The Funslinger]

(that is, until they do Warhammer: Total War, which would be FREAKING AWESOME!!!).

This [http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?s=4296c318ee077b01160ccfd4f6939fe6&t=533167] is as close as it gets for now.

Yeah, but it shares the problem of many such total conversion mods - for some reason they are punishingly difficult. I hate it when someone make a cool huge mod, but then puts in cheap bullshit to make it harder. I remember some mods that overhauled Medieval 2 mechanics in some awesome ways... but they also had the AI spawn fullstacked armies all the time. And while I understand that highly experienced players might enjoy the challenge, to me it was just boring and I wanted to enjoy the mod without the bullshit. Same thing with Europa Barbarorum. Almost every faction starts deep in debt with hardly any units if controlled by the player, but has fullstacked armies and tons of cash if controlled by the AI. Kills all the fun for me...

If you like A Game of Thrones, try Westeros: Total War for Medieval 2. No cheap bullshit there.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

I absolutely LOVED Rome. This is literally on my "looking forward to things in life list", which brings the total number of things on it to five.

Not so much emphasis on building and tech trees.

I want lots of emphasis on tech trees and developing regions.

I imagine you will get what you want although it is often quite stupid when it comes to building balanced and believable armies.

 

[Comando96]

Multiple campaign types. ie Julii, Brutii, Scipii etc, or Just Rome vs the World.

Large choices which allow you, your Faction leader to choose who he supports, both formally and informally, which is basically a tool for the extension of choosing your Government type.

The Roman Units should be weaker but more organised than the enemy. This means that an enemy army can actually defeat Roman units by overpowering them. The Romans win by being Romans and using order and teamwork to win rather than brute force, however are then subsequently merciless in victory. On the other hand the Barbarians can capture enemy units by default and only certain generals traits change this. Enemies can then be ransomed, released or offered as a sacrifice to the gods(which is better PR than executed).

I'd also like to see an Empire type village to settlement structure, except you found colonies. This requires money, and population, which can be increased with an influx of slaves to any of your captured settlements. The Capital cities are made up of the culture of the surrounding settlements. If you have enough money and people you can then found a colony of your own culture, therefore quickly converting a province of another nation to your culture, which improves happiness as well as the obvious benefits of more building spots and a better economy. Pre-existing settlements can be changed to the controllers culture slowly over time, but at a faster rate if the Capital is a high concentration of the new controllers culture.
This means that if there was a rebellion then the rebelling nation would be a pesudo-Roman nation if the province was 100% Roman Therefore Carthage wouldn't reform but an Ethnic-African Culture Roman nation would form. If it was 50% Roman 50% "native" then the rebellion would be Native if the unhappiness was small. If the unhappiness was large then... allow for 2 rebellions, both full-sized, they are both rebelling against their masters, but both are of different cultures and therefore these rebel armies will attack each other.
Finally I think there should be a key link between cultures and replenishment rates, counteracted with roads and ports. Therefore an occupying army can replenish in a far away province if they have a good supply network that can supply their army abroad with a suplus at home (after a technology) then an army in a severely hostile territory could be replenished if there was the necessary infrastructure. Also, in this scenario an army should replenish faster at a port.

Anything else?
Yeah. There should be different classifications of technology. For example improvements to armour and weapons should be appropriate to "milestones". Different nations reaching the other side of the map should have different uniforms and equipment once experienced the environment. A small but famous example is the enforced steel ring on the top of the Legionnaires helmet which was employed against the Dacians You wouldn't have this at the beginning and only after fighting a battle.
So what you would have main tech trees which go up over time, but then school type buildings which slowly affect the rate of the mainstream techs but these centres can research smaller improvements, thereby adding 2 levels of tech You can research these small techs without schools but its passive over time, while these schools specifically target them, therefore you can choose what you want depending on your needs.

Also finally protectorates work properly... I mean fuck sake they really do need to work don't they? Never before have they worked. A protectorate should be an extension of your Empire being ruled by someone else. Nations should submit rather than being destroyed unless fanatics. Personally I would love to see a difference in diplomacy depending on who the leader is. For example a leader who is weak, young and frankly should not have got the throne will act like so in diplomacy, therefore is more likely to submit to a protectorate offer. Also if someone signed a protectorate offer, their life expectancy shortens if the next in line is a better leader and ambitious... and can afford an assassin.

Yeah... this... and moar elephants.
Also I like the idea of sea to land, landing battles. That shit would be cool.

 

[Supertegwyn]

Dammit ninja'ed me.

-A free campaign mode a.k.a. no objectives whatsoever. Sometimes I just want to conquer the world at my own pace.
-More troop variety
-Better menus
-Lots of different factions (as long as they aren't copy-pastes)
-More RPG elements
-More political options

Other stuff that I can't think of.

 

[KiKiweaky]

Improved battle AI will be a big one, they got it pretty good with Shogun the way your troops occupy the wall instead of just stand on it but I wonder how they are going to make it work with the big walled Roman cities.

Campaign AI that actually works and doesnt make dumb decisions.

Naval battles like shogun 2 are pretty much guaranteed I'd say why would they put it in and then just take it out... Not looking forward to fighting the byzantine fireships hehe.

Impact from cavalry charges similar to medieval, I know they warent knights but still a unit horsemen or cataphracts ploughing into your lines should be devastating.

I'd prefer if they brought back to original way of retraining units from rome total war, making 9 units retrainable in one turn would be pretty sweet <3 and not having to wait around for 'replenishment'

 

[RustlessPotato]

Le mighty snip

Please do not take offense. I wasn't even attempting to be trolling. I was just succeeding in acting stupid .

 

[Kargathia]

And small unit size battles are bad, they should not be an option in MP, at least not to force people into playing small unit size on matchmaking.

Amen to that. I can understand not everyone running a high-end gaming rig, but being forced to fight on small unit size is beyond aggravating - and that's before I start considering that I do, in fact, have a computer capable of flawlessly running a 4v4 on ultra.

 

[TheCommanders]

4. Balance the spartan unit.
Enough said.

No, the Spartan Hoplites unit was fine. The Urban Cohort, on the other hand, was broken like fuck.

The Urban Cohorts were powerful, no argument there, but when I could win siege battles against whole armies by putting two spartan units in front of the gate, and 1-2 archer units behind them, they are undeniably broken. Hilarious, but broken.

COMPLETELY UNRELATED SIDE NOTE:
The capture just gave me a list of things, only one of which contained numbers, and asked me to pick out which one is math. Anyone who fails this test should be burnt at the stake for the capital crime that is terminal stupidity.
(in case you're curious, the other things were: tall building, bunny rabbit, chocolate pudding, loud music, and coffee)

 

[adeadlysinner]

Improve the AI they were either suicidal or depraved. In Empire they would attack a fort with artillery and cavalry, but never actually attack except bring down the walls. Forcing me to wait till time expired.
Make diplomacy a actual part of the game rather then a pesky thing that makes ridiculous demands and declares a suicidal war.
Make the auto-resolve a little more sensible. If the enemy has a beaten down army and I have a 10 to 1 superiority do not kill a quarter of my army.
And finally Please add some dinosaurs!!!!!!

 

[SckizoBoy]

The Urban Cohorts were powerful, no argument there, but when I could win siege battles against whole armies by putting two spartan units in front of the gate, and 1-2 archer units behind them, they are undeniably broken. Hilarious, but broken.

To be fair to the Spartan Hoplites, you could replicate the same trick with the same amount of Armoured Hoplites (on a cost basis as opposed to man to man basis) or better yet, SS pikemen.

The Spartans have a great defense rating and are great in close combat, but what makes the Urban Cohort (which I contend to be the funniest inadvertent anachronism, since they were fireman in reality) crazy as fuck is their pila attack. They make a single missile attack on a unit of Spartan Hoplites and then charge, the Spartans be fuk'd. They compensate for the single hitpoint by having a better defense & attack rating as well as a wipe-the-floor missile attack. The only way to make the Spartans naturally 'hard' is to recruit them with the Nike kicker (which you get in Sparta anyway, but the point still stands).

1: No unit caps, seriously. There is nothing more frustrating than spending 150 turns building and researching all the things you needs for your ultimate units, only to realize you can only have 1.

I actually agree with the unit cap principle, but N:TW did it best. Gave you a broad range of available elite units once the best buildings had been completed. Or, there was a higher unit cap for Guards/special artillery.

So yes, keep the cap for ***** units, but make it sensible (like 4 Praetorian Cohort, 2 Sacred Band, 2 Hetairoi etc.)

1. Keep archers as lethal or make them even more lethal then they were in Shogun 2.

Nah, that's a terrible idea... everyone would just end up spamming archers with a couple units of cavalry. Battles would be boring as hell and the whole point of shield bashing would be lost. Have the archers as effective as they were in RTR, against armoured units, they suck except when you shoot them from behind.

OT: WE GET MARINES?!

Awesome...(!)