JFSOCC

I read them, but not gladly. I read the books because often they provide obvious foreshadowing. I would like this fixed. I think a lot of the lore and interesting bonus content does not need to be advertised. Why can't a book just be a book, it's much more likely to pique my curiosity if the benefits of reading are not directly obvious, and if it does not spell everything out for you. You can support lore by deliberately omitting information too, because that adds to the mystery. take Morrowind's "Vampires of VVarvendel" it's got several editions, and the ones with key information are rare. You can stumble on one if you're lucky, or you can go looking for one, but there's no one to help you. (to my knowledge) I long for subtlety.

It looks like P:E -will- support modding. To what extent is yet unknown, but I cannot imagine that there won't be any tools released.

You forgot Consumables as ability modifiers...

The Journeyman Project, man that was a long long time ago. It's a shame the series died. I always felt this was a brother the the Myst seeries.

I think this may have to do with choice of faction, what you say I've also heard from others who haven't played carthage, and yet I hear them echoed by others who do play carthage.

A not suitable for work, chauvinistic, and over the top new Oculus Rift commercial. I'm sure this is going to make a lot of 15 year old kids begging their mothers for one... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUIqLScp4V0

I'm surprised no-one posted it yet.

holy ****, that's Brit Marling's new film! didn't know it was out already. and Skarsgard in there as well?! a must-see yeah I loved her acting in Another Earth, I dare say she is even better here.

I'm perpetually behind on this thread so I've skipped some pages. I've watched The East, now that's a good movie about corporate espionage. And what a lead, wow that's acting. Strong cast, excellent script, I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't watched it. Watch it if you can.

I gotta say, I got introduced to the series with the recent remake, I love every piece of it, I just wish for more (diverse) content. I heard the old game had missions defending your base(s!) that sounds really cool. also, I would have loved it if you could detach units to regions and have bases there, so you could respond to more things happening simultaneously (and then actually have things happen simultaneously, other than terror missions)

So, I've been an avid total war games player, when RTW2 was slated to come out, I didn't even have to buy it, my friends had already gotten it for me for my birthday. (awesome) Now, I started my playthrough with Carthage, Rome was immensely overpowered in the original game, so I don't like picking it as a faction. Luckily, unlike its predecessor, you don't first have to play Rome to unlock other factions. So far so good. The feeling quickly turns however when I get introduced to the campaign map. It is beautiful, it is also detailed. However, I cannot zoom out far enough to get a good overview of my (small) empire to be. That's OK, I'm not in a hurry, but I wonder why this arbitrary limit has been set. Rome 2 introduces some new features, some of which have been seen before in other total war games since the original Rome, some are new to the series. New are provinces, groupings of two to four settlements which allow you to select individual bonuses if you control all of them. It is an interesting addition, and an extra level of complexity. Now Total War games have always been fairly deep, but never has it been as complex as now. I don't mind micromanaging in a turn based game. It's one of the things I loved most about the series, caring more about the campaign map than the battles, although those are a core part of the game, also to be enjoyed. The added complexity does more harm than good, however; provinces suffer as a whole for what happens to a single settlement, and more often than not, expanding your empire has some very negative consequences for your provinces not yet fully controlled. cripplingly so, as I found myself fighting several different factions at once early on, I constantly had to struggle between managing public order in my settlements using my military as leverage, vs fighting wars. As the game arbitrarily limits the armies and fleets which you can have (early on you are limited to 6 armies and 4 fleets) you simply do not have enough to do all you need to do. It becomes especially frustrating when the numerous factions around you all prioritize you as their target, the moment you enter into inevitable war with them. I never declared war once, I simply didn't need to. Having provinces be split up amongst varying factions seems to be cause enough for war. I quickly found myself in a struggle putting out fires all over the place. Another new feature, one I've first encountered in Shogun II, is the technology trees. Your villages provide you with a small technology bonus, insignificant to speed up the research. A player has 6 possible paths to research in, each with about 10 technologies. 3 Empire management Technology paths, and 3 army management Technology paths. None of these paths are exclusive, but you will never have time to expand on all of them. Picking Carthage as my first (and second and third) playthrough, I was planning on making it a trading empire. The problems with public order, which seem to be endemic in the game, quickly forced me to focus on my cultural advancement, rather than trade, however. Even with the maximum public order bonuses from (cultural) technology, it remains a struggle to keep order and fight wars at the same time. The slow process by which order settles over time, and the speed by which it degrades if you don't focus on it hampers warfare on any scale. Doubly annoying when war cannot be avoided. Most of the time you are struggling to find a good balance between maintaining armies and expanding your settlements, I actually find this an engaging challenge, and I certainly don't claim to be the wisest in dealing with it. The new interface for settlement management and expansion, army management and agent management are a step backwards. Where previous Total War games would have all relevant information neatly together, everything in RTW2 has a separate window, accessible only through separate buttons on the bottom of your screen. Not insurmountable, but not helpful either. Army units now show so many stats that it is hard to keep track of their strengths and weaknesses, made even more opaque by the many different ways in which the combat abilities of your troops are affected by various modifiers. These modifiers, however, are my favourite new addition to Rome Total War, armies now can get permanent traits in the form of "army traditions" these bonuses, while slight, can make the difference in the effectiveness of your armies, and allow your various armies to be more distinct and memorable, coupled with this, every army now has a name, making them much more memorable. You could say it's the various armies which you can have, especially because of their arbitrary limit, which are the central players in your game. Combat itself has not changed much. But what has changed has changed for the worse, or stayed the same for the worse. Battles in the Total War series have become progressively shorter. I remember spending three hours on a battle in the first Medieval, twenty to forty minutes in Rome, battles were over fairly quickly in Medieval II, in Shogun they lasted about ten minutes, in Rome II it seems rare for a battle to last longer than ten minutes. For a game which focuses predominantly on delivering Epic Battles of History, this is a serious shortcoming. AI is still as dull as it has ever been, and is easily fooled and beaten as long as you've got half a brain, and aren't outnumbered too badly. Enemies which allow you to concentrate on their divided army, charge straight at your main line, and seem devoid of tricks don't engage me. Historically, most casualties in war fell during the rout, but as routing units lose their markers, it becomes frustratingly hard to attack them. I do not know if this was a deliberate change, but I'm not a fan. Especially since the "mop up" that you use your cavalry for hasn't improved, allowing your units to be in the middle of a routing unit, without managing to stop or harry them. Yes, running away has become dramatically easier. Coupled with troop replacements refilling damaged units in friendly territory, a partially destroyed force is quickly back up to its original strength. I actually appreciate this feature, but it gets frustrating when you keep beating an enemy without destroying him completely. Those who have played Total War games may recall that waiting for your turn can become a real drag as your empire grows, as every faction has their own turn, and each turn takes some time for the computer to process. I'm playing RTWII with a fairly powerful machine, but despite this, and despite putting the game on a SSD, waiting on the CPU players becomes a drag much much earlier in the game than previously. This is because every region in the game now has its own faction, and factions can emerge during (frequent) slave rebellions. From early on, I found that myself doing other things waiting for the computer to finish its many many turns. Adding insult to injury because my own turns are so dramatically limited. Diplomacy has gotten a few upgrades, now you can see your relationship statistics with your neighbours, and you do not need diplomats to parley with your fellow factions, but rather just select them through a menu. This would have been great if the diplomacy AI also would have gotten upgrades, but it is the same weird, oft-times foolish AI which denies joining your war against a faction, then announcing war against that faction the next turn without your aid. Or denies you trade agreements which would benefit themselves as well. Agents are much improved in effectiveness, although I preferred the levelling system of Shogun II, agents are now all multi-purpose, have different strengths and weaknesses, and have some overlap. They are expensive and you are (again arbitrarily) limited in how many you can employ. Early on you will not make much use of them as you can use your money better elsewhere. perhaps it is because I am novice at RTWII, but I found it a little unclear what to focus on upgrading them. There is an internal politics system, but I have yet to understand how to influence it, and what it does. It seems like an unfinished feature, yet another layer of pointless complexity. Finally, I have a pet peeve with the series. I have found the Total War series to be overly deterministic. For a series which touts "rewrite history" I've always found it more to be "relive history" whether it was that barbarians could never build Highways in the original RTW, that Factions would always have their units based on factions rather than region. (did you know that historically, Rome had pike units in North Africa? of course they did, it made sense for the region) or that you could not build settlements and determine your own borders strategically. Rome II does nothing to improve this, apart from predetermining province lay-out (in ways which do not always make sense geographically, and certainly not geopolitically) The game provides you with set objectives throughout the game. These objectives are invariably the same, and while they can be ignored, this comes at a serious disadvantage to you, because the rewards are significant, and going without is self-defeating. So the game rewards you to expand in certain directions and certain ways, and again, I find myself doing the games' bidding rather than vice versa. I was always hoping against hope that the total war series would innovate and take some risks, but the developers seemed to have been unwilling to give up anything previously established, still having many weak points on the campaign map, with movement points, crazy useless AI, hardcoded overpowered factions (Rome) the series is becoming ever more stagnant. after all that, I ask myself the question, in the three days I've almost religiously played the game, did I enjoy myself? did I find myself engaged? do I want more? The answer is a resounding no. No, I was always waiting for the game to become enjoyable, maybe once I fixed this, maybe after I managed to do that. It never pans out. It's not a terrible game, it's a game you can learn to love. But the lack of serious innovation, the focus on complexity over depth, and graphics over gameplay force me to make a negative judgement. Hardcore fans may forgive the game its flaws, there is still the old and well known game structure they may be familiar with, and even the bad UI and pointless complexity can be learnt to be dealt with, however, for anyone else I suggest you give this game a pass. PS: I've not mentioned some of the bugs that come with the game, Total War games have bugs on release as a matter of course, but most of the time they get fixed over time, so I felt it best to leave it out of my judgement. There were some, none that I encountered were seriously game breaking, although having a 2GB video card and 8GB memory and seeing frame rate issues and game speed issues pop up during combat is hardly fun.

Get rid of your family, you don't need them.

I just hope there will be choices in upgrades. IE you could dig out that old well, or you could divert a nearby stream so you'd have flowing water. You could build that defensivee tower there, or it could be an observatory, or, a meditation chamber, etc etc.

I like your new avatar okkoko, but could you rephrase this so I actually understand what you are saying?

I really disliked most of the CNPCs, I really disliked being forced to go find Imoen, I really disliked the style of dialogue, and I really disliked being flooded with a million quests by every shmoe on the streets of Athkatla. Basically, there wasn't a whole lot I did like about it. where's Helm when you need him? yeah I recall reading that and discussing it. I think the quest staggering topic covered it quite extensively.

Love the update, one question though those upgrades, are the the same for everyone, or can you personalise your stronghold a little by branching upgrades?

If it's engaging, I'll want to do it and it will be worth the time and effort.

My favourite thing about Baldurs Gate II was the sheer density of quest content. There was just a ton of stuff to do. After leaving Athkatla my interest slowly diminished.

I think this is polish, and I hope a significant amount of energy is put into it.

I had seen those before. the hat seems to have functioned as a calendar, predicting moon phases and the like. An early example of astrology/astronomy. and 25 wikipedia tabs later, I'm no closer to encompassing the wonder that is neolithic Europe.

Ethical You consider yourself to be an Ethical person, and feel the need to justify your actions to yourself or others. On the one hand your constant doubt inhibits action, on the other hand you are considered to be an honourable person by most who have met you.

I can see the anger in the description, lol

I dunno, but I think I'm going to make a content mod set in another place: a fusion between Arabic and Persian culture for one part, and Indian(the one in Asia) and Inca. And a generous dose of fantasy.

like a magic eight ball? Nah man, I must deal with it and make my own decisions, decided to finish a book, and I did today. one that had been bugging me for weeks, if not months.