My Rome: Total War 2 review

[JFSOCC]

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.

Edited September 6, 2013 by JFSOCC

[Osvir]

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)

First impression:

Real-Time w/ 2 (Version 2? Too?)

 

 

Now to read. Sorry xD

[Lexx]

I don't mind the shorter battles. In fact, after just a few hours I am only using auto resolve most of the time anyway.

 

The new province system is good. It greatly reduces the town micro-management. The political (internal faction) system... I am not really using it at all. Every 10 or 15 turns I remember that it existed and check the menu, but even then I am pretty much not doing anything with it.

 

My impression so far: I like it. Not sure yet if I like it more than Rome 1, but it is on a good way, simply because of the better interface. Also I like the perk system for armies and all this stuff.

[alanschu]

Note, hit TAB (default) to zoom the map way out to a strategic view.

[Bos_hybrid]

I'm really enjoying it.

 

My biggest complaints so far, is the campaign map slowdown. And of course as always the AI.
 

The new province system is good. It greatly reduces the town micro-management.

 

I agree, it's well done.

[Monte Carlo]

I'm too busy to sit down and explore it properly. It would be like drinking a bottle of vintage wine too quickly. TBH it looks quite daunting, but I love Mark Strong's VO in the prologue.

[Walsingham]

Superb review. You have saved me both time and money. I am 100% sure I would react as you did.

[Leferd]

Observations:

 

- no guard mode

- it took me about 15 turns to get Legionaries - and convert all my hastati

- brokering trade agreements is rough

- instant ferry crossings

- no family tree

- battles take six minutes

 

Despite the above, I'm really liking the game. I like the Legion (legacy) system. Army recruitment is less frustrating and more intuitive.

[Hurlshort]

Wait, no family tree?  What the heck!  That's like my favorite part of the game.

[Nonek]

Based on your review and the fact i've not really liked a Total War since Viking Invasion, I think i'll pass, much appreciated JFSOCC.

[Lord of Lost Socks]

Few points I disagree with in your review:

 

- The AI is way dumber than before. Dumb as bricks.

- I've never felt the need to have more than 3 armies, because the Campaign AI is dumb as bricks. Played two games that combined are in total ~25 hours and no one has declared war on me. First on medium, then very hard. Now kinda bored with the game. The CAI has so far been incapable of amassing any significant army to stop me. Only once did that manage that, and the Battle AI effectively kamikazed the army against my troops to no effect.

- Have not really had issues with public order or felt the need to capture an entire province. In fact, the entire feature seems a bit pointless and not fleshed out.

- Provinces have no made it easier to manage cities either in my opinion. It worked perfectly well in Shogun 2. However this could be a problem with the UI (coming back to this later)

- Indeed, the amount of different unit stats in recent titles are a bit needless. Pre-Shogun and this "wiki" of theirs it was easy to see weaknesses and strengths of a unit, because there weren't too many variables, and the info wasn't picked up from the web-based wiki.

- Armies are an excellent concept, and I love them, but purely for roleplay purposes. Because the AI is dumb as bricks and due to the way I play, most armies get the same perks every time, because it compliments my playstyle.

 

Few points I agree with:

 

- Turn times long.

- AI is indeed still dumb.

- Battles are WAY too fast. I have yet to see their much touted facial expressions because the game always ends in a huge melee blob fight that over in 4 minutes.

 

Additions:

 

- The UI is a clunky mess at times.

- The unit cards that could be really nice clash with the otherwise oddly modern look of the UI creating an in my opinion aesthetically horrible look.

- The UI is really big and takes up a ton of screen space for no reason. This game is supposed to be enjoyed visually watching large battles clash, but it's hard when half the screen is covered in trash. See below for comparisons.

- Have not bothered creating a navy. If I see enemy ships, I just grab one of my landarmies and transform them in to a full fledged fleet.

- Performance issues, though in my case not that many.

- Navy battles are a huge mess. The mechanics break down unless it's ideal circumstances.

- Lots and lots of random bugs and glitches.

 

 

Who designed this UI? Pictures are from Rome and Shogun, displaying the same info.

Campaign map:

Rome

Shogun

Battle:

Rome

Shogun

 

Rome's UI is so cluttered. Why is that when I have 20 units the unit cards are in two rows? One row is apparently 16 unit cards, leave the second row with 4 and the just clutter. This in addition with clouds hovering all over the place just obstructs me my view way too much.

Shogun II's UI is much smaller and only shows what is needed. And even shows more, like troop numbers. It is also aesthetically much more thought out and actually looks good. Anyone with half a sense knows that the more space you have in the middle of the screen the better. This is the reason why Shogun's UI excels over Rome's. The UI doesn't have a huge blocky thing in the midbottom of the screen, but keeps it as unobtrusive as possible. And the event screen only takes up as much of the screen as it has to, while Rome's event message screen is huge. And ugly.

 

 

Overall, I'd say this game is a 6/10 at the moment. I've tried to enjoy it, but all the bugbears just amount to a frustrating experience. If they fix the bugs/performance issues, the game is a 7/10. If they also fix the Battle AI, it's a 8/10. If they also fix the campaign AI it's a 9/10. And for the final polish they could make an appealing UI and it'd be a 10/10.

 

I fully expect them to fix most of the bugs and performance issues, but I fear the AI will not even reach the status of patched Empire:TW.

 

That said, look at my tiny greek democracy.

 

Damn you cloud!

Edited September 7, 2013 by Lord of Lost Socks

[Walsingham]

I don't know about you chaps, but I felt that the AI in the series has got consistently more mental as time has gone by. Yet I refuse to believe that there aren't student projects which coudl do a better job than the AI I've seen.

 

Are they rehashing the original AI approach, rather than inventing from scratch? Are they inventing from scratch each time, and that's why it's not working?

 

It seems to me that given the 'battle space' is nearly identical, and that units differ only in values such as range and movement speed, that combat AI at least should be steadily improving. For god's sake, surely by now they could simply have codified a few classic player fighting styles.

[Rosbjerg]

Yeah it's really wierd.. I think the campaign AI got pretty good in Shogun II compared the other titles, but I haven't played Rome enough to see if it's better. I do think the limitations on armies were meant for the AI (to prevent it from splitting armies up in to a gajillion small armies) and not the player and just covered up as a Legion mechanism. I like it though.. Same with the garrison units, which also works..

 

So I guess their AI all in all is just bad and they are trying to help it with limitations.

[JFSOCC]

Few points I disagree with in your review:

- I've never felt the need to have more than 3 armies, because the Campaign AI is dumb as bricks. Played two games that combined are in total ~25 hours and no one has declared war on me. First on medium, then very hard. Now kinda bored with the game. The CAI has so far been incapable of amassing any significant army to stop me. Only once did that manage that, and the Battle AI effectively kamikazed the army against my troops to no effect.

 

- Have not really had issues with public order or felt the need to capture an entire province. In fact, the entire feature seems a bit pointless and not fleshed out.

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.

[Walsingham]

 

Few points I disagree with in your review:

- I've never felt the need to have more than 3 armies, because the Campaign AI is dumb as bricks. Played two games that combined are in total ~25 hours and no one has declared war on me. First on medium, then very hard. Now kinda bored with the game. The CAI has so far been incapable of amassing any significant army to stop me. Only once did that manage that, and the Battle AI effectively kamikazed the army against my troops to no effect.

 

- Have not really had issues with public order or felt the need to capture an entire province. In fact, the entire feature seems a bit pointless and not fleshed out.

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.

 

 

Presumably because unlike the Romans, Carthage has a safe flank?

[Lexx]

The starting position indeed has a huge influence. Obviously being surrounded by many potential enemies makes the game a lot harder, at least in the beginning.

 

I slowly started to value the trade agreement a little more. Right now I have trade agreements with around 3/4 of all my known factions, which brings me about 9000 dinarii per turn. If I would higher my taxes to the maximum, I would make around 25k in a turn. Though, that's not a good idea, as my own towns would jump on me then. :> Still, as long as I only research and don't do much war, I shovel money like a mad men.

 

What makes me wonder, though, is that the ai sometimes cancles trade agreements for (to me) no aparent reason. I mean, wouldn't this be the last thing you'd cancle? Like, a second before you invade the country?

 

My tactic right now is to send the civic dudebros into enemy territory, where they spread latin culture until the enemy cities fall from a rebellion. Then I move my legions into the city and take it. Gives me a new town and the former faction doesn't notice it as a attack. :> It takes a while, of course....

Edited September 8, 2013 by Lexx

[Tigranes]

I'm determined not to waste my money, and more importantly, my time on this one. Everything I'm hearing echoes the reservations that are natural for anyone who's been buying their games for a decade - they are just incapable of fixing the basic problems and tack on more crap each time (with the exception of Shogun 2). The difference is that this time even the 'new shiny stuff' isn't really that appealing. Provinces? Great, but we all knew that the campaign AI, which has never ever ever worked very well in any nonmodded 3D CA game, will make it all rather pointless. Naval battles? Yeah, huge ships, boarding, all that will work so well when the AI doesn't even know how to man a set of stone walls or go up and down some stairs. 

 

EB2, where are you...

[Bendu]

So disappointed. Especially after Shogun 2. I thought I would get this:

 

 

Instead I got that:

 

 

[Calax]

I've been having fun with it. In terms of the vanilla game it's frustrating having to balance squalor and food. Some people even built their entire economy's on keeping cities revolting as much as possible and enslaving those that survive the Legion smashing the rebellions to pieces. However, they tuned those two pieces so tightly that the AI can't figure it out.

 

On Steam Der has been doing a wee bit o' complainin that the AI was only sending basic basic units at him... And he's Rome running around with heavily armored preatorians.  Well it turns out this entire thing is because the AI doesn't have the control necessary to keep a big empire running (which is why nobody ever starts getting a big enough empire to challenge the player).

 

I picked up a Mod that's originally from Total War Center. Cuts down on squalor and everything for the AI and makes things faster because it eliminates the stupid clouds etc that MURDER your performance in game (who'd a thought).

 

More info later, at work and have to go.

[Lord of Lost Socks]

Three steps to winning the AI on normal in Rome II as Rome.

 

Step 1: Recruit 19 Hastati(in pic) or better to counter the standard AI army. Keep in mind that you can get Principes in like 5 turns, and Legionnaries in 10.

 

Heh, just kidding, the AI never fields an army that's this good.

 

Step 2: Anyway, if they theoretically would do that, counter their tactics by attacking them.

 

Like, so.

 

Step 3: Win!

 

Yay!

 

Keep in mind that ANY variation to this small tutorial will improve the results.

 

Have fun playing, guys! I hope this helps.

[Calax]

Thinking about it I think that our loving designers broke a few of their systems. I've only gotten two sets of the storyline decisions that they hyped in the game. And that was on my first day playing. Since then it's just been the game looking at me like "So... you wanna go to war yet?"

 

RPS did a rundown on the game where they discussed the fact that there seems to be an overriding reason in most games to do something. In the early ones the AI was "smart" enough to be aggressive, but since then AI hasn't been updated that much to involve newer bits of the game. The guys at RPS said that they think that you need to have a Civil war driving the game. Which I personally don't think is true. Instead I think it's that you need to have somebody on your back saying "Dude! We need to beat these two other guys but they're bigger than us!" Going back to the Original Rome, you were always fighting and playing knowing that at some point the other two roman kingdoms were going to turn on you because you were gaining to much power. I always felt that Medieval just was the most annoyingly complicated game (with each faction seemingly having it's own tech tree and armies..) and it had the Pope sitting there glaring at you as a christian Kingdom to get a move on. Shogun II and it's expansions had the mission system and random events to egg you on. 

 

Rome 2 has a lackluster politics system and a, I think, broken Missions system. Politics is so buried in the UI it might as well be ignored, and the Senate hasn't issued that many missions to me. So I don't have them or the ultimate goal of being the Emperor as a driving force behind my play. And this wouldn't be a problem if the AI had been built to deal with the systems that they've got in place for things like squalor and food, but it isn't so every turn I see at least one "A new faction rises!" notification because a province revolted due to food. In the original Rome there would usually end up being a massive Empire waiting for you somewhere once you'd conquered the other Roman factions, so part of the fun there was dukeing it out against that other faction and slowly carving their old domain into little provinces.

 

There is most definitely a good game in Rome 2. Lurking just beneath the surface... but I think it'd take a Napoleon-esque release to bring it to the fore. The new army system is fantastic and suits how real life armies work, the Province system is good, but I feel like there needs to be some adjustments made to get the armies out more. The AI just needs to be scrapped and rebuilt (I think somebody said that the AI in current use is just a modified version of the one from all the way back in the original Rome... and the programmer of that system left the company during Medieval II).

 

The only other major thing I can say is that I feel like Generals should almost be vestigial at this point. The time frame of the game has each turn as one Year. Meaning that your Generals aren't around long enough for you to feel like it's worth investing in them. At this point if I were at CA I'd probably flipflop the General and Legion systems, making the Legion itself more important than the General or any of it's component parts.

[Lexx]

By the way, the enemy turn time in my game is so long by now that I've started to read a book. Every turn I manage to read about 2 pages, more if nothing special happens in the game, like diplomatic stuff or a battle. I do not find it that bad, though, as I wanted to read more again anyway and just couldn't get me to spend time on it. :>

 

Also the world map slowly loses more and more fps. If the clouds really are a huge performance eater, then I probably should check out how to disable them. They don't add anything to the graphical presentation anyway.

Edited September 9, 2013 by Lexx

[Leferd]

Spot on review by Angry Joe:

 

 

I don't know how salvageable this game is even with post release support but it is a mess. However, it's still Total War and the underlying mechanics and gameplay is still fun. I'll still be playing.

[obyknven]

Don't like entire Total war series.

 

Stupid AI, rude historical errors and simplifications,  eclectic gameplay.

 

As result battles are better in Warhammer: Shadow of Horned Rat and  Warhammer: Dark Omen

http://www.mobygames.com/game/warhammer-shadow-of-the-horned-rat

http://www.mobygames.com/game/warhammer-dark-omen

 

Myth/ Myth2 have better atmosphere

http://www.mobygames.com/game/myth-the-fallen-lords

http://www.mobygames.com/game/myth-ii-soulblighter

 

Old Microprose / KOEI games are more historiclal and have better strategic gameplay

http://www.mobygames.com/game/sword-of-the-samurai

http://www.mobygames.com/game/nobunagas-ambition-ii

http://www.mobygames.com/game/bandit-kings-of-ancient-china

http://www.mobygames.com/game/lempereur

http://www.mobygames.com/game/genghis-khan-ii-clan-of-the-gray-wolf

http://www.mobygames.com/game/liberty-or-death

http://www.mobygames.com/game/romance-of-the-three-kingdoms-iv-wall-of-fire

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/celtic-tales-balor-of-the-evil-eye

http://www.mobygames.com/game/new-horizons

 

All Total war games are bad. It's no reason exist to play in yet another Frankenstein Total war game. 

 

P.S. Sadly no good games in Roman setting even exist. Do want game about ancient Rome in GTA style (Hot cofee, crimes, blood feuds, tortures and executions, raping and murdering of slaves, slavetrade, bribery and perfidy, cruelty to animals) with all sh1t of ancient life instead of pastoral modern pseudo-Roman fantasies.

[Rosbjerg]

43 minutes review.. what.. How pretentious is this guy?