Rome II General Info Thread

[Bulzur]

We understand that seasonal variety is important to campaign map flavour and that the four season cycle from Shogun 2 worked well both visually and in terms of gameplay. One year turns are not the only thing to overcome with regards to this: the map is huge, with many climates that would each require visual and gameplay representations of their individual seasonal variants. The climates themselves do cover the extremes that one would expect to experience at the height of the baking summer or the depths of the long, dark winter, and rest assured that we are continuing to explore effective methods of representing seasonal change regardless of the yearly turns and map scale complexities.

How can you represent different seasons when turns are yearly ? o_O
Will they make perpetual winter in northern countries, perpetual summer in Egypt ? That would just be strange...
If they really want us to play one session in 200-300 years, then make each turn 5 seasons (so 1 year and 1 season). That way, you'll keep the climatic impact for campaign, but also the fast pace and fast ageing.
Even though it's quite strange to have a 5 seasons turn. 

[okiN]

How can you represent different seasons when turns are yearly ? o_O

Well, I was wondering about that myself, and one idea that occurred to me was tying it to army movement points. You could say that every turn begins in spring, and then depending on how far the army has to move (as % of its maximum move for the turn) before reaching the site of the battle, the season could change.

Will they make perpetual winter in northern countries, perpetual summer in Egypt ? That would just be strange...

Indeed, a fair compromise would probably be two states, a "warm" and "cold" season for each area. Didn't they have something like that in the original RTW?

[Bulzur]

Well, I was wondering about that myself, and one idea that occurred to me was tying it to army movement points. You could say that every turn begins in spring, and then depending on how far the army has to move (as % of its maximum move for the turn) before reaching the site of the battle, the season could change.

That's pretty interesting indeed. If they try something like that, they'll have to reach a compromise between realistic (one army can move pretty far in one year) and gameplay (no need to check every place, knowing ennemies can suddenly come from far far away. It'd feel strange though, to move your army, then have a "load" of the map, since you just changed season. Or they won't bother changing the map design, but would just tell what season it is for wich army.
Half a year turn would have been perfect for "cold/hot season" impact on the battlefield and movement, yet faster pace than 4 season.

Really looking forward to see how they'll think that over. Hope they'll surprise me, in a good way.

[Lord_Bernie_of_Voodoo]

http://www.shacknews.com/game/total-war-rome-ii/videos/15284/total-war-rome-ii-greek-states-culture-pack-trailer

Hello!

[[ptx]]

Oh, wow, separate Greek city-state factions, i like

[okiN]

I was expecting that, but it's still nice to have confirmation. It's another good change to the campaign we've had since Empire, all these AI factions. Infinitely better than having all of them as "rebels", especially since you can have individual diplomacy and trade with them -- as can other factions. And of course they can then easily be converted into DLC, as we already saw with Shogun 2.

Also it looks like there's a release date now? September third.

[Xant]

Jesus fucking Christ.

Already two DLCs announced before the game is even released. They're getting more and more shameless with every game.

[Ninja_Khorin]

Well. At least they're free. Sort of.

[okiN]

Well, the Pontus thing hardly counts as a DLC. Since it's free, it's more like "look, we made this for you because we had some extra time even though we didn't really plan to earlier". The Greek thing, on the other hand, is a preorder bonus -- also nothing new. Companies have been offering enticements for gamers to lay their money down in advance for years.

That said, yeah, I don't really see why they couldn't just include both in the base game at this point, but meh.

[Xant]

Well. At least they're free. Sort of.

If you pre-order...

I mean, come on. Making a pre-order bonus with SPARTANS is obvious money grabbing. If they were going to include a Spartan faction in the game, it should be in the base game. But I guess they'll at least ensure lots of pre-orders this way...

[Ninja_Khorin]

Oh, I agree. It's a Total Cashgrab. But, still better than exclusive pre-order bonuses. (One clan if you preorder in steam, another if you preorder in gamestop, etc.)

[Tor!]

Well, atleast we get the Greek factions. Though the way they do it sucks 

[SirCymro_Crusader]

£45 on steam but someone saw a collector's edition for £110 - normally i bought the collector's edition which comes with added troops, and normally that only cost me £40 i hope the price is gonna be worth it, but i think i'll stick to the £45 version

[Xant]

Pre-ordered.

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[JackieChan]

Im starting to hate them for that moneygrabbing BS. Hopefully there will be a cracked version out there soon enough after the release.