Rome II General Info Thread

[ThePoopy]

part1:

Hi!

I understand that there is some concern regarding our decision to have one turn equal one year in Rome II.

Fundamentally, it boils down to the fact that our campaign spans a considerable period of time, from the build-up to the Punic Wars through to the establishment of the Roman Empire. We chose this period because we felt that, as well as encompassing some of Rome’s most significant conflicts, territorial conquests and internal struggles, it gave us the potential to explore the rise and fall of those factions which would play an important supporting role in Roman history (such as the recently revealed Parthians, a major power who would long keep Rome’s eastward expansion in check as of their first conflicts during first century BC).

So, if we assume a campaign length of around 300 years, that makes around 300 turns: we felt that to escalate this to 600 or 1200 turns would be detrimental to the campaign experience that we were aiming for. Bear in mind that the Rome II campaign is no longer time-restricted, however: the player can take as few or as many turns as they like to achieve their ultimate victory objectives and, as per usual, one is free to continue one’s campaign post-victory.

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.

Movement is less of an issue. Yes, the map is huge and the turns long: why would it take my army one year to get from Roma to the alps? Forces are effectively moving in a state of battle-readiness but may be ordered into a ‘forced march’ (armies)or a ‘double-time’ (fleets) stance. Their movement extents are vastly increased, allowing them to assemble from afar in preparation for invasion or to support threatened possessions, albeit at the expense of their offensive and defensive capabilities: long-distance headshotting will not be a valid tactic.

We expect characters who survive the challenges laid out before them to survive a good 40 years in play. Obviously there is an element of chance to this, and a character may well die in battle or at the hands of an unscrupulous agent before succumbing to old age, but during their campaign map tenure they will have plenty of opportunity to make a difference to their faction’s endeavours. Furthermore, the intention is to have characters gain experience faster than in Shogun 2, allowing them to reach their fullest potential faster as long as they are deployed consistently and successfully against their foes. Lastly, every general is affiliated with a ‘party’ within their faction, such as one of the major Roman or Carthaginian dynasties or the royal household of an Eastern kingdom and their court rivals: as these characters act around the campaign map or retire to the homeland to scheme, they contribute to their party’s overall influence within the faction, with repercussions that will carry on from one generation to the next.

The military traditions established by armies and fleets over the years also persist beyond the lifespan of any one character or unit, a legacy handed down the generations by those who fought and died for the good of their people. This process will be slower than that of characters gaining ranks, but can span the entire length of a campaign: even if a military force is disbanded or destroyed utterly, it may be re-established once more, the past effects of its history and traditions intact.

Cheers!
-ds

part 2:

Hi guys,

It’s great to follow the on-going discussion regarding turns per year – we have similar debates internally about all kinds of things, and sometimes we make a decision that not everyone will like for the good of the overall game – so now might be a good time for us to open up a little about how we come to these decisions.

Here’s some of the rationale, below, and a few points addressing some of the debate so far. Note that we don’t make decisions solely on data, but it can help build a picture of the way that people play our games.

We want to make a campaign experience that is great for everyone
We don’t simply “cater to the masses” with our games – we wouldn’t be where we are now if we did. We know that one of the main reasons people like Total War is that they can create their own story on the campaign map, and their own emergent tales of victories and losses. We’ve read the Rome campaign diaries, we’ve watched the Let’s Plays, and we want to create a game that creates an even deeper level of customisation and experience so that you guys can share more of those tales, and we can read them.

Because of that, the campaign is not scripted
It’s a totally emergent, dynamic experience. There are challenges when designing that sort of game that aren’t always apparent to the player. How much free reign do you give the player before the game stops being fun? And how do you cater for as many people as possible without breaking that individual emergence? We have to take lots of factors into consideration.

The game length is in line with previous Total War games
Shogun 2 gave the player 240 turns to complete its victory conditions when playing a long campaign. Napoleon 244, Empire 200, Medieval II 230 or so. Rome II is balanced around a campaign length of approximately 300 turns, so is in fact longer than recent Total War games.

There is no time limit to complete the victory conditions
You no longer have to win the campaign by a certain point, you could take 1000 turns if you wanted to.

Only 1% of players play for more than 300 turns
We’re not saying that 1% of people is not significant – as we said, we think about how the game will play for everyone, not just the masses (that’s one of our core values). But this sort of data indicates the actual demand for campaigns of a certain length above and beyond anecdotal evidence.

Even with Rome I and its longer overall campaign length, research and surveys we did showed people even then players only played for around 200 turns max each campaign.

As a result we balance the campaign experience around a length that the vast majority of people will enjoy, so everyone will get the full experience instead of just a small percentage.

Many more players play on easy than all the hard difficulties combined
We try to take into consideration how many turns the average player will play, and build in options (like hard, very hard, legendary) for the hardcore guys. Nobody likes to be lumped in with a wider group or tagged with a label, so we try to cater for as many gamer types as possible. But if every decision could be tailored for every player, we’d never make a game.

Movement rates for armies will be similar to previous TW games
Forced march/double time will allow for longer movement, but with penalties to the army, and they can’t attack. We’ve always balanced movement rates for gameplay instead of reality.

Characters will have traits and skills, and will gain experience more quickly
They can get a lot done in a campaign, so don’t get too hung up on the raw numbers. 40 years was also given as an example of how long generals and agents can live for. Some may die gloriously in battle at the age of 20, others may last into their 80’s. There will be plenty of time to make use of your greatest characters.

We are still looking at seasons
Development is fluid, and we don’t rule things out on a whim.

also

First post for a while and I want to take this opportunity to talk about the changes we have made to the combat system and tweaks we have made to the morale system as well.

Combat changes

There have been big changes to the combat system for Rome II. I will talk about these changes in the context of some new stats: weapon damage and health.

Weapon damage is split into two parts, base damage and armour piercing damage (referred to as AP damage from here on out). AP damage is always applied but base damage can be blocked by armour. Melee weapons and projectiles have this damage split. Health is the amount of hit points a soldier in a unit has, and damage dealt reduces a soldiers hit points.

This system gives us a lot more flexibility in how we balance units. Whereas before an axe may have been set as armour piercing which would reduce target armour by half, the new system allows us to give axes lots of AP damage but little base damage so that most of their damage cannot be blocked by armour. Other weapons may have the other extreme, lots of base damage but low AP damage which would make them fantastic against units with low armour but weak against more heavily armoured opponents.

All weapons do some AP damage so you can always guarantee that no matter who is fighting who some damage will always be done, though this may be very little.

Health has been introduced as the system that damage affects, most units will have a similar amount of health (more for cavalry when mounted to show the hit points of horses) and armour will be a bigger factor in a unit’s survivability as that can block damage whereas health can only absorb so much.

Melee defence is still a factor and is matched against melee attack to determine if a unit will hit and then see if it does damage.

Shields in Rome II do not just provide a bonus to melee defence, they now can provide a bonus to both melee defence and armour when a soldier is attacked from the front or left. How much of a bonus is given to melee defence or armour is dependent on the shield a unit has in the database. So a hoplite shield will give a big bonus to armour but less to melee defence due to how it was held close to the body and could not be moved around lots, but a celtic shield will give a big bonus to melee defence showing how it was used much more actively.

Charge bonus now affects both melee attack and damage to reflect the changes made to the combat system.

All these changes allow for a lot more flexibility and more depth to be portrayed in the unit balancing and combat calculations. This system has more depth to it than any previous Total War games whilst keeping the rules simple so players can grasp what each stat means. All the complexity of the previous system has been retained with more added to it

A brief note here on ranged combat. With the way we display arcs to show the range of missile units, dynamic height based range bonuses are basically impossible to do as it is entirely dependent on who the unit is targeting. Instead we have implemented a damage bonus for ranged units firing down on enemies, and a damage reduction for ranged units firing up on enemies. This allows us to have an advantage for ranged units on high ground without massively complicated code for dynamic firing arcs with very few benefits.

The new combat rules also have one v many combat coded into them. The animations may look 1v1, but under the hood every available additional attacker is factored in and will result in a person surrounded by enemies dying a lot faster.

Morale Changes

There have been less code changes to the morale system, the big one being a smoothing mechanism to soften some of the big jumps between different morale values that can be caused by balancing. This, when combined with units being in the wavering state for longer will allow players more time to react to units in trouble and to try and boost their morale.

The morale values themselves have had a lot of changes, for example the morale penalty from being under missile fire is much greater in Rome II to emphasise the harassment nature of missile units and allow those ranged units to be less focused on just killing opponents and so offer a wider array of tactical uses. The morale effects for lost casualties and flanking have also ben tweaked to help make the cause and effect of player actions more clear in the battlefield and put more emphasis on good movement and positioning.

Unit Stat Scales

As some people noticed in the Teutoberg trailer, the stats for units are a lot bigger now. This is because we are using a wider range of stats for units in Rome II. For example in Shogun 2 morale may have gone from 4 to 15 for most units (excluding heroes). In Rome II it can go from 10 to 75.

This greater range allows us much more granularity in the bonuses we give from experience and in the campaign and also a greater range to differentiate units over.

Additionally, I should point out that the Teutoberg video certainly showed barbarian units breaking earlier and Roman units surviving longer than they will do in the final game. We tweaked this for the video so that the guy demoing it could actually get through the battle to the end without dying horribly halfway through. It can be hilarious when that happens for the fifth time in a row, but maybe not so much when we are trying to record a video to show you….

Below are images of some of the Greek shield patterns.


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I hope you have enjoyed todays update,
Jack

[Ninja_Khorin]

Wrong. They answered this a while back. I can't remember the exact amount of years, but the game will span ~250 years (+/- 50 years...).

One year per turn. That makes it ~250 turns, which is around the same as all other Total War's.

EDIT: Heh, serves me right for not checking the last page.

[Tor!]

Hope we can edit some files to get 0.5 years per turn, I like it better that way 

[Oberyn]

I kind of feel bad for all the Europa Barbarorum 2 people who have been working on a MTW2 mod for years. Rome 2 as a baseline would probably have made it much, much easier, if only for models. I hope it manages to get a playable version out before Rome 2 does...

[Havoco]

Wait what?

more players play on easy than all other hard difficulties combined

REALLY, that's bs.

I wonder if that includes everything or just campaign.

[okiN]

Yeah, having surmised that the game would run for 200-300 years, it was kind of obvious that it would be one year per turn. I'm not really that bothered, my only real concern with one year per turn is the negative impact it has on character longevity. It's good to see they've taken that into account, though I'm still a little skeptical.

Characters will have traits and skills, and will gain experience more quickly
They can get a lot done in a campaign, so don’t get too hung up on the raw numbers. 40 years was also given as an example of how long generals and agents can live for. Some may die gloriously in battle at the age of 20, others may last into their 80’s. There will be plenty of time to make use of your greatest characters.

They better level REALLY fast, because I remember playing Medieval/Stainless Steel, which is one year per turn, and it felt like all my generals had the lifespan of a mayfly and took ages to gain experience. The whole dynasty gameplay has its own appeal as opposed to Shogun 2 or Napoleon where you can play through the whole campaign using the same generals, but they need to balance it right. Europa Barbarorum went to the other extreme, with four turns per year and several centuries of campaigning -- it has its good points but on the whole it's excruciatingly slow.

[Havoco]

wondering what the combat advantages would be with the regular movement versus the quick march now.

[okiN]

Well, he said you can't attack after a forced march, and also that there are penalties. So presumably if you get attacked after a forced march, your units will be at a significant disadvantage in terms of combat stats. I'm guessing they'll certainly be more susceptible to fatigue, maybe also worsened attack/defence/morale, we'll see.

[Emotion]

I cum every time I read more about this game.

[Turboflex]

Well, he said you can't attack after a forced march, and also that there are penalties. So presumably if you get attacked after a forced march, your units will be at a significant disadvantage in terms of combat stats. I'm guessing they'll certainly be more susceptible to fatigue, maybe also worsened attack/defence/morale, we'll see.

That said I think army positioning will be more important they are expanding the army proximity zone of control concept cuz the gameplay objective is to force fewer but more decisive field battles as opposed to lots of spammy armies and siegefests. So force marching to gain a key position to cut off an enemy could be critical.

[okiN]

Maybe, but if there's a sizable enemy force in attack range, you run the risk of being caught on the back foot while your army is weakened. It sounds neat, looking forward to seeing it in action. It's certainly nice that they've addressed the problem of agonizingly slow foot slogs to get troops from your capital to the front lines. Tweaks like this are the greatest thing about the series' progression; removing unit retraining was probably the best gameplay change in the history of Total War.

[Bulzur]

So, you have a general. You hire an army.
And you wage war, crushing the opponents, with never any losses.
And 40 turns later, your general dies of natural causes, while your PEASANT UNITS stay as veterans, and can still live to the rest of the campaign, always getting stronger.

I like how my archers have a way longer longevity than my finest general. Actually, they're immortals. Fuck yeah. Even better, the longer they live, the better they get. I can already picture the 80 years old sharpshooter, running around the battlefield. 


I seriously love leveling up some generals, but one year per turn means you'll really have to always be in war to profit using them. A shame. 0,5 year/turn would have been lovely.

[okiN]

Yeah, I wonder whether we'll see the governor mechanic making a return now that generals will be having such a high turnover. I also wonder whether the family tree will now return to the old branching model where it expands steadily into a pyramid, or whether it'll stay like in Shogun 2 where you only have the core family members with everyone tied directly to the ruler (heir - son - brother) and the family size stays constant.

[Korgoth]

If it's 1 year per turn, will the turns always be in summer or winter? How will they serperate the seasons in the campaign?

[enigmatic_stranger]

If it's 1 year per turn, will the turns always be in summer or winter? How will they serperate the seasons in the campaign?

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.