Rome II General Info Thread

[Oberyn]

"Total War Then and Now" presentation. The main points are "Rome 2 looks pretties than Rome" and "it has more stuff".

Also rebuilding compiled data from source files takes 12h-24h, and partial updates aren't usually possible due to referential integrity issues.

Doesn't sound terribly moddable even with tools...

All source code for Rome etc. was lost, so probably no support for .sav ever.

Some vague story about restoring from wrong backup tapes.

It's a pretty big screwup, but then anybody who never lost any data throw the first stone...

Even if they had source code, it would still be a lot of work to get support for .sav format out of that, so it probably still wouldn't happen.

 

"Pretty much no way to change Battle AI, just tweak some numbers. Campaign AI much more flexible."

"Combat formula is extremely complicated and it makes no sense to release it"

"Nothing in DB tables affects BAI."

Full documentation of group formations will be included in the kit.

I think this is a direct reference to why they are dubious about Darth's claims that his mod improves on battle AI.

[Oberyn]

There were some words from one of the people responsible for budgeting and he explained about the economical issues with modding (before you get the wrong impression: you could tell he also loved TW. But they wanted to and it was interesting to hear that side of the story; after all, there is such a thing as a reality to deal with).
The thing about the point that "supporting modding is also good for sales" may be true or not; the team doesn't even really care as such (mostly I think they believe it). Rather, from a their gamer's point of view - which they had a good amount of the time because they all are gamers - they were aware of and amazed by what some modders have put out there. The problem is that for them to support it, they need to include it in their budget, and they need to get money for it from their investors. Investors don't give money out for free, so there needs to be a justification. So CA goes "it's ultimately good for sales and will bring in more money in the long run", the investors is going to ask how much... and that's exactly it: there just is no amount that can be connected to it. People handling money need to fill numbers into spreadsheets, and "pretty much (probably)" just isn't a number.
The fact that they somehow did manage to cut out money to make that summit possible (and make no mistake, that's a pretty big whopper by itself for only a day) must once again be stressed. I really hope the released tools will give S2 modding a big boost and it does pay off for CA.

I think this is salient to the whole modding aspect of TW games, and the financial insentive (or lack thereof, depending) for it's support. Mods being the lifeblood of TW games is something most of it's longtime players can readily recognize. But explaining that to the suits and bean counters behind the financing is probably not easy.

[Lt_Anders]

Oh god the drama, the sweet drama. My takeaway from it is that they did end up inviting bobbin, and publicly stated that EB was one of their favorite RTW mods. It's not surprising that they have taken elements and been influenced by it.
It's also slightly worrying hearing about things like anti-piracy coding to prevent people from unlocking DLC factions, something already present in Shogun 2. What if a modder just recreates the faction out of spite with different models and textures, would CA call down the hammer on them? What are they going to do, claim copyright on a historical two thousand+ year old tribe? What is going to happen with seleucids for example? It's obviously going to be a DLC faction at some point, despite not being all that different from the other greek factions. Same goes for Baktria. Modders creating and inserting the faction would be obvious competition, especially since they would be free. Hardcoded faction limits doesn't seem so much an engine limitation as a deliberate strategy to sell more DLC, since they can obviously include new factions whenever it suits them.

They mentioned it in that modding summit thread, but, it's entirely possible to mod in a DLC faction assuming you make/do everything yourself. With the current engine, that means removing one faction and replacing with another type thing. I do believe that that is what's possible.

As for the Darth thing, the claim changing DB doesn't affect BAI, which is true, but by changing the paramaters that BAI works with, then it does change it's options. But, meh, Empire sucks without Darth's mod, so they say....

[Xelaris]

Rome 2 is a good game, i should read all the damn posts from a thread

[Overdriven]

But, meh, Empire sucks without Darth's mod, so they say....

My 150 hours of gameplay would state otherwise. I actually really enjoyed basic Empire. AI could do some weird shit sometimes but for the most part it worked.

So i heard you pre-order Rome2.

read the baggage controversy

http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?144533-Total-War-Rome-II-Battle-of-the-Nile

(click to show/hide)

But the baggage train thing is ridiculous, it's painfully arcady. As if the men would just lay down and die as soon as their camp was looted, lol. There's plenty of solutions for them to survive - most obviously going on to win the battle and taking the enemies supplies. And even if they lost, they could always loot the local area.

if it was mentioned before i'm sorry to bring it back but i don't think it got nearly enough drama

I thought the baggage train capture point thing was already cleared up? They said the capture points wouldn't be in open battles, just historical and sieges (like shogun), so I assume that means the baggage train will only be a specific scenario. So I imagine you lose the battle when you lose your baggage train because the battle is one focusing on your supplies. Like in a Siege you lose the battle if they capture the central square/main capture point.

Ah yeah this guy confirmed they said it:
"You guys do realize that baggage trains will only be in battles when one army was in the forced march stance, right?

And that capture points are just in siege battles?"

[Butan]

The baggage thing sound actually very realistic    There is a lot of historical examples where it happened and that the army routed : its quite similar to having your general killed, a symbolic banner captured, or just being attacked by the flank/rear = it sent the morale of the army down in the gutter.

Most of the time the baggage train was comprised of : the gold for the army, the food for the army, personal belongings of the general and his officers, some symbolic element of power. So losing that is generaly very, very bad.


Overdriven, you wasted 150 hours of your life    have you only tried the mod or didnt feel like it ? I too, the first time (on medieval 2) played a loooooooot on vanilla, but when I tried a cool mod I could never go back. This is what happens to 99% of the players who does that and im sure you're not one of the 1%!

[Overdriven]

I played EB on Rome. It was ok but I never particularly enjoyed it. Guess some people's tastes differ. I only even played vanilla after that with the others because I just didn't find the mods that interesting. Vanilla works for me!

[Casimir]

Having played a wide variety of mods including darth mod, third age 1066 mod and Dark age mod I csn safely say I still very much enjoy the vanilla game.

[Butan]

You make me feel ashamed of being a human being 


Anyway I looked more videos on rome II and I must say I saw some cool nice-looking new features... even if they dont completely rework the battle/campaign AI (they promise that each new TW) it looks good and should be enjoyable!

I still hope the modding tools will be available and that it will be not too arcadey (or at least with "arcade" options on/off)

[Strudog]

Having played a wide variety of mods including darth mod, third age 1066 mod and Dark age mod I csn safely say I still very much enjoy the vanilla game.

Did you ever try the mod from Lordz? Best mod of Napoleon Total war, especially there historical battles, (in which i did some OOB's for) 80 + units on each side while playing at Waterloo was pretty epic, plus it brought realism to the game in a  substantial way with battles taking between 2-3 hours if it was a long one.

It is the best mod you will ever play of the TW series, i would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes realism. Rather than the arcady editions that CA come out with


Plus already pre-ordered Rome, it was £29.99 on the website, so i thought why not

[EponiCo]

As for the Darth thing, the claim changing DB doesn't affect BAI, which is true, but by changing the paramaters that BAI works with, then it does change it's options. But, meh, Empire sucks without Darth's mod, so they say....

Could be that they know the parameters are just artifacts that were used in an initial build but have long been disabled on release though.
In any case tweaking values is way different than actually writing the AI. While they are possibly improvements imo the claims made about the mods were always way overblown.
Btw. I also remember him GTXting TW modding after Medieval 2, so it's not so unlikely there will be Rome 2 Darth Mod.

[ThePoopy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0GA_jDYfEs

[Adamar]

I wonder if the baggage train will allow us to retrain our armies away from our territories...

[Banok]

The Celts were very widespread at this time, the Germanic migrations only took place centuries later.

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Never knew this myself, your post led me on a wikipedia reading spree lasting a couple hours most of which unrelated history but guess I must really be bored.

[okiN]

Hands-on from RPS. Sounds pretty promising, though I won't be really convinced until I play it myself.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/08/01/hands-on-total-war-rome-ii/