Rome II General Info Thread

[Butan]

My main complaint with the AI is that battles only last a mere 3-5 minute.

With those mods, a battle last between 10 and an eternity (depending which you pick and which you dont, some overwrite each others) :

- http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?618513-Radious-Battle-Mod
- http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?619033-Yarkis-Personal-Battle-Mod-%28True-Kill-Rate-Reduction%29!
- http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?618660-Released-Slower-Units-mod
- http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/78732-A-way-to-cahnge-unit_multiplier!?s=da6ca5e76c3ad9c25df261fd273e3323
- www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?617756-Want-40-units-fighting-under-one-General-Here-is-how

No family tree. The politics is an utter mess, you get no connection with your characters, no emotional attachment whatsoever.

There is no family tree, but there is political parties, which it replaces. You also have household characters (1 slot) and marriages possibles. You also have traits for your characters (only 3 slots).
I prefered the old family tree and traits system of medieval 2 too, but Rome 2 system has its merits.

With this mod, you can form emotional attachment due to the longer lifetime of characters :

- http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?618096-2-turns-per-year-4-turns-per-year

Events, remember those good old events coming on once in a while to add flavor to the game... In Rome II? Had a couple things happening like sacrificing a fawn, adopting some long lost child, but after a while I faced no such events. In 150 turns this was what I did.... End turn, Wait 1 or so minute for 144 factions to process, invade a settlement fight for 3-5 minutes and end turn again.

Could need more events, he is right. But the management of settlements and provinces (public order, growth, edicts, buildings, etc...), the placement of your limited armies and navies and agents, the diplomacy, the monitoring of the political balance, this takes about 5-10 minutes, and much more if you want to do something special, per turn alone. And this is without the much longer battles you will have if you take some very cool mods.

A mod for campaign changes : http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?618525-Radious-Campaign-Features-Mod

Now lets talk about Army Traditions, one of the features CA talked up so much. My LEGIONS Ended up having the SAME TRADITIONS.

There is many traditions to take from, you can upgrade them all on a number of different levels (not only one traits tree), and this, coupled with the general which is at its head, which can have a lot of traits/skills/household bonus multiply by 10 the variety of every armies in terms of capabilities.






Vanilla TW have always been bad, and Rome 2 is the worst on-release vanilla version, I must agree. But with mods its extraordinaly great. Then the AI does random shit sometimes (and for some, its enough to break the game, and I can understand that), I hope it will be ironed out but atm its enough for me to note it 9/10.

[Nessaj]

No need for a key. If you check the beta-tab, there is a betapatch1hotfix available for everyone. I am installing it atm.

Dunno if it does anything.

None of those help. The key I supplied gives you access to a super sekrit fix 8)

[Molly]

Gonna try your code - I can use every fix I can get

Although those new ATI beta drivers helped a lot already for overall smoothness.

[Butan]

Epirus campaign, turn 18, year 267 (4 TPY), normal difficulty, battle near Sparta result :

(click to show/hide)

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Athens has been crushed recently, they were both at war with me, while Macedon in the north happily watched me kill them off and broke all agreements with them. So I only had to manage Southern Greece and was even able to send a military transport group down Africa to broker trade, and even find a war.

Sparta has only one army left, but has been recruiting at maximum capacity for a while now : 25 units, 6960 men.
To match their Strenght, I recruited 4 mercenaries and had a 2nd army come to reinforce and initiate the battle, moving from the recently conquered Athenaie : 30 units, 7040 men. The odds were not in my favor yet, the battle will be hard!
And hard it was, my bestest General, Pyrrhus, leader of the faction, died early on while charging to help my left flank 

(click to show/hide)

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Still, this battle was very critical, and was enough to completely break the military power of Sparta, and the siege of Sparta itself is next...

[Rogue]

This: http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/83143-Possible-battle-map-and-campaign-lag-fix

has really done wonders for me. Why is truly beyond me, I compared the settings and did not notice any real difference, but the game went from sluggish on medium, to high to fluid on high to very high.
I also noticed that the turn times are much faster now, but I am not sure if that is due to the new campaign I, started in comparison to my old pre-patch campaign. The annoying campaign map lags are gone for good though.

[Adamar]

  Doesn't make mine go any faster...

[Tor!]

Epirus campaign, turn 18, year 267 (4 TPY), normal difficulty, battle near Sparta result :

(click to show/hide)

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

Athens has been crushed recently, they were both at war with me, while Macedon in the north happily watched me kill them off and broke all agreements with them. So I only had to manage Southern Greece and was even able to send a military transport group down Africa to broker trade, and even find a war.

Sparta has only one army left, but has been recruiting at maximum capacity for a while now : 25 units, 6960 men.
To match their Strenght, I recruited 4 mercenaries and had a 2nd army come to reinforce and initiate the battle, moving from the recently conquered Athenaie : 30 units, 7040 men. The odds were not in my favor yet, the battle will be hard!
And hard it was, my bestest General, Pyrrhus, leader of the faction, died early on while charging to help my left flank 

(click to show/hide)

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

Still, this battle was very critical, and was enough to completely break the military power of Sparta, and the siege of Sparta itself is next...

How do you get these kind of epic battles? The ai avoids me, never declares war on me, and just moves all its armies away from me 

[Adamar]

Is your faction big and dangerous?

[Tor!]

I havent been declared war on, from being small to big. I now own everything bordering the black sea, got no allies, legendary difficulty 

[Xant]

How do you get these kind of epic battles? The ai avoids me, never declares war on me, and just moves all its armies away from me 

And you still ask "am I the only one who's enjoying Rome?"

You enjoy playing a game that a toddler could beat and the battles last three minutes so you can't even watch the fights and the AI avoids you, never declares and and just moves all its armies away? Sounds enjoyable Tor!!!!!!!

[bilwit]

I wish multiplayer campaign was like 5 player max instead of just 2

[Taser]

I wish multiplayer campaign was like 5 player max instead of just 2

Seriously its just 2?

I don't know if I was going to get more than 2 or 3 friends to play but seriously? 2 is the max? That's lame. No way to mod that either?

Goddammit its like they're trying to shoot themselves in the foot with a fat boy. They're succeeding too.

[Lt_Anders]

I think the AI is MORE aggressive on lower difficulty. Like they switched codes or something...

[Adamar]

It seems random to me, or maybe the patch did something.

I've redone my spartan campaign since yesterday, and it's been quite rewarding:

First Epirus is overwhelmed, must take Apolonia and Larissa fast to make sure the romans dont have a foothold in Greece. From there I have Athens surrounded, but I can't make a move on them yet, because their are clients of Macedon. I must be as strong as possible first, so I go over to knossos and whipe out both Army and garrison in a single battle with my one army. After that I pull back my army to greece and turn to civic matters, developing my lands and upgrading my hoplites into actuall spartan hoplites.

So far so good, because the other greek factions wont do anything as long as we have a strong diplomatic situation. So I bide my time and keep developing my lands and strengtning my treasury.

Athens had taken notice of my strong spartan army across the border, so they amassed two of their own to be safe, and eventually one of them gets sick. At this point, the game was getting a bit stale, so I decided to take the offensive and engage both armies and fleets all at once on the open with my one army, and I manage to break them, but not without losing almost a third of my men.
I decide to take Athens imediately, in case Macedon pulled something, so I make my move towards the city where I face the garrison and the 2000+survivors, with no siege equipment of any kind.
I decide to make it simple and burn a gate down, and on the other side is the entire garrison of hoplites and what not, and I think to myself, ' screw it, these men are spartans...' So I spend over 20 minutes just sending men in, trying to push the enemy away from the gate so I can deploy my army inside and surround the enemy, and even with all the pressure of the enemy blob + boilling oil from above they manage to pull it off(although some spartans retreated in the process  ). And after all that was done all units routed, I take the city with only like 10% of my original army and only 15 minutes left.

In the same turn, Macedon renouces Athens as a client state, even though they are technically still a faction(assholes ) So I think Im safe from a macedonian counter attack, since I managed to defeat Athens in one turn, maybe they will let it be, and I leave my army in athens, where I can rebuild it with all kinds of units.

Next turn, Macedon does decide to declare war on me, but they're not alone. They made a millitary pact with the romans and they're now both at war with me, I saw some roman fleets near Apollonia, and Macedon has besiege Larissa with a full army.

Battle is eminent and I have only my garrison to face them...

[Banok]

Im such a huge nerd I've kind of been writing my own notes/guide on rome 2, testing unit effectiveness and such. i've made it public here

I havent been declared war on, from being small to big. I now own everything bordering the black sea, got no allies, legendary difficulty 

did you start this campaign before or after patch?

i had same in all my legendary campaigns before patch but now after the first few turns most my nieghbours do war dec me. think it does slightly depend on faction you start as, but still definitely feels imrpoved to me, actually have a reason to play now.