I just got Rome 2 on a steam sale last weekend and the verdict so far:
It crashes often just like Empire used to when it first came out which is frustrating but at least the game seems to load up a lot faster than previous total war games. The prologue was pretty good but I got to a point in the 3rd stage where I couldn't move past without the game crashing so skipped to the campaigns.
I've started a few campaigns on VH with no mods (Rome, Carthage and Macedon) and so far Rome/Macedon seemed pretty easy but Carthage had some interesting challenges. Some of your north African territory that you might have started with or had to conquer in the original game is controlled by client states and they don't always trade with you or do what you need them to do.
Compared to Europa Barbarorum there's a lot less cities so wars are over quickly but new territory can take more time to stabilize and home territories seem more rebellious so far. It's expensive to maintain large armies so I have to shift them around quite a bit while building up my financial base. Every town automatically comes with garrison troops but you can only move troops on the map with a general leading them.
I'm not too far into the game but so far the political stuff hasn't had much impact. You get events once in a while where you have to make a choice which could lead positive or negative modifiers for a few turns. For example, -4 public order in cities or tax bonuses.
The battle AI is alright in field battles when they have numerical superiority but kinda dumb when attacking or defending villages sometimes.
Exhibit A
I had two full stack barbarian armies from separate tribes attack a Carthagian city with walls one time, one by land and the other by sea. Defending I just had the low level garrison troops then about 9 mostly half strength units so expected to lose. I was able to get the full stack attacking by sea to chase one of the fast ships that came with the garrison back and forth across the bay outside the city with their slow transport ships while my army blocked the other full stack army which was attacking one gate. The AI only had 4 ladder ramps which they put up right next to each other so I was able to keep them from getting in and eventually burned the ladders (I think?).
Then I just let the transports catch my fast ship and dealt with troops they landed in my port easily then the rest of their army threw themselves at a gate without siege equipment. In this game, attackers can throw torches on gates and eventually burn them down but they have a tendency to throw their torches then leave units outside gates until they're destroyed by arrow towers then bring other units in one by one to throw torches. So by the time they burn a gate down, there's not much time left and they might have lost half their army. Anyway, I have my general run outside with elephants and do a suicide charge on the first army so maybe that tipped the balance enough but I really did not expect to win that battle.
Exhibit B
Macedon campaign, a superior thracian army was in a village and just sat there while my slingers took out their best units (falxmen) then my javelin throwers did the same thing against the rest of their melee troops until they were out of ammo as well. The barbarian faction had tons of ranged units (slingers and javelin throwers) on the the other side of the village but didn't move them, just brought more melee units over replace the ones I took out in one small section of the village. After I ran out of ammo it was pretty easy for my hopites to run in and mop up all their unused range units.
I still haven't spent that much time with the game but overall it's pretty fun, not perfect but very nice to look at. I just got a 27" monitor for working at home plus upgraded my graphics card/memory so maybe being able to see more details in the battle has made the crashing easier to put up with. The game definitely loads a lot faster than Shogun 2, which is nice as well.
8/10
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