Your top three issues with RTW 2 (constructive criticism)

[siregar0511]

1. The battle feels more like an RTS (ex: Age of Empire) than a realistic battle simulation. The units run around like flash on crack and they have not even a slightest idea of what a formation means (yes, even the roman cohorts).

2. Graphic/CPU optimization is just horrible. Way worse than Shogun 2. I know I don't have the best computer/GPU, but, if I'm able to run Shogun 2 on very high/ultra than I should be able to run this at at least 'very high' setting. And BTW, the high/very high setting in this game is 100x worse than Shogun 2.

3. Overall the game just feel too simplistic, yet, it's also confusing at the same time because of the complicated, multi layered UI. The Navy has been rendered useless because now units could just walk on water (magical transport ships, yay!). If you play a faction like Carthage which, historically, depends on their large Navy to control the sea to protect their empire from Naval invasion, your Navy is useless. AI could just pop up anytime, anywhere and invade your coastal cities without having to build a Navy which is just ridiculous.

IMHO, this game is an insult, a slap in the face, to all of us veteran total war players. It's obvious that CA made this to try and bring in new players who are more used to arcade, first person shooter type of game. Shame on you CA, shame on you.

[baldrick13]

1. turn ending times2. garrisons make a regular sized army useless3. needs some better ai that react when facing ranged units

[TEUTknight]

When it works for me the game is great but even though I pass the benchmarks during the game it freezes and only way to get out of it would be a manual restart (oddly when it freezes the audio keeps playing). Still, considering how new the game is I am sure it will be fixed shortly. Other than that there are a few minor issues I have such as:

-prologue should have more content (in my opinion) in order to cover more features that were added.
-bring map information back into diplomacy (I didn't see it but I could have just glanced over it without noticing).
-having to turn off the screen when anyone else comes near me (my family has a firm belief that video games are addicting and for children)...

[Niccolo Machiavelli]

1. AI (mainly diplomacy&battlefield)

2. UI (menus and submenus are completely counter-intuitive.

3. The complete lack of love for detail, like bland character development, lack of family trees, minimal retinue. Playing as the Suebi, the tech trees look like some chimp was (poorly) instructed to lay down a bunch of cards and then a random number generator was used to attach some stats to them. (e.g. the first military tech tree is represented by a shield and spear, the second one by a horse. The first one then contains a lot of horse icons (guess what CA - I would've expected them in the one with the horse - seems I lack your creativity), but on top the horse icons don't offer any bonuses to cavalry, just some generic bonuses to all units...

[|Sith|Galvanized Iron]

1) The extreme lagg.
2) The mega-extreme ultra lagg semi-pausing when zooming in on a melee.
3) The inability to turn off shadows completely.

Since the game is barely playable I haven't really had the opportunity to notice other issues other than the retarded naming on the Roman units.

[Jugurtha King of Numidia]

CA (Trish) please take note: 1. Capture point concept in general: Causes the A.I> to sit back and just guard those points and not properly reinforce their beleaguered troops that are under fire. Plus, sometimes you get the A.I. just camping those points, very frustrating. 2. Battle Animation Speed/Length of battles: The animations are moving WAY too fast and the units are dying WAY WAY WAY too quick. The length of the battles are absurd. 3. Blobbing and lack of cohesion of unit lines (A.I. and Player): Perhaps this is due to animation/battle speed but this is not ancient warfare, particularly when you have enemy troops able to push through a phalanx; that is not going to happen without someone dying. Please fix these blatant shortcoming your game and thank you.

[rrgg]

1. Very fast, arcady, clickfest mob battles.

2. Unit health, even putting aside balance issues it creates and the fact that the player now has no real feedback about how much damage their units are really taking, the vast, vast majority of attacks should either be insta-kills or do zero damage just on principle alone.

3. Lots of UI issues. the default camera angles are really bad (apparently the game thinks I only want to give orders to units on the other side of the map when I'm zoomed out?) and on a widescreen monitor the unit cards take up almost half the screen.

[Jugurtha King of Numidia]

1: Battles are over wayyyy too quickly. Average battle length for me so far has been like 5-6 minutes. Feels like it all happens too fast. 2. AI is dumber than bricks. I have captured TWO towns now because the defending army just up and walks away with my attacking force in plain sight right next to their town. One time they even got on a boat and just sailed off. I captured the town effortlessly, and then they came back, landed, and marched randomly through the woods for a turn until they'd all died of attrition. 3. Battles are cluttered, very hard to tell what is going on. I find myself needing to pause often to identify which troops are mine and which are the enemy.

This quote had me dying laughing picturing it in my mind...
"One time they even got on a boat and just sailed off"
Thanks for sharing that.

[polaris70]

1. Battle speed. I set up a nice defensive formation with my archers out in front, ready to fall back, spearmen and melee troops behind and cavalry on the flanks. Then poured myself a glass of wine to savour the battle and apply my tactics in an orderly fashion. I next my pants as the enemy appeared and sprinted at me at about 40mph, straight into my line and a huge rugby scrum ensued.2. Too many magic buttons to press in combat when I should be worrying about and applying tactics.3. Rest of it is not too bad, but the battle speed is a killer, back to Empire until it's sorted or modded.

[blackburnite]

My First Post. Yaay.

I've been a huge fan of total war games since the first shogun came out way back when, and this game just turns me off.

1) The UI is not intuitive at all compared to the previous games.
2) Only Generals can field armies and they are in short supply (This is one of the dumbest things I've seen in a TW game, whoever came up with this idea should be flogged).
3) 1 turn per year and the recruitment.

[Jugurtha King of Numidia]

1) battles go way to fast, I spend more time walking/running than fighting (hate when my units run when I right click once)...to much clicky clicky with thos dumb buffs, feels like i'm playing arena on WoW. Just cant enjoy them trying too. Barbarian tribes just recruit mostly range units. (im playing as anveri) 2) Ai stuff up in battles as they just stand there when they are meant to be attacking me and I'm defending. 3) sieges suck Ai doesn't defend the walls they only put missile units on them . Ai just assault one of my capitals with no siege equipment and just burnt down my gate (boring) cant assault capital with two armies unless one attacks from the sea but my other army lost the siege equipment it built. AI attack one of my towns with just a general. (macedon died early in my campaign and a few other peoples too)

This doesn't bode well (Reminds of Joan of Arc attacking that city wall, alone)

[Pachinko]

1, "Blob" battles ...yuck..
2. UI are counter intuitive.
3. no family tree.

Unfortunately UI were stuck with it.
All you people try the Very hard or Legendary. Alot of BAI works much better.. Same for CAI.

[Jugurtha King of Numidia]

Been an avid player of all total war games. I like the overall feel of the game, but some of the issues I'm experiencing are completely game breaking.

1. Units not staying in formation/blobbing mosh pits- Its absolutely ridiculous (playing as the "professional soldiers" of the Romans), and having your units converge into a tightly packed mob as soon as they enter combat. The absence of guard mode ruins the entire feel of battles. The massive blob that forms, makes strategic maneuvers impossible. This problem also makes the battles progress far to quickly, and the results are decided throwing your blob at the AI blob and hoping your blob prevails... (By far the worst problem, not even going to play until this is modded or patched in some way)

2. Laggy campaign map- I get great frame rates in battles but the campaign map is horribly laggy and my fps is really spiky.

3. Generals must be present to move an army, and the amount of generals is limited- I don't like that I am unable to split my forces. Why can I not break off a couple units to watch over a strategic point on the map? You can no longer stagger smaller groups of units to guard an area from an enemy advance. This feature just limits your troop movements in an unrealistic way. I like previous TW games where you are just granted a "captain" to lead an army with no general present.

** is it even going to be possible to mod the unit formations so that RTWII has the feel of battle lines like other TW games or should I stop holding my breath?

This is a REALLY good point too. Why can't we use captains like in the previous games and that way split forces? Not being able to do that LIMITS you sending reinforcements to areas (specific unit types), ambushing w/o risking a general and more... jeez

[big_feef]

Wow, lot of work to only cut it down to 3 issues, but here goes.

1. I absolutely hate the whole capture the victory point crap. This is supposed to be Total War, where tactics meant something; not who got to sit on a particular section of the battle map the longest. I detest losing battles where I'm hammering and routing my opponent but they managed to sneak some mobs over to the victory point so I lose... I also hate that I can just sit on that one part of the map with 1 unit while the witless AI attacks my main force to no avail. Ridiculous.

2. Arbitrary force limits. Who thought that one up? I don't mind the fact that I need a general/admiral for armies/navies. What I do mind is that the amount I can field is tied to some arbitrary value that has nothing to do with my economy, tech level or provinces I currently own; which are already limiting factors in what and how much I can take to the field. Very, very bad design... there goes the entire point of empire building right there.

3. Battle behavior! Not accounting for the usual ridiculously inept AI, or even the whole victory point madness; battles are a mess. Units don't keep cohesion for long, if at all when they come into contact with an enemy. Hoplite warfare is a joke: even after having them move by walking to make sure they maintain the formation; it usually melts away as soon as they actually make contact and dissolves, like everything else, into a melee free-for-all. Another battle feature that's suppose to be a signature of the era is also a joke: Roman soldiers with javelins will not fire them at all unless they're charging at an enemy. Now I have to send my defensive units like the triarii running at the enemy like madmen or barbarians to utilize them to full effect; bah. And finally; the whole having to click several times for units to actually do what you order them to do. I don't have much graphical lag while playing because I've found a happy balance so far with the game's obviously unoptimized engine; even though I have a very powerful computer that should be able to eat this game for breakfast; I have to turn things down several notches... That aside; I've lost battles because my cavalry will just sit there while my infantry gets slaughtered; even after giving them order after order, with the game paused or in real-time, for them to charge home into the enemy's flank.

[ronchas]

1.Graphics
2.AI
3.CAI

[Teutonik]

1) BAI - Every battle I have played so far has been boring and formulaic. The AI just sits in the starting position every single time forcing me to advance, and then charges in all its units in a single, uncohesive charge. This is fine for barbarian nations of course, but it really breaks the immersion seeing this with the more sophisticated nations as well.

2) Graphics/performance issue - IMO this is a trend that seems to have started with Empire, where CA have somehow managed to create this unbalanced and erratic relationship between graphical quality and performance. I realise it's an incredibly complex game but it's pretty frustrating when I'm playing a battle at nowhere near the FPS I should be getting with a fairly high end system, and the battle I'm playing still looks like a PS2 game in places (I use high settings). Rome 2 has continued the trend and again, I'm sure we will see improvements through drivers, patches etc but it would be nice to see actual progress being made with new releases so this becomes less of a problem!

3) Engagement length - As many have already said, the battles are too short! For me it just decreases the epic feel and immersion of the battles and makes them feel like less of a big event.

On the plus side I seem to be one of the few people who kinda likes the new UI, it feels nice and fluid and gives only the info needed. Also the sound design this time is awesome!

[sinople]

1. The limited zoom scale in campaign. Well it's just impossible to manage an empire if we can just see one settlement. That makes no sense. Please fix that point. A good idea would be to do a very big unzoom such as Supreme Commander 1.

[craziii]

1: generals and agents has become trivial. you finally got that character to a decent lvl? end turn - character dies of natural causes, I actually faced palm pretty hard when my lvl 7 spy died like that.

2: I wonder who decided to separate the character/settlement info panels into 2 parts. that has got to be the most annoying/disorienting change so far. I really miss the character info panels whoever decided to axe the info panels needs to be fired. s/he isn't fit to be a game designer.

3: Squalor is way too high, it needs to be toned down by at least 50% army stack limit isn't even an issue with how high the squalor is.

that is all for now. I am sure I will find more.

how about I list some of the new stuff I like to go along with criticisms.

1: I love the new province management system! just wish it wasn't separated into 2 screens.

2: I like the new garrison system, makes taking any province capital challenging, instead of a push over. it is now a real battle when you have to fight the garrisons + the defending army stack if any. nice change!

3: I like the battle speeds and found the BAI to be pretty adequate. my last battle before I turned off last night lasted 18 mins AI army stack hunkered down and created a fort while I attacked. the fight lasted a good 18 mins. while most other fights were about 8 to 10 mins. the BAI was actually defending against most of my flanking maneuvers during that fort fight, I am very impressed. was a very close victory.

4: despite how restricted I feel about the campaign map(army movements), it is very atmospheric. well done there, CA artists.

that is all for now.

[jtfjtfjtf]

1. Battle System: Everything from the battle speed, to the bizarre AI, to the lack of unit/army cohesion, to the stupid hoplite formation, to the loss of guard and loose/tight.

2. UI: really Bland and boring, cards are too big AND uninformative, single style UI breaks game immersion of different cultures.

3. Overall lack of character. Things like shallow political systems/no sense of factional history, Different cultures just seem like copy and pastes of each other with graphical replacements. There's no weather on the map so it looks very same-y every turn.

[Agoraphobia]

1.) 1 turn per year does not work at all for the game, especially with the map being so large. I'll have a general die of old age getting from Italy to Britain!! I believe someone already found a way to change it to 2TPY, there should be an option for 1TPY for casual players, but as a whole I think the game would be much, much more enjoyable and the characters more appealing if the pace was made 2 TPY.

2.) Battles don't feel right - units feel incredibly imbalanced - especially the Roman units, formations and troop placement doesn't feel like it matters at all since it just becomes a mob blob in the middle, lightning fast javelin skirmisher ROF, and pila not functioning like they should, etc. etc.

3.) The fact that ONLY the provincial capitals get walls severely imbalances the game and is a HUGE issue in my opinion. ALL cities should get walls after reaching a certain population size; it doesn't feel like a lot of fun steamrolling through so many minor settlements because provinces often have 4 cities in them, which means typically only 1 in 4 siege battles actually pose any semblance of a challenge. And on that note, it would be nice to have some of the provinces rearranged. For example, Sicily should be its own province and have 3 settlements, with Syracuse as the provincial capital.