My honest question : Is the new release Rome 2 fixable?

[the_mango55]

What would you consider "fixed"?

I mean if I had the same standards people seem to have for Rome 2, then the original RTW hasn't been "fixed" yet and it's been a decade.

[Vernah]

everything is fixable if someone is really willing to do so.


now the question is....

How far will CA go for Rome II ?



: P

I feel like someone needs to make a signature banner with this slogan and start a protest to get CA to fix this damn game.

[Ferdiad]

The games fine, it has bugs and design flaws like all games but it's certainly playable and enjoyable.

[Huberto]

What would you consider "fixed"? I mean if I had the same standards people seem to have for Rome 2, then the original RTW hasn't been "fixed" yet and it's been a decade.

Yeah but... the apt comparison is with Shogun 2. Who cares how bad RTW was on release it's been 9 years, the company has grown, the supporting tech has changed and CA 40% more staff than Shogun 2 and a bigger to produce something decent. Didn't happen obviously, so the question is why.

[UnLimitedSD]

As long as they fix the optimization I'm fine with it. There's not much else to fix, at least for me. I'm really enjoying this game, but those damn 15 FPS on the campaign map hurt.

[rudthemighty]

The game is completely broken in its state. Some factions are overpowered. AI is retarded. Performance issues all over. You time is better spent away from Total War Rome 2 Unifinished.

Source: 30+ hours of gametime.

[UnLimitedSD]

Oh, right. The AI is horrible. Siege battles are extremely easy if you have ranged units. I win pretty much every single one since the AI just sits there, letting me shoot it to death.

[Black-]

No. On their site they have a thread telling us only 2% have problems.
Believing in that, there is no need to fix anything.

[Kenios]

I do not agree AI is horrible. It station melee units behind missile units, but will charge the melee units out if you attempt to close in. It knows to target your valuable units with missile fire rather than waste them on lower quality troops. It often moves cavalry in for a flanking attack. If intercepted by your melee troops, its cavalry will pull back and swoop in for another flanking attack. It knows not to directly charge its units head-on against your melee units, but approach from an angle so as to wrap around your unit. In a siege defense, it knows to use how to build a perimeter defense. You can pelt it with missiles, and it does respond by charging out in a do-or-die attack. When it does, it moves supporting units behind to support the attack. However, it does not commit all its forces, so the player can't just lure them all away and run in to grab the town centre.

[GnaReffotsirk]

It is a pain to have to be patient on a game just because I love the idea. And my god, why are the textures so vibrant and cartoony?

[BruceR]

Yeah, land BAI isn't great, but it isn't any worse than its predecessors (including RTW and MTW2, which also had pretty godawful AI, no matter what people think they remember). Battle realism mode takes away a lot of the human advantages in the later games if you like that sort of thing. I just don't use it because I like pausing to zoom in on the whole tableau close up some of the time.

(And this is my problem with the threads complaining about the funny looking faces. Yeah, they're hilarious, I get it, I'm still laughing at the some of the screenshots, too, but making something I should barely see because I'm zoomed out fighting a battle should have been a lower priority than better BAI... every time we say some face texture or animation looks funny up close, we're basically saying to CA we feel that's more important than getting the computer to fight smart, and that's a real shame.)

There's all kinds of little problems, sure, more than Shogun 2, no doubt, and I'm hopeful patches will fix a few soon, but this game is nowhere near as bad as some say right now. I'm confident I've been getting my money's worth.

What I am impressed with is CA made some big decisions here they knew could be unpopular. The battlefield capture flags were their own little blow against corner- and hill-camping, which has been easily the cheapest exploit in the game since the first Shogun. Similarly, transports that fight were their way of negating the single-ship army-sinking fleet, which had to be the second-cheapest. Yeah, both could be refined. But they're both good, historically solid ideas for making the fight more challenging for the player.

They've obviously been listening to the Mike Loades of the world, too, and are putting forward a vision for ancient combat that in some ways is really quite radical: none of the Arrian-to-Creasy, ordered-battle, move-countermove stuff. They're saying a real ancient fight was a bashup, over almost before it started, where it was more important in those few minutes where your commander stood and what he did than any brilliant sweeping maneuvers, and a lot of the stuff that's been written about Ancient fighting that makes it seem some kind of ornate, intricate ballet of units is just wrong. They wouldn't have designed the fighting this way, otherwise.

Now they could be wrong there (and they could have overdone it, and need to modify things a bit, sure) but it's made me think about that stuff again, and want to learn more, just like its predecessor games all did. The people jumping at mods because they find the fighting unusual should try playing the game as it's intended for a little more, first, imho. (I say that as a modder myself.)

PS: Oh yeah, while I'm at it: next biggest complaint after the above has been campaign turns last too long between player turns. Well, you know what? If you push the devs to put in five dozen factions for realism, and yet you still want to watch all their moves for the intel value, yeah, that's kinda what happens. We know the computer can resolve all the dice rolling faster, but then you'd miss the intel value. So yeah, campaign turns should probably be faster (especially if "watch other faction moves" is turned off, then they should just zip), but this is again a predictable outcome of what we asked them for.

[Niccolo Machiavelli]

Actually, there really isn't a lot to fix as compared to RTW1 or any other game in the series.

After having played each and every TW game, I have to say this game is by far the most flawlss Vanilla TW reease we'ev ever had, except S2TW.

S2TW was very polished at release, but it was a far more restricted scenario, so quite a few humps were to be expected.

Actually, I strongly disliked R1TW at release and the only reason I can think of RTW is popular was the fact that the TW series had mass-appeal because it was '3d' for the very first time. At release, it was one of the most terrible releases I've ever played, except ETW, which had so many gamebreaking bugs

Vanilla TW always had an awesome concept but there is not a single one TW game that did beter at release except maybe S2TW - people only seem to remember their 1000+ hours playing a fixed and modded version of previous games.

Considering how hard it is to port the rather simplisctic approach of S2TW to an antique scenario, CA did an incredible job and managed to release their most impressive release to this date.

Yes - i't's full of bugs and letdons (seriously - the family tree iwas one og the core featuers in TW games). but compared to previous TW games (maybe except S2TW) this is absolute heaven. The Province system is pure geniuos, just as army stances are. I have to mildly chuckle at all those complaining on how bad the AI is, because it was so mind-boggingly bad in every TW ewlwase to this date, I seriously have to conduct that these people have never played a TW game on its release and if they did, these people are mentally challenged.

[Chewie]

Well, I wouldn't call it heaven but I definitely think it wasn't as bad as Empire or Medieval 2 on release. I thought Shogun 2 was as finished as you can expect any game to be these days when it came out, though I did have a good rig so I avoided a lot of the performance problems. I think I would place this as the 3rd most unbugged release behind Shogun 2 and Rome 1 (which I really liked on release). I don't remember any bugs really from Napoleon but I'm throwing that together with Empire. I played medieval 1 and shogun 1 after patches were released so don't know anything about those. And can the bugs for Rome 2 be fixed? IMO yes they can. I'm all for the how far will CA go for Rome quote lol

[absinthia]

Considering how hard it is to port the rather simplisctic approach of S2TW to an antique scenario, CA did an incredible job and managed to release their most impressive release to this date.

hard to port? that is no excuse when it is their own pile of crap they are adapting!
if they had actually developed a piece of software that did fit the antique scenario, that would have been incredible.

if anything this release got me interested in S2TW, as i have heard much good about it in this here forum.
honestly i have not touched a TW game since M2TW and i am not impressed with the depth or quality here. what reminds me most of R1TW is the uniform look of the units, that is not high praise...

[Wittman]

Nope

[Riekopo]

There is too much bad in the design to fix this. Anyone up for Europa Universalis IV? lol

[Wittman]

Im game as the guy said,it will be YEARS before this game will be ROME 2,now its some random strategy game

[beksibeksi]

It depends on what you want "fixed."

Optimization - yes.
AI - it'll be decent in around two months and modders will fix the rest.
Family trees - maybe if the community whines REALLY HARD.
Battle speed - maybe, but Radious already fixed that.
Guard mode - not likely but could happen.
Javelin stop mode - not likely but could happen
Capture flags - not going to happen.
Better portraits - if we complain hard enough.
Balancing - will happen but generally up to mods.
Multiplayer - will be included in expansion pack.
Caesar Total War - definitely.
Turn Times - maybe, but I suggest everybody to just get an Intel CPU.

The AI really isn't that horrible. There are major problems with it, but most of them are isolated problems that don't affect other areas.
The capture point isn't going away because it was implemented to fix something.

I think most of the problems fans want "fixed" won't be "fixed," but if you like the core of the game, the provincial system, the new tech trees, the faction specific buildings, the battles, and the campaign, I think it can become more enjoyable.
With Radious mods it's pretty much the game I always wanted tbh.
I do feel sorry for those that wanted a Shogun 2 type multiplayer but at the same time I can see how CA didn't focus on that aspect of the game, considering they couldn't even get the single player to work properly on the release date.

[PlacidDragon]

My honest question : Is the new release Rome 2 fixable?

Yes and no. It really depends on what they have hard coded.

Things like bugs, crashes, the AI, etc can of course be fixed through patching, and/or modding. The same with battle speeds, and so on (Radious and other modders already has a number of mods out to address some of these issues).

What modders probably cannot touch (again, depending on hard coding) is the foundation of the game, things like the capture flags, the completely anemic political system, etc.

So shortly put, you can pretty up the facade, but the foundation its standing on is rotten to the core

[caratacus]

You can only fix problems not a flawed design. Yes many of the numerous bugs and glitches could be ironed out to greatly improve performance but sadly if you are like me and don't like the actual form of the game, you are probably stuck with it. I just can't see CA doing a major overhaul of the game by taking out unpopular features and restoring those that were included with previous titles, they simply won't have the time allocation for that and those only so much of the game that can be modified.

Shogun 2 also had problems on it's release, but these were ironed out and with the release of FOTS and subsequent modding tools, many thought that CA had turned a big corner from the disaster with Empire. Which makes the mess of RTW2 all the more difficult to comprehend, unless the game is being orientated towards consoles.

I love Total War, don't play any other game and I am extremely disappointed by how RTW2 came out. But in a way I am glad it is what it is. Instead of undertaking long campaigns and modding it, I can finally get away from the computer in my free time and get to do other things instead. So thanks CA for liberating me from the PC and especially a big thank you from my dog, who hates me playing Total war when she wants to go a walk. Maybe in a few more years I will get to play a game which truly recreates ancient warfare, sadly RTW2 in its present form just doesn't do that for me.