PATCH 2 beta has begun!

[Niccolo Machiavelli]

Definitely a good patch - I'm playing this in conjunction with Radious except the Campaign enhancements (since I think increasing the limit of generals again allows the AI to split its armies in too many small stacks) on legendary as Suebi and with two turns/year and I must say compared to my last Suebi Campaign it's brutal (third campaign as Suebi).

Whereas I was easily able to unite the tribes (i.e. conquering all germanic provinces) on my last two attempts (vanilla VH & Radious Legendary), I'm struggling quite a bit this time around. Managed to take Hercynia occupied by the tribe you start out at war with and formed a confederation with the Marcomanni then the Cheruskans declared war on me.

That war swayed back and forth for a while until I managed to gain the upper hand and took their capital, however the regained a foothold in eastern Hercynia using their remaining stack. Meanwhile the Kimbri declared war on me after having expanded into northern suebia, shortly followed by the tribe to my east who managed to expand quite nicely. One of my two main armies just got crushed in my start province, which will force me to move the other one north which will give the Cheruskans time to catch some breath in eastern Hercynia.

Can't say much about performance as I didn't have any issues playing on extreme settings before the patch, but turn time has definitely decreased quite a bit, albeit it increases the further I get into the campaign. BAI is still bad, but that's the one thing that saved me thus far (had to fight quite a few battles manually due to being outnumbered, whereas I could autoresolve everything on my last legendary attempt except maybe 1-2 crucial battles).

[Dago Red]

Step in the right direction. But one step in a journey where they should already have been a mile by the time they delivered this to us.

There are now new bugs I'm having, including the cursor being permanently stuck in a "expanding tool" form from resizing the encyclopedia window and a giant red streak that appears across the screen when a general has depleted his movement points.

grade: D+

[Pheidippides]

Got the patch and started a Carthage game. The campaign performance is significantly better, I'm getting some texture lag but when I click on something a menu actually pops up without a few second wait. It's a fun campaign so far. I'm at war in West Africa with a tribe that has taken a province from Nova Carthago, and Hannibal is rampaging around Southern Italy. Where I left off his Carthaginian/merc army has looted and sacked two southern Italian cites, killed a half dozen Roman generals, and is besieging Brundisium. But there's just been a revolt on Sicily, the Romans are massing several stacks around Rome, and I have no money to send him since it's all tied up fighting barbarians. I might have to recall him to retake Sicily from the rebels, which would give the Romans time to regroup- decisions decisions.

I say left off because there is still this very annoying bug in siege battles. When my troops are setting fire to a gate, if I zoom down the screen cuts to black. Apparently this does not freeze the game because I can hear sounds of battle. But it's essentially a freeze and I have to quit.

There's also a notable bug when I modify any graphics settings in game, the screen turns a dark blue and I have to quit and restart. Can still see the unit flags though, and am able to give orders.

A few more notes: it's really hard to make peace, even when you've won every battle and taken cites from the enemy; the AI still fields too many little stacks with too many skirmishers; breaking up Carthage without a mission that will let you reunify Nova Carthago and Libya was a bad game decision, as now I have to wait for my allies to get their cites taken before I can recapture them; I still don't get naval combat; the AI still does not properly screen their main force in city battles; they need to make transports cost money and only spawn from a large enough port, because the idea of the Romans shuttling their troops up and down the peninsula on giant vessels they build out of nowhere is ridiculous.