I dared to start a single campaign again.

[Roboute Guilliman]

So after countless multiplayer battles, the only enjoyable aspect of the game, I told myself well why not start a single player campaign to see if the game has improved with the patches. I chose Thracia (Odyssiran Kingdom, yes have some mods installed: the Thracia Unit pack (with major tweaks from myself), natural dyes, and the unlock all factions).

First impression, was of course the beautiful city waiting to get expanded. I raised a couple of troops and clicked next turn, to my surprise a Celtic neighbour wanted a trade agreement. This was the moment I told myself, hmm this game seems to work properly now, an AI willing to interact with the player! Two turns later they even wanted an alliance.

After that those great impressions, which lasted 4-6 turns, started to fade. When looking at the black sea, I noticed the steppe factions preferred to sail with massive horsearcher armies and harrassing other ''naval'' horsearcher armies wandering aimlessly around. The nomdadic way of the steppe seemed to be to boring for them

Madness I told to myself and preferred an western invasion of Illyria. The Daorsi(spelling?) seemed like an easy target, and well like one I am used to in the previous total wars. They had an army guarding their one city. So I gathered my troops, besieged the city and conquered it with ease. I sent in first my jav men in first firing everything they got on the defenders who preferred to just stand there and watch their men falling down left and right. When I sent in my troops for melee, there was not much left of the defending force. A 'close' victory was obtained with me losing maybe 70 men of my 2000.
I converted the city to my barbarian hellenic ways, and moved south on Epirus. Conquered both cities and got a faction destroyed screen, and then it hit me, I didnt get that with daorsi.
The answer why came 2 turns later when I noticed two full stacks of Illyrian Levy Spear landed from their club Med trip. Defeated them with ease.

This is where I stopped playing.


Whats with the AI sending their land armies on naval expeditions? We all know previous total war games had a problem with naval invasions, but this is even worse. The AI just sends them out, leaves themselves completly open for a land invasion. Why can land armies even build transport boats? Were there ship engineers among the army at all times? Do they carry these transport boats? Questions over questions.

The siege AI is the same. Defenders waiting for you to engage them on the streets. You can let your missile troops fire at them unhindered.

With the lack of political and character immersion, this game is just offering a basic multiplayer. On my way to Illyria, I have fought battles and lost my 'faction leader' countless times. The guy just got replaced with a full stack of bodyguards and the campaign continued. /snore

I am still going to give this game 4/10.

[Sun Tsu]

Yeah but you have mods installed...and you play with a modded faction... try to play with generic faction like Rome...( some mods and patches do not work together very well)

[♘Top Hat Zebra]

Sounds like a game of Shogun 2, to me. Or maybe Empire, given the siege AI.

I climbed a wall in Empire and then just lined up and shot the enemy to death, who just sat in their fort and died.

[Roboute Guilliman]

Yeah but you have mods installed...and you play with a modded faction... try to play with generic faction like Rome...( some mods and patches do not work together very well)

The mods dont touch the AI files. Nor the game mechanics, units added and factions playble thats it.

[bigfootedfred]

So after countless multiplayer battles, the only enjoyable aspect of the game, I told myself well why not start a single player campaign to see if the game has improved with the patches. I chose Thracia (Odyssiran Kingdom, yes have some mods installed: the Thracia Unit pack (with major tweaks from myself), natural dyes, and the unlock all factions).

First impression, was of course the beautiful city waiting to get expanded. I raised a couple of troops and clicked next turn, to my surprise a Celtic neighbour wanted a trade agreement. This was the moment I told myself, hmm this game seems to work properly now, an AI willing to interact with the player! Two turns later they even wanted an alliance.

After that those great impressions, which lasted 4-6 turns, started to fade. When looking at the black sea, I noticed the steppe factions preferred to sail with massive horsearcher armies and harrassing other ''naval'' horsearcher armies wandering aimlessly around. The nomdadic way of the steppe seemed to be to boring for them

Madness I told to myself and preferred an western invasion of Illyria. The Daorsi(spelling?) seemed like an easy target, and well like one I am used to in the previous total wars. They had an army guarding their one city. So I gathered my troops, besieged the city and conquered it with ease. I sent in first my jav men in first firing everything they got on the defenders who preferred to just stand there and watch their men falling down left and right. When I sent in my troops for melee, there was not much left of the defending force. A 'close' victory was obtained with me losing maybe 70 men of my 2000.
I converted the city to my barbarian hellenic ways, and moved south on Epirus. Conquered both cities and got a faction destroyed screen, and then it hit me, I didnt get that with daorsi.
The answer why came 2 turns later when I noticed two full stacks of Illyrian Levy Spear landed from their club Med trip. Defeated them with ease.

This is where I stopped playing.


Whats with the AI sending their land armies on naval expeditions? We all know previous total war games had a problem with naval invasions, but this is even worse. The AI just sends them out, leaves themselves completly open for a land invasion. Why can land armies even build transport boats? Were there ship engineers among the army at all times? Do they carry these transport boats? Questions over questions.

The siege AI is the same. Defenders waiting for you to engage them on the streets. You can let your missile troops fire at them unhindered.

With the lack of political and character immersion, this game is just offering a basic multiplayer. On my way to Illyria, I have fought battles and lost my 'faction leader' countless times. The guy just got replaced with a full stack of bodyguards and the campaign continued. /snore

I am still going to give this game 4/10.

yeah its reversed basically, i dont think its fixable.

Water is treated as -high speed land- by AI, and land is treat like -low speed water-

its like empire in reverse. mentioned on the .com dunno how many times. sure plenty others have too.
they are forever sailing off somewhere. its stupid.

[Humble Warrior]

The whole instant army to ships things is another `feature` that seriously breaks the CAI function. Y`see, now the AI army just jump onto the sea like it`s land without any thought and this is why it`s such a mess. If the AI army was restricted to land UNTIL it could find a ship at a port (or had some time penalty\COST in building ships), it would prefer to use the sea far less and only for proper-planned Naval invasions.

I ran empire (Darthmod) and it was so nice to see armies actually go to ports and get ships before they could go out there- It showed that there was a programmed routine telling the army it needed ships before considering any kind of `off land` expedition and kept armies generally on land. Wow am I actually saying Empire is better than RTW2??


RTW2 needs serious reworking and we`re not getting it because CA are too arrogant to fix this, along with family trees and how Roman units fight and sieges, etc, etc, etc...

Why do I even bother?

[Arkonath]

RTW2 needs serious reworking and we`re not getting it because CA are too arrogant to fix this, along with family trees and how Roman units fight and sieges, etc, etc, etc...

Lately I've been thinking about their absolute refusal to improve or add new features giving only weak excuses or contradictory explanations. I think this is not a matter of attitude anymore, I truly believe they have a problem with their aptitude. That means they are not capable of managing their own engine as much as they want and they don't how to stop it. Now I question myself if the same dev team that worked in Shogun 2 is working on this game.

[Konfuzfanten]

The main problem with Rome 2 is the very week CAI and BAI. Its just not fun or rewarding winning in R2, you have to be semi-retarded to lose a campaign even on legendary, unless you get really unlucky and get a lot of negative events in the start of the campaign.

[Huberto]

I converted the city to my barbarian hellenic ways, and moved south on Epirus. Conquered both cities and got a faction destroyed screen, and then it hit me, I didnt get that with daorsi.
The answer why came 2 turns later when I noticed two full stacks of Illyrian Levy Spear landed from their club Med trip. Defeated them with ease.

This is where I stopped playing.
I am still going to give this game 4/10.

Yes I've noticed this behavior in my campaigns (before I uninstalled). In fact it's very hard to miss. For some reason the AI will leave its cities and take to the water. At first I thought the AI took to the water because it was outnumbered in a potential siege or land battle. But nah, it appears that CAI simply likes to park land units out on the water (water armies I call them). After five patches too? Holy that's a bad game!

In this picture you can see this random desert tribe, that rewrote history by conquering all of Libya, Egypt and the province of Nabatea, putting their army stacks out to sea as welcoming committee so I can conquer these regions and build the Roman Empire. The CAI likes to keep those water armies just out of range of my ports so they end up dying of attrition.

I think the the idea may be that the CAI "hides" out there and then tries to recapture the cities after losing them? I dunno sounds pretty clever to me. This is why I keep saying that this is the worst PC strategy game I've ever played.

[MKeogh]

The "insta-amphibious" armies is the biggest reason why I haven't played this game in weeks. It ruined the campaign game. There are too many of those boring/buggy amphibious city assault battles and the water-happy CAI all too often leaves its cities unprotected due to its armies sailing off to no where. This poorly thought-out and implemented feature is one of the biggest reasons why Rome2 is a terrible game.

I would have been happy with a Roman "mod" for Shogun2. Instead CA tried to reinvent the wheel by adding all sorts of features that no one asked for and quite simply don't work due to AI failings. The sad thing is CA views these new features as WAD and thus most likely will never be "fixed."

[Humble Warrior]

Lately I've been thinking about their absolute refusal to improve or add new features giving only weak excuses or contradictory explanations. I think this is not a matter of attitude anymore, I truly believe they have a problem with their aptitude. That means they are not capable of managing their own engine as much as they want and they don't how to stop it. Now I question myself if the same dev team that worked in Shogun 2 is working on this game.

It certainly feels like a completely different team worked on RTW2 than worked on STW2. An arrogant team with it`s head in the sand. Just run STW2 and the difference is immediate just from the way it starts and runs in a campaign. First thing I do is check the FAMILY TREE and start giving my Generals titles. Good luck doing that in RTW2. Everyone liked how naval invasions worked- it seemed CA had learned from Empire`s mistakes.

But then RTW2???

How could CA not learn from the relatively good reception of STW2, especially FOTS?

And how does lusted even support this schizophrenic approach?

Oh wait- money.

[Naked Emperor]

I was playing Sparta and was at war with everyone except Macedon and Carthage, some 25 factions. And I just built a couple of navies and sunk most of the armies using autocalc. If the A.I is unable to destroy me or even halt my advance on VH difficulty while fighting literally every faction that borders me and their friends and allies then something is wrong. I at least lost some campaigns in S2 on very hard. I think people have to make an effort to lose a game in R2

[Slaists]

Overindulgence in Mediterranean cruises is the reason Roman AI tends to get wiped out (by minor AI's) in my campaigns too. The AI let's minor factions tear Italy apart while legions cruise around the seas.

[AusHaching]

Whats with the AI sending their land armies on naval expeditions? We all know previous total war games had a problem with naval invasions, but this is even worse. The AI just sends them out, leaves themselves completly open for a land invasion. Why can land armies even build transport boats? Were there ship engineers among the army at all times? Do they carry these transport boats? Questions over questions.

The siege AI is the same. Defenders waiting for you to engage them on the streets. You can let your missile troops fire at them unhindered.

The reason why the AI behaves this way should - of all people - not be a surprise for you. CA is codex-compliant and therefore cannot use real AI. Wouldn´t want the Inquisition on their doorstep.

[totalwar_legend]

Yeah but you have mods installed...and you play with a modded faction... try to play with generic faction like Rome...( some mods and patches do not work together very well)

I don't think you know what generic means. Generic refers to something that either has no brand or is part of a large group. Rome is the most unique faction in regards to culture because the only other faction that shares latin culture are the etruscans. None of the other factions look anything like roman units or cities.

The generic factions are the barbarian non playable factions.

[Dunadd]

yeah the fleets of transports sailing off to random places everywhere are stupid and annoying. Transports need nerfed to the point that they're useless against warships so the AI stops this.

[krisslanza]

The AI likely treats the sea as land, as mentioned. Which makes some sense - after all it's much faster to usually reach somewhere by going in the ocean, then walking depending. It's much faster to get to Africa if you just sail across the ocean, instead of walking all the way through Iberia.

The problem being, somehow, the AI doesn't seem to realize its cities are being attacked often. I have seen the AI pull its fleets back before but... it seems kind of hit or miss. It also likes to just hang out in the sea until I leave, then it just lands and takes the settlement back. TW could really benefit from an 'intelligent' AI, but I somehow can't imagine how to do that without inventing Skynet or something.

[bigfootedfred]

Yes I've noticed this behavior in my campaigns (before I uninstalled). In fact it's very hard to miss. For some reason the AI will leave its cities and take to the water. At first I thought the AI took to the water because it was outnumbered in a potential siege or land battle. But nah, it appears that CAI simply likes to park land units out on the water (water armies I call them). After five patches too? Holy that's a bad game!

In this picture you can see this random desert tribe, that rewrote history by conquering all of Libya, Egypt and the province of Nabatea, putting their army stacks out to sea as welcoming committee so I can conquer these regions and build the Roman Empire. The CAI likes to keep those water armies just out of range of my ports so they end up dying of attrition.

I think the the idea may be that the CAI "hides" out there and then tries to recapture the cities after losing them? I dunno sounds pretty clever to me. This is why I keep saying that this is the worst PC strategy game I've ever played.

im pretty much convinced its on purpose now. its intended to just get out of the way of the human player when it comes along, thats what its basicaly told to do.

[Akumu]

im pretty much convinced its on purpose now. its intended to just get out of the way of the human player when it comes along, thats what its basicaly told to do.

I can agree with this. There has been plenty of times a faction goes to war with me, I send my army to their city, then they pack up and go out on a cruise. It's pretty mind boggling that this is the A.I. that received so much attention compared to previous games(yet it's clearly a HUGE step back or zero improvement). I was even willing to compromise with the magical insta ship for armies if it helped the A.I., but it makes it worst compared to every other installment.

While I don't hate R2TW as much as some others here, I must admit CA seriously slapped every TW fan in the face with this release. The final product is very little of what was promised/hyped(wasn't Rome 2 originally supposed to have 3 tpy? I could be mistaken). Politics system is clearly half-baked and could have replaced the family tree well (at least without the reaction of torches and pitchforks) if some solid effort was put into it.

Yet that's all R2TW really is. It's a game with loads of potential that will never be realized because CA will not put in the work needed. Sure, hope is always with the modders, but that's assuming they have all the tools needed, the access to the important files, and the time/patience to basically make the other half of an incomplete game. What irritates me the most is that we won't see any solid improvements until maybe 2 years from now in another game(if CA has anything to say about it).

[pajomife]

After that those great impressions, which lasted 4-6 turns, started to fade. When looking at the black sea, I noticed the steppe factions preferred to sail with massive horsearcher armies and harrassing other ''naval'' horsearcher armies wandering aimlessly around. The nomdadic way of the steppe seemed to be to boring for them

Serious?,here,here,here,but its not a bug its a feature.Of course the first thing that an African tribe or steppe factions makes reaching the sea, is to build a fleet, especially if they never had any contact with the sea, and have not ant naval technology.
This is what the CA has given us, through laziness or other reason .And the worst, is that here in the forum, there are still those who defend it. They deserve the game they have.