Superficial Campaign Map.

[C.Maximus]

This is why empire is the best game imo. Sure it lacked in many ways but what drew me into Shogun Total War 1 was the sheer scale of the game that continued up until empire where we have 3 Massive continents.

I agree... I mean sure France was 1 region if you capture Paris you have control over France.... HOWEVER the mini settlements (though they had no land attached to them) made the game seem like it had more cities. The mini settlements that you could raid and hold, to me, were very interesting. In Mods like Darthmod Empire where the Ai was a bit more of a challenge, I found it interesting fighting my way up through Spain having to actually capture those mini settlements before getting to the capital. I thought Rome II was going to be like this where say there was Sparta, then there was Corinith, Argos ect... there as mini settlements.... (NOT the smaller capitals in Empire but the small villages and towns you were able to build pleasure houses, farms ect in.... THEY I thought made Empire MOST Interesting.) I they were included in Rome II as more in depth small towns... they would no eat up providence space and would make each region more fleshed out with more things to capture/attack and hold. I remember fighting the Austrians as the Ottomans forever in some small town which was an oil industrial place. Anyways... if they made the same sort of thing happen in Rome II it would add much depth to the game awhile not making them have to add more regions to take over.

[Pontic Pontus]

There is a mod which adds tiny unattackable cities in each regions, which make it look more like an empire. It looks much better on the campaign map, with small patches of buildings everywhere.

[MathiasOfAthens]

There is a mod which adds tiny unattackable cities in each regions, which make it look more like an empire. It looks much better on the campaign map, with small patches of buildings everywhere.

Those are just eye-candies. Nothing can be done with them.


Solution is more regions. Smaller village like settlements or towns. The borders would be small and the regions would feel like islands. Anti-region twc people would complain that this would turn into siege fest. Possible... so add in the option to demand surrenders and these regions might be too small to have a large garrisson and when besieged they are more likely to surrender. Then increase the turns-per-year so if it takes a while to conquer Italy it will still feel realistic because only 50 years have passed.

[Errabundi]

At workshop forums we were discussing about THIS

[AnonMilwaukean]

The campaign map is pretty good overall, but, I do agree, it has a few areas that don't fit well into this sort of map system.

As the original poster mentioned, Greece is one of the areas that doesn't fit well into this system. Really, Greece should have almost double the number of settlements, but this just isn't feasible given the size of the map requiring Greece to fit into a fairly small area of game space. Another area I'm not fond of is the Iberian Peninsula: it feels slightly too small.

But the game does pretty well overall with the campaign map, IMO. Especially with areas of vast distances (Arabia, North Africa, Scythia) between settlements. I think they made a choice and chose to favor a map that represents sparse populations better than dense ones, and it really shows if you compare how plausible the Nomadic areas feel versus how insignificant Greece somehow seems.

[AgentGB]

I was hoping for somthing atleast on the same scale as the prologue campaign, if not slighty bigger, but tbh somthing like the slitherine spartan map i posted on page 2 would have been better, to justify the sizes of the settlments. Also they should have kept the ability to build "watch towers" like Rome 1, making ambushing armies force marching a more viable tactic. I mean they have fog of war in battles, surely it would have made sense to have it in the campaign to some extent. One can argue it may be hard for an army to go unnoticed marching into your lands, but still added a nice element of play.

[-iceblade^]

Agreed. The map is bigger but the cities are unrealistically massive as well so actually size comparison is exactly the same as Rome 1. I would prefer if they had made the scale of the grand campaign the same as the Ceasar in Gaul DLC so like 20 or so just in one country.

True, but then they'd have had either an enormous rebel faction, or (hopefully) more factions, and more factions = longer turn ends. Not that I mind an enormous rebel faction, mind you, but having each faction on the map owning one of the provinces does make it a bit more interesting, even if they mostly die off before the midgame

[Riekopo]

The whole map feels "cartoonized" to me.

[RZZZA]

the justification CA gave for this is that they wanted to have more field battles and less frequent siege battles. I'm okay with this

[EdwardReynolds]

The province system limited the amount of cities they really could have. Unless they made the provinces smaller.

IIRC this campaign has nearly 180 towns, more then any other TW game so far and unlike R1 military forces have zones of influence for interdiction and the terrain has choke points everywhere. Dont try act like this map in superficial compared to the R1 map, it is night and day in terms of strategic and tactical depth.

TBH sounds like you just have a worry that there arent enough cities in Greece for your liking to make it the center of attention. And as for 'that area' being devoid of things to do, look to your right and visit turkey, or go north into Illyria and Dacia heck, go south east and visit the Greek Isles.

[Petroniu]

'a few cities'
173 is the greatest number of settlements in a TW game ever, nearly double RTW, and almost every one is held by a different faction. This is I am afraid a blatantly ridiculous statement. The map isn't just the largest in physical size it is also by far the largest in number of settlements and regions

I truly believe that the way they really ed up with the map is with the ridiculous distribution of the cities in which they made all the map regardless of its historical city density have more or less the same amount of settlements. That is why the map seems barren. The real problem is in the fact that more civilized areas like Greece, Italy, Carthaginian Africa, Egypt, Asia Minor and Syria had a large number of settlements with resilient defenses and those are not properly represented in the game. Take Tyros for example which has been a formidable fortress throughout history or Syracuse which is famous for its walled defenses and so on.

There is where the problem lies. IMHO, anyway.

But the actual game contains 104

Haha! The actual cities that exist in Rome 2 is 53. The rest are just a bunch of defenseless villages! PAM PAM!

[jamreal18]

When they first announced the province system I was excited, because it seemed to be a streamlined way to manage a lot of cities. When the game was released, however, it transpired to be a dumbed-down way to manage a few cities.

Me too...
Corinth and Thebes has been removed. Crete was replaced by Knossos.
Also because of province system, Syracuse, Jerusalem, Sparta, Rhodes, etc sacrificed their walls and became generic villages...

[Vimes]

For those people who are suggesting that the map could do with more cities do you not think that the campaign can be a grind already as you progress....?

On my last campaign I ended with a military victory by simply sending a couple of stacks to capture the city of Arsamosata and thus, with my military alliance of Sparta and Athens, hold the province of Armenia and, at the same time of capturing that city, build another 50 plus ships and a win to be had, albeit a sort of hollow victory.

I did use the mod noted to place extra towns and villages etc on the map but as I now use the highest graphics settings it no longer looks right.

Unless there were ways to scale up the rest of the game mechanics to keep my interest in playing a larger or more province enriched map I am more than happy enough as it is, in the respect of the number of cities etc.
As noted I find it a bit of a grind already doing a full tour of the map, but that is common to all the TW games that I have played once my faction gets to a certain size and already dominates the game.

[Petroniu]

True, but then they'd have had either an enormous rebel faction, or (hopefully) more factions, and more factions = longer turn ends. Not that I mind an enormous rebel faction, mind you, but having each faction on the map owning one of the provinces does make it a bit more interesting, even if they mostly die off before the midgame

What really ticks me off with the one faction - 1 region thing is that that 1 faction can recruit an entire army while you can barely manage to have 3 as a minor kingdom with 2 provinces! Surrounded by 4 one region factions you get yourself overwhelmed unrealistically.

For those people who are suggesting that the map could do with more cities do you not think that the campaign can be a grind already as you progress....?

On my last campaign I ended with a military victory by simply sending a couple of stacks to capture the city of Arsamosata and thus, with my military alliance of Sparta and Athens, hold the province of Armenia and, at the same time of capturing that city, build another 50 plus ships and a win to be had, albeit a sort of hollow victory.

I did use the mod noted to place extra towns and villages etc on the map but as I now use the highest graphics settings it no longer looks right.

Unless there were ways to scale up the rest of the game mechanics to keep my interest in playing a larger or more province enriched map I am more than happy enough as it is, in the respect of the number of cities etc.
As noted I find it a bit of a grind already doing a full tour of the map, but that is common to all the TW games that I have played once my faction gets to a certain size and already dominates the game.

That problem lies in the fact that you have to conquer half of the map to achieve victory. That s up replayability big time! I mean, you can only play a campaign with a faction once and you are through! Why the hell would you go back to playing Carthage again if you have already conquered the world with it?! That was another stupid CA design choice!

[MathiasOfAthens]

Me too...
Corinth and Thebes has been removed. Crete was replaced by Knossos.
Also because of province system, Syracuse, Jerusalem, Sparta, Rhodes, etc sacrificed their walls and became generic villages...

Crete is an island. Knossos is the capital city.

[zonks40]

The campaign map looks pretty and that's about it, you cannot call a village a city, you only have two build options, they can never achieve city status, which is a few bucket loads of sand out of the sand box right there, you need to capture 3-4 regions before you have the equivalent of a city in Rome 1.
It's just a part of the dumbing down process, there is no reason that I could not build a temple, barracks and a farm in a town, they have just made it easier for the not so intelligent, as they complain about having to much to do.

[AgentGB]

Crete is an island. Knossos is the capital city.

yeah, in slitherine spartan, there are 4 citys in crete

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

For those people who are suggesting that the map could do with more cities do you not think that the campaign can be a grind already as you progress....?

On my last campaign I ended with a military victory by simply sending a couple of stacks to capture the city of Arsamosata and thus, with my military alliance of Sparta and Athens, hold the province of Armenia and, at the same time of capturing that city, build another 50 plus ships and a win to be had, albeit a sort of hollow victory.

I did use the mod noted to place extra towns and villages etc on the map but as I now use the highest graphics settings it no longer looks right.

Unless there were ways to scale up the rest of the game mechanics to keep my interest in playing a larger or more province enriched map I am more than happy enough as it is, in the respect of the number of cities etc.
As noted I find it a bit of a grind already doing a full tour of the map, but that is common to all the TW games that I have played once my faction gets to a certain size and already dominates the game.

Only seems a grind because of the silly victory conditions, and once your established, you can pretty much autoresolve your way to victory anyway. Also given the fact that settlements are all a single turns march away, that why attacking settlements can feel like a drag. They could have added a warscore mechanic, or ask town surrender option. Expansion in Rome 2 is far to easy, it should feel like your confined to a theatre of war in your own right, playing as crete in spartan slitherine, it would be pretty ambitious to even think of going to turkey, let alone attacking the Lacedaemon. To assemble enough materials, food, silver to pay the troops while moblised would take some building up, and if you have any hicups or even if you don't, you may be able to get a city or two of them, in which you need to build up again, and wait for the counter attack.

[Petroniu]

Crete is an island. Knossos is the capital city.

Actually, in Rome 2, Knossos is the faction and Hyeraptina is the city on the island. No reference at all to Crete - which is odd because everybody knew it as Crete even back then IIRC.

[AgentGB]

Actually, in Rome 2, Knossos is the faction and Hyeraptina is the city on the island. No reference at all to Crete - which is odd because everybody knew it as Crete even back then IIRC.

Thats a good point!

[AnthoniusII]

'a few cities'
173 is the greatest number of settlements in a TW game ever, nearly double RTW, and almost every one is held by a different faction. This is I am afraid a blatantly ridiculous statement. The map isn't just the largest in physical size it is also by far the largest in number of settlements and regions

RTW1 supports 199 'real' cities.......nothing blatantly ridiculous about that. It would appear that is 26 more than Rome2.

Both Rome I and MTW2 have the 199 provinces limit (with sea as the 200th). Focus on the word provinces.
I do not know the R2 provinces limit though..As province in R2 has from 2 to 4 cities in it now...If cities limit in R2 will still be 199 then is a clear backwards step because that way provinces will be less.
If provinces limitation can reach 199 then it means that actually cities (capitals and smaller ones) can atleast be 398!!!!! That way a mod could have 199 proninces with a capital and a country side city!
That would look promicing! We need a CA answer in this matter!
Even if the best scenario will be the last one i discribe an other answer is the capital cities real model (on strat_map) limitation. You have notticed that each city -small or capital-expands according to the position on the strat_map is placed on. If as example we would like to add Byzantion city and make a new province , we can not be sure that the capital model will expand on the land and not in to the sea!!! An other answer CA must give us!