Superficial Campaign Map.

[TuuSaR]

Settlement number has to be somewhat limited otherwise workload gets too big.

[godles1984]

Rome2 has 173 regions vs Rome1 with 103 regions.

But i agree the campaign map in rome1 is better i also miss the building of forts and watch towers.

[Huberto]

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.

Agree. A design decision so terrible one would think Mr. Satomi ordered it himself.

[Swamidude]

I hope they make it available for modders to adjust it, what also would be great is that if they are done with the mini campaign DLC's and you own all of them there's a special feature to merge them all in the main campaign. Assuming they are going to make enough DLC minicampaigns to pretty much cover the world (perhaps a few regions added for making this option possible after the last dlc). So after that you can play the grand campaign, but with all the mini campaign maps included, so you would really have one massive map that's huge. Or perhaps a mod could enable this... Now it's pointless to have only Gaul exist out of many regions and the rest of the world not

[VINC.XXIII]

Agreed with the OP.
If I can add this point again: C.A must take example on Dominium of the Sword PSF. In few words, the province would be subdivided in capital, secondary settlements, port, fortresses, or else according the local specificity(nomad camps, emporion, colonies...etc)

[B. W.]

Rome 2 campaign map: gargantuan cities and tiny roads. I played an entire campaign and never developed roads in Italy. It's ridiculous how the game mechanics are set up. In RTW you built roads to increase growth and trade. In Rome 2 you have to increase growth and trade to build roads. WTF?

[AgentGB]

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!

Bang! that would be neat!

I hope they make it available for modders to adjust it, what also would be great is that if they are done with the mini campaign DLC's and you own all of them there's a special feature to merge them all in the main campaign. Assuming they are going to make enough DLC minicampaigns to pretty much cover the world (perhaps a few regions added for making this option possible after the last dlc). So after that you can play the grand campaign, but with all the mini campaign maps included, so you would really have one massive map that's huge. Or perhaps a mod could enable this... Now it's pointless to have only Gaul exist out of many regions and the rest of the world not

Ive been thinking about that too! That would be a pretty sweet way of doing it, a long time to wait, but if it could happen that way also, that would be great. If they are worried about workload, allow modder to do somthing very much like in Empire, were you can swap in between different theatres. Although tbh, that could have been done by CA from the start.

Rome 2 campaign map: gargantuan cities and tiny roads. I played an entire campaign and never developed roads in Italy. It's ridiculous how the game mechanics are set up. In RTW you built roads to increase growth and trade. In Rome 2 you have to increase growth and trade to build roads. WTF?

Somthing else i miss also! Romans were famous for there roads, somthing that was hugely missed in such a game, even in RS2, the barbarian factions had an equivalent, of amber/silk/tin trade routes.

[MathiasOfAthens]

They were famous for their engineering skills. IE: Roads, bridges, forts etc. All of which are sorta missed.

[Mirni]

For me Mods for RTW Europa Barbarorum & Roma Surrectum have better map Sicily have 6 towns ,Greece & Italy was much better



Macedonia

[Cavalier]

I dislike the number of settlements that are prevalent in major mods for RTW. I don't need 15-20 settlements in Greece, for example. It just gets tedious after a while. I mean, I played one of the major mods for RTW and eventually it just bogged down to siege after siege after siege. 6 settlements for Macedonia and Hellas combined is alright as in Rome II, though two or three more wouldn't hurt.

[Holger Danske]

You know there could have been implemented other mechanics to prevent the siegefest beyond the dumbed down simplistic idea of less settlements, mechanics that in fact would underline the importance and significance of large field battles. But given CA's competence I understand why such could not be made.

[GussieFinkNottle]

Rome2 has 173 regions vs Rome1 with 103 regions.

But i agree the campaign map in rome1 is better i also miss the building of forts and watch towers.

Every design feature from Rome 1 that was cut for Rome 2: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...Rome-2-doesn-t
It comes to quite a total.

[Cavalier]

Every design feature from Rome 1 that was cut for Rome 2: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...Rome-2-doesn-t
It comes to quite a total.

I think it'd be "better" to compare the design features from, say, Empire or Shogun II to Rome II as they are more similar. I mean Medieval II was the only game really similar to RTW.

[RZZZA]

CA is infamous for removing/scaling back features people liked from their previous iterations. They really seem to have no idea what it is about their own games that people like.

after all these years, they've still been unable to emulate the civil war/emerging factions feature people loved so much in the original Medieval: Total War. They constantly remove and scale back the RPG/attribute system that people loved from that game too.

They're really a clueless company, there's no getting around it.

[kilroy]

I think more distance between the cities are needed, so you can't go from city to city in one turn. I remember bilding watchtowers round my border, just to see if a army is close by, and it was so fun!! not anymore tho.

[AgentGB]

I really do hope, if atleast CA aren't willing to expand the potential of the map, that its not hardcoded or to difficult for modders to do. Bring back mines also, have them appear on the campaign map, and as a way for armies to attack and disurpt/free slaves into an additonal rouge army, that would be pretty neat, would validate a reason for every nation to have a stock of slaves. I know this can be send it was resembled through the income you get for slave population, but to see the actual mechanic working means alot.

If they are planning expansions on different areas of the map of Rome 2 in further detail, i hope they can join all these together very much how empire did it. Now that would make for a good game.

[Symphony]

Rome 2 is a dumbed down streamlined game, what else did you expect?

So, more cities (even though it already has more than any vanilla TW game before it) would add thought and make the game more difficult? I thought one of the complaints regarding previous TW games was that they over-focused on city sieges, so that every meaningful battle ended up being the same repetitive siege experience.

Adding repetition doesn't make a game more challenging; it just makes it more of a grind.

There are so many things people could get (and have gotten) angry about with this game...why do we have to invent reasons to tie every statement somebody makes about the game into one more reason CA is the devil?

[Symphony]

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?!

I agree with this, though (sorry, didn't see it earlier). No matter how you balance a game like this, the later game will always get repetitious; there's just no good way to eliminate the resource advantage of a large empire without using heavy-handed, artificial-feeling balancing mechanisms (some of which are already used here).

Building in victory conditions that require so many territories (and so far-flung...really, Gaul can't claim a victory without having to own a good chunk of Asia Minor?) just makes the late game a grind no matter how many total territories the map has...it's certainly a curious design decision.

[Adamwestisgod]

Im not gonna lie at first I hated the new province system....but now I freakin love it. To me it just makes sense...now I the only thing I wish is that the main capital could build more buildings.

[Archesel]

For me Mods for RTW Europa Barbarorum & Roma Surrectum have better map Sicily have 6 towns ,Greece & Italy was much better

Sure we miss this in Rome II: the "battle for Greece domination" is not as exciting as in RS2! Then it is not unuseful to precise that Euboia (Chalcis) IS AN ISLAND while Rome II make it appear like a peninsula.