Rome II

[Gusington]

I loved the original Rome TW with the Barbarian Invasions pack.

[bob48]

I loved the original Rome TW with the Barbarian Invasions pack.

^+1

[TheCommandTent]

I loved the original Rome TW with the Barbarian Invasions pack.

^+1

+2  :)

[Gusington]

See now Martok maybe you need to give the original another chance...sure it wasn't the most historically accurate game but I loved the exotic (fake) units. Wardogs!

[mikeck]

I loved Rome TW. I still play it with the Roma Surrectum mod. Like all TW games, it needs some Mods to flesh it out. AI was weak but that's expected with the series.

[Gusington]

I am hoping for the AI of Shogun 2 in Rome 2. Because I don't get my ass kicked nearly enough :/

I did win several campaigns of Rome TW but I have yet to win any in Shogun 2.

[Tamas]

Yep. Also the tactical AI must be better in Shogun 2, or I have become much worse at the game, because I remember that after a little while it took no effort whatsoever to achieve some pretty stellar victories in Rome, while in Shogun 2 if I did not pay attention, I often got some costly victories, and the occassional defeat.

[Gusington]

Not really good for self esteem but good for a challenge.

[MengJiao]

Do I dare ask why you hate the first Rome TW that much?

  I have to say Rome 1 didn't impress me all that much at first and for me MTW2 was by so much one of the best games of all time
that the first Rome has never been very bright in my memory.  Though I do have a few good memories of various barbarian events
at some indeterminate later time that might have been early MTW2, maybe.

 

[Sir Slash]

So I finished my ETW- American Revolution campaign over the weekend with a win after the Brits put-up a good fight for Quebec. It took about a year and 3 months of off and on play to win. I remember really enjoying the campaign when I first started it but the end game was less appealing. I began to think, and almost every TW campaign has been the same. Less fun at the end. By that time you usually have a huge empire to manage( and I never trust the AI to manage running a dog house in my country) and you have to declare war on some poor little Republic of Defenseless-stan to get to an arbitrary number of territories for the win. My hope for Rome 2 is the end game is as much fun as the beginning. Assuming I make it that far. :)

[Martok]

Do I dare ask why you hate the first Rome TW that much?

Ditto ...apart from flaming pigs and war dogs I played it to death and multiplayer was great.

Oh boy.  Where do I begin?  I'll just do a list... 


1.) Terrible AI (note: I don't give a rat's ass about multiplayer). 

2.) Poor atmosphere/immersion -- atrocious voice acting, ridiculous fantasy/extremely unhistorical units (even more so than in the first two TW games), cartoonish-looking 3D campaign map, etc. 

3.)  Terrible AI. 

4.)  Had to first beat the game as on of the Roman families in order to unlock the other playable factions (which pissed me off enormously). 

5.)  Terrible AI. 

6.)  Poor Ptolemaic Egypt got hosed.  (This partly goes back to my beef with the atmosphere/immersion.) 

7.)  Terrible AI

8.)  Absurdly fast unit movement in combat. 

9.)  Terrible AI

10.)  Terrain hardly making a difference in battle. 

11.)  Terrible AI



I've said it numerous times before, and I say it again now:  I can enjoy a strategy game that has poor atmosphere/immersion OR poor AI...but not both.  For me, Rome 1 failed utterly in both respects. 


(Also, at the time, I was more than a little pissed with the way CA/Sega dropped support for those unfortunate folks -- and there were quite a lot of them -- having issues running Medieval Total War/Viking Invasion on newer video cards.  (I was even more pissed they continued to sell MTW/VI, long after the technical issues had become widely known.)  As Rome 1 embodied the way CA/Sega had "moved on" with the series (and left many devotees of the original STW & MTW in the proverbial dust), it only caused me to hate RTW even more.  Not entirely fair, I realize, but there you go. 

However, even if I'd hadn't resented CA/Sega for their (in my mind) mistreatment of MTW/VI, I still couldn't stand Rome.  I tried getting into that game for 2-3 months, before I finally gave up in disgust.) 

[Nefaro]

The last time I fired up the Rome Total War, it reminded me of just how bad the older tactical battle controls sucked.   Especially annoying was how much a pain it was to keep grouped units in a halfway decent line when moving them anywhere but directly forward.  I won't mention the AI, as everyone knows that was a great weakness too.

Despite having some of their own problems, the later TW titles did continually increase the quality of the army control scheme, especially with ETW/NTW.

[TheCommandTent]

Do I dare ask why you hate the first Rome TW that much?

Ditto ...apart from flaming pigs and war dogs I played it to death and multiplayer was great.

Oh boy.  Where do I begin?  I'll just do a list... 


1.) Terrible AI (note: I don't give a rat's ass about multiplayer). 

2.) Poor atmosphere/immersion -- atrocious voice acting, ridiculous fantasy/extremely unhistorical units (even more so than in the first two TW games), cartoonish-looking 3D campaign map, etc. 

3.)  Terrible AI. 

4.)  Had to first beat the game as on of the Roman families in order to unlock the other playable factions (which pissed me off enormously). 

5.)  Terrible AI. 

6.)  Poor Ptolemaic Egypt got hosed.  (This partly goes back to my beef with the atmosphere/immersion.) 

7.)  Terrible AI



I've said it numerous times before, and I say it again now:  I can enjoy a strategy game that has poor atmosphere/immersion OR poor AI...but not both.  For me, Rome 1 failed utterly in both respects. 


(Also, at the time, I was more than a little pissed with the way CA/Sega dropped support for those unfortunate folks -- and there were quite a lot of them -- having issues running Medieval Total War/Viking Invasion on newer video cards.  (I was even more pissed they continued to sell MTW/VI, long after the technical issues had become widely known.)  As Rome 1 embodied the way CA/Sega had "moved on" with the series (and left many devotees of the original STW & MTW in the proverbial dust), it only caused me to hate RTW even more.  Not entirely fair, I realize, but there you go. 

However, even if I'd hadn't resented CA/Sega for their (in my mind) mistreatment of MTW/VI, I still couldn't stand Rome.  I tried getting into that game for 2-3 months, before I finally gave up in disgust.)

All fair points.  Did you ever mod it to help improve AI and such?

[Martok]

The last time I fired up the Rome Total War, it reminded me of just how bad the older tactical battle controls sucked.   Especially annoying was how much a pain it was to keep grouped units in a halfway decent line when moving them anywhere but directly forward.  I won't mention the AI, as everyone knows that was a great weakness too.

Despite having some of their own problems, the later TW titles did continually increase the quality of the army control scheme, especially with ETW/NTW.

In terms of actual gameplay improvements, a better battle UI is the one of the few things I'll concede RTW did better than MTW & STW. 


In terms of less concrete (but still important) aspects, I liked Rome's soundtrack quite a bit.  Indeed, I'd say it's about as good as the first two games' (which for me is high praise). 

Another neat little feature was the "city view" screen; I enjoyed being able to conduct a virtual tour of my settlements outside of combat.  Would very much like to see this feature return in Rome 2 (although I'm not holding my breath). 

Did you ever mod it to help improve AI and such?

Believe it or not, I'd never even *heard* of modding until a couple years after RTW was released -- and when I did, it was ironically in conjunction with mods for MTW/VI (it's how I discovered the excellent XL mod).  Moreover, I (sadly) possessed no modding skills in any case.  (I still don't, for that matter.)  :-[ 

By the time I finally did become aware of Rome's modding scene, I was already too thoroughly turned off by the game to ever be tempted to pick it up again. 

[ComradeP]

I haven't played any of the titles released after MTW2, but I'm not inclined to preorder RTW2 with the track record of buggy/incomplete releases with a poorly scripted AI. I played RTW for only a short while before I lost any interest in the game, even with mods.

The same goes for MTW2. One of the silliest things was that auto-resolving battles could allow you to win battles that would normally be, at best, very difficult to win. After auto-resolving my way to Jerusalem in the Crusade that the Pope called for in one of the first turns of the game (for no clear reason), I tried some mods, but that didn't really improve things. I can see why people liked the game, and it had potential, but the not so stellar strategic map and playing the game on the strategic level unfortunately nullified the enjoyment of fighting interesting battles.

Winning the game with masses of urban militia and similar units was something that tired me even in MTW. To me, MTW is still the best title after Shogun, although the AI seemingly always knowing precisely where my units were was as annoying as in other TW games.