Total War series

Jait

Jait

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Problem is...almost every single review and all my TW friends say exactly what bayr is saying. And he's got good points as opposed to the "I love it because it's Total War!".

This is Rome2, the sequel to the game that put TW on every gamers radar. It should have been a 95/100 game just by updating the graphics/ui/ai of Rome.

Going to finish out SR4 while this shit gets fixed and polished. If nothing else, there's CLEARLY a problem with hardware resource management, load times, etc... And when I see fanbois pretending that's not an issue, I know their opinions are far too biased.
 
Utnayan

Utnayan

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Nutron_sl said:
Thanks for making my point.
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I am writing for JunkiesNation and I think my first article might move from the state of the MMORPG genre and why it is horrible, to how come Creative Assembly cannot release a game that isn't bug ridden for months.

(I am used to it, but the fact that it is still accepted because it's "CA", is ridiculous.)

An interesting side bar of link. Apparently you cannot review a game now until the bugs have been fixed after launch.

It?s not a great start for the game and it?s also one reason we are holding off on the review as these issues were identified by Peter when he previewed the game about a month ago.
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http://www.incgamers.com/2013/09/tot...nd-bugs-abound

Seriously. What the Christ???
 
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bayr_sl

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I don't doubt they will fix the biggest problems, and that modders will get the game to a point where battles don't last 6 whole minutes, but the game right now is in shambles, and it's not just bugs like Shogun 2 shipped with. It's a significant number of bugs like Empire, with unacceptably poor performance on high end machines, and a lot of real questionable shit like the poor UI that defies all logic, the utterly forgettable soundtrack (I doubt there's a single person who can honestly recall any music from this game even if they played it an hour ago), that laughable intro video. Massive corners were cut in this game AND it's typical CA buggy launch quality.
 
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Nutron_sl

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Utnayan_sl said:
I am writing for JunkiesNation and I think my first article might move from the state of the MMORPG genre and why it is horrible, to how come Creative Assembly cannot release a game that isn't bug ridden for months.

(I am used to it, but the fact that it is still accepted because it's "CA", is ridiculous.)

An interesting side bar of link. Apparently you cannot review a game now until the bugs have been fixed after launch.



http://www.incgamers.com/2013/09/tot...nd-bugs-abound

Seriously. What the Christ???
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Yep I find it unacceptable as well, I was merely stating the fact that people defend shogun 2 vs rome 2 saying how rome 2 is awful compared to shogun 2...I'm simply stating that shogun 2 was much worse on release than rome 2 is at the moment. It was unplayable, this is playable altho filled with bugs. shady balancing and questionable gameplay choices. Shogun became one of my favorite games of the last couple years so I'm optimistic about this title reaching that status instead of being a doom and gloomy everything is wrong in the world why didnt my mommy love me type person.

It's easy to be a mouthbreathing "EVERYTHING IS BROKEN I WANT MONEY BACK FUCK YOU WORLD IM ANGRY AT THE WORLD" vs trying to find exactly what i wrong and what they did right. And yes they did a lot of things right with this title, sadly also a lot of things wrong. One thing i dont think they will be able to fix is the terrible waiting times in strategic view because the scope of the game might have been too big with too many factions controling their units, agents, diplomacies, armies, etc... It's pretty horrible as the game goes on. Short battles? easy fix the balance with damage/hp. Shitty ai? Easily patchable as they did in shogun 2. Annoying ui elements? Most of them are easily patchable, but I doubt the shitty cards are gonna get reworked to be more easily descriptive for example.

Call me a fuckign retard for being objective and trying to see the big picture, at least i'm not a mouthbreathing fucking moron that just yells about things without any critical thinking in an extremist manner where its either the best thing ever or nothing works and all is bad*
 
Araysar

Loser Araysar

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So any other good strategy games based around antiquity then? Rome 3 probably wont come out till 2020 now
 
Denaut

Denaut

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I never claimed the game was perfect, I only talk about my personal experience which is so far pretty excellent, and already more enjoyable than Shogun 2. The menus don't bother me that much (although they could be better).

Armies and Recruiting function much differently (and better) than they do in the other Total War games. Recruiting directly into your army is different than building and then moving units from towns into your army. You don't have to lean on the turn button to get your army together and you don't have a smattering of individual units running around everywhere. It also puts the focus on the army itself.

Secondly the Provence system is fantastic. Groups of cities working in concert and sharing bonus, while at the same time simplifying the interface for building construction was a huge step in the right direction.

3rdly, performance for me is overall better than Shogun 2. I have a brand new computer with an SSD and battle load times are significantly faster than they were in Shogun 2. Now, turn times are longer overall but faster per faction. That is the price for having a much larger and more diverse map, one I am actually quite happy to pay since that was my biggest gripe about the last game. I am actually not looking forward to them "optimizing" that part because "optimizing" the decision tree for the turn-based AI means pruning decision branches earlier and will result in a dumber strategic AI, plain and simple. There is no way around that one, turn-based AI is still basically the same as it was in the 70s, a brute force decision tree algorithm.

I also tested some skirmish battles against the AI, I set up identical armies and played the AI at normal and very hard difficulties. I trounced the Normal AI, but the Very Hard AI beat me twice (I am a distinctly average player). I could probably beat it after another try or 2. But overall the AI did the right things, matching the right units against their counters and running the cavalry around to smack me where it hurt most.

Normal Difficulty
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Very Hard Difficulty
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rrr_img_42529.jpg


Now, at the same time I am trouncing through the campaign with little to virtually no challenge (turns are still under a minute though), even after upping the battle AI. Near as I can figure it out it is probably one of or a combination of roughly 3 reasons:
* Roman Units, especially early on, are simply much better than the other factions.
* More complex levels screw up the AI (skirmishes were on a simple mostly flat map).
* Ok, I had a third one but forgot what it was
biggrin.png


So, call me a "shill" if you like, it is as pointless as me calling you a "bitter harpy". I like all of the improvements more than I dislike the drawbacks (most of which are quite fixable), and am looking for ways to minimize those drawbacks so that I can enjoy the game better. You are welcome to ignore me so I can have actual fruitful discussions with people in the same boat.
 
Araysar

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Nutron_sl said:
need paradox to make a Rome Universalis or something :>
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Weirdly enough, I cant get into the Universalis series of games or figure them out. They look amazing but I just cant understand them.

I played Hearts of Iron II for a long time though without any issues

Am I doing something wrong?
 
bytes

bytes

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Nutron_sl said:
Call me a fuckign retard for being objective and trying to see the big picture, at least i'm not a mouthbreathing fucking moron that just yells about things without any critical thinking in an extremist manner where its either the best thing ever or nothing works and all is bad*
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Somebody gives you a list of all the things which are broken, you put that aside and call it being a mouthbreathing fucking moron. Meanwhile you're talking (in a totally not subjective manner) about all the things CA did right with Rome, without ever being at least somewhat specific about what you actually mean by that.

Seriously, please enlighten me what good qualities you can find in a TW game with bad performance, forgettable music, awkward UI and outright broken combat. And please, don't bring up the tired "Shogun was bad at release too!" phrase; just because another game was messed up at release, is zero excuse for a new game to be like that aswell.
 
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Nutron_sl

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Araysar_sl said:
Weirdly enough, I cant get into the Universalis series of games or figure them out. They look amazing but I just cant understand them.

I played Hearts of Iron II for a long time though without any issues

Am I doing something wrong?
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Yes.

The learning curve is easier than crusader kings 2 if youve played that, but its definitely not a game you pick up and play right away, Did you do the tutorials? they cover most of the basics and forums/wikis can usualy cover the rest easily.

The thing I find a bit sad abut rome 2 is that granted its better than shogun 2 was at release, but why cant it be better than shogun 2 right now, its like they ignored every fault shogun made and went a step back from its current state for god knows what reason :\ Like diplomacy for example is so passive if you dont start wars yourselves where as in shogun 2, it was basicaly a timer counting down to "the ai is gonna come find you and fuck you in your sleep if you blink" every time you hit end turn :x
 
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Nutron_sl

shitlord
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bytes_sl said:
Somebody gives you a list of all the things which are broken, you put that aside and call it being a mouthbreathing fucking moron. Meanwhile you're talking (in a totally not subjective manner) about all the things CA did right with Rome, without ever being at least somewhat specific about what you actually mean by that.

Seriously, please enlighten me what good qualities you can find in a TW game with bad performance, forgettable music, awkward UI and outright broken combat. And please, don't bring up the tired "Shogun was bad at release too!" phrase; just because another game was messed up at release, is zero excuse for a new game to be like that aswell.
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I did put up a list of things that they did correctly, so did Denaut. Your little friend byr said "THEY DID NOTHING RIGHT WITH THIS TITLE" which is what I was responding to. I've offered as many negative feedbacks and probably more than positive feedbacks, it's not my fault you guys cant read or are too set in looking at only negative things.
 
W

Wrathcaster

bytes_sl said:
Somebody gives you a list of all the things which are broken, you put that aside and call it being a mouthbreathing fucking moron. Meanwhile you're talking (in a totally not subjective manner) about all the things CA did right with Rome, without ever being at least somewhat specific about what you actually mean by that.

Seriously, please enlighten me what good qualities you can find in a TW game with bad performance, forgettable music, awkward UI and outright broken combat. And please, don't bring up the tired "Shogun was bad at release too!" phrase; just because another game was messed up at release, is zero excuse for a new game to be like that aswell.
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I rather like it. I must be one of the few people not having performance issues (lol). 2500 i5, 560Ti, random ssd, 16 gb ram and win7 pro. Have things set to Ultra and stay right at ~50ish fps for just about everything. I don't really pay attention to music in TW games so I guess it's not an issue for me. Not really sure what you mean with broken combat, but I'm only about 10 hours deep into the Roman campaign. Ship battles are pretty fucking weird and I've noticed skirmishers do weird things, but maybe there's issues that relate more specifically to other factions? Dunno if you played as Rome or not.

What I like is the huge depth and variety in unity types and factions, the graphics themselves (even when I viewed on medium/low they were still pretty outstanding for a TW game), and the new Legacy/Tradition system. That is really, really cool and I love the idea, being able to really flesh out a stack of units and keep those characteristics even if they're offed to the last man. Another thing is that I don't have to fuck with manually placing every single fucking general if I want one in an army, and if the fuckers die off the game just prompts me with a new one.

I LOVE the naval/land amphibious battles, particularly city sieges. It's something I've waited to see for a while and it really totally changes the potential options for sieges against coastal cities. Previously in an actual assault it seemed like 99% of the time I'd just sit and wait til my catapults and siege weapons beat the shit out of the enemy walls/artillery and spent all ammunition, then send in my dudes. It was always the least costly method of assaulting a city for me and it got boring. With the amphibious landing though, I'm digging how you can just completely bypass the main walls and let the rest of the army in. That being said, it is really fucking weird for the AI and if you don't have a battle timer on, there's a decent chance the AI will pull up ships to the shore as if to disembark, but then just sit there. Sometimes it's only one unit too, and if you don't have a navy left or something to hit them with you're stuck for eternity staring at a single ship that won't disembark their stupid pleb troops. This seems like one of those that'll get stamped out pretty quickly.

I understand people are pissed about the bugs and performance but despite those I have tremendously enjoyed what I've played so far and I've tried to dig into every aspect thus far (diplomacy, naval battles, sieges, etc.) and feel like the aforementioned issues are no reason to pass up a truly massively epic game with a level of detail put in that is so, so rare in the gaming industry these days. You're guaranteed to have excellent patch support for years, the mod community is amazing, and hardware companies are already scrambling to release drivers optimized for Rome 2.

I'd hardly call Rome 2 "in shambles," and it seems like you're making a massive exaggeration about some things that particularly pissed you off taken together. "In shambles" to me is unplayable, laughably terrible, poorly conceived and rushed out titles loaded with horrible features ala SimCity. It seems like you define it differently, and that definition seems to be "it has bugs and doesn't perform great for me and i don't like the music/ui."
 
N

Nutron_sl

shitlord
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Wrathcaster_sl said:
I rather like it. I must be one of the few people not having performance issues (lol). 2500 i5, 560Ti, random ssd, 16 gb ram and win7 pro. Have things set to Ultra and stay right at ~50ish fps for just about everything. I don't really pay attention to music in TW games so I guess it's not an issue for me. Not really sure what you mean with broken combat, but I'm only about 10 hours deep into the Roman campaign. Ship battles are pretty fucking weird and I've noticed skirmishers do weird things, but maybe there's issues that relate more specifically to other factions? Dunno if you played as Rome or not.

What I like is the huge depth and variety in unity types and factions, the graphics themselves (even when I viewed on medium/low they were still pretty outstanding for a TW game), and the new Legacy/Tradition system. That is really, really cool and I love the idea, being able to really flesh out a stack of units and keep those characteristics even if they're offed to the last man. Another thing is that I don't have to fuck with manually placing every single fucking general if I want one in an army, and if the fuckers die off the game just prompts me with a new one.

I LOVE the naval/land amphibious battles, particularly city sieges. It's something I've waited to see for a while and it really totally changes the potential options for sieges against coastal cities. Previously in an actual assault it seemed like 99% of the time I'd just sit and wait til my catapults and siege weapons beat the shit out of the enemy walls/artillery and spent all ammunition, then send in my dudes. It was always the least costly method of assaulting a city for me and it got boring. With the amphibious landing though, I'm digging how you can just completely bypass the main walls and let the rest of the army in. That being said, it is really fucking weird for the AI and if you don't have a battle timer on, there's a decent chance the AI will pull up ships to the shore as if to disembark, but then just sit there. Sometimes it's only one unit too, and if you don't have a navy left or something to hit them with you're stuck for eternity staring at a single ship that won't disembark their stupid pleb troops. This seems like one of those that'll get stamped out pretty quickly.

I understand people are pissed about the bugs and performance but despite those I have tremendously enjoyed what I've played so far and I've tried to dig into every aspect thus far (diplomacy, naval battles, sieges, etc.) and feel like the aforementioned issues are no reason to pass up a truly massively epic game with a level of detail put in that is so, so rare in the gaming industry these days. You're guaranteed to have excellent patch support for years, the mod community is amazing, and hardware companies are already scrambling to release drivers optimized for Rome 2.

I'd hardly call Rome 2 "in shambles," and it seems like you're making a massive exaggeration about some things that particularly pissed you off taken together. "In shambles" to me is unplayable, laughably terrible, poorly conceived and rushed out titles loaded with horrible features ala SimCity. It seems like you define it differently, and that definition seems to be "it has bugs and doesn't perform great for me and i don't like the music/ui."
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Naval battles are definitely wonky and i try to avoid them. Nothing new tho I avoid naval battles in all TW games cause they're always boring as fuck to me.
 
Heriotze

Heriotze

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somehow managed to avoid the performance issues so far but fuck this is one of the ugliest games that I have seen for a very long time. Playing on ultra and even without the texture glitches the models are just amateurishly bad. This absolutely feels like an early beta game. I have no idea why they took all of the interesting things that they have slowly been improving on and evolving from all of the shogun games and just threw them out the window. Almost all of the military and world map interaction feels like a giant step back. The new city management stuff is a good idea and seems like the only improvement. It is nice to be able to control all cities in a province in one window but that one window is overflowing with build icons that offer no information about construction other than right click to learn more. I feel like 1/4 of my screen real estate is taken up with really poorly thought out UI. The battles just feel off as well. Even in early shogun 2 battles things felt like they had weight to them. Units would charge each other and there'd be the illusion of impact with sound and animation. This feels like things are just gliding around. This looks and plays like it should be a pre Empire TW release, just pretty bad in pretty much every area.
 
hodj

hodj

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Having played Total War from the oldest games, I can't remember a time in my life I've ever zoomed in close enough to be able to see individual character models to judge them.

Its a nice feature but its not a game making or breaking thing. The units could be and have been just pixelated blobs in the past and it doesn't affect the gameplay one little teeny tiny bit.
 
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bayr_sl

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I would do it all the time in Shogun 2. First for direct control (another thing rome2 doesnt have) and second to watch the valiant last stands in that game. Of course they made a meal of that sort of thing because ~samurai honor~ and all. It was also something they constantly showed off in videos, with the insert key.

The battles really don't look good in this game. Not awful but a significant step back. That said if they offend you so badly you can always just blink and the fight will be over.
 
Denaut

Denaut

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bayr_sl said:
I would do it all the time in Shogun 2. First for direct control (another thing rome2 doesnt have)
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Have you actually played the game or are you just echoing the bitching of other people? Your credibility is rapidly approaching none.

rrr_img_42585.jpg
 
hodj

hodj

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I've played this for several hours now and yes I had to turn the graphics down to keep a decent framerate which is dumb but doesn't bother me. The rest of the complaints, I'm still not seeing. There's a pretty good image going around /v/ right now that shows that reviewers barely played the game, they didn't even get achievements for putting two hours in.

So here's my theory: Bunch of people went into this super hyped up, expecting a whole new genre defining epic game, and they got a Total War game with some minor tweaks and the typical errors a Total War game has, and they flipped shit over it.

Again: If you're on the fence, I'd wait for a sale, just so you don't get all butt devastated that this game isn't the second coming of Jesus. Otherwise, if you're willing to deal with another Total War game and all its quirks, then dive on in.
 
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