Rome II

[Gusington]

^When I'm tired or impatient, yes the game is fun as TBS. When I have more energy though I still love the tactical battles.

[mikeck]

CA really needs to work on the AI siege. Because of attrition I suppose, the AI never lays a true siege. They just attack, burn the gate and them try to force their army through the opening. In Rome 1 the AI would always build towers or use ladders to climb over the walls. Here it can't or won't. I can only guess it's because it will not wait in siege long enough to build them. Why that is - I bet- is because it wants to avoid attrition. That's the reason I don't.

Sit your army outside in siege for 4 turns and it's virtually destroyed.

[Gusington]

^A mod will change that if CA don't, eventually.

[Nefaro]

Despite the decrease in performance on the campaign map, and the occasionally instability, I'm enjoying the improvements in this one.

I'm liking it as a turn-based game. I avoid the real-time battles at almost any cost.

Does the game play well this way?  I haven't really ever played any TW game because of the real time battles.  Does playing the turn-based campaign with auto resolved battles work well?

Right now auto-resolve is okay in the open, for when you outnumber the enemy.  However, you can do far better than the auto-resolve especially in siege battles.  There's been some complaints about the auto-resolve sucking in some situations at the moment.  I think siege battle resolution is one of them, and you'll do siege battles fairly often.

[LongBlade]

Does the game play well this way?  I haven't really ever played any TW game because of the real time battles.  Does playing the turn-based campaign with auto resolved battles work well?

Usually yes.

I'll confess that with past Total War games I tended to build up a few generals using the tactical battles. Once they got strong enough I could afford to turn them lose and auto-resolve the rest of the battles.

Rome II differs in this pattern slightly. First, the tactical battles move faster. I don't find them frenetically faster, but faster in the sense that I don't have to play them long to resolve them. I actually like the tactical speed, though opinions legitimately differ on the subject.

There have been times that, even with experienced generals with a full deck of an army I've been forced to fight tactically. This happens when I'm besieging a town and don't have enough troops to take it. I still lose, but I make the cost so high that I can bring in a second army and crush the town.

So real-time battles are rarely required, but still are better addressed by a human in most cases.

All-in-all I like Rome II better. It's not like previous games and takes some time to learn - the "encyclopedia" and tutorials are not helpful beyond the basics.

But it may be the best turn-based Total War game we have yet seen. There may be better overall Total War games out there, but as a turn-based game I'm starting to think this is the best we've seen to date. Still needs improvement, but it's the best turn-based strategy Total War game yet.

That doesn't precisely answer your question, and for that I apologize.

[Martok]

Is there an ETA yet on the public release of patch 3?  It sounds like the one I've (kinda/sorta) been waiting for, but I don't want to opt in on the beta with the stability issues. 

[Nefaro]

Is there an ETA yet on the public release of patch 3?  It sounds like the one I've (kinda/sorta) been waiting for, but I don't want to opt in on the beta with the stability issues.

I've not had a lock-up or crash since that first play session. 

While the campaign map performance dropped a bit for me, most notably on my older desktop with the HD5770, it hasn't 'sploded lately.  I'd also like to report that the AI is now providing a noticeable improvement in challenge in Normal difficulty whereas it was often passive before.  The combat speed has been slowed and they are now a longer grind when melee is joined.  There are still issues to be sorted, but it's a nice improvement in the gameplay.

One thing I noticed is that they really boosted the city garrisons.  Not sure if I like just how much they boosted it up but it has definitely made it more difficult to expand.  In anything but the first few turns, you'd better bring two armies in order to capture one if the AI also has one of it's own armies posted inside.  Even the early game garrisons start with about 12-14 units in them.  :o Otherwise you'll take some nasty losses due to being heavily outnumbered, and be vulnerable to a siege from one of his other armies.

It's been worth putting up with the vanilla-like campaign map performance in order to get the better gameplay in Beta 3.

[undercovergeek]

did you do anything other then tick the 'beta' box again - i have done this and it says patch 3 but theres nothing downloaded - for 2 it started as soon as i clicked on the beta

[tgb]

Gameholds.com (which research shows to be reliable and legit) has region-free keys for $35, which is the price point I've been waiting for.  So my question is how much have patches improved the game, particularly in terms of performance on lower-end systems?

For the record I have an Intel i3-3220 3.3 GHz processor with 6Gb RAM.  My bottleneck is integrated Intel HD graphics, and I won't have the money to upgrade that until my end-of-year bonus.

For what it's worth, Shogun 2 runs fine with lowered settings.

[Nefaro]

did you do anything other then tick the 'beta' box again - i have done this and it says patch 3 but theres nothing downloaded - for 2 it started as soon as i clicked on the beta

Yeah, just use the dropdown and select beta 3. 

If it doesn't start downloading within a minute or so, restart your Steam client.  I also tend to click the code verification button, after selecting the dropdown menu thing, but I don't think you need to.  With some of the bugs I've had in the Steam client in the past, it doesn't hurt to give it a little push at updating a selection.

[Nefaro]

Gameholds.com (which research shows to be reliable and legit) has region-free keys for $35, which is the price point I've been waiting for.  So my question is how much have patches improved the game, particularly in terms of performance on lower-end systems?

For the record I have an Intel i3-3220 3.3 GHz processor with 6Gb RAM.  My bottleneck is integrated Intel HD graphics, and I won't have the money to upgrade that until my end-of-year bonus.

For what it's worth, Shogun 2 runs fine with lowered settings.

You can run Shogun 2 on Intel HD integrated graphics?  :o   Well.. if you can run Shogun 2, I suppose you could theoretically run Rome 2.  But it runs like shit on most people's systems.  I wouldn't be surprised if yours ran the same as Shogun 2, however.  ::)   Most of the complaints are from people with any kind of remotely decent video card.  The gfx optimization is utter sheeeit.

[undercovergeek]

lol - it woke itself up after 5 mins and a restart thanks

[Gusington]

How is the offensive AI siege behavior with the 3rd patch? Is it more aggressive? It couldn't be any less in my campaign...they would just sit there. Probably my biggest complaint so far with Rome II.

[Nefaro]

How is the offensive AI siege behavior with the 3rd patch? Is it more aggressive? It couldn't be any less in my campaign...they would just sit there. Probably my biggest complaint so far with Rome II.

Not sure yet, but it did besiege me once, after I took one of it's cities with heavy losses.  The AI sieged me for one turn, then assaulted on the next.  The huge army & garrison combo I had to fight with that army the previous turn left me with only about 35% of my forces left (was outnumbered about 2.5-to-1 while assaulting, and the melee changes made it even more costly).  It stomped me that time.

I've also had a second assault get turned back by such large city defense numbers, and the AI chased my army back to my own city - across the water, even.  With it's own full-size army and a supporting navy.   

So it has certainly improved to some degree.

[Gusington]

Just the fact that it did mount an assault is huge! Chasing you across the water is icing on the cake.

On the receiving end of a siege I haven't had anything even close to that happen yet.