Rome II

[Gusington]

You're missing out, Greybriar. Especially at that price. 100s of hours of gameplay, mods, etc. to be had.

[Greybriar]

I didn't notice the video was made nearly ten months ago.  :P I just did another search on YouTube for a more recent player-made video (in English) and so far one three months old is the newest I have found:

I realize the game was a mess when it was released and that there have been a lot of fixes since then. I admit that I haven't read all 207 pages of this thread (you really didn't expect me to, did you?).

No doubt you are correct, Gus. There are many hours of enjoyment in the title. The problem is that I have so many games in my backlog that I don't really need to add another 35 gigs of game to my hard drive that won't be played.

Oh, what the hell! I will buy it from GamersGate. At least it will be in my GamersGate account and I can install it on Steam should I get the urge to check it out, or give it to someone if I don't.

[Gusington]

^Cool. At this point I would like to refer you to your own sig line, for good measure :)

That said, I am not sure how much you enjoy the ancient era. I myself like the Fall of Rome era more than the eras covered in Rome II typically, but the game really turned me on to cultures and militaries that I had no idea about. If you're into the era to begin with, you will get 100s of hours out of this.

[Greybriar]

^Cool. At this point I would like to refer you to your own sig line, for good measure :)...

And which half of what I've seen should I believe?  ;)

...That said, I am not sure how much you enjoy the ancient era. I myself like the Fall of Rome era more than the eras covered in Rome II typically, but the game really turned me on to cultures and militaries that I had no idea about. If you're into the era to begin with, you will get 100s of hours out of this.

There have been a number of games in the past that I enjoyed playing--Centurion and Darklands come to mind, to name just two. I enjoyed playing the original Rome: Total War, so perhaps its successor will renew my interest in the series.

I decided to install Rome II and give it a try. It's downloading now, so hopefully the storm here won't cause an electrical outage and Rome II will be ready to go when I get up in the morning.

[Sir Slash]

I'd be interested in your thoughts about it Grey.

[mikeck]

Lol...Greybriar, I didn't mean for you to read 209 pages of the thread. I guess my point was that a game would not spawn a 209 page thread if there wasn't something to it. bad games just disappear after a while.

If you are into the fall of Rome right now I'm playing the rise of Constantine mod. Not exactly the fall of Rome but fourth century Roman warfare nonetheless

[Gusington]

^How is it? I subscribed to it a few days ago.

Greybriar if you liked Centurion and Rome Total War I think you will definitely enjoy Rome II.

[Greybriar]

I'd be interested in your thoughts about it Grey.

I played around with the Prologue primarily to become familiar with the controls. So far so good.

Greybriar if you liked Centurion and Rome Total War I think you will definitely enjoy Rome II.

It looks that way. I'm not as much "into" them as I once was, but there is a lot of gameplay there if I choose to devote the time to experience it.

[mikeck]

New beta patch 15 is out. Brings the game up to the "emperor  edition" coming out soon.

http://wiki.totalwar.com/index.php?title=Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_15#Patch_15_Beta

[Gusington]

The new campaign has me VERY interested. Some new factions in there...like Armenia :)

[SirAndrewD]

The game is entirely different now.  Pretty much every big mod got destroyed by this update.  Dresden of DeI was talking about months to catch up.

Part of what CA did was actually take most of the best ideas of the big mods and incorporate them. 

[Gusington]

Just opted into the beta of EE but the download seems to have stalled out at around 35% :/

[mikeck]

 I have not tried the beta as I hate to lose my Constantine mod. But if it's really good, then I guess I might as well download it

[undercovergeek]

dammit i was loving my Sparta campaign

[SirAndrewD]

I only got a little time in with the new patch.  I've been so used to playing DeI that moving back to vanilla was a bit weird, even in its heavily modified state.  Just a few of my quick observations:

Movement and battle speed are much better than vanilla, but not quite as good as some of the more popular mods. 

Units can fire at will with pila.

The AI is doing a few wonky things, possibly due to the stat rebalances.  It seemed to gravitate between very aggressive and conservative, and it was putting its skirmishers a bit too much into harms way.  It poured attacks in at me in a much more piecemeal fashion than before. 

Rome is in a MUCH stronger starting position now.  The Etruscan army is smaller, the Roman legion in the north bigger.  Rome can reliably take an Etruscian city on turn 1, even with the intervention of the Etruscian field army. 

The entire building system has been overhauled.  You can now have civil and military city paths that make your frontier cities more defensible and home cities more economically vibrant.

Anyway, that's what I gathered from a couple of hours.  Is it worth downloading now?  I think it is.  This is the future of the core game anyway, my thinking was I might as well get used to it.

EDIT: It also seems that DeI's latest version of 0.95 has added Patch 15 compatibility.  It does lack the new building system, but it is at least working.