Rome II

[Gusington]

Back to province morale for a minute...I have started to build temples and researching civic improvements so according to what everyone has said I am on the path to lessening province belly-aching :)

[Bison]

Back to province morale for a minute...I have started to build temples and researching civic improvements so according to what everyone has said I am on the path to lessening province belly-aching :)

Yes.  Look at your province screen and hover over the happiness bar and it'll tell you where you are gaining/losing happiness and adjust from there.

[Gusington]

Cool thanks...have to pay more attention to tool tips and pop ups. A print manual would help.

[MengJiao]

I might have bitten off more than I can chew in my Roman campaign.  I'm in a full fledged war with Carthage and her allies.  Armies and Navies are moving all over the Mediterranean.  We are in a power struggle primarily over the Sardinia islands area.  The one upside for me is that Carthage has a major rebel problem right now, which is indirectly helping my war efforts.

I took an Easy Tour under blue skies.  I tried some barbarians.  Then I set out as Easy Egypt.  I was puttering around knocking out rebels and getting some trade when the Selucids and all their Satrapies and allies (about 6-7 kingdoms) declared war on me.  So the AI will get you.  Apparently especially if you are Egypt.  Even Easy Egypt.  Maybe I can beat them in detail or something.  we will see.

Well, I trashed the Selucids...looting and leaving towns burning and full of rebels.  This might not have been wise,but that will teach them to pick on Easy Egypt.

[Toonces]

Ok, I spent an hour or so with Rome 2 last night finally and I guess I'm going to be the dissenting opinion here.

This is hard to articulate, but I kind of "get" the haters who are less than thrilled with Rome 2.  For me, it's not something as easy to quantify as bad AI or some missing feature.

It's not a bad game.  It looks good and there are a lot of neat touches, for example the autoresolve combat animations.  I definitely like being able to fight the naval battles...and so on.

But ultimately I came away a bit underwhelmed.  It's not one thing.  I think it's that the aggregate of all of the new features feel like window dressing on what is essentially the same game as Rome 1.  I don't know if I can say it better than that.  I feel as though some of the charm and magic of Rome 1 is maybe missing from Rome 2. 

Obviously I need to spend more time with the game to get deeper into the features.  However, I can sort of see the opposing viewpoint a bit better now.  It's still Rome Total War.  Just different.  Not necessarily better and maybe the problem is that I'm out of my comfort zone.  I really liked Rome 1 so maybe the change is just sitting poorly with me.  My feeling after an hour was mostly, "So that's it?"  And I don't know why.  I don't feel like I was lied to or that something was promised that didn't deliver.  I was just underwhelmed.

When my wife called me in to watch a movie, I didn't have any problem shutting the game down for the night.  I'm not in any hurry to get back to it today. 

[Gusington]

^That's much more well articulated than the foaming at the mouth responses on other forums.

[mikeck]

I think maybe because its been done before. When Rome Mae out (even after mtw and stw) it was a completely new type of game. It was similar enough to older TW game but had more building options and 3d battles. Since then, we've gotten used to it, it's hard to be new and fresh.

For me, it's kind of the opposite... The whole is more than the sum of its parts. I just like it and can't explain why. Sure, there are an lying bugs like ships that won't unload after they beach and crap like that...but it's cool. Once sept 24th roles around, I will be on to Dominions and O
Command

[mikeck]

Any of you Gus shave any luck getting into TWcenter today? Trying to look for mod updated and haven't been able to get on since last night

[Staggerwing]

Any of you Gus shave any luck getting into TWcenter today? Trying to look for mod updated and haven't been able to get on since last night

Some autocorrect happening there, Mike?  :D

[Gusington]

I've been on TWC today but it is very VERY slow. I want to check out the Radious mod.

[mikeck]

Any of you Gus shave any luck getting into TWcenter today? Trying to look for mod updated and haven't been able to get on since last night

Some autocorrect happening there, Mike?  :D

Yes, and if my iPhone changes "$&*ing" into "ducking" one more time, I'm throwing it out the window.

[jomni]

How does it compare to STW2? I really like that a lot. I think that one is well-polished.

[mikeck]

Just FYI. There is a "field battles" mod at TWcenter which allows the player ton hose whether to fight sieges in the town or an open field. Only works in non walled settlements that don't have a port so it is limited. Apparently, it was originally included in the vanilla game bug was "turned off".

Should help with decreasing the battles occurring in those small settlement

[Nefaro]

They definitely put some Game of Thrones references in there.  I've seen two in the last fifteen minutes.  :)

One is a voiceover for an eastern Spy character with an accent, " A man has many faces."  Another is one of the character traits that says, "The night is dark and full of terror."  I'd bet there are more.

That field battle mod may be ideal as long as the field battles don't spawn flags.  Probably hard-coded though.  The AI does terrible when it has to defend even one of those and just bum rushes with everything if you hold one.  :(

[mikeck]

Also try this:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?619033-Yarkis-Personal-Battle-Mod-v1-1-(UPDATED-Now-with-Better-Unit-Cohesion)

Helps with units maintains cohesion. He altered the unit "mass" numbers as well as the "container size". When units clash they don't just spill everywhere. Not perfect but pretty good