Rome II

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Maybe it should be. The Iceni are bad ass. They wear woad and hippie pants.

So do a lot of the alternative lifestyle types who infest the park across the street and annoy people with their constant bongo drumming.  I had no idea they had such a proud lineage.


BTW, is it just me or does the dog in your avatar look like it's trying and failing to hold in a bout of explosive diarrhea? 

[Con]

Seem to have experienced a pretty interesting, and annoying bug.  I was at war with Carthage, as were Syracuse and a few African powers.  One of the African nations sacked Cathargo.  I got a pop up next turn indicating that Carthage was destroyed as a faction. Then, the following turn, control of Cathargo magically flipped to Carthage again and I received a message from the advisor congratulating me for making peace with an enemy. When I attacked Cathargo on the next turn, I was warned that I was breaking a treaty and now my reputation fell from "steadfast" to "unreliable."

So this bug seemed to have magically respawned a destroyed faction, magically made peace with my empire and then totally screwed my reputation.

Ahhhhh the vindictive ex girlfriend bug

Con

[Sir Slash]

I thought Gus's dog was sitting on something painful cause you can't see his ass at all. I'll call him, "Iceni". Started a new campaign as Seubi. Much more fun than Pontus. Just conquer stuff. The victory conditions actually require that you raze or sack 50 settlements. NICE. ;)

[Gusington]

The dog is the war dog avatar from Rome II...took a bit of effort to get him in there. He is actually looking up at your faces and getting ready to eat them.

[Grim.Reaper]

Tomorrows patch details

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/81552-Contents-of-September-6th-Patch?s=2907900461705c638e351985665d65bf


• Higher average frame rates with out-of-the-box settings (more conservative settings)
• Fix for DirectX 10.0 Lighting issue reported – environment map wasn't being created leading to black reflections.
• Fixed a sunken Samothrace temple complex world wonder on the Campaign map.
• Fixed defender being able to create encampments when involved in a combined battle.
• Added some localisation fixes to audio packs in French, Russian, Italian, German and Spanish.
• Fixed lock up in Multiplayer Campaign battles when a desynchronisation occurs. Players are now notified of the desynchronisation, and the battle ends.
• Fixed Multiplayer Campaign battle "overrun" prompt, which was not being shown to a player if they were a reinforcement and the other player was spectating.
• Fixed corrupt loading screen when changing to fullscreen / windowed mode after a battle, and then going into another battle.
• Fix for Multiplayer Campaign host being unable to move the camera in campaign, after reloading a save game on some rare occasions.
• Safe guards added to prevent a very rare crash in coastal assault battles.
• Fix for game lock up during end turn sequence / Celtic AI faction turn in single player campaign.
• Improved AI use of walls on Athens large settlement battle map.
• Improvements to Auto-resolve balancing in Single Player and Multiplayer Campaign modes.
• Aligned ship unit upkeep costs with land units – made mercenary ships more expensive and non-mercenary ships cheaper.
• Fixed slow turning rates for transport ships.
• Improved civil war balancing in relation to campaign difficulty.
• Fixed vehicle ground pipes, to prevent Siege Towers becoming immovable when they are left empty during the Deployment Phase of a Siege Battle, then units were moved into the Siege Tower when the battle has started.
• Fixed bug when ramming sideways into moving ship, which caused the ramming ship stick to target and strafe along with it in battles.
• Reduced the chance of Naval units sometimes clipping through the ground or harbours / ports during Port Assault battles when attempting to disembark.
• Fixed issue where armies would be stuck in Muster stance and could not exit that stance in Campaign modes.
• Fixed case where spies could get stuck on top of fleets in Campaign modes.
• Fixed rare post battle lockup in Campaign modes.
• Improved unit pathfinding in Barbarian village battle maps (fixed no go zones).
• Fix for Multiplayer Campaign lock up when the player was reinforcing an AI ally who was victorious in battle, causing the player to become stuck with no victory / continue / exit battle user interface functionality.
• Fix for cultural influence bonus from the Shrine of Neptune building
• Fix for "Zone of Controls" of hidden armies being visible to both players in head to head Multiplayer Campaign mode on mouse-over.
• Assorted minor fixes to city battle maps.
• Fix for "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day" achievement failing to unlock when its requirements were met in some situations.

[Yskonyn]

One thing I could never figure out with total war games is when you select your army and have them move to a spot in a formation, but the calvary during the move does not stay in formation but always ends up passing the lined troops in front of them.  When doing a march like that, they should stay in the back an set their pace appropriately not to pass up the walking troops.

Is this when using the CTRL or SHIFT (can't remember which it was) mode to move in formation?
That should not happen indeed.

[Grim.Reaper]

Using ctrl+g worked a little better, but still have seen it.

[Nefaro]

Alright, finished the Prologue. Now to choose...Rome or the Iceni for a real campaign? Both are rated as 'Easy,' both have great rosters, and both have decent starting positions (the Iceni moreso than Rome, IMHO, but Rome aint bad.) Decisions...

After starting a campaign as both Rome and Pontus, I've found it more difficult as Pontus because they only start out owning two regions.  This resulted in a stagnated population growth and city expansion due to limited food-producing slots.  It also made for tough decisions regarding food-producing structures and stability-inducing structures when they did finally start expanding.  As Rome, it started off notably easier since they have more (and thus more flexibility).  So I'd think that an Iceni start would be tough for awhile until you can expand and get your pops growing to fill out more structures, to then support more expansion, etc etc. 

On the other hand, I've only had one foreign power  indirectly initiate a war against me, since it was against a client state I had taken in a previous war not long before.  None have directly DOW'd me, so it leads me to think they generally leave the player alone for awhile in the beginning.  If that's the case, you could have enough time to get things moving.

Starting off as one of the larger, stronger powers is probably a good deal easier since they start off wealthier, and with better initial growth.  You hit the ground running.

[Bison]

OK.  We got the MP to work for several hours and no issue.  I think we ended up with a desynched save or something annoying but the second start seems to be going swimmingly now.

[JudgeDredd]

This was already mentioned by JH - but can I just clarify?

I started the prologue last night and I had my formation of troops. When I clicked on an enemy unit to attack (clicked - NOT double clicked) - they ran towards them like a rabble.

So that is porked right - but from what I gather only in the prologue?

I don't mind if I double click to attack they run and lose rank - but I'm not having my units running as a rabble towards the enemy when I single click the enemy unit!

[Nefaro]

OK.  We got the MP to work for several hours and no issue.  I think we ended up with a desynched save or something annoying but the second start seems to be going swimmingly now.

The upcoming Friday patch is supposed to address some de-sync issues with multiplayer.  At least it says so in the beta patch notes. 

It's mostly for fixing the worst crashing and screwy textures that have been reported.  Their "fix" for poor video performance is going to be lowering the default video settings for when someone first loads the game.  Yes, you heard that right.  They will make it look worse by default.  I don't think they ever quite optimizized Shogun 2's video performance and it's worse in this one, so hopefully they get to crackin' on that instead of just lowering the settings quality.  At least give us more options of crap to turn off;  the goddamn clouds, fog, and burning cities/smoke all over the huge strategic map is a good example of what should be ticked off to improve performance a good deal.

I started the prologue last night and I had my formation of troops. When I clicked on an enemy unit to attack (clicked - NOT double clicked) - they ran towards them like a rabble.

In many Total War titles, certainly the last few, your own Tac AI tends to give your units a Run order if you're moving a long distance towards the enemy or if you're near the enemy and making a short hop forward.  I'm always Johnny On The Spot with the 'R' hotkey, for telling them to walk, so use that after you issue an order else see them trying to tire themselves by running across half the battlefield in formation.  ;)

I'm running into some nasty gameplay issues regarding all your generals dying off in very short order.  Between the assassinations by other houses in your own faction, and these generals aging at an incredibly fast rate, they disappear rather quickly.  I've been having to resort to bribing other house membors over, which not only costs money but court/senator influence.  It's just a downward spiral with both generals and the number of nobles influenced.  Both tend to drop faster than a cheap whore.  It also doesn't help that you can't even get married and have offspring to fill your ranks in the future.  The Wifey slot is there, but I've not seen any option for getting your own household generals married and also have yet to see a single marriage offer for filling that slot up (and down, baby, yeah!).  The poor attempts at CK2-like random family events must've distracted them from actually completing it.  ???

Reportedly a dev video interview says they ripped out the scripted AI, that worked so well in Shogun 2, and started with some fresh new AI system that's supposed to be more flexible.  *facepalm*  Another case of, "if it's not broke..", huh?  So what if it does generally the same thing, if it's doing it well enough to be a bit of a challenge.

I'm enjoying the game, but the unfinished game mechanics and AI is starting to get me down.  I can generally stomach the patchy video performance but things such as the generals dying every few turns, constantly plummeting influence that isn't going up with military victories (as it should), and other such wifeless factors, are starting to bum me out.

Oh.. forgot to mention that I found out why the Pikemen were missing their pikes.  You have to give them the Form Phalanx order.  Only then will their pikes show up in their hands, where their swords had been.  Rather ass-backwards.  :o

[undercovergeek]

For the defeated nation not dieing and returning, id read that the nation only dies when all the troops are wiped out, not the last city which is the old way and the remainder of the army turns rebel - now every one must be hunted down, what this means of course is the remaining armies out in the field can recapture a province and hey presto Carthage are present on the map again

As for the battles and morale and everyone running away too quick, i think everyone needs a morale tweak - this is what Darth used to do to get troops to stay in the fight - one thing that did occur to me is everyone is fighting as Rome against others or their own nation but havent yet fought the romans - maybe its just romans that are overpowered

[Nefaro]

For the defeated nation not dieing and returning, id read that the nation only dies when all the troops are wiped out, not the last city which is the old way and the remainder of the army turns rebel - now every one must be hunted down, what this means of course is the remaining armies out in the field can recapture a province and hey presto Carthage are present on the map again

Exactly right.  However, I've found that the AI usually suicides it's troops at the nearest city after you take the final one.

The real shocking AI behavior, on the Strategic Map, is all their armies I see hanging around outside town suffrering attrition.  The skull & crossbone symbol's tooltip on the character cards says, "Your armies are suffering losses every turn due to the inability to afford their upkeep" or something to that effect.  Nearly every faction I attack, who have been at peace, have three small armies sitting outside one of their cities wasting away like this.  I was gonna post a screenshot of it, but all I got was a black screen on the cap.  :-\

I'm very close to packing it away for awhile, when the AI is this brain dead.  I didn't think it was possible after their previous game, but they managed to screw it up.  I intentionally avoided all the hype before release, so it would be a fresh experience, and some of the new facets I like.  However, it's just unfinished and the AI is putting up no fight at all.  Hell, it's helping me kill them. 

I just hope that CA gives it enough post-release work to get it where it needs to be.  The way they quickly left NTW, and most notably ETW, in a mediocre state while heading off to produce the next title makes me wonder whether they'll have the fortitude to do so.  I would be very sad if they didn't get it up to Shogun 2 standards in the end.

[Great Ajax]

This is an odd design decision as the default click has always been at walking speed unless you double clicked in which they would run at the double.  I have to use Ctrl-left click or something like that to get the units moving at walking speed and they will stay in formation and my general won't lead the charge in front of his formations.

Trey

This was already mentioned by JH - but can I just clarify?

I started the prologue last night and I had my formation of troops. When I clicked on an enemy unit to attack (clicked - NOT double clicked) - they ran towards them like a rabble.

So that is porked right - but from what I gather only in the prologue?

I don't mind if I double click to attack they run and lose rank - but I'm not having my units running as a rabble towards the enemy when I single click the enemy unit!

[Bison]

This is an odd design decision as the default click has always been at walking speed unless you double clicked in which they would run at the double.  I have to use Ctrl-left click or something like that to get the units moving at walking speed and they will stay in formation and my general won't lead the charge in front of his formations.

Trey

This was already mentioned by JH - but can I just clarify?

I started the prologue last night and I had my formation of troops. When I clicked on an enemy unit to attack (clicked - NOT double clicked) - they ran towards them like a rabble.

So that is porked right - but from what I gather only in the prologue?

I don't mind if I double click to attack they run and lose rank - but I'm not having my units running as a rabble towards the enemy when I single click the enemy unit!

I haven't looked yet, but I wonder if you can reset this in the control panel for keyboard shortcuts.