Rome II

[JudgeDredd]

^ re the enemy AI attacking - didn't the video linked to in here explain that the AI is reluctant to attack because of those popup victory flags?

[Yskonyn]

If I fire something else up, it'll intermittently lag it out.  Like it keeps trying to use up all the processor time or keep constantly writing to the hard drive (despite these patch sizes being less than 30MB) while a patch has stopped for minutes at a time.  Whatever it's doing, it isn't doing it properly. 
(...)
Usually have to restart the pc to get it straightened out.  Makes me wonder if they have some kind of runaway bug if you keep it running too long.

That reinforces my theory about it handling files differently than before. There seems to be a lot of verifying and unpacking going on.
I see the same issue with a program called SpotNet. It downloads files from Usenet, verifies them, then downloads PAR files to repair the package if needed, repairs the package and then unpacks it. All automatically and it brings your PC down to its knees.
Perhaps Steam does a similar thing now?

I never have to restart my PC, though. I just let it run and it tidies up by itself. But it doesn't bring my pc down to its knees like it does to yours. I can still do other stuff, just not that game that is updating that I really want to play. :D

[Nefaro]

I never have to restart my PC, though. I just let it run and it tidies up by itself. But it doesn't bring my pc down to its knees like it does to yours. I can still do other stuff, just not that game that is updating that I really want to play. :D

It really only bogs down on my notebook, so the Steam client is probably conflicting with something else running.  However, the terrible download speeds and time-outs now happen on my desktop, too.  I wonder if they put some kind of strict cap on update downloads.  Seems like I have two or three games updating every damn day when I log in, so I can only imagine how much traffic there is with all the developers doing such frequent updates.

^ re the enemy AI attacking - didn't the video linked to in here explain that the AI is reluctant to attack because of those popup victory flags?

I was talking about on the strategy map, in the main campaign.  I've not been directly attacked by an AI force, other than the 1's and 2's that suicide into your city once their last one is gone.  Neither has it directly declared war on me.  This is hurting my opinion of the game the most, by far.  The AI is doing nothing while I just steamroll it's passiveness.  It also may not be doing very well at constructing buildings and keeping it's population happy.  I've not looked into how it's running it's own regions much.  It's upgrading buildings at least, so it may be okay.  Definitely can't concentrate into a large army and attack, though.  :'(

I need some kind of challenge in strategy games to enjoy them.  It's just letting me walk all over it right now.  There are reports that raising the campaign difficulty up doesn't make it any more aggressive either, but I may have to check it out anyway.

[undercovergeek]

torn between 2 mods at the mo - both getting good feed back - one adjusts the morale and speed of the troops, the other adjusts the battle effectiveness of the units - both are leading toward longer lasting battles, more effective pike phalanxes and nail biting fights

that been said im still in prologue so have yet to see what the main game is like

[JudgeDredd]

I never have to restart my PC, though. I just let it run and it tidies up by itself. But it doesn't bring my pc down to its knees like it does to yours. I can still do other stuff, just not that game that is updating that I really want to play. :D

It really only bogs down on my notebook, so the Steam client is probably conflicting with something else running.  However, the terrible download speeds and time-outs now happen on my desktop, too.  I wonder if they put some kind of strict cap on update downloads.  Seems like I have two or three games updating every damn day when I log in, so I can only imagine how much traffic there is with all the developers doing such frequent updates.

^ re the enemy AI attacking - didn't the video linked to in here explain that the AI is reluctant to attack because of those popup victory flags?

I was talking about on the strategy map, in the main campaign.  I've not been directly attacked by an AI force, other than the 1's and 2's that suicide into your city once their last one is gone.  Neither has it directly declared war on me.  This is hurting my opinion of the game the most, by far.  The AI is doing nothing while I just steamroll it's passiveness.  It also may not be doing very well at constructing buildings and keeping it's population happy.  I've not looked into how it's running it's own regions much.  It's upgrading buildings at least, so it may be okay.  Definitely can't concentrate into a large army and attack, though.  :'(

I need some kind of challenge in strategy games to enjoy them.  It's just letting me walk all over it right now.  There are reports that raising the campaign difficulty up doesn't make it any more aggressive either, but I may have to check it out anyway.

Ok - sorry. My bad. :)

[MengJiao]

Nope, not yet. Truthfully, it doesn't bother me too much as it just looks like sunset.

I have a question: I have taken about 5 cities including Syracuse and none of them had walls. I needed no seige equipment. What gives? Are walls something that must be built through the UI? I am playing as Rome so does Rome have them? Maybe I need to research concrete or something?

I'm sorry, I have played this game all night and I love it. I really don't know what all of the griping is about. Installed Radious' building mod which lowers the unrest penalty and raises the food bonus of some buildings but other than that, vanilla is good...red sky and all

All of the provincial capitals I've seen have walls.

[MengJiao]

I never have to restart my PC, though. I just let it run and it tidies up by itself. But it doesn't bring my pc down to its knees like it does to yours. I can still do other stuff, just not that game that is updating that I really want to play. :D

It really only bogs down on my notebook, so the Steam client is probably conflicting with something else running.  However, the terrible download speeds and time-outs now happen on my desktop, too.  I wonder if they put some kind of strict cap on update downloads.  Seems like I have two or three games updating every damn day when I log in, so I can only imagine how much traffic there is with all the developers doing such frequent updates.

^ re the enemy AI attacking - didn't the video linked to in here explain that the AI is reluctant to attack because of those popup victory flags?

I was talking about on the strategy map, in the main campaign.  I've not been directly attacked by an AI force, other than the 1's and 2's that suicide into your city once their last one is gone.  Neither has it directly declared war on me.  This is hurting my opinion of the game the most, by far.  The AI is doing nothing while I just steamroll it's passiveness.  It also may not be doing very well at constructing buildings and keeping it's population happy.  I've not looked into how it's running it's own regions much.  It's upgrading buildings at least, so it may be okay.  Definitely can't concentrate into a large army and attack, though.  :'(

I need some kind of challenge in strategy games to enjoy them.  It's just letting me walk all over it right now.  There are reports that raising the campaign difficulty up doesn't make it any more aggressive either, but I may have to check it out anyway.

The AI hasn't directly declared war on me, but it has wiped out my allies and satrapies and caused unrest and attempted assassinations and subversion and sabotage.  One wars are underway, it seems reasonably aggressive.  I usually only stop the main enemy attack by a combination of causing unrest and sabotage and forced marching and emergency recruitment of mercenaries.

[MengJiao]

I am at year 237bc so that's like 26 turns right? Anyway, it's not bad at all so far. Certainly not any worse than Rome1. It certainly isn't like Pride of nations. It is slower than it was in the first few turns and as other nations are discovered and those nations build Armies , it will slow. It goes faster when you turn off "watch AI moves"

I'm in the late 220s.  I've knocked off all the easy barbarians and I'm looking at some serious enemies: Persia, the Medes, Parthia, the Scythians, the Selucids, Sardes, Macedon and Sparta.  Gotta watch the diplomacy even more carefully.

[Nefaro]

The AI hasn't directly declared war on me, but it has wiped out my allies and satrapies and caused unrest and attempted assassinations and subversion and sabotage.  One wars are underway, it seems reasonably aggressive.  I usually only stop the main enemy attack by a combination of causing unrest and sabotage and forced marching and emergency recruitment of mercenaries.

Keep me abreast on how aggressive they are.  Perhaps I just had an easy start as Pontus and quickly gained in military strength enough to scare all my neighbors. *shrug*

I did start up a game as Epirus today.  I figured it must be super hard because they get rolled very quickly in all the campaigns I've started.  Sure enough, you get dogpiled like mad as Epirus.  Started off at war with Sparta.  Okay, no biggie.. that'll be a good contest.  Then Athens declared war on the second turn.  Then Gnossos.  Then Rome.  I think someone else DOW'd after that too.  All in the first three or four turns.   :o

Good thing:  I actually had a city besieged by an Athenian force, although it was a good deal smaller than the army I had within range.  It had more units, but kept them all holed up in Athens instead of putting the bulk of it's forces into the army sent on an offensive against me.  *Le sigh*  So I killed them and decided to see whether it would do something if I sieged Athens.  Sure enough, it sooo overwhelmingly outnumbered my army that it attacked with a near full-sized Spartan army and was backed up by the similarly-sized Athenian garrison.  In other words, it finally attacked me when it had about a 3-to-1 advantage.  They also didn't press their advantage when they killed half my army and sent the other wounded half running.   :-[  They could've killed it off or taken my nearest city within the next turn.  I guess it's better than the nothing I was getting before, but still leaves much to be desired. 

The Epirus start probably needs some fixing by CA.  All those DOWs at the beginning of the game were insane.  I doubt Epirus will ever survive since this tends to happen every time, with the AIs playing it.

[Gusington]

Is there any chance to go into uber turtle mode and hold off all the enemy factions?

[mikeck]

I found that the Ai can be aggressive once war is declared. I declared on Syracuse and laid seige to it, I was curious where there army was but figured if it was not in front of me, who cares? Next turn AI landed about 12 ships worth of troops into newly conquered city on the west of Sicily. I had a legion with about 7 units there but it got wiped out. Solid play as I had to break seige and rescue my legion.

Easy to say "so what" but look how long we waited for amphibious landings in ETW

[undercovergeek]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBVVxidztHc

looks promising

[Bison]

I found that the Ai can be aggressive once war is declared. I declared on Syracuse and laid seige to it, I was curious where there army was but figured if it was not in front of me, who cares? Next turn AI landed about 12 ships worth of troops into newly conquered city on the west of Sicily. I had a legion with about 7 units there but it got wiped out. Solid play as I had to break seige and rescue my legion.

I've found this to be the case as well.  The AI does not seem to be overly inclined to declare war on it's own, but I've seen it put up a pretty decent fight after it's been declared war on or if it starts out at war with another faction.

[Martok]

I also must confess I love the unit cards.  They fit perfectly into the art style of the era, which I happen to really like.  If I could get a Roman style mosaic installed on my gaming corner floor, I would.  Just saying.

A big +1 to that.  I realize not everyone's enamored with them, but I really dig Rome II's unit cards. 

The AI hasn't directly declared war on me, but it has wiped out my allies and satrapies and caused unrest and attempted assassinations and subversion and sabotage.  One wars are underway, it seems reasonably aggressive.  I usually only stop the main enemy attack by a combination of causing unrest and sabotage and forced marching and emergency recruitment of mercenaries.

Keep me abreast on how aggressive they are.  Perhaps I just had an easy start as Pontus and quickly gained in military strength enough to scare all my neighbors. *shrug*

I did start up a game as Epirus today.  I figured it must be super hard because they get rolled very quickly in all the campaigns I've started.  Sure enough, you get dogpiled like mad as Epirus.  Started off at war with Sparta.  Okay, no biggie.. that'll be a good contest.  Then Athens declared war on the second turn.  Then Gnossos.  Then Rome.  I think someone else DOW'd after that too.  All in the first three or four turns.   :o

Good thing:  I actually had a city besieged by an Athenian force, although it was a good deal smaller than the army I had within range.  It had more units, but kept them all holed up in Athens instead of putting the bulk of it's forces into the army sent on an offensive against me.  *Le sigh*  So I killed them and decided to see whether it would do something if I sieged Athens.  Sure enough, it sooo overwhelmingly outnumbered my army that it attacked with a near full-sized Spartan army and was backed up by the similarly-sized Athenian garrison.  In other words, it finally attacked me when it had about a 3-to-1 advantage.  They also didn't press their advantage when they killed half my army and sent the other wounded half running.   :-[  They could've killed it off or taken my nearest city within the next turn.  I guess it's better than the nothing I was getting before, but still leaves much to be desired. 

The Epirus start probably needs some fixing by CA.  All those DOWs at the beginning of the game were insane.  I doubt Epirus will ever survive since this tends to happen every time, with the AIs playing it.

FWIW, I think Epirus may essentially be destined to everyone declaring war on them early on.  I know I've already DOW'ed them in my Athens campaign, as I badly need the extra territory/population/income.  (Heck, for that matter, pretty much all the Greek factions seem to want a piece of each other... ::) )

[Grim.Reaper]

 New patch today, likely the hot fix for red sky.