Rome II

[JudgeDredd]

I did see the one with soldiers running around not knowing what the hell to do...headless chickens...and I haven't even played it that much and I noticed it.

[Nefaro]

I am backing up Mike on this. Angry Joe's review is hilarious because he is hilarious. But the stuff he has seen I have never seen. I have seen my own weirdness but the game's sheer epic scope has totally outweighed anything negative I have seen. The negative I have seen are niggles...one time oddities...etc.

I've seen all that mentioned in his review, and then some.  Well.. minus the ship sailing through a city, but I've seen my cavalry ride right into a hill, sinking right in.  Same type of bug. 

Of course, I've put about 65 hours into the game so I've probably experienced more than most.  There's a great all-around game in there, waiting to get out.  The latest beta update improved the gfx performance on the campaign map, and seems to have possibly enticed the AIs to build slightly larger armies (sometimes to the detriment of it's yearly profits) but I've not really seen much in the way of AI improvement yet.  Still.. it's an improvement and hopefully that trend continues for awhile.  The biggest improvement has been the AI turn resolution times.  Haven't had a 2-minute wait since!

Thanks Nefaro...there were definitely at least three powers in the area when I first went to besiege the city, four counting the rebels. Matter of fact Carthage is having it's arse handed to it by a number of AI powers. I am trying to muscle in to pick at the carcass.

I've definitely had to finger out some of the stuff on my own, like everyone else, but I'm pretty sure I know it all well enough now.

[undercovergeek]

have you played the beta with/without Radious' stuff yet - is it still needed?

[Nefaro]

have you played the beta with/without Radious' stuff yet - is it still needed?

Nope.

Not even sure if they're beta-compatible.

[Gusington]

65 hours! I've only played 15.

[Bison]

I've played around 30+ hours, but haven't played all weekend as I spent all my free time with board games.

[LongBlade]

Gah!

I can't believe I've conquered a bunch of towns but haven't developed tech for battering rams or anything.

Here I am ten turns into a 25 turn development cycle for the Multilingual cultural perk and my vaunted warriors can't figure out how to pick up a tree trunk and bash in a weak wooden gate defended by 50 cavalrymen!

[mikeck]

have you played the beta with/without Radious' stuff yet - is it still needed?

Nope.

Not even sure if they're beta-compatible.

Yes they are compatable.

I've put about 71 hours into it. I have had 1 crash to desktop and one freeze. I have had many good battles and have had one where I wondered what the hell the AI was doing. It is not as good as S2 at release for sure, but it is far better than Rome, M2 or empire in that department. I just thinks the angry Joe review made it look like the game was a grease fire and that is just not the case.

[undercovergeek]

have you played the beta with/without Radious' stuff yet - is it still needed?

Nope.

Not even sure if they're beta-compatible.

Yes they are compatable.

I've put about 71 hours into it. I have had 1 crash to desktop and one freeze. I have had many good battles and have had one where I wondered what the hell the AI was doing. It is not as good as S2 at release for sure, but it is far better than Rome, M2 or empire in that department. I just thinks the angry Joe review made it look like the game was a grease fire and that is just not the case.

Do the mods not exaggerate the fixes - make troops to slow

[Nefaro]

Yes they are compatable.

I had two lock-ups using a couple of the Radious mods and the Yarkis mod, so I removed them.  One was a freeze after I hit 'Exit Game' that forced a restart of the whole machine.  It may well have been problems with the stock game, but the same hasn't happened since taking them out for the beta so I'm going back to waiting until the patches progress, and the mods mature with them, before digging into the soup again.  Not a big deal, as my time spent with the game has dropped in favor of others at the moment.  I can wait.

[MengJiao]

^I agree...I have an NVidia GTX 560 and it should run this as smooth as a baby's tuckus, but it doesn't, especially on the campaign map.

Totally different questions: I went to take Lilybaneum (sp?) from Carthage and could not (my army was not allowed to engage...could not get the target reticule to pop up). Is this because the city is besieged and I just can't see that through the fog of war? Or is it some kind of bug?

  The besieging force has priority on making the attack.  So if force A is besieging and force B comes up, force B will enter the battle, but you have to trigger it with the besieging force.

   Where this gets tricky is when allies or enemies attack the same place:  you might have to attack the besieging force and then attack the city.

[mikeck]

have you played the beta with/without Radious' stuff yet - is it still needed?

Nope.

Not even sure if they're beta-compatible.

Yes they are compatable.

I've put about 71 hours into it. I have had 1 crash to desktop and one freeze. I have had many good battles and have had one where I wondered what the hell the AI was doing. It is not as good as S2 at release for sure, but it is far better than Rome, M2 or empire in that department. I just thinks the angry Joe review made it look like the game was a grease fire and that is just not the case.

Do the mods not exaggerate the fixes - make troops to slow

Not that I have noticed. It overrides the vanilla file anyway. I know the "close combat mod 2" had an issue with that but it had to do with an internal mod issue in the end

[MengJiao]

^That's a lot of ifs there. That said, the newest beta patch is getting some rave reviews from the lunatics over at TWC. A lot of claims of a reborn AI.

  Actually the supposedly messy release was probably a good strategy since they were going to get lunatic rants about how bad the game was no matter what they did.  So why not release it with a few noticible problems -- let everyone rant -- fix a few things and then let them repent of their ranting with raves of wonder.

[mikeck]

Lol, didnt matter to me. When it comes to TW and AgEOD, regardless of condition, I have fun.

[Nefaro]

^That's a lot of ifs there. That said, the newest beta patch is getting some rave reviews from the lunatics over at TWC. A lot of claims of a reborn AI.

  Actually the supposedly messy release was probably a good strategy since they were going to get lunatic rants about how bad the game was no matter what they did.  So why not release it with a few noticible problems -- let everyone rant -- fix a few things and then let them repent of their ranting with raves of wonder.

Shogun 2 actually received a lot of praise, on release. 

I suppose it will be their oddball release success, now that we're back to normal with Rome 2.