Rome II

[MengJiao]

Wow! Back from my vacation trip and there has been a lot of activity regarding Rome 2! Excited to see all the changes in the coming week and finally start my grand campaign as Egypt. :D

  Yep.  Easy Egypt was a fun campaign.  It starts with quite a bit of regions and a nice fleet, but then it seems to be destined to be attacked by
the Selucids and all their satrapies and allies and Cyrenica.  This makes about 7-8 medium to large factions attacking Egypt in the first few turns.  I took the fleet and the armies on a looting spree just to keep from going under.  It took 30 turns to clean up the resulting mess (you can get peace with some of the Eastern Satrapies of the Selucids and peace very early with Cyrenica might be a good idea), but then Egypt did very well and took the whole Levant and even beat some Steppe barbarians and Sparta.  I stopped since I wanted to play Carthage on easy before the patches came in.

[Sir Slash]

Patch 2 is out now. 76MB total. Hope it's as good as they say it is. At first I didn't much like this game but that was because of all the new stuff. But it's growing on me. Been playing Rome/Subei/Pontus off and on and the way the factions play differently is great. Really like the cultural and building choices. I'm not a fan of the new Province system though. Any time I capture a new city, the whole province is angry about it. I don't see why the entire province shares a universal disorder level. Shouldn't 2 or 3 happy cities outweigh 1 unhappy one? And I can't cancel taxes for the one pissed-off city the way I could in all other TW games. So either everybody pays or nobody pays. This makes it tough early on when you really need the cash. Similar thing happened when I captured the last Etruscan city. Instead of occupying it I made them my client state thinking I would avoid the whole Public Disorder thing. Instead of being happy about my mercy on them, they hate me. They won't even trade with me. And are giving me 0 money each turn as my clients even though they're building new buildings and raising new armies. And the talking head diplomacy guy keeps talking smack to me every time I try to negotiate with them. I guess I should've just conquered them instead. Still this game's a gem. It just needs a lot of polishing. :)

[mikeck]

Was anything added since the beta?

[Sir Slash]

I think this was the beta patch made available for everybody. Another beta patch is in the works according to TWC.

[Greybriar]

I don't know anything about additions, but according to this, the latest patch has 100 fixes and the A.I. doesn't take so long to move.

[Gusington]

Nice so that first beta patch is now live? I know what I'll be doing tonight. Looking forward to shorter AI move times and general improved smooveosity on the campaign map.

[Sir Slash]

The most notable change so far is tech tab at the bottom now has a number on it indicating how many turns before the tech is finished.

[Gusington]

That should have been there from Day 1. Starting to believe that SEGA put a lot of pressure on CA for initial release and that this system of patch releases is not ad hoc...it was planned this way all along.

[mikeck]

Quite likely. Nothing in my experience is as bad as Sword or the Stars being released as an early alpha and having them tell their customers "oh sorry! We released a beta by mistake, real game goes up tomorrow". Of course, it didnt. They then tried to say its just a few patches. Then finally admission . Never been lied to like that by a game company but it was an eye opener to the business a bit.

[mikeck]

Gus,

This isn't the first patch...it's the official release of what was the 2nd Beta patch that came out a week ago.

[Gusington]

Yeah I know...this patch sounds more meaty than the first though.

[Tuna]

Can you continue existing campaigns if you patch?

[Sir Slash]

Yes you can for patch 1 & 2.

[LongBlade]

Can you continue existing campaigns if you patch?

I fired my game up today, noticed the tech countdown and figured it was an auto-patch. My saved game continued without issue.

[Nefaro]

The most notable change so far is tech tab at the bottom now has a number on it indicating how many turns before the tech is finished.

..and the turn resolution is faster.