Rome II

[Sir Slash]

One of the funniest sights from Rome 2 for me was ordering a elephant unit to charge through a city gate to get inside and watching the elephants squeezing through one at a time. Talk about a bottleneck!

[jomni]

Jomni you need to recruit some War Mice units to frighten the elephants. The Spartan ones are the toughest. And the scariest because they wear those funny little Spartan helmets.

Sorry but I'm not gonna download any cartoony DLC.

Speaking of War Mice...

[MengJiao]

yes, but only because im a movie going, hollywood drivel in taking fan whore and recently saw the new 300 film, which i admit doesnt have spartans in and is all about the Athenians but i do like 300 and i do like their martial society

ill put my hand up and say i know sod all east of Rome history wise, and without some learned reading and Frank Miller probably wouldnt know much about Sparta either

Pontus, Breuci, Getae, Royal Scythia is all new to me

  I missed 300, but I have read some of the Archaeology of Scythia, so I started a new campaign as the Massagetae.  The Ai has spent most of its time running for its life (from Amul into deepest Bactria) so apparently the Massagetae and their Amazon Archers are pretty scary.  But I have plenty of allies too.  The AI is definitely very different in this latest iteration.  They prioritized massing their forces to such an extent that if you drive a fast cavalry army into the midst of where you think they will be assembling, you can even get a few ambushes.  But that's against the Bactrians who are burdened with hoplites and whatnot.  When fighting other steppe barbarians, the AI is quite fearsome in my opinion.

[Gusington]

I was just checking out the Scythian roster and man does it look cool. May play them next instead of Sparta or Macedon.

[undercovergeek]

whats so fancy about the scythians?

[endfire79]

whats so fancy about the scythians?

Pirates? arrgh

[undercovergeek]

sea based or land based? - because im pants at naval combat

[Gusington]

They have a lot of horseymen, and I love horseymen. Like 12 different types. And they look quite savage. I like my horseymen to be savage.

[Sir Slash]

Yeah with the dismount ability for siege battles, I've thought you could have an entire cavalry-based force as the Scythians. But what'cha gonna do when you hit water? Teach the horseys to row?

[Gusington]

IIRC the Scythians also had a few decent infantry units too...not many but some.

[Sir Slash]

The new Emperor Edition Campaign is now out and I am very happy to report it doesn't conflict with the new Radious mod update nor does it screw-up any of my old saved games. So I am at a loss for something to bitch about. >:( The new campaign looks scrumptious and has a lot of new toys to play with including... finally... Latrines in your cities. My people were getting really tired of holding it. New icons for all the new factions can be a little confusing at first. I can't wait to get all Octavian on somebody's ass and see how the improved AI handles itself. And it's free. Like I use to tell the young girls, "The best love is free love Darling".

[MengJiao]

They have a lot of horseymen, and I love horseymen. Like 12 different types. And they look quite savage. I like my horseymen to be savage.

  Gak.  I was crushed horribly by the Parthinians as the Massagetae.  That's it.  I'm going to be the Normal Parthinians again.  The AI can be a real killer in this game.

 

[mikeck]

Should I even use radious mod or another full conversion? So much has changed and although they may work...do they make anything worse?

[SirAndrewD]

Should I even use radious mod or another full conversion? So much has changed and although they may work...do they make anything worse?

I personally prefer DeI to Radious, and the DeI team has been very quick to adapt to the new patches. 

That said, I plan on giving Vanilla a go for a new campaign.  With all the changes they've made to AI, battle speed, ect. I really want to see how well balanced the core game is now. 

[Sir Slash]

I've only used Radious and like it a lot. He has put the Civil War back in the mod but still has kept out the Forced March ability because of balance issues which is only a big deal when moving transport fleets which just crawl across the map. The vanilla game has come so far that there may not be a whole lot of difference from the mods. I had one crash when trying to load the new campaign with the Traits, Talents, and Toadies mod enabled. I fired up the Mark Anthony faction for the new campaign and he starts off at war with about 20 different factions. Damn! What'd he do?