Rome II

[mikeck]

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"

[mikeck]

Can anyone explain the benefits of authority, cunning and zeal for generals?

[Bison]

Can anyone explain the benefits of authority, cunning and zeal for generals?

My understanding is that authority improves unit morale, zeal gives boost to damage, and cunning effects strategic movements/stances.  I think.

[Boggit]

Hopefully my copy will arrive tomorrow am, then I can see for myself all this cool stuff. Martian skies though, weird! Has CA fixed that yet?

[mikeck]

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

[mikeck]

Ah - ok. I have been running my troops to make ground - though I'm pretty sure I have them setup in a formation before I move them - meaning (I thought) they were back in walk mode.

I'll double check tonight.

You are correct...no matter what I click, they run and mob. Only way is to use the arrow key and have them walk into the enemy

[Nefaro]

What the hell does the swirling white cloud thingy mean around armies and navies?

A meaningless drop in frames per second. 

Stuff like that kills the campaign map performance and I don't really see any use for it.  Why some water funnel spinning around ships?  Because it's just "more".  ::)

I, too, think it will be a wonderful game - if they stick to fixing it up.  Right now it's a very flawed game that's still fun even with all the bugs and and regularly dead AI.  There are some great new things:

1) Multiple victory conditions.  Not just "conquer this many territories", for those who want to turtle up into a more economic or diplomatically-oriented game.

2) No campaign time limit!  Supposedly we can play as long as we want with no turn timer monkey on our backs!

3) The new faction politics has potential if they can fix the rate at which your generals die off, add the missing marriage option(s), and give the Gravitas rating a proper effect on influence.

4) New army mustering restrictions that focus on generals and limited amounts of armies you can have in the field.

5) Amphibious landings, with both sea battles and even sieges taking place on the same map.

6) The new Province system makes for some interesting choices and rewards you for taking certain adjacent regions.

7) Like the Province system and faction politics, the random family events are yet more CK2-inspired game mechanics added to TW Rome 2.  They have potential although a few of them I've experienced make me feel like I'm just randomly choosing a multiple choice answer that may or may not punish me. 

8) The unit and faction variety is great, and it should only grow with faction DLC.  Let's hope all the bugs get squished before they start cranking out all these DLC additions, however.

9) The special commands available for armies & navies adds a little more strategy to the campain side. 

Those are ones I can think of on the spot.  I also have a long list of bugs & complaints but I wanted to point out that I see some good stuff in here too, so it's not a complete disaster (unless they leave it unfinished).

[Nefaro]

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?

Walls are only present in regions with a Province capital. 

The only defensive siege research pertains to having extra weapons (boiling oil for example) and adding extra days to the amount required for a siege to be successful against one of your cities.

[Bison]

I've got a multiplayer campaign going as Sparta and my co-op partner is playing Egypt.  It's a lot of fun to sit and coordinate how we are going to divide and conquer the world.  We have had some issues with de synch prior to todays patch.  So far around 6 or 7 turns in a new campaign and no issues really other than the red sky.

I have a Roman solo campaign going and it's been a lot of fun.  Oddly enough I'm not suffering from the red sky bug in this one.

Personally now that I'm starting to understand the mechanics of the province system, public order, culture, and the faction relationships there is a lot of depth to the strategic game.  The FPS hitches just don't really bother me on the strategic map.  YMMV, but it's not a real annoyance to me.

The battle are hit and miss.  I'd love for them to relook the flag system and city layouts, because I want more open field battles.  But to be fair if I'm defending a city, I don't go rushing out to the open fields to engage either.  I make the attacker get disorganized in the city and force them to come to the flag too.  I'd also like for them to spend some more time working on keeping armies in formation for an attack, but I'm learning how to keep my troops in formation. 

Maybe I'm just a super huge Total War fan boy, but I'm just not seeing the same number of issues that some are having with the game.

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.

[Nefaro]

F Steam right in the F'ing A. 

Goddamn thing is hanging on every other update this weekend.  POS client. 

RAAAGE

[JudgeDredd]

^ lol  ;)

[Yskonyn]

Lol! I suspect the way Steam applies patches might have changed. It used to download complete packages and then apply the patch.
Perhaps it downloads seperate files now and writes them first before downloading the next one? It seems that updates on games with large files show this 'pausing' behavior more often.
Are you using an SSD? If so then my theory is moot . ;)

[JudgeDredd]

I'm playing the prologue and I'm not getting a red sky

[undercovergeek]

i cant believe you said that out loud!!

the gods of glitches are watching yoooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

[Nefaro]

Naa, I'm not using an SSD.  The Steam client has been a real bitch lately, and now that you mention it.. there was a client update  or two before it started acting up like this. 

I wouldn't have ranted about it, but the client has been sucking up way too much processing speed when it stalls out like that.  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. 

It's more pronounced with my notebook computer so it may well be, at least partly, a hard disk writing issue.  Then again, it doesn't even have to be downloading for the Steam client to occasionally freeze my computer for a couple seconds and show an 'Not Responding' indicator.  So I tend to rage when one or both start happening.  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.

*******************

Hey, Bison.  Have you played a regular campaign yet,  very long? 

I just can't get the AI to attack me in the regular campaign.  Nor it's armies.  If I rated it's aggresiveness on a scale of 100, it'd be -2.  If the AI is attacking you on the strategic map, tell me which faction you're playing.  Maybe some areas work better for the AI.  Perhaps I'll try starting as a Celtic tribe and see if it gets a move on.