Rome II

[Gusington]

I've seen complaints about the construction part of Rome II but now that I have got the hang of it and I'm making money and know how to control public order...I really like it. Moreso than Shogun 2. The construction component feels substantial somehow...I feel like I am controlling an empire moreso in Rome 2 than in perhaps any TW game before. Hard to explain exactly why.

[MengJiao]

I have to admit...I consistently get ASS KICKED. In naval battles. Big even close. If I use assault biremes, I get chewed up with javelins. If I switch to javelins, my ships get rammed by big assault ships. I thing the AI is really good at naval battles

I still have some issues with getting my ships to Board instead of Ram.  The button and cursor icon seem to be working properly now, unlike the release version, but I'm still seeing some of my ships just sit there and do nothing after giving them a Board order.  I even had one recently row backwards quite a ways and had to stop it myself.   ???

I'm pretty sure the naval battles still aren't finished.  I generally just auto-resolve them because the order system and ship AI is still wonky.

  I think they work okay.  If you give a ship a ram target and put on ramming speed, they will do some spectacular ramming.

The ramming works fine. 

It's when you switch them over to Boarding and try to use that order after a ram.  It only seems to work if my ship is contacting the other one nose-to-nose.  If I just rammed one in the side, and give a Board order, it'll just sit there.   Sometimes it'll reverse backwards until I stop it. 

I don't think the tactical AI can execute the Board order very well.

  I hadn't noticed this.  It may work differently with different types of ships.  For example the firepot ship executes the firepot attack with a ramming order (or so it seems to me).  And sometimes I think the ram gets disabled after a successful ram or other collision.

   From what I've seen, the sea battles are the best sea battles ever done on or off computers anywhere.  I find them intuitively satisfying and tactically convincing.  My favorite otherwise unimaginable nuance is one that I have mentioned before: missile troops can target enemy boarders on other ships, but everything I have noticed seems to be working extremely well and I haven't even tried complex group orders.

   I'm sometimes able to knock out two medium-sized enemy ships with a good, well-handled medium-sized melee ship: the first by ramming and the second by ramming or boarding.  A typical battle goes like this:

1) set game on 1/2 speed
2) pull flagship back and give it some medium melee defense escorts
3) set firepots near the center gap and prepare to target them at the larger enemy ships
4) Set artillery ships on either side of the center gap and behind the two melee/ram strike forces
5) Set faster missile ships on the outsides of the formation

Usually I'm attacking two smaller AI fleets (one transport group and one battlefleet or even two battlefleets) so one wing does a holding action while the center and the other wing form a burning mass of wreckage out of the more forward of the AI groups.  The AI tends to go after
nearer, weaker targets so the holding wing pulls back and my surviving fast ships go around the central wreckage and engage the slower enemy ships while the artillery and the flagship mop up the faster AI group.

One thing that throws this off is AI artillery and missle fire.  That can be hard to counter.

[MengJiao]

^Have you won a campaign yet?

I've had to restart every time I updated, to make sure everything's working as it should.

I made it furthest as Pontus, owning a 2-3 region deep area all the way around the Black Sea, and having just taken all of Dacia.  That game was a cakewalk and there was no sign of my expansion slowing.  However, that was before Patch 3, so maybe it's a bit more difficult now.

  Parthia seems like a possible Normal winner.  Easy Egypt would have won but very tediously; Easy Pontus and Normal Carthage got crushed.

  Ah, Parthia.  The heavy, armored horse archers can do anything.  Actually the Parthian armies I'm fielding are a very mixed bag, BUT I'm able to defeat Median and Persian forces even nearly double my size.  Why only last night, the battle assessment had me way down when I faced two armies of Median Pikes with a pure cavalry force.  What to do?  I was sure no pikes could beat Parthia.  I dismounted my Persian Mercenary cavalry (spears at least) and stuck them in a handy central clump of woods backed up by dismounted archers (not skirmishing...they meant business) and the Commander (also in the woods, but still on horseback).  My right wing was refused and all of pure, fun-loving horse archers bent on running away as much as possible.  The left was a multi-layered composit of archers forward and Median Cavalry far back to strike once the pikes where disrupted by the woods and stuff in the center.  The Medians advanced, attacked the defensive center and were gradually chopped up more or less as planned, though I think the woods on their approach march were what really destroyed their chances by stringing them out.

[MengJiao]

^Have you won a campaign yet?

I've had to restart every time I updated, to make sure everything's working as it should.

I made it furthest as Pontus, owning a 2-3 region deep area all the way around the Black Sea, and having just taken all of Dacia.  That game was a cakewalk and there was no sign of my expansion slowing.  However, that was before Patch 3, so maybe it's a bit more difficult now.

  Oh!  Patch3.  Yes.  Parthia's possible win is a patch three game.  At least two good things happened from the Parthinian point of view:
1) Ambushes: result: a flexible defense with small armies is possible: forced march to threatened towns -- the enemy by-passes and you ambush -- I think the problem for the AI is that they have just-big-enough armies to get in trouble and an army all alone -- no matter how big -- is in trouble.  I stay on the defensive until the enemy field armies are destroyed and then concentrate everything (forced marches behind a screen of deployed forces) to take something and then  disperse again to "defend" (ie lure into ambush).  I only defend towns as a ruse -- I never let an army get beseiged and always leave attractive targets for the AI.  The AI doesn't cope with the world of Patch3 very well.
2) possibly pure luck, but in my Patch3 the Selucids got clobbered by Pergamon and Cappadocia, thus saving Parthia.
3) possibly pure luck, but in my Patch3 trade trumps all in the mind of the AI.  I was at war with Media and they wanted a trade agreement.  The assorted Steppe barbarians hate me but I make a ton of money off of trading with them.

[Gusington]

I salivate over playing Parthia. I really want to play as Iceni but it will be Parthia after that, unless Persia is made playable through modding or DLC.

[Nefaro]

A patch for Beta-3 just went out that is supposed to address the campaign map hitching caused when you use the 'zoom to..' buttons.

I think the turn resolution time went back up a bit for Beta-3 but that's okay if it's required for getting the AI to actually do stuff, as it is.

[Gusington]

Wait so the 3rd patch is live now or still in beta?

[Nefaro]

Wait so the 3rd patch is live now or still in beta?

Still Beta.  They've had a couple updates to the Beta, however.

[MengJiao]

I salivate over playing Parthia. I really want to play as Iceni but it will be Parthia after that, unless Persia is made playable through modding or DLC.

  Parthia has lots of small advantages, but I think I was extremely lucky.  I was just playing to see what Patch3 was like so I did simple stuff like dumping that deranged ally to the north, trading a lot and staying out of trouble while building up the armies.  Once I got the joys of ambush down and gave up on seriously defending any particular spots, all was well.  Knocking out the Baktrians got me a great spot against the impenetrable whatnot of the silk road (Sogdian and Manichean wanna-bees?) and clearing the Elephantine Symbol people on the Arabian sea made that an even bigger safe hinderland and lots of trade and the Elephant Symbol people had armored horse archer-production (maybe it was something else in their elephantine world).  It looks like while I was getting a very safe base, the whole Selucid thing got bashed.  Parthava, Persia and Media all had other enemies and are now almost gone.  Now I'm looking at how to get to the Mediterranean and maybe checking the victory conditions.

[tgb]

Quick question from a guy still sitting on the fence who hasn't seen this addressed anywhere:

Has CA gotten rid of the endgame mechanic (i.e. the Realm Divide in S2) where the whole world turns against you just because you're winning?

[Nefaro]

Quick question from a guy still sitting on the fence who hasn't seen this addressed anywhere:

Has CA gotten rid of the endgame mechanic (i.e. the Realm Divide in S2) where the whole world turns against you just because you're winning?

There is no Realm Divide that I've seen.

There is, however, separate factions within your own 'nation'.  They will regularly attempt to assassinate you, whether you're close to taking over or not.

I suspect this facet of the game needs more work, and wasn't fully fleshed out.  I'm not sure if it ever really will be, but it'd be nice if the bastards weren't regularly going all 'Ides of March' on my generals.

[Sir Slash]

I'm really liking the Strategic View feature. At first it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me but in a recent battle in Germania, my Seubi were fighting another German faction in a heavily forested region and thought the trees and snow were beautiful but I couldn't see a damned thing going on. The Strat view helped me to make sense of the whole affair and win a victory. Very nice touch CA.

[LongBlade]

Quick question from a guy still sitting on the fence who hasn't seen this addressed anywhere:

Has CA gotten rid of the endgame mechanic (i.e. the Realm Divide in S2) where the whole world turns against you just because you're winning?

Not sure.

I'm somewhere around 70 BC. I had one province go up in civil war, which was easily crushed.

As I pushed from Europe down to the Aegean I started running into states with multiple alliances. The "whole world" is not against me, and I did choose when and where to go to war with multiple states. That said, I have the sense that things got more complex. Whether it's the region or the AI reacting against me I'm not sure. I am able to handle it, and have had several offers for peace. Which I have declined. Athens and Macedonia are pains in the butt, but I will crush them utterly. MUAHAHAHAHA!

[tgb]

I don't mind complexity.  What ultimately spoiled Shogun 2 for me was the gamey mechanism where allies and vassals turned against you because you hit a certain point on some meter.

[LongBlade]

I don't mind complexity.  What ultimately spoiled Shogun 2 for me was the gamey mechanism where allies and vassals turned against you because you hit a certain point on some meter.

I haven't seen that yet. Will keep you posted.

I did see where one lone nation surrounded by me did seem to think about taking advantage of the fact that I had lots of undefended provinces. It sent a scout over to look at a city, then retreated.

So far I've tolerated it, but this reminds me that I probably should just crush them to prevent an unexpected surprise.