Rome II Complaint Thread

[perifanosEllinas]

The latest patch (16.1) has broken my game again for the third time.The first time was at release,when the game was completely broken and remained broken for several months and patches (about 6-7 patches if I remember correctly,which means like 4-5 months).The second time was with patch 9,which broke the game again.Patch 16.1 broke my game again for the third time.This is a failure of epic proportions for CA.About 1,5 year after release (plus the 2 years of development before release = 3,5 years of development) and the game is still broken and even their patches are broken,which is completely pathetic.

And to be more specific,campaign works fine.But as soon as I try to load a battle in any mode,during the pre-battle loading screen and when the bar is at about 25% full, the cursor turns into the desktop mouse icon and my whole system just freezes,I can't do anything else than manually reboot the entire system.And this happens every single time,in every single mode,in every single battle.Agh,this is just pathetic and disgusting.

And my greatest problem with this is that this is harassing my modding work again,as I can't test anything related to battles since this patch.This is just ridiculous.

And just to forestall the expected "my game doesn't crash so it's not broken" arguement I say this: even if your game doesn't crash it's still broken because

1)naval battles are still broken

2)pathfinding on walls is still broken

3)pike phalanx is broken again since patch 16 as it can't hold the enemy at a safe distance properly anymore

4)all the abilities with the awful frontal width limitation (shield wall,shield screen etc.) are still broken

5)there are still no hoplite phalanx formation mechanics,animations and shields (the hoplite wall which is just a renamed shield wall doesn't cut it) and as a result all the hoplite phalanx based factions are broken

6)agents are still broken

And to forestall the also expected arguement about installed mods that break the game,no.I have no mods installed at all.It's just 100% vanilla.

[Dracula]

The latest patch (16.1) has broken my game again for the third time.The first time was at release,when the game was completely broken and remained broken for several months and patches (about 6-7 patches if I remember correctly,which means like 4-5 months).The second time was with patch 9,which broke the game again.Patch 16.1 broke my game again for the third time.This is a failure of epic proportions for CA.About 1,5 year after release (plus the 2 years of development before release = 3,5 years of development) and the game is still broken and even their patches are broken,which is completely pathetic.

And to be more specific,campaign works fine.But as soon as I try to load a battle in any mode,during the pre-battle loading screen and when the bar is at about 25% full, the cursor turns into the desktop mouse icon and my whole system just freezes,I can't do anything else than manually reboot the entire system.And this happens every single time,in every single mode,in every single battle.Agh,this is just pathetic and disgusting.

And my greatest problem with this is that this is harassing my modding work again,as I can't test anything related to battles since this patch.This is just ridiculous.

And just to forestall the expected "my game doesn't crash so it's not broken" arguement I say this: even if your game doesn't crash it's still broken because

1)naval battles are still broken

2)pathfinding on walls is still broken

3)pike phalanx is broken again since patch 16 as it can't hold the enemy at a safe distance properly anymore

4)all the abilities with the awful frontal width limitation (shield wall,shield screen etc.) are still broken

5)there are still no hoplite phalanx formation mechanics,animations and shields (the hoplite wall which is just a renamed shield wall doesn't cut it) and as a result all the hoplite phalanx based factions are broken

6)agents are still broken

And to forestall the also expected arguement about installed mods that break the game,no.I have no mods installed at all.It's just 100% vanilla.

I much enjoyed your post. But you have answered yourself. If the game broke itself, patch after patch, being vanilla ... what does it tell to you ?! You have to install that many mods as to completely erase the possibility of crashing from the patches. This means as much as possible. Allthough they conflict with each other, but you never know what you may get to work ... Sounds a bit crazy but is the only possible way I am afraid.

It happened to me with SHO 2. At first I couldn't get any mod to work with it. Now I have 4 games all perfect (4 separate installations). 1 Sengoku Jidai game (1600s). 2 RotS games (earlier) and 1 FotS installation. And I am completely pleased.

[rfaustin]

My main complaint with CA games is that they unpack the entire game in order to install an update. A 21 MB update requires and additional 20GB of disk space. Doesn't that sound a bit ridiculous? It is almost as if the developer are too lazy to figure out a way to update their products that doesn't require so much damned space. How come Paradox Interactive manages to do it when CA can't lift their dandy little fingers to do it.

[snuggans]

when i focus my camera on a single house fire or city wall tower fire my FPS should not drop from a stable 60 to a drowning 37 even on a GPU as outdated and mid-range as a GTX 560 Ti. (cpu is 2500k oc'd to 4.5)

there is apparently no setting i can change to correct this huge drop, not particle effects, not distortion effects, not shader model, not building detail. this is extremely poor optimization with the smoke plumes (the flames are fine) in every other part of the map the FPS sits between 55 to 60, even with two Ultra-sized armies with Very High Unit detail, the FPS behaves itself far better than when looking at a SINGLE house fire in a city. i can look at an entire undamaged city and be fine.

[The Norseman]

I would seriously prefer them to just go back to the graphics from Empire total war if they managed to make a good game again. It kind of says something when 3 people modding on their sparetime as a hobby does a better job than 300 employees.

[snuggans]

if i am sieging a coastal city with an army and an ally's fleet comes along with two leves and assaults the city with me and i accept the assault, they should NOT get the settlement. more importantly, they rushed to the town center and were all promptly killed which meant i had to take care of the defenders by myself but their dead corpses now somehow acquire the city because of the magical rule of assault initiator gets the spoils.

[Lannes1]

How can I delete my account in the Rome II forums? Does anyone know? Not Total War Center, the other one, Total War Forums.

[nomadewolf]

The problem is that people now buy games before they try them and before the games are finnished.
There is so much hype that it just hurts the consumer.
I have skipped Imperial.
The most i payed for a Total War game was € 15 for Shogun II 2 years after it was released and then i realised it wasn't even finnished.
I will only pay again when i am certain that the game is finnished and i like it.
It only took me half an hour of Rome II to realise it wasnt a good game and i decided to skip it.
I still play Rome I, Medieval II and the best so far (for me at least) Shogun II.

The fans have only themselves to blame for.
I never heard of anyone dying for not playing a game on day 1...
Pre-order, and that's what you get!

[Dontfearme22]

I would seriously prefer them to just go back to the graphics from Empire total war if they managed to make a good game again. It kind of says something when 3 people modding on their sparetime as a hobby does a better job than 300 employees.

empire was not that good though, id be more okay with Shogun 2 type gameplay. The empire launch was also catastrophic.

[=ANTiKES=]

How can I delete my account in the Rome II forums? Does anyone know? Not Total War Center, the other one, Total War Forums.

make a post about your opinion regarding R2?

[mrmouth]

Picked up the Emperor Edition last month. How is this game such a crash-ridden piece of crap this long after launch? Totally rhetorical question.

This is why I'm not putting Total War games on my list of "must haves" but instead the "maybe someday" list. Problem is, that "maybe someday" list kind of assumes that game killing bugs will be ironed-out by the time I buy it. I cannot even count on that anymore, I guess.

[Dracula]

Picked up the Emperor Edition last month. How is this game such a crash-ridden piece of crap this long after launch? Totally rhetorical question.

This is why I'm not putting Total War games on my list of "must haves" but instead the "maybe someday" list. Problem is, that "maybe someday" list kind of assumes that game killing bugs will be ironed-out by the time I buy it. I cannot even count on that anymore, I guess.

We are still battling with NTW. Perhaps some day will come to R2 to be fixed. These games are released too uncooked and too fast for the modding community to react appropriately. And we aren't dealing only with games, there's the real life in first place, nor are we paid to do work as the people who released the mess so fast.

[HigoChumbo]

Third chance I give Rome 2. I've waited almost two years and plenty of comments reassuring the game was rather enjoyable after all the patches this time.

Emperor Edition. Fully patched. Grand Campaign.

I'm playing as Macedon, I've barely got out of Greece, I don't think I've played more than 20 turns. I've played 2 naval battles. Both awful. In the first one I had to wait for 30 minutes until the idle enemy blob of boats decided to disembark.. They divided their forces nonsensically when they had the upper hand by far (full fledged stack against a petty low level garrison with no reinforcements), disembarked in the two furthest away points of the map, and then started sending units almost one by one. They got crushed even when the prediction was something like 5%-95% against me. Of course, after I had already won, I had to put the game on full speed, minimize and wait for some 10-15 more minutes until the timer ran out because for some reason one of the units had not disembarked and was just sitting in middle of the ocean doing nothing.

Second naval battle, same story (full stack with plenty of heavy infantry), similar odds (this was like 10-90 against me because it was an higher level garrison). I had nothing to do but to send a few sucide squads to sink a couple of their ships and turtle in the town plaza because I have just a handful of useful units (2 mobs, 2 slingers, 2 thureophoroi, 2 citizen cavalry and a unit of militia hoplites, against their full stack of heavy hoplites and dismounted medium cavalry). Again they divide their forces in 3 parts, this time they did not even start sending them one by one to the plaza, they started running to the edges of the map for no reason. They landed all their ranged units together and unprotected in front of my cavalry, and their 3-4 dismounted spear cavalry units did nothing but watch while I slaughtered their slingers.

And of course, same as before, I had to wait minimized again because another unit was in the middle of the ocean doing nothing.



Sieges are still awful. I've played two, autoresolved the rest. I don't think it's even worth to point out that torches are still there... the best part is that torches are a workaround for malfunctioning use of siege engines, and still AI's use of torches is just as awful. In both the sieges I played I put all my units in the section of the wall that was being attacked, and in both of them the AI sent their mounted general alone to a different section to attack another gate. The first time, I did not worry (why should I worry about what a petty cavalry unit with no siege machines can do alone against my mighty walled city)... until I saw them torching the gates... I couldn't believe that was still a thing. Still my fear faded rather quickly because that general unit (supposed to count amognst its ranks the best military mind in the whole army) decided to stand eating arrows under the walls getting hit by my auto-towers until they all got killed.

Second time. Same thing... only this time the general did it after the rest of his army was either killed or routed... and with the gates wide open. Again, they just kept torching it until the towers killed them all.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Skirmish mode for both infantry and cavalry is PLAIN AWFUL. Medieval 2 levels of awful. Even the fastest cavalry get's caught every single time because of their lack of reaction and crappy choice of routes. And don't even try to micromanage them, because they are unresponsive as hell. Ranged units in general are pretty bad... I can't believe they have the same problems Medieval did back in the day, how hard is to shot an enemy you have in front of you and who is not even attacking you? I already set you in formaiton, I already made you face the direction you have to be facing, you have a clear view of them, hell, I even disabled your skirmish ability so you don't have to think a lot... why on earth do you start moving and reforming the moment I order you to fire? Wait... WHAT?!? Don't go into melee you idiots!

Also where the hell is the merge units button? What's exactly the design goal behind forcing the player to minimize the game and spend 5 minutes reading forums to check the hotkey combination? If the option is there... why the hell not give it a damned button? What about "stand ground"? You know how useful it is when you want units to attack something without getting out of position to chase?


I could keep going. The game is not only worse than Shogun 2 even nearly 2 years after release, it's on release Medieval 2 levels of bugginess. Nine years since Med2 came out and we still have idle armies, unresponsive units, bugged sieges, sloth-level reflexes skirmishers, bad "chasing routers" mechanics and a long etc.


A few years ago I would be thrilled as hell to learn that The Creative Assembly was making a Total War strategy game about Warhammer. Today, I'm starting to fear its them doing it and with exactly the same tools they did the mess Rome 2 is, because I really, REALLY want TW:Warhammer to be good...


Get on top of it already, CA.

[=ANTiKES=]

Skirmish mode for both infantry and cavalry is PLAIN AWFUL. Medieval 2 levels of awful. Even the fastest cavalry get's caught every single time because of their lack of reaction and crappy choice of routes. And don't even try to micromanage them, because they are unresponsive as hell. Ranged units in general are pretty bad... I can't believe they have the same problems Medieval did back in the day, how hard is to shot an enemy you have in front of you and who is not even attacking you? I already set you in formaiton, I already made you face the direction you have to be facing, you have a clear view of them, hell, I even disabled your skirmish ability so you don't have to think a lot... why on earth do you start moving and reforming the moment I order you to fire? Wait... WHAT?!? Don't go into melee you idiots!

haha yeah, that's the best part I can confirm the rest as well. It's just awesome game design when you're forced to fast forward a battle just because AI doesn't know what to do during sieges or during amphibious assault...

[Akahige]

Rome II is broken beyond repair and no amount of patches is able to fix it. I'm just hoping they got some new people to code AI for Warhammer.

[Cope]

i lel

[frenchyvinnie]

Your post really made me laugh as well xD

But in all seriousness it shouldn't have. It's deplorable that the game still isn't working for you. Were you using Vanilla R2TW? I've never tried it, so far I've played two campaigns with Rome 2 emperor Edition, one using Radious, one using Divide et Impera, and my experience with the game has been quite satisfactory.

Sure, even with mods the AI still isn't the sharpest tool in the box but at least I haven't experienced any game breaking AI freezes like units derping around in the water or attacking a settlement one unit at a time. I've actually even liked naval battles in R2TW with mods on. Very few bugs, enemy units do want to kill you (instead of watching Netflix at the other end of the map), ramming ships left and right, boarding actions that do work (shocking!). It's been quite fun.

Some poor design choices are still there (like the goddamn torches, and the range units reforming every time you give them an order...), but as long as the rest of the game is fundamentally sound and bug free, I got along with it.

So my advice is this: give mods a go.

[Risasi]

Overall I don't consider it broken per se. But yeah, kind of dumbed down. If I want to be kind it's "streamlined", and for non-serious play fun in a beer and pretzels sort of way.

Vanilla, battles get old very fast because of the spamminess to them. And too many, they kind of become meaningless...like watching a show on Netflix "because it's there". Campaign isn't superior or inferior to other titles, just different.

I played about 40 turns into DeI and found it to be pretty awesome. I loved the diplo and campaign aspects to it. The battles are definitely harder. My biggest gripe though was even though battles were meaningful I didn't have many. In fact I had trade agreements and non-aggression pacts with everyone around me except Carthage and Epirus. My game turned into Rome 2 Total World Peace!

Anyway, the two copies of R2 on the last Steam sale were $15. At that price I don't feel like I wasted my money. But I'm not playing it right now. I'll eventually swing back to it maybe next year when I have more time and play through a campaign of DeI.

I still feel like there is something wrong with melee fighting and in the warscape engine, generally speaking and the vanilla AI just seems to get dumber. And because of that I prefer RTW/M2TW + mods. I like Shogun 2 also, but for different reasons.

[gyabo]

Lol Fall of Samurai have the same issue like the immortal artillery crew! Meaning CA already abandon Rome 2 and moved to Attila Total War. Hopefully CA will never make any some sort expansion in Attila Total War or else will be abandon due there upcoming franchise War Hammer.

Seriously if they gonna fix Rome 2, they will release another DLC.

[HigoChumbo]

So my advice is this: give mods a go.

Actually I was quite happy after Shogun 2 since it was the first TW game in which I did not only not feel the need for mods, but actually like vanilla more in more aspects.

But the real question here is... how come a handful of amateurs can fix in a few months (I don't know if they have indeed done that, haven't tried Rome 2 mods) what a huge, dedicated team of proffessionals couldn't in years?

And because of that I prefer RTW/M2TW + mods.

My problem with older Total Wars is that, although I do still enjoy the battles, I just can't stand the campaign.

Meaning CA already abandon Rome 2 and moved to Attila Total War.

And why do we have to pay 40 bucks to play Attila's beta (aka Rome 2)? It's ok for me t hat they move on to Attila, it's their bussiness after all, but in a bussiness you have to keep your customers satisfied and the least they could do is to apply some of the basic Attila's improvements (at least the ones that solve game-breaking bugs) into Rome 2, because in all effects they have sold an unfinished product at full price.