Your top three issues with RTW 2 (constructive criticism)

[Slor]

Aside from the overwhelming graphical problems and deficiencies, and the many bugs.

1. New Region system: Good idea, flawed execution. Too many provinces for one region. Very little info in the tooltip on how to properly manage(3/3 generals all full stack and cannot move out of garrison or revolt, even with the proper offsetting buildings and minimal squalor) how they work. The UI for the Region system is just awful and overly simple/dumbed down. Completely dumb how one province gets actual defenses. Overall it makes the map feel very small and conquests pointless in some situations.

2. General system + faction screen: WTF I have to have a general to have an army, yet you cant decide how many generals you can have, and you have a limited selection(family/tribe etc.) to choose from leading to balance problems with the faction under your rule. Merging units has become a complete hassle. No family tree in your faction screen, but you can just marry randomly for the cheap price of 10,000+..

3. The CAI/BAI/diplomacy atm is garbage: I really dont play a base TW game expecting the AI/diplomacy to be any good. I always rely on modders for that, but Rome2 has hit new lows in awful programming/testing. The CAI just does nothing 95% of the time. The other 5% they will put an army in defense mode or fleet in raid mode in my territory. Most of the game I'm wondering if the AI isnt glitched out/stuck or something. The agents are active, but thats about it. Even when I'm tearing thru their turf they just feel like maybe its a better option to take its stack and leave the city undefended as they go off in the other direction. The BAI doesn't attempt to do anything besides fight in a blob and get easily encircled as they all go to center mass. The fights are so buggy/so fast/so skill-less/so BORING. Diplomacy - nobody wants to do anything at all until you get 4 provinces and then you just basically bully everyone into trading or joining your confederation etc.

These are my experiences playing 2 factions 50-60 turns each on very hard. Rome2 is making some of the worst C&C games look godmode right now.

[Slor]

woops

[Stívarðr Reynitré]

The turbo speed battles that descend into a 'blob' of dull thrashing sprites when everyone immediately and inevitably loses formation.

The utterly inconsistent behaviour of the graphics settings that can be ultra for me one minute and then become unplayable on anything higher than medium the next minute.

The constant freezes that occur when sieges take place.

The seemingly blatant disregard for appropriate weighting and mass within the battle dynamics that appear to make hulking units into little more than inflatable caricatures who bounce into one another, aimlessly flailing weaponry in the air.

Apart from that, it's fine.

[sobchack]

1. Legion Pilums - ability to turn on and off fire at will, and ability to throw pilums while standing

2. battle optimization would be nice. added battle unit cohesion if possible and revise infantry charge animation

3. family tree would also be nice

[redxavier]

1. Provinces - I really don't like how they're set up, capturing a new region in a foreign part of the 'province' puts you at risk of rebellion in your home region because why? Also, because of the faction-wide tax, you can't exempt a region from tax and still have money pouring in from Rome for instance.

2. Traits - I've always hated them (in old games and mods alike) and they're flooding in every turn without any reason. Absolutely no control.

3. Generals=Armies - hard limits on unit counts from previous games worked fine in limiting armies, and I sort of see what they were aiming for, but it just has inconvient side effects, like not being able to put general x in control of army y, or to bulk up troops in one army with another without having them be chaperoned by a general. But good luck doing that with such low movement points for everyone (my +18% bonus guy still can't get even half way down Italy in one turn).

I confess I got bored by about turn 38 playing Rome. I had trade agreements in place with virtually everyone around the Mediterranean, and I couldn't expand in any direction once I had Italia (including getting the all important 'full' provinces) since I was friendly with both Carthage and Syracuse and breaking the non-aggression pacts would have irreparably damaged my standing... I ended up doing it just because there was literally nothing else to do but follow the tired technology tree format and collect dozens of general household items I was never going to use.

[andymate]

1. Battles - This is the deal breaker for me, and i think most people have summed it up already. Needs to be doubled in time at least and ai needs to be improved.
2. End of turn time - As the game gets longer even with nations being wiped out the turns have become increasingly longer. And it is mainly the non playable factions.
3. Enemy army composition - Seems poor for some factions.

[Noif de Bodemloze]

I have really really long list about negative stuffs but lets take 3 some up.

1. Graphic issue (Units looks like zombies and not exactly like in screenshots, bad fps, poor AA ...)
2. USAIN BOLT BATTLES (Battles are too quick and it kill my game motivate and passion totally, units running so fast and ships are like motorboats, poor morale etc...)
3. GIANT UI (I can't even see my beautiful battle, because battle UI is so HUGE that it take almost 50% from my screen space. I don't understand why CA made them bigger. Previous battle UI was much better and not took too much space.

and list continue ....

[Der Phönix]

1. Performance

2. Fugly 3D advisors

3. Blob battles and useless ranged weapons

[Amelorn]

Battle speed: Holy carp! I thought S2TW was fast paced and formulaic (march hidden cav down the convenient bit of forest, charge when ready). Shogun 2 was restrained and thoughtful compared to R2!

BAI vs autoresolve: The idiocy of the BAI has been discussed ad nauseum. That said, the calculator for auto-resolving has NO BEARING on how the battle might play out were the player to fight. Auto-resolve might cost 40% of my men while delivering a victory. On the field, courtesy of insane general abilities and my mediocre skill, I will lose...12 men. Velites, Latin for Automatic Firing of Ignited Javelins, destroy significant portions of the enemy army. The battered remnants are then mopped up by the orc-like mob of hastati. I suppose it doesn't help that everyone's early units are spears, while Romans use swords.

Navies: Whose idea was it to make transport ships viable in combat? I mean, holy God, transport ships are better than what is being fielded in 210 BC. Not requiring a navy to transport an army represents a huge dumbing down of a key strategic element in the total war series.

Bonus 1 : Roman Faction dynamics. Tha fuq? (to steal that phrase from a friend) Why should I waste my money on any of these actions? If I have no better use for gold, maybe it's nice to reward my favourite with the rank of Tribune. Otherwise, I don't see a point in assassinating or marrying.

Bonus 2: Unrest is a BS roadblock. The empire'esque resistance to foreign occupation makes ZERO SENSE IN THIS TIME PERIOD. This wasn't the age of literacy or modern, nationalist identity formation. The local butcher or publican didn't care much at all where his taxable denarii or drachma went. If unrest were more like Rome 1 (ie rebellion only under the worst circumstances), I'd probably have conquered the western half of the empire by 200 B.C. (see the retarded AI posts). In Rome 1, I was slowed down by powerful factions that could at the very least throw troops at me. Conquering Carthage and Egypt in Rome 1 was a slow grind because of their troops and economic staying power. Here, Carthage folded like a shirt at a dry cleaner's shop. I was bogged down by rebellions. My theory: unrest is a method to slow players down because the AI is too idiotic to put up a noticeable resistance.

[DanMLee88]

1. Too many things randomly done for the player for apparently no reason. Random family members and generals. Random trait gains (how many unhinged idiots can i get this time?) for no apparent reason. Any way to stop the plague? What actual control is there on vitally important and perfectly understandable factors such as family trees? It's almost as if you took it out for the sake of 'freeing' the player from actually using their effort to forge something.

2. Performance issues: Whenever 3d advisors come up or 3D characters pop up, they kill fps on battle and campaign map. Not to mention campaign map becomes a slide show at later turns. You lied to us about the performance spec recs. There is hardware issue, then there is just plain oversight like this. I ran my campaign map on turn 1 for rome at around 40fps. On turn 60, it's 15 if I am lucky. Also, some battlefield units run like it's fps 2 when it's actually 30 - another performance and graphical shoddy work.

3. Battles are too arcade-like, too simple and fast paced. What is it with not even allowing you to control when to throw the pila? What is with horse archers not being able to do partian shots? The whole 'having to move the firing arc before shooting' is a huge step back from days of mtw2 and rome 2 when you didn't really need to shift the entire unit and wait precious seconds before firing (by then they are already in a melee).

In short, what the hell were they thinking taking so much out of player's hands and leaving up to arbitrary throw of dice? Do they expect us to play the game or watch a movie?

[Bai Grozdan]

1. Font size ... again, too small ... again.

[BeastG33]

1. Battle speed

2. Optimization (including no proper AA)

3. The UI isn't great

[hollowfaith]

"3. GIANT UI (I can't even see my beautiful battle, because battle UI is so HUGE that it take almost 50% from my screen space. I don't understand why CA made them bigger. Previous battle UI was much better and not took too much space." - You know you can minimize the UI in both battles and campaign maps right? A simple click closes them and brings them back up.

I'm very much enjoying the game, had one single crash/freeze that required me to restart my puter.
My Top 3 after 10+ hours of play and 80+ turns as pontus and 45 turns as rome...

1. - To many skirmishers in the AI's armies.
2. - Flaming javelins, made me laugh at the thought at first, but then realized en masse they're overpowering. Fought an army that had 8 of them, and half my forces routed almost instantly.
3. - Chasing mini armies in ships all over the med. so they don't land piece meal and siege a city. Had a single unit of Etruscan spears siege a city with a FULL legion garrison of 4 Hastati, 4 Principes, 4 Triarii, 4 Velites, 2 Equites, and my General not to mention my city's garrison and 3 of my ships off shore. LOL

[MemnonOfRhodes]

1. AI
2. Graphic/ Performance issues
3. Battle speed.

[KillaJules]

1. CAI is too passive. In my experience, the AI is actually pretty good at diplomacy and makes reasonable deals with the player, but it won't ever attack.
2. UI is uninformative and inferior in design compared to Shogun 2.
3. Every faction gets ballistas and scorpions which is clearly wrong. If CA wanted every faction to get siege weapons, they should have just given them onagers.

Flaming javelins, made me laugh at the thought at first,

Actually, flaming javelins were used. However, only the Iberians used them. This feature could have been an interesting unique feature for an Iberian DLC faction, but instead CA gave this to everyone.

[Canaris]

1. tactical level of the gameplay - "hooligans brawl" level melee fights, retarded Ai, ING CAPTURE THE FLAG, rpg-like buffs etc etc
2. strategic level of the gameplay - stupid limitations in city building, "no general - no movement for armies" , nonexistant diplomacy ( again ffs), every army is outfitted with "litle shipyard worker kit" and can pop entire fleets out of their ass, major factions rarely surviving more than 50 turns, one turn per year, zero family/characters managment, cant play every faction without of DLC ( and not even then probably ) etc etc.
3. program wise - optimalization, being resource intensive game while providing none of the looks, loading times etc.

Basically whole ing game..
Good thing EB2 is coming shortly.

[MemnonOfRhodes]

In a nutshell...

[thebigcheese]

1) Battles. AI tactic = zerg , no guard mode. Battles are so poor they seem pointless, Auto-Resolve Total War I call this. Why not with the battle realism selection button, have a more traditional TW battle gameplay?

2) City details in spreadsheet form please!

3) naval battles. Even worse than land battles. We all know why.

[Bai Grozdan]

Ujio, your type of naval vessels look like more transport ships than battle ones.
They are huge, barely maneuverable, so no surprise they can't ram the smaller, more agile battleships.

[elbeto78]

1- No "guard mode" and "fire at will" for heavy infantry units (Hastati, etc, you know what I mean). And a proper Testudo of course.

2- Absurd battle speeds,no guarding, no flanking, no battleline, and annoying dying/routing speeds.

3- Stupid AI (As always)

4- Poor Graphics. (Shogun 2 seemed to me too much better)

5- No family tree.

6- Poor diplomacy (As always)

7- General needed to raise armies, to split it, etc (Nonsense for me)

8- Capture points. (I hate it, especially in "no walls cities")

9- Disgusting province management (I preferred the old system)

10- No SLI/Crossfire support (I hope it comes soon)

Conclusion: I payed for a total war game, and after playing I Can´t recognize it. Of course there are a few new good tips, but only a few. CA would have made Rome I with better graphics and this forum wouldn´t be full of complaints.