Your top three issues with RTW 2 (constructive criticism)

[Jester]

1. Worst performance ever!

2. Battles dont feel right at all. too fast and massive blobbing without any coherent formations or battlelines

3. Horrible performance and horrible battle gameplay.

[Coxy]

1) Lag in some battles - only seems to occur with combined sea / land battles for me

2) Diplomacy - it's ridiculous - no- impossible - to get trade agreements, and especially alliances. Needs to be far easier - this is the only thing that is spoiling the game for me.

3) The big powers (e.g. Macedon) died fairly early in my campaign - I get that it should be dynamic - but the bigger players should be able to hold their own against the smaller factions (unless attacked by multiples etc)

[Reggum]

1) battles go way to fast, I spend more time walking/running than fighting (hate when my units run when I right click once)...to much clicky clicky with thos dumb buffs, feels like i'm playing arena on WoW. Just cant enjoy them trying too. Barbarian tribes just recruit mostly range units. (im playing as anveri) 2) Ai stuff up in battles as they just stand there when they are meant to be attacking me and I'm defending. 3) sieges suck Ai doesn't defend the walls they only put missile units on them . Ai just assault one of my capitals with no siege equipment and just burnt down my gate (boring) cant assault capital with two armies unless one attacks from the sea but my other army lost the siege equipment it built. AI attack one of my towns with just a general. (macedon died early in my campaign and a few other peoples too)

[random_samurai]

1) UI is takes up far too much space and clutters the screen to a ridiculous extent as soon as that second row of unit cards happens

2) I've attempted 2 MP campaigns, powering through poor optimization with a friend, but both have lasted ~10-15 turns before ending up desynching after a battle.

3) Battle speed, as others have mentioned

[evilmarshy]

1. The UI is fricken massive (oh the irony, the thing that you may want to look at :the map, is too small, even more ironic is that you can scale it in the preferences) the banners aswell, this is the first time in a total war where they annoy me, even though I usually like them (They don't seem to scale correctly). Oh yeah, and the cryptic icons when I highlight over a unit, WTF do they mean? Yeah sure I can wait like 5 seconds for the full dialogue to appear but that's too much time. Also, the stupid caveman painting art, at first I wasn't too fussed because I thought each faction would have had a distinct look, but hell no, they look the damn same, just re-coloured and changed slightly, even units within the same army look almost exactly the same, but they'll do something like change the shield from white to red.

BTW, does the interface scale with the screen resolution, like if you're using a higher res the interface appears smaller? (I don't recall it changing much on the resolutions I have available.)

2. I thought Press to go stronger buttons were a pain in shogun 2, but at least in that every unit didn't have it. (probably a big factor in why I lose multiplayer battles since I simply can't be bothered going: select, click, select, click etc. It would be nice if there was an option to turn these off.

3. No optimization.

[DaveDash]

1. Campaign AI still seems to faff around in little groups that you defeat in detail, instead of merging into one stack.
2. Lack of 'wow' factor with the graphics that you usually get with new Total War games.
3. Battle speed.

[YassirX]

1) No Avatar-System in Onlinemode (means less replayablity)
2) Battles are too fast, it feels less tactical than the previous TW games
3) UI is not well thought out, which is making it hard to navigate.
4) Units are not holding their formation when engaging.
5) AI is not existent, baddest AI in any TW game.
5.1) AI is not able to realize that the capture-point is taken
5.2) AI General seems to abandon his army by walking to another part of the map
5.3) AI is not attacking units, even if they are directly standing in front of them
5.4) AI is not trying any flanking attacks
5.5) AI is not able to use Cavalary properly
5.6) AI is not reacting against missile fire.
5.7) AI armies outside of cities are not aiding when the city is besieged.

[Frost, colonel]

Battles too fast, both movement and killing.
To much micro abilities with generals in battle, who has time?
Where's guard mode?
The troop numbers were on the old cards on the old battle UI, now I have to leave 2 sets of info on screen to get the same info, whilst fighting battles that are to blinking fast.
The whole situation with city manament and Generals/families seems a bit fussy, could just be me needing more time to get to grips with it?
Archers/flaming missiles too deadly.
I had a unit of horse archers following elite Celts spearmen who were chasing my heavy cav, the archers shooting into their back caused hardly any damage. I don't understand why the mods make things so well balanced and CA seem like backward children, when it's their game in the first place.

[Greve Af Göteborg]

1. Blobbing fast battles with gimmicky abilities that adds nothing to the game.
2. Removal of beloved features such as : Family tree, seasons etc...
3. The UI, it uses cryptic symbolism that makes it harder for the player to distinguish what the heck it's supposed to be (same goes for the unit cards). Streamlined city management that just takes away all the fun, the province system together with the horrid UI makes for a pair of ugly warts on the campaign map.
4. The optimization is terrible and the graphics are nowhere as clean as Rome 1, flickering shadows, pop-up terrain, trees and textures. The "facial animations" that CA loves to brag about is forgotten because of the frantic blob battles.

[boxleitnerb]

1) Battles too fast. Too blobby, no cohesion - the feeling isn't right. In Rome 1 you could "feel" when heavily armored units clashed or when shock cavalry charged a unit. Ever since the Warscape engine was used, this feeling was gone completely, even now in Rome 2. It still feels too "light", too "dancy". This is also due to the lacking BAI that cannot provide a proper challenge.
2) UI is very complicated, makes management tedious and not very transparent. Same goes for politics which imo is simply unnecessary (at least in my campaign play up to now)
3) No proper Antialiasing! Especially with all these small units and zoomed out it is shimmering/aliasing from hell! You might say that MSAA or SSAA are not practical in Rome 2 anyway due to the bad performance. But that only goes to show that there are two problems here. Quality AND performance.

[Maiden_Ante]

1. Optimization/graphic bugs.

2. A bit more AI would be nice (I know, I know, everyone has already said it).

3. Changed in the HUD, making more of the screen visible and REMOVING THAT GOD DAMN ADVISER.

[Amur_Tiger]

I agree with most of the things said here about the battles so I won't be adding to that, just some comments about the campaign.

1.Settlements, in particular provincial capitals are too 'small's mechanically only allowing a small handfull of the many buildings to be constructed. This is made worse with the port trees which force a rediculous baby vs naval trade either or choice. Should have 8-12 slots for large cities.

2. Few settlements overall, less then Rome 1 and the resulting huge provinces joining up southern Italy and Sicily. Provinces should really be settlements with close economic ties not just everybody withing an arbitrarily large area.

3. misc smaller changes 1 turn per year/family tree gone/spawning transport ships

[drunkeneagle]

1) Not keen on UI & HUD,too cluttered up in one place
2) Battle speeds
3) Optimization needed!

[MaxMaximillian]

I've been a reader on these forums for a long while and I have tracked the game's progress from the beginning, but this will be my first post here, so hello everyone. I'd like to start that I do not mean to criticize out of any desire to vent anger or frustration or to be vitriolic, but simply because I think CA made the framework for an absolutely amazing game here, but too many things have been overlooked or omitted. This has unfortunately lead to the current situation and we have a game that obviously wasn't completely finished. I've only played the prologue and a few hours of a Roman campaign on hard, so my experience may not be as substantial as other players but this is what I've taken away. 1:Optimization(obvious) I haven't really had many problems in this department. I don't have a particularly stellar PC but I can run most things comfortably. I have an I5 2500k, 8 gigs of RAM, and a GeForce GTX 570. I could run everything in Shogun on Ultra, and I can mostly do the same here, save some options. My game is running okay, but there is some frame loss during big brawls and twice now the game has "stopped working." This hasn't been much of a problem for me, but obviously for other people, oddly with systems much better than mine, it is. This is the first priority. 2:AI I consider myself to be an average Total War player. I usually play on Hard, and not much higher. I didn't expect anything stellar from the AI as I realize that any semi-competent player with a lot of experience will be able to absolutely thrash the AI in almost all circumstances, but the AI in this has some big problems based on what I've seen myself and from what I've seen of others experiences. It's difficult to explain, but the AI seems to view the player army more as an obstacle rather than a goal, and this leads to really awkward AI decisions and unit movement. It's almost as if the AI doesn't really even want to be in the battle and is just looking for a way out. I've noticed that instead of trying to defend walls during a siege, the AI just has its units run back and forth around the gate while I sat on top of the walls shooting at them. Another time I was defending a town from a naval invasion, and I managed to repel all but the general who seemed content to sit in his boat and not do anything, causing me to have to restart the battle. Again, I am not expecting AI that can match a human, but there are a lot of issues with the AI that need to be fixed. 3: Strange Omissions. This one may actually bug me the most. In a game about conquest and your faction's gradual ascent to a world dominating empire, why on Earth is there no family tree? While playing the campaign I got a message about my daughter's indecent activities. I have a daughter? I never knew about her before that message. In a game like Empire, or particularly Napoleon which is based off of a very specific set of characters, I can see the sense in not having a family tree but in a game that spans 300 years and in a time period like this how could there not be one? I loved looking at the various characters in my family from Rome 1 all the way up to Shogun 2. With this omission it doesn't feel like you control a dynasty any longer, but a series of random characters that the game throws at you from nowhere. The other big omission is the lack of any sort of guard mode on the melee units. Unlike some others, I don't mind some units having an ability that is activated by a button, but by the end of the prologue campaign Gaius Silanus must have had 4 or 5 buffs/debuffs yet I had no way to tell my Hastati to fight defensively instead of just blobbing into the enemy unit. I haven't tried the Phalanx-using units yet, but I hear a lot of criticism directed at those as well. These two features I think really, really need to be added back into the game as it feels very awkward and unfinished at the moment. Well those are the three most important things I want to see changed. I really love Total War and I love CA and the games they make, which is why I want them to make this game as amazing as I know it can be. Everything I say here is meant as constructive criticism that I desperately hope CA fixes or implements. I think this game is in dire need of patches and fixes, but I think if those do come we will have the game that many of us are so desperate to see. Thanks for reading.

[Hockey85]

Been an avid player of all total war games. I like the overall feel of the game, but some of the issues I'm experiencing are completely game breaking.

1. Units not staying in formation/blobbing mosh pits- Its absolutely ridiculous (playing as the "professional soldiers" of the Romans), and having your units converge into a tightly packed mob as soon as they enter combat. The absence of guard mode ruins the entire feel of battles. The massive blob that forms, makes strategic maneuvers impossible. This problem also makes the battles progress far to quickly, and the results are decided throwing your blob at the AI blob and hoping your blob prevails... (By far the worst problem, not even going to play until this is modded or patched in some way)

2. Laggy campaign map- I get great frame rates in battles but the campaign map is horribly laggy and my fps is really spiky.

3. Generals must be present to move an army, and the amount of generals is limited- I don't like that I am unable to split my forces. Why can I not break off a couple units to watch over a strategic point on the map? You can no longer stagger smaller groups of units to guard an area from an enemy advance. This feature just limits your troop movements in an unrealistic way. I like previous TW games where you are just granted a "captain" to lead an army with no general present.

** is it even going to be possible to mod the unit formations so that RTWII has the feel of battle lines like other TW games or should I stop holding my breath?

[Amur_Tiger]

Please delete me, I'm a double post due to mobile phone usage.

[MaxMaximillian]

I've been a reader on these forums for a long while and I have tracked the game's progress from the beginning, but this will be my first post here, so hello everyone. I'd like to start that I do not mean to criticize out of any desire to vent anger or frustration or to be vitriolic, but simply because I think CA made the framework for an absolutely amazing game here, but too many things have been overlooked or omitted. This has unfortunately lead to the current situation and we have a game that obviously wasn't completely finished. I've only played the prologue and a few hours of a Roman campaign on hard, so my experience may not be as substantial as other players but this is what I've taken away. 1:Optimization(obvious) I haven't really had many problems in this department. I don't have a particularly stellar PC but I can run most things comfortably. I have an I5 2500k, 8 gigs of RAM, and a GeForce GTX 570. I could run everything in Shogun on Ultra, and I can mostly do the same here, save some options. My game is running okay, but there is some frame loss during big brawls and twice now the game has "stopped working." This hasn't been much of a problem for me, but obviously for other people, oddly with systems much better than mine, it is. This is the first priority. 2:AI I consider myself to be an average Total War player. I usually play on Hard, and not much higher. I didn't expect anything stellar from the AI as I realize that any semi-competent player with a lot of experience will be able to absolutely thrash the AI in almost all circumstances, but the AI in this has some big problems based on what I've seen myself and from what I've seen of others experiences. It's difficult to explain, but the AI seems to view the player army more as an obstacle rather than a goal, and this leads to really awkward AI decisions and unit movement. It's almost as if the AI doesn't really even want to be in the battle and is just looking for a way out. I've noticed that instead of trying to defend walls during a siege, the AI just has its units run back and forth around the gate while I sat on top of the walls shooting at them. Another time I was defending a town from a naval invasion, and I managed to repel all but the general who seemed content to sit in his boat and not do anything, causing me to have to restart the battle. Again, I am not expecting AI that can match a human, but there are a lot of issues with the AI that need to be fixed. 3: Strange Omissions. This one may actually bug me the most. In a game about conquest and your faction's gradual ascent to a world dominating empire, why on Earth is there no family tree? While playing the campaign I got a message about my daughter's indecent activities. I have a daughter? I never knew about her before that message. In a game like Empire, or particularly Napoleon which is based off of a very specific set of characters, I can see the sense in not having a family tree but in a game that spans 300 years and in a time period like this how could there not be one? I loved looking at the various characters in my family from Rome 1 all the way up to Shogun 2. With this omission it doesn't feel like you control a dynasty any longer, but a series of random characters that the game throws at you from nowhere. The other big omission is the lack of any sort of guard mode on the melee units. Unlike some others, I don't mind some units having an ability that is activated by a button, but by the end of the prologue campaign Gaius Silanus must have had 4 or 5 buffs/debuffs yet I had no way to tell my Hastati to fight defensively instead of just blobbing into the enemy unit. I haven't tried the Phalanx-using units yet, but I hear a lot of criticism directed at those as well. These two features I think really, really need to be added back into the game as it feels very awkward and unfinished at the moment. Well those are the three most important things I want to see changed. I really love Total War and I love CA and the games they make, which is why I want them to make this game as amazing as I know it can be. Everything I say here is meant as constructive criticism that I desperately hope CA fixes or implements. I think this game is in dire need of patches and fixes, but I think if those do come we will have the game that many of us are so desperate to see. Thanks for reading.

I apologize for the wall of text, I guess I formatted it wrong. I appreciate anybody who took the time to read that and I apologize to your eyes.

[Louis Davout]

1. Battles are WAY too fast and arcade like. Balance is all wrong2. Units don't maintain formation. Phalanx and Testudo seem broken for starters3. No family trees and having to choose your general and armies upgrades (they should happen automatically)

[fredtrotter]

1. Lack of units for many factions.2. Poor optimization.3. The fog on the campaign map.

[valouris]

1. Battle balance and AI, it obviously doesn't work as intended. Sure the AI itself will not change in a day, but some things that happen in battles are obviously kind of like bugs, esp. concerning unit behavior and formation.

2. Performance optimization, as much as possible, maybe give us more options, some things are definitely running in the background that slow the game down despite graphical settings, maybe different gfx options for campaign and battles (honestly where did that go?)

3. Interface. This is probably the most demanding I ask, but I honestly believe the UI in the campaign needs a complete overhaul. I know this is probably not possible, but at least make some major changes, the critical information you need is mostly hidden in small places, and it is not expressed properly (if at all).
Also, it needs way too many clicks to do sth. If I wanted to see my agent's/person's card I used to be able to right click his portrait, and there everything was. Now, I have first to click the army, then click army details, then click the tab I want (army, general, agent), and then upgrade him. This is totally unintuitive. Also, the information is presented horribly and it needs some more organization, especially the talent and trait trees.
It is obvious that you guys tried to keep the campaign map visible as much as possible, and not have info cards take up half (or the entire) screen, but if you are so keen on doing that, you have to have the alternative method perfectly refined and ready to use, the info perfectly organized and easy to access. I shouldn't have to manage 6 different tabs to see what technologies I have available, and what choices I have in the tree. I shouldn't have to have an open construction slot in order to see what possible buildings I can make! What if I am thinking of demolishing a building and I have my slots full? I have to destroy it first, and see next turn what I can make.