Not the AI is THE problem in Rome II
Some reviews criticizing the AI very harshly dampen my hopes seriously. But after the very well made tutorial, where it was possible to see that the AI is still not good (like in every Total War game, maybe except Medieval 1), but by far not such a catastrophe as it was described in couple of reviews. So confidently I went to the main campaign. Now some hours of playing later, I have to admit Rome 2 is a huge disappointment.
I never get this feeling like playing vanilla Rome or some major (RS2, EB, De Bello Mundi) or “specialized” (Diadochi, Fall of the Republic) mods. Rome II feels unfinished, confusing and counterintuitive, castrated and yet overcomplicated, and yes, boring most of the time. The reason for this is not the AI. Rome 1 managed to create a much more enjoyable gameplay with even a worse AI.
Not finished
Sadly in current status the game is on the late beta level. For sure it is better than by some other games published in early beta or even nearly in alpha but still it is not polished, not even finished. There is a massive amount of things that are simply not done or not done properly. Just some examples:
- The troops that managed to flee the battle reappears on the strategy map. So far as in every TW game. But the problem is on the battlefield as soon as the unit begins to flee, the flag above it disappears and your unit suddenly stops to fight the fleeing enemys. Even worse it also disappears from the battle map. So you have to scroll over the whole battlefield to find some little people running to command the attack. If it is a bad weather, foggy or there are lots of forests good luck to find these little men.
- The icon after the technologies and the one directly near to end turn are exactly showing the same thing: the diplomacy map. Maybe CA was so excited by such feature that they created two icons for it.
- After the battle there is no info which unit gained or loosed experience. This information was very important in all my TW games.
- If you merge your troops and in one of the armies there are a lot of units you see only a small piece of the left side of the unit card. So if you want to replace damaged troops or units with small experience the only way is to memorize theme before the merge. (OK it’s nr. 2 of range units, nr. 3,4 and 7 of infantery and first and fourth cavallery. Oh no it was nr. 1 and 3 of cavallery. OK now I have to begin it from new).
- There is a nice list of your armies and your provinces but no one of your agents. If you forget where your agent is the only way to find it is via the arrows on the left side on the UI. If you have a lot of units and agents you will lost some greetings to CA after finally find the agent.
These are only some examples. Sadly there are tons of other minor or major undone or badly done things in this game. It is clearly that some months in development would improve the game hugely. Some of you would say that the situation is worse with some mods. It is true but it is not a professional game company which spend millions in the development create the mods but just a couple of “normal” people who spend their free time in it and for what you don’t have to pay anything. For such an established company like CA you can expect a finished, polished product. Especially after the experience that they had with Empire.
Music
The soundtrack in Rome 1 was one of the things that supported the atmosphere massively. Without it would be a different game. It included some slow, relaxing but also fast, aggressive tracks. In Rome II there is barely any music and if you hear something it is just some tu-tu-tu in quasi ancient style that don’t create any immersion. In De Bello Mundi you get shivers by listening to the Gladiator main theme on the campaign map or a great feeling of an epic battle by listening to Conan theme. In Rome 2 you only get sleepy and bored instead.
Click orgy
Why to make things easier when it is possible to make them complicated? In other TW games you send the agent to the province and let him do his job. Intuitive and easy. In Rome 2 you have to click every time when she arrived in the new province. If you forget to click on the icon, well your problem. The agent won’t do anything.
You want to make a new trade agreement? Then go to one of the both icons (click!), go to the faction symbol (click!), go to the agreement button (click!), go to the trade agreement (click!), go to send (click!), your counterpart sign it or refuses go to the accept button (click!), go to the button to stop the negotiations (click!). Congratulations you signed your first trade agreement! Just kidding, in most cases you don’t. So please go on to another faction and make click, click, click. And don’t worry now there are so many factions you can spend half an hour to sign couple of agreements and make hudreds of click, click, click besides.
Another example are the skills of your general or agent. Instead of getting a message “Your general reached new level. Which skill would you like to have?”. You choose the the skill directly in this message and press on the accept button. Hhhmm, no that would be too easy. We can do it in the more complicated way. Press on the magnifier button (click!), go to army details (click!), go to generals detail (click!), go to add a new skill (click!), choose a new skill (click!).
After some hours of click, click, click I was very excited by the glorious work CA did here. I’m confident a bit of more click, click, click would improve the gameplay even more.
Road to win: “Cancel good feature and make the existing more complicated”
It is impossible to explain why CA cut such important for the atmosphere and easy to implement features like family tree or wide building management. But it is even worse. Some of the features are now without any reason overcomplicated but not necessary better.
For example. Three types of agents and all of them do more or less equal or same things. Only one or maybe two types would be absolutely enough. Why when you move the agent to the enemy general you get three types of choice but everything ends in the same result (killing the general) during the first phase of the game? Why not handle it like in other TW games? You get the possibility to kill him, and not three possibilities meaning absolutely the same.
Now you have the possibilities to individualize the armies. Super. But the bonuses are a poor joke. Experienced units are more valuable than this tiny feature.
You have the possibility to create new vassals. But without the possibility to integrate them later into your empire and the risk be backstabbed by them. Wherefore create such a feature then?
The events could be something interesting. But the unknown results of your choice make it just silly. Why not handle it like Paradox where you see the results of your choice immediately?
The different houses (gens) model could be interesting. But now it is just a complicated feature that doesn’t provide any improvement to the depth of the game.
And so on, and so on.
UI - Uber Interface
I have to admit that I hated (and still hate) the unit icons and also don’t like the buildings icon. However the new UI approach looked good and I seriously thought it could be a good improvement for the gameplay. Unfortunately it’s not, it’s a catastrophe. And unlike most of the things mentioned above it won’t be completely fixed, since it is unlikely that CA will redone the UI completely.
There are two problems with it.
First. It is confusing and counterintuitive. Some things are on different places instead to be combined, or the structure doesn’t make any sense, or the icons are sometimes too large but in important to small, or is it just not logical at all.
A good example for it is the mentioned above diplomacy. Why not to make it in the same way like in Civ?
You see directly by clicking on the faction symbol all possible agreements and the probability for acceptance. If you want to go to another faction you just click on other faction symbol and not close the current negotiations. It would be make the whole thing more transparent, easier to handle, more logical and needless to say avoid most of the click, click, click.
Second problem is the coexistence of such an UI with the Total War game. I’m one of the persons who think that the changes to Win8 was a good decision by Microsoft. So I thought the change to modern UI would also make Rome a smoother and better game. Unfortunately the game lost a lot of immersion due to this change. The design, all these non saying criptical pictures and the information that are not visible on the “right” place but somewhere besides are out of place. You never get the feeling to play a game about ancient times. To create an empire, to build it up, to manage it, care for your characters and command your armies. The whole time you just clicking some pictures. A very, very big fail. I have to appreciate now modern UI and a historical game are just things that don’t match. At least not in this way done in Rome II.
Conclusion
I’m a bit angry but also very, very sad what happened with Rome II because I had such an expectation for it and especially shortly before the release very optimistic about the result. For sure it will be better through patches and mods, though due to some fundamental reasons even with that won’t be a game that a lot of us expected. The whole story reminds me on HOI III from Paradox. Also there we had an experienced company with a brilliant predecessor. The game was launched with a better graphics. However it was also undone (though I have to admit more buggy than Rome II), overcomplicated in a bad way with a user unfriendly interface. Also in most of the previews these problems weren’t mentioned. The result was a huge sales but an angry community afterwards, relatively small amount of DLC sales and despite the full moddability a considerable drop in mods.
As the conclusion for myself – the “fool me once” proverb. It is definitely my last CA game preordered. No matter how often they are saying how great the future games will be.
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Originally Posted by JaM
At least we didn't pay about 40 dollars to TWC.
very annoying.
