Here are some examples why 1 tpy is stupid or not done right.

[Wicked Moose]

I don't have a problem with 1tpy, that can be modded anyway, but I'm concerned by the lack of seasons. It might hinder making good mods. And for me personally, Rome 2 needs some good mods, in the future of course.

[Huberto]

No, we get it, there are tons of people in gaming industry who are in it only for the money. Are you saying it's the right direction to take for game developers?

Nice! +rep

Because as CA found out a lot of people didn't bothered to play to the end so as Lesta pointed out what's the point?

Boy I sure hope CA finds why I didn't finish Rome II.

[Humble Warrior]

While 1tpy is not the most pressing problem in my humble opinion, I do find it very shoddy of CA. They`ve had years of this, a decade even, and if these guys really cared for a quality game you`d think they would make some effort on the Drawing board to get the years to make some sense with the distance travelled. It does irk me when it takes 2 years to cross the English Channel. CA in many ways, act like a bunch of kids, that run before walking and don`t really plan at all.

Just for those who don`t realise the madness of it, today, by ferry it takes an hour or so to cross the channel, so I guess by ancient times maybe a day? No way should it take a year or two.

You`d think BRITISH GUYS would do their best to get this closer to accurate than this!

[nameless]

No, we get it, there are tons of people in gaming industry who are in it only for the money. Are you saying it's the right direction to take for game developers?

Clearly you don't.

Get it in your heads. It's a freaking business, not a bat cave. CA employees are not robots. They have families and mouths to feed. There is a line to draw in regards to money and such but CA is nowhere near that. A perfect example would be EA that tries to gouge people to death.

Like I pointed out with things like Dredd 2013. The hardcore fans may love it but in the end when it comes down to it they are an extreme minority that cannot support it in order to be successful. You and others keep talking about "vote with your wallets" but when it comes down to it you can't carry it through at all.

While 1tpy is not the most pressing problem in my humble opinion, I do find it very shoddy of CA. They`ve had years of this, a decade even, and if these guys really cared for a quality game you`d think they would make some effort on the Drawing board to get the years to make some sense with the distance travelled. It does irk me when it takes 2 years to cross the English Channel. CA in many ways, act like a bunch of kids, that run before walking and don`t really plan at all.

Way to completely miss my point.

Like I said, I guarantee that if the next game CA pumps out focuses on a short timeframe there WILL be multiple turns per year just like FOTS, NTW, and Shogun 2.

Why is that so hard to understand? Why do you think MTW2 had 2 turns per year? Because it covered an ever larger timeframe.

Boy I sure hope CA finds why I didn't finish Rome II.

News flash Huberto. The world doesn't revolve around you. And way to miss the point.

[Forward Observer]

I love 1tpy, it's realistic, have you read a history book? You should know it actually took the great Arrow armada 30 years to reach Egypt from Britain. It is said that there were only 1 man and 1 woman on each ship when they left, and when they arrived an entire army was raised. And that it took 80 years for alexander to conquer the Persians.

I have no idea what the Arrow armada is, but Alexander the Great only lived to be 33 years old, so you might want to recheck your history book facts


Anyway, since LestaT brought up the fact that the last game covering multiple centuries was Med 2 and that it used 1 turn to equal 2 years, it should also be mentioned how the game handled the life spans of the generals, and other characters. In Med 2, they only aged every other turn. That's right, they only had a birthday once every 4 years. If the family tree showed that they were 65 years old, they were actually 260 years old in the game.

Everybody seemed to ignore or have forgotten about this little twist on reality although it was sort of hidden from view. The game turn button panel never showed the year--only the turn number. One had to go to a sub menu panel to see the year and then a completely different panel to look at ages on the family tree.

While I'm not crazy about the current situation with characters dying off every 35 to 50 turns, I just don't see a practical solution that maintains both the needed time span of the game and that keeps it in a playable form that will appeal to all---also while retaining realistic human lifespans for the characters.

Here are main options that I can see.

A. cover only 100 years at 2 or 4 turns per year. (as suggested by the OP) This works fine for a game like Shogun 2 or Empire, but sadly could never do justice to the classical Roman era.
B. cover 250 to 300 years at 2 or 4 turns per year (the usual most suggested option) However, having a game that takes 500 to 1200 turns to complete would severely limit its audience appeal.
C. cover 250 to 300 year a 1 turn per year, but have characters age at a slower rate. (this is the method used in Medieval 2)
D. keep it as it is.

To my way of thinking the developers used the most practical and realistic method possible to give the average player a chance to finish a campaign. Only choice C would keep the campaign length playable for most while keeping the characters alive longer, but then this solution might run afoul of the reality police.

Let's face it. Until somebody invents a real Startrek holodeck, game designers will be forced to abstract some parts of reality to make a game playable---meaning I don't think they are ever going to include a "latrine duty" DLC real soon--as much as some may want it.

With 3,885 hours in Shogun 2/FOTS and 325 hours to date in Rome 2, I don't consider myself a casual player, and I always finish the campaigns I start (well, Shogun 2/FOTS on legendary kicked my butt on more than one occasion, but I finally made the 1% list for both).

I am not a role player in the TW games, so although the short life span of the characters is an inconvenience, I can live with it.

However, I could probably also live with the system used in Med 2.

I just don't find the other two options A or B very acceptable.

Of course this is only my opinion and you know what your proctologist says about opinions.

Feel free to add any other possible choices.


Cheers


P.S. to the OP, I just ran a little test and it only took me a single turn to cross the channel and only 2 turns to get between points on the map that would approximate London and Paris (the latter has no settlement represented in the game) I understand your frustration, but over exaggerating the facts tends to undermine your position somewhat. What happens during a turn is always a gameplay abstraction of real life---sometimes more, sometimes less.

[Humble Warrior]

Clearly you don't.

Get it in your heads. It's a freaking business, not a bat cave. CA employees are not robots. They have families and mouths to feed. There is a line to draw in regards to money and such but CA is nowhere near that. A perfect example would be EA that tries to gouge people to death.

Actually, no, it is not that simple. Every business has a duty to its customers, EVERY business. It`s not there just to milk as much money out of them as possible, regardless what you think. I would say their practises are already at the limit of and even surpassed EA. Lying face-on the screen to people about the game come what may to squeeze undeserved profit is not the way to make money or happy customers in the long term.

[Akrotatos]

A. cover only 100 years at 2 or 4 turns per year. (as suggested by the OP) This works fine for a game like Shogun 2 or Empire, but sadly could never do justice to the classical Roman era.
B. cover 250 to 300 years at 2 or 4 turns per year (the usual most suggested option) However, having a game that takes 500 to 1200 turns to complete would severely limit its audience appeal.
C. cover 250 to 300 year a 1 turn per year, but have characters age at a slower rate. (this is the method used in Medieval 2)
D. keep it as it is.

I don't get this "500 to 1200 turns to complete' idea that everybody seems to have. We don't play the game until the last date, we play to freaking win before that. If anything, this would relax the casual gamer who does not need to beat the clock to win.

I vote 4 turns per year and as long as it takes. Alexander's conquests lasted less than two decades and less than 200 years separate a still new-appearing Roman republic to the battle of Actium! THere is nothing non-unrealstic about conquering the half of europe in 150 years when you control the faction, something that to my imagination translates to a string of rulers, all at a level with the greatest generals of history.

[Takizama]

The thing I love about Total war games is thier flexibality modding. If you dont like it, modd it. I am only 17 and im in algebra 2 and I can mod this game to do anything I want: Besides textrue modding. Modding to get 2tpy is so easy. Find your startpos.esf file and dig around and you can find the fix. If not ask the modding fourms for help =]

I understand your point, but thiere is a line. That line is crossed by complainging about something that can be fixed by you in 2 minutes. I'm ok with the complaints about The retarted AI, But this is such an easy fix it isnt even acceptable to complain about it.

Of course no one will listen to me because apparently, "Im backing up CA/Rome 2" But im not, im trying to solve the problem instead of qqing about it flooding this fourm with whining topics. I want to discuss rome 2. not argue about it.

[Huberto]

Clearly you don't.

Get it in your heads. It's a freaking business, not a bat cave. CA employees are not robots. They have families and mouths to feed. There is a line to draw in regards to money and such but CA is nowhere near that. A perfect example would be EA that tries to gouge people to death.

Like I pointed out with things like Dredd 2013. The hardcore fans may love it but in the end when it comes down to it they are an extreme minority that cannot support it in order to be successful.

News Flash: CA/SEGA was doing quite well with Total War selling it to a somewhat niche audience. Now with Rome II they've streamlined the game and openly talked of making the game compatible for tablets or consoles. But the streamlined game isn't a very good game and it doesn't work very well. And many, many people are disappointed as seen on metacritic. This bit of commercial bravado is going to cost CA/SEGA with their expansion or the next release -- just as NTW sales suffered because of ETW. Except it will be worse. That is if CA/SEGA even do another Total War game. So while your post assumes a savvy, if not world weary tone, actually in a concrete business sense, your words are quite naïve.

[Forward Observer]

I don't get this "500 to 1200 turns to complete' idea that everybody seems to have. We don't play the game until the last date, we play to freaking win before that. If anything, this would relax the casual gamer who does not need to beat the clock to win.

I vote 4 turns per year and as long as it takes. Alexander's conquests lasted less than two decades and less than 200 years separate a still new-appearing Roman republic to the battle of Actium! THere is nothing non-unrealstic about conquering the half of europe in 150 years when you control the faction, something that to my imagination translates to a string of rulers, all at a level with the greatest generals of history.

Perhaps I should have made my description of option B a little clearer so you would not have taken it so literally and misunderstood my point. My numbers of 500 and 1200 were just a range of the minimum and maximum number of turns possible with that particular option. I never meant to imply that it would take this many turn to finish a game.

How many turns one takes to complete the campaign objectives is up to the individual player. Some like to play fast and some like to turtle.

In my first play through as Rome on normal difficulty I took 228 turns to achieve a cultural victory. The economic victory condition were out of the question at that point due to the number of trading treaties required.

Likewise I was still short about 25 settlements to meet the military victory.

On my second play through at the hard level I will better this by maybe 25 years/turns, but let's use your example of 150 years. If the game has 4 turns per year that would equate to 600 turns. Personally, I would stopped playing the TW games a long time ago it they required 600 turns to win a campaign. Am I a typical TW player? Maybe and maybe not, but I like to think of my self as one. I certainly have put in the hours as I listed in my first post.

Having to wade through 600 turns to win a campaign may appeal to you, but it doesn't to me. The problem that the developers have--is to try to build a game time structure that both of us can play and enjoy. I don't have the perfect answer to this, but as I said, I can live with the turn structure they have given us, but I wouldn't have a big problem with the Med 2 solution either.

I think there are a lot more pressing aspects of the game that have to be addressed at the present and ultimately, I suspect that the turns per year is simply not going to be changed by CA. In other words, if one is not happy with this they will probably have to rely on a mod to change it as others have mentioned.

Cheers

[Lionheart11]

News Flash: CA/SEGA was doing quite well with Total War selling it to a somewhat niche audience. Now with Rome II they've streamlined the game and openly talked of making the game compatible for tablets or consoles. But the streamlined game isn't a very good game and it doesn't work very well. And many, many people are disappointed as seen on metacritic. This bit of commercial bravado is going to cost CA/SEGA with their expansion or the next release -- just as NTW sales suffered because of ETW. Except it will be worse. That is if CA/SEGA even do another Total War game. So while your post assumes a savvy, if not world weary tone, actually in a concrete business sense, your words are quite naïve.

Exactly! they had a award winning formular, they messed with it! and now we have the situation we have now(lots and lots not happy)

The time /distance thing shows that it was not very well thought out or implemented, maybe you could say a rush idea?

[Humble Warrior]

I have no idea what the Arrow armada is, but Alexander the Great only lived to be 33 years old, so you might want to recheck your history book facts


.

It`s called dry British humour and I`m almost certain he is British.

[Huberto]

Exactly! they had a award winning formular, they messed with it! and now we have the situation we have now(lots and lots not happy)

The time /distance thing shows that it was not very well thought out or implemented, maybe you could say a rush idea?

I believe we got 1tpy for a game lasting 300 years because they thought their potential customers wanted Hannibal, Caesar, Sparta, Cleopatra and Conan the barbarian all in one quick campaign.

[Plan C]

[...]maintains both the needed time span of the game[...]

Looking at the options you listed, I would pick option A, but I would give players 3 starting points - early republic (485BC), middle republic (285BC) and Late republic (post-marian, 85BC). This would allow us to cover all major points in Roman history in this way - development of the republican state, subjugation of Sabines and Samnites etc in the early rep start., then in middle rep. we could cover Pyrrhic wars, Punic wars, subjugation of Greece, Sicily and the idea of Mare Nostrum and, in late republic starting point the campaign could focus on Gallic wars, middle-eastern wars and subjugation of Egypt.

Took me 5 mins to come up with that. This game could have been ing amazing, like, really amazing if some basic design effort was put into it.

[AngryTitusPullo]

Why is that so hard to understand? Why do you think MTW2 had 2 turns per year? Because it covered an ever larger timeframe.

2 years per turn ! 2 years per turn !

Not 2 turns per year.

In any case if anyone bothers to remember, vanilla Med 2 don't even have years but turns only. You have to edit the config file or mod the strat file to enable so that it shows the year number in your game.

[m.minkov]

I don't understand what's the problem for CA to double the turns - the victory conditions are there and they don't include anything about the year/turn, except that you need to meet them before the last turn.

So if a player wants to finish a campaign fast - no problem, he can finish it in 200-300, even 100 turns, if he can, but if other player wants to turtle and not take a settlement every 1-2 turns, he can do it too as well and not worry that the game will end soon.

If those "fast" players want to see/use the late/end game units, but don't want to play slow - custom battle.

I could understand to limit the number of turns, if we had victory conditions like in Medieval 1(i really miss those), where at every 25 years(if i remember right), you gained points depending on what territories(your own de jure territories which gave more points and conquets) and some required buildings before year X you had and in the end after the final turn, the faction with the most points win the campaign.

In fact IMO this is the biggest problem with the TW series - you just expand way too fast and easy and it's a must requirement, if you want to win a campaign, that's why most ppl don't finish their campaigns at all - it just get's very boring and repetative fast.

Now compare that to Paradox games - f.e. CK2 - you have very long campaign there as well, esp if you start from the earliest possible year, however you can't expand with the speed of light there and if you expand too fast, very quickly you face civil wars, rebellions and various plots to end your life or at least crumble your power. This makes the game very enjoyable even after 200 years have passed(quite a lot game play hours).

If in Rome2, we had point system for the conditions we get ingame, instead of money rewards(as well as the AI had those) and bigger problems to hold our internal piece, the % of the ppl actually finishing a campaign would be way higher IMO.

IMO the need to conquer the whole known world in every single campaign is the bane of the TW series since Rome 1.

[mAIOR]

Hehe. First post here in a long while. I wrote something about this regarding Rome II before it even came out and apparently it came true. For me, 1tpy completely kills any strategic meaning on the campaign and CA just took the lazy way out to prevent armies from roaming around the whole world in a single turn, just tone down movement rates. lol. Am I glad I didn't get this game!

For people who were not around when I first posted my opinion on the matter, let me say it again:

1tpy completely kills any hint of strategy. You don't have to think, about supplies and logistics or any of those issues. You want to know why I stop playing campaigns after a couple of turns (even with mods)? Because without checks to player expansion and a lousy AI, you get bored with the game since it was not designed with enough content to last for all those turns.

So, if CA wanted to do something proper about it, they could've done it. They chose the profitable way out. It's their choice but, if they had enough money before and now it is somehow not enough, then they are probably spending too much elsewhere (as others have said).

Check Europa Universalis 4. The bloody game keeps you hooked even after you are a super power. When you conquer a province, it takes 50 years for it to be even considered yours. Things like conquest and pacification took time. Strategically, you'd need more resources to keep an occupied territory than you needed to take it. This is not represented in the game for instance. And again 1tpy makes it even more absurd.

But what do I know? I'm a bit of an extremist and I say that 4tpy are the bare minimum to have some strategic elements to the campaign so take this as you will. If CA wanted to make the game appealing for 1000 turns, they could. Add supply lines, huge cost to newly conquered settlements, Ruinous war costs and so on. They could make it so that after conquering a major province, you'd have to wait years before it even began to turn over a profit. They could have cities consume more and more resources as they grow so that you have to fulfill certain conditions to expand a city (like grain shipments and other goods) and those could be intercepted by pirates or other nations causing mass unrest, riots and would force you to spend more money and resources just securing those supplies.

This would obviously make the game more about politics and city building creating a crescendo of resource use and need which eventually you couldn't get from anywhere, so unrest is imminent and you would have to go to war to secure critical supplies (by raiding provinces or conquering to release them under diplomatic agreement in exchange for peace and grain or even conquering a wwealthy province which produces the supplies you want thinking on a long term plan). Or you can have other nations begin to grow too large for comfort and you'd need to go there and take them down a peg so your trade routes are under no threat.

Another example of how 1tpy is flawed are major wars. The Gallic wars lasted for 8 years and had around 11 major battles. These battles were spread by months or years divided in campaign seasons with time to replenish depleted legions with fresh reinforcements. How are you going to do that with 1tpy? How are you going to represent on of the defining moments of the Roman history? You don't.

So many options CA could've done... Instead, they went for a bland 1tpy so that the campaign ends fast enough and those inherent flaws are not so easily spotted.


All this I said could be done without too much of a workload:
1) 4tpy (I'd prefer 6 or 12 but I'm a reasonable person).
2) add huge resource consumption to newly conquered settlements. It should take generations for a completely different culture to be absorbed and unrest ceased. Also, make newly conquered settlements cost a bundle of money and resources. This would make wars be more about taming an opponent and giving it a crippling peace agreement rather then straight out conquering.
3)add supply lines to armies that can be cut off by opposing armies meaning that a deep move into enemies territory would need more armies along it's path to prevent raiders from completely starving your conquering army off.


Not entirely unreasonable points I believe. And just by adding these simple things, you'd gain interest in your campaign for much longer periods. It's a matter of fighting for what you want and not having it given to you free of charge.

hmmm, after a bit of thinking this could all resume to:

Make the game about trade agreements and diplomatic treaties instead of just open conflict without any cause or justification.

[Radzeer]

1 tpy is indeed stupid. Likely based on either some focus group of casual players for whom 300 is a large number or on Steam stats (which only say that the game is unbalanced toward the player and fails to provide an interesting end-game challenge). It is also the testament of lazy programming (skipping seasons). The argument that it covers some arbitrary historical period is silly.

Anyhow, one can say that it is driven by victory conditions, that is a sequence of steps taking approximately 300 end turn clicks. Well, I'm not sure how many plays for victory goals anyway. But let's say the majority does. Why not keep 4 turns per year with seasons and implement separate victory conditions for short and long campaigns (with the balancing of features that are connected to time progression, such as movement, building siege equipment etc.)? This would satisfy both those who just want short campaigns with clear goals and those who want to play this for a long time. Or maybe different starting points in history? Or both? Sigh.

1 tpy is actually a good example for the lazy and ill-conceived streamlining many people don't like. Everything 1 tpy does could be done better with 4 tpy. And then it adds extra.

[Vilkas09]

making 4 turns per year with seasons require more work, efforts, time from developers. CA simply made the easiet and cheapest decision.

[chris10]

Everything is flat and the only difference between a desert town and a Germanic town is the look.

Rome 2 is so shallow that it could straight be ported to console and nobody ever would realize this was a PC title.
In the ol days PC players had all those complex badass-games and mildly smiling at console players who congealed in shock and awee
when confronted with the real deal...