Why is Shogun 2 prettier than Rome 2 on ultra settings?

[TheLastRonin]

It comes down to a few things. Shogun had Tesselation, MSAA, a higher draw distance and better shaders. Also like another user mentioned it seems anisotropic filtering is broke in Rome 2, explaining the blurry land textures. Its all a bit of a write off really.

On another note, those that say it only looks great maxed out on high end rigs are plain wrong. Anyone with a Dx11 capable card can see what this game looks like maxed out, it will just run differently depending on the specs of your components. There's no hidden magic, what you pick in options is what everyone gets. Some screenshots look ok only because they are taken from perspectives where you cant see the lack of AA and AF, in combination with one of the battlefield lighting/environment types that do look ok. Graphical consistency is yet another problem the game suffers from though.

Basically, Rome 2 has better assets but the "glue" to mould them together is non existent.

You're wasting your words... To many people think IT MUST BE BETTER BECAUSE IT'S NEW.

[RedFox]

Hah, someone that talks about the technicalities of things. This got me interested in the game engine(Warscape Engine) and found something that could be the cause of those light issues...


taken from the second post(http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...ne-for-Rome-II)

I'm guessing it was the rush to get this game out that ensured the lack of 'professionalism' in regards to the visuals.

That's quite interesting. I fail to see how per-pixel lighting of Particles would add anything to the game however? Other than just slowing it down, I don't see where it can pay off even visually, since particles are so small. Perhaps design decisions like this made it hard to finish and optimize the graphics engine, leading to its rushed state...

I feel that even Anisotropic Filtering won't make the textures look any better - there's simply something wrong with the engine itself.

[alkis6]

Pretty close but you putted shogun 2 units in area with no grass? And also if we include optimisation ...

The draw distance of grass in s2tw is smaller than r2tw. The same happens with trees.

[A Barbarian]

Rome 2 has bigger potential but the implementation sucks (slow and buggy) so Shogun 2 looks better in most situations imho. Especially the lack of proper anti-aliasing (=MSAA) makes me sick when I have to look at all the pixelated trees and soldiers in the distance. Adding MSAA in Rome 2 would also finally give high-end GPUs something to do.

[Super7700]

Especially the lack of proper anti-aliasing (=MSAA) makes me sick when I have to look at all the pixelated trees and soldiers in the distance. Adding MSAA in Rome 2 would also finally give high-end GPUs something to do.

You should probably see a doctor about that

Unfortunately a number of people's high-end GPUs are already struggling due to poor optimisation, so CA will need to fix that before they try adding proper AA.

[agent 47]

You should probably see a doctor about that

Unfortunately a number of people's high-end GPUs are already struggling due to poor optimisation, so CA will need to fix that before they try adding proper AA.

I think its cpus that are struggling, not gpus. Gpu usage by the game seems to be fairly low.

[NekOnOkO]

You should probably see a doctor about that

Unfortunately a number of people's high-end GPUs are already struggling due to poor optimisation, so CA will need to fix that before they try adding proper AA.

Struggling so much that GPU load never exceeds 55% (at GTX 780 ti). You clearly have 0 idea. Game is CPU-limited so badly (due to lack of multi-threading and some things, like shadows, being CPU-rendered for god knows why reason), that it fails to "feed" GPU with work.

[Super7700]

Struggling so much that GPU load never exceeds 55% (at GTX 780 ti). You clearly have 0 idea. Game is CPU-limited so badly (due to lack of multi-threading and some things, like shadows, being CPU-rendered for god knows why reason), that it fails to "feed" GPU with work.

Okay I was wrong, but there's no need to be impolite about it, even though you are right that my knowledge of computers is indeed limited. Anyway, would it still be correct for me to say that the game should be better optimised before they can add proper AA?

[Jester]

i think it's mostly because of the lack of proper AA.

then messed up lightning and some really ugly low res terrain and building textures. grass is also ridiculous ugly on some maps.

there're very few maps where the game can look pretty good though, like dark stormy desert maps for example. everytime there is too much sun it becomes ugly though

and that was only about close up/midrange zoom. fully zoomed out, R2 is even more uglier than Shogun2, Napoleon, Empire, Medieval2

[NekOnOkO]

Okay I was wrong, but there's no need to be impolite about it, even though you are right that my knowledge of computers is indeed limited. Anyway, would it still be correct for me to say that the game should be better optimised before they can add proper AA?

I doubt it can be optimized at all, tbh. In order to get rid of CPU-bottleneck they'll have to pretty much re-write the whole game engine, which won't happen until the next Total War title. Adding proper AA and AF, however, should be possible. Summary: the game CAN look better while maintaining roughly the same (bad) performance.

[Toho]

I would have to say shogun 2 models seem to be superior but I see that Rome 2 models are not crap either but the problem is when I zoom out i lose all detail with rome 2.
my troops become just black figures twitching left and right "trying" to fight.

When I watch a battle I am disgusted. Absolutely disguested.

I can barely see whats hapening, my troops look garbage in a semi-zoomed in view, troops sliding left and right.
the battle looks so unrealistic and random... it just sad. I uninstalled this game because it just made me pity what this could have been.

Shogun 2 despite having zero diversity at least had good battles. on every single aspect it excelled. that's why it is fun.
the only thing R2 has going for it is its period. everything else is pretty much a failure. there is not one single thing CA did perfectly with this game in any aspect.

[Super7700]

I doubt it can be optimized at all, tbh. In order to get rid of CPU-bottleneck they'll have to pretty much re-write the whole game engine, which won't happen until the next Total War title. Adding proper AA and AF, however, should be possible. Summary: the game CAN look better while maintaining roughly the same (bad) performance.

Thank you for clearing that up. Hopefully they'll still add anti-aliasing in, though I won't be all that bothered if they don't. I remember reading somewhere that proper AA was only added to Shogun 2 later on, though I may be completely mistaken.

[NekOnOkO]

I remember reading somewhere that proper AA was only added to Shogun 2 later on, though I may be completely mistaken.

Indeed it was, along with many other features and DX11 support (it had only DX9 initially). I don't remember how long did it take them to implement it. Also, Shogun 2 supports SLI\CrossFireX and scales decently with it, while Rome II doesn't (Crossfire worked till the patch 4 or smth, then they've broke it completely), which for AAA game, released in 2013 is absolutely unacceptable and indicates how ruched and unfinished this game is.

[A Barbarian]

Unfortunately a number of people's high-end GPUs are already struggling due to poor optimisation, so CA will need to fix that before they try adding proper AA.

It's the opposite. High-end GPUs are totally bored in Rome 2. Minimum framerates are determined by CPU performance, especially in battles. Even the benchmark is CPU limited towards the end when the fighting starts. I did a graph in Afterburner. At the end 1 CPU core is utilized to 100% and GPU utilization goes down.

Even a 4770K@4.5Ghz will limit a GTX660TI in battles on extreme preset + AA + SSAO + DOF (no veg alpha).

Rome 2 models are not crap either but the problem is when I zoom out i lose all detail with rome 2.
my troops become just black figures twitching left and right "trying" to fight.

When I watch a battle I am disgusted. Absolutely disguested.

Exactly, that's because there is no MSAA. Zoomed in Rome 2 models look fine but zoomed out its horrible.

[DarrenTotalWar]

Rome II is the best graphically, let's not mess about here guys. Shogun 2 probably looks more asthetically pleasing though.

[Greve Af Göteborg]

Rome II is the best graphically, let's not mess about here guys. Shogun 2 probably looks more asthetically pleasing though.

I wouldn't say that. Some of Rome 2's graphical features aren't even functional, and it straight up misses some of the features from shogun 2.
Combine that with bad optimization, weird shaders & colour filters.

[nigelnire]

Shogun 2 looks way better than Rome 2 but then perhaps half of the budget for Shogun 2 wasn’t spent on blatantly false advertising.

[PROMETHEUS ts]

Does anyone know the reason why? From a technical point of view maybe.
I just feel like Shogun 2 is so vibrant, clean, crisp and alive in higher settings.
Rome 2 I find dull, less vibrant, less fluid, on higher settings than shogun 2.
I still think rome 2 is beautiful to look at. But it seems less beautiful to look at then shogun 2 on higher settings.
Just a question
Thanks for the answer in advance, I know someone here should have some theories

I agree with you and I think its for some few reasons :

1 They have far more factions or they wanted to create many more for Rome II and so had to distinguish them more with fancy colors, something not needed in Shogun
2 The Units are all the same and shared in Shogun so they couldprobably dedicate more texture size resources to them and so look more vibrand and sharp compared ot the RTWII
3 Better research and attention to detail for Shogun II and poor research , together with fantasy elements intermixed to grant a gameplay balance filling in more uits than whats really known to have exhisted so a lot of unit get the feel of recycled stuff with just different sharp colors .

[Dago Red]

Rome II is the best graphically, let's not mess about here guys. Shogun 2 probably looks more asthetically pleasing though.

How can you say that when it's been discussed ad naseum that the game is missing real AA, real high res textures, real anisotropic filtering, and where's tessellation, etc, etc?

I hated the units in Shogun with their plastic look, but what good are better models and assets if the core, modern, aspects of high end graphics are missing?

I loaded up Black and White 2, a game from another lifetime and it looks better than Rome II (not the units, but the landscape and environment).

[z3n]

Actually check this out, a guy is doing something for MTW2.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

You can find it here, although he is not done yet.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...al-war-project