(0.8) Legendary Campaigns - Rome and...

[LawL_LawL]

With the release of 0.8 I'm really excited to see where things go with the major overhaul on reforms. Started a campaign with Legendary/Legendary difficulty, going for another round as the Romans. Already very keen on seeing the rest of the changes as I notice Camillan era units, great that Rome actually has longer range skirmishers now with the inclusion of Accensi as slingers. Though the Hastati and Principes both retain their Pila as melee weapons even after their ammunition runs dry it seems.

New campaign screens for Rome will be posted here: http://imgur.com/a/7x8Zg and will continue updating this as I play for a while longer today.

I'm currently on Turn 11. So far it's been pretty much the same start except without the Etruscans being conquered first, so following the assembly of my armies south of Genua I marched them in and set them to Pillage while waiting for the already At-War Insubres to march their army down before starting my attack and declaring war as well. Genua was taken mostly at the expense of my Leves and the Insubres army. Following this I declared war on the Insubres and sent their battered stack retreating back to their territory. Planning to follow up with an assault on Mediolanum as soon as next turn comes around to ensure as little of the remnants of their army gets the chance to replenish.

At the moment I also have 8 trade partners who in total provide me enough income to make ~3-4k per turn while at min taxes for early growth. Spy is already in the corner of the Black Sea to facilitate some of this trade-partner hunting. Plan to secure Northern Italy and looking to Magna Graecia for opportunistic attacks. Not sure where I'm going from there on.

Alongside Rome I was planning on rebooting a campaign as a different faction, not sure what to go for. Wasn't particularly keen on starting up Seleucids again as they're definitely my most played faction across both MP and SP campaigns, and while still my favourite it's getting a little repetitive.

What faction do you think would be interesting to play or would like to see played on Legendary?

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Reformatted the screenshots.

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And reformatted again due to my own clumsiness when fatigued.

http://imgur.com/a/7x8Zg

[stevehoos]

I think a campaign as Syracuse would be interesting given their situation!

[Schiehaven]

Always nice to read your threads! I think Sparta is interesting to play on L/L. How do you make screenshots btw? I think the minor fractions are perhaps most difficult

[stupar123]

If you expand at start , end game is always easy .

I found hard playing on L/L with Massalia for example . But taht was two months ago , got a bt better in DeI so far !

[zonks40]

Good read, looks like your doing well considering the level your playing.
Though I can't help but think the reforms on turn 30 is a bit soon.

[shadepanther]

Macedon would get my vote. It's a tough start if you get dogpiled

[LawL_LawL]

Thanks for the comments.

How do you make screenshots btw?

With Steam you screenshot with F12, though the Steam client defaults to JPEG format so you end up with some quality loss. This doesn't do anything for me though as I ended up dropping all my settings due to issues with big battles and crashing so everything looks like crap anyways. Alternatives to Steam's screenshot function would be other programs that may sport in-game overlays like Fraps. Then there's always Print-Screen and then pasting the image into an image processor.

Though I can't help but think the reforms on turn 30 is a bit soon.

Yeah I replied to the Roman unit reform thread on this matter, this is what I had written:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Well... realistically the reforms happened so far apart and on an as-needed basis that people were rarely in a position to be told to re-arm and re-train, given the non-standing armies of the pre-Marian systems.

I'm liking the changes that made it less tech-locked and more turns-elapsed + Imperium level, however I'm already at the first set of Reforms as Rome at Turn 30. Relative to what was set for the Reform parameters is this too soon or around when the first Reforms for Rome should take place? Personally I feel like 30 Turns with 4TPY means less than 8 years of time elapsed before *poof* our armies are clearly obsolete, look at their success in the field!

Perhaps it would be too complicated or simply impossible, but besides possibly extending the base requirements for Turns played before Reforms I'd love to see it implemented that the Reforms simply will not happen without the appropriate demand for such. It makes little sense at all if a Roman Republic sitting idly on the Italian peninsula and doing dick-all for conquest will eventually update its army out of sheer boredom. Marius' reforms of the army were of course significant as they set Rome on the path to professional and standing armies to be improved later in the empire, but they were also made as an ad-hoc change of the enlistment requirements because Marius himself was tasked with concluding the war between Rome and Numidia but without any army to use as previous rounds of recruitment emptied Rome of the able-bodied landed citizens.

So if at all possible, perhaps regularly losing battles would be a contributing factor towards Reform progress, with something like a complete annihilation similar to Cannae being more contributing toward the issue.

So at the moment I'm looking at a couple minor factions like Arche Bosphorus (actually, are they even Minor?), as well as all the single settlement factions Major and Minor as their starts are a little more in line with each other than the Major and Minor multi-settlement factions. All the other factions are still very much on the table, just potentially less interesting. Syracuse was one of the single settlement Minors that I didn't get very far into on pre-0.8 and would find interesting, Sparta I've surprisingly never played. I don't think I even played them in Rome 1's campaign...

[Lieutenant Sharpe]

Just out of curiosity what does setting the campaign to legendary do affecting the AI? I know battle difficulty levels give buffs to enemy units but I'm not sure what campaign difficulty levels do.

[Soul Firez]

what advantage does that hollow square give you on the hill in those battle pics?? i thought it was only used when you were going to be flanked attacked from rear??? Please enlighten me on its proper use as you dont apear to be flanked or attacked from behind just at the disadvantage of being down the hill??

[LawL_LawL]

what advantage does that hollow square give you on the hill in those battle pics?? i thought it was only used when you were going to be flanked attacked from rear??? Please enlighten me on its proper use as you dont apear to be flanked or attacked from behind just at the disadvantage of being down the hill??

I usually micro flanking units so the units I commit to big clashes as the anvil invariably get less attention. When not formed in Hollow Square these units pursue the enemy unit they were told to attack, sometimes even after the foe routs which gets them into some bad places at times. Other times the enemy unit repositions, and more troublesome when they wheel, and your own unit follows suit to get maximum frontage on that enemy unit which leaves it open for flanking penalties as the lines get further and further disorganized.

Example of this happened in my battle which just crashed where I was being assaulted by multiple Spartan units and met them head-on with my Hastati. My 4 units of Hastati which attacked had the centre-left unit wheel their formation to have the rest of the unit reform directly in-front of the Perioikoi Hoplitai which had clipped their left. This caused their right to extend into the right-flank of a different enemy unit of Misthophoroi Archaioi Hoplitai which inflicted flanking penalties to the Hastati unit. Not wanting to reposition and worry about maintaining a line to avoid severe penalties, I select anvil units en masse and form them into square when I don't see them winning their combats frontally.

Another thing is that the Hollow Square usually leads to fewer friendly fire casualties when my other Hastati begin to roll up the enemy line as there's far fewer friendly bodies in immediate proximity with the enemy unit to be hit by the volley of pila.

EDIT: This is standard for me in battles where I'm vastly outnumbered. In battles where the situation is less numerically appalling I'll often only have the edge-most unit adopt square and have the rest of the line be a dense and contiguous line of units in standard array.

[Soul Firez]

I usually micro flanking units so the units I commit to big clashes as the anvil invariably get less attention. When not formed in Hollow Square these units pursue the enemy unit they were told to attack, sometimes even after the foe routs which gets them into some bad places at times. Other times the enemy unit repositions, and more troublesome when they wheel, and your own unit follows suit to get maximum frontage on that enemy unit which leaves it open for flanking penalties as the lines get further and further disorganized.

Example of this happened in my battle which just crashed where I was being assaulted by multiple Spartan units and met them head-on with my Hastati. My 4 units of Hastati which attacked had the centre-left unit wheel their formation to have the rest of the unit reform directly in-front of the Perioikoi Hoplitai which had clipped their left. This caused their right to extend into the right-flank of a different enemy unit of Misthophoroi Archaioi Hoplitai which inflicted flanking penalties to the Hastati unit. Not wanting to reposition and worry about maintaining a line to avoid severe penalties, I select anvil units en masse and form them into square when I don't see them winning their combats frontally.

Another thing is that the Hollow Square usually leads to fewer friendly fire casualties when my other Hastati begin to roll up the enemy line as there's far fewer friendly bodies in immediate proximity with the enemy unit to be hit by the volley of pila.

EDIT: This is standard for me in battles where I'm vastly outnumbered. In battles where the situation is less numerically appalling I'll often only have the edge-most unit adopt square and have the rest of the line be a dense and contiguous line of units in standard array.

My thanks soon as i spread some rep around ill rep you again.. Very interesting i am a mad speed micro manager but indeed the pila friendly fire is a costly one ill be using this tactic and see how it works( never really view a battle while it happens i spend most of it at great height but i always save replays to watch again both for my tactics and for viewing pleasure (when i win lol)..

[Joseph The Great]

Interesting thread. On battles maps, do you stay zoomed out with the troops highlighted, or is that just for the screen-shots? Looks quite tactical.

It also makes me want to upgrade my video card. Those battles are huge and epic looking. I only do 120 unit size for lag purposes. Soon as it gets up around 6 thousand troops my system slows down.

[alfer0001]

Hi, man, why don`t you make a video? it would be VERY intresting!

[LawL_LawL]

Interesting thread. On battles maps, do you stay zoomed out with the troops highlighted, or is that just for the screen-shots? Looks quite tactical.

It also makes me want to upgrade my video card. Those battles are huge and epic looking. I only do 120 unit size for lag purposes. Soon as it gets up around 6 thousand troops my system slows down.

It's only for the screenshots. I normally play not too far above normal zoom, but zooming further for wider view when needed, though the really zoomed out shots are really cool to look at and do feel more tactical a POV.

Hi, man, why don`t you make a video? it would be VERY intresting!

I'm already having issues running Rome 2 stable on the really big battles, and this is on absolute minimum settings (not even due to FPS issues, I manage a stable 40 at worst, . When not on massive battles- like within the realm of 40-60 units, I tend to prefer high/ultra mixed settings. Neither of these really make for good times to pop Fraps on and try to record, as far as I know. And then there's the matter of having never done something like that before. Even if the Fraps stuff came together fine, Rome didn't crash, and the lag wasn't horrible... I think I would die trying to edit and render the stuff. God help me if I try for commentary- I'd expect a lot of silence in my videos. If not, some very nervous stuttery ramblings here and there.

Thanks for the interest though, I was very surprised at the response right from the start, and I'm entirely willing to continue writing up and screenshotting as I go along even if only a few people take a look. Just a way to combine my interests in gaming, history, and writing all in one go.

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Uploaded another big batch, on Turn 49 so far.

So since I last posted, I struck my agreements with Sparta around the time the Reforms came up as I was keen on taking advantage of their situation fighting the Macedonians, and when it looked like the coast was clear I aimed to sail in my twin maxed stacks for a quick blitz on Sparta itself. Apparently there were two Spartan armies I was not aware of still on the Peleponnese, and I unwittingly landed my 2nd Legion alone on the Peleponnesian Peninsula. So on the Summer of the AI turn of 264 BC I was suddenly and deliberately attacked by- no but to my dismay when I first saw them the two Spartan armies came down on my poor lonely 2nd Legion, and quite the scrap ensued with the Spartan armies.

My centre was held by all of my Triarii, General Pacuvius Vespillo's personal retinue stationed slightly behind the rest of the Triarii. (I had to find the guy's name, I don't remember anyone who isn't faction leader for a long period of time) My Hastati were split in equal halves and deployed on the flanks of the Triarii, all the garbage levied slingers and javelinmen of the Accensi and Leves I held further back as a rather paltry reserve for minor supporting missile fire where needed.

The Spartan armies grouped together to form a contiguous line before advancing down a light slope to the flat ground I positioned my troops around near the back of my deployment zone. While this happened I noticed there was a significant excess of Spartan troops concentrated on their left so I re-deployed my Triarii on my far right and brought my Hastati back in line with the Hastati on my left. The battle started in earnest with entirely ineffective sling fire from the Helot slingers in the woods on my left firing through the woods at my Hastati, also in wooded terrain. The Spartan left was met with most of the Hastati units forming up my centre, while the Spartan centre collided with my Triarii who counter-charged before forming into phalanxes to hold off the Spartan left which began to wheel in on them by the thousands.

The right-most Hastati unit on my left flank advanced and discharged their pila into a dense heap of Makhairaphoroi or something of the like, as well as several units of hoplites, before backing away to deal with some skirmishers further in the woods. The remaining four units of Hastati discharged their Pila into the rear of the Spartans attacking the other Hastati holding the line. None of the left units of Hastati commit to melee against the main Spartan line until their Pila were all spent, besides directly charging skirmishers without the use of Pila to drive off the Helot missile troops.

About half-way through the battle Vespillo falls to a Spartan spear minutes after giving his troops an encouraging cry. Thank you Discplined units... the line holds without a problem. The Triarii are really feeling the pain though, with one unit completely swamped in hostile Hoplite phalanxes. This unit would later break when struck from behind by Spartan Royal Guard while another unit of Spartans had formed up infront of them and ground further at their lines. After breaking they would eventually be run down by a Spartan hoplite contingent, with only 12 of them making it away from the action alive. The rest of the Triarii units around this point are mostly below or around half-strength and Tired at best.

One of the Hastati units in the middle broke around the beginning of the end. The enemy sent one of their Generals through the gap while it was open and I immediately recalled my missile troops from supporting the left to dealing with the Spartan Royal Hoplites. Slingers I drew back to around half-range and fired on the General's retinue immediately while the Leves dispersed to the flanks of the Spartans to pepper them with javelins. The Spartan units that broke the Hastati mostly charged to support the attack on the squares of Hastati to either side, with one unit of Misthophoroi Archaioi Hoplitai advancing on my Leves as they harassed the Spartan General, who decided to stop pursing my skirmishers and head for the Triarii, also where the other Spartan General was.

My skirmishers then spent most of the remaining time ripping apart the poor mercenary hoplites while leading them around in circles with the three units of skirmishers never short of rear and side angles while the hoplites pursued one of the other units. As my left had completed their use of Pila and committed to the fray they began the process of rolling-up the Spartan line from the left to give me some semblance of control over the battle, which at the time of the Spartan Generals sandwiching one unit of Triarii was definitely not the case, with my General dead and all my units engaged.

Luckily my Triarii held fast against the spears, swords, and javelins of the enemy longer than their hoplites held against my devastating Pila volleys which enfiladed their unreasonably densely packed line. As my left mopped up the Spartans they had on their hands, my right gave some ground with the one unit of Triarii breaking as mentioned, the rest being in absolute tatters and on the brink of collapse. The Spartan Generals had split up to tackle two different Triarii units after their joint attack on the now-broken Triarii. My completely victorious left came back into the mess in the centre of the battlefield, which was now more or less what was previously only the right-most portion of my line. Some of the central Hastati units still retained well over 50% of their Pila, having used insignificant amounts and not having the chance to expend the rest before being bogged down in melee with the Spartan line. All of these Pila were brought to bear on the rear of one of the Spartan Royal Guard phalanxes, with friendly fire amongst the Triarii deemed entirely acceptable.

If you look at some of the screenshots from the end, you'll see the status of my units around this point. Another of the Triarii units had broken and fled, as well as nearly half of my army's starting Hastati units. The skirmishers had ran out of ammunition and added their numbers to the messy melee wrapping itself around the last bastions of Spartan resistance which were a handful of units completely swamped in tired and exhausted Romans. Ultimately the Spartans were routed in their entirety, the unit of Perioikoi stranded in the woods being mercilessly hacked to pieces by two units of Hastati attacking them from front and rear. Following this the Misthophoroi Archaioi Hoplitai unit, which was actually holding pretty well, routed due to the depleted Perioikoi units beside them finally breaking, which lead to the whole cluster routing.

The Royal Spartans themselves held on a little longer, but at this point one of the Generals had already died and the other was to die in mere moments. The battle concluded with the merciless pursuit of the remaining Spartan units, the ones who routed prior to this point being lucky to have not even the slightest chance of being pursued. The retinue belonging to the Spartan General Galenos was hacked down to a single man, this man managing to flee in another direction from his comrades and inadvertently walking through the length of the massacre on the Spartan right which occurred in and around the wooded plain which covered most of the battlefield.

In the aftermath of the battle hardly a unit remained that wasn't below 50% strength, many more on the verge of collapse both in battle and for campaign minimum unit strengths. Certainly a victory entirely to the credit of the Legion itself, having their General taken from them merely halfway through the bloody affair. I really wish there was a more dynamic army morale system and adjustable wages/rations and the likes...

So with that battle out of the way, I was looking at an army that already had 1 slot opened by the destruction of a Triarii unit when my next turn started up. Sadly my army couldn't make it to Sparta this turn. And it didn't even end there as a Macedonian army had just disembarked on the Southern beaches of the Peleponnesian Peninsula...

WHAT DID MY GENERAL AND LEGIONNARIES PERISH IN BATTLE FOR?

And things managed to take a strange path as the next turn unveiled the beginnings of the Hellenic League... Knossos had snatched Sparta from both the Macedonians and myself. I saw this as a blessing as I immediately disbanded the Accensi and Leves to bring the total open slots to 4, then recruiting some Creshan Arshers along with 3 units of mercenary hoplites so as to make the army capable of attacking Sparta. Broke my Trade and Non-Aggression with Knossos- now the Hellenic League, and went to assault Sparta.

The Hellenic garrison was virtually non-existent as the shift from Spartan hands to Knossos' League had changed the garrison units. On top of this they decided to sally out to fight in the field. My hoplites and Cretans advanced towards the Hellenic troops while my General took his cavalry retinue and went knocking about the Hellenic skirmishers. He withdrew with 25 losses and more than 100 kills from the numbers of slingers and mob troops run down.

The mercenary hoplites went straight into the enemy Politai, Ekdromoi, and Epistratoi hoplites. One unit of Mobs and another of Epistratoi Hoplitai advanced on my Cretans, who directed two vollies on the Mob which broke them, and spent their next flights of arrows on the hoplitai advancing on them. My General went off to the side to run down the remaining Mob troops while my Cretans deleted the Epistratoi down to the last after they routed and my Cretans gave chase at a distance, discharging arrows whenever possible and continuing the pursuit immediately after.

Battle ended with fewer than a hundred casualties... So much for the mercenary hoplites, as I was expecting a bit more of a fight I grabbed the three to act as an anvil. Apparently there wasn't even a need.

Though not long after this multiple Hellenic League armies appear on my Peleponnesian shores with one of them lead by a Spartan General. I had disbanded my mercenary hoplites in the mean time, and my 2nd Legion went back to Italia (well, Magna Graecia, but...) for safe replenishment while leaving the Cretan archers in the hands of the 1st Legion that takes over the task of garrisoning Sparta.

The Hellenic armies land disjointedly and are each in turn wiped out entirely, the Spartan General managing to break away from a battle and needing to be chased down. I even played the battle out to see how many of them could be felled by the Cretan archers at range before they stopped standing still. Surprisingly this number was a paltry 0, as they almost immediately advanced, only then reaching 2 after taking repeated volleys of arrows as the Cretans retreated and fired in rapid repetition. The few men of the Royal Spartans and accompanying Marines fought to the last.

As of now, on Turn 49, there's yet another Hellenic League army at my door-step at Sparta. I have reasons for not being able to capture Knossos yet...

This reason being that my affiliating with the Nervii to my North got on Ardiaei's nerves and they declared war three turns ago on Turn 46. Though before that happens, I lost Syracuse to Syracuse as they retained lands in North Africa and I had neglected to keep troops there until the buildings finished converting. So the paltry 2x Mobs 1x Leves garrison troops couldn't even stop a half dozen Raiding Hemiola and a larger tower ship with Greek archers. I was expecting Carthage, Masaesyli, and Gaetuli to deal with them much faster... Oh well had to march my 3rd Legion over to recapture the settlement (Though the 3rd Legion used was technically a replenished and supplemented stack consisting of the 2nd Legion merged with a couple existing units, the 2nd Legion in name went off to Italia to train up a more modernized force making use of the reformed Polybian units). Syracuse soon lost the remainder of their lands, but not before they lost the all important Lilybaeum many turns prior to Carthage, which ruined my plans to grab all of Magna Graecia while keeping on good terms with Carthage. Very many unexpected developments in my campaign interfering with the completion of my objectives. Although in the fires of the Punic-Syracusan war Masaesyli managed to capture a lot of what was formerly Carthage's territory.

After securing Syracuse for real and pacifying the initial turns of unrest my army crosses the sea to disembark on sandy shores with the aim of taking as many Syracusan settlements in North Africa as possible. They end up being largely witnesses to Masaesyli's capture of the entirety of Western North Africa's coast besides Carthage and a couple settlements in the hands of Carthage and the Gaetuli. Speaking of which, the Gaetuli managed to take some of what was previously Carthage's holdings by securing the Northern part of Mauretania in capturing Tingis, and taking Gadira not long after. The rest of Iberia consisted of the Lusitani and Massalia occupying the majority, with a small sliver held by the Arverni extending into Iberia from what is eventually Aquitaine. Anyhow my 3rd Legion, the one tasked with the recapture of Syracuse and an expedition into Africa, finally found a settlement to take when running into Garama. After a little bit of desert attrition and a turn of siege attrition the 3rd Legion storms Garama with the assistance of a Gaetuli stack. I captured the walls on my side and began forcing my way in with Triarii at the gates and Hastati hopping off the walls for combat with hoplites beyond the walls. Sadly the Gaetuli had no ladders of their own and rather than reinforcing me... they assault the opposite end of the town and get held by a near-full strength unit of Epistratoi Hoplitai formed in Phalanx. This Gaetuli army would play no further part in the battle after burning down the gates.

So that's pretty much all that's happened in regards to everything except Ardiaei. And regarding these Pseudo-Hellenic Illyrian bastards, I'm actually glad they took the first step as I wasn't too keen on the global penalties if I were the one to strike for Illyria and Macedonia in order to complete that campaign bonus objective to have at least 1 settlement in each province. Though to be honest my ties with the Ardiaei were much more valuable, imo, than the relations with the Nervii. The biggest problem was that the Nervii, scarily enough, were the European super-power for quite a while after they managed to wrestle control of a lot of Celtic settlements from the single-settlement minor factions all around their starting region. This also eventually included the Raeti, Helvetii, and Nori just to the North of Mediolanum that I formerly backed against the Nervii. I somewhat regret straining relations with the Ardiaei to appease the Nervii as the Nervii ended up fizzling out when they took on the Germanic tribes, with the Suebi and Frisii holding strong, and possibly others.

At this very moment I have two large stacks, though after taking Garama and finishing off Syracuse I disbanded part of the stack belonging to the 3rd Legion. Syracuse really had quite the campaign in Africa too, with a two stack army just sweeping away most of the African settlements including Carthage itself, and taking out Garamantia and some other North African minor faction as well. Was more surprising than the Massalian conquest of Southern France and North-Eastern Iberia in face of multiple Celtic and Celtiberian tribes.

Some pretty big battles here and there, but so far nothing on the scale my pre-0.8 game had and I'm almost as far in. Eager to see what my encounter with the Ardiaei will lead to though, as so far there's only been one small clash where my 2nd Legion and accompanying mercenaries assault across the Adriatic to capture Apollonia. Again I miscalculate the stress on mercenaries when I expect to rely on them almost exclusively to avoid main-army casualties, so I recruited 3 units of Mercenary Hoplites, 2 of Veteran Mercenary Hoplites, and 2 Mercenary Thureophoroi. Captured Apollonia with minimal involvement from the rest of my army during the pursuit phase, with the Veteran hoplites not even playing a part in the battle, and the other 5 mercenary units hardly being pushed to their limit. And yes I know armies stuck in captured cities are all killed regardless, but I like padding unit exp bars whenever possible so I set them to pursue/cut off the enemy and FFWD the rest.

Again screens found here: http://imgur.com/a/7x8Zg

Still not decided on faction for campaign #2 so I'll stick to the Romans only for a bit.

[stupar123]

Interesting thread. On battles maps, do you stay zoomed out with the troops highlighted, or is that just for the screen-shots? Looks quite tactical.

It also makes me want to upgrade my video card. Those battles are huge and epic looking. I only do 120 unit size for lag purposes. Soon as it gets up around 6 thousand troops my system slows down.

8000 and all dies ....

[Soul Firez]

If you ever do decide to do video and if you have a gtx 600 or 700 series card id use shadowplay its almost as good a quality as fraps (really i cant tell the difference) and does not affect your performance i use it myself to record Dayz SA which runs far worse than rome2 and at most i might at times drop 2fps(and that may have nothing to do with shadow play as the game is so poorly optimised..

For comentary you can simple do it after the gaming watch your footage explain your moves etc and mux the audio in when editing.. Just food for thought as it would allow us a better look at your strategies and tactics...

[LawL_LawL]

If you ever do decide to do video and if you have a gtx 600 or 700 series card id use shadowplay its almost as good a quality as fraps (really i cant tell the difference) and does not affect your performance i use it myself to record Dayz SA which runs far worse than rome2 and at most i might at times drop 2fps(and that may have nothing to do with shadow play as the game is so poorly optimised..

For comentary you can simple do it after the gaming watch your footage explain your moves etc and mux the audio in when editing.. Just food for thought as it would allow us a better look at your strategies and tactics...

That's the really sad part. I have a GTX 780 but I still have issues with 60+ unit battles being unreasonably sluggish and unstable, even with a consistent FPS around 40-60. Which is completely in contrast with what seems to run fine when I have high/ultra mixed settings with 60 units or fewer. This is part of the reason why I thought adding anything like Fraps on top of all of that would be like pouring oil where there's soon to be fire. Though besides that I wouldn't have a clue as to what to do to edit and produce a decent video... I don't think I have the energy to sit down and get that all sorted in one go to produce a couple videos on Rome 2. Though I am looking into Shadowplay to potentially upload pretty bare-bones videos for more informative visual reference on what happens during my campaigns. I know that with just the screenshotting and the intervals I take them at (at times even forgetting to) a lot of stuff like building, general diplomacy, army and general trait specs, etc, is missed mostly or entirely which leaves big empty gaps between most of the battles.

[LawL_LawL]

I've posted elsewhere that I've run into issues with the Late Triarii forming a different form of Phalanx, but I'm running into the same issue with some other units. Namely the newly added auxiliary Cohors Hellenicum Phalangae for the Romans, they seem to adopt a different phalanx from the normal DEI Pike Phalanx, and the tool-tip and unit array is very vanilla in appearance. No missile vulnerability is mentioned in the tool-tip.

[Dresden]

I checked their abilities and they are the same, so I am trying to figure out what would cause the difference.

[LawL_LawL]

I checked their abilities and they are the same, so I am trying to figure out what would cause the difference.

I downloaded the update from today and it seems to have resolved the issue for the Late Triarii as they form the correct Phalanx now (previously I was running off of one of the day 1 release builds). Not sure what the issue is with the Pikemen, as I myself am no longer sure if it's the wrong ability or not with this patch.

Though just out of curiosity, correct me if I'm wrong but were the names for Shield-Walls and Phalanxes (Pike and Hoplite) formatted slightly differently pre-0.8?

EDIT: By formatting I meant the format behind the naming scheme, something like "Phalanx (Pike)" "Phalanx (Hoplite)" "Phalanx (Shield Wall)"