Battles in Total War: Rome II are pretty awesome and yet contain some of the biggest game breaking behaviors when speaking of the clash of battle lines and routing...
- 5 Mintues of Dead Time Every Battle: The user experiences 5 minutes of unnecessary dead time every battle. since, the users goal is to expand, the majority of battles are fought as being the aggressor. unfortunately the defending AI does not move its armies. Example 1: Two full stacks meet on plain terrain. The user has to spend 5 minutes to walk over there while every single battle the defending AI does not move towards the users army to meet in the middle. This leads to loosing 5 minutes every time of just sitting there and waiting... and secondly to fight every single battle on the edges of the maps instead of the middle enabling more interesting and diverse maneuvring options. Example 2: Two AI units meet an users full stack on plain terrain. The AI does neither flee nor suicide charge, again 5 minutes to be spend to walk over there and to rout the two AI units in a few seconds. The general manages to flee with a handful of his companions. The user has to attack again. another 5 minutes initiated to finally finish a few units off so they do not recruit a bunch of mercenaries in the next turn. As a total 10 dead minutes are gone for a little bit of unspectacular chasing action.
- The Moment of Truth Shuffle Dance: As soon as the user gets close enough to the waiting enemy army, passing the imaginative line of the "moment of truth", the entire enemy army starts to shuffle around like a crazy beehive, completely destroying its cohesive battle lines.
- The Inability to Properly Counter Charge: In general, but also amplified by the shuffling of the battle line the AI is not able to properly charge or counter charge the unit that is charging its as well. Hence, the users unit just in front of the AI's unit starts to charge, while the AI's unit is trying to charge (or flank?) a unit next to him that is already engaged. of course all this happens with no chance to ever reach that unit in the left or right because impact with the charging unit right in front of it is imminent. Hence, as a result the users army is charging into the units in front of its units while the AI's army is charging crazily into the units next to its units fancily trying to exploit open flanks. At the end what it does is simply destroy its own cohesive battle line and making the AI seem kind of absent not reacting on the events of the initial clash, but live in its own fantasy world completely forgetting whats going on in front of it.
- The Inability to Engage the Complete Battle Line: The AI prefers to push 2 units into each other rather than simply engaging the units in front of its units so the complete battle lines clash into each other. no, it does prefer to push and squeeze multiple of its units into one enemy unit only to see itself surrounded by the users units soon afterwards. at the end this leaves no epic battle line where historically it was the goal to break it and cause the entire battle line to collapse. Now it never really forms up, but leaves the entire battle field to consist of a handful of blobs of AI units surrounded by users units. Its very chaotic and not very beautiful to look at. Not to mention that the entire tactical element of holding the battle line is simply gone in many battles because of this.
- The Squeezing into Each Other: When units run, charge, clash or rout they squeeze into each other like a accordion. The formation attack button does not help here, what it does is to simply rearrange the units again into a square formation once being squeezed into each other. This unfortunately amplifies that visual accordion effect even more. because of the squeezing of all units Total War: Rome II became a rinse and repeat cavalry attack in the back of multiple engaged units. The AI should be able to hold some of his troops as reserves like in the triplex acies to counter such flanking moves or rear attacks like it does in Rome: Total War. As a side note, we have seen blobbing in Rome: Total War as well, I also don't say that real battles back than where not chaotic as well, but in Rome: Total War the units blobbing did never squeeze into each other. The men within a unit always stayed together while others behind did not squeeze through, but just queue behind the unit in front of them. That is a huge difference!
- Aggressivle Charging, Fleeing or Retreating is No Option: No matter if you outnumber the AI by 10:1 it will still take every single fight. It is pretty much as easy as it can get to catch and kill the opposing generals in every single battle, because of that. Furthermore if the AI does outnumber you 10:1 he will still not attack or press forward. Even if he does outnumber you 10:1 on sieges he will never press forward or leave the city itself. The current sally forth option on the campaign is just a poor try to hide this shortcoming of the AI. In Rome: Total War the AI will always sally forth from the city and attack any army if he feels strong enough and when loosing the battle for any reason retreat back into the city walls. That's a huge difference than the sally forth button on the campaign map. Nothing against this buttong, it is a nice feature, but it is meant to supplement the sallying forth directly in front of the city as well and not replace it at all.
- Meeting Reinforcements or Splitting the Army is No Option: The AI will adjust its position according to reinforcements or split up units, but he does never split up his own army to meet reinforcements and alike. For example, in Rome: Total War he send small attachements to meet reinforcing units and alike.
- Routing Behavior: Oh my... routing. One might think routing is the least important of battles, yet it was historically one of the most important parts, where most of the killing would take place. Although routing is still a big problem here. Units do rout into every single direction of the map, making a chase particularly chaotic. On top of that, routing from cities renders the routers to build ridiculous routing queues. Furthermore units that have been beaten in sieges, do try to rout out of the city, through the gates while getting slaughtered by trying to push through the users units, who have just entered the city from there. Routing units in sieges should rout into the city center preparing to fight their last stand instead of pushing through enemy units in the attempt to flee the city. On the battle fields themselves, once routers return they build even more blobbing due to not routing behind their battle line from where they came from, but routing into every single direction. This renders them, when they reorganize and return to not reinforce the main battle line but attack chaotically from every single direction setting up even more fragmented blobs out there.
Compared to Rome: Total War we have a lot of AI game breakers in here, that need to be looked upon in possible expansions. In Rome: Total War the AI evaluates the strength and position of an army and actively reacts, like attacking relentlessly even if being the defender. This is interesting, feels dynamic and transfers most battles to be played out in the center of the battle map. Once you reach the moment of truth the AI holds his cohesiveness and the entire battle line attacks the one unit in front of them. It is too late now to shuffle around like it happens in Total War: Rome II. Therefore holding the battle line in Rome: Total War is crucial, if it collapse the entire battle might get lost. Maneuvring does only take place on the flanks. There is no squeezing of units into each others. The multiple lines formations like the triplex acies formation does make the AI hold some of his units back free to maneuver and meet flanking attempts. There is no rinse and repeat of cavalry attacks in the back of units, since there are always units there to counter that. The AI does also consider the overwhelming strength or the arrival of reinforcements. If the power ratio changes drastically, it does retreat and flee with all units that are not engaged yet. This saves the AI generals many times! Meeting reinforcements or flanking attempts do work like a charm. If a small reinforcement army arrives it sends a small part of his army to meet them, actively! Routing does work much better as well. All units will aim to rout from where they entered the battle field, which is comprehensive and immersive, rendering chases much less chaotic and focused on pushing routers back instead of bursting them into all directions. Therefore if a unit recovers, because of not being pursued, it will reform and return at the right spot and reinforce its battle line from the right side, prohibiting more blobbing to take place all over the place. |
[Rome II Agenda] Potential Expansions, DLC, FLC, Patches - The Path to Real Greatness (From a Fan's Viewpoint)
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Originally Posted by Hetairos
. Fact though is that the newly added LoD from one of the previous patches is not optimal. Especially for people with low settings it can become rather ridiculous.
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