Originally Posted by
Karak Norn Clansman
Having tried out ROP II the last couple of days, I found two things that jarred the game a lot for me. This might be a mere matter of taste, but here we go:
1) AI Greek factions overrun everything from west-to-east. Not too surprising, given their military advantages. Still, it slowly doomed my game where I played as Babylon and managed to stabilize the empire, fend off a lot of foreign attacks and even conquer Susa in amongst the two-front-wars.
Eventually, the Ionians conquered the Lydians and pumped out large armies to invade Lydia and then Media north of my territory, plus Taros which I owned. Given the peculiarities of the low-level Eastern barrack units, I found a working grind strategy against them, consisting of constantly abandoning Taros, defeating lumbering Hoplite armies in the field and reconquer Taros in sieges with mounted archers. This had to be done over and over again without end, since Ionia could pump out ever more full-strength armies against Taros while maintaining their offensive to the north. And now, Cyrenaica has conquered the last Egyptian city, making me a neighbour of the Greek great powers. The future looks bleak, with an endless repetitive mounted archer grind, from which I cannot escape by making higher-tier barracks and units, since all resources gets swallowed by the need to constantly replenish these low-tier front armies...
Which leads us to the second issue. A major issue.
2) Slow economy, expensive armies. One of Rome I's strengths was it relatively fast economy. It was pretty simple to make your economy bloom, and it was quite cheap and simple to raise armies, making for a funnier game. This lovely element does not feature here. It is the same in two Medieval II mods which I tried, and seems to be a thing with modders. Eventually, the boring slow economy and high-maintenance units led me to drop long-running campaigns on those mods, and the same is happening on ROP II. Is it possible to add a fast/cheap economy option to ROP III? This would be immensely appreciated if you did.
Also, thanks for a nice mod! It's certainly good. With the above two issues fixed, it would be superb in my eyes. Also, it'd be nice to see more Babylonian-style beards on Mesopotamian units, but that might already be planned.