ROME II - Official Multiplayer discussion.

[Argon Viper]

Because every battle would have to be played out. Imagine how long just a few turns would take. The only way I can see it working is if when one player leaves, the CPU temporarily takes over and another player is soon found to replace the AI.

I think the main idea of the MP campaign would be for friends to play together. Assuming they meet one night a week for an hour or two to play things out, it would still be a reasonable system.

You are, however, correct that such a system would be extremely troublesome for random groupings.

[freakkriek]

First of all I have to state i'm fan of an all open multiplayer game in which all 8 factions are available for human control.

Secondly, since the roman campaign will probably get the most attention why not make all three families open for multiplayer. Imagine playing in one faction where 3 people strive for control in the senate, over armies, regions,... This would (at least in the start) avoid the "what to do when players battle?" problem. I would just love competing with other players over the control in one faction.

Thirdly, as a solution to the long waits in which player battles can be played I think the option of making PvP battles automated or give the AI controlled players army a moral boost. Just let there be a campaign that can be compared to the current Medieval hotseat games

[SaintLunatic777]

bug free would be nice!

[Tickle My Fancy]

I actually kind of hope they bring the avatars back, i thought that it personilized the multiplayer

[Argon Viper]

The avatars were great. Now I'm spoiled and I miss having an avatar when I play other games in multiplayer.

I'm curious if they're going to keep the avatar conquest map. On the one hand, it made it exciting to unlock new units and abilities as you went, but on the other hand it made it really unfair to play someone even a single rank ahead of you on the unlocking tree.

[alQamar]

Did they release any Q&A or other information and details about multiplayer in Rome 2 yet? Have been offline for a while. Thank you.

[oOIYvYIOo]

I will go with the last option.
It would be epic to have MPC with 4 players .MPB is just for persons that dont have a minium interess in the History and on what the game ofter us .

[TribuneSPQR]

I think what could be a cool idea is to have 2 opposing army's, both controlled by 2 players each (2 players per army). For example, a siege which has a beach landing where one play controlles navy, and the other controlls the soldiers on land.
Attackers will have both land and navy between players.

Just an idea which i think would make teamwork more essential.

[samil63]

i think there must be special campaign map for multiplayer campaign.maybe just focused rome and carthage

[General Vangelis]

Well, I really consider the avatar and conquest map system a "must" for the Rome 2. I mean being able to begin as a Greek, Roman, Barbaric style general would be great. It would certainly be a lot better in terms of personalization since most of us would like to see something resembling our RL appearance in the game. I strongly acquiesce in using this system in Rome 2.

[Halogrunt100]

The more than 2 player campaign looks promising, but in my opinion the Avatar conquest was a good feature in Shogun 2, because i gave you the choice to do matchmaking or just make custom battles!

[Rifugio]

(apologies in advance if I've missed an earlier posting about the following)

One thing that I don't believe has never been done before in any Total War game would be to allow the hosting of multiplayer games as a stand alone server. This is perhaps the best solution to allow the asynchronous and synchronous co-ordination of Multiplayer games which could go on for weeks or months.

The Rome III stand alone server app would run constantly and perform regular game saves. Players in the campaign could then run their local installations, which would connect to the persistent server to allow them to update their turns.

There are some really neat things that you could do with such a system, not limited to the following.

For both Hotseat and co-op/versus games you could allow people to connect at any time and queue up their turn actions prior to their actual turn. When they logon to actually take their turn they can view the actions of the other players (or AI) and then adjust. You could also set a cutoff so if a player has not submitted their turn within a certain time period the AI takes their turn (using their queued actions if any exist). This would also allow games to continue where players drop out, as is sometimes the case with very long multiplayer games.

Because the stand-alone server would keep track of the battles there would also be no more reloads until you get the best results against the AI. So it would be a good idea to have a number of visibale muligans (do overs) in case someone makes a pigs ear of their turn or there is a network glitch.

For co-op, versus campaigns you could have battles which involve multiple players triggering schedulling alerts so the sides can decide when to play the battles or let the AI handle them and auto resolve.

As an extension to this it would be quite nice to have an email turn report facility, which emails the players with significant details and messages from other players - so you wouldn't even need to be logged into the game to have an idea of what is happening. Even nicer to have this as a webfront end...

[Feldmarschall Blücher]

For me ground breaking new in this series would be a non round base structure We are talking about

RTS and i feel that round based games are part of history in the late 90´s early 2000. But in 2013 we

should have a non round based system and also the possibility to play a campaign with more than just

one more additional player. Everyhing else is snow from yesterday. And also the focus should be on the

system specs that not old machines from 3-4 years ago are able to play that turns the game down in its

possibilies. If you are not able to afford to drive a Jaguar you have to drive a Ford thats it. Player with

old machines turn the game down because they can´t handle 40 Units etc. etc. Player with high end

machines get board.

Make the game RTS possible use high end standards and the rest has to follow or play tetris

The opportunity to play with 4 or more players we can see in other games thas working so thats not

ground breaking new its standard since the last 10 years beside total war We are still using old

round based structure its time to change that old shite

[Rifugio]

That's really a question of taste I think so I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss round based game play. Sure it would be nice to have the ability to have a button that executes everyone’s turns at once, but that has a lot of inherent issues so I'm not really that bothered if the strategy game play remains the way it is. If they were to turn the strategy side of Rome Total War II into RTS it would be a major negative for me.

As for round based games being out of date, check out the record sales of the excellent XCOM: Enemy Unknown. It's a style of game that still has a lot of appeal and I don't think that will change any time soon.

There is a real risk to reducing campaign games to RTS game play, as shown in A Game of Thrones - Genesis. There are plenty of grand strategy games out there which are not round based including Europa Universalis (and some other Paradox titles) if you would like something more "modern", however I prefer the total war series.



For me it's not even about historical war games. Given the choice between a game like Sword of the Stars 2 and Sins of a Solar Empire I prefer my strategy turn based

[TotalWarBuff]

For me, I kind of wish multiplayer would improve in Rome II. Hopefully that is the case.

[Serkelet]

I would like avatars but... just as stetics and personalization, reallly. All that leveling system only served to build a huge distance between new players and veterans, where the later would utterly crash the former every time.

[Sir Sesshaku]

I believe avatars WILL be in, and I also believe that the "amazing thing" they're trying on multiplayer will be something related to that, something like different factions avatar fighting over the europe map. Sound more exciting that it actually is, because I also agree with Serkelet, it just created a huge gap between players, besides, playing with so few units at the beggining made it a little annoying.

I would love if the "amazing thing" its instead related to multiplayer campaign, but I doubt it.

[Kadoken]

I love the avatar campaign in Shogun 2. Being able to personalize your general, your faction color, and named veteran units are fantastic.

Though to deal with the newly unique factions of Rome 2, I suggest that starting point correlates with what faction you play as first (Start in Brittania, you play Briton units first, start in Greece, you play Greek units first) but having the option to branch out into other faction's units (Conquer Rome as Greece, you get legionaries).

[Dumanthis]

Hotseat mode that is playable up to 4 players via 2 computers !!!!!!!!!

[perablenta]

Don't see much point in hoping for anything good in the MP. We are just going to end up with:

1. Broken leaderboards, broken points, broken win/lose tracking
2. Drops, plug pulls, P2P system = exploit heaven
3. General exploitation of OP units and bugged powers with patches every 3 months or so.

I am even thinking of not even buying the game since you can't play it as it was meant to be played but rather a " I will do anything I can NOT to lose" way.