Rome II Pictures & Videos Thread

[KLAssurbanipal]

Hoplites:

[Tenerife_Boy]

Hoplites:

Check how they're holding their aspides....with just their hands and not all the lower arm

[Templar Knight]

Check how they're holding their aspides....with just their hands and not all the lower arm

Dear God! I am canceling my pre-order now! It should be noted that in both r1tw and m2tw there was only one shield holding animation as well for every type of shield in the game.

[Lavrentivs]

New vid guys, just spotted it now


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_9qkAC4b5c

Video description:

"In our latest Let's Play video, Studio Communications Manager Al Bickham's Macedonian forces take on the might of Rome in a straight-up, open terrain skirmish match. He's playing on Very Hard difficulty, so it won't be an easy task to supress the Roman war machine.

We're playing from the defender's viewpoint, so it's very much a case of "Come at me, bro!" as the enemy assaults his position. See how they employ their abilities and hardened military tactics to wear down our very own hero's forces, with a sprinkle of cunning thrown in for free.

Will Mr. Bickham survive? Is this the end of the Macedonians? There's only one way to find out..."

[S-te-Fan]

Hoplites, no (real Macedonian) phalanx

[Lavrentivs]

This is getting quite suspicious now.... why haven't we seen any proper phalangite action? I would have thought Macedon would have provided a fantastic showcase for phalanxes.

[Cathal]

This is getting quite suspicious now.... why haven't we seen any proper phalangite action? I would have thought Macedon would have provided a fantastic showcase for phalanxes.

I've always been suspicious since the Battle of the Nile when every time the phalanx was going to fight they would change the formation or make them move so they would never be set and pan away. They just won't show them fighting. Quite odd.

[StarDreamer]

Well, I can only say one thing. Shameful display!

[Beregond]

well here we go. I rushed to the video as I was sure Macedon would have its iconic troops present...

But no phalanx. They won't show it before the release as it's just terribly broken. Prove me wrong, CA, please. Show us some phalanx in action.

[simonsimons]

The ai seems brillaint! No complaints.

[Verann]

How is the AI brilliant? The player made all the wrong decisions while having no overview over his armies.

[Rittsy]

How is the AI brilliant? The player made all the wrong decisions while having no overview over his armies.

Well they held units in reserve, they were flanking, their general didn't charge headlong into the phalanx...for TW that's brilliant.

[DavidtheDuke]

Well they held units in reserve, they were flanking, their general didn't charge headlong into the phalanx...for TW that's brilliant.

Yep, I'd say the TW AI here is about as good as ReallyBadAI for MTW2 now.

[smoke]

Yep, I'd say the TW AI here is about as good as ReallyBadAI for MTW2 now.

LOL you really think MTW2 had great AI?

[kamikazee786]

Well they held units in reserve, they were flanking, their general didn't charge headlong into the phalanx...for TW that's brilliant.

Bickham plays crap on purpose to make the AI look good and secondly those troops in "reserve" were skirmishers who were firing from a range , as skirmishers do !!!

and yes there is something wrong with not only the Phalanx but also the hoplite, i ask why didnt he zoom in to show some of the animations.

Either they dropped the spears and started fighting with swords or the animations were broken, either way they wont show anything that would ruin the game before release.

on a more positive note the music is pretty decent and the voices of the troops are awesome, the map looks great and the animations that we did see were beautiful

I only hope that they fix the Phalanx before release !!

[Dan113112]

Bickham plays crap on purpose to make the AI look good and secondly those troops in "reserve" were skirmishers who were firing from a range , as skirmishers do !!!

and yes there is something wrong with not only the Phalanx but also the hoplite, i ask why didnt he zoom in to show some of the animations.

Either they dropped the spears and started fighting with swords or the animations were broken, either way they wont show anything that would ruin the game before release.

on a more positive note the music is pretty decent and the voices of the troops are awesome, the map looks great and the animations that we did see were beautiful

I only hope that they fix the Phalanx before release !!

I didn't see them drop swords. As for the phalanx it will probably not form a solid shield wall. The reason is the height/size of soldiers varies and the shield only comes in one size. It is not clear that Al plays bad on purpose. That is pure speculation. The AI does do things that look promising, though. Things that only appear in modded AI. Remember, CA said the AI would be better than previous TW AI. They most probably meant vanilla AI. It appears they are right about that. I think people's expectations for the AI are just too high.

Just to be clear, skirmishers don't pelt the enemy from behind the protection of their own lines. That's some serious "English Longbowmen" Hollywood BS. Skirmishers are used to skirmish, that is go in front, try to disrupt and kill the enemy infantry line and mask the deployment of their own heavy infantry.
As for the static infantry, that's like the least inspired idea ever.

Oh well, I just saw your sig. Not surprised at all.

This is true. I suppose it might be possible to throw javelins over the heads of your own men if you had enough clearance. It is risky, though. You could accidently kill some of your own men. I've done this before.

Voices are terrible for the troops.It seems that german,roman and macedonian voices were all done by the same voice actor,an american one,and they all sound like us marines....pretty bad ca

Mark Strong is British. Yes, the voices are modern but you can't expect the voices to sound like the ancients. The fake accents in RTW were terrible at times as well.

So that battle was what 8 minutes long? The speeds with which the units run is absurd, perfect for arcade teens. It was nice to see the AI general not dive in and die causing mass capitulation.

This was a skirmish battle. I found the battle speed was good for those who don't have time to sit at a computer for hours on end.

AI is decent but it did send a unit of hastati from one flank to another to deal with the Macedonian cavalry...that's just stupid.



Yes it was 8 minutes for a battle between 11 units on the Macedonian side and about 13 on the Roman side. So what of it? I find this far more preferable to the notion of spending half a ing hour in what essentially is an insignificant battle, especially if I know for certain I am going to win.

Agreed.

Lol, this argument.

The battle length is perfect for people who enjoy that duration. Enjoying that speed does not make you an "Arcade teen". What an utterly uninformed statement.

Considering it was only a half stack with mainly cavalry and skirmishers I would say it seems OK.

Agreed.

The pace seemed fine to me too.The AI looked good and aggressive.Those were the good things of the video.

The bad thing,that seems that noone else has noticed but me,is that the hoplites don't fight in phalanx formation.So after the Yari formation instead of sarissa phalanx,we also get hoplites without phalanx formation.And I know that AL says that they are in phalanx formation,but pause the video at 1:49 and see for yourselves.They aren't.They don't even form a shield-wall.

I can overlook many things that I dislike.The stupid unit names,the fantasy units,the wrong equipment and colours for certain units and factions,the wrong starting position of very important factions (like Carthage and Seleucids),the absence of the Hellenic leagues,the ridiculously oversized cities,the sci-fi UI,the ugly portraits,the missile trails,the extremely poorly presentation of Greece on the campaign map,the absence of seasons,the flying Romans,the exploding stones from artillery,the ugly unit cards,their lack of numbers and many other things.But the absence of the phalanx formation is a game breaker for me.By destroying the phalanx formation you immediately destroy all the Hellenic and Hellenistic factions of the game.And since we're talking about the Hellenistic era,they are many.

A little over critical aren't we? Considering the campaign map is only an abstraction. Some of your comments about Hellenistic units seem valid but it sounds like you have other motives for citing them.

Blatantly made the AI have a stronger force than the player, just to try and make us believe that the AI has miraculously become brilliant. Oh plus the fact that the player is terrible adds it on as well.

It is not clear that CA did that. Pure speculation. Compared to past vanilla TW AI the TWR2 AI does look fairly competent.

to determine whether the AI has improved isn't based on the winner, but it's clear to see that the player purposely lost the game to make it look as if the AI become more intelligent.

No, it is not clear that he plays bad on purpose. Many players are bad at battles. I have been known to make stupid mistakes as well.

Poor way to dodge the bullet, a very true bullet.

Fact is, this video didn't show us a good nor bad AI, it showed us a terrible player. It's impossible to judge the AI when he commits suicide.

This could be true but you are missing or ignoring the things the AI did. The AI itself did things that seemed very competent. Sure, we probably could have beaten it but humans can beat pretty much any AI in any game out there.

According to Mr Lusted the phalanx will use the same script as the spear wall formation in Shogun 2. As I recall the spear wall collapsed fairly quickly (from the front). Sad that CA could make a phalanx work 10 years ago but not now.

Please show us a phalanx CA!
because its pretty freaking central to the time period and I hope I didn't waste $60.

It was stated that they use a similar mechanic but not the same one. If you really think about it a pike block is a pike block. There are only a few differences. Even at Rezzed/E3, players mentioned that, from the front, the phalanx was hard to get through. This sounds promising.

I don't think their engine does pikes very well. You just know that its the same script because the Egyptian phalanx didn't stand up very long. Neither did the spear wall in Shogun 2. Neither did the pikemen in Empire:

I think there is too much space between individual men. Honestly I like the phalanx from 10 years ago more:

The phalanx from ten years ago had so many problems. It was also inaccurate as well. As I said before, those who played the Battle of the Nile actually said the phalanx was hard to get past from the front. This was on a sped up battle as well.

[DavidtheDuke]

Why pick Macedon and not use the phalanx? The hoplites seemed fine, though, and the AI wasn't retarded as far as I could tell.

[Mamertine]

Why pick Macedon and not use the phalanx?

That's probably what I will do. My favorite mod is EB, and I really love playing as Thrace. But they did not have a Thracian faction and Dacia was too barbarian for my tastes, so I made my own faction. I played as Macedon as if I were Odryssian Thrace that did not get destroyed. I used hoplites from Byzantion, Agrarian Axemen, falxmen, Dacian cavalry, and a mainly rhomphaia and Thracian peltast infantry. It was the funnest playthrough I ever had to date. I will do it again when I have time, hopefully in EB2, as well as in Rome 2, until CA sells us a Thracian faction.

[Revan The Great]

Before even watching the video, let me say that Al Bickman is one of the worst Total War players I've ever seen. I think they put him out there specifically to make the AI better.

Also, not showing phalanx warfare with Macedonia is practically criminal at worst, and extremely suspicious at best.

Edit: I can confidently say that the reason Al lost was because he decided to use only 3 units of infantry against what was probably 8 or 9 units of Roman infantry. Generally the AI performed reasonably well though, and I liked what I saw with their general.

[DavidtheDuke]

Before even watching the video, let me say that Al Bickman is one of the worst Total War players I've ever seen. I think they put him out there specifically to make the AI better.

Also, not showing phalanx warfare with Macedonia is practically criminal at worst, and extremely suspicious at best.

I'd always say it was unintentional, as they may as well have used Greece here. This is like walking around with a bloody knife in a police station, you're probably not doing it because you did something bad.