Hands on Rome 2, sent to me by Osoros

[1cmanny1]

Can you ask him how big the maps were? The demos we have seen have had huge maps, and I am curious to see if all of them are to that scale.

[ptoss1]

Originally Posted by amenallah1992
wouf , thank the gods , what a relief . that was one thing that maybe ****ed me off the most in shogun 2 , no matter how powerfull your rig is , you will experience lag
though i'm still sceptical about the 720p , i'd bet you would have felt much more lag in the 1080p



which is what I said. XD



Originally Posted by Slanish
Is there any chariots in the battle? how does the charge went?

Is the Roman legionaries's pillars cause lots of damage?

Sorry first time posting



Welcome to the forums mate! thanks for posting in my thread!

There were indeed chariots, and they were very cool! four horses per chariot. And they acted as you would expect, very effective against cavalry and flanks, however if you let them get stopped they are killed very quick. Very authentic. The best thing is that they do what you tell them too, the orders are effective, and you no longer have to micro them to get em to do exactly what you want.


For your second question, I'm going to assume you mean Pilum. mmm Well that depends on who your throwing them at. It appears it helps break up spear formations a bit before you slam into them. Its VERY devastating to un-armored ranks.



Originally Posted by wizardfingersz
How is the battle AI and the Campaign AI?



Well the battle AI while parts of it were scripted, you could tell it still had the power to react to you. I was very impressed that most of the things the AI used to do, like come after you during a skirmish, no matter how small it was.

They actually through me for a bit of a loop! I was marching up the hill with my main troops, getting hammered by arrows, rocks, spears, ect. So I figured I would try and get them to kick into aggressive mode like you can in all tw games, by harassing a flank to pull the units off them.

Instead of doing that they reformed their line a bit, and pulled ranged infantry reserves to fire at my cav. But instead of just doing that, they actually re-positioned and spread out their lines a single rank, and kept me from gaining a flanking advantage. They pulled a few other surprising techniques, like ability to use gaps in my formation to maximum advantage. and it appeared that they knew how to use their general.

Overall very impressive.

[Bekaya]

If I could get my hands on Rome II first thing I would try is to "pull through" with units, a exploit that plagues Shogun 2 multiplayer.

[ptoss1]

It was fairly long, I'd say 25 second, maybe 30. However The battle loaded faster as Ptolomy, so I don't think we really have a taste of how long it will actually take. Besides the hardware that this was running on didn't seem to be very high end, which is good actually since it gave me a really good idea of how it would run in the future.

@Amenallah:

uhhhh, honestly man I don't know, as I didn't have time to just hang around the elephants. when I was watching it felt as if it was fairly well done. And nothing jumped out at me as being odd.

@Wizardfingers:

Well this is really hard to answer, as I didn't mess with the formation stuff much. There are plenty of options. My men did a really good job of hanging together during the battle, so I guess I wasn't really paying attention much to the finer details. Remember though we didn't have a ton of time to mess with it.

EDIT:




Originally Posted by Clover
How fast did the units themselves move on the battle map? Would you compare it to Shogun2 or the games before?

Was there a strong RPS element to the battle like in Shogun2?



It felt nearly perfect, the men felt like they had Armour on. But still covered ground quickly enough, however; They did tire faster than the other units. I guess they were a tad fast, especially when running up the hill. But honestly its still slower than S2. But faster than the original. I think they found a really nice middle ground.

The RPS elements felt really good! not quite as established as S2. But still let you know where your units would best be used. Basically it was the way its supposed to be.

[Fishdawg]

this is awesome cant wait for tomorrow morning and watching E3 good post Sun

[DarthTom1013]

Thanks for the Info. Hear anything about CA releasing a Demo pre launch?

[The Norseman]

Very exciting, this is just what I have been waiting for, thanks for the link.

[The Uruk]

This is great! Thanks for the info.

I have 2 questions which no one seemed to have asked, I may have missed something though.

1. Where are the city garrisons? Why are there no troops inside any cities in any screenshots?

2. No city name is visible in any screenshot so is this a HUD screen which you can turn on or off?

[0ldboy]

Thanks for this Mr. Sun. Very awesome sounding... few 'hmmm's' concerning the campaign diplomacy etc, but nothing that won't kill the game for me. Sounds bloomin' awesome.

Now time to look at the new screens!

EDIT: Think my motherboard has been burned out.

[Zipzopdippidybopbop]

Sounds good; although I wish he had told us more about the Campaign Diplomacy tab. The 25% less battle speed is a godsend though.

[SamueleD]

25% slower than Shogun 2, so I will be able to watch the men fight!
Originally Posted by wizardfingersz
How is the battle AI and the Campaign AI?
Well the battle AI while parts of it were scripted, you could tell it still had the power to react to you. I was very impressed that most of the things the AI used to do, like come after you during a skirmish, no matter how small it was.

They actually through me for a bit of a loop! I was marching up the hill with my main troops, getting hammered by arrows, rocks, spears, ect. So I figured I would try and get them to kick into aggressive mode like you can in all tw games, by harassing a flank to pull the units off them.

Instead of doing that they reformed their line a bit, and pulled ranged infantry reserves to fire at my cav. But instead of just doing that, they actually re-positioned and spread out their lines a single rank, and kept me from gaining a flanking advantage. They pulled a few other surprising techniques, like ability to use gaps in my formation to maximum advantage. and it appeared that they knew how to use their general.

Overall very impressive.

Now that is some real good news.

[jamreal18]

Does ca plan to release a live gameplay Demo like other games at e3?

[perifanosEllinas]

Sounds too good to be true.

Did he really find everything that perfect? Did he not dislike a single thing? Not even slightly?

Too hard to believe.

Thanks for the post anyway!

[HigoChumbo]

Sounds too good to be true.

Did he really find everything that perfect? Did he not dislike a single thing? Not even slightly?

Too hard to believe.

Thanks for the post anyway!

´
He is watching one of his favourite games live at one of the biggest E3s of the last years... he might be totally hyped ^^

[Archilles]

Sounds too good to be true.

Did he really find everything that perfect? Did he not dislike a single thing? Not even slightly?

Too hard to believe.

Thanks for the post anyway!

he didn´t like the phalanx...
i think when you play the game only for an hour or something like that, you will get a mindgasmus...
think the bugs and so on will come after a cool down

[SandraDevilGirl]

Some cry about the colour, some about the angle of the Nile, some about the weapon/armor are not 100% historical and some about the numbers of cities but all I care about is the AI........make them dynamic and for god sake, make them think!

[Miszel]

Some cry about the colour, some about the angle of the Nile, some about the weapon/armor are not 100% historical and some about the numbers of cities but all I care about is the AI........make them dynamic and for god sake, make them think!

I think that you may be disappointed.

[Dan113112]

I think that you may be disappointed.

The AI grew leaps and bounds in TWS2. If they improve on that I'd be content with TWR2's AI.

[SandraDevilGirl]

I think that you may be disappointed.

I know I will disappointed, like all of the TW games when they came. Problem is that the public don't seems to care about this, only about the g** d*** color issues and other visual stuff. (Maybe most of the public find the game very challenging even at easy?)

Every vanilla TW game is challenging the first 30-40 turns but after this the AI goes bankrupt and their forces are spread all over the world and city's are left un-defended. Of course, how do they fix this? Spawn script! and how do they fix the bankrupt problem? Money script! And don't get me started on the vanilla battle AI which in my opinion are very dumb strait forward (kamikaze attacks) and its really just to find the way to defeat them and you can use this tactic in almost all of the battles with small variations to get victory. The dynamic is so far off as you can get it. The AI never counters any of your moved on the campaign map or the battle map, its just program to do this and that so its very predictable.

Modded versions of TW games makes it issue alittle better but its limited what they can do with the hardcoded part of the games and I'm afraid Rome 2 is gonna be very limited when it comes to modding. Sure you can make smilly mods to show that we still give the public tools to make changes to the game and stuff like that but changes which effects gameplay probably is gonna be very restricted.

CA: We know how to make good games to dont tell us what to do!

Anyway, gonna be a cool game :-)

PS: I have pre-bought the game...

[Dan113112]

I know I will disappointed, like all of the TW games when they came. Problem is that the public don't seems to care about this, only about the g** d*** color issues and other visual stuff. (Maybe most of the public find the game very challenging even at easy?)

Every vanilla TW game is challenging the first 30-40 turns but after this the AI goes bankrupt and their forces are spread all over the world and city's are left un-defended. Of course, how do they fix this? Spawn script! and how do they fix the bankrupt problem? Money script! And don't get me started on the vanilla battle AI which in my opinion are very dumb strait forward (kamikaze attacks) and its really just to find the way to defeat them and you can use this tactic in almost all of the battles with small variations to get victory. The dynamic is so far off as you can get it. The AI never counters any of your moved on the campaign map or the battle map, its just program to do this and that so its very predictable.

Modded versions of TW games makes it issue alittle better but its limited what they can do with the hardcoded part of the games and Im afraid Rome 2 is gonna be very limited when it comes to modding. Sure you can make smilly mods to show that we still give the public tools to make changes to the game and stuff like that but changes which effects gameplay probably is gonna be very restricted.


CA: We know how to make good games to dont tell us what to do!


Anyway, gonna be a cool game :-)

I'm just curious as to what TW games you've played? As I said before, TWS2 had some pretty amazing AI compared to previous TWs. If they improve on that then it can only get better. CA is putting an army cap in the game based on faction power so the AI won't be able to spam little armies anymore (hopefully). They've also included an LOS system which should help the AI as well. The AI could always be better but remember that no PC game AI can outthink a human player. People often forget this and think that the AI should be super intelligent when that just isn't possible.

Since TWS2 there's practically no hardcoded limits for modding. You can actually mod things that weren't moddable in pre-Warscape games.