Some observations (mainly, not good ones)
First of all, let me just say this: gah.Second of all, let me just say: what on earth possessed you, Creative Assembly, to release the game in this state? You could have said in August or July "Guys, this game is just not going to be in a fit state to release in September. We're pushing it back to October" and we'd all have respected you for it. We'd have thought "there goes a company that takes pride in it's work". That is not what we think at the moment. I'm honestly not sure even another month would have been enough, given what we've had a chance to play today. I think the game needs until at least 2014 to be in a state where it would match the quality of Shogun 2. But, you know, at least we'd know you'd tried. Onwards, then.It goes without saying that the game runs like dog-and looks like turd because of some graphics bugs and poor optimization. These issues are far too widespread to make me believe you weren't well aware of them before release. So that's not very good, is it? Still, I trust these problems be fixed in an upcoming patch, so I won't dwell on them.Oh, and turn processing takes about 3000 years. Fix that as well, maybe? Instead, I'd like to talk about a few things I noticed playing a Rome campaign on hard. They are (mostly) things that really don't work very well and hopefully they're not repetitions of what everyone else has already been saying.
First Thing is, diplomacy is crap. For once, the problem isn't with the AI, though. The problem is that there just aren't enough options.
Let me give you an example. As Rome, some barbarians (I forget their name) in the north are at war with some other barbarians. Apparently, it isn't going too well, because they ask me to become their client state apparently in the hope that I'll pull their asses out of the fire. This is an example of Good Diplomatic AI. Thumbs up there. Sure enough, about 10 turns later they come to me and they say, please attack these guys for us. Well, I wasn't busy so I said yes. So far so good, another example of Good Diplomatic AI. It gets better. The guys who I'm at war with, they also recognize that they're about to get Roman'd. So they come to me, and they want to make a peace treaty. Yet more Good Diplomatic AI. Remember back in Empire or Medieval 2 when the AI absolutely would not accept peace ever? How far we've come since then. Again, so far so good. To the barbarians, I say, aha, but I'll only give you a peace treaty if you become a client state of the Roman Republic, and not cause trouble all the time in the north. Again, recognizing the precariousness of the situation, the AI accepts. Holy crap, it's like a masterclass in Good Diplomatic AI. I've expanded Roman influence all the way to alps by exploiting a petty war between two tribes of Barbarians just with diplomacy. Awesome! If this had been Medieval 2, they'd have declared war twice by now. Have you spotted the problem yet? That's right, my two client states are still at war. And there's no option to say "please call of your war against...". So, my two client states are at war with each other and there's nothing I can do about it. What. The.
Second example: Syracuse. While the above is going on, down in Sicily I feel like having some more land and I'm trying to troll Syracuse enough so that they'll start a war with me. So I'm sending dignitaries down there to spread Latin culture around, inciting unrest with spies and really obviously marching an army around in their territory HELLO I'M THE ROMAN REPUBLIC AND I'M NOT RESPECTING YOUR TERRITORY AT ALL LOOK AT THIS LEGION MARCHING AROUND IN YOUR LAND WOW IF SOMEONE DID THAT TO ME I'D SURE GO TO WAR WITH THEM RIGHT AWAY. They get pissed at me, but they don't rise to it. Some people might criticize this (like, maybe they'd have felt more confident in declaring war if they'd had a wall!), but I actually think this is Yet More Good Diplomatic AI. I'm much more powerful than them, after all. However... that's about the limit of the bullying based interaction I can do with them short of declaring war. There is no option to embargo them (I don't know if embargo were a thing in the ancient world, that's just an example) and critically there's no option to go "accept this or we attack". I can't remember if that was in Shogun 2 (you were never short of enemies in that game), but it's in a lot of other games and it's badly needed here. In short, the diplo-AI is fine. Some of the best AI I've seen, even, but there are simply far to few ways to interact with other empires.
Second Thing. This is just a suspicion and I'd need to play more to confirm this, but if the purpose of the army limit was to help the AI by stopping it spreading it's forces to thin then that hasn't worked. At all. Because, you see, it appears to me that the AI under some compulsion to always have the maximum number of armies it can field. But the maximum number of armies you can have in the field is, at least in the early game, more than you can support at a decent size. So, at the start you can have maybe two stacks a bit under half-full before you start running short on money. The AI will go for three stacks a third or quarter full. So, basically, the system (or, rather, the AI's reaction to it) is actually causing there to be more small sized armies running around, rather than fewer. I had a spy in Seleucid lands (they were doing well and had expanded into Egypt) and saw three armies with just a general or a general and a handful of units.
Third Thing. You know what the AI really likes? Transport ships. It just lurves to put armies into transports and sale them around for no discernible reason. Or leave them hanging round a settlement, but in transports. This isn't a really big deal, but it just looks stupid and it means that when you attack the settlement the army it has defending it (and they do seem to defend settlements) has to come in by sea rather than being there in city. Maybe this is related to the Second Thing... like it's got these units it can build and still be in the black, and it's got this settlement it has to defend... but it also has this OCD compulsion to have three armies. And since there isn't room for three armies in the city, the others have to hand around outside and sometimes that's in the water? I don't know. It's dumb, anyway.
Forth Thing. Transport ships themselves. I like the idea in principle, but in practice it doesn't seem to work. You know how we were sold armies being able to cross oceans with the idea that if they get caught by a real navy, they're
Fifth Thing Yeah, the interface is crap. I don't care that it looks too space age, or whatevs, I don't mind the look I just can't find what I'm looking for half the time. It seems a lot of important information is only available if you hover the mouse somewhere ambiguous. Sorry, that's just plain bad UI design guys. Remember those screens that came up when you clicked the mouse on a city or a character and tell you anything you want to know? Those were great. Hey, how do you find out the current experience level of an agent and how far to go until level up?
Sixth Thing Those strength ratio bars you see before a battle seem wildly inaccurate. I think they only take into account numbers.
Seventh Thing Autoresolve Stances! They're all the goddamn same! Except when they're completely counter-initiative and a protective stance results in higher casualties! What is the point in them exactly?! I don't know!
Eight Thing Water, Air, Fire, Dirt, the
I've played for about fifty turns so far. Fifty turns accounts for several hours of gameplay, because of the glacial turn processing. As you can see, I've found a lot of stuff that just doesn't work as they intended, mechanically. I've found a lot of stuff that was bad. I imagine I'll find a lot more before I get through my first campaign. Rome 2 is clearly a game that was rushed to market far, far too early. There's a good game in there, a very good one. If they'd just thought about this feature a bit more, if a bit more effort had been put in to that aspect of the game, if the thing was properly optimised, if such and such a feature had just had more time spent on it. But no, it was not to be. I know there will be patches that will fix a lot of the more obvious stuff. The performance issues in particular are so bad they can't not address them. But beyond that, I don't have a great deal of faith. There's just too much wrong to be fully addressed with patches, and it will never be the great game it could've been. However, it will, I think be a good game. It's not the disaster Empire was. The launch is just as bad, if not worse, but the basic underlying game is much better. Empire felt like a game where the people making it just didn't care anymore. An empty game, devoid of features and what was there didn't work right. Rome 2 is not like that. It feels like a game where the people who made it did care very much, they just ran out of time. For that I feel pretty sorry for them, for I suspect the decision to release now was not theirs. I don't know whose it was, someone higher up at CA or someone at Saga but to that person I'd just like to say: you're an idiot. I thought you'd learned your lesson after Empire. Now, another massive and self-inflicted blow to the reputation of a company that could once do no wrong.
On that note, I'd just like to say a few things about the stuff that does work well:
1) They've finally cracked public order. The new system is much better than the old one in just about every way. You can't just magic away discontent by adding troops, and going into negative public order doesn't have immediate Oh
2) The interconnected nature of provinces is good. For example, if you build a temple in one city it effects public order across the board, likewise with food production, recruitment etc. It makes you empire feel like a society, rather than a collection of independent city states that don't really interact with each other.
3) The above means you have to make some pretty meaningful decisions about what to build on the campaign map. It's all good stuff.
4) The tactical map and the world view map are sweet.
5) Just One More Turn syndrome is present and correct.
6) The AI has a few problems, but it does play the meta-game much better. It knows when to back off, when to capitulate, when not to pick a fight. This is good. I hope it also knows when it should pick a fight, I haven't played for long enough to get a feel fore this.
7) Pace of the game on the campaign map is slow and measured. I like that.
Notes on the AI
The Battle AI From what I saw of it... eh, it's alright. Not as good as Shogun 2, but better than Medieval 2 and much better than Empire. It seems pretty solid, but has some kinks. If you observe the following screenshot:
You'll see the AI with a pretty nice battleline, and in the distance an attempt to use some navel units to sneak up and get the capture point. What happened next was that they moved forward with those Italian spearmen to confront my skirmishers, they headed off in different directions and the Italian spearmen followed and I moved in with my Hastati against one of the spearmen units... and they both backed off and regrouped with the others. However, on other occasions I've seen this behavior result in the AI's army getting badly spread out. The AI has it's moments, but could use some improvement. I am convinced these are bugs we are seeing at work, and that they'll be fixed.
Campaign AI Pretty decent so far, not withstanding it's OCD about making the max number of armies. I saw an army of Etruscans cross the sea from Corsica. I moved a larger army to stop them. They... backed off again? Nice. However, I saw other examples where they made an attack that was clearly doomed to failure, like attacking an army stationed on a bridge with an inferior force.
Finally
I don't know if noticed, CA, but I think some guys from the 1990 arcade game Smash TV got into your game. I had to use the spread gun to get rid of them, but then Mr. Shrapnel showed up and... well, it was a quagmire basically.
(I lied when I said I wouldn't mention the graphics)
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