Anyone else feel zero attachment to Generals/Faction Leaders?

[Marcus Claudius Marcellus]

Minus the obvious issues people are having with this game (graphics, battle speed etc), does anyone else feel like CA really dropped the ball on the character/general side of things? I appreciate they've put some work into the political system and such, but getting rid of the family tree and not being able to set your heir gives absolutely no sense of dynasty or progression in the campaign.

For example, I started my first campaign as Macedon, Antigonus is my faction leader, fantastic. Around 10 turns later, he dies from old age, some random guy I've never used before called Ennyus is in charge. At 57 years old? Didn't Antigonus have a son? Or a brother? Is Ennyus a relative? Who knows. And this happens again and again until I literally couldn't care less who is in charge. It was such a simple system they've had in place, I have no idea why they've taken it out. If I want my faction heir to exterminate the faction who killed his father in battle, for example, I can't. I can't even tell if the man who is now controlling my faction is even related to the previous king. It leaves me with no sense of attachment, even to my faction leader, they're just disposable, I have an unlimited pool of random Macedonian noblemen to choose from, and 9/10 are always "unhinged" or "touched by the gods".

I want a young successor to Alexander leading my companions. Not a 57 year old unhinged loon when nobody knows who he even is. Also, why are all spies female? I had a 68 year old female spy in the same campaign. That, to me doesn't scream out subterfuge, it screams out geriatric.

It's not often I complain like this, but I'd really like to try and open CA's eyes a little. Little by little their taking the soul out of the series, don't get me wrong, Rome II LOOKS great, but if it ain't broke?

Rant over. Sorry!

[SomaaTheLion]

Well said.

[Lionheart11]

I had dudes die in 5 turns , sure I took on his legacy but what a sucky life he had. 1 tpy is game killing.

[The Roman Republic]

Minus the obvious issues people are having with this game (graphics, battle speed etc), does anyone else feel like CA really dropped the ball on the character/general side of things? I appreciate they've put some work into the political system and such, but getting rid of the family tree and not being able to set your heir gives absolutely no sense of dynasty or progression in the campaign.

For example, I started my first campaign as Macedon, Antigonus is my faction leader, fantastic. Around 10 turns later, he dies from old age, some random guy I've never used before called Ennyus is in charge. At 57 years old? Didn't Antigonus have a son? Or a brother? Is Ennyus a relative? Who knows. And this happens again and again until I literally couldn't care less who is in charge. It was such a simple system they've had in place, I have no idea why they've taken it out. If I want my faction heir to exterminate the faction who killed his father in battle, for example, I can't. I can't even tell if the man who is now controlling my faction is even related to the previous king. It leaves me with no sense of attachment, even to my faction leader, they're just disposable, I have an unlimited pool of random Macedonian noblemen to choose from, and 9/10 are always "unhinged" or "touched by the gods".

I want a young successor to Alexander leading my companions. Not a 57 year old unhinged loon when nobody knows who he even is. Also, why are all spies female? I had a 68 year old female spy in the same campaign. That, to me doesn't scream out subterfuge, it screams out geriatric.

It's not often I complain like this, but I'd really like to try and open CA's eyes a little. Little by little their taking the soul out of the series, don't get me wrong, Rome II LOOKS great, but if it ain't broke?

Rant over. Sorry!

if you have a leader you like with it's traits etc, you then need to adopt a general to be your adopted son, and the traits from the leader are then a gene effect for the adopted son. I'm not saying this is good but at least it's something.

[Aerox_The_Great]

Oh hey we can still Roleplay..

[valouris]

They should have the same system they have for armies work for generals. Once a person dies, you have the option of a completely different one taking his place, with level 1 stats etc, or a relative of his, with level 1 stats as well, but you can choose starting traits and household people from the ones the deceased had.

[inversive]

1TPY sucks so bad and the lack of a family tree makes it impossible to know who's who. I no longer feel bad when my General dies because I know i can replace this stranger with another stranger the very next turn.

[Cyrus the Virus]

I wonder why they removed some much that was included in, like RTW. Good, neat features.
It seems sometimes things are changed in the sake of changing things! Undue.

Well, we always have EB.

EDIT: It's also addressed Here

[Duncan III]

I think that one problem is the system whereby you get to choose the traits for a general when he 'levels up'. In Rome and MII your family members and generals gained different traits based on their actions and experiences. This made them feel much more 'real' as though they actually had an independent existence. It was great the way governors would gain negative traits such as sloth, drunkenness or sexual perversions if you left them rotting for decades in some minor settlement. This was a great, immersive mechanic that they foolishly removed in favour of identikit characters with zero humanity. One TPY is also a massive fail of course. By the way, I cannot do paragraphs and it takes about 10 minutes to actually post on this forum, which has been broken since the 'upgrade' a few months back.

[cevap]

I dont even know who is my faction leader or pater familias or whathaveyou in my Rome campaign. The names of the generals are in a submenu of a submenu so I dont know any of my generals, even though I only have 4 right now.
This could be addressed with a decent non-sterile UI but as it is it really bugs me a lot. Shogun 2 had so much heart it baffles me what they were thinking with this game.

"Human face"

[metalguy24]

I don't know I've had the same general leading one of my Legions for 30 years now. I've grown pretty attached to him and can create a pretty good story based on his conquests. I do wish there was a family tree, it would add a lot more immersion. Some Generals do die fast and I don't have time to get to know them but that isn't always the case. I'm playing as Rome and I've been treating it like the two year term for Generalship, if they last longer they won another term! Works for Rome, don't know about other factions yet.

[1cmanny1]

I agree. ATM I am too busy trying to figure out the UI to get attached to my generals. I can barely even find them on the campaign map!

[Neverpleased]

Eh I sacrifice these as food. They get a free unit of heavy cavalry so I basically raise armies using them and send em of to their death.

Yes, I use my generals as sacrificial because they only cost me 200 g for a heavy cav unit. That's how little I care about them. They have no permanency, they die within 10 turns usually so why bother levelling them? Just send em off to their death and the game will spawn a few more for you. They all get sucky pointless traits that make them utterly useless anyway if you keep em around for too long.

[Eldanno]

For some reason my Spartan generals seem to die every couple of years no matter their age or if there is disease, attrition etc. It seems like my Spartan warrior generals are quite weak, surely this needs to be corrected, because soon as I have got a few traits he keels over and dies...

[brandbll]

For some reason my Spartan generals seem to die every couple of years no matter their age or if there is disease, attrition etc. It seems like my Spartan warrior generals are quite weak, surely this needs to be corrected, because soon as I have got a few traits he keels over and dies...

Yeah, it happened so much in my Carthage campaign. Even if they weren't dying they were getting poisoned or falling down the stairs or some and getting knocked out of use for four turns. At which point i'd have to throw another guy into to lead that army. Then they'd come back and sit around. It's a jsut a giant cluster and CA was stupid for trying to fix somethign that wasn't broke.

[Revan The Great]

Yeah, this is one of the most disappointing parts of the game for me. If Generals are instantly replaceable, recruitable, and always present via requirement, then there's nothing meaningful to them. It's much like in E:TW, which I hated and thought that CA had learned its lesson because they brought families back for Shogun 2.

I think this is one of the changes that unambiguously disappoints everyone, so it's all the more puzzling why it was chosen.

[King Beowulf]

Completely agree with everything the OP said, in the old TW games (notably Medieval 2 and earlier) the immersion felt so much more real with being attached to a particular general with his random traits adding so much flavour to him that would be at least 1/3 of the fun I was having from the entire game. This game could have been so much more if it had simply just kept that one feature along with optimising it properly and not making it so that every bloody unit has an ability turning each and every battle into a micro-management fest, usually in previous TW games I would zoom into the battles with any spare time I had just taking in the fun of the game as opposed to having to juggle around buffs for practically every unit in the army.

All of that is on top of getting past the low frame rate with the poor optimisation, they should have held off the release date for another month or two

.Edit: Also forgot to mention what I am about to say is highly subjective but to me at least the 3D models for the generals / family members was a mistake. Keep it for diplomacy but for everything else is just looks plain ugly.

[keldor]

I have been playing total war series since medieval 1. Then started playing with mods from this site since original rome. And to be honest I'm more excited about the warhammer mod the sundering than going back and playing this game.
To me campaign map is the meat of the total war series. Rome 2 campaign map just sucks. I just cant find something good about it to immerse my self in to keep clicking that end turn. There is no proper capital city for your empire/kingdom or whatever you wanna call it. You just have lame ass provincial capitals. And some factions start out without even a provincial capital. Such as Parthia and Pontus. Generals are just fillers especially with the 1tpy. City construction feel like a tech tree rather than an actual city building. Liked it better in rome 1 and medieval 2, shogun 2 was alright with city building. But Rome II it's just not interesting, especially with that cheap historical art style. Yes it makes sense to use that type of art, but its just so bland, cheap and boring.

From battles to campaign map this game reminds me more like King Arthur II then a total war game. Its damn sad.

Its like all those what 13 years of experience, Sega replaced everyone at CA with their own people and created Rome II. But I think its more like they wanted to attract as many casual players as they could with marketing and just milk them with dlc's and whatnot later on.

[MrChris]

I like to keep a tab on the generals in the faction overview and their ages, because I always try to recruit young people, so many golden oldies around that die a lot :p

quite often though, the problem is, when you go to pick a general in the window, you don't know anything about him, it just says his name, family etc - is there anyway to see his more detail stats like age, traits etc in that pick general window? A lot of the generals you get in this window, are not shown at all on the faction overview, so its like guessing...

I've gotten lucky with mine in that I pick younger generals that last me a long time, have built some epic generals that way and I am rather attached to my agents, especially the champions. The spy I find very useful mainly for the poison provisions ha and the delegates (w/e they are called) are actually really good if you set them to work in your own regions, haven't used them much offensively though

[Maxmoaz]

I like to keep a tab on the generals in the faction overview and their ages, because I always try to recruit young people, so many golden oldies around that die a lot :p

quite often though, the problem is, when you go to pick a general in the window, you don't know anything about him, it just says his name, family etc - is there anyway to see his more detail stats like age, traits etc in that pick general window? A lot of the generals you get in this window, are not shown at all on the faction overview, so its like guessing...

I've gotten lucky with mine in that I pick younger generals that last me a long time, have built some epic generals that way and I am rather attached to my agents, especially the champions. The spy I find very useful mainly for the poison provisions ha and the delegates (w/e they are called) are actually really good if you set them to work in your own regions, haven't used them much offensively though

Yepp, you can mouse over the little star at the bottom left corner under his portrait that shows up when you mouse over the general itself