Medieval 2 still looks better. I don't have flickering pixels all over my eyes.

[HiguraShiki]

It's called Aesthetics, Rome 2 doesn't have it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oK8UTRgvJU

Alright, for once I will agree with you on that, and thanks for the educating vid. I will agree that most of Rome 2 looks pretty bland compared to Shogun 2.

[Remo]

Alright, for once I will agree with you on that, and thanks for the educating vid. I will agree that most of Rome 2 looks pretty bland compared to Shogun 2.

Thank goodness someone finally understands.

[HiguraShiki]

Thank goodness someone finally understands.

Well you actually showed me something compared to the other mindless individuals who just yell "OH YOU GET PAID BY CA SCREW YUUU AARHGHGH"
If more people actually game some friggin decent examples then I would understand, and you did. I feel the aestetics for rome 2 isn't as great mostly because there is a lack of color aside from brown.

[beksibeksi]

Alright, for once I will agree with you on that, and thanks for the educating vid. I will agree that most of Rome 2 looks pretty bland compared to Shogun 2.

I disagree. Shogun 2 has the worst battle maps ever. There was no variation between battle maps and the height terrain was bland and boring. Its one saving grace is seasonal changes.

[Remo]

I disagree. Shogun 2 has the worst battle maps ever. There was no variation between battle maps and the height terrain was bland and boring. Its one saving grace is seasonal changes.

Which Rome 2 doesn't even have. Not to mention Rome 2's battle maps aren't even that great. They are mostly flat terrain with variations of trees.

If you fight next to a river, you get a river somewhere in the battle map to maybe look at.

All that is for immersion, which is fine if the rest of the games issues didn't keep you from being immersed to begin with.


Seriously? One turn per year?

The fudge!?

[beksibeksi]

I don't know what you guys are talking about with AA. I just manually set it to 8X CSAA with Nvidia Control Center. The models don't look jagged at all.

[Sebt1890]

Nope...

Rome 2 on Ultra settings with the texture tweak (MSAA x3) at 40-50fps looks better on my computer.

[T-Duke]

Nope...

Rome 2 on Ultra settings with the texture tweak (MSAA x3) at 40-50fps looks better on my computer.

Screenshot please. And please not a "marketing screenshot" with super-zoom in to a couple of soldiers but a real screenshot of the normal visual you have to use to manage your army... I'm very curious...

[Grand Duke Vytautas]

I must admit I've fallen for CA false marketing of R2 and preordered it month or so before release, it is very dissapointing at the state the game is in and I totally agree with Angry Joe review. I would give the score 5/6 out of 10 atm.

As a fan of the series (played all games since original MTW) best TW for me were M2TW, RTW and Shogun2. I've reinstalled M2TW with Kingdoms + Stainless Steel 6.4 and boy it brings back memories and despite relatively old game, the AI and even graphics are great + family tree . Having a blast atm with Lithuania campaign on h/h defending my pagan ways

[absinthia]

having moded M2TW a fair bit i can say that the units were worse than they had to be. many of the textures seemed to have been scaled up, as they were blury and lacking in detail.
this had no effect on load or anything, it were just badly made.

i am not overly impressed by R2 units either.
given they looks nice enough, but they are not outstanding. have seen just as detailed units for M2TW.
by the experience of previous TW releases i bet there are potential that can be drawn-upon to increase quality and appearance, without puting extra strain on computer.

[A Barbarian]

Every professional in the business of producing 'life like' graphics/animations will confirm that proper anti-aliasing is one of the most important aspects of 'real' images/videos. There can be some low resolution textures and there can be low poly models but there can't be any sign of pixelation or 'flickering/shimmering' when in motion.

Shogun 2 with SSAA (requires MSAA) looks so much better than Rome 2 on the battlefield, it's not even funny. Every single unit, even in the very far distance looks like an actual soldier and not some flickering pixel mess. When the camera moves, there is no flickering or shimmering, everything is as steady and 'quiet' just like in reality.

Regarding the implementation, yes, deferred shading techniques need a little bit more effort to implement proper MSAA but Shogun 2 has it and almost every AAA in the last 5 years as well. So there is absolutely no excuse for CA not to have it. Except maybe they removed it on purpose because consoles usually don't use it because it's too costly and because it's not as visible on TV (due to view distance and the image being more blurry compared to PC monitors). And since TW is going the consoles (also see this CA job opening for an console optimization engineer) they won't need it in the future, lol.

And yes, I can run Rome 2 on extreme (see sig for PC specs) with no downgrades by using 'unlimited video memory'. It's only the lack of MSAA/SSAA which makes the battlemap unbearable to look at for me (except for closeups which are ok).

Funnily, Shogun 2 with 4xSSAA with more men on screens runs at least with steady 30fps there as Rome 2 on extreme dips into the low 20s in large battles due to the single core CPU bottleneck for shadows and unit animation which is still not fixed (and even worse) from Shogun 2. While the 4770K@4.3 Ghz is choking, the 2x7970s are almost idling at 40% load, lol. Setting shadows quality and unit detail to 'very high' from extreme immediately raises battlefield performance from 20fps to 30fps (and the 2 GPUs are loaded to about 60% accordingly).

[SirPeacemaker]

Like I said before, MTW II graphic (the battle engine) on its time was much much more impressive than Rome 2 has. And sometimes I think MTW 2 engine looks better.

[Destraex]

absinthia, I notice the difference is also in the way

(i) The units move
(ii) The effects applied to them
(iii) The 3D elements like armour actually not looking like it is just painted on in Rome2. Armour looks 3D this time around. That sort of thing does not come out well in screenshots.

For me at least, last time I went back to vanilla medieval2. Textures and models looked very simplistic.
I have to admit though that some of the new mods coming out make it look awesome. BUT the gameplay is simply featureless compared to rome2
All the old bugs are there.... but Rome also has a ways to go.

The only screenshots I have left that are from medieval2 are of a recent mod. It looked good and as you can see I can see my units even when zoomed out!!!!
YAY. But the gameplay is really really boring. I have just done it to death and the same old problems like suicide generals and no multiplayer campaign don't draw me in.
Rome2's multiplayer campaign is the MAJOR draw for me gameplay wise.



Now this is the freaking mess that the warscape engine makes of zooming out. Compare this to the shots below.
Warscape makes the men seem like messy jaggy blobs that merge together. While the older games still render well at this distance.

[Chopy]

Now imagine if instead of adding facial animations/1v1 combat animations , extra polygons on soldiers , they would instead invest into a huge battles. 40.000 vs 40.000 battles with unit visuals comparable to M2TW , just with some new bells and whistles and units would hold perfect formations. My dream....forever lost....

[Canaris]

Now imagine if instead of adding facial animations/1v1 combat animations , extra polygons on soldiers , they would instead invest into a huge battles. 40.000 vs 40.000 battles with unit visuals comparable to M2TW , just with some new bells and whistles and units would hold perfect formations. My dream....forever lost....

Stop ..... you will make me cry like a in baby ..... ;___;

[Kmack_27]

Now imagine if instead of adding facial animations/1v1 combat animations , extra polygons on soldiers , they would instead invest into a huge battles. 40.000 vs 40.000 battles with unit visuals comparable to M2TW , just with some new bells and whistles and units would hold perfect formations. My dream....forever lost....

THIS!!!! Hope everyone reads this because this is EXACTLY what CA should have done!! I could not agree with you more!

[Ramesses II The Great]

I too think they needlessly destroyed performance with stuff like facial animations. I'd rather my huge battles run smoothly than be able to see my general's lips move during his 8 second speech.

THIS!!!! Hope everyone reads this because this is EXACTLY what CA should have done!! I could not agree with you more!

[temporaryname1]

Now imagine if instead of adding facial animations/1v1 combat animations , extra polygons on soldiers , they would instead invest into a huge battles. 40.000 vs 40.000 battles with unit visuals comparable to M2TW , just with some new bells and whistles and units would hold perfect formations. My dream....forever lost....

Somehow CA seems to believe strategy and history enthusiasts give a about graphics.

[familyguy1]

Somehow CA seems to believe strategy and history enthusiasts give a about graphics.

Because a lot of us do.

[beksibeksi]

Because a lot of us do.

What he meant to say was that he can't run this game on any setting higher than medium, so therefore he doesn't give a about graphics.
What he should have said is that everybody cares about graphics (so long as they are super duper optimized to the point where a gt8600 can play it on ultra).