NTW was ... well... better?

[Gauloisier de la Gauloiserie]

Hi there
I launched (test in mind) a few battles of NTW. The combat animation are better, the graphics while having less details (units) are somehow better, the overall feeling of battle is greater. That's exactly what I feared. R2TW is a good game, but light years away from TW games released 2-3 years ago. An outrage.
(this is my personal opinion, you can -you will?- disagree of course)

[eusKai]

Rome 1 and Shogun 2 are the best games in the series, for what I´ve heard Rome 2 is not better than any of those 2.

I think I´ll wait for a few good total conversions, a dozen patches, a couple expansions and a good discount before buying.

[M2TWRocks]

Rome 1 is hardly the "best" in the series. It was filled with nearly as many game mechanic bugs, but very few graphical issues. There was a lot of uproar over many similar things to Rome 2 like a complete lack of naval invasions, terrible AI, tiny enemy stacks, etc. It's pretty much just nostalgia, as for most, Rome 1 was their first experience with Total War. Shogun 2 was definitely the most polished game of the series, followed close behind by NTW. If you're taking it back to the beginning, the original STW and MTW were in many ways vastly superior to RTW due to the AI being far more adept at attacking/defending the risk style map. In a lot of ways, RTW actually took the game into a slow decline to it's current state. S2TW was a bright spot in the series and seemed to be heading in a much better direction from ETW, but R2 is like 3 steps back. The lack of consistency is really bizarre.

[eusKai]

Rome 1 is hardly the "best" in the series. It was filled with nearly as many game mechanic bugs, but very few graphical issues. There was a lot of uproar over many similar things to Rome 2 like a complete lack of naval invasions, terrible AI, tiny enemy stacks, etc. It's pretty much just nostalgia, as for most, Rome 1 was their first experience with Total War. Shogun 2 was definitely the most polished game of the series, followed close behind by NTW. If you're taking it back to the beginning, the original STW and MTW were in many ways vastly superior to RTW due to the AI being far more adept at attacking/defending the risk style map. In a lot of ways, RTW actually took the game into a slow decline to it's current state. S2TW was a bright spot in the series and seemed to be heading in a much better direction from ETW, but R2 is like 3 steps back. The lack of consistency is really bizarre.

Maybe my memory of Rome 1 is distorted by "the good old times" syndrome, even if I played Shogun 1 and Medieval 1 before that, but Rome still feels inferior to Shogun 2, which I agree it´s the most polished game in the series.

Time will tell if patches and mods will get Rome 2 to the same level or not, for now it has a list of problems to fix (disclaimer: I don´t own the game, I´ve played/watched a 10/15 hours at a friend´s home):

-Campaign map performance
-AI turns are eternal
-AI is stupid when it needs to do anything more comlplex than running ahead and attacking.
-Benny Hill speed battles.
-Lack of unit diversity.
-Lack of diplomatic options

It´s possible that most of these can be fixed/modded, but I´m not so sure about the AI, it always was the weakest point of Total War games

[Dirty Harry]

Rome 1 is hardly the "best" in the series. It was filled with nearly as many game mechanic bugs, but very few graphical issues. There was a lot of uproar over many similar things to Rome 2 like a complete lack of naval invasions, terrible AI, tiny enemy stacks, etc. It's pretty much just nostalgia, as for most, Rome 1 was their first experience with Total War. Shogun 2 was definitely the most polished game of the series, followed close behind by NTW. If you're taking it back to the beginning, the original STW and MTW were in many ways vastly superior to RTW due to the AI being far more adept at attacking/defending the risk style map. In a lot of ways, RTW actually took the game into a slow decline to it's current state. S2TW was a bright spot in the series and seemed to be heading in a much better direction from ETW, but R2 is like 3 steps back. The lack of consistency is really bizarre.

Yep, STW2 is the only one that could be called mostly functional on release.

I think people are very disappointed because STW2 set such a high standard, then CA goes and releases RTW2 anyway despite such obvious AI issues, after spending so much time bragging about how great it's going to be.

[Humble Warrior]

I never bought NTW as protest for Empire and how that was never fully fixed. Also NTW should have been an expansion to Empire, helping to improve it, but no, they abandoned Empire. They just made MORE money by putting their fixes in to Napoleon. Wrong.

They even did their `carrot-on-a-stick` routine of saying they might go back and upgrade Empire which never happened.

My refusal protest sanction to buy NTW remains to this day. I`m glad about it and it will remain so.

[Wicked Moose]

I never bought NTW as protest for Empire and how that was never fully fixed. Also NTW should have been an expansion to Empire, helping to improve it, but no, they abandoned Empire. They just made MORE money by putting their fixes in to Napoleon. Wrong.

They even did their `carrot-on-a-stick` routine of saying they might go back and upgrade Empire which never happened.

My refusal protest sanction to buy NTW remains to this day. I`m glad about it and it will remain so.

Then it would have been better if you bought NTW and not ETW :p if only you knew before

[wulfgar610]

I launched (test in mind) a few battles of NTW. The combat animation are better, the graphics while having less details (units) are somehow better, the overall feeling of battle is greater.

Less Data, less lag. Yes, NTW played nicely on contemporary machines. And was way better optimized than ETW.

Rome2 will play just as well, better optimized on PC's that can handle the data.

[M2TWRocks]

Well, for me personally, campaign map performance and AI turns have been resolved with beta patch 2. It no longer takes 1 minute 20 seconds b/w turns. Now, it's a more reasonable 15-20 seconds. This was my biggest complaint. The unit speed has been lowered as of this patch, but that was never a concern of mine. AI is reasonable, albeit a bit docile. I think the problem with the campaign AI has more to do with it's lack of aggression than anything. If the bigger factions would just conquer the smaller like I as a human player do, they could become insanely powerful, and a real threat. Hopefully they, or a modder, will address this at some point.

[B_L70]

I think you should compare Shogun 2 to Rome 2 instead of NTW. NTW was essentially a polished version of the disastrous ETW, I wonder if we can expect the same with Rome II in the form of Ceasar TW or something.

[CaileanMac]

Napoleon is still my favourite TW... I just couldn't get into Shogun II simply because I am not that interested in Japanese history.

[ShadowMassa]

Rome I was good and evolutionary at the time, it took realism mods to add more life into the game, which it did. Revamping the map and added better detailed and more historically accurate units, along with scripts, game play, ect. Shogun II and Napoleon felt more complete with better research. Napoleon felt like an upgraded proper version of Empire, like many would say. The units are better researched, closer to historical accuracy, the the UI is nice, used a political tree and elections are held. My only personal gripe with napoleon is the campaign is broken into subsections. CA could of added Malta onto the campaign map, more of Turkey, the Levant and Egypt all onto the general campaign. They could of done more research and added more units or regional troops, Balkan troops, ect. I'm playing a N:TW campaign now as Britain and I am enjoying myself. Another thing from Empire and Napoleon I didn't like is when you meet an enemy on a certain point of the campaign map, lets say a beach, and on the battle map you end up on a generated field with the coastline nowhere on sight. Rome I, Medieval II, Shogun II and Rome II campaign map - Battle map relates better, I guess it's a per tile thing. You meet an army by let's say a beach in the mentioned titles you see it on the battle map also.

[Gunfreak]

I can't play Napoleon, I know way to much about the period to be able to play a total war version of the game, I can't play a "napoleonic" battle with 1200 soldiers, thats bearly a single regiment in real life, I just can't play it, the ai dosn't help either.


Atleast in Rome 2, you can get about 5000 soldiers in an army, so about a single legion. somewhat more realistic.

[Alexander Iulianus Verus]

Rome 2 is the best in the series following shogun 2, but it has the potential to dwarf Shogun 2 pending patching. I really believe this is true, greater scale, much bigger map, more features, more potential.

Some support:

Rome 2 has the greatest optimization animation wise of all the titles. Things would just slow down too much in other games, I am speaking of my PC when compared to shogun 2, NTW, ETW, etc.

Rome 2 has the greatest amount of factions and regions ever in any total war game, this obviously would create huge potentials for problems because of the vastly increased scale over S2.

Mods do more than just 'placebo' my mod has completely revolutionized the gameplay for me, both on the campaign and in battles. It now plays like RTW1, with greatly enhanced graphics (Thanks gem mod) and superior battle pacing. I often have battles that take 12-20 minutes on average.

The province system has amazing potential for large empire management, and if refined a bit better (having a province list) could be finalized into an amazing feature.

It is a step back in terms of settlement battles and siege battles, but that isn't something that can't be addressed with a patch.

I am speaking of final major patch performance vs S2 and NTW and RTW1; I believe it has the potential to dwarf every one of them, or at least equal S2.

[[N]Tac]

I can't play Napoleon, I know way to much about the period to be able to play a total war version of the game, I can't play a "napoleonic" battle with 1200 soldiers, thats bearly a single regiment in real life, I just can't play it, the ai dosn't help either.

Then my friend you should of played ntw3 with historical battles,a better fog of war,more historically accurate maps and more historical units with correct uniforms than you can shake a stick at.Maybe if the makers of rome 2 spent some time looking at what the true enthusiasts of the communtiy made out of half arsed money grabbing attempts they may actually improve each release instead of dumbing it down for brain fodder..
Playing Waterloo was a dream come true.

[Honorable Poncho]

I hated the campaign but absolutely loved multiplayer. The battles lasted much, much longer than Rome 2 that's for sure.

[I WUB PUGS]

Rome 1 was a terrible vanilla game. RTR is what most people remember when they remember the good ole days of Rome 1. You think the political system is bad in Rome 2? Ha! The community literally went into meltdown over the "3 Roman Factions". It was the first thing modded out.

NTW has been the only quality release and it still wasn't perfect. It kept a couple bad features from ETW, but all in all it was really good.

Shogun 2 was a box of promises that never even came close to being fulfilled. FotS also saved it. Amazing. No one remembers the forum riots over how lazy CA was with the S2 units? Every army was the same, the exact same. Sure, historical, but S2 was a bland as it could be, and that's compared to ETW which was all the same types of units.

Far too many people with rose tinted glasses. However, Rome 2 is pretty bad, but at least for me anyway, it doesn't crash every 20 minutes like ETW did.

[Ayleid]

What really annoys me when people slate R2:TW, and then mention the original in the same breath, is that the original wasn't even that great vanilla. I played that game A LOT, and you could never have any meaningful diplomatic options on the campaign map. Similarly nor would any battle be any more a challenge, due to the engine's problems producing army structures then. You were likely to fight tiny stacks, full of eraticly chosen units. And to top things off, the squalor and public disorder problems in certain regions would require stacks of superfluous militia units, just to keep the cities barely manageable. Now that I mention it, the original Rome and this release both have more in common than the would be moaners would like to admit.

On topic, yes Napoleon was great. It was what Empire should have been. But, like all TW games before it (and can i say the only consistency CA adheres to) it had great features from the previous game stripped out. What's the point of including the Ottomans, and being able to fight a mini campaign in Egypt, and then not include it on the Grand Campaign map? If you're going to 'streamline' the GC map, atleast make it understandable. But, in terms of usibility of the units themselves and the AI of the enemy unit structure/ it's cohesion on the battle map, atleast Napoleon had some redeeming features. However, laughably just like Shogun, you could therefore argue that the real reason for this end product stemmed from the fact that they weren't overly ambitious; neglecting asia minor/near east/ north africa and focusing on a small time period allowed the CA to really iron out what they wanted to get across in a coherent manner. Just my thoughts..