EB II and Rome 2: A projected comparison

[Alexander Iulianus Verus]

*Please note my previous name was Exanimous*

Hello All,

As an avid supporter of both EB 2 and R2, I'd like to make a brief comparison of projected/expected features.

R2:

By the time EB2 comes out, R2 will hopefully have at least resolved the majority of its most egregious bugs, and mods will have taken care of the rest of the balance issues. There may even be a RTR2 mod by then, however, features like the family tree, province swapping, and the Old UI will not be present.

Eb2:

EB2 will have extraordinary historical accuracy, sans the older graphics, the animation system is still strong and whenever I play Med 2 there is always a fullness of unit contact. Additionally, there's a family tree and the carry-over of the important features from the RTW engine.

The building system is also highly tailored to the multiple construction options necessarily for EB2. I have no idea how RTR2 team will address this.

That said, I think that both games could have great potential, and both be extremely worthwhile.

Since I've been waiting for EB2 ever since it was announced, I definitely will be playing that as soon as humanly possible.

What are everyone else's thoughts? Please no anti-rome 2 super pro EB2 posts, I'd like an objective comparison.

[yuezhi]

Comparing two games that are separated by two generations.

My conclusion: nobody cares.

[fryslan]

yolo

[gustave]

Comparing these 2 "games" is totally pointless in my opinion.

[Hummer]

I am extremely unhappy with R2TW. It has no immersive feel to it at all. It feels like I can barely connect to the game. I am waiting in trepidation for EBII.

I am also very skeptical about modding for R2TW. It took 2 years just for someone to be able to figure out how to add one province to S2TW.
There will either be no large scale mods or it will take numerous years for anything to come out.

[Principe Alessandro]

Sadly we will have to wait years to reach the same degree of moddability on the warscape engine that we already reached on the MTW2 engine, probably RTW2 will remain essentially the same broken vanilla game with a little degree of refinement by the mods. So for now I pick EB2 over RTW2 and his mods.

[Achilles Lacedaemon]

RIITW was and still is a broken game to me, of course some mods can save it from doom, but CA seems to be complicating things far often...

I could compare the first EB or RTR,RSII and say that those were far more enjoyable ( of course they dont have the same eye-candy, but sometimes even the graphics of RSII are still better ), but thats just my opinion anyway...

[Castiel]

I didn't even own R2TW so I can't comment accurately on it, but one of major flaw of R2TW is still the BAI: I followed 3 Youtube commentators who are still playing R2TW. And at patch 5, the BAI is still broken:
- in 2 battles, I saw the AI charged all of their heavy cavs on Phalanx lines,
- in another, ranged units standing idle and get slaughtered by the slow-@ss walking phalanx units (no skirmish mode?),
- AI outnumbered player 5:1 (with very few mobs units) in a city defense battle, decided to divide their units in small groups within the city and waiting for their turns to be slaughtered
- no spread-out formations, which led to valueable tight-packed units such as armored speamen get bombarded to smithreen by Super-accurated balistaes and caltapults, and no, they didn't bother to move either.
Even vanilla M2TW BAI can handle some of those things correctly!

Graphically, after watching R2TW in 720p and playing Stainless Steel 6.4 with highest setting, IMO, the units are of equal quality; of course M2TW lacked some fancy graphical options that R2TW had - but I don't even think some of them are working atm; and with the quality of previewed EB2 units, there were no reasons for EB to lose to R2TW in graphic terms.

[GeorgiBG]

Comapring this 2 games is like comparing a Lada and Mercedes - pointless.

EB II is far better than R2TW.

[geala]

I don't like R2TW bashing so much. The game has it's problems but for many people it offers a good experience. I could live with many of the gameplay restrictions. For me there are just some extremely subjective reasons not to play R2TW at all, connected with the so called immersion: I don't like my Greek or Iberian units with Roman caligae and I don't like ancient warriors depicted stereotypically as super muscular steroid junkies. The term "variety" seems to have a very special meaning for CA, I don't name it variety when all units have two to four sets of armour but all wear the same sandals or are of the same figures.

[Alexander Iulianus Verus]

I'm skeptical about the graphics here; I run it on max, and with the graphics mods that already exist, in addition to the hopefully expected tuning by CA, the graphics would easily trump EB2. But then again that isn't the reason why I was playing EB1 up until RTW2's release.

I did try to load it up again, and unfortunately I lost all my immersion that I had with EB originally. The fogginess of RTW2's massive campaign map, the clouds, the elevated alps... everything made venturing beyond Cisalpina extremely terrifying for me as Rome. I haven't felt that kind of fear in any RTS game before or since. Exploring Northern Spain as the Iceni was equally enthralling; I felt the massiveness of the region and the extremely different units (I had been acclimating myself with only the northern celtic type units up until that point) Not knowing how to deal with short-sword units proved exciting. Of course, I miss terribly all of the features that made EB1 great, and I hope soon there's a linking between EB principles and RTW2 modding. I attempted on my own to create a battle stats calculator, see this linK: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...rive_web#gid=0 but I haven't worked on it since, and various patches render progress dreadful and tedious. I deeply appreciate the hard work and tireless effort of the EB2 team.

I see a point in this thread, and it only takes one person. To anyone speaking to the contrary, it's interesting how there's no justification for such a conclusion. I'll just have to say those comments are pointless in themselves, in as much that they don't contribute anything but negation.

[Aenima]

I'm skeptical about the graphics here; I run it on max, and with the graphics mods that already exist, in addition to the hopefully expected tuning by CA, the graphics would easily trump EB2. But then again that isn't the reason why I was playing EB1 up until RTW2's release.

I did try to load it up again, and unfortunately I lost all my immersion that I had with EB originally. The fogginess of RTW2's massive campaign map, the clouds, the elevated alps... everything made venturing beyond Cisalpina extremely terrifying for me as Rome. I haven't felt that kind of fear in any RTS game before or since. Exploring Northern Spain as the Iceni was equally enthralling; I felt the massiveness of the region and the extremely different units (I had been acclimating myself with only the northern celtic type units up until that point) Not knowing how to deal with short-sword units proved exciting. Of course, I miss terribly all of the features that made EB1 great, and I hope soon there's a linking between EB principles and RTW2 modding. I attempted on my own to create a battle stats calculator, see this linK: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...rive_web#gid=0 but I haven't worked on it since, and various patches render progress dreadful and tedious. I deeply appreciate the hard work and tireless effort of the EB2 team.

I see a point in this thread, and it only takes one person. To anyone speaking to the contrary, it's interesting how there's no justification for such a conclusion. I'll just have to say those comments are pointless in themselves, in as much that they don't contribute anything but negation.

EB style gameplay with Rome 2's visuals would be pretty amazing, it's true.

However, R2 just seems so inherently flawed that I'm trying to forget it ever existed, since at this point I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that the engine is inherently flawed (ie siege battle AI)

EB2 all the way.

[nein]

Rome 2 EB2 GOOD

[agent 47]

Personally i think Med 2's engine is superior almost in every way. There's barely one thing warscape (What Rome is built on) does better.

Graphically Rome II is more demanding and graphics heavy in theory, sure there's more unit detail but aesthetically the game is a mess, the graphics are ok but it looks awful if you know what i mean. Medieval 2 has great aesthetics, that's why it still looks so good. Medieval 2 also has anti aliasing and working anisotropic filtering.

Units on the Med 2 engine have mass between units. Units push, give ground and take ground. Individual units have something of a collision system so you you dont end up with a fulll stack able to push through defensive lines with thousands of men inside eachother like Rome 2.

Med 2 has guard mode and loose formation for units. Rome 2 has built in guard mode which cant be turned off and on, units with guard mode rotate and create gaps in the lines so they are easily flanked.

Med 2 has fire at will for javelin armed units so you don't have to charge to throw them, allowing for more defensive strategies to be played out. Offensive tactics are greatly favoured in Rome II because you handicap yourself by forfeiting your javelins if you don't charge.

Med 2 has a superior base UI. Rome II's looks too modern and way out of place. The abstract unit and building icons are also ugly, confusing and kill immersion. Personally i feel as though when i construct a building, I'm merely creating a set of plus and minus attributes because of the abstraction.

There hasn't been one warscape game yet with fun, working sieges and Rome II is no exception. The AI cant use siege engines, i don't think i need to say any more on that. Rome II has better siege maps but they are irrelevant. All sieges end up with the AI burning down the gate and rushing to the flag ignoring your entire army along the way.

Rome II's ballistics system is backwards and makes no sense whatsoever. For example all units have hitpoints so if say a unit in tetsudo is under fire, the casualty rate increases as the each volley is fired upon it, as each units HP is worn down.

[Alexander Iulianus Verus]

Yes yes yes and yes. But, the mods I use reduce most of these issues, and I'm sure eventually will address all of them. I will play EB2/Rome 2 (modded heavily), because they both have amazing potential. the amount of work that went into EB2 I would say greatly surpasses CA, at least in meticulousness.

[Samariten]

Correction, dont compare a game with a mod :p .

[dimnjacar]

its simple, R2TW is a boring game.

[nomercysniper]

Youve asked a question in a forum of fanboys... You should have expected this criticism.

Sometimes when people spend so long expecting a game they make out is gonna be crap, they can play it, enjoy, but be too stubborn arsed to turn around and admit, ok i was wrong, this is actually pretty good.

EB2 is a mod right?

Fire at will Javelins - theres a mod for that
guard mode - (view patch 7 notes)
unit mass - last time i checked its there

eb can take the ui and BAI sure, but when EB has been years (a decade soon?) in the making, you'd be disapointed otherwise.

Me, ill enjoy both without comparison.

[fryslan]

wololo

[yuezhi]

wololo

*hits enter key
E=MC2 TROOPER