Has Rome 2 Vanilla now reached the level of Rome 1 Vanilla

[perifanosEllinas]

Has Rome 2 Vanilla now reached the level of Rome 1 Vanilla

Gameplay design is a matter of personal taste.But the fact is that RTW is functional in all of its features while TWR2 still has broken features (like phalanx,politics,battle formations,siege AI,civil war etc. etc.),so no.Rome 2 is nowhere near the level of RTW yet.

I don't know what Rome I was better at.

Then let me help you.

1)way superior and atmospheric music that I still remember.But I cannot remember any part of the music in TWR2.

2)way superior UI in both campaign and battles.No weird sci-fi hieroglyphics,no copy/paste sci-fi unit icons etc.

3)way superior building system,including the buildings options.No horrible building stats like in Rome 2

4)useful and realistic agents,not the ridiculously overpowered and cloned ones of Rome 2

5)seasons

6)multiple turns per year

7)generals speeches cutscenes

8)way superior animations,especially in battles.No stupid ponies on the campaign or personal brawls in battles

9)functional siege AI

10)way superior phalanx (both versions)

11)way better testudo

12)way superior character progression and attachment,including their traits

13)way more realistic map,with useful info that Rome 2 lucks and without the damn ugly oversized cities

14)no torches to break the sieges

15)no Jesus armies that walk on water to break the campaign

16)way superior tutorial that brings you to the game's atmosphere immediately and teaches successfully the new features

17)way superior formations (units spacing,guard mode etc.)

18)city view

19)faction specific advisors

20)much better and more realistic siege equipment (normal ladders,sappers etc.)

21)faction specific intros (and pretty damn good ones actually)

22)normal loading and end turn times

23)way more realistic and less generic unit names

24)way better unit stats

25)family tree

26)skill tree in the actual UI,not hidden away in an online encyclopedia

27)way superior relation between the campaign and the battle maps

28)campaign AI not only doesn't let the cities undefended when enemy armies approach,but it also brings reinforcements to defend them

29)faction specific UI

30)faction specific music

31)no magic abilities for the units

32)bigger units (240 vs 160)

33)way better mechanics for units pursuing routing units

34)units don't abandon formation when ordered to attack

35)fire at will for Roman infantry

36)way better fatigue system

Are those enough?

[PointOfViewGun]

Then let me help you.

1)way superior and atmospheric music that I still remember.But I cannot remember any part of the music in TWR2.
2)way superior UI in both campaign and battles.No weird sci-fi hieroglyphics,no copy/paste sci-fi unit icons etc.
3)way superior building system,including the buildings options.No horrible building stats like in Rome 2
4)useful and realistic agents,not the ridiculously overpowered and cloned ones of Rome 2
5)seasons
6)multiple turns per year
7)generals speeches cutscenes
8)way superior animations,especially in battles.No stupid ponies on the campaign or personal brawls in battles
9)functional siege AI
10)way superior phalanx (both versions)
11)way better testudo
12)way superior character progression and attachment,including their traits
13)way more realistic map,with useful info that Rome 2 lucks and without the damn ugly oversized cities
14)no torches to break the sieges
15)no Jesus armies that walk on water to break the campaign
16)way superior tutorial that brings you to the game's atmosphere immediately and teaches successfully the new features
17)way superior formations (units spacing,guard mode etc.)
18)city view
19)faction specific advisors
20)much better and more realistic siege equipment (normal ladders,sappers etc.)
21)faction specific intros (and pretty damn good ones actually)
22)normal loading and end turn times
23)way more realistic and less generic unit names
24)way better unit stats
25)family tree
26)skill tree in the actual UI,not hidden away in an online encyclopedia
27)way superior relation between the campaign and the battle maps
28)campaign AI not only doesn't let the cities undefended when enemy armies approach,but it also brings reinforcements to defend them
29)faction specific UI
30)faction specific music
31)no magic abilities for the units
32)bigger units (240 vs 160)
33)way better mechanics for units pursuing routing units
34)units don't abandon formation when ordered to attack
35)fire at will for Roman infantry
36)way better fatigue system

Are those enough?

It's rather ironic of you to talk about personal taste and then use a number of subjective factors in determining which one is better.

1) I don't remember any music from Rome I. This point is a very subjective one. What is objective is that battle sounds of Rome II are much more in sync with the animation. While in Rome I they were merely cosmetic and arbitrary.

2) Again, subjective. I prefer Rome II's UI and unit cards though more customization of UIs wouldn't kill.

3) Ability to build everything does not make a system superior. Neither are perfect but I'd prefer Rome IIs system. Rome I's system was simply boring.

4) It's funny of you to use the word clone for Rome II. Rome I was dubbed as Clone Wars: Total Wars... Anyways, agents from both games have merits that the other game doesn't have. In Rome I, you had Diplomats but only Assassins could kill. In Rome II, all agents can assassinate in connection to their function but there is no Diplomat.

5 & 6) These are tied to each other. Seasons should indeed be included but I also acknowledge the technical limitations. CA needs to come up with a completely new and unthought solution to make campaign maps playable and contain seasons.

7) General speeches exist in Rome II as well. This time at least your general gives the speech while you can look at your army freely. It's a step forward.

8) This is just plain silly and wrong. The animations in Rome I can not compare with Rome II. Rome II animations are much much better. There is coherence of models. Soldiers actually grasp weapons instead of having them embedded in their flesh. Fight animations are actually decent. Soldiers don't fight with ghosts as it was in Rome I nor units took hits with no effect.

9) Not really. There was many problems with sieges in Rome I as well. Breaches were very badly managed. You could simply kill thousands of men with a single unit (though that applies to bridges as well but sieges provided more opportunity for it to happen). Rome I also had very bad path finding.

10) Phalanx in Rome I also had it's problems. I don't remember after how many patches it started working. I do remember the phalanx changing direction mid-fight and lose all of it's effectiveness though.

11) The only difference is cosmetic which is to have men covering the sides with their shields. This should be fixed though.

12) This is also little bit tied to (6). The campaign turn limitation makes character traits unsustainable. Rome II introduces army traits because of that, something Rome I doesn't have.

13) Rome I map more realistic? I don't think so. Don't see what makes it more realistic or more informative. This point might be subjective too.

14) Yes, no torches, something that shouldn't be on Rome II as well. But, Rome I also has skyscraper sized walls and no mountable artillery.

15) Instead, you got 2 thousand men sharing the same boat in Rome I. Is that better? It's a gameplay design decision necessitated by a number of constraints that I find to be much better than how it is in Rome I.

16) A tutorial hardly makes a game better, unless it's a game like Crusader Kings that require hell of a lot micromanagement.

17) Guard mode is in Rome II. It's just there by default. Rome II also has many formations. The only difference is in loose formation which they added for certain units later on. It's however pointless to have it for a legionnaire unit.

18) Objective. Useless.

19) Nice touch but hardly adds much.

20) Ladders do look odd in Rome II. That is not enough to say that siege equipment in general is more realistic in Rome I. Siege towers look much better in Rome II.

21) Objective. Does not appeal much to me.

22) Similar with Rome II.

23) Rome I's units can hardly called be qualified as realistic. A quick Google search even reveals articles on unrealistic Rome I units. Unit names in Rome II are just fine.

24) Better unit stats? Didn't study and compare each unit in both games to give a definitive opinion and I doubt you did as well. However, I spotted no abnormalities to have such an opinion either.

25) Objective. Never appealed to me though CA did miss the chance of making something meaningful out of it.

26) I don't remember Rome I's unit information pages to be much different from Rome II's. The only real difference is that one is living online. If Rome II's is hidden then so is Rome I's.

27) Such as? They have similar relationship.

28) Can't say I have the same experience with Rome I. At least with Rome II, you have the defending soldiers for each settlement.

29) Objective. Minor difference. Would be nice to have in Rome II.

30) Don't remember faction specific music from Rome I but I did find online bunch of people asking how to mod in faction specific music for Rome I...

31) Rome I also had "magical" abilities. Warcry, Screech, Druidic Chant, etc...

32) Don't see the need. Rome II allows you to have 40 unit cards. So, the want for controlling more soldiers becomes a moot point.

33) I have no recollection of it being better in Rome I.

34) They don't do it in Rome II too.

35) Don't know if infantry units ever doubled as javelin throwers in history.

36) Haven't studied that either.

It's really revealing that we're complaining about stripped gameplay features, a total lack of immersion, brain-dead siege AI and poor battle mechanics whilst you're complaining about the height of walls and cutscenes (both of which are done better in RTW than in R2 regardless).

It could be revealing if it was true. My comments on Rome I and Rome II are not limited to one or two posts. The issues I pointed out in that post however are simply obvious and tangible and require little investigation or debate. Though, do tell me, how was having gigantic walls was done better in Rome I?

[Colonel Dax]

Gameplay design is a matter of personal taste.But the fact is that RTW is functional in all of its features while TWR2 still has broken features (like phalanx,politics,battle formations,siege AI,civil war etc. etc.),so no.Rome 2 is nowhere near the level of RTW yet.



Then let me help you.

1)way superior and atmospheric music that I still remember.But I cannot remember any part of the music in TWR2.

2)way superior UI in both campaign and battles.No weird sci-fi hieroglyphics,no copy/paste sci-fi unit icons etc.

3)way superior building system,including the buildings options.No horrible building stats like in Rome 2

All subjective.

4)useful and realistic agents,not the ridiculously overpowered and cloned ones of Rome 2

Not entirely sure I understand what you mean by "cloned." Both games have three agents: Spy, Assassin, Diplomat (Rome), and Spy, Champion, Dignitary (Rome II).

They serve similar roles in both titles.

5)seasons

Added with Caesar in Gaul.

6)multiple turns per year

I'll give you this one; the lack of multiple turns per year still baffles me (of course, there are mods that add them (which, admittedly, is a moot point in a thread about vanilla games)).

7)generals speeches cutscenes

Another fair point, more or less. Speeches are still in the game however (though not necessarily as immersive), so take it or leave it, I suppose.

8)way superior animations,especially in battles.No stupid ponies on the campaign or personal brawls in battles

Yeah...no. Go back and look at a brawl in RTW. It seriously amounts to little more than little men thrusting back and forth until somebody spins and dies. Not to mention the swords that are permanently fixed parallel to the body, unmoving (except to thrust, of course).

9)functional siege AI

Again, I'll take it. That said, siege AI has always been a bit wonky, but it's damn-near brain dead in Warscape. It might also be worth noting that a bug in RTW sometimes caused sieges to be broken upon loading a game. Food for thought, that.

10)way superior phalanx (both versions)

Again, subjective. If by "superior" you mean "functional," then maybe. My experiences with phalanxes have been similar across both games, however. Once upon a time, RTW had only semi-functional pike walls, as well. Oh, and for the love of everything holy, don't try to bring those things into a city. Pathfinding no-likey.

11)way better testudo

Meh. Testudos have never seemed particularly useful to me, so I've not much of an opinion on the matter.

As for the rest, fair points all...er...most, at least. Load times sound more like a performance issue, really (another beast entirely).

"Better unit stats"? Nah, not really. Not sure how one would objectively determine whether one virtual sword cuts deeper than another, but whatever.

Oh, and unit names are virtually unchanged. Both have Anglicised, largely generic titles for their troop.

And realistic siege equipment? Not so much. I'm fairly certain that velites shouldn't be able to burrow underneath the walls of Carthage.

Did I miss anything?

[The Despondent Mind]

I don't know what Rome I was better at.

Try to actually play it, especially the battles . It is this lovely game first TW in 3d with a new engine and a whole bunch of new features that weren't in previous games and yet it was only patched to 1.5 It set the foundations to what makes a tw game , most of them especially the ones in battle were all present in every total game after it except this one arcade low budget spin off that got "TW" label to sell more units .

[PointOfViewGun]

Try to actually play it, especially the battles . It is this lovely game first TW in 3d with a new engine and a whole bunch of new features that weren't in previous games and yet it was only patched to 1.5 It set the foundations to what makes a tw game , most of them especially the ones in battle were all present in every total game after it except this one arcade low budget spin off that got "TW" label to sell more units .

I did play it, with all of its expansions as well. It can be seen as the foundation for the 3D era but that hardly makes it great. Same for number of patches. It's meaningless.

[The Despondent Mind]

I did play it, with all of its expansions as well. It can be seen as the foundation for the 3D era but that hardly makes it great. Same for number of patches. It's meaningless.

You obviously missed my point . RTW was a huge step forward for that time and it only need patching until 1.5 , and if game that practically invented the 3d epic tactical battle genre isn't " Great" for you , than I don't have an idea what is .
Now look at RTW2 , it's the fourth game on the same engine,biggest budget and eight TW game , yet it's bugy even in 9.0 . Another thing is that until RTW2 every single tw had a something recognizable that made it TW , it was very strange for me to play other games in the genre . RTW2 is also the only tw game that me made me completely confused by it's lack of features and options when I sat down to play it .

People can argue that RTW2 is a descent game on it's own , but for every person that really played ALL the previous titles it simply isn't total war .
Let me make an analogy .
Imagine that in the new Call Of Duty , Battlefield or ARMA game , you cannot crouch,zoom your aim , re-load,throw a grenade,sprint and jump . That's how RTW 2 feels to me .

[PointOfViewGun]

You obviously missed my point . RTW was a huge step forward for that time and it only need patching until 1.5 , and if game that practically invented the 3d epic tactical battle genre isn't " Great" for you , than I don't have an idea what is .
Now look at RTW2 , it's the fourth game on the same engine,biggest budget and eight TW game , yet it's bugy even in 9.0 . Another thing is that until RTW2 every single tw had a something recognizable that made it TW , it was very strange for me to play other games in the genre . RTW2 is also the only tw game that me made me completely confused by it's lack of features and options when I sat down to play it .

People can argue that RTW2 is a descent game on it's own , but for every person that really played ALL the previous titles it simply isn't total war .
Let me make an analogy .
Imagine that in the new Call Of Duty , Battlefield or ARMA game , you cannot crouch,zoom your aim , re-load,throw a grenade,sprint and jump . That's how RTW 2 feels to me .

You're using a bunch of points that doesn't really make sense. Rome I was patched until 1.5 and that was because no other patch was needed? Really? Where is the reality in that? How many times a game is patched is meaningless but you went one step beyond that. No, Rome I is not a perfect game. It's indeed a great game but it's not a great game if you're gonna call Rome II a bad game or not a total war game. Nonetheless, it being the first 3D game does not make it great.

This biggest budget BS needs to stop too. They built an entirely new motion capture studio that rivals that of major movie studios. That's where the money went. It wouldn't even matter if they had a billion dollars and it was spent on the game development.

Rome II is Total War. It has all the essentials of a Total War game.

[Dynamo11]

I can't even remember what vanilla Rome 1 was like, and after having played EB I don't think I want to (nostalgia goggles and all that)

[emperor77]

No.

[King Xiao]

The question should be...

Is Rome2 vanilla NINE years worth of development better than Rome1 vanilla. The simple answer is no.

[GoTW Kubee]

No way. Rome 2 will forever remain in Rome 1's shadow barring a complete overhaul of most of the core game mechanics.

[Pontic Pontus]

Leonidas 2, this thread is about the vanilla games, mods don't count, As Rome 1 Mods had about 10 times as much time to be created than Rome 2 mods.

[Garensterz]

Has Rome 2 Vanilla now reached the level of Rome 1 Vanilla

I think your question is a little bit vague for me to understand. When you say "the level of Rome 1 vanilla" are you referring to it's, realistic campaign gameplay, the complexity of building an empire, the huge variation of constructing buildings, the realistic battle gameplay, the right amount of spacing of units in combat, a working siege AI, the simple slash-stab-block animation (that works), the cinematic inspirational speech before every combat, how everything was manual and you are the one who decides what to do? Well I think Rome 2 hasn't reached that level yet.

If CA didn't cut off all of those great features from Rome 1 and combined it with these new added features such as the combined land and sea battles. Rome 2 would been the best total war game to be released.

[Ritmas]

I think your question is a little bit vague for me to understand. When you say "the level of Rome 1 vanilla" are you referring to it's, realistic campaign gameplay, the complexity of building an empire, the huge variation of constructing buildings, the realistic battle gameplay, the right amount of spacing of units in combat, a working siege AI, the simple slash-stab-block animation (that works), the cinematic inspirational speech before every combat, how everything was manual and you are the one who decides what to do? Well I think Rome 2 hasn't reached that level yet.

Rome I was anything but realistic...

[Garensterz]

Rome I was anything but realistic...

No. Just the unit skins were inaccurate in Rome 1. and everything is far more realistic than Rome 2. I suggest playing Rome 1 again to see for yourself? and try a modded version such as EB or RTR

[Ritmas]

No. Just the unit skins were inaccurate in Rome 1. and everything is far more realistic than Rome 2. I suggest playing Rome 1 again to see for yourself? and try a modded version such as EB or RTR

Try DeI. I can't take u srsly after reading your sig.

[Garensterz]

Try DeI. I can't take u srsly after reading your sig.

If you can't take me seriously and didn't have some reasonable opinions aside. Then you shouldn't have bothered replying to my post then.

Rome II actually lets you watch the general speech whichever way you want. Somehow that's a step back for you...

@TheSutekh

In rome 2, It was never even close for being a speech. It was only like an attack order. It might be a speech. But was it inspirational? No.

[PointOfViewGun]

No. Just the unit skins were inaccurate in Rome 1. and everything is far more realistic than Rome 2. I suggest playing Rome 1 again to see for yourself? and try a modded version such as EB or RTR

Yes, things like gigantic walls are much more realistic... You also listed cutscene general speeches as something better at Rome I. Rome II actually lets you watch the general speech whichever way you want. Somehow that's a step back for you...

[GussieFinkNottle]

Yes, things like gigantic walls are much more realistic... You also listed cutscene general speeches as something better at Rome I. Rome II actually lets you watch the general speech whichever way you want. Somehow that's a step back for you...

It is a step back when the generals' speech is 3 sentences long and generic, as opposed to the long and deeply contextual speeches of Rome 1, including details e.g. 'we outnumber them comfortably', 'they have many spearmen, so cavalry be careful' etc.

[GoTW Kubee]

Yes, things like gigantic walls are much more realistic... You also listed cutscene general speeches as something better at Rome I. Rome II actually lets you watch the general speech whichever way you want. Somehow that's a step back for you...

It's really revealing that we're complaining about stripped gameplay features, a total lack of immersion, brain-dead siege AI and poor battle mechanics whilst you're complaining about the height of walls and cutscenes (both of which are done better in RTW than in R2 regardless).