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

[TuuSaR]

out-dated graphics

If you have machine that can run Rome 2 on max.

[Anna_Gein]

I choose "it is still worse".

Not sure how the patching work as CA see it could have changed anything. R2 is so much inferior to RTW in term of design. It is as if R2 was made by a different studio attracted by the profit of the first one. They tried to succeed by the weight of their investissement alone but didn't understood the challenges, the concerns of the genre

[empr guy]

I'd say Rome 2 can never be on the level of Rome 1, even without the god awful bug mess of release.

To me the game was flawed from conception:

The province system is complete nonsense, and everything tied to it.

The culture system; get people converted to punic in half of sicily and suddenly south italy is also punic culture... what? The religious system in barbarian invasion was miles ahead of this; religion was based on buildings and characters in the settlement, surrounding towns could provide a small increase of their own religion as a cultural diffusion mechanic.

The buildings; in Rome 1, you could build everything in every city if you had the money. Now you're limited by the city slots, and actually building up a tree isn't a good idea because now buildings have arbitrary bonuses or penalties, such as inns making food, ports/economic buildings causing squalor, etc. And irrc some max buildings can only even be built in the capital of the province. So you end up with ~3/4 buildings in a city that are half built. Awesome.

"Only capitals have walls so no more siege fest" Well if that wasn't already retarded (Cities like Syracuse didn't have walls historically right?) I'm under the impression CA took out walls because the AI had absolutely no idea what to do about them (probably why gates are also burnable, because making them out of something that doesn't burn is just soooo hard). Not that it helped though, as of my last experience with the game the AI couldn't path find through city streets anyways.

I really have a million more issues with this game, but these are, imho, the biggest reasons why this game would be a flop even without all the bugs. Did Rome 1 have bugs and flaws? Absolutely, it had endless bugs, some of which were never fixed by CA, and it was not a perfect game in any sense, but relative to the games of their day, Rome 1 is in another universe then Rome 2.

[Canaris]

"Fun" being completely subjective, of course...

Well i dont think there is someone Who defines FUN as a game that offers no challenge, no working enemy AI and is simply BORING as .

The province system is complete nonsense, and everything tied to it.

I hate this thing. Completely idiotic, arbitrary and pointless.

The buildings; in Rome 1, you could build everything in every city if you had the money. Now you're limited by the city slots, and actually building up a tree isn't a good idea because now buildings have arbitrary bonuses or penalties, such as inns making food, ports/economic buildings causing squalor, etc. And irrc some max buildings can only even be built in the capital of the province. So you end up with ~3/4 buildings in a city that are half built. Awesome.

Yeah buildings in RTW2 are a ing joke. Massive squalor penalties that make no sense, limited building slots - completely retarded.

"Only capitals have walls so no more siege fest"

And RTW2 is by far the most siegefest Total War game in the history of the series. I cant recall even one open field battle in my 30 hours of playing....

I'm under the impression CA took out walls because the AI had absolutely no idea what to do about them (probably why gates are also burnable, because making them out of something that doesn't burn is just soooo hard).

And you are absolutely right man. Only reason that walls have been removed is that the Ai simply cant deal with them ( ffs its a number 9 patchand Ai still cant take walled city ... )

[SupAll]

Well i dont think there is someone Who defines FUN as a game that offers no challenge, no working enemy AI and is simply BORING as .

How is R1 any better in terms of challenge? It wasn't. It was a boring, tedious, grind with no real strategy involved. I didn't even have to plan my battles. Set pikes here, hit play, grab some food. The only challenge I received was when I played Parthia and that was maybe in the first few turns and this was on the hardest difficulty setting.

It's hard to take anything seriously if I can't even make it past this first incredulous statement. Rome 2 has a much higher difficulty setting on the Legendary, although not as much as the S2TW Vanilla Legendary (before it got nerfed).

[Man o' War]

How is R1 any better in terms of challenge? It wasn't. It was a boring, tedious, grind with no real strategy involved. I didn't even have to plan my battles. Set pikes here, hit play, grab some food. The only challenge I received was when I played Parthia and that was maybe in the first few turns and this was on the hardest difficulty setting.

It's hard to take anything seriously if I can't even make it past this first incredulous statement. Rome 2 has a much higher difficulty setting on the Legendary, although not as much as the S2TW Vanilla Legendary (before it got nerfed).

You like magic ships don't you mate.

The hardest thing to do in R2 is managing to lose a game.

[pyj99]

It's funny the answer to this poll is exactly the same than the one above on DLC

It seems that 66% of people on this forum are haters/whiners and 26% fan boys

8% being honest

Back on topic

If you compare both games

BAI R2 no more kamikaze general -good flanking -even interesting siege
CAI R2 diplomacy, helpful allies, AI actually building empires, no more useless rebels

Features for R2
Naval combat
Much more interesting and differentiated countries to play with
Province system
Actual buildings system

Features for R1
Family tree - personnally dont care much but important for people
Roads

Gameplay R2
End game more dynamic interesting
Much less grinding

Overall R2 by a longshot

[Man o' War]

It seems that 66% of people on this forum are haters/whiners and 33% fan boys

1% being unknown

1% is the kids who try to sound clever.

Kids!

[Sir_Pee_Alot]

All i can say is that in rome 1 i could play for days and had lots of fun. with rome 2 its maybe 1/2 hours then im getting bored and want to quite the game but thats just me.

[Aeimnestus]

All i can say is that in rome 1 i could play for days and had lots of fun. with rome 2 its maybe 1/2 hours then im getting bored and want to quite the game but thats just me.

Yes, but that is because of certain gameplay decisions made by CA, for me specifically the dumbing down of the city building/management, the removal of forts/watchtowers/garrisons, and the removal of the family tree. As far as the state of the game is concerned, I think Rome II is now about as polished as Rome I was at launch. (i.e. not very polished at all, but not in a terrible state). There are still some gamebreaking bugs in Rome II (i.e. naval ramming/boarding issues, naval landings bugging out) but Rome I had some issues too at launch.

[TheRomanRuler]

All i can say is that in rome 1 i could play for days and had lots of fun. with rome 2 its maybe 1/2 hours then im getting bored and want to quite the game but thats just me.

Exactly

[Uriyaca]

For it's time, Rome I was way way better then Rome II. But if you put that aside, Rome II is a better game

[BeastG33]

Well the factions and unit variety in Rome 2 vanilla is a million times better than Rome 1. We all remember the barbarian unit rosters in RTW, right?

[Dago Red]

Yes you can compare them and yes Rome 2 is still worse.

Do the battles work, even the fundamental mechanics that underlie them? Objectively No. They sometimes appear to work in open field, but there are so many errors happening on the detailed level that the result is combat is not being simulated as well as in Rome I. The secondary weapons aren't even real, no stats or entries in the unit database -- just fake cosmetic swords.

In siege battles the results are abundantly clear.

The rest of the game is a combination of dumbed down streamlining; good, but broken gameplay elements; sad attempts at changing immersive things like family trees and characters into something totally not immersive; and just plain terrible ideas like magic boats.

[pyj99]

Yes you can compare them and yes Rome 2 is still worse.

Do the battles work, even the fundamental mechanics that underlie them? Objectively YES. They sometimes appear to work in open field, but there are so many errors happening on the detailed level that the result is combat is not being simulated as well as in Rome I. The secondary weapons aren't even real, no stats or entries in the unit database -- just fake cosmetic swords.

In siege battles the results are abundantly clear.

The rest of the game is a combination of dumbed down streamlining; good, but broken gameplay elements; sad attempts at changing immersive things like family trees and characters into something totally not immersive; and just plain terrible ideas like magic boats.

People who says that combar simulation worked better in rome 1 should launch the game again

Do not let rosy memoris wreck your thinking

BAI was bad - you just had to kill the AI general and bam you had won the day
AND the AI general was a kamikaze ...

[Cavalier]

Yes you can compare them and yes Rome 2 is still worse.

Do the battles work, even the fundamental mechanics that underlie them? Objectively No. They sometimes appear to work in open field, but there are so many errors happening on the detailed level that the result is combat is not being simulated as well as in Rome I. The secondary weapons aren't even real, no stats or entries in the unit database -- just fake cosmetic swords.

In siege battles the results are abundantly clear.

I disagree about the field battles. With patch 9 they're very enjoyable. Average battle length for me is 10 minutes, which is perfect. Way better than Rome 1 ever was.

Regarding siege battles, well, nothing to add there

[GoTW Kubee]

The RTW engine was a lot better for these sorts of battles than the R2 engine is. As someone who has played 1000+ hours of RTW and been one of the top players on MP, I can say with certainty that battles in that game were far more fun, intuitive, realistic and tactical. R2 doesn't even have proper unit collision or functioning pikemen. The only thing warscape has going for it is the way it handles missiles imo. Other than that, I don't see how the battles in Rome 2 are better than RTW's. Would someone care to explain please?

[jamreal18]

Talking about GAMEPLAY - ROME 1
Talking about GRAPHICS - ROME 2

Rome 1 gameplay for me depends on tactics but Rome 2 gameplay depends on fast finger tactics.
*Rome 2 has improved gameplay mechanics like running remains hiding and line of sight. I love those. But the battle duration, shifting sounds that depends on situation, fire at will and testudo were better in previous game thats why I prefer Rome 1.

Rome 2 graphics for me is superior to Rome 1 in quality.
*Rome 2's diversity of soldiers in units, environment, terrain, cities, etc. are all fantastic... In terms of quantity of soldiers per unit, previous titles have 200, 240 men per unit were better, cavalry only 80 men which is less than 100 is not that huge anymore... But controlling 40 units at once is great! I want huge scale to be huge... Ships' details are awesome... In terms of UI, no comment... I like minimal UI but the advisor(always the same), and large unit cards control panel (2 rows of unit cards), unit cards notification are thumbs down to me... The animations of Rome 2 is improving to me though...

[High Fist]

Sad thing is we shouldn't even compare these games. Rome II was released 9 years after Rome I (which is pretty huge), with a 40% larger budget than any other Total War game. It's absolutely ing ridiculous that there are so many threads like this. But, CA dropped the ball, and there are. The only thing they've really made progress with is the graphics, which is pretty damn sad.

[azbestor]

Sad thing is we shouldn't even compare these games. Rome II was released 9 years after Rome I (which is pretty huge), with a 40% larger budget than any other Total War game. It's absolutely ing ridiculous that there are so many threads like this. But, CA dropped the ball, and there are. The only thing they've really made progress with is the graphics, which is pretty damn sad.

First thing most people are not realizing, that they are those 10 years older and more experienced. There's rarely that nice "oh, so that's how it works" feeling, isn't it? Was R1 better, than R2? Beats me, ATM both are not appealing to me, thanks to too old graphics (I know, mods are making miracles, but I prefer to mod game only after being content with vanillia) or too shallow gameplay.

Answering OP:
Lacking any description of what type of level it is about:
(Un)Playability:R2 achieved that first day for me. R1 wasn't that The Important TW to me, M2TW was and playing in reverse is not too shabby (I love Morrowind, yet Daggerfall is bit to archaic). R2 had chance, but CA blew it. Still, in theoretical situation, where my only available PC is good enough to run RTW and nothing more from TW, it's match between Alpha Centauri, Diablo 2 and RTW, with quite high chance of RTW winning. Now, replacing R1 with R2 and old, poor PC with one 3 years old, yet able to run most titles in vicinityhood of max settings, sorry, it's quite a list of games taking precedence, including M2TW and S2TW.
Graphics: R2's done it first day.
That strange ability to make you sitting on edge of your chair, during last, desperate charge in bad situation: nope.
That strange need to watch last moments of last enemy soldier in slo-mo: nope. I can't see him
That strange addictive "one more turn", every civver knows too well: nope.
R2 doesn't bind me to events on the screen in any way. Albeit I'm not a fan of R1, there was that.