Rome II Total Realism - Beta Feedback and Suggestions

[Mausolos of Caria]

Yeah, your last point is absolutely spot on, JaM. I thinkt he changes you want to pursue now must be the right way, it's just the old problem of balancing then.

[Alma69]

actually, no, that sarrisa was accurate. it was a presentation of Koryvantes - association of historical studies.. these guys would not blame themselves using historically incorrect replicas. you can find more details on their home page.

In any source that I have seen, it is stayed 5-6 meters, 5-6 kilo, made from two pieces.
While we don`t know how they screwed together two pieces, we know that they was made from two, some say that it have to be some lighter and harder wood then those available this days.
They over done it, its far over sized to the silly point. They did it for show needs, to make bigger ohh wow factor.
If you want to see how ancient phalanx could look, take a closer look at renesans swiss keils. No one in they mind would use this over sized thing.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...e_img_3653.jpg

some more common sense pics




















http://postimg.org/image/3vholsycl/

[La Tene]

Well, I don't see a big difference between these pikes and the one JaM posted. Pikes will get a bonus to damage in a coming update but I agree they should not be extremely effective - troops can quite easily back away from slower moving pikes and I agree it is not easy to produce a heavy blow with a long weapon like this.

[Yerevan]

This sarissa replica is too long, too heavy and too flexible.
I don`t think is accurate replica at all.

Real sarissa was made from two pieces smart screwed together. 5-6 meters. Some archeo says that wood it was made from is not available this days.
This thing is like 9 meters long and looks like it weight more then 10 kilo.

I have no opinion on the subject, but 10 meters, are you sure ? Cause really the sarissa in the Koryvantes vid does seem to be 6m. You can estimate this from the guy's size. He's shaped like a 1m75 max guy (1m80 at max!) and the Sarisse is x3,5 his size. Of course the one from your pics looks more like what we tend to imagine ; more to what we're used to see in CA games. But with the same kind of estimation you can see that the sarissa in all your pics is barely 5m.

If archeos says the wood is not avalaible anymore it would be really interesting to know which wood and how they did find out ? Do you know which archeo exactly said that ?

Anyway, thanks guys for the first time I realise how long and unconfortable a 5,6 meters spear is !

[La Tene]

I can imagine pikes being less cumbersome made from advanced modern materials, aluminum or titanium maybe? But the ancients were using wood. Did they have a superior wood that's gone extinct? Good question.

[JaM]

here is another video where you see a pike made of two pieces put together, and then moved around. You can clearly see that even if its just around 6kg heavy, guy is struggling holding it horizontally quite a lot, now imagine how hard it must have been to keep like that for extended period of time..

[La Tene]

Definitely looks awkward. I doubt you could thrust a weapon like that very hard because you're already dealing with a lot of counter balancing - stressing your muscles. A weapon like that is all about reach and not much else. Of course, you could deal some damage with a strong thrust but with the cost of tiring very fast. I do believe much more maneuverable pikes have been used in history, just not these ones.

[DrunkenHussar]

Hello everyone

First of all I would like to thank you and congratulate you for again an awesome mod. I also played Rome TR and now Rome II TR really fullfills the high expectations I had since I have been quite impressed by Rome TR.

I started a campaign with Macedon and so far everything looks pretty good. Even the strategic decisions of the AI and the development of the AI fractions seem to be realistic. Everything evolves slow but steady, the AI uses diplomacy a lot and many fractions seem to group within wide alliances. So every move towards war is more dangerous and even the AI doesent't go to war as easily as usual. It's decisively using opportunitys to strike though. This is a great improvement. No sucidal AI attacks. And it seems like it is not only for the player much harder to substitute a lost banner, but also for the AI. So there are fewer battles but those do really count. No Massproducing AI and big battles almost very round. Thank you for that. In the original version it has been rediculously how many battles came within one campaign against one even fraction. And beside: The battles against the AI are also some kind of challenging (I played vanilla, vae victis and now TR on very hard and just in TR the AI managed it to let my (more experienced) banners suffer actually considerable losses). On the other hand economy and investments now really show some satisfactory results. With some carefull investments it's finally possible to field some realistic forces. Philipp II supposedly deployed 30000 men at Chaironaia and since the ancient reports usually exaggerate the numbers of the deployed men I think the approximately 9500 men (army, fleet and garrisons) my Macedon (directly controlling just Pella and all of Thracia and controlling Apollonia and Larissa by vassalage) can easily sustain are more or less realistic. So finally TW isn't any more only about worring how much money there will be to feed the troops but actually if there could be a profitable war/campaign and how to win it. And with the again implemented opportunity to free settlemts one is actually able to secure the own borders with vassals. Also quite realistic since we can see in Caesar's Commentarii and in Thukydides Pelleponesian War that most of the time subdued enemy settlements haven't been fully occupied but have been held in vassalage via local authoritys. The AI uses it quite often as well. And it's also hard to stabilize an occupied country. All in all nice and challenging but not annoying.

But there is still an questionable occurence from time to time:

1. I just recently noticed that the transport ships of the Odryse faction have been as describe (new models, very weak and easily destroyed with some trieres, usually with a single hit), while romen transport ships still has been the old models and quite strong. I did need 2-4 hits by trieres and penteres to destroy them. And while doing this the roman have been able to unload salvos of pila and thus causing seriously causalaties to my marines. In the result some of my ships did flee prematurely.

2. I do really miss the possibility to besiege an entrenched enemy army. I just recently experienced the situation that an slightly decimated roman army (still strong enough to attack and conquer a settlement), and wich I did cut off from it's landing point in Apollonia by conquering Apollonia with my fleet, just took an entrenched Position between Apollonia annd Pella. They are to strong to storm the camp and they can't be ignored. They can decide to leave the camp whenever they want and then they can either attack Apollonia or Pella. So it has to be dealed with them but the only logical thing to do, to besiege the camp, isn't possible. And they are not loosing troops by missing supplys being in enmy country and cut off either.


Thanks again for your efforts, it's great work