Discussion of Total War: Rome II generally as a game

[Septentrionalis]

I was driving thread "How do you determine what technologies to research first?" off-topic when asking about whether the tech tree contains implausible items that do not fit a serious historical simulation.

You're welcome! Morticia's advice is good.

I've heard people complaining that newer Total War games are arcadey, too. As I see it, to be arcadey, a game should have a significant similarity with arcade games. Arcade games like Space Invaders, Frogger and Asteroids were simple, repetitive and were all about reflexes. Rome II has shortcomings, like any Total War game. To be fair, levelling up agents in the late campaign can get a bit repetitive.

Even so, with its research trees, cultural groups, food mechanics, army traditions and internal politics, Rome II seems to me to be more complex, not more simple, than its predecessors. I don't see it as similar to arcade games in any significant way. (If you'd like to continue discussing the strengths and shortcomings of this game, I suggest that we do this on another thread, if that's okay.)

I do think as well that the word arcadey is not the correct term here. I am an old gamer, and to me arcadey kind of implies level jumping, using joystick for control, and the kinds of things you mentioned.

What I am trying to grasp here is the notion of games that are not serious. Such as if you make a historical simulation of classical antiquity, you do not incorporate any fantasy elements or things like that. So the notion of "researching" champions that magically make your unit's soldiers fight better sounded to me on the surface as something approaching "Gladius +2 of Slaying Celts". However, you explained it in a way that I think I could find myself able to roleplay the notion of champion in a satisfying way in Rome II, and I am still looking forward to buying the game.

If anyone wants to share a few thoughts on why Rome II is a great game for someone who likes serious historical simulation, it is much appreciated!

[Alwyn]

Yes, I associate arcade games with those things too - and also with games that are completely unforgiving. Arcade games often require you to exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment or you lose a life. I like the way that Rome II doesn't have a time limit to fulfil the campaign objectives, so it's relatively forgiving. When I lose a battle, I can learn from it and continue the campaign, rather than going back to a saved game because I need to win every battle to satisfy the victory conditions before the deadline. Rome didn't win every battle historically, so neither should Rome in the game (or any faction).

Yes, if champions magically made your units better that wouldn't make sense. They make your units better after years of continuous training (the champion needs to remain attached to the army and, to have a significant effect, needs to select skill development related to training), which seems reasonable.

I see Rome II as a historical sandbox rather than a serious historical simulation. I enjoy historical challenges in the game, such as how to survive against Rome when playing as Carthage, but I see it as a strategy game loosely based on history, not a simulation of history. I'm wondering if you experience any Total War game as a serious historical simulation, and if so, what specific features or mechanics make it like that.

[Septentrionalis]

I like the way that Rome II doesn't have a time limit to fulfil the campaign objectives, so it's relatively forgiving. When I lose a battle, I can learn from it and continue the campaign, rather than going back to a saved game because I need to win every battle to satisfy the victory conditions before the deadline. Rome didn't win every battle historically, so neither should Rome in the game (or any faction).

There are very few things that I hate in games more than arbitrary time limits that are not justified in some manner, so I hear you there. That is what killed my interest towards the newer X-COM series. Well, respawning enemies in 3D shooters probably takes the ultimate prize. But that kind of deadline you mention in a strategy game makes no sense.

They make your units better after years of continuous training (the champion needs to remain attached to the army and, to have a significant effect, needs to select skill development related to training), which seems reasonable.

I am starting to think that the semantics of research and champion led me into thinking that something is not right. If we had talked about training of leaders or something like that it would have sounded better even if the game mechanic was equal. Even if I complain about these things, I am still quite willing to roleplay things and imagine game mechanics as simply representing something reasonable in the "real" world.

I see Rome II as a historical sandbox rather than a serious historical simulation. I enjoy historical challenges in the game, such as how to survive against Rome when playing as Carthage, but I see it as a strategy game loosely based on history, not a simulation of history. I'm wondering if you experience any Total War game as a serious historical simulation, and if so, what specific features or mechanics make it like that.

An excellent point. I have again used a word carelessly. I did not imply or expect that a simulation should recreate historical events as they occurred. In fact, that sounds like something we would not need a game for in the first place because we would know how it ends. What I meant was a game that tries to recreate the historical situation to certain degree without taking too many liberties with actual history of what would be possible in that historical context. Druids casting spells (or heads as in the original Rome) or Egyptian pyramid-builders and Romans coexisting would be the kind of things that I would prefer not to see.

In the event that someone reading this has not played Medieval II total conversion Europa Barbarorum II, I would like to take the opportunity to say that it is as serious and as impressive as anything you are going to see. It is as historically accurate as it possibly can be with an astounding amount historical detail including classical and reconstructed languages of the era being used. I have played it a lot and have barely scratched the surface, and I still get that feeling of awe and disbelief about it. Like I cannot believe that this kind of mod actually exists. And very little if anything that breaks my immersion because it feels artificial and "gamey".

[Alwyn]

I'd say that Rome II re-creates the historical situation to an extent. The campaign would differ from history in ways that might annoy you. In the main campaign, AI Rome sometimes expands and sometimes is conquered. To be fair, this makes me think - the main campaign starts in the early 3rd century BC, when Rome was dominant in Italy but not in Western Europe. Was Rome's rise inevitable at that point? In a strict historical sense it was since it happened - but how much would have needed to change for a different outcome?

You might prefer the campaigns which focus on specific time periods - Imperator Augustus for the civil war after the murder of Julius Caesar and Empire Divided for the crisis of the 3rd century - to the main campaign. The unfolding of historical events is more closely linked to actual history, there are a lot of historical characters and the turns involve a shorter time period than the main campaign, so generals last longer.

Druidic Nobles in Rome II increase the morale of nearby units by a chant ability which is similar to the morale boost from a general or elite unit. It seems reasonable that druids could inspire warriors even if no actual magic was involved. There can be gamey moments in Rome II for example with general abilities, but they seemed to have toned those down a bit in recent patches, so battles are less about generals using their abilities and more about the units and tactics.

I've see a bit of EB II by watching Drtad's Hayastan AAR, the Aura of the Orontids. It looks like a very impressive historical realism mod, with a lot of depth.

[Septentrionalis]

I'd say that Rome II re-creates the historical situation to an extent. The campaign would differ from history in ways that might annoy you. In the main campaign, AI Rome sometimes expands and sometimes is conquered. To be fair, this makes me think - the main campaign starts in the early 3rd century BC, when Rome was dominant in Italy but not in Western Europe. Was Rome's rise inevitable at that point? In a strict historical sense it was since it happened - but how much would have needed to change for a different outcome?

I guess I have not made my point clear enough that varying outcomes are not the thing that annoys me. Quite the opposite; I absolutely love the possibility of history changing its course due to gameplay choices of both the human player and the unpredictable results of what AI-controlled factions do. That is what makes it a game and an interesting excercise in how things could have been. The fact that Rome turned out to be what it was was not a given, either. The Celts were very close to putting an end to Rome in real history as well, but for some reason they chose not to expand at that critical time. We could just as well have a world in which Celtic instead of Italic or Latin words describe everything from computers to political concepts.

You might prefer the campaigns which focus on specific time periods - Imperator Augustus for the civil war after the murder of Julius Caesar and Empire Divided for the crisis of the 3rd century - to the main campaign. The unfolding of historical events is more closely linked to actual history, there are a lot of historical characters and the turns involve a shorter time period than the main campaign, so generals last longer.

Druidic Nobles in Rome II increase the morale of nearby units by a chant ability which is similar to the morale boost from a general or elite unit. It seems reasonable that druids could inspire warriors even if no actual magic was involved. There can be gamey moments in Rome II for example with general abilities, but they seemed to have toned those down a bit in recent patches, so battles are less about generals using their abilities and more about the units and tactics.

I've see a bit of EB II by watching Drtad's Hayastan AAR, the Aura of the Orontids. It looks like a very impressive historical realism mod, with a lot of depth.

I have been a long-time proponent of granting primarily morale boni instead of fighting stat boni to units because of good leadership or inspiring characters / units being present, although I understand that actual fighting stats could also be improved with proper leadership. Just perhaps to a more modest degree. I would also like to see that unit boni would be not be tied to individual troops alone, because a certain esprit de corps is a real thing in my opinion. Many in the in the EBII section of the forum consider that retraining units is cheating; in their opinion unit experience should diminish directly proportionally to the number of new recruits. I have a reason to disagree with that. New recruits in a predominantly experienced and battle-hardened unit are not at the same disadvantage that those in a completely new and rookie unit are.

[Septentrionalis]

I watched an early review of Rome II and was shocked to learn that there was a capture the flag mechanism in field battles. I mean that holding some random flag for 30 seconds somewhere on the battlefield will grant you victory regardless of what else is going on. Also, the the review stated that battles are unnaturally short.

Are those things still around at this point?

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Flags are only left in sieges. Fortified settlements have a central victory point (simulating the acropolis/forum/palace/chief court) and cities on a higher level some other flag points additionally, which give some moral boost if conquered. I personally like that, as it give some room for extra strategy (sneaking across the walls while defenders are busy on a other part of the wall). And surprising storming of acropolis happened(storming of Akrokorinth in Korinth by Achaean League).

Battles are longer than at the release with five minutes, smaller ones around 7, bigger ones > 10 minutes. Honestly i like that and hate slow motion battles. The more battles are slow in TW games, the worse the AI is. Thats the reason, why i can't play RTW or Med II anymore.

[Septentrionalis]

Thank you for the information, Morty. That means that getting Rome 2 is still the plan. Although I like realism, it might be nice to be able to play without so much dedication. If I want to get back to 45-minute battles, I can always play Europa Barbarorum.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Flags are only left in sieges. Fortified settlements have a central victory point (simulating the acropolis/forum/palace/chief court) and cities on a higher level some other flag points additionally, which give some moral boost if conquered. I personally like that, as it give some room for extra strategy (sneaking across the walls while defenders are busy on a other part of the wall). And surprising storming of acropolis happened(storming of Akrokorinth in Korinth by Achaean League).

Battles are longer than at the release with five minutes, smaller ones around 7, bigger ones > 10 minutes. Honestly i like that and hate slow motion battles. The more battles are slow in TW games, the worse the AI is. Thats the reason, why i can't play RTW or Med II anymore.

Haha, to scare you a bit, Morticia:

Hi Guys,
I've been playing a Pritanoi campaign and I have much fun with the battles in the EBII. I'm a micromanagement freak, I think, so my battles are very long and the losses are minimized. Or are they? I'm curious how do they compare to your experience.
Below there's data on 15 battles played in EBII 2.35 against Eleutheroi with similar or better troops. The battle difficulty level was Very Hard, what was very palpable in two aspects: killing (against similar units my troops were seriously loosing) and stamina (my troops were almost instantly exhausted, while the AI were always fresh). All the battles were initiated by myself, all were won, in one case there was a risk of defeat (or wasn't?). I didn't have problems with morale due to my generals. The tigernos had like 4-6 Command, up to 3 Command while Attacking, up to 6 TroopMorale and up to 6 Confidence (what is equivalent to TroopMorale) - that meant that all units had the maximum morale irrespectively from their base values (he effectively added 23 morale). They would also fight the very last man without a rout. In a few battles, I've used some other generals with lower stats (so perhaps adding only 4-6 to morale) but the units didn't flee either (but two cases when they're overwhelmed locally).

[1-1] 10%, 40 min.
[2-1] 20%, 40 min.
[1-1] 10%, 50 min.
[2-1] 15%, 75 min.
[1-1] 20%, 60 min.
[1-1] 20%, 75 min.
[1-1] 30%, 90 min.
[1-1] 30%, 25 min.
[1-1] 10%, 8 min.
[1-1] 40%, 130 min. (battle in a hilly landscape)
[1-1] 30%, 50 min.
[2-1] 20%, 35 min. (unexperienced general with 0 Command and morale)
[1-1] 30%, 60 min.
[1-2] 45%, 120 min. (large siege battle)
[5-3] 5%, 6 min.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Thank you for the information, Morty. That means that getting Rome 2 is still the plan. Although I like realism, it might be nice to be able to play without so much dedication. If I want to get back to 45-minute battles, I can always play Europa Barbarorum.

You can still always use mods, which adds more in-depth-realism like DeI.

Personally i use my own Overhaul mod, which adds more characters, units, building diversity + a population mechanic mod, which ties units to a 1-4 population classes. You care more about your warrior class units, if you haven't endless of them.

I tried EB II and TES-Med II mod, but the AI and battles didn't convince me/are not my taste( but not because i lost the battles, i won them all on Hard).

@Jurand: It doesn't frighten me, if you are entertained in this 45 minutes, everything is fine.

[Septentrionalis]

I tried EB II and TES-Med II mod, but the AI and battles didn't convince me/are not my taste( but not because i lost the battles, i won them all on Hard).

At the risk of going a bit off topic with EBII, I know that battles become too easy, especially when you discover that winning cavalry superiority in the early battle (sending a big cavalry contingent to pick off enemy cavalry units in the beginning) will win almost all battles.

I dislike upping combat difficulty to counter that because it essentially means that in one-on-one confrontations of identical units the player always loses. That is in some way immersion-breaking or gamey, but on the other hand, the problems of AI cannot be helped really in any other way. Besides roleplaying and making weaker stacks, which is not fun either.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Yeah , two years ago i did put up battle difficulty to very hard, but now i only increase campaign difficulty to very hard, as mob with clubs having a moral like royal guard is really immersion breaking. At least Rome II Cav are not so rolling tanks like in previous titles, only the very heavy cavalry, what is realistic as ancient horse breeds were smaller than in Middle age or today.

[Gyrosmeister]

Discovered this thread just now, but I will share my thoughts.
First of all this +2 gladius to kill Celts gimmick exists even in the older Total War games, even in Medieval II you had all kinds of that gave you +2 command, +1 piety, -3 chivalry or whatever.
Objectively, Rome II base game is not something to experience Historical simulation of Hellenistic antiquity, (not even with the bigger overhaul mods like DEI, they get many things wrong in terms of historicity). It's not about stuff like unit balance, like some made up Celtic Units beating Macedonian Phalangites, even if in reality in the setting of the game the various elite Macedonian Phalangites represent veterans of Alexander's campaign and of the Diadochoi conflicts, so they should have been the most overpowered units in the base game. These stuff can be easily fixed with a unit balance mod or two.
Reason 1 why Rome II is not a simulation of Hellenistic antiquity: Naval warfare is broken and a buggy mess, ships get stuck, the classic tactics of breaking rows to immobilize a ship or using them as a last ditch attempt to stop a ram from wrecking you don't exist, corvus exists but it's bugged as hell and hidden in the game files.
Reason 2: Sieges have a completely retarded torch mechanic, this was probably done to stop players from glitching out the AI and leaving it without any single option to assault a walled settlement, but its implementation is a dumb mess. Plus, siege towers are overpowered as , in real life they quite often would get stuck while trying to reach the wall in the first place (Like the Helepolis during the Siege of Rhodes by Demetrios Poliorketes)
Reason 3: No (simple) population mechanic. In my opinion, Medieval II did this the best, by having all units available and simply giving you elite units much less frequently than the spearman that got levied from a farm. Some overhaul mods, like DEI mentioned above have population mechanics (it all started with a mod called People of Rome), but even that doesn't give you completely historical gameplay. If you wanted to go full historical mode you should have had some set population groups (like Alexander's/Diadochoi veterans mentioned above) that were a set number at the start and would not regenerate. Or in case of the Romans, you cannot mass grant citizenship and other stuff to get a huge buff to your manpower after getting slaughtered.
Reason 4: Many important cities outright missing, like Ambrakia (the capital of Pyrrhos), or Syracuse not having walls (thankfully this was fixed in some campaigns released later and retroported by mods).
Reason 5: No differences in governments between absolute monarchy, the Greek Koina, the Barbarian chiefdoms, the Spartan Diarchy etc. Only difference are basically different modifiers and some political actions being blocked etc.
Reason 6: Pitched battles starting immediately with the slaughter. More often than not, the first 2-3 days of a pitched battle (like at the Kynos Kephalon) were light infantry and cavalry scouting and trying to occupy some hills or other strategic vantage points and skirmishing a little bit against each other before the main bodies came to fight it out.
Reason 7: No officer system. In Rome II you simply have your General and that's it in the army. No Chiliarchoi, Taxiarchoi, Lochagoi in Greek cases or Centurions etc being mechanically separate entities in-game. This is important because they played an essential part during the battles, often deciding the outcome, or before it. Like at Pydna in 168 B.C. a main reason that Perseus lost (and one that is not that widely known, Rome II's interpretation of the battle is completely wrong in that regard) was that the senior cavalry officers betrayed him the night before the battle and never showed up with their cavalry.
Reason 8: Female Generals overrepresented in Barbarian factions, or being possible for like Ptolemaic Egypt, (yes Cleopatra VII blah blah blah, also an Archon of Korinth at some point was a woman), but the instances of it actually happened are way too little to warrant such a representation in the game.

If you wanted a full blown historical simulation, these stuff would have been implemented better, or simply implemented in the first place. I could go on and on but for the sake of it I stop here. But as far as historical Total War games go, Rome II is surprisingly one of the more historical ones (3 Kingdoms doesn't count as a historical in my eyes, Rome I and Medieval II were -albeit limited by engine at the time- very dubious historically, Attila base game is more of a city ransacked by Huns and Germans than a proper game)

But let's not forget that this is a video game, and so completely different than real life. Many of the "unrealistic stuff" that are in the game, like those full blown technology trees (in reality most of the technologies are historically baseless, forcing you to wait to unlock buildings or units that already existed at this point in life) are there to serve gameplay and give you sense of progression and limiting you from getting buildings with very strong effects early in the game. Also regarding Point 7 I made. Let's consider the Total War formula. It is Turn Based campaign building with Real Time battles. How well would micromanaging petty officers and nobles fit in the formula? For some that could be fun, perhaps having come from Paradox games, but if you play Total War, chances are you want to duke it out on the battlefield and not play Byzantine intrigue simulator. Many of the points that would make Rome II (or in fact any historical total war) closer to a simulator simply do not fit well in the Total War formula.

So far I may have sounded pretty negatively, like almost every hardcore TW fan out there (not going to mention extreme cases of blinders like Volound or some other YTers like him). But if you look at the numbers, Rome II still remains very popular among the playerbase? Some may say that it is just because it's the most modern game set in the beloved antiquity, with Rome I being increasingly harder to run on modern systems. Yet Rome Remastered failed miserably, maybe some of that "Rome I best game ever" vibes that people are spreading is simply bound to nostalgia and the fact that Rome II was dogshit at launch.

If you are into historical simulation, why should you get this game? I will give you a few reasons, shameless advertising of my mods so that you can upvote them is not included

Reason 1: Pike and Cavalry warfare works surprisingly well, given the limitations that they have on an Engine that was designed on gunpowder combat. Phalangites kill slowly, like they did historically, but serving a wonderful dish for your cavalry to massacre them from the rear.
Reason 2: Has a surprisingly good public order system compared to older titles, with it being carried over to newer titles since. Settlements won't instantly revolt the moment you move your General away (this happened a lot in Rome I/Medieval II, but the speed of a possible revolt will depend on many factors, like buildings, culture etc.
Reason 3: The game has a really good party loyalty mechanic that is bound to the civil wars. You have to keep political rivals happy and appease them from time to time, otherwise they will give you the middle finger. Some settings perhaps need to be finetuned with a mod or two, but the baseline is good.
Reason 4: Generals are more "soft" compared to older games. In something like Med II, there was an exploit you could do to kill a general, but if you didn't want to cheese the game, the general entity inside the unit was an overpowered tank. From what I have noticed, this has been carried over here as well, but to a lesser extent. This is more historical, as at Cannae I think, one of the Roman Generals there was killed very very early on in the battle by an accurate slingshot.
Reason 5: I am not sure if CA designed it that way, but in the family tree, boys are more likely to spawn than girls, hinting to sex-selective abortion which was prevalent in certain cultures at the time.
Reason 6: Ranged Combat works really well. You can punish a poorly balanced army that relies solely on heavy infantry even with cheap skirmishers. Iphikrates had done exactly that to the Spartans at the battle of Lechaion.

I think these are the main points for hardcore stuff since you mentioned that specifically. On a steam sale I think it's a very good pick up, yes it has a lot of DLC but there is plenty of content to chew through, before thinking about buying DLC. And there are many mods, from complete overhauls to vanilla plus style stuff.

[Maximinus Thrax]

What's the current status of the vanilla game ten years after its initial release? I can still remember the general rage following the release back then. The main reason it's still the only TW release I haven't played yet.

[Alwyn]

Yes, there was a lot of (understandable) rage when the game was released. While it's not perfect, I'd say that it's much better now - and I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Main differences with Rome II now compared to how it was on release:

• Family Trees / Political System - Your political party now has a family system tied to it (husbands / wives, children, heirs etc). You can enact more political / character intrigues (24 compared to release's 4). Government types, better party management. Civil wars are no longer inevitable and can happen multiple times to varying degrees - "Secession" if just one party breaks away, fullscale traditional "Civil War" if more than one party breaks away. They only occur if you don't manage politics very well.
• Seasons - Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. They basically act like the seasons from Shogun II, but can provide some positive / negative effects.
• Wonders - Give factionwide bonuses and are visually represented on the campaign map + battle maps (if you fight close to them).
• Balanced Agents - No more endless poisoning of wells with the "Spy" agents.
• DLC - There's a crap load of DLC options available. They're mostly more campaign and faction options (you don't need to buy the faction packs if you don't want to play as them - the AI have access to all the new stuff for free).
• Graphics - MSAA, water reflections, god rays, cloud shadows, ability to turn proximity fading on / off, better lighting (especially in night battles), particle effects are affected by wind direction + strength etc. There's more visual diversity between some units now, such as African elephants, transport ships etc.
• Performance - The game is more optimised compared to release. Everything seems to run faster / smoother. The only exception is the campaign map loading times - they're quite long (especially with certain mods enabled which affect the Grand Campaign - it can make them take up to 4 or 5 minutes to load).
• UI - Faction's colours and icons aren't as saturated as they were on release - their colours are now more naturalistic. The UI's aesthetics have been changed a bit to look slightly more marble-like (especially in the Empire Divided DLC campaign). Skill trees now look more like Shogun II's, where - at a glance - you can see all the skills and their requirements as a tree diagram making them much easier to read.
• Fewer Bugs - I'm not saying the game is bugless, but compared to release, it is way better than it used to be. I haven't seen the notorious land-ship or LOD face bugs ever since early-2014 in my battles.
• Lots of Minor Fixes / Tweaks - Example: Ships can now disembark off of beaches after landing their units, which allows all ships to land their units. Now you won't ever have a situation where ships get stuck at sea, unable to land once all beach slots are taken.

Well, here's a quick recap of the main changes. I'm just covering the stuff from the new patches in the past year or so.

• For the Family Tree, this video ( "How Family Trees Work" ) gives a good overview of this new feature, and it's only a couple of minutes long so. It's by no means comprehensive, but it's a good place to start. You can also learn a lot by mousing over the various intrigues and other details in the UI.
• Politics have been heavily overhauled. But basically you want to maximise your influence, while keeping other parties loyal to avoid secessions and civil wars from happening. A good way to get some loyalty is by using the Political Marriage Intrigue to marry your sons to their daughters and visa versa. Also be cautious when handing out promotions, spread them around between the different parties not just your guys. And each party controls a certain amount of your territory based on their influence. You can see what territory is controlled by which party on the Strategic View, choose the "Political Party Affiliation" button.
• One of the other major changes has been Agents. They've been toned down a bit, made more specialised, but also had a load of new abilities added, some of which are unlocked by talents. If you right click on the Agent cards in game it will bring up a new page giving details of how that Agent type works, as well their abilities, and if you mouse over those it tells you what the ability does and the attribute (Authority, Cunning or Zeal) which affects that specific ability. While you won't be laying waste to garrisons and armies by poisoning them (at least at low levels,) you can do other interesting things like having a Spy Steal food, a Dignitary bribe a single enemy unit to disband or a General to join your army, use an agent (I forget which type) to burn some of an enemy armies ammo before a battle etc.
• Related to that, both Generals and Agents now have some Culture/Faction Specific Skills they can choose when levelling up, rather than having the exact same Skill tree regardless of faction. So for example an Iceni Champion can gain a Skill which means every unit in the army they are attached to gets the "Frenzy" ability, while a Greek General looking to increase their Zeal might choose to be a "Philosopher" which has replaced the standard "Warrior" Skill in their tree.
• Also General Abilities like Rally, Inspire, Second Wind etc are now unlocked by specific Skills, instead of by the level of your Authority, Cunning or Zeal. This helps to make each of your Generals more unique, as the Skills you choose doesn't just affect basic attributes but battlefield abilities as well.

People complained that agents were overpowered (I agree, the first time an army was mass poisoned by high-level enemy agents, I felt like my army had been the target of an air strike). Agents were nerfed. People complained that transport ships were more powerful than warships. Now, warships (at least for factions whose ships have rams) reliably sink transports. People complained that we had no family tree, the old politics system didn't make sense and that civil wars were arbitrary. Now, we have a family tree, we can see the reasons why a rival party is loyal or not (by hovering over their loyalty score), different political strategies are available (such as not appointing rivals to command roles, or appointing them and promoting them alongside supporters of the ruling faction) and we can see which regions are controlled by which party. In my previous Carthage campaign, defeating African kingdoms was fairly easy, now it's harder since AI African kingdoms can use the larger roster from the Desert Kingdoms DLC. Battles are more challenging, I'm seeing better flanking from the AI and more aggressive moves (such as cavalry charging into my skirmishers and general, then withdrawing to charge again just like a player would).

The game still has shortcomings. For example, it seems odd to me that, if I sack or raze a city, my faction controls the ruined settlement (and has to deal with the public order issues and pay to rebuild buildings). Cities still either have walls or they don't (we can't add them to a city which doesn't have them) - this doesn't bother me much, as I like defending settlements without walls, making the most of choke-points. Armies still need a general (we can't move units around the campaign map without a general) and there's a maximum number of generals; this is okay with me, as it encourages the player to think about which borders need to be defended with armies, to use diplomacy to establish some (fairly) safe borders, and to plan ahead when expanding (and I can usually have a 'supply general' behind the lines, recruiting units from barracks in safe regions and marching them to the front lines.) Cities still have a limited number of building slots; however, they share the effects of buildings across a province of two to four regions. While provinces can become specialised, they don't have to be - the same province can recruit units, grow food, generate money and spread your culture. The AI is better than it was (for example, AI factions are more aggressive on the campaign map), but it still makes sometimes (for example, if the player is defending an unwalled city and guards every choke-point with pikes, the AI will cheerfully send cavalry in a doomed attack).

Despite the shortcomings, I enjoy Rome II a lot. Different cultural groups play in very different ways and, within cultural groups I like the variety of faction rosters and starting positions. I enjoy the challenging starts of some factions, such as the Suebi who are stealthy in their forests but under attack from the start, the Hellenic colony of Syracuse (caught in between the Roman Republic and Carthage, and in danger from both) and Carthage (caught in between Rome and some African kingdoms - I played as Carthage before the later patches and it was easy because neither Rome nor the African kingdoms were aggressive or dangerous; but after the later patches, both Rome and African kingdoms can be both).

While I play single-player campaigns, I enjoy watching skilled players demonstrate clever tactics, such as Heir of Carthage and Maximus Decimus Meridius (there are examples on this thread.) Rome II campaigns have inspired some great AARs, such as Toutatis Favours the Brave by Welsh Dragon.

[Maximinus Thrax]

Thanks a lot for that thorough answer, Alwyn! I'll make sure to buy the game next time it's on sale then. Good to know things have improved a bit since the 2013-2014 forum pandemonium.