[Hijack]
I thought you guys might like this video. Creative Assembley had some extra marketing budget and hired the Extra Credits crew (check them out here) to make a short series on the Punic Wars. This is the first video of four.
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My computer works again. Yay! And Rome II runs without the ground being all flickery, though icons are still messed up and performance is poor. Oh, well.
I’m starting to get a good war machine going. I absolutely love that I can upgrade my hastati and principes to legionaries; inability to do that was one of my pet peeves in Rome I. I’ve left Carthage and Greece untouched so far; Macedon was knocked out early, and now Sparta has taken over Athens and Epirus. I hope my showdown with Sparta will be interesting.
So far I like the new province management system, though I haven’t fully gotten the hang of it yet. I think I’m producing way too much food, out of force of habit from Shogun II. Public order is interesting as well, and probably a lot trickier when one isn’t playing as the Junia (I am).
When you say “shite”, do you mean ridiculously powerful? Armstrong guns are much more deadly than Gatling guns. Even the cannons in the vanilla campaign can lay waste to a fortress in short order.
After improving pretty steadily in the last few installments, the Total War tactical AI really seems to have retrograded. Not that it was ever great, but by Shogun II it at least didn’t feel like I was playing a chess tournament against someone with downs-syndrome.
But Rome II seems as bad or maybe even a little worse then Rome I.
I said apart from FotS! Rule of fun also means that Gatling guns are superior to Armstrong; press H and go to town. Afraid you aren’t gonna change my mind on the vanilla, though. The pathetic arty in Shogun II always had the lowest kill count of all my units. Fortresses were easily captured with infantry.
Well, I’m going to play it. I never really expected the AI to be too improved.
Someone ought to start a new series of games where there is no historical backdrop, the units and map are colored squares, the action takes place in text, but the AI is wicked good. Later iterations of this game can improve on the sound and graphics and so on.
Having a lot of fun. Playing as Rome first, happy to report that Legionares are butcher-machines. I invested a bit in artillery at first, remembering the brutal efficiency of cannister shot and the like from previous games, but I’d forego it entirely in Rome if I started over. Only one out of two-to-four settlements have walls, and in field battles there’s too much movement for them to have much effect. Another stack of cavalry will do far better. Artillery should either have their price lowered, be free in fortification combat or have their efficiency upped.
Skirmishers are good to have in small-scale conflicts, but in death-stacks they have limited use. I tend to have two or three to stick behind the meat-wall to focus fire enemy cavalry stacks that get tangled in infighting. Cavalry are incredibly effective on the flanks and to round up enemy skirmishers, then falling in the rear of the enemy melee forces. They’ll literally tear apart skirmishers in ten seconds.
ETA: A tip for those just starting. Invest heavily in population happiness from the start. In later tiers, almost every building you’ll want will have a negative effect on public happiness, especially military, factories and heavy-duty farming. You’re going to want a big buffer.
I, too have seen Carthage more or less collapse without my (military) interference. I suspect that it has to do with culture and public order being managed at a province-wide level. Carthage has most of its territories in provinces shared with other cultures. I never went to war with them, but I did Latinize Sardinia and western Sicily; I think that Libya similarly disrupted Carthage itself.
Syracuse mopped up Carthage without me lifting a finger in my campaign as Rome.
Diplomacy I’m finding a lot different that previous TW games, it’s a bit hit and miss (as is the artillery, using giant ballistas - immobile, but pack one hell of a punch. Tried the polyboros, but not enough casualties). Factions you’re at war have realistic responses to you if they’re badly losing; offering cash for peace. Likewise now most of Europe is mine I’ve had factions approach me offering to become a client state of Rome, which never happened before.
That said, I’m sick of turns being interrupted by some pissant faction I’ve never heard of demanding half my treasury for a trade agreement. One faction in the middle of the African desert did it every turn; 17,000 denarii for a trade agreement that would yield 61 denarii per turn - I marched the Legio I Italica down there to permanently shut them up.
I do not get how trading works this time around. I have villages producing wine and olives, a shiny new trade port and everybody still wants several thousand, I dunno, denarii to trade with me. That doesn’t seem right?
Yeah, me neither. In all prior games trade agreements were pretty easy to get, unless you’d just been at war. As Rome, it seems that increasing the variety of resources you have access to drastically improves the chances of trade agreements being accepted although I still haven’t figured it out yet. None of the Greek factions want anything to do with trade at all.
Well, I guess I can do that, at least. The faction across the Adriatic with the marble deposit is so asking for it.
I suspect that I’ve been neglecting building up my generals. So far I’ve just been putting a guy from my house in charge of a new legion and only replacing him when he dies. This seems to lead to generals that reach rank 4 or 5 before dying of old age.
I need to try favoring certain generals. I capture a settlement in Dacia (general gets XP). Instead of leaving a gifted general in Dacia for years to pacify the province (little or no XP), I replace him with a newbie general from the pool, and send him back to Roma. The next turn, I can put my favorite general in charge of a different legion on the other side of the empire, and kick Treverii butt (more XP). It is my hope that I can build up a general or two to a really high rank to get high offices and big bonuses. I got a faulty tooltip, though; it said he could become Consul at rank 6 (-10% corruption empire-wide, and other bonuses!) but he got a different office instead. Dang.
Argh, just got hit by the AI dumb.
Was fending off over 2,000 enemy troops with a rather lackluster garrison. I should have died, badly. The auto resolve certainly thought so too. But I figured, I’d try to inflict as much damage as possible in an actual battle.
Well, the AI decides that instead of wearing me down with it’s 1,000 slingers, or surrounding the plaza with it’s spearman, it would be a much better idea to bum rush all it’s units down a single narrow street, while ignoring my army as it massacres its units. All because it really, really, really wanted to capture that flag behind me.
I heard about the game being far too flag-centric. I guess that’s true? As in, even when you’re defending out in the field, you still have to defend a flag out in the middle of nowhere instead of actually choosing the spot you want to defend.
It’s not always the case, It’s either random, or only in cases when you sally out to attack a sieging army or perhaps when defending. I’m not entirely sure. But yeah, there are some battles, fought in the open field where for some reason there is a stupid flag that you have to defend. The flag falls in under a minute too, so if you try to maneuver at all, it’s likely the AI will campt it and win. On the other hand, it’ll ignore you while it attempts to do so, so defending it might net you a victory.
It’s basically broken. It shouldn’t be there, since it limits tactical gameplay, and the AI certainly can’t wrap it’s head around it anyway.
I’m not even sure they’re necessary in siege combat. It shoudl be about breaking the opposite army.
I would say, if they keep them, have them be more logical, and provide certain bonuses, not outright win an engagement. Like say, one could be near a supply tain on the battlefiled, and capturing it gives you more ammo, raises moral, etc.
Or capturing one in a siege battle with multiple layers of defense (like in Carthage) refreshes your troops, maybe nets you a couple of pleb units, etc.
Well, I’ve run into a couple of late game issues. I’m not sure why, but the game keeps locking up or blue screening me late in the game. I guess it has to do with having so many units(?), but I noticed around 50 BC that the game would just lock up and I’d have to alt tab out and reload. Around 25 BC I started getting occasional blue screens as well as a lock up from time to time. This always happens during the computers turn.
Other than that I’m having a hard time late in the game keeping my food in the positive. It wasn’t an issue through much of the game, but I guess the buildings I’m upgrading too are costing me so much food that I keep going negative. I’ve researched just about everything on the civilian side at this point so I don’t think there are any more bonus food tech coming down the pike. Kind of sucks since you have to upgrade stuff to keep the population happy and keep your cities from becoming nasty plague ridden hell holes, but upgrading seems to draw off more and more food. My empire is huge, so that might be part of the issue. The funny thing is that I almost never had to actually fight anyone. I just sat back and waited until provinces rebelled then marched in, killed the rebels and took the territory. I basically go all of North Africa, Spain, all of the islands in the Med and most of Greece and the eastern coast of the Med this way. Hell, I even have the best parts of Egypt. All without fighting anyone major (I had some of the barbarian tribes in northern Spain and France attack me, but they were no problem). I think there are some balance issues that need to be addressed if the AI can’t even keep the major powers in charge of their own territory through a game.
Yeah, food is starting to be a problem for me, too. I can’t build level IV farms yet, but I think that that will lead to massive public order issues. I’m starting to suspect that it’s best to keep one’s outlying provinces as low-level backwaters; farms and ranches kept at low levels to minimize squalor. Maybe things will get easier once I finish the tech tree. Scriptoria sure are hungry buildings.
I can’t even seem to do that in my game. Carthage is held by Punic Rebels and I sent an army down there because Cato talked me into it, but when I try to attack it just says it can’t do that. The only other force around is a Carthaginian fleet blockade, and as far as I can tell it shouldn’t be able to block land attacks since it only has a zone of control at sea. I don’t know what’s going on any more.
I believe that’s a bug. Or at least is being discussed at such over at the CA forums.
As far as I can tell with the way amphibious assaults works now blockading counts as besieging a settlement, and you can only initiate an attack on a settlement once, so if you start with a blockade at sea, you can’t then start a siege by land, and vice versa.
I have the same problem where a rebel settlement has been continuously under blockade by a neutral faction for over a decade, and it seems like the only way to go forward would be to declare war on that faction, drive them off, then attack the rebels, which is too much trouble for what its worth, for now.