In stark contrast to its E3 hype, Rome II was a mixed bag when it released in 2013 because not only was it graphically more demanding than Shogun II, it didn't even have the same shaders used in the E3 demo footage for Carthage, was buggy until Emperor Edition in 2014 fixed most issues and even gameplaywise, was a product of its time, when more complex campaign strategy games from Paradox Interactive were taking off, so back then Creative Assembly had told themselves, our consumers have become big boys, let’s give them a complex game that will make the mechanics of previous Total War games look like child’s play. So let’s first talk about the campaign map's changes. But I’ll be honest, every TW game has had a campaign map mechanics overhaul. Where Rome I had a simple system of the world map divided into provinces with each having a province capital with the same build list, and Medieval II splitting these into a City type & Castle type, while Empire, Napoleon & Shogun II distributed some of their buildings over the province itself on the campaign map in the form of smaller settlements like farms and mines that could be pillaged by enemy armies, in Rome II the buildings are all back inside (expandable) cities again, but the world map is divided into historical provinces (like “Italia”), and each province can consist of upto 4 regions. Each region has a city, but only the biggest city in each province, already predetermined at the start of the game, is walled, while the rest arent. Furthermore, while wealth is unique to every region, happiness, slaves & culture % are averaged for the entire province as a summation of activity in ALL regions of that province, i.e even unrest/temples from neighboring regions controlled by other factions! Because previous TW games had been plagued by a plethora of individual military units moving about on the campaign map, especially the AI's units that made some factions’ turns particularly long, the next departure from previous TW games is that in Rome II, you cant recruit units in cities and send them off on the campaign map. Instead, it is done on stacks led by generals. This had been sort of introduced in Empire TW and beyond already, but was a different system where the unit would still get recruited at the city and then march all the way across the campaign map to your general, taking several turns depending on how far away he was. In Rome 2 the units automatically appear in the general’s army next turn, and you can raise more units at a time than in previous TW games. Same regarding the navy. Instead of built at a port, you have to first enlist an admiral and can then recruit warships through him. What you can recruit is determined by the military building/port level in the region they are in. But building pics are just small icons. Unit cards are also mere silhouettes. You have an upper limit on how many generals/stacks you can have based on your overall faction strength. This also means that in order to swap units, two of your stacks/generals have to meet face-to-face rather than send each other units over a distance, thereby wasting movement as you have to both meet up in one spot. Merging two of the same, partially depleted troops is harder in that you can’t drag the unit card and drop it onto the other like in previous TW games, but have to select both (using ctrl) and only then does the merge option turn from grey to available. Similarly, armies & fleets also cant just raid enemy land & sea trade routes by right clicking on them on the campaign map, but must set their “stance” to raiding, that limits their movement and such. On the pro side, other movement stances are available, like forced march that gives you a big movement bonus at the expense of line of sight, morale and any attack automatically becoming an ambush. This new system also means you cant just quickly raise an army when you see the AI approaching one of your cities with the intent on taking it, unless you purposely keep a spare general ready to be deployed anywhere on the map. Otherwise, if all your generals are out conquering somewhere else on the campaign map, your cities will have to rely on their own garrison they generate as was introduced with Empire TW and beyond. Number and quality of the garrison is based on main administrative building level of that province, supplemented by the military building/dock. While such things were easier to see on the campaign maps of previous TW games in the form of grey blips, garrison size is a mere footnote found in the description of Rome II’s settlement buildings, so you have to do some careful reading. In general there is more reading in Rome II and things feel less intuitive compared to previous TW games. Rome II is also known for amphibious battles, i.e. where ships full of soldiers also take part in a land battle and have cool disembarking mechanics, whereby your units jump off their ship and charge into battle, and you can choose on which part of the coastline the ship will beach. Naval battles on the other hand, are atrocious (if you don’t know what you’re doing) compared to the fine wine that was Empire/Napoleon and decent mediocrity that was Shogun 2. In Rome II’s naval battles, ramming is the name of the game as it is completely overpowered, turning certain ships into bumpercars you need to micromanage – as often a single ram is enough to break up an entire enemy ship packed with soldiers and make everyone drown. Okay, this may have been a transport ship but still. Speaking of, your land armies can now march into water and are converted into a fleet of transport ships. However, they still need a proper navy as escort, because otherwise they are very vulnerable to drowning by ramming and should not be used for either boarding actions, or ranged exchanges due to their weak hulls. The “action camera” that was introduced Empire TW onward by pressing the ‘insert’ key is now a button found on the lower left of the battle map and it now also allows you to look around by moving the mouse and return to the main camera by pressing Esc. The other major improvement over previous TW titles are cities during battle. While they didn’t exist at all in Empire & Napoleon and were the generic japanese castle with 1, 2 or 3 terraces in Shogun 2, in Rome II each capital is hand crafted by the devs. Some for example are at the foot of a mountain with their city walls ending at the slope of the mountain, while others are at the coast. However, the AI doesn’t use the streets as choke points or defend central squares. You don’t even win if you take these squares (as they only grant a morale bonus to the attacker & losing them a penalty to the defender) and instead have to rout the entire garrison that just loiters at the city’s edge, unless it’s the walled province capital which they do a better job of defending. Then there’s the politics section in the game. If you play as Rome, you start as a republic (and can later switch to an empire) with a senate where each “party” is an influential house/family: Julia, Junia, Cornelia, Papiria etc., with differing amount of seats in the senate that is based on gravitas. No matter your faction family pick, each of your starting characters (2 generals and 1 admiral) is of a different family and along with other stats like ambition, cunning or zeal, each has gravitas, which is a counter that adds to their family's influence each turn. The more experience your generals gain, the more their gravitas. Your goal is to keep a balance of influence in the senate. Since each conquered region gets auto-assigned to a family, you dont want a civil war as your united empire will break apart. You can balance influence between the families by having your family members do other families a favor to increase that family’s loyalty to yours, or spread rumors to lose gravitas, or assassinate characters of that family which play no role on the campaign map. Overall, a complex game!
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