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Seems like the 3 families of Rome is going to make a comeback in Rome II.

http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War:_R ... an_Faction

Ugh.

Care to expand?

It is stupid, unnecessary, bad game design and unnecessary to boot.

There is a reason every mod has done away with them in the old RTW.

Ah. I haven't played the original RTW, so I don't know anything about the families. What was so bad about them. Gameplay-wise, I mean.

The only thing that makes me vaguely hopeful is them displaying Roman territory as all red, so maybe they won't split them into factions like last time.

Rome was three competing factions whose holdings would never be unified until an unnecessarily long and boring civil war. There was literally nothing good about it.

Um, Thanas you did actually look at the page, right? From the looks of it, Rome is Rome, no Julii, Scipio or Brutii to be seen. Unless I'm missing something as well.

Actually, I did miss it. Although it seems you play as the family head whilst still in Rome proper. Gradual ascension of the ranks leading to better tech?

Nothing modders can't fix, but I wish the newer games were as moddable as the older ones.

Um, Thanas you did actually look at the page, right? From the looks of it, Rome is Rome, no Julii, Scipio or Brutii to be seen. Unless I'm missing something as well.

Actually, I did miss it. Although it seems you play as the family head whilst still in Rome proper. Gradual ascension of the ranks leading to better tech?

It is still a dumb move. If the game wants to you play as the head of a clan rather than the head of a faction, they should have added more clans into one faction.

More importantly, being head of clan would mean you might not even get the chance to properly manage your armies and cities before the end of your term. A consul term is at the most one year, which means you will only be able to control the Roman faction and cities for four turns in the game.

"As a playable faction, Rome benefits economically from its excellence in metalwork, enjoys enhanced military development, and can exploit the masses in order to maintain public order. Furthermore, the player will choose to conduct the affairs of Rome as the head of one of three great Roman houses: The Julia, The Cornelia, and the Junia, each of which bring further economic, military and cultural benefits."

This just implies that your choice of ruler will have traits that grant bonuses, not that the Roman empire will be carved up into three seperate nations.

GuppyShark wrote: This just implies that your choice of ruler will have traits that grant bonuses, not that the Roman empire will be carved up into three seperate nations.

Indeed, over on TWCenter the devs have said as much.

This is selecting which family you want to play as, in terms of Roman internal politics. Rome itself is one faction, and the devs are keeping quiet about what the internal political system is going to look like.

Thanas wrote:It is stupid, unnecessary, bad game design and unnecessary to boot.

There is a reason every mod has done away with them in the old RTW.

How is it bad game design? Just curious here.

Two new production diary is available.






Seems like we are going to have 40 units per army now.

I wonder if they'll bump up the build speed or it'll just be there to prevent you from having to let the computer deal with your reinforcements. I'd prefer the latter.

Also, why are they making it seem like Carthage was beating Rome during the Third Punic War? All that talk of Rome needing a masterstroke...wut? I mean, my history is not that great, but I think that at this point Carthage was fucked if it came to war.

Goddamnit, I can't wait for the Roma Surrectum mod for this so I get my OP Praetorians

Scrib wrote:I wonder if they'll bump up the build speed or it'll just be there to prevent you from having to let the computer deal with your reinforcements. I'd prefer the latter.

Also, why are they making it seem like Carthage was beating Rome during the Third Punic War? All that talk of Rome needing a masterstroke...wut? I mean, my history is not that great, but I think that at this point Carthage was fucked if it came to war.

It's all about making it exciting for the people who aren't too well read on Roman history.

Which is a major problem. I complain about Paradox as much as the next guy but at least they don't make stuff like that for the sake of "interesting".

This is a significant part of the reason I was happy to see them get a fictional license.

Thanas wrote:Which is a major problem. I complain about Paradox as much as the next guy but at least they don't make stuff like that for the sake of "interesting".

Yeah, but it's such a cheap trick to pull, especially in an interview. I'm sympathetic to needing to ignore reality for balance reasons but it's just weird here.

Does the game have to start at the beginning of the Third Punic War? If they want a challenge in game why not just go with the Second? Then you skip all of this bombast and both sides get an actual challenge.

Probably because they wanted to start a game from a time period that has a very well known siege battle.

ray245 wrote:Probably because they wanted to start a game from a time period that has a very well known siege battle.

So...you sacrifice the challenge of an actually strong Carthage so you can have a quick siege battle? I mean, you can have a bunch of sieges during the 2nd Punic War, it's not like the game will prevent you from besieging Rome (unless they introduce a mechanic similar to Paradox's where you need a minimum amount of men to siege a castle) or any other city. I would think that having Hannibal around would provide enough of a pull for the casual people. People would still jizz themselves over getting to play Cannae or something.

A long challenge with Carthage seems better than a short siege.

But perhaps they wanted Rome to start stronger and with less immediate worries. I can't recall anyone running around Italy after Hannibal for a long time.

There was a lot of struggle with the Samnites and Gauls though.

That being said, they probably cannot simulate Hannibal correctly because the AI probably cannot handle it. CA AI is hilariously bad.

Apparently, the Etruscan league is still around at the start of the Roman campaign.

The AI has improved according to people who played Shogun 2. Whether is it good enough to offer a challenge to the player is another issue altogether.

Thanas wrote: CA AI is hilariously bad.

Honestly, have you ever played a strategy game (either turn-based or real time) where the AI wasn't hilariously bad? I mean, I love RTS and TBS games, but I have yet to play one where the AI wasn't pretty moronic. Usually the only way to get a challenge is turn up the difficulty level, which doesn't improve their intelligence it just "cheats" by allowing them to produce units faster or something.

I am sorry, but in most strategy games the AI can at least react to obvious and easy tactics that literally every player will always use. Not in CA games it can't - at least it couldn't as far as Empire. Of course, pulling off Hannibal is well beyond current AI technology anyways, even if it's written competently.

I like the increasing tend towards being able to beat up on an actual human. Unfortunately its a pain doing it with friends because usually one guy's consistently better than the others.