


The official constructive criticism thread



  • posthumanposthuman Junior Member Posts: 11Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    it needs to bring back the shogun 2 style interface. Or atleast make current one fit with the era, it looks utterly ugly and cluttered.
    there was a post about it earlier too with many pages people agreeing. A nice interface like in shogun 2 gets you much more immersed in the universe
  • theedge634theedge634 Senior Member Posts: 1,768Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    posthuman wrote: »

    I have zero problem with the interface....
  • ThegunnerThegunner Senior Member Posts: 120Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    Hardvark wrote: »
    By far my biggest criticism has to be the victory flag in open battles. In past games, the real fun for me has been trying to find ways to win battles when the odds are stacked heavily against you. That meant looking to utilise the high ground, or taking advantage of woods to ambush your enemy.

    Now you can either sit in the middle of the map and get slaughtered, or occupy the high ground and watch as the enemy captures the victory flag and wins the battle without ever engaging you. I honestly cannot understand how anyone thought this was a good idea.
    Well said
    This needs to be addressed it is utterly rediculous. There is Absolutely no need for any capture points in open battle.
  • sdw1000sdw1000 Senior Member Posts: 623Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    My game is running great! It did have one freeze moment in a rainy battle, but I closed out the game and restarted. Nothing since. I am running it on 1980x1080 with mostly high/medium graphics. No anti aliasing. Just learning the game mechanics in campaign has been challenging for me. Battles are easy.. biggest help is putting units into groups until I learn the unit cards. Only gripe I have is the constant British accent when looking at ancient Rome. lol
    - William Tecumseh Sherman
  • JohannJohann Member Posts: 49Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    We need an open/closed beta or demo before they open games in the future, so that people can tell them where they F'd up in my opinion. Most of the issues are minor or optimization issues imho.
    "Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln" - General Carl von Clausewitz

    "War is nothing more than politics by other means."
  • 82nd2LTBigX82nd2LTBigX Member Posts: 69Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    1. UI is confusing as hell and encyclopedia does not explain things well.
    2. Tutorial explains how to use one's army but leaves one completely confused about public order issues and what to build, research, etc.
    3. Battles are WAY TOO FAST.
  • PhalanxTestudoPhalanxTestudo Member Posts: 33Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    Posting these from my own thread which nobody read to improve the chance that somebody from CA actually reads it. Also includes my recommendations on how to improve some things.

    Taxes; Faction wide as in Shogun 2 which isn't ideal, but I've accepted. However there doesn't appear to be ability to exempt areas from tax which is a pity.

    Buildings; Higher tier buildings increase either squalor or food consumption, but are balanced in a way that if you upgrade both a public order increasing building (which consumes food) and a food building (which increases squalor), you seem to end up with less food overall and a lower public order overall than if you hadn't upgraded at all- which makes me just keep the buildings at a lower tier despite any extra benefits upgrading might give. Maybe modify the squalor or food values for the later buildings so that they don't cancel eachother out so much?

    Slums; They appear regardless of public order as long as there's a free slot and forces you to pay 500 and wait a turn to remove it. Punishing the player in this way for expanding a town too early or forgetting about a free building slot is only annoying and doesn't really add much outside that. Would be more forgivable if it only occurred in areas with negative public order.

    AI turn times take too long. Possibly due to there being too many minor factions. I wouldn't have minded nameless rebels holding some areas as in previous games or fewer factions if it meant less waiting. Could maybe be fixed or mitigated by making more minor factions completely passive (as in no standing army) or purely economy based. They'll get wiped out quickly by the more aggressive factions, sure, but not every clan is destined for greatness, especially when they're not under player control.

    Uncertain how exactly politics works, getting generals married etc; didn't seem to be explained well in the prologue if at all.

    Portraits don't seem to have much variation, particularly with agents; some of which just appear to be the exact same person from a slightly different angle.

    Loss of the family tree. Not a major thing, but it was still nice to look at and use to keep track of how things have developed.

    Lack of specialization or interesting traits. Every selectable trait seems to be +5% x or +1 x, which isn't particularly interesting and also feels too low to really have anything but the slightest significance. Negative traits seem too common as Julia - keep getting touched in the head.

    Tech upgrades feel too fast and oversimplified compared to Shogun 2. What I liked in the original Rome is it took a while to move on from Hastati to Legionaries, but in II I got legionaries a lot faster than expected which dulled their impact when getting them completely. Also the economic / military bonuses for researching tech that don't involve units or buildings feel too low.
    Units don't seem to keep formation very well during fights. Acceptable for barbarian factions, not so much as Rome or a Hellenic faction.

    No rotate, march forward / backward buttons on HUD. Might be hotkeys with that function, haven't looked into it yet. It was one of the few things that came out of Empire that I liked. Really useful for ranged units.

    No guard mode. It's a pretty vital feature and needs to be returned asap.

    Sieging Carthage as Rome early on was disappointing, it just felt like another ordinary city. Apparently it becomes more like the previews if it's upgraded more. If that's the case, it would be better to have the main cities (Rome, Carthage, Alexandria, etc) always in their fully upgraded layout for sieges.
  • dragonlightdragonlight Senior Member Posts: 2,840Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    Like everyone said.
    1.Turns take too long even after disable following AI. Once you pass 10 turns its getting worse because everyone moving.
    2. I don't know if its bad or not but I saw one region with 3 full legions and 8 units in city . Basically means you need one hell of an army . But I like the challenge .
    3. Too easy to move armies from sea to land and land to sea. This cause faster attacks on cities. You have no time to prepare.
    4. Rebels grow x2 each turn loll. At one time I left them alone and they had 20 units army in 3 turns. Needless to say my army killed them.
    5.sometimes AI attacks too many factions

    Really its not big issues and its fine.

    Just fix long turn AI and I am happy.
    "Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear."

    "Festina lente" (Make haste slowly)

    My mini beast PC :

    AMD FX 6120 6 core 3.5 Ghz
    10gb Ram
    EVGA GeForce GTX 770 SC
  • KorzKorz Junior Member Posts: 2Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    I own all the total war titles and have played them all. This one by far is the most disappointing one. That doesn't mean it doesn't have some good points. I read the majority of the thread and some have named some of the same points but I adding in my both to give weight and make sure all are addressed.

    Shogun 2 released without crossfire support. How could they release without in this one? (Boggle)

    Things that need to be fixed asap:

    1. Victory points in non-city maps. ( A small argument could be made for putting them in certain areas ie. passes or crossings.)
    2. No family tree. Missed a big spot here. Added in characteristics for armies as they develop. You could have done the same for families. This would mean that new generals that come out would do so with some family abilities. ( Missed the boat big time).
    3. No guard mode??????
    4. Where is my command wheel with my move forward rotate right or left at?
    5. Cities and towns need to be treated as individuals for unrest. Then you should have a provincial unrest. So you could have some rebels trying to free the occupied town from invaders but the town itself could be happy and content. And the rebels could be separate from the two factions.
    6. There should be some provincial buildings and structures that can be built once a province is united. Not just edicts.
    7. Auto running instead of walking. ( Who orders their troops to run everywhere and tells them to slow down only some times?)
    8. Magic abilities...Just get rid of them. This is also a time of leading from the front not the rear. General units need to be a bit more rugged treated as elite for moral purposed.
    9. Diplomacy is bad. Fix it and add in the option for asking what it would take to get an agreement. ex: I want a trade agreement what do you want in order to agree to that?
    10. The pace of units is to fast. ( This has always been an issue with all the games either to fast or to slow. Slack can be given a bit here.)
  • RavenXRavenX Senior Member Posts: 156Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    1. Missing button to go from province to province next to the Province Name when you have a province selected. I know that's minor, but it would go along way when you have a lot of provinces.

    2. I miss just right clicking on a general's unit card on the campaign map and going to a card with all his details (including age). I'd rather it not go straight to the encyclopedia entry for the unit type. I know what the unit type is because it's either a general or a admiral.
  • RybonRybon Junior Member Posts: 59Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    Fix ****** UI. What heck were you thinking with those silly cards.

    Technology needs to be clearer.

    Tactical Battle, are way to fast on normal speed. All units just seem to blob together. No lines. Apparently these great formations were really myths.

    Family Trees were pretty cool and I would like to see them back.

    I miss the season. The year fly by to quickly.

    Only general army takes away my ability to reinforce front line generals.
  • Sulieman the MagnficentSulieman the Magnficent Senior Member Posts: 1,851Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    Oh I was only posting screenshots of those bugs and glitches which should be easy to fix from the steam community page.

    However what I don't get is food & attrition. How do you get food shortage in one year and attrition in the next? Its weird because you may be in any region, any terrain and yet you're getting attrition. Surely it should be soley on winter that you get attrition .

    Oh and the lag is insufferable.

    Also agree on troops moving way to fast and my battle against three forces lasted for 4:03 minutes.

    Also fix loading times, takes too long.
    Dwarf Battle cry: " For the High King and the glory of the dwarfs "
    Team Dwarves
  • Pinkerton00Pinkerton00 Senior Member Posts: 471Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    I have problems with the game, too, but I have to play the CA supporter here for a sec.

    1. They warned you guys about the 1 year turns. Openly and many times. It makes sense. They want the campaign to go through the actual collapse of the Roman Empire. That's over 300 years. You don't want a campaign to last 600 turns, do you? And those people wanting all 4 seasons like in Shogun 2? you really want 1200 turn campaigns? Don't even THINK about talking about the FotS turn system.
    Yes, generals don't last as long, but so? As far as I can tell, that was part of the motivation for the army progression system. Generals change, but the armies are what you should REALLY be getting attached to. And it's kind of cool that the army details tell you what general it was founded by and when. I like that.

    2. I saw somebody complaining about sword units beating their phalanxes. That's how it's supposed to work. Spear units are supposed to lose to sword units. Especially if we're talking about a phalangite phalanx. If you want to succeed with phalangite phalanxes, you need to be extremely careful about guarding your flanks.

    3. The loss of the family tree isn't such a huge deal, I think. At least not for Rome. It was a little ridiculous in Rome 1 that the faction leadership went from father to son forever. The rest of the tree was kinda awesome (distant cousins and uncles and such), but that part was dumb. In actual Rome, the emperor was almost never (if ever) succeeded by his son. It was pretty much always distant cousins or nephews or even people only related by marriage who just wanted power and gained enough support to become emperor.
  • markorplymarkorply Senior Member Posts: 733Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    Usually siege battles take me 10-20 mins, not that quick
    Add:markorply on steam if you like
    "There is no ignorance in those who can see beyond what they perceive and into what they have yet to learn in a positive and edifying way." -Hardwaremaster
  • mc_delimc_deli Member Posts: 84Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    I have played since Imperial Governor - if you know what I mean - and RTW2 is a very big deal for me.

    90% the best thread I have read since launch - nice one - and try to keep it constructive.

    I am keeping my CE on ice until some of this stuff gets cleared up. CA have some work to do. Come on guys and gals - let's see the colour of your patches!
  • Th3DeanTh3Dean Junior Member Posts: 12Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    I'm playing as Sparta on Normal mode. It's 175 B.C. I own the entire Greek and Italian peninsulas, and am expanding into North Africa. I have 9 Fully maxed death armies of Spartans (don't get me started on the arbitrary max unit limit on spartan units) and Perioikoi, with ballista support.
    And yet, 6 of my armies (and 3/4 of my time) I have to spend roaming around my own provinces, checking GD happiness levels and putting down rebellions because I have the audacity to upgrade my cities.


    Because of faulty game design, and a terrible game mechanic. It takes 3 production slots of sewer systems[at non-max rank] to counter the 12 squalor unhappiness from a single level 4 city- and you cannot get sewer systems in the outlying cities, which means that you can reliably have one level 4 city in a province, a level 3 city, and 2 level 2 cities. Anything more and you are constantly facing rebellion. Which makes no sense, as you are being actively punished for spending money.
    Alternatively, if you have an idle army you want leveled up, you can buck the system, and farm the rebelling peasants for army/general exp- and since having a rebellion makes your city happier, you actively gain stuff by ****ing your citizens off and then murdering them.


    TL;DR: Total War: Rome 2 wants me to commit genocide on my people, because it will make the survivors happier. #CA Logic
  • MBLMBL Junior Member Posts: 22Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    I think the most things are allready written down. But I want to thank you for this thread, just this complainers everywhere make my furious. Imo CA wanted to improve to many things at once and that's why it's not as it should be.
  • themilothemilo Member Posts: 94Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    1 The time between turns is ridiculously long.

    2 In battles even the fastest speed is pretty slow.

    3 make auto battles better, if one unit attacks a city with full garrison that unit is dead, end of story.

    4 one town\city provinces can create full stack armies, I don’t know the ai cheats or they just get trade agreements very easily.

    5 fix the thing that says how strong your army is opposed to the enemies army, I can’t count the amount of times I’ve won battles that the game called nigh impossible.

    Beside those not really all that troublesome issues I’m having a blast, I haven’t encountered any kind of bugs and the game runs
    fine on my increasingly aging computer, I’m going to assume the problem was that the game was overhyped.
  • MortalMortal Senior Member Posts: 174Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    Speed of infantry men is ridiculous, they need to be slowed down by 50% or around this figure (currently hoplites can almost keep up with cavalry).
  • anubis4567anubis4567 Senior Member Posts: 500Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    Battles could be slower. I miss those epic 50 minute marathon sieges, that down to the wire 30 minute battle in the desert that decides the fate of the Egyptian empire. You just can't have that with Rome II because everything just dies too fast. By far the BIGGEST (seriously) thing that's keeping Rome II from becoming my new favorite game.

    Victroy points, capture points, whatever you want to call them. The only place they remotely make sense is when defending a siege. When the enemy sallies out, no I shouldn't have to defend a flag. I should be able to take a defensive position in those woods to the right! It really limits the gameplay. Second biggest thing that's preventing me from enjoying myself.

    Other than that, it's great. Not a huge fan of the no armies without general thing. But I can deal with it until a mod comes out. The changes to empire management are awesome, though the information about the different settlements could be easier to access. I wish I could give proper feedback on battles but the current pacing of battles makes it futile.
    "The so called negative feedback is often love in disguise. Take full advantage''
  • Sierra419Sierra419 Senior Member Posts: 263Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    the ui needs A TON of work. This game is so confusing and lacking in so much information! And I'm a veteran player! I feel bad for the guy I convinced to buy this. He probably wont ever play it again.
  • PhalangitePhalangite Senior Member Posts: 383Registered Users
    edited September 2013


    Phalanx troops were near invincible when attacked from the front, you are right they are very vulnerable from the flanks, problem is troops don't stay in formation in this game they all just blob up in the mosh pit, so off the bat phalanx's greatest strength in staying in formation is impossible thanks to the games' current mechanics.
  • Fraggin WagonFraggin Wagon Senior Member Posts: 413Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    Something in the box besides a 3 page hot-key directory. A map would be nice. A tech/building/unit tree chart would be even nicer.
  • scfs123scfs123 Senior Member Posts: 974Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    Mortal wrote: »
    I was curious if this was intentional or not.
    Since it makes sense that calvary have to go at a not very fast pace to maintain formation, and only go crazy speed when charging, and it seems the calvary thats intended for charging gets speed increase abilities for the charge?
  • Centurion84Centurion84 Senior Member Posts: 105Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    For my part loving the province and army system with how you can attach a personality to them and the generals but...

    The dynamic of the campaign strategy is undermined for me given the Armies can effectively just march onto the water.

    One of the things I've enjoyed about TW games is the fact that any naval activity using troops requires a sense of organisation, eg I have to march them to a Port, and either get a Navy to come to them or build a Bireme/Sloop etc, now they can just casually walk through a port onto water but are converted into Transport ships instantaneously

    Also, if attacking, if you landed the troops, they couldn't move unless you docked them in a friendly/enemy port

    I can appreciate they need this transport capacity given the dual land/sea battles, but personally I think they probably should have had a feature like the field recruitment where you hit the coast, and have to be still for a turn while building the transport ships

    This way it keeps with other TW games where moving armies across water requires strategic thought and planning several turns in advance, plus it is keeping with history, as even up until now any campaigns across the water were quite complex (eg Brittania), plus the water is seen as a kind of geographic defence barrier like mountains etc. I keep getting charged at my flank by the Etruscan league

    Other than that still feeling my way into the game, I think I can end up quite enjoying it but am still trying to figure out how to stop the food shortages, rebellions and army attrition even though I'm not collecting any taxes
  • ElicasElicas Senior Member Posts: 218Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    Phalangite wrote: »

    That was me complaining about it in a different thread.

    Historically, we know the Phalanxes were defeated by the Roman Legions attacking the "joints" between units of Phalangites, attempting to lever a gap between units to allow the Legionnaires access to the mow exposed flanks. However. even going back to the earliest meetings between Macedonian Style Phalangites in Pyhrrus army in Magna Greatia and later in the conquest of Greece, there was appalling deaths on both sides. Swordsmen simply could not dodge between the pikes of the Phalanx and engage in close melee from a direct frontal assault.

    The Romans got utterly mauled both times they went up against Pyhrrus' Phalangites. While he too suffered appalling casualties (leading to the term, Phyrric Victory) the Legions strength of long, drawn out meat grinder melee combat was largely nullified when fighting Phalanxes.

    This game does them wrong, simply put.
  • RattlerRattler Member Posts: 77Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    Vasquinho wrote: »
    I feel it is an unfinished game and the are making the same mistakes as previous titels.

    I have four words that sum up the really bad points:
    -generals life span
    -insane loading time between turns

    And many more...really disapointed. It´s so frustrating to play it. :mad:

    In my post i forgot about the generals (and characters) life span...utter nonsense. I guess that comes with the "1 turn/1 year", before you know it, the poor ******* is dead...what's the point in having such a long list of attributes if you can barely fit in 4 or 5???
    The seasons being out is also a major disappointment...
    I think they focused too much on those godforsaken attributes and forgot what's important for us TW fans...the really tactical component of battles (and semi-realistic). TW has always been for me the build up to that one (read several) battle where you get to show off that perfect army that stands a chance against impossible odds...the battle that you start losing, then turn it around half way through... here, you make a mistake or some stupid thing you dont even spot in the chaos of the "Mosh pit" happens and a single unit of spearman disbands 4 (yes, FOUR) units of spartan hoplites in less than 20 seconds...(it happened to yours truely)...

    CA needs to step up and fix this...it's too bad to be true. There are always issues on game launches these days, but i have to confess this one looks structural, not just the one-off bugs that CTD every once in a while...i hope they can fix some of the "ridiculousness" and they are not too imbeded in the engine so it makes it impossible to change... :(

    I dont have the graphical issues or load times, but i have a "big rig" which i bought partially anticipating this...:(
  • RAIDERRAIDER Junior Member Posts: 3Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    1. The Co-Op Campaign is currently unplayable! you reach a point in the game where you can't continue because battle windows don't appear so it always says team mate hasn't decided. Loading up an older save doesn't resolve the issue and most of the time just results in an incompatible version error appearing.

    2. Graphically the game looks nothing like the screenshots on the website, I have maxed every single setting available yet most of the textures look like a blurry console port mess.

    3. What's with all the buffs and power-ups? I can understand rapid charge but is whip really needed? The generals have about 4-5 different buffs and debuffs and it seems kind of stupid.

    4. While some people have said they don't like the victory points I prefer to have them there because it stops players from just hiding and it keeps all of the action at the flags.

    5. It takes way to long for the turns to complete, I have not tried the single player yet but in co-op it takes over 2 minutes to finish.

    6. The UI seems kind of awkward, I can never find the information I am looking for such as why is the town not happy? for example.

    Finally I would just like to say that I am really disappointed with Rome 2, you would think that CA would know how to make a total war game but it seems like every time there is a new game the same issues pop-up over and over and we end up having to wait for patches. The game clearly wasn't ready to be released and I am pretty annoyed that I am being used to beta test your game.
  • MoexyMoexy Member Posts: 55Registered Users
    edited September 2013
    The only things that bother me at this moment is the battlespeed (it's too fast! I can't even look at the nice graphics and movements!), not much information how the political system works and the strength of the barbarian naties is too much (I can't even win against them, they just slow ram in too my ship and it explodes!).
    If these are fixed I'm happy, especially the battlespeed anoys me!
  • TotmaniaTotmania Senior Member Posts: 252Users Awaiting Email Confirmation - NO EMAIL
    edited September 2013
    When you guys solve performance issues can we get a new GUI current GUI suck
Sign In or Register to comment.