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diplomacy (beyond a single scripted encounter in the prologue), faction and unit balance, etc. There are also many aspects of gameplay I’ve yet to get a feel for – e.g. * Quite a few interesting ideas here, although I need to see how well they work in the context of a full campaign. Time will tell how well the Rome 2 AI performs throughout an entire campaign. * That said, it’s still too soon for me to tell – consider Fall of the Samurai’s AI, which was fine in the early game but eventually faltered because it didn’t use high-end units. * The battle AI was sensible – infantry in front, cavalry flanking in an attempt to surround my Romans.
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* The campaign AI fielded massed forces of trained soldiers (spear/swordsmen) – I fought an invading stack comprising 6-7 regular infantry, plus supporting cavalry and missile units. For example, I heard something to the effect of, “where’s the general? Has anyone seen the general?” – I assume that unit must have been out of my general’s command radius. * I like the little touches here: zooming in now lets the player “overhear” the soldiers’ chatter.
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* For comparison, here are two of my favourite Shogun 2 screenshots: (For context, my machine is 3 years old, but still meets Rome 2’s recommended specs.) A picture is worth 1,000 words, so here are two of my nicest screenshots so far: * It took me a fair bit of fiddling, but I think I’ve found an acceptable compromise between performance and appearance. Hopefully either CA or AMD will address this issue soon.) ( UPDATE: well, that didn’t work - my computer did not like the ATI beta drivers I installed. As I write this I’m downloading a driver update hopefully that’ll fix the problem. * I’ve encountered only one significant glitch, but it is both frequent and irksome: large black panels appearing instead of terrain, on both the campaign and battle (see below) maps. Since then it’s received several significant patches, and last night I finished its prologue chapter (which begins as a scripted tutorial, but eventually broadens into freeform strategy). Total War: Rome II has been this year’s highest-profile strategy release, but its initial launch was dogged by reports of bugs, technical glitches, and AI failings. My design analysis of Rome II, the Total War series, and what makes a good 4X game is now up! You can find it here.
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