OddballGreg - Total War: Rome 2 (Brilliant War Simulation)

And everyone with even a modicum of OCD, (including me), wants to kill me for the slightly off center subtitle. On the other hand, the practical side of me refuses to move it 5 pixels to the left. Screenshot is of the title screen from the Emperor Edition of Total War: Rome 2.

 Total War: Rome 2 is the most recent Creative Assembly game in the Total War Series, (That's been released so far at least), and is also the most recent cause for my lack of free time for a variety of reasons. As a result, I decided it might be fun to do one of my famous semi-formal reviews on it.

Yesterday, JovialJman spoke about Simulations and the way the reality was starting to be accurately portrayed with computers. Of course, what better opportunity to talk about my most recent timesink: Total War: Rome 2, the grand strategy game from Creative Assembly that revolves around the conquest of the European and North African landscapes which formed part of the Roman empire. (I'll point out that they don't refer to it as a grand strategy game, but I use that as a term for any game that involves the manipulation of a large "World Map" towards goals of victory; ala Paradox Games.) I started playing Rome 2 as a result of the crazy ramblings and tactical soliloquy of one of my other, newer favorite YouTube commentators, DiplexHeated, whom I found while looking for playthrough's of Paradox Games's Hearts of Iron 3.

In my case, I figured it would be more fun to try out the Iceni, a Gallic Brittanic tribe in the lands of what is now the UK. (Later in the campaign I conquered all the British, Scottish and Irish land... effectively forming the UK about 1700 years before it historically did. Give or take.)

 So, before I get into the details, I will point out that I am playing the more recently released "Emperor Edition" of Rome 2, which was released with a large variety of updates, fixes and general extra content, most of which was graciously given to buyers of the original edition for their patience with what can only be described as a "turbulent" launch. For a humorous depiction of just how turbulent I mean, refer to the "Hitler Find Out" video below:

With that out of the way, and you likely in tears from laughter, let me talk about the pro's. Why does Total War: Rome 2 make me stay up far later than I should, and play when I should be writing blog posts or making special Halloween themed graphics? Well, the obvious answer is that it's fun and addictive, clearly preying on my enjoyment of figuring things out.

What's that? "Stop stalling and actually get to the point." you say? Of course, Rome 2 is keeps me absurdly distracted with both of it's game modes, which a fairly interlinked for reasons you'll understand shortly. The first of which is the "Grand Campaign" mode, as shown in some of the earlier screenshots that I have littered throughout this post as I am wont to do with these kinds of reviews.

In this mode, you control the entirety of your empire, managing it's politics, economy, diplomacy and, of course, military, in the hopes of becoming the dominant power on the map and ultimately becoming victorious. Everything from the arrangement of trade, alliances and confederations with your neighbors, to the research of new technologies and expansion of your cities and villages, down to the recruitment, improvement of your armies and a fair bit more is left in your hands; all managed from the isometric view of the world pictured in the screenshots. 

Though the game is turn-based and, admittedly, takes a good minute to process each turn on my frankencomputer, this oddly satisfying bid for domination and supremacy kept me busy for a good 5 hours today, and several tens more this past week that I've been playing. Suffice to say that despite some negative views on what has been called a "dumbed down" game by fans of older games in the Total War series, there is still a great deal of fun to be had with Rome 2.

As it turns out, experience with grand strategy games in general does not make you immune to poor decisions, as the 2 armies denoted by the men with blue flags soon found out. (They died in case you're unsure.)

 Of course, World Domination is not the only thing to keep you busy in Total War: Rome 2. The real meat of the game, (and the thing that made the Total War games famous in the first place), is it's highly accurate model for realtime warfare involving thousands of troops arrayed in their respective cohorts/squads/battalions/whatever you want to call them.

In some of the later screenshots in this post, you'll note that I decided to take a break from the Grand Campaign to try out some of the Historical Battles that come in the game. Of the 3 that I played, I lost 2 and learned that I am really bad at fighting offensively. (Which is part of the "Fun" as Dwarf Fortress would put it.) Between a forest ambush scenario, the siege of Carthage and a fort defense scenario, the only one I was able to win by just a slim margin was the fort defense, which is part of what makes the combat in Rome 2 so interesting.

You see, the Warscape Engine, and the engines previously designed for the older Total War games, are designed to create highly accurate representations of combat with large amounts of forces, thereby making real world combat strategies applicable to the game because of it's accurate representation of the soldiers and the factors that influence them.

At this point, I figured it would be a good idea to show what the technology tree's looked like in the game. Nothing too fancy, but they don't feel redundant at least.

 To be less vague about how this is done, consider one of the battles I fought in the "Grand Campaign" as the Iceni against the Demetae clan. Outnumbered 3 men for ever 2, I decided, having read a great deal of military themed books and taken great interest in various documentaries throughout my life, that the best course of action would be to place all my men up on the nearby hill and force the enemy troops to arduously climb up the hill to reach me.

Having reached the foot of the hill, his men quickly found themselves being pelted heavily by the extended range of my slingers, effectively killing a good 100 of their men before they even managed to get into combat. Those that did make it to the top were severely winded from the steep ascent, and their morale damaged at the sight of their friends dying beside them and the knowledge that at any moment, they could be next.

Not yet broken, their own slingers took up a line at the base of the hill and began pelting their own missiles back up at my mine while their warriors fought. Unfortunately for them, this was the perfect opportunity for my horsemen, in a wedge formation, (which is effective for smashing through ranks of enemies.), to come and utterly decimate his unarmored slingers. Alone and unable to fight back against the agile horsemen, the enemy slinger's morale broke within moments, the surviving men fleeing the field quickly while my own warriors enveloped their enemy atop the hill. Surrounded and without support, the enemy warriors began to die quickly due to attacks coming from all sides, and the death of their general promptly resulted in their surrender.

One moment while I revel in how cool that sounded. (Heehee). Moving on, as you can see, the game's engine allows for the accurate depiction of all the factors that influence a fighting force in the game, from morale, to how tired they are, the equipment that they have, and the effect that losing their leader can have on them. And that's not even everything that can happen. In the earlier mentioned Roman fort defense scenario, use of archers with flaming arrows and onagers allowed me to demoralize the enemy Gauls while holding them at the fort gates, causing more men to flee than what actually died in the combat. (I will point out that I am not actually that good at these games, I just haven't mentioned my blunders yet, such as my inability to regroup my men during a forest ambush, and the fact that I let half my army die to arrow fire from the walls of Carthage during the siege. Truth be told, if I don't choose where I'm going to fight, I'll probably lose.)

Some of the historical battles in Rome 2. I should point out that those earlier mentioned victories in battle were made playing on "Easy". This game is kinda difficult.

 Now, I could continue to give you blow by blow accounts of battles, (Which does sound like fun in all honesty, perhaps I'll do it again sometime.), but I think you've gotten the picture of why I so thoroughly enjoy playing this game, and that's enough for the purposes of this article. All in all, as someone as easily forgiving as me, I have yet to find any real reason to fault Total War: Rome 2, though I am admittedly new to the Total War series. Perhaps the AI isn't the best in the world and maybe the Grand Campaign is allegedly dumbed down from previous iterations, but as a game on it's own, objectively, Total War: Rome 2 is a fun game and definitely worth a go. I would recommend this game to anyone who's a fan of tactical and strategic military combat, as averse to simply running into battle as one guy and killing hundreds of people all on your own. (That can have it's own attractions too sometimes.)

In any case, feel free to check out the additional screenshots and read the side-story that accompanies them at your leisure for a better perspective of what the game looks like. If you enjoyed this article, or have something you wish to add or ask, please be sure to let us know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter as we here at TCSA love to hear from you guys. Of course, if you happen to have any friends who enjoy large strategy games, consider sharing this article with them too. I am sure they will appreciate it. And if you yourself would like to read more articles like this one, consider liking the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or following us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had and absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Fair battles my friends.

The siege of Carthago begins, complete with a map of the battlefield and a customary Roman-times themed quote.

A few minutes later, and the most I've done is lobbed several hundred rocks at the enemy walls and siege equipment in the hopes that this will make the impending battle easier. (It didn't really.)

Walls and towers down, the time to charge was getting closer, but I had a strange feeling that this wasn't going to go well.

The land based Roman forces which I had little experience commanding. Though better equipped than the Gauls from earlier, the fact that the Carthaginians got to choose where we fought is probably a good indicator of things to come.

The water based troops of Rome. Most of these guys died before they even drew their swords thanks to enemy Onagers and towers.

Having finally assaulted the city, it can be easily seen by my men's healthbars that the Carthaginians had collected a hefty toll for my entry.

Most of my men killed and maimed, it should come as little surprise that I wasn't happy when I found out the enemy was counter-attacking.

Note to self: War elephants are no joke. Just because your men were confident before the fighting started does not make them any less mashable by elephant tusks and feet. -300 Roman Soldiers in 30 seconds.

The enemy counterattack defeated, my roman troops were in complete shambles as they attempted to kill a squad of elites. (This dis not go so well, especially since my general had died a few minutes ago already)

On the upside, my 36 minute long "Valiant Defeat" did drag almost twice as many of their troops to death as they did mine. I don't think Rome is happy with "my best" though.