Having a ton of fun, graphics seem fine on Very High, no perfomance issues. Just need to expand the empire quicker.

Horrendous is just being hyperbolic

My only real complaint is turns take too long to complete (i.e., so many other factions the turns take foreverrrrrrrr)

After looking at this thread, I feel more confident that I'll probably wait to find a good PC and play it when the time is right. Kind of bummed hearing about the game's flaws and bugs, but hey, I doubt that won't stop it from being my 2014 2013 game of the year.

"Horrendous".... hah.

I'm about 30 or so turns into a Hard, Rome campaign. First tip: definitely play on Hard. I'd imagine the AI is a bit better, but in general it'll just handicap you a bit which makes it more interesting. Heard a lot of people talk about it being too easy, and I've always found the series that way with default AI.

The AI on the campaign map is better (though some countries still refuse to ally when it's a great offer... maybe I'm overvaluing that). I did have Syracuse continually try to become buddy buddy with me when they saw how I was growing, and hoping I'd ally with them opposing Carthage, and when I eventually declared war on them they even tried to broker peace with a big offering of 3000 to me. I've never had the default AI in a Total War game work that well in diplomacy. The battle AI has been more or less the same, though I think it's better than it has been in some past games. A few times they pulled off some clever maneuvers and they hole up well in my attacks on settlements.

Technically, I run it in windowed mode which helped with some texture issues (they weren't going past basically low settings without it, found this temp fix on the CA forums-- nVidia driver is on the way). It also defaulted everything to extreme and I lowered stuff down a notch or two in most areas, getting 30-40 fps.

Haven't encountered a single bug.

I also heard complaints about the enemy turn times but those have been pretty snappy.

I'm having a great time with the game. I understand it's not perfect but it'll improve and so far no real issues for me. The game itself is fantastic, getting that Rome feeling all over again. Just starting what will be a long bloody war with Carthage.

Just know it's not everyone, you might be fine. I'd say their system reqs were on the low end for now but I think performance will improve with support. On their forums CA seems to suggest they thought they'd have newer drivers from nVidia already out and that those should be here soon.

I'm going to stick by what I said because I have further complaints. I am clearly not having the same experience with the AI as other people in this thread because, from what I've seen, it's significantly worse than Shogun 2. Never before have I seen so many 'armies' of 1 or 2 units suicide themselves against cities over and over again. The campaign on legendary difficulty is hilariously easy as a result. The UI also bothers me a lot. The new one is bulky and ugly and none of the options available to you are clear on the campaign map.

A final major issue I have is how the battles work out now. Apart from the fact that formations don't stay together so everything just turns into an enormous blob of men, they've sped up battles enormously. There's never any chance of a comeback because morale drops to zero so quickly in Rome 2.

@buckybit: I have to agree with you, I am running the game on a 2013 iMac (Windows Bootcamp) and am having absolutely no issues. In fact, it is by far my favorite of the series now.

@crysack I just don't see it, I am having none of the issues that you are, and I sunk a number of hours in yesterday and this morning. I do have random naval units blockading my ports but that's to be expected really, blockades don't need massive forces to be effective. On land I have fought about 8 full-scale battles, winning 5 and loosing 3 (Very Hard difficulty), and I can see the enemy is capitalizing on my weak defenses in certain areas. I have noticed the AI has a 'hold position' attitude, but to be fair in past games it was far too easy to draw the enemy out of position and decimate them. The only hiccup I actually had with AI was when it held position just outside the control point of it's town and I seized the settlement with 0 casualties as a result. This is an obvious bug and one that I assume will be ironed out quickly, nothing to throw up my arms in disgust about.

As far as the game goes generally, I love the quick pace of the battles, hand-to-hand combat is violent and fast paced, and morale swings wildly in an actual conflict. I like the fact that I can shatter the enemies defensive line and his auxiliaries and conscripted forces run for the hills, that's the reality of war. When your biggest guys go down fast, the remainder tend to give up. But on this end I disagree about the lack of possibility to make a comeback, using your generals abilities is pivotal to swing the tide of battle and I have pulled out victory when I should have completely been annihilated by the use of an effective buff and debuff on the enemy. Yes, I did loose a gross amount of forces, but I managed to hold position and carry the day.

Or just play the original Rome or Medieval 2 and have a good experience no matter what.

Well fair enough then, but the AI is being utterly infuriating on my end. Its latest trick is to just not bother attacking any of my units during sieges and instead walk its troops straight through my lines to the centre capture point. It looks completely bizarre.

They also need to do something about formations completely falling apart at the drop of a hat and all of your men constantly wanting to blob around the enemy. It isn't such a major deal for sword infantry but it's crippling to hoplites and other spear infantry who rely on the phalanx.

So a couple issues rearing their heads:

The "enemy turn" length is starting to drag out now, which often happens as a campaign wears on. I'm pretty patient though so it's not a huge thing.

And on the map, they need to fix how the game handles navies. A great touch in this game is that you can just send armies across the water and they auto build transports, which are no real match for a navy but get the job done on movement. Anyways though, it has led to the AI being so foolish with their concentration of forces. I just fought Carthage, who had quite an army, but once war kicked off they sent smaller groups to the wind, not protecting their cities or concentrating an attack. So I rather easily took their cities, and even after when they had enough manpower to make a good attempt at taking one of my cities and continuing to fight, they scattered their forces, throwing many small groups at each city for easy autoresolve victories.

I really am loving everything else. I hope modders work on AI quick because this game will be such a gem with better AI.

Are you sure there isn't some sort of option to have them maintain formation? This has been in previous TW games for sure.

I have more or less the exact same specs and the exact same issues: 15 FPS even at the lowest settings, glicthes galore like the army of the dead in the picture up there and god knows what else. I never bothered to find out. I'm not going to ruin my experience with the game by playing it like this, I'm waiting for the patch.

The issues appear to be extremely common so I have complete faith in CA fixing this soon. Hopefully as early as Friday when the first patch hits, or in a driver update.

As for those not having these problems: that's the thing. It's absurdly random. The game is outright broken on some machines and works fine on others with no relation to system specs. Count yourselves among the lucky ones and weep for the rest of us.

EDIT: Here's a few comparison pictures to what @buckybit posted:

Buckybit

Nivash

This is at 1080p, Extreme preset. It's taken from as close to the same angle as I could get.

See the difference? The lighting is all broken even from up here, as are some of the textures, like the house in the upper right.

This is what we get when we move up close:

Again, this is the Extreme preset. The textures are so low res that I think Rome I had more detail. And it's not just that: look at the legs of the guys, especially the leg of the guy to the right of the the guy in wolf mask. There's also something decidedly off with the the overall impression, things just don't seem to fit right for some reason. It's more in-your-face full screen.

Here's the same picture at 1080p, Low preset:

It's barely any worse! Sure the textures are even lower res, and the grass is gone, but the lighting is still equally broken. And hey, the leg-glitches are gone.

But more importantly, care to guess what FPS I get? In the low 40s.

I looked around a bit and found a place where my FPS actually dropped below 30:

Am I seriously supposed to believe that my i5 3570K, overclocked 7950-Boost with 3GB VRAM and 8 GB system ram is incapable of rendering this at anything lower than several hundred FPS!? It makes no sense.

It's just insanely broken right now. Friday can't come soon enough.

I feel for you man, it hasn't run great on mine but 30-40 fps on my 670 card.

Hopefully they work on it quick.

There's a patch coming this Friday, let's hope this fixes our problems.

There most certainly was. It was called 'guard mode' and they removed it in Rome 2. I guess they didn't consider it to be important given the fact that there are no matchlock units in Rome 2.

Also, for your amusement:

Loved the original Rome: Total War, haven't played this sequel because it would most likely destroy my PC with a AMD 5870. But sad to hear there's so many issues with it. I have to admit I've lost interest in the Total War series since enjoying Medieval.

Shogun 2 was released two years ago and I got to play it without bugs or performance issues for about a week, can't say I'm surprised that people are having issues at launch.

Medieval 2's where it's at.

@crysack: Land boats? Nothing can stop you now. Except maybe land kraken.

Just made a post in the positive thread so go check that out for why I'm currently loving this game... just had a great sequence. The new mechanics, how politics work, just made for some really interesting gameplay. I also love how the provinces and capital cities work as well. Having a lot of fun with this game.

EDIT: Turns out replays are fucked though. Just watched a replay of a battle I won and the replay shows me losing in spectacular fashion. So hopefully they fix that.

@crysack said:

@artisanbreads said:

Are you sure there isn't some sort of option to have them maintain formation? This has been in previous TW games for sure.

There most certainly was. It was called 'guard mode' and they removed it in Rome 2. I guess they didn't consider it to be important given the fact that there are no matchlock units in Rome 2.

Also, for your amusement:

Yeah I didn't notice it either, which is too bad. A lot of units have similar options though. Still weird it's not there.