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- Release Date: Sep 3, 2013
User Score
Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 3506 Ratings
User score distribution:
Positive: 1,113 out of 3506
Mixed: 306 out of 3506
Negative: 2,087 out of 3506
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Sep 4, 2013So after I played over 10 hours, I will adjust my 10/10 to a 4/10. The AI is just too stupid, a donkey i a compliment to them! I can defeat 3 armys with 1 on legendery! The AI is killing the game.. Also, i have lag... while I can run all other newest games on ultra settings! I have to tune down alot of the settings to have 20+ fps.... stupid framerate! If they fix all of this, i will change again to a 8/10! I am very sad about this....… Expand
Sep 3, 2013Horrible UI.
Horrendously confusing unit cards.
Poorly optimized.
Fix the triremes.
Where is my guard button.
Make a unit card that covers half my screen.
2/10 for releasing.
Glad I paid 60$ for beta testing.
It is broken. As per all CA games. They sell it to customers. Expect us to be the beta tester. Xmas comes about and people can buy the ready game at half the price...
In all srs. They should not be allowed to do this time after time. They need to spend some of the preorder money on testing/optimisation.
I will not be buying any CA game again. And this comes from an avid total war gamer since the beginning.… Collapse
Sep 6, 2013The AI is still not able to attack or defend a Town properly, even on 'Legendary'.
- AI pathfinding is still up.
- The optimization is horrible, it looks worse than Shogun2 but the framerate is unacceptable, even on high end rigs that play BF3/Metro 2033/Crysis3/ArmA3 on ultra with mostly over 60 frames.
- Day 1 DLC. That is always a negative thing.
- Texture bug, selecting "Extreme" settings does nothing although I have 3GB Vram and yes, I enabled "unlimited Vram" in the settings. Doesn't do ****
- Round endings/CPU calculations for the AI factions: >2.5min in the mid/late game, this is a problem from Empire TW and hasn't been fixed since then (Empire, Napoleon, Shogun2, FotS). It only gets worse because they increased the factions.
- No SLI/CFX support.
- Day 1 patch, releasing unfinished software.
(-) possible DLCs in the feature.
- UI is just a massive joke. Is this ment to be played with a Gamepad?! Shogun 2 was good. Don't change what ain't broken CA.
-Unit cards look as if they hired cavemen to draw them. They look terrible and they are useless if want to know how each unit looks like.
- Battles take less than 5 minutes, enemys rout after less than a minute after they started fighting.
- For some reason the Roman Legions turn into massive blobs upon contact although that's what made the Roman army special and superior unlike the barbarian factions.
-They removed alot of features such as lose or tight formations, hold ground etc
- Random flag in a ground battle as defender. Who had this brilliant idea?! Imagine You are outnumbered 3:1..what would you do? Go on a Hill and defend it? Oh you can't because there is a ****ing flag randomly spawning, mostly on open ground that changes this great tactical franchise into a capture the flag blob war with no strategy what so ****ing ever.
- Testudo formation is broken, you take less casulties charging towards the enemy.
- The campaign AI is just ridiculous, I'm 130 turns in and not a single time someone declared war on me and I don't even bothered building fortifications on my borders. This game is called Total War. Also the trade AI will refuse to accept win-win offers.
- alot of people who pre-ordered this on amazon don't got their free DLC code. SEGA says it's the retailers fault, they say SEGA never gave them codes.
- MP is completly broken, desync errors everywhere. We already had this error in Empire.. but it was rare..
- COOP campaign is unplayable, for some unknown reason the AI turns take almost 3 times longer than in the SP.
- the free transport ships from the Campaign map are OP compared to expansive Navy ships from your harbour. Just head-on ram them with your transporter and they break!
- Naval combat in general is unbalanced and bugged.
As a "true" fan of Rome 1 with over 1500h playtime I am more than disappointed. This is a step backwards from Shogun 2 and even worse than Empire TWs release.
Sadly I joined the hype and waisted 55€ (~80 USD).… Expand
Sep 3, 2013Biggest over hyped game of 2013 no doubt. Poorly optimized and buggy. Loading times are ridiculously slow.
UI is clunky and not very streamline. I am a big fan of the Total war series so it saddens me to admit this is nothing but a disappointment. Before the zealous fanboys scream ''your pc is I have an ultra end gaming computer and can run arma 3, and metro 2033 at over 50fps on ultra.
Sep 3, 2013Awful performance, probably the worst Total War AI ever (and that's saying a lot), graphics are nothing like the Siege of Carthage video even on max settings (probably mostly due to performance issues), a lot of reskinned units (every faction gets skirmishers, light infantry, heavy infantry etc., they're not functionally different in any way), battle formations collapse on contact because you have less control over your units, and battles are over too quickly. Another horrendously botched Creative Assembly launch, they should have learned by now not to release unfinished games. I'm sure that performance and graphics issues will be patched in time (but with CA's record I expect it to take months). The major issue for me is that the game has been made more casual, CA has clearly made an effort to attract a larger audience by making the game more cinematic and less historic and layered. I've come to this conclusion because tactics are less important due to formations collapsing almost instantly (even hoplites and Roman legions quickly descend into a blob of hacking one on one animations), no fire at will mode for many units with javelins (such as Roman heavy infantry, you won't be able to control when they throw their pila, they do it only on a charge now), no guard mode (meaning your units will mindlessly chase hostiles they've driven off even if you don't want them to), and very quick battle times (if you know a thing or two about tactics you will make any difficulty AI route in under 10 minutes, even fighting against full stack armies). In short CA have made the change to more casual game play, this accompanied by a buggy launch has made R2TW lackluster at this point. If you're interested in battle tactics more than seeing epic Hollywood battles (which will get boring quickly), you should look to other Total War games. Rome 1 is still very playable, extremely deep and satisfying, especially with all the love and care modders have added.… Expand
Sep 3, 2013This game is what i feared. Just a repixeling of the old engine. Same AI, Same Bugs, same behavior.
EA is re-milking this cow with each new iteration since Medieval 2.
As a long time player.. Shogun Total war. I ve lost all hopes of real improvement.
They are just repixelating and improving the GFX capacity. But the core is the same as ever, the team is totally unable to really improve anything. Almost a decade of players same complains: AI, Interesting multiplayer that work, bugs on release that are the same of the last iteration.… Expand
Sep 3, 2013This is not a game this is a beta. With optimisation issues that make it unplayable more often than not, Rome 2 is so broken it's a disgrace it was allowed to be released in this state. Aside from the frankly game-breaking performance issues, the gameplay is a real step down from previous titles. The AI is as incompetent as ever. The campaign map has been taken in completely the wrong direction, with all areas of gameplay dumbed down, and soul-sapping load times rubbing it in. Battles are simply no fun to play. Combat is resolved in minutes, with units destroying each other near-instantaneously. The array of stupid unit abilities emphasises the arcade-like nature of the battles.
I won't go into the host of minor complaints with the game. Creative Assembly have released an unfinished product that you SHOULD NOT BUY. Those of us who have bought the game now wait for CA to fix the performance issues and independent modders to fix the gameplay. You decide for yourself if this is the state a game should be in at release, and whether this is the sort of product that you should pay for.… Expand
Sep 3, 2013Disappointing. It's very unoptimized, the textures are terrible and the AI is terrible as well. Not innovative at all, it's basically a cash-grabbing rehash. Also, pre-order DLC? Really? I can't imagine the amount of pointless DLC they will add in the future...
Avoid this like the plague.
Sep 3, 2013So I've selected "Very High" graphics just to make sure game runs smoothly and hoping to increase it later but I was incredibly surprised seeing graphics equality of Rome I with lags. My specs are: X4 955/6950 2gb/8gb ram. I'll wait for a patches but for now this isn't how surprise fans Creative Assembly!
Sep 3, 2013Don't even bother to buy the game right now, there is a high change you will have tons of problems, since low fps, crashes, etc; even with high end rigs. You can check lots of foruns to see whats going on. There is no way a game that expensive could get out like this. Shame
Sep 3, 2013-----------Vote this game down----------
If you have ever been a fan of this series it is your obligation to vote this game down so CA understands that we are no longer going to put up with --consistently-- broken products that take upwards of 6 months to fix.
-And the AI still sucks? 10+ years later? Hundreds of millions in revenue later? You still cant hire someone competent enough to make a game more challenging than pong? Modders can do it but your entire development team cannot?
-It only takes 30 seconds to create an account through your email but the damage you can do to CA's sales will last a lifetime. Make them think twice before they try to pull this ONCE AGAIN. A game that has any flaws does not deserve a 10/10! Not one bug!
-Take a stand against this kind of robbery
You can drastically impact CAs revenue by voting games down on metacritic.
-----Vote this down!-----… Expand
Sep 3, 2013Broken AI.
Horrible Ui.
Poorly optimized.
Huge random FPS drops even in strong rigs.
Confusing unit cards.
Cap on armies and generals.
One year per turn and only one season.
One major step back from Shogun 2 in general.
Stay away from this game until major patches and mods fix the game and wait for a demo
Sep 3, 2013Where to start? Well not a whole lot of technical problems can't run it at ultra but already knew that.
Problems are many mainly don't feel part of the game like in older TW games were you controlled most everything and interaction with the game made you feel part of it. Not going to happen here feel no connection with my faction at all.
Avatars are the ugliest I have seen in 10 years they are that bad and when they talk they just open and close their mouths do not even remotely connect to the speech.
It took two years to sail from Rome to the other side of Corsica. I think my army would have starved. The 1 year turn sucks.
The battles I will say the units respond better and pathing is much better in this release. The biggest problem with battles is they are over in like 3 to 6 mins. The units make contact 30 seconds later one or the other is running.
The biggest let down though is the lack of feel part of the game that has always been something I loved about TW and it just doesn't exist here. The technology tree went backwards and is not interesting at all. The city control is bad and not interesting at all. Raising armies is way to easy and being connected to a General is stupid. With one year turns and taking two to land and army on Corsica there is no way in hell I will ever get to enjoy the huge world.
In the end I don't really care if I go back to playing or not there is no excitement like "Wow I need to go to the store ok one more hour I will go!" Nah I leave the game all time have really no care if I play it or not most likely will too see if it gets better but with already many turns gone I doubt it.… Expand
Sep 3, 2013As a long time Total War fan, I was disappointed by this title to say the least.
Unlike some, I have had absolutely no technical problems, and I'm not basing my judgement on something as petty as that. The technical problems always get fixed later.
However, I found some of the new "features" quite counter intuitive. For example, the amount of armies you can field is limited (this penalizes good players who know how to divide their forces and encourages players to rely on mass.) You can no longer divide an army, not without first starting a new one in the nearest town, then moving that close enough to transfer units. If you want to have specific type of unit in your army, you need to start your own FedEx company (and by doing that, you're committing part of your army capacity, just to get the units you want in the front lines.)
The information was obviously designed for the GUI, not the other way around. Someone thought that making everything small and inconveniently placed (I got standard GUI scale, 1600x1080) was a good idea. For example, the economy summary that used to fit in one page for easy one look glance, is not in a small box with a scrollbar. Same amount of information, horribly inconvenient to access.
Unit information cards that used to pop up where you howered over with the mouse are now in the far left corner of the screen, whereas the units you're examining are on bottom center. You'll be looking like MeGusta going through your unit capabilities.
And what about the tech tree? It is divided to 6 branches, just so you wouldn't notice how boring it is. Shogun 2 FotS had interesting tech tree, interesting and diverse technologies, easy one glance look and you could plan it all out. Now you need to go to 6 different branches, and nothing seems worth researching. But I guess that is just my personal opinion. Someone could think that researching {+Income, -Cost} 5 times in a row for agriculture is interesting and diverse tech tree.
And of course the AI is derping worse than a mad horse on weed. But I trust that will get fixed, eventually.… Expand
Sep 3, 2013The reviewing companies were obviously paid off. What CA has released is a bug riddled, unoriginal waste of hard disk space. The few positive changes made by Shogun 2 have been reverted, high end systems can't even play it (not because of graphical requirements but because of some error), AI is broken-- as usual to the point where non aggression pacts or trade agreements are basically impossible to negotiate. All in all, it's the same old wine in a new bottle. I'm off to play the Shogun 2 Sekigahara campaign till patches fix Rome 2. See you all in 2014.… Expand
Sep 3, 2013I've waited so long for this game and the hype has been immense. When i opened the game and entered my first battle i almost felt like slamming my head into the wall. Never have I been so disappointed with a game on release. The list of dissappointments range from strange and frustrating graphics issues to completely ludacris waiting times in the campaign. Even with AI movements toggled off it's unacceptable. We had the exact same issue in shogun 2 but this is far worse. Sad and dissappointing launch. I want to love this game but I this is undenieably an unfinished product that I don't want to spend my time on with the current state of the game.… Expand
Sep 4, 2013I paid 55 euros for horrible beta with tons of bugs? Nice. Ok, I can handle that, not first time.
But wait.... why they removed tons of thing such as: Avatar mode, Family Tree(minor thing but fun), WALLS, normal economy??? An UI is UGLY.
0/10. Shogun 2 is way better game!
Sep 3, 2013to counter the silly 10's being thrown around out the wrongfully I had to give this game a 1. It's not worthy of a 10 and everyone knows itl It's not worthy of a 1 but we have to even things out. Right now it has some intuitive issues and crash issues and diplomacy issues and I saw them. Figuring out how to build took about 3 turns and having to have a plat form before one builds is just more micromangement the game doesn't need. Diplomacy is silly in that no one wants a simple trade agreememt or non aggression pact. Crashing is a big issue with me because I rarely have them but this game crashed on the very first battle. a bad one too reset my whole computer and did a hard reboot. I'm sure there will be more issues like the AI is pretty easy too but hopefully that is because of these early factions I've encountered if it gets better without mods I'll up my score until then it gets a 1… Expand
Sep 3, 2013I have been a fan if the series since the very first game. CA burned us with ETW and Shogun 2 but we still trusted them, still believed. When Rome 2 was announced I was incredibly excited.
Now that it's been released? Far from it. All I feel is disappointment. One of my biggest disappointments is the lack if features we all loved from previous games in the series.
Most notably the family system/deep character traits. There is no family tree or way to keep up with what is going on with your faction leader. You don't see if he is married, you can't and do not get marriage proposals (at least I have not and I am 62 turns in...) but you can make them to "interesting characters" and it's as if you offered up some invisible female from your faction of which you have an unlimited amount when my faction leader dies literally some random guy pops up that I am not notified about to replace him. He's from my family, apparently, yet I do not know if he is my previous faction leader's son, brother, uncle, dog. Can't see if he has kids, nothing.
Feature in half-assed, game is half-assed. I am done with you, CA. Two times now I was disappointed and I still believed and defended you and your games. No more, not with how badly you have mucked up Rome 2. Adding features in one game and the removing them in the next among all the other issues: poor optimization, lag even on powerful machines, AI fails. How many more times until you actually fix it?
Done with this. Rockstar are the only devs I still trust now and respect. They always deliver, listen to their FANS and make great games that aren't half-assed. Once GTA V releases Rome 2 can step back with all its disappointment.… Expand
Sep 3, 2013I have played this series since 2004 and i am shocked this game is so bad.It is essentially a reskinned Shogun II that manages to run worse,look worse and feel worse even when they had a massive amount of money which seems to have went on PR and false reviews
Firstly the promise of slower grittier battles never happened and battles are so fast they are over in no time at all giving the user a huge load time wait and feeling underwhelmed.Units are also quite small and unmoddable at around 160 per unit.And the unit movement speeds are just insane with horses running with wild cheetas.There is a huge ugly and intrusive UI blocking most of the up close action when you control 40 units which is supposed to be a huge new feature.
Horrible AI also seems to plague the series again with dumb beach landings forcing the player to wait for every unit to dis embark before being allowed to give orders while the enemy attacks for disembarking forces.
The game lao seems so fast paced and dumbed down with so many flashing icons and instructions you would think it was designed for a ten year old.The game also lacks any kind of historical accuracy with laughable roman testudo formations and unrealistic phalanx formations.The massive unit spacing between soldiers means the testudo has huge gaps and paltry shield protection.And on the topic of shields the new hitpoint system now means that shields only act as a HP increase and once low a slingers stone can kill someone even behind a shield.Units also never seem to die in one hit due to this system.You must also be prepared to witness men flying in the air when hit by horses and chariots giving the whole game a messy and arcade feel which is devoid of grit or accuracy.
The performance is also shameful on high end computers and a note of caution SLI DOES NOT WORK and might never work.This game is single cards only and seems to barely use available GPU power.Only 70% load on a GTX 680 and sub 30 frames per second is simply unacceptable.
This is but a small fraction of issues listed so i gave them a score of one due to the over rated reviews and need to balance the metacritic score so people know just how much of a failure this game has been and how much money was wasted on PR instead of game development and high quality programmers.… Expand
Sep 3, 2013I expected wayyy more. I hate the way the soldier look on the bottom tab. Also it lags a lot with wayyyyy toooo long loading screens. My computer is suposed to run this game very well but the game thinks otherwise.
Sep 3, 2013Shame on reviewers for giving this game a free ride. As of release day, Creative Assembly is selling a totally defective, half-finished game that beyond its half-baked design innovations is unplayable by roughly a third of modern gaming computers. Don't buy this game until it's Steam saled for $10 or less, and only if they've patched it up.
Sep 4, 2013So far the biggest disappointment of 2013. Instead of improving and adding new features to the game, CA made everything more casual. I don't understand all these talks about huge budget, this game is lame shadow of old TW games.
People don't buy this game. It is very bad!
Sep 4, 2013We just bought a console port.
I redact my 2 out of 10 and give a 0 out of 10 for lies and trickery.
Look for Rome 2 on PS4 and Xbox One.
I really wish I hadn't preordered this game.
Sep 3, 2013This game is frankly terrible. As a CA fanboy I'm willing to forgive slight bugs and errors but this game goes far beyond that into the realm of unplayable. Every forum dedicated to this game is filled with people suffering from low fps, graphical glitches and the kind of experience you would expect from an Alpha, not a £30 full priced game.
Even if you ignore the fps issues (which is basically impossible) the game is lacking in unit variety, the campaign is now basically a CIV-lite and they've decided to add the ridiculous option of allowing armies to build boats, meaning that having a standard navy is completely pointless.… Expand
Sep 3, 2013In short, AVOID at all cost.
Extremely poor optimization, even you have i7 and GTX Titan, you may still have only around 20 fps.
Still the same graphic quality as Medieval (wow, it is now 2013), the same buggy AI, and the non user friendly UI and manual control.
Just play a high quality mod in Total War: Rome I, you may even have more fun than that.
Sep 4, 2013After I played 10 hours I would say:
-Bad AI,
-Little armies,
-Awful user interface.
- Boring campaign
55€ on steam is absolutely joke.
Sep 3, 2013The game shouldn't have been released yet, people pretty much pre-ordered a beta instead of a finished product. The game is good, perhaps a 7/10, but the developers screwed up and got greedy. Pretending it was finished, when it wasn't. This is Colonial Marines 2.0
Sep 3, 2013I'm a big fan of the Total War series, but Rome 2 is a big step backwards. Like, 15 years backwards. Honestly, Medieval 2 had better graphics. Actually, I think they may have re-used the same graphical engine from the original Rome: Total War. It looks about like that, with the big difference of only running at 8 frames per second on my actually-not-that-bad Radeon 6870. Maybe this game has some neat stuff in it, but you can't see it through all the pixels. In any case, the historical accuracy is awesome, like other Total War games, and I did learn a few things before I punched my fist through my computer screen and pissed all over the motherboard. For instance, I had no idea Roman soldiers wore puke from head to toe before they went into battle. It probably would have been effective at avoiding confrontation, if their enemies weren't all non-descript pink naked blobs wielding what appear to be gray foam tubes, with the intelligence of lemmings. Yeah, the graphics make it difficult to view very much of the game, but I can at least see that the A.I. is more retarded than the pong game I programmed when I was 13. Seriously. I hate this game, and this game hates me, and will hate you if you buy it. Just do yourself a favor and go play Tetris on a web page or something.… Expand
Sep 3, 2013I have been waiting about 8 years for this game, stayed up all last night for the 8am launch.
And well its utter utter at the moment unplayable lag, graphics look at all settings, my pc can play any game on the market at ultra settings! so its a top on the line gaming pc .
i didn't pay £30 for a beta game
Sep 3, 2013This game is one of the best strategy game I played but it's poorly optimized! Sadly, my core i3 and gtx 560ti can't run this on high settings. I just bought this game because of my total war collection
Sep 3, 2013The single player is reasonably good. I wouldn't say it's much of an improvement to its predecessor, Shogun 2, but nevertheless it's fun to play.
However the multiplayer experience has been entirely ruined in this latest offering from Creative Assembly. They removed the Avatars, the veteran units and vet progression, the leaderboards, the clan battles, and much else. They made the entire game experience harder. For example in Shogun2 when choosing your units, you would automatically see the statistics of each unit when you click on it. In Rome2 you have to right click on each one and bring up a slow-to-load properties window that gives you the stats on each unit, which makes the experience of picking an army tiresome and slow. And to add to that, it's almost impossible to distinguish units apart as the icons for them are the same, and the flags they carry on the field do not distinguish unit type, only weapon type.
Why did they take something beautiful and ruin it?… Expand
Sep 4, 2013This is a really bad game. I bought it, and I was all excited, but there are so many bugs and the gameplay is boring. Very disappointing game to actually play. Crashes all the time for me as I get into the middle stages of the campaign game. The AI is silly.
I don't want to play it anymore. Give me back my money SEGA!
Sep 3, 2013All i see is 10/10 OMG BEST GAME EVER...
But in reality crashes, tons of bugs, extreme lack of optimization with poor textures, low quality UI etc
But most of all DESYNC in MP campaign. Yes, yes. After 2 years of shogun 2 and still not fixed. This means it is same imbecile made network code for 5 years already. New game! How it is possible? Desync after 5 minutes of MP game. Who tested this? Long anticipated piece of crap.… Expand
Sep 3, 2013Rushed and clearly unfinished, Rome 2 Total War is a disastrous mess.
The game suffers from countless bugs, terrible AI, awful and inconsistent visuals a poor interface, and some of the worst optimization I've ever seen in a PC game. If you must buy this game do yourself and wait 3-4 months when the bugs have been worked out.
Sep 3, 2013The worst Total War game since Empire. They took every bit of progress they made with Shogun 2 and threw it out the window. What we have instead is an uglier, worse game on the same engine.
Sep 4, 2013Well, I've been (trying to) play this for a day and a night, and I can officially confirm this game is an absolute POS. I don't even had too many technical problems, a few, but my opinion is based solely on the experience of the game thus far. Here are some of my observations;
i. Where the hell are the seasons? Even Rome I had seasons, and that was ten years ago!
ii. OK, so the turns advance a whole year, which means my generals drop like flies. Just when they increase rank and you think they're getting somewhere, boom, they're dead. Awesome... NOT!
iii. Battle are just blob on blob, there's far less battle strategy than I've ever seen in any TW game, and I've been playing since the original Shogun. They just end up in a huge, blob on blob sh!t fight, where's the strategy in that??
iv. Do units get tired anymore? Who knows, they've dropped that all altogether!
v. Do units slow down according to the terrain? Apparently not, because they appear to advance up hills at lightning speed. Gone are the days of having a decent missile squad up the hill raining death, great, how fun?
vi. The new interface for combining units is appallingly bad, who the hell thought this garbage up? What was wrong with dragging and dropping, how can you go wrong with that? What where you thinking CA, FFS??
vii. Again, what the hell is up with food? I'm a master of Civ, the only compatible game. One of the best things about Civ is you know what you're going to get when you build something, or neglect to build something, it's all right there in the numbers. In Rome II, indeed most TW games, the 'economy' and 'food' remain completely ephemeral. You don't really have clue what's going on most of the time. Instead of planning your economy and carefully balancing your unit count with building upgrades, you're just running around fixing things after the fact, the entire time. Oh, that cities unhappy and the citizens are rioting, for no apparent reason! Who knows why these things happen in the TW universe, they just do, and there's sweet FA you can do to pre-empt it. This entirely reactionary approach means you're spending most of your time putting out spot fires, so to speak, instead of getting down to business and taking territory.
viii. The 'help tool' or dictionary isn't very helpful either.
ix. The unit cards are garbage, just more poorly presented, useless information.
x. And the AI... LOL, the poor old AI... I actually feel sorry for it, I really do. I'd buy this AI flowers and give it a hug, God knows it needs one. Easily the worst AI of any TW game I've ever seen, and that's saying something.
xi. No guard mode! WTF? How the hell could they have removed guard mode? So, now my units will midlessly chase down fleeing enemy instead of holding formation with the rest of my army? Great, more micro management, and they're actually saying the AI's improved in the marketing spiel? Can I get my money back for false advertising? I'd upload this crap back to Steam if I could.
xii. Very limited armies and units. In every other TW game you could field as many units and armies as your population could support, which was a lot. You could also divide up your armies as you liked; leave half to garrison the town, and take the rest out on an expedition to scout around... Not anymore, none of it, it's all gone, everything has been simplified specifically to cater for idiot noobs. What a sick joke.
I could go on... and on... it's a HUGE step back from Shogun II, a massive, unfathomable dumbing-down for casual gamers. All the years of technical and gameplay innovation and that led up to and was perfectly distilled in Shogun II is GONE. It's just GONE, forget about it, it may as well have never happened.
You know, there's a reason why EA has 'won' the worst corporation in America award two years in a row. They're greedy scum, and this is a prefect example. They've simply rehashed the old Rome, jazzed-up the graphics a bit, screwed-up the interface (severely), and sold it as something new. EA/CA have clearly attempted to 'casualize' one of the few remaining strategy franchises that had any depth, any soul left at all. Gone are the layers of depth and refinement forged over so many years and various iterations, in favour of streamlining and easy conversion to Xbox One. I mean, really, we all shoulda seen it coming, it was only a matter of time.
Well, shame on you CA for releasing this un-optimized filth, and shame on me for falling for the unbelievable marketing hype surrounding this absolute POS game.
Please, don't buy this game. Don't reward CA/EA for treating their customers like mugs and releasing a half finished product simply because they know we'll buy it. I pre-ordered it, but you have the benefit of reading posts and review such as this, honest reviews, not the paid-off drivel spouted by so many 'professional' review sites. Just don't do it, have some self control.
I'm going to try and get a refund through Paypal. Dispute opened...… Expand
Sep 3, 2013Worst strategy game i've ever seen.
It's not a game, it's trash, it's not Rome, it is repainted Shogun2. The game is so poorly done absolutely everything fighting, strategy map, interface, diplomacy, AI, facial animation which is hard to believe that these same people who made the last game of the series. I withdrew my pre-order from Steam two months ago, but support did not want to see the two letters that i send. So i got proof that i was right, and the game 60-bucks full of crap. In the CA thought of me as well as the buyer, but it is not thought as a player. This game a lack of respect for fans of the series. I will not even more buy a game of CA until the demo.… Expand
Sep 4, 2013Huge disappointment. Rome 2 is very bad game with expensive marketing campaign. Gameplay is boring and loses almost in every aspect to first Rome which was released 10 years ago!
Sep 3, 2013This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I am very upset!!!! .Horrible optimization and miserable graphics first Rome looks better if this guano. Millions of bugs.Ai is very stupid.Developers cheated players.… Expand
Sep 6, 2013A well orchestrated PR campaign (congratulations on that CA!) and promises of a game well made and an incentive of 1 additional free DLC and people buy the game. Then, fans (me) complain it is different and broken, so some patches and a ton of paid DLC's later CA is far more income sturdier than just issuing a game upfront properly.
CA is completely capable of making their games playable, modders like dartvader proved they can do it on their own but it is not a good business proposition. There is no development to be done anymore. And development means income and jobs. Tell me again, why do it properly and then be out of a years to come long business?! Unfortunately for me, only now I fully realized this.
Turning now on the PR campaign we have been promised graphics outstanding with soldiers faces showing horror as enemies attack. This is not the case. Will be though ...a DLC later. We have been expecting some blood and wear and tear of armor and weapons after the battle as seen in the pictures of their PR campaign and as we read in reviews. Again, it is not yet the case, but will be... a DLC later.
Right now a soldier looks the same before and after the battle.
We know Romans had archers but there are no archer units in Rome 2 rooster. We all want them as it is stupid to fight with stone slingers in a fiercesome war machine ...a DLC later.
Got the point?
For this reason CA bolstered that Rome2 is a huge platform with unlimited potential for the future. And it is truly a cash making machine as long there are fans. I'm gone.
Believe it or not, the people actually programming the game are not fans of the series. They do not understand the subtleties of the game and this is proven by the fact that they invested in graphics a lot more while "simplifying" the game play and micromanagement, making thus the game dull. To them it seems normal an unmanned tower is raining arrows on the attacking force?! Realism?
They did not see the point of the defensive position in the unit's orders and just took it out. Why? Because the programmer who did this in the previous series isn't working or in charge of that particular development and the new guy did not see the point anymore. Or, maybe it is pointless for consoles.
We have to take into account that CA evolved in the last 10 years also. Many new people came and old ones went. This team is not the one who launched Medieval 2 and the previous games. It was visible from the launch of Empire where the bugs started piling up, to this date. It seems they do not play the games they are programming.
Now, back to us, the fans. We have also evolved. Many of us are fans of the series since Rome 1 or Shogun 1. This was say back in 2004 and we were then 18. That makes us 28 years old now. We don't play games like then.
We like to think, use strategy and want to see realism and feel it. We don't like fast and easy battles won. We like positions and tactics and planning an empire right. We like BAI and CAI that is challenging, diplomacy that makes sense, we like to develop our regions, muster armies (as many as we like and afford) and to be challenged. We need for that an immersive game in both strategy and game play.
Here lies the subtlety that CA did not grasp.
We also like stunning graphics and can afford top notch PC's. We can spend money if we feel we get what we want.
But right now, I don't. I feel tricked by a PR campaign promising everything there was in the series and more and delivering... a different and broken thing.
Deceiving your customers is generally bad bussiness practice, may work here and now but not on the long run.
Looking at the above, my feel is that CA cannot deliver the game play we want anymore. They can create a platform but that's it. For that reason modders like darthvader appeared and made from a jerky, fort lagging and stupid humpty dumpty style Empire a nice playable game. Same goes for Napoleon and Shogun 2. The crowning achievement of the modding community is Shogun 2 darthmod. From here, looking down on Rome 2 seems a huge step back.
There are so many issues to be addressed speaking about the game from a game play perspective like armies cannot be split up, armies embarking on nonexistent ships transports, reduced tech tree, UI non intuitive, melees extremely fast, units routing extremely quick one has no time to zoom in to see the fight, not holding formations etc. that it makes no sense to write all here. Just read the posts on Metacritic or Steam.
Forget the technical problems, they will be fixed eventually but concept issues will not.
This game will be playable for us maybe in 1-2 years from now when modding people like darthvader and the many others will have corrected some of the game play issues if they will exist for this game.
From my perspective I am truly sorry to have bought this game now, because I supported this strategy CA is implementing and I destroyed my hopes of a great game. A dumbed down game it is.… Expand
Sep 3, 2013I have been a loyal TW fan since inception. I feel deceived by the trailers and false promises. Rome II, after a full day of testing, has left me extremely disappointed. The "core" game is a complete 180 from previous games and alienates the die-hard fans. Unit speeds are ridiculously fast, formations break instantly upon contact, and the moral system is nonexistent. This game feels more like a typical RTS game than a Total War game. I would read more of these reviews before purchasing. Caveat emptor.… Expand
Sep 4, 2013It is my first Total War game and I was looking forward to enjoy it very much. Oh god... this is terrible game. Not only bugs and glitches annoy me. Every aspect of the game looks unfinished. It has the dumbest AI I ever saw.
3/10. Hate this game
Sep 3, 2013Sadly a disappointment. Poor performance, AI still charges into your spears with its general, multiplayer adds nothing to the original Rome 1 concept.
Sep 3, 2013A big dissapointment, like all other total war games at release it's filled with bugs. This time it's everything from bad performance on high-end rigs to graphical errors and crashes
Sep 3, 2013Terrible, just a glorified console game with an arcade feeling, depth-less boring city management, no unit cohesion in battle just a mess, 2 minute battles with ridiculous unit speeds, terrible animations including this awful looking gray smoke that emits from all units when hit by a ranged weapon, Capped armies breaking game play, warp speed ships, bugged diplomacy, AI units that don't defend the walls of a city breaking game play, box turtle like designed interface, bland unit cards, questionable graphics (like a teenager with abstract ideas), un-moddable music files, and no family trees. I would stay away from this game, even in the coming months (when and if modding tools are released) I still would caution against buying it. This the worst PC game I ever spent 60$ on. It is nothing more than a functional alpha at this point.… Expand
Sep 3, 2013This was one of the most overly hyped games ever. I remember exactly a year ago when all of us were excited by the Siege of Carthage which was shown as Pre-Pre-Alpha. But heck the game looked so much better then. And I am talking in terms of the "Darker Feel of War" which the Lead Design actually emphasized over and over again.
Where has that darker and gritty feel gone? All I am seeing are people dressed in colorful clown costumes with battles talking 1-2 minutes at most. AI still sucks and is easy to beat even at Legendary. Poor optimization problems and performance issues. Alot of campaign features and removed including the ever decreasing list of diplomacy options.
Here is how CA can redeem themselves: Either release comprehensive mod tools right away allowing us to edit all the DBs including settlements (God I want to make them so much bigger. "Cities" are represented none more than small villages with a couple of scattered buildings), or refund us all the money for fooling us with hyped marketing.… Expand
Sep 4, 2013Long time C.A fan, a great company that is unfortunately moving backwards. This game which I'm sure by March next year might be working is sadly broken in it's present state. Testers should actually bring another laptop or tower in to work and check how this runs on different systems before release, I feel for those fools who pre-ordered this mess with the DLC, I for one will not be trusting C.A and their paid for reviews in future. Furthermore it really calls into question those publications and their credibility in future. Shogun 2 was great but the series NEEDS to take a step forward, the strategic map needs some more depth, that part of the game could take a lot out of Fallen Enchantress L.H book, some random events, depth and developing storylines could be a step forward, but C.A just keeps on simplifying things and in turn the games are becoming shallow and boring. Revolution, evolution and creative thinking seem to be lacking in their team, Empire has still got so many problems after all these years that haven't been dealt with that I wonder if this screw-up could be a serious nail in their coffin. I have a lot of respect for what they have done over the years, but they knew how busted this was as should've been put back or Beta tested before asking people to spend $60 on an unfinished product. Relying on unpaid modders and fans to make their games enjoyable, stable and playable is shockingly bad from a company with such a following and I for one am disappointed to have waited so long for this. Reading some of these reviews is just as shocking though. At the end of the day it is just a game, not the end of the world and people should not be so dramatic. I understand peoples anger at paying so much for a turkey, but you really have to learn from having your fingers burnt, don't buy the DLC, stop supporting an uncreative company, be vocal in where you want the series to go (three kingdoms please!) and they will hopefully turn things round and give us a great blockbuster to bring the fans back. If all those fanboys and sheep give this 10's when it clearly doesn't deserve them are holding the development of this series back. If we want a challenging, gripping, impressive forward step in the next game, we have to send the message that they are going backwards and alienating their fan-base. Come on C.A, step up to the plate...… Expand
Sep 3, 2013Needs work it has a lot of issues right now. crashing, diplomacy, AI, intuitive gameplay. Graphics are good though I wouldn't give it a 10 but we have to be fair about this 7.5 is closer to home it shouldn't get a 10 just because it's CA and RTW2
Sep 4, 2013Total waste of money 2 is more like it the game crashes often, AI is not challenging at all even on the hardest difficulty and co-op campaign is hardly functional atm. I also Tried a 1v1 multiplayer battle lost connection after 2 minutes cool cool.... OH! lets not forget to top off sundae with bugs galore and no way to get a refund if you bought it on steam well deserved 0 in my book.
Sep 4, 2013This game is a disaster and worst instalment in TW franchise. Developers simply removed many things such as family tree, normal economic mode, multiplayers modes, etc. Game mechanics is much worse than in Shogun 2. It doesnt feel like a TW game. Battles are boring and AI has serious glitches.
Sep 4, 2013Wait at least for a year before you buy this game. Maybe -and I mean maybe!- after a couple of hundreds patches and a few dozen mods, this dumbed down bug-filled pacman fighting game will be playable. Until that day, this is a disgrace for our dear Total War Series.
Sep 3, 2013This game is not finished. They released it with no driver support. No crossfire, no SLI. Terrible! Official word is blaming AMD and Nividia. What a joke. Make a game that don't work and blame others.
Sep 6, 2013After more than 20 hours of playing I gotta change my initial rating. In its current state I'd give it a solid 4/10. Too many bad design decisions and on top of that a plethora of bugs and performance issues.
In its core it's a dumbed down version of the original Rome TW with a pretty campaign map.
Sep 4, 2013For the love of god DON'T BUY IT! This game is a failure on so many levels.
As a Total War veteran (have bought and extensively played other games starting from first shogun), I really could not be more disappointed.
Every developer has had a big miss, and CA has their first huge miss. In my opinion, even Empire was far better game.
Sep 4, 2013This is going to be a very detailed review of the game, it was a huge disappointment so far for me. For readabilitys sake this is the things that I (and most other people) hate about the game
-Retarded AI
-Capture Points, The AI will neglect your army and go to the capture points straight and even sometimes break throuh your superior forces
-Graphic issues (CA has announced a patch on that one though), soldiers faces look incredibly stupid even on ultra
-Balance Issues (Some factions are so overpowered that there is simply no fun found in battling with or against them)
-Formations break after a few seconds (Even in phalanx the soldiers will break out of formation and shuffle around the map weirdly)
-Insane battle speed (The battles are over even faster than in Shogun 2, I had no battle over 10 minutes so far)
-Immersive Feeling Lost (No family tree, Recruitable generals, etc.)
-Bugs (Roman units can't throw pila except when attacking, Phalanx units can't attack or will go out of phalanx)
-Ridiculously bad UI (It takes up half of your screen and is totally dumbed down, there isn't even loose formation or guard mode!)
-The power bar is out of control, the balance of forces is totally against you on the campaign map, but on the battlefield your power bar occupies 90%, what is that?)
Me and most other people feel this way, I was overly excited. This game stil has some potential though, as long as CA decides to get on their asses and fix all those gamebreaking things.
I give it a 4/10 as it is right now and will look forward to future patches and user overhauls. I really hope that this game gets fixed, at the moment it is absolutely unplayable for me.… Expand
Sep 4, 2013One word describes this game 'souless'. It's boring and you don't feel connected to anything in the game at all. Compared to the original Rome this is horrible garbage, this game is rubbish!! Waited 10 years since Rome 1 for this pile of RS 2.6 is much more enjoyable than this. Anyone who is scoring this game a 10 is either a brain dead moronic drone or paid advertising. From the start of writing this review i have seen the positive reviews rise from around 55 to 161 in the space of a few mins, yeah right... and good on all those review sites who probably didn't even play the game who gave it a good score, Empire mark II...… Expand
Sep 4, 2013After playing all day I need to admit that this game is very different what developers promised. Optimization doesnt exist at and graphics look not great. Gameplay is very messy and many things just missing. I regret preordering this game. I was fooled by their marketing campaign.
Sep 4, 2013I am a big fan of Total War series, I bought every single game&dlc up to date. But I will never buy anything from CA. Rome II is a real disappointment. It's developed for 12 years old retarded CoD players.
- Combat is too fast paced. Thousand of men die in a few minutes and even the most crowded battles are over in 3-4 minutes. (No I am serious) No tactics, no flanking, no retreating etc...
- It's rushed. CA didn't even try to optimize it. Textures are like crap and it's laggy. It looks nothing like trailers.
- They promised to support low end computers and laptops but it's not even working on high end PC's.
- Navies are pointless. Your armies can just march into the sea and 20 ships will magically appear to transport them. They can easily destroy most of the warships.
- They have removed a lot of useful features from past games.
- It's an over-simplistic arcade-like game. Special abilities are terrible.
- Day one dlc.
- İncredibly stupid AI
- Stupid UI made for consoles. (feel free to not believe this, you will see.)
- No family tree, no veteran units, nothing we know from good old Total War games.
I can expand this list but I am bored of this game. Sorry for grammar mistakes, I am not a native speaker… Expand
Sep 3, 2013It could have been better much better. All the crashing is terrible just terrible. I hope they patch it soon as these many issues just won't do nor these lying scores it's dejavue all over again with the origional RTW the game does not rate 100 or 90's and that's all these jerks can give just to be like the other lemmings or smurfs. Quit lying and give it the score it deserves because of performance and gameplay.… Expand
Sep 4, 2013I used to play Rome Total War 1 a lot and it's an excellent game. Rome 2 however is terrible. Game looks like dirty beta or alpha because it is very buggy The game design is too plain simple and boring compared to Rome 1. UI just looks ugly. Campaign map is very casual with many things removed.
I would like to get a refund.
Sep 4, 2013The official review score is a total shame. The gamer's review score is closer to reality and it should even be a much lower score. Same old philosoply coming from Sega is a real disappointment. Selling an unfinished product is totally unacceptable. The game is a bug in itself. It will mess up your computer and slow down anything you do with it.
I can't even finish a prologue because games crashes. UI looks horrible.… Expand
Sep 3, 2013Definitely a let down in regards to pushing for new mechanics and interesting gameplay aspects for the TW series. Not to mention the abysmal performance and countless graphical and stability issues. I have to use two third party programs to even make the game playable. Shiftwindow to bypass texture issues (The OFFICIAL fix from CA...) and cursorlock because CA Fails to add region lock to their games. Their previous title, Shogun II, showed huge improvements to their gameplay and strategic flow, of which Rome II has little of. The new AI seems to have the potential to be a challenging opponent but normally just bugs out and does nothing, runs around after a worthless cav unit the whole battle, or charges their general right into the wall of spears right off the bat. I wanted to love this game, but CA seems to have taken to their old habits again, a pity.… Expand
Sep 4, 2013Yesterday I spent damn five hours trying to finish prologue. It crashed like 30 times. This game is one huge bug.
Don't buy it people. It is not worth current price.
Sep 4, 2013Review is based on the current release: Huge letdown and worst TW game ever made rolling on the hype of rome nothing more) Horrible UI and Layout: - too big unit cards and info windows (covers nearly 40 of the screen) - no artwork at all (looks like Windows reminds me of dragon age 2) Gameplay: - Poorly optimized waiting for turn to end ... - Poor region information on strat map
- No family tree system
- Poor tech tree.
- No Rome era immersion.
- Next to no tactical possibilites (no guard button, units do not hold lines, super quick battles just charge and forget. Moral system seem to be related to a unit only and does not effect nearby units at all.
Most battles end in… Expand
Sep 4, 2013This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This one should be called Rome II or Rome II casual war doing a cap limit and do not even let the player have the number of army he want just drop down the total war mention I do not experienced any graphical issues but doing this game for being more realistic Just moving an army into water and poping it into a boat that sound not realistic at any point just a bunch of worst thinking that casual will have a great time of non thinking anything and enjoing a Star craft II from CA.Was quite impressed by shogun 2 total war battles fast with energy with a good feel on what your armies is doing, there is nothing, men full of bronze equipement run faster than ninja and kill so fast you hadn't any time to appreciate it seriously I really hope for a mod that retunr some point of this game to a rome 1 total war i didn't paid a game to play the way developper want to, i paid a game to play it and enjoy it the way i want Seeing 10/10 make me feel they havn't never played a total war game before or they not yet found the cap limit haha More people must come here to claim their dissatisfaction spending 60 bucks in this open beta game … Expand
Sep 4, 2013This game is one big false marketing. After watching all commercial videos, I was hoping to see Rome 2 at least as good as Shogun 2. However, developers just lied to us. Optimization and visual part of the game is bad. Gameplay doesn't feel like TW game.
Rome 2: Total War is big disappointment for me. I want my money back!
Sep 4, 2013I tried liking this game but I just don't, and it looks like I'm not the only one who feels let down by Rome II.
The graphics look amazing on the highest setting, but for some odd reason my GTX 660 can't handle more than medium graphics which makes the game look A LOT worse than Shogun 2, Napoleon and even Empire. Which doesn't make sense right?? I have no idea why that is, but it really takes away from the whole experience.
Biggest issue I have with the game though is the battles. In sieges no matter if you are attacking or defending the AI doesn't move, or if they do they just run around in circles...plane and simple, yet again the AI is beyond stupid.
I don't like where CA took the Total War series with Shogun 2, it was just too arcadish for my taste. CA promised this wouldn't be the case with Rome II, but here we are...most of my battles are over in 4 minutes and it's like watching Usain Bolt when the units are running.
This game is big disappointment.… Expand
Sep 4, 2013Really a huge leap backwards from the Shogun era, interface usability is horrible, game depth is shallow while unit statistics have become completely silly, player interaction is much worse, multiplayer is a complete mess an maps are very unbalanced, graphics look very poor unless zoomed right in from where there is no control, very frequent crashes and low frame rates even at low settings, what have u done in the last 2 years CA? btw I played 2000+ hrs of Shogun 2 & FOTS and really enjoyed every bit of it.… Expand
Sep 4, 2013I was waiting this game for years. I bought pre-order after watching commercials and reading developers interviews. Now I am feeling robbed and scammed. This game is nothing as it was promised by developers and actually it is much worse than previous TW games. Tons of bugs, simplified campaign map, many features removed, graphics are glitchy. Total disaster.
Sep 4, 2013NEG: Too low morale, too fast unit movements & batttle speed, cluster-building, not keeping formations, 1-2 minutes waiting time after every turn, stupid AI. Battles hardly last longer than 4 minutes, it's a joke.
POS: Province system, graphics, factions
Summary: 2 points. Very disappointing
Sep 4, 2013I feel scammed there's no other way to say it.
The minimum and recommended requirements are a lie. The game is unplayable. After applying community-prorposed fixes, I can now actually barely play at 10-12 FPS. Won't comment on the many disappointments which other players report battle mechanics, removed gameplay features like family trees and so on.. but I have to say this is the biggest let down I have ever experienced from an entertainment product! Such a shame!… Expand
Sep 4, 2013Ignore the people with underpowered pcs! said every 10 out of 10 review ever
I built my pc last month using brand new parts and it cost me a total of £1500 and this game still runs terrible. Not only that but the graphical bugs are extreme and the countless other problems. This really is a shame because i was looking forward to Rome 2 for years. Ether the chance of getting good performance is random or there's a lot of people lying about having 5 year old pcs and i can run this on ultra with smooth fps Shame on CA. Have they learned nothing?… Expand
Sep 4, 2013This game failed its Total War predecessors. It is too fast paced, it´s hard to actually "feel" the game and immerse in to it, because of the new campaign, in which you just don´t give a what happens next. Diplomacy is ok but could stil use improvement (especially the trade agreements).
But the battles! Oh my god, they suck balls. Even with high tier units, the battles tend to last at max like 5 minutes, and I am talking about 4000 against 4000 men battles. Every battle, be it an ambush, siege, or whatever, just ends in a Giant Big Blob. And the AI in siege battles, which was supposed to be really good, is freaking horrible! All the AI does is just rushes towards the Central Point. All hail the Central Point! All hail the worst game in the series! But seriously, let´s just pray for a patch. Unfortunately I believe, that there are just too many problems, that it will either take a year to be repaired, or won´t ever see the improvement.… Expand
Sep 4, 2013Well, this might seem unfair to give 1/10. It is. But its unfair of SEGA/CA to release a game full of potential but with so many bugs it seems they havnt tested at all. Besides serious performance issues there are many bugs known of previous TW titles, like AI not attacking at all in battles, desync issues and also some fancy new ones, like frozen camera or 5min turn-time-waits in coop campaign.. Some of them are gamebreaking, some of them are just annoying. Fix this game and this could be a solid 9/10, but at this state its not worth playing as frustration is imminent.… Expand
Sep 5, 2013After playing every single Total War game since its release i am incredibly disappointed with this release. There are many positives (scope, graphics, traditions, unit types, increased diplomacy) yet somehow by importing these features in the developers have lost so much of the Total War basics that it is actually massively shocking. The PR for this game was excellent and we were told that the developers had the biggest budget ever for a Total War game. With that in mind the fact that your 'epic battles' can be over in a couple of minutes due to poor testing of the combat system and units formations crumble when they meet an opposing force and battle lines turn into blobs is ridiculous. Also the campaign map, as beautiful as it is it has been dumbed down, no longer do you build farms and see farms appear upgraded on the map (Shogun 2) but you do see your cities get bigger. So big in fact that they take up a stupid amount of space. I appreciate as a Total War fanatic i could come across snobby, the mechanics of this game are really good. The game itself though has been released unfinished and unworthy of the epic reviews it has been given by the press. My thoughts are that they probably are not Total War fans and not played the previous titles. Playing the game for the first time id imagine it might appear pretty amazing but believe me, its not. This will need sorting out by the amazing Total War modding community and they don't even get paid for it. Thanks CA, i can only presume your next title will be even worse after this.… Expand
Sep 4, 2013Genuinely awful game. I only gave it 1 because I suppose they've done some work on graphics but clearly nothing else. The website/magazine reviews have been bought and paid for again so ignore completely. Any user giving this 5 or higher is an idiot/child/idiot child and should be ignored completely.
This game has absolutely zero depth. The AI is rubbish of the highest order, yet you will still spend most of your time waiting for the game to take the AI turns, even on decent rigs. The UI is horrendous and displays info in a painful fashion. Each turn is a pointless exercise in building things that create food and reduce order, then building things that raise order and reduce food. The "tactical" aspect is laughable and battles rarely last more than 5-8 minutes and consist of a series of insta-routs. Defensive battles now have a capture point rendering all tactical thinking irrelevant.
Total War games (and I've played them all) have never been what you would call strategy masterpieces, but CA have somehow managed to remove every single aspect of decision making and choice from this. If you enjoy strategy can I suggest you play chess or Europa Universalis IV because Rome II is crap of the highest order.
If I can help stop even 100 people from buying this then I'll be happy. TBH, this game wouldn't even be worth pirating.… Expand
Sep 10, 2013This game is commercial garbage.
Unplayable, graphics and gameplay simplified, arcadized and NO tactic at all.
Capture point? WTF is this, a hsitorical strategy serious game or a arcade-console-casual game?
It's pure it's the worst abort I everseen in my gaming life, is the biggest delusion of the year.
DON'T BUY THIS ALPHA-ARCADE-PIECEOF**** and install Rome I.
Sep 4, 2013Rome Total War II!
You dissapointed me greatly. I am a big fan of the total war series and I have longed for you since God-knows-when. But yesterday, you let me down greatly. Unlike what CA showed and promised in their huge campaign, you are a mess of lots of semmingly good things. Because I love the previous total war games so much, let me leave you some comment on the 4 hours I spent on you yesterday:
- Too many unnecessary changes about the managing tabs. The back ground of the tabs is dark and unattractive. The tech tree is broken and inconvenient to use. The city management is confusing and un-focusing. If in the previous games, I know precisely what I can get from getting up a certain building and therefore can plan my strategy for each province, now I know no longer, every thing I build, I have no idea what use would it be for my strategy.
- The management of generals is dreadful. If in shogun, your generals add a huge value to your strategy and the managing tabs look so classical for shogun, here in Rome 2, because the game pace is so damn slow and the time past so fast, no general can survive more than 40 turns which is really not a lot considering the size of the map and the number of turns it would take to conquering just 1/4 of it. This all make general insignificant and just a sad unnecessary feature plus the managing tabs looks awful.
- Recruitment is too goddam easy and fast and it makes the game boring.
- the agents despite the interesting marketing story made up by CA, seem insignificant.
- The strategy side of the game is slow, energy lacking and boring,
- the tactic side has a lot of bugs and it does not show the unique characters of each nation army. though I ve just tried rome and sparta, both of which by the way are famous for their high military disciplines, in battle they just run into enemy army like mob. my phalanx keeps un-phalanxing every sec and just charge straight ahead with their swords without even a care of keeping formation. If in Shogun II, flanking, attacking from behind and timing are so crucial to defeat the enemy and the suspense atmosphere you have in battle and the victorious feeling after defeating a legendary-army, all of which makes total war games so enjoyable, in rome II you dont have any of those feeling and brainy features anymore.
A huge let-down in general… Expand
Sep 4, 2013I have enjoyed all of the total war games up until now. The biggest pain about this game is that it is virtually unplayable due to all the crashes and bugs. I have never been able to play this game for 30 minutes straight without crashing. AI is more stupid than it was in Empire. No Avatar mode which I liked in Shogun. For me developers are dead after this game.
Sep 4, 2013Simply not fair to charge 55 dollars for a broken game. I still give it a 4/10 because it might get better through the months.
Some features are just bad though and not broken. Like the messy battles and arcade-like campaign. Stupid traits etc.
Sep 4, 2013This game is a HUGE letdown.
The game was many performance issues, since crashes, freezes, low fps on pc's above the requirements and even on some med/high end machines.
Even without counting the performance issues, the game is a residual of the other total war games. The battle system is awful, you have a capture the flag system and you run straight into it and let the armies fight you don't even need to care about tactics they will just pile up anyway and form a big chunk off units that appear to be deaf. The units moving on battle seem that they are running all the time and the cavalry seems like cars moving. AI is plentiful bad in battles and outside.
There are some good points that I like, diplomacy is one of them.
In conclusion, this game is not worth the money and seems unfinished. What is unacceptable since CA overhyped this so much, I personally feel rip off and regret completely from buying it.… Expand
Sep 4, 2013Very big disappointment. Game is very poorly optimized and loaded with performance bottle necks. Lots of application crashes due to run time errors with the software (i.e. bugs.) The user interface is awful and is definitely not AAA quality. Things the AI does do not make any sense. Battles are too short, don't feel epic. I have played every TW game ever made, this is the only one where I don't get that excited feeling before my army clashes with the enemy on the battlefield.
If this game had it's technical issues under control and the game was even remotely stable, it would give it a 6/10.
In summary, it doesn't feel like I am playing a total war game made by TCA.
It feels like I am playing a game made by some 'pretender' company that tried and failed to copy what TCA did.… Expand
Sep 4, 2013Well the developers sure pulled the wool over my eyes. I wish they would of put all that money from advertising into the actual game! This game should be labeled as a "beta". The sad thing being, that it is beyond repair. It will take years of patches, and community mods to make this game worth playing.
Sep 4, 2013Horrible UI.
Horrendously confusing unit cards.
Poorly optimized.
Fix the triremes.
Where is my guard button.
Make a unit card that covers half my screen.
Sep 5, 2013First Aliens
Then Company of Heroes
and now Total war.
Its time for SEGA to go bankrupt, all they care about is quick money grab. They are ruining my 2 favourite franchises Coh and TW. you SEGA piece of
Sep 27, 2013Update: The 3 released patches fixed a few things. The really long turns have gotten some what faster, "some" balancing has been done, and units hold their formations slightly longer than before. The most hilarious fix I read in the patch list was a fix for misspelled words..I could give a crap about that there are more pressing matters to focus on CA. With that being said, the 3 patches still don't do it for me, but I'll bring my score up for the effort, but not by much. Still many missing features, no family tree. still buggy land and naval battles, still arcade like battles that end in 10mins now instead of 5 so I guess it's an improvement, Ai is still retarded and does the jig while getting slaughter by missle units and they still fail to engage 80% of the time, and we still have that ridiculous army limit!! Geez that is a crappy decision., etc, etc, ect, ect..
Also, I got to love the sudden flood of naive brainless individuals giving this game 9-10s in an attempt to boost the rating and the user complaining about a 0 score. I gave this a 0 because it's BS I friggin paid $70 for a game in Alpha stage. It's like buying a computer only to find out the I have a really pretty monitor and tower but no guts. So to all those ppl "Go kick rocks!
Rome II the Arcade game...or something!??? WTF is this garbage.
0.) This takes the cake, half the total war fan base can't even play this junk because it fails to work. Many CTDs and freezes....worthless...someone should be fired and kicked square in the a$$ on the way out the door.
1.) Your Units are set to run by default...so they are running all over the place like idiots every time you order a move.
2.)No Family Tree- wtf, I thought this was Rome, a family tree is a pretty important part of the game...or maybe not, hell I don't know...retarded CA.
3.) Has more bugs than Empires Total War ever did, and that's seriously saying something!
4.) Serious limitation to recruitment- Now you can only recruit units through a General and only a General. No more recruiting units in your cities, which pretty much hamstrings your ability to recruit a garrison army that you feel is just right to hold that city on the border of your enemy. Now you have a preset "Generic Garrison". I guess I don't need more than 4 archer units to hold miles of walls...oh yeah that leads me to my next point.
5.) You no longer have the option to build walls...yep that's right, no option to build walls in your smaller villages or towns. Walls are reserved for your "More important" capital cities. Well that's great and grand and all, but I guess my other towns are worthless and F***ed. I suppose my generic garrison army can handle it..... or not.
6.) You are no longer allowed to detach any units from your Army unless you have another General right next to that particular Army/General you wish to exchange units with. So I guess CA figured it was wise to keep me from detaching half my army to garrison a city I just captured so that I can send my General on his marry little way to do something useful. Instead I have to park his a$$ in the city for 10 flippin turns (Which Equals 10 yrs btw) until the public order stabilizes...awesome!
7.) Battles last a WHOPPING 3-5mins! No time for tactical maneuvers, not that it matters with this AI, it's over too fast. You just send all your guys into this blob of troops just like you would if you were playing good old Command and Conquer.
8.) No fire at will options for your Legionaries. Instead your Legionaries throw their pilums every time you order them to engage then enemy, which is absolutely AWESOME when you send a unit to support another unit already engaged with the enemy and your Legionaries throw that SWEET volley of Pilums right into the backs of your own troops..Brilliant move!
9.) No loose and tight formation options-guess we didn't need them
10.) We got magic abilities just like Warhammer. (Remove all fatigue, better accuracy for archers, reload faster, and many more fun abilities from Middle Earth) Every single unit has some retarded special ability that you need to use as much as possible..so it turns into a classic click fest.
11.) You can only trade out of one port, which is probably one of the many bugs, while your others just sit and be useless.
12.) Countless other bugs, from Red skies to enemy units doing the jig while you pepper them with arrows all day, to the classic suicide generals getting impaled on spears.
All of these issues and retarded features, among a ton of other issues I really don't feel like listing because it would take 2-3 days, makes Rome II the worse game of the series so far and probably the death of the total war franchise. I sure do hope CA really enjoys this piece of crap, dumbed down, casual, console geared, kiddie game they have created. As for me, there is nothing Creative about this and it's gone into my coaster collection of sh!t games to be used to set my beverages on. At least I'll get some use out of my stolen… Expand
Sep 4, 2013This game is horrible and total disrespect to customers. Amount of bugs is terrific, graphics look much worse than Shogun 2(released in 2011 Many gameplay features were removed. Oh god.. this game look very bad even comparing with Rome 1. Shame on you Creative Assembley!
Sep 4, 2013Buggy piece of crap is all this is. I just hate buying a game that gets ratings of 10's from major magazines and sites only to find out the game is less fun than checkers. AI is HORRIBLE and too many bugs for me. anyone that says different is a fanboy because Rome 2 is BUGGY as heck for EVERYONE. AVOID!!
Sep 4, 2013Unplayable. Simple waste of time and money.it just crashes 5 times every hour. Incredibly bad AI and battle interface. Not to mention the multiplayer side of the game is even worse.
I strongly recommend to avoid this game.
Sep 4, 2013Unplayable game too bad, because I was looking forward to it. My game crashed every hour, get black screens when i was in a battles, could not play through the prologue because it was unplayable, sound issues, framerate out of the roof... a real bummer this game. avoid it until it gets better
Sep 4, 2013Let me start off this review by saying that I am not new to Total War. I have payed and own Shogun: Total War, Rome: Total War, Medieval II: Total War, Medieval II: Total War, Empire: Total War, Napoleon: Total War, Total War: Shogun 2, and now Total War: Rome II. Out of all those games Rome: Total War was my all time favorite Total War Game. I don't know if it was just my affection towards Roman culture or if I just enjoyed being in charge of one of the largest empires that the Mediterranean sea has ever seen.
After discovering my favorite game and playing it for many years after I finally purchased Total War: Shogun 2. Though the game was quite a bit different from Rome I, I found it quite interesting the way that the game graphics changed after so many years. I did like how the units added that "rock, paper, scissors" effect. affect making some units strong, or weak, to other units. This make it just a bit harder to dominate other players. I did have quite a distaste for the new total tax system that they implemented. Even though they added this system, they still allowed player to see a total breakdown of how the economy and happiness worked in each providence. And if a player was having trouble keeping their income in the green, they could choose not to tax that providence. But one thing I still cant figure out is where does the Daimyo keeps his chair?
When I heard about the release of Total War:Rome II I did not jump the gun and pre-order it right a way. Instead I did research about the game, most of which i would find out to be a official lie. After months I pre-ordered it until about 9 hours away from release. I was not able to play the game until after returned home (close to noon). When I first started campaign mode, I am not going to lie I had high hopes for this game. I was quickly put down. When I started it took me over 1 hour just for figure out how to get my generals out and start moving, I was playing as Athens and I was trying to see what special units I had. No need to spend 1 hour looking there are practically no difference between faction and their units. During that hour I sorta saw how to manage taxes. I though that it was for each territory that you owned. after I moved 3 of my generals to one of my neighboring territories and found out that you can not have more than one general in a army. I took the city and went to repair it, because i though it would be similar to Shogun II due to the campaign interface, by the way it is not. After that I realized that I was not able to manage taxes on an individual level but on a faction level. This would make it easy for those who just like to click the "end turn" button, but for experienced players, like my self where who like to micro manage every country to bring out the optimal profit from every country with out having to bring down all the total taxes because your new territory is unhappy with you taking over. I have since played over 7 hours trying to play this game and try to find a way to make it playable for players who want strategy. I have to agree with other player about the AI being one of the worst AI i have ever played with. I could list thousands of thing wrong with the AI but I will not in this review. Sadly I had any issues running ultra graphics on my computer. Probably because I have about 2.5 thousand US dollars invested in my custom build performance computer. So I have not experienced any lag, but i have noticed patches that come up un-rendered from time to time. I do not see the detail that they promised they would have in this game, even on ultra mode. The battle load times have been as long as they were in Shogun II in my option. but really... Units should not move that fast ever. To fix this issue for the most part you have to manually change the game speed down. This game is by far one of that saddest excesses for a Total War game that I have every seen. They should have produced a better quality product and when they overemphasize this being a tactics and strategy game, they better live up to what they say.
I would not get this game for obvious reasons, underdeveloped, crippled AI, lacking diverse units, basic "cookie cutter" units for every faction, not even roman archers (which Romans had), there are so many critics hyping up this game, and painful campaign interface.
There are only a few reason why critics would give this game a good review,
1) They were paid and given a basic script to reword
2) They must have been given the full copy of the game that no one else tends to have.
3)They got the game and spend very little (under 10 minutes) looking at the game or just watched the trailer
Don't buy this game if you can help it, it is not worth it right now. I do not think even a mod could save this game from this painful interface. I
I rate this game low because that is where I feel it is, not because someone pays me.… Expand
Sep 4, 2013My first impression of this game was a 9/10 however as I tried to delve deeper into the game I found that I simply could not, vast and very shallow a lake this is. City management has been simplified even further than Shogun 2. The immersive nature and detail of the cities in Rome 1 are gone replaced with prettier pictures but simpler mechanics. Perhaps this is the core of the issue, CA focused so heavily in making a gorgeous game (which it is, albeit unoptimized) that they forgot to reel the player in with detail management mechanics that while small are what ties and immerses the player in the game world in the first place. Each mechanic individually is indeed an 8 or 9 out of ten, However put it all together and try and immerse yopurself in the campaign and you find those little things that kept you playing 100 hours are no longer there. As a proper total war game it is a 3.
This is the last time I preorder a TW game.… Expand
Sep 4, 2013I'm shocked, did not expect this from Creative Assembly, game simply is unplayable, 15-25 fps on strategic map on minimal settings...
CA give me back my money!
Sep 15, 2013Beautiful game with so much potential. Game breaking crash bug at turn 57 on Suebi campaign. AI is almost non-existent. Poorly optimized graphics. Aside from the bugs and crashes VERY fun.
It's a game of magnificent scope and ambition, but is CLEARLY in beta phase. I am very much looking forward to the final version after some patches.
Sep 6, 2013Horrible UI.
Horrendously confusing unit cards.
Poorly optimized.
Fix the triremes.
Where is my guard button.
Make a unit card that covers half my screen.
2/10 for releasing.
Glad I paid 60$ for beta testing.
Oct 6, 2013They are heavily patching the game, and a lot of bugs have been fixed. However, the core elements of the game are still extremely flawed and no amount of stat mods will fix them.
The major problems are:
- The AI is really bad, especially in sieges. When defending, it gets butchered by missiles unresponsively. When attacking, it has a habit of standing around and not doing anything or zerg rushing a choke point to get to a capture flag (and getting completely slaughtered in the process).
- Battle speed. EB for Rome I had it perfect: long, epic battles with plenty of room for manoeuvring, employing different tactics and zooming in to see the action. When will CA learn that 5 minute battles are simply NOT FUN?
- Blobbiness. I don't know what they did to unit cohesion, but it sucks big time! As soon as units engage in melee, they break the formation they had and start blobbing around. What's worse, they shuffle around a lot and create a huge, confusing mess.It's nowhere near an engaging battle experience.
- Extreme responsiveness. it feels like commanding an army of robots. You're not done clicking yet and your troops start moving already. Immediately. Simultaneously. Synchronously. The entire unit turns in perfect unison like machines. It feels... fake.
- A lot of inexplicable feature cutting. Loose formation and guard mode buttons are no longer there. Family tree is no longer present and tax management is now done by adjusting... one... global... slider. In stead of tactically utilising such essential abilities as loose formation and guard mode, we now have magic buffs like The Whip which give temporary stat boosts almost every unit has at least one such ability, shifting the focus from tactically using realistic abilities that alter the way units actually behave to clicking simple stat buffs... I can't believe the devs actually thought this would be a good idea... Also, certain formations seem very unbalanced. For example, testudo is useless as it gets destroyed easily by missiles.
- Some inexplicable features added. Units can now burn down gates... Yes, no siege equipment needed, just shuffle up a unit and click on a gate to have it destroyed in a couple seconds. Who... WHO thought that will be a good idea? When the AI uses it, the entire army zerg rushes me through the gate and gets slaughtered. Then there is the addition of army traditions, which is kinda cool on the surface, but what it also does is when your entire army gets wiped out, you can resurrect it by restoring its traditions. What's the point of that, huh? If I made a mistake and lost my best army in a battle, WHY does the game reward me by allowing me to keep all its abilities? It should PUNISH the player for being stupid, not reward him. The hand-holding is almost insulting... Also, you can now move your land army onto water and it magically turns into a fleet... Streamlining is one thing, but dumbing down and making such basic things as maintaining a navy separate from your land forces obsolete, is another. Naval battles in general are bugged, not to say broken and I always auto-resolve them. There are also no seasons and every turn equals one year. This means that your generals and agents die very quickly. That and no family tree make it very difficult to become attached to your generals and agents.
- The UI is completely re-done. And it's bad. Really, really bad. It's confusing, uninformative and has way too many pop-up tool tips. I want to open a panel and have everything in front of me, I don't want to mouse-over everything to get basic information. Shogun 2 had the perfect UI, why did they go away from that? In stead of having some antique-themed background with painted, artistic portraits we have a sci-fi semi-transparent UI with the ugliest portraits in the existence of strategy games. The portraits are poorly synced to the speech and the faces are expressionless even when shouting battle cries, it's ugly and a huge immersion breaker. The UI cards can also be difficult to differentiate, but the biggest problem is their size. Especially on resolutions lower than 1080p they literally take up half the screen.
There is a lot more stuff that is broken in this game, but those things are small and petty compared to what I have already listed. Have CA devs ever played mods like EB and RS2 They're popular for a reason... and the sooner they understand it, the better. For now, the future of TW looks dim.… Expand
Sep 4, 2013Extremely disapointed and i see revieuws of this game scoring 9 and 9.5 Do game revieuwers get payed these days ? This game isnt even in Beta stage, seriously what an abomination... I got a beast of a system and it runs crap, crashes, textures bugs, politics what politics ? insane wait times per turn... I wait a few months to the modders can fix this game as the originel is just to bad to play.… Expand
Sep 5, 2013his game failed its Total War predecessors. It is too fast paced, it´s hard to actually "feel" the game and immerse in to it, because of the new campaign, in which you just don´t give a what happens next. Diplomacy is ok but could stil use improvement (especially the trade agreements).
But the battles! Oh my god, they suck balls. Even with high tier units, the battles tend to last at ma… Expand
Helpful? 18 of 23 users said Yes. All this user's reviews
Necromonger Sep 4, 2013 0 Extremely disapointed and i see revieuws of this game scoring 9 and 9.5 Do game revieuwers get payed these days This game isnt even in Beta stage, seriously what an abomination... I got a beast of a system and it runs crap, crashes, textures bugs, politics what politics insane wait times per turn... I wait a few months to the modders can fix this game as the originel is jus… Expand… Expand
It is broken. As per all CA games. They sell it to customers. Expect us to be the beta tester. Xmas comes about and people can buy the ready game at half the price...
In all srs. They should not be allowed to do this time after time. They need to spend some of the preorder money on testing/optimisation.
I will not be buying any CA game again. And this comes from an avid total war gamer since the beginning.… Collapse
Nov 18, 2013The game is far less polished than Shogun 2, and a few more patches will help, but Rome II is still a flawed game that is underwhelming when compared to previous titles in the franchise.
Nov 6, 2013And here's the rub: every addition, every sub-system, every mechanic is subservient to War. War is what Total War is really about. Everything else not directly related to conflict comes across as ancillary. Rome II is a game for warmongers, on both the campaign map and, obviously, on the battlefield. When peace is happening, nothing is happening. When war is happening, Rome comes alive.
Oct 28, 2013If you will play literally anything featuring Total War and Rome in the same title and don't value your time, this is for you. [Nov 2013, p.80]


text:
For decades, global uranium suppliers have been providing low cost reactor fuel in plentiful supplies. However the market is changing, and nuclear fuel prices are set to increase. Some plants will...
Spent-Fuel Fedcorp
The Blue Ribbon Commission's best answer for the nuclear waste dilemma.
in effect, last forever.
The BRC held hearings at locations that illustrate both success and failure at siting similar facilities. Their investigations took the BRC to Europe and across the United States, and included testimony from many experts on siting issues—as well as from those who express grave concerns and fears about such siting. Almost universally, public officials—from mayors to governors to state legislators—demand a say in approving such sites. Some demand a binding veto. Others ask for a permitting role. Some want the Congress to dictate a site, while others urge a competition from local communities and states for a site with huge financial bonuses—as was the case in Sweden and Finland, where there has been permanent repository siting success (see " Life After Yucca ," November 2010) .
In any case, a spent-fuel fedcorp seems likely to succeed only if it can develop a new, collaborative approach to siting nuclear waste facilities. Also, to the degree the fedcorp considers interim storage options, it would need some way to establish credibility that "interim" isn't a euphemism for "permanent" (see "Tough Questions for Fedcorp") .
In the Plan D for Spent Nuclear Fuel report—produced by a group of academics, led by Prof. Clifford Singer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign—a key recommendation is that "every shipment of spent nuclear fuel material should be accompanied by a payment into a Permanent Fund, to be held by the recipient state as long as that material stays in the state… States would receive interest earnings on the Permanent Fund balance beyond any needed to maintain the minimum balance."
The Plan D report also argues against a single long-term storage site— e.g., the so-called "monopoly" approach that failed at Yucca Mountain. "A monopoly situation would generate tension within the state and with the federal government over whether the state had obtained adequate compensation," Prof. Singer wrote. "This could lead to delays or even failure of the whole project again." He suggested that a more successful process might involve about six finalist states, competing for two or preferably three repository site licenses—with an equal number of spent-fuel aging facilities to be licensed at repository sites.
Clean Slate
If the BRC recommends the federal government create a fedcorp to take over the process of siting a repository for spent nuclear fuel, it could establish a clean slate for resolving America's nuclear waste dilemma. Properly structured, a fedcorp would allow a more rational and sustainable approach to the problem.
However, in order for it to succeed, the mission of such a fedcorp must be clearly defined, its powers carefully delineated, and its financing constructed so as to avoid the delays that have hampered DOE efforts to date.
A spent-fuel fedcorp would face a panoply of complexities in management, funding, legislative authority and structure, as well as legal and financial liabilities—and that's before it even considers the technical and operational issues of siting, building and running nuclear waste facilities. This combination of complexities and difficulties has stymied progress by the DOE, but a dedicated fedcorp that's more flexible

subset: commoncrawl


text:
It'd work but I don't like tank specs which do not have Imp icy touch, since you can reliably apply that haste-debuff even if everyone else has run off to kill something else.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
I was wondering about toying with this spec for a more TPS based spec. Any thoughts on it?
It'd work but I don't like tank specs which do not have Imp icy touch, since you can reliably apply that haste-debuff even if everyone else has run off to kill something else.
agreed. I never forgo 3/3 in imp. IT.
and no death rune mastery? I suppose that's viable, but part of the appeal of blood, i always felt, was the ability to have 4 death runes on your plate on the 2nd stretch of your rotation. i'm not sure if 4/5 necrosis makes up for the utility of a 4-death rune rotation.
Yeah I was playing with it last couple of nights. It really was only on average a 200-400 TPS increase. Next up I was going to try the Death rune mastery. I am still fairly new to DK tanking and loving the blood spec. I gave DW tanking a try but in the end I still like the survival of Blood tanking. Maybe with 3.2.2 it will be better Runic strike affected by both weapons.
Thanks for the imput though
You don't need Scent of Blood unless you are overdumping Death Coils. Subversion and Death Rune Mastery are primo threat talents, Heart Strike / Rune Strike are the bread and butter of blood TPS. Drop Imp. Death and Decay for Imp. Death Coil, especially with Morbidity and Sudden Death.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Is maximum threat with very little missed survivability, and is perfectly fine for virtually everything in the game.
Rotation is simple - ds - ps - it - hs - hs - hs - hs - empower - hs - hs - ds - ps - it on the opener, and then repeat sans empower, with Rune Strikes in between.
yeah that's what i was thinking too. picking up sudden doom with a HS x6 rotation cycle would generate more threat over time than morbidity would on it's own. that extra DC is instant too, no work involved. very nice talent.
if threat is your main concern with a blood tanking build, then I approve of Edge's build. drop blood tap and SoB, fill out necrosis, and get death rune mastery and sudden doom.
Last edited by lyd; 09-11-2009 at 07:29 AM.
Guys, that's more like a dps build than a tank build!
It'd be a sad day in tanking if you had to give up that many survival talents like in Edge's build.
lol, I would never take that build personally. but if he REALLY wants to maximize threat...
and it doesn't have Imp Rune Tap either...
I would think the opposite would be true, as our health increases, imp RT heals for more and produces more threat. But some DKs leave it out because they don't like having yet another reactive ability or aren't fast enough to make use of it.
Ultimately the question is what you need. If you're not threat capping a raid or pushing DPS timers, hard modes and/or enrages, Imp Rune Tap is very useful. On the other hand, if all you care about is maximizing threat, IRT is a talent set you can forego. I personally find the reactivity of a 10k self heal to be more useful, based on where my raid groups' progression.
Nothing to do with personal preference, more of a study of what other DK's are speccing. ToC 25 has 2 fights that can ultimately result in tank death, N.Beasts and Anubarak.
On Anub you are either a tank that is picking up fresh mobs on a tight DPS timer and don't have the runes to waste on predictable damage, or going to die solely in a melee/swarm/ice slash, in which case you can't use abilities regardless.
For beasts, the same is virtually true. If you die to Gormakk you probably improperly used cooldowns and were instantly gibbed, if you die to Icehowl you died in a melee/ferocious butt combo and couldnt use blood tap either way.
It's really easy to get high healing numbers with DS and tap, but it's a lot harder to use it in a way that's effective, especially considering the 4 point investment.
Edit - for 10 mans, for Ulduar, for lower RDPS requirement fights, it certainly has its uses, I'm not arguing that. I just refuse to throw it in the same category as vamp blood or imp. icy touch when people talk about survivability cooldowns
Interesting spec, but as stated above, Scent of Blood will not be a big value, and generally speaking if you're focusing on Blood, Subversion and DRM used to spam the daylights out of HS will make for major threat value.
Imp Rune Tap would be the last of the three Survival talents you take (the other two being Spell Deflection and WotN) but you could easily make an argument for one of the other two instead. My point is, however, if you want a threat oriented spec, you can drop one or two of those three to actually fully realize the beastly synergy of Blood.
What level of raiding are we talking about tanking that you want to use this spec for?
The (Old) Book on Death Knight Tanking
The New Testament on Death Knight Tanking
I can see where Edgewalker is coming from. at the edge of end-game progression, you can get bosses pounding you for 25k-30k at a time. a 10k rune tap seems paltry at best when you're relying on your healers to constantly bomb you back to full health anyway.
i used to swear by it to the point where I gave up some dodge from talents to spec into it from a deep frost build. I eventually gave it up because I couldn't justify spec'ing that many points in blood once the SoB change went through and I started taking that instead. but pre toc-heroic content I did find it quite useful.
The (Old) Book on Death Knight Tanking
The New Testament on Death Knight Tanking
If Rune Tap didnt cost a blood rune this would be a totally different conversation, but it does.
I could see limited application of it in a few situations.