The Closest You Can Get to Beating Volound's Rome 2 Test Battle
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- Опубліковано 4 жов 2024
- About 4 months ago, Volound released a video talking about why Rome 2 is a very, very bad game. I spent 3 hours duplicating his battle, and in that 3 hours this was the best result I could get. There are maybe minor adjustments that could be made, and my play certainly isn't 'perfect,' but if anything this just further accentuates the point he made in his video.
In the test he pits a Very Hard AI's 5 Praetorian Guards, 1 Veteran Legionary, and 1 Legatus against 7 Gladiators, 3 Socii Extraordinarii, 1 Veteran Legionary, and 1 Legatus. What follows is a demonstration of how even isolating individual units, stacking fatigue against the enemy, using all available pila in ideal scenarios, and killing the enemy's general aren't enough for an army of equivalent value to defeat an equivalent value army of Praetorians with stacked hidden combat modifiers thanks to Very Hard difficulty, which gives the Praets +7 Attack and Morale.
So is Rome 2 a bad game? Given that these armies are roughly the same value, I think the answer is pretty obvious.
Volound's original video is here, and includes the original test parameters: • Rome 2 is a Terrible G...
Almost every fight was perfect scenario for the gladiators. But tactics can’t beat ai bonuses in this game lol
kite until exhausted, attempt a snipe the general at the outset, mass pila volley to soften the first unit to be truly engaged, absolutely gangbang the unit in the melee with everything, do your best to puill apart and defeat in detail the entire rest of the army, STILL LOSE. LOL!
this game is such a pile of shit.
It's fucking embarrassing. The hidden combat modifiers mean the only way this is winnable is with ranged units, so the Warhammerization of TW started in 2013, not 2016 lmao
Always has been! *pulls pistol at your back*
@@darkfireslide Don't forget that when you Rear Charge those Praetorian Guards the Morale Penalty is just -30, which might sound a good damage for the 70 Morale Praetorian Guard, but due to Morale Bonus Shenanigan from both the Difficulty and the Morale System, winning a fight(Green Sword Clash) will gives a +10 to 20 Morale bonus, basically turning your rear attack into just -10 Morale Penalty.
Wouldn't really say it's a Warhammerization, but it's close and Warhammer just take it into another level of bullshit, -16 Leadershit Penalty when rear charged on a game where the baseline Leadershit for a early frontline unit is 50, lowest I can remember is the Bretonnian peasants with their 36 Leadershit.
At least Rome 2 still abide to the basic counter wheel where Infantry get shot to death by cheap Ranged infantry, and Ranged infantry get trampled and scattered by Cavalry that didn't get any damage while doing that, while in Warhammer ranged unit can stand up against light cavalry, and you need expensive cavalry to do the job of actually dealing damage to a mid tier infantry.
@Volound really appreciate your videos and effort to point all this stuff out. I was getting so frustrated with new tw games, especially warhammer 2 which had good reviews and seems to be received positively by most of its fanbase. I played 60+ hours trying to like it, thinking "it must get better, maybe i made some critical mistakes or just picked a terrible faction". And although i managed to identify some issues myself, (single entity units, non existent diplomacy, huge garrisons, dumb and suicidal ai that exists just to be a pain regardless of its own security and self preservation, magic, teleporting or/and exploding units.
But what broke me was a video 'line of death' by zerkovich about in his noob mistakes series. Using one of the basic principal of historical battle tactics is "a noob mistake".
It really helps seeing your vids just to know that I'm not crazy, and hearing someone articulate the origin of same issues i experienced, but i simply wasn't able to precisely identify. Beyond "it's weird, feels off, its somehow very different and seems almost broken". I really liked pre-rome 2 total wars. And i did like a bit thrones of britannia campaign (and i mean just the campaign map) because my expectations were really low, seeing cold reception. And i did have fun with three kindgoms record mode (again just on the campaign map, thanks mostly to the setting, diplomacy and new mechanics. And because it was a nice change after a dumpster-fire that was warhammer 2.) But the battles were a big let down. And got boring fast. (at least pre battle deployables added some nice change and tools). Safe to say, i am not getting anywhere near warhammer 3.
I love how the AI is still the same as it is in previous games. It lets individual units get surrounded. It does nonsensical things with the general unit. It allows the player to kite units with ease and can't keep its army in a coherent formation. Gotta love that Praetorian unity from 2:14 - 3:08. Yes, it took more than 54 seconds to kill a unit that was taking heavy losses, that was completely surrounded and isolated from the army and massively outnumbered. It took longer than 54 seconds because you tripled the game speed near the end of the fight.
Its no wonder that they massively buffed the effectiveness of the auto resolve feature in the campaign. No one wants to play these battles.
Newer Total War games are garbage.
The funny thing about that is that in Medieval 2 and Rome 1 the AI generally wouldn't commit its general, which let you snipe it by encircling the formation. But the AI did try to keep cohesion and generally wouldn't go running after units in perpetuity, split off from the rest of the force
@@darkfireslide I swear the AI was better in Medieval 1!
Return of the king
Just participating in Volound's community by adding more evidence that even a more experienced Rome 2 player exploiting the dumb AI can't win this
Beat me to it! @Darkfireslide we would all love to see your return, regardless of what game you play!
And this is only possible with cheesing tye AI. in PVP this would never happen and you’d get clobbered.
Most likely, especially since the Praets have the Pila advantage, even though without the cheating AI this battle is technically possible to win, it's still embarrassing that tactics matter this little
@@darkfireslide form a battle line and March them into ur opponent’s is essentially what they want from you.
I think you should be able to establish a list of criteria for what makes a TW game's combat system good or not. Being able to overcome qualitative odds (with player skill) should be one of them.
Nice. I only recently came back to tw. And i remember winning some insane battles in rome 1, mtw2, empire and shogun 2. Yet in rome 2 and warhammer i just couldn't get the same results. And the game felt more frustrating rather than rewarding. It's good to see that I'm not the only one who seems to have issues with new tw games.
The only way to pull of insane victories in modern Total War is to use cheese.
DUDE! Where have you been?!?!?! Really miss your content, hope you’re doing well
Thanks man. Been busy with real life honestly. This was just the first thing I've felt like making in a while, too
kinda a minor note. man the Rome 2 music is bland 😢
lol yeah it's really drab
Amazing effort, truly shameful it doesn’t pay off
This reminds me way too much of some of my battles on very hard difficulty in total Warhammer 2. Infantry maneuvers mean little against enemies who do not route easily and can mop the floor with you in melee. Kill counts in line with what's displayed here are not uncommon even on completely annihilated units. The player is incentivized to enter into a desperate struggle to "cheese" the enemy ai by effectively avoiding engaging with it.
Well fought. In campaign you'd probably win this with massed ranged units, cavalry charges, or perhaps a second army as reinforcements. While this is "difficult to win" I do not know if it's the kind of engaging battle difficulty we're looking for.
I'm someone who actually likes skirmish-heavy gameplay in Total War and yet I find Rome 2 and onwards' ranged gameplay to be uninteresting because units have near-perfect firing accuracy in almost all conditions. I also hate that formations take the time to line up even on a loose order of javelin throwers. In Rome 1 and Medieval 2 the unit would just start firing where they stood, which ironically was more responsive and useful for focus firing targets. I also liked how much elevation mattered in those games for ranged combat and how the skirmish phase mattered so much because of how good terrain is
@@darkfireslide very much feel the same. Skirmishing is a key part of the order of battle and it always felt so good to pick apart an enemy battle line or deal with a dangerous unit by harrying it with skirmishes or moving one of your own powerhouse units into position while covering them with a screen of skirmishers. Rome tries to permit fun skirmishing gameplay with a selection of javelins, pila, archers, slingers, etc but you're right, something is off. I really enjoy skirmishing in Shogun 2, but there, on legendary, the bow samurai that the ai spam are absolute terminators. The difference between ineffectual bow ashigaru and horrifyingly powerful bow samurai is just jarring. It's weird how seemingly meager ai bonuses can just unexpectedly torpedo a player's available tactics. In Rome 2 its a pain to engage the enemy in melee on higher difficulties. In Shogun 2, god help you if you accept a ranged battle against bow samurai on legendary.
I played the shit hammer series, just so I would know in person how shit the game was.
I noticed is shit hammer, all you need is mob army. Just to see, in campaign I made an army of all infantry spear man. No archers, no cav, obviously 1 general/MMORPG character. I won every battle eventually giving up on the game cuz how boring it was. The aesthetics aren’t good, they look childish n goofy. We would have been better if CA landed a contract with whoever owns LOTR’s.
I did my own test, no buffs, just unit vs unit. 1st test was to see if CA still had its fundamentals, of sword beats spear, spear beats cav, cav beats sword, archers usually weak in combat, but effective when you use em right. They had none. All test showed that crap hammer gave up on CA’s fundamentals.
CA wants to get into the MMORPG, you tell by how you can upgrade your people like Tod Howard game. You can add better equipment. Buy spells.
Seems like CA bought a dead franchise, or at least a dumb fanbase. They just put a bunch of their fav aspects of their own games, add favorites from other games. Then came out with Shit packed hammer, where they’ve modeled every TW game since. 3 Kingdoms same MMORPG trash, Troy same thing.
Not saying your the typical fan but War hammer can’t be used as comparison. When it’s modeled from this game.
Try something ridiculous like an ultra high ground advantage.
It would be the exception that would prove the rule.
Those aren't the parameters of the test (Map was Medhlan) and to be honest I think it would make things worse since then my own units would lose charge efficacy on the flanks
@@darkfireslide ah yes right.
good test, i bet you played your hearth out ... and this game profed it doesnt deserves it
One thing I would note though is that I don't think testing this on VH is a good test, simply because the bonuses due to VH are different in R1 and R2, making this test not a fair comparison (they both affect morale and other attributes but in different proportion to base morale)
It still shows that R2's VH is not very interesting as a whole, but can't directly make us say that R2's system as a whole is worse than R1, even though we can intuit it
Actually Rome 1's difficulty modifiers are identical: +7 Morale and +7 Melee Attack for all units. It's actually more impactful because of how low the attack values in that game are relative to Rome 2. And yet you can still make this exact engagement work in Rome 1, using a stalwart line of legionaries to hold the line while flanking with gladiators. Volound, who I am responding to, did this exact test on his channel, the link for which is in the description of this video.
You aren't the first person to make this argument and when you add the context it actually makes Rome 2 look even worse.
I also don't understand how you could possibly suggest that what occurred on screen is in any way sensical. Who cares how much of a bonus the AI is getting? Units that get surrounded should be cut to pieces by high attack value units and break quickly as the casualties mount. The Praetorians here have such high morale stats that it basically ignores the morale system entirely. Why design the game like that in the first place? Why have units like that in the game at all, especially with no limit on their usage?
@@darkfireslide I suggested that it was "sensical"? Where?
@@TimmacTR calling the test unfair implies that without difficulty modifiers that it would suddenly be fixed, which in turn suggests you think the fundamental nature of the combat works just because a few numbers get shifted around
@@darkfireslide Your comment uses both a strawman and a non sequitur:
How does it "follow" that if VH is badly designed that the whole system is also badly designed? Those aren't necessarily linked
You could have a fine system like R1 or S2 that gets unplayable on VH depending on what attributes are affected and by how much
You don't need VH to prove R2's system is bad, using VH only makes the proof less clear, as the failure of the combat dynamics can now hypothetically also be attributed to bad difficulty balance on top of bad combat system
@@TimmacTR On the contrary, VH proves exactly why Rome 2's system is broken, by demonstrating that statistical inflation is capable of fundamentally breaking the core game balance and rendering core tactical fundamentals irrelevant. As you saw in the video I used functionally every ability in my power to attempt to win the battle. I used precursor javelins to kill most of a unit before the battle was joined--the most effective use of my heavy melee infantry, by the way, which is sad--then separated the enemy forces and attempted to defeat in detail most of the enemy force, only taking ideal engagements and cycle charging the enemy repeatedly.
It just doesn't work that way in Rome 1. Even as strong as Praetorians are in Rome 1 with statistical bonuses, they can still be flanked, separated, exhausted, and then destroyed even by other infantry. I already said that in a previous comment and apparently I have to repeat myself. If you haven't watched Volound's video which contains the original thesis, of which my own video is just supporting evidence, then I strongly suggest you do that instead of arguing with me about points you don't understand were already covered in the original video.
The inflated stats demonstrate that the core system is broken, because there is a point where the stats can be inflated within the game's presented parameters (i.e. not modding stats to intentionally break the game) that tactics, or in other words the entire reason one would play Total War battles, are rendered pointless, demonstrating that, as Volound put it, "The game is won at the unit selection screen, not in the battle itself."
It is deeper than just this one battle. When you examine it, actually, including other unit interactions, it actually gets much worse.
Let it be said this was the first game in the series to introduce HP and WEAPON DAMAGE as stats. The way Armor works here and in Rome 2 is, is straight up blocks damage or at least their is a dice roll for it. Swords and Spears dont deal alot of AP damage, but Axes, Javalins, and AP arrows do.
Can't deny that the AI bonuses don't help the situation, Given Pretorian Guard are the Creme de le creme of Romes army (high stats, high armor, slightly higher hp then most troops) and they Inspire nearby units so when they clump together they become even harder to route. They used to be overpowered in mutiplayer and might still be for all i know.
Still, id say that was a Valent defeat if iv ever seen one. Id imagine a few Velites or Levies firing into the praetorians backs (i think they have more ammo then standard troops) and since skirmishers are faster then infantry can kite very well, would help massive. But that kinda misses the point of this test.
These armies have an identical point value so even notwithstanding all of Rome 2's bad mechanics the game itself is just badly balanced
I would pick Rome 1 over Rome 2 every time but why not spend your money on shock cav instead of gladiators? You might still lose but your odds would be better (in both games)
Because in Rome 1 flanking was supreme and mattered more than unit stats. Volound did this exact test in Rome 1 as well and he won that battle even on VH difficulty because Rome 1 is a good game lol
@@darkfireslide just watched his video. I guess gladiators demonstrate the point better. The Rome 1 and medieval 2 era was truly total wars golden age
Sees Volound in the title. Unsubs.
why?
@@darkfireslide Just a joke. I wouldn't unsub just because I don't like Volound.
@@slendermangonewild lmao with the way the main total war sub is, I thought this was genuine LOL
I have Divide et Impera plus some other mods, with graphical enhancements and the original Rome 1 music.
This makes it an ACTUAL game for me and I enjoy it a lot.
I couldn't play vanilla Rome 2 though as I always thought it was a shite game.
Yes, there's some good elements in it but overall it's just pesh and probably the worst Total War game....oh no , hold on....Atilla.
;-)
sooooooooo
and what&)
pr໐๓໐Ş๓ 😢