Review;+Total+War+Rome+II

For this project I played Total War Rome II. I chose to play this game being as it was currently discounted over 70% on steam, and over a decade ago I enjoyed playing it’s predecessor Total War: Medieval. In this game you play as a nation, you control the diplomacy, the construction, as well as the armies of that nation. Your goal’s can range from defeating one specific other nation, to controlling Europe. Above is a screenshot of the overview map, for the most part in game you do not look at this being as you tend to focus on conquering smaller regions first. The game does not only involve combat, much of it involves managing your regions and developing your nation so that it has a competitive edge over rival nations. You then aim to have the best general on the field, or alternatively you can take control of your forces and run through the battles as the general.

In the game I learned a variety of skills, such as how to build up cities in the context of Total War. Furthermore I learned how to build and move armies, how to engage in diplomacy, as well as how to engage in war with the rival nations. I learned a little about basic battlefield tactics, which units countered which, where to place units for the best results, as well as practice hiding units, and flanking others. I also learned a little more about the history of the period, which tribes happened to exist in Britannia at that certain moment in history, what units they had, a little about what religion they practiced, etc. For the most part my tasks in the game involved building up my civilization and conquering others. This often involved diplomacy, being as you did not want to go to war with too many nations at any given moment.

In Total War Rome II the game uses the subset principle by placing you in a tutorial campaign, which is a simplified version of the world map that also uses the incremental principle to gradually teach you the various controls of the game. The game also utilizes the explicit information On-Demand principle and just in time principle, being as it does not overload you with instructions, but gives them to you at relevant points in the tutorial after you have had ample opportunity to learn to use the last game feature. Rome II also provides ample opportunity for the player to discover features on their own, these are not necessarily the core needed features, but alternative options on how to do things. One example of this would be in selecting certain strategies for your generals to use if you choose not to control battles, I was pleased to find out a) that I did not have to control the battles directly, and b) that I could still assign a generic strategy to be used in the battle that might increase the odds of victory.

The game has a huge following, with millions of related web-pages. A large number of the results of a Rome 2 search are images and videos that people have uploaded from their time spent playing this game. A fair number of the pages are generic guides to playing one of the factions in the game, or guides that provide additional help for people new to the game by providing further instruction in case the in game tutorial was not enough. Another large subsection of the pages involve theorycrafting, in particular on which civilizations are the best, as well as which development paths for your cities and nations are the best. The game has a huge number of options to make as your cities and armies develop, so there is ample opportunity for people to test out and try to find the best options for period in the game. What is interesting is that some units, and nations are better against certain opponents, so the game makes for slightly more complex theorycrafting, being as there is no one correct response for all situations. It did look like there was some possibility to cheat in this game, being as there were cheat codes listed on a variety of sites online. As for mods, this seems to be another area where this game was fairly active, with mods to alter civilizations, add others, change/or add units, etc.

Overall I was not entirely pleased with this version of Total War. I might have some nostalgia going, but I seem to recall that its predecessor Medieval Total War had a much higher level of complexity. For example In total War Rome II you can only have four land armies at a given time, this is a restriction that did not exist in Medieval Total War, where I was fond of having more armies moving around reinforcing and flanking opponents. The game seems to have improved the graphics, as well as the AI, while at the same time reducing the overall complexity of the game. This might help bring new players into the game, but makes the game much less challenging, and subsequently less enjoyable for players who have played prior itinerations of the game, or other similar RTS games in the past.