TOTAL WAR ROME 2 IMAGES SERIES

The impressive detail, unit model variety, and intricate animations give each fight a sort of you-are-there immediacy that had me regularly dropping down to eye level with my troops to see the action from their perspective.

TOTAL WAR ROME 2 IMAGES SERIES

The other half, the real-time tactical battles, are more stunning in Rome II than any the series has ever delivered. That, of course, is only half of a Total War game. It can be a pain to have to manually swap back and forth as needed, but I value the flexibility to match my army's attitudes with its current needs each turn.

You can switch an army into forced march stance if you need to get to a far corner of your empire quickly, or you can switch to raiding mode if you're in enemy territory and want to live off the enemyвЂ™s land. The stances, on the other hand, feel much more necessary and useful. While it's a fun feature that adds a bit of story and character to your forces, it also seems somewhat redundant in the face of the time you've presumably already spent building up the right mix of forces, researching the appropriate technologies, and applying your own upgrades. You can specialize units for things like ranged attacks, ambushes, sieges, or battles against barbarians. The promotions include abilities that apply to the army as a whole and to the particular general in command. You'll likely spend a lot of time tinkering with the new features of armies: promotions and stances.

While these restrictions definitely improve the speed and focus of the campaign game, you can't do anything with units without a commander present, which makes scouting, reassigning, and general shuffling of forces a bit more problematic. You'll also be limited in the number of armies and navies you can field at one time, which puts the emphasis on a few larger forces rather than lots of tiny armies. With the shifting of recruitment and mustering to be focused on generals and admirals rather than the regions, getting around the map and prepping assaults has become that much easier. Army management has been streamlined a bit as well. Playing as one of the Germanic tribes requires a bit more runway before you start having the same impact youвЂ™d get from playing as Rome. Some of the interest and opportunity depends on which of the eight the factions you choose to play as вЂ“ leading one of the major powers allows for lots of opportunity to grow and shape your empire. This additional layer of specialization adds another interesting series of decisions that can help refine your strategies without necessarily requiring additional micromanagement. If they're already on board with your culture, you might want an edict that improves tax rates or the food supply. If you've just conquered a province owned by a different culture, you might want an edict that encourages their assimilation with your culture. If you own all the regions within a province, you'll gain a small benefit and be able to enact province-wide edicts, which can boost that province's abilities in a key area.

Taking an unwalled town still gives you a bit of urban fighting, but without the predictable gate and tower assaults. What makes this system particularly exciting is that each section can be conquered individually, and only one per province has city walls, which makes sieges rarer and more significant. Since each region has a limited number of building slots, you'll need to carefully consider placement when building up the temples, aqueducts, farms, barracks, and ports that make up each region. It preserves the depth I crave by leaving room for specialization, and rewarding us for smart use of it. Italy for example, has 11 regions, but you manage them in three large groups. Now, instead of having to click through every different region to check food and order levels and set build orders, you manage each region as part of a larger provincial unit. The burden of this management has always been a problem for Total War over its 13-year history, particularly in the late game when an empire can become sprawling, and Rome II's provincial-management system goes a long way towards lightening that load a bit without sacrificing depth. The core of the campaign game focuses on managing the civic infrastructure required to commission and maintain your armies and navies.

Total war rome 2 images