No, there’s no space Romans here. An alternate history setting perhaps, but hardly science fiction at all :) The thing is that Rome: Total War was such an iconic 4X game. So, we’ve been covering Total War: Rome 2 here, and we intend to keep covering it, including writing a review. I guess many of you will be happy with this.
Now, Creative Assembly has released a new Total War: Rome 2 video showing off large portions of the campaign map. The video also mentions the different victory conditions available (military, economic and culture) and there’s also some talk about the different playable factions, as for some glimpses on diplomacy, mostly about how relations work.
The video looks pretty good actually. Here’s hopping that they got it right. Total War: Rome 2 is set to release on September 3rd, 2013 for the PC. Creative Assembly is currently selling pre-orders for $59.95/€54,99. Quite hefty hum? So, if I were you I would probably wait for a few reviews to come out before buying. As I said above, we plan to publish our own review for this one.
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Any chance of Europa Universalis IV coverage? Pretty excited for its release a week from now. Too bad they released it at the start of the semester here :(
Yes, the idea is to cover Europe Universalis IV as well.
Good to know EU IV will be getting some coverage. Been following their updates and whatnot and the confusion about the CKII save converter to EUIV.
On Rome:
Wow! it looks gorgeous. I think I better buy one of them SSDs so I could run Total War better.
This is starting to smell like sots II where they release all sorts of pretty pictures but no actual gameplay because there is nothing under that pretty skirt
http://www.gamespot.com/total-war-rome-ii/videos/total-war-rome-ii-setting-the-stage-for-world-domination-6412318/.
Is not like Sots II at beginning and now Sots II 2.0.25003.3. is quite a nice game and deserved a better place in heart of 4X fan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNVJlmYJJnM&list=SPs4ggZ3kZb9wQR-9QEbdHGiafQ0kexqZ8
I agree, I gave SOTS2 after a long abstinence another try and I was very pleased, stable, acceptable AI, gorgeous battles, deep complex gameplay. The only thing which breaks the game for me to some extent is the poor diplomacy, the AI constantly declaring war without any consideration of the diplomacy status, no matter if at peace, NAP or even in an alliance. Apart from that annoyance which I think is due to that part of the game not being fully implemented, the game is fantastic, by far the best 4x space game around.
If you look up the 30m tutorial that CA played with PC gamer, you can see a lot more gameplay. It looks fantastic.
Anyone wanting to buy the game but not get bum-rushed by the Steam retail prices…
CJS CD Keys (legit website recently profiled on pcgamer)is selling Steam keys for Rome 2 for $46 / 26 quid, so that takes the edge off a bit.
Similarly, ‘Get Games’ a NA based website is selling Rome 2 inc. the dlc for $46 so again not too shabby.
“he video also mentions the different victory conditions available (military, economic and culture)”
Wait a min, you mean that the Total War series is going to have victory conditions that don’t involve killing people?
I don’t know what to feel about that. On one had it sounds like the series could get more depth, but on the other hand since this franchise is all about war my guess is that the victory conditions that don’t involve winning through war are probably going to be fairly half-assed.
It always involves killing people, but it seems that if you go with economic victory rather than the purely military one you get some not as violent goals to achieve victory.
Check 3.25m. If you go with economic victory, you still need to control many settlements but instead of having to hold a certain amount of army units and military techs, you need to maintain more trade and research civil techs instead. The goals’ style reminded me of the Risk board game a lot. Was it just me?
I like that you have more ways to win now as that’s a very important aspect of what makes a 4X game. More depth on diplomacy is also another good step in the right direction, in my view.
I will wait on this one. Looks good, but if Shogun 2 is anything to go by we will see a few patches before it reaches a decent playable version I suspect
Alternate history has always been accepted as SciFi so even if Space is not involved I do not see why 4X games with that slant should not be covered here.
‘Lest darkness fall’ it is one of my favourite SciFi books ever and a mayor inspiration when I play the Roman empire in Civilization.
Correct, but the thing is, doesn’t an alternate history setting still need science fiction elements to back it up to be considered as sci-fi? Otherwise could it be considered just historical fiction? I mean, things like time travel or different technological paths that lead to different outcomes.
Some book spoilers ahead. For instance, Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore where the Confederate States of America wins the Battle of Gettysburg. There, the protagonist Hodge Backmaker travels back in time to witness the moment when the South won the war.
Or, in The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, where Germany wins World War II, I think there’s a passage where the Reich sends spaceships to colonize Mars and other parts of the Solar System. So, time travel and colonization of other planets (space travel).
What’s your take on this?
Well… the time traveller is obviously the player and in Civilization you can launch a spaceship when other civs are still well into the Renaissance ;-)
More seriously any alternate history story in literature is about an alternate universe and that is classified SciFi, being it with space exploration or not.
On the other hand there is so little Sci(ence) in so many ‘SciFi’ books or, even worse, movies and TV series that classification has to become all-encompassing to avoid the risk of endless debates.
I think that being SciFi or not is more a question of intentions than realisation but there are so precious few good 4X games around that it would be a pity to overlook them for a technicality.
Space Romans would be a nice title..
You start small on your planet Romulus and fight against Space Germans, Space Persians and sometimes the Space Hannibal will attack you with his space elefants :)
But You can build a Space Limes… You can build space aqueducts from Ocean planets to desert planets..
Wow cool concept..
So Adam lets start a Kickstarter Projekt..
The game should be in latin.
Well, actually, you already have an homage to Romans in Space with the Romulan Empire in Star Trek, where the homeworld is called Romulus. I guess Gene Roddenberry beat us to that idea ;)
“I came up with the concept of the Romulans which was an extension of the Roman civilization to the point of space travel, and it turned out quite well.” –Paul Schneider (wrote two episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series, which introduced the Romulans).
From what I have seen this will be the best strategy games of the year by some margin.S2 was their best game with decent A.I in both tactical and strategic.The mono culture focus was S2’s only downside which Rome does not suffer from.
I think I would rather buy another copy of EU4 and gift it to a friend instead of wasting money on another CA game.
If i remember correctly the last one I was really looking forward to was Empire: Total War as they finally decided to add campaign multiplayer to it.
Hmm.. something wrong with that sentence.. lemme think. Gotcha.. they just PROMISED to add great campaign multiplayer, but never actually did it.
Thats not to say I will never buy R2:TW.. I like the ancient era its played in and as such will pick the game up eventually, probably during one of those 50+% steam sales. It does not change the fact, that were it up to me, CA offices would have been burned down and the ruins sowed with salt a very long time ago.
There is a good deal on Greenman gaming.