Total War: Rome II due out in Sept. 2013

[Keith]

I see by the ad on Steam that a new version of Total War Rome is coming out this fall. There is a promo video on the Steam store and some screenshots.

If you pre-order it now ($59.99) you get the Greek States Culture Pack included free, if I'm not mistaken.

The minimum requirements are Vista, Win7 or Win8 with DX9.0c. So it may work on XP if you have at least a 2.6ghz processor and 1GB of RAM for XP and 2GB for Vista, Win7 & 8 systems. A DX9 graphics card with 512MB that also supports Shader 3 is required.

The recommended system is a Vista, Win7 or 8 with a Core i5 processor 2GB RAM for XP and 4GB for Vista, Win7 & 8 systems. DirectX 11 is recommended with a DX11 compatible graphics card with 1024MB of RAM.

Minimum screen resolution is set for 1024x768, recommended is 1280x1024.

http://www.totalwar.com/en_us/rome2/

[EmperorJay]

In addition, there's a Collector's Edition, limited to 22,000 copies (available worldwide, at least I've seen links to UK and Dutch sites).

http://us.download-store.sega.com/eshop/total-war/rome-2-3418.html

And here's a 10 min gameplay video, featuring a battle in the Teutoburg Forest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKSkBEJ_wrM

[Keith]

At $160 U.S. that collectors edition is pretty expensive. I like the idea of the leather binding but the Roman dice and card game are something I'd probably never play. The mini-catapult and empire map is kind of neat.

I stopped playing the original TW: Rome after a time. I played all the battles, but kind of got bored with the campaign game after a while. It was a lot like the game Risk, taking over territories one by one. After a while I seemed to be getting nowhere in the game so I just gave up.

I loved the individual battles though. Something like that would be tremendous in a citybuilder like Caesar, or even a Greeks states style citybuilder.

The live action teaser trailer was kind of interesting. It seems to me I have seen those scenes somewhere before. That was a lot of expense to make that trailer just for a computer game. It would make an interesting story for tv or movie, sort of like HBO's "ROME" series.

[EmperorJay]

What you describe of the first Rome: Total War game is something that bugged me in later TW games as well. Especially in Shogun 2, in which differences between the factions were minimal (almost just aesthetic) the campaign felt repetitive. However, in the end I've always felt the TW games are worth their value considering the hours I've played in each version.

For Total War: Rome II they say the campaign should be more diverse and less repetitive, because you can actually make meaningful choices (f.e. you can prevent the formation of the Empire). In addition to the great diversity between the available factions, it should be a very exciting installment to play.

And on the CE... very expensive indeed but I'm fond of board games and had a gift card laying around. In the end I only paid €10 than I would've for the normal version. That should be worth it.

[Keith]

If you plan on getting the collectors edition you better pre-order it now. By the time September 3rd roles around there probably won't be any left if they are limiting the run to 22,000 copies.

In the original game, I think I had something on the order of 98 provinces under my control, but still didn't seem to have enough forces to actually take Rome itself even though I had nearly all of Italy under my control. I haven't played the original for about two to three years now.

I'll probably end up getting TWR2, but just the regular version. I can't bring myself to spend $160 U.S. on a computer game.

I may pre-order it just to get the Greek Culture pack for free and save a few bucks that way.

If the graphics in the game look as good as those videos of game play they have made some significant improvements. My new computer will let me play it at the highest settings, or should, so it should look spectacular.

[EmperorJay]

Despite my interest in ancient Rome and reading De Bello Gallico more than once, I've never realised Julius Caesar received this reward early in his military career.

Since the new engine enhances the view on one-on-one fights even further as compared to the earlier games, it would be cool if legions or units wouldn't only gain experience, but you could also hand out rewards to units or even single soldiers!

[Rnett]

For $160 bucks maybe they can include an AI with this game. The oringinal was fun for a while, but also half finished with terrible pathfinding and bipolar campaign diplomacy. I gave up on the series after that.