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However, Creative Assembly acknowledges that there’s still room for polishing. It feels like the AI is constantly evaluating the battlefield and reacting to my strategy (or lack thereof), which ensures that conflicts are much more than just two sides hammering chunks out of one another until the strongest wins. It’s a gleeful moment until my cavalry becomes isolated from the main body of my army and the enemy AI quickly moves its spearmen to block the riders’ return path. Likewise, I pay dearly when a rush of blood to the head sees me order my Roman cavalry to cut deep into the exposed flank of a company of Samnite soldiers and then chase down the stragglers as they break. The AI understands these factors and so occasionally tries to disengage from a head-on conflict to regroup on higher ground. There are tangible advantages to be gained from utilising the terrain during a skirmish and to manoeuvring to attack an enemy unit from the side or rear.
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“We’ve given ourselves a crazy problem to solve because most games script everything, even other RTS games are based on set missions, whereas we’re pretty much sandbox so our AI has to look intelligent and behave in every single situation it’s placed in.”Ĭheck out these new interviews from the game's recent press tour and some campaign prologue gameplay.įor the most part, the AI responds appropriately to the challenges I present to it. “All the streets and squares and points are highlighted to the AI and they use them to flank, block and establish defence points. “For cities it’s a real big challenge, so much so that we’ve designed a new AI for sieges,” explains Wojs. However, looking the part is only half the battle and so, this time around, I decide to leave the spandex suit at home.Īfter several hours with Rome 2’s prologue missions, I sat down with lead game designer James Russell and lead battlefield artist Pawel Wojs to discuss siege mentality, difficulty levels and how the AI adapts from fighting on the open expanse of rolling fields to the close quarters of a burning city. On a previous visit to The Creative Assembly’s motion capture studio, I gained some insight into what it takes to create the animations that bring those battlefields to life, as well as discovering that Roman Legionnaires are partial to a bit of YMCA. Surveying the ebb and flow of tiny troops from a distance offers a sense of the huge scale of the battles, while focusing the camera on an individual soldier offers a wince-inducing close-up view of the action. The visual spectacle of hundreds of soldiers clashing on the battlefields of Total War: Rome 2 is certainly a sight to behold. The Creative Assembly has made an interactive version of the campaign map available on the Total War website. Total War: Rome 2 will be released on September 3, jump through here to check its minimum and recommended specsĪ recent 10-minute game play video showed off campaign mode and highlighted some of the differences between the playable factions. The original Rome: Total War launched in 2004. Total War: Rome 2 is the eighth full-release in the Total War series, which dates back 13 years to 2000. Stace Harman explores the lengths that the AI of Total War: Rome 2 will go to in order to crush you and speaks to The Creative Assembly’s James Russell and Pawel Wojs.