There's a couple of points I think you didn't consider: - The battles are balanced for medium difficulty. Morale has increased across the board. That's why enemy units took so much effort to break when you played on VH. It even says in the player guide that enemies in VH tend to fight to the death. - Which brings me to the player guide. It's about 10 pages of general information, and each faction has like 8 pages of info. And most of the space in those pages is taken up by images instead of text. Now of course you can play without reading it but in my opinion that's very likely to negatively impact your experience. Now, the mod is definitely VERY slow paced. It's very roleplay oriented, with stuff like the roman winter elections representing problems that were very real in that time. It's definitely a niche mod. And I agree that the soundtrack isn't the best. I like it, but replacing Jeff van Dyke's masterful work with that is a bloody tragedy. I personally love the mod but it is definitely not for everyone. Anyway I enjoyed your take on it and I look forward to the next mod. Do BOTET pls.
Wallas404 actually morale has decreased a lot throughout the board, it is the other stats that have been balanced in a way to make sure that there aren’t large morale penalties. Most units only have 1-3 morale and units such as skirmishers break almost instantly. That has implemented so units actually return to battle instead of being thrown into a whole army rout or fighting to the death. Other than that I agree
@@alexanderekman9261 Somebody complains that they don´t want to play a game where they need first to read a lot of pages of info, the game is also slow paced so you can put some effort to reading some useful info, the devs of this game put a lot of time to this game and do you think they get a lot of money for it like Creative Assembly? Then again, if you don´t like this mod you will find a mod that fits your play style. :) And there is a mod that changes the music to the basic Rome 1, or you can play around with the game files and put/change the music yourself, - If you have time and want to play this very long game, it will pay off to mod the music and remove the anoying stuff, so you can play in peace. :)
Jozef Joe V. I know, personally I have no problem with reading a manual, especially considering the engines limitations. And I also personally have no problem with the pace of the game and actually have to use house rules to slow it down even more, I have played the mod for hundreds of hours and really love it.
Mines aren’t supposed to be built in regions which aren’t rich in minerals. If you were to build the mines somewhere that had minerals like gold, like south spain or dacia, you’ll get smth like 2500 income per turn, maybe more or less. Just something to keep in mind
The game should tell you that though, understanding empire infrastructure is a whole field of study a gamer should not be forced to study. it is called game optimization. The game should not allow you to build mines in provinces that has no sens to do so. Rome 1 had that. Thus reducing unnecessary complexity. It makes the Ai much easier to program too.
@@jeffvella9765good point... And the developers wanted realism, and you can build a mine in a resource poor region with miniscule income. I understand that for some or many people this decision, to make mines available everywhere, (or a similar feature) can be a bad thing.
@@kolonkacity001 There are ways and ways how do do things. It is ok to be able to build anything anywhere but then it is required to make it very clear to the player. This mod does not. Legend actually though it was ok to build a mine there. it is not intuative that the game would allow you to build anything everywhere. like when building one, it actually shows you an indication that it is not as profitable compared to other regions where it could be built. Hell I would think that the entire building interface requires a redesign at that point. like instead of going to provinces to build stuff, you have a building interface that will build buildings in the order you select. Europa Universalis 4 Macro Builder interface comes to mind. Also a Mod should prioritize Fun over everything else and if VH is no fun, just remove it. It can only harm the mod. hell i would also consider letting the player customize things (related to battle)as much as possible. Sometimes a little tweak helps a lot.
@@jeffvella9765 Some things could be better, you are right. Some people may prefer other things or point out some other negatives. Why would they leave for example the H/VH difficulty if they put such detail and work in some aspects of the game? Maybe they couldn´t figure out a way to do it, or were lazy? or an oversight? Its intended to be played on the default difficulty and i think they pointed it out. About the tweaking, i saw the Darth mod has some tweaks, so it is possible maybe easy to do, i don´t know. And you are right again (i did not think about this before), there could be tweaks such as the ability to change the pace of battles, or simplifying the building in settlements so you can have fun and focuse on battles. Can you suggest please a different mod, a different installment of TW or a different game that is similar but better than what the mod crew were trying to achieve in this mod? And thanks for your insight.
Heya Ivan Moscavich from the DeI team here. I really like your upfront and Frank mod reviews. You definitely go a long way on describing the pros and cons of these different mods without sugarcoating anything. Looking forward to when you eventually get around to us.
I understand that the soundtrack can be a mixed bag for people. I really like the soundtrack for the greek states and the one for the celts are nice as well. The thing is that they have tried to use as many instruments that actually were used in those times and played how historians think they were played. More than one of the greek pieces for the lute are actually played from original sheet music from that era (plus minus a few hundred years). So for me it's almost more imersive since it sounds more like the sounds the people actually heard back in those days.
8:29 I am prety sure, that the mines require minable resources on the map... Since Capua doesn't have any mineral deposits, your mines are literally mining stones and rabbles..
EB II is what ancient conquest would have really looked like. It is historical accuracy at its peak. So no wonder most people dont like it . In Rome Total War you can conquer mediterranean in 15 turns. Not here
I too am not surprised that cheesers and losers that rely on exploits don't like this style, modus operandi, realism and mod, and prefer vanilla Medieval 2 or vanilla Rome 1.
@@dusk6159 Loser like you hasnt watched the whole Seleucid 200 episodes series from this channel, sure he is exploiter but he enjoyed EBI more than EBII
@@dusk6159 Just because some people would rather have fun and play games instead of dressing up and pretending to be a Roman general or whatever it is you weirdos try to do, doesn't make them losers.
"Noble and manly music invigorates the spirit, strengthens the wavering man, and incites him to great and worthy deeds" - Homer 13:35 I feel invigorated alright..
In all fairness, that probably was considered noble and manly music back then. That's the kind of shit the Romans marched into battle to. You can't pretend to like history and then laugh at and mock actual historical recreations of what history sounded like.
@@Aethelhald so tell me, what does history sound like? Unless you have sheet music you can only reconstruct instruments based on archaeological finds and then the music is still open for interpretation. As a Roman archaeologist I've seen some ridiculous reconstructions, believe me.. The music in this mod sounds retarded, there is no defending that, although I like the creators effort to try and reconstruct the past.
@@imredijkstra4641 Uhhh.. I don't think it sounds retarded at all. Of course I can defend it. As a music historian it's refreshing not to hear the usual silly, bombastic hollywood rubbish. That particular soundbite is based on the primitive horn instruments that were known to the ancient world. It's obviously meant to reflect functional battle music, the kind used for communication, and not a stirring hymn. The campaign music for the Romans is from Musica Romana, a pretty good group that uses recreated panflutes and such. you have to keep in mind that modern conventions in harmony were only codified after the middle ages. so just about anything is going to sound a bit strange to modern ears.
@John Doe To be honest, I'm curious to know how many of you are basing your opinions on the actual soundtrack, or if you just listened to the sample provided by LoTW - which is NOT part of the soundtrack, i.e. it isn't a background music that plays regularly: it's a sound effect when a Roman army begins to march forward, so he's been dishonest with the explanation of the track.
@John Doe The point is that this isn't even the music of the game, the trash review potrays it and makes it think like it is but it's just a sound effect for particular and very specific events.
I think showing a siege on VH and then only attacking through one angle is extremely unfair towards the mods battles. The mod is balanced for Medium difficulty and the with the mod having slowed down unit stats as well as adding higher morale on VH makes it very slow, the developers state this all the time. A siege is slow in any total war so this combined with the first point just exacerbate the problems, and then attacking through one gate makes sure you don’t get any flanking bonus for being able to use superior numbers so it takes even longer. A regular battle even with VH and good use of decent cavalry (which the Romans doesn’t really have access to but one can mass equities to gain the same effect) isn’t nearly as sluggish as you’re implying.
Also forts fucks up for the campaign AI as you have shown in every challenging Medieval II campaign, their path finding just can’t handle them. That’s why they’re removed and that’s to be honest it’s a good thing
@@alexanderekman9261 This one about forts I disagree, they are extremely valueble for strategic reasons, to slow down enemy armies and etc... They should never be removed.
@@streetstroller the ai is broken on anything but medium because the difficulty modifiers were designed for vanilla, causing every unit to basically never break as the modifiers dont play well with the balancing they have done. almost all the issues he had in this were largely due to him not reading the manual lol
I don't understand the hate for the music. I find it atmospheric and a welcome change from the generic 20th century epic orchestral music polluting all historical media, even if it isn't completely accurate. The fact they tried so hard to make something close to authentic makes me like it, a shame so many people make fun of it and don't appreciate it, even if it can be annoying to listen to sometimes. PS: To those calling the barbarian music "aboriginal", the concept of blowing and vibrating your lips into hollowed out wood wasn't invented in Australia, societies around the planet, Europe included, had similar instruments.
The music can totally help with immersion. That instrument people keep mistaking for a didgeridoo is actually called a Carynx. It was used by iron age celtic peoples and is a very historically accurate instrument to use in the soundtrack
@@RightWingDestroyer666 Your point being you prefer ear rape because it's "historically accurate" (questionable) over something that sounds good to modern ears. We miss anything? I'm sure ancient people bopped to that all the time, but we aren't ancient people.
I like the mod overall but I think they lose themselves in too much micro that doesn't fit the scale. Like taking your generals (or your king if you are playing the seleucids) back to the capital is ridiculous on this grand scale. It should be abstracted. Also, the progression of the campaign is weird as you get so crippled by corruption and buildings provide such small increments and have maluses to it that it feels pointless. You put it brilliant. The rewards you get are too small for the amount of work you put into it. And I have the distinct feeling that mastering this mod will involved troop disbands, building razing and weird steps to ensure that you get some sort of progression. In my seleucid campaign I have zero progress I like tons of turns. Sure I conquered a couple of settlements and spent a lot of time in it. But it was like work that doesn't translate into anything...
The rewards are enough. Pretty much every mod and TW game you can just jump in and blitz, in this its different, not for all tastes, but it doesnt means its bad. On EB2 ive had a 850 turn Epeiros campaign where i basically reformed Alexander's empire, and until turn 500 i only had 4 or 5 main stacks outside of those garrisoning, I didnt blitz through it, sometimes i had 60 turns of no wars, just getting my economy and manpower ready, then a war that lasts for as near as 60 turns as well. That was the best TW campaign ive ever played and certainly my longest. On the terms of the generals, if you want to ignore the roman election system and their equivalents, you are more than able to do so. Its set in place for those that enjoy that sort of rp and immersion, and its certainly the nearest they can get to being historical accurate in terms of government for Rome in Medieval 2 Total War.
@@wulfB I am not saying that they shouldn't prevent blitzing and I do enjoy this mod. Especially combat. But, in EB1 the rewards you get from investing in buildings seem better. In EB2 it feels too throtled. I dislike the balance. Also, taking your generals to Rome every year is ridiculous and should not be implemented at this scale.
@@damianleach8132 well, I prefer consistency. It doesn't fit the scale imho. It is too micro for such a macro game. Don't get me wrong, I can play it like this and I do. And generally I like the mod a lot. The amount of detail is staggering. However, it sometimes loses itself in the details.
@@Heldermaior It fits the scale just fine. It represents the real problem Roman commanders had in maintaining their legal status as the Roman dominions expanded. For the offices with imperium - praetor and consul, they have extremely long promagistracy periods, so you don't have to go shuttling back to Rome every year, you'll have up to 5 years of freedom as a propraetor or proconsul before you have to go back to get a new term. Getting back isn't even difficult, put them on a fleet and sail home. That takes at most two seasons from most locations, it just needs a bit of forethought. Never mind that you can ignore it entirely as the player of Rome, just know that it comes with consequences. Command stars are largely irrelevant if you're fighting all your battles on the battlemap.
those permanent forts are actually put there as wonder outpost, which makes you utilize wonder bonuses. and if you found the music not energizing, you should try a steppe nomad faction. throat singing rocks \m/ once i read something about this mod saying 'the ultimate history nerd mod', obviously :D
yeah i think it comes down to what resources the region has where you build them, if it has something like "large silver deposits" mining income is way higher.
@@ciararoper4148 The absolutely massive scale of battles is amazing, Bran Mac Born AI submod works pretty well. Especially since the vanilla AI is basically AFK. It can even be vaguely challenging at times, battle AI can flank and make somewhat well coordinated attacks and campaign AI builds armies relatively competently. Give it a try, it's pretty much the best napoloeonic warfare experience in a total war game, Italian campaign is your best bet for a short test run, the mod works amazingly well on this one.
@Iouiis Instead of being proud of playing a game, explain something rather than shitting around. I didn't ask you what is eb2 is about or what other mod shall I look for. Tell me how "easy" is to suppress the rebellions of akka and northern italy and how to achieve reforms with nabatu and parthia.
13:36, I can tell you as a Brass player, that's not a bad song, it's a good song being played poorly. I really want to know the story behind it now. Did a 10 year old play that song? I imagine it has to be an absolute armature, as mods don't really have a budget. If they could just rent a pro for $50 USD an hour, which you can do for Berkley trained pros, then it would be a soundtrack for the books. But they couldn't swing it, so we get to hear... that ... instead. This isnt like Dualshock RE where it's total incompetence, the notes on the page seem to be fine. It's just the "musicians". Timing's fucked, and they dont hit the notes. That's why it sounds so atrocious
It is played by a roman historical reenactment music group. They use reproduction of ancient musical instruments and music is based on what few elements we have available. The same is true for tracks of other cultures. I dont find them particularly good either but goes a great lenght to show how the perception of beauty can change through time.
i agree 100% with your review. however it still feels the devs put much more love in this one, than ca did with rome 2. personaly my favorite medieval 2 mod is third age. don't know if you done a review on that one, but i'm drooling to see what you gotta say about it. keep up the amazing work, you're one of the very few guys TW veterans trust these days.
@@eleliot1200 total war was unique because of the massive battles. since empire, they make the battles worse and worse, 1 game at a time., to the point that watching a 3 kingdoms battles feels like a skirmish in battle for middle earth, the rts. physics? graphics? what to do with them when you have no game under it? seriously they should focus on warhammer because a. that team seems to know what the fuck they are doing b.the goofy engine they use works fine for fantasy, but not at all for historical battles. in the end it's a matter of taste, but total war fans are divided between pre and after empire era. cheers. also, fuck ca, fuck sega ect ect.
@@adrianbundy3249 he's right though, i have a beast of a machine and can run any total war with no problems. but remember the douchebags from ca saying that "attila was designed for future pc's" or something in those lines? it was because the game was so poorly optimized that you could have an ideal rig and still face fps drops and people of course where angry at the time, here's the famous quote from the ca spokescunt " Please note, that the ‘Extreme Quality’ setting is meant for future graphics cards, not for current gen,"
I like your channel but this review was poorly written. Basically you don't understand certain game mechanics or the reason they're implemented(historical accuracy). Someone already mentioned it but every region has it's own mine value. About the battles: field battles are not that slow, even on vh. The main thing is, 2 infantry lines fighting face to face is very slow due to a huge shield+skill value compared to attack, this is for historical accuracy where such battles had about very low casualty rate if no side routed and both disengaged in order. Because it's pretty hard to kill a guy with a huge shield actively trying to defend. Then you say missile troops suck, if you look at graeco-roman roster this is true, again, mostly for historical reasons. For any "barbarian" or eastern faction skirmirsers are worth it, because they're better and are facing less armored troops. Even a garbage missile troop can rack up decent kills if you flank from behind, put the game on pause, find and shoot the least armored unit. Shooting shielders is useless, and some factions have armor piercing javelins. Same for cavalry, not every cavalry is a lancer, they may look like they hold a spear but they fight like hoplites with an overhead grip, usually they carry javelins too. Those guys suck for charging but they're tankier and fight better in prolonged melee. Also even the shittiest cav matters because: 1. someone has to chase broken troops. 2. even if you don't kill half a unit after a charge the enemy still gets a penalty for being surrounded, and cav is the quickest to reposition.
Even the non-lancer cavalry can deliver effective charges if you do it right. From an appropriate distance and with a formed-up unit, charging into the rear or flanks of an engaged unit.
In EB2 2.35 battles in open field are more balanced. I noticed in siege battles where you attack settlement AI units are more "tankier" , even light skirmish units are hard to kill. Looks like there is a script bonus behind, to slow down player to take the city.
@@jurijsoklic5026 That's because pathfinding is broken in sieges. It's an M2TW problem that no mod can "fix". Not to mention the town square problem, where the defenders can't be broken if they're in the middle of the map.
Damian Leach the town square being defended to the death is fine what isn't fine is having elite units run because of morale and skirmishers fighting pikemen and not dying. when an army routs most of the casualties were there with the enemy being run down. in EB 2 running down armies is annoying because they don't die fast enough. the AI doesn't kill off rebel armies or purse them and then kill them. I remember in one campaign there were two armies standing next to each other and they were both rebels. Pontus had three full stacks and didn't kill them off I had to cheat to kill them because my computer couldn't handle the battle. The battles are slow paced which would be fine if the enemies armies could be killed on the field of battle faster but they aren't. add in the garrison scripts which I hate and the fact that the AI is given eilte units that the player can't get until mid or late game and they influence sieges and make them a grind.
@@hopedream11 Uh, routing enemies die plenty fast enough if you bother to keep an eye on your cavalry running down the fleeing men. Same goes cavalry charges, complaints usually arise because people are doing them wrong. Elite units being defeated by skirmishers is a facet of playing on the wrong battle difficulty, it doesn't happen on Medium or even Hard. Garrison script is a completely different matter, and it's only in a handful of places and has a 10-turn cooldown on it. It isn't every settlement with every siege attempt, as some other mods feature.
Do "Italian Wars" next, as it is a mod that takes up the pike and shoot era, not really covered in any other total war with the base in medieval 2. You might not have heared of it or played it, but you might enjoy it, as it has some cool concepts like the options to convert to protestant for some nations.
I'm amazed people don't like the music. It's made to sound as close to ancient music as possible (as far as we know ancient music sounded like). I always found it very, very immersive. The soundtrack at 13:40 is something you'd probably hear if you were a legionnaire on the march or something. You're playing battles with your battle difficulty above normal. They literally tell you not to play battles above medium difficulty. It's balanced for medium. It's incompetent to do a review like this and criticize something because you don't understand it. You're supposed to make your armies historically accurate and play on medium difficulty. So if you're playing as Macedonia, you don't use an army of 15 elite royal epic pikemen and 4 hetairoi cavalry, you use an army that Macedonia would have used in those days - a core of elite troops commanded by the king, surrounded by mercenaries, lighter troops, skirmishers, etc. And speaking about Skirmishers - they do massive damage in EB2 (if you play on medium, like the mod is balanced for). And the battles don't last that long... if you play on medium... like you should. Especially field battles, which can be over in 5 minutes. Sieges are still a pain but guess what - that's historically accurate! EB and EB2's incentive is in the historical accuracy. If you enjoy immersing yourself in history then this mod is for you. If you enjoy fighting epic battles that last for 3 minutes every single turn, it's not for you. Your armies aren't supposed to be "organized", uniform forces. They never were in history either, at least until the Marian reforms. Every "nation" back then had armies that looked like a "dog's dinner". Even the Roman ones.
Yeah, um...maybe historically accurate. Who knows, I'd like to think ancient musicians played their instruments better than that. It might have sounded great to ancient people, but to be historically accurate at all costs is not always the smartest move, as demonstrated by the soundtrack.
@@streetstroller I just don't get why you would play a mod that is designed and marketed as being as close to historically accurate as they can possibly make it, including going to the extremes of recording music with real ancient musical instruments for maximum authenticity, and then criticizing the mod because it's accurate. Honestly, this is one of the most incompetent reviews of anything I've ever seen. It's like buying Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and giving it a bad review because you don't get to drive formula one cars in it. No shit, it's not a racing game. Then playing the battles on very hard, when the developers of the mod specifically warn people that their mod is balanced for medium battles only, and complaining that the battles don't work properly on hard. It's just total incompetence. I'd be embarrassed if I had made a review like this.
@@Aethelhald I don't know what you're talking about. He gave credit for the quality of the mod but acknowledged it wasn't for everyone. It's not perfect, it has flaws, and it doesn't make you sound credible getting angry if someone dares to say your mod isn't perfect. He reviewed it fairly, said what he thought worked and what he thought didn't work. He didn't say it wasn't accurate, he just said it favored realism over fun gameplay, which is a fair argument to make. And saying Legend is incompetent for not knowing about some text file for some esoteric mod explaining the mod's shortcomings is just a low blow. If the mod was that good it would have been balanced for all difficulties, and the game should let the player know in game if building a mine in some provinces is a bad idea, like through an in game advisor because, you know, that would be realistic. Or just not allow them to build mines in cities without resources. All better game design choices that for some reason were not considered.
@@hieroprotoganist3440 People with genuinely busy lives are usually very good at scheduling and prioritising. I often find the people who claim they "don't have time" for things are doing very little indeed.
Legend, would you play a Medieval 2 mod that perfectly re-creates Rome 1, but with various features in Medieval 2 (free upkeep, chivalry/dread, loyalty, more diverse units, more scripted events, etc?)
@@Siamzero1994 I love Jeff Van Dyck too, that's why I always mod my mods to include his music (in the case of EB and EB2 I also left in the EB music as well). Still, I don't get it. They made the music for EB and EB2 to sound like it would've sounded back in history (as far as we know) and I always thought it sounded very immersive.
Regarding the music, I'm not sure if there could be compromise between historical accuracy and being aesthetically pleasing because you risk compromising historical accuracy when you decide to conform the music to contemporary standards. The music that was made for the mod was created using traditional instruments and historical reconstructions; it's something they acknowledge as being potentially "jarring" to contemporary ears in one of their loading screens. So with how meticulous the EBII team is with regards to history, they probably wouldn't want to change the music out or modify it for modern Western ears. Though I would like for them to change the frequency of that blaring soundtrack you played. As someone who plays EBI I've never heard that before unless it's culture specific to Roman or Hellenic culture or it's something new they added for EBII. And this is coming from someone that loves EBI music.
It´s a shame that the music drives away some people, there are sub mods that change the music, it would be neat if there were some options to change or disable some music you dont like, but i don´t know if it is possible or easy to do in the game menu, or if you need to go in the game folder and mess with some files and change the music there.
@Fa Mulan Its a matter of taste, i for one prefer EB's soundtrack than Rome Total War's. One gets you feeling you are in a movie and the other immersers yourself 2000 years ago. Each is fitting for the type of game they made.
+Fa Mulan You don't have to act so vitriolic to it. It's just music. This is a mod that strives for accuracy is many ways so it's unsurprising they wanted to change the music to this. Have you played the mod beyond just hearing what Legend has shown you hear because most tracks aren't as annoying as the track he decided to highlight. If you're just going off of what Legend has shown you here, it's going to give you an impression that most tracks in the game are as annoying or ear piercing as that.
The scripts spawning rebel stacks and defensive stacks when you get to the last settlement of a culture are really annoying to overcome. I get the idea, to make it harder to wipe out tribes, particularly in historic centres, but its a bit ridiculous. I mean, yeah, last ditch mass mobilisation, but OP stacks again and again - no. Once. And its a great shame, because it may be the best for historical detail of those ancient nationalities and cultures. I vote for Roma Surrectum (I can't remember if it's a 2 or not. If there's a 2, then I mean the 2).
those OP stacks are the reason I stopped playing along with rebels being way stronger so much so that factions can't even fight them they don't kill rebels around them. the garrison script needs to be removed it makes sense but is bad for gameplay. you as Carthage taking Rome when it has low soldiers? nope, garrison script saves them. can't even replicate Hannibal's campaign be cause of that script and the slow battles. can't do what happened at Cannae either.
Not a mod for everyone, and the issue with the mines - some regions give you a lot more profit, it depends of the natural resources. Some music is good and some bad, you could put some more time to mod the game and change the music, it´s a very long game so it should pay off to not listen dozens of hours of sometning you don´t like.
Jozef Joe V. I think the horn music in the battles were meant to add to the historical atmosphere, in that the Romans used horns while marching and to communicate orders over distances, but I agree this has been done at the expense of the games ascetic appeal.
- Broken Crescent for Medieval II - Republic of China 1924 for Medieval II - Genghis Khan/Mongol mod for Rome: Barbarian Invasion - Morning Sun (Total War Centre version) for Shogun II
I loved the meltdowns in the streams while it happened but this is barely a review of the real thing. It's good for people like you who won't immediately like it, I guess. You can't really appreciate the Roman Campaign until you see how some of the others play after a lot of growth time and you have these massive grinding wars that feel like real wars because they go on for years and you will without a doubt have some victories that you feel amazing about, even when it's just AI. The map is massive and I love diving into every faction. It's not just the greeks. People miss out on Indians and Africans, Nabateans, and Sabeans. It's really a remarkably full experience to me and they just keep adding to it. You have to respect that. It's not for everyone but I'll say it's for me. It probably helps that it was one of the first times I've ever modded a game. It still blows my mind and I wish that Med2 wasn't so old. Hopefully the team perseveres on in some form and chooses another game.
how is the shit even playable when u have tosend ur generals back to rome every 4th turn? and then you spend one turn moving your general from rome, back to the fight, now you have 3 turns left to siege, move into position attack, and then run back home.... shits fucking egregious... and that's just ONE general, imagine when you have like 5-6
@@iliketastybread9010 not really, it doesn't have heavy scripting and isn't particularly slow either. I like it because ı find it kinda difficult right now
When I heard that music for the first time on your stream and you just gave an utter look of disgust, I think I laughed the hardest I ever have in years...
well for the battles, if it's open field battles I like them alot, and they don't take so much time (on medium difficulty) as if u got enough troops you can allways engage all enemy units and surround them with the free units or cav and break them fast, in Sieges that's alot harder to do and take alot more time that's true
13:37 this is some of the most hilarious music I have ever heard. The main problem isn´t even the music itself, it´s just that the musicians can´t play their instruments, and they are playing on very old instruments. For example the trumpets sound like they are playing on ancient fanfare trumpets, but not very well. Their tone quality and intonation is shit. There are some authentic old horns as well which sound like crap. It is actually cool that they are using authentic instruments, but when it´s not done well, I would much rather have modern music. Even if the instruments were played by experts on those specific instruments, the music would still actually be worse because modern instruments are way better than they were 2000 years ago. It might even be possible that the musicians aren´t that bad and it´s actually just the instruments that are awful. This is coming from someone who has played the trumpet for more or less my entire life, just to establish some ethos.
That isn't part of the soundtrack, it's a sound effect for when you order units to march that attempts to reflect the way they would give orders through the sound of the horn back then. In this case the quality does not come from its musicality. This is coming from someone who has played this mod for more than one hour, just to establish some ethos.
Do BOTET - Alternative Cut at some point. Campaign is still so unfinished that some of the new factions don't have their recruitment buildings, but it's still the best total war experience I've had.
@koviack The original Call of Warhammer was heavily focused on the Empire and the Beginning of the End of Times team kept those factions. Also Beginning of the End Times was abandoned and Alternative Cut is the only active development team.
They're not very slow if you play them on medium battle difficulty, which the game is balanced for. This guy is playing on hard or very hard, which literally breaks the balancing of the mod. Siege battles are pretty slow and grindy but I just don't fight them. I besiege an enemy city and wait for them to starve to death or come out and attack me. In history a siege assault was a last resort because assaulting a city was a good way to lose most of your army. Sieges went on for years. Even the Romans, who were good at them, would besiege large cities for years (Carthage, Syracuse) before assaulting them as a last resort.
@@schlomoshekelstein908 It's every 4 years (which is 16 turns) not every 4 turns. But you don't need to send them back every 4 years even. Once they get elected to an imperium-holding office they hold that office for 4 years (16 turns), then it gets prolonged by 4 years (another 16 turns). It's somewhat unrealistic but the developers had to make allowances for gameplay. Or you can just ignore the offices altogether and just let any general lead any army, no matter how young or inexperienced they may be.
@@Aethelhald i just read i'm not supposed to be playing on vh/vh that's probably where my problems are coming from. nothing ever routs even when they're surrounded. oh well time to start over i guess
@@schlomoshekelstein908 Hard campaign, medium battles is what I always go for. The battles in EB last a LOT longer than they do in the un-modded game because every unit has like 10x the amount of armour and morale, so if you play on hard or very hard battles you're basically making enemy units into terminators. The difficulty in EB comes from using balanced, historically accurate armies. So as Rome for example you would have an army consisting of: 2 leves 2 rorarii 2 accensi 4 hastati 4 principes 2 triarii 1 or 2 cavalry 1 general 2 units of your choice (mercs or whatever) Enemy units are still tanky as hell, but you win battles by outflanking them and surrounding them which absolutely wrecks their morale and causes a panic and a rout, where most of the casualties occur in chasing the enemy when they're running, just like in real life. It really adds a whole lot of realism to the experience of playing the game, especially if you also follow the historical pattern of conquest for the faction you're playing. If you're not playing as Rome I can give you some tips on historically accurate armies for whichever faction you're playing, though it's the same pattern for pretty much everyone - a core of elite, expensive units with the rest of the slots filled by cheaper militia types and expensive mercenaries recruited from whichever location you happen to be fighting in. That's just how it was in those days.
But not nuanced enough to know that the battles are balanced around medium difficulty and that playing them on a higher difficulty than medium breaks the mod.
Hello i just recently playing this game and yes i agree that it is so boring but one thing i like about it is you can recruit units from other area they call expansion territories or colony ? You can recruit units that are populated on that area nice idea rather than always recruiting the same. Units even far away from your homeland
They made the music sound like it would've sounded back then. I always found it very immersive to think that I was listening to the same shit that Roman soldiers listened to when they were on the march.
You're inspiring me to release an "ACTION" submod for EB2 to fix some of the issues you've mentioned. Music and certain SFX fixes are also easy enough to implement. EB2 is way too good to have to be inaccessible to people who have less free time. I agree with that sentiment. Btw hope you try out some other factions, they all play very differently, and Rome is easily the most technical / scripted of them all.
You don't need to release an action submod. All you need to do is play the mod on medium battle difficulty, which is what the developers balanced the game around. Why would you play with unbalanced difficulty that the developers told you not to play, then complain that you made the game slower?
@@Aethelhald It's not about "difficulty", it's about painfully slow battles, particularly sieges. The importance of stamina also gets thrown out the window since it only takes a few minutes for units to become exhausted, but the battle still has to drag out for another hour. Fixing this is actually a very easy process (tweaking a few values in battle_config.xml) but requires some finesse to keep everything balanced.
@@HaHawk Strange then, that I was playing the game this morning (on H/M difficulty, as it is balanced for) and fought two battles (my full army Vs. an enemy full army), neither of which lasted longer than around 10 minutes. As for siege battles... why would you be assaulting cities with large garrisons? Do you know how rare that was in the ancient world? Generals would rather besiege a city for 2 years than assault it. Assaulting a city that was even moderately defended was a great way to get your whole army wrecked - even if you win you're going to take horrific casualties. You're supposed to besiege a city for as long as it takes for the garrison to starve and surrender, or sally out and attack you in desperation. Or until another enemy army arrives to attack you and relieve the city which, if you win, will give you the city as you will have destroyed its garrison on the battlefield (or reduced it significantly so that assault is now a viable option). EB is a full on historical accuracy project. If historical accuracy isn't your thing (and I understand why it isn't for many people) then just don't play it. But don't try to play it like an action game and then complain that it's too slow. I don't even know why Legendoftotalwar bothered to play it to begin with - his playstyle is using cavalry to cheese the bad AI in TW games. He's better sticking to vanilla TW, or mods which still allow you to beat an entire enemy army with nothing but a general's bodyguard and a flaming pig.
Ah, review of me favoured mod ever, apart the first one. As history nerd and Asberger with neurotic interest to history, this mod is match made in heaven! Can't get enough of it! And as I get me new gaming pc later this week, I'm able to dive back in it! And stream it in Twitch as one of the most boring streams ever, unless you are history nerd... ;D I love that combats are long, current TW battles are way too quick. Also love that building don't give you OP bonuses like Vanilla ones tend to. For me this mod is just dream come true... Also, best music ever in TW games or mods! Flaming arrows frigging unrealistic. They are just shittier arrows in IRL. Cavarly at the time weren't like knights etc.
@Iouiis "a waste of time" just because some people doesnt like it doesnt mean that is a waste of time is like saying that no one should play foot ball because most people dont do it, that argument is just retarded. as long as they are happy with doing they should keep doing.
the games should be broken up into 3 camps. 1 Low attention span instant gratification players. 2 Medium attention span and challenge/ option for high difficulty. 3 slow paced historical accuracy hardcore game modes etc.
Whatever EB2 is, it's most certainly not a game. Unless you think sitting there and doing nothing for long periods of time is a game. And gamers are not low attention span just because they don't want to recreate the 'waiting in line at the DMV' experience in game.
@@streetstroller I'm not necessarily talking about eb2. It's probably too slow for me. For gaming in general when you look at how many popular games evolved in the past 15 years they've catered to ppl with shorter attention span or that want instant gratification. I've heard this as well when comparing rome total war and medeival 2 total war to the newer warhammer games. Or u can think of a different genre, far cry 3 compared to far cry 5. The newer one has x-ray vision and stuff bc many don't want a challenge
@@__dudewitagun__4607 Saying people have shorter attention spans is true but no one ever talks about the reason, which is that today people are much busier and there are so many more thing vying for peoples' limited attention. Very few people have the time resources to commit to those types of games. I did up until around 16 or so, and that was in an age before the internet and media is what it is now.
@@streetstroller i can agree for those of us that are busy working. But back when I had time I noticed that the average teenagers/young adults wanted instant gratification in games . I'll narrow it down to AAA gaming bc that's where I noticed it the most. The time argument is fair and definitely applies which justifies quick to jump in/out games. However I don't think X-ray vision and ridiculously easy game play (the new normal is yesterday's easy) falls into that category. It brings more money in to the industry and more gamer but dilutes the quality of games a bit IMO, which is why i play niche titles and indie games mostly. Both of these arguments are true when looking at the massive pool of games and varying gamers that are out there.
@@__dudewitagun__4607 I partially agree. You do need to understand though that a lot older games difficulty curves stemmed from just plain old bad game design/jankiness and also a lot of games came from arcades where the difficulty was jacked in order to take peoples' quarters lol.
My experience with this mod: armored horse archers are stupid. Playing as Baktria I attacked the remnants of a Saka general’s bodyguard (armored HA) with some HA of my own. End result? They started with 5, and after spending all my ammunition, 3 were left. Effin’ amazing.
Damian Leach a heavily armored cavalry unit barely took any damage from hundreds of arrows! Oh noes! Seriously, your argument makes no sense. If a unit takes less ranged damage than a unit of armored legionaries in testudo (Rome 2, fired at from the front of course), that should need fixing. Especially if the horses aren’t even armored.
@@jordinagel1184 Rome 2 is a completely different engine, and an irrelevant comparison. Sakan bodyguards have much more armour than Roman legionaries in EBII. Arrows aren't killers in this period for well-armoured troops. If you really thought the Romans at Carrhae were wiped out by archery, I'd suggest you go read a more detailed account of what happened.
Damian Leach never said anything about Carrhae, don’t know where you got that from. And fair enough about the engine. Let me use another example then: I’ve seen horse archers do more damage to a high elf bodyguard in Third Age, and those are as tough as they come. I don’t expect archers to do all the killing, but I do expect them to get at least smg done with the amount of ammo they use.
@@jordinagel1184 Deploy archers against unarmoured units and you'll see them have a much greater impact. I used Carrhae as an example, because it is one of the things that informs how we tailored the battle mechanics in EBII. The Romans stood under showers of arrows for hours on end. They didn't lose many men to the arrows, but they were exhausted by being forced to remain on station all day, in the hot sun. So that when the cataphracts charged them, they didn't have the energy to stand. TATW isn't a game based on history, so I'm afraid that's a meaningless comparator.
So your idea is taking off many of theunique stuff from EB2 and making it Rome Total War esque? Just go play RTW or Roma Surrectum then, instead of wanting people to dumb down EB2.
Who's "they"? You won't find the dev team doing that (why would I remove a whole load of my own work?), but you're more than welcome to do it yourself.
Full disclosure, I'm one of the developers of EBII (writer of scripts and recruitment), and I was on the second livestream for several hours. Overall, a relatively balanced review, but as you said several times, this isn't a mod that is aimed at either the casual player, or someone wanting a quick fix. There are around 1100 turns available in a campaign, and unlike EB1 you can actually reach the end of a game without a fatal CTD ending your campaign after 100-200 turns. That said, the constant comparison to EB1 isn't necessarily a useful one, it's a different engine (some of the battle mechanics in RTW were better than M2TW), a different team and has different goals. EBII isn't trying to merely be EB1 ported to a new engine. Pace is slow deliberately. EBII is not intended to be a 10-hour, 100 turns and you're done. A 50 turn review isn't really anywhere near long enough to do more than scratch the surface, and some of your confusion was because you didn't read anything. Blitzing has been disincentivised, because what's the point of us designing something to be played for over 1000 turns if there's nothing left to do after 100? EBII isn't trying to "evolve with the times" and be a fast thing to dip in and out of. Not for people with short attention spans, and that's just fine, it isn't trying to be all things to all men. So I'm afraid we're not going to speed up the campaign, that would be counter-productive. A siege is a terrible example of a battle. Pathfinding and thus cohesion and movement are broken in settlements in M2TW. You could have shown an actual field battle if you wanted to demonstrate how battles are paced. I watched you playing some in the livestream, and you were just charging everything around with little tactics or maneuver. One of the advantages of slower battles is that you can actually set things up and react to what the AI is doing, rather than just smash units into each other and hope you win out. I can't help but feel that if you were going to play so short a game, you'd have been better off playing another faction, like Makedonia. You didn't get anywhere near special events like the Roman military reforms, which take over 100 turns to reach. Some random nitpicks from the review: -Koinon Hellenon is not "the Greek cities" and it doesn't have a "historically inaccurate number" of cities. It loosely represents the Chremonidian League, which comprised Athens, Sparta and Rhodes, insofar as settlements that are represented on the map. -Eremos/Terhazza down in the bottom left corner - yes you can "cheat to conquer it", but it's a terrible idea. That province is used for scripting and other mechanical purposes, you'll break the game. -Elections - yes it makes it tricky to get FMs back to Rome for the winter, but if they're elected to praetor or consul, they have a pro-magistracy period of 5 years (20 turns) after that election in which they can act. They don't have to shuttle back every 4 turns. Remember the player doesn't have to go along with the system, they just won't get the reward of imperium. It's a feature of the Roman game. -You were trying to build mines in a place with poor resources. You're not supposed to build mines everywhere. 100 turn payback is nothing in a game designed to last 1100 turns. -Liguria is supposed to be hard to control. It's one of over a dozen settlements designed to be difficult to keep, because they were historically restive. -Rebels - they're strong in the early game, you didn't play long enough for other factions to get into their own or threaten you. -You're supposed to use varied armies, not uniform ones. That's not a "dog's breakfast", that's much more realistic. A proper Roman army was only half-Roman, the other half composed of allied units/auxiliaries. You use too much cavalry. -Skirmishers are for killing other skirmishers. -"A giant boner for pike warfare" - it's the Hellenistic era, the pike was the mainstay of battle. It's basic tactical unit was bigger than that of the Roman maniple. -It's not a Roman mod, the whole point of EB is to go beyond Rome, so they don't get special treatment. They already have some of the best units, which get better with their reforms. -Flaming arrows are a Hollywood myth. -Units are fighting for a long time because you're in a siege, there's nowhere for them to go. -Cavalry charges don't work in settlements - see broken pathfinding. They work fine in field battles, if you do them correctly. Usually they don't work because people are charging from too close. -Can't help crashing after several hours of gameplay - that's an M2TW problem with memory leaks. The longer the session, the bigger the game gets in memory. The only way to clear the buffer is to save, quit and start again. EBII is more memory-intensive than any other mod out there, so it reaches memory leaks faster. -Forts removed because they break the CAI. The eight permanent ones are placed to allow Wonders to appear on the battle map, they're not "randomly placed". -Autosave removed because it corrupts saved games, just as quicksave does.
Everything is great tho large adress aware is MUST with this mod. The one thing that *SUCKS* however, even that is too nice of a word, the one thing that's *CANCER* is music. My ears literally hurt no exaggerating. I still hear ringing as i type this. Never have i faced anything similar and i've listened all kinds of trash music. I don't mean to offend whoever put effort into this but if you can listen to this my hats off to you sir as this could be used as torture tool. I'll mod vanilla music back in as everything else is great and it's worth the effort of digging trough filles.
@@damianleach8132 I know... They are on witchhunt even for any link to it on TWC for years and i doubt CA themselves care about it. Mod is honestly it's own game. Unlike Warhammer Mods or Divide and Conquer which are amazing, this is so complex and different than anything med2 has seen so far. I was overwhelmed even tho i've played med2 and mods for years this is like it's own game. So many features. However in the main menu when you enter custom battle or campaign and exit before doing anything and go to campaign or custom battle it always crashes but if you go to campaign start campaign or go to custom battle start battle and then exit and go to to campaign or custom battle it doesn't so it's not the problem but is that normal? Also meele units being in loose formation on default is that intended for historical accuracy and recommended way to play or?
@@abcdc197 That problem of Campaign/Custom battle crashes in the menu is hardcoded. The only solution is not to do it. Yes, Roman units are in loose formation by default, that's intended. Theirs was a looser order than the hoplite, a lesson the Samnites and Celts taught them.
I'm late to the party, but I'd like to put something up for consideration: it isn't just the attention span that has diminished. Even amongst hardcore old total war players, the experience itself is not the same. I play a custom-made mod that I've been working on for 15 years, tweaking and whatnot, and I still often get bored. There are only so many times you can play a game without getting bored. And I played R:TW for about 8000 hours... there's very little any mod can do for me at this point...
THERA: REDUX .... Little known Med2 mod but with a popular following. Has an epic campaign with factions based on history and a bit of fantasy (of the low magic variety).
Hi uploader, The integrity of your opinions and validity of your criticisms would improve if you'd spent more time learning about the game. It would seem you've missed out on some key game mechanics and are unaware of a lot of this mod's features. That shows in your playthrough and in this review. You would have benefited from reading the guide that comes with the game, visiting the EB2 forum at twcenter and/or watching the playthroughs of experienced players. Maybe what you were saying about attention span was spot on. But then, wouldn't it serve everyone better if you skipped the review, rather than reviewing something you don't understand? This game has a steep learning curve and is relatively slow-paced, yes, but this review has several criticisms that either miss the point of the mod entirely or are misleading. Some examples (some of which have been mentioned): - Income from mines depend on the mineral wealth in the region. You should build mines where there's mineral wealth. You should not build mines where there's no mineral wealth. - There are several types of government. Which one you should build depends on the prevalent culture in the region. You could barely hold Mediolanum with a ~full stack because you built the wrong type of government. In my playthrough I'm currently holding Mediolanum with 2 units, one of which is a Client Ruler. - Surprised that it takes a shitload of time to win a battle? Well, it doesn't help that you engage from a single angle and fight in a two-metre wide doorway. Try flanking, it's super effective! I could go on, but I realise that I'm taking your review more seriously than you yourself are... Keep on enjoying TW, even if this mod's not for you.
I agree. It's tragic to see an incompetent reviewer literally do all the things the guide tells you not to do and criticize the mod for those things, then see hundreds of viewers who've never even tried the mod agree with an incompetent and ill-informed review.
@@moonman2051 It's because the EB team have worked so hard for so many years to craft a historical mod, then along comes this pleb who plays it wrong and doesn't understand it and trashes it.
@@Aethelhald But Legend said all those things, he said that is an extremely good mod many times, he never trashed the game except for the music, which he mentions only some of it is boring.
Can you do an install tutorial for this? I tried so many times to install it but I got everytime some CTD during campaigns and custom battles that don't let me enjoy this beautiful mod
I disagree about the opinion on the soundtrack. "Barbarian Battle Theme" and "Furious demon drum" are both better than Jeff Dycke's trakc and that is because they fit into this game so well. It makes the whole battle experience extremely immersive.
The alleged dingeradoo might be a carnyx which I believe ancient Celts used, and was a long horn/trumpet. I haven’t played the mod so I don’t know maybe it’s clearly the dingeradoo (how is it even spelled lol)
Most of these 20% just love to see your reaction to the EB music and therefore voted positiv to it. Frankly, I also found your reaction was the past and funniest part of the lets play:) (But I would have voted against the music because the pain is to much to handle...)
Gonna have to hard disagree with about every point in this review. Particularly the point about the pace. Not every game, especially mods, need to appeal to a mass audience and the core audience will be turned off by a lot of the changes you suggested here. I know it's an old video but to be frank I'd just keep playing the old version if they took up most of the guidance here. Although I'd be surprised if we saw future revisions.
LEGEND, hi! Been watching you for a while. Have two questions, would be very thankful if you do a video about one of them or both. a)What do you think about CA/SEGA ability to make a 'breakthrough' in tech? I'm talking about engine stuff. I bet everyone of old TW fan knows that all titles starting from Empire TW are build on Warscape engine. Which is quite old plus in the beginning they had a shit ton prooblems with it. Isn't it a time to create a new engine, and possibly, make a breakthrough in the future games features? b) What are chances of making Empire 2 TW, what do you think about this?
"Is this a good mod? Absolutely? [...] Will it be popular? No" Legend had problems with this one but I can't disagree. This has been my first modding experience with ANY game and it blew my mind. I learned a lot about history and spent many an hour hving epic battles. But not everything here is everybody's cup of tea. One man's immersive, authentic soundtrack is another man's DOOOOOOT DOOOOOOT didgeridoo nonsense. One man's intensely long battle is another's slog. It's a complex mod with a lot of ambition curtailed by the engine. But they persist. Currently it seems the AI is in a more broken than usual state, some games it is passive and wonky and others it will blob out and become interesting. There are older versions to try and always interesting submods to tweak things you don't like. I had a Third Age battles submod attached for the longest time because I hated the low kill, high morale style of EB2 but now I'm engrossed by pretty much Vanilla EB2. You could spend a year or two just enjoying every faction in EB2 and then moving onto Stainless Steel/Broken Crescent, what have you. In my mind the only way a Medieval 3 TW isn't a massive failure is if Creative Assembly buckles down and makes it just as modifiable and open to creativity as this 10+ year old masterpiece. Even when mods are bad, mods that can change so much of the game are good. Open your games up CA, stop having them... be closed.
The CAI isn't broken - the reason you're seeing those two distinct behaviours is that we have two AI states that factions switch back and forth between. There's the TW standard hyper-aggressive state called "warlike" and there's a much calmer, more reasonable state called "diplomacy". It's still very much a work in progress to get the triggers which cause the switch to the right place so that it feels natural.
historical "accuracy" is incredibly subjective to begin with. is making the mines take a century to pay off it's initial investment really accurate to anything?
If you dont like it dont play it. There are tons of mods that focus on "gameplay", on blitzing, on hollywood-esque wars. Europa Barbarorum 2 is the different one and people want it to be exactly like all the others?
@@wulfB You're welcome to enjoy the mod, as is anyone else who likes it. My opinion of it however remains unchanged. As with any game or mod that tries to be to historically accurate..
The reasons why i think the mod was meant to be slow is to prevent steamrolling the maps, and make any expansion more close to what would be like back in those days. Hence the factions are weak and the rebels are strong. The plus side, you don't get the "white death" in the east, you did back in the EB1 days. The minus......you aren't rewarded for creative game play. No matter what you do, you can't capitalize on great victories or brilliant leaders. Because there aren't any. If you play to win in this game, you play the long game. And that sucks away the fun of tactical successes which (i guess) most TW players crave. Personally, i'm still on the fence with this mod. I haven really dabbed into it enough to makeup my mind. I'm far too busy and removed from the MTW2 and RTW community these days to invest enough time in it. Had this been around a year or two after EB1 was "sealed" i might have been into a better position to provide a more educated opinion on it. Which i feel is a shame, cause a lot of work and effort seams to have went into it.
Man at first when you were bitching about the music in battle I was like come on man could it really be that bad then I fought a battle and now I can’t fight them with the music on, my god it really is that bad
Pretty fair review. I loved the mod, but I do agree battles could be very slow and should be tweaked. Field battles are much better, but city battles were a grindfest so much that I would just siege settlements out. If they sallied forth, its a field battle and went much smoother. My biggest gripe though was I would often forget to save every turn, and after a few hours the game would crash, and always after a big battle. Hopefully they'll fix it up one day.
Pathfinding is broken in sieges, there's nothing we can do about that. As you note, field battles are much better, because pathfinding (and thus cohesion and a host of other things) works properly. The longer your session goes on, the bigger it gets in memory, and the higher the chances of a memory leak. This is a problem with the way M2TW is coded, not something the EBII team can do anything about. The only reason it's more noticeable in EBII than other mods is because it's much more memory-intensive than others. The only things you can do to address this are using Large Address Aware, which is required for EBII, and ending your session after a couple of hours. If you want to play on, just load up again, but you need to quit to clear the memory.
I am so glad I was not the only one who finds the soundtrack so annoying. I just mute the music and youtube rtw soundtrack. The voice actors for the troops are annoying as well.
13:36 I thought you were overreacting and being too harsh on the music... then you turned on one of the tracks, and I actually laughed out loud at how bad it was.
As a person who played this mod a lot, I can state that not all soundtracks are like that, the themes for the greek states, certain roman and nomad tracks and main menu theme are memorable and I consider it beats vanilla in imersion by a long shot, but I agree some can be quite jarring but it's not garbage across the board
There is auto save for me. I think the installer is the safest bet in terms of downloading it. All things aside though, I love this mod and thanks for giving it a go even if your impressions of it weren’t like mine.
I think they really wasted an opportunity by just rehashing the EXACT same time frame RTW and EB1 were set in. It would have made perfect sense to do Late Antiquity, being the era which linked the ancient and medieval worlds.
I personally like EB1 more even if its more unstable, i tried EB2 and just couldnt get into it at all, the new buildings are just crap, the new public order system is also bad, its like the mod went downhill in more than several ways and i dont know how they managed to make the mod even slower than EB1, its ridiculous, it feels like they're stuck in the early-mid 2000s still instead of moving on. Also, whats with the fucking rebels? Why are they so ridiculously strong?
Because the Rebels represent, or try to represent, independent, active Kingdoms/Political entities. In EB II they recruit Agents, they recruit units, they attack cities. Legend did not read through the, included, 8-Page, picture heavy beginners guide. He has no business making a shitty, uninformed "Review" on this.
@@karlkarlsson8826 You shouldnt have to read 8-page guides in order to have fun with the mod, i understand that they wanted to give rebels more weight and make them represent entities but the old engines dont have the capacity for that, and any scripts that boost rebels just makes them more annoying to deal with for the player, i liked the way they were in EB1, where they had sizable garrisons, but werent a huge slog to deal with, with more troops sometimes than the actual factions themselves.
If you cant read 8 pages then why the heck would you want to play EB2? THe point of EB2 is being as historical as possible, and showing that period to the players, the players that will get the most of the experience are exactly the ones that will want to read the unit descriptions, the buildings, etc etc, incorporating all the amazing info that they placed in there and immersing yourself into the mod.
@@wulfB They sacrificed fun gameplay for historical accuracy in all fronts in EB2, its basic design to balance the two properly in a game like this, EB1 was leaning towards accuracy but not to the detriment of the gameplay, EB2 leans towards accuracy so much that gameplay becomes an afterthought in favor of just shoving as much history in there as possible. Also, "if you cant read 8 pages blah blah" because i enjoyed EB1 and thought EB2 would be a direct upgrade, with the good things expanded upon, the mediocre things improved from EB1...etc, but it was just a downgrade in gameplay for historical accuracy. Such as the rebels, which became a bad slog from just okay, the public order which became extremely annoying over it being good, the buildings which went from being meh to being straight up bad with the way they function. EB1 already had some useless buildings bloating the construction tree, its a lot worse here with some mines, the costs to everything under the sun...etc Not to mention the fact that the horrible battle music is still there, the campaign map music is good, the menu music is good, why is the battle music so bad.
Feel free to review The Last Kingdom: Wrath of the Norsemen, Warcraft: Total War, Game of Thrones: Enhanced, Republic of China 1924 or Wrath of the Norsemen: The Baltic.
Do call of war hammer BOTET 1.5
I want to do this!
1 vote
LegendofTotalWar yeah I started an Empire campaign and it’s really good. They nerfed griffins though
Play as Reikland, destroy everyone with mortars and rockets. Also, the campaign map music is best for Reikland.
MarkoAnardur exactly artillery + demogryphs is easy win
There's a couple of points I think you didn't consider:
- The battles are balanced for medium difficulty. Morale has increased across the board. That's why enemy units took so much effort to break when you played on VH. It even says in the player guide that enemies in VH tend to fight to the death.
- Which brings me to the player guide. It's about 10 pages of general information, and each faction has like 8 pages of info. And most of the space in those pages is taken up by images instead of text. Now of course you can play without reading it but in my opinion that's very likely to negatively impact your experience.
Now, the mod is definitely VERY slow paced. It's very roleplay oriented, with stuff like the roman winter elections representing problems that were very real in that time. It's definitely a niche mod. And I agree that the soundtrack isn't the best. I like it, but replacing Jeff van Dyke's masterful work with that is a bloody tragedy. I personally love the mod but it is definitely not for everyone. Anyway I enjoyed your take on it and I look forward to the next mod. Do BOTET pls.
Wallas404 actually morale has decreased a lot throughout the board, it is the other stats that have been balanced in a way to make sure that there aren’t large morale penalties. Most units only have 1-3 morale and units such as skirmishers break almost instantly. That has implemented so units actually return to battle instead of being thrown into a whole army rout or fighting to the death. Other than that I agree
@@alexanderekman9261 Somebody complains that they don´t want to play a game where they need first to read a lot of pages of info, the game is also slow paced so you can put some effort to reading some useful info, the devs of this game put a lot of time to this game and do you think they get a lot of money for it like Creative Assembly?
Then again, if you don´t like this mod you will find a mod that fits your play style. :)
And there is a mod that changes the music to the basic Rome 1, or you can play around with the game files and put/change the music yourself, - If you have time and want to play this very long game, it will pay off to mod the music and remove the anoying stuff, so you can play in peace. :)
Jozef Joe V. I know, personally I have no problem with reading a manual, especially considering the engines limitations. And I also personally have no problem with the pace of the game and actually have to use house rules to slow it down even more, I have played the mod for hundreds of hours and really love it.
What is BOTET?
@@paxluporum4447 BOTET is Beginning of the End Times, a Warhammer themed mod for medieval 2. It's pretty good.
"I don't know why they took away fire arrows"
oh man, I can feel lindybeige roaring from the other side of the planet.
Mines aren’t supposed to be built in regions which aren’t rich in minerals. If you were to build the mines somewhere that had minerals like gold, like south spain or dacia, you’ll get smth like 2500 income per turn, maybe more or less. Just something to keep in mind
Maybe he did not put enough time and effort to learn some useful stuff in this mod. And made the harsh opinion.
The game should tell you that though, understanding empire infrastructure is a whole field of study a gamer should not be forced to study.
it is called game optimization.
The game should not allow you to build mines in provinces that has no sens to do so. Rome 1 had that.
Thus reducing unnecessary complexity. It makes the Ai much easier to program too.
@@jeffvella9765good point... And the developers wanted realism, and you can build a mine in a resource poor region with miniscule income. I understand that for some or many people this decision, to make mines available everywhere, (or a similar feature) can be a bad thing.
@@kolonkacity001 There are ways and ways how do do things.
It is ok to be able to build anything anywhere but then it is required to make it very clear to the player. This mod does not. Legend actually though it was ok to build a mine there. it is not intuative that the game would allow you to build anything everywhere.
like when building one, it actually shows you an indication that it is not as profitable compared to other regions where it could be built.
Hell I would think that the entire building interface requires a redesign at that point.
like instead of going to provinces to build stuff, you have a building interface that will build buildings in the order you select.
Europa Universalis 4 Macro Builder interface comes to mind.
Also a Mod should prioritize Fun over everything else and if VH is no fun, just remove it. It can only harm the mod.
hell i would also consider letting the player customize things (related to battle)as much as possible.
Sometimes a little tweak helps a lot.
@@jeffvella9765 Some things could be better, you are right. Some people may prefer other things or point out some other negatives. Why would they leave for example the H/VH difficulty if they put such detail and work in some aspects of the game? Maybe they couldn´t figure out a way to do it, or were lazy? or an oversight? Its intended to be played on the default difficulty and i think they pointed it out.
About the tweaking, i saw the Darth mod has some tweaks, so it is possible maybe easy to do, i don´t know. And you are right again (i did not think about this before), there could be tweaks such as the ability to change the pace of battles, or simplifying the building in settlements so you can have fun and focuse on battles.
Can you suggest please a different mod, a different installment of TW or a different game that is similar but better than what the mod crew were trying to achieve in this mod? And thanks for your insight.
Heya
Ivan Moscavich from the DeI team here.
I really like your upfront and Frank mod reviews. You definitely go a long way on describing the pros and cons of these different mods without sugarcoating anything.
Looking forward to when you eventually get around to us.
I'm sure it won't be that long. you've got a very popular mod
Im playing 1.2 right now, having a blast!
I understand that the soundtrack can be a mixed bag for people. I really like the soundtrack for the greek states and the one for the celts are nice as well. The thing is that they have tried to use as many instruments that actually were used in those times and played how historians think they were played. More than one of the greek pieces for the lute are actually played from original sheet music from that era (plus minus a few hundred years). So for me it's almost more imersive since it sounds more like the sounds the people actually heard back in those days.
Meanwhile playing as the Saka or Parthians in battles is pure, unadulterated Ear Rape.
Weirdly I love the Parthian battle music
@@spanishinquisition7623 So you are a Sado-masochist then?
8:29
I am prety sure, that the mines require minable resources on the map... Since Capua doesn't have any mineral deposits, your mines are literally mining stones and rabbles..
Or perhaps nothing more profitable than salt.
@@damianleach8132 Tbh back then salt was worth it's weight in gold. That's how we got the term "salary"
EB II is what ancient conquest would have really looked like. It is historical accuracy at its peak. So no wonder most people dont like it .
In Rome Total War you can conquer mediterranean in 15 turns. Not here
I too am not surprised that cheesers and losers that rely on exploits don't like this style, modus operandi, realism and mod, and prefer vanilla Medieval 2 or vanilla Rome 1.
@@dusk6159 Loser like you hasnt watched the whole Seleucid 200 episodes series from this channel, sure he is exploiter but he enjoyed EBI more than EBII
I like to try more or less historically accurate gameplays and I love the original EB so I should like this a lot.
@@dusk6159 Just because some people would rather have fun and play games instead of dressing up and pretending to be a Roman general or whatever it is you weirdos try to do, doesn't make them losers.
Julius Caesar conquered Gaul in 10 turns in real life, it can be realistic
13:28 Never played this mod. Laughed myself to tears at the audio samples xD
Me too, man! It's just laughably terrible and grotesque
You helots laughing at my roman flutes?
Someone is playing your flutes with his asshole, controling his massive farts in order to achive power notes in a cacophony of pain and suffering.
He just wants to convert his good boy points into chicken tendies.
I sounds like the soundtrack of old Asterix and Obelix movies...
"Noble and manly music invigorates the spirit, strengthens the wavering man, and incites him to great and worthy deeds" - Homer
13:35
I feel invigorated alright..
In all fairness, that probably was considered noble and manly music back then. That's the kind of shit the Romans marched into battle to. You can't pretend to like history and then laugh at and mock actual historical recreations of what history sounded like.
@@Aethelhald so tell me, what does history sound like? Unless you have sheet music you can only reconstruct instruments based on archaeological finds and then the music is still open for interpretation. As a Roman archaeologist I've seen some ridiculous reconstructions, believe me.. The music in this mod sounds retarded, there is no defending that, although I like the creators effort to try and reconstruct the past.
@@imredijkstra4641 Uhhh.. I don't think it sounds retarded at all. Of course I can defend it. As a music historian it's refreshing not to hear the usual silly, bombastic hollywood rubbish. That particular soundbite is based on the primitive horn instruments that were known to the ancient world. It's obviously meant to reflect functional battle music, the kind used for communication, and not a stirring hymn. The campaign music for the Romans is from Musica Romana, a pretty good group that uses recreated panflutes and such. you have to keep in mind that modern conventions in harmony were only codified after the middle ages. so just about anything is going to sound a bit strange to modern ears.
@John Doe To be honest, I'm curious to know how many of you are basing your opinions on the actual soundtrack, or if you just listened to the sample provided by LoTW - which is NOT part of the soundtrack, i.e. it isn't a background music that plays regularly: it's a sound effect when a Roman army begins to march forward, so he's been dishonest with the explanation of the track.
@John Doe The point is that this isn't even the music of the game, the trash review potrays it and makes it think like it is but it's just a sound effect for particular and very specific events.
Game: The 3rd Punic war has ended.
Me: I still haven't moved out of Italy yet.
Poor guy at 6:30 is only 17 and his head is completely bald :(
He's stressing cuz of his midlife crisis
"Governing Rome is not stressful at all!" ~Marcus Valerius Maximus, 17
I had a family member who was bald when he spawned at 16 in vanilla. He also came with the handsome trait. Hmm...
Not so bad as the Imperator's childrens though.
I think showing a siege on VH and then only attacking through one angle is extremely unfair towards the mods battles. The mod is balanced for Medium difficulty and the with the mod having slowed down unit stats as well as adding higher morale on VH makes it very slow, the developers state this all the time. A siege is slow in any total war so this combined with the first point just exacerbate the problems, and then attacking through one gate makes sure you don’t get any flanking bonus for being able to use superior numbers so it takes even longer. A regular battle even with VH and good use of decent cavalry (which the Romans doesn’t really have access to but one can mass equities to gain the same effect) isn’t nearly as sluggish as you’re implying.
Also forts fucks up for the campaign AI as you have shown in every challenging Medieval II campaign, their path finding just can’t handle them. That’s why they’re removed and that’s to be honest it’s a good thing
@@alexanderekman9261 This one about forts I disagree, they are extremely valueble for strategic reasons, to slow down enemy armies and etc... They should never be removed.
Yeah attacking on one place is really dumb
Dude he had it on 6x speed. And 20 minute capture time? WTF?
@@streetstroller the ai is broken on anything but medium because the difficulty modifiers were designed for vanilla, causing every unit to basically never break as the modifiers dont play well with the balancing they have done. almost all the issues he had in this were largely due to him not reading the manual lol
I don't understand the hate for the music. I find it atmospheric and a welcome change from the generic 20th century epic orchestral music polluting all historical media, even if it isn't completely accurate.
The fact they tried so hard to make something close to authentic makes me like it, a shame so many people make fun of it and don't appreciate it, even if it can be annoying to listen to sometimes.
PS: To those calling the barbarian music "aboriginal", the concept of blowing and vibrating your lips into hollowed out wood wasn't invented in Australia, societies around the planet, Europe included, had similar instruments.
The music can totally help with immersion. That instrument people keep mistaking for a didgeridoo is actually called a Carynx. It was used by iron age celtic peoples and is a very historically accurate instrument to use in the soundtrack
And yet it stands juxtaposed to Jeff van Dyck's amazing soundtrack. EB's soundtrack cannot hope to match that
@@Siamzero1994 and yet you totally missed the point of my comment
@@Siamzero1994 Mfw "amazing" isn't the aim of the mod, accuracy is the aim of the mod, not "amazing"-ness.
@@RightWingDestroyer666 Your point being you prefer ear rape because it's "historically accurate" (questionable) over something that sounds good to modern ears. We miss anything? I'm sure ancient people bopped to that all the time, but we aren't ancient people.
Mod! Review! *clap* *clap*
👏mod 👏 review
😁
I like the mod overall but I think they lose themselves in too much micro that doesn't fit the scale. Like taking your generals (or your king if you are playing the seleucids) back to the capital is ridiculous on this grand scale. It should be abstracted. Also, the progression of the campaign is weird as you get so crippled by corruption and buildings provide such small increments and have maluses to it that it feels pointless.
You put it brilliant. The rewards you get are too small for the amount of work you put into it. And I have the distinct feeling that mastering this mod will involved troop disbands, building razing and weird steps to ensure that you get some sort of progression. In my seleucid campaign I have zero progress I like tons of turns. Sure I conquered a couple of settlements and spent a lot of time in it. But it was like work that doesn't translate into anything...
The rewards are enough. Pretty much every mod and TW game you can just jump in and blitz, in this its different, not for all tastes, but it doesnt means its bad.
On EB2 ive had a 850 turn Epeiros campaign where i basically reformed Alexander's empire, and until turn 500 i only had 4 or 5 main stacks outside of those garrisoning, I didnt blitz through it, sometimes i had 60 turns of no wars, just getting my economy and manpower ready, then a war that lasts for as near as 60 turns as well. That was the best TW campaign ive ever played and certainly my longest.
On the terms of the generals, if you want to ignore the roman election system and their equivalents, you are more than able to do so. Its set in place for those that enjoy that sort of rp and immersion, and its certainly the nearest they can get to being historical accurate in terms of government for Rome in Medieval 2 Total War.
@@wulfB I am not saying that they shouldn't prevent blitzing and I do enjoy this mod. Especially combat. But, in EB1 the rewards you get from investing in buildings seem better. In EB2 it feels too throtled. I dislike the balance. Also, taking your generals to Rome every year is ridiculous and should not be implemented at this scale.
@@Heldermaior Taking general to Rome every year (when they need imperium) stops the easiest faction in the game being even easier still.
@@damianleach8132 well, I prefer consistency. It doesn't fit the scale imho. It is too micro for such a macro game. Don't get me wrong, I can play it like this and I do. And generally I like the mod a lot. The amount of detail is staggering. However, it sometimes loses itself in the details.
@@Heldermaior It fits the scale just fine. It represents the real problem Roman commanders had in maintaining their legal status as the Roman dominions expanded. For the offices with imperium - praetor and consul, they have extremely long promagistracy periods, so you don't have to go shuttling back to Rome every year, you'll have up to 5 years of freedom as a propraetor or proconsul before you have to go back to get a new term.
Getting back isn't even difficult, put them on a fleet and sail home. That takes at most two seasons from most locations, it just needs a bit of forethought.
Never mind that you can ignore it entirely as the player of Rome, just know that it comes with consequences. Command stars are largely irrelevant if you're fighting all your battles on the battlemap.
Do Roma Surrectum 3.
Is Shittyflute the author of the soundtrack?
@Dugunthi He was joking, i hope you know that.
@Dugunthi lulz dork
@Dugunthi Not only are you a dork but you are easily trolled, well played good sir, well played.
kelman221 You played yourself.
@@NeptuneGuy78 huh?! Never!
those permanent forts are actually put there as wonder outpost, which makes you utilize wonder bonuses.
and if you found the music not energizing, you should try a steppe nomad faction. throat singing rocks \m/
once i read something about this mod saying 'the ultimate history nerd mod', obviously :D
Some of the mines give you huge amounts, think some of them can be around 2k.
yeah i think it comes down to what resources the region has where you build them, if it has something like "large silver deposits" mining income is way higher.
Balkans and Spain have tons of Gold/Silver.
Do a Mod review of something smaller in scale like Darthmod
Darthmod Napoleon + Bran Mac Born AI!
@@HMKSayn1911 never played darthmod for napoleon is it any good? I have only played darthmod for rome total war
@@ciararoper4148 The absolutely massive scale of battles is amazing, Bran Mac Born AI submod works pretty well. Especially since the vanilla AI is basically AFK. It can even be vaguely challenging at times, battle AI can flank and make somewhat well coordinated attacks and campaign AI builds armies relatively competently.
Give it a try, it's pretty much the best napoloeonic warfare experience in a total war game, Italian campaign is your best bet for a short test run, the mod works amazingly well on this one.
europa barbarorum 2 should also has a "lite" version where it is not that complex at resembles more to the vanilla.
@Iouiis Explain to me. How to stop rebellions in Akka and norhern italy. And how can I get reforms for Nabatu and parthia.
@Iouiis Instead of being proud of playing a game, explain something rather than shitting around. I didn't ask you what is eb2 is about or what other mod shall I look for. Tell me how "easy" is to suppress the rebellions of akka and northern italy and how to achieve reforms with nabatu and parthia.
13:36, I can tell you as a Brass player, that's not a bad song, it's a good song being played poorly.
I really want to know the story behind it now. Did a 10 year old play that song? I imagine it has to be an absolute armature, as mods don't really have a budget. If they could just rent a pro for $50 USD an hour, which you can do for Berkley trained pros, then it would be a soundtrack for the books. But they couldn't swing it, so we get to hear... that
... instead.
This isnt like Dualshock RE where it's total incompetence, the notes on the page seem to be fine. It's just the "musicians". Timing's fucked, and they dont hit the notes. That's why it sounds so atrocious
It is played by a roman historical reenactment music group. They use reproduction of ancient musical instruments and music is based on what few elements we have available. The same is true for tracks of other cultures. I dont find them particularly good either but goes a great lenght to show how the perception of beauty can change through time.
You should probably do the third age mod for medieval... Good mod that was.
Broken Crescent
yes please
indeed
For me broken cresent and eb2 are the best mods
i agree 100% with your review. however it still feels the devs put much more love in this one, than ca did with rome 2. personaly my favorite medieval 2 mod is third age. don't know if you done a review on that one, but i'm drooling to see what you gotta say about it. keep up the amazing work, you're one of the very few guys TW veterans trust these days.
Medieval is not a good game enough by the pyshics and the graphics.
The great problems of the TW saga is the fucking optimisation of the games.
Ej: Atilla on ultra with shadows dosent run well even in a NASA pc.
@@eleliot1200 total war was unique because of the massive battles. since empire, they make the battles worse and worse, 1 game at a time., to the point that watching a 3 kingdoms battles feels like a skirmish in battle for middle earth, the rts. physics? graphics? what to do with them when you have no game under it? seriously they should focus on warhammer because a. that team seems to know what the fuck they are doing b.the goofy engine they use works fine for fantasy, but not at all for historical battles. in the end it's a matter of taste, but total war fans are divided between pre and after empire era. cheers. also, fuck ca, fuck sega ect ect.
I never had much issues with Attila on Ultra with all settings turned on John.. What graphics cards, etc are you using?
@@adrianbundy3249 he's right though, i have a beast of a machine and can run any total war with no problems. but remember the douchebags from ca saying that "attila was designed for future pc's" or something in those lines? it was because the game was so poorly optimized that you could have an ideal rig and still face fps drops and people of course where angry at the time, here's the famous quote from the ca spokescunt " Please note, that the ‘Extreme Quality’ setting is meant for future graphics cards, not for current gen,"
13:12 I didn’t know how musically gifted Legend was :O
I like your channel but this review was poorly written. Basically you don't understand certain game mechanics or the reason they're implemented(historical accuracy).
Someone already mentioned it but every region has it's own mine value.
About the battles: field battles are not that slow, even on vh. The main thing is, 2 infantry lines fighting face to face is very slow due to a huge shield+skill value compared to attack, this is for historical accuracy where such battles had about very low casualty rate if no side routed and both disengaged in order. Because it's pretty hard to kill a guy with a huge shield actively trying to defend.
Then you say missile troops suck, if you look at graeco-roman roster this is true, again, mostly for historical reasons. For any "barbarian" or eastern faction skirmirsers are worth it, because they're better and are facing less armored troops. Even a garbage missile troop can rack up decent kills if you flank from behind, put the game on pause, find and shoot the least armored unit. Shooting shielders is useless, and some factions have armor piercing javelins.
Same for cavalry, not every cavalry is a lancer, they may look like they hold a spear but they fight like hoplites with an overhead grip, usually they carry javelins too. Those guys suck for charging but they're tankier and fight better in prolonged melee. Also even the shittiest cav matters because: 1. someone has to chase broken troops. 2. even if you don't kill half a unit after a charge the enemy still gets a penalty for being surrounded, and cav is the quickest to reposition.
Even the non-lancer cavalry can deliver effective charges if you do it right. From an appropriate distance and with a formed-up unit, charging into the rear or flanks of an engaged unit.
In EB2 2.35 battles in open field are more balanced. I noticed in siege battles where you attack settlement AI units are more "tankier" , even light skirmish units are hard to kill. Looks like there is a script bonus behind, to slow down player to take the city.
@@jurijsoklic5026 That's because pathfinding is broken in sieges. It's an M2TW problem that no mod can "fix".
Not to mention the town square problem, where the defenders can't be broken if they're in the middle of the map.
Damian Leach the town square being defended to the death is fine what isn't fine is having elite units run because of morale and skirmishers fighting pikemen and not dying. when an army routs most of the casualties were there with the enemy being run down. in EB 2 running down armies is annoying because they don't die fast enough. the AI doesn't kill off rebel armies or purse them and then kill them. I remember in one campaign there were two armies standing next to each other and they were both rebels. Pontus had three full stacks and didn't kill them off I had to cheat to kill them because my computer couldn't handle the battle. The battles are slow paced which would be fine if the enemies armies could be killed on the field of battle faster but they aren't. add in the garrison scripts which I hate and the fact that the AI is given eilte units that the player can't get until mid or late game and they influence sieges and make them a grind.
@@hopedream11 Uh, routing enemies die plenty fast enough if you bother to keep an eye on your cavalry running down the fleeing men. Same goes cavalry charges, complaints usually arise because people are doing them wrong.
Elite units being defeated by skirmishers is a facet of playing on the wrong battle difficulty, it doesn't happen on Medium or even Hard.
Garrison script is a completely different matter, and it's only in a handful of places and has a 10-turn cooldown on it. It isn't every settlement with every siege attempt, as some other mods feature.
Do "Italian Wars" next, as it is a mod that takes up the pike and shoot era, not really covered in any other total war with the base in medieval 2. You might not have heared of it or played it, but you might enjoy it, as it has some cool concepts like the options to convert to protestant for some nations.
I'm amazed people don't like the music. It's made to sound as close to ancient music as possible (as far as we know ancient music sounded like). I always found it very, very immersive. The soundtrack at 13:40 is something you'd probably hear if you were a legionnaire on the march or something.
You're playing battles with your battle difficulty above normal. They literally tell you not to play battles above medium difficulty. It's balanced for medium. It's incompetent to do a review like this and criticize something because you don't understand it. You're supposed to make your armies historically accurate and play on medium difficulty. So if you're playing as Macedonia, you don't use an army of 15 elite royal epic pikemen and 4 hetairoi cavalry, you use an army that Macedonia would have used in those days - a core of elite troops commanded by the king, surrounded by mercenaries, lighter troops, skirmishers, etc. And speaking about Skirmishers - they do massive damage in EB2 (if you play on medium, like the mod is balanced for). And the battles don't last that long... if you play on medium... like you should. Especially field battles, which can be over in 5 minutes. Sieges are still a pain but guess what - that's historically accurate!
EB and EB2's incentive is in the historical accuracy. If you enjoy immersing yourself in history then this mod is for you. If you enjoy fighting epic battles that last for 3 minutes every single turn, it's not for you.
Your armies aren't supposed to be "organized", uniform forces. They never were in history either, at least until the Marian reforms. Every "nation" back then had armies that looked like a "dog's dinner". Even the Roman ones.
Yeah, um...maybe historically accurate. Who knows, I'd like to think ancient musicians played their instruments better than that. It might have sounded great to ancient people, but to be historically accurate at all costs is not always the smartest move, as demonstrated by the soundtrack.
@@streetstroller I just don't get why you would play a mod that is designed and marketed as being as close to historically accurate as they can possibly make it, including going to the extremes of recording music with real ancient musical instruments for maximum authenticity, and then criticizing the mod because it's accurate.
Honestly, this is one of the most incompetent reviews of anything I've ever seen. It's like buying Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and giving it a bad review because you don't get to drive formula one cars in it. No shit, it's not a racing game.
Then playing the battles on very hard, when the developers of the mod specifically warn people that their mod is balanced for medium battles only, and complaining that the battles don't work properly on hard.
It's just total incompetence. I'd be embarrassed if I had made a review like this.
@@Aethelhald I don't know what you're talking about. He gave credit for the quality of the mod but acknowledged it wasn't for everyone. It's not perfect, it has flaws, and it doesn't make you sound credible getting angry if someone dares to say your mod isn't perfect. He reviewed it fairly, said what he thought worked and what he thought didn't work. He didn't say it wasn't accurate, he just said it favored realism over fun gameplay, which is a fair argument to make. And saying Legend is incompetent for not knowing about some text file for some esoteric mod explaining the mod's shortcomings is just a low blow. If the mod was that good it would have been balanced for all difficulties, and the game should let the player know in game if building a mine in some provinces is a bad idea, like through an in game advisor because, you know, that would be realistic. Or just not allow them to build mines in cities without resources. All better game design choices that for some reason were not considered.
I think everyone is suffering from shorter attention spans.
not me, i love this kind of shit.
Or other things in life.
@@hieroprotoganist3440 People with genuinely busy lives are usually very good at scheduling and prioritising. I often find the people who claim they "don't have time" for things are doing very little indeed.
@@damianleach8132 What a dumb generalization.
@@CarrotConsumer Truth hurts, eh?
Legend, would you play a Medieval 2 mod that perfectly re-creates Rome 1, but with various features in Medieval 2 (free upkeep, chivalry/dread, loyalty, more diverse units, more scripted events, etc?)
I would at least
that didgeridoo soundtrack had me in tears
You do know that the music was made to sound like it would've sounded back in history, right?
@@Aethelhald yeah but still sounds hilarious
@@Aethelhald Well, when you're spoiled by Jeff van Dyck, then yeah, this shit is hilarious
@@Siamzero1994 I love Jeff Van Dyck too, that's why I always mod my mods to include his music (in the case of EB and EB2 I also left in the EB music as well).
Still, I don't get it. They made the music for EB and EB2 to sound like it would've sounded back in history (as far as we know) and I always thought it sounded very immersive.
Regarding the music, I'm not sure if there could be compromise between historical accuracy and being aesthetically pleasing because you risk compromising historical accuracy when you decide to conform the music to contemporary standards. The music that was made for the mod was created using traditional instruments and historical reconstructions; it's something they acknowledge as being potentially "jarring" to contemporary ears in one of their loading screens. So with how meticulous the EBII team is with regards to history, they probably wouldn't want to change the music out or modify it for modern Western ears. Though I would like for them to change the frequency of that blaring soundtrack you played. As someone who plays EBI I've never heard that before unless it's culture specific to Roman or Hellenic culture or it's something new they added for EBII. And this is coming from someone that loves EBI music.
It´s a shame that the music drives away some people, there are sub mods that change the music, it would be neat if there were some options to change or disable some music you dont like, but i don´t know if it is possible or easy to do in the game menu, or if you need to go in the game folder and mess with some files and change the music there.
@Fa Mulan Its a matter of taste, i for one prefer EB's soundtrack than Rome Total War's. One gets you feeling you are in a movie and the other immersers yourself 2000 years ago. Each is fitting for the type of game they made.
+Fa Mulan
You don't have to act so vitriolic to it. It's just music. This is a mod that strives for accuracy is many ways so it's unsurprising they wanted to change the music to this. Have you played the mod beyond just hearing what Legend has shown you hear because most tracks aren't as annoying as the track he decided to highlight. If you're just going off of what Legend has shown you here, it's going to give you an impression that most tracks in the game are as annoying or ear piercing as that.
The scripts spawning rebel stacks and defensive stacks when you get to the last settlement of a culture are really annoying to overcome. I get the idea, to make it harder to wipe out tribes, particularly in historic centres, but its a bit ridiculous. I mean, yeah, last ditch mass mobilisation, but OP stacks again and again - no. Once. And its a great shame, because it may be the best for historical detail of those ancient nationalities and cultures. I vote for Roma Surrectum (I can't remember if it's a 2 or not. If there's a 2, then I mean the 2).
those OP stacks are the reason I stopped playing along with rebels being way stronger so much so that factions can't even fight them they don't kill rebels around them. the garrison script needs to be removed it makes sense but is bad for gameplay. you as Carthage taking Rome when it has low soldiers? nope, garrison script saves them. can't even replicate Hannibal's campaign be cause of that script and the slow battles. can't do what happened at Cannae either.
That was a fair review with good points and constructive criticism.
Not a mod for everyone, and the issue with the mines - some regions give you a lot more profit, it depends of the natural resources. Some music is good and some bad, you could put some more time to mod the game and change the music, it´s a very long game so it should pay off to not listen dozens of hours of sometning you don´t like.
Jozef Joe V. I think the horn music in the battles were meant to add to the historical atmosphere, in that the Romans used horns while marching and to communicate orders over distances, but I agree this has been done at the expense of the games ascetic appeal.
that music...
13:38 I thought you were playing on the trumpet ...
Feels like inspiration for the battle music was drawn from Resident Evil Dualshock's Mansion Basement theme.
Am I the only one that likes the music??
- Broken Crescent for Medieval II
- Republic of China 1924 for Medieval II
- Genghis Khan/Mongol mod for Rome: Barbarian Invasion
- Morning Sun (Total War Centre version) for Shogun II
I loved the meltdowns in the streams while it happened but this is barely a review of the real thing. It's good for people like you who won't immediately like it, I guess. You can't really appreciate the Roman Campaign until you see how some of the others play after a lot of growth time and you have these massive grinding wars that feel like real wars because they go on for years and you will without a doubt have some victories that you feel amazing about, even when it's just AI. The map is massive and I love diving into every faction. It's not just the greeks. People miss out on Indians and Africans, Nabateans, and Sabeans. It's really a remarkably full experience to me and they just keep adding to it. You have to respect that. It's not for everyone but I'll say it's for me. It probably helps that it was one of the first times I've ever modded a game. It still blows my mind and I wish that Med2 wasn't so old. Hopefully the team perseveres on in some form and chooses another game.
how is the shit even playable when u have tosend ur generals back to rome every 4th turn? and then you spend one turn moving your general from rome, back to the fight, now you have 3 turns left to siege, move into position attack, and then run back home.... shits fucking egregious... and that's just ONE general, imagine when you have like 5-6
You should check out a Stainless steel submod called SSHIP
That mod has a lot of the same things Legend doesn't like about this mod.
@@iliketastybread9010 not really, it doesn't have heavy scripting and isn't particularly slow either. I like it because ı find it kinda difficult right now
This submod is very cool. I myself have done a couple of campaings in it. The mod is not for those who like unlimited expansion.
When I heard that music for the first time on your stream and you just gave an utter look of disgust, I think I laughed the hardest I ever have in years...
Total Vanilla Beyond for Medieval 2?
Yes.
well for the battles, if it's open field battles I like them alot, and they don't take so much time (on medium difficulty) as if u got enough troops you can allways engage all enemy units and surround them with the free units or cav and break them fast, in Sieges that's alot harder to do and take alot more time that's true
13:37 this is some of the most hilarious music I have ever heard. The main problem isn´t even the music itself, it´s just that the musicians can´t play their instruments, and they are playing on very old instruments. For example the trumpets sound like they are playing on ancient fanfare trumpets, but not very well. Their tone quality and intonation is shit. There are some authentic old horns as well which sound like crap. It is actually cool that they are using authentic instruments, but when it´s not done well, I would much rather have modern music. Even if the instruments were played by experts on those specific instruments, the music would still actually be worse because modern instruments are way better than they were 2000 years ago. It might even be possible that the musicians aren´t that bad and it´s actually just the instruments that are awful.
This is coming from someone who has played the trumpet for more or less my entire life, just to establish some ethos.
That isn't part of the soundtrack, it's a sound effect for when you order units to march that attempts to reflect the way they would give orders through the sound of the horn back then. In this case the quality does not come from its musicality.
This is coming from someone who has played this mod for more than one hour, just to establish some ethos.
@@pplelo9364 you are a liar. show me video proof of this or youre lying
Do BOTET - Alternative Cut at some point. Campaign is still so unfinished that some of the new factions don't have their recruitment buildings, but it's still the best total war experience I've had.
@koviack Adds a lot more factions that are very cool
@koviack The original Call of Warhammer was heavily focused on the Empire and the Beginning of the End of Times team kept those factions. Also Beginning of the End Times was abandoned and Alternative Cut is the only active development team.
Love the in depth, love the micro, love this mod, battles waaaaay too slow and grindy, couldn't agree more.
They're not very slow if you play them on medium battle difficulty, which the game is balanced for. This guy is playing on hard or very hard, which literally breaks the balancing of the mod.
Siege battles are pretty slow and grindy but I just don't fight them. I besiege an enemy city and wait for them to starve to death or come out and attack me. In history a siege assault was a last resort because assaulting a city was a good way to lose most of your army. Sieges went on for years. Even the Romans, who were good at them, would besiege large cities for years (Carthage, Syracuse) before assaulting them as a last resort.
@@Aethelhald how the fuck are you besieging a city for years when you have to send your general back home every 4 turns
@@schlomoshekelstein908 It's every 4 years (which is 16 turns) not every 4 turns. But you don't need to send them back every 4 years even. Once they get elected to an imperium-holding office they hold that office for 4 years (16 turns), then it gets prolonged by 4 years (another 16 turns). It's somewhat unrealistic but the developers had to make allowances for gameplay.
Or you can just ignore the offices altogether and just let any general lead any army, no matter how young or inexperienced they may be.
@@Aethelhald i just read i'm not supposed to be playing on vh/vh that's probably where my problems are coming from. nothing ever routs even when they're surrounded. oh well time to start over i guess
@@schlomoshekelstein908 Hard campaign, medium battles is what I always go for. The battles in EB last a LOT longer than they do in the un-modded game because every unit has like 10x the amount of armour and morale, so if you play on hard or very hard battles you're basically making enemy units into terminators.
The difficulty in EB comes from using balanced, historically accurate armies. So as Rome for example you would have an army consisting of:
2 leves
2 rorarii
2 accensi
4 hastati
4 principes
2 triarii
1 or 2 cavalry
1 general
2 units of your choice (mercs or whatever)
Enemy units are still tanky as hell, but you win battles by outflanking them and surrounding them which absolutely wrecks their morale and causes a panic and a rout, where most of the casualties occur in chasing the enemy when they're running, just like in real life.
It really adds a whole lot of realism to the experience of playing the game, especially if you also follow the historical pattern of conquest for the faction you're playing.
If you're not playing as Rome I can give you some tips on historically accurate armies for whichever faction you're playing, though it's the same pattern for pretty much everyone - a core of elite, expensive units with the rest of the slots filled by cheaper militia types and expensive mercenaries recruited from whichever location you happen to be fighting in. That's just how it was in those days.
Enjoyed this vid. Felt you were nuanced enough with the feedback and yeah, the music is rough.
But not nuanced enough to know that the battles are balanced around medium difficulty and that playing them on a higher difficulty than medium breaks the mod.
Hello i just recently playing this game and yes i agree that it is so boring but one thing i like about it is you can recruit units from other area they call expansion territories or colony ? You can recruit units that are populated on that area nice idea rather than always recruiting the same. Units even far away from your homeland
Lmao when the trumpet track played i thought you were joking xD
They made the music sound like it would've sounded back then. I always found it very immersive to think that I was listening to the same shit that Roman soldiers listened to when they were on the march.
You're inspiring me to release an "ACTION" submod for EB2 to fix some of the issues you've mentioned. Music and certain SFX fixes are also easy enough to implement.
EB2 is way too good to have to be inaccessible to people who have less free time. I agree with that sentiment. Btw hope you try out some other factions, they all play very differently, and Rome is easily the most technical / scripted of them all.
You're more than welcome to, Ha Hawk.
You don't need to release an action submod. All you need to do is play the mod on medium battle difficulty, which is what the developers balanced the game around. Why would you play with unbalanced difficulty that the developers told you not to play, then complain that you made the game slower?
@@Aethelhald It's not about "difficulty", it's about painfully slow battles, particularly sieges. The importance of stamina also gets thrown out the window since it only takes a few minutes for units to become exhausted, but the battle still has to drag out for another hour. Fixing this is actually a very easy process (tweaking a few values in battle_config.xml) but requires some finesse to keep everything balanced.
@@HaHawk Strange then, that I was playing the game this morning (on H/M difficulty, as it is balanced for) and fought two battles (my full army Vs. an enemy full army), neither of which lasted longer than around 10 minutes.
As for siege battles... why would you be assaulting cities with large garrisons? Do you know how rare that was in the ancient world? Generals would rather besiege a city for 2 years than assault it. Assaulting a city that was even moderately defended was a great way to get your whole army wrecked - even if you win you're going to take horrific casualties.
You're supposed to besiege a city for as long as it takes for the garrison to starve and surrender, or sally out and attack you in desperation. Or until another enemy army arrives to attack you and relieve the city which, if you win, will give you the city as you will have destroyed its garrison on the battlefield (or reduced it significantly so that assault is now a viable option).
EB is a full on historical accuracy project. If historical accuracy isn't your thing (and I understand why it isn't for many people) then just don't play it. But don't try to play it like an action game and then complain that it's too slow. I don't even know why Legendoftotalwar bothered to play it to begin with - his playstyle is using cavalry to cheese the bad AI in TW games. He's better sticking to vanilla TW, or mods which still allow you to beat an entire enemy army with nothing but a general's bodyguard and a flaming pig.
No one:
EB2: Boioi
Not even 10 seconds of that music was painful!
And that's one of the tracks that play regularly?
Pain is all that exists in that.
Ah, review of me favoured mod ever, apart the first one. As history nerd and Asberger with neurotic interest to history, this mod is match made in heaven! Can't get enough of it! And as I get me new gaming pc later this week, I'm able to dive back in it! And stream it in Twitch as one of the most boring streams ever, unless you are history nerd... ;D
I love that combats are long, current TW battles are way too quick. Also love that building don't give you OP bonuses like Vanilla ones tend to. For me this mod is just dream come true...
Also, best music ever in TW games or mods!
Flaming arrows frigging unrealistic. They are just shittier arrows in IRL. Cavarly at the time weren't like knights etc.
@Iouiis "a waste of time" just because some people doesnt like it doesnt mean that is a waste of time is like saying that no one should play foot ball because most people dont do it, that argument is just retarded.
as long as they are happy with doing they should keep doing.
Tried to start as Rome but I get a CTD every time I besiege Taras, and try to play the battle. Anybody know anything?
the games should be broken up into 3 camps. 1 Low attention span instant gratification players. 2 Medium attention span and challenge/ option for high difficulty. 3 slow paced historical accuracy hardcore game modes etc.
Whatever EB2 is, it's most certainly not a game. Unless you think sitting there and doing nothing for long periods of time is a game. And gamers are not low attention span just because they don't want to recreate the 'waiting in line at the DMV' experience in game.
@@streetstroller I'm not necessarily talking about eb2. It's probably too slow for me. For gaming in general when you look at how many popular games evolved in the past 15 years they've catered to ppl with shorter attention span or that want instant gratification. I've heard this as well when comparing rome total war and medeival 2 total war to the newer warhammer games. Or u can think of a different genre, far cry 3 compared to far cry 5. The newer one has x-ray vision and stuff bc many don't want a challenge
@@__dudewitagun__4607 Saying people have shorter attention spans is true but no one ever talks about the reason, which is that today people are much busier and there are so many more thing vying for peoples' limited attention. Very few people have the time resources to commit to those types of games. I did up until around 16 or so, and that was in an age before the internet and media is what it is now.
@@streetstroller i can agree for those of us that are busy working. But back when I had time I noticed that the average teenagers/young adults wanted instant gratification in games . I'll narrow it down to AAA gaming bc that's where I noticed it the most. The time argument is fair and definitely applies which justifies quick to jump in/out games. However I don't think X-ray vision and ridiculously easy game play (the new normal is yesterday's easy) falls into that category. It brings more money in to the industry and more gamer but dilutes the quality of games a bit IMO, which is why i play niche titles and indie games mostly. Both of these arguments are true when looking at the massive pool of games and varying gamers that are out there.
@@__dudewitagun__4607 I partially agree. You do need to understand though that a lot older games difficulty curves stemmed from just plain old bad game design/jankiness and also a lot of games came from arcades where the difficulty was jacked in order to take peoples' quarters lol.
My experience with this mod: armored horse archers are stupid. Playing as Baktria I attacked the remnants of a Saka general’s bodyguard (armored HA) with some HA of my own. End result? They started with 5, and after spending all my ammunition, 3 were left. Effin’ amazing.
You couldn't kill some of the most heavily-armoured units in the game with arrows! Oh noes!
Damian Leach a heavily armored cavalry unit barely took any damage from hundreds of arrows! Oh noes!
Seriously, your argument makes no sense. If a unit takes less ranged damage than a unit of armored legionaries in testudo (Rome 2, fired at from the front of course), that should need fixing. Especially if the horses aren’t even armored.
@@jordinagel1184 Rome 2 is a completely different engine, and an irrelevant comparison.
Sakan bodyguards have much more armour than Roman legionaries in EBII.
Arrows aren't killers in this period for well-armoured troops. If you really thought the Romans at Carrhae were wiped out by archery, I'd suggest you go read a more detailed account of what happened.
Damian Leach never said anything about Carrhae, don’t know where you got that from.
And fair enough about the engine. Let me use another example then: I’ve seen horse archers do more damage to a high elf bodyguard in Third Age, and those are as tough as they come.
I don’t expect archers to do all the killing, but I do expect them to get at least smg done with the amount of ammo they use.
@@jordinagel1184 Deploy archers against unarmoured units and you'll see them have a much greater impact.
I used Carrhae as an example, because it is one of the things that informs how we tailored the battle mechanics in EBII. The Romans stood under showers of arrows for hours on end. They didn't lose many men to the arrows, but they were exhausted by being forced to remain on station all day, in the hot sun. So that when the cataphracts charged them, they didn't have the energy to stand.
TATW isn't a game based on history, so I'm afraid that's a meaningless comparator.
If they make a sub mod which removes heaps of scripts and stuff then this would be amazing
So your idea is taking off many of theunique stuff from EB2 and making it Rome Total War esque? Just go play RTW or Roma Surrectum then, instead of wanting people to dumb down EB2.
Who's "they"? You won't find the dev team doing that (why would I remove a whole load of my own work?), but you're more than welcome to do it yourself.
Does anyone know if the team are doing a mod for the later Roman Empire? Would love to see a barbarian invasion mod from them
Full disclosure, I'm one of the developers of EBII (writer of scripts and recruitment), and I was on the second livestream for several hours.
Overall, a relatively balanced review, but as you said several times, this isn't a mod that is aimed at either the casual player, or someone wanting a quick fix. There are around 1100 turns available in a campaign, and unlike EB1 you can actually reach the end of a game without a fatal CTD ending your campaign after 100-200 turns. That said, the constant comparison to EB1 isn't necessarily a useful one, it's a different engine (some of the battle mechanics in RTW were better than M2TW), a different team and has different goals. EBII isn't trying to merely be EB1 ported to a new engine.
Pace is slow deliberately. EBII is not intended to be a 10-hour, 100 turns and you're done. A 50 turn review isn't really anywhere near long enough to do more than scratch the surface, and some of your confusion was because you didn't read anything. Blitzing has been disincentivised, because what's the point of us designing something to be played for over 1000 turns if there's nothing left to do after 100? EBII isn't trying to "evolve with the times" and be a fast thing to dip in and out of. Not for people with short attention spans, and that's just fine, it isn't trying to be all things to all men. So I'm afraid we're not going to speed up the campaign, that would be counter-productive.
A siege is a terrible example of a battle. Pathfinding and thus cohesion and movement are broken in settlements in M2TW. You could have shown an actual field battle if you wanted to demonstrate how battles are paced. I watched you playing some in the livestream, and you were just charging everything around with little tactics or maneuver. One of the advantages of slower battles is that you can actually set things up and react to what the AI is doing, rather than just smash units into each other and hope you win out.
I can't help but feel that if you were going to play so short a game, you'd have been better off playing another faction, like Makedonia. You didn't get anywhere near special events like the Roman military reforms, which take over 100 turns to reach.
Some random nitpicks from the review:
-Koinon Hellenon is not "the Greek cities" and it doesn't have a "historically inaccurate number" of cities. It loosely represents the Chremonidian League, which comprised Athens, Sparta and Rhodes, insofar as settlements that are represented on the map.
-Eremos/Terhazza down in the bottom left corner - yes you can "cheat to conquer it", but it's a terrible idea. That province is used for scripting and other mechanical purposes, you'll break the game.
-Elections - yes it makes it tricky to get FMs back to Rome for the winter, but if they're elected to praetor or consul, they have a pro-magistracy period of 5 years (20 turns) after that election in which they can act. They don't have to shuttle back every 4 turns. Remember the player doesn't have to go along with the system, they just won't get the reward of imperium. It's a feature of the Roman game.
-You were trying to build mines in a place with poor resources. You're not supposed to build mines everywhere. 100 turn payback is nothing in a game designed to last 1100 turns.
-Liguria is supposed to be hard to control. It's one of over a dozen settlements designed to be difficult to keep, because they were historically restive.
-Rebels - they're strong in the early game, you didn't play long enough for other factions to get into their own or threaten you.
-You're supposed to use varied armies, not uniform ones. That's not a "dog's breakfast", that's much more realistic. A proper Roman army was only half-Roman, the other half composed of allied units/auxiliaries. You use too much cavalry.
-Skirmishers are for killing other skirmishers.
-"A giant boner for pike warfare" - it's the Hellenistic era, the pike was the mainstay of battle. It's basic tactical unit was bigger than that of the Roman maniple.
-It's not a Roman mod, the whole point of EB is to go beyond Rome, so they don't get special treatment. They already have some of the best units, which get better with their reforms.
-Flaming arrows are a Hollywood myth.
-Units are fighting for a long time because you're in a siege, there's nowhere for them to go.
-Cavalry charges don't work in settlements - see broken pathfinding. They work fine in field battles, if you do them correctly. Usually they don't work because people are charging from too close.
-Can't help crashing after several hours of gameplay - that's an M2TW problem with memory leaks. The longer the session, the bigger the game gets in memory. The only way to clear the buffer is to save, quit and start again. EBII is more memory-intensive than any other mod out there, so it reaches memory leaks faster.
-Forts removed because they break the CAI. The eight permanent ones are placed to allow Wonders to appear on the battle map, they're not "randomly placed".
-Autosave removed because it corrupts saved games, just as quicksave does.
Everything is great tho large adress aware is MUST with this mod. The one thing that *SUCKS* however, even that is too nice of a word, the one thing that's *CANCER* is music. My ears literally hurt no exaggerating. I still hear ringing as i type this. Never have i faced anything similar and i've listened all kinds of trash music. I don't mean to offend whoever put effort into this but if you can listen to this my hats off to you sir as this could be used as torture tool. I'll mod vanilla music back in as everything else is great and it's worth the effort of digging trough filles.
@@abcdc197 LAA is a must; we're just not allowed to say so on TWC, because they judge it a breach of the EULA.
@@damianleach8132 I know... They are on witchhunt even for any link to it on TWC for years and i doubt CA themselves care about it. Mod is honestly it's own game. Unlike Warhammer Mods or Divide and Conquer which are amazing, this is so complex and different than anything med2 has seen so far. I was overwhelmed even tho i've played med2 and mods for years this is like it's own game. So many features. However in the main menu when you enter custom battle or campaign and exit before doing anything and go to campaign or custom battle it always crashes but if you go to campaign start campaign or go to custom battle start battle and then exit and go to to campaign or custom battle it doesn't so it's not the problem but is that normal? Also meele units being in loose formation on default is that intended for historical accuracy and recommended way to play or?
@@abcdc197 That problem of Campaign/Custom battle crashes in the menu is hardcoded. The only solution is not to do it.
Yes, Roman units are in loose formation by default, that's intended. Theirs was a looser order than the hoplite, a lesson the Samnites and Celts taught them.
@@damianleach8132 Thank you!
Holy fuck that Trumpet soundtrack is fucking
F I R E
Please a how to install this mod plss www.moddb.com/mods/europa-barbarorum-2
Everything you hate about this modI love. Sounds like you're too used to modern arcade TW
Total war has always been arcadey.
I'm late to the party, but I'd like to put something up for consideration: it isn't just the attention span that has diminished. Even amongst hardcore old total war players, the experience itself is not the same. I play a custom-made mod that I've been working on for 15 years, tweaking and whatnot, and I still often get bored. There are only so many times you can play a game without getting bored. And I played R:TW for about 8000 hours... there's very little any mod can do for me at this point...
THERA: REDUX .... Little known Med2 mod but with a popular following. Has an epic campaign with factions based on history and a bit of fantasy (of the low magic variety).
Hi uploader,
The integrity of your opinions and validity of your criticisms would improve if you'd spent more time learning about the game. It would seem you've missed out on some key game mechanics and are unaware of a lot of this mod's features. That shows in your playthrough and in this review. You would have benefited from reading the guide that comes with the game, visiting the EB2 forum at twcenter and/or watching the playthroughs of experienced players. Maybe what you were saying about attention span was spot on. But then, wouldn't it serve everyone better if you skipped the review, rather than reviewing something you don't understand?
This game has a steep learning curve and is relatively slow-paced, yes, but this review has several criticisms that either miss the point of the mod entirely or are misleading.
Some examples (some of which have been mentioned):
- Income from mines depend on the mineral wealth in the region. You should build mines where there's mineral wealth. You should not build mines where there's no mineral wealth.
- There are several types of government. Which one you should build depends on the prevalent culture in the region. You could barely hold Mediolanum with a ~full stack because you built the wrong type of government. In my playthrough I'm currently holding Mediolanum with 2 units, one of which is a Client Ruler.
- Surprised that it takes a shitload of time to win a battle? Well, it doesn't help that you engage from a single angle and fight in a two-metre wide doorway. Try flanking, it's super effective!
I could go on, but I realise that I'm taking your review more seriously than you yourself are...
Keep on enjoying TW, even if this mod's not for you.
I agree. It's tragic to see an incompetent reviewer literally do all the things the guide tells you not to do and criticize the mod for those things, then see hundreds of viewers who've never even tried the mod agree with an incompetent and ill-informed review.
Really passive agressive comment right here. I agree with you, but I would rather not read such snarky/snap comments.
@@moonman2051 It's because the EB team have worked so hard for so many years to craft a historical mod, then along comes this pleb who plays it wrong and doesn't understand it and trashes it.
@@Aethelhald But Legend said all those things, he said that is an extremely good mod many times, he never trashed the game except for the music, which he mentions only some of it is boring.
Add blood please!
Can you do an install tutorial for this? I tried so many times to install it but I got everytime some CTD during campaigns and custom battles that don't let me enjoy this beautiful mod
I disagree about the opinion on the soundtrack. "Barbarian Battle Theme" and "Furious demon drum" are both better than Jeff Dycke's trakc and that is because they fit into this game so well. It makes the whole battle experience extremely immersive.
The alleged dingeradoo might be a carnyx which I believe ancient Celts used, and was a long horn/trumpet. I haven’t played the mod so I don’t know maybe it’s clearly the dingeradoo (how is it even spelled lol)
My fav mod ever, the ammount of detail on units is crazy
I'm a little weird when it comes to battles I enjoy watching the troops fight with the camera zoomed right in.
Most of these 20% just love to see your reaction to the EB music and therefore voted positiv to it. Frankly, I also found your reaction was the past and funniest part of the lets play:)
(But I would have voted against the music because the pain is to much to handle...)
Gonna have to hard disagree with about every point in this review. Particularly the point about the pace. Not every game, especially mods, need to appeal to a mass audience and the core audience will be turned off by a lot of the changes you suggested here. I know it's an old video but to be frank I'd just keep playing the old version if they took up most of the guidance here. Although I'd be surprised if we saw future revisions.
LEGEND, hi!
Been watching you for a while. Have two questions, would be very thankful if you do a video about one of them or both.
a)What do you think about CA/SEGA ability to make a 'breakthrough' in tech? I'm talking about engine stuff. I bet everyone of old TW fan knows that all titles starting from Empire TW are build on Warscape engine. Which is quite old plus in the beginning they had a shit ton prooblems with it. Isn't it a time to create a new engine, and possibly, make a breakthrough in the future games features?
b) What are chances of making Empire 2 TW, what do you think about this?
"Is this a good mod? Absolutely? [...] Will it be popular? No"
Legend had problems with this one but I can't disagree. This has been my first modding experience with ANY game and it blew my mind. I learned a lot about history and spent many an hour hving epic battles. But not everything here is everybody's cup of tea. One man's immersive, authentic soundtrack is another man's DOOOOOOT DOOOOOOT didgeridoo nonsense. One man's intensely long battle is another's slog.
It's a complex mod with a lot of ambition curtailed by the engine. But they persist. Currently it seems the AI is in a more broken than usual state, some games it is passive and wonky and others it will blob out and become interesting. There are older versions to try and always interesting submods to tweak things you don't like. I had a Third Age battles submod attached for the longest time because I hated the low kill, high morale style of EB2 but now I'm engrossed by pretty much Vanilla EB2. You could spend a year or two just enjoying every faction in EB2 and then moving onto Stainless Steel/Broken Crescent, what have you. In my mind the only way a Medieval 3 TW isn't a massive failure is if Creative Assembly buckles down and makes it just as modifiable and open to creativity as this 10+ year old masterpiece. Even when mods are bad, mods that can change so much of the game are good. Open your games up CA, stop having them... be closed.
The CAI isn't broken - the reason you're seeing those two distinct behaviours is that we have two AI states that factions switch back and forth between. There's the TW standard hyper-aggressive state called "warlike" and there's a much calmer, more reasonable state called "diplomacy".
It's still very much a work in progress to get the triggers which cause the switch to the right place so that it feels natural.
Historical accuracy shouldn't come at the cost of a fun game play experience.
historical "accuracy" is incredibly subjective to begin with. is making the mines take a century to pay off it's initial investment really accurate to anything?
@@Mantis42 Those aren't mine-rich regions, actual mining regions make a lot of money from mines.
If you dont like it dont play it. There are tons of mods that focus on "gameplay", on blitzing, on hollywood-esque wars. Europa Barbarorum 2 is the different one and people want it to be exactly like all the others?
It's ok guys, the mod is bad, you don't have to defend it at such lengths
@@wulfB You're welcome to enjoy the mod, as is anyone else who likes it. My opinion of it however remains unchanged. As with any game or mod that tries to be to historically accurate..
The reasons why i think the mod was meant to be slow is to prevent steamrolling the maps, and make any expansion more close to what would be like back in those days. Hence the factions are weak and the rebels are strong. The plus side, you don't get the "white death" in the east, you did back in the EB1 days. The minus......you aren't rewarded for creative game play. No matter what you do, you can't capitalize on great victories or brilliant leaders. Because there aren't any. If you play to win in this game, you play the long game. And that sucks away the fun of tactical successes which (i guess) most TW players crave. Personally, i'm still on the fence with this mod. I haven really dabbed into it enough to makeup my mind. I'm far too busy and removed from the MTW2 and RTW community these days to invest enough time in it. Had this been around a year or two after EB1 was "sealed" i might have been into a better position to provide a more educated opinion on it. Which i feel is a shame, cause a lot of work and effort seams to have went into it.
Like your mod reviews a lot
I am partially deaf, all the people with good hearing, turn the closed captions on, you can thank me later.
Man at first when you were bitching about the music in battle I was like come on man could it really be that bad then I fought a battle and now I can’t fight them with the music on, my god it really is that bad
"Never condemn, criticize, or complain."
Pretty fair review. I loved the mod, but I do agree battles could be very slow and should be tweaked. Field battles are much better, but city battles were a grindfest so much that I would just siege settlements out. If they sallied forth, its a field battle and went much smoother. My biggest gripe though was I would often forget to save every turn, and after a few hours the game would crash, and always after a big battle. Hopefully they'll fix it up one day.
Pathfinding is broken in sieges, there's nothing we can do about that. As you note, field battles are much better, because pathfinding (and thus cohesion and a host of other things) works properly.
The longer your session goes on, the bigger it gets in memory, and the higher the chances of a memory leak. This is a problem with the way M2TW is coded, not something the EBII team can do anything about. The only reason it's more noticeable in EBII than other mods is because it's much more memory-intensive than others.
The only things you can do to address this are using Large Address Aware, which is required for EBII, and ending your session after a couple of hours. If you want to play on, just load up again, but you need to quit to clear the memory.
Really good video! Glad I saw this
I am so glad I was not the only one who finds the soundtrack so annoying. I just mute the music and youtube rtw soundtrack.
The voice actors for the troops are annoying as well.
13:36
I thought you were overreacting and being too harsh on the music... then you turned on one of the tracks, and I actually laughed out loud at how bad it was.
As a person who played this mod a lot, I can state that not all soundtracks are like that, the themes for the greek states, certain roman and nomad tracks and main menu theme are memorable and I consider it beats vanilla in imersion by a long shot, but I agree some can be quite jarring but it's not garbage across the board
I'm glad I read the comments.
There is auto save for me. I think the installer is the safest bet in terms of downloading it. All things aside though, I love this mod and thanks for giving it a go even if your impressions of it weren’t like mine.
Autosave is disabled for a reason - it corrupts saved games.
@@damianleach8132 Thanks, I hadn't heard anything about it.
I think they really wasted an opportunity by just rehashing the EXACT same time frame RTW and EB1 were set in. It would have made perfect sense to do Late Antiquity, being the era which linked the ancient and medieval worlds.
I personally like EB1 more even if its more unstable, i tried EB2 and just couldnt get into it at all, the new buildings are just crap, the new public order system is also bad, its like the mod went downhill in more than several ways and i dont know how they managed to make the mod even slower than EB1, its ridiculous, it feels like they're stuck in the early-mid 2000s still instead of moving on.
Also, whats with the fucking rebels? Why are they so ridiculously strong?
Because the Rebels represent, or try to represent, independent, active Kingdoms/Political entities.
In EB II they recruit Agents, they recruit units, they attack cities.
Legend did not read through the, included, 8-Page, picture heavy beginners guide. He has no business making a shitty, uninformed "Review" on this.
@@karlkarlsson8826 You shouldnt have to read 8-page guides in order to have fun with the mod, i understand that they wanted to give rebels more weight and make them represent entities but the old engines dont have the capacity for that, and any scripts that boost rebels just makes them more annoying to deal with for the player, i liked the way they were in EB1, where they had sizable garrisons, but werent a huge slog to deal with, with more troops sometimes than the actual factions themselves.
If you cant read 8 pages then why the heck would you want to play EB2? THe point of EB2 is being as historical as possible, and showing that period to the players, the players that will get the most of the experience are exactly the ones that will want to read the unit descriptions, the buildings, etc etc, incorporating all the amazing info that they placed in there and immersing yourself into the mod.
@@wulfB They sacrificed fun gameplay for historical accuracy in all fronts in EB2, its basic design to balance the two properly in a game like this, EB1 was leaning towards accuracy but not to the detriment of the gameplay, EB2 leans towards accuracy so much that gameplay becomes an afterthought in favor of just shoving as much history in there as possible.
Also, "if you cant read 8 pages blah blah" because i enjoyed EB1 and thought EB2 would be a direct upgrade, with the good things expanded upon, the mediocre things improved from EB1...etc, but it was just a downgrade in gameplay for historical accuracy.
Such as the rebels, which became a bad slog from just okay, the public order which became extremely annoying over it being good, the buildings which went from being meh to being straight up bad with the way they function. EB1 already had some useless buildings bloating the construction tree, its a lot worse here with some mines, the costs to everything under the sun...etc
Not to mention the fact that the horrible battle music is still there, the campaign map music is good, the menu music is good, why is the battle music so bad.
Rome 2 DEI. It feels very polished after last update.
Does anyone know how to install this on Linux Mint? I know the original game works fine.
You cannot save and load games?!?!?!? WTF, is that true?
De Bello Mundi is a really nice substitute. It's faster.
@Iouiis it's nice, I spent hours on it.
" slow ass fuckin battles..."
lol
Feel free to review The Last Kingdom: Wrath of the Norsemen, Warcraft: Total War, Game of Thrones: Enhanced, Republic of China 1924 or Wrath of the Norsemen: The Baltic.
Rome 2 DEI!!!!
the true rome 2! Dresden is a savior, a messiah, a titan and a demigod :P
Could you do reviews for Roma Surrectum 3 for RTW and Total Vanilla Beyond for M2TW ?
Cheers Legend.
Sometimes my game crashes while I am about to start a siege battle.
Any solutions ?
Make sure you've downloaded and installed Large Address Aware - it's probably a memory leak.