When writing this i have over 530+ hours of Rome II, i have tried it since the horrible launch (horrible in every meaning of the word) and up until now where it is far better but still not perfect.

The things i like about this game is the Battles themselves and the diversity in combat, not to mention the numbers of player made mods that the community have made.

if you are looking for something similar to Shogun, then you will find this game is more of a straightforward battle-sim than the predecessor. The whole aspect of politics in Rome II has either been dumbed down or removed completely, i usually ignored it until i got the expansion packs which actually changed a lot of the random events and made them far better (even for the grand campaign) but did not give it anything else than that. with 3 campaigns currently there is a lot to Conquer with the original grand campaign as the biggest time sink by far.

Battles : Normal battles on the campaign maps are very enjoyable. the AI will take different approaches depending on your unit composition, if you have the fast siege equipment (rock lobbers) they will try to rush you before their reinforcements arrive instead of getting shelled, while if you have slow ones or even the stationary ones then i have noticed the AI will pull back, wait for all the reinforcements and then attack you in force.

Ambushes: they work pretty much the same way as they always did, they are fun to play and an easy way to eliminate big armies quickly. especially the mechanics when you are being ambushed are very enjoyable (you riding in semi first person view inside the army scouting for the enemies in a semi cut scene that will end when you get attacked). the only problem with ambushes is that the AI NEVER WILL USE THEM, in shogun the AI used Ambush when they found it to be a good tactic while in Rome the only times i have been ambushed is when i am moving my army at 2x speed (automatic ambush by attacking army).

Fortification : one of the stances in the game is that you essentially build a small fort (with arrow towers) making it easier to defend key area`s with a smaller force. although i rarely use this myself the AI loves to use this mechanic.

Pillage: AI loves this one, will sneak a small army (more often than not a single General) into your area`s and pillage them. will lower your income to 0 and remove quite a lot of happiness per round. if you dont pay attention to this or the Raiding equivalent (boats) you will get a rebellion.

now to the "Elephant in the room" siege battles : the AI is HORRIBLE for the most part. until the second to last patch the AI would dance around rather than attack your castles in force and defend properly, then they fixed it and i had several VERY enjoyable battles where the AI would siege for several turns and bring quite a lot of siege equipment (rams, towers, Turtles and ladders). but the last patch ruined the AI again and now they rarely build anything (and if they do they will abandon it at the start of the battles), the only thing they will attack with is the standard ladders you automatically get from besieging a capital.

The patch in question also destroyed the AI of your own troops meaning that they will not follow your orders as you give them and they will not always take the "smart" route but run out of your fortifications to enter them again further down the line. more often than not when i tell them to move somewhere with the Right-Click-Hold command they will decide to do something totally retarded and move somewhere else.

if they refix your AI and the enemy AI then the game will be improved greatly.

Coop: This is my favorite part of the game. i have probably played more co op than single player because i enjoy splitting armies in two and playing battles with a friend. only thing that annoys me mechanically about they way the Coop is built is the lack of possibility of the other player controlling the AI which was possible in shogun. (please bring this back and don't limit it to non allies SEGA !).

you will desync, you will curse and it is very annoying and time consuming swapping save games to fix something that should be working correctly, the funniest moment i had with this was when i got attacked in a capital and my buddy loaded a different city(which also got attacked that turn but in a later order). essentially he was watching the AI defending one of my towns and i was defending a totally DIFFERENT battle. because we loaded two different battles without problem is weird to me and should have been fixed.

Naval battles : Hate it - Auto resolve 90% of the time.

Factions: Tons of different ones, i found this to be the easiest way to determine game difficulty (Rome - Easy Barbarians, Medium, Nomads hard, a little rough comparison).

try one of the Horse Kingdoms on legendary for a challenge :)

All in all i both love and hate this game, it is definitely worth it, especially if you have someone to play Coop with (random players for campaign in my experience never works out). have some patience with the AI and laugh at their mistakes.

Grab a drink, Grab a friend and conquer the World !