Camels beat horses. Elephants crush everything in their path My elephant units demonstrate their mass, plowing into Roman infantry. Don’t let the history books fool you about the sacking of Alexandria and its famous library. Those warmongering bookworms had it coming. It turns out that Julius Caesar made the Egyptians a very reasonable offer when they got all uppity about him marching an army through “their” land. Not only did he graciously ignore their belligerence and re-establish the longstanding trade agreement the Egyptians had foolishly tossed out (along with all their toys), but the Creative Assembly dev playing Caesar gave Egypt the opportunity to become a client state of Rome as well. A great offer, I think, but the Egyptian ambassador rejected it. I guess this means Total War.
larger army is mounted on top of the high ground, while the reinforcements Caesar desperately needs are all aboard ships that must wrestle with my superior navy before they can land.
Rome II’s naval and land battles are now controlled on the same battlefield, and the sea is my first priority. Naval warfare feels closer to Shogun than Empire: you can still fight at range, but a volley of arrow The Relations Pane makes the inscrutable nature of Total War’s AI more transparent. fire is really just a polite way of introducing yourself before the prow of your ship slams into your enemy’s starboard side. “Ramming is one of the key weapons
for these ancient ships,” community communications manager Al Bickham explains. “You’ll see they all have these big metal prows.” There’s no need to be subtle here: my navy outnumbers Caesar’s, so I send my ships to entangle his before they can get to shore, pausing to zoom in as my crew leaps on board his vessels and murders everyone.
In the meantime, Caesar has sent a mounted unit up the hill to test my defenses. Unfortunately, horses are easily spooked by camels—their obvious superiors. I send out a unit of camelry (yes, that is the correct word) to meet the attackers, and the Romans quickly scatter. Caesar then marches the rest of his army up the hill to meet me head-on. A standard Total War rout follows, and the obvious superiority of my forces means I don’t need to rely on clever tactics.
I do try out some new defensive weapons, though—flaming boulders that can be pushed down a hill at aggressors—while my elephant units demonstrate their superior mass by plowing head-on into Roman infantry. The heavy-footed pachyderms scatter troops across the battlefield—and, um, head straight into a bunch of archers that I really should have moved out of the way. It’s all a bit easy, in fact, so Creative Assembly offers to let me try the battle from the Roman side.
I’m almost crushed. First I rush my navy to the shore, since I learned the fun way that the Roman forces are no match for the Egyptian fleet. Once there, however, a unit of mounted elephants comes charging out of a nearby forest and tears straight through my freshly disembarked forces. In the meantime, I try to outflank the main body of the Egyptian army but the steep gradient makes maneuvering hard work, and the Egyptians rush down to annihilate me, shamelessly copying my previous tactics.
Once the elephantmangled bodies are counted, I find that I managed to snatch a win by successfully holding down a capture point at the summit of the hill. But it was Pyrrhic at
best, and I suspect it won’t be this easy in the finished game. Caesar’s battle against the Egyptian forces felt like classic Total War, with the extra nuances to the simulation adding tactical subtleties without requiring new approaches. With the polished RTS elements embedded in a similarly overhauled campaign map, Rome II offers players plenty of reasons to cross the Rubicon once more
