okay, I figured out what the AI problem is basically if you have walls, it will send 2-3 units to burn your gates down early on (later in the game, but like supa late, they get onagers / towers / ladders etc.). if you rout those 2-3 units which is very easy, the rest of the army will not react and will stand there until the time runs out the game is still rather boring, as it is IMPOSSIBLE to lose when Rome even on the hard settings unless you try to. Shit tons of bugs of course, some big ones: slave revolts don't actually do anything the slaves revolt, a huge army appears in your province(s), but it does not do anything, disappears about 1-2 turns later. your income does not suffer too so it doesn't matter at all the predictions are god awful for battles - size matters only, not unit skill, so a veteran legion full of elite units will lose against (if auto'd) an army 3x its size but made of peons the politics are useless - if they DO matter, it's impossible to tell how. champions are incredibly OP due to the xp they give an army I'm glad that they fixed a lot of the inane shit though, diplomacy actually has depth now unless you go around betraying everybody, then it doesn't matter since nobody will trust you. The combination of land and sea battles in one is very nice and adds another level of depth sieges are better, the AI is fine when defending it ain't a bad game over-all but it's a bit simplified and has some shitty things about it, I'd advise waiting 6 months to a year for the good mods to come out - maybe a roma surrectum 3 or ER 2

is it just me or are the autobattle predictions incredibly biased towards the siege defender?

the game is still rather boring, as it is IMPOSSIBLE to lose when Rome even on the hard settings unless you try to.

Shit tons of bugs of course, some big ones: slave revolts don't actually do anything the slaves revolt, a huge army appears in your province(s), but it does not do anything, disappears about 1-2 turns later. your income does not suffer too so it doesn't matter at all the predictions are god awful for battles - size matters only, not unit skill, so a veteran legion full of elite units will lose against (if auto'd) an army 3x its size but made of peons champions are incredibly OP due to the xp they give an army

slave revolts don't actually do anything the slaves revolt, a huge army appears in your province(s), but it does not do anything, disappears about 1-2 turns later. your income does not suffer too so it doesn't matter at all

Does the AI still blatantly cheat with large amounts of resources and elite armies out of nowhere? Is it still terrible at laying siege to player towns, whether on the strategic or tactical map?

Still yet to play it as attempting to download it made steam crash. Found a fix for that and will be playing this game for most of the evening and early morning, YAY for days off. I also found a tip for 'vastly' improving performance as well. So they said. Let me see if I can find it... Vegetation and depth of field. Turn them off and you get a massive boost apparently.

So, what is actually the problem? I didn't pre order cuz no monies but I have about 500 hours clocked on Rome Total war and it's probably my favorite strategy game ever, so I was expecting rome 2 to be 10/10