It's Rome 2 with more convenient geography and less tactical diversity Another good day's work from the Tenth.īut while these improvements are meaningful (especially to those like myself who were exasperated by Rome 2's vanilla campaign), they are also fairly modest. While improvements are meaningful, they are also fairly modest. On the other hand, the AI uses its own agents well, so there's an entire "covert war" element to Caesar in Gaul that's really only comparable to the Peninsular War DLC for Napoleon. It's nice to have agents making a tangible difference to the outcome of the game, but it seems a little absurd to have a stable of a half-dozen spies, champions, and dignitaries who could destroy armies and cities for a few thousand gold. This might be a bit of an over-correction. There was no stopping her: no sooner would an army appear on my border than its men would mysteriously start dropping dead, and its units were down to 50% strength or worse before they ever engaged my troops. My top spy was such a gifted mass-poisoner that she could destroy entire armies in just a couple turns. In fact, spies and champions become so effective that it borders on cartoonish. Now, that ace spy of yours won't drop dead after a dozen turns, but will instead turn into a sandaled Jane Bond. This time-scale also rescues agents and generals from their miserable Rome 2 existence, in which they were destined to die of old age before ever accruing enough skills to accomplish something meaningful. Infantry march as cheerfully through washed-out farm fields as they do dry pastures in high summer, but at least the lighting gives Caesar's battles the atmosphere of a Gothic nightmare. Likewise, autumn and spring campaigns occur against a backdrop of melodramatic storms and fog, although their effects don't seem nearly as impressive as the visuals accompanying them. Winter quarters are now something you'll actually want to find, because a legion that force-marches through Switzerland in January isn't going to be a legion by the time it arrives in Burgundy. Caesar in Gaul slows the action down to half-months, meaning that changing seasons and weather arrive to lend some structure and flavour to the campaign. The narrowed scope and improved pacing extend to the game's time-scale. Say this for the AI, it can form and hold a decent battle line on the fly. Even better, a single game turn takes only a few seconds to process, as opposed to the constant thumb-twiddling of Rome 2's AI turns. Gaul, on the other hand, is teeming with barbarian tribes and densely-packed provinces. Rome 2's main campaign could be a trudge through Roman history, as Roman fleets and legions inched their way across an improbably large map of Europe (even Odysseus would find crossing the Mediterranean in Rome 2 unrealistically difficult) and often struggled to find a major battle to fight. Still, Caesar in Gaul cannot help but address one major problem with Rome 2: its unwieldy scope and slow pacing. For those who were hoping that Caesar might find a unique Total War experience beyond the Alps, this expansion is a bit of a disappointment. For people who were quite happy to buy what Rome 2 was selling, then Caesar in Gaul provides a bit more of the same in a more convenient package. It is, instead, Rome 2 on a different map. Both these campaigns (and arguably, Napoleon: Total War itself) tweaked the core Total War game design in exciting ways to cover more specific conflicts and challenges.Ĭaesar in Gaul never rises to this level. The Peninsular Campaign expansion for Napoleon: Total War likewise tried to combine traditional Napoleonic warfare with the guerrilla war and counterinsurgency campaign fought across the Spanish countryside. Shogun 2's Fall of the Samurai campaign was a fascinating collision of Age of Rifles technology and doctrine with the fading samurai way of war. Unfortunately for Caesar, The Creative Assembly has established a pattern of releasing novel and systemically distinctive follow-ups to their major releases. Rome 2's Caesar in Gaul expansion campaign has a problem with recent history.
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