14 DAY TRIAL // When Total War: Rome II was first launched, I was very disappointed to find that Dacia or the Getae, the ancient confederation of tribes from which Romanians claim descendence, was not included as a playable faction and that meant I was forced to spend most of my time with the strategy title with the Carthaginians and the Macedonians, my second and third choices.
I never managed to actually complete one of the Grand Campaigns that I started, mainly because the game tended to slow down significantly after about 60 to 70 turns played, and I was always tempted to choose another faction when I needed to wait for more than one minute between turns.
The Creative Assembly has released a number of free playable factions over time, in order to reward the community for its patience with the title, and at some point, the Getae were also included, but I never managed to spend time with them.
Emperor Edition opens up more options
I have played quite a bit of the Imperator Augustus campaign included in the Emperor Edition version of the game, and there I can choose to try and develop the Dacian kingdom, which Julius Caesar was supposed to be thinking about invading before he was assassinated, by moving into some of the territories controlled by the three Roman factions engaged in civil war.
But that campaign puts my favorite faction somewhere on the edge of the world, so I decided to move back to the Grand Campaign and try to see how a Getae campaign would work on this definitive version of Total War: Rome II.
I admit that I struggled at first and abandoned a few times after less than 20 turns because I was unable to expand well and got into wars I was unable to win without crippling losses.
The next hundred hours of Total War: Rome II
In many ways, this is the beauty of the Total War franchise, the ability to constantly try things out before finding a good and quick way of solving a challenge that, in real world history, the faction under the player’s control failed to get over.
The problem with games which have a wide range of factions and a set of mechanics that introduce a great deal of possibilities is that a lot of time is required in order to explore everything that’s on offer.
A Getae campaign might consume a few weeks of free time, and then a shift to another faction might make Total War: Rome II – Emperor Edition the game that will dominate the rest of 2014 for me.