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Rome 2's Caesar in Gaul expansion campaign has a problem with recent history. Unfortunately for Caesar, The Creative Assembly has established a pattern of releasing novel and systemically distinctive follow-ups to their major releases. 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. 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. 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. Caesar in Gaul never rises to this level. It is, instead, Rome 2 on a different map. 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. 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.
Still, Caesar in Gaul cannot help but address one major problem with Rome 2: its unwieldy scope and slow pacing. 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. Gaul, on the other hand, is teeming with barbarian tribes and densely-packed provinces. 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.
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