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Lemur
09-09-2013, 20:40
Patch 7 (http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_7)

Here are the patch notes for Total War: ROME II - Patch 7 (as of 14/11/2013):

Known Issues
The objectives panel will show placeholder text for Ultimate Objectives and Chapter Objectives after opening another UI panel (e.g. selecting a unit, clicking Trade etc.

Global

Performance – Unit rendering performance on high spec gpu’s has been optimised, resulting in higher frame rates on EXTREME settings in most scenarios.
Extensive Frontend-UI tweaks and optimisations.


Battle AI improvements

Attacking siege AI now uses battering rams more frequently.
Attacking siege AI can now use all units to burn gates, and should not become inactive if it has only non-infantry units remaining.
Attacking AI is now more conservative with the use of its general when assaulting walls and gates, but can still use the general unit as a last resort.
Added safeguards against some rare issues which could cause the attacking settlement AI to become idle.
Fixed an issue in settlement AI which could result in units losing their attack orders, causing units to sometimes run past enemy units they were trying to attack, as well as causing defending missile units on walls to halt their firing orders.
Improved AI’s use of Use The Whip and Rapid Advance.
AI now targets war-dogs rather than their handlers after dogs have been released.
Eliminated unnecessary reforms in AI’s defence-line tactics.
Improved AI scouting behaviour.


Unit rebalancing

Increased damage for club weapons.
Increased melee defence for pike units.
Rebalance of all small-arm projectile damage:
-Javelins have received a boost to their armour penetration damage.
-All horse archers (incl. Royal Horse Archers) now have Heavy Shot.
-Some elite foot archers now also have access to Heavy Shot.
-Different types of bows now have different ranges.
-All bows now have some armour penetration.
Javelins have received a boost to their armour penetration damage.
All horse archers (incl. Royal Horse Archers) now have Heavy Shot.
Some elite foot archers now also have access to Heavy Shot.
Different types of bows now have different ranges.
All bows now have some armour penetration.
Rebalanced the following units:
-Naked warriors
-Ambushers
-Berserkers
-Painted ones
-Naked swords
Some missile infantry shields have had their missile block chance increased.
Tower projectile incendiary damage has been reduced.
Burning oil incendiary damage has been reduced.
Improved arrow tower damage has been reduced, and is now mostly normal damage instead of armour penetration.
Scorpion tower projectiles now have a smaller cone of effect.
Reduced incendiary hit points on all siege vehicles apart from burning rams which have both incendiary and normal hit points increased.
Removed shield wall ability from Falxmen, Thracian Warriors and Thracian Nobles.


General battle improvements

Increased battle-side hit points of all generals and officers.
Fixed issue in battle combat rules which failed to give the commanding general additional saving throws, making generals unusually vulnerable in harder difficulty modes. These saving throws have also been extended to non-commanding generals, making all general characters harder to kill in battles.
Fixed issue which caused artillery units to sometimes move forwards instead of firing when targeting a ground position.
Formed Attack button added for key disciplined units (eg Legionaries, Hoplites, Pikemen). Disciplined units are now better at keeping formation when fighting.
Improved existing unit formations.
Reduced “blobbing”, where units converge into a disorganised brawl
*Adjusted spacing of some infantry units to prevent units being too cramped.
Added blood effects on animals, for players who own the Blood & Gore DLC.
Fixed an issue where pikemen would ignore orders.
Fixed rank & file shortcuts which were not working correctly; and only ever resulted in wider units.
Telestration (drawing on the map) now works for spectators in MP battles.
Fixed issue where throwing torches at gates failed due to projectile simulation causing torches to bounce off the roof of the gatehouse instead of hitting the gate itself.
New guard mode mechanic: units will be in guard mode behaviour by default and hold their line unless they have a direct attack order.
Several improvements to how formed attackers adjust to one or more targets, encompassing different target widths.
New hiding mechanic: running will no longer reveal hidden units.
Behaviour improvements for disengaging units: Units pulling out of melee will now try harder to avoid combat and run to the ordered location.
New mechanic for knocked-down soldiers: Heavier units will take longer to get up after being knocked down.
Fixes and improvements to bracing:
- Formation depth and defensive formations now have the correct impact on bracing bonus.
- No bracing bonus when using loose spacing.
Elephant and chariot collisions are now less lethal.
Boiling oil no longer triggers when enemies are on top of a gatehouse.
Entities no longer warp in combat when two infantry units charge each other.
Avoidance-jittering eliminated when multiple units in formed attack overlap.
Prevented ships and drowning men from floating above the waterline in very rough seas.
Improved the framerate when multiple units pass under boiling oil.
Added option to disable left-click dragging move-orders.
Locked formation unit groups now correctly track moving targets when given attack orders.
Locked formation unit groups should now move at the correct speed in all circumstances.
Units now interweave less when moving a locked formation backwards.
Artillery units no longer move forwards to attack a building when their target is already in range.
Firing whilst moving now always fires at the target unit.
Reduced instances of ranged-unit stop/start movements when chasing a moving target.
Units no longer automatically attack their previous melee target after routing then rallying.
When gate capture points are neutralised, gates are now locked to all alliances and boiling oil stops pouring.
Units firing from walls can now be consistently halted.
Units firing from walls now fire with all ranks.
Rebalancing of entity/projectile/effect audio volumes.
Added new preset city and port maps to the custom battle/multiplayer map lists.
Removed situations where defenders could partially deploy units outside the city walls in siege battles.
Siege maps now have towers or gates linked to the correct capture points.
Changed capture point timer from 20 seconds to 30 seconds. Gates and towers now take 1 minute rather than 40 seconds to change from one alliance to another.
Added new minor settlements: 1x Persian port and city, 2x Egyptian cities, 1x Greek city.
Improved docking and landing points in several maps.
Added spectator icon for battle to make it clearer when people are spectating.
Cinematic camera now works correctly for units on buildings.
General technical/usability fixes across many battle maps (docking points, deployment zones, scenery placement, tower bridging-points etc).
Extensive battle-UI tweaks and optimisations.
Fixed several rare crash instances.
Aide de camp advisor has been enabled for multiplayer now.
Modified right click drag-outs, so when moving the mouse to the minimum drag threshold, and then back under the minimum drag threshold, the drag-out visualisation will no longer be hidden.


Campaign

Multiplayer campaign legendary mode saves now work correctly.
Campaign AI is now more focused on recruiting better units and constructing buildings that allow the recruitment of better units.
Increased number of Imperium thresholds from 4 to 7, rebalancing progression of military, agent and edict cap increases to match.
Campaign diplomacy: It’s now harder to sign trade & alliance treaties with AI factions, gifts now give a bigger boost to relations.
Added warning when the player is about to break treaty in Diplomacy which will result in player being treacherous.
Enemy/ally armies/agents are now shown on the Campaign Tactical map and not just players.
Fixed user interface animation issues in campaign, where in Multiplayer Campaign mode, animations would sometimes be in slow motion.
Added resource icons to the city info bar.
Added a small delay to update of the Settlement info panel, when moving the mouse off building icons to make easier to compare two buildings, without info panel flickering to province info in between.
Fixed setting for whether Unit info panel is shown in battle, which was being set incorrectly in campaign modes, leading to unit info panel being hidden in battle, without player ever minimising it.
Fixed campaign cycle buttons (which cycle between settlements) going in opposite direction, and fixed both buttons going in the same direction.
Fixed issue where if a unit was gifted in a group, the player could still control that unit via group they were previously in.
Fixed issue where current army emblem wasn't shown in list of emblems meaning once changed couldn't set it back.
When the player is defending in ambush, the attackers units are hidden because if they were ambushed they wouldn't know the details of the force they were up against.
Telestration (drawing) now works on the campaign tactical map for Multiplayer Campaign mode.
Added a vote-timer to the autoresolve panel buttons in Multiplayer Campaign mode pre-battle, so players know how much time is left to make a decision once the panel is opened.
Join Confederation option now appears as a diplomatic option when countering an AI’s diplomatic offer.
Added experience indicators on queued recruitment unit cards.
Multiple units can now be upgraded with better equipment, or retrained into better units, simultaneously.
When retraining units, UI now shows the unit a current unit will be retrained into, along with the cost for doing so.
Finance panel tax-slider now snaps to values, to make it easier to use, and to clarify that there are a finite number of levels.
Added notifications for when the other player saves in multiplayer campaign, so you know why the game is pausing.
Added filter-specific info to tooltips in the campaign tactical map (such as regional wealth values when on the region wealth filter).
Unit info UI now takes into account bonus HP for unit health stat, to fix incorrect values being shown
Unit info now shows the breakdown for melee defence and shield armour values on the tooltip.
Added vote timer to the pre-battle screen in Multiplayer Campaign mode, so players know how much time left to make decision once open this panel.
Unit info missile-damage display now working correctly (damage modifier was being applied to armour penetration damage, and breakdown wasn't taking into account the missile damage modifier).
Campaign radar map now follows the camera to improve navigation.
Client states and satrapies are now shown as allied on settlement panel. Also added an icon to show relationship of the factions owning the regions.
Fixed several rare crash instances.

Patch 6 (http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_6)

This was a minor patch delivered alongside the Blood Pack for Total War: ROME II, applying to all users.


Fix for terrain turning black during Campaign and Battles when changing the “Texture Quality” setting. This was listed as a “Known Issue” in the Patch 5, but is now fixed.
French and German campaign audio will no longer play very quietly (e.g. when selecting armies on the Campaign map).
Fix for the game failing to launch in some circumstances when running as a Windows Administrator.

Hotfix 5.1 (http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/106804-Beta-Hotfix-5.1-is-live!-PLEASE-READ-BEFORE-POSTING)

The Public BETA for Patch 5.1 is now available! We have added the following fixes:


Fix for terrain turning black during Campaign and Battles when changing the “Texture Quality” setting. This was listed as a “Known Issue” in the Patch 5, but is now fixed.
Fixed French and German campaign audio from playing very quietly (e.g. when selecting armies on the Campaign map).
Fix for the game failing to launch in some circumstances when running as a Windows Administrator.


Please bear in mind that it is only the beta version of this hot fix, and that some issues might be experienced. This is why we would like to have your feedback on this patch.
Patch 5 (http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_5)

Patch notes for Total War: ROME II Patch 5 (7765.464566)

Technical and Performance

Campaign


Improved Campaign AI decision-making speed when considering local forces prior to settlement attack
Fix to problem the AI interface received stances that were not up to date, when called to accepting a war declaration help request, or deciding whether to invite allies to a war.
Improved responsiveness of tabs in the Trade and Finance panel in Campaign mode.
Fixed a crash when loading an auto-save game.
Various campaign optimisations including: Fog-of-war update (improves frame rate when moving units, improves end turn times in games where the player has many allies) and Improved frame rate when lots of units are on screen.
Fix for rare crash when loading a Campaign save game.
Fixed various rare crashes during battles caused by unit card sorting.

Battle


The video memory footprint of battles has been reduced by up to 250MB.
Left-click and dragging units during battles is now more responsive.
Fix for slow down / performance hit when selecting AI siege equipment in the battle setup menu.

Gameplay Improvements

Campaign


Campaign AI now encourages factions to form allegiances more over time based on personality, perceived threat and existing balance of relationships the faction holds.
A new function has been added to the diplomacy screen, which allows the user to select AI factions, and then mouse over other faction icons on the map to display their relationships.
The chances of the AI betraying their allies has been increased, since it used to help them too often when a betrayal was a more appropriate action.
Allies that have made a decision to join a war, have that decision enforced at the Campaign AI to ensure consistency. E.g. To prevent Satrapies from joining a war and betraying their overlord at the same time.
Improved the AI’s consideration and use of payments in diplomacy
Garrisoned armed citizenry now reinforcing their army standing just next to the settlement they are Garrisoned in.
Fixed satrapies not recognising that they no longer have an overlord in some cases when they cease to be a satrapy.
Fixed a pathfinding data error that allowed paths to cross directly from beach to river on the Campaign map.
When a settlement is blockaded on the campaign map, a fix has been made to prevent the player from queuing more siege equipment in the construction queue than you are allowed.
Reduced the chance of AI armies standing close to the players army on the Campaign map in Forced March stance, allowing the player to ambush them.
Armies can no longer be garrisoned in a settlement and in Forced March stance at the same time, which led to an ambush battle outside of the settlement when it was attacked, and the winner not capturing the settlement.
When handing over a region in civil war, the armed citizenry in that region are now refreshed immediately, to prevent the player from recapture the settlement with no resistance from within.
During a multiplayer coop campaign, the client and host could both make decisions when attacked by the AI. However the user interface did not always display the correct choice. This is now fixed.
Rebels, Greeks and Gauls are now unable to capture the Bovianum settlement from the Samnites during the Prologue Campaign.
Objectives are now listed in The Invasion of Samnium chapter of the Prologue Campaign.
Converting an army in a port settlement to the port docks will no longer break it out of muster stance allowing it to recruit while moving .
Fix for Lode Stone technology not applying correct speed bonus to ships.

Battle


Improved gates so they don't open so prematurely for routers during battles.
Fix for Cavalry units not able to perform flaming arrow attacks on buildings.
Autonomous siege engines now have an ammunition limit during battles.
Fixed bug where routers appeared to walk in battles.
Added display of phase timers to Ability buttons in battles.
A unit tooltip will now display to indicate when units are withdrawing during battles.
Added a new Persian minor city battle map variation to the game.
Improved the in-battle AI's interactions with a Greek City battlefield.
Improved AI interactions with the walls in Hecatompylos (small) battle map.
Adjusted deployment zones in Greek Port (Antioch) map, to stop the defender from being able to deploy outside of the city.
Fixed a bug in the Antioch (large) battle map, that made traversable areas of the map untraversable to units.
Adjusted deployment zones in Carthago city map to stop the defender from being able to deploy outside of the city.
In Multiplayer, spectators can now see both the attackers and defenders units regardless of whether they're within line of sight (both in the battle itself and on the battle radar.)
Improvement for the timing in when pike men switch between pikes and swords during combat.
Re-jigged pike attacks slightly so that they don't end when the enemy run away, but instead, re-intercept.
Fixed bug in Ambush visibility which made unleashing war dogs invisible while the handler unit is hidden, causing the dogs not to be seen by the enemy.
Fixed certain capture points that were not assigned to the correct buildings in various siege maps
Smoothed out the deployment zones across all siege maps.
Fixed disembarking points in minor Barbarian port battle map, allowing units to disembark from ships correctly.
A wall piece that is partially underground in the small Barbarian City battle map has now been made to be un-dockable for siege equipment.
Fixed the collision on some large rocks in the Carthage battle map to prevent units from passing through them.

Balancing Changes

Campaign


Barbarians and Easterners can now also build military ports in minor settlements.
Increased campaign cap for the limited naval units, so more of them can be recruited.

Battle


Added new missile block chance for shields, and some new shield types added to enable better balancing.
Adjustments made to the Carthage chapter 6 difficulty.
Rebalanced the ranged damage effects for the Numidian Technology Tree.

Usability Improvements

Campaign


Agent success changes now reflects the fact that some actions (for example Assasination) require critical success to eliminate the character. A tooltip has been added to showing the sucees/failure precentage breakdown.
Fixed a bug in Multiplayer Campaign mode, where the player couldn't move their camera on the campaign map after spectating in another players' battle, if the player had the Overview Map opened before the battle.
Added faction icons to attitude / factors tooltip in Diplomacy to make it clearer whose relationship is being shown.
Added message events when a satrapy declares war on its overlord in Campaign modes.
Fix for Legendary difficulty auto-save occurring before dilemmas are decided in Campaign mode.
Fixed the cancel vassal diplomatic action which was not working correctly.
Fix for menus "sticking" when moving the mouse from a submenu button to the Encyclopaedia.
Fixed a number of formatting issues in the Multiplayer Campaign faction list user interface.
Durations are now displayed on effects in regions / factions where applicable.
Added experience and bonus icons to queued unit cards, so they are more consistent with recruitment and recruited units.
Fixed hull upgrade bonus icon not showing on recruitment cards.
When ordering an agent to perform an action against the enemy, if the player left clicks and holds on one of the action boxes, and then moves the cursor the action box will no longer disappear.
In Campaign modes, if the keyboard shortcut to end the turn is replaced by any other key, other than then default [ENTER], the new key will now end turn as expected.
Passive abilities are now coloured differently on the Unit Info Panel in Campaign modes to make them clearer.
Fixed duplicate faction icons appearing in Diplomacy, when war declared with satrapies.
Solved an issue that prevented the settlement looting panel from appearing, when Campaign Overview / Tactical Map was open.
The Forces tab in Campaign modes is now refreshed / updated faster in response to different actions taking place.
When returning to the campaign from a battle, besieging army's action points bar no longer doubles in length and extends beyond it's limit.
When an ally attacks a provincial capital in coop Campaign the other player will no longer be able to add and subtract siege equipment to the construction list during battle deployment.
Removed spaces between building upgrade icons in the Building Information panel to avoid info panel flickering in Campaign modes.
Improved the yellow selection highlighting on selected factions in the Campaign Faction Selection screen.
Added the option to delete key configuration files form the load key configuration dialog in the settings menu.
The "Battle Realism Mode" checkbox now greys out correctly when Legendary difficulty is selected in Campaign mode.
Consecrated Ground buildings in Campaign now show which culture they belongs to.
The "No Equipment Available" message on the pre-battle user interface in Campaign Mode is no longer displayed, if the player is the defender in a siege assault.
Added functionality to post-battle espionage icon so user can now see details about the conquered settlement.
Added missing tooltips to character skills on faction screen.
Fixes to the Campaign user interface to make objectives status text fit correctly within the available space.
When on the Campaign Map, if an Agent has no more action points and tries to perform an action on an enemy settlement, that action will become queued. If on the next turn the player captures that settlement that, upon ending turn the agent will no longer play the animation for the action on that now owned settlement.
When building Construction is paused in Campaign modes, a pause icon is now displayed to represent this.
Additional army names added for Germanic, Nomadic, Greek, Pontic, and Gaulish factions for more variety.
Fixed issue in the Prologue Campaign where the player couldn't declare war on the Greek States via move options and had to do it via diplomacy.
There is now a chance for Campaign characters to spawn with a wife in their household.
In Campaign, when selecting an opponent's settlement, then hovering the mouse over buildings in an owned settlement in the same province, the building information panel is now correctly displayed instead of being hidden.
Added an arrow icons to the Public Order entry in province dropdown, to indicate when Public Order is going up or down.
Solved issue that prevented the settlement button from being updated, when the province details panel is shown in the Campaign user interface.
The Conversion option is no longer displayed when the building is damaged on the Campaign map.
Fixed irrelevant attrition immunities being shown for ships in campaign on the Unit Info panel.
Remove misleading tooltips from unit cards in the unit exchange panel if they cannot be exchanged in Campaign modes.
Female character portrait / heads are shown when a "Subject Gains Notoriety" event occurs in Campaign, and the event involves a female character (e.g. the Vicious Words event).
Fixed a bug, where some Campaign Event Messages were automatically marked as read.
Dragging the mouse from a province owned by a certain faction, for instance Rhodes, into a sea region which they do not use, will no longer display their faction icon next to the contested status for the sea region.
Fixed un-openable event messages which sometimes appeared in Campaign modes.
Successful bribe attempt now shows correct family name on the message.
Mission event titles are now consistent between event messages and the event message list panel.
The correct cursor icon is now displayed when an Army at sea is selected and order to attack a garrisoned army in a port settlement.
The "opportune failure" part of agent action event messages will now only display for the faction that the agent belongs to.
After progressing through the Prologue from Chapter 1 to Chapter 3, exiting out of Chapter 3 at the start will no longer cause Chapter 3 to appear locked on the main menu.
Character Rank Up events now display the Character Type and new rank.
Fixed the window size of the games Launcher in certain desktop resolutions.
Fixed bug where placing the mouse over areas of attrition on the campaign map, would make the tooltip look like the area was an enemy.
Tooltips don't show ambush chance for fleets anymore.
Fixed tooltip height, when tooltips don't have any text in them.
Tooltip on Campaign map no longer stops showing ambush chance when placing the mouse over an attrition area.
Fix for number of available units is not displaying on mercenary recruitment cards.
Fixed an inconsistency with Silanus' name between Prologue Chapters. Throughout Prologue 2, Silanus was identified as 'Gaius Fulvius Silanus'. However during Prologue 3, he was identified as 'Gaius Silanus'.
Various minor text fixes in Campaign mode.
When the player doesn't have enough money to perform an agent action, and orders an agent to perform a certain action on an enemy, the list of options to perform will now be greyed out immediately, instead of only when the cursor is moved over the options.
Fix for incorrect hyperlink in the faction panel and incorrect tooltip on damaged buildings.

Battle


Added unit numbers to Unit Cards. These can now be enabled in battle interface options ("Unit Card Man Count" check box).
Added option to game settings menu to enable/disable aide de camp (Battlefield Advisor), so the player can now disable this panel from ever appearing.
Naval units are now grouped together depending on their unit type more often in deployment. This prevents them from colliding into each other so much at the start of a battle with large armies and large varieties of ships.
Fixing for invisible elephants making it appear like elephant riders were floating in the air during battles.
Fixed issue where dragging out units on the battlefield could get stuck on screen after deselecting the unit.
Chat toggle button is no longer greyed out in frontend when players set their state to "Ready" in a Multiplayer Battle or Campaign lobby.
Updated the Carthago radar image to better represent the terrain in the battle.
In a Multiplayer Lobby, when a team leader with one AI army on their team switches to the other side, the players Steam avatar no longer remains attached to AI army.
Fixed checkbox for "Battle Realism Mode", so it's no longer greyed out and un-ticked when the player has just quit a Legendary difficulty Campaign.
Fix for “Unit Size” option being reset to last saved setting when going hosting multiplayer battles.
Fixed the "Select All" functionality in battle setup screen ([CTRL]+[A] keyboard shortcut)
Various fixes for the Change Team button being in incorrect state in the battle setup menu.
The Battle HUD with double line Unit Cards will shrink to single line as units are removed.
The Spectator slot in a Multiplayer Lobby can be taken out of team 2 now if there is space there, and not on team 1.
Updated buildings on the radar map during battle for the "Armavir" battle map.
Improved boarding user interface in battles.
Added some user interface to remind player to use deployables during deployment, when they still have deployables un-deployed.
Reduced chance of siege towers moving away and leaving men behind if the user clicks to drop equipment, and orders it to be re-manned as troops are disembarking.
Added tooltips for ability effect icons on Unit Banners in battle, and made these icons larger.
Fixed transport ship icons not disappearing from their Unit Cards once the units disembarks
Fixed a large number of floating objects and clipping issues across a variety of siege maps.
Fixed floating buildings and battlefield props in an Egyptian Port battlefield.
Visually improved Greek Port battle map.
Removed some rocks from a port in the Antioch battle map to prevent ships passing through them when disembarking.
Changes made to the disembarkation areas in the large Carthago battle map to prevent ships from passing through the naval port buildings.
Adjusted beach landing / disembarkation areas in the Athenia battle map, to prevent ships going too far onto the land.
Adjusted beach landing / disembarkation areas in the Greek minor port battle map, to prevent ships going too far onto the land.

Known Issues


Changing the game's Texture Quality option during a campaign or a battle may cause the terrain to appear black. This can be avoided by changing this option with the Game Settings in the main menu, and will usually stop happening after starting the next battle or re-loading your campaign. This will be hotfixed in the near future.
The Mod Manager is currently only partially localised, so most compatible with English. We aim to localise this fully in the near future.

Patch 4 (http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_4)

Here are the patch notes for Total War: ROME II- Patch 4 (version #7573.461942):

Technical and Performance Issues


Further optimisation to Campaign path finding.
Improved the performance of selecting units.
Incremental performance improvements, reduced CPU bottleneck in a number of scenarios - further improvements pending in future patch.
Fixed crashes occurring when entering battles, declaring war, and ending turn after changing the unit size in the advanced graphics options menu in Campaign modes.
Fixed crash when placing deployables with a single click in invalid locations on the battlefield.
Fixed rare crash in battles when unit banners were moving slowly due to low frame rates.
Fixed an indefinite hang, when attacking Egyptian rebel army across the Nile in Campaign mode.
Fixed crash in the ambush controller caused by incorrectly assuming that an ambush battle was being loaded, when loading into a multiplayer land battle.
Fixed crash occurs during AI turn cycle, after changing the unit size options while in Campaign mode.
Fix for major performance issue caused by reinforcing naval units in certain circumstances.
The Campaign game will no longer crash when selecting the "Province Details" panel after selecting "Raise Forces".
Fix for crash due to transport ships erroneously being able to select shot types.
Fixed Campaign lock up when a rank 2 or higher General dies, after selecting a replacement with the "Duty Calls" event, then selecting any other open event, and then attempting to open Diplomacy.
Fixed a crash when rapidly clicking the fire button on the Polybolos unit in Frist Person mode.
Fixed rare crash when selecting an active mission in the Objectives panel in Campaign modes.
Fixed a rare crashing bug in the campaign when selecting units.
Improved performance of drag-outs and holding space to show unit proxies, by no longer render ghosts for men and mounts, as they were too expensive to render. Artillery, ships and vehicles still have ghosts rendered.
Fix rare crash when AI initiated diplomacy with the player.
Improved stability when moving between the Campaign game and front end.

Gameplay Improvements


Improved AI construction logic. It now constructs more military buildings.
Improved AI army compositions & unit quality. The AI uses better units and slightly less ranged units.
AI research is more military focused at the start of the campaign.
Slightly reduced the settlement defensive bonuses for the auto-resolver.
Increased the willingness of the AI signing trade agreements and defensive alliance.
The AI is now much more careful with constructing buildings that consume food or increase squalor. This has improved the AI's ability to fight food shortage problems.
Added more restrictions on the AI running too often making them exhausted by the time they reach their opponents.
Improvements to the AI defensive ambush behaviour.
AI now have improved ability to place its forces appropriately to deal with simultaneous front and side attacks. This involves angling and bifurcation of its *line with appropriate units to deal with the players use of flanking or harassing forces.
Fixed a bug where sometimes AI factions wouldn't generate a stance towards the player at the start of a Campaign, meaning they started the Campaign neutral to the players faction, and sometimes ask for peace immediately.
When generating armies, the AI is now more likely to choose elite units when they have the funds to do so.
Improved AI use of Pikemen in battles.
Fixed terrain height melee bonuses, so attackers on higher ground have an advantage.
Fixed problem with slinger units being overpowered as their shots could hit multiple units and made balancing adjustments to other projectile types .
Fixed pike phalanx single-click and double-click attack behaviour. They will now try to maintain proper distance from targeted unit instead of running into them.
Made it much harder for enemy infantry units to move/push through a pike phalanx.
Fixing bug where the AI will not know what do if river edge hint lines are present in a map without crossing hint lines. Also improving AI use of phalanx formation in river defence.
Increased chance of AI making alliances in diplomacy.
Flaming projectiles are now set as default for naval artillery when available.
Slightly increased the effects of diplomatic events on relations with third party factions, and the AI remembers diplomatic events for a longer period of time.
Difficulty can no longer be changed from the in-campaign game settings whist in a Campaign on Legendary difficulty.
Deployed agents on the campaign map, no longer reset back to being un-deployed when they level up.
Fix for missile troops sometimes firing in a "perfect" formation, rather than appearing natural and offset.
Diplomacy improvements - Factions attitudes towards each other are now mapped with colours on the map on the diplomacy screen. When your faction is selected, it shows other factions attitudes to you, and when other faction selected, shows their attitudes to other factions. Also, the factors tooltip now works between two non-player factions by selecting a non-player faction and moussing over another faction.
In Multiplayer battles, if the last remaining player in an alliance has a network timeout disconnection, the game will now be a draw.
Fix for units pursuing enemies when reacting to melee (not for direct orders). *Units will no longer pursue enemies when reacting to melee.
Fix for bug where units pursuing a routing unit could stop pursuing when the unit rallied even though they were still not in contact with the target.
Made individual cavalry units breaking out of combat more easily, to reduce units getting stuck in brawls.
Allied armies in siege battles now use separate default deployment lines so they don't deploy crammed into the same area.
Reduced qualifying trait list for various "Mad" traits (such as "Not quite right" or "Unhinged") for generals in campaign modes.
When a port is garrisoned in a port settlement, it is now possible to recruit units to the fleet.
Units are now automatically assigned to siege equipment in deployment.
If an AI faction offers an alliance to the player, it is no longer possible to offer satrapy status and have both active offers at the same time.
Fixed the firing arch for African elephant units.
The Loose formation button has been added for certain units in battle.
Teutoburg Forest historic battle is now more tolerant to the general or other Roman forces wandering off the beaten track.
The cap on Mounted Artillery pieces is now set at 6 per team / alliance instead of 6 per army.
When a host decides to make changes to the game setup (e.g. add new player slots) in a multiplayer lobby, these changes are now more accurately displayed to the clients in the lobby.
In Multiplayer Campaign mode, the "Show AI player moves" option is now reflected correctly for the client.
Multiplayer Ambush battles can no longer be started with 2v2 (or greater) numbers of players. This battle type is now limited to 1v1 as intended.
Whilst in a Campaign as Egypt, the "Defender of Alexandria" mission now requires the correct target to be completed.
Various fixes for men being unable to disembark from ships in battles.
Improved the visual arch of torches that can be thrown to burn down gates in battles. The distance / range that the torches travel was not changed, just the way they travel through the air is now more realistic.
Cinematic camera view in battles now works better with siege vehicles.
Disabled damage from rolling flammable projectiles that have landed on the ground (This does not include fireball deployables)

Balancing Changes


Re-balancing for Transport ships.
Enemies routing now have double the morale impact.
The Form Square unit ability now gives a small increase to morale and a bracing bonus in battles.
Re-balancing for the damage rate of fire on burning buildings and gates.
The Charge timeout tolerance has been reduced so heavy units aren’t so good at chasing down skirmishers.
Further reductions to Casualty morale penalties at lower levels.
Flanking and rear charge morale penalties have been increased.
Increase morale penalty for general death/fleeing.
Increased effect of rear attack in melee.
Reduced melee defence stats for most units, and increased shield melee defence values to even out the differences between units.
Melee attack reduced slightly for most units.
Increased melee defence for all shock cavalry units.
Tweaked balancing of Hoplite units.
Fix for Silver Shield Pikemen using wrong shield type.

Usability Improvements

Players can now customise the emblem on their Generals and Admirals banners. 32 new emblems have been added. When you select a General or Admiral on the Campaign map, and click the "Details" button, players can select a new emblem via a new user interface.
Switching graphics quality will no longer reset changes made to the "run in window" checkbox.
Fixed issue in Multiplayer Campaign diplomacy, where both players had control over the accept/cancel buttons at same time, so they could (for example) spam the send offer button to result in multiple trade agreements with same player.
Fixed user interface exploit which allowed the players in battles in Legendary difficulty, to pause battles and still issue orders to their units.
The Maintain blockade button no longer appears on the pre-battle screen after attacking an enemy army and clicking fight battle.
In Campaign modes, if an army is embarked on a navy and in a port (e.g. by capturing a port settlement with an army/navy) it is now easier to get that army out of the water and into the garrison.
Fixed issue where if the player declared war several times successively in diplomacy in Campaign modes, some of the text on the declare war panel would go missing.
"Army Destroyed" event message now displays the name of the army instead of the name of the general.
The "Food Shortage" event message no longer contains a list of provinces affected. This can still be reviewed in the Provinces panel.
Improved "Culture Details" interface when the mouse is placed over the "Culture" icon on a "Province Details" panel in Campaign modes.
Added event message for when units defect during a civil war in Campaign modes.
Rank up event message now contains the new rank for both characters and armies in Campaign modes.
Slowed down scrolling with the mouse wheel on the Province tab in Campaign modes, as it was too fast.
Prologue chapters are now unlocked as soon as the player plays them.
Improved the progress bar above ships in battles when they are boarding each other.
Fixed strength bar not being setup in negotiation screen of Diplomacy.
The Banner emblems have been removed from the top of barbarian unit banners to make it easier to distinguish Generals and Admirals.
The Cruel agent trait now has a positive icon instead of a negative one, as it has a positive effect.
Improved responsiveness of the Technology panel user interface in Campaign modes.
In Chat, remembered chat rooms are no longer re-created when they are not found. This is to fix the issue of lots of chat rooms being created, that only contain 1 person.
There is now a faction flag for each alliance involved in battle on the loading screen when loading into a battle.
Saving keyboard setups with characters such as "&, <, >," or ' " in the name is now supported.
When attacking a door of a fort with a battering ram, the per cent of damage will now reach 100% when the door to opens, instead of 20%.
The list of save games in the Save / Load menu now loads faster, and prevent the player from over-writing files with the same name by prompting them when this is about to occur.
Fixed issue when giving a double click move/attack order to a unit while dragging units into formation at the same time, which caused the drag-outs to get stuck to the cursor.
Fix for a bug in the "Cloud" tab of the save menu. When closing the menu and re-opening it, the "Cloud" tab was selected, but the cloud saves weren't listed.
Fix for a bug that allowed the player to use the "ping" function (which draws yellow arrows on the campaign map, when the player presses the [F5] key) in *Single Player Campaign, so it now only works in Multiplayer Campaign as intended.
When there is a civil war during a Carthage campaign game, the emerging Adirim Loyalists' faction icon is now sown next to the settlement names of settlements owned by Adirim Loyalists, instead of the original Carthage faction icon.
Fixed various missing texture issues on unit banners in battles for reinforcements, disembarking ships, and when flags were turned off and then turned on.
The group morale frames on Unit Banners are coloured same as ungrouped units in battles.
The "Attacker Direction" dropdown list has been hidden instead of greyed out in the Battle Setup screens for Custom and Multiplayer battles, when not applicable, to avoid confusion.
Trample abilities effects on fatigue are now clearer in battles.
In the Custom Battle setup screen, the Mare Ibericum battle map no longer remains selected when the player selects another map.
The portrait of the selected character on the Character Details screen in Campaign modes no longer overlaps frame around the portrait.
Fixed for land unit style category icons and tooltips sometimes being shown on ship unit banners during battles.
Fixed subtitles on some tutorial videos in the Encyclopaedia.
Fixed a bug where destroying one slave army would kill / make all the other slave armies disappear.
Unit cards now scale horizontally to a certain limit, to reduce the likelihood of requiring double row of cards, which takes up quite a lot of space on the screen.
The "Active Missions" button in the objectives panel now highlights correctly when selected.
The description text for the second objective ("White India") of the fifth historical chapter ("Excelsior") of the Parthia faction now fits correctly in the text box in the Objectives panel.
If the player uses the encyclopaedia shortcut while scrolling a menu, the scroll bar button will no longer appear on top (overlap) the encyclopaedia page.
Experience levelling up effects on banners are no longer displayed when banners themselves are hidden, e.g. in Cinematic Camera view in Battles.
The "Roma Captured" video now plays when Rome is captured on the Campaign map, when the player choses to loot or raze Roma.
Fixed bug when making an Offer / Demand in diplomacy that would stop the diplomats mouth from moving as they spoke.
Players can no longer select the Greek faction in Multiplayer Campaign mode with the arrow keys, when they don't own the Greek States Culture Pack DLC, which led to both players being returned to the main menu when loading the campaign.
Having the "Add Offer/ Demand" window open in diplomacy, while breaking a treaty will no longer cause the "Add Offer/ Demand" window to remain visible.
Players can now load a fleet or army on coastal and port assault battles, instead of only fleets.
Fix for Socii units missing variations in battles.
Added greaves to Carthaginian Hoplites units in battles.
Fix for Chosen Spear and Sword band missing helmet variation in battles.
Event messages that open automatically will now correctly open in order, one by one.
Pressing the "Cancel" button when changing the "Push to Talk" key in the Voice Chat Settings menu now works as expected.
Fixed issue where double clicking on a map in the map list in the Battle Setup screens (in Custom Battle and Multiplayer Battle modes) would make that map always remain highlighted as if it was selected.
The icon for glassware is now visible on the Hieron Ton Megalon Theon's building card.
Better consistency between the attributes that are displayed on the recruitment user interface for Generals and the attributes of the General once recruited.
Fixed tool tip on notification icon that appears on the "Details" button when units are available to upgrade.
When entering the diplomacy screen for the first time in Campaign modes, the accompanying speech now matches the text displayed.
Promotion level is now displayed on the Faction Summary and Faction Details *Panel in Campaign modes when a character is selected.
Placeholder text no longer displays on the pre-battle user interface for one player, when a rebel army attacks the other player in Multiplayer Campaign mode.
Pressing the Escape key while pacing the mouse over a construction options in the Settlement Details panel no longer leaves the construction options open while closing the Settlement Detail panel.
Increased Cataphract armour, and strong version added for Royal Cataphracts units.
Changed armour for Eastern Noble Horse Archers to Cataphracts.
Fix for incorrect colouring of battle list entries.
Clicking on the "zoom to location" button on event messages will now always take you to the correct location.
Added in missing standard bearers to Spartan and Carthaginian infantry units.
When an agent is with an army that is accompanying a fleet, separating the agent from the army now updates the user interface correctly, so that the agent no longer appears like it's with the army.
Fixed missing text on the "Accept" button when offering diplomacy to another faction in Campaign modes.
Fixed the arrows buttons functionality on various scrollbars in the Campaign user interface.
When viewing the total number of army units listed in a merged fleet, in the top left corner of the unit panel in campaign modes, it now correctly shows the number of units instead of incorrectly displaying the fleet total.
When a unit gains a rank during or after a battle in Campaign modes, there is now a "level-up" animation to highlight this.
The red left and right arrows on either side of the settlement name in the left hand side of the screen when a settlement is selected on the campaign map, now toggle between settlements more effectively.
When the Rhodes region is captured on the Campaign map, and under player control, viewing the Tactical Map will now colour the region correctly.
The arrow to sort by Food Production in the Province panel in Campaign modes now sorts correctly.
Fixed multiple issues surrounding certain events being fired at the same time as winning the game.
The movie player for Campaign movies will now correctly re-initialise its full screen state between queued movies.
Switching between different forces on the Campaign map, while in the Details panel is open, will now update the stance button, so the changing the stance with this button will now set the stance for the currently selected force.
When looking for an online multiplayer battle, the list of games available are in the Battle List window can now be scrolled with the mouse wheel.
When exiting negotiations with faction in the Diplomacy panel, that faction now stays selected in faction list so the player doesn't have to scroll down the whole list each time.
When placing the mouse over buildings that can be converted in a settlement in Campaign modes, the mouse now highlights the upgrades correctly.
Fixed the sort by diplomatic status button in the "Known Factions" list in the diplomacy panel in Campaign Modes.
In Multiplayer Campaign, when one player declares war on a faction and confirms this, the "Call your Allies to help!" checkbox is now hidden, as changing it after this point didn't do anything.
While choosing an agent action in Campaign modes, the player can now see the current treasury status of the agent in the agent action panel.
During all Quick Battle multiplayer games, when any player enters the deployment screen they are no longer shown as Rome for a couple of seconds while the game is set up.
Fixed reinforcing armies unit banners sometimes appearing darker and missing their outlines on the battlefield.
Unit banners will no longer appear black when turning on unit flags in a battle after turning them off in the campaign map.
The expanded tooltip for client state in diplomacy now no longer always displays 0.
Fixed tooltips for incident event effects in Campaign modes.
Arrow keys can no longer be used to move artillery weapons in First Person mode, as this was not an intended feature.
Fixed incomes from client states and satrapies not being shown correctly in diplomacy.
Improved menu response to use of double-clicks when using the "Controls" menu under "Settings" in the main menu.
In the Controls menu, if changes are made to controls and the Accept button is pressed, the save dialog appears automatically. If this dialog is cancelled, and the Accept button is pressed again, all control changes will no longer be discarded without warning.
Fixed some layout issues with faction list in multiplayer campaign.
The resources icons in the Trade & Finance tab now fit in the user interface better when multiple (over 6) different types of resources are being traded.
Added hull upgrade icon to Unit Cards, and fixed upgrade icons not appearing in battle.
Fixed the "Zoom to Province" button in campaign modes sometimes zooming to the last region within the province group, instead of the capital (main settlement).
Removed the confirmation dialog when quitting a battle when the player had already won and was chasing down routers, to avoid confusion about what will happen (as the player has already won, quitting just ends the battle with victory).
Fixed face animations and audio not working correctly in the diplomacy screen when declare war, and prevented adding new offers/demands from interrupting the face animations.
Text made clearer in the confirmation dialog when quitting a battle.
Addressed inconsistencies in the campaign Heads Up Display when selecting between enemy and friendly settlements and characters.
Added details of the effects to "Public Order" event messages.
The wider your resize the chat window the more rooms you can now see.
The Escape key now works correctly with the "Lock Visibility" option in chat.
Fixed issue where the cursor wouldn't update, if it had mouse over a text input box when transitioned between different areas of game, and stay as a text cursor within battles (for example).
In the Defence of Campania chapter of the Prologue campaign, the "infinity symbol" is no longer displayed on unit cards when the units can be recruited.
Fixed flickering graphics when the "downgrade warning" message appears on loading screens.
Fixed issue where the shroud would disappear from the Campaign Tactical Map and Mini-Map when entering Tactical Map or moving a character.
Fixed for rain being shown as an option for snowy regions in the Custom Battle setup screen, as it would just appear as snow in the battle anyway.
Added tooltips to the left and right arrows in "Your Forces" panel in pre-battle campaign phase.
Added some missing text for reinforcements on the pre-battle loading screen.
Altered tooltip for Siege Turn Time and Fix for Order of Battle reinforcements tooltip not displaying.
The text for "Show AI player movements" in Italian ("Mostra mosse dei giocatori") now fits correctly in the Multiplayer Campaign setup menu.
Phase timers are now displayed as a ring around Ability buttons in battles.
Added some text that was missing from the Faction Summary screen in Campaign modes.
Added current ancillary card to the "Ancillary Gained" event message.
The Province details button no longer remains selected after deselecting a settlement.
Removed the sound effect when placing the mouse over blank / empty character options in the Family Politics panel.
Update to the hyperlinks for "Armies" in the Prologue Defence of Campania.
The text for "Game Mode" in Italian ("Modalità di gioco") now fits correctly in the button in the Multiplayer Campaign setup menu.
Some hyperlinks in the user interface in Campaign modes have been removed, as it opened a blank page in the Encyclopaedia.
Fix for grammar errors in the subject dilemma text.
Fixed text clipping issues on building tooltips in Campaign modes in some languages.
Fixed text clipping on the campaign factors tooltip in some languages, now shows ellipsis to show text has been cut off.
Fixed possible cut-offs of text in the "Trait / Ancillary Gained" event message in Campaign mode.
Subtitles added to the Parthia Civil War video in Campaign modes.
Various localisation text and audio fixes in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Czech, Russian, Polish and Turkish.


Patch 3 (http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_3)

Here are the patch notes for Total War: ROME II- Patch 3:

Technical and Performance Issues


Significant improvements to multiplayer campaign speed, which is now limited by the slowest players machine.
Frame Rate improvements on Campaign map on low spec Core2 Duo cpu’s in windowed mode.
Fix for lock-ups reported on loading into battle in DirectX9.
Frame Rate improvements on Campaign map across all configurations when setting Effects Quality to Low or High.
Fix for minor stutters & terrain rendering glitches on some gpu’s when rendering the terrain.
Fixed a bug in the Graphics Benchmark frame rate display that reported the wrong per-frame time.
LAN multiplayer modes are now accessible when Steam is in Offline mode.
Fix for graphics crash caused by changing the games screen resolution shortly after loading a new Campaign.
Fix for a crash when performing an agent action on a wounded/assassinated unit in Campaign modes.
Further campaign map optimisations.
Optimised fire and smoke effects on the campaign map (improving the frames per second on all graphics setting, especially during the late gameplay where all faction territories are revealed)
Fix in Multiplayer Campaign, after Player 1 offers diplomacy to Player 2, Player 2 made a counter offer, then cancelled the offer, which caused the game to lock up for Player 1.
Fix to prevent the games user interface from flickering when SLI is enabled.
Improved culling on the campaign map to prevent props (e.g. the pyramids) from disappearing when the camera was set to certain angles.
Improved the desktop icon for Total War: ROME II to support multiple resolutions.

Gameplay Improvements


When the player is attacked whilst in a minor settlement (not provincial capital), a new "Sally Forth" button is available on the pre-battle panel to fight the attackers in an open field battle.
All armies that are forced to retreat, and then are attacked, no longer have a *Baggage Train battle. It is a normal open field battle with any campaign generated penalties applied as before.
When an army in forced march is attacked on the Campaign Map, an ambush battle is now triggered, rather than a baggage train Victory Point battle .
Combined battles where there is no navy in the defending alliance do not have *Victory Points/Baggage Trains.
Combined battles where the defender has a navy will retain their Victory Point.
Victory Points have had their capture time increased by 3x their previous length.
Attacking AI is now more likely to prioritise taking Victory Points in Siege Battles / City Assault Battles.
AI controlled Agents are now more likely to act upon the player's settlements instead of standing around outside of them.
Fixed issue in battle AI which prevented siege assault groups from responding to nearby threats.
Fixed timing issue in battle AI which could cause the attacking AI in port sieges to stop updating.
Substantially reduced free hits from enemies in battles, when moving a unit through enemy units (without attacking them), so units can disengage with less penalty.
Smaller and depleted AI controlled forces are now less likely to survive auto-resolved battles in Campaign modes.
Cavalry can no longer capture Victory Points in battles while mounted. They can still neutralise the Victory Points if they were previously in enemy control, and capture Victory Points when dismounted.
The size / radius of capture points has been increased in Coastal battles.
Fix for some instances of passive AI during River Crossing battles, when the AI is defending.
Fixed issue which prevented reinforcement artillery ships deploying.
Fixed issue in Siege Battles where the AI attempted to use breaches and gates which they could not reach.
In Battles, the number of ranks now factor into bracing mass bonus for collision system, i.e. thin lines will make you lose your bracing bonus against cavalry charges from the front
Fixed chasing down of routers at the end of battles, so they engage in combat more often and can be killed more easily.
Satrapies can no longer sign peace treaties with the enemies of their overlord (but still able to automatically make peace if their overlord signs a peace treaty with the enemy) in Campaign modes.
Snow ground type now replaces grass in snow attrition areas of the battle map.
Units in Testudo formation will now respond to an order to attack city gates in a City Assault battles.
Men throwing torches to ignite gates in battles, now have less chance of failing to throw their torches and hit the gate, if ordered more than once to ignite the same gate.
AI houses can no longer secure promotions without first meeting the required age and rank in Campaign modes.
Removed old concealed by distance logic, that was incompatible with the newer visibility system. For example, units that are visible at range could look like they were hidden on their user interface, when they could be seen.
Pikemen can move out of melee when pike phalanx is active in battles. For example, If only one of the pikeman is attacked, the entire unit will no longer start to be unresponsive to orders.
Improved responsiveness of Siege Equipment when dropped and picked back up multiple times.
In Campaign modes, the number of siege equipment entries is now capped to be the length of the siege - 1
Further improvements to AI collision detection with Deployables in battle.
Units that charge while in formation (e.g. block formation) stop sooner on contact with the enemy, to reduce "blobbing" where units converge into a disorganised brawl.
Fixed bug with missile units on ships not firing on enemies reliably during battles.
Fixed bug with ship artillery not firing on buildings reliably in battles.
Fix for ships surviving on the campaign map after sinking on the battle map.
Fix missile ships getting stuck when targeting land units just outside of their range.
Reduced the chance of AI (enemy) reinforcements and the players reinforcements joining a battle from the same location and therefore engaging in combat instantly in battles from Campaign modes.

Balancing Changes


Hit points for all units have been increased in combat.
Melee defence has been reduced for most melee cavalry units and for some elite infantry units.
Reduced melee weapon damage in battles, and increased melee defence from shields.
Various trait effects are now working as intended.
Improved pike weapon damage balancing in battles.
Fatigue for running and being in combat has been increased in battles.
Further tweaks and rebalancing has been made to unit morale in battles.
Elite infantry morale has been reduced slightly during battles.
Experience level thresholds have been increased for units.
Special ability cool down times have been re-balanced in battles.
Building costs have been updated to reflect the changes in building effects in Campaign modes.
Morale bonuses from training and religious building chains have been reduced in Campaign modes. Instead, these buildings now give more varied bonuses to the units.
Cost of experience bonuses for Custom and Multiplayer battles have been reduced.
Squalor and food consumption have been rebalanced (reduction for higher-level buildings) in Campaign modes.
The Headhunt ability has been re-balanced in battles.
The charge bonus for Celtic, Briton and Germanic units have been reduced.
The masses of horses and men on the battlefield have been made more reasonable.
Reduced the mass of camel units in battle.

Usability Improvements


The Balance Of Power bar on the Diplomacy screen now shows the correct ratio, rather than just 50/50.
Improved the desynchronisation detection in Multiplayer Campaign mode, and players are now given a popup message when a desynchronisation has occurred, with the options to resynchronise the game to continue, or quit the game.
When the host leaves the team lobby in Quick Battle multiplayer mode, a new host is found.
Improved multiplayer compatibility between players who own the Greek States DLC and those who don't.
In Multiplayer Ambush Battles, if Player 1 clicks the "Start Battle" button, and the Player 2 waits for the timer to run out for the battle to start, Player 2 will no longer be locked into Cinematic Mode with limited user interface controls.
All battles now end 5 seconds after the victory is decided (This used to be 10 seconds).
In Multiplayer Land Battles, when deployment is over, enemy armies will no longer be visible, when they are supposed to be hidden, for a couple of seconds before fading out.
In Multiplayer battles, a player who has conceded defeat will now turn into a spectator. They can then exit the battle if they want to.
Fix for battle music getting paused while in slow battle speed.
When on the campaign map, if an agent is placed close to the edge of an enemy settlement as it expands (builds a building in a construction slot) the agent is now teleported out of the way of the expansion, so they do not become stuck within the settlement. If the agent was already stuck in an expanded settlement before this update, they will remain stuck, and have to be disbanded. This update will prevent this situation from happening in the future.
Slightly improve combat responsiveness and animations for formation attacks in battles.
Fixed bug with ship artillery not firing at all after using first-person mode in battles.
The Attacking Testudo can no longer be activated in melee during battles.
Battering rams moves out the way correctly after battering a gate down in battles.
The Tortoise battering ram animation has been tweaked slightly so it collides with walls better, at the point of impact when a wall is destroyed.
Multiple waypoints displayed for units in siege equipment, as previously only 1 was displayed.
Selecting Dismount on mounted units continuously during deployment in battles will move the units towards their last ordered position less after dismounting.
During battles, if a cavalry unit is ordered to move to a location, and then ordered to dismount, the men will now dismount but not continue to move to the previously ordered location.
The number of arrows is now correctly depleted when units fire whilst moving during battles.
Correct bonuses are now being applied to units from Workshop buildings.
Fixed bug with pike phalanx not getting back into pike stance after running.
Charge bonuses are now correctly applied to units recruited in certain provinces.
Projectile impact effects hitting units and buildings are now positioned more accurately.
Improved fire effects for buildings, siege vehicles and deployables during battles.
Improved some visual effects for during battles. Better burnt version of buildings with burning embers, and running water down roofs and vertical surfaces in rain.
Damaged visual effects have been improved on the campaign.
Fixed Briton Chariot unit attributes.
Fix for Scythian horse unit variation.
The achievements "Noble Master", "Spymaster" and "Champion of the Gods" now unlock sooner after their requirements have been met.
Fix for the Campaign map terrain disappearing when repeatedly toggling between the Campaign Map and Campaign Tactical Map.
Province level bonuses (such as edicts with food bonuses) are now taken into account in the food level displayed in a province overview in Campaign modes.
Settlement labels on the campaign map are now positioned more accurately and no longer get offset from the settlements.
In the Province panel in Campaign modes, provinces can now be sorted by their level of food production.
Several Eastern buildings now correctly consume food (instead of either not consuming anything or giving contradicting public order effects) in Campaign modes.
The Qanat building (in the Eastern agricultural chain) now produces a small amount of food in campaign mode.
The warning message that informs the player that they are not researching any technology when they press the "End Turn" button in Single Player Campaigns is now also displayed in Multiplayer Campaigns.
The players armies in Ambush stance will no longer move by themselves in Campaign modes, which happened on rare occasions.
Fix for user interface bug showing the wrong tax level on the Province Details panel when the "Tax province" button was ticked in Campaign modes.
Culture conversion coming from some characters now correctly shows up as "character" in the culture tooltip, no longer as "building".
In Campaign modes, the culture that Consecrated Grounds belong to is now displayed in their title, to make it clearer why they need to be converted.
The "Reduces slave population decline" icon in the information panel when placing the mouse over the "Slave Trader" in the Commons buildings section in Campaign modes is now displayed as green instead of red (as it's a positive affect).
The first building in the equipment chain (E.g. Workshop for Hellenic, Quartermaster for Eastern etc.) can no longer be bypassed by converting from another faction's equipment chain without researching.
Technologies are now required to create the Level 4 Jewelsmith building, to prevent an exploit.
Improved ship melee/ramming target selection in battles.
Fixed boarding mode button state issues when attempting to board a ship in battle.
In battles, men who have already boarded an enemy ship no longer jump into the sea once their ship has started to sink or back onto their sinking ship. (Men who remain on the sinking ship still jump into the water.)
Improved Advisor lip sync in various pieces of advice in Campaign modes.
Clicking the "Square" special ability as a unit is attempting to man a siege tower will no longer stick the siege tower to that unit in battles.
When an agent is selected in Campaign mode, and the player right clicks on a settlement to sabotage the enemy, the menu will no longer act erratically.
When the player had a subject to deal with in the politics screen and the subject had an infamy effect, this effect once seen persisted in being shown for all other characters even if the subject is dismissed. This has been fixed.
Fix for some misaligned text on a tooltip displayed when a settlement with a port is blockaded by an enemy, and the player selects the enemy and places the mouse over the settlement.
Improved small glitches with Campaign selection markers and Forced March visual effects sometimes being displayed in the wrong positions when units move.
Fixed some inconsistent ability names for General Skill Types.
In Campaign mode, Roman "Basilica of X" temples have now been renamed to "Precinct of X".
Tooltip regarding the "Armoured Siege Units" technology bonus effects on pre-siege vehicles (all variants of Galleries, Siege Towers, Ladders and Battering Rams) is now clearer.
Fixed the tooltip when placing the mouse over the Columns I, II and III for War Exercises, Warrior Code, Tribal Economy and Druidic Council technology trees in the Technology Panel in Campaign modes.
Two pieces of advice from the Battlefield Advisor relating to flanking were mixed up in Italian and Spanish. These have now been corrected.
Fixed a couple of instances where what the Battlefield Advisors was saying did not match the text displayed in Spanish.
Some steep terrain in a Greek Minor Port battle map has been levelled out, to stop ships from going under the beach when they disembark.
Improvements to the wall connectivity in a Greek Port battle map.
Boiling oil poured from gate houses in battles will look better where it intersects with the ground.
Improved impact animations when pig carcasses hit the ground when fired as poison rounds form artillery in battles.
While crossing rivers in battles, units footsteps now default to mud sounds instead of water sounds.
Fix for a small hole in the terrain in a Greek Minor Port battle map.
When the player is defending in a siege battle from Campaign mode, and the enemy partially capture a Victory Point on the battle map, then the player re-gains control of the Victory Point, the Battlefield Advisor will no longer say "Our enemy have lost a victory point".
Fix for the Battlefield Advisor sometimes referring to the players own reinforcements as "Enemy Reinforcements" during battles.
Added some localisation text and audio fixes for French, Italian, German, Spanish, Czech, Russian, Polish and Turkish.
Added Stonehenge back to the custom battle map at these coordinates 0.137, 0238 (Iska).
Fixed typo on 'Conscription' edict in English.
Improved culling of certain rocks on the battlefield.
Added French, Italian, German and Spanish localisation to the word "Settlement" in the Agent Action Panel in Campaign modes.
Various text and grammar fixes for the Campaign user interface.

Patch 2 (http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_2)

Warning: Your current Save Games will work with Patch 2, but Save Games created or overwritten in Patch 2 will be incompatible with previous versions of Total War: ROME II.

Technical and Performance Issues


Campaign performance optimisations.
Campaign AI round time improvements (greatest effect during early game).
A new "Limited" option has been added to the "Show AI Player Moves" settings in Single Player an Multiplayer Campaign modes, this enables the player to see all movement of enemy factions, all movement within the players regions, and all movement within sea that the player has ports in during the AI turns.
Improved AI recruitment decisions in Campaign modes. Further improvements planned for subsequent patches.
Pathfinding optimisation on the Campaign Map.
Fix for "Level of Detail" distances scaling incorrectly when the "Field of View" is changed which reduces the chance of the "Intelligent Zoom" [N] key, causing "zombie like” low quality textures on unit faces in battles.
A new warning message has been added to loading screen to inform the player when graphics memory is running low, and the game is downgrading the players graphics settings. This can be overriden, allowing the game to use system memory for graphics (VRAM) by ticking the "Unlimited video memory" option in the graphics menu.
Increased the frame rate and reduced frame stuttering in battles on certain GPUs.
Improved compatibility for graphics cards with multiple GPUs.
Added earlier Multiplayer Campaign resyncronisation detection, upon loading save games which allows resyncronisation in more cases.
More conservative out-of-the-box graphics settings and resolution for DirectX 10 and 11 on Mobile GPUs
Improved the processing speed of the default deployment placement, reducing battle loading times on some battle maps.
Fixed battle crash bug caused by the default deployment placement.
Crash fix for when the player placed the mouse over a garrison force of a region in Campaign mode.
Fix for crash loading save games that were created on the "settlement captured" screen in Campaign modes.
Fix for a crash when holding the [SHIFT] and [CTRL] keys down, and selecting a unit card, when no unit cards where previously selected in Campaign and Battle modes.
Fix for crash caused by forming a Confederation in Campaign modes.
Some desyncronisations have been fixed in multiplayer city / port assault battles.
Crash fix for when multiple AI reinforcements arrive in a single player siege battle in Campaign mode.
Fix for crash when selecting Custom Battle mode after fighting several different Multiplayer battles.
Fix for a crash in 4v4 custom or multiplayer battles caused by the battle AI.
Fix for crash when cancelling a game request for a password protected game whilst in a Multiplayer battle lobby.
Fix some crashes in multiplayer campaign mode, when one player quit the game, it would cause the other player to crash.
Fixed a Multiplayer crash which happened when a client joined a lobby and was being allocated to the wrong slot.
Fix for a very rare crash when launching a new campaign.
Fixed rare battlefield loading lockup.
Fix for a rare crash caused by animal handlers in battles.
Fix for crash that happens when AI unit triggers raise banner special ability when no human units are selected in battles.

Gameplay Improvements


Reduced infantry run speed, charge speed and acceleration in battles.
The low level casualty moral penalties have been significantly reduced in battles.
Improved balancing for Food and Squalor in Campaign Mode.
Campaign AI is more likely to make a stand when defending its final settlement, but may still seek out another home, if they fear losing the final battle.
Encampments battles are no longer incorrectly merged with Coastal battles, which lead to forts floating in the air when a friendly navy reinforced an army in the Fortification stance.
Improved ship movement speeds in battles.
Shock cavalry run speed and charge speed have been increased in battles.
Increased flanking morale penalties.
Added icons to indicate activity in the Technology and Faction screens during a campaign.
Fix for the boarding/ramming button which showed the incorrect state in certain circumstances in battles.
Fix for a bug that sometimes made it impossible to exchange units between a transported land force and another land force on the Campaign map.
Fix for armies on the sea getting stuck in patrol stance in Campaign modes.
Fixed splitting an embedded army from a navy which sometimes caused the player to get stuck in the Prologue Campaign.
Some missions in single player and multiplayer Campaign have been fixed and now execute correctly.
When a settlement is captured via a siege battle, with a friendly naval fleet blockading its port, the ownership of the port is now changed correctly to the friendly navy fleet on capture.
Fix for AI taking inappropriate sized siege equipment into battle when the user changed the settlement wall height, via the map selection settings, in Custom Battle mode.
Fix for defending armies under AI control grouping together at the edge of their deployment zone, during Ambush battles when the player choses to wait before attacking them.
Improved AI and scripting in the Raphia Historical Battle.
Fixed a bug preventing the player from progressing in The Invasion of Samnium prologue chapter, if they had spent all of their funds before being instructed to recruit a General (and therefore having no funds to do so).
The Attribute increases for an agent accompanying an army now activate its associated effects on the general of that army in Campaign modes.
Improved AI collision detection with Deployables in battle.
In Multiplayer Campaign mode, one player can no longer cancel recruitment during the other players turn.
The order of events leading up to the Battle of Bovianum in the prologue have been re-scripted. The player now gets multiple turns to construct siege equipment.
Fixed issues with not enough time being given for certain advisor lines to play in different languages in the prologue.
Fix for units floating in the air while climbing siege towers in battle, when the tower is placed on a slope.
Attacking siege ladders will no longer clip through the gate house in the siege on Bovianum battle during The Invasion of Samnium chapter in Prologue Campaign.
The victory screen in Multiplayer Campaign mode now shows the correct title for both players.
The Basilica of Vulcan religious building now applies the correct bonus to recruitment cost reduction in Campaign Mode.
Added level indicators to the Sanctuary of Austro & Sanctuary of Fraujaz shrines in Campaign mode and the Encyclopaedia.
Fix for settlement expansion trapping / blocking units movement on the campaign map in very rare cases.
Improved the terrain in a small Barbarian city battle map.
Minor bug fixes for Roman and Barbarian siege battle maps.
During battles, players are no longer able to un-pause the game while in the options menus.

Usability improvements


In Campaign mode, exempting a province from tax will no longer incorrectly adjust the food number in the province info panel left side of the screen.
Improved multiplayer lobby discovery, reducing the chance of finding *multiplayer lobbies with the wrong battle type.
Removed the red tint from the sky in battles.
Fix for "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day" achievement failing to unlock when its requirements were met in some situations.
The "Quaestor" achievement should now unlock correctly, when completing the Prologue campaign
Fixed the inability to select the previous faction, when an army is automatically loaded due to a battle type change during battle setup.
Improved the clarity of stats displayed for Slaves Economic Effect when placing the mouse over "Slaves" in the Province Details panel on the Campaign map.
Fix for rare cases of broken save games in Campaign mode.
Fix for Campaign mode bug, where a hostile agent and the players' ship became stuck in the same position, with neither one able to move.
Fix for very rare agent pathfinding issue, which caused the game progression to become impossible in Campaign modes.
Removed the ability to loading the wrong type of units into a battle from a saved army pre-set in Custom Battle mode.
In Multiplayer battle setup, unit restrictions related to "Battle type" are no longer desynchronised between the host and client, so only the correct units can be chosen.
Defending armies in an Ambush Battle can no longer load an army containing *Fixed Artillery and other Siege Equipment.
Fixed the tooltip displayed when placing the mouse over the garrison in enemy settlements, while the settlement is under siege.
The Public Order "Change per turn" stat is now displayed as the sum of all of its "Contributing Factors" on the Province Info panel in Campaign mode.
Right-clicking on the Aggressive, Balanced and Protective stance buttons when Autoresolving a battle in campaign mode will now take the player to the Encyclopedia, where these stances are explained in more detail.
More detailed descriptions added to the tooltips for the "Occupy, Loot and Raze" buttons after successfully capturing a settlement on the Campaign map.
Improved icons for Province Effects in Campaign mode.
Fixed an error with uploading stats when a multiplayer battle was ended prematurely.
The "Force March" movement effect on the campaign map (looks like a whirlwind) are now correctly removed from the screen when the AI move their army.
Correction to the Assault Hexeres unit card in the Parthia faction during battles, which had no colour mask and appeared black.
The buttons to change pages in the Leaderboards menu have been fixed, so more players can be seen on the Leaderboards.
The Provinces list in Campaign mode can now be scrolled with the mouse wheel.
Units in a recruitment queue, in a province with its capital under siege, now have an "infinity sign" icon to indicate that the "turns to recruit" is infinite while the siege is maintained in Campaign mode.
In the "Controls" menu under the "Settings" option in the main menu, when the player modifies the keyboard controls, and saves them, the new name for these controls is now replaces the "Classic Total War" name.
Added a tooltip to say "Left-click to remove unit from recruitment queue" for units that are queued for hire in Campaign mode.
Added a tooltip to make ruined buildings more obvious in Campaign mode.
Added tooltips to "Weather" and "Time of Day" settings in the Custom Battle menu.
Fixes and corrections for text in the encyclopaedia have been made.
Minor text and grammar corrections in Campaign Modes.
Fix for some German text not fitting into the available text space in the campaign mode user interface.
Improved text formatting in the Objectives panel in Campaign mode.
Added some localisation text fixes for French, Italian, German, Spanish, Czech, Russian, Polish and Turkish.
Fixed some missing text on the Diplomacy screen in Campaign modes.
Added white outline to Armoured Legionaries unit cards in battle.

Patch 1.5 (http://www.ibtimes.com/total-war-rome-2-patch-15-patch-notes-released-patch-2-delayed-1403707)

Should improve Campaign Map frame rate in the majority of cases for those people with high-end graphics cards combined with mid-range CPUs. Those people who have noted high frame rates in battle but single-figure frame rates during Campaign Map play should see a notable increase in performance.
Patch 1 (http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_1)

Here are the patch notes for Total War: ROME II- Patch 1 (06.09.13):


Higher average frame rates with out-of-the-box settings (more conservative settings)
Fix for DirectX 10.0 Lighting issue reported - environment map wasn't being created leading to black reflections.
Fixed a sunken Samothrace temple complex world wonder on the Campaign map.
Fixed defender being able to create encampments when involved in a combined battle.
Added some localisation fixes to audio packs in French, Russian, Italian, German and Spanish.
Fixed lock up in Multiplayer Campaign battles when a desynchronisation occurs. Players are now notified of the desynchronisation, and the battle ends.
Fixed Multiplayer Campaign battle "overrun" prompt, which was not being shown to a player if they were a reinforcement and the other player was spectating.
Fixed corrupt loading screen when changing to fullscreen / windowed mode after a battle, and then going into another battle.
Fix for Multiplayer Campaign host being unable to move the camera in campaign, after reloading a save game on some rare occasions.
Safe guards added to prevent a very rare crash in coastal assault battles.
Fix for game lock up during end turn sequence / Celtic AI faction turn in single player campaign.
Improved AI use of walls on Athens large settlement battle map.
Improvements to Auto-resolve balancing in Single Player and Multiplayer Campaign modes.
Aligned ship unit upkeep costs with land units - made mercenary ships more expensive and non-mercenary ships cheaper.
Fixed slow turning rates for transport ships.
Improved civil war balancing in relation to campaign difficulty.
Fixed vehicle ground pipes, to prevent Siege Towers becoming immovable when they are left empty during the Deployment Phase of a Siege Battle, then units were moved into the Siege Tower when the battle has started.
Fixed bug when ramming sideways into moving ship, which caused the ramming ship stick to target and strafe along with it in battles.
Reduced the chance of Naval units sometimes clipping through the ground or harbours / ports during Port Assault battles when attempting to disembark.
Fixed issue where armies would be stuck in Muster stance and could not exit that stance in Campaign modes.
Fixed case where spies could get stuck on top of fleets in Campaign modes.
Fixed rare post battle lockup in Campaign modes.
Improved unit pathfinding in Barbarian village battle maps (fixed no go zones).
Fix for Multiplayer Campaign lock up when the player was reinforcing an AI ally who was victorious in battle, causing the player to become stuck with no victory / continue / exit battle user interface functionality.
Fix for cultural influence bonus from the Shrine of Neptune building
Fix for “Zone of Controls” of hidden armies being visible to both players in head to head Multiplayer Campaign mode on mouse-over.
Assorted minor fixes to city battle maps.
Fix for "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day" achievement failing to unlock when its requirements were met in some situations.

From the Unconfirmed Gossip Department (http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/87075-Where-is-the-2nd-patch-you-were-supposed-to-release-today?p=721491&viewfull=1#post721491):


Hello,

So i just finished a pretty long Skype chat with a friend of mine from and old mmo who coincidentally now works at SEGA. I'm not going to tell you who he is or what position he holds nor am I going to provide any verification of this claim in the form of progress reports, memos or any other kind of internal documentation as that is illegal.

What I will say to you is that he went into great detail on why Rome was released in the state it was in. The game was not ready and CA knew it was definately not even finished in the gameplay department. They had plans to implement all those missing features that caused the outcry: no family tree, guard mode, auto fire, unit formations. The game was completely rushed out in order to meet that deadline and I can tell you (again no proof of this but feel free to believe me or not) that there was a great deal of friction between the CA team and Sega.

It doesn't excuse the state of the game but at least I understand why the game is pretty much obviously half done. Also on the point of console port, he refused to comment so take that as you will.

https://i.imgur.com/bfBYH6j.png

Sp4
09-09-2013, 20:44
I've heard that 'story' for like every game that came out since I started playing video games ^^

BroskiDerpman
09-09-2013, 20:44
Friction from CA and Sega over release dates was probably going to happen when it got moved back. Curse you Sega... Perhaps that is why the game looks like it's in a bad state for a full version as of now.

Though this might be fake and the game won't have half of the features from earlier TWs back.

Barkhorn1x
09-09-2013, 20:47
This does not surprise me. Now, the questions are:
- Will we get substantial patches that address those issues?
- Or will the patches address the horrible sore thumb stuff and we are stuck w/ half a fulfilled concept?

Time will tell.

Vuk
09-09-2013, 20:51
You know, I actually believe them. Often times greedy publishers will try to get developers to rush games out unfinished. That does not absolve CA of responsibility though. It is them making the game, and it is their responsibility to say 'no' to SEGA and not release them a working build to publish. It is their responsibility to demand more time to at least make sure that the game is in a working state before releasing it, even if it is not perfect. People expect the publisher to be unprincipled (they always are), but the developers should not be.
Grow some backbone CA. It is your reputation that is gonna take the hit, and if no one buys your next games, it will be you out of a job. Stand up for yourselves and your fans.

AntiDamascus
09-09-2013, 21:07
You know, I actually believe them. Often times greedy publishers will try to get developers to rush games out unfinished. That does not absolve CA of responsibility though. It is them making the game, and it is their responsibility to say 'no' to SEGA and not release them a working build to publish. It is their responsibility to demand more time to at least make sure that the game is in a working state before releasing it, even if it is not perfect. People expect the publisher to be unprincipled (they always are), but the developers should not be.
Grow some backbone CA. It is your reputation that is gonna take the hit, and if no one buys your next games, it will be you out of a job. Stand up for yourselves and your fans.

Does CA own the rights to Total War still or can Sega or someone else just hand it off to another developer to make?

Sigurd
09-09-2013, 21:16
Well... that's it. I can't get any further than with my Roman campaign (at 226 BC). Every time I fight a battle I can't get back to the campaign map. I am thrown out to the main menu and the most recent saves (made several) will do the same. I can load older saves, but it kinda defeats the point when you just can't progress in the game. I even loaded an older save and didn't fight a single battle, just stayed in the campaign map and moved past 226 BC to 225 BC.. but as soon as I fight a battle (able to finish the battle), I get thrown out to the main menu when loading the campaign map.

Anyone experienced anything similar?

Lemur
09-09-2013, 21:24
I opted-in for the beta patches, but here's the question: If I leave Steam on all day while I work (which I tend to do), how will I know if/when the beta patch is applied?

So I sit down at my desk, and I open up the library window in Steam, right-click on the Rome II app, and ...

... derp (http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/derp).

What do I check?

-edit-

Oh, interesting, I am no longer in the beta program, and it's not even an option anymore. The beta dun gone.

Only option is a code field for "private betas."

Anybody else checked this?

Spoonska
09-09-2013, 21:31
Would be sweet if someone maintained a thread that listed all patch changes old and new ;) .

Lemur
09-09-2013, 21:37
Would be sweet if someone maintained a thread that listed all patch changes old and new ;) .
All of the patch 1 details are here (http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_Notes), along with placeholders for the next two patches.

Spoonska
09-09-2013, 21:39
I meant ... on....the .org... You know what nevermind. I'll see myself out.

Lemur
09-09-2013, 21:46
I meant ... on....the .org...
I get it now, and I edited OP to reflect this very reasonable request. In fact, I'm going to sticky this, so's we all have a main place to discuss patches and hotfixes.

'Cause I think that's going to be a big part of our lives from now on.

CaptainCrunch
09-09-2013, 23:08
...If I leave Steam on all day while I work (which I tend to do), how will I know if/when the beta patch is applied?

In the upper right corner of the main menu the build number should change no? We're currently at V1.0.0 6858453644.

Suraknar
09-09-2013, 23:49
Bahhh....

The game has a few missing elements compared to previous ones but I think it is very playable and fun, and I am sure the rest will get irond out with patches post release. CA will not let the quality of the series that we have all come to appreciate go down.

And I think it is not worth it to be making a big fuss about it. Constructive Critisizm yes, but fussing will not serve any purpose.

Just my two cents :)

fallen851
09-10-2013, 05:08
You know, I actually believe them. Often times greedy publishers will try to get developers to rush games out unfinished. That does not absolve CA of responsibility though. It is them making the game, and it is their responsibility to say 'no' to SEGA and not release them a working build to publish. It is their responsibility to demand more time to at least make sure that the game is in a working state before releasing it, even if it is not perfect. People expect the publisher to be unprincipled (they always are), but the developers should not be.
Grow some backbone CA. It is your reputation that is gonna take the hit, and if no one buys your next games, it will be you out of a job. Stand up for yourselves and your fans.

It might have been Sega asking CA how much time they needed for Rome II, and CA stating "we need X amount of time." Sega then provides that amount of time and creates their yearly budget with that in mind. CA can't finish it in time (I mean, how often do contractors finish on time... rarely...) and Sega says "no extensions, you told us you needed X amount of time and we gave it to you." Game gets released as is... in this case the blame lies solely with the developer.

Either way, it was a poorly managed by one or both parties and the result is an unfinished game. A company that has a reputation of releasing superior products soils it very quickly when they release mediocre products. In fact, releasing mediocre products is first step that many great companies take that ultimately leads to their failure. Rome II still has a lot going for it though if CA commits to the patches, and does more than fix bugs with them.

Finally, and I don't know if CA was responsible for this or Sega, but the marketing department had way too much money for all the fancy videos, that could have gone into more coders, artists, ect... those buffoons in rally point were a complete waste.

gedingradski
09-10-2013, 06:31
Finally, and I don't know if CA was responsible for this or Sega, but the marketing department had way too much money for all the fancy videos, that could have gone into more coders, artists, ect... those buffoons in rally point were a complete waste. - fallen851

Couldn't agree more. Waste of time and money and I think the over-hype kind of worked against them considering how disappointed many people are. They built up the expectation and grossly under-delivered.

This trend of releasing half-finished games and then fixing it via patches is a transparent money grab, which I think is even more on the nose after their boasting of how RTW2 pre-sales out performed the STW2 pre-sale. Yay... they made so much monies... congratulations?...

I hope it gets better, but I'm not holding my breath. EBII will probably be out and updated before this thing ever gets good ;-)

quadalpha
09-10-2013, 07:42
Their marketing materials actually lowered expectations on here, being the smart forum and all.

Myth
09-10-2013, 10:25
Look guys, everything that is not right in Rome II can be fixed with patches, so I'm feeling very confident. Lusted is an ex modder, he is one of us, the unwashed gamer masses. Paying attention to community feedback and lots of after sales support will get the game to the level it needs to be. Much better than Jay Wilson's "I FELT THIS IS THE WAY DIABLO IS MEANT TO BE PLAYED SO STFU AND GIVE ME MONEY!"

ReluctantSamurai
09-10-2013, 11:08
Look guys, everything that is not right in Rome II can be fixed with patches

This is am not so sure about:book2:

I'm not a programmer type so I don't know if things like unit blob in melee combat, or the apparent lack of a meaningful family tree, and of course the brain-dead AI, can be fixed with patching. I'm surprised you've made no mention of the capture-the-flag fiasco...if that feature is not removed from field battles, I'm afraid you will never see any R2 AAR's from ReluctantSamurai:no:

The Stranger
09-10-2013, 11:23
"Rome Wasn't Built in a Day"

But Rome 2 was...

:laugh2:

BroskiDerpman
09-10-2013, 11:40
Lusted is just one of those unit designers you can tell by it because of the balance in game. XD

Ok, ok...


One of the annoyances is leveling up armies and families, I like how Shogun 2 actually shows where you can go right there clearly.

Everything will not be fixed by patches, even Shogun 2 wasn't...

The game mechanics just look completely dull and what seems to be the ai blobing all it's units to rush the capture point. No point in one more turn, just want to get done with it.

Myth
09-10-2013, 12:00
This is am not so sure about:book2:

I'm not a programmer type so I don't know if things like unit blob in melee combat, or the apparent lack of a meaningful family tree, and of course the brain-dead AI, can be fixed with patching. I'm surprised you've made no mention of the capture-the-flag fiasco...if that feature is not removed from field battles, I'm afraid you will never see any R2 AAR's from ReluctantSamurai:no:

Hmm, I had one field battle with a capture point but that was in the tutorial where the game made me fortify on the campaign map. When you fort up the game gives you a capture point to defend in your own fort.

I had one field battle versus 4 units in a heavily forested area and I didn't see any capture points, I won it the good old fashioned way and chased the remnants with my general. All my other battles were siege assaults, some of which I ARed.

As I play more of the game I'll give more insight, as I said


Lusted is just one of those unit designers you can tell by it because of the balance in game. XD

Ok, ok...


One of the annoyances is leveling up armies and families, I like how Shogun 2 actually shows where you can go right there clearly.

Everything will not be fixed by patches, even Shogun 2 wasn't...

The game mechanics just look completely dull and what seems to be the ai blobing all it's units to rush the capture point. No point in one more turn, just want to get done with it.

Dude you haven't even played the game how can you talk about the game mechanics? I found nothing dull about the game and if anything, there is plenty of new things to discover before one can say they've mastered it to the level of R1 or M2TW. In the older games you didn't know at the start about how to read the city details view, how to plan your buildings, what is worth getting when, what resources and merchants do and so on. Rome II is more complex and better balanced as far as game mechancis go, and that includes SII and it's silly naval based trade nodes and how you can't start realm divide because trade is the only thing that gives you money to support your stacks.

The AI that I played against didn't blob, but was rather more defensive and harder to bait. I assaulted Syracuse and got minced to bits by hoplite reinforcements coming from the flank (I had not recruited enough units because I was confident and hadn't scouted the hidden stack that would reinfoce the city). Once I play 150 turns I'll be able to give better insight but I think overall Rome II is a great Total War game and a lot of the things that are annoying can and will be fixed.

BroskiDerpman
09-10-2013, 12:03
I don't need to play the game to know the game just like how I knew what Shogun 2 gameplay felt like before even playing it.

Watch Volound's Legendary campaign or some other and watch how the ai gets steamrolled worse than Shogun 2.

Oh in Shogun 2 farming, markets and such were my income the whole game, never trusted trade till late game with vassals.

Balance? Just no....

Ai does run it's units in a blob to capture a city's point.

To say the game is great and superior to the older TWs and mods is just quite strange.

Myth
09-10-2013, 13:13
I was not talking about mods. It's still pretty hard to play SS and all the free stacks the AI gets, not to mention if you turn on BGR. EB is a great mod but i have campaign map lag and I can't stand that. Anyway I was comparing it to the vanilla older games.

Shogun 2 I didn't enjoy that much because of the limited, small setting, because of the artificial realm divide mechanic, because all the units are the same and because some factions were nigh-on-impossible while others steamrolled.

The AI does and will get steamrolled, I know. Show me a TW game where you don't do that. In RTW I could get Greece and Sicilly as the Brutii, trigger the Marian reforms from Carthage and by the year 230 BC no faction on the map could stop my endless stacks of marian legionaires. How is that not steamrolling? In vanilla M2TW you can pick any faction and win the entire map with just generals and crusades/jihads if you want.

For me Rome II is interesting and entertaining and so long as there is a limit to my speed of blitzing the map and some benefit to keeping AI factions around (for a time at least), I'm having fun.

Jacque Schtrapp
09-10-2013, 15:41
Hmm, I had one field battle with a capture point but that was in the tutorial where the game made me fortify on the campaign map. When you fort up the game gives you a capture point to defend in your own fort.

I had one field battle versus 4 units in a heavily forested area and I didn't see any capture points, I won it the good old fashioned way and chased the remnants with my general. All my other battles were siege assaults, some of which I ARed.

Playing as Egypt, I was besieging a city in the desert when the owner happened by and decided to relieve the siege by attacking me. The battlefield is a desert map and it is me vs. an AI army and AI garrison which out number me about 2-1. I find the only hill around and put my army on top of it. Next thing I know, there is a timer counting down at the top of the screen and I lose the battle because I didn't sit in the dead middle of the map and defend some empty sand while allowing myself to be surrounded. Until that time, I didn't even know this existed. Quite possibly the dumbest "feature" I've ever seen in a TW game.

ReluctantSamurai
09-10-2013, 16:16
Rome II is interesting and entertaining and so long as there is a limit to my speed of blitzing the map

There is a mechanism to slow down blitzing. I'm not sure it's the best way to do it, but according to some, it does work. Every time you capture an enemy town/city, you take a loyalty hit (there is a small discussion about the amounts in another thread) and if you just move your conquering army elsewhere, you have to deal with rebellion. If you capture multiple areas on the same turn, the % loyalty hit will stack.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?145445-The-RTW-II-Economy-Research-Tips-and-Strategies (post #6)


I was besieging a city in the desert when the owner happened by and decided to relieve the siege by attacking me

:laugh4:

But what is not funny is that the capture point (flag) prevented proper deployment determined by army strength and terrain. A virtual game-breaker for someone who plays using maneuver to fight superior numbers....:no:

Spoonska
09-10-2013, 16:38
Another patch deployed on steam


Patch 1.5 Contains one fix:
- Should improve Campaign Map frame rate in the majority of cases for those people with high-end graphics cards combined with mid-range CPUs. Those people who have noted high frame rates in battle but single-figure frame rates during Campaign Map play should see a notable increase in performance.

I'm hoping this helps me out. With last Friday's patch my Battle FPS went up but my Campaign FPS got crippled in many areas.


Edit: Also Patch 2 delayed till next week I guess


We have taken the decision to move back Patch 2 slightly to increase the amount of fixes included in it. We will have more news on it later this week

Lemur
09-10-2013, 17:31
Another patch deployed on steam
Hmm, nothing up on their internal patch page (http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_Notes) just yet ...

-edit-

Oh, okay, I see it now that I'm at the PC with Steam; 1.5 is a beta (http://www.ibtimes.com/how-download-total-war-rome-2-patch-15-beta-1403789).

BroskiDerpman
09-10-2013, 19:35
Hoping the patches improve the game bit by bit to make the game go from what seems to be the general opinion of "ok" to an "this is a good TW game" Somewhat like Angry Joe's thoughts on Rome 2.

Lemur
09-10-2013, 19:39
I think the extremely high quality of Shogun 2 is part of what makes Rome 2 such a bitter pill to swallow. CA demonstrated focus and competence ... and then didn't.

BroskiDerpman
09-10-2013, 19:48
I think you hit part of the nail. Shogun 2 for a vanilla game was quite immersive and had that fun gamey factor to it. (I honestly liked realm divide, a real Total War)

The units felt unique though limited in numbers, I really just don't know what makes the game addictive. I still got to try out some mods for it too.

Here's hoping for a complete Rome 2 later on. Don't know about you guys but the map to me feels pretty tiny compared to Rome 1 mods, Med 2 mods, or Empire.

Also, people might like it as in Rome 2 as the CA devs said, they want it to be more sandbox like. That might explain why some people like it; the ability to mould Antiquity to your likings. Plus what seems to be a less challenging ai who wants to be your vassal. (CA can't win eh? XD)

Though if one likes sandbox I don't think TW is the right choice.

Though of course I hope the game gets well patched and supported before moving on as Rome is CA's most iconic game.

fallen851
09-11-2013, 05:13
This is am not so sure about:book2:

I'm not a programmer type so I don't know if things like unit blob in melee combat, or the apparent lack of a meaningful family tree, and of course the brain-dead AI, can be fixed with patching. I'm surprised you've made no mention of the capture-the-flag fiasco...if that feature is not removed from field battles, I'm afraid you will never see any R2 AAR's from ReluctantSamurai:no:

If not patches, perhaps expansions?

All I can say is, I'm really looking forward to EBII regardless if Rome II pans out.

hoom
09-11-2013, 15:59
Total War: Rome2 AI standalone expansion pack
Remove battle cap point DLC
Grouping buttons that work DLC
Unit balance that makes combat work DLC (order now & get free charging unit AI DLC)

Lemur
09-11-2013, 16:31
Report: I managed to play an hour last night with the 1.5 beta patch. It made a huge difference in terms of campaign map lag and general performance. Seems like some programmer somewhere in CA has his or her head screwed on correctly.

Only tested campaign elements, (no time for a serious battle) but there was big improvement. I can only hope this is the beginning of a good trend.

CaptainCrunch
09-11-2013, 17:59
New patch is out, build number v1.0.0 6955454492, 'bout the same size as the previous.

Unfortunately, so far I can't echo Lemur's experience with improved campaign map lag from the beta. I'm still getting it whenever I select a character and their movement area gets highlighted. Will test further and see if I notice any improvements elsewhere...

Ituralde
09-12-2013, 10:48
Funnily enough I started getting campaing map lag yesterday. The map would freeze up roughly every 10 to 15 secondes no matter what I did. Luckily downloading the latest BETA drivers for my graphics card fixed the issue. I had wanted to do that anyway, as a friend gave me his old ATI 5750. It's old I know, but with the new drivers the battles were smooth as well. This is on low settings though.

Barkhorn1x
09-12-2013, 12:58
I tested last night w/ the beta patch and two things that gave me huge lag
- strat map transition
- diplomacy map transition

...are now much improved and off my annoyance list.

So, for me at least, so far so good.

JeromeBaker
09-12-2013, 16:04
Pre 2nd patch the worst issue I had was randomly my diplomacy screen would open and some of the buttons would freeze and be unclickable. Sometimes I would have to restart the program as there was no way for me to click out of the diplomacy screen. I kept trying to recreate that issue by repeatedly opening the diplomacy screen post patch and so far no issues in any of my saved campaigns. I cant speak to any improvement in lag as I didnt really have any issues there.

Glad to hear that some people are seeing improvements. It sounds like CA is getting a little traction with this 2nd patch; I hope it continues.

SwordsMaster
09-12-2013, 16:17
Hah! Have a crash every time i personally fight the siege of Tarraco since the patch... Not sure what happened. Not sure if it would have happened without the patch. Playing as Carthage

Spoonska
09-13-2013, 15:38
Patch 2 is now in beta on steam. Now this is what I call a patch.

Here are the patch notes for Total War: ROME II- Patch 2 ('''CURRENTLY IN BETA''' as of 13/09/2013):



'''Warning: Your current Save Games will work with Patch 2, but Save Games created or overwritten in Patch 2 will be incompatible with previous versions of Total War: ROME II.'''


'''Technical and Performance Issues'''

*Campaign performance optimisations.
*Campaign AI round time improvements (greatest effect during early game).
*A new "Limited" option has been added to the "Show AI Player Moves" settings in Single Player an Multiplayer Campaign modes, this enables the player to see all movement of enemy factions, all movement within the players regions, and all movement within sea that the player has ports in during the AI turns.
*Improved AI recruitment decisions in Campaign modes. Further improvements planned for subsequent patches.
*Pathfinding optimisation on the Campaign Map.
*Fix for "Level of Detail" distances scaling incorrectly when the "Field of View" is changed which reduces the chance of the "Intelligent Zoom" [N] key, causing "zombie like” low quality textures on unit faces in battles.
*A new warning message has been added to loading screen to inform the player when graphics memory is running low, and the game is downgrading the players graphics settings. This can be overriden, allowing the game to use system memory for graphics (VRAM) by ticking the "Unlimited video memory" option in the graphics menu.
*Increased the frame rate and reduced frame stuttering in battles on certain GPUs.
*Improved compatibility for graphics cards with multiple GPUs.
*Added earlier Multiplayer Campaign resyncronisation detection, upon loading save games which allows resyncronisation in more cases.
*More conservative out-of-the-box graphics settings and resolution for DirectX 10 and 11 on Mobile GPUs
*Improved the processing speed of the default deployment placement, reducing battle loading times on some battle maps.
*Fixed battle crash bug caused by the default deployment placement.
*Crash fix for when the player placed the mouse over a garrison force of a region in Campaign mode.
*Fix for crash loading save games that were created on the "settlement captured" screen in Campaign modes.
*Fix for a crash when holding the [SHIFT] and [CTRL] keys down, and selecting a unit card, when no unit cards where previously selected in Campaign and Battle modes.
*Fix for crash caused by forming a Confederation in Campaign modes.
*Some desyncronisations have been fixed in multiplayer city / port assault battles.
*Crash fix for when multiple AI reinforcements arrive in a single player siege battle in Campaign mode.
*Fix for crash when selecting Custom Battle mode after fighting several different Multiplayer battles.
*Fix for a crash in 4v4 custom or multiplayer battles caused by the battle AI.
*Fix for crash when cancelling a game request for a password protected game whilst in a Multiplayer battle lobby.
*Fix some crashes in multiplayer campaign mode, when one player quit the game, it would cause the other player to crash.
*Fixed a Multiplayer crash which happened when a client joined a lobby and was being allocated to the wrong slot.
*Fix for a very rare crash when launching a new campaign.
*Fixed rare battlefield loading lockup.
*Fix for a rare crash caused by animal handlers in battles.
*Fix for crash that happens when AI unit triggers raise banner special ability when no human units are selected in battles.


'''Gameplay Improvements'''
*Reduced infantry run speed, charge speed and acceleration in battles.
*The low level casualty moral penalties have been significantly reduced in battles.
*Improved balancing for Food and Squalor in Campaign Mode.
*Campaign AI is more likely to make a stand when defending its final settlement, but may still seek out another home, if they fear losing the final battle.
*Encampments battles are no longer incorrectly merged with Coastal battles, which lead to forts floating in the air when a friendly navy reinforced an army in the Fortification stance.
*Improved ship movement speeds in battles.
*Shock cavalry run speed and charge speed have been increased in battles.
*Increased flanking morale penalties.
*Added icons to indicate activity in the Technology and Faction screens during a campaign.
*Fix for the boarding/ramming button which showed the incorrect state in certain circumstances in battles.
*Fix for a bug that sometimes made it impossible to exchange units between a transported land force and another land force on the Campaign map.
*Fix for armies on the sea getting stuck in patrol stance in Campaign modes.
*Fixed splitting an embedded army from a navy which sometimes caused the player to get stuck in the Prologue Campaign.
*Some missions in single player and multiplayer Campaign have been fixed and now execute correctly.
*When a settlement is captured via a siege battle, with a friendly naval fleet blockading its port, the ownership of the port is now changed correctly to the friendly navy fleet on capture.
*Fix for AI taking inappropriate sized siege equipment into battle when the user changed the settlement wall height, via the map selection settings, in Custom Battle mode.
*Fix for defending armies under AI control grouping together at the edge of their deployment zone, during Ambush battles when the player choses to wait before attacking them.
*Improved AI and scripting in the Raphia Historical Battle.
*Fixed a bug preventing the player from progressing in The Invasion of Samnium prologue chapter, if they had spent all of their funds before being instructed to recruit a General (and therefore having no funds to do so).
*The Attribute increases for an agent accompanying an army now activate its associated effects on the general of that army in Campaign modes.
*Improved AI collision detection with Deployables in battle.
*In Multiplayer Campaign mode, one player can no longer cancel recruitment during the other players turn.
*The order of events leading up to the Battle of Bovianum in the prologue have been re-scripted. The player now gets multiple turns to construct siege equipment.
*Fixed issues with not enough time being given for certain advisor lines to play in different languages in the prologue.
*Fix for units floating in the air while climbing siege towers in battle, when the tower is placed on a slope.
*Attacking siege ladders will no longer clip through the gate house in the siege on Bovianum battle during The Invasion of Samnium chapter in Prologue Campaign.
*The victory screen in Multiplayer Campaign mode now shows the correct title for both players.
*The Basilica of Vulcan religious building now applies the correct bonus to recruitment cost reduction in Campaign Mode.
*Added level indicators to the Sanctuary of Austro & Sanctuary of Fraujaz shrines in Campaign mode and the Encyclopaedia.
*Fix for settlement expansion trapping / blocking units movement on the campaign map in very rare cases.
*Improved the terrain in a small Barbarian city battle map.
*Minor bug fixes for Roman and Barbarian siege battle maps.
*During battles, players are no longer able to un-pause the game while in the options menus.


'''Usability improvements'''

*In Campaign mode, exempting a province from tax will no longer incorrectly adjust the food number in the province info panel left side of the screen.
*Improved multiplayer lobby discovery, reducing the chance of finding *multiplayer lobbies with the wrong battle type.
*Removed the red tint from the sky in battles.
*Fix for "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day" achievement failing to unlock when its requirements were met in some situations.
*The "Quaestor" achievement should now unlock correctly, when completing the Prologue campaign
*Fixed the inability to select the previous faction, when an army is automatically loaded due to a battle type change during battle setup.
*Improved the clarity of stats displayed for Slaves Economic Effect when placing the mouse over "Slaves" in the Province Details panel on the Campaign map.
*Fix for rare cases of broken save games in Campaign mode.
*Fix for Campaign mode bug, where a hostile agent and the players' ship became stuck in the same position, with neither one able to move.
*Fix for very rare agent pathfinding issue, which caused the game progression to become impossible in Campaign modes.
*Removed the ability to loading the wrong type of units into a battle from a saved army pre-set in Custom Battle mode.
*In Multiplayer battle setup, unit restrictions related to "Battle type" are no longer desynchronised between the host and client, so only the correct units can be chosen.
*Defending armies in an Ambush Battle can no longer load an army containing *Fixed Artillery and other Siege Equipment.
*Fixed the tooltip displayed when placing the mouse over the garrison in enemy settlements, while the settlement is under siege.
*The Public Order "Change per turn" stat is now displayed as the sum of all of its "Contributing Factors" on the Province Info panel in Campaign mode.
*Right-clicking on the Aggressive, Balanced and Protective stance buttons when Autoresolving a battle in campaign mode will now take the player to the Encyclopedia, where these stances are explained in more detail.
*More detailed descriptions added to the tooltips for the "Occupy, Loot and Raze" buttons after successfully capturing a settlement on the Campaign map.
*Improved icons for Province Effects in Campaign mode.
*Fixed an error with uploading stats when a multiplayer battle was ended prematurely.
*The "Force March" movement effect on the campaign map (looks like a whirlwind) are now correctly removed from the screen when the AI move their army.
*Correction to the Assault Hexeres unit card in the Parthia faction during battles, which had no colour mask and appeared black.
*The buttons to change pages in the Leaderboards menu have been fixed, so more players can be seen on the Leaderboards.
*The Provinces list in Campaign mode can now be scrolled with the mouse wheel.
*Units in a recruitment queue, in a province with its capital under siege, now have an "infinity sign" icon to indicate that the "turns to recruit" is infinite while the siege is maintained in Campaign mode.
*In the "Controls" menu under the "Settings" option in the main menu, when the player modifies the keyboard controls, and saves them, the new name for these controls is now replaces the "Classic Total War" name.
*Added a tooltip to say "Left-click to remove unit from recruitment queue" for units that are queued for hire in Campaign mode.
*Added a tooltip to make ruined buildings more obvious in Campaign mode.
*Added tooltips to "Weather" and "Time of Day" settings in the Custom Battle menu.
*Fixes and corrections for text in the encyclopaedia have been made.
*Minor text and grammar corrections in Campaign Modes.
*Fix for some German text not fitting into the available text space in the campaign mode user interface.
*Improved text formatting in the Objectives panel in Campaign mode.
*Added some localisation text fixes for French, Italian, German, Spanish, Czech, Russian, Polish and Turkish.
*Fixed some missing text on the Diplomacy screen in Campaign modes.
*Added white outline to Armoured Legionaries unit cards in battle.

BroskiDerpman
09-13-2013, 15:49
Oh my, that is indeed an improvement!

If CA rolls more of these patches out I'll be happy.

Bramborough
09-13-2013, 16:24
Yeah, that's a pretty substantive patch. Good stuff.

Time to take the plunge, Broski....you know you want to...

BroskiDerpman
09-13-2013, 16:37
@Bram

I'll take it when there's a sale or Gold edition as always, I have no urge as of now to try out the game again. :shame:

Barkhorn1x
09-13-2013, 17:42
Now that's a meaty patch!!! Beta here I come.

Hooahguy
09-13-2013, 20:25
Very excited to test out this new patch, though I might wait until Radious updates his mod, which he said will be soon.

Bramborough
09-13-2013, 20:38
Have downloaded the beta Patch 2 and have spent the last couple of hours playing with it.

Visible improvement.

The graphics adjustment and limited-AI-moves features are helpful. The AI turn does seem to be a little faster, but that might be psychological, as at least I don't have to watch a bunch of irrelevant client-state units just wander about their territory. Overall, the game just feels more stable.

UI-wise, some nice (albeit small) additions. The 100-order provinces display their public order surplus instead of just 0, so it's a lot easier to see at a glance how much room you have to play with if you want to make some building changes. The tech tree button now displays #turns remaining to research current tech.

Hooahguy
09-13-2013, 20:42
Nice, thanks for the update. Anything else you noticed was improved?

BroskiDerpman
09-13-2013, 20:43
I wonder what does the limited ai moves feature do? Could you perhaps explain it?

hoom
09-14-2013, 03:25
Bunch of good changes here.
Small things making nice differences.
Only fought 1 battle yet, was pretty straightforward so not sure if it really felt better but I like the sounds of the slower movement, better morale etc.

Zatoichi
09-14-2013, 09:09
I wonder what does the limited ai moves feature do? Could you perhaps explain it?

It seems you only see moves on the campaign map in your neighbouring territories, rather than with the full 'follow AI' setting where you see all moves made across the map wherever you have trade routes/allies, which could get quite time consuming when added on to the already long turn times.

At least that's been my experience of it so far at least. It's a decent compromise in my opinion. Initial AI turn times are much quicker too in the campaign I restarted than previously - I'm not sure I'll get to finish one at the rate the patches are being deployed, so this is a good way of trying out each faction I guess.

As for the rest of the patch, the most striking thing I've noticed was the improved look of battles, which surprised me because I thought they looked good already - I still think the killing speed needs to be slowed down a bit, and the morale buffed a bit as well to keep the battles going on longer. The other little UI tweaks are welcome too as Bramborough said. I wasn't suffering from any game-stopping performance issues or crashes that got fixed so I can't really comment on them.

All in all, this is a very good beta patch - I'm looking forward to see what things they address next.

Sigurd
09-15-2013, 10:36
I experience a few CTDs during AI movement. Expect this to be better in the official release.

fallen851
09-15-2013, 17:52
Happy they are actually patching the game, but it didn't take long for them to abandon the weekly patches... CA seems incapable on actually thinking out making a statement before making it, resulting in an inability to follow through.

Hopefully they won't abandon the idea of patching the game to reflect player feedback too.

AntiDamascus
09-15-2013, 18:00
Hopefully it means the stuff they want to patch now takes longer than a week to fix v0v

Bramborough
09-16-2013, 17:40
I wonder what does the limited ai moves feature do? Could you perhaps explain it?

Zatoichi pretty much nailed it. Removes the moves of clients/allies, as well as movement of units in view of your trade routes. Preserves the view of enemies' moves, as well as the movement of any units within your own territory.

Bramborough
09-16-2013, 17:43
Nice, thanks for the update. Anything else you noticed was improved?

Lol not yet...took a 2-day break for football games. I could talk a bit about Bama-A&M or the Seahawks, but I guess that'd be outside the forum scope....

Zatoichi
09-17-2013, 12:36
Patch 2 has been released - apparently there are no changes from the beta patch released last week.

Barkhorn1x
09-17-2013, 16:35
Patch 2 has been released - apparently there are no changes from the beta patch released last week.

...and I guess if you d/l'd the beta then you are up to date as there were no d/ls waiting for me this morning.

jbillybrack
09-17-2013, 17:25
The patch has significantly decreased end of turn wait times

Sp4
09-17-2013, 17:29
In SP yes. In MP it's still like 4 or 5 minutes.

Sweavenger
09-17-2013, 19:27
Wow, this patch really improved gameplay for me! Especially regarding end-of-turn time. Cut from about 5(?) min to around 1, which is quite Ok.

Hooahguy
09-18-2013, 13:35
This was posted by CA onto Reddit regarding the next patch and the future:


Heya guys, Just wanted to post up a thread that went up recently in terms of what we are working on next, gameplay-wise. I hope this information helps clear things up and that we are listening to feedback and it has been nothing but appreciated. You can find this thread here: http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/94255-Battle-and-Unit-teams-What-we-are-working-on[1]
Or, if you don't mind, I will copy and post the thread here: "As you have already heard, the TW team is currently working flat out to fix issues with the game. The highest priority has been given to technical and performance issues, but we are also working on changes that affect AI performance (on battle and campaign).
It’s worth noting that the issues some players are reporting regarding AI behaviour are primarily a result of bugs influencing the input the AI receives before deciding how to react. The brain itself is working but the info it gets isn’t always appropriate.
Like a soccer forward whose team don’t always manage to get the passes to him, he can do all the incredible shots on goal he likes, but he’s going to look silly without a ball.
Of course, that makes no difference to the player, because the end effect is the same, the AI doesn’t perform as it should in some situations. However, it does mean that as various other fixes go in the AI starts getting the right info and you’ll start seeing those issues go away.
Because AI changes have to be effective across all situations in the game, and not create any knock-on problems, they are much more complicated to test, so it’s not always possible to release updates that affect the AI as quickly as we would like – but we are doing everything we can. Over the coming weeks you will begin to notice changes to the AI in campaign and battles as we patch the game. We will also let you know more about those changes as we roll them out.
Beyond technical & AI considerations, various gameplay issues have also been raised, and we wanted to comment on just a few of these, and make a start by explaining some of our thinking behind what’s in the game, and what we intend to do in the near future.
We’ll comment on campaign issues soon, but first – battles.
Capture Points
There has been a lot of hostility to capture points – at least outside of standard siege battles. The battle design plan was for 2 main instances of this kind of battle:
First, when you have a combined battle (land forces and navy fighting on an open field). The capture point was added to force a fight for control of the land, avoiding the situation where a defender, with a reinforcing navy, would be untouchable and thus undefeatable for an attacker without a navy.
The second situation was for an attack on an over-extended enemy army caught in “Forced March” stance. Here the capture point was introduced to reduce defender advantage, and introduce a change in tactics, requiring the defender - who was meant to be on the back foot & unprepared - to defend positions they may not want to defend.
Outside of settlement sieges, the plan was to create a variety of battle experiences in specific circumstances, with a variety of tactical scenarios. The frequency of capture point battles was not intended to be high.
So for patches 3 and onwards, we’re currently testing a number of changes:
First off, attacks on armies in forced march will be ambush battles instead. Ambushes are very intense and have a clear penalty to the defender who is attacked as they are more likely to be overwhelmed by well-prepared attacking forces. It is important there’s a risk to committing to a Forced March stance, and this should help make that more apparent.
Secondly for combined battles, we’ll make sure a capture point only appears when there actually is a reinforcing defender navy taking part in the battle. In all other combined battle instances the capture point will not be present. Thirdly we’re increasing the time required to capture the point, to improve the gameplay in the few remaining situations that instigate capture point battles. Small forces making a dash for a strategic position while the rest of the enemy is engaged and distracted should still be a viable and creative tactic if it can be pulled off, but this change will increase the chance of both sides reacting to that in a more realistic way.
Fourth, follow up attacks - attacking a defeated, retreating army - will be treated as a normal battle with any penalties that are accrued as a result of campaign game situation, and the inability to retreat any further without being destroyed.
As a result of all these changes, the frequency of capture point battles should be significantly reduced. We are looking at alternative mechanics to resolve combined land & naval battles. We will talk more about this when we feel we have tested and tried out the possibilities and settled on the best solution.
Guard Mode and Unit ‘Blobbiness’
A number of people have expressed disappointment that we have removed the Guard Mode button. In fact (as many have realised), guard mode behaviour has not been removed – it is now an inherent property of units: they have guard mode behaviour by default. If you want units to chase down routers & retreaters, you have to order them to do so. However, some unintended pursuit actions are occurring and will be fixed in upcoming patches. This should improve some of the line cohesion issues people have been raising. Also, we have fixed an animation control code bug where formed units have not been fighting in a formed manner, causing some “blobbing” issues.
The design intention was to have some unit types (e.g. some less disciplined barbarians) fight in an unformed manner, so on contact that unit would ‘collapse’ into the enemy to find individual targets. Formed units (e.g. your disciplined Roman legionary) are intended to fight in a more rigid manner and try to hold their formation cohesion as much as possible (meaning some unengaged men would stand in position and not seek an enemy target). A specific formed combat bug has been fixed in the forthcoming patch 3, which should significantly improve formed melee behaviour.
We also intended for some traditionally unruly units to not behave as though in guard mode, but instead be undisciplined in their behaviour, and disregard attempts at holding the line if their opponents retreat or route. We are looking at the behaviour of this currently.
Speed of Battles
In terms of battle speed, we are looking to tweak combat with on-going stat balance improvements. We are looking at reducing some run speeds, combat speed, and some morale balancing, but of course it depends on the campaign situation too – strong, disciplined troops are intended to rout light undisciplined men with ease. We also wanted to allow scope for the campaign-derived morale buffs to be significant, but not overpowered. This means un-buffed morale for some weaker/ lighter units needs attention… stat balance updates are coming. We’re also looking at improving missile balance overall.
The first part of this rebalance is in patch 2 with reduction to infantry run speed and tweaks to the morale system with more significant changes in patch 3. We’ll be keeping an eye on community feedback after these patches come out and make further changes based on that.
Special Abilities
A variety of opinions have been expressed about special abilities. To be clear, our design intent is that they are not necessarily meant to turn the tide of battle on their own, nor are most meant to be used all the time and frequently throughout a battle. The design is for them to be used in certain circumstances to provide a reasonable bonus, and for there to be real choice in when players use them. They are not meant to be “magical” and are based on real world behaviour expressed in a game setting. For example: Rallying calls to units, urging your tired troops to fight harder, getting men to run faster by pushing themselves to the limit, calling on their loyalty, threatening them and so on.
We are looking at making a number of changes, particularly in relation to the cool down times and the effects of some abilities. This is a current focus of ours and once we have more definitive plans of what we will be doing with them balance wise we will let you know. Do expect to see changes in patch 3 and upcoming patches. We are also looking at changes to when and how some abilities are triggered and improving their behaviours. These changes can’t always be instant as there are interconnections between Campaign and Battle.
Naval Battles
Many have raised concerns about the balance between transported units and naval ships in naval battles. We are looking at relative strengths of these as well as potential changes on the campaign map as well to improve this situation.
The design intent was that transported armies are weak and vulnerable. Thus moving an army without an escorting fleet should be a bigger risk if they encounter a sufficiently well-armed attacking force. We are looking to address this issue. You will see the first parts of a series of changes in both patches 2 and 3 with further changes occurring in later patches. Some of these changes need to be made across both campaign and battle so aren’t trivial to achieve.
PS: On a point of History
We always look to history for inspiration and if there is any mention of something that seems fun we use that as a basis for a game mechanic. As an example some people have asked where we got the idea for flaming javelins from. Our source in this case was primary. Please refer to Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars.
We hope this not only shows you all that we are looking at raised issues and are making changes to address them but also the design intention behind some of the features in the game as well. These changes will not all come in one update, but we have a number of updates planned already and are working on those full time. Thank you for taking time to read this and for your continued support."
Thank you for taking the time to read this, Reddit!<3

Myth
09-18-2013, 14:09
Look's like they're paying attention and imroving the game :2thumbsup: I hope they fix the horrible siege defense lag I'm getting on occasion.

Hooahguy
09-18-2013, 14:53
I hope so too, but this makes me really happy, it truly looks like they are putting in the effort to listen to the community.


Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk - now Free (http://tapatalk.com/m?id=1)

Barkhorn1x
09-18-2013, 15:02
Look's like they're paying attention and imroving the game :2thumbsup: I hope they fix the horrible siege defense lag I'm getting on occasion.

Yes, agree and I am happy to see the new capture point treatment and the commitment to address all issues.

Spoonska
09-18-2013, 15:10
I like the idea to turn Forced March attacks into ambushes, but have they ever mentioned anything about the AI always being in forced march? It's pretty easy to catch the AI in forced march at the beginning of a new turn. I just don't want every other battle to be an ambush.

Ituralde
09-19-2013, 08:19
I was really looking forward to the second patch, after reading the patch notes. And while the end of turn time has lowered and I appreciate the UI differences, I've had three CTDs in as many hours after the patch, whereas I had none before it. So can't really comment on AI improvements.

I hope they release hotfixes and I'm looking forward to the further improvement!

Sigurd
09-19-2013, 16:36
I was really looking forward to the second patch, after reading the patch notes. And while the end of turn time has lowered and I appreciate the UI differences, I've had three CTDs in as many hours after the patch, whereas I had none before it. So can't really comment on AI improvements.

I hope they release hotfixes and I'm looking forward to the further improvement!
Same happened to me... I was however trying to continue on my Roman campaign. At one point I couldn't progress as it always CTD'ed during AI movement.
I started a new campaign and played a few hours without having a single CTD.
Then I read the notes that saved games wouldn't work... unless you saved them again/overwrote them.
Aha... loaded my 50 turn Rome campaign, saved it to the cloud, exited the game, reloaded the game from the cloud and haven't had a single CTD since.

Sp4
09-19-2013, 16:47
Look's like they're paying attention and imroving the game :2thumbsup: I hope they fix the horrible siege defense lag I'm getting on occasion.

Oh god yay. And I thought I was the only one with my crap computer.

JeromeBaker
09-19-2013, 20:35
Question on video settings.

I know pre 2nd patch it was suggessted to lower your graphic settings to aid in performance as the highest end setting was FUBAR.

Has this been addressed and/or fixed in the 2nd patch? Are people running ultra settings now without issue?

thnx

Bramborough
09-19-2013, 20:54
Question on video settings.

I know pre 2nd patch it was suggessted to lower your graphic settings to aid in performance as the highest end setting was FUBAR.

Has this been addressed and/or fixed in the 2nd patch? Are people running ultra settings now without issue?

thnx

I don't know about "fixed", but at least "addressed".

Upon release, the game seemed to default to "Extreme" (it did in my case, anyway). What happens now is that upon loading the campaign (and again at the start of each battle), the game adjusts graphics settings to a level appropriate for the machine. You get a message stating that the game is altering settings during the load-in screen.

In my case at least, I haven't noticed any substantial degradation in graphics quality, but I have noticed that the game seems more stable. I haven't had a CTD since loading Patch 2 (which was about a week ago, during its beta). So overall it seems a pretty good change to me.

Sp4
09-20-2013, 11:26
Question on video settings.

I know pre 2nd patch it was suggessted to lower your graphic settings to aid in performance as the highest end setting was FUBAR.

Has this been addressed and/or fixed in the 2nd patch? Are people running ultra settings now without issue?

thnx

I could never really run ultra without issues but that is because of my computer. I don't think I ever had any problems in battles. Most of my problems came and are still on the campaign map.

Zatoichi
09-20-2013, 14:19
Look's like they're paying attention and imroving the game :2thumbsup: I hope they fix the horrible siege defense lag I'm getting on occasion.

I've had a weird slow down that's happened a few times during seige defences - the battle starts at normal speed, but as soon as there's any fighting, everything slows down to about 1/5 the speed except for the camera controls and the mouse, which remain constant. Is that what you're seeing? Only had this since the beta patch 2/patch 2, but I'd not seen anything reported about this anywhere.

Spoonska
09-20-2013, 15:39
Here is the notes for patch 3.




Technical and Performance Issues


Significant improvements to multiplayer campaign speed, which is now limited by the slowest players machine.

Frame Rate improvements on Campaign map on low spec Core2 Duo cpu’s in windowed mode.

Fix for lock-ups reported on loading into battle in DirectX9.

Frame Rate improvements on Campaign map across all configurations when setting Effects Quality to Low or High.

Fix for minor stutters & terrain rendering glitches on some gpu’s when rendering the terrain.

Fixed a bug in the Graphics Benchmark frame rate display that reported the wrong per-frame time.

LAN multiplayer modes are now accessible when Steam is in Offline mode.

Fix for graphics crash caused by changing the games screen resolution shortly after loading a new Campaign.

Fix for a crash when performing an agent action on a wounded/assassinated unit in Campaign modes.

Further campaign map optimisations.

Optimised fire and smoke effects on the campaign map (improving the frames per second on all graphics setting, especially during the late gameplay where all faction territories are revealed)

Fix in Multiplayer Campaign, after Player 1 offers diplomacy to Player 2, Player 2 made a counter offer, then cancelled the offer, which caused the game to lock up for Player 1.

Fix to prevent the games user interface from flickering when SLI is enabled.

Improved culling on the campaign map to prevent props (e.g. the pyramids) from disappearing when the camera was set to certain angles.

Improved the desktop icon for Total War: ROME II to support multiple resolutions.





Gameplay Improvements


When the player is attacked whilst in a minor settlement (not provincial capital), a new "Sally Forth" button is available on the pre-battle panel to fight the attackers in an open field battle.

All armies that are forced to retreat, and then are attacked, no longer have a Baggage Train battle. It is a normal open field battle with any campaign generated penalties applied as before.

When an army in forced march is attacked on the Campaign Map, an ambush battle is now triggered, rather than a baggage train Victory Point battle .

Combined battles where there is no navy in the defending alliance do not have *Victory Points/Baggage Trains.

Combined battles where the defender has a navy will retain their Victory Point.

Victory Points have had their capture time increased by 3x their previous length.

Attacking AI is now more likely to prioritise taking Victory Points in Siege Battles / City Assault Battles.

AI controlled Agents are now more likely to act upon the player's settlements instead of standing around outside of them.

Fixed issue in battle AI which prevented siege assault groups from responding to nearby threats.

Fixed timing issue in battle AI which could cause the attacking AI in port sieges to stop updating.

Substantially reduced free hits from enemies in battles, when moving a unit through enemy units (without attacking them), so units can disengage with less penalty.

Smaller and depleted AI controlled forces are now less likely to survive auto-resolved battles in Campaign modes.

Cavalry can no longer capture Victory Points in battles while mounted. They can still neutralise the Victory Points if they were previously in enemy control, and capture Victory Points when dismounted.

The size / radius of capture points has been increased in Coastal battles.

Fix for some instances of passive AI during River Crossing battles, when the AI is defending.

Fixed issue which prevented reinforcement artillery ships deploying.

Fixed issue in Siege Battles where the AI attempted to use breaches and gates which they could not reach.

In Battles, the number of ranks now factor into bracing mass bonus for collision system, i.e. thin lines will make you lose your bracing bonus against cavalry charges from the front

Fixed chasing down of routers at the end of battles, so they engage in combat more often and can be killed more easily.

Satrapies can no longer sign peace treaties with the enemies of their overlord (but still able to automatically make peace if their overlord signs a peace treaty with the enemy) in Campaign modes.

Snow ground type now replaces grass in snow attrition areas of the battle map.

Units in Testudo formation will now respond to an order to attack city gates in a City Assault battles.

Men throwing torches to ignite gates in battles, now have less chance of failing to throw their torches and hit the gate, if ordered more than once to ignite the same gate.

AI houses can no longer secure promotions without first meeting the required age and rank in Campaign modes.

Removed old concealed by distance logic, that was incompatible with the newer visibility system. For example, units that are visible at range could look like they were hidden on their user interface, when they could be seen.

Pikemen can move out of melee when pike phalanx is active in battles. For example, If only one of the pikeman is attacked, the entire unit will no longer start to be unresponsive to orders.

Improved responsiveness of Siege Equipment when dropped and picked back up multiple times.

In Campaign modes, the number of siege equipment entries is now capped to be the length of the siege - 1

Further improvements to AI collision detection with Deployables in battle.

Units that charge while in formation (e.g. block formation) stop sooner on contact with the enemy, to reduce "blobbing" where units converge into a disorganised brawl.

Fixed bug with missile units on ships not firing on enemies reliably during battles.

Fixed bug with ship artillery not firing on buildings reliably in battles.

Fix for ships surviving on the campaign map after sinking on the battle map.

Fix missile ships getting stuck when targeting land units just outside of their range.

Reduced the chance of AI (enemy) reinforcements and the players reinforcements joining a battle from the same location and therefore engaging in combat instantly in battles from Campaign modes.




Balancing Changes



Hit points for all units have been increased in combat.

Melee defence has been reduced for most melee cavalry units and for some elite infantry units.

Reduced melee weapon damage in battles, and increased melee defence from shields.

Various trait effects are now working as intended.

Improved pike weapon damage balancing in battles.

Fatigue for running and being in combat has been increased in battles.

Further tweaks and rebalancing has been made to unit morale in battles.

Elite infantry morale has been reduced slightly during battles.

Experience level thresholds have been increased for units.

Special ability cool down times have been re-balanced in battles.

Building costs have been updated to reflect the changes in building effects in Campaign modes.

Morale bonuses from training and religious building chains have been reduced in Campaign modes. Instead, these buildings now give more varied bonuses to the units.

Cost of experience bonuses for Custom and Multiplayer battles have been reduced.

Squalor and food consumption have been rebalanced (reduction for higher-level buildings) in Campaign modes.

The Headhunt ability has been re-balanced in battles.

The charge bonus for Celtic, Briton and Germanic units have been reduced.

The masses of horses and men on the battlefield have been made more reasonable.

Reduced the mass of camel units in battle.





Usability Improvements



The Balance Of Power bar on the Diplomacy screen now shows the correct ratio, rather than just 50/50.

Improved the desynchronisation detection in Multiplayer Campaign mode, and players are now given a popup message when a desynchronisation has occurred, with the options to resynchronise the game to continue, or quit the game.

When the host leaves the team lobby in Quick Battle multiplayer mode, a new host is found.

Improved multiplayer compatibility between players who own the Greek States DLC and those who don't.

In Multiplayer Ambush Battles, if Player 1 clicks the "Start Battle" button, and the Player 2 waits for the timer to run out for the battle to start, Player 2 will no longer be locked into Cinematic Mode with limited user interface controls.

All battles now end 5 seconds after the victory is decided (This used to be 10 seconds).

In Multiplayer Land Battles, when deployment is over, enemy armies will no longer be visible, when they are supposed to be hidden, for a couple of seconds before fading out.

In Multiplayer battles, a player who has conceded defeat will now turn into a spectator. They can then exit the battle if they want to.

Fix for battle music getting paused while in slow battle speed.

When on the campaign map, if an agent is placed close to the edge of an enemy settlement as it expands (builds a building in a construction slot) the agent is now teleported out of the way of the expansion, so they do not become stuck within the settlement. If the agent was already stuck in an expanded settlement before this update, they will remain stuck, and have to be disbanded. This update will prevent this situation from happening in the future.

Slightly improve combat responsiveness and animations for formation attacks in battles.

Fixed bug with ship artillery not firing at all after using first-person mode in battles.

The Attacking Testudo can no longer be activated in melee during battles.

Battering rams moves out the way correctly after battering a gate down in battles.

The Tortoise battering ram animation has been tweaked slightly so it collides with walls better, at the point of impact when a wall is destroyed.

Multiple waypoints displayed for units in siege equipment, as previously only 1 was displayed.

Selecting Dismount on mounted units continuously during deployment in battles will move the units towards their last ordered position less after dismounting.

During battles, if a cavalry unit is ordered to move to a location, and then ordered to dismount, the men will now dismount but not continue to move to the previously ordered location.

The number of arrows is now correctly depleted when units fire whilst moving during battles.

Correct bonuses are now being applied to units from Workshop buildings.

Fixed bug with pike phalanx not getting back into pike stance after running.

Charge bonuses are now correctly applied to units recruited in certain provinces.

Projectile impact effects hitting units and buildings are now positioned more accurately.

Improved fire effects for buildings, siege vehicles and deployables during battles.

Improved some visual effects for during battles. Better burnt version of buildings with burning embers, and running water down roofs and vertical surfaces in rain.

Damaged visual effects have been improved on the campaign.

Fixed Briton Chariot unit attributes.

Fix for Scythian horse unit variation.

The achievements "Noble Master", "Spymaster" and "Champion of the Gods" now unlock sooner after their requirements have been met.

Fix for the Campaign map terrain disappearing when repeatedly toggling between the Campaign Map and Campaign Tactical Map.

Province level bonuses (such as edicts with food bonuses) are now taken into account in the food level displayed in a province overview in Campaign modes.

Settlement labels on the campaign map are now positioned more accurately and no longer get offset from the settlements.

In the Province panel in Campaign modes, provinces can now be sorted by their level of food production.

Several Eastern buildings now correctly consume food (instead of either not consuming anything or giving contradicting public order effects) in Campaign modes.

The Qanat building (in the Eastern agricultural chain) now produces a small amount of food in campaign mode.

The warning message that informs the player that they are not researching any technology when they press the "End Turn" button in Single Player Campaigns is now also displayed in Multiplayer Campaigns.

The players armies in Ambush stance will no longer move by themselves in Campaign modes, which happened on rare occasions.

Fix for user interface bug showing the wrong tax level on the Province Details panel when the "Tax province" button was ticked in Campaign modes.

Culture conversion coming from some characters now correctly shows up as "character" in the culture tooltip, no longer as "building".

In Campaign modes, the culture that Consecrated Grounds belong to is now displayed in their title, to make it clearer why they need to be converted.

The "Reduces slave population decline" icon in the information panel when placing the mouse over the "Slave Trader" in the Commons buildings section in Campaign modes is now displayed as green instead of red (as it's a positive affect).

The first building in the equipment chain (E.g. Workshop for Hellenic, Quartermaster for Eastern etc.) can no longer be bypassed by converting from another faction's equipment chain without researching.

Technologies are now required to create the Level 4 Jewelsmith building, to prevent an exploit.

Improved ship melee/ramming target selection in battles.

Fixed boarding mode button state issues when attempting to board a ship in battle.

In battles, men who have already boarded an enemy ship no longer jump into the sea once their ship has started to sink or back onto their sinking ship. (Men who remain on the sinking ship still jump into the water.)

Improved Advisor lip sync in various pieces of advice in Campaign modes.

Clicking the "Square" special ability as a unit is attempting to man a siege tower will no longer stick the siege tower to that unit in battles.

When an agent is selected in Campaign mode, and the player right clicks on a settlement to sabotage the enemy, the menu will no longer act erratically.

When the player had a subject to deal with in the politics screen and the subject had an infamy effect, this effect once seen persisted in being shown for all other characters even if the subject is dismissed. This has been fixed.

Fix for some misaligned text on a tooltip displayed when a settlement with a port is blockaded by an enemy, and the player selects the enemy and places the mouse over the settlement.

Improved small glitches with Campaign selection markers and Forced March visual effects sometimes being displayed in the wrong positions when units move.

Fixed some inconsistent ability names for General Skill Types.

In Campaign mode, Roman "Basilica of X" temples have now been renamed to "Precinct of X".

Tooltip regarding the "Armoured Siege Units" technology bonus effects on pre-siege vehicles (all variants of Galleries, Siege Towers, Ladders and Battering Rams) is now clearer.

Fixed the tooltip when placing the mouse over the Columns I, II and III for War Exercises, Warrior Code, Tribal Economy and Druidic Council technology trees in the Technology Panel in Campaign modes.

Two pieces of advice from the Battlefield Advisor relating to flanking were mixed up in Italian and Spanish. These have now been corrected.

Fixed a couple of instances where what the Battlefield Advisors was saying did not match the text displayed in Spanish.

Some steep terrain in a Greek Minor Port battle map has been levelled out, to stop ships from going under the beach when they disembark.

Improvements to the wall connectivity in a Greek Port battle map.

Boiling oil poured from gate houses in battles will look better where it intersects with the ground.

Improved impact animations when pig carcasses hit the ground when fired as poison rounds form artillery in battles.

While crossing rivers in battles, units footsteps now default to mud sounds instead of water sounds.

Fix for a small hole in the terrain in a Greek Minor Port battle map.

When the player is defending in a siege battle from Campaign mode, and the enemy partially capture a Victory Point on the battle map, then the player re-gains control of the Victory Point, the Battlefield Advisor will no longer say "Our enemy have lost a victory point".

Fix for the Battlefield Advisor sometimes referring to the players own reinforcements as "Enemy Reinforcements" during battles.

Added some localisation text and audio fixes for French, Italian, German, Spanish, Czech, Russian, Polish and Turkish.

Added Stonehenge back to the custom battle map at these coordinates 0.137, 0238 (Iska).

Fixed typo on 'Conscription' edict in English.

Improved culling of certain rocks on the battlefield.

Added French, Italian, German and Spanish localisation to the word "Settlement" in the Agent Action Panel in Campaign modes.

Various text and grammar fixes for the Campaign user interface.

Spoonska
09-20-2013, 16:43
The only things that bugs me is that squalor and food nerf. In 1.0 it was 12 Squalor - 10 Food for a Lv.4 Capital building. Now it's 10 / 8. Is it going to be 8 / 6 now?

My concern is province management is just going to become a click fest. I know a lot of the vocal opinion is "I can't build all the cool buildings", but public order and food nerfs are effectively campaign difficulty nerfs.

Barkhorn1x
09-20-2013, 17:55
Well another VERY meaty patch filled w/ good stuff. :yes:

Hope they keep 'em coming.

Jarmam
09-20-2013, 18:00
This is a really, really, really good patch with some incredibly welcome changes. The only complaint I can muster is that they've undermined the brilliance of their own economic system by further dumbing down economy expotential growth and ease of management. On Legendary the economy was quite managable at launch - now its a joke how overpowered you become as you expand. But! This can be modded easily. The important stuff is the AI changes, the unit formation changes, hp/defense/pikemen balance changes (tho Spartan Pikes still need a nerf) and the victory point things, all of which are great.

Going to test how the AI performs in siege battles with gates right away - they might not be a complete joke anymore! Tallyho!

ReluctantSamurai
09-20-2013, 18:44
Improved impact animations when pig carcasses hit the ground when fired as poison rounds form artillery in battles

Splatt!~:handball:

andrewt
09-20-2013, 18:47
The only things that bugs me is that squalor and food nerf. In 1.0 it was 12 Squalor - 10 Food for a Lv.4 Capital building. Now it's 10 / 8. Is it going to be 8 / 6 now?

My concern is province management is just going to become a click fest. I know a lot of the vocal opinion is "I can't build all the cool buildings", but public order and food nerfs are effectively campaign difficulty nerfs.

I disagree. The level 4s need to be an upgrade from the level 3s, which need to be an upgrade from the level 2s. Take Carthage's fishing port line, for example. Level 2 gives 6 food. Level 3 gives 8-9 food with a 4 squalor penalty. Upgrading Temple of Tanit from level 2 to level 3 ups the bonus from 4 to 8 public order at the cost of 4 food. You've essentially lost 1-2 by upgrading both level 2 buildings to level 3. I've destroyed every single level 3 fishing port I've captured to rebuild to level 2.

The farm line gives 6 food at level 2. It used to give 18 food for 12 public order at level 4. Now it's 18 for 10. It could be 18 and 8 after this patch. The net food vs public order has to go up with each subsequent upgrade. Otherwise, what's the point. It used to be not worth it to upgrade past level 2. Now, it's worth it.

In the current game, a lot of the upgrades are just not worth it. The player is smart enough to not upgrade most of the buildings. The AI isn't. I've noticed that many factions are losing their troops to food shortages because they keep upgrading the stuff that isn't worth it.

ReluctantSamurai
09-20-2013, 18:56
In the current game, a lot of the upgrades are just not worth it. The player is smart enough to not upgrade most of the buildings. The AI isn't. I've noticed that many factions are losing their troops to food shortages because they keep upgrading the stuff that isn't worth it.

Seems to be commonplace. I've seen it suggested to script AI factions in how they develop. But it seems CA is taking the 'dumb down' route...which has its advantages, it seems. It's going to be a delicate balancing act to keep development challenging for the player, yet doable by the AI..

JeromeBaker
09-20-2013, 20:25
I've had a weird slow down that's happened a few times during seige defences - the battle starts at normal speed, but as soon as there's any fighting, everything slows down to about 1/5 the speed except for the camera controls and the mouse, which remain constant. Is that what you're seeing? Only had this since the beta patch 2/patch 2, but I'd not seen anything reported about this anywhere.

I got a lot of lag on seige battles pre 2nd patch when the gate walls would catch on fire and smoke would rise up. Once that smoke animation got on the screen the whole battle would slow down to roughly 1/5 the speed. I havent notcied this issue recently though, so it either improved when i messed with the graphical settings or the 2nd patch helped.

I turned down all the settings pre 2nd patch, now I am wondering if i should max them back out. My computer should be able to handle this on high end settings.

JeromeBaker
09-20-2013, 20:39
Seems to be commonplace. I've seen it suggested to script AI factions in how they develop. But it seems CA is taking the 'dumb down' route...which has its advantages, it seems. It's going to be a delicate balancing act to keep development challenging for the player, yet doable by the AI..

AI factions fare much better if you play Rodious' MODs. When he nerfed the squalor and food shortages from later level buildings it helped the AI build up real armies that didnt either starve off or attach you with a full stack made up of mostly skirmishers.

Only downside so far has been the AI can build to the point they drop like 15 to 20 stacks on you when the civil war starts. Of course, from what I read most good players saw this as a positive and enjoyed the challenge.

I am not exactly an amazing general, so I might not fare as well with a 20 stack civil war uprising. Although i would love to have 1 really solid army with a mix of good infantry and a mix of ballistas and onagers and camp one side of a bridge and fight the 20 stack uprising that way.

Jarmam
09-20-2013, 20:40
I disagree. The level 4s need to be an upgrade from the level 3s, which need to be an upgrade from the level 2s. Take Carthage's fishing port line, for example. Level 2 gives 6 food. Level 3 gives 8-9 food with a 4 squalor penalty. Upgrading Temple of Tanit from level 2 to level 3 ups the bonus from 4 to 8 public order at the cost of 4 food. You've essentially lost 1-2 by upgrading both level 2 buildings to level 3. I've destroyed every single level 3 fishing port I've captured to rebuild to level 2.

The farm line gives 6 food at level 2. It used to give 18 food for 12 public order at level 4. Now it's 18 for 10. It could be 18 and 8 after this patch. The net food vs public order has to go up with each subsequent upgrade. Otherwise, what's the point. It used to be not worth it to upgrade past level 2. Now, it's worth it.

In the current game, a lot of the upgrades are just not worth it. The player is smart enough to not upgrade most of the buildings. The AI isn't. I've noticed that many factions are losing their troops to food shortages because they keep upgrading the stuff that isn't worth it.

No, they dont need to be an upgrade in every situation ever, because if they are then there is no point in civic macromanagement at all, since every single decision is a no-brainer. Then there's no macro game. Also known as Shogun 2.

You are not addressing squalor vs public order as a factor in this, or public order as a resource. To use the example of the fishing port: Level 2 gives 6 food. But what if you need 3 more to sustain a commerce-focused edict-province (like Siciliy+Southern Italy)? Then you build a lvl 3 port. This increases squalor by 4 in the province of the port. This is bad if it leads to instability. But what if I have, say, +2 public order from researches and +4 from a temple, giving me a total of, say, +5 public order in said province? Now its a clear upgrade, because I lose nothing - but this cannot be done in every single province you own, because edicts are finite and certain province specializations leave less public order to be messed around with. I am transferring +order (that I have in surplus, thus it is a resource) to +food, and then food for, lets say a Temple of Mercury for a +ROI play. But I have to make some decisions as to when, why and for what.

We have 2 clear advantages of having a drawback to structures:
1. I have to manage my macro-resources beyond "low food=bad".
2. This puts a natural dampener to how economy spins ridiculously out of control as your faction grows large, keeping some sort of challenge in the lategame. This got much worse after the first patch, but luckily this patch seems to only affect the main line of structures, which admittedly was kind of weak. Now it has some merit for upgrading.

It is crucial if you want any sort of macro-game in Rome 2 to keep a tension between food/squalor, income and public order, because if every building has a net +food-to-squalor or +order-to-food, the macro-game becomes both explosively unstable (as in, all buildings are then overpowered and need significant tuning down in +income and +order) and decisionless. This is also why buildings such as the Colloseum need a cap of 1 per faction, because they completely break the game by existing. I am certain I could increase my faction income by more than 50% by exploiting +order buildings with no drawbacks and thats either a design flaw or a game bug. Either way its game-breaking.

The fact that the AI cannot manage this is a flaw on the AI that needs fixing. It doesn't beckon a trimming down of the game's potential unless there is absolutely no way of making the AI play around this system.

Sp4
09-20-2013, 20:44
Holy crap, the MP Campaign turn time fix is amazing!!! I can finally play a coop campaign with my friend XD

Barkhorn1x
09-20-2013, 20:48
Holy crap, the MP Campaign turn time fix is amazing!!! I can finally play a coop campaign with my friend XD

Progress baby, progress.

Bramborough
09-20-2013, 21:06
Patch looks pretty good, lots of great stuff here. Will have to look after this and see if it's available in beta yet.

I share the concerns about further squalor-vs-food balancing. I think they're giving up some economic challenge to the player. As already pointed out, however, I think their intent is to help out the AI, particularly the small 1-2 region minor factions, so that they can at least support a decent-sized stack or two.

Spoonska
09-21-2013, 00:06
Tried to play with Patch 3, and it took a giant :daisy: all over my rome. CTD when loading up a save game. I tried to start a new campaign, and it took 6:48 to load. After that it was a giant lag fest; switching from province to another would make the game hang for 10-15sec.


:turtle:

Bramborough
09-21-2013, 00:42
Yep, I haven't had a good experience this afternoon with Patch 3 either. Nothing nearly as drastic as Spoonska reports, but campaign map lags with every location shift, during both my turn and AI's. Thought it was going to CTD a couple of times. Also, the province panel doesn't scroll with mousewheel any more, have to do it manually with the scroll button. One of the patch notes stated that provinces would now be sort-able by food production; I'm not seeing that. I'm also not seeing any of the squalor/food rebalancing either. Kinda feels like pre-patch2; I'm not seeing any of the features mentioned in notes, and stability has taken a step backwards.

Problem is, now that I've opted into the Patch3beta on Steam, I can't see any way to back out of it and revert to Patch 2.

EDIT: Never mind. It appears that somehow R2 wasn't fully closed. Rebooted computer, and got the "NONE - Opt out of all beta" option in the appropriate pull-down menu, which hadn't appeared before.

Hooahguy
09-21-2013, 03:57
Im not having any of the problems that you guys are having with beta patch 3. While Im not sure if the pounding that I just took from the AI was as a result of the new beta patch or mods, but still, my hopes are climbing for this game.

nafod
09-21-2013, 04:51
I would avoid the 3.0 Beta. Campaign map performance in creased however I noticed significantly longer load time to start the game and a battle took in excess of 8 minutes until I decided to kill it. I haven't had this issue previously.

Sp4
09-21-2013, 07:16
The game occasionally locks up for 15-20 seconds. So far only happened in MP campaign.

hoom
09-21-2013, 14:51
This beta3 patch is a big improvement.
If only the game had been delayed a month & come to market like this, with extra improvement to come.

Still a couple of kinda nasty passive AI habits: I have found in the unwalled town battles it forms up nice defensive perimeters in the intersections, but it'll then sit there passive.
But if you move a unit out of line, AI suddenly kicks in & moves to attack the perceived weakness. Once its moving you can generally shift your unit back into line.

Unit behavior in combat is better & combat somewhat slower.

I'm starting to get a hang of the squalor/food mechanic & the reduced values seems to help me make rational choices, seemed impossible to upgrade before but now I see a path via public order -> food -> economy.

Thing that bugs me is in city battles if you play on after enemy is shattered then most of the time the game seems to not notice once enemy all leave the map/all captured (or I've been having one or two soliders get stuck somewhere I haven't been able to find) -> have to sit out the timer.
Still suffering rather from enemy generals/admirals surviving battles where everything else got killed & their units severely mauled -> they come attack again next turn.

Playing Normal difficulty AI diplomacy seems maybe nicer (or just started getting scared of my Spartans as I've expanded...), have managed to even have some turns of complete peace.
Seems this CAI is inclined to recognise when its beat/suffered significant loss & offer peace vs previous TWs where it would fight indignantly to the last no matter how much I wanted to let them live.

Myth
09-21-2013, 15:52
Downloading the Rome II patch 3 beta and will give you a hands-on as I restart my Roman campaign.

Changelog:

Disclaimer: There are one or two known issues with the beta that we are looking to resolve before rolling this out further, with ALT-Tabbing and changing game resolution. We are aware of these issues and there is no need to report them in our patch feedback threads.

Technical and Performance Issues

Significant improvements to multiplayer campaign speed, which is now limited by the slowest players machine.
Frame Rate improvements on Campaign map on low spec Core2 Duo cpu’s in windowed mode.
Fix for lock-ups reported on loading into battle in DirectX9.
Frame Rate improvements on Campaign map across all configurations when setting Effects Quality to Low or High.
Fix for minor stutters & terrain rendering glitches on some gpu’s when rendering the terrain.
Fixed a bug in the Graphics Benchmark frame rate display that reported the wrong per-frame time.
LAN multiplayer modes are now accessible when Steam is in Offline mode.
Fix for graphics crash caused by changing the games screen resolution shortly after loading a new Campaign.
Fix for a crash when performing an agent action on a wounded/assassinated unit in Campaign modes.
Further campaign map optimisations.
Optimised fire and smoke effects on the campaign map (improving the frames per second on all graphics setting, especially during the late gameplay where all faction territories are revealed)
Fix in Multiplayer Campaign, after Player 1 offers diplomacy to Player 2, Player 2 made a counter offer, then cancelled the offer, which caused the game to lock up for Player 1.
Fix to prevent the games user interface from flickering when SLI is enabled.
Improved culling on the campaign map to prevent props (e.g. the pyramids) from disappearing when the camera was set to certain angles.
Improved the desktop icon for Total War: ROME II to support multiple resolutions.

Gameplay Improvements

When the player is attacked whilst in a minor settlement (not provincial capital), a new "Sally Forth" button is available on the pre-battle panel to fight the attackers in an open field battle.
All armies that are forced to retreat, and then are attacked, no longer have a *Baggage Train battle. It is a normal open field battle with any campaign generated penalties applied as before.
When an army in forced march is attacked on the Campaign Map, an ambush battle is now triggered, rather than a baggage train Victory Point battle .
Combined battles where there is no navy in the defending alliance do not have *Victory Points/Baggage Trains.
Combined battles where the defender has a navy will retain their Victory Point.
Victory Points have had their capture time increased by 3x their previous length.
Attacking AI is now more likely to prioritise taking Victory Points in Siege Battles / City Assault Battles.
AI controlled Agents are now more likely to act upon the player's settlements instead of standing around outside of them.
Fixed issue in battle AI which prevented siege assault groups from responding to nearby threats.
Fixed timing issue in battle AI which could cause the attacking AI in port sieges to stop updating.
Substantially reduced free hits from enemies in battles, when moving a unit through enemy units (without attacking them), so units can disengage with less penalty.
Smaller and depleted AI controlled forces are now less likely to survive auto-resolved battles in Campaign modes.
Cavalry can no longer capture Victory Points in battles while mounted. They can still neutralise the Victory Points if they were previously in enemy control, and capture Victory Points when dismounted.
The size / radius of capture points has been increased in Coastal battles.
Fix for some instances of passive AI during River Crossing battles, when the AI is defending.
Fixed issue which prevented reinforcement artillery ships deploying.
Fixed issue in Siege Battles where the AI attempted to use breaches and gates which they could not reach.
In Battles, the number of ranks now factor into bracing mass bonus for collision system, i.e. thin lines will make you lose your bracing bonus against cavalry charges from the front
Fixed chasing down of routers at the end of battles, so they engage in combat more often and can be killed more easily.
Satrapies can no longer sign peace treaties with the enemies of their overlord (but still able to automatically make peace if their overlord signs a peace treaty with the enemy) in Campaign modes.
Snow ground type now replaces grass in snow attrition areas of the battle map.
Units in Testudo formation will now respond to an order to attack city gates in a City Assault battles.
Men throwing torches to ignite gates in battles, now have less chance of failing to throw their torches and hit the gate, if ordered more than once to ignite the same gate.
AI houses can no longer secure promotions without first meeting the required age and rank in Campaign modes.
Removed old concealed by distance logic, that was incompatible with the newer visibility system. For example, units that are visible at range could look like they were hidden on their user interface, when they could be seen.
Pikemen can move out of melee when pike phalanx is active in battles. For example, If only one of the pikeman is attacked, the entire unit will no longer start to be unresponsive to orders.
Improved responsiveness of Siege Equipment when dropped and picked back up multiple times.
In Campaign modes, the number of siege equipment entries is now capped to be the length of the siege - 1
Further improvements to AI collision detection with Deployables in battle.
Units that charge while in formation (e.g. block formation) stop sooner on contact with the enemy, to reduce "blobbing" where units converge into a disorganised brawl.
Fixed bug with missile units on ships not firing on enemies reliably during battles.
Fixed bug with ship artillery not firing on buildings reliably in battles.
Fix for ships surviving on the campaign map after sinking on the battle map.
Fix missile ships getting stuck when targeting land units just outside of their range.
Reduced the chance of AI (enemy) reinforcements and the players reinforcements joining a battle from the same location and therefore engaging in combat instantly in battles from Campaign modes.

Balancing Changes

Hit points for all units have been increased in combat.
Melee defence has been reduced for most melee cavalry units and for some elite infantry units.
Reduced melee weapon damage in battles, and increased melee defence from shields.
Various trait effects are now working as intended.
Improved pike weapon damage balancing in battles.
Fatigue for running and being in combat has been increased in battles.
Further tweaks and rebalancing has been made to unit morale in battles.
Elite infantry morale has been reduced slightly during battles.
Experience level thresholds have been increased for units.
Special ability cool down times have been re-balanced in battles.
Building costs have been updated to reflect the changes in building effects in Campaign modes.
Morale bonuses from training and religious building chains have been reduced in Campaign modes. Instead, these buildings now give more varied bonuses to the units.
Cost of experience bonuses for Custom and Multiplayer battles have been reduced.
Squalor and food consumption have been rebalanced (reduction for higher-level buildings) in Campaign modes.
The Headhunt ability has been re-balanced in battles.
The charge bonus for Celtic, Briton and Germanic units have been reduced.
The masses of horses and men on the battlefield have been made more reasonable.
Reduced the mass of camel units in battle.

Usability Improvements

The Balance Of Power bar on the Diplomacy screen now shows the correct ratio, rather than just 50/50.
Improved the desynchronisation detection in Multiplayer Campaign mode, and players are now given a popup message when a desynchronisation has occurred, with the options to resynchronise the game to continue, or quit the game.
When the host leaves the team lobby in Quick Battle multiplayer mode, a new host is found.
Improved multiplayer compatibility between players who own the Greek States DLC and those who don't.
In Multiplayer Ambush Battles, if Player 1 clicks the "Start Battle" button, and the Player 2 waits for the timer to run out for the battle to start, Player 2 will no longer be locked into Cinematic Mode with limited user interface controls.
All battles now end 5 seconds after the victory is decided (This used to be 10 seconds).
In Multiplayer Land Battles, when deployment is over, enemy armies will no longer be visible, when they are supposed to be hidden, for a couple of seconds before fading out.
In Multiplayer battles, a player who has conceded defeat will now turn into a spectator. They can then exit the battle if they want to.
Fix for battle music getting paused while in slow battle speed.
When on the campaign map, if an agent is placed close to the edge of an enemy settlement as it expands (builds a building in a construction slot) the agent is now teleported out of the way of the expansion, so they do not become stuck within the settlement. If the agent was already stuck in an expanded settlement before this update, they will remain stuck, and have to be disbanded. This update will prevent this situation from happening in the future.
Slightly improve combat responsiveness and animations for formation attacks in battles.
Fixed bug with ship artillery not firing at all after using first-person mode in battles.
The Attacking Testudo can no longer be activated in melee during battles.
Battering rams moves out the way correctly after battering a gate down in battles.
The Tortoise battering ram animation has been tweaked slightly so it collides with walls better, at the point of impact when a wall is destroyed.
Multiple waypoints displayed for units in siege equipment, as previously only 1 was displayed.
Selecting Dismount on mounted units continuously during deployment in battles will move the units towards their last ordered position less after dismounting.
During battles, if a cavalry unit is ordered to move to a location, and then ordered to dismount, the men will now dismount but not continue to move to the previously ordered location.
The number of arrows is now correctly depleted when units fire whilst moving during battles.
Correct bonuses are now being applied to units from Workshop buildings.
Fixed bug with pike phalanx not getting back into pike stance after running.
Charge bonuses are now correctly applied to units recruited in certain provinces.
Projectile impact effects hitting units and buildings are now positioned more accurately.
Improved fire effects for buildings, siege vehicles and deployables during battles.
Improved some visual effects for during battles. Better burnt version of buildings with burning embers, and running water down roofs and vertical surfaces in rain.
Damaged visual effects have been improved on the campaign.
Fixed Briton Chariot unit attributes.
Fix for Scythian horse unit variation.
The achievements "Noble Master", "Spymaster" and "Champion of the Gods" now unlock sooner after their requirements have been met.
Fix for the Campaign map terrain disappearing when repeatedly toggling between the Campaign Map and Campaign Tactical Map.
Province level bonuses (such as edicts with food bonuses) are now taken into account in the food level displayed in a province overview in Campaign modes.
Settlement labels on the campaign map are now positioned more accurately and no longer get offset from the settlements.
In the Province panel in Campaign modes, provinces can now be sorted by their level of food production.
Several Eastern buildings now correctly consume food (instead of either not consuming anything or giving contradicting public order effects) in Campaign modes.
The Qanat building (in the Eastern agricultural chain) now produces a small amount of food in campaign mode.
The warning message that informs the player that they are not researching any technology when they press the "End Turn" button in Single Player Campaigns is now also displayed in Multiplayer Campaigns.
The players armies in Ambush stance will no longer move by themselves in Campaign modes, which happened on rare occasions.
Fix for user interface bug showing the wrong tax level on the Province Details panel when the "Tax province" button was ticked in Campaign modes.
Culture conversion coming from some characters now correctly shows up as "character" in the culture tooltip, no longer as "building".
In Campaign modes, the culture that Consecrated Grounds belong to is now displayed in their title, to make it clearer why they need to be converted.
The "Reduces slave population decline" icon in the information panel when placing the mouse over the "Slave Trader" in the Commons buildings section in Campaign modes is now displayed as green instead of red (as it's a positive affect).
The first building in the equipment chain (E.g. Workshop for Hellenic, Quartermaster for Eastern etc.) can no longer be bypassed by converting from another faction's equipment chain without researching.
Technologies are now required to create the Level 4 Jewelsmith building, to prevent an exploit.
Improved ship melee/ramming target selection in battles.
Fixed boarding mode button state issues when attempting to board a ship in battle.
In battles, men who have already boarded an enemy ship no longer jump into the sea once their ship has started to sink or back onto their sinking ship. (Men who remain on the sinking ship still jump into the water.)
Improved Advisor lip sync in various pieces of advice in Campaign modes.
Clicking the "Square" special ability as a unit is attempting to man a siege tower will no longer stick the siege tower to that unit in battles.
When an agent is selected in Campaign mode, and the player right clicks on a settlement to sabotage the enemy, the menu will no longer act erratically.
When the player had a subject to deal with in the politics screen and the subject had an infamy effect, this effect once seen persisted in being shown for all other characters even if the subject is dismissed. This has been fixed.
Fix for some misaligned text on a tooltip displayed when a settlement with a port is blockaded by an enemy, and the player selects the enemy and places the mouse over the settlement.
Improved small glitches with Campaign selection markers and Forced March visual effects sometimes being displayed in the wrong positions when units move.
Fixed some inconsistent ability names for General Skill Types.
In Campaign mode, Roman "Basilica of X" temples have now been renamed to "Precinct of X".
Tooltip regarding the "Armoured Siege Units" technology bonus effects on pre-siege vehicles (all variants of Galleries, Siege Towers, Ladders and Battering Rams) is now clearer.
Fixed the tooltip when placing the mouse over the Columns I, II and III for War Exercises, Warrior Code, Tribal Economy and Druidic Council technology trees in the Technology Panel in Campaign modes.
Two pieces of advice from the Battlefield Advisor relating to flanking were mixed up in Italian and Spanish. These have now been corrected.
Fixed a couple of instances where what the Battlefield Advisors was saying did not match the text displayed in Spanish.
Some steep terrain in a Greek Minor Port battle map has been levelled out, to stop ships from going under the beach when they disembark.
Improvements to the wall connectivity in a Greek Port battle map.
Boiling oil poured from gate houses in battles will look better where it intersects with the ground.
Improved impact animations when pig carcasses hit the ground when fired as poison rounds form artillery in battles.
While crossing rivers in battles, units footsteps now default to mud sounds instead of water sounds.
Fix for a small hole in the terrain in a Greek Minor Port battle map.
When the player is defending in a siege battle from Campaign mode, and the enemy partially capture a Victory Point on the battle map, then the player re-gains control of the Victory Point, the Battlefield Advisor will no longer say "Our enemy have lost a victory point".
Fix for the Battlefield Advisor sometimes referring to the players own reinforcements as "Enemy Reinforcements" during battles.
Added some localisation text and audio fixes for French, Italian, German, Spanish, Czech, Russian, Polish and Turkish.
Added Stonehenge back to the custom battle map at these coordinates 0.137, 0238 (Iska).
Fixed typo on 'Conscription' edict in English.
Improved culling of certain rocks on the battlefield.
Added French, Italian, German and Spanish localisation to the word "Settlement" in the Agent Action Panel in Campaign modes.
Various text and grammar fixes for the Campaign user interface.

Bramborough
09-21-2013, 19:24
Am doing same. I tried yesterday but performance declined....yet now I suspect that the patch somehow didn't install correctly, and in fact I was playing essentially an unpatched version. I'm not technically smart enough to rationally explain why I think that...just my observation of what the game was playing like. This time I'm going to install and then log off and close out Steam entirely, and verify neither Steam or R2 is running in Task Manager, to ensure both programs go through complete loading process. I have this feeling that R2 was still running in background last time and that's why the patch didn't "take".

I know this sounds like computer superstition that I'm trying to solve via the intellectual equivalent of voodoo.....but I have a hunch it's going to work.

EDIT: Nope, the chicken sacrifice didn't work. Didn't even get to really play myself much, as I tend to save games right before hitting "End Turn", so the first thing I went through was the AI turn aftering loading the campaign. I did look around first; still not seeing any rebalanced squalor-food values in any of my buildings (one of the patch notes), still cannot sort provinces by food production (one of the patch notes), and cannot mouse-wheel scroll in province list (loss of a previous feature).

I did play one battle which was rather strange in how it worked out. Bithynia (my ally) got into a battle with a stronger force from Mascat (our common enemy). I, however, was within reinforcement range with an even bigger stack. It was treated as an ambush battle, most likely because Mascat was in FM mode (which is now supposed to result in ambush battle vs vic point in Patch3). In any case....Bithynia and Mascat were the "primaries", while I was supporting Bithynia. Despite being ambushed, the Mascat guys quickly destroyed the Bithynians while I was marching in. I then proceeded to annihilate the Mascatis and won. So far so good. Upon exiting back to campaign map, however, the game froze...as if it couldn't decide who had won the battle; both of the "primary" combatants had been destroyed. I let it try to work itself out of the bog for several minutes; no joy, so I had to Ctrl+Alt+Del out.

I did see some positive improvements in the battle with cavalry, as mentioned in the Patch3 notes. They disengaged after charging much better than I'd seen before, and did a far more efficient job in cleaning up routers. Also noticed some small but nice graphic improvements during the battle.

My impression is that there is some sort of bug in Patch3 which can revert the game back to pre-Patch2 instability, specifically on the campaign map. Promised battle improvements seem to be present, at least as far as I can see. Looking forward to Patch3 going live, if they can work these issues out. Uninstalling Patch3beta again for now...I'd like to soldier on with it some more, but every turn carries a realistic chance of CTD or freeze. Having left that situation behind with Patch2, not going back to it.

RawPower
09-21-2013, 20:46
Anybody else getting ctd with patch 3? I didnt have any problems before but i had to revert to patch 2. A tiny bit annoying!

easytarget
09-21-2013, 22:45
No, but I do find it troubling I can no longer alt-tab out of the game.

Spoonska
09-22-2013, 02:20
Alt Tabbing is fine if you're running in windowed mode.

Sp4
09-22-2013, 09:42
Orly? =P

Myth
09-22-2013, 17:18
The alt-tabbing thing is a known issue and will be fixed before patch 3 goes live. I started a new game as Rome. Here are my impressions with Patch 3 beta.

- Turn times near instantaneous. They only slow down for agent actions.
- The AI recruits a lot more armies and uses them. Sparta and Athen' declared war on me and the first time I tried fighting them + Macedon + a war in Africa I overextended and had to restart.
- My fight for Greece in the second game was a thing of legend. I held Athens with my Prima Legio Filii Martis and Legio I Italica versus impossible odds. There were two waves, one of Spartan elites outnumbering us 7000 to 5000. The second wave was of Athens' complete army, engaging right after we defeated the Spartans. The Athenians were even more in number and we - even less due to casualties. Both fights happened in the fields outside Athens, and I only won because i managed to consolidate my reinforcing armies and defeat the enemy reinforcements before they could merge. I also had Socii Equites Extraordinarii and Gladiators and those are the units that allowed me to chop up the phalangites, otherwise my legionaries would lack the damage to rout them. A unit of Royal Spartans made a vallant effort and managed to cleave through half a unit of pretorians while another two units had surrounded it.

After this fight came the war with Macedon and they had some scary armies - almost 3 full stacks. And they engaged me near Pella, but somehow used agent actions to cut off Legio I italica from reinforcements. Thus, outnumberd 3000 to around 10000 we lost both legions. I had to lick my wounds and raise 4 new legions in Italy before I came back and destroyed the Macedonians.

Meanwhile I had a bloody war up north with various Celtic tribes but now Cispalina is stable and bringing in money.

The re-balanced structures means that the trading ports eat food now, and that it makes more sense to make amphora factories once you max out your slots if you have at least 2 ports, and otherwise you make the brickworks in landed provinces.

Performance wise the game is great, I haven't encountered the stutterstep lag yet and the battles run as well as they can on my (slightly outdated) GTX 570. I plan on buying a new graphics card with 2 gb video memory so I can view full on 40,000 men battles at max details.

komnenos
09-23-2013, 12:47
I'm going to buy a laptop (with Ram: 8GB and Graphic: 2GB), so by these patches can I play the game in high quality without any problems or bugs?

Barkhorn1x
09-23-2013, 14:02
I'm going to buy a laptop (with Ram: 8GB and Graphic: 2GB), so by these patches can I play the game in high quality without any problems or bugs?

Assuming the laptop wll be at least a Quad core and the GPU is a dedicated card - not an "integrated" one you should be fine.

Barkhorn1x
09-23-2013, 14:05
Anybody else getting ctd with patch 3? I didnt have any problems before but i had to revert to patch 2. A tiny bit annoying!

I have had rock solid gameplay w/ Patch 3.

For those having issues I strongly suggest the following:

- Right click on the Rome TW II icon in the Steam menu
- Select Properties
- Select Local Files
- Select Verify Game Cache

...as I suspect some files were corrupted or failed to d/l. The above will fix those problems.

Bramborough
09-23-2013, 18:58
I have had rock solid gameplay w/ Patch 3.

For those having issues I strongly suggest the following:

- Right click on the Rome TW II icon in the Steam menu
- Select Properties
- Select Local Files
- Select Verify Game Cache

...as I suspect some files were corrupted or failed to d/l. The above will fix those problems.

Y'know...I've noticed that button before, but haven't used it. Will give this a try.

EDIT: Don't really see much of a difference. Campaign map still feels more stutterish and glitchy than with Patch 2. That said, went several turns without a CTD or freeze, so I'll keep Patch 3 loaded. Hopefully the issues get resolved as Patch 3 goes live.

Myth
09-23-2013, 21:23
I'm going to buy a laptop (with Ram: 8GB and Graphic: 2GB), so by these patches can I play the game in high quality without any problems or bugs?
Laptops will always perform more poorly than desktop PCs.

For a 2 GB graphics card and a good processor you need a 1 KW power inlet, which you probably will not have. If you do, then you will have heat issues. Especially running graphics intensive games.

Also laptop processors are always weaker than PC processors, for heating and power consumption issues. Even if it says dual quad core, it will be worse than a PC counterpart performance wise. Laptops also have slower HDD RPM speeds due to the noise a 7200 or 10000 SATA drive makes.

My advice is to spend the budget you have on the best PC you can assemble, unless you plan on using that laptop as an actual laptop, as in move around constantly. If you are going to need it outside your room just once per month, just stick with a PC instead.

Bramborough
09-24-2013, 07:17
Here's an observation which may (or may not) be useful to those of you who've mentioned Patch3beta performance issues (as I did).

I completed first campaign earlier today, soon after loading the patch (3rd try). Interestingly, as soon as I started a new campaign, game ran smooth as silk on campaign map. I wonder if something in the earlier save files was somehow conflicting with the patch, whereas a campaign started running Patch3beta doesn't have the same issues.

I suppose it could be simply because there's far fewer units and other complexities in a new game...which might help explain why some of us were having problems with Patch3beta while others were not.

Myth
09-24-2013, 08:21
I started a new campaign as i got Patch 3. 120 turns in i have zero issues. I only had two CTDs which were easily fixed with just resuming my campaign as Legendary does its own saving.

Sp4
09-24-2013, 08:26
I have CTDs every once in a while. It's made me paranoid, so I always hit the quicksave button =X

Sigurd
09-24-2013, 08:59
I'm going to buy a laptop (with Ram: 8GB and Graphic: 2GB), so by these patches can I play the game in high quality without any problems or bugs?
I have one... It doesn't play these games very well.
Even though computers have a graphic card with 2+ GB video ram, doesn't make them play games very well.
I bought a top line desk computer (HP) that had a 2 GB graphic card. It came out of the machine pretty quick, to be replaced with a GTX 660 card. If you hold both cards in your hands, it is self evident. The original card a geForce GT 630 fits in my palm, while the GTX 660 takes my palm and most of my forearm. It nearly didn't fit in the computer.



Thing that bugs me is in city battles if you play on after enemy is shattered then most of the time the game seems to not notice once enemy all leave the map/all captured (or I've been having one or two soliders get stuck somewhere I haven't been able to find) -> have to sit out the timer.
Still suffering rather from enemy generals/admirals surviving battles where everything else got killed & their units severely mauled -> they come attack again next turn.

Happened to me also. All though the battle didn't end when the timer ran out. I near pulled my hair out as this was a long and hard battle. However [ESC] and END BATTLE in the menu box gave me a decisive victory. I guess you can end the game anytime after the initial Victory and remain victorious.

jbillybrack
09-24-2013, 17:19
@ Hoom:
You can use the "quit battle" button to exit the battle screen after the outcome has been decided and your victory will not be lost

Myth
09-24-2013, 18:20
Patch 3 is now live.

hoom
09-24-2013, 19:45
Ahh excellent, thanks :)

JeromeBaker
09-24-2013, 21:31
if you are spending less than 2500 you would be much better off with the desktop.

JeromeBaker
09-24-2013, 23:58
Patch 3 downloaded while I was at work. I noticed that it wouldn't allow me to use previous save games.


EDIT - actually I was able to pull up saved games and play them without issue. When I restarted my computer my saved games showed up again...

Hooahguy
09-25-2013, 00:06
Apparently there was a small update for the beta patch today that fixed the alt-tabbing issue, among others:

This should fix the following:
• Fix for issues with ALT-Tabbing the game and changing resolution
• Improved camera stuttering / pausing when moving between settlements on the campaign map via the "Zoom to Location" buttons

We are currently still working on this performance issue as well as on other issues you have reported on the forums.
http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/95273-Patch-3-BETA-is-here!-PLEASE-READ-BEFORE-POSTING!-updated-24-09?p=815912&viewfull=1#post815912

Sigurd
09-25-2013, 07:28
Patch 3 downloaded while I was at work. I noticed that it wouldn't allow me to use previous save games. I still like using 4 turns per year, so when I went to look for my save game of a new campaign I started, it wasn't in the normal spot, but all of my previous saved games were there, but those don't show up in Rome 2 after the 3rd patch.

Did CA change where the save games are stored? Is it no longer user/name/appdata/thecreativeassembly...... ?


EDIT - new save games are stored in C:\Users\TEMP\AppData\Roaming\The Creative Assembly\Rome2\save_games . I assume since CA changed directories that the 3rd patch requires a fresh campaign. Oh well, I was almost ready for civil war to start in my last one. At least now I know where I can alter my turns per year.
Same for me... so I opted in on the patch again which updated the game (80.2 MB).
I am now running v1.3.0 build 7184.457555 which is better than any of the other versions I have played so far. Oh, and I am able to play saved games, whereas I wasn't able before... Didn't check the version.

nearchos
09-25-2013, 08:41
Patch 3 is now live.
Thats very good news, last night i opened Steam in my PC but it didnt start any instalation process, as with the previous patches.
How can i comfirm if the patch is downloaded??

Spoonska
09-25-2013, 12:23
Thats very good news, last night i opened Steam in my PC but it didnt start any instalation process, as with the previous patches.
How can i comfirm if the patch is downloaded??

When you first start the game you should see these numbers "v1.3.0 build 7184.457555" in the top corner. That is the latest


New hotfixed corrected all of my new issues with Rome 2. Game is playing really well now!

nearchos
09-25-2013, 12:46
When you first start the game you should see these numbers "v1.3.0 build 7184.457555" in the top corner. That is the latest


New hotfixed corrected all of my new issues with Rome 2. Game is playing really well now!
Thank you very much

nearchos
09-26-2013, 06:47
When you first start the game you should see these numbers "v1.3.0 build 7184.457555" in the top corner. That is the latest


New hotfixed corrected all of my new issues with Rome 2. Game is playing really well now!
well, if the patch is live, steam hasnt download it yet.
I saw yesterday at the corner of the screen, that the version is v1.0.0.
Ill wait and see.
Thank you again.

ShadesPanther
09-26-2013, 09:56
well, if the patch is live, steam hasnt download it yet.
I saw yesterday at the corner of the screen, that the version is v1.0.0.
Ill wait and see.
Thank you again.

I think that there is an option to update automatically or not in the steam options. Maybe it is disabled?

Shaitan
09-26-2013, 12:22
Patch3 is still in beta. Unless you opt in the beta you won't see patch3.

Myth
09-26-2013, 12:27
Really? Steam has mislead me then because I got another big download that said Patch 3 and everyhting.

Shaitan
09-26-2013, 13:57
Really? Steam has mislead me then because I got another big download that said Patch 3 and everyhting.

In the the official forum (link (http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/95273-Patch-3-BETA-is-here!-PLEASE-READ-BEFORE-POSTING!-updated-25-09?)) they speak of 2 patches to the beta3 patch. But nothing of going live. Did you opt in for betas in Steam?

AntiDamascus
09-26-2013, 14:22
I'll log in soon and see, I haven't opted for any beta patches yet

My version is still v1.0.0

Edit - I also can't to opt into the betas. I see the option where it says to and it's a drop down box but when I click it nothing happens.

Hooahguy
09-26-2013, 14:41
I'll log in soon and see, I haven't opted for any beta patches yet

My version is still v1.0.0

Edit - I also can't to opt into the betas. I see the option where it says to and it's a drop down box but when I click it nothing happens.
Try restarting Steam, that might work.

AntiDamascus
09-26-2013, 14:59
It worked but I restarted Steam a couple times in the past days or so o.O

Maybe because there was no beta patch at the time? v0v It works now. Downloading beta 3 as I type

nearchos
09-27-2013, 06:36
I think that there is an option to update automatically or not in the steam options. Maybe it is disabled?
Thank you, i didnt know that, il check it any way.

nearchos
09-27-2013, 06:45
In the the official forum (link (http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/95273-Patch-3-BETA-is-here!-PLEASE-READ-BEFORE-POSTING!-updated-25-09?)) they speak of 2 patches to the beta3 patch. But nothing of going live. Did you opt in for betas in Steam?
Im lost, since patch 2 steam didnt download any thing, do we know when this patch 3 will be live for sure?

Shaitan
09-27-2013, 08:45
Im lost, since patch 2 steam didnt download any thing, do we know when this patch 3 will be live for sure?

Unfortunately there is nothing official yet.

Myth
09-27-2013, 09:27
Just opt in for the beta, it's stable.

AntiDamascus
09-27-2013, 16:33
When I played the new beta it seriously slowed down my games. I'm going to have to look at the settings again but it went from running perfectly to just amazingly slow.

CaptainCrunch
09-27-2013, 18:36
Haven't played under Patch 3 yet, but these 2 lines from the release notes seem like a potential problem to me;


"Attacking AI is now more likely to prioritise taking Victory Points in Siege Battles / City Assault Battles."


"Substantially reduced free hits from enemies in battles, when moving a unit through enemy units (without attacking them), so units can disengage with less penalty."

The AI already tries to zerg rush the capture points in settlements, much to its detriment. Substantially reducing a units' ability to kill them while trying to do so sounds like it could seriously marginalize your ability to protect choke points, especially when outnumbered, and might result in the AI just running right through your defenders and on to your city streets. Can anyone playing the beta patch confirm or deny this?

I see what they're trying to do, but how realistic is it to move a unit through an enemy unit without attacking it and not expect to take serious losses in the first place? Which also applies to disengaging a unit from combat that doesn't have a significant seed advantage over its opponent (cav vs infantry for example). Expect to take losses...

Bramborough
09-27-2013, 19:59
When I played the new beta it seriously slowed down my games. I'm going to have to look at the settings again but it went from running perfectly to just amazingly slow.

I had same experience when first trying Patch3beta, but two things pretty much cleared it up:

1. They did a quick hotfix to the patch that helped camera panning between campaign map locations.

2. Started new campaign. I didn't start new just because the patch, it was coincidental.

Between these two changes, running smoothly now...or, perhaps more accurately, at least as smoothly as with Patch 2. At first Patch3beta resulted in some game freezes and CTDs for me, but not any more.

JeromeBaker
09-27-2013, 20:38
I had same experience when first trying Patch3beta, but two things pretty much cleared it up:

1. They did a quick hotfix to the patch that helped camera panning between campaign map locations.

2. Started new campaign. I didn't start new just because the patch, it was coincidental.

Between these two changes, running smoothly now...or, perhaps more accurately, at least as smoothly as with Patch 2. At first Patch3beta resulted in some game freezes and CTDs for me, but not any more.

At first Patch 3 (beta) made saved games slower but I didnt have CTDs. I ran a check to make sure the files were not corupted, messed around a bit with the graphic settings ( i think the biggest change I made was lowering unit detail to "very high", but on many of the other settings I actually upped the performance to higher end graphics), and for whatever reason I can play saved games with the Patch 3 beta and they run fine now....

Perhaps it was a hotfix, I am not sure.

AntiDamascus
09-27-2013, 20:55
It is better in battle now. But after one battlefield fight, the campaign itself slows down. I still need to fiddle with it.

Bramborough
09-27-2013, 21:18
So, I shut down R2 about an hour ago for some lunch and a little housework (gotta keep the Mrs happy...). When I did so, Steam started updating R2. I didn't catch the size of the update, but it took about 10 min or so, so wasn't super-tiny. The logical assumption is that this was Patch 3 going live. BUT...first, I already had Patch3beta loaded anyway, and I don't remember a download when Patch2beta went live as Patch 2. Second, when I look at the Beta tab in Properties, it's still reflecting Patch3beta as an option; I would expect this to disappear once Patch 3 goes live (just like Patch2beta did).

So...any idea what this little update was? Anyone else getting it today?

Barkhorn1x
09-27-2013, 22:40
So, I shut down R2 about an hour ago for some lunch and a little housework (gotta keep the Mrs happy...). When I did so, Steam started updating R2. I didn't catch the size of the update, but it took about 10 min or so, so wasn't super-tiny. The logical assumption is that this was Patch 3 going live. BUT...first, I already had Patch3beta loaded anyway, and I don't remember a download when Patch2beta went live as Patch 2. Second, when I look at the Beta tab in Properties, it's still reflecting Patch3beta as an option; I would expect this to disappear once Patch 3 goes live (just like Patch2beta did).

So...any idea what this little update was? Anyone else getting it today?

Mine is updating too! Different iterations of the 3beta?

Wilbo
09-27-2013, 22:41
Yep, Steam is downloading a 22MB patch for Rome II right now, which must have been released since 0800 GMT, September 27th.

Hooahguy
09-27-2013, 22:48
Seems to be a hotfix:

If testing over the weekend reveals no further issues, Patch 3 will go live early next week.

Meanwhile, Patch 4 is completing internal testing and will arrive into beta soon afterwards.

The list of fixes brought with by the latest hotfix for patch 3 BETA:

• Players and AI were unable to siege a city with a port, with a land army while the port was blockaded by a navy in an earlier Patch 3 BETA build. This is now fixed.
• Fix for a crash while loading into ambush battles from the Campaign map, where the player had AI reinforcements (reinforcements are no longer aloud in ambush battles). This crash was introduced in an earlier Patch 3 BETA build, and is now fixed.
• Fix for a pathfinding crash in battles, which was introduced in an earlier Patch 3 BETA build.
source (http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/95274-Patch-3-Beta-now-available-updated-25-09?p=829243&viewfull=1#post829243)

AntiDamascus
09-28-2013, 04:25
I hated not being able to take a city because like 1 ship was blockading the port and I basically had to go to war with them to get it lifted.

Bramborough
09-28-2013, 05:46
Yeah, quite annoying. So that's a good fix.

Kinda amusing their language implies this was only a problem with earlier Patch 3 beta, when in fact the blockade issue had existed since release.

EDIT: I don't see that they've fixed this at all. Still having same situation crop up in my campaign. Couldn't attack Paraitonion (held by Pergamum) last night because a 3-unit Egyptian navy was content to sit there forever blockading it. Didn't really want to go to war with Egypt at that stage, but was my only option to take the town.

Maybe I misunderstood the language of the "fix" above?

andrewt
09-29-2013, 01:04
Did anybody see any change in the squalor and food consumption of higher tier buildings? I don't see any difference between patch 2 and beta patch 3.

Bramborough
09-29-2013, 23:02
Did anybody see any change in the squalor and food consumption of higher tier buildings? I don't see any difference between patch 2 and beta patch 3.

I haven't seen a difference either.

That said, I can't claim to have memorized the food/squalor costs of every Roman building (only faction I've played thus far). There may have been a minor change somewhere that I didn't notice. But I agree that a substantial "rebalancing" (not that I really think one was required) doesn't seem to have occurred.

Myth
09-30-2013, 07:45
Did anybody see any change in the squalor and food consumption of higher tier buildings? I don't see any difference between patch 2 and beta patch 3.

They were changed from patch 1 to patch 2.

This hotfix finally fixed my ingame encyclopedia so now it has images instead of blanks, so that's good.

Bramborough
09-30-2013, 09:19
They were changed from patch 1 to patch 2.

This hotfix finally fixed my ingame encyclopedia so now it has images instead of blanks, so that's good.

Indeed, no question there were some changes in Patch 2, across many different building types.

The Patch3beta notes, however, also mention some food/squalor rebalancing. These Patch3-specific changes (if in fact there were any) are the ones which have escaped my attention. Perhaps they were global in nature and not readily visible by looking at building stats.

Zatoichi
09-30-2013, 23:47
Yeah, quite annoying. So that's a good fix.

Kinda amusing their language implies this was only a problem with earlier Patch 3 beta, when in fact the blockade issue had existed since release.

EDIT: I don't see that they've fixed this at all. Still having same situation crop up in my campaign. Couldn't attack Paraitonion (held by Pergamum) last night because a 3-unit Egyptian navy was content to sit there forever blockading it. Didn't really want to go to war with Egypt at that stage, but was my only option to take the town.

Maybe I misunderstood the language of the "fix" above?

My understanding of this fix is that in an earlier patch 3 beta release, if one of your own armies/navies was blockading a port, then another of your own armies couldn't lay siege simultaneously (and same for an AI army/navy blockade and siege combo). They've fixed this situation, just not the annoying situation you've described whereby we're unable to siege a settlement if the AI is blockading it, which unfortunately is still deemed 'working as designed'.

Barkhorn1x
10-01-2013, 14:26
Why can't CA communicate on what is going on here?

MadKow
10-01-2013, 15:19
Why can't CA communicate on what is going on here?

Patch 3 is now live (http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_3)


I can't tell what was in the Beta Patch 3 and what is new.

Barkhorn1x
10-01-2013, 17:03
Patch 3 is now live (http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_3)


I can't tell what was in the Beta Patch 3 and what is new.

Yes, agreed and I do like this one:


•When the player is attacked whilst in a minor settlement (not provincial capital), a new "Sally Forth" button is available on the pre-battle panel to fight the attackers in an open field battle.

Sp4
10-01-2013, 17:13
You guys are confusing me. The ship blockading ports indefinitely thing was changed in like the first patch, so were the food and squalor things. Patch three is all about being able to leave towns and fight on battle maps rather than pre historic urban warfare =p

Oh and the MP campaign actually works now which is great until it stops working anyways.

Bramborough
10-01-2013, 17:57
You guys are confusing me. The ship blockading ports indefinitely thing was changed in like the first patch...

Not for me it wasn't. Still seeing it. Has been consistent through all the patches, live and beta.

Ituralde
10-01-2013, 21:58
Playing on patch day seems to be bad luck for me. Just like with patch 2 I've had numerous freezes tonight, whereas I had none when I played a couple of hours last week. Maybe it's a problem with Steam where some hotfixes don't come through. Really frustrating to have the patch make it unplayable. Anyone else have similar experiences or is it smooth sailing for you guys?

Barkhorn1x
10-01-2013, 22:06
Playing on patch day seems to be bad luck for me. Just like with patch 2 I've had numerous freezes tonight, whereas I had none when I played a couple of hours last week. Maybe it's a problem with Steam where some hotfixes don't come through. Really frustrating to have the patch make it unplayable. Anyone else have similar experiences or is it smooth sailing for you guys?

For those having issues I strongly suggest the following:

- Right click on the Rome TW II icon in the Steam menu
- Select Properties
- Select Local Files
- Select Verify Game Cache

...as I suspect some files were corrupted or failed to d/l. The above will fix those problems.

Ituralde
10-02-2013, 08:23
For those having issues I strongly suggest the following:

- Right click on the Rome TW II icon in the Steam menu
- Select Properties
- Select Local Files
- Select Verify Game Cache

...as I suspect some files were corrupted or failed to d/l. The above will fix those problems.

Will try this, once I am home. Does Steam do this automatically from time to time?
I ask, because I didn't do this after the last patch, and while it froze a couple of times on patch day, it worked like a charm several days afterwards. I'm not sure if there were Hotfixes in between though. I'll keep this in mind though and it will be the first thing I try, if those problems crop up again.

Thanks!

Sp4
10-02-2013, 11:13
As far as I know, Steam does not do it automatically.

Shaitan
10-02-2013, 11:17
Regarding the issue with the blockaded port and not be able to attack a city. I had the issue that my client state was besieging a land only capital city and I could not join the siege or initiate the attack.

Is this a common bug or maybe even intended?

Bramborough
10-02-2013, 23:10
Regarding the issue with the blockaded port and not be able to attack a city. I had the issue that my client state was besieging a land only capital city and I could not join the siege or initiate the attack.

Is this a common bug or maybe even intended?

The difference is that a land siege cannot go on indefinitely. First, a besieging army takes higher attrition losses than a blockading navy. Second, the city will eventually surrender if there's no sally-out or assault. Third, the AI appears to be much more likely to assault (as attacker) or sally-out (as defender) for a land siege than to execute these actions for a naval blockade. So...the situation resolves itself within a few turns.

With the naval blockade, there is no surrender turn-limit, the AI appears content to just sit out the blockade as either attacker or defender, and the low attrition rate allows them to do so for a very long time.

Sp4
10-03-2013, 05:31
The difference is that a land siege cannot go on indefinitely. First, a besieging army takes higher attrition losses than a blockading navy. Second, the city will eventually surrender if there's no sally-out or assault. Third, the AI appears to be much more likely to assault (as attacker) or sally-out (as defender) for a land siege than to execute these actions for a naval blockade. So...the situation resolves itself within a few turns.

With the naval blockade, there is no surrender turn-limit, the AI appears content to just sit out the blockade as either attacker or defender, and the low attrition rate allows them to do so for a very long time.

A port settlement that is under siege from a land army but not blockaded wont suffer any attrition and as far as I know, it will be able to last forever as well or until someone blockades the port.

Bramborough
10-03-2013, 06:34
A port settlement that is under siege from a land army but not blockaded wont suffer any attrition and as far as I know, it will be able to last forever as well or until someone blockades the port.

I meant attrition for the blockader, not the blockaded. Currently, attrition suffered by a blockading navy is far less than for a besieging army. Coupled with the fact that there's no surrender deadline like there is with a siege, means blockades can go on forever.

jbillybrack
10-03-2013, 17:55
Will try this, once I am home. Does Steam do this automatically from time to time?
I ask, because I didn't do this after the last patch, and while it froze a couple of times on patch day, it worked like a charm several days afterwards. I'm not sure if there were Hotfixes in between though. I'll keep this in mind though and it will be the first thing I try, if those problems crop up again.

Thanks!

They did in fact do a hotfix for patch beta 3 to allow alt-tabbing out. Don't know if it's common practice.

edyzmedieval
10-04-2013, 17:17
Patch 4 notes. (so far in BETA)

Technical and Performance Issues



Further optimisation to Campaign pathfinding.
Improved the performance of selecting units.
Incremental performance improvements, reduced CPU bottleneck in a number of scenarios - further improvements pending in future patch.
Fixed crashes occurring when entering battles, declaring war, and ending turn after changing the unit size in the advanced graphics options menu in Campaign modes.
Fixed crash when placing deployables with a single click in invalid locations on the battlefield.
Fixed rare crash in battles when unit banners were moving slowly due to low frame rates.
Fixed an indefinite hang, when attacking Egyptian rebel army across the Nile in Campaign mode.
Fixed crash in the ambush controller caused by incorrectly assuming that an are in an ambush battle was being loaded, when loading into a multiplayer land battle.
Fixed crash occurs during AI turn cycle, after changing the unit size options while in Campaign mode.
Fix for major performance issue caused by reinforcing naval units in certain circumstances.
The Campaign game will no longer crash when selecting the "Province Details" panel after selecting "Raise Forces".
Fix for crash due to transport ships erroneously being able to select shot types.
Fix for crash when the game deleted the cached user interface panels, which would cause other panels to open and attempt to delete the cached panel again, when ending turn in single Player Campaign mode.
Fixed Campaign lock up when a rank 2 or higher General dies, after selecting a replacement with the "Duty Calls" event, then selecting any other open event, and then attempting to open Diplomacy.
Fixed a crash when rapidly clicking the fire button on the Polybolos unit in Frist Person mode.
Fixed rare crash when selecting an active mission in the Objectives panel in Campaign modes.
Fixed a rare crashing bug in the campaign when selecting units.
Improved performance of drag-outs and holding space to show unit proxies, by no longer render ghosts for men and mounts, as they were too expensive to render. Artillery, ships and vehicles still have ghosts rendered.



Gameplay Improvements



Improved AI construction logic. It now constructs more military buildings.
Improved AI army compositions & unit quality. The AI uses better units and slightly less ranged units.
AI research is more military focused at the start of the campaign.
Slightly reduced the settlement defensive bonuses for the auto-resolver.
Increased the willingness of the AI signing trade agreements and defensive alliance.
The AI are now much more careful with constructing buildings that consume food or increase squalor. This has improved the AI's ability to fight food shortage problems.
Added more restrictions on the AI running too often making them exhausted by the time they reach their opponents.
Improvements to the AI defensive ambush behaviour.
AI now have improved ability to place its forces appropriately to deal with simultaneous front and side attacks. This involves angling and bifurcation of its *line with appropriate units to deal with the players use of flanking or harassing forces.
Fixed a bug where sometimes AI factions wouldn't generate a stance towards the player at the start of a Campaign, meaning they started the Campaign neutral to the players faction, and sometimes ask for peace immediately.
When generating armies, the AI is now more likely to choose elite units when they have the funds to do so.
Improved AI use of Pikemen in battles.
Fixing bug where the AI will not know what do if river edge hint lines are present in a map without crossing hint lines. Also improving AI use of phalanx formation in river defence.
Increased chance of AI making alliances in diplomacy.
Slightly increased the effects of diplomatic events on relations with third party factions, and the AI remembers diplomatic events for a longer period of time.
Difficulty can no longer be changed from the in-campaign game settings whist in a Campaign on Legendary difficulty.
Deployed agents on the campaign map, no longer reset back to being un-deployed when they level up.
Fix for missile troops sometimes firing in a "perfect" formation, rather than appearing natural and offset.
Diplomacy improvements - Factions attitudes towards each other are now mapped with colours on the map on the diplomacy screen. When your faction is selected, it shows other factions attitudes to you, and when other faction selected, shows their attitudes to other factions. Also, the factors tooltip now works between two non-player factions by selecting a non-player faction and moussing over another faction.
In Multiplayer battles, if the last remaining player in an alliance has a network timeout disconnection, the game will now be a draw.
Fix for units pursuing enemies when reacting to melee (not for direct orders). *Units will no longer pursue enemies when reacting to melee.
Fix for bug where units pursuing a routing unit could stop pursuing when the unit rallied even though they were still not in contact with the target.
Made individual cavalry units breaking out of combat more easily, to reduce units getting stuck in brawls.
Allied armies in siege battles now use separate default deployment lines so they don't deploy crammed into the same area.
Reduced qualifying trait list for various "Mad" traits (such as "Not quite right" or "Unhinged") for generals in campaign modes.
When a port is garrisoned in a port settlement, it is now possible to recruit units to the fleet.
Units are now automatically assigned to siege equipment in deployment.
If an AI faction offers an alliance to the player, it is no longer possible to offer satrapy status and have both active offers at the same time.
Fixed the firing arch for African elephant units.
The Loose formation button has been added for certain units in battle.
Teutoburg Forest historic battle is now more tolerant to the general or other Roman forces wandering off the beaten track.
The cap on Mounted Artillery pieces is now set at 6 per team / alliance instead of 6 per army.
When a host decides to make changes to the game setup (e.g. add new player slots) in a multiplayer lobby, these changes are now more accurately displayed to the clients in the lobby.
In Multiplayer Campaign mode, the "Show AI player moves" option is now reflected correctly for the client.
Multiplayer Ambush battles can no longer be started with 2v2 (or greater) numbers of players. This battle type is now limited to 1v1 as intended.
Whilst in a Campaign as Egypt, the "Defender of Alexandria" mission now requires the correct target to be completed.
Various fixes for men being unable to disembark from ships in battles.



Balancing Changes



Re-balancing for Transport ships.
Enemies routing now have double the morale impact.
The Form Square unit ability now gives a small increase to morale and a bracing bonus in battles.
Re-balancing for the damage rate of fire on burning buildings and gates.
The Charge timeout tolerance has been reduced so heavy units aren’t so good at chasing down skirmishers.
Further reductions to Casualty morale penalties at lower levels.
Flanking and rear charge morale penalties have been increased.
Increase morale penalty for general death/fleeing.
Increased effect of rear attack in melee.
Reduced melee defence stats for most units, and increased shield melee defence values to even out the differences between units.
Melee attack reduced slightly for most units.
Increased melee defence for all shock cavalry units.
Tweaked balancing of Hoplite units.
Fix for Silver Shield Pikemen using wrong shield type.




Usability Improvements



Players can now customise the emblem on their Generals and Admirals banners. 32 new emblems have been added. When you select a General or Admiral on the Campaign map, and click the "Details" button, players can select a new emblem via a new user interface.
Switching graphics quality will no longer reset changes made to the "run in window" checkbox.
Fixed issue in Multiplayer Campaign diplomacy, where both players had control over the accept/cancel buttons at same time, so they could (for example) spam the send offer button to result in multiple trade agreements with same player.
Fixed user interface exploit which allowed the players in battles in Legendary difficulty, to pause battles and still issue orders to their units.
The Maintain blockade button no longer appears on the pre-battle screen after attacking an enemy army and clicking fight battle.
In Campaign modes, if an army is embarked on a navy and in a port (e.g. by capturing a port settlement with an army/navy) it is now easier to get that army out of the water and into the garrison.
Fixed issue where if the player declared war several times successively in diplomacy in Campaign modes, some of the text on the declare war panel would go missing.
Improved "Culture Details" interface when the mouse is placed over the "Culture" icon on a "Province Details" panel in Campaign modes.
Slowed down scrolling with the mouse wheel on the Province tab in Campaign modes, as it was too fast.
Prologue chapters are now unlocked as soon as the player plays them.
Improved the progress bar above ships in battles when they are boarding each other.
Fixed strength bar not being setup in negotiation screen of Diplomacy.
The Banner emblems have been removed from the top of barbarian unit banners to make it easier to distinguish Generals and Admirals.
The Cruel agent trait now has a positive icon instead of a negative one, as it has a positive effect.
Improved responsiveness of the Technology panel user interface in Campaign modes.
In Chat, remembered chat rooms are no longer re-created when they are not found. This is to fix the issue of lots of chat rooms being created, that only contain 1 person.
There is now a faction flag for each alliance involved in battle on the loading screen when loading into a battle.
Saving keyboard setups with characters such as "&, <, >," or ' " in the name is now supported.
The list of save games in the Save / Load menu now loads faster, and prevent the player from over-writing files with the same name by prompting them when this is about to occur.
Fixed issue when giving a double click move/attack order to a unit while dragging units into formation at the same time, which caused the drag-outs to get stuck to the cursor.
Fix for a bug in the "Cloud" tab of the save menu. When closing the menu and re-opening it, the "Cloud" tab was selected, but the cloud saves weren't listed.
Fix for a bug that allowed the player to use the "ping" function (which draws yellow arrows on the campaign map, when the player presses the [F5] key) in *Single Player Campaign, so it now only works in Multiplayer Campaign as intended.
When there is a civil war during a Carthage campaign game, the emerging Adirim Loyalists' faction icon is now sown next to the settlement names of settlements owned by Adirim Loyalists, instead of the original Carthage faction icon.
Fixed various missing texture issues on unit banners in battles for reinforcements, disembarking ships, and when had flags were off then turned on.
The group morale frames on Unit Banners are coloured same as ungrouped units in battles.
The "Attacker Direction" dropdown list has been hidden instead of greyed out in the Battle Setup screens for Custom and Multiplayer battles, when not applicable, to avoid confusion.
Trample abilities effects on fatigue are now clearer in battles.
In the Custom Battle setup screen, the Mare Ibericum battle map no longer remains selected when the player selects another map.
The portrait of the selected character on the Character Details screen in Campaign modes no longer overlaps frame around the portrait.
Fixed for land unit style category icons and tooltips sometimes being shown on ship unit banners during battles.
Fixed subtitles on some tutorial videos in the Encyclopaedia.
Fixed a bug where destroying one slave army would kill / make all the other slave armies disappear.
Unit cards now scale horizontally to a certain limit, to reduce the likelihood of requiring double row of cards, which takes up quite a lot of space on the screen.
The "Active Missions" button in the objectives panel now highlights correctly when selected.
The description text for the second objective ("White India") of the fifth historical chapter ("Excelsior") of the Parthia faction now fits correctly in the text box in the Objectives panel.
If the player uses the encyclopaedia shortcut while scrolling a menu, the scroll bar button will no longer appear on top (overlap) the encyclopaedia page.
Experience levelling up effects on banners are no longer displayed when banners themselves are hidden, e.g. in Cinematic Camera view in Battles.
The "Roma Captured" video now plays when Rome is captured on the Campaign map, when the player choses to loot or raze Roma.
Fixed bug when making an Offer / Demand in diplomacy that would stop the diplomats mouth from moving as they spoke.
Players can no longer select the Greek faction in Multiplayer Campaign mode with the arrow keys, when they don't own the Greek States Culture Pack DLC, which led to both players being returned to the main menu when loading the campaign.
Having the "Add Offer/ Demand" window open in diplomacy, while breaking a treaty will no longer cause the "Add Offer/ Demand" window to remain visible.
Players can now load a fleet or army on coastal and port assault battles, instead of only fleets.
Fix for Socii units missing variations in battles.
Added greaves to Carthaginian Hoplites units in battles.
Fix for Chosen Spear and Sword band missing helmet variation in battles.
Event messages that open automatically will now correctly open in order, one by one.
Pressing the "Cancel" button when changing the Push To Talk key in the Voice Chat Settings menu now works as expected.
The icon for glassware is now visible on the Hieron Ton Megalon Theon's building card.
Better consistency between the attributes that are displayed on the recruitment user interface for Generals and the attributes of the General once recruited.
Fixed tool tip on notification icon that appears on the "Details" button when units are available to upgrade.
When entering the diplomacy screen for the first time in Campaign modes, the accompanying speech now matches the text displayed.
Promotion level is now displayed on the Faction Summary and Faction Details *Panel in Campaign modes when a character is selected.
Placeholder text no longer displays on the pre-battle user interface for one player, when a rebel army attacks the other player in Multiplayer Campaign mode.
Pressing the Escape key while pacing the mouse over a construction options in the Settlement Details panel no longer leaves the construction options open while closing the Settlement Detail panel.
Increased Cataphract armour, and strong version added for Royal Cataphracts units.
Changed armour for Eastern Noble Horse Archers to Cataphracts.
Fix for incorrect colouring of battle list entries.
Clicking on the "zoom to location" button on event messages will now always take you to the correct location.
Added in missing standard bearers to Spartan and Carthaginian infantry units.
When an agent is with an army that is accompanying a fleet, separating the agent from the army now updates the user interface correctly, so that the agent no longer appears like it's with the army.
Fixed missing text on the "Accept" button when offering diplomacy to another faction in Campaign modes.
Fixed the arrows buttons functionality on various scrollbars in the Campaign user interface.
When viewing the total number of army units listed in a merged fleet, in the top left corner of the unit panel in campaign modes, it now correctly shows the number of units instead of incorrectly displaying the fleet total.
When a unit gains a rank during or after a battle in Campaign modes, there is now a "level-up" animation to highlight this.
The red left and right arrows on either side of the settlement name in the left hand side of the screen when a settlement is selected on the campaign map, now toggle between settlements more effectively.
When the Rhodes region is captured on the Campaign map, and under player control, viewing the Tactical Map will now colour the region correctly.
The arrow to sort by Food Production in the Province panel in Campaign modes now sorts correctly.
Switching between different forces on the Campaign map, while in the Details panel is open, will now update the stance button, so the changing the stance with this button will now set the stance for the currently selected force.
When looking for an online multiplayer battle, the list of games available are in the Battle List window can now be scrolled with the mouse wheel.
When exiting negotiations with faction in the Diplomacy panel, that faction now stays selected in faction list so the player doesn't have to scroll down the whole list each time.
When placing the mouse over buildings that can be converted in a settlement in Campaign modes, the mouse now highlights the upgrades correctly.
Fixed the sort by diplomatic status button in the "Known Factions" list in the diplomacy panel in Campaign Modes.
In Multiplayer Campaign, when one player declares war on a faction and confirms this, the "Call your Allies to help!" checkbox is now hidden, as changing it after this point didn't do anything.
While choosing an agent action in Campaign modes, the player can now see the current treasury status of the agent in the agent action panel.
During all Quick Battle multiplayer games, when any player enters the deployment screen they are no longer shown as Rome for a couple of seconds while the game is set up.
The expanded tooltip for client state in diplomacy now no longer always displays 0.
Arrow keys can no longer be used to move artillery weapons in First Person mode, as this was not an intended feature.
Fixed incomes from client states and satrapies not being shown correctly in diplomacy.
Improved menu response to use of double-click when using the "Controls" menu under "Settings" in the main menu.
In the Controls menu, if changes are made to controls and the Accept button is pressed, the save dialog appears automatically. If this dialog is cancelled, and the Accept button is pressed again, all control changes will no longer be discarded without warning.
Fixed some layout issues with faction list in multiplayer campaign.
Added hull upgrade icon to Unit Cards, and fixed upgrade icons not appearing in battle.
Fixed the "Zoom to Province" button in campaign modes sometimes zooming to the last region within the province group, instead of the capital (main settlement).
Removed the confirmation dialog when quitting a battle when the player had already won and was chasing down routers, to avoid confusion about what will happen (as the player has already won, quitting just ends the battle with victory).
Text made more clear in the confirmation dialog when quitting a battle.
The wider your resize the chat window the more rooms you can now see.
The Escape key now works correctly with the "Lock Visibility" option in chat.
Fixed issue where the cursor wouldn't update, if it had mouse over a text input box when transitioned between different areas of game, and stay as a text cursor within battles (for example).
In the Defence of Campania chapter of the Prologue campaign, the "infinity symbol" is no longer displayed on unit cards when the units can be recruited.
Fixed flickering graphics when the "downgrade warning" message appears on loading screens.
Fixed issue where the shroud would disappear from the Campaign Tactical Map and Mini-Map when entering Tactical Map or moving a character.
Fixed for rain being shown as an option for snowy regions in the Custom Battle setup screen, as it would just appear as snow in the battle anyway.
Added tooltips to the left and right arrows in "Your Forces" panel in pre-battle campaign phase.
Added some missing text for reinforcements on the pre-battle loading screen.
Altered tooltip for Siege Turn Time and Fix for Order of Battle reinforcements tooltip not displaying.
The text for "Shoa AI player movements" in Italian ("Mostra mosse dei giocatori") now fits correctly in the Multiplayer Campaign setup menu.
Phase timers are now displayed as a ring around Ability buttons in battles.
Added some text that was missing from the Faction Summary screen in Campaign modes.
Added current ancillary card to the "Ancillary Gained" event message.
The Province details button no longer remains selected after deselecting a settlement.
Removed the sound effect when placing the mouse over blank / empty character options in the Family Politics panel.
Update to the hyperlinks for '"Amies" in the Prologue Defence of Campania.
The text for "Game Mode" in Italian ("Modalità di gioco") now fits correctly in the button in the Multiplayer Campaign setup menu.
Some hyperlinks in the user interface in Campaign modes have been removed, as it opened a blank page in the Encyclopaedia.
Fix for grammar errors in the subject dilemma text.
Various localisation text and audio fixes in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Czech, Russian, Polish and Turkish.

Hooahguy
10-04-2013, 18:01
Super excited to try this out:


Players can now customise the emblem on their Generals and Admirals banners. 32 new emblems have been added. When you select a General or Admiral on the Campaign map, and click the "Details" button, players can select a new emblem via a new user interface.

The patch notes look fantastic, cant wait to try all this new stuff out!

Barkhorn1x
10-04-2013, 18:12
Meaty, beaty big and bouncy!!!

AntiDamascus
10-04-2013, 19:05
Increased the willingness of the AI signing trade agreements and defensive alliance.

Yay

Sp4
10-04-2013, 19:59
Fixed Campaign lock up when a rank 2 or higher General dies, after selecting a replacement with the "Duty Calls" event, then selecting any other open event, and then attempting to open Diplomacy.

How did the find that? Do people try these things out? I wonder if there is someone out there who tries playing this while doing a handstand.

-E- I did a 'little test' and now everyone trades with me, even people who hate me XD

Suraknar
10-04-2013, 20:59
How did the find that? Do people try these things out? I wonder if there is someone out there who tries playing this while doing a handstand.

-E- I did a 'little test' and now everyone trades with me, even people who hate me XD

This is most probably found by QA testers, or Game Testers if you will who are paid for it. They actually have a list of Do this then this then this etc etc.

Bramborough
10-04-2013, 21:54
Liking patch4beta. Lots of nice little items which just makes things easier. Now on "Household Expands", one can compare the current retainer with the newly available one, instead of trying to remember who was with that general. The province list mouse-scrolls again.

Trade does seem to come a bit easier now. I'm not sure if that's the patch, or the fact that I'm now playing Pontus which has a nice diplo boost with Hellenic states (as opposed to my prior Junii Romans whom everyone instinctively hates).

Haven't yet had a chance yet to take over enemy towns to see if they're building them any smarter. I did just fight an AI army which seemed well loaded with as high-quality troops as they could reasonably have available at this game stage...although again I don't know if that's the patch or not.

Best of all, seeing none of the glitchiness which seemed to plague many of us with the introduction of patch3beta....smooth sailing.

sassbarman
10-04-2013, 23:13
A lot of solid changes here. Unit cards scaling horizontally uncluttering the screen, units and agents levelling up animation staying on campaign map and the improvements to the diplomacy screens are very welcome.

Slaists
10-05-2013, 15:18
Liking patch4beta. Lots of nice little items which just makes things easier. Now on "Household Expands", one can compare the current retainer with the newly available one, instead of trying to remember who was with that general. The province list mouse-scrolls again.

Trade does seem to come a bit easier now. I'm not sure if that's the patch, or the fact that I'm now playing Pontus which has a nice diplo boost with Hellenic states (as opposed to my prior Junii Romans whom everyone instinctively hates).

Haven't yet had a chance yet to take over enemy towns to see if they're building them any smarter. I did just fight an AI army which seemed well loaded with as high-quality troops as they could reasonably have available at this game stage...although again I don't know if that's the patch or not.

Best of all, seeing none of the glitchiness which seemed to plague many of us with the introduction of patch3beta....smooth sailing.

Patch IV beta. Patch notes say the AI is now prioritizing military buildup. I am playing as Macedonia (fresh start, VH) and took Apollonia from Epirus. They had two barracks buildings there... Food shortage would have been imminent for them.

Spoonska
10-05-2013, 16:31
Deployed agents on the campaign map, no longer reset back to being un-deployed when they level up.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

They just took it to a ..whole...notha........level

Jarmam
10-05-2013, 17:27
These patches show great potential for Rome 2. Sure, one can harp about a great many of these issues being unfixed at release (which is perfectly justified), but the direction and scope of each patch gives me genuine hope for a truly awesome campaign once Seleucid is released.

And if this bleeds into multiplayer, which I know nothing of, this could go on to be an epic game.

Hooahguy
10-05-2013, 18:41
I played a few turns with the patch 4 beta and I already see more infantry/cavalry heavy armies and fewer slingers. For example, I took this from my current Suebi campaign:
https://i.imgur.com/isPAyuS.jpg

This Roman army, as you can tell, has an excellent makeup, in my opinion.

Though they do need to get better at managing their food supplies.

CaptainCrunch
10-05-2013, 21:55
Patch IV beta. Patch notes say the AI is now prioritizing military buildup. I am playing as Macedonia (fresh start, VH) and took Apollonia from Epirus. They had two barracks buildings there... Food shortage would have been imminent for them.

This is exactly what I was afraid of when I read the notes. I think this type of re-balancing really needs time to be play-tested thoroughly before being implemented, or the campaign AI may end up being constantly broke and require scripted cheats to stay competitive like in RTW.

The rest of the changes are awesome improvements :thumbsup:

Sp4
10-05-2013, 22:03
A lot of solid changes here. Unit cards scaling horizontally uncluttering the screen, units and agents levelling up animation staying on campaign map and the improvements to the diplomacy screens are very welcome.

I have not really seen any of this unit card scaling.

sassbarman
10-05-2013, 23:59
I have not really seen any of this unit card scaling.

Im just going by the patch notes. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet but I hope it's better because it annoyed the hell out me.

sassbarman
10-06-2013, 00:01
Deployed agents on the campaign map, no longer reset back to being un-deployed when they level up.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

They just took it to a ..whole...notha........level

Fully agree!!!!!!!

Alcibiade
10-06-2013, 15:52
IMO the game is getting better wit each patch ! But I've read so many posts on TWC or the official forum claiming the exact opposite that I'm beginning to ask myself if I'm completely blind or just too stupid to see their point...

Anyway, as I have two mods installed (close combat and no HDR) I'm a bit hesitant to install the patch 4 beta. Has anyone here had those CTD on start up caused by mods + patch 4 ?

Hooahguy
10-06-2013, 16:14
Ive had one CTD with the new patch, but Im not sure if the patch actually caused it. I pressed "end turn" while zoomed all the way out while using a "zoom out more" mod and I crashed. Then I reloaded, zoomed back in, and ended my turn and no CTD.

Veho Nex
10-06-2013, 16:41
How did the find that? Do people try these things out? I wonder if there is someone out there who tries playing this while doing a handstand.

-E- I did a 'little test' and now everyone trades with me, even people who hate me XD

Actually that little bug is pretty easy to find out. A lot of times the AI, at least in my campaign game, would assassinate whatever general i had closest to the front lines and then DoW me. About 60% of the time I froze.

sassbarman
10-06-2013, 20:05
IMO the game is getting better wit each patch ! But I've read so many posts on TWC or the official forum claiming the exact opposite that I'm beginning to ask myself if I'm completely blind or just too stupid to see their point...

Anyway, as I have two mods installed (close combat and no HDR) I'm a bit hesitant to install the patch 4 beta. Has anyone here had those CTD on start up caused by mods + patch 4 ?

The game for me at least is far better after the last couple of patches. The other forums tend to be a little more "animated" than on here so take about 80% of the reaction there with a grain of salt. Game still needs a ton of work especially siege AI but it's getting there.

Sp4
10-06-2013, 23:55
I have not really seen any of this unit card scaling.

Now I have seen it and.. woohoo! I am impressed :D

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/902135452926408996/C0947831A5133BFE90E4061BE1E6F0BF645BA173/

Bramborough
10-07-2013, 07:46
IMO the game is getting better wit each patch ! But I've read so many posts on TWC or the official forum claiming the exact opposite that I'm beginning to ask myself if I'm completely blind or just too stupid to see their point...

Anyway, as I have two mods installed (close combat and no HDR) I'm a bit hesitant to install the patch 4 beta. Has anyone here had those CTD on start up caused by mods + patch 4 ?

My theory is that at some point a "critical mass" of negative opinion is sometimes reached, and a vocal minority become intractably hostile. Once this occurs, no matter what positive changes occur, the baying hounds just won't be quieted. Regrettable though it may be, it's normal...commonly seen in politics, sports, pretty much anywhere. Certainly nothing new...we've been doing it for thousands of years, but the internet is a natural medium to facilitate and amplify this tendency.

My own opinion is that each patch has substantially improved the game, and patch4beta is no different. I did have some initial campaign map problems with patch3beta (resolved well before that patch went live). All other patches, including patch4beta, have run just fine for me. I see no rational reason whatsoever to recommend against installing it.

nearchos
10-07-2013, 08:03
I played two campaigns with Parthia, with patch 3, legendary which i quit and start a new in very hard.
In both cases i had a dificult time, i had to deal with a lot of enemies, an aggresive AI, invasions and enemy agents all over my lands, some times there were 3 or 4 agents, where my main stacks were operating.

After beta patch 4, i desided to start a new camapign, so i start with Pontus in very hard.

I see most of the changes posted, in diplomacy, in AI army composition, agents, etc, ok.

Now the AI. I currently own 9 settlements, by destroying 4 factions, Cappadocia, Galatia,Armenia and Kartlii( not sure how is writen).
I have defencive alliances with Bythinia and Trapezon and trade aggreements with most of factions.

Until this point, no enemy army, since the start of the campaign, moved from their settlements, i was just murching my armies and attack, the settlement and waiting armies, destroying them and capturing the town.
They just never moved aggresively.

And moreover, Trapezon, was for many turns at war with, Armenia, Kartlii and Colhis, but no army of theirs ever moved to capture their only settlement, which was not heavily guarded and an easy pick esspecialy for Armenia.

I also can see that most of the factions, not only enemies have still problems with food sortages.

Has anyone else same experience with AI aggresivenes with patch 4? should i turn to patch 3 until they fix it again?

Bramborough
10-07-2013, 08:32
After beta patch 4, i desided to start a new camapign, so i start with Pontus in very hard.

I see most of the changes posted, in diplomacy, in AI army composition, agents, etc, ok.

Now the AI. I currently own 9 settlements, by destroying 4 factions, Cappadocia, Galatia,Armenia and Kartlii( not sure how is writen).
I have defencive alliances with Bythinia and Trapezon and trade aggreements with most of factions.

Until this point, no enemy army, since the start of the campaign, moved from their settlements, i was just murching my armies and attack, the settlement and waiting armies, destroying them and capturing the town.
They just never moved aggresively.

And moreover, Trapezon, was for many turns at war with, Armenia, Kartlii and Colhis, but no army of theirs ever moved to capture their only settlement, which was not heavily guarded and an easy pick esspecialy for Armenia.

I also can see that most of the factions, not only enemies have still problems with food sortages.

Has anyone else same experience with AI aggresivenes with patch 4? should i turn to patch 3 until they fix it again?

Interesting difference in experience with early Pontus campaign. Galatia, Cappadocia, and Cimmeria have all acted pretty aggressively toward me, I've had to defend starting capital and port vs full-size invading army several times. They've also repeatedly blockaded Sinope...driving me to completely change my near-term strategic plan in order to deal with it. I will agree that Armenia - formally at war with me - was strangely passive while I was preoccupied with these other folks. Other than that, I've got no complaint about AI aggressiveness. I began the campaign on Patch 3, but this kind of spunky AI behavior has continued with patch4beta.

This has been on Normal...counterintuitive that AI would get less aggressive on a higher difficulty level. Maybe I was just lucky.

Alcibiade
10-07-2013, 09:31
My own opinion is that each patch has substantially improved the game, and patch4beta is no different.

happy happy joy joy

Seriously, I wonder when CA will correct the problem of major historical factions like Rome, Carthage, Egypt or Seleucid being destroyed so early in the game. Maybe it's not in their priorities and not even on their agenda, but this is something that really annoys me.
At the moment, the only super-powers I see rising in the west are obscure Iberic or Maurish factions. I would be ok if those were Lybia or Nova Carthago (who have an access to the sea), but most of the tiime it's the Garamants , the Massaely or the Gaetuli. SAme with the Turdetani, and Edetani being so powerfull with huge fleets even befor Cathaginian contact.

Anyway, patch after patch, this game reveal its awesome potential. By the way, is there any chance for some major features like a toggable guard mode or family tree to be implemented in a future patch ? Is it a realistic wish ?

Myth
10-07-2013, 09:47
So I came back to the game last night for just a bit but I saw no opton to opt-in into patch 4? I just had the option to opt out of all betas... Strange. And it's been out for a while too.

The "main" factions being destroyed too early is an issue for me too. Coming to test the waters around Rome with the Avernii lead me to smearing them because they couldn't even contend with the Etruscan league in 30 turns :inquisitive:

I'm contemplating making my Sparta campaign basically a landgrab for the two rich Roman provinces so I can be off to a stellar start (can't make a two-bit 3 settlement province your main recruitment center now...)

nearchos
10-07-2013, 09:50
Interesting difference in experience with early Pontus campaign. Galatia, Cappadocia, and Cimmeria have all acted pretty aggressively toward me, I've had to defend starting capital and port vs full-size invading army several times. They've also repeatedly blockaded Sinope...driving me to completely change my near-term strategic plan in order to deal with it. I will agree that Armenia - formally at war with me - was strangely passive while I was preoccupied with these other folks. Other than that, I've got no complaint about AI aggressiveness. I began the campaign on Patch 3, but this kind of spunky AI behavior has continued with patch4beta.

This has been on Normal...counterintuitive that AI would get less aggressive on a higher difficulty level. Maybe I was just lucky.
No such experience for me, but im not sure, if there is something wrong with the patch 4 because i started the campaign just after i instaled the 4 beta.

I started being at war with Cappadocia and an unfriently attitude from Galatia.
So i gather an early army of slings and eastern spears and invade the lands of the Cappadocians, after few turns i have destroyed the faction.
Galatia remains unfriendly but makes no move.Trapezon is at war already with Colhis, Armenia and Karlii and im not sending any troops to assist them since i want them out of the way in order to take Trapezon for me.I assume that sooner or later they will be destroyed, but no, no one is moving away from its settlements.

As i see the time passes, i assept the invitation from Trapezon to join the war with Armenia and i acept for 2000 dinarii, i cupture their western settlement and next turn i acept a peace trety for 3000 dinarii.

Finaly i decide to wipe the Gallatians, so i invade them with 2 armies and destroy them as a faction at turn 25.

And a detail, i only have the starting fleet and 4 armies from the 6 i can have and dont need more.

After i got access to higher level units, level 3 barracks, i declared war to Armenia and destroyed them in 3 turns.

And by watching also other factions behaviour, sending spies around to see what is going on, Seleucids, Media, Media Apopatene, they all standing around their settlements, starving....

Only further west there is movement, Sparta destroyed Athens, Rome is geting strong, Cyrrenaica is expanding.

Oh and other factions agents are passing through a couple of times.

I dont think you were lucky, because as i said, with patch 3 the AI was aggresive and used its armies and agents with efficiency.

By the way your Walkthrough of Pontus campaign is great, im looking forward for the next chapters.

Bramborough
10-07-2013, 13:48
I dont think you were lucky, because as i said, with patch 3 the AI was aggresive and used its armies and agents with efficiency.

By the way your Walkthrough of Pontus campaign is great, im looking forward for the next chapters.

Hmm...perhaps because I started with Patch 3, the basic behavior patterns set in place at campaign start continue despite the patch, but if I start another with Patch 4, they'd act more passively? Does that even make sense...could the programming work out that way (as an unintended consequence)?

Thanks for the thumbs up on the AAR. I did it just add a bit more activity. I'd enjoyed Hooah's, thought I'd give back a bit to the forum. As it turns out, it's significantly adding to my enjoyment of the game, imagining the storyline in my head as I play along.

SwordsMaster
10-07-2013, 14:28
happy happy joy joy

Seriously, I wonder when CA will correct the problem of major historical factions like Rome, Carthage, Egypt or Seleucid being destroyed so early in the game. Maybe it's not in their priorities and not even on their agenda, but this is something that really annoys me.
At the moment, the only super-powers I see rising in the west are obscure Iberic or Maurish factions. I would be ok if those were Lybia or Nova Carthago (who have an access to the sea), but most of the tiime it's the Garamants , the Massaely or the Gaetuli. SAme with the Turdetani, and Edetani being so powerfull with huge fleets even befor Cathaginian contact.

Anyway, patch after patch, this game reveal its awesome potential. By the way, is there any chance for some major features like a toggable guard mode or family tree to be implemented in a future patch ? Is it a realistic wish ?

The problem with the Gaetulii is that they sit on a purple dye deposit, and desert attrition is so underplayed in this game that they have no problem financing themselves - in my game the control all of mauretania, Carthage, and half of spain... Obviously the lack of options to expand further south pushes them north with likely unintended consequences. Anyhow, IMO any travel through the Sahara should have impossible attrition for armoured units, even on 'roads'. As if there was such a thing in the Sahara. that would add an element to desert warfare where light troops and light cavalry would need to be used. there is a reason Rome didn't settle Dakhla and Timbuktu...

Alcibiade
10-07-2013, 15:30
The problem with the Gaetulii is that they sit on a purple dye deposit, and desert attrition is so underplayed in this game that they have no problem financing themselves - in my game the control all of mauretania, Carthage, and half of spain... Obviously the lack of options to expand further south pushes them north with likely unintended consequences. Anyhow, IMO any travel through the Sahara should have impossible attrition for armoured units, even on 'roads'. As if there was such a thing in the Sahara. that would add an element to desert warfare where light troops and light cavalry would need to be used. there is a reason Rome didn't settle Dakhla and Timbuktu...

It's a good idea. Now that CA integrated attrition it might even be possible to mod.

Maybe CA equalised the map for gameplay purpose, but it's not working for me. Some factions should be far more powerfull and rich than others. The campaign map surely needs some (un)balancing. I'd love to fight a powerfull Carthage in my next Rome campaign. And if I ever play a Seleucid campaign, I hope that I won't fight Cyrene or the Nabatea/Axum/etc... occupying Alexandria every time.

Jacque Schtrapp
10-07-2013, 16:00
Has anyone else same experience with AI aggresivenes with patch 4? should i turn to patch 3 until they fix it again?

I started a new campaign as VH Pontus after installing the Patch 4 Beta. I spent the very beginning wiping out Cappadocia and Galatia, same as most people do I expect. After that, I inadvertently figured out how to make my campaign extremely interesting. I had been eyeing Armenian lands since they destroyed my ally, Trapezos. I decided to go ahead and seize their two closest towns while they were busy finishing off the Kartlii elsewhere. Shortly thereafter, every Black Sea faction and their landlocked neighbor declared war on me. Things got even more interesting when I accepted an alliance offer from the Seleucid. It seemed that every turn, 2-3 factions went to war with them and, by honoring our alliance, I was soon at war with every non Greek faction in the eastern part of the map.

My lands are swarming with agents. Every turn I get an average of 3 enemy agent actions against my towns/provinces/armies. The makeup of the enemy armies is much better. The issues I'm seeing now are enemies coming in and conquering settlements close to my borders and then leaving them completely undefended while I've got an army sitting in my border province right next door. Also, for some inexplicable reason, Armenia, which has plenty of troops, is sending its armies via the sea even though we share a common border with the province they are attacking.

In short, if you want an interesting campaign, ally with the Seleucid early on and honor the alliance until the bitter end.

There are still issues to improve upon, but I do feel the game is heading in the right direction.

nearchos
10-08-2013, 07:07
I started a new campaign as VH Pontus after installing the Patch 4 Beta. I spent the very beginning wiping out Cappadocia and Galatia, same as most people do I expect. After that, I inadvertently figured out how to make my campaign extremely interesting. I had been eyeing Armenian lands since they destroyed my ally, Trapezos. I decided to go ahead and seize their two closest towns while they were busy finishing off the Kartlii elsewhere. Shortly thereafter, every Black Sea faction and their landlocked neighbor declared war on me. Things got even more interesting when I accepted an alliance offer from the Seleucid. It seemed that every turn, 2-3 factions went to war with them and, by honoring our alliance, I was soon at war with every non Greek faction in the eastern part of the map.

My lands are swarming with agents. Every turn I get an average of 3 enemy agent actions against my towns/provinces/armies. The makeup of the enemy armies is much better. The issues I'm seeing now are enemies coming in and conquering settlements close to my borders and then leaving them completely undefended while I've got an army sitting in my border province right next door. Also, for some inexplicable reason, Armenia, which has plenty of troops, is sending its armies via the sea even though we share a common border with the province they are attacking.

In short, if you want an interesting campaign, ally with the Seleucid early on and honor the alliance until the bitter end.

There are still issues to improve upon, but I do feel the game is heading in the right direction.
Well, you have a point here and i thank you very much, this must be the reason since i am very careful with my diplomatic moves.
I only have defencive alliances with Bythinia and Trapezon, and some non aggrecion pacts and a lot of trade aggreements and moreover im very carefull with my moves not to cause non nessecary unfriendly attitude by any other faction.
So perhaps in reality what seemed to me as an extremely passive AI is just a more balanced diplomacy.

Last night, i finished of the Colchis and the Cimerians, the last were hard to fight, i destroyed their main armies with 50% cassualties and then took their last settlement with the help of 3 armies of Royal Schythia.

So now i own 2/3 of the Black Sea coast and will plan my next moves.

I suppose from now on i will have to bleed since my target now is to unite all of Asia minor so i will go to war with Selleucids and their satrapies.

nearchos
10-08-2013, 07:14
Hmm...perhaps because I started with Patch 3, the basic behavior patterns set in place at campaign start continue despite the patch, but if I start another with Patch 4, they'd act more passively? Does that even make sense...could the programming work out that way (as an unintended consequence)?
Well, Jacque Schtrapp gave a very interesting tip about diplomacy, since i was till now very carefull with my diplomatic desisions.

I was trying to see as many green or at least yellow faces as i could.

nearchos
10-08-2013, 07:43
Seriously, I wonder when CA will correct the problem of major historical factions like Rome, Carthage, Egypt or Seleucid being destroyed so early in the game.
I agree with that, and moreover there must be a time during the campaign, when you have reached a level of power, there must be an other faction close to the players power, so in order to complete the campaign you have to battle an other empire with strong economy and high level units.

A final inevitable clash of empires.

During the only campaign i have completed, at the end, i was just mooving 10 of my 15 armies around conquering in the process and the most powerful faction at the end was some german congederation with 9 settlements. After the CW there was no serious opposition.

Ituralde
10-08-2013, 09:26
For those having issues I strongly suggest the following:

- Right click on the Rome TW II icon in the Steam menu
- Select Properties
- Select Local Files
- Select Verify Game Cache

...as I suspect some files were corrupted or failed to d/l. The above will fix those problems.

Just a short update on my situation here. Unfortunately this didn't fix the issues. I still have freeze ups on the Campaign map, just by selecting an action or waiting for tool tips to appear. Maybe this is just a general performance issue that just now crops up, where I'm roughly 100 turns into the Campaign. QuickSave (Ctrl + S) has become my best friend now so I don't loose any progress, but it's still annoying.

Bramborough
10-08-2013, 10:50
Just a short update on my situation here. Unfortunately this didn't fix the issues. I still have freeze ups on the Campaign map, just by selecting an action or waiting for tool tips to appear. Maybe this is just a general performance issue that just now crops up, where I'm roughly 100 turns into the Campaign. QuickSave (Ctrl + S) has become my best friend now so I don't loose any progress, but it's still annoying.

Are you still referring to Patch 3? If so...and I hate to say this...your best bet might be to just start a new campaign.

I had problems with Patch3 beta. CTD/freezes, glitchy campaign map camera movement. I validated the cache, played with video quality settings, nothing much helped. Then I started a second campaign. Instantly the game ran smoothly. No problems with Patch 3 afterward, either beta or live.

I did not have this experience with Patches 2 or 4beta, both of which ran perfectly for me on in-progress games upon installation. So I suspect there was something specific to Patch 3 which somehow conflicted with data in save files of prior-existing campaigns.

Alcibiade
10-08-2013, 13:58
I don't know if it's a post patch 3 exclusiv feature, but my generals are systematically murdered when they are in the center of the action. Now it's a common combo for the AI to murder a general before attacking his army. It's already very difficult to identify to a general with 1TPY and no family tree thing but with those systematic murders on top of it, it's getting boring.

With Epirus I got Pyrrus wounded at the second turn of the campaign and when he finally came back, well, he won an heroic victory and was murdererd just after .

As a player I don't use this murder thing with generals as I don't think it's quite realistic, (you got almost 80% chances of succes at level 2) but the AI seems to really dig that feature. And when you're at war with 3 different factions you have easily 6,7 agents swirling around your troops and breaking everything. I'm ok with the sabotage, unrest, etc.. but not the automatic murders.

Slaists
10-08-2013, 14:21
I played two campaigns with Parthia, with patch 3, legendary which i quit and start a new in very hard.
In both cases i had a dificult time, i had to deal with a lot of enemies, an aggresive AI, invasions and enemy agents all over my lands, some times there were 3 or 4 agents, where my main stacks were operating.

After beta patch 4, i desided to start a new camapign, so i start with Pontus in very hard.

I see most of the changes posted, in diplomacy, in AI army composition, agents, etc, ok.

Now the AI. I currently own 9 settlements, by destroying 4 factions, Cappadocia, Galatia,Armenia and Kartlii( not sure how is writen).
I have defencive alliances with Bythinia and Trapezon and trade aggreements with most of factions.

Until this point, no enemy army, since the start of the campaign, moved from their settlements, i was just murching my armies and attack, the settlement and waiting armies, destroying them and capturing the town.
They just never moved aggresively.

And moreover, Trapezon, was for many turns at war with, Armenia, Kartlii and Colhis, but no army of theirs ever moved to capture their only settlement, which was not heavily guarded and an easy pick esspecialy for Armenia.

I also can see that most of the factions, not only enemies have still problems with food sortages.

Has anyone else same experience with AI aggresivenes with patch 4? should i turn to patch 3 until they fix it again?

When you are at war with the AI, they move aggressively alright if they feel strong enough (this is patch IV beta). The standard AI move is: move an army (or two) close to your army, then attack with the third army dragging the other armies in as reinforcements. Usually, the autoresolve shows my army being annihilated to the man. Of course, playing out the battle gives a different result.

Jacque Schtrapp
10-08-2013, 17:05
. And when you're at war with 3 different factions you have easily 6,7 agents swirling around your troops and breaking everything. I'm ok with the sabotage, unrest, etc.. but not the automatic murders.

I'm currently at war with at least a dozen different factions. There are enemy agents everywhere inside my lands. Even provinces that are hundreds of miles away from where I am fighting have agents trying to cause unrest or sabotage. I'm not getting any assassinations of generals yet, though they are hitting my agents pretty hard. I'm beginning to think they have actually gone a little overboard with the agent spam.

I'm also starting to notice that a lot of factions declare war on you and never actually send any troops against your lands. I believe part of this is because many of the factions that have declared war on me are landlocked and unable to ally with my other enemies or secure military access to get troops to my lands. Thus, we sit in a perpetual state of war with neither side actually able to engage the other.

I've got a neat little dance going on with a full stack from Media Atropatene. I hold Antioch and Edessa, which are about one turns movement apart for an army. Media Atropatene has an army just far enough south of those two cities that it would take me two turns to get to them. If I make the attempt, they can hit one city or the other, most likely capturing it. They move towards Edessa, I come out of Antioch to defend Edessa. They move back towards Antioch, I leave Edessa and dash back to Antioch. It's frustrating and amusing at the same time.

Lastly, it seems as if there is some reluctance on the part of my enemies to actually attack me. As Pontus, I control the entire northern coastline of Anatolia. I'm at war with literally every Black Sea faction, yet no one has attempted to land troops even though all but one of my armies are in the east fighting Media Atropatene and assorted others. Cimmeria has two armies sitting well off the coast in fleet form. Neither has moved in many turns now.

nearchos
10-08-2013, 19:55
When you are at war with the AI, they move aggressively alright if they feel strong enough (this is patch IV beta). The standard AI move is: move an army (or two) close to your army, then attack with the third army dragging the other armies in as reinforcements. Usually, the autoresolve shows my army being annihilated to the man. Of course, playing out the battle gives a different result.
Interesting, but im not sure if this is something good or bad for the campaign.

nearchos
10-08-2013, 20:01
Is patch 4 live?
Im asking because steam is downloading 1.4 GB at this moment.

Sp4
10-08-2013, 20:10
Nope.

Sp4
10-08-2013, 20:17
I don't know if it's a post patch 3 exclusiv feature, but my generals are systematically murdered when they are in the center of the action. Now it's a common combo for the AI to murder a general before attacking his army. It's already very difficult to identify to a general with 1TPY and no family tree thing but with those systematic murders on top of it, it's getting boring.

With Epirus I got Pyrrus wounded at the second turn of the campaign and when he finally came back, well, he won an heroic victory and was murdererd just after .

As a player I don't use this murder thing with generals as I don't think it's quite realistic, (you got almost 80% chances of succes at level 2) but the AI seems to really dig that feature. And when you're at war with 3 different factions you have easily 6,7 agents swirling around your troops and breaking everything. I'm ok with the sabotage, unrest, etc.. but not the automatic murders.

Yes, agent spam is annoying. It's the one thing that keeps me from putting the difficulty all the way up there... AIs just get more agents.

Wilbo
10-08-2013, 22:59
Interestingly, the game has become quite unstable for me since patch 4 beta. I'm consistently getting CTDs enough to end my Parthian campaign - it crashes loading the battle after the auto-save. I've gad no problems at all prior to P4B.

sassbarman
10-09-2013, 03:39
Not sure if this is a bug or a feature with this patch but after convincing the Seleucids to give up all their satrapies I couldn't conduct normal diplomacy with the former client states only the basic stuff as if they were still satrapies. Anyone else come across this?

nearchos
10-09-2013, 06:36
Is patch 4 live?
Im asking because steam is downloading 1.4 GB at this moment.

Well, after steam completed the instalation, instead 1.4.0. i was running since patch 4 beta, i saw that it was back to 1.3.0.
Not sure what was dounloaded.

Myth
10-09-2013, 07:41
Patch 4 improved the framerate for battles for me.

Ituralde
10-09-2013, 11:09
Are you still referring to Patch 3? If so...and I hate to say this...your best bet might be to just start a new campaign.

I had problems with Patch3 beta. CTD/freezes, glitchy campaign map camera movement. I validated the cache, played with video quality settings, nothing much helped. Then I started a second campaign. Instantly the game ran smoothly. No problems with Patch 3 afterward, either beta or live.

I did not have this experience with Patches 2 or 4beta, both of which ran perfectly for me on in-progress games upon installation. So I suspect there was something specific to Patch 3 which somehow conflicted with data in save files of prior-existing campaigns.

I started a new campaign with Rome yesterday, as I wanted to try them out finally. This didn't help with the freezes though and twenty turns in already three generals have gone mad! This is patch 3 by the way.

I've also learnt to fear the heavy Slinger focus of the northern Barbarians. I lost a whole legion of 1200 against 2100 Insubres, half of them Slingers. Their barrage was enough to demoralize my units and rout them after a short fight. Playing on Hard has already paid off.

Myth
10-09-2013, 12:08
Patch 4 reduces the occurence of madness traits and reduces the number of slingers in AI armies. However, beating slingers with low tier infantry is a pain indeed. If your men are with weak base morale (below 50) they will take heavy casualties. Use cavalry to kill the slingers instead - even two units of equites will be enough.

later on, once your pretorians get to 90+ morale and a ton of defence/armour/shields you will just run them over. And by later I mean 10 turns after the start if you rush to Pretorians (which you should as Rome is one of the richest factions at campaign start)

Zatoichi
10-09-2013, 12:53
Anyone else notice that the 'jump to region' button has gone missing from the 'Region xxx population is upset/rebellious/all fluffy' messages in patch 4 beta? It's kinda annoying as I can't remember more than about 4 province names at a time!

Ituralde
10-09-2013, 13:48
Patch 4 reduces the occurence of madness traits and reduces the number of slingers in AI armies. However, beating slingers with low tier infantry is a pain indeed. If your men are with weak base morale (below 50) they will take heavy casualties. Use cavalry to kill the slingers instead - even two units of equites will be enough.

later on, once your pretorians get to 90+ morale and a ton of defence/armour/shields you will just run them over. And by later I mean 10 turns after the start if you rush to Pretorians (which you should as Rome is one of the richest factions at campaign start)

The lesson I learned was to take some Equites with me in the future. My army was 4 Hastati, 4 Prinicpes, 2 Triarii and some assorted Leves and Velites. Was nice to see them get slaughtered though, because after reading about Rome on the forums and my first battles against the Etruscan and Carthaginians, I was afraid it would be too easy. That's why I decided against teching Legionnaries right away, I want to roleplay it a bit as well, I think.

Slaists
10-09-2013, 14:31
So far, on turn 75 with a VH Macedon campaign which started post patch IV beta release. I have 30+ regions and no AI has ever declared war on me: I am just steamrolling my way through same as before. Hey, Seleucids voluntarily became my vassals without any hostilities breaking between us. AI's Rome was at some point almost taken out by Epirus, but then Romans pulled themselves together and wiped out the pesky Italians. Now though, it seems, Northern barbarians are about to sack Rome itself.

Battles are a tad more interesting now that the AI is not starving as a rule. I am about to hit the threshold for the civil war start: I hope, that will heat things up a bit.


Patch 4 reduces the occurence of madness traits and reduces the number of slingers in AI armies. However, beating slingers with low tier infantry is a pain indeed. If your men are with weak base morale (below 50) they will take heavy casualties. Use cavalry to kill the slingers instead - even two units of equites will be enough.

later on, once your pretorians get to 90+ morale and a ton of defence/armour/shields you will just run them over. And by later I mean 10 turns after the start if you rush to Pretorians (which you should as Rome is one of the richest factions at campaign start)

Rush Praetorians? The Roman campaign is way too easy with Hastati + Principes + Triarii, no need for rushing Praetorians (or Legionaries for that matter), which I feel, should be allowed no more than 1 cohort per stack. When I play Romans I tend to have half my legion as auxiliaries for roleplaying (Italian auxialiary cavalry is better than the early Roman variety anyway).

fallen851
10-09-2013, 15:38
Rush Praetorians? The Roman campaign is way too easy with Hastati + Principes + Triarii, no need for rushing Praetorians (or Legionaries for that matter), which I feel, should be allowed no more than 1 cohort per stack. When I play Romans I tend to have half my legion as auxiliaries for roleplaying (Italian auxialiary cavalry is better than the early Roman variety anyway).

Agreed Slaists. I've never understood the need to absolutely dominate such a weak AI by resorting to things like this. What is the thrill? If you're going to play a game of soccer (football for those in Europe) with a bunch of young kids, do you really need to bring your cleats along?

I could understand if the AI put up a fight... but it doesn't.

Myth
10-09-2013, 17:12
Agreed Slaists. I've never understood the need to absolutely dominate such a weak AI by resorting to things like this. What is the thrill? If you're going to play a game of soccer (football for those in Europe) with a bunch of young kids, do you really need to bring your cleats along?

I could understand if the AI put up a fight... but it doesn't.

Yes it does, but you have to play a real difficulty setting and not baby mode.

Alcibiade
10-09-2013, 17:16
I'm currently at war with at least a dozen different factions. There are enemy agents everywhere inside my lands. Even provinces that are hundreds of miles away from where I am fighting have agents trying to cause unrest or sabotage. I'm not getting any assassinations of generals yet, though they are hitting my agents pretty hard. I'm beginning to think they have actually gone a little overboard with the agent spam.

I wonder if they changed something aboutthe agents with patch 4. I didn't see anything about that in the patch notes. But maybe, it only became noticeable with a more agressive AI.



I've got a neat little dance going on with a full stack from Media Atropatene. I hold Antioch and Edessa, which are about one turns movement apart for an army. Media Atropatene has an army just far enough south of those two cities that it would take me two turns to get to them. If I make the attempt, they can hit one city or the other, most likely capturing it. They move towards Edessa, I come out of Antioch to defend Edessa. They move back towards Antioch, I leave Edessa and dash back to Antioch. It's frustrating and amusing at the same time.

It looks like a chess "pat".



When I play Romans I tend to have half my legion as auxiliaries for roleplaying (Italian auxialiary cavalry is better than the early Roman variety anyway).

That's interesting, as I'm trying to roleplay with the Romans but I use this 1/2 auxiliary ratio only for the legions which are in far away provinces.In this matter I thought I would have only one first cohort by legion and one praetorian accompanying only the most important characters in the game. I was wondering about the ratio of veterans too.

Another question is to allow legions to stand in Rome's region. I only allow my legions to stay in Rome's province in case of invasion.

Actually it might be time for a House Rules thread !

Myth
10-09-2013, 17:17
So far, on turn 75 with a VH Macedon campaign which started post patch IV beta release. I have 30+ regions and no AI has ever declared war on me: I am just steamrolling my way through same as before. Hey, Seleucids voluntarily became my vassals without any hostilities breaking between us. AI's Rome was at some point almost taken out by Epirus, but then Romans pulled themselves together and wiped out the pesky Italians. Now though, it seems, Northern barbarians are about to sack Rome itself.

Battles are a tad more interesting now that the AI is not starving as a rule. I am about to hit the threshold for the civil war start: I hope, that will heat things up a bit.



Rush Praetorians? The Roman campaign is way too easy with Hastati + Principes + Triarii, no need for rushing Praetorians (or Legionaries for that matter), which I feel, should be allowed no more than 1 cohort per stack. When I play Romans I tend to have half my legion as auxiliaries for roleplaying (Italian auxialiary cavalry is better than the early Roman variety anyway).

Not sure how that happens, as the Avernii I was at war constantly until I took Roma and Magna Graecia. As Sparta, I picked my fights and people want NAPs but I still was in war with Rome/Etruscans/Carthage+Satrapies. Is Macedon somehow liked by other hellenistic factions? In any event, you're picking your wars carefully if you don't get the AI to declare on you, which can be attributed to careful playing. How much have you conquered in those 75 turns?

As for the Romans - I wouldn't pick that faction if I wanted a challenge. I play them to dominate as Rome and to enjoy the great civil buildings they have (their farms still suck though). I hear people are having a tough start as Pontus, so the AI definitely does declare war though.

BroskiDerpman
10-09-2013, 17:33
I'm looking forward to playing as Pontus when I do get Rome 2, is there any decent guides on them? I've only seen Bram's AAR and some online battle videos with Pontus.

fallen851
10-09-2013, 20:34
Yes it does, but you have to play a real difficulty setting and not baby mode.

I'm sorry if you can't beat the AI without rushing to Praetorians. I'll agree the AI is somewhat more challenging than most TW games, but that doesn't say much. I have to give it a chance to be able to compete, and rushing to Pratorians doesn't give it a chance. Maybe our difference is in our expectations. I expect the AI to actually defeat me. If you just expect them to give you a fight here and there, then you are right.

I do take video games quite seriously though, was a semi-professional SC2 play for awhile and made some money doing it... that may be the difference.

Slaists
10-09-2013, 21:17
Not sure how that happens, as the Avernii I was at war constantly until I took Roma and Magna Graecia. As Sparta, I picked my fights and people want NAPs but I still was in war with Rome/Etruscans/Carthage+Satrapies. Is Macedon somehow liked by other hellenistic factions? In any event, you're picking your wars carefully if you don't get the AI to declare on you, which can be attributed to careful playing. How much have you conquered in those 75 turns?

As for the Romans - I wouldn't pick that faction if I wanted a challenge. I play them to dominate as Rome and to enjoy the great civil buildings they have (their farms still suck though). I hear people are having a tough start as Pontus, so the AI definitely does declare war though.

Actually, Macedon gets a diplomatic hit with all Hellenistic factions... How much I conquered in those 75 turns? I have 30+ regions (not counting vassals), 5 of my allowed 9 armies, 1 navy. I guess, I do tend to pick my wars carefully (my diplo-relationship shows as 'steady' with anybody on the map except the nation I declare the current war on: I suppose, this is bugged actually). On VH difficulty, carefully picking wars did not matter in the previous TW titles though. In S2, on VH, the AI would have foaming at its mouth on the first sight of me (read: my border).

I will try Pontus soon. For some reason, I am not convinced there will be any more challenge there, LOL.

Bramborough
10-09-2013, 22:10
Pontus does have a tougher start than Rome...but probably not as tough as some other playable factions. One starts with two minor settlements, no military buildings (and few slots in which to build one). Only Eastern spearmen and slingers recruitable. I found the first few turns hairy against Galatia and Cappadocia, both of whom were pretty aggressive toward Pontic territory. But once these guys are beaten back, most other factions in the area are Hellenic and therefore quite friendly (Pontus trait). The first barracks, moreover, enables hoplite recruitment. At that point, yeah, pretty smooth sailing.

Sp4
10-09-2013, 23:20
I started a new campaign as Epirus and so far it's tougher than what else I've tried mostly because everyone hates you although I'm now quite friendly with Macedon after settling things down a little in and around that area. Syracuse has declared war on me, Rome hates me pretty much but I've allied with the Barbarians north of Italy, who are quite happy with keeping them busy.

The Outsider
10-09-2013, 23:57
Guys does anyone know when the selucids will be made playable?

Hooahguy
10-10-2013, 01:38
I heard within the next few weeks, but who really knows, right?

Slaists
10-10-2013, 05:40
Not sure how that happens, as the Avernii I was at war constantly until I took Roma and Magna Graecia. As Sparta, I picked my fights and people want NAPs but I still was in war with Rome/Etruscans/Carthage+Satrapies. Is Macedon somehow liked by other hellenistic factions? In any event, you're picking your wars carefully if you don't get the AI to declare on you, which can be attributed to careful playing. How much have you conquered in those 75 turns?

As for the Romans - I wouldn't pick that faction if I wanted a challenge. I play them to dominate as Rome and to enjoy the great civil buildings they have (their farms still suck though). I hear people are having a tough start as Pontus, so the AI definitely does declare war though.

OK, VH campaign (VH battles), Pontus, patch IV beta (with the latest hotfix as of today), here's the chronological report:

272, 2 minor provinces, no walled settlement, no serious troops available, just slingers with the precision boost + eastern spear-men; Cimmeria accepts trade off the bat; move troops towards the border with Samosata; move navy to explore the black sea

271, turn start: Cappadocia (ooo,... the scary ones...) offers peace (yeah, right... rejected) Battle for Samosata takes place: no losses on the Pontic side (thanks, eastern slingers!);

270, turn start: Seleucids offer NAP (accepted); Cappadocia offers peace (yeah, right... rejected); inside turn: Sinope: start a muster field; trade opened with: Athens, Seleucids, Odryssians, Sardes, Tylis; the main army moved toward Mazaca (violating Seleucid territory)

269, turn start: Trapezos offers DA (why not!? accepted!); inside turn: Mazaca falls to Pontus (a tight battle fought; the AI wisely sallies forth; advances after being hit with the first pebbles; somewhoe (don't know how) kills my gen who was hiding behind the ranks; still my slingers prevailed in the end). Afterwars, Pontus' main army (led by a new gen) moves onwards into Galatia who have not declared war (on Pontus) yet

268, turn start: Galatia declares war on Tylus (why not!?... after all it's just pesky me in the backyard of Galatia aiming for penetration in their capital... ); inside turn: trade opened with Macedon, Epirus; hoplite training started in Pontus regions

267, turn start: Athens offers NAP (paying cash: why not!?... accepted!); Knossos offers trade (why not? accepted!); inside the turn: not much, moving armies towards Ancyra

266, turn start: Galatian main army marches towards Amasea (forced march stance); Rhodos offers trade (paying cash for it; why not!?... accepted!); inside turn: my gen in Amasea hires mercs (missile cav) and ambushes the Galatian army: all captives killed; more hoplites queued to be trained

265, turn start: Knossos offers NAP (paying cash, why not!?...); Seleucids violate the integrity of my borders, march their army in and defeat the rebels that just have spawned... thank you, Seleucos! inside turn: A battle is fought near Ancyra defeating the remnants of the army formerly ambushed.

264, turn start, inside turn: not much. Ancyra surrounded by my armies; building gallies for safer approach to the gates; suffering attrition in the process

263, turn start, nothing. inside turn: Ancyra falls (3 waves of Pontus' eastern spearmen rout while burning the gates (good, burning the gates is tougher now), but who cares, hoplites and slingers rule the day afterwards); trade opened with Epirus, Libya; DA with Trapezos canceled (guess why...).

that's first something turns with VH Pontus. got to play further, but at least the proclaimed starting challenge of Pontus is already gone. also, no one has declared war on me (yet) and all neighbors except Trapezus and Armenia are friendly (and the latter two are my next targets).

nearchos
10-10-2013, 06:55
that's first something turns with VH Pontus. got to play further, but at least the proclaimed starting challenge of Pontus is already gone. also, no one has declared war on me (yet) and all neighbors except Trapezus and Armenia are friendly (and the latter two are my next targets)

I m in turn 50 something with Pontus on VH after P4 beta, and the starting turns were same, took over easily Cappadosia and Galatia,everybody wanted to trade and have a NAP or a DA and the Spartans at a point offered them selves to be my satrapy, ( i reject).

I am very carefull with the diplomatic decisions, not to provoke, but till now the AI is pasive, not only against me but also against other factions next to my borders, i.e. as i stated in an earlier post, Trapezon was at war with 3 factions, Colchis, Armenia, Kartlii), almost from the begining of the campaign, and no one army tried to enter their lands.

Now i have conquered Cappadosia, Galatia, Armenia, Colchis, kartlii and Cimeria, practicaly by marching and battling in and owtside their settlements, since their forces were always just standing by their cities waiting.

nearchos
10-10-2013, 07:34
Rush Praetorians? The Roman campaign is way too easy with Hastati + Principes + Triarii, no need for rushing Praetorians (or Legionaries for that matter), which I feel, should be allowed no more than 1 cohort per stack. When I play Romans I tend to have half my legion as auxiliaries for roleplaying (Italian auxialiary cavalry is better than the early Roman variety anyway).
As for the no of praetorians per army, i totaly agree and moreover i believe that, there should be a cap for all the "special" units of each faction, like the Macedonian shield bearers, Pontic bronze shields, Seleucid silver shields etc, like 1 unit per army.

nearchos
10-10-2013, 07:41
I'm sorry if you can't beat the AI without rushing to Praetorians. I'll agree the AI is somewhat more challenging than most TW games, but that doesn't say much. I have to give it a chance to be able to compete, and rushing to Pratorians doesn't give it a chance. Maybe our difference is in our expectations. I expect the AI to actually defeat me. If you just expect them to give you a fight here and there, then you are right.

I do take video games quite seriously though, was a semi-professional SC2 play for awhile and made some money doing it... that may be the difference.
And also, CA must reconsider the actual difficulty in game, to be according to the supposed level you pick.
Because at the moment there are only two levels, legendary and an other and the distance between them is huge.

Myth
10-10-2013, 08:10
I'm sorry if you can't beat the AI without rushing to Praetorians. I'll agree the AI is somewhat more challenging than most TW games, but that doesn't say much. I have to give it a chance to be able to compete, and rushing to Pratorians doesn't give it a chance. Maybe our difference is in our expectations. I expect the AI to actually defeat me. If you just expect them to give you a fight here and there, then you are right.

I do take video games quite seriously though, was a semi-professional SC2 play for awhile and made some money doing it... that may be the difference.

No need to start trolling. I can beat the AI but I usually don't impose self restrictoins on myself. If beating it with pretorians is too hard I just start another campaign wtih a faction which doesn't have such an overwhelming advantage. FYI Rome can be played with Hastati only and still win by virtue of having access to the richest lands in the game early on and the manpower to take them. I know I can pull it off but I find no particular entertainment value in it.

As to being semi-pro for SC2, this sounds like "a little bit pregnant". You're either pro or a really involved casual. SC2 is a lot harder to master than TW though. I would enjoy a MP battle versus someone with your micro skills however. Want to set up a match?

Myth
10-10-2013, 08:23
OK, VH campaign (VH battles), Pontus, patch IV beta (with the latest hotfix as of today), here's the chronological report:

272, 2 minor provinces, no walled settlement, no serious troops available, just slingers with the precision boost + eastern spear-men; Cimmeria accepts trade off the bat; move troops towards the border with Samosata; move navy to explore the black sea

271, turn start: Cappadocia (ooo,... the scary ones...) offers peace (yeah, right... rejected) Battle for Samosata takes place: no losses on the Pontic side (thanks, eastern slingers!);

270, turn start: Seleucids offer NAP (accepted); Cappadocia offers peace (yeah, right... rejected); inside turn: Sinope: start a muster field; trade opened with: Athens, Seleucids, Odryssians, Sardes, Tylis; the main army moved toward Mazaca (violating Seleucid territory)

269, turn start: Trapezos offers DA (why not!? accepted!); inside turn: Mazaca falls to Pontus (a tight battle fought; the AI wisely sallies forth; advances after being hit with the first pebbles; somewhoe (don't know how) kills my gen who was hiding behind the ranks; still my slingers prevailed in the end). Afterwars, Pontus' main army (led by a new gen) moves onwards into Galatia who have not declared war (on Pontus) yet

268, turn start: Galatia declares war on Tylus (why not!?... after all it's just pesky me in the backyard of Galatia aiming for penetration in their capital... ); inside turn: trade opened with Macedon, Epirus; hoplite training started in Pontus regions

267, turn start: Athens offers NAP (paying cash: why not!?... accepted!); Knossos offers trade (why not? accepted!); inside the turn: not much, moving armies towards Ancyra

266, turn start: Galatian main army marches towards Amasea (forced march stance); Rhodos offers trade (paying cash for it; why not!?... accepted!); inside turn: my gen in Amasea hires mercs (missile cav) and ambushes the Galatian army: all captives killed; more hoplites queued to be trained

265, turn start: Knossos offers NAP (paying cash, why not!?...); Seleucids violate the integrity of my borders, march their army in and defeat the rebels that just have spawned... thank you, Seleucos! inside turn: A battle is fought near Ancyra defeating the remnants of the army formerly ambushed.

264, turn start, inside turn: not much. Ancyra surrounded by my armies; building gallies for safer approach to the gates; suffering attrition in the process

263, turn start, nothing. inside turn: Ancyra falls (3 waves of Pontus' eastern spearmen rout while burning the gates (good, burning the gates is tougher now), but who cares, hoplites and slingers rule the day afterwards); trade opened with Epirus, Libya; DA with Trapezos canceled (guess why...).

that's first something turns with VH Pontus. got to play further, but at least the proclaimed starting challenge of Pontus is already gone. also, no one has declared war on me (yet) and all neighbors except Trapezus and Armenia are friendly (and the latter two are my next targets).

Seems to me that you are ready for Legendary :2thumbsup:

I think that the buff to how easy it is to get trade is a bit overdone. It's too easy to spiral your early economy out of control just with a couple of regions that have a resource now. Although it was not logical for everyone to reject trade before, it was definitely more challenging.

Bramborough
10-10-2013, 09:47
OK, VH campaign (VH battles), Pontus, patch IV beta (with the latest hotfix as of today), here's the chronological report:

Hmm...obviously we had different experience during early turns, and I was on Normal. Part of the explanation may be that I played these turns with Patch 3, when trade was harder to get and the AI may indeed have been more aggressive. But biggest reason is probably that I simply didn't play as smart. I didn't realize that the very first Level I training field would give me hoplites, for example, and didn't build one for a while (maybe 20-25 turns or so). I also managed to get my first army destroyed...which could have fed into Galatia/Cappadocia's aggression BoP-wise.

Oh well...if it takes being a n00b to get some challenge out of TW:R2, then I guess I don't mind being a n00b. What the hell, it's SP, right? :-)

Alcibiade
10-10-2013, 13:10
I started a new campaign as Epirus and so far it's tougher than what else I've tried mostly because everyone hates you although I'm now quite friendly with Macedon after settling things down a little in and around that area. Syracuse has declared war on me, Rome hates me pretty much but I've allied with the Barbarians north of Italy, who are quite happy with keeping them busy.

Sure, Epirus is the right button to push if you want the shit sandwich. As soon as you're engaged in a war with Sparta, Athens will join them and Rome can't wait to jump on your back. I was in H dificulty and my best idea was to sign a NAP with MAcedon att turn 2. I knew it would push Macedonia's re-unification away but war on the four sides is too much for an average player like me. But I lost the campaign anyway. I destroyed the Spartan stacks but thx to patch 4, 2 of my generals were murdered at turn 5, just before their armies were attacked and my elephants were useless against Athenians hoplites and op slingers. But that was fun !

I have an interesting H campaign with Pontus and my neighbours were aggressive since the beginning but that was with patch 3. First encounters with eastern cavalery stacks were enthralling !

So, to me patch 4 is better diplomacy interaction with AI factions, but agressiveness going back to pre-patch 2, unfotunately.

Slaists
10-10-2013, 13:52
Sure, Epirus is the right button to push if you want the shit sandwich. As soon as you're engaged in a war with Sparta, Athens will join them and Rome can't wait to jump on your back. I was in H dificulty and my best idea was to sign a NAP with MAcedon att turn 2. I knew it would push Macedonia's re-unification away but war on the four sides is too much for an average player like me. But I lost the campaign anyway. I destroyed the Spartan stacks but thx to patch 4, 2 of my generals were murdered at turn 5, just before their armies were attacked and my elephants were useless against Athenians hoplites and op slingers. But that was fun !

I have an interesting H campaign with Pontus and my neighbours were aggressive since the beginning but that was with patch 3. First encounters with eastern cavalery stacks were enthralling !

So, to me patch 4 is better diplomacy interaction with AI factions, but agressiveness going back to pre-patch 2, unfotunately.

Playing with Macedon I started new VH campaigns both with patch 3 and patch 4 beta. The AI aggressiveness (lack of it) was exactly the same.


Seems to me that you are ready for Legendary :2thumbsup:

I think that the buff to how easy it is to get trade is a bit overdone. It's too easy to spiral your early economy out of control just with a couple of regions that have a resource now. Although it was not logical for everyone to reject trade before, it was definitely more challenging.

I like the extra bonuses that the AI gets on legendary [wish I could have those without the lack of radar map on the battle-field] but dislike the fact that I cannot exit as I please (for example, if I want to play a long battle later rather than right this instant; or if I need to pause a battle to take a phone call). I also have had unpleasant experiences with the autosave (file corruption) in S2. That's why I stick with VH.

By the way, the latest hotfix to patch IV was supposed to nerf slingers (bouncing effect of their ammo removed). Well, at least in my first 10 turns as Pontus, my slingers still have machine guns. Anything goes down with a few salvos: including armored AI generals.

Jacque Schtrapp
10-10-2013, 15:51
OK, VH campaign (VH battles), Pontus, patch IV beta (with the latest hotfix as of today),

that's first something turns with VH Pontus. got to play further, but at least the proclaimed starting challenge of Pontus is already gone. also, no one has declared war on me (yet) and all neighbors except Trapezus and Armenia are friendly (and the latter two are my next targets).

Restart the campaign and seek an early alliance with the Seleucids. Honor that alliance until the bitter end. For whatever reason, EVERYONE hates the Seleucids and their satrapies. You will end up at war with at least a dozen different factions.

Alcibiade
10-10-2013, 18:12
Playing with Macedon I started new VH campaigns both with patch 3 and patch 4 beta. The AI aggressiveness (lack of it) was exactly the same.
By the way, the latest hotfix to patch IV was supposed to nerf slingers (bouncing effect of their ammo removed). Well, at least in my first 10 turns as Pontus my slingers still have machine guns. Anything goes down with a few salvos: including armored AI generals.

Well, I might have jumped too quikly on the conclusion. Those things are difficult to judge and campaigns are never the same. My new Macedonian campaign's start just seemed far too easy. But this time Tylis was not a threat and it certainly added on the impression.
I really love to play hellenistic factions. Don't know if its due to EB nostalgia of the greeck city states campaign or if it's because they are right in the center of the map.

Yes I find the slingers are still op too.

Slaists
10-10-2013, 18:31
Well, I might have jumped too quikly on the conclusion. Those things are difficult to judge and campaigns are never the same. My new Macedonian campaign's start just seemed far too easy. But this time Tylis was not a threat and it certainly added on the impression.
I really love to play hellenistic factions. Don't know if its due to EB nostalgia of the greeck city states campaign or if it's because they are right in the center of the map.

Yes I find the slingers are still op too.

I like to play Greeks since the old good EB, RTR days. The idea is: their location allows the player to expand East while Romans or Carthage become dominant in the West. This used to result in a decent fight in mid-game/late-game. Unfortunately, does not seem to work in RTW 2. Rome and Carthage either stagnate or get wiped out by minors.

Myth
10-11-2013, 09:22
I like the extra bonuses that the AI gets on legendary [wish I could have those without the lack of radar map on the battle-field] but dislike the fact that I cannot exit as I please (for example, if I want to play a long battle later rather than right this instant; or if I need to pause a battle to take a phone call). I also have had unpleasant experiences with the autosave (file corruption) in S2. That's why I stick with VH.

By the way, the latest hotfix to patch IV was supposed to nerf slingers (bouncing effect of their ammo removed). Well, at least in my first 10 turns as Pontus, my slingers still have machine guns. Anything goes down with a few salvos: including armored AI generals.

The lack of radar map is annoying but it does make battles harder, which is good.
You CAN exit as you please. Every time you quit the game it saves and the save has never corrupted for me. You can quit right before a battle. As soon as you enter the enemy zone of control and you lay siege or are about to clash wtih an army, the game is saved.
You can pause battles just fine, you just can't order your troops while paused which makes them harder.

Give Legendary a try, i've played above 200 turns on Legendary in Rome II and about as much in Shogun II not once have I had save file troubles.

nearchos
10-11-2013, 10:18
So, to me patch 4 is better diplomacy interaction with AI factions, but agressiveness going back to pre-patch 2, unfotunately

Exact same experience and feeling, its like they fix some things with P4 but they got AI agressiveness brokken again.

Slaists
10-11-2013, 13:58
I restarted yesterday after the latest hot-fix that's supposed to fix the uphill/downhill mess (units were getting a bonus for fighting uphill rather than the other way around). I rolled as Epirus on VH. The first 12 or so turns were a blast. Rome & Syracuse DOW'ed on the second turn (of course, Syracuse AI decided it was a good idea to declare war on Carthage at the same time...); Veneti joined the fray on 3rd turn and Athens on the 4th (and sent a full stack down some 6 turns later). Alas, AI's aggressiveness stopped at that. Athens, Sparta folded. Knossos soon after [the latter one I attacked myself to complete the province of Hellas]; Roman Brundissium fell as well [but they did send half an army to Apollonia, which almost took the settlement]. I suspect, now I am "too big" for the AI to attack since NAP and trade offers roll in from everywhere.

One pleasant thing that I noticed was that the AI felt much more active in siege battles. I breached Brundissium's walls in 3 places, the AI reacted to all the breaches and, in the end, put up a good fight near the capture point. It might have been a coincidence though. The wall-less settlement AI is still abysmal though.

Oh, about the latter case (settlements without walls): there seems to be a script in place now which makes the AI rotate armored units int and out of the front ranks if under missile fire. I guess, they put it in place to counter minor missiles slowly drilling down hitpoints until the target unit drops dead practically at once. Now, whenever a unit suffers some missile casualties, the AI roates the unit back to the center of the town and puts a fresh unit to guard the front. I have yet to make up my mind whether this is good or not. Those units rotated back to the center are still "damaged goods" (hit-points drilled down) even if the units appear to be full strength. On melee impact they still drop like flies (later). To be more specific: this happened when I was assaulting Sparta. My slingers peppered the defenders for a while without much visible damage. Then, as the melee broke out, the defenders died and/or routed on impact.

Bramborough
10-11-2013, 16:08
Oh, about the latter case (settlements without walls): there seems to be a script in place now which makes the AI rotate armored units int and out of the front ranks if under missile fire. I guess, they put it in place to counter minor missiles slowly drilling down hitpoints until the target unit drops dead practically at once. Now, whenever a unit suffers some missile casualties, the AI roates the unit back to the center of the town and puts a fresh unit to guard the front. I have yet to make up my mind whether this is good or not. Those units rotated back to the center are still "damaged goods" (hit-points drilled down) even if the units appear to be full strength. On melee impact they still drop like flies (later). To be more specific: this happened when I was assaulting Sparta. My slingers peppered the defenders for a while without much visible damage. Then, as the melee broke out, the defenders died and/or routed on impact.

I've been seeing the AI do this in the minor settlements for a long time...at LEAST since Patch 2, maybe whole game. I don't think the AI really helps himself much...all he's doing is allowing my missileers to damage a larger proportion of his army. In addition to the "self-mutilating rotation", there's also often a "sweet spot" for the attacking missile troops, whereby they can stand within range of the target, but are still far enough that the AI infantry won't charge them...nor are the attackers quite within range of the AI missile troops only a few meters behind their front line. Bottom line, it's very common for the attacking army's missile (and siege) troops to be able to expend all their ammo and inflict hundreds of casualties with impunity, before the attacking army loses a single soldier.

That said...I really don't know how the AI would play it differently. If the units stand still and do not rotate, then the AI suffers destroyed/routed units rather than damaged ones. If he retreats from the fire, it's not long before he leaves the city center (and VP) open and undfended. If he advances against the attacking missile troops, then he's open to counterattack by accompanying infantry/cavalry.

I don't necessarily want minor settlements to have walls per se, because then we're back to the "too many siege battles" problem. But I think a good compromise would be if there were some sort of strongpoint or redoubt at a few places in the settlement where at least they get some good cover from missile fire. Perhaps a small wooden or stone fort in the town, which doesn't itself encompass the city center VP, but from which their missileers can keep the VP under fire. I dunno, if they introduced such a feature, it would last maybe 24 hrs at most before we all figured out how to easily destroy it too...and then we'd just gripe about that instead.

Slaists
10-11-2013, 16:16
There is an option for a defender to sally forth (into a field): at times, the AI uses that. Probably, the likelihood of such sallies should be increased especially if the AI has a decent army in the town.

Alcibiade
10-11-2013, 16:39
One pleasant thing that I noticed was that the AI felt much more active in siege battles. I breached Brundissium's walls in 3 places, the AI reacted to all the breaches and, in the end, put up a good fight near the capture point. It might have been a coincidence though. The wall-less settlement AI is still abysmal though..

Since patch 3 the AI is not so bad in siege as a defender. But as an attacker it's a completely different story.

Recently, when I attacked it's settlements without walls, the AI chose to sally out and fight in open battles. Never saw this before.

Oh, just one question : does the quallity of units really matters with the auto-solve ? Cause I feel like elite units or not, the only thing that matters is the size of the army.

Bramborough
10-11-2013, 16:57
There is an option for a defender to sally forth (into a field): at times, the AI uses that. Probably, the likelihood of such sallies should be increased especially if the AI has a decent army in the town.

Yep, and AI defenders use this option quite often. I haven't kept tabs per se, but I'd say roughly 50% of the time, perhaps a little more. IIRC, this was an added tweak in Patch 3. For my current Pontus campaign for I'm keeping up an AAR thread (which has turned into a bit of a Frankenstein's monster, lol), so I've AR'd far fewer battles than before. I've been a bit surprised by how frequently settlement defenders sally out, even against extremely heavy odds.

TargetSlayer
10-11-2013, 17:26
[Bramborough your earlier comments about seiges]

While I do not object to the concept of VP, both the AI and human cannot properly defend against a seige when the attacker has range units. Personally, if Rome showed up with range equipment, I would likely retreat back and behind buildings or better topography and let them exhaust their ammo, then attack segments of their army as they entered the settlement. But with VP one cannot afford to be too far away from these strategic points, even with the delayed time introduced in one of the latest patches. That or the AI still doesn't want to.

As Rome my conquests have really been too easy. I have routinely expended all my ammo from my range units before entering, and sometimes I do not even need to enter as the Victory has already been awarded to me.

I realize that if I show up with a superior force I will win. However, there has to be something better for the AI than just standing at a pre-determined spot while being slaughtered by my range units, though I do enjoy all the taunting the AI soldiers say while under fire. :)

In Shogun 2 they charged - well most of the time they just slowly walked up to my frontline (if they survived that long). I cannot remember any TW title where the AI hide itself inside their settlement, though the range for these Roman "giant" units seem excessive to me (but I use them so I can't complain). I keep going back to Empire and Napoleon where AI armies almost always fielded range equipment against me. This seems to have been lost in the programming since that time.

Regards

Hooahguy
10-11-2013, 17:56
Patch 4 is officially out now!

Full list of changes. (http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_4)

Slaists
10-12-2013, 01:41
Sigh, the campaign AI may be more proactive now with patch IV, but it is still hopeless as far as army coordination is concerned. In my fresh Epirus campaign, I arrived at the gates of Rome with an army filled with levy pikemen and hoplites + 1 ballista. Guess what army Rome sent to intercept me? None! Zero! Nada!... They had 3 full stacks (each of those would be able to crush my army in autoresolve) roaming around the sea, but no one in Rome... Bah!...

Bramborough
10-12-2013, 02:02
Sigh, the campaign AI may be more proactive now with patch IV, but it is still hopeless as far as army coordination is concerned. In my fresh Epirus campaign, I arrived at the gates of Rome with an army filled with levy pikemen and hoplites + 1 ballista. Guess what army Rome sent to intercept me? None! Zero! Nada!... They had 3 full stacks (each of those would be able to crush my army in autoresolve) roaming around the sea, but no one in Rome... Bah!...

Gotta agree...more than once I've approached an AI capital with 2 or 3 substantial stacks nearby, and think "Cool! Get to fight some decent-sized battles next turn!". Then they promptly all run away, leaving the garrison to its fate. WTF?

Alcibiade
10-12-2013, 12:28
Yeq, it seems some pre-patch 3 troubles came back with patch 4.

I'm sarting to wonder if those amphibious armies are not confusingg the CAI in an unfixable way. As soon as I'm at war with too much factions and every AI factions jumps in the bandwagon to declare war on me, even the one on the other extremities of the map declare war to me as well. Just because the amphibious armies and their access to the sea make them consider me as a neighbour.

It's also stupid that the fact a faction is at war with many is such a decisive factor for other factions to declare war on it. GGRRR, I love this game (and it's the only computer game I play) but god, this fixing patch stage is going to be long !

Slaists
10-12-2013, 14:23
Yeq, it seems some pre-patch 3 troubles came back with patch 4.

I'm sarting to wonder if those amphibious armies are not confusingg the CAI in an unfixable way. As soon as I'm at war with too much factions and every AI factions jumps in the bandwagon to declare war on me, even the one on the other extremities of the map declare war to me as well. Just because the amphibious armies and their access to the sea make them consider me as a neighbour.

It's also stupid that the fact a faction is at war with many is such a decisive factor for other factions to declare war on it. GGRRR, I love this game (and it's the only computer game I play) but god, this fixing patch stage is going to be long !

LOL, not sure what game you playing. I am playing a legendary Pontus campaign started post patch IV official release, around turn 35 now. No one has declared a thing on me. The AI's throw NAP agreements at me and pay cash for them.

Alcibiade
10-12-2013, 15:04
LOL, not sure what game you playing. I am playing a legendary Pontus campaign started post patch IV official release, around turn 35 now. No one has declared a thing on me. The AI's throw NAP agreements at me and pay cash for them.

It's a campaign I started with patch 3. Don't know if all those war declarations are conditionned by it but they happened just 3,4 turns after I activated patch 4, that is turn 65 or something like that.

Ituralde
10-14-2013, 11:31
Has anyone found out which units can now go into Loose Formation? The patch notes say it has been introduced to a few units. Curios to see which ones it will be!

Lord of the Isles
10-14-2013, 13:59
LOL, not sure what game you playing. I am playing a legendary Pontus campaign started post patch IV official release, around turn 35 now. No one has declared a thing on me. The AI's throw NAP agreements at me and pay cash for them.

I started unpatched TWRII with Rome on Hard but abandoned it at about 70 regions. Then played patch 2 with Athens (H) and Iceni (VH) to a (more-or-less) economic victory. Then Parthia (VH) on patch 3 to about 60 regions. I abandoned the latter to try out patch 4 (I have learned over the years that a new patch for a TW game is best played with a new campaign; too many potential issues even if the release notes say it is compatible).

In all those games I've noticed what people have mentioned here: sometimes the starting position means an anxious early few dozen turns but after that (and sometimes not even with that) it gets easy. No one DoW's you so you can just pick off regions that go rebel with no penalty and gradually gobble up small neighbours without too many allies. Treasury grows, research expands and eventually you have enough to take on anyone you wish. Civil war provides a nice challenge but it is over too soon and then nothing stands in your way. All that is still fun for me but I can see a day when I'll get bored and uninstall.

However, I found one exception to this rule. I tried patch 4 initially with Carthage on VH. Twice. First time I tried to hold on to all 4 starting provinces. Clearly a big mistake. So I restarted and tried to hold on to just Karalis and Carthage, withdrawing my Iberian troops back to Africa so I would have 2 proto-armies to concentrate on 1 theater of war. Seemed like a promising plan as I lost Qart Hadasht & Lilybaeum around turns 10-15 when I only had 3 or 4 nations at war with me. I hoped that not having a border with many others would keep me under their radar, so I could concentrate on Africa & Mauritania when the inland nations inevitably declared war on my clients, Libya & Nova Carthago.

So much for that plan. By turn 30 (IIRC), I was at war with (not in order): Gaetuli, Masaesyli, Garamantia, Nasamones, Turditani, Syracuse, Rome, Edetani, Cantabri, Knossos, Athens, Sparta, Delmetae, Veneti, Liguria. I may have forgotten a few but you get the point. And these weren't just the normal DoW-and-forget things: when a full stack of Veneti transports appeared outside my last region, Carthage, to join the Knossos, Syracuse and one other full stack in the blockaded harbour, I gave up.

Not sure if I can moan about that, having found the game too easy. Perhaps having the challenges spread a little between the factions rather than making just one almost-impossible one would be good for CA to do. Anyone else found any other faction a challenge like Carthage?

Mind you, I'll do it eventually. Next time I'll try abandoning everything except Iberia - that might work.