Announced Features of TWR2

[Peasant Phill]

From the EuroGamer.Net article with Mike Simpson;

" "We haven't really fleshed out what we can and can't do from a modding point of view," Simpson went on. "We're going to spend some more time actually talking to the modder groups and try to come up with a plan that actually delivers them what they need rather than what we think they need, which isn't necessarily the same thing."

To that end, Creative Assembly has organi[z]ed a modding summit at Total War HQ in Horsham, England. That's next month. Key modders from the community will be invited and both parties will work together for mutual gain."

Is this actually legit info? Cuz it sounds too good to be true. Ye gods I hope the EB team is all over this!

@CaptainCrunch, this info is legit. There was an ivitation a while back.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Red Wedding confirmed for modders.

[Vuk]

Red Wedding confirmed for modders.

What is that?

[TinCow]

What is that?

The Red Wedding is an event from the book series A Song of Ice and Fire (currently popular as the TV series Game of Thrones). The non-spoilery explanation is that the comment means that CA isn't going to be friendly towards modders.

[Vuk]

The Red Wedding is an event from the book series A Song of Ice and Fire (currently popular as the TV series Game of Thrones). The non-spoilery explanation is that the comment means that CA isn't going to be friendly towards modders.

The spoiler version?

[TinCow]

The spoiler version?

The spoilery explanation (seriously, you really should not read this if you are interested in the Ice & Fire/Game of Thrones series and have not read book three):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Alexander means that CA are going to viciously murder all of the modders who are gathering at the Mod Summit. There may be some additional desecration of the corpses.

[quadalpha]

The Red Wedding is an event from the book series A Song of Ice and Fire (currently popular as the TV series Game of Thrones). The non-spoilery explanation is that the comment means that CA isn't going to be friendly towards modders.

Too late. He made me google it yesterday!

[alQamar]

hi guys i have question regarding the general speeches. in the starting post it is stated there will be no general speeches pre battle but ingame cutscenes. can anyone still confirm this. there is a idea thread for pre battle speeches in forums.totalwar.com and it seems people and the mods there are not aware from that. they were suprised when i linked to our collection and this special statement.

[TinCow]

hi guys i have question regarding the general speeches. in the starting post it is stated there will be no general speeches pre battle but ingame cutscenes. can anyone still confirm this. there is a idea thread for pre battle speeches in forums.totalwar.com and it seems people and the mods there are not aware from that. they were suprised when i linked to our collection and this special statement.

That comes directly from PCGamer:

Total War: Rome 2 runs on a new engine that supports the largest and most detailed battles in the series’ history, to the extent of supporting full, in-engine cutscenes. In place of a traditional general’s speech, then, the siege of Carthage began with an actual conversation between Scipio and his men, before zooming out to take in the sight of the Roman fleet approaching the heavily-defended shoreline.

As you can see, it specifically says that the cutscene is "[i]n place of a traditional general’s speech." We don't have any more information than that, but it seems likely to me that the "conversation" would have varied dialog, of the kind we are used to from the usual pre-battle speeches, but it looks like it won't necessarily be a speech to the men by the general. If anything, it sounds like a more elaborate version of what we're used to. We'll probably get varied dialog, but it will be delivered in a more interesting manner than some random guy sitting on a horse while the camera pans over the units.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

That Siege of Carthage looks like a historical battle. It's quite possible they start differently than normal campaign battles.

[Moros]

Q&A from Lusted:

Q. How historically accurate will Rome II be?

A. It is more useful to talk in terms of historical authenticity than historical accuracy, which never survives past the player getting involved anyway. There are a lot of things we do which aren’t accurate because it is a game, battles lasting minutes not hours or days for example. So any game can’t be historically accurate, but we are aiming for it to be more historically authentic than ever.

This refers to the look and feel of the various nations and peoples in the games, from the way they are dressed to the equipment they use on the battlefield to the mechanics on the campaign map. So the armour, tunic, helmets, shields and so on will be based on historical examples. The unit rosters will be based on the kind of units that were fielded and the societies of different cultures.

There will be units which were historically rare but we make more of because they are interesting and different. As in the past few Total War games they will not be appearing in every army but they will be there to add flavour.

Q. Will there be mixed main weapon types within a unit, say barbarians fighting with swords and spears in the same unit?

A. No. Whilst historically this may have occurred we split them into different units for gameplay reasons. Spears and swords have different stats in our game so we want them to be the main weapons for different units so the use for them is clearer and the player can tailor their army make up more depending on their play style.

Q. Will most of the effort be going into the Roman faction at the expense of other factions and cultures?

A. There is obviously far more information available on Rome than on other factions and cultures in this era, but that does not mean we are neglecting them. A lot of research has gone into the unit rosters for non-roman factions and into the campaign map to represent them well.

Q. With talk of reducing micro-management on the campaign, is it going to be even more focused on war?

A. The focus on reducing province and region micro-management is so the campaign can focus on other areas and not just war. There are a lot of great new features that will increase the campaign gameplay depth.

Not quite the time to outline them all now, but expect greater intrigue and emphasis on characters.

Q. Will mercenaries make a return?

A. YES!

Q. Will Rome II use Steam, and why?

A. Yes Rome II will use and require Steam, just like Empire, Napoleon and Shogun II.

Steam offers a lot of benefits to both us and players, from helping us to reach more people and provide on-going updates to the campaign and multiplayer, along with allowing a great platform for DLC and helping to reduce piracy.

In general, integrating Steam features into the game (like language, social, achievement and multiplayer features for example) also helps us spend more development time on improving and implementing other features.

We will also be talking about some exciting additional Steam features in the future.

[Peasant Phill]

Thanks for sharing Moros.

[total war fan]

well when Rome total war 2 comes out i am going to get it and play what month does it come out

[TinCow]

well when Rome total war 2 comes out i am going to get it and play what month does it come out

The release date hasn't been announced yet. All they've said is that it's going to be at least a year. If I had to guess, I'd say they're going for autumn 2013.

[Barkhorn1x]

Q. Will Rome II use Steam, and why?

Someone asked that? Really?

Sigh. That battle was lost 3 games ago.

[playa4]

Looking forward to see Gaius Julius Caesar appearing in the game at his right time, meaning in game birth date should be accurate to his real birth date.

[Fisherking]

news by Jack Lusted:

"Q. In previous Total War games a single ship has been able to carry whole armies. Why was this and will it change for Rome 2?
A. In previous Total War games this has always been an abstraction. It has never been the case that we are saying all those troops are being held on that one ship. The army has always been thought of as on its own transport fleet which we did not represent, with the actual fleet representing the escort.

For Rome 2 there are a few changes coming to how armies will be moved around on the sea, some of which we won’t talk about for a while, but we will be representing transports this time round."

PCGamer article evidently contains information that says factions can learn or acquire things from contact with other factions (I have this second hand)

Everythiing known per Videogamer.com.
http://www.videogamer.com/pc/rome_ii..._detailed.html

One site, and I don’t remember which, said that play goes from the very beginning to the end of the empire, but that could have just been their take.

[edyzmedieval]

Learn or acquire things from contact with other factions? A good touch, it will represent the Greek influence on Roman lands. I like that.

[Madae]

No doubt Republic vs. Emperor will make it in, and in a video I saw that it seemed like they wanted it to be a choice; "do you defend the Republic, or become Emperor?". It would be really cool if that choice did make it in, with their being separate branches of units for each one. Say, Rome at it's start has its generic units, and then when you have the choice, you can split off to the Emperor tree and receive new specialty units, or the Republic tree and receive new units for that - unique to your choice.

I also like the idea of provinces, with each province having several conquerable territories like we know right now, but under management by the province border as a whole to reduce the whole micro-management. Very good idea. I hope it doesn't get to minimal though, like in Empire, where France and Spain was just one big territory. I'd actually like to see something like France or Spain in Empire as the province, but more like Medieval where there were several territories inside. I also wonder how that whole idea will work - does it only become a province after you capture all the territories required? Are each particular regions you conquered their own territory until you conquer them all to form the province? Might have a big affect on diplomacy if you have half of a province owned by someone else, they sue for peace or whatever, and the whole territory becomes theirs again, regardless of how much you held of it.

[The Stranger]

Learn or acquire things from contact with other factions? A good touch, it will represent the Greek influence on Roman lands. I like that.

where did you find any mention of this? ive been looking but i cant :S

[Prodigal]

Maybe I'm worn down & cynical, but does this all seems just a little bit too good to be true? So far the points they've talked about reads like my TW wishlist, there are even things I didn't know I needed until they told me...I refuse to become overly excited yet.

[Ishmael]

Maybe I'm worn down & cynical, but does this all seems just a little bit too good to be true? So far the points they've talked about reads like my TW wishlist, there are even things I didn't know I needed until they told me...I refuse to become overly excited yet.

Don't be too pessimistic there - I was heartily impressed by TWS2, and if they can simply 'transfer' that across to the Rome setting and polish the AI a bit further, it will be the best game in the series. My main fear is that CA will over-reach themselves, but I'm sure they learnt their lesson after Empire (although that was still a very fun game).

[Kocmoc]

Well, Im a MP. I dont like those SP campaigns. Its no fun at all to play vs. an AI.
You always win and just burn your time. But thats just my subjective opinion and as far you can see, many people really enjoy the SP side of the game.
Fine with me!

If I look at the MP part, I just see once again the same thing comping along.
I kinda gave up on the TW games, they didnt got it done in the last 12 years, how they should get it done this time?

I could read, that they had more people playing the MP campaign than they thought… Well, that kinda sums it up.
Who with brain played the MP campaign?


Anyway, there will be great new things coming around. Better avatar, better grafix, better AI and ofc tons of new units and new abilities.
If you look at the current stage of the game and the massive drop of playernumbers after the initial clash, I would worry about the direction the game took.
I did love the game, I still look at it from time to time and Im interested in the new game, but I cant see how this will work out.

If you want to call a game successful, than you always end with comparing the player-numbers.
Compare TW with solid, well balanced games like WC3 (still has like 100 times more player than S2) or SC2… just to call 2 games.

TW games are not newcomer friendly.
TW games takes too much time to get started.
TW games are not fair at all.

In most online games everyone has the same chance once you enter a game. Not so in TW. here you have to put hundreds of hours into it,
to get good units with the correct abilities.

Im not even start with the early beta we get sold as final game, all the bugs we found out in less than 2 weeks after release is just a nightmare.


For the MP part Im pretty pessimistic, we will get the same thing, if not worser.

[quadalpha]

I think TW has always been SP-focused, with the campaign map and all. It's simply not balanced and tested to death for multiplayer the way SC is.

[[cF]HanBaal]

Hi all!

For those who didn't notice we have been geting more official details here:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=548136

sorry if links to another tw forums are nor allowed. anyway i'll copypaste the info i find most relevant:

Hello all,

Apologies for the delay since the last update to this thread I have been away on holiday.
Looking at the response to my interview in the latest Rally Point episode I thought I would respond to some of the questions that people had after it.

Q. Are there really going to be around 700 units in Rome II?
A. Yes, with all the land units, mercenaries, auxiliaries, artillery and ships there will be around 700 units in Rome II.

Q. How much does the unit list and the look of units vary across the map?
A. Whilst there are areas where there will be similar units (siege engines with different looking crews for different cultures) we really want to emphasise the variety in the time period Rome II covers.

An example of this would be to compare the unit rosters we will have for the Germanics and the Gauls. They both have unique unit lists, and whilst there are some similar missile units and low level spearmen, they are big differences as well. Visually they will also look very different, armour and helmets being very rare for the Germanics and fairly common for the Gauls, different hair styles, different shield shapes and patterns etc.

Q. I bet most of those are DLC units aren’t they?
A. No that is the number that will be in the game when it launches.

Q. As the Greek cities are not going to be a single faction anymore but broken up into various different factions, will same be true of other factions from Rome II such as the Gauls or Britons.
A. There will be a lot of factions in the game and yes factions that were previously grouped together as one such as the Gauls will be split up into many tribes along with other cultural groups such as the Iberians, Britons etc.
Unit Design Lead on the Total War team.

These are GREAT news. Iberian,gallic,germanic tribes represented individually with plenty unique units for each faction. For all EB fans and history fans this is great.

[Kocmoc]

I think TW has always been SP-focused, with the campaign map and all. It's simply not balanced and tested to death for multiplayer the way SC is.

Well, TW had a SP focus many years, but last year with S2, CA clearly stated the "focus on the MP part of the game".
They said that many times and actual you could see the effort the did put in, it didnt worked like they thought… but they tried it.

Now for your information, there was hardcoretesting within the betagroup concerning MP.
As far I know, a lot more than for the SP part of the game.



But to get my point clear. Its not about the testing and the amount of testing. You simply will always fail, if you bring a complex, unfair, unbalanced, timeconsuming game
and expect to have success with it! period.
The basics wont work, I said it before release and I was right.
And to see rome coming up, with all those "new" things, I just see another bad MP part of the game.

[Moros]

40 units controllable in a battle (combination of land and naval troops). source: video diary.

[Shigawire]

-True Line of Sight

From PCGamer UK
...a subtle but major change to the Total War formula: every unit now has dynamic, terrain-based line of sight, and no enemy unit is visible by default. No more steering your men towards a general magically marked out by a star on the battlefield.
"Each individual man is actually looking around him," Ferguson explains. "He can only see what he can see. As a result of that you get a much more claustrophobic effect when you're in a forest situation - and much less time to react.

[The Stranger]

that is very cool but somehow i cannot feel that this will become very frustrating vs ai either because they somehow always magically find you or because they never really find you :S

[Brother Sam]

I'm very encouraged each and every time that I hear some new information about the features of this game. It is shaping up to be everything that the first edition should have been crossed with the best mods! The detail level sounds to be staggering with the number of factions, and with a bit of presumption, the size of the map. One thing though, I've heard it mentioned that there will be no slave/ rebel faction, therefore will the tiny city states be surrounded by a bigger nation? And therefore be an easy target to be picked off early?

I really expect there to be more information available in the coming months and hopefully a lot of visual material to really get the drool flowing!