Initial Faction Reveal (sort of)

[Lemur]

TW has updated their wiki page of factions. Unfortunately, at the moment it is broken (announcement from Sega is here). Posting link for future reference, when they get their server situation sorted.

I was able to pull some text, however, despite the page's current crippled condition. To wit:



Factions

Ranging from the Spanish coast to the far-flung, exotic kingdoms of the east, the campaign map for Total War: ROME II™ is breath-taking in scope, and a study in detail and variety. This page is your source for background information about each of the playable factions: their starting position on the campaign map, their civic and military focus, and some of their key battlefield units.

The playable factions represent key powers within the Greco-Roman, Barbarian, and Eastern cultures, and each offers a notably different and deeper form of gameplay experience from those in previous Total War games. Each brings unique commercial, military and political strengths, its own agents and political system, and three tech trees representing civic, military and engineering disciplines. Each will have its own dilemmas to face and different styles of army to manage. Some factions are split into a number of playable families, which bring further unique benefits to their base faction traits.

Players will need to work with – and in certain circumstances against – their faction’s internal political system. You’ll direct the actions of famous characters from history, and if they’re not out in the field commanding your armies, they’ll be politicking in the senate house, or its cultural equivalent. Players would be wise to keep an eye on such individuals…

Some factions rely more on mercenaries for their military might; some prefer to train their own. Some rely on client-nations or vassals to boost their economic growth, while others are more trade-focussed. Whichever you choose, each faction brings a completely different gameplay experience to Total War: ROME II™.

-edit-

Page seems to be up now, looks like the only faction revealed is ... Rome. Sigh. Betcha didn't see that coming, what with the game called "Rome II."

[Ferret]

Oh my god, are you serious? ROME IS GONNA BE IN ROME II! Although to be fair Rome 1 didn't have a Rome faction...

Seriously though there being only eight playable factions is worrying. Hopefully there'll be plenty of others that are easy to convert to playable like last time.

[HopAlongBunny]

And hopefully its as easy as a .txt edit but I'm willing to bet on a stream of DLC.

[Lemur]

Well ... in fairness to CA, I would take 8 in-depth factions with unique and interesting tech trees, goals, units, etc., rather than 20 cookie-cutter factions with slightly different skins on the spearmen. I realize it's not really an either-or, but in the best possible light, this could mean a really deep Rome, a really deep Carthage, a really deep Macedonia, etc.

[Arjos]

Only eight? That's just terrible, I hope the non-playable ones, don't end up being raw factions, with no flavour whatsoever...

[HopAlongBunny]

8 in depth factions and easy for modders to create/elaborate further...I would probably pick it up. Here's hoping.

[dge1]

There will be 8 to start. I'm pretty sure there will be more to follow, DLC that will coorrelate with various time periods in the history of Rome. Lots of fertile ground for game play.

[Nerdymidgetkid]

They said in teh Eurogamer talk that all the factions would be playable and that there would be something like 40 factions.

[SalmonSoil]

Its possible that the 8 question marks represent 8 different cultures. The Roman culture obviously only has one faction, but the Greek culture would contain Macedonia, Egypt (Hopefully), Seleucids, etc as different factions (hopefully with minor variation between them).