Rome 2 Patches, Hotfixes, Betas and Such (patch 17 live!)

[CaptainCrunch]

As long as your troops are visible, the AI does a pretty good job of stopping right outside the range of your armies. If your troops are hidden (ambush stance deployed anywhere, even in plain sight on a road), that's a whole different matter. Then, the AI can stop right next to you.

Slaists, what game is this? I've only found this to be true for naval movements. On land I routinely have AI invasion forces coming onto my territory in FM and maintaining that stance until I obliterate them. They even use FM to come right up to settlements that I have armies in.

In other news, I posted the patch notes to the Wonders and Seasons patch in the HatG thread and there are AI changes!

[Myth]

Slaists, what game is this? I've only found this to be true for naval movements. On land I routinely have AI invasion forces coming onto my territory in FM and maintaining that stance until I obliterate them. They even use FM to come right up to settlements that I have armies in.

In other news, I posted the patch notes to the Wonders and Seasons patch in the HatG thread and there are AI changes!

They definitely do what Slaists says in Legendary.

[CaptainCrunch]

They definitely do what Slaists says in Legendary.

Hmm... haven't played on legendary since patch 4 or 5, and since DEI is balanced for normal I haven't played anything other than that for months. However, as far as I know the game's difficulty has never actually affected tactical decisions by the AI (I wish it did). Then again, from everything I've seen and read about this release from the day it dropped it's become evident to me that the game behaves differently on different machines. For example, the survivability of the historically powerful factions like Rome, Carthage, etc differs from machine to machine pretty significantly in some cases.

*Wanna give everyone a heads up on the new patch- There seems to be a bug in the new mod manager that will appcrash the launcher after the update. You might even get the game to launch once, but after you accept the EULA for Twitch, it'll kick you back out and the launcher will crash. I finally got around this by unsubscribing from all my mods and then manually removing any remnants from my data folder. Hope they hotfix this ASAP as I simply can't play the vanilla game.

Fought a couple of battles in the snow though and it was pretty cool. Running speed really reduced.

[Slaists]

Slaists, what game is this? I've only found this to be true for naval movements. On land I routinely have AI invasion forces coming onto my territory in FM and maintaining that stance until I obliterate them. They even use FM to come right up to settlements that I have armies in.

In other news, I posted the patch notes to the Wonders and Seasons patch in the HatG thread and there are AI changes!

I have no mods, just vanilla game, very hard or legendary difficulty. What I described was happening in patch 10 version of the game. But I have seen the same behavior since patch 7 or so. Before that, the AI was much more careless about FM. Now, the AI does occasionally stumble into the range of my unhidden armies, but that happens rarely. In those instances, typically there is some "third" factor that throws the AI off: another hostile faction's army, for example.

On the downside, the AI unfortunately does not see city garrisons as a threat. They do not mind parking armies in FM stance right next to empty cities. Of course, this allows me to pop out a general, hire some mercs (if needed) and drag the city garrison in as reinforcements (in an ambush battle).

I have also come to suspect that the AI is not as "all seeing" as we assumed it was. If my army is deep inside my territory and away from trade routes, the AI does on occasion run their FM armies into trouble.

As to the new patch: the move point reduction for armies on the high seas is very noticeable. Need to change my starting strategies ;)

[Slaists]

On my part: after a few (too many) hours of late-night play: I am pleased. Of course, jumped in with Carthage on VH.

Relations map at start, 272:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Within the first few turns, Syracuse, Edetani, Celtici, Garamantia, Morocco, Rome, and some other desert tribe declared war. Keeping allies and client states alive was quite a challenge.

So, here's relations map in some 20 or so turns, Punic war in full swing:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Seems like not much but it took some doing. At some point, Carthage itself was in danger (garrison led by a single general, besieged by a full stack). For one, the AI no longer blindly storms into your walled settlements. At times, they just decide to lay siege and starve your garrison out; very different from patch 10 (and before). Given the stretched out position of Carthage and money problems of Barcids (barely any trade) this can result in scary situations as Carthage is not always able to send reinforcing armies in time.

The fixed replenishing pool of faction mercenaries (and the extra replenishing mercenary slots in terms of the 5 new units) is a lifesaver for Carthage though: now, can recruit crucial troops in crisis situations. Thumbs up for that. This definitely gives extra flavor to playing as Carthage.

[Kamakazi]

stated up 2 different games one with nervii and one with Egypt and no force march =/

[Slaists]

stated up 2 different games one with nervii and one with Egypt and no force march =/

Are you using mods? I am playing a Carthage vanilla game and can use forced march. The AI uses it too. Maybe some mod takes FM ability away.

[nearchos]

The FM is definately there, but i think they have limited the distances the armies can move in both FM and normal.

[Slaists]

The FM is definately there, but i think they have limited the distances the armies can move in both FM and normal.

I believe, the move point nerf applied to armies traveling by sea. Should not have affected armies on land.

On a side note: an undocumented feature of patch 11 seems significantly increased life expectancy for agents and generals. Now, my generals and agents tend to reach 70-80 years of age rather than die off in their 50s.

[Sp4]

Are you using mods? I am playing a Carthage vanilla game and can use forced march. The AI uses it too. Maybe some mod takes FM ability away.

DeI does, some so called hard core mods do. There are also the multiple tpy mods that take it away because the game needs to be slowed down >_>

[CaptainCrunch]

Patch 12 beta released. Notes spoilered;

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Technical and performance improvements:

Battle

Fix for UI-related crash in battle
Fixed replay de-sync for siege battles initiated from the frontend (e.g. custom or multiplayer, not campaign battles).


Campaign

Reduced lag during AI turns in Multiplayer Campaign mode.


Battle AI improvements:

Fixed several battle AI issues in naval settlement assaults which caused disembarked units to go idle and not join the battle.
Fix for a Battle AI bug where units could not find a path to a wall-breach, if a gate was captured before entering city.
Various battle-map improvements to help the Battle AI use siege equipment more effectively.
Fixed bug which caused the battle AI not to recognise breaches in some wall corner pieces.
Improved Battle AI phalanx unit behaviour (ensuring pike units use their phalanx abilities when bracing).
Battle AI no longer issues orders to units when they should be skirmishing.
Improved the battle AI’s spatial reasoning in naval settlement assaults. This applies to reinforcing or disembarked naval forces, when selecting positions from which to assault the settlement.



Campaign AI improvements

Campaign AI is now less likely to maintain long blockades without assaulting.
Campaign AI is now less likely to move armies into proximity with superior enemy forces.



General battle improvements

Improvements to certain units in unit groups who would fail to pathfind effectively when ordered to attack units in different areas (in very specific/rare cases on the battlefield).
Improvements to siege vehicles to ensure men on the tower getting knocked into the air does not cause wall-docking to fail.
Unit parts (armour, tunics etc) updated to offer greater unit variety.
Various improvements to men climbing siege towers and ladders. Soldiers now climb towers more effectively without milling at the bottom.
Siege engines will no longer get stuck on trees on the battlefield.
Player-controlled ambushing armies can now use deployables in ambush battles.
Naval units no longer attempt to reinforce ambush battles.
Fixed a bug which prevented armies of only one unit from being able to hide on the battlefield.
Fixed an area in the large Persian port where ships were not disembarking correctly.
Increased the number of unobstructed walls in the medium and large Rome siege battle-maps.
Fixed several cases where multiplayer battles could take place on very steep hills or mountains.
Several battle map improvements to beach landings, improved terrain heights and collision with some battlefield props.
Added new helmet variations and new Germanic tunics to Campaign Generals.
Added new Eastern Horse and Hellenic Heavy Horse variants.
Trees and units no longer clip through the ground near the Statue of Zeus at Olympia wonder on the battlefield.
Altered ship-sorting priority when disembarking, in order to reduce shuffling around.
An alternative bear pelt has been applied to Germanic Berserkers who don't wear helmets under their pelts, so the top of the hairline is no longer visible.


General Campaign improvements

A number of battle maps no longer feature snow during Spring, Summer and Autumn.
Fixed an issue where an ambushing army would move at the start of the turn. Please note: Sometimes an ambushing army will move when it is discovered or you discover an agent or army that is standing on top of it. This is expected behaviour.
When a general’s unit is the only unit in a reinforcing army, and the general dies but the unit does not, The general will now die on the campaign map.
Raiding will no longer cause negative happiness.
Technology requirements for military ports have been altered. Tier II military ports either have no tech requirements, or the same requirements as other tier II ports.
Corrected local traditions for Iberian regions in Grand Campaign to be Iberian instead of Celtic.
Reduced the Siege Holdout Time Effect conferred by siege tower technologies.
Political promotion positions for Syracuse, Arevaci and Lusitani factions have been corrected.
Forming a confederation no longer causes rebel armies in regions owned by the confederating factions to be absorbed into the confederation.
Fixed some terrain issues on the Hannibal at the Gates map.
New Germanic trousers and tunics added.



Usability Improvements

Battle

Fixed a rare bug where fire sound-effects would play after a battle had finished, and could be heard over the victory menu.


Campaign

Reduce Slaves effect now displays the correct icon.
Retreat button is no longer enabled on the pre-battle siege screen when forces are unable to retreat.
Some typographical fixes in Incidents and Dilemmas.
Tweaks to Egyptian and Carthaginian siege technology to more closely match the unlock order of normal Greek technologies.
Fixed a situation where all new Carthaginian general or agent recruits had the surname "Gisco".
Fix for some instances where a skull would appear on a unit card despite that unit not being dead on the post battle screen.
Various improvements to battle-unit banner icons.
Arevaci, Lusitani and Syracuse civil-war factions minimap and unit card colours have been corrected.
Roman siege buildings are now unlocked by technologies in the correct order in Grand Campaign.


General

Added a warning when loading replays from an older game version, to inform the player that results may be inconsistent when viewed in the version they are now playing.
If the Twitch End User Licence Agreement (EULA) has previously been declined, it will no longer be displayed every time the game is launched. If the Twitch button is pressed when the EULA has previously been declined, the EULA will then be shown. If the Twitch button is pressed and the player is not signed in to their Twitch account, they will be taken to the options menu to sign in.
Twitch streams will now be paused when the Steam overlay is active.
The Twitch button will no longer display during Historical Battle frontend intros.



Balancing Changes

Campaign

Reduced all technology-conferred ammo bonuses from 50% to 25%.
Reduced General’s logistics-conferred ammo bonuses from 25% and 50% to 10% and 25%.
Hidden income bonus for African and Arabian factions removed.
Reduced the amount of money that the Etruscan league start the campaign with.
Added two extra Hastati units to Rome at the start of their campaign.
The Ibossim region now belongs to Carthage at the start of the campaign.
Unit-balancing changes. Axe Warriors and Naked Warriors have also been added to the Boii unit roster.


Assembly Kit

Fixed an Assembly Kit bug which removed Campaign victory conditions from Campaign mods.

Still working that siege AI. Hope something positive comes from it.

[easytarget]

Anyone know what the latest patch to a patch did? Btw, if you're running beta 12 you got an update today. haha

Not like I consider CA terribly mod friendly any more, certainly not in comparison to pre-warscape, but I got to say, releasing a product in the state R2 did and then patching it a dozen times has to be on the very last nerve of anyone valiant enough to mod this thing.

[Slaists]

I suppose the biggest one is this:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Newly formed armies now start with no action points and are unable to switch to the forced march stance until the following turn.

It used to be quite easy to pop-out 4 elephant general armies in a backwater town that just got a visit from a far-away AI army in forced march stance. Invasion repelled... No longer possible, it seems ;)

[easytarget]

I guess I'll go on waiting for them to fix agent spam. Until then I've shelved this one. I've just got better things to play frankly, namely ME2.

[Slaists]

I guess I'll go on waiting for them to fix agent spam. Until then I've shelved this one. I've just got better things to play frankly, namely ME2.

I am playing as Lusitani now: a VH campaign started with patch 12 beta. I have expanded all over Iberia, Gaul, North-Western Africa; about to roll into Italy. I have yet to encounter the agent spam. I think since the start of the campaign (now it's turn 100), I have been successfully hit by the AI maybe three times. That's hardly an agent spam.

[easytarget]

Lucky you, last two campaigns I ran in CIG and HaTG I ran into never ending waves of them. Until I see it as a line item in the patch notes this one is tabled far as I'm concerned.

[Slaists]

Lucky you, last two campaigns I ran in CIG and HaTG I ran into never ending waves of them. Until I see it as a line item in the patch notes this one is tabled far as I'm concerned.

I suppose the way I play has something to do with lack of agent spam as well. I rarely have more than 1 close-buy enemy faction (the one that I am actively fighting). Remote enemies rarely bother sending their agents to my lands since there are plenty of allies of mine available before those agents find their way into my territories. I also use ambush stance whenever I can (as in, I advance my armies in ambush stance even if I leave them on the roads). Agents rarely bother armies in ambush stance.

[easytarget]

This agent spam was coming from all over the map, have you played CIG? The campaign starts at near RD and then relations only get worse over time. The stacks and the agent spam come from everywhere. I had 50 flipped agents, another at least 50 I killed. This was outside of one province.

And stance has little to do with this, I never have issues with agents seriously impeding my armies, I take all the flipped agents along for the ride to flip some more or kill'em off when I get tired of them.

The volume is the issue, and one that could be easily corrected, just set a cap per AI.

CA response: mod it
My response: Adults recognize and acknowledge mistakes - and the first and biggest one made by CA was failing to do a beta and uncovering all the game play issues

[Slaists]

This agent spam was coming from all over the map, have you played CIG? The campaign starts at near RD and then relations only get worse over time. The stacks and the agent spam come from everywhere. I had 50 flipped agents, another at least 50 I killed. This was outside of one province.

And stance has little to do with this, I never have issues with agents seriously impeding my armies, I take all the flipped agents along for the ride to flip some more or kill'em off when I get tired of them.

The volume is the issue, and one that could be easily corrected, just set a cap per AI.

CA response: mod it
My response: Adults recognize and acknowledge mistakes - and the first and biggest one made by CA was failing to do a beta and uncovering all the game play issues

I suppose it's not a cap per AI but rather a cap of how many AI's can throw their agents at you on the same turn. In CIG you are likely to have many AI enemies each of whom have their own fill/cap of agents. Having said that, no, I have not played CiG (not interested in the setting), but have played HaTG: did not experience the spam problem there.

[CaptainCrunch]

... My response: Adults recognize and acknowledge mistakes ...

Easy you and I think alike in many regards, but 'adults' the world over can't get their heads around that one, so it's no surprise to me that CA can't either. Personally I just can't stand waiting for lame people to do the responsible thing when I know it's highly unlikely, so I take matters into my own hands whenever possible. In this case it's mods to get a better game experience. Believe me, I don't think this is an ideal situation and certainly don't think that it's something paying customers should feel they have to do in order to makeup for how poorly the entire game was executed... but to me this entire fiasco revealed CA to be largely incompetent. They simply can't fix this game, it's beyond their capability. Any improvements they happen to make to the game at this point I'll put down to pure happenstance.

Slaists, out of curiosity do you run any mods normally? I can't even remember what vanilla R2 was like, I gave up on that mess by the 2nd patch.

[Slaists]

Slaists, out of curiosity do you run any mods normally? I can't even remember what vanilla R2 was like, I gave up on that mess by the 2nd patch.

Nope, I do not run any mods with RTW 2: plain vanilla game, which has improved a lot with the latest patches (compared to patch 2: it's a different game now).

The only time I use mods in TW game is when a major team-effort project rolls out that adds substantially to the gaming experience. Examples would be: Rome Total Realism and Europa Barbarorum for Rome 1, Stainless Steel and Broken Crescent mods for MTW 2, Imperial Splendor (sorry, Darth) for Empire Total War, etc. Such in-depth mods usually take very long time to develop [took several years for EB I] and it's too early for such to appear for RTW 2.

I generally do not touch singe modder mods just because I feel those are not sufficiently tested. A slight preferable change on one end of the game, can introduce undesirable ripple effects on another, etc. On top of that, I best enjoy TW campaigns when I play against another player (MPC head-to-head mode). Balancing various mods across both players can get troublesome. Easier to stick with the vanilla version of the game.

[CaptainCrunch]

...The only time I use mods in TW game is when a major team-effort project rolls out that adds substantially to the gaming experience...

I recommend you give DEI a try after they release v.90. It's a pretty significant (and complex) mod, there's quite a lot on offer in terms of game improvements. I run my own mod along with it that tailors a few things more towards my personal preferences, but those guys have done a pretty remarkable job so far. You should definitely experience it, I think you'd dig it.

[AussieGiant]

Hi guys,

Over the past few patches (9+) I've now got this animation stuttering. The FPS are fine but the battles just stutter constantly on all settings and all sizes of battles.

Do you guys have a heads up on the status of this problem?

[Myth]

Hi guys,

Over the past few patches (9+) I've now got this animation stuttering. The FPS are fine but the battles just stutter constantly on all settings and all sizes of battles.

Do you guys have a heads up on the status of this problem?

9 patches is too long a time for a bug or incompatibility to persist in the game. What are your system specs? My guess:

#1: Not enough system resources
#2: Unsupported graphics card
#3: Outdated graphics card drivers
#4: Outdated system drivers (BIOS, motherboard, Windows update)

[Slaists]

Hi guys,

Over the past few patches (9+) I've now got this animation stuttering. The FPS are fine but the battles just stutter constantly on all settings and all sizes of battles.

Do you guys have a heads up on the status of this problem?

Check your RAM usage with RTW 2 on and without it (there is a windows gadget that you can enable on your desktop that continuously monitors usage). It could be that something other than RTW 2 is clogging up your RAM and/or CPU. Other than that: Myth gave you a good checklist.

In my case, I was experiencing frequent BSOD's. It turned out that even though my video drivers were up to date, my BIOS was 10 versions behind... (face-palm). No more BSOD's after BIOS was brought up to date.

BTW, related to that RAM usage: RTW 2 tends to have leaky memory. This means, it leaves junk data in your RAM after every time you play the game (and exit it). In due time, this can clog up the RAM considerably. The easiest solution for that: a reboot.

[AussieGiant]

Hi there Myth, Slaists,

Thanks for the quick response. I have a GTX 690, i7 960 overclocked, 12 GB Ram and the Nvidia 335.23 driver version. I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate. It's an old gaming machine and is still pretty relevant.

I didn't have the issue prior to the last few patches so it seems to be a new issue.

I'll check how much resources I'm using when I play next.

Any other ideas as I think I'm well inside the machine specs for the game. I'm using medium settings from the Gforce Experience software so I'm not running any where near max settings?

[Myth]

The overclocking might be the culprit here.

[CaptainCrunch]

The overclocking might be the culprit here.

I agree with Myth. Don't know how long you've run your CPU at overclocked cycles, but what may have been stable in the past is often no longer the case as a processor gets older. Have you checked your temps while the game is running? Easiest thing to do is just run it at regular speed and see what happens. Otherwise your machine is capable of running it fairly well I'd imagine, mine is a straight up bucket of bolts in comparison and it runs the game obscenely well in most cases for what it is.

[AussieGiant]

Hi there fellas. The machines is from MainGear. https://www.maingear.com/

It's been overclocked since I bought it 4 years ago and the machine has been running the game fine since it came out last year and most of the first quarter of this year. It's only been in the last month or so where I've started to see this issue. A quick search indicates it's a known issue but I wasn't certain if any of you guy's had the issue before and therefore knew of a specific fix. I can't seem to find anything specific only.

Trouble shooting is always a pain :-)

Thanks for the helps guys!

[CaptainCrunch]

Has anyone had their settlements attacked by enemy spies at sea before? Nasty little bug, I came across it for the first time since launch in a recent campaign. Was gonna post pics but why bother, it's pretty straight forward. I run mods so I'd like to know if any vanilla players have experienced this sheeeeiii...