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

[Kamakazi]

See I want a campaign like that ^^^

AI in all my campaigns no matter the patch have been my whipping boys.... no aggression or spunk

[Bramborough]

I've had factions DW and move on me early in the game...appears to me that AI is aggressive enough when the player's faction is equal or weaker in strength. So aggression/passivity may not be the root problem.

It doesn't take very many turns for the player to build up where neighboring AI factions are significantly weaker. Perhaps AI passivity is really a different manifestation of another fundamental problem...the AI doesn't build or expand well and quickly gets economically outstripped.

[Kamakazi]

Even factions across the map from me never grow bigger. You would think that they would infight and expand with all the declarations of war I see but I only ever see 3-5 provinces owned by a single AI and if they get bigger than that they implode into several rebel holds

[Hooahguy]

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!

A number of infantry units can do it now, notably most Roman infantry units. Not sure about everyone else, though it seems as if barbarian faction units cannot go into loose formation.

[Slaists]

Patch IV, legendary Pontus, turn 75 or so: an AI finally managed to take a town from me. I had forgotten about a pesky faction since two of my vassals were beating up on them. The faction was one of the steppe roamers: the ones from the North-East. Then, they sneaked a stack right into my rear and grabbed a settlement before I could march my armies to intercept. Of course, the very next turn I retook the town. Funny, my vassal had two stacks sitting not far from the settlement taken from me: they did not move a finger to intercept the intruders. I later checked the affairs near the steppe folks home-town: my vassals had 4 stacks there, all in raiding stance, doing nothing. Meanwhile, the town in the province they were raiding was completely empty (that's where the stack that grabbed my town [4 turns march distance] came from).

[Myth]

I never use vassals myself. I preffer to pain the map my colour.

[Slaists]

Someone on the main forum suggested that CA has confirmed somewhere that the difficulty settings currently are "not working as intended" and will be fixed at some point in the future... Duh...

I did not get the exact reference yet though.

As to vassals: a habit from S2. I used vassals extensively there to have someone to trade with post RD and secure borders in areas where I did not want to expand. Here, in R2, vassals also add a bit of challenge since they tend to drag you into unintended wars ;)

Anyone else notice a new siege crash-bug that has appeared with patch IV? Usually happens when selecting several of your units and asking them to go inside a walled settlement (through a breach). The game freezes. This was not present (in my games) before patch IV, but now I've seen it already 5 times. The bug appears persistent too: a battle replay results just in another crash so have to use autoresolve to get through.

[Jacque Schtrapp]

I started a new VH Parthia campaign after the release of patch 4. The Dahae are my only ally and seal off my northern border east of the Caspian Sea all the way to the edge of the map. Consequently, I've been busying myself with dealing with the Parthava-Sagartia-Arachosia confederation to the south and west. I have no troops in the north and rarely even look at that area. The Dahae have sent all of their troops down into Mesopotamia in support of my campaign.

Recently, while scrolling through my cities looking for buildings to upgrade, I noticed that a unit of Baktrian rebels had spawned in one of the Dahae provinces bordering mine in the far north. I had no troops available to deal with them, so I figured if they managed to take the province, I'd send an army to destroy them and add it to my empire. About a 5 or 6 turns later, I took a look at that province again to see if the rebels were still there or had been defeated. There were now 6 Baktrian rebel armies, each with 4 units, standing there using the same animation an army does when recruiting. On a hunch, I started checking the province every turn and counting the number of armies. Sure enough, each turn, a new Baktrian rebel army with 4 units would appear and begin the recruiting animation. None of the armies every recruited any units beyond the four they spawned with.

I decided to send an army north and destroy all of the Baktrian rebels, there were 13 four unit armies by the time I could get there, to see if they would stop spawning once the last one was gone. It took a while to chase each one of them down and destroy them all, and new ones spawned until the last one was destroyed. I realized after I did this that I should have taken screen shots. I can't seem to find any mention of a similar issue on the main forums, so I'm guessing it was just a really odd sequence of events that led to this occurring. I think I may have a save game from around that time. If so, I'll have to post a screen shot of the infinite Baktrian rebellion of 224 BC.

[Sp4]

Someone on the main forum suggested that CA has confirmed somewhere that the difficulty settings currently are "not working as intended" and will be fixed at some point in the future... Duh...

I did not get the exact reference yet though.



That's actually great f*cking news lol.

[Bramborough]

... Sure enough, each turn, a new Baktrian rebel army with 4 units would appear and begin the recruiting animation. None of the armies every recruited any units beyond the four they spawned with.

I decided to send an army north and destroy all of the Baktrian rebels, there were 13 four unit armies by the time I could get there....

I saw this happen in my last Rome campaign (Patch 3), in Libya. Paraitonion was held by Pergamon at the time, so they happened to be Hellenic rebels. Same thing...about a dozen 4-unit rebel armies in that region.

It smells like some sort of bug. What's supposed to happen (and usually does) is that one rebel army spawns, and then gains an additional 4 units each turn.

I wonder if it's terrain-related. I haven't played in the far eastern regions like Baktria. Is it open terrain? Most of the European-mainland provinces have large inaccessible mountain/forest areas, the available space to place an army can be limited. By contrast, desert/steppe provinces are wide open, an army can move or plop down pretty much anywhwere (albeit with attrition in desert).

[Jacque Schtrapp]

It smells like some sort of bug. What's supposed to happen (and usually does) is that one rebel army spawns, and then gains an additional 4 units each turn.

I wonder if it's terrain-related. I haven't played in the far eastern regions like Baktria. Is it open terrain?

The province in question is about 70% grassland and 30% forest. I also forgot to mention that I auto resolved all of the fights and, whenever engaging one of the Baktrian armies with reinforcements, the reinforcements would show the Roman Julii insignia behind the portrait of their general on the auto resolve screen.

Maybe I should see if I can dig up a save game and submit it to CA.

[Bramborough]

whenever engaging one of the Baktrian armies with reinforcements, the reinforcements would show the Roman Julii insignia behind the portrait of their general on the auto resolve screen.


Your comment jogs my memory...saw the same thing. At first I was wondering "What are the Romans doing here....I'M the Romans, dammit!", but they were labelled Hellenic.

[Seyavash]

Just started a new campaign with Carthage patch 4 and I am getting wars declared on me by practically every faction that has even remote contact. I sent a spy and fleet around to make contact so I could make trade contacts, but nope, apparently I need 5+ Dow per turn.

Playing on normal and didn't see this with either of my prior games, one unpatched at the start and the other patch 3. Anyone else getting DOW spammed?

[nearchos]

QUOTE]Someone on the main forum suggested that CA has confirmed somewhere that the difficulty settings currently are "not working as intended" and will be fixed at some point in the future... Duh...[/QUOTE]
Thanks CA for confirming the obvious.
The only difficulty level, was legendary and only with patch 3, not now with p4.

[nearchos]

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!...
I started an Epirus campaign on legendary after patch 4, the same thing, very passive AI, twice i had to defend agains invasions at Apollonia, from Rome and from Syracuse, but thats all the exitement.everybody ofered NAP, many trade agreements and just picking my targets as i like.

Im in second imperium, and i operate with 4/6 armies and 1 10ships navy.
Also an other thing needs fixing, Rome, Egypt, Seleucid empire have been destroyed already, Carthage is about to die and the other now powerful factions are, Blemyes, Caramandia, some iberian factions and Armenia.

[Alcibiade]

Just started a new campaign with Carthage patch 4 and I am getting wars declared on me by practically every faction that has even remote contact. I sent a spy and fleet around to make contact so I could make trade contacts, but nope, apparently I need 5+ Dow per turn.

Playing on normal and didn't see this with either of my prior games, one unpatched at the start and the other patch 3. Anyone else getting DOW spammed?

I never played with Carthage. Did you have any wars right at the beginning of the campaign ? Cause I start to think those DOW spams happens when you already have more than 3,4 wars going on. With Egypt, it's automatic since you're at war with the seleucids from the beginning which means their numerous strapies are also at war with you. Then, the DOW spam starts.

And yes, ths CAI is not very reactive, in general. I also wonder what Athenians, Aierdi and Dalmatians fleet are doing in between Karalis and Lyllybeum, they just stands there since 10 turns at minimum and none of those factions are at war nor allied with any of the factions around. It looks like they are just here to enjoy the view, as a war is going on in between Syracuse,Rome and Carthage. Maybe the CAI is getting bored too.

[gedingradski]

Not sure if this is bug or not, so thoughts are welcome - but either there is a way around the diplomatic reaction with client states/defensive allies to declare war if you engage their parent state or ally, or the penalty is not high enough...

I installed patch 4 and started a new VH Rome campaign, and was happy enough that trade agreements were much easier make (though, perhaps a little too easily as hardly anyone resisted in the first couple of turns, even with the Cultural Aversion penalty from being house of Junia...). Among them, I had agreements (no non-agression pacts) with Libya and Nova Carthago (Cathage's clients). Eventually I had to declare war on Carthage, so usually in this situation I find someone else who they're at war with (Syracuse in this case) and see if I can get a bit of cash from them for declaring even though I was going to anyway... After I did that, I suffered a minor (<10 negative diplo points) with Carthage's clients but they continued trading with me. I thought that was unusually fortunate, until it happened again with Sparta but this time their defensive allies (Makedon, and by this time Athens) didn't declare war on me and continued to trade (except Makedon, with whom I had no previous agreement).

Has this happened to anyone else? It appears to me that: 1) declaring war in this manner seems to by-pass the trigger whereby allies or clients can join the war as opposed to when it is a direct declaration; and 2) the penalty doesn't seem to be appropriately large enough with their allies or clients for them to join the war in their next turn(s).

Anyone else noticed anything similar? I reckon it might be scripting glitch for that diplomatic action, or something the AI is recognising (or programmed to recognise) as a trigger for war... I don't think it used to do this though...

[Kamakazi]

Ive gone to the point of declaring on everyone to get a challenge. My only allies are Knossos and Pergamon. But im at war with pretty much everyone else and will be declaring on cimmera soon

[Seyavash]

I never played with Carthage. Did you have any wars right at the beginning of the campaign ? Cause I start to think those DOW spams happens when you already have more than 3,4 wars going on. With Egypt, it's automatic since you're at war with the seleucids from the beginning which means their numerous strapies are also at war with you. Then, the DOW spam starts.

And yes, ths CAI is not very reactive, in general. I also wonder what Athenians, Aierdi and Dalmatians fleet are doing in between Karalis and Lyllybeum, they just stands there since 10 turns at minimum and none of those factions are at war nor allied with any of the factions around. It looks like they are just here to enjoy the view, as a war is going on in between Syracuse,Rome and Carthage. Maybe the CAI is getting bored too.

Yes they start with a war against the Turdetani but this faction has no client states at the beginning. I have no issue with DOW from factions near me but when various German factions and land locked Galatians in Anatolia declare war without reason that seems a bit ridiculous. Basically there seems to be an imbalance between passive and aggressive AI that still needs to be sorted out better. Based on other posts here and on TWC it does seem Carthage is more prone to this issue but I do hope future patches improve this feature to be challenging without being silly.

[Hooahguy]

New patch coming out tomorrow! (http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/104317-Latest-update-from-Mike-Simpson-and-CA-(17.10.2013)?p=889408#post889408)


Hi everyone,

Thank you for playing our patches and reporting issues you find on the forum. Without that help we wouldn’t be able to turn around the patches as fast as we have been doing. We’re achieving in weeks what, on previous projects, took months.

Over the next few weeks there’s going to be a shift from dealing with stability and config to working on gameplay and features, while performance and AI remain high priorities. I expect the pace of patching to slow a little as gameplay and deeper AI changes need longer to test and tune. It’ll still be weeks rather than months between patches though, and we're going to continue to patch the game regularly for the foreseeable future.

Gameplay and AI fixes take a long time to test, and we have to play a lot of 200+ turn games to be sure a change has worked as intended. To make the regular patches possible we have to overlap them, so while patch 5 will go live tomorrow, we've already started work on patch 7. This does mean it takes a while for your feedback to manifest as changes in the game, so please don’t be too disappointed if your top issue isn’t fixed in the latest patch. We are listening to you, and we will get there.

Our long-term plan from here is to get as fast as possible to a point where everyone is broadly happy with the state of the gameplay and AI. After that we’ll shift modes again to long-term support – something which is new for TW and was very much our plan for the title all along. Our games already have a long lifetime, but by releasing occasional DLC packs and free content updates we keep working on them for much longer. This means upgrades in a number of areas which help the game evolve, and stop it becoming obsolete.

I’m not going make any detailed claims about what we’re going to do in the short term. The best way – the only really credible way - we can let you know what we’re doing is by delivering it in the game. But rest assured that we’re constantly reading the TW forums and a variety of others, and the feedback you’re giving helps us to prioritise the issues we deal with, as well as getting a sense of which features work well, which are not liked, and which features from previous Total War games which weren’t designed into Rome II are missed. This is an interesting topic actually, as a lot of people think that we’ve ‘cut’ features to make Rome II and it isn’t as simplistic as that assumption.

A lot of the game is designed from the ground up. We develop many features in parallel, some of which work differently to how they did in previous games: we aim to create a different experience every time, and that’s very important to us. New features are added, and certain features from previous games are therefore not included as they must naturally make way for different features. What’s been interesting – and very useful for us – is listening to you telling us about which features you like and don’t like, and what you miss from previous titles. We take your views seriously, and we’ll take them with us in the future.

For now, we’re about to roll out our largest patch yet, which contains a number of key fixes and changes. The next update will also bring you new, free game content which we’ve been talking about for a while… we hope you like it. Alongside this, you’ll see our next major step towards mod support for ROME II.

Enjoy the update, enjoy the game, and thanks again for your ongoing feedback.

Mike Simpson

I am cautiously optimistic, cant wait to see what is coming! If I had to guess the Selucids will be released tomorrow, maybe a blood pack? I would be so happy if so. We need more blood in the game. :sneaky:

[Bramborough]

Good news indeed, also optimistically anticipating.


"A lot of the game is designed from the ground up. We develop many features in parallel, some of which work differently to how they did in previous games: we aim to create a different experience every time, and that’s very important to us. New features are added, and certain features from previous games are therefore not included as they must naturally make way for different features. What’s been interesting – and very useful for us – is listening to you telling us about which features you like and don’t like, and what you miss from previous titles. We take your views seriously, and we’ll take them with us in the future."

I hope Simpson and the CA crew are picking up the general trends among the vast sea of feedback:

1) We want large epic battles against strong enemies, with loads of opportunity for tactics and maneuver. Beating up on starving remnants or restrained by geographically fixed contact points (whether "VP flag" or "city gate") gets a little old.

2) We want the campaign and battle AI to play as smart as possible. This may not mean complex strategies of which only a human player is really capable...but at least have them act rationally in a given strategic/tactical situation.

3) We want to really care about our individual characters; no such thing as "too much" background/context for these guys. We also want them to hang around for a while.

I'm not saying that they haven't started addressing these in patches (with varying degrees of success). But I think 90+% of gameplay-related complaints fall into one of these three general themes. I know I'm just stating the obvious here amongst the regulars of this and other related forums. My point is that I hope it has registered now as obvious for the CA folks, and that they understand the fundamental themes. If not, then they're mired in a reactive process, playing whack-a-mole on specific items...and potentially making some of the same conceptual mistakes again in their next title. On the other hand, if they can see the forest instead of individual trees, and can evaluate game design and features against such a framework, then the rocky start of TW:R2 will not have been in vain.

[Barkhorn1x]

New patch coming out tomorrow! (http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/104317-Latest-update-from-Mike-Simpson-and-CA-(17.10.2013)?p=889408#post889408)

For now, we’re about to roll out our largest patch yet, which contains a number of key fixes and changes. The next update will also bring you new, free game content which we’ve been talking about for a while

Good news - family tree perhaps or is that too optimistic?

[Hooahguy]

We will see tomorrow I guess.

[Sp4]

Seleucids as a playable faction.

[Bramborough]

I'd be interested to see how Seleucid would be implemented as playable. The current version has some pretty decent starting territory of its own, plus something like 6-8 satrapies covering from Mesopotamia to the eastern edge of the map.

This seems like a rather OP start, even for an "Easy initial challenge" like Rome or Egypt. They must have some sort of huge drawback that is not apparent to me...or one would have to be added when it goes playable. All just idle conjecture on my part...anyone out there have more insight?

[Hooahguy]

If I had to guess it will be something like how it was in Rome 1: Lots of unrest, lots of enemies, not enough starting units. All three of which, combined, do not bode well.

[Jacque Schtrapp]

I'd be interested to see how Seleucid would be implemented as playable. All just idle conjecture on my part...anyone out there have more insight?

The Seleucids are usually one of the first factions to be wiped out in my campaign experience. I've rarely come in contact with them. In my new Patch 4 Parthia campaign, most of the Seleucid satrapies declared their independence in the first few turns. In fact, the Parthia intro dialogue specifically tells you to wait before attacking Parthava as they may rebel against the Seleucids thereby alleviating any need to deal with additional foes.


3) We want to really care about our individual characters; no such thing as "too much" background/context for these guys. We also want them to hang around for a while.

This is the big one for me. As it stands now, I don't even know which of my generals/admirals are actually members of my family and which are "other families." I simply can't be bothered to keep track. They have no impact in the game beyond their individual traits and, with year long turns, they die so quickly I can never get attached to any of them. This is a stark difference between Rome II and STW II. In the latter, a single general could last 150+ turns. I took pride in reaching max level and assigning their skills just so. Now, it seems a general dies every other turn and the replacement screen doesn't even let me see who it was that perished before I have to assign their replacement. Meh.

[Bramborough]

the replacement screen doesn't even let me see who it was that perished before I have to assign their replacement.

Yep, this is pretty annoying...as is the fact that you can't look at all the various stats for the candidates. You can if replacing a live general or forming an army, but not on the "Dead General! Replace NOW!!" window.

[Sp4]

I'd be interested to see how Seleucid would be implemented as playable. The current version has some pretty decent starting territory of its own, plus something like 6-8 satrapies covering from Mesopotamia to the eastern edge of the map.

This seems like a rather OP start, even for an "Easy initial challenge" like Rome or Egypt. They must have some sort of huge drawback that is not apparent to me...or one would have to be added when it goes playable. All just idle conjecture on my part...anyone out there have more insight?

All the satrapies declare war eventually?

[nearchos]

I'd be interested to see how Seleucid would be implemented as playable. The current version has some pretty decent starting territory of its own, plus something like 6-8 satrapies covering from Mesopotamia to the eastern edge of the map.

This seems like a rather OP start, even for an "Easy initial challenge" like Rome or Egypt. They must have some sort of huge drawback that is not apparent to me...or one would have to be added when it goes playable. All just idle conjecture on my part...anyone out there have more insight?
Normaly, they must have a real hard starting, with public order problems, because of the many settlements they control, not very good relations with their satrapies and being at war in the begining with Ptolemies of Egypt.

Also many satrapies mean more potential unwanted wars, in different fronts.

It will be interesting to see, its one of my favourite factions, almost sorry if they will be playable before the AI behaviour is better ballanced.

[Hooahguy]

So Supposedly three new DLC packs are coming out next week, at least according to this page (http://steamdb.info/app/214950/#section_history), though Im not sure what from that page gives people reason to think that there will be new DLC next week.

Listed on that page are 3 new DLC: A nomadic pack, a blood pack (:2thumbsup:) and something called "veteran_group."

[Myth]

I hope most of these are free or priced at around 1.99 euro

[Hooahguy]

The blood pack has to cost something because if so the game would lose its rating.

[Hooahguy]

Patch 5 release notes (http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_5)

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.

[Spoonska]

If they're going to release a veteran pack I hope that it's something I can acquire relatively early in game. I can't stand these packs that come out with units, and their usability is only there for 20 or so turns.

[Beskar]

So Patch 5 is now out. Is the game worth playing yet, or should I wait for a couple of months?

My biggest gripes were the complete lack of Campaign AI, the Riverdancing Enemies and massive time-taking turns.

[Hooahguy]

I think the CAI is very good. Its the BAI which needs a lot more work. Id say its worth playing, maybe wait another few weeks until the more substantial patches can be released.

[Hooahguy]

So I keep crashing after the splash screen. I removed all mods, nothing is working. Darn.

EDIT: If you delete your Roaming/CA/Rome 2 folder in your &appdata& folder things will be fixed. Now everything works for me.

[Bramborough]

Really liking the expanded tooltip percentages for agent actions. If these previously invisible numbers were the same before (and presumably they were), then I was picking the wrong action...a lot.

[Hooahguy]

Also apparently the siege AI is a lot better, according to reports from Reddit.


In my current seleucid campaign one of my newly conquered and poorly defended cities was besieged.
After sitting there for a few turns, the AI finally decided to attack (I guess waiting one more turn wasn't honorable) and I figured it was worth a try to defend since I had boiling oil and a hoplite general.
That plan didn't work out since the AI decided it would be much more fun to use 12 siege ladders instead.
While my slingers did some damage before they reached the walls they were quickly overwhelmed. My eastern spearmen managed to hold them off at some places but my entire right flank collapsed.
Then the enemy decided to start burning down the gate as well, most likely to get his cavalry inside.
In the end my general was running around killing spearmen on the wall while my levy pikemen sat in the gate and repelled all the horses since the rest of my forces where dead, gone or just generally useless.
9/10, would have desperate last stand again.

EDIT: I also found out how apparently now when besieging a provincial settlement you automatically get some ladders off the bat. Which is good I guess because torches are pretty dumb.

[hoom]

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.These are really great :)

[Barkhorn1x]

These are really great :)
Indeed.

[Forward Observer]

Really liking the expanded tooltip percentages for agent actions. If these previously invisible numbers were the same before (and presumably they were), then I was picking the wrong action...a lot.

For me and at least one other poster at the other forum, this tool tip is a bit buggy. I've had two issues so far. When I first bring up the panel, I don't see the total positive percentage, but instead only see the top positive percentage. Then the tool tip will show the missing positive that makes up the total. If I exit the panel and activate it again by right clicking on the target, it reads like it used to with the total positive and the tool tip breaking that down.

Then last night the tool tip quit working all together. All I could see in the initial panel was the very small percentage for the best result with no clue what my total positive chances were.

The only way I could fix it was to go back to the previous auto-save and re-run the end turn. That got it working again for now, but still with the different percentages in the initial panel on successive attempts.

I'm still kind of surprised that they didn't do another beta for this patch like they did for all the others.

Cheers

[antisocialmunky]

You know, I'll be pretty happy with what I paid for Rome 2 so long as this continues.

[Alcibiade]

Good news - family tree perhaps or is that too optimistic?

And maybe seasons and more turns per year ! Cause I start to realise how absurd it is to simulate ancient warfare camapign strategies without seasons ! Plus the armies's movement points make the campaign map much too small !

[Hooahguy]

I dont think that they are ever going to change the turns per year, I think thats up to the modders to change, which they have. Mostly. Seasons are still in the works.

[BroskiDerpman]

I'm wondering, even w/ tpy mods do they count in actual seasons and give bonus' or penalties?

[Wilbo]

Hooahguy, thanks for keeping us all up to date on the patches. It's much appreciated.

[Alcibiade]

In this thread : http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/103698-Skeuomorphic-UI-(Design-Concepts)

(which is interesting btw) a guy (Morgothic) wrote that the yearly turn is essential to render the attrition effects of the campaign map. I really don't understand the logic of it... I mean, it doesn't change anything, with 4 turns per year you just have the attrition losses divided but I don't see the point.... Maybe he suggests errors are more fatal with 1 TPY ?

[Sp4]

That thread is so painful to read =X

[CaptainCrunch]

In this thread : http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/103698-Skeuomorphic-UI-(Design-Concepts)

(which is interesting btw) a guy (Morgothic) wrote that the yearly turn is essential to render the attrition effects of the campaign map. I really don't understand the logic of it... I mean, it doesn't change anything, with 4 turns per year you just have the attrition losses divided but I don't see the point.... Maybe he suggests errors are more fatal with 1 TPY ?

I think you might be reading into his remarks too deeply. I don't think he was suggesting that it was some essential game mechanic for attrition to work, I think he was just stating that he prefers it the way it is, with players incurring attrition penalties for things like moving through deserts rather than being penalized for having your army outside a settlement during the winter season.

[Nelson]

Smaller light transports have been added. Mounted generals and artillery units get them.

[Lord of the Isles]

I've played a couple of games till about turn 60 since the latest patch (both VH as Rome: Julia and Junia). The biggest differences I've noticed seem to have been caused by changes to the CAI and diplomatic relations.

Of course, may just be random luck in my 2 games. However, I find:


AI Factions much more ready to ally with each other
AI Factions slightly more likely to DoW human faction (not sure about this)
Money a little tighter - for one thing, buffing legionaries from scratch to Armour III and Weapons III costs 1350 per unit


The former means that after the initial period, there are very few no-friends small factions around for the human to bully. By the time I was ready to push into TransAlpina, the Veneti owned all 3 regions and had defensive or military alliances with 5 other factions. There's going to be a lot of battles and my cash flow isn't really enough to be confident I can field sufficient armies. There is also a 'Greek' block of allies that I have joined and an African one and the start of another block in Iberia. Quite a change from the slow eating up of isolated 1 or 2 region factions in previous patches.

The second point may just be my imagination, coupled with playing for the first time as the Junia family. They take what is described as a 'moderate' hit to diplomatic relations with all other factions but it isn't that modest when it tips you into multiple wars as AI factions DoW you. And the snowball effect where once you are in 4 or so wars, other factions like to join in for the fun, means I had 9 or 10 enemies as Junia by about turn 40-50. Not as impossible as Carthage was (is?) since the CAI doesn't seem to be attacking Italy with the same frenzied assaults that it likes to attack Carthage with, but still a big challenge.

The Julia family is proving easier, at least at first. Only Carthage joined in the war on the side of the Etruscan League, which mechanism meant that neither of their allies (Libya, Nova Carthago) joined as well. Once I got a peace v Carthage things were easier.

So, early days, but some signs that the campaigns might prove more interesting.

[Sp4]

Upgrading units can be expensive if you want to get them from level 1 to 3. I think that is kind of normal. AI declaring war on you more than on each other has something to do with the difficulty.

[Jacque Schtrapp]

AI Factions much more ready to ally with each other


I'm playing a 5.0 Seleucid campaign on VH. About a dozen turns in, all of my satrapies excepting Media and Sardes declared war on me. They also began forming an alliance block. I wasn't too worried at first, because of the buffer Media provides. Once Media was eliminated, I was in serious trouble because the Seleucid economy does not support enough armies to repel the hordes of troops from Arachosia, Parthia, Parthava, Drangiana, Aria, Dahae and Sagartia. Fortunately for me, I was able to ally with Athens early on and that boosted my street cred enough that I eventually ended up allied with ALL of the Hellenic factions.

After setting a War Target somewhere in Parthavan territory, my allies began to declare war on my enemies one by one. Not only did they DOW, but they all sent troops. What followed was an uncoordinated mess, but it ended up working to my advantage. My complaint with my allies is this: initially, their troops entered the lands of my enemies and even conquered a few provinces. Eventually they lost the land they conquered and now, their troops either march around without doing anything (Macedon, Knossos, Pergamon), or they congregate in these large groups in the desert (Athens, Sparta, Bithynia, Rhodos) losing troops to desert attrition turn after turn.

I'm curious what will happen once I've conquered my corner of the map. The huge Hellenic alliance has expanded to cover Rome and some of the northern African tribes, as well as the northern Black Sea barbarians, I'll probably have to travel to Iberia to find anyone to fight and likely end up touching off World War .5

I think the willingness to ally will eventually have to be toned down. Bithynia was part of the Hellenic alliance, and when Armenia declared war on them, I had to break our alliance because I had no troops left to face Armenia and they bordered 4 of my unprotected provinces. I hate to break an alliance, but I could not afford to have the heart of my empire gutted. Bithynia offered me a non aggression pact the next turn, which I accepted. The turn after that, they offered me a military alliance and 7800.

[Hooahguy]

DLC-related posts moved to their own thread.

[CaptainCrunch]

... Bithynia offered me a non aggression pact the next turn, which I accepted. The turn after that, they offered me a military alliance and 7800.

:laugh3:

I find this hilarious...

[Alcibiade]

Of course it still needs some tweaks but the new diplomatic features and the post patch 5 CAI really improved the strategic side of the game ! Maybe it's the Seleucid campaign that starts off to wheel but finally, Persepolis seems closer than my fridge ! The one more turn effect is slowly coming back.

The Ui is still capricious, I sometimes have troubles to open the public order/food panel on the left.

[AntiDamascus]

What diplomatic changes were there?

[Slaists]

Playing as Macedon, started fresh from patch V (VH since there is no way to get out of the rain bug on legendary): things are really looking up in terms of AI diplomatic interaction at least during the first 50 turns. Despite having Macedonic faction's anti-hellenic diplomatic handicap, I am allied with most of the Hellenic world as I am making my way North-East through the barbarians. My allies stick with me and actually send troops too. As I grow bigger, more and more factions come with alliance offers offering their first-borns for it. On the enemy side, as I attacked them, Getae formed a Celtic confederation with their neighbors: that one actually managed to stall me for a few turns. On the campaign map, AI's coordination of military forces has improved too: they actually managed to sneak-snatch a couple settlements from me.

On the major AI faction side: AI Rome seems to be doing alright. They own all of Italia, all of Magna Graecia, all of Sardinia and now are expanding in Africa. This was unseen before patch V. Seleucids are doing very well too: they're about the only Hellenic faction I am not allied to. I guess, war is brewing (or so I hope).

Not so good: the AI still has a very poor grasp of stances. For example, why would horse archer armies adopt fortification stance [yummy...]?

[Hooahguy]

I wish I saw more AI armies raiding. Would make for an interesting cat-and-mouse game as the enemy army must use it to survive without attrition and you must stop them.

[easytarget]

DLC-related posts moved to their own thread.

Nice job guys throwing that up on the home page, I bet for sure some folks catch the update because of this that would have missed it otherwise.

[Jarmam]

I wish I saw more AI armies raiding. Would make for an interesting cat-and-mouse game as the enemy army must use it to survive without attrition and you must stop them.

Something amazing happened while I was taking out the remaining small factions east of my Seleucid Empire. Persia sent 2 stacks to take a smaller settlement I had recently conquered, but with low missile (non-slinger) units they stood little chance of breaking through my stack of mainly phalanxes and hillmen in a town. So they both went into raiding! I have never experienced that before, but it destroyed my public order and pretty much forced my hand. This is exactly what I was hoping raiding was intended to do all along, and I hope the AI continues to use it wisely as it did there. The two stacks combined gave a whopping -40 public order from their raiding, and this type of indirect damage is an excellent addition to the TW strategy map.

[Hooahguy]

Something amazing happened while I was taking out the remaining small factions east of my Seleucid Empire. Persia sent 2 stacks to take a smaller settlement I had recently conquered, but with low missile (non-slinger) units they stood little chance of breaking through my stack of mainly phalanxes and hillmen in a town. So they both went into raiding! I have never experienced that before, but it destroyed my public order and pretty much forced my hand. This is exactly what I was hoping raiding was intended to do all along, and I hope the AI continues to use it wisely as it did there. The two stacks combined gave a whopping -40 public order from their raiding, and this type of indirect damage is an excellent addition to the TW strategy map.

Interesting. Ive had very little time with patch 5, so Im hoping for better CAI all around, so Im glad things like this were improved on!

[Sp4]

Yes, I like how raiding has a serious impact on public order now and the AI does it too! It adds a bit more strategic depth to the whole thing. You can force a garrisoned army to come after you by raiding their province or sometimes the AI will do that to you! It's a little annoying that the public order debuff from raiding is a set amount... so a single general is going to wreak as much havoc as a whole army... I can see that becoming annoying quickly if the AI spams it, or you end up with armies at home through slave uprisings or something.

[Kamakazi]

I like the new patch... my pontus game on VH is actually giving me a decent challenge.... Its a big cat and mouse game with a lot of trading territory

[Hooahguy]

So Im just going to guess that the next patch will be on Friday? Anyone else think that? As I recall, patch 5 was released on Friday so Im hoping for another Friday with good news!

[nearchos]

So Im just going to guess that the next patch will be on Friday? Anyone else think that? As I recall, patch 5 was released on Friday so Im hoping for another Friday with good news!
I hope so, with every patch the game is more and more interesting.
Are the patches working for autosaved games also?
I dont want to quit my current campaign.

[nearchos]

The same with me, eventhough i was at a time at war in all my borders, i was able to make peacein the north, with Bythinia and Pergamon finaly with Galatia and now i have aliance with the first two plus Pontus which is a trusted friend from the begining.
I have aliances with the north Africa factions, Carramandia, Nassamones, Cyrinaica and curently i fight at the east with all my ex satrapies plus Media Apopatene.

I just destroyed Gerrthrea south in the vast Arabian Deserts, a war which was very hard because of the big disstances betueen the settlements and the armies and agents of the former inflitrating from everywere, capturing settlements and sambotaging my armies.

Now i can concetrate east, where during the last turns, i had to give 5 battles 4 against Parthava something and 1 against Media Apopatene, in all of them, before they attack, a swarm of their agents were attacking my armies, so in 4 of the 5 battles i didnt have a general due to assasination and 2 of the battles the reinforcing army was sabotaged.

The result was, very hard battles, 1 of the Seleucids armies destroyed, 3 generals assasinated, heavy casuallties, 3 of the enemy armies destroyed, 3 more decimated, and Seleucia, the capital of Messopotamia at last capture.

I was sweting last night and enjoy it.

[Myth]

The Seleucids on Legendary are no cakewalk. You can make it work but you have to fight constatnly on two or even three fronts. Maybe that's me, because I don't really like allying with too many factions (makes them harder to conquer later on) but still.

[nearchos]

The Seleucids on Legendary are no cakewalk. You can make it work but you have to fight constatnly on two or even three fronts. Maybe that's me, because I don't really like allying with too many factions (makes them harder to conquer later on) but still.
Yes you are right, i thought of that, but i had a realy hard time and securing my other borders and concetrating against my major enemies at the east and south was a relieve at the moment.

I will see, it will be a long campaign for me, so things might be different later on.

[Subedei]

In my Roman campaign i get a lot of pressure on the British Islands (Rebels and another faction) with pretty large & experienced armies. Besides i am in a ongoing brawl for the province of Sarmatia. The "two-horse-head-icon" faction sends in waves of invaders plus has strong garisons in their homelands. A pretty tough conflict going on on both fronts.

I am currently refitting a Legion with artillery in my homelands to face the British units and concentrate my most skilled legions on the Eastern front.

I think the patches work fine....the last time i had such an intense threat to my empire was in EB or Darth´s ETW/NTW mod.....

[Kamakazi]

I was allied to bithninia and then when I declared on Seleucid they were at war with me. Then we made peace and 10-15 turns later they declared on me..... Im fighting every Seleucid satrapy. Siraces to the north, Pergamon, Turdiante? (unsure of spelling) etc. At last count it was 12 factions vs me cimmera and trapezos

[Slaists]

In my Roman campaign i get a lot of pressure on the British Islands (Rebels and another faction) with pretty large & experienced armies. Besides i am in a ongoing brawl for the province of Sarmatia. The "two-horse-head-icon" faction sends in waves of invaders plus has strong garisons in their homelands. A pretty tough conflict going on on both fronts.

I am currently refitting a Legion with artillery in my homelands to face the British units and concentrate my most skilled legions on the Eastern front.

I think the patches work fine....the last time i had such an intense threat to my empire was in EB or Darth´s ETW/NTW mod.....

Just curious: did you start that campaign from scratch with patch V? Good progress there, mate :)

[Mhantra]

So Im just going to guess that the next patch will be on Friday? Anyone else think that? As I recall, patch 5 was released on Friday so Im hoping for another Friday with good news!

The update by the CA guy last week seemed to be saying that the patches will be further apart now that they are focusing on deeper systems rather than simple bug fixes. He said weeks, not months, though. I am hoping, though, that maybe there is one more weekly to come out Friday, maybe patch 6 :)

[Subedei]

@ Slaists: No, in case "from scratch" means "from the beginning". Got the game on the day of release. Got my behind handed over in my 1st camapaign. Started a new one which runs eversince (smth. like 24 A.D. right now). I am pretty slow, yet methinks the patches work considering my actual campaign. It took me a while to get used to the "new" game mechanics.

Plus: usually i prefer Eastern cultures (and hunt down Romans, hehe), but i have to admit it is fun to play as Rome. As soon as the mentioned conflicts are "resolved" I think about goingi nto Egypt/ Near East. After that i will start a new campaign, maybe Seleucids or one of the Nomad fractions.

[Slaists]

@ Slaists: No, in case "from scratch" means "from the beginning". Got the game on the day of release. Got my behind handed over in my 1st camapaign. Started a new one which runs eversince (smth. like 24 A.D. right now). I am pretty slow, yet methinks the patches work considering my actual campaign. It took me a while to get used to the "new" game mechanics.

Plus: usually i prefer Eastern cultures (and hunt down Romans, hehe), but i have to admit it is fun to play as Rome. As soon as the mentioned conflicts are "resolved" I think about goingi nto Egypt/ Near East. After that i will start a new campaign, maybe Seleucids or one of the Nomad fractions.

I'd recommend starting from the scratch then. With patch V, the starting campaign is miles better than what it used to be (even with patch IV). You missing out on some fun there.

[Jacque Schtrapp]

Still playing as the Seleucids. I'm finding myself disappointed in the way the AI handles reinforcing armies. I've had several battles now where they've cornered one of my armies with three of their own. At the beginning of the battle, one of their reinforcing armies will come from the side or rear of the map. At first I was greatly alarmed, as I assumed they would surround and annihilate me. Instead, the reinforcing army skirts my forces and joins with the main attacking force. It's been the same in every battle with more than one enemy army.

Once all of the enemy armies are conjoined, instead of forming a longer battle line and massively outflanking my force, they form a line roughly the same length as mine, only several ranks deep. When our forces collide, they'll try and send 1-2 units around each flank, the same as they would if it were a 1v1 fight, and the rest of their troops pile straight into my pikemen and get destroyed. I've won battle after battle where I was massively outnumbered, my cavalry was rendered ineffective, and my flanks were beginning to crumble, all because they can't handle pikes or reinforce in an intelligent manner. It's starting to get a little redundant.

As others are mentioning, I have seen enemy armies raiding, though it has always been in a situation where I have a nearby army that can come and crush them that same turn.

[AntiDamascus]

I never let them combine. I hit one army before it can join in. I've been outnumbered 3-1 and just fought the one that would reinforce first, then the second, and then the static army.

[Alcibiade]

On the major AI faction side: AI Rome seems to be doing alright. They own all of Italia, all of Magna Graecia, all of Sardinia and now are expanding in Africa. This was unseen before patch V. Seleucids are doing very well too: they're about the only Hellenic faction I am not allied to. I guess, war is brewing (or so I hope).

That is something I'd like to check : in my post patch 5 campaign with the Seleucid, at turn 50, Egypt, Carthage and Rome are slowly expanding. Anybody noticed the same ?

[Jacque Schtrapp]

That is something I'd like to check : in my post patch 5 campaign with the Seleucid, at turn 50, Egypt, Carthage and Rome are slowly expanding. Anybody noticed the same ?

At turn 125 of my Seleucid campaign, Egypt is allied with everyone and had no where to expand to, Garamantia eliminated Carthage and controls that area of North Africa, and Rome is at war with several barbarian tribes, but hasn't conquered any territory.

[Bramborough]

That is something I'd like to check : in my post patch 5 campaign with the Seleucid, at turn 50, Egypt, Carthage and Rome are slowly expanding. Anybody noticed the same ?

Well, my Pontus campaign has been rolling since late in Patch3. All three of these large factions flamed out early. Egypt cannot come back, all their former territory is now mine. Carthage still pops up but gets pummeled quickly.

Since Patch 5, however, Rome has reappeared and is doing okay. They've only got a few settlements, but these appear to be functioning well. They've built several large non-starving armies (I don't have a spy close enough to see what kind of composition). My hope is that they take the fight back to the Veneti (who originally bumped them off) and reclaim the Italian peninsula.

[Subedei]

I'd recommend starting from the scratch then. With patch V, the starting campaign is miles better than what it used to be (even with patch IV). You missing out on some fun there.

Thanks for the recomendation. What are the most notable improvements?

[Myth]

Why is Egypt even alive at turn 50 or 125 with the Seleucids? Aegyptus has 3 resources in its minor settlements, it's easily one of the richest and most valuable provinces in the game! Eearly Egyptian armies cannot stand to even a signle well composed Seleucid stack. Letting Egypt live means you give the AI leave to exploit 2 grain + 1 iron resources, not to mention two wonders of the world. There is literally nothing better for one stack to do than conquer Egypt and then with reinforcements - Lybia and Carthage (two verry good, 4 settlement provinces there too)

[Alcibiade]

Why is Egypt even alive at turn 50 or 125 with the Seleucids? Aegyptus has 3 resources in its minor settlements, it's easily one of the richest and most valuable provinces in the game! Eearly Egyptian armies cannot stand to even a signle well composed Seleucid stack. Letting Egypt live means you give the AI leave to exploit 2 grain + 1 iron resources, not to mention two wonders of the world. There is literally nothing better for one stack to do than conquer Egypt and then with reinforcements - Lybia and Carthage (two verry good, 4 settlement provinces there too)

I prefer to focus on my eastern front for now. I sent a full stack to help Persia and Media and I help Sardes against Bythinia and Pergamon. Rhodes, Sparta and Athens are helping me on the West. When those two fronts will be taken care of I'll proceed with Cyprus and Egypt. But yeah, it might not be the more logical and strategic plan. Nor the most historical one. I just do it for roleplay purpose. My three dynastic leaders had the love-greeks trait from the beginning so their first purpose is to crush any rebelling attitude from the easterners and strengthen bonds with the greek factions. In the meantime Spartan AI managed to be conquered by Knossos, so I'll have to liberate them.... I might be embroiled in a spiral here

I'm disappointed, CA doesn't want to take care this "no future for major AI factions" trouble. THat and the family tree doesn't seem to be in their priorities. A mix of the family tree and the actual system where family members would be concretely represented when they command an army and would only interact through the faction screen when they rule as statesmen could be awesome ! But I'm rambling again.

[Slaists]

Thanks for the recomendation. What are the most notable improvements?

You'll see much more active diplomatic AI at the start of the campaign (which can heavily affect the player's chances of expansion, trade, etc.). You'll see AI's forming defensive blocks (with the player and against the player and against other AI's). All in all, it is a much more engaging campaign than it used to be before patch 5.

[Slaists]

That is something I'd like to check : in my post patch 5 campaign with the Seleucid, at turn 50, Egypt, Carthage and Rome are slowly expanding. Anybody noticed the same ?

My original post was too optimistic. Now i am near turn 100 with the same Macedon campaign. I purposely avoided expanding into Italy AND the East [instead steam-rolling towards the Northern seas via Germany] to see how the major AI factions will be doing without my interference. At this point, AI Seleucids have been destroyed by Media Atropene (they control territory all the way to the Mediterranean, but nothing really "empire like"; with close to 40 settlements, I am by far the biggest faction on the map); Carthage has been destroyed by desert folks who even hold some territory in Italy. Rome is still around, but mostly spends time at the seas (with its armies) losing territory to one or another minor (then retaking it; then losing again). So, all in all, it is still "no future for major AI factions": just with a little delay (compared to the game before patch 5).

[Seyavash]

Started a new Carthage campaign with patch 5 and it seems that while the major factions don't have large empires a number of factions across the entire map have consolidated in a series of local powerhouses. So rather than a mess of individual factions and one or two very large minor faction empires there is real competition between several mid size empires. So long as it doesn't settle into a stalemate I prefer this to no empires or major factions always winning.

[Slaists]

Started a new Carthage campaign with patch 5 and it seems that while the major factions don't have large empires a number of factions across the entire map have consolidated in a series of local powerhouses. So rather than a mess of individual factions and one or two very large minor faction empires there is real competition between several mid size empires. So long as it doesn't settle into a stalemate I prefer this to no empires or major factions always winning.

The problem is that no matter what faction the player picks, as soon as size of 30-40 settlements is reached the sense of danger completely disappears from the game: and that's pretty much still early game... Don't know. I feel I miss realm divide, LOL...

[Alcibiade]

Started a new Carthage campaign with patch 5 and it seems that while the major factions don't have large empires a number of factions across the entire map have consolidated in a series of local powerhouses. So rather than a mess of individual factions and one or two very large minor faction empires there is real competition between several mid size empires. So long as it doesn't settle into a stalemate I prefer this to no empires or major factions always winning.

What do you mean by powerhouses ? How many provinces or settlements ? Because if the AI really knows how to maintain an empire without collapsing under its own weight, then, the major Ai faction's trouble can be taken care of through mods...

@ Slaists: missing realm divide, it says a lot :-(

[Empire*Of*Media]

but i think they have not fixed this issue that by starting a new campaign and going for it on and on........but again great kingdoms & empires fall easily like Carthage & Rome & .........
besides< still the shortages of food will easily destroy MOST of the factions !! a very boring easy campaign to complete!!

[Alcibiade]

but i think they have not fixed this issue that by starting a new campaign and going for it on and on........but again great kingdoms & empires fall easily like Carthage & Rome & .........
besides< still the shortages of food will easily destroy MOST of the factions !! a very boring easy campaign to complete!!

It's a pity cause I'm very positively impressed by some of the CAI moves and the interactions between AI factions on the diplomatic scale are starting to give life to te campaign map ! But yeah, a simgle mod can take care of that issue I suppose.

[AntiDamascus]

Part of it is, I think, that we know these were great kingdoms who survived for long times but in the game world these are just factions. Carthage can fall because of bad luck or bad decisions and so on. No one really complains that you take Sparta and rule the world so to speak so it shouldn't be odd that Rome can, in fact, fall early on.

[Alcibiade]

I think Patch 5 corrected the army composition's trouble ! The eastern's factions I fight as the Seleucids brought many thorax units (pikemen and swordmen) and a perfect ratio of inf, missile, cav troops !
And there's this 4 star enemy general, couldn't spell his name properly, who annihilated one of my stacks and succeeded in escaping when I destroyed his stack ! All my generals on the eastern front must dream of choping his head now ! That's the TW I love : I was so pissed that I couldn't have any mortal tenacious enemies in Shogun 2 ! At first occasion they were comitting suicide in some fortress assault.

@ AntiDamascus : I see your point. It's just that I'd prefer to fight a powerfull Roman empire, playing as Carthage, and have to deal with rebellious african's tribe, than the opposite. Maybe, it's a lack of imagination. But as I love to read antiquity historic books I love when the course if events stay close tp it with some variations though.

When I play EU4, I see various scenari, but the main empires are ususally the same we saw in history, with slight variations.

.

[Slaists]

RTW 2 starvation post patch 5


It's a pity cause I'm very positively impressed by some of the CAI moves and the interactions between AI factions on the diplomatic scale are starting to give life to te campaign map ! But yeah, a simgle mod can take care of that issue I suppose.

After patch 5, I see the AI starving only in the cases when it has been left with one region which happens to be the capital (walled) settlement. In that case, the AI is likely to starve due to lack of farms. In any case, the incidence of starving seems to be quite reduced compared to patch 3 for example.

EU4 versus RTW 2




@ AntiDamascus : I see your point. It's just that I'd prefer to fight a powerfull Roman empire, playing as Carthage, and have to deal with rebellious african's tribe, than the opposite. Maybe, it's a lack of imagination. But as I love to read antiquity historic books I love when the course if events stay close tp it with some variations though.

When I play EU4, I see various scenari, but the main empires are ususally the same we saw in history, with slight variations.

.

In EU4, 8 historically well performing AI nations get "lucky nation bonus" (better morale, better battle stats, better monarchs; the latter one is actually a huge bonus in EU4). This practically ensures these nations succeed if the game is played long enough (and the human player does not "take care" of the lucky ones early). The historical lucky nations feature can be turned off at the game start. With this feature turned off, the AI universe collapses in a random mess in EU4 same as in RTW-2. One can elect to have "random lucky nations" instead of "historical lucky nations": this results in a random pick of nations becoming large and strong.

RTW 2 WAD?

Back to RTW 2, here are a few features that seem to be bugged. I am wondering what other folks here think about them (I have posted these in the official support forum too):

1. diplomatic reliability (for the player): no matter what the game difficulty this stays "steadfast" for the player with all of the AI factions except the one the player is directly at war with. Even in the latter case, it fast reverts to steadfast or close to steadfast within a few turns. Last night I tested it by declaring war on a long term military ally. Sure, I became untrustworthy with the target, but I was still steadfast with all of the target's allies and 'friends'. Surely a word should have gotten out that I was an untrustworthy scumbag...

2. dignitaries get a random trait called "military administrator" (or something sounding similar). From the name of the trait, it would seem like a good trait for the dignitary in the military administrator role. However, in the game, it gives a whooping +10% to army upkeep. All the military administrator skills give the opposite (reduction in upkeep costs).

3. corruption reduction (the 5% bonus that's supposed to accrue from completing 3 skills in each level of the academic research area; for example, the first level is supposed to give corruption reduction of 5%). However, it gives much less than that. In my last game, I checked it on a few provinces and the reduction was closer to 0.05% (could be an issue with misplaced zeroes or the decimal point, or a multiplication applies where addition was supposed to happen) than 5%. At least on the tax side, it appears a 3% bonus from technology is applied as a +3% to the tax rate; not tax rate x 0.03.

p.s. I suspect, if #1 is not working as intended, this could be a factor in the current state of AI's peacefulness with respect to the player in the late game. Also, someone on the official forum suggested the diplomatic reliability display for the player is bugged. Even though it shows as steadfast, the real value applies is lower than that. Hmm, got to explore that further.

[AntiDamascus]

I'm sure the military thing is just a whoopsie that someone put in wrong.

[nearchos]

I dont know if others have noticed this, but when autoresolving a battle and have elephant units in my army with percentage between 85 and 90% or lower, sometimes even with over 90%, all units are having their % of casualties but the elephant units are totaly destroyed.

Same happened often with chariot units.

Im not sure wy this happens but i think it needs a fix here, perhaps the autoresolve mechanism, counts quandities and desides that with a low no of "items" a unit should be destroyed.

[FesterShinetop]

Just had a 150MB download for Rome II and the version number in game is now at 1.6? Though I have no idea what number it was before, I assume it was 1.5 after Patch 5? Anyone know if this was a patch or just an update for the blood and gore DLC?

[Slaists]

I dont know if others have noticed this, but when autoresolving a battle and have elephant units in my army with percentage between 85 and 90% or lower, sometimes even with over 90%, all units are having their % of casualties but the elephant units are totaly destroyed.

Same happened often with chariot units.

Im not sure wy this happens but i think it needs a fix here, perhaps the autoresolve mechanism, counts quandities and desides that with a low no of "items" a unit should be destroyed.

It is a known glitch with the autoresolve now. Not only the elephants: cavalry is affected by this as well. Cavalry suffers way more casualties in autoresolve than the infantry. I suspect, the autoresolve damage is applied to the maximum unit size (for any type), not the actual. The maximum default unit size on ultra, for example, is 160 infantry. Let's say the autoresolve suggests 10% loss. That suggests 16 infantry should die. I guess, 16 gets blanket-style applied to all units not the relative 10% loss. Just, in the case of elephants: 16 means a wipeout, not a 10% loss.

[Myth]

AR gives me horrible predictions when I use pike heavy armies. It favours sword units for some reason. When I actually lead the battle I win with 100-200 men lost.

[nearchos]

That suggests 16 infantry should die. I guess, 16 gets blanket-style applied to all units not the relative 10% loss. Just, in the case of elephants: 16 means a wipeout, not a 10% loss.
Yes, thats the general formula but its not that strict i think, since not all units in an army suffer the same,even same type of units taking different no of casualties but any way, since i think a lot of players, choose to AR some battles for various reasons, perchaps CA should see if there is something to re balance here, because its very frustrating, to pay more than 2000 to get 48 armoured elephands, upgrade them, use them in battles to get exp, and in AR a battle, with minimal loses they just get destroyed.

[Empire*Of*Media]

Please i need HELP !

i have problem playing Multiplayer in tunngle they said u should only have patch4

so this is my question:

by updating to patch 4 or maybe future 5, WHITHOUT updating patch 1- 2 - 3, will i miss good things like high frame rate that was in other patches?!
i mean will i loose some features and fixes when i ONLY install Update/Patch 4 ?!

please help me!
Thanks !

[Myth]

Since these are not standalone patches I assume they don't include the previous patch in the new one. So you have to go through their order of release.

[Empire*Of*Media]

Since these are not standalone patches I assume they don't include the previous patch in the new one. So you have to go through their order of release.

can u tell me what GREAT features that have real influence on AI & Campaign & Battle & Specially Frame Rate and Performance, i will loose when i only install update4 ?!

[Slaists]

can u tell me what GREAT features that have real influence on AI & Campaign & Battle & Specially Frame Rate and Performance, i will loose when i only install update4 ?!

The AI diplomacy is simply broken before patch 5. Since patch 5, the AI's form alliance blocks that sometimes are tricky to deal with (a good thing).

[Empire*Of*Media]

The AI diplomacy is simply broken before patch 5. Since patch 5, the AI's form alliance blocks that sometimes are tricky to deal with (a good thing).

no i said what good things i will loose by not installing update 1 to 3, when i ONLY WANT TO INSTALL UPDATE 4! not 5!

[Myth]

You will probably mess up your game.

[Hooahguy]

Update (http://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/1pout4/where_are_the_patches_you_ask/)on the patches:


Hi all,
There’s been a bit of confusion over the various updates to ROME II recently and what’s coming next, so here’s a quick summary.
First a bit of technical detail on what happens when we update a TW game, because that will hopefully help with the explanation.
When we release a patch or DLC for our games, we are of course making changes to the game. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of changes; code changes (changes to the games executable file, i.e. Rome2.exe) and content changes (changes to the assets that the game uses, including models, audio, text, the database etc. that come in the form of .pack files in the game’s data folder).
Code changes need to go to all players, to keep the version and experience of the game the same for everybody. This also ensures that everybody’s version of the game is compatible with new content. This is especially important for multiplayer, so that all players are playing the same version of the game. This means that sometimes when we release DLC everyone downloads the data in a patch even if they don’t buy the DLC so that their version of the game is current and they can see the new units or factions when they play against someone using them in multiplayer.
Content changes can be made without code changes. Different players can also own different content of course. For example, one player may own the Total War: ROME II Nomadic Tribes Culture Pack DLC, and another may not. However, in this case, both players will still need to have the same version of the game, and so the same code changes. All players will have received an update when Total War: ROME II Nomadic Tribes Culture Pack DLC was released, which included fixes and code to make the game aware of the new content, and some of the graphics/data to ensure that the new units show up in multiplayer correctly even if that player hasn’t purchased that DLC (or picked it up for free in the giveaway week).
Most of the time, when we release a patch or DLC, we release both code changes and content changes at the same time, so all players will experience an update, whether they get new content changes or not. If a player gains ownership of new content (by buying DLC for example), and already has the latest version of the game (latest code changes to Rome2.exe), only the extra data pack(s) of content changes will be downloaded, and not any code changes (changes to the games executable file Rome2.exe). Depending on the DLC and how much of it has already been downloaded as part of the update for the above reasons, the size of this download on purchase can vary greatly.
Patch 6
As explained in posts before, not all patches are equal in size, when we name them they are just given the next ascending number so we can track them internally as they are built and published. Patch 6 was effectively the update that allowed the game to recognise the Blood & Gore DLC yesterday, so that when you buy the DLC it works correctly with the game and, even if you choose not to buy it, we have made sure that everyone has the very latest version, so that when we patch in the future we are sure that everyone’s is at the same point.
It did also include some very minor fixes (correction for black terrain and issues running in non-administrator mode in windows for some people, namely), and we will update the patch notes page on the wiki to reflect this.
Patch 7
The core team’s main focus since patch 5 has been patch 7, which is currently being prepared for open beta. So expect to see some news on this soon.
As we’ve mentioned before, the TW team work on multiple different patches and new game content in parallel at the same time, it’s not always required that the whole team work on one specific tech issue at the same time.
Please note that we won’t specify dates on when patches will enter open beta or go live as we may decide that they need further work or content added at the last moment and we don’t want to cause disappointment.
Patch 7 certainly won’t be the last update we make to the game, as we announced before ROME II launched we have an extensive plan for post-release updates including free additional content and features: http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/74026-Post-launch-support-plans-and-even-more-free-content-for-Total-War-ROME-II[1] !
But as Mike Simpson mentioned recently, the interval between updates will increase as deeper gameplay and AI changes take longer to test. It would be fair to say though that the frequency of updates will be higher than any TW game to date for the foreseeable future.
Thanks!

[Bramborough]

This is probably one of those posts where I demonstrate once again how I've completely missed something simple and fundamental...but here goes...

Is Steam not required to run R2? And if running via Steam, don't the patches load automatically once they go live, whether one desires or not?

If this is the case, I don't see how any typical player can possibly be running the game without Patches 1-5.

I say "typical" because I'm sure there's a few computer whizzes out there who can tinker the game however they like, and could run R2 without the patches. I'm at a loss to come up with any rational reason why they would want to do so in the first place.

EasternSpartakus, I strongly suspect you've already got Patches 1-5 loaded. If I'm in error, well, just load them all up anyway. They've done nothing except improve the game. Immensely.

[Slaists]

no i said what good things i will loose by not installing update 1 to 3, when i ONLY WANT TO INSTALL UPDATE 4! not 5!

I don't think, you can do that. If you install the latest patch, the earlier ones get loaded automatically.

[Sp4]

Unless you've pirated the game or somehow broken it (very much), you have all the updates there are.

[Fridge]

Unless you've pirated the game or somehow broken it (very much), you have all the updates there are.

That's a bit harsh, isn't it? I think there's an option in Steam that says 'keep this game up to date' (or som't), I assume unticking that lets you choose whether to dl updates?

[Lemur]

You're onto something there. In Steam you can either keep the game on the current patch, or stop the patching process entirely.

Which means that on a fresh install, you can either have the game in release form or the current patch. No in-betweensies. Or if there is such a method, I'm unaware of it.

[Empire*Of*Media]

I don't think, you can do that. If you install the latest patch, the earlier ones get loaded automatically.

are you sure about that?!
or anyone agrees with Slaist?!

[Lord of the Isles]

are you sure about that?!
or anyone agrees with Slaist?!

Slaists has it right. With Steam, you have to accept it updating to whatever the most recent patch is.

Well, there is an alternative which I've posted before: once you have some version you are content with, never start up Steam on your PC without first disabling your network interface in the appropriate Control Panel. Steam will always run off-line (no choice!) and will never notice any new patches. But no other games get updated or installed either, so this isn't for everyone. This is more extreme than the option of setting the game not to Auto-Update (right click on game and choose Properties menu) because many of us found that you couldn't rely on Steam obeying that and you ended up having to update anyway.

It wouldn't be possible to allow users to choose a selection of old patches anyway. The way programs are written just makes that impossible. It would be technically feasible to allow people to stick with some earlier state (say up to patch 4 but nothing newer, or up to patch 2 but nothing newer) but the potential problems for Steam's customer support in that would be great. So I can understand why they don't allow it - just would be handy for some of us at times.

[Empire*Of*Media]

Discussing illegal activity in any way shape or form is forbidden on these forums.

[nearchos]

I dont want to start a new thread, but im thinking, dont know if anyone would agree, that something is missing from the ranged units informations and that is reload time,( could be the shots per min) and accuracy, ( could be the damage).
My thought is that, when a unit of archers i.e. are geting shevrons of exp or they are upgrated, you can see all the other staff going up, deffence, attack, meele etc, exept those that actually matters for these units, reload and accuracy.

And if we accept that reload=shoots per min and accuracy=damage then why these are never changing no matter what exp. or what upgrades the unit has?

In S2TW, accuracy end reload were increasing as a number for a unit through exp. and upgrades.

[Bramborough]

100% agree on the missile units...all their stats go up except for the ones that actually matter. This pertains not only to XP levels but also equipment upgrades...the workshop armorers are happy to give archers a quarter-inch longer dagger and slightly thicker cloth shirts, but apparently do not provide better BOWS.

[Myth]

I haven't found bowmen who I'd actually mass recruit over plain ol' slingers and jav skirmishers anyway...

[Fridge]

Since getting the blood dlc, the last two times I've started Rome I've had quite meaty updates to download (today's is 3.7gb) - but zero information on what they are. I'm assuming they're just hotfixes rather than content changes, but it would be nice if CA provided some information. Anyone know what they are, or anywhere they're explained?

Edit: I am signed in for the beta patches, and I don't think one of them can be 5.1/6 as this was delivered with the dlc?

[Hooahguy]

There has been no notification of beta updates anywhere so I'm just as confused as you are.

[Bramborough]

I haven't found bowmen who I'd actually mass recruit over plain ol' slingers and jav skirmishers anyway...

Was just using archers as an example. The concern extends to all missile troops.

[Alcibiade]

There has been no notification of beta updates anywhere so I'm just as confused as you are.

Yes, they are hotfixes and modifications t the exe in order towelcome the blood/gore thing. So that people with the DLC and people without have compatible exe to play multi. I believe there is a note about that on the official forum.

[Bramborough]

Yep, due to B&G, we're actually on Patch 6 now.

[Fridge]

Yes, they are hotfixes and modifications t the exe in order towelcome the blood/gore thing. So that people with the DLC and people without have compatible exe to play multi. I believe there is a note about that on the official forum.

I guessed as much, I was just wondering why I've had two since downloading b&g

[nearchos]

Yep, due to B&G, we're actually on Patch 6 now.

Had anyone problem after patch 6 like freezes etc?
The last two days especialy i barely can play the game since it frrezes all the time no matter if im in campaign or in battle and i have to restart steam many times since i have the msg totalwar. launcher.exe is not responding.

I actually have played 4 or 5 turns the last 2 days.

[nearchos]

Was just using archers as an example. The concern extends to all missile troops.
I think this is totaly wrong, the upgrades of missile units must apply at the damage and SPM stats.
CA shoud see to that.

[Fridge]

Had anyone problem after patch 6 like freezes etc?
The last two days especialy i barely can play the game since it frrezes all the time no matter if im in campaign or in battle and i have to restart steam many times since i have the msg totalwar. launcher.exe is not responding.

I actually have played 4 or 5 turns the last 2 days.

It hasn't crashed, but I'm getting short freezes in both battles and campaign (mainly campaign) - only for a few seconds, maybe up to about 20, so it's not the end of the world, but it certainly never happened before the latest round of dlc and patches.

[Jacque Schtrapp]

It hasn't crashed, but I'm getting short freezes in both battles and campaign (mainly campaign) - only for a few seconds, maybe up to about 20, so it's not the end of the world, but it certainly never happened before the latest round of dlc and patches.

I'm having a similar issue. I play in windowed mode opened to fullscreen so I can freely mouse over to my second monitor. Consequently, the top of the Rome II window is visible. During the end of turn faction cycle, it will freeze for a half second several times and display Not Responding at the top of the window. It's literally not much more than an eye blink and never happens except during the end of turn process. I have a good PC rig and it is not impacting game play for me, but it has been enough to cause me to notice.

[Sp4]

Didn't they say they fixed this at some point?

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/705106121661995710/A7127FE23521C6D998FE1F928CBC02E83BF386C8/

[Slaists]

Didn't they say they fixed this at some point?

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/705106121661995710/A7127FE23521C6D998FE1F928CBC02E83BF386C8/

Maybe mercury poisoning? Too much tuna from the Mediterranean? After all, Hercules was quite mad too... Achilles had his spouts as well...

anyway, I'm chucking through a Roman campaign and I do not see too much of these. In a few cases when they pop up, it's usually the same people just developing their madness to a new level, upgrading so to say.

[Sp4]

I don't mind a few cases across a campaign but that's like.. 2 cases in 2 turns.

[Bramborough]

https://i.imgur.com/zuIOLP2.jpg

This is an odd trait. I assume it's supposed to read "-5%" instead of "+5%". The trait title/description would seem to indicate it's supposed to be a good trait, not a bad one....

And anyway, what exactly is "Harass" in the first place? I've never gotten that particular action in the menu for any champion-type agent. Same with the term "Adventuring"...what does that mean? I see both of these terms appear in champion trait descriptions all the time, but do not see an opportunity to use them. Are they passive capabilities that are always in effect when embedded in an army in foreign territory?

[The Stranger]

just tried to give this another try... but windows mode isnt working =_= anyone else having problems with it?

alt tabbing in normal mode takes so long and causes freezes sometimes =_=


also im getting ambushed all the time... even by armies which, according to the minimap animation, just came marching into the area to attack me and so didnt lay in waiting... im even getting ambushed 2x in a row... which is ridiculous. how will i get ambushed on the exact same spot i just beat an army that tried to ambush me??!?!?!?!?!?!!

im giving up on this stuff again. its just frustrating garbage. hours of campaign play, millions of turns just to get to the enemy and then a battle of 4 minutes... in which i cannot even control anything because everything dies so fast and its impossible almost to distinguish between armies.

[nearchos]

https://i.imgur.com/zuIOLP2.jpg

This is an odd trait. I assume it's supposed to read "-5%" instead of "+5%". The trait title/description would seem to indicate it's supposed to be a good trait, not a bad one....
Well, fighting where the enemy is not, perhaps means that, this guy doesnt acctually likes to meet the enemy.....
So with these stats increased the outcome of the action is redused, as i see it at least.

And anyway, what exactly is "Harass" in the first place? I've never gotten that particular action in the menu for any champion-type agent. Same with the term "Adventuring"...what does that mean? I see both of these terms appear in champion trait descriptions all the time, but do not see an opportunity to use them. Are they passive capabilities that are always in effect when embedded in an army in foreign territory?
Harass is one of the actions for military sabotage against a standing army and adventuring i think is the action which is performed when you chose the bottom left button when you pick the agent,next to agents details.

[nearchos]

I haven't found bowmen who I'd actually mass recruit over plain ol' slingers and jav skirmishers anyway...
I agree, i only used some Cretan archers during my first campaign, since then i m not using even slingers, only javs.

Speaking of javs, i feel a litle idiot here but, i need to ask if anyone has ever noticed during a battle if and when a unit of thyreos spears, releasing javs?

I have notised that, thyreos spears and even the hillmen are having a blue amunition indicator but ive never seen them throwing javs.
The same i remember hapened with the Macedonian royal peltasts.

[Slaists]

just tried to give this another try... but windows mode isnt working =_= anyone else having problems with it?

alt tabbing in normal mode takes so long and causes freezes sometimes =_=


also im getting ambushed all the time... even by armies which, according to the minimap animation, just came marching into the area to attack me and so didnt lay in waiting... im even getting ambushed 2x in a row... which is ridiculous. how will i get ambushed on the exact same spot i just beat an army that tried to ambush me??!?!?!?!?!?!!

im giving up on this stuff again. its just frustrating garbage. hours of campaign play, millions of turns just to get to the enemy and then a battle of 4 minutes... in which i cannot even control anything because everything dies so fast and its impossible almost to distinguish between armies.

Um... it sounds like you're marching your army in forced march stance everywhere. If caught in forced march stance, your army will be ambushed. This was changed in patch 3 I think (used to be a capture flag battle; CA removed that and replaced it with ambush battles). You have to use forced march sparingly and try to land in safe spots, where the enemy cannot reach you. On the other side of the token, you can ambush the AI the same way too. The AI is programmed to land it's armies in forced march stance away from you though. So, a good way to catch the AI is to put your army in ambush stance (so the AI cannot see it). The AI is likely to end up within reach from you then ;)

[Slaists]

I agree, i only used some Cretan archers during my first campaign, since then i m not using even slingers, only javs.

Speaking of javs, i feel a litle idiot here but, i need to ask if anyone has ever noticed during a battle if and when a unit of thyreos spears, releasing javs?

I have notised that, thyreos spears and even the hillmen are having a blue amunition indicator but ive never seen them throwing javs.
The same i remember hapened with the Macedonian royal peltasts.

Hillmen and thureos spears/swords have javelins same as legionaries. They throw them right before charging in just observe closely with missile trackers on. If the enemy countercharges, it is possible the throw does not get executed before the lines collide.

[The Stranger]

Um... it sounds like you're marching your army in forced march stance everywhere. If caught in forced march stance, your army will be ambushed. This was changed in patch 3 I think (used to be a capture flag battle; CA removed that and replaced it with ambush battles). You have to use forced march sparingly and try to land in safe spots, where the enemy cannot reach you. On the other side of the token, you can ambush the AI the same way too. The AI is programmed to land it's armies in forced march stance away from you though. So, a good way to catch the AI is to put your army in ambush stance (so the AI cannot see it). The AI is likely to end up within reach from you then ;)

this is just retarded...

why would forced march equal getting ambushed in every occasion?!? I'm using forced march because otherwise it takes a billion years to get from one part of my empire to the other. It seems like they changed one quickfix for another instead of fixing the bloody balance.

but anyway thanks for clearing it up. not that it really matters i guess, im shelving this game again. maybe for good now.

[Slaists]

this is just retarded...

why would forced march equal getting ambushed in every occasion?!? I'm using forced march because otherwise it takes a billion years to get from one part of my empire to the other. It seems like they changed one quickfix for another instead of fixing the bloody balance.

but anyway thanks for clearing it up. not that it really matters i guess, im shelving this game again. maybe for good now.

For me, I do not have an issue with the forced marched stance being ambushable. I did dislike it at the start but for a different reason than you. AI would leave its armies in forced march stance where I could attack them easily. With patch 5, that almost never happens now. So that's fixed. As to my own armies: I just take care not to march in that stance where I can be reached by the enemy during the AI turn. Parking forced march armies in cities seems a safe bet too (the seas are pretty safe too).

[The Stranger]

it just doesnt make any sense, even if i can avoid it relatively easily (it would make sense if forced march would increase the likelyhood of not spotting armies that are laying in waiting for an ambush, using ambush mode, but not that you get ambushed by every army that engages you, even if you beat another army on the same spot in the same turn before...). that + pretty much everything else in the few hours i played yday ticked me off so much im giving up on this game till some of the mods are getting in the next development state.

there is just very little i enjoy while playing. and many things just dont respond very intuitively. cant zoom out on my campaign map, the fog is so annoying (im aware there is a mod that disables the fog), switching between the different screens is just sluggish, family tree etc etc, cant enjoy battles because theyre over so quick. and i barely have any because i cbf to spend hours marching to my neighbour.

anyway, if u enjoy it, good for you. dont let me spoil ur fun.

[Slaists]

Sorry to hear you're unhappy with the game. But yes, everyone's different.

If you like getting into battles right away, and have patience for it, I'd recommend Seleucids. You'll get into serious fights very soon, especially with your satrapies that will break away very soon. For some time, it will be hectic scramble back and forth between many borders. Or, for a more linear play try Pontus. VH or Legendary recommended.

[Bramborough]

I like the "forced-march equals getting ambushed" mechanic. At very least, it's tons better than the stationary flag. I think it makes sense, too. A quickly-marching army is organized for speed instead of tactical deployment and doesn't have a robust recon screen out way ahead and to the flanks. So it's great for redeploying troops across safe areas of the empire, but yeah, once getting to the combat zone, gotta get back into "normal" mode (which I tend to think of as "tactical" mode).

The AI armies use forced-march all the time, but as Slaists mentions, has gotten much better at ending movement just out of player army's reach. Can turn into a maddening tail-chase trying to run these guys to ground. Using ambush stance is a good idea, must confess I very rarely use it and should try it more often. I usually solve the problem using agents to slow them down, even immobilize on a crit. Added agent benefit is preventing reinforcement so one can defeat the AI armies in series rather than fight a pitched battle against a massive blob (although sometimes that's fun). Not only does this cut down on the casualty rate, but gets a higher number of separate battles for your family's generals to win, boosting their rank-up and gravitas.

[Myth]

Since I optimize for MP bonuses much better than the AI their armies are rarely, if ever, are out of reach of mine. Especially once the army traditions start racking up (Unrelenting Force etc.)

[Bramborough]

Yep, I've read your comments about that before, and recently I've been prioritizing those buffs. Unrelenting Force tradition, +cunning for generals, and obviously the agents' +zeal traits. When these things start stacking with each other it's freaking amazing how far an army can go in one turn. The only problem is that once a general or agent gets maxed, it also means that he's getting pretty old and is going to croak soon. Annoying to then have to start over with a new character. Makes that army tradition really important. <Insert obligatory "Use 2tpy or 4tpy mod!" comment here>

Another really useful thing with +cunning in generals is the ability to force night battles. Prevents reinforcement from nearby enemies...basically getting the effect of agent action(s) with 100% reliability and for free.

Well into my 3rd campaign, I thought +authority or +zeal was the way to go for a general. Started experimenting with +cunning late in the Pontus AAR campaign and was pleasantly surprised.

[Slaists]

Since I optimize for MP bonuses much better than the AI their armies are rarely, if ever, are out of reach of mine. Especially once the army traditions start racking up (Unrelenting Force etc.)

Haha, the AI "knows" pretty well how far your army can go with or without bonuses. Usually, now it tends to park its forced march armies right outside the reach of my standing (drill) general. Well, that's where the AI's luck runs out. My fighting general arrives from the capital and forces my army just that 1 necessary extra mile ;)


Yep, I've read your comments about that before, and recently I've been prioritizing those buffs. Unrelenting Force tradition, +cunning for generals, and obviously the agents' +zeal traits. When these things start stacking with each other it's freaking amazing how far an army can go in one turn. The only problem is that once a general or agent gets maxed, it also means that he's getting pretty old and is going to croak soon. Annoying to then have to start over with a new character. Makes that army tradition really important. <Insert obligatory "Use 2tpy or 4tpy mod!" comment here>

Another really useful thing with +cunning in generals is the ability to force night battles. Prevents reinforcement from nearby enemies...basically getting the effect of agent action(s) with 100% reliability and for free.

Well into my 3rd campaign, I thought +authority or +zeal was the way to go for a general. Started experimenting with +cunning late in the Pontus AAR campaign and was pleasantly surprised.

For maxing generals: if you use the constant rotation in and out of the capital (for influence gain) your fighting generals will level up pretty fast since they'll be fighting almost every turn. Prioritize giving them the biggest fights of the turn: tends to give more xp. Also, pay attention to their starting age and prioritize the very young ones (usually the right side of the candidates list is younger). Agent aging: that's a different matter. Some make it into very old age though for me.

I've also started to side branch some generals into zeal. The top level fear gives a significant moral debuff against the AI (I think, -30%). If your champion hits the enemy on the same turn for another 20%: can get up to 50% morale reduction. Add to that a night battle and they running upon the sight of your torches. Can specialize a gen + champ this way for laughs.

[Myth]

Post patch 4 generals started to die to the whisper of the wind so I just tend to keep the guy I assign to that particular army until he passes. It is not unheard of for one of my best armies which is in the thick of things to have a succession of 5 generals over the course of 5 turns. I remember in the 1.0 version when I made a Triarii unit as my Roman general he could just sit there amidst a massive blob of enemies and live, even if his unit got depleted to 10 guys.

[Bramborough]

What kind of bodyguard units are you assigning for them? That seems a significant factor, not only because of the unit's stats, but also where the general is placed within that unit's ranks for particular formations. For example, if one uses a pike unit and keeps it in phalanx formation, the boss hides in the back hunkered down...poof, dead-general problems pretty much go away. But if the unit is in non-phalanx formation (for whatever reason), then he pops out to front center, and even if engaging in close melee, stays pretty near the front rank.

[Myth]

I've tried with Oathsworn, Royal Spartans, Noble Cavalry, Veteran Legionaries, Hellenic Cataphracts and Royal Peltasts. All of them die almost equally as fast when they engage in combat.

It is even more annoying when they die to slinger fire while hiding behind my ranks. Seriously, i've had a Royal Spartan unit deployed in box formation on the edge of my lines and the general dies to the first volley of vanilla barbarian slingers. The unit itself then proceeds to tank through an ungodly amount of levy spears and concentrated slinger and javelin fire, and remain alive and unrouted until the end of the fight. This started happening post patch 4 IIRC and it's very pronounced and consistent, it's not a matter of player decision making. I've since given up on generals as a resource and simply take what I can get from them. Army traditions and agents have become my new army boosting mechanic.

[Bramborough]

Might be related to difficulty level, as I know you play on legendary. I noticed in the VH Athens succession game, I lost a general very early to missile fire, and he was in the back of a pike phalanx. Surprised me a bit, as I hadn't had this experience in my other campaigns.

Obviously with increased difficulty, the game should get harder in many ways. Personally, however, I don't think increased general-death chance should be one of them. Character development has always been a key feature of TW games. R2 is already plagued a bit in this area for other oft-articulated reasons. If this commander vulnerability is truly a factor (instead of maybe just a really improbable outlier streak), then exacerbates the problem.

[Fridge]

I was going to post about this the other day - I lost three generals in three battles. Romans, pre-Marian, so triarii(?), and in all three cases the unit was back behind the lines and had lost three, maybe four soldiers in total. It hadn't happened to me before, so I thought it might be one of the patches, but it was also my first legendary game, so it may be something to do with the difficulty level...

[Bramborough]

I was going to post about this the other day - I lost three generals in three battles. Romans, pre-Marian, so triarii(?), and in all three cases the unit was back behind the lines and had lost three, maybe four soldiers in total. It hadn't happened to me before, so I thought it might be one of the patches, but it was also my first legendary game, so it may be something to do with the difficulty level...

Another data point supporting the "difficulty level" theory. I just haven't had a problem with this at Normal and Hard. Only time I've experienced a "wtf?" general combat death has been on VH.

I've certainly lost generals in battle before, but always in cav (or worse...chariots) that I let get into trouble, and deserved to have the general killed. Also a few disadvantaged situations where the general went down fighting against heavy odds; that's perfectly fine.

[Jarmam]

I have the same experience with generals. A single unit of t1 Horse Skirmishers ran up to my Hellenic Cataphract general. They got shot by 3 archer units and therefore wiped within 3 rounds of javelin throws. They killed 3 Cataphract guys - one of them was my general. This happens a lot. I get that javelins and rocks don't respect who's a general and who isn't, but A: The guy should be in the shiniest bling in the empire, and B: Even if its completely random it doesn't feel like it at all. The general nearly always dies as one of the first 10-15 guys of my 80 man strong unit - except when on a charge (here he usually lasts until the unit breaks). And that really makes no sense to me, because on a charge the general looks to be one of the first into the fight. Guess I might as well switch to Companion Generals, they're much faster. Sigh.

This is on Legendary.

[Alcibiade]

Same here, my generals happens to die frequentely durig battles that are not that desperate. It was not so frequent before the last patches. No matter the type of body guards I assign to them. Missiles or not, I would expect those body guards to give their life for a general and provide their own children a bright future in the process. I usually play H/H.

[Slaists]

There is a thread somewhere suggesting the general switches locations within unit depending on the attack type and formation. For example, a pike general is in the first row if the unit is NOT in phalanx formation. If it is in phalanx formation, the general moves to the back row and actually crouches down.

Having said that, I tend to use cavalry generals almost exclusively. I also tend to try to keep them out of trouble as much as I can. Usually my generals die of old-age-related boredom while sitting in the capital.

[antisocialmunky]

I dunno, my generals usually get wounded by assassins every 5 - 10 turns or so so I can't even relate.

[Myth]

Since i converted about 6-7 agents during the Civil War now nobody can try to agent-assassinate my general without swift retribution.

[Slaists]

There was a windows update today (windows 7 for me). Had my first blue screen of death with Rome 2... Duh...

[Sp4]

Have they done the next update yet?

[Hooahguy]

Nope.

:sweatdrop:

[Hooahguy]

Seems I spoke too soon. Beta patch 7 is out! I will post a list of changes after class today but it is a huge list.

[Slaists]

Seems I spoke too soon. Beta patch 7 is out! I will post a list of changes after class today but it is a huge list.

Read it. To be honest, I feel a bit underwhelmed by the change list. At least on paper, it does not seem nearly as game changing as what was done with patch 5. I might be wrong though. Not being able to establish trade might constrain the start of the campaign quite a bit.

Funny, they have a note about the default now being "guard mode" for units. I thought, CA said, that WAS the default from the start ;)

All in all, seems like a patch they're rushing to get out so they can sell another DLC. I wouldn't mind being able to play as Armenia though.

Given where the new regions are, I suspect a DLC will introduce some playable faction in the Middle East. Maybe Judea...

Ahem, scratch that. Someone spotted Baktria appearing among upcoming playable factions.

[Hooahguy]

I agree with you to a point about how it doesn't seem quite as extensive as patch 5, but it's a patch so I'm not complaining. Plus I have yet to see how it actually effects gameplay. Maybe now the AI will be intelligent, who knows?

Anyhow, the changelog:

Hiya guys,

The patch 7 beta is available for download via Steam now. You should see some real changes to the game while encountering fewer technical issues. Please note that your save file should be compatible with this patch but it is always recommended to start a new campaign to fully optimize this patch. Also, if you have any modifications installed, please uninstall them until you can verify with the creator that it is compatible with patch 7.

The full list of fixes is available here: http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_Notes

And finally please be aware this update is in beta – we’re still testing it internally and looking forward to beta-test feedback.

Thanks!
**PATCH 7 NOTES BELOW**
*****
**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.

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.

Extensive campaign-UI tweaks and optimisations.

Fixed several rare crash instances.

Edit: seems like there is a "damned if they do, damned if they don't" mentality about this patch.

[Slaists]

Some lucky ones are playing it already (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?630123-Performance-post-patch-7). It seems, I will have to withdraw my earlier comment. Changes are significant.

[Hooahguy]

Very glad to hear, maybe now I can kick my settings from high/very high to very high/extreme.

[Kamakazi]

these changes look radically better

[Bramborough]

Loading this baby up right now. I see a lot of good here.

Going from 5 to 8 Imps is interesting...does it mean more armies at higher imp levels, or just more increments leading up to the 15-army max?

I do note that I didn't see any mention of Civil War or politics mechanics being adjusted.

[Slaists]

Loading this baby up right now. I see a lot of good here.

Going from 5 to 8 Imps is interesting...does it mean more armies at higher imp levels, or just more increments leading up to the 15-army max?

I do note that I didn't see any mention of Civil War or politics mechanics being adjusted.

I gave it a spin during the lunch hour. It seems, the new imperium breaks the old one into smaller increments. At lower levels you get less than you used to. I think, they put it there to reign in minor AI's ;)

Also, they have fixed the diplomatic reliability (I could not find this in the patch notes but noticed in the game). Now, if you do something scum-baggy, the whole world knows about it.

Trade is harder to find early game, but not impossible.

[sassbarman]

Just played out a siege battle playing as Macedonia against Tylis and had my very first crash to desktop. I also noticed when recruiting hoplites and slingers barbarian spearman unit cards where displayed. Also blank unit cards where displayed when recruiting mercs. On a positive note FPS seemed much better after patch.

[Seyavash]

I don't understand why they messed with trade and alliances again. Wasn't trading just made easier in patch 3 or 4 because players found it far too hard to get? I thought it was working fine.

[Sp4]

It was apparently too easy. No idea if it actually was. I only sort of played one campaign with 5 or 6 or 5/6, whichever it was.

[easytarget]

is this intentional or not?

there is no option in the diplomacy screen to make peace with someone your at war with?

is this perhaps one of those situations involving parent-client and i'm talking to the client?

[easytarget]

Btw, for the full effect of a patch do you have to start a new campaign or can you continue your current one?

[Hooahguy]

So for a full effect you are recommended to start a new campaign, but I have had no real problem continuing my current one.

Anyone have any reports on the AI? I did a quick one with hoplites and they kept formation in battle, so that is very good to see.

[Myth]

It was apparently too easy. No idea if it actually was. I only sort of played one campaign with 5 or 6 or 5/6, whichever it was.

It was hard during the first turns especially if you don't own resource minor settlements. Later on it became much easier. Factions with several resources at the start (Rome, Seelucids etc.) got a much better start compared to the others.

I started an Iceni campaign now and no one - not one of my neighbors wants to trade.

[Sp4]

It was hard during the first turns especially if you don't own resource minor settlements. Later on it became much easier. Factions with several resources at the start (Rome, Seelucids etc.) got a much better start compared to the others.

I started an Iceni campaign now and no one - not one of my neighbors wants to trade.

Send a scout south to like Massalia, Rome, those sort of places and tell them hey guys, I have iron.

[Myth]

Eh, as soon as I'm done with the germaic tribes I'll just send 3 armies of chosen spears/swords and stuff and take their olive oil and grain.

[Slaists]

Diplomatic reliability implications

As the diplomatic reliability rating display seems to have been fixed have to rethink campaign starts. Macedon, for example, has a military access treaty with Epirus at the game start. Canceling it on turn 1 and attacking Epirus on turn two will result in a major global reputation hit post patch 7.

Seleucids: a similar situation. I thought this was one of the most exciting campaign starts in the game. Now, I see, it was exciting because I was breaking preexisting truces, LOL. I used to go after Egypt on turn 1 which, as it turns out, is breaking a preexisting game-start truce which is supposed to last for 10 turns. This truce was hidden before patch 7 since there was no warning about breaking anything. As a result of breaking the truce, I used to be getting DOW'ed by my satraps on turn 2-3. By keeping the truce with Egypt, it is possible to keep more satraps loyal (and for longer), which results in a pretty boring game start for Seleucids, LOL. Go figure...

p.s. one would hope, giving Egypt AI 10 turns of peace at the game start would result in them growing into a considerable force. Unfortunately, that was not true. But that's a different story.

The siege freeze bug is back

Before patch 5, there used to be a siege freeze bug. Game would freeze when clicking on your or your enemy's units during siege battles. This was fixed with patch 5. Now, the bug is back with vengeance. However, this time around, I experienced it several times while fighting wall-less settlement battles. In the "old version" this bug used to happen during walled-settlement battles.

The weather selection FPS drop during rain is still there

If during the weather selection it rains, the bug that causes FPS drop to practically zero still happens (at times). It is almost impossible to get out of that screen since clicking "wait another day" takes minutes.

The new imperium system

I have yet to make up my mind about the new imperium system. It sure renders minor AI's weaker than they used to be. I guess, I just had grown accustomed to every 1 region minor fielding 3 stacks on VH difficulty. Last night, playing as Seleucids, arrived at the capital of Quidri and they had about half-a-stack of the weakest spears there. It was a "meh...." moment. Before patch 7, they'd meet me in force. Hopefully, this will result in some major AI factions appearing and stabilizing though.

New battle-maps added

OK, Jack Lusted just cleared this up. The additions were new battle-maps, not actual regions.

[Jacque Schtrapp]

Patch notes talk about several minor settlements being added to the map. However, I have not been able to find any. Greece looks the same as before so does Egypt. Anyone has had any luck spotting these mysterious additions? Maybe I should look in Hades, or under water.

I got the impression that these might be battle map additions representing existing cities and added for varieties sake.

[Slaists]

I got the impression that these might be battle map additions representing existing cities and added for varieties sake.

Yup, I added a note to my original post to that effect. I misread the patch notes to imply new regions were added. I guess, I saw what I wanted to see ;)

[Bramborough]

Anyone seen the new regions added?

Patch notes talk about several minor settlements being added to the map. However, I have not been able to find any. Greece looks the same as before so does Egypt. Anyone has had any luck spotting these mysterious additions? Maybe I should look in Hades, or under water.

Is this the note to which you refer?


Added new minor settlements: 1x Persian port and city, 2x Egyptian cities, 1x Greek city.

If so, I think what they mean is that these are additional battle maps for minor settlements.

Yesterday I had a settlement battle in an Egypt-owned town. The map was quite new, I'd never seen it before. Looked pretty cool, had a big hieroglyph-covered obelisk in the town center. Also, outside the usual town area were lots of other structures, many of them beyond the playable boundaries. Big temple or mausoleum complexes. The overall visual effect was a highly developed, sprawling, semi-urban landscape, without the concentration of a true city. Egyptian Suburbia.

Wish I'd had the presence of mind to snap a screenshot.

Edit: lol, I guess that got cleared up while I was typing....

[Sp4]

Eh, as soon as I'm done with the germaic tribes I'll just send 3 armies of chosen spears/swords and stuff and take their olive oil and grain.

In the first 5 turns?

[Hooahguy]

If so, I think what they mean is that these are additional battle maps for minor settlements.

Yesterday I had a settlement battle in an Egypt-owned town. The map was quite new, I'd never seen it before. Looked pretty cool, had a big hieroglyph-covered obelisk in the town center. Also, outside the usual town area were lots of other structures, many of them beyond the playable boundaries. Big temple or mausoleum complexes. The overall visual effect was a highly developed, sprawling, semi-urban landscape, without the concentration of a true city. Egyptian Suburbia.

Wish I'd had the presence of mind to snap a screenshot...

Sounds awesome, I wish they would expand the barbarian city and town types. They get kinda repetitive after a bit.

[Bramborough]

The siege freeze bug is back

Yep, just got this myself. I don't remember getting the earlier pre-5 walled-city bug. But happened just now on a minor.

[Slaists]

Yep, just got this myself. I don't remember getting the earlier pre-5 walled-city bug. But happened just now on a minor.

Someone on .com suggested it has something to do with targeting defending slingers: he got several crashes like that attacking the first Etruscan city North of Rome. Come to think of it, my crash also happened when ordering my slingers to attack the AI ones inside a settlement.

The good thing about this bug: it does not seem persistent; I was able to replay the battle without a crash. The previous one, with walled-cities, was a persistent crash. If you got it on a specific settlement, it would re-manifest itself if the same battle was replayed.

[Hooahguy]

Wait, what is this bug?

[Slaists]

Wait, what is this bug?

Happens in settlement battles. When you click on your unit and target something inside the settlement the game freezes. Happens at random (not always). It was present at some point before patch 5, but got fixed. Now it's back.

[Hooahguy]

Geez, now Im glad Im putting my campaign on hold until I finish by Suebi guide.

[Bramborough]

Someone on .com suggested it has something to do with targeting defending slingers: he got several crashes like that attacking the first Etruscan city North of Rome. Come to think of it, my crash also happened when ordering my slingers to attack the AI ones inside a settlement.

The good thing about this bug: it does not seem persistent; I was able to replay the battle without a crash. The previous one, with walled-cities, was a persistent crash. If you got it on a specific settlement, it would re-manifest itself if the same battle was replayed.

Hmm...yep, I think I was doing same thing: targetting an enemy slinger unit.

[sassbarman]

11263


Anyone else getting this happening. I've tried verifying game cache but to no avail.

[Bramborough]

11263


Anyone else getting this happening. I've tried verifying game cache but to no avail.

It's happened to me a few times, but not persistently.

[Sp4]

Do you have Bullgod's mod installed? I figured it was because of that. Does the same for me.

[Slaists]

Do you have Bullgod's mod installed? I figured it was because of that. Does the same for me.

Happens to me too. No mods installed.

[Bramborough]

No mods either, so that little glitch isn't mod-related. Frankly, it's not a big deal; I don't see how it affects gameplay. It is, however, annoying.

Separate-but-similar glitch, which does affect gameplay: often on agent portraits in the lower-left of campaign view, the selected agents' rank stars disappear. This persists when multiple agents are selected, both friend and enemy. This is quite annoying when one is sifting through a mob of these guys during an agent war, trying to select highest-percentage or highest-priority action targets for one's own agents. Then later the stars show up again.

[Sp4]

No mods either, so that little glitch isn't mod-related. Frankly, it's not a big deal; I don't see how it affects gameplay. It is, however, annoying.

Separate-but-similar glitch, which does affect gameplay: often on agent portraits in the lower-left of campaign view, the selected agents' rank stars disappear. This persists when multiple agents are selected, both friend and enemy. This is quite annoying when one is sifting through a mob of these guys during an agent war, trying to select highest-percentage or highest-priority action targets for one's own agents. Then later the stars show up again.

This has been around for a while. Save and load fixes it.

[Slaists]

Secondary generals gain xp now: an undocumented change of patch 7

There is an undocumented change introduced by patch 7: the reinforcing generals are gaining experience also now.

[Fridge]

Also undocumented in patch 7 - Exempting provinces from tax no longer takes them out of the food supply chain - bit of a shock in my current campaign... Also lots of crashes and hangs with the patch (beta though, so can't complain too much...)

[Hooahguy]

Also undocumented in patch 7 - Exempting provinces from tax no longer takes them out of the food supply chain - bit of a shock in my current campaign... Also lots of crashes and hangs with the patch (beta though, so can't complain too much...)
I wonder if that was a bug that was fixed or a gameplay change, because this will certainly have a lot of impact on my game as the "bug" certainly helped keep public order in check when conquering new areas.

[Bramborough]

The siege freeze bug is back

Before patch 5, there used to be a siege freeze bug. Game would freeze when clicking on your or your enemy's units during siege battles. This was fixed with patch 5. Now, the bug is back with vengeance. However, this time around, I experienced it several times while fighting wall-less settlement battles. In the "old version" this bug used to happen during walled-settlement battles.

This one problem is driving me back to Patch 5 (actually, "Patch 6", I guess) for now. In my recent Patch 7 experience, game freezes caused by targeting with missile units are extremely common - in open-field as well as settlement battles. It does seem to be confined to targeting with missile units; I haven't noticed a problem with ordering melee attacks.

Am trying out the steppe nomad guys at the moment, where early-game armies are heavily dependent upon Horse Archers. This freeze bug is just killing my Roxolani campaign.

[Bramborough]

Additional info on the "missile freeze" bug. Turns out that the problem appears specific to grouped missile troops, in an all-missile group. A few trials in custom battles shows me:

Ungrouped archers (multiple units selected) = no freeze.
Archers grouped with an infantry unit = no freeze.
Grouped archers = freeze.

[Slaists]

have you tried a group of mixed missiles? javelins + slingers for example?

[Bramborough]

have you tried a group of mixed missiles? javelins + slingers for example?

No, I did not try that in these custom-battle trials. In previous gameplay, however, I do remember having a mixed Roxo group of HAs and armored HAs. Froze.

I think the bug is still bad enough that trying to manage a nomad army full of HA variants remains problematic. I can probably now live, however, with a more typical army containing a few missile support troops. Will be annoying not to be able to group them, but do-able.

I regard this as merely a temporary work-around to enable continued play with Patch7 beta, not even remotely a "solution". Still needs fixing before Patch 7 goes live.

[Myth]

have you tried a group of mixed missiles? javelins + slingers for example?

I usually go with a 3/3 mix once i get more of my core units up.

[Slaists]

I usually go with a 3/3 mix once i get more of my core units up.
Myth, my question was related to testing the bug that resulted in crashes when missile units were grouped together. Lucky for us, it seems, CA has fixed that bug with the official release of the patch 7.

[Fridge]

Haven't played with the non beta patch 7 yet, but I notice in the patch notes there's no mention of the new feature (?) where exempting provinces from tax no longer takes them out of the food chain... can anyone confirm it's still there?

[Hooahguy]

So I fiddled around with patch 7 today and I can confirm that the exemption is still there. Though I was playing with a campaign from patch 1 so maybe it didnt take effect or something.

[Slaists]

Shameful display: settlement defending AI, patch VII (look at the kill count of my slingers). The AI is still just standing in the streets and taking it in the face. And it was not so that the AI just had some weak garrison there. Actually, the AI had 7000+ troops versus my 2,600. About 3000 of the defending AI troops were killed by 3 slinger units.

http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/487808781222300449/80875BB5FF2BA8453CEFF0FD2F9B6ED14373A116/

[Hooahguy]

I think that the AI is getting confusing signals here, that one one hand they need to hang back and defend the CP but on the other hand they are getting mowed down by enemies. CA really needs to sort this out.

[Jacque Schtrapp]

Shameful display: settlement defending AI, patch VII (look at the kill count of my slingers). The AI is still just standing in the streets and taking it in the face.

I started a patch VII game as Sparta on VH. I've tried marching my units in formation to engage Epirean defenders the same way I would have in any previous patch. So far, Epirean slingers are annihilating my units before they can close. Literally whole units being wiped out without ever reaching enemy lines. I think slingers have been ridiculously buffed this patch in addition to the wonky AI issue you are observing.

[Slaists]

I started a patch VII game as Sparta on VH. I've tried marching my units in formation to engage Epirean defenders the same way I would have in any previous patch. So far, Epirean slingers are annihilating my units before they can close. Literally whole units being wiped out without ever reaching enemy lines. I think slingers have been ridiculously buffed this patch in addition to the wonky AI issue you are observing.

Well, in field battles, there is actually a distinct skirmish phase now. To counter their slingers, bring your own slingers (or any missiles) and kill the AI missiles before more important units get harmed. Slingers, javelins, etc, are cheap: no worries if they die while battling AI's counterparts.

[Slaists]

Shameful display: broken MPC

Patch 7 has introduced some bug which renders MPC unplayable. Every 10 turns or so, campaigns become desynced (unplayable). Exchanging save files between the host and the opposite player does not help to fix the issue (as it used with ETW for example). Duh...

Don't lose your capital

I am not sure this was present before patch 7, but now, if you lose your original capital your trade does not revert to the new one. Playing as Epirus, I migrated to Italy and lost Apollonia to Spartans. The capital got moved to Brundissium, but my original trade routes still went back to Apollonia disappearing in the middle of the Adriatic (not going to any settlement). The tool-tip on top of the trader routes showed them "blockaded" (neither my new capital, nor the trade partner ports were blockaded at the time).

[Mhantra]

Shameful display: broken MPC

Patch 7 has introduced some bug which renders MPC unplayable. Every 10 turns or so, campaigns become desynced (unplayable). Exchanging save files between the host and the opposite player does not help to fix the issue (as it used with ETW for example). Duh...

Don't lose your capital

I am not sure this was present before patch 7, but now, if you lose your original capital your trade does not revert to the new one. Playing as Epirus, I migrated to Italy and lost Apollonia to Spartans. The capital got moved to Brundissium, but my original trade routes still went back to Apollonia disappearing in the middle of the Adriatic (not going to any settlement). The tool-tip on top of the trader routes showed them "blockaded" (neither my new capital, nor the trade partner ports were blockaded at the time).

Actually, playing a new campaign as Sparta, it didn't matter that I got a new port city from Epirus. I still could not open new trade, same tooltip message. I started without a port city, so I think that is the same thing.

[Sp4]

This is kind of hilarious but sad at the same time.

[Slaists]

Actually, playing a new campaign as Sparta, it didn't matter that I got a new port city from Epirus. I still could not open new trade, same tooltip message. I started without a port city, so I think that is the same thing.

For Sparta it sort (in CA fashion) of makes sense. You need an uninterrupted road from a port to your capital for the trade to flow. Unless, as Sparta, you get Athens, you cannot have that. Then again, it beats me, why Sparta would not have a port. Peloponnesus has plenty of coastal settlements in real life.

In my case though, I had a new capital and a new port there: Brundissium. The trade did not revert to that. I still had my original trade agreements in the diplo interface. Even had trade routes on the map, but they ended in the middle of the sea...

[CaptainCrunch]

Shameful display: settlement defending AI, patch VII (look at the kill count of my slingers). The AI is still just standing in the streets and taking it in the face. And it was not so that the AI just had some weak garrison there. Actually, the AI had 7000+ troops versus my 2,600. About 3000 of the defending AI troops were killed by 3 slinger units.

Damn, more like riflemen :skull:!

I'm still experiencing this while both assaulting and defending settlements. Also - while AI defends, the AI unit under attack will often fall back after taking too many casualties and send another unit up to replace it, but then gets confused and starts going back and forth getting itself annihilated. AI cav unit generals also sit there and get completely destroyed by missile units quite often.

While attacking with a naval assault, the AI will often send its missile units up as soon as they land, but leave its heavy infantry parked indefinitely on the beach even well after their missile units have been wiped out and they've started taking heavy fire.


I started a patch VII game as Sparta on VH. I've tried marching my units in formation to engage Epirean defenders the same way I would have in any previous patch. So far, Epirean slingers are annihilating my units before they can close. Literally whole units being wiped out without ever reaching enemy lines. I think slingers have been ridiculously buffed this patch in addition to the wonky AI issue you are observing.

I've had mixed results with slingers, sometimes they hardly ding heavy infantry, sometimes they severely cripple them under the same circumstances. On the other hand, sometimes they waste half their ammunition just to kill a few levies.

Peltasts en masse are absolutely lethal to standing heavy infantry though, even from the front. I've seen hoplite walls literally shredded in seconds from javelin fire (Hard difficulty).

[Slaists]

I feel, for armored, especially shielded, units, the chance to deflect lighter missiles (no damage done) should be raised considerably. The way it stands now, this is just another Empire Total War (line infantry shootout) just with Roman era clothing... Missile units did not rule the battlefield in this time period (with a few notable exceptions such as Carrhae), armored melee infantry did.


I've had mixed results with slingers, sometimes they hardly ding heavy infantry, sometimes they severely cripple them under the same circumstances. On the other hand, sometimes they waste half their ammunition just to kill a few levies.

What you see there is the new hitpoint system at work (+ the law of large numbers). If the shootout does not go on for long, the missile units do not have a chance to ebb sufficiently high number of hitpoints away from armored units so you see now kills even though, the targets have been damaged (their hitpoints lowered). If the shootout goes on just for a second longer, you'd see mass casualties among the same targets.

Then there is focused fire (that's where the law of large numbers comes in): as several AI missile units focus on one armored unit of yours even if there is some chance to fully deflect missile damage, the sheer number of incoming projectiles will result in successful hit-rolls that will translate in mass casualties within seconds.

There is more to that, of course, if you closely observe your missile units, you'll notice that sometimes there is some terrain obstacle that obscures their field of fire. Missiles end up hitting some bump in the earth not the target. In that case, you'll see lower casualties. And frequently the obstacle is hard to notice from higher vantage point. You really have go down to the ground level. There is also the direction from which missiles hit. If they hit the unit from the front or the left (shielded) side, the chance of success is lower than if they hit from the right or the rear.

Again, the way it is implemented is as if this was a line-infantry shootout form Empire Total War (or Fall of the Samurai).

[Bramborough]

A rather interesting thread at TWC on this topic: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?620767-Statistical-Combat-Analysis

Note that he wrote this up pre-patch 7, so does not reflect latest tweaks.

[Slaists]

A rather interesting thread at TWC on this topic: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?620767-Statistical-Combat-Analysis

Note that he wrote this up pre-patch 7, so does not reflect latest tweaks.

Yeah, patch 7 rebalanced missile armor piercing significantly. Now it is more like it was around patch 2.

As to crzyrndm's writeup, there is some contradiction in his text (I know he is quoting Jack Lusted on this). In one spot he is saying that it does not matter where the projectile hits the soldier. Then, in another spot he is saying that left side and front actually gets more protection. So, which one is it? Does it matter where the projectile hits or not? LOL. I live by the assumption that the left side and front are better shielded.

Also, while he wrote this up, shield did not have the complete block probability (the chance that an incoming missile will do no damage at all). Now shields add this protection (since patch 5 I think).

One thing that struck me as I re-read this post is that "armor provides a chance to ignore normal damage". So, another reason why we see random results in missile performance is just that: randomness. Sometimes, armor succeeds in blocking the normal damage part of incoming missiles, sometimes it does not. Focused fire and pro-longed fire ensures that the law of large numbers kicks in and we see mass casualties even among armored units.

By the way, testudo for Romans is still useless. I lose more men when advancing in testudo than when I run straight up to the enemy.

[CaptainCrunch]

I haven't looked at the numbers myself, but I'd be interested to know what modifiers get applied to armored units vs missiles now. Shield side vs right side vs rear, etc. Since they added the animation of units raising their shields up overhead to defend against taking fire, do they actually receive a buff, or is it simply cosmetic? Cuz often it doesn't seem like it does anything to protect them. I think I also read somewhere that they added some AP damage to all archer units now.

Edit: Slaists beat me to it :grin:

[Myth]

I've had pleasantly challenging experiences with the CAI post patch 7. It now uses forced march and multiple armies to force a choice on me on which settlement to defend and which to lose next turn. It's much smarter than it's previous "camp all my armies in one province" mentality.

[Slaists]

I've had pleasantly challenging experiences with the CAI post patch 7. It now uses forced march and multiple armies to force a choice on me on which settlement to defend and which to lose next turn. It's much smarter than it's previous "camp all my armies in one province" mentality.

Yup, it has its bright moments (the CAI). But, for the most part, it is utterly idiotic... The other day, we were playing an MPC with my friend (before the desync bug trashed our game) and I forced a very hard defeat on him as I was controlling an AI army in Britain. He was playing Iceni, the AI enemy was Brigantes I think. Iceni army was obiterated. Brigantes had a free pass to Iceni capital. What do you think the AI Brigantes did next turn? Did they move in for the final strike? Nope, it surrendered to Iceni...


I haven't looked at the numbers myself, but I'd be interested to know what modifiers get applied to armored units vs missiles now. Shield side vs right side vs rear, etc. Since they added the animation of units raising their shields up overhead to defend against taking fire, do they actually receive a buff, or is it simply cosmetic? Cuz often it doesn't seem like it does anything to protect them. I think I also read somewhere that they added some AP damage to all archer units now.

Edit: Slaists beat me to it :grin:

Going by what Jack Lusted has said, the raised shields is a pure cosmetic thing. It does not matter where the missile hits. A collision gets recorded, a roll carried out and then, depending on the roll, damage applied. The exception to this seems the left side and the front of the unit. There it gets extra armor protection (which means higher chance of avoiding the normal damage part of the missile). Since patch 5 or thereabouts, shields add a chance to avoid missile damage altogether.

By the way, regarding that cosmetic animation thing (where raised shields meaning nothing), it work similarly for battle animations where units only duel 1 on 1 rather than multiple units attacking one target simultaneously). As was explained by CA somewhere else (cannot find that bit in the net now), only the animations display duels. The real battle damage calculation accounts for several units damaging one target (for example when you hold a target unit with one of yours and hit the target from the rear).

[CaptainCrunch]

... Going by what Jack Lusted has said, the raised shields is a pure cosmetic thing. It does not matter where the missile hits. A collision gets recorded, a roll carried out and then, depending on the roll, damage applied. The exception to this seems the left side and the front of the unit. There it gets extra armor protection (which means higher chance of avoiding the normal damage part of the missile). Since patch 5 or thereabouts, shields add a chance to avoid missile damage altogether.

By the way, regarding that cosmetic animation thing (where raised shields meaning nothing), it work similarly for battle animations where units only duel 1 on 1 rather than multiple units attacking one target simultaneously). As was explained by CA somewhere else (cannot find that bit in the net now), only the animations display duels. The real battle damage calculation accounts for several units damaging one target (for example when you hold a target unit with one of yours and hit the target from the rear).

Damn shame. Since the game mechanics can't account for precise hit detection, do the numbers still take the fact that the shields are raised into account though? If not, it's odd that they simply didn't add shield defense probability in for applicable units that are standing (or especially moving) in guard mode not engaged (ie shields up overhead). I think if the unit isn't attacking (or engaged), and is only taking fire from one direction (and that direction is from the frontal hemisphere, which includes overhead), shield size/defense should come into play. This seems like a reasonable solution to me for heavy infantry that carry large shields like scutums or hoplons holding them up for extra protection.

I think heavily armored units that are turtled up in that mode should be considerably harder to damage with missile fire, you should be forced to hit them with real sustained heavy volume, engage from multiple angles or break them out of that stance by engaging with infantry (which is how I approach it anyway).

[Slaists]

My guess, is, nope. The raised shields do not add extra protection "from the top". The only exception would be testudo, but that is a formation that you trigger. Once triggered, testudo adds flat armor and deflection bonus to the whole unit.

Shields add different deflection chance bonuses depending on their size (the latest patch notes implied so). So, there is that. In my experience, heavily armored units are considerably easier to kill if I hit them with missiles in the rear. So, the front/left side effect seems to be true.

[Slaists]

Night battles are bugged if reinforcements are coming in by sea

If you have a night-fighter general and are attacking, your nightfigher ability will have no effect on AI reinforcements coming in by sea. See the pic, that fleet with ballista was clearly identified as "not being able to join a night battle" on the pre-battle screen. However, here it is... LOL. I have seen it happen several times.

http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/491187589948623015/9BAAF4BD5A739B82B71C9CA17A12441270373B55/

And... guess what!? This feature is broken in reverse too... If you are an attacker, and have 2 nightfighter general led armies, only the first one joins the battle. LOL, this was something that worked properly even in RTW 1...

[Myth]

It's a new mechanic. After all, it was added in Barbarian Invasion, not in the original Rome game. Give them time to figure it out :clown:

[BroskiDerpman]

Ahhh no worries, it's not like 8 years is much time to work on night battles. :clown:

[Slaists]

It's a new mechanic. After all, it was added in Barbarian Invasion, not in the original Rome game. Give them time to figure it out :clown:

Oh yeah, forgot. This really is a new feature added with Barb Invasion, not earlier than that.

[Lord of the Isles]

I started a patch VII game as Sparta on VH. I've tried marching my units in formation to engage Epirean defenders the same way I would have in any previous patch. So far, Epirean slingers are annihilating my units before they can close. Literally whole units being wiped out without ever reaching enemy lines. I think slingers have been ridiculously buffed this patch in addition to the wonky AI issue you are observing.

Same here. I read this thread before deciding to upgrade to patch 7 from patch 5 but didn't pay enough attention. Oh well.

A unit of African Pikeman (well armoured Carthaginian phalanx heavy infantry) got ... evaporated seems the best word for it ... by 2 or 3 units of slingers yesterday. I see Slaists' advice is to use my own skirmishers as mutual cannon fodder but it seems a little contrived to plan strategy around compensating for CA's weird changes. Also as Slaists notes, the new hit point system seems to produce this sequence: they come under fire but take few casualties at first. Your attention wanders to another area of the battle and then, perhaps just 15 or 20 seconds later, you notice the unit card troop number whirring down like a demented altimeter in a plummeting plane. Your 160 unit now has 30-odd survivors and is breaking. Evaporation.

I've had a quick look at mods since without one that changes this the game isn't worth playing IMHO. None have seemed exactly what I want so far (or else have their own bugs still being worked on). I'll just have to wait. That'll teach me to allow a patch upgrade without thinking long and hard about it.

[Empire*Of*Media]

i have one question please...
1.now with the update 7 is it necessary to install updates from 1-5?!
2. is it REALLY Save game Compatible?!
thanks for your reply.......

[Lord of the Isles]

i have one question please...
1.now with the update 7 is it necessary to install updates from 1-5?!
2. is it REALLY Save game Compatible?!
thanks for your reply.......

1. Yes. In fact, with Steam, you won't have any option to choose to get or not get different patches - it always just upgrades you to the most recent once you have connected online. Even sometimes when you have the game Properties (right click on game in game library) set to "Do not automatically keep this game up to date".

But even were that not so, since later patches change code only there in earlier patches, it wouldn't be possible to miss out intermediate patches. What would be a good analogy ... imagine you are buying a flat. You like the view from a 7th floor flat but hate climbing the stairs to reach it. Can you have a 7th floor flat but miss out floors 3-5 so that you only have to climb four flights of stairs? No. The higher levels need all the lower ones since they are built on them.

2. Don't know for sure. I believe recent patches are supposed to be compatible but there is always the chance that even though your game won't crash, some things might behave a little strangely in the game. I always try if I can to finish a game I'm enjoying before I go online and allow an upgrade.

[Slaists]

I see Slaists' advice is to use my own skirmishers as mutual cannon fodder but it seems a little contrived to plan strategy around compensating for CA's weird changes.
Lord of the Isles, to be fair, that skirmisher vs skirmisher matching before the forces engage is historically accurate. That was called the skirmish phase of the engagement. In Rome 1, it was practically non-existent since missiles were very ineffective. In Rome 2, it is critical. Also, skirmishers in RTW 2 are very vulnerable to cavalry charges. Much more so than in previous TW games. So, that's a counter.

But otherwise, I agree, slings are too effective against armored units. The deflection probability for shields should be raised and probably added to armor for units that are highly armored but have no shields (sling damage could stay as is). Probably the CA did not do this in order not to nerf javelins, which in my opinion are correct now.

[Sp4]

What was the skirmishing phase all about? I guess the point wasn't to see which side is better at throwing rocks at each other?

[Myth]

What was the skirmishing phase all about? I guess the point wasn't to see which side is better at throwing rocks at each other?

If you had no skirmishers or other such light troops you'd have no advance companies moving forward towards the enemy battle line. Thus your medium and heavy infantry would have to pave the way but unlike skirmishers they more or less need to be in formation or at least in a coherent battle line. Enemy skirmishers pelting your guys all the way from your battle line to theirs will disrupt the formation, make you lose men and morale and also will make it more likely for your troops to lose battle line cohesion in the chaos of being harrased and thus you end up with wedges which can get surrounded and massacred in melee.

Also, sling stones and bullets are deadly. Do not think a sling is what you use at home with some small pebbles.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU87f5o8vMg

[Nelson]

Skirmishing was just the missile troops doing their thing while they could for the reasons Myth mentioned because dense formations made great targets. Of course they were first to engage having ranged weapons. And generally, being lightly armed and armored, they eschewed melee and kept their distance. When the enemy had light troops also, they naturally had a shoot out.

My guess is that they would throw their javelins and sling shot and hastily get out of Dodge. Once the melee forces joined they needed to go somewhere else, preferably safe from enemy cavalry!

[Hooahguy]

Update on patch 8 and the new DLC:


Hiya guys,Just a heads up to let you know that we’ve pushed back the release of the Caesar in Gaul Campaign Pack slightly toTuesday 17th December in order to give us a bit more time to squeeze in some additions to the accompanying patch. The good news is that the extra changes we’re squeezing in will have a knock-on benefit to the main game, so even if you don’t purchase the DLC you’ll still see improvements.
Patch 8 will be hitting at the same time as the Caesar in Gaul DLC and as well as activating the DLC will bring with it some improvements, including:
• Technical and performance issue updates including crash fixes.
• New culture system – culture no longer works on 100%-0%, instead aiming to achieve an equilibrium between the cultures present in a province, relative to their respective culture points.
• Additional AI fixes.
• The Post-battle loading screens for Custom/ Multiplayer battles are now interactive, after load so the player can see kills/losses of other armies in battle.
As Caesar in Gaul has moved back slightly, the patch after it is going to go into Public Beta quite soon. We plan to put Patch 8.1 into open beta 48 hours after launch of Caesar in Gaul, which will bring additional improvements to the main game, including:
• Improvements to siege artillery using flaming projectiles appropriately (when attacking walls and towers).
• Additional fixes to AI and pathfinding.
• Fixes to issues with AI’s interaction with walls in siege battles, enabling a more effective use of siege towers and ladders.

[Sp4]

Ah.. I always thought it was a bit weird how the only ranged units Rome had in the early game of Rome 1 were people throwing spears. I just thought that would be really inefficient as a way of shooting at someone especially because everything shot back... might as well go with longer range...

I read about it a little today and found they even did it up to and during the Napoleonic wars. I thought it kind of became meh once artillery was developed to a certain point. It makes me wonder why people still bothered with ordered formations and firing lines if everything else seems to have been aimed at breaking them apart.

[Slaists]

Ah.. I always thought it was a bit weird how the only ranged units Rome had in the early game of Rome 1 were people throwing spears. I just thought that would be really inefficient as a way of shooting at someone especially because everything shot back... might as well go with longer range...

I read about it a little today and found they even did it up to and during the Napoleonic wars. I thought it kind of became meh once artillery was developed to a certain point. It makes me wonder why people still bothered with ordered formations and firing lines if everything else seems to have been aimed at breaking them apart.

Javelin throwing ended up being an Olympic sport for a reason ;)

Wonder why slinging was never included though, LOL. Actually, just read up on it: one of the first Olympic events was javelin throwing WITH a sling.

Then there is this too:


Film exists of Spanish Civil War combatants using slings to throw grenades over buildings into enemy positions on the opposite street. (from Wikipedia)

[Sp4]

Slinging grenades.. of course, it's pretty genius. Nothing could go wrong! :D But then.. they're shooting at us, we're shooting at them, why don't we try flinging grenades over buildings while we're at it, all in danger anyways.

[The Stranger]

Ah.. I always thought it was a bit weird how the only ranged units Rome had in the early game of Rome 1 were people throwing spears. I just thought that would be really inefficient as a way of shooting at someone especially because everything shot back... might as well go with longer range...

I read about it a little today and found they even did it up to and during the Napoleonic wars. I thought it kind of became meh once artillery was developed to a certain point. It makes me wonder why people still bothered with ordered formations and firing lines if everything else seems to have been aimed at breaking them apart.

because until napoleon artillery was usually a secondary weapon and rarely used offensively. the ordered formations were to make it less likely that men break and run and at the same time it was needed to resist the heavy cavalry charges. although it started to show signs of being outdated, the infantry formation can still be defended in that era. ww1 however, thats a completely different story. what a waste of human lives that was :/

[Hooahguy]

Patch 8 notes:

Gameplay Improvements

Campaign


-It is now possible to levy units from satrapies and client states. This works in a similar manner to mercenaries, but these units have normal recruitment and upkeep costs, and come from the locally available unit roster.
-Infantry and cavalry units now have different campaign movement extents. Infantry units are slower than before, while cavalry units are faster than before. Armies always move at the speed of the slowest unit. Now cavalry-only armies actually move faster.
-Cinematic borders can now be displayed in campaign and battle by pressing [ALT] + [K] keys (by default).
-New industrial building chain: Quarry and mine buildings are now available for construction in minor settlements for all factions.
-Fixed an issue that prevented the AI from blockading the Brundisium port.
-Improved cultural conversion mechanics.
-Exempting a province from tax now sets its food consumption to zero (this wasn’t previously registering).
-In Multiplayer Campaign mode, when a player-owned settlement is attacked by the AI, the player will no longer have the option to sally forth, when the ‘fight manual battles’ option is disabled.
-Improved disembarkation areas in some coastal battle maps.
-Special abilities in battle have undergone rebalancing.
-Changed victory conditions in grand campaign for all playable factions. The number of regions the player needs to control in order to win the game has been reduced.
-Removed a number of misleading treachery types from Diplomacy, so now a faction that breaks a treaty and then signs it again within 10 turns won’t get treachery penalties.
-Campaign AI is now less likely to declare war on too many factions.


Battle


-Added new Barbarian major port battle map.
-Enemy reinforcement banners no longer begin battle as visible, thereby initially hiding the units’ positions in battles.
-Added visualisations to denote the range of targeted abilities in battles, so the player will know which units will be affected.
-Fixed a bug which caused the frame rate drop when it rained during battles.


Usability Improvements


Campaign


-After researching a technology on the campaign map, the zoom-to-location button on the Research Complete message will now zoom to the correct location.
-Faction list in Diplomacy now sorts alphabetically by default.
-The Toggle UI shortcut ([K] key by default) now works with Campaign modes.
-Treachery warnings now show reliably when you are declaring war and have current treaties with that faction. The warning also shows when the player breaks a treaty and tries to declare war, while the treaty is still in the process of being broken.
-Fixed the top and bottom of the Campaign tactical map to prevent it from being clipped at high resolutions.
-Added borders to the campaign tactical map so regions at the edges can be seen more centrally and are not blocked by the diplomacy user interface.
-Fixed a conflict which meant automatically constructed siege equipment prevented the player from building anything else.
-General’s skills and army traditions which lower upkeep costs will now update the recruitment panels correctly.
-Agent ability Intercept Orders success event-messages will now display which specific armies/settlements are revealed.
-Improved trees on the Campaign map.

Battle


-Post-battle loading screens for Custom/Multiplayer battles are now interactive, so the player can see kills/losses of armies in battle.
-When reinforcing an ally in a campaign battle using multiple armies, the unit cards in battle will now be adapted correctly to the number of unit cards and fit the screen correctly.
-It is now clearer in the battle UI when auto-trigger is enabled on ability buttons.
-Improved lighting and vegetation in Atlantic climate battles.

Patch 8.1 notes:

Gameplay Improvements



Campaign


-Improved AI parameter balancing: increased tactical focus and aggression, especially for major factions in both Grand Campaign and Gaul Campaign.
-Improved campaign AI raiding behaviour. AI factions are now more likely to raid during campaigns.


Battle




-Siege artillery now uses flaming projectiles appropriately (when attacking walls and towers).
-Fixed an issue in siege battle AI which could lead to the general's unit exposing itself to attack when trying to use its special abilities to support assaulting units on walls.
-Fixed a pathfinding issue which could cause units to retreat from siege towers and ladders once they had docked to walls. This was most common with AI units due to the sequence in which it issues unit orders.
-Fixed a range of issues with the AI's interaction with walls in siege battles, enabling the AI to conduct a more effective assault using siege towers and ladders.
-Improved the tactical co-ordination between different sub-groups of units when assaulting the walls in siege battles. When the AI attempts to enter the settlement via the gates, it is now able to do a better job of first eliminating the threat of boiling oil.
-Fixed an issue which caused units to march off in a random direction when reforming on a siege tower.
-Improved the behaviour of units when a unit on the ground is ordered to melee-attack a unit on the walls.
-Boiling oil no longer causes incendiary damage (so won’t burn battering rams for example).
-Improved pathfinding when attacking units on walls with units on the ground or vice versa.
-Improved attacking siege AI’s interaction with walls, and its use of battering rams.

Glad to see all of the AI improvements. Also glad to see the oil tuned down a bit.

Also, its a 1.1 gb patch. Wow. Though most of that is probably the new DLC.

EDIT 2: download is 1.5 gb with the new DLC and 1.1 without. This is a massive patch.

[Mhantra]

All of those changes look great. But uhh...what about the cultural conversion mechanics? Anyone know what, exactly, the changes are?

[Hooahguy]

From what I understand cultural conversion will now find a balance between competing cultures within the same province instead of 1 culture going to 100% pushing the others to 0%.

[Mhantra]

From what I understand cultural conversion will now find a balance between competing cultures within the same province instead of 1 culture going to 100% pushing the others to 0%.

oooh, so this has a few implications.

1. An overall drop in cultural benefit toward public order? Or did they rebalance the amount of public order from each unit of culture?
2. No more using a cultural conversion building for 10-15 turns, they removing it altogether for another building?
3. As an example: In southern Italia, that Syracuse has already culturally bled into the boot, and unless they are removed will continue to influence the culture with its Hellenistic influence. This will create a ratio within the lower most settlement in the boot based on buildings built and agent/general culture converstion ratings. This will make it more difficult to maintain public order, and also makes it more fluid, as settlements near your own settlement affect it, you don't have to conquer it to influence the culture. Is this a correct assumption?

[Myth]

Patch 8.1 coming on the 19th. It's supposed to dramatically increase AI aggressiveness. No point in staring a new campaign now...

[Sp4]

Also, its a 1.1 gb patch. Wow. Though most of that is probably the new DLC.

EDIT 2: download is 1.5 gb with the new DLC and 1.1 without. This is a massive patch.

The DLC isn't going to be very big. Most of it is probably the new campaign map.

[CaptainCrunch]

Just booted my game and saw that the main menu background changed to reflect the expansion (even though I don't have it) and came here to see the change log. Then I saw this; "Campaign AI is now less likely to declare war on too many factions." I really hope this works in practice, cuz it's definitely one of the main culprits in the early demise of the historically powerful expansionist factions like Rome. Don't understand why it took 8 patches to address this, but when the AI is at war with 7+ factions at once how can it hope to survive?

By way of game design, the powerful expansionist factions are more vulnerable to early extinction than the smaller defensive ones. They get to sit back and play the counterattack game while factions like Rome, Carthage, etc exhaust themselves fighting ruinous wars on multiple fronts and then collapse easily with no way left to defend themselves. CA need to add more diplomatic options so that large powerful factions can use diplomatic savvy or demonstrations of force to further their expansionist agendas without entering into direct conflict. Survival needs to take priority over reckless offensives, especially when considering the AI's poor balance of power estimates when confronting the player. It'd be nice if the AI could settle disputes quickly and bring the smaller factions to the negotiation table without the need for long protracted wars. And most importantly, the AI needs to settle other disputes as quickly as possible when attacked by the player so that it can focus its forces to deal with it.

Right now, I find that if you play on any difficulty higher than normal the AI will sit there and continue to fight with multiple factions while you knock off its settlements one after the other and refuse any offers of peace when it's clearly in its best interests to do so until it's way too late. More diplomatic options are needed, for the AI's sake alone.

EDIT- After playing for a few hours I see that phalanx on phalanx warfare is literally over in seconds from first contact. You don't even have time for flanking maneuvers, the phalangites on both sides (comparable units) are almost completely destroyed by the time you get there even if you launch the move as soon as they come into contact :rtwno:

Also, has anyone been able to levy troops from a client yet in an existing campaign? Not working for me so far.

2nd EDIT- So levying troops from clients is now working for me in a Patch 7 campaign. Sorted itself out somehow. I also see that seasons have somehow been implemented in the main game now, for anyone using a tpy mod you see a seasonal symbol right next to the date at the lower right of the campaign map (and you can mouse over as well). I'm wondering if anyone has actually seen changes (snow) on the campaign map or a campaign battlefield yet, or any campaign effects? I created a few custom battles up north and there was snow on the ground. I hope the modders can take advantage of this in the grand campaign.

[Hooahguy]

Also, people are saying that the rain lag has been fixed.

[Nelson]

I just noticed that my replay saves do not replay my battles. They show my deployment and then the AI plays the battle its way. Quite a difference I can tell you! Has this been messed up like this for very long? They used to work back in October I’m sure.

[Hooahguy]

Replays are very hit and miss. Contrary to public belief its not an actual reply where it records your every move. Rather it tries to predict your moves, oftentimes getting them wrong. This is the way its been for a while, I recall that in Rome 1 vanilla I played an epic custom battle as Carthage against the Romans. I won by the skin of my teeth, and in the excitement I wanted to save the replay. So the next day Im telling my buddy about this awesome battle and he comes over to watch the replay. So we watch it, and in the replay, I lose. It was actually a pretty pathetic loss, with most of my men routing in the first 5 minutes. Ever since then I never saved a replay in a TW game.

[CaptainCrunch]

Just found this on .com... hilarious and sad at the same time


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CBtqiA7iQw#t=14