New DLC campaign confirmed: Wrath of Sparta! Also more Attila info.

Rally point 23!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi9s...ature=youtu.be

Peloponnesian War campaign confirmed! Will be released December 16th.

:charge:

EDIT: some more info, taken from CA's post on the TWC-

Wrath of Sparta features:


New Campaign Map
The earliest period any Total War game has depicted, Wrath of Sparta’s campaign map is a vivid and detailed representation of the Greek world in 432 BC; featuring 22 provinces across 78 regions, covering the Greek mainland, islands and the Ionian coast. The map brings 12 new Wonders to light, including the Ruins of Troy, the Temple of Zeus and the Royal Tombs of Makedon. Furthermore, as the campaign features a tighter timeframe than the ROME II Grand Campaign, each turn represents one month.


Four Playable Factions
Athens (Athenai), Corinth (Korinthos), Sparta and Boiotia are all playable in Wrath of Sparta, each bringing its own faction traits, unit rosters, challenges and geographical starting point. In addition, famous generals and statesmen of history appear throughout the campaign, such as the Spartan general Lysander and the Athenian dignitary Sokrates.


In homage to their historical strengths, Sparta can field a greater variety of troops than other factions to reflect its mastery in land warfare, while Athens has the roster advantage in naval warfare.




Panhellenic Games and Festivals
The Greeks of the age were keen athletes, and the annual competitions of the Olympic, Pythian, Sithmian and Nemean games are represented. When each is held throughout the yearly calendar, you’ll have a number of choices to make. Do you sponsor an athlete, back a competitor, send an envoy or do nothing? Each choice can bring you favour or misfortune. Likewise, the Greek calendar was packed with religious festivals, which bring their own campaign bonuses and benefits, and bring the flavour of the age to life.




New Tech Trees
Wrath of Sparta features all-new tech trees, reflecting the military, naval and civic developments of the time. The six branches enable the player to advance in the fields of military, naval and support technologies, philosophy, aesthetics and mathematics.




Hellenic Tribalism
With the exception of the Persian Empire, the factions represented in Wrath of Sparta are Culturally Hellenic, so ‘Culture’ has been replaced with ‘Tribalism’. Each faction belongs to one of the Greek tribes, and while the four playable factions won’t suffer from public unrest due to the presence of other Greek tribes, they will suffer major diplomatic penalties with factions that were not ‘true’ Greeks.




The Persian Threat
The Empire of Persia sits at the eastern end of the campaign map and remains largely uninvolved with Greek affairs. However, if one Greek state rises to dominate all others, the Persians will escalate their military involvement over time, in a growing effort to bring that power to heel!




New Army and Naval Unit Rosters
New unit rosters are available to all four playable factions, representing warfare of this period in Greek history. The Greek factions feature a heavy emphasis on hoplites, with supporting elements to react to different combat scenarios and bring tactical variety. There are fewer but more specialised units of mercenaries available to swiftly bolster and bring greater flexibility to armies, and these are more widely available across the provinces.


The backbone of Greek naval assets is composed of tactical variations on the Dieres and Trieres hull types, with a greater focus on ramming and boarding. In addition, troop transports act more as cargo ships than combat vessels, and are no longer able to ram in naval battles, reducing the unfair advantage of troop convoys in naval warfare. This change will be retroactively applied to all ROME II campaigns.


Amongst over 50 new Naval and Land units for Wrath of Sparta, you will also encounter specialist and legendary troops, such as the Immortal Spearmen, Spartan Hoplites and Skiritai.

Wahoo!

I have to ask, this is more than 1ypt right?

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Originally Posted by easytarget

I have to ask, this is more than 1ypt right?

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It's one turn per month, old stick!

Then I'm pre-ordering the second is shows up on steam. :2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by easytarget

Then I'm pre-ordering the second is shows up on steam. :2thumbsup:

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Are my eyes deceiving me? Or did I just read that you are going to pre-order something?

:dizzy2:

You could mod your main campaign to be 12tpy, but yes. This campaign DLC actually looks semi interesting. I hope all the other factions besides Sparta and Athens are more exciting than wet baguette.

And what does this dlc add to the grand campaign? Nothing?

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Originally Posted by Hooahguy

Are my eyes deceiving me? Or did I just read that you are going to pre-order something?

:dizzy2:

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It's surely a sign of the apocalypse I realize, but note, I didn't say Attila, just this new DLC. haha

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Originally Posted by The Outsider

And what does this dlc add to the grand campaign? Nothing?

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Exactly, because there's no saving the GC in my view.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Outsider

And what does this dlc add to the grand campaign? Nothing?

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"In addition, troop transports act more as cargo ships than combat vessels, and are no longer able to ram in naval battles, reducing the unfair advantage of troop convoys in naval warfare. This change will be retroactively applied to all ROME II campaigns."

So Peloponnesian war after all & no Macedonian Wars :shrug:

Its a popular time period so not too surprising but I'm not totally sure Hoplites vs Hoplites vs Hoplites is going to be that much fun.

Unramming transports is such an obvious thing I can't understand why its taken so long.
Hopefully comes with a model change to a roundship rather than the silly penteres out of nowhere.

Screenshots via Steam
http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/st...198d59e6d5.jpg
http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/st...4507dd80c5.jpg
http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/st...e269ca5dea.jpg
http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/st...bcda02f257.jpg
http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/st...bfcdf445f4.jpg
http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/st...5649b03f85.jpg

They also announced Panhellenic games for the DLC as well:

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To the ancient Greeks, the Panhellenic Games were an important tradition, a fantastic spectacle where people were brought together to be entertained, to compete, and to be crowned champions. Taking place over a four year cycle, the victors of the games were lauded throughout Greece. Olympic champions often went on to help found colonies.

In Wrath of Sparta’s campaign, your attitude to the games will affect your public’s opinion of you. If you choose to ignore them altogether, they may become annoyed at your lack of involvement. Sponsor a winning athlete however, and you may gain a skilled general.

Alongside the Panhellenic games, Wrath of Sparta features a busy calendar of religious and cultural festivals, which provide various factionwide effects.

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There once was a time when an announcement for the Peloponnesian War would be huge for me... then R2 released and kicked me in the jimmy. It's hard for me to get excited about this stuff. For one, hoplite warfare won't be well represented in this game because CA have never been able to create a reasonable facsimile of how a real phalanx worked historically. What they have now is basically nonsense. Wouldn't this have been an ideal time to really step their game up to where it should be and get with the historians, mo-cap actors and animators and completely revamp the phalanx mechanic for the TW series? I mean this would be something to talk about! This alone would be a selling point! This is hoplite warfare after all, you'd think they might consider it a little more important than adding some new textures and details to the map.

How about naval battles? How significant a role did they play in the struggle for dominance between Athens and Sparta?! Are they gonna bring anything new (and significant) to the table to address the atrocious naval battle mechanics? My crystal ball says 'no'. Oh wait, they finally did something to address the cartoonishly overpowered transports 15 months after release. I don't know man, some people eat up everything they release, which is cool for them. But free time has become the most precious commodity for me and I find myself demanding a bit more from my entertainment these days. It just looks to me that CA are too lazy or simply not concerned about getting the details and the overall game right. I mean, they gave Sparta walls! Real sloppy:rtwno:. There are people out there in the modding community improving the game in their spare time that are making CA look like amateurs in my estimation. When I think about what a campaign like this could be like if it was well executed, it brings tears to my eyes... *sniff*sniff*

Meh I love Sparta and all but im leary of spending more money on TWR2 for content that hasn't made me altogether happy

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Oh wait, they finally did something to address the cartoonishly overpowered transports 15 months after release

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To be fair, they did heavily nerf transport speed/turn & hitpoints.
A couple of Dieres have no problem taking out several Transports with ramming as long as the Transports aren't missile units.

Problem is that normally you find 15-20 Transports & they all react instantly to maneuvers so its very hard to isolate one or two to be attacked.

A proper Naval fleet will annihilate a full Transport stack though.

So after noticing the Hoplites in these screenshots holding the shield soley on the middle band instead of the proper elbow through the middle & grip near the edge, I couldn't help but notice the same thing ingame on the existing Hoplites...

Seriously has it been like that the whole time? :boxedin:
Now what has been seen can't be unseen.

I had kind of assumed they'd have done Hoplite shields right since they had managed to do Phalangite shields stuff like the Thracian Warrior shield right.

I have also noticed various of the Horse Archer units that should be using the upper arm shields have them cop-out mode sitting on the back.
Which is weird because the Standard Bearer has it in right place so its not like they can't do it.

This DLC would be a great opportunity to fix that shield grip.

Even though I haven't played Rome II in a good while (too busy with Diablo 3, Heroes of the Storm, Civ 5 and Civ BE) I am so getting this!

I have a feeling that the game would be terribly unhistorical, but also there is an issue about some models.
Apparently, the Creative Assembly copies the material of some mods, which were awarded during their recent modding contest. Although, I am happy CA is inspired by some more efficient at modelling modding teams, I think that they should have put some cretid to them. It's common courtesy, isn't it?

An example (notice the shield pattern with the pink flower):
http://wiki.totalwar.com/images/e/eb/Athens_logo.png
https://i.imgur.com/YdrF2bV.jpg

To be fair that's not the best choice to show they are copying. There aren't thousands of historical Greek shield designs out there in the historical record so they are bound to overlap at some point.

ZOMG I bet CA copied EBs Spartan shield blazon too.
EB should sue them for copyright infringement for using the Spartan L (or whatever letter it is) 11!!1!!!!!!!!111 :dizzy2:

I think its certainly clear that CA has been heavily influenced by EB in making Rome2.
But this is a very good thing not a bad thing in any way.

The EB team was formed in the first place to attempt to influence CA into making Rome1 a better game.
https://www.europabarbarorum.com/

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The Europa Barbarorum project started in January 2004 as a team with the intent of informing The Creative Assembly about the historical nature of the "barbarian" factions in Rome: Total War. Our aim was to gather as large an amount of historical information as we could and pass it on to the Creative Assembly, prior to R:TW's release, in order for their portrayal of the "barbarian" factions in the game to be more accurate.

Later, the team expanded their aim to also correcting ahistorical representations everywhere on the map. As it became clear that CA would not use this sort of information, the group decided to transform the project into a modification.

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So while they did not succeed to influence Rome1, the strong influence on Rome2 is a massive success. :bow:

Pelgao is a non-esitent word, I am afraid...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=V1yxh2_pzY0

Any orgah got it already? I am interested in the expanded Spartan roster. I bet they will be a pale lot, since they're usually fighting in the shade.

I dont, but I am debating buying it or not. Maybe once I finish with my Augustus campaign.

Also, new trailer!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdcVBj_eDGQ&feature=youtu.be

Reminds me a lot of 300. Especially at 1:28.

Nice 300 moves there. I hope they added them in the game :) Also, downloading it now. Guess which faction I will pick.

So, I've been playing as Athens, and I've got to say, it's been a damn good bit of fun. In fact I've really enjoyed every DLC campaign for Rome 2, they have quite literally saved the game for me since the GC in my estimation at least is beyond repair.

I've had to struggle to handle a collapsing empire initially, I've been beset on all sides by enemies, as I showed in another thread the Persians are on scene and making me nervous, it sort of gives me an impression Athens was a test of the Attila concept of Roman collapsing empire you have to try and hold together (if you are playing as Rome of course.

I lost multiple settlements initially and had to re-trench, try and get things under control from internal rebellion stand point and get the economy going sufficiently to support a proper army, while at the same time working to cultivate some allies. In short, WOS is everything about Total War that makes it enjoyable and fun to play.