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

Patch 12 beta released. Notes spoilered;

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Technical and performance improvements:

Battle

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


Campaign

Reduced lag during AI turns in Multiplayer Campaign mode.


Battle AI improvements:

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



Campaign AI improvements

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



General battle improvements

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


General Campaign improvements

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



Usability Improvements

Battle

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


Campaign

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


General

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



Balancing Changes

Campaign

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


Assembly Kit

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

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

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

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

I suppose the biggest one is this:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

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

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

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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by easytarget

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

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

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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by easytarget

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by easytarget

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

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

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

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

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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by easytarget

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

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

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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

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

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

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

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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Slaists

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

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

Hi guys,

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

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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AussieGiant

Hi guys,

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

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

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

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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AussieGiant

Hi guys,

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

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

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

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

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

Hi there Myth, Slaists,

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

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

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

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

The overclocking might be the culprit here.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Myth

The overclocking might be the culprit here.

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

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

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

Trouble shooting is always a pain :-)

Thanks for the helps guys!

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

Yes, I had this happen repeatedly in a coastal town in CIG.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by easytarget

Yes, I had this happen repeatedly in a coastal town in CIG.

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Aww hell... Lemme tell ya, CA will hear about this!

:laugh3:

Yeah, one for me falls under the heading of something I've posted nearly a dozen posts on at the main forum: agent spam.

There are simply way too many allowed to the AI and as a result I had 50 or more of them running around in my game, it's not that I can't deal with them, it's the fact that they made agent actions cost money that's broken. Either set a limit like Shogun 2 which didn't have this problem, or make the action not cost anything, but the Rome 2 design is as wrong headed as you can make agents in a TW game.

So far CA at 12 patches has kept their head on this issue firmly up their bum, and as a result I've stopped playing R2 entirely. If they can't be bothered to fix it after being told repeatedly for 6 months about it, I can't be bothered to play the game. So I've just gone back to other CA works where they obviously cared about their work product more than they do today.

FYI, in order to stop that agent spam on the coast I had to take out the cities they were flowing out of since there was no direct way to flip or kill them as they were hanging out on the coast line where no action could be taken against them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by easytarget

Yeah, one for me falls under the heading of something I've posted nearly a dozen posts on at the main forum: agent spam.

There are simply way too many allowed to the AI and as a result I had 50 or more of them running around in my game, it's not that I can't deal with them, it's the fact that they made agent actions cost money that's broken. Either set a limit like Shogun 2 which didn't have this problem, or make the action not cost anything, but the Rome 2 design is as wrong headed as you can make agents in a TW game.

So far CA at 12 patches has kept their head on this issue firmly up their bum, and as a result I've stopped playing R2 entirely. If they can't be bothered to fix it after being told repeatedly for 6 months about it, I can't be bothered to play the game. So I've just gone back to other CA works where they obviously cared about their work product more than they do today.

FYI, in order to stop that agent spam on the coast I had to take out the cities they were flowing out of since there was no direct way to flip or kill them as they were hanging out on the coast line where no action could be taken against them.

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A way to get around this problem is to use a Steam mod that deals with it. There are a few available - some limit the AI's "allocated funds to agents per turn", and some remove them altogether. Neither is necessarily optimal, but it can address the issue in a pinch.

Because this is an issue. I get that revolts by faction-rebels should mean something, and I am even ok with a single town-faction being able to field 2 stacks of units in 5 turns or less. But by far the most annoying thing is the fact that they can *also* field 2-3 agents that constantly get respawned. This is unbearable in a Seleucid campaign, where the entire eastern alliance-block of 6-8 factions will inevitably join up to stomp on you. Send your stacks of units all day, but the *swarm* of agents this produces is beyond frustrating. I'm getting used to not relying on having a general in any large defensive fight ever, since he is inevitably wounded or killed pre-battle. Every time. All game long. Only counter is to field him with 1 of each agent type - but then who's gonna resist the onslaught of sappers? I've already repurposed the aristocrats from tax-boosters to assassins solely because of this issue.

Yawn.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by easytarget

...FYI, in order to stop that agent spam on the coast I had to take out the cities they were flowing out of since there was no direct way to flip or kill them as they were hanging out on the coast line where no action could be taken against them.

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Yeah, normally that would be my approach... but since it was a Roman spy in this instance what I've done instead is put agents in play to buff the city's security until I get them to sue for peace. Not that it works all that well... AI agents can still pull off successful missions even when the odds are only 30-40%! Little fakers. I agree with you, the system is annoying.

I often try and help Rome in my campaigns so they can expand and become powerful 'til at least mid-game. Then it's party time... salting of the earth style :grin:

Patch 12 went live today.

Not sure I am happy about the ammo nerf they implemented. I think, horse-archer nations should have the old tech bonuses (+50%) not the reduced one. Otherwise, horse archer armies become kind of useless as they run out of ammo quickly.

I'm not gonna update to this patch for a minute, does anyone know of a guaranteed way to stop Steam from updating other than starting in 'offline mode'? I know for a fact that disabling auto updates through the game properties often doesn't do it. Not to mention that now that option is locked on my Steam console for some damn reason.

They finally fixed the bug with temples of war not granting multiple stacking bonuses. Now you can finally do what I said in my guide and train super soldiers! Especially as Rome or Sparta. Rome can get legionaries with 5 chevrons out right off the bat. The maximum for Rome appears to be:

+ 1 from the faction bonus
+ 2 from Major temple
+ 3 from 3 minor temples
+ 3 from Armidoctor

So 9 chevrons for fresh legionnaire recruits for Rome. And the bonus morale will be sickening.

"Raiding will no longer cause negative happiness."

...

wat...?

I would understand if they tuned the public order penalty to the size of the raiding force (ie -1 per unit, instead of -20 per army). Removing it is mindboggling. Does it mean... I can raid... my own provinces? To reduce the upkeep of my army?

wat?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I'm not gonna update to this patch for a minute, does anyone know of a guaranteed way to stop Steam from updating other than starting in 'offline mode'? I know for a fact that disabling auto updates through the game properties often doesn't do it. Not to mention that now that option is locked on my Steam console for some damn reason.

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Nope. As far as i know even disabling the auto-updates prevents you playing the game once steam knows it needs a patch. Along with the fairly regular patching (and it's effects on current campaigns), this has actually discouraged me from consistently playing R2 - particularly as I was living somewhere with terrible interweb.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I'm not gonna update to this patch for a minute, does anyone know of a guaranteed way to stop Steam from updating other than starting in 'offline mode'?

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Block Steam in firewall. It's the only guaranteed way to stop the updates (I had the same problem a few months back).

Patch 14 beta is now live!

Supposedly has a ton of siege AI improvements, and Im pretty excited to see these changes in game!

Patch notes

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Technical and performance improvements:


Battle


-Unit ‘stuttering’ in battle has been improved.
-Improved reflections in rivers on the battlefield.
-Ship reflections now appear correctly in battles.
-Fixed a crash in large scale multiplayer battles containing over 14,000 combined soldiers in total.
-Fix for a crash which occurred when selecting reinforcements on the minimap during battle replays.


Campaign


-Reduced the game's memory usage in Campaign modes, and when saving Campaign games.
-Fixed a rare crash which happened when placing the mouse over a building in the construction queue.
-Rare Campaign crash fixed, which triggered shortly after battle results were displayed.
-Fixed a crash which occurred after an un-walled port assault in Hannibal at the Gates campaign.
-Fixed a very rare texture crash when moving the camera around the campaign map.
-A rare crash which occurred after declining to fight a battle as a reinforcing army while the camera was still moving on the Campaign map has been fixed.


Battle AI improvements:


-Significant improvements to attacking siege AI’s use of siege engines, allowing them to better co-ordinate assaults through breaches and gates while also reusing previously docked siege vehicles.
-Improved AI's ability to re-start siege assault tactics after responding to units sallying out of a settlement in a siege battle.
-Fixed an issue in the attacking siege AI which could cause individual units or small groups of units to split off from the main force and attempt to burn the city gates elsewhere.
-Improved the Battle AI's usage of artillery to breach walls in siege battles.
-Made a range of improvements to battle AI pathfinding in settlement battles.
-Fixed an issue in a specific Egyptian city map variant which caused the AI to ignore siege equipment and always opt to burn down the gates.
-Fixed a bug in the deployment system which could cause the attacking siege AI to deploy far away from the city, sometimes facing the wrong direction.
-Fixed a bug which sometimes prevented the attacking siege AI from recognising existing wall breaches from previous battles in the same campaign turn.
-Introduced evasive manoeuvres in defending siege AI for units defending walls which are under enemy bombardment and are likely to collapse.
-Fixed an issue in the attacking siege AI where AI units would sometimes be assigned incorrectly to siege vehicles, or multiple AI units would be assigned to the same siege vehicle.
-Improvements made to the Battle AI's evaluation of task priority in settlement battles, enabling it to better direct attacks against higher concentrations of enemy units, as well as co-ordinate more effectively with reinforcements.
-Fixed a bug in siege battles when the player was defending, which caused ally AI armies to become idle in certain situations.
-Improved AI's wall targeting in siege battles, to prevent it from attempting to dock two siege towers on the same wall segment, for example.
-Enabled the Battle AI to better co-ordinate attacks in settlements through multiple breaches, gates or streets simultaneously.
-Fixed a rare crash bug which occurred when an AI general's bodyguard unit is completely killed while the rest of the army is entering the breaches in a siege battle.
-Introduced better co-ordinated attacks from multiple directions in minor settlements as well as some fortified settlements.
-When a unit under Battle AI control is changing formation, due to being attacked on multiple fronts, it will now take more consideration of its facing, to avoid presenting the enemies its back or flanks.
-Fixed issues where AI's naval reinforcement units became unresponsive after splitting up into multiple groups upon disembarking.
-Battle AI will now use melee units in addition to missile units to defend settlement walls when useful.
-Fixed issues with battle AI's sally out behaviours in settlement battles.
-When defending a settlement against bombardment from naval artillery, battle AI is better able to attempt to avoid casualties.
-Improved AI deployment logic for several settlement maps.
-Occasionally units given move orders on the battlefield would remain stationary for a while before moving. This has now been reduced.
-Fixed an issue which sometimes allowed the attacking siege AI to command their siege towers into settlements.
-Fixed issues in the attacking siege AI in naval siege battles, which caused some disembarked units to go idle.
-Battle AI is now more likely to pick up siege equipment, when it's been dropped by other units being killed.
-Fixed a bug where the Battle AI was incorrectly determining whether it had sent a unit to pick up a piece of siege equipment.
-Fixed a battle AI issue in which it would move to capture courtyards with victory points but fail to actually take the capture points due to its placement of units within the courtyard.
-Battle AI made more aggressive when attacking unfortified settlements to avoid losing due to timeout.


Campaign AI improvements


-Campaign AI is now more likely to defend settlements instead of running away. This should lead to bigger and more frequent battles.
-Improved Campaign AI siege behaviour - Campaign AI now tends to maintain sieges longer and construct more siege equipment against major settlements when besieging.
-Improved Campaign AI building repair behaviour.




General battle improvements


-Units on the battlefield now blend / fade out when they get very close to the camera, to avoid clipping / seeing into the unit models.
-Improved siege vehicle docking, to reduce the chance of ladders rotating back and forth indefinitely, when attempting to dock against a walls in siege battles.
-Battle replays now save and replay the weather as it was in the battle being recorded.
-Fix for capture points sometimes being connected to the wrong buildings in some battles with multiple capture points.
-Improved the combat behaviour of flanking enemies while attacking in formation, so the units are more concerned with attacking the flank of the enemy unit, rather than drifting to the front of the enemy, and potentially nullifying the flanking attack.
-Units can now fire at animal handlers once they've released the dogs.
-When the player selects multiple siege vehicles and attempts to dock them on a wall, only one will be given the order. The player must now manually order siege vehicles to dock on a settlement wall.
-Battering rams will no longer cause collision when they are destroyed.
-Units now more effectively pick up battering rams that have been dropped while they were attacking gates.
-Improved how units move through wall breaches:
-Individual men will not attempt to walk through solid fort walls as their unit passes through a breach.
-Fixed cases where units ordered into settlements via a breach would not move.
-Siege vehicles are less likely to get stuck on small buildings and rocks outside of a settlement, becoming inactive.
-Reduced units from climbing siege ladders in single file, up one side of the ladder.
-Fix for units ignoring docked siege towers in favour of ladders and captured gates where the siege tower offered a more appropriate route.
-Attackers can no longer see defenders in multiplayer land/naval battles during the deployment phase.
-Fixed a bug where units in defensive stance were not reacting correctly when attacked in melee and therefore not performing as well as expected.
-Increased cost of Indian Armoured Elephants.
-Cavalry will no longer be able to push through enemy units without experiencing losses.
-Balkan General units will now have the expected melee attack value in battle.
-Units will no longer continue to target and attack an enemy unit if they lose visibility of it.
-Improved pathfinding for large attacking AI armies in unfortified settlement battles, so the army does not become idle when attempting to reform.
-Adjustments to morale mechanics to limit certain defender exploits.
-Units will now look further for targets when on walls, to increase melee engagement.
-Capture points have been removed from custom coastal battles.
-Stopped AI controlled units getting stuck and spinning in one spot after disembarking in the medium Alexandria battle map.
-Fixed a Greek minor port map, to prevent ships from going through the shore when disembarking.


General Campaign improvements


-Fixed a bug that made Vigiles units disappear from garrisons in Campaign modes.
-Fixed an issue with undestroyed transported armies were being destroyed on the campaign, if their transporting army was destroyed in battle.
-Faction’s fame levels can go up and down, but you could never return to fame level 0. This has been fixed.
-Fixed an issue where in some situations, after sacking a settlement, the game would re-issue an order to sack the settlement again.
-Grand Campaign map snow now appears correctly on settlements in the North East of the map.
-Added some missing localised audio to the start of the fly camera fly over at the beginning of the Hannibal at the Gates Campaign, when playing as the Arevaci faction.
-Campaign AI will no longer pick galleries siege equipment.
-The Duty Calls event in the prologue campaign will now trigger correctly, preventing a progression blocker.
-Thracian Warriors added to Odrysian Kingdom garrisons.
-Upgrading certain buildings will no longer remove units from available recruits pool.
-Objectives requiring specific buildings will now trigger correctly after the building is constructed.
-Edicts will no longer remain active in provinces that are shared with a client state if the faction stops being your client.
-Resynchronisation has been sped up in Multiplayer Campaign mode.
-A congratulatory message in the Grand Campaign, which incorrectly triggered when winning a battle by ambushing and AI, instead of successfully defending against an ambush has been fixed.
-Swapped the bonuses for the "Votive Offering" and "Feast" barbarian festival campaign events.




Usability Improvements


Battle


-Siege vehicles will now correctly line up with bastions when docking.
-When a player commands a group of units to enter an enemy settlement with multiple ladders docked, the units are less likely to all focus on climbing the same ladder.
-Units will no longer clip through / walk under the terrain near a gate in a Barbarian City map variation.
-Fix for un-reachable bastions in Barbarian city maps.
-Fixed a gap under a gate in the Carthage (large) battle map.
-A map where ships would sail across the land while attempting to disembark has been fixed.
-Improved deployment zones and collision placement in several battle map variations.
-Fixed a floating river in Eildon battle map.
-Improved collision around battlefield town tiles, to make units navigate around them more effectively.
-Tooltips will now show up when placing the mouse over barbarian ports on the battlefield.


Campaign


-A progression blocker has been fixed in Multiplayer Campaign mode, when pressing "end turn" at the exact same time as the turn timer reaches 0:00.
-"Ally under attack" interface in Campaign modes is now clearer when both attacker and defender are the players allies.
-UI fix for when an AI unit attacks the players faction, the retreated during a Campaign end turn sequence, which caused the auto resolve window to pop up and close immediately.
-When the campaign tactical map is opened at the same time as pressing the end turn button, the campaign camera will no longer get locked in place / be un-movable when the turn ends.
-Solved an issue that caused false desyncs after a resync had been performed in multiplayer.
-Fixed an overlapping tooltip text when hovering over an enemy agent on the Campaign map.




General


-A New system has been put in place to handle when a player disconnects from a multiplayer game. Instead of causing a draw, this judges which player is in a better position upon connection loss. Draws are now much rarer and more representative of the battle conditions.
-Sound settings changes in the options menu, now take effect when saved, without the player having to re-open the sound options menu.
-Fixed Quick Battle disconnections which occurred when entering the lobby.
-Fixed a crash caused by Steam not running.

Definitely siege improvements.
Its not a match for a person but much more of a threat than it was.

Plus stuff like when you grab a bunch of units & tell them to get up ladders they actually split properly between the ladders!

Have not had a serious siege defense yet, but on the campaign side, it seems, the AI will hand it to me through attrition (Junia, legendary, started with patch 14.0): my allies (Illyria, Syracuse, Athens, Sparta, Egypt) are crumbling everywhere and one barbarian after another declares war on me. This is around turn 40. CA must have done something more than enhanced the siege AI.

I also see new factions strive (ones that previously typically did not do that well). Veneti expanded fast (took out Dalmati, Daorsi, Illyrians). Arverni made it into Northern Italy within the first 15-20 turns just to succumb to a blitzkrieg by Volcae who usually do not do much. All of Northern Alps and a good part of Dacia is already under stable (green happiness) Suebi control, etc.

Fun time...

Whee, they're putting an actual siege AI into the game.

Wow, never seen the Suebi blob so much unless we are talking some Confederation forming.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Myth

Wow, never seen the Suebi blob so much unless we are talking some Confederation forming.

---

Nope, no Confederation just proper Suebi. Funny though, Suebi finally made it into Northern Italy and their two stacks there were filled mostly with club infantry and spear levy. Guess, that's what they had been using to win their way across Germania.

Celts have formed a confederation in Dacia though and succeeding in beating Suebig back there (no wonder given the numbers of club infantry they fielding).

Hey guys, just wanted to let you know that patch 14 apparently went live today. By the looks of it nothing has been changed since beta. If there's still interested in knowing.

Yeah, nothing seems to have been changed. Kind of a short beta period, if I remember things correctly.

Ok so Patch 15 which includes the new emperor edition is now in beta!

The change notes:

Quote:

---

The headline changes in this beta are:

• Politics and civil war improvements
• Overhauled building chains
• Special regions
• Campaign balancing changes
• Land battle changes
• Naval battle balancing changes
• Politics and Civil War Improvements
• Civil wars no longer inevitable, instead they are now based on your level of support. Based on your support you can end up having a high, medium or low chance of a civil war occurring each turn. You’ll get warning messages when you reach those levels (currently a few bugs related to that). When a civil war occurs, all the generals and admirals not of your family will go over to the civil war. As will any agents in their armies and the regions their standing in. All other agents and regions then have a chance to join the civil war faction.
• Multiple civil wars can occur through the course of a campaign. There are now political support effect bundles. Based on the support for your party you will get an effect bundle that affects your faction. Very low support and you’ll get penalties to morale, public order, research. Very high you’ll get big faction wide bonuses but you’ll also run a higher risk of civil war occurring.
• Political action costs reduced.
• New effect bundles based on your Imperium level that increase political action cost and political incident occurrences, as well as giving your party more support each turn past level 4 Imperium. The effects of technologies that reduce political action cost have been increased.
• Effects of political promotions improved to give gravitas per turn and better bonuses.
• The first level political promotion no longer has any requirements so even basic statesmen can accumulate gravitas and contribute to the political game. Core general skills also give gravitas per turn. Want to keep politics balanced? Make sure generals from all the parties are fighting and gaining skills.
• The effects of wives have also been increased.
• New effects from Imperium that increase political action cost and political incident frequency as you gain more power. You will also gain more influence for your party automatically as you get bigger, making it harder and harder to avoid civil wars. So now it is perfectly possible to avoid civil wars if you manage politics right. You do that via actions, getting promotions or by having generals win battles and skilling up. But as the game goes on and you expand it will be harder and harder to avoid civil wars.

Overhaul Building Changes
The Aim

The aims for these changes are simple:

• Provide more building options for all cultures and more interesting building combinations.
• Make resource regions more important.
• Improve the balance of the late game economy.
• Balance food/squalor so buildings can be upgraded further.

THESE CHANGES DO NOT APPLY TO EXISTING SAVE GAMES

In order to not break/soft-break save games, the new building changes are only available when starting new campaigns.

Universal changes

These changes affect all cultures.

• Resource chains – have been renamed and their effects improved to make them more important.
• New amber resource chain – appears in some regions in German. Amber will not be a tradeable resource, but the chain will provide a good amount of income.
• Removal of military equipment chains apart from siege engines. Weapon and armour upgrades now come from iron regions. New horse resource chain added to buff cavalry units which is also exclusive to some regions.
• Universal minor industrial chain now only has mine line of buildings. This change has been made because of other chain changes for each culture that have added more industrial focused buildings.
• Splitting of industry and culture income types into manufacturing/mining and entertainment/learning respectively. This is taken advantage of with many of the new building bonuses. For example Gold resource chain gives mining income, and the Roman goldsmith lines gives manufacturing income and a bonus to mining income for the province.
• Garrison units now come from the core settlement building, ports and military chains only. The core settlement chain garrisons have been improved and all now include at least one good quality unit.
• No longer any difference in port and religious chains in major/minor settlements.
• Coffee machine now works.
• Negative bonuses now apply from level 2 in a small form so you can see what those are earlier
• Food penalties removed from lowest level core settlement buildings.
• Number of religious chains has been reduced for all factions so the remaining ones can provide better bonuses.

Barbarians

• Province capital core chain now splits at level 4 into 3 options which allow you to focus the speciality of a province more.
• The minor settlement core chains in non-resource regions now splits into 2 options at level 4 for the same reasons as above.
• New Warrior Lodge chain added for province capitals. The goldsmith building line and tavern building lines have been moved here and a new proving grounds line added. This chain provides income/happiness along with providing buffs for your units.
• Artisan chain split into artisan and craftsmen chain.
• Artisan chain has bronze workshop, new coin maker and new horn maker lines. Bronze workshop line provides recruitment of all melee/spear infantry.
• Craftsmen chain has clay pit, brine distiller and woodworker lines. Woodworker line provides recruitment of all ranged infantry/siege units.
• Both of the above can be built in major and minor settlements. Changes should keep the barbarian flavour of recruiting from diverse chains, but having recruitment focused onto a few lines instead of being so spread out as it was before.
• New minor sanitation chain added, has 2 lines that can be upgraded to level 3.
• Storage pit line now provides a replenishment rate bonus for the province.
• Research chains moved from agriculture to commons chain.

Eastern

• Province capital core building splits into 2 at level 2: the Royal and Satrap lines. The Royal will be more expensive once costs are added in.
• The minor settlement core chains in non-resource regions now splits into 2 options at level 2: trade and garrison lines.
• Infantry military chain merged into one line to make infantry recruitment simpler.
• New military buff chain added, with ranged and cavalry upgrade lines which go to level 3.
• Industrial chain adjusted so it has 3 lines: adobe, new weaving, and new mint ones.
• New water chain, using existing windcatcher and fountain lines, available in major settlements only.
• New town centre chain added for minor settlements. It has trade and game field lines.
• New tax chain added for minor settlements. Splits into tax and road lines. Focused on tax and agent bonuses.
• Herding and granary lines added to agriculture chain. Granary line gives replenishment bonuses.

Greek

• The minor settlement core chains in non-resource regions now splits into 3 options at level 2: farm, market and civic lines.
• Military buff chain now only goes up to level 3.
• Industrial chain adjusted to the following 3 lines: amphorae, goldsmith, mint.
• Granary line added to agricultural chain, gives replenishment bonuses.
• New town centre chain added for minor settlements. It has trade and gymnasia lines.

Roman

• Province capital core building splits into 2 at level 2: the civic and garrison lines.
• The minor settlement core chains in non-resource regions now splits into 3 options at level 2: farm, market and civic lines.
• Military buff chain now only goes up to level 3.
• Industrial chain adjusted to the following 3 lines: amphorae, goldsmith, mint.
• Granary line added to agricultural chain, gives replenishment bonuses.
• New town centre chain added for minor settlements. It has trade and theatre lines. Special Regions

A new thing that has been introduced are special regions.Effectively regions now have effect bundles that give them certain bonuses. Currently Roma, Carthago, Pella, Pergamon, Antioch and Baktra have these effects. Rome for example gives +2 recruitment slots in that province for owning it and +15% to all income. Carthago has a bonus to commerce income.
Other Campaign Changes
Alongside the extensive building changes are a bunch of other balance changes for the campaign.

• Core income for all factions reduced from 3000 to 1500
• Playable factions get different bonuses to core income. Sparta gets 500 for example, Macedon 1000, Rome 1500. So overall Sparta will have 2000 (1500 base + 500 extra) and Rome 3000 (1500 base + 1500 extra).
• Post-battle settlement occupation options rebalanced.
• Iceni, Roman, Eastern and royal Scythian faction traits adjusted. Iceni captive reduction replaced with small negative to morale in enemy territory. Roman experience bonus for infantry replaced with +1 recruitment slot in all regions. Eastern experience bonus for missile units replaced with +25% ammo. Same for Royal Scythians.
• Besieger attrition reduced.
• Replenishment rates reduced.
• Biephi faction renamed to Apulii.
• Fixed inconsistent messages/outcomes for subjects (faction screen dilemmas).
• Fix for not all factions getting missions, subjects, incidents or dilemmas in all campaigns.

Land Battle Changes

• Units with precursor weapons can now fire at will when stationary.
• The pace of battles and combat has been reduced, and morale values adjusted so battles last longer and are more dynamic.
• Axe and shield animation set based on existing animations added to the game.

Naval Battle Balancing Changes

• Speed of all ships reduced.
• Ship artillery accuracy reduced.
• Transport ships ramming damage significantly reduced.

---

This is a ton of changes, this is crazy! Gonna have to wait on the beta though as it will break all my mods.

So, when will the game be ready for non-beta testing? Patch 20?

Good that things are bieng fixed... but conversely there are so many things requiring fixing...

~:smoking:

Anyone know what the 12.3 MB patch had in it today?

Just an update to the beta patch:

Quote:

---

General Improvements

Adjusted pike balancing.
Tweaked mercenary and auxiliary unit multiplayer caps.
Fix for Hoplite wall exploit.
Added mercenary Dacian spears to Odrysian multiplayer roster.
Halved based political action costs, but doubled the increases from Imperium.
Armies on ships will now join civil wars.
When deploying troops on a land battle with snow, the markers indicating where individual soldiers will stand are now displayed correctly in yellow instead of white.
Increased melee cavalry attack.
Light Peltasts and Bactrian Peltasts morale changed to 50.
Removed happiness bonus from military recruitment buildings.
Adjusted the stats for the branches of the Roman city, Eastern city and Eastern generic town chains to give more clear differentiation between the choices.
Fix for Epona religious chain for Iberians giving the wrong culture type.
Fixed an issue related to politics that could cause an end turn crash.
Improved Campaign AI army management and recruitment.

---

Not in front of the game atm. Can someone list ne new provincial bonuses:

"A new thing that has been introduced are special regions.Effectively regions now have effect bundles that give them certain bonuses. Currently Roma, Carthago, Pella, Pergamon, Antioch and Baktra have these effects. Rome for example gives +2 recruitment slots in that province for owning it and +15% to all income. Carthago has a bonus to commerce income."

And also, Roman upgrade buildings only go up to level 3 now, have the bonuses effectively been reduced, or only the building levels?

I wish I could answer, I dont have the beta yet so I really dont know. Though according to the encyclopedia it varies. Some tiers go only to level 3, some go to level 5, others to level 4.

Also have no idea about the provincial bonuses. Cant find a list but they might be in the final patch notes when the patch goes live.

I'll play the beta tonight and I'll list what I find.

What happens when you let generals swim down the cac river ;)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/...A28EC4D72B438/

luckily, the cac lover was from an opposition party; wiped their influence down to zero.

Im at work so Im afraid to google what a Cloca Maxima is...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hooahguy

Im at work so Im afraid to google what a Cloca Maxima is...

---

LOL, what does it sound like? ;) City's sewage

"Negative bonuses now apply from level 2 in a small form so you can see what those are earlier"... anyone care to elaborate on this one a bit?

Haven't been able to play in quite some time, but some of these changes, to the politics in particular, have me seriously intrigued! Won't get to try it out for another month, so I hope it all works out well. Maybe there's hope for this game yet :2thumbsup:

In the meantime, Slaists I'll be looking out for your detailed reports :grin:

Well the new rebalanced starting regions are great. Pella, Macedon's capital starts with a military wharf, holosideros barracks and a travellers lodge. This will make Macedonian early game much more enjoyable

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

"Negative bonuses now apply from level 2 in a small form so you can see what those are earlier"... anyone care to elaborate on this one a bit?

Haven't been able to play in quite some time, but some of these changes, to the politics in particular, have me seriously intrigued! Won't get to try it out for another month, so I hope it all works out well. Maybe there's hope for this game yet :2thumbsup:

In the meantime, Slaists I'll be looking out for your detailed reports :grin:

---

As to that "negative bonuses start to apply from level 2". Prior to patch 15, level 2 city centers gave no food/unhappiness malus. They gave -4 food malus at level 3 (unless they were food towns); don't remember what was the unhappiness malus.

Now cities give -1 food malus at level 2 already. However, at level 3, they give the old -4 food malus. This applies, of course, unless local resources change that picture (olive producing regions, for example, have no food malus, they give extra food). It seems, unhappiness malus has been completely removed from towns/cities.

In total though, the food malus from city center development has been reduced by -2. Previously, a fully upgraded city center cost -10 in food; now, level IV city costs -8 in food.

So:

-1 food at level II. (previously 0 food effect; 0 unhappiness)
- 4 food at level III. (previously -4 food effect & some unhappiness)
- 8 food at level IV. (previously -8 food effect & -10 unhappiness)

Be tested patch 15 beta 100% vanilla and to me it seems nice. :)

done. patch 15, vanilla, legendary Junia campaign:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/...4D82F0F247592/

p.s. never encountered those fancy troops some folks call legionaries... no civil wars either.

Very nice, military victory?

yes, military. Was holding out (hoped for a civil war; or relationship souring with Egypt) but Iceni offered MA all of a sudden. Could not resist :)

Here is the diplo map, btw, for those who say diplomacy is impossible on legendary:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/...C2EDC0145BEE7/

The same campaign, continued post victory screen, still no civil war:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/...7DED200BAFBB0/

So here are the new fixes/additions that the patch brings, along with the previous patch notes from the beta.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Additional Changes with the Emperor Edition


The Imperator Augustus Campaign

Set during the 2nd Triumvirate and starting in 42 BC, this campaign covers the same areas as the Grand Campaign but with revisions to what settlements and provinces there are. There are 10 playable factions:


Antony’s Rome
Lepidus’ Rome
Octavian’s Rome
Pompey’s Rome
Iceni
Marcomanni
Dacia
Egypt
Parthia
Armenia have also been made playable in the Grand Campaign.


UI Graphical tweaks – Updating the look of the UI to improve immersion and the feel of the game.
Faction Colour Changes – All factions that were in the Grand Campaign have had their colours and icons updated generally to more naturalistic tones.
Trait Changes – lots of changes to what triggers traits, which ones will trigger and their effects.
Character Ages – Changes have been made that mean in the Grand Campaign characters should tend to live for an extra 20-25 years on average.


Known Issues:
If you continue an old Grand Campaign save, during or after a Civil War, the new Politics screen in the Faction Overview will not display correctly, due to the civil war mechanics changing to allow multiple civil wars. These saves can still be continued, but the Politics screen will not be useful in this case.


Technical and performance improvements:


Campaign
Fix for some end of turn hangs.
Fixed several crashes that could occur during the end turn sequence.
Fixed an issue related to politics that could cause an end turn crash.
Fix for campaign map stuttering when double-clicking on the terrain to move the camera long distances.
Improved the loading times, loading into Campaigns.
Updated diplomacy for when the Roman factions speak to each other.


AI improvements


Battle AI improvements:
Optimisations for Battle AI tactics for attacking walls.
AI controlled elephant units will no longer kill their elephant as soon as it begins to rampage.


Campaign AI improvements
Campaign AI army management and recruitment adjustments.
Improved Campaign AI budgeting for construction.
Improved Campaign AI army management and recruitment.
Campaign AI controlled armies will no longer remain in forced march stance after being sabotaged.
Campaign AI will no longer ignore threats when attempting to reach their last settlement to defend it from imminent capture.
AI controlled armies on the Campaign map are now less likely to stand in forced march nearby players settlements for several turns.
Increased AI research bonus on Hard and Very Hard difficulty levels.

General improvements


General battle improvements
Added Noble Horse Archers, Kartli Axemen, Persian Hoplites, Persian Cavalry and Elite Persian Archers to Armenia's unit roster.
New custom/multiplayer battle map presets added.
Tweaked mercenary unit caps in multiplayer.
Fixed Hoplite Wall exploit.
Removed Camulodunum and Oracle of Amun Ra battle preset maps.
Added in loose formation to all Iberian melee and spear infantry.
Added new pelt helmets to Germanic Officers and Elite units.
Fix for Bithynian infantry holding swords instead of axes.
Fixed bug with siege holdout skill giving negative effect.
Added Mercenary Dacian Spears to Odrysian multiplayer roster.


General Campaign improvements
Fix for Armenian/Eastern tech military building unlocks.
Updated Imperium Effect bundles.
Fix for a Multiplayer Campaign exploit.
Lots of building effect bug fixing, and religious buildings received big adjustments to their effects.
Quartered base political action costs, but quadrupled the increases from Imperium.
Fix for Epona religious chain for Iberians giving the wrong culture type.
Added replenishment rate bonus for Fortify Stance.
Fix for Remuneration Reform technology giving bigger bonuses than Cohort Organisation; their bonuses have been swapped.
The Egypian victory conditions in the Grand Campaign have been updated.
Certain political actions e.g. "Reduce senators" would increasing characters gravitas and thus power / influence. The influence cost of these political actions has been set to 0 to make it clearer what is happening, instead of showing an increase.
Improved Civil War warning message.
The Rosmerta religious chain bonus to public order from the tax edict will now apply correctly.
The "Good Looking" character trait has been given an effect, and the trigger has been restricted to agents.
Improved the portrait lighting for the advisors and Roman, Barbarian, Eastern, Hellenistic generals.
Fix for oracle event outcomes having the wrong target.
Removed movement range bonuses/penalties from season effects.
Adjustments to eastern building unit recruitment.
Added missing faction income bonuses to Getae and Odrysian Kingdom in Grand Campaign.
Fixed multiplayer campaign exploit regarding taxes and public order.
Added in glass resource to Caesar in Gaul campaign.
Added auxiliaries to Chorasmia province.
Removed happiness bonus from Field of Mars.
Swapped generic Mine Chain penalty from food to squalor.
Fix for missing political parties for Caesar in Gaul Campaign.
Fix for Persian Hoplites not being recruitable for Seleucids.
Fix for Nabia Temple increasing recruitment costs instead of decreasing them.
Bactria region will now colour correctly.
Fixed several text bugs.


Usability Improvements


Battle
Updates to battle grass colours.
Fix for some tree graphical issues on battlefields.
Improved battlefield lighting ambiance.
Updated weather environments for Mediterranean climate, dry and rainy conditions on the battlefield.
Briton Levy Freemen now look less like Celts.


Campaign
Various Multiplayer desyncs have been fixed.
Sea colours edited for all campaigns
Updates to the looks of the campaign map trees.
Fix for Seleucids speaking with Roman voices in the Grand Campaign.
Fixed some character names in the Hannibal at the Gates Campaign
Fixed a bug in Multiplayer Campaign Diplomacy, which allowed the player to accept an offer before it had been made, and in some cases caused the game to lock up when doing so.
The Coliseum now has the correct long description.
Fix for Grand Campaign Persia having wrong mini-map colour.
Reduced the strength of the sun during sandstorms in desert, reduced saturation of night-time environments.
Shrank the font size for unit names when displayed in objectives, so they fit better in the available space in the UI.
Fix for missing % in great marksmen faction trait


General
Fix when opening browser for Twitch EULA agreement.
Various UI tweaks.


Balancing Changes


Campaign
Fix for some wives missing effects.
Tweaks to ancillary effects
Tweaks to when corruption will reach max level.
Reduced anti-corruption bonuses from technology.
Reduced cumulative culture GDP bonuses from technology.
Added hull upgrade bonuses to Poseidon temple line.
Increased Macedon and Seleucid faction income bonuses.
Adjusted public order penalties/bonuses from Influence and Imperium to be more in-line with buildings. These happiness effects are now listed as Faction on the happiness tooltip in the settlement details panel.
Adjusted cost of Legionaries, Principes and Legionary Cohort.
Eastern Horse Archers are now recruitable from level 2 Light Stables.
Balkan factions now have Cultural Affinity bonus with each other.
Adjusted happiness penalty from Imperium to one based on presence of foreign cultures.
Reduced experience gain per turn for agents being deployed or in armies.
Adjusted recruitment of Painted Ones, Naked Swords and Naked Warriors to be earlier.
Adjusted the stats for the branches of the Roman city, Eastern city and Eastern generic town chains to give more clear differentiation between the choices.


Battle
Hoplites speed has been adjusted.
Adjusted pike balancing.
Increased melee cavalry attack.
Big adjustments to unit ability assignments - now fewer units have abilities, and their distribution has been edited.
Increased the ammo of Scorpion and Polybolos units.
Reduced reload time of Scorpion units.
Reduced "attacked in rear" morale penalty to -30.
Reduced winning combat significantly morale factor to 20.
Reduced pike attack cool-down timer to 2.1.
Reduced acceleration and turn speed of super heavy (cataphract) mount.
Increased elephant hit points.
Reduced chariot hit points.
Reduced melee defence of pike units.
Reduced morale of most Peltasts units.
Improved attack of Agrianian Axemen.
Increased melee defence of Round Shield Swordsmen.
Increased attack and charge of Falxmen and Thracian Warriors.
Increased attack and charge of Carthaginian Noble Cavalry.
Removed disciplined trait from Illyrian Thureos Spears.
Increased attack and charge of Sword Band.
Reduced melee defence and hit points of Milita Hoplites, Libyan Hoplites and Late Libyan Hoplites.
Increased attack and defence of Hastati.
Changed shield of Cantabrian Cavalry to one with a bigger missile block chance.
Increased morale and hit points for Etruscan Hoplites.
Reduced cost of Noble Spearmen.
AP damage of Kopis increased by 1.
Reduced damage of recurve bows.
Removed melee defence bonus from Fighting Spirit ability.
Removed unbreakable morale from Force Concentration ability.
Removed fatigue freeze from Relentless ability.
Reduced fatigue penalty from Rapid Advance ability.
Duration of the Spirit of the 10th ability reduced by half.
Reduced speed penalties from fatigue.
Fixed armour type for Naked swords unit (set to no armour).
Reduced stats of higher level pikes by -1 attack and -2 melee defence.
Increased melee attack of Chosen Sword Band, Chosen Swordsmen, Sword Followers, Tribal Warriors, Gallo-Thracian Infantry.
Increased melee defence of Fierce Swords.
Reduced melee attack of Axemen and Kartli Axemen.
Increased melee attack of Scale Throax Hoplites.
Increased melee attack and charge of Naked Swords.
Increased melee defence of Ambushers.
Increased melee attack and charge bonus of Painted Ones and reduced melee defence.
Increased armour of Elite Persian Archers.
Increased charge of Kartli Axemen.

Only another 8 hours until I can get home and try this out!

For those that never tried the beta, the update came in at 1.2Gb for me.

Build number:
Mac: 14120.589209
PC: 14116.589209


The changes are:

• Fix for Civil War triggering at under 50% influence for 2 party factions.
• Fix for wrong minimum Political Influence causing a Civil War in a 4 Party Faction.
• The Mac Steam version of the game will no longer crash, when the Macs system language is set to Turkish, Polish, Russian or Czech.
• In-game movies will now play correctly at 1380x768 resolution.
• Added traditions to Egypt faction in the Imperator Augustus Campaign.
• Reduced Campaign AI priority for recruiting dog units.
• Added description to Armenias political party in Grand Campaign mode.
• A few incorrect effect icons have been corrected.
• Fix for shadows not being cast properly by barbarian fort walls on the battle map.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by easytarget

Build number:
Mac: 14120.589209
PC: 14116.589209


The changes are:

• Fix for Civil War triggering at under 50% influence for 2 party factions.
• Fix for wrong minimum Political Influence causing a Civil War in a 4 Party Faction.
• The Mac Steam version of the game will no longer crash, when the Macs system language is set to Turkish, Polish, Russian or Czech.
• In-game movies will now play correctly at 1380x768 resolution.
• Added traditions to Egypt faction in the Imperator Augustus Campaign.
• Reduced Campaign AI priority for recruiting dog units.
• Added description to Armenias political party in Grand Campaign mode.
• A few incorrect effect icons have been corrected.
• Fix for shadows not being cast properly by barbarian fort walls on the battle map.

---

They added in game mini video things?

Certain events like generals dying, civil wars starting/ending, and capturing certain cities as certain factions (like the Suebi sacking Rome) have small videos that play when it occurs. Apparently they didnt play correctly at certain resolutions so now that seems fixed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hooahguy

Certain events like generals dying, civil wars starting/ending, and capturing certain cities as certain factions (like the Suebi sacking Rome) have small videos that play when it occurs. Apparently they didnt play correctly at certain resolutions so now that seems fixed.

---

I only know of the "Rome falls" and "Rome recaptured" videos. Do the Suebi get a unique one?

Nope.

Patch 16 was released today.

Patch notes:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Technical and performance improvements
Battle
Fixed a rare projectile crash in battles.
Campaign AI improvements
Adjustment to Campaign AI to force factions that have just become known / discovered to take on the current attitude towards the player, rather than be neutral.
General battle improvements
Fixed bug with Celtic Linothorax armour on units in battle.
Fixed misaligned settlement walls in Tigranocerta city battle map.
Stopped infantry user triggering "riders into wedge" voiceover during battles.
Armies moving from a settlement will no longer trigger "move completed" dialogue lines before their move has begun.
Armenia can no longer use large onagers when defending in a custom siege battles.
General Campaign improvements
Fixes for seasonal effects and adjustments to income types and amounts from buildings in the campaign so subsistence is more favoured.
Diplomatic scores have been lowered in general, and It is now harder to make client states.
Usability Improvements
Battle
Factions are now listed in 2 columns in the Custom Battle and Multiplayer *Lobbies, to prevent the faction list going off the bottom of the screen.
Fixed a Roman minor port coastal battle map, where units could disembark on an out-crop of land at the edge of the map, and therefore would get stuck and no longer be able to fight the navies in the battle.
Fix for broken deployment area on port tile near the Dolmens in France.
Campaign
Faction Trait Icons fix - adjust to newer Emperor Edition colour scheme.
Balancing Changes
Unit Stats
Increased armour of Foot Companions.
Increased melee attack of Thracian Slingers, Bowmen, Skirmishers.
Increased charge bonus of Carthaginian Noble Cavalry.
Increased damage of longbows but reduced reload rate.
Increased health of First Cohort and Eagle Cohort.
Removed square from noble Spearmen and Persian Hoplites.
Increased range of Nubian Bowmen to 150.
Increased the health, attack and melee defence of Egyptian Cavalry.
Increased the health of Thureos Spears by 5.
Karian Axemen ranged weapon swapped for the same javelins as used by Thureos Spears.
Increased the attack, armour and health of Mercenary Leopard Warriors.
Increased the morale and armour of Camel Spearmen.
Increased the morale of Camel Archers.
Attack and charge bonus increased for Agrianian Axemen.
Increased the armour of Thessalian Cavalry.
Changed weapon of Hippeus Lancers so they do more damage.
Increased the morale and health of Elite Persian Archers.
Increased the armour, charge and melee defence of Etruscan Hoplites.
Increased the morale of Light Hoplites.
Increased the health of Heroes of Sparta.
Increased the range of Gallic Hunters.
Increased the health of Celtic Skirmishers.
Increased the melee attack, charge bonus and melee defence of Celtiberian Cavalry.
Increased the melee attack and charge bonus of Iberian Noble Cavalry
Cantabrian Cavalry have been given higher damage javelins..
Increased the armour of Veteran Riders.
Increased the hit points of Horse Runners.
Increased the armour of Bloodsworn.
Increased the armour and morale of Spear Wall.
Increased the morale and melee defence of Night Hunters.
Increased the melee attack and melee defence of Fierce Swords.
Increased the range of Dacian Heavy Bowmen.
Increased the health and melee attack of Dacian Heavy Skirmishers.
Increased the armour of Thracian Peltasts.
Increased the morale of Thracian Warriors.
Increased the health of Tribal Warriors and reduced speed.
Increased the morale and melee defence of Illyrian Cavalry.
Increased the morale of Parthian Foot Archers.
Swapped the shield type of Scythian Royal Skirmishers and Sarmatian Horsemen to one with more armour.
Increased armour and health of Sarmatian Royal Lancers.
Reduced the mass of chariots.
Increased the mass of elephants.
Increased the attack of Briton Scout Riders to 38*
Decreased the attack of Hastati to 35
Unit Abilities and Attributes
Added hoplite wall to Persian Hoplites.
Rapid Advance for Gorgo's Skirmishers replaced with Rapid Reload.
Added Frenzied Charge to Mighty Horse.
Added Frenzied Charge to Illyrian Cavalry.
Added Hoplite Wall for Noble Spearmen.
Added Drago to Saka Noble Armoured Lancers.
All camel units have gained the resistant to fatigue attribute.
Unit Costs and Caps
Thureos Hoplites cost decreased to 600.
Illyrian Thureos Spears cost increased to 380.
Iberian Swordsmen cost increased to 350.
Thureos Spears cost increased to 560.
Riders of the Hunt cost decreased to 570.
(Mercenary) Rhodian Slingers cost decrease to 590.
Evocati Cohort cost increased to 890.
Triarii cost decreased to 790.
Steppe Archers cost increased to 330
Nubian Bowmen, Hippeus Lancers, Dacian Heavy Bowmen, Mercenary Thracian *Warriors and Illyrian Cavalry cost increased
Steppe Archers cost increased to 330
Egyptian cavalry increased to 600.
Celtic Warhounds cost reduced by 50
Increased the custom/multiplayer battle cap of Mercenary Axe Warriors to 4.
Unit Availability
Mercenary Thracian Warriors added to custom/multiplayer battle roster for *Macedon and Athens.
Mercenary Samnite Warriors added to custom/multiplayer battle roster for Epirus.
Mercenary Italian Cavalry added to custom/multiplayer battle roster for Syracuse.
Mercenary Cappadocian Cavalry, Mercenary Skirmisher Cavalry and Mercenary *Syrian Archers added to custom/multiplayer roster for Galatia.
Mercenary Germanic Scout Riders added to custom/multiplayer battle roster for Nervii.
Mercenary Veteran Hoplites added to custom/multiplayer battle roster for the Odrysian Kingdom.
Factional mercenaries for Tylis swapped from Dacian to Celtic units.
Mercenary Tarantine Cavalry added to custom/multiplayer roster for Ardiaei.
Mercenary Persian Cavalry added to custom/multiplayer roster for Pontus.
Cappadocian Cavalry added to campaign and battle roster for Pontus.
Mercenary Naked Swords added to custom/multiplayer battle roster for Pontus.
Mercenary Amazonian Riders added to custom/multiplayer battle roster for *Roxolani and Massagetae.
Known Issue
In the Mac Steam version of the game, some changes to the games options during play will not be kept once the game is restarted.

CA has really made some progress with Rome II, I have to admit.

Has anyone heard if they will be working on naval battles at all, fixing the problems boarding, the strange troop movements, troops jumping off ships, ect...

I'll be damned, but it seems there is a hidden fix which the patch notes are silent about: it concerns left-click, hold + drag (while holding down CTRL key). Now, all units seem to match speeds while doing so... Great!

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...xed-for-armies

At least they just did in my Galatia battle. Hope this holds in general.

EDIT

This turned out to be a fluke. Galatian infantry walks almost at the same speed as light cavalry that's the reason why I saw the whole army move at the same speed.

Units still walk at their own respective speeds when using left click move commands.

Ok so the Wrath of Sparta DLC has been released, and with it comes a small patch for the base game. I wont bother putting all the changelogs for the new campaign here, just the ones pertinent to the main game.

Link

Quote:

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Changes to ROME II

-Optimisation campaign memory usage by loading less campaign character / general models into campaigns where they are not needed.
-Land units on transport ships will no longer be able to ram in battle; navies will be needed to escort these extremely vulnerable ships at sea.
-Improvements to animations for charging shock cavalry.
-Improved unit bracing in shield wall formation for the units in the rear of the ranks.
-Fixed the white loading screen which appeared when changing graphics settings during a battle.
-Fix for some battle terrain bugs in the Caesar in Gaul Campaign.
-Disabled ramming for barbarian ships.
-Added a fix to the "Continue Campaign" button on the launcher, which in some very rare cases didn't work for a few users with unexpected file path to appdata.
-Added a new Spartan loading screen.
-Improved axe-men animations, to replace "stabbing" animations in synced combat.
-Fixed a flooded area in a Barbarian minor port battle map.

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There is a sneak-change also, pertaining to the politics and influence. The government sizes of factions like Sparta have been boosted in GC. Now Sparta has 300 gerontes instead of 30. This might fix the late-game influence (lack of its increase) issue.

Unfortunately, this change is not save-game compatible. Old campaigns still have the smaller government sizes.

The game failed to launch after I install patch 16.1 from Steam. Be careful.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by deigratia

The game failed to launch after I install patch 16.1 from Steam. Be careful.

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I had something weird happen when I was trying to launch right after the update. I had to reboot Steam to get everything working. Also, I had to close the launcher via CTRL ALT DEL interface; it was lingering among ghost processes even after I had closed Steam.

Anyway, after the reboot all was fine.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Slaists

I had something weird happen when I was trying to launch right after the update. I had to reboot Steam to get everything working. Also, I had to close the launcher via CTRL ALT DEL interface; it was lingering among ghost processes even after I had closed Steam.

Anyway, after the reboot all was fine.

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Steam is horrible when it comes to updating (both Steam itself and specific games). It takes forever and often entails multiple attempts and reboots. Just crap.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Barkhorn1x

Steam is horrible when it comes to updating (both Steam itself and specific games). It takes forever and often entails multiple attempts and reboots. Just crap.

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There is a file in steam folder that sometimes needs to be deleted for the updates to kick in. I forgot the name of it. But when you get the error that says "Steam servers are too busy" or something like it, grab that error tag and google it. The solution that suggests deleting something from the Steam folder works.

Got an 8.8MB patch today, not finding any notes about it anywhere.
Pretty sure this is new since I had done a Steam Cache verification just yesterday & it didn't try to download anything when opening Rome2 after it.

My gameversion is now 2.2.0 build 15558.627558*

Well apparently nobody else got this, no updates at https://steamdb.info/app/214950/history/ or http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War...I:_Patch_Notes
So apparently the next day & while open for the 2nd time after the cache verification it decided to redownload some bit?

I didn't see any evidence of a download (which possibly just means I didn't know where on the steam page to look...). Nor did I notice any difference in the game as I continued my current campaign over the past couple of days (again, hardly conclusive).

Another 20.5MB update.
Now 2.2.0 build 15666.640460.

The patch seems to just add three new achievements for Valentines day:

Make War, Not Love
Win at least one battle on 14/02/2015, Valentine’s Day. (any battle type in single player campaign, or multiplayer campaign)

Company of Zeroes, more like…
Win a single battle during MWNL2, between 00:01GMT on 12/02/2015 to 23:59 GMT on 15/02/2015. (any battle type in single player campaign, or multiplayer campaign)

A Relic of the Past
Declare war on a faction in Single player or Multiplayer Campaign during MWNL2, between 00:01GMT on 12/02/2015 to 23:59 GMT on 15/02/2015.

Very disappointed, I expected something similar with the Halloween update, like the ravens turnt into flying angels and the sky having a pink colour.