Announced Features of TWR2

[Moros]

Q&A from Lusted:

Q. How historically accurate will Rome II be?

A. It is more useful to talk in terms of historical authenticity than historical accuracy, which never survives past the player getting involved anyway. There are a lot of things we do which aren’t accurate because it is a game, battles lasting minutes not hours or days for example. So any game can’t be historically accurate, but we are aiming for it to be more historically authentic than ever.

This refers to the look and feel of the various nations and peoples in the games, from the way they are dressed to the equipment they use on the battlefield to the mechanics on the campaign map. So the armour, tunic, helmets, shields and so on will be based on historical examples. The unit rosters will be based on the kind of units that were fielded and the societies of different cultures.

There will be units which were historically rare but we make more of because they are interesting and different. As in the past few Total War games they will not be appearing in every army but they will be there to add flavour.

Q. Will there be mixed main weapon types within a unit, say barbarians fighting with swords and spears in the same unit?

A. No. Whilst historically this may have occurred we split them into different units for gameplay reasons. Spears and swords have different stats in our game so we want them to be the main weapons for different units so the use for them is clearer and the player can tailor their army make up more depending on their play style.

Q. Will most of the effort be going into the Roman faction at the expense of other factions and cultures?

A. There is obviously far more information available on Rome than on other factions and cultures in this era, but that does not mean we are neglecting them. A lot of research has gone into the unit rosters for non-roman factions and into the campaign map to represent them well.

Q. With talk of reducing micro-management on the campaign, is it going to be even more focused on war?

A. The focus on reducing province and region micro-management is so the campaign can focus on other areas and not just war. There are a lot of great new features that will increase the campaign gameplay depth.

Not quite the time to outline them all now, but expect greater intrigue and emphasis on characters.

Q. Will mercenaries make a return?

A. YES!

Q. Will Rome II use Steam, and why?

A. Yes Rome II will use and require Steam, just like Empire, Napoleon and Shogun II.

Steam offers a lot of benefits to both us and players, from helping us to reach more people and provide on-going updates to the campaign and multiplayer, along with allowing a great platform for DLC and helping to reduce piracy.

In general, integrating Steam features into the game (like language, social, achievement and multiplayer features for example) also helps us spend more development time on improving and implementing other features.

We will also be talking about some exciting additional Steam features in the future.