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

[Bramborough]

Good news indeed, also optimistically anticipating.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Barkhorn1x]

New patch coming out tomorrow!

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

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

[Hooahguy]

We will see tomorrow I guess.

[Sp4]

Seleucids as a playable faction.

[Bramborough]

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

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

[Hooahguy]

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

[Jacque Schtrapp]

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

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

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

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

[Bramborough]

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

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

[Sp4]

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

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

All the satrapies declare war eventually?

[nearchos]

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

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

Normaly, they must have a real hard starting, with public order problems, because of the many settlements they control, not very good relations with their satrapies and being at war in the begining with Ptolemies of Egypt.

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

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

[Hooahguy]

So Supposedly three new DLC packs are coming out next week, at least according to this page, though Im not sure what from that page gives people reason to think that there will be new DLC next week.

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

[Myth]

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

[Hooahguy]

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

[Hooahguy]

Patch 5 release notes

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Technical and Performance

Campaign

Improved Campaign AI decision-making speed when considering local forces prior to settlement attack
Fix to problem the AI interface received stances that were not up to date, when called to accepting a war declaration help request, or deciding whether to invite allies to a war.
Improved responsiveness of tabs in the Trade and Finance panel in Campaign mode.
Fixed a crash when loading an auto-save game.
Various campaign optimisations including: Fog-of-war update (improves frame rate when moving units, improves end turn times in games where the player has many allies) and Improved frame rate when lots of units are on screen.
Fix for rare crash when loading a Campaign save game.
Fixed various rare crashes during battles caused by unit card sorting.

Battle

The video memory footprint of battles has been reduced by up to 250MB.
Left-click and dragging units during battles is now more responsive.
Fix for slow down / performance hit when selecting AI siege equipment in the battle setup menu.

Gameplay Improvements

Campaign

Campaign AI now encourages factions to form allegiances more over time based on personality, perceived threat and existing balance of relationships the faction holds.
A new function has been added to the diplomacy screen, which allows the user to select AI factions, and then mouse over other faction icons on the map to display their relationships.
The chances of the AI betraying their allies has been increased, since it used to help them too often when a betrayal was a more appropriate action.
Allies that have made a decision to join a war, have that decision enforced at the Campaign AI to ensure consistency. E.g. To prevent Satrapies from joining a war and betraying their overlord at the same time.
Improved the AI’s consideration and use of payments in diplomacy
Garrisoned armed citizenry now reinforcing their army standing just next to the settlement they are Garrisoned in.
Fixed satrapies not recognising that they no longer have an overlord in some cases when they cease to be a satrapy.
Fixed a pathfinding data error that allowed paths to cross directly from beach to river on the Campaign map.
When a settlement is blockaded on the campaign map, a fix has been made to prevent the player from queuing more siege equipment in the construction queue than you are allowed.
Reduced the chance of AI armies standing close to the players army on the Campaign map in Forced March stance, allowing the player to ambush them.
Armies can no longer be garrisoned in a settlement and in Forced March stance at the same time, which led to an ambush battle outside of the settlement when it was attacked, and the winner not capturing the settlement.
When handing over a region in civil war, the armed citizenry in that region are now refreshed immediately, to prevent the player from recapture the settlement with no resistance from within.
During a multiplayer coop campaign, the client and host could both make decisions when attacked by the AI. However the user interface did not always display the correct choice. This is now fixed.
Rebels, Greeks and Gauls are now unable to capture the Bovianum settlement from the Samnites during the Prologue Campaign.
Objectives are now listed in The Invasion of Samnium chapter of the Prologue Campaign.
Converting an army in a port settlement to the port docks will no longer break it out of muster stance allowing it to recruit while moving .
Fix for Lode Stone technology not applying correct speed bonus to ships.

Battle

Improved gates so they don't open so prematurely for routers during battles.
Fix for Cavalry units not able to perform flaming arrow attacks on buildings.
Autonomous siege engines now have an ammunition limit during battles.
Fixed bug where routers appeared to walk in battles.
Added display of phase timers to Ability buttons in battles.
A unit tooltip will now display to indicate when units are withdrawing during battles.
Added a new Persian minor city battle map variation to the game.
Improved the in-battle AI's interactions with a Greek City battlefield.
Improved AI interactions with the walls in Hecatompylos (small) battle map.
Adjusted deployment zones in Greek Port (Antioch) map, to stop the defender from being able to deploy outside of the city.
Fixed a bug in the Antioch (large) battle map, that made traversable areas of the map untraversable to units.
Adjusted deployment zones in Carthago city map to stop the defender from being able to deploy outside of the city.
In Multiplayer, spectators can now see both the attackers and defenders units regardless of whether they're within line of sight (both in the battle itself and on the battle radar.)
Improvement for the timing in when pike men switch between pikes and swords during combat.
Re-jigged pike attacks slightly so that they don't end when the enemy run away, but instead, re-intercept.
Fixed bug in Ambush visibility which made unleashing war dogs invisible while the handler unit is hidden, causing the dogs not to be seen by the enemy.
Fixed certain capture points that were not assigned to the correct buildings in various siege maps
Smoothed out the deployment zones across all siege maps.
Fixed disembarking points in minor Barbarian port battle map, allowing units to disembark from ships correctly.
A wall piece that is partially underground in the small Barbarian City battle map has now been made to be un-dockable for siege equipment.
Fixed the collision on some large rocks in the Carthage battle map to prevent units from passing through them.

Balancing Changes

Campaign

Barbarians and Easterners can now also build military ports in minor settlements.
Increased campaign cap for the limited naval units, so more of them can be recruited.

Battle

Added new missile block chance for shields, and some new shield types added to enable better balancing.
Adjustments made to the Carthage chapter 6 difficulty.
Rebalanced the ranged damage effects for the Numidian Technology Tree.

Usability Improvements

Campaign

Agent success changes now reflects the fact that some actions (for example Assasination) require critical success to eliminate the character. A tooltip has been added to showing the sucees/failure precentage breakdown.
Fixed a bug in Multiplayer Campaign mode, where the player couldn't move their camera on the campaign map after spectating in another players' battle, if the player had the Overview Map opened before the battle.
Added faction icons to attitude / factors tooltip in Diplomacy to make it clearer whose relationship is being shown.
Added message events when a satrapy declares war on its overlord in Campaign modes.
Fix for Legendary difficulty auto-save occurring before dilemmas are decided in Campaign mode.
Fixed the cancel vassal diplomatic action which was not working correctly.
Fix for menus "sticking" when moving the mouse from a submenu button to the Encyclopaedia.
Fixed a number of formatting issues in the Multiplayer Campaign faction list user interface.
Durations are now displayed on effects in regions / factions where applicable.
Added experience and bonus icons to queued unit cards, so they are more consistent with recruitment and recruited units.
Fixed hull upgrade bonus icon not showing on recruitment cards.
When ordering an agent to perform an action against the enemy, if the player left clicks and holds on one of the action boxes, and then moves the cursor the action box will no longer disappear.
In Campaign modes, if the keyboard shortcut to end the turn is replaced by any other key, other than then default [ENTER], the new key will now end turn as expected.
Passive abilities are now coloured differently on the Unit Info Panel in Campaign modes to make them clearer.
Fixed duplicate faction icons appearing in Diplomacy, when war declared with satrapies.
Solved an issue that prevented the settlement looting panel from appearing, when Campaign Overview / Tactical Map was open.
The Forces tab in Campaign modes is now refreshed / updated faster in response to different actions taking place.
When returning to the campaign from a battle, besieging army's action points bar no longer doubles in length and extends beyond it's limit.
When an ally attacks a provincial capital in coop Campaign the other player will no longer be able to add and subtract siege equipment to the construction list during battle deployment.
Removed spaces between building upgrade icons in the Building Information panel to avoid info panel flickering in Campaign modes.
Improved the yellow selection highlighting on selected factions in the Campaign Faction Selection screen.
Added the option to delete key configuration files form the load key configuration dialog in the settings menu.
The "Battle Realism Mode" checkbox now greys out correctly when Legendary difficulty is selected in Campaign mode.
Consecrated Ground buildings in Campaign now show which culture they belongs to.
The "No Equipment Available" message on the pre-battle user interface in Campaign Mode is no longer displayed, if the player is the defender in a siege assault.
Added functionality to post-battle espionage icon so user can now see details about the conquered settlement.
Added missing tooltips to character skills on faction screen.
Fixes to the Campaign user interface to make objectives status text fit correctly within the available space.
When on the Campaign Map, if an Agent has no more action points and tries to perform an action on an enemy settlement, that action will become queued. If on the next turn the player captures that settlement that, upon ending turn the agent will no longer play the animation for the action on that now owned settlement.
When building Construction is paused in Campaign modes, a pause icon is now displayed to represent this.
Additional army names added for Germanic, Nomadic, Greek, Pontic, and Gaulish factions for more variety.
Fixed issue in the Prologue Campaign where the player couldn't declare war on the Greek States via move options and had to do it via diplomacy.
There is now a chance for Campaign characters to spawn with a wife in their household.
In Campaign, when selecting an opponent's settlement, then hovering the mouse over buildings in an owned settlement in the same province, the building information panel is now correctly displayed instead of being hidden.
Added an arrow icons to the Public Order entry in province dropdown, to indicate when Public Order is going up or down.
Solved issue that prevented the settlement button from being updated, when the province details panel is shown in the Campaign user interface.
The Conversion option is no longer displayed when the building is damaged on the Campaign map.
Fixed irrelevant attrition immunities being shown for ships in campaign on the Unit Info panel.
Remove misleading tooltips from unit cards in the unit exchange panel if they cannot be exchanged in Campaign modes.
Female character portrait / heads are shown when a "Subject Gains Notoriety" event occurs in Campaign, and the event involves a female character (e.g. the Vicious Words event).
Fixed a bug, where some Campaign Event Messages were automatically marked as read.
Dragging the mouse from a province owned by a certain faction, for instance Rhodes, into a sea region which they do not use, will no longer display their faction icon next to the contested status for the sea region.
Fixed un-openable event messages which sometimes appeared in Campaign modes.
Successful bribe attempt now shows correct family name on the message.
Mission event titles are now consistent between event messages and the event message list panel.
The correct cursor icon is now displayed when an Army at sea is selected and order to attack a garrisoned army in a port settlement.
The "opportune failure" part of agent action event messages will now only display for the faction that the agent belongs to.
After progressing through the Prologue from Chapter 1 to Chapter 3, exiting out of Chapter 3 at the start will no longer cause Chapter 3 to appear locked on the main menu.
Character Rank Up events now display the Character Type and new rank.
Fixed the window size of the games Launcher in certain desktop resolutions.
Fixed bug where placing the mouse over areas of attrition on the campaign map, would make the tooltip look like the area was an enemy.
Tooltips don't show ambush chance for fleets anymore.
Fixed tooltip height, when tooltips don't have any text in them.
Tooltip on Campaign map no longer stops showing ambush chance when placing the mouse over an attrition area.
Fix for number of available units is not displaying on mercenary recruitment cards.
Fixed an inconsistency with Silanus' name between Prologue Chapters. Throughout Prologue 2, Silanus was identified as 'Gaius Fulvius Silanus'. However during Prologue 3, he was identified as 'Gaius Silanus'.
Various minor text fixes in Campaign mode.
When the player doesn't have enough money to perform an agent action, and orders an agent to perform a certain action on an enemy, the list of options to perform will now be greyed out immediately, instead of only when the cursor is moved over the options.
Fix for incorrect hyperlink in the faction panel and incorrect tooltip on damaged buildings.

Battle

Added unit numbers to Unit Cards. These can now be enabled in battle interface options ("Unit Card Man Count" check box).
Added option to game settings menu to enable/disable aide de camp (Battlefield Advisor), so the player can now disable this panel from ever appearing.
Naval units are now grouped together depending on their unit type more often in deployment. This prevents them from colliding into each other so much at the start of a battle with large armies and large varieties of ships.
Fixing for invisible elephants making it appear like elephant riders were floating in the air during battles.
Fixed issue where dragging out units on the battlefield could get stuck on screen after deselecting the unit.
Chat toggle button is no longer greyed out in frontend when players set their state to "Ready" in a Multiplayer Battle or Campaign lobby.
Updated the Carthago radar image to better represent the terrain in the battle.
In a Multiplayer Lobby, when a team leader with one AI army on their team switches to the other side, the players Steam avatar no longer remains attached to AI army.
Fixed checkbox for "Battle Realism Mode", so it's no longer greyed out and un-ticked when the player has just quit a Legendary difficulty Campaign.
Fix for “Unit Size” option being reset to last saved setting when going hosting multiplayer battles.
Fixed the "Select All" functionality in battle setup screen ([CTRL]+[A] keyboard shortcut)
Various fixes for the Change Team button being in incorrect state in the battle setup menu.
The Battle HUD with double line Unit Cards will shrink to single line as units are removed.
The Spectator slot in a Multiplayer Lobby can be taken out of team 2 now if there is space there, and not on team 1.
Updated buildings on the radar map during battle for the "Armavir" battle map.
Improved boarding user interface in battles.
Added some user interface to remind player to use deployables during deployment, when they still have deployables un-deployed.
Reduced chance of siege towers moving away and leaving men behind if the user clicks to drop equipment, and orders it to be re-manned as troops are disembarking.
Added tooltips for ability effect icons on Unit Banners in battle, and made these icons larger.
Fixed transport ship icons not disappearing from their Unit Cards once the units disembarks
Fixed a large number of floating objects and clipping issues across a variety of siege maps.
Fixed floating buildings and battlefield props in an Egyptian Port battlefield.
Visually improved Greek Port battle map.
Removed some rocks from a port in the Antioch battle map to prevent ships passing through them when disembarking.
Changes made to the disembarkation areas in the large Carthago battle map to prevent ships from passing through the naval port buildings.
Adjusted beach landing / disembarkation areas in the Athenia battle map, to prevent ships going too far onto the land.
Adjusted beach landing / disembarkation areas in the Greek minor port battle map, to prevent ships going too far onto the land.

Known Issues

Changing the game's Texture Quality option during a campaign or a battle may cause the terrain to appear black. This can be avoided by changing this option with the Game Settings in the main menu, and will usually stop happening after starting the next battle or re-loading your campaign. This will be hotfixed in the near future.
The Mod Manager is currently only partially localised, so most compatible with English. We aim to localise this fully in the near future.

[Spoonska]

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

[Beskar]

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

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

[Hooahguy]

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

[Hooahguy]

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

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

[Bramborough]

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

[Hooahguy]

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

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

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

[hoom]

Added unit numbers to Unit Cards. These can now be enabled in battle interface options ("Unit Card Man Count" check box).
Added option to game settings menu to enable/disable aide de camp (Battlefield Advisor), so the player can now disable this panel from ever appearing.

These are really great :)

[Barkhorn1x]

These are really great :)

Indeed.

[Forward Observer]

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers

[antisocialmunky]

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

[Alcibiade]

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

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

[Hooahguy]

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

[BroskiDerpman]

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

[Wilbo]

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

[Alcibiade]

In this thread : http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...sign-Concepts)

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

[Sp4]

That thread is so painful to read =X