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

[Myth]

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

[Slaists]

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

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

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

Edit: Slaists beat me to it

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

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

[CaptainCrunch]

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

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

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

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

[Slaists]

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

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

[Slaists]

Night battles are bugged if reinforcements are coming in by sea

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

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

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

[Myth]

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

[BroskiDerpman]

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

[Slaists]

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

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