Hi all,

Just a heads up to let you know that we’ve pushed back the release of the Caesar in Gaul Campaign Pack slightly to Tuesday 17th December in order to give us a bit more time to squeeze in some additions to the accompanying patch. The good news is that the extra changes we’re squeezing in will have a knock-on benefit to the main game, so even if you don’t purchase the DLC you’ll still see improvements.

Patch 8 will be hitting at the same time as the Caesar in Gaul DLC and as well as activating the DLC will bring with it some improvements, including:

• Technical and performance issue updates including crash fixes.

• New culture system – culture no longer works on 100%-0%, instead aiming to achieve an equilibrium between the cultures present in a province, relative to their respective culture points.

• Additional AI fixes.

• The Post-battle loading screens for Custom/ Multiplayer battles are now interactive, after load so the player can see kills/losses of other armies in battle.

As Caesar in Gaul has moved back slightly, the patch after it is going to go into Public Beta quite soon. We plan to put Patch 8.1 into open beta 48 hours after launch of Caesar in Gaul, which will bring additional improvements to the main game, including:

• Improvements to siege artillery using flaming projectiles appropriately (when attacking walls and towers).

• Additional fixes to AI and pathfinding.

• Fixes to issues with AI’s interaction with walls in siege battles, enabling a more effective use of siege towers and ladders.


Thanks,

Trish

Hi all,

Just a heads up to let you know that we’ve pushed back the release of the Caesar in Gaul Campaign Pack slightly to Tuesday 17th December in order to give us a bit more time to squeeze in some additions to the accompanying patch. The good news is that the extra changes we’re squeezing in will have a knock-on benefit to the main game, so even if you don’t purchase the DLC you’ll still see improvements.

Patch 8 will be hitting at the same time as the Caesar in Gaul DLC and as well as activating the DLC will bring with it some improvements, including:

• Technical and performance issue updates including crash fixes.

• New culture system – culture no longer works on 100%-0%, instead aiming to achieve an equilibrium between the cultures present in a province, relative to their respective culture points.

• Additional AI fixes.

• The Post-battle loading screens for Custom/ Multiplayer battles are now interactive, after load so the player can see kills/losses of other armies in battle.

As Caesar in Gaul has moved back slightly, the patch after it is going to go into Public Beta quite soon. We plan to put Patch 8.1 into open beta 48 hours after launch of Caesar in Gaul, which will bring additional improvements to the main game, including:

• Improvements to siege artillery using flaming projectiles appropriately (when attacking walls and towers).

• Additional fixes to AI and pathfinding.

• Fixes to issues with AI’s interaction with walls in siege battles, enabling a more effective use of siege towers and ladders.


Thanks,

Trish

Hi everyone,

We have another piece of good news for you, the Nomadic Tribes Culture Pack is available now for download – and to thank our loyal fans for their continued support, if you grab your copy before the 29th Oct, it will be yours to own forever for FREE (normal cost £5.99/$7.99/€7.49).

You can grab your copy here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/258270

And check out this awesome trailer showing off the Nomadic Tribes right here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl-csVA7bM0

The Nomadic Tribes favour cavalry, exclusively in some cases, providing for swift hit and run and massed shattering charge tactics on the battlefield. The three playable factions come with new buildings and building chains, technology tree, campaign objectives and new units both unique and for general mercenary use

For more information please visit:
http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Factions

Hi everyone,

We have another piece of good news for you, the Nomadic Tribes Culture Pack is available now for download – and to thank our loyal fans for their continued support, if you grab your copy before the 29th Oct, it will be yours to own forever for FREE (normal cost £5.99/$7.99/€7.49).

You can grab your copy here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/258270

And check out this awesome trailer showing off the Nomadic Tribes right here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl-csVA7bM0

The Nomadic Tribes favour cavalry, exclusively in some cases, providing for swift hit and run and massed shattering charge tactics on the battlefield. The three playable factions come with new buildings and building chains, technology tree, campaign objectives and new units both unique and for general mercenary use

For more information please visit:
http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Factions

Hi everyone,

We’re delighted to share with you news of the next free content drop for Total War: ROME II, which is available today in an automatic update. The Seleucid Empire is now a playable faction in single-player campaign and multiplayer games.

Renowned for their civil engineering and city-building feats, the kings of the vast Seleucid Empire rely on expert cavalry regiments to enforce and expand their borders. This content update includes new unique Seleucid units, building and technology trees, Campaign Objectives and the Paradise of Daphne; a unique new wonder. For more details on this faction, please visit this link.

http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War:_Rome_II_-_Seleucid_Faction

We’re also releasing Patch 5 today, which delivers a huge number of fixes, tweaks and upgrades to the ROME II experience.

This patch contains a large number of improvements across pretty much every part of the game. Among these are a number of optimisations to Campaign Map performance, which improve framerates with the fog-of-war and when there are many armies, navies and agents on-screen. We’ve also sped up end-turn times in situations where the player has multiple allies.

There have been further improvements to diplomacy as well. The campaign AI now encourages factions to form allegiances based on personality, perceived threat and the existing balance of relationships the faction holds. Players can also see relationship information by hovering the cursor over factions on the map in the diplomacy screen.

We’ve also reduced the chance of AI armies standing close to the player in Forced March mode – thereby reducing their chances of being ambushed – and any garrison of armed citizenry will now reinforce friendly armies in battle outside their settlement.

Finally, we’ve added tooltips to Agent Actions, which reveal their normal and critical success and failure chances. This gives you a much clearer picture of the potential outcomes.

As always, please note that some changes take much longer to effect than others – particularly gameplay and battle AI changes – so don’t worry if the improvement you’re looking for isn’t here yet. Chances are we’re working on it!

You can see full patch notes here on the official Total War Wiki: http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_5

We also updated you yesterday with news from Creative Director Mike Simpson on the patching process in general and our plans for the future. In case you missed it, you can read that post here.

As well as this free content and patch, we’re also delighted to announce Steam Workshop and Mod Manager support for Total War: ROME II, making the sharing and loading of user mods a breeze.

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse?appid=214950&browsesort=trend

We’ve been working closely with some key names on the modding scene to offer original Workshop content from day one, such as the incredibly talented Radious, who has crafted some of the finest mods available for Total War.

That’s not all for modding support, though – we’re consulting closely with the community and are looking to host another Mod Summit soon to gather opinions on what we can do next for Total War: ROME II to further unlock its modding potential.

Enjoy,

The Creative Assembly

Hi everyone,

We’re delighted to share with you news of the next free content drop for Total War: ROME II, which is available today in an automatic update. The Seleucid Empire is now a playable faction in single-player campaign and multiplayer games.

Renowned for their civil engineering and city-building feats, the kings of the vast Seleucid Empire rely on expert cavalry regiments to enforce and expand their borders. This content update includes new unique Seleucid units, building and technology trees, Campaign Objectives and the Paradise of Daphne; a unique new wonder. For more details on this faction, please visit this link.

http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War:_Rome_II_-_Seleucid_Faction

We’re also releasing Patch 5 today, which delivers a huge number of fixes, tweaks and upgrades to the ROME II experience.

This patch contains a large number of improvements across pretty much every part of the game. Among these are a number of optimisations to Campaign Map performance, which improve framerates with the fog-of-war and when there are many armies, navies and agents on-screen. We’ve also sped up end-turn times in situations where the player has multiple allies.

There have been further improvements to diplomacy as well. The campaign AI now encourages factions to form allegiances based on personality, perceived threat and the existing balance of relationships the faction holds. Players can also see relationship information by hovering the cursor over factions on the map in the diplomacy screen.

We’ve also reduced the chance of AI armies standing close to the player in Forced March mode – thereby reducing their chances of being ambushed – and any garrison of armed citizenry will now reinforce friendly armies in battle outside their settlement.

Finally, we’ve added tooltips to Agent Actions, which reveal their normal and critical success and failure chances. This gives you a much clearer picture of the potential outcomes.

As always, please note that some changes take much longer to effect than others – particularly gameplay and battle AI changes – so don’t worry if the improvement you’re looking for isn’t here yet. Chances are we’re working on it!

You can see full patch notes here on the official Total War Wiki: http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_5

We also updated you yesterday with news from Creative Director Mike Simpson on the patching process in general and our plans for the future. In case you missed it, you can read that post here.

As well as this free content and patch, we’re also delighted to announce Steam Workshop and Mod Manager support for Total War: ROME II, making the sharing and loading of user mods a breeze.

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse?appid=214950&browsesort=trend

We’ve been working closely with some key names on the modding scene to offer original Workshop content from day one, such as the incredibly talented Radious, who has crafted some of the finest mods available for Total War.

That’s not all for modding support, though – we’re consulting closely with the community and are looking to host another Mod Summit soon to gather opinions on what we can do next for Total War: ROME II to further unlock its modding potential.

Enjoy,

The Creative Assembly

With a total of 175 fixes and enhancements it’s by far the biggest ROME II update yet.

This update includes major AI improvements related to the constructions of new buildings, food supply management, creation of armies, technology researches and tactics used during battles, making the AI more organised and challenging. Further tweaks and improvements have been made to the diplomacy, missiles, melee units and much more.

The update is automatically applied to the game client upon restarting Steam and a full list of changes implemented is available here: http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_4
Patch 5 will enter public beta next week, with further technical optimisations and improvements to gameplay, balance and usability to come.

Assistance for anyone seeking to solve issues or improve the performance of ROME II on their system is available from the CA support team at http://www.totalwar.com/rome2support.

Answers to most-asked questions:

Should you make a start a new campaign?
To reap the full benefits of every patch, it is recommended to start a new campaign. However, please try your old campaign and see if you benefit from anything advantageous. If not, start up a new campaign and compare the differences/similarities. Your answer should lie there.

My game is broken after Patch 4, what happened Trish?
Try un-installing your mods if you have any installed. They may not be patch 4 compatible (please seek the mod provider for an answer to this) just yet. Then, try verifying your game cache. You can do this by going to your Steam Game Library, right-clicking ROME II, Properties, Local Files, then "verify the integrity of my game cache". This hopefully solves your issue. If not, please seek out: http://www.totalwar.com/rome2support

If I was in patch 4 beta, does this mean I have an update as well?
If you opted into the patch 4 beta and your version is #7573.461942 (you can see this on the top-right corner of your game) then you should already be all set!

With a total of 175 fixes and enhancements it’s by far the biggest ROME II update yet.

This update includes major AI improvements related to the constructions of new buildings, food supply management, creation of armies, technology researches and tactics used during battles, making the AI more organised and challenging. Further tweaks and improvements have been made to the diplomacy, missiles, melee units and much more.

The update is automatically applied to the game client upon restarting Steam and a full list of changes implemented is available here: http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_4
Patch 5 will enter public beta next week, with further technical optimisations and improvements to gameplay, balance and usability to come.

Assistance for anyone seeking to solve issues or improve the performance of ROME II on their system is available from the CA support team at http://www.totalwar.com/rome2support.

Answers to most-asked questions:

Should you make a start a new campaign?
To reap the full benefits of every patch, it is recommended to start a new campaign. However, please try your old campaign and see if you benefit from anything advantageous. If not, start up a new campaign and compare the differences/similarities. Your answer should lie there.

My game is broken after Patch 4, what happened Trish?
Try un-installing your mods if you have any installed. They may not be patch 4 compatible (please seek the mod provider for an answer to this) just yet. Then, try verifying your game cache. You can do this by going to your Steam Game Library, right-clicking ROME II, Properties, Local Files, then "verify the integrity of my game cache". This hopefully solves your issue. If not, please seek out: http://www.totalwar.com/rome2support

If I was in patch 4 beta, does this mean I have an update as well?
If you opted into the patch 4 beta and your version is #7573.461942 (you can see this on the top-right corner of your game) then you should already be all set!

Automatically applied to the game client upon restarting, the third update to ROME II includes over 140 technical, gameplay, balancing and usability improvements.

Technical optimisations include Campaign performance improvements on some hardware configurations, fixes for UI flickering in SLI setups, and a significant multiplayer campaign-speed boost. There are many new gameplay improvements, such as alterations to the victory point system, and chiefly a reduction in the circumstances in which victory points appear in battles. For example, when the player is attacked while occupying a minor settlement (though not a provincial capital), a new Sally Forth button is available on the pre-battle panel, which enables the player’s army to fight the attackers in an open field battle without victory points.

Numerous other specific fixes are also included, and full patch notes can be found here: http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_Notes

Patch 4 enters public beta soon, with further technical optimisations and improvements to gameplay, balance and usability to come.

Assistance for anyone seeking to solve issues or improve the performance of ROME II on their system is available from the CA support team at http://www.totalwar.com/rome2support.

Automatically applied to the game client upon restarting, the third update to ROME II includes over 140 technical, gameplay, balancing and usability improvements.

Technical optimisations include Campaign performance improvements on some hardware configurations, fixes for UI flickering in SLI setups, and a significant multiplayer campaign-speed boost. There are many new gameplay improvements, such as alterations to the victory point system, and chiefly a reduction in the circumstances in which victory points appear in battles. For example, when the player is attacked while occupying a minor settlement (though not a provincial capital), a new Sally Forth button is available on the pre-battle panel, which enables the player’s army to fight the attackers in an open field battle without victory points.

Numerous other specific fixes are also included, and full patch notes can be found here: http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_ROME_II:_Patch_Notes

Patch 4 enters public beta soon, with further technical optimisations and improvements to gameplay, balance and usability to come.

Assistance for anyone seeking to solve issues or improve the performance of ROME II on their system is available from the CA support team at http://www.totalwar.com/rome2support.