I kind of tuned out of Rome 2's faction announcements after personal favorites, the Arverni and the Suebi, were announced, but if you've been holding out for some Eastern flavor, today is your day. Joining the aforementioned barbarian badasses, their Iceni cousins, and the imperialist dogs of Rome, Macedon, and Carthage, the Parthian Persians enter the fray from the previously-shrouded, right-hand side of the map.

"A confederation of tribes, Parthia is famed for its horses, nomadic horse-archers and heavy cavalry," the new faction page reads, continuing, "the latter developing distinctive bronze or iron scaled armour which covers both horse and rider. For its infantry it relies on ethnic Persian/Iranian hillmen, spear and skirmisher units and sometimes mercenaries, armed and drilled in the Seleucid fashion."

Long-time Total War fans will be familiar with horse archers as the most annoying thing ever invented in human history. It seems we will not be spared their wheel of death in Rome 2. The Parthains are also bringing some Zoroastrian flavor to the battlefield, which basically demands that you name at least one of your generals Farrokh Bulsara (the birth name of Freddie Mercury, the most rocking Zoroastrian of the last 1000 years.)

Company of Heroes 2 was due to come out around about now, but then THQ folded and developers, Relic, were auctioned off to Sega. This has pushed back the World War 2 RTS by a few months. It'll now arrive on JUNE 25, long before Russian winter sets in.

“We hate to disappoint our fans with a later than expected date as we know they are eager to play but we feel that the additional time will help the team deliver the high quality sequel fans deserve” - thus spake producer Greg Williams into the press release robot's listening hole.

“However, the wait won’t be long as players will soon be able to help us test and balance multiplayer in the upcoming Closed Beta.

"Details will follow shortly," he adds.

Exciting news, no? I liked what I played of Company of Heroes 2 very much, because I like Company of Heroes 1 very much, and the sequel seems to be clinging very close to the ideas that made the original great.

The doors of Creative Assembly’s Total War development fortress creaked open a little wider today with the release of a new trailer for Rome II’s Battle of the Teutoburg Forest scenario. I saw this mission being played live a few months ago while visiting CA for the lead feature in PC Gamer issue 250. It was the first time I’d seen the game being played properly rather than running as a pre-scripted demo (or while dressed up in black spandex and dancing around like a moron.)

There was a lot to take in, and you’ll be able to read my full impressions in the preview feature which will be going up next week. Now that we’re allowed to talk about it, however, I thought I’d rattle off a few of the key changes to the Total War formula that were shown off - or discussed - while I was there.

A simpler, stylised interface

Rome II’s UI continues the trend of ornate, era-appropriate artwork that began in Shogun 2. Each faction has their own style - the Mediterranean factions, for example, are themed around Greco-Roman pottery. Unit cards are a little larger, by default, but can be minimised - and they’ll shrink when your army grows, like the icons on an iOS dock. It didn't look like any elements had been removed - mousing over units still brings up a detailed status indication, for example - but there’s been an evident effort to get you looking at the battle more and the interface less, which I like.

More varied individual soldiers

The version of the game I saw was reportedly pre-alpha, and I was told that there’s still work to be done inserting greater variety into the game in terms of animation - there were a few awkwardly synchronised moments in the demo, as is Total War tradition. Nonetheless, the guys from CA spent a lot of time excitedly pointing out little details that add granularity and visual interest to Rome II’s battles. There’s now height variation between soldiers, with the Germanic forces notably taller than their Roman rivals. Men coming under fire from a unit of archers raise their shields dynamically as individuals. Slight differences in equipment establish the idea that these are individuals, not clones.

This extends to voice work, too: the orders you can hear being yelled if you zoom in close enough are situation-appropriate. A few I heard were definitely scripted for the Teutoburg Forest scenario - Roman leader Varus, for example, yelling for someone to go and find German ‘ally’ Arminius and his auxiliaries - but others weren't, and I was told that this is another way that CA are trying to communicate battle information in more interesting ways.



Tactical view

The new Total War’s highest zoom setting pulls you right back out to a top-down view of the battlefield with units represented as translucent coloured rectangles. I was told that the art for this is currently a placeholder, and that CA are experimenting with a few different looks - including depicting troops as pieces of Roman-style coloured glass. The view was used sparingly during the demo, usually as a way to quickly confirm the position of multiple units before crashing back down to give orders at the unit level. I can see the two options working together well, due to a major change to Total War’s battle mechanics:

Dynamic line-of-sight

In a first for the series, you are now only able to see what your men can see - no more abstraction of certain battlefield elements, no more always-visible generals represented by a star. This has the effect of making battles much more reactive - in the dense Teutoburg Forest, with its winding forest paths and multiple elevated ridge-lines, units could appear from the treeline or from around corners demanding an immediate tactical shift. According to the designers I spoke to, making this change has allowed them to fiddle with the pace and balance of battle in ways that will hopefully do away with some of the series’ long-standing problems. Heavy cavalry units, for example, will now be limited by the fact that wearing a lot of armour means that they’re not very maneuverable and they can’t see very much. They’ll need to be accompanied by light auxiliaries or scouts to be effective, and this in turn keeps lighter and faster units tactically relevant when a faction has the resources to afford more powerful troops. A modern analogy would be the relationship between a piece of heavy artillery and the advance spotters that mean it can actually hit something.

It also means that it’s potentially possible for an army to disguise its numbers or composition right up until the point where it lands on top of an enemy. I’m really excited about the potential this has - as ancient history nerds will know, there are innumerable instances where misinformation and deception earned victories for smaller forces that seem impossible on paper.

Baggage trains!

Creative Assembly were still experimenting with the inclusion of optional objectives for regular battles when I spoke to them, but one example that was mentioned was the presence of an army’s baggage train as a static encampment behind the lines of each engagement. Capturing or destroying supplies would be a way for a clever, maneuverable army to get the better of a larger one. Again - the way this works as a part of a regular campaign is still being worked on. But it’s great that they’re working to provide ways to win besides ‘bringing more dudes.’



Persistent terrain and ambushes

Once a terrain map is generated for the campaign it’ll be persistent for any subsequent battles that take place in the same area - in previous Total War games, a series of variously hilly, flat and coastal maps were rotated in and out for each new battle. What this means is that players will become familiar with the best places to attack, defend, and ambush enemy armies, turning the home-field advantage from a rule-based mechanic to a dynamic one based on your tactical understanding of your territory.

This works hand-in-hand with the ambush feature, which lets you put armies into hiding ready to jump out at anyone - enemy or ally - that you’d like them to force into battle. In ambush scenarios, the defending army won’t get a chance to deploy: they’ll be marching in a line when the battle starts and will have to move into defensive formation as soon as possible. The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest is a standalone mission, but hopefully situations like it will be repeatable in the main campaign.

Assuming direct control

Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai allowed you to fire certain pieces of siege equipment - such as the gatling gun - directly, using a crosshair. This feature will return in Rome II for siege equipment. I haven’t seen it in play yet, so that’s about all I know - but expect to manually fire some trebuchets.



Dynasty warriors

We still haven’t seen the new campaign map, but a few details crept out. When selecting a faction you’ll also choose which political power you belong to - in the case of the Romans, these are the Junii, Julii and Cornelii. You are still playing as Rome, effectively, but the presence of other interest groups within your faction gives you something to consider at home as well as abroad. The designers I spoke to described this as a substantially expanded version of Shogun 2’s loyalty mechanic.

Sudden but inevitable betrayal

Creative Assembly are experimenting with ways to keep the game interesting when your power as a faction has reached critical mass. The clean-up phase has always been a weakness of the series, the point in the game where you can’t be stopped, and the road to victory looks a lot like clicking ‘auto resolve’ over and over again. Part of this will be an expanded reputation system where your deeds throughout the entire campaign are remembered: brutality towards one enemy will be factored in by the others you might face, meaning that you’ll face increasingly violent opposition even from enemies who you otherwise outnumber, or alliances of necessity formed in the face of your rolling war machine. Likewise, internal politics can lead to your faction facing outright civil war when power vacuums form. It all sounds very appropriate to the period. The Romans had a bit of a problem with uppity generals crossing important rivers, don’t you know.

Have you heard this one before? A Roman general and his German ally go for a walk in the woods. Three legions of Roman soldiers end up dead. It's not a very good joke - not if you're Augustus, anyway. They were his legions. He would really, really like them back.



The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest is the basis for the latest trailer for Rome II, setting the stage for the historical scenario that I saw played when I last visited Creative Assembly. My full report can be found in PC Gamer 250 and will be going up on the site next week. Check out my run-down of the game's new features for a quick overview of the things that are changing in Total War's return to Rome.

Edit: Er, it looks like we embedded a previous Rome II video rather than the new trailer. Oops! Should be fixed now.

Creative Assembly continue to announce Rome 2's playable factions. Today's reveal heralds the Suebi as the sixth of the game's eight factions, meaning we're only a few weeks away from the full roster. "The Suebi are an indomitable Germanic culture dwelling to the north east of Gaul. Not a single people, but rather numerous tribes sharing a common language and similar religious beliefs," says the wiki page. From the look of the above screenshot, they also make passing wolves rather nervous.

"Heavily reliant on infantry and ambush tactics, raiding is their predominant form of conflict. Lightly equipped, most Suebi warriors make use of the framea, a javelin-like spear, as swords are a rarity. Often unarmoured they carried their rounded, oval or long, hexagonal shields into battle and wore little more than simple cloaks or other garments at times."

From the sounds of things, their Berserker units will prove powerful fighters, and the Night Hunters will camouflage well in forests. "Like other Germanic factions, the Suebi are masters of forest warfare and plunder. Stemming from a confederation of smaller Germanic tribes, they have a diplomatic edge when dealing with other barbarians and excel at fighting lesser tribes who dare to stand in their way." Despite this, their isolationist stance will likely hamper trade with outside factions.

The Suebi join Arverni, Iceni, Macedon, Carthage, and, of course, Rome. But which civilisations will make up the final two factions? Place you bets... Now!

Rome II is out in October.

The Gallic Arverni are the fifth of eight factions to be revealed as playable forces in Total War: Rome 2. Their chieftains lead the counter-charge against Roman advancement according to the will of their king, inspired by the sentiments of their druids. The Arverni were most notably led by the fierce Vercingetorix, who united the Gallic tribes against Ceasar in the great revolts of 52BC.

In combat, they're "heavily dependent on infantry," according to the Arverni page on the Rome 2 site. They'll "make great use of javelins and the devastating impact of the charge, led by elite warriors such as Spear Nobles and Oathsworn." More importantly, they'll do it while shouty faces and hairy, hairy chins.

At home, they're good goldsmiths, and turn a fair trade selling the produce of their prodigious craftsmen. It's the charisma of their leaders that makes them tempting campaign avatars, however. Their ability to unite tribes and amass great numbers should make them a good underdog choice for those of us who'd rather burn down the Roman Empire than help it prosper.

Rome 2 is a videogame I'm very much looking forward to. It's out in October.

Last week, Ironclad Games’ director and co-owner Blair Fraser called the RTS genre “a dying market.” The genre convention of base building is “done,” Fraser says, and while a handful of games like Company of Heroes “may be profitable,” it’s his belief that RTSes are “very niche.”

Hearing these comments from a strategy studio we respect sparked our own discussion: what’s the state of real-time strategy? In this Face Off debate, T.J. and Evan talk about the health of the genre, and debate whether its popularity has waned to never return, or if it’s actually seeing a resurgence.

Jump over to the next page for more opinions from the PC Gamer community, and make your own arguments in the comments. Debate team captains: construct additional arguments.

Evan: Let’s be clear: this isn’t something that I or we are rooting for. We love RTSes. Command & Conquer was one of my formative games. But the decline of real-time strategy as a popular experience is indisputable. RTS has shrank from the smorgasbord of experiences it offered in the ‘90s and early ‘00s—the era of Warcraft, Age of Empires, Ground Control, Homeworld, and Total Annihilation. I don’t think there’s any hope for a comeback.

TJ: Oh ye of little faith. Well, I’m sure you expected I’d play the eSports card. So... bam! There it is, on the table. All of the most popular eSports are either traditional RTSes, or spins on traditional RTSes. Competitive strategy gaming is drawing millions of viewers in hundreds of countries. How can you say a genre that’s driving that kind of revolution is dying? It looks vibrant and energetic from where I’m sitting.

Evan: The eSports “revolution” you’re describing can be attributed to the increased access to fast, high-quality internet video. eSports is in a better state than it was in the age of DSL and dial-up, sure, but StarCraft is the only conventional RTS with any success as an eSport.

TJ: So far. We’re only two and a half years in. That’s like saying sports were dead back when all they had was Throw the Rock Through the Hoop.

Evan: I’m glad to see eSports doing as well as it is. But really, this is about what we play and pay for, not about what we spectate. It’s about how few games are being made in a genre we used to count as a pillar of PC gaming. Most RTS studios are either closing or scrambling to change their core competency. Relic released a shooter in 2011. Petroglyph laid off 19 people in December and saw its game, End of Nations, brought in-house by its publisher. Sins of a Dark Age, which was initially pitched as an RTS-meets-MOBA, just ditched a “Commander Mode” RTS component that seemed promising. And Gas Powered Games, after declaring that it’d stop adding new content to Age of Empires Online, and after laying off most of its employees, is clinging to a Kickstarter campaign that seems doomed.

I don’t want to see any of these studios shuttered. We need independent, creative groups like Gas Powered in the industry. But this is simply not a healthy genre. Real-time strategy doesn’t have enough fans to support it.

TJ: I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I would be really, genuinely surprised if there were actually fewer total people playing RTS than in the days of WarCraft III. Gaming, and even PC gaming specifically, have only gained traction since then. Huge traction. I think the fans are definitely there. If anything is dying, it’s the idea that RTSes should be given the same treatment, as shooters or action games, whose audiences have grown faster.

If anything, not enough devs have caught on to how you make and market an RTS in the modern market. You don’t spend Call of Duty money on an these things. And that’s hardly a stubborn enough problem that it would leave us without “any hope for a comeback.”

Evan: Not enough devs have “caught on” because it’s such a challenge for an RTS to make the money of a modern budget back. Again, look at Age of Empires Online. Its parent games were beloved and immensely popular. It reinvented itself as a free game. Gas Powered abandoned it just eight months after release. Very few people are playing it.

Should base-building be retired as a game mechanic? Will Kickstarter allow more studios to market RTS games directly to the people that want them?

TJ: I pin the failure of AOEO on a weak launch. There just wasn’t enough content—and only two factions? Really? If it had launched as the fleshed-out experience it became, I think it would have had a lot more success. Once the gaming masses have decided your game is lackluster, there’s not a lot you can do to bring them back.

Evan: I don’t know... if a free Age of Empires can’t make it, what chance do lesser-knowns like End of Nations have of surviving? I expect a similar fate for the next Command & Conquer, which will also be free to play. Face it: all the recent experiments with RTS have failed.

TJ: So did all the experimentations with human flight for hundreds of years. And they’ve only failed if your definition is pretty narrow.

Evan: This isn’t science—it’s business, and consumers continue to leave the genre. I think a lot of those people are flocking to a genre that was originally a spin-off of Warcraft III. Dota 2 and League of Legends are more popular and successful than StarCraft because designers realized that most people are intimidated by base building and managing a whole army.

TJ: Most people don’t play PC games (in the core audience sense) in the first place. What I’m saying is that RTS is a niche, but it’s no smaller of a niche, in terms of number of players, than it was in the glory days when it represented a higher percentage, because there just weren’t as many gamers. And if you want to talk about consumers expressing themselves, look no further than the 2.2-million-dollar Planetary Annihilation Kickstarter. That’s about as RTS as RTS gets, and it shows that there’s still plenty of vitality in the space beyond the traditional model of publishers bent on spending more than they can make back on these types of games.

Evan: Planetary Annihilation looks terrific! Like any rational human, I’m looking forward to weaponizing asteroids. But Planetary’s “success” is still just 44,000 people. Compare that to another recent spiritual successor made by another small studio—MechWarrior Online, which made 5 million dollars through its pre-order program. Mech games aren’t exactly mainstream—publishers have been afraid to back them for a decade.

Calling RTS a niche is accurate, I guess. But compared to the “glory days,” as you’ve labeled them, I think the genre as it exists now is a clump of lifeboats that’ve escaped from the capsized Titanic.

TJ: You’re comparing apples to robots here. Pre-orders and Kickstarter aren’t necessarily the same thing. I’m not arguing that RTS is as lucrative a genre as, say, shooters or action games. But there are plenty of people on those lifeboats to start a thriving island society. Which is arguably what PC gaming is: a series of thriving, passionate communities.

Evan: Perhaps that island society of yours can gather enough resources to build a second base, tech up, then construct air units. I hope they won’t have to resort to cannibalism.

For more opinions on PC gaming, follow Evan, T.J., and PC Gamer on Twitter. On the next page: more opinions from the community.



Here’s what folks on Twitter wrote back when we asked the following:

@pcgamer no way its dead. It's the best genre by far and the crowning area of pc dominance.— Hilander (@Canisrah) February 4, 2013

@pcgamer We may never see another Age of Empires, but we have Planetary Annihilation, CoH, DoW, SC, and MOBAs. Gimme Homeworld 3!— Josh B (@Branstetter87) February 4, 2013


@pcgamer not dead, but shrinking. By listening too intently to the hardcore crowd, fun simplicity has become overwhelming complexity.— Ryan Aleson (@TacticalGenius) February 5, 2013


@pcgamer RTS genre is alive more than in past, just look at Planetary Annihilation – one of the most funded games on Kickstarter!— Adam Wayland (@AdamWayland86) February 6, 2013


@pcgamer It is a genre in decline in terms of IPs and also game scale. Dying not necessarily but more like small and established.— Alexander Lai(@Lex_Lai) February 4, 2013


@pcgamer It's dying because of the repetitive formulas that every new game has. It's like the state of MMOs, no MMORPG can compete with WoW.— Jesús Jiménez-Lara (@MrVariaZ) February 4, 2013


@pcgamer RTS is not a dying market. It is, was and always will be a niche market. Some people them but most people hate them— Chris Thieblot (@christhieblot) February 5, 2013

@pcgamer Single player games are dying, RTSes are dying, adventure games are dying... nobody tell Valve, Uber, or Telltale!— Jacob Dieffenbach (@dieffenbachj) February 4, 2013


@pcgamer Traditional RTS games translate poorly to consoles, and few devs making PC exclusives outside major franchises.— Eric Watson (@RogueWatson) February 5, 2013

@pcgamer I love my rts games. There the first games I ever played and I don't plan on stopping any time soon.— Scott Ratter (@napatakking) February 5, 2013

This week, Chris and Toms Senior and Francis talk Teleglitch, SimCity, Crysis 3 multiplayer and more. Includes our thoughts on the troubles at Gas Powered Games, Jon Blow's next game, and your
questions from Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or download the MP3 directly. The YouTube version will be going up early next week as I've, er, got a train to catch.

Follow PC Gamer UK on Twitter to be informed when we're putting the call out for questions. Here are our individual accounts:

Chris - @cthursten
Tom F - @pentadact
Tom S - @pcgludo

Show notes

Gas Powered Games' Wildman Kickstarter and Matt Barton's interview with Chris Taylor.
Our collected thoughts on Crysis 3 multiplayer, plus The Hidden: Source mod.
/r/GuildWarsDyeJob, the Guild Wars 2 dress-up subreddit that Chris is weirdly excited about.
The Dota 2 character art guide.
The nascent Twitter feed for the Absolute Bedlam Dota 2 tournament.
Try a round or two of Cheese or Font.