The republic of Creative Assembly continue to work on the list of complaints presented to them by agitated gamers after the launch of Total War: Rome 2. Much like last time, Patch 3 makes changes throughout the game, focusing on key weaknesses in the formation, including performance and AI tweaks. CA have also focused fire on multiplayer, and claim to have significantly improved the online campaign speed, which will now be determined by the slowest player's machine. Patch 3 is currently in beta, and can be applied through the game's Steam properties menu. A general release should come later this week. You can see the full changelist below.

Technical and Performance Issues


Significant improvements to multiplayer campaign speed, which is now limited by the slowest players machine.
Frame Rate improvements on Campaign map on low spec Core2 Duo cpu’s in windowed mode.
Fix for lock-ups reported on loading into battle in DirectX9.
Frame Rate improvements on Campaign map across all configurations when setting Effects Quality to Low or High.
Fix for minor stutters & terrain rendering glitches on some gpu’s when rendering the terrain.
Fixed a bug in the Graphics Benchmark frame rate display that reported the wrong per-frame time.
LAN multiplayer modes are now accessible when Steam is in Offline mode.
Fix for graphics crash caused by changing the games screen resolution shortly after loading a new Campaign.
Fix for a crash when performing an agent action on a wounded/assassinated unit in Campaign modes.
Further campaign map optimisations.
Optimised fire and smoke effects on the campaign map (improving the frames per second on all graphics setting, especially during the late gameplay where all faction territories are revealed)
Fix in Multiplayer Campaign, after Player 1 offers diplomacy to Player 2, Player 2 made a counter offer, then cancelled the offer, which caused the game to lock up for Player 1.
Fix to prevent the games user interface from flickering when SLI is enabled.
Improved culling on the campaign map to prevent props (e.g. the pyramids) from disappearing when the camera was set to certain angles.
Improved the desktop icon for Total War: ROME II to support multiple resolutions.


Gameplay Improvements


When the player is attacked whilst in a minor settlement (not provincial capital), a new "Sally Forth" button is available on the pre-battle panel to fight the attackers in an open field battle.
All armies that are forced to retreat, and then are attacked, no longer have a *Baggage Train battle. It is a normal open field battle with any campaign generated penalties applied as before.
When an army in forced march is attacked on the Campaign Map, an ambush battle is now triggered, rather than a baggage train Victory Point battle .
Combined battles where there is no navy in the defending alliance do not have *Victory Points/Baggage Trains.
Combined battles where the defender has a navy will retain their Victory Point.
Victory Points have had their capture time increased by 3x their previous length.
Attacking AI is now more likely to prioritise taking Victory Points in Siege Battles / City Assault Battles.
AI controlled Agents are now more likely to act upon the player's settlements instead of standing around outside of them.
Fixed issue in battle AI which prevented siege assault groups from responding to nearby threats.
Fixed timing issue in battle AI which could cause the attacking AI in port sieges to stop updating.
Substantially reduced free hits from enemies in battles, when moving a unit through enemy units (without attacking them), so units can disengage with less penalty.
Smaller and depleted AI controlled forces are now less likely to survive auto-resolved battles in Campaign modes.
Cavalry can no longer capture Victory Points in battles while mounted. They can still neutralise the Victory Points if they were previously in enemy control, and capture Victory Points when dismounted.
The size / radius of capture points has been increased in Coastal battles.
Fix for some instances of passive AI during River Crossing battles, when the AI is defending.
Fixed issue which prevented reinforcement artillery ships deploying.
Fixed issue in Siege Battles where the AI attempted to use breaches and gates which they could not reach.
In Battles, the number of ranks now factor into bracing mass bonus for collision system, i.e. thin lines will make you lose your bracing bonus against cavalry charges from the front
Fixed chasing down of routers at the end of battles, so they engage in combat more often and can be killed more easily.
Satrapies can no longer sign peace treaties with the enemies of their overlord (but still able to automatically make peace if their overlord signs a peace treaty with the enemy) in Campaign modes.
Snow ground type now replaces grass in snow attrition areas of the battle map.
Units in Testudo formation will now respond to an order to attack city gates in a City Assault battles.
Men throwing torches to ignite gates in battles, now have less chance of failing to throw their torches and hit the gate, if ordered more than once to ignite the same gate.
AI houses can no longer secure promotions without first meeting the required age and rank in Campaign modes.
Removed old concealed by distance logic, that was incompatible with the newer visibility system. For example, units that are visible at range could look like they were hidden on their user interface, when they could be seen.
Pikemen can move out of melee when pike phalanx is active in battles. For example, If only one of the pikeman is attacked, the entire unit will no longer start to be unresponsive to orders.
Improved responsiveness of Siege Equipment when dropped and picked back up multiple times.
In Campaign modes, the number of siege equipment entries is now capped to be the length of the siege - 1
Further improvements to AI collision detection with Deployables in battle.
Units that charge while in formation (e.g. block formation) stop sooner on contact with the enemy, to reduce "blobbing" where units converge into a disorganised brawl.
Fixed bug with missile units on ships not firing on enemies reliably during battles.
Fixed bug with ship artillery not firing on buildings reliably in battles.
Fix for ships surviving on the campaign map after sinking on the battle map.
Fix missile ships getting stuck when targeting land units just outside of their range.
Reduced the chance of AI (enemy) reinforcements and the players reinforcements joining a battle from the same location and therefore engaging in combat instantly in battles from Campaign modes.


Balancing Changes


Hit points for all units have been increased in combat.
Melee defence has been reduced for most melee cavalry units and for some elite infantry units.
Reduced melee weapon damage in battles, and increased melee defence from shields.
Various trait effects are now working as intended.
Improved pike weapon damage balancing in battles.
Fatigue for running and being in combat has been increased in battles.
Further tweaks and rebalancing has been made to unit morale in battles.
Elite infantry morale has been reduced slightly during battles.
Experience level thresholds have been increased for units.
Special ability cool down times have been re-balanced in battles.
Building costs have been updated to reflect the changes in building effects in Campaign modes.
Morale bonuses from training and religious building chains have been reduced in Campaign modes. Instead, these buildings now give more varied bonuses to the units.
Cost of experience bonuses for Custom and Multiplayer battles have been reduced.
Squalor and food consumption have been rebalanced (reduction for higher-level buildings) in Campaign modes.
The Headhunt ability has been re-balanced in battles.
The charge bonus for Celtic, Briton and Germanic units have been reduced.
The masses of horses and men on the battlefield have been made more reasonable.
Reduced the mass of camel units in battle.


Usability Improvements


The Balance Of Power bar on the Diplomacy screen now shows the correct ratio, rather than just 50/50.
Improved the desynchronisation detection in Multiplayer Campaign mode, and players are now given a popup message when a desynchronisation has occurred, with the options to resynchronise the game to continue, or quit the game.
When the host leaves the team lobby in Quick Battle multiplayer mode, a new host is found.
Improved multiplayer compatibility between players who own the Greek States DLC and those who don't.
In Multiplayer Ambush Battles, if Player 1 clicks the "Start Battle" button, and the Player 2 waits for the timer to run out for the battle to start, Player 2 will no longer be locked into Cinematic Mode with limited user interface controls.
All battles now end 5 seconds after the victory is decided (This used to be 10 seconds).
In Multiplayer Land Battles, when deployment is over, enemy armies will no longer be visible, when they are supposed to be hidden, for a couple of seconds before fading out.
In Multiplayer battles, a player who has conceded defeat will now turn into a spectator. They can then exit the battle if they want to.
Fix for battle music getting paused while in slow battle speed.
When on the campaign map, if an agent is placed close to the edge of an enemy settlement as it expands (builds a building in a construction slot) the agent is now teleported out of the way of the expansion, so they do not become stuck within the settlement. If the agent was already stuck in an expanded settlement before this update, they will remain stuck, and have to be disbanded. This update will prevent this situation from happening in the future.
Slightly improve combat responsiveness and animations for formation attacks in battles.
Fixed bug with ship artillery not firing at all after using first-person mode in battles.
The Attacking Testudo can no longer be activated in melee during battles.
Battering rams moves out the way correctly after battering a gate down in battles.
The Tortoise battering ram animation has been tweaked slightly so it collides with walls better, at the point of impact when a wall is destroyed.
Multiple waypoints displayed for units in siege equipment, as previously only 1 was displayed.
Selecting Dismount on mounted units continuously during deployment in battles will move the units towards their last ordered position less after dismounting.
During battles, if a cavalry unit is ordered to move to a location, and then ordered to dismount, the men will now dismount but not continue to move to the previously ordered location.
The number of arrows is now correctly depleted when units fire whilst moving during battles.
Correct bonuses are now being applied to units from Workshop buildings.
Fixed bug with pike phalanx not getting back into pike stance after running.
Charge bonuses are now correctly applied to units recruited in certain provinces.
Projectile impact effects hitting units and buildings are now positioned more accurately.
Improved fire effects for buildings, siege vehicles and deployables during battles.
Improved some visual effects for during battles. Better burnt version of buildings with burning embers, and running water down roofs and vertical surfaces in rain.
Damaged visual effects have been improved on the campaign.
Fixed Briton Chariot unit attributes.
Fix for Scythian horse unit variation.
The achievements "Noble Master", "Spymaster" and "Champion of the Gods" now unlock sooner after their requirements have been met.
Fix for the Campaign map terrain disappearing when repeatedly toggling between the Campaign Map and Campaign Tactical Map.
Province level bonuses (such as edicts with food bonuses) are now taken into account in the food level displayed in a province overview in Campaign modes.
Settlement labels on the campaign map are now positioned more accurately and no longer get offset from the settlements.
In the Province panel in Campaign modes, provinces can now be sorted by their level of food production.
Several Eastern buildings now correctly consume food (instead of either not consuming anything or giving contradicting public order effects) in Campaign modes.
The Qanat building (in the Eastern agricultural chain) now produces a small amount of food in campaign mode.
The warning message that informs the player that they are not researching any technology when they press the "End Turn" button in Single Player Campaigns is now also displayed in Multiplayer Campaigns.
The players armies in Ambush stance will no longer move by themselves in Campaign modes, which happened on rare occasions.
Fix for user interface bug showing the wrong tax level on the Province Details panel when the "Tax province" button was ticked in Campaign modes.
Culture conversion coming from some characters now correctly shows up as "character" in the culture tooltip, no longer as "building".
In Campaign modes, the culture that Consecrated Grounds belong to is now displayed in their title, to make it clearer why they need to be converted.
The "Reduces slave population decline" icon in the information panel when placing the mouse over the "Slave Trader" in the Commons buildings section in Campaign modes is now displayed as green instead of red (as it's a positive affect).
The first building in the equipment chain (E.g. Workshop for Hellenic, Quartermaster for Eastern etc.) can no longer be bypassed by converting from another faction's equipment chain without researching.
Technologies are now required to create the Level 4 Jewelsmith building, to prevent an exploit.
Improved ship melee/ramming target selection in battles.
Fixed boarding mode button state issues when attempting to board a ship in battle.
In battles, men who have already boarded an enemy ship no longer jump into the sea once their ship has started to sink or back onto their sinking ship. (Men who remain on the sinking ship still jump into the water.)
Improved Advisor lip sync in various pieces of advice in Campaign modes.
Clicking the "Square" special ability as a unit is attempting to man a siege tower will no longer stick the siege tower to that unit in battles.
When an agent is selected in Campaign mode, and the player right clicks on a settlement to sabotage the enemy, the menu will no longer act erratically.
When the player had a subject to deal with in the politics screen and the subject had an infamy effect, this effect once seen persisted in being shown for all other characters even if the subject is dismissed. This has been fixed.
Fix for some misaligned text on a tooltip displayed when a settlement with a port is blockaded by an enemy, and the player selects the enemy and places the mouse over the settlement.
Improved small glitches with Campaign selection markers and Forced March visual effects sometimes being displayed in the wrong positions when units move.
Fixed some inconsistent ability names for General Skill Types.
In Campaign mode, Roman "Basilica of X" temples have now been renamed to "Precinct of X".
Tooltip regarding the "Armoured Siege Units" technology bonus effects on pre-siege vehicles (all variants of Galleries, Siege Towers, Ladders and Battering Rams) is now clearer.
Fixed the tooltip when placing the mouse over the Columns I, II and III for War Exercises, Warrior Code, Tribal Economy and Druidic Council technology trees in the Technology Panel in Campaign modes.
Two pieces of advice from the Battlefield Advisor relating to flanking were mixed up in Italian and Spanish. These have now been corrected.
Fixed a couple of instances where what the Battlefield Advisors was saying did not match the text displayed in Spanish.
Some steep terrain in a Greek Minor Port battle map has been levelled out, to stop ships from going under the beach when they disembark.
Improvements to the wall connectivity in a Greek Port battle map.
Boiling oil poured from gate houses in battles will look better where it intersects with the ground.
Improved impact animations when pig carcasses hit the ground when fired as poison rounds form artillery in battles.
While crossing rivers in battles, units footsteps now default to mud sounds instead of water sounds.
Fix for a small hole in the terrain in a Greek Minor Port battle map.
When the player is defending in a siege battle from Campaign mode, and the enemy partially capture a Victory Point on the battle map, then the player re-gains control of the Victory Point, the Battlefield Advisor will no longer say "Our enemy have lost a victory point".
Fix for the Battlefield Advisor sometimes referring to the players own reinforcements as "Enemy Reinforcements" during battles.
Added some localisation text and audio fixes for French, Italian, German, Spanish, Czech, Russian, Polish and Turkish.
Added Stonehenge back to the custom battle map at these coordinates 0.137, 0238 (Iska).
Fixed typo on 'Conscription' edict in English.
Improved culling of certain rocks on the battlefield.
Added French, Italian, German and Spanish localisation to the word "Settlement" in the Agent Action Panel in Campaign modes.
Various text and grammar fixes for the Campaign user interface.

You could read a book in the time it takes for Rome 2 to calculate AI movements between turns. Our Chris Thursten has made good progress with Game of Thrones. I, meanwhile, tend to make a cup of tea every end-turn event, and then run my empire with the urgency and recklessness of a hyper-stimulated general with a permanently full bladder. To the delight of my internal organs, CA are trying to trim those long AI thinking times down. They've posted a list of fixes made by a beta version of the second patch, which went into testing on Friday, of which "campaign performance optimisations" and "AI round time improvements" are the most welcome. There are also GPU optimisation tweaks listed alongside significant in-game changes to unit speed and morale-battering flank charges. The fix-list is here for your perusal.

Technical and Performance Issues

Campaign performance optimisations.
Campaign AI round time improvements (greatest effect during early game).
A new "Limited" option has been added to the "Show AI Player Moves" settings in Single Player an Multiplayer Campaign modes, this enables the player to see all movement of enemy factions, all movement within the players regions, and all movement within sea that the player has ports in during the AI turns.
Improved AI recruitment decisions in Campaign modes. Further improvements planned for subsequent patches.
Pathfinding optimisation on the Campaign Map.
Fix for "Level of Detail" distances scaling incorrectly when the "Field of View" is changed which reduces the chance of the "Intelligent Zoom" key, causing "zombie like” low quality textures on unit faces in battles.
A new warning message has been added to loading screen to inform the player when graphics memory is running low, and the game is downgrading the players graphics settings. This can be overriden, allowing the game to use system memory for graphics (VRAM) by ticking the "Unlimited video memory" option in the graphics menu.
Increased the frame rate and reduced frame stuttering in battles on certain GPUs.
Improved compatibility for graphics cards with multiple GPUs.
Added earlier Multiplayer Campaign resyncronisation detection, upon loading save games which allows resyncronisation in more cases.
More conservative out-of-the-box graphics settings and resolution for DirectX 10 and 11 on Mobile GPUs
Improved the processing speed of the default deployment placement, reducing battle loading times on some battle maps.
Fixed battle crash bug caused by the default deployment placement.
Crash fix for when the player placed the mouse over a garrison force of a region in Campaign mode.
Fix for crash loading save games that were created on the "settlement captured" screen in Campaign modes.
Fix for a crash when holding the and keys down, and selecting a unit card, when no unit cards where previously selected in Campaign and Battle modes.
Fix for crash caused by forming a Confederation in Campaign modes.
Some desyncronisations have been fixed in multiplayer city / port assault battles.
Crash fix for when multiple AI reinforcements arrive in a single player siege battle in Campaign mode.
Fix for crash when selecting Custom Battle mode after fighting several different Multiplayer battles.
Fix for a crash in 4v4 custom or multiplayer battles caused by the battle AI.
Fix for crash when cancelling a game request for a password protected game whilst in a Multiplayer battle lobby.
Fix some crashes in multiplayer campaign mode, when one player quit the game, it would cause the other player to crash.
Fixed a Multiplayer crash which happened when a client joined a lobby and was being allocated to the wrong slot.
Fix for a very rare crash when launching a new campaign.
Fixed rare battlefield loading lockup.
Fix for a rare crash caused by animal handlers in battles.
Fix for crash that happens when AI unit triggers raise banner special ability when no human units are selected in battles.


Gameplay Improvements

Reduced infantry run speed, charge speed and acceleration in battles.
The low level casualty moral penalties have been significantly reduced in battles.
Improved balancing for Food and Squalor in Campaign Mode.
Campaign AI is more likely to make a stand when defending its final settlement, but may still seek out another home, if they fear losing the final battle.
Encampments battles are no longer incorrectly merged with Coastal battles, which lead to forts floating in the air when a friendly navy reinforced an army in the Fortification stance.
Improved ship movement speeds in battles.
Shock cavalry run speed and charge speed have been increased in battles.
Increased flanking morale penalties.
Added icons to indicate activity in the Technology and Faction screens during a campaign.
Fix for the boarding/ramming button which showed the incorrect state in certain circumstances in battles.
Fix for a bug that sometimes made it impossible to exchange units between a transported land force and another land force on the Campaign map.
Fix for armies on the sea getting stuck in patrol stance in Campaign modes.
Fixed splitting an embedded army from a navy which sometimes caused the player to get stuck in the Prologue Campaign.
Some missions in single player and multiplayer Campaign have been fixed and now execute correctly.
When a settlement is captured via a siege battle, with a friendly naval fleet blockading its port, the ownership of the port is now changed correctly to the friendly navy fleet on capture.
Fix for AI taking inappropriate sized siege equipment into battle when the user changed the settlement wall height, via the map selection settings, in Custom Battle mode.
Fix for defending armies under AI control grouping together at the edge of their deployment zone, during Ambush battles when the player choses to wait before attacking them.
Improved AI and scripting in the Raphia Historical Battle.
Fixed a bug preventing the player from progressing in The Invasion of Samnium prologue chapter, if they had spent all of their funds before being instructed to recruit a General (and therefore having no funds to do so).
The Attribute increases for an agent accompanying an army now activate its associated effects on the general of that army in Campaign modes.
Improved AI collision detection with Deployables in battle.
In Multiplayer Campaign mode, one player can no longer cancel recruitment during the other players turn.
The order of events leading up to the Battle of Bovianum in the prologue have been re-scripted. The player now gets multiple turns to construct siege equipment.
Fixed issues with not enough time being given for certain advisor lines to play in different languages in the prologue.
Fix for units floating in the air while climbing siege towers in battle, when the tower is placed on a slope.
Attacking siege ladders will no longer clip through the gate house in the siege on Bovianum battle during The Invasion of Samnium chapter in Prologue Campaign.
The victory screen in Multiplayer Campaign mode now shows the correct title for both players.
The Basilica of Vulcan religious building now applies the correct bonus to recruitment cost reduction in Campaign Mode.
Added level indicators to the Sanctuary of Austro & Sanctuary of Fraujaz shrines in Campaign mode and the Encyclopaedia.
Fix for settlement expansion trapping / blocking units movement on the campaign map in very rare cases.
Improved the terrain in a small Barbarian city battle map.
Minor bug fixes for Roman and Barbarian siege battle maps.
During battles, players are no longer able to un-pause the game while in the options menus.

Usability improvements

In Campaign mode, exempting a province from tax will no longer incorrectly adjust the food number in the province info panel left side of the screen.
Improved multiplayer lobby discovery, reducing the chance of finding *multiplayer lobbies with the wrong battle type.
Removed the red tint from the sky in battles.
Fix for "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day" achievement failing to unlock when its requirements were met in some situations.
The "Quaestor" achievement should now unlock correctly, when completing the Prologue campaign
Fixed the inability to select the previous faction, when an army is automatically loaded due to a battle type change during battle setup.
Improved the clarity of stats displayed for Slaves Economic Effect when placing the mouse over "Slaves" in the Province Details panel on the Campaign map.
Fix for rare cases of broken save games in Campaign mode.
Fix for Campaign mode bug, where a hostile agent and the players' ship became stuck in the same position, with neither one able to move.
Fix for very rare agent pathfinding issue, which caused the game progression to become impossible in Campaign modes.
Removed the ability to loading the wrong type of units into a battle from a saved army pre-set in Custom Battle mode.
In Multiplayer battle setup, unit restrictions related to "Battle type" are no longer desynchronised between the host and client, so only the correct units can be chosen.
Defending armies in an Ambush Battle can no longer load an army containing *Fixed Artillery and other Siege Equipment.
Fixed the tooltip displayed when placing the mouse over the garrison in enemy settlements, while the settlement is under siege.
The Public Order "Change per turn" stat is now displayed as the sum of all of its "Contributing Factors" on the Province Info panel in Campaign mode.
Right-clicking on the Aggressive, Balanced and Protective stance buttons when Autoresolving a battle in campaign mode will now take the player to the Encyclopedia, where these stances are explained in more detail.
More detailed descriptions added to the tooltips for the "Occupy, Loot and Raze" buttons after successfully capturing a settlement on the Campaign map.
Improved icons for Province Effects in Campaign mode.
Fixed an error with uploading stats when a multiplayer battle was ended prematurely.
The "Force March" movement effect on the campaign map (looks like a whirlwind) are now correctly removed from the screen when the AI move their army.
Correction to the Assault Hexeres unit card in the Parthia faction during battles, which had no colour mask and appeared black.
The buttons to change pages in the Leaderboards menu have been fixed, so more players can be seen on the Leaderboards.
The Provinces list in Campaign mode can now be scrolled with the mouse wheel.
Units in a recruitment queue, in a province with its capital under siege, now have an "infinity sign" icon to indicate that the "turns to recruit" is infinite while the siege is maintained in Campaign mode.
In the "Controls" menu under the "Settings" option in the main menu, when the player modifies the keyboard controls, and saves them, the new name for these controls is now replaces the "Classic Total War" name.
Added a tooltip to say "Left-click to remove unit from recruitment queue" for units that are queued for hire in Campaign mode.
Added a tooltip to make ruined buildings more obvious in Campaign mode.
Added tooltips to "Weather" and "Time of Day" settings in the Custom Battle menu.
Fixes and corrections for text in the encyclopaedia have been made.
Minor text and grammar corrections in Campaign Modes.
Fix for some German text not fitting into the available text space in the campaign mode user interface.
Improved text formatting in the Objectives panel in Campaign mode.
Added some localisation text fixes for French, Italian, German, Spanish, Czech, Russian, Polish and Turkish.
Fixed some missing text on the Diplomacy screen in Campaign modes.
Added white outline to Armoured Legionaries unit cards in battle.

Friends! Romans! PC gamers! Want a free copy of Total War: Rome II—and a beefy new gaming PC to play it on? We're giving away a Digital Storm Bolt PC and a copy of Creative Assembly's newest strategy game to a lucky new general.

To enter, first go to the PC Gamer Facebook page and like us (you like us, you really like us!). Then fill out this handy form and hope for the best. One lucky winner will receive a Digital Storm Bolt custom gaming desktop PC, along with a copy of Rome II. Five still-lucky runner-ups will get a copy of Rome II for their existing gaming rigs.

Entries need to be submitted by Sunday, Sept. 22, and you only get one entry per person. This contest is for US readers only. Check out our Total War: Rome II review to learn why the Gauls should be crushed. Good luck!

Total War: Rome 2 came out last week, but though it was just short of greatness, it has also had a bit of a rough launch. Some players have been unable to login and others are reporting game-crashing bugs. Now Total War creative director Mike Simpson has posted to the game's forums to apologize and lay out the plan for the next few weeks.

“Rome II is a big and complex game and, especially on PC, we are always conscious of the wide variety of different combinations of hardware out there and, while we do test extensively before launch, it is clear that we have failed some of you and we will look at the way in which launch games in the future,” Simpson writes. “Again, I know this is scant comfort to you if you have a set-up that is not performing well, but we do intend to fix your specific problem—whoever you are and whatever it is—as soon as we can.”

According to Simpson’s post, about two percent of all players are reporting issues that are preventing the game from being launched. Considering that Rome 2 enjoyed record-breaking amounts of pre-ordering from devoted fans, that two percent is a small fraction of a large number.

Our own review of Rome 2 found the game enjoyable, but hampered by glitchy AI and some faltering political systems. According to Simpson, both the technical and design teams are looking into updates that will overhaul various parts of the game. It’s good of Creative Assembly to not leave its fans high and dry, but couldn't this have been cleaned up a bit before launch?

Creative Assembly have announced the update and support strategy for their latest Total War, and, like the city it's based on, revealed that Rome II won't be patched in a day. The developers plan to release fixes for the game "on a weekly basis in the immediate future", targeting their updates based on player feedback, as they configure and tune the release post-launch.

"As with all large PC releases, the variety of hardware and general system specifications can cause issues for some people and we are urgently working to help get them the right experience," they say. "As announced last month, we are also planning to tweak the balancing, AI routines and other features now that we’re getting real-time metric feedback from thousands of players."

"The result is that the first update to the game will drop this Friday, with the intention to update the game on a weekly basis in the immediate future."

The full patch notes will be released on Friday, but CA say that it will target "known instances of crashes due to hardware conflicts alongside several other performance fixes." In the meantime, they point people to the game's support forums, where a number of fixes and workarounds have been suggested for those experiencing graphics issues.

Our review found a great game, marred slightly by AI bugs. As such, it's good to see a stated commitment to fixing the issues that players are having.

Et tu, CA? In a tradition dating back to roughly 44 BC, the developers of Total War: Rome 2 are celebrating the launch of their game with a trailer. If you can tear your eyes away from the sight of Steam downloading, unlocking, or perhaps even playing their latest strategy lasagne*, spare some time for a CGI retelling of ancient history. As with all of history, everybody dies.



If you'd prefer to see some footage of the game as she is played, you can do that too.

The game is now available as a Steamworks package, for £29.99/$59.95. Should you get it? Tom Senior's review revealed a game with some AI oddities, that nevertheless offered the series' best empire management and land-battles.

*Because it's layered, see? Look, it's still early.

The Roman senate will weep for Crassipes. They'll talk proudly of how the great general threw himself against the walls of Massalia. They'll talk of how he burned the gates and took the central square, and how a dozen Averni javelins ended his illustrious command of Legio I Italica there. But will they talk of the fleet barely a mile away that sat still and watched the great man lemming his way into the history books? Do they realise that the patriot they adored was sent intentionally to his death? I wonder what that would do if they knew that the fate of Crassipes and all the armies and settlements of Rome were not beholden to the gods, but to one bearded games journalist moving them like pawns on a vast playing board.

What a beautiful board it is - an intricate papier mache caricature of Europe, decorated with landmarks, rivers and exaggerated topography. Total War has come a long way from the papery maps of Shogun, but its form is the same. You must guide your chosen nation to glory by managing cities, conducting diplomacy, plotting espionage and moving armies to conquer new settlements. When your armies meet resistance, you dive into a real-time battle and command the troops personally.

In contrast with the focused, shorter campaigns of Napoleon and Shogun 2, Rome 2 hauls Total War back onto the global stage for a huge and varied campaign. It's 272 BC, and nine playable nations and dozens of others, from Britannia to the northern tip of Africa, to Syria and the eastern tribes are elbowing for space. Rome sets its wardogs against Celtic berserkers in the west, Greece flexes its cultural muscle to gain support in the central territories. In the east, Egypt enslaves nations with its chariots and raging war elephants. This is grand strategy at its most ambitious, not least because Rome 2 is committed to giving the pawns you're sacrificing faces, voices and personalities of their own.



That's why I felt a twinge of guilt about poor Crassipes. Generals are vital resources in Rome 2. Previously, you could raise tiny armies of a couple of troops and a leader would be picked from their ranks. Now troops cannot move at all unless they have a general, and the number of generals you can have is limited by the size of your empire. The legions they command are also persistent entities that can gain stat-buffing 'military tradition' affixes over time. It's a significant shift that affects everything from how armies are constructed to how territories operate on the strategic map. Territories are now grouped into 'provinces' which can be boosted by production-boosting edicts if you own them entirely (useful for swift social engineering in the face of food shortage), and your cities' buildings now have province-wide effects. Construct a high-grade military training building in Rome and the troops you unlock can be recruited from anywhere within the Italia region. New units are now recruited by generals in the field, sparing them the long walk from their barracks to the battlefield.

These changes are designed to reduce the number of moving parts on the board without diluting Total War's logistical complexity. For the same reason, farms, mines and other supporting buildings now sit within city borders where formerly they were scattered across the campaign map like chickenfeed for tiny enemy warbands to peck at. The army limit and condensed targets encourage grander strategic gestures. Where in Shogun 2 I might spend time using small forces to devastate a region's resources before amassing them again to take the territory, in Rome 2 I'll build a huge army and march it up to the doors of their huge city, and then we'll have a huge fight to decide who gets to keep it.



Armies are also more flexible thanks to a variety of stances, which can let them move extremely quickly with 'forced march', create a wooden outpost at their location with 'fortify', or lay an ambush on the strategic map. The map has been designed with these stances in mind, so you can dominate large regions with clever use of choke points. Alliances are now extremely worthwhile as well. Allied and client states (who will sit quietly and pay you a tithe every turn in exchange for their lives) contribute to your settlement count for victory conditions, and you can poke your pro-active pals in the right direction with a new diplomacy option that lets you target settlements you want taken.

These are excellent changes for two reasons. Firstly, the new interface condenses all of your building work into neat boxes that let you see exactly what needs upgrading where, making building management far faster and easier that previous Total Wars. Secondly, the battles I've had in Rome 2 have been bigger and more dramatic than any I've fought in a previous Total War game - in any game, ever, in fact. When two army avatars meet, they square off on the map and you're given a choice to auto-resolve the battle, fight, or flee. If there's another army within reinforcement range, they'll join in. This is how I took forty units of Rome's finest into a contest with joint Averni and Helvetii forces at the Gallic fort of Bibracte in 190 BC. Thousands died in the drizzle. The Celts charged my lines shirtless, facing my Velites' flaming javelins with remarkable zest, faltering only when they encountered my veteran legionaries. Romans, as they were in life, are a bit OP.



Rome 2's battles are stunning. Great attention has been lavished on making troops more responsive. If a unit is under fire they'll lift up their shields, and the incoming projectiles will turn them into wooden porcupines. They'll erupt into rowdy celebration when they rout a unit, and you'll see the exhaustion of the fleeing enemies in their gait. A cinematic battle-cam puts you right into the melee, where you'll hear men yelling to each other and see differences in the way units fight. Praetorians use their huge shields to haul barbarians over and behind them to be stabbed by supporting ranks. Attack dogs, released from their handlers, tear into a fight with terrifying speed and drag down opponents with a flying bite to the arm. If you encounter an exotic unit you like, you might be able to recruit them as mercenaries for a high ongoing cost. Mercenaries are the only troops you can hire in enemy territory, but Romans can construct auxiliary barracks that will let you recruit other factions' units properly. This reflects how the Roman army historically used foreign troops and encouraging a sort of military tourism. I'm still on a quest to unite elephants and Celtic skirmishers in the same army.

Battlefields are better, too. They vary hugely depending on weather conditions and location, and are enhanced by the new line of sight system. If your troops can't see an enemy, nor can you, which means every undulation can hide an enemy unit if you don't scout a little. The resulting guessing game keeps the marching portion of the fight interesting and makes fights feel faster. The new engine also allows for proper cities. Major capitals like Rome and Carthage have their own spectacular custom-made maps, and there are variations in the wider world for land and coastal towns, which also vary completely in style and structure depending on their cultural origin. Celtic hill-forts are tiered, earthy formations contained by wooden walls. Romans prefer sheets of white stone and traditional tower fortifications. One settlement in each province will be fortified with walls and require a siege to break, which you can do with equipment like ladders and tortoises built at the siege location.





In remembering the battles, and the most marvellous moments of the fifty plus hours I've played so far, it can be easy to forget Rome 2's frustrating elements, which is where the boats come in. Naval warfare is entertaining. Where once it was sluggish and imprecise, it is now merely imprecise, but in a comical close-range fashion. They've been designed to play more like land battles, and they do thanks to assault ships that must ram enemies to death or board them to defeat them in melee. There are also support ships, which instead must float very close to enemy boats to throw javelins at them. Sea battles tend to result in massive wooden boat-mobs and a lot of shouting.

However, chances are you'll rarely fight at sea. The AI does transport armies across the ocean, and does so effectively, but it never seems to raid trade routes or build especially large fleets. I've often encountered towns surrounded by four or five tiny one or two-boat navies doing nothing. There are also problems with coastal defence fights. For the first time in the series, land and sea battles can take place on the same map. Boats that survive the sea battle can run ashore and deploy troops directly into the land fight in scenes that would be extraordinary if the troops didn't sometimes fail to disembark, or simply stand still on the beach unmoving forever. I've had three major coastal siege battles in which I've had to sit back, fast-forward the battle and let the 60 minute timer tick down to gain an automatic siege-defence victory against a frozen AI opponent. The severity of the problem seems to vary greatly depending on the map you’re fighting on. Disappointing, yes, but three incidents in 50 hours is far from game-breaking.

Worse is the AI's tendency to constantly suicidally throw tiny forces against cities. This tends to happen when you defeat a faction, and all their homeless mini-armies are left wandering the map mindlessly attacking things. All the busywork that's been saved by moving resources into cities is undone by this relentless phenomenon, which grows worse the bigger your empire gets. Towards the end I was auto-resolving four or five useless assaults per turn, and because auto-resolve often doesn't kill tiny units outright, they keep coming back. Along with the extremely long end-turn loading times (which lasted more than two minutes each on my half-decent home PC), this slows down progress enormously.



This is only part of why Rome 2 feels glacial even compared to Empire. You won’t complete a campaign on a Sunday afternoon, or over a weekend. Expanding across such a huge map takes time, and the balance between keeping public order in just-conquered territory and starting new invasions is a constant concern that stopped me from running slipshod over the map. Managing the correct balance of buildings sometimes felt more like admin work than empire building when juggling multiple territories, though I did find that I had more money than I could spend once I’d amassed enough settlements. That’s useful for greasing the palms of would-be allies.

Sadly, the promising but opaque domestic politics system falters as well. Before you take charge of a republic you must affiliate with a domestic party. Of the three available Roman options, I took charge of the House of Julia. Every general you install belongs to one of Rome's houses, and their might, reflected in two stats – gravitas and ambition - contributes to their house's influence over the senate. For monarchies or tribal societies the setup is reversed – your house starts with huge influence and the other houses will attack when they think you're growing weak. This created a fascinating tension, initially. I was watching my generals with suspicion, and promoting and offing contenders accordingly, plotting like a true Roman. That's why I sent Crassipes to Massalia to die. His many victories earned him Batman levels of gravitas and I'd started to worry about his aspirations.

I needn't have. Your house's influence is measured in senate support, and mine crept up throughout the game at a steady pace by itself. At an apparently random point (83% support, for me) civil war broke out, and the leading generals of the other houses took their armies, took a settlement and marched for Rome. The civil war was an interesting challenge and after I'd crushed all senate sympathisers I could choose whether to remain a republic or go full-despot as an empire, but the domestic politics that triggered it doesn't seem to require player input. I tried to speed up Rome's turn from republic to empire by taking action against the other houses, but assassinating their members reduced my senate influence, seemingly staving off the transition. After many, many turns, the way ambition, gravitas and influence interact remains unclear.



Fortunately, you can ignore the system and carry on regardless, which means you're free to enjoy a rather good Total War game. I should mention though that you'll need a good PC to run it properly. Mine is well above the published minimum specs, and the campaign map was running at around 20 FPS on low settings. Conversely, my high-powered office machine ran it faultlessly, and it was a faster and more enjoyable experience as a result. There are a few other considerations that can't be factored into the score that are still worth mentioning - we can only review what a game is, not what it could be, after all. It would be blinkered to ignore the power of the Total War community, who have been producing spectacular mods for the series since Rome 1. If you use mods, then Rome 2 doubles as a platform for greater things, and you'll likely get a lot more bang for your denarii in the coming years as a result. Creative Assembly's pro-active history with patches may well fix some of the problems mentioned as well, and we'll address those in future articles should that happen.

Right now, Rome 2 has its flaws, but is still a sumptuous, slow-burn strategy game with some of the best land battles in the series. Aesthetically, it's a triumph. Empire management, alliances, the UI and battlefields have all improved, which makes it doubly frustrating to encounter the floppy AI that will be extremely familiar to Total War fans by now. Still, nothing out there does what Total War does with this degree of scope and detail. I'd still recommend it to armchair generals anywhere.

Don't worry, you can unclench your buttocks. As a video game made in 2013, Total War: Rome 2 will have paid-for DLC, but today Creative Assembly have confirmed that their cavalcade of post-release content isn't all destined to end life as a line on your bank statement. Alongside the additional purchases, the developers are planning to sprinkle in some free content updates and support.

"Rome II will be the biggest game we’ve ever released, in terms of scope, gameplay features and sheer weight of content," says its clearly boastful lead designer James Russell. "Even then we’re just scratching the surface of the Roman period, an era so rich in diversity that it’s easy to foresee releasing relevant content for years after ROME II has shipped."

"As with Shogun 2, we will continually improve the game’s compatibility, optimisation and integral features such as AI and gameplay balancing post-release, and plan to add to that with new control schemes and additional free formats on other operating systems," Russell says. He also announces the plan for modding support, saying they hope that Rome 2 will follow Shogun 2 onto the Steam Workshop.

The already announced Pontus faction will be added to the game, for free, on launch day, and now Creative Assembly have announced the Seleucid faction, planned as a free update in October.

"In addition to free content, gamers can expect to see Culture Packs that add more playable factions and unique units, Feature Packs that add gameplay or wide-ranging aesthetic changes, and Campaign Packs that add entirely new story-based campaign expansions," Russell finished.

Total War: Rome 2 will be available on September 3rd.

I have a lot of sympathy for the tactics displayed in this latest Total War: Rome 2 video. The "send a bunch of guys into those other guys, I dunno, that'll probably work" strategy is a tried and tested favourite of mine. Although, admittedly it has failed on every single one of those tests. Still, this Let's Play provides a nice quick-look, if you're interested in the multiplayer portion of the game, and you'll learn plenty of details about the interactive campaign map, and how it can generate thousands of potential battlefields.

Total War: Rome 2 is due out on September 3rd.

War. War never changes. Unless it's on a ship, then it changes quite a lot, what with all the water and scurvy and stingrays to worry about. In its latest trailer, Total War: Rome II gives us a glimpse of its frankly gorgeous naval combat and, blimey, I'm getting seasick just looking at it. The whole business looks appropriately chaotic and cramped, though not as many people fall in the sea as I would have thought. It's the first thing I would have done if I'd have been there.



The only really disappointing part of that video, in my eyes, is the rather sudden collapse of a smaller boat upon bashing into one of the bigger ones (you can tell I've got the terminology down). But I suppose they have to hold something back for Total War: Croydon, which--oops, I don't think I was supposed to mention that.

As that big gold text says at the end of the trailer, Total War: Rome II is out September 3rd
which – checks filofax – is not very far away at all. Have a watch of our recent gameplay demo while you wait.

Ta, RPS.