Total War: Rome II New Expansions - Empire Divided + Rise of the Republic

[Raghar]

Steam reviews are bad.

Steam reviews are always bad.

 

[RNGsus]

Unforeseen consequence of this update; it broke all the mods that were mitigating the vanilla game.

Just like merging the kingdoms exe with mtw2 exe in the steam patch to 1.5.

Speaking of, if anybody has a kingdoms exe they can upload to a host and post a link, yeah that'd be great.

 

[LESS T_T]

Desert Kingdoms DLC and female leaders free update announced:

The Desert Kingdoms Culture Pack introduces four new playable factions to Total War: ROME II. The Kingdoms of Kush, Saba and Nabatea fall under the African/Arabian subculture, while the Masaesyli are of Numidian origin.

These factions are native to the deserts of Africa and Arabia. Surviving these harsh environmental conditions has forged them into hardy warriors who use the shifting desert sands to their advantage in battle.

While culturally similar, each faction boasts unique new unit rosters which offer different military strengths. Each faction also has new building chains and technology trees, playing to their strengths and further differentiating their playstyles.

Alongside their individual Faction Traits, the Desert Kingdoms all share the following Cultural Traits:

Desert Warriors: Bonus to morale in desert battles and bonus income from agriculture
Deep-rooted Traditions: Penalty to research rate

details for each faction

Meroe (The Kingdom of Kush)

A major regional power with vast resources derived from its trade in gold, jewels and exotic hides, Kush has been overshadowed by its more powerful and famous northern neighbour, Egypt.

In the early 3rd century BC, king Ergamenes decided to wrest power away from the priests of Amun, and moved the capital from Napata to Meroe. The priests would no longer decide the fate of the kings and queens.

The shift of capital also marked something of a break from Egyptian culture with Hellenistic, Indian, Persian and African influences making their way through the trade routes. The kings and warrior queens would sit on the throne and rule with authority and conviction to protect the riches of Nubia. Even the Romans could not conquer Meroe, and preferred to trade instead.

A regional powerhouse with a surfeit of natural treasures and fertile land, Kush is well equipped to prosper and once again vie for power against the mightiest empires in the world.

Key Features:

• Affinity for Egyptian/Hellenistic culture
  
• Higher probability of female characters in politics
  
• Trading kingdom (ivory, exotic hides, iron, gold)
  
• Fine pottery

Faction Traits:

• Disciplined Workforce: Bonus income from slaves, reduction in slave decline, Reduced Public Order penalty from slaves.
  
• The Land of the Bow: cheaper, better archer units.

Nabatae

The Nabataeans were great builders and pioneers of advanced construction techniques. They were the first civilization to use cement extensively, and built remarkable watertight reservoirs, ensuring a plentiful supply of potable water. Even when under threat from powerful foes like the Seleucids and Judeans, their progressive society enabled them to flourish and prosper.

The Nabataeans were very literate and had a remarkable degree of gender equality for an ancient civilization, with women participating in both political and religious matters. Nabatae was an important crossroad for the spice trade, serving as a conduit between the southern kingdoms that produced frankincense and myrrh, and the wealthy eastern and western empires who were its primary buyers.

Preserving all this wealth at such a geographically strategic location demanded a well-trained military and a strong navy. Nabatae had both, bolstered by excellent engineering and exploitation of the surrounding environment, making their capital city of Petra a nigh-impregnable bastion.

Key Features:

• Hellenic influence: may recruit Hellenic-themed units for battle
  
• Silk road traders: Bonus to trade and diplomacy
  
• Skilled masons: bonuses to construction and fortification
  
• Friends of Rome: diplomatic bonus with Roman factions/allies
  
• Roman tactics: some native units may use Roman army formations/abilities

Faction Traits:

• Stonecutters: Faster, cheaper construction of main settlement-chain buildings
  
• Incense Traders: Bonus income from incense trade

Saba

The Sabaean kingdom lies in the harsh lands of the southern Arabian Peninsula. Even in such inhospitable conditions, however, these ingenious people thrived. They built dams, invented new irrigation techniques and became masters of water-efficiency. The Sabaeans were also excellent sailors, and had strong trade relations with peoples across the Red Sea.

Not warlike by nature, the Sabaeans charged mercenaries with the protection of their trade routes and caravans. That said, they were a resilient people of tough character, who made formidable foes for anyone who dared threaten their great capital city of Marib. Even the Romans could not best them during their expedition in the early 1st century.

Key features:

• Camels as predominant cavalry, with superior armored camels
  
• Excellent use of javelins and chariots
  
• Agricultural and fertility bonuses from the famous Marib Dam
  
• Incense production provides diplomatic and trade bonuses
  
• Great Dam of Ma’rib: A unique building type which provides faction wide bonuses to agriculture and fertility and can be upgraded with technologies, but requires upkeep to maintain.

Faction Traits:

• Incense Traders: Bonus income from tariffs
  
• Hired Armies: Access to cheaper, stronger mercenary units

Numidia

Prior to Numidia’s founding after the 2nd Punic war, its people were divided into two Berber tribes: the Massyli and the Masaesyli. Both were skilled warriors and there were many rivalries between them.

The Massyli had strong relations with Carthage, a key reason for the Massaesyli aligning with Rome when the opportunity came. Through many twists and turns, both tribes ultimately unified into theK kingdom of Numidia, under the Massylian king Massinissa. He ruled for an astonishing 54 years, transforming his kingdom into a prospering North African power.

Key Features:

• Affinity to Cartage and Latin culture
  
• Extensive Roman influence in battle
  
• Cavalry-focused faction

Faction traits

• Desert Ambushers: enemy armies in the same province as a Numidian army cannot replenish

Unit Rosters
We look forward to sharing details for each of the faction in Total War: ROME II – Desert Kingdoms in the upcoming weeks, prior to release.

 

[Young_Hollow]

Lets us discuss why this is fucking retarded. These were unplayable factions in the game up till this point, and they were playable only with unlock all factions mods or total conversion mods that made them playable factions. In vanilla, they have cookie cutter units and their poor roster can be seen if you download an all factions playable mod and look in the custom battle menu. I doubt they're gonna flesh those up.

But what this really fucks up is modding. Total conversion mods like Divide et Impera, whose developers put much more effort into the mod than CA did on R2TW, have released fleshed out unit rosters for Nabatea, Saba and Numidia in their mod and all of them are very interesting to play and have their own style. There have also been many great unit packs released for them that flesh out their rosters in vanilla. Needless to say the modders did this through painstaking research and balancing. And this was worth it too, since these factions were unplayable, people who didn't have DLC could play interesting factions that weren't otherwise playable / interesting without needing to cough up. But now, because they become DLC, modders can't make them playable and will have to make DLC factions unplayable as is common practice. So the modders who invested their time into making content for these factions will now have their work locked behind a paywall. Meanwhile SEGA and CA can rejoice that they just made money out of doing nothing, because by locking these behind a paywall, people who liked these factions would want to buy back what they had (for free).

Genius.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Has anyone here tried empire divided? I love late antiquity so much, and I can generally stomach even the worst of the total war games, at least for a while.

Can anyone tell me if this one’s worth it, or should I just wait for Thrones of Britannia?

 

[Raghar]

Has anyone here tried empire divided? I love late antiquity so much, and I can generally stomach even the worst of the total war games, at least for a while.

Can anyone tell me if this one’s worth it, or should I just wait for Thrones of Britannia?

Pirate both of them.

Basically they are selling you a scenarios. (Something like these scenarios in Warhammer Total War, which nearly nobody played and even bothered to pay for.)
Empire divided has major weakness of low faction diversity, most of Europe is conquered by Roman empire. And thrones of Britannia are basically about Anglos who would like to see infight between theirs minor factions and possibly forming England...

If you are not Anglos, you probably don't have passion to liberate unknown malaria ridden land like (name of some small province in Southern England) from theirs original owners to add it to your land, and regret it because of spread of malaria.

 

[Raghar]

Folks looks like there is funny butthurt behavior. Looks like update to newest version killed a lot of mods, modders are of course no longer there to create new version, and these who didn't use pirated version to lock theirs version to stay compatible with mods are butthurt.

Remember, a modder who is not doing his work towards latest pirated version is insane, or don't take his work seriously. Modder who is doing checks against pirated or not pirated version is actually hurting the community.

 

[Rahdulan]

Didn't everything kinda go to hell with Empire Divided but some modders updated to keep up? And then this new Desert Kingdoms DLC just shook it up even further. At this point Rome 2 should've been in "safe to mod Complete Edition" state, but CA keeps fiddling with it.

 

[Young_Hollow]

Modders who support pirated version over paid version are trashy whores or edgy kids who only think about what they want and not what impact their whoredom has on the decline in the game they're modding. Pirates are 10X worse.

 

[Forest Dweller]

So they're just releasing Attila again?

 

[AwesomeButton]

When this company releases a game worth playing, I will buy it. Until then, I will pirate, try and delete, without going back to their games. That's because I do not trust this company one bit.

 

[A horse of course]

Looks like they're gearing up for more Rome 2 DLC. The vanilla game has almost all of Attilla's features and mechanics now, with notable exceptions like Razing and AI civil wars.

 

[Rahdulan]

When you really need to break all existing mods AND take away one thing Rome 2 had over Attila - better performance. Someone's smoking too much opium over at CA.

 

[A horse of course]

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/total-war-rome-ii-ancestral-update

The Family Tree
The Family Tree is a visual representation of the web of character relationships within your faction, and offers the functionality for you to interact with those characters and generate Intrigues, which bring new gameplay options. The characters in your faction can forge strong bonds and alliances with other factions. Marriages can produce offspring, who grow and obtain duties of their own. Characters are born, live their lives, and eventually die throughout the course of a game.

Here’s an example of the Macedonian family tree from the Grand Campaign. The central panel contains members of the player’s family. The panel on the right, labelled Other Nobles, contains characters who are members of the player’s party, but not included in the family. The panel on the left, labelled Important Characters, contains characters of other parties – Ones that may turn hostile in the case of secession or civil war, for example.

Intrigues
Every living, adult character has access to a certain number of Intrigues: actions that can be executed to achieve a variety of outcomes. In the screenshot below you’ll see them in the bottom right corner.

Every Intrigue has requirements such as:

• Character needs to be a general
• Character needs to be a politician
• Character needs to be the faction leader
• Character needs a certain amount of a specific attribute
• Character needs a certain amount of an attribute that exceeds the attribute of another target character (for example, the Adopt Intrigue is available if the Adopting character has three more Authority points than the target character’s Zeal)

FAQ
How do I opt in to the Ancestral Update?
To take part in the Ancestral Update open beta, follow these steps:

1. Restart Steam
2. Find Total War: ROME II – Emperor Edition in your Steam library
3. Right click Total War: ROME II – Emperor Edition and go to Properties in the drop-down menu
4. Go to the Betas tab
5. In the drop-down menu under Select the beta you would like to opt into: select ancestral –

Will opting in break my save games?
No. We’ve deliberately worked to ensure old save game compatibility with the update. The game generates a new Family Tree based on the data in your save game, and refunds any skill points you’ve already spent on your Agents, enabling you to spend them in the new skills tree to your preference. Issues are still possible, of course – Please report any that you find!

Should I disable my mods?
Absolutely, yes. Mods are frequently incompatible with new releases and will remain out-of-date until the mod creator updates their mod.

We would like to ensure all the feedback we receive for this beta comes from campaigns played with all mods disabled, so we can be sure that any new fixes we may have to explore are focused on the core, unmodded game, and not a result of out-of-date mods.

Where should I report any issues?
Any issues should be reported in the dedicated Ancestral Update issues thread on the official Total War forums, which we will be monitoring closely.

Additional Patch Notes
New

• Agents skills have been completely reworked, rebalanced and are now culture-specific. They now have more actions, some of them having significant new effects
• Generals’ skills are also now culture specific
• Skill cards for agents, generals and military traditions have informative pips that show what the skill grants at each level
• Agent skills have been re-ordered to mimic the order of attributes in the character portrait
• Reinforcement range is now visible as an area, not only as blinking arrows
• Technology panels now have sounds
• In battle, ships in will now be able to leave their disembarking area by shifting in reverse, making room for more ships to land
• Champions have received a skill that directly buffs the bonus to unit experience per turn
• Levels 2 and 3 of Agent skills are now unlocked on the next agent level, instead of skipping a level. For instance, tier 1 skills are unlocked on levels 2/3/4, instead of the previous 2/4/6
• Battle loot implemented in field battles, granting different sums based on the upkeep cost of the defeated army and the action selected after victory
• Added more variety to generals in Empire Divided
• Number of household ancillaries has been increased from 1 to 3
• Number of character traits has been increased from 3 to 6

Visual

• Added MSAA anti-aliasing
• Added “Clouds shadow” option to shadows
• Added an option for near the camera objects fading (on/off)
• Added “Hide dead bodies” option, so dead units can vanish even on higher graphics settings
• Added “Hide foliage” to the graphics options and made that shader functionality toggleable
• “Hide foliage” option has a shortcut set to Ctrl+F by default
• Added “Terrain noise” to make distant terrain look less flat.
• Improved building LOD distances for Extreme/Ultra to be really extreme and ultra (x3 times greater)
• Improved shadow quality & performance.
• Heavy rain weather VFX in battle now occasionally replaced with stormy rain weather (with lightning flashes)
• Ships now render in water reflections
• Reduced terrain and grass reflectivity in rainy weather
• Improved night lighting of units. Torch light is now animated and casts shadows on higher settings
• Improved river shader in battles: shallow river water is more visible, won’t vanish when near the camera, specular and shadows improved
• Trees on the tactical view are no longer very obviously rotating towards the camera
• Rivers have been optimized to not render past a certain distance

Bugfixes

• Changed the AI to now recruit more suitable units in campaign
• Added Numidian Spearmen Assault Dieres to eastern naval garrison lvl 2 group
• Corrected many instances of units with mismatches between their weight and caste
• Fixed the Palmyrene Top Recruit technology (Empire Divided Campaign) to correctly apply its bonuses to all new land unit recruits
• Fixed Kushite Archers and Kushite Royal Archers to now correctly receive bonuses from effects applying to missile infantry
• Fixed all Empire Divided bodyguard units to correctly receive bonuses from different effects
• Added Theban Hippeus unit to the Boiotia League custom battle roster
• Missile Range bonuses now actually work!
• Fixed a few cases where the player can get stuck in the Prologue campaign
• Fixed a few cases of improperly rotated settlement battle tiles
• The “Status Quo” achievement can now again be obtained

Battle AI

• Fixed an issue that caused units to cluster together when climbing ladders on walled settlements
• The AI will no longer zealously guard the capture points in unwalled settlements
• Fixed an issue that sometimes caused the AI to never attack a walled settlement
• Fixed an issue with pathfinding that sometimes caused units to rapidly move in different directions
• Tweaked the AI behaviour to better assess and exploit players’ tactical weaknesses, such as gaps in defence lines or an unprotected general
• Shield Wall, Hoplite Wall and Testudo will not be broken by the fast-move command and will move in formation to the target until they reach change distance
• When siege units and mounted units (cavalry, chariots, camels, elephants) are making a naval assault they will deploy on the ground, instead of disembarking from ships, similar to Total War: ATTILA

Gameplay Improvements

• Female cursus honorum grants attributes at higher levels
• GC Iceni start their campaign having military access with Dumnonii
• Starting loyalty has been decreased for all difficulty settings (0 on Easy, 0< on higher difficulty)
• The political traits Militarist and Expansionist have been nerfed, granting less loyalty
• A different version of the Family Tree, called Chain of Command, has been added to the Caesar in Gaul campaign. It contains fewer intrigues
• Start-pos characters have been rebalanced in all campaigns – many more were added, both historical and created for gameplay purposes
• New encyclopaedia page for Agents, available on right-click
• The Family Duty trait now disables character skills

Known Issues

• Loading legacy save games will refund less skill points than expected
• Start-pos family trees for campaign other than Grand might have missing characters, names or links between characters
• Some start-pos characters might be labelled as members of another party when they are not expected to be
• When a new character is generated, the message about a daughter coming out of age is displayed in error
• Children from diplomatic marriage with another subculture will be displayed as belonging to player’s own culture
• Events sometimes occur more often than expected.
• The game may crash when clicking on the “Controls” button on the Campaign map when playing the Empire Divided campaign

 

[A horse of course]

I swear somebody made a joke in the old thread about it taking them 5 years to remove the piss filter.

 

[A horse of course]

https://imgur.com/a/pJjAMDM

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNG

 

[Fedora Master]

It only took them 5 fucking years to implement a feature everyone expected to be in the game at launch.

 

[A horse of course]

As you may have seen already, we’ve just announced the Ancestral Update for ROME II and it’s now in open beta!

If you haven’t been paying close attention, the Ancestral Update is the Family Tree feature plus loads of fixes, tweaks, and improvements to ROME II’s base game. It’s free to opt in, and will be free on release if you own the main game – we really want you to get involved, create your own legacies, and share your feedback with us so we can ensure it’s working as intended on release.

If you want more information on how to opt in and where to share your feedback, you can read all about it here.

This isn’t the only ROME II news you’ll be getting this month, though – keep an eye on our social media channels for a DLC announcement coming very soon…

It can't possibly be as bad as Wrath of Sparta.

 

[A horse of course]

There's a livestream going on now, no idea when they'll actually show anything though



30m countdown now

 

[A horse of course]

The year is 399 BC, and Rome is poised for greatness. However, its very existence balances on a knife-edge.

The Gallic Senones tribe, led by chieftain Brennus, are newly settled in eastern Italy. Ambitious and fierce, they are but a javelin-throw from the nascent republic.

The tyrannical Dionysius rules Syracuse with an iron fist. He leads the war against Carthage, but his eyes range across the Mediterranean as he considers future conquests.

Under the guiding hand of the great philosopher-statesman Archytas, Taras in southern Italy is reaching the zenith of its glory and power. Rome’s meteoric rise is cause for concern, to be sure – perhaps an intervention is merited?

Meanwhile, Marcus Furius Camillus seeks the title and powers of Dictator. His vision for Rome is grand indeed, but can it survive the designs of the young republic’s neighbours?

A crossroads in history: a time of threat – and of opportunity.

A time for the republic to rise.

Total War: ROME II – Rise of the Republic is a thrilling new campaign pack charting the events surrounding Rome in the 4th century BC. The campaign unfolds across a detailed map of Italy including Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and Carthage, and depicts the tumultuous events which ultimately set the stage for the Second Founding of Rome.
Rise of the Republic Content:

A full prequel campaign to Total War: ROME II set in the 4th Century BC

All-new campaign map, detailing the landmass of Italy and its neighbouring states

Nine playable factions:

• Rome – a growing republic, vulnerable and surrounded by enemies
  
• Tarchuna – the mighty and influential Etruscan state
  
• Senones – a Cisalpine Gallic tribe with a thirst for plunder
  
• Insubres – a Gallic tribe who are diplomatic and managerial in style
  
• Samnites – an Italic state that threatened Rome in the 4th century BC
  
• Taras – a Greek city-state founded by the Spartans
  
• Syracuse – a Greek metropolis in Sicily, and the bastion against Carthage
  
• Iolei – an indigenous Sardinian tribe
  
• Veneti – an Italic tribe of horse masters surrounded by enemies

An epic campaign battle for the city of Rome

Post Battle Loot

New Technologies

Region specific dilemma systems – depending on the regions you control dilemmas related to Carthage or Massalia might spawn.

Chapter objectives are also faction specific and are a way to unlock agents.

The factions of Rise of the Republic are uniquely replayable due to the new Government Actions options, which replaces the Change Government system from prior ROME II campaigns. These options provide unique new bonuses, albeit at a cost. Some notable examples are:

• Rome may appoint consuls or dictators in times of need
  
• The Etruscans of Tarchuna can initiate the summit of Fanum Voltumnae, where decisions are made
  
• The Samnites can rely on the ancient Ver Sacrum rite, to receive an instant army
  
• The Insubres and Senones rely on druidic councils for divination and public support
  
• Taras has access to court philosophers who greatly improve their research

Along with these, different factions have access to specific dilemma chains such as:

• Rome often is forced deal with domestic trouble that result in plebeians or patricians being happy or enraged.
  
• Greek factions can influence the struggle of the Greek poleis back in Hellas.

 

[Life of the Party]

 

[A horse of course]

An epic campaign battle for the city of Rome

I FUCKING KNEW IT I KNEW THOSE MOUTHBREATHING REDDITORS SUCKING CA OFF FOR THOSE SHITTY SCRIPTED QUEST BATTLES WOULD LEAD TO THIS

 

[Life of the Party]

 

[Rahdulan]

Man, I wish they'd make these videos interesting. It's clearly a developer phoning it in. It just reminds me of the massive decline in VA coming from the first game.

 

[A horse of course]

Man, I wish they'd make these videos interesting. It's clearly a developer phoning it in. It just reminds me of the massive decline in VA coming from the first game.

"Cinematic" Total War videos are usually done by actors, whereas gameplay overviews - which they know casuals are not going to bother sitting through - are typically done by the PR guys or developers. The guy that replaced Darren is obviously a bit greener and doesn't do a good job of trying to make videos more exciting - see for example the horribly cringey one he did on the Dwarf runeforge/new start position a few months back.