Returning after years - Overwhelming differences

[alhoon]

After several years of not having time\hardware to play the game, I decided to spend some of my well earned holiday free time to play R2TW now that I have a good computer. I decide to try the Hannibal campaign since it's big enough map but not that big as to give me those big end-turn lags as I am impatient.

I found the game to be... overwhelming. I see things that I have no idea what they are or how they affect me. Some things like seasons are OK. Some things like food and pop growth I can remember. Some things like how slavery worked I never found out anyway.
But there's now a very different political tab. Party loyalties and their priorities. Possible government changes. A lot of colored icons under a family tree (?).

That's suddenly throwing me in the deep. Where can I find a small (as in 3-4 paragraphs) dummy's guide on the politics, diplomacy and empire-management stuff of R2TW after the changes of the past years?
This feels like a completely new game.

[Daruwind]

Here you go sir!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1237207803

[alhoon]

Thank you!

[Welsh Dragon]

Here you go sir!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1237207803

That's good for general principles, but I'm not sure it's been updated for the Family Tree and other features added in Ancestral Update, as that guide was last updated in July, and Ancestral came out in August. So @alhoon just be aware that some things have changed since that guide was written.

For the politics side of things I've had several people say they've found this post of mine was helpful, so maybe worth a look: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...3#post15666393

It's also probably worth taking a look at some of the Blog posts from CA about the updates of the past year. You can find all of their Rome 2 Blogs here or if you want to narrow it down a bit, perhaps start with the Patch Notes here (https://www.totalwar.com/blog?ca_page_number=1&catname=total-war-rome-ii&topic=patch-notes&orderby=post_date ).

If you have any specific questions your welcome to post them here and I'll try and help when I can.

And welcome back to Rome 2!

All the Best,

Welsh Dragon.

[alhoon]

Thank you, I'll check your post, but as far as the multi-blog posts are concerned, what I wanted to avoid was a deep study of several sources to play a game.

[Welsh Dragon]

Thank you, I'll check your post, but as far as the multi-blog posts are concerned, what I wanted to avoid was a deep study of several sources to play a game.

Ah. Yeah, sorry. I do tend to fall on the side of giving too much information for fear of not giving enough.

Well, here's a quick recap of the main changes. I'm just covering the stuff from the new patches in the past year or so.

• For the Family Tree, this video ( "How Family Trees Work" ) gives a good overview of this new feature, and it's only a couple of minutes long so. It's by no means comprehensive, but it's a good place to start. You can also learn a lot by mousing over the various intrigues and other details in the UI.
• Politics have been heavily overhauled. But basically you want to maximise your influence, while keeping other parties loyal to avoid secessions and civil wars from happening. A good way to get some loyalty is by using the Political Marriage Intrigue to marry your sons to their daughters and visa versa. Also be cautious when handing out promotions, spread them around between the different parties not just your guys. And each party controls a certain amount of your territory based on their influence. You can see what territory is controlled by which party on the Strategic View, choose the "Political Party Affiliation" button.
• One of the other major changes has been Agents. They've been toned down a bit, made more specialised, but also had a load of new abilities added, some of which are unlocked by talents. If you right click on the Agent cards in game it will bring up a new page giving details of how that Agent type works, as well their abilities, and if you mouse over those it tells you what the ability does and the attribute (Authority, Cunning or Zeal) which affects that specific ability. While you won't be laying waste to garrisons and armies by poisoning them (at least at low levels,) you can do other interesting things like having a Spy Steal food, a Dignitary bribe a single enemy unit to disband or a General to join your army, use an agent (I forget which type) to burn some of an enemy armies ammo before a battle etc.
• Related to that, both Generals and Agents now have some Culture/Faction Specific Skills they can choose when levelling up, rather than having the exact same Skill tree regardless of faction. So for example an Iceni Champion can gain a Skill which means every unit in the army they are attached to gets the "Frenzy" ability, while a Greek General looking to increase their Zeal might choose to be a "Philosopher" which has replaced the standard "Warrior" Skill in their tree.
• Also General Abilities like Rally, Inspire, Second Wind etc are now unlocked by specific Skills, instead of by the level of your Authority, Cunning or Zeal. This helps to make each of your Generals more unique, as the Skills you choose doesn't just affect basic attributes but battlefield abilities as well.

There's more, but that hopefully gives you the gist of it.

Hope that helps.

All the Best,

Welsh Dragon.

[alhoon]

​

"and each party controls a certain amount of your territory based on their influence."

What? Aren't there ways to "diffuse" their power? Spreading it thin across many places so they are not majority anywhere? I.e. instead of making X and Y provinces the powerbase of the evil-ones party (I hope there's only one other party, right?) to have them spread around?
i.e. if they are 33% they don't have to hold a third of my land, they could be 33% all around and majority nowhere.

"

While you won't be laying waste to garrisons and armies by poisoning them "
Oh, come on... I know it is more balanced that way, but I liked my shadow armies of 1 agent and 1 veteran that were superheroes able to cause the death of hundreds of people by themselves.

[Welsh Dragon]

​

"and each party controls a certain amount of your territory based on their influence."

What? Aren't there ways to "diffuse" their power? Spreading it thin across many places so they are not majority anywhere? I.e. instead of making X and Y provinces the powerbase of the evil-ones party (I hope there's only one other party, right?) to have them spread around?
i.e. if they are 33% they don't have to hold a third of my land, they could be 33% all around and majority nowhere.

Note: When I say a specific party "controls" a region/province, what that means in game is that these are the lands that will join that party if it secedes or there's a Civil War. While it's still part of your empire you have full control of it like you would any other region/province you own. When a party secedes, it takes all lands it controls, all armies/navies lead by a general/admiral of that party, and all agents attached to said armies/navies. It will also spawn additional armies/navies if there's a major power imbalance, for example if the player disbands House Cornellia's entire military just before they secede... no save scumming here.

As for how the game decides who controls what. The way it works is the game uses a clever little algorithm to assign provinces/regions to parties based on their influence and several other factors/goals. As far as I know those are:

1. The area controlled by a party should roughly represent that party's Influence.
   
2. A party's regions should be clustered together if possible.
   
3. Only one party should control all regions owned by the player in a specific province.
   
4. (Not sure about this one.) That the player should control the faction Capital.
   
5. There may be others, but those are the ones I know of.

So in your example, the game will try to give the party with 33% Influence a third of your lands, but it's more likely to be a little more or less than that depending on how the game figures it out.

In practice this means that you end up with power-blocks in certain areas of the map, so if a Secession or Civil War happens, you get a logical faction to fight against, rather than a splatter pattern of regions all over the place like you used to. e.g. A decent size Roman empire might have the ruling House Julia (the player) controlling Italy and Gaul, House Cornellia controlling Greece and North Africa, and House Junia controlling Britannia. These can shift though as you take new lands and influence levels change. For example if House Cornellia loses influence and Junia gains, while you also took lands in Germania, the game may then decide the best way to represent it would by Julia (you) now controlling Italy, Southern Gaul, North Africa and Greece, Cornellia controlling your new holdings in Germania, and Junia controlling Britannia and Northern Gaul. It's basically maths.

There can be up to 5 or 6 parties in total at one time, and the number of parties you start with varies depending on faction. In Grand Campaign Rome and Carthage start with 4 (including yours,) most other factions start with 2. New parties will form over time though, so even if you cause a series of Secessions and get rid of all the other starting parties, sooner or later someone will rise to oppose you again. Such is politics and life.

While this may all sound a bit daunting, it's not actually that difficult once you get the hang of it, at least on the difficulty I play (Hard/Hard.) You basically want to try and make it so your party has as much influence as possible (meaning the others have less,) while balancing that with keeping other parties loyal (so they don't secede.)

"

While you won't be laying waste to garrisons and armies by poisoning them "
Oh, come on... I know it is more balanced that way, but I liked my shadow armies of 1 agent and 1 veteran that were superheroes able to cause the death of hundreds of people by themselves.

Agents can still be very powerful, it just requires investing more time and effort into it, and learning the best ways to use your agent types. Also there are still tools for degrading enemy forces with your agents (e.g. Champions can Raid a settlement's garrison, killing many men; Dignitaries can remove an entire unit from an enemy army by Bribing them; Spies can steal food, potentially causing starvation attrition.) Just not the button of death there was before.

Hope that helps.

All the Best,

Welsh Dragon.

[alhoon]

It does help, thanks. Can two parties secede at the same time? That would be a crapstorm...

For generals I know loyalty 3 is iffy and 1 or 2 is problem-inviting. What's a good loyalty for other party? And what's where the problems start?

Will they still try to assassinate my generals etc like they did a couple years ago?

As far as I remember, when I gain regions with my generals etc, the gravitas gain is not too significant. I.e. If I have 5 regions and capture another 5, even if I do it with my generals I would gain just a little dominion or how it's called in the senate-thingy. Which means that from say 50% I would go to 55%. On the other hand the evil ones will now have 5 regions instead of 2 since I have 10 instead of 5.

So... you said somewhere that if I do things with their generals they gain loyalty. Is loyalty more important nowdays than dominion?

Also you said somewhere or someone else mentioned it, that women now show up and gather gravitas. Does this mean that I can chip in this gravitas, to assassinate and bribe help secure loyalty as the women have less use of their gravitas?

[Benjin]

It does help, thanks. Can two parties secede at the same time? That would be a crapstorm...

I don't think many people know this, but yes they can if more than one party is at the point of betraying you (usually below -15 loyalty). If they do, that is considered by the game to be a traditional civil war. I tested this out some months ago before the Ancestral Update and these were the differences I spotted:

• A civil war movie event will play at the beginning + end of the civil war (different voice / spoken words / city backgrounds based on your culture or faction).
• The cooldown for the next possible secession is paused until the civil war ends (in comparison, if you just suffer a secession, the cooldown starts immediately).
• You suffer a minor public order penalty factionwide due to "Regional Instability". It decreases once every turn until it goes away.
• Bigger loyalty bonus at the end of a civil war with the newly spawned parties.

[alhoon]

When you say "Traditional civil war" do you mean like the ones of the early days with the clone armies and navies that equaled my own?

[Benjin]

When you say "Traditional civil war" do you mean like the ones of the early days with the clone armies and navies that equaled my own?

No, just that the game treats it as a proper civil war (movie event, text etc) rather than a mere secession - civil wars don't work like that anymore because people thought that was annoying.

Although, if you try to cheese the game and replace all the Generals from a disloyal party with ones from either a loyal one or your own - or disband their armies' units - the game will spawn an army or two in their new settlements to keep the civil war / secession balanced.

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

Good to see you're back to it old dog
Welsh Dragon and Benjin are both excellent gaming advisors. Keep taking advantage of them

[alhoon]

If I have a general of my own party in a realm of the wannabe traitor backstabbers, would he change colors when the evil ones try to benefit from the fruits of my labor? Or I could do the sensible thing that most non-toppled kings did and have my brother with a huge army in the enemy different party capital to intimidate keep them company?

[Welsh Dragon]

It does help, thanks. Can two parties secede at the same time? That would be a crapstorm...

Yes. When a party secedes, the game checks all other parties (except the player's) to see if they will also secede (I think it's basically a dice roll modified by their loyalty, so the higher the loyalty the less likely they secede.) If there's more than 1 opposition party and all parties secede then it's a Civil War.... I think.

For generals I know loyalty 3 is iffy and 1 or 2 is problem-inviting. What's a good loyalty for other party? And what's where the problems start?

Individual generals don't have a loyalty stat in Rome 2. Party loyalty is on a scale where basically if it falls much below zero then there's the possibility of a secessions, and the further below zero the greater the possibility. And as loyalty is affected by many different factors, from the Party Traits (every party except yours has 2 set when it's created, and a 3rd set by the party leader, and they can cause + or - based on many different factors... always check what a new party wants, because for example those lovely treaties with the Gauls, Britons and Germanics that are making you money might also be annoying the main opposition party!) to Imperium, to Government type, to promotions, to character deaths etc, it can fluctuate a fair bit. So it's hard to put an exact number, but I definitely feel better when it's closer to 10+ than if it's say -2.

Will they still try to assassinate my generals etc like they did a couple years ago?

They might. But they might not. This is ancient Rome etc, so political assassinations are a factor of doing business.

As far as I remember, when I gain regions with my generals etc, the gravitas gain is not too significant. I.e. If I have 5 regions and capture another 5, even if I do it with my generals I would gain just a little dominion or how it's called in the senate-thingy. Which means that from say 50% I would go to 55%. On the other hand the evil ones will now have 5 regions instead of 2 since I have 10 instead of 5.

It would depend partly on the regions and provinces involved. The game won't let more than one party control regions in the same province, so while they might go from 2 to 5, they might only go to 3 or 4 total.

Also you have a lot more tools available to you for increasing your party's Gravitas and Influence these days, and equally reducing that of the other Parties. While there are still some old favourites, like having generals fight battles to increase their XP and level, so you can then promote them so they generate more gravitas, there's a lot of new tricks to play with in the Intrigues menu on the Characters Screen. For example, I can order a member of my Party to Improve Relations with a member of another party, thus decreasing the gravitas of the target, while increasing the loyalty of the target's party. Or I might use Improve Support, which will increase my party's influence at the cost of some loyalty from the other parties.

Note that Intrigues will often have a price (which can be money, gravitas or both,) and/or a requirement (for example Improve Relations requires the person using it to have 2 more Zeal than the target's Cunning, while Improve Support requires a character with 7+ Zeal or Authority.) Selecting a character on the Characters screen will highlight what Intrigues that character can currently use. Mousing over an Intrigue will give you the details, and when you have an Intrigue selected it will highlight the eligible targets if applicable.

I'd also suggest perhaps reconsidering the idea of other parties being the "evil ones." Just because someone swears loyalty to House Cornelia instead of House Julia doesn't mean you can't work together for the good of Rome. It's quite possible to avoid secessions entirely by balancing the wants of different factions and learning to use the tools at your disposal. Or to limit a secession to perhaps one small party, instead of several larger ones. It's less good vs evil, and more different groups with different views but that can find common interests.

So... you said somewhere that if I do things with their generals they gain loyalty. Is loyalty more important nowdays than dominion?

I'd say it's the balance of both which is important. A ruling party with high influence, but whose other parties are moments away from seceding is just as weak as a ruling party with low influence but a very loyal opposition. Just like how you will have learned how to balance Food, Public Order and Money, you basically now need to learn how to balance your desire for power (Influence) with the need to keep your other parties loyal (Loyalty,) and your desire to accumulate Gravitas with your need to use some of it to benefit you in the long run. Some people dislike this, but I find it adds depth to the campaign and is quite fun at times. Sometimes you can even string several Intrigues together, for example using Provoke (target -1 Cunning) to reduce another party's member's Cunning, so that I can Improve Relations with them now their Cunning is lower than my character's Zeal, when it wasn't before.

Also you said somewhere or someone else mentioned it, that women now show up and gather gravitas. Does this mean that I can chip in this gravitas, to assassinate and bribe help secure loyalty as the women have less use of their gravitas?

Women are treated as full characters now, able to engage in politics, receive promotions (either along their own specific promotion path in factions such as Rome, or the standard one in factions such as Iceni) and in some factions even become a General/Admiral. I wouldn't say they have less use for their Gravitas though, but they can be an important part of playing the political game. Political marriage is one of the most reliable sources of Loyalty, and in factions where they can't be Generals such as Rome, Carthage and most Hellenic and Eastern factions their Family Duty and promotion traits provide a reasonable amount of consistent Gravitas. For example, 50 turns into a Rome GC as House Cornellia, my faction leader Scipio's wife has more Gravitas than he does!

If I have a general of my own party in a realm of the wannabe traitor backstabbers, would he change colors when the evil ones try to benefit from the fruits of my labor? Or I could do the sensible thing that most non-toppled kings did and have my brother with a huge army in the enemy different party capital to intimidate keep them company?

Good question. Pretty sure he'll stay loyal and be in a good position to either strike with great vengeance... or get caught behind enemy lines and slaughtered. If he's in the settlement when they secede I think he and his army get moved outside though. I guess the traitors waited till he was out on maneuvers!

Good to see you're back to it old dog

Welsh Dragon and Benjin

are both excellent gaming advisors. Keep taking advantage of them

Thank you. I try my best.

Hope that helps, and Merry Christmas to you all!

All the Best,

Welsh Dragon.

[alhoon]

Well, I don't play the Roman faction, I will try Carthage in Hannibal, and I have a -10 party loyalty just for being a Republic. I agree politics adds an extra layer to the game and since I play N/N and I have no problem using load, I think I will manage. I just hope those other guys would understand the severity of the situation in a war with Rome and not let me hanging in Rome ... like they did historically with Hannibal.

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

Thank you. I try my best.

Hope that helps, and Merry Christmas to you all!

All the Best,

Welsh Dragon.

Thank you Sir! Likewise! Happy Holidays to all!

Well, I don't play the Roman faction, I will try Carthage in Hannibal, and I have a -10 party loyalty just for being a Republic. I agree politics adds an extra layer to the game and since I play N/N and I have no problem using load, I think I will manage. I just hope those other guys would understand the severity of the situation in a war with Rome and not let me hanging in Rome ... like they did historically with Hannibal.

Wishful thinking ?

[alhoon]

How is it that the loyalty of one of the parties gives me some mild bonuses, but my own party doesn't?
Also, I have started the game like 4 times to see different parties as their priorities are randomly generated.

How could I see the priorities of Roman parties to help cause a secession?

There are no penalties anymore in having a huge dominion? Or is it just in the campaign I play (HatG)? So far I have ~80% dominion, I have practically reduced one of the parties to a sliver of africa and I just gain bonuses.

[Alwyn]

How could I see the priorities of Roman parties to help cause a secession?

You can see what causes a rival party to be loyal or disloyal by hovering your cursor over their loyalty score and also hovering over their party traits.

I'm not sure I understood your question correectly. Are you saying that you want to cause a secession? If you want to do this (for example because you don't like the traits of a rival party, or you would like the loyalty bonus which comes from defeating a secession) then the event which usually causes a secession in my campaigns is the death in battle of a commander belonging to the rival party.

There are no penalties anymore in having a huge dominion? Or is it just in the campaign I play (HatG)? So far I have ~80% dominion, I have practically reduced one of the parties to a sliver of africa and I just gain bonuses.

There are no direct penalties for having a very high dominion. Having a very high dominion can result from actions such as promoting commanders from the ruling party and not promoting commanders from rival parties; the penalty for this is a higher risk of secession.

[alhoon]

You can see what causes a rival party to be loyal or disloyal by hovering your cursor over their loyalty score and also hovering over their party traits.

I was asking about different factions than mine.

I want to cause my enemies to have a civil war, so I can take up the pieces. Or, in my case, buy some time.

As for politics... well, I have to say they ended up being a bit anti-climactic. After the initial shock of "what the heck is happening here?" I found out that I more or less don't have to worry about it; just keep an eye on it. Later on, when I have more generals and the other parties have a bigger part of my Empire I may need to focus there, but so far, it's fine.

I expect this to change as I have to hire generals from the other families. Is the only way to get generals\politicians in your family adoption and having children (That would grow up in like 15 years = 15 x 12 = 180 turns = end of the campaign) ?
Am I to end up with like 3-4 generals\admirals out of like 15 from my party? That would be horrible in case of secession.