Warning! Don't download the new Patch 5!

[SilentResident]

ANNOUNCEMENT: A temporary solution has been found for the gamers whose the game has been patched with the new Patch 5 and is not running at all when they click the PLAY button on the Total War Launcher. - So, if your game has been patched with Patch 5 and refuses to run, then follow the solution below - it worked for both me and others!:

1) Go to the game's installation directory in Steam -

for 32-bit Windows users, this usually is the following:
<your hard drive>\Program Files\Steam\Steamapps\Common\Total War Rome II

and for 64-bit Windows users:
<your hard drive>\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steamapps\Common\Total War Rome II

2) Find the ROMEII.exe and right-mouse click it. Choose "Properties" from the context menu.

3) In the "Properties", Go to the "Compatibility" Tag and here, untick the box next to "Run this program as an administrator".

4) Try your game and... profit! Now Rome II will finally launch when you click the PLAY button on the TW Launcher! Somehow the Patch 5 messed the "Run as admin" option and the game no longer runs with this option checked. This solution worked both on me and 3 more players. Hope it will work for you as well!



Sorry but it took more than 2 days to find what is causing the new problem. We had no official response by CA, and so, we had to dig and find for ourselves why the players were unable to run their games anymore, since Patch 5 came live, and here we go! Apparently the Patch #5 for Rome II Total War is conflicting with some privileges or the User Account Control system of the Windows. Creative Assembly will need fix this asap.


A big thanks to all teammates and friends in this awesome community for their very valuable help!





ORIGINAL POST's MESSAGE:

WARNING TO ALL THE GAMERS - PATCH 5 IS LIVE! but better do not install it and wait for a hotfix by CA to fix the new critical game launching issue! (especially for Windows 7 64bit users)

The new Patch 5 (aka Patch 1.5) brought a new, but serious, technical issue which prevents the game Rome II from launching, at all.


The Critical bug of Patch 5:
The Total War Launcher runs absolutely fine, with the new (and very welcoming) Mod-support in the form of a Mod Manager. But if you click the PLAY button to run your game, thanks to the awesomeness of Patch 5, the game won't run at all on some computers. No matter what. There is no error message when you try run the game, just it will completely fail to run. And there is nothing you can do to fix it!


Even the Steam File Verification, sadly, does not fix the new problem Patch 5 brought to most of us.

This bug seems to be affecting mostly the Windows 7 64-bit users.


And the problem persists even after reinstalling your game and deleting completely your data and preferences folders. No matter what - even if you have no mods installed in your game. Some people, including me, have no mods installed and yet the game won't start at all. When you click the PLAY button, no window will open and nothing happens.

For most of us the gamers, the older Patches for Rome II, prior Patch 5, worked just fine, as they have been play-tested EXTENSIVELY, before they get released to the public (LIVE). But the new Patch 5 screwed the games for both me and my friends who too are using Windows 7 64-bit.

No mods of course installed to the game - and still it won't start at all.

So if you are afraid of the new Patch 5 breaking your game, I suggest that you don't risk and download the patch - have patience and wait for a patch-for-the-patch to fix the Patch 5's new launching issues.

CA will be back at work at Monday, to patch and fix the new mess.

Please, bear in mind that you need be careful with the patching of this game - the Patch 5 HAS NOT BEEN BETA-TESTED carefully, and thus, it totally messed the games for several people!

And for these people who were lucky to have their game still running with Patch 5, we consider them lucky and wish them have fun with their campaigns!



The Patch 5 technical issues list:

-The game will no longer start at all, no matter what, clicking the PLAY button in the TW Launcher, won't run the game for several players.

-Mods no longer work properly in the game, even if you update them. The new, official Mod Manager is disfunctioning.

-Blue Screens of Death for certain system configurations

-Crippled water graphics and other graphical horrors - graphics became buggy now

-Get stuck in Diplomacy Panel - only way to leave it is to close the game itself with ALT+SHIF+DEL

-Unbalanced unit size versus unit power

-Extra stuttering (even for the people who didn't have stuttering in the in previous four patches)

-Game crashes on turns (new) and on the battlefields (old)

[CatoTheYounger]

Lmao. Amatuer crap.

[SilentResident]

Lmao. Amatuer crap.

Crap?

The people are reporting that the Patch 5 in fact, ed their games. Now they won't even start. Including mine.
I just took the kind time to warn the gamers here, and you just come and all what you say is just "crap"?

Go there, dear. see yourself. Then come and tell me about if it is crap.
In the Official Total War Support forums - go tell these players that all that is crap.
http://forums.totalwar.com/forumdisp...-Patch-testing



You have the option to ignore and not answer a thread if you think it is crap... None forces you to read it.

[DramaBelli]

Don't feel lucky if the game will run,

-Lag improved

.poor framerate improved

-mod manager not working

-savegame broken

-stuttering &Co. improved

-first time I have to declare game unplayable and lost.

this is really the time to come back to shogun II.

This thread should be sticky

[karamazovmm]

oh my Im so glad you warned me, I was going into that trap!

[Jihada]

It seems to me he was referring to CA's amateur attempts to patch the game, not your problems with the patch. Sorry some of you are having trouble, it's unbelievable that CA didn't test it properly.

[✠Ikaroqx✠]

Lol. So now we need a patch for the patch.

[Humble Warrior]

So far my version is running ok. But I had completely uninstalled with version 3 and reinstalled today. I started a new Campaign instead of staying with the old and took out all the Mods before patching. Then ran it JUST vanilla, no Mods. I now have the Close Combat mod -ready for patch5- (Updated 18.10.2013) modular- no Fire Javelins And it still works.

I also defragged beforehand.

However, your issues don`t surprise me. Tis clearly a lack of testing. But that`s our unpaid job right?

p.s. I`m a Win 7 64 bit user.

[Fallout386]

Sigh...

Been trying to play all morning but getting constant crashes in battles.

Sometimes the game just crashes when a battle loads or halfway through a battle and sometimes it loads a battle and the game is at 2fps for no reason.

Win7 64bit here as well
Playing Parthia - New Campaign

[SilentResident]

Yes please, all be careful, the Patch 5 HAS NOT BEEN BETA-TESTED at all, and thus, it totally messed the games for many people:



The Patch 5 technical issues list:

-The game will no longer start at all, no matter what, clicking the PLAY button in the TW Launcher, won't run the game for several players.

-Mods no longer work properly in the game, even if you update them. The new, official Mod Manager is disfunctioning.

-Blue Screens of Death for certain system configurations

-Crippled water graphics and other graphical horrors - graphics became buggy now

-Get stuck in Diplomacy Panel - only way to leave it is to close the game itself with ALT+SHIF+DEL

-Unbalanced unit size versus unit power

-Extra stuttering (even for the people who didn't have stuttering in the in previous four patches)

-Game crashes on turns

-Game freezes on the ROME II TOTAL WAR logo (as you load to the main menu).

-Completely incompatible with previous savegames (logical)


I will update the first post.

[karamazovmm]

you mean it isnt publicly beta tested, i.e. open beta

and how do you have an issue list if you cant launch the game?

[SilentResident]

you mean it isnt publicly beta tested, i.e. open beta

and how do you have an issue list if you cant launch the game?

Just check the Official Total War Rome II Support forum which focuses on Patch testing and problem reporting. You can check what technical issues the new Patch 5 brought to the gamers who tested it in their games and get an idea of what is going on with the new Patch and see if it is worth to install it in your game, or wait for hotfixes.
http://forums.totalwar.com/forumdisp...-Patch-testing

[Bearnation54]

Worked fine for me

[SilentResident]

Worked fine for me

That is the spirit! To work. But this time, the new Patch 5 works on less people's machines than the Patch 4 did. Which concerns me.

Apparently this time it won't work for a good part of the gaming community - hope CA will fix the issues and release hotfixes to stabilize it and address the new launching issues.

[AndyMoszejevsky]

Tommorow I will bring back my RTW 2 copy to SATURN market - 3 of my friends from Augsburg / Germany come with me and do the same with here copys - this buggy game isn't playable.

H.Balck

[krisslanza]

I want to point out, this advice is kind of useless - this isn't a beta patch. It's going to download automatically once Steam connects to the internet as it's an official launch. The only way you can make it not patch is to not connect Steam to the internet at all - once you do, I don't think Steam will let you run Rome 2 until it updates to the newest version.

Though, this just reinforces why CA releases betas first... but since some people want faster patches...

[SilentResident]

I want to point out, this advice is kind of useless - this isn't a beta patch. It's going to download automatically once Steam connects to the internet as it's an official launch. The only way you can make it not patch is to not connect Steam to the internet at all - once you do, I don't think Steam will let you run Rome 2 until it updates to the newest version.

Though, this just reinforces why CA releases betas first... but since some people want faster patches...

Although people might want patches sooner, they want them because the game is unplayable in the current state. And since the company wanted to release it straight to the public without beta testing, it is expected that the patch will carry lots of bugs and technical issues, for which, hotfixes are necessary.

[krisslanza]

Although people might want patches sooner, they want them because the game is unplayable in the current state. And since the company wanted to release it straight to the public without beta testing, it is expected that the patch will carry lots of bugs and technical issues, for which, hotfixes are necessary.

Given I have over 100 hours of playtime, I have to disagree on the game being unplayable. Though, some computers do seem to have far more optimization issues then others.

[Gauloisier de la Gauloiserie]

It's the new way to beta test by CA:
They release a final product with bugs, we cry for one week, then they patch it. They did exactly this with the game. A patch of the patch is to be expected.
The whole R2TW and is patches are released but they are still under beta testing... by us. You see.

[SilentResident]

I had the same problem and its took me hours of trying to figure it out, what worked for me is deleting the game which was on my mechanical drive ( to save space on my SSD) and deleted all preference scripts, logs etc, /ComputerName/AppData/Roaming/The CreativeAssembly/Rome2/
And delete the *Rome2 folder!
Then I re-installed onto a different drive(SSD)
But I can categorically say there is no improvement (for me) in large battles, when zoomed in on the Blobby mass of units,no notable improvement with FPS shenanigans!
and all that!

Prior to game reinstallation, I tried this solution (and even deleting the entire Rome 2 folder in AppData), still game refuses to run. Damn, it run just fine in Patch 4 and the 3 older ones. Why this has to do with the new patch.. But your effort to help is appreciated, as I am looking for an way to help the people in the support forums but the solutions aren't even working for me. Thanks anyways! ^_^