All Post-Release Statements by CA
Seems like it can be useful to have all the statements from CA in one place. Would make sense to pin this thread.
ROME II Community Question & Answer
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:Hey guys!
To help appease those with burning questions that linger, I have compiled a list of the top Community questions that have been asked over the last few weeks. I then asked our gracious developers to answer them for you. So here are your answers!
Without further ado, bring on the Q&A...
Why does testudo formation (offensive) seem pretty weak against front attacks (missile)? It remains a testudo after all.
Testudo provides a bonus to the shield armour value, which reduces the damage a unit takes from missiles. In the launch version of the game quite a bit of damage from missiles was armour piercing damage which ignores armour and is always applied. That is why it was weak then. Patch 4 featured a rebalance of missile damage which reduces armour piercing damage and switches more to normal damage, so testudo will be more effective. Then combined with a change in Patch 5, where there is a new missile block chance for shields, you will see a real difference between units in testudo and units outside of it.
We will continue to examine the balance of testudo going forward, as we do want to ensure it is working properly.
Why does it take 1 year to build 1 siege equipment?
The reason for delays in building siege equipment is to give value to walls and towers, and we don’t want to undermine that too much. Historically, sieges often lasted a long time and in the setting of a turn-based game the mechanics need to fit with starving out defenders and the movement of reinforcing armies around the campaign map. This is something we’re always looking at though.
Why did you (CA) think every troop carrying flame torches to burn castle gates was a good idea? In Shogun it worked, but it seems strange to completely devalue siege equipment for this.
The intent behind burning gates was that this action would be a last resort for the attacking army, a last ditch attempt to breach the walls at great cost when all else fails. Siege equipment should always be more effective than attempting to burn the gates. But we didn’t want a huge army without siege equipment to have literally zero chance of capturing a city (especially a near-defenceless one). What’s more, we didn’t want to allow players into a siege if there could be a quick ‘game over’ situation where their siege equipment were destroyed – especially if their army was much more powerful.
It’s fair to say that the balance of ‘burning gates’ at release wasn't as we wanted it. We adjusted the balance of the mechanics involved in patch 4, and will continue to do so.
Siege mechanics in general remain a focus for the team, future patches will contain continuing tweaks and updates to how they play out.
A few factions, particularly Averni and Epirus and a few others, lack unit diversity. Can we expect some units to be added in updates or unit pack DLCs for these factions?
Their units reflect the units those nations fielded at the time. Averni have a good mix of melee and spear infantry supported by strong melee cavalry. Epirus has a standard Macedonian style army.
It may be that we add in units via updates and DLC at a later date, but the core idea is that different factions offer distinctly different ways to play and strategic challenges that come with them – see the recently released Nomadic Tribes. You can always hire mercenaries to fill tactical roles you might lack, but the incurred cost also represents the kind of penalty you’re assuming for operating out of the faction’s comfort zone.
In Multiplayer we are considering adding more mercenary or auxiliary unit options though, please send us your suggestions via the official MP forums.
Is there a bonus for fighting on higher ground, if so, what is it?
The soldier uphill should get an advantage in the underlying combat mechanics but this wasn’t always working correctly at release – this is now fixed in Patch 4.
Is there a range bonus when firing from a hill?
There is no range bonus for being on a hill, but missile units on a hill will do more damage to soldiers on lower ground.
Does terrain influence morale?
The morale system is very sophisticated and takes in many different variables including terrain. For example there is a morale bonus for being on a hill, and this triggers if the unit is at a higher altitude than all enemy units in the nearby area.
What exactly is the difference in stats between normal arrows and fire arrows?
With the missile rebalancing in Patch 4, normal arrows do more damage than fire arrows, but fire arrows provide a bigger morale hit to enemies and can also cause elephants to run amok. In naval combat they are important in setting fire to enemy ships.
Why do Roman generals have a tendency to go insane? Could we have a more thorough explanation of the trait system?
This wasn’t originally working as intended but has now been tweaked; we have reduced the qualifying trait list for various "Mad" traits (such as "Not quite right" or "Unhinged") for generals in campaign modes.
Why only 1 hexareme to a fleet? Even in custom battle mode? Could this restriction be mentioned on the hexareme unit page in the encyclopaedia?
Some units are capped because of how powerful they are. We will look into mentioning this on the encyclopaedia.
What was the reasoning behind cutting the family tree system?
It’s important to note that because a feature was in a previous TW doesn’t mean it’s automatically included in the next; some naturally make way for other features, others don’t fit the design or the period. In ROME II, the design intention was to make more of the politics system which would better suit the large variety of ruling systems e.g. party affiliations in the senate, rather than focus on strict nuclear family heredity. This would help create the legacy overview and sense of personal character that the family tree may have supplied in previous games.
It is certainly fair to say this feature didn’t turn out 100% as we would have wanted it and as part of the on-going game balancing and tweaking we are looking into this.
It is interesting to see how passionate people were about family trees though and that’s certainly something we will consider for future titles.
How does House of Julia bonus "Founding Fathers" work?
Depending on the local culture distribution you can get up to +4 public order if Latin is present:
a. 1%-25% = +1 public order
b. 26%-50% = +2 public order
c. 51%-75% = +3 public order
d. 76%-100% = +4 public order
Shown as "Faction: +x" in the public order information panel.
Similar negative traits work in the same way, such as the Arverni's "Internal Power Struggles" - a high proportion of your own culture will bring down your public order, effectively reducing your ability to control the people once you've Gallified the provinces.
How can we see bonus results on unit stats? Could it be possible to see how unit stats would be before unlocking some technologies or buildings (i.e. in-game or in the encyclopaedia)?
We do show currently applied bonuses in the game UI (coloured differently at the end of the bar). Showing potential effects due to upgrades is something we are looking into, but it isn’t currently a priority.
Are some technology bonuses stackable (i.e. Tier 1: +5%. Tier 2: +10%. Current bonus: +15%)?
They are stacking.
Do you have plans to incorporate client states and satrapies and the like into provinces so we can use edicts? If I have 3 cities under my control and the fourth under a client state of mine all in one province, I still can't use the edicts because that fourth city is not under my direct control. It really dissuades me from even having client states.
It is something we have thought about but can’t confirm at the moment that anything will be done to change this.
How do you upgrade roads? I've heard its automatic once your region becomes richer or something.. in my campaign I'm almost reaching 160 turns and the roads are still the same even in my richest province. What do I have to do?
Road development is tied to the settlements they route between. If the settlements on the endpoints of the road are well developed the roads will get upgraded after a time, allowing faster movement on them. Upgrading your main settlement buildings (orange), as well as your city centre chain (yellow) and trade ports (blue) drives road upgrades. Without upgrading your main settlement to higher levels you will find it difficult to get road upgrades.
Roads can also deteriorate if settlements are razed or stop prospering. Also roads going between hostile settlements will decline. However rich your provinces are, if you are bordered by hostile settlements you’ll find upgrades harder to realise.
Can you explain slaves and how exactly they affect the economy and public order in the game?
Slaves can be obtained when you defeat an army on the field or you are victorious in a siege. These slaves are distributed across your empire. Slaves increase economic output of the whole empire while causing public order problems, especially when there are a lot of them in a province (the penalty exponentially increases). If public order collapses specifically due to this, the resulting rebellion will be a slave uprising.
Will we ever get an in game option to change the turns per year or are we stuck having to re-mod the game after every patch?
The entire game is set over a 300 year span, based around one turn per year and we are happy with the balance of its design that way. It is very unlikely that we would introduce this as an option.
It may be that we can do more to help modders make blunt changes and to start with we can discuss this with those attending the forthcoming mod summit.
Why did you make the decision to remove seasons?
There are technical limitations in implementing seasons over such a large (and diverse) geographic area and this would have raised the memory budget (and required specs) to unacceptable levels. Depending on the design for future titles, and potentially DLC, this is certainly a feature we’d like to include.
When difficulty is increased, what actually changes?
Upkeep, recruitment costs, public order. On easy and normal the player gets advantages, on higher difficulties the AI does. Additionally almost every AI system taps into the difficulty setting (region and faction targeting, threat-analysis, task generation, construction, attitude towards other AI factions and the player, general "zeitgeist"; on higher difficulty the AI is less friendly and quite paranoid).
Why does it seem like we moved from a large amount of information on the settlement and settlement detail pages of the first RTW to a more simplified version that hides information? It also seems like very informative pages from previous total wars have been broken up and spread over multiple pages, panels, and tooltips.
The game systems are not based on RTW but continuation from SHOGUN 2. The pages were broken down into 2 separate panels. One is at-a-glance high level information (enough when you are browsing quickly through provinces) and the other is a details panel. Detailed information is deliberately "hidden" and broken down into categories so we can provide more on individual areas.
However, some tweaks to address feedback we’ve received on this are likely.
Are there any changes planned for how client states work, currently they seem to have little value?
They are meant to be semi-independent, serving buffer purposes. With proper support you can groom them into powerful allies. However, further tweaks to how these function will definitely happen.
It's hard to know how the food is actually consumed. We know how much each building is going to consume but could we have a more elaborated panel (list of buildings, units, etc…)?
It is planned to display more detailed information on this in a future patch.
Why do factions ask for money while asking for a peace treaty?
At that point, pursuing war for them is no longer a goal, but they still don’t consider it a bad idea – so need additional monetary persuasion to make up their mind.
Could we have some explanation of how exactly the political system works?
It's not explained well via the manual or tutorial. For example, civil wars seem to trigger regardless of your party having low/high support. Additionally - some elements don't seem to make much sense logically, such as having poor support when your faction is thriving.
This actually requires a bit of a longer explanation, we are going to do a separate guide on this soon.
Are there plans to expand the diplomacy options, to include things like gifting/demanding regions, making/demanding yearly payments, making client states more user-friendly by 'resetting' their status with all other factions once they become your client (More than once I've had 2 client states war between them, asking me to join them against one or the other)?
There are general plans but we can’t commit to anything yet.
On the client state side: client states are semi-independent and not tools of the player. They can continue to act according to their agenda and this might involve declaring war on your other clients. Think about it as an asymmetric alliance and not vassalage. On the other hand, satrapies are not independent.
Are there any plans to rework the campaign UI? Specifically the construction report.
Complete rework no; tweaks, fixes, additions yes. We constantly iterate here.
Thanks!
Latest update from Mike Simpson and CA (17.10.2013)
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:Hi everyone,
Thank you for playing our patches and reporting issues you find on the forum. Without that help we wouldn’t be able to turn around the patches as fast as we have been doing. We’re achieving in weeks what, on previous projects, took months.
Over the next few weeks there’s going to be a shift from dealing with stability and config to working on gameplay and features, while performance and AI remain high priorities. I expect the pace of patching to slow a little as gameplay and deeper AI changes need longer to test and tune. It’ll still be weeks rather than months between patches though, and we're going to continue to patch the game regularly for the foreseeable future.
Gameplay and AI fixes take a long time to test, and we have to play a lot of 200+ turn games to be sure a change has worked as intended. To make the regular patches possible we have to overlap them, so while patch 5 will go live tomorrow, we've already started work on patch 7. This does mean it takes a while for your feedback to manifest as changes in the game, so please don’t be too disappointed if your top issue isn’t fixed in the latest patch. We are listening to you, and we will get there.
Our long-term plan from here is to get as fast as possible to a point where everyone is broadly happy with the state of the gameplay and AI. After that we’ll shift modes again to long-term support – something which is new for TW and was very much our plan for the title all along. Our games already have a long lifetime, but by releasing occasional DLC packs and free content updates we keep working on them for much longer. This means upgrades in a number of areas which help the game evolve, and stop it becoming obsolete.
I’m not going make any detailed claims about what we’re going to do in the short term. The best way – the only really credible way - we can let you know what we’re doing is by delivering it in the game. But rest assured that we’re constantly reading the TW forums and a variety of others, and the feedback you’re giving helps us to prioritise the issues we deal with, as well as getting a sense of which features work well, which are not liked, and which features from previous Total War games which weren’t designed into Rome II are missed. This is an interesting topic actually, as a lot of people think that we’ve ‘cut’ features to make Rome II and it isn’t as simplistic as that assumption.
A lot of the game is designed from the ground up. We develop many features in parallel, some of which work differently to how they did in previous games: we aim to create a different experience every time, and that’s very important to us. New features are added, and certain features from previous games are therefore not included as they must naturally make way for different features. What’s been interesting – and very useful for us – is listening to you telling us about which features you like and don’t like, and what you miss from previous titles. We take your views seriously, and we’ll take them with us in the future.
For now, we’re about to roll out our largest patch yet, which contains a number of key fixes and changes. The next update will also bring you new, free game content which we’ve been talking about for a while… we hope you like it. Alongside this, you’ll see our next major step towards mod support for ROME II.
Enjoy the update, enjoy the game, and thanks again for your ongoing feedback.
Mike Simpson
Second statement from CA on Rome II's release (11 Sep 2013)
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:Hi everyone,
We’ve just put up a hotfix that significantly improves campaign map frame-rate on a variety of hardware combinations that were getting frame rates less than 15 fps. It took us until Monday to get a case of this happening in the studio, but it was a very simple fix, so we’ve decided to put it out as a single issue patch. This bug was introduced very late in the process, but we absolutely should have found and fixed it before release.
This release has obviously not gone as planned for some people, and I want to apologise to everyone out there who had issues with the game, whether they were hardware issues or disappointment in the performance of game features. We obviously don’t plan to release a game with any bugs, performance and AI issues. How this has happened is something we’re beginning to post mortem in detail now.
Fortunately, the same tech that gave us the rope to work on the game right up to release lets us keep working on it after it’s out, and the flaws in the game are mostly just bugs, not structural defects. We can and will get the game to where we wanted it to be for everyone.
The top priority is stability and performance – both frame rates in battle and campaign, and end of turn times and loading times. Then gameplay spoilers – AI flaws and exploits, balancing tweaks and the level of challenge on higher difficulties. Then minor bugs, lesser features that really didn’t pan out, UI improvements, and longer term adjustments to features and systems that could be better. Because there are a lot of us working in parallel there will be a mixture of different priority fixes in each patch. Much of this work would be part of the usual planned improvements we would make to our games post-launch anyway, but we are aware that they have now taken on extra significance and importance.
We have a major improvement to end of turn times in the pipeline, along with around 100 fixes in the next patch. We have another 100 or so fixes already being tested for the patch after that. At this point the limiting factor on getting issues fixed in patches is not our ability to fix issues, it’s our ability to test them and guarantee that we don’t repeat past mistakes by putting a patch out that breaks something new. We’ll also be putting each patch up as a beta you can opt in to before releasing it. It’s our aim to continue patching more or less weekly until all the bugs are dealt with.
Then we can start the kind of dialogue we always want to be having with the community – which new features you like, which you don’t like, which deleted features from previous games you really miss and so on. That’s a good conversation to be having, and since it’s our intention not to fall in to the trap of just re-skinning the previous game each time, it’s one that hopefully you’ll be having for years to come.
Lastly, I’m hoping we can fundamentally treat our releases differently in the future. Long open betas are the way things are going, and while that model hasn’t been compatible with the way Total War has been built to date, that could be the way forward.
Mike Simpson
Creative Director
Creative Assembly
Sorry From CA - Current State of the Game and What Happens Next (06 Sep 2013)
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:Hi All - I’m just posting this on behalf of Mike Simpson, Creative Director on Total War here at Creative Assembly - Bart CA
--------------------------
Hi everyone and thanks for your attention.
We just wanted to reassure you that we do know it’s an extremely annoying and frustrating time for some of you at the moment and we are working around the clock to sort out those issues that you are having. The first patch has just gone up - it's not trouble-free we know and are fixing with a hotfix, but there will be another next week and every week after that till the problems are gone.
At the moment it may seem that the changes are slight, but they aren’t the only ones we are working on currently and bigger changes are happening now for future patches.
If you are having a problem, it is totally unacceptable and a big deal for us, please know that we are spending all our dev effort on fixing outstanding issues.
I realise in our rush to do that we haven’t updated you on the situation, so if you are interested, please read on.
Scale of launch issues
First and foremost let me say that if even one person has a problem running the game we would want to fix it, this is why we’ve set up 24 hour support and if you post in the support forums you will get an answer or discover a solution that’s already posted for your issue.
I appreciate that it doesn’t help to know this if you are somebody having an issue, but the vast majority of people are running the game without problems. At the moment we are seeing 2% of people playing reporting a technical issue. Let me be clear, that is 2% too many and we will be helping them into the game and working very hard to make sure they get the best possible experience.
To these people we are really very sorry that you are having problems, we really want to get you enjoying our game, please do take the time to post your issue in the Support Forum if there isn't a fix for you available in there already.
Technical Issues
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. 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.
Many issues have been alleviated by the workarounds and system tweaks posted about in the Support Forum, please do head to this thread as your first port of callhttp://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...support-forums, if your issue is not solved by stepping through these solutions please do post your issue in the Support Forum and one of the team will get back to you.
Gameplay Issues
If you have concerns on the actual features and mechanics, like gameplay balancing and AI behaviour, we do want to hear about them. As mentioned before launch we absolutely intend to support ROME II post-release with plenty of content, further development and comprehensive balancing through-out – and no I’m not thinking of DLC you have to pay for. We have already planned for some very interesting stuff and we wanted to do that with advice from the community.
Please do keep posting your concerns, our code team are focussing on tech issues to get people playing, but our design teams are very aware of your concerns and are already looking at ways to add further options and rebalance aspects of the game.
You will see our community team dropping into threads to ask questions, please do chat to them, but even if you don’t see a response please do know that we look at the forums every day here and do appreciate what you have to say.
Thank you for reading,
Mike Simpson
There seems to be a lot of information posted on the official forums from the CA. I'll add some of them here too.
Dynamic city growth
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:Hey all,
To showcase the incredible detail in ROME II’s campaign map, we thought we’d give you a Greek-peek of how city growth looks in the game, using the walled city of Massalia in southern France – or modern-day Marseille – as an example.
Settlements and cities in ROME II grow in a very organic way, and can expand in a number of different directions, while reflecting some of your key building decisions. Each city has a number of potential slots which can be developed ready for further construction, and it’s this process which physically expands the city. These construction slots can then accommodate new structures such as temples, training grounds, marketplaces and so on, which then appear within the city on the campaign map. You’ll also see greater works represented in the city too. As you can see here, we’ve upgraded our way through the Forum building-chain to a full-blow amphitheatre, with a typically Roman aqueduct thrown in for good measure.
As your city grows, it begins to impact the landscape around it. Urban sprawl appears outside the walls as the city increases in size. If your building choices support agriculture, farmland blossoms around the city, and forests are cut back to make way for new works.
Not all cities boast walls however, only provincial capitals. This gives the player a much greater range of battle types across a broader variety of settlements, and reduces the number of siege battles you’ll face compared to Shogun 2, which in turn keeps battle gameplay fresh and interesting. Across Rome II’s 49 different settlement, city and port-town battle maps, you’ll see a tremendous amount of urban battlefield variety while you’re storming your way through enemy provinces!
The New Culture System
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:I've already posted this in another thread, but I'm afraid it might get lost, and other people might be wondering about it. Here's an explanation of how the new culture system works:
Culture is completely provincial. So every settlement in a province contributes to this province's culture. If a province is divided between several factions, the provincial culture still is the same for ALL settlements of ALL factions in that province. With that we want to simulate culture spreading across borders (at least within a province).
In each province, there is a cultural equilibrium towards which the culture always tends. For example, if a province has 6 Latin cultural influence and 4 Hellenic cultural influence, the equilibrium would be 60% Latin and 40% Hellenic. Another example: With 4 Celtic and 2 Germanic influence, the equilibrium would be at 66.6% Celtic and 33.3% Germanic.
Now the current cultural breakdown will shift always towards the equilibrium. For example, if the equilibrium would be at 60% Latin and 40% Hellenic (6 Latin & 4 Hellenic influence), but the current cultural breakdown is 70% Latin and 30% Hellenic, then Latin would decrease and Hellenic would increase (even though Latin has a higher cultural influence than Hellenic), until the equilibrium is reached. The further a culture's percentage is from its desired equilibrium percentage, the bigger the change per turn is. This means that when a new culture enters a province, it will grow quickly at the beginning and then slow down when it gets closer to its equilibrium.
As soon as the cultural influence of any culture in a province changes (for example, because a building is constructed, or a dignitary enters the province), the equilibrium values are updated and the cultures will shift towards this new equilibrium.
A province's "local traditions" are just another cultural influence factor that is always there, which cannot be changed. Most provinces have a sum of 4 local traditions influence points (shared between cultures), while some "cultural capitals" such as Rome or Alexandria have stronger local traditions. Local traditions also mean that provinces cannot be converted 100% to a foreign culture -- added realism.
I hope I could help you understand the new system. If you think there's a bug, we would need the following information from you:
- Current cultural breakdown of the province for each culture
- Change per turn for each culture in the province
- Total cultural influence for each culture in the province
Thanks for posting, and hopefully have fun with Caesar in Gaul!
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Originally Posted by Red River
