Desert Kingdoms DLC

[Ostrogoth]

Does this DLC adds anything worthy for DeI player other than mandatory paywall?

[Vladdy Daddy]

First it's Empire Divided, now this. Seriously, this issue needs to be the next subject on Jim Sterling's Jimquisition.

[Alannon]

Well, maybe it'll bring some new nice models, we'll see. Empire Divided added some very, very nice-looking helmets and horse armours, with better textures than the old vanilla ones. Maybe here they'll add stuffs too!

[drillmaster]

Does this DLC adds anything worthy for DeI player other than mandatory paywall?

Thats the number one question that should have been asked.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

[priam54]

Hey we just got everything running for patch 18 power & politics. Let me see what I really want the most. Wait, another patch please!

Are they planning to release a new patch as well?

(I guess the female leaders thing could bring some new problems for the mods)

[Geffalrus]

As a card carrying SJW, I'll just drop in my .02 cents. ;-)

Historical accuracy is all well and good, but let's keep in mind that historical accuracy starts to go out the window on turn 2. Once you as the player start making historically different decisions, you crank the butterfly effect up to 11. All aspects of history will radically change - especially when you start conquering the world as Colchis (the time space continuum has no idea how to process a Colchian Empire). Whatever gender relationships existed prior to your meteoric rise to power, the geopolitical tidal waves resulting from your toppling of the Seleucid Empire and 8 separate burnings of Rome (ROME CAN NEVER BE BURNED ENOUGH) are bound to shift things a bit.

What are some plausible situations where female soldiers/generals/leaders would make sense? Here are a couple:

1) Your society's military is so taxed by continual defeats, losses in battle, or migration that relying on only men prevents you from fielding the 20-40,000 person strong armies that the Romans throw at you every season. If Spartans can open the military up to Perioikoi and Helots, if the Ptolemies can open the phalanx up to the Machimoi, and Romans can expand citizenship beyond Italy, then it's not completely impossible that a culture in this time period could have become desperate enough to conscript women into the military.

2) Loyalty. If you're the ruler of a kingdom where women have few military or political rights, then being the first king to grant some women military or political rights will earn you some high loyalty female generals or soldiers. Similar to how kingdoms would utilize foreign contingents (Galatians, Judeans, etc) as royal guards because those foreigners lacked local connections. The primary connection of those contingents would be to the ruler who paid them, a key thing during civil unrest. And after seeing Black Panther this weekend, I DEFINITELY want my own guard of Dora Milaje, that's for sure.

Of course you shouldn't be forced to use female units/leaders if you don't want to. Enforce all the gender rules you want, mighty tyrant. ;-)

Let's just be careful about saying that women COULD NOT have been participants in military and politics in this era. Whatever the literal historical record might be on this subject (and that record has giant holes in it), you as the player are creating a new record. Many things are possible.

[Little Legionaire]

What CA doesn't understand is Total War fans changed in many ways as the mods, modders and community had a long way in terms of gameplay, historical accuracy, references and such. Practically the community is way ahead of CA content creation for historical titles. If you give a Corinthian helmet for a Numidian unit see what happens and how people react!

And it's a nice thing to have such a community for game developer as well as the modders. I enjoyed many great feedback and inspiration directly from the fans and friends and community. But it seems developers somehow overlook that fact and tells us another story with cataphract african woman warriors, fantasy bows, camel panzers and such. TBH, i don't know what to say about it. This DLC leaves me speechless.

For years total war gamers praised, supported and become even part of such mods who favoured the realism and authenticity. Largely accepted, approved and played by thousands. This is a solid direction to pursue.

I don't know whois behind of this DLC idea but it smells purely promotional stuff to catch the Black Panther trend. Well, good luck with that

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

Are they planning to release a new patch as well?

(I guess the female leaders thing could bring some new problems for the mods)

They will release a new patch of course and that will affect DEI. They will also lock (as DLC only) factions that are fully fleshed in DEI.

What CA doesn't understand is Total War fans changed in many ways as the mods, modders and community had a long way in terms of gameplay, historical accuracy, references and such. Practically the community is way ahead of CA content creation for historical titles. If you give a Corinthian helmet for a Numidian unit see what happens and how people react!

And it's a nice thing to have such a community for game developer as well as the modders. I enjoyed many great feedback and inspiration directly from the fans and friends and community. But it seems developers somehow overlook that fact and tells us another story with cataphract african woman warriors, fantasy bows, camel panzers and such. TBH, i don't know what to say about it. This DLC leaves me speechless.

For years total war gamers praised, supported and become even part of such mods who favoured the realism and authenticity. Largely accepted, approved and played by thousands. This is a solid direction to pursue.

I don't know whois behind of this DLC idea but it smells purely promotional stuff to catch the Black Panther trend. Well, good luck with that

I couldn't agree more brother.

[Benjin]

Nothing! First they released fake and ahistorical "Daughters of Mars" DLC and now instead of fixing numerous things with core of the game and introducing things which were asked by community for a long time, they please some sort of total war SJW's with another "modern social standard" flc which recognizes "the role of the woman". "There are special events (dilemmas) that portray the trials and tribulations associated with women coming to power in ancient times. Usually, there are traditions and prejudice standing in the way. Such events allow the player to recruit a female leader or gain some other bonuses from parties that would oppose such a decision." Just lol. I'm sick and tired of how modern entertainment pushes fake agendas of known lobbies literally everywhere.

I don't know why you're pissed off with me for asking that question or whatever it was that set you off on your rant, but why does literally anything that's related to women in any form of media (especially games) have to be seen as some kind of SJW push and be utterly criticized for it? Why can't you appreciate that CA are even doing anything with Rome II which adds some much-needed depth to the game - no matter how small - after two and a half years of inactivity?

The stuff that they're adding in this free-LC has been asked by the community to be added - I am one of the people who has been asking for it for years and was one of the things I discussed with Pawel Wojs at EGX London a few years ago after I got my 3D portfolio reviewed (i.e. what happened to Cleopatra since she was in the cinematics and not in the game? The topic stemmed onto a discussion about female characters in the Total War series). I also entered Total War modding to eventually add these kind of features myself (among other things) simply because I wanted to see more variation to the generals / politicians:

• Cleopatra + Teuta finally implemented into the game - advertised through concept art and trailers yet were not seen in the game.
• Mechanic for women to be recruited as backroom-style politicians for Romans + Greeks, and as generals / admirals only for Barbarians (don't know about the Eastern culture group yet).
• Some new events and political incidents related to women (probably how they're recruited, rather than recruiting them directly from the candidates window).

Stop messing up history. How many woman general do you personally know from this time period? Please name them.

Don't you find amazing that woman flc comes alongside with bunch of fake units we can see in the trailer already?

What is this? Womataphract which dominated ancient battlefields?

Cash grab, stolen ideas, re-skinned ahistorical units and another push of modern agendas into "historical title". That what is wrong with that

Setting aside the fact that Total War has never intended to be a "realistic" depiction of the history they portray - but rather a stereotypical, "Hollywood", stylised mishmash of history blended together with totally fictional elements (read Kevin McDowell's - Lead Art Director - comments on historical authenticity in the "Art of Total War" book) - how is any of the stuff they're implementing with the free-LC portion of the update "ahistorical"? I wouldn't personally know of any women (or men, for that matter) from the ancient world since I wasn't alive to meet them, but if you think that Cleopatra, Teuta and just believing that women in general have had absolutely no affect on the politics or any battlefield of the ancient world, you are misinformed and need to brush up on your own history. Ever heard of Livia Drusilla/Augusta (had great backroom power - supposedly poisoned Augustus to allow her son Tiberius to become Emperor)? As for women who have lead armies, what about Boadicea of the Iceni? Veleda of the Bructeri? Zenobia of Palmyra (already in Empire Divided)? Tomyris of the Massagetae? That's just to name some for you. The fact that you're completely unaware that there have been ancient female figures who have had a massive influence in history and occasionally lead armies either just highlights a gap in your knowledge of ancient history, or maybe you're trying to impose an agenda of your own in an effort to re-write history? Ratios don't matter - the fact that they did exist while potentially lending extra character variations for players to utilize in their games is more than enough to justify their implementation in a series like Total War - a series which gives you the ability to change history.

As for the fictional units in the DLC - why is this such a big deal, and why are you so surprised at this point (especially after the over-exaggerated account of female warriors in the Daughters of Mars DLC)? Mods like DeI will remove them or change them for you anyway, or just take them out yourself (which is so easy to do). Knowing this, how does the presence of these fictional units threaten your goal for a totally historically authentic version of Rome II for you to play? It doesn't.

Obviously CA want cash - they're a business first and foremost; what were you expecting from them in terms of support at this point? That is the business model they've been using for the past decade. What other incentive do they have to revisit one of their older products? Other game companies, such as Paradox, work on free updates accompanied by paid micro-expansions as well. If it encourages CA to continue support for a game I and many other people still love to play and mod, then I have no issue with what they're doing.

How can you claim that factions which were implemented in vanilla as minors on release have been "stolen"? They're a part of the campaign map which have always been there, and were severely neglected (i.e. not playable at all, had a bad building / tech tree with unit rosters mostly borrowed from other playable rosters) from the beginning who have always needed attention. The fact that there are already a tonne of mods besides DeI which have a heavy focus on those areas of the campaign map doesn't take a genius to figure out why they chose that culture group (Desert Nomads) to fully flesh out.

[Nordling]

They will release a new patch of course and that will affect DEI. They will also lock (as DLC only) factions that are fully fleshed in DEI.

While many players critised CA for bringing new ED DLC to R2TW saying that it will break countless mods, I was defending them by saying that they bring new stuff and that it was a large mod with new features and that it adds new experience to the game itself by also affecting GC.

I cannot say nothing like it this time. They just took your ideas (I guess its obvious here, by picking exactly 4 factions which you guys polished) and put them behind paywall. This is really just wrong and I'm getting more and more frustrated with their policy. Game is 5 yo and they see exactly what's going on - DEI is extremely popular and therefore saw an opportunity for easy cash.

@Geffalrus - this is reallh far-fetched what you are suggesting. Following your logic, I should be able to recruit camels while playing Rome because I decided on turn 5 that I want to start importing them for my armies and wars with Gauls. Let's stick to facts and the facts are that CA gives us armored camels and women with longbows & breastplates/cuirasses looking like tank tops and surprise, suprise! - they wear no helmets
(screenshot can be found somewhere in the thread). Why stop there? Let's give legions axes as primary weapon because in my campaign there was no Gaius Marius but Gaius Darius and he decided to equip legionnairies with axes and aspis shields.
Let's keep the discussion on a reasonable level, please

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

... and woman had almost same role as man in a viking society. ...

Funnily, they were.

http://www.history.com/news/dna-proves-viking-women-were-powerful-warriors


@Benjin: You can add to the list:

Olympia (Alexanders Mum), Agrippina Minor (poisoned Emperor Claudius to make her son Nero Emperor), Cartimandua (Queen of the Brigantes)...

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

Funnily, they were.

http://www.history.com/news/dna-prov...erful-warriors

Did you just assume her gender ???

[Nordling]

Funnily, they were.

http://www.history.com/news/dna-prov...erful-warriors

Its all a matter of proportion. While I am not denying the fact there were women-warriors I am saying that armies were still dominated by men. Your link only confirms what he said - its the first such grave found while there were numerous findings of male-warrior graves.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

No, not i, the DNA.

@Nordling: How many were false classified like this before?^^

[Geffalrus]

@Nordling: Clearly you don't understand what I was suggesting. I'll try and use smaller words next time.

[Colest]

I don't know why you're pissed off with me for asking that question or whatever it was that set you off on your rant, but why does literally anything that's related to women in any form of media (especially games) have to be seen as some kind of SJW push and be utterly criticized for it? Why can't you appreciate that CA are even doing anything with Rome II which adds some much-needed depth to the game - no matter how small - after two and a half years of inactivity?

The stuff that they're adding in this free-LC has been asked by the community to be added - I am one of the people who has been asking for it for years and was one of the things I discussed with Pawel Wojs at EGX London a few years ago after I got my 3D portfolio reviewed (i.e. what happened to Cleopatra since she was in the cinematics and not in the game? The topic stemmed onto a discussion about female characters in the Total War series). I also entered Total War modding to eventually add these kind of features myself (among other things) simply because I wanted to see more variation to the generals / politicians:

By and large what people want for this game is fixes. More depth is cool and giving marriages a point and fleshing out backroom politics is nice but this will receive the same reception as the Empire Divided patch, that being a collective "We really didn't ask for this."

Again it's cool you got something you wanted but it's patently false to say "the Community" wanted it when on the whole they didn't.

I won't go as far as others by saying CA picked these factions to milk DEI, but it raises an eyebrow that really the only entire culture pretty much handcrafted by DEI that have not been in the game as anything other than minor factions is chosen. I am dubious that these factions were picked arbitrarily.

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

Its a bit bizarre how they picked our exact factions we have had for years in the mod to now be DLC locked. Seems like long odds that is a coincidence. A paranoid person might say they are using the mods popularity and development yet again to sell product. Add it to the list of changes piled into vanilla over the years that were originally content from mods.

Just off the top of my head: GC seasons, resource buildings, minor town forum chains, multiple town type options, skill trees, specific playables, later century campaign like constantine, streamlined recruitment buildings, and thats just to name a few. Any recognition for those modders inspiring any of that work? Nah...

Υou can't blame them for that. They recognized modders and their work. By removing them from mod squad.

and Desert Pikemen. lel

Ι have another one from Vardano's post.
Womataphracts with bows...

[Benjin]

By and large what people want for this game is fixes. More depth is cool and giving marriages a point and fleshing out backroom politics is nice but this will receive the same reception as the Empire Divided patch, that being a collective "We really didn't ask for this."

Again it's cool you got something you wanted but it's patently false to say "the Community" wanted it when on the whole they didn't.

When I said "the community", I obviously didn't mean "the whole community". Yes, more people probably want fixes of certain aspects of the game which interest them or re-implementing other things which were cut (e.g. naval combat being terrible, E3 Carthage historical battle, formations not working properly etc) but adding in Cleopatra was one of the things which was definitely requested by a significant portion though - take a look at all of the old threads asking where she was, or all of the comments on the Cleopatra / Imperator Augustus trailer cinematics requesting her to be implemented. I guess they just threw in Cleopatra, plus doing a bit more on female characters, after their work with Queen Zenobia proved to be one of the more unique elements of the Empire Divided DLC?

[Vardano]

The fact that you're completely unaware that there have been ancient female figures who have had a massive influence in history and occasionally lead armies either just highlights a gap in your knowledge of ancient history, or maybe you're trying to impose an agenda of your own in an effort to re-write history?

Let me think... what is my agenda? I'm saying very straight up things that in a last six or seven years we see some sort of paranoia about the role of the woman in a history. Overly increased amount of female characters in a movies, tv shows, video games and in mass media in general makes you question what has changed in our society so fast so we all talking about this? SJW's did not let developers to release Divinity Original Sin game because women characters looked too sexy in their eyes. They forced developers to change that so female characters will be more men like. I already gave you an examples of what is going on with mass media and how they messing up history in a really disgusting way and you talking about my agenda of re-writing history? The role of women in behind of the scene was always big in a history and I surprisingly like that touch from CA but adding female generals all over the map is just part of agenda which I'm talking about.

Ratios don't matter - the fact that they did exist while potentially lending extra character variations for players to utilize in their games is more than enough to justify their implementation in a series like Total War - a series which gives you the ability to change history.

Let me disagree here with you completely dear sir. There is line of acceptability in a historical titles and crossing it proves exactly what I was talking about agendas. They have great fantasy Warhammer game, I have zero interest towards it and as long it is a fantasy game they can add whatever DLC they want into it. They could even re-release Daughters of Mars for that game - I won't comment. History is strongly related to a facts, facts tell us certain information and information explains the ratio. You can't deny facts, information and ratio and out of any logic implement things which are most likely would never happen. Following your logic "I was not there, I did not see it" we can add Greek gods as generals, I read they had a pretty big impact on the battle of Troy. So why not change history this way too? I ask again - stop messing up history. 10 known female characters compared to 1000000 men is a strong base which makes me speak of history and not agendas.

As for the fictional units in the DLC - why is this such a big deal, and why are you so surprised at this point (especially after the over-exaggerated account of female warriors in the Daughters of Mars DLC)? Mods like DeI will remove them or change them for you anyway, or just take them out yourself (which is so easy to do). Knowing this, how does the presence of these fictional units threaten your goal for a totally historically authentic version of Rome II for you to play? It doesn't.

I agree here. If they will buy anything then why would not we sell them anything. Stunning!

Obviously CA want cash - they're a business first and foremost; what were you expecting from them in terms of support at this point? That is the business model they've been using for the past decade. What other incentive do they have to revisit one of their older products? Other game companies, such as Paradox, work on free updates accompanied by paid micro-expansions as well. If it encourages CA to continue support for a game I and many other people still love to play and mod, then I have no issue with what they're doing.

Power and Politics was sort of good addition but still many things are messed up in that FLC. They broke with latest update many things and never mentioned it. They did not fix or add things which were asked in a first place. I paid money for Blood and Gore DLC and many animations are gone now. How you explain that? They are not continuing to support it - they finding the ways to milk their old product and instead of decent patches which could change game for a better they add shallow stuff no one cares about. They have to be so happy that they don't have any competition for now...

How can you claim that factions which were implemented in vanilla as minors on release have been "stolen"? They're a part of the campaign map which have always been there, and were severely neglected (i.e. not playable at all, had a bad building / tech tree with unit rosters mostly borrowed from other playable rosters) from the beginning who have always needed attention. The fact that there are already a tonne of mods heavily focusing on those areas of the campaign map doesn't take a genius to figure out why they chose that culture group (Desert Nomads) to fully flesh out.

Read Dresden's post above. Thank you for reading. They literally stealing ideas from mod which, I might suppose, have more active followers than vanilla Rome and they selling those ideas as theirs in a new and cheap DLC's. If that not stealing to you, than you can justify anything.

[Geffalrus]

@Vardano: Rome 2 and DeI are fantasy games. Full stop. They may be clothed differently and use different sets of logic, but they're fantasy nonetheless. If they were historically accurate, Rome would win the exact same way every time and players would lose the game every time they deviated from the prescribed path.

What you're actually talking about is having the right type of historical fantasy, which is fine. That's what we all want deep down.

And the increased amount of consideration for female gamers is a drop in the bucket compared to the overwhelming consideration for male gamers that was and is the rule.