Total War: Rome 2 Beta Patch 12 available

Another beta patch charges down the Rome 2 hill.

While I’ve been busy fighting my way through Rome 2’s Second Punic War for the Hannibal at the Gates review, Creative Assembly has released more patches. Well, it’s released a beta version of the upcoming patch 12. That means you can download it early (at risk of some teething troubles) and try out the changes early.

To get yourself hooked up with the beta, right-click on Total War: Rome 2 in your list of Steam games, navigate to “properties” and then find the betas tab in that window. Once you’re in that tab, select “update12beta” from the drop-down list. Steam should start downloading the beta patch automatically. You can opt out later on if you feel like it. When the official version of patch 12 is released, Rome 2 should also update itself automatically over the beta patch.

It contains fixes relating to the Hannibal at the Gates expansion, but you don’t need to own that to make use of this.

Anyway, enough about how to get hold of it. What does the changelog hold this time? “A number of battle maps no longer feature snow during Spring, Summer and Autumn,” for one thing. So that’s handy.

Here’s the full list.

Technical and performance improvements:

Battle

• Fix for UI-related crash in battle
• Fixed replay de-sync for siege battles initiated from the frontend (e.g. custom or multiplayer, not campaign battles).

Campaign

• Reduced lag during AI turns in Multiplayer Campaign mode.

Battle AI improvements:

• Fixed several battle AI issues in naval settlement assaults which caused disembarked units to go idle and not join the battle.
• Fix for a Battle AI bug where units could not find a path to a wall-breach, if a gate was captured before entering city.
• Various battle-map improvements to help the Battle AI use siege equipment more effectively.
• Fixed bug which caused the battle AI not to recognise breaches in some wall corner pieces.
• Improved Battle AI phalanx unit behaviour (ensuring pike units use their phalanx abilities when bracing).
• Battle AI no longer issues orders to units when they should be skirmishing.
• Improved the battle AI’s spatial reasoning in naval settlement assaults. This applies to reinforcing or disembarked naval forces, when selecting positions from which to assault the settlement.

Campaign AI improvements

• Campaign AI is now less likely to maintain long blockades without assaulting.
• Campaign AI is now less likely to move armies into proximity with superior enemy forces.

General battle improvements

• Improvements to certain units in unit groups who would fail to pathfind effectively when ordered to attack units in different areas (in very specific/rare cases on the battlefield).
• Improvements to siege vehicles to ensure men on the tower getting knocked into the air does not cause wall-docking to fail.
• Unit parts (armour, tunics etc) updated to offer greater unit variety.
• Various improvements to men climbing siege towers and ladders. Soldiers now climb towers more effectively without milling at the bottom.
• Siege engines will no longer get stuck on trees on the battlefield.
• Player-controlled ambushing armies can now use deployables in ambush battles.
• Naval units no longer attempt to reinforce ambush battles.
• Fixed a bug which prevented armies of only one unit from being able to hide on the battlefield.
• Fixed an area in the large Persian port where ships were not disembarking correctly.
• Increased the number of unobstructed walls in the medium and large Rome siege battle-maps.
• Fixed several cases where multiplayer battles could take place on very steep hills or mountains.
• Several battle map improvements to beach landings, improved terrain heights and collision with some battlefield props.
• Added new helmet variations and new Germanic tunics to Campaign Generals.
• Added new Eastern Horse and Hellenic Heavy Horse variants.
• Trees and units no longer clip through the ground near the Statue of Zeus at Olympia wonder on the battlefield.
• Altered ship-sorting priority when disembarking, in order to reduce shuffling around.
• An alternative bear pelt has been applied to Germanic Berserkers who don’t wear helmets under their pelts, so the top of the hairline is no longer visible.

General Campaign improvements

• A number of battle maps no longer feature snow during Spring, Summer and Autumn.
• Fixed an issue where an ambushing army would move at the start of the turn. Please note: Sometimes an ambushing army will move when it is discovered or you discover an agent or army that is standing on top of it. This is expected behaviour.
• When a general’s unit is the only unit in a reinforcing army, and the general dies but the unit does not, The general will now die on the campaign map.
• Raiding will no longer cause negative happiness.
• Technology requirements for military ports have been altered. Tier II military ports either have no tech requirements, or the same requirements as other tier II ports.
• Corrected local traditions for Iberian regions in Grand Campaign to be Iberian instead of Celtic.
• Reduced the Siege Holdout Time Effect conferred by siege tower technologies.
• Political promotion positions for Syracuse, Arevaci and Lusitani factions have been corrected.
• Forming a confederation no longer causes rebel armies in regions owned by the confederating factions to be absorbed into the confederation.
• Fixed some terrain issues on the Hannibal at the Gates map.
• New Germanic trousers and tunics added.

Usability Improvements

Battle

• Fixed a rare bug where fire sound-effects would play after a battle had finished, and could be heard over the victory menu.

Campaign

• Reduce Slaves effect now displays the correct icon.
• Retreat button is no longer enabled on the pre-battle siege screen when forces are unable to retreat.
• Some typographical fixes in Incidents and Dilemmas.
• Tweaks to Egyptian and Carthaginian siege technology to more closely match the unlock order of normal Greek technologies.
• Fixed a situation where all new Carthaginian general or agent recruits had the surname “Gisco”.
• Fix for some instances where a skull would appear on a unit card despite that unit not being dead on the post battle screen.
• Various improvements to battle-unit banner icons.
• Arevaci, Lusitani and Syracuse civil-war factions minimap and unit card colours have been corrected.
• Roman siege buildings are now unlocked by technologies in the correct order in Grand Campaign.

General

• Added a warning when loading replays from an older game version, to inform the player that results may be inconsistent when viewed in the version they are now playing.
• If the Twitch End User Licence Agreement (EULA) has previously been declined, it will no longer be displayed every time the game is launched. If the Twitch button is pressed when the EULA has previously been declined, the EULA will then be shown. If the Twitch button is pressed and the player is not signed in to their Twitch account, they will be taken to the options menu to sign in.
• Twitch streams will now be paused when the Steam overlay is active.
• The Twitch button will no longer display during Historical Battle frontend intros.

Balancing Changes

Campaign

• Reduced all technology-conferred ammo bonuses from 50% to 25%.
• Reduced General’s logistics-conferred ammo bonuses from 25% and 50% to 10% and 25%.
• Hidden income bonus for African and Arabian factions removed.
• Reduced the amount of money that the Etruscan league start the campaign with.
• Added two extra Hastati units to Rome at the start of their campaign.
• The Ibossim region now belongs to Carthage at the start of the campaign.
• Unit-balancing changes. Axe Warriors and Naked Warriors have also been added to the Boii unit roster.

Assembly Kit

• Fixed an Assembly Kit bug which removed Campaign victory conditions from Campaign mods.