Rome Total War 2 looking likely!

Coming March 8th.

The Total War: ROME 2 - Desert Kingdoms Culture Pack introduces four new playable factions to Total War: ROME II. The Kingdoms of Kush, Saba and Nabatea fall under the African/Arabian subculture, while the Masaesyli are of Numidian origin.

Also:

Female Leaders – Free LC

Following in Zenobia’s footsteps, Cleopatra and Teuta are now fully playable as faction leaders and generals, along with custom visuals and voice-over.
Important female characters have been added to all campaigns and across all factions. In some cultures, like Rome and Greek – women can only serve a social/political role while in other women can be generals and fight alongside men.
For cultures where women can’t hold public offices there is a special “Cursus Honorum” path that follows the increase in “behind-the-stage” political influence of women.
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.
Faction leaders of opposite gender can now marry as a diplomatic action, significantly strengthening the relations between the two factions.
The basic marriage action now has political implications.

Quite a surprise!

From a business perspective…I wonder if this is CA expanding - they have a lot on their plate since Warhammer Total War - and giving some new teams a chance to cut their teeth on Rome 2 DLC?

This released today:

And happy International Women’s Day - don’t forget about the female leaders free-LC available now! Cleopatra and Teuta are now fully playable as faction leaders and generals, along with custom visuals and voice-over., and important female characters have been added to all campaigns and across all factions.

Click here for more info, including patch notes and optional rollback build: Total War: Rome II - Desert Kingdoms Patch Notes - Total War

Ill go check it out. Report later.

Nabatea campaign is very good. Interesting troop compliment, desert, (“you are one of those desert loving Englishman”) , and some strategic choices. Yes I am playing Warhammer 2. But I always like to pull a 10 turn in Rome 2. Interesting campaign.

Falling back in love with Total War games after Medieval 2 (Warhammer did that), I have to say that Rome 2 is actually pretty great after the expansions. I bounced off it at initial release, but now going back to it after Total Warhammer tired me out, I’ll have to say it’s good stuff.

What i like (compared to WH) is the political part, it’s not just war - war - war. You have to keep attention to politics. Also having a prettty decent idea of what your up against in the tactical battles makes it more tactical.

Do you have the latest expansion pack for it? If so does it make the politics part a lot better?

The politics update was in the patch, not the expansion. And I would say it gives the game more depth. Rome 2 is quite good now, I think.

I don’t have Empire Divided, but as Richard Holt says, it’s in base game now. The more I think about it, it is not actually the (new) mechanics alone that makes me like it so much, but that Rome 2 lets me roleplay a little in politics and diplomacy.

I mean I love Warhammer but there the battle lines are basically set from the get go. Eg. as the Empire, the only real diplomatic decision you’ll have to make (imo) is how to treat the Britonians. And unless you want a two front war, the answer is usually given. You also play as a predefined character with a history and specific goals.

In Rome 2 there are so many tribes/barbarians that I can (lightly) roleplay, and actually make a divide and conquer strategy to try to take as many provinces as I can without making everyone my enemies. This is especially true if you play as one of the barbarians, and actually have to be careful with who you get into a war with (in the beginning).

For example I was playing as the Iceni, having taken the UK and gotten a foothold in mainland Europe. There I found another federation that was more or less the same size as me. Now instead of attacking them head on or trying to form an alliance, I used diplomacy (ie bribes) to make the other smaller tribes attack them from the other side. Then I waited to the smaller tribes had almost been wiped out before offering to join them in the war - giving me a nice casus belli with less diplomatic penalty. And of course made a nasty two front war for my rival and easy pickings for me later with the smaller tribes.

The most fun part was thinking of myself of a cynical cheiftan who wanted to be king of the celts, no matter the (human) cost. It gave me a little taste of Roman-style backstabbery :-)

That is very cool. Now I want to be the Iceni too! :)

Rome invading the Fangorn confirmed.

My guess is family trees (because it’s a tree) as free updates, with…er…Alexander as DLC? Founding of Rome? No idea on that part.

Amazing (and great) they are still working on this game.

This is a whopper - family tree, a whole slew of changes to the worst part of the game (agents!), MSAA anti-aliasing(!), ships that leave after disembarking troops (this is huge!), and a whole range of bug fixes.

Wow, might be time to finally pick up this thing, as that looks awesome.

That is great news, I love this game and I love this period of history. I bounced off Warhammer pretty hard so I’m really glad they’ve revisited Rome II. I’m looking forward to many more hours with this superb game.

Great prediction Fifth_Fret, you were spot on. :)

Agents were never a hard fix, all you had to do is cap the number as was done in S2, so I’ll be interested to see what solution they came up with here.

Well, it was a tree. It’s not that hard a riddle!

More of a question is the upcoming campaign DLC.

Ok then, it was an alright prediction I suppose… better?

HOLY CRAP! I want this now! Been waiting for this since the game first came out. Yippee!

The music in the One Tree video from the 33 second mark. Is that from the game or a 3rd party song?