Total War: Rome 2 Empire Divided DLC and patch details revealed

Creative Assembly has been teasing their latest Total War expansion for a few days now, and today there are finally more details on the Total War: Rome 2 updates.

The Total War: Rome 2 Empire Divided DLC (Steam page here) will bring ten different playable factions, new victory conditions and new campaign features such as plagues, cults and banditry. As previously mentioned, CA is also releasing a Total War: Rome 2 patch which they are calling the Power and Politics patch. This update has gone into public beta testing on Steam today. Players will need to opt-in to take part.

The Empire Divided DLC will focus on the years 270AD with the Roman Empire near collapse. The barbarian tribes are circling and ready to take advantage of the chaos and what happens now will be played out in a new full campaign.

The new patch will overhaul Rome 2’s political system as CA aim to “system to create a more subtle and intriguing experience with farther-reaching consequences.” The patch also comes with numerous fixes to the game which are outlined below. The update is designed to work alongside the Empire Divided DLC which will release on 30 November, priced at $17.

A quick note to modders, the Power and Politics patch likely to break all mods so they will need to be updated. Players who have saved games so also be aware this is going to happen. CA says that players can opt-in to the PATCH_17 beta that is the old version of the game without the Power & Politics update.

Here are the full Total War: Rome 2 patch notes.

Total War: Rome 2 Power & Politics Patch Notes

This free overhaul to ROME II’s political system introduces a host of new features, options and functionality designed to create a more subtle and intriguing political game with farther-reaching consequences. The main aims of the Power & Politics patch are:

• To allow the player to exercise direct impact on their campaign through the political system.
• To allow for well-defined civil wars through the new loyalty statistic and party areas of influence.
• To add variety in gameplay for different factions and/or government types.

The Power & Politics Update is currently in beta, and has been developed hand-in-hand with Total War: ROME II – Empire Divided, which launches 30^th November 2017. The update is also compatible with all pre-existing ROME II campaigns with the exception of Caesar In Gaul, which retains its own custom political system.

Political parties, influence and loyalty

• Each political party in your empire will have two main properties – influence and loyalty. Influence is carried over from the old system and loyalty shows how satisfied they are with the ruling party.
• Loyalty will increase or decrease as a direct result of political actions and from campaign action or inaction (for example, if a general belongs to a given party but is just sitting idle, he will cause that party to drop in loyalty).
• Low loyalty for any party will result in a chance for a secession or civil war.
• New parties may spawn within your political system, based on your imperium level and government type.

Political parties: areas of influence

• Each political party in your empire will control a number of provinces, depending on their influence. The more influence a party has, the more provinces it will control. The exact provinces under the control of each party are automatically assigned by an algorithm that tries to keep all its territories close together.
• In case of a secession or civil war, the new faction that spawns will have the provinces that were included in the areas of influence of the seceding parties.
• The party areas of influence can be seen from the new filter available in the map screen in the campaign UI.

Political party leaders, important characters, and traits

• Political parties have traits that modify the way they gain or lose loyalty. Each party has two traits.
• Each political party now has a leader. The leader has one additional trait that acts like a party trait. This means that there are three traits in total that affect a party’s loyalty (2 built in the party and 1 more from the leader).
• All political characters now have an additional political trait that takes effect only if they become the leader of their party. You can still see the political traits of characters that are not members of the ruling party, so you can plan how to develop them.

Government types and reforms

• There are 4 possible government types: Kingdom, League (or Union), Republic, and Empire, each of them providing different bonuses and penalties (public order, number of edicts, etc). The Empire archetype provides slightly better bonuses than the other 3, and it is generally the goal of the player to reach that government type, although reforms can be made between all government types at any time.
• Each faction can reform their government type at the cost of money and several turns of instability. Reforming a government is done from the Government Overview section in the Politics or Summary tab in the Faction screen.
• The Empire government type is available to all cultures, however the other 3 types are available only to some cultures. For example, barbarians can only reform between Empire, Kingdom and Union (not Republic).
• The faction leader is now excluded from the Cursus Honorum system (Secure Promotion). Instead, he now has a unique trait that depends on the player’s government type.

Secessions and Civil Wars

• Parties with low loyalty have a chance to start a secession. In case of secession, the territories under the area of influence of the party break off from your empire, creating a new faction at war with you.
• Secessions may turn into civil wars, where all parties join either you or the separatists.
• Parties that start a secession or civil war are removed from your political system.

New political actions

• There is a number of new political actions that can be done from the Characters tab in the Faction screen in the UI. Some of them now have direct effect on the campaign gameplay and utilize the previously underused statesmen (political characters that are not currently commanding an army).
• There are a few new actions that can be taken against entire parties. They are available from the Politics tab in the Faction screen in the UI.
• Some of the old political actions have been rebalanced. For example, Secure Promotion can now be used on characters from the non-ruling party as well, to increase their party loyalty.

UI/UX Changes and Improvements

• The Factions screen now remembers the last tab opened by the user and it is automatically selected the next time the Factions screen is opened.
• Actions taken from the Characters or Politics tab in the Faction screen no longer close the Faction screen, so the user can continue doing political actions without having to reopen it.
• The Records and Statistics tabs have been combined into a single tab.
• The Character tab in the Faction screen received an overhaul and a Hire Statesman option has been added so players can now recruit statesmen directly.
• An Open Character Profile link has been added to the Character portrait on the campaign map that leads to the Character tab, with the character selected. Similarly, a link on the character portrait in its profile leads to the general on the campaign map.
• Support for 4K resolution has been added to the game.
• A Campaign filter has been added to the multiplayer/custom battles.

Bug Fixes and Balance Changes

• Reduced the number of senators gained or lost from subject dilemmas.
• Fixed effects given to some damaged buildings that were more beneficial than the undamaged ones.
• Fixed bonuses from iron and lumber settlements to match their description.
• Fixed buildings that unlocked certain units at lower levels but didn’t allow them at higher levels.
• Fixed mercenary and auxiliary units that were missing abilities enabled for the original units or had vastly different statistics from the original units.
• Fixed unit cards for several units to represent their actual mass.
• Fixed several units that had incorrect action points or vision range for their type.
• Fixed buildings that provided less garrison units as they were upgraded.
• Fixed several general skills and army traditions that were providing wrong bonuses.
• Fixed the time windows during which several historical characters would appear to better match their real birth and death dates.
• Decreased the effectiveness of the Poison Wells and Poison Provisions spy actions.
• Changed the effects of grain settlements. They now provide food to regions in their current province and adjacent provinces instead of faction-wide.
• Fixed a problem with an unnamed army in the Hannibal at the Gates campaign.
• Fixed several visual/UI issues (overlapping text boxes, text being cut out, spilling out, black screen when changing resolution and others)
• Added an indicator for active edicts in the province list.
• Fixed a problem that resulted in duplicate mercenaries being available in some regions in the Hannibal at the Gates campaign.
• Disbanding an army no longer wounds agents attached to armies.
• The Historical Battles of Alesia and Carthago have been rebalanced.
• Several issues that were causing crashes have been fixed.
• Fixed several effects that provided incorrect bonuses (melee defence, melee attack, shots per minute, range).
• Fixed an issue that was causing incorrect loading screens to be displayed.