Patch 14 Live Now!

[alQamar]

Hello and good morning Joey,

this thread got quite long is the dev / support team aware about these issues? Thank you for confirming a status for each of them. Some of them have been reported here or / an on .com


top issues imho:
- patch 14, pathfinding issue including lags due heavy unit blobbling behind and siege towers, reported by several users, documented earlier this thread

- changing graphical quality of sky settings in a game (e.g. during a replay) leads to a bugged camera view and UI. Everything looks like viewed through a fish lense (using Geforce GPU and currently the 340.52 driver) . This may also happen when changing other settings, I have not evaluated that yet. In this case i tried changing the Sky Quality from Extreme to low and otherwise. Both ways reproducible cause this issue.

- Bactria region will not show a proper status on the strategic and diplomacy campaign map for the owner, happiness, growth and wealth (since patch 9 I think)

- Unit size still cannot be adjusted for a multiplayer battle, without forcing the player to leave the hosted game as he is switching to options > graphical settings. To maintain the hosted game there is a ineviteable need to have this option in the game menu for the hoster, so he can change the unit size accordingly to the needs / hardware of the other players without loosing the players as the game will be closed normally. Alternatively if you do not want to have an UI change, please have a look why accessing the left pane options menu forces a quit in the MP lobby. This behaviour is very annoying.

- Shadows of moving units are heavily flickering when you pan out the camera (video). Seems to be unrelated to GPU manufacturer so happens on AMD / NVIDIA either way and quite regardless the shadow quality settings, using Shader Model 5. Also the shadows of birds can be seen occasionally even though this would not be physically possible in the height they are flying. Reported several times on .com including videos and pictures

- the chat lobby is (still) not globally connected so you cannot see all players online. This belongs to the global chat as well for the rooms. Now then Rome 1 and Medival 2 have been ported to Steam networks their source code for the global chat lobby still works, so the assumption this unique ability for TW games was due to Gamespy did not prove right. Technically now using Steam networks the global chat still works there. Would be cool if CA could fix this important issue for the MP community for the games:
Empire TW, Napoleon TW, Shogun 2 TW, Rome 2 TW. In Napoleon TW you cannot even use the global chat as you are unable to write a message outside a hosted MP game.

- Rome2.exe occasionally does not properly terminate when leaving the game. Thus you have to manually close it via the task manager. The game is not available as a window or on the taskbar but Steam will still recognize it is played as it remains in the memory. Also Steam cannot be shutdown while Rome 2 is in this ghosting state. Reported by different users, I also experience this sometimes. Seems not to be related to the Windows version used. Cannot say definitely if this also happens without mods.

- an earlier patch introduced a feature to have Rome 2 borderless in windowed mode. This does only work under circumstances. Currently you have to setup the windowed mode in the graphic settings. The window will not be borderless. A workaround is needed to achieve the status that is desireable. You currently have to lower the game resolution in windowed mode then raising it again, to get rid of the typical Windows window. The borderless window should be initialised already when changing to windowed mode, without the need of a resolution switch. This all is needed for broadcasting (external twitch tools) and video recording purposes e.g machinimas.

- occassionally lags (very slow motion unit movement or even game halts) when playing a MP game and having spectators. The framerate is ok, network connection seems to be ok, CPU load ok but the game is barely unplayable. Happened this way in several tourneys incl. Intel & Scan, as well as the TWC tournament final yesterday. The circumstances when this occours needs to be concretized still. Perhaps this is a sort of a NAT issue. The game was suddenly ok when the BOTH spectators left the game.

- the position of ships coming in as reinforcements in a sea battle, especially with many ships is quite unfortunate. I had this problem (video) when I had to defend Rome in a sea battle (sea map Rome) during my campaign. My ships as well the AI reinforcements spawned quite nearby and a proper movement is not possible. It all ended in a massive blob of ships. The positions where reinformenct ships spawning should be relocated to a further distance between the attacker and defender.

- also during my campaign I experienced a problem that the AI, defending a walled city, is not able to open /pass the gates when the reinforcement troops try to come into the city from outside.
they were under missle attack by my troops and stood in front of a closed gate, not able to pass into their city. Of course they got slaughtered. The specific units landed via transport ships on the shore of the map.
The AI (units) still tried to pass the closed gate and did not try to defend or react to the "new" situation.

- at least an occasional problem with landing transport ships. If you select 4 transport ships and there are only 3 "spots" left on the shore, all 4 ships will try to land on the shore and one ship will become unaccessible while the others disembark their units.
It should be checked if the amount of ships ordered to a landing point at the shore exceeds the number of free spots. As soon all spots are blocked all remaining ships given the order to land at the shore should become accessible again.



improvements:
- transport ships should have a lower ramming damage especially against bigger vessels including war ships. Currently many are unhappy with the instant sink option they bring and their OP ramming damage on non transport ship vessels.

- routing units often enough form a long line of units instead running away more scattered from the battlefield. I think this problem exists since Empire. In Rome 1 and Medieval 2 routing units did not really care about formation and ran away more scattered and unformed. Routing units should not maintain a line formation when routing, it looks like a trail of the death tbh.

- ability to have loose formation for more units other than the roman faction only.

- ability to use pila or other missles like that in defence (not only for roman infantry though) @thanks HumbleWarriror

[the lightning legion]

- routing units often enough form a long line of units instead running away more scattered from the battlefield. I think this problem exists since Empire. In Rome 1 and Medieval 2 routing units did not really care about formation and ran away more scattered and unformed. Routing units should not maintain a line formation when routing, it looks like a trail of the death tbh.

they do tend to scatter if they don't have to go around something that's when you have the line to cross the styx

[Kirra]

- routing units often enough form a long line of units instead running away more scattered from the battlefield. I think this problem exists since Empire. In Rome 1 and Medieval 2 routing units did not really care about formation and ran away more scattered and unformed. Routing units should not maintain a line formation when routing, it looks like a trail of the death tbh.[/QUOTE]

More like a trail of ants.

[alQamar]

Boom Joey tellin it how it is!

I saw a huge increase this patch with optimization. I even have a side by side comparison video. The game (for me at least) handles mass amounts of troops way better now.

I played the same battle twice with about 10,000 troops in a city, and on P.13 it was chugging along really slow, seemed like the tick rate was at 3-6fps then with the update it's like 13-15fps until you kill off a bunch of troops and it speeds up more.

Granted 13-15fps may not seem like much, but this is with everything on Extreme/Ultra, a 1200p resolution, Siege equipment, 10,000 troops and a coastal city.

Yes Darren that's what I also observed in the benchmark / patch comparison. In conditions where you have highest settings and heavy load the FPS increased also for me and are quite doubled compared to patch 12, but later I found out that you also need to have a latest driver. With old drivers (nvidia) this performance increase will not happen at all. On the opposite it is still obvious all patches after 8.1 / 9.1 decreased the performance for the presets "ultra", "very high" and "high" on my rig regardless the driver version used. CA certainly should have a look into that causes.

I am very content with the most patch 14 brought so I am not falling into argues whether those changes come late. Better late than never in this case. Would be cool to know what CA plans for p15 anyway. A dev blog would be great.

they do tend to scatter if they don't have to go around something that's when you have the line to cross the styx

Sounds legit. But as soon they "decide" to form this way, perhaps for your given reason they will never change formation. Mostly this happens in city battles. And they will run this way till the red border.

More like a trail of ants.

yea and they are altogether carrying a heavy load running bend forward like being very depressive - never mind - wrong thread

[Joey CA]

I've passed your feedback onto the support team alQamar- If I receive any further information on this I will post in to this thread.

[alQamar]

Thank you very much!

[Humble Warrior]

Boom Joey tellin it how it is!

Childish. I remeber this kind of thing during the release run up and it was the doubter who turned out right.

If Joey is indeed passing on notes, perhaps final changes can be made to fully remove the torches from sieges. applying ladders or ballistas to naval invasions would also help this.

Also the way ships work in Campaign needs reworking. Too many times they hange out in the middle of the oceon. Ships should be afraid of the sea. So in brief:

1. we would advise have transport ships go only from a-B.
2. have them escorted by military ships if possible.
3. Transports should never attack military ships.

Edited comment - Humble warrior, though I do not feel at fault at all.

[alQamar]

Personally, in the context of the process of patch 14 I do not think that the torches needs to be removed at all. The AI needs a way of last resort to come into a city. Of course it would be sorta realistic that a city cannot be successfully besieged when the attacker is not properly equipped so he has to withdraw the siege in such cases.

While it would make the game more realistic HW, as it is only an AI I suspect this could lead to a situation where the AI is not logically able to grasp it cannot get the city even with a fortunate unit amount. Imagine the AI would attack and besiege your city every turn then withdraw because when in the game it checks, wow we simply cannot get in, while we basically outnumber the reserves (garrison troops).

this would be more annoying than the role the torches play right now after patch 14.

I love your idea that we should be able to escort our transport ships with war ships of all classes. This would be really cool and raise the immersion of naval battles during a campaign. Bascially I could even imagine that CA could actually code this as could work quite the same in the UI like having troops and siege machines / equipment, so you have a split up unit roaster like in a siege in such battles. Same they could split up the unit roaster in such a battle into a unit tab for transport ships and war ships.

[Humble Warrior]

Personally, in the context of the process of patch 14 I do not think that the torches needs to be removed at all. The AI needs a way of last resort to come into a city.

It's very simple. The AI has no more siege engines into a fort, the battle ends as in RTW, MTW2 and history. I can't make it much plainer.

I, personally, think Twitch is a waste of time and wish it wasn't put on the front of my battle screen, perhaps Joey will request the CA gang to remove this UI to the options page? I will never use it. I suspect that won't happen. I believe more important fixes than that are required.

[Joey CA]

Childish and heavy brown nosing. I thought you better than that. I remeber this kind of thing during the release run up and it was the doubter who turned out right.

If Joey is indeed passing on notes, perhaps final changes can be made to fully remove the torches from sieges. applying ladders or ballistas to naval invasions would also help this.

Also the way ships work in Campaign needs reworking. Too many times they hange out in the middle of the oceon. Ships should be afraid of the sea. So in brief:

1. we would advise have transport ships go only from a-B.
2. have them escorted by military ships if possible.
3. Transports should never attack military ships.

Joey IS indeed passing it on- I can't confirm that by me passing it on will mean your specific requests will be made a reality though. I don't make those calls.

Please don't reinforce the view that being 'not completely hostile' to me means that they are brown nosing. It's hardly the case Humble.

[Humble Warrior]

Fair enough, I will remove that bit, but that kind of comment is not right in my eyes. Here check out this thread I made earlier. It points out stuff that I believe need fixing. I do not expect it to be done as these are just things I would like.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...er-Pila-thrown

Also my findings on siege AI in campaign. Perhaps if they have the time to read.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...AI-in-Campaign

[the lightning legion]

I don't think torching the gates needs to be removed it wouldn't hurt to tart it up a bit though with an animation or something other than just lobbing torches at the gates

[Dan113112]

I don't think torching the gates needs to be removed it wouldn't hurt to tart it up a bit though with an animation or something other than just lobbing torches at the gates

Make them take a lot longer to do damage so it isn't something worth doing unless you have no other choice. Like mods do.

[the lightning legion]

one thing I would absolutely love is if I could toggle the main menu screen
I want ma eagle back

[Praetorian_BGX]

Hi Joey,

I can confirm that siege battles stuttering is much worst in my case than before patch 14. Its not connected to fps.

Open battles are working more than fine on 2vs2 full armies (extreme settings).

[alQamar]

It's very simple. The AI has no more siege engines into a fort, the battle ends as in RTW, MTW2 and history. I can't make it much plainer.

I, personally, think Twitch is a waste of time and wish it wasn't put on the front of my battle screen, perhaps Joey will request the CA gang to remove this UI to the options page? I will never use it. I suspect that won't happen. I believe more important fixes than that are required.

How is your comment about twitch related to the AI torching mate? It is hard for me to grasp a link. You do not have to use twitch if you do not like to, but there are people using it. Also I referred to an issue (borderless window) that is important to have when NOT using the twitch function of Rome 2 but external twitch tools.

just a bit offtopic but related to torching:
Yesterday I played on a MP game of Civ 5 with a friend and as we are both TW fans we had to laugh at lot:
He plays Byzantinium, I play Persia. We captured the captital of Rome and it got a part of Byzantinium and also when captured converted to the Catholic religion. I said to him: well have a look again we are rewriting history. East of Rome spreads catholic religion and now the East Roman Empire controls Rome. And Byzantinium troops got aided by my persian archers.

But the really funny point was: as we were around 150 AD, what did the troop do when capturing the city of Rome in Civ 5 at this time?:

Right - they are torching the city. We both instantly thought about Rome 2, and so it seems a bit legit to have torches or perhaps CA took Civ 5 as a template

one thing I would absolutely love is if I could toggle the main menu screen
I want ma eagle back

As you are on TWC this is the heaven for mods, such a mod exist for long. Google it please.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...er-Pila-thrown

Also my findings on siege AI in campaign. Perhaps if they have the time to read.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...AI-in-Campaign

very important things too, sorry I missed to include them in my comprehensive list of issues.

[Huberto]

one thing I would absolutely love is if I could toggle the main menu screen
I want ma eagle back

Couldn't live without it: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=204957234

[von stoker]

All in all, a great step forward with patch 14, but the nomad tribes still need work siege-wise. I had a full stack of cavalry with 1 foot unit attack my walled city, the 1 unit used the ladder while the cavalry tried to torch the gates with the usual lack of success. Maybe programme predominantly horse armies to besiege walled cities and force the defender to sally out. Hopefully a bit of nomad love in future patches.

[Huberto]

Personally, in the context of the process of patch 14 I do not think that the torches needs to be removed at all. The AI needs a way of last resort to come into a city. Of course it would be sorta realistic that a city cannot be successfully besieged when the attacker is not properly equipped so he has to withdraw the siege in such cases.

While it would make the game more realistic HW, as it is only an AI I suspect this could lead to a situation where the AI is not logically able to grasp it cannot get the city even with a fortunate unit amount. Imagine the AI would attack and besiege your city every turn then withdraw because when in the game it checks, wow we simply cannot get in, while we basically outnumber the reserves (garrison troops).

this would be more annoying than the role the torches play right now after patch 14.

Doesn't the AI get a ram on the second turn of a siege though, as in Med 2? Why can't the AI learn to wait a turn before attacking cities? Then it will have, what, 50% more ladders and a realistic why to break the gates.

[Swamidude]

Personally, in the context of the process of patch 14 I do not think that the torches needs to be removed at all. The AI needs a way of last resort to come into a city. Of course it would be sorta realistic that a city cannot be successfully besieged when the attacker is not properly equipped so he has to withdraw the siege in such cases.

While it would make the game more realistic HW, as it is only an AI I suspect this could lead to a situation where the AI is not logically able to grasp it cannot get the city even with a fortunate unit amount. Imagine the AI would attack and besiege your city every turn then withdraw because when in the game it checks, wow we simply cannot get in, while we basically outnumber the reserves (garrison troops).

this would be more annoying than the role the torches play right now after patch 14.

I love your idea that we should be able to escort our transport ships with war ships of all classes. This would be really cool and raise the immersion of naval battles during a campaign. Bascially I could even imagine that CA could actually code this as could work quite the same in the UI like having troops and siege machines / equipment, so you have a split up unit roaster like in a siege in such battles. Same they could split up the unit roaster in such a battle into a unit tab for transport ships and war ships.

Just a script that makes the battle end when there are no options anymore. The battle ends in a draw and the siege continues, so the attacking army doesn't pull back completely. At this moment you can't pull back into a certain 'save zone' and just end the battle, but continue the siege. There should be a possibility to have a draw if to much siege equipment gets destroyed.

If the siege isn't going well, I pull back, I don't sacrifice much more units in a suicide torch blob, especially not when it's raining!! What the AI needs is that those torches get removed and there comes a draw system. Torching those gates is suicide, especially with rain, pulling back would be a much better option, then they live to fight another day instead of commiting suicide on a helpless case.

It would be nice if this system could be stretched to all the battles, to get a BAI who knows when it is loss and will try to retreat as good as possible in order to keep as much men alive for perhaps a next battle. And that means not a mass rout, running to the corner of the map, but an organised retreat, holding you back at some points and sacrificing some units in order to give the rest a possibility to pull back. But I don't think that's gonna happen for Rome II, perhaps a challenge for the AI designers for games to come? Anyway at least do something at the sieges, because when the last option is torching, in 95% of the cases it will be suicide and pulling back is a better option and the AI should be able to know whether it's worth doing or not.