Total War: Rome 2 to get yet another performance-updating patch

With all the patches that Creative Assembly has been pushing out for its recent strategy game Total War: Rome 2, one can't help but think that the game might have been rushed out without proper QA testing. The game is about to get a new patch, and while there are a few balance changes that one would expect in a patch for a strategy game, a lot of the patch's new additions seem to be for improved stability of the game.

Staring contests was often the way to settle dispites in ancient Rome

The patch will, for example, improve frame rates on the Campaign map on low-specced PCs running on a Core 2 Duo CPU in windowed mode, fix lock-ups on DirectX 9 and a fix for minor stutters and terrain rendering glitches. A lot of these changes also bring about a better multiplayer experience. For example, improvements to the multiplayer campaign speed have been made, which is now limited by the slowest player's machine. Also, LAN mode will be available when Steam is set to offline mode.

The previous update that made its way to Total War: Rome 2 introduced a number of performance upgrades, especially to the AI. The patch reduced the calculation time AI-controlled faction use when it is their turn. It also added a new “Limited” option in the "Show AI Player Moves" settings for single player and multiplayer campaign modes. This allows the player to see all movement of enemy factions, all movement within the players' regions and all movement within the sea that the player has ports in during the AI's turns. Almost every other change in the patch is a performance improvement of some kind.

Total War: Rome 2 is out now on PC. It is available through retail channels as well as digital distribution platform Steam.