Rome Total War releases Patch 1.2

[Paelos]

And its about damn time

The patch is 56 MB and I can't see the changes online, so I'm downloading for the readme file where they are located. More to follow.

EDIT: Well the thing won't open on my work computer since its not installed here. I'll have to get it at home. Perhaps I can locate the documenation elsewhere.

[Paelos]

Found it:

PATCH FIXES v1.2

This 1.2 patch contains many improvements as well as fixes for Single and Multiplayer issues. Listed below are some of the main changes/fixes.

Battles

• Fixed missile collision code to reduce friendly fire casualties
• Reinforcement AI – AI Generals are now less suicidal
• Fixed phalanx pursuit bug
• Fixed multiple groups converging on a single point when ordered to move
• Player can now select between drip-fed and AI controlled reinforcements before a battle
• Custom battles in both single player and multiplayer involving multiple
armies of the same faction are now supported. Armies of the same faction must all be on the same team.
• Allowed troops defending a city with no walls to leave the wall boundary
• Allowed men in siege towers to panic to stop men 'fighting to the death'
becoming stuck in an inaccessible place.
• Chariots carrying an officer or the general now get the appropriate health bonus
• Stopped men on bridges from panicking (thus leading to mass extinctions).
• Fixed armies withdrawing from an ambush on the battlefield where they couldn't escape the battlefield.
• You can now see settlements, wonders, ships on adjacent tiles when
going down to the battlefield
• Increased the fatigue combat penalties by 50% to make them more
noticeable
• Fixed amok elephants not killing anyone after they went into a path following individuals.
• Numerous fixes to the testudo formation, particularly movement in cities, colliding with other testudos and getting stuck in the reform task
• General Improvements to unit movement when grouped.
• Fixed bug in locomotion, which was leading to men sometimes being trapped in the testudo state.
• Fixed path finding not taking constrictions (e.g. bridges) into account when moving to points within the constriction in some cases. (Usually manifested as people running into the river when asked to attack a unit standing on a bridge).
• Allowed troops defending the plaza to leave the plaza if being shot at
• Stopped elephants/chariots and cavalry running into rivers in an attempt to reach their combat target
• Units with shields can now effectively shield themselves when marching.


Sieges

• Fixed siege towers colliding (producing a rattling behaviour), when dragged out as close as possible then ordered to move.
• Fixed a crash when a unit tries to pick up ladders in deployment but doesn't have enough men in unit.
• Fixed siege towers creating arrows during deployment when in range and set to fire-at-will, which would all fly forwards in one huge volley when you started the battle.

Interface

• Added option to enable/disable unit shaders to graphics options (in preferences.txt)
• Added option to enable/disable gloss maps to graphics options (in preferences.txt)
• Stopped ancillary transfer ‘cloning’ issue
• Added total cost of queued mercenaries to recruitment scroll
• Sieging armies can now bring up siege equipment scroll when they have no Movement Points
• Added optional multiplayer quick chat system, and ability to set message duration (in preferences.txt)
• Added 'minimal UI' for battles, set MINIMAL_UI: TRUE in preferences.txt
• Added shortcuts for hiding elements of minimal battle ui, F5 – toggle radar, F6 - toggle buttons, F7 - toggle cards
• Added a button to admit defeat in multiplayer battles
• When using 'quick chat' system, messages are now colored depending on source of message in categories: friend, enemy, all, private
• Added logical unit selections (ctrl + shift + 1-9 to set, alt + 1-9 to select) as in Medieval. There is no visual representation of this.
• Added keyboard shortcuts to select next and previous of a given selected object type (character, settlement, fort etc.)
• Added multiplayer message log (use the ` key)
• You can now view all queued multi turn paths (equals key)

Multiplayer

• Added filter check box to game list to filter games that cannot be joined
• Added ignore player chat button to filter unwanted chat from players in the lobby
• Players who quit the game now have their armies taken over by AI.
• Dropping players who have lost contact (either through connection problems or because of a machine lock-up) is now possible. In army selection stage, if there is a problem that causes the game to stall a chat message will notify players. If there is ONE player causing the problems, the host may kick them using the relevant 'kick' button. If the game resumes, either because the problem has been resolved or because the player causing the problem has been kicked, then a message will inform players. Players can leave the game even when stalled.
• In battles, if the game stalls a window will pop up to inform players of the problem. If one player is causing the problem, a 'kick' button will appear in this window on the host machine. All players will also have a 'leave game' option. If the game resumes, the window disappears
• Desyncs in game state are now reported in the release version of the game. A message will inform players that the game is not synchronized. The host may then kick players who have desync’d from the host game state, by using chat commands. These can be entered in battle games, by selecting any chat option. Supported commands are: '#players' - which displays a list of players in the game, with indexes that can be used to kick them, and also displays if the game is currently synchronized, and if not shows who is synchronized with the host; '#kick', which allows the host to kick players from the game, either by specifying a single player index (eg, '#kick 1'), or if the chat command has been sent 'to' a specific player, '#kick you' will kick that player. Finally, if the game has desync’d, '#kick desync' will kick all players not synchronized with the host. If the game then becomes synchronized again, a message will inform players
• Logfiles: To allow people to view stats without using the online stats tracking, a logfile report is generated after all MP battles. This lists various stats about the game. Preferences options allow you to force logfiles to be generated after ALL battles, even single player campaign ones. By default this is off - the preferences.txt file must be edited by hand, there is no in-game UI to change these. The name of the file used is online_mp_DD-MM-YY_HHMM.txt, for day, month, year, hour, minute, saved to 'logfiles' directory. Another preferences option allows you to switch off time stamped logfiles and just use logfile.txt.
• Player Id’s: In Online play, users can choose any name they like at login. We do however have a CD-key specific ID that is unique, and we've implemented a system that lets people use this information. It's disabled by default - preferences settings (starting with GS_PID) enable this, although you can also enable it through the chat window in the lobby. The basic idea is that information derived from a player's CD ID is displayed as a tooltip for that player's name; the CD ID itself can be shown, and/or it can be used to look up entries from listings. The system uses listings found in playerlists directory. Lists have titles and a series of player CD ID/name pairs. If a CDID is present in a list, the tooltip for that player will appear and show the list title and the name found. One listing is (optionally) maintained by the game - current.txt, which has a default title 'Known'. When you log out, any CD IDs not previously seen are appended to this list. You can also force saving the list with #cur. Use #cur TITLE to save and also change the title used. By default, current.txt is used - this can be toggled with #usecur. Chat-window commands control this system. #pid - enables and disables the system. #fullid - toggles display of CD ID. This is not active by default, as the ids are just numbers. #usecur - toggle use of current.txt listing (active by default) #lists - reload all player lists; also displays the position of any errors if it failed to load, so people can create their own lists and try them out more easily. Check current.txt for format. With this system active, you can see what people called themselves the first time you met them. The community can create and distribute additional listings, for tournaments, clans, and rankings. This goes some way to letting people have confidence in identities. It's disabled by default, and is entirely optional, so only those who feel the need for it will use it. The tooltips for players can take a second or two to appear as GameSpy has to be queried for CDID info. If there is no listing, nothing will appear - also, if the player is in GameSpy Arcade, no CDID info is available, so again nothing will appear.
• Battle chat commands: In MP battles, there are some chat commands available. Send chat to anyone or everyone (anything starting # is not actually sent as chat). #players (or #p) shows info about players in the game - names, factions, denari spent if custom battle, whether the game is synchronised. In deployment, it also lists who the game is waiting for, so you can see who is taking too long to deploy. #kick allows the host to kick players (using the player number listed with #p) #kick desync allows host to kick players who have desynced with the host game #drop allows the host to attempt to drop players who have lost contact with the game, possibly as they have crashed - this is managed by a pop-up window in-game, but while the game is still loading on some machines this window is disabled, and #drop is the only way the host can drop such players. Note that this will work only if a single player has lost contact - multiple drops are not supported.


Editor

• Battle editor enabled – can be accessed by entering command line switch –enable_editor

Campaign Map

• The Campaign Map camera movement has been made considerably smoother with the addition of inertia to remove camera judder. This option can be switched on and off in the preferences.txt file by changing the value of CAMPAIGN_MAP_CAMERA_SMOOTHING between TRUE and FALSE.
• Added 'show character details' button to coming of age message
• When accepting a marriage proposal, a marriage message is generated with a 'Show character details' button, so the character can be located
• You can now sally out against a besieging army only once per turn
• Heirs are chosen through their influence rather than their
management or command skills
• Decreased movement cost for deep sea, hence an increase in movement per turn
• Brigands now more active - they will move around more often
• Brigands now have the option of attempting to conquer human-controlled settlements on difficulty levels hard and very hard
• Reinforcements will now only be available in a sally battle outside a settlement, if the army that is attacked is the besieging army
• Fixed crash bug when doing a multi turn action on a fort or port which
then disappears before the action is finished
• Watchtowers were not using their height advantage to see over obstacles and terrain
• Limited the effect of squalor on public order to 100% max
• Rebalanced elephants and chariots in auto-resolve, they were hugely undervalued
• Improved behavior of the auto-resolve on hard and very hard
• Increased frequency of ambushes
• Losing or drawing army withdrawing now reforms with all it's routed units as long as there are enough soldiers to reform the army
• Assassinating generals is much more difficult if his army has a substantial number of men
• Slightly increased movement extends for agents
• Can now disband units in enemy territories
• Map information diplomacy costs increased in line with the amount of information received
• Post Marius upgraded bodyguard units are now working
• Subterfuge AI now much more active
• Sally battles are now only available against a besieging army rather than just an adjacency check
• Fixed many trait and ancillary issues
• Battlefield now shows adjacent settlements, forts, wonders, ships and ports
• Extermination cash reward reduced
• Bribing settlements and characters is now a transgression
• Fixed bug where spies in an enemy settlement were getting killed when the settlement changed hands
• Improved campaign map scroll speed control.

Naval

• Navies are now more likely to blockade enemy ports
• Navies will consider moving to reinforce a navy that is transporting troops, as long as the moving navy has not already moved that turn, and can reach the transporting navy within one single turn
• Navies transporting passengers will no longer consider merging with other navies
• Fixed bug that was preventing navies from merging (hence lots of little
ships in version 1.0)
• Fleets may split into smaller fleets if the faction doesn't have enough
individual navies to satisfy all transport requirements
• Added contiguous coastlines to help with long range naval pathfinding
• Fixed admirals not getting command stars after battle

Characters/Agents

• Fixed bribery attribute so that it increases your chance of bribing
rather than reducing it.
• You cannot bribe a family member back after another faction has bribed them. He is disinherited from any of
his former factions
• Cannot bribe fellow Romans anymore whilst you're allied
• Bribery costs increased to double and also according to the wealth of the briber
• Bribery of a captain with agents and incompatible units was disbanding the agents with the army. Now fixed.
• Infiltrated spies remain when a settlement changes hands
• Maximum chance of assassination and sabotage is changed from 100% to 95%
to stop assassins assassinating everything.
• Characters can now be cured of the plague when they are not in a settlement
• Character plague duration has been reduced from 8 to 5 turns
• Command stars will not be assigned in battle when the odds are overwhelming in favor of the winner and vice versa for the loser
• Fixed transgression bug when making small value deals

Events

• Birthplace, marriages, and adoptions can be at other settlements now, not just capital. New characters will appear in the settlement where their father (or father in law in the case of marriage, and adopted-father in the case of adoption) is garrisoned
• Tweaked the age of marriage candidates so that you get less old suitors and overly young suitors.
• Marius is now more likely to happen later on in the game
• All future disaster events and historical events were being erased when a save game was loaded up. This is now fixed

AI

• Improved the AI unit re-training behavior
• Tweaked the AI subterfuge so that assassination missions, sabotage
missions, infiltration missions are actually carried out. Is now less
cautious with lower ranked assassins and spies.
• Tweaked the AI tax level setting code (also affects player-assist)
• Fixed the player-assist AI updating the tax policy when part or all of the
garrison is moved out of a settlement
• Fixed the AI not attacking enemy controlled forts in its territory
• Changes to campaign AI strength evaluation
• Improved likelihood of AI sallying
• Allowed AI armies to move again after executing an attack
• Increased AI target evaluation of provinces which contain Wonders
• Changed campaign AI production behavior to make it more likely that elephants and Artillery are produced
• Fixed protectorate behavior (Tribute and not attacking)
• Fixed other Romans attacking your protectorates
• Fixed bug stopping the AI defending fords in river battles
• Reinforcement AI – AI Generals are now less suicidal


Many more general tweaks and fixes.

UNINSTALLING THE GAME
When uninstalling Rome: Total War™ , there will be 2 files that will remain on the hard drive. You can find the files in the following locations if you wish to delete them.

\version.inf
\Docs\Patch Readme.rtf

PATCH FIXES v1.1

Battles

• Elephant units in the game have been tweaked to make them less overpowering.


Multiplayer

• This 1.1 patch addresses many issues with multiplayer dealing with game stability, performance and some synch issues.
• Fixed an issue with the GameSpy multiplayer lobby population when it hits its maximum.

[plummerx]

I've been looking at this game, I'd like to hear your thoughts on it. Those that play it seem very enamored of it.

[Comstar]

It won strat game of the year, everywhere. That was not an accident.

edit additon - check the overwelming postive reviews of it. The comibination of a good stratagy game AND tactical wargame makes it a game of the year in both "catagories".

[schild]

It won stratn game of the year, everywhere. That was not an accident.

While it wasn't an accident, you can't deny that it's strongest competition was Middle Earth (which was ass) and S2. Oh, and Armies of Exigo. That's a weak fuckin' year for strategy games.

[Rasix]

Going toe to toe with games like EU2 and Warcraft 3, I'd still give Rome:TW the nod.   Very strong game released in a very weak year for the genre.

Here's an old thread on it.  http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=1129.0

[Zane0]

I've played the game a while with the new patch. 

Many gameplay elements are better, especially the AI's campaign map performance, but it still generally gets massacred against a player who has a basic idea of what he's doing.  Other nations will now attack more often with large stacks of troops instead of dozens of small armies, but they will still use captains to field these troops more often than not (which is generally suicide).  If the AI does use a general, they will sometimes stay out of trouble now, but they'll also occasionally stand around and get charged, too. 

It's difficult to really enjoy this game.  Normal difficulty will put you on an equal playing field with the AI, but it's not smart enough to give you challenging battles very frequently.  Harder difficulties will make things trickier, but only because the AI cheats on the campaign map, and gets annoying battleground morale bonuses.  The game eventually degenerates into making campaign strategies to conquer the world as efficiently as possible.. other factions are speed-bumps.  Playing my patched game, it's around 220 BC, Marius Reforms have not begun, and as Scipii I control Carthage, Numidia, Spain, much of France, and some of Egypt.  Egypt has been resisting admirably, but it's running out of steam with my ability to generally defeat three of its armies with one, before retraining is needed. 

I still can't get over how kick ass the engine is, though.  Maybe the next iteration will have some decent AI.

[eldaec]

If I patch, do old saved games still work?

[Comstar]

Yes.

[eldaec]

Hurrah.

[SirBruce]

I had no interest in this game, as I dislike RTS, until someone told me recently that you could actually play it strategically without bothering with the RTS battles.  Between that recommendation and the patch, I went ahead and bought the game.

Bruce

[Comstar]

Yes, you auto reslove the battles (which is how navy combat works anyway), though you'd miss half the game.

[Rodent]

It won stratn game of the year, everywhere. That was not an accident.

While it wasn't an accident, you can't deny that it's strongest competition was Middle Earth (which was ass) and S2. Oh, and Armies of Exigo. That's a weak fuckin' year for strategy games.

Why does everyone forget about Dawn of War?

[eldaec]

Because the single player game was trivial.

And the multiplayer game didn't have a great deal to it either - assuming competent opponents you could pretty much guess exactly what every other team would do and who would win right from the start.

They needed to finish balancing multiplayer, and deliver the other half of the units, oh and put in AI, and add a single player game for eldar, ork, and chaos.

Then we'll mention it.

[SirBruce]

Hey, nobody mentioned Crusader Kings, either.  (And HOI II just came out.)

Bruce

[Megrim]

Because the single player game was trivial.

And the multiplayer game didn't have a great deal to it either - assuming competent opponents you could pretty much guess exactly what every other team would do and who would win right from the start.

They needed to finish balancing multiplayer, and deliver the other half of the units, oh and put in AI, and add a single player game for eldar, ork, and chaos.

Then we'll mention it.

Yea, what is even more disturbing is that DoW has now been chosen as an official competition game for WCG2005. It's a good thing at least _half_ the races work /smirk

All-in-all, i think Exigo would have been the strongest contender to R:TW for strat game of the year. Enough good bits from Starcraft and not too much clicking = <3

 - meg

[eldaec]

what is even more disturbing is that DoW has now been chosen as an official competition game for WCG2005.

That would only be disturbing if anyone anywhere gave a shit about WCG2005.

Back on the subject of good strategy games of 2005. The game that should have challenged R:TW last year is Evil Genius. And it would have done if it wasn't for whatever idiot that designed the SABRE super agent.

[Megrim]

Heh. Well, even though i can smell your disdain for esports over the phone lines (i care about it man, i care *sob*), do you really think Evil Genius an RTS, or RTS-like game?

A contender for The Sims (version 28752085298520) maybe...

 - meg

[eldaec]

I guess I think of it as a strategy game because of the way I tend to play RTSs. Which is to concentrate on building the most complex and invulnerable base possible before even thinking of attacking anyone.

[Rasix]

Back on the subject of good strategy games of 2005. The game that should have challenged R:TW last year is Evil Genius. And it would have done if it wasn't for whatever idiot that designed the SABRE super agent.

EG blew ass.  Rome: TW has the potential to be boring at times, but EG to me was just boring from minute 1.  If you're going to make a game with no fast forward function, might be advisable to have it not crawl forward at a fucking snail's pace.  It was an annoying game of super villian Barbie with retarded minions and super cheeso agents.  Whatever magic it tried to borrow from the Dungeon Master series of games it dropped at the goal line.

Yah, EG challenges Rome: TW like a 3 legged mutt in a 100 yard dash challenges a German Shepard.

[Murgos]

Heh. Well, even though i can smell your disdain for esports over the phone lines (i care about it man, i care *sob*), do you really think Evil Genius an RTS, or RTS-like game?

A contender for The Sims (version 28752085298520) maybe...

 - meg

Evil Genius played far closer to RTS style than to sims style.  Build base, allocate peasents, move up research tree, upgrade units, etc...  The only thing it was missing was the end of game tank rush (I think, I didn't make it to the end game).

Sims style games do normally incorperate some progression but not anywhere near the level of Evil Genius.

[Megrim]

Bizzare, i'd never of though for anyone to take Evil Genius as an rts. I think it's mostly like Rasix said - the pace itself was what set it apart from an RTS. The game felt more like sim-city to me, a completely different category.

 - meg

[schild]

For the sake of arguments, I'd place Evil Genius in the sim category due to a lack of Multiplayer functionality. Against the computer, it never took all that much strategy. More plotting, which is what a sim is. Plotting.

With MP, I may consider it an RTS.

[SirBruce]

Evil Genius is basically a variation on Dungeon Keeper, which certainly qualified as an RTS.  I suppose Evil Genius is a little bit more "Sims-like", but still an RTS.

Bruce