Total War: Rome II - TONS OF NEWS from San Francisco Event

Hey, sup guys, this is Oakley. Uh, hey, nice to see you guys again. Yeah, I'm gonna be covering more news I appreciate the fact that you guys are tuning in even though you've seen some of this news before so, you know That just goes to show that you guys like to converse about Rome Total War and I'm happy to have that discussion So anyways, this is gonna be for those of you who aren't, you know, looking around the forums all the time Or for those of you who run the forums, you know, maybe you'll enjoy me talking about it Kind of getting my perspective on it Anyways, this is gonna be kind of an accumulation of what a bunch of people posted on the forums based off some recent news So let's get started I'd also like to thank these guys for all they've done for the community in terms of getting us the news and being super Enthusiastic about the game. So let's get started So emmery821 says that he went to the event in San Francisco and what's really exciting about this is he talked about there being a New trailer. So as we saw with that Cleopatra trailer, which was you know, kind of cinematic but in Using the gameplay he talked about one involving Hannibal All about a new campaign map shots with siege attacks elephants and the Alps He says it's freaking awesome. And what's more? It's most important is he says it's gonna come out very very soon So, you know, we're gonna keep our eyes and ears peeled Just for that trailer. I love Hannibal. I love the Punic Wars He's one of my favorite generals one of my favorite historic times to cover So I'm gonna be super excited to see that when it comes out All right, the next guy who helped us out was a Nuccio N-U-C-C-I-O. Sorry if I'm butchering that. Anyways, he brings us more information. So about trade resources He talks about how silver and salt are actually gonna be represented in the game This is something that people talked about before when we saw the list of tradable items People were worried that silver and salt were not represented because those were hugely important talk about silver talk about Carthage in the in Spain the huge miles that there are mines excuse me that they're able to you know extract and fuel essentially the second Punic War and their Expansion just because they were exploiting the mines there and then obviously later when the Romans took over they could mine it there and of Course silver was everywhere. Also salt was an Extremely important commodity something that brought you great wealth and that's what he talks about right here You can't trade your silver and salt, but they will increase region wealth Anyway, in case you guys didn't know salt was very important because it allowed you to preserve your food Salt was actually a way that they because it was so important everywhere It was a way they actually paid their soldiers often in the Roman legions You were often paid in salt and that's how we get the term salary because of the fact they were paid with salt The salt, you know salt and salary. That's how that those terms came about Anyways next he talks about the agents. So this is something I covered in a previous video Anyways, there's gonna be three main agents the champion the dignitary and the spy slash assassin Each is gonna be unique to the culture So, you know, maybe some culture will have like a spy who's more sneaky adept at infiltrating the court doing more diplomatic espionage Whereas someone might have a spy who's more assassin based More towards harassing and killing people another faction may have a spy that's more towards, you know breaking into cities So you'll see that variety same goes with the champion same goes with the dignitary The champion will be more towards your own military stick harassment dignitary I think is more cultural focused and the spy and assassin is all about gathering information but again, what is interesting right here is the He notes in his questions that he discovered that it's not gonna be a rock-paper-scissors Mechanic how it's gonna work is agents can all deal with each other in terms of weak moderate or strong ways Depending on their individually modified skill tree So that means just because you have a spy doesn't mean he can't do the actions of a champion they can all do the same kind of actions depending on how you upgrade them and Depending on their innate benefits based off the culture and based off who they are But there's no reason a spy can't do something that a champion would he'll just have less success and it depends on how you upgrade Them now, I think that's really awesome. It really puts, you know, the tactical Maneuverability and the the skill and the strategy all into your hands in terms of how you want to sculpt that particular agent Now next is gonna be attrition weather and night battles. So this is something I've really been wondering about It's been confirmed that each turn is gonna be one year. So with that we always wondered, you know How are they gonna represent summer and winter? Because they can't really do it linearly because what if you take forever to you to do a turn if they do it based off Time then, you know You only have a certain amount of time in the summer and then after that boom the rest of your like However long session you spend in that turn is gonna be in the winter. That would be something that's kind of weird So the way it's gonna work here is on the campaign map regions are gonna kind of be locked into their climates So if you go up north, it's always gonna be kind of dark and cold and the the attrition is gonna be there Egypt It's gonna be really hot and there's also gonna be attrition in the desert, you know different places are gonna have the different climates now when you go into the particular battle as with battles before you could kind of Choose what time of day you want to engage in battle this time? There's gonna be three randomized options So when you have a battle either you choose or whoever the attacker is the attacker chooses when they want that battle So you might for example have two snow battles and a night battle or two summer battles and a snow battle It'll be randomized. You take your your pick and your choice Interesting things to note. It's randomized so players can exploit, you know, always going for the summer You may have to fight in poor conditions Also nighttime battles seem to be a random option in the past night time battles were maybe something your general had to be good At in order to engage in now, it seems like something you might just be thrust into Next is gonna be the food system in Total War Rome 2 So they talk about food being two parts. The first part of food is gonna be In terms of the tradable grain So that's a resource that you can get and you trade it for money for income and all that stuff So that's one dynamic of food The second dynamic of food is represented in your cities Which is kind of how you have to manage your populace You have to keep them fed now the grain which is a resource that I talked about earlier does not transfer over The food here is basically in terms of the buildings you create So say you create a farm in your city. Boom. That's like plus three food say you create a Militia barracks boom that's minus two food because you know You have to feed the men and house them and garrison them and all that stuff So your buildings are gonna have effects on your population and that's the food You're gonna have to take care of if you don't your population will starve There'll be you know a downturn in population happiness and productivity and stuff like that So those are the two dynamics of food again One is a resource another one is kind of the health and the happiness of your city Next they talk about ruling factions So it's been confirmed as I mentioned before that Roman Carthage will each have their three different ruling factions Each faction has two of the main, you know common benefits and then each sub family has three additional, you know perks about them But that's only true of Roman Carthage every other faction will have a single family that you have to choose from And besides the family, you know in terms of the internal diplomacy There's gonna be I think the nobles that you have to contend with and maybe Other groups so that they'll also be other people you can compete with internally, but it's all you know One family against the council council and elders one family against the nobles So there's gonna be other players, but you are still just one family Something that was also mentioned is it as a barbarian you also have the option to form a confederacy of barbaric tribes now that is Freaking awesome. It's historical and when you think about Gaul when you think about Vercingetorix who who rose and he united the the Gauls in a confederation That's something the tribes would often do to face a common enemy and I'm super pumped that you can do that Can you freaking imagine? Creating Confederacy uniting all of Gaul all of you know Northern Britain and having a huge basically like the Huns a huge roaming horde and just plowing through The entire game getting more and more barbarian tribes along with you and creating this massive raiding horde That's super exciting to hear about next. They talk about elephants and basically they say there's gonna be a visual visual Differentiation between elephants from India and elephants from Africa at least visually and we're still waiting on confirmation whether that will be Reflected in the stats. Anyways, if you didn't know elephants from Africa are larger have I think bigger ears Indian elephants are smaller with smaller ears, etc Next they talk about naval regions. So the way naval regions work is there are gonna be these tiles in the ocean In order to control a sea region the faction must have a Navy present So once you have your Navy present in that region Then it's yours Basically trade can go through it Neutral factions can move through it. But the second a hostile faction moves into that territory well then Anywhere they enter that territory no matter where both of your fleets are as long as you control it and as long as they eat So much as enter a square inch of your territory boom battles initiated now That's important because it means you don't have to go and track down these small fleets that are marauding everywhere You just have to hold down That zone and you you know presume that your fleet is patrolling now Additionally, you can put your fleet on defensive or raid stance and that'll have the benefit of reducing piracy So I guess that's how you're gonna have to deal with piracy having a big, you know fleet present to safeguard your merchants, etc Next they kind of briefly mentioned multiplayer. So in this they say there's something big that's gonna be coming and one of the large revelations Is when it comes to multiplayer? It's kind of interesting What they said is you will have the entire campaign map in front of you and you can zoom down to whatever area you want To fight on that spot So it seems like a multiplayer at least in this regard will allow you to kind of choose a random battlefield based on the map So for example, he gives the example you want to fight at the hot gates hot gates Excuse me. You want to fight at Thermopylae zoom in. There you go You can fight that battle if you want to fight to the north you zoom into the north and engage in a battle now I'm not sure how the dynamics of this works who choose in all that stuff But it's definitely a very interesting way to keep it dynamic allow players to you know, do scenarios So maybe you want to go fight at Cannae or do all sorts of things It also allows people to kind of explore the map and find hey, I found a really neat region out in Egypt And you can share it with people. So that's kind of a cool take but again There's gonna be more news about multiplayer that's gonna drop soon in the next couple of days We're gonna hear what they did in Rome itself. And so I'm super excited for that now next point rage units Javelin throwers it has been said must be stationary in order to throw their javelins But other units such as legionary cohorts will be able to charge and throw their pillum now I think that's kind of weird. But again, I'll let it go for a gameplay mechanic I'm sure as people have said, you know, the pillow were just just meant to be disruptive And so I guess you could throw it while running. I do think it looks a little gimmicky, but oh well Next kind of shocking is that battle speeches are gonna be gone. I thought they were always cool But again, I never really spent too much time with them. So it's not a huge deal. Some people will miss them Man, there's a lot of these points. Sorry about this. Okay, but it's interesting, you know That's why you guys are here is to learn about this stuff So the next point is gonna be slavery They talk about slavery being an important mechanic in the game and it's a little bit of a touchy subject But slaves will be treated as a resource It's something that allows you, you know The more slaves you have the more capital human capital you have to develop your projects and promote your economy But have too many slaves and they might revolt and cause unrest so you have to keep that kind of in in balance Anyways, the way you get slaves is you can capture the enemy units on a battlefield and choose to enslave them So that's something that's cool It's something that we saw before in previous games where you could, you know, either kill your captives free them or you could ransom them So now it seems like you can enslave the enemy I'm not sure if you're given options or if you kind of just do that Also, you can also you can do that when you capture a settlement you have the option to enslave the populace Yeah, next is gonna be talking about campaign Cities so famous cities such as Rome, Carthage and Alexandria will be pre-mapped really high detail like we saw on the Trailer of the battle. So those are gonna be pre-mapped the other cities are gonna be, you know, randomly generated But from what I've seen they do still look highly detailed. They're not generic. They still look really awesome. They look believable It's just they don't have all the time to you know, map out the 170 or so provinces It's gonna be the major cities again, Rome, Carthage, Alexandria and some of the others I'm guessing Athens and stuff like that that you'll be seeing represented, you know in a highly mapped out way next unit cap on the battlefield, so Emory and and these guys talk about how they're They've heard that there's gonna be a 20 unit standard cap but whatever what I've heard and what they think they've heard here is that you can actually have 40 units and I think what it Will be is um, you actually have the option to choose based off You know what your play style is if you think you can manage that Let alone if your computer can manage that I think you have the option to you know Take a box that says yes allow 40 units. That's gonna be freaking Absolutely insane. Excuse me for Burping in my mouth right there. But anyways, yeah, that's gonna be absolutely freaking insane having 40 units again It's 40 units let alone AI controlled reinforcements. They're gonna be some epic battles next is gonna be routing units So he says he wasn't able to have too many questions about this but what's really really cool is he said in one of the battles that he played he was kind of slaughtering these Egyptian troops and As they started to route the soldiers in the front kept on fighting While the ones in the back kind of trickled away and started running so it that's you know It might have been you know a spur-of-the-moment type of thing kind of a gimmick But maybe it's something that they have built into the game where you know Routing will occur kind of in stages and progressions and that would be really cool to see He also talks about another instance where he completely surrounded a certain number of units and as he was hacking them to death They ended up never fleeing and they fought to the death and that's something we saw and I believe medieval was if you surround units They're gonna fight to the death So you always have to give them the semblance of an escape route so that they will flee So that's another cool dynamic that you have to take into account when you attack your forces or the enemies. Excuse me Wow, that was a lot of information. Anyways, there's gonna be so much more information coming out guys. I'm gonna keep covering it I'm super exciting. Stay tuned. There's gonna be the multiplayer news that's coming out soon that Hannibal trailer That's gonna be coming out soon. So I will be covering that as soon as it comes out I will see you guys next time. Feel free to drop comments below And talk to me. I love corresponding with you guys. Let me know what you think. Anyways, see you next time The men are fatigued my lord and some must rest My lord a glorious victory will soon be yours