A legion of new information concerning Total War: Rome 2, the most pre-ordered entry in the acclaimed turn based strategy series, has been revealed on Reddit concering the provinces and regions of the game as well as how armies and generals will be used in the title which launches on September 3rd.
"For Rome II we wanted to make an epic scale campaign map, and as part of that we wanted to have more regions than any previous Total War game," one of the game's developers revealed.
There are 183 regions in Rome II, the highest number ever and nearly double that of Total War: Rome. As a result the Crative Assembly have overhauled the way in which regions work in the game and have added provinces to the title. Provinces are groupings of between two to four regions and each region within a province can be occupied by a different faction.
However, should you control an entire province you will be able to pass edicts which provide various bonuses. Construction options for a region are displayed on a single menu while the happiness measure is now also province based. This means that if you own a three region province which is unhappy with your rule the region with the lowest happiness will rebel but this will be determined by the happiness of the whole province.
Rome II sees the resource buildings of Empire, Napoleon and Shogun 2 done away with and all resources are part of the settlement in each region. As the resource building are gone armies now have a raid stance which reduces their upkeep and offers the chance to earn some money off their plundering, in friendly territory this will only increase unhappiness.
All settlements in the game come with garrisons which will defend the region if attacked.
One settlement in each region will be the province capital and a siege battle will take place when the capital is attacked, the other settlements in a region do not offer the option for seige battles. This is part of a balancing act to avoid the game becoming bogged down in too many sieges given the number of regions. Each capital will also come with more building slots than other settlements.
Armies in Rome II can be made up of a maximum of 20 units and must have a general, this is the case for both land forces and navies. The maximum number of armies a faction can have is based on the amount of power that faction has with the Creative Assembly comparing this to the Fame System in Shogun 2.
This has been implemented to make battles more decisive and have a bigger impact on a war. Army traditions meanwhile make each army you can have even more valuable as each will be unique and due to the limits that have been placed it will make players less likely to throw them away in no-win battles.
When you create a general and begin training your troops the army enters 'muster mode' and it cannot move while in this stance. Players will have the ability to name their generals and change their emblem. Generals also acquire skills and traits; skills can be chosen by the player as their general levels up while traits are based on what a general actually does in game.
If an army loses its general a new one will be automatically appointed.
Another new feature is the forced march stance which allows armies to move quickly around the map, however, this comes at a penalty of not being able to attack in the turn that it is used and troops will suffer a morale penaly if the enemy assaults them that turn.
