Total War: Rome Remastered

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Total War: Rome Remastered developed by Feral Interactive launches on 29th April 2021.

The new game is a remaster of the 2004 Rome: Total War game by Creative Assembly. The game will be available for Windows, Mac and Linux, retailing through Steam and the Mac App Store.

• A FAQ guide about the game can be found on the totalwar.com website here.

• Discuss the new game on TWC here.

Feature Summary

• 16 playable factions (38 in total)
• Cross-platform multiplayer
• Steam Workshop mod support
• Merchant agent type (new to RTW but found in M2TW)
• Improved graphics and redesigned UI options

Playable Factions

Base Game

In the original Rome: Total War players would initially play one of the three Roman Factions. These were the Julii, colored red, who were positioned north of Rome and would initially come into conflict with the Gallic factions, the Brutii,colored green, who would initially come into conflict with the Greek factions and the Scipii, who were based south of Rome and Capua and would come into conflict with the Carthage. These sub faction names and starting locations loosely reflected historical events with the Skipii and their almost inevitable conflict with Carthage being reminiscent of the struggle between Hannibal and Publius Cornelius Scipio. The Julii are loosely based on Gaius Julius Caesar and their starting location allows the player to play the role of Caesar and conquer Gaul. The faction names pay homage to history but are not entirely accurate.

The starting date of Rome does not make it possible to give one accurate experience of the Rise of Rome and subsequent wars but rather allows for the Carthaginian, Gallic and Macedonian wars to play out from the same starting date. The later period of instability and Civil Wars of Caesar and the Triumvirate are the inspiration behind the endgame civil war mechanic.

The Senate is a non-playable Roman faction which loosely represented the autonomy of the Senate and holds the province of Rome. Players can earn standing with both the Senate and the with the people of Rome as part of the Civil War mechanic, the senate also issues missions to the player similar to those present in Rome II total war. Non-Roman players do not receive these missions from another faction but from a similar elders mechanic. Players could not Unlock the Senate in Vanilla Rome. This sub faction change was removed by many prominent Rome Total War mods and was also subsequently abandoned in Rome II. The different Campaign experiences were released as DLC in later games. The senate is playable in the Custom Battle mode

Originally players could unlock other factions by either conquering them individually or winning the campaign. The ultimate goal of the campaign was/is to become emperor by conquering fifty provinces, including Rome. A short version of the Campaign existed in which the player had to take control of fifteen provinces and outlast a certain faction or factions.

The Original playable factions for Rome Total War were -

• Egypt which differed from Rome II in its roster and style, more comparable to pre-Alexander Egypt. Known for Chariots and its distinct unit roster.
• The Seleucid Empire was famous back in Rome 1 for its Silver Shield Legionaries, had a very diverse roster with eastern themed units supplementing and a core Macedonian Phalanx.
• Carthage known for elephants and a strong unique unit roster. Proximity to Rome made for a good play-through for anyone who wanted to topple the Empire.
• Parthia known for heavy cavalry and horse-archers, in many senses the polar opposite and counter to Rome, mobile with very poor infantry.
• Gaul good well rounded unit roster mid to late game with weak units in early game.
• Germania very similar to Gaul with the addition of berserk infantry and axe infantry.
• Britannia unique unit roster with chariots and head throwers. Weak Cavalry.
• The Greek Cities amalgamation of the city states, very good late game infantry.
• Macedonia excellent Companion Cavalry and Phalanx Infantry.
• Pontus similar to Selucia with a diverse unit roster.
• Armeniana similar to Pontus this faction had a hybrid of different unit types
• Dacians made famous during the wars of Trajan whose monument commemorating the war can still be found in Rome today, this faction is known for its deadly Flax Infantry.
• Numidia were famous for their light skirmish cavalry, traditionally considered as a faction with a weak roster of unit they provide players with a significant challenge.
• Scythia situated on the fringes of the map on the northern coast of Black Sea this faction is known for its archers and cavalry.
• Iberia heavily infantry focused with unique Bull Warriors, decent cavalry who lack good Spear-men
• Thracia are another hybrid faction whose roster contains a mix of greek and barbarian infantry.

Source - Feral Interactive

Apart from this Rome Total War remastered will contain additional playable factions bringing the total to 38. From what can be gathered these will be the Factions of the Rome Total War Barbarian Invasion Expansion Pack released in 2006 and will be on a separate campaign map. This suggests there will be no additional factions to the Rome Remastered base campaign but rather the Barbarian Invasion Campaign will be included. This campaign mode is currently not visible on the beta footage and this is, for the time being, speculative.

These later factions were as follows -

Barbarian Invasion

• Western Roman Empire
• Eastern Roman Empire
• Huns
• Goths
• Ostrogoths
• Vandals
• Franks
• Saxons
• Celts
• Sassanids
• Sarmatians
• Roxolani
• Late Roman Brittania
• Slavs
• Burgundii
• Berbers
• Alemanni
• Lombardi

The Alexander campaign appears to have solely the one faction playable:

• Alexander the Great’s Macedon

Question and Answer Session

A Q&A session with the Feral Dev Team and CA members was held on Discord on 31st March 2021. Simone of CA stated that they do not currently plan to remaster any other classic TW titles. Feral stated that they will support the game post-launch (e.g. with patches).

The answers about RTW Remastered features are roughly summarised in the sections below:

Factions

• You can optionally unlock all factions within the Pre-Game Options menu, if you wish, instead of unlocking by beating the campaign.

Gameplay Features

• Campaign AI and diplomacy have had updates, the changes are optional when starting a new campaign:

Negotiations have a concept of long term relationships.

The AI can be more decisive.

You're more likely to be able to convince a small faction to become a protectorate, but they may turn on you if there's a better option.

AI will now attack across seas.

Diplomacy includes the concept of settling debts, financial and territorial.

• Battle AI areas already worked on include:

Phalanx formation realignment

Tower and walls pathfinding

Settlement breach point pathing

• Adoptions work in the same way as the original game, you can choose to accept or reject a potential candidate.
• 'Man of the Hour' is included with the option of promoting to general as in the original.
• Slaves can optionally be distributed equally between settlements, or by using the old method of moving generals into and out of settlements.
• The feature to view your cities at peace is included.
• Injured units can be merged but only in campaign mode.
• Armies remain limited to 20 units.
• Naval battles can only be auto-resolved.
• Custom battle replays can be saved but not campaigns.
• Includes improved balancing of population/costs to suit army size choices.

Units

• Feral have "spent considerable time on polishing and adding new animations".

UI and Audio

• The unit cards have been re-rendered and better match the battle models.
• Arrow trails (and other features) can be optionally disabled in the gameplay settings menu.
• Borderless windowed mode is supported.
• New audio has been added for additional faction introduction videos, merchants, and diplomacy options. The UI has updated audio triggers.
• Music is from the original soundtrack with upgraded quality.
• There is no option to use original UI layouts/elements.

Multiplayer

• The Remaster does not have a co-op campaign, but Feral are aware that this is a popular and requested feature.
• 8 player free-for-all is still in the game.

Mods and Modding

• Local mods will be supported using the built-in mod-manager. Feral/CA will be in contact with the modding community.
• Hard-coded Limits: Faction and regions limits are being lifted (more information in due course).
• 3D models still use the same format however the structure of the file has changed in order to support the new features. On release or shortly after tools will be released to support editing 3D models
• Blender will be supported with the modding tools.
• Textures will be easy to edit. (more information on modding specifics soon)
• The campaign map should be more moddable [than RTW] or at least more flexible to artistic and design edits. The underlying tile system has been retained, and there are now 104 4K textures that were procedurally generated offline. The added complexity of the new system will come from ensuring that the tile locations and scale are in agreement with the mesh and texture assets. However, we believe that you should be able to export out a texture of the new tile layout and use this as the basis from which to make the map geometry.
• Battle Map Editor will not be available at release, but the game will accept battle-maps created in the original RTW's editor.

Performance

• System requirements not yet announced.
• They have worked to multi-thread as much as possible, including rendering setup for units.
• Other optimisations include:

Batching and instancing for unit rendering

Instancing and LOD system for buildings

New mesh and texture setup and texture streaming system

New improved renderer, which will have modder adjustable parameters added at, or shortly after, release.