Total War: ROME 2 Ancestral Update adds Updated Visuals, Family Trees, Bug Fixes and more!

Creative Assembly is adding a Family Tree system, updated visuals and bug fixes to their RTS Total War: ROME II. Try the beta out today ahead of the release!

One of the long requested features for Total War: ROME II is finally set to launch with the Ancestral Update that features visual improvements to the game, bug fixes and (at long last) the Family Tree! The Family Tree is a visual representation of the character relationships you have within your faction, and will allow you to interact with others to generate Intrigues, which offers new gameplay options. Characters in your faction can forge bonds and alliance with other factions, and players can get married to produce offspring who will grow and get duties of their own as they live their lives throughtout the gameplay. Get a look at some of the features coming in this brand new trailer:

Opt-in to the Beta to try it today

If you'd like to check out the updates for yourself ahead of the release you can do that by opting in via Steam:

• Restart Steam
• Find Total War: ROME II – Emperor Edition in your Steam library
• Right click Total War: ROME II – Emperor Edition and go to Properties in the drop-down menu
• Go to the Betas tab
• In the drop-down menu under Select the beta you would like to opt into: select ancestral –

Note: The Beta will not break saves, but it's recommended to disable Mods.

You can read some of the changes coming to the game with the patch notes below, but if you want to check out the full list you should check out the FAQ on the Total War website for more info!

Patch Notes

New

• Agents skills have been completely reworked, rebalanced and are now culture-specific. They now have more actions, some of them having significant new effects
• Generals’ skills are also now culture specific
• Skill cards for agents, generals and military traditions have informative pips that show what the skill grants at each level
• Agent skills have been re-ordered to mimic the order of attributes in the character portrait
• Reinforcement range is now visible as an area, not only as blinking arrows
• Technology panels now have sounds
• In battle, ships in will now be able to leave their disembarking area by shifting in reverse, making room for more ships to land
• Champions have received a skill that directly buffs the bonus to unit experience per turn
• Levels 2 and 3 of Agent skills are now unlocked on the next agent level, instead of skipping a level. For instance, tier 1 skills are unlocked on levels 2/3/4, instead of the previous 2/4/6
• Battle loot implemented in field battles, granting different sums based on the upkeep cost of the defeated army and the action selected after victory
• Added more variety to generals in Empire Divided
• Number of household ancillaries has been increased from 1 to 3
• Number of character traits has been increased from 3 to 6

Visual

• Added MSAA anti-aliasing
• Added “Clouds shadow” option to shadows
• Added an option for near the camera objects fading (on/off)
• Added “Hide dead bodies” option, so dead units can vanish even on higher graphics settings
• Added “Hide foliage” to the graphics options and made that shader functionality toggleable
• “Hide foliage” option has a shortcut set to Ctrl+F by default
• Added “Terrain noise” to make distant terrain look less flat.
• Improved building LOD distances for Extreme/Ultra to be really extreme and ultra (x3 times greater)
• Improved shadow quality & performance.
• Heavy rain weather VFX in battle now occasionally replaced with stormy rain weather (with lightning flashes)
• Ships now render in water reflections
• Reduced terrain and grass reflectivity in rainy weather
• Improved night lighting of units. Torch light is now animated and casts shadows on higher settings
• Improved river shader in battles: shallow river water is more visible, won’t vanish when near the camera, specular and shadows improved
• Trees on the tactical view are no longer very obviously rotating towards the camera
• Rivers have been optimized to not render past a certain distance

Gameplay Improvements

• Female cursus honorum grants attributes at higher levels
• GC Iceni start their campaign having military access with Dumnonii
• Starting loyalty has been decreased for all difficulty settings (0 on Easy, 0< on higher difficulty)
• The political traits Militarist and Expansionist have been nerfed, granting less loyalty
• A different version of the Family Tree, called Chain of Command, has been added to the Caesar in Gaul campaign. It contains fewer intrigues
• Start-pos characters have been rebalanced in all campaigns – many more were added, both historical and created for gameplay purposes
• New encyclopaedia page for Agents, available on right-click
• The Family Duty trait now disables character skills

Source: https://www.totalwar.com/blog/total-war-rome-ii-ancestral-update