Total War: Rome II
The Creative Assembly · Strategy
Overview
Emperor Edition is the definitive edition of ROME II, featuring an improved politics system, overhauled building chains, rebalanced battles and improved visuals in both campaign and battleEmperor Edition contains all free feature updates since its release in 2013, which includes bug fixes, balancing, Twitch.
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Emperor Edition contains all free feature updates since its release in 2013, which includes bug fixes, balancing, Twitch.tv integration, touchscreen, and Mac compatibility. In addition, a free DLC campaign pack ‘The Imperator Augustus’ is included, which follows the aftermath of Caesar’s demise.
The Imperator Augustus Campaign Pack and all Emperor Edition updates are free, via automatic update, to all existing ROME II owners.
If you’re new to Total War: ROME II click the Total War Academy link to learn more:
About the Imperator Augustus Campaign Pack
The Imperator Augustus Campaign Pack is a new playable campaign for ROME II, which rivals the original ROME II Grand Campaign in both scope and scale. This campaign comes as part of Total War™: ROME II – Emperor Edition and is available as a free, automatic update to existing owners of Total War™: ROME II.
The Imperator Augustus Campaign Pack is set in 42 BC during the chaotic aftermath of Caesar’s grisly murder. The republic remains whole, but its soul is divided as three great men, the members of the Second Triumvirate, hold the future of Rome in the palms of their hands.
Octavian, Caesar’s adoptive son and the heir to his legacy.
Marc Antony, Caesar’s loyal friend and most trusted lieutenant.
Lepidus, Pontifex Maximus of Rome and the man who secured Caesar’s dictatorship.
With the territories of The Republic divided between them and the military might of Rome at their beck-and-call, the members of The Second Triumvirate are each in a position to make a bid for leadership, and rule Rome as its first – and only – emperor.
However, external forces are on the move, looking to exploit the instability of Rome and expand their own territories. Will you fight as a defender of Rome and defeat the other members of the Triumvirate? Or lead another faction on a campaign of conquest and expansion, and take advantage of the chaos as the Roman civil war rages?
Playable Factions
Players may embark on a new Campaign as one of the following playable factions:
Parthia
Armenia (also now playable in the ROME II Grand Campaign).
How far will you go for Rome?
The award-winning Total War series returns to Rome, setting a brand new quality benchmark for Strategy gaming. Become the world’s first superpower and command the Ancient world’s most incredible war machine. Dominate your enemies by military, economic and political means. Your ascension will bring both admiration and jealousy, even from your closest allies.
Will you suffer betrayal or will you be the first to turn on old friends? Will you fight to save the Republic, or plot to rule alone as Emperor?
✢ Plan your conquest of the known world in a massive sandbox turn-based campaign mode (supporting additional 2-player cooperative & competitive modes). Conspiracies, politics, intrigue, revolts, loyalty, honour, ambition, betrayal. Your decisions will write your own story.
✢ Build vast armies and take to the battlefield in real-time combat mode. Put your tactical skills to the test as you directly control tens of thousands of men clashing in epic land and sea battles.
✢ Play for the glory of Rome as one of three families or take command of a huge variety of rival civilisations – each offers a notably different form of gameplay experience with hundreds of unique units from siege engines and heavy cavalry to steel-plated legionaries and barbarian berserkers.
✢ See exotic ancient cities and colossal armies rendered in incredible detail, as jaw-dropping battles unfold. Detailed camera perspectives allow you to see your men shout in victory or scream in pain on the frontline, while a new tactical cam allows a god’s eye view of the carnage to better inform your strategic decisions.
✢ Extremely scalable experience, with gameplay and graphics performance optimised to match low and high-end hardware alike.
From the game's Steam store page.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT10,000 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Players praise Rome II for its setting: the Mediterranean world of Rome, Carthage, the Greek states and dozens of other cultures on one huge campaign map, with real-time battles that people still call cinematic. 7% of the longer reviews describe coming back to it again and again. Mods come up in 23% of the longer reviews, Divide et Impera alone in 8%, and several reviewers treat that mod as part of the game. Some of those who remember the 2013 launch say patches have since made it a good game.
On the game itself, players fault an AI they call passive, foolish or cheating, a politics and civil-war system that some love and others call a chore, and a late campaign that turns repetitive. Crashes and freezes, often on the battle loading screen and on newer PCs, appear in 25% of all negative reviews. 10.5% of the longer reviews discuss price, objecting to full price and paid DLC for a game from 2013, with the paid blood pack singled out. Reviewers disagree on whether Rome II beats Rome I, Medieval II or Shogun 2, and on whether vanilla is enough without mods.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
The ancient world, its factions and its scaleHigh
26% of the longer reviews talk about the period, its history or the setting, and 7.5% single out the range of factions, cultures and unit rosters. Players enjoy Romans, Greeks, Carthaginians, Gauls, Egyptians and eastern kingdoms each playing differently, and they enjoy rewriting history. "If you love ancient history, you'll love this game." A small group says some minor factions feel copy-pasted or that the best factions sit behind DLC, which comes up again under DLC.
Mods, with Divide et Impera above allHigh
23% of the longer reviews talk about mods, and 8% name Divide et Impera (DEI). Radious, Para Bellum and 1100 AD come up too. These reviewers say mods patch the game's weak spots: DEI adds population, supply and harder AI, and smaller mods add four turns per year or better graphics. "Base game is alright, but gets old quick. Divide Et Impera mod turns this into the best historical strategy game ever." Some go further and call vanilla mediocre ("Rome 2 4/10, DEI 8/10."). A few new players warn that DEI is too punishing to start with.
Big, cinematic real-time battlesMedium
Phalanxes, cavalry charges, elephants, sieges and the up-close finishing animations get explicit praise in 8% of the longer reviews. "The scale of the battles is still impressive, and building an empire across the campaign map is incredibly satisfying." How the fighting works underneath is less settled; see the frustrations about unit behaviour.
A game people return to for yearsMedium
7% of the longer reviews talk about replaying or coming back with a new faction, a new campaign or a new mod. "I always come back to this game because of the scale." Several call it the historical Total War they play while waiting for a new one.
A launch that was rescuedMedium
16% of the longer reviews bring up the launch, and 4.4% say outright that patches fixed it. "It was horrible on launch but in 2026 its good fun with all types of mods, campaigns, and so on." A minority answers that the same bugs are still there years later, which overlaps with the technical complaints below.
Where players are split
Better or worse than Rome I, Medieval II and Shogun 2High
19% of the longer reviews compare Rome II with older Total Wars, and 11.5% with the first Rome or its remaster. One camp says Rome II improves on the original ("in my opinion this is better than Rome 1 in almost every way"). The other calls it a "Serious downgrade from the original," pointing to fewer settlement buildings, armies tied to generals, battles they see as stat-driven, and a less memorable soundtrack. Attila and Warhammer come up as benchmarks too, in both directions.
DLC: good campaigns, resented paywallsHigh
14% of the longer reviews discuss DLC. Campaign packs such as Caesar in Gaul, Empire Divided, Wrath of Sparta and Rise of the Republic get real praise ("I am hooked into the Empire Divided DLC."). The anger is about factions that players feel belong in the base game, the Greek states especially, and about paying for gore: 2% complain specifically about the paid blood pack ("Never thought id be paying for blood and gore."). A few say the Emperor Edition name led them to expect all the DLC.
Politics, families and civil warsHigh
11% of the longer reviews discuss the political system. Some love the intrigue and the family tree, like the reviewer who "bought for the combat but ended up staying for the politics". Others find it opaque and punishing: civil wars and secessions that take half the empire's armies, slave revolts with elite troops, constant bribes to keep rival families loyal ("You haven't clicked this forgettable menu enough. Fun disallowed"). A few ask for an option to switch civil wars off.
Multiplayer and co-opMedium
7% of the longer reviews bring up multiplayer, co-op campaigns or playing with friends and family. The two-player campaign and online battles have a loyal following ("Multiplayer campaign is super fun with a buddy!"), though the same players report desyncs and crashes in co-op campaigns and miss the in-game chat that was removed (below).
Naval battlesMedium
4.5% of the longer reviews mention naval combat, and they disagree about it. Fans like combined land and sea battles and beach landings ("Best naval battles in all total war history"). Critics describe ships ramming from a distance, transports stuck or sailing off the map, and fights that cannot be avoided ("abysmal naval combat. completely ruins this game since its unavoidable").
What frustrates players
AI that is passive, foolish or cheatingHigh
11% of the longer reviews talk about the AI, and positive reviews raise it as a caveat too ("The AI is kind of dumb, but that's ok."). On the battle map players describe generals charging into pike walls and defenders standing still in sieges. On the campaign map they describe tiny factions fielding several full stacks, rebels appearing with top-tier units, and AI armies bypassing the player to besiege empty towns. 2% say outright that the AI cheats ("the AI is only challenging because it cheats").
Crashes and freezes, worst on newer PCsHigh
9.5% of the longer reviews report crashes, freezes, black screens or a game that will not launch, and 25% of all negative reviews describe them. About a third of these reports involve the battle loading screen: "Constantly freezes when loading battles, forcing you to restart your pc." Players link it to Windows 11 and newer CPUs and pass around a workaround, limiting the game's CPU cores in Task Manager ("just unassign your last 3 CPUs"), which works for some and not for others. Other reports cover crashes on end turn late in a campaign, the PC locking up on exit, and campaign saves that stop loading. Mac players are divided. Some cheer the Apple Silicon port ("After 5 1/2 years, Feral has finally fixed Total War: Rome II on MacOS."), while others say the game no longer launches on their machine. Players under 10 hours bring these problems up much more often than players past 100 hours.
Full price for a game from 2013Medium
10.5% of the longer reviews talk about price, and 5.9% advise waiting for a sale. The complaint is the base price and the cost of the full DLC set for a game this old ("Over a decade old and they still want full price for just the base game"). Several who bought at a deep discount say it was well worth it at that price.
A steep learning curve and a weak tutorialMedium
4% of the longer reviews talk about the learning curve, the tutorial or the prologue. Newcomers say the game explains too little about provinces, food, building chains and character stats ("The tutorial only teaches the bare minimum information to get started"), and several had to turn to YouTube. Some also report prologue bugs, such as a won battle that restarts from before the fight.
A late campaign that turns repetitive or easyMedium
3.9% of the longer reviews say the campaign drags once the player snowballs: long victory conditions, autoresolving everything, and turn times that grow ("Gets reallllyy repetitive late game of all things."). Some raise the difficulty or install DEI to fix it.
Unit behaviour, pathfinding and stat-heavy fightsMedium
3% of the longer reviews complain about how battles play underneath the spectacle: units ignoring orders, poor pathfinding on walls and in streets, elite units that refuse to rout when surrounded, and fights decided by stats rather than tactics. "The AI pathfinding is still so bad that sieges are completely broken."
Multiplayer chat was removedLow
2.2% of the longer reviews (79 reviews in total) are about the removal of in-game chat. Players say that without it they cannot agree on lobby rules, coordinate with teammates or invite people to Discord. "Multiplayer is crap without CHAT."
Updates that break saves and modsLow
About 1% of the longer reviews blame updates for breaking mods or saves. A cluster of these appeared in September and October 2026 ("New update has broken the game. Crashes after every other battle."), and a few players ask for legacy versions so long modded campaigns survive.
Generals who age too fast and armies tied to generalsLow
1.3% of the longer reviews object to one year per turn, which kills generals before their skill trees matter ("Generals, etc age way too fast."), or to rules that every army needs a general and that the number of armies is capped ("i hate general only armies"). Several reviewers recommend mods that add four turns per year.
3. The player conversation
The tone is warm and nostalgic, often from people who say they have played since 2013 or who came to Rome II after Warhammer or the newer historical releases. Many reviews are a few words of affection or a Latin slogan. The AI, politics and crash complaints mostly sit in the longer reviews, often inside a positive one.
Players reviewing in their first hours mostly write about technical walls and the learning curve, so crashes, freezes and tutorial confusion take up more of their reviews than of the overall slice. Players past 100 hours talk more about mods, politics, AI and DLC, and they make the comparisons with Rome I, Medieval II and Shogun 2.
Within the slice, the share recommending the game stayed between roughly 85% and 95% in most weeks from 2024 to 2026. In September and October 2026 it was 87% and 84%, with a cluster of reviews blaming a new update for broken saves, mods and stability, next to others hoping the same update would fix the old modern-hardware problems.
4. What the developers could do
- Fix the battle-loading freeze on modern CPUs and Windows 11. Crashes and freezes appear in 25% of negative reviews, and players are left trading a Task Manager core-affinity workaround that does not work for everyone.
- Make the campaign and battle AI fight fairly and competently. Players describe passive defenders, suicidal charges and tiny factions with impossible armies, and some point to AI mods as the way to get a better opponent.
- Offer a complete edition at a price that fits the game's age, and fold the blood pack into the base game. DLC comes up in 14% of the longer reviews and price in 10.5%, and the paid gore pack is the example some players use to say the game is being nickel-and-dimed.
- Add options to tune or disable civil wars, secession and slave revolts. The politics system splits players, and a few of the unhappy ones ask for a switch to turn civil wars off.
- Restore multiplayer chat or an equivalent way to talk in lobbies and battles. The players who raise it say lobby rules and teamwork fell apart without it.
- Keep legacy versions available when updating the game. The September and October 2026 complaints and older ones say updates broke long modded campaigns and saves, and a few players ask for a beta branch to stay on.
- Fix the prologue bugs and expand the in-game explanations. Newcomers report a tutorial that restarts after a won battle and systems they could only learn from YouTube.
- Offer a turns-per-year campaign setting. Players say generals die before their skills matter, and several recommend a four-turns-per-year mod as the fix.
