The latest patch for ROME II hits today and will automatically download for players via Steam. This is the most significant gameplay-enhancing patch yet, bringing framerate improvements to high-end systems, and substantial gameplay, AI and behavioural improvements, particularly in settlement and siege battles.

Among other AI improvements, players will now find  the attacking siege AI more active, more likely to employ battering rams against gates, and more conservative in how it commits its generals in gate and wall assaults. It will also use a wider range of units when attempting to burn down gates.

This patch also brings the first in a series of targeted unit rebalances. Among other units, infantry small-arms ranged units and the barbarian Naked Warrior unit have been readdressed. Disciplined units (such as Legionaries and Hoplites) now have a Formed Attack ability, which keeps them ordered in melee, and all units now hold formation much better.

Here are the patch notes for Total War: ROME II – Patch 7 (as of 21/11/2013):
Known Issues

• Dog handlers will try to melee attack whenever their dogs enter melee, resulting in the handlers running towards the enemy unit that the dog is attacking, and often being killed.

Global

• Performance – Unit rendering performance on high spec gpu’s has been optimised, resulting in higher frame rates on EXTREME settings in most scenarios.
• Extensive Frontend-UI tweaks and optimisations.
• Fixed a crash in the terrain system which occurred on crossfire machines.
• Players are no longer restricted from selecting graphics options, based on the games evaluation of their system. This means that players can now set any graphics options they want.

Battle AI improvements

• Attacking siege AI now uses battering rams more frequently.
• Attacking siege AI can now use all units to burn gates, and should not become inactive if it has only non-infantry units remaining.
• Attacking AI is now more conservative with the use of its general when assaulting walls and gates, but can still use the general unit as a last resort.
• Added safeguards against some rare issues which could cause the attacking settlement AI to become idle.
• Fixed an issue in settlement AI which could result in units losing their attack orders, causing units to sometimes run past enemy units they were trying to attack, as well as causing defending missile units on walls to halt their firing orders.
• Improved AI’s use of Use The Whip and Rapid Advance.
• AI now targets war-dogs rather than their handlers after dogs have been released.
• Eliminated unnecessary reforms in AI’s defence-line tactics.
• Improved AI scouting behaviour.

Unit rebalancing

• Increased damage for club weapons.
• Increased melee defence for pike units.
• Rebalance of all small-arm projectile damage:
• Javelins have received a boost to their armour penetration damage.
• All horse archers (incl. Royal Horse Archers) now have Heavy Shot.
• Some elite foot archers now also have access to Heavy Shot.
• Different types of bows now have different ranges.
• All bows now have some armour penetration.
• Rebalanced the following units:

Naked warriors
Ambushers
Berserkers
Painted ones
Naked swords

• Some missile infantry shields have had their missile block chance increased.
• Tower projectile incendiary damage has been reduced.
• Burning oil incendiary damage has been reduced.
• Improved arrow tower damage has been reduced, and is now mostly normal damage instead of armour penetration.
• Scorpion tower projectiles now have a smaller cone of effect.
• Reduced incendiary hit points on all siege vehicles apart from burning rams which have both incendiary and normal hit points increased.
• Removed shield wall ability from Falxmen, Thracian Warriors and Thracian Nobles.

General battle improvements

• Increased battle-side hit points of all generals and officers.
• Fixed issue in battle combat rules which failed to give the commanding general additional saving throws, making generals unusually vulnerable in harder difficulty modes. These saving throws have also been extended to non-commanding generals, making all general characters harder to kill in battles.
• Fixed issue which caused artillery units to sometimes move forwards instead of firing when targeting a ground position.
• Formed Attack button added for key disciplined units (eg Legionaries, Hoplites, Pikemen). Disciplined units are now better at keeping formation when fighting.
• Improved existing unit formations.
• Reduced “blobbing”, where units converge into a disorganised brawl
  *Adjusted spacing of some infantry units to prevent units being too cramped.
• Added blood effects on animals, for players who own the Blood & Gore DLC.
• Fixed an issue where pikemen would ignore orders.
• Fixed rank & file shortcuts which were not working correctly; and only ever resulted in wider units.
• Telestration (drawing on the map) now works for spectators in MP battles.
• Fixed issue where throwing torches at gates failed due to projectile simulation causing torches to bounce off the roof of the gatehouse instead of hitting the gate itself.
• New guard mode mechanic: units will be in guard mode behaviour by default and hold their line unless they have a direct attack order.
• Several improvements to how formed attackers adjust to one or more targets, encompassing different target widths.
• New hiding mechanic: running will no longer reveal hidden units.
• Behaviour improvements for disengaging units: Units pulling out of melee will now try harder to avoid combat and run to the ordered location.
• New mechanic for knocked-down soldiers: Heavier units will take longer to get up after being knocked down.
• Fixes and improvements to bracing:

– Formation depth and defensive formations now have the correct impact on bracing bonus.
– No bracing bonus when using loose spacing.

• Elephant and chariot collisions are now less lethal.
• Boiling oil no longer triggers when enemies are on top of a gatehouse.
• Entities no longer warp in combat when two infantry units charge each other.
• Avoidance-jittering eliminated when multiple units in formed attack overlap.
• Prevented ships and drowning men from floating above the waterline in very rough seas.
• Improved the framerate when multiple units pass under boiling oil.
• Added option to disable left-click dragging move-orders.
• Locked formation unit groups now correctly track moving targets when given attack orders.
• Locked formation unit groups should now move at the correct speed in all circumstances.
• Units now interweave less when moving a locked formation backwards.
• Artillery units no longer move forwards to attack a building when their target is already in range.
• Firing whilst moving now always fires at the target unit.
• Reduced instances of ranged-unit stop/start movements when chasing a moving target.
• Units no longer automatically attack their previous melee target after routing then rallying.
• When gate capture points are neutralised, gates are now locked to all alliances and boiling oil stops pouring.
• Units firing from walls can now be consistently halted.
• Units firing from walls now fire with all ranks.
• Rebalancing of entity/projectile/effect audio volumes.
• Added new preset city and port maps to the custom battle/multiplayer map lists.
• Removed situations where defenders could partially deploy units outside the city walls in siege battles.
• Siege maps now have towers or gates linked to the correct capture points.
• Changed capture point timer from 20 seconds to 30 seconds. Gates and towers now take 1 minute rather than 40 seconds to change from one alliance to another.
• Added new minor settlements: 1x Persian port and city, 2x Egyptian cities, 1x Greek city.
• Improved docking and landing points in several maps.
• Added spectator icon for battle to make it clearer when people are spectating.
• Cinematic camera now works correctly for units on buildings.
• General technical/usability fixes across many battle maps (docking points, deployment zones, scenery placement, tower bridging-points etc).
• Extensive battle-UI tweaks and optimisations.
• Fixed several rare crash instances.
• Aide de camp advisor has been enabled for multiplayer now.
• Modified right click drag-outs, so when moving the mouse to the minimum drag threshold, and then back under the minimum drag threshold, the drag-out visualisation will no longer be hidden.
• Men on walls above gates no longer die when gate is destroyed in battles.

Campaign

• Fixed a crash when loading into a Roman Port battle map from the Campaign.
• Multiplayer campaign legendary mode saves now work correctly.
• Campaign AI is now more focused on recruiting better units and constructing buildings that allow the recruitment of better units.
• Increased number of Imperium thresholds from 4 to 7, rebalancing progression of military, agent and edict cap increases to match.
• Campaign diplomacy: It’s now harder to sign trade & alliance treaties with AI factions, gifts now give a bigger boost to relations.
• Added warning when the player is about to break treaty in Diplomacy which will result in player being treacherous.
• Enemy/ally armies/agents are now shown on the Campaign Tactical map and not just players.
• Fixed user interface animation issues in campaign, where in Multiplayer Campaign mode, animations would sometimes be in slow motion.
• Added resource icons to the city info bar.
• Added a small delay to update of the Settlement info panel, when moving the mouse off building icons to make easier to compare two buildings, without info panel flickering to province info in between.
• Fixed setting for whether Unit info panel is shown in battle, which was being set incorrectly in campaign modes, leading to unit info panel being hidden in battle, without player ever minimising it.
• Fixed campaign cycle buttons (which cycle between settlements) going in opposite direction, and fixed both buttons going in the same direction.
• Fixed issue where if a unit was gifted in a group, the player could still control that unit via group they were previously in.
• Fixed issue where current army emblem wasn’t shown in list of emblems meaning once changed couldn’t set it back.
• When the player is defending in ambush, the attackers units are hidden because if they were ambushed they wouldn’t know the details of the force they were up against.
• Telestration (drawing) now works on the campaign tactical map for Multiplayer Campaign mode.
• Added a vote-timer to the autoresolve panel buttons in Multiplayer Campaign mode pre-battle, so players know how much time is left to make a decision once the panel is opened.
• Join Confederation option now appears as a diplomatic option when countering an AI’s diplomatic offer.
• Added experience indicators on queued recruitment unit cards.
• Multiple units can now be upgraded with better equipment, or retrained into better units, simultaneously.
• When retraining units, UI now shows the unit a current unit will be retrained into, along with the cost for doing so.
• Finance panel tax-slider now snaps to values, to make it easier to use, and to clarify that there are a finite number of levels.
• Added notifications for when the other player saves in multiplayer campaign, so you know why the game is pausing.
• Added filter-specific info to tooltips in the campaign tactical map (such as regional wealth values when on the region wealth filter).
• Unit info UI now takes into account bonus HP for unit health stat, to fix incorrect values being shown
• Unit info now shows the breakdown for melee defence and shield armour values on the tooltip.
• Added vote timer to the pre-battle screen in Multiplayer Campaign mode, so players know how much time left to make decision once open this panel.
• Unit info missile-damage display now working correctly (damage modifier was being applied to armour penetration damage, and breakdown wasn’t taking into account the missile damage modifier).
• Campaign radar map now follows the camera to improve navigation.
• Client states and satrapies are now shown as allied on settlement panel. Also added an icon to show relationship of the factions owning the regions.
• Fixed several rare crash instances.
• Fixed a crash which happened when merging units together several times, with the [CTRL] + [M] key shortcut in the same army in Campaign modes.
• Garrisons are no longer displayed with dignitary icons on the Campaign Tactical Map.

And don’t forget to check out our Total War: ROME II review here.