Total War: Rome 2: Patch 3 now live, brings more optimisation and improvement

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The thing about games is that sometimes they lock up when loading into battle with DirectX 9, or report the wrong per-frame time in the Graphics Benchmark frame rate display. Honestly, I don't know why we put up with them. Actually, wait, it's because they're brilliant. Even better, they can be fixed. Total War: Rome 2's third patch, announced last week , is now live, and offers technical and performance fixes, along with balance changes, and improvements to usability and the general game.

"Technical optimisations include Campaign performance improvements on some hardware configurations, fixes for UI flickering in SLI setups, and a significant multiplayer campaign-speed boost. There are many new gameplay improvements, such as alterations to the victory point system, and chiefly a reduction in the circumstances in which victory points appear in battles. For example, when the player is attacked while occupying a minor settlement (though not a provincial capital), a new Sally Forth button is available on the pre-battle panel, which enables the player's army to fight the attackers in an open field battle without victory points."

You can see the full change list over at the Total War Wiki. Next up is the numerically accurate Patch 4, which continues down the path of technical optimisation and game balance tweaks. That update is due to enter public beta soon.

Phil Savage
Phil Savage
Editor-in-Chief

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.