Total War: Rome II - "Troop Abilities" (Multiplayer Info Part 4)

So guys this is Oakley and we're going to be on part 4 of the series where I dive into what we know about multiplayer. So part 1 was talking about transition from Shogun to Rome in terms of doing away with the avatar system. Part 2 talked about the battlefield map itself, the terrain and some of the features of that. And then part 3 talks about the line of sight mechanism. So if you missed those go ahead and take a look at those. Any case we're going to talk about the abilities. So what I'm talking about in this is basically troop abilities and different things that you can do with those. Now this has to do with multiplayer for a number of reasons. So in terms of troop abilities this is something we've seen from the days of Rome 1. So for example flaming arrows or form of phalanx. But what we've seen progressively is the development of the general. So if you played Shogun 2 you know that the general had basically an aura around him, a radius in which his influence would be felt so that would improve morale and have all sorts of bonuses. So in some of the gameplay we did see that that is making a comeback. I'm happy to see that I like the influence of the general. So anyways the general can move around, he has the ability to inspire specific units or he can kind of do a general rally for his troops and that will up their morale. And they also mention in one of the videos that the general can rank up and be better at either fighting, defense or morale. So that kind of reminds me of the general upgrading that we saw in Shogun. But again I'm not sure if we're going to see this, at least the upgrades in the multiplayer aspect. But we are going to see for sure, you can bet on it, the inspire and rally abilities for the general. That's really crucial is knowing how to use your general. So anyways I wanted to, that's just going to start talking about some of the abilities. The other abilities that you're going to see is for the troops. It seems like, well at least I'll start this way. Rome 2 has 700 units and all sorts of different faction flavors known for different abilities and stuff like that. So for example the Testudo, the Phalanx, the Shieldwall, Flying Triangle, you'll have the Bactrian Circle, you'll have all sorts of stuff like that that each faction will have. And so what I've started to see is it seems like there's going to be a lot more particular unit abilities. Now that's something we kind of saw with Shogun but it was limited to more elite units. So for example Warcry and stuff like that or Whistling Arrows for bows. I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of that in order to make the troops stand out and to make sort of historically accurate tactics that it would use. So for example that Testudo that I said for the Romans, you know that's something we've seen before but I think you're going to see more of that for different units. And one of them that they mentioned was called the Draco. And what that is, it's an ability of the cavalry which says once you click that ability essentially all the cavalry will start basically blowing on their horns. And if you do that on the charge it has a radius around it and it will do a morale shock to the troops. So cavalry all of a sudden will be much much better at essentially breaking morale immediately. And that's kind of cool. Also I like how you can do a blaring of the horns. I'm guessing they'll have other units that can do that too. Maybe some that will do more of a morale buff. Like a banging, like do the Beratus or the Beratus however you pronounce it, sort of the troops who would kind of bang their shields slowly and start shouting and get louder and louder and louder kind of to hype the troops. You might be seeing that. And anyways the Druids might have something like that. So we'll see. But anyways the main point that I wanted to say is as we're talking about these abilities that's all going to feed into multiplayer because in multiplayer in at least a competitive sense you need to be able to make the best use of your troops. And if there's a lot more abilities then that means you're going to have to be super attentive to what each unit can do, how it can essentially counter another set of forces, and what's the best time to use these abilities. Also something that I saw in the videos that kind of interested me was when they were looking through the abilities, and this was an ability I saw on virtually all the troops, if you clicked on those troops it looked like there was a whip with kind of three or four tails. And what I'm thinking that is, is maybe for each troop you can click that whip ability and maybe it'll make the troops sprint or run a little faster at the cost of lost morale so it's kind of like a forced march inside of the battle. And if that's the case then that'll mean that you can do these rapid advances in some places and there's all these new possibilities that open up. So if you're talking about multiplayer that just means so many more wrinkles to the game that you're going to have to know to use. Now of course you could play it vanilla but by exploiting these different tactics you'll definitely I think have an edge. So in any case that's basically the abilities part of multiplayer that's going to be making a return to the series but also an expansion in terms of what they're adding to it. So that's basically what I wanted to cover. Anyways thanks so much for listening to me with these four parts, listen to them if you haven't yet. That basically dives into what we know about multiplayer, admittedly so far we don't know too much and so I just brought you the accumulation of what I learned by reading all the articles that came out recently and also past posts and images and stuff like that. So anyways thanks so much guys, I will see you next time, peace out.