Rome II sea citadel

Creative Assembly to release patch to improve Total War: Rome II’s performance

Creative Assembly said it will launch a major patch Friday that updates the performance of Total War: Rome II.

Sega and developer Creative Assembly said they are pleased with the response to Rome II, with hundreds of thousands of players enjoying the game so far. But it said that “as with all large PC releases, the variety of hardware and general system specifications can cause issues for some people, and we are urgently working to help get them the right experience.”

The company is tweaking Rome II’s balancing, artificial intelligence routines, and other features now that it has real-time feedback from so many players. The first update drops Friday, with regular updates coming on a weekly basis. We haven’t seen many issues, as we noted in our own game review, but we have noticed reports of numerous complaints.

Among the fixes are updates that address bugs that cause crashes due to hardware conflicts. The company said that anyone with graphics performance issues should review the support forums for optimal settings advice.

Rome II, a game that combines real-time combat and turn-based strategy,  is the latest in a series that has sold millions of units. The sequel is the first Rome version in the Total War series since the first Rome game debuted in 2004.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.