Last month Total War developer Creative Assembly discussed the direction of its historical games, before unveiling Total War: Rome 2 Empire Divided—a new DLC for the 2013 original—shortly after. It's out on Thursday and now has a new trailer.
Let's watch that first:
Taking place in 270 AD, Empire Divided returns to a turbulent Roman Empire. Faced with its "gravest" economic crisis yet, players must wrestle with, funnily enough, an empire divided—taking the reins of one of ten playable factions across five different cultures. From there you'll negotiate victory conditions, new campaign features and plagues, cults and bandits.
During his hands-on time last week, Tom liked but didn't love Empire Divided. Here's his words on some of what's new:
Empire Divided adds cults, banditry and plagues to the world to reflect the collapse of order across territories, and the new buildings are largely geared towards managing public order and keeping down bandit levels (high banditry saps food, leading to unrest). The cult structures are the most interesting of the bunch. These free buildings let you welcome in Christianity, Mithraism and Manichaeism for stat bonuses, but the introduction of new ideas creates civil unrest over time. They are expensive to get rid of too, so it's a 'borrow now, pay later' deal if you decide to throw the cult out of your territory.
Total War: Rome 2's Empire Divided DLC is out this Thursday, November 30.
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