Total War: Shogun 2 patch to add free maps and castles alongside Rise of the Samurai, out today

An enormous patch for Total War: Shogun 2 will add new maps, castles and a huge list of bug fixes and balance changes along with the release of the Rise of the Samurai DLC later today. The Creative Assembly have posted a full patch list on the Total War forums and it is HUGE.

The highlight has to be the free castle pack. This adds three new castle structures including one top tier fortress, which will be "considerable larger than any other castle in Shogun 2." The new structures won't turn up in the Rise of the Samurai pack, but will be added to normal campaigns, and can appear across five different maps. A new time limit in siege battles will encourage attackers to be a bit more proactive. You'll now have 45 minutes to climb the walls and take the central keep.

The patch also adds eleven new battle maps, and a number of tweaks have been made to the multiplayer side. Changes made by the patch will let The Creative Assembly hold free XP weekends, and there are dozens and dozens of balance changes. Get the full list below.

Free castle pack

Three newly-designed castles specifically for the Shogun 2 campaign map:

• 1 standard sized castle of new configuration

• 1 standard sized castle on a clifftop with limited approaches

• 1 top-tier castle, considerably larger than any other castle in Shogun 2

Each castle appears across five maps, resulting in 15 new siege battle-map variants.

These maps do not appear in the Rise of The Samurai DLC campaign.

Multiplayer balances and tweaks

Influence point changes:

• Corruption and logistics: clans will suffer a cumulative 5% cost in influence point gain for every province beyond 3 that they own (with a maximum penalty of 95%).

• Points loss: Every time a player loses a match-made battle, they will lose 50% of the clan influence they would have gained for a victory.

  Filters:

• A number of filters have been added to help display the strategic situations of your own and other clans in the clan competition.

• You can now cycle through and view all other worlds in the clan competition as well as search for a specific clan and view the world they are operating in

• Filters have been added to sort retainers into smaller concise lists based on units and weapon restrictions.

Rewards:

There is now a series of rewards for players whose clans are promoted:

• Winner of clan competition (Mon, Crest, Helmet)

• Promotion into tier 1 (Mon, Crest)

• Promotion (Mon, Crest)

Avatar promotion and prestige:

• Upon reaching level 10, Avatars can now be promoted to a new Prestige level and re-play the avatar conquest mode.

• Coloured ranking stars are now used to define the current Prestige of an avatar: Bronze; Silver and Gold

• Upon promotion to a new Prestige level, the avatar's skill-tree is reset, but his units retain their veterancy, and he retains any armour pieces, retainers earned through armour pieces and clan tokens

• Upon promotion to a new Prestige level, Avatars gain +10 Veteran Slots

• Higher-Prestige avatars require consequently more XP to level, and cost more to field.

  Matchmaking

• Match-made battles will now prioritise avatar level when attempting to match players, taking into account ELO rating.

General UI improvements:

• The XP bar on the avatar screen now shows current and required XP for a rank increase

• Avatar rank is now shown on the pre-battle setup screen of all users

• The player's current number of clan tokens is now displayed on the skills tree

• Locked icons have been added to retainer slots which currently can't be used

• Units and retainers which cannot be used in the next battle have been made more visible.

Stats

• Ladder and overall stats have been rearranged for clarification and ease of use.

Battle UI:

An avatar's primary skill-set is now displayed on the avatar's banner in battles. This is based on the skill tree with the most skill points spent within it.

Siege Battles:

• Time limit added to siege battles (45 mins)

• The small funds bracket has been removed from match-made siege battles

• The Kyoto and Buatsui castle maps have been removed from match-making map pool

New Maps

• 11 New battle maps have been added:

• Chubu Pass

• Chugoku River

• Ehime Gorge

• Gunma Field

• Hokuriku Crossing

• Kansai Wood

• Kanto Plains

• Koshinetsu Ridge

• Saga River

• Tohoku Forest

• Tokai Valley

• All non-key building maps have been removed from the match-making map pool.

Naval Battles:

• Funding bracket adjustments

• Small: 5000 (no change)

• Medium: 10,000 (down from 14,000)

• Large: 18,000 (down from 24,000)

Drop-in Battles

• Avatars now get awarded XP if the player participates in a drop-in battle

• The amount of XP awarded is double the base win/loss XP for avatar battles

Free XP weekends

The ability to run XP multiplier weekends is now in the codebase. We're now planning a series of weekend events in which individual unit types, Avatars, specific clans and more can gain experience and veterancy at increased rates, and drop-rates for legendary items and retainers can be increased.

Keep an eye on Steam and the Total War forums for more information in coming weeks!

Head to the next page for the full list of multiplayer balance tweaks and bug fixes.