Total War: Rome II has received a huge patch from the developers, aiming to improve multiple aspects of the gameplay and A.I.
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In particular, the Patch 14 focuses on improvements to the siege A.I., which (as most players will attest) can be pretty faulty. The Creative Assembly announced the patch on its Steam page, and gave an outline of what in particular should be better moving forward:
"Along with a host of significant battle and campaign improvements, this patch enables the battle AI to use its siege equipment more effectively, and employ its combined forces with a much greater level of co-ordination. This provides the player with a sharpened level of challenge, and a considerably more satisfying siege-battle experience."
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So does it work? The announcement also linked to a Reddit thread for feedback on the patch, which seems mostly filled with reports that the new siege A.I. makes a huge difference. Before, the computer would make strange decisions when attacking a city, or just stand outside its walls. Players could manipulate this or wait for time to run down, working the broken system to win battles--this is why you'll multiple comments in the thread of players excited to lose.
The full patch notes can be found here, and there are fixes to more than just siege A.I. Several crashes have been addressed, the campaign A.I. improved, and other balances and adjustments have been made.
It's worth looking through if you're a player as there's quite a lot in there, though it would been preferable to have the game in this state at launch rather than a year later. It's good that the developers are committed to improving and fixing the game in such significant ways this far from launch, but it's partially because of Rome II's issues upon release that so much needs to still be addressed. It's a good game at it's core, but has always been crippled by A.I. and balancing issues, which have been addressed through many patches over time. If the latest feedback is anything to go by, though, the game might finally be in a much more ideal state--try it out for yourself and let us know.
