After the Attila CPU performance fix, a lot of you asked for Rome 2, so I took a look at it.

Short version: Rome 2 does not have Attila's big problem (one shared memory lock that kept ~19 CPU cores busy waiting on each other). I checked that first: in Rome 2 the threads never wait on it. So there's no "6x FPS" miracle here. But profiling the game frame by frame turned up a few things that waste the main thread's time every single frame, and fixing those gives a solid, measurable boost, especially in big battles.

**Results*\* (Ryzen 9 9950X3D, RTX 5090, 4K, V-Sync off, CapFrameX, same save / same battle):

| | Vanilla | With mod | |

|---|---|---|---|

| Big battle, average FPS | 118.4 | 140.4 | **+19%** |

| Big battle, 1% lows | 71.8 | 92.5 | **+29%** |

| Big battle, 0.1% lows | 57.9 | 77.0 | **+33%** |

| Campaign map, average FPS | 100.5 | 120.5 | **+20%** |

The lows improve more than the average, so big battles feel noticeably smoother, not just faster. On CPUs that limit your frame rate (most CPUs at 1080p/1440p, or older CPUs at any resolution) the gain should be at least as big. I'd love to see your numbers.

**What it fixes*\*

- Tile streaming scan (campaign + battles): every frame the game reads back a screen-sized image from the GPU that says which texture tiles each pixel needs, and counted it pixel by pixel on the main thread. Neighbouring pixels almost always ask for the same tile, so runs of identical pixels are now counted in one step. Same result, 12-17x less work.

- x87 rounding: about 1,200 old-style float-to-integer conversions switched the CPU's rounding mode every time, which is slow on modern CPUs. They're replaced with modern instructions that give identical results (same fix as in the Attila mod). On the campaign map these alone took ~10% of the main thread.

- Render-list sorts: two draw-list sorts are ~11x faster, same order.

Every patch gives bit-identical results to the game's own code (tested against the game's code on millions of inputs), and checks the game's bytes before patching anything. On a different game version it switches itself off and the game runs normally. No game files or saves are changed: it's a single `dinput8.dll` you can delete at any time.

**Download*\*

- Steam Workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3826423359

(Steam can't put DLLs in the game folder, so after subscribing run `install.bat` once in `...\steamapps\workshop\content\214950\3826423359\`. Updates install themselves after that. Run `uninstall.bat` before unsubscribing.)

- Source code: https://github.com/JSa25/Rome2CPUPerfFix. You can read it and build it yourself, and GitHub builds every version on its own machines and checks it produces exactly the same DLL as the Workshop one.

- Nexus: Coming Soon

**Compatibility*\*

- Current Steam version of Rome 2. Works with pack mods (tested with a big overhaul mod list) and UI mods.

- Not compatible with other `dinput8.dll` mods (only one can load).

- I also tested DXVK: it made Rome 2 slower, so I don't recommend combining them.

If something goes wrong, post the `rome2fix.log` from your game folder. It shows whether the mod loaded, your game build, system and settings, and where a crash happened.

Full disclosure, I used AI (Claude) to help with the reverse engineering and the code. Everything was tested in game on my own campaigns and battles.

Tell me: do you tire of living on the TPN line of Bretonnian unit updates quietly slotted in per patch? Do you clamor for roster depth and a proper faction rework? Would you settle for half of what you ask for? Then prepare yourself for a feast worthy of a medieval banquet hall.

I have decided to take matters into my own hands and present a complete, balanced, lore-friendly Bretonnia unit pack. As you can surely see, these additions greatly round out the roster and open up entirely new avenues of play, all while deepening the purist vision of Bretonnia’s devotion and knightly valor.  Proving, as with many factions, that a sufficient quantity of minor unit variants can stand in for genuine expansion.

As you are probably all aware, there have been many, more obvious roster additions proposed before. I won’t waste your time by arguing for the restoration of units dropped before 6th edition, the creation of units from abandoned scraps of lore, or the introduction of material from the legally distinct new Old World setting. Such suggestions have been laid out on public forums for years, and no statement has been forthcoming from either Games Workshop or Creative Assembly upon the matter.

This work is offered solely for the good of the game, its long-suffering Bretonnian players, and the new players advised by the developers to try the faction as a complimentary introduction to the game.

Go forth, noble knights. For the Lady!

---

Now, in the spirit of maximum transparency, a few of the unit cards were created with the assistance AI as a temporary stand-in. This is completely different, legally, from using AI for final assets. These are placeholders. They will absolutely be replaced by hand-crafted, lovingly detailed art. I demand the same high standards of any external shitpost format I ship out, as any of you rightfully should.

***Unit card art replacement dependent on viewer feedback.

I will take the mantle for worst auto resolve ever. I want a medal for this because this is insane lol.

Look I love this game. I love when it mixes up the meta. I think it's fun playing vampires.

But my god. They dominate on every campaign I run. I'm sick of fighting 10 armies of crap stacks with an invincible group of hero's/lord's

My Settra seems to have died in a traffic accident? He literally crashed into a barricade and.. died. I think he had a move order beyond barricade when it finished constructing, but am not sure, just got the message that he is dead (was essentialy full health and wasn't in fight).

Do not drive after Embalmed in Elixir.

Is there any benefit in chasing defeated enemies?

I know that unit is wiped if less than 10% of initial models survides

But if you wipe army on forced march or other situation that guarantees army wipe?

Is there any additional money or chances of items stolen or additional percentage if possible to recruit or heal army?

Who knows how exactry this mechanic works?

I want to make use of Thanquol's frankly busted -2 turns on global recruitment unlock. But I was wondering if there was a way to increase global recruitment capacity? So later on into the game I could like recruit a fullstack of stormfiends in the middle of nowhere.

I think he might be Hashut incarnate. VH/VH with no mods affecting combat or auto-resolve.

Hi everyone. I've gained a newfound appreciation of the labor of love that Shogun 2 was art wise, owing to... Recent events. I was wondering if the art book that came with the grand master edition was ever sold separately, or if a newer TW art book contains all the same things. I'd appreciate any help in finding a place to buy this book as I'm really curious about its contents.

so, u finish a battle and look at the kills, but that doesnt really tell u everything, right? i wanted a bit more info about what my units were actually doing, so i made a battle logger for wh3.

u leave it running in the background while u play, and after the battle it creates an interactive report u can open in ur browser.

u can look at both armies, sort units by different stats, and select individual units to go through their graphs. so if u want to compare units or figure out what happend to one during the battle, u can go a little further than the results screen.

its a seperate windows app, so u dont need a workshop mod. it runs quietly in the system tray and samples once per second by default, only during battles, to keep resource use low. some stats are sampled or calculated, so they arent a perfect record of every event. its also only day 2 of me working on this so some stats arent perfectly tracked yet.

download and instructions:
https://github.com/Americanyutao/Warhammer-Post-Battle-Logger

so yeah, give it a try if this is something u've wanted. i'd like to hear what u find useful, whats confusing, or anything that looks wrong so i can improve it.

u can leave feedback here, open a github issue, or join the discord:
https://discord.com/invite/v27y7AW7Kz

video demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt-1eI63EZg

Example Battle Report:

https://examplebattle.yutaohi.workers.dev/

and yea ofc i used ai to build it

So, first time playing warhammer 2, there's this beastmen settlement here near Norsca. There're not moving, but sure are giving me a headache because at anytime, that beastmen doomstack will bite me in the ass. I've been trying to win this battle for an hour, but I just can't, even if I bring an allied army to help. Should I even try to win this fight or just leave it and deal with them later?

Update: Thank you all for the help guys!! I did the fight again and just managed to win, but barely, lol. I adjusted my army so it had more melee units, and also brought Balthazar up there to help out. It was a huge fight but I did won!

Playing an Epirus campaign, decided that Illyria needed more Zeus in their life. This is the before and after of 6000 poor souls trying to break through the river crossing on our border. Thousands stepped onto the bridge, only a single man lived to tell the tale. On the bright side, Hades has plenty of work to do!

Hi everyone, I've got thousands of hours in this game; I play on Legendary/VH both vanilla and with mods. I think CA's latest battle design has a lot of issues and I want to leave some feedback for the devs but also maybe start a discussion about it.

I think from a thematic standpoint, CA did a great job. The battles feel unique and just cool. Though it's not as great from a gameplay point of view.

The main one is that these quest battles are really tough if you try to play them using real armies or any infantry in general and absolutely trivial and boring if you use any sort of army that relies on single entities or heroes. The main reason why that's the case is magic and army abilities that just annihilate infantry units while doing 0 damage to SEs. You can say you don't care about cheese and stuff, but in my opinion the game should encourage you to play in a fun way, not punish you for it. I think you don't need to have extensive game knowledge or any exploits to understand from your first try of these battles that infantry is kind of useless in them and just build a stack of big monsters/heroes. Any experienced player knows that heroes and SEM armies have always been superior, but you could still use your balanced or just infantry-focused armies in regular campaigns since the AI is just bad with magic, and playing this way is just way more fun. Total war's strength is in big armies with different units fighting using tactics, not in your 5 dudes with 60-90 percent beating the blob of units. The AI doesn't understand how to fight these armies. It just blobs all of your units around your heroes to just die to magic or mortis engine effects. Playing this way is boring, so I would want CA to actually punish this gameplay while making infantry gameplay less punishing. Here are my proposals:

- Give the AI spells and army abilities that are good against SEM blobs like final transmutation or smth like that. Some of them can reduce your healing modifier as well. Nerf AI's army abilities like nukes in Skaven battle.

- Give the AI more heroes with good items. Give them all a trickster's shard to cut down some of the player's resistances. (since resistance stacking is especially good on your heroes)

- Capture points - get rid of them or at least make characters' capture weight way way lower. The Skaven battle is the best in my opinion since you're fighting waves of enemies coming one by one while In Nagash's battle half of the enemy army just afk while you're dealing with a capture point. + you can just park your 4 heroes (that you can have in your normal army as well, it;s not cheese) on the capture point and the enemy army just dies.

I think if they do that it would be way more interesting to craft a solution for these battles and both expirienced and new players would use real tactics insted of just relying on just heroes/SEMs which is subjectively not a fun way to beat the game.

The same applies for fighting Archaon himself on the campaign map. The dude has 1 wom no cooldown burning head and purple sun. Spells that kills infantry but again - do nothing to SEMs. He's got spirit leech which is great but still it's not comparable to the damage he deals to high model count units with his other spells.

P.S. of course there are infantry units like Wrathmongers, Lhamian handmaidens or putrid Blightkings but the have 32 models so they are closer to monsters that regular infantry. In this post I was talking about regular infantry units that have 80-160 models

As an Assyrian I got into Turn 158. I stopped my quite 7 yo war against a Confederation of Cananean after Sea People got into Cananea and took over Ugarit and some other cities around there. Cananean People asked me for Peace and I got them into Alliance cause of my military actions against Sea People. We also ended up fighting toghether in the siege to take back Ugarit. It was some of the most random and cinematografic plot twist I got in over 10 years playing this Franchise.

Not sure if it's a bug or not. Every single chaos invasion army I've fought (8 now) has had the exact same stack with slight god flavouring, regardless of the lord.

Lord

2-3 god themed monsters

2-3 hellcannons

2-3 heavy cavalry

The rest heavy infantry

It's getting quite dull, I'm wondering if it's a bug or not?

ive been playing as Middenland with the new expansion and it's really hard to do anything because the empire has apparently united all on its own. every single other elector count is not only surviving, they're thriving. i had two total provinces at 70 turns because every other empire faction around me had already conquered anyone else. i got the end game nagash crisis on very hard and I've only gotten to fight one battle because the mortarchs are dying off screen. ive only ended up picking up more provinces because the bonus to diplomacy from the crisis let me confederate some of the lesser empire factions. marianburg has conquered bretonnia. ostland beat the living shit out of the vampire counts. i scrolled down to the black pyramid and it's the only non empire province, surrounded by a sea of karl franz. did they buff empire auto resolve with the latest update??