Total War Arena Update 2.2.1 Patch Notes
7 min readUpdate 2.2.1 Patch Notes
- Unit power scale rebalance: following feedback from the community this rebalance is designed to reduce the difference in power between tiers throughout the mid and high tiers.
- New early game Achievements available.
- New Tier 1 and Tier 2 equipment added.
- Changes to morale, progression balancing and matchmaking.
Unit Power Scale Rebalance
We have reduced the difference in unit power between tiers. We felt that the gap was too extreme, which was lowering tactical depth, and reducing options when trying to combat high tier units. This opinion was shared throughout the community, so we are excited to hear your feedback on this matter as we continue to tweak and refine the balance.
The change should allow for fully equipped units to compete strongly against the above tier, and help to reduce cases of high tier units completely steam-rolling matches. The top end of the game has had a 20% total reduction in core stats, whilst the bottom end has increased by around 3%. This results in a softened curve throughout the mid and high tiers, but leaves interaction between lower tiers relatively unaffected.
The change is specifically targeted, we have worked to avoid changing the meta-interaction between units and commanders. When fighting enemies of the same tier, little to no difference should be felt.
Sulla – Fortify
- Fortify is for now just a stat increasing ability with no associated mechanical behavior.
- Added “Can’t use when Formed Combat active” and “Auto deactivate when Formed Combat is Active” flags to Sulla – Fortify.
Units Rebalancing
- The first 4 roman swordsmen were on not performing well defensively and had too low shield defence, especially when considering Sulla – Fortify.
- Shield defence increased on Pedites, Milites, Accensi, Hastati.
- With the introduction of new charge mechanics in the previous patch, specifically charge damage being rolled against the armour of units, the charge damage balance was too punishing for cavalry units.
- We have slightly increased the cavalry charge damage across the board.
Morale flank damage scaling change
We have in previous patches introduced a scaling of morale flank damage in lower tiers. The goal of this balancing change was to soften up the lethality and improve the learning curve of the morale system in low tiers. The positives of this implementation were questionable, and were outweighed by the negatives associated with it. We still want to soften up the lethality levels of the morale system, but we will be choosing a different implementation approach.
Morale flank damage does not scale over tiers anymore.
Core Morale changes
Depreciation Rate
- The rate at which morale reduces has been reduced significantly
Disengagement
- When you disengage with an enemy unit you are currently in combat with, that unit cannot apply any flank effects on you for 10 seconds
- This should allow you to pull out from combat if you feel it’s better to retreat, without getting harshly punished for it
- It’s important to note this will only happen if they are currently targeting your unit when you pull out
- If the enemy unit is targeting something else, and you turn to run, and then that unit targets your unit, it will still be able to flank you.
Wavering State
Old:
- When below 30% soldiers remaining, the unit will enter the Wavering state
- In this state their morale will reduce each second until 0
- When in combat, this reduction is halted
- A unit that Routs in the Wavering state will permanently shatter and be eliminated from the battle
New:
- When the number of soldiers remaining in the unit is 10 (not percentage!) or less, the unit will enter the Wavering state
- When in the Wavering state, the unit will receive an 80% Morale debuff and an 80% View Range debuff
- A unit that Routs in the Wavering state will permanently shatter and be eliminated from the battle
- This should allow you to still use your unit, but you’ll need to be careful with it as it can be easily broken (and therefore shattered), and you won’t be able to use it as a scout (though it can still capture watchtowers)
Commander Death
- Morale loss on Commander Death has been changed from a flat value to a percentage
- The percentage morale your units will lose upon Commander Death has been set to 10%
Range units increase in turn speed
We have increased the turn speed of all ranged units across the board. This change is meant to help improve tactical depth by allowing better kiting (hit and run technique).
Low tier Greek spears balance
The Greek Mycenaean hoplites and Archaic hoplites were performing too well offensively. We have slightly reduced their melee attack.
Progression Balancing
We have rebalanced the progression speed of how many battles it takes to get from Tier 1 to Tier 10. The total time it takes to get to T10 is still pretty much the same as before (ever so slightly quicker), but we’ve changed the time it takes to get through each tier. Overall, we made the progression smoother and also less steep at the end.
- New players will now spend a bit longer at Tiers 1 to 4, because we felt that we’ve previously not given new players enough time to learn the basics of the game before presenting them with complex units such as Wardogs and Artillery.
- There used to be a peak at Tier 5, as it took much longer to get through T5 than other tiers. This is now much smoother and should not feel like hitting a wall.
- Players will now progress slightly quicker through Tiers 6 to 10, most noticeably at the high tiers.
New Tier 1 and 2 Equipment
As part of these balancing changes we have added new unlockable equipment to most Tier 1 and Tier 2 units, with the intention of making lower-tier play more varied and rewarding. The following units have gained a new upgrade:
- Pedites: Battered Montefortino (+5 Base Morale)
- Tirones: Basic Round Shield (+4 Missile Block)
- Milites: Republican Scutum (+4 Missile Block)
- Leves: Round Shield (+4 Missile Block)
- Mycenaean Archers: Simple Archaic Tunic (+5 Armour)
- Mycenaean Hoplites: Cracked Pylos (+5 Base Morale)
- Archaic Hoplites: Archaic Hoplon (+5 Missile Block)
- Riders: Rought Knots (+5 Base Morale)
- Tribesmen: Battered Bronze Sword (+9 Melee Damage)
- Scouts: Enthusiastic Warpaint (+5 Melee Defence)
- Woodsmen: Hasty Warpaint (+4 Melee Defence)
Party Tier Banding Change
Playing in parties is a core part of the game, as it’s probably the most fun way to enjoy Total War: ARENA. However, whenever players join in a party, we must make sure that the gameplay experience of other players is not tarnished by parties. We’ve seen many cases of parties taking units into battle which were too far apart, thereby dragging low-tier units into higher-tier matches. This was not well-received by the community and we agree! As a result, we have made the following change to parties:
- The maximum unit tier difference between units in one party has been reduced from two tiers to one tier.
New Early Game Achievements
We added several new Achievements that focus on the player’s progression, in particular in early gameplay. We’ve added Achievements for progression through the game, as well as for earning in-battle decorations for the first time.
Title | Description | Icons |
|---|---|---|
| Ad Cursum | Unlock a T2/T4/T6/T8 unit |  |
| Ad Magnificentia | Unlock T2/T4/T6/T8 on a commander |  |
| Executed | Earned the Executed decoration in battle |  |
| Ambushed | Earned the Ambushed decoration in battle |  |
| Nuked | Earned the Nuked decoration in battle |  |
| Eliminated | Earned the Eliminated decoration in battle |  |
| Defended | Earned the Defended decoration in battle |  |
| Saved | Earned the Saved decoration in battle |  |
| Demolished | Earned the Demolished decoration in battle |  |
| Routed | Earned the Routed decoration in battle |  |
Matchmaking Improvements
In our metrics we have seen that sometimes new players play their first match against players of Tier 3. This is of course a bad gameplay experience and we have therefore updated the matchmaking algorithm to make sure that player tiers are more strictly separated than they were before. This change only applies to matchmaking below Tier 6. Higher-tier matches will still have a wider range of unit tiers as we need to wait for more players to reach higher tiers before we can increase granularity here (otherwise, high-tier players would find it difficult to find matches).
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue with certain unit cards not flashing red when receiving damage.
- Spectated matches should now end correctly, rather than indefinitely pausing towards the end.
- Active consumables should no longer move along the hot bar in battle.
- Removed a debug file that was downloading into the appdata folder.
- Should now be able to watch cloud replays that friends were present in, via their profile, for the full replay duration.
- Archer units now have bow strung on unit cards correctly.
- Resolved issues with camera movement speeds having dependencies on the FPS.
- [LOC] [RU] Play button text no longer changing on hover.
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