Not Really a sale....but, Total War: Rome II keeps having content delivered. Today brings another DLC, Desert Kingdoms. IF you don't want to spend another $8.99, you still get a lot of stuff in Patch 19, including the return of
Guard mode, which has been missing since Shogun 2 (actually, I may be wrong, it might be since Medeival 2, since I seem to remember some units in Shogun 2 breaking ranks to attack).
New features
Female Leaders
- Following in Zenobia’s footsteps, Cleopatra and Teuta are now fully playable as faction leaders and generals, along with custom visuals and voice-over.
- Teuta has been added as the leader of the Ardiaei in the Grand Campaign.
- Cleopatra has been added as the leader of Egypt in the Imperator Augustus campaign.
- Major female characters have been added to all campaigns and all factions. In some cultures, such as Roman and Greek, women occupy social/political roles, while in others, women may be generals and lead armies.
- For cultures where women do not hold public offices, there is a special Cursus Honorum path that follows the increase in the influence of women in politics.
- There are special events (dilemmas) which portray the trials and tribulations associated with women coming to power in ancient times. Often, tradition and prejudice stood in the way. Such events allow the player to recruit female leaders, or gain other bonuses from parties that would normally oppose such a decision.
- Important historical female characters will spawn via special incidents at various times throughout various ROME II campaigns:
Historical QueenCampaignFactionBerenice IIIROME II Grand CampaignPtolemaic EgyptCleopatra IIROME II Grand CampaignPtolemaic EgyptBerenice IVROME II Grand CampaignPtolemaic EgyptCleopatra TheaROME II Grand CampaignSeleucidsBerenice PhernophorusROME II Grand CampaignSeleucidsOlympias IIROME II Grand CampaignEpirusLaodiceROME II Grand CampaignPontusLaodice IVROME II Grand CampaignPontusEratoImperator AugustusArmeniaMusaImperator AugustusParthiaAmanitoreROME II Grand CampaignKushShanakhdakhetoROME II Grand CampaignKush
- Faction leaders of opposite gender can now marry as a diplomatic action, significantly strengthening the relations between the two factions.
- The basic marriage action now has political implications.
New Resource: Spices
The Spices resource has been added to the Eudaemon and Charmuthas regions of the Arabian Peninsula. Spices give a large bonus to tariff income from trade agreements.
Merge Units button:
A new button allowing the player to merge two selected units of the same type into one has been added to the game.
Guard Mode:
The Guard Mode stance has been reintroduced into battles and players can now again put units into Guard Mode, keeping them in position and preventing them from chasing down enemies.
Guard Mode is disabled when units are on walls.
Mod Filter:
A new Mod Filter tool has been introduced to help players disable all their mods after a new patch is applied to prevent them from breaking the game.
Factions removed from the Grand Campaign:
The following factions have been removed from the Grand Campaign due to the addition of The Sabaean Kingdom and The Kingdom of Kush:
Those factions can still spawn in the game if the player liberates their original regions.
BUG FIXES
Performance improvements
Removed Ctrl+F1 as a shortcut to take a screenshot. This was undocumented and causes the game to freeze for second which would make it look like an issue.
Optimised the rendering of waypoints in battle
Fixed an issue causing pathfinding spikes when selected player units are on walls during sieges
Fixed an issue causing pathfinding spikes when units are close to walls in sieges
Fixed an issue where selecting a character on the campaign map and then using the mouse to scroll the map would cause the framerate to drop
Unit Animations Fixes:
Fixed issues on club and axe-wielding units sometimes using animations that are meant to be used only with swords (beheadings, stabs, etc).
Fixed the issues with dismembering animations being overused. Enabling Blood and Gore DLC will bump them up in frequency only when a killing blow is executed
Fixed an issue where Admirals would not be present on their ships.
Government Types in Wrath of Sparta:
Changed the government types of Athens and Korinthos in the Wrath of Sparta DLC from Kingdom to Politea, and the government type of the Boiotian League from Kingdom to League.
Starting political party traits:
Most rival political parties will now always start with a certain set of traits to better represent the current political situation and prevent strange cases like the rival party of the Iceni hating easterners, even though they would probably have no way of even knowing them.
Send Diplomat fixes:
Fixed an issue causing the Send Diplomat feature to cause incorrect outcomes that could never result in a critical success. Now with a critical success, the player will get a whole region from the target faction.
Champion Trait: Striking:
The champion trait Striking has been fixed to actually hurt the enemy army.
Scipio Africanus:
Scipio Africanus is once again available in the Hannibal at the Gates campaign.
Achievement Fixes:
The Seize the Initiative achievement will now unlock if the player manages to attack an enemy army in encamped state and win the battle with less than 15% casualties.
The Pontifex Maximus achievement will now correctly unlock when a player constructs a level 5 cultural building as Rome.
Shield Decal Fixes:
Fixed some units missing shield decals, mainly for Odryssian Kingdom spears.
Empire Divided:
New additions
Move Capital Dilemma:
A new dilemma has been added for all Roman factions upon capturing Rome, asking them if they want to move their faction capital there.
New Saxoni Ships:
Three new naval units have been added to the Saxoni roster in both campaign and custom battle:
- Assault Raider (Geoguth Warriors)
- Medium Assault Raider (Duguth Spearmen)
- Heavy Raider (Gedriht Swordsmen)
New Saxoni Admiral option:
The Heavy Raider (Gedriht Swordsmen) can now be recruited as a bodyguard unit for Saxoni Admirals.
Bug Fixes
Gallic Empire client states:
Fixed an issue with all the Gallic Empire’s client states not recruiting any medium or high tier units.
Tetricus’ Spear:
Fixed Tetricus’ model in battle to hold a spear while on a chariot
Eastern Barbarian city center artillery fixes:
Fixed a bug with cities in eastern Barbarian cultures displaying more artillery slots in the building tooltips then there actually were.
Multiple Visual Updates on Roman units:
Multiple units from the Roman factions have had their models update for better historical accuracy. These units include: Gallic Legionaries, Gallic Imperial Guard, Gallic Longsword Cohort, Heavy Gallic Spearmen, Spear Warriors, Palmyrene Cohors, Palmyrene Veteran Legionaries, Palmyrene Legionaries, Armoured Pikemen, Heavy Palmyrene Skirmishers, Palmyrene Spearmen, Palmyrene Legionary Cavalry, Palmyrene Palace Guard, Roman Legionaries, Roman Cohors, Roman Evocati Cohors, Herculiani, Roman Praetorian Guard, Roman Praetorian Cavalry.
Unit Voice Line fixes:
Fixed several issues of units not using the correct voice lines, including Germanic Pikes, and some of the Alani units.
Known Issue:
The Status Quo achievement is not currently attainable
How to opt in to the roll back build
I want to keep Rome II as it is, despite the update!
If you want to avoid this update to keep your mods working or you just want to stay on the version on Total War: ROME II you’ve been playing up until now, follow these steps:
Open Steam and select Total War: Rome II in your library
Right click Rome II and select properties
Open the ‘Betas’ tab
In the drop down menu, select the ‘patch_18’ option
Steam will download your update and the name of Total War: ROME II on your Steam library will end with [patch_18]
(( 
thnx guys 
. I ended up getting so pissed, i just told them if they needed the $ that bad, they could keep it.I had paid the extra $$ for their "shield" (which is a TOTAL joke), as it took almost 2 weeks for the process explained above to play out, and i never got my money back, or the key i paid for. then they blocked my account 
