Recommended graphics mods ?

[MF]

Coming from Troy (my first TW title), I'm all about the eye candy and that game spoiled me silly as it's just so gorgeous. I'm a rank newb with this title so I'm not about to start messing with the gameplay until I totally understand the mechanics.

While relatively nice as-is (a quantum leap over Midieval), I do note that the graphics could still be nicer, from unit cards to portraits to, well, just about everything. What ones would you guys recommend to enhance the visuals ?

[TimeTraveller]

Definitely start by checking your GPU memory matches to what's in the graphics options of the game. A little tweak to one of the scripts and it should then be the same.

That's a good start point for sure.

[MF]

Originally posted by TimeTraveller:

Definitely start by checking your GPU memory matches to what's in the graphics options of the game. A little tweak to one of the scripts and it should then be the same.

That's a good start point for sure.

My GPU is more than powerful enough for anything, methinks.

[Yews]

A bit of self-promotion: the widely advertised and celebrated Emperor Edition update to the game, although it did fix some things that were wrong with the game, also hopelessly messed up a bunch of other things, among which the graphics happened to be. The game suddenly becoming a messed-up ugly shadow of itself bothered me so much that I could not enjoy playing it until I dove into its older versions and pulled the old code for the graphics, the old art assets and everything, to make the game look almost like it did back in 2013 when it originally released. The parts of the game that were added after the Emperor Edition update had to be remade from scratch by my hand, which is also how I can immediately tell when some piece of sh᠎it such as Enkeli steals my work and then claims it was his. The comparison of how the current Emperor Edition version of the game looks vs. the appearance of the original 2013 Rome II can be found in the galleries on the pages of the mods. I believe this small collection does something close to what you wanted; it does not affect gameplay but it drastically changes how the game looks:
Classic Rome II graphics in battles
Pre-Emperor Edition vegetation in campaign
Old UI
Original dark red splash screen
Old graphics in campaign
Original Rome II lighting in portholes
This one was not made by me but rather by another guy who figured out how to do what I never figured out: reconstructed more or less accurately how the water in the seas looked back in 2013 when the game originally came out.

[kam2150]

Get these plus find some nice Reshade preset, game will look like its 2030.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1970932617

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2876335362

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3108254297

[MF]

Originally posted by Yews:

A bit of self-promotion: the widely advertised and celebrated Emperor Edition update to the game, although it did fix some things that were wrong with the game, also hopelessly messed up a bunch of other things, among which the graphics happened to be. The game suddenly becoming a messed-up ugly shadow of itself bothered me so much that I could not enjoy playing it until I dove into its older versions and pulled the old code for the graphics, the old art assets and everything, to make the game look almost like it did back in 2013 when it originally released. The parts of the game that were added after the Emperor Edition update had to be remade from scratch by my hand, which is also how I can immediately tell when some piece of sh᠎it such as Enkeli steals my work and then claims it was his. The comparison of how the current Emperor Edition version of the game looks vs. the appearance of the original 2013 Rome II can be found in the galleries on the pages of the mods. I believe this small collection does something close to what you wanted; it does not affect gameplay but it drastically changes how the game looks:
Classic Rome II graphics in battles
Pre-Emperor Edition vegetation in campaign
Old UI
Original dark red splash screen
Old graphics in campaign
Original Rome II lighting in portholes
This one was not made by me but rather by another guy who figured out how to do what I never figured out: reconstructed more or less accurately how the water in the seas looked back in 2013 when the game originally came out.

Well hello there. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you play this one too. Thanks for the info. So I take it that the issue isnt with Rome 2 per se, but the 'Emperor Edition'. Wow - odd that they screwed that up.

[MF]

Originally posted by kam2150:

Get these plus find some nice Reshade preset, game will look like its 2030.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1970932617

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2876335362

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3108254297

Those look sweet.

[Yews]

Yeah the game used to look much more like a 2013 version of Troy back when it originally came out, in my opinion.

Also seeing how you are completely new to the game: you actually need gameplay mods in order for the game to function as intended. The code is broken in many places and needs manual patching to become mostly functional. Also while the game has been patched by the devs, and expanded, a lot since release, they also managed to break areas of the game that used not to be broken, such as for instance its UI. Thankfully someone has already done most of the work. I am sharing mods that bring the game as close to perfection as possible without deviating from its original design direction.

Also, bizarre as it is with this game being the most popular historical instalment in the franchise with hundreds of thousands of mods of all sorts made and still being made for it, there has not been a single mod that would attempt to fix the actual Roman faction, aside from large overhauls such as Dívide et imperá. The Roman faction in Rome II is highly anachronistic with religion and appearance of characters straight out of the 2nd century (while the game begins in the 3rd BC), with tech from the far future of the Late Classical era and an Imperial political system that does not reflect the reality of Republican Rome. Also the army system might appear faithful to life at first glance but actually makes no sense because for instance Praetorians were in real life something like a general-exclusive paramilitary force but in the game you can make an entire legion that consists exclusively of Praetorians while under no circumstances you can make them accompany your general, which in real life was their entire point. The early game Roman roster is a mix of archaic early Republican and late Republican units that never coexisted. It is really strange that none of this ever bothered any player enough for anyone to attempt to fix it.

The oddest historicity issues affect the rest of the game as well: for instance, in Grand Campaign, Carthage is split into a bunch of separate factions that basically did not exist at that point, whereas in the Hannibal in Gates campaign Carthage is one giant unified faction. In real life everything was exactly the other way around. This mind-boggling design decision severely underpowers Carthage in Grand Campaign even though it was the superpower of that day and age in real life, and in turn makes the Hannibal at the Gates Carthage much more frightening than it actually was in 218 BC. The Egyptian roster progression is reversed as though the Egyptian faction was going back in time every time you press End Turn, and the entire faction Sparta should not even be in the game to begin with.

That being said, I have thrown together a list of low-footprint, so to speak, high-yield mods that might not overhaul the game and make something 100% historical and flawlessly functional out of it, but certainly improve the experience immensely when they all work together:

General all-purpose bug fix mod that addresses a couple hundred bugs in all areas of the game:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1962928608
This mod is an absolute must-have if you want to enjoy the game; fixes typos in the code, incorrectly assigned culture groups, game looking for assets that are not there because they were renamed or misspelt etc. etc.

This mod patches, or rather works around, an irritating AI issue where the AI will not assault your settlement when it has the chance, because the autoresolve unit stats are broken and the AI pretty much always has a wrong idea about what units fare well against what units in what conditions:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2964477209

This bundle of mods is more or less pertinent to your original request; it does not touch the overall graphical engine but it fixes the fact that the appearance of many units does not correspond to their actual stats:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1912117011
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2122702269
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2340579033
☝️ evidently the devs had to throw together a bunch of unit rosters fast and simply left them as-is so you get naked dudes who run around decimating everything because their stats say that they are heavily armoured and also you get units that wear cool capes on their unit card but actually look bland on the battlefield and so on; the mods simply make the rosters for many non-Hellenistic factions actually consistent.

Yet another issue neither Creative Assembly nor Ultimate Fixes ever addressed is that the faction Etruscan League has a generic Gaulish accent whereas the game actually has a giant unique set of voice lines for Etruscans that this faction oddly never uses (the faction also obviously was meant to be playable but was never finished just like much of the game). Anyway the mod makes Etruscans at least speak like Etruscans:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1485315320
☝️ The Etruscan faction is still a barebones placeholder, essentially just a clone of Rome with no legionaries. The Rise of the Republic campaign is highly recommended if you want to have actual Etruscans in your campaign, ones that resemble the real Etruscans from real life in terms of what tech they have, what units they field etc.

The following mod is yet another fix that makes aqueducts you construct actually show up in the game, in Imperator Augustus and Empire Divided campaigns (no need to install this if you intend to skip those):
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1530039267

And this mod gives the women in the game a bunch of unique hairstyles, apparel, equipment, and generally significantly improves the variety of their appearances. I think that this is also associated with your original request; without the mod all the women look identical save for the occasional differently-coloured tunic (also really odd to see respected matrons dressed like that, WTF CA):
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1692167625

Also, the current in-game colours for almost all the factions are not the original colours the factions had back when the game originally came out; they completely remade them in Emperor Edition, citing authenticity, but like with the UI the game ended up looking way less faithful to the era. This mod restores the original 2013 palette for all factions:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1888936282

Last but not least: while the mods above patch the content that is already present in the game, this mod restores cut content: male spies. In case you never heard about it, male spies were planned and were actually completed and implemented, but at the last moment the devs simply turned them off, so they never actually appear in any campaign. Really odd peculiarity, anyway the mod just enables them so that you actually get them in your game:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1470432766

Sadly this mod list does not fix everything that is wrong with the game (like onagers dominating the campaign while in real life they were not even invented until the era of Attila, like about a third of the settlements having nonsensical ahistorical names and locations etc. etc.), but it definitely helps. Helps as in, right after you subscribe you might not see any difference, but with every turn you will slowly realise better that you are playing an entirely different game.

[MF]

Originally posted by Yews:

Holy crap !!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks !

Only played the prologue so far and a bit of the main campaign and right off the bat I find combat way way easier in Rome. More room to manoeuvre and I can see the units much better. What I find annoying though is all of the really really tiny print - hard to read although eventually it'll become second nature I suppose.

Thanks again.

[MF]

Originally posted by Yews:

The oddest historicity issues affect the rest of the game as well: for instance, in Grand Campaign, Carthage is split into a bunch of separate factions that basically did not exist at that point, whereas in the Hannibal in Gates campaign Carthage is one giant unified faction. In real life everything was exactly the other way around.

That's pretty a-historical; the buggers that survived the trip over the Alps were quite a mixed bunch. They sure as hell weren't a uniform unit of Carthaginians. Who did they rely on for historical research, Jada Pinkett Smith ?

[MF]

Originally posted by MF:

Originally posted by Yews:

The oddest historicity issues affect the rest of the game as well: for instance, in Grand Campaign, Carthage is split into a bunch of separate factions that basically did not exist at that point, whereas in the Hannibal in Gates campaign Carthage is one giant unified faction. In real life everything was exactly the other way around.

That's pretty a-historical; the buggers that survived the trip over the Alps were quite a mixed bunch. They sure as hell weren't a uniform unit of Carthaginians. Who did they rely on for historical research, Jada Pinkett Smith ?

As far as CA continuing to work on the franchise, I suppose there are only so many programmers to go around and they had other projects to work on such as the Warhammer series and my beloved Troy.

Heh - maybe there'll be a Rome III.

[TimeTraveller]

Originally posted by MF:

Originally posted by TimeTraveller:

Definitely start by checking your GPU memory matches to what's in the graphics options of the game. A little tweak to one of the scripts and it should then be the same.

That's a good start point for sure.

My GPU is more than powerful enough for anything, methinks.

Yeah it's not really about how big your graphics card is....it's just ensuring the game is utilizing it.

[MF]

Originally posted by TimeTraveller:

Originally posted by MF:

My GPU is more than powerful enough for anything, methinks.

Yeah it's not really about how big your graphics card is....it's just ensuring the game is utilizing it.

Well In installed virtually everything YEWS recommended and she runs pretty smooth. No issues.