Caesar then marches the rest of his army up the hill to meet me head-on. I send out a unit of camelry (yes, that is the correct word) to meet the attackers, and the Romans quickly scatter. Unfortunately, horses are easily spooked by camels – their obvious superiors. In the meantime, Caesar has sent a mounted unit up the hill to test my defences. “You'll see they all have these big metal prows.” There's no need to be subtle here: my navy outnumbers Caesar's so I send my ships to entangle his before they can get to shore, pausing to zoom in as my crew leaps on board his vessels and murders everyone. “Ramming is one of the key weapons for these ancient ships,” community communications manager Al Bickham explains. Rome II's naval and land battles are now controlled on the same battlefield, and the boaty bit is my first priority: naval warfare feels closer to Shogun than Empire: you can still fight at range, but a volley of arrow fire is really just a polite way of introducing yourself before the prow of your ship slams into your enemy's starboard side. My larger army is mounted on top of some raised ground, while the reinforcements Caesar desperately needs are all aboard ships that must wrestle with my superior navy before they can land.
The reason I'm playing Egypt is that Rome will face on uphill struggle – literally – to win the Battle of the Nile. "Ramming is one of the key weapons for these ancient ships." Making AI responses more readable runs the risk of making them appear nakedly robotic, but it also opens the scope for more nuanced diplomatic strategies. You can now see, for instance, that breaking off trade agreements with allies of Egypt won't go down too well in Pharaohland, but Egypt seems to love it when you commit wartime atrocities against the Macedonians. It makes the often inscrutable nature of Total War's AI more transparent, and helps put faction behaviour into wider sociopolitical context. Open the diplomacy tab in Rome 2 and you'll see something called the Relations Pane: this contains a list of your actions throughout the history of the game, complete with the relevant faction's response. A great offer, I think, but the Egyptian ambassador rejected it. Not only did he graciously ignore their belligerence and re-establish the longstanding trade agreement the Egyptians had foolishly tossed out (along with all their toys), but the Creative Assembly dev playing Caesar gave Egypt the opportunity to become a client state of Rome as well. It turns out that Julius Caesar made the Egyptians a very reasonable offer when they got all uppity about him marching an army through 'their' land.
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