I recently booted up and tried Rome 2 again. In the multiplayer campaign. Here's a quick heads-up: It still suffers from enormous problems. In fact, almost none of the issues I've been having, are fixed at all! This is despite the fact that two major patches have already been released.

However, because these issues are so far from being fixed yet, Creative Assembly continue their hard work at really, really, seriously attempting to fix the game. Patch 3 is currently in Beta, and comes with yet another enormous changelog. Here are some tidbits:

-Significant improvements to multiplayer campaign speed, which is now limited by the -slowest players machine.

-Fix for lock-ups reported on loading into battle in DirectX9.

-Frame Rate improvements on Campaign map across all configurations when setting Effects -Quality to Low or High.

-LAN multiplayer modes are now accessible when Steam is in Offline mode.

-Fix to prevent the games user interface from flickering when SLI is enabled.

-When the player is attacked whilst in a minor settlement (not provincial capital), a new "Sally Forth" button is available on the pre-battle panel to fight the attackers in an open field battle.

-Victory Points have had their capture time increased by 3x their previous length.

-Attacking AI is now more likely to prioritise taking Victory Points in Siege Battles / City Assault Battles.

-Fixed issue in battle AI which prevented siege assault groups from responding to nearby threats.

-Units that charge while in formation (e.g. block formation) stop sooner on contact with the enemy, to reduce "blobbing" where units converge into a disorganised brawl.

-Improved the desynchronisation detection in Multiplayer Campaign mode, and players are now given a popup message when a desynchronisation has occurred, with the options to resynchronise the game to continue, or quit the game.

The list goes on and on. To sum things up, Creative Assembly once again seek to improve performance, balance the unbalanced things, fix the desync issues in multiplayer, decrease load- and wait-times, fix the combat AI and take Rome 2 a few steps closer to actually being worth the $60/€55 pricetag.

Sounds like I'm angry? You've got that right. You've got that damn right. Let's hope they fix this game very soon. I have a social life in need of wasting, damn it!