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Imperator: Rome 2.0 ‘Marius’ patch notes are here

Get the full low-down on the free and premium features and changes coming tomorrow

Imperator: Rome’s 2.0 ‘Marius’ update is due to drop tomorrow, but you can peruse the official patch notes right now, thanks to the magic of dev diaries. As is tradition, the formal change log for a major title update gets released in the developer update just before the event, and the historical grand strategy game’s diary slot has been Monday for a while now.

The upcoming changes touch a lot of areas, judging by the number of free features being included in the notes. The overhauled UI alone will make the game look completely different than before, but there’s also been a bunch of changes to military forces and warfare, buildings (including ports), and the way technology and innovations work has also been changed. And that’s not even tackling the bug fixes and tweaks to existing content. Pasted into a Word document, the notes run to some nine or ten pages.

It’s the military revisions that I’m most excited about, but then I’m a massive nerd. Some people enjoy music, or good art design… but me? I enjoy an authentic abstraction of the Roman Republic’s transition from a levy-based military to a state-funded professional army.

It’s not just free content arriving tomorrow though: The Heirs of Alexander DLC pack is also releasing. The new features introduced in this expansion are more modest, but carry most of the interesting bits of flavour. For example, a free feature sees professional armies (now called ‘legions’) become a more semi-permanent entity that can have its career tracked. The new DLC also adds in a load of honours/dishonours they can earn, depending on what they get up to.

the wonder creation screen in imperator rome, showing off the in-game model and various options.

The rest of the DLC adds in more flavoured events around the wars of the Diadochi successor kingdoms, as well as a new ‘wonder designer’ feature that will allow you to create your own ancient wonders of the world.

The Imperator: Rome 2.0 patch and Heirs of Alexander content pack is due to release tomorrow. We’ll have a full in-depth analysis of the new patch and what it means for the strategy game‘s future ready when it does.