Total War: Rome 2 is being review-bombed on Steam

Total War: Rome II is being review-bombed on Steam following its recent Ancestral update. While 75% of all of the game’s reviews on the platform are positive, 74% of the reviews from the last 30 days are negative.

This has been catalysed by one of Rome II’s recent updates and the adjustments to the spawn rate of female generals that it has supposedly made. Many of the most prominent complaints allege that male generals in saved games have been retroactively replaced with women, and that only women have been available to recruit from general recruitment pools. This has sat badly with players who feel it’s historically inaccurate in a time period dominated by patriarchal societies, such as Rome and Greece, wherein female generals were practically unheard of.

The trouble is, it may not be entirely true. Research by YouTuber Republic of Play, who took the time to dig into the database, indicates that the spawn rate for female generals varies between cultures, with most rates around 10% – only the Kushites have a 50% rate. This has to raise questions about the provenance of a screenshot depicting an all-female general recruitment pool, and about who is really pushing an agenda here. Even the birth rate of female characters into your family – which, obviously, ought to be 50% if you care about biological accuracy – is just 35%.

The outcry has been compounded by comments from a Total War community manager, who locked a lengthy Steam forum post on the issue, stating that “this thread is a mess so I’m locking it.” That thread now seems to have been deleted, but the community manager went on to say that “as has been said previously: Total War games are historically authentic, not historically accurate – if having female units upsets you that much you can either mod them out or just not play.”

We’ve reached out to Creative Assembly for further clarification, and will update with any new information.

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