Easy Guide To Making Rome II So Much More Beautiful In 2021

FULL VIDEO TUTORIAL HERE:
Hey there friends!

Now, I can’t be the only one excited for Total War: Rome Remastered, but until then, we still have Total War: Rome 2 to play around with. But if you’re like me, vanilla Rome has for a while now, looked kinda meh looking. So, if you want Rome 2’s campaign map to look a lot better with a few simple tricks and mods that are very easy to find and install, then keep reading. I have also made an easy to follow video tutorial, so check it out if you want to, and make sure you like the video and leave a comment so more people can have Rome 2’s campaign map looking this good!

Ok, so. Rome 2’s map looks okay normally, which is what we like to call the vanilla experience. There are several things here I’d like to fix. I want the game sharpened a bit, I want it a bit less foggy, I want it a bit more realistic, but retain that good old antiquity feel to it.
So, let’s get to the biggest change first – the entire aspect of the image quality. If we want the campaign to look a lot better, and I mean a lot, we need to head over to the Steam Workshop, and look up Lux un Umbra – Reshade preset. Reshade is basically an injector tool which makes it possible to change multiple aspects of how your game looks, and if you want to, you can use reshade on many other games as well.

The mod on steam workshop basically does nothing, but it does provide the information we need to proceed. We need to follow the first link to download first another Rome 2 mod, the Orbis Terrarrum 2 mod, so just subscribe to it and enable it in the launcher. Then, we download the RAR file, which contains a few presets. You then unpack the RAR file, and extract the ini files inside the Rome 2 presets folder to your Rome 2 data folder. Then, very important, we need to download reshade itself, so just follow the link there, and click download. Once downloaded, open the program, choose direct X 10/11/12, aim reshade at your Total War: Rome 2 program, install all of the packs available, and just accept everything moving forward until you’re finished.

When we then enter the game, you’re gonna see this bar in the top of the screen. To open the overlay, your program will most likely say to click the home button, I just changed mine to be page down because in the game, pressing the home button centers the camera on your city, which I kind of want to keep.

So anyway. I’m not the biggest fan of the way the game looks right now. Maybe you’ll even have some blurred out menus or something, so just follow onward and we’ll fix it. Basically, we’re gonna go into the reshade settings here, and untick what we don’t want or need. You can obviously choose this to look like whatever you want. But what I find to be the best combination for a great campaign look and a decent battle map look, even though you can turn off the reshade filter with the click of a button, is this. So, go to the top bar, and selected Hazard’s preset from the drop down menu. Then, we’ve kept these modifiers: DELC Sharpen, Reveill Top, prod80, Curves, Clarity, FXAA, REveil bottom, and MXAO. In addition, even though I don’t know if it makes a difference, is that we go to the D3D11 menu, and select both of these options as on.

Finally, I’ve changed the gamma and brightness settings to be at 21 – 12, for what I found to be a good balance between realistic shadows and good lighting overall. And, the Orbis Terrarum mod needs to be turned on. Looks a ton better right? Not only is the map itself been sharpened, but it just looks so much better – almost like a new game.

But ok, we’re far from done. Now comes the immersion part. Remember, you can choose between these mods all you like, having one but not another, so if you don’t like any of the upcoming mods, then you don’t have to use them at all – all of these are separate and work alone or in combination with the others.

So, first up is the blank borders mod. This mod removes the arcady campaign visual elements, mainly the thick borders between your own settlements, but also between your empire and your neighbors. The same goes for sea borders, and connects the ocean in a much better way than before. It’s a matter of taste and gameplay preference, but I think this makes the map look so much more natural and immersive. The land is just connected in a way it wasn’t before, and I don’t think it really takes anything away from the gameplay either, since it’s so easy to see where your cities and the enemies are anyway.

Next up is the Blank Trade Lines + Doubled Trade Ships and Carts mod. I’ve always loved seeing movement on my campaign maps, and Rome 2 is no exception. However, if you want more action, then this is a great mod. It not only increases the activity of your merchant navies and land traders, but it removes the trade lines between you and other factions, making for a cleaner ocean look. The gameplay element is not gone though, so you can still hover over the ships’ route to see who’s getting rich from overseas trading.

Next, we have in fact to mods for the same purpose: the Better Water III HD mod and/ or the Orbis Aquarum – Realistic Water mod. So, for orders sake, in vanilla, you see the colour changes a bit in the ocean, and it has this weird white looking shimmer closer to the shores. If we turn on Better Water III HD however, the ocean turns much darker and uniform, and kinda fits a realistic looking game. I really like this look, but personally, I might prefer the Orbis Aquarum Realistic Water mod. Again, the ocean is more uniform looking, but with a lighter colour, perhaps more fitting for a golden age of Rome style campaign. Either way, both of these mods are excellent, so you can’t really go wrong here.

Lastly, we have the Classic Campaign Vegetation mod. Now, this is the mod which I’m most unsure about, even though I really like the look of it. Essentially, if you owned Rome 2 for the first few years, you’ll remember that the trees in fact looked differently. The trees in the current game look rather detailed, but also kind of aliasy with jagged edges that can shimmer during movement. The old trees however, are much more simplistic, but in a certain way, also more wholesome and beautiful. Especially if you’re just kind of hovering over the map or is admiring your empire, I really love the look of the way the trees looked originally.

In combination then, Rome 2 looks so much more beautiful, and I personally think it is not only a massive change, but an extremely good one. The map is more detailed, sharper, more realistic, and more immersive, and somehow looks next gen like.

If you want some added feeling of Rome: Total War, make sure to download the Rome: Total War Music mod, which replaces the Rome 2 soundtrack, with the one from Rome 1.
It wont make Rome: Remastered come out any faster, but it might make you want to play Rome 2 again, especially if you’re playing with the massive DEI campaign mod, which ads new, units, campaign mechanics like population and supply systems, and much more.

So that is how you make Rome 2 into an extremely beautiful game in 2021. I hope you found this guide useful!