Total War: Shogun 2 patch tackles multiplayer desync bugs, improves lighting

For many, "Fixes to prevent desynchronisation (desync) in multiplayer campaign modes" will be the highlight of the latest round of updates to Total War: Shogun 2. Syncing up a multiplayer campaign requires the PCs running each instance of the campaign to high five every now and then to make sure everything is where it should be. Some people's games were, tragically, missing high fives and then failing to catch follow up hits up high, down low AND on the rebound.

This patch will hopefully help with all that, but also adds a few visual tweaks in the form of an updated shader to "improve lighting in battles throughout the game," horse animation transitions have been smoothed out, and the game is now more compatible than ever with Radeon HD7 cards. Here's the full update list from Steam .

Total War is at the heart of the Steam Summer Sale today. Shogun 2 is 40% discounted. All of the other Total War games (apart from the original Shogun) are available in a big cheap bundle , available today at a quarter of its normal price.

Change Log:

• Lighting shader tweaks to improve lighting in battles throughout the game.

• A Multiplayer crash on host machine when searching for a 4v4 Set-up team siege battle has been fixed.

• Fixed crash when attempting to play Fall of the Samurai Historical Battles when players owns the stand alone Dragon War Battle Pack and not Total War: SHOGUN 2 Fall of the Samurai.

• Fix for players becoming stuck during the Avatar Multiplayer Tutorial after searching for a Match Made battle.

• The "Season" drop down list should now display correctly after changing map in a multiplayer Battle List battle.

• Wako pirates now have the correct banners in naval battles via the Campaign.

• Fix to prevent AI trade fleets grouped around occupied trade nodes in Campaign mode.

• Fix to prevent Mixed Avatars being able to join Battle List battles with 'Mixed Avatars' option turned off.

• Fix for bug in Avatar Conquest mode where players receiving a clan promotion were shown a message telling them they have been relegated.

• Desynchronisation (desync) message has been localised to French, Italian, German, Spanish, Czech, Russian, Polish.

• Fix for multiplayer campaign desynchronsiation (desync) when playing between German and Czech players.

• Improved compatibility with AMD Radeon HD 7 series graphics cards.

• Fixes to prevent desynchronisation (desync) in Multiplayer Campaign mode.

• Improved combat animation blending for cavalry.

• Added localisation to the multiplayer lobby for the status of TEd created maps when they are being shared.

• Fix for Sea of Japan naval battle map crash.

• Players can no longer delete the "Sea of Japan" Naval Battle map, and can delete their own maps (Created or shared through TEd) on the battle setup screen UI.

• Added localisation for battle setup screen UI in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Czech, Russian, Polish.

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.