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CA's business plan for the last 20 years has been to make 2 games on each game engine, each with an expansion. Work on the next generation game begins at the same time as the second game on the 'current' engine. Shogun > Mongol Invasion > Medieval > Viking Invasion then Rome > Barbarian Invasion > Medieval 2 > Kingdoms (with Alexander being the first foray into DLC) Napoleon was the first time that the expansion was released as a standalone game, and CA have gone all-out on producing additional content for Shogun 2, but broadly they've been running the same iteration. Empire had serious AI issues but the fact that later games are much better is really just indicative of CA getting to grips with the tools they've produced.
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Jun 15, 2012 17:15
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Shorter Than Some posted:I agree, but I would like to see a better fleshed out combat system. Not sure in what way exactly though. It depends entirely what game we're talking about, Paradox treat each game not just as a different time period but as a completely different game focus. Crusader Kings is about characters and dynasties. Europa is about colonialism. Victoria is about economies and imperialism. Hearts of Iron is about WW2 and is the only game that's actually focused on war. For CK what they need is for Martial skill to have much more of an effect on combat than being a percentage modifier on attack - brilliant generals should be able to pull off victories against larger opponents... every so often. But no, they should never try and do a real time battle engine. It would be lovely and terrible and completely detract from what the main point of the game is, which is large-scale strategy. Don't forget that in the original Shogun the risk-map was just thrown together as a way of getting the game to generate tactical battles for the player and little more than that. CA were surprised by the fact that people actually liked playing just on the Risk map and have gradually adapted to that, but even many games later, Shogun 2's strategy game is a shadow of what Paradox produce. SeanBeansShako is asking Paradox to go through the same process in reverse and it would be a God-awful mistake.
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Jun 17, 2012 21:20
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NihilCredo posted:Oh hey, just had a nice ragequit over this so I'm left wondering: I believe that was solved with the Empire engine.
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Jun 19, 2012 00:30
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SeanBeansShako posted:So if it WAS Rome Total War 2, would you guys rather have a campaign where you play a selection of senatorial families with a handful of regions in your control or have a nice big detailed semi united Rome at your control when you begin? I liked the Family system. No, it wasn't historical at all, but in gameplay terms it was a good way of allowing the player to choose a direction to expand in from the center of the map (against 3 different cultures of enemy) without having to worry about constantly fending off attacks from the other directions. It also worked really well to set up the civil war later on. Actually new thoughts: a Rome game would be the perfect setting for a Napoleon-style campaigns. You play a character (in a dynasty). As that character you get assigned to a province in the Empire and have to govern it, fending off incursions, taxing, and making the region safe. If you conquer your neighbors then you are expected to make them provinces or protectorates of Rome and hand over control of them. As you are moved from province to province (this is how the game throws you at Barbarian armies, then Carthaginian, then Greek), you get to keep your personal treasury and armies. At some point, you get powerful enough to do a Caesar and take several provinces and hold them for yourself. At that point the civil war triggers and you have to march on Rome, using your provinces as support. When you win the civil war, then the game transitions to a more traditional Total War fashion and as Emperor you can conquer the map at leisure.
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Jun 21, 2012 16:57
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Asehujiko posted:I vaguely remember a Q&A or interview where a CA employee said something to the effects that they intentionally put in the anachronistic New Kingdom instead of the Ptolemaic Kingdom for the exact reason of avoiding "slightly browner phalanxes" because there were so many Alexandrian factions already and fans wanted ancient Egypt even if it wasn't 100% accurate. This. Phalanxes are loving boring to fight and what was even more stupid was that because they couldn't get into formation on a city wall the best way to beat them was to force the AI into a series of city assaults. I don't care that the Game Egyptians are in the wrong time period, I want to play a game that has a varied set of unique factions. It should be a unique experience fighting each nation.
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Jun 22, 2012 01:33
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Imapanda posted:Oh my goooood. If it's on a new engine then odds are it will be both amazing and terrible at the same time.
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Jun 22, 2012 19:10
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The problem with pre-Classical warfare is that it's basically the same as Classical Warfare except a bit less interesting and with a bit less variety. If you want to do an 'ancient' game set in Europe then Rome is the era to do it in because Rome is the nation that actually did the 'Total War' thing and conquered the known world. As CA have already shown, you can happily adapt the assets you create for a Rome game in order to do DLC for an Alexander Campaign or otherwise. We also don't need a Renaissance game. Medieval goes up to 1530 and at the end of the tech tree takes you to the point where filling your armies with musketmen actually starts to be a viable strategy. Empire starts at 1700, when that transition was complete and covers as a whole the development of gunpowder warfare. The only thing a Renaissance game could do is cover that transition period, which: a) is actually done right now by Fall of the Samuri b) would be quite boring because it would essentially be either Empire with some low grade hand-cannoners and pikemen at the bottom of the tech tree or Medieval with some more gunpowder units at the top of the tech tree. CA have been getting better and better at modelling individual soldiers in their units with each engine, I'd be interested in seeing their take on an American Civil War game. After we get Rome, of course.
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Jun 23, 2012 00:15
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NihilCredo posted:Personally I think they should just do a sci-fi or fantasy game (or steampunk or post-apocalyptic or whatever). Historical accuracy is only a secondary attraction for Total War games, at least vanilla ones. With a fantastical setting they would be free to develop both a strategic map AND a unit roster focused entirely on good and interesting gameplay, instead of being forced into awkward compromises like Mummy Returns Egypt or You Only Live Twice ninjas. It still needs (until CA strike out and attempt a different concept) a game in a setting where people fight wars by lining up in blocks of men and charging at each other. That's why 1860-70 is about as far as you can go with the Total War concept before warfare changes so much that it would only make sense if you really drew the scale back and had each unit be a division or something.
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Jun 23, 2012 01:05
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Mans posted:I disagree, not only was Medieval warfare completely different from the Renaissance but the political intrigue mas much more interesting. The technology was much better and tactics were diverse, meaning you'd get a lot more variety in units than "feudal knight, sergeant and mercenary spearmen". Plus, Medieval's renaissance era is on the end game, where the game is almost over and you're bored with it. We're talking about a 150ish year period that was the transition between Medieval and full Gunpowder warfare. It's interesting history, but as a game there's nothing there that Medieval and Empire doesn't give.
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Jun 23, 2012 18:51
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Tomn posted:Is Total War really about providing entirely different gameplay experiences with each new game, or is it about watching a lot of pretty digital soldiers from your favorite historical period kill each other? The Senate and Roman Civil War. Sure, it wasn't implemented particularly well (nor was the Pope and Crusades in Medieval), but they exist and as concepts are perfectly expandable. e: but that's just taking us away from the fact that your Renaissance Total War game already exists. Just start a Medieval campaign in the late era or start Empire with a mod that prevents any technology progression.
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Jun 23, 2012 21:09
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John Charity Spring posted:Any 16th-17th century Total War needs to make religion important. You have the Reformation and then later the Thirty Years War - it's hugely important for the era. Ok, I'd take a Total War game that was set in the Holy Roman Empire in the Thirty Years War. Shogun proves very well that you don't need a map the size of a continent for a Total War game.
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Jun 23, 2012 22:36
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SeanBeansShako posted:I hope the Naval Battles boarding stuff will be more detailed, they should experiment with ship scale and try it anyways. That's basically what all of war, land or sea, is about. I'm not sure what more you want.
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Jun 28, 2012 15:31
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SeanBeansShako posted:It would sadly be too ambitious and require proper AI coding from CA. That sounds like an utterly terrible idea.
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Jun 28, 2012 18:10
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tokyosexwale posted:Buyer beware. I just purchased Fall of the Samurai and the DLC bundle from them. The unique activation key they e-mailed me was invalid. I contacted customer support. I'll update once I hear from them. Mine worked fine so it's probably just an individual blip.
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Jun 30, 2012 19:34
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Is it just me or is the Satsuma campaign in FOTS complete bullshit? You start without a barracks and facing an army more powerful than your own. Once you've finally gotten round to defeating your initial opponent it seems like everyone else has started blobbing and you have nowhere to expand that isn't blocked by superstacks oh and by the way you have no money.
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Jul 1, 2012 15:35
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SeanBeansShako posted:What was your difficulty setting? On Normal, I just played the regional big fish and moved fast taking land. One of the northern Islands is worth taking right away as it has a gold depot that makes building up so much easier. On Hard, apparently that is the reason for the ridiculous number of superstacks being thrown my way.
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Jul 1, 2012 15:58
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 I don't usually have these moments but I was messing about with the faction screen for the first time ever and realised that you can adopt generals and give then titles with faction wide bonuses.
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Jul 1, 2012 18:02
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peer posted:The move from controlling individual units to "legions" sounds interesting. Wonder how that'll work out. Earlier I suggested that the only way a WW1/2 scale game would work the way Total War works is if each 'unit' was a Division with all the integrated combined arms you would expect to see and not just a mass of men with the same kind of sword/gun. I wonder if this is the sort of thing they mean.
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Jul 2, 2012 15:05
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Eugh, I know I'm really late to the party on this, but FOTS's naval battles are incredibly boring and terrible. Do you have explosive shells? Yes? You win.
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Jul 2, 2012 20:34
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Tomn posted:I have to say, the interviews RPS has up are soothing any hurt from having to wait for pike-and-shot pretty well. More interesting internal conflicts? Atmospheric events for each faction? Legionary histories, traits, and equipment? That's the good stuff. Thing about it this way: doing pike-and-shot well means nailing mixed equipment units first. Engine limitations have prevented it in the past, Rome 2's engine and features hint at this being CA's first attempt at being able to do that.
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Jul 3, 2012 14:49
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Sistergodiva posted:Should I get Shogun 2 or go straight for Fall of the Samurai? I've only played Rome before. Should I try any of the earlier games first? I just got a beefy computer, so something modern would be cool. Having just finished my first game of FOTS - get Shogun 2 first. I love my Napoleonic warfare, but FOTS literally just consists of 'get the biggest artillery pieces, watch them murder everyone'.
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Jul 3, 2012 18:47
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Zettace posted:Depends on what kind of Total War game you want. If you want a Total War with a gun and cannon focus then get Napoleon. FOTS is an interesting diversion but it isn't a particularly good game and doesn't hold much replayability.
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Jul 4, 2012 01:00
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Chumpion posted:I just got a chubby thinking of dlc ideas actually, total war games have hardly had the best history with dlc but I really feel with shogun they hit their momentum of making individual campaigns that didn't just feel like skirmish campaigns ala mtw2 kingdoms or the empire/napoleon ones but instead kept foundations of the core game whilst building genuinely unique settings and mechanics. So many possibilities of the ancient world where this could be applied successfully. Yeah, it does feel like the guys at CA sat down together with King Arthur and said 'we need some of this story stuff'.
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Jul 6, 2012 10:25
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Nimmy posted:It sounded like they want to do all of Roman history, at least until the sack of Rome. No point in leaving out Huns and Vandals just for an expansion pack when it would make the original game much more interesting; they could trigger kind of like the Mongols in ME2:TW. Or if the campaign map stretches as far as, say Mongolia, there could at least be random events when a great warlord unites a large horde and where they go from there (China, Persia, Europe) is anyone's guess. Yeah, in the RPS interview the guy mentioned invading Carthage as being analagous to a boss fight, it would make sense as a progression mechanic that once the Empire gets big enough it triggers large-scale horde invasions.
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Jul 8, 2012 12:30
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Flippycunt posted:Around this period of history Egypt was thoroughly Greek-ifed from the conquest of Alexander. In the first Rome game, however, Egypt was portrayed as like, ancient "build the pyramids and make mummies" Egypt which was hundreds of years anachronistic to the game. And that would be just fine because the game would be better with another unique army type.
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Jul 11, 2012 00:13
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Mans posted:Well, either that or mummified soldiers. On second thought, I want this.
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Jul 11, 2012 09:44
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ganthony posted:I've been playing FoTS for the past few days, and I can't figure out why I am so freaking terrible at it. It seems like the AI strategy is basically charge blindly forward into my guns, and fifty percent of the time it seems to work. I was never this bad at the other Total War games...and the battle results never seem this flukey when playing them. Maybe I'm crazy and/or loving awful at the game...has anyone else had similar results? Get 2 Armstrong/Parrot guns. Blast away at the enemy line for the entire time that they are marching towards you. Win.
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Jul 12, 2012 12:39
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SeanBeansShako posted:You know what bugs me about Empire and Napoleon Total War? 1. Because the Napoleonic era didn't involve ransom of prisoners, so there's no reason to keep track of them. 2. Because the replacement mechanic changed so there's literally no reason to exchange/pay for replacements back. Pretend it's part of the abstracted resupply system if you like. It makes perfect sense.
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Jul 14, 2012 20:07
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Ghost of Mussolini posted:You can't really do anything past Franco-Prussian/Italian unification wars with the current control schemes and distances. Boer War might work since the forces involved were small, but even that is pushing it. The way combat happens in WW2 is simply unworkable with the current control schemes, they would have to rework the entire game and come up with brand new mechanics. And I mean really brand new, not gradual improvements. As much as the series innovates from title to title, the concepts remain the same, taking someone from Shogun I to FOTS would not be that jarring gameplay-wise. But by structuring it to WW2 (small infantry teams, not 100+; armored units; long-range artillery, planes?) would mean a total rework of the basic gameplay elements. Agree with everything you just said. However, with each new game engine you can see a consistent effort to model individual soldiers with more and more freedom. To use a states of matter metaphor, in Shogun units were 'solid', in Rome and Empire they were more 'liquid', Rome 2 appears to be going for a more 'gaseous' relationship between individual soldiers and the unit they represent. If they keep going in that direction then in 5-6 years they might end up with something that can model small unit tactics. It wouldn't be Total War, and it would mean throwing away the decades of work they've done on modelling infantry melee combat, but I could easily see them ending up with something that looks like this. Of course that begs an obvious question as to why people don't just go buy Shock Force: Normandy and quit wishing that CA would abandon everything that makes Total War unique and great to make a cookie cutter WW2 RTS. Seriously, there is nothing about the Total War games that even remotely suggests their mechanics would work in a WW2 theme and I don't understand why people keep asking for it.
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Jul 20, 2012 12:23
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Geisladisk posted:Because CA makes good large scale strategy games, and a good WW2 large scale strategy game would be cool. This is completely wrong. The Total War series are tactics games with an risk map attached. They always have been. CA have never done large scale strategy so I have no idea what you are talking about. e: \/\/ yeah, that. Given that literally nothing that makes Total War Total War could be transferred into a WW2 game, asking for CA to make a WW2 game is asking them to abandon all of the experience they have at making games for the last decade to do something in an already flooded genre. There's no reason to think that what resulted would be remarkable in any way. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 13:17 on Jul 20, 2012 |
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Jul 20, 2012 13:12
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Flippycunt posted:This game you want already exists and has been mentioned in this thread. It's this. No man, CA need to do it because
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Jul 20, 2012 14:13
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Geisladisk posted:Hey, that game looks sweet as hell. I didn't even know it existed. I'll check it out, thanks! If literally all you can see when you look at Total War is 'two armies fight each other' then really all nuance is beyond you.
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Jul 20, 2012 14:39
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It's been explicitly said that Rome 2 is on a new engine. And that fits in with CA's modus operandi on how long they stick with one engine.
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Jul 20, 2012 15:48
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What I won't get but would actually like is if they took this opportunity to really distance themselves from the freeform risk-strategy that's what's preventing any kind of interesting diplomacy or storytelling from taking place. They've already hinted at how entering certain areas on the map will trigger event/plot chains etc. Say that instead of controlling a region from the start ala Rome 1, your character is sent to Govern a province of Republic by the Senate. You are responsible for building an army, for sending revenue back to Rome (affecting your prestige and influence there) and for dealing with the inevitable threats on the border, whether through diplomacy or vassalisation or outright annexation. At the end of your term you get to push for another Governorship and your influence in Rome determines how much say you have in where you go. The army you've raised comes with you and you get to benefit from the experience it's gained and the rpg-lite decisions you've made to customise your legions and personally invest in them (raising a legion should be an expensive undertaking, and the difference between rookie and battle-hardened units should be a Big Deal). This all sets you up for an endgame Roman Civil War that makes much more sense and actually matches history - as the factions in the Senate become more and more polarized eventually you get the message to surrender your posts and return to Rome. At that point you get to pull a genuine Julius Caesar, gather your legions and march on Italy (as opposed to just moving the super stack you've had waiting on the Rome border into the city and winning immediately).
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Jul 23, 2012 12:55
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Bloodly posted:I assume if you win you grow out into your 'standard Medieval/Rome' of sorts after the Civil War, since you'll be the man in charge? Yeah, the point being that while restricting the freedom of the player somewhat, you can create a better gameplay experience by controlling progression, you can get around traditional pitfalls of Total War by scripting a 'story' into each province zone so you can have armies show up in the right place at the right time so that there are battles worth fighting - and there's plenty of scenarios to draw from Roman history; you could play through Scipio's campaigns against Carthage, Lucullus in the Mithraditic Wars, Caesar in Gaul. You could even get a surprise recall to Rome to deal with a slave uprising. So many choices and a 'Governorship' system would be the ideal in-game justification for moving the player about so he gets to fight against each army 'culture'. For me, Total War is about my army. It's about building an army around my main 2 or three generals and getting attached to those troops as I use them to conquer the map. It's why the change to the replacement system in Empire was so great - it is meaningful to me that my regiments rebuild themselves and thus have continuity of existence, rather than just being a unit that's mashed together with a newly built unit to create a full strength one with slightly better stats. That's also why I want to see a transition to bigger units with customised component parts; it's not just about having more men on the screen, I want to be able to look at my army and say 'that's the Third Legion, it's battle hardened and has a higher proportion of Principes and Triarii, it should be in the centre of my line' or 'that's the Seventh Legion, it has a wing of cavalry auxilia that they picked up while I was in Asia Minor, I want it covering my flanks'. ie. anything that adds personality and flavour to the units I'm moving about with my mouse clicks and makes me care about them more is good.
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Jul 23, 2012 15:43
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Davincie posted:How so? The Mongols employed a lot of troops from the various tribes and people's they conquered giving them quite a varied army. Sure the main Mongol guys would be horse archers, but it's not like there were only Mongols in their army! I loving hate both of you. e: ^^ I think it comes down to the problem of endgame blob syndrome that Total War games suffer from, ie. the last few dozen turns consist of spamming elite superstacks and autoresolving your way through the last few provinces to total victory. Why don't most people fight those battles? Because they don't mean anything (you've already won) and the troops don't mean anything (you've just spammed them). CA have been struggling with this problem hard ever since Shogun and the results (The Pope, The Senate, The Shogun) have been consistently stronger and stronger in terms of trying to balance out the natural tendency of the player to hit critical mass because when that happens the game suddenly stops being fun. It's that inherent contradiction in Total War games that the player is striving for a goal that actually removes all pleasure from the game - I actually wouldn't mind staying small. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Jul 23, 2012 |
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Jul 23, 2012 19:26
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DarkCrawler posted:If you put an unit into a city in Rome: TW (and I assume Medieval 2) you can retrain them and they replenish themselves while retaining their experience. Empire had a better system though, true. Yeah, it's about the emotional feeling of continuity of existence - putting them back into a training queue breaks that for me. I wasn't that impressed by FOTS, but it provides an excellent example of what I mean; halfway through the campaign I'm able to recruit Imperial Infantry, but they end up supplementing my existing armies rather than replacing them completely. Why? Because that unit of line infantry that's been with me since turn 1 is now vet 7 and gently caress, he's just as good at the higher tech unit now.
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Jul 23, 2012 20:52
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MrOnBicycle posted:What they really need to do is expand on the multiplayer campaign. Add the possibility for more players and for players to attack each other. Balls to that, RTS multiplayer scenes live and die based on how easy and how long it takes to get into a game. Give me the ability to create an army on the map in my deployment zone before the game starts (ala Wargame) and you'll save ages of faffing about in the pre-battle screen.
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Jul 24, 2012 16:31
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I auto resolve boring battles and fight the ones that I think will be interesting.
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Aug 1, 2012 11:05
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brozozo posted:I take issue with that caption. I thought the naval warfare in Empire and Napoleon were top notch and a hell of a lot of fun. I know they had issues (boarding was always wonky, wasn't it?), but it seemed like one of the more solid features in the two games. Given how terrible both Shogun and FoTS's naval battles are, it's not a high bar. But yeah, I thought Napoleon in particular was very good. The problem is that in Total War games Naval Warfare in general is little more than a way of spring-boarding armies across the map. And you can fit a full land stack on a dinky little corvette and get it from shore to shore without difficulty. And once the army is landed you don't need it anymore. That all needs to change for ships to be worthwhile in Total War games.
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Aug 20, 2012 18:05
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