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I see creative assembly have abandoned any claim to being experts at historical gaming. This is good, for now shitty games like Rome 2 will not be viewed by idiots as "historical" games.

I'll wait to see some gameplay features. I was so disappointed by Rome 2 that I'm going to be treating this with buckets of skepticism.

Thanas wrote:I see creative assembly have abandoned any claim to being experts at historical gaming. This is good, for now shitty games like Rome 2 will not be viewed by idiots as "historical" games.

...and this follows how, exactly?

Ironically, if you don't count mods, W:TW will have most accurate portrayal of Holy Roman Empire in TW series to date ignoring gryphon cavalry of course, and perhaps medieval France too if they include Bretonnia as playable faction

Pretty. Might actually buy a TW game for once. Of course it won't be *this* pretty in game, but still.

They showed a lot of the flying units from the table top, makes me wonder if they will be putting in units like that and how they'll balance it.

Thanas wrote:I see creative assembly have abandoned any claim to being experts at historical gaming. This is good, for now shitty games like Rome 2 will not be viewed by idiots as "historical" games.

I'm just upset that, if they're going for fantasy we can't get an official Middle Earth: Total War game.

I could see a good strategy game being built upon First Age roots. "Middle Earth: Total War vs. Morgoth" could fly. You have all the flavors of Humans, High Elves, Sindar Elves, Gondolindrim, Dwarves, and Valar, versus Orcs, Goblins, Trolls, Balrogs and Dragons. If you wanted to jigger it a bit, you could even have the option to play Sauron and scheme your way out of the fall of the Bad Guys (TM), have a couple of rounds where you butt heads against the Numenoreans with a mini-game where you work your way up the vine and schmooze with the King. Something like that.

Haven't they already done some strategy games with LOTR though, mostly based on the movies?

I suspect Warhammer was an easy pick for a TW game though as it's already got assloads of different units and factions and all the balance and what not has been worked out. Minimal re-jiggering is needed to make the mechanics work in a video-game format. The hard decision is deciding *which* factions to include-- you've got Empire and Bretonnians for the Humans (not counting Chaos Marauders), *three* Elves (High, Dark and Wood), Dwarves, Ogres, Skaven, Tomb Kings and Vampire Counts for your undead forces, and up to three flavours of Chaos-- Marauders/Warriors, Beastmen, and Daemons, then there's Orcs and Goblins... Oh, let's not forget the Lizardmen, and the occasional expansion like damn I can't remember, that city up in the North, Kislev? The one with the snow-knights or whatever they are, the ones that wear polar bear capes. Point being Warhammer has a *lot* of possible factions to play with. Plenty of material for future expansions.

One thing I'd like to see in LOTR is a roleplaying game where you play as Sauron during the 1st age before the great war and all.

I fear Tolkien based game wouldn't work that well. It's all cloudy mythology, with little interest paid to tactics, non-legendary weapons or hell, even civilian life and economy (necessary for grand strategy game). You'd need to make all of that up, and then you will have million nerds picking faults in what you did, "no way Balrogs were that, literal reading of Tolkien suggest pinkish colour!". Remember what happened with movies?

W:TW is said to include 2 expansion packs with more outlandish races, but for now we're supposed to get core 5 factions. The setting is so heavily based on Mediaeval Europe CA can use a lot of its own research and assets - we have what, direct lifts in Empire (HRE), Bretonnia (France) and Kislev (Slavs). And even fantasy races are mostly based on real locations - Vampire counts are Romania/Vallahia, Tomb Kings Egypt, Orks pagan Prussians and Latvians, Warriors of Chaos Scandinavians - it's easy to flesh out inconvenient details by simply opening history book.

Tolkien actually does give some information on tactics. And civilian life for Hobbits, at least, gets a fair amount of detail. But I get the impression that economics was a field Tolkien didn't have much interest in or respect for.

I don't know much about Warhammer, however. But I know its supposed to be grimdark, which isn't a point in its favour for me.

The Romulan Republic wrote:Tolkien actually does give some information on tactics. And civilian life for Hobbits, at least, gets a fair amount of detail. But I get the impression that economics was a field Tolkien didn't have much interest in or respect for.

What information on tactics? It's all along the style "and then steely host rushed the Enemy's flank, and there was much gnashing and clashing, and the enemy was cut apart where he stood, and Elves sang in victory". It's literally useless, Tolkien doesn't even bother with attempting to describe how mortal humans fought 30 feet tall demigods or what exactly everyone was doing between military campaigns.

None of his heroes seem to have any sort of job or profession, just sometimes superficial 'he is gardener' or 'he is a smith' but who exactly buys from him and for what is skipped. They are all mythological figures and you can almost tell Tolkien thrown away mundane details to make them more so, but what works for fable-telling doesn't make for good setting-building.

Even you hobbit example doesn't work - what, say, was Bilbo doing for living? How he could afford Bag End, seeing tunnelling all that was job for a whole squad of miners, not to mention furnishing and maintaining it? How he could have such big food surplus on hand for dwarves? We have mention he was from rich family, rich thanks to what exactly? We don't know, and in Silmarillion, it's hundred times worse.

Irbis wrote:Even you hobbit example doesn't work - what, say, was Bilbo doing for living? How he could afford Bag End, seeing tunnelling all that was job for a whole squad of miners, not to mention furnishing and maintaining it? How he could have such big food surplus on hand for dwarves? We have mention he was from rich family, rich thanks to what exactly? We don't know, and in Silmarillion, it's hundred times worse.

I always thought Bilbo to be a rich heir, sort of like Paris Hilton. Except not nasty and from a family that got rich way back in history so far back that it might as well not matter. There are plenty of people in our world who are 5+ generations removed from the ancestor that made them rich.

Irbis wrote:

The Romulan Republic wrote:Tolkien actually does give some information on tactics. And civilian life for Hobbits, at least, gets a fair amount of detail. But I get the impression that economics was a field Tolkien didn't have much interest in or respect for.

What information on tactics? It's all along the style "and then steely host rushed the Enemy's flank, and there was much gnashing and clashing, and the enemy was cut apart where he stood, and Elves sang in victory". It's literally useless, Tolkien doesn't even bother with attempting to describe how mortal humans fought 30 feet tall demigods or what exactly everyone was doing between military campaigns.

None of his heroes seem to have any sort of job or profession, just sometimes superficial 'he is gardener' or 'he is a smith' but who exactly buys from him and for what is skipped. They are all mythological figures and you can almost tell Tolkien thrown away mundane details to make them more so, but what works for fable-telling doesn't make for good setting-building.

Even you hobbit example doesn't work - what, say, was Bilbo doing for living? How he could afford Bag End, seeing tunnelling all that was job for a whole squad of miners, not to mention furnishing and maintaining it? How he could have such big food surplus on hand for dwarves? We have mention he was from rich family, rich thanks to what exactly? We don't know, and in Silmarillion, it's hundred times worse.

Gondor is shown using guerrilla tactics/ambushing in Ithilian. Also, the different types of units it possesses are described in quite a bit of detail, particularly in the passage where reinforcements arrive at Minas Tirith before the Siege of Gondor.

Rohan employs a shield wall or something similar on foot and uses horse archers for skirmishing in addition to their classic cavalry charges.

Mordor and its allies, unfortunately, tend towards simply swamping the enemy with orcs, but they do have fine siege engineering.

But all this is going quite off topic, I suppose.

Purple wrote:

We have mention he was from rich family, rich thanks to what exactly?

I always thought Bilbo to be a rich heir, sort of like Paris Hilton. Except not nasty and from a family that got rich way back in history so far back that it might as well not matter. There are plenty of people in our world who are 5+ generations removed from the ancestor that made them rich.

Yes, but again, rich thanks to what? Was his family big land owners? Investors in local craftsmen? Bankers? Traders? Nobility collecting taxes? Any sort of reply to that would be a big hint how to represent Shire in strategy game, but we have nothing behind superficial "it's like old, rural, unspoilt England".

The Romulan Republic wrote:Gondor is shown using guerrilla tactics/ambushing in Ithilian. Also, the different types of units it possesses are described in quite a bit of detail, particularly in the passage where reinforcements arrive at Minas Tirith before the Siege of Gondor.

Rohan employs a shield wall or something similar on foot and uses horse archers for skirmishing in addition to their classic cavalry charges.

Mordor and its allies, unfortunately, tend towards simply swamping the enemy with orcs, but they do have fine siege engineering.

That's not tactics. That's just showing unit formation or mention "Heroes are too weak to attack directly, so they just harass Enemy until protagonist shows up". You can maybe create some sort of unit roster from that, but it will be patchy and again, you will need to make a lot of stuff up.

Ok, let's agree to stop on that, my point was simply it's a lot easier to make a strategy game based on something that included solid basics for it than on vague mythological epics.

Anyway, more importantly which edition are they going to follow here?

Irbis wrote:Yes, but again, rich thanks to what? Was his family big land owners? Investors in local craftsmen? Bankers? Traders? Nobility collecting taxes? Any sort of reply to that would be a big hint how to represent Shire in strategy game, but we have nothing behind superficial "it's like old, rural, unspoilt England".

I always took the reason to be "because someone long, long ago did something that made him rich but that's so long ago it might as well not matter." It's kind of like asking one of the European nobility what their ancestors did to actually become nobles. Who knows? Who cares?

Re Bilbo: His family has a long history in the Shire and are basically semi-aristocracy, but in Tolkien's perfect world (pretty much the Shire) that was all they needed to be well off, really. He just never bothered to go into any detail about why or how, that's just how it was and he'd much rather write more claptrap about Elves singing another damn song, thank you very much...

Anyway.

RR, WHFB is actually less grimdark (ish) than 40K. I mean, sure, there's still plenty of skulls (hell, the Tomb Kings even use them as ammunition), but it's a bit more tongue in cheek and there's an actual notion-- at least until they started the Time of Ending-- that some day the 'good' side might actually manage to win by kicking Chaos's, the Undead and the Skaven's collective arses. It's less "WE ARE ALL DOOMED" and a little more "We might be doomed, now send in the Reiksguard and tell the Volley Gun to hit those Beastmen on the right because we are NOT going down without a fight, by Sigmar!"

The Romulan Republic wrote:I'm just upset that, if they're going for fantasy we can't get an official Middle Earth: Total War game.

That would require serious contrivances. The Orcs would happily wage war against everyone, sure. The Elves and Dwarves may dislike or even hate each other, but they're both too smart to go to war unless it's over something concrete, and they're both self sufficient as civilizations and neither are imperialistic. The hobbits are obviously out of the equation entirely, as they have no standing military whatsoever. When it comes to epic scale wars between multiple factions, and by extension creating gameplay opportunities, Warhammer is the richest universe in existence.

I found the trailer to be promising, at least in terms of the developers' adherence to the WHFB canon. Most of the major factions are introduced by an Empire Battle Wizard thumbing through the pages of his tome, except for Chaos.. which is instead represented by the same wizard being tempted by Tzeentch's whispered promises, giving hope against all the insurmountable threats the wizard was just describing.

Of course, this says little about the gameplay itself, so hopefully more is revealed soon.


Regarding the offshoot topic, I think the point that Irbis was trying to make, is not that the lack of explanation for the Baggins' family wealth somehow lessens the verisimilitude of the stories, though I see a lot folks defending it by explaining it's old money, or that such concerns are irrelevant to the stories. For purposes of the stories, it is indeed irrelevant, and all that is not a problem at all.

What he is trying to say is that the sheer lack of any information about the economy of the Shire (and the rest of Middle-Earth) makes it more difficult to make a roleplaying game about it, because it would require the developers to flesh it out with their own imagination.. and no matter what they decide to fill out the missing areas with, it would upset fans of the literature.
The same goes for other aspects of civilian life and battle tactics.

Eipok_Kruden wrote:When it comes to epic scale wars between multiple factions, and by extension creating gameplay opportunities, Warhammer is the richest universe in existence.

Agreed, and indeed, the background fiction of Warhammer (and its GRIMDARK futuristic counterpart) have been designed and repeatedly revised solely with the intention of providing a backstory as an explanation (or perhaps, an excuse) for the featured factions to frequently, or even constantly, wage wars with one another.

That is, of course, for the purpose of the tabletop miniatures games, but it also makes it just as suitable for other mediums such as video games.

Cykeisme wrote:Regarding the offshoot topic

I know full well what he meant. It's just that IMHO he really picked the wrong example. He picked the one and only character for whom we actually can trace the economic linage. Even if that is the fact that he is a member of the local gentry whose family has been rich since forever he is actually the one character we do know off.

Purple wrote:

Cykeisme wrote:Regarding the offshoot topic

I know full well what he meant. It's just that IMHO he really picked the wrong example. He picked the one and only character for whom we actually can trace the economic linage. Even if that is the fact that he is a member of the local gentry whose family has been rich since forever he is actually the one character we do know off.

You can track his family lineage, but where do you get 'economic'? All we know is that Bilbo's family has been around for a long time. That's it. Nothing about what they did. More distant ancestors like the Tooks have a little more detail, like Bullroarer Took killing the goblin chief Golfimbul, but that's about it. Literally, all we know is that they've lived in the Shire a long time, as all the Hobbits apparently have.

Elheru Aran wrote:Re Bilbo: His family has a long history in the Shire and are basically semi-aristocracy, but in Tolkien's perfect world (pretty much the Shire) that was all they needed to be well off, really. He just never bothered to go into any detail about why or how, that's just how it was and he'd much rather write more claptrap about Elves singing another damn song, thank you very much...

Anyway.

RR, WHFB is actually less grimdark (ish) than 40K. I mean, sure, there's still plenty of skulls (hell, the Tomb Kings even use them as ammunition), but it's a bit more tongue in cheek and there's an actual notion-- at least until they started the Time of Ending-- that some day the 'good' side might actually manage to win by kicking Chaos's, the Undead and the Skaven's collective arses. It's less "WE ARE ALL DOOMED" and a little more "We might be doomed, now send in the Reiksguard and tell the Volley Gun to hit those Beastmen on the right because we are NOT going down without a fight, by Sigmar!"

Hmm. Might even considering playing this game out in that case.

Yeah, WHFB more or less takes traditional fantasy tropes and plays them to the bloody hilt.

Empire are doughty HRE/Germanic/Landsknecht types where you can see both a Wizard from the Colleges of Magic and a goggled, steampunkish Engineer driving a steam-tank, and robust armoured men in flamboyant clothing and fancy armour wield swords bigger than they are. They've got an Inquisition with the concomitant religious fanatics... but really most people just do the basic Empire and love it.

Bretonnians, on the other hand, are French High Medieval, chain mail wearing knights with a strong dash of King Arthur, levying downtrodden peasants with pointy sticks and bows to back up the cavalry and the occasional magical hand from the Lady of the Lake.

Vampire Counts are ghoulish... well, vampires, that come in a few different flavours. You've got your Blood Dragons, who are big plate-armoured knights (with bat-wing decorations aplenty, please), your von Carsteins who are either classic Dracula types with the fine clothes and slicked back hair or the wiry but ugly necromancers, and Lahmians who are classic female seducer Morticia Addams (but with less clothes) types. Their forces are typically Undead-- ghosts, zombies, walking skeletons with spears and shields. Ray Harryhausen would be crying tears of jealousy.

Elves... where do I start?

High Elves are nancy-boys who wear fancy plate and look down their long noses at pretty much every damn race out there. They've got all the awesome magic and some fancy rides (Dragons, Phoenixes... a fucking chariot drawn by bloody *lions*). Lightweight, though. Really, all the Elves are lightweight...

Dark Elves-- Think evil ninjas, and you won't be too far off. The nobs are like mirror-universe High Elves in that they have fancy armour too-- just with a lot more pointy bits.

Wood Elves are hippy tree-ninjas with bows and extra leaves. You know how the Dark Elves have pointy bits? The Wood Elves have leaves. And Ents. Have fun.

Really I could go on, just check 1d4chan if you want to know more. WHFB is not without its dark moments, especially now with the Time of Ending, but there are so many factions that the grimdark really gets spread around a lot.