It's Official: Empire: Total War. (NAVAL COMBAT!)

[weemadando]

It.

Must.

Be.

Mine.

Also - this is DEFINITELY causing a whole of box upgrade.

[Vympel]

It is so amusing to me all the people saying how they have to upgrade. I won't have to. Muahahahahahaha.

(taunt me about 2 years from now, minimum)

[Dartzap]

Interesting: This is being made by the original Rome team (The UK one) instead of the Ozzies, who have been focusing on MTW2/Kingdoms

It could very well be fan-bloody-tastic

So, Vympel, will you be wishing to take command of the South Essex in Portugal?

[Vympel]

So, Vympel, will you be wishing to take command of the South Essex in Portugal?

Prince of Wales' Own Volunteers, when I'm through with them! Sharpe may be no gentleman, but damned if he can't give Boney whatfor. Huzzah!

I'm also going to equally enjoy liquidating the Streltsy and replacing them with the Imperial Russian Army.

[Ford Prefect]

I got excited when Medieval 2 came around. However, looking at this, I'm really excited. It's really raising the bar, I feel.

[Darth Tanner]

Sharpe may be no gentleman, but damned if he can't give Boney whatfor

The fact that you can have heroes in this one will probably mean a hero unit of riflemen with Sean Bean at their head being released by a modder about 25 minutes after the game is.

Assuming the Napoleonic wars are in it of course. They are outside of the timeline given on the site.

Asking for tanks and machine guns and trenches

They could get away with upto WW1 in my opinion after that vehicles, air power and broken infantry formations simply breaks the entirety of the Total War game mechanics.

Empires 2 Total War could go through the actual Imperial era up to WWI though. Perhaps stopping just as the Germans are forced to retreat from Paris and dig trenches.

As well as getting regimental musicians, will each Company get some Sergeants, captains and the like? Like in Rome with the Centurions?

I was very disappointed they removed that for M2TW. It was one of my favourite features of Rome. Especially as you could mod it so that every unit had a full command squad of officer and standard bearer.

Can we also play as the Asian nations (i.e. Qing China, Mughal India)?

It says there's only going to be 3 continents so I'd guess no. In fact I don't see how they can do it with just 3 continents unless their grouping South America in with North America.

It's not like it's some great taboo to add new functionality to the engine or retool existing game mechanics

By adding trenches or tanks however (especially air power) the whole of the game mechanics have to be thrown out and replaced. Sea battles are likely to be kept separate from ground battle as it was in Imperial Glory so the inclusion of a different mechanics is not going to effect the existing land battles as tanks or air power would.

Bring on the red coats.

[Vympel]

Assuming the Napoleonic wars are in it of course. They are outside of the timeline given on the site.

They fit quite nicely - 1700 to early 1800s. 1815 = end of Napoleonic Wars.

Of course, with the player in the game, the wars would never happen, except as a specific campaign in an expansion, but eh

[Raesene]

New Real-Time 3D Naval Warfare takes Total War’s unparalleled battle action to the high seas with players commanding single ships or vast fleets. These will be the most exciting and realistic sea battles ever seen in a PC game. They will feature a realistic sailing model, cannon and musket fire, boarding actions, fully destructible sails, rigging and hulls and a full range of weather effects to influence battles. These will play out on stunning, ultra-realistic seascapes, as cannons and muskets blaze away, cutting through the smoke and fog to splinter, pierce and shatter hulls, sails and masts, laying waste to crew members and sending them to Davy Jones’ Locker.

That game is a must have for me.

As they fulfilled our wish of basically Napoleon: Total War, perhaps there is also a full multiplayer campaign included.

[Darth Tanner]

They fit quite nicely - 1700 to early 1800s. 1815 = end of Napoleonic Wars.

My bad

I'll be interested to see how they fit events like the French and American revolution into the game. Its going to be difficult for Britain if some of your colonies just arbitrarily declare independence for no in game reason, and even harder on the colonies as a British player will be expecting it.

Also the French revolution would require the royal family to be removed from power and removed from the players control, being replaced initially by the republic then by Napoleon. I don't see how that's going to work without a total revamp of the faction system.

So I'll get my hopes up that they have redesigned that from scratch as well!

[Raesene]

They fit quite nicely - 1700 to early 1800s. 1815 = end of Napoleonic Wars.

My bad

I'll be interested to see how they fit events like the French and American revolution into the game. Its going to be difficult for Britain if some of your colonies just arbitrarily declare independence for no in game reason, and even harder on the colonies as a British player will be expecting it.

Also the French revolution would require the royal family to be removed from power and removed from the players control, being replaced initially by the republic then by Napoleon. I don't see how that's going to work without a total revamp of the faction system.

So I'll get my hopes up that they have redesigned that from scratch as well!

It's not necessarily the historical Revolution, maybe just another powerful faction suffers from the revolutions and looses overseas territory or the monarchy.

[ray245]

I'm going to go on record and say that anything more modern than 18th to 19th century won't work. War gets too complicated to fudge and abstract the further along in history you go, and the armies get ever more massive.

As it is, I'll be very surprised if Empire has appropriate troop numbers for massive continent wide wars like the Napoleonic wars.

Asking for tanks and machine guns and trenches - just no. Play Combat Mission or Close Combat or whatever if you want that.

Ya..but we have never played ww2 on a large scale before...and basically, the overall stragetic level and tacital level of ww2 is what makes the wars fun to play.

[Vympel]

It's just very far removed from Total War's demonstrated strengths - it deals with soldiers as distinct blocks of units, which is of course exactly how armies fought until the 20th century - that makes the job a whole lot harder. Second, if you're going to model tanks, there's all these issues of range, ammunition, armor penetration, angle etc that would have to be fudged to get it to work on the scale of total war, and for me it just wouldn't be very satisfying. Combat Mission or Close Combat modelled that very well, and it worked. Total War would fail misreably.

Also, battles in the Total War games really aren't "large scale", in historical terms. It can only handle several thousand men on the map at one time - even with some of the historical battles in say, Rome, it was simply not enough men to be an accurate representation.

(ie. the massacre of Varus' three legions - RTW simply cannot put three legions on the map.)

[Ypoknons]

Another quickie is that modern armies are huge and can span a huge area - think of the length of WWI's entrenched front lines that were at least several hundred km wide, compared to say, Hannibal, who squeezed his army through the alps.

Plus, how many decent ancient, or heck, pre-WWI warfare games are there? Do we need more WWII, WWI, etc etc video games?

[Ford Prefect]

Plus, how many decent ancient, or heck, pre-WWI warfare games are there? Do we need more WWII, WWI, etc etc video games?

This might sound like a silly question, but are there any notable World War I games out there? There's a zillion and three WWII, but I can't recall any for the first.

[Psychic_Sandwich]

This might sound like a silly question, but are there any notable World War I games out there? There's a zillion and three WWII, but I can't recall any for the first.

Victoria includes WW1, but it doesn't have any tactical component. On the other hand, it really does simulate the trench warfare thing; after about 1870 (ie, after you have Point Defence system, Machine Guns and Bolt Action Rifles), it becomes basically impossible to advance if you ever loose momentum, at least if you're up against a competent player. This changes only when you get tanks and the more advanced doctrine and leadership techs.

Empire Earth had a WW1 time period, but it only really looked like WW1. It played almost exactly the same as the other time periods with guns.

[TC Pilot]

How exactly could a franchise that specializes in battles that last a day at most model battles that lasted weeks and months?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

How exactly could a franchise that specializes in battles that last a day at most model battles that lasted weeks and months?

The same way it models armies taking two years to march from Nottingham to Edinburgh, presumably. Or important figures living four times their actual lifespan.

[Duckie]

I love how my question was shrugged off while people continued to masturbate to the idea of Empire: Total War.

Like I said in the Rome Thread, this game will be worthless if you can win it with your eyes closed, and have to purposefully lose battles to balance out your ability to inflict 5:1 casualties and immediate routs on any army you wish to, even when outnumbered several times.

(Excepting specialty scenarios where the odds are more than 5:1 against you- fighting Huns as Western Roman Empire (whose economy sucks) in R:TW:BI, fighting the Golden Horde and the Il-Khans in MTWII, etc.)

[Fire Fly]

Feast your eyes on these beauties.

I'm not sure if I should be super excited or cautious since CA has, in the past, shown bewildering screen shots only for them not to be in the game. But still, it looks very good, especially the battle models.

[Vympel]

I love how my question was shrugged off while people continued to masturbate to the idea of Empire: Total War.

Because it's really not that important to everyone. I never particularly cared if I got my arse kicked or if I smashed an enemy army easily. Winning a difficult battle is part of the fun, but it's not all of it, for me.

And besides, Darth Tanner already stated the obvious.

Feast your eyes on these beauties.

I'm not sure if I should be super excited or cautious since CA has, in the past, shown bewildering screen shots only for them not to be in the game. But still, it looks very good, especially the battle models.

Dammit- unmaximizeable!

[Darth Wong]

I love how my question was shrugged off while people continued to masturbate to the idea of Empire: Total War.

Like I said in the Rome Thread, this game will be worthless if you can win it with your eyes closed, and have to purposefully lose battles to balance out your ability to inflict 5:1 casualties and immediate routs on any army you wish to, even when outnumbered several times.

And yet, shockingly, many people loved Rome Total War. Egads, could your highly scientific model of gamer satisfaction be flawed?

[RazorOutlaw]

I liked Rome: Total War a lot, but I'll be damned if the constant whining didn't get to me after a while. Every expansion pack or new game seems to bring a particular kind of whining. Not that pointing out of flaws is bad, but people tore Rome: Total War apart on the various forums I went to. It left me wondering why I even liked the game at all at times.

If I remember a major complaint correctly, it was that on regular difficulty levels the AI was moronic and on harder difficulty levels it simply cheated too much. Unfortunately, on normal difficulty levels I found myself being beaten. *sigh*

[Stark]

Because the game is good but the implementation is bad? There are MANY very serious, very valid criticisms of CA's games. They're still heaps of fun, and pretty much unique in the marketplace. Mods fix most of the problems bar the AI and a few bugs, at least in Rome.

But I hear saying 'AI sucks' and 'dip sucks' and 'piles of bugs suck' is whining now, just like saying 'it doesn't have the features written on the box' is whining?

[RazorOutlaw]

Actually, Stark, I'd have to agree that the game is good but the implementation is bad. If anything, the criticism pointed out how things might have been better if CA had done things a little differently. Sometimes the complaints got ridiculous, though. I'd say just a browse of Total War Center back in late August-September would give you a good idea of all the complaints being thrown up.

Oh, and yes, as one of the CA defenders I had to keep my mouth shut on what they "promised". They promised a fuck of a lot for those games. What they gave us was good, I just hated admitting that I was being short changed on anything.

[Stark]

I was being sarcastic. I've never really followed the TW series community (I remember Mike did, with his posting on the forums etc) so I've never really heard the more NMA-style complaints. There's nothing worse than when something has a great idea and manages to mess a few things up, though.

I'm pretty critical, but even I don't see the poor AI as a deal-breaker. It makes the game -easy-, but due to the way the game is played it's still -fun- regardless. It might have bugs, but it's got nothing on Civ 4.