News from the Horn of Troy!! Stay tuned for breaking news!!! Run by the Press and Philosophy Guild of the TW empires. Based in the presence of the Warriors Of Troy. (c)2005-2009
I recently foraged into ETW land again, and these screenies are what i brought back with me! Someof them might have been posted already, apologies if they have, others i know fact are brand new, so enjoy!
OK, this is a report from IGN, who's staff were shown an actual land battle taking place, it includes some new screenies.
Creative Assembly is doing things a little differently with Empire, the latest entry in its long-running Total War series. There's sea combat, sure, but we've heard about that before. At GC 2008, they showed off a controlled demo of the land battles, which has been tweaked rather significantly. Since the game spans the 17th and 18th centuries, much of the combat will center on ranged combat with rifles and long-distance artillery fire. Units will actively take cover when it's nearby, pressing against low-lying walls or other structures, and you'll need to be conscious of moving infantry in columnar formations to minimize their exposure to incoming bullets.
For the demo, which was controlled entirely by Creative Assembly, we saw the Prussians trying to wrest Leipzig from British control. They'd brought along riflemen and artillery to pound the town from afar, but the British had cavalry which, if it managed to close range, could wipe out the artillery pretty easily. Fortunately the Prussians had laid down a type of land mine in an arc surrounding their artillery, so that while the cavalry could easily skirt around the range of the bullets to find an easy avenue to assault the guns, they couldn't escape the mines. In the demo we watched as Creative Assembly instructed the Prussians to trigger the mines just as the British horses charged forward and crossed into the active zone, which killed a majority of their numbers and sent the survivors fleeing in terror. We're told this kind of mine defense is a high level technology, so it wouldn't be available until much later on in the game.
The British eventually moved their way across the field of battle in long, narrow lines, taking up cover positions behind a low stone walls and engaging in a firefight with the Prussians. Eventually they affixed bayonets and moved out into the open field with the intention of engaging the enemy at close range. This turned out to be not such a good idea, as the Prussians were still firing their rifles and many British soldiers hit the dirt.
Instead of simply fleeing the field, however, Creative Assembly says their new AI system allows for the computer-controlled soldiers to make a better assessment of the overall battle situation. In this case, they survivors simply fell back and regrouped in Leipzig and garrisoned a few buildings there, as well as a farm house a little further out into the field. To combat this, the Prussians aimed their artillery at the farm house to smash it to bits, but held off on aiming their guns at the city center, for several reasons.
First off, the Leipzig area's brick and mortar buildings were more resistant to the shot the Prussians were throwing up. It's possible to upgrade to different kinds of ammunition, including heavier rounds for more of a devastating effect, but there's another reason you might not want to smash a town simply to eliminate the enemy within: the consequences. By breaking apart structures, you have to pay to build them back up should you take the town over. And if you raze the town, the populace won't exactly be receptive to the idea of your rule.
So Creative Assembly, controlling the Prussians, directed the artillery to cease fire and moved their infantry in for some hand-to-hand combat on the city streets. For Empire, the development team has added in plenty more fighting animations to make battle seem more chaotic, as troops lock into one-on-one encounters, whack each other with rifles, and plunge bayonets into the chests of downed members of the opposition. Visual variety within units has been enhanced as well, with details like different breeds of horses within cavalry groups and different face textures.
Of course not all of Total War's gameplay takes place on the battlefield – you still have the overworld map on which to order unit and building construction and move around your armies. Wherever you wind up engaging the enemy in battle on the overworld map will more accurately correspond to what the battle map looks like. If you're fighting near the foot of the Andes, for instance, you'll see that represented once you zoom into combat.
To make for more of a challenge, Creative Assembly said they've linked the campaign and battle map AI to allow for better strategic awareness, essentially allowing opponents to assess whether or not a battle is essential and worth fighting to the last man or whether it's better to simply flee with as many remaining units as possible.
Depending on the type of weather during a battle, players will also notice different sorts of behaviors for ammunition. If it's hot and dry, artillery rounds will bounce off the ground when they hit, whereas they'll behave differently if it's raining.
It appears the developer is trying to make the game a little more user-friendly this time around with the addition of an episodic campaign, which focuses on the American struggle for independence against the British. This special game mode is being designed to more gradually introduce the types of upgrades and build options Total War vets are undoubtedly used to, giving players smaller chunks of content to digest with focused objectives, such as 'destroy this settlement,' or something to that effect.
For anyone who prefers the more wide-open gameplay of the standard campaign, that'll still be there as well.
Empire: Total War just got out of its alpha testing phases, and if the trailer run before the demo began is to be believed, the game is being readied for a February 6, 2009 release date.
if it's anything like combat in the napoleonic era the way to win a battle will be shootin down the flanks.
you need to overlap the enemy without stretching to thin.
i hope the mines dont appear online, everyone will probably ban them but there are always rulebreakers but i hope they don't ban artilery as that had a lot more importance in that era than in roman and medieval times.
the battles will hopefully be longer as two army line up and shoot the out of eachover then when you sense the enemy is about to flee CHHAAAAAAARRRGGGGEEEE. for me the worst case scenario will br if like rom eand mdieval the fastest clicker wins.
also although every ones banging on about naval battles if theyre historicaly accurate it will look ike this:
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ one line
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ another line
and they pummel eachover until one fleet runs away. the winner being the one with the most guns
the person who changed this was nelson who launched surprise attacks etc, unfortunately on total war theres no such thing as a surprise attack.
This is a preview, writen by a journalist who attended the GC games Convention in Germany.
Empire will be the first Total War game made by the series-founding Creative Assembly team since Rome four years ago, and will be twice as big. While the three years of effort poured into Empire may not be as immediately apparent as Rome's jump from 2D to 3D, there are some meaty and if not more impressive leaps made beneath the surface. And for a series that's earned 9/10 for every major instalment (including Medieval 2 - developed in Australia) that makes us ever so excited.
The Total War series can be a little off-putting at first glance. The grand idea is a marriage between a turn-based settlement-building campaign map (think Civilization) and real-time land battles (think Command & Conquer). To win, the player must dominate, by force, the largest amount of the map. The series is also steeped in history; each aspect, from units to buildings to characters, are extensively researched and recreated. And that is Total War in a nutshell. Well, that was Total War in a nutshell. This time things are slightly different.
Geographical domination still plays a key role, but win conditions have been expanded and encompass political and economical strategies, although a powerful army will still be of interest. To achieve these ends, different styles of government can be adopted, and this ruling body sets the unique goals of the faction based around its needs. Mess up, however, and rebellions and even revolutions may occur. This could be a result of over-taxing the rich while being lenient on the poor, for example, although when push comes to shove there will be a choice of joining either the loyalists or the revolutionaries. It's another step closer to producing a campaign map with the level of depth expected from a series like Civilization.
Trade is perhaps the most dramatically-altered non-battle aspect to Total War, and has been opened up on a global scale and split into three trade theatres: the Indies, the Americas, and Europe. Capturing valuable trade routes will be vital to a successful campaign, as will depriving other factions of theirs. And to achieve all this, of course, you need some of them boats. And herein lies the "third game", and possibly the most eye-catching feature of Empire: Total War: naval warfare.
The computer previously auto-resolved battles on the high seas, but this time players order the ships about as they would on dry land. Gigantic floating fortresses will slowly manoeuvre to unleash thundering broadsides, choosing either round shot ammunition to devastate the opposing boat, chain shot to snap the masts, or grapeshot to decimate the crew. Get close enough and vessels can be boarded - there's even pirate ships to capture and use as your own, or burning armada tactics to employ. But to truly master the seas is to master the weather, which will rage and sleep and keep Admirals on their toes. Flotillas must be varied and made of fast and small as well as big and large ships, just as an army needs varied troops on the ground. Clearly, there's been lots of effort invested, and we're promised as much complexity on the sea as there is on the ground. Which, of course, is not to say the rest of the game has been standing still; quite the opposite, and the changes are both broad and minute.
The broadest is the AI, which has become one entity rather than be split into a campaign-brain and a battle-brain. The effect is opposing battle generals acting according to an overarching campaign goal, which can be as subtle as not wasting effort on a strategically unimportant area, or as drastic as drawing players into dummy battles; distracting them from the real threat or forcing them to divide their attention. The battle AI itself has also been completely rewritten, and now reacts in a plan-based rather than state-based way, which prevents predicting that the computer will do A if attacked with B. Plus, these decisions adapt to suit the overall battle plan, which in turn is bossed by the overarching campaign plan. Even the generals have unique personalities that set them apart. The combined result is an AI that feels eerily human, and one that sparks battles with the element of surprise and unpredictability.
Meaty changes have been made to the campaign map side of things, where the tile-based layout has been scrapped, allowing players to move freely over terrain. Buildings have been ripped from settlement lists and visually scattered over the surrounding land, so one look should tell you what capabilities a settlement has. Then, if you need a ship, simply click on the port and order one to be built. Upgrades can be visually picked out, too. And these upgrades are tied to another new and key area: technologies. These can be researched and applied across the board; to alter government types, build economic infrastructures, expand trade, even enhance education to speed up the research itself. Also, of course, bigger guns. Military advancements can be as intricate as permanent bayonet attachments allowing riflemen to shoot and stab, or as obvious as town-wrecking artillery.
Another obvious change, and a rather important one, is the historical period, which takes place between 1700 and 1800. Crucially this welcomes in the age of gunpowder, and its ramifications on the battlefield are enormous. Tactics become more about protecting hulking ranged guns that can batter cities in an instant. That is, of course, presuming you don't want to settle in the city - flatten it and the population will hate you, unsurprisingly, and it will need to be rebuilt. Cavalry also no longer flattens infantry, and the effect is hefty blurring of the paper, scissors, stone unit hierarchy. Empire, it's fair to say, presents an ideal more akin to paper, scissors, stone, tree, bird, apple and bucket.
Riflemen and snipers can be garrisoned or hide behind cover for the first time in the series, and there are all sorts of period tactics employed by your opposing numbers and factions. Take storming a city, as you want to settle there and increase your empire. If the defenders decide to garrison in the many houses then your advancement will be slow and bloody. Add to this a heavy downpour and terrain mashed into mud and your advance becomes even more treacherous. And morale in Empire is more prevalent than ever; men will lose belief in many more stages before fleeing, but flee they will if you make foolhardy decisions to embark on a Russian campaign in mid-winter, or stomp into the tropics during monsoon season. Historic events such as the French Revolution will also play out around you. These are not set in stone, but rather will be triggered if the conditions are right, so history can be altered. In total there are 12 playable factions at launch, with 50 out there to encounter.
All of which sounds bafflingly complex and time-consuming. Only, it isn't. Because another star feature of Empire is accessibility. Tutorials and on-screen advice have been vastly improved to ease newcomers in and returning fans back. More exciting is the extensive streamlining done to cut-down micro-management and enormously time-consuming turns. So, tax and trade are handled by a tab and split into theatres (Europe, Indies, Americas), as is diplomacy. Incidentally, gone are wandering scholars and assassins to keep an eye on. Instead, the special units have been merged into just two: Gentlemen and Rakes. The former handles diplomatic pursuits, and the latter does the underhand jobs. Gentlemen, brilliantly, can engage in duels to politely dispose of key members of opposing factions, and can enrol at foreign universities and pinch research, all in the name of study. Anyway. Armies are built through generals who recruit from nearby settlements - no longer grown all over the map and then moved to meet a leader. Even commands are streamlined so that orders are issued and then moves made, thus speeding up turn time.
Clearly lots of effort has been poured into the new engine underneath all of this, which is the most visually spectacular of a visually spectacular series so far. Little soldiers can be zoomed into and exhibit extraordinary detail (even varying faces and uniforms to other members of the unit), especially considering there can be up to 10,000 on the screen firing the same number of projectiles - themselves individual physical objects. Buildings crumble, ships creak and crack and explode, and bodies litter the battlefield as a silent reminder of the carnage witnessed. Animation has significantly improved; motion-captured cinematic actions have been applied to the units likely to get into hand-to-hand range, and generally units exist and clash much more naturally and believably than before. And, surprisingly, the minimum system requirements will be fairly low; a decent machine from two years ago should do the trick. And the engine is scalable for those that can handle the extra effects.
Perhaps the only rock left unturned is multiplayer. We were told Empire would be the "most moddable" instalment in the series when we asked if there would be a toolset shipped with the game, and there would be "more modes of [online] play" than ever before - some inspired by fans, others to attract newcomers. Creative Assembly will reveal all in the lead up to February 2009, but the feeling in the room was that something special lurks in the wings. The series has only ever let us face off in land battles against each other online. Perhaps Empire will finally gift the Total War series with an online campaign map mode. We certainly hope so. If it does, then there is so much both at first glance and second that Empire may do what no other in the series has: earn 10/10.
ALSO HERE IS THE LATEST VIDEO, SHOWING ACTUAL GAME FOOTAGE OF LAND BATTLES, PLUS THE CAMPAIGN MAP!
OK this is a report by Jim Rossignol, of Rock, Paper, Scissors. He was speaking to the LEAD DESIGNER of ETW.
Not all empires are built in intergalactic space, you know. Some are built in history, and that’s the subject of this latest interview: matters pertaining to the latest strategic behemoth from the British studio, Creative Assembly. We chart some of the major differences between this and previous games, with particular attention paid to the turn-based campaign map and the radical changes brought about by the new game’s battle engine. Crucially, Empire: Total War drags the Total War series a couple of centuries closer to the modern age. The 18th century setting is one of ranked, musket-heavy land armies, rip-roaring sea battles, complex revolutionary politics, and colonial ambition. It’s these two elements, as well as a desire to reflect some of the social changes (hiring generals rather than relying on hereditary feudal heirs, for example) of the 18th century, that motivate the designs implemented by Creative Assembly’s lead on the project, James Russell. We were lucky enough to be able to put some questions to Russell. You can read his rather detailed responses below.
RPS: How are the political changes of the era (I actually said 17th century, but I meant 18th century. Sigh!) reflected in your gameplay?
Russell: It’s the 18th century: the 1700s. It was a time of tumultuous social change and upheaval, including the American Revolution and the French Revolution. We’ve put a lot of effort into enhancing how public order works, and the game includes unrest due to industrialisation, religious differences and intellectual advances, and different government types which have differing effects on each social class. Each government type has to be played differently if you are to avoid rebellion or revolution and the overthrow of the old order.
RPS: What kind of changes have you made to the campaign map when compared to the previous games?
Russell: The most obvious difference is the sheer scale of the game world. This was the time when Europe was extending its power across the world, and when the first truly global wars were fought. As well as the European theatre, the campaign map stretches west to include the Caribbean and much of North America and east to include the whole of India, as well as special trade areas such as the East Indies and the Ivory Coast.
Another big change is the fact that regions have towns and other resource buildings spread around the landscape, unlike previous Total War titles where all a region’s buildings were contained inside a single settlement. This means you can interact with each region building directly on the map - it also means you can attack enemy towns, farms and other buildings without having to besiege the region capital. Because you can raid and damage a region like this, it becomes more important for defenders to use their armies in defensive manoeuvres rather than just camping inside the city. This also helps improve the variety of battles by reducing the frequency of siege battles.
We’ve also centralised some features at the national rather than regional level, which streamlines management for the player by reducing repetition. This allows us to deepen the gameplay at the same time as reducing the management burden. For example, we’ve added a lot of depth to the trade system, and tax levels can be set separately for the ruling classes or the people, with different consequences - but policy is conducted at a theatre level: the player no longer has to make a decision for every single region.
RPS: What’s so exciting about all this ship-to-ship combat then, eh?
Russell: Naval combat is one of the biggest additions for Empire: Total War. The game is set in the 18th century - the great age of fighting sail, the ideal period in which to introduce naval battles to the series. Battles on the high seas with fleets of ships offers a whole new gameplay experience. Ships play very differently from land units: they have to be manoeuvred with the wind in mind, they fire massive broadsides at right angles to their direction of movement. Ships have hulls, crew, guns, masts and sails, all of which can be damaged separately with different effects, crippling the ship’s ability to move or fire or repel boarders - even sinking the ship, setting it on fire or causing its magazine to explode. We have lots of different types of ships that work in different ways and are suited to different uses. There is a whole set of new tactics to get to grips with to master the naval battles, with lines of battle attempting to ‘cross the T’ and devastate the enemy with raking fire. It all feels very distinct from the land battle gameplay.
RPS: And how has combat on the terrestrial battlefield changed for Empire: Total War?
Russell: The land battles in Empire have moved on a great deal, and they play and feel very different from previous Total War titles. The most obvious development with 18th century warfare is the growing emphasis on ranged gunpowder weapons: cannons and muskets. The player needs to carefully consider fields of fire and cover. Buildings became very tactically significant on the battlefields of the period because of the cover they provide and in Empire, land units can be positioned inside buildings during battle - though you need to take care as these can be destroyed by artillery. Of course, melee remains an important (and visceral!) part of the combat all the same. We have tried to reflect the development of military technology throughout the century, and you will see soldiers improve their firing drills, and artillery able to fire more devastating high-tech ordnance in battle as a result of your research efforts on the campaign map. Units that are dug in on the campaign map will also (if defending against attack) be able to deploy a variety of defensive features that each offer unique tactical advantages.
RPS: When I saw the game in June you mention that the role of generals changed somewhat?
Russell: The most distinct change those familiar with previous Total War titles will notice is the new ability generals have to order recruits to reinforce their armies. Instead of having to build armies at different cities and then manually assemble them, you can now order troops directly at the general and they will automatically be recruited at the optimum nearby city and then sent out to join your army as ordered. Of course, you can still do things manually as well. You can also choose to promote a new general from the ranks.
RPS: It seems like AI was a big issue for players of Medieval II, can you explain how AI changes will improve play Empire: Total War?
Russell: We’ve put a lot of effort into improving how the player’s behaviour impacts diplomatic relations with different AI nations, and into making the AI behave in an intuitive manner. It’s very important for the player’s sense of immersion in a believable world of rival countries that other nations respond in a way that makes sense in terms of how the player has been behaving. For example if you back-stab your allies, the whole world will see you as dishonourable and you will lose friends quickly. Religious and political differences will all impact how the AI views you, as will your alliances and wars with other nations. In addition, different nations will have different personalities with preferences for different kinds of activity - for example a preference for naval power or for research and building up economically.
The battle AI has also been much improved and is aware of the significance of the battle in terms of the campaign map context - is the battle a vital fight to the death? Or might a tactical withdrawal be the best tactic if the battle starts to go the wrong way? Different nations will also use different tactics and strategies, which gives battles more variety and makes the AI less predictable.
RPS: What aspect of Empire: Total War do you think mainstream coverage will miss out on or ignore?
Russell: A lot of coverage is inevitably focused on the graphical advances made by the new engine, and how beautiful the game looks - especially the spectacular naval battles. But in many ways, it’s the multitude of small details that make the game more immersive. Generals developing certain traits as a result of the way you use them. Flag bearers and officers shouting orders on the battlefield. The way your population gets unhappy if you attack a friendly nation but patriotic if you attack a hostile nation. The way a country can become hostile if you’re caught spying, or if you go to war with someone they like; or the way their hostility might soften if you go to war with a country they dislike. These little touches that can really add to the player’s response to playing the game. Even the most cunning player will have lots of interesting new strategies and tactics to explore.
Yeah, the new info releases have been pretty dry on the ground lately.
I think its something to do with xmas perios coming up, companies want people spending there money on whats available, not savin git for whats coming soon.
Soon as xmas is gone, guarenteed there will be a steady stream of new info all over the place, as early versions are released to reporters, and the release date looms, CA will try to whip us all into an ETW frenzy.
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out of eachover then when you sense the enemy is about to flee CHHAAAAAAARRRGGGGEEEE. for me the worst case scenario will br if like rom eand mdieval the fastest clicker wins.
