By Kieron Gillen on August 19th, 2009 at 12:05 pm.
Sadly, there’s no room for a “Aren’t You A Little Short For A Dictator?” gag in the subject line. C’est la vie, as Napoleon might have said with a Gallic flourish. News breaks from the European Land-Mass Videogameisual Show that – as perhaps expected – Creative Assembly are adding using the tiny tyrant as their next step on from Empire: Total War. CA’s interview with IGN is about the only information in the public sphere which isn’t in the press release, their site gubbins or the trailer. You’ll find all of them, for your convenience, beneath the cut.
The press release:
TOTAL WAR LIVES THE LEGEND
Direct The Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte in Napoleon: Total WarTM.
LONDON & SAN FRANCISCO (August 19th, 2009) – SEGA Europe Ltd. and SEGA of America, Inc. today announced Napoleon: Total War, the first in an all-new story driven branch of The Creative Assembly’s multi award winning Total War RTS franchise. Napoleon: Total War will keep the franchise’s genre-leading 3D battles on land and sea. The turn-based campaign is split into three different story-driven campaigns, telling the story of the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte through his most famous battles.
In Napoleon: Total War, aspiring generals have the chance to play as the legendary French general Napoleon Bonaparte or as one of his opposing factions. Battling through his three biggest military campaigns, the game will take you through Italy and Egypt, narrating the early years of the fearsome commander, while the third campaign will tell the story of his fateful drive towards Moscow and, ultimately, his showdown with the Duke of Wellington at one of the most famous battles of all – The Battle of Waterloo.
“In Napoleon: Total War you get to actually be Napoleon – to face the problems he faced, to win the battles he won, and to build the Empire he built. Or better,” commented Mike Simpson, Creative Director at The Creative Assembly and father of the Total War franchise. “However, the game allows you to step in the shoes of his opposing generals as well, allowing the player to rewrite history as they see fit.”
Napoleon: Total War expands on the successful Total War series by taking all the features from previous games such as the full 3D land and naval battles, the detailed campaign map, and an in depth diplomacy system and taking them a step further.
History is as yet unwritten.
Napoleon: Total War™ is the new chapter in the critically acclaimed Total War series and opens up a new narrative layer to the genre-defining franchise. From the early Italian campaign to the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon covers two decades of relentless battles, a backdrop of a world in flames against which the story of an extraordinary military career unfolds.
Whether you play as the legendary General or against, the outcome of war can never be guaranteed. The course of history relies on your ability to lead your troops through the most intense battles as never seen before in a Total War game.
The genre-defining franchise brings Napoleon to life:
Napoleon: Total War defines a new standard within the genre with exciting characters and a cinematic narrative, mind-blowing battle sequences and an unrivalled mix of turn-based and real-time strategy.Three new episodic campaigns:
Take command and lead your armies on land and sea over three campaigns: Italy, Egypt and Mastery of Europe. The seamless mix of objective-based missions and sandbox experience makes this the most complete Total War experience to date.Cutting-edge multiplayer:
Napoleon features fully integrated multiplayer modes and a complete set of online functionalities: Steam achievements, gameplay bonuses, uniform editor and voice communications.All new Napoleonic battles and units:
Advanced weaponry enables new tactical options and even more exciting real-time battles on an epic scale, while the highly detailed environments and improved battlefield buildings guarantee a realistic recreation of famous historical battles.
Hmm. My top level view raises an eyebrow a little – the talk of mixing the sandbox and the set-pieces is an interesting approach, but it does lead you to wonder exactly how much freedom there’s going to be in them. Reading the IGN interview, there seems to be a case of creating an objective – say, pushing back the fucking Austrians – and then being able to go about it how you wish. Will this allow them to keep the narrative core they like while giving you the freedom of action? God knows. And it’s a bit of a shame there’s no talk of – say – expanding the timeline of the previous game into the 1800s.
But still – the Total War expansions have tended to be a more coherent, focused experience than the game they sprung from. I suspect this is one thing Empire could really do with. It’s looking for a February 2010 release.
That said – it doesn’t actually say that this *is* an expansion pack at any point. I suspect we’re in expandalone territory.
19/08/2009 at 12:14 Rob says:
I know it’s going to be good, But i’ve always wanted a total war game that breaks from history a bit and lets you conquer the entire world.
19/08/2009 at 12:16 Derf says:
I skipped on Empire TW entirely. Fundamentally unfinished. I’m not sure if an expansion can fix that.
19/08/2009 at 12:23 Professor says:
Buying ETW was a mistake for me. It’s a heavily bugged and unbalanced and uninteresting game. Medieval 2 FTW.
19/08/2009 at 12:25 Jim Rossignol says:
Rome probably remains the best game.
19/08/2009 at 12:27 Andrew Dunn says:
Empire is one of my favourite games this year and this adds proper hats to the linear warfare that I am so fond of. Cannot fail.
19/08/2009 at 12:34 Professor says:
Yeah Jim, I won’t deny that rome, for me, was the first TRUE total war game. It’s an epic game by any means.
19/08/2009 at 12:37 Nurdbot says:
I knew they were going to do an expansion for the most interesting part of the late eighteenth and early ninteteenth century for ETW. I would have gotten ETW if this was included in it.
Will I get? only if Modders can somehow port some of the content into ETW.
19/08/2009 at 12:39 Heliocentric says:
Really, i need them to make a total war where the ai is open and the whole platform modable.
Until then i can’t really bring myself to care about the games. Empire was the chance to start from scratch. SEGA have made their priorities pretty clear, milk it til its dry.
19/08/2009 at 12:40 Tunips says:
Suggestion to people who like lines of men in bright uniform, but don’t like Empire Total War: Play Cossacks 2. ‘Tis good.
19/08/2009 at 12:42 Mat says:
Where does napolean hide his armies?
and yes MTW2>>>Empire Total War. I played
19/08/2009 at 12:56 Bossman says:
Meh, I’m more looking forward to HistWar: Les Grognards.
19/08/2009 at 12:56 RGS says:
Here’s what I said on the CA forums, where the view seems to be that this is a standalone ‘game’, not ‘expansion’. As an expansion I’d be fine with it (especially if it extended Empire’s Grand Campaign), as a game, though I might pick it up, I’ll be sticking with Empire. Anyway:
***
Initial thoughts:
Doesn’t sound like a fully fledged TW game. Seems like a little more than a standalone expansion.
With the time period close to Empire I would have MUCH rather it could have been integrated with that.
Would rather have one open Grand Campaign than 3 semi-scripted Episodes. Not a fan of scripted stuff, the longer the campaign + more freedom for the player the better IMO.
Very short timeline, not necessarily a problem, but doesn’t get me hyped either…
——
Basically, I just really hope that Empire REALLY is still going to be fully supported, not just with patches, but extra PDLC and extra ‘full’ expansions. I’m more than happy to pay for a lot of extra content for this bad boy, please continue to flesh out Empire. For me, That’s where it at, not Napoleon.
I’m sure I’ll still get it (love your work, nothing else quite like it), but I am disappointed that it’s not integrated with Empire, especially considering the timeframe and content + it seems like it’s a stopgap rather than a new TW.
Best of luck guys.
***
19/08/2009 at 12:57 Sartoris says:
What a terrible trailer.
19/08/2009 at 13:02 The Poisoned Sponge says:
Is everyone ignoring the fact that the trailer states the Napoleon conquered Russia, when he obviously didn’t? Very odd.
19/08/2009 at 13:10 Rick says:
The trailer also had Napoleon burn the HMS Victory on the coast of England, Poisoned Sponge. I think we can assume that a “what-if” scenario has occured.
19/08/2009 at 13:13 mesmertron says:
Meh, this is just Alexander with guns.
19/08/2009 at 13:16 Jockie says:
For me, Empire doesn’t push the right buttons, loved it when I first bought it, but it’s had nowhere near the same longevity as the previous entries to the series because I really can’t find much to love about people standing in lines with guns, slowly walking towards each other. The AI was a wee bit shoddy and naval battles hurt my brain.
Probably won’t be buying this because of those things, Total War for me works best when it’s trying to recreate the most thrilling and brutal military periods with accurate detail and a healthy dosage of strategy. Medieval always felt weak towards the ends of long campaigns as gunpowder began to play a more important role.
TL:DR version – Make Rome 2 instead!
19/08/2009 at 13:16 simonkaye says:
While we’re on this, Medieval: Total War 1 was the best, surely? It certainly dominated my time the most.
ETW actually did pretty well at naval warfare, which has long been lacking, but I have to admit that I didn’t find the land battles particularly compelling, and the AI remained a disappointment on the strategy map. There’s really no going back from the hyper-intelligence of GalCiv2 empires.
I know people have been wanting a WW1 or WW2 Total War for ages, but I’m not really sure that gunpowder isn’t ruining the mechanics of this game a bit. They really got hand-to-hand right in M2TW, and now we never get to see any of it.
I’m gunning for a Rome 2 Total War next, personally.
19/08/2009 at 13:19 Ansob. says:
I never really had any issues with Empire, bug-wise. It only crashed once, and besides the AI being unable to launch a naval invasion, nothing else was broken.
No; the reason I really disliked it was the bloody muskets. There’s nothing more boring than watching little men march towards each other at a snail’s pace (even in fast forward), then stop, spend thirty seconds lining up, fire once, and do nothing for a full minute. I much preferred little men running at each other with swords; so much so that after a day of trying to play the battles the way they were supposed to be played, I just resorted to firing one volley, fixing bayonets and charging.
I picked Medieval 2 up for 10€ instead, and have been having a blast ever since. I need to find Kingdoms for equally cheap so I can install Third Age: Total War and Europa Barbarorum 2, when it comes out.
19/08/2009 at 13:19 Darthy says:
Was that the HMS Victory getting torched at the end?
I’ve played an awful lot of Empire over the past few months, but it remains one of the more flawed of the series. Unlike its predecessors it lacked many historical battles in a period rich with them, and the fortress sieges are still fundimentally broken several major patches later.
CA’s inability to address these issues since launch has gradually embittered the community, and I’m sure the announcement of a expandalone with the features many thought should have been in the game to begin with will only stoke the fanboy rage further.
But like RGS, I’m sure I’ll still end up getting it.
19/08/2009 at 13:23 Ansob. says:
Concerning a potential WWI: Total War, didn’t the Creative Assembly lads say the next real TW game would have tanks? A title that spans 1914-18 with each turn being a week would fit well, given a) the increased recruitment rates; b) the increased production rates (Industrial Revolution, natch); and the fact that bayonet combat (and therefore close combat) was very much still an actuality in WWI. The small-scale deployment of automatic weapons and lack of tanks until the end of the conflict would probably also mean it doesn’t become too much of a generic shooty RTS, and at least bolt-action rifles would ensure I no longer stare at the screen for two minutes waiting for my little men to do something.
19/08/2009 at 13:26 Dave says:
Bah Napoleon total War! What about Wellesly total war or how come Britain rocked so much total war. bloody Napoleon!
19/08/2009 at 13:33 mesmertron says:
You know, CA started a ‘daily update’ thread on their forums, giving the fans contsant status reports on what they were fixing and how the patch was coming along.
I really wish that would become an industry standard (even if CA did eventually stop updating it for weeks at a time).
I quite like Empire, but I think that it’s incomplete. It needs more missions (why have an achievement for finishing thirty when there are only three nations that get them, and they only get one each?!) for one thing, there’s still no multiplayer campaign (unless I’ve missed something?) and I feel that they should have included some more depth to the economic model (nothing as bad as the M:TW2 merchants, but surely I should be able to buy out another nation who’s sitting on a theater of trade that I want!).
Still, despite these little greivances, I’ve enjoyed it. It takes a bit of getting used to, but I think it’s just as strong a game as any of their other titles.
Actually, that’s probably my biggest gripe – rather than reinventing the franchise, all they’ve really done is taken their same formula and made gunpowder effective for once and added in naval battles.
19/08/2009 at 13:45 jsutcliffe says:
Bah, I was hoping the next one would be one of these:
Shogun 2: Total War — because the series has advanced so much since the first one
World: Total War — 20th century, and covering both world wars and any other mischief you might want to cause
Galaxy: Total War — a pipe dream, but Total War in space would be fun. I’m picturing a souped-up Imperium Galactica
19/08/2009 at 13:46 simonkaye says:
re: WW1: Total War (‘Great Powers: total war?’) …
I don’t think I could really bear to find out Creative Assembly’s interpretation of trench warfare.
There’s a reason that so very few games are based on WW1 (as opposed to WW2 or earlier conflicts) and that’s because by no stretch of the imagination could there be anything particularly entertaining about trench-style warfare.
WW1 is simply harder to sex up. There are no ‘evil’ baddies (the Nazis were a real gift to this industry, at least), and the majority of time would be spent holding perfectly still, in abysmal conditions, waiting for a few brief moments of horrible, smokey, muddy, terrifying combat.
So I’d say a big ‘no thankyou’ to WW1: Total War.
19/08/2009 at 13:57 mesmertron says:
@simonkaye:
Surely you’d handle trench warfare as any other seige? You don’t spend ages in M:TW2′s battle mode just cutting off supply points or razing farmlands. You only go to the battle mode to hammer away at the fortifications and then charge into the breech.
Trench warfare would probably have to play out on the campaign map, since it’s ultimately a stalemate. either that, or you’d need to fight one sortie, representational of an entire push towards the other line…
What I’d like to see CA do with the E:TW engine is an American Civil War game. Even if they did it in a more linear, episodic campaign, it would still be impressive to add Ironclads to the naval battles.
A multiplayer campaign in such a setting would be most excellent. How do you, as the Union, cope with a Confederate opponent who doesn’t engage at Ghettysburg, but instead flanks to the south and then marches on Washington?
19/08/2009 at 13:58 Gap Gen says:
I think Empire is more interesting than any of the other Total War games. Rome was good, but was the first that used the that campaign map model, which means that the provinces are too sprawling and battles sometimes tend to be fought between small skirmishing forces rather than epic struggles. I think Empire has refined this. I wouldn’t mind seeing a Rome 2, though, once they’ve had time to come up with new and interesting things to do with the formula.
19/08/2009 at 13:58 mesmertron says:
I would give Keiron’s right nut for a Shogun 2.
19/08/2009 at 13:58 Captain Haplo says:
@simonkaye,
There really aren’t any ‘evil’ baddies in E:TW, R:TW or M:TW, either. But you’re right regarding the trench-warfare part.
That said, the Eastern Front was a fairly bit more flexible than the Western, but the Western Front’s what’s deeply ingrained into our collective consciousness due to being full of so much damn carnage.
19/08/2009 at 14:00 Gap Gen says:
And yes, a Civil War expandalone to Empire could work very well – it would necessarily strip out the international focus and expand the Americas. Possibly even increase the size of battlefields, with the battles in the current game making up individual engagements in larger battles like Gettysburg, say.
19/08/2009 at 14:06 Rosti says:
Total War: French Midget Rage! I haven’t decided whether my life could sustain Empire TW yet, but colour me interested.
19/08/2009 at 14:12 jalf says:
> Rome probably remains the best game.
MTW was the best. That was before they began actively wasting the player’s time by integrating a half-arsed Civ clone into the campaign part. MTW had a focus that the later game (*especially* Rome) lacked.
More isn’t always better. What originally got me hooked on TW was the simple, sweet and to the point Risk-like campaign map, and the awesome battles where the actual action was. The campaign map was for setting up the battles, and for managing troops. Not for building roads and endlessly chasing, or being chased by, enemy units.
After MTW, they became schizophrenic, and started burdening down the campaign game with things I fundamentally didn’t want to have to worry about, *in addition* to fleshing out the battles. MTW2 suffered from the same problem, and while ETW streamlined it somewhat, I still miss the old days.
19/08/2009 at 14:13 mesmertron says:
@Gap Gen:
You could still do it as part of a grand campaign – Victorian age, Franco-Prussian war and all… it could just be a nasty aspect of playing as the United States.
19/08/2009 at 14:14 jalf says:
Anyway, I’m still hoping for a Sci-Fi: Total War. Enough with the muskets and big sticks. Bring on the power armour, jetpacks and plasma rifles!
19/08/2009 at 14:15 optimal says:
Um, Napoleon wasn’t short, he was the average height of his age.
Educate yourselves a bit…
19/08/2009 at 14:17 mesmertron says:
@jalf:
So tick the ‘auto-manage’ options and get on with things.
I liked Shogun and the first Medieval, but what I loved most about Rome and later games was that I could pick my territory. If I wanted to fight on high ground, I’d station my armies in the mountain passes. If i had nothing but cavalry and wanted to charge across open plains, I’d likewise plan accordingly.
Shogun, and to a significant extent Medieval, always dengenerated into auto-resolving fights between multiple massive stacks of armies because I couldn’t be bothered to fight on the same maps over and over with increasingly complex forces.
19/08/2009 at 14:18 Clovus says:
@mesmertron: I very much agree. In normal game terms the US Civil War is not interesting. The North has an industrial base and a larger population; they win. So, it would be interesting if a game could capture the complications that the North (or rather Lincoln) actually faced. The game would need to include an actual election cycle and how well Lincoln is doing, because if Lincoln would have lost the election the war would have ended. If Vicksburg and Gettysburg weren’t Union victories, or if a major Northern city was sacked he would have lost. The mechanics of TW could certainly be used to create a great Civil War game.
I would definitely play as the South and make sure to cancel all night operations!
Also, this does sound standalone. Where are the AIM?
19/08/2009 at 14:18 DMJ says:
WWI: The Game! could work. It would probably be something more akin to tower defence though, with setting up defences and letting the enemies come at you…
19/08/2009 at 14:22 Derf says:
While Rome Total War was very fun, especially with realism mods, I never found any functionality with being able to wander the campaign map. You ultimately never had control of the ground you fought on. Any Total War title that fixes this will have my praise (and money).
19/08/2009 at 14:27 Professor says:
World: Total War (WW1 total war game) would be interesting. The problem is that WW1 had way too much trench warfare for it to not be included, and trench warfare would suck as a main gameplay feature. But yeah, WW1 is the last great war to fit a total war game (WW2 is way too overdone and has too little of the typical TW game mechanics such as cavalary and melee and all that jazz) and I’d like to see it done.
19/08/2009 at 14:27 Jim Rossignol says:
Surely it’ll be 20th Century Total War, as all the other games have been century eras.
19/08/2009 at 14:32 Clovus says:
I can’t imagine a WWI:TW working. WWI is a really bad subject for a strategy game because the player already knows that trench warfare is doing it wrong. Why would a player send his troops across no man’s land straight into machine gun fire?
Then again, maybe if the game could force the player to do this, the player would get a get an accurate impression of WWI. An insane war started for no good reason that was fought in a completely insane way. No matter what happens at the end of the game you feel like a complete loser. Congratulations, you’ve murdered millions and acheived the status quo.
@optimal: I educated myself by watching the documentary Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
19/08/2009 at 14:41 Kieron Gillen says:
Clovus: Exactly. QED.
KG
19/08/2009 at 14:46 Novotny says:
I adored Medieval and Rome. Medieval 2 was good, but I was starting to realise there wasn’t much going on behind the interface. CA finally admitted they only had one guy working on the AI for the entire game – and futhermore, it wasn’t his key responsibility (just let that sink in for a moment) but then promised that Empire would be different.
And it looked fantastic at first. Until the scales fell from my eyes and I saw it for what it was: a fancy interface to the same damn game.
I think Johann from the Hearts of Iron team put it best when he said ‘AI? I wasn’t aware there was an AI in Empire’.
The only reason CA started daily updates was because of the outrage from many quarters at their blatant, cynical fleecing of you and I, dear readers.
I’m not usually given to slagging games out of hand however Empire was – and is – despite this amazing patching process, total rubbish.
Wouldn’t you think that naval invasions would be kind of key to a game about sailing the seas and creating an Empire? Especially when the Americas is a huge part of the map? Wouldn’t that be one of the most important mechanics?
No. The AI couldn’t work a boat. It’s a bit like releasing a Doom clone where the monsters don’t know how to run at you. I cannot for the life on of me understand how people overlook this.
As for reviews; well, the presentation is great, the game does seem to work. it’s a classic example of smoke and mirrors. If you don’t play the game much, you won’t realise that you’re not a ctually playing a game, merely navigating an interface.
To top it all, The battle AI was even worse than the previous games and it crashed frequently.
That was one pre-order where I felt totally ripped-off.
And now they have the temerity to announce what appears to be an expansion? I laugh, bitterly.
I’m glad some of you enjoy Empire. I’ve met people who regard the Jeremy Kyle show as ‘edgy’ and think the Daily Mail is a quality read. It’s sad, but at least they’re happy.
I’d implore you to turn your back on this poisoned stew until CA stop sitting on their piles of money and actually do some programming beyond updating the graphics on their franchise.
19/08/2009 at 14:47 Don says:
@Kieron: “Hmm. My top level view raises an eyebrow a little – the talk of mixing the sandbox and the set-pieces is an interesting approach, but it does lead you to wonder exactly how much freedom there’s going to be in them.”
My eyebrows went twice around my head. I’ll bet that the sandbox bit is heavily constrained. The current version of Empire is totally braindead when it comes to diplomacy, incapable of even making a predictable add-up-points-and-choose-option-with-the-highest-score type decision let alone anything that would convince you that you might be dealing with anything with a brain.
The military AI at the strategic level is equally useless so if allowed to do it’s thing the experience would be on the lines of: As Austria the human player has advanced armies to the border of France and now stands ready to deal with whatever strategic master-stroke the world’s greatest general has to offer. Napoleon sends 1 unit of artillery and 1 of cavalry to attack a weaver’s cottage right in front of your army. You annihilate it. Napoleon sends the same again. Same result. Napoleon thinks the third time might be the charm. He’s wrong. Paris is now totally undefended as the rest of the French army is sittng in a (not in any danger) port the other side of the country and you move in to end the Emperor’s rule in record time. And if anyone thinks I’m joking that’s almost exactly what happened when I decided to give Empire another go last week except that I was England and it was Louis the Something running France.
To let the current TW AI play the parts of Wellington, Blucher, Napoleon, Davout, Bagration or Kutusov would merely serve to blacken their reputations, though I suppose it could do a decent rendition of “The unfortunate General Mack”.
19/08/2009 at 14:47 theleif says:
Until they release more multiplayer skirmish maps and the multiplayer campaign for E:TW i won’t touch this.
And if it doesn’t integrate with E:TW and extends the grand campaign i probably won’t buy it anyway.
Oh well.
19/08/2009 at 14:48 Isometric says:
A more coherent and focused expansion isnt necessarily a bad thing.
I’ve hardly even touched Empire and had it on release.
Its a puzzle as to why i haven’t got around to having a good whack at it yet.
Thus maybe this kind of expansion would get the ball rolling for me.
Anyway.
Agreed Jim, rome was my personnel favourite.
19/08/2009 at 15:10 jRides says:
@frightlever – Dow2 is not a game about future war, its a skirmish level real-time MMO for the starcraft crowd.
19/08/2009 at 15:20 mesmertron says:
re: Rome – it got so much right, and yet the thing that kept hurting the game for me was the campaign’s diplomatic AI. and not just with forming and breaking alliances for no good reason. everyone hated the Senate, right? Build up too much power too fast and then it’s war…
but you can’t play a TW game by expanding slowly. Very much as with Civilization (any version, including 4), Gal Civ, or the good Master of Orions, the only viable strategy is to grab as much land as you can as fast as you can.
Empire and Civ4 actually encourage you to slow down a bit by curbing your economic growth, but i’ve yet to play a game of Empire as Prussia where I can’t neuter Poland by seizing their biggest cities in the first campaign year.
And while I’m thinking of it, I can’t remember seeing a Civ game yet on any difficulty level short of Emperor where the AI could cope with you building a third city before they finished their second. Get enough of a head start and they just roll over and play dead.
In both games, sure they’ll declare war on you, but let’s face it. Armed populace simply don’t stand a chance against well drilled Prussian grenadiers.
19/08/2009 at 15:25 Tom says:
I think as somebody said further up, that the Total War series is being milked dry by SEGA. They need (read must) reinvent this baby, and reinvent it proper.
*IDEA START*
Why should the dam thing be restricted to a single era or epoch? Why can’t the player decide, where and when he wants to play. He then gets some resources, a little tidbit of territory, and plays it out, just that the hole thing is like a gigantic MMO, where we really do play against ‘real human’ opponents, those that happen to also want to play in the same region in the same epoch. Nobody wants to do that, the AI kicks in, simple and brilliant. Add a little AOE style ‘timeline’, really cool graphics, and of course tanks, and I’m all set to wet my trousers and go running naked in the streets ;)
*IDEA END*
19/08/2009 at 15:27 StalinsGhost says:
“Rome probably remains the best game.”
Both agreed and disagreed. The core game itself for me was easily the worst of the series. Mods – particularly Rome: Total Realism – kept me playing it for years, so in that sense it was the best. But ultimately, Empire seems to me to be the most coherent and enjoyable without mods.
19/08/2009 at 15:39 Ginger Yellow says:
“Anything major and you’ll just send the giant intelligent bomb to do your “negotiating”.”
Wouldn’t work, as you should know from sci-fi films. The intelligent bomb would either refuse to explode, or kill itself from boredom en route.
19/08/2009 at 15:43 jsutcliffe says:
I never really gave Rome a fair shake. All these “Rome was the best one” comments are making me think that may have been foolish.
That solves my “What strategy game shall I play next?” dilemma. Thanks!
19/08/2009 at 15:48 Gap Gen says:
I think CA *could* do modern battles, but it would have to rethink its engine carefully. The main criticism is that the World Wars were sprawling conflicts rather than individual battles over limited areas, which TW wouldn’t be able to manage in its current form.
Something like Imperium Galactica 2 could work (largely because it did) because the engagements in it were focused battles.
19/08/2009 at 16:04 alset says:
To all the people wishing for a sci fi Total War: Sword of the Stars is pretty much that. Turn based galaxy map with real-time battles, very playable in multiplayer and awesome fun, spiced up with random menaces.
19/08/2009 at 16:12 jalf says:
@Novotny: In the game I started after the last patch, Spain has so far conquered southern Italy as well as Holland. Seems they’re getting a grip on the naval invasion thing.
Oh? By that logic, DoW2 didn’t work either. Nor did *any other sci-fi game ever made*.
The point about the future is that it hasn’t happened yet. That’s kinda one of its key features. And it means that if you want all-out warfare in *your* future game, then that is how *your* future will look.
Eh, I think you’ve got it upside down. In Rome (and later), you can pick your ground, and then your opponent walks around you, making the point moot.
In MTW, you could see the general type of terrain in an area, and use that. You had quite a lot of control over choice of terrain if you paid attention to the information in the campaign map. And unlike the later games, your opponent couldn’t easily dodge your army. If you, the defender wants to fight on a mountain, station your troups in mountaneous terrain. One of the things I loved about MTW was the far more varied terrain. In Rome and MTW2, even the most mountainous terrain was little more than a small hill. In MTW the terrain really made a difference. You could really make use of height, set up some cruel ambushes, and so on.
Again, my experience is almost exactly opposite. In later games I’ve been tempted to autoresolve because there was no variation. The terrain was exactly the same as the last battle, because you’re still defending the same position.
MTW gave you varied terrain. As long as you stand on a mountainous area, you get rough hilly terrain, but the *actual* battlefield varied from battle to battle.
19/08/2009 at 16:27 mesmertron says:
“Eh, I think you’ve got it upside down. In Rome (and later), you can pick your ground, and then your opponent walks around you, making the point moot.”
Then you didn’t field your armies effectively. If the geography doesn’t provide you with a choke point, create one!
As for M:TW, maybe my memories are a bit rusty with age, but I don’t recall very varied terrain. If i invaded wales from England, I thought it was always the same map i fought on… but it’s been far far too long since I played so I’ll happily conceed that point if I’m mistaken.
And for the record, I loved M:TW when it came out. I’m not sure how many hours I logged in it, but too many.
And when Rome came out, I think that was the first game after getting married where my wife poked her head out of the bedroom to ask “Are you still playing that game?!” and, after i assured her i’d be straight to bed after the next turn, she pointed out “It’s morning now. I’m getting up for work.”
Good times.
19/08/2009 at 16:29 DarkNoghri says:
I got Rome a year or two back, and just now started playing a couple months ago. I played it nonstop for about a week, and then beat the campaign once. I haven’t really played it since.
It was quite good. Nothing quite like going into a battle that you think is 3000 vs 3000, having two thirds of your troops arrive late, and then belatedly realize that you didn’t realize the battle announcer thingy has a scrollbar on it, which means they actually outnumber you 5000 to 3000. You get in with one army, and they have one army coming from every direction. And then you crush them anyway. Afterwards, the battle looked like a forest after the leaves fell out of the trees.
Lovely.
The AI was totally broken on walls and bridges, which annoyed me to no end.
19/08/2009 at 16:35 mesmertron says:
@DarkNoghri, re: bridges –
“Honey, why are you laughing so much?”
“1200 gauls vs my 180 roman triarii. I only lost seven men”
“Are you /still/ playing that game??”
19/08/2009 at 16:35 Azhrei says:
Damn Sega for rushing Empire out before it was ready. Even now, we have to mod in the royal family function. We still don’t have multiplayer campaigns. The game has only just become stable with the latest patch, at last fixing all those ridiculous bugs. And now this.
Aside from that, Creative Assembly really needs to hire people who can draw and animate a face properly. There’s nothing really wrong with Napoleon up there, other than his animating being a bit stiff. But there’s nothing really right about the way he looks, either.
19/08/2009 at 16:37 Serondal says:
It’s like that in M:TW2 as well DarkNoghri, fighting in towns is extremely insane due to your units almost NEVER doing what you want them to do no matter how many hundreds of times you click :P Instead of rushing down the street to face the enemy they’ll run the other way, all the way out of the entire city to go around to the gate behind your enenemy to attack them from that side all the while getting arrows rained upon their heads ect.
I just decided after going through that several times to siege the enemy until they gave up instead of trying to attack when the armies are about even.
The thing I liked about Rome TW is that it gave you the feel that your Roman army was the best in the world. it made you feel awesome.
19/08/2009 at 17:05 Shadrach says:
Aww, I was kinda hoping for a Shogun 2, or some asian medieval theme. This just seems like CA took the easy road on this one. Napoleon could’ve just as easily been an expansion for Empire – Mod even!
19/08/2009 at 17:14 StalinsGhost says:
I think the standalone status is taking peoples attention away from the fact that this is no different from all the other games. All (ALL!) of them had an expansion that didn’t really shift the period focus much at all, adding new units, factions and a few new abilities. It was pretty much always set to be ETW: Frenchie Invasion a year after the first game’s release. Its CA’s standard model as usual.
Rome/Shogun 2/Other setting: Total War will be the year after next. Almost certainly on the Empire engine.
19/08/2009 at 17:23 Mad Doc MacRae says:
There is no way Rome was the best TW game.
19/08/2009 at 17:34 JonFitt says:
As a great man once said: This looks like Alexander with guns.
I might buy this. I’ve played every TW game except Alexander, and Empire. At the time of Alexander I didn’t want a mini campaign, but now I don’t want to buy Empire as I have no time to sink into a grand campaign!
In the beginning, what Creative did exceptionally was produce a great troop tactics simulation and slot it into a campaign map so that the battles had significance. As things have gone on the campaign has grown to become a game in its own right, but I find it takes more and more of the game time away from winning great battles.
Next: Shogun 2 please!
I don’t think a TW game would work outside of the era when people used troops in formation of sorts. I want to sweep my cavalry down and strike your flank (oo-er) not shoot at you with my tank. I have other games for that tankyouverymuch.
19/08/2009 at 17:38 JonFitt says:
If we can’t have Shogun 2, then I suggest a Chinese setting. It’s perfect, you even have the discovery of gunpowder and invading Monguls :)
19/08/2009 at 17:47 Serondal says:
They could blow the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games out of the water if they set it in that peroid of time ^_^ Then they can throw in a mini game of playing Go while you have your bone scrapped because you got shot by a poison arrow and also you can wear giant feathers in your hair and get a bonus to charsima +5 O.o What?
19/08/2009 at 18:08 Vinraith says:
I regret buying Empire, and this sounds like a move in the wrong direction. I don’t want story in my strategy games, I want strategic freedom and moddability. I hope CA eventually comes back around to the Rome/Medieval 2 model because lately they’ve been in the tall grass.
19/08/2009 at 18:09 Scundoo says:
Nice trailer
Sauron and his Orcs invade the Shire
CA show their british roots (and their distorted view of history).
19/08/2009 at 18:19 Wooly says:
I love the end. Victory burning, and a little sign that reads “London: 54 miles” :D
19/08/2009 at 19:02 EBass says:
ETW was a total mess. I’ll buy this if it actually fixes the core game and not just adds on extra bits to a broken game. Not on release though, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. (Though the industries’ reviewing hardly helped on that score)
19/08/2009 at 19:18 Archonsod says:
@ Ansob
“No; the reason I really disliked it was the bloody muskets. There’s nothing more boring than watching little men march towards each other at a snail’s pace (even in fast forward), then stop, spend thirty seconds lining up, fire once, and do nothing for a full minute. I much preferred little men running at each other with swords; so much so that after a day of trying to play the battles the way they were supposed to be played, I just resorted to firing one volley, fixing bayonets and charging.”
Erm, that was the way the battles were supposed to be played. It wasn’t until WW1 that the idea of charging through the smoke really died.
Personally I find them much more tactical than previous titles, which pretty much boiled down to picking large group of men, clicking smaller group of men, waiting for the inevitable victory.
19/08/2009 at 19:43 Real Horrorshow says:
You British and your short jokes, tsk tsk.
That was a propaganda lie, Napoleon was normal height for the time.
19/08/2009 at 19:55 Irish Al says:
He still had tits though.
19/08/2009 at 20:30 Railick says:
He was 5 foot 7 inch’s tall, that’s pretty average even now.
19/08/2009 at 20:34 Railick says:
@archonsod – I disagree in Rome Total War it was possible to use logical tactics to defeat much larger forces of enemies. I once defeated 10 squads of phallanx men with 1 light horse and 1 legion squad by baiting the phalllax men with the legion squad then charging them from behind once they’d fixed their spears with the horses, then having the horses run away once the phallax men started fighting back. It was VERY tricky because there were so many of them but since they were so slow my troops were able to out fox them at every turn :)
19/08/2009 at 20:34 Railick says:
@archonsod – I disagree in Rome Total War it was possible to use logical tactics to defeat much larger forces of enemies. I once defeated 10 squads of phallanx men with 1 light horse and 1 legion squad by baiting the phalllax men with the legion squad then charging them from behind once they’d fixed their spears with the horses, then having the horses run away once the phallax men started fighting back. It was VERY tricky because there were so many of them but since they were so slow my troops were able to out fox them at every turn :)
19/08/2009 at 20:47 Tim Ward says:
I hope they never touch 20th century warfare. CA are utterly in capable of doing it anything approaching justice.
Can you imagine their take on WW2? Mexico and Canada declare war on America because they share borders, Germany does absolutely nothing while France declares war on China.
19/08/2009 at 20:55 g says:
personally, i adore the etw period-napoleonic period. there’s some weird thread of historic reverence in me that the nature of warfare in that period strikes a chord with, and i’m subsequently still enjoying etw more than any tw game up until this point, since its main gameplay related issues being entirely hereditary.
re:ww1/20c total war. i think a more realistic scenario would be “industry:total war” or something to that effect. war which spams the industrial revolution, with the cumulating effect of all the maxed out tech trees being something resembling the brutal stalemate of trench warfare – serving as a poignant climax to a century long arms race and an elegy to the flowing battlefield tactics of old that the series is built upon.
19/08/2009 at 21:00 BinhoF says:
I think M:TW was the best Total War game, mainly since it improved on S:TW and i’t wasn’t broken at launch.
AI has always been horrible in TW games, and it’s worth pointing out that since R:TW the AI couldn’t launch amphibious assaults.
R:TW had a lot of problems, and as much as I like the greater freedom of movement, I thought the game lost a lot of the visual charm when it switched away from the paper campaign map and the tin-soldier like army stacks.
To go against the flow, I quite like E:TW. The naval battles are fun and pretty, and I like the scope of the game.
I just wish they’d fix the campaign and diplomatic AI!
19/08/2009 at 21:10 Macs says:
Rome TW was the biggest step forward in the series (got a new computer back in ’04 especially for it and still play it :p). So what about another game placed in the ancient era before Alexander? I for one would like to see a Rise of Persia with a map of the entire known world at the time (Europe through to India). Dunno about you, but the prospect of playing ancient Sumeria, Assyria, Babylon, Lydia, Medea or Persia brings a silent thrill that any TW veteran knows all too well :D
19/08/2009 at 21:56 Mad Doc MacRae says:
If by “biggest step forward” you mean “most AI left behind.”
It was shiny, sure, but the gameplay was lacking. Railick talking about “tactics” meaning his one cav unit and one legionnaire unit beat up 5 times their number in phalanx only illustrates that.
19/08/2009 at 21:57 Taillefer says:
I don’t think they should do anything until they can create an AI opponent that realises it should turn its troops around if they’re being shot in the back.
It’s disheartening to feel like every win is through exploiting a dumb AI rather than outsmarting it.
19/08/2009 at 22:55 Mike says:
That’s some pretty good animation work there.
E:TW has been the first Total War to engage me past the first battle. I’m thoroughly enjoying it so far.
19/08/2009 at 23:02 Professor says:
The moment I realized I had made a mistake in buying this game was when I told my units to go shoot some unit which wasn’t directly in front of them, and then they decided to fuck off to the other side of the map to go and do it. I mean, seriously. Red Alert 2 had better unit AI than this piece of crap.
19/08/2009 at 23:03 Kommissar Nicko says:
Aside from the ass-backwards map AI, the sheer madness of defending/attacking fortresses with artillery made me piss my pants and tear out all my hair with rage and sorrow.
Win an assault on an entire fortress full of thousands of troops with nothing but fixed mortars… check!
Watch in abject horror as my artillerymen attack flanking cavalry with canister shot, only to watch the one on the far end annihilate everyone by shooting down the line onto their heads… check!
Attempt to defend against an admittedly large force of Iroquois braves with a smaller but solid force of Polish grenadiers in a wooden fortress, only to watch as my men stood like they were waiting for a bus as braves poured by the millions over the walls on fucking ROPES, refusing outright to at least bash a few skulls… CHECK!
REALIZING THAT IT WAS BETTER TO DEPLOY MY ADMITTEDLY LARGE FORCE OUTSIDE THE FORTRESS TO AVOID GENERAL AI CLUSTER-FUCKERY WHEN DEALING WITH MOUNTING AND DEFENDING WALLS WITH THEIR EVER-FUCKING-USELESS MUSKETS… CHECK.
I’d love the opportunity to stroke my meat to the craggy pixel-shaded lines of Napoleon’s face, and imagine caressing the anti-aliased bump-mapping of his skin, but count me waaaaaay out unless they can bring him back from the fucking dead and wire his ghost into my computer for this game.
19/08/2009 at 23:03 Noc says:
“They said Russia could never be taken.”
“Now . . . it turns out they were probably right. Man, that sucked.“
19/08/2009 at 23:51 detarame says:
We all know that Napoleon was actually of about average height for his day, yes?
20/08/2009 at 00:11 cjlr says:
Just so everybody gets this cleared up once and for all:
Napoleon was 5’2”. Five feet and two inches.
In French feet. That’s ~5’7”/5’8” in British measures; more or less average for a man in the early 1800s.
That is all.
20/08/2009 at 00:25 Adventurous Putty says:
I must humbly confess that I squealed inappropriately when he said “I AM EMPEROR!” and put on his little Napoleon hat.
20/08/2009 at 01:08 lePooch says:
Total War Online CONFIRMED!! You heard it here on RPS first!
Quoting Tom:
I think as somebody said further up, that the Total War series is being milked dry by SEGA.
….*IDEA START*….
…player decide, where and when he wants to play…
…like a gigantic MMO… play against ‘real human’ opponents…
Add …timeline… graphics… TANKS…
*IDEA END*
Seriously though, this is the last logical step for Sega to take if they are going to milk the franchise. Make it free to play, add in a ridiculous amount of grinding, introduce micropayments for key techs such as gunpowder(you cannot advance age till gunpowder is researched), sit back…
20/08/2009 at 01:35 Sonsonofapreachermon says:
Interesting one, concept wise. A lot of recent historiography on Napoleon (I liked that this was the only bit that sounded French in the vid) has veered towards the suggestion that he was essentially an egomaniac who utilized the republican ideals of the revolution to secure himself a nice position in power; did away with any such principles thereafter; and became a despot (and not, as I mistyped before, a depot) who pretty much made war and harvested much of the male population of France for his own glory.
Given that much of the most thorough and recent research seems to be affirming this quite heavily it makes you wonder, or me anyway, in a genuine, non-shrill daily mail reader way, how this differs from playing the campaigns of Hitler, or the like. BAN THIS SICK FILTH.
Seriously though, as a graduated, now popular historian I’ve always liked history orientated games but there are a few sacred cows-slavery is i think the most notable-that you just know devs wouldn’t touch with a barge pole, but there’s no consistency. I know there are games where you can play the Nazis but there are no serious ones, to my knowledge at least, where one is encouraged to act as Hitler manifest. Ghengis Kahn though, or Atilla the Hun, no bother. Is it just a matter of, as in the comedy trope, “too soon”? Or does it stem from the belief that Hitler was the worst of a nasty (Nazi, haha) bunch and just, well, soo much worse that it rally is obscene to even ask the question?
Napoleon, to adopt the view of the above, condemned about eight million to death in battles that were it not for the presence of one determined warmonger were unlikely to have occurred. Mr Kahn and his mongols, in the rape of Samarkand spent six days slaughtering the civilians of said settlement for fun and erected a pile of skulls supposedly a mile high as a celebratory after thought. Come to think of it mass slaughter and conquest has only really abated in the west in these last few decades and goes on pretty much everywhere else. Yet representation of such-political forces killing their rivals and engulfing everyone in between-are either blithely permitted, as in this nest TW venture, or alternatively roundly condemned. Without getting too introspective here, why is this? Presumably because we’re only killing historical representations of Russians or what have you, rather than representations of Middle Eastern civilians in a current context. But to follow that logic means it is the context, rather than the concept of killing, which is what matters.
Maybe its just the case of basing representations on stereotypical or cod-historical realisations of the cast of history, it probably almost certainly is. Given that it probably follows that only sad people like me who spend a majority of their time buried in history would even think of this as being an issue. But in an era of marketing and heightened sensitivity to any form of potential offense I find it a peculiar anomaly. It would be interesting to see how a member of PR from the Creative Assembly answered as to why slavery was not simulated, or why there is the suggestion that it’s not only ok but a good thing to play a dictator in a game, just to see how they are tracking the issue, if at all.
20/08/2009 at 01:40 Sonsonofapreachermon says:
Apologies for the sloppy spelling in the above, my keyboard is misbehaving. I also sincerely doubt I will ever write the word “Nazi” with the suffix “haha” thereafter ever again.
20/08/2009 at 02:02 Scundoo says:
@Sonsonofapreawhatever
You compare Napoleon with Hitler.
And then you claim to be a Historian.
I always knew the British were great at turning defeats into victories (Dunkirk), finding excuses to enslave other nations (opium wars) and creating Heroes out of madmen and opportunists (Chinese Gordon). Portraying Napoleon as the Devil himself was yet another feat of the British propaganda machine.
The fact though that any person that knows to read and write (yet one that claims to have gone to university) would be the mouthpiece for such antiquated propaganda beggars belief.
20/08/2009 at 02:25 Scundoo says:
Oh, and answer me this:
Who was it that broke the treaty of Amiens?
Yes, you may use Wikipedia, you historian you.
20/08/2009 at 03:33 Pijama says:
Until Creative Assembly decides to punch SEGA’s crotch and make a stand to release a POLISHED game, they can count me off.
Paradox, even with all their issues at launch, continues to kick their arse at grand-strategizing. The proof of that is that I NEVER uninstalled one of their games. Even Victoria.
20/08/2009 at 03:37 TheFanciestOfPants says:
Empire was great, but Medieval 2 was probably my favorite.
Loved those faction-specific pre battle speeches.
20/08/2009 at 04:22 Gregorix says:
@Kommissar Nicko –
Sing it brother.
Watching my Rangers ponce about in the forest hiding, then leaping out to destroy Native lancers by… impaling themselves? Almost as good as watching a reinforcing general stroll in front of a cannon blast
20/08/2009 at 06:18 heroic zero says:
Rome Total War has been my favorite so far. Certainly it has flaws, as do they all, but it’s the only one where the good bits far outweigh the bad bits (for me).
Medieval 2 was a bit clunky by comparison…even the interface didn’t seem as elegant, somehow.
Still, I enjoyed R:TW so much that I preordered Empire: Total War. Unfortunately I’m still waiting for them to finish it enough to feel worth playing.
20/08/2009 at 07:52 MeestaNob! says:
This is a game that was always going to happen, but I’ll be interested to see how it turns out.
20/08/2009 at 09:30 Collic says:
I bought empire, and I’ve long since given up on it. The reasons why have already been covered.
To be honest, I am still a little bothered by the glowing reviews the game received at launch. It seems like the gaming press didn’t really play the game beyond ooing at the shiny graphics.
I’ve pretty much given up on CA as a company, which is a shame. They made really great games once.
20/08/2009 at 09:32 Rabbitsoup says:
ahh empire, you already have enough of my money you broken piece of crap.
As perviously mentioned the AI, particually in its lack of ablity to use naval invasions and some of the other features (such as fortresses being totally bypassable) make it seem stupid.
I wish that the game had a real army logistics role to it other than providing them lots of cash, most armys can survive away form home for years in the Arctic on minimum wage.
20/08/2009 at 09:36 Sonsonofapreachermon says:
@Scundoo
a) At no point did I declare this to be my own opinion. Rather, I stated that recent scholarship was returning to this conclusion. The debate has been going full circle since Napoleon’s death. A viewpoint can be expressed more than once, with differing evidence, and still be relevant and not a part of the emotive “British Propaganda machine”. We found a lot of other opportunities to do nasty things by the way and I wouldn’t ever argue to the contrary. I’ve no interest in defending the indefensible. I’d bet I was more painfully familiar with and angry at Britain’s considerably unjust modern history than yourself.
b) The other view which defends Napoleon as a champion of liberty and revolutionary republican principles is championed for the most part by the French and Americans, who shared in the political sentiments of 1789. The more despotic character is championed by British, Russian, German academics and so forth. Namely those whose ancestors were prey to the Emperor’s conquests. There is no neutral position here. History cannot, I’m afraid, be reduced to what actually happened and the deviant British presentation thereof.
c) I could go on but I found the latest book I read on the subject and its seven hundred pages better argued, sensitive, informed and persuasive than your paragraph which attacked my recycling of clichés which you yourself committed. Despite what you might think, as conveyed in your tone, your argument was flimsy, if indeed there was one above personal insults. I’m happy to genuinely debate stuff, and I was probably mistaken in launching into a largely historical debate on a games forum and for that I apologise, but far from being wowed by the bombast and enlightenment of your argument I’m more inclined to think that you are Jeremy Clarkson, such is your condescension and complete lack of subtlety, although your willingness to defend someone from the Continent who is not responsible for making cars means this cannot be so.
20/08/2009 at 09:40 Irish Al says:
We are still skirting around the matter of whether he had tits or not.
20/08/2009 at 09:57 Gap Gen says:
Empire is fine now. It’s not particularly clever or complicated compared to the Paradox games, but I doubt they’d do so well sales-wise if they were as complicated as the Paradox games.
20/08/2009 at 10:16 simonkaye says:
Anyone else think Sonsonofapreachermon is actually Summer Glau?
Reading this thread, I realised that I’d never played either of the expansions for Rome:TW. Amending that right…. now.
20/08/2009 at 10:31 Sonsonofapreachermon says:
Didn’t know who she was, but I can now confirm I am indeed Summer Glau and just didn’t realise it before. Hi Fans!
20/08/2009 at 13:10 Guy says:
Aww man, same old WW1 cliches.
1) The Germans are the baddies. They not only acted like massive jerks, thereby starting the arms race but they started the war quite deliberately. Then of course there is their lack of democracy, stomping over neutrality, various war crimes in Belgium, ethnic cleansing in Poland and the East etc. They used gas first, they used flamethrowers first etc. They’re not Nazi’s but they’re not all that nice either.
2) WW1 is not just the Western Front. You have the war in Africa, in the Balkans, in the Alps, in the East, in the Far East, in the Middle East, in Central Asia etc. Everything from open mountain combat to guerilla warfare in the desert to commando raids to naval landings.
3) If you include the Eastern campaigns that resulted from the Tsarist Empire’s collapse (so 1917-21) then you have warfare that stretched from Poland to Mongolia, from the Baltic to Afghanistan. Most of it open, featuring cool stuff like armoured trains, the rise of the Bolsheviks, Mongolian hordes etc.
4) Trench warfare only applies on the Western front from 1915-1917. Both 1914 and 1918 are largely fought in the open (and both years have far more casualties than any of the trench war years).
5) Trench warfare was not just dumb slaughter. The Generals were not idiots. British bite and hold operations proved very effective for instance. There was continuous tactical and technological innovations. The big question is, if it was so dumb then why did the Allies win and not the Central Powers?
However WW1: Total War wouldn’t work anyway. Total War relies on tactical battles on a big field where you can see and command everyone. WW1 battles were so large that they stretched for miles at a time, including hundreds of thousands of men, vehicles, planes and tanks. There is just no way you could command that. The same goes for WW2. Then again Total War has never been that realistic anyway…
Napoleon looks intriguing, though I’m still waiting for Empire to be fixed before I buy it, but surely Napoleon lost in both Egypt and Russia…
20/08/2009 at 15:45 scundoo says:
@Sonofapreach…
All that gibberish and you still didn’t answer my question.
20/08/2009 at 15:49 scundoo says:
Maybe that REALLY BIG book with its so persuasive arguments (the title of which you didn’t even mention) has the answer there for you. Or maybe they don’t deal with the subject at all, and like you would rather avoid this annoying detail, since it puts quite a dent in their theory.
20/08/2009 at 16:12 Sonsonofapreachermon says:
Mate, I’m not really into proving that things are definitley right or wrong, as they rarley are. My “gibberish” was an attmempt to convey the worth of subtley and balance in argument and repsond to your attacking my intellect and percieved apologising for Brtiain’s Imperial past, but seeing as you’re so persistent the book is Napoleon’s Wars by Charles Esdaile, and there’s about sixty pages of a chapter in there that deals precisley with Amiens, its beginnings and its eventual ending by Britain and various historians views on this and what it means to the reputation of Britain and Napoleon. Give that a read if you are genuinley interested as to another interpretation and not, as I suspect, simply being pathetically snide and condesceding for no apparent reason.
20/08/2009 at 16:53 bookworm8at says:
Game stripped down to sell extra content, bad AI, and now an early sequel. This franchise is not for me.
20/08/2009 at 17:03 Scundoo says:
Sonsonofapreach…: attmempt[sic] to convey the worth of subtley[sic] and balance in argument
Mate, really, you are hilarious. You compare Napoleon with Hitler and then you have the nerve to speak about subtlety and balance.
Sonsonofapreach…:your paragraph which attacked my recycling of clichés which you yourself committed.
Nope, I didn’t post any clichés, and neither did you for that matter; comparing Napoleon with Hitler is just so embarrassingly stupid, there aren’t enough people with the necessary lack in intellect to actualy believe and post such nonsense often enough for it to turn into a cliché.
I am done with this conversation, the level of discourse here is appalling.
21/08/2009 at 09:03 simonkaye says:
Sorry to dig this up again, but I have to broadcast this –
Nobody told me that Brian Blessed presides over Rome: Alexander’s historical battles!
Rome is promoted to best TW ever.
21/08/2009 at 09:09 Jim Rossignol says:
I was actually at the Brian Blessed recording sessions for Alexander.
He took great delight in saying “GORDON FREEMAN’S ALIVE?” for PC Zone’s coverdisk.
21/08/2009 at 11:19 The Hammer says:
@Jim: Hahahaha.
23/08/2009 at 05:02 skylog says:
eh, remake lords of conquest….j/k give me shogun ii
16/08/2010 at 17:34 Orion says:
There is no Sandbox aspect…total shit