Shogun 2: Total War - New Video - Battle Report
Posted: Tue May 25, 2010 9:28 pm
Currently on the Total War website there is a counter which goes from 2010 to 1908. Is this a possible hint that we may be seeing a WW1 Total War game?
If so, I predict mass quantites of suck. There's no way that the Total War games can ever really capture the sheer scale of the First World War, and given that typical braindead behaviour that the AI exhibits, there's no way we'll be getting anything near the massive war of attrition and trench combat that happened historicaly.
On a somewhat related tangent, this got me thinking about what I'd like the next Total War game to be. Personally, I think that they should take a step back and go to an earlier period. I always thought that the Total War games were at their best during the sword-fighting eras. What I'd like to see is a game set during and just prior to the European conquest of the Americas. We're well able to have a map big enough to cover the entire North and South American continents at this point, so we could have all of the indegenous tribes and civilisations in play. At the very start of the game you'd be warring with other Native American factions, expanding your influence throughout the continent. Then once 1492 hits, outside context problems! These strange pale-skinned foreigners turn up on your shores, telling you that you're now all servants of his Imperial Majesty who's very keen on this strange concept called "taxes" and that there's a bunch of priests who'd like to have a quiet word with your holy men.
This leads on into the next half of the game, where the Native American factions have to compete with both their native neighbours and fleets and armies of the different European factions turning up to grab a slice of the New World. If playing as one of the American factions, you can try and buy (or steal) guns and horses from allied European factions, allowing you to recruit limited amounts of gun and mounted units. To level the playing field against the far more advanced and dangerous European invaders, the Native Americans could have a mechanic where an army composed of 5 or less units can start any engagement with a European force as though they'd ambushed them, regardless of whether the surrounding terrain would normally have allowed them to ambush. This would represent their far superior knowledge of the local land and their different method of fighting.
As a European nation, you'd (naturally) start later on in the game, but you'd have at your disposal far superior ships, heavily armoured troops, gunpowder, and cavalry. And Native troops would probably suffer morale penalties when facing gunpowder and cavalry. This would initialy lead to easy victories over the Native Americans, but as the Native factions begin to gain access to their own cavalry and gunpowder units and as the morale penalties lessen the longer you have contact with them. And then there's also the competition you'd experience from the other European factions arriving in the Americas as well.
I think, properly done, that'd be an excellent scenario for a Total War game. So what sort of eras would you like to see made in a Total War game?
If so, I predict mass quantites of suck. There's no way that the Total War games can ever really capture the sheer scale of the First World War, and given that typical braindead behaviour that the AI exhibits, there's no way we'll be getting anything near the massive war of attrition and trench combat that happened historicaly.
On a somewhat related tangent, this got me thinking about what I'd like the next Total War game to be. Personally, I think that they should take a step back and go to an earlier period. I always thought that the Total War games were at their best during the sword-fighting eras. What I'd like to see is a game set during and just prior to the European conquest of the Americas. We're well able to have a map big enough to cover the entire North and South American continents at this point, so we could have all of the indegenous tribes and civilisations in play. At the very start of the game you'd be warring with other Native American factions, expanding your influence throughout the continent. Then once 1492 hits, outside context problems! These strange pale-skinned foreigners turn up on your shores, telling you that you're now all servants of his Imperial Majesty who's very keen on this strange concept called "taxes" and that there's a bunch of priests who'd like to have a quiet word with your holy men.
This leads on into the next half of the game, where the Native American factions have to compete with both their native neighbours and fleets and armies of the different European factions turning up to grab a slice of the New World. If playing as one of the American factions, you can try and buy (or steal) guns and horses from allied European factions, allowing you to recruit limited amounts of gun and mounted units. To level the playing field against the far more advanced and dangerous European invaders, the Native Americans could have a mechanic where an army composed of 5 or less units can start any engagement with a European force as though they'd ambushed them, regardless of whether the surrounding terrain would normally have allowed them to ambush. This would represent their far superior knowledge of the local land and their different method of fighting.
As a European nation, you'd (naturally) start later on in the game, but you'd have at your disposal far superior ships, heavily armoured troops, gunpowder, and cavalry. And Native troops would probably suffer morale penalties when facing gunpowder and cavalry. This would initialy lead to easy victories over the Native Americans, but as the Native factions begin to gain access to their own cavalry and gunpowder units and as the morale penalties lessen the longer you have contact with them. And then there's also the competition you'd experience from the other European factions arriving in the Americas as well.
I think, properly done, that'd be an excellent scenario for a Total War game. So what sort of eras would you like to see made in a Total War game?
