I have never played any total war games but I felt a connection to my orcs and humans in warcraft 1, I felt sad when they died and felt proud of them when we defeated the opponent with our overwhelming numbers.
Total War: Rome II Offers Spielberg-Level Drama
- Thread starter Jeremy Wilkinson
- Start date
Rome: Total War was an iconic advancement for creative assembly and it introduced a lot of people to the Total War franchise. With all the progress they made in Medieval 2 and Shogun 2 (oh look, two other sequels to the same era they already covered and improved drastically), Rome 2 has the potential make that magic happen again.Zulnam said:
In regards to World War 1, that would be boring as hell. I don't know anyone who wants to watch a pair of trenches filled with men dying of disease more than gunfire for weeks to months at a time until one side gets the idea of making a suicide charge at the other side. That's not a fun experience on the real time or turn based side; it's just dull. If you're talking about starting the scenario with tanks, well most the war is done already.
There's a mod of the Zulu Era for Napoleon, but like I said, I'm more interested in the Early Victorian era, from the first Opium War to the end of the Crimean.BrotherSurplice said:
Could be very interesting to see the switch from Muskets to Rifle-Muskets, which were the British's primary advantage in the Crimean War.
I'm also a sucker for the Infantry uniforms of that era, still with the Regency splendour but with some of the Victorian style seen in later uniforms.
Although as far as these games go, I'm a Cavalryman, and would love to be able to use the General creator from Shogun to create myself a leader in proper 11th Hussars regimentals.
The way I see Total War though, is that every advance they make in a game with a setting I'm not particularly interested in, i.e. Shogun or Rome, is an advance for every game I'm holding out for, like Medieval III or a Victorian:TW.
It's not avoiding the subject to admit that the series got less varied and more boring the further it went into the gunpowder eras. Throw trench warfare into the mix and they might as well not bother with the tactical warfare, just autocomplete all of it to save time.Zulnam said:
Rome was hands-down the best in the series with the most varied unit types: chariots, phalanxes, testudo, war elephants, circle and fire... It badly needs an update with some new tech.
I'm a massive fan of the Total War series so I'm interested to see how this pans out. I've cared for my units in RTS games for any game where soldiers are kept from battle to battle. I may have been keeping them alive for the 'wrong' reasons but after a while I get a Pokémon like attachment to them.
The ability to name certain battalions after a certain experience level would help build this bond.
The ability to name certain battalions after a certain experience level would help build this bond.
I don't think facial expressions are what's going to do it... in Total War, you generally can't see the faces of your soldiers anyway, as far as I know. Besides, many people (Including myself) are incapable of reading facial expressions beyond "It's a face, and it's smiling/frowning" anyway, so it's just wasted effort for them. But I'm probably in the minority here (I don't get any Uncanny Valley effect, except from actual robots.)
Personally I'm slightly worried by this, to me this isn't what the Total War series doesn't desperately need, I'd have said the AI should be the most important aspect.
Now I understand that programming an AI would be hard its hard enough to get a program that follows one set of instructions at times but come on, Total War is about Empires and Nations not the little infantry man. I don't care about him, he probably will survive the first five minutes and then die on the end of a spear-point wielded by a passing barbarian.
I would love to see a political challenge rather than a. An enemy that never surrenders ALL THE FRIGGIN' TIME (I'm looking at you France in Medieval 2) and attempt to build an actual military challenge because it has an economy and directs it's armies with some attempt at strategy.
Those may have been in Shogun 2 but that felt waaaay too slow for me.
Now I understand that programming an AI would be hard its hard enough to get a program that follows one set of instructions at times but come on, Total War is about Empires and Nations not the little infantry man. I don't care about him, he probably will survive the first five minutes and then die on the end of a spear-point wielded by a passing barbarian.
I would love to see a political challenge rather than a. An enemy that never surrenders ALL THE FRIGGIN' TIME (I'm looking at you France in Medieval 2) and attempt to build an actual military challenge because it has an economy and directs it's armies with some attempt at strategy.
Those may have been in Shogun 2 but that felt waaaay too slow for me.
Could have sworn I was wearing pants when I was reading this, oh well, this just makes changing my underwear easier.JezWilkinson said:
CAPTCHA: She loves him
That's great! Good news all around it seems.
I'm throwing money at the screen as we speak. Shogun II was incredible, and Rome II will kick its ass.
Really looking forward to the whole amphibious invasions thing, would have helped me a lot during a campaign I played once as the Macedonians...
I don't think they are trying to make you care about a specific person within a group, rather the overall unit group itself will be more fleshed out than in other Total War games.KorLeonis said:
When I first played Rome: Total War and played as the Julii, I grew really attached to my only Triarii unit that I was given at the start of the game. I tried to get them into combat as much as possible to gain combat experience while trying to minimise casualties as much as possible, since they couldn't be retrained. I think CA are going one step further with this as each unit group will have It's own traits, much like the generals did in Rome: Total War.
Even in Rome: Total War I grew really attached to certain generals/units who had lots of combat experience and if this new Rome game can make me feel even more emotional towards my cohorts, then that would be an amazing thing.
Translation: The battlefield AI is still dodgy as hell and the campaign AI will still cheat it's arse off... so here's some minor, non-gameplay related item that we can puff up enough to make a press release out of.
Are the soldiers gonna shout out personal things while dying? "HRARGH! Who will look after my wife and newborn!?"
"Tell my wife... hello."superbatranger said:
I would die laughing if they did something like that. I throw my support.
Does that mean... no more clone armies?
I find it hard to say this after the disaster that was Empire and its arcadey brothers, but they...might... actually... be going in the right direction.
I find it hard to say this after the disaster that was Empire and its arcadey brothers, but they...might... actually... be going in the right direction.
Eventually, in the thick of battle, you're gonna hear a very angry centurion shout "PULLOOO!! GET BACK IN LINE!" - I'm all in favor of that.Blunderboy said: