Total War: Medieval gets an expansion pack

The press release:

ACTIVISION’S MEDIEVAL: TOTAL WAR™ EXPANDS NORTHWARDS WITH VIKING INVASION™ EXPANSION PACK

The Longships Of The Norsemen Cast A Shadow Over Europe As Activision’s Historical Strategy Game Franchise

Gains A Savage Expansion Pack

Santa Monica, CA - January 7, 2003 - Activision, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) today announced an expansion pack for Medieval: Total War™, the critically acclaimed PC strategy game which was honored as the top PC game of all time by PC Gamer (UK). Developed by The Creative Assembly, Medieval: Total War - Viking Invasion™ turns the clock back to 790AD, when the Viking hordes descended from their Scandinavian strongholds to pillage their neighbors.

Medieval: Total War - Viking Invasion challenges players to control eight new factions, including the Vikings themselves, the Saxons, Scots, Irish, Welsh and Picts, and embark on a campaign to dominate the British Isles. With a wealth of new historical heroes, players can lead a range of new units into battle, including Viking Berserkers, Saxon Huscarles and Fyrdmen, while conducting sieges enhanced by the introduction of flaming arrows and boiling oil.

“Medieval: Total War’s mixture of epic battles, historical accuracy and brilliant design put the game in a class all its own,” states Larry Goldberg, executive vice president, Activision Worldwide Studios. “Medieval: Total War - Viking Invasion adds to this incredibly formidable mix in what is sure to be one of the best expansion packs of the year.”

“We felt the era of Nordic raiders offered the perfect opportunity to add new flavors to the Medieval: Total War experience,” explains Tim Ansell, founder, owner and managing director of developer The Creative Assembly. “Players can now sweep west from Scandinavia to raid, pillage and conquer just as they did over 1200 years ago.”

Medieval: Total War – Viking Invasion introduces new features that will be welcomed by fans of the franchise Players can now plan reinforcements and scout enemy formations before taking to the field from a new pre-battle screen. In addition, there will be new playable factions and a new heavy weapon in the shape of the fearsome Organ Gun. Medieval: Total War - Viking Invasion is slated for release in the Spring of 2003 and has yet to be rated by the ESRB.

For more information on Medieval: Total War™ visit the website at www.totalwar.com. For more information on The Creative Assembly visit the website at www.creative-assembly.com.

…while conducting sieges enhanced by the introduction of flaming arrows and boiling oil.

If this is a more than cosmetic change, say an indication of some real siegeworks (including ladders and towers) then this will be a great addition. If the bulk of the expansion is mainly tweaks and a few extra units then, despite my pick of M:TW as GoTY, I may have to hold off. I guess I’ll wait and see.

I’m excited! It sounds like that the expansion pack will focus just on the British Isles, which hopefully means we’ll get a much larger and more detailed map of England and Ireland.

As it is in the current game, the British Isles comprise just 6 provinces, but if we get a British-only map, we can have some serious fun recreating some English history.

I hope they fix the interface somehow.

I hope they make the battle-cam capable of side-strafing, or whatever the action is called.

What are you thinking of? The strategic or the tactical interface?

It is, through the keyboard. Unless you are thinking of something other than moving the camera sideways.

What are you thinking of? The strategic or the tactical interface?[quote]

Strategic.

It’s completely incapable of assisting the player in handling special units like bishops, princesses - never mind all the armies you end up with. Even without the special units, there are so many more provinces than in Shogun and the war fronts get so big…

It is, through the keyboard. Unless you are thinking of something other than moving the camera sideways.

:oops: Looked through the manual again. It can indeed be done. Now I can’t blame losses on a crappy camera anymore.

Yeah, that was my biggest disappointment with the game; the enormous amount of unneccessary special units that do very little and need a lot of management. The special units were a pain in late-game Shogun, so I don’t really understand why they thought adding more would be good.

Well, Mongol Invasion improved the Shogun strategic interface somewhat; they might do the same thing now.

Woohoo, check it out!

Official add-on site
http://www.totalwar.com/community/medieval/viking.htm

Cool new map of the British Isles
http://www.totalwar.com/community/medieval/vikingsp3.htm

Well, it seems they still haven’t figured out to make seiges interesting or realistic but I have to confess I’ll get this anyhow. I’ve just gotten back into Medieval in a big way and playing with new armies on new maps is incentive enough.

I don’t know if anyone’s ever played an old Steve Jackson (or was it Metagaming?) Microgame called Vikings? That would be a fun premise for a strategy game - raiding towns, man-to-man combat, looting, pillaging, and dragging the treasures and prisoners back to home for fun and profit. A politically incorrect X-Com, to be sure, but it would definitely take better advantage of the whole Viking concept than setpiece field battles between factions that didn’t even exist, as far as I know, in the same time periods. Weren’t the Picts exterminated by the Romans and Scottish Celts long before Vikings ever showed up? This seems more like a fictionalized Arthurian era (Pendragon RPG or that DOAC) than a historical game.

Still, I guess I’ll be getting it anyhow. Yes, the micromanaging on the strategic level can be annoying but there’s simply no other game that offers this good a mix of strategic maneuvering and tactical battles out there.

It looks like they have scrapped the TB part of the game. Bleah

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/news/news_story.php(que)id=86091

olaf

You mean this ?

It’s not just the battle sections that have had the old overhaul treatment though. The bigger picture is now greatly expanded, with the ‘Risk’-style tactical interface being replaced with a totally 3D real-time map encompassing Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Budding Caesars can theoretically zoom in on any point they like, conducting battles in just about any location they desire. The map also updates as your cities grow, showing your empire expanding or contracting depending on how Dame Fortune decides to treat your endeavours.

I don’t see a problem with this as long as the “areas of influence” are correctly taken into account.

They’ve just made it real time like Europa Universalis. You still do all the strategic empire building stuff on the strategy map, but now it is fully 3D like a huge zoomed out tactical battle and when you get a battle the game “zooms in” to the tactical battle map.

It presents a lot of room for strategy this way since you’ll actually have to to garrison troops in a mountain pass to hold off invasions for example, instead of just sitting an army anywhere in a huge province and blocking all access to it. Armies will also have to actually walk to their destination which will make planning more important and could lead to interceptions and such. It could be very cool…

Of course it could also totally fail, but we’ll see.

Yes that would be very cool indeed. :D

I guess most people will like it, as real time sells better than TB, and thats probably why they made the switch. In general, I prefer turn based strategy games though, so I dont like this switch just on principal.

I thought the way M:TW played was great, with the exception of the game bogging down to all hell because of the agent micromanagement. The strategy part was turn based, the tactics part was realtime. They complemented each other well and paced the game nicely.

olaf

No, but this one looks like the coolest freakin’ game on earth:

It’s kung-fu… in the future!

And yet the strategy portion and diplomacy in M:TW wasn’t half as deep or complex as Europa Universalis, which is entirely real time. And believe me, it didn’t sell nearly as many copies as M:TW has done and is a much more hardcore strategy game…

So I don’t buy the “they turned it to real time to sell better” argument. I’m not sure how you can come to that conclusion when they’re actually continually trying to enhance the strategic gameplay (they’ve said they’re greatly enhancing diplomacy for example). Considering you’ll be able to pause the game at will and slow down/speed up time I really don’t think there is anything to miss. Just because the game runs in real time doesn’t suddenly make it Warcraft or Age of Empires.

Never heard of this one. Is it a good game ?

It is very good. However it is probably the most complex empire building game out there and it requires some dedication to get into and learn, it is very daunting at first. If you liked M:TW’s strategic map but wanted it to be deeper and more complex then you should check it out (unfortunately it doesn’t have the awesome tactical battles of the Total War series).

Here’s a couple of good reviews that probably explain it better than I can:

http://www.quartertothree.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=43662#43662