Nice, a surprising amount of details among the PR fluff. Some stray impressions:
“Are these the final days of Egypt?” do they not know Egypt is still around?
Relating to the earlier talk about realistic campaigning and seasonal warfare, it looks like they are going for a more… impressionistic?.. approach. Emphasizing the decay of civilizations rather than military logistics. Not that you couldn’t do both but that’s where their interest lies.
The campaign map looks bad, maybe even a placeholder, although the painted sky box at “night” is nice.
They’re talking about how weather will completely transform the battle system. Hasn’t that been around (on and off) since the original Shogun?
Some incredible headgear in this. When does fashion cycle back to the bronze age?
“Historically, we only know the name of this character, so needed to do some narrative work”
Talk about how weather will transform the battle system has definitely been around since the original. Actually transforming the battle system, on the other hand…
I think it would be awesome to try a Total War game where you start each battle by assembling the position of your troops (as we do now) but also assign orders of how they should move and engage the enemy prior to combat start. Each segment of your army is headed by a commander that has his own personality.
Once the battle is underway and your plan comes into contact with the enemy’s plan, you can adjust your plan on the fly but it relies on your general or his couriers physically delivering orders. So if your right flank needs your personal touch you ride your general over there and yell at the commander. Otherwise, the commanders will make decisions based on their AI personality.
No idea if that would be more fun than what we have now, but it would certainly be very interesting to try in my view.
Decades ago, I loved the battles in Centurion ( I think that was the name) where you set your armies positions and then just started the battle and watched it happen. I don’t think there was any input after the battle started but watching the lil dudes march into each others formations and battle was awesome.
It’s not Total War but the Scourge of War/Take Command games operate much as you describe, at least as far as commanders with personalities and courier-based orders delay.
Probably reading too much into it. It was probably just referring to units stuck in mud.
Heavier units will tire out faster, and they’ll also get bogged down in mud, less able to fight in these unfavourable conditions than their lighter counterparts.
But that input was limited by the command range of your general - basically a radius in which he could be heard. Units outside that range ignored anything you tried to tell them to do and stuck to the original plan.
OK I am getting hyped for this - a straight down the line, historical Total War. Looks absolutely gorgeous. The weather and fire effects work great. Matched fighting animations. Sieges worth a damn.
I was a bit dubious about siege towers in Ancient Egypt - some 2000 years before they were used on battlefields in medieval Europe - but apparently they were!
In the Middle Kingdom tomb of General Intef at Thebes a depiction shows a type of mobile siege tower.
This is one of the most amazing interviews. The production is great - but then the responses from the devs and their appreciation for the period are great!!
Wait, the guy in the second video speculates it will be connected to Troy via a third game covering Anatolia, is this game not covering that? Does that mean the Hittites are mostly off-map? I can’t really see a third game covering such a tiny niche.
… and suddenly my internet plummets, like tears in the rain. How many 200 hour CA Total War game does one have to have before you can save you’ve seen it before?
Even though my interest in this started out very low, the more I see from y’all the more interested I get. Ancient stuff is interesting, it’s not an area well covered in games, and they have funky outfits.
