Empire: Total War

[titanvoyager]

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Empire is your first "gunpowder" game, emphasizing lines of fire and ranged weapons instead of crashing lines of sharp metal. Did this require a change in mindset about how battles would work?

The move to the 18th century and gunpowder required a fundamental change from the design and play points of view. The dynamic of battles is now much more movement and position based. Bringing your forces to bear on the enemy, timing your volleys all are critical.

Melee combat is still crucial, but is a much more important choice to the player. The age of the musket is also the age of the bayonet and the good timing of any close quarters combat is essential! Rush in too early and you'll be gunned down as you charge, leave it too late and your enemies are upon you before you're ready. It's a delicate balance.

When you add in the use of artillery of varying sizes, different munitions types, mortars and other long range armaments Empire is a real tactical treat, and a shift from previous Total War games.

The E3 naval combat demo looked great, but how does mastery of the seas play into the campaign game?

It is essential for any budding Empire to expand into the world oceans. You'll need fleets of trade ships to bring the rich resources of trade theatres to your coffers for one.

You'll also need your ships to ferry troops across continents, protect your trading ships and explore and retain trade routes whilst protecting your troops in transit. Pirates and enemy nations are also a constant threat, and that's before you have to start thinking of protecting your coasts from invasion!

Naval battles were always envisaged as an essential in Empire, we didn't want them to just be tacked on to the game, they have to be intrinsic to the way the game plays and we feel we've achieved that.

Certainly there's an awesome feeling when a war that started in Europe is fought off the coast of South America by fleets hitting one another in running battles.

You promise to model the physics of every musket ball and every cannon shot. Can you describe how this model interacts with towns and terrain?

Essentially there is an actual model for every cannonball and every musket ball fired. When these balls leave the barrel of a cannon or rifle they have an associated trajectory, velocity and so on and so forth. As they move through the environment, they encounter objects in their flight path.

Sometimes those objects are humans, with whom they collide and cause fatal damage. Sometimes those objects are other ships or walls or fences. Depending on the speed of your cannonball, its poundage, the strength of the ships you’re fighting etc, they may smash straight through or end their journey embedded in a house, hull, wall or person!

All this is calculated by a complex damage model which takes every factor into account when working out impacts and the like! That's the overarching technology.

Battles are bigger and prettier this time out with thousands and thousands of units on screen. Will this mean a huge jump in the system requirements from Medieval 2?

With TW games we always design them so you can get a decent experience regardless of your PC specs. We work closely with hardware partners to make sure whatever combination of hardware you have, there are some optimisations for your setup.

Additionally lots of the game is scalable, meaning you can decrease unit sizes and textures etc. to achieve better gameplay. Ultimately however, the standard answer for PC games is applicable, the better your hardware, the better your experience.

The first thing that strikes me from the screenshots is the color. What can you say about the work that went into the art design?

The art design is a project unto itself. Essentially the artists research the era and the period and then come up with a 'theme' for the game. The 18th century is a romantic era, full of adventure, exploration, colonialism, wars fought in distant lands and ships sailing to the four corners of the earth.

The taste and style of rich blues, edged with gilded gold make up the interface and UI. Then we move into the materials and objects of the age. The rich wood colours of the ships, the clear blue to dark green/black of the oceans and the agricultural colours of the land.

When we design the uniforms and structures, all of these things are historically referenced with the overall visual in mind. Finally, and something we haven't publicly shown yet, is our ultimate layer of art design. This is the post processing of the image, the way the game applies those subtle, subconscious effects to bring about the romantic realism of the world. A judicious use of bloom, saturation and hue is applied to the image on your screen giving it a unique Empire look and feel. Look out for further screenshots as we get closer to release!