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GC08 - Empire: Total War Q&A Feature
Gwynne Dixon
23/08/2008
Gwynne Dixon
Following an impressive Leipzig demonstration, TVG finds out more on one of our most eagerly awaited titles for 2009...
With a new timeline spanning a new type of warfare and the addition of naval combat, The Creative Assembly's Empire: Total War looks set to enhance the standards set by the popular strategy series.
TVG recently had the chance to chat with The Creative Assembly's Communications Manager Kieran Brigden and Associate Producer Mark Sutherns shortly after the game's Leipzig Games Convention demonstration, so read on to find out about the map size, the issue of slavery, and what's been removed and reworked for the sake of accessibility.
TVG: In previous Total Wars, barbarians have always been quite a factor in the turn-based strategy and you need them in the main RTS; being this is the era of Pirates...
(Spontaneous laughter and cries of 'Pirates' erupt from The Creative Assembly's ensemble...)
Kieran Bridges: Yes there are pirates. Pirates occur in places that you'd expect them like the Caribbean and places like that. They will rage your commerce routes and take percentages of your trade and they might attack your trade ships and fleets as well, so you might need to protect against the possibility of pirates and various pirate activities. On top of that, I can tell you that you will be able to play as the pirates in multiplayer. If you want to play a naval battle, you can play as pirates.
TVG: I assume given the styling of Medieval: Total War we won't be talking about skulls and crossbones and a pirate on your shoulder?
KB: Perhaps not the parrot, although the pirates of the time, we research everything as accurately as we can, the pirates did hoist flags like a skull and crossbones. Not perhaps for the RTS part of the game, but as far as the campaign map is concerned when you're identifying a pirate fleet it's probably one of the easiest symbols worldwide that is recognised as a pirate. But in terms of the RTS game we're still trying to work out what the actual flag design will be for pirate ships.
TVG: Will you actually meet them in the naval combat?
KB: You'll be able to fight against pirate ships both in the campaign and in the multiplayer mode. When you're fighting pirate ships you can also board those and seize them to add them to your own navy.
TVG: We took a look at the campaign map, can you talk a little about this, how far it will extend?
KB: If you imagine it to be like the 18th century world predominantly from the view of central European powers. In that respect, obviously it would have been North America, Central America, the Caribbean, the Indies, North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.
So it's a pretty advanced map, it doesn't go as far east as places like China, but that's mostly because how the world is progressing in the 18th century. It wasn't quite yet the age when everything was discovered and the whole world was charted, certainly America was concerned with the New World at that stage and so we've reflected that in the game.
It's certainly the biggest one we've ever done in terms of the sheer volume of regions and places you can go, but it's not quite yet the entire world.
TVG: Speaking of multiplayer, are you talking about that at the moment?
KB: A little bit, it depends on what you're asking.
TVG: How many players?
KB: Well that's a good question, it's eight isn't it.
Mark Sutherns: Yeah the traditional battle mode is still there, you've got battles of up to eight players. Obviously, we've got naval combat, so you can fight naval battles in multiplayer. We're looking at new modes of play, but we're not yet announcing them. It's fair to say there are modes that we're considering, some which will please older players of the Total War fanbase that we've had all the way through from Shogun, and some which we hope will appeal to new players, maybe RTS players.
KB: There's a lot more than there used to be. We're trying to cater for our fans who've been requesting certain modes for a long time and also giving modes that might help a traditional RTS player.
TVG: Another factor of Total War surrounds the historical accuracy in terms of battles, do you have any examples at this stage?
KB: That's a good question. We're actually, in terms of strict terminology, we're removing the historical battles this time around. You can still fight custom battles, you can create certain scenarios that you want to fight, so you can create a rendition of Waterloo or Trafalgar, then you can go ahead and do that.
But we're at a stage now with Total War with Empire, whereby we feel that the game is historic enough, we don't need to prepare these sorts of maps, these kinds of layouts for you to feel like you're actually experiencing a historic battle. The biggest thing about Total War games is traditionally you got everything accurate at the starting point, so in this instance in 1700, and after that you make history. Certainly now with the new battle map system coming out of the campaign map, each battle is of sufficient quality that it feels historic on itself. Of course, if you want to create custom battles and fight them you still can.
TVG: The turn-based strategy in the last game was deeper than it's ever been; the Catholic church came into play with the Pope, subterfuge was a big element, what sort of things are you doing in this historical era to fill the gap?
KB: I see what you mean. Mark's a bit of an Empire campaign mode expert on this one, but I'll start off by saying that we've slimmed it down, but deepened the number of options. So the number of things you can do is massively expanded but the micro-management and other kinds of fiddly bits that you're required to do those things has been made a lot less in terms of accessibility.
I'll let Mark take that one on.
MS: It's like Kieran says a lot of the stuff that maybe was and were present in previous games perhaps weren't as accessible as they could have been. You're looking at stuff like recruitment, upgrading buildings, now all of that has come out and we've either centralised it and made it available in one central menu for your whole faction or we've pulled it out and added it to the campaign map itself.
So buildings are now upgraded via the campaign map not via the cities, where before in Rome, Medieval, you clicked on the city, if you wanted to upgrade your barracks you had to find it and upgrade it. You don't do that now, the barracks is on the map. That adds a couple of things. Probably the biggest thing you can see at a glance is where your most profitable regions are, so you can see your own and you can see your enemies. If you want to cripple your enemy's trade or their military, you know what region they're getting the most from so you can see where their commercial ports are, so I know that's where I want to attack. Whereas before you had to send a spy in to get an idea of their infrastructure and so on, a lot of that stuff was hidden, whereas now it's out there in front of the player and that makes it more accessible.
No me cabe toda la entrevista, así que os dejo ese trozo. |
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. Pero esta vez a Jack que parece que habla más (cuando lo haga preparaos para lo que pueda soltar
como excusa
(el TWCenter en el cuál CA está representada por dos personas. Ni me han respondido). Pero si me aclaras que deseas que le pregunte concretamente (entendí que quieres que le pregunte qué libros se han leído y qué series o documentales han visto, si es eso...).
.desdeluego estos capullos el arte del asedio no se toman muy enserio.lode obligar al defensor conbatir a campo habierto para evitar destruccion es como minimo discutible porque en general bamos a combatir en inferiodad 
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