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Total War: Rome II annouced

    • 952 posts
    July 4, 2012 2:43 PM EDT

    Yes yes yes, the total war game that everyone wanted for about 10 years now is finally coming. After the release of Shogun 2 people have filled the internet with wishes that they will make this game and The Creative Assembly has given their answer. Seeing the trailer it seems to me we are going to get more politics and usage of agents, together with powerstruggles between important persons who belong to the same nation. More war, more death, more chaos. That's what this trailer seems to show.

    What are your thougts about this game, will you buy it? I will, I'm sure of that.

    I also looked a bit more into this game and found out it will be quite impressive what they are trying to achieve with their new engine, I hope for them and for us it will turn out like they planned.

    Here are 4 screenshots they released.

    Information so far:

    • Shogun 2 was set in narrow geographical areas, with limited sets of units - a comparatively small scale to what's being intended with Rome II. It was designed with a focus on game systems, such as engine polishing and improvements to unit pathing.
    • With that in place, Rome II is going big - it's bigger than Rome 1 in geographical scale.
    • The game's key design vision is in taking players from a macro to micro scale, such as jumping from a campaign map to a single unit.
    • Despite that focus, Rome II is still attempting to make its macro scale bigger - we're guessing the senate will play a large part of that, but Creative Assembly won't say just yet.
    • As you rise through the ranks, your success will attract less-than-favourable responses from some of your friends. You will almost definitely get betrayed. There's "more human-level drama on the campaign map" in Rome II.
    • The bigger campaign map has "hundreds" of regions to move your units around, but the game buckets them into provinces to make management easier. The idea is to have you thinking about armies and legions rather than fiddling around with individual units.
    • Ultimately, the game will allow you to decide whether to favour the republic or become Rome's dictator.
    • The game's cameras have been redesigned. You can now lock the camera to single units. In this mode it functions like a sort of documentary cam, shaking while the unit walks – it's "a soldier's eye view" according to Creative Assembly.
    • The demonstration takes place with a scenario set during the Third Punic War, which took place during 149BC to 146BC. The scenario here is the Siege of Carthage.
    • Rome II: Total War features a new graphics engine, which features particle and deferred lighting.
    • The game can now combine naval and land battles into the same conflict, including naval invasions: in this demo a Roman ship lands on the coast of Carthage.
    • Naval units now have more than one ship per unit.
    • Though expected, we see catapults and ballistae being put to good use.
    • The demo has a big focus on Roman siege towers, and the snap-to unit camera takes the view of the game inside the siege tower itself.
    • Conflicts take place over much bigger environments - much of Carthage has been recreated in the demo. To accommodate this extra scale, the game now features a top-down tactical map.
    • There are multiple ways to capture cities. Walls can be reduced to rubble after they've sustained enough damage, for instance. It's designed to create cat-and-mouse gameplay: "You're not just sitting in the plaza once the walls are breached trying to defend that one area"
    • There's a real oomph when units engage, with walls of shields colliding.
    • The new graphics engine can show some impressive fidelity for a game of this scale. We can clearly see that Cathage's walls have graffiti.
    • Buildings crumble in the background as Carthage deploys its war elephants and the demo ends.
    • The unit camera has been designed so the game feels like it's "almost Saving Private Ryan at the beaches".
    • Each unit has its own facial animations, and leaders bark out a stream of orders throughout. each confrontation.
    • Units react to things, such as their colleagues being slaughtered - the idea is that these aren't idenikit clone armies anymore.
    • The map he was playing was a scenario about the conquest of Carthage.
    • Naval warfare and land warfare seems to be combinable in this sense.
    • Ships can provide covering fire with their ballistas and catapults
    • The walls are collapsing at different parts (you can also conquer the walls traditionally).
    • The sheer number of ships and legionnaires is far beyond the numbers of previous games.
    • The battle map is larger than Shogun 2
    • New Voices
    • As they are taking the tower, one officer screams toward his men, "For the honor of Rome!"
    • You will also see soldiers that will react to the death of one of their comrades
    • Troop speed and movements seem faster
    • New feature: by hitting tab, you get a 2D overview of the battlefield, displaying troops with colored symbols (much more detailed than the current radar map); you can't give orders in this mode, however
    • The development team is currently pondering an ambush system specifically for siege battles. Certain troop types could blockade a street or hide on a side street and then fall into the back of the attackers.
    • You can no longer simply retreat to the central plaza as a defender, but there will be several capture points within a city.
    • CA is planning on giving (all or some?) battles scripted content to make each battle feel different.
    • There will be more variation in the battlefields than ever before in a TW-game.
    • CA said you'll be able to follow Romes growth from the beginning until the end of the empire, thus giving us some perspective in when the game will take place.
    • CA will put a great effort in depicting the variation in each and every culture of the different factions and giving each factions a depth. And giving each faction an army and tactic specific for these different factions.
    • Rome 2 is probably gonna field the greatest number of different units than in any other TW-game.
    • Ca mentions that spartas general is going the be on foot, not on horse. If you can play as Spartans there is a good chance that the greek city states will be individual factions and not a united one like in Rome 1.
    • The diplomacy is going to get a great buff.
    • It has been said that there will be about 50 factions in ROME II. Not entirely confirmed.

    First gameplay footage added:

    Longer more detailed siege of Carthage trailer added:

    Very cinematic indeed. But that's the path their graphics will take, from now on they want to create games with a cinematic visual style instead of realistic. In my opinion this succeeded very well.

    Some more explanation about the game and where it stands now:

    And if this trailer is still with Alpha gameplay I can't wait to see the complete game or even the Beta gameplay.

    And ofcourse the factions reveal page they started recently:

    http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Factions

    They are probarly the playable factions so not all of them so far but each faction will have certain family trees for example that you play which give you some variety within each faction.

  • July 4, 2012 3:00 PM EDT

    First thing I must say:

    Anyone else see Mason 

    I'll probably get it.

    • 952 posts
    July 4, 2012 3:03 PM EDT

    I noticed him too, I had some sort of Skyrim Romeception or Skyrimception moment, with those roman soldiers and that dog. Just like Skyrim, hell, maybe that's how they got the inspiration for that scene, it might as well have been Helgen with a different outcome.

    • 739 posts
    July 4, 2012 3:12 PM EDT

    Am i the guy rutting that ginger?

    • 739 posts
    July 4, 2012 3:13 PM EDT

    -Barks-

    Oh i see...

    • 952 posts
    July 4, 2012 5:15 PM EDT

    I just added the 2 screenshots they released, notice the elephants in the distance on that plaza, that will maybe give you an idea of what period this game takes place.

    • 162 posts
    July 4, 2012 5:25 PM EDT

    During the Roman times?

    • 952 posts
    July 4, 2012 5:28 PM EDT

    Yes, thank you captain obvious, but I was talking about a more specific period, probarly one that everybody knows.

    • 342 posts
    July 4, 2012 8:47 PM EDT

    it just looks like an episode of Spartacus to me :P

    • 162 posts
    July 5, 2012 2:58 AM EDT

    If you want a serious answer I would say during the Punic war times, or maybe during the Macedonian wars or the Civil war between Julius Ceasar and Gnaeus Pompeius, in short the time of the mid- & late Roman republic. After that Elephants weren't actually used anymore in Roman wars.

    My son has "Rome Total war" but I don't really like it. After he had installed a mod called "Europa Barbarus" or something like that, which would made the game historical accurate, I've played it a short while. I found it painstaking slow and a bit dull, rather played "Civilisation". That mod itself was a history lesson on its own though, with the vast amount of historical facts and information it contained.

    • 952 posts
    July 5, 2012 4:45 AM EDT

    I never played the original Rome Total War, that's why I'm so happy with Rome II, now I get a chance of playing it as well, just a better, newer version of it.

    But anyway, I think it will be the Punic and Macedonian wars, since these took place roughly around the same period. I even think I read somewhere that they included the battle against Hannibal but I'm not too sure about that.

    • 952 posts
    July 5, 2012 4:46 AM EDT

    With the things their new engine is going to have implemented, I can say it wil look much better than spartacus, and much more real too.

    • 162 posts
    July 5, 2012 4:57 AM EDT

    Wasn't that a RTW mod too?

    Btw, the Spartacus uprise took place in the Republic times, so who knows he'll be there also.

    • 82 posts
    July 5, 2012 8:59 AM EDT

    Oh man I must have a new gaming computer for this game.  My favorite strategy series of all time. 

    • 952 posts
    July 5, 2012 10:58 AM EDT

    Well, let me quote something from a document they made.

    " Completely scalable experience, with performance optimised for your PC or laptop. Witness the awesome scale of Total War: Rome II, no matter what your spec."

    • 377 posts
    July 5, 2012 5:46 PM EDT

    Even though I am very very happy for this, I am still disappointed that it won't be a World War Total War.

    So sometime in 2013. Now the torture begins.

    • 952 posts
    July 5, 2012 6:19 PM EDT

    I hoped that they would make a Total War: WWI for a while too, but then I realized that I wanted a Rome II more. WWI was mainly trench warfare, so it would be pretty boring. If they would decide to make game around the world wars, I'd prefer they just make a Total War: Bismarck