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The Creative Assembly have just announced that they’ll be releasing a huge standalone expansion for Total War: Shogun 2 called Fall of the Samurai. It will be set in the period leading up to the Boshin War, in which European and American forces introduce a new wave of military technology that threatens to wipe out the Samurai.
You can read more HERE.
EDIT: link to the official totalwar site.
Awesome, just awesome. I want this now.
Ships to be able to bombard land based stuff =D Torpedoes =D Gatling guns \o/
The initial wording of the announcement made me frown a wee bit, yet, after reading the article and despite some mental caveats about the possibility for this to go very wrong unless it will be highly polished, I must say:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J6-3l3hCm0
I'm wary about the first person modes. But Im enthusiastic about the off map bombardments that you can call in. I think they are paving the way for a WW game in the future. Maybe not the next big release, but sometime soonish.
What is this first person mode you speak of?
Looks interesting otherwise!
Cool! this like unexpected moove by CA
http://www.totalwar.com/shogun2/fall-of-the-samurai/Quote:
Originally Posted by JuJuBee
Quote:
Originally Posted by website linkd above
is 1st person mode really new? i toggle into it in S2 already by accident now and again...
Well, as long as it is an option and not required I guess the 1st person thingie wouldn't be too bad. Good for some I guess.
Yep, not terribly worried about that, I'm much more concerned about how CA is going to balance game play. Last time they introduced firearms in the form of matchlocks we had the main TW forums lit up with OP postings. Can you imagine what happens when gatling guns show up mowing down entire armies?
This sounds really nice. Wonder how they will make it all balanced though, but I'm already looking forward to fight with 'ancient' Samurai armies against modern riflemen!
I'm completely disappointed. ~:(
If someone asked me what I don't want to see in a Shogun expansion, that's basically a description of FotS. The moment guns become the common weapon I lose interest in military history and in any gameplay based around it. After the end of the Sengoku my interest in Japanese history rapidly wanes; I cease to enjoy European history around 100 years before the Sengoku begins. Additionally, the advertised elements of gameplay are geared towards increasing aspects I dislike, or introducing new stuff I don't care about or outright do not want.
Hmm, the issues I was alluding to in my initial post, hinting at the necessity for extensive polishing of such features, are potentially even larger.Quote:
Originally Posted by easytarget
Surely, you’d think first that, no matter the casualties, with the speed infantry enjoys in Shogun 2, negating a Gatling is still only a matter of choosing the right meatshield, because a Gatling can only be used prior to the clash of the battlelines.
Yet then you’re left worrying about the adversary’s meatshield. Because it is a game, so the above rule does not really stand, does it? Your meatshields can be spent against equally inexpensive troops, and then what stops anyone from parrying an irresistible charge from your most veteran elite units with their own meatshield while mowing the whole melee down with Gatlings? Sure, that unfortunate meatshield will have its moral shattered fast enough, but that's not enough of a penalty for breaking an otherwise devastating charge. The rules against friendly fire must be draconic, with heavy battlefield-wide morale penalties, else this will be awful. And of course, the cheap fix for MP is a unit limit – hopefully they won’t employ it, this game is very limited creatively as is since the last plethora of MP rules came out.
EDIT: Since frog made her post while I was writing mine. Brief edit:
Not having played Empire or Napoleon and yet being reluctant to try them after the advances S2 had made, battlefield-wise, I was not unpleasantly surprised to read about FotS, though it is placed in really the very last quarter century a Total War game should ever be placed in and, while this might blend in nicely, I do hope it is not an exercise for an American Civil (total) War title.
I agree, that is pretty much the furthest you can go back with the sort of gameplay we have right now. I must admit, I only briefly read over the article the first time I read it and after reading it carefully, I do not like the direction this is going in.
I was talking to a friend about what a TW game would look like if it were based in modern times and came to the conclusion, that except for maybe tank battles, you could get rid of 3D battles entirely, unless the game becomes totally unrealistic.
To come back to the original discussion, I am somewhat afraid, the campaign map will be too small for that kind of warfare. I liked it the way it was in ETW (though a PITA to use sometimes, especially without a stupid tutorial =S ) but I sometimes wonder what was so bad about everything being centered around cities.
Really everything that ever happens right now is the AI just taking the piss by sending single units around places to burn some farms and then die as soon as they as much as see your castle walls.
Sorry if i misunderstand...
but if you are playing with the latest version of TW:S2, you will notice that your men wont shoot through "meat shields" of your own troops, you put between you and the enemy. Not keeping your fields of fire clear just stops your men firing unless they have a clear shot.
Sending expendable troops in to a fight first, to stop your good troops being shot at by the enemy, is a valid tactic, even if it does mean you probably end up dealing with issues of routing.
Wouldn't worry about misunderstanding, any input you give us is likely to be most helpful.
Hmm, I certainly do have the latest version, yet I’ve been struggling to find the time to finish my second RotS campaign for a month now, so perhaps you chaps sneaked some MP changes past me?
Yet, lets make sure we’re on the same page here; I’ll try to use the most clear terms.
To my knowledge, individual matchlock infantrymen only shoot towards an enemy individual if they have, as you wrote as well, a clear field of fire.
Then, accuracy determines the trajectory of the bullet and, also taking into account the last millisecond changes in positioning, friendly fire is determined.
Are you saying an entire Gatling unit will behave like an individual matchlock infantryman and, when confronted with a close-combat melee, it will basically fire in bursts, at best?
And in this situation, depending on the degree of interpenetration of the battle lines, wouldn’t it still be possible to wreak absolute havoc by using a well spread meatshield?
Though of course, it is a valid tactic. That does not wave off balance problems however. And I hope by writing this I do not seem a Cassandra looking to make some silly ominous prophecy, because I do think all these problems can be solved pre-release, as I wrote previously.
A little off topic, but I wonder if anyone ever did this in history? I remember seeing a mini-series about a French landing in Ireland (probably around the Napoleonic period) where the French general got the Irish rabble (with pitchforks etc) to march in front of his musket armed men to soak the redcoat volleys. But I am not sure how accurate it was and, as the TV series showed, would probably not do much to endear the Irish to the French.Quote:
Originally Posted by Intrepid Sidekick
Quite aside from the require level of ruthlessness by the commanding general, I don't think this tactic would work so well in reality as it often does in a computer game. I suspect such frontal assaults are often "morale contests" and there's a reluctance to close when the defenders hold and maintain their fire. Plus formations are likely to get over-crowded, risking panic, loss of cohesion and an inability to maneouvre, as well as being wonderfully rich targets for artillery. I think the original STW/MTW had some kind of penalty for formations being too crowded.
Crowded formations, in all TW games I can remember, would take more casulties from missile fire. Besides that, a tightly packed group of units that takes a strong morale hit spreads a rout very fast.
I expect it will be very good, but even if it isn't, I'll be buying. I am Creative Assembly's catamite.
Again a little off topic, but I just had to chime in on those people here and on the other boards getting really excited about this expansion paving the way for a WW1 based game. I just can't for the life of me understand why anyone would want a totalwar game based on trench warfare. I really hope they don't go that direction; I couldn't imagine anything more disastrous for the series.
It's probably going to be a great expansion if you are at all interested in pre-modern warfare. Lots of the new features tie into that and improve on what the two gunpowder games offered, and based on the Shogun 2 and RotS it's fair to say that CA have learned a lot from what went wrong in the past. A lot of the announced aspects are things people have been requesting for years now. If absolutely nothing else it's going to be unusual.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nowake
It's only disappointing if you have similar tastes to me. I really struggle to enjoy anything that's set in post-gunpowder world history, it's like everything becomes incredibly boring overnight, whether military history, social history, politics, fashion, technology - or gameplay. Aside from the unappealing theme, it's hard to get excited about being able to bombard or do coastal assaults when you hate big guns and manually controlling naval battles, or about controlling gatling guns in first person when your interest is purely in the wider battlefield via the zoomed out view. I'll see what people say about it once it's out and maybe give it a try if it sounds like it has enough of the core S2 gameplay to make the pre-modern stuff tolerable.
:froggy sits forlornly in the corner, wishing for a Mongol Invasion or similar ...:
This will definitely be a challenge for CA, but I for one am not particularly looking forward to it. It's not my cup of tea.
Nevertheless, I am looking forward to see how it plays, I will be buying the DLC pack.
I think its better to wait and see what this dlc has in store. In the era this takes place when the shinsengumi was idolized, well romanticized; a bunch of wolves of mibu fighting to the very end still clinging onto their swords and samurai spirit.Quote:
Originally Posted by frogbeastegg
Will this be DLC for Shogun2? It sounds like FotS is to Shogun2 what Napoleon is to E:TW.
This (surprising) period sounds good to me. I didn't think CA could find a way to get mid to late 19th century warfare to make sense on a small scale. This could be it. And if they can get the naval to work well, they could do a lot with the Russo-Japanese War and the Spanish-American War. I like the naval battles in TW so far and am looking forward ironclads. I want to see ancient naval warfare, too.
As for the first person perspective, I'd like to see them take it to naval gunnery. It would be fun to manage the muzzle loaders and breach loaders of this period, not to mention the quick firers and early torpedos.
frog
Hmm, if I remember one of your (mild) rants a while back, I am pretty certain we see eye to eye.
At least, I very much prefer the titles that focus on a small period of time (a century at most). The way Medieval used to traverse four centuries of European history set the game for failure in my opinion, as the eventual tech de-synchronisation between different kingdoms would screw every hope of a consistent world.
And in view of that, I’ll allow myself a bit of off topic as well and write that, in my opinion, the perfect European total war would be situated in the XIIth century. The Mediterranean commercial rebirth with the Norman kingdom of Sicily at its centre, the actual crusades and the kingdoms they spawned at the height of their power, such as it was, the last great Holy Roman Emperors, Henri the 2nd and the Capetian kings which prepared France for the victory of Bouvines, the last whiff of Byzantine splendour and the Balkan kingdoms at their most vibrant. You can even squeeze in the Mongol invasions with a bit of alternative history in there. Basically, the one true century of Medieval Europe, the limited timeframe allowing for solid, well-anchored gameplay.
Would also love a 1150-1250 Mongol-themed title or anything Chinese below 1000 but the chances of that are so slim sigh.
frog & Nelson
Now that we got that out of the way, even in these circumstances I believe FotS might prove a small gem as long as it is a one-time only stray. Japan in the period is such a perfect theatre to put on a contrasting display between the neat savagery of the modern tech and the last hurrah of the ancient ferocity of the old ways.
What Total War cannot due is to properly replicate the state apparatus and dynamics past the 18th. Anything beyond it must be so overly simplified that it becomes silly. Yet here it might work, because the pre-modern tech is delivered to a basically feudal social structure; realism is thus saved to a large degree.
Moreover, its railroads are being built “as we speak” so to say, thus the player is able to accurately, from a historical point of view, develop an infrastructure to its liking; the clash between the very latest firearms and nostalgia for steel blades feels real; the navy and artillery were being built by Japanese warlords from scratch, just as the player will have to build them as well; it’s a pre-modern expansion and yet, there will still be genuine melees. And of course, the game will also benefit from the historically accurate portrayal of a few European regiments and what not, you know this series’ fandom is crawling with odd-balls who like to collect pedantically painted soldier figurines and such, so it will probably be quite profitable for CA as well.
So I can only welcome it with an open mind.
Sorry I cant go in to details but lets just say there is loads more juicy stuff to come that will keep all sorts of folks happy. For example: there is something TW related happening later today that might get people excited.
:2thumbsup::shocked2::balloon:
I've read some of the history of this period. Two or three books worth. Then I decided I'd gathered a basic enough awareness of what happened that I could stick to the periods I enjoy, and now I put my Japanese history books down shortly before contact with the Western world is re-established. The politics, social change, events and so on aren't of the type I find interesting to read about, whereas the Sengoku and earlier periods are filled with material I really enjoy. I know some people find the opposite, and don't find Japanese history engaging until the country is starting to modernise. Some people enjoy all of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Braver Pleinair
On many things, I think so.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nowake
This would be a case of our arriving at same place for different reasons. In those old games I'm less concerned about the tech gap than about the redundancy it introduces into the game. The wallpaper catalogue of units effect, where there's a vast array of units which all do the same job but with minor stat differences. I also dislike the management busywork of needing to scrap and replace armies each time I achieve a tech 'level up' and unlock the next incrementally improved unit. For tech disparities to have become a problem I'll already have had to labour on through many hours of those two issues, so chances are I've already abandoned my game. In speculative principle, a wide tech gap would be a problem in most TW games but it could work under the right circumstances. FotS may pull it off.Quote:
At least, I very much prefer the titles that focus on a small period of time (a century at most). The way Medieval used to traverse four centuries of European history set the game for failure in my opinion, as the eventual tech de-synchronisation between different kingdoms would screw every hope of a consistent world.
I don't disagree with anything you've said. It's going to be a different, unusual gaming experience. There's reason to expect a good game and for a lot of people it's doing great things with its gameplay. It's just not my cup of tea; the starting point is already placed in historical territory I find boring, and whether I am using or fighting against the new technology it's still present and a core part of the game. I don't like the settings for ETW or NTW either and, all other problems aside, find them fundamentally tedious.
Agreed. For that you need a game like Paradox's Victoria. Those two games work because they focus on economics, politics, technological change, and the expression of specific concepts like colonialism, all within a set 100ish year long period. Warfare is abstracted into a very light presence. Vicky is notable for being one of very, very few strategy games I like with a post 1500AD setting. Well, I suppose it's more a case of appreciate from afar and occasionally dabble with.Quote:
What Total War cannot due is to properly replicate the state apparatus and dynamics past the 18th. Anything beyond it must be so overly simplified that it becomes silly.
Does that mean there will still be material for the Sengoku and RotS parts of Shogun 2? I do hope so; I'm planning to start a new campaign soon. Love those two campaigns.Quote:
Originally Posted by Intrepid Sidekick
Hi Nowake
Just an update to our conversation about "meat shields".
I'm sorry but when we work on stuff here at CA towers we often see it months before you do and as a result we get a little confused about when it is released in to the wild.
Just so you know we have implemented some changes, in todays patch, to friendly fire and los that will change tactics a bit, especially for the multiplayer crowd and people defending castles. Try it out. :)
Intrepid Sidekick
So, if you can answer this \/Quote:
Originally Posted by Intrepid Sidekick
Is this going to be like a whole new game where we are going to have to drop another $40-$60 (I can't remember how much NTW cost on its release), or is it going to be like RoTS where it was $15-$20 (Again I don't know its release price)Quote:
Originally Posted by Nelson
If you can't answer, no worries.