Total War-- Roman Style?

[Willard]

Anyone have any idea if Total War would be looking to adapt this game to Ancient times?
I think the game would be great to set in the time period of 500 BC-500 AD.
You could have various empires such as the Persians, Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, etc. Maybe a little map expansion from its present state would be required, but all in all it would be a cool concept. I would love to have Hannibal salting the earth in Italy or using the Spartans to fight the Persians at Thermopylae. If anyone has heard anything, I would appreciate your input.
Thanks!

[Nelson]

There is nothing going on that we know about. Some of us have clamored for Rome: Total War for years. You're right. It would be great.

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COGITOERGOVINCO

[Maelstrom]

Would this look very different to Medieval though?

Similar types of units on the whole, with even more infantry and perhaps the odd elephant...

This might be anathema to people in these forums, but I would quite like to see a fantasy version - I would love to fight the battle of Helm's deep....

[ToranagaSama]

click, type R-0-M-A-N, click
http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/ubb/search.cgi?action=intro

[G0THIC-Lobster]

I want 1 base on the bc where there are assyrians and friends

[Daveybaby]

I dunno, Roman total war would probably be a bit one sided, dont you think?

I really like the idea of Fantasy Total War as well. Basically i want Master of Magic II with the Total War engine for combat. Drooooool....

[Sainika]

I dream of total war engine in ancient time period. Those Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, Persians, Skifs and Celts, Egyptians etc.
There are a lot of projects based on ancient times, but they are much more reserved than even MTW.
And I won't buy fantasy game based on MTW.

[Irish Rover]

The decision in depicting ancient battles would be whether to restrict an army to the limited tactics it knew and employed. Alexander was the exception. The choice would be historical and reletively boring or "fantasy history" and more intricate.

[Rosacrux]

another vote for ancient TW here

[Gringoleader]

I'd like to see Colonial Total War. Carry the timeline up as far as maybe 1500-1900 and extend the map to cover the whole world. You'd also need a real time ship combat interface, but I think that's doable.

The problem with ancient total war is the Romans would have a pisseasy time of it. Also there is no technology tree to speak of, the Roman legions adapted over the years but the rest of the world made no real developments militarily. I suppose the shift from battle chariots to cavalry would be in there, but I can't see that it would be enough to base an entire tech tree on.

Some sort of fantasy total war could be good but it would have to be very well put together. Personally the thought of having to piddle about with individual wizards and spells as in warcraft does my head in. It would have to be done in a belieable way with no cheesy super characters.

[Pellinor]

As far as fantasy goes, there are lots of flavours. I wouldn't particularly like to see the Warhammer/Warcraft style stereotyped fantasy (Orcs are green and stupid and like klanky stuf wiv spikz on, etc), partly because I don't like the world but largely because it's been done in other franchises.

There are lots of other options available. Fantasy doesn't necessarily require fireball-type magic dominating. You could instead just have different races with different physical characteristics and styles, lots of monsters, and maybe some limited magic perhaps even limiting it to strategic effects.

Lord of the Rings has been cited a lot. I could see that as being such a game - how often is magic used tactically in Lord of the Rings or the Silmarillion? We have some generic fear-causing darkness ("enemy morale -2 for this turn"?), some explosions at Helm's Deep (siege engines?), the odd flaming arrow or pinecone, and mithril mail/glowy swords (attack +2, defence +3). None of these need dominate the actual tactical situation, but you could have a lot of flavour added to the game.

Another style would be HOMM-style: lots of different creatures, using mainly physical attacks. Flight would add a whole new dimension to combat - the rear ranks of a spear formation might be essential to protect it from aerial assault.

Are people who say "I wouldn't buy Fantasy:Total War" really just saying "I don't want a Warcraft clone"?

[amrcg]

Quote Originally posted by Willard:
Anyone have any idea if Total War would be looking to adapt this game to Ancient times?
I think the game would be great to set in the time period of 500 BC-500 AD.
You could have various empires such as the Persians, Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, etc. Maybe a little map expansion from its present state would be required, but all in all it would be a cool concept. I would love to have Hannibal salting the earth in Italy or using the Spartans to fight the Persians at Thermopylae. If anyone has heard anything, I would appreciate your input.
Thanks![/QUOTE]

mmm... It would have to be different. Republican and Imperial Roman tactics, for example, were based on the relief of lines, not unit-by-unit. There were pre-arranged maneuvres for this. So I think that the tactical options of ATW would have to differ from nation to nation, otherwise we would end up with fake-ancient-total-war-for-kids.

Cheers,
Antonio

[Sainika]

Quote Originally posted by Pellinor:


Are people who say "I wouldn't buy Fantasy:Total War" really just saying "I don't want a Warcraft clone"?[/QUOTE]

I don't like fantasy oriented games because of their unbalanced combat and mythical creatures. I played several fantasy games but I didn't enjoyed them for a long time. Yes it is interesting for a few hours but after some playing I'm getting bored. For example, Disciples II. I liked it for one week until I developed high-level heroe who could kill the whole enemy's army alone. I attacked tons of monsters without any care about my heroe cause I knew definitely that he will survive in any case. Or even if he was dead, always there was a possibility to revive him.
Fantasy games suppose the essense of magic and wizards. Without them it is not a fantasy game any more - just another RTS with strange units but common strategy and warfare.
And to those who think that no usual tech tree is available for ancient time. That's not true. During years of wars and peace weapon was developing constantly. Varios types of bows appeared, sword combat technique perfectioned, cavalry armour and weapon were under development too. For instance, first types of crossbows appeared in ancient China, the idea of cavalry plated with heavy armour became wide spread in Persia long before Byzantine began to use it (as Kataphractoi). Of course the development lasted longer than in Medieval, but it was constant process.

[maroule]

mithrandir has done some work on the fantsay version

I think the only viable one would exclude magic effects, as was said rightly here. It indeed could be based on Tolkien, and more the Silmarilion that LOTR (the second age in particular). Phalanxes of elder elves would be fun, and some generals would make me salivate (Turin Turambar, to name only one).

[Del]

To have a tech tree you don't so much need technological advance, so much as a diversity of unit types (see Shogun - Total War.. the only actual advance being gunpowder).

There were many very significant advances in artillery and engineering between 500BCE and 400CE, as well as two revolutions in infantry (Phalanx and Legion) and many incremental changes and improvements to the various styles that existed. This epoch saw the decisive phasing out of War Chariots, the rise and the fall of War Elephants, and significant shifts in the fighting style of all involved cultures.

That's plenty of techological advancement for me, what about you? I guess the question is how long a period do you want. You'd have to start back in at least 400 or 300 BCE to give everyone a fair chance, and continue I guess until the turn of the era (0) to give a good span..

Within that you'd have pretty much all of the technological advances I mentioned earlier.

Come to think of it, you'd probably want to start out a little later, after the death of Alexander, just to get rid of that massive "what if?". Following through to the birth of Jesus would be enough, but you could even go on 200 years past that.

Del

[This message has been edited by Del (edited 10-29-2002).]

[The Yogi]

I wouldn't want to miss the late roman period. I mean, the Hordes of Attila, Gothic cavalry at Adrianople, Aetius, Theoderik, Belisarius....

To much would be lost by ending in 200 AD. Keep it up until 600 AD or so, methinks.

[sodoff]

Perhaps a Mechwarrior-type-thing. Large formations of mechwarriors, slogging it out. Explosions, missiles flying, hardy hand-to-hand Mechs tearing limbs off etc.

Ancient Greece would also be pretty cool. Using the period of the early cities, competing for the dominant posisiton as the spartans and athenians achieved.

The period 1600 until 1850 would be my tip for the top here. Prerequisites would be : Larger units(2000 - 5000 men), higher scale battle-maps. An abstacted colonial section (I feel that the control of european real-estate should be the goal, the control of colonies reduced to a means to an end). I would REALLY like to re-fight the battle of Waterloo and other. I don't think that the sheer scale would get in the way here. The largest engagements in the later period involved maybe 150.000 combatants. Thus, using my suggestion for unit size, maximum troops on a battlefirld would be 80.000 to 1 side. The question is then: how important is it to SEE every individual that the unit represents? If you look at games like Sid Meiers Gettysburg and Antietam (the reasons why I even looked at Shogun twice!) I don't think my idea is too far fetched.

[solypsist]

already several variations of Total War- XXXX in threads in the OT.
this one moved to OT