Why does noone compete with totalwar

[Swoosh So]

I often wonder why noone competes with the totalwar franchise i mean really most games are just copies of others with different themes so why has noone in 10 years sucessfully copied their structure of game turn based/real time battles. I reckon even a game with the quality of shogun 1 with slightly better graphics could grab a good bit of the market from CA on era alone and strange not to see any fantasy type games that go for it either.

[A Nerd]

I have wondered this too. The only games I can think of that are similar, are mission based and not sandboxie. I prefer conquring the map vs. winning the game fighting one scripted battle after another.

[Beefy187]

Japanese game called the Kessen had similar idea with TW games.
Except it was on play station and the variety of units were less.
It was more of commanding shogun who serves you and watch the kick ass short movie which happened every now and then.

Good game that.

[pevergreen]

Theres a surprising number of games that are trying it.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/24400/

Thats basically Total War in the legend of King Arthur. Has a campaign map, turn based. Has battles which go the same.
Made by Neocore, and all they do now is basically the same thing. They had a crusader one, new one coming out, same thing basically.

Problem is, the battles suck.

Real time version of TW campaign map:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/90100/?snr=1_5_9__13
Thats a really fun game by an indie dev.

Most games just don't combine both elements.

[Cecil XIX]

The original X-com (http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-XCOMUD/x-com-ufo-defence) was rather similar, just with turn-based battles and a real-time campaign map. Also, Magitech Game's Takeda 3 (http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-TAKEDA3/takeda-3) is very similar to Shogun.

[Swoosh So]

Heard about king arthur and had a quick look but any game with like 16 men in a unit can dissapear as far as im concerned.

[pevergreen]

Heard about king arthur and had a quick look but any game with like 16 men in a unit can dissapear as far as im concerned.

The battles are just horrendous. The only thing the game does good is how the campaign map looks. Story is terrible, mechanics are horrible, but the newest game 'looks' ok and its 70% off at the moment:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/42920/

[Ibn-Khaldun]

There is also Imperial Glory.

[Swoosh So]

Doesent look like theres any on the horizon for 2011 had a look at upcoming strategy and couldent see anything.

[gollum]

There has been attempts over the years, all below average as far as i am concerned. Praetorians, Knights of Honour, the aformenioned Imperial Glory, a historical battles simulator "Great Battles of Rome" and a few others iirc. None came even close.

I think that CA got already such a huge jump start on the competition with STW, that by this time that they have accumulated so much experience in doing it and trying different features, the others would really betaking a huge risk to try a few failed attempts in order to (potentially) catch up with them. Hence everyone stays on their turf, unless some miracle happens.

EDIT There was a game with very good tactical battles engine in the American Civil War theme/context, by a very small niche company of 2 people that kept refining their engine/scenarios. Rumor was that it was good for hardcore wargamers and prety realistic.

[Swoosh So]

thing is tho i feel a game even just a little better graphics than shogun 1 could compete multiplayer with the latest totalwar games whos combat engines are not very good or as solid as the old games. They still look terrible zoomed out which is what MP guys play a game that focussed on the zoomed out instead of the zoomed in could be a sucess.

[gollum]

You are most certainly and absolutely right. The two first engines were solid for mp gameplay and STW in particular had the best playbalance imo and by v2.01 MTW the best engine.

The Samurai Wars guys tried to build a community using the best engine and the best playbalance the series had to offer from an mp perspective as far as i am concerned. Can you explain why people did not flood to that effort? If it was succesful, CA could have considered making a move in its multiplayer efforts in that direction.

A lot of factors played out - personal loyalties and sympathies/antipathies no doubt, why to play with another person's idea of balance and also as TosaInu said recently in a post, its difficult to even get all people have the same stats at the lobby at the same time - which causes drops and loss of interest. But fundamentally speaking there was no reason why it shouldn't have worked. But, sadly, it didn't - in a mass scale at least.

There were other such efforts, like the MP mod for M2 by the Celtiberos, which, although accepted to a certain extent, it wasn't universally popular either as far as i understand.

So balance mods seem not the way to go for mp - CA has to make the vanilla game solid and balanced for it. But CA won't do it, be it because it focuses on the SP/history buffs fans that seem to be the core for TW customers these days or because they have technical anti-reasons for it or both.

From an SP perspective, catering to mpers needs is suicide and vice versa in terms of allocating team resources as far as i understand. Once CA got in the trip to put more emphasis on the campaign map with more units, more ancillaries, more roleplaying of characters etc it was all downhill for battlefield playbalance. The TW engine can't support meaningfully more than 14-max20 unit types wih clearly defined gameplay roles, which is the ideal for good playbalance. You can give out special abilities and different units to different factions etc but all this fades out quickly in an mp sense - its hard already to balance the game anaway, and that sort of thing makes it nearly impossible to get the balance right that means playstyles and armies quickly converge instead of recycling continuously without artificial rules and restrictions as they do when balance is about right.

You can make a game like Empire that can sell lots, with it being basically very very average if not outright bad. But Spers and history buffs will by default buy it - even if the TW format did not really reflect well the era of line infantry/artillery/cavalry in the battles historically speaking - TW battles have too few units available in battle and men for that.

If CA wanted to make a good mp game, it should have sticked in the original format ie few unit types and well balanced. From an SP perspective there were unlimited contexts for that; 100years war, the Crusades, Reconquista, Napoleon's campaigns (as it happened) etc. Few opposing factions with few playstyles to balance; it was possible. But if you want to represent 4-5 centuries of medieval warfare, and with the same unit stats for SP and MP, inevitably the game will end up with bad balance.

On the other hand, the more large and inclusive the map the better from an SP commercial perspective; you have people's countries in - that's a major one, everyone wants to play their nation's time of glory or danger etc and also you make it more civilisation like that its a boon for SPers.

[Durango]

There was a game with very good tactical battles engine in the American Civil War theme/context, by a very small niche company of 2 people that kept refining their engine/scenarios. Rumor was that it was good for hardcore wargamers and prety realistic.

Ah yes, the Take Command series, particularly 2nd Manassas. Rumor has it that they're VERY good indeed. Especially in
terms of tactical AI. Have yet to try it though, since it's hard to pull myself away from MTW and STW...


thing is tho i feel a game even just a little better graphics than shogun 1 could compete multiplayer with the latest totalwar games whos combat engines are not very good or as solid as the old games. They still look terrible zoomed out which is what MP guys play a game that focussed on the zoomed out instead of the zoomed in could be a sucess.

Absolutely, the only thing graphics really need to get right is clarity, from a game play perspective - that is the right shape and form
of units so they are clearly identifiable, and terrain that does not draw attention to itself so much. That's one of the reasons for the
competitive success of the FPS game Counterstrike, as it was very "clean" and straightforward to play. The players' models did not
blend in with the surrounding environment and there was very little "clutter" present in the maps. The same style is advantageous
in a TW game IMHO, like in STW or MTW.

All in all, it's a shame no one has managed to compete with Total War. Competition brings out quality.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

Because I guess because of the MP factor of it.

[Nigel]

.. or looking at it from an entirely different (legal) angle : CA may have patented certain aspects of their game which makes it difficult for other companies to simply copy them. I am no expert in patent law, but would not be surprised if it was possible to either patent of copyright some concepts or code, which would be essential for a direct copy of a game like this.

[Meldarion]

It has plenty of competition. Civ series gives you a better experience on the world map than any TW game, whilst games like Age of empires etc, make for better real time battles. TW tries to deliver both, but at the end of the day its pretty weak. Don't get me wrong, I like TW games and all games have their flaws. It's just that TW struggles as being a "jack of all master of none" type game.

[Napoleon The Emperor Of Europe]

I dont agree.

Total War has a format ,which no one can have it,lets have a look,Shogun 2 has a mix of Napoleon into it.The Historical Accuracy is breathtaking,Remeber Sega is a Japanese Company,and Shogun 2 total war is now the most widely searched and demanding game ever.

Hey,the battles are good.

MP gives more fun.

[Galvanized Iron]

There is also Imperial Glory.
Yeah Imperial Glory had better campaign map part than any other Total War since M1TW, but the battles was not very enjoyable due to quirky controls, no fast forward (later addressed in patch) and no unit morale (which is weird since the demo had retreating units). Plus a melêe bug that would make ETW blush, but in multiplayer IG battles could be quite good.

[Kocmoc]

If you look at the Campaign and SP part, than there is a lot of competition, yes.

If you look at the battles or the combination of Campaign & battles, than there isnt much.

Why noone compete with this? Imo its the fact, that TW never had any good Multiplayer numbers. They was always pretty low and today almost every company try to
get into the online market. They want many player playing it online.
TW never could manage it and even with S2 coming out pretty soon, i doubt that we will see really many online player.

Successful online games, such as SC or WC3 has basics, TW had 10 years ago as well. A small amount of units, well balanced with many ways to counter stuff.
One real difference is, that other games have a very good quick learningcurve at start, which TW doesnt have.
TW needs too much time at start, till player did learn the very important basics, most are gone already. It takes just too long to feel some success.

Other companies surely did invest a lot of time to look at this kind of games, especially the online battles and im sure, every company came to the conclusion,
that they are not able to turn this into some online success, thats the reason, why we dont see any competition or TW clone.
The SP part did work always real good, thatswhy we see many games compete in this segment.

We had that many times already, many suggestion was made. If the battles of TW ever will have any real success, than there have to be some heavy changes.
To come up with achivements (which are completely overrated) or skilltrees, doesnt really help, it spice things up and might be a good addition, but it wont bring the masses to the online part of the game.

The first thought should be, how we create a good learningcurve for the player to ensure some success.
My idea, just to bring an example, would be to cut the game in a few parts. I would give new player just a few unitslots, i would cut down the skilltrees and the unit unlocks.
If someone learn with a small amount of units, he will surely learn things a lot quicker, than with many units he/she cant even control at start.
Right now we will have that, with many cheap units, no unlocks, people are spending their money and end with 20 units, which they cant control.

They would already struggle with 5 units, but they would surely learn a lot quicker with just a few.

Thats just an example, there could be a lot more blended out at first and than slowly give them more, instead to bomb people with tons of information...