A Modern Total War? (Discussion, Oppinions)

[Sir Beane]

The feasability and appeal of a Total War game set in the modern era (1900 onwards) has been a topic I've seen crop up a lot recently on the forum, so I though we should have a thread to discuss, plus it kills time until Empire is released. I'm posting it here because it ties in with Empire being a more modern period, and because it might become an issue for an expansion to Empire.

Recently in a Eurogamer TV interview a member of CA stated a game set over the two World Wars would be an interesting period for a Total War game. This seems to indicate CA are atleast considering it, which makes it a possible candidate for the next game. I'd like to see peoples oppinions on whether it's a good idea or not.

Personally I think not. For me Total War is about massed ranks of men, fighting in large groups. Melee has to be present and important.

A modern Total War game would have to involve to some degree: trench warfare, tanks, armored vehicles, artillery with ranges of miles or more, air combat, bombing, the holocaust, combat on a much smaller scale (squads fighting in urban conditions) and a much larger scale (tank battles, gigantic battles like the Somme) as well as long range missiles, and nuclear weapons.

Personally I don't think any of that really fits in with what I think of as a Total War game. Total War is unique in it's blend of history, grand strategy and visceral close up melee battles. World War strategy games are not unique at all.

But this is just one fan's opinion, so what do the rest of you think? Let CA know how you feel.

[Megas Methuselah]

No. Aircraft and long-range artillery wouldn't work. Maybe up until 1899 at the latest, but no more.

I love this time-era, I love WW2, but it just wouldn't work with the Total War engine.

[Sir Beane]

No. Aircraft and long-range artillery wouldn't work. Maybe up until 1899 at the latest, but no more.

I love this time-era, I love WW2, but it just wouldn't work with the Total War engine.

I'm impressed with the speed of your reply Methuselah!

To make it clear I to am interested in both World Wars, and by no means do I dislike the period in question. However I just don't think it's suitable Total War material.

My ideal cut-off date would be about 1870, just before modern warfare tactics really caught on.

[Mailman653]

I'd love to see WWI, but I think the spirit of TW has always been formations of soldiers clashing together and bringing down the walls of a fort or castle.

Imagine controlling whole regiments in various formations in previous TW titles, and then only controlling squads and platoons because what a modern TW will end up becoming is just that, whole units spiting up all over the place, and trying to take positions at various landmarks.

I don't know if I explained that properly, but I just don't see how a modern setting can work with TW style of play without drastically changing it.

[caravel]

Imagine controlling whole regiments in various formations in previous TW titles, and then only controlling squads and platoons because what a modern TW will end up becoming is just that, whole units spiting up all over the place, and trying to take positions at various landmarks.

I don't know if I explained that properly, but I just don't see how a modern setting can work with TW style of play without drastically changing it.

This says it all. TW is based on rectangular units marching in formation onto a small scale battlefield. Modern warfare is quite obviously nothing like this and there is no realistic way of getting TW battles to work in this fashion.

[General SupaCrunk]

I would vote for never! If i could vote!

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Yup, wrong engine for the subject IMHO. Total War has always been dense formations hacking, stabbing and shooting at other dense formations. Modern warfare has completely different requirements. I'm still waiting with trepidation how light 18th century infantry will function. 20th century rifleman and their completely different way of functioning on a modern battlefield doesn't bear thinking about.

If you want modern warfare I can heartily recommend the Combat Mission series.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

I forgot to mention penetration. Any WWI and beyond game requires you model armour and the penetration thereof. That'll be whole new nightmare for CA. They could model it if they wanted to, but I hope CA stick with what they are good at.

[Owen Glyndwr]

I would say no. By that time, wars were faught on such a grand scale, with wide battle lines and so many troops, that it would probably come out as something similar to Civilization 4. By that point, wars were more about logistics, timing, and production than singular battles. Most strategies were general directions (i.e. We'll move our 3rd Panzer division through Belgium and cut a swath straight to Paris), rather than specific battle strategies such as those of Hannibal and Henry V (we'll meet the enemy on this battlefield and decisively defeat the majority of the army and have the entire west open to our legions). Nevermind dealing with planes, bombing, trench warfare, and finding a way to put hundreds of thousands to millions (rather than ten-thousand max) troops on a single battlefield, I think if you even start to consider Modern Warfare (By modern we mean WWI and II right? Because I wouldn't even start to think about how Vietnam or Counter: Terrorist type games would work) from a gameplay standpoint, it just wouldn't be the type of TW game we've been seeing for the last 10+ years.

-Speaking of which, totally unrelated, when did STW and MTW come out?

[darrin42]

How could someone vote no lol. 1900 onwards total war would be sheer brilliance. We have seen enough of the past, their is no reason why the games should not modernise. And dont give me the ''Their is no Units or possitioning of troops in that era'' because its just not true! And total war could adopt modern warfare techniques into the game with a bit of tweaking. I think it would be a great thing to look towards after Empire.

[Sir Beane]

How could someone vote no lol. 1900 onwards total war would be sheer brilliance. We have seen enough of the past, their is no reason why the games should not modernise. And dont give me the ''Their is no Units or possitioning of troops in that era'' because its just not true! And total war could adopt modern warfare techniques into the game with a bit of tweaking. I think it would be a great thing to look towards after Empire.

I think that if you reda through the thread there are several better arguments against the idea than the one you mentioned. And from my perspective and apparently that of atleast 35 other members there are plenty of reasons why the game shouldn't try to go further than 1900, and definitely no further than WW1.

And I have to argue that it IS more or less true that there are no units or positioning of troops in the traditional Total War style. Modern sodiers don't march in columns and blocks. They move in small squads, staying behind cover and mostly acting independantly from other groups.

For instance in WW1 a typical battle strategy would probably consist of "Right, I'll set my men up in this trench here, these guys in this trench here, some artillery here. The enemy are in that trench there. Right, you fire on them, you fire on them and... GO! Twenty minutes later, a few on each side have died, some people have attempted to cross no-mans land and been cut down by snipers or mines, and nothing is happening except the slow death of your men from trench foot and malnutrition. Of course that's if CA wanted to actually stay true to the period, for all I know everyone else is imagining a completely different idea of WW1 than the one I have.

[PBI]

How do you make it fun for the player?

I'm not saying you can't. And I'm not saying that's all there is to WW1, but I would appreciate some input from the people who are championing a WW1 game. I would love to see it done if someone can think of a way to make it work.

This is a difficult issue to address, since the question of whether something is "fun" is so very subjective. For me, winning a medieval battle with a massed charge of heavy knights to crush the flanks leaves me a little cold, it feels like victory gained too easily and quickly; for some though overwhelming their enemy in a whirlwind of hooves and steel is utterly exhilarating and what Total War is all about. Similarly some would consider trying to break the stalemate of the trenches and struggling to make any kind of headway in the hell of mud and wire and bullets to be the most excruciating tedium; I however cannot think of a more enticing challenge for my jaded tactical palate than to face the task of making an advance against some of the most formidable defensive odds ever to exist.

Basically, I would say the best way is to make it possible to implement the tactics which worked in real life. It's true that many battles in WWI were largely about mindless attrition, but I suspect many battles in the medieval and ancient period were also fought with a similar lack of imagination on the part of the commanders; it's just that in those periods the weapons used were not quite so exquisitely deadly as the weapons available by WWI, so an indecisive stalemate would not generally still result in hundreds of thousands dead on either side. Ultimately the tactical challenge of mounting a successful offensive against trenches was overcome; the last year of the war saw successful large-scale offensives from both sides for almost the whole year. I see no reason why the player could not be able to implement an effective set of offensive tactics sooner than occured in real life, what with the benefit of hindsight and the long standing tradition of Total War games to strip out the boring aspects in favour of decisive showdowns.

To take a specific example: There was an interplay between the use of infantry assaults and artillery bombardments. The defenders hunkering down in their dugouts and keeping much of their strength in reserve behind the front might protect them from heavy casualties in a bombardment, but it would leave the forward trenches vulnerable to being overrun by attacking infantry. This was the idea between the creeping barrage; if timed correctly, the attackers could follow the barrage and overrun the enemy trenches before the defenders could climb out and set up their machine guns. Risky, and requiring of very careful planning and timing, but very effective when done right, for example the famous Canadian assault on Vimy Ridge.

The inverse was also possible: a diversionary infantry attack to draw out the defenders, then a sudden barrage to surprise them before they could retreat underground. You could argue there is an analogy here between the interplay of artillery and infantry and the use of flanking in earlier games; there, the basic interplay is between spreading the line too thin and risking it being broken by a concentrated attack, and making it too short and leaving the flanks exposed. Similarly, against massed artillery there was a balancing act between being impregnable to infantry attack but at the mercy of artillery, and being sheltered from bombardment but lowering your guard against infantry.

Of course, if the trenches are simply not to your tastes one could always simply choose to fight on one of the other fronts, where the fighting was generally more fluid. As Kiron points out, the game would likely be a broader late 19th/early 20th century setting encompassing the WWI era, not a myopic focus on one front of that single conflict. In this case I suspect that wars in which such a huge number of men are concentrated along a relatively short front as in the Western Front of WWI will be relatively uncommon, as was the case in real life.

Ultimately though, I suspect the main obstacle to a WWI-era Total War is simply the relative lack of interest in the conflict rather than any fundamental problem in the ability to make a fun game out of it. Most people tend to either be interested in WW2, or in the Napoleonic period or earlier; aptly enough WWI seems to occupy something of a No-Man's-Land in between, too modern for the medieval fans and too primitive for the WW2 fans.

I remain of the opinion that a relatively faithful but still entertaining depiction of WWI-era combat could be made in the Total War format. However there is no denying it would be a huge gamble, both since it would require such a radical reinterpretation of the tactical aspect of the game (although I would hope that the series will make steady progress toward overcoming the main obstacle, scale, in subsequent titles), but also as the game would have to stand purely on its own merits to win acceptance from a skeptical fanbase.

In the end I fear it will be too big of a gamble for CA to risk, but I think this is a shame. I would much rather have a CA which both boldly experiments with the parameters of the game, and is willing to explore relatively unknown or unpopular historical settings just to see if there is potential for a good game hiding in there somewhere, than a CA which plays it safe and simply churns out sequel after sequel to Medieval with a few extra features and fancier graphics.

[Fisherking]

Ah yes…and let us not forget the Gas Attacks! Mustard gas, Chlorine gas, and some other agents. They even made gas masks for horses and dogs.

Artillery Barrages lasting for days…

After the war, when they talked of the lost generation, they were not kidding…the losses were staggering.

On their worst day of battle the British lost 58,000 men in an attack. There were a lot of day when more than 50,000 fell.

At Verdun the casualties for both sides totaled about 1,000,000 with more than half of those killed.

At Somme there were 620,000 allied casualties. German casualties were estimated at 500,000.

Total military casualties for the war in all theaters is put at 37,508,686 that was 57.6% of all men mobilized. Just under 1,300,000 were from Gas.

Italy’s treachery in the war might be a nice topic too. But likely not for Italians.

All in all a colossal blood bathe that moved with glacial speed.

It has some very interesting events and side lights, but I am not so sure I would enjoy gaming it.

but never say never

[Polemists]

As others have stated it is obvious the numbers would have to stay small.

It could be done as others have stated.

However, for several of us, total war will always be about the melee more then the ranged, some people like the ranged more. Heck one poster in here even stated he's not even buying Empire because it put to much focus on ranged.

Obviously CA will do a expansion before a another game, so there's a full year and a half left to debate this at very least, so dont' worry plenty of time to debate

[Fisherking]

That is all very true. In fact I figure the Australian branch is working on the next game with this engine and the UK office already has a good handle on what the add-on will be.

I am not opposed to them moving forward in time. I just perceive a few difficulties if they wish to stay with the same general style of tactical play.

What ever they come out with I will surly give it serious consideration. Maybe even if it is a Star Wars TW…shiver…

Change though, always happens. Even if not everyone likes it.

The finished products have always been worth playing and for now I am assuming that they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

I like the Series but even if they change I will trust what CA comes up with….to a point…


Please! No Sponge Bob Total War!

[Arcana]

Obviously CA will do a expansion before a another game, so there's a full year and a half left to debate this at very least, so dont' worry plenty of time to debate

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to the expansion's name, especially since the most-likely expansion setting has already been confirmed as the second playable campaign in the game.

So, what do we reckon?
French Invasion? (If I din't know better, I'd say this was a bit of an oxymoron... )

[BeenPlayingSinceRTW]

Yes, definitely. (For some reason, I am unable to vote on this poll)

There are a lot of decent WWI/WWII era games out there, but none on the scale of the Total War games with a true large scale campaign mode. If CA doesn't do a modern version of Total War, I am sure someone else will do one. All that's missing is the campaign.

There's a reason that military students at West Point and other schools are still taught fundamental historical battles and tactics from the time periods of the current Total War games - it's because those old methods actually translate very well to modern warfare. Tactics like flanking are still used. A tank division was used to smash enemy lines in WWII that same way we use heavy cavalry in the TotalWar games.

Modern infantry w/rifles = archers
Artillery = culverin and other gunpowder weapons
Air force = horse archers
tanks = elephants
armored personnel carriers = praetorians
etc.

It would definitely be possible for CA to upgrade the game to the modern era, although obviously, there would have to be changes in the scale of battles

[magnum]

While I choose 'Wouldn't Mind', I have to say it wouldn't be high on my list. As much as I enjoy the modern area of warfare, I think Total War has done a fantastic job with those 'older' eras. After the evolution release (which I think should cover the next approx 100 years after Empire) I would prefer to see them go back to Three Kingdoms or Mongol, some asian centered total war.

[peacemaker]

well, I honestly don't like all-ranged warfare(or mostly-ranged). ETW was already kind of a stretch. But anyway, how are we going to incorporate airstrikes and tanks and all this other stuff. Both sides have made strong arguments, but let me ask you this: How is CA going to make a game that will a)offend many with extermination, etc. as listed earlier, b)give massive-scale battles, c)keep it all going smoothly on a computer, and d)incorporate airstrikes, tanks, small islands, brutal warfare, POW camps, and the like? It's a very tricky thing to do and if CA can pull it off, I will buy that game out of respect for making it work, even If I don't like it that much. I think TW should go back to an asian style total war, or maybe even babylonian or fantasy TW. TW so far has been mostly infantry and tactics, I think incorporating all the technology and guns and stuff from WWI will stop making it as much of a TW as we know it and more of some other game.

[Polemists]

I think the Total War franchise will slowly wither and die if they simply go back and redo an era that they've already done.

Really? Because you know they seemed to do just fine after they released MTW2 and I'm willing to bet that same group would go out and Buy Shogun Total war 2 or Rome total War 2 just as likely as they would a WW 1/2 game.

That's the whole point though, it's already out there. It's been done. If your argument is it's a redux, then it's a mute point because WW 2 has been redone more then any era period. It does sell to the RTS crowd. The crowd that want's buildings, instant gameplay and little patience.

This is the same crowd and reason that CA has repeatedly made Total war games have less management and more main streamed.

In all likely hood they may have to make it eventually if only as a cash cow. I can accept that.

I just don't have to like it.

as the demo will show (oh you all saw that coming) there are other fun periods beyond ww2 struggles.

[Sir Beane]

Really? Because you know they seemed to do just fine after they released MTW2 and I'm willing to bet that same group would go out and Buy Shogun Total war 2 or Rome total War 2 just as likely as they would a WW 1/2 game.

That's the whole point though, it's already out there. It's been done. If your argument is it's a redux, then it's a mute point because WW 2 has been redone more then any era period. It does sell to the RTS crowd. The crowd that want's buildings, instant gameplay and little patience.

This is the same crowd and reason that CA has repeatedly made Total war games have less management and more main streamed.

In all likely hood they may have to make it eventually if only as a cash cow. I can accept that.

I just don't have to like it.

as the demo will show (oh you all saw that coming) there are other fun periods beyond ww2 struggles.

I agree with basically everything in this post. I still don't get why people claim they want CA to do something different and then ask for a World War game however.

Whilst WW1 has not been done too frequently WW2 certainly has. So why make yet another WW2 game? CA cover time periods that very few other games cover, and they do them better than any other game company. Ther eare a whole lot of other time periods CA can cover before they need to go do a World War game.

Those who are saying they might get stuck in a rut have a point, but that will only be if CA let themselves. History is pretty big, there's a lot of it. We have enough countries and time periods to make a hundred games before running out of ideas.

I like my warfare to be up close and personal with big sticks, or at least from a reasonable distance with sticks that go BANG and produce lots of smoke.

Warfare where you can be killed by a man who is sitting in a building several miles a way, or in the cockpit of a plane a mile above you, just doesn't seem like it would make a very fun TW game.

[PBI]

CA cover time periods that very few other games cover

Like WWI, perhaps?

Those who are saying they might get stuck in a rut have a point, but that will only be if CA let themselves. History is pretty big, there's a lot of it. We have enough countries and time periods to make a hundred games before running out of ideas.

I strongly agree. There are plenty of previously untouched historical settings for the series to cover. WWI is only one of them, and not by any stretch the best candidate for the next game in my opinion; I simply feel it should not be dismissed out of hand, nor lumped in as a concept with the saturated WW2 market.

Because you know they seemed to do just fine after they released MTW2 and I'm willing to bet that same group would go out and Buy Shogun Total war 2 or Rome total War 2 just as likely as they would a WW 1/2 game.

I don't know about that; I played the Civilization games since the first installment way back in the day, yet my love affair with the series ended precisely because I saw no point in shelling out another 30GBP for what is basically the same game released back in 1991, with a few extra bells and whistles but no real change in gameplay or setting. It's understandable the series went that way, a scope covering the whole of human history doesn't leave a lot of room for new settings, but the Total War series does not have that excuse.

If the Total War series goes the same way, I certainly will take my money elsewhere to more original titles.

[BeenPlayingSinceRTW]

Really? Because you know they seemed to do just fine after they released MTW2 and I'm willing to bet that same group would go out and Buy Shogun Total war 2 or Rome total War 2 just as likely as they would a WW 1/2 game.

That's the whole point though, it's already out there. It's been done. If your argument is it's a redux, then it's a mute point because WW 2 has been redone more then any era period. It does sell to the RTS crowd. The crowd that want's buildings, instant gameplay and little patience.

This is the same crowd and reason that CA has repeatedly made Total war games have less management and more main streamed.

In all likely hood they may have to make it eventually if only as a cash cow. I can accept that.

I just don't have to like it.

as the demo will show (oh you all saw that coming) there are other fun periods beyond ww2 struggles.

You could be right.

But for me personally, M2TW was the weakest of the three. I played it much less than the other two (RTW and RTW:BI), and have not played it at all since a few months after getting it, although I have gone back and played the other two many times. I think probably part of that has to do with the fact that there wasn't really that much difference between the battle tactics and campaign characteristics between RTW:BI and M2TW. Yeah, there was gunpowder in the late stages of the game, but a lot of the city building was kind of redundant (rebuilding the same things as in the earlier two games - roads, blacksmiths, etc.).

There were major differences in the RTW and RTW:BI campaigns - in RTW, you had to start from nothing to build an empire, while in RTW:BI you started with a full empire and the challenge was to prevent it from collapsing. The lack of a major change in scenery in M2TW made the game less interesting, in my opinion. Would I really be excited by the prospect of rebuilding the same type of civilization that I already built in RTW again for RTW2? I don't think so. Given a choice between a rehash of RTW and a game set in a completely different time period I would choose the new game rather than the retread.

For me, these games are just entertainment. I play other games now, and I'll play others in the future. Some of the other war games I play are set in modern times, and I would love to play a TW-style campaign along with the modern-day battles. I don't think I'm the only person who feels this way, which is why I'm sure someone will build such a game. As game franchises go, TW has already lasted longer than most games...

[Polemists]

They may build one, Tw has lasted longer then some not as long as others.

They would get more of the main stream I have little doubt and that is always a fore focus of CA's mind. I will say though, that quite clearly, as this poll shows. The die hard fans are overwhelmingly against it. Not to say there isn't a small percantage that want it, but the percantage that definetly do not want it is far larger, almost double.

It's merely how you view it. Yes if you view it in the spectrum of total war Rome or shogun would be a reappearance of a similiar theme previously played. That said CA has stated they would love to at some point go back to Rome and Shogun and give them the MTW2 treatment, it was in a interview shortly after MTW 2 released, so it's coming at some point.

The next game, I don't know but some point.

In the main market though WW2 games are are probably 8 to 1 over other startegy games. Even roman games which had a slight resurrgance, Europa: Rome, Pratoreans, Civcity:Rome, etc, quickly vanished. WW 2 games sell normally because they are fast paced.

Games like Company of Heroes, Commandos, and other small tactical games sold because they brought a tactical fast paced setting to a familiar time frame.

Games like Battlefield 1942, and Call of Duty, and Medal of Honor, sell because FPS's are far more popular then almost all other genres combined.

Yes, a campaign map game could be done with WW2 and it might be semi new, but I don't want Axis vs Allies again, I've done it to many times, in to many games. Even Rome vs Carthage has seen less action.

Honestly, if the buildings depress you I think you'll be disappointed in Empire. We've already seen university (academy), and farms (land clearance) being done again.

We are also seeing familiar factions again England, France, Germany.

and we are seeing a familiar region of map, (You are starting in Europe again for the most part)


Many find the true joy of TW games not the newness, Japan wasn't new when Shogun came out, it's the way they refine, detail, and enhance a game to truly make it a game that puts you in the seat of the Shadow Advisor behind the throne/faction.

They could make Shogun4 as far as I'm concerned, if it has better graphics, a more detailed campaign map, and better Ai, i'd buy it.

Of course I'd much rather have

A

Demo