What if TW ended...

[Beskar]

There are too many possibilities to consider. It's my personal wetdream to see an Ancient: Total War that spans the world, including Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas. Obviously, you probably won't be able to traverse from one great theatre to another so easily, if at all... but it would still be amazing to witness the great civilizations each of those continents boasted in one game.

Too bad it's just a dream.

You can traverse the conitents. IT is the fact that the Eygptians went to South America (tobacco found in mummy's corpses) and shared similar pyramid styles. The fact the French settled in America, before the Mongolians did, as well.

[Ethelred Unread]

Time and investment is all that's needed for a competitor to the TW games.

I'm sure there will be a games company out there gunning for CA.

I think they'll already be thinking about their next time period and as others have said they might go down the "episodes" route - I guess this depends on what the format N:TW is and how well it sells.

I think they or their competitors need to get focus on the following:-

1. Competent BAI or CAI OR a workable Human vs Human campaign
2. Interesting e.g. mass appeal historic era. Thinking of the size of the Chinese market, getting the marketing right (and probably sorting out piracy - no mean task) and you've got a huge revenue stream right there.
3. If not episodic campaigns, then something to keep the player entertained during the end game, how many of you quit after getting to the "tipping point" when you know you'll win?
4. The Mod tools question - do you want to shift more original games or have more DLC? Mod Tools kind of make any DLC you produce obsolete because modders could add it for free, so mod tools released after a year? 2 years?
5. A *new feature* like Naval battles (hard in Medieval period) or Economics, or a Free Hat.

[ollicompolli]

Well, they can do Medieval, Rome or Shogun again. That'd satisfy us grouches and if there was a cheesy Hollywood movie set in the era CA wants to set the game in then they would have hit the jackpot.

If they refuse to do this, then the Russian Civil War might be pretty good. Think about it. A lot of swords involved, some shooting and a huge amount of raiding. It's perfect for the E:TW system. One military advisor called the Russian Civil War "an 18th-century affair" (or something along those lines...).

Relying on DLC's that do nothing for the campaign and screw the multi will be the end for CA.

[antisocialmunky]

Dynasty Warriors except Total War done in anime style would be epic. Realism gets boring after a while.

[Durallan]

For all those asia fanatics I wouldn't be disheartened, mainly because they have done so much in europe I would imagine they are getting rather tired of it no doubt, RTW, M2TW, ETW, NTW.

No doubt the next game will be something along the lines of STW 2 or somewhere in asia, which will be a nice change, although it must be something they can do with their naval engine seeing they spent so much time developing that I would imagine they would be annoyed if they couldn't use that in some way in the next game.

[Belgolas]

ha! I can name plenty of time periods that CA hasn't gotten into. Who ever thinks an ancient Asian time period wouldn't be interesting is completly wrong as I think it is more interesting than Rome. You have MASSIVE armies and more caulters and religions than Europe. You could even do the mongol expansion where there were multiple nations that could have sprung up. The mongol wars are estimated at killing over 40 million (battle, massacre, flooding, and famine). There were also several naval battles in varios places although not as important as the gundpoweder age but still lots of potential.

There is also ancient greece, ancient egypt, babylons, aztecs, myans, tons of african nations, etc etc etc......... Don't tell me there arn't more than Rome, Medieval,and Japan which is just a very tiny part of Asia. There is so much more to explore.

[hoom]

Time and investment is all that's needed for a competitor to the TW games.

Substantially more time & investment than is required for any other game type.
&/or some seriously over-achieving coders.

I think Crytek is probably the only currently known studio I could buy taking it on with any chance of success.
Perhaps some other nobodies out of Eastern Europe? (but there are only so many of those that can happen)

[Elmar Bijlsma]

The interesting periods for CA to portray are near limitless. The amount of periods that CA can promote successfully to a mass market is frightfully small.

Average Joe is a dumbass.
"ZOMG Samurai, ZOMG, kniggets, ZOMG Romans, ZOMG, Kniggets again, ZOMG muskets" is about as much recognition as could be squeezed out of Average Joe for the previous titles in the series. Anything more obscure then that and marketeers would be having headaches. Personally, I think they might be a smidge lazy not to try. Build it and they will come. It's a risk, and when millions are spend risks are avoided.

Even stuff like the Pelopponessian Wars or Thirty Years' War would be somewhat hard to pitch because not much is known about it by Average Joe. And these are among the most significant and iconic wars in human history! You can forget about a TW game about the Khmer Empire! I'm amazed they even dared tackle the age of Marlborough and Louis XIV. I doubt it would have happened if it weren't for the American War of Independence being included in the sales pitch!

So we re-fight familiar wars at Gettysburg, St.Lo, Waterloo, Cannae or Agincourt for the umpteenth time.

[DisruptorX]

Dynasty Warriors except Total War done in anime style would be epic. Realism gets boring after a while.

That depends what you mean by "anime style". The Dynasty Warriors games are in manga style, but its rather subdued and well done. If you mean saucer sized eyes, hell no.

I've wanted to see a 3 Kingdoms: Total War for a while, I just find the period more interesting than Feudal Japan. Now, its not as popular as Japan, but I think it would still find a big audience. 18th Century Europe, afterall, is certainly not a common setting for a video game, even in the strategy genre.

As for the original question: Total War has no competition. I'll continue to buy and play these games as long as they are made because, despite the flaws, there is nothing else like them.

[antisocialmunky]

Well, that's is a generalization, you are correct except that 'manga' is also an umbrella term for a variety of styles.

But yeah, something stylized may be fun as TW has really hit the uncanny valley with ETW.

[Brutus]

First post here in years, so be kind...

I would love it if they did a game about the 16th-17th century: Wars of Religion, Dutch Revolt, English Civil War, Anglo-Dutch Wars, the Wars of Louis XIV, the European expansion into the West and East, etc, etc.

Maybe a bit similar in gameplay to Empire, but I was a bit disappointed they left the 17th century out!

[ReluctantSamurai]

July 1st - the I Corp of the ANV beats back Bufords Calvary and the 1st and 11th corp of the AOP (these forces retreat South, cross the Potomac and end their turn right next to the Rebel capital of Richmond VA.

July 2nd - the Remaining 5 corps of the AOP attack the I Corp of the ANV (The II Corp arrives as reinforcements). Things were going well for the Rebels until an artillery battery turned 180 to fire at an errant union calvary brigade and took out Ambrose Powell Hill. The I corp of the ANV retreats accross the appalachians ending up in the area of Columbus Ohio. The II corp retreats N to Albany NY. In the meantime the 1st and 11th corp of the AOP along with Buford's calvary lay seige to Richmond VA.

July 3rd - Longstreets III Corp of the ANV arrives to perform Pickett's charge. It's a slaughter as expected and this stack retreats south west towards Lynchburg VA. The AOP does not pursue the rebels as their calvary ranks seem to have mysteriously thinned considerably while trying to run down routing enemies.

July 4th - Someone trys to move a gunboat up the Mississippi to blockade Vicksburg MS and the game crashes.

TW has already ended for me.....I stopped buying with M2. If someone new steps in when CA bites it, and can produce a quality product, I'm in.

[antisocialmunky]

... Wow, I missed that post. Goodjobsir.

[Goaswerfraiejen]

TW has already ended for me.....I stopped buying with M2. If someone new steps in when CA bites it, and can produce a quality product, I'm in.

Quoted for truth. My experience with M2 discouraged me from buying Kingdoms and Empire, and it will continue to do so in the future. Also worthy of note: I wouldn't be able to run anything past M2TW on this computer, no matter how much I wanted to, and buying a new rig is simply not justified by games like ETW at this point.

I have in no way regretted my decision(s), and continue to enjoy playing RTW EB a LOT. I like it so much that I am entirely indifferent to Total War's demise.

[Furunculus]

i'd like another shogun total war

[gollum]

Jack Lusted has hinted that advances made in artillery modelling in ETW/NTW will be relevant for future TWs. Considering that CA must have already, at least partially been working on it, in all probability this means that WWI will be the next TW game, based most likely on the ETW/NTW engine.

[Royce]

I'm with you I think a remake of shogun TW with the way forts and castles are able to be attacked and defended would be awsome. Shogun TW was bad when it came to defending a Castle. Great Idea!

[gardibolt]

As far as I'm concerned, TW has ended. Empire is literally unplayable due to freezes and crashes. So MIITW was the last of the franchise, never spending a nickel on their products again. See ya, don't let the door hit ya.

[al Roumi]

Frankly, whatever comes next from CA would do well to be detailed, pay some sort of heed to historical accuracy and of course challenging and stable.

A return to Rome would be ok, if done with a broader and deeper view of the civilisations of the time (less focus on the romanii for a start please), but I agree the the Chinese 3 kingdoms period would be very interesting -mostly because i know very little about it. Sengoku Jidai might offer CA a more manageable chance to reclaim some of their kudos if they were to do it again in style (they shouldn't have to do much more research on the period for one).

[The Stranger]

i dont see why they can't make a WW1 total war...

[The Stranger]

Frankly, whatever comes next from CA would do well to be detailed, pay some sort of heed to historical accuracy and of course challenging and stable.
.

the historicall accuracy in ntw i think is better than it has been since mtw. atleast there are no real fantasy units (apart from maybe ski troops), and the backup info is atleast moderately detailed and worth the read.

[Prussian to the Iron]

im hoping for a new rome or shogun, especially since i never played shogun. if not, ill probly just ditch RTS and buy the new Mount and Blade, then see if my computer can run Crysis.

[Centurion1]

ive been playing alot of aoe2 lately. love that game so much.

I was always a rtw fan. Never really played the others but i could spend hours playing that game. Still do actually im even relatively happy with vanilla. what was best was how easy modding was. Wanna make the roman factions have a starting civil war, no problem, wanna have carthage start in Britian, simple. Want to make the seleucids actually survive? well that was impossible but you get what im saying.

[M to the A]

A total war that starts in 500BC and ends in 1900 or so

[TenkiWarPRIEST]

A total war that begins with Dinosaurs and ends with meteor impact.

[Rowanda Gaming]

Total War just needs to create a game based in like World War II or World War I era. Or Space Age. Or Mythology. That would be pretty cool.

[Noncommunist]

A couple people have mentioned the American Civil War and then it was disparaged for only having 2 sides. However, what if the whole continent was involved in the game? Within the Civil War, many tribes were sorting out which side to support. If there were some amount of division by state, maintaining the loyalty of different states could be an integral part of the game. Britain could have also been conceivably involved and traded with both sides to some degree. Russia also sent some Monitors over expressing some support of the Union. Meanwhile, just to the south, Mexico just finished a civil war of their own and was promptly invaded by France which eventually involved Cinco de Mayo among other things. And Spain briefly reabsorbed the Dominican Republic. So it seems there are enough other players to keep it interesting.