Tomorrow we have an interview for the new Total war game, taking your questions!

[radarhead]

Hi everyone,
tomorrow myself and a colleague will be lucky enough to carry out an interview with the developers for the new total war game!
Last year we did the same for Rome 2, and it went down pretty damned well.

So fire away!

Radarhead
GameOverCast.

[Vuk]

New Total War game? I am sorry, what new Total War game? Oh, you mean the two bit expansion pack they are trying to sell as a full priced game? Seriously CA, what the heck? You guys used to be my all time favorite video game franchise and now you have turned into a bunch of useless, corporate, money grubbers. Don't get me wrong, I know you need to make games for money, but what happened to loving the art too? What happened to having standards and ethics? You can make games you love and run your studio in an ethical way and still make lots of money. I am sick and tired of bitching about your trash and hoping you will actually start giving a crap. Consider this our break-up; no more second chances CA.
If I ever hear from people I trust that you have put out a good game, I will do adequate research and may consider buying it. Until that time I am not even going to bother to follow your studio anymore, because I think it is more likely that the ice-cubs in my freezer will burst into flames than you will start putting out good games. Hasta la vista.

[Fragony]

Not interested anymore as well, I sticked with the first Medieval. Still the best with some mods. It even still looks good if you ask me, huge armies on huge battlegrounds.

[rajpoot]

Ask them when are they going to do Medieval 3.

[Gregoshi]

Apparently we got
nothing.

[Beskar]

And here I thought of hiring Vuk as leading PR spokesman for the org.

[AntiDamascus]

"What did you learn from previous releases (Rome 2) that you will try to solve this time?"

"Are you worried consumers will look at this is another Rome 2 expansion since it deals with areas like Gaul and Byzantine?"

"Do you think there are new time periods or areas to explore or is it "Roman, Medieval, Renascence" repeated?"

"Are there plans to add microtransactions into games like so many other games are doing?"

I'll come up with more as I think of them.

[Hooahguy]

Vuk, you really shouldnt be surprised at this, they have been doing this since Napoleon. Though to be fair, these "two-bit expansion packs" are always more polished than the game before it. Napoleon was much more polished than Empire, as FOTS was to Shogun 2.

As for questions, I would ask the devs to see if there will be any features from Attila that will be ported back into Rome 2 as there were features in FOTS that were ported back into Shogun 2, or so I heard.

[Sp4]

Will the features in the new game be ported into Rome 2? That is all, thank you.

[easytarget]

Will the features in the new game be ported into Rome 2? That is all, thank you.

My guess would be no. CA in the main forum has said this is a standalone game. Which in my opinion does not really answer the question. Because you can do standalone a la FOTS and you can do standalone a la Napoleon. One of these fires up as its own game and the other was an addition to the menu choices of which campaign you wanted to start up.

I've grown quite cynical about the current group of people at CA working on TW, I honestly don't see how this group can be in any way related to the ones who created Shogun 2. Because of this and what I've seen with R2 it would not surprise me at all to see them not incorporate the improvements they make on Atilla backwards into R2. And it would not surprise me if they slow down or even stopped patching R2 before they've fixed it.

[Sp4]

Of course it is a no but I want to hear it from them or at least hear how they avoid the question entirely.

I'm not buying it anyways.

[easytarget]

Yepper, skipping it myself as well. I'll wait for the herd to pay full price to be beta testers and wade in once they patch it up and put it on sell for 20 bucks.

[Hooahguy]

I too will be hesitant to buy it, but if I hear good things about it I will not hesitate to buy it full price.

[Sp4]

Yepper, skipping it myself as well. I'll wait for the herd to pay full price to be beta testers and wade in once they patch it up and put it no sell for 20 bucks.

Something like that.

[Hooahguy]

Any news on this interview?

[AntiDamascus]

If it's who I think it is, they haven't uploaded the podcast yet.

[radarhead]

Hi Guys,

As promised the latest Gameovercast episode features our Attila interview with Pawel Wojs and Dominique Starr. It was great to meet them and chat about Attila, along with getting a chance to play it.

Highlights of the interview include

-Map changes
-Disease propagation and army effects
-Turn vs Time (how many turns per year)
-Features feeding back into Rome 2.
-Multiplayer changes
-New agents
-Time period
-Siege differences
-How will Attila spread throughout the map
-Ai changes
And mucho Mucho more!

We have a couple of cool Attila t-shirts to give away, and will be doing so in the next episode.

You can now listen to Episode 192 on our website or download it on ITUNES (when the link becomes available).

The interview starts about 51 minutes in.

[radarhead]

Also apologies about the lateness.

[Hooahguy]

Highlights of the interview include

-Map changes
-Disease propagation and army effects
-Turn vs Time (how many turns per year)
-Features feeding back into Rome 2.
-Multiplayer changes
-New agents
-Time period
-Siege differences
-How will Attila spread throughout the map
-Ai changes

Thanks for the interview! It was very good.

So I will try to summarize some of the points Im remembering off-hand from the interview:

-Map changes
Winter will get longer as time goes on, so in the northern areas they could see about three turns of winter a year by the end.
As many factions will be playable as in Rome 2.
The map cut off a bit of the far east (where Bactria is) but extended to add the Steppes and more of the Baltic.

-Razing cities
Rebuilding a razed city will be costly in money and manpower: it can only be done by an occupying army and it will consume half of the army you are using to rebuild. The larger the army, the faster/cheaper it will be to rebuild, but you will also lose more men. You will also start with a one-slot settlement so you are literally starting the city again from scratch. The places where you can build a city are fixed though, so you cannot choose where to put the new city.

-Disease propagation and army effects
We wont see disease directly on the battlefield (sick and coughing men) but they will have negative effects on the affected armies like lower numbers, morale, and attack capability.
Disease can spread to armies that fight infected armies so it might be best to ignore infected armies to avoid contamination.

-Turn vs Time (how many turns per year)
4 turns per year and will be about a 75 year period, so 300 turns.

-Features feeding back into Rome 2
They will see what they can do, but it is a standalone game so no promises.
They will also keep supporting Rome 2 past the release of Attila.

-Multiplayer changes
It will be basically the same as Rome 2's MP, so no avatar system like there was in Shogun 2.
Razing/abandoning of settlements will be in MP.

-New agents
There are now also priests who spread your religion and they take the place of dignitaries.
Agents start off with 2 actions available, and as they progress more actions become available.

-Time period
New weapons, new tactics.

-Naval battles
Will come back, less ramming and more about boarding actions, and non-naval units (i.e. unit transports) will be much less capable as they will get "seasick."

-Diplomacy
Aggressiveness/dependability will be somewhat dependent on the faction leader so you might get a peaceful AI leader and his heir could be a backstabbing warmongering warlord. -Siege differences
As the siege goes on the civilians will leave, so if you attack immediately there will be civilians who you see flee/fight back. They are independent of your general so wont be able to be commanded.
Fire will automatically spread as enemy advances, and can also spread via barricades. If you arent careful your units manning the barricades can be consumed by fire as it spreads.

-How will Attila spread throughout the map.
Attila is not born at the start of the game, and the Huns will do their own thing in their area of the map (so they arent starting out as a horde with no land) but then when he is born and comes of age he will take command and the Huns will get much more aggressive and more of a threat to the rest of the map.
Other than his birth and coming of age, Atillas movements are not scripted.

-Miscellaneous info
It will launch as a separate game like Napoleon did.
No info on pricing.Priced about the same as Napoleon and FOTS.
2015 is launch year, cant get more specific.
Totally new voice acting and music.
Mercenaries will be region-specific.
Skill trees are like in Shogun 2, so you can see the whole tree and not just the next level.
Army/navy traditions making a comeback.
Much more immersive in its narrative element as the theme of impending doom permeates through the entire campaign.
Different religions have different edicts, so your state religion matters as well as the religion actually in your provinces.
You are not locked into a religion.