WWII Total War?

[Aulus Paulinus]

Hello!

The Total War series is going to be richer in slightly less then a year. I'm sure we all hope that's not the last one and that we will keep getting new games every couple of years. Here's a wild idea, do you think that one of the future sequels might be World War II: Total War? Might seem weird since that part of history is quite diferent but I think it has a great potential. Of course, turns couldn't be 6 months long but rather about a week. Battle maps would have to be much larger to accomodate for artillery and armour movement but I see it working. We might have Panzer General and Close Combat all in one game.

Write what you think, If you have suggestions I would like to hear them.

Aulus Paulinus

[Franconicus]

Yes and no!
I think thatthe total war series is to much taylored and focused to that spear beats horse-horse beats sword-sword beats spear thing. So they will be limited to create scenarios from stone age (at least after horses were used!) to the time where guns played a minor role and can be simulated as modified bows. Planes do not fit into this pattern.

I think another company will do it. They will create a new concept which includes the means of modern warfare. WW2 is far too popular and lot of people would buy it.

Maybe our modding factions should sit together with our history high flyers and found a corporation to build a WW2 simulation. Could make a lot of money. But they would have to make it inaccurate and full of bugs. Wonder if they can make it!

[econ21]

I'm not sure it would work. As we get closer in time to the present day, I find historical accuracy becomes so much more important as we know so much more about what happened. The great thing about TW for me, is that I can suspend disbelief and take it as a pretty good simulation of historical conflict. I doubt I could do that for WW2:TW.

For example, at the tactical level: We can debate how effective cavalry were against spears until the cows come home, because it seems very hard to get the historical evidence to settle the questions. But when it comes to WW2 combat, there are gamers who know at what distance a Panther's gun will penetrate a T-34 and how that varies with the precise point of impact etc.

And at the strategic level, it would be rather hard to swallow a game that allowed Japan to invade the US in 1943 or Mussolini's Italy to dominate the Med.

Indeed, discrete "battles" in the TW sense don't really seem to make much sense in historical terms after 1913 (arguably before) so the whole TW concept of combining turn-based campaigns from real time battles seems inappropriate.

[jimmy]

especially with games like sudden strike,blitzkreig. then theres close combat.then games like call of duty.if the game was modeled on call of duty then yes it may work. but things like kursk ardennes normandy ?? i dont think it would especially as the number of units needed to replicate it would be huge. in my opinion it would be a step backward as there are still loads of topics in ancient history not yet done.

as an example you could for the puritians like myself base a game entirely on the mongol alexander the great campaigns you could recreate homers troy. ancient china, unification of the mongol tribes,the crusades the rise of islamic armies babars saladin etc .timur the lame the lists are endless but it may not sell as many games and thats what it boils down too. the thing is stick to something your good at which to me is ancient medieval history for the totalwar series.imagine trying to recreate the battle of stalingrad etc.plus your going up against established WW2 rts producers of these games.it all depends on the customer and the max number of games shifted who is the target audience.

[cannon_fodder]

Thinking about the implications, benefits, and problems of a TW game set in (relatively) modern times is quite fun.

First point I'll make is about the actual amount of men involved in a battle. In RTW, a single unit has at the most about 240 men. This is the rough equivalent to a modern-day company. The player cannot engage more than 20 of these units in a single battle. This means about 5 battalions, which is about 1-2 brigades. All of these units are smaller than a division, hundreds of which were fielded during WWII.

So, clearly, the amount of men in a unit that the player individually commands would have to be raised. A small point, the units of <240 men are the smallest the player can move as a consistent body- just as a battalion is the smallest unit that can set up an HQ and act without higher orders. The player commanding individual battalions would be most suiting. Anyway, the implications of larger player-commanded units would be

1. Much, MUCH larger maps. Especially in conjunction with the longer-ranged weapons of the day that Aulus Paulinus mentioned.
2. Longer battles. A couple divisions could fight it out for several weeks.

It would most likely be necessary to have far greater abstraction, as there would be almost no decisive, half-hour battles fought between a few divisions. Of course, things would probably be scaled down a bit, as they have been in previous TW games. In STW, the largest unit is of 120 men, and the player can field (if I remember right) 14 units. An army of about 1700 men would've been incredibly small at the time in Japan, and that's the largest the player could field!

One possiblity for abstraction would be skirmishing that occurs between turns, between opposed divisions that are near to each other. When one tried to make a decisive push, there would be a realtime battle.

One fundamental problem with a modern TW game is the actual wars themselves. Previous TW games took place in times of general lawlessness (when looked at at an international level, of course). This lawlessness was suiting for a game with a basic theme of domination. However, a WWII game would basically involve 2 huge opposing forces, and a handful of neutral ones. Not much really interesting that can happen there.

There are such problems even with a more generally modern TW game, one being the existence of the U.N. With this organization in place, a nation attempting to use its military might to overwhelm others and conquer them would be stopped immediately. This may be more of a benefit, though- more focus would be put on the economic and political aspects of the game. The goal(s) would have to be something other than territorial conquest.

It's pretty clear that as far as the game's engine is concerned, CA would be looking at a complete rewrite. Not the update that MTW2's obviously is. And all the modelling and texturing required would definitely put all their previous games to shame. It would be a mammoth task- but I hope they undertake it one day!

[marcusbrutus]

Just started playing Total War again after a long lay off but... I agree with everyone who says that the Total War engine is just not suited to modern warfare - bullets, artillery, trains, planes and automobiles are just not gonna work too well.