Total Warhammer?

[Sigurd]

I had an acquaintance back in '94 who played Warhammer. I played a few matches as Orcs against his High Elf army - and visited the games workshop near every time I passed it when visiting Glasgow that year.
From my knowledge (which is quite rusty), the classical multiplayer in totalwar is very similar to the Warhammer setup, with fielding an army based on a point system. ... you get some time to order your army and consider a strategy - one figurine in Warhammer represents an army class, not unlike a unit in totalwar.

I think it was this warhammer background that made me instantly recognize the upcoming game Shogun Totalwar back in '99 (I saw a poster of it in a PC game shop).
It is not unthinkable that the CA developers were Warhammer players. IIRC the campaign map was added to the realtime battles - not the other way around. Which means they developed a Warhammer kind of game as a starting point.
This could be full circle back to their roots.