My dear friends of the twcenter,
Now that we are allowed to post reports of the Sega Community Event in Munich I'll present my impressions to you.
It was a sunny day when I made my way through crouds of dressed up freaks at the carnival in Munich with a heading for the Sega headquarters.
Upon arrival I was introduced to Craig and Jamie from the CA and was told where to get food, drinks, where to dispose of them later and was asked whether I had experience with the demo just before I was placed in front of a PC running a full version of the game.
Right in the beginning a keyboard fell victim to a busted cable, but thanks to the quick reactions of the hosts this problem was solved within minutes.
In the beginning you could only see the campaign on most of the screens and how the people were clicking through all the new menus.
When we finished getting our first overview of the campaign many people started trying out the battles and the members of the Strategie-Zone (German Community) used this time to get answers to some of the communities questions.
Of course we only asked those questions that were worth being asked
Especially the AI questions were rather unimportant since the demo doesn't use the full game's AI
Anyways, here are the answers to the community's questions, we got.
-there will be modding tools for Empire and Napoleon in the first half of 2011. They might be working for Shogun2, because of the engine and there is no release date for Shogun2 modding tools so far.
-the pirates won't get their own provinces, but only be a threat to sea trade and small fleets.
-the Black ship is the most preacious and strong ship in the game. Its arrival and route will be announced and you can steal it from the portuguese.
-there will be a short campaign (20 provinces), a long campaign (40 provinces) and a world domination campaign (60 provinces).
-the Jodo-Shinzu-shrine is a building used by the Ikko-Ikki, which gives them acces to religious fanatics and creates religious unrest.
-if your Daimyo dies that doesn't change anything about your clan's status.
-the multiplayer campaign is featuring a coop mode, which allows you to play the battles with your allies army as reinforcement, or, if he isn't anywhere nearby and you have only got your own army you can give your ally, who would otherwise just be a spectator, control over some of your units, which is very useful for more complicated maneuvers and sieges.
During this conversation we mentioned several times that most of the community wants a to see a Rome2 Total War in the near future.
After we got the questions out of the way we went back to the PCs where I played a multiplayercampaign with Jamie, which lasted several hours, while 6 of the other players organized an epic multiplayer battle.
While everybody was busy either trying the MP or some other features Craig used his time to take pictures for their facebook site and to create the most awesome avatar ever.
I really enjoyed the event and I'm very impressed by the way CA improved after Empire. The game looks really polished, runs fluintly, and there are lots of details, you can only see after hours of gameplay because there is just so much of it.
Except for a few little bugs and glitches, which should be fixed soon, I really love the game so far and in a scale of 100 points I'd give it a rating in the high nineties.
Sincerely, Prof
Originally Posted by German
My impressions of the community event at Sega Munich.
There were Michael Paul from SEGA (not in the picture), two more SEGA co-workers, Jamie Ferguson (Lead-Designer to the far left), Craig Laycock (Community-Manager to the far right) from the Creative Assembly. From the Strategie-Zone: me (fourth from the left), Hinkel (second from the right), Takaya (second from the left), Prof (third from the right), der Stratege (not in the picture), Walküre, her husband Kensei and their daughter (between Prof and me) and 3 or 4 more people from gaming magazines, etc.
There were sandwiches and drinks. In a dark room there were workspaces at PCs on 3 walls where we could play the game from 12 to 6 o'clock.
During that time Jamie Ferguson and Craig Laycock answered nearly all of our questions willingly and patiently. I gave our users' questions to Prof, because his English skills exceed mine by far.
About mod support/tools they told us that there would be tools released for Napoleon and Empire this year. They are following the modding community closely and are being inspired be it. But there are some things they just can't release, because there would be more tools and programs necessary and other developers could use the data to make Total War clones. I can actually understand this. When we said that Medieval and Rome were easier to mod they said that the games have become much more complex and the old data system would just lead to extremely long loading times. When one of the players (not one of ours) mentioned the AI and DarthMod they were just amused and told him that the AI is hard coded and the only way to give it new advantages in the old games was to give it boni. However they were very impressed by MItch and the work he did on the demo. Just a tip: if you remove the scripts from the demo, there won't be much of the AI left. You shouldn't think that the remaining AI is the one used in the full game.
I have asked for Rome2 at least 5 times. Well...not asked. Begged! When I told them that the majority of the community wants a sequel to that game and that they shouldn't go to any period more modern than Napoleon Jamie just smiled and said that there were enough possible scenarios for TW games in history.
All in all you could see the love for details they put into Shogun2 and that they put more emphasis on quality now than on quantity. This also answers the question about a huge map like Mundus Magnus for the next game.
When I said that I think the units are moving to fast they told us that the movements they recorded at the British Kendo Association via motion capturing have not been sped up for the animations. They were really moving that fast.
That's what happens when Craig is bored.
A few more pictures
My companions can tell you more about the game itself since I was to busy asking questions and taking pictures. Here's what I can tell you:
- There will be 3 kinds of campaigns. Short: conquer 25 provinces, Long: conquer 40 provinces, World Domination: conquer 60 provinces.
- There will be missions again which give you boni after completing them. Some of those boni only last for a few turns however.
- The general speeches are in Japanese with subtitles
- When you recruit a unit for the first time there will be an event movie telling you about the unit's strengths, weaknesses, etc.
- There will be 4 historical battles (5 in the limited edition); Kizugawaguchi, Sekigahara, Kawanakajima and Okihazama (or something like that)
- The loading times are between 30 and 50 seconds.
And here are some parts of a multiplayer battle.
Here are a few more pictures which Kensei and Walküre sent me.
There will be modding tools for Empire and Napoleon in the first half of 2011. They might be working for Shogun2, because of the engine and there is no release date for Shogun2 modding tools so far.
I was at the same event (as you know ) and I talked with Craig Laycock and he said, that there won't be "tools", but tutorials for modders to get more knowledge of the campaign map making etc.
So I don't know who's true at this point
--------------------------- The American Civil War for Total War ------------------------------
I seem to recall someone from CA (Kieron i think) Mentioning some months back that they planned to release modding tools for Napoleon and Empire once Shogun was out and established.
I seem to recall someone from CA (Kieron i think) Mentioning some months back that they planned to release modding tools for Napoleon and Empire once Shogun was out and established.
Yeah I read that, it was to be in a final Empire patch but it never came when Shogun 2 came out
Sega community event Munich (08.03.2011)
Originally Posted by German
My impressions of the community event at Sega Munich.
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) and I talked with Craig Laycock and he said, that there won't be "tools", but tutorials for modders to get more knowledge of the campaign map making etc.
