WWI Total War would be an amazing total war era

[JustinJsen]

Not all of WWI was fought in trenches and a good trench battle can be fun if done right.

On the campaign map you would send aerial planes to scout weak points in trenches start bombing areas around it with artillery, engage in chemical warfare, and even build holes under enemy trenches to blast a portion of trenches. Finally after all you could send in an epic numbers of troops across no man's land to attempt to take a trench and secure machine guns.

The tech tree would include sub-machine guns, tanks, chemical warfare, propaganda, and fighter plane improvements.

The campaign map would allow you to design and create lines of trenches across the battle map in campaign mode by drawing it out; taking hills and terrain into consideration. There would be a lot of room for strategy, probably more than any other total war game, and map control losing and gaining important small areas of ground little by little.

You would manage taxes, recruiting ages, the draft, and manufacturing. The decrease of recruiting ages would be directly related to the public order and the taxes would be inversely related. The draft would decrease recruitment times but screw over the public order. Manufacturing would be interesting; you can choose to focus on the manufacturing of guns which would improve the quality of units, you can choose to focus on the manufacturing of foods which would increase public order, and you can choose to focus on the manufacturing of ships which of course decreases timers of ships and the quality of them.

Building trenches would cost manpower and lots of time to prevent trench spamming and camping. The trench spamming technique would not be unit effective since one trench is more effective with 1k units than 4 trenches with 250 units in each.

My point is WW1 would and has(see The Great War Mod Napoleon Total War) been a good total war era. Also, The Great War is one of the coolest wars in history for how the war had been building up for decades before hand and how game-over the scenario would be if you lost.

Factions:
Play as Russia you can beat back the mounting Bolsheviks while choosing your course in defending Serbia and declaring war on Austria Hungary. If you allow the Bolsheviks to gain power you automatically lose.

Play as The German Empire and decide how to defend against two fronts and managing your sea policies also featuring foreign relations (see Zimmerman Telegram).

Play as Austria Hungary and decide in how you take retribution upon the Serbians and defend the House of Hapsburg.

Play as Britain and defend by land and by sea.

Play as France as you defend the initial push by The Germans and have the option of building elaborate trench systems.

The United States would not be a faction. Instead they would act as a "nobles looking for glory" in "Medieval 2 Total War Kingdoms Teutonic Campaign" but with armies and no rewards for combat to be used by Britain and France. Preliminaries: Germany has to initiate in unrestricted sea warfare, persistent aggressive diplomacy, and if neither of these preliminaries are performed by the Triple Alliance then they automatically join very late in the war. This leaves Germany pressure to lead a great assault through Belgium into France to cripple the French enough for the US not to be able to join the European conflict.


Most of the hate on the WWI Total War idea has been because it would require some major changes to the current engine and be very unlike it's total war predecessors. When a person imagines WWI and thinks of total war they see a disastrous stalemate game in which both sides in a battle are sitting there waiting for the other side to do something. This view of the game would be a revolution from the imagination to encourage aggressiveness and decisive engaging attacks after extensive scouting of enemy units and artillery strikes. Not once would you not be defending or deciding where and how you would strike. Strategy even before the battle would important and one unsuccessful all in attack could lose you the game.

tl;dr WW1 is a great if not brilliant total war game that I would like to see in the future. Meanwhile I will keep playing The Great War Mod for Napoleon Total War.

[tarvu]

See Sendoku Jidai was a great era for Total War because it has lots of glorious battles, "heroic" characters from various factions that have only been enlarged by time and history, and is overall a dynamic war that is anything but uneventful or boring.

WW1 was a terrible war, and a travesty of human history. It was less war, more senseless mass murder. It will never make a good game, ever, because it above all else is viewed as an exemplary lesson in the horrors and futility of war. Most people I think would not want to play such a game.

I know there is already a mod for it, but I really doubt we will ever see a successful game designed around it from a developer like CA.

I do agree that the build up to the war, and the historical implications of the war are very interesting but the war itself is less so, at least in ways that would make for an interesting game. You claim that there is so much room for tactics and strategy... and yet the war was famous for how much of a stalemate it produced between the warring factions for years. It doesn't sound like a good setting for a strategy/tactical game like the TW series. Victoria II is a decent game, but I guess that doesn't do you much good if you want to actually see in graphic detail machine guns mowing down hundreds of men and chemical weapons in use. I wouldn't hold my breath for it though.

[Aonghus G. Friedhold]

I mostly agree, but not WWI specifically. The general era, say 1900-1930, or 1871-1930. Otherwise it's too cut and dry; the war would be too limited. Total War has multiple wars, and the diplomacy system is more suited to the pre-war forging of alliances than the diplomacy of two states involved in this sort of war. What if Germany had renewed the Reinsurance Treaty of 1887 with Russia in 1890, continuing the isolation of France? What if she had formed an alliance with Great Britain in 1899 or 1905? What if she had chosen not to become involved in the Dreadnought race with Britain, alienating herself from the Greatest Power on Earth? The player would have to negotiate these turbulent affairs, as well as the colonization of Africa, culminating in the Berlin Conference. And the U.S. would be playable, it would have to be. Why should they be forced into allying with the Entente? After all, even if it started in 1914, if Germany didn't go into unrestricted submarine warfare, it may have kept the U.S. out. And the Zimmerman Telegraph was not a given of the war, it was a result of the submarine warfare. And what about the Ottoman Empire, or Austria-Hungary? Trying to hold on the last vestiges of Ottoman glory, fighting in the campaigns in Iraq, Egypt, and the rest of the Middle East, or trying to rally your outdated, under supplied, and culturally repressed people into fighting the Russians are really good Total War scenarios. Not to mention the possibilities of Japan and the Meiji Era. From 1871-1912 Japan was still modernizing, and there was the Russo-Japanese war, which would be fun to fight, especially if the player decided to occupy Vladivostok or another East-Russian area. And the Russians could do the opposite, if they won the oceans, they could take Hokaido, or Nihon itself. Alot of options there. Plus the Spanish-American War, the Boxer Rebellions, the Boer Wars, and a lot of other interesting scenarios. WWI itself is too limited in scope, and could even be avoided, or come about in an entirely different way. What if France had remained isolated, and allied with the Ottoman Empire, Benelux, and Italy? And Germany had remained neutral-friendly with Russia, allied with Austria-Hungary and an Entente with Britain? Well, in real life that wouldn't have happened, but in Total War... Stranger things have happened. Also the U.S. gets the latter half of the Reconstruction. So many options. But, Victoria II is better for it. Total War can't handle the complex diplomatic and political realities of the time period.

tl;dr:
WWI alone could not be a TW game, but it's era could be, allowing the player to negotiate the political, social, and military problems and events of the time. However, TW can't replicate those problems and events, and Victoria II better represents it than TW could.

[gord96]

the Victorian era would work, 1830-1920 or so.

[Erwin Rommel]

Nahh.

Warring States Period will be epic.

[luckybeaver]

Nahh.

Warring States Period will be epic.

Possibly the Three Kingdoms era too. Personally I'd love to see a game on ancient China, so much unexplored potential there. Would be great

[Erwin Rommel]

Possibly the Three Kingdoms era too. Personally I'd love to see a game on ancient China, so much unexplored potential there. Would be great

The massive array of weapons from the fire drake manual, in full total war engine glory, even missiles from the previous games have nothing compared to it.

[JustinJsen]

Nahh.

Warring States Period will be epic.

Honestly? You haven't already had enough of Asian warfare you want another Shogun 2 Total War with minor faction changes? I'm sorry but a year from now everyone will have lost all enjoyment from old far eastern battles. If another melee based total war game is made CA's best bet is Rome 2 Total War.

[tarvu]

Honestly? You haven't already had enough of Asian warfare you want another Shogun 2 Total War with minor faction changes? I'm sorry but a year from now everyone will have lost all enjoyment from old far eastern battles. If another melee based total war game is made CA's best bet is Rome 2 Total War.

Only someone from Finland such as yourself could make the absurd statement that a game about china and a game about Japan represents only "minor faction changes".

[JustinJsen]

Only someone from Finland such as yourself could make the absurd statement that a game about china and a game about Japan represents only "minor faction changes".

That's because there isn't much of a difference strategically. No matter how much history you show me in the differences the battlefields are still about archers and sword units charging at each other with cavalry giving an effort to flank the line. At least with Rome Total War the units don't just have minor changes and city architecture is significantly different. Nice Finland joke.

[tarvu]

That's because there isn't much of a difference strategically. No matter how much history you show me in the differences the battlefields are still about archers and sword units charging at each other with cavalry giving an effort to flank the line.

You just described every successful Total War game to date.

[Raimeken]

That's because there isn't much of a difference strategically. No matter how much history you show me in the differences the battlefields are still about archers and sword units charging at each other with cavalry giving an effort to flank the line. At least with Rome Total War the units don't just have minor changes and city architecture is significantly different. Nice Finland joke.

China is a large place, there's more diversity there than you realize

[empr guy]

"Oh look, that unit there, 4 lines deep, 80 men long, it's the french! Can you see the perfect 20x20 square just behind them?! The brits! wow...
.

*artillery fires a volly*

"no sir, i cant say i do see them..."

Honestly? You haven't already had enough of Asian warfare you want another Shogun 2 Total War with minor faction changes? I'm sorry but a year from now everyone will have lost all enjoyment from old far eastern battles. If another melee based total war game is made CA's best bet is Rome 2 Total War.

honestly? You havent had enough european warfar and you want another empire total war a few years later? Im sorry, but no one is going to buy rebranded except the graphics whores and fan boys.

That's because there isn't much of a difference strategically. No matter how much history you show me in the differences the battlefields are still about archers and sword units charging at each other with cavalry giving an effort to flank the line. At least with Rome Total War the units don't just have minor changes and city architecture is significantly different. Nice Finland joke.

because there was so much stratigic variation in WWI. besides, the AI isnt good enough for this, it will either be the same 'charge ahead at all costs' or will just camp, neither of which is good. The eastern front was of course not all trench warfare but it only involved like three of the countrys out of all that participated.

[Beowulf1990]

Honestly? You haven't already had enough of Asian warfare you want another Shogun 2 Total War with minor faction changes? I'm sorry but a year from now everyone will have lost all enjoyment from old far eastern battles. If another melee based total war game is made CA's best bet is Rome 2 Total War.

See that right there just lost you any possible credibility you had concerning military history. You're either misinformed or just plain an idiot.

I'd also like to mention that ranged guns in Empire meant muskets and cannon, as oppossed to WWI where it means machine guns and artillery that fires giant barrages from miles away from the battlefield. If you actually want enjoyable battles you should be against a WWI game that's even slightly realistic.

[gord96]

that too.

[SonOfOdin]

It would be nice on the campaign map, but battles would SUCK. CA are great at making melee battles, gunpowder has clearly failed. They won't make the same mistake twice.

[Radious]

Nothing with warfare where range guns are primary/only source of fighting. This cant work for battle system TW games always had. ETW + NTW was absolute maximum and we saw that it wasnt really good.

[Death_Sheep]

I am fairly certain there is a WWI mod for Napoleon....

[JustinJsen]

I am fairly certain there is a WWI mod for Napoleon....

I mentioned the mod a total of two times in my post.

[Death_Sheep]

I mentioned the mod a total of two times in my post.

Oh yeah... huh. I think I need more sleep than I thought...