what should the next historical total war be about? (opinions, not rumors)

[emcdunna]

I think ancient china would be an amazing setting, including the mongols, japanese, south-east Asians, and even India and the middle east.

The map of Europe is so boring now, after having conquered europe as romans, huns, Prussians, or whatever , I am bored of the topography.

Does anyone else like this?

[River Lord]

Crusade era would be cool. Or a map like Broken Crescent mod has. 11th and 12th century sounds good, no?

[Ostrogoth]

Empire 2 will be nice. Victorian era is also interesting.

[Imperator Artorius]

Victoria or Pike and Shot.

[Vardan the Great]

Medieval , covering the whole Europe from Ireland to Atrahan and Kazan Khanates and from Sweeden to Arabian Ethiopia. This would be great. Also start date should be the diminish if Golden Horde so that suchs staes like Grand Principality of Moscow existed along with still strong Tatar Khanates ( Crimea, Kazann Astrakhan ones). This must be tasty.

[PrinceofPersia]

A few time eras I would like to see covered

Achaemenid Empire - 550BC
Alexander The great (but with the inclusion of Chandragupta Maurya also) - the map spanning from Europe to India and China
Rise of Islam - 634 AD to Charlemagne (sadly I think CA missed this one)
Med 3 1066 - 1453
Renaissance era / age of discovery (perhaps mid Renaissance so 1450 - 17th century)
Empire 2
Victoria - WW1

Heck all of the era coming to think of it....all fabulous!

[FrozenmenSS]

Empire 2 - starting in 1878 with All of Asia,Africa,Europe and North and South America. Why 1878? Because all major WW1 players were on the map of Europe at that time. First DLC to come to my mind - Preorder and get the Balkan DLC - Serbia,Greece,Bulgaria. This will be Fantastic.

The campaign starts in 1878 and the end game as technology is the end of World War 1.

We got steam ships,artiley and musket warfare from Shogun 2 FOTS, tanks and flying units in Warhammer.


Everything else as idea for future TW game is just a reskin for me comparing with Rome 2,Attila,Napoleon,Empire - Im looking at you Medieval 3.We dont need you - we got the medieval mod that starts in 1212ad already for Attila.And we have it for free.

[Dumanthis]

Medieval III, with a difference that it would be a long-term e-sports capable strategy game with developers continuing to extend the game on for many years. The fact is that we don't really want more total wars, we just want them to be better or contain all the good aspects of total war games, so a project that is to be improved constantly to a level of godlike polish and tons of extra content and features is something many people want. To put it short: make the Total War of total wars, in Medieval III

[marceror]

I'm torn between Medieval 3 and World War I. I'd like to see the TW series eventually move into some more modern warfare. Of course, the engine will obviously need to be able to support this, which I don't believe the current engine would be able to do well.

[emcdunna]

What about world war 2? That has been a massive fantasy for me for a long time... imagine this:

- the map is a globe, WASD rotates the globe around, but you basically now have a 3 dimensional total war map, and can conquer everywhere on planet earth.
- The big 6 factions (USA, USSR, Britain, Germany, Japan, Italy) have soooooo many units and unit types to choose from. Theres Air power (fighters, bombers, heavy fighters, etc.), naval power (submarines, carriers, battleships, etc.), theres combined arms mechanized armies (so infantry, mech infantry, light tanks, AT guns, Tank destroyers, medium tanks, heavy tanks, heck theres even cavalry)
- You could re-enact the conflict as if Hitler and Stalin were allied, or some other combination.
- You could have a "cold war" mod/DLC campaign where its the west vs east with spies and nukes...

Anyway, the only weird thing about it is that the scope is HUGE and that the modern battles are weird. So you cant just have all of northern europe be a single "settlment" called berlin... youd need hundreds of cities and regions.

So the battles. I have thought about it and technically WW2 battles went on for months, with constant sporadic fighting, but there could be other ways to do it. When you play a battle its considered a major offensive, not just random border skirmishing. Your units would be approximately companies, so 100 or so riflemen spread out and taking cover (automatically) while they advance, or a unit of something like 5 tanks driving up and supporting the troops.

Air power would be a general's (HQ section with radio team) ability, but its only available to the general when he actually has "units" of fighters in his PROVINCE (note, not in his army... so several fighter units placed at a central airfield all get to support several different armies in battle). Same goes for artillery barrages (so you dont have the heavy artillery units on the field, since their range is measured in like miles...).

The naval battles for sure make sense, the navies clash and blow each other up with long range barrages from battleships or launching strikes of fighters/bombers from the carriers, so thats not a problem... as long as you can handle the somewhat non-historical way that land battles would be fought, it can totally work.

Dont you want to see banzai charges into USMC HMG positions? Dont you want to see hordes of russian conscripts defending the motherland and dying by the millions? Dont you want to see long range (like 300 meters away) tank engagements between tiger tanks and Shermans? Dont you want to see the D-Day landings in Normandy?

And dont you just kinda want to play as Germany and take over the whole planet, just for the lolz? haha

[marceror]

I'd love WW2 also. My main reason for proposing WWI is I think it's somewhat less ambitious, and I'd be concerned about CA trying to take on too much and the game flopping on its face. WWI alone would require a ton of innovation to make it work.

[The Iron Chancellor]

I. Total War: Victoria; spanning the years 1836 - 1936 with 2TPY or even 4TPY.
II. Including the continents of Europe (which would stretch across Russia to Mongolia, Korea and Japan), Africa, North/Central America, the east coast of South America, Central/East Asia (North to Kazakhstan, East to Burma's modern border with Thailand, South to Arabia Felix and West to Europe) and Australasia. These could be separated by Theatres of War. The thinking here is that it's an expansion on the territory in Empire, which was itself loosely based on the territory conquered/controlled by the British Empire.
III. Scripted Reforms following major technological innovations e.g machined rifling, chemical weapons, aircraft, tanks, steamships, dreadnoughts etc.
IV. Manpower/Population and Supply Scripts. This has been done in Rome 2!
V. The ability to construct small towns instead of the forts of old (Rome, Medieval 2, Empire) to represent colonies. This has actually been done in Europa Barbarorum 2.
VI. Railways in addition to Roads akin to Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai.
VII. Abolition of the "Provincial System" of Rome 2 and a return to something of a mix between the laxer province system of Empire and the city-state system of Rome/Medieval 2/Shogun 2.
VIII. Overhauled Siege and Battle System: Allowing for different formations of troops, trenches and modern siege battles.
IX. Overhauled diplomacy/economic/political systems. I'm not asking for Victoria 2 or Europa Universalis, but I am hoping for more than the usual Total War fare: something approaching at least Victoria 2.
IX.A. Political Ideologies: Fascism, Communism, Liberalism or Conservatism.
IX.B. Return of "Culture/Religion".
IX.B. Diplomatic annexation of Client States/Vassals and expansion on espionage.
X. Return of the "Kingdom Scripts" seen in Age of Charlemagne: the ability to form Germany, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, Arabia etc.

Other than that, Fall of the Samurai was a terrific base for a latter 19th/early 20th century Total War game with off-map artillery support to boot! While Warhammer will include aircraft and tanks.

[emcdunna]

I totally agree with you, WW1 would be a good stepping stone to WW2 Total War. IMO, the fact that they made ETW totally saved Napoleon from utter failure. The "second game" in a series of two games that are made in succession (like ETW and NTW, or Rome 1 and Barbarian invasion, or Rome 2 and attila, etc.) is ALWAYS BETTER.

They make loads of mistakes in the first game (in this case itd be the WW1) but then CA improves and perfects the concept in the sequel game. So maybe we'll see 1 total war game released each year, with Warhammer this year, next year would be another historical (maybe WW1 Total War) then the following would be a sequel to Warhammer, then the year after that would be the sequel to the historical one (WW2 total war).

WW2 is too ambitious to jump to without a "proof of concept" game first, like a Victorian era or WW1 game, especially if they do SOMETHING with air support, long ranged artillery, trenches, tanks, poison gas, etc. in a WW1 game.

If they just released a WW1 game with infantry only (besides the absolute crud cavalry units), who dont fight in trenches..... good god thatd be so awful. But how are they going to make the WW1 battles take only 10 minutes? Like, if two players are both dug in in trenches and all, why wouldnt you just turtle for an hour and take a draw? Especially when the alternative is rushing HMG nests

[The Iron Chancellor]

If they just released a WW1 game with infantry only (besides the absolute crud cavalry units), who dont fight in trenches..... good god thatd be so awful. But how are they going to make the WW1 battles take only 10 minutes? Like, if two players are both dug in in trenches and all, why wouldnt you just turtle for an hour and take a draw? Especially when the alternative is rushing HMG nests

I think the answer is to, simply put, increase the maximum unit size/double the army size and return to the 1HP system of older titles while scaling the deadliness of weapons. E.g, an early machine gun could fire anywhere between 400 - 600 rounds per minute, so if we say it suffers a large accuracy penalty, it could still kill 100 - 200 individual soldiers per minute. Add into that artillery, chemical weapons that confer statistic penalties, off-map fire support etc the death tolls mount up. However, I'd also advocate a cover system such as that featured in Company of Heroes. Map design would definitely have to change too.

[marceror]

I think the answer is to, simply put, increase the maximum unit size/double the army size and return to the 1HP system of older titles while scaling the deadliness of weapons. E.g, an early machine gun could fire anywhere between 400 - 600 rounds per minute, so if we say it suffers a large accuracy penalty, it could still kill 100 - 200 individual soldiers per minute. Add into that artillery, chemical weapons that confer statistic penalties, off-map fire support etc the death tolls mount up. However, I'd also advocate a cover system such as that featured in Company of Heroes. Map design would definitely have to change too.

Some good observations, but I'm wondering how many graphics cards CA would burn up with people trying to run this game.... I can just see frame rates crawling to a standstill.

[spiderknight]

I think some of you give CA to much credit....they can hardly pull of Rome and Attila how do you think they could pull of ww2?
My own picks would be Age of discovery/quest for the new world. Some of the units from warhammer have very similar helmets to the spanish conquistadors ...it would be like them to reuse assets
Pke and shot/ thirty years war.
Victorian era.

[emcdunna]

I think CA could do it.

What I basically want is a mashup of COH2 and Total War... but maybe SEGA won't do that because they want all of their WW2 fans to be playing COH2

[awful horror]

I would rather they update and improve existing games continuously. Rome 2 has so much potential.

barring that, Ancient China. Maybe allow room for a Mongol expansion. I just wish it was less about the next big release and more about expanding on and perfecting a system. I don't like splitting up subjects knowing that they could have made Rome/classical era better.
that's one of the reasons I mostly look forward to Arena. The developers seem to care about the same thing.

[Garensterz]

Pike and Shot.

This. I've always wanted to see this era made with real time battles.



A next Medieval would be great too.

[Matamoros]

The next logical step would be Renaissance.
But I hope they build another engine with 64bits in order to display actual armies with 20-60.000 soldiers, not 3.000. With realistic weight systems for realistic charges. Now, the armies have no weight, no drive, no momentum. And actual sieges with actual cities and fortresses. Not this lackluster sad joke of a siege (Rome 2)
But what basically awful horror said is really what they need to do. History is great. European History is the greatest of all. Rome is the light. Just honor it properly.
The worst problem of CA is just that they don't have any competitors.