Originally Posted by
Evan MF
I wouldn't call it dead, I would just say it has stagnated to a ludicrous degree, to the extent that I no longer buy their titles (haven't touched anything after Rome 2). What was a fresh and revolutionary formula back in 2004 with Rome TW has now lost all its shine and magic to reveal a rather stale and boring experience underneath. A set of game mechanics that do nothing particularly well on their own but together were just about holding together an engaging experience by the early Warscape 3 engine (Empire TW). The only thing that has really changed since Rome has been the graphical fidelity. We are still stuck with simplistic campaign economy,trade and diplomacy mechanics and diminished building slots. We are still stuck with a battle engine that is designed only to support 20-unit armies with at most around hundred or so men in each unit (hell, battle sizes may have actually fallen since Rome, I remember Legionary units in being as large as 240 men on Huge settings back then). We are stuck with shallow character significance and development (I was more engaged by Rome and Medieval 2 general traits and retinues than I am anything from later games). We're stuck with stagnant unit mechanics, worse combatant interaction than in the Rome/Medieval engine where combatants would execute short, snappy animations, opposed to drawn out mocap animations that take all the feeling of impact out of the melee. Dare I say, we're also stuck with turn based campaigns which can mean tedious wait times and make it impossible to simulate proper army maneuvering and logistics (armies just appear out of nowhere after a turn), there's been no innovation on this front at all. Variety and accuracy is still too limited for any historical aficionado, the peak of historicity in terms of aesthetic was probably Napoleon or Empire, we've gone downhill from that point onwards. And an outright negative has been the feature-creep of cookie-cutter RTS elements from other games in the industry, the most toxic being the mass adoption of active unit buffs (power-up buttons and 'special abilities') which are totally anathema to the gameplay of Total War battles, which in my mind are supposed to be about 'reading the field' opposed to 'reading the spreadsheet'; combined-arms maneuvering affairs and not statistically calculated button-clickfests, as every other MOBA or 2D RTS out there appears to be - I fear CA's new hirings over the years are the main culprits for this creep and I also believe the gimmicky nature of Warhammer units (which as I understand it are chock full of this special ability, that power-up, can receive this passive buff, etc in the Tabletop) are going to infect Total War the development culture going forwards into new historical titles (3+ years of working on Warhammer will inevitably have an effect on the studio's game design philosophy in future titles).
I think most veteran players cling to the idea of Total War, the vision we have of a deep simulator/strategy game which fuses geopolitical and economic affairs in the macro, with life-size armies and proper newtonian battle physics in the micro, rather than what CA's actual execution tends to be. I believe we're long past the point of believing CA are ever going to deliver this or make any effort to take Total War down this road. I'm sure they're happy with their market position (effectively a genre-monopoly) and are making good money being conservative and derivative, opposed to revolutionary and innovative, as they were back in the early 2000s. It's time to look elsewhere for another ambitious development team to give them some competition and attempt to move us a few steps closer to realizing our dream game.
Disclaimer: these words are just my opinion.