RockPaperShotgun.com has posted a new exclusive interview with Empire: Total War's Lead Designer James Russell. During the Q&A they discussed political changes in the 18th century, changes to the campaign map, the role of Generals and naval battles.
Not all empires are built in intergalactic space, you know. Some are built in history, and that’s the subject of this latest interview: matters pertaining to the latest strategic behemoth from the British studio, Creative Assembly. We chart some of the major differences between this and previous games, with particular attention paid to the turn-based campaign map and the radical changes brought about by the new game’s battle engine. Crucially, Empire: Total War drags the Total War series a couple of centuries closer to the modern age.
Nice find. I really like the part concerning the small details of the game. Something i think TW has always done well.
I still wonder how the generals will be portrayed on the battlefield. I probably missed this somewhere though.
Keep digging up Empire info and you'll keep getting points on the "Afty's fav. forummer board"
Brilliant. About to read- thanks!
I'm sure I saw Andew Dunn in one of the posts while reading the discussion below.
Yes, I've seen him quite a bit on Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
The new features, especially the attention to detail, sound spectacular! It is good to see the TW games tread paths previously trod only by the Europa Universalis games. Excellent!
Randomly, last time I talked to the Empire guys, they talked a bit about the AI to me. They said they were reapproaching it - but equally, they said that they didn’t expect people to completely buy into that sort of promise. But the said that on a pure quantitative level that the last Total War this team did - Rome - had a single guy working on all the AI, and it wasn’t even his sole programming responsibility. This time I think they have 3 full time on it, plus another couple of people in a part time basis.
So while I do understand cynicism, it does appear they are throwing manpower at the problem.
For those who don't know Kieron, he's an expert reviewer at EuroGamer.