A Plethora of Rome II: Total War Info

NeoGAF user Dmax3901 got his hands on a copy of next month’s PC PowerPlay early and found that, apart from a cool cover, it actually had a bunch of new information on the Creative Assembly’s newest iteration of its famous Total War series.

Basically, Rome II will make combat both more personal and more epic. Players will be able to control ground armies and naval units, while also zooming in to watch small groups of armies engage in combat. Enough so that the Creative Assembly are even including facial animation in a game with thousands of units on screen at once. No word on if this includes horses and war elephants yet. The new engine also offers improvements for clothes and skins of armies as well. Consequently, the game will be grittier in tone compared to the previous games where armies just sort of dissipated when outclassed.

In terms of the territorial management, the developers are looking to add more capturable territories, but not all will need to be individually managed as in the first game. The organically growing cities from Fall of the Samurai are being improved upon for Rome II and the campaign map will be even bigger, stretching from Scotland to modern day Iran.

Dmax3901′s rundown with all the details gleaned from the magazine are as follows.

• The city in the screenshot of the beach landing is apparently Carthage.
• Massive fleet. Some boats head for the beach while others hang back. Their job is to storm the harbour once the walls have been breached and provide ranged support.
• The guy describes the beach landing as ‘Saving Private Roman,’ camera locks onto a boat as soldiers pile out and get hit with ballista bolts.
• Soldiers then run to siege towers (which are apparently left behind from previous assaults)
• The camera then moves to Scipio Aemilianus (the man who exterminated Cartharge and wiped it from the history books) who is in a siege tower. He’s shouting to encourage the troops around him. “We fight for Rome!”
• Lead Designer James Russell talks about making combat more gritty, impactful and visceral (yes the v word)
• New Engine: fully-implemented facial animation, better lighting, new shaders, improved particles and new tech for cloth and skin. Creative Assembly have the biggest mo-cap suite of its kind in Europe.
• Focussing on enhancing both micro and macro. Making on-the-ground combat more personal and human, then when zoomed out they want epic scale, elevated terrain, massive cities and combined land/sea battles.
• Creative Assembly are toying with the idea of having river combat i.e. on the Danube or Rhine.
• The city of Carthage more detailed than anything in Total War series. Realistic network of streets, statues, looks “weathered” and “beaten-up”. Want it to feel lived-in.
• Cities will have multiple capture points so there won’t be a “mosh in the plaza”.
• You can hide units in the city, spring ambushes “cavalry pouring from a side alley”. Rooftops used as defensive platforms.
• Epic scope of campaign map “from Scotland to Batria (Iran)”.
• Campaign map and unit roster far bigger than original Rome game.
• Budget is a lot bigger than Shogun 2. “40% bigger in terms of how much effort we’re putting into it”
• Talks of Regions v Provinces “we want to make sure you’ve got different areas to capture, but not necessarily all those places to manage.”
• Navies will be able to bombard cities, city walls, kill land soldiers and capture ports.
• Taking the organically growing cities of Fall of the Samurai further, making it more dynamic.