I visited Creative Assembly late last year for a look around their brand new motion capture studio. While I was there I spoke to CA mocap manager Pete Clapperton about what it took for the Total War developer to set up their own facility and the way it fits into the development of Total War: Rome II. I also got suited up, covered in pingpong balls, and told to attack a bag of wood chips with an sword. As you do.



Fun fact: I once trained as a mime and was paid to hang around parties pretending to be trapped in a glass box. I say this now to establish that, no, CGI Disco Centurion is not the stupidest thing I have done in my professional life.

Find out more about Rome 2 in our most recent preview - and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more videos in which I humiliate myself. Most of the time, they also feature PC games.

Edit: At the end, I am the orange Roman. For better or worse.

Creative Assembly continue to slowly reveal info on Total War: Rome 2. Following last week's shock announcement that the game will feature Rome as a playable faction, today they announce Carthage will also be making it into the game. It's not quite as blindingly obvious a reveal, but Rome: Total War fans won't be surprised to see the return of the North African state.

The Total War Wiki has a rundown of what traits and benefits the Carthaginians will offer. "Carthage is an expansionist trading state with a small indigenous population. As such, the bulk of its armies consist of mercenary units."

"The core of its land forces, however, are elite Carthaginian citizens known as the Sacred Band and mighty war elephants from the forests of North Africa. Accomplished seamen, their ships are fast and manoeuvrable, with good ramming and missile capabilities." Elephants! The stompiest of land mammals.

For players this means they'll serve as a great trading nation and, thanks to being a democracy, will grant a bonus to happiness. You'll also have a choice between three political powers within the state, each offering military, economic or cultural benefits.

Creative Assembly have revealed an enormous battle scene from their upcoming historical strategy epic Total War: Rome II (or possibly Rome: Total War II, or even Total Rome: War II - it's hard to keep track). Well whatever it's called, the game will boast what the developers are describing as "the biggest city – indeed the biggest battle – we've ever created in a Total War game". History fans, they're talking about the Siege of Carthage.

That image up there is just a slice of the full panorama, which is a lovely thing to behold, zoom in and explore. You can see cannons mid-fling, and soldiers mid-fall, as the city of Carthage is sacked and obliterated before your eyes. Frustratingly, we won't get to enact this battle ourselves until 2013, so in the meantime I'm going to photoshop in a mouse cursor and pretend I'm playing it right now. Don't judge me. War: Total Rome: No Place Like Rome II is due out in October next year.

Total War: Rome 2 soldiers are made up of between 6000 and 7000 polygons lead designer, James Russell, explained recently at the Eurogamer Expo. Artillery projectiles in Rome 2 are made up of more polygons then a Rome 1 soldier has. If you put enough polygons into these characters and layer on enough AI subroutines than there's always a danger that one of your chaps can become sentient and kick his way out of the matrix. Luckily for humanity this soldier is having his existential crisis in front of a team of rampaging war elephants, one of the top five worst situations in which to have an existential crisis. See his predicament in more detail in the screenshots below.

Recent rumblings from the Creative Assembly mod summit suggested that a Shogun 2 Steam Workshop and mod tools were on the way, and now they're here! You can peruse the Shogun 2 section of the Steam Workshop to download new maps and mods right now.

On the TWCenter forums CA announce the arrival of the Total War Assembly Kit. This contains a collection of extremely useful programs for modders, including a unit editor and a campaign map reprocessor that allows for the creation of custom campaigns.

The Shogun 2 map editor has also been updated to allow users to create historical battles. The package is capped off with the launch of the Total War wiki, which will serve as a hub for information on the Assembly Kit, as well as more general Total War info.

That should tide us over nicely until Rome 2 arrives next year. You can watch the first in-game footage of the Creative Assembly's next big game while your Shogun 2 maps download. There's a massive Total War sale on Steam this weekend to celebrate. Rome is available for just one pound. ONE POUND.

Accounts of this week's Creative Assembly mod summit have been hitting Total War community forums, with word of Steam Workshop support for Total War: Shogun 2 and plans for an upgraded set of CA-developed mod tools that will let modders tweak campaign and model files.

The creator of The Great War mod, "Mitch," posted a detailed account of the meeting, in which some of the most prolific Total War modders in the world got to meet top CA talent like Shogun 2 lead designer Jamie Ferguson. According to Mitch, the presentation revealed that "there will be Steam Workshop intergration" for Shogun 2. "People will be able to create and upload their own historical battles and have others download them."

There's also mention of new model conversion software and a "campaign reprocessor" that will let tweakers "edit the most desired areas of modding, the campaign and the models."

You can read the full account of the day at the TWCenter forums. The Creative Assembly kickstarted their program to support modders earlier this year with the release of the free Shogun 2 map editor.

Ouch! I've never seen someone get crushed with the head of a massive statue before, but this is WAR. The new Rome 2 trailer shows the first in-engine footage of the siege of Carthage. Legions of troops pour onto the beaches, wash into the streets and break against the grey, craggy fury of an elephant charge. It's a short teaser for a longer fly-through video of the siege that The Creative Assembly are keeping locked safely away in their trailer Trireme, but it offers a heady glimpse of the updated engine. Don't let me keep you. The video is right here ready to go.

Nick "Darth Vader" Thomadis has announced that there won't be any more follow ups to the popular Darthmod series of mods for Total War after receiving no invite to The Creative Assembly's upcoming modders' summit. "There will be some support for older games, if needed, as all my mods are complete now but there will be not a new DarthMod for new Total War games and of course not for the upcoming RTW2," said Thomadis on Facebook.

"Do not worry about the future of the current DarthMods. They will stay and will be probably somewhat more improved. Maybe now I will have more time to play them."

The Empire, Napoleon and Shogun 2 versions of Darthmod offer some of the most comprehensive player-made updates to Total War games in recent years. They've gained a reputation for being ruthless, difficult and beautiful. Dozens of collaborators have updated each edition with layers of audio, visual and AI updates, making Darthmod a go-to choice for players looking for extra challenge from Total War. Thomadis mentions that Darthmod for Shogun 2 has amassed quarter of a million downloads since its release in March.

If you fancy trying Darthmod out, Moddb has the latest versions of the Darthmod updates for Shogun 2, Empire: Total War and Napoleon.

If you don't have an iOS device, you may not have heard of The Creative Assembly's mobile take on Total War. How on Earth do you fit the scale and spectacle of a Total War campaign onto a smartphone? Well, you can't, so Total War Battles tries to offer an entirely different take. It merges building and combat onto battlefields overlaid by grids of hexes. You can channel your troops down lanes drawn across the map and harvest resources with structures placed nearby. It's designed to be quick and easy to jump into, two qualities that Total War titles have traditionally lacked.

Sega's blurb boasts a ten hour campaign with bonus challenge missions. The visuals have been spruced up for the big screen and the PC version will come with bonus concept art showing off TWB's loud, colourful style.

Total War Battles is available now on Steam for $7.99 / £4.99 / EUR 9.99. Find out more on the Total War Battles site, and get a feel for how it plays in this here trailer:

Shakespeare knew what he was doing, which is why, when he penned the first lines of Mark Antony's most famous speech from Julius Ceaser, he didn't write "friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your eyeballs," which leaves it to me to make that demand. Come on now, your eyeballs, please. All of them.

I'll use them well, I promise. Let me just gather them all up in arms, like so, and saunter into the depths of this post, where four new screenshots for the tremendously exciting Total War: Rome 2 await, showing a bit of close combat and some epic snapshots of the Battle of Carthage.

For more on Rome 2, here are our video interviews with Creative Assembly with details on Rome 2's battles and campaign game, and here's lead designer James Russell on ancient warfare, modding, DLC and the importance of building community. You may also want to check out the live action announcement trailer, which sets the scene quite nicely, except hang on a minute, let me give you these eyeballs back.