The original Rome is one of the most enduringly popular games in the Total War series. It did away with sprites, rendering warfare in full 3D. It added depth and flexibility to the campaign game, coupled with one of the most varied and evocative eras in the history of human conflict. It even formed the basis of a historical TV show.

A sequel to Rome is, according to Total War lead designer James Russell, the most frequent request that Creative Assembly receive - and a few weeks ago, I visited the developer to see that sequel for myself. I was shown a ten minute battle demonstration, running live and in-engine but with pre-scripted troop movements and a planned outcome. What I saw was really exciting, but it’s worth being clear about the fact that this was a first look at a game that is early in development, with a lot that the developers aren’t willing to show. The impression I got was that there’s much still to be nailed down behind the scenes and as such a lot of the specific detail that Total War fans will be looking far was hard to come by. They were however willing to talk about the direction and themes of Rome 2’s design, and I was given exclusive interviews with the people behind the game. Here’s everything there is to know so far.

Bigger, more detailed battles
 
The setting for the demonstration was the Roman siege of Carthage at the end of the Thrid Punic War, circa 146 - the battle that famously ended with the total destruction of the north African city by Roman forces. The opening shot was a close-up on Roman consul Scipio Aemilianus, giving orders to his men on board a warship. Total War: Rome 2 runs on a new engine that supports the largest and most detailed battles in the series’ history, to the extent of supporting full, in-engine cutscenes. In place of a traditional general’s speech, then, the siege of Carthage began with an actual conversation between Scipio and his men, before zooming out to take in the sight of the Roman fleet approaching the heavily-defended shoreline.

Ships and armies can now take part in the same battles when the situation demands it. As troop-carrying biremes crashed into the shore, Roman boats armed with catapults kept their distance and provided covering fire for the dismounting troops, who formed into ranks before charging up the beach towards the walls. I later asked if this ‘rolling start’ meant that the deployment phase was a thing of the past, but that’s not the case - instead, CA are looking to be more flexible about how battles can begin, based on various circumstances. Beach landings are a confirmed feature, according to lead battle designer Jamie Ferguson, and there’s room for other non-traditional openings as well.

“There's something very special about Total War in terms of the scale,” James Russell told me. “If you look at a battle you have incredible detail close up, where you can see two men fighting it out - and you zoom out and you can see thousands and thousands of them on the battlefield, and we really want to push both ends of that spectrum in Rome 2.”

The developers used a free camera to show off different aspects of the battle - Roman archers taking cover behind wooden barricades to return fire on the Carthaginian defenders, siege towers moving into place, off-shore Roman artillery causing a breach in the city’s harbour walls. They were keen to stress, however, that in the final game it’ll no longer be necessary to swing the camera around to keep track of the battlefield. Rome 2 will feature a tactical view that allows players to zoom the camera out to a top-down, kilometer-square overview where units are represented by simplified icons. Commanding individual cohorts effectively from this perspective won’t be possible, but it should make getting your bearings easier and reduce the amount of time you spend squinting at the mini-map.


Making battles easier absorb on the macroscale belies Creative Assembly’s most frequently stated aim for Rome 2, which is to add character and humanity to the scores of tiny soldiers that live or die by your command. The new closest zoom setting is an absurdly detailed close-up that allows you to hover over a individual combatant’s shoulder in third-person. In the demonstration, this was shown off by leaping into Scipio Aemilianus’ unit as they prepared to storm the Carthaginian walls using a siege tower. The same Romans that had just been swarming from biremes by the hundred were now fidgeting and shifting as nervous individuals, listening to the orders of a general a few feet away.

Scripted? Yes, and Creative Assembly wouldn’t comment on how these mid-battle moments would play out as part of regular play. Impressive, though? Certainly, particularly when the Romans reached the walls. Shogun 2’s samurai occasionally broke off into brief animated duels, but Rome 2 takes the specifics of melee combat much further - men lunge and dodge and shield-bash each other, the game taking full advantage of both Creative Assembly’s meticulous research - which involves work with professional ancient warfare reenactors - and the new engine’s enhanced animation capabilities.

The importance of this extra detail, according to lead battle designer Jamie Ferguson, is that it involves the player in the lives of their men. “When they give those guys an order to take the walls they can experience that themselves” he explains, “and see what those guys are going and realise that they're not just a bunch of clones climbing a ladder, that there are individuals in there and they're all doing their best for you.”

The walls taken, the battle continued in the streets. Roman troops entering by another route - that breach in the harbour wall - trapped the Carthaginians at a crossroads with a flanking maneuver, forcing the defenders further back into their own city. This part of the demo closely resembled equivalent encounters in other recent Total War games, but the sheer size of cities necessitates that battles be more complex than simply capturing and holding a single central location. In Rome 2, a successful siege will be a multi-part affair, with several dynamic objectives.

For the sake of the demo, the sack of Carthage was limited to these opening minutes. To conclude, the team zoomed back into Scipio Aemilianus’ unit as the consul lead the charge into the city. A collapsing tower sent a cloud of dust and smoke into the street, causing the Romans to hesitate. There was a pause, and a yelled order to hold the line. The silhouettes of charging war elephants emerged from the smoke, and, well, that was it for the world's first glimpse at Rome 2. In an epilogue, a victorious Scipio surveyed defeated Carthage and gave the order to burn the city to the ground.

Obviously, these bookending cutscenes are too specific and too neat to apply to every campaign - as ever in an open-ended Total War game, Carthage is just as likely to be sacked by rampaging Gauls as it is by the Roman Republic - and Creative Assembly say that the siege of Carthage is more likely to end up as a standalone historical battle. It’s a striking statement of Rome 2’s cinematic intent, though, and my impression from the demo was that this new level of detail has the potential to enhance the drama of the whole game.


Reinventing the campaign game
 
"What we're trying to do is create a game where warfare more meaningful,” Jamie Ferguson told me. “We're placing much more importance on battles, that when an army turns up it is an army. You may find that the campaign game doesn't look like it might have in previous games."

Despite the tease, CA aren’t willing to show off anything of Rome 2’s campaign map at this stage. The impression I got however was that they’re taking a serious and critical look at the structure of the turn-based part of the game, again with an eye to making the player care more about the individual soldiers, cohorts and armies at their command.

"We're ... trying to focus attention on a much smaller number of armies and a smaller number of more significant battles” James Russell explains. “We're trying to reduce the management you've got to do assembling armies, and that kind of thing.”

One example of this kind of refinement will be the ability to govern whole provinces made up of a number of individual regions. Rather than delving into the micromanagement of each individual territory, it sounds like it’ll be possible to set policies for an entire region - but when it comes to warfare, each one of those areas will need to be conquered separately. “We still have that strategic depth where a province is made of up several regions which you can conquer”, Russell says. “And what that means is that you can have the benefit of scale but you don't have the management detail.”

Discussing the occurrence of actual historical events during the campaign, Jamie Ferguson stresses that player freedom is still paramount. “We're not putting the player on rails” he explains. “ will be triggered depending on what the player is doing how how the player is behaving... it's really our core goal to integrate the player's interaction with the rich tapestry of the ancient world.”

That integration is key to Total War, he argues. "The point of Total War games isn't just to recreate history. What we're trying to do is get a counterfactual history going. We start from a historical point of view - this is how things were at, lets pick a date at random, 325 BC - and from that point onwards, it's about player action and interaction, with the AI and their environment. That determines how the game develops."


This will apply to everything from political systems to army composition. Using the example of the crown offered to Julius Caesar, Ferguson says that there’s no reason that the Roman Republic necessarily needs to become an Empire - it could have historically gone back to a kingship, and if the player chooses to make that decision then that’s something Creative Assembly want to support. Likewise, there’s nothing - geography and resources aside - stopping a sufficiently well-managed coalition of Germanic tribes from becoming the dominant force of their time.

Giving the player the power to pick the loadout of individual units of troops is something else that Creative Assembly are exploring. “There's no reason that we can't allow the player, maybe, to change the way those units are equipped” Ferguson says. “For example there's the cavalry sword - the spatha. In reality that didn't really become part of standard Roman equipment until very late, in the period - but there's no reason that some general at some point might not have decided, 'well lets do that earlier on'." The idea of history as a sandbox is still at the forefront of Total War’s identity.

(Re)designing the ancient world
 
It’s also worth mentioning that Rome 2 looks stunning, and that’s as much thanks to its art direction as it is to the new engine. Shogun 2 was rightly praised for having a comprehensive visual identity of its own, and Rome 2 continues that trend - which is even more impressive given how familiar Roman warfare is to a western audience. There’s a strong attention to colour and lighting in particular, with Carthage rendered in orange, brown and olive green against the white of its defenders and deep red of the invading Romans. Smoke from fires throughout the city changes the nature of the lighting - in real time, I’m told - diffusing glaring sunlight into a gathering gloom. It’s effective, dramatic, believable stuff.

Soldiers’ weapons and armour is chipped and looks used, and the walls of cities are adorned with ancient graffiti. This “lived-in” sense is one of the key things that makes Rome 2’s design stand out. Despite the prevalence of Rome in film and TV, the team have gone back to original archaeological sources, rebuilt them, and then beaten them up. If Carthage looks this good, I cannot wait to see the Eternal City itself.

Multiplayer and mods
 
Multiplayer is confirmed, but aside from the fact that Creative Assembly are “planning to do something really big”, no details are available yet. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect something along the lines of Shogun 2’s matchmaking and online campaign systems.

Whether or not Rome 2 will include the content creation tools recently rolled out to Shogun 2 is less clear. “We do our best” James Russell told me. “It has become harder, in the old days we worked with very simple text files that were very easy to mod, now we have a proper authenticated database. We don't necessarily have all the editor tools that the players out there think we do.”

The road to Rome
 
Total War: Rome 2 is due in 2013. If Creative Assembly can successfully balance revitalising the campaign game with chasing a new, cinematic depth to individual battles then there’s every reason to be very excited. More on Rome 2 is available in PCG UK issue 242, out July 4th, and PCG US issue 230, out July 17th. You can also check out our video interviews with the game's lead designers.

SEGA have just announced that many of their European offices are about to close. New distribution partners have been announced across France, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

The veteran developer/publisher are "realigning" their strategy and closing all offices apart from the London headquarters. The UK office will be responsible for managing European distribution from July 1st, assisted by Koch Media, Level03 Distribution and 5 Star Games.

“SEGA is entering a new and exciting phase that will position the company as a content led organisation maximising sales with strong and balanced IP such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Total War, Football Manager and the Aliens franchise,” said Jurgen Post, COO of SEGA Europe.

Rumours of closures originated at E3 but were quickly snuffed out by Studio Director at Sports Interactive, Miles Jacobson. His crytpic tweet may or may not have something to do with the sport they call "footkick."

Good luck to all at Sega Europe with their transition into the digital-heavy strategy. Our sympathies go out to those affected negatively by the changes.

A gentleman named Lambent Stew has put together a webpage that gathers some of your Steam data and arranges it like little quantitative ducks in a row. How nice.

There are a number of homemade utilities that reconstitute Steam information, like a Steam sales tracker, and a Steam account value calculator. What's unique to this one is it outputs some useful aggregate data, like total hours played, and what percentage of games you've bought you haven't opened, you jerk. Good lord, I haven't played 1,006 games. Tonight, Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships, it's you and me.

The Creative Assembly's TW Craig posted on the Total War forums earlier with news of an upcoming event that will give modders a chance to meet the designers and programmers behind their favourite strategy series.

"We'd like to hold a modding summit here at The Creative Assembly at the end of July. Maybe we'll hire a venue somewhere," writes TW Craig. "The main thing is we can have these conversations with you ourselves, explain why limitations are in place if they exist, and help if there's any way we can."

A few posts further on, a player posts some excerpts from emails from The Creative Assembly, which provide a few further details. Attending CA devs will "likely have direct experience of coding, designing or mapping on Empire, Napoleon and Shogun 2" and there are plans to "absolutely live stream it in some way." TW Craig also mentions that the devs are "building an official wiki" for Total War, with "a separate section just for modders."

The Creative Assembly recently released a free map editor for Shogun 2 and Fall of the Samurai, another sign that they're looking to give their great modding community some official support.

Great news for Total War fans. Out of the blue, The Creative Assembly have released the first official modding tool for a Total War game. The map editor is now available to download for free from the Tools section of your Steam library. It'll let you create multiplayer maps that can then be shared and played in custom battles against other players or the AI in Shogun 2 and this year's splendid standalone expansion, Fall of the Samurai.

The Total War series has always had a great modding community. It's nice to see them get some official support from the developers. The editor lets you mould terrain into a battlefield and then place objects to form towns, forests and castles. The Creative Assembly have released a bunch of new screenshots showing off some of the landscapes you can make using the tools. Take a look.

As reported on Eurogamer, Creative Assembly are doing their best to get Notch motion captured for their next Total War game. Where/when/how/why is this happening? That's still something of a mystery. Motion capture is a hot topic on PC Gamer today. Even horses are at it.

Earlier today Creative Assembly sent Notch a tweet, saying "Hey Notch. How would you like to be in the next Total War game?"

Notch replied: "It's going to feature fat guys sitting around a lot and grunting when they finally do stand up?" before confirming his interest: "'cause if it does, I'm DOWN! YEAH!! Assuming schedule works out and all that. When? Where? How?"

Since those tweets, Community man at Creative Assembly, Craig Laylock has shed some light into the invite: "I love that he enjoys making games for the fun of making good games. That's what it's all about."

Notch is the hatted creator of Minecraft. We'll have more on the Total War/Notch collaboration as and when it breaks.

After a controversial launch, Empire has gone on to become one of the sleeper hits of the Total War series. A few weeks before the standalone Total War: Shogun 2 expansion, Fall of the Samurai was released, we asked Creative Assembly studio director, Mike Simpson about Empire's strange journey. "It’s weird isn’t it?" he said. "It does keep going – that’s one thing about Empire, it’s still selling now as much as it was a year ago and that just doesn’t stop."

Empire was to be The Creative Assembly's most sprawling, ambitious Total War yet, but its release in 2009 was overshadowed by AI bugs. Passive enemies and weak AI frustrated Total War players. Simpson admits that The Creative Assembly "did take on a little bit more than we were actually capable of delivering by the date."

"We had to have it earlier, so it was buggy on release, and it took us quite a few patches to get that sorted out. But when it was done it gets closer to the product that we originally intended, and it had long, long, long legs."

Empire's vast campaign takes place across three major theatres of war, America, Europe and India. Those are just the land battles, additional coastline zones host naval battles for international trade routes, vital for securing the huge resources needed to fuel a hungry global empire. Simpson described how The Creative Assembly approach each edition of Total War, in stages of "revolution" and "evolution." New titles like Empire are designed to refresh the series and update the engine, acting as a platform for future expansions like The Warpath campaign and, follow-up games like Napoleon.

"Empire was one of those revolutionary steps, but at that point the revolutions were starting to take too long to do, so it started to take more than three years to go around and that cycle was too long," said Simpson. "So at that point we realised you can’t actually throw the whole codebase away and start again, we have to do it in chunks. So we’re going into more of a continuous revolution process, which seems to be working pretty well."

Empire is available on Steam now for £10 / $19.99, and there's a demo available if you fancy trying it out. It's improved immensely in with the patches CA have added over the years, and there are plenty of mods out there keeping it fresh.

More recently, Total War: Shogun 2 could be considered the next "revolution" of the cycle. We've since had Rise of the Samurai and Fall of the Samurai, which means we're probably due another big step into a new theatre soon. Where would you like Total War to go next?

An epic Shogun 2 patch has landed alongside the standalone expansion, Fall of the Samurai. If a dozen sumo wrestlers were to combine into a twelve foot tall Megazord of sumo wrestlers, the resulting horror would not be as large or fleshy as this update, which adds 40 vs. 40 units battles to multiplayer, 22 new land and sea maps to fight on, Steam cloud support, reduced battle load times, "greatly reduced" AI turn times and some 3000 words worth of balance shifts and bug fixes. Bikkuri shita!

The fixes listed in the patch notes below affect every aspect of the game, from the campaign map, to the real time battles and multiplayer. There's a bit of good news for anyone who bought the Blood Pack for Shogun 2, it'll apply the same effects to Fall of the Samurai's battles, too. Here's the full change list.

Headline additions – also available to Shogun 2 players

40v40 unit battles available via ‘control large armies’ option in Custom Battles and Multiplayer
Numerous Battle and Campaign AI improvements (see Battle and Campaign sections below)
Greatly reduced save-game file sizes and full Steam Cloud support
Battlefield load time improvement (approximately 30% dependent on machine spec)
Greatly reduced AI turn-time
22 brand new Land, Naval and Siege battle-maps

 
Full patch notes
 

The majority of these also apply to Shogun 2.

General fixes/additions

Fixes for known multiplayer campaign desyncs
Introduced option to auto-trigger abilities through right-clicking
Towers can now be ordered to fire at specific targets
Domination (capture all points) victories added for multiplayer
General optimisations across all areas of the game
Ability to queue technology tree research
Ability to set groups to AI control
Ability to lock group formations with new UI button
Fixed missing siege models
New front-end background camera pans
Campaign AI turn-times reduced due to pathfinding optimisations
Naval campaign AI improved significantly

 
Naval battles

Fixes:

Fixed attack intercept position when in and around islands
Fixed bug where some submerged ships did not surrender
Fixed several rare crashes in naval battle.
Improved circling behaviour for all ships
Improved range detection for Fire Bomb Kobaya
Removed stop-start movement for AI ships moving in a group.
Improved target selection for naval AI

 
User Interface

Modified the Standard Camera in naval battles to ensure that the horizon is always visible.
Added UI toggle to battle HUD (bottom left corner), so can hide UI elements
Mousing over unit cards now highlights the corresponding unit as if mousing over them
Double pressing group frame or double pressing group number shorcut zooms to groups
Added lock formation button for groups; groups act like did before, locked into formation by default, but can be unlocked to behave like a selection group. This provides an easier interface for players just wanting selection groups. (Can still quickly create a selection group pressing ctrl+g, which can also be used to toggle lock)
Added UI support for more units in a single battlefield, card system now goes onto double rows when required
Cursor no longer gives option to attack unmounted horses, as doing so would give order to attack riders which could be confusing
Inspiration range now drawn for all units with inspiration aura, not just for the general (like hero units)
Added ship schematics to info panel for boshin ships, to provide more detail on ships state
Fixed graphical issues with naval fire arcs in night battles
Added player names to MPC tooltips
Added fade transitions to info panels
Unit cards now coloured based on unit category
Added support for unbound keys, so can disable shortcuts rather than having to give obscure shortcut
Added page numbers to tooltips
New group frames to support double rows, and now highlight when moused over or group selected; as well as showing group number rather than japanese number for easier access via shortcuts
Multiplayer postbattle screen reworked
Added option to invert camera's x-axis
Can now move around battlefield when battle results present
Can no longer use debug camera from preferences while in multiplayer battle
Fixed text running off battle tooltips for some gempei units
Fixed bug where info panel would not update while paused during a replay
Bridge icons on battle radar given better image, and now orientated correctly
Fort walls now visible on radar map/loading map
Pings placed on invalid terrain no longer appear in middle of map
Ship tooltips/cards number of men take into account officers
Inactive battle hud buttons have tooltips
Fix for rotated UI images behaving incorrect when running widescreen resolution
Fix for realism mode setting being lost for campaign
Officers taken into account for ship numbers on unit cards/tooltips
Fixed in game chat highlight issues
Building info panel resizes unit entries dynamically to fix unit names being clipped in certain languages
Can now use context and tracking cameras in replays
Fixed issue where pasted invalid characters into text inputs
Neatend effect bundle tooltips so not larger than need to be
Can now double click on ground in battles to move to that location
Drag out units display now shows two arrows when will result in run on release, 1 arrow when will result in walk
Improved target/path marker spline quality so doesn't stretch out, and head now represents movement speed of unit it represents (so know if running or walking to current target)
Added ability to view replays at end of battle/replay, rather than routing player back to front-end then back into battle
Post-battle screens now appear for replays
Tweaks to main menu button animations
Fix for inconsistent naval crew-icons on ship cards between front-end/campaign and battle
Battle-lobby countdown timer moved so retainer panel not obscured
Tweaked UI banner-scaling (slightly smaller) and UI splines brought closer to ground (fire arcs, paths, etc)
Fixed cinematic borders not always being flush to edges of screen, resulting in gaps at top and bottom
Added UI to toggle auto-triggered abilities. Right-clicking on a supported ability button will toggle it to auto-trigger, where the AI will decide when to use the ability, in order to save the player some micro-management.
Chat-toggle button now hides all chat when currently visible rather than input, and button is highlighted when player has unread messages
Group number shortcuts are now rebindable
Moved pings to left-click rather than right-click for UI consistency
Realism mode changes: radar visible during deployment, morale visible on minimal tooltips

 
Campaign

Fixed rare case where pre-battle camera would trigger too early if an agent or neutral army was between the attacker and the defender under certain circumstances.
Campaign variable "family_rounds_between_wife_offers" now also determines the earliest round a wife can be offered
Stopped generating movement extents for armies on the pre-battle screen
Fixed rare campaign lockup caused by an agent being forced out of its reserved area
Fixed very rare campaign lockup involving an ambush across a land bridge, where an agent or third party neutral army is between the acting army and the ambusher
Fixed multi-turn AI actions against the human player causing the game to drop out of speed-up mode even though the action will not complete that turn
Changed format of campaign height-map to reduce load time and significantly reduce memory usage
Fixed very rare crash caused by autosave saving an army in an incorrect order
Fixed bug when issuing orders to agents on navies against target agents in armies
Fixed trade-route tooltip which showed only one imported resource per route
Fixed a rare lockup caused by a successful agent action causing an army to move, whilst another army is also in motion under certain circumstances
Fixed rare crash when two multi-turn embark orders – to embark two different armies onto two different navies – resulted in an attempt to perform both embarks at the same port in the same turn
Fixed rare crash caused by the Daimyo's brother not being demoted from command of an army when the Daimyo dies while there is a superior general in the army
Fixed a few issues with commerce-raid value updates when merging and splitting raiding navies
Added information about when a diplomatic action would be considered dishonourable by other clans
Selecting an agent in an army now shows the agent’s movement extents.
Improved rope visuals on campaign map buildings
Fixed trade-route information not being updated when a port is damaged
Fixed obscure issue which prevented other factions’ movement extents showing if they had military access to player’s territory, but player did not have military access to theirs.
Modified several game areas to fail gracefully instead of crashing when loading incorrectly modded data
Various memory-usage optimisations
Fixed being able to get more than three agents in a city
Fixed unusual crash in pathfinder related to blockaded ports
Fixed crash in event-log system
Fixed crash when issuing an order to a previously merged army
Fixed crash related to capturing artillery
Fixed bug where reinforcement armies solely comprised of units that can't enter as reinforcements (such as artillery) were counted as reinforcements in pre-battle
Fixed bug where region ownership for unseen rebel regions was visible
Fixed bug where attrition-indicator showed on rebel banners when they weren't suffering attrition
Fixed crash when bribing cities that are under siege
Fixed issue with missing army-templates causing lockups
Fixed crash in sound tracker
Fixed crash in agent-options dialog
Fixed issue with ‘surrender imminent’ message
Fixed issue where certain melee and charge bonuses were not working correctly in battle
Fixed issue where shroud was updated many times when a Clan dies, causing some slowdown
Fixed unit exchange issue when in ports
Fixed issue where some characters destroyed in battle remained alive
Fixed issue where pre battle UI appeared in odd order when player was playing as AI in MPC
Fixed issue where campaign thought ships needed 0 crew to function
Fixed case where MPC players are forced to spectate an AI-vs-AI game
Fixed issue where MPC co-op allies received message that enemy is retreating when allies are retreating
Fixed issue where ambush cursor did not show for characters in garrisons
Fixed bug where a force would act on incorrect orders after capturing units
Fixed issue where recruited agents were unable to enter the settlement they were recruited from on the turn they were recruited
Fixed missing building name in ‘legendary building built’ event-log entry
Player now gets full spying information on a force after attacking it
Improved campaign experience-handling
Removed timer from certain battles to prevent exploit
Port selection marker is now centred around the flag
Armies now only get region-unrestricted replenishment in enemy regions
Tweaked some message events to be more informative
Various campaign load-time and memory usage optimisations
Reduced memory usage in front end startup process
Reduced campaign animations memory-usage
Improvements to campaign building-display resource usage
Fixed religion/allegiance zeal display in religion tooltips for more than two religions
Various mission bugs fixed
Fix to clear military crackdown repression on handover of region
Only primary generals now get full XP in battles; generals commanding reinforcements get reduced XP
Technology goal can be selected to guide auto-selection of next tech when research completes
Save games: compression and other size reductions to make files dramatically smaller; Steam Cloud support added

 
Battles

When units are climbing walls men can now fire their bows or guns when at the top of the walls while men in the same unit are still climbing
Movement arrow now appears when units are ordered onto positions on zones such as fort walls
Fixes for units not being able to fire at units behind fort walls in certain circumstances
Unit destination proxies (shown on space bar) now update when the game is paused
Fire arcs now only turn off when ‘fire at will’ is off and melee mode is enabled
Improvement to display of fire arc facing when defending a zone (e.g. on a fort wall)
Fix for not being able to turn off fire at will when defending a zone (e.g. on a fort wall)
AI unit shooting-line analysis tweaks
In siege battles where the AI is attacking, artillery can now deploy on multiple lines.
Units now change their tactic state more effectively if they are idle and under fire in siege battles (when AI is attacking)
Stopped units behind fort walls being unfavourably targeted by artillery
Fixed several fort-reinforcement AI bugs
Stopped units from being issued attack orders when they are climbing fort walls
Stopped units from prioritizing the capture of distant towers in siege battles
Fixed several bugs with idle cavalry during AI-attacking siege battles
Fixed bug where AI was unable to place units on a sensible fort approach
Fixed strange movement bugs in AI fort defence
Fixed rare crash-issue resulting from a scenario where the player enters a battle with no units because they are reinforcing another player, and all their units are artillery (which cannot be deployed as reinforcements)
The ‘last stand’ morale state, triggered when castle defenders are fighting to the death, now imposes penalties on ranged accuracy and reload rate
Battle AI is more likely to deploy cavalry on both of its flanks, allowing for greater opportunities when flanking and executing a double envelopment
Fixed an issue where naval reinforcements sometimes did not fully enter the map
Introduced a variety of improvements to the battlefield AI's use of outflanking and double envelopment manoeuvres, making these tactics more effective overall
Fixed a rare issue where some reinforcement units did not enter the battlefield because they were not correctly resized to avoid obstacles outside the playable area
Battle AI now performs a deeper analysis when it decides between walking and running, resulting in the AI moving more swiftly when appropriate and tiring its troops out less often
Fixed an issue where ships left a battle with incorrect experience data, causing them to gain experience prematurely
Fixed an issue in Battle AI which delayed its ability to move to a good defensive position outside its deployment zone once the battle starts
Fixed several issues in the way that the Battle AI assembles and holds a defensive line. The AI is less likely to reform when an enemy is near, and will be more stable when holding the line
Battle AI now does a better job of advancing a firing-front towards an enemy, by performing a more robust selection of a direction from which to attack
Mounted shooters now avoid shooting through friendly units before firing in the same way that infantry shooters do
The duration of the friendly-fire penalty has increased from 6 seconds to 30 seconds
When trying to set buildings alight, archers no longer continue to fire on buildings after their flaming arrows are spent
When a unit is within range of multiple friendly passive inspiration auras, it is now given a bonus equivalent to the largest single aura; the multiple auras do not stack. Previously only the commanding general's aura was ever applied

 
General multiplayer fixes

Fixed issue where a veteran unit could gain its statistics bonus prematurely during the battle, once enough experience points had been earned but before the end of the battle
Fixed issue where LAN server browser contained wrong information
Fixed some crashes with multiplayer
Improved chat-room population system
Fixed issue where battle voice was not working
Fix for rare case where land units could be taken into naval battle

 
MP abilities

Stand and fight: melee attack bonus reduced from 3 to 2
Standand Fight: reload bonus reduced from 10 to 5
Hold firm: melee defence bonus reduced from 6 to 3
Rally: morale bonus to non-routing units reduced from 2 to 1 (bonus for units already routing is unaffected)
Naval whistling Arrows duration halved
Special abilities for towers

 
MP unit caps

Kisho Ninja capped at 4 per army
Mounted Samurai capped at 3 per army

 
MP retainers

Infantry officer: +1 morale
Way of the Ikko-Ikki: +1 morale, +2 melee defence & +5% cost for monks and ashigaru
Rennyo's teachings: -1 melee attack, +3 melee defence all units
Stricken unholy forge: -1 armour to enemy melee troops
World-Weary: -1 morale (enemy veterans)
Shirabyoshi dancer: +1 morale (veterans), +5% cost (monks, nuns)
Naginata Warrior Monk Cavalry no longer affected by retainers affecting all monks, to bring them in line with their Samurai equivalents.

 
MP skills

Fire by rank: cost reduced from 250 to 120
Rapid Volley: cost reduced from 250 to 120

 
MP key buildings

Reduced morale bonus from Shrine

 
MP unit costs

Yari hero (decreased from 1200 to 1100)
Bow hero (decreased from 1500 to 1400)
Bow ashigaru (decreased from 450 to 400)
Matchlock ashigaru (decreased from 500 to 450)
Bulletproof samurai (decreased from 1000 to 950)
Nuns (decreased from 900 to 850)
Tetsubo monk hero (increased from 800 to 850)

 
The following brand new Fall of the Samurai maps will also be made available in Shogun 2:

Land battles:

Awa Ridge Pass
Gigu Crossing
Happo Ridge
Ishiyama Ruins
Iwaki Foothills
Jigokudani Valley
Kawabe River
Kurobe Gorge
Nishizawa Valley
Osaka Plain
Ubayu Onsen
Usui Pass

 
Naval battles:

Hokuriki Coast
Seto Inland Sea
Tohuku Sea
Tokai Coast
Tsugaru Straits
Sea of Japan

 
Siege battles:

Iburi Castle
Satsuma Castle
Uzen Fortress
Wakasa Fortress

 
EDIT: Additionally added fixes

Rally (land & naval)
Active time reduced to 60; recharge time reduced to 180

 
Hold firm

Range reduced to 30
Active time reduced to 30

 
Stand and Fight

recharge time increased to 45

 

For every Total War game, there are dozens of ambitious mods. Some, like Europa Barbarorum for Rome, overhaul the game to reflect the period in which it's set with a scholarly degree of historical accuracy. Others, like the Darth mods, prettify everything with a bundle of graphical updates tweak enemy AI to make the games more challenging.

Despite modders' enthusiasm for the series, the Total War games have never been especially easy to meddle with. If anything, they're getting harder to tweak. Is this a deliberate move to help sell more DLC by reducing fan-made alternatives? We asked Creative Assembly studio director Mike Simpson that very question.

"That isn’t the case. If anything, we tend towards: the more mod support, the more DLC you’ll sell," he said. "It has always been quite difficult to support mods quite well and it’s quite a lot of work, so we’d end up not doing something else."

The increasing complexity of the Total War engine will have made modding trickier, but it also makes creating user friendly mod tools more difficult on the development side, too. "We’ll do more," Simpson said. "We will do more."

We asked Mike Simpson if the team at Creative Assembly have been watching the launch of the Steam Workshop, and the explosion of TF2 and Skyrim mods that have resulted.

"Yeah, we’re looking at that as well. We should be letting people do this," he said. There’s no philosophical problem with modding at all."

"I can imagine situations where it might run into trouble if someone started to do a mod that happened to be the thing we were doing in the next game, then we’d be thinking do we really want to encourage that?" he added with a laugh.

The standalone expansion, Total War: Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai, is coming out on Friday. It's good. Find out why in our Total War: Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai review, and have a peek at our ten top tips to help you take back Japan. Hint: use guns. Lots of guns.

Standalone Total War expansion, Fall of the Samurai, is out, and it's really rather good. You can find out exactly why in our Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai review. You'll be fighting for tradition and the Samurai way on the Shogun's side, or battling to restore the Emperor to supremacy, but carving out your empire in the midst of a civil war isn't an easy task. The standalone expansion adds 39 new units, three new agents and a bunch of new boats. There's a new tech tree, railways and dramatic new weapons like naval artillery and gatling guns to get to grips with.

There's so much to do. Where should a new general start? Who should you kill first? Which are better, swords or guns? Is Sun Tzu's Art of War actually useful? (yes, if you're monitor's a bit low down, plonk it on top of the ancient tome, voila). Here are ten top tips to help you take back Japan.

Set up trade routes quickly


Building an empire is expensive. Never mind the cost of training troops and building boats, it's the upkeep that you need to worry about. Soldiers are always hungry and boats have a habit of breaking. That'll cost you a set amount of gold every turn. In Total War, quick money is hard to come by. You can take an enemy town and sack it for all it's worth, or just set up a trade route.

Doing a deal with another clan will instantly secure you a boost to your income every turn, but the number of trade agreements you can set up is limited by the number of ports you control. Your first step should be to send out a small fleet to skirt the shores of Japan. Whenever you catch a glimpse of an undiscovered faction, you'll be able to set up a meeting straight away and start negotiations.

In Fall of the Samurai, your relationships with other clans will be affected by your allegiance with the progressive Emperor or the traditionalist Shogun. If a clan's on the other side, they won't like you very much. That's why it's best to discover as many factions as possible as quickly as possible. The deals you do should be limited by the number of ports you have, not the number of factions you can talk to.

It's worth keeping an eye on which resources are in demand. If you see one selling for a good price, upgrade the mines and mills that generate that resource to boost that vital trade income.
Use artillery always


Ships can now bombard cities, mines, farms, railway stations and even armies from the safety of the sea. If one of your armies enter battle within a friendly fleet's circle of influence on the campaign map, you'll be able to call down artillery to smash your enemies on the battlefield. This is an extremely powerful ability that you'll want to use constantly throughout your Fall of the Samurai campaign.

On the strategic campaign map, you should use fleets to strike at unguarded resource buildings scattered throughout enemy provinces. You can hammer farms and mines into disrepair, damaging your opponent's economy. They'll have to spend some gold to get those buildings repaired as well, making shoreline bombardments a great way to soften up a province for invasion.

Naval artillery can be even more useful in battle. As long as the fight is initiated within the circular range indicator of your fleet on the campaign map, you'll be able to call down a couple of devastating bombardments during the real time battle. You can choose a focused bombardment, which is useful if you're going for a high-risk strike on a vital enemy unit (the one that carries their general, for example), but you'll probably do better with the less accurate strike. This will spread out the incoming shells, delivering less destruction over a wider area, but more disruption to the enemy line.

A well timed strike can obliterate enemy armies in tight rank and file formation. If you're lucky, your strike will result in plenty of casualties, but even if you don't score a direct hit, the force of the impacts will send soldiers flying. This can scatter your foe's formation and open up gaps in their gunlines. Once you've called in the big guns, there's a bit of a wait before it arrives. Getting barrages on target can take a bit of practice. If you master artillery, you've added a devastating weapon to your arsenal.
Build boats. Lots of boats


Naval artillery is an important weapon, but your fleets have an even more vital task. You must protect your trade ports at all costs. At high tech levels, you can upgrade those ports to international trade centres. These bring in immense riches and give you the opportunity to recruit troops from overseas. If your enemy blockades a port, it'll cost you thousands in gold and you'll lose those recruitment options.

Don't let that happen. A fleet can travel a long way in a turn, which means they can protect wide stretches of coastline from would-be pirates. It's worth keeping a few souped up fleets as high-impact defensive armadas designed to crush raiding parties. Likewise, send out small squadrons yourself to harass enemy resource points and raid trade routes. Maintaining all these ships will be expensive, but it's worth it.

Once you've researched the tech, it's worth upgrading your port defences. This will install a series of huge cannon emplacements around your shipping centres that will automatically lay damage on any enemy fleets within range. You'll even be able to see these tiny cannon emplacements firing away on the strategic campaign map.

Mind the seasons


Each turn in Fall of the Samurai reflects just a few weeks of time. In previous Total War games, clicking the End Turn button could move the game ahead an entire season. This has some knock on effects that you'll want to keep in mind as you plan your conquest of Japan.

Winters last a lot longer. If you leave armies out in the field during the winter months, a number of soldiers each turn will freeze to death or desert. As it can take many turns to train replacements, you'll want to keep these casualties to a minimum by planning around the winter months. When you plot an army's route on the campaign map, you'll be able to tell how long it'll take them to reach their target from the number of times the arrow changes colour along the journey. Making a note of this will help you avoid stranding your armies in the cold.

That means the winter months are good for up your forces and planning your attack. When the snows thaw, start the war.
Manage the pace of change


Moving down the new tech tree in Fall of the Samurai can be a dangerous business. You gain new advances by increasing your faction's overall modernisation score. You do this by building modern buildings, researching certain civic techs and training advanced troops. Their are several tiers of modernisation to unlock, and each time you cross into a new tier, the chances of a samurai rebellion increase.

As you start to head into that final tier it's a good idea to pull some troops off the front lines to garrison some of your central towns. When the samurai rebel, they really go for it. Large armies of them will pop up in the middle of the countryside in your weakest lands. They'll make a beeline for the city of that province, trashing your mines, farms and taverns as they go. Build structures that increase repression to stop this from happening, and keep your forts well stocked with troops. Their mere presence will discourage disgruntled warriors from turning their blades against you.
Be aggressive with your allies


Just because you're allied with a faction doesn't mean you're not in competition with them. There are a lot of factions fighting over a limited amount of territory in Fall of the Samurai and you'll have to be boisterous if you want to take more cities than your nearby friends. Securing lots of territory early on can solve problems later in the campaign when the only territory you can feasibly take belongs to an ally.

Betraying a faction you have a long term relationship with will have a negative effect on all of your negotiations. Word travels quickly, and the other faction leaders will quickly get wind of your backstabbing behaviour and trust you less as a result. Damaged relationships have a direct impact on the amount of profit you make from trade, which makes all-out war with friends a bad option.

There are sneakier alternatives, though. When the campaign starts, there's a rush to conquer the many tiny factions scattered across Japan. If you don't take their territory, your allies will. I often found myself racing allied armies to undefended enemy cities. In these situations I would employ Shinobi agents to sabotage allied armies. This would freeze them on the campaign map and give my army the chance to occupy the province that should have rightfully been theirs.

If your Shinobi is good he'll complete the mission and leave no trace. In that case, sabotage isn't an act of war. Your ally might suspect your involvement in their army's difficulty but they'll never be able to prove it. The perfect crime.
Turn the enemy


There are several new agent types to scheme with in Fall of the Samurai. Used them well and you can destabilise enemy provinces and even turn enemy troops to your cause. Imperial factions can recruit Ishin Shishi agents, Shogun players can recruit Shinsegumi. They play very similar roles on the campaign map. They're good agent hunters, can repress rebellions, inspire friendly troops or waltz up to enemy generals and talk them into joining your cause.

It's worth sending one or two agents wandering through the wilderness, converting small enemy forces whenever he can. These turncoats can hang around behind enemy lines, sabotaging resource points and throwing themselves suicidally in front of large enemy forces to slow their progress. Cruel, but effective.

It's worth remembering that some targets are much more precious than others. When you're harassing enemy provinces, you'll want to burn trade ports and advanced resource gathering structures to the ground. Above all, you'll want to target railway stations.

Build railways


Railways are so expensive, and require such a level of infrastructure, that they only come into Fall of the Samurai towards the end of a campaign. If you get a line up and running, you have an enormous advantage. Troops and agents can travel from one end of a route to the other in the space of a single turn.

This will let you respond to invading armies very quickly. More importantly, it'll let you get new units, cannons and gatling guns to your forward forces almost instantaneously. The cannon factories you'll need to build gatling guns have to be upgraded many times and take a long time to build. You're not likely to have many, and they'll probably be tucked away safely in the middle of your empire somewhere. Unless you have a railway, getting these monstrous weapons to your armies can take a long, long time.

If an enemy takes one of the stations along the line, you won't be able to transport troops to any location beyond that station. As you'd expect. Trashed stations are very expensive to repair as well, so you'll want to make sure they're well guarded. Conversely, you'll want to break enemy stations at every opportunity, using bombardment, agent sabotage, or ordinary troops.
Look after your Generals


Fall of the Samurai's campaign spans a relatively short amount of time, which means you won't get the problem that could crop up in larger Total Wars like Empire, when leaders tended to die of old age on the eve of an important battle. In this expansion, your generals be there until the end, as long as you keep them out of trouble.

With each battle they survive, your generals will gain experience. As they level up you can buy advances from their personal skill tree, improving their ability to command in the field, or turning them into masterful siege warriors that excel in defensive situations. Keeping your leaders safe in battle can be a delicate business. Their "rally" and "inspire" abilities are tremendously useful for those moments when you need to give nearby a troops a much needed morale boost, but generals must stay close to the front lines to use them. Keep spearmen at your leader's flanks to protect from enemy cavalry attacks and equip give his bodyguard revolvers when you can. This will let these elite warriors deal damage from a short distance, just out of harm's way.

The campaign map is almost as treacherous as combat for your brave generals. Enemy Shinobi can assassinate them outright, and high level Geisha can woo them away from your cause. Use your own agents to counter these threats. Install your own Geisha in your biggest armies to keep morale high, and counter Shinobi with Shinsegumi, Ishin Shishi and Foreign Veterans.
Guns are great


Archers can compete for a time, but in the end, guns will win out. If you're used to meatgrinder melees then the stand-offish art of mid-range gun combat can seem a little odd, but the rules are simple. Focus fire on weaker units to break them quickly, this will have a negative impact on troops near the fleeing unit. It's hard to stand and fire when your friends have turned around and started running for the nearest pub.

Royal Marines, US Marines and infanterie de marine units are very powerful. They're very accurate, reload quickly and can even put on a good show when they go toe to toe. They're well drilled, too, which means they're less likely to break. If you get the opportunity to recruit these chaps through international trade ports, you won't regret it. Shogunate Guard and Imperial Guard are good all-round gunners, and support these quality elite troops very well.

When you can, grab the high-level "kneel and fire" ability. This will train the front rank of a unit of gunners to take a knee while firing, bringing more guns to bear on your oncoming foe. Wait until the foe is just entering rifle range, throw down some artillery and enjoy the spectacle as your troops mow down the enemy army. In the face of all that gunpowder, the Samurai were doomed to fall.