Do you think a WW I Total war game could work?

[Dansen]

I'm really curious about what other people think about this topic because it seems to be a rather touchy subject amongst the fan base. How ever it seems like it might be the few remaining paths for the franchise. Creative Assembly is already going back and remaking previous titles. This is fine by me because the new games are obviously improvements on their predecessors, but what happens when they run out of games? Would the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century be a time period that could support the total war franchise?

I think it could work, but there would have to be a lot of changes made to the gameplay formula that fans might not appreciate. Infantry would have to take on a primary role, cavalry would eventually turn into mechanized units and I'm not sure how they would be able to deal with areal combat. If it was announced though the devs would have my support.

 

[maninahat]

Someone has already giving it a go. Look up "The Great War" mod for Napoleon: Total War. It is still a work in progress, but you can download what they have managed so far. As far as I can tell, you need a pretty hefty rig for it: Artillery fires none stop, filling the screen with earth shattering kabooms.


If it was properly done, thhan yes, I think it can be managed.

There are problems though:
1) Balancing the different types of warfare. You see, when most people think of WWI, they think trench warfare. But that was only a part of it. Go into the Austrian-Hungarian empire or the Ottoman empire and you still have mobilised cavalry charges and fast moving troops. How will they fit in with dug in forces?

2) Naval warfare: ships shoot one another from miles apart, taking away some of the dramatic imagery of the previous navy battles, and screwing up the mechanics (do you make a 20 mile wide battle map?)

3) As with previous titles, armies fielded an undiverse range of troops. Most WWI armies look alike, and like in Empire and Napoleon Total War, that takes away some of the fun of playing as different factions. Games like Medieval 2:Total War gave much more choice and unique army set ups.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Game balance would be a real pain to get right. Artillery would slaughter anything caught in the open and without artillery, the side with the most machine guns win. One of the reasons the russian front and the ottoman/austrian-hungarian front were so mobile was because these armies had a much lower ratio of machine guns per battalion then the french, british or german armies.

Apart from that and the potential for really boring gameplay ("So I have 3,000 dudes in this province and he has 3,000 in his. We are both dug in, so neither can attack... I guess I better skip to next turn.") I think that there are still other eras that could be done that would offer more variety and fun. Like the 30 year war, 3 Warring States period in China or even America: Total War, allowing you to play through the colonization of America and the wars between the native americans.

 

[Blunderboy]

Not really. By that time war became a lot more about small unit actions rather then the massed warfare of previous eras.
Also, WW1 is much more static than any other Total War era. Static wars are boring wars quite frankly.

 

[Sarge034]

No, because of the nature of WWI. Artillery and machine guns would do to the game what they did in real life. Force everyone into a defensive trench warfare siege/ counter- siege scenario. Anyone who did use a mobile force would end up like they did in the real war. Look it up, it was bad for infantry and cavalry.

 

[Ordinaryundone]

Well, the fights would be pretty dull for one thing. The more diverse forms of warfare only happened in the less technologically developed areas of the war; the real fighting (and the most effective kind) was done with trenches, artillery, and machine guns. Which wouldn't make for a very interesting game. Also, it was just so static, with only a few major "lynchpin" battles that were also comparitively dull (was the Somme a huge turning point? Yes. Was it mostly months and months of sitting, staring at each other? Yep.)

Three Kingdoms: Total War, America: Total War (think every "native" faction, from the Apache to the Aztecs. Do they fit? No. Would it be awesome? Hell yeah!) or gorram Rome 2! Those are what I want.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Well, no... There were so few involved parties.

I mean, even if different nations were involved, half the conflict was between the Germans (and at times Italians) verse the allies. It's not like you could be the leader of Austria and somehow end up owning all of Europe.

Not to be petulant or mean, but there were quite a few parties involved. The UK Commonwealth, France, Germany, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, The Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire and Italy all played quite significant parts in the war. That's 7 different factions right there. Add to that the many smaller nations like Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands and medium nations like Spain and you've got quit a roster just for the European theater.

 

[Jandau]

It COULD work, but they'd have to rework their engine A LOT. The current stuff just doesn't lend itself well to firearms, and for WW1 you'd need the regiments and formations to be far more fluid and less rigid. Also, WW1 wasn't a complete everyone-fighting-everyone clusterfuck that makes TW games great.

Personally, I'd say they should leave established history and move to a Fantasy setting, allowing them to cut loose. Alternately, they should go into the future. A near future scenario with World War 3 breaking out would allow for so much potential, exploring the various challenges and tensions that are being held at bay in the world at the moment, and it would allow a showcasing of current experimental weapons. A really futuristic Total War would also be cool, maybe by moving off planet.

 

[Blunderboy]

Personally, I'd say they should leave established history and move to a Fantasy setting, allowing them to cut loose. Alternately, they should go into the future. A near future scenario with World War 3 breaking out would allow for so much potential, exploring the various challenges and tensions that are being held at bay in the world at the moment, and it would allow a showcasing of current experimental weapons. A really futuristic Total War would also be cool, maybe by moving off planet.

I disagree in the strongest possible terms. I'm at work so I can't go into details sadly (my lunch is just ending) but that would be a huge mistake as far as I'm concerned.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

I don't think so. Bearing in mind my knowledge of WW1 is based on crappy made for school movies. It would be quite boring because there wasn't much moving around of units in WW1. It was basically just two sides firing shit at eachother then occasionaly rushing at eachother, which wouldn't make for a good RTS.

 

[HerbertTheHamster]

Mustard gas would be OP.

 

[JoesshittyOs]

First person shooter?

No.

RTS? I'm pretty sure there are a few.

 

[Soviet Steve]

The problem would be the casulty rates, the control interface and so on. To effectively command forces of the size involved one would have to restructure it to a point where it isn't a total war game any longer.

The latest war I would consider reasonable to include would be the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, after that there are just too many considerations to include aside from the impossible nature of the battles themselves.

How do you include the political, economic, logistical and technological factors for instance?

A total war game based on Ghengis Khan or just the rise of Imperial China would be much more sensible ventures.

 

[Jandau]

Personally, I'd say they should leave established history and move to a Fantasy setting, allowing them to cut loose. Alternately, they should go into the future. A near future scenario with World War 3 breaking out would allow for so much potential, exploring the various challenges and tensions that are being held at bay in the world at the moment, and it would allow a showcasing of current experimental weapons. A really futuristic Total War would also be cool, maybe by moving off planet.

I disagree in the strongest possible terms. I'm at work so I can't go into details sadly (my lunch is just ending) but that would be a huge mistake as far as I'm concerned.

Branching out and using the Total War paradigm on nonhistoric settings would be inherently bad? Really? Such games couldn't possibly be good? I understand that you might not be personally interested in non-historic periods, but I wasn't interested in the Empire/Napoleon period myself and that doesn't mean those games were a "huge mistake".

I don't like the idea of them remaking the existing games over and over again. Maybe Rome, since it would benefit from a modern version. Beyond that, they have the 20th century which I don't think would lend itself well to the TW paradigm. Or they could try to explore other geographical areas, but aside from a China/East Asia game, there isn't that much to work with.

Sure, people had history, but what we need is history with enough conflict for a TW game and prefferably varried participants. Also, it has to be a place/period that the general audience will find interesting.

So, we make Total War: Rome 2 and Total War: China. And then what?

 

[JamesStone]

It COULD work, but they'd have to rework their engine A LOT. The current stuff just doesn't lend itself well to firearms, and for WW1 you'd need the regiments and formations to be far more fluid and less rigid. Also, WW1 wasn't a complete everyone-fighting-everyone clusterfuck that makes TW games great.

Personally, I'd say they should leave established history and move to a Fantasy setting, allowing them to cut loose. Alternately, they should go into the future. A near future scenario with World War 3 breaking out would allow for so much potential, exploring the various challenges and tensions that are being held at bay in the world at the moment, and it would allow a showcasing of current experimental weapons. A really futuristic Total War would also be cool, maybe by moving off planet.

Great ideia. That could work well. Like the Anno franchise, seeing that their new game is Anno 2070.

Maybe, but the engine would have to be reworked, and the battles would be much smaller, because we would need to be able to control each individual troop.

 

[Blunderboy]

SNIP

Not inherently wrong, but they won't suit the game style or engines. A fantasy setting might well work, but it would need a world that is believable and absorbing, and presumably original. This is something that's very difficult to achieve.
But the futuristic setting would not work. If, as you say the 20th Century doesn?t lend itself to the series, then how exactly does a future setting do so? Presumably as things develop small unit tactics become even more important then they currently are, and this makes the premise much harder to work with the Total War style.

 

[imnot]

Eh I still want to see a ww1 fps ,could be fun if it was done well.

 

[Vivi22]

I don't think so. Bearing in mind my knowledge of WW1 is based on crappy made for school movies. It would be quite boring because there wasn't much moving around of units in WW1. It was basically just two sides firing shit at eachother then occasionaly rushing at eachother, which wouldn't make for a good RTS.

While the early war ended up being fairly dominated by trench warfare, in the last two years or so of the war they were already moving away from this and trending towards the sort of warfare we'd see in WWII. Trench wars of attrition were not effective ways to wage a war and by the end they were moving more to pill box defensive lines, smaller unit actions and that sort of thing. My memories a bit fuzzy on the details since it's been about 8 years or so since I learned about any of this in University. But despite trench warfare being the common conception of waging war in that time period, it was already falling by the way side long before the war ended.

If a game were set and drew from the later years of the war it would be vastly different than what many would expect.

 

[Rottweiler]

The biggest issue I've seen talked about, and I agree, is the same issues people had with US Civil War games:

When we have all the decades- in some cases centuries- of collected history, theories, and commentary on every major conflict, it's *extremely* hard to create a game which enforces the most important aspect of any historical conflict:

Tactics and Equipment are based on what people knew at the time. (Plus politics.)

For example, World War I had some of the most blatantly *awful* tactics in any conflict aside from the Persians. Human wave attacks, long-term trench warfare where people literally *drowned* in their own trenches...today, it makes next to no sense. Heck, at one point, one of the more famous Generals had his men (thousands of them) form up in parade ground lines and march in unison toward the enemy. He lost over 10,000 men...and continued to use variations of that tactic for most of the War.

The point is *we* know (or can easily find in public resources) every bad military decision from history, and can avoid them when we play our games.