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

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Vivi22

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I'm not saying it wouldn't be strange for a TW game. I've actually never played a game in the series oddly enough, though I've been wanting to jump into it sometime soon. It just bothers me when people repeatedly claim that WW1 was nothing but 4 years of throwing bodies into the meat grinder that was trench warfare. I mean, there was a lot of that, but towards the end they were actually starting to figure some of this modern warfare stuff out.
 

SextusMaximus

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It does, "The Great War mod". I DO NOT want CA to ,make a WW1 game though, there are enough WW1 strategy games and not enough from various other time frames CA could utilise.
 

maninahat

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Blunderboy said:
Vivi22 said:
Kukakkau said:
You can't make an exciting game out of deploy in trench and wait for the grind to end. You need an era where battles occur at a fast rate and involve moving your men to positions of an advantage
As myself and others have already mentioned, the idea that WW1 was nothing but trench warfare is a popular misconception. During the last two years of the war they were very much laying the groundwork for the sort of infantry tactics prevalent in later wars like WW2.
That's true. But a TW game spanning only two years is not going to go down well.
Hell I feel weird only having 50 years in Empire.
Napoleon works in terms of months instead of years, and the technological and tactical advances were very quick in WWI, so there is that.

If I had to pick a time or setting, I'd pick Africa. Colonial Africa, or the African Empires just prior to being colonized by European forces. Africa has a huge range of locales, varying colourful troops (ranging from Tuareg Camels, to Benin infantry, to Colonial sepoys, maybe even limited African elephant units), differing tactics, cultures and politics. Africa would make an exceptional Total War game.
 

Kukakkau

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Vivi22 said:
Kukakkau said:
You can't make an exciting game out of deploy in trench and wait for the grind to end. You need an era where battles occur at a fast rate and involve moving your men to positions of an advantage
As myself and others have already mentioned, the idea that WW1 was nothing but trench warfare is a popular misconception. During the last two years of the war they were very much laying the groundwork for the sort of infantry tactics prevalent in later wars like WW2.
True, wasn't saying it is 100% trench warfare but it was mostly.

Even still the rest of the war wasn't a case of "let's deploy this unit here in a line 3 ranks deep etc" in other words the deployment style of a Total War game. That and sieges will mainly be deploy 5 men/a gun crew in a building - it won't work well with units of 100 men cramming into one cottage etc.

It has a large enough scale of battles to be used sure, but think about the number of historical battles that did occur, what tactics and troop movements were used in them and how short the time period is.

It's nowhere near as good a setting as the ones they have used before which span decades/centuries and have detailed accounts of many battles and strategies. As opposed to 4 years worth of content - how would the campaign work? It would need to be week based turns to give some length, which would then make unit recruitment a problem, you would have to draft and the only training they get is in the field, no elite units...so on
 

Trillovinum

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TrilbyWill said:
no. too static.
also too many diseases.
having half your units die of trench fever would piss people off, especially when they can't control their units.
Trillovinum said:
Why is Belgium in the group with the neutral states? They fought with the allies.
Just thought I should mention that.
belgium was officially neutral.
they got sneak-attacked by the germans.
Well that neutrality didn't last long and they fought with the allies for the rest of the war at the Yser river and with their colonial troops in the Congo.
So I see them as combatants rather than a neutral state.
 

HobbesMkii

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Jun 7, 2008
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A total war game? No. A different RTS game with a smaller focus, say "the Battle of Verdun" or something where your job is to defend and attack, that could probably work.
 

thespyisdead

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WW1 you say? no it wouldn't!!! i already see it: both sides entrenched, not wanting to move, and when they do, they are mown down by machine gun fire.

as for the later conflicts? focus moved from large units to smaller ones which indeed belonged into bigger ones, which were scattered all over the place, and people did not tend to stay in an open field waiting to get shot while reloading.

my answer comes down to an all around no
 

Ethan Asia

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I have an image in my head of a button marked 'over the top', which would cause all your troops to slowly walk towards the nearest enemy machine gun.
 

Gethsemani_v1legacy

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Trillovinum said:
Why is Belgium in the group with the neutral states? They fought with the allies.
Just thought I should mention that.
I know, as you'll see in my post I just listed Belgium as a "smaller" nation, not necessarily a neutral nation. Not that Belgium was a very small nation in those days, but compared to powerhouses like France and Germany, they kind of pale.
 

Alssadar

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Sep 19, 2010
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Maybe. It'd be difficult. It would either have to be a strategy or a shooter, with the same general style for each.
-Strategy-
You get multiple units of infantry (with horrible aim at far ranges, like a Total War) in which they have an ability to build trenches. With such, you can push the trenches forward towards the enemy lines, building a set of cover to flood with troops that either charge them, or tunnel towards their lines (Sapper tunnels would also have to be used). With proper teching, you could probably call in more advanced weapon units and artillery (See game Warfare 1918 for example) that you can control. Primitive aircraft fighting might be available, but also sets for strafing runs along trenches, most likely.

-Cover-based Shooter-
More or less, select a class (Rifleman, officer, assault, sapper, sniper, machine-gunner [would have to be heavily nerfed]) that each have a role, like riflemen can expand trenches minecraft-like by moving small portions of ground. Sappers could tunnel underground to eventually reach opponent lines and shotgun them behind their backs. Possibly, an officer can call in one special (tank, artillery, air) every couple of minutes per officers on the team. Something like that.
 

persopolis

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Perhaps an alternate, ficticious WW I setting? Of course, then it wouldn't be a true WW I RTS, but it would keep the look and feel of the setting.
Or maybe set it during the Russian revolution: you'd have quite a few warring factions, a lot more mobile warfare, and still with the WW I setting in the background.
 

Trillovinum

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Gethsemani said:
Trillovinum said:
Why is Belgium in the group with the neutral states? They fought with the allies.
Just thought I should mention that.
I know, as you'll see in my post I just listed Belgium as a "smaller" nation, not necessarily a neutral nation. Not that Belgium was a very small nation in those days, but compared to powerhouses like France and Germany, they kind of pale.
Yet you mentioned Italy with the allies...

Belgium was one of the worlds top industrial states at the time mind you.
 

Jaksteri

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WW1, the war that finally proved the true effect of weapon technology of the age. 1914 basically every one went to war as they had done for past century, thenthey noticed that facing machineguns, accurate rifles and artillery, cavalry was F'd up(actually any one with a braincell woould have lessened their use in European fronts after Franco-prussian war) this was in western front. Eastern frotn was more mobile than west but not much, middle east on the other hand wasn't trenched war.

It could work in the time before the trenching begun, after that no. And in my opinion WW1 is one of those wars that do not really work on most types of games, exeptions being for Blitzkrieg and Hearts of Iron styles.

but my biggest consern is that to play in that age, is that diplomacy is very preset, unless it would start at 1900...

I'd probably buy the Total War: Fantazy, but making a fantasy game with out using existing realms as quide is gong to be a lot more work than just choosing a historical scenario.
 

SckizoBoy

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A Hermit's Cave
Istvan said:
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.
(Note, I agree with everything I deleted.) Anyway, oh, how I'd love to see a Das Reich: Total War, though I'm sure it'd be misconstrued in many ways.

Jandau said:
So, we make Total War: Rome 2 and Total War: China. And then what?
Thirty Years War? Plenty going on there, loads of names to go with it, too, and enough political backstabbing and side changing for it to make for a compelling game, methinks... (though it is a slightly more niche historical setting than the Classical era/Napoleonic Europe etc.) Still, I get where you're coming from and agree that they should consider a fictional setting, but remove the Total War trademark from it. Keep that for the historically informed (allegedly) games and give a new franchise name to the fictional world, within which they can have some sort of evolution without the need to continually think up new names...(!)

Trillovinum said:
Germany
Austria-Hungary (a big country by the way)
Ottoman Empire
The problems I have with the geopolitical map and starting strength/position of a WWI TW game is that the Allies (particularly the Brits) would have it quite easy compared to everyone else. Austro-Hungary needs to restore public order very quickly in its southern and eastern provinces, and the Ottoman Empire is on the verge of meltdown as well (both the Greeks and the Arabs do not like them). Only the German Empire has any stability and on harder difficulty settings, unless they start with a noticeably larger army than everyone else, I can't see them coming out well after 1914 unless it forces an ingame equivalent of Tannenberg to restore a modicum of parity, since public morale changes from battle results is non-existent. As for the Allies, how're the Russians going to be placed? (Don't feel the need to answer, I'm asking myself more than anything else.)

Besides, in N:TW only five (six if you include the Peninsular Campaign) factions were playable and I've lost count of the number of times I've finished the game. Still, not the point.

Kukakkau said:
Right to respond to all three quotes - the total war series is not an FPS it is an RTS game
To be a total jerk, it's not even an RTS game, really, it's an RTT/TBS hybrid...

Kukakkau said:
That and there isn't exactly a wealth of unit types you could have. It would be riflemen, riflemen, machine gun, riflemen
*meh* You get cavalry as well, but no-one'd recruit them 'cos they'd die too easily. Besides, gripe number two: race to get the tanks... that'd suck so much of the fun out of the game for me... and how's the aerial warfare going to be done??

So, what TW game to I want next (besides Rome 2, of course)?? Peloponnesian Wars, 'cos I'm a sucker for hoplites...! Yes, yes, I know, talk about lack of unit diversity, but include the Samnites, Persians, other Latins and eastern states and it'd make for a good game IMO.
 

RuralGamer

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I think that as soon as you get away from massed formations, i.e. the end of the American Civil War period/Franco-Prussian War period, then I think you lose what Total War is all about; massed formations of troops duking it out to the death on the open field of battle. Without the very essence of how the battles work being totally overhauled, it wouldn't work well and that wouldn't really be a total war game anyway, would it? And of course the most definitive thing I would raise against a WW1 Total War is this; WW1, like WW2 and most major wars since have all be wars of fronts; the battle system wouldn't ultimately work because of the scale of the maps and the number of models needed to simulate it. Naval battles would need CPU-killingly large maps to be even remotely realistic.

Total War, I think, doesn't need to really go any further forward in terms of time period, than the 1860s, which will be in the next Shogun 2 DLC; an American Civil War game would be pretty cool, but after the late 1860s/early 1870s, I don't think a game would still feel like a Total War game.
Besides there are many historical periods not yet visited by the series so far; I can think of:
The numerous internal conflicts of feudal and imperial China
The rise and fall of the Mongols
The Dark Ages and the creation of the Frankish Empire (i.e. a game that bridges between Barbarian Invasion and the Medieval Total Wars)
The War of the Three Kingdoms (i.e. the English Civil War and the conflicts that occurred in Scotland and Ireland at the same time)

That all said, WW1 does seem a major conflict largely untouched by games.
 

Trillovinum

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urprobablyright said:
Trillovinum said:
Belgium? No I don't think so... No, Belgium got annexed on day 1 and that was that. Hardly a candidate for the campaign map.

The Americans came in at the end from across the Atlantic - hardly seems worth it to have a massive industrial powerhouse chunning away on the other side of a giant ocean for half the game with bugger all to do.

Ditto Belgium, the Netherlands, Serbia, arguably France (though obviously to a much less extent), spain etc. I can hardly think of a central european country that was not basically assimilated into a massive 'war state' apart from the swiss, but then again it's hardly good content for a computer game to play the swiss.
Well let me start of with saying no clearly don't know about history.
The Belgian army fought throughout the first world war. Holding on to a small stretch of land behind the Yser river and fought the Germans in East Africa with their colonial troops in the Congo.

The Americans weren't the industrial powerhouse you seem to think they were. They even had to buy most of their weapons from the French.
(fun fact; the Swedish army was larger than the American army right up until 1912)

And I don't know if you know, but the Netherlands were neutral in the first world war.

+ as an answer to all this mess; "It's a game!" you don't really need to follow the course of history letter by letter throughout it.