Four strategy gaming veterans examine Creative Assembly’s Total War franchise, tracing its journey from groundbreaking historical titles to fantasy success while analyzing what made early entries special and where the series might venture next.

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This episode provides a comprehensive analysis of the Total War franchise, from its revolutionary beginnings with Medieval and Rome Total War through its current fantasy-focused direction with the Warhammer trilogy. The hosts debate whether the series has lost its innovative edge in historical titles, examine why the Warhammer games achieved unprecedented success, and speculate about upcoming projects including potential Warhammer 40K and Star Wars entries. The discussion covers the franchise’s technical evolution, campaign versus battle priorities, and the challenges of adapting the traditional Total War formula to different time periods and fictional universes.

Critical Moves Podcast – Episode 4 Show Notes

Episode Title: The Evolution of Total War (And Its Next Move)
Hosts: Al, Nuno, Joe, Tim
Episode Length: ~42 minutes

Episode Summary

The fourth episode of Critical Moves delivers an in-depth examination of Creative Assembly’s Total War franchise, exploring its evolution from genre-defining historical strategy games to the current fantasy-dominated lineup. The hosts analyze what made early entries like Rome and Medieval Total War revolutionary, debate whether the series has stagnated in historical settings, and examine why the Warhammer trilogy became the franchise’s most successful iteration. The conversation extends to speculation about future projects, including confirmed Warhammer 40K and Star Wars titles, while considering the technical and design challenges these ambitious projects will face.

The Golden Age Foundation

Early Innovation and Appeal

The hosts establish that early Total War games succeeded through their unique combination of accessible grand strategy and spectacular tactical battles. Tim identifies the series’ “middle of the road” approach as key to its success – providing strategic depth without the complexity of hardcore grand strategy titles while delivering visually impressive battles that remained engaging even for casual players. The simple satisfaction of executing a hammer and anvil maneuver created immediate tactical gratification.

Medieval Total War introduced many players to grand strategy concepts, serving as a gateway from traditional RTS games like Command & Conquer and Total Annihilation. The unprecedented scale of battles and the novelty of combining turn-based campaign management with real-time tactical combat created a unique gaming experience that had no direct competitors at the time.

Technical Achievement and Attention to Detail

The early games demonstrated remarkable attention to historical authenticity and mechanical depth. Nuno highlights how experienced units in Rome Total War would automatically create gaps in formations to allow friendly retreating troops to pass through, while inexperienced units would become disorganized. Such details created emergent tactical behaviors that rewarded player understanding of military principles.

Creative Assembly’s partnership with historical institutions, particularly for Empire Total War’s naval combat, demonstrated their commitment to authenticity. The scanning of actual museum ships to create accurate 3D models exemplified the development philosophy that prioritized historical accuracy alongside entertainment value.

The Warhammer Revolution

Asymmetrical Faction Design

The Warhammer trilogy’s greatest innovation lies in its asymmetrical faction design, which eliminated the homogeneous military structures that characterized historical entries. Unlike Medieval warfare where most European factions deployed similar unit types with minor variations, Warhammer’s factions play fundamentally differently. Chaos armies lack settlements entirely, focusing on aggressive expansion, while other factions pursue completely different victory conditions.

This asymmetry extends beyond unit rosters to core gameplay mechanics. Some factions emphasize magic and monsters, others rely on advanced technology, and still others depend on overwhelming numbers or elite units. The rock-paper-scissors unit relationships, while criticized for their rigid nature, become more interesting when combined with such diverse tactical approaches.

Commercial Vindication

Warhammer 2’s status as Creative Assembly’s most successful Total War release validates the fantasy direction despite initial skepticism from historical purists. The success demonstrates that the vocal historical gaming community represents a minority compared to the broader audience attracted by fantasy settings and Games Workshop’s established fanbase.

The Warhammer games’ success also reflects modern gaming preferences for distinct, memorable factions over historically accurate but similar military forces. Players appreciate factions that offer genuinely different gameplay experiences rather than cosmetic variations on identical underlying mechanics.

Historical Challenges and Missed Opportunities

Innovation Stagnation

The hosts identify a troubling pattern in recent historical releases where Creative Assembly appears to be recycling mechanics without meaningful innovation. Pharaoh, despite featuring an underexplored time period, feels mechanically indistinguishable from previous historical entries beyond cosmetic changes. The most significant recent innovation – armies blocking movement and preventing bypassing – represents a minor quality-of-life improvement rather than fundamental advancement.

This stagnation becomes more apparent when comparing Total War’s campaign mechanics to dedicated grand strategy games like those from Paradox Interactive. The simplistic diplomacy, minimal trade systems, and basic building mechanics feel increasingly dated compared to more sophisticated alternatives available to strategy gaming audiences.

Wrong Historical Choices

Al suggests that Creative Assembly’s historical struggles stem from poor period selection rather than fundamental issues with historical gaming. The consistent fan demand for Medieval 3 or Empire 2 indicates strong interest in historical titles, but Creative Assembly’s focus on less popular periods like Bronze Age Egypt (Pharaoh) or narrow regional conflicts (Thrones of Britannia) fails to capture mainstream attention.

The cancellation of Three Kingdoms, despite initial success, further demonstrates Creative Assembly’s apparent disconnect from their historical audience’s preferences. The company seems unwilling to commit resources to the historical periods that generate the most community enthusiasm.

Technical Evolution and Engine Limitations

Battle Scale and Authenticity

The Total War engine excels at medieval and ancient warfare where large formations clash in relatively static engagements. However, this strength becomes a limitation when depicting warfare from later historical periods or fictional settings that emphasize small-unit tactics, combined arms coordination, or advanced technology integration.

World War I represents the extreme challenge for this approach – the static nature of trench warfare and the massive scale of actual operations don’t translate well to Total War’s tactical battle system. The reported development difficulties and resignation of the WWI project’s game director suggest that Creative Assembly recognizes these fundamental incompatibilities.

Future Engine Requirements

The upcoming Warhammer 40K and Star Wars projects will require significant engine modifications or complete redesigns to accommodate their settings’ requirements. Star Wars warfare, inspired by World War II aerial combat and Vietnam-era asymmetrical conflict, demands more dynamic, smaller-scale engagements than the traditional Total War formula supports.

Warhammer 40K presents the opposite challenge – its lore emphasizes conflicts of impossibly massive scale that dwarf even Total War’s largest historical battles. Successfully depicting 40K warfare might require technological advances that allow for tens of thousands of individually animated units engaging simultaneously across vast battlefields.

Campaign Versus Battle Priority Debate

The Core Experience Question

A significant debate emerges regarding whether Total War’s primary appeal lies in its tactical battles or campaign management. Al argues that the campaign represents the core experience, noting that battles can be auto-resolved while the campaign cannot be skipped. The single-player focus and the series’ success despite weak campaign mechanics compared to dedicated grand strategy games supports the battle-centric perspective.

However, the ability to play custom battles without campaign context, and the popularity of historical battle recreations, suggests that many players value the tactical combat as the primary attraction. The History Channel’s partnership with Creative Assembly for “Decisive Battles” programming demonstrated the standalone appeal of the battle engine.

Multiplayer Potential

Tim’s suggestion for real-time campaign movement represents a radical departure that could address Total War’s multiplayer limitations. Turn-based campaigns inherently work poorly for multiplayer experiences, limiting the series’ competitive potential despite having sophisticated tactical combat systems that could support engaging multiplayer battles.

Such changes would fundamentally alter the Total War experience, potentially alienating the existing fanbase while opening new possibilities for competitive and cooperative play. The suggestion reflects broader questions about whether Creative Assembly should prioritize incremental improvements to their established formula or pursue more dramatic innovations.

Speculation on Future Projects

Warhammer 40K Challenges

The confirmed Warhammer 40K project represents Creative Assembly’s most ambitious undertaking, requiring solutions to unprecedented scale and setting challenges. The galactic scope demands new approaches to campaign mapping and interplanetary logistics, while the grim darkness of the 41st millennium’s warfare operates on scales that exceed even Total War’s largest historical conflicts.

Naval combat becomes crucial in a setting where space battles determine control over entire star systems. The success of Battlefleet Gothic: Armada demonstrates audience appetite for 40K naval combat, but integrating such systems with Total War’s traditional ground-based focus presents significant design challenges.

Star Wars Possibilities

Star Wars offers different but equally significant challenges, particularly regarding scale and combat authenticity. The universe’s warfare draws inspiration from World War II aerial combat and asymmetrical rebel conflicts, both of which sit uncomfortably with Total War’s formation-based ground combat systems.

The comparison to Empire at War highlights potential solutions – that game successfully combined galactic-scale campaigning with tactical ground and space battles, though at smaller scales than typical Total War engagements. Creative Assembly might need to embrace smaller, more dynamic battles to authentically represent Star Wars conflicts.

The licensing costs for Star Wars could be offset by reduced development complexity if Creative Assembly can adapt existing Warhammer fantasy systems, since both universes feature diverse factions with distinct capabilities and magical/technological elements.

Alternative Historical Periods

Nuno’s advocacy for Renaissance warfare (15th-17th centuries) represents the kind of innovative historical thinking that could revitalize the franchise’s historical offerings. This period’s transitional nature – with firearms gradually displacing medieval tactics while maintaining diverse regional approaches to warfare – could provide the faction asymmetry that made Warhammer successful while remaining historically grounded.

The Renaissance period would also enable global scope campaigns incorporating European expansion, Asian empires, and American civilizations, providing the scale and diversity that modern Total War audiences expect while exploring genuinely underrepresented historical periods.

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Episode Verdict

This episode successfully balances nostalgia for Total War’s innovative past with realistic assessment of its current challenges and future potential. The hosts demonstrate deep knowledge of both the franchise’s technical evolution and its place within the broader strategy gaming landscape. Their debate over campaign versus battle priority reflects genuine community discussions, while their speculation about upcoming fantasy projects acknowledges both the commercial logic and creative challenges involved. The conversation effectively illustrates why Total War remains influential despite its perceived stagnation, and why its upcoming projects represent crucial tests for Creative Assembly’s ability to innovate beyond their established formula.

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