Archive for the ‘CA Updates’

One common complaint we get from the community is that so long as there are defects in Empire: Total War, we shouldn’t be working on any new products. If there was just one of us, or all of us could work on any issue that would make sense. As it is, we’ve had Empire: Total War patch work as the top priority for everyone. The campaign AI team has worked on nothing else at all since release. The other programmers have dealt with their patch issues before moving on, and get dragged back to them if they resurface. Most of the content team have not been able to help with patches – artists and designers can’t code and most issues are code issues – and have moved on to new stuff.

Patch 1.5 has just been released. This is the last planned major patch for Empire: Total War, and attempts to sweep up the remaining AI issues that for the hardcore gamer take the shine off of the Empire apple. The previous patches have dealt with the most common crashes and tidied up a lot of bugs, and 1.4 dealt with a lot of the AI issues. What is left at this point are a few minor issues spread around the game, and the last big campaign AI problem – the aggression level.

Battle and campaign AI are completely different systems and teams. I’ll talk about battle AI another time. The Empire campaign AI has been way too passive for me, and the community pretty unanimously shares that view, so it’s not something I need to explain. It is however interesting that a good proportion of the more casual gamers – and they are probably more than half our customers – actually like the AI to be fairly passive.  The US casual gamer in particular likes a more sandbox-like experience, where he can make and execute long term plans and not have them constantly disrupted by an aggressive AI. This is a play style thing rather than a level of difficulty thing – they still want a challenge, but they want it to be their game, not the AI’s.

Making a passive AI may have sold us lots more games in the US, but it wasn’t intentional. Maybe we’ll have a play style setting in the future, but for now our intention is to challenge the player with an AI that is as aggressive and varied as human players would be.

So it is campaign AI that was the main focus for 1.4, and that I think we’ve finally got sorted out on 1.5. It’s worth talking a bit about how we ended up with an AI that didn’t have the play style we intended on release, and has taken 6 more months work to get there.  The short answer is an excess of ambition.

This AI is not like any other we have written. It’s a beliefs – desires – intentions based planning system, and it’s also by far the most complex code edifice I’ve ever seen in a game. I wrote much of the campaign AI for Shogun and Medieval I (Ah… those were the days…)  and I know that even quite simple “static” evaluate-act AI’s with no plans or memory can be complex enough to exhibit chaotic behaviour (we’re talking about mathematical “butterfly effect” style chaos here). It does what it does, and it’s not quite what you intended. This can be a good thing – you cull out the bad behaviours and are left with just what is good, and with a simple system that’s not too predictable.

Well, the Empire AI is way more complicated than any of our previous products, but the team is bigger and has more talent that we had in my day – PhD’s, and coders sharper than a box of razor blades.  It’s a V12 supercar compared with Shogun’s 50cc moped. When it’s firing on all cylinders, it will be way, way ahead of anything we’ve seen in any PC strategy game before. It thinks about everything. It thinks of everything, it plots and it plans. As we approached release, bringing more subsystems on line, it was looking amazingly good, but at some point the level of chaos reached a tipping point and we lost control. Our AI did a “HAL” on us and gained the AI equivalent of multiple personality disorder. The net result is an AI that plans furiously and brilliantly and long term, but disagrees with itself chronically and often ends up paralysed by indecision.

We’ve had it on the coder’s couch for 6 months now, and it’s finally feeling better. It’s more aggressive, it uses naval invasions, and it doesn’t dither much more than most humans I know. It should now be well ahead of Rome/Med II’s  AI, but it’s still only firing on two or three cylinders and had much untapped potential.

One thing I am sure about – I don’t regret having the ambition that led to this. This AI will I think astound in the long term, but I am gutted that we didn’t get the AI we wanted for the hardcore fans on day 1.

I had 6 copies of Empire: Total War sat on my shelf intended for close gamer friends that I didn’t send out because I was too embarrassed about the flaws. Old friends are the harshest critics. Well they’ve gone out now.  I think the game now meets my personal unreasonably high quality threshold – not just good but great. Hopefully my friends will agree.

Well, I’ve finally given in and decided to start blogging. It’s something I’ve tried to resist over the years. I’ve also not posted directly on the forums, and it’s mainly because it takes so much time. Many of the issues discussed on the forums are deep and complex, and the arguments well put and compelling.  Writing considered and persuasive responses that really deal with the issue is time consuming, and that is time I can’t spend working on the games.

So it’s a choice – fix stuff, or talk about fixing stuff. Seems like a no-brainer, but things have changed. I can now add more quality to the games by talking to the community than I can by fixing issues.

Quite simply, the quality of what we produce depends directly on how much we get to spend on developing them. How much we spend depends directly on how many people buy the games. The user feedback on sites like IGN directly impacts sales, and that impacts how positively our publisher views the future of Total War, which determines how much we get to spend on the games.

Normally it’s a virtuous circle, and that’s allowed us to be very ambitious with what we try to deliver. We were not entirely happy with the state of Empire: Total War when it went out, and are only now getting to a point where we are broadly speaking happy with the game. Our own threshold for how we’d like the game to be is much higher than the commercial threshold required by our publisher. We are, like our community, hardcore fans of our own products, and any imperfections drive us nuts.

With Empire: Total War, the virtuous circle turned a little vicious. The community  used user ratings and user comments on sites like IGN and Metacritic to highlight weaknesses in the game, to try to encourage us to fix existing issues before working on anything new.

I’m not saying that we didn’t deserve to have a fair number of verbal bricks thrown our way.

However overdoing the criticism (For example I think a 67% user score on Metacritic is unfair), has the opposite effect to what is intended.  Gamers (and reviewers. retailers, marketeers and publishing execs) will be put off Total War.  That could mean fewer sales and less money to spend on adding quality to the games.

And so I find myself blogging. The aim is twofold. Firstly, I want to explain why we do the things we do, and also a little more detail about what we’re spending our time (and your money) on. That should give the community a much better starting point for discussing issues. Secondly, I want to prove we listen to the community by directly addressing the big issues.  I’ll be as honest as I can be without getting sued or fired.

Anyway, I started this by saying I’d rather be fixing the game than talking about it. That’s true, but talking about it is a pretty good second best.  I’ll start with the 1.5 patch and AI on the next update, and then go on to talk about Napoleon – what it is, why it’s the size it is, how that affects the price.

Mike Simpson

Hi everyone, please find below the features for the forthcoming 1.4 update to Empire: Total War.

The focus for the update has been AI, both campaign and battle along with improvements to sieges and the naval rebalancing. A lot of work has been put into the campaign and diplomacy AI, focusing on how it wages war, makes alliances and peace as well as use of naval invasions. Battle side improvements have been made to most areas of the AI with the focus on the siege AI which has had major changes made to it. Sieges have also had a lot of work done on them with a lot of bugs fixed, improvements made to pathfinding and how guns and troops on walls work.

Below is a list of some of the fixes that will be in 1.4:

- Fix for auto unlimbering causing the attack order to terminate prematurely resulting in an inability to stop the unit from firing.
- Fix for troops on fort walls not using fort gun range when judging when to fire on enemy troops.
- Fix for fort guns using wrong targeting formula.
- Fixes to fort pathfinding and use of ropes.
- Multiplayer soft lock fixes.
- Fix crash in quotes table.
- Improved AI diplomacy.
- Cumulative updates to improve AI invasion behaviour.
- Added tooltips for alliance button in diplomacy.
- Bug fixes and improvements to AI counter offers.
- Improvements to AI diplomatic valuation of military access and alliances.
- Fix for wind sounds not working in naval battles
- Fixed ship wakes not always working.
- Fixed disembarking subsets of armies and agents from navies.
- Fixed potential crash disembarking agents from navies.
- Fixed armies not being booted out of regions when losing military access gained by joining an ally in war.
- Improved AI diplomacy valuation of technologies.
- Fix for bug where general’s unit for an upper class rebellion was coming from the region owning faction rather than the faction rebelling, even if a suitable unit was available – eg, Cherokee owning a region that rebels to American Rebels, the general’s unit was a Native American chief.
- Fixed reinforcements from unreachable positions.
- Fixed bug preventing disembarking.
- Balance of power fix for attack of opportunity.
- Fixed bug that was causing issues with embarking an army containing multiple characters.
- Minor tweak to stop some ship sails endlessly play furling sound.
- Fixed path blocked bug.
- Diplomacy counter-offer improvements.
- Fix for fast forward not working as intended on some PCs. Will always speed up if camera is still, if camera moves fast forward will be as fast as possible on each PC.

Hi guys,

Update 1.2 for Empire: Total War is available to download now via Steam.  Below is a list of all the major fixes included with the release.

CRASH FIXES
- Fixed crash when disbanding generals unit.
- Fix for crash on trying to merge ships from port into ships next to port.
- Fixed rare crash relating to boarding.
- Fixed crash to do with reinforcing armies.
- Fixed crash on revolution video attempting to play.
- Fixed crash for double clicking on sinking ship on campaign map.
- Fix for crash on merging units but moving into fort before army arrives.
- Fixed several crashes related to rakes.
- Fixed crashes relating to battles when running Czech or German versions of the game.
- Fixed crash on moving army into region of faction player has military access and then cancelling military access.
- Fixed crash on trying to exchange ships between 2 fleets.
- Fixed crash on spamming move orders to puckle guns locked in melee combat.
- Fixed hard lock on inviting host to their own MP game.
- Fix to prevent loading of mod causing crash post patch.
- Various end turn crash bugs fixed.
- Fixes to crash bugs relating to completion of revolutions.
- Some fixes relating to merging and disbanding.
- Fix for several crashes in land battles.
- Several crashes relating to attacking cities fixed.
- Several load save game crashes fixed.

CAMPAIGN
- Armies now placed correctly on battlefields in relation to campaign.
- Fix for nearby ships sometimes not being included as reinforcements for battles.
- Fix for incorrect numbers sometimes showing on trade routes.
- Units with limits on how many can be recruited now show how many are available.
- Various fixes relating to rakes and infiltrating.
- Fixes relating to problems moving armies/merging into army’s right next to settlements.
- Various trade bug fixes.
- Fix for moving agent from settlement moving army instead of agent.
- Fix for several bugs relating to military access and armies being in regions.
- Fix for tattered flags appearing on fleet/armies even when at full strength/fully repaired.
- Fix for sallying out armies breaking siege at times even when losing the battle.
- Fix for bugs relating to capturing ships on returning to campaign map from naval battle.

LAND BATTLE
- Improvements to path finding have been made.
- Some fixes to units not garrisoning buildings.
- Fort gate ownership made clearer with faction flags appearing at the gatehouse.
- Fix for problem relating to artillery unlimbering after being ordered to limber.
- Fix for puckle guns moving on their own in some circumstances.
- Fix for big slowdown in unit movement on some battle maps in the Road to Independence episodes.
- Fix for missile cavalry not reloading when out of combat.
- Jaegers now have muskets instead of incorrect rifles, Prussian Jaegers keep rifles.
- Quebec episodic land battle fixed ground type in deployment area
- Fix for unrealistic numbers when ending a land battle by quitting on the battle results screen.

NAVAL BATTLE
- Several fixes for ships clipping into each other.
- Improvements to boarding have been made. Crew is more fluid in attack and more resolute in defence. Men survive long fall and officers join in the boarding attack.
- Crew uniforms improved to make identification of the crew type and faction easier.
- Defending ship is not allowed to fire cannons anymore during boarding procedure.
- Improved naval grouping UI and group movement made.
- Improvements made to ship collisions to reduce chance of ships getting stuck.
- Fix for sail damage not being shown when volumetric effects turned on.

MULTIPLAYER
- Various fixes for joining games/game lobby issues.
- Fixes for problems relating to spectators being kicked/locking up on other players joining games in certain instances.
- Long riflemen and winged hussars removed from early era battles.
- Fix for insufficient funds always showing on unit cards even when enough money is available.
- Player name is now displayed on unit tooltips.
- Team chat is now displayed in a different colour.

AI
- Basic fix for AI being unable to move army by fleet.
- Aggression of factions in campaign improved, as well as tweaks to diplomacy.
- Improvements to campaign AI relating to its waging of wars, recruitment and movement of armies.
- Improvements made to battle AI to make it more reactive, use buildings better as well as squares and rakes.
- Siege battle AI improvements made.
- Improvements to naval AI to make it bunch up less, its use of galleys and long range units such as bomb ketches.

MISCELLANEOUS
- Delete save game button added to save game list.
- View replays button added to single player Play Battle menu.
- Various sound fixes and improvements.
- Various incorrect text messages fixed.
- Fixes to various graphical glitches with display of walls.
- Fixes made for stuttering videos.
- Fix for several game option settings not being saved correctly, including settings such as floating flags.
- Fix for unit voices/attack confirmation being heard for all units in an alliance instead of just for the player’s army.
- Armour and shield values are now added into melee defence value shown on unit cards.
- Lots of other small and minor bug fixes.

BALANCING
- Land unit recruitment cost in campaign has been increased, with higher cost on higher difficulty level.
- Ship recruitment and upkeep costs have been increased in campaign.
- Various balancing and cost adjustments to improve multiplayer land battle balance.
- Ship costing improvements made for both campaign and multiplayer.
- Economic tweaks have been made to campaign to reduce amount of money made in later part of campaign.

EXTRA NOTE:
- We are aware of an issue with community created maps that results in a crash when someone without the map tries to join the game. This crash will be fixed in the next patch.
- Further work is being done on improving AI Naval invasion behaviour and this will be included in the next upgrade patch.
- Please also note that this update is save game compatible but you should start a new game to see all of the benefits.

Many thanks,

Mark O’Connell

Hi guys,

We recently had the chance to interview Richard Beddow at The Creative Assembly to find out more about the music of Empire: Total War!

Q:  When did the composing for Empire start?

Composing stated in the summer of 2008 and was completed towards the end of November in time for us to meet the deadlines to record our score live with the orchestra.

Q:  What were the main challenges in the music production for Empire?

We approached the music in a somewhat ‘Hollywood’ fashion, that is, we decided early on to feature orchestra, have an epic cinematic score to really get across the sense of size and scale of a game as large as Empire and to support the battles with the necessary level of might within the music.  So, with that in mind the most important thing then lay in getting these qualities in to all the music including those of the other cultures.  While this is fine for western sounding music, it can be more tricky to get the right level of fusion when dealing with other cultures, for instance fusing western orchestral music with eastern instruments and scales and still maintaining the overall drive and sound that we’re after from the music.  It was important to incorporate as much ethnic material as possible to give the right cultural flavour but while still retaining the orchestral and ‘Hollywood’ feel.

The above approach was applied to each music track and once these were complete the next challenge was to prepare all the music from the MIDI mock-ups in to a format for us to record the music with a live orchestra.  Prepared MIDI files were created and then sent to the orchestrator in order to get the printed parts ready for the musicians.

Q:  During the composing process do you write to in-game footage, FMV or storyboards?

A combination.  The in-game footage helps to give you a sense of the games atmosphere and also allows you to try your music against the visuals to perfect the style.  The storyboards were used essentially for the movie sequences in the game, mostly for the Road To Independance missions.  The graphics and final renders for these movies were not complete when we needed to start the composing process, so due to the fact that we had internal deadlines and those with the orchestra and I needed to approve the music as soon as possible, get it to our orchestrator and printed before the recording, so we had to use static storyboard movies with placeholder voice over to write the music to.  Far from ideal but doable.  The shorter movie sequences such as the win and lose movies were almost fully complete visually so these were used to compose to in their case.

Q: What are the main differences between writing music for cutscenes and writing for the in game battles and what are the challenges faced with each?

Well, the cutscenes are miniature movies so we’ll obtain digital videos or storyboards as mentioned above and write to them as if its a film.  We’ll contour the tempo, dynamics and melodic shape to fit perfectly to the onscreen drama.  With in-game music, you obviously have no ‘locked’ visuals to synchronize the music to as it is constantly changing, so effectively what you end up writing is music that gives a mood for the battle but is not restricted by the visuals.  Additionally with in-game music, due to the amount of repetition the music will undergo you have to play it a little safer in terms of how melodic you make it as the more thematic you make the material the more chance it has of grating on the end user over extended play.  With the cutscenes, they will be viewed only once in a while or maybe only once so you can be very thematic but you have to keep in mind fitting it to the dialogue if it is present and not overpowering it.  Much in-game music also has to be designed to loop, for instance battle music.  We have to make sure that the material in the printed score around the looping areas works both musically and in terms of dynamics to get a smooth match when it loops.  Other than that, we will actually want to create as much unity as possible with material used in-game with that in the cutscenes so where possible we will re-use or adapt our themes/styles where appropriate.

Q:  Where do you being the composing process with a project as large as Empire?

Before we can start the composing process we need to know where music will feature in the game, what styles we’ll require and how and when they will be played in the game.  So we simply start by answering those questions.

The basic idea for the campaign music looked back to how music was used in the original Total War game Shogun. In Shogun, campaign music was almost used as a sound effect, providing flourishes of musical colour on various oriental instruments, effectively small melodic music phrases or effects.  This approach allowed plenty of breathing space when playing on the campaign map which could literally last days.  In those types of circumstances the last thing you want is a looping background track to irritate the player.  The Shogun approach allowed music to be used in an almost relaxing and calming manner.  So, for Empire we decided to revisit the method used in Shogun and expand upon it a little.  Firstly, as Empire is a game which stretches across continents not just Japan we had to look to record instruments which covered all the core cultures featured in the game – in essences instruments to represent Western, Indian, Arabic and Tribal cultures.  Secondly we would look to record all of the instruments live to maintain a consistently high listening experience.  Thirdly we would develop a playback system in the game that would not only play music from the appropriate culture when you position the camera over the part of the map that the culture originates but would also pick at random phrases of music to play for that culture in order to keep the listening experience interesting.  For instance you could position the camera over an Arabic settlement and you could be listening to the haunting melodies of a Duduk, then shortly followed by phrases performed on a Lauto.

Recording all of this material provided us with approx. 70 minutes of material just for the campaign map alone.

The other large area of game play is the in-game battles, which in the case of Empire are featured on both land and sea.  This area of the game requires a lot of music too, in the order of 60 mins.  Much like in the campaign the music was divided in to the same cultural sets with a slight addition in that naval battles have their own music styles to differentiate them from the other music.

The basic idea with the music system for the battles is that when a battle is initiated on the campaign map, depending where you initiate the battle in the world, the music that will play during the battle will be based on the originating culture for that area i.e. if you start a battle in London you will hear Western battle music.  Each actual battle consists of two pieces of music, the deployment (or tension) music and the battle (or attack) music.  As you start to deploy your army the tension music will start, it will continue until the game detects that the battle state has been initiated.  Once this state is reached the music will slowly crossfade from the tension music in to the battle music which will loop for the duration of the battle.

The final area of music usage in the game is with the in-game movies.  Here again as with the rest of the game we have cultural variants of music to match the visual variants of the videos, but in addition Empire features the Road To Independence quest which also required a variety of cinematic sequences and musical accompaniment, this time building an American flavour in the music.

Q:  A new feature is that units have musicians on the battlefield, can you tell us a little more about this?

One of the important roles of musicians on the battlefield was to relay orders to their unit.  It was this aspect specifically that we chose to focus on.  So, I spent some time with one of our designers Jamie Ferguson discussing what types of orders they’d need to relay in the game and once I had the list I quickly notated some ‘musical orders’ together such as Halt, Fire At Will, March for both the snare drummers and the buglers.  I then brought in the talents of some live musicians to record the audio for these orders and the outcome was fantastic as once the orders were integrated in to the game it transformed the level of realism in the battles.  While we did not stick to authentic musical phrases for the orders, the effect is the same in the game nonetheless.  In the game hearing the enemy orders can be an important clue as to what an enemy is doing!

Q:  Empire’s score features music performed with a Symphony Orchestra and also digital samples.  Can you tell us a little bit about this?

We recorded approx. 60 minutes of the score live and we had about 20+ minutes remain completely as digital.  In addition, some tracks were enhanced with additional digital samples, most notably the Indian, Arabic and Tribal battles which featured a lot of sampled ethnic melodic and percussive instruments.

Q: How do you know the tracks will work properly in the game before you record the orchestra?

We simply create electronic MIDI mock-up versions of each track.  This is actually a very important process because these tracks are fully orchestrated so it allows us the ability to hear very accurately the music and make any decision on changes before we record any notes live.  It also allows us the opportunity to try out concepts in the game and refine the style.

Q:  When realizing the score with an orchestra, does this alter the composing process as opposed to just using digital samples for the music?

The composing process itself largely stays the same, what alters is the amount of editing you’ll do to create a realistic MIDI mock-up if using the samples alone in the final mix.  Mock-ups can be very big demanding jobs, and often due to the limits of using samples you’ll sometimes find yourself having to layer many articulations, adding lots of volume shaping, tweaking reverb settings to simulate a hall environment or other such procedures in order to make the music sound more realistic when played back with samples.

Q:  Where/when did you record the live orchestral score?

We recorded the orchestral music with THE SLOVAK NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA . It was recorded by sound engineer Peter Fuchs at the Slovak Radio Concert Hall, in Bratislava during the first week of December 2008.

Q: Can you tell us a little about the recording process.

The Slovak Radio Concert Hall was huge, it a created a lovely lush sound with the orchestra.

To capture this engineer Peter Fuchs used 46 microphones strategically placed around the hall, between and in front of the players.  The close string mics were fed into a Yamaha DM 2000, the remaining microphones were fed into Grace Design 802R, Millennia HV-3D, ASP-008 and Digidesign PRE pre-amps and recorded in to a ProTools HD rig via Apogee converters.

Each piece of music had a click track that would be fed via headphones to each musician and the conductor to ensure accurate timing in the music.  This was important because we needed to add a fair amount of digital samples back to some of the tracks later in the mixing.  Then one by one we’d work our way through each piece of music until we had recorded everything we needed.

The score was recorded over 2 days after which we began preparation for mixing the music.

Peter then flew back to the UK to join me in our in-house studio to mix the music.  We then spent 3 days mixing, again using a ProTools HD rig.

Q: What was the most enjoyable part of the music production?

I always enjoy the collaborative process, working with other musicians, composers and the rest of the orchestral team who helped us put together and record the score.  There are so many cogs in the process and each one helps make the finished recording what it is.

Without doubt though, the single most enjoyable aspect is when you hear the music come alive through the orchestra.  When you have spent months writing, listening and working with the music in MIDI format, to then go and listen to it live with 80 musicians giving it their all is truly a moving experience.

Q:  Are there any plans for a Soundtrack release, a lot of reviews have commented on the strength of the music?

Actually there is, we have been very pleased with the response to the music and I’m sure Total War fans will be happy to hear that we are planning a commercial soundtrack release from the game which should be available in the not too distant future.

With Empire: Total War currently flying off shelves around the world, we spoke to several members of the team to get their thoughts on the game and spill the beans on their winning tactics!

Can you please introduce yourself and tell us about your role on Empire: Total War?

Mike Brunton – My name is Mike Brunton and I think my current job title is Head Writer and Senior Designer, but who can say? According to some the words “paranoid” and “curmudgeon” may appear in there as well, but I say in reply: who are these little bastards, and why are they following me around? I think I’ve written quite a lot of the words on Empire: Total War, or did I? Perhaps some of the historical content, whimsy and the occasional humorous asides in the game would, if dusted for prints CSI-style, lead back to me.

Lee Cowen – I’ve been at CA 10 years in May. So I’m a veteran of the company having been on the 2001 Rugby World Cup game, followed by the PS2 version and then onto Rome: Total War where I was the campaign map guy. Following this was Barbarian Invasion and Alexander and now Empire: Total War.

On Empire: Total War I’m part of the battle team responsible for all the naval combat that is the cannon fire, the crew and the ship locomotion.  My other main job was the battlefield buildings. Getting them from our 3d modeling app onto the terrain and creating the internal structure logic of the building.

Jerome Grasdyke – Hi all, my name is Jerome Grasdyke and I’m the lead programmer on Empire.

Kevin McDowell: Hi all, I’m Kevin McDowell, Lead Artist on Empire TW. I co-ordinate and manage the art team and supply art direction.

Tom Pickard – Hi, I’m Tom Pickard and I’ve been on the total war team since the summer of 2006. I’ve been working on the campaign map primarily since I arrived and have been involved in most stages of its development over the past 2 and a half years. I am a big Total war fan so as you can imagine landing a job on the TW team and having to not mention a thing about it for 2 years till it was announced to the public was pretty hard…

Pawel Wojs – My name is Pawel Wojs and I’m an artist on Empire.

James Buckle – I’m James Buckle, Senior Tester and Internal Support Lead on Empire.  I walk around QA and whip the testers with a cat if they’re bug count gets too low.  Sometimes, between whippings, I like to drink a nice cup of tea and play the game.

Mark O’Connell: I’m the PR and Online Manager for Empire: Total War and have been with the Creative Assembly since September 2006. Some of my responsibilities include press and community events around the world, running our websites, speaking to our lovely community and spreading the word about all things Total War. I also did quite a good job on the company Christmas tree last December!

Which part of the game are you most proud of?

Mike Brunton – I’m quite chuffed I managed to use the words “genuphobe”, “tympanitic”, “air loom”, “jugs” and “pie-shop hussar”. Actually, I’d like to see “Pie-Shop Hussar” on promo T-shirts – maybe I should ask… I’m also quite pleased that the original tech tree, buildings and army lists from my early drafts of years ago survived reasonably intact into the published game. Quite a lot of the development process ends up developing stuff out of existence as needs and targets change, but in this case it looks like the first stabs were going in mostly the right direction. They’ve been extended, tweaked and polished since by many hands (some of them under the conscious control of their owners!), but that’s the nature of development.

Lee Cowen – The gameplay involved with making the naval battles fun to play. It’s not everyone cup of tea but the demo seems to have gone down really well in the community

Jerome Grasdyke – Whoa, where to begin? Empire’s such a rich and varied game that it’s really quite hard to pick a favourite feature… I guess I’d have to go for the new campaign map, which I think has worked out really well. It gives the artists a lot more control over the look of the map, and they’ve definitely made great use of it in places like India and the Caribbean.

Kevin McDowell: The new campaign map is a really big step up from what we have had in the past. The ships are wicked too.

Tom Pickard – On a Personal level, I’ve been involved with the campaign map pretty much from the start, when I arrived the concepts we’re done and the project approved so it was a case of getting down to it. It being a massive aspect of the game to work on and have a chance to influence the direction of the campaign map as we move into a non tile based design was a great experience.

The campaign map for at least a year and a half was somewhat of a minefield of new features and experimental tech, a lot of new coders and new ideas mixed with a now un-tiled handmade map, made in 3d Max(…. that one took a while ) this map would drive the path finding and was originally meant to be the graphical side of things too, however with some rather frank admissions that this would be unworkable as both sides of the map, the wonderful graphics programmers worked their butts off to make me a more usable system that would give us (well me and Ben the other artist working on the map) greater control of the graphical side of the map. The campaign programming team on the other hand we’re using my max map to the fullest, as we started to create something that looked so unbelievably complex just so you the player would get a continuous experience across the world. Over the Last 6 months and many late nights we’ve all brought this together and polished it to be the largest TW map and something I hope all the players spend many, many months looking at.

Pawel Wojs – Literally every aspect, the game as a whole. I’ve seen it grow for the past 3 years, having played it to death, I still can’t get enough of it, and I’ll be playing it compulsively for a long time to come.

James Buckle – It’s hard to pick out any one feature, it’s just a big pile of awesome.  But I think the naval battles really stand out.  Few games have tried it and fewer have made it work.  We’ve managed to capture the essence of naval warfare and make it fun on our first attempt.  Building your first 1^st Rate, sending it into battle and seeing it blow the crap out of an enemy ship with a single broadside is a really satisfying moment.  Having said ship attempt to board a pirate galleon only to be repelled, set on fire and blown in two by its powder magazine is a little less satisfying.  Damn those pirates and their wily pirateness.

Mark O’Connell: I love the entire game and it’s been an honour and a privilege to work with the talented team that created it. That said, I am particularly excited with what has been achieved with naval battles. I still can’t help but be impressed with the level of detail and depth of the new mode, which stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the other modes in the game. It’s also a lot of fun when a well-placed shot causes your opponents ship to blow up!

What is your favourite faction to play as and why?

Mike Brunton – I’m going to be dull and say the British, but that’s only because I know where to find Britain on a map, mostly. My grasp of geography south of Doncaster is a little vague. It’s a wonder that I ever find the CA office some days.

Lee Cowen – I’m currently playing Road to Independence Episode 3, so I have to say America. I’m very much into US history and politics anyway and our game fits perfectly into that. It’s good that we went ahead with RTI as it really helps with learning the mechanics of campaign map. As I was the campaign map coder on Rome and have had little to do with that side of the game this time around, it’s interesting to compare the differences. There is so much more to it now, it’s scope is massive in comparison. Rome’s campaign map was much smaller. Basically it was myself full time, plus 2 or 3 other programmers.

Jerome Grasdyke - Usually I play as the United Provinces. It’s a good challenge since you start with few territories, but you’ve got money, some targets close by and a presence in all three theatres. I like the Ottomans as well as they’ve got quite a few colourful units which are fun to experiment with.

Kevin McDowell: Sweden’s fun, you’re in your own little corner, and there are lots of different ways to break out of it…you play a land or sea game, it’s up to you.

Tom Pickard - Well… I do love playing Prussia as a faction, but when I had a campaign where I allied myself with Austria and invaded Poland and France in swift powerful moves before I was stopped as I marched towards Moscow…. sounded a little too familiar for me… So then I played as Sweden and found them to suit my style of warfare, controlling the Baltic and invading Russia (sorry Russia I seem to pick on you whenever I’m an eastern/Northern European faction) Struggling with my economy until I secured enough trade deals and regions I’d captured became well enough behaved to tax properly. Before sweeping through Denmark into the thick of Europe’s elite armies. I’m going to plug for Sweden with Prussia a close second…

Pawel Wojs – The Ottomans! Out of all the factions I’ve played they are pretty much the toughest on the highest difficulty settings, I challenge anyone to play as the Ottomans, without saving and reloading when everything goes wrong.

James Buckle – That’s a tough one, I’ve had a good run on all of them and each one is a different playing experience.  I’ll probably go with the United Provinces.  You have a foothold in both the American and Indian theatres right from the start, bringing in lots of trade.  Your home region is sat next Westphalia, Bavaria and Hannover, so you have lots of minor factions to stomp on.  Of course, it’s not all roses, if you pick on the wrong little guy and he’s allied to one of the heavyweights you’re in trouble.  France and the UK are right next to you. Pick a fight with them and they will raid your trade routes, blockade your ports and generally ruin your day.

Mark O’Connell: I have probably spent the most time with the British. Being an island nation they are pretty well protected in the early game and you can work on establishing a foothold in the United States. They also have an excellent navy, which is ideal for suppressing pirates and setting up trade routes abroad. I have also really enjoyed playing as the Marathas because of their unique units and setting as well as the United Provinces when I fancy a challenge!

Have you got any tips or winning tactics that you’d like to share?

Mike Brunton – Don’t spend all your money. Keep up with the Joneses (as it were) with tech research. And never, ever, do what I did (repeatedly) and put your immovable saker cannons in a spot where they can’t hit anything. That’s really stupid, I can tell you. And remember to go fish mining - no, hang on, that’s in one of those MMORPGs, isn’t it?

Lee Cowen – Keep your ship’s in formation or you’ll end up micromanaging every single ship. Cross the enemy’s line if their sails are up and chain shot them.

Jerome Grasdyke – At the risk of stating the obvious I tend to pile in with superior forces – my victories are mostly won on the campaign map before I even get around to fighting the battles. That does mean actually paying attention to diplomacy in this game though.

Kevin McDowell: No. Loose lips sink ships.

Tom Pickard – Strong Allies, Aggression, and knowing when to run away and save your troops. Also one of my weaker aspects is my economy, most of my wars become bloated and once a campaign is completed I have to slash army numbers just to balance books… Not good when you’ve just declared war on France and its allies, and failed to take Paris.

Pawel Wojs – Don’t underestimate the effectiveness of melee, even in this period and especially if you have elephants in your army :p.  Play RTI even if you’re a total war vet, you won’t be disappointed! Also build up a strong economy, and protect your trade routes at all cost!

James Buckle – Some of the tactics I used in the previous games don’t work in Empire as it’s a different kind of warfare, but most of them can be adapted.  One that still works and is as old as the hills, is to stack units on one flank and then wrap around the enemy line.  The cross fire it creates will ripe the enemy units to pieces.  Unfortunately, this tactic tends to fall on its face when the enemy has greater infantry numbers.

I leave you to figure out how to get around that problem.

A sneaky tactic I sometimes use is to attack the flanks with galloper artillery.  I hide them in the woods to the side and wait for the enemy to line up, once they begin firing, pop up on their flank and fire straight down the line.  The effect can be devastating, whole rows of men get wiped out by canon fire.  If you can get it in close, hit them with canister shot, it’s brutal.  Be aware of their cavalry units, they will often be floating around on their flanks and, if ignored, will quickly obliterate your artillery and with them any chance for victory.

The new naval battles gave me a headache for a while, it’s a new aspect of the game so I couldn’t adapt old tactics in the way I did for the land battles.  This took a quiet a while.  A great tactic when you’re outnumbered by smaller ships, which happens a lot with all the pirates around the place, is to sail away from them in a zig-zag.  As they follow you, turn into them and fire chain shot at their sails, then turn away and reload.  With their sails torn to pieces they will fall away.  Keep this up and as each ship is immobilized it will be left behind by the chasing pack until you have a whole fleet of strung out and disabled ships.  You can now turn around, park out of range of their guns and shred them with round and grape shot until they surrender and leave you with a tidy little prize.

Mark O’Connell: In naval battles, set a couple of your ships up sideways in the deployment phase. Then unleash a devastating assault of chain shot as your enemies move into attack. It’ll leave them sitting ducks in the water as their masts come crashing down into the sea. Then you can maneuver your fleet to catch them in deadly crossfire of round and grapeshot.  Here’s another tip – select any unit during land battles and press the ‘Insert’ key. It’s awesome.

Finally, do you have any messages for our community?

Mike Brunton – Thanks for being so informative and enthusiastic/keen/mad for it/vaguely threatening (delete as appropriate) in your posts over the years. Now go and enjoy yourselves playing the game!

Lee Cowen – This is one of the largest games ever written, with massive scope, so bear with us if you have any issues, we always consider your comments. Just enjoy what’s great about the game.

Jerome Grasdyke – Just to remember to take it easy, and enjoy conquering the world (again). And also, that Total War would not have become what it is without their enthusiasm and support.

Kevin McDowell: Have fun! Try playing different nations. There are lots of different play styles available.

Tom Pickard – First, I hope you enjoy, and I hope it’s as much fun for you guys to play it as it has been to make.

I’d also like to take this to address a one of the things I’ve seen repeated on the forums (see we do read them ) The areas we covered (or the areas we left off the map): I understand many people’s frustrations at not seeing their country/faction, or not seeing all of say Siberia or china or Australia to capture, but the map is massive, it is truly giant on so many levels and it took lots of designers and many art/coders/producers months of wrangling to decide which areas should make the first draft of the campaign map, This was based on so many deciding factors, and then it took a year or so after to slim it down to a size that was both manageable and fun, and most importantly the gameplay /style/loading times/so many other things was vastly improved because of the time we we’re able to spend polishing the (vast) areas we ended up focusing on. Also If we gave you the world what would the fantastic TWMod community do

Pawel Wojs – Enjoy! We’ll look forward to your feedback, in the forums.

James Buckle – See if you can find the kittens.

Mark O’Connell: I would like to personally thank each and every one of you for your feedback and support throughout the duration of the project. We have a lot more planned in the coming months so stay tuned to www.totalwar.com for the latest information. Oh, and thanks for reading!

Hi guys,  are you prepared to fight on Land and at Sea in the Official Demo for Empire: Total War?

We’ve just announced a playable demo of Empire: Total War will be available on STEAM today at 16.00 GMT.  Capturing just a short glimpse of the kind of epic engagements you’ll be playing from March the 3^rd when the game is released, this demo will take you through the basics of land and naval command and then let you loose on two historic scenarios.

Playing as the British Empire, you’ll take on the American Army in the pivotal ‘Battle of Brandywine Creek’ and then the French Navy in the decisive ‘Battle of Lagos’.

You asked for the 18th Century, you’ve got Empire – let the Campaigns begin!

Empire: Total War will be released from the 3^rd of March, exclusively for PC.

 Hi guys,

I thought you might be interested in this little video that I filmed on my digital camera during a recent press trip to Stockholm, Sweden. Kieran and I flew over to do a series of presentations and interviews with the local press. We arrived at the venue two hours early to set up the equipment and run through the demo. The plan was to show off some naval footage and then give an in-game presentation of a Land battle, showing off many of the exciting new features. Everything was going smoothly until five minutes before the journalists were due to start entering the room, when our television started randomly turning itself off!  Here is the video that we made while awaiting a spare:

Miles Jacobson from Sports Interactive then came to the rescue and kindly lent us his television. He was in the next room to promote the forthcoming Football Manager 2009. I’m pleased to report that the rest of the day went very well, and event coverage should start appearing online and in magazines in the coming weeks.

As always, stay tuned to www.totalwar.com/empire for all the latest info on the game!

Thanks,

Mark O’Connell

 Hi guys,

Welcome to our fifth Empire: Total War FAQ. This month we are focusing exclusively on your Land Battle questions…

With so much of the warfare in the period being focused on the use of gunpowder, will there still be a role for melee units?
Despite the emergence of gunpowder, melee and dedicated melee units remain important parts of warfare in Empire: Total War. Flintlock, muzzle-loading small arms were unreliable, relatively slow to reload and not always accurate. If you were sensible you carried a sword, or a bayonet, or both, or an axe or almost anything as a backup weapon. Once you’d fired, you had a tactical choice: try to reload before the enemy closed to stabbing range, or charge home before he could fire and reload. Hence the need for melee combat. The comparative short effective range of musketry makes this a ticklish problem for commanders. At the start of the period, players will have to make the choice between shooting at the last moment and not being prepared for melee or fixing bayonets. The land battles are being designed so that there is no single ‘right answer’ to that decision. This ensures that the tactics of timing and manoeuvre are vitally important. The period was full of successful bayonet charges and cavalry attacks. There’s a huge, rich variety in the period and we’re determined to get all that flavour into the game. Empire is definitely not just Rome or Medieval with gunpowder units.

With ranged combat being so much more important to the way land battles work, will units be able to use cover and stances to protect themselves?
Absolutely, finding cover on the battlefield for your units introduces a brand new idea to the land battles. Buildings on the battlefield can become a tactical focus of battle because of the cover they provide. Historically, farm and village buildings often saw some of the most ferocious fighting in many famous battles of the period, from Blenheim to Waterloo. Empire allows for this by letting men deploy in buildings for the first time in a Total War game.

There is a downside, of course. Concentrating your men in buildings makes them prime targets for enemy artillery. All the buildings on Empires battlefields will be destructible so the walls can come tumbling down!

Buildings aren’t the only cover. There are deployable items such as chevaux de frise (a kind of portable barrier studded with hideous spikes and blades) and earthworks that provide partial protection for units. The walls, trees and the outside of buildings that can be used as cover too. In addition, some units (skirmishers, in particular) are trained to fire from a prone position in order to reduce their vulnerability to incoming fire.

With ranged combat now so crucial, will the land battle engine UI display areas of fire in addition to unit range?
Aside from range, the battle UI will enable the player to view a unit’s line of sight and there are elements that communicate unit movement and fields of fire (the area that can be hit by a unit with its current facing and formation).

What effects do the weather and environment have on armies in battle?
Weather and the battlefield environment will have a variety of effects on the armies in battle. Fog and smoke influence line of sight, while rain affects rate of fire (or even whether a unit can fire at all) and the chance of misfires. The environment meanwhile will have a range of effects on troops via fatigue. Troops will tire on the battlefield if they march uphill or through mud and, as result, you’ll see their rate of fire and accuracy diminish. Ground types will also affect the movement rate of all troop types, as will obstacles like walls. This only goes to promote the importance of manoeuvring your units with care. If a unit is slowed and fatigued by mud, or commanded to climb over a wall whilst under fire, they could be cut to ribbons in no time by a well-drilled enemy.

Uniforms in that time period were mostly similar, how will you keep armies from becoming clones again?
Not all units are created equal – a number of units are not ‘regular’ army troops, and have plenty of scope for variation. Each unit we are using has a variety of different faces, hair colours, haircuts and facial hair. Unit equipments, such as backpacks and ammo pouches, have a variety of positions and sizes and there is also some variation with unit weaponry.

We’re also introducing a system that allows us to alter any part of the unit on a per-unit basis, so for each unit type we can add variety wherever possible and appropriate.  Even the most uniform of uniforms can have hats at different angles, some buttons unfastened, shorter or longer coat tails, different shoes and all manner of visual flavour.  Of course, with the more exotic unit types the world is our oyster!

Faction colouring is done in a cunning way, and we can have slightly different areas of faction colour on each soldier. Dynamic dirt and wounding will mean that in the heat of battle, every man in the unit will display a different level of grime and injury. All of this is intended to give us as much flexibility in de-cloning the units of men as possible.

Will we have the ability to dismount men pre-battle?
Better than that – dragoon units will be able to dismount and mount during battle. Dismounting is a unit ability that won’t be available to all units and must be selected through the tech tree. This opens up many strategic possibilities – dragoons can for example, ride to buildings or areas of cover on the battlefield, then dismount and fire from the cover they’ve seized. Before battle there will also be a few units that can choose to fight on foot or horseback (but can’t change during battle).. Guns will also be able to limber and unlimber on the battlefield; this means that horse artillery will gallop to where they are most needed.

Units could deploy stakes in Medieval 2 – what kind of deployable items will be available on the battlefield?
There are a variety of weapons and defensive structures that can be deployed in battle. Some in real-time, others in the deployment stage of battle. We’ve already mentioned the chevaux de fries. This can be deployed in the pre-battle deployment phase and provide an effective defense against cavalry charges and limited cover. Other examples include the infantry earthworks and gabions (large wicker baskets filled with earth), which can be deployed pre-battle, and provide significant defensive cover form small arms and artillery fire. The latter is a defensive emplacement that offers strong protection for artillery units from small arms fire but fixes your artillery to a set field position – lose the position, and you may have lost your guns! There will also be items such as wooden stakes, depending on other factors.

How will fixing bayonets be handled – will it be an order you can issue?
The order to fix bayonets can be given to any, musket armed, infantry unit that carries them in battle (and not everyone did, strangely). At the start of the period, a bayonet plugged into the gun barrel like a cork in a bottle – the musket became a heavy spear, but could no longer fire. As the game progresses, more advanced bayonet technology becomes available, including ring bayonets and eventually socket bayonets. The socket bayonet in particular didn’t interfere with loading or firing. Actually, that’s not quite true – historically the French decided to offset their socket bayonets above the barrel exactly into the firer’s eye line. This made aiming a bit of a tricky exercise.

Will there be different types of ammunition available?
Artillery units in Empire can gain access to a variety of ammo types that can be selected by activating a unit ability in battle. Ammo types include explosive shot – these are cannon balls that fly towards their target and then burst and fragment, showering an enemy with shards of metal that can be devastating to a unit of infantry. Canister shot or grape shot works in the similar way but at a shorter range, turning a cannon into a giant sawn-off shotgun. Then there are grenades which are delivered via grenadiers on the battlefield, with their range and effectiveness based on the experience and training of the unit.

I hope you have enjoyed our Land Battles FAQ. Keep your questions coming on our official forums and stay tuned to www.totalwar.com for the latest updates!

Take care,

Mark O’Connell

Hi, I’m Jack Lusted a Games Tester at the Creative Assembly UK and this blog will detail my part in the Battle AI development process and how the AI testing works. This blog compliments an upcoming video development diary on the Battle AI.

First a bit of background on myself. Now I’m sure many of you from the community will know me (so you can just skip the next bit), but for those who don’t I used to be an admin of Total War Center, one of the biggest Total War fan sites. I’ve been playing the series since Medieval: Total War was released back in 2002. I’ve been working here at the Creative Assembly UK since June last year as a Tester and secondee to the Empire design team.

As a tester, I have a wide range of tools available to me with which I can see exactly what the AI is doing and thinking. This makes it easy to spot problems with the AI, and helps Richard Bull (Battle AI programmer) more quickly fix any problems that are found.

There are a variety of battles that we have set up that we use to test the AI on. Most battles will consist of me trying a variety of tactics against the AI to see how it reacts, and noting what it does and doesn’t do well. Other times we will run the game so the AI controls both sides and fights itself, to see how well it does in that situation. That is also one of the most useful ways of exposing flaws in the AI. As the project goes on, the AI will be tested under a wider variety of situations to make sure it plays well in all battles.

During each battle, we can play with all the AI debug information being shown. This lets us see exactly what each AI unit is doing and what tactics it’s engaging. This allows us to get a very clear picture of the AI’s overall strategy and so makes it easy to see where it could be improved and where it isn’t quite behaving right.

Every fortnight myself, Richard and one of the Designers will meet up and discuss the progress of the AI. We’ll talk about the issues with it, new things that have been added in and other progress that has been made since the last meeting. We’ll also make suggestions for improvements by discussing how the AI should react in certain situations and how it should play. For instance some new code has recently gone in based on an idea to try and improve the organization of the AI during the later stages of battle. After each meeting we’ll generally have a few specific areas of the AI that we’ve been asked to test before the next meeting.

The close link between myself as a tester and the battle AI programmer is new for Empire and this process of regular meetings and constant testing helps ensure that the battle AI is always moving forwards. The process will carry on right up until release, and things are looking very promising already.

Also for Empire, I’ve written a series of design documents on how the AI should deal with certain situations and general things it should do based on how myself and others play the game. These documents are constantly updated as more is added to them, new tactics are included and situations arise which have AI design implications. This ensures that there are always up to date documents detailing how the AI should play both generally in battles, and more specifically for certain situations. This helps give clear goals for how the AI should progress, and means we are aiming towards an AI that plays a lot more like a human and so should provide more of a challenge to both our experienced players and those new to the series.

If you’ve got any questions on this blog, please do send them in.

Jack.