Ideas for Total War games after Empire.

[Dachs]

I can't wait to install EB.

It's awesome. I wish I could give some help to the EB II team, but they are set for historical information (or seem to be), and modeling/skinning ain't my thing. But it's supposed to be out sometime this year.

I looked it up in Stephen Tanner's Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban, and it was Bessus, the satrap of Bactria (and later Artaxerxes V), who brought the Scythian, Arachosian, and Sogdian horsemen to Gaugamela, including Saka from the Dahae tribe. They were the ones who made Parmenio sweat bullets while the Pezh and Hippos Hetairoi were off being glorious and stuff.

Thanks very much Dachs. I had picked up on their being Saka units at those battles, but had interpreted it a bit differently. I had assumed that the Saka were similar to the companion cavalry in equipment, but if the horses were mailed too then that would make sense. Bessus was in charge of the Eastern cavalry units and they did chew quite a hole in the infantry line. I'll go back to Arrian (again) and try to find the references.

Cheers.

Good stuff.

The thing that annoys me about the Romans in RTW is that if CA had started a little earlier then they could have kept the faction unified and not unbalanced the gameplay much. I think that several mods have corrected that error now.

Europa Barbarorum starts in 272 BC(E) (a very important year), keeps Rome unified.

It was also pretty awful that the Egyptian unit roster was from the wrong period.

Awful here having the meaning of hilarious. I can't imagine what they were thinking when they were coming up with units for the historical battle of Raphia. "Pikemen? Let's call em 'Nile Spearmen'! And get rid of any insinuation that they were Greek, everybody knows there were no Greeks in Egypt!"

The thing about the three Roman families in RTW is that they were trying to simulate Caesar's civil war, and they didn't want to frustrate the player by making a random amount of their settlements rebel. Even though it's not historically accurate, I think that was a fairly clever design decision.

Then why don't other factions get split up to simulate their civil wars? The Seleucid Empire had a fairly major one, between Antiochus 'Hierax' and Seleucus II, for example, and then another between Antiochus III and Achaeus. The Gauls were divided into innumerable tribes (hell, even attempting an Aedui/Arverni or a Belgae/Celt/Aquitanian dichotomy would've been plenty), as were the 'Spanish'. Carthage had the parties of the Barcids and others to contend between themselves, too. In short: the game was too Romanocentric.

Not that they could have made much of an impact anyway, Darius put himself in an effing hole in the mountain.

I gotta there. I mean, he made a strange combination of operationally sound moves and tactically disastrous ones. Maneuvering behind Alexander was smart. It never made sense to me that the rest of his actions didn't have the same intelligent flair. (And why didn't he try to cut Alexander off when he was off being a prat in Egypt? Aaaargh...)

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

The only EB version I can find is the one for RTW Vanilla, is there a BI version?

 

[Maniacal]

I thought EB was for 1.5 which includes BI? I have 1.6 with BI from the Eras boxed, so I don't think EB works with my version.

 

[Dachs]

The only EB version I can find is the one for RTW Vanilla, is there a BI version?

I thought EB was for 1.5 which includes BI? I have 1.6 with BI from the Eras boxed, so I don't think EB works with my version.

EB was originally developed for RTW 1.5 but the good folks at the Guild have ported it to both Alex.exe and BI.exe. Enjoy!

 

[Justin Somnios]

I think China would be a good candidate, but wouldn't it be cool if they had a Cold War one?

 

[Dachs]

I think China would be a good candidate, but wouldn't it be cool if they had a Cold War one?

By the time of the Cold War, armies don't work the way they do in the Total War engine.

 

[Justin Somnios]

Guess you're right on that one. So what's left?
-Three Kingdoms
-World War?
-remake RTW
-remake shogun
-India
-Assyria
-Mesoamerica? (M2?)
not a whole lot left.

 

[Keroro]

The thing about the three Roman families in RTW is that they were trying to simulate Caesar's civil war, and they didn't want to frustrate the player by making a random amount of their settlements rebel. Even though it's not historically accurate, I think that was a fairly clever design decision.

Then why don't other factions get split up to simulate their civil wars? The Seleucid Empire had a fairly major one, between Antiochus 'Hierax' and Seleucus II, for example, and then another between Antiochus III and Achaeus. The Gauls were divided into innumerable tribes (hell, even attempting an Aedui/Arverni or a Belgae/Celt/Aquitanian dichotomy would've been plenty), as were the 'Spanish'. Carthage had the parties of the Barcids and others to contend between themselves, too. In short: the game was too Romanocentric.

Too Romanocentric? It does what it says on the box: it's called Rome: Total War. I choose to just enjoy the mods, I haven't played the standard game for years. I prefer having the Romans in one faction but with the Roman rebels being active. I think that rebels were brought in with the BI expansion, and IMO they work quite well, though they're usually not quite powerful enough. I know that I've cursed many times when one of my top generals has decided to rebel along with an elite gold chevroned army.

I think Dachs was correct that there were also Sogdian and Saka units at Issus, just not proto-Kataphractoi. Not that they could have made much of an impact anyway, Darius put himself in an effing hole in the mountain.

There were other units of Eastern Cavalry. From memory there were Bactrians, Sogdians, Saka heavy cavalry, and horse archers from...somewhere. Dahae or Scythian I think. There would also have been plenty of cavalry from the Median provinces but I don't think they performed as impressively.

Awful here having the meaning of hilarious. I can't imagine what they were thinking when they were coming up with units for the historical battle of Raphia. "Pikemen? Let's call em 'Nile Spearmen'! And get rid of any insinuation that they were Greek, everybody knows there were no Greeks in Egypt!"

Yes. The fact that the capital is called Alexandria and the King is called Ptolomy is mere coincidence.

I gotta there. I mean, he made a strange combination of operationally sound moves and tactically disastrous ones. Maneuvering behind Alexander was smart. It never made sense to me that the rest of his actions didn't have the same intelligent flair. (And why didn't he try to cut Alexander off when he was off being a prat in Egypt? Aaaargh...)

Many questions, so few answers. Considering the manpower that Darius had he really should have been able to make a better dent in the Mack lines, both at Issus and Gaugamela. Memnon had already explained to the Persians why they couldn't win in a one-on-one fight, so it came down to making sure that the Macks suffered whilst in enemy country. Later on the Romans showed, against Pyrhus, that if you make a Mack army pay for every inch of ground then you could stop them from advancing. I guess the difference must be morale - the Romans were determined to protect their state and kept in the fight even whilst losing, whereas most of the Persian troops don't seem to have had the morale to hold their lines in the face of a good kicking. According to the histories we have the casualties on the Mack side were very light.

 

[Kathandrion]

How about the colonisation of Africa? There would be all the different competing European states and some of the African empires too. It's a bit later in time than the setting for Empire, but I think it would still work. It could even be considered as an expansion for it if the two timescales are too similar, similar to Alexander being an add-on for Rome because it was still comparable ancient history.

 

[brainshannon]

Total War Vietnam... haha, just kidding.

A Civil War one would be awesome though! Napoleonic Wars would also be cool.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

There were other units of Eastern Cavalry. From memory there were Bactrians, Sogdians, Saka heavy cavalry, and horse archers from...somewhere. Dahae or Scythian I think. There would also have been plenty of cavalry from the Median provinces but I don't think they performed as impressively.

The only cavalry I can call from memory at Issos was that with which Alexander dealt by his Thessalian cavalry on his left flank, along the shoreline. I'm sure there were more there.

Yes. The fact that the capital is called Alexandria and the King is called Ptolomy is mere coincidence.

Then why call them "Nile Spearmen" and not Machmoi or Pezoi? It also fails to explain the appearance of chariots, which are a strictly Phaoronic characteristic.

Many questions, so few answers. Considering the manpower that Darius had he really should have been able to make a better dent in the Mack lines, both at Issus and Gaugamela.

But at Issos, it was Alexander who took the initiative, not Darius.

Memnon had already explained to the Persians why they couldn't win in a one-on-one fight, so it came down to making sure that the Macks suffered whilst in enemy country.

Memnon was also smart enough to remember how the Ten Thousand had fared (as was Alexander, but in a different light). Too bad he was dead before either of the battles in question took place.

Later on the Romans showed, against Pyrhus, that if you make a Mack army pay for every inch of ground then you could stop them from advancing. I guess the difference must be morale - the Romans were determined to protect their state and kept in the fight even whilst losing, whereas most of the Persian troops don't seem to have had the morale to hold their lines in the face of a good kicking. According to the histories we have the casualties on the Mack side were very light.

The greatest strength of the Republic was its truly massive population from which to draw new recruits into its war machine. Even before the unification of Italia was complete, the Romans could call on enough warriors to nearly infinitely replenish their armies (relative to other countries' capabilities); this is why the Epirians were never able to make good on their victories against Rome, because the Romans could always be counted on to quickly replace losses.

 

[Dachs]

Guess you're right on that one. So what's left?
-Three Kingdoms
-World War?
-remake RTW
-remake shogun
-India
-Assyria
-Mesoamerica? (M2?)
not a whole lot left.

Three Kingdoms and Spring and Autumn are solid ideas. They, along with some Mongol-type thing and maybe something about the end of the 16th century (so you get Jurchens, Ming, Japan, and Korea) could form the basis of a Kingdoms-like game with a bunch of minicampaigns, something that's been alluded to before in this thread.

Remaking games with the new naval combat bit will work differently in naval warfare for the classical age, I think. Doing RTW over again (make it more like EB! ) would be cool, but IMHO they should be trying entirely new things, like the aforementioned China plan. Mesoamerica has already been done to a limited extent in M2TW, expanding on that seems more like a job for a mod than a full fledged game. India might work, but my main beef with that is that you are gonna have to do the late medieval/Renaissance time period to get any sort of equilibrium amongst the various states in power for an extended period of time, and people don't really know all that much about that. (People in general, not historians. )

As for 'Assyria', that's kinda vague, hein? First Assyrian Empire is basically all but unknown, though, so I guess we'd have to do the later one, and that could be interesting. Since it's so limited in scale, though (being by necessity confined to Hatti, Assyria, Mitanni, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Hurrians, Urartu, and probably western Iran), it seems like more of a job for an expansion or a modpack.

Too Romanocentric? It does what it says on the box: it's called Rome: Total War.

Marketing ploy.

I choose to just enjoy the mods, I haven't played the standard game for years.

Me, too.

I prefer having the Romans in one faction but with the Roman rebels being active. I think that rebels were brought in with the BI expansion, and IMO they work quite well, though they're usually not quite powerful enough. I know that I've cursed many times when one of my top generals has decided to rebel along with an elite gold chevroned army.

My beef with faction-specific emergent rebel factions is that Rome doesn't necessarily deserve to have 'em. Say I'm playing as Macedonia and I occupy the entirety of the Italian peninsula by 220 BC(E). Not much point in those emergent rebels then, is there? There are plenty of other valid places to use those faction slots that will add more depth to the game, and internal conflict can be scripted if necessary.

Many questions, so few answers. Considering the manpower that Darius had he really should have been able to make a better dent in the Mack lines, both at Issus and Gaugamela. Memnon had already explained to the Persians why they couldn't win in a one-on-one fight, so it came down to making sure that the Macks suffered whilst in enemy country. Later on the Romans showed, against Pyrhus, that if you make a Mack army pay for every inch of ground then you could stop them from advancing. I guess the difference must be morale - the Romans were determined to protect their state and kept in the fight even whilst losing, whereas most of the Persian troops don't seem to have had the morale to hold their lines in the face of a good kicking. According to the histories we have the casualties on the Mack side were very light.

Hmm, perhaps the soldiers were unwilling to fight. I don't know that morale was entirely an issue, though. Codomannus had experience fighting, and he knew what he could expect from his men; he had units that did fight for a long time (the 'Kardaka' hoplite analogs and the 'Immortals'), after all. I think it was mostly a case of Macedonian tactical innovation proving to have grand-strategic results, similar to the case of Frederick the Great and his fathers' Prussian military reforms having the end result of the survival and aggrandizement of the Prussian state in the 1740s to 1770s. The Greek chroniclers, it seems, referred to the vast mass of Eastern armies as being comprised of 'peltasts' (I know for certain Polybius did, and it's something that has infuriated me whenever I try to get a good account of the Arius River battle ); the Persian army was on the whole a lighter formation than its opposing Macedonian force was, and its heavier components were also tactically behind, being roughly of comparison to the Greek hoplites in the resistance they could put up to the Macedonian syntagma.

How about the colonisation of Africa? There would be all the different competing European states and some of the African empires too. It's a bit later in time than the setting for Empire, but I think it would still work. It could even be considered as an expansion for it if the two timescales are too similar, similar to Alexander being an add-on for Rome because it was still comparable ancient history.

That's actually a pretty good idea, though anybody who tried to play as the Africans themselves would kinda get shafted. I don't really see many opportunities for combat between the European states, though, unless we go all ahistorical. But yeah: smaller forces abound until ~World War II...could be interesting, in short, but I don't know if it would be all that exciting.

A Civil War one would be awesome though! Napoleonic Wars would also be cool.

Whose Civil War? And the Napoleonic Wars are part of the bailiwick of Empire: Total War already (Gott sei dank).

Then why call them "Nile Spearmen" and not Machmoi or Pezoi? It also fails to explain the appearance of chariots, which are a strictly Phaoronic characteristic.

He was joking. Also, chariots were used by some Hellenistic armies (for example, the Seleucids under Antiochus the Great used them to disastrous effect at Magnesia, when they were driven back upon their own lines...if he had not made that mistake, perhaps they would have won...). But the Ptolemies on the whole didn't employ them, I think. Mostly they relied on the aforementioned machimoi, Greek klerouch settler phalangitai, and Galatian mercenaries.

The greatest strength of the Republic was its truly massive population from which to draw new recruits into its war machine. Even before the unification of Italia was complete, the Romans could call on enough warriors to nearly infinitely replenish their armies (relative to other countries' capabilities); this is why the Epirians were never able to make good on their victories against Rome, because the Romans could always be counted on to quickly replace losses.

This. The Roman military system was tactically inferior to the full spectrum of Hellenistic warfare (save for the innovation of the triplex acies, of course), but it had the grand strategic advantage of being able to draw from a very large portion of the population of the Italian peninsula. But even keeping that in mind, the losses suffered during the warfare from 280 BC(E) for the next century and a half had a very palpable demographic effect on Italy and Rome. It's a shame that the Romans elected to solve it by increasing the manpower pool (thus leading to the disastrous losses of the Civil War half-century) instead of tactical innovation with a focus on fewer losses and a cleaner victory.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

It's also worth mentioning that the Romans were among the first to implement a tactical reserve. Alexander did it at Gaugamela, and Porus at the Jhelum River, but the tripartite formation you mentioned, i.e. the Hastati/Principes/Triarii structure, was quite new to the battlefield, and certainly not yet institutionalized before the Republic.

 

[Keroro]

The only cavalry I can call from memory at Issos was that with which Alexander dealt by his Thessalian cavalry on his left flank, along the shoreline. I'm sure there were more there.

Wikipedia (not the most trusted resource I'm sure) has the Persian cavalry at Issos listed as 11,000. That's a hell of a lot of horses for that time. There's some doubt over whether that cavalry was from the Eastern provinces or the nearer satrapies. They could feasibly have been median / armenian.

Memnon was also smart enough to remember how the Ten Thousand had fared (as was Alexander, but in a different light). Too bad he was dead before either of the battles in question took place.

Yes, Memnon's one of the big what ifs of the whole period. A very impressive commander, cut down by disease. An unedifying end.

Remaking games with the new naval combat bit will work differently in naval warfare for the classical age, I think. Doing RTW over again (make it more like EB! ) would be cool, but IMHO they should be trying entirely new things, like the aforementioned China plan. Mesoamerica has already been done to a limited extent in M2TW, expanding on that seems more like a job for a mod than a full fledged game. India might work, but my main beef with that is that you are gonna have to do the late medieval/Renaissance time period to get any sort of equilibrium amongst the various states in power for an extended period of time, and people don't really know all that much about that. (People in general, not historians. )

Rise and Fall of the Mughals is one of the best scenarios I played for Civ 3 because of this precise reason - the factions are reasonably well balanced. But as you say, it's not a period people know a huge amount about. One of the things that is inevitable (sadly) in the game industry as well as other creative industries, is that sequals to successful products tend to sell very well. That's why most of the highest grossing films tend to be sequals. That's why we'll probably get a remake before we get a completely new game. Hope to be proved wrong on this matter.

My beef with faction-specific emergent rebel factions is that Rome doesn't necessarily deserve to have 'em. Say I'm playing as Macedonia and I occupy the entirety of the Italian peninsula by 220 BC(E). Not much point in those emergent rebels then, is there? There are plenty of other valid places to use those faction slots that will add more depth to the game, and internal conflict can be scripted if necessary.

I'm not that knowledgable about the modding process for RTW, but I don't think that the rebel factions actually take up a slot - they sort of piggy back on the non-rebel version of that faction. I could always be wrong there. Otherwise, yes, more unique factions would be preferable. Scripting seems to be something that CA and a lot of modders are not that keen on for some reason - I'm not sure why, perhaps they're buggy. I've seen a few used in XGM to provide additional garrisons for important AI cities when they're getting beaten, but I've not seen them used to provide rebel opposition.

Hmm, perhaps the soldiers were unwilling to fight. I don't know that morale was entirely an issue, though. Codomannus had experience fighting, and he knew what he could expect from his men; he had units that did fight for a long time (the 'Kardaka' hoplite analogs and the 'Immortals'), after all. I think it was mostly a case of Macedonian tactical innovation proving to have grand-strategic results, similar to the case of Frederick the Great and his fathers' Prussian military reforms having the end result of the survival and aggrandizement of the Prussian state in the 1740s to 1770s. The Greek chroniclers, it seems, referred to the vast mass of Eastern armies as being comprised of 'peltasts' (I know for certain Polybius did, and it's something that has infuriated me whenever I try to get a good account of the Arius River battle ); the Persian army was on the whole a lighter formation than its opposing Macedonian force was, and its heavier components were also tactically behind, being roughly of comparison to the Greek hoplites in the resistance they could put up to the Macedonian syntagma.

True that there were certain elements of the Persians that stuck around longer than the rest. The Greek hoplite style forces and Eastern cavalry performed well. I don't recall the Immortals having a massive effect in either Issos or Gaugamela though.

Peltasts - I get the feeling that the Greek authors tended to refer to any light missile troops as peltasts. It doesn't seem to matter whether they were using slings, javelins, bows, they're all referred to as peltasts. I believe that the Archemaenid troops tended to carry bows as a secondary weapon, thus causing the Greeks to think of them as peltasts. Certainly the Persian forces were predominately lighter than the Mack army of the time.

Then why call them "Nile Spearmen" and not Machmoi or Pezoi? It also fails to explain the appearance of chariots, which are a strictly Phaoronic characteristic.

He was joking. Also, chariots were used by some Hellenistic armies (for example, the Seleucids under Antiochus the Great used them to disastrous effect at Magnesia, when they were driven back upon their own lines...if he had not made that mistake, perhaps they would have won...). But the Ptolemies on the whole didn't employ them, I think. Mostly they relied on the aforementioned machimoi, Greek klerouch settler phalangitai, and Galatian mercenaries.

I was definitely joking. I should have used the obligatory smilie. I believe that scythed chariots were used by a few Hellenistic Kingdoms, but they weren't that widespread. They seem to be one of the weapons that were often as destructive to their own side as the opposition - rather like elephants could be when not used correctly.

The greatest strength of the Republic was its truly massive population from which to draw new recruits into its war machine. Even before the unification of Italia was complete, the Romans could call on enough warriors to nearly infinitely replenish their armies (relative to other countries' capabilities); this is why the Epirians were never able to make good on their victories against Rome, because the Romans could always be counted on to quickly replace losses.

This. The Roman military system was tactically inferior to the full spectrum of Hellenistic warfare (save for the innovation of the triplex acies, of course), but it had the grand strategic advantage of being able to draw from a very large portion of the population of the Italian peninsula. But even keeping that in mind, the losses suffered during the warfare from 280 BC(E) for the next century and a half had a very palpable demographic effect on Italy and Rome. It's a shame that the Romans elected to solve it by increasing the manpower pool (thus leading to the disastrous losses of the Civil War half-century) instead of tactical innovation with a focus on fewer losses and a cleaner victory.

Rome regularly took such a beating at the hands of a variety of other nations, Greeks included, but still people tend to think of Roman legions as the more successful military force. Epirus won a lot of tactical victories but lost the strategic battle due to the manpower problems. Hannibal won both tactical and strategic victories, but a brief hesitation allowed Rome to escape even from him. You can almost imagine the desperation that you would feel as a besieging commander - 'where the hell do these people get their troops from?' Apart from anything else it shows the commitment that the people of Rome had to keep their Republic alive. It's not quite the same as the commitment that most people are willing to show to an Emperor. I think that this is pretty well simulated in RTW - it's quite easy to recruit good Roman armies with a lower level barracks, but most other civilized nations require a level 4 or 5 barracks before you get comparable quality troops. I'm not really knowledgable enough on Roman history to be able to debate whether their reliance on Italian raised legions was responsible for any Roman loss of power. I guess the reliance on mercenary legions later on suggests that it could have been.

 

[Dachs]

It's also worth mentioning that the Romans were among the first to implement a tactical reserve. Alexander did it at Gaugamela, and Porus at the Jhelum River, but the tripartite formation you mentioned, i.e. the Hastati/Principes/Triarii structure, was quite new to the battlefield, and certainly not yet institutionalized before the Republic.

Yeah, that is why I mentioned the triplex acies. Tactical institutionalization of a reserve was a tremendous innovation. I wonder...*runs back to Hellenistic era alternate history drawing board*

I'm not that knowledgable about the modding process for RTW, but I don't think that the rebel factions actually take up a slot - they sort of piggy back on the non-rebel version of that faction. I could always be wrong there.

From taking part in discussions in the Guild and on TWC about Europa Barbarorum's decision not to include faction-specific rebels, I think they do, in fact, take up a slot, especially as they are implemented in BI. Emergent factions as a whole are generally unsatisfying because they limit the amount of factions the player can play as anyway.

Otherwise, yes, more unique factions would be preferable. Scripting seems to be something that CA and a lot of modders are not that keen on for some reason - I'm not sure why, perhaps they're buggy. I've seen a few used in XGM to provide additional garrisons for important AI cities when they're getting beaten, but I've not seen them used to provide rebel opposition.

EB makes heavy use of scripting, and the result is a longer runtime for most stuff. (The 1.2 patch for the 1.1 build has largely fixed this.) XGM and some other mods, like Chivalry II for M2TW, do use scripting to add units to ungarrisoned cities (imitating levies). EB doesn't really do this, but it does script a lot of Eleutheroi (slave/rebel) faction actions, such that, for instance, the Boii act like a separate faction instead of just a bunch of scrub barb slaves.

I don't recall the Immortals having a massive effect in either Issos or Gaugamela though.

My mistake.

Peltasts - I get the feeling that the Greek authors tended to refer to any light missile troops as peltasts. It doesn't seem to matter whether they were using slings, javelins, bows, they're all referred to as peltasts. I believe that the Archemaenid troops tended to carry bows as a secondary weapon, thus causing the Greeks to think of them as peltasts. Certainly the Persian forces were predominately lighter than the Mack army of the time.

Yeah, that's what I was alluding to: the Greeks were fighting against forces primarily classes as light soldiers, who couldn't stand up to a proper phalanx, much less a Macedonian syntagma, in close combat. Those nizagan archer-spearmen made up the bulk of many armies, in large part because they were awesome multirole soldiers, but they weren't as well armored as their opponents.

Rome regularly took such a beating at the hands of a variety of other nations, Greeks included, but still people tend to think of Roman legions as the more successful military force. Epirus won a lot of tactical victories but lost the strategic battle due to the manpower problems. Hannibal won both tactical and strategic victories, but a brief hesitation allowed Rome to escape even from him. You can almost imagine the desperation that you would feel as a besieging commander - 'where the hell do these people get their troops from?' Apart from anything else it shows the commitment that the people of Rome had to keep their Republic alive. It's not quite the same as the commitment that most people are willing to show to an Emperor. I think that this is pretty well simulated in RTW - it's quite easy to recruit good Roman armies with a lower level barracks, but most other civilized nations require a level 4 or 5 barracks before you get comparable quality troops. I'm not really knowledgable enough on Roman history to be able to debate whether their reliance on Italian raised legions was responsible for any Roman loss of power. I guess the reliance on mercenary legions later on suggests that it could have been.

I think that the problem was that they relied on a manpower pool that they thought was inexhaustible, and sometimes seemed like it, but wasn't. Already in the 130s you can see, in the legislation of the Gracchi, a manpower problem that was near desperation, and the defeats suffered immediately before the Marian military 'reform', such as Arausio, exacerbated the problem. So the Romans elected to do with their new inexhaustible source of manpower granted by opening up more of Italy to legion service exactly what they had done earlier: throw more men into the grinder, except this time against each other. And again, during the reign of Augustus, there's a conscious realization that hey, we need more men, let's not just waste them. This was why they figured it wasn't worth it to go after Germania after Arminius inflicted the defeat of the Teutoberg Forest on them, for instance. And then you have Caracalla's legislation to make all free residents of the Empire citizens, which opened up recruitment again somewhat. A huge part of Roman history is the disregard for human life, even those of their soldiers, and the search to 'get more' into the mix.

Of course, that's not confined to Rome either. The famous socialistic reforms of Cleomenes III, for example, which set off the firestorm of revolution across the Peloponnese, were never motivated at any kind of Stoic philosophical idea of class restructuring or remedying social wrongs. Cleomenes needed to expand the phalanx in order to rebuild Spartan power, and he did so admirably, beating up on Aratus of Sicyon with aplomb before Aratus finally swallowed his pride and called in Antigonus III Doson, official bogeyman, south to crush the social revolution. And in Bactria and India, the dynasties of Euthydemus and Eucratides (more so Eucratides than Euthydemus; Demetrius the Invincible, for one, seems to have had more of a concept of an Alexandrine commonwealth of man than the man who supplanted him) included large Indian and native Iranian forces in their armies, not because they wanted to, but because social constraints forced them to if they didn't want to be overrun by their enemies. (This is the supreme irony of the dynasty of Eucratides...he, as a Seleucid, led a chauvinistic ethnic Greek revolt against the Euthydemids' native-friendly policies, and then ended up having to incorporate those selfsame natives into his armies anyway.)

Whoo, ranting. Conclusion: if you know military history in the classical age, everything follows from that...social history, economic history, political history...

 

[Traitorfish]

I admit I haven't tried that particular mod, I'll have to look it up. I'd rather have something on a grander scale personally though.

Yeah, I agree, I just kind of buggered up my post... Should've said "although" instead of "while"... Made it sound like a feature or something.
The scale of Troy is certainly pretty limited, especially as most of the factions are located inside Greece (and in the classical sense, let alone the modern sense), so it would work a lot better as a game covering all of the Bronze Age Near and Middle East, something like the bronze-age scenario in Civ 3 Conquests, ranging from Greece in the West (perhaps extending to Italy) to the Afghanistan-ish in the East. I wouldn't really expect a whole game, though, given the virtual lack of the naval combat that they're clearly placing a lot of emphasis on, and the general lack of public appeal. Could make a good mod, though.

 

[Elta]

Pike and Shot total war.

In theory you can use tercios in M2, but you can't really. They just don't work in the intended way.

The ultimate project would be the entire world from 1100 to 186X (when ever the repeater was invented 1860 something IIRC, soon after the civil war for sure) With the repeater and trenches coming into play it is really a different sort of game altogether.

I know it would be nearly impossible to have any continuity with so many nations.
I wouldn't care if it was a fantasy map with fake nations, so lone as the technology flowed and it was fun.

 

[Nekro]

China: Total War might be the most likely choice.

An Asia-centered one might be interesting, too, perhaps from Propontis--->East?

I second that. They should go back to the roots, do either a Shogun II Total War or an East Asia Total War.

 

[Dachs]

The ultimate project would be the entire world from 1100 to 186X (when ever the repeater was invented 1860 something IIRC, soon after the civil war for sure) With the repeater and trenches coming into play it is really a different sort of game altogether.

Probably should make it a bit earlier, so you don't get the percussion cap. The Spencer repeating rifle was used during the American Civil War.

 

[Icaria909]

Personally, I would want to see WWII Total War. I know that it's modern warefare and that something like that is lacking in the previous Total war games (ignoring mods), but the fact that they are doing Empire with naval warefare and other innovations (gunpowder units specifically) shows the design board is up to the task.

The game would work if you set the game as three seperate allied spheres: the allies, the Nazis, and the Independants. Allied nations cant attack each other, allies of Nazis can't attack each other, and the Independants get full diplomacy abilities. They can do this just like how in Rome: Total War the Julli could't declare war on the SPQR (I know that the name implies that the Julli are included but even so).

As far as military tactics and strategies go, WWII is a prime period to make a game about. because armies were hard to maintain and expensive in the 16th to 18th centuries, kings didn't want to use them unless for an emergency, so, European Warefare had mostly consisted of outmaneuvering your enemies by placing yourself in front of their supply lines. Napoleon Changed that by directly pursuing and purposefully trying to destroy enemy armies because then he could fully conquer a State. Thats one of the reasons that his strategies and tactics won on most occasions, while he also made cavalry important again. From the napoleanic wars until WWII Europe reverted back to old style european warefare, but upon the entry of Europe into WWII, the world had made a definate shift in Military tactics and strategies by using some that were similar to or identical to Classical Greece, Rome, and Mongolia (all previously made or potential games). For instance, in tactics, mobility becomes a defining factor on the battlefield, taking up defensive postitions becomes a necesity, as well as choosing the correct amounts of munitions and the logistical problems associated with it (Rommel in Egypt as an example). Not to say that the helenistic armies didn't face similar problems but they could rely on swords or spears if they lost arrows, a modern army is a mob if it doesn't possess munitions and weapons.

Strategically, Blitzkrieg and coordinated warefare were knock off strategies stolen from the mongols and romans.

Planes could be like spy units that could enter cities and destroy a building or two, or damage units inside. Fighter planes can beat bombers and can sit in a stack of army units but die if it doesn't come back to a city with an airfield for "retraining".

You could even have the americans appear in Moroco like the huns do RTW or the mongols in MTW.

In essense a WWII total war game would have a much closer feel to the original games then even Empire, let alone the american civil war. If any total war game were to be made, I hope it is based on WWII, not for the period's military innovations but its military reinovations.