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

We had speculated that the special weapons the eastern powers might be able to use would be some sort of fire ship but we weren't even close. Creative Assembly revealed the brand new rocket ships that can really make short work of the enemy battle line ships. These are unlocked towards the end of the tech tree and are armed with basically a large firework on a ramp. When fired, the rocket arcs up into the sky and crashes down onto the deck of enemy ships. They seemed uncannily accurate in the build we saw, setting fire to the admiral ship in a matter of seconds.

The team also showed off another late game unit, the steam ship. This industrial wonder can steam under its own power, making it a great asset when the wind is low. It can also move at double speed by using the wind and steam power at the same time. The steam ships also have cannons that can fire in all four arcs around it.

Creative Assembly didn't have a great deal to say about the campaign but they did reveal two interesting items. First, in addition to the grand campaign, the game will include a Road to Independence campaign that lets players take charge of America from the founding of Jamestown to the victory at Yorktown. They also mentioned that the campaign AI will now advise the tactical AI about how important a battle is. So if an enemy is fighting while retreating on the strategic map, they might tell the tactical AI to fight a delaying action, preserving as many of their troops as possible. If the battle takes place just adjacent to the enemy capital, the campaign AI will tell the tactical AI to go all out and fight to the very last man.

wow.. amazing scrnshot
makes the medieval 2 looks very outdated

Those company sure used GTX280 SLi or Tri-SLI to turn on all MAx and full AA 16X to make picture nice to attrative you buy this games. SO you need Triple GTX280 for it if u buy this games and want taht graphic....LOL

fujkenasai your Rig sure can play since can play WIC also and Mediaval Total War 2. Just turn setting to medium to playable then ok le

Those company sure used GTX280 SLi or Tri-SLI to turn on all MAx and full AA 16X to make picture nice to attrative you buy this games. SO you need Triple GTX280 for it if u buy this games and want taht graphic....LOL

fujkenasai your Rig sure can play since can play WIC also and Mediaval Total War 2. Just turn setting to medium to playable then ok le

A developer has said that his workstation is using a X1900 with something like a X2 4200..game is playable but not optimised yet...debug code...so expect it to run on even lower spec when its done...The engine has been said to perform quite well. So your rig wont be an issue le...I'm pretty sure even mine would run it decently well enough...no worries..

A developer has said that his workstation is using a X1900 with something like a X2 4200..game is playable but not optimised yet...debug code...so expect it to run on even lower spec when its done...The engine has been said to perform quite well. So your rig wont be an issue le...I'm pretty sure even mine would run it decently well enough...no worries..

Hoping my C2D T7100 + 3GB RAM + 8600M GS will be able to play it.

I would if i could. I'm using a laptop, in case you forgot.

There is no doubt Creative assembly are the  best developer for "large scale" strategy game. (sorry for supreme commander fans).
I have played all the total war series (excluding some bad expansion), there is not pretty much innovation in gameplay only enhancement in graphics
(which is why medieval 2 score ranks lower than Rome).

However, they take a huge gamble by not progressing to titles like Rome 2, Shogun 2 (i'm still waiting) but create a totally different era than b4.
The colonisation age (from IGN, gamespy & gamespot preview), there is lack of melle units as opposed to its early games.
I will have no doubt they will push the map to a "huge proportion as well"
I will tell everyone what they are waiting for in this game (no not the graphics, sound, story.....etc) BUT the naval battle.

I love naval battle scenes (pirates of the carribean, master & commander), so this alone will push it for at least Top 5 games of the year.

Here is a screenshot of the naval gameplay trailer. A look at the UI. It looks similar to the prototype UI that was available earlier. Sorry for the big screen. Easier for you guys to see.



Some question marks in there not sure what they are...