Hello everyone,
Before I start the recap - I really do want to emphasise one thing - please let us know what you thought of the Show and Tell.
If you liked it, what worked? If you didn't, what was missing?
I can't promise that we'll make it to everyone's linking - but I see a few different paths to evolve the format. Some where these are more frequent, but with less content and deeper discussion on what is shown, others where it's similar to this balance and more spaced out over the year. We want to find the balance between, ironically, the showing and the telling, so please let me know.
KingGobbo is posting this on my behalf in the forums, forums etc - but I'll of course be looking there too.
Onto the recap!
For those of you who tuned in to our first ever Total War: Show and Tell, I hope you enjoyed the stream! Please let us know what you thought about it. And for those who missed it, we’ve prepared this recap summary to ensure you’re able to catch-up.
Please note that we're writing most of this blog before we've gone live with the stream. We’ve added in some of the key discussion points, but there are other details the developers have added that we haven’t captured below. If you’re interested in what you’ve read, I recommend watching the relevant section.
I've added timestamps to the VOD now, so you can find the sections easily.
Medieval III
We discussed our approach to building up rosters, and how available units are made-up of multiple components, such as the region you’re recruiting from, and which cultures are present there. To demonstrate this, we showed some art for units you can expect to see the Holy Roman Empire have easy access to including, Konstaflers, Ministeralis and Imperial Knights.
If you want to get involved and give feedback on our approach to rosters, you’ll find the post about it here.
We also asked the team some of your questions from our last stream and showed a clip of our current work on ladders. In that Q&A, they discussed how naval battles are a ‘when’ not an ‘if’ – but that the focus for launch will be on the core game as we continue to build on the Warcore engine. They’re investigating castle sieges as a separate battle type, alongside siege and land battles but want to ensure it feels like it brings something unique to the gameplay.
Our next Medieval III blog and stream will be in June but expect continued discussion over on the forums in the meantime.
Rome II
We spoke about not one, not two, but three updates we’re planning for Rome II that will come together in the PANTHEON updates! If you want to get involved with the discussion on these updates, check out the new Rome II forum space here – which has a more comprehensive write-up of each update. I’ll focus below on what we showed in the stream.
First up, Mars.
This update is focused on Battle Gameplay. We showed off the intended changes to unit spacing, and to way damage is calculated, but there’s so many systems being touched here that if you want a deep dive, I recommend checking out the forum post. We’re aiming to show Mars off in a stream in June, but we’re trying to stay flexible with the timings here as we dig through old codebases, so it may be a little sooner or later.
Next up, Venus.
While the main focus was on Mars, we wanted to give a sneak peek of the other updates we’ve planned. The focus here is on Campaign Visuals and UI. We played a video that shows off our intent, and the updated lighting, terrain and water textures that we’re planning to implement into Rome II for its campaign. We’ll talk more about the release windows for this and Jupiter after we’ve released Mars.
Finally, Jupiter.
Another sneak peek here of the update focused on Campaign Gameplay. We showed off the intended changes to building tech trees for the Roman Military and Roman Forum/Market, and how they’ll extend and give them more focus with clearer effects.
If you want to get involved with the Rome II updates, now is the best time to do so!
Warhammer III
Our first section was focused on Game Updates.
Campaign AI will be getting an update in 8.1. The key change there is a mechanism that lets us adjust Campaign AI priorities depending on the current campaign length. We’ve used this to reduce the AI’s prioritisation of defending key regions as the campaign progresses, encouraging them to act more aggressively once established. This should reduce the frequency of clustered armies and allow us to investigate this behaviour more easily in the future.
The Siege Rework will be coming in update 9.1. Since the beta, we’ve been working on the art assets for the siege ladders and revising siege balance based on your feedback. For those who prefer ladders as they are, there will be an option to swap back to that system.
Next, we moved onto our Character Pack
Starting with Bhashiva herself, we had a first look at her in-game animations and discussed some of her abilities (one of which allows her to teleport) and her fast, deadly anti-infantry playstyle. It’s worth having a look at this one just to see her zipping through the battlefield and slamming foes through teleports.
Then we showed Taoyan, the FLC Legendary Hero coming with the update. She’s a strong Anti-Large hero, and her trident will help you to execute intruding Ogres.
We had a quick look at some of the tweaks coming to Cathay alongside the update, including changes to the skill trees for Gate Master, Alchemist and Astromancer, the reworked Cathay tech tree, changes to unit tiers, and how we’re moving Harmony traits into lord skills.
Finally, we revealed Boris Todbringer to be one of the Lords of the End Times.
We showed his selection screen, and then some battle footage, before revealing the Teutogen Guard and the Knights Panther, two of the units joining him. There were a few teases for other units, and we’ve seen the guesses have already started rolling.
And in case you missed it, we brought in AngoryTom to record a set of alternate voice lines for Custom Battle, which will be part of the End Times update.
You’ll hear more about the Bhashiva in May, and Lords of the End Times in June, where we are aiming to take you through some of the free content arriving alongside the patch.
Warhammer 40,000
On the Campaign side, we showed off an in-development planet. There’s still lots to be done, but the aim is to represent what we’re working towards, and that came with a discussion about we’re looking at to ensure planets felt distinct and fun to conquer, and how the scale of a campaign should feel.
On the Battle side, we flew through three different battlefield maps, each with a different level of density. One of those was the city from our announce trailer, our highest density map, but we also had a look at Arid and Ice biomes while discussing how we’ve created maps to allow for varying biomes and deployment zones to all layer over one another, giving a lot of variety in how you play maps, and how they look.
We've got a few things in the works in regard to future updates about the game, but we're still working on which will get to you first. Regardless, you'll have heard more about Total War: Warhammer 40,000 by the end of June.
Community Inbox
We posed your inbox questions to Roger, such as:
- Why do we work on multiple games at once?
- What’s the biggest challenge on improving AI?
- How are we tackling keeping longer campaigns consistently fun?
If you’re interested in hearing the answers to those, I recommend listening to the Community Inbox section.
We hope you enjoyed watching the stream as much as we enjoyed getting to show you everything we’re working on. Let us know what you thought!
Thanks,
Josh // Head of Community Engagement
