Total War is a computer series of strategy games developed by The Creative Assembly. These combine turn-based strategy and resource management, with real-time tactical control of battles. The first of the series, Shogun: Total War was released in June 2000. The most recent major game released was Total War: Warhammer on 24 May 2016. The series has sold over 20 million copies
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Shogun: Total War
Shogun: Total War is set in feudal Japan. The single-player game includes interactive videos that represented possible decisions by the player, such as converting to Christianity. The original Shogun was not a mainstream product, but attracted a dedicated fan base.[citation needed] The expansion pack, called Mongol Invasion, was released with the original in the Warlord Edition.
Medieval: Total War
Medieval: Total War is set in medieval Europe. The expansion pack is called Viking Invasion, and the combined edition is called the Battle Collection. It was one of the best-selling games in the Total War series.
Rome: Total War
Rome: Total War is set in the Roman Republic. This was the first game to encompass what would become one of the most fundamental additions to the Total Warseries, the inclusion of free map movement as opposed to earlier versions where all movement was province based. The first expansion pack, Barbarian Invasion, was released on 27 September 2005. Rome: Total War Gold Edition, which combined the fully patched versions of the original game and its first expansion into one DVD (instead of the original game's three CD-ROMs) was released on 14 February 2006. A CD-ROM version (a total of four CDs) was also produced. A Mac version of Rome: Total War Gold Edition, developed by Feral Interactive, was released 12 February 2010. A second expansion pack, Rome: Total War: Alexander, was released on 19 June 2006 as a download and, later at retail. A compilation of the original game and the two expansions, Rome: Total War Anthology was released on 16 March 2007. The series has also spawned several popular mods such as Europa Barbarorum and Rome: Total Realism both of which seek to create more historically accurate settings.
Medieval II: Total War
Medieval II: Total War, a sequel to Medieval: Total War, was released on 10 November 2006 in Europe and on 14 November in North America. This game includes much more detailed characters and features the Age of Discovery (and colonisation of the Americas) and the Mongol and Timurid invasions. An expansion pack, Medieval II: Total War: Kingdoms was announced on 30 March 2007. It was released on 28 August 2007. The Gold Edition of the game, containing the original game and the expansion pack, was released on 1 February 2008. The Kingdoms expansion pack contained 4 campaigns: the Britannia Campaign, set in the British Isles in 1258, during the reign of Henry III of England; the Crusades Campaign, set in the Middle East in 1174; the Teutonic Campaign, set in the Baltic region of Eastern Europe in 1250; and the Americas Campaign, set in the New World in 1521, during the decline of the Aztec and Maya civilizations.
Empire: Total War
Empire: Total War was announced on 22 August 2007 by Sega and had been secretly in development since the release of Barbarian Invasion. It is set in the 18th century and includes features such as the Industrial Revolution, America's struggle for independence and the colonization of India. For the first time in a Total Wargame, players have the ability to play real-time 3D naval battles. Also a feature that had been developed in the game was the decentralisation of provinces, adding greater realism in that many features, from production to technological advancement, would now occur outside of the capital of the province. Empire: Total War was released on 3 March in North America and 4 March in Europe 2009. The expansion pack, Empire: Total War: Warpath, was released in October 2009. Warpath is set in the Americas where it is possible to control one of five different Native American nations. While the game was critically acclaimed due to its innovative game play, the game has been subject to most of the criticism of the Total War series by many critics and fans after its release due to bugs; Sega claims nearly all issues have been presently resolved. The issues have been publicly explained by Creative Assembly several months after the game's release. It was the first in the series to use Valve Corporation's Steamworks DRM and achievements system, thereby requiring Steam to be played.
Napoleon: Total War
Napoleon: Total War was released in North America on 23 February 2010, and in Europe on 26 February. The game focuses on the politics and major military campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars in the late 18th century and the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century. Napoleon was released with several editions: the Standard Edition (as well as a limited edition version of the Standard Edition), Imperial Edition, and the Emperor's Edition (available in Australia and New Zealand only). Players assume the role of Napoleon Bonaparte, or one of his major rivals, on a turn-based campaign map and engage in the subsequent battles in real-time. As with its predecessor, Empire: Total War, which included a special episodic United States storyline, Napoleon features three separate campaigns which follow the general's early Italian and Egyptian campaigns as well as the European campaign and the Battle of Waterloo.
In the grand campaign, which is named "Campaigns of the Coalition", the player can play as Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, or Russia in a map that spans Europe. There is also a second campaign available as DLC, the "Peninsular campaign", in which the player vies for control of the Iberian peninsula. The campaign is playable as either France, Spain, or Great Britain. On 3 June 2013 premiered Napoleon: Total War Gold Edition for Macs, available for download.
Total War: Shogun 2
On 2 June 2010 Creative Assembly released a full preview of Total War: Shogun 2 set in the middle of the 16th century in Medieval Japan. The new battle engine supports up to 56,000 soldiers in a single battle, making them significantly larger than in Napoleon, the previous game in the series. Shogun 2 is the first game of the series to feature the franchise's name appearing as the primary title in an effort to increase brand awareness. The game was released on 15 March 2011.
Total War: Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai is a stand-alone expansion to Total War: Shogun 2 released in March 2012. The game explores the conflict between the Imperial throne and the last Shogun around the time of the Boshin War in 19th century Japan, 300 years after the events of the original game in a clash of traditional Samurai culture with the power of modern weaponry. There are six new playable clans (Satsuma, Tosa, and Choshu, Imperial and Aizu, Nagaoka, and Jozai Shogunate) plus four DLC clans (Tsu, Saga, Obama, and Sendai), supporting either the Imperial throne or the Tokugawa Shogunate. Also portrayed in a limited role are Britain, United States and France, with all of whom trade deals can be struck (given the proper infrastructure), and from whom Marines can be recruited. A new feature is the land and sea unit interactions which includes the ability to call in offshore artillery support barrages, coastal gun emplacements that target enemy ships and the ability to call in campaign map bombardments – bombarding armies and cities in adjacent coastal areas of the campaign map. Other new features are railway networks, ironclad warships, improved siege battle mechanics (with upgradable tower defences, each with their own speciality), new agent types, the ability to control two armies on the battle map at the same time, a third person shooter for torpedo gunboats, coastal batteries, Gatling guns and cannons, and a multiplayer overhaul.
Total War: Rome II
On 2 July 2012, The Creative Assembly announced Total War: Rome II with a live action trailer that features different scenes with the theme, "How far will you go for Rome?". Work on the title began during the development of Total War: Shogun 2.The Creative Assembly announced that the game would have a bigger map than its predecessor, Rome: Total War, it will "go more to the east", have many new game features and that it will have new camera views in-battle, allowing the player to see the battle from almost every angle. They further claimed that the game was developed using a new programming system, which allows it to achieve graphical quality never seen before in the Total War series, including dynamic facial expressions.[citation needed] The game was released on 3 September 2013 This title hit record high pre-order sales for The Creative Assembly, with the Greek States Culture Pack unlocking Sparta, Athens and Epirus in the campaign as a pre-order bonus. The initial release suffered from massive performance issues as well as having many bugs which severely affected gameplay including both game function bugs as well as frequent game crashes.[citation needed] As a result the Steam page had mostly negative reviews on the Steam store page for weeks, but over time it now has mostly positive reviews. In total the game received over 6500 negative reviews on steam as of December 2016, over twice as many as all their previous titles combined. One year after release, these issues had been fixed and all owners had their game upgraded to Emperor Edition for free which included some of the last fixes to the game as well as a new campaign, Imperator Augustus. Some think this was released in an attempt to bring back players who were upset by the issues at launch as a sort of apology. The messy release of Rome II likely contributed to a demand for a refund feature in the Steam Store to combat games with misleading trailers and claims by the developers, which was eventually added in 2015.
Total War: Attila
On 25 September 2014, The Creative Assembly announced Total War: Attila at the Eurogamer Expo. According to the Creative Assembly, Total War: Attila would implement an "apocalyptic" atmosphere, with hostile weather and darker lighting. Total War: Attila was released on 17 February 2015.
Total War: Warhammer
Announced on 22 April 2015, Total War: Warhammer changes the rules of the series as it takes place in a setting of high fantasy for the first time in the series' history. The setting comes from Games Workshop's miniature wargame Warhammer Fantasy Battle. The real-time battles and turn-based sandbox campaigns, a staple of the series, return. Races include the men of the Empire, Orcs and Goblins, Dwarves, Vampire Counts, the Warriors of Chaos, Beastmen and Wood Elves. Sega has revealed this is the first in what will be a trilogy of titles, with two additional standalone installments planned. Total War: Warhammer was released on 24 May 2016.
Total War: Warhammer II
Announced on 31 March 2017 at EGX Rezzed. Release date 28th September 2017
Shogun: Total War is set in feudal Japan. The single-player game includes interactive videos that represented possible decisions by the player, such as converting to Christianity. The original Shogun was not a mainstream product, but attracted a dedicated fan base.[citation needed] The expansion pack, called Mongol Invasion, was released with the original in the Warlord Edition.
Medieval: Total War
Medieval: Total War is set in medieval Europe. The expansion pack is called Viking Invasion, and the combined edition is called the Battle Collection. It was one of the best-selling games in the Total War series.
Rome: Total War
Rome: Total War is set in the Roman Republic. This was the first game to encompass what would become one of the most fundamental additions to the Total Warseries, the inclusion of free map movement as opposed to earlier versions where all movement was province based. The first expansion pack, Barbarian Invasion, was released on 27 September 2005. Rome: Total War Gold Edition, which combined the fully patched versions of the original game and its first expansion into one DVD (instead of the original game's three CD-ROMs) was released on 14 February 2006. A CD-ROM version (a total of four CDs) was also produced. A Mac version of Rome: Total War Gold Edition, developed by Feral Interactive, was released 12 February 2010. A second expansion pack, Rome: Total War: Alexander, was released on 19 June 2006 as a download and, later at retail. A compilation of the original game and the two expansions, Rome: Total War Anthology was released on 16 March 2007. The series has also spawned several popular mods such as Europa Barbarorum and Rome: Total Realism both of which seek to create more historically accurate settings.
Medieval II: Total War
Medieval II: Total War, a sequel to Medieval: Total War, was released on 10 November 2006 in Europe and on 14 November in North America. This game includes much more detailed characters and features the Age of Discovery (and colonisation of the Americas) and the Mongol and Timurid invasions. An expansion pack, Medieval II: Total War: Kingdoms was announced on 30 March 2007. It was released on 28 August 2007. The Gold Edition of the game, containing the original game and the expansion pack, was released on 1 February 2008. The Kingdoms expansion pack contained 4 campaigns: the Britannia Campaign, set in the British Isles in 1258, during the reign of Henry III of England; the Crusades Campaign, set in the Middle East in 1174; the Teutonic Campaign, set in the Baltic region of Eastern Europe in 1250; and the Americas Campaign, set in the New World in 1521, during the decline of the Aztec and Maya civilizations.
Empire: Total War
Empire: Total War was announced on 22 August 2007 by Sega and had been secretly in development since the release of Barbarian Invasion. It is set in the 18th century and includes features such as the Industrial Revolution, America's struggle for independence and the colonization of India. For the first time in a Total Wargame, players have the ability to play real-time 3D naval battles. Also a feature that had been developed in the game was the decentralisation of provinces, adding greater realism in that many features, from production to technological advancement, would now occur outside of the capital of the province. Empire: Total War was released on 3 March in North America and 4 March in Europe 2009. The expansion pack, Empire: Total War: Warpath, was released in October 2009. Warpath is set in the Americas where it is possible to control one of five different Native American nations. While the game was critically acclaimed due to its innovative game play, the game has been subject to most of the criticism of the Total War series by many critics and fans after its release due to bugs; Sega claims nearly all issues have been presently resolved. The issues have been publicly explained by Creative Assembly several months after the game's release. It was the first in the series to use Valve Corporation's Steamworks DRM and achievements system, thereby requiring Steam to be played.
Napoleon: Total War
Napoleon: Total War was released in North America on 23 February 2010, and in Europe on 26 February. The game focuses on the politics and major military campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars in the late 18th century and the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century. Napoleon was released with several editions: the Standard Edition (as well as a limited edition version of the Standard Edition), Imperial Edition, and the Emperor's Edition (available in Australia and New Zealand only). Players assume the role of Napoleon Bonaparte, or one of his major rivals, on a turn-based campaign map and engage in the subsequent battles in real-time. As with its predecessor, Empire: Total War, which included a special episodic United States storyline, Napoleon features three separate campaigns which follow the general's early Italian and Egyptian campaigns as well as the European campaign and the Battle of Waterloo.
In the grand campaign, which is named "Campaigns of the Coalition", the player can play as Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, or Russia in a map that spans Europe. There is also a second campaign available as DLC, the "Peninsular campaign", in which the player vies for control of the Iberian peninsula. The campaign is playable as either France, Spain, or Great Britain. On 3 June 2013 premiered Napoleon: Total War Gold Edition for Macs, available for download.
Total War: Shogun 2
On 2 June 2010 Creative Assembly released a full preview of Total War: Shogun 2 set in the middle of the 16th century in Medieval Japan. The new battle engine supports up to 56,000 soldiers in a single battle, making them significantly larger than in Napoleon, the previous game in the series. Shogun 2 is the first game of the series to feature the franchise's name appearing as the primary title in an effort to increase brand awareness. The game was released on 15 March 2011.
Total War: Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai is a stand-alone expansion to Total War: Shogun 2 released in March 2012. The game explores the conflict between the Imperial throne and the last Shogun around the time of the Boshin War in 19th century Japan, 300 years after the events of the original game in a clash of traditional Samurai culture with the power of modern weaponry. There are six new playable clans (Satsuma, Tosa, and Choshu, Imperial and Aizu, Nagaoka, and Jozai Shogunate) plus four DLC clans (Tsu, Saga, Obama, and Sendai), supporting either the Imperial throne or the Tokugawa Shogunate. Also portrayed in a limited role are Britain, United States and France, with all of whom trade deals can be struck (given the proper infrastructure), and from whom Marines can be recruited. A new feature is the land and sea unit interactions which includes the ability to call in offshore artillery support barrages, coastal gun emplacements that target enemy ships and the ability to call in campaign map bombardments – bombarding armies and cities in adjacent coastal areas of the campaign map. Other new features are railway networks, ironclad warships, improved siege battle mechanics (with upgradable tower defences, each with their own speciality), new agent types, the ability to control two armies on the battle map at the same time, a third person shooter for torpedo gunboats, coastal batteries, Gatling guns and cannons, and a multiplayer overhaul.
Total War: Rome II
On 2 July 2012, The Creative Assembly announced Total War: Rome II with a live action trailer that features different scenes with the theme, "How far will you go for Rome?". Work on the title began during the development of Total War: Shogun 2.The Creative Assembly announced that the game would have a bigger map than its predecessor, Rome: Total War, it will "go more to the east", have many new game features and that it will have new camera views in-battle, allowing the player to see the battle from almost every angle. They further claimed that the game was developed using a new programming system, which allows it to achieve graphical quality never seen before in the Total War series, including dynamic facial expressions.[citation needed] The game was released on 3 September 2013 This title hit record high pre-order sales for The Creative Assembly, with the Greek States Culture Pack unlocking Sparta, Athens and Epirus in the campaign as a pre-order bonus. The initial release suffered from massive performance issues as well as having many bugs which severely affected gameplay including both game function bugs as well as frequent game crashes.[citation needed] As a result the Steam page had mostly negative reviews on the Steam store page for weeks, but over time it now has mostly positive reviews. In total the game received over 6500 negative reviews on steam as of December 2016, over twice as many as all their previous titles combined. One year after release, these issues had been fixed and all owners had their game upgraded to Emperor Edition for free which included some of the last fixes to the game as well as a new campaign, Imperator Augustus. Some think this was released in an attempt to bring back players who were upset by the issues at launch as a sort of apology. The messy release of Rome II likely contributed to a demand for a refund feature in the Steam Store to combat games with misleading trailers and claims by the developers, which was eventually added in 2015.
Total War: Attila
On 25 September 2014, The Creative Assembly announced Total War: Attila at the Eurogamer Expo. According to the Creative Assembly, Total War: Attila would implement an "apocalyptic" atmosphere, with hostile weather and darker lighting. Total War: Attila was released on 17 February 2015.
Total War: Warhammer
Announced on 22 April 2015, Total War: Warhammer changes the rules of the series as it takes place in a setting of high fantasy for the first time in the series' history. The setting comes from Games Workshop's miniature wargame Warhammer Fantasy Battle. The real-time battles and turn-based sandbox campaigns, a staple of the series, return. Races include the men of the Empire, Orcs and Goblins, Dwarves, Vampire Counts, the Warriors of Chaos, Beastmen and Wood Elves. Sega has revealed this is the first in what will be a trilogy of titles, with two additional standalone installments planned. Total War: Warhammer was released on 24 May 2016.
Total War: Warhammer II
Announced on 31 March 2017 at EGX Rezzed. Release date 28th September 2017
