Part 1: The Board Games

Shogun: Total War

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Have you ever wanted to play something that was a unique creation based on turn based strategy ideas pioneered by series like Civilization, Master of Orion, Fire Emblem, Liberty or Death, and countless other classics? What if it had a system to allow real time strategy fans to enjoy like Age of Empires on an even more epic scale?

Well my friends, you need some Total War in your life.

The first game in the series was developed by The Creative Assembly and published by Electronic Arts. Prior to this endeavor The Creative Assembly was known for porting sports games to various PC systems, such as porting Amiga games to DOS. Their history with EA goes back to the early 1990's, where they began porting FIFA games to DOS systems. EA allowed them to expand their porting efforts into full blown developed titles such as a couple of Rugby World Cup games, 1999's Cricket World Cup, and Australian Football League games.

In the late 90's work began on an entirely different project, this one being a mishmash of turn based and real time strategy set in Japan in the middle of the 16th century.



Shogun: Total War released for PC in June 2000 to critical acclaim. The game allows battles where over 1,000 sprites appear onscreen at one time. Many people in the PC market had been moving to 3D Accelerated cards by this time, but the sheer number of objects onscreen was a technical achievement for the day.

On top of the battles involving the real armies the game offered a plethora of other options to deal with opposing forces. You could use a spy to gather information on them, an emissary can forge alliances and create ciesefires, Portuguese Jesuits act as emissaries while also converting populations from Buddhism to Catholicism, ninja act as basic assassins, and shinobi are more powerful spies, geisha are legendary assassins who rarely fail.



The battles declare that proper tactics and deployments are used to inflict maximum damage on your enemies. Sun Tzu's philosophy in The Art of War was highly integral to Japanese tactics, and knowing the basics will help you win. Or you can just outmuscle with numbers, but you can take heavy losses and win a Phyrric victory, or lose and bring dishonor to your clan. Will you commit seppuku to regain your honor?

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The campaign map is set up much like a game of Risk mixed with Diplomacy. Armies can move from one province to another no matter how large their first province is. At the start of each game the player can pick a time period to begin, with the earlier ones having the major clans holding fewer lands, and the later ones starting with larger holdings.

Shogun received an expansion pack based on the Mongol invasions of Kublai Khan. The game doesn't change much but just adds another campaign to play. However, the Mongol invasions occurred about 300 years before the main campaign, and the technology and units are mostly the same. Despite being budgeted and treated as a B-Title Shogun: Total War sold rather well, enough to warrant a sequel at least.

Medieval: Total War

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The sequel to Shogun is much larger in scale, has many more factions each with unique units instead of bonuses to units everybody can get, and focuses so much more on the religious politics that it is a much more satisfying gaming experience than Shogun. That said, the gameplay engine is largely the same. Battle graphics and UI is unchanged, the campaign map is in the same board game style. Medieval was the first game to include seige battles, something that would become a mainstay for the entire series. There's just so much more to the game that it makes for a breathtaking advancement, the proper evolution of a sequel! It released in August of 2002 to even more critical fanfare and higher sales than Shogun. The Creative Assembly had moved away from Electronic Arts and as a result, Medieval: Total War was published by Activision (nowadays that's like courting the axis of evil, wait until Sega enters the ring!)



This game did start a meme among the fans of the series though, and that meme is the rule that the Pope is a massive dillhole. He'll excommunicate you for some stupid reason and then forget about it if you just give him some money, wait for your king to die, or kill him. Being excommunicated was the best time for expanding, because who cares about the Pope?

Medieval also gives some more immersive and strategic choices. You get the ability to assign a governor to your newly conquered province, if you're interested I have a few hints. In highly economic provinces use a guy with high acumen, in a province with naturally low public order or with a different majority religion, use a guy with high dread, and always use somebody with high loyalty. These random provincial governors never die though. You could be 200 years into the campaign, with the Mongols invading, and that guy you made governor in turn two is still alive. It was nice for something to do, but it wasn't fully realized.



Medieval continued the tradition of having an expansion that was based on an invasion. This time it was the Viking Invasion, as the Mongol invasion was included as part of the base game. The Viking Invasion takes place during the petty kingdoms period of the history of the British Isles, even letting you control a personal favorite of mine, the Picts! Those sneaky bastards resisted the Romans and invented the kilt! Many modern differences between the Gaels of Ireland and Scots can be traced to the independently minded Picts.

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I personally believe that the music in Medieval is the most immersive and beautiful of the series. It really feels like it belongs to the period in question, and is completely non-intrusive, using sound effects such as the chirping of birds to break up the songs so they do not feel monotonous. The Muslim factions even have a different overall score than the Christian ones. Jeff van Dyck was the composer of the soundtracks for both of The Board Games.



Next time we see Total War make the jump to full 3D!

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