# Total War: Warhammer becoming a reality?



## maddermax (May 12, 2008)

It seems GW is partnering with Creative Assembly, best known for their Total War series, to make a Warhammer Fantasy game. As someone who loves the Total War series, and who loved Dark Omen's and Shadow of the Horned Rat, I really really love the idea of this, and I'm looking forward to it immensely. We know that Warhammer can work in RTS games like that, we know that Creative Assembly can make awesome RTS games, so this looks like it has a lot of potential.



> SEGA and Creative Assembly Announce Partnership with Games Workshop to Create Warhammer Games
> 
> SAN FRANCISCO & LONDON – 11AM GMT, December 6, 2012 – SEGA® of America, Inc. and SEGA® Europe Ltd. today announced that Creative Assembly™, award-winning creator of the Total War™ series, and SEGA® Group have entered into a multi-title licensing deal with Games Workshop® to create videogames based in the Warhammer® universe of fantasy battles.
> 
> ...


http://www.creative-assembly.com/se...ith-games-workshop-to-create-warhammer-games/


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## nevynxxx (Dec 27, 2011)

That could indeed be awesome.


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## Boc (Mar 19, 2010)

I think I just went from 6 to midnight. This would be epic!

Granted, I'd much rather a 40K variation of the game, but hell I'll be happy with WHF!


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## Turnip86 (Oct 7, 2011)

Should be good if it ever gets made - looking forward to it. Campaign mode should be awesome and as long as they manage to get all units from every army in (unlike the last few attempts that only had a basic selection) I can see it introducing a lot of new people to the world of warhammer


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## Insanity (Oct 25, 2011)

There has been a mod around for Medieval 2 for quite awhile, not sure how good it is though.


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## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot, need new PC now!
i have just become a tad moist


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## Lord of the Night (Nov 18, 2009)

*OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!*

THIS. IS. GLORIOUS NEWS!! :biggrin:

I'm so happy I might vomit from sheer joy. :biggrin: (30 Rock reference for those who don't get it.)


LotN


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## MetalHandkerchief (Aug 3, 2009)

Nice. Although if the rights for Warhammer and 40K video games go to CA now, it'll probably be the final nail in the coffin for just-about-as-good-as-dead THQ/ Relic who are on life support after numerous financial hits.


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## humakt (Jan 2, 2008)

Sounds great. I do like total war, but currently dont have a PC good enough to play it. Im sure that would change if they made a total War warhammer!


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## A_fool_of_a_Took (Oct 28, 2012)

Send for my armor and sword then have the men make ready to march, for today war has once again come to the old world and I shall ride forth on a steed of dread with fire in my eyes and soul! Let all who witness my war-craft know that the time for the harvest of wheat has passed and now all that remains is the harvest of broken bodies and tormented souls who long for the absolution of my Warhammer! Praise Sigmar and the college of Creative-assembly!


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## Doelago (Nov 29, 2009)

MetalHandkerchief said:


> Nice. Although if the rights for Warhammer and 40K video games go to CA now, it'll probably be the final nail in the coffin for just-about-as-good-as-dead THQ/ Relic who are on life support after numerous financial hits.


The rights for Warhammer 40k are still at THQ, and the Warhammer Fantasy IP has never been in THQ`s hands to start of with. EA is the publisher that in the past has been throwing out Warhammer Fantasy games, like Battle March and Age of Reckoning.


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## whiplash308 (Jan 14, 2009)

Boc said:


> Granted, I'd much rather a 40K variation of the game, but hell I'll be happy with WHF!


Well that's what Dawn of War is all about! haha
WHFB definitely fits the Total War scale, so this would be too epic. Let's hope it comes through. 

With all armies? Oh please.


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## Lord of the Night (Nov 18, 2009)

Doelago said:


> EA is the publisher that in the past has been throwing out Warhammer Fantasy games, like Battle March and Age of Reckoning.


And any publisher would be an improvement over that. Creative Arts however is a god-send. :biggrin:



whiplash308 said:


> With all armies? Oh please.


If you can't play the Skaven i'll go insane. Or the Chaos Dwarfs or the Dark Elves. Those 3 are ESSENTIAL!


LotN


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## gwmaniac (Sep 1, 2008)

hopefully its not like a total war game. maybe it's just me, but i can't take non-humans in this type of strategy genre, i'd prefer to stick with what made total war what it is today.


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## JAMOB (Dec 30, 2010)

This is perfect!!! I have like three friends obsessed with total war but not so much with 40k, this'll be our gateway game


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## Lord of the Night (Nov 18, 2009)

Lord of the Night said:


> If you can't play the Skaven i'll go insane. Or the Chaos Dwarfs or the Dark Elves. Those 3 are ESSENTIAL!
> 
> 
> LotN


After some thought i've come up with what factions are most likely in a Warhammer RTS.

The Empire - Obviously.
Dwarfs - Again, obviously.
High Elves - Yet again, obviously.
Warriors of Chaos - Do I even need to say it? Just in case. Obviously,
Orcs and Goblins - Yeah that word again.
Dark Elves - And one more time. Obviously.

Those six factions are kind of the cover guys for Warhammer. The armies that most people think of and the ones that are, at the very least, extremely likely to be included, and in one or two cases are guaranteed. You can't have a Warhammer game without the WoC, you just can't.

The remaining armies, Bretonnia, Beastmen, Skaven, Ogre Kingdoms, Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts, Wood Elves, Chaos Dwarfs and Lizardmen are all armies that don't seem as likely to be included. My heart bleeds that Skaven are sadly among those numbers but it'd be a lie to say that I think they are guaranteed to be in the game, at least at first. In an expansion that probability goes up immensely but I doubt they would be a starting race, as would any of these factions.


LotN


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## Boc (Mar 19, 2010)

bitsandkits said:


> i have just become a tad moist


Might want to grab a moist towelette


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## Bane_of_Kings (Oct 28, 2009)

Hurrah, excellent news even though I'd prefer a 40k one. Now I just need to get a better computer .


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## MetalHandkerchief (Aug 3, 2009)

Lord of the Night said:


> After some thought i've come up with what factions are most likely in a Warhammer RTS.
> 
> The Empire - Obviously.
> Dwarfs - Again, obviously.
> ...


What is most common is automatically the most boring and non-unique. Skaven is probably the one army in the entire WH catalogue that is unique-ish to Warhammer. All the other races exist in thousands of other settings and IPs in some form or another. While Ratmen isn't ONLY in Warhammer, it is definitely the least copypasta of the entire game. Thus, it should be auto-included, and any game coming out of Warhammer without them is not something I will buy.

Regardless, it's not a true Warhammer or Warhammer 40K game without all the races. Dawn of War 2 was an abomination. (Both for it's game play and races) You'll find lots of uncritical consumer-minded people who'll disagree, simply because they don't hold the game up to those standards, but I'd never pay for a 40K game without Tau or Dark Eldar, and likewise I'll never pay for a WHFB game without Skaven.


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## whiplash308 (Jan 14, 2009)

Well we'd have to see. I'd certainly expect expansion packs to come out with new races, but I would have to agree that it's the Age of Reckoning lineup that we'd expect to see in the game, starting out. I would love to see Bretonnians and Wood Elves in the game. Total War games are keen on strategy, and having ranged units in tree lines were a good strategy. Should Wood Elves be included in the game, they would have a fairly strong advantage in woodland maps, for example.


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## Vaz (Mar 19, 2008)

Boycotting CA bullshit until they fix modding campaign maps. Supertextures and limitations without any proper documentation and shitty tools is poor.

Call for Boycot.


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## Barnster (Feb 11, 2010)

I've always wonder how they could handle VCs in a RTS. 

Their troops are awful, other than heroes and they spawn new units. Although this could work in DoW2 style game can't work in TW based game. 

That said they have to do something different than a TW game to be current and novel


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## Vaz (Mar 19, 2008)

In M2 they have "battle surgery" traits which in a campaign allows you increase amount of units healed instead of killed. I can't see much being taken to code Necromancy to create damaged units or heal units from enemy dead. You can also create an undead unit using the Mercenary mechanism.

A spell could be used like Vanhels to grant nearby units a movespeed buff. For destructive magic like purple sun, or curse of years, however, that needs more than simply making a unit with ranged attacks as magic.


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## maddermax (May 12, 2008)

I don't think they'd have a straight up Total War style campaign myself - I just don't think it would be optimal for the warhammer system. I think they'll get a new take on the campaign map, but the Total War style combat map. I think we'll either see something like the set campaigns of previous Warhammer games, or some new resource, reinforcement and upkeep system.

Also, I forsee a fight over a new piece of realestate, like Albion or something, rather than a full Old World campaign.


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## Arcane (Feb 17, 2009)

The only thing that could ruin this is if they decide to only do a handful of armies like DoW2. Let's see all the armies represented!


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## maddermax (May 12, 2008)

Arcane said:


> The only thing that could ruin this is if they decide to only do a handful of armies like DoW2. Let's see all the armies represented!


I'm going to bet that not all armies will be represented, but MOST will, with the possibility that future expansions will bring the last ones in.

For instance, I think they'll probably only have one human faction to start with, dropping Bretonnia, except as possibly an allied unit that can be picked up at some point. Similarly, I think Ogre Kingdoms will probably be left behind, but there might be allies for a few different factions. Wood elves, because there are definitely going to be High and Dark elves already. Probably only one Undead faction to start with, probably Vampire Counts. Probably only one Chaos faction to start with, perhaps with daemon and chaos dwarf allies as special units.


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## Arcane (Feb 17, 2009)

I'm kind of confused through, why is it that WHFB has had more attention than WH40k as far as large budget video games go despite the inverted fan base. DoW, Dow2, Firewarrior and Space Marine seem very meh to me while Warhammer Online was a very big deal.


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## Doelago (Nov 29, 2009)

Arcane said:


> The only thing that could ruin this is if they decide to only do a handful of armies like DoW2. Let's see all the armies represented!


That will lead to a fucked up horrible balance. DoW II was balanced because there were few races, while Soulstorm was the fuckfeast of the year with no balance to talk about.


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## MetalHandkerchief (Aug 3, 2009)

Arcane said:


> I'm kind of confused through, why is it that WHFB has had more attention than WH40k as far as large budget video games go despite the inverted fan base. DoW, Dow2, Firewarrior and Space Marine seem very meh to me while Warhammer Online was a very big deal.


Warhammer Online was an MMO, so was automatically more 'hungered for'. The first Dawn of War was really good, was released the same year as Rome: Total War and still won a couple of 'best strategy of the year' awards. Rome won more, but still, it's a great feat.

It has always been down to execution though. Fire Warrior had extreme potential, but was squandered by a poor developer and a terrible budget, and a silly Playstation 2 focus. Spess Muhreen was a boring idea, devoid of soul, but was a slight commercial success as anything that is targeted towards the lowest common denominator.

The only real 100% failure I see so far post-Y2K is DoW2, and in my opinion Relic should not be allowed to make any more 40K games. It was an absolute tragedy.

I want a first person shooter recounting the tale of a Dark Eldar kabalite rising through the grim ranks where you can end up becoming a haemonculi, archon, or even scourge.

Or a survival/horror/shooter where you are a raid victim being brought back to commoragh and have to try to escape (which should end in tragedy)

Or an ACTUAL Fire Warrior game with a real budget.

Or even a comical Ork-world RPG where you are a Grot fighting for teef in the squig pits, for the entertainment of the Orks and almost certain death.

Or an epic space opera where you're the last hope of an Eldar Craftworld on the brink of extinction.


THERE ARE SO MANY POSSIBILITIES! YET THOSE BASTARDS KEEP FORCE FEEDING US SHITTY SPESS MUHREEN BRAIN FARTS!


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## Arcane (Feb 17, 2009)

Doelago said:


> That will lead to a fucked up horrible balance. DoW II was balanced because there were few races, while Soulstorm was the fuckfeast of the year with no balance to talk about.


That's like saying, We wanted better balance for the Stanley Cup so we only invited the Red Wings, Penguins, Avalanche and Blackhawks. Besides, most Space Marine chapters are very similar with slight alterations. Perhaps you are not familiar with the Total War team but in the past they have had at least as many factions as exist in the 40k universe and made damn good games. GW just seems to have a poptart up their ass and can't be bothered with armies unless they slather them in the cash colored gravy spewed from the phallus of Space Marines.


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## Lord of the Night (Nov 18, 2009)

MetalHandkerchief said:


> What is most common is automatically the most boring and non-unique. Skaven is probably the one army in the entire WH catalogue that is unique-ish to Warhammer. All the other races exist in thousands of other settings and IPs in some form or another. While Ratmen isn't ONLY in Warhammer, it is definitely the least copypasta of the entire game. Thus, it should be auto-included, and any game coming out of Warhammer without them is not something I will buy.
> 
> Regardless, it's not a true Warhammer or Warhammer 40K game without all the races. Dawn of War 2 was an abomination. (Both for it's game play and races) You'll find lots of uncritical consumer-minded people who'll disagree, simply because they don't hold the game up to those standards, but I'd never pay for a 40K game without Tau or Dark Eldar, and likewise I'll never pay for a WHFB game without Skaven.


At no point will I ever deny that. The Skaven are my favourite fantasy race period. Nothing else in all of the fantasy genre, not just Warhammer Fantasy, makes me laugh like the Skaven do or impress me as much. And while I won't not buy the game if they aren't present at first I will be disappointed, but I won't just ignore the game because my favourite race is not in it because I like the other races as well. I can't play as the Skaven... I guess i'll have to make do with the Warriors of Chaos and Dark Elves, who are close seconds in being badass and awesome

Uh I disagree. Not every faction can be included in a game because they'll want room for expansion packs, add new factions to bring in those players. And I am one of those people who do not expect a DoW or WHF game to have every single faction in it at the very start because that would require massive amounts of work and balance to make everything ok, and would multiply the chances of the game being released with flaws in it, whereas with expansion packs they can build up the armies over time and take the time that is necessary to produce a great game rather than overload on content just to try and get everything that is possible into the game on the first try.


LotN


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## Insanity (Oct 25, 2011)

Arcane said:


> Perhaps you are not familiar with the Total War team but in the past they have had at least as many factions as exist in the 40k universe and made damn good games.


While that is true, the total war factions are all human, so when it comes to developing roughly 12 unique races (Not accounting for different variants of elves etc.), it makes it easier to believe that they won't include them all.


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## Arcane (Feb 17, 2009)

Insanity72 said:


> While that is true, the total war factions are all human, so when it comes to developing roughly 12 unique races (Not accounting for different variants of elves etc.), it makes it easier to believe that they won't include them all.


A Swiss Pikeman in Gothic Plate is about a different from a Moorish Calverymen than a Dark Eldar Wytch is from a Tau Firewarrior. Race doesn't mean anything, only the scope, skill and budget of the creators. Or they could make a came of limited factions like DoW2... we all know how wildly successful that was.


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## Tyrannus (Sep 19, 2010)

Arcane said:


> A Swiss Pikeman in Gothic Plate is about a different from a Moorish Calverymen than a Dark Eldar Wytch is from a Tau Firewarrior. Race doesn't mean anything, only the scope, skill and budget of the creators. Or they could make a came of limited factions like DoW2... we all know how wildly successful that was.


You mean very successful? Just because some people in these forums dislike the game doesn't mean it was a bad game or that it didn't sell well.

And there really wasn't much difference between the factions. In Medieval 2 the factions could be put into broad categories of Northern Europe, Southern Europe and Islamic states. Then you have Empire, which was basically western powers, native Americans and Islamic/Indian forces. And in shogun 2, apart from minor differences between them, they were basically all the same.


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## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

i have utter faith in the total war dudes to make a brilliant total war game using the units from warhammer while keeping faithful to warhammer, i have far more faith in them to create a fair and balanced game engine using GWs IP than i do with GW,these guys can do simulations and tests thousands of times and tweek things until they get the units right, where as GW have to rely on games testors and studio staff.

the total war games are probably the only series of games where each sucessive title is a genuine improvement on its predecessor without alienating the player, everything in the game makes sense,total freedom to do as you want. 
Also i wouldnt count out any race, the likelyhood is that all races will be included from the off unless they section off parts of the old world map , more likely is that they will release a new campaign expansion with new unit types and different ways to conquer or "historical" campaigns, so for example you would have to take a certain army and fight the battles as laid out in its army book timeline fluff.


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## Vaz (Mar 19, 2008)

In Shogun 2, they specifically made the game to have very few units so they could focus on getting the Battles to work; but in reality it lead to even more Spam than simply "20 General/Byz Archontopoulai stack".

I'm still playing M2TW; waiting for EB2 and Dominion of the Sword to be released. Stainless Steel and Third Age are now heavily bogged down, and instead of following the kiss principle; the Ent's and Mumakil pushed it. But some of the new ideas that came out for it are incredibly, blergh.

Edit; bits - i wouldn't call the unpatched Empire to be better than M2TW. Or even Napoleon.


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## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

Vaz said:


> Edit; bits - i wouldn't call the unpatched Empire to be better than M2TW. Or even Napoleon.


im not really sure what you mean


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## Tyrannus (Sep 19, 2010)

bitsandkits said:


> im not really sure what you mean


You said that each successive title is an improvement from the last and he basically disagreed by saying Empire and Napoleon were not better than ME2TW.


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## Troublehalf (Aug 6, 2010)

I should step in here and mention some sobbering stuff.

Not only do CA have Rome Total War 2 to make, the Alien game they are doing to make and rumoured "new era" Total War to make but this license lasts till 2025 (I think). This means it's a long term thing. So the earliest release of a Total War: Warhammer game would be 2015. If they are keen to release one soon, 2017. If they have another era TW in the making, that's 2018 onwards. Now, Rome Total War 2 has been in production since the release of Shogun 2, this means they start work on a new project before they release one. Since Rome Total War 2 is out October 2013, it is very possibly they will release their new era (or whatever since Empire 2 and Medieval 3 is rumoured also, especially since the announcement of custom troop equipment in Rome 2) in 2014/15. So, that leaves 2016/17 as possibly announcement of Total Warhammer.

Don't get me wrong, I came buckets, but CA have other things to do and they've only just confirmed the license contract... Does this mean they've only just bought it? Or does it mean they bought it months/years ago? That can be the major factor in working out a potential release date.

It also asks a lot more questions, like... Where will the game be set? When? What races? Lizardmen and Dark Elves are on another continent... I know Lizardmen have a colony in Albion... But it still means the possibility of expansions for additional races. That or they do an Empire and multiple theatres... If it IS multiple theatres then it will increase production/development time by a huge margin. It also asks, will Cathay, Araby, Nippon and the Kingdom on Ind be in the game? Once again, more development time.

Also, the Call of Warhammer mod is great fun, but it's basically multiple Empire forces with some different units, Chaos multiple armies, DE, HE, Orcs, Dwarfs, VC. This means, will CA split Empire up into Nuln, Altdorf and so on like the modder did for Call of Warhammer? Will they split up Chaos? Split up Daemons?


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## moshpiler (Apr 16, 2009)

Arcane said:


> Or they could make a came of limited factions like DoW2... we all know how wildly successful that was.


Sound logic. 'Cause the original DoW had so many races, right? Yeah, that's why they went so well.





Troublehalf said:


> I should step in here and mention some sobbering stuff.


Except they've specifically said that, because they already have so much on their plates, they're assigning an entirely new team to the project.


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## Iron Angel (Aug 2, 2009)

I got a boner from reading this


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## Doelago (Nov 29, 2009)

I can already see there being an expansion called Warhammer: Total Waaaagh!


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## Iron Angel (Aug 2, 2009)

As if the main campaign wont have Orks already?

I can see a lot of expansions.


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## Troublehalf (Aug 6, 2010)

moshpiler said:


> Except they've specifically said that, because they already have so much on their plates, they're assigning an entirely new team to the project.


Changes nothing. Unless their development team is double the size of their normal team, it won't make it any quicker. It'll still be at least 2 years and more like 3+.

Remember, these guys have just forked out a huge amount just to get the damn IP license from GW, followed by making a whole new team (if what you say is right) so whatever happens, they've spent a lot of cash on this... It either means they'll rush it OR they'll take their time. 

We'll see. A whole new team doesn't mean it'll be out next year. 2014 will be the earliest if what you say is correct. I still say 2015. Who knows, they may surprise me.


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## Arcane (Feb 17, 2009)

moshpiler said:


> Sound logic. 'Cause the original DoW had so many races, right? Yeah, that's why they went so well..


Including the expansions, yeah it did. DoW2 mostly just focuses on human factions and is pretty fucking boring. Only 6 armies vs 10 in the original.


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## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

i dont think it will take them too long, they have the engine from previous editions, they have all the art work and models and the map and shit loads of fluff, they could knock out the release version pretty quickly compared to other titles.Plus we dont know how far along they already are with this project, just becuse they announced the thing the other day does not mean they havent already started development,for example Disney and Lucas film will have been working through stuff months before the announcement was made, i expect this is no different, both companies will have wanted to make sure that this is a do-able project,particularly after the failed mmo attempt.


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## Haskanael (Jul 5, 2011)

mark of chaos had some similiarities to total war mainly when it came to the battles, I'm curious how Sega are gonna do this


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