Empire: Total War is set in the 18th century, a turbulent era that is the most requested by Total War’s loyal fan base and a period alive with global conflict, revolutionary fervour and technological advances. With themes such as the Industrial Revolution, America’s struggle for independence, the race to control Eastern trade routes and the globalisation of war on land and sea, Empire: Total War promises to be amongst the richest and most dynamic PC RTS games of all time.

The World of Empire: Diary 1

Just so you know, Good Sirs, I have worked in the games industry since the reign of George II (1727-1760) and, as a result, boast of a fine collection of wigs, steenkirks, and tricornes. In these lesser days my speech and creative work are of a largely meteorological nature, consisting as they do of an enormous amount of wind. I’ve also worked on most of the TW games to date and if you’ve ever tittered at a general’s speech before a battle the blame must be hurled in my direction, like unto the manner of a dead cat (and one man was so popular that people did hurl dead cats at his funeral cortege in 1732 – gosh, what fun we had).

One of the small pleasures of coming to work each morning at Creative Assembly is the chance to read all the email that comes in from chaps who are very keen to help me in all kinds of ways. Each day, I’m given the chance to invest in all kinds of sure-fire share deals, enlarge my reproductive organs, spend money on the charms of comely young ladies, buy medicines that are guaranteed to cure all kinds of ills I never even dreamed that I had, and a hundred other services that I never even knew I needed. This, strangely, is a very 1700s start to a day. And it helps with the mindset of the Empire: Total War period too.

Had I been walking down a street in London on my way to some sort of gainful employment in, say, 1720, I would have faced much the same barrage of dodgy offers. Jobbing stock dealers would have been keen to part me from my guineas in exchange for investments in mad schemes to gather moonbeams, or plant colonies in the Americas (I know, the America idea sounds mad, but apparently it worked). Young and not-so-young “actresses” (of both sexes) would have been willing to let me sample their bosomy charms, for a financial consideration. Apothecaries and physicians would have vied for my money to cure all manner of afflictions (and if I wasn’t ill to start with, I would be when they finished). The main difference between walking down the London byway and cleaning up the spam would have been the smell: the stench in 18th Century London was enough to wilt your cravat. The smell was appalling even before William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781 (come on, bottom jokes are always funny). Oh, and I could have popped into a coffee shop to meet my fellows and indulge in a dish or two of very expensive, and highly fashionable, coffee.

In other words, the 18th century sometimes looks rather modern. When we started looking at the Empire period this was one of the things that struck us. We were also struck by the fact that people spent quite a lot of effort and most of the century trying to kill each other in wars, or in inventing better ways to kill each other. This is very Total War. Wars were fought for national honour, vengeance, control of natural resources, and for what is now called “regime change”. This is also very Total War. Science and the whole “Enlightenment thing” got going, and were immediately condemned by some as ungodly. And nearly everyone in Britain must have been very drunk.

This last point is quite interesting and, if you are a liver, rather scary. Given the amount of drink they threw down their throats, it is a wonder the Georgians could stand up, let alone go out and conquer the world! The population of London – including children – seems to have drunk around 4 pints of gin each, week in, week out. That’s on top of the other tipples like ale, claret, port, porter, beer, sack, rum, brandy, cider, untaxed “gin” (well, they called it that) from backstreet gin mills, and (had they been around at the time) brake fluid, aftershave and surgical spirit. When Londoners got gin, they rioted. When Londoners ran out of gin, they rioted. In between, they threw cobblestones at passing Frenchmen. This did not count as proper rioting, just patriotism. Actually, you have to blame the Dutch for all the gin. William of Orange was on the British throne in 1700 so it became patriotic to sink a glass or two of Dutch gin. William himself was fond of a bucket of the stuff himself, and he didn’t mind when stones were hurled in the general direction of a French fop. Frenchmen were always fops and dandies and prided themselves on their fashion sense. Even French peasants wore stylish rags and called themselves the “sans culottes”. Only in France would a lack of trousers be class warfare!

When they weren’t fighting each other (and that wasn’t very often, to be honest), the Europeans packed their booze and set out to see the world, and then conquer it. They took their wars with them, and European armies fought each other in every corner of the globe with and without local allies. The Seven Years War, for example, was a global conflict, and saw battles in the Americas, in India and in almost every sea between.

And now, according to the nice doctors (pah! Quacks and poxmongers, the lot of them!) from the Home for Mildly Confused Gentlefolk, that’s enough. Do you know that once I could have had them whipped round the fleet for such impertinence? Or put in the stocks? Ho hum, the modern world… Next time round, we’ll have a look at some of the colourful characters who changed the world, and take in a bit of corruption, consider trade, look at a robot tiger (no, really) and briefly discuss life, the universe and everything.

The World of Empire: Diary 2

This is the second bite of the cherry of history in Empire: Total War. It’s time to look beyond Europe, and then briefly consider the Enlightenment. Don’t worry, though, this isn’t going to be a history lesson - at least not like some of the history lessons that I remember. I think I’d sooner nail my own tongue to the rear bumper of a Trabant than go through some of those again. Yuck.
Europe developed a global reach in the Empire period: there were fortunes to be had in the Americas, in the Caribbean and, above all, in India. A man could make a fortune in Madras or Bengal, New France and Jamaica – if he survived disease, European rivals and hostile natives. In the meantime, many carved out an Empire in the name of their respective monarchs, with an eye to royal favour, of course. The period was one where lining one’s own pocket was an accepted, if not quite respectable, part of serving the nation: John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough, thoughtfully appointed himself as one of his army’s chief supply contractors. The money helped build Blenheim Palace – not bad for someone who started out as a gigolo!

And during a century of warfare, there was a tactical and strategic revolution in the way that war was conducted. In 1700 some men still carried pikes in European armies mostly, it has to be said, because it was very expensive to give them muskets. Within the space of a few years, the infantryman had been given a musket, a bayonet (that stopped him firing), a better bayonet (so he could shoot as well as stab his enemies), a completely new drill book, and (as the old joke has it) the chance to see the world, meet interesting people and kill them. Wars in Europe and in the distant colonies caused changes in tactics, equipment and strategy throughout the period. You’ll see these in Empire: Total War.

Yes, there were powerful Empires in the world when the Europeans “arrived”: the Ottomans and Mughal India. Yet it was the apparently minor powers like the French, British and Dutch who sailed away to make money, by trade, warfare and outright theft. No Mughal admiral ever dropped anchor outside Rotterdam or London and demanded trade rights. Then again, to be fair, the Mughals had more money than they could ever spend. Trade with India actually caused a silver shortage in Europe because the Indians quite sensibly wouldn’t take crappy European products for their shiny, lovely stuff. The Europeans really lowered the tone in India: Sultan Tippu of Mysore hated the English so much that he had a tiger automata made that gored an equally mechanical Englishman to death, just so he could laugh at it.

This really is the century where the modern world starts. Apart from the wars that barely stopped during the century, it was a time of tremendous intellectual vigour. The Enlightenment is well named, even if it did look like a bunch of be-wigged gentlemen thinking about life, the universe and everything. They were doing that, and they were having great ideas.

They were colourful, clever and downright odd. A quick selection illustrates the point: Isaac Newton, for example, invented calculus (the basis of quite a lot of mathematics) but then didn’t really bother telling anyone until Gottfried Leibniz claimed to have done it too. Without them: no difficult maths, no computers, no computer games. Yet Sir Isaac was also an alchemist, trying to find the secret of immortality and turn base metals into gold. The word “millionaire” appears in France, thanks to the efforts of a banker, gambler and con artist called John Law. Before him, no one had ever had enough cash to count it in millions! Adam Smith accidentally creates the modern world of work by showing that dividing jobs up into repetitive tasks makes money. Thanks for that, Adam, and the 9-to-5 working day. Benjamin Franklin showed that genius and gormless stupidity are but a heartbeat apart by flying kites in thunderstorms to see what lightning did. And Carl von Linné created a system of labelling plants and animals so cunning it’s still in use today. You are a “Homo sapiens sapiens” and not just a lumpy collection of bone, muscles and floppy bits thanks to Carl. If you’re not a Homo sapiens sapiens and you’re reading this, then welcome to Earth! It is quite nice, apart from all the bits we’ve buggered up.

So, although you might not believe it just yet, Empire: Total War is set in a world that’s going to seem strangely familiar and then different too. It’s dramatic, world-spanning, bloody-minded and just plain fun. And there’s plenty of stuff that’s just interesting. Consider, for example, this piece of oddness: Londoners rioted in 1752 when Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar and skipped 11 days to get the date into line with the rest of Europe. People went to bed on September 2, and awoke on September 14. The old-style Julian calendar was wrong, but the “new” Gregorian scheme caused outrage for two reasons: people had (obviously) had their lives shortened by this daylight robbery! It was the work of foreigners and Catholics! I think the hard drinking led to the trouble: too many people just thought the latest hangover had lasted 11 days!

And so, as Samuel Pepys would have it, to bed. Next time round, I’ll try to find something to say vaguely interesting about warfare in what I’ve come to think of as the Age of Enormous Wigs and Big Hats. In the meantime, where’s the gin?

The Wars of Empire: Diary 3

It’s now time to turn a bleary and gin-sodden eye (drinking gin is a large part of “method designing” for Empire Total War) to matters military in the 18th century and in particular land warfare in the period. I can promise that the next few instalments are not going to be a detailed history lesson – hurrah! – but more a gallop through the subject – huzzah! – while backhanding matters of interest with a sabre – swish! – from time to time.

So what happens to armies and warfare during the Empire period? That depends on the army, and even the continent, involved in warfare. The French and English/British still fought like two cats in a sack, but where they fought was very different. Their soldiers would face each other in the Rhineland, the backwoods of America and the steamy heat of India. This is a function of what today is termed “power projection” (or “putting your army in some other blokes’ country and making an awful mess over there”). This was what the Europeans learned to do during the 18th century: they could ship troops halfway round the world and fight on their own terms. Doing this involved naval power (so that’s why there are naval battles in Empire: Total War!), and that’s a subject for another day; here we’re looking at land warfare.

Firstly, don’t run away with the idea that the 18th Century is one of unbridled expansion for the Europeans, backed up by muskets, bayonets and the guts to use them effectively. The effectiveness of European armies varied from decade to decade as lessons in warfare were learned, copied by enemies, and then discarded in favour of a new idea. European armies didn’t always have it their own way. In the Balkans, the Turks may have been slightly old-fashioned but their Janissary armies were no laughing matter for anyone facing them, even if they could be beaten. In India, more than one nasty shock awaited the Western invaders as elephants (and what’s a Total War game these days without some heffalumps?), rockets and imported European artillery (along with imported European gunners) were turned against them. The cannons made by Indians weren’t all that bad either, even if they did go in for a lot of decorative fiddly bits. The use of massed rocket attacks impressed the British so much that they copied them as the Congreve rocket system, and then turned them on their own enemies in later wars (without, it has to be said, very much success). In North America a completely new style of light skirmishing warfare was required for success in the dense forests of the eastern seaboard. In short, depending on where you’re fighting, you’ll have a different experience in the game.

Not only had the nature of warfare changed, but its context and purposes too. Any medieval monarch could have understood the “why” of the War of the Spanish Succession: to stop the French Bourbons putting one of their relatives on the throne of Spain. Less than a hundred years later, the Bourbons’ problems, guillotine-wise, brought their power to a sudden, painful and cravat-ruining halt. Once they were gone, the French Republic was engaged in a very different kind of war of survival. Other powers (for which read “the rich, powerful and well bred”) wanted the infection of revolutionary Republicanism cut from the European body politic before it could do any more damage (the bloody progress of events shocked supporters of the infant Republic). Napoleon Bonaparte’s seizure of power (and his conscious aping of Roman precedent) merely confirmed the view that a new, dark tyranny (of the unwashed masses, if nothing else) that threatened the natural order of things had arrived. The concept of a war of ideas – republicanism, liberty, patriotism, tyranny, equality, freedom – had arrived.

If the French Revolution hadn’t happened in France, the rest of European civilization probably wouldn’t have been so bothered by the whole business. Hang on, then it would have been the French Revolution… Still, revolutions are going to be possible; you might even be able to engineer one. Back to the point: It was almost an article of faith that the French were the pre-eminent experts in war, and fielded the finest army in Europe. The French army did suffer defeat on occasion, but it remained a mighty instrument of policy. It defined “soldiering” for generations: young men who wished to be soldiers went to France to learn the serious business of killing. Both of Britain’s greatest generals, John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough (yes, same family as Winston), and Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington (yes, the boots man), had French connections early in their careers. Churchill even received a commendation from Louis XIV for his bravery in leading a forlorn hope. He might have purchased his first commission from his profits as the Duchess of Buckingham’s toy boy, but John had guts! Young Arthur was quite a bit more respectable (or a stuffy prig) as he attended a French military academy after his schooldays at Eton.

We’ll return to this gallop across land warfare in the next part of this developer diary. In the meantime, I’m off to polish my Patriotic Fund sword. Here’s to a bloody battle, or the pox!

Empire: Total War has already been secretly in development at The Creative Assembly’s Horsham studio for over a year and is priming its forces for a release in 2008.