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I've seen this discussion a bit on Reddit, usually in the vein of where will CA go with a fantasy title. Just to summarize what I've seen and my own opinion.

GoT - Absolutely not, not fantastical enough, general public dislike due to the final season and Martin not releasing any new books. My opinion is that the world would work for a warfare game, but it would be rather bland unless it was set in the distant past.

LotR - Some people are for, most seem against because it goes against the setting. I tend to agree and would prefer to not see more bastardized adaptations of Tolkien.

Age of Mythology - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Mythology - For those who don't know, AoM was a spin off of the Age of Empires series and was fairly successful. I played the hell out of it when I was younger. The general idea being that CA draws from real world mythology. Featured factions in AoM were the Greeks, Egyptians, and Norse with the Atlanteans added in an expansion. I'm not terribly familiar with African mythology, but I know there is a lot CA could also draw from various New World cultures, India, Japan, China, other European traditions, etc.

New IP - This could be tricky, but other studios have had success licensing IPs before creating their own. Most notably to me being Bioware with their Neverwinter titles and TOR before moving on to Mass Effect and Dragon Age. With Jade Empire being something of a stepping stone.

The Elder Scrolls - This might be my favorite potential move, but I feel like Bethesda wouldn't go for it. Still, it's a very rich setting to the point of absurdity. It would not be dissimilar to developing the Warhammer titles. The relative downside I see would be that Warhammer came pre-built with army rosters and faction identity at least as far battle tactics go.

Warhammer 40K - Since they've already worked with GW it would seem natural to develop a 40K title, but the question is can the Total War gameplay work in a space setting? I can see planets being provinces with key cities to take, Space Hulks replacing mysterious islands complete with Orcs and Genestealers, Tyranid infestations and Chaos corruption vs Untainted serving as the 'religious' basis for instability (it's still coded that way), and so forth. Also, with 40K's emphasis on melee combat having locked in battle lines wouldn't be completely off putting. The only issue I see is the technology limit of having significantly vast armies in battle, but then again there is also the fact that many players can't micro 20 units in real time to begin with.

Overall, I do think 40K is the likely bet.

What are your thoughts?

Most likely continue their mythos series similar to Troy. Expecting something akin to TW red cliff or TW Ghana.

you could do some fun stuff with GoT and either the first invasion of Westeros or the Dance of Dragons where you have Dragons on both sides.

Lot of info in the first Fire and Blood book.

Lofthe Rings seems perfect for it.

Age of Mythology also seems to have it all

Age of Sigmar would also seem to have lot of possibility

I'd have wished that Troy would've been an actual AI improvement, yet it wasnt.

Altough, the terrain improvements will be great for future historical titles, it would also need improved map generation.

As for age of mythology style , ehhh, imo it would've been needed to be done in Troy. Maybee that would've made it better then the hybrid that it is now that has issues with this...

Considering that the way they've story scripted their Warhammer Old World game they are basically setting it up for the End Times in their own way.

First game was the world falling into war; second game we see the vast Vortex that protects the world from Chaos being destroyed/disabled/weakened.

Third game we see vast incursions of full demonic armies; possibly seeing Chaos shift either as a whole or introducing a new Chaos army type that isn't just raiding but settling towns and building up full armies as normal. Corrupting the land; warping the terrain (I can see them doing that visually).



Basically The End Times have come. I can see CA destroying the Old World.


It sets them up nicely to lead into making Total War Age of Sigmar. Because honestly beyond polishing Warhammer 1-2-3 I can't see them needing to make a sequel to that mammoth of a game for a long long time. So it makes logical sense that the next step could well be taking things into the Age of Sigmar - it benefits both parties in the agreement.



Another option might be that they could go for the new Old World game that GW is developing. However its likely that CA would be able to release more armies and more factions faster than GW could for that game (even before we consider that Corona has likely kicked that project at LEAST another year down the line). To me that project would be better for CA after GW has had it for a few years. Otherwise it might be a Saga game in the Warhammer universe for CA to work on.



About the only thing missing from TW Warhammer is sea armies and honestly with the way Warhammer is setup sea wise that's really a whole game unto itself. This could be another possibility. CA making a game where there is very limited land but instead vast fleets. You secure coastal towns and focus purely on the sea side of battle. Considering that each army would need full sea forces and that warhammer ships are very different to each other it would be a huge undertaking for CA; at the same time it would let them remain in the Old World and focusing on having it as its own title means that armies which "shouldn't" have sea forces could be left out or casually merged with others through alliances. Meanwhile it also lets them balance things more easily. Things like Dragons which appear in land and sea armies should be present, but that makes it hard to balance sea forces when some of the land are appearing in the battles. Also things like Black Arks are vast powers on the high seas, almost unstoppable save for multiple fleets taking them on at once (since a Black Ark will typically have a fleet of its own at dock).

Man I just want Medieval 3. I tried to go back and play Medieval 2 recently but I had a hard time adjusting to the old controls and sorta gave up and went back to Warhammer and Attila.

At the same time however I wish they put more effort into fixing their AI. I mean it has never been good but their method of just giving the AI a bunch of cheats instead of just making it smarter is annoying.

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:
Man I just want Medieval 3. I tried to go back and play Medieval 2 recently but I had a hard time adjusting to the old controls and sorta gave up and went back to Warhammer and Attila.

At the same time however I wish they put more effort into fixing their AI. I mean it has never been good but their method of just giving the AI a bunch of cheats instead of just making it smarter is annoying.

I guess that is the core issue, TW is kinda the only company in their niche, and for that they have become, partially, lazy.
Considering just how long it took to make them finally attempt to propperly fix Diplo...
It also doesn't help that they did cut features like on map towns and buildings, which imo still are a better system then the provice settlement ones thy have gone with since RTW2...

My only problem with TW games is that over the years they've made the strategic map more and more detailed and beautiful. However the result is that the more detail they put in the harder it is to actually read the information on the map.

You really see it when you compare the very busy maps of Warhammer or Three Kingdoms against the maps for Mediveal 1, 2 etc.. Those older maps were not as pretty, but they are very easy to read. You can see towns, important resources, unique feature of regions etc...

In TW its hard to tell what's a fancy bit of detail and what's actual "information" about a region on the map.

Sometimes I just feel like its detail and information overload.








Otherwise they've generally improved over the years - diplomacy has always been a bit of an iffy area; but in part that's because they want you in war more than using diplomacy to win. The game is built around the 3D battles.

Some say they went back a bit with siege maps in Warhammer games; however I've felt that as they've made sige maps bigger and bigger the computers and engines can't support enough actual units to make the siege feel right. Heck I recall playing "chase the defenders/attackers" more than once in older TW games. Because they've such a huge area to play with that the AI is easily "confused or can play the run-away game.

The TW Warhammer AI doesn't tend to get that and if anything is far more aggressive and I think the smaller maps help with that. There's still a few issues - eg I'd like the town segment to be deeper and give some of that "street fighting" feel that you got with some older games.

Is it possible they could use a lesser-known fantasy/sci-fi IP for their next one? Witcher, Stalker, and Metro were all video adaptations of books, though I would hazard a guess that these stories were not quite as well known as widely before the game came out.

 SkavenLord wrote:
Is it possible they could use a lesser-known fantasy/sci-fi IP for their next one? Witcher, Stalker, and Metro were all video adaptations of books, though I would hazard a guess that these stories were not quite as well known as widely before the game came out.

I can't speak to the latter two, but I'm pretty sure Witcher doesn't have the depth needed for a TW game.

Also, I think Age of Sigmar is an awful choice. Even if it is a separate game. The general community discourse I've seen isn't fond of it or the End Times events. It would also rub a lot of people wrong if that was developed prior to at least Cathay and Chaos Dwarfs being introduced in Warhammer 3. Honestly, it seems to me that most fans would prefer getting CA's interpretation of Nippon and the Kingom of Ind instead of AoS.

I'd hope that their next big announcement is TWW3 rather than anything else.

I'm also don't see how a TWW40k could work.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I'd hope that their next big announcement is TWW3 rather than anything else.

I'm also don't see how a TWW40k could work.

The thread is speculation on what fantasy franchise Total War decides to use *after* the third Warhammer game is completed. So TWW3 being the next announcement is more or less assumed.

Having said that, the thread is more or less pointless. Yes, you can speculate. But there's not enough information to make anything close to even an educated guess. We don't even know if Creative Assembly will make another fantasy game right away after finishing with Warhammer. They might go back to historical (or "inspired by history" in the case of Troy) stuff for another decade.

Also, I agree that TWW40K wouldn't work with the way that Total War works now.

 trexmeyer wrote:

 SkavenLord wrote:
Is it possible they could use a lesser-known fantasy/sci-fi IP for their next one? Witcher, Stalker, and Metro were all video adaptations of books, though I would hazard a guess that these stories were not quite as well known as widely before the game came out.

I can't speak to the latter two, but I'm pretty sure Witcher doesn't have the depth needed for a TW game.

Also, I think Age of Sigmar is an awful choice. Even if it is a separate game. The general community discourse I've seen isn't fond of it or the End Times events. It would also rub a lot of people wrong if that was developed prior to at least Cathay and Chaos Dwarfs being introduced in Warhammer 3. Honestly, it seems to me that most fans would prefer getting CA's interpretation of Nippon and the Kingom of Ind instead of AoS.

Thing is Nippon, Cathay, Araby are just a few armies, not a whole game. Granted they could work expansion armies like that into the current Warhammer game and Araby has a chance as they did get an official army (Warmaster). When it comes to AOS in general I think the reception is very different now to when it launched. I think a TW game would be fine; sure some would cry foul but they've already got Old World Warhammer and that same body would cry foul if they had to "buy it all over again" anyway. They've got their Old World; they don't need it again for quite some time. The field is ripe to explore AoS. Plus with GW eventually releasing their own Classic Old World game I'm sure that will ease tensions even more.
Heck Narnia would be an interesting one, even though its not as war focused there's a fair few long story lines of battle that happen between books



As for other fantasy franchises, Witcher has a lot of wars ,but the story doesn't really focus on them as much. It would be a very odd situation. Also the wars are mostly men vs men; the magical elements are typically more muted. Witchers hunt single griffins rather than whole regimented armies of men riding griffens. I can't see Witcher working for a fantasy game and for a military game it would lack most of the Witcher fantasy elements to make it worth doing over other series.

Malazan Book of the Fallen could be an option; there are a LOT of battles and wars in that. Or heck who knows they might even secure the Lord of the Rings. Considering that GW already has a licence for the tabletop of that game and that with the films done there isn't likely a need for film-tie-ins - we might see that as a potential option. However it does seem that Warner still holds the game rights for LotR and they might have a blanket "all games" deal that could last for a long time.

More likely they will stick to more historical games. I know why possible fantasy universe games would be appealing, Warhammer and Warhammer 2 are far and away their most popular games. Although I attribute that to that fact Total War fans have been screaming for a Warhammer Total War game since Medieval 2. Only reason we got it now was because GW nuked the Old World and it was safe to make one as it would not compete with their miniature game.

I'd prefer they work on a new engine for this as part of the reason gameplay works the way it does is because of exploits in the way the current engine works. I especially miss breaking off parts of my army to go deal with minor threats without having to have my general there.

I see their next title after Warhammer 3 either being Empire 2 or Medieval 3...you know. After they milk Warhammer 3 with a bunch of DLC that is.

Most popular fantasy worlds tend to be quasi medievil so should have a good base.

Love to see a Stormbringer one myself but thats unlikely.

The D+D worlds might work - do they already have game that covers them?

Wheel of Time - can't stand it myself but I think its popular and new tv show coming?

Fallout?

How about a zombie Appoclaypse game -

Malazan Book of the Fallen could be an option; there are a LOT of battles and wars in that.

Wow that would be awesome

It sets them up nicely to lead into making Total War Age of Sigmar. Because honestly beyond polishing Warhammer 1-2-3 I can't see them needing to make a sequel to that mammoth of a game for a long long time. So it makes logical sense that the next step could well be taking things into the Age of Sigmar - it benefits both parties in the agreement.

But the AoS license already went to someone else for an RTS game (the folks behind Planet Zoo). I don't see GW self-competing, or CA being willing to 'share' the license.

Licenses beyond TW3 depend heavily on the licensee being willing. Truthfully, depending on how Troy goes, I can see CA not bothering and just doing full on 'mythical' games. (Which honestly is better than the ahistorical AND anti-mythic approach they took for Troy)

Voss wrote:

It sets them up nicely to lead into making Total War Age of Sigmar. Because honestly beyond polishing Warhammer 1-2-3 I can't see them needing to make a sequel to that mammoth of a game for a long long time. So it makes logical sense that the next step could well be taking things into the Age of Sigmar - it benefits both parties in the agreement.

But the AoS license already went to someone else for an RTS game (the folks behind Planet Zoo). I don't see GW self-competing, or CA being willing to 'share' the license.

Licenses beyond TW3 depend heavily on the licensee being willing. Truthfully, depending on how Troy goes, I can see CA not bothering and just doing full on 'mythical' games. (Which honestly is better than the ahistorical AND anti-mythic approach they took for Troy)

Actually I think the AoS strategy game is turning out to be turn based and also a mobile/console etc.. port. GW has never really shown any worry about licences being exclusive. Nothing stopped them letting a company make Man O War and it wasn't anything stopping CA adding warships to TW Warhammer - it was more the scale of work involved. In the end I'm sure if CA wanted to make AoS Total War both companies would want to do it - CA has done really well of the Warhammer licence and ths staff clearly like the game. They can even use a lot of the Warhammer work and build upon it. Meanwhile GW would see AoS getting a powerful and likely positive, game experience to help promote it.

The question for an AoS license would be whether the current one is exclusive. If it's not, then it has no bearing on future decisions by CA.

On another note, my understanding is that Three Kingdoms is currently the best-selling Total War game, having beaten out the sales of the two Warhammer games released so far (at least individually; they probably outsold 3K when the sales figures were combined).

Eumerin wrote:
The question for an AoS license would be whether the current one is exclusive. If it's not, then it has no bearing on future decisions by CA.

On another note, my understanding is that Three Kingdoms is currently the best-selling Total War game, having beaten out the sales of the two Warhammer games released so far (at least individually; they probably outsold 3K when the sales figures were combined).

Just glancing at Steam right now Warhammer II has 20k online vs 3K's 13k. Does Warhammer Fantasy or 40K have any appeal in China?

AFAIK, Games Workshop doesn't have any real presence in mainland China, apart from *maybe* Hong Kong and Shanghai.

I'm open to correction, though, if anyone knows otherwise.

Eumerin wrote:
The question for an AoS license would be whether the current one is exclusive. If it's not, then it has no bearing on future decisions by CA.

Obviously it does. 'Is the Warhammer license worth enough to compete in the strategy space against someone else producing a similar product in the new setting' has a lot of bearing on CA's decisions.
Even in the (slim, IMO) eventuality that GW does offer the license to both companies, there is a list of reasons to decide for or against it, and no reason to pretend there aren't any.

Voss wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
The question for an AoS license would be whether the current one is exclusive. If it's not, then it has no bearing on future decisions by CA.

Obviously it does. 'Is the Warhammer license worth enough to compete in the strategy space against someone else producing a similar product in the new setting' has a lot of bearing on CA's decisions.
Even in the (slim, IMO) eventuality that GW does offer the license to both companies, there is a list of reasons to decide for or against it, and no reason to pretend there aren't any.

Eh...

I doubt that the Planet Coaster team will be able to build a game that really competes with the Total War franchise. Even if the Planet Coaster team turns out a good quality RTS, it's unlikely that it will incorporate all of the elements that make a Total War game recognizable.


I'd view "competition" between the two as arguing whether Age of Empires II is a competitor with Medieval Total War.

Eumerin wrote:

Voss wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
The question for an AoS license would be whether the current one is exclusive. If it's not, then it has no bearing on future decisions by CA.

Obviously it does. 'Is the Warhammer license worth enough to compete in the strategy space against someone else producing a similar product in the new setting' has a lot of bearing on CA's decisions.
Even in the (slim, IMO) eventuality that GW does offer the license to both companies, there is a list of reasons to decide for or against it, and no reason to pretend there aren't any.

Eh...

I doubt that the Planet Coaster team will be able to build a game that really competes with the Total War franchise. Even if the Planet Coaster team turns out a good quality RTS, it's unlikely that it will incorporate all of the elements that make a Total War game recognizable.


I'd view "competition" between the two as arguing whether Age of Empires II is a competitor with Medieval Total War.

I've no idea why it wouldn't be competition. Things don't have to be the same as a 'total war game' to compete with them. Of course other games are going offer other 'elements,' that's to be expected, and changes nothing.

Or influence the CA folks as to whether or not to sign up for a _completely theoretical_ AoS license. At this point, you're nesting a lot of hypotheticals about the hope of a future game that no one has given any indication will actually happen, and even if it does, it will be years after the next one, which itself still doesn't even have a date attached to it.

I think you're confusing posters. I've merely asserted that if the existing AoS license is non-exclusive, then it will likely have little impact on whether CA chooses to acquure an AoS license of their own. I've never offered any opinion on the likelihood of CA wanting the AoS license in the first place.

I've responded directly to you every time except the first, which was clarifying in general that an AoS game was already in the works, nothing 'confusing' there.

You're speculating that the AoS game might not be an exclusive license (for no particular reason) and building a bizarre argument (for... apparently the sake of arguing) that CA might do an AoS game of their own, assuming they or GW want the competition, while arguing that it wouldn't be competition because reasons.

Seems straightforward. I don't understand any of it, but that's what you seem to be saying.

Would be nice for them to have their own fantasy setting or custom map.

Doubt they would though.

Voss wrote:
I've responded directly to you every time except the first, which was clarifying in general that an AoS game was already in the works, nothing 'confusing' there.

You're speculating that the AoS game might not be an exclusive license (for no particular reason) and building a bizarre argument (for... apparently the sake of arguing) that CA might do an AoS game of their own, assuming they or GW want the competition, while arguing that it wouldn't be competition because reasons.

Seems straightforward. I don't understand any of it, but that's what you seem to be saying.

No, my point is that if Frontier Development's AoS license isn't exclusive, then it has no bearing on whether Creative Assembly decides to license AoS. Anything more than that is you reading something in that simply isn't there.

Unless the contract is only for 3 Warhammer games with no prospect of any sort of extension, I don’t see why they couldn’t just continue more Warhammer games under the “Saga” franchise tag. The scope of the Saga games has been much more limited and that could work well if they chose to focus on a “historical” event set in the Warhammer World.

Think of any of the Dark Elf invasions of Ulthuan, The Vampire Wars, The Chaos invasion that was repelled by Magnus the Pious, and my particular favorite the War of the Beard/War of Vengeance. Any of those could get a more focused and detailed map suitable for the setting and tell there own story with new features added.

 Nerak wrote:
...Expecting something akin to TW red cliff...

Like TW: Three Kingdoms?

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Nerak wrote:
...Expecting something akin to TW red cliff...

Like TW: Three Kingdoms?

Three Kingdoms would need to have naval combat added for that...