Total War Troy Confirmed

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**Eumerin**

Word has gotten out anong the gaming publications that the next Total War game will focus on the Trojan War. This is apparently based off of a leak, and thus still unofficial. But Creative Assembly is apparently going to make an announcement of some sort tomorrow, and it's believed that this game will be the focus of that announcement. It's speculated that this will likely be a Saga game.

**Overread**

I can get behind that - heck I'd freaking love if they simulate a REAL siege. That is instead of building an empire, the Campaign map were a huge city under siege. With you now attacking wall segments with huge armies; but also only able to battle over parts of the city at a time. It would add weight to the "Trojan horse" if you had to spend ages attacking and breaking through walls and fighting for every street and inch of land to then have a method of breaching a powerful walled segment that otherwise resists invasion.

It will most likely be a SAGA game; they've hinted in the past a new one was coming and it seems that after Three Kingdoms, the next big project the team is working on is Warhammer Total War 3. So until then a SAGA game plus an expansion or two for TW 3 Kingdoms and Warhammer2 would be very sensible moves.

**nels1031**

Yep, apparently there is a PCGamer cover floating around.

They had me at “A world of Gods and Monsters”. A Total War game that meets Age of Mythology? Sign me up!

**Sterling191**

If my boy Aeneas show up, its a buy.

**Voss**

Yeah, I got an email yesterday with what looks like a Stargate with a single character on every panel. (Sort of a backwards S with an additional tail at both ends)

Title is 'A new epic saga awaits'
And then '3pm BSt, 19th september'' in the center of the image
So something soon today

@Overread- wasn't the 'new' Saga game just rebranding Fall of the Samurai?

**Overread**

Voss wrote:

@Overread- wasn't the 'new' Saga game just rebranding Fall of the Samurai?

That was the most recent but was just rebranding the game; Troy would be the "new" one as in a proper new game made for the Saga system.

**Voss**

So there is a blog post about it up.
https://www.totalwar.com/blog/a-total-war-saga-troy-faq/

And I'm going to go with "really dubious" as my reaction.

This 'truth behind the myth' approach grates hellishly on my historical, archaeological and archival training.

Especially the weasel words about gods, belief and faith (and yet in game bonuses) and 'what mythological creatures really were.'

The whole thing sits poorly given their source material is just the Illiad +some archaeology. 'Truths that might have been' is frankly nonsense. IMO, a straight up fantastical approach would have been massively superior to this sort of ahistorical nonsense. (Though a fantasy heavy game admitedly might cause problems with warhammer 3)

Also:
No naval battles (warhammer island battles instead) which seems very odd given the Odyssey naturally follows.

Pretty much just some chariots, almost no cav.

Character duels like 3k. Similar diplomacy (which is largely a positive, if its slightly less easy to cheese)

**Not Online!!!**

The rebrainding is bs.
it's mostly to PR the name up after they fethed up Brittania.

**Eumerin**

I'll have to wait and see. My understanding is that barely anything is known about this era. If it works out, then great. But there are a lot of ways that it can go bad.

Barter economy makes me say "Hmm..." Your own production should be straightforward enough. But trade income could be an issue with no currency.

**StygianBeach**

I was quite interested until I saw the trailer.
Now I am happy to wait for 60% off like I did with Thrones of Britannia.

**Voss**

Eumerin wrote:
I'll have to wait and see. My understanding is that barely anything is known about this era. If it works out, then great. But there are a lot of ways that it can go bad.

Barter economy makes me say "Hmm..." Your own production should be straightforward enough. But trade income could be an issue with no currency.

From what the FAQ says, it uses the 3k system, and tiered units are produced with food and wood, then bronze then gold. So that also implies trading of those resources. The tricky thing is trading at all possibly fuels an enemy's ability to make units. Either a future enemy or your trading partner trades with them.

StygianBeach wrote:
I was quite interested until I saw the trailer.
Now I am happy to wait for 60% off like I did with Thrones of Britannia.

What bothered you about the trailer? It was a fairly standard cinematic that says almost nothing about the game, beyond a touch of melodramatic tone (which given the subject matter, would seem odd if it wasn't).

**Argive**

I've watched the trailer/review.

Looks like they are using the Warhammer 2 engine/3k duelling system.

The vanilla system will sadly not have any real "mythical entetities" but there is a screen shot of a huge dude swinging a big ass bronze battle axe wearing a minotaur skull. So they went the realistic interpretation route.

But you never know, there might be a patch to go full mythical which would be bad ass! And if not DLC than I'm 100% some mad soul will go to town and create a mod.

Cinematic trailer ends at 1:38 followed up by campaign map gameplay sneak peak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEO0e7uzAIQ

**StygianBeach**

Voss wrote:
Eumerin wrote:

StygianBeach wrote:
I was quite interested until I saw the trailer.
Now I am happy to wait for 60% off like I did with Thrones of Britannia.

What bothered you about the trailer? It was a fairly standard cinematic that says almost nothing about the game, beyond a touch of melodramatic tone (which given the subject matter, would seem odd if it wasn't).

I dislike the Armour design and the movement.

I do love the look of the campaign map, so maybe I will only wait for 30% off depending on the reviews.

**nels1031**

Epic Store exclusive for 1 year...

Here it is: A Total War Saga: TROY is an Epic Games Store exclusive for 12 months – and will be available for free if you claim it in the first 24 hours.

That’s right – we’re giving away TROY for free, to keep, as long as you claim it in the 24 hour window!

We’re really excited about TROY, and we’re even more excited that this will give more of you the chance to play and enjoy it than might have had it otherwise. While we know that some of you won’t like the Epic Games Store exclusivity, we feel like this is a great opportunity for us in a lot of ways, and we’re hoping that you’ll take some time to hear us out and for us to answer what some of the questions we think you might have.

First of all: this is an opportunity for TROY specifically, and we have no plans for future games to be Epic exclusives. As developers we truly value our existing fans, but at the same time we want to reach new audiences and have as many people as possible experiencing the thrill of Total War for themselves. As a business that means putting Total War onto new platforms so that it can reach more players. This is part of that and in principal we’d like future Total War titles to be simultaneously available, from launch day, on as many store fronts as possible.

Right now, this is a one-time, one-year exclusive deal for TROY. We’ve always said that Saga titles allow us to experiment, and this is an experiment on a grand scale. TROY seemed like a good game to try this out with, especially as pre-orders aren’t live on Steam yet, so no one’s already put money into a store they’ll have to wait 12 extra months for it to appear on.

So now that’s out the way, here’s a little more backstory. Epic approached us and asked if TROY could be an Epic exclusive, as part of a commercial deal. That’s not to say that we immediately signed on the dotted line, or that money was the only reason that we did this (it’s not!). It was a difficult decision, and you can be assured that there were a lot of differing opinions in the studio, and a lot of discussions about it – which largely focussed on what it would mean for you, the players.

However, ultimately we considered two things. First we’re at a time when we’re looking to invest more into the ongoing development of Total War this felt like an opportunity to really move the franchise forward by getting it in front of more people. Secondly, Epic were paying for our players to have our latest release free on day one. For Total War’s 20th birthday, that felt like an opportunity too good to pass up.

As mentioned, and like others in the industry, a key reason for exploring other digital stores is that we don’t want to be limited just to Steam. We also want to diversify our business. In fact, we want to get our games onto as many stores as possible. Long term, we want to expand where players find Total War. This deal gives us a great way to try out other platforms, such as Epic – to see what works for us and what doesn’t. It allows us to get a feel for the development required to expand to other platforms, and it’s relatively risk-free for you, too, as the game’s available for free when claimed in the first 24 hours.

This opportunity allows expansive back-end infrastructure development that will allow us to expand into multiple stores. That means we can have more resources, push ourselves further, be more creative, make more Total War. We’re always looking to evolve and improve on our games and this deal gives us a lot of ways to do that – as we said, fresh perspectives, money that we’ll be putting back into the studio, new ways to expand.

You might not immediately see a big change, but we’re confident you will over time – and we guarantee there are a lot of things behind the scenes being made possible due to this, which we wouldn’t otherwise have the chance to do. Some of this is long-term – but there are short-term benefits to you, as well as us.

Making it available for free, for everyone to keep, during the first 24 hours – wouldn’t have been possible without this deal.

Finally, we’ve got just one favour to ask – however you feel about this, please keep any criticism to the studio as a whole, and don’t take it out on individual employees that you might find on various social media platforms.). We get it. It’s unexpected. But they’re not going to be able to change anything, and probably weren’t the ones who made the decision regardless.

We really think you’ll love TROY, and hey, it’s free so definitely give it a shot, redeem your 24 hour freebie and enjoy the game. If not, it’ll just be a year until it’s available on Steam. Ultimately, we think that this is good for our players, good for Creative Assembly, and therefore good for Total War.

Thank you for reading.

**Trondheim**

Good thing I never intend to give the devs any more of my coin then, if they decide to be such bumbling oafs to make it exclusive to EPIC store.

**LordofHats**

Trondheim wrote:
Good thing I never intend to give the devs any more of my coin then, if they decide to be such bumbling oafs to make it exclusive to EPIC store.

Seconded. I'm not even interested in waiting. I see the word 'Epic exclusive' and I walk.

Finally, we’ve got just one favour to ask – however you feel about this, please keep any criticism to the studio as a whole, and don’t take it out on individual employees that you might find on various social media platforms.). We get it. It’s unexpected. But they’re not going to be able to change anything, and probably weren’t the ones who made the decision regardless.

This line is interesting. It's almost like the person writing the announcement is begging people not to blame him cause he's just doing his job XD

**nels1031**

Impression I get from Facebook comments is that Epic doesn't allow modding? Is that true?

A Total War game without mod support seems... less than ideal.

**LordofHats**

nels1031 wrote:
Impression I get from Facebook comments is that Epic doesn't allow modding? Is that true?

They have no mod support built into their client, but I have no idea if that precludes modding. There's still places like Nexus. If they end up using the same Total War launcher as the rest of the franchise, that launcher has mod support built into it. IDK. I don't give enough of a gak about Epic to bother looking and don't care either way. Epic can go die in a ditch. I'm not taking a free game bribe.

**Overread**

Epic is willing to throw insane money at developers to get them on a 1 year exclusivity contract. For some reason they are unwilling to throw even a tiny portion of that money at their store system.

It's really odd, they want to rival steam yet their only real marketing strategy is to basically strong-arm companies into exclusivity for a year. Whilst that is very effective, it just seems so strange that they've got all these resources and they aren't trying to win by putting out a superior store-front display as well

As for CA I can't really blame them - Epic 1 year exclusivity is basically a no-risk deal with a huge up-front payment and a golden handshake that Epic will cover any loss of estimated revenue from sales. Even if not a single person bought Troy, CA would make as much profit as they'd best estimate from it plus the money for the 1 year exclusivity. Whilst its a bit of a marketing blunder its losing its sting over time (its just 1 year not full time and its only another storefront - which in the end just means a user has to install a launcher and that's about it).

Troy is also a side game for them and Britannia wasn't a mega-seller. Chances are CA feels any loss from steam fanbois isn't a huge problem for them. Now if this were Warhammer 3 which is a major product and tied into the other games (1 and 2) which users already own on steam then yeah that WOULD be a huge marketing blunder

Also its free for 24 hours - even if you hate epic you can just get their launcher- get the game and not pay them a £ and make them pay for the server costs for you to download the game. It's basically a win-win unless you've an allergy to launchers (since far as I can tell security seems to have become a non-issue for Epic - or at least I've not heard of a major breach in a long time - most of the complaints are either "its not steam" or " its not gog" or "its not got a cart/mods/reviews/cards"

**LordofHats**

Overread wrote:
Epic is willing to throw insane money at developers to get them on a 1 year exclusivity contract. For some reason they are unwilling to throw even a tiny portion of that money at their store system.

They'd honestly probably have a wildly different response to everything they do if their fundamental service weren't such a pile of gak.

It's really odd, they want to rival steam yet their only real marketing strategy is to basically strong-arm companies into exclusivity for a year.

I'm with you on all of this and the rest of your post. This is probably a lot of nothing for the franchise as a whole at this time. The real question is how much will Epic get out of it? They must have shelled out some mad money to Sega. I read the announcement as all but saying 'Sega made this decision it's not what we (CA) want'. I can't see how Epic will make money on Troy itself with this set up. The clear goal is to bring users into their gakky storefront. People will probably take the free game in droves. I question the logic that it'll get Epic's store out of the pit it's burying for itself with deals like this.

**Voss**

Nope.
Poor decision here. Had little interest in the game already, but this kills it.

If the pull this crap with TW3, though, its table flipping time.

**Overread**

As far as I can tell Epic's entire marketing policy is not to pay for advertisements, but to simply invest all that money into securing exclusive titles on popular and major franchises. By association they get a large percentage of that markets users signing up to their service.

Their plan is that they basically buying customers. Each person that installs their launcher is basically another customer who is more likely to use their store front again.

Once they reach a critical mass point they can do away with many of these policies because they'll have a significant portion of the user base using their system or at least having got one or two games on it. By which point they are then able to compete with steam on price.

It's just a really odd strategy in that its so one dimensional. I don't understand why really basic features (eg a store cart and reviews) aren't part of the Epic store. They've clearly got vast wealth and even an off-the-shelf basic store-front commercial site offers those as basic features. If they just cleaned the store up a huge amount of complaints would vanish.

That said just had a quick look - the Steam Troy page is burning heavily. Though honestly you read some and its honestly almost troubling how some are so blindly pro-steam. What's odd is I never recall GOG getting this much flame against it ever. Then again they never went for exclusivity.
Thing is I get the exclusivity pain with consoles - you have to spend £100s to get a single console so any exclusive title is behind a significant pay wall. PC store exclusivity is basically nothing; you install the launcher and that's it you've got the other company. No fees, no costs and most of the launchers even let you "add games" from other companies to the quick-start menu.

**Eumerin**

Epic also has to deal with claims that it (or more accurately the company's Chinese partner) doesn't observe basic privacy guidelines wuth customer data.

**LordofHats**

Voss wrote:
Nope.
Poor decision here. Had little interest in the game already, but this kills it.

If the pull this crap with TW3, though, its table flipping time.

I think it's reactionary to worry about TW3 at this junction.

I'd almost bet that Epic probably paid Sega's entire margin to get this deal, and like you I think most people had little interest in the game already. I'm honestly not sure what the Total War Saga titles are supposed to be. They're like mni-Total Wars, but I don't really want a mini-Total War I want a full Total War. Sega probably had low expectations of this game, given Britannia's shoddy performance and reputation. Epic offering them this deal was probably easy math for them. It's gak for anyone who hates Epic Games and wanted the game maybe, but I don't think it's indicative of much.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Overread wrote:
PC store exclusivity is basically nothing; you install the launcher and that's it you've got the other company. No fees, no costs and most of the launchers even let you "add games" from other companies to the quick-start menu.

I don't want that kind of clutter on my desktop.

If someone wants to compete with Steam, they should compete. GOG and Greenman do it dandily. No one complains about them because they have the respect for the user to offer a quality service. Steam's dominance is a much about momentum as quality. Epic isn't competing, they're just making the market toxic in a bid to get their own share of it, so feth um.

**Overread**

CA has some issues with community management - even the big warhammer games get a fair few more trolls than most games. Even years after launch every time there's an update a slew of trolls come out of the woodwork.

I think that hurts smaller games like Britannia and Troy. That said I think that the idea being the Saga games is to give a TW experience on a smaller country scale instead of at the global scale. Development wise I think they are a smaller quicker turn around project designed to both turn a short term profit inbetween big games and also as a dump=ground for skilled staff to work on a smaller side project inbetween big ones when staff in key roles don't have any work on the big projects. Big projects move slower and there's likely a good few staff that end up trapped in a deadzone between them. An animator might have finished one games work and the other isn't ready for them - saga/smaller titles likely give room for those staff to keep working toward a profitable investment instead of losing them or keeping them with no real work for them.

Personally I enjoyed Britannia for what it was. I do think that the Saga games need better marketing and that CA needs to invest in some big community clean-up. A handful of really active very fair and balanced mods to clean-house on the steam boards and such might b money well spent in at least cleaning house.

Note I'm not saying CA can't do wrong, they can and hav made some poor choices. I just feel that there's a point at which people have stopped complaining and are shifting into purely trolling.
Of course CA sitll makes very solid sales - these trolls are stilly only a vocal tiny fragment of their market.

**Voss**

LordofHats wrote:
Voss wrote:
Nope.
Poor decision here. Had little interest in the game already, but this kills it.

If the pull this crap with TW3, though, its table flipping time.

I think it's reactionary to worry about TW3 at this junction.

Yep. Its a reaction to what they're doing.
Since they were more open about TW3 18 months ago then they are now (when they were talking about pre-production mocap), I'm responding to what little information I can get- which is the company is currently making crap decisions that I don't like.

They were bribed into making a bad decision this time, nothing prevents that from happening again.

**Disciple of Fate**

I love how the trailer on Steam still says 2020, they couldn't even be assed to make another few trailer frames for Steam, kind of says it all.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Overread wrote:
I think that hurts smaller games like Britannia and Troy. That said I think that the idea being the Saga games is to give a TW experience on a smaller country scale instead of at the global scale. Development wise I think they are a smaller quicker turn around project designed to both turn a short term profit inbetween big games and also as a dump=ground for skilled staff to work on a smaller side project inbetween big ones when staff in key roles don't have any work on the big projects. Big projects move slower and there's likely a good few staff that end up trapped in a deadzone between them. An animator might have finished one games work and the other isn't ready for them - saga/smaller titles likely give room for those staff to keep working toward a profitable investment instead of losing them or keeping them with no real work for them.

I kind of feel that CA is not big enough to also make Saga games, now that its basically them trying to push out a game every year at this rate. It really shows as well, Britannia was left to die in a ditch in my opinion. Bugs spanning multiple games, serious bugs in Three Kingdoms and Warhammer that take weeks if not months to fix. It feels like a lot of staff get shifted around and a skeleton crew is left to hold the fort until the game is up for its round of DLC and resources flow back in.

The idea was brilliant, the execution seems to be pretty lacking.

**Voss**

Disciple of Fate wrote:
I love how the trailer on Steam still says 2020, they couldn't even be assed to make another few trailer frames for steam, kind of says it all.

I will say that there are some hints that this was a Sega decision that they couldn't say no to, so it may have caught them off guard.

They did just update the steam release date to 2021. It said 2020 an hour ago. And they took down the trailer you're referencing. Just a few screenshots now.

**Disciple of Fate**

Voss wrote:
Disciple of Fate wrote:
I love how the trailer on Steam still says 2020, they couldn't even be assed to make another few trailer frames for steam, kind of says it all.

I will say that there are some hints that this was a Sega decision that they couldn't say no to, so it may have caught them off guard.

They did just update the steam release date to 2021. It said 2020 an hour ago. And they took down the trailer you're referencing. Just a few screenshots now.

I can't believe that they would not get a moments notice though. Negotiations must have taken a while and they could have pushed back the announcement slightly. The Steam page actually went up with the trailer saying 2020, but the release date window next to it saying 2021.

Maybe I'm just in a mood, because now that CA and SEGA have cracked to the Epic store, I'm just a little bit more nervous about Warhammer 3.

**Overread**

Don't forget Warhammer 3 is a totally different product structure to Troy. Troy is a short term short attention game for them - its not a major franchise game.

Also don't forget Forgeworld didn't even know Age of Sigmar was coming - GW operates out of one sites and AoS was a massive release and yet several departments were totally unaware it was a thing. So I can well see that SEGA could have been negotiating for a long while without CA hearing anything but a rumour if that. It could very well be a top end choice dropped in their laps without them getting much say-so or without much room to do any preliminary marketing moves.