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Empire: Total War’s early game was made too complicated by its setting and scale, say Creative Assembly

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“One of the things that was challenging about playing Empire: Total War, which was 2009, was that the starting situation for the player was quite complicated because it was set in 1700,” Total War: Rome 2 lead designer James Russell told BeefJack.

“If you played as Great Britain, it’d be like, ‘Well, here’s most of the British Empire. Manage it’. And I think one of the things we learned going back to Shogun 2 was that it’s important to start small. It’s not just an accessibility thing. Starting small makes the game better, and it makes the game deeper, because the player is building their empire and writing their history the way they want to.”

New features like Rome 2’s province system will allow for a greater range of options with less micromanagement, said Russell. “We’ve got a province system, so we’ve got many more regions than in the original Rome, but without many more things to manage.

“So, for instance, a province might be made up of three or four different regions, and you can capture regions individually without having to manage them all. They come under this umbrella concept in your province. And that’s one of the ways we’re dealing with a bigger map and making it more accessible to manage.”