Military history buffs though they are, Total War’s UK-based developers clearly know a thing or two about diplomacy as well. At our demonstration they politely elect to play as the Prussian forces wresting back control of an 18th century recreation of the town from the British, leaving it strewn with red-coated carcasses.

While Empire is still recognisably a Total War game, bundling the minutiae of realtime battle – the split-second decisions to fix bayonets or garrison units – into the macroscopic view of international diplomacy, trade and scientific progress, its scale and depth is quite beyond that of its predecessors, and pretty much any other strategy game you care to name.

Though the addition of naval combat is perhaps Empire’s most obvious hook, today we are here to see how land combat works as Total War marches into the age of gunpowder and artillery. Not a studio to skimp on detail, Creative Assembly claims to be recreating the entire 18th century world. The town of Leipzig isn’t just built for this demonstration – it’s apparently in there with every other major town, constructed from a mixture of topographical satellite data and historical record.

And, as the British forces move out of Leipzig to meet the Prussian troops, it’s clear that Creative Assembly isn’t just thinking of the big picture. Men vault over a low wall, dash across a yellow field and hunker down behind a hedgerow; though models are reused, they move as a unit made up of individuals – animations are varied and desynchronised to make the flow of troops appear naturalistic. When engaged in combat, several will break off to fight duels – zoomed in, these motion-captured sequences are cinematic enough, but when the camera pans out, they help to break up the mass into a swarm of individual bodies. With the potential for up to 10,000 units on screen, it’s fairly important that they don’t all appear to be doing the exact same thing.



Every musket shot is modelled, we are told – the use of cover here isn’t just a damage modifier, but an actual impediment to deadly, physics-enabled lead. The dynamic weather also has some significance here – cannonballs bounce off hard ground, and bury themselves into wet soil; movement is trickier through mud and the damp will cause muskets to misfire. This is of no small importance to strategy in the larger campaign – since the weather is seasonal and dependent on geography, it may be prudent to delay the invasion of India until after the monsoon.