Developing Total War Warhammer as Creative Assembly quest

This quest is largely the result of my attempts to translate into reality the experience of the quest to create an MMO in the Fallout universe. In this quest, I'm trying to invite you to play as Creative Assembly in 2012 and create your version of Total War Warhammer.

As for the game mechanics, I have my own and is not similar to almost anything else in other players.

Your main opponent within the game universe is Time. The further your game develops, the more the hype around it decreases, and the more sales of the game fall. As a result, Time is a cumulative penalty you receive each year that impacts the game's popularity and reduces the game's revenue and SEGA approval.

The SEGA approval must be maintained as high as possible. By default, you have 5 approval points. As soon as there are 10 of them, the counter is reset, the approval again becomes equal to 5, and you receive one unit of Money. You will get the complete opposite result when the SEGA approval drops to zero.

Money is the second main thing in the game. They are required to make the most expensive decisions. In addition, they also give you the ability to re-roll the worst rolls other than a natural 1. The more Money you have, the more you can re-roll dice and use the best result. Money is your main way to deal with Time penalties. If you lose all the money, then the quest will end with your defeat.

As the game develops, you will often be faced with the choice of creating original content or following strictly the board game rule books. The first option is more likely to increase the popularity of the game, and hence the SEGA Approval, but will cost you a Games Workshop Approval. This is the second way to lose. Games Workshop's approval grows as the game's popularity grows, but unlike SEGA, they carefully follow the canonical side of the issue. If the Games Workshop Approval drops to zero, they will terminate the agreement with you, and thus you will lose in the same way.

And yes, in this turn, in order to avoid initial meta-gaming, the numerical characteristics of your decisions are hidden. They exist, but sometimes there is a rather complex relationship between them due to synergy, so I preferred to hide them.

****

It was 2012 when you received an email saying that your SEGA bosses had made an agreement to create a new project with Games Workshop. In a normal situation, this would not bother you at all. However, in this case, the situation was very different from normal, since it was your company that was supposed to develop Total War Warhammer, as the project was called.

Working on something like this was a frankly new experience for you. The reason is simple - your studio has never worked with fantasy. You could offer some pretty good gameplay focused on real historical military forces. However, magic and monsters were something completely new for you.

No, you certainly understood the reasons why you were the one responsible for this project. The format of the Total War game series was closest to the original with its fantasy counterpart of the Renaissance. You already had experience both in the Middle Ages and in the eighteenth century. Who but you can make this project a reality?

In addition, the preliminary agreement that was concluded between the two companies provided not just a single game, but a whole trilogy of several games, including local Europe, America and the Polar Wastes. Work on such a project could stretch for a whole decade and significantly change the vector of the company's development.

There were only a few things that were strictly stipulated at the moment. Namely, the first part should focus on the Old World, and the playable faction should be the Empire of Sigmar.

On the one hand, this was understandable, since the Empire of Sigmar represents for itself the most universal and at the same time the easiest to understand faction of this universe. But at the same time, it put players in the middle of the main continent of the game universe, where they had to face almost all human nations, vampires, beastmen, wood elves and many others. You will have to think carefully about what content will be placed in your game.

You continued to think about the task, and you gradually loomed several questions that needed to be solved. The first of these included what kind of game space the game world was supposed to cover. On the one hand, indeed, one can try to completely cover the Old World, but the complete alternative would be an attempt to reduce the playing space to the Empire of Sigmar, Sylvania, Kislev and Norsca. This would allow you to focus more on the specific sub factions of the main factions. The more territory you cover, the less detailed will be the study of each specific faction.

Choose one option
[] - Empire, Kislev and Norsca. You will take the most modest option in terms of space, but you can try to focus on the Empire instead. Present it not as a relatively monolithic entity, or invariably turning into a single power, but as a multitude of small states.
[] - Old light. In addition to the game faction, you will include in the gameplay the territories of Tilia, Bretonnia and Estalia, three more human states. True, of these, only Bretonnia has its own book of rules. Well, if we don't consider the Fifth Edition Rule Book of War Dogs as such.
[] - The whole Old World. You will also include the territories of the mountains of the dwarves, as well as the lands of the orcs and goblins in the game space. In fact, they are just the most likely to be part of the playable factions at the start of the game.

The second issue we need to consider from the outset is the number of fully fledged playable factions that we are going to base on the rulebooks. Even in the most minimal version, we can offer players four such factions - the Empire of Sigmar, the Warriors of Chaos, the Vampire Counts and Kislev. All four have had their own rulebooks at one time or another, although we can always add other factions, such as the Weremen.

Choose one option:
[] - Four. At the start of the game, there will be four playable factions that will be fully available to players. On the one hand, this may seem like a very small amount, but it is worth considering the fact that we are limited to a set of rules books for playable factions, and each faction will be completely unique, unlike our previous projects.
[] - Five. Five is not a bad number, we will be able to offer players more factions, although this will require more financial investments from us, as well as a longer time frame for the development of the gameplay.
[] - Six. This is probably the maximum that we can afford at this stage, based on the resources we have and the freedom of creativity. It will be tritely difficult for us to find more playable factions with their own rulebooks in the territory we are looking for.

Another question that should be raised is who exactly will be the main opponent for the players. It should be some faction that appears literally out of nowhere along with a lot of forces from outside the map. And at the same time, this faction must belong to negative forces in order to justify its hostility to all other playable factions. This actually leaves us with very few options that we can implement.

Choose one option:
[] - Warriors of Chaos. The classic version, which we are all familiar with. They come from the Chaos Wastes, seeking to destroy the entire world. An army of fanatics, sorcerers and other extremely colorful personalities under the control of Archaon. Why don't we just take it?
[] - Orcs. As an alternative, we can turn to another option, leaving the forces of Chaos for later updates. On the other hand, Grimgor's huge WAAAGH is a good way to give players one last test before the campaign finale.

The remaining options, unfortunately, do not stand up to criticism. we can't use Chaos Demons as they are for later games, just like Dark Elves. The Chaos Dwarfs are outside the game space, while the Beastmen are simply too weak and do not pose a threat to the global world order from the point of view of the game universe. This leaves only two options.

Finally, the last question we should address is the gameplay features. In general, there are three significant differences between the gameplay and the classic for our game series. The first is monsters, as well as flying troops, which add new means for players to act, as well as a new level of confrontation between flying creatures. Secondly, this is magic, which we absolutely cannot exclude from the gameplay. And finally, the third, these are the characters that play an extremely important role in the original board game.

But apart from that, we should pay attention to some more things that we can carry over from the gameplay.

Choose any number of options:
[] - Ranks of troops. We can take from the original board game the original rules for dividing troops into Characters, Basic, Special and Rare troops, which must occupy a certain percentage of troops. On the one hand, this will complicate the gameplay, but at the same time add more micromanagement, which not everyone likes.
[] - Deepening the system of magic. We can imagine magic not on the simplest magic in the form of spells that require a certain amount of winds of magic, but in a much more complex form, with the ability to dispel spells and so on.
[] - Duels between characters. To some extent, in the original game, this was an important component, since the duelist hero could kill the enemy commander and thereby put the army to flight. Moreover, to kill him, calling him to a duel, from which he in most cases did not have the opportunity to refuse. This will be a very unusual addition.
[] - Deepening the character system. If we imagine the characters as just a squad of one fighter, then we will miss some important details of the gameplay, namely, the interaction between squads and characters. For example, a cavalryman can join a squad of knights. Or even more cunning schemes, where the magician stays among the detachment away from the battle, and the comrades-in-arms, at the cost of their lives, will protect him both from arrows and from a surprise attack.
[] - Leveling game characters. We could expand the character leveling system into several skill trees, many of which are either extremely simple or are references to the game's rules. There is also a proposal to change the weapons of the characters. The general of the Empire of Sigmar, for example, could be armed not only with a sword, but with anything up to a bow.
[] - Mercenary system. If the old Warhound rule book was mentioned, why don't we use it? Mercenary squads can be presented in completely different variations, from just small elite squads to small armies that accompany the main one for the duration of the contract.
[] - Faction mechanics. We can pay special attention to intra-faction mechanics. For example, the system of Electors of the Empire of Sigmar, or the differences between vampire bloodlines.
[] - Naval battles. We can give players the opportunity to fight at sea. However, this is a rather complicated and sore subject, since, as the experience of Empire has shown, AI is much better at this task than any person. In addition, the factions themselves are unequal. The flimsy Chaos ships will have a hard time holding their own against the Dwarven Dreadnoughts.
[] - Boss battles. This is generally a good idea that we can take into service for the story battles that each individual character can have. A special battle mode where you need to confront a particularly powerful lord or monster of a hostile faction. In terms of player-to-player battles, it can be sieges of large cities, where you need to win several consecutive battles without replenishing the army and lifting the siege.
[] - Big plot component. We can give players cinematics that tell the history of their faction and generally tie it into something like a coherent campaign.
[] - The system of morale and supply of the army. We do not need to create a full-fledged supply system that will take into account the location of enemy armies. We could do it, but it would be too difficult for the players themselves in the first place. Instead, we can make morality systems that require you to win and a supply system that requires you to stop in loyal cities from time to time.

[X] - Plan no-no skaven?
-[X] - Old light. In addition to the game faction, you will include in the gameplay the territories of Tilia, Bretonnia and Estalia, three more human states. True, of these, only Bretonnia has its own book of rules. Well, if we don't consider the Fifth Edition Rule Book of War Dogs as such.
-[X] - Four. At the start of the game, there will be four playable factions that will be fully available to players. On the one hand, this may seem like a very small amount, but it is worth considering the fact that we are limited to a set of rules books for playable factions, and each faction will be completely unique, unlike our previous projects.
-[X] - Orcs. As an alternative, we can turn to another option, leaving the forces of Chaos for later updates. On the other hand, Grimgor's huge WAAAGH is a good way to give players one last test before the campaign finale.
-[X] - Deepening the system of magic. We can imagine magic not on the simplest magic in the form of spells that require a certain amount of winds of magic, but in a much more complex form, with the ability to dispel spells and so on.
-[X] - Deepening the character system. If we imagine the characters as just a squad of one fighter, then we will miss some important details of the gameplay, namely, the interaction between squads and characters. For example, a cavalryman can join a squad of knights. Or even more cunning schemes, where the magician stays among the detachment away from the battle, and the comrades-in-arms, at the cost of their lives, will protect him both from arrows and from a surprise attack.
-[X] - Leveling game characters. We could expand the character leveling system into several skill trees, many of which are either extremely simple or are references to the game's rules. There is also a proposal to change the weapons of the characters. The general of the Empire of Sigmar, for example, could be armed not only with a sword, but with anything up to a bow.
-[X] - Faction mechanics. We can pay special attention to intra-faction mechanics. For example, the system of Electors of the Empire of Sigmar, or the differences between vampire bloodlines.
-[X] - Boss battles. This is generally a good idea that we can take into service for the story battles that each individual character can have. A special battle mode where you need to confront a particularly powerful lord or monster of a hostile faction. In terms of player-to-player battles, it can be sieges of large cities, where you need to win several consecutive battles without replenishing the army and lifting the siege.
-[X] - Big plot component. We can give players cinematics that tell the history of their faction and generally tie it into something like a coherent campaign.

****

Money: 4
SEGA Approval: 7
Games Workshop Approval: 6

****

Well, the overall concept ended up being approved even by GW, although they ended up being unhappy with some of the liberties we took. However, even they were eventually forced to admit that they had a certain meaning.

Speaking briefly about the essence of the project from the point of view of game development, it can be described quite easily. A grand strategy game with four playable races with an extremely high degree of diversity. Moreover, in order to achieve filling the map with a large number of weak factions suitable for destruction, it was decided to use numerous sub-fractions. For example, in addition to the Reikland, which is a playable faction of the Empire of Sigmar, players should also imagine that the map will also contain all the other provinces of the empire that can be conquered or conquered.

This is a significant difference from our earlier work, where neutral settlements were occupied by faceless "Rebels", which players gradually destroyed as they expanded. 4X component requires us to offer players the first component of this genre - Expand.

From the point of view of Games Workshop, in the end they liked our emphasis on characters. In the original game, they played an extremely important role, and individual characters were strong enough to kill an ancient and powerful dragon in just a few rounds. And for some factions, such as vampires or Nehekhara, they were completely vital, preventing the troops from turning into dust. They were glad that we decided to experiment in terms of attitudes towards single troops. They were also delighted that we decided to coordinate our story building efforts with them.

But they didn't like everything else. For example, they were in a difficult position because of our decision to present the main enemy of the orcs. From our point of view, it seemed reasonable. Destroying the dwarven defenses seemed like a good way to gradually escalate the situation for the players from a story standpoint, and the orcs are a good late-game enemy. Unfortunately, however, GW decided a little differently for reasons of their own universe's chronology. Namely, it is not clear what plot point to take as the basis of the gameplay. Storm of Chaos, despite the important role of the orcs in the defense of Middenheim, still represented the main threat of Chaos.

As they explained, we could create a third Warhammer Fantasy alternate world timeline after the Storm of Chaos and the End Times, but that would be off-putting to new fans of the game, as well as board game veterans who are somewhat tired of retcons. Although it is possible that such a refusal to follow the established chronologies will be much better for us.

As for the rest of the issues, such as deepening the magic system, multi-stage sieges and specific faction mechanics, they had no questions, just like our leadership from SEGA. The reason is simple - they are still in too infancy for us to be able to tell exactly where the problems are and what needs to be changed.

One way or another, however, we are now facing perhaps the most important question that will affect the perception of the first part of the game series. Namely, which races we want to make playable. The presented borders gave us a number of options, although one is strictly obligatory for us - this is the Empire of Sigmar. However, even this will not be the case, then it would be extremely reasonable to choose it, since due to the extensive set of troops and heroes, the faction is suitable for novice players, since it has almost everything except flying troops and monsters. However, the Empire of Sigmar has options to counter both flying enemies and giant enemies.

Choose three options:
[] - Bretonnia. A state that is a formal ally of the people of the Empire of Sigmar. A country of noble knights and absolutely disenfranchised peasants, which has changed a lot since its appearance in the first editions, when it had guns. However, they regularly supply powerful ground and flying cavalry, which form the backbone of their army. The rest is weak infantry and not the best artillery.
[] - Kislev. The main ally of the Empire of Sigmar and the main barrier for her from the threat from the north. This state, half taken from the Commonwealth, and half from the Moscow Kingdom, represents its gameplay. They have slow but very well-protected infantry, as well as excellent light and medium cavalry, from Ungol archers to the Griffin Legion. And of course, their own magicians of frost and cold.
[] - Vampire Counts. These are representatives of the predominantly vampire family of von Carsteins, on whom the gameplay is similar and will be concentrated, since in addition to them only Blood Dragons are widely represented on the game map. In terms of game mechanics, each of their heroes can be a magician, thanks to which they have the potential to be one of the strongest in this part of the battle, they have powerful healing, as well as monsters of colossal power. But as a disadvantage, the rest of the army is slow, and they themselves do not have normal rifle troops.
[] - Dogs of war. We could well take them and present them in... very different versions. Historically, they are numerous units of mercenaries that various factions can use. But we could make it a little less classic, based on the ancient series of tactical strategies and the main character, Morgan Blackheart, with his wandering army.
[] - Greenskins. Despite the fact that they are an enemy faction, it is also possible to make them a playable side as well. For strategies, there is nothing unusual when it is possible to play for purely negative representatives as well. True, we will have a question with the position of which character will be narrated.
[] - Wood elves. The elves of Athel Loren are possibly the best archers present in this game world, with whom no one can compare, and their entire army is extremely mobile. But as a drawback, they
[] - Empire of Sigmar. Yes, we could reduce the formal number of parties by changing the Empire of Sigmar much deeper and making it possible to play as virtually every province in the Empire. After all, all Electors except Wissenland are good fighters. But in the case of Wissenland, we can refer to the book about Tamurkhan.
[] - Write-in your option.



An example of a game map.

In addition, we have to consider another issue that we have in addition to the game map and the factions located on it. Namely, this is a question of who will be our main villain in the first part of the game. We have already decided that WAAAH!!! will be the main motivator of the game's plot.

As part of the first part, the story of the greenskin invasion unfolds, which forces the dwarves to fully concentrate on the eastern borders of their state. For the rest of the factions, the main task is to prepare for the almost imminent breakthrough of the greenskins and fortify themselves enough to be able to defend their borders. Of course, in addition to the orcs and goblins, who will have to carry out the destruction of the whole world.

But we still have the question of who will be the main threat to the entire civilized world. And here we don't have many different options, unless of course we want to do some change in the canon - and if we are allowed to do so.

Choose one or more. -if you really want, -option:
[] - Grimgor. The main character of orcs and goblins in the latest editions. A black orc who was able to defeat Archaon in the Storm of Chaos campaign. And it is worth noting that in the tabletop rules, he could well do this. This option is the easiest to implement in terms of canon, but also the most boring from the point of view of fans of the universe. This is just a dangerous orc who has almost no charisma.
[] - Azhag. The second option suggests using an unusual orc who is also a magician. However, his magical art is not the result of training and study of magic - which the orcs are simply incapable of - but the result of the possession of Nagash's crown, which is trying to send him south to revive his owner.
[] - Grom. Possibly the greatest of the goblins, and also one of the few who has grown to a size where he could well threaten even the black orcs. He traveled an incredible path for a goblin, laying siege to Altdorf and even reaching Ulthuan, but disappeared in the battle for Yvresse.
[] - Gorbad. He is an ordinary Orc, but at the same time also probably the greatest of the Orcs, as he excelled not in combat skills, but in leadership and commanding qualities unheard of by Orcs. His invasion wiped out the province of Solland and was arguably the most devastating invasion in history as a whole. He is presumed dead, and probably is, given that no one has seen him for seven centuries, but technically there is no confirmation of his death.
[] - Skarsnik. This option will be very... unusual. The reason is simple, this is not an orc or even a goblin, this is a night goblin, a representative of a particularly fanatical and many would even say abnormal part of the goblins, which, in addition, is far from human lands in terms of the plot. But we can use it just the same.
[] - Write-in your option.

The last part is about how we're going to embody richness in terms of character customization options. If we take the original board game, then the characters are divided mainly into three types. The first is duelists, who can defeat almost anyone in hand-to-hand combat. The second is magicians who can unleash devastating spells on the enemy. Third, these are priests, who are a cross between fighters and magicians, are not found in all factions. But what elements should the leveling up of heroes and lords consist of?

Choose two options that will NOT be realized:
[] - Access to new weapons. As the level increases, heroes and lords get the opportunity to arm themselves with new weapons. Most start with only hand weapons, but then they get access to halberds and two-handed weapons, which give a bonus against the corresponding categories of opponents, as well as small arms.
[] - Leadership skills. All lords and heroes should be able to influence at least the nearest troops, increasing their morale in battle. But beyond that, they can also have skill chains that specialize them in assisting specific troops. This will compensate for the weakness of random characters in direct combat by making them more dangerous leaders.
[] - Unique artifacts. We can implement various unique and not so unique items for lords and heroes, which can not only give bonuses, but even change the model of the lord with the appropriate approach. They will be obtained by passing fights with bosses in special battles.
[] - Mountable animals. Mounts play a rather important role in the gameplay, which allow you to turn the hero from a representative of one class of fighters into a completely different one. Fighting an elf prince on foot is a very different matter from fighting him on a dragon.
[] - Joining squads. From us, this will require significant attention and time, however, we can quite implement the change of units by joining the hero to a unit of a similar type. On the one hand, this can make the hero more vulnerable due to the lesser mobility of units, but on the other hand, he will be much more protected among the fighters.
[] - Great feats. This has actually already been implemented in some form, where when performing an impressive action - for example, capturing a large city, the character receives a certain title. In this case, he can receive a unique trait when capturing the capital of a faction or defeating its unique leader.