쇼군2 토탈워 New Interviews of STW 2

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Shogun 2 Total War: Craig Laycock Interview

Published By: Conrad Reyners   On: Friday 29 Oct 5:30 PM

By Conrad Reyners

Conrad has a chat with Craig Laycock - Creative Assembly’s Community Manager.

We spent some time together going over Shogun 2 – the sequel to the original, decade old Creative Assembly title. Our first impressions of the game are already up for you to read but as well as that; we had a great opportunity to pick Craig’s brain about Creative Assembly's upcoming entry.

For all the hardcore Total War fans out there, read on. There are many hints, admissions, denials and secrets below. If you care at all about the Total War series, you owe it to yourself to go get a biscuit and a cup of tea, and settle down for a good, in-depth and informative read.

NZGamer.com: Why Shogun? Why come back to Shogun, we’ve been here before; the original Shogun was ten years ago.

Well, I think that plays a big part of it. It was ten years ago, that’s a big nice round number. It also gives us a chance to work on a direct sequel. I mean, we’ve had Medieval 2 but the Australian studio did that. This was kind of an opportunity for us guys internally for us to go back and have a go making a sequel. I also think that there were a lot of guys in the team now – I think when Shogun was originally made there were about eight or ten guys working on the game – now there are one hundred and fifty, one hundred and sixty guys. And they all played Shogun and for some that’s why the joined Creative Assembly. Its certainly not for the location, we are in the Horsham – the middle of nowhere in the UK! I think everyone is psyched about going back and doing things again. Maybe doing some things we wanted to do in Shogun 1 but can now only do in Shogun 2. It’s almost like a personal challenge for a lot of the guys, and it’s a way of paying homage to the game that started it all really.

Creative Assembly has a development iteration cycle. A title is created, then refined and the next title after it improves on that original – then you start again. Take Empire, it was the creation and Napoleon was the refinement. Where is Shogun2 in that process?

Empire was the revolution and then Napoleon was the evolution. We are kinda going back to the revolution for Shogun2. It is kind of similar to Napoleon, so in a sense it is still evolution – but so much has changed in the last ten years, there has been such a leap technologically. We don’t still too much to the cycle, we do whatever is right at the time, and we do what we think will be the most fun to work on. But yea, I think it’s more of a revolution than an evolution.

NZGamer.com: Was there anything that you think didn’t work in Napoleon, and you either removed or updated in Shogun 2?

I think it’s been more of a tinkering. We kind of look at what works and what doesn’t. Things that work we keep things that don’t we get rid of. Things like introducing the family tree again, that worked really well in previous games. We always felt that worked, but it didn’t set well with the setting of Napoleon, that being more about arms races. So it was nice to have a setting where we could bring it back as well. We’ve got quite a long memory in terms of features that worked in the past, so we could bring back anything really.

NZGamer.com: What changes were made to the battle map AI?

AI is pretty active now. We made it analyse the situation on the battlefield. It will look for situations and take advantage of them. So you can expect to see cavalry moving a lot more decisively and trying to get around your flanks. We also have a line of sight system now – so the AI isn’t physic. It will look to see whether it can see you or your units. Say if you are covered by a hill for example, it won’t kind of psychically know you are there. So you can use hills and things to hide your units behind.

NZGamer.com: What about castles and sieges?

The idea is that there will be loads of courtyards and ambush points within the castle. We’ve really kind of worked on the path finding for forts and sieges. We’ve really tried to work on the tactical elements, so you are not just bursting through a wall fighting, and having a big fight in the courtyard. You can have guys climbing up the walls and fighting all over the place; have your ninjas kinda getting up the sides. The idea is now that you need to defend from multiple points; you can’t just let the guys in and then cut them off at a choke point. Yea, so we’ve done loads of work on the castles and sieges.

NZGamer.com: What’s the battle map like as a resource hog? Will Shogun 2 need significant GPU power?

We are kind of aiming for Napoleon specs, so a lot of the stuff we’ve done in terms of engine improvement has been under the hood kind of stuff. Its nips and tucks and basically if you can play Napoleon you should be able to run Shogun 2 as well. Although, we haven’t actually finalised our system specs yet. And obviously the more powerful your machine the more it’s going to scale. But we’ve still got it so you can play it on a reasonable old PC.

NZGamer.com: Are cavalry now a lot more powerful than in previous titles?

It depends what kind of unit they are up against. We’ve tried to make it a lot clearer. In terms of Japanese warfare Calvary was pretty powerful. We’ve tried to reflect that as much as possible. With empire and Napoleon the cavalry wasn’t perhaps quite as useful as it was in other games. But we want that epic cavalry charge feel.

NZGamer.com: How do spies and specialist units play out in the campaign map?

We’ve kinda reworked it a little bit. Agents now have a more defined purpose. We’ve got the whole “rock paper scissors” thing going with the agents as well. So you have geishas who are particularly good at assassinating. Then you have ninjas who are good at assassinating or who can sabotage armies, and they can also so subterfuge. But within that we now have skill trees. So each agent can work their way through and unlock new skills. It’s a reworking of the trait system. Beforehand you’d perform an action and a trait would be assigned based on what you’d done. Which is kinda nice, but we wanted to give the player more control. Players will have more control of the destiny of their characters and feel more attached to them. Generals will have their own skill tree as well.

NZGamer.com: What about the research trees we saw in Napoleon?

We have reworked that. Now we have a research tree called the “Mastery of the Arts” which takes a fixed number of turns to progress through. So at the moment you can’t boost that with agents. The idea is that you learn things as you go and unlock things as you go along. The “Mastery of the Arts” is divided down two major routes. You can go the way of chi or the way of bushido. So with chi you can go for the more philosophical and get campaign bonuses. Tax bonuses, happiness bonuses. Or you can go the way of bushido and unlock all the cool things like fire arrows and the like. The idea is that you will never be able to get through all of both. You have to specialise. When you select certain things it will lock other paths, every play through is going to be different.

NZGamer.com: What’s new about the in game economy?

We have reworked things a little bit. Now we have food, which limits your growth. You need to make sure you have an adequate supply of food in order to recruit new troops. Your castle is your provincial stronghold, and all the food in the province gets consumed by the castle. So you need to have a positive balance of food if you want to be able to recruit units effectively. The trade routes are also coming back, but they will be overland trade routes.

NZGamer.com: Will your castles just stay as castles? Is there is no need to engage in ‘flipping’ between castles and towns?

We do have regions where there might just be strongholds (which is worse than a castle) instead of castles, but most regions will have a castle in there. Or some kind of military building present. You can upgrade your castles to fortresses and beyond that as well. There is the whole idea of having markets as well. The size of your settlement will determine the amount of slots that your settlement will be able to build. And improvements in the region would contribute to the castles. They kind of work like towns from previous games. So it’s similar to the way Napoleon works, but instead of towns they are called farms. On the economy screen we have tried to cram in as much as possible in, just for those who want to see everything in detail.

NZGamer.com: Religion is getting an injection into the Total War experience. Other titles like Civilization have tried this, but Civ has just gotten rid of it. Why did you decide to take that route?

It was to give it a little more colour and depth and strategy in terms of how that dynamic works. The religion gives players dilemmas. So, it was kind of a decision to make the player stay on their toes a bit. We haven’t gone over the top and had the whole, religion spreading to different settlements as much as say, Civilization did. We are still toying with the idea of missionaries. We are still engaging in heavy play testing at the moment to see how it all balances, which will determine how all that stuff pans out. But we wanted to put in dilemmas, it adds to the flavour and colour of the game. There will also be other dilemmas, such as earthquakes and volcanoes and stuff. You will have to choose to provide disaster relief and the like. There are also emergent dilemmas, if you take out a clan, any units they have left will be left as ronin roaming the landscape. They are hireable, so you have the option to make them mercenaries – but they won’t be as loyal, there is a whole loyalty system in place – but it saves them from harassing you. Or you can kill them, or you can leave them as bandits, roaming around destroying the countryside. Which might be very bad if you’re right next to them. But if your away from them, it might be advantageous to just let them go feral!

NZGamer.com: Any new developments to multiplayer?

It’s a little early to say. But there is a whole team working on the multiplayer aspects of the game. With some other total war titles the multiplayer felt a little tacked on at the end. With Shogun the multiplayer forms an integral part of the game. It’s going to feature quite heavily.

NZGamer.com: Have there been any moves to make the economy or taxation elements easier to manage? In previous games this has really been segregated at the regional level, has this changed?

Yea, it’s kind of, well the food thing is an example perhaps of how that all works. The food does still come in on a province by province basis. Gold will still be really important, so tax income will be important for your armies and buildings. All of that stuff will still be there, as will certain buildings that will generate income.

NZGamer.com: Can you raid land based trade routes?

Hah, well, we haven’t announced whether we are going to be able to do that a lot. Haha, I know that’s probably not a very satisfying answer for you but we aren’t ready to talk about that yet.

NZGamer.com: How do hero units work in Shogun 2?

They are going to be based on actual historical figures. They are going to be the highest level of a certain path of soldier. So, you have a few different ranks of units and as you go up you get improved units. The idea is that the hero unit is the very top unit. They are the supreme unit and they will be the best, elite unit. You obtain them from building legendary buildings, which are the highest level of the building chains. So the idea is that you will need to put a lot of effort and investment into getting these units. But when you’ve got them they are the most bad-ass type of unit on the battle map. They wont win a battle single handedly but they are going to help you influence it.

NZGamer.com: Can you have more than one hero unit at the same time?

We want players not to really be in that situation. We want players to specialise so we are still balancing whether we allow players to have two or three. It suits the gameplay to have choices a lot more. So players should specialise in one particular type of hero – we are going to push it towards one, maybe maximum two hero units. But the other player could have heroes, so you can have heroes fighting on either side.

NZGamer.com: Has the battle map camera been changed?

We’ve tried to maybe give the player a little more control in terms of how high they can get. Not a massive amount, but a little more height so they can get a broader overview of what’s going on. And that kind of suits the terrain a little bit; players can see what’s going on and how the terrain is looking. It’s all about giving the player more control – it ties in to the changes to the campaign map.

NZGamer.com: What improvements have been made with the AI?

The AI is constantly analysing the situation, it will try and counter you with its own units. With AI, it’s a really big thing for us. With Empire there was a lot of talk in the Press about our AI, it’s actually really hard to make a battlefield AI, there are so many variables, it’s very difficult to make one with human like behaviour. But every time we work on it we get closer to it. Mike Simpson our creative director has basically said, the game is not going out the door until the AI is perfect. He has the game by the balls basically, and won’t let it go out until its perfect. We want to make a game that we are proud of. We don’t want dodgy AI, we don’t want strange behaviour. Some of these work logically when you look at the logic of the AI, but they look really stupid to a human player. It’s about finding that balance logistically to make it the best at mimicking human behaviour. But we are going to make sure that Shogun 2 has the best of any AI. That’s the goal.

NZGamer.com: Campaign map wise, any changes to the AI there?

The main thing we had problems with was naval invasions. But we’ve worked on this; there is a different flavour to the different clans. Some will favour coastal defences, but the AI is going to put up a fight this time. You’re going to feel like there is a strong challenge there. Whatever your starting point is in the game you’re going to face some pretty sturdy challenges along the way. Enemy clans will be spying on your armies; the AI will be using agents more effectively. The AI can do some quite clever things with them.

NZGamer.com: How has the modification community been included in Shogun 2?

The aim with Empire and Napoleon was to include the community much more. Actually it hasn’t quite turned out like that. The community has struggled a little bit with our file formats. That wasn’t intentional on our part, and we were quite surprised by that. There’s not going to be any native support in the game, but we are trying to increase transparency with the community. We are doing modding workshops to show modders how the file formats work. I mean, we don’t want to shut out mods – some of the guys who work here are former modders themselves.

The Bit at the End

So there you have it, straight from the horse’s mouth. Well, not exactly, Craig isn’t a horse, but you get the idea. It’s fairly obvious that Creative assembly are staying pretty tight lipped about their new title, and with good(ish) reason. Shogun 2 is still in development and it’s going to be awhile before design decisions and balancing issues are resolved.

But from what NZGamer.com saw and heard, it is shaping up to be an interesting and complex addition to the Total War Family. But as the Japanese say: “keizoku wa chikara nari”. Perseverance is strength. We are just going to have to wait a few months longer before we find out for sure if Shogun 2 is worthy of its namesake

 

 

http://www.buzzfocus.com/2010/10/15/exclusive-interview-shogun-2-total-war-studio-manager-at-the-creative-assembly/

 

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/adventure/shogun2totalwar/video/6282200/shogun-2-total-war-interview-with-craig-laycock

Shogun 2: Total War Interview With Craig Laycock

• 1,549 Views
• Posted Oct 17, 2010

James Kozanecki speaks to The Creative Assembly's senior community manager, Craig Laycock, about Shogun 2's changes and improvements in its game mechanics.

http://www.gameplanet.co.nz/pc/games/162638/features/135903.20101019.Craig-Laycock-on-Shogun-2/

Craig Laycock on Shogun 2

Creative Assembly’s Community Manager Craig Laycock swung by SEGA's Auckland office this week on a whistle-stop trip to expound the virtues of Shogun 2: Total War. We put a few questions to him regarding a new take on an old favourite.

Interview

by Dan Cheer (19/10/10)

 

GP: Many believed in the wake of Empire and Napoleon that the Total War series was on a modernising trajectory. What were the other conflicts you considered in the boardroom before settling on revisiting Feudal Japan?

Craig: [laughs] We've got loads and loads of ideas from different time periods that we might do. It'll quite often come down to one or two members of the team making a particularly compelling case for a specific game. So with Shogun 2, it was a case of going back to our roots. We've made a decades worth of progress, let's go back to our roots and do everything we wished we could have done ten years ago, in terms of all the extra engine technology we've put in there and all the extra gameplay advances we've made. So there's a few different areas we've considered. We considered going back to other games. We also considered some really crazy stuff, like future tech, and all kinds of weird stuff. So we're always considering different time periods. If something works, we'll do it, if someone can make a compelling case for it. If we think we can make it into a fun game, we'll definitely do it.

 

Craig Laycock: Community Manager at The Creative Assembly.

GP: Shogun 2 has been described as an “art-led game”. Beyond portraits and information panels, how has art direction led design?

Craig: Art permeates throughout the entire game. An example would be the 2D/3D campaign map we've got. It was something we prototyped as an art thing to start with. Someone just drew some concept art in 2D and 3D side by side. We weren't really sure if it was going to work in the game, but we kind of let the art team direct that, in terms of giving it a go. And when we implemented the early code it worked really well, so we kept it. I think it has to be an art-led game when it's set in such an iconic time period. There's certainly artistic influences from Japan, things like the seasons are always portrayed quite artistically, so it's better to think of it from an artistic perspective. I think it's the most stylish Total War we've ever done.

GP: Battle AI has been a thorn in the side of the Total War series since its inception. What improvements can players familiar with the series expect?

Craig: Mike Simpson, our creative director, has basically said 'this game is not going out the door until the AI is perfect'. AI really has been a bit of an issue for us in the past. But even Napoleon was better than Empire. I mean, one of our goals for Napoleon was to fix the issues we had in Empire, and I think to an extent we did that really well. But in terms of Shogun 2 we're not going to release it until it's perfect. There's the line-of-sight stuff we're introducing - basically, if any of our designers are playing the game and see something stupid, it's like everyone stops. Everyone gets around the PC to have a look at it, and see what can we do to fix it. We want to get it so there's nothing stupid happening in the game. We don't want to see stupid AI. It is a big thorn in our side, and it's something we've really had to work on. We're pretty confident about Shogun 2.

 

GP: Will Shogun 2 reprise strategies from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, and how will these AI improvements better reflect his strategies?

Craig: On the art side, design-wise, and also the way the game is played, it's driven by Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu is a big thing for us. Most of the design, in terms of the unit simplification kind of came from Sun Tzu. The idea that a certain kind of unit has a very specific kind of purpose, it'll beat another kind of unit with a specific purpose. We wanted to kind of simplify the number of units, so you don't have - for example - two kinds of musketmen that are very similar. You can't really tell what the difference is. We wanted it to be nice and clear, so if Sun Tzu says that cavalry beats infantry, we want to reflect that in the game as well. So you've got one or two cavalry pieces in the game, and you can kind of see how that will be in the end. It's really driven from the Sun Tzu side of things, and that permeates throughout the game.

GP: The Total War series has increased in scope over its five instalments, now you’re returning to a very small setting. What do you believe are the benefits and drawbacks of decreasing the game’s geographic scale?

 

Craig: Geographic scale is an interesting one, because although we've homed it in on Japan, we've actually magnified the scale. So it's comparable to Empire and Napoleon. There's a lot of benefits to doing that. For starters, you've got a more focused setting, so you know right from the start your objective is to unite Japan under your banner. So the player knows right from the start what they have to do. They know the limits of where they can go, and they can make their own path as they go. This whole kind of emergent gameplay - giving the player the tools when they start, and only having one or two regions instead of ten allows the player to create their own story as they go. So having a tightly focused setting benefits the title. On the downside, there are some players who like that kind of world-spanning scale, they like being able to flick between different theatres of conflict. But what I would say to those players is give Shogun 2 a chance, see how you feel with the more focused game. We've actually played it internally, and we have a lot of guys who prefer the huge scale, but when they've played Shogun 2 they've actually really enjoyed it. So give it a go!

GP: The original Shogun was the only game in the series to feature interactive diplomacy. Is this something that will make a return in Shogun 2?

 

Craig: We've kind of overhauled the diplomacy a little bit. All of the cool stuff that was in Empire and Napoleon will be returning, but we've also got the clan management side of things as well. So previously you could negotiate alliances with the factions, which kind of suited the European theatre of Empire and Napoleon, with the global intrigue side of things. With Shogun 2 it's much more about loyalty, honour, and how you interact with other clans, it's a bit more personal. There's things like a prisoner exchange program, or hostage exchange, where you can swap a daughter or a son with a daughter or son from another clan. So you've kind of got a blood bond there which will give you a really strong alliance. It allows you to marry another clans daughter into your bloodline to produce an heir. There's loads of stuff we've done there to make diplomacy a little bit more interesting, and also it ties into the whole story thing as well. Players might have an alliance with a clan, and have a daughter married into that clan who might be accidentally killed, that sort of thing. The players get to write their own story. It makes it more interesting, adds more colour and flavour to the campaign.

 

GP: Religion will be making a return to the series after an absence. What improvements have you made to the religion system?

Craig: Previously, each of your provinces would have a religion level, and that can be influenced by agents, like monks for example, who can spread a certain kind of religion. With Shogun 2, we wanted to have all that stuff that was in the previous games, but also ramp it up a notch. So you have the introduction of Christianity, for example, from the Europeans, which really kind of mixes it up a bit and throws a spanner in the works, because you can have clans who are trying to convert to Christianity, and when that happens you have a religious conflict as well. So it makes things more interesting - instead of there being heaps of complimentary religions, there's a bit of religious conflict in there as well.

GP: Will technology be researchable as it has been in more recent Total War games, or will it simply unlock as it did in the original?

 

Craig: Mastery of the arts, is what we're calling it. So instead of pumping lots of resources into a technology, it's going to be a learned art system. It is unlockable, but you have to take a certain number of turns to unlock it. So Tea Ceremony, for example, which would give me an increase in happiness in regions, that would take twelve turns to unlock. You kind of work down the skill tree, or down the arts tree as we're calling it. As you go down you unlock it further and further, and different paths will take you to different options.

GP: What improvements have you made to multiplayer to make it more desirable to players?

Craig: We've done quite a lot with multiplayer. A lot of the cool stuff from Empire and Napoleon will be coming back, but we're also going to be doing some brand new stuff, which I'm not allowed to talk about yet! But it is going to be very cool. We've got a whole new element of multiplayer coming in. With Steam, we've always been able to get a good clan matching system going on, so with Steamworks we can have players match each other, and that works well with what we're planning to do. But I can't really say much about it, but that gives you an idea of the direction we're heading in. If you look at the previous stuff we did, we have a multiplayer campaign for example, we had drop-in battles where instead of playing the AI you could play a human opponent. It's reasonable to speculate that may be returning.

 

GP: What were the key difficulties in implementing night battles? Why are they being introduced now?

Craig: I think, to answer the second question first, we're introducing them now because it just looks really good on the engine. It looks really nice. You saw the battle there, how atmospheric it looked with the lights - when you can have 300 light sources at any one time, it really makes it more atmospheric. In terms of the difficulties, I suppose the main difficulty is why would we do it? What is the purpose of the night battle? So we want the battles to have a purpose in terms of your progression in the campaign. So the night battles will give you an element of surprise. As well as looking cool, we had to have a gameplay reason for their inclusion.