Reply To: Cathedrals of Commerce

January 16, 2004 at 10:27 pm #738912

Participant

AOE would be axonometric I think in architecture speak. I think, but that might have advanced with most recent editions. Whereas the total war formula is based upon landscape models the likes of which you might normally see in a Flight simulator game.

The little people are only 2D card board cut outs, and perform very limited repetitive 5 frame sequence actions like throw spears or riding horses etc. But there is so many of them on the screen at once, that things have to be made pretty simple.

Aside from that, each type of unit or brigade behaves a little differently, some get scared and run off quicker etc. There was a series on the BBC where they televised people re-enacting great battles – was great fun.

The LOTR battles for middle earth were created using a similar idea. The problem that they found using AI warriors in LOTRs was, that if the soldier or ORK couldn’t find an opponent in the melee, he simply would just run off into the landscape and never return. But you don’t notice it in the film.

Here are lots more images.

http://mysite.freeserve.com/lordkrazy/
http://www.totalwar.com/community/vikingsp1.htm
http://www.totalwar.org/mongol/screenshots.shtml

A couple of more ones I happen to love;