Despite a vast ocean at the center of its expanded map, Creative Assembly says no to Warhammer Naval Battles
Fans of the Total War franchise have known that Total War: Warhammer would be expanding to the new shores since before the game’s release. Warhammer II will extend the current campaign map to the far West, entering the New World. With such a wide swathe of ocean separating the Old World from the New, many players anticipated naval combat to be implemented in some way.
However, Creative Assembly has recently announced that it would not be including naval combat, a decision that has upset some players. Here’s a look at how naval travel will be used in the upcoming game, as well as why the developers came to this decision.
Naval Travel Will Likely Remain as it is
An example of the game’s auto resolve. Many critics of the game have stated that this aspect of gameplay is broken, with the auto resolve favoring some factions over others.
Naval travel was implemented into the first Total War Warhammer, though it is rarely used due to most locations of the map being accessible through land travel. Whenever two armies encounter each other on the open seas or a large river, the player is forced to either flee or auto resolve the battle. This may become a problem when high amounts of army traffic begins travelling between continents, due to the complaints that the auto resolve is unreliable to the point of being broken.
Lack of Naval Battles May be Due to Licensing Issue
Man o’ War Corsair, the PC game based on tabletop game of the same name. Man o’ War focuses exclusively on the naval battles of the Warhammer Fantasy universe.
Part of the decision to not include naval combat in Total War Warhammer was most likely influenced by the presence of another game, one that was released through Steam’s Early Access section. Man o’ War Corsair is based on Games Workshop’s naval warfare tabletop game, which uses the same universe as Warhammer Fantasy. Man o’ War is a Games Workshop licensed game, so the fact that they have already produced a PC game using that IP would make using naval combat in Total War tricky at best.
Decision is Probably a Result of Allocating Resources into Other Mechanics
A mighty Slann Priest projects powerful magic, and will likely be one of the key characters from the Lizardmen faction dedicated to interacting with the mysterious vortex.
Total War Warhammer II will introduce a number of mechanics that were not in the previous installment. One of the most prevalent of these is the vortex, a giant warp storm that different factions can interact with in different ways. Implementing naval battles into the game would’ve required a lot of resources to be devoted to it, with new content being added to all previous factions as well as upcoming ones.
The fan response to this announcement has ranged from disappointment to complete apathy, especially given that players were dissatisfied with how naval battles were handled in other recent Total War games. While the forced auto resolve during naval engagements is frustrating, its probably for the best that the game focus on its land battles and campaign map.
Source Links:
Man o' War: Corsair Steam Page
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