Total War finally given Campaign MP

By Robert Purchese Published 2 December, 2009

Creative Assembly's strategy is complete.

After nearly 10 years, SEGA and Creative Assembly's seminal Total War series is ready for Campaign multiplayer.

At first, integration will be rudimentary; a global beta will begin on 7th December and you'll need to sign-up for to participate. To begin with, only two human players will be able to occupy the Campaign map, either working against each other or expanding co-operatively.

The Campaign map, incidentally, is the Risk-style, turn-based portion of the game that involves building and managing settlements like in Civilization and plotting your global conquest. The Battle map is the hands-on RTS element that involves bossing your troops to glorious victory.

Six months have been spent testing Campaign multiplayer features in-house at Creative Assembly already. There are a few screenshots of the multiplayer in action in our Empire: Total War gallery.

On 7th December we'll also be treated to the Elite Units of America DLC. This adds, for £2/€3, powerful new fighters to the American, British and French factions - recognisable soldiers that changed the face of history forever.

Campaign multiplayer may the missing ingredient that has prevented the Total War series being awarded a 10/10 from Eurogamer. Still, a 9/10 for every core iteration isn't a bad tally.

Head over to our Empire: Total War review to find out more.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (13) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Wobbler #1 2 years ago

    About time!

  • Fellblade #2 2 years ago

    Shiney! Now I just need to get around to buying E:TW instead of repeatly replaying M2:TW :)

  • JahB #3 2 years ago

    does this mean they can now get started on the sequel to spartan total warrior?

    i sure as hell hope so.

  • makeamazing #4 2 years ago

    I would rather they fix issues that make my Windows 7 game blue screen, than MP... :( oh and make a new Rome or Medieval war next rather than MP please.

  • Bravestinsane #5 2 years ago

    awesome just awesome

  • Mr_Brown #6 2 years ago

    Excellent! I take it just means Empire mp then. Medievil 2 campaign multiplayer would be fantastic.

  • Loser #7 2 years ago

    SLI support would make me happier I must say...

  • Lin #8 2 years ago

    i won't play multiplayer campaigns. the gameplay just doesn't lend itself to it. TW does not need campaign multiplayer for the same reasons that Galactic Civilizations does not. see this thread written by a GOTY award winning developer

    [link url=http://forums.galciv2 .com/98074
    ]http://forums.galciv2 .com/98074
    [/link]

    very few TBS gamers want multiplayer campaigns or use them. the only people who really care about it are reviewers, and this is half the reason why it keeps getting put in.

    i see this as a massive failure. i would have far rather that CA (for the first time in their ten year career) had tried to write competent campaign AI, made more factions playable, address the fundamental problems that cause the campaign to play out the exact same way every time, improved the naval interface to stop sea battles descending into farce every time, had released some of their modding tools to the community....

    or, just for once, had actually expanded one of their games instead of just throwing a bunch of mini-campaigns and new units at us.

  • Gazza_UK #9 2 years ago

    If my computer wasnt 4 years old, this is all i would play.

  • Metalfish #10 2 years ago

    Well, Lin is right about one thing, the AI is pathetic. Initially impressively dynamic, you soon learn that it is so damn schizophrenic that it is completely unable to react to your deployments without splintering its battle line in to several disorderly blocks of cannon fodder. I don't want AI that has such a huge morale advantage it wins by attrition, I want AI that doesn't blunder into killing fields over and over again.

  • hiddenranbir #11 2 years ago

    Sorry Lin,

    ...but Civilization 4, the de facto TBS game of the genre proves that multiplayer is a great thing for strategy games. Frogboy was wrong for GalCiv 2. It is a game with little soul that would have done a world of good had it had real people to play with. Besides, it isn't as if GalCiv's lack of mp gave it any better AI - which isn't that impressive when it boils down to it.

    It is great for ETW to get mp. The fun will multiply when we get mods to play multiplayer as well.


    Edited by 1 at 02/12/09 @ 16:47

  • makeamazing #12 2 years ago

    I actually agree with Lin, and i think it will be very difficult to have a MP game in most cases, especially with people you dont know... i think its perfect if you have others who you can rely on, otherwise i dont think its going to work.

  • CordableTuna #13 2 years ago

    "Creative Assembly's strategy is complete."

    As someone who bought the game on launch day and waited half a year for patches to finally end up with its current "No more patches! We're doing Napoleon now!" state, I wouldn't exactly call it complete...