Total War: Empire’s AI was annoyingly peace-loving at one point, developers reveal

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Creative Assembly is continuing to celebrate 25 years of the Total War series with behind-the-scenes looks at game development. Recently, they shared how a cancelled console Total War game led to a great feature in Total War: Medieval 2. Their latest video focuses on Total War: Empire, a game that still impacts the series today. Empire was the first to use the Warscape Engine – which is still used in modern Total War games – though the engine has been almost completely rebuilt over the years, a deliberate design choice from the start.

The Empire wasn’t just a technical improvement; it also prompted Creative Assembly to re-evaluate how they made games.

Scott Pitkethly, a battle designer, explained that they used to build a simulation of the game and then test how it played. This method sometimes worked great, but other times the simulation was technically sound but simply wasn’t enjoyable. Now, the team focuses on ensuring the game is fun from the beginning, before building the simulation.

He used sailing as an example to illustrate the issue: Originally, the game didn’t allow players to sail directly into the wind, forcing ships to follow a zig-zag path, just like in real life. This was confusing for players because the actual course the boats took didn’t match what they intended.

Okay, so the land combat was just as frustrating. They tried something new with buildings you could actually go *inside* of, which was cool – finally, some urban warfare! We could put our infantry in there for cover and shoot out the windows. But honestly, it was broken. Enemy troops outside could just blast us to bits way faster than we could react, which totally wasn’t the idea. The devs wanted the buildings to *protect* us, but they ended up being death traps!

“Gunpowder did cause some issues,” Pitkethly explained. “We’re always balancing historical accuracy with creating an enjoyable experience for visitors.”

The game initially aimed to simulate the entire world, but developers scaled back the vision to focus on trade regions. Tim Gosling, who worked on the game’s AI, explained that they had to be realistic about what they could achieve. He often had to start over because fundamental parts of the game were constantly being revised.

Even building the AI wasn’t without challenges. Once we got the diplomacy feature working, the AI started negotiating with itself and happily concluding that everything was perfect. As a joke, we called it ‘Empire: Total Negotiated Settlement’ because it just wanted to maintain the status quo. While it was good to see the AI functioning, it wasn’t the outcome we were aiming for, Gosling explained.

Reflecting on the impact of *Empire*, Pitkethly explained that it established a new standard for the *Total War* series in terms of its ambitious scale, intricate details, and overall complexity. It essentially defined what a *Total War* game could achieve, and created an expectation that’s been difficult to move away from.

As a long-time Total War fan, I was really excited to hear Ellie Koorlander, the current technical art director, talk about the latest game. She called it a total ‘creative eye opener’ – not just for her, but for the whole series! It sounds like it’s opened doors to explore all sorts of new settings, both in history and beyond, which is amazing!

The plans for the next Total War games will be revealed at the end of 2025.

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2025-09-17 19:17