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Medieval II: Total War
Developer Diary – Diplomacy

Dan Toose, Game Designer, Creative Assembly Australia
Hey, my name’s Dan Toose, one of the designers focused on the campaign aspect of Medieval II: Total War, including among many things, overseeing our redesign of the diplomacy system. Thanks to the tireless efforts of programmer Scott Lowther to help make the designs a reality, we’re able to share a bit about the thinking behind how we’ve revamped the Total War way of dealing with the other powers in the world.

In Rome: Total War the diplomacy system handled each diplomatic proposal in such a way as to ‘wrap up’ a collection of offers and/or demands as a whole proposal. When the player sent the AI a proposal, they would get a response which would ideally give them an indication as to what happened and why. Despite the admirable work done to create the ‘packaged proposal’ system, we had come to the conclusion that there was still too much mystery in Total War diplomacy.

Upon revising the system for Medieval II, we felt that the key means to improve diplomacy was to do away that ‘mystery’ factor, or at least make things less mysterious than they were – after all, unless you can read minds, there’s always a little mystery in negotiation.

It prompted the question, “What is diplomacy?” – Our answer was that the negotiation aspect of diplomacy is all about two things:

Trying to read what the other party wants
Creating a proposal that takes that knowledge into account, and helps you get what you want

Reading the other party - Their Situation
To start offering the player some extra information about what the other party needs or wants, we looked at ways to go about offering that sort of knowledge without making the AI an open book. To do this, we chose some key points to relate to the player that describe things about the other faction’s place in the world – these things offered some vague hints as to what may be a good or bad thing to include in a diplomatic proposal. These include things such as:

Their military power
Their financial power
Their reputation
Their relations with your faction
Anything they are known to be actively seeking from your faction

After all, there is no point in asking a very poor faction for a lot of money, as it’s something that they may not be able to comply with. If that same faction however had lots of military forces, perhaps it could be asked for assistance in a war.

Reading the other party - Their Reaction

There is one particular element of diplomacy we wanted to convey to the player in a much more precise way, and that’s the AI’s reaction to what the player has proposed. After all, when you’re haggling with someone in real life, it is generally easy to tell if their decision was a close call or not. We didn’t want a player who made a proposal that was only JUST rejected to feel that they were way off the mark. Conversely, we didn’t want a player who’d made an incredibly insulting offer to make the mistake of thinking their offer was reasonable, or simply just a ‘no’.

Our solution to this dilemma was to show the AI’s ‘Demeanour’ after every proposal the player makes. It doesn’t stop the player from insulting the AI, or giving way too generous an offer, but it does let them know when that’s happened, allowing them to make a better proposal next time around. We always wanted the first proposal to require some smarts, then ‘feel’ out the bumps in the counters.

Understanding your own proposal
While common sense allowed most players to form intelligent proposals in Rome: Total War, the diplomacy system itself didn’t tell the player when they were making a good or bad offer. For example – the player may ask for an alliance with another faction, but has no idea if that is deemed to be a good or bad offer by the game’s terms.

To take out some of the mystery, we devised a system that informs the player if their proposal is generous, demanding or balanced BEFORE they present it to the AI. This means that the player will be aware if the offer they are making is extortionate or generous in the Medieval II world. This will prove extremely useful for a player who desperately wants to strengthen or worsen their relationship with another faction.

Learning how to push your luck
If the player pays attention to their proposal balance and the other faction’s current position, they are actually armed with the information to not only make a balanced proposal, but also try and make a proposal that is demanding – while still being appealing to the other party.

For example, let’s say you’re dealing with a faction that has lots of money, and desperately needs military aid. You could create a proposal that offers military aid against their enemy, in exchange for a huge sum of money. The proposal itself may be rather demanding, but for the AI faction that needs military aid more than money, it may be an offer they can’t refuse.

So long as the player takes note of the proposal balance, the AI’s situation, and their reaction via the demeanour display, they have everything they need to know to make an intelligent proposal, and also how to intelligently make a better offer based on how the AI reacts.

One final aspect of ‘pushing your luck’ can be felt when you make several proposals in one sitting. The people you deal with can alter their take on you depending on the nature of your proposals. If you keep making outrageous demands, you WILL annoy someone.

What else matters?
Exposing what the other person was thinking is one thing, but to truly convey the nature of a reaction you really need to sample a human quality – we chose to use speech. That involved coming up with a system that can detect varying degrees of reaction and assigning appropriate voice acting to convey that reaction as desired. Best of all, the feedback is immediate – You’ll know when just a few more florins will sweeten a deal enough… or when you’ve been insulting.

Aside from its use to the player, we really wanted this to be an area of the game where you can get a feel for the people you’re dealing with. A large amount of dialogue was recorded and we’ve significant upped the number of accents included in the game compared to previous Total War titles, so when you deal with the French in diplomacy, you hear a Frenchman delivering the dialogue.

What else does diplomacy touch?
Armed with the ability to measure how insulting or appreciated something was, AI factions can now have their view towards you altered in degrees. This means the player’s behaviour in diplomacy will actually effect what they have to face in their campaign.

We then applied the same philosophy of exposing a shift in stance from the actual act of diplomacy, out into the whole faction relations system that tracks what every faction thinks of every other faction. When things either break down between two factions, or relations improve – the player is notified.

What’s next here?
For us, adding in more speech than we’d originally planned, and then… tuning and testing – Something that the mod community may well also be able to dabble in without too much issue.

Discuss
Why not visit the forums and have your say on this or any other Total War subject. You can find our forums here.

Medieval II: Total War

Developer Diary – Event Movies

Nick Tresadern Artist, Creative Assembly UK

Hi, I'm Nick Tresadern and my role for this game was to design, oversee and create the event movies that appear on the game's strategy map in the grand campaign. I worked with an art team that comprised mainly of myself, Pawel Wojs and Roland McDonald, with animators Greg Alston and Ben Potts handling the animations and motion capture and other CA artists helping out as required. I actually had the very same role on the first Total War title, Shogun, where I designed and made the movies that portrayed the assassination attempts. These assassination movies were a popular feature and many Total War fans had requested their return. When the opportunity to work on these came around I was delighted, especially as Medieval 2 gave me the opportunity to make them even bigger, better and more numerous than before.

Raising the bar

This time along with assassination movies, Medieval II : Total War includes other types of event movies. These include infiltrations and sabotage attempts, and some special events, e.g. a princess's royal wedding to ally two factions to each other, the coronation ceremony of a new Pope in a packed cathedral, and the public burning of a heretic at the stake by the merciless Inquisition. A much larger variety of movies was required for Medieval II, as the events can take place in a number of environments, from lush outdoor locales in Europe to dusty desert settlements in the Middle East and vast cathedral interiors flooded with multi-coloured light from the huge stained glass windows. This range of environments clearly required us to render out loads more movies than Shogun

had, as most of the Shogun environments were simply set in specifically Japanese locations. There's now also a larger range of targets that can be assassinated. As well as being able to assassinate the poor old priests again, the player can now also dispatch princesses and even The Pope himself. Enemy generals can also be assassinated to remove their threat from the game. Enemy spies, merchants and diplomats are other popular targets.

Like Shogun, the outcomes of the assassination (and infiltration/sabotage) movies in Medieval 2 differ, depending on whether the assassin or spy was successful or not, which, of course is down to factors in the campaign game such as the assassin’s skill. However, we also wanted to implement new outcomes, so, in Medieval II an Assassin can fail in his attempt but still manage to escape from the town guards and live to try again another day.

Killing time

There are a range of assassination methods used to dispatch the victims, including simple but brutal stabbings, spitting poisoned darts from blowpipes and burning victims while they sleep. We've tried to keep a similar style to Shogun's – that of

lightening the violence with a touch of humour and an occasional surprise in places. In some cases the viewer may wonder how the assassin could possibly fail, in others the player will see the target get killed even before the movie reveals where the assassin is hiding. For the first time in a Total War game, there are now movies showing a spies' attempts at infiltrating settlements and enemy armies. Infiltrating a settlement usually involves the spy dressed in a cunning disguise, trying get past the city gates' sentries undetected, and in some cases the player won't even spot where the spy is until he reveals himself later in the movie. The spies infiltrate armies by trying to obtain a soldier's uniform in order to mingle with the rest of the army. In some cases, this involves the spy luring a lone soldier into an alleyway then overpowering him and robbing him of his uniform. We now also have saboteur movies, where the agents can attempt to destroy an enemy's building in a settlement. He'll do this by either burning it down or blowing it up with gunpowder casks. There's no escape option for a failed sabotage or infiltration, so the player will be kept on the edge of his seat throughout the movie, guessing which way the attempt will go.

How they were made

The whole process began with collecting ideas of cool ways to kill people in the medieval setting, then I crafted animatic storyboards for each of the scenarios, to plan the camera shots and the timing and pace of the movies. This was also essential for carefully planning what moves we wanted to motion-capture, and for measuring the distances that the actor would travel so that the whole move would fit in the capture volume. The animation was then captured using our mo-cap rig, and after the data was tidied up by our animation team, we inserted into the animatics to replace the crude placeholder animation, then the lighting and extra details (e.g. particle effects, cloth and hair & fur simulation etc) were added and the movies rendered out on our large render farm overnight, every night for several months. The rendered frames were then given a lick of post-production using Adobe AfterEffects then delivered to the audio team to compose their cool sound tracks. I loved every minute that I worked on these movies, particularly devising the assassination methods and planning cool camera shots that I hope make the movies feel dramatic in places. I hope these movies add to your Medieval II experience, and that you’ll enjoy the watching the events and your agents exploits unfold in front of you. Thanks.

Medieval 2: Total War Developer Diary – Missions

Penny Sweetser Game Designer, CA Australia

Hi, I’m Penny Sweetser, a game designer on Medieval II: Total War. One of my main areas of work is designing the campaign game mechanics, including the design and implementation of the missions that are assigned to the player. In this diary, I’m going to take you through some of the work myself and the team have done in this particular area.

In Rome: Total War, the player was assigned various missions by the Roman Senate. These missions were designed to give the player interesting, small, side-objectives to pursue to help them on their way to achieving the main objective of the game, global domination. The main campaign can be quite overwhelming, so these missions helped to give the player concrete objectives, as well as giving flavour to the game in the form of the Senate.

In Medieval 2, we wanted to extend the mission system to provide more medieval flavour and add greater variety to the types of missions assigned. To do so, we decided to create an array of different entities that would issue the player with missions. Each one would have different goals and motivations and assign different types of missions accordingly. In Medieval 2, the player is issued missions from the Pope, a Council of Nobles, Guilds, as well as other Factions.

Types of Missions

The Pope is an important presence in the game, and is always watching over the shoulder of Catholic factions to ensure they are on the right path. He expects that the player will pay proper respect to their faith by building churches, recruiting priests to preach, keeping the peace with fellow Catholics and ensuring that their people remain properly loyal to the Catholic faith. The Pope issues missions to the player to try and ensure that these goals are met. However, the Pope himself is the leader of a faction and has his own biases towards different factions depending on their diplomatic relations with him and their dedication to Catholicism. Consequently, he can be particularly harsh on factions that have not been keeping the faith and turn a blind eye to those who are paying their dues. He assigns missions, rewards and penalties accordingly.

The Council of Nobles is an entity within the player’s faction, made up of men of importance within the kingdom. As such, they generally have the best interests of the player in mind. They give missions to the player to help them expand their territory and maintain diplomatic relations with other factions. However, their actions are sometimes motivated by more personal reasons and they can issue missions to further their own ends.

There are various types of guilds in the game that can offer to establish guild halls in the player’s settlements. Depending on how a kingdom is run and how the settlements are governed, different guilds will be attracted to different regions. Once these guilds are established in the player’s settlements, they begin making requests of the player, in exchange for certain benefits. Missions that are given by guilds reflect the goals and motivations of the specific guilds. Some of the available guilds include the Assassins’ Guild, Templars’ Chapter House and Explorers’ Guild.

The player will also receive demands or requests from other factions. These can come from individuals within the faction, seeking external help to further themselves within the faction, or from the faction as a whole. If the player makes an agreement with another faction to carry out a certain action in the future (e.g. attack another faction), this agreement will become a mission and the player will receive their rewards when the action is completed.

Mechanics

The mission system itself has been improved from Rome: Total War, to issue the player with the most relevant and varied set of missions throughout the game. When a new mission needs to be issued, each mission in the system is evaluated to determine if there is a valid target. Then each valid mission is issued with a score, based on a set of criteria – such as the best available target for the mission, time since this mission was last given, time in the game, the source of the mission’s attitude to the player and the player’s state (e.g. money, available agents etc). The result is that the player gets an interesting set of varied, achievable and relevant missions throughout the course of the campaign.

The UI

The presentation of the missions have been improved to make them a more prominent and usable part of the game. A missions button has been added to the UI, which brings up a dedicated missions scroll, outlining the player’s active missions, with information about time remaining, mission goals, and rewards and penalties. The player can also click on any of their active missions to highlight and zoom to the mission target on the map.

What’s Next?

After we had a chance to play the campaign game with the new missions, we were able to tune the difficulty, duration and rewards associated with each mission. It was important to try to balance out the mission system so different types of missions were assigned with the right frequency, so that the player receives new and interesting challenges throughout the game. Also, as one of our campaign programmers, Scott Lowther, did such a good job in creating the missions system, we were able to easily add in some new missions and mission variations. The missions in Medieval 2 will give the player a rich, varied and challenging game-playing experience.

Medieval II: Total War
Developer Diary – Religion Part 1

Dan Toose, Game Designer, Creative Assembly Australia

Medieval II: Total War is set in an era where faith ruled the lives of men, regardless of whether they were pauper or prince. For this reason our team here at Creative Assembly have put considerable effort into creating the most robust religion system of any Total War game to date.

At no point did we want to make the game about religion, we make strategy games. However, a strategy game in a Medieval setting that doesn’t consider matters of faith would be taking away some of the greatest challenges rulers of the time faced – How to be seen as an angel as you conquer like a devil. What follows is a summary, over two parts, of how we went about working that into Medieval II: Total War.

The Five Religions of Medieval II: Total War

Even though there are many more faiths and denominations that could be included in

Medieval II: Total War, we decided on five: Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Paganism and Heresy. The two Christian faiths and Islam represent the primary religions of the game, with Paganism now entering its dying throws in the Old World, and Heresy being not so much a religion itself, but a more general opposition to organised religion. For that reason, Heresy is the enemy of all other religions in Medieval II: Total War. Religious harmony leads to stability, whereas religious tension leads to unrest and conflict.

As for why we left out certain faiths, that simply came down to the faiths of the factions in our game. Religion can only be spread by a faction that actually builds religious structures and trains priests, so we didn’t want to include other faiths only to have them wiped out during the course of our game.

How Religion Affects the Medieval II: Total War World

Because of the importance of religion in the medieval period we wanted to ensure that religion had a significant role to play in Medieval II: Total War, without creating something complicated that the player had to micromanage. The key effect of religion in Medieval II: Total War is keeping your people happy, or more to the point, preventing them from becoming unhappy by not providing an environment where their chosen faith is dominant. Each region on the map has its population split up between the five religions.

There are other ways religion affects Medieval II: Total War as well, such as Crusades and Jihads, dealing with the Pope, and diplomatic effects from being at odds with your faith.

Managing Religion in your Realm

To ensure your religion is dominant in your lands, you will need to support the faith by financing the construction of churches or mosques. Once you build a religious structure, it will convert a percentage of the people in that region over to your faith. The more expensive and grand the building you invest in, the more absolute your faith’s dominance will be. This means that once you spend the money on ensuring your faith is dominant in your own lands, the player can essentially let things run their course, unless they have heretics or religious figures of other faiths enter the lands, which brings us to the role of Priests and Imams in Medieval II.

Spreading the Faith – Using Priests

Building religious structures is useful for keeping your people happy, but sometimes

you might conquer a region, only to face immediate problems because the local populace does not share your faith. This is where creating a mobile conversion force is useful, and in Medieval II: Total War, that means recruiting Priests (or Imams for Islamic factions).

Priests are considered an agent, like spies, assassins and diplomats. Their religious conviction and power is represented by their ‘Piety’ attribute, and it not only affects how effectively they preach, but also, how well they combat heresy. In regions where heresy is left unchecked, Heretics start stalking the map, and aside from an assassin’s blade, being put to trial for heresy by a priest is the only way the player can actively attempt to dispatch these extremely disruptive figures.

Role of the Pope – The Most Powerful Man in Christendom

While religion has the same basic effects for all faiths in Medieval II, those of the Catholic faith also have to deal with the authority and will of the Pope. What the Pope said was considered mandate, and that was something that was often a problem for the Kings of Catholic factions… Especially if it involved not attacking your annoying neighbour whom also happened to be Catholic.

So within Medieval II: Total War, the Pope is an extra authority figure to deal with, for those who normally answer to no other authority. If you play as a Catholic faction, you will receive missions from the Pope, much in the same way that you received missions from the Senate in Rome: Total War. However, the Pope has far more scope for individuality than the Senate ever did. That is because the Pope is an individual who earns their own traits as they rise up through the ranks of the Catholic Church.

That concludes part one of this diary on Religion in Medieval II. In part two I’ll reveal

details of how you manage your relationship with the Pope when playing as a Catholic faction. How to avoid the threat of excommunication, the terror of the Inquisition and even how you can get your own Pope elected by rigging Papal Elections. I’ll also look in detail at the risk and rewards of Crusades and Jihads.

Medieval II: Total War

Developer Diary – Religion Part 2

Dan Toose, Game Designer, Creative Assembly Australia

In part one of my diary on Religion in Medieval II: Total War I talked you through the basic mechanic of how religion worked within your regions. We also touched on the role of Priests which led us to the introduction of one of the most powerful figures in the game – the Pope. In this second part I’m going to begin by taking you through how, when playing as a Catholic faction, the options you have to interact with the Pope and the Papal states before moving on to look at the Crusades and Jihads.

Managing Relationship with the Pope

For the most part, so long as you do what the Pope asks of you, then he’ll approve of your people and you should have no problems. Of course, that’s very limited, and we wanted to ensure that the player can have LOTS of interaction with the Pope, and the Papacy as a whole.

In Rome, the Senate wasn’t really tangible. You could attack the armies of SPQR, but you couldn’t actually have the members of the Senate killed. This is something we wanted to change for Medieval II and the Pope. The Pope is the leader of the Papal States, and as such, can be targeted and killed, just like any other faction leader. He can even take to the field of battle, although a Pope who wants to get involved in combat himself is very rare. Not only did we want the player to be able to attack the Pope directly (which is an incredibly drastic measure in the campaign), we also wanted them to be able to spend time influencing the Catholic Church from within. The Pope is not a constant… If you have a horrible relationship with the Pope, things may improve remarkably after the next Papal Election.

The College of Cardinals and Papal Elections

Catholicism is a religion with a very established system of hierarchy – and Medieval II covers this with several ranks of priest for Catholic factions. A Catholic priest can become a Bishop if created in a major church such as a Cathedral, something that is entirely within the player’s power to establish themselves.

However, the Catholic Church denotes its higher ranks itself, and during the course of the game, various priests will be promoted to the rank of Cardinal – joining the Sacred College of Cardinals. There are thirteen seats within the College, and these are only ever filled by rather pious priests. Once a priest becomes a Cardinal, further emphasis on their personality becomes apparent in their traits. This is how you can glean what sort of Pope they might make, should they ever be elected to the position. The Papal elections themselves are always between three candidates, called the Preferati. These are usually the most pious of the Cardinals, although priests who achieve certain things during their lives can become more eligible for the role of Pope, so there is reason to be pro-active with your priests.

Rigging Elections

When the Pope passes away, and the Papal Election is called, factions that have a cardinal will be able to vote on the election. Since there are only ever three candidates, most Catholic factions won’t have a Cardinal from their lands as a Preferati. For that reason, there’s a huge opportunity for Catholic powers to haggle over their votes, and we ensured that the player can do this by allowing them to jump straight into a request for support in the election. There is more scope than simply asking for support though… At any time you could look at the College of Cardinals and consider taking out a potential rival at the next election. You could also look for other factions with Cardinals that don’t have Preferati, and start buttering those people up so that they are more likely to support you in the election, as most people relish the prospect of a positive relationship with the future Pope.

Consequences of Papal Problems

The reason that your relationship with the Pope is so important is that he is the one person who can give the green light to other Catholic factions to attack you. If you upset the Pope badly enough, he may excommunicate your faction – Meaning that your people are no longer considered to be true followers of the faith. Excommunication has been designed as a personal thing between the Pope and your faction leader – If either dies, there’s a chance to make amends. However, it may only take a few turns for the rest of Christendom assaulting your people to make all the difference, so waiting for the Pope to die isn’t an effective safety plan.

The Terror of the Inquisition

Aside from how the Pope feels about you personally, he is generally concerned about how large a problem heresy becomes in your lands. To ensure the player had to deal with this, we set things up so that if they let heresy get out of control, the Catholic Church will start sending Inquisitors into your realm in an effort to root out the problem. Inquisitors are not averse to looking for heresy in high places, and make actually put your generals and family members through a trial for heresy. Unless your characters appear to have a truly pious nature, chances are that they will be found guilty and put to death. So although you may not fear heresy itself, you’d be wise to fear what may happen should the church feel they need to deal with the matter personally.

Crusades & Jihads

The last major aspect of the Medieval II religion design is the Crusades and Jihads, a very special kind of religious mission for Catholic and Islamic factions respectively. These are essentially conquest missions that multiple factions can join, both co-operating and competing on their mutual quest to claim a certain place in the name of their faith. The benefits for joining a Crusade or a Jihad are identical, but the way they come about is somewhat different.

The Pope may call Crusades spontaneously, but they will more typically come about because one of the Catholic factions has requested one. This is yet another area where the relationship with the Pope is important for a Catholic power. Islamic factions can call a Jihad so long as they have an Imam with sufficient piety. This is one of the few areas where we make the religions work differently.

Staying True to the Cause

Once a Crusade or Jihad is called, armies of the same faith with a general or family member can join them. This will grant the army some amazing benefits, such as doubling the movement speed of the entire force, removing all upkeep costs, the ability to move through Catholic lands without it being an act of war, and allowing the recruitment of religious mercenaries that will not join your forces at any other time. These benefits are all a result of religious zeal… This is an age where many men were prepared to go well above and beyond for their faith. For that reason, the men in these armies are not prepared to follow a leader who isn’t going to share their drive and conviction. Generals who don’t make progress towards the Crusade or Jihad target will have their troops begin to desert. So, while joining a Crusade or Jihad offers great benefits, such as the chance to quickly fly across the map to secure a distant region, and receive outstanding rewards – It’s not something undertaken lightly.

As you can see, religion touches a lot Medieval II: Total War, and although we’ve gone to great lengths to ensure those who don’t find it interesting don’t have to get bogged down in something complex to avoid problems, we’ve gone to even greater lengths to ensure those of you who do want to work religion into your schemes have a means to do so.

Medieval 2: Total War Developer Diary – Battlefield Environments

Brendan Rogers - Senior Artist, CA Australia

Greetings, my name is Brendan Rogers, I'm an environment artist and level designer on Medieval II: Total War. My main areas of focus on the game are creating art assets for the environments, skies and siege weapons. In this diary I'm going to take you through the work that went into developing the different environments in Medieval II.

Environment and Landscapes

At the start of the project we reviewed the graphical features in our previous game, Rome: Total War, and began brainstorming ideas that would allow us to enhance the realism and graphical detail in Medieval II. Our aim for the battlefield environments was to capture the range of unique and rich landscapes that are found throughout the world. We wanted the player to discover this huge variety of landscapes as they expand their empire and venture into new territories via the battlefield.

One of our first tasks was to address the texturing system. Throughout the history of the Total War series we’ve always strived to achieve a large draw distance on the battlefield. Medieval II is no different. Because of this we decided to create a new texturing system to allow us to define two textures for each ground type per climate. One for the ground detail up close such as grass, rock and dirt, and another larger texture blended over it to create variation in the land when viewed from a distance.

The detail in the battlefield maps is generated from the campaign world-map, meaning; if you engage an enemy on a road or near a river, you will see those landmarks on the battlemap you are fighting.. The result is a unique battlefield for each campaign tile that reflects the climate, landscape and surroundings of the location.

Vegetation

We created a system in Rome: Total War that gave us the ability to define each climate and assign a set of vegetation to each one. However we weren’t able to fully exploit the vegetation system’s capabilities so for Medieval II we created a system that would allow us to create the many different climates we envisaged.

We carried out research on the types of vegetation that grew in the various climates we wanted to create and picked out the most dominant species in each for use on our battlefields. We then put these to use by creating a huge variety of unique climates that can be found throughout the campaign game, from the tropical jungle of the Aztecs to the scorched lands of the east. It’s just a shame that the boss wouldn’t send me to these locations for some ‘first-hand’ research. Maybe next time ;)

The overall look of these environments have been boosted by a rendering engine that has been completely overhauled to allow for DX9 and shader 2 support. All models and vegetation now cast and receive per-pixel shadows from all objects in the game, including the terrain that now casts self-shadows from the position of the sun. Our new lighting system also includes bloom and a radiosity lighting setup that mixes hues from the ground and sky into the directional sunlight.

Our most recent addition to the Medieval II engine is the new grass system. This new system ties in directly with the climate and texture setup allowing us to sprout different grass types from the ground texture. This means that for each climate we can create a different grass type per ground texture. The grass also animates based on the wind speed from the game engine; this creates a realistic staggered sway that you would expect to see in a grassy field.

With the addition of these systems, we can now create a diverse range of climates never before seen in a Total War game and create some truly stunning battlefield environments.