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How The Creative Assembly mashes up turn-based strategy and real-time combat in Total War: Rome II (video interview)

al bickham

Sega’s Total War: Rome II is going to pack a nice surprise for gamers when it arrives on the PC this fall. It’s going to be two games in one. The title combines turn-based strategy in its Civilization-like campaign map of ancient Rome with the hectic combat of real-time gameplay.

Al Bickham, the communications manager for Sega’s The Creative Assembly studio, told us about this hybrid strategy of mixing Civ-like empire building with on-the-ground combat.

Here’s our interview with Bickham below.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/IUiMD7irnGo]

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.