Sometimes a good map will sell a strategy game. That’s why the folks at Sega and its developer Creative Assembly are touting the campaign map for Total War: Rome II. This map looks so good it might appeal to fans of the turn-based strategy game Civilization.
The companies released an interactive version of the campaign map as a promotion for the upcoming real-time strategy PC game that ships on Sept. 3. The action in this real-time game, where the combat between factions takes place with both sides moving simultaneously, can zoom in all the way into individual soldiers and zoom out to a bird’s eye view. Creative Assembly already has a huge potential audience for this game, as it has 700,000 players a month already playing its older games in the Total War series.
Last year, without a major title release, the series sold more than 2 million games and 5 million expansion packs. But Rome II promises to be the biggest yet, and it will require a hefty gaming PC if you want to play it with all of the bells and whistles. The graphical beauty of the game carries over to the interactive campaign map, which looks great. As you hover over each territory, you can see the details on the region such its resources and controlling faction. The map covers the whole territory of the Roman empire and its outer edges.
This kind of map is likely to be appealing to fans of Civilization, who enjoy the high-level strategy of controlling an empire, such as navigating political alliances and launching wars for control of strategic resources.