Total War at the Ashmolean Museum: Storms, Wars and Shipwrecks

This year, Creative Assembly were invited to contribute to the ‘Storms, Wars and Shipwrecks’ summer exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, UK.

Telling the story of the pivotal Mediterranean island of Sicily over the last 2500 years, the exhibition features a range of incredible artefacts recovered by underwater archaeologists from the surrounding sea bed. Including treasures as varied as ship anchors to soldiers’ armour, and from amphorae to a byzantine church interior the exhibit is a fascinating exploration of ancient cultures and the story of the modern-day divers who worked to uncover them.

One of the key exhibits is a display of Roman and Carthaginian warship rams, thought to be from the Battle of the Egadi Islands in 241 BC. To help illustrate these giant weapons, Creative Assembly have created a video re-enactment of the battle using the Total War: ROME II game engine and art, which is projected on to the wall behind the display.

The Battle of the Egadi Islands was an important turning point in the First Punic War, more about the battle and the exhibition can be seen in this video short.

The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford was founded in 1683 and is home to thousands of diverse artefacts dating from 8000 BC to the present day, representing most of the world’s great civilisations. The Storms, Wars and Shipwrecks exhibition is open now and runs until the 25th September.

[fizzypurple]

Always knew Total War could be used to provide excellent backing simulations for historical stories, as proved by the content on THFE Productions channel. Cool to see CA do it themselves though

[brunon.]

Fascinanting! Do more like this please. I love it.

[THENEW]

Jesus CA, with this amount of people complaining at every breath you take, you must be VERY stressed everyday, don't know how you handle it

Good initiative and video =)

[gabrielhoffman]

we dont care about Warhammer, give us a name! EMPIRE 2!!!

[Sassy_Witch]

at first I though a Ship DLC for warhammer came out

[dan]

those roman ships don't look smaller and more nimble.

[mockz]

Game of Thrones Total war please or make Dynasty Total War

[tonyweaver]

Makes me want to play Rome 2 again, loved those saving private ryan style beach assaults with Roman Marines and Onagers.

[themaxolol]

CA needs to do more stuff like this, this is amazing!

[kelstr]

We want to see more "mod highlight" videos for Total War: Warhammer !!!
*Edit... but thank you for this video too !!! We love everything and anything; TOTAL WAR !!!!

[nicklehn]

The Ashmoleon! Love it!! I did my masters at Oxford.

[eyepatchpirate]

It was a great game. We classicists love it.

[Kristaliorn]

That was fantastic! might even have to visit it. Many thanks!

[christopherfisher]

PLEASE ANOTHER 17th century warfare based game

[yourethatmantis]

those guys were stupid, why didn't they just spam the crap out of raiding hemolia and press auto resolve?

[OhMyEnglishTeaBags]

Empire 2 or Medieval 3 please. We beg!

[kirschakos]

Awesome! I wish you could make a historical documentary series like this video! :)

[alejandroromangonzalez]

Great to see Total War make collaboration with museums! Many of us playing your games are also interested in military history and history in general. Is there any chance of getting any Youtube video series covering important battles, historically well researched, using the different Total war games? :)

[AerionLockheart]

plz make more of these historical clips made with the total war games

[EmhyrvarSpice]

I for one would rather see CA focus on TWW for a while.