Total War: Rome 2 has had a budgetary pant-expansion, say Creative Assembly.

“It’s about having a lot of content,” lead designer James Russell told Edge on the subject. “And of course we’ve got to do that for all of these different cultures as well. So we’ve got the barbarians and all the barbarian tribes, and these eastern factions.”

Russell cited the variety of battle environments as another major cause for cash-splashing; Carthage, Rome and Barbarian settlements are all to “look different”.

“This is one of the reasons why the game is so expensive to make, why we’ve got a budget that is way [bigger] than anything we’ve done before,” said the Creative Assembly designer.

Russell also talked about the technological hurdles that accompany Rome 2’s more-flexible camera, which allows for both a top-down battlefield swoop and “soldier’s-eye view”.

“Technically it’s a challenge because we’re trying to keep the minimum spec the same as Shogun 2, so that it’s accessible to a whole range of machines,” he said.

“What we have is quite sophisticated tech for streaming in higher levels of detail when you zoom in. So technically there is a challenge, because obviously your eye picks up different things in the far distance versus up close. So we have each soldier [with] a really detailed cinematic skeleton with a very high poly count, and then when it zooms out, he has to become three pixels.

“So that’s a challenge, but I think that’s one of the unique features of the Total War tech over the years, and we’re really just trying to improve that.”

Take in the thousands of words in our Total War: Rome 2 preview from above and let us know your thoughts – has Sega and Creative Assembly’s money been well splashed?