The company's early work, often produced personally by Ansell, involved porting games from the Amiga to MS-DOS, such as the 1989 titles Geoff Crammond's Stunt Car Racer and Shadow of the Beast by Psygnosis.

Creative Assembly began work with Electronic Arts in 1993, producing titles under the EA Sports label, starting with the DOS version of the early FIFA games.

With EA Sports, Creative Assembly was able to produce low development risk products bearing official league endorsements.

When it became clear that the company needed to expand further, Ansell employed Michael Simpson in 1996 as the creative director.

A blend of real-time tactics and turn-based gameplay, Shogun: Total War was announced in early 1999.

The game focused the Sengoku period of Japanese feudal history, and upon its release in June 2000 it was met with critical acclaim.

[6][7] Inhouse composer Jeff van Dyck won both a BAFTA and an EMMA award for his work on the game's soundtrack.

[12] Despite speculation that Activision might buy Creative Assembly, as the publisher had done with previous successful developers under its wing,[13] the Japanese company Sega announced on 9 March 2005 that they had sealed an acquisition deal with Creative Assembly,[13] purchasing all issued shares in the company.

Spartan: Total Warrior was released in October 2005 on Xbox, PlayStation 2 and GameCube, receiving a mixed reception from critics.

[17][18][19] Medieval II: Total War, the fourth title in the franchise, was announced in January 2006 and developed by the Australian branch of Creative Assembly.

The game was released in November 2006, and although not as successful as Rome: Total War,[22] Medieval II: Total War was still a critical and commercial hit, holding a place in the UK games charts in November 2006,[23] and in the US charts until the end of January 2007.

The first, Viking: Battle for Asgard, was a console-exclusive title, similar in style to Spartan: Total Warrior, but focusing on Norse mythology.

Though there were numerous patches, not all of these were addressed by the abandonment of support for the game, which caused many to question Sega's influence on Creative Assembly.

[32] Stormrise received negative and mediocre responses, with criticisms focusing on broken pathfinding and the game's flawed control scheme (designed with the intent to create an easy interface for consoles).

[33][34] In January 2009, Creative Assembly was joined by Tim Heaton, who serves as the company's studio director.

In 2010, the company released Napoleon: Total War, based on the exploits of Napoleon Bonaparte to generally favourable reviews that praised the tightly scripted elements of a smaller, more focussed campaign than its globe-spanning predecessor, Empire Total War.

[44] In March 2017 Creative Assembly announced the acquisition of Crytek Black Sea, which was shut down in December 2016.