Total War thread: Byzantine Edition

I don't know. It's kind of nice not having to keep my hardware and OS up to date. There are more good games out right now than I'll ever be able to thoroughly play in a lifetime. I do not lament my decision to stop following new releases.

Rome and Medieval already did the engine right? What's the point of doing it over? All CA did in Rome 2 was copy concepts from EB anyway. Even if they didn't fuck it up, it would be pretty much the same as Rome with EB anyway, except it would run like garbage on my toaster and I'd still have to pay extra to play as Greeks.

Right so why not enhance the old engine to make it look spiffy and modern, all the while keeping the core intact.

Is this possible?

EB does that to an extent. The meshes and textures are all hand crafted by the modders. All of CA's original textures and meshes are gone. The battles actually look pretty good, though the cities are still boxy.

Medieval 2 with EB2 looks even nicer.

New engine when?

That does look better, but it leaves a bit to be desired in my mind.

I want a non-shit AA CA Total war game, and I seriously hope the day MTW3 ends up being made that it is a product of those standards.

Crashes a lot though.

Speaking of good games:

New TW: Warhammer DLC. New shit for Orcs and Dwarfs. Wurrzag as FLC. Certain minor Orc/Dwarf faction made playable.

The move to a 3d campaign map was a fundamental mistake.

The germ of corruption.

I just don't know what the fuck I am looking at. The things that matter, don't clearly stand out.

Anyway, can you oldfags tell me about what the older total war games are like?
Especially when it comes to internal trade and population? I heard that it's actually a thing and determines the value of a city, which is imo much superior to the attila system of "every province is exactly the same (except for unique ressources) once you build it up. (and also a pain to hold)

Please be detailed. I have been spoiled a bit by watching Legend of Total War. Who might be a good total war player, but he sucks the magic out of games.

it looks even better with roma surrectum. they also released the environment files for RS3 to be used in EB.

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Do not wish for what you will clearly end up regretting.

Well, in RTW(or atleast modded) it was quite essential to keep your roads clean, atleast between your major cities, otherwise they couldn't trade with each other and you'd end up losing a complete metric shitton of money. Same with sea trade routes.

Oh this reminds me of time when I dropped Rome 2 and never picked it up again

Didn't they fix that in a Rome 2 patch?

Even with the difficulty set at very hard on Napoleon, the AI is still shit. I see them shuffling around and get mixed up in a big group just waiting for my artillery. All they seem to have is more morale than my troops. I'm not sure why I always reinstall it now and then because it's still the same shitty AI and boring game, it's just lining up units, no real tactics other than hammer and anvil.

Nah. They got slightly better with Attila and again with Warhammer but it's still just a stopgap measure.

Why does Rome 2 get shit on so much? As someone who's played every TW game since the first Shogun I just don't get it

Did you play the release version or did you jump in when the Emperor Edition was released?

That's because difficulty does fuckall but gimp you and have the AI cheat more. They don't get smarter.

I was aware, but I felt in normal difficulty, their units route fast, but I feel very hard is a total gimp as they seem to have incredible morale, even when their general dies, the battles last until their last unit and even then they put up a hell of a fight.

I just want a Victorian era Total War with more than 5 provinces spanning Europe.

The industry has gotten so cancerous that some developers have a complete monopoly on any given niche and no one attempts to compete with them.

CA became as Jewish as they are in large parts because there is no one the community can turn to if they want their fix.

Ultimate General Gettysburg sort of took a jab at CA, it's made by the Darthmod guy he advertised his game with having good AI. I hope the guy makes a total war clone, I'd be alright with 2D graphics, because fuck CA, you're spot on with your post.

Darth is a turbo autiste though.

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What can you do, he made an alright game.

TW:W is good. Deal with it.

he is a shill, user.

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Oh. Ok. Thanks for clearing that up.

I clearly stated that I wanted a non-shit game.

I understand fully how poor the warscape engine is and that it was designed for firearm combat. I will not regret what I wish for but I will dislike what you describe.

I was disappointed when the Total War games moved away from the Risk- styled map. Feels like it reduced the scale of the game. I would play Medieval: Total War again, but the broken turn system always discourages me from doing that.

You missed his point. It' inevitably going to be a disappointment.
It's most likely going to be Warscape again. If they new try to build a new engine it's going to be experimental and full of kinks like in Empire. Lots of patchs for months and months to fix things (often attached to a DLC).

The map will cover more area (probably extend to india and the eastern half of the americas) to give the illusion of a larger map but the whole world will be broken down into bigger more generalized and inaccurate provinces.

All non-catholic nations will be unplayable until you buy DLC – I GUARANTEE this one.

How about ironing out those kinks before release?
Oh, right, it's [CURRENTYEAR] and we don't need to do that because we can just shit out another title and improve upon it with the next game.

That point only remains valid if you are a cynicist

You're only desperate because you are a graphics whore. As I said, Middle Ages in a Total War game has already been done right. Even if everything about Medieval 3 was good, it would be redundant anyway.

Ad homs will not help you here, cynicist

You're still not understanding. This is a positive message. The game you want already exists. It's out there. You just refuse to see it because good gameplay isn't enough for you. You need flashy shallow gimmicks like physics engines and high-res textures. You're the cynicist. The perfect Total War games exist but you can't get over appearance.

Shogun was the last game where terrain, fatigue and weather made an actual difference to your tactics(with exception to MTW heat), it was also the only Total War to have battle maps that actually had more than a few patches of trees and small hills. Shame the mongol expansion nerfed the enemy AI and added retarded units like battlefield ninja, STW is best played vanilla. MTW was the last game with a functioning campaign AI and has by far the best campaign game of any total war.

RTW is overrated and is inferior to M2TW in almost every way except music( which is equal) and campaign map graphics, it's also complete eye cancer without mods to remove the neon colored units and ahistorical Egyptians. Rose tinted nostalgia and first game syndrome blinds people as to the games quality. MTW2 campaign AI is not only retarded but also incredibly easy to manipulate once you know its mechanics. The M2TW campaign map is visually less atmospheric than RTW.

Empire is a broken mess. Clearly no AI was programmed for the star fort battles and in field battles the AI will always B-line to your artillery, making an artillery centre V formation impossible to lose a battle with. Napoleon I've not played beyond an hour, I probably should.

Every game from Shogun 2 onwards has battles that last 5 minutes or less and has a campaign AI that can't even survive the first ten turns without overtly cheating; I saw that stack of ashigaru retreat into a tiny patch of FoW at the end of a peninsula, game, do tell what ritual they performed to be turned into a full stack of samurai. Rome 2 literally stopped working for me when the Emperor Edition upgrade came out, a fresh install didn't fix it but I honestly don't care because I'd rather play EB than that crap.

I learned my lesson and didn't buy Attila or Warhammer. The campaign AI being utter shit can be resolved easily by going back to the Risk map, but how they've managed to take a battle AI that was competent in Shogun and Medieval and slowly turn it into something that can't win a fight without A) being on the hardest difficulty B) speeding them up and reducing battle times to less than 5 minutes and then C) HOPING the player misses something due to the camera being deliberately locked from zooming too far out is beyond me. RTW and M2TW were bad on release but were saved by their endless modding potential, the new games don't even have that.

This post is guaranteed to trigger some nigger purely because of the comments about RTW, it's the Fallout 3 of the franchise.

Empire had a 100+ artists and asset creators, but only one dude working on AI. CA simply stopped giving a shit, and the really insulting thing is that this has been an issue since Rome 1, and has dragged through game after game, despite Empire and onwards being the same fucking game with the same units.

Gotta sell the DLC somehow.

Let's not be insulting. Rome did a lot of things well, and back when it came out it was genuinely revolutionary to see all your little 3D guys shoah the filthy barbarian hordes in the name of Rome.

Warhammer is okay. It's held my interest more then Rome 2 and Attila ever did, but it also fucked up in several new ways I didn't think possible.
Units look, fight, and charge better then Rome 2 and Attila and all the races play differently enough. But siege battles blow and the campaign AI is still retarded.
The DLC is acceptable compared to Rome 2 Attila, new races that can't be fucking reskins but Chaos preorder shit.
Siege AI is retarded even with one wall, but I like the idea of restricting conquest of settlements on the map to force diplomacy to be slightly more important. Diplomacy AI is still retarded, but it's warhammer so everyone generally hates everyones else so it's not too unrealistic in that regard.
It's a game of three steps forward, one step back.

Shogun Geisha. The ultimate bullshit.

Crossbows and Arbalests aren't affected by the rain in Medieval 1 which makes them really good against archers and horse archers. I don't really know how you can say that fatigue doesn't matter in MTW. Cavalry is also pretty much useless in woods and you can easily fuck em up there. Refer to the Terrain modifier part of pic related. probably not the triggered nigger you expected

It still was a step back in almost every way other than eye candy wise.

That first pic is me.

Well you're in conflict with yourself then. Nice to see you again, just started a campaign of Medieval today, was gonna be either that or Shogun but the nostalgia got me

But I want to have my cake and eat it too.

I'm an entitled shitlord

Harsh but accurate.

I agree with pretty much everything you say. But RTW beats M2TW in unit responsiveness, which is pretty important in battles.

There's nothing more frustrating than watching your heavy cav simply trot into melee with their lances held upright and then pull out their swords.
You have to kind of acclimate to the shittiness of the units compared to other games, but after that it's not so bad.

Yes there is. Seeing your shock cav get stuck in melee because ONE DUDE didn't fucking get the message and keeps being interrupted by footsloggers because lol muh cinematic combat.

Except he was a little easy on Rome. Egypt is far from the only faction that makes no historical sense.

You can always play an older one for the mechanics and a newer one for the graphics. If you play both you can have it all.

I suppose that's what I've been doing. And I don't find alot of faults with Attila so I enjoy it.

Total War has always been retarded and always will be.

Defender always wins at time out. Your whole story is a lie.

(Witnessed)

TW has had climbable walls since Empire.

Shitty OC coming in

Bullshit what game. If they have no breach, and no siege weapons it's an automatic loss for the attackers.

Also there is the fact that battles time out after 45 minutes. My guess is he didn't realize he can fast-forward the battle, got tired of sitting there and quit the battle which makes him lose.

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Welcome to the year 2016.

It was really shitty on release, and people judge it mostly on that. Doesn't matter that the game got a million patches that made it a lot better, first impressions are all that matter.

God dammit, you just cant help it but to love orks, they are the right amount of silly for warhammer (both fantasy and 40k).

Holy fucking shit if only other industries had the same mentality as AAA devs.

Rome 2 is still boring as fuck to play to this day, no mod, no patch can fix core issues. Divide Et Impera is the closest to playable and even I find it slow.

Amidst the myriad of shit design choices, graphical downgrades, bugs, and general casualization, this fag here was the Sean Murray before Sean Murray.

The release AI of this strategy game was: 'All units, run to flag. Don't fight, just run.' since apparently captureable flag points are now a thing in every battle, including field battles. This was probably implemented so that the AI could have the simplest of goals.

Release was more of an insult than a disappointment, and later patches only really succeed in polishing the turd a little more each time.

First example, that has happened in the past, it's called a Directors Cut, look it up.

Second example is just retarded, you go to a restaurant for short time regardless of the quality of the experience. You can't make it better or worse three months later like you can with actual media.

A director's cut usually has cut scenes or it cuts in different takes of the same scenes. It doesn't add in crucial scenes that make or break the whole movie.

Also, the restaurant is the same scenario. you're the retard who goes to the restaurant three months later after they finally get a menu and say, "all those bad reviews saying there was no food… these people are just too caught up in first impressions."

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I want population back. I want internal trade back. I want trade goods be able to be used inside your empire. I want settlements feel like useful additons to your empire and not like liabilities that are only useful when you control the entire region and use synergy of balancing food, public order, sanitation and wealth.
Which is challenging and a complex system, sure that's a plus point, but it's kinda abstract and gamey as opposed to simulationist. (simulation vs abstraction)

I have to play Mediveal 2 for once, so I know what their system was actually like.

TW:W is a huge step back towards the M2TW feel for battles, compared to everything else since M2TW, including Shogun 2.
The DLC shit is obnoxious, I won't lie or shill that shit. Especially the chaos one. The Chaos campaign is broken as hell. Archeon the Everchosen, Lord of Chaos and Harbinger of Doom upon the world of man and all that, should not be fighting guerilla warfare against norsican tribes for a hundred turns while constantly on the run from multiple full stacks of troops from kislev and latter empire armies too, on top of the norsicans. You don't really feel like you are leading the armies of doom to unleash Armageddon on the puny mortals when you do that. And you have to avoid most fights since, being chaos you have the hardest time replacing casualties you sustain, of any faction in the game. Any major battle you do fight means you have to sit around 5-10 turns recuperating afterwards, which the AI's never let you, or run all the way back to norsca where you can find some tribe you've beaten into submission, who's turf you can camp on. THEN you get replacements at the same rate everyone else do, except they do that all the time.
The entire campaign is a slow tedious slog more than anything else. Not hard, just slow, tedious and unforgiving if you ever forget to take things slow and tedious. Also an event will trigger at one point that turns all the norscan tribes you have taken control of against you at the same time without warning because fuck you.
And just in case all that shit didn't sound tedious enough, Chaos is also the only faction in the game who gets attrition if two of your armies get within half a region of each other. Attrition that takes several turns of an army doing fuck all to replace, and prevents you from using multiple armies against a single target, something that is fucking well required to crack large cities defended by armies or even multiple stacks of troops sitting close together in the field. And you can't just fight them in a big cool battle, because than will result in your troops taking tons of casualties forcing you to spend ages recovering your troops, unless there's an enemy stack or 3 hunting you, in which case you're just fucked and can only hope you can outrun them before you loose an army that took 50 turns or more to build.

Every other faction is fun however. They feel very different, from the Empires focus on combined arms tactics, the Dwarves defensive focus, Orks rushing and the Undead's monster spam. All feel very different, all are fun and work well. Even the Beastmen work well, despite being a horde army like chaos, but at least they get to make hidden camps and get tons of moon phase events that let them get bonuses to troop recovery and the like. Also, they are supposed to be sneaky guerilla fighters who run away when enemies come looking for them, unlike Archeon the Everfuckingchosen. Chaos warriors would probably have worked better if norscans where predisposed to aid him and he got a steady stream of free troops from the chaos wastes.
Heroes are fun, especially in the campaign where their tons of powerups from levels result in crazy powerful units. Like Kolek with over 10k hp or a Grimgor that can do 800 damage per hit. Rampaging through an enemy army with something like that is fun. So is empire rocket batteries and dwarven flame thrower spam. And of course there's few things as awesome as watching a gigantic spider with a small fort on its back run amok through enemy formations of monsterfodder.
The only major downside is the economy, where every region gives so little income you simply can't afford more than 2-3 stacks of troops until the late game, even if you've taken over 5 full regions. Radious mod at least fixes that shit so the campaign gets fun.
The regional conquest shit, that artificial limit on what regions you are allowed to conquer is complete horseshit. Lorewise its retarded to claim the empire can't take over a dwarven city, since its essentially just a giant fortress carved into a mountain, or to claim chaos won't make use of castles or to suggest that orcs won't inhabit empire cities they've conquered the way they do dwarven cities. Hell, Dwarves used to inhabit half the lands of the empire before the empire was founded and most of the badlands where the orcs live used to be a human nation.
Mechanic wise, its an artificial limitation on the players actions so they always do the same thing, for the sake of a narrative.
Its an idiotic idea that should have never been in the game in the first place. The game isn't about playing out the status quo from the lore any more than M2TW is supposed to play out exactly as it does in the history books.

TL:DR, it TW:W may not quite be M2TW, but its the second best thing the series has to offer and a lot of fun, so long as you don't play chaos.

Oh wow. I thought you would actually talk about stuff that matters, isntead of whining.

GIT GUD YOU GIT

Immideatly disband every expensive unit and spam cheap shit. Keep some settlements so you can spam sacking them to get some xp and gold. Economy is everything.

Watch Legend of Sucking the magic out of Total War if you want to see how it's done.

Or become good at the game that you can win against armies 3-4 times your size like Volound.

I know how its done, he spend nearly 100 turns before he even considered breaking into the empire, using every exploit he could, and the campaign was STILL slow and tedious. Its not hard to run from everything and use stacks of nothing but marauders, it just gets a bit boring when there's nothing else you CAN do until the late game. Nor does it change the fact that this style of play is antithetical to everything playing Archeon the Everchosen is supposed to be like. He's supposed to command an unstoppable tide of doom marching out of the chaos wastes with the single purpose of laying waste to everything good and nice, not running away from every fight that looks tough.

Then just do a "only fight battles manually challenge"? Then you have your challenge and marauder spam is not nearly as good.

You can always just pick easy difficulty. People who play on legendary or very hard want a challenge.