BestTotal War tbh

I agree even though I like Rome more. Nothing will ever beat Rome's general speeches and atmosphere, also has the best soundtrack. But from a purely mechanically standpoint, Medieval is objectively better.

Rome Total War is great. But holy shit I'm afraid too continue. Spain were cunts to beat while the remnants of Gaul cower in the center. I fucked up by attacking SPQR. After taking rome, every body wants me dead!

Letting Brutii take Greece can be campaign ending depending on the difficulty. Greece is stupid fucking wealthy. Your best best is to blockade all their ports so they can't transport their armies by sea, then place armies on the bridges in Northern Italy.

I liked the first shogun the best.

I do wonder where the franchise could have gone from the high point of M2 if CA hadn't decided to start fucking up. Outside the obvious improvements to strategic and tactical AI I would have liked them to go back to the boardgame map and take a few cues from Crusader Kings when it comes to family management and the stats of the characters and to give some much needed character drama to the proceedings.

Hell, I wish the skills of the general directly affected how big of an army he can field without penalties.

Correct but still a shit thread OP.

The loss of generals developing naturally I will always consider to be one of the biggest crimes. So much went to shit after Shogun 2 it baffles me.

Change in staff members. If you look at the people that made Empire, to everyone that matters in the dev team that was their first game gig. I still have no idea how Shogun 2 turned out as well as it did.

It's definitely one of my favorites, S1 and M1 had by far the best field battles.

Rome 1 still has the best cavalry.

Are the twcenter forums fucking up for anyone else?

Me neither. But if it hadn't, Rome II probably would've been the NMS of its time.

i like the units in rome total war, no other game gives me phalanxes in a better way
shogun 2 felt the best for me though, sieges there were beautiful

Shogun 2 was developed by Feral Interactive who normally do linux and Mac ports of CAs games

Can we just ignore the shit OP and have fun talking about Total War instead please?

Why isnt tbh wordfiltered

Why are the mods so utterly and painfully worthless? If the average user here was a mod, we wouldn't have fucking cancer threads like this.

we also wouldn't have any threads since they'd all be like ryulong from wikipedia

If the average user was a mod there would be no difference because the mods already are average lazy anons.

This is a better RTS

So is Warhammer worth playing at all? I've had a real itch to play it because I am a huge sucker for Warhammer lore. However, this is the company that also tanked the Total War franchise. How does Warhammer stack up to Shogun 2 for example?

Rome 1 and Medieval 1 best total wars.

The only way to explain Total Warhammer is this
If you like Warhammer more than Total War, it's okay
If you like Total War more than Warhammer, don't even bother

Just to point out a few things with it
>Grimgor iz da best

This is a fair assessment, and I say this as someone who loves WaWa.

Some of the issues with weird army compositions and battles being too fast can be fixed with mods though. The DLC whoring is an issue but by now they should go on sale for reasonable prices. If you really don't give a fuck about certain factions you don't need to buy them (unlike with Paradox DLC that hides important gameplay features). The Beastman one for example is a bit underwhelming. Norsca is great though. You can also get mods to flesh out minor factions like Tiles and Estalia and I'd say they are on the same level as CAs work.

What I did was have enough territories(about 50) before conquering Rome, then after conquering it I immediately won the campaign, and didn't have to deal with Brutii's stacks of armies.

Oh definitely get some mods after you play say, 5 hours-ish, just to get a handle of how the game works compared to other TWs. I would stay away from ones that ruin all sense of faction uniqueness and any fun you have such as Radius or whatever the fuck it's called.
Some mods I play with are Ultimate Chaos which divides Chaos so you can dedicate your armies to a single god. Although, Slaanesh units are total pussies and her/his/its artillery is literal trash that sparkles. I also use mods that nerf Norsca's economy so that they use all of the units given to them instead of chariots and some that add more skill points to level ups because campaigns usually don't last long enough to get a LL or hero to level 30

Rome Total War on Very Hard with max unit sizes is excellent.

The huge unit sizes option makes the barbarians more difficult as they can bring a huge army to the field and you have to use a small elite force. Rome can't reinforce in the frontiers. You need to head back to Rome to refill your armies.

Rome actually makes the battles affect the health of the cities and economy.

Well I will try it out. Definitely not giving them any money though after Rome 2.

I hear that Total War Warhammer 2 is coming out soon too. Considering they are calling it a whole new game and not an expansion, I guess they are still full steam ahead on trying to rip people off for as much money as they can get away with. I seriously don't understand why they don't just work on their niche in strategy games instead of trying to rip people off for a few more shekels. They have totally destroyed their credibility and alienated their formerly loyal fanbase. Sad times.

I believe it has more to do with GW wanting more shekels than CA. CA does a lot of shady shit (paying for blood and gore) but GW is worse in that regard. They killed an entire franchise so they could push Ultramarysues-but-Sigmar edition. I believe CA was the one that fought for modding the game because GW thought that mods would lose them money, somehow.

CA has been fucking over modders for years now, making it more and more difficult to mod their games. It's why you see so many mods being made for M2 and R1 to this day.

I still can't fucking believe it's going to be sold as a whole new game. A total conversion mod for $59.99.

Because you are a fag lol

lol at the delusional fags who think CA would have ever gotten the budget to actually release a "complete" Warhammer Total War.

The Warhammer license isn't that popular and SEGA/CA never expected Total WaWa to be as successful as it has been. CA had a limited budget, which is why the release and Beastmen DLC were so barebones.

Chaos wasn't even meant to be playable in the first game, but had to jerry rig them in because of the complaints. And then these retards got angry that CA decided to make them pay for the faction they were forced to put in.

I'm actually leaning more towards this being the fault of GW. They allowed CA to make a Fantasy based game knowing that they were going to go through with the End Times anyways, thus they said "fuck it" and threw some money at CA to make a WHFB Total War. CA said something along the lines that GW were so impressed with the sales of the first game that they handed almost all creative control over the CA. In some paradoxical retardation, GW constricted the creativity of Creative Assembly so that GW could keep their precious "lore" intact, but they were eventually going to throw it out the fucking window anyways. I'm surprised Goys Workshop still has any fanbase after what they did in regards to both Fantasy and 40K.
pic related is mfw GW were willing to give any freedom to CA

just kill yourself

Between CA, Sega and GW the DLC whoring was to be expected. I wouldnt absolve CA since the DLC shit started with Empire.

As to WaWa 2: You get a bigger map with the Elves, Lizardmen and Skaven only but they intend to expand the map of WaWa1 as well and add the new races there. Same with the eventual WaWa 3 - They want to make the whole world playable but the "Grand Campaign" map will be slightly smaller. The games can only handle so many provinces and factions, an issue that existed since R1.

It's better if you fix that one bug that makes the AI so irrational about backstabbing you.

I wish we'd get a new total war game focused on Mesoamerica

The Medieval 2 expansion is cool but it's aged pretty hard in most regards, and only includes a few native when in reality the region was as densely packed as europe in regards to separate nation-states, city states, and so on, and there are also obviously a ton of unorganized tribes and groups too that you could take over.

There's also more then enough different troop types and military organizational complexity to do it. (i'd be be happy to dump more of these)

post current progress
i'm doing a macedonian run, all of greece is mine and i've conquered 3 cities in italy, once i retrain my army i've got a pretty much free pass to conquer rome itself
meanwhile i've got 1 city in africa that i have no idea how i obtained. at one point i just got a notice that it's under siege and had to defend it. i've saved it, but with no other cities and generals on that continent i can't make any progress against the numidians

also, is there any way i can make my army not have gaps between units when making them go in a formation? regardless of how much it's stretched or not, they always leave a gap between them that usually ends up fucking them up

you know rome total war has some problems when the most popular mod for it gets remade for med2 instead because of rome engine limitations
why do your graphics look so garbage?

i've installed the game and haven't touched the quality, aside for troop count
now tell me, what did i do wrong in this battle, because i somehow lost despite being evenly matched and having the terrain to my advantage

not enough flanking, maybe you fucked yourself letting archers/artillery fire into your own ranks

It looks like you're trying to use Alexander's echelon formation as the Macedonians. Nice. But you're doing it wrong. The idea is to lure them towards weak infantry and flank them with cavalry that they can't see. I can already tell those guys to the far left in the pic are headed to try and engage your cavalry and keep them busy for when the bulk of their army hits you. Those shitty missile units should be out in front skirmishing. The AI will send cavalry at them, which is your chance to lure their cavalry where you want it to be, instead of the other way around.

Basically, this is what you should have done:
That "V" shape should be all infantry with the missiles in the open space to lure their charge in, where you can envelop your formation all around and flank them from all sides. You should have marched fast to the trees before your enemy got there if possible, that way you could hide some shock troops in the trees.

There's a CA sale going on on Steam atm if anyone cares

Your damn ranged units are way too far back to even get that many shots in. You dingus.

What a shitty sale; nobody is going to buy Warhammer for £27 when you used to sell it at £12 every other month.

This is objective, minus Attila because I never fucking played it:

Shogun 2 > Rome > Warhammer/Rome 2 Emperor Edition > Medieval 2 > Medieval/Shogun > Napoleon > Empire

Medieval 2 > Rome > Shogun 2 > Medieval > Rome 2 Emperor Edition > Shogun > Warhammer > Empire/Napoleon

Shogun 2 > Everything else

Medieval 2 > Rome > Warhammer > Shogun 2 > Rome 2 > Empire/Napoleon

Fall of the Samurai > All of the other cancer

If you disagree with the list, you are wrong.

I generally agree but it can't possibly be objective if it doesn't include Attila because your personal experience would be irrelevant.

Nevermins, I don't agree with Rome 2 being anywhere but dead last for best battles.

Yeah, it's a real joy to watch your whole samurai unit get held up because the last remaining soldier in the enemy unit keeps killing your guys in 1-on-1 duels while the other 60 patiently wait their turn.

It is an objective list of all non-Attila Total War games.

That's because you're wrong. The land/sea battles were cool (especially in co-op battles), javelins are dope as fuck, unit variety was great, and units were clearly defined, all in a responsive (in comparison to other sticky-as-fuck battle systems like all games rated under it) package. To suggest anything should rate under Empire makes me think that Rome 2 raped your dog and killed your parents, and it doesn't seem reasonable to suggest at all.

The battles in the lower games sucked rotten ass. The best parts of the games rated lower are the campaign maps, except Napoleon and Empire who were both just thoroughly shit.

Rome 2 Emperor Edition combat is literally Warhammer Total War combat but without Warhammer.

Still the most responsive and most mechanically sound battles of the entire series. It ties with Rome 2 for cavalry control. It is the single best Total War for battle gameplay, and it's expansion is the single Total War game to make guns not miserable as shit to play with. It also has the best naval battles. Abilities were well-placed and not excessive, and cavalry could dismount in combat.

If you don't think Shogun 2 has the best battles, what would you recommend, Hoplite: The Game, Warhammer: Exact Same Army Edition, or "I can't control my unit anymore because one of my dismounted knights clipped through a ladder/bridge": Total War?

Shamfurr dispray

Well this is the dumbest thing I'll read today.

You're retarded. Rome 2's battles were the most disappointing thing about that shitfest. The AI still thought they were in Empire so the enemy army always suicide charged me as if it was a game of paintball. Forget about the skirmishes and formations and tactics from Rome. Now, it's just stand there in a ball while the enemy kills himself. It is ludicrous to suggest that Empire should rate below Rome 2 for the simple reason that Rome 2's combat was the same exact half-assed garbage as from Empire, only even more out of place because it takes place almost 1500 years before gunpowder.

He could be right about r2's battles being good, but I'ld never know because every fight was a landslide autoresolve-worthy snorefest thanks to poison.

He's not. And I gave up on that bullshit long before I even got around to recruiting assassins. And the removal of the family tree and that corny level-up system for generals that replaced the traits. The more I talk about it the more I remember how bad it sucked.

How can one man be so wrong?
Rome > Medieval 2 > Empire > Napoopean > Medieval > Shogun > Warhammer > Attila > Shit > Rome 2 All the warscape games post Napoleon suffer from an engine optimised for ranged combat + 1v1 animation nonsense and a gradual increase in arcadey bullshit like every fucking unit having an activateable ability, also lower faction variety.
Napoopean > Empire > Rome 2 > Shogun 2 You just have to learn to use the group button and how to sail past faggots in a line using period tactics, shit's easy after that. Works even better in something like Darthmod that prevents the ships turning on the spot or sailing directly into the wind. Napoopean fixed the 5th rate having the best range and so rewarding excessive micro by being essentially untouchable.
Empire > Rome > Medieval 2 > Medieval > Warhammer > Shogun 2 > Attila > Rome 2 > Napoopean > Shogun Empire is basically a mini-GSG with far and away the best research, trade, diplomacy and method of upgrading cities without micro-management or over-simplification. While I prefer the way it handles reinforcements to having to march 3/4 of the way back across the world to fix up a good unit it did make it a bit too easy to refill them even in enemy territory, napoopean fixed this.
Any of the pre-warscape games, with that engine they literally had to make it so any unit could climb fort/castle walls without siege equipment or the AI would just fail entirely to attack them.
Rome > Medieval 2 > Empire > Napoopean > Shogun 2 > Rome 2 the last two are terrible multiplayer games for anything other than coop, Rome's MP is still alive and has managed to avoid a completely stale meta even 13 years in (play with CWB rules for the best experience).
Medieval 2 > Rome > Empire > the rest
Kingdoms > Fall of the Samurai > Viking Invasion > Attila arguably Napoopean is just an expandalone, if you treat it as one it'd be first. Attila is a similar situation.

I forgot:
Medieval 2 > Rome > Medieval > Warhammer (surprisingly) > Shogun 2 > Attila > Rome 2 > Shogun > Napoopean > Shit > Empire

Shogun 2 had the best sieges simply because of how the castles were designed. Every other TW game has shit sieges with atrocious pathfinding in the cities.

pretty sure spies are available from the start and the other 2 were t1 techs.

That's because they hardly even qualify as castles (and fuck the arcadey 'whoever controls this tower is decided by this arbitrary spot). They also play out in only one of two ways: bumrush the fucker if you have a normal balanced army or stand outside and shoot him to death if you've stacked archers, battles being very stale was an issue with Shogun 2 in general. Warhammer basically just said 'fuck it' and also designed the castles around the engine limits but at least there's some variety to how they play out.
Every other TW game using the Warscape engine sure, that doesn't apply to Medieval 2 or Rome. The Warscape engine is bad at sieges because it does not like units to be in less than perfect formation before doing anything. I'll agree the Warhammer/Shogun 2 approach is the best available option for the later games though.

just finished reinstalling shogun 2
which faction do i pick?
last time i played i really liked the one that payed the yari ashigeru less

I was hoping to get Warhammer but I'm not paying for that unless I can get the game and that shitload of DLC all for at least 75% off. It's also a shame that they never bundle these things up into one pack years after they release so I can get it all for a pittance at some 3rd party key seller site.

Don't fall for Takeda's lies. Uesugi or go home.

Oda, your 28 morale ashigaru will march across the lands.

Gamebillet and Dreamgame are selling Warhammer for £14, neither let you use Paypal though so use at your own risk.

Depends what mods you're playing with, or if you're playing one of the expansions.

Also I LIKED Rise Of The Samurai.

no mods, no expansion since i don't like the gatling guns

...

because i've never tried mods on total war games, no idea what i want/need

The worst maps of ME2 were when you got stuck on the side of a fucking mountain

What are the recommended mods for Shogun 2 anyway?

anyone got a clue why shogun 2 won't launch?
didn't launch on the first try, won't launch after installing the redistributables it comes with

The first time Shogun 2 starts up it takes forever, I hope you're not killing the process. If it's not the first time then right click>properties>local files>verify integrity of game files.

Savemi is selling Total WaWa for £14, they let you pay by Paypal, key was delivered instantly (though it went into my spam folder), dl'ing now.

I'll just wait for the complete edition with all the DLC.

Pick Oda, spam Yari, win. Like, holy fucking shit, yari standing alone in defensive formation fuck up EVERYTHING. I've fended off stacks of general's bodyguards with just a few yari.

Even on a fast machine for the time it takes a while. Looking up old posts some people waited around 10 minutes each time they started the game.

Does creamapi not work with wawa?

I've never found any mods really worth having in any of the warscape engine TW games. So many of them are just an absolute mess.

...

nah, apparently i did miss one of the redistributables, worked after that
also why is nobunaga so overpowered
troop quality means absolutely nothing anymore

TW has never been that good and the only reason CA still exist is that they have a monopoly on this kind of game if anyone else even remotely competent began to compete with them on this, they'd get fucking rekt

I play Total War and like them but it's true tbh

i only like them because they have the best RTS formation controls
otherwise they get outmatched in the grand strat aspect easily

There are so many types of games in this situation right now and it fucking sucks because the monopoly holder is always completely shit.

Your phalanxes are too deep. Maximize the zone enemies can't pass (and your ability to flank attack) by spreading them thinner. And autistically overlap the phalanxes so the enemy unit can't naturally flow into the sides when they are held by the spear wall.

Not Shogun 2 but Empire has some pretty great mods. Darthmod is a little overrated but it's a good place to start (slap on Casua Belli and try playing as the Barbary States, it's a fun ride).

If you've never tried any look into Third Age Total War for Medieval 2: Kingdoms. It's basically like having an extra game in the main series.

Yeah, no morale units sure are fun when you have to fetch them back for the xth time. There were just not enough factions. Aztecs should have had more.
And the plains were just OP with no enemies coming.

My nigger. I remember my last playthrough about 3-4 years ago and having Aragorn live for like 250+ years and having dozens of traits and retinues/retainers. By the time I stopped playing he still hadn't died. I always thought it was a bug, but then I remembered he had Numenorian blood. And even then not being pure-blooded, most of the Numenorian kings lived for 400-500 years before they ended up dying.

The only mild annoyance in Third Age are some of the overpowered AI scripts (insta-stakes primarily) but they've got a guide on disabling them.

The idea of those scripts is sound; the player not being able to immediatly take important settlements where everything is right next to each other with some random garrison cobbled up in the first turn, but it does feel like way too blatant cheating. It would be better if the mechanic was more like Shogun 2, where it's clear what kind of garrison the settlement with conjure up out of thin air and the troops were more varied than tons of boring sword guys and if it benefitted the player too.

This feels like next lvl shilling, knows there's a sale going on, knows someone in the thread will volunteer that information so it gets brought up anyway without the OP being the one who does it.

That said, I personally have been waiting for Medieval 2 to go on sale. I gifted a copy to a friend and we're gonna play the shit out of it this weekend.

i think i did alright
my only fuckup was that i had just conquered the castle and used a ninja for the gates, so when i was defending it i completely forgot that the gates were still broken

...

for med2 i always get that, hyrule total war, europa barborum 2, and stainless steel

typical total war faggot

That or how Empire does it by giving you a ton of miltia based on happiness: they couldn't hold a town alone but they could defend it if you'd left a fair sized garrison anyway. I was also talking about the script that lets AI archers drop stakes in the middle of a battle, often right in front of your charging cavalry.

I'm playing Shogun 2 right now and honestly I have no fucking idea who is what at all.

Do you struggle with Napoleon too?

I actually never played Napoleon because when it came out the performance was so ass I didn't even want to bother. I basically skipped from Medieval 2 to Shogun 2.

Maybe it's because I'm playing Fall of the Samurai and after 50 turns the game is still just

I assume your navy is the only one still in existence.

Man I haven't even had any navy battles, fucking landlocked Aizu.

I never played a total war game. I recently bought Medieval II. What can I expect? Been wanting to try this series for a while and recently remembered it existed. I am expecting Mount and Blade Microboogaloo.

From a Mount and Blade perspective…
imagine battles only mode, except when you do battles you only control groups of units RTS style.
Everything else like building and diplomacy is handled like those 4x games.

Actually what the fuck is even going on in Fall of the Samurai?

I get the feeling that something is getting contrived here.

So you have to build cities and such?

yeah, remember to build roads too since you need the money to afford those massive armies.

Now and then, when I'm playing Mount & Blade with 1257 AD, it really feels like I'm running around on the Medieval 2 map.

well that was easy
now tell me, why does data give me a peace offer and demands money every other turn, despite the fact that we've never faced each other on the field, and takeda is my ally and between both of our territories

date* not data

Then why the fuck are you still on Levy troops after 50 turns, what tech have you been researching?

The actual real history of the war is not the easiest to follow, but so long as you keep in mind that no real political power in Japan actually gave a fuck about keeping out barbarians and was only interested in using the rhetoric of such to further their own political power, it becomes easier.

It's not the tech it's the money. Can't afford to build all these expensive troop buildings and troops when I'm only pulling in about 1500 per turn.

...

Well. Fuck.

This, Shogun 2's economy can be summed up as 'lower taxes build farms'.