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Can you do a tier list for total wars that are vastly improved by a massive and successful overhaul mod? For example, Rome 2 vanilla is garbage, but Rome 2 DEI is the best total war game and it’s not even close Attila has Eagles, etc.
@@reddyreddog9025 shogun 2 is god tier IMO. Its a bit different, smaller scope, you can finish a main campaign in a day sometimes (which I like), but it feels really crisp & you really have to use units properly otherwise they achieve nothing. Things die very quickly too so the battles tend to be frantic, trying to plug a gap/delete an enemy unit when theres an opportunity. Thats said its pretty old & the enemy AI is pretty exploitable, but you can say that for any TW game lol
Attila deserves a lot more love than people give it. Great game, glad you agree that the battles are S tier. For me the Attila being OP isn't the biggest issue. Think you have mentioned it in previous videos, the AI basically sets out to annoy you instead of focusing on there own objectives or goals. So even if you think tactically what the worst thing the AI could do to more here, the AI pull a rabbit out of the hat and do something really annoying that kills the enjoyment.
yeah Atilla's battles were great but i didn't like the settlement building system and the campaign AI really let it down imo. Unfortunately TW diplomacy has always been terrible but mods definitely add a lot.
One thing that is pretty important in that game is the AI faction leader traits. If they have aggressive, expansionist, unreliable etc. you can expect them to declare war on you at the first opportunity and pursue you to the ends of the map but if they have something like tolertant, defensive etc. then you can stay at peace with them pretty reliably. The traits are randomised every new game so it can lead to games being very different each time. It can be really important for the ERE keeping peace with the Sassanid Empire as them declaring war on you early is a nightmare. Also keeping an army on their border when at peace seems to stop them from declaring war on you or atleast delay it.
There's a handful of things in Attila that make me dislike it. The AI being a bunch of annoying cowards is one reason, corruption being crippling when you control lots of territory (though they did reduce corruption's maximum, so it now isn't really a big issue as you won't see it go nearly as high), climate change being kinda stupid, first off that time period did not have that type of serious cold shift from all the things I could find on it. Secondly it's just lazily applied to the whole map, ignoring the fact that the hotter regions would probably be better off if it was a bit cooler. And most factions have no means to counter or reduce the penalties of it, only faction that can as far as I know is the Slavs. And finally for Romans specifically, the loss of legacy tech, the religion techs that cause the loss of my sanitation buildings can go f**k themselves. Now I once had someone tell me to merely build sanitation buildings during the early game and not wait till later, only thing they seem to fail at realizing is that doesn't help when I start conquering the map in the late campaign and have no means to build sanitation buildings anymore, and the regions I take have none built in them most of the time. Last issue is friendly fire is a b*tch of an issue, never use javelin units, as you'll basically butcher your own guys. Archers are fine for the most part you just need to be careful about when the enemy is in melee with your units, but they'll usually not shoot your guys in the back too much. I've also tried to flank with javelin throwers, and watched them unload a whole volley into a handful of the enemy but still mostly hit my guys. So I prefer safe than sorry. Now with the exception of the javelins being terrible friendly fire machines, and detach penalties being very punishing at times, mods will fix most of the other problems. Climate change an issue, use a mod that lets you actually fight the fertility hit with buildings that provide fertility. Loss of Legacy tech, how about no, or you can go with the mod that overhauls the romans and makes it so their buildings change depending on what path you want the romans to take. So with mods Attila can be fun, but vanilla is often a no for me, it's very annoying, the battles are mostly fine, love the sieges, just don't like annoying parts of the campaign is all.
The biggest problem is that they gave up on it early and never bothered optimising it. I can easily play Rome 2 on my potato laptop alongside Shogun 2, Napoleon, Empire, Med2 and Rome1- but Attila crawls even on minimum settings and it sucks they shot it in the foot then looked confused and said 'why does no one want to play historical games anyone? :('
I remember playing a battle in Rome 2 where the enemy general, a unit of Royal peltasts proceeded to take volley after volley of javelins without any troops dying and then they proceeded to wipe out my entire army of lower grade troops despite being surrounded. After watching this video I finally feel validated! I'm glad I'm not crazy!
I disagree about Rome II. Why people think low-tier units should defeat Oathsworn I have no idea. Try looking up competitive Attila battles. You won't find any tournaments whereas Rome II was incredibly popular for competitive battle scene
@@Baltic_Dude I'd agree with you if the unit was going toe to toe on even ground with 2-3 or maybe even four times the number of lower grade troops but in real life and in other games even elite troops get tired. It just didn't make sense for even an elite unit of troops to take 12 volleys of javelins and be surrounded 10-1 and also be exhausted and somehow come out on top. Just didn't seem plausible to me but hey it's just the design choice they went for.
Great control scheme, units respond quickly and great variety of units that are surprisingly well balanced. And most importantly unit morale just works great. Maybe battles work slightly better in Shogun 2, but battles get boring quickly because you fight the same units all the time and control scheme/camera angles are worse. So overall I think Attila has the best battles by far considering the massive unit variety.
Similar morale across the board, unlike Rome 2, and significant morale debuffs caused by correct tactical decisions, like flanking, use of whistling shot and general sniping. And AI morale cheats do not severely change that. So elite infantry don't end up becoming unbreakable raid bosses, both elite infantry and peasants will break if they get flanked putting a lot more importance on tactics than just being a stat fest.
Also "sticky" combat. The penalty for disengaging without creating space for your unit is incredibly punishing. It makes you commit to your decisions, and reduces the value of cheesing chain cavalry charging, but you get fabulous charge and morale shock when you do it at just the right time.
Shogun 2 being considered low cheats is such an eye opener for me, I only play Med 2 and Shogun 2 and I already thought the Legendary cheats were quite bs, can't imagine it for the newer games
In TW:Warhammer 2 AI melee cheats at higher difficulties makes near impossible to use melee-oriented armies. It's so sad, because there are a lot of beautifully designed melee units in game
In shogun 2 the ai battle cheats are archers get higher armor penetration and all units get slightly more moral (not enough to matter tho). The cheats feel so bullshit on legendary is because the ai gets more recruitment slots, essentially infinite money and food, and public order cheats so high that they will never have a revolt occur without a monk instigating it.
@@onestupidboi9320 Winning Legendary shogun 2 is pretty much decided the first 30-40 turns, if you haven’t expanded enough the AI will crush you no matter what. I had taken nearly half of the map already controlled most of the trade posts and had metsukes overseeing my richest provinces and was struggling to field 3-4 full stacks and had the spread them around, while the Oda had 4 full stacks travelling together towards my border with them at Bizen lmao, I had two stacks there but my other one was dealing with a Honma invasion on my homeland lmao and the last one was trying eliminate the chokosabe lmao. Those 4 full stacks had more experience and were full of bow samurai, my two stacks didn’t stand a chance
@@PAPADRACOLIN You can never compete with the AI on the campaign map. You need to just be insane enough at battles that you can kill 6000 men with 2000 consistently. Good army composition helps too.
In Troy on legendary difficulty the first 20 turns are completely BS in terms of AI cheats. One way to get around is to use a lot of slingers to get some free damage early, or if you are Achilles use him. Then it becomes bearable because there are so much stacking bonuses you can get thru tech tree, general skills and divine favor. But then you can just auto-resolve everything.
Morale and shock damage are the most important things in an interesting title imo. Part of what makes Shogun and Attila so enjoyable battlewise, is getting a mass rout going can be super impactful. In other titles, sometimes 1 militia unit can be hanging around against a full stack and still fancying his chances.
One time in Attila, I'd completely turned the tables on a barbarian horde with a garrison of a couple cohors and one comatitensis in a siege defense with the help of one scout equites I routed their ranged contingents and flanked their entire dozen+ strong crappy German spear stack that they'd commited to one chokepoint , it was costly but i was just at the finish line with two units still in the fight on both sides, i was winning, the balance of power was like 80% in my favour, then these god-damn shirtless *light* axemen go Super Saiyan or "beserk" a random buff that was usually exclusive to elephants, and they scare off both my remaining units, losing me the battle, i promptly named that replay "the biggest pile of bs" and crushed them the next turn with an army I had in an adjacent settlement.
@@buzter8135 Those bastards you will find are best killed with archer, they think they're so cool going to war without a shirt so but will run away p quick after 1-2 volleys of low tier archers wipe out half their battalion.
It also works pretty well in m2, you can completely obliterate the enemy army while being absolutely outnumbered if you use your units correctly (mostly cav, let's be honest)
I have ATTILA installed still trying to figure out after years how to mitigate all these bloody penalties like Sanitation and PO penalties everywhere. It's great game, cavalry is amazing and responsive, music is damn good but there some annoyances like cheating from AI as per usual in TW and strategy games.
Yes, you are the only one. In a world full of 7 billion + people all sharing different lives, experiences and tastes, you are indeed the only one with this unique opinion and absolutely no one shares it despite Attila selling millions of copies. Congratulations.
I usually play on normal battle difficulty in any tw because I don't like that the AI cheats. So when I tried to up the battle difficulty in my favourite tw, empire, and saw 3 regiments of prussian line infantry get one shot by a random unit of militia, I knew that something was off.
Hard agree. They always try and "fix the player bias" but always end up flubbing something up. Most of the time i feel like you are forced to go slower because of AI bullcrap or make risky maneuvers to outpace the AI actions which doesn't make sense to me personally. I like to somewhat play tall in strategy games so I personally feel when all the AI treat me like a Bangbus trip.
Yeah for empire whenever I play, except the Empire TW2 mod (amazing mod btw) I always auto resolve land and fight naval. Loved naval so much and the Age of Sail as a whole.
Basically describing why I don't play most TW games on very hard / legendary. It's not that I don't enjoy good challenge, but it's a bummer when it fundamentally breaks how the game is supposed to be played. I can enjoy well-rounded armies at lower difficulties without being compelled to spam the broken units. This does have me tempted to revisit MTWII and Atilla.
That's why I almost always play on very hard campaigns but normal battles. I like the overall challenge but I don't like my elite units losing to some garbage.
Medieval 2 ai: must.....kill....player Player: yea you came here while your capitol is sieged by someone else right?? Ai: we will ceasefire next turn. But....i..must..kill..player
@@madwellmusic8995 Warhammer AI: I'll declare war but I won't send any armies at you, cause I'm a minor gobbo faction at the other side of the map Medieval AI: we're allied but I'll send my armies at you
One thing I would like to compare is Shogun 2 vs Three Kingdoms. Both have a shared pool of units across most factions because the setting is placed in a single culture, yet in Shogun 2 you can always feel the different and uniqueness of each clan. Shimazu fielding a Katana Samurai focus army is equally viable and enjoyable as Uesugi fielding monks. Using gun units as Otomo feel different and unique compare to others, even though it's just copy pasted with altered stats. Meanwhile, Three Kingdoms having a missile and calvary meta means that all factions are locked into focusing those units, made worse by the fact that when you go down the tech tree, you get access to the superior units that every factions can also have. Liu Bei has unique archer units, but it doesn't matter because everyone get Onyx Dragons, and can be recruited by level 1 generals.
Granted Shimazu are also pretty good at the gun units games but I know what you mean. Also the position of each clan on the map makes a huge difference. What are your routes of expansion? Available trade goods? Special buildings? Trade ports? And so on.
The cavalry issue was compounded by the way recruitment works as only certain generals could recruit any good cavalry. You generally wanted Vanguards for that. That said, I think the main issue were Azure Dragons. You unlock them through food research you were going to do anyway, and they do everything really well. They're archers and glaive infantry, they can stand up against imperial units, they can do range well and they're great against cavalry. The other thing was that artillery felt very OP, maybe it's because of my lower end laptop not being able to run larger unit scales, but it seemed like trebuchets could just route half the enemy army before they got to you. The other thing was that militia felt useless late game. Maybe you could use archer and cavalry militia here and there but they just didn't seem to be able to stand up. Ji Militia feel obsolete by Turn 1.
And the cherry on top is those animated agent actions, looking as your shinobi is working his way to the target between sleeping soldiers. Does he trip on to someone this time? Does he get away?
Yeaaa, Three kingdoms is kinda general meta. In one of my campaigns I haven't recruited almost any normal units till like round 50 (and campaign lasted around 80 rounds till full domination). If You know how to cheese, generals are crazy strong. Infinte healing general, multiple shot destruction gods, Lu Bu who can solo multiple fullstacks. That was some crazy things going on, but loved it. :D
@@Kuutti_original IMHO there isn't enough variety to keep them activated but they are certainly appreciated. The pre-battle speeches OTOH are quite impressive as they are made of several segments and change according to the battle at hand. I really liked that.
If anyone's interested in a criticism about TW battles accuracy I strongly recommend Schwerpunkt, a former TW modder as well as a PhD in military history
I am maybe a causal player, but I really loved battles in Empire. I felt like game really rewarded me for having superior technology over my enemies from the start, to the late game. Like difference for having a bayonets and units fightning with stock of their muskets, or inventing grapeshot is huge, and in late game using shrapnel and other high tier artillery was just deeply satisfing. I guess my opinion comes also from not playing on hardest possible battle diffiulcties, but I actually never felt like I have to do so, just to have fun and satisfaction from the game.
The biggest thing about Rome II is that all the battles last like 4 minutes. Missile units absolutely obliterate melee units. They're best at firing in their rear, but even firing onto a testudo, missile units are way too good. Playing divide et impera really solves these problems for me, and brings Rome II from C tier to S tier (or maybe A tier since the naval battles can't be fixed).
Macedon or any other army with strong pike units breaks that game. Get a wall of pikes, and put like 3 ballista with explosive shot behind them. The AI just doesn't know what to do with it. Like you actually see it just give up and charge cavalry into a pike formation. Rinse and repeat til you own the map.
The most underappreciated Total War game is Attila. Even I wasn't sure at the time when I tried out first because it was 0 hype around it but it was the most pleasant surprise how good it was.
I am old. I loved the rock-paper-scissors mechanics of Shogun 1 and would gladly see it on the chart, probably in the A Tier. Nevertheless, I think starting with Rome 1 was a good choice. The changes from the first games were significant. I pretty much agree, but I must add that Troy is a game I have strongly mixed feelings about. The campaign is fun and the map is gorgeous. I find the idea of the battles quite compelling but they just don't work for me. I find myself playing Troy like a Paradox' grand strategy. And the battles were always the reason I played Total War games.
I really enjoy the battles in Empire and Napoleon, like 7.5 out of 10. It is the reason I love the Empire in TWW. Empire has one of my favorite maps across all the games and trying to maintain those gigantic empires is part of the fun. I am a normal difficulty player typically across all games to really see where the base balance stands. Rome was my start and I loved that dynamic as well. I am definitely going to give Attila a try now though.
I really adore Med 2's battles, the units feel super sluggish which can be a pain in the ass but after you get used to it Med 2 is for sure the most rewarding for me. Shogun 2 was the first Total War game that got me into Multiplayer fights though but that might have been due to the Avatar Conquest though.
Avatar Conquest was a great idea poorly executed on the balance side of things. I wish they improved on it, because having your own custom veteran units and bonuses was a great idea.
@@Knoloaify It was really cool yeah, I am sure I am remembering it fondly because I was a bit younger but it was a cool to get players to hop on and do a few 1v1s.
@@MsSirAndy That's purely a subjective view. Not saying you're wrong, just that some people (myself included) can get more fun out of the faster pacing of RTW, although I do also enjoy M2TW's battles.
@@Nutty31313 I didn't say RTW battles are bad. It's just that M2TW battles are more realistic thus a better choice for those who prefer realism and strategy over constant micromanagement
I recently played Napoleon Darthmod Britain campaign again and it was pretty good. Really enjoyed the epic naval battles makes me sad they haven't bothered putting them in Warhammer. Imagine fleets of Empire ships of the line, dwarf ironclads, krakens and all the other wild ship designs and sea monsters doing battle rather than just the same couple of "island" land battles over and over and over... Hopefully someday someone makes a mod
Problem with Wh is exactly that, naval battles would most likely require as much effort as a full fledged game due to the huge variety of ships and the various ways they must Interact with each other. I'd love to see them hlbut I understand why many people don't want the Devs to waste funds on them.
I loved exploiting how much of an advantage that proper naval units had over troops on transports in Attila. Crushing full stacks with a couple of ships was crazy satisfying.
There is also a total revamp mod for Empire rn called Empire Total War 2. Unit selection is by far the biggest differentiator. I mean you on average have 300 choices for units to recruit.
This is great! Exactly what I was looking for. Just played Shogun 2 but in researching other total wars it made me so confused to figure out which ones have a functioning battle system that is reliant on tactics and not just stats. Thanks so much for this video! Can't wait to try Medieval 2 and Attila
I always thought that the unresponsiveness of heavy cavalry in Med II was intentional. They have a lot of momentum and making the entities a little sluggish adds to the realism a little.
Dear Legend. It does me well to see you change your opinion on 3K. It is not perfect, but I have sunk many an hour into conquering China. One of the most interesting outings CreativeAssembly's ever done.
Man, napoleon with darth mod, controlling 40 units against another 40, battles are almost realistic in terms of men on the field... Now that is something else, it's truly awesome.
I highly highly recommend giving three kingdoms records mode a serious chance. It seriously holds up as a Total War experience even if people like to say it’s a “watered down romance mode.” Forget romance and its single entity hero units. Records mode with the basic gameplay 3k gives is probabaly one of the best total war experiences I’ve had in a long time after fall of the samurai.
Yeah, it's what bugged me (And still bugs me) about Rome 2 and Attila - I loved Rome 2's campaign and its setting, but the battles didn't do it for me. I loved Attila's battles, but its campaign and its setting did nothing for me. It's wrapped up in what frustrates me most about CA, where they just can't seem to find a way to be consistent, especially when it comes to the battles. A new game comes out and they'll massively improve one aspect of it, whilst simultaneously massively regressing in another. It drives me bloody mad. Stop trying to reinvent a perfectly functioning wheel from scratch every time and improve by iteration instead.
I would say that I think my favorite experience in Total War is playing as a migratory faction. You have so much freedom to basically make your own story; are you going to settle your Sarmatians in Gaul? Cool, but wait here come the Saxons with a bunch of full stacks you can't deal with. TIme to uproot and move to somewhere safer. It feels like such a fun way to tell your own story, lots of times where you're beating the odds and every battle is super impactful. Whereas with most factions you get a few of those important, must win low odds battles early on, but then after that you just steamroll your enemy and it's more of a grind than anything.
I recently picked up thrones of Britannia because I wanted a more infantry focused gameplay and I like the game way more than I expected to. My biggest issue is definitely not enough siege defense battles. I love playing defense in siege battles and in this game if you're on defense for siege battles then something has gone terribly wrong. Also the oil gates were BRUTAL. Edit: The naval battles were fun to learn in Britannia as well. I never experienced 800AD naval combat and its a blast.
Same here. I know this is more campaign than battle, but I like the way Britannia makes you plan out your battles as well. Those undefended targets look good, but if you don't have the food or means to make it work, you have to plan your attacks around that. I like that better than all the others where you can turn the Saharah Desert into a breadbasket, because you can build anything anywhere with little if any penalty. Same with the Tech-Tree. If you go all in on the military you pay a heavy price, but if you plan how and what you learn as you develop it works smoothly. IDK, Thrones makes you think of the campaign as an Equal to the Battles making it balance more if that makes sense. ((Now if only they would've done away with the cartoon "tapestry" look and kept the life like character images that age as you go it would've been perfect. In the battles generals & leaders look amazing, in the campaign they lost it all))
I think encouraging tactics is good as long as you clarify that tactics are a serious focus (e.g. positioning, elevation, weather, terrain features.) . Especially because of how tactical features have come and gone, and how many of the “standard” tactical features have changed in their function and importance. But sometimes it’s also fun to just have really strong units that dominate a battlefield (tosa riflemen, or skarbrand) it’s kinda like a game vs a toy one can be fun and challenging for a long time the other is great for occasional bursts of entertainment
The original Shogun was the whole reason I bought a home computer back in the day. My brother in law had it, and after playing it for a handful of hours I went home and bought a "Gateway" (cow-box) PC just to be able to play Total War. For a long time I only bought new PC's to keep up with the new releases, but honestly that all ended with Empire. I still play Total War, but not nearly with the same vigor I used to pre-Empire.
Empire was the last one I played too. And man, what a shameful display. They really could have done so much more than that watered down junk. I loved the game too, but it's just so watered down
People sleep on Attila so much and I don't understand why. It has it's problems like a lot of other total war games, sure. But it's one of the last historical games with any sort of quality. The mods too bring it so much more life.
S: Attila - for the reaons you said A: Medieval 2 - marked down for clunkiness, lack of drag to move formation especially, lack of naval battles B: Rome Remastered - pushed down by M2. Rome 2 - because elite units not losing to peasants walking up behind them is not a good reason to rank it below straight-up broken things C: Rome - pushed down by Remastered and M2. D: Empire- because good naval battles can't carry the broken land battles. F: Warhammers - because single model units completely screw up how combat is supposed to work by being able to blob up entire armies, the worst sieges and making 'naval' battles even worse than m2's auto resolve only I haven't played Shogun2, Britania, 3k and Troy but I imagine variety would be a huge issue. I haven't played Napoleon, but I can't imagine it being much better than Empire
The Warhammer games have too much tactical depth for historical only pea brains to understand. Can't just win every battle with an infantry slog and some cycle charges.
I know you’ve played these games WAY more than I have.. but with 600 hours in Rome2, I feel that the battles deserve higher than C tier. Yes you cannot overcome ridiculous odds.. but you can use tactics to win battles you have no right being able to. Calvary and ranged units when used to flank while using infantry to hold the line can result in insane wins. The pacing of Rome2 seems slower than a lot of other games (which I like) but perhaps that is what you don’t like about it. And removed from “battle difficulty” the unit responsiveness, AI movement/unit pathing is great. I always go back to Rome2 when I want good open field battles.. also some of the best siege battles in the whole series. EDIT: One other thing I was thinking about. And I get this is a preference/thing that not everyone enjoys... but Rome2 battles seem like the most "realistic" of all the games. I genuinely don't think that losing a commander in a battle would have real time effects. Mainly because most of the soldiers wouldn't even know. Maybe after the battle moral would be hit. But during? I think people are more worried about the swords and spears swinging at them than caring to listen for if the commander is still alive. I do admit that the moral system isn't the best with flanking and such. But I think the stats (combat effectiveness) of a unit does have huge impacts on a battle in real life. I'm sure a "full stack" of praetorian guard would likely not be able to lose to light calvary and spearmen without shirts on. There is a realism in Rome2, and I think it makes you have to CHOOSE when you actually want to fight.
I agree. I like rome 2 a ton. But it does feel like the pacing of time is messed up. Each turn is a year but you can only travel such small distances especially via naval travel. I also feel like it ends up making your effort to make good leader seem like a losing battle. Also seiges? One year to make two seige towers?
Main post got cut short, but Rome 2 favors PRE battle strategy over in fight tactics. Using two armies to take on a superior one, night battles, positioning on a hill on the campaign map if you know you will be attacked, hiring mercenaries for a turn, deployable defenses (fireballs) can wipe huge lines of men out. It is the before battle thoughts that often win the wars in Rome 2. Playing Warhammer and other Historical titles (like Shogun) even though I love them, never felt "realistic" to me. Most feel very gamey, which some love. But Rome 2 pureness to me comes from how the battles just feel real. And @Legendoftotalwar you are incredible at winning difficult, against all odds battles, probably the best in the world. No one can tactic or cheese a battle like you. But in Rome 2 I think sometimes you just need to not fight some battles and find ways to win fights before the battles begin.
I actually think Troy battles are pretty good. The one thing I really like and was sure Legend would like is that flanking is such a big thing. You can easily beat any unit with flanking because it lowers not only moral but melee defence as well. You have missile units with serrated blades which lower moral just like whistling shots. I also believe that there should be a big difference between elite units and peasants but there's a light cap on how many elite units you can bring because of the resource system. You can't bring 3 full stacks of Elite Agamemnon's Charges which can destroy whole militia armies. The collision is awful, chariots are op but expensive. Like he said there is no perfect total war game but I believe Troy is far from D tier.
I was shocked by the low score you gave Empire, as it's one of my favorite Total War games, but you made a lot of good points for why. Add in that I only play on normal or easy, and always use DarthMod, your score makes a lot of sense.
Empire has by far the worst battle AI of any total war game. Legend doesn't play multiplayer, so it makes sense that he ranked Empire's battles so low.
I would like to see a video like this ranked based on each games modding community. I think Rome 2 became S tier once Dei came into the picture such a great mod!
I remember playing empire: the enemy would send their general forward to scout, killed him with the first cannon shot. Can’t believe how awful Troy had to be to be worse than that
Surprised about Troy. Especially after Mythos the battles are tons of fun and very polished. At release I agree that it belongs in D, though that applies to every TW game (especially R2).
I feel like Rome 2 is popular because of DEI Mod. It makes the game so much harder and just awesome. Enemy routing when charging and flanking. Mass route works very good. I never touched Rome 2 before but with this mod I found a hidden gem for me
I had experience only with Rome 2 of these. I even didn't try other options. Legend is right, but I simply didn't consider his perspective: I was playing a game with that level of importance of the army composition and enjoy the atmosphere and global part. I liked to rely on artillery and archers pulling off your enemy onto the uncrushable wall of spikesmen or other best defensive melee units I have. Making a stand on river crossing with such armies was a fun for me. Defense in siege battles, even doomed to be lost, was fun. Slow pacing cracking of defense as an attacker in siege battles. In all these cases, the cavalry was used for scouting on the maps with rough landscape or forests, often hidden scouting from forests, with cutting down the enemy artillery or archer units whenever they are left unprotected. Compared to Warhammer 2, which was a thing which pulled me off the Rome 2, this is boring, but I enjoyed :) Also, I never was putting even a 40% percent of Legends' efforts into battles; actually, I do not want: my work is the intellectual one (theoretical and statistical physics) and I want to be lazy and stupid after work, I do not afford any more too much intellectual activity in games %), I play for aesthetics and just a little bit of thinking.
I've been playing a lot of Attila lately and I would disagree with its battles being S tier. They are S tier _when they work_. But they are some of the buggiest and broken battles in the series: * Attila maps have tons of rocks everywhere. No reason for it, just tons of big rocks all over the place on every map, especially sieges. They can be hard to see, and its often hard just to deploy a simple straight battle line because there are rocks everywhere, and they screw up pathfinding. * Alt+Drag movement in useless in Attila when selecting multiple control groups. The game just places all control groups on top of each other in the same place and messes up your army formation. Also if the AI issues an order to its own units when you are in the middle of alt+drag movement, it throws your alt+drag over to the other side of the map. You have to be quick, if the AI moves its armies at all it will mess up your alt movement. * Some Attila maps have these vineyards on them. These vineyards are the ancient enemy of pathfinding. Any unit that wanders into a vineyard will breka their formation and spread out like ants. Most models in the unit will start running in every direction and ignore orders. It can take 2 full minutes for a unit to recover from "vineyard shock" and regain its formation to begin following your orders again. You have to treat these vineyards as dead spots in the map and avoid them. They are especially common on sieges - along with rocks everywhere, Attila sieges lose their luster fast due to terrible pathfinding. * AI battle cheats are quite extreme. AI tier 1 axemen will beat almost any player tier 3 infantry in battle. If any AI cavalry unit charges into non-spear infantry that are not in a shieldwall-type formation, that infantry unit is dead even if it is tier 3 and the cavalry tier 1. This limits what types on units you can use, for example any berserker type unit like Heteira Guard or Athar's Chosen that doesn't have a shieldwall formation is useless as it will be deleted by cavalry before it can contribute, and the AI knows this and prioritizes charging these units. AI cheats are most egregious on ranged units. Player horse archers will end up with ~90 fire rate. AI Hunnic Devil Archers can reach over 700 fire rate with legendary cheats. If you use testudo formation, this can actually work in your favor since their archers do no damage and will use up their ammo faster. * Attila's group pathfinding is very bad. There is one element that drives me crazy. If you lock a formation and alt+drag or right click+drag to move their formation but deploy it backwards from how you locked it, the units in that group will then "criss cross" each other's path, where they all run into each other to reverse their positions in their formation. This makes it very annoying to use skirmishing units like horse archers. If you quickly move them and reverse their orientation, they will waste time running into each other in a big mass of stupid and will likely be caught in melee by anything chasing them. * The AI doesn't know how to make strong armies and usually just spams mercenaries and whatever tier 1 spearmen unit that has no prerequisites for their faction. Even though they make barracks-type buildings everywhere, they rarely make a strong army. It's a good thing the Huns have armies that are all auto-generated from two templates, because both of those template armies are dangerous and the Huns would be no threat if left for the AI to build their armies. * Tons of stuff is straight up broken. Some agent skills do nothing. Spent skill points, get an ability that does literally nothing. Many traditions are broken. One of the strongest army traditions in the game, the Sassanid' skill "Persian marksmanship" says it increases range for ranged units by 20%. It does nothing. Spend 2 skill points on it, no range increase. * Many skill bonuses are laughably small. Wow! 1% more armor! That will make a huge different for my 15 armor cavalry! 1% more ammunition! My ranged units have 22 ammo total, so that almost equals out to 1/4 of 1 arrow for them! Good stuff. But then you have actually strong skills, like +20% more missile damage or +20% more campaign movement or +6 melee attack/defense for all cavalry. Naturally, you will go for these skills on every army and general in every playthrough so you are always working toward the same 1 or 2 skills in each tree. Skills should have a major impact on the battles, but only 1 or 2 actually do. AI battle cheats are so extreme that these skill increases can often feel superfluous. * The AI can intentionally bug out its units on settlement maps to make them unattackable. If a unit moves close enough to a building, its models cannot be attacked. For some reason any attacking unit will break off its attack order if the target is hugging a building. The AI can "string out" its units into spaghetti lines that hug buildings, making them unattackable, but they can attack you. This is rare but can ruin your day. I remember abandoning a WRE campaign I put 100 hours into because I had to replay 1 siege about 8 times due to the AI spaghettifying its units into buildings so that I could not attack them. * Attila is great but broken. When the battles work, they are some of the best. They often do not. In well over 1000 hours I've never finished an Attila campaign, I rarely even make it to turn 100 when Attila actually appears in game. I always quit in frustration because of some battle breaking.
You're just describing Total War in general here I think with most of these points. Best thing they could ever do going forward is use a new, modern engine that gives developers an easier time in making the games how they want to and not perpetually piggybacking from a previous game. Those reports about how inefficient it is to work on a Total War game and the archaic systems they're still using are very worrying. Especially now they blew all that money people gave them via the Warhammer games on the failed FPS project that was cancelled, makes me worried for this franchise. Imagine they reinvested that into the franchise that made them the money in the first place.
@@allbies I wouldnt agree with that, imo these are Attila issues which is why I went into detail on how they specifically affect Attila's battles. I can't think of any 1% bonuses in Warhammer or vineyards that make my units go braindead.
Meaning to say I think other Total War games had they had map designs with those vineyards included might experience similar issues with the pathfinding. Whereas even if those vineyards exist, you'd expect a game built on a modern engine to solve those physics so that would never be an issue in the first place. Speaking about historical titles mainly and not comparing them to Warhammer. The problem is all of the TW games have multiple issues and many are due to what they're developing these games on.@@Sarcasmses
Med I would defend itself better than you think in my opinion. Always loved the slower pace of battle and charges are epic in this game. Archers feel right.
When Legend spoke about the naval battles of Shogun 2, I shed a small tear of nostalgia. In Shogun 2 I honed the art of controlling ordinary kobayas to mastery. I could kill 7, 8, even 10 of any enemy ships with just three kobayas with archers. In the midgame I usually added another one with a fire bombs. When they gained more experience, I began to sink black ships with the same fleet of four kobayas (couldn't capture it though). It got to the point where I stopped capturing the black ship altogether, bacause with its salary alone I could support multiple kobaya fleets that absolutely dominated the entire ocean. Playing for any house that had early enough access to the sea I always fought off and kept all trading posts. The downside was, the AI, usually running away from superior forces, underestimated my fleets and constantly tried to kill them. So I had to fight a LOT of naval battles. In the final statistics sometimes it reached a ratio of 2 to 1 sea to land. I didn't lose much, but it was very tiring.
First of all, impressive :) I was microing nadal battles and winning against the odds but not as yours. I stopped because like you said it was annoying, too many battles.
Ive jumped into Thrones of Britannia lately and Im having a blast as Great Viking army. The battles are awesome, tactical, every unit have its place and utility and the campaing is quite fun. I do really like the village system as it gives some strategic depth.Try it for yourself! Legendary everything ofc! ;)
After playing rome 2 and lots of warhammer i decided to purchase TW Attila and I have to say that if i have choose which has the best battles, Attila wins by far the fact that you can use tier 1 units to overcome the odds is best thing ever. Great game
Have you tried dwarf warriors backed up by quarrelers? Armies of just that can handle most things. And 40 units of that can handle even ai doomstacks. Without arty
@@daxl505 the comment above is tier 1, or basic infantry. 40 dawi with axe and crossbow are more than capable of handling almost anything the game throws at you 95% of the time. Everything else is flavor and win more.
what always crushes the fun out of Empire TW is the fact that especially the sieges (i look at you Star Fort) are bug riddled and to some extend they are the majority of landbattles.
One thing from Med II that always sticks with me is fighting the King of Denmark who I think was level 8 Leader and him dispatching 3 full units of my army singlehandedly! He went down eventually but I just sat there in Awe watching him cleave through my men just thinking wow...
I think they have hidden cheats with ai attack ratio and suicidal generals. Like when I watch enemy generals swing 300% more, and my general will somehow end up in the middle of enemy blod, just eating blows. Sometimes out of even 50-60 he will be the only casualty, while enemy general will 9 times out of 10 be the very last one standing.
Rome 1 is king. It is the only historic title with legit unit upgrading. 5 chevron long shield cavalry with max upgrades could easily take down the Companions or even the Cataphracts. Only Warhammer TW reintroduced the concept and let you make a unit truly stronger. Medieval 2 was more about the stats and Rome 2 is almost entirely just raw stats.
Rank 9 yari ashigaru with blacksmith upgrades easily wins against blank katana samurai. Even if they don't use yariwall. Flat bonuses on low values are pretty big.
I really agree with the point about tactics. I remember beating a gigantic army of gauls in Rome 1 with a tiny force of understrength hastati, town watch and one general - it feels so rewarding to actually win though tactic rather than having a bigger stack of units or having higher stats - it really makes you feel like your choices and actions matter as a player. These are the kinds of moments that i remember from these games: beating the odds and winning with an inferior force through tactics.
The duel system in Three Kingdoms and the generals specialization systems is something that comes out. Its another layer of tactics that if it was better balanced would have been a great addition in the total wars series I believe. (Note that I haven't played any history total war after 3 kingdoms I don't know if they kept it in troy.)
I have a very different perspective to you because battle mechanics are not my top priority. For me, it's immersion that ranks the highest, along with faction diversity. I also play on normal and mostly play for simulation/historical/hardcore mods. It is an interesting thing to see what you have to say because modded play does massively change how the games function and we play on different difficulties. But, you do point out things that i do appreciate, even if i weight them differently. I have to say though that Empire feeds into my style the best and has my favorite battle moments lol. What you said about it reinforces my position of only playing on normal. I should add that i also pause to issue orders. Which, is something that I've done since the original Medieval.
For me Attila battles should be in S+ tier, they are so good that you just want to keep fighting battle after battle. Extremely rewarding and satisfying this is how I would describe them, also comparing them to autoresolve simulator which is Rome II gives even better perspective. I am praying for Medieval III with Attila battle system.
I wish that among all the chaos that CA it's going through, they somehow thinks a way to earn money from old titles, that way we could finally get a final patch for Attila that solves the optimization issue as they did for TOB
Great video Legend! Really interesting to listen to others' thoughts on this. One aspect I've discovered between titles that can really help or hinder battles is battle maps. I especially noticed it going from Rome2/Attila back to shogun 2 at one point, I've found shogun 2 offers on a more regular basis really interesting terrain to play with like large hills, tree lines that can allow you to travel large distances hidden to get an advantage (rather than just clumps of trees for hiding) and cliffs while I can't tell you the number of times I've gotten a flat plain map in Rome 2/Attila (sure it happens sometimes in shogun but feels like much less often). Medieval 2 and Rome 1 would fall into the good maps category too just based usually on the size of the maps you get. I also find it interesting that I don't typically find Attila's battles that great though I think that may be more due to some of the unit/faction design i.e. general units having worse stats than other units in their class (defying all logic?), roman infantry being some of the worst in the game (besides testudo formations), some of the whacky unit balancing and aforementioned battle maps. Would be curious what others think though I say all this having spent hundreds of hours in Attila and generally enjoying it (maybe also due to the time period and it being the first totak war delving into modding scene).
I don’t know if Troy has been improved since launch, I remember playing it a little when it was free then putting it down. I then picked it up again, trying out the historical mode, and actually found the battles quite enjoyable. I did feel like I had to think around the different unit speeds, think about timings of “how long can those units over there hold while I try and defeat the units over here with my offensive units”. I had to consider morale in a way I haven’t felt the need in recent TW games, since amazing high tier units just don’t become available until late in the game and even then cost the premium resource of gold. That last point really stands out to me. In TW:WH games it always felt like I’d go around with an army until I unlocked a tier 4 settlement, then just buy a brand new elite army with the special units. In Troy, even when I unlock the elite units, I still get battles with weaker units in my army that I have to be conscious of and make decisions around. I can see why people wouldn’t rate Troy battles highly, I certainly wouldn’t put them in S tier, but I think that they do a solid standing for a saga game and I probably wouldn’t agree with putting them quite so much in the bin.
Wow I've had a completely different experience with empire's battles from you. My guns might need some support but once you tech up and DON'T use militia they can take on 2 groups to 1. Then there are the cannons, I go with 3 cannons with grape shot for the majority of the game its just so satisfying when the enemy is rounding a corner to be met with a direct blast of grapeshot. I can hold a fort with 3 cannons and some militia. And yes this is on the hardest difficulty.
The shooting line upgrades are the most satisfying thing ever! Seeing your infantry go from just the front line shooting to a well-drilled, organized barrage completely changes the game.
The things i love from Empire is the naval battles and that each unit has a regiment title. The regiment thing is small but i really wished they kept that feature in future games
Since i read it that way how about a tierlist on the actual historical battles you can play in the game and how you feel they brought them to life within the game (taking the game age into account obv)
ToBs sieges are the best because they increased the settlement sized by making more space between buildings and it makes the path finding so much better. And then they just stopped that in future games…
I think 3k is massively underrated. Has some of my favourite features in a TW game and the ability to have it more warhammer esque with the heroes or have a standard experience with generals bodyguard.
Rome 2: I really enjoyed - especially once the various patches were launched. I'd say one thing that I like about the battles, and prefer them to Rome 1 (at least these days), is that Rome 1 can be very cheesy to win battles. Rome 2 I had lots of battles throughout various campaigns where I felt like my armies were overcoming odds - a lot of this probably is just due to the stats point you mentioned, but I like the army experience progression in Rome 2, and a good defensive formation (especially during sieges and forcing the enemy into choke points) feels very powerful, even when you're massively outnumbered. I'd say defending sieges is what I enjoy the most in this game, when outnumbered. I find that in a defensive siege, especially when outnumbered, your units defending choke points and then flanking the enemy with calvary is very powerful. I've won plenty of battles in Rome 2 via good use of calvary and choke points, and it feels less cheesy than sieges in Rome 1. It also gives some of the feeling of the historical portrayals in that era - Caesar invading gaul and overcoming huge battles where he's heavily outnumbered, and relying on legionaries being well disciplined and using defensive formations to win.
Medieval 2 and Rome 1's field battles are a comfort space for all total war players, whether it's lines of heavy knights smashing each other in med 2 or a phalanx wall meeting a horde of barbarians in rome... amazing experiences
It depends on what map you get a bit but I found defending minor settlements in three kingdoms really fun. The combination of choke points and some open space allows for a good variety of units to perform well
I love tw three kingdoms, the battles are nice but the reason i like it is because of the setting. I really love being able to recruit all these legendary generals and watch them duel, character mods like MTU and Wu Kingdaisance really help with that too
TW Attila was my first TW game and I still love it to this day! Your WRE legendary campaign was my favourite series Legend, make another one someday please.
I do think the best historic games encourage you to build balanced and 'realistic' looking army's whereas the WH games really benefit form allowing you to run skewed, one dimensional army's that are thematic over realistic.
Finally ! I'm a TWW player since day one but I've always wanted to try out a historical total war yet they all seemed boring to me, battles looked like "better stats = win" no strategy involved, just infantry vs infantry. Thank you !
Honestly Rome 2's naval battle's biggest issues are the bugginess of ship movement and artillery ships being able to do all the hard work without moving. I get it that they're shooting big rocks, but don't tell me a rock bouncing off the deck or front of the ship will make it sink. When these two issues weren't present on the battlefield, I actually had some fun ramming or setting much bigger ships ablaze. Even took Alexandria while aiding Seleucids' siege with just 4 Carthage ships.
Three kingdoms is S tier just for how well the unit stats were changed. Melee defense was removed, we got to see the otherwise hidden attack speed stat, shields have an armor value from the front, charge bonuses are high across the board and charge reflection works, so well timed charges are a required lest you waste them. It all adds up to melee holding the line for an extremely long period of time, so long as their flanks are covered, meaning even on legendary you have time to zoom in a bit and watch some of the spectacle. Unlike WH you also don't have to worry about constant micro of every unit and can do things like actually send cavalry around the back since your units aren't constantly routing or getting thrown around, making them engage with other random blobs. For all the flak it gets TK had some of the best battles hands down, even if the campaign wasn't as good
are you gonna do a "campaign" version of this list? I ask mostly because I personally play campaigns, and would like to hear your take on the different games.
There was always a TON of naval battles in Shogun 2. If you just ignored navies, then you'd have to hold back forces to defend against naval landings, which can be okay, but you also get far less money because you don't get to use trade nodes meaning fewer armies. Factions like Honma and Chosokabe can punish you for not having enough naval power. Honma can really fuck you up without any repercussion because of their starting position if you don't have a fleet. That said I like the base Shogun 2 naval battles. The core problem was that the AI struggle to play them, often they fight for 2 minutes and then the AI shits itself and its whole fleet scatters their whole fleet across the edges of the map.
Is there a mod for empire and Napoleon that stops troops coming off of the ramparts just dying? I was fighting a very close battle and moved some infantry off the walls to deal with a potential breach and watched in horrow as theg got caught on the corner of the ramp and just fell down dead with the unit going from 120 to 17 in 5 seconds
On fall of the samurai I've actually started building a fleet that I plan to have multiple of but I'm playing as the taga and all of a sudden all the diamyos around me swapped sides 😅😂 my fleet has single handedly ended 4 invasions and lead to the death of 2 clans...so far....
I would absolutely love to see another historical tier list that’s takes major overhaul mods into consideration. Like Rome 2 with Divide Et Impera, or Napoleon with Darthmod or NTW3.
In Rome 2 I always play on Legendary difficulty, but usually I was able to overcome the odds you speak of (higher tier units + ai cheats). But it mostly means resorting to cheesy defence strategies (eg funneling dumb enemies to a chokepoint guarded by pikemen)
I love Empire but have to agree that the battles are objectively garbage compared to FotS. Sieges just don't work at all and pathfinding is buggy as heck. Naval combat is the saving grace and pulling off a square in time to destroy a cavalry charge is satisfying, but yeah, battles ain't great. I wish for Empire setting and map scale, but with FotS guns and ships and Warhammer campaign polish. Make that and I die a little happier!
When it comes to historical total war battles, empire and napoleon just takes it home for me. It’s just such a beautiful devastation. Sure, it’s cheesy af but still, there’s something unbelievable great about gunpowder
I actually just picked up Fall of the Samurai because of Legend. I had always been a huge fan of Medieval 2 and played it all the time, and I loved playing in the late eras there with all the gunpowder units and always wished it was more expanded on. I tried both Empire and Napoleon first, but felt disappointed with them, especially for their siege battles. I didn't even know Fall of the Samurai was another "modern era" Total War game, so when I saw Legend talking about it in earlier videos, I picked it up for myself and have been loving it so far. So I've done some games in Napoleon and Empire. I've also played a decent amount of Rome 2 and Attila, but don't really enjoy those either. Medieval 2 and now FotS are my favorites. I haven't played any others yet (not even Shogun 2 itself; just FotS).
Imo Shogun 2 is one of the best games in the series due to the lack of troop variety. Everyone is the same race, they just have slight faction buffs and i think that makes the game feel really fair. 3K is alright, it needed to be more fleshed out but i guess it sold so well they decided to just make a 3K 2.
Thanks to MANSCAPED for sponsoring today's video! Get The Performance Package 5.0 Ultra for 20% OFF + Free International Shipping with my link manscaped.com/legendoftotalwar
thanks for letting us know that you shave your balls legend
Can you do a tier list for total wars that are vastly improved by a massive and successful overhaul mod?
For example, Rome 2 vanilla is garbage, but Rome 2 DEI is the best total war game and it’s not even close
Attila has Eagles, etc.
thats my brothers xmas present sorted, thanks Legend, you truly are a legend!
The never ending story of Total War franchise: Does something great in a game, it doesn't transfer to new games...
But carries over and doubles down on the worst aspects of the previous games.
Does something wrong in a game, it does Transfer to new games...
Pokemon syndrome
Had a golden streak of Rome med 2 and apparently shogun 2 but I personally never played it
@@reddyreddog9025 shogun 2 is god tier IMO. Its a bit different, smaller scope, you can finish a main campaign in a day sometimes (which I like), but it feels really crisp & you really have to use units properly otherwise they achieve nothing. Things die very quickly too so the battles tend to be frantic, trying to plug a gap/delete an enemy unit when theres an opportunity.
Thats said its pretty old & the enemy AI is pretty exploitable, but you can say that for any TW game lol
3:55 Rome
6:03 Med II
9:20 Empire&Napoleon
12:45 Shogun 2&FotS
15:40 Rome II
20:20 Attila
23:08 Brittania
24:48 3K
27:05 Troy
29:10 Rome remastered
@LegendofTotalWar Can you make "one-man-doomstack" tierlist? Please.
forgot the manscaped timestamp smh my head
Attila deserves a lot more love than people give it. Great game, glad you agree that the battles are S tier. For me the Attila being OP isn't the biggest issue. Think you have mentioned it in previous videos, the AI basically sets out to annoy you instead of focusing on there own objectives or goals. So even if you think tactically what the worst thing the AI could do to more here, the AI pull a rabbit out of the hat and do something really annoying that kills the enjoyment.
yeah Atilla's battles were great but i didn't like the settlement building system and the campaign AI really let it down imo. Unfortunately TW diplomacy has always been terrible but mods definitely add a lot.
One thing that is pretty important in that game is the AI faction leader traits. If they have aggressive, expansionist, unreliable etc. you can expect them to declare war on you at the first opportunity and pursue you to the ends of the map but if they have something like tolertant, defensive etc. then you can stay at peace with them pretty reliably. The traits are randomised every new game so it can lead to games being very different each time. It can be really important for the ERE keeping peace with the Sassanid Empire as them declaring war on you early is a nightmare. Also keeping an army on their border when at peace seems to stop them from declaring war on you or atleast delay it.
The only thing that made me drop it was the poor optimization sadly. I'd love to give it an actual chance, though.
There's a handful of things in Attila that make me dislike it. The AI being a bunch of annoying cowards is one reason, corruption being crippling when you control lots of territory (though they did reduce corruption's maximum, so it now isn't really a big issue as you won't see it go nearly as high), climate change being kinda stupid, first off that time period did not have that type of serious cold shift from all the things I could find on it. Secondly it's just lazily applied to the whole map, ignoring the fact that the hotter regions would probably be better off if it was a bit cooler. And most factions have no means to counter or reduce the penalties of it, only faction that can as far as I know is the Slavs. And finally for Romans specifically, the loss of legacy tech, the religion techs that cause the loss of my sanitation buildings can go f**k themselves.
Now I once had someone tell me to merely build sanitation buildings during the early game and not wait till later, only thing they seem to fail at realizing is that doesn't help when I start conquering the map in the late campaign and have no means to build sanitation buildings anymore, and the regions I take have none built in them most of the time. Last issue is friendly fire is a b*tch of an issue, never use javelin units, as you'll basically butcher your own guys. Archers are fine for the most part you just need to be careful about when the enemy is in melee with your units, but they'll usually not shoot your guys in the back too much. I've also tried to flank with javelin throwers, and watched them unload a whole volley into a handful of the enemy but still mostly hit my guys. So I prefer safe than sorry. Now with the exception of the javelins being terrible friendly fire machines, and detach penalties being very punishing at times, mods will fix most of the other problems. Climate change an issue, use a mod that lets you actually fight the fertility hit with buildings that provide fertility. Loss of Legacy tech, how about no, or you can go with the mod that overhauls the romans and makes it so their buildings change depending on what path you want the romans to take. So with mods Attila can be fun, but vanilla is often a no for me, it's very annoying, the battles are mostly fine, love the sieges, just don't like annoying parts of the campaign is all.
The biggest problem is that they gave up on it early and never bothered optimising it. I can easily play Rome 2 on my potato laptop alongside Shogun 2, Napoleon, Empire, Med2 and Rome1- but Attila crawls even on minimum settings and it sucks they shot it in the foot then looked confused and said 'why does no one want to play historical games anyone? :('
I remember playing a battle in Rome 2 where the enemy general, a unit of Royal peltasts proceeded to take volley after volley of javelins without any troops dying and then they proceeded to wipe out my entire army of lower grade troops despite being surrounded. After watching this video I finally feel validated! I'm glad I'm not crazy!
Meanwhile I lost my King in my last Sparta campaign when my Royal Peltasts took ONE volley from some Velites lol
I had a unit of hoplites lose in melee combat vs citizen cav in rome 2.
Rome 2 is overrated.
I disagree about Rome II. Why people think low-tier units should defeat Oathsworn I have no idea. Try looking up competitive Attila battles. You won't find any tournaments whereas Rome II was incredibly popular for competitive battle scene
@@Baltic_Dude I'd agree with you if the unit was going toe to toe on even ground with 2-3 or maybe even four times the number of lower grade troops but in real life and in other games even elite troops get tired. It just didn't make sense for even an elite unit of troops to take 12 volleys of javelins and be surrounded 10-1 and also be exhausted and somehow come out on top. Just didn't seem plausible to me but hey it's just the design choice they went for.
I don't know what they did differently for Attila's battles, but they are just so damn good. Probably the best in the series.
Attila is just really good in general. The Huns feel more apocalyptic than Chaos invasions ever did.
Great control scheme, units respond quickly and great variety of units that are surprisingly well balanced. And most importantly unit morale just works great.
Maybe battles work slightly better in Shogun 2, but battles get boring quickly because you fight the same units all the time and control scheme/camera angles are worse.
So overall I think Attila has the best battles by far considering the massive unit variety.
Similar morale across the board, unlike Rome 2, and significant morale debuffs caused by correct tactical decisions, like flanking, use of whistling shot and general sniping. And AI morale cheats do not severely change that.
So elite infantry don't end up becoming unbreakable raid bosses, both elite infantry and peasants will break if they get flanked putting a lot more importance on tactics than just being a stat fest.
Also "sticky" combat. The penalty for disengaging without creating space for your unit is incredibly punishing. It makes you commit to your decisions, and reduces the value of cheesing chain cavalry charging, but you get fabulous charge and morale shock when you do it at just the right time.
Unit models throw up if they have disease
Shogun 2 being considered low cheats is such an eye opener for me, I only play Med 2 and Shogun 2 and I already thought the Legendary cheats were quite bs, can't imagine it for the newer games
In TW:Warhammer 2 AI melee cheats at higher difficulties makes near impossible to use melee-oriented armies. It's so sad, because there are a lot of beautifully designed melee units in game
In shogun 2 the ai battle cheats are archers get higher armor penetration and all units get slightly more moral (not enough to matter tho). The cheats feel so bullshit on legendary is because the ai gets more recruitment slots, essentially infinite money and food, and public order cheats so high that they will never have a revolt occur without a monk instigating it.
@@onestupidboi9320 Winning Legendary shogun 2 is pretty much decided the first 30-40 turns, if you haven’t expanded enough the AI will crush you no matter what. I had taken nearly half of the map already controlled most of the trade posts and had metsukes overseeing my richest provinces and was struggling to field 3-4 full stacks and had the spread them around, while the Oda had 4 full stacks travelling together towards my border with them at Bizen lmao, I had two stacks there but my other one was dealing with a Honma invasion on my homeland lmao and the last one was trying eliminate the chokosabe lmao. Those 4 full stacks had more experience and were full of bow samurai, my two stacks didn’t stand a chance
@@PAPADRACOLIN You can never compete with the AI on the campaign map. You need to just be insane enough at battles that you can kill 6000 men with 2000 consistently. Good army composition helps too.
In Troy on legendary difficulty the first 20 turns are completely BS in terms of AI cheats. One way to get around is to use a lot of slingers to get some free damage early, or if you are Achilles use him.
Then it becomes bearable because there are so much stacking bonuses you can get thru tech tree, general skills and divine favor. But then you can just auto-resolve everything.
Morale and shock damage are the most important things in an interesting title imo.
Part of what makes Shogun and Attila so enjoyable battlewise, is getting a mass rout going can be super impactful.
In other titles, sometimes 1 militia unit can be hanging around against a full stack and still fancying his chances.
exactly
One time in Attila, I'd completely turned the tables on a barbarian horde with a garrison of a couple cohors and one comatitensis in a siege defense with the help of one scout equites I routed their ranged contingents and flanked their entire dozen+ strong crappy German spear stack that they'd commited to one chokepoint , it was costly but i was just at the finish line with two units still in the fight on both sides, i was winning, the balance of power was like 80% in my favour, then these god-damn shirtless *light* axemen go Super Saiyan or "beserk" a random buff that was usually exclusive to elephants, and they scare off both my remaining units, losing me the battle, i promptly named that replay "the biggest pile of bs" and crushed them the next turn with an army I had in an adjacent settlement.
@@buzter8135 Those bastards you will find are best killed with archer, they think they're so cool going to war without a shirt so but will run away p quick after 1-2 volleys of low tier archers wipe out half their battalion.
It also works pretty well in m2, you can completely obliterate the enemy army while being absolutely outnumbered if you use your units correctly (mostly cav, let's be honest)
Am I the only one who really liked Attila? It was the most challenging, the most Rewarding
Attila (:;
I have ATTILA installed still trying to figure out after years how to mitigate all these bloody penalties like Sanitation and PO penalties everywhere. It's great game, cavalry is amazing and responsive, music is damn good but there some annoyances like cheating from AI as per usual in TW and strategy games.
Was my first total war. Fire baptism XD
I like it!
Yes, you are the only one. In a world full of 7 billion + people all sharing different lives, experiences and tastes, you are indeed the only one with this unique opinion and absolutely no one shares it despite Attila selling millions of copies.
Congratulations.
I usually play on normal battle difficulty in any tw because I don't like that the AI cheats. So when I tried to up the battle difficulty in my favourite tw, empire, and saw 3 regiments of prussian line infantry get one shot by a random unit of militia, I knew that something was off.
Hard agree. They always try and "fix the player bias" but always end up flubbing something up. Most of the time i feel like you are forced to go slower because of AI bullcrap or make risky maneuvers to outpace the AI actions which doesn't make sense to me personally. I like to somewhat play tall in strategy games so I personally feel when all the AI treat me like a Bangbus trip.
Not to mention the ai gangbang on the player. Usually by turn 25 I'm at war with 5-7 factions who somehow all are allied with each other
Yeah for empire whenever I play, except the Empire TW2 mod (amazing mod btw) I always auto resolve land and fight naval. Loved naval so much and the Age of Sail as a whole.
@@MrBlipman but naval is so bad in empire
More "fun" tier lists are always appreciated
Basically describing why I don't play most TW games on very hard / legendary. It's not that I don't enjoy good challenge, but it's a bummer when it fundamentally breaks how the game is supposed to be played. I can enjoy well-rounded armies at lower difficulties without being compelled to spam the broken units.
This does have me tempted to revisit MTWII and Atilla.
That's why I almost always play on very hard campaigns but normal battles. I like the overall challenge but I don't like my elite units losing to some garbage.
Medieval 2 ai: must.....kill....player
Player: yea you came here while your capitol is sieged by someone else right??
Ai: we will ceasefire next turn. But....i..must..kill..player
@@madwellmusic8995
Warhammer AI: I'll declare war but I won't send any armies at you, cause I'm a minor gobbo faction at the other side of the map
Medieval AI: we're allied but I'll send my armies at you
One thing I would like to compare is Shogun 2 vs Three Kingdoms. Both have a shared pool of units across most factions because the setting is placed in a single culture, yet in Shogun 2 you can always feel the different and uniqueness of each clan. Shimazu fielding a Katana Samurai focus army is equally viable and enjoyable as Uesugi fielding monks. Using gun units as Otomo feel different and unique compare to others, even though it's just copy pasted with altered stats.
Meanwhile, Three Kingdoms having a missile and calvary meta means that all factions are locked into focusing those units, made worse by the fact that when you go down the tech tree, you get access to the superior units that every factions can also have. Liu Bei has unique archer units, but it doesn't matter because everyone get Onyx Dragons, and can be recruited by level 1 generals.
Granted Shimazu are also pretty good at the gun units games but I know what you mean. Also the position of each clan on the map makes a huge difference. What are your routes of expansion? Available trade goods? Special buildings? Trade ports? And so on.
The cavalry issue was compounded by the way recruitment works as only certain generals could recruit any good cavalry. You generally wanted Vanguards for that. That said, I think the main issue were Azure Dragons. You unlock them through food research you were going to do anyway, and they do everything really well. They're archers and glaive infantry, they can stand up against imperial units, they can do range well and they're great against cavalry. The other thing was that artillery felt very OP, maybe it's because of my lower end laptop not being able to run larger unit scales, but it seemed like trebuchets could just route half the enemy army before they got to you.
The other thing was that militia felt useless late game. Maybe you could use archer and cavalry militia here and there but they just didn't seem to be able to stand up. Ji Militia feel obsolete by Turn 1.
And the cherry on top is those animated agent actions, looking as your shinobi is working his way to the target between sleeping soldiers. Does he trip on to someone this time? Does he get away?
Yeaaa, Three kingdoms is kinda general meta. In one of my campaigns I haven't recruited almost any normal units till like round 50 (and campaign lasted around 80 rounds till full domination). If You know how to cheese, generals are crazy strong. Infinte healing general, multiple shot destruction gods, Lu Bu who can solo multiple fullstacks. That was some crazy things going on, but loved it. :D
@@Kuutti_original IMHO there isn't enough variety to keep them activated but they are certainly appreciated.
The pre-battle speeches OTOH are quite impressive as they are made of several segments and change according to the battle at hand. I really liked that.
If anyone's interested in a criticism about TW battles accuracy I strongly recommend Schwerpunkt, a former TW modder as well as a PhD in military history
Pretty much agree with your ranking. Although I would have put Napoleon in A. Attila in my opinion had the best battles in Total War history.
😂😂😂😂😂 what a shit take
Really enjoyed Napoleon. Wish those improvements could have been retroactively applied to Empire.
I really liked Attila battles but Shogun 2 units were incredible to watch with their matched combat
@@disillusioned8686Attila's matched combat was pretty good too, bah at least imo
@@supersardonic1179this. Forever this....
I am maybe a causal player, but I really loved battles in Empire. I felt like game really rewarded me for having superior technology over my enemies from the start, to the late game. Like difference for having a bayonets and units fightning with stock of their muskets, or inventing grapeshot is huge, and in late game using shrapnel and other high tier artillery was just deeply satisfing. I guess my opinion comes also from not playing on hardest possible battle diffiulcties, but I actually never felt like I have to do so, just to have fun and satisfaction from the game.
The biggest thing about Rome II is that all the battles last like 4 minutes. Missile units absolutely obliterate melee units. They're best at firing in their rear, but even firing onto a testudo, missile units are way too good. Playing divide et impera really solves these problems for me, and brings Rome II from C tier to S tier (or maybe A tier since the naval battles can't be fixed).
Macedon or any other army with strong pike units breaks that game. Get a wall of pikes, and put like 3 ballista with explosive shot behind them. The AI just doesn't know what to do with it. Like you actually see it just give up and charge cavalry into a pike formation. Rinse and repeat til you own the map.
Bullshit lmao turn off the arrows have 500AP damage mod
I distinctly remember ranged units being far less effective in Rome 2 compared to Shogun. Haven’t touched unmodded Rome 2 in forever though.
The most underappreciated Total War game is Attila. Even I wasn't sure at the time when I tried out first because it was 0 hype around it but it was the most pleasant surprise how good it was.
Building system needs to be like original tw
@@majormarketing6552 the building system works well for Rome and Sassanids but dumb for small tier factions.
I am old. I loved the rock-paper-scissors mechanics of Shogun 1 and would gladly see it on the chart, probably in the A Tier. Nevertheless, I think starting with Rome 1 was a good choice. The changes from the first games were significant.
I pretty much agree, but I must add that Troy is a game I have strongly mixed feelings about. The campaign is fun and the map is gorgeous. I find the idea of the battles quite compelling but they just don't work for me. I find myself playing Troy like a Paradox' grand strategy. And the battles were always the reason I played Total War games.
I really enjoy the battles in Empire and Napoleon, like 7.5 out of 10. It is the reason I love the Empire in TWW. Empire has one of my favorite maps across all the games and trying to maintain those gigantic empires is part of the fun. I am a normal difficulty player typically across all games to really see where the base balance stands. Rome was my start and I loved that dynamic as well. I am definitely going to give Attila a try now though.
Try Attila with 1212AD if you want to see the most beautiful units of all time
Just wanna say no matter what you do the world in Attila will burn
I really adore Med 2's battles, the units feel super sluggish which can be a pain in the ass but after you get used to it Med 2 is for sure the most rewarding for me. Shogun 2 was the first Total War game that got me into Multiplayer fights though but that might have been due to the Avatar Conquest though.
Avatar Conquest was a great idea poorly executed on the balance side of things. I wish they improved on it, because having your own custom veteran units and bonuses was a great idea.
M2TW are more realistic and slow paced while RTW battles are too arcadish
@@Knoloaify It was really cool yeah, I am sure I am remembering it fondly because I was a bit younger but it was a cool to get players to hop on and do a few 1v1s.
@@MsSirAndy That's purely a subjective view. Not saying you're wrong, just that some people (myself included) can get more fun out of the faster pacing of RTW, although I do also enjoy M2TW's battles.
@@Nutty31313 I didn't say RTW battles are bad. It's just that M2TW battles are more realistic thus a better choice for those who prefer realism and strategy over constant micromanagement
I recently played Napoleon Darthmod Britain campaign again and it was pretty good. Really enjoyed the epic naval battles makes me sad they haven't bothered putting them in Warhammer. Imagine fleets of Empire ships of the line, dwarf ironclads, krakens and all the other wild ship designs and sea monsters doing battle rather than just the same couple of "island" land battles over and over and over... Hopefully someday someone makes a mod
Problem with Wh is exactly that, naval battles would most likely require as much effort as a full fledged game due to the huge variety of ships and the various ways they must Interact with each other. I'd love to see them hlbut I understand why many people don't want the Devs to waste funds on them.
The only issue I have with the navy in Napoleon, is it reminds me Villeneuve exists.
I loved exploiting how much of an advantage that proper naval units had over troops on transports in Attila. Crushing full stacks with a couple of ships was crazy satisfying.
There is also a total revamp mod for Empire rn called Empire Total War 2. Unit selection is by far the biggest differentiator. I mean you on average have 300 choices for units to recruit.
@@RambleOn07does the seasickness debuff really go that far?
This is great! Exactly what I was looking for. Just played Shogun 2 but in researching other total wars it made me so confused to figure out which ones have a functioning battle system that is reliant on tactics and not just stats. Thanks so much for this video! Can't wait to try Medieval 2 and Attila
I always thought that the unresponsiveness of heavy cavalry in Med II was intentional. They have a lot of momentum and making the entities a little sluggish adds to the realism a little.
But still annoying as fuck considering the second charge is way less powerfull and cav just feels clunky even light cav but that could just be me
Dear Legend. It does me well to see you change your opinion on 3K. It is not perfect, but I have sunk many an hour into conquering China. One of the most interesting outings CreativeAssembly's ever done.
Man, napoleon with darth mod, controlling 40 units against another 40, battles are almost realistic in terms of men on the field... Now that is something else, it's truly awesome.
I highly highly recommend giving three kingdoms records mode a serious chance. It seriously holds up as a Total War experience even if people like to say it’s a “watered down romance mode.” Forget romance and its single entity hero units. Records mode with the basic gameplay 3k gives is probabaly one of the best total war experiences I’ve had in a long time after fall of the samurai.
Yeah, it's what bugged me (And still bugs me) about Rome 2 and Attila - I loved Rome 2's campaign and its setting, but the battles didn't do it for me. I loved Attila's battles, but its campaign and its setting did nothing for me. It's wrapped up in what frustrates me most about CA, where they just can't seem to find a way to be consistent, especially when it comes to the battles. A new game comes out and they'll massively improve one aspect of it, whilst simultaneously massively regressing in another. It drives me bloody mad. Stop trying to reinvent a perfectly functioning wheel from scratch every time and improve by iteration instead.
I would say that I think my favorite experience in Total War is playing as a migratory faction. You have so much freedom to basically make your own story; are you going to settle your Sarmatians in Gaul? Cool, but wait here come the Saxons with a bunch of full stacks you can't deal with. TIme to uproot and move to somewhere safer. It feels like such a fun way to tell your own story, lots of times where you're beating the odds and every battle is super impactful. Whereas with most factions you get a few of those important, must win low odds battles early on, but then after that you just steamroll your enemy and it's more of a grind than anything.
Yup. The Attila/R2 situation is just like the Empire/Napoleon one. Attila should have been a big expansion to Rome 2. Same with Napoleon to Empire.
I recently picked up thrones of Britannia because I wanted a more infantry focused gameplay and I like the game way more than I expected to. My biggest issue is definitely not enough siege defense battles. I love playing defense in siege battles and in this game if you're on defense for siege battles then something has gone terribly wrong. Also the oil gates were BRUTAL.
Edit: The naval battles were fun to learn in Britannia as well. I never experienced 800AD naval combat and its a blast.
Same here. I know this is more campaign than battle, but I like the way Britannia makes you plan out your battles as well. Those undefended targets look good, but if you don't have the food or means to make it work, you have to plan your attacks around that. I like that better than all the others where you can turn the Saharah Desert into a breadbasket, because you can build anything anywhere with little if any penalty. Same with the Tech-Tree. If you go all in on the military you pay a heavy price, but if you plan how and what you learn as you develop it works smoothly. IDK, Thrones makes you think of the campaign as an Equal to the Battles making it balance more if that makes sense.
((Now if only they would've done away with the cartoon "tapestry" look and kept the life like character images that age as you go it would've been perfect. In the battles generals & leaders look amazing, in the campaign they lost it all))
I think encouraging tactics is good as long as you clarify that tactics are a serious focus (e.g. positioning, elevation, weather, terrain features.) . Especially because of how tactical features have come and gone, and how many of the “standard” tactical features have changed in their function and importance. But sometimes it’s also fun to just have really strong units that dominate a battlefield (tosa riflemen, or skarbrand) it’s kinda like a game vs a toy one can be fun and challenging for a long time the other is great for occasional bursts of entertainment
Chariotspam in Troy stopped being relevant after about the first patch, the game became much more dynamic after that.
Med 1 still had good battles. Could be nostalgia though 😅
Med1 battles are very good at their core. Controls, interface and pathfinding a part xD
The original Shogun was the whole reason I bought a home computer back in the day. My brother in law had it, and after playing it for a handful of hours I went home and bought a "Gateway" (cow-box) PC just to be able to play Total War. For a long time I only bought new PC's to keep up with the new releases, but honestly that all ended with Empire. I still play Total War, but not nearly with the same vigor I used to pre-Empire.
Empire was the last one I played too. And man, what a shameful display. They really could have done so much more than that watered down junk. I loved the game too, but it's just so watered down
You should try attila it isnt as immersive as rome of medieval 2 but is still amazing and very difficult but get 1212ad if you want a medieval 3
People sleep on Attila so much and I don't understand why. It has it's problems like a lot of other total war games, sure. But it's one of the last historical games with any sort of quality. The mods too bring it so much more life.
S: Attila - for the reaons you said
A: Medieval 2 - marked down for clunkiness, lack of drag to move formation especially, lack of naval battles
B: Rome Remastered - pushed down by M2. Rome 2 - because elite units not losing to peasants walking up behind them is not a good reason to rank it below straight-up broken things
C: Rome - pushed down by Remastered and M2.
D: Empire- because good naval battles can't carry the broken land battles.
F: Warhammers - because single model units completely screw up how combat is supposed to work by being able to blob up entire armies, the worst sieges and making 'naval' battles even worse than m2's auto resolve only
I haven't played Shogun2, Britania, 3k and Troy but I imagine variety would be a huge issue. I haven't played Napoleon, but I can't imagine it being much better than Empire
Your placing for the warhammer titles is spot on. They're generally "good" games only because its the only Warhammer Fantasy rts out there.
The Warhammer games have too much tactical depth for historical only pea brains to understand. Can't just win every battle with an infantry slog and some cycle charges.
@@assassininja18 sure they do, keep telling yourself that, you special little boy you. Bless your heart
I know you’ve played these games WAY more than I have.. but with 600 hours in Rome2, I feel that the battles deserve higher than C tier. Yes you cannot overcome ridiculous odds.. but you can use tactics to win battles you have no right being able to. Calvary and ranged units when used to flank while using infantry to hold the line can result in insane wins. The pacing of Rome2 seems slower than a lot of other games (which I like) but perhaps that is what you don’t like about it.
And removed from “battle difficulty” the unit responsiveness, AI movement/unit pathing is great. I always go back to Rome2 when I want good open field battles.. also some of the best siege battles in the whole series.
EDIT: One other thing I was thinking about. And I get this is a preference/thing that not everyone enjoys... but Rome2 battles seem like the most "realistic" of all the games. I genuinely don't think that losing a commander in a battle would have real time effects. Mainly because most of the soldiers wouldn't even know. Maybe after the battle moral would be hit. But during? I think people are more worried about the swords and spears swinging at them than caring to listen for if the commander is still alive. I do admit that the moral system isn't the best with flanking and such. But I think the stats (combat effectiveness) of a unit does have huge impacts on a battle in real life. I'm sure a "full stack" of praetorian guard would likely not be able to lose to light calvary and spearmen without shirts on. There is a realism in Rome2, and I think it makes you have to CHOOSE when you actually want to fight.
I agree. I like rome 2 a ton. But it does feel like the pacing of time is messed up. Each turn is a year but you can only travel such small distances especially via naval travel. I also feel like it ends up making your effort to make good leader seem like a losing battle. Also seiges? One year to make two seige towers?
Main post got cut short, but Rome 2 favors PRE battle strategy over in fight tactics. Using two armies to take on a superior one, night battles, positioning on a hill on the campaign map if you know you will be attacked, hiring mercenaries for a turn, deployable defenses (fireballs) can wipe huge lines of men out. It is the before battle thoughts that often win the wars in Rome 2. Playing Warhammer and other Historical titles (like Shogun) even though I love them, never felt "realistic" to me. Most feel very gamey, which some love. But Rome 2 pureness to me comes from how the battles just feel real. And @Legendoftotalwar you are incredible at winning difficult, against all odds battles, probably the best in the world. No one can tactic or cheese a battle like you. But in Rome 2 I think sometimes you just need to not fight some battles and find ways to win fights before the battles begin.
I actually think Troy battles are pretty good. The one thing I really like and was sure Legend would like is that flanking is such a big thing. You can easily beat any unit with flanking because it lowers not only moral but melee defence as well. You have missile units with serrated blades which lower moral just like whistling shots. I also believe that there should be a big difference between elite units and peasants but there's a light cap on how many elite units you can bring because of the resource system. You can't bring 3 full stacks of Elite Agamemnon's Charges which can destroy whole militia armies. The collision is awful, chariots are op but expensive. Like he said there is no perfect total war game but I believe Troy is far from D tier.
If you flank in Rome 2 and attila it lowers morale,melee defence and melee attack
I was shocked by the low score you gave Empire, as it's one of my favorite Total War games, but you made a lot of good points for why. Add in that I only play on normal or easy, and always use DarthMod, your score makes a lot of sense.
Empire has by far the worst battle AI of any total war game. Legend doesn't play multiplayer, so it makes sense that he ranked Empire's battles so low.
The ai refuses to line battle. They just form one long line and blob charge
I would like to see a video like this ranked based on each games modding community.
I think Rome 2 became S tier once Dei came into the picture such a great mod!
I remember playing empire: the enemy would send their general forward to scout, killed him with the first cannon shot. Can’t believe how awful Troy had to be to be worse than that
Surprised about Troy. Especially after Mythos the battles are tons of fun and very polished. At release I agree that it belongs in D, though that applies to every TW game (especially R2).
I feel like Rome 2 is popular because of DEI Mod. It makes the game so much harder and just awesome. Enemy routing when charging and flanking. Mass route works very good. I never touched Rome 2 before but with this mod I found a hidden gem for me
Same. DEI is the only way I can play Rome 2.
I had experience only with Rome 2 of these. I even didn't try other options. Legend is right, but I simply didn't consider his perspective: I was playing a game with that level of importance of the army composition and enjoy the atmosphere and global part. I liked to rely on artillery and archers pulling off your enemy onto the uncrushable wall of spikesmen or other best defensive melee units I have. Making a stand on river crossing with such armies was a fun for me. Defense in siege battles, even doomed to be lost, was fun. Slow pacing cracking of defense as an attacker in siege battles. In all these cases, the cavalry was used for scouting on the maps with rough landscape or forests, often hidden scouting from forests, with cutting down the enemy artillery or archer units whenever they are left unprotected.
Compared to Warhammer 2, which was a thing which pulled me off the Rome 2, this is boring, but I enjoyed :)
Also, I never was putting even a 40% percent of Legends' efforts into battles; actually, I do not want: my work is the intellectual one (theoretical and statistical physics) and I want to be lazy and stupid after work, I do not afford any more too much intellectual activity in games %), I play for aesthetics and just a little bit of thinking.
Nice to see attila and thrones getting some love. Funnily enough this is exactly what i would of rated them all
I've been playing a lot of Attila lately and I would disagree with its battles being S tier. They are S tier _when they work_. But they are some of the buggiest and broken battles in the series:
* Attila maps have tons of rocks everywhere. No reason for it, just tons of big rocks all over the place on every map, especially sieges. They can be hard to see, and its often hard just to deploy a simple straight battle line because there are rocks everywhere, and they screw up pathfinding.
* Alt+Drag movement in useless in Attila when selecting multiple control groups. The game just places all control groups on top of each other in the same place and messes up your army formation. Also if the AI issues an order to its own units when you are in the middle of alt+drag movement, it throws your alt+drag over to the other side of the map. You have to be quick, if the AI moves its armies at all it will mess up your alt movement.
* Some Attila maps have these vineyards on them. These vineyards are the ancient enemy of pathfinding. Any unit that wanders into a vineyard will breka their formation and spread out like ants. Most models in the unit will start running in every direction and ignore orders. It can take 2 full minutes for a unit to recover from "vineyard shock" and regain its formation to begin following your orders again. You have to treat these vineyards as dead spots in the map and avoid them. They are especially common on sieges - along with rocks everywhere, Attila sieges lose their luster fast due to terrible pathfinding.
* AI battle cheats are quite extreme. AI tier 1 axemen will beat almost any player tier 3 infantry in battle. If any AI cavalry unit charges into non-spear infantry that are not in a shieldwall-type formation, that infantry unit is dead even if it is tier 3 and the cavalry tier 1. This limits what types on units you can use, for example any berserker type unit like Heteira Guard or Athar's Chosen that doesn't have a shieldwall formation is useless as it will be deleted by cavalry before it can contribute, and the AI knows this and prioritizes charging these units. AI cheats are most egregious on ranged units. Player horse archers will end up with ~90 fire rate. AI Hunnic Devil Archers can reach over 700 fire rate with legendary cheats. If you use testudo formation, this can actually work in your favor since their archers do no damage and will use up their ammo faster.
* Attila's group pathfinding is very bad. There is one element that drives me crazy. If you lock a formation and alt+drag or right click+drag to move their formation but deploy it backwards from how you locked it, the units in that group will then "criss cross" each other's path, where they all run into each other to reverse their positions in their formation. This makes it very annoying to use skirmishing units like horse archers. If you quickly move them and reverse their orientation, they will waste time running into each other in a big mass of stupid and will likely be caught in melee by anything chasing them.
* The AI doesn't know how to make strong armies and usually just spams mercenaries and whatever tier 1 spearmen unit that has no prerequisites for their faction. Even though they make barracks-type buildings everywhere, they rarely make a strong army. It's a good thing the Huns have armies that are all auto-generated from two templates, because both of those template armies are dangerous and the Huns would be no threat if left for the AI to build their armies.
* Tons of stuff is straight up broken. Some agent skills do nothing. Spent skill points, get an ability that does literally nothing. Many traditions are broken. One of the strongest army traditions in the game, the Sassanid' skill "Persian marksmanship" says it increases range for ranged units by 20%. It does nothing. Spend 2 skill points on it, no range increase.
* Many skill bonuses are laughably small. Wow! 1% more armor! That will make a huge different for my 15 armor cavalry! 1% more ammunition! My ranged units have 22 ammo total, so that almost equals out to 1/4 of 1 arrow for them! Good stuff. But then you have actually strong skills, like +20% more missile damage or +20% more campaign movement or +6 melee attack/defense for all cavalry. Naturally, you will go for these skills on every army and general in every playthrough so you are always working toward the same 1 or 2 skills in each tree. Skills should have a major impact on the battles, but only 1 or 2 actually do. AI battle cheats are so extreme that these skill increases can often feel superfluous.
* The AI can intentionally bug out its units on settlement maps to make them unattackable. If a unit moves close enough to a building, its models cannot be attacked. For some reason any attacking unit will break off its attack order if the target is hugging a building. The AI can "string out" its units into spaghetti lines that hug buildings, making them unattackable, but they can attack you. This is rare but can ruin your day. I remember abandoning a WRE campaign I put 100 hours into because I had to replay 1 siege about 8 times due to the AI spaghettifying its units into buildings so that I could not attack them.
* Attila is great but broken. When the battles work, they are some of the best. They often do not. In well over 1000 hours I've never finished an Attila campaign, I rarely even make it to turn 100 when Attila actually appears in game. I always quit in frustration because of some battle breaking.
You're just describing Total War in general here I think with most of these points.
Best thing they could ever do going forward is use a new, modern engine that gives developers an easier time in making the games how they want to and not perpetually piggybacking from a previous game. Those reports about how inefficient it is to work on a Total War game and the archaic systems they're still using are very worrying. Especially now they blew all that money people gave them via the Warhammer games on the failed FPS project that was cancelled, makes me worried for this franchise. Imagine they reinvested that into the franchise that made them the money in the first place.
@@allbies I wouldnt agree with that, imo these are Attila issues which is why I went into detail on how they specifically affect Attila's battles. I can't think of any 1% bonuses in Warhammer or vineyards that make my units go braindead.
Meaning to say I think other Total War games had they had map designs with those vineyards included might experience similar issues with the pathfinding. Whereas even if those vineyards exist, you'd expect a game built on a modern engine to solve those physics so that would never be an issue in the first place. Speaking about historical titles mainly and not comparing them to Warhammer. The problem is all of the TW games have multiple issues and many are due to what they're developing these games on.@@Sarcasmses
I skipped over Atilla at first but when I actually played it, I found it to be everything Rome 2 was meant to be.
Med I would defend itself better than you think in my opinion. Always loved the slower pace of battle and charges are epic in this game. Archers feel right.
Medieval 1 battle system holds up pretty well even to this day. Very underrated TW game. Even the risk style campaign map has it's big pros
medieval you can cheese the ai easier than any other game
@@HeyYoFabels that's not true, in Medieval 2 is much easier to do such
When Legend spoke about the naval battles of Shogun 2, I shed a small tear of nostalgia. In Shogun 2 I honed the art of controlling ordinary kobayas to mastery. I could kill 7, 8, even 10 of any enemy ships with just three kobayas with archers. In the midgame I usually added another one with a fire bombs. When they gained more experience, I began to sink black ships with the same fleet of four kobayas (couldn't capture it though). It got to the point where I stopped capturing the black ship altogether, bacause with its salary alone I could support multiple kobaya fleets that absolutely dominated the entire ocean. Playing for any house that had early enough access to the sea I always fought off and kept all trading posts. The downside was, the AI, usually running away from superior forces, underestimated my fleets and constantly tried to kill them. So I had to fight a LOT of naval battles. In the final statistics sometimes it reached a ratio of 2 to 1 sea to land. I didn't lose much, but it was very tiring.
First of all, impressive :) I was microing nadal battles and winning against the odds but not as yours. I stopped because like you said it was annoying, too many battles.
That's kind of a problem, the way to win Shogun 2 naval is either Kobaya spam or Nanban trade ship spam.
Ive jumped into Thrones of Britannia lately and Im having a blast as Great Viking army. The battles are awesome, tactical, every unit have its place and utility and the campaing is quite fun. I do really like the village system as it gives some strategic depth.Try it for yourself! Legendary everything ofc! ;)
After playing rome 2 and lots of warhammer i decided to purchase TW Attila and I have to say that if i have choose which has the best battles, Attila wins by far the fact that you can use tier 1 units to overcome the odds is best thing ever. Great game
Have you tried dwarf warriors backed up by quarrelers? Armies of just that can handle most things. And 40 units of that can handle even ai doomstacks. Without arty
@@perrymeril in Thorek Ironbrows army yes. Late game AP is more valuable
@@daxl505 the comment above is tier 1, or basic infantry. 40 dawi with axe and crossbow are more than capable of handling almost anything the game throws at you 95% of the time. Everything else is flavor and win more.
@@perrymeril try deal with late game Caos Dwarves and their dreadqueak mortars that you can't stop with just Quarellers
@@daxl505 I never said you would come out of a late game fight with your entire army intact. I am saying they can handle it.
what always crushes the fun out of Empire TW is the fact that especially the sieges (i look at you Star Fort) are bug riddled and to some extend they are the majority of landbattles.
One thing from Med II that always sticks with me is fighting the King of Denmark who I think was level 8 Leader and him dispatching 3 full units of my army singlehandedly! He went down eventually but I just sat there in Awe watching him cleave through my men just thinking wow...
Super high level general units are terrifying in med 2 lol
I think they have hidden cheats with ai attack ratio and suicidal generals. Like when I watch enemy generals swing 300% more, and my general will somehow end up in the middle of enemy blod, just eating blows. Sometimes out of even 50-60 he will be the only casualty, while enemy general will 9 times out of 10 be the very last one standing.
Atilla getting the praise it deserves
Rome 1 is king. It is the only historic title with legit unit upgrading. 5 chevron long shield cavalry with max upgrades could easily take down the Companions or even the Cataphracts. Only Warhammer TW reintroduced the concept and let you make a unit truly stronger. Medieval 2 was more about the stats and Rome 2 is almost entirely just raw stats.
Rank 9 yari ashigaru with blacksmith upgrades easily wins against blank katana samurai. Even if they don't use yariwall. Flat bonuses on low values are pretty big.
Troy total war has unit upgrading too. The amazons can only recruit basic units, but can be upgraded at any time if they have enough chevrons.
I really agree with the point about tactics. I remember beating a gigantic army of gauls in Rome 1 with a tiny force of understrength hastati, town watch and one general - it feels so rewarding to actually win though tactic rather than having a bigger stack of units or having higher stats - it really makes you feel like your choices and actions matter as a player. These are the kinds of moments that i remember from these games: beating the odds and winning with an inferior force through tactics.
The duel system in Three Kingdoms and the generals specialization systems is something that comes out. Its another layer of tactics that if it was better balanced would have been a great addition in the total wars series I believe. (Note that I haven't played any history total war after 3 kingdoms I don't know if they kept it in troy.)
I have a very different perspective to you because battle mechanics are not my top priority. For me, it's immersion that ranks the highest, along with faction diversity. I also play on normal and mostly play for simulation/historical/hardcore mods. It is an interesting thing to see what you have to say because modded play does massively change how the games function and we play on different difficulties. But, you do point out things that i do appreciate, even if i weight them differently.
I have to say though that Empire feeds into my style the best and has my favorite battle moments lol. What you said about it reinforces my position of only playing on normal.
I should add that i also pause to issue orders. Which, is something that I've done since the original Medieval.
For me Attila battles should be in S+ tier, they are so good that you just want to keep fighting battle after battle. Extremely rewarding and satisfying this is how I would describe them, also comparing them to autoresolve simulator which is Rome II gives even better perspective. I am praying for Medieval III with Attila battle system.
Despite Napoleon being a terrible movie it did make me start another Napoleon campaign
This list is very close to my own, love the atilla appreciation, I have always felt the same about the battles.
Honestly, out of all the historical Games, i keep finding myself playing Attila the most. I just wish it would have gotten more polish.
I'd love to see you rank this in terms of the major overhaul mods -- DEI/Para Bellum/ETW2/NTW3/Darthmod/1212AD
I wish that among all the chaos that CA it's going through, they somehow thinks a way to earn money from old titles, that way we could finally get a final patch for Attila that solves the optimization issue as they did for TOB
Great video Legend! Really interesting to listen to others' thoughts on this.
One aspect I've discovered between titles that can really help or hinder battles is battle maps. I especially noticed it going from Rome2/Attila back to shogun 2 at one point, I've found shogun 2 offers on a more regular basis really interesting terrain to play with like large hills, tree lines that can allow you to travel large distances hidden to get an advantage (rather than just clumps of trees for hiding) and cliffs while I can't tell you the number of times I've gotten a flat plain map in Rome 2/Attila (sure it happens sometimes in shogun but feels like much less often). Medieval 2 and Rome 1 would fall into the good maps category too just based usually on the size of the maps you get.
I also find it interesting that I don't typically find Attila's battles that great though I think that may be more due to some of the unit/faction design i.e. general units having worse stats than other units in their class (defying all logic?), roman infantry being some of the worst in the game (besides testudo formations), some of the whacky unit balancing and aforementioned battle maps. Would be curious what others think though I say all this having spent hundreds of hours in Attila and generally enjoying it (maybe also due to the time period and it being the first totak war delving into modding scene).
I don’t know if Troy has been improved since launch, I remember playing it a little when it was free then putting it down.
I then picked it up again, trying out the historical mode, and actually found the battles quite enjoyable. I did feel like I had to think around the different unit speeds, think about timings of “how long can those units over there hold while I try and defeat the units over here with my offensive units”. I had to consider morale in a way I haven’t felt the need in recent TW games, since amazing high tier units just don’t become available until late in the game and even then cost the premium resource of gold.
That last point really stands out to me. In TW:WH games it always felt like I’d go around with an army until I unlocked a tier 4 settlement, then just buy a brand new elite army with the special units. In Troy, even when I unlock the elite units, I still get battles with weaker units in my army that I have to be conscious of and make decisions around.
I can see why people wouldn’t rate Troy battles highly, I certainly wouldn’t put them in S tier, but I think that they do a solid standing for a saga game and I probably wouldn’t agree with putting them quite so much in the bin.
Wow I've had a completely different experience with empire's battles from you. My guns might need some support but once you tech up and DON'T use militia they can take on 2 groups to 1. Then there are the cannons, I go with 3 cannons with grape shot for the majority of the game its just so satisfying when the enemy is rounding a corner to be met with a direct blast of grapeshot. I can hold a fort with 3 cannons and some militia. And yes this is on the hardest difficulty.
The shooting line upgrades are the most satisfying thing ever! Seeing your infantry go from just the front line shooting to a well-drilled, organized barrage completely changes the game.
Who else would love to see Legend doing a new Western Roman Empire this is total war campaign in Atilla.
The things i love from Empire is the naval battles and that each unit has a regiment title. The regiment thing is small but i really wished they kept that feature in future games
Three kingdoms is my favorite, but honestly, I am quite happy with the A tier rank as I understand the criticisms even if they don't bother me.
Since i read it that way how about a tierlist on the actual historical battles you can play in the game and how you feel they brought them to life within the game (taking the game age into account obv)
ToBs sieges are the best because they increased the settlement sized by making more space between buildings and it makes the path finding so much better.
And then they just stopped that in future games…
I think 3k is massively underrated. Has some of my favourite features in a TW game and the ability to have it more warhammer esque with the heroes or have a standard experience with generals bodyguard.
Naval AI in Empire and Napoleon is pretty good. Can be very difficult to beat sometimes
But that's also due to the limited possibilities, so the AI can handle it
@@El_Cattivo1988 true
Rome 2: I really enjoyed - especially once the various patches were launched. I'd say one thing that I like about the battles, and prefer them to Rome 1 (at least these days), is that Rome 1 can be very cheesy to win battles. Rome 2 I had lots of battles throughout various campaigns where I felt like my armies were overcoming odds - a lot of this probably is just due to the stats point you mentioned, but I like the army experience progression in Rome 2, and a good defensive formation (especially during sieges and forcing the enemy into choke points) feels very powerful, even when you're massively outnumbered.
I'd say defending sieges is what I enjoy the most in this game, when outnumbered. I find that in a defensive siege, especially when outnumbered, your units defending choke points and then flanking the enemy with calvary is very powerful. I've won plenty of battles in Rome 2 via good use of calvary and choke points, and it feels less cheesy than sieges in Rome 1.
It also gives some of the feeling of the historical portrayals in that era - Caesar invading gaul and overcoming huge battles where he's heavily outnumbered, and relying on legionaries being well disciplined and using defensive formations to win.
Western roman campaign was such a good campaign in Attila
Medieval 2 and Rome 1's field battles are a comfort space for all total war players, whether it's lines of heavy knights smashing each other in med 2 or a phalanx wall meeting a horde of barbarians in rome... amazing experiences
It depends on what map you get a bit but I found defending minor settlements in three kingdoms really fun. The combination of choke points and some open space allows for a good variety of units to perform well
I love tw three kingdoms, the battles are nice but the reason i like it is because of the setting. I really love being able to recruit all these legendary generals and watch them duel, character mods like MTU and Wu Kingdaisance really help with that too
TW Attila was my first TW game and I still love it to this day! Your WRE legendary campaign was my favourite series Legend, make another one someday please.
I do think the best historic games encourage you to build balanced and 'realistic' looking army's whereas the WH games really benefit form allowing you to run skewed, one dimensional army's that are thematic over realistic.
Finally ! I'm a TWW player since day one but I've always wanted to try out a historical total war yet they all seemed boring to me, battles looked like "better stats = win" no strategy involved, just infantry vs infantry. Thank you !
Honestly Rome 2's naval battle's biggest issues are the bugginess of ship movement and artillery ships being able to do all the hard work without moving. I get it that they're shooting big rocks, but don't tell me a rock bouncing off the deck or front of the ship will make it sink. When these two issues weren't present on the battlefield, I actually had some fun ramming or setting much bigger ships ablaze. Even took Alexandria while aiding Seleucids' siege with just 4 Carthage ships.
Only just recently got into DEI for Rome 2, so frustrating at first but so rewarding and fun to get the hang of
"In the Grand Cath- original campagne" I see someone had a little too mutch total war warhammer III
Three kingdoms is S tier just for how well the unit stats were changed. Melee defense was removed, we got to see the otherwise hidden attack speed stat, shields have an armor value from the front, charge bonuses are high across the board and charge reflection works, so well timed charges are a required lest you waste them. It all adds up to melee holding the line for an extremely long period of time, so long as their flanks are covered, meaning even on legendary you have time to zoom in a bit and watch some of the spectacle. Unlike WH you also don't have to worry about constant micro of every unit and can do things like actually send cavalry around the back since your units aren't constantly routing or getting thrown around, making them engage with other random blobs.
For all the flak it gets TK had some of the best battles hands down, even if the campaign wasn't as good
are you gonna do a "campaign" version of this list?
I ask mostly because I personally play campaigns, and would like to hear your take on the different games.
Perfect timing! I was thinking about playing a historic TW, kind of got tired of WH for now.
There was always a TON of naval battles in Shogun 2. If you just ignored navies, then you'd have to hold back forces to defend against naval landings, which can be okay, but you also get far less money because you don't get to use trade nodes meaning fewer armies. Factions like Honma and Chosokabe can punish you for not having enough naval power. Honma can really fuck you up without any repercussion because of their starting position if you don't have a fleet.
That said I like the base Shogun 2 naval battles. The core problem was that the AI struggle to play them, often they fight for 2 minutes and then the AI shits itself and its whole fleet scatters their whole fleet across the edges of the map.
Is there a mod for empire and Napoleon that stops troops coming off of the ramparts just dying?
I was fighting a very close battle and moved some infantry off the walls to deal with a potential breach and watched in horrow as theg got caught on the corner of the ramp and just fell down dead with the unit going from 120 to 17 in 5 seconds
try Darthmod or Empire 2
On fall of the samurai I've actually started building a fleet that I plan to have multiple of but I'm playing as the taga and all of a sudden all the diamyos around me swapped sides 😅😂 my fleet has single handedly ended 4 invasions and lead to the death of 2 clans...so far....
I would really love a revamp of tw Napoleon. Especially with the movie coming out.
I would absolutely love to see another historical tier list that’s takes major overhaul mods into consideration. Like Rome 2 with Divide Et Impera, or Napoleon with Darthmod or NTW3.
He doesn't really play modded campaigns so much.
lol it wouldnt be a competition then since all of the mods would make most of these games S tiers
Absolutely LOVE naval battles on total war games, wish they kept it up with the modern games.
AI in Attila is also relatively smart. The cavalry cancels charge, if you trying to bait, by pushing back your archers behind the pikes, and so on
In Rome 2 I always play on Legendary difficulty, but usually I was able to overcome the odds you speak of (higher tier units + ai cheats). But it mostly means resorting to cheesy defence strategies (eg funneling dumb enemies to a chokepoint guarded by pikemen)
I think you missed out pharaoh
Thank god
I love Empire but have to agree that the battles are objectively garbage compared to FotS. Sieges just don't work at all and pathfinding is buggy as heck. Naval combat is the saving grace and pulling off a square in time to destroy a cavalry charge is satisfying, but yeah, battles ain't great. I wish for Empire setting and map scale, but with FotS guns and ships and Warhammer campaign polish. Make that and I die a little happier!
When it comes to historical total war battles, empire and napoleon just takes it home for me. It’s just such a beautiful devastation. Sure, it’s cheesy af but still, there’s something unbelievable great about gunpowder
I actually just picked up Fall of the Samurai because of Legend. I had always been a huge fan of Medieval 2 and played it all the time, and I loved playing in the late eras there with all the gunpowder units and always wished it was more expanded on. I tried both Empire and Napoleon first, but felt disappointed with them, especially for their siege battles. I didn't even know Fall of the Samurai was another "modern era" Total War game, so when I saw Legend talking about it in earlier videos, I picked it up for myself and have been loving it so far.
So I've done some games in Napoleon and Empire. I've also played a decent amount of Rome 2 and Attila, but don't really enjoy those either. Medieval 2 and now FotS are my favorites. I haven't played any others yet (not even Shogun 2 itself; just FotS).
Imo Shogun 2 is one of the best games in the series due to the lack of troop variety. Everyone is the same race, they just have slight faction buffs and i think that makes the game feel really fair. 3K is alright, it needed to be more fleshed out but i guess it sold so well they decided to just make a 3K 2.