@Krzysztof Milański Nope not those.But Janissary heavy infantry with halberd or zweihander.Only 2 handed weapons change.They dont become different unit but weapon skins changes with melee upgrade.
@@Ugurcan191 just one of those minor details that you might miss but show the devs really put work into the game. Seeing your spearmen with different spears might seem pointless but its such a nice touch
Not with melee upgrade but armor upgrade There are different levels a unit can uprade so you can have different type of skins for that unit. For example you have a Tier 1 spear and shield militia if you uprade them for one level they now have some plates and leather. Next upgrade covers them in chain armor. Weapon and shield skins can change as well but not so correctly the weapon type because it needs a new animation and you cannot give a unit different types of animations based on the upgrade level due to engine limitations. Thinking now that this feature was stripped and not developed further is a shame really
As a current empire modder I can confirm there was an incredible amount of great features that were either just cut or made so shallow that they barely appear in the game
I still come back to empire on occasion, only to leave once the bugs become too much. It's a shame, I really liked some of the features like different types of government, permanent villages (that weren't their own province) and so on. How the new engine/empire got greenlit when there was no unit collision and animations were the only way to kill in melee are beyond me though.
@@RedBaronFlyer yeah I love the game but it was for sure never worked on after one of their lead coders left. I've heard that after he left CA didnt have anyone who was able to fix the bugs. Idk, it's a real shame.
I'm curius if it possible to use old code in new games to at least get some of features back. Attlia can be fixed in some way with files from ToB, or so I hear.
@@barbaron123 Yeah, id love to see what the old code would have brought us. I would also like to see if there is a way to implement those into the game. Empire had so much potential, sucks to see it fall flat. Darthmod helps, but its just not what it could have been.
@@herculesc130. give a try to empire extended ( the siberian production's mod) i won one capmaign on it, and while it has things askew i found it entertaining. *not the last 15 regions grind but that is the standard finish the campiagn fatigue* I got it at Mod db.
The quote there is from a warhammer lore character, Emperor Magnus the Pious. The quote goes: "Three things make the Empire great. Faith, Steel and GUNPOWDER." To answer your question about sieges and guns: you CAN put guns on walls in warhammer. Well ... you can put rifles on walls in warhammer. Not arty (even though the trailer had artillery on walls and the game universe features arty on walls). And with a mod you can also put skaven weapon teams and snipers on the walls. still no arty though. But you never want to do that. Because walls in warhammer are useless. They DO NOT increase your range. Or accuracy. Or anything. They don't even provide ANY kind of protection from incoming enemy fire. And of course, since every single enemy unit can just deploy ladders for no cost, you do not want to be on the walls anyway as you'll just get engaged with multiple enemy units for each one of your units and get them massacred in melee. Due to the way the HP system works you can barely get one or two volleys off into the approaching enemy before they are upon you and you can't fire on them anymore. And you most likely would have caused exactly zero casualties. Walls in Warhammer are a DISADVATAGE to the defender. That is the position of how utterly FUCKED sieges are and the foundation from which they have promised to rework them for re-sell 3 of the game. Personally I don't believe they can.
46:37 According to all known laws of ballistics, the warhammer gunman cannot fire. His puny little slingshot pebble tosser cannot get the bullet to the enemy. The warhammer gunman, of course, shoots anyway because warhammer doesn't care about what people think is impossible.
12:05 You missed the piont on the bethesda comment I think. I believe that he means it is the attatude of: leave it to the modders to fix things or change shit people dislike. By the way good videos keep it up my friend.
54:00 It’s not a “priority” to have the billy-fucking-basics of contextual animations that are pretty important to tell what stage of readiness the unit is before firing? Fuck it let’s not have walking animations, fighting animations…animations in general. Just cool Art PNGs bonking into eachother as a number goes down
The dev team has their priorities, and the mod team have theirs, but what about the fucking consumer? You know, the ones that the devs are making the fucking game for??? The only reason the devs don't put the effort in is because of people like this who'll take it in the back, then turn around and berate anyone who won't line up for the next round, much less call out CA on their bullsh*t.
The huge flaw with guns in warhammer is also the implementation of Health Bars and not Hit Points. Because of that you can actually see a full volley of guns fired on Norscans ( Imagine naked men with just a round wooden shield ) and BULLETS, multiple of them hitting a single man and he still moves because 1 they have shields so they have 35% chance of blocking any "missile" that also includes bullets (CA logic) and 2 because that models HP got split between the communist Health Bar by X number of all the people in that unit making him somehow survive getting hit with 5 bullets. If we had individual Hit Points for each model then the aforementioned Norscan wich got hit by 5 bullets would be dead on the ground. The best example for that is Warhammer: Marks of Chaos. Thats the only Warhammer game with functioning guns. They are devastating, penetrate armor and shields but shoot slowly. 2006 btw. That also makes cavalry even more useless. As for example Medieval 2 you can have devastating cav charges because of how Hit Points and the unique cavalry charge mechanic works. In Warhammer because of cinematic purpouses i guess, when cavalry charge and hit an infatry unit the models get launched like ragdolls clipping though each other ( Making them not recieve any damage, because when any unit is sent flying they cannot recieve any damage. Again CA logic) and then falling on the ground. From a 200 man unit only like 15 get killed because of how communist Health Bar and the ragdoll works. Also, they removed the unique cav charge mechanic. Cav now is just an infatry unit but just faster. In Warhammer its impossible to see that 200 number count drop to 57 in 3 seconds after a cav charge. Infatry is also garbage as how "armor" and missile block % has been implemented. For example in one of your videos for Rome 1 you made the great example of armoured hoplites vs archers. Even if you have 3 units of archers shooting at them, the deaths to the ammo used would be so no worth it that you better not even shoot at them ( From the front of course, but even shooting at back is kinda bad ). In Warhammer ALL missiles have some AP damage, even if 1 or 2, like that i can have 1 archer just shooting at a 120 armor unit wich would be the same as armored hoplite and still lose half my unit because of that. And those archers could even be the worst archers in the game. Crossbows are bows. And guns are bows but with more restricted firing angle. Thats why the entire game just goes for ranged armies as no matter wich unit you throw at them they can just shoot at for 2 seconds and kill it. Also, all missiles homes ( homing ? ) at enemies. Even bullets curve mid air. If you wanna really see that in work use 1 unit of Fell Bats and 1 any gun unit. Shoot at them and you can see that when a Bat falls down to the ground after getting shot down, a random bullet follows it down to the ground spinning in the air to the Bat. Also in my opinion, guns stoped functioning or even existing because of the Health Bar system instead of individual Hit Points.
Total War Arena also had homing projectiles, or at least felt like it. Seeing 3 Theban Archers melt entire lines of ARMORED Legionnaires with focus fire was cringe and not cool. Then again, the whole TWA concept didn't work out, so maybe it was doomed from the start.
They do have individual hit points though. If you ever healed a unit with Lore of Life, you would see this quite obviously. The "health bar" as you said, is just all the individual hit points put together, but it is different from entity numbers. This is why you can have a unit of chaos warrios with (an example, numbers are off the top of my head to illustrate the point. Don't get stuck on semantics) 10k HP and 100 entities and Aspiring champions with 10k hp and 12 entities. As for cav charges, yes, they are fucked atm, but the very next update is the "cav update" so they will be changed in some ways at least. Will have to see if for better or worse
@@Brodwyn No, units do not have individual Hit Points. What i think you mean with lore of life is that they have dead already. If a unit has 700/1000 HP and you throw a heal at them of 400 then the unit will heal to 1000. The unit wont heal if A: it has too many dead or B: Unit has reached max healing per battle. And if you still believe that units have individual Hit Points, then do this: Go to the laboratory and make the unit have 500% more entities per unit. Go with i dont know Clanrats and make them fight in melee. And when you look at them fight, forget about the front line, look at thte middle and the back. Why? Cause you will see randomly entities wich arent in melee combat dieing. Why is that? Cause all entities in that unit has the communits Health Bar making any damage that a model recieves get spli into all entitites. And cavalry wont get fixed with that update. Yes they will be better and how charges for infantry works. But the fundamental cavalry potential wich you see in medieval 2 is doesnt exist anymore. I dont know if you have Medieval 2 or not, if you do you can make an easy test. If you do not have Medieval 2 im sure you can fing on UA-cam some video talking in detail about cavalry.
@@Quackerilla I actually liked Total War Arena. But i think the game went to shit with the "Generals" and their unique powers. And limiting units abilities to the Generals. For example there were 3 Roman Generals but only 1 allowed for testudo formation wich was absolutely retarded. Or the archer Generals wich some possesed the -200% reload speed allowing them to shoot that absurd constant stream of arrows. All ranged untis for example have infinit ammo, so where you would try to waste or absorb ammo of enemy units with minimal casualities was possible before. Now its not, so all strategy to counter Ranged outside of melee is none existing. There was also the same bug from Rome 2, with pikes. You know that pike vs pike if you spam attack then your unit of pikes wins? Yeah that was also in Arena. Like having different Generals with unique abilities was a good i dea i think but how they implemented it was so shit that in the long run as we saw the game just died.
@@szymonrozanski6938 The units do have individual hit points. What you described ... doesn't happen? At least in my 800+ hours of playing the game and numerous videos watched I've never seen what you described with 'random units dying in the middle and back'. If you want an example of this, watch the video titled "Drycha's Bodyguard" by Sleepingdruid. In it, you can see Skaven shooting at Drycha, who is behind a treekin entity. The treekin absorbs all of the hits and eventually dies off, as it was the sole entity in the unit to take the damage. If the unit had 'communist hit points' as you call it, the tree kin would be alive and the damage divvied up between the 16 or so treekin entities. As for the Lore of Life example, what I mean is that the healing spells can only heal the entities to their max hit points as it cannot bring back dead units. If you use it on a unit, that, let's hypothesise again and make up a unit of 100 men and 10k HP total. This leaves each entity with 100 HP. If the unit has lost 14 entities, it should be at 8600-8501 hit points total. However, the unit can be at even as low as 100 HP total, with 100 entities, if you somehow managed to damage them each for 99 damage. So, in the example you talked about, the unit would not heal to max because of C: The units entities were already fully healed and cannot heal past that if some entities were dead. Another example are the Vampires, who first of all heal the entities to full HP and only then begin to resurrect fallen entities. To quote the spell 'Invocation of Nehek' from the Lore of Vampires (which I'm sure you can google up, if you want proof); "Resurrects combatants Heals injured before resurrecting" If the units all had 'communist hit points', it would not work this way, for, I hope by now, obvious reasons. As for cavarly, yeah, cav is fucked, I never said otherwise. What I am saying though, is to see what the update brings and then move on. Personally I don't think the cav in Med 2 is that great gameplay wise. Sure, it looks great and is extremely effective which it should be in a historical medieval setting, but in my honest opinion it was way too overpowered in Med 2, as you could take over everything with a purely cav army by just repeatedly cycle charging everything to death. And before you think otherwise, Medieval 2 is my personal favourite of the Total War series.
Shogun 2 by far has best guns, the sound and impact feels deadly and every volley gives the sense of power facing them would have, better then even Napoleon TTW which is CENTERED around guns.
yeah. I think a lot of developers or what not are behind the times, as it were. Trying to appeal to what would or will be current, but by the time release hits it's a piece of hot garbage per usual.
@@VoloundExpounds it’s almost as if they looked upon the disaster that Empire was and decided Homer Simpson had a point… “Trying is the first step towards failure.” Now they barely even try and just spout rubbish in order to market to the delta between standards and costs to maximise annual profit. If you notice how bad it is, the customer’s problem, not the product’s.
@@Quackerilla I also think it's the fact that (as the hashtag says ''dontcarelookscool'') is working. A lot of people seems to be interested in games that just looks cool, without caring much for the gameplay. Which is sad, because you can have both. Probably the reason we see so many piece of hot garbage games or games that feels like early access.
@@zinswear6117 A lot of ideas for games sound good in a vacuum. The basic idea of a fantasy based *Total War Game* sounds fine, but coupling that with a desire to make money ONLY off of the fantasy aspect to the detriment of other aspects of play. Imagine if they made a Shogun 3, and instead of it playing as per 2 does, you instead have the hero mechanics of TW2 to enable Shingen to 1 v 3000 the entire Oda army. Who cares if it looks cool, it's still shit.
I played M2TW recently and the animations in that game are awesome! I love the way my knights bob up and down when they trot. The animations for the pavise crossbowmen are just fantastic. It's been a gradual decline it seems because it's very noticeable after playing the more recent games.
Classic Total War: Oh you're a strategy game all right, just not a classic. Modern Total War: What's the difference?! Classic Total War: "Presentation"!
The gun gameplay in Shogun 2 is amazing, I don't entirely understand how people can say they aren't useful. I'm not a huge gunpowder aesthetic guy and I much prefer more medieval/antiquity. But even then when I used guns instead of bows in Shogun 2, I got addicted to them.
Some Mods from Empire Total War enabled them again (E.G Darth Mod) while Napoleon Total War had Advance and Fire skills. Sadly on Napoleon, from what I've heard they Removed Fire By Rank and Platoon Firing because it was "Buggy" and "Can't be Fixed"
@@AttiliusRex actually yeah, My bad, all of them were available on Vanilla. However all of those formations/firing drills except advance and fire were removed in Napoleon
For shogun 2, i found that the most effective and cheapest way to defend a castle was to deploy yari ashigaru in spear wall behind the walls, not at them, a few metres back. Enemy archers struggle to shoot at you and the enemy infantry climb the walls, and get stuck into combat while spread out against a full spear wall. It wrecks their moral, taking heavy casualties while their men are spread so far apart. The upgrade to this tactic was to stick matchlocks back from the wall. The enemy dont get time to form up before the matchlocks reload and the moral shock of again, being spread out between on top and below the wall and constant losses in large batches, tends to break units before they even engage in a melee.
I tend to deploy matchlocks to whittle them down while advancing and then yari wall them when they try to come up. I've always had bad luck with AI archers being able to do beaucoup damage to my units behind walls unless I specifically hide them behind the castle or some other structure. It's also why I very rarely build Samurai for siege defense.
@@The_Crimson_Fucker oh yes, apologies, should have specified that I was describing the fall back position. Would use the matchlocks before they reach the walls too and then fall back once they start to climb, setting yaris and matchlocks where appropriate. Would obv also still use the other garrison units available. Bows on walls vs bows below tends to be a very efficient tradeoff.
I would always deploy archers on the first wall with some melee to target enemy archers or elite units, then haves guns on the next set of walls to cover the archers' retreat while the melee troops stayed to delay the enemy.
@@JakeBaldwin1 Sounds reasonable. I was describing budget defence, i included not spending money to upgrade the castle to have the second tier in that.
BTW, ya got to love how The Empire in Warhammer has Grenade launcher Cav but not Grenadier units. Meanwhile the Undead pirates do. Its kinda crazy the stuff thats been removed over the years: Dismounting Cav so they can fight on foot if need be. (Usefull in walled sieges or dealing with spearmen) Dragoons (not to be confused with Light Dragoons which can fire on horse back) are still the Coolest unit in Empire in my honest option just do to the fact they are are Both a Cav unit AND when you dismount they act like a small unit of line infantry with carbines. Grenadiers which act like slightly smaller line infantry (actually the are technically elite infantry since they get Platoon fire in Empire) which at the press of a button can chuck DEVISTATING grenades from EACH guy and just devastate enemy units if they land well. Wall mounted Artillery last scene in Rome 2 and Attila. Deployable for Defense, also last seen in Rome 2 and Attila. And that's just the stuff IN BATTLE that is missing.
The fact that people can mention that CA has animators working for free and not see a massive fucking problem with that is baffling to me. Like, is "the animators made it for free on their own time" supposed to be a defence? Fucking shameful.
The armoured monsters so handgunners can't be on the front line is a bad arguement. Handgunners in warhammer lore ignore all but the highest tier of armour, like irl, and are thus used in the frontline to designate everything save magically protected things and even then they can still do work. There is no reason why gunpowder units in warhammer can't be balanced around devistating fire but slow reloads and innacuracy (leading to short effective ranges) so you need fall back lines and blocking units to intercept enemies that get close.
something i should have mentioned earlier when there was discussion on the musket units sounds having fired different types of musket and owning a modern musket, the medieval 2 sound is much more accurate than most games, there is a loud basey fwoosh or foom depending on the type and caliber and design and powder quality/mix and for a while until there was complaints there was a reenactment group that had a cannon fire during parades (didnt shoot a projectile obviously) and shogun/fots more or less got the sound right although reasonably made it so you didnt almost go deaf from how loud it is, i cant recall the sound it made since you immediately have loud ringing in your ears even if your 200 yards away kinda like trying to remember the sound of a stun grenade irl all you probably would remember is a generic boom and ringing.
Holding the walls is detrimental in Warhammer if you're actually facing something formidable. If you have some guns available you'd just use them in the same way you use archers, put them on the wall to shoot on the enemy and then withdraw them when the enemy gets too close, not only for the damage you may or may not do but also to keep the towers under your control.
When you destroy siege tower does it have impact on unit in it? Unless you have artillery on defence, ranged units cant shot anyting worth going back and regrouping them. If only there was a movable balistas and such weapon on walls. Set them before battle as addition to big towers. If only every building in settlement could add own bonus structure like outside camps, farms with some peasants or gate/tower guards that destroy ladders and such.
@@barbaron123 Pretty sure the unit inside the siege tower dies, have never managed to destroy the siege tower in time lol. Probably only possible on tier 4 and 5 walls
The synced animations were definitely done in the animator's own time. I remember watching the developer diary where a guy (I think maybe the ginger one who's always in a scarf and cap) mentioned it, and then it was confirmed in a later blog post or something. CA tried to show it off as "look how passionate about this game our team" are and most of the "community" were happy to receive it that way. It reminds me of how the miniature model of Barad-dur in RotK was built by one guy voluntarily over his Christmas break. But that was to produce a genuine masterpiece.
They 100% won't add any additional details to wh 3, like reaload animations, because the whole game will be merged with previous 2 and it would look out of place next to units from previous 2 whs if they did. They aren't even selling a game, it's just a big chunk of paid puzzle. No one's even playing the standalone campaigns in wh tws, they only care about mortal empires where races from all 3 games are playable.
I really don't understand the people who keep saying that Shogun 2 archers were strong in field battles. You basically have to leave a unit in the open, eating flat-trajectory arrows to the face for them to start being effective. Proper angles and trees provided so much cover in Shogun 2, I think those people just don't understand how to play the game properly. They still provide a great tactical tool, being able to bait out enemies or force the AI to attack your hill since they recognise that you have the ranged advantage. But they are by no means great damage dealers.
Volund said it before, with the Yari Ashigaru. It was considered the worst unit in the game until people started experimenting with them and found out more ways to use em. Same thing with these.....err....."players". They think they know more about the game but they never experimented nor do they try to find ways to use units differently. I used to be in the same camp as well ngl until I watched a lot of Volound's video and soon started trying out his tactics and ways to use units and even started experimenting on my own to see what can work and not work.
@@MrAsh1100 Now the pendulum swung and people think that Yari Ashigaru are the single most powerful unit in the game, simple because they keep hearing it repeated over and over, even though in a 1v1, while in Yari Wall, they objectively lose to every single melee-infantry samurai unit except for Yari Samurai. Of course, they are the most cost-effective unit by far, and upgrades affect them proportionally more due to the flat nature of said upgrades. But there is this meme going around saying that Yari Ashigaru in Yari Wall will flat out beat anything in 1v1, which is simply false. The worst part is that they use this an argument for why Shogun 2 is a bad game.
@@Osvath97 yeah, tbh, its just how most casual gamers play. They don't want to take the time and effort to master and experiment. I put half the blame on them.
Muskets should be the Empire's trump card. In a world of giant monsters trying to kill them, it ought to level the playing field. The fact handgunners work like any other missile unit is disgusting for anyone interested in good game design. I would bet money early on during testing WH1, it didn't feel "cool" or "awesome" for noobs to send a big scary "cool" monster directly into an opposing musket formation only to have it instantly killed by 200 guns. It's too "punishing" for the centerpiece monster everyone fawns over to be fragile in any realistic way. TW has had monsters since RTW. Elephants. The devs chose to make the game's tuning out of wack to be less punishing. Guns don't work right. "Monster" units don't work right. "Hero" units don't work right. All to lower the bar of skill I would presume. If people's tactical mismanagement led to them losing, it wouldn't be very "fun" or "cool" or "awesome". ua-cam.com/video/9vfcjWizrrM/v-deo.html An old video from ETW. Fast forward to 5:33 to see how guns vs. monsters ought to work ua-cam.com/video/LXsqsHl7yqc/v-deo.html another side by side using the Call of Warhammer mod edit: I know most the video focusses on firing drills etc. but what really breaks everything is how bullets are not bullets in TWWH, they're just sharper arrows, which was a conscious game design decision to make the game stupider and easier.
I really hope they make a med 2 remastered ngl. Don't really trust them enough for a med 3 but med 2 vanilla has a lotta bugs and crashes every time I reinstall it
26:41 the funny thing about the warhammer 2 siege meta is that you completely disregard walls because of how useless they are at preventing the enemy form a breach which is so fucking stupid that you have to question how they managed to fuck up so hard that a wall is useless when defending
I dont think people who compare total war to Bethesda games quite understand the modding process for warhammer and newer total war games in general. Modders are much more restrained now in terms of how much they can interact with the engine, then they were in M2TW times. Sure, modders can pull off some impressive stuff, like i've seen mod that adds flying gunners on some da vinci style steampunk contraptions for warhammer 2, but you cant really amend the broken stuff in the engine. There's really nothing that modders can do about broken AI for instance, except for some minor tweaking. If developers didnt program AI, in this commerically released product, to react to player's actions during sieges and their unit just stand under artillery fire, there really is nothing modders can do about it, unless CA releases source code and that wont happen. I would actually make a different comparison of CA to Bethesda - Bethesda has set very high standards of worldbuilding and storytelling back during Morrowind release in 2002. Then, in 2006 Oblivion came along which, while it was warmly received and remains beloved by some people to this day, undeniably had much simpler and diluted world, story and game mechanics when compared to Morrowind, not to mention the shrek aesthetics Oblivion had going on. So basically, Bethesda made a game that was much simpler compared to it's predecessor in order to make their franchase more appealing for new audience. I think you can already see some parallels to CA's actions. But in Bethesda case, a lot of it was also due to personell changes, chief writer and some other people had left the company, and I am not so sure about CA's internal history. Be that as it may, Bethesda has later somewhat amended their shortcomings with oblivion, skyrim was admittedly more complex and rich in terms of world-building and aesthetics than oblivion ever was. And after their latest oopsie with fallout 76 they apparently went ahead and made the game much better (well according to reviews on steam anyway, i never played it), after being faced with an unrelenting barrage of criticism. Hopefully your efforts will help playerbase communicate some much needed feedback to CA and the next games will be better. Dont have much hope for warhammer 3 though, that game is only few months away, they'll really need to get cracking if they want to unfuck the hole they've dug for themselves with bad game design decisions they made back when they made warhammer 1 Edit: sorry if i rambled a little bit, this is the first time i've decided to comment on your vid, wanted to try and articulate a good point and sum up my opinion at the same time.
the three things which make the empire (from Warhammer) great are faith steel and gunpower, so you would have thought they would put more effort into gun animations as its clearly a key aspect of that faction.
Fire by rank in shogun 2 isn't bugged at all, it works exactly as it is supposed to and it is powerful if used correctly. All these people claiming "warhammer is better because units fire at once" are just not using fire by rank correctly.
I remember a strategy i use alot in med2 when goin to aztec land in the endgame : I would put the gunners in the walls , open the gate and go out with the canons , not much, just a little in front of the wall , for some reason the aztecs could not undestand this and do not attack the canons and got shot from towers, gunners and canon until they fleed and i win. The fact that they gain full armies every turn out of nowhere forces me to use this tipes of shi* but all in all it has fun. In warhammer you can defende the walls but for a very limited time because every unit have ladders in their pockets , that change realy realy hurt the game. I will not lie , i did have some great siege defense battles in warhammer but to be fair that is the type of battle that is remember the most in every totalwar , who cant say they not remember even one "impossible" defense won. The gun problem , i never care because the unit did what i need it to do, that is kill from flanks but when this come to historic titles now is my problem, you see in fantasy i can roleplay that every gunman is retar* but in a historic game no , just no. In the end i want a better product but when a local concession on a game become rule for future games like no naval battles in warhammer also goin into 3k , that is a big problem.
I clung on for Warhammer because I thought Rome 2 was just a blip. With guns returning in Warhammer I thought, CA would HAVE to go back to the mechanics of Shogun 2+FoTS. My disappointment on playing was immediate, something didn't feel 'right' but it took until last year and watching your videos pointing it out for me to see it myself. Over time, I came to realise Warhammer is just Rome 2 with extra steps. Well then years went by without the third game being announced, so CA maybe will be using the time to do it properly and backwards-port the improvements the same way Shogun 2 got some when it merged with FoTS into the same app. This is only semi-serious wishful-thinking: I didn't believe in such hope. I can see in the trailer for Cathay the ranged units using what would appear to be firing-drills, but I know if there is the slightest chance they are in the game; they're stat-modifiers. Their animations are not going to be reflective of any non-spreadsheet mechanics under the hood.
I dont think hes wrong, I just think this is generally a dumb nitpick, would I like to see FoTS gunpowder mechanics? Yeah, but its not going to kill me if its not, if all I got is a reload mod, then thats good enough. Some TW games are destined to be better than others, either through age or laziness, I still havent gotten over feeling backstabbed over Rome II, but the WH series is miles better in many different ways.
I believe most of the Fire option in Empire were in the game at release. Platoon fire definitely was as its a researchable thing in the tech tree. Only issue was it was worthless next to Ranked fire and no one ever used it. Napoleon had Fire and Advance and I believe that was a carry over from Empire too, but im not sure. As to the Warhammer Handgunner shooting through the deep column, Empire and Napoleon, and even Shogun 2 firearm are troops could do that. It only required checking a box in the code (Skirmish, if you're curious). The annoying thing is that ability of firing is more accurate to the period than what Empire and Napoleon allowed players to use, and ironically, it makes battles with the AI slightly better overall. No one knows why, but there is a marked improvement in how the AI performs in battle when the Skirmish ability is activated on all musket armed units in Empire and Napoleon. (Look up any Pixellated Apollo Napoleonic Total War 3 mod battle replays and you'll see the all troops in a unit fire at once in the same fashion as the WH Handgunners.) So, I can understand why CA have the WH Handgunners shooting through their own men like that, it just works better in the game engine. It would have been visually better if they had of put more effort into them using Counter March or Ranked Fire, but I can understand why they didn't do that. The lack of a reload animation is still criminal though.
The bugginess of drills is something they could have worked on in subsequent titles. They already had it functional in the first game. So no, I don't think we should defend their inability to do this by throwing the blame on the engine instead (also whose decision was it to adopt the engine in the first place?)
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I'm not defending them. Just saying I understand why they did it. They should always be pushing themselves to do better in the next game and fix problems that arise in current/older games. Alas, that's just not something they are willing to do.
S2 firearm troops can't shoot in a column regardless of what skills you enable, as they are restricted to only the first rank firing (Unless you enable the Kneel Fire ability which allows a second rank to fire, otherwise only the front rank can shoot). Skirmish mode is a "skill" that makes it so the unit automatically retreats if an enemy gets too close. That is its only effect, except in M2 where it would cause your firearm unit to use Fire by Rank rather than the normal counter march. However S2 has a flag called "All Ranks Fire" in the "unit_stats_land" table. Activating that allows everyone with a clear line of sight to fire, but lads that don't have a clean line of sight still can't fire so firing in a column generally doesn't work.
@@demomanchaos All that is true. I've not modded S2 much, but in Empire and Napoleon, the All Ranks Fire flag you talk about is called Skirmish in those games. And the clear LoS thing was only added Shogun 2 to reduce Friendly Fire incidences. In Empire and Napoleon, you can line up behind one of your units and the musketeers will shoot into the back of your own units because they don't recognise Friendly Fire as a thing. So you can literally have them in a column and as long as the model has range they will shoot.
26:10 the closest thing to this I've seen is a "disaster battle" by LegendOfTotalWar where he uses the rat gunners to sit at the capture point and camp the choke points, all the while playing footsies with his commanders and hero units to keep the enemy AI from actually pushing through and attacking. Look up "Ratling Gun Murder-Death Kill-Kill Zone". EDIT: after having watched videos of guns in other total war games, it's very striking how emaciated guns are in Warhammer. They're really just bow and arrows with a different set of sounds.
@ 2:00 Well, it's not hard to see why Platoon was broken in ETW: because that's not platoon fire. It looks more like firing by file--if people assumed files were in fact six or something. So here's how it's supposed to work (British army specifically): you did indeed have 16 platoons in the hat companies, plus 2 per grenadier platoons (they're kept separate as they were often detached; ideally, one platoon covers each flank). However, they wouldn't fire one at a time, as ETW idiotically portrays. Instead, they'd be grouped into three "firings". The firings would ideally shoot every 10 seconds or so. Not only that, but the platoons in a firing were not next to each other. They'd be split relatively evenly through the battalion. So let's have a hypothetical platoon, with both grenadier platoons present: G hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh G 1 2312312312312312 3 ^this would be how they'd do it, were they going from left to right (a common European custom). each platoon has a firing assigned, and as you can see, they don't simply go down the line. There are other variations too: 3 3322211111122233 3 < this one was used in America in the French and Indian War: fire from the center and spread out. You could do this too: 1 1122233333322211 1 < from outside in. This was roughly how the French army did it in Europe too during the Seven Years War as well. But notice that it is *almost* never simply from one side to another (The Prussians and Austrians were the exceptions--and even then, the Prussians only had 5 firings in 1757 (10 platoons), the Austrians, 4 (8 platoons)). The reason is that you're trying to cover the whole battalion; even the American service versions--less idea as they are--never leave any firing vulnerable more than 10 seconds (this fine, if only because cavalry wasn't a thing at the time in America). Here's how the French did it (1750's): P hhhhhhhh G Also, with them, if they wanted to do fire and advance, these would happen by firing as well. So at no point would they be doing what ETW units do when you toggle fire and advance. Not necessary, and anyway, kind of stupid. Fire by rank wouldn't have worked as you see either: they'd have had a complicated maneuver to do to cycle the ranks back. This is easy to teach the soldiers and requires less training, but it also adds a delay on the reload (the guy has to walk to the rear to reload). As a result, you should never have fewer than 4 ranks, and ideally no fewer than 5. Platoon fire should only really shine with well-trained troops, next to the fire by rank. Finally, with platoon fire, it was common to use the front rank as a reserve fire. They'd only join in the shooting if more firepower were needed. Sorry, had to go into it. This sort of thing is a pet peeve of mine.
The med2 clip in the original reddit post is footage from Call of Warhammer, the Med2 mod that inspired Warhammer TW (and did a lot of things way better). I'd highly recommend making some comparisons between unit behavior in the two, as Call of Warhammer has all the fancy unit variety of warhammer while still maintaining more functional units, better campaigns, and generally better battles.
I DO agree with the guy who said matchlock were slow, low on the tech tree, etc, at 32:00. By the time I ever manage to bring them out in large enough numbers to be worthwhile considering how often the enemy will just charge in (I'll get one or two volleys off in that time), my bowmen are already experienced and OP as shit. Never found the use until Fall. Maybe now that I have more experience from Fall (FINALLY having gotten to it) I might appreciate them more in the main game, but still, I love me my burning arrows fired by guys who won't break at the first sign of an incoming charge. Yes, INCOMING. Whether or not I pull them back in irrelevant, because they're already running.
hey volound, regarding about the animations. Mandalore gaming mentioned about it in his review total war Warhammer II video. Timestamp at 7:52 and Animators did extra on their free time
there are a lot of neat additions made by newer total wars, and there are ways in which the warscape engine surpasses the old engine. and medieval 2 firearm units were always quite messy, especially with how they fired (rank fire was at times useless, and skirmish fire predictably had the issue of the soldiers running away as soon as the enemy got close). but in warhammer firearm units just act like "heavy" archers essentially, as if ranged projectiles are upgraded along a linear line rather than fulfill different functions.
Care to actually describe any of these "neat" additions? It's well known that firearms in all games excepting the first Shogun had their issues, that doesn't absolve WH from its terrible depiction of guns. Rather than fixing and improving on the systems of older games, they opted to get rid of them.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I meant neat additions in general, not specificly muskets. What warscape did well was smoothing out movement and the like. One example being how Rome 2s skirmishers actually being proper skirmishers who are both mobile and capable of quickly throwing, and not having to stop and switch weapon and then aim, like in Rome 1 or medieval 2. Archers in general are less likely to scuffle around for 2 minutes before shooting. Which is the (in my opinion, bad) trade-off here. Gunners in TWW are way more boring and lack impact and complexity, but now they work consistently. It's definitely a downgrade from shogun 2 and even Empire, no doubt, but in contrast to those two its a lot more tetiary as a concern, as firearms only represent a small part of the larger combat system. Not defending the downgrading, but merely being a devil's advocate on this part, whilst acknowledging how guns were always quite shit in total war. Beautiful and atmospheric and powerful when they worked, but a costly fuck up when the programming shat the bed. I love medieval 2, it's my favorite of the franchise, but there is a reason why there are hundreds of threads across the Internet all discussing how medieval 2 muskets, just like medieval 2 pikemen and zweihänder, are buggy and convuluted. Mods fix it tho, and some fixes can be done right in the descr files, but a lot of the damage has already been done.
I have drawn any and all blood from the stone of Empire: Total War. I have played for 600 hours, including mods and vanilla, and have completed a Grand Campaign as every faction. The assessment that these ambitious mechanics were placed and then forgotten and abandoned is accurate. Advancing Fire and Platoon Fire are both available in the campaign as researchable options, tools to be used at the player's discretion and not arbitrarily forced. You might want advancing fire on a nation like Russia or France who have better melee line infantry, while platoon fire is more appealing for nations with better marksmanship. There was an attempt to allow the player to choose their own tactics to victory, shitty AI notwithstanding. When you play Empire there is always this frustrating sense that they were teetering on the border of a massive success but just didn't have the time or tools to make it happen. Then in Napoleon they cut most of the interesting features out like fire drills in favor of a more "balanced" experience and a gutted campaign. Empire is the greatest tragedy in the series after Rome 2, yet is still a more playable and enjoyable game than Rome 2 because before the end, CA was still trying to push game design forward. Then, they gave up and now all we have left is Tusslemallet.
Empire and Napoleon (didn't really play that second one) had GRATE firearm animations and tactics (fire by rank, fire and advance, platoon fire), in fact it had ALOT of features that have been CUT. Base Shogun 2 the Matchlocks worked well for the most part, the buggyness of the Fire by Rank Ability shall be a eternal debate, i swing back and forth weather it is or not. Im pretty sure it isn't and people just are impatient, but sometimes i REALLY feels like they take forever to SHOOT. Not to mention Walls in Shogun 2 BUFF the reload speed of ranged units. Fall of the Samurai did have Kneel fire but JESUS CHRIST gun infantry in that game where very "ridged" in their animations, Like a common problem was so many men would die instead of firing the gun Infantry keep "forming ranks" instead of laying down lead. Also why the fuck was kneel fire an ABILITY and not a passive? Ya know like Empire did where you just research the tech and your mend preform that action automatically. That said Fall of the Samurai's GUN and CANNON sounds truly are a Joy to listen too. All the SMOKE, MUZZLE FLASH, and the CRACK and BANG of the weapons.
its actually a disadvantage to hold the walls on warhammer, lotw talks about it alot when i watched him. you want to hold the flag and funnel them in the streets to do shitty blob cheese tactics cuz the game is shit
Lol @ the guy saying guns were irrelevant in Shogun 2 until FOTS. Obviously he just doesn't know how to use them. I have pulled off great victories with 2 matchlock ashigaru units that I may not have been able to without them (in base game Shogun 2).
For the warhammer guns, I would guess the firing timing of the guns is probably determined by a matrix. Suppose there are 200 men in the gun unit, I would guess that at most 50 different matrices could represent every formation. If you had a 15*14 matrix, that's over 200 so the whole 200 man unit could fit in there. Since the unit is modeled by a matrix, you could just have every member of the first row fire and then cycle down through all the rows. I would guess that with 900 men, the matrix they form isn't one that the game was designed for, so that makes the firing timings bug out.
That might make sense except for the fact that warhammer musketeers don't fire by rank ever, even at normal unit size and stretched as wide as possible, so you're giving them too much credit even then.
Issue is that firearm infantry arent very good in Med 2 The sluggishness of the engine made the units just too inefficient to be worth using Empire and Napoleon has the weird syncopation but everything worked seemlessly 95% of the time
yeah having a unit refusing to fire because one damn model for some reason hadnt finished reloading and a volley couldnt be started if not 100% of all men hadnt reloaded was very frustrating ...should have been easy enough to fix by putting more intelligence into the unit AI
For the bullets arcing, it's Warhammer. If they were to tell me that the bullets are 50lb balls, and thus the arcing is actually a correct thing, i would believe it. it sounds like the wacky shit you get in Warhammer. Thing is, they DON'T say this.
No way you can hold walls in warhammer w only guns. A couple magic spells or friggin fell bat/carrion drops and they are rendered useless. Same thing w any artillery. The game makes it fairly easy to get rid of anything like that. Also I enjoyed the fact that steady artillery barrage is asmr to you.
pretty sure the opposite was also true, the damage was constant but less "chunky" the rank firing drill had such devestating volleys that it would break a unit as they suffered 25% losses within a few seconds...
i think what people meant by posting about bethesda is that bethesda expects modders to pick up a lot of slack for there games like the unoffical patches and what not it seems CA may be thinking the same with reloading and stuff like that
I will admit that in my 200 or so hours of Shogun 2 only playing campaign Ive always thought that guns were not that great I always struggle when I try to do the otomo, but I've made a few more recent attempts especially after watching videos like these and they say that gunpowder is not useless in fact unless it's a rainy day it's amazing, I've gone back and had more success. The only issues I will face is if you know most of my army has gunpowder and they force the melee and my gunpowder units are not quite as effective. However, as several other videos have demonstrated it's all about how you use them tactically the terrain, your opponent's composition, straight up art of War basic tactics. I guess a way to put it is that the Bows have more counters to them but can still be effective because Samurai don't use Shields unlike the European Total wars where when shields are involved those are a lot less effective, but guns have a lot less counters to them and them do a lot more morale impact unless you are going up against a high morale unit like the warrior monks but most people do not want to waste their more expensive more valuable units against guns. Bows are great for putting on pressure but they usually won't get a lot of kills against upper tier units. I have lost several battles because I didn't bring enough bows. As I've seen with several multiplayer battles and watching some of these tournaments Shogun is the skirmisher's paradise this game favors skirmishes more than probably any other Total War game.
In answer to your question, you can't put gunners on walls in Warhammer and hold off anything really. I doubt a unit of handgunners could stop a unit of clanrats just running straight at them, producing ladders out of nowhere and scaling the walls into melee. You'll get off a coupple of volleys, do some hp damage, and then be overrun.
"I mean, fire by rank was buggy in Shogun 2" With that same logic, CA should just scrap sieges permanently since they have never been able to perfect them. With that logic, CA must have been right to scrap naval battles as well, because they couldn't get it right. Trial and error is the name of the game, without it there would be no innovation in the world, and everything would be mediocre.
You "can" put gunpowder units on walls for siege defense in Warhammer but siege maps and mechanics are so fundamentally broken that even Warhammer fans try to pretend they don't exist. Most of the damage to attackers comes from automatic turrets in siege defenses, and guns are functionally archers, so there's no particular advantage for putting guns on walls over bowmen or even melee infantry who will engage with attackers when they come over the walls.
25:30 Quite interesting to see the diffrence in observation, as a non mp player I fully agreed with the poster. I didn't really find much use for gunpowder units in sp campaign. But I can see how a higher damage density is nice in MP where time is a more important factor to consider. Still, it comes down to a diffrence in primary play, a lot of total war players probably don't bother with MP battles and thus will have a vastly diffrent experience compared to those that do. 26:30 Yes does happen, (campaign) gun units do really well against (particularily armored) single target entities in total war warhammer, gun units in general are very strong on the campaign map as they have the same amount of ammo as archer units but much higher damage potential. Sadly their strength is in part due to the poor melee balancing on higher difficulty which makes it necessery to pick high damage density units. But they at least do that job very well. Put them on a wall and right klick on an approaching monster and they will take it down generally before the gates are cracked.
its wrong though, and i demonstrate it to be wrong in this very video. so you are affirming a falsehood. most of why otomo is such a good faction in SP is that they get immediate matchlocks and the early game is easymoded. everyone that is familiar with shogun 2 knows this. im the guy that introduced max difficulty total war campaigns to youtube, and that showed everyone how to beast legendary difficulty. i point out the usefulness of matchlocks in MP to show that matchlocks are useful EVEN IN MP where rushing punishes ranged units particularly hard.
also ive had everyone confirm that putting units in walls on warhammer is outright ineffective, so you are either just horribly misinformed or are being a contrarian. bad comments.
@@VoloundExpounds For your first point: I merely observed how I found it interesting, I did not disagree with you that your point was valid, merely explained why I thought that commenter actually made sense to me. Again, that wasn't a "Oh you must be wrong because my experience was diffrent." but a "Oh my experience was A but it could have been B as you showed." I don't see the point in misreading my comment to twist it into something that is against you. For your second point, you asked if someone had an experience with putting gun units on walls and that feeling fun and interesting, I had that experience. It is a thing that occured, when I play campaign I defend my walls every single time. I have no issue with doing this on very hard either. Is it optimal? Maybe not, I don't know because I haven't yet tried not defending my walls. Maybe once I do that I'll find out that I could hold a settlement without taking any losses at all, this is possible. Again though this doesn't negate my experience, you asked and when you got an answer that went contrary to what you wanted to hear you dismissed it. If I may ask, why? Do keep in mind that my perspective is purely singleplayer, I do not play multiplayer online battles so I can not comment on that, but I think that I am not alone in this, thus I think it's alright to partake.
Well actually you can win against monstrous units by holding the walls in a siege....just happens that Monstrous units cant climb walls... Jokes aside, I dont think monstrous units are actually strong enough to survive being shot at while they try to tear down the walls. Also, while the favourable strategy in Siege is to abandon the walls for the sake of choke points within the city walls, it isn't really hard to win a siege by holding the walls, holding choke points behind the walls can just be more cost-effective, especially when you have a smaller garrison. With Larger defending forces as well, defending the walls is entirely viable but it can also be easier to have fewer units holding the line while also being able to spare more of your ranged units for each choke point, especially if the Player or AI in question doesnt regroup its forces after getting passed the walls.
The Total War series really needs to go back and grab all the cut content and put them back in. Hell do a Troy and make it so you can choose to play Streamlined or Complex. I would pick Complex every time for all the Formations, Fire modes, Ammo types, Ships! I want Warhammer Ships. I love Total War Warhammer, but it disappoints me so badly like a child that forgets all the skills you teach them, all the gaming knowledge you impart to go and play Fortnight and watch pewdie pie...
The Bethesda comment was probably talking about Elder Scrolls series not fallout. Skyrim is just Oblivion with less of everything and Oblivion is just Morrowind with less of everything. Constantly degrading series.
"Bethesda has not been notorious for cutting content from their games" Did you play anything prior to Skyrim, man? They cut SO much, character creation wise, for Skyrim! Not to mention how lifeless all the people feel, despite their "daily routine" thing. And don't get me started on the lack of lore (yes, LACK).
i dont have a preference either way i play warhammer because i want a fantasy setting but yea i prefered empire total war gun i have never really gotten to the point of having guns in medieval total war didnt even know they had guns but yea i dont play warhammer for the guns personally i dont know who would play total war warhammer for the guns warhammer only has two races with guns and there are tons of better units in their roster if i want to play with guns in a total war game it is prolly gonna be empire i dont own napoleon so i cant play that unless there is a better total war game with guns makes me wonder though what is the possibility of total war series coming out with a WW1 or WW2 sorta game i also wanna make a point that i am a big warhammer fan and i want to defend the game but i cant when the evidence is that obvious i just have to sorta say well played yea our gun mechanics are shit
Not just historical players, it's immersion breaking, so larpers will also dislike its absense. As will those that are there for the spectival to some extent. Its OK not to care, but its not just historical fnas who like animations.
Okay, are you REALLY having this much trouble reading these? I get they're not great with the grammar, but it's not impossible to get the point of what's being said. Or are you just playing into the "these people suck and are stupid" thing?
yeah i am. im not as smart as these people, so their ideas are difficult to grasp, and it takes more time than it should. likewise, if i was smart enough to be an actor, i would be in movies and not struggling with these very complex ideas on reddit.
Total war engine is garbage and compleatly unsuitable for a startegy game. All units should be 2d rectangles in the gam engine represented by a group of 3d models but in total war engine sees individual soldiers that form a unit and every of them is treated as semi separate entity leading to so much bullshit problems that it's just pathetic.
hahaha dude not everyone has the priviledge to be born in the land of the knife attacks or the kingdom of schoolshootings. I wonder if you speak a second or a third tongue perfectly... I'm sure you Doesn't
a very underrated detail that i noticed in medieval 2 some day's ago is that some weapons have different textures if you upgraded them.
Weapons, armors and I think even horse bardings change in Medieval 2
@@JohnDoe-ug3su Elite units like zweihander,janissaries can have diferent weapons with upgrades.
@Krzysztof Milański Nope not those.But Janissary heavy infantry with halberd or zweihander.Only 2 handed weapons change.They dont become different unit but weapon skins changes with melee upgrade.
@@Ugurcan191 just one of those minor details that you might miss but show the devs really put work into the game. Seeing your spearmen with different spears might seem pointless but its such a nice touch
Not with melee upgrade but armor upgrade
There are different levels a unit can uprade so you can have different type of skins for that unit.
For example you have a Tier 1 spear and shield militia if you uprade them for one level they now have some plates and leather.
Next upgrade covers them in chain armor.
Weapon and shield skins can change as well but not so correctly the weapon type because it needs a new animation and you cannot give a unit different types of animations based on the upgrade level due to engine limitations.
Thinking now that this feature was stripped and not developed further is a shame really
As a current empire modder I can confirm there was an incredible amount of great features that were either just cut or made so shallow that they barely appear in the game
I still come back to empire on occasion, only to leave once the bugs become too much. It's a shame, I really liked some of the features like different types of government, permanent villages (that weren't their own province) and so on. How the new engine/empire got greenlit when there was no unit collision and animations were the only way to kill in melee are beyond me though.
@@RedBaronFlyer yeah I love the game but it was for sure never worked on after one of their lead coders left. I've heard that after he left CA didnt have anyone who was able to fix the bugs. Idk, it's a real shame.
I'm curius if it possible to use old code in new games to at least get some of features back. Attlia can be fixed in some way with files from ToB, or so I hear.
@@barbaron123 Yeah, id love to see what the old code would have brought us. I would also like to see if there is a way to implement those into the game. Empire had so much potential, sucks to see it fall flat. Darthmod helps, but its just not what it could have been.
@@herculesc130. give a try to empire extended ( the siberian production's mod) i won one capmaign on it, and while it has things askew i found it entertaining. *not the last 15 regions grind but that is the standard finish the campiagn fatigue* I got it at Mod db.
The quote there is from a warhammer lore character, Emperor Magnus the Pious. The quote goes: "Three things make the Empire great. Faith, Steel and GUNPOWDER."
To answer your question about sieges and guns: you CAN put guns on walls in warhammer. Well ... you can put rifles on walls in warhammer. Not arty (even though the trailer had artillery on walls and the game universe features arty on walls). And with a mod you can also put skaven weapon teams and snipers on the walls. still no arty though.
But you never want to do that. Because walls in warhammer are useless. They DO NOT increase your range. Or accuracy. Or anything. They don't even provide ANY kind of protection from incoming enemy fire. And of course, since every single enemy unit can just deploy ladders for no cost, you do not want to be on the walls anyway as you'll just get engaged with multiple enemy units for each one of your units and get them massacred in melee. Due to the way the HP system works you can barely get one or two volleys off into the approaching enemy before they are upon you and you can't fire on them anymore. And you most likely would have caused exactly zero casualties. Walls in Warhammer are a DISADVATAGE to the defender. That is the position of how utterly FUCKED sieges are and the foundation from which they have promised to rework them for re-sell 3 of the game. Personally I don't believe they can.
46:37 According to all known laws of ballistics, the warhammer gunman cannot fire. His puny little slingshot pebble tosser cannot get the bullet to the enemy. The warhammer gunman, of course, shoots anyway because warhammer doesn't care about what people think is impossible.
Underrated comment
12:05 You missed the piont on the bethesda comment I think. I believe that he means it is the attatude of: leave it to the modders to fix things or change shit people dislike. By the way good videos keep it up my friend.
that makes way more sense. thanks for the catch.
54:00
It’s not a “priority” to have the billy-fucking-basics of contextual animations that are pretty important to tell what stage of readiness the unit is before firing?
Fuck it let’s not have walking animations, fighting animations…animations in general. Just cool Art PNGs bonking into eachother as a number goes down
The dev team has their priorities, and the mod team have theirs, but what about the fucking consumer? You know, the ones that the devs are making the fucking game for??? The only reason the devs don't put the effort in is because of people like this who'll take it in the back, then turn around and berate anyone who won't line up for the next round, much less call out CA on their bullsh*t.
The huge flaw with guns in warhammer is also the implementation of Health Bars and not Hit Points. Because of that you can actually see a full volley of guns fired on Norscans ( Imagine naked men with just a round wooden shield ) and BULLETS, multiple of them hitting a single man and he still moves because 1 they have shields so they have 35% chance of blocking any "missile" that also includes bullets (CA logic) and 2 because that models HP got split between the communist Health Bar by X number of all the people in that unit making him somehow survive getting hit with 5 bullets.
If we had individual Hit Points for each model then the aforementioned Norscan wich got hit by 5 bullets would be dead on the ground. The best example for that is Warhammer: Marks of Chaos. Thats the only Warhammer game with functioning guns. They are devastating, penetrate armor and shields but shoot slowly. 2006 btw.
That also makes cavalry even more useless. As for example Medieval 2 you can have devastating cav charges because of how Hit Points and the unique cavalry charge mechanic works.
In Warhammer because of cinematic purpouses i guess, when cavalry charge and hit an infatry unit the models get launched like ragdolls clipping though each other ( Making them not recieve any damage, because when any unit is sent flying they cannot recieve any damage. Again CA logic) and then falling on the ground. From a 200 man unit only like 15 get killed because of how communist Health Bar and the ragdoll works. Also, they removed the unique cav charge mechanic. Cav now is just an infatry unit but just faster.
In Warhammer its impossible to see that 200 number count drop to 57 in 3 seconds after a cav charge.
Infatry is also garbage as how "armor" and missile block % has been implemented. For example in one of your videos for Rome 1 you made the great example of armoured hoplites vs archers. Even if you have 3 units of archers shooting at them, the deaths to the ammo used would be so no worth it that you better not even shoot at them ( From the front of course, but even shooting at back is kinda bad ). In Warhammer ALL missiles have some AP damage, even if 1 or 2, like that i can have 1 archer just shooting at a 120 armor unit wich would be the same as armored hoplite and still lose half my unit because of that. And those archers could even be the worst archers in the game. Crossbows are bows. And guns are bows but with more restricted firing angle.
Thats why the entire game just goes for ranged armies as no matter wich unit you throw at them they can just shoot at for 2 seconds and kill it.
Also, all missiles homes ( homing ? ) at enemies. Even bullets curve mid air. If you wanna really see that in work use 1 unit of Fell Bats and 1 any gun unit. Shoot at them and you can see that when a Bat falls down to the ground after getting shot down, a random bullet follows it down to the ground spinning in the air to the Bat.
Also in my opinion, guns stoped functioning or even existing because of the Health Bar system instead of individual Hit Points.
Total War Arena also had homing projectiles, or at least felt like it. Seeing 3 Theban Archers melt entire lines of ARMORED Legionnaires with focus fire was cringe and not cool. Then again, the whole TWA concept didn't work out, so maybe it was doomed from the start.
They do have individual hit points though. If you ever healed a unit with Lore of Life, you would see this quite obviously. The "health bar" as you said, is just all the individual hit points put together, but it is different from entity numbers. This is why you can have a unit of chaos warrios with (an example, numbers are off the top of my head to illustrate the point. Don't get stuck on semantics) 10k HP and 100 entities and Aspiring champions with 10k hp and 12 entities. As for cav charges, yes, they are fucked atm, but the very next update is the "cav update" so they will be changed in some ways at least. Will have to see if for better or worse
@@Brodwyn No, units do not have individual Hit Points. What i think you mean with lore of life is that they have dead already. If a unit has 700/1000 HP and you throw a heal at them of 400 then the unit will heal to 1000. The unit wont heal if A: it has too many dead or B: Unit has reached max healing per battle.
And if you still believe that units have individual Hit Points, then do this: Go to the laboratory and make the unit have 500% more entities per unit. Go with i dont know Clanrats and make them fight in melee. And when you look at them fight, forget about the front line, look at thte middle and the back. Why? Cause you will see randomly entities wich arent in melee combat dieing. Why is that? Cause all entities in that unit has the communits Health Bar making any damage that a model recieves get spli into all entitites.
And cavalry wont get fixed with that update. Yes they will be better and how charges for infantry works. But the fundamental cavalry potential wich you see in medieval 2 is doesnt exist anymore. I dont know if you have Medieval 2 or not, if you do you can make an easy test. If you do not have Medieval 2 im sure you can fing on UA-cam some video talking in detail about cavalry.
@@Quackerilla I actually liked Total War Arena. But i think the game went to shit with the "Generals" and their unique powers. And limiting units abilities to the Generals. For example there were 3 Roman Generals but only 1 allowed for testudo formation wich was absolutely retarded. Or the archer Generals wich some possesed the -200% reload speed allowing them to shoot that absurd constant stream of arrows. All ranged untis for example have infinit ammo, so where you would try to waste or absorb ammo of enemy units with minimal casualities was possible before. Now its not, so all strategy to counter Ranged outside of melee is none existing.
There was also the same bug from Rome 2, with pikes. You know that pike vs pike if you spam attack then your unit of pikes wins? Yeah that was also in Arena.
Like having different Generals with unique abilities was a good i dea i think but how they implemented it was so shit that in the long run as we saw the game just died.
@@szymonrozanski6938 The units do have individual hit points. What you described ... doesn't happen? At least in my 800+ hours of playing the game and numerous videos watched I've never seen what you described with 'random units dying in the middle and back'. If you want an example of this, watch the video titled "Drycha's Bodyguard" by Sleepingdruid. In it, you can see Skaven shooting at Drycha, who is behind a treekin entity. The treekin absorbs all of the hits and eventually dies off, as it was the sole entity in the unit to take the damage. If the unit had 'communist hit points' as you call it, the tree kin would be alive and the damage divvied up between the 16 or so treekin entities.
As for the Lore of Life example, what I mean is that the healing spells can only heal the entities to their max hit points as it cannot bring back dead units. If you use it on a unit, that, let's hypothesise again and make up a unit of 100 men and 10k HP total. This leaves each entity with 100 HP. If the unit has lost 14 entities, it should be at 8600-8501 hit points total. However, the unit can be at even as low as 100 HP total, with 100 entities, if you somehow managed to damage them each for 99 damage. So, in the example you talked about, the unit would not heal to max because of C: The units entities were already fully healed and cannot heal past that if some entities were dead.
Another example are the Vampires, who first of all heal the entities to full HP and only then begin to resurrect fallen entities.
To quote the spell 'Invocation of Nehek' from the Lore of Vampires (which I'm sure you can google up, if you want proof);
"Resurrects combatants
Heals injured before resurrecting"
If the units all had 'communist hit points', it would not work this way, for, I hope by now, obvious reasons.
As for cavarly, yeah, cav is fucked, I never said otherwise. What I am saying though, is to see what the update brings and then move on. Personally I don't think the cav in Med 2 is that great gameplay wise. Sure, it looks great and is extremely effective which it should be in a historical medieval setting, but in my honest opinion it was way too overpowered in Med 2, as you could take over everything with a purely cav army by just repeatedly cycle charging everything to death. And before you think otherwise, Medieval 2 is my personal favourite of the Total War series.
Shogun 2 by far has best guns, the sound and impact feels deadly and every volley gives the sense of power facing them would have, better then even Napoleon TTW which is CENTERED around guns.
*yeah but shogun 2 fall of the samurai is centered around guns even more then empire and napoleon*
@@pancytryna9378 nah, base game already has muskets, 2 cannon ships, shotgun and musket cav, cannon artillery
I feel dumb for taking the effort to position the gunners in front of the army and being careful to prevent friendly fire.
If the subreddit is 8 months behind, does that mean CA is 8 years behind?
Thenks for the upload : - )
yeah.
I think a lot of developers or what not are behind the times, as it were. Trying to appeal to what would or will be current, but by the time release hits it's a piece of hot garbage per usual.
pretty much, yeah. they have given up since empire in 2008.
@@VoloundExpounds it’s almost as if they looked upon the disaster that Empire was and decided Homer Simpson had a point…
“Trying is the first step towards failure.”
Now they barely even try and just spout rubbish in order to market to the delta between standards and costs to maximise annual profit.
If you notice how bad it is, the customer’s problem, not the product’s.
@@Quackerilla I also think it's the fact that (as the hashtag says ''dontcarelookscool'') is working. A lot of people seems to be interested in games that just looks cool, without caring much for the gameplay. Which is sad, because you can have both. Probably the reason we see so many piece of hot garbage games or games that feels like early access.
@@zinswear6117 A lot of ideas for games sound good in a vacuum. The basic idea of a fantasy based *Total War Game* sounds fine, but coupling that with a desire to make money ONLY off of the fantasy aspect to the detriment of other aspects of play.
Imagine if they made a Shogun 3, and instead of it playing as per 2 does, you instead have the hero mechanics of TW2 to enable Shingen to 1 v 3000 the entire Oda army. Who cares if it looks cool, it's still shit.
I played M2TW recently and the animations in that game are awesome! I love the way my knights bob up and down when they trot. The animations for the pavise crossbowmen are just fantastic. It's been a gradual decline it seems because it's very noticeable after playing the more recent games.
So soyhammer gunmen are like stormtroopers dressed in medieval fantasy uniforms
Classic Total War: Oh you're a strategy game all right, just not a classic.
Modern Total War: What's the difference?!
Classic Total War: "Presentation"!
The gun gameplay in Shogun 2 is amazing, I don't entirely understand how people can say they aren't useful.
I'm not a huge gunpowder aesthetic guy and I much prefer more medieval/antiquity. But even then when I used guns instead of bows in Shogun 2, I got addicted to them.
I've never seen this advance and fire thing 😱
loads of us skipped empire and had no way to know.
shows the path not taken. the roads not gone down. the potential spurned.
Some Mods from Empire Total War enabled them again (E.G Darth Mod) while Napoleon Total War had Advance and Fire skills. Sadly on Napoleon, from what I've heard they Removed Fire By Rank and Platoon Firing because it was "Buggy" and "Can't be Fixed"
@@Crappy1441 oh, they never bothered I guess
@@Crappy1441 wut, wasnt platon fire, fire and advance and rank firing drill all technologies in vanilla empire?
@@AttiliusRex actually yeah, My bad, all of them were available on Vanilla. However all of those formations/firing drills except advance and fire were removed in Napoleon
For shogun 2, i found that the most effective and cheapest way to defend a castle was to deploy yari ashigaru in spear wall behind the walls, not at them, a few metres back.
Enemy archers struggle to shoot at you and the enemy infantry climb the walls, and get stuck into combat while spread out against a full spear wall. It wrecks their moral, taking heavy casualties while their men are spread so far apart.
The upgrade to this tactic was to stick matchlocks back from the wall. The enemy dont get time to form up before the matchlocks reload and the moral shock of again, being spread out between on top and below the wall and constant losses in large batches, tends to break units before they even engage in a melee.
I tend to deploy matchlocks to whittle them down while advancing and then yari wall them when they try to come up. I've always had bad luck with AI archers being able to do beaucoup damage to my units behind walls unless I specifically hide them behind the castle or some other structure. It's also why I very rarely build Samurai for siege defense.
@@The_Crimson_Fucker oh yes, apologies, should have specified that I was describing the fall back position.
Would use the matchlocks before they reach the walls too and then fall back once they start to climb, setting yaris and matchlocks where appropriate.
Would obv also still use the other garrison units available.
Bows on walls vs bows below tends to be a very efficient tradeoff.
This tactic also feels more thematic than putting the yaris outside and below the walls
I would always deploy archers on the first wall with some melee to target enemy archers or elite units, then haves guns on the next set of walls to cover the archers' retreat while the melee troops stayed to delay the enemy.
@@JakeBaldwin1 Sounds reasonable. I was describing budget defence, i included not spending money to upgrade the castle to have the second tier in that.
BTW, ya got to love how The Empire in Warhammer has Grenade launcher Cav but not Grenadier units. Meanwhile the Undead pirates do.
Its kinda crazy the stuff thats been removed over the years:
Dismounting Cav so they can fight on foot if need be. (Usefull in walled sieges or dealing with spearmen)
Dragoons (not to be confused with Light Dragoons which can fire on horse back) are still the Coolest unit in Empire in my honest option just do to the fact they are are Both a Cav unit AND when you dismount they act like a small unit of line infantry with carbines.
Grenadiers which act like slightly smaller line infantry (actually the are technically elite infantry since they get Platoon fire in Empire) which at the press of a button can chuck DEVISTATING grenades from EACH guy and just devastate enemy units if they land well.
Wall mounted Artillery last scene in Rome 2 and Attila. Deployable for Defense, also last seen in Rome 2 and Attila.
And that's just the stuff IN BATTLE that is missing.
The fact that people can mention that CA has animators working for free and not see a massive fucking problem with that is baffling to me. Like, is "the animators made it for free on their own time" supposed to be a defence? Fucking shameful.
The armoured monsters so handgunners can't be on the front line is a bad arguement. Handgunners in warhammer lore ignore all but the highest tier of armour, like irl, and are thus used in the frontline to designate everything save magically protected things and even then they can still do work.
There is no reason why gunpowder units in warhammer can't be balanced around devistating fire but slow reloads and innacuracy (leading to short effective ranges) so you need fall back lines and blocking units to intercept enemies that get close.
But instead they chose to make them reskinned crossbows
something i should have mentioned earlier when there was discussion on the musket units sounds having fired different types of musket and owning a modern musket, the medieval 2 sound is much more accurate than most games, there is a loud basey fwoosh or foom depending on the type and caliber and design and powder quality/mix and for a while until there was complaints there was a reenactment group that had a cannon fire during parades (didnt shoot a projectile obviously) and shogun/fots more or less got the sound right although reasonably made it so you didnt almost go deaf from how loud it is, i cant recall the sound it made since you immediately have loud ringing in your ears even if your 200 yards away kinda like trying to remember the sound of a stun grenade irl all you probably would remember is a generic boom and ringing.
19:25 The Empire's catchphrase is "faith, steel, and gunpowder".
Holding the walls is detrimental in Warhammer if you're actually facing something formidable. If you have some guns available you'd just use them in the same way you use archers, put them on the wall to shoot on the enemy and then withdraw them when the enemy gets too close, not only for the damage you may or may not do but also to keep the towers under your control.
When you destroy siege tower does it have impact on unit in it? Unless you have artillery on defence, ranged units cant shot anyting worth going back and regrouping them.
If only there was a movable balistas and such weapon on walls. Set them before battle as addition to big towers. If only every building in settlement could add own bonus structure like outside camps, farms with some peasants or gate/tower guards that destroy ladders and such.
@@barbaron123 Pretty sure the unit inside the siege tower dies, have never managed to destroy the siege tower in time lol. Probably only possible on tier 4 and 5 walls
The synced animations were definitely done in the animator's own time. I remember watching the developer diary where a guy (I think maybe the ginger one who's always in a scarf and cap) mentioned it, and then it was confirmed in a later blog post or something. CA tried to show it off as "look how passionate about this game our team" are and most of the "community" were happy to receive it that way. It reminds me of how the miniature model of Barad-dur in RotK was built by one guy voluntarily over his Christmas break. But that was to produce a genuine masterpiece.
They 100% won't add any additional details to wh 3, like reaload animations, because the whole game will be merged with previous 2 and it would look out of place next to units from previous 2 whs if they did. They aren't even selling a game, it's just a big chunk of paid puzzle. No one's even playing the standalone campaigns in wh tws, they only care about mortal empires where races from all 3 games are playable.
This is just making me want to play the Warhammer mod for Med 2 and see the differences
I really don't understand the people who keep saying that Shogun 2 archers were strong in field battles. You basically have to leave a unit in the open, eating flat-trajectory arrows to the face for them to start being effective. Proper angles and trees provided so much cover in Shogun 2, I think those people just don't understand how to play the game properly.
They still provide a great tactical tool, being able to bait out enemies or force the AI to attack your hill since they recognise that you have the ranged advantage. But they are by no means great damage dealers.
Volund said it before, with the Yari Ashigaru. It was considered the worst unit in the game until people started experimenting with them and found out more ways to use em. Same thing with these.....err....."players". They think they know more about the game but they never experimented nor do they try to find ways to use units differently. I used to be in the same camp as well ngl until I watched a lot of Volound's video and soon started trying out his tactics and ways to use units and even started experimenting on my own to see what can work and not work.
@@MrAsh1100 Now the pendulum swung and people think that Yari Ashigaru are the single most powerful unit in the game, simple because they keep hearing it repeated over and over, even though in a 1v1, while in Yari Wall, they objectively lose to every single melee-infantry samurai unit except for Yari Samurai. Of course, they are the most cost-effective unit by far, and upgrades affect them proportionally more due to the flat nature of said upgrades. But there is this meme going around saying that Yari Ashigaru in Yari Wall will flat out beat anything in 1v1, which is simply false. The worst part is that they use this an argument for why Shogun 2 is a bad game.
@@Osvath97 yeah, tbh, its just how most casual gamers play. They don't want to take the time and effort to master and experiment. I put half the blame on them.
Muskets should be the Empire's trump card. In a world of giant monsters trying to kill them, it ought to level the playing field. The fact handgunners work like any other missile unit is disgusting for anyone interested in good game design.
I would bet money early on during testing WH1, it didn't feel "cool" or "awesome" for noobs to send a big scary "cool" monster directly into an opposing musket formation only to have it instantly killed by 200 guns. It's too "punishing" for the centerpiece monster everyone fawns over to be fragile in any realistic way. TW has had monsters since RTW. Elephants. The devs chose to make the game's tuning out of wack to be less punishing. Guns don't work right. "Monster" units don't work right. "Hero" units don't work right. All to lower the bar of skill I would presume. If people's tactical mismanagement led to them losing, it wouldn't be very "fun" or "cool" or "awesome".
ua-cam.com/video/9vfcjWizrrM/v-deo.html
An old video from ETW. Fast forward to 5:33 to see how guns vs. monsters ought to work
ua-cam.com/video/LXsqsHl7yqc/v-deo.html
another side by side using the Call of Warhammer mod
edit: I know most the video focusses on firing drills etc. but what really breaks everything is how bullets are not bullets in TWWH, they're just sharper arrows, which was a conscious game design decision to make the game stupider and easier.
I really hope they make a med 2 remastered ngl. Don't really trust them enough for a med 3 but med 2 vanilla has a lotta bugs and crashes every time I reinstall it
26:41 the funny thing about the warhammer 2 siege meta is that you completely disregard walls because of how useless they are at preventing the enemy form a breach which is so fucking stupid that you have to question how they managed to fuck up so hard that a wall is useless when defending
I dont think people who compare total war to Bethesda games quite understand the modding process for warhammer and newer total war games in general. Modders are much more restrained now in terms of how much they can interact with the engine, then they were in M2TW times.
Sure, modders can pull off some impressive stuff, like i've seen mod that adds flying gunners on some da vinci style steampunk contraptions for warhammer 2, but you cant really amend the broken stuff in the engine. There's really nothing that modders can do about broken AI for instance, except for some minor tweaking. If developers didnt program AI, in this commerically released product, to react to player's actions during sieges and their unit just stand under artillery fire, there really is nothing modders can do about it, unless CA releases source code and that wont happen.
I would actually make a different comparison of CA to Bethesda - Bethesda has set very high standards of worldbuilding and storytelling back during Morrowind release in 2002. Then, in 2006 Oblivion came along which, while it was warmly received and remains beloved by some people to this day, undeniably had much simpler and diluted world, story and game mechanics when compared to Morrowind, not to mention the shrek aesthetics Oblivion had going on. So basically, Bethesda made a game that was much simpler compared to it's predecessor in order to make their franchase more appealing for new audience.
I think you can already see some parallels to CA's actions. But in Bethesda case, a lot of it was also due to personell changes, chief writer and some other people had left the company, and I am not so sure about CA's internal history.
Be that as it may, Bethesda has later somewhat amended their shortcomings with oblivion, skyrim was admittedly more complex and rich in terms of world-building and aesthetics than oblivion ever was.
And after their latest oopsie with fallout 76 they apparently went ahead and made the game much better (well according to reviews on steam anyway, i never played it), after being faced with an unrelenting barrage of criticism. Hopefully your efforts will help playerbase communicate some much needed feedback to CA and the next games will be better.
Dont have much hope for warhammer 3 though, that game is only few months away, they'll really need to get cracking if they want to unfuck the hole they've dug for themselves with bad game design decisions they made back when they made warhammer 1
Edit: sorry if i rambled a little bit, this is the first time i've decided to comment on your vid, wanted to try and articulate a good point and sum up my opinion at the same time.
the three things which make the empire (from Warhammer) great are faith steel and gunpower, so you would have thought they would put more effort into gun animations as its clearly a key aspect of that faction.
Fire by rank in shogun 2 isn't bugged at all, it works exactly as it is supposed to and it is powerful if used correctly. All these people claiming "warhammer is better because units fire at once" are just not using fire by rank correctly.
I remember a strategy i use alot in med2 when goin to aztec land in the endgame :
I would put the gunners in the walls , open the gate and go out with the canons , not much, just a little in front of the wall , for some reason the aztecs could not undestand this and do not attack the canons and got shot from towers, gunners and canon until they fleed and i win. The fact that they gain full armies every turn out of nowhere forces me to use this tipes of shi* but all in all it has fun.
In warhammer you can defende the walls but for a very limited time because every unit have ladders in their pockets , that change realy realy hurt the game.
I will not lie , i did have some great siege defense battles in warhammer but to be fair that is the type of battle that is remember the most in every totalwar , who cant say they not remember even one "impossible" defense won.
The gun problem , i never care because the unit did what i need it to do, that is kill from flanks but when this come to historic titles now is my problem, you see in fantasy i can roleplay that every gunman is retar* but in a historic game no , just no. In the end i want a better product but when a local concession on a game become rule for future games like no naval battles in warhammer also goin into 3k , that is a big problem.
I clung on for Warhammer because I thought Rome 2 was just a blip. With guns returning in Warhammer I thought, CA would HAVE to go back to the mechanics of Shogun 2+FoTS. My disappointment on playing was immediate, something didn't feel 'right' but it took until last year and watching your videos pointing it out for me to see it myself. Over time, I came to realise Warhammer is just Rome 2 with extra steps. Well then years went by without the third game being announced, so CA maybe will be using the time to do it properly and backwards-port the improvements the same way Shogun 2 got some when it merged with FoTS into the same app. This is only semi-serious wishful-thinking: I didn't believe in such hope. I can see in the trailer for Cathay the ranged units using what would appear to be firing-drills, but I know if there is the slightest chance they are in the game; they're stat-modifiers. Their animations are not going to be reflective of any non-spreadsheet mechanics under the hood.
Warhammer guns making sense because "gunpowder not the focus" is silly - play tabletop and see how gunpowder is treated!:)
I was one of the comments laughing at the reload mod. Can we find some millionaire who loves TW and just fund our own game?
Something refreshing about having the people who shit on you later realize you were right, not that they would ever admit it though.
I dont think hes wrong, I just think this is generally a dumb nitpick, would I like to see FoTS gunpowder mechanics? Yeah, but its not going to kill me if its not, if all I got is a reload mod, then thats good enough. Some TW games are destined to be better than others, either through age or laziness, I still havent gotten over feeling backstabbed over Rome II, but the WH series is miles better in many different ways.
I believe most of the Fire option in Empire were in the game at release. Platoon fire definitely was as its a researchable thing in the tech tree.
Only issue was it was worthless next to Ranked fire and no one ever used it. Napoleon had Fire and Advance and I believe that was a carry over from Empire too, but im not sure.
As to the Warhammer Handgunner shooting through the deep column, Empire and Napoleon, and even Shogun 2 firearm are troops could do that. It only required checking a box in the code (Skirmish, if you're curious). The annoying thing is that ability of firing is more accurate to the period than what Empire and Napoleon allowed players to use, and ironically, it makes battles with the AI slightly better overall. No one knows why, but there is a marked improvement in how the AI performs in battle when the Skirmish ability is activated on all musket armed units in Empire and Napoleon. (Look up any Pixellated Apollo Napoleonic Total War 3 mod battle replays and you'll see the all troops in a unit fire at once in the same fashion as the WH Handgunners.)
So, I can understand why CA have the WH Handgunners shooting through their own men like that, it just works better in the game engine. It would have been visually better if they had of put more effort into them using Counter March or Ranked Fire, but I can understand why they didn't do that.
The lack of a reload animation is still criminal though.
The bugginess of drills is something they could have worked on in subsequent titles. They already had it functional in the first game. So no, I don't think we should defend their inability to do this by throwing the blame on the engine instead (also whose decision was it to adopt the engine in the first place?)
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I'm not defending them. Just saying I understand why they did it.
They should always be pushing themselves to do better in the next game and fix problems that arise in current/older games.
Alas, that's just not something they are willing to do.
S2 firearm troops can't shoot in a column regardless of what skills you enable, as they are restricted to only the first rank firing (Unless you enable the Kneel Fire ability which allows a second rank to fire, otherwise only the front rank can shoot). Skirmish mode is a "skill" that makes it so the unit automatically retreats if an enemy gets too close. That is its only effect, except in M2 where it would cause your firearm unit to use Fire by Rank rather than the normal counter march.
However S2 has a flag called "All Ranks Fire" in the "unit_stats_land" table. Activating that allows everyone with a clear line of sight to fire, but lads that don't have a clean line of sight still can't fire so firing in a column generally doesn't work.
@@demomanchaos All that is true. I've not modded S2 much, but in Empire and Napoleon, the All Ranks Fire flag you talk about is called Skirmish in those games.
And the clear LoS thing was only added Shogun 2 to reduce Friendly Fire incidences. In Empire and Napoleon, you can line up behind one of your units and the musketeers will shoot into the back of your own units because they don't recognise Friendly Fire as a thing. So you can literally have them in a column and as long as the model has range they will shoot.
The Portuguese Tercio shreds most things, why would anyone think guns were weak in Shogun 2.
platoon fire wasnt cut, its just quite late in the tech tree
26:10 the closest thing to this I've seen is a "disaster battle" by LegendOfTotalWar where he uses the rat gunners to sit at the capture point and camp the choke points, all the while playing footsies with his commanders and hero units to keep the enemy AI from actually pushing through and attacking. Look up "Ratling Gun Murder-Death Kill-Kill Zone".
EDIT: after having watched videos of guns in other total war games, it's very striking how emaciated guns are in Warhammer. They're really just bow and arrows with a different set of sounds.
@ 2:00
Well, it's not hard to see why Platoon was broken in ETW: because that's not platoon fire. It looks more like firing by file--if people assumed files were in fact six or something.
So here's how it's supposed to work (British army specifically): you did indeed have 16 platoons in the hat companies, plus 2 per grenadier platoons (they're kept separate as they were often detached; ideally, one platoon covers each flank).
However, they wouldn't fire one at a time, as ETW idiotically portrays. Instead, they'd be grouped into three "firings". The firings would ideally shoot every 10 seconds or so. Not only that, but the platoons in a firing were not next to each other. They'd be split relatively evenly through the battalion. So let's have a hypothetical platoon, with both grenadier platoons present:
G hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh G
1 2312312312312312 3
^this would be how they'd do it, were they going from left to right (a common European custom). each platoon has a firing assigned, and as you can see, they don't simply go down the line. There are other variations too:
3 3322211111122233 3 < this one was used in America in the French and Indian War: fire from the center and spread out. You could do this too:
1 1122233333322211 1 < from outside in. This was roughly how the French army did it in Europe too during the Seven Years War as well.
But notice that it is *almost* never simply from one side to another (The Prussians and Austrians were the exceptions--and even then, the Prussians only had 5 firings in 1757 (10 platoons), the Austrians, 4 (8 platoons)). The reason is that you're trying to cover the whole battalion; even the American service versions--less idea as they are--never leave any firing vulnerable more than 10 seconds (this fine, if only because cavalry wasn't a thing at the time in America).
Here's how the French did it (1750's):
P hhhhhhhh G
Also, with them, if they wanted to do fire and advance, these would happen by firing as well. So at no point would they be doing what ETW units do when you toggle fire and advance. Not necessary, and anyway, kind of stupid.
Fire by rank wouldn't have worked as you see either: they'd have had a complicated maneuver to do to cycle the ranks back. This is easy to teach the soldiers and requires less training, but it also adds a delay on the reload (the guy has to walk to the rear to reload). As a result, you should never have fewer than 4 ranks, and ideally no fewer than 5. Platoon fire should only really shine with well-trained troops, next to the fire by rank.
Finally, with platoon fire, it was common to use the front rank as a reserve fire. They'd only join in the shooting if more firepower were needed.
Sorry, had to go into it. This sort of thing is a pet peeve of mine.
The med2 clip in the original reddit post is footage from Call of Warhammer, the Med2 mod that inspired Warhammer TW (and did a lot of things way better). I'd highly recommend making some comparisons between unit behavior in the two, as Call of Warhammer has all the fancy unit variety of warhammer while still maintaining more functional units, better campaigns, and generally better battles.
Troy doesn't even have unit collision
I DO agree with the guy who said matchlock were slow, low on the tech tree, etc, at 32:00. By the time I ever manage to bring them out in large enough numbers to be worthwhile considering how often the enemy will just charge in (I'll get one or two volleys off in that time), my bowmen are already experienced and OP as shit. Never found the use until Fall. Maybe now that I have more experience from Fall (FINALLY having gotten to it) I might appreciate them more in the main game, but still, I love me my burning arrows fired by guys who won't break at the first sign of an incoming charge. Yes, INCOMING. Whether or not I pull them back in irrelevant, because they're already running.
For all its faults I loved empire at the time..
Magikarp is evolving
hey volound, regarding about the animations. Mandalore gaming mentioned about it in his review total war Warhammer II video. Timestamp at 7:52 and Animators did extra on their free time
there are a lot of neat additions made by newer total wars, and there are ways in which the warscape engine surpasses the old engine. and medieval 2 firearm units were always quite messy, especially with how they fired (rank fire was at times useless, and skirmish fire predictably had the issue of the soldiers running away as soon as the enemy got close).
but in warhammer firearm units just act like "heavy" archers essentially, as if ranged projectiles are upgraded along a linear line rather than fulfill different functions.
Care to actually describe any of these "neat" additions?
It's well known that firearms in all games excepting the first Shogun had their issues, that doesn't absolve WH from its terrible depiction of guns. Rather than fixing and improving on the systems of older games, they opted to get rid of them.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498
I meant neat additions in general, not specificly muskets. What warscape did well was smoothing out movement and the like.
One example being how Rome 2s skirmishers actually being proper skirmishers who are both mobile and capable of quickly throwing, and not having to stop and switch weapon and then aim, like in Rome 1 or medieval 2. Archers in general are less likely to scuffle around for 2 minutes before shooting.
Which is the (in my opinion, bad) trade-off here.
Gunners in TWW are way more boring and lack impact and complexity, but now they work consistently. It's definitely a downgrade from shogun 2 and even Empire, no doubt, but in contrast to those two its a lot more tetiary as a concern, as firearms only represent a small part of the larger combat system. Not defending the downgrading, but merely being a devil's advocate on this part, whilst acknowledging how guns were always quite shit in total war. Beautiful and atmospheric and powerful when they worked, but a costly fuck up when the programming shat the bed.
I love medieval 2, it's my favorite of the franchise, but there is a reason why there are hundreds of threads across the Internet all discussing how medieval 2 muskets, just like medieval 2 pikemen and zweihänder, are buggy and convuluted. Mods fix it tho, and some fixes can be done right in the descr files, but a lot of the damage has already been done.
I have drawn any and all blood from the stone of Empire: Total War. I have played for 600 hours, including mods and vanilla, and have completed a Grand Campaign as every faction.
The assessment that these ambitious mechanics were placed and then forgotten and abandoned is accurate. Advancing Fire and Platoon Fire are both available in the campaign as researchable options, tools to be used at the player's discretion and not arbitrarily forced. You might want advancing fire on a nation like Russia or France who have better melee line infantry, while platoon fire is more appealing for nations with better marksmanship. There was an attempt to allow the player to choose their own tactics to victory, shitty AI notwithstanding.
When you play Empire there is always this frustrating sense that they were teetering on the border of a massive success but just didn't have the time or tools to make it happen. Then in Napoleon they cut most of the interesting features out like fire drills in favor of a more "balanced" experience and a gutted campaign.
Empire is the greatest tragedy in the series after Rome 2, yet is still a more playable and enjoyable game than Rome 2 because before the end, CA was still trying to push game design forward.
Then, they gave up and now all we have left is Tusslemallet.
Empire and Napoleon (didn't really play that second one) had GRATE firearm animations and tactics (fire by rank, fire and advance, platoon fire), in fact it had ALOT of features that have been CUT.
Base Shogun 2 the Matchlocks worked well for the most part, the buggyness of the Fire by Rank Ability shall be a eternal debate, i swing back and forth weather it is or not. Im pretty sure it isn't and people just are impatient, but sometimes i REALLY feels like they take forever to SHOOT. Not to mention Walls in Shogun 2 BUFF the reload speed of ranged units.
Fall of the Samurai did have Kneel fire but JESUS CHRIST gun infantry in that game where very "ridged" in their animations, Like a common problem was so many men would die instead of firing the gun Infantry keep "forming ranks" instead of laying down lead. Also why the fuck was kneel fire an ABILITY and not a passive? Ya know like Empire did where you just research the tech and your mend preform that action automatically. That said Fall of the Samurai's GUN and CANNON sounds truly are a Joy to listen too. All the SMOKE, MUZZLE FLASH, and the CRACK and BANG of the weapons.
its actually a disadvantage to hold the walls on warhammer, lotw talks about it alot when i watched him. you want to hold the flag and funnel them in the streets to do shitty blob cheese tactics cuz the game is shit
Lol @ the guy saying guns were irrelevant in Shogun 2 until FOTS. Obviously he just doesn't know how to use them. I have pulled off great victories with 2 matchlock ashigaru units that I may not have been able to without them (in base game Shogun 2).
For the warhammer guns, I would guess the firing timing of the guns is probably determined by a matrix. Suppose there are 200 men in the gun unit, I would guess that at most 50 different matrices could represent every formation. If you had a 15*14 matrix, that's over 200 so the whole 200 man unit could fit in there. Since the unit is modeled by a matrix, you could just have every member of the first row fire and then cycle down through all the rows.
I would guess that with 900 men, the matrix they form isn't one that the game was designed for, so that makes the firing timings bug out.
That might make sense except for the fact that warhammer musketeers don't fire by rank ever, even at normal unit size and stretched as wide as possible, so you're giving them too much credit even then.
51:54 Oh! the tinny slap-echo-like effect in the audio for the discharges due to marginal time-delay in synchrony! A reductio in itself!
Issue is that firearm infantry arent very good in Med 2
The sluggishness of the engine made the units just too inefficient to be worth using
Empire and Napoleon has the weird syncopation but everything worked seemlessly 95% of the time
yeah having a unit refusing to fire because one damn model for some reason hadnt finished reloading and a volley couldnt be started if not 100% of all men hadnt reloaded was very frustrating
...should have been easy enough to fix by putting more intelligence into the unit AI
Im glad my skaven jezzails have a full reload animation
For the bullets arcing, it's Warhammer. If they were to tell me that the bullets are 50lb balls, and thus the arcing is actually a correct thing, i would believe it. it sounds like the wacky shit you get in Warhammer. Thing is, they DON'T say this.
No way you can hold walls in warhammer w only guns. A couple magic spells or friggin fell bat/carrion drops and they are rendered useless. Same thing w any artillery. The game makes it fairly easy to get rid of anything like that.
Also I enjoyed the fact that steady artillery barrage is asmr to you.
empires platoon firing is a sight to behold, i think it may also affect morale more because the damage is constant.
pretty sure the opposite was also true, the damage was constant but less "chunky"
the rank firing drill had such devestating volleys that it would break a unit as they suffered 25% losses within a few seconds...
i think what people meant by posting about bethesda is that bethesda expects modders to pick up a lot of slack for there games like the unoffical patches and what not it seems CA may be thinking the same with reloading and stuff like that
i dont think wh3 will have fire by rank, but you can see in some trailers already that gunners do have reloading animations
Modded out guns from Shogun 2 and Med2 for a long time, not for balancing but because I enjoyed bloody melee frenzy more.
I will admit that in my 200 or so hours of Shogun 2 only playing campaign Ive always thought that guns were not that great I always struggle when I try to do the otomo, but I've made a few more recent attempts especially after watching videos like these and they say that gunpowder is not useless in fact unless it's a rainy day it's amazing, I've gone back and had more success. The only issues I will face is if you know most of my army has gunpowder and they force the melee and my gunpowder units are not quite as effective. However, as several other videos have demonstrated it's all about how you use them tactically the terrain, your opponent's composition, straight up art of War basic tactics.
I guess a way to put it is that the Bows have more counters to them but can still be effective because Samurai don't use Shields unlike the European Total wars where when shields are involved those are a lot less effective, but guns have a lot less counters to them and them do a lot more morale impact unless you are going up against a high morale unit like the warrior monks but most people do not want to waste their more expensive more valuable units against guns. Bows are great for putting on pressure but they usually won't get a lot of kills against upper tier units. I have lost several battles because I didn't bring enough bows.
As I've seen with several multiplayer battles and watching some of these tournaments Shogun is the skirmisher's paradise this game favors skirmishes more than probably any other Total War game.
wow, I never knew Empire could have been so much more.
In answer to your question, you can't put gunners on walls in Warhammer and hold off anything really. I doubt a unit of handgunners could stop a unit of clanrats just running straight at them, producing ladders out of nowhere and scaling the walls into melee. You'll get off a coupple of volleys, do some hp damage, and then be overrun.
Everyone talking about empire and shogun;
Total war napoleon :(
"Warhammer is not a gunpowder game"
Excuse me sir might i interest you into some empire/dwarf full artillery and guns action?
Crazy how Warhammer battle march (a 15 year old Xbox360 game) had better combat mechanics than the triple A Warhammer total war games.
holding walls with range troops in WH is near impossible its better to hold the streets
"I mean, fire by rank was buggy in Shogun 2" With that same logic, CA should just scrap sieges permanently since they have never been able to perfect them. With that logic, CA must have been right to scrap naval battles as well, because they couldn't get it right. Trial and error is the name of the game, without it there would be no innovation in the world, and everything would be mediocre.
srsly wish empire wasnt so shitty, it easily couldve been the best total war for so many reasons
You "can" put gunpowder units on walls for siege defense in Warhammer but siege maps and mechanics are so fundamentally broken that even Warhammer fans try to pretend they don't exist. Most of the damage to attackers comes from automatic turrets in siege defenses, and guns are functionally archers, so there's no particular advantage for putting guns on walls over bowmen or even melee infantry who will engage with attackers when they come over the walls.
25:30 Quite interesting to see the diffrence in observation, as a non mp player I fully agreed with the poster. I didn't really find much use for gunpowder units in sp campaign. But I can see how a higher damage density is nice in MP where time is a more important factor to consider. Still, it comes down to a diffrence in primary play, a lot of total war players probably don't bother with MP battles and thus will have a vastly diffrent experience compared to those that do.
26:30 Yes does happen, (campaign) gun units do really well against (particularily armored) single target entities in total war warhammer, gun units in general are very strong on the campaign map as they have the same amount of ammo as archer units but much higher damage potential. Sadly their strength is in part due to the poor melee balancing on higher difficulty which makes it necessery to pick high damage density units. But they at least do that job very well. Put them on a wall and right klick on an approaching monster and they will take it down generally before the gates are cracked.
its wrong though, and i demonstrate it to be wrong in this very video. so you are affirming a falsehood. most of why otomo is such a good faction in SP is that they get immediate matchlocks and the early game is easymoded. everyone that is familiar with shogun 2 knows this. im the guy that introduced max difficulty total war campaigns to youtube, and that showed everyone how to beast legendary difficulty.
i point out the usefulness of matchlocks in MP to show that matchlocks are useful EVEN IN MP where rushing punishes ranged units particularly hard.
also ive had everyone confirm that putting units in walls on warhammer is outright ineffective, so you are either just horribly misinformed or are being a contrarian. bad comments.
@@VoloundExpounds For your first point: I merely observed how I found it interesting, I did not disagree with you that your point was valid, merely explained why I thought that commenter actually made sense to me. Again, that wasn't a "Oh you must be wrong because my experience was diffrent." but a "Oh my experience was A but it could have been B as you showed." I don't see the point in misreading my comment to twist it into something that is against you.
For your second point, you asked if someone had an experience with putting gun units on walls and that feeling fun and interesting, I had that experience. It is a thing that occured, when I play campaign I defend my walls every single time. I have no issue with doing this on very hard either. Is it optimal? Maybe not, I don't know because I haven't yet tried not defending my walls. Maybe once I do that I'll find out that I could hold a settlement without taking any losses at all, this is possible. Again though this doesn't negate my experience, you asked and when you got an answer that went contrary to what you wanted to hear you dismissed it. If I may ask, why?
Do keep in mind that my perspective is purely singleplayer, I do not play multiplayer online battles so I can not comment on that, but I think that I am not alone in this, thus I think it's alright to partake.
because it was wrong.
@@VoloundExpounds Except you asked for an opinion.
Man that's a long video
thanks for uploading this. can't wait to see what's in store
I MEAAAAAAAN
Good video. If I had 3 wishes one of them would definitely be that CA make decent historical strategy games again. One can but hope...
Well actually you can win against monstrous units by holding the walls in a siege....just happens that Monstrous units cant climb walls...
Jokes aside, I dont think monstrous units are actually strong enough to survive being shot at while they try to tear down the walls.
Also, while the favourable strategy in Siege is to abandon the walls for the sake of choke points within the city walls, it isn't really hard to win a siege by holding the walls, holding choke points behind the walls can just be more cost-effective, especially when you have a smaller garrison.
With Larger defending forces as well, defending the walls is entirely viable but it can also be easier to have fewer units holding the line while also being able to spare more of your ranged units for each choke point, especially if the Player or AI in question doesnt regroup its forces after getting passed the walls.
here so early that its not even in HD, papa bless
The Total War series really needs to go back and grab all the cut content and put them back in. Hell do a Troy and make it so you can choose to play Streamlined or Complex. I would pick Complex every time for all the Formations, Fire modes, Ammo types, Ships! I want Warhammer Ships.
I love Total War Warhammer, but it disappoints me so badly like a child that forgets all the skills you teach them, all the gaming knowledge you impart to go and play Fortnight and watch pewdie pie...
So CA is like Disney
The Bethesda comment was probably talking about Elder Scrolls series not fallout. Skyrim is just Oblivion with less of everything and Oblivion is just Morrowind with less of everything. Constantly degrading series.
"Bethesda has not been notorious for cutting content from their games" Did you play anything prior to Skyrim, man? They cut SO much, character creation wise, for Skyrim! Not to mention how lifeless all the people feel, despite their "daily routine" thing. And don't get me started on the lack of lore (yes, LACK).
Volound be like. toggle fow :)
At least the Cathy might have since jazeel have ir
This video is just crazy...
1h 07m holy fuck this guy LMAO
i dont have a preference either way i play warhammer because i want a fantasy setting but yea i prefered empire total war gun i have never really gotten to the point of having guns in medieval total war didnt even know they had guns but yea i dont play warhammer for the guns personally i dont know who would play total war warhammer for the guns warhammer only has two races with guns and there are tons of better units in their roster if i want to play with guns in a total war game it is prolly gonna be empire i dont own napoleon so i cant play that unless there is a better total war game with guns makes me wonder though what is the possibility of total war series coming out with a WW1 or WW2 sorta game i also wanna make a point that i am a big warhammer fan and i want to defend the game but i cant when the evidence is that obvious i just have to sorta say well played yea our gun mechanics are shit
it looks cool, but I think it appeals the most to historical players. I only play warhammer and i couldn't care less if it was on the game
Not just historical players, it's immersion breaking, so larpers will also dislike its absense. As will those that are there for the spectival to some extent.
Its OK not to care, but its not just historical fnas who like animations.
leadership damage how cringe i laughed so hard at that comment
I see that my comments are somehow invisible :/
Okay, are you REALLY having this much trouble reading these? I get they're not great with the grammar, but it's not impossible to get the point of what's being said. Or are you just playing into the "these people suck and are stupid" thing?
yeah i am. im not as smart as these people, so their ideas are difficult to grasp, and it takes more time than it should. likewise, if i was smart enough to be an actor, i would be in movies and not struggling with these very complex ideas on reddit.
@@VoloundExpounds Are you being sarcastic and actually ARE playing into how moronic they are? Sorry, hard to tell just through text.
being sarcastic. im obviously smarter than all these fucking clowns.
@@VoloundExpounds Ah, okay then.
Being disingenuous and misleading for the sake of updoots? Sounds like reddit
Total war engine is garbage and compleatly unsuitable for a startegy game. All units should be 2d rectangles in the gam engine represented by a group of 3d models but in total war engine sees individual soldiers that form a unit and every of them is treated as semi separate entity leading to so much bullshit problems that it's just pathetic.
Who pissed in your cheerios, play another game loser.
hahaha dude not everyone has the priviledge to be born in the land of the knife attacks or the kingdom of schoolshootings. I wonder if you speak a second or a third tongue perfectly... I'm sure you
Doesn't
take your meds schizo.