Total War: Fall of a Franchise (Gameplay Analysis)
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- Опубліковано 19 чер 2024
- A story of a franchise that started out like no other and its interesting journey...
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0:00 From Shogun to Medieval 2
13:20 Wasted Potential - Empire: Total War
25:20 Hope Restored - Shogun 2
31:00 Paradigm Shift - Rome 2
40:26 Putting Rome 2 to the Test
58:30 An Example of Actual Gameplay
1:07:25 Rome 2's Legacy - Attila
1:23:10 The Decline Continues - Warhammer
1:28:40 Marketing Deception - Three Kingdoms
1:36:40 Dismantling Counter-arguments
1:44:40 List of Cut Features
1:51:30 CA Lacks Faith in their Own Games
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just clicked onto this video and skipped forward to get a feeling of what im in for (basically opened the book at a random page) at 1:02:10 and listening for a few seconds and already cant help commenting, lol.
theres so much you could do, and it all comes from exactly what you said - thinking. you could run the katana cavalry around, keeping them mounted, and then dismount when the yari samurai are tired and have wasted their rapid advance, and you would be fresh while they are tired. you could DENY their charge by hitting them with light cavalry while your own katana cavalry charge in on foot, giving themselves a free charge. man, you could even take that further by getting some really well-timed rear charges with the light cavalry and take almost no losses in the melee due to none of the yari samurai ever actually facing the incoming charge (EDIT: you did exactly this next, LOL. well executed, too.) you could bait them to trees with the light cavalry and then have the dismounted katanas charge into them, and potentially even rout them from the "surprised" shock state at being ambushed and charged. and as you said, this is all about the thinking - the entire point. it completely overpowers the strong rock paper scissors. it completely overcomes the stat aspect.
im getting carried away. if the rest of this 2 hours is as good as this tiny segment, then this will be a hell of a show.
I'm glad, I actually added that segment in extremely late in the production. It gets even more astounding to realize that Yari Samurai can be dismantled by units that it normally hard-counters, whereas in Rome 2 charging cavalry into the backs of sword infantry (the most ideal engagement for cavalry) goes horribly. Units in Rome 2 can't even succeed at their first-order functions.
it never registered to me until right now somehow that attila actually describes units with "tier" in the unit mouseover"
"tier 3" what the fuck is this crap? lmao.
also loving the actual gameplay tests so far. not something that people usually touch, and ironically it is the only way to actually back up and substantiate anything worth saying. great job.
1:31:10 lol records actually suggests NOT TO RUN by default, implying that you probably would on romance. and this is a copypaste of warhammer. man, anyone that said warhammer wasnt super casualised and arcadey are full of shit. youre not even supposed to acknowledge stamina in these games. the wording of 3K when it tries to describe playing on the non-casual version just gives the game away.
1:42:20 appreciate this counter-apologetics segment after dealing with nearly 2 years of this crap by now.
pausing to comment that i was talking recently with a big youtuber from my 2014-2016 days, and we were talking about the state of the industry. we both concluded independently that it really feels like the AAA game industry peaked at around 2011-2012 (when early influence still overpowered profit motive and dilution), and has been on a nosedive ever since, and where nothing worthwhile has really been produced since 2016. there was mass effect 2 in 2011. in 2012 there was fall of the samurai and dishonored (both of MY games months apart), and there was far cry 3 too. 2013 was colonial marines and rome 2, to begin the redpilling. thief in 2014 was when i realised the game industry was capable of complete debasement of even sacred genres and franchises (the thief franchise and the immersive sim), and banished in the same year was when i realised indie was better than AAA now.
@@Volound It's so much more tragic when it comes to TW, at least in other genres you have some form of competition and good games can still be found if you're willing to do a bit of research...it's not just that TW has gotten bad, it was the only major IP doing what it did, and we don't even have the capacity to just to get that experience from a competitor.
Empire Total War is that friend that had a rough upbringing but has a good heart and massive potential if you're patient with him
All it would take is remodelling the settlement layout inside battles, completely changing the distribution of map regions (France being one city is inexcusable) and adjusting the AI pathfinding to make this one of the best TW titles. It sounds like much but really isn't. If they cared, they could do this quickly.
@@pointyheadYT
I'd also fix platoon fire: it's simply done wrong in the game; what they got there is more like fire by file.
20:59 : "In multiplayer people will charge their light cavalry in to try and bait their opponent to form square, and lose their ability to win a firefight."
This might seem like odd metagame-strats from the outside, but that is literally a light cavalry tactic regularly employed in the napoleonic era, in real life.
And this was done just by implementing a few simple mechanics and formations...
It goes to show that good gameplay is not difficult to conceptualize.
tbh it doesn't seem so. It seems rather realistic from the get go. ( i mean most people have watched sharpe before playing napoleon. right? RIGHT?!)
@@ChristosGoulios do be a aware that a semifamous anglo show about a british officer might not be popular in asia-non anglo america-latin europe.
@@cseijifja ]i mean i doubt the napoleonic period would be pop either. america likes the civil war when it comes to musket warfair and asia....idk. Thus it's safe to asume that the mainly europian fanbase would have watched sharpe.And you should watch it too if you like the nw. shows of that nature are rare.
@@ChristosGoulios no idea what you speak of lmao
47:36 One of my favorite moments while playing Medieval 2 Total War was when I charged a general's bodyguard in the side with a unit of very mediocre Turkish light cavalry and killed the enemy general on the charge. Said general had the protection of his best crusading knights yet at that moment it didn't matter since the light cav charged his unit from the side he was leading it from. With nothing between him and a Saracen spear he died and that shifted a whole battle in my favor. This right here is living proof that such things aren't possible in new Total War.
Edit: Well at least the general unit routed. Took way too long but still and it still didn't effect the battle's outcome at all.
Not only did it not affect the outcome, there's no advisor mocking him for routing. Remember Rome 1/Medieval 2's advisors emphatically mocking the enemy general for routing? In Rome 2 it's a complete non-event. Not even the game is interested in itself.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Yeah that too, even if I lost the battle I would at least get the satisfaction of hearing my advisor mock the enemy. Here the advisor just limply says “The enemy general is dead” word for word iirc.
There is a difference between tactic based tw and stats based tw, medieval 2 is probably the most fluid when it comes to your and AI decision making for tactics, hence I like it a lot. In Rome 1 or medieval 2 a proper charge in the back can rout the entire army while in Rome 2 encircling them for 2 min this unit hardly break lol
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Shogun 2 immortalized the term SHAMEFURU DISPURAY!
@@hanglei9865 Legit I've had some of the my most tense battles of the series in Med 2 it's bonkers how ahead of the curve it is in comparison to the Modern titles.
1:20:09 The only cavalry I have ever heard of beating pikes are the Winged Hussars, and that was because their lances were longer than their enemies pikes.
thats not the only time, french and german heavy cavalry defeated flemish and german pikes regularly with frontal charges, and even broke through swiss pikes regularly through frontal cavalry charges in the french-italians wars (resulting in the tactic of haveing halberd units immediately behind pike units to counter cavalry break throughs)
the main reason for the spainish square tercios was so that if cavalry broke through the pikes they could be quickly countered by the other sides of the square (hence armies made up of small squares rather than 1 large square)
dutch pike manuals have different formations and tactics for fighting infantry and cavalry, because the standard formations used against infantry were vulnerable to direct cavalry charges.
if your cavalry have enough armour (like french cavalry against swiss pikes in the french-italian wars), or kill the front rank of pikemen (through long lances, or through pistols) like cavalry in the renaissance, then pikes are likely to be unable to stop the cavalry in a single unit, and you need other men to catch the cavalry as they break through to the other sides in order to beat the cavalry)
pikes are not invulnerable to frontal cavalry charges, the advantage *all* infantry have over cavalry is in a prolonged melee and pikes were better at draging cavalry into such fights, as they are better reducing the momentum of the charge. and ofcaurse steady, braced pikes against lighter armoured cavalry is a deathwish for the cavalry. but armoured/pistol cavalry did regularly overcome this that even during the height of pike dominance tactics still heavily revolved around countering cavalry breakthroughs (as seen in dutch military manuals)
@@matthiuskoenig3378 yes,but you forgot the fact that most of the times frontal charges against pikes were even not attempted just for the risk of doing it and failing.
Myth. Lol.
@@Oppetsismiimsitsitc Sadly, it's the truth.
Tbf the pike formation was very thin and the formation was disrupted. If they stood there they would’ve killed the general, was just an unlucky moment.
Also another missing point of past Life improvement is the unit cards. In the previous games especially Napoleon and Shogun 2 we can just with just a glance tell what unit we are looking at (the pose, the weapons, just looks like the units in battle) each just looks different.
They used to make unit cards easy to spot in heat of battle. Almost no way you can mistakenly click wrong kind of units, just because the units cards are masterfully crafted. Not just abstract stickman figure with same colors or in WH case too much colors and too dark to see.
I remember having a small number of high quality professional troops - but by no means ELITE - in Rome II. I was completely outnumbered by regular to less-than regular troops, but by no means mobs of plebs. Being someone who plays more Shogun 2 than Rome II, I expected to utterly lose since there was just no way I could protect myself from being outflanked. After being completely surrounded I... Won. I barely even used complicated tactics since there was barely anything I could do when utterly surrounded by hordes of enemies. Yet I still won. How? I do not know. But I did. Sure it was a close run thing and I did some heavy micro to try to even the odds but... I really do not understand how I won. In Shogun 2 it would have been a complete and utter loss. If it was a battle with heavily buffed Praetorians versus Plebs, sure. But as I said, it was not a battle of highly elite units versus bottom-of-the-barrel units. It was like 3 higher-end regular troops versus 10 regular to lower-end regular troops but from a different culture.. At that point I really lost a certain amount of respect for Rome II (which I had slowly been regaining after the initial years of its release).
I did a similar battle in one of my tests, and ended up winning. The AI blobbed all its units together to attack my unit from the front, it didn't even attempt flanking which the AI in Shogun 2 did all the time.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Here my units were literally wading through a sea of surrounding enemies, that is how ridiculous the battle looked.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 ducking AI in Shogun 2 which requires you to have 3 people to play each battle lol
So you mean that if you were leading the pther army you couldnt win?
You need to understand that morale works way different in Rome 2.
Rome could read as “morale” troops. Essentially unbreakable when buffed, they’ll simply all die to a man. To break Rome’s legionnaires, particularly as barbarian factions, you must use barbarian tactics. For example, you should always be ambushing. Celts and Germanic tribes get bonuses to chance to ambush, and Rome starts the battle winded and with a morale penalty. Next, you should be using u it’s like naked swordsman, wolf warriors, etc, that give morale penalties to units. Disrupt the legion’s lines, draw them out to isolate them, flank them, rear charges, activated abilities. Fire and whistler arrows.
It isn’t easy for new players (or veterans used to other games) and there is no doubt that Rome is purposefully overpowered in its game. I mean, Rome’s auxiliary system makes it silly. Go up to Celts right away and conquer Bibracte and you get access to Celtic Hunters and Noble Horse units. Suddenly, you have bowmen a tier below Cretan archers and shock cavalry a tier under Cappodocian horse. That’s entirely possible by turn 30.
It’s even easier with horse archers, as the slow legionaries can simply be kited.
No matter what you think about atilla you got to admit it has the best theme and trailer
To be fair all the Total War games are pretty good, I regularly enjoy Thrones of Britania, even with the stupid mechanics for the Celtic factions, but unfortunately, CA has an attention span worse than of a child with ADHD who is on a constant sugar high and who is entering early stages of dementia. There are so many stupid things that they could have easily fixed, and they keep reusing the same tired old ideas they developed in older titles. I just hope that they will fix their franchise some day.
But they are ADHD kids on a constant sugar high in the early stages of dementia! *grin*
shogun 2 forward they are just card games/mobile games/moba without the beauty of the card games, without the hability to play outside and without the incredible tension toggables and buttoms bring to the tables in Mobas
@garmonbozia which are? Rome 1 and med 2? What about shogun 2?
One of my favorite clutch battle moments is in ToB funnily enough. Despite the AI having about 3 brain cells to run together, there was one moment early on where one of my smaller forces was slightly over extended in a co op campaign with my friend, and the AI capitalized on that and attached them with a larger force. I had one Calvary unit that I placed in deployment on The opposite side of my deployment since from the rest of my army. My main force I positioned in the standard defensive trapezoid. Very small, 2 lines of infantry with 8 units, and 2 Archer units in the rear. I used the Roman tactic of rotating my front lines to keep them fresh, while my Archers whittled them down. Once their force was committed I charged my hidden Calvary into their rear, catching their commander completely off guard. I got the luckiest general snipe of my life. At that point their morale was plummetting. I took a guaranteed defeat and turned into one of the most devastating wins of my total war career. I think it was 900 vs over 2000. What a fight
"All the Total War games are pretty good"
Not true but okay lol
Very interesting video. As a person who only got into the franchise recently with warhammer II I did always feel that the game could be better in many ways, most of the time feeling that cavalry was utterly useless, but damn. Seeing how much better the mechanics and dynamics that emerged from them were back in the day, it is almost insane to think that such features were cut from newer titles. U CAN DISMOUNT UR CAVALRY LIKE WHAT.
It seems like they cut down on the in depth mechanics of each unit just to make them look prettier and more distinct appearance wise.
I think the reason they are continuing with this attitude is because they found a new audience, which seems to make them more money, that being the one that emerged from the non-historical total wars aka warhammer, such as myself. Really disappointing to see that even with 3 iterations of the warhammer games there has been barely any substantial changes to the actual combat system. Only more different factions that look so cool and different yet they feel so empty in terms of unit depth. Sad, one can hope that another company is gonna step in and do right where CA has been going on for years, though RTS games are an absolute nightmare to make unfortunately and only bigger companies have budgets to develop such games due to custom engines being needed to make the development process bearable.
Great video man, have a good one.
Hey there dude, it really is interesting from your perspective as even someone who enjoys WH gets to feel like they were deprived of a much better experience. I feel the same about how much potential there was for a good, tactical fantasy TW, and how none of that was ever realized. Unfortunately many of their fanboys will just mark you as someone who hates the WH setting just because.
CA just doesn't know how to design games on fundamental level anymore. All they know is tweaking unit stats and changing skins.
You can always play the warhammer mod for medieval 2
@@justinficiu5193 I can't really bring myself to play that game, unfortunately the antiquated UI really hurts Medieval 2 at the base
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Medeival 2 is actually the high mark for historical titles, imo. The name of the game is cavalry. I mean, you can watch LegendofTW bring disaster campaigns with a couple general’s bodyguard units.
Not that I would not cry to have Med 3. Oh I absolutely would. As an old school TW player, I’m not a fan of the one man army system that Warhammer brought on. It fits that setting, but not historical. Richard the Lionheart was a great leader and warrior, he still was killed by a lucky crossbow bolt fired by a peasant hiding in a tree.
What I think is kinda ironic is the fact when back then shogun 2 was released it was heavly critisized for not having any actual unique units for every faction even though it was a heavily strategy centric game in a time period where the playable factions are not really different from one another, because humans dont really get anymore unique then having two arms, two legs and a head.
But as of now, every faction has unique units, unique gameplay mechanic and unique animations, but at the cost of real strategy. I mean just look at any battle from the warhammer series, there is no deep thought behind unit movement, just attack and win no ranks, no long thought out manoveurs, just the biggest and most expensive units attacking different units, sure with some cavalry charge here and there but seriously not deeper thought than "attack".
What determines the victory of a battle is not tactical thinking rather which units return from routing and taking part of the battle again, every Warhammer battle is such a f*cking mess just look at any commentary matches from any warhammer total war youtuber, just clusmy mosh-pit kinda battle, its really ridiculous.
I will also add that the ppl that think in battles arent there anymore. Noone uses proper hammer and andvil, no one thinks about AOE dmg or morale problems. The number one rule in totall war used to be to not blob you units and now thats the norm because no one knows how to play. There are AOE spells to make blobing worse and yet ppl ignore it, it just shows how low the average fight iq is.
In modern Total War it's no longer thinking of "what tactic should I use to win that engagement" but "how should I cheese the AI into doing the dumbest thing possible, because actual tactics don't work" I.E. the whole LegendOfTotalWar channel.
@@mrorome5064 Legend himself admitted he only does cheese strats because his audience prefers that kind of content, he himself likes actual challenges when playing privately. I personally liked his channel a lot more a decade ago, without all this Warhammer garbage.
I feel the entire Atilla section was a misrepresentation of how Atilla plays. Cavalry is strong but not invincible as it is in 3k. If you charge cavalry head on into spears or pikes they will lose and they will lose badly. However, cavalry in Atilla is devastating when you use them for rear charges on engaged units. With simple Scout Equites you can delete enemy generals or other high tier infantry with hammer and anvil strikes. This dimension of gameplay does not exist in Rome 2 or Warhammer. Even with infantry you can do rear attacks in Atilla and gain massive advantage in battles. I find it annoying that people compare Atilla and Rome 2 battles as if the battles are the same, they are not at all. Also pikes are not amazing in Atilla, I will admit, but they will beat any other unit 1v1 if charged head on in a chokepoint. While spears hold the line better, pikes get a ton of kills quickly while spears take ages to get kills.
For me Atilla is the last total war game where all the familiar tactics and strategies from Rome 1, Med 2, and Shogun 2 work. Its the last total war game that had good balance in battles and the last one with enjoyable tactics and strategies in battles.
I feel like a ton of people disliked it on launch because of what CA did with Rome 2 and thought Atilla shouldn't be a separate game. As a result people didn't play it for that reason and for the poor optimization. I myself didn't pick it up until 2019 because everyone said how terrible it was. I tried it on a whim and enjoyed it almost as much as Rome 1/Med 2/Shogun 2. Only in Atilla can you have battles where a Roman garrison of 4 units can beat back an entire stack. New total war games don't come close to Atilla and I'm tired of people pretending the battles in Atilla are bad just like the new total war games.
Ngl my main point against it was that I just didn’t like the “surivival” strategy elements.
i bought it for Charlemange but I found it to be such a massive jump from Shogun 2 that I couldn’t be bothered to learn it when games like AoE4 were coming out, and now Company of Heroes 3
I've been playing TWs since I was a kid, starting off from Rome 1. Then, my all-time favourite, Med2. Later on I tried Napoleon, Shogun 2, Attila and then, out of sheer curiosity, Med1. I have never played Empire and Rome, due to the many deal-breaking disadvantages you mentioned. I've bought Attila for mods only, this game is unplayable for me without mods. To this very day my favourite TWs are Med2, Rome 1 and Shogun 2 in this exact order.
I've spent many, many hours with these games. 1000+ hours with Med2 alone. I consider myself to be a TW veteran even though I never played multiplayer much and wasnt ever good at it. I always preffered my battles to be long and tactical, instead of absurdly quick clickfest. I always favoured mods that make the battles much longer, so that I had an opportunity to think, to create a battle order, to use my formations, reserves, to manouver etc. And it pains me to watch how the franchise is being completely destroyed by Unvreative Assembly.
Games are being constantly dumbed-down. Physics are no more. Unit collision is non existing. Single entity units are game breaking. AI is more stupid than ever. And battles are so short that there is no place for any tactics anymore. Instead of making the AI better, creators just give it more cheats, or delete some features, like having an army without a general. God I wish there was some kind of competition, some kind of a game that would match TWs scale of battles and campaign.
Med2 is my favorite one aswell, to this day. I've played every TW title ever except for the latest 2. To me, the dumbing down isn't the main problem. It's the arcade style "All factions start with 1 region" gameplay that got introduced with Warhammer. Someone at CA seems to have thought that it would work with historical TW titles aswell. Probably the dumbest decision they've ever made.
I remember defending a small castle in the medieval 2 kingdoms baltic campaign with only 1 archer and 2 peasants only because I got lucky and killed the general when his cav unit charged the town square alone, I was left with only the archers and half a unit of peasants but still held off 3 spearmen and 1 peasants from taking the castle
That Rome 2 battle was great, you bring a unit, so what the says the ai, my unit costs more denarii so you lose. Ha!
Wanna trade some unit cards? I got me one sweet level 3 Praetorians in my stack.
That interface lag in Rome is a modern systems issue. It didn't do that on release, and some systems today also run it fine.
Are you aware of any simple ways to fix it?
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 set fps limit to game i set 65 it worked otherwise game gets 3000 fps burning your pc
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Just find a decent patch online. Mine works fine.
Maan, this brings me back to why I absolutely preferred starcraft broodwar over the starcraft 2 gameplay. Since sc2 came out, after a while the game was more about who's army cost more or which spellcaster was OP in the meta etc. rather than having clever tactics and battles around the map. In broodwar, if a player managed their high ground or choke point advantages well, there was virtually no way you could push them through sheer numbers. Months before sc2 came out a lot of old bw vets had concerns about the changes.
Agree, in starcraft one and brood war, all battles were thining and how i made something and have more than one way of doing thing, cinematics were rewards and really well done, in wings of liberty, the game was a movie, was more or less passable, and o mi lord only two last mission i feel i was playng starcraft i agree it gives game variety, but were is tactic and strategy, and worst i miss tarcraft because times when videogames didnt need a new pc, dign of NASA for playing a game.
Yes and dont even make me start in heart of swarm, instead of creating your own swarm and play with genetics like in incredible animals, no, is just some modifier, tree per zerg and what happen with mi guardians, and defilers, no overlords, transport, is like many said, limit creativity, limit ideas, no make gamers play games how developers want, all devolve in doom vall.
And o mi lord mi dear protos, lets get rid of the Khala, and make protos be so good is meh, and instead of ancient beings of wisdom and with tecknology beyond our comprehenshion they are the weackes of factions, as the matter of fact we humans are stronger than protos is miserable
For the Rome 2 test, Cavalry is basically useless against heavy infantry no matter how heavy you're, the design has changed as Equites in Rome 2 can only fight other cavalry or light infantry while being useless against heavy infantry due to their weight.
50:02 the same could goes to both blind haters and blind fans, Rome 2 still not the best it can be, but it's better than 2013 which doesn't really mark it as "Fixed". for blind haters, tick on your show unit numbers please.
Also Javelin Missile Infantry/Cavalry unit in Rome 2 are basically better than Melee Cavalry if you want damage, replace the 2 Equites into 2 or 3 Velites and they do more damage at the cost of being slower but still faster than the Vigiles.
But still, Melee Cavalry is pretty bad in Rome 2.
try Saka Noble Armoured Lancers. you will be surprised
@@TotalWarCAT That's Shock Cavalry and is very good at charging at the back of engaged infantry.
Fancy seeing you here, ashina.
It comes strictly how base game defines collision damage... its set too low, so cavalry doesn't kill heavy infantry during charge...
Its a balancing problem, because default hitpoints units have, are bigger than default damage weapons deal.. which means even if there is no armor or defense, melee hit from a weapon is not enough to kill the entity... if Hitpoints were more balanced and on pair with weapon dealt damage, things like that would just not happen... from realism perspective, i would say a stab in gut with a gladius would kill you right away, so such melee attack needs to be enough to remove all Hitpoints.. then, Armor and defense should define how well protected enemy is...
One thing I didn't notice get mentioned was the addition of the forced march stance. It was a major annoyance in Rome 2 to have enemy armies or embarked armies make a mad dash for your backline settlements forcing you to waste multiple turns chasing them around while the AI tries to stay just out of range at all times. It was still present in 3K on launch and arguably even worse in Warhammer because some factions combined it with underground movement. The supply mechanic does nothing to prevent the AI from abusing it. Just more lategame cancer.
There is so much that I did not cover in this video, and I agree that crap was an instance of overcomplicating things resulting in a worse game. Combine that with transport ships and you get a miserable late-game experience. I remember naval invasions in Shogun 2 were exciting because of the planning and the risk of 1) you get intercepted and the army is sunk 2) you arrive and immediately get attacked by an army before you have a chance to take a settlement. Likewise seeing the AI send a full stack only for you to sink it was satisfying.
Thankful for the TW modding community and pfm.
Whats PFM? Is this a modder or another company?
@@ivanthehighman177 PackFileManager
@@EmanGameplay Ah alr, and very true.
@@ivanthehighman177 it’s a great tool. Love using it.
Finally finished watching. I would've definitely loved some of the features in Shogun 2 that CA decided to gut out. I also enjoyed playing Shogun 2 with the fatigue fix mod. Imagine how better Nu-Total War would've been if these simple but realistic and grounded features weren't gutted.
I was unaware you could burn your own gates in Shogun 2. An old favorite of mine to mess around in gets better by the day, mods excluded.
Burning down gates in FotS is an absolute game-changer. Those defenses are so fun to play, made even better by the gun sound effects and smoke.
I'm only 50 or so minutes into the video, but one thing I always missed from Medieval 2 was the simplification of agents into just 3 different category of people that make you happy, make the enemy unhappy, or can kill generals/agents. It was nice having to actually send a diplomat to other factions, move merchants to more lucrative trade sites and have them seize merchants assets, and spies/assassins giving you valuable info on what units the enemy has in garrison or in their armies.
I came here from Volound. I am currently nearly half way through, and so far, I must say It's an great video.
It's very informative and tackles the problems by their roots. It is also has a really high quality for a channel with 500 subs.
I would love to see more.
I also really like the quote "And this is true, for every game going forward, excluding rome remastered, but that's just an half baked re-release of rome 1. I don't think CA had time to remove that feature, or maybe they forgot it existed."
Keep up the good work.
I'm extremely grateful to hear your thoughts on the video quality, I have been working very hard for close to a year learning to make videos and work with this equipment, so it warms my heart to see it appreciated.
List of cut features section sums up my feelings for recent tw games. So much lost that could’ve been polished and improved on.
Really enjoyed the analysis here. Well done and even-handed.
The dragon form for Cathay isn't more powerful, it is just different. As a human she gives better buffs to her army and has better magic. As a dragon she is a better tank and duelist. So it's a decision on when to change based on what is going on.
Well then their marketing guys should have taken that into account if they were hoping to sell the game to an audience not familiar with the setting.
Because that's the conclusion when you watch that without the context you gave.
Imagine thinking quality of troops doesnt matter for morale in attila. Im not saying these tests were wrong, but they are definitely not my experience in the game. You have a lot of tools at your disposal in attila. Im not saying it's the best total war by a long shot, but it does arguably have the best battles from a tactical standpoint. It has a rock/paper/scissor system in the range units. Cavalry is dominant yet vulnerable, charges are devastating but cycle charging will get you killed. Chain routs are the name of the game
That's the brain rot youtube culture where people think that they can give a judgement from a passing glance in a rat race for clicks. Attila is not a good game, but to say stuff like "there is no difference between high tier and low tier units", "battles are a slug" and "you can't do chain routes" is 100% the opposite of the truth/
I'm a Total War old head, been playing since OG Rome, and played every game through 3K. But man... I don't know if I can keep going. Troy and WH3 don't entice me at all and frankly I wouldn't even care if they made a Medieval 3 now. I know it would be terrible because they have lost all benefit of doubt I had for them. Total War as I knew and loved it is dead.
Great video mate! Having been a huge TW supporter since Medieval 1, I too am disappointed by the decline of the franchise
I have a suggestion for you, for a video to make as this is a topic I think you would cover really well,
I would love to see a video made about TW Mods vs Vanilla games
It's getting a bit ridiculous how unpaid programmers are making better games than the paid developers...
A few I highly and strongly recomend to anyone who hasn't played them
Attilla - Medieval Kingdoms 1212ad Mod
Napoleon - Napoleonic Total War 3 overhaul mod
I spend a lot of time making videos for Shogun 2 from my Against All Odds series to commentating MP matches, so unfortunately I don't have all that much time to play games. I tend to make it a point to only showcase games I'm good at or let's plays of story-driven games.
Well, done watching everything. I can't imagine the amount of time it took to make this video. Honnestly impressed.
Thanks dude, meanwhile I lament at the amount of things I did not cover. There's enough wrong with Rome 2, WH, 3K, and so on individually that you could make an hour-long vid covering everything wrong in each one.
40:38 - Regarding the fanboys claiming "Rome II Best Game in 2022", based on my experience there is a high chance they probably playing with mods - with Divide et Impera at the forefront. That being said, as far as I'm aware, not even that mod has managed to fix the fundamental problems of Rome II's combat.
Yea, my assumption is that they are either playing with mods and/or roleplaying on the campaign map, which is funny because Medieval 2 had better roleplaying IN VANILLA thanks to the trait system. And in moddability it's no contest. Modern CA thinks roleplaying and tactical gameplay are mutually exclusive, for some reason, hence 3K being split into Romance & Records.
great video! it puts everything together in the right words!! hope someday we get a great RTT game
Finally finished the video. The 2 last segments are my favourite. Extremely on point
It all comes down to lack of competition, we need one of the exceptional mod teams to start a franchise
And customers with no standards to speak of.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 lol spot on
Excellent video. The final point especially is potent.
1:36:40 Dismantling Counter-arguments. This is just brilliant!
Hehehe, that segment was my favorite one to record
Firing into the wall and barely hitting the enemy is realistic. These are muskets with terrible Accuracy. Tactics of the time relied on artillery for walled units, or bayonet charge scaling walls
yes but in the clip I showed my soldier clearly could not even see the enemy at all.
I am halfway through the video, just after you did a custom battle in Rome 2 and I have a theory why exactly this doesn't work when you add a Health Point versus damage and percent bonuses to the old mechanics of Total War. Let's say you have 150 Spearman waiting for the cavalry charge in an old Total War game like Medieval 2. Your unit has its coherence and if it's braced, has additional Mass. The enemy Cavalry has its mass, has its speed and all the bonuses emerging from the terrain. They pick up Speed, Charge, slam into your unit and because of their statistics annihilate your front row or two of man. But then the rock paper scissors works and they start dying because a horse is pretty large so if you poke it hard with a sharp stick it will probably die so the rest is about morale positioning armor and skill. After the Cavalry unit rates, your unit lost let's say 25 men, so they are definitely more shaken up and will be easier to break with a charge next time. But now let's say you add health bars and weapon damage to the mix. So now the Horseman charging have like let's say a 80 damage and every of your Spearman has like 90 health and some armor also expressed in points. This is when the game stops working, you either simulate physics correctly so after the charge your Spearman will fly 5 m into the air but then just stand up and still fight because enemy was unable to kill them during the charge... Or you completely ignore the issue and focus purely on statistics which means the horsemen will just stand there awkwardly poking your spearmen, also overlay poking them in return, and whoever has more points wins like in Warcraft. These two mechanics don't work well in tandem, you either go completely arcade which leads to absurd things like Archer maxing in Total War Warhammer or take a step back and actually create an engine simulating battle physics so what you see is consistent and logic.
Yea, when you add healthbars things like charges and volleys no longer have any expected effect.
Your cavalry aren't breaking a formation; they are lowering an HP bar.
HP does not directly affect combat effectiveness; in the older system losing half of your cavalry unit means your charges will have less impact. which also means they will take a higher proportion of losses as they will have more difficulty breaking formations. Casualties under the old system had a deleterious effect, multiple knock on effects on unit performance.
With HP you can now have scenarios where your cavalry unit loses HP in a charge but none of the men die, meaning their next charge will have the same effect as the first. It makes the consequences of certain actions so inconsistent and hard to predict.
@Dishonorable_Daimyo exactly. This of course also creates problems with magic implemented in Total War Warhammer because you can have like a huge condensed unit of Infantry subjected to a huge fiery tornado and they keep fighting, the unit has few casualties because there wasn't enough DPS in the area they were standing to actually burn any of them to death. This is bad design sabotaging further implemented features. They have to overcome problems they themselves created somewhere along the way
I really enjoyed watching this for 2hrs :D
Thanks a lot.
I think that CA just doesn't want to create a game for history needs. It wants a hero doomstck battle game. Credit to CA their releases are relatively bug free recently.
There is a lot of work that's gone into this and it's put together superbly. You should submit this as a PhD thesis :)
they would turn it down because it's too blunt lol
Thank you so much Telvido!
I have long had the feeling CA wanted to create something that they could use in a E-sports setting, like DOTA for Warcraft. The games more and more became frantic clickfests, running around and focused on heroes and monsters, with "abilities" and buffs. DOTA really has cultivated the hysterical, overexited, dopamin-exited fans, and the same crowd is dominating the warhammer base now. (Bethesdas generally shit all over their own legacy as well, so theres that too.)The I didn't mind that Total War made warhammer, but I was afraid it would mean they would more or less give up proper historical games. And that has happened, what a shame. They sold themselves to the devil by having such success on GW's Ip, because GW can prettymuch kill them by rewoking their use of the IP, and thereby enforce their will on CA. Its a sad state of affairs.
YT algorithm brought me here but I'm glad to see you're well grounded opinions and attention to detail. Been playing TW games since Rome1. They really did us dirty with Empire, but it's still my 2nd fave behind Shogun 2. Great tip about burning down your own gates in FoTS, that was a game changer. Great work on this whole video.
After watching it in full, again, great job. Highlights for me were the direct comparisons at 47:00 and 1:04:00 and 1:20:00 between morale and countering systems using Shogun2 as a baseline
One note: as someone who played Shogun 1 and Med2 when they were released, while the controls are objectively outdated today, they didn't feel so back in the day, and the games played well and were amazingly fun. It is true that today it's much more painful. Would love to have these games be remastered though, with controls being brought up to the standard of Shogun 2
Edit: i meant Med1
It was my biggest disappointment with Rome Demastered, I would have made entire video series on that game if it weren't for them not bothering to fix the UI (actually making it worse). There is nothing that can spoil an otherwise good RTS like bad interfacing.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I saw Melkor had a bounty with actual money to fix the UI with a mod. Don't know if anyone took that bounty up though..
Tbh the shit roman morale is also a thing in bi, only generals and first cohorts have good morale (not even excellent like urbans in the base game), plus palatina with decent. Even some mid tier units of many other factions are as brave or better. Might be an intentional way of showing the falling empire
I don’t particularly agree with your dismissal of the source material for Total War Warhammer, however other than that this is very solid. It’s not to defend the TWWH games, but I just have a deep passion for the old Warhammer Fantasy universe.
Just to inform you, I started with Rome 1 sound 2007 when I was very young, and later Medieval 2 and then Shogun 2 after that, with medieval 2 being my all time favorite TW game that I have spent the most hours in.
From personal experience, I know the CA shills will just screech at you for daring to criticize, but ignore them. Their moral compass is completely borked.
I should clarify, I wasn't outright dismissing WH fantasy, I prefaced my statement with "if it is true that..." as I know very little about the universe. It was just to illustrate how much these overpowered single-entities not only damage the gameplay but are far less interesting than the generals of old on a narrative level.
There are other comments before yours explaining so much about the WH fantasy and the actual tactics that can be used in the tabletop...and it is very insightful to see that present in the source material but not featured in the gameplay. I have no doubt that you could make a tactically deep and immersive RTT in that universe, and that CA utterly squandered its potential.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 well I do appreciate that. It is a shame since the only truly positive aspect of the TWWH games I see are the IP they are using. They could have done so much more with it without resorting to cheese and single entity spam, along with outright tactical feature-stripping.
Since you mentioned it towards the end, the large 2 headed Bird is Kairos Fateweaver. Now Tzeentch is my favorite of the 4 gods so I just wanted to give an explanation to your inquiry.
He is noted as “blind to the present.” in his book description. The gift of his foresight and his archive of past events does make him very powerful for prediction of possible futures, but the cost of the experiment that Tzeench conducted on him was that it physically blinded him. He has to rely entirely on his foresight and magic. The description in the army book is deliberately vague on purpose, because that’s the nature of Tzeentch himself. It’s both the truth and a lie simultaneously. So it’s likely Fateweaver is actually fully blind but one head sees constant visions of what is to come and the other perfectly sees what has happened before so he has to use memory or other senses to communicate the present. This is reflected in the tabletop in that while he is a great caster with access to every lord of magic, he is very vulnerable in melee.
For someone like that his perception of the present is much more ephemeral than you’d think. He’s essentially gone fully mad by the present-day in the setting.
Sorry if that was a bit of a ramble, but I hope it wasn’t too much.
@@EmanGameplay it makes sense when you put it into context...but this is not the sort of thing you put into a marketing piece. Marketing is supposed to draw in players who would have otherwise not bought the game, but when you put together a sentence that on its own makes no sense--only making sense with the context you gave--it kinda defeats the purpose of the marketing.
The overaching issue is that they have no real gameplay to showcase, forcing them to resort to weird word salad and references to lore that only lore-enthusiasts would understand.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Oh that’s understandable. In regards to the issue of marketing I totally get it. I appreciate you taking the time to read it, though.
Pretty much wholeheartedly agree with all of that, great video.
At the start of 2020 I caught covid and ended up self isolated in a room for about 23 days (as everyone in the house came down with it one by one) with only my laptop without a dedicated graphics card. Played Shogun 1 and completed expert campaigns for all clans except Uesugi (expert start with Uesugi is incrediobly difficult, worse than Oda with whom you need more than a little luck and some very careful planning and management as well as winning a couple of very difficult unbalanced but crucial early game battles) and even with the old interface, clunky camera etc. -
The feeling, the gameplay in the battles, the atmosphere. Just so good. The sound of your archer commanders screaming fire, the whistling of the arrows, (without ridiculous visual trails) and the distant visceral screams of your enemies echoing through the fog. Ahhh the old speech samples, 'My Lord! the enemy Daimyo is fleeing like a whipped dog! Shamefur Dispray!'
CA doesn't have the guts or talent to make that today. And with the botched release of Warhammer 3 this video has aged incredibly well.
I also have my own depression story; back at the start of 2021 for personal reasons I was very upset for a long time, and I found myself immersing myself in Shogun 2 and getting better at the game. Never imagined I would be the one putting this kind of a video together barely a year later.
I have such fond memories of Shogun 2 in 2013 and fighting the Ikko-ikki horde of 10,000 men in campaign, and my mind was running with the possibilities for the series' growth. I never once thought that was the end of the series as we knew it...
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I am sorry to hear that, I liked Shogun 2 despite not that technically brilliant at strategy, I had fond memories of enveloping the Ai and player troops by using the Mountainous areas with Satsuma archers and causing death to the enemy, was exhilerating. However, the game does need some tweaks here and there to smooth out the experience but Shogun 2 the game was a hidden gem amongst CA's lazy attempt that Was Three Kingdoms Total war😫. I feel like CA drank the Konami & Koei kool aid of recycling game assets and degrading simplifying their core gameplay loop and strategic capacity to suit the Gacha Casual Gamers market: I am looking at you Arknights and Genshin Impact!.
Yes, yes, yes. This needed to come out. Hats off.
Do you think CA hit a wall with battle AI and decided that battles really couldn't get that much better?
Also, what do you think about campaigns from older games (such as Shogun 2) compared with the campaigns in newer games? There is a larger focus on faction variety (in terms of units and campaign gameplay) in the new games that's honestly pretty enjoyable.
CA gave up on battle AI the same way they gave up on everything aside from marketing and selling low-effort DLC's.
Shogun 2 still has the best campaign thanks to its very well-balanced faction specialization made possible by the technology tree in that game; you couldn't unlock every art so you had to choose what path to take your faction down in a given campaign. Lots of depth and immense replay value, on top of the well-designed battles. The newer games don't have better variety outside of the most superficial aspects; counting units is a meaningless exercise and does nothing to measure the quality of the gameplay. Furthermore every game starting with Rome 2 attaches absurd melee buffs to AI units in battle, rendering whole sections of the roster ineffective at their jobs and never worth recruiting, resulting in cavalry spam in 3K and single-entity and ranged-reliance in WH, while melee infantry are sidelined and rarely worth bringing outside of meatshields.
How does this man only have 2.5k subs?
You definitely earned mine for putting into words what I've been feeling for a very long time. My first total war game was Rome Total War. Divinitus still plays in my ears from time to time. Shogun II is also my favourite one of them all and also the one I spent the most time in. I remember when I tried MP for the first time ever, loaded into battle with some basic troops and saw this other guy with many stars on his profile and a pretty experienced army of units. I was sure I'd lose to him for sure, but ended up spanking his ass and getting the achievement for winning a multiplayer battle, having lost less than half of your troops. Ths is what I call a game that values experience and tactics knowledge
Also, the newer total wars just aren't intuitive. Spear beats cavalry, that's logical. What beats a giant two-headed mage birb?
Ok, so now, question time. You get full budget to do a TW game, what do you change? What are the core areas to look at and fix first?
(My: 1-Combat system (remove armour-piercing as a damage type, return to something closer to S2, improvements and good compromises exist), 2-Progression systems: remove all custom progression systems and replace with reactive ones like in R1/Med2, but improved)
I've never really thought of this, actually. Back in 2012 there were so many good directions the franchise could have gone, the possibilities were immense. There is no one way to make a Total War game; but CA consistently chooses terribly.
Actually there is an explanation for why the handgunners behave like that, if they were like in Empire, they would be absolute useless, they can't fire over the frontline like archers, they need a clear line of sight which means they are extremely vulnerable to be attacked by cavalry, monsters, flying cavalry etc...
If only the frontline could fire, there dps would be so low, there would be no point to take rilfes units over crossbows and bows who can fire in safety behind the frontline.
Empire is a game where every factions have rilfes units, and is centered around gunpowder warfare, Warhammer is not, black bowder infanterie is very low in number compared to other missile types, only few factions have access to it, to not be useless, handgunners need to be more "arcade" in their behavior.
However, there is no justification for why there are no reloads.
And for the Legendary Lords being very powerfull, yes it is in the lore, because everything is way more powerfull in Warhammer than in Lord of the Rings for example, it is stupid to compare them, characters in Warhammer are more like greek mythological characters in their powers, generally chosen by their gods.
Guns requiring a direct line of fire is half of what makes guns unique and interesting. If that's too hard then you need to actually put in effort to playing video games.
Guns in older TW games were devastating despite having that disadvantage; the guns in WH are no different than archers or crossbows.
Lords being overpowered may be accurate to the WH setting. Doesn't change the fact that is completely uninteresting and bankrupt of any tactical depth. Good, interesting gameplay that requires the player to think is all that really matters in a game, and "lore" can go and crap all over itself.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I know that it is not realistic and guns don't work like that, but 1 : not all games or mechanics have to be 100 % realistics
2 : in Empire I don't recall there was things like dragons, pegasus or things that can catch units in few seconds
3 : for the legendary lords it is just differents, Lords in Warhammer have a real impact on the batlle, they are not just waiting behind the lines, and if they die, it is a probleme because the moral penalty for the army that follow often causes the whole army to flee
4 : Warhammer is probably as tactical as other total war, there is more than just aligning muskets and pikes, there is such unit variety, different playstyle, more than in any other Total War, I personnaly find hard to go back to non-warhammer because of how much every factions feels the same or similar in batlles
@@Thibull Man this dude is pissing me off so much, just say you don't like Warhammer and that's it. But I've been reading his take on Warhammer and the guys just dismisses the WHOLE GIANT LORE as "LOTR is more grounded" I find it funny how even he purposely chose to not mention that there are Legendary Lords that aren't Overpowered demigods like for example Tretch Craventail or Volkmar the Grim which implies for me that he didn't even research any of the game. Plus the part that he rants that the game markets itself for Warhammer fans (like of course it will) In the Miao Ying titles part
In Attila pikes are meant to be deep and stationary units which isn’t how you used them in the atilla battles.
Just from the title alone, my first impression was that your video would be full of mindless criticism. After watching an hour, I know that that it's not the case. While I disagree on some aspects, most of your criticisms are reasonable and come from a place of love for the franchise.
Empire was my first game. But I didn't become a fan until Shogun 2 came out. Realm Divide kicked my ass so many times, even on Easy, but it felt really good to win the campaigns. Then I proceeded to skip all of the games in between until the release of 3Kingdoms. I was already a fan of the novel and that game gave me a lot of joy, even if it wasn't a pure historical title. Besides, it gave me the closest thing to a game that offered the battles of Total War and the campaign aspects of the Paradox Games (on a much small scale, of course). Then the cancellation happened, of course, and it broke my heart.
The problem with 3K - and the future 3K2, for that matter - is that once the kingdoms of Wu, Shu and Wei are formed, both the novel and the real history becomes a series of stalemates until the Sima clan unites the country once again. Even if CA released a playable date as a DLC, it would hurt the game even more since there's no space for other regional warlords with interesting mechanics: just the big boys. Also, the way they announced the future Three Kingdoms 2 makes me think that they don't know what to do with 3K. They said that 3K2 will be "more focused on the novel". Which is something that makes me raise my eyebrows. Because, aside for some very very minor moments, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms was never about dragons or magic. TW: 3K was pretty faithful in that aspect because the focus was on the characters and their feats of strength and virtue on the battle. They can't simply make a 3K game with mythic units like it is another Warhammer.
I hope that CA develops their next games with the mindset of improving and building upon what's already there and not removing. I would love to see 3K's spy system improved upon on a potential Empire or Medieval game.
Excuse my ramblings. Have a good day.
All that really matters is the battles being good. They can take their own liberties with the setting as much as they want; no one would care if the gameplay is simply fun. Total War has never been very faithful to the history it portrays, anyway.
Loved the video, keep it up!
Medieval 2 total war was my entry into the word of total war I loved these games all the way up to napoleon when I stopped playing then I picked it back up when shogun 2 came out and haven’t messed with it since it seems creative assembly seems to be focusing a lot on warhammer games I’m not for the fantasy titles I prefer the historical settings bc you can do what if scenarios
Weirdly enough i was recommended this video by someone commenting under some rome 1 ost that my nostalgia frequently brings me back listening to and i agree with most points in this video. I skipped through some parts but one of the features i really miss is the city/castle distinction and settlements with multiple walls in medieval 2 that i think you didnt really mention.
I did mention it briefly but I will be expanding on this point in an upcoming video showcasing how TW's campaign systems have been dumbed down over the years.
Great job
I used to like when you killed their general you could see where they fell
I admire how hard you had to try to make Atilla look bad lol
Yeah, this video tried to do too much for its own good, though it has been a valuable learning experience.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I did really enjoy the video! I agree that more elaboration was required.
Napoleon is one of my favorite total war games. I think it did the actual tactics of 19th century warfare the best in the series so far.
Watched the whole thing, very good video!
I am glad you enjoyed it, Master Obi-Wan!
I'm curious if you'd be interested in doing some playtesting for my multiplayer mod project for Medieval II? Its fantasy, based on Tolkien's Silmarillion, and blends traditional historical Total War gameplay with reasonably implemented single entity monsters/characters.
I'd like to know more about it, I have a lot of videos I want to make so I don't want to promise, but anyway feel free to hop onto our discord and share your work! There's a lot of mod-work going there
Holy shit this is so enlightening. Thanks for the vid!
I should thank you for watching it! :))
An excellent overview of the franchise that people new to Total War should watch before purchasing
I witnessed some of the most amazing siege defence last stands in Shogun 2 Total War. Absolutely poetic stuff.
To be fair when you were comparing the legionaries to the principes the reason they are similar is because the legionaries are a jump in tech from the hastati, both units won't be on the field together in the campaign.
It doesn't solve the fact that the units you unlock are straight up better and more cost-effective than the lower-tier ones, making it pointless fielding them. They need to be better differentiated in stats, mass, formations, morale and so on and their strengths and weaknesses should be differentiated to allow for creativity in unit synergies. If one unit is just flat out better at everything you'll just want to field it as much as you can over the other, completely uninteresting.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I agree with you overall point but I think that's why CA built the Roman faction like that in a way, mainly for campaign because let's face it they gutted the multiplayer after shogun
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 That's how it worked in history though. The Marian reforms occurred and suddenly the three old classifications and the velites were abolished for a more efficient structure that also allowed a streamlining of logistics, command, and training. A similar event occurred when the Polybian army came into being and the old hoplite style Roman army was transitioned into the hastati, principes, and triarii. That change allowed much greater flexibility both in command but also in terms of pulling a line back and sending in a fresh 'unit'. This should be accurately modeled in the game but some players would complain if Romans could make short withdrawls from combat whilst other armies were stuck in an inflexible battleline although that is the challenge and can be balanced with point costs. All this should be explained ingame as each faction should have a primer tutorial/series of historical battles that give a brief overview of the history and development og their forces. This obviously isn't needed in Shogun where the military technology is a snapshot of a 50-100 year period and is simplified (units should have mixed weapon types rather than segregated spear, katana, and bow units).
@@willgirvan2491 TW ditching the era setting for custom battles is what caused the mess. They had the same issue in Rome 1 with Polybian and Marian units being on the roster together and it was fixed in M2 where early, high, and late unit rosters made sense with no arquebusiers in the early era and more armoured units in the high era.
@@benwaddi history history history
yeah but what about designing a good game?
if i cared so much about the details and historical accuracy I would much rather read it in a book than looking for it in a video game for some reason.
Brilliant and concise
Me and my friend played a battle in our Shogun 2 FotS coop campaign (before it desynced and died lmao), where one of my cities was besieged by an enemy army that was several magnitudes larger AND higher quality than my garrison (basically, I had 3 levy infantry units and 2 spear levy units against around 12 line infantry and I think 4 or 5 samurai units on the enemy side), and we WON that battle because we used the walls to the fullest, and after they broke down the gates and got in, we used the spear levies as the anvil by charging the line infantry and then shooting them in the side. To this day it's one of our gratest multiplayer gaming achievements. This would be literally impossible in Rome 2 and later games.
7:38
>Gives Carthage levy infantry and militia only
> Has mostly powerful Urban Cohort
" Look at how quickly this entire army routed"
OK, Give them Sacred Band and we will see next time
And 108 cavalarymen in one unit is unbalanced compared to 160 infantrymen in one unit.
Left out that I only committed 2-3 units to the fight while employing hammer & anvil; still a great demonstration of the dynamism of the morale system that set TW apart from other RTT titles and something the modern titles completely squandered.
You can't even attempt to chain rout weaker armies in newer titles thanks to their healthbars and difficulty modifiers.
If I tried that in the modern system it would take 10 minutes of the Cohorts hacking away until they finally grind the lower quality unit into the dust.
A brilliant video!
i was playing TWM2 once and had a war with the timurids but had to delete my save becasue a timurid armor got locked in a feetback loop of moving inside a settlement then outside then back inside over and over when i ended my turn and it made it impossible to play
I got really into TW with Warhammer 2, though I've heard about cut features from older games, like Empire's naval battles or having armies without generals, for a long time. I wasn't however aware that Shogun had at least a partial army customizer, something that the WH game should have had for a long time, being based on a tabletop game and all that.
One thing I will say is that IMO the Warhammer games did a much better job of differentiating units even though every faction has a lot of them. They still have higher-tier units largely beat out cheaper units (though it still depends on the exact match-up) but the challenge comes from only being able to field so many high tier units and making sure you get your money's worth when they fight, at least in multiplayer.
That's not to say that WH doesn't have balance issues, for an example missiles and magic being the best damage dealers by quite a bit, leaving some factions that lack either or both of those in the dust.
Also, the reason why TWW2 will lose most of it's playerbase within the next half a year or so isn't just because "it's the new game, *insert CoD comparison here*" but rather because the Mortal Empires campaign once implemented will let you play all the races from the last two games on a massive map with all the new factions and new mechanics.
Overall, based on what I've seen from you it seems that the older TW games were perhaps ahead of their time, suffering from a lot of technical issues while later games (post Samurai 2) are a result of CA becoming complacent with being mostly mediocre. Even though I still greatly enjoyed my time with TWW2 and even with TWW3 so far I do feel sad looking back and imagining how much better these could have been had CA been willing to put more work into the mechanics of the games.
On the topic of difficulty modifiers I'd argue that AI not really getting smarter on higher difficulties is true for the whole of the RTS genre. Even in Shogun 2 all it does is stat buffs after all, and comparing this to more difficult AI in a shooter isn't really a working argument as enemy AI in action games is easier to make better in comparison, especially with AI as heavily scripted as that in any modern CoD game.
Regarding point 8 of your list of cut features, the Warhammer games actually have the basic loot, raze, occupy system still in place, with most factions having either changes to those base options or even new options added, like establishing a pirate cove in a settlement rather than looting it. Maybe this worked differently in older games and that's what you're talking about?
On the whole I have to agree with the vast majority of your points though and I found the video very informative. While I enjoy my time with the franchise I can fully empathize with older fans who have seen this decline happen and I wish TW was as good as it truly could be.
Good points, except the one about the AI: Age of Empires 2 has had its AI made more intelligent over the years by using high-level players' playstyles and tactics as the basis for it. It is possible, it is just that devs including CA are either incompetent or know they can still sell games while assigning a budget of zero to the AI. I have already documented examples of the AI in older TW's like Shogun (yes, the FIRST TW game) having superior AI on the battle map; in fact I would argue it has the best overall battle AI of all the games. Developing an intelligent AI opponent isn't an easy task, certainly, but that doesn't excuse them making no effort to improve it at all.
Regarding the WH titles, CA way back when stated that they all 3 entries would be incorporated into one application, similar to how Fall of the Samurai is a stand-alone expansion to Shogun 2 accessed within the same application. The WH trilogy is a Frankenstein's monster where some things get carried over and others don't (not to mention how awful the launch of WH3 has been). The fact that the gameplay itself is a shallow mess only reinforces the idea of these titles being akin to low-quality fast food, rather than each entry offering a chance to flesh out the gameplay, as was the case pre-2013.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Thanks for the response! I wasn't aware of the AI in AoE2, it's an RTS I didn't get around to back in the day. I'd wager the lack of improvements of AI is more an issue of funding as RTS games in general really aren't big money makers anymore and seem to have a much bigger emphasis put on competitive MP.
I think the game play quality of the TWW games is something we have to agree to disagree on, though I admit that my perspective is much less informed than yours. I play TW for the grand, cinematic feel and TWW has that in spades but I found Shogun 2 very enjoyable too.
I also wouldn't call the games a Frankenstein's monster, from my experience the integration in TWW2 worked quite well, with some factions that were absolute garbage in the first game (Wood Elves and Beastmen for an example) finally becoming enjoyable experiences with free updates in TWW2. But at the end of the day these factions should have been fun to begin with, though that's not really an issue with TWW as a trilogy.
I remember a situation where I had a nightmare general I had to kill. In Medieval 1 I had to ally with Egypt so we could take turns pinning down a single Byzantium general (no honour guard left just him alone) after I had thrown 4 full armies at him and Egypt 3 that I saw (most likely more as Byzantium was heavily weakened by the time I joined the war) and I had to time with Egypt us both sending a full stack of elite units to eliminate 1 man.
Rome Remastered is great except the UI which can be partially fixed with mods. They did a lot of work on the UI since the original release. The mods coming out for RR are impressive. The game got many patches and I think might get another one. I'm aware of one bug at least remaining.
Is there any mods that fix the technical issues of games like Empire and Medieval 2?
Rome 2 doesn't even have weather.
Caesar was FAMOUS for waiting for the exact moment to deploy his troops and often finding really small some times weird advantages in the terrain or weather.
But nope. Can't do that.
A wise general seeks victory from strategic advantage. And does not demand it from his men. ~ Tsun Szu.
In Attila you used the most broken and glitched cavlary unit this unit is so broken that it can easily destroy armored elephants or the best hunnic cavlary. Other cav units aren't as OP. And they were spearmen not Pikemen.Also in the first test the pikes couldn't form up properly and 1-2rank pikes are weak as you noticed before.
haha, gotta love how Alexander as the weird proto-standalone does not even make an appearance, what a disgusting trashfire.
Volound will never be pleased, he wants the franchise to stay “historical” and not go into a different genera you might not enjoy the newer titles but I fully enjoyed Troy just needs more DLC’s and I really didn’t like warhammer but that was because I wasn’t used to that type of gameplay and now that I gave it a chance I really enjoy it and they are bringing back shogun 2 avatar feature witch is well improved. And it’s not a fall of a franchise they are in control of the entire grand campaign/rts genera.
Which is sad because now they are incompetent.
ive said over and over again that i could not possibly care any less about this "pisstorical fantasoy" distinction, and have even made full-form videos debunking this stupid non-point head on. id appreciate it if you would not serve as a lobotomised mouthpiece for garbage you read butthurt warhammer losers spouting on the shithole subreddit, accidentally libelling me in the process of spreading this kind of worthless misinformation, and actually could have paid attention to anything i have ever said at any point, instead. cheers.
@@Volound 1. I’ve been listening to ur hour and sometimes 2-3 hour rants on why new total wars are terrible and how warhammer sucks and I believed you and didn’t buy warhammer for years but I decided to buy it and found the game fun, and played the new titles like thrones of Britannia and it’s also a good game, also ur rants on Rome 2, Rome 2 is a good game definitely a top 3-5 total war title didn’t start out well but definitely turned it around. I understand you don’t like being criticized. And it’s rlly sad I didn’t insult you as a person you make content saying how bad things are when UA-camrs like legendoftotalwar enjoys the game along with so many others it’s not a bad game it’s just not the taste of gaming that u like that’s okay.
The fact that you say "just needs more DLC's" shows how much you've been brainwashed. Absolute garbage comment making arguments based on the false "historical vs fantasy" narrative, proving you did not watch the video, where I thoroughly debunk that argument more than once. Good game vs bad game is the only distinction that ever mattered, period.
Why is it that fans of the newer titles can never provide cohesive, evidence-based arguments for why their games are supposedly good?
Keep asking for hollow, half-baked DLC's instead of calling bad games bad and having standards for yourself.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 lmao Play the fucking game😭 the saga titles have less of a budget so they don’t have as many DLC’s the game is fun to play the only problem is their isn’t enough content. And I haven’t been brainwashed it’s a video game dude stop getting so butthurt about it😭
I like Total War Atilla even though it's not really a good game compared to previous titles. I do mod the shit out of it though
The difference between the principes and legionaries specifically, is that they are very similar unit, the difference is to mark a culture shift, the Marian Reforms, a complete restructuring of the Roman military
@ 9:31
That brings up something I do sometimes:
If the enemy's crossing a river, I send archers to harass them, if possible. The AI will bob and weave trying to get its swimming units out of the way. As a result, they get exhausted.
And when that happens, they drown!
The other day, I was watching some Germanic cavalrymen (Alemanni) do just that in BI: drown in a river, because they couldn't get out in time.
@ 1:09:59
What I don't get is this:
Why is an axeman, not a melee unit? His job is to get up close and swing his axe. More to the point, why are we even differentiating to that extent?
What's wrong with light, spearman, heavy, skirmisher, and missile? And arguably, that itself might have been too granular: a hoplite was a heavy infantryman who was also a spearman: just combine the two!
@ 1:15:37
6ab3an! With how wide the files are (which you pointed out earlier), the horses could just waltz right in!
@ 1:49:25
You can sort of do this in Rome Total War (the original). though it ends up having a probabilistic distribution of "uses the right animation" v. "uses the wrong one" against a cavalryman, or against a man who's knocked down, and so on. You can increase the probability to something fierce, but it will never be 1.
But the animations don't match per se, so your overall point here still stands.
@ 1:51:05
What, are the guns just high-velocity poison darts from American conquest?
@ 1:54:24
I still want to lynch the SOB who did that.
@ 1:59:40
Meh, they're a bunch of airy-fairy idiots at CA: stop trying to use logic on them.
One thing I noticed was the switch to health also made missile units much better, might have something to do with collision, as I should not be able to have an army of archers with 1-3 spears in Warhammer 2 and win because they just shred enemy units
missile units are not better, it's just that melee units are garbage thanks to AI melee cheats and healthbars.
Awesome video man, cheers!
I'm currently working on an end of year video and am right now, as I write this comment, transferring this exact video from my external hard drive to my computer so I can use the footage in a highlight reel.
What a coincidence.
And thanks for watching!
I have a similar one I released this month: ua-cam.com/video/rW7PFNqGuog/v-deo.html
Atilla was my first Total War. I like it for the setting and campaigns as the Romans are fun because of the difficulty and tension of waiting for what the Huns will do. Unfortunately, it made me used to using noob square and viewing battles like a movie. I was surprised that when I played shogun 2 the battles went by quickly and there was a larger emphasis on movement rather than holding a line. I still relied on more defensive lines but my infantry moved around a lot more.
I dunno how you've played Atilla, dude, but holding the line in any field battle is the fastest way to get rekt when you play on legendary. You actually need to manuvre your troops, put archers and crossbowmen into position to do maksimum damage while preventing them from hitting your own troops while protecting them from cavalry flank attacks. Sieges is another story, but even there you have ways to minimize your casulties while maksimising enemies' casulties by creating firebags and engaging in suprise raids with light scout cavalry on missile units and catapults. As for Shogun 2, asigaru is kinda op there, to the point that it makes samurai pretty useless, you can simply bring 2-3 stacks of asigaru and own any battle instead of scrambling expensive samurai units that need 2 turns to be assembled and which strain your economy to a breaking point. So brining them as some kind of a sign of Shogun 2 being a superior strategy compared to Rome 2 and especially Atilla (where a lot of things such as nonexisten damage from cavalry flank and rear charges were fixed) is dubious at best.
27:24 - To be fair to Empire, you really *couldn't* just spam Schools everywhere and tech up super fast, at least not without consequences. You'd end up with extreme amounts of public disorder due to the "Clamour for Reform" effect, which virtually every technology had. You would quickly reach a point with this strategy where your home territories struggled to get enough income to cover the armies you were sending out AND their own garrisons, and any new conquests would rebel no matter what because of the punishing penalties to public order - they were massively increased in general for conquest, and then you add an extra -10 from your tech.
Haha nice video!
But really
What about the droid attack on the wookies?
Why have your pike units in 2 man deep formation? In some places it was only 1 row.
It's insane how they even removed the animation of reloading the muskets from Shogun and Empire, and in warhammer there is nothing in the rifle infantry it's madness
great vid, lot of good points made
I am early, but I wouldn't have thought. This felt like a video that I did not find for too long.
Great video!
Marking as watch later, excited to see what you'll say!
Just some corrections
#30 cut feature is present in Warhammer at least, don't know about 3K or Troy
#37 is coming back in WH3
#38 present in the WH quest battles, and to some degree in normal battles in WH3 from what I've seen
#40 matched animations also resulted in outnumbered units just being watched dueling individual models until the rng decided they died
#47 also in WH
#50 at least partially in WH3 for walled settlements, and present for unwalled settlements
Matched combat animations were a mostly visual part of the combat; the actual combat calculations were not directly related to what you saw on-screen. Shogun 2 had a hidden modifier for being outnumbered, which is why even heavy cavalry in that game can die so quickly, since cavalry units will typically be outnumbered in a melee. They could have developed the system rather than gutting it; and many units in the newer games still engage in 1-on-1 combat, it's just that the animations aren't matched (soldiers striking in the air in front of them).
@ no i was too busy looking at the recharge-guns
I can live w/o the matched animations in wh because simply put, unlike most every other total war, each unit doesn’t share the same animation skeleton/rig. The diverse amount of body types and sizes present in it mean that it’d be herculean task to add multiple fighting and death animations for more than a small handful of unique matchups, and it honestly wouldn’t add anything to the game anyway besides it looking slightly cooler
@@poyloos4834 "diverse amount of body types"
what? you mean a roster made up of mostly humanoids?
Each sequel should improve on its predecessor in every way, and that includes the visual aspect. The point I raised in my video is that even the VISUAL aspect of these games has gone through a decline, particularly in animations and effects (look at how wimpy guns are in WH); the same applies to sound design which has been neutered.
I don't think it's wise to give a pass on "minor" things like visual and sound design because I don't like where that leads; because of this attitude we got firearm units that don't even have reloading animations. What's to stop them from giving us a game of squares crashing into each other until their bars deplete?
If you forgive one case of obvious laziness and cost-cutting, the company will just keep pushing further to see how much they can get for very little work. Which is what they have been doing since 2013.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I’m saying that the body of an orc or a dwarf doesn’t rig the same way as an empire soldier, and that’s an example keeping it to infantry. In older games, having matched animations was much easier to do, as everyone bar horsemen shared the same animation rig/skeleton, the difference only being how they looked. Warhammer is much grander in scale and as a consequence they can’t focus on the more minute detail in some areas, at least, not in a way that would make sense. Sure, I’d love it if they could just make 2 or 3 unique animations for each unique match up for both sides (which would probably end up in the ballpark of 15,000 but that’s just a guess), but it simply isn’t a realistic goal in the scope of what the devs are going for.
I’m not sure if I’m just experiencing the game incorrectly but trying Medieval 2 again and I can never seem to get along with the fighting mechanic in that game. It always looked like whenever I see my units charge they end up damaged or outright defeated.
Spear infantry go into a bracing stance when you place them stationary for a few seconds; if you're charging your spear men that may be why you're taking heavy losses.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 also do you know a fix to the weird mouse accelerating issue with medieval 2 on steam? Maybe I’m too much of a boomer for mods but I tried a method or two and had little to no impact on the game performance for the better?
Also thank you for giving the time to read this. Tip is fully noted.
I'm not as deeply involved with the series as you are, but loved Medieval 1, Rome 1 and later shogun 2 and its add ons, only to be extremely dissapointed by Rome 2 in its entirety. I did not know why exactly, it just felt, off. When you got to the point of cavalry and showed the difference in Rome 2 and Shogun 2, it clicked. So thank you for going into so much detail!
That would bring me to a question, maybe to others in that community:
What polish in art or mechanics could you do without in a total war like game? Even if its is something you like, but that is hard do implement? Subsequently, What mechanics and polish in the art should absolutely be in? Considering how much has been cut out over the years, this might seem ridiculous to ask, but I'm thinking, what would be a good baseline that could inspire a different or smaller studio to try and create a successor without the funds CA had. Not the "perfect" total war, but the "good enough" to improve upon.
I'd say the bare minimum is a hard-counter system (meaning every unit counters a type while being countered by another), all tiers of units are viable in some way, meaning more expensive units shouldn't render cheaper ones obsolete, terrain should confer logical advantages (height, trees offering cover, water slowing down movement, etc.) and finally each entity in a unit should have its own health while projectiles abide by ballistics (an arrow fired in an arc will be less accurate, less damaging, and easier to dodge). If you don't have this foundation, everything else built upon it will fail, and Rome 2 and everything else beyond it is proof of that. And this is not counting the obvious like an actually functional interface. Basically Shogun 2's battles.
I appreciate that this video helped you better understand what went wrong; and I'd like to add that in hindsight I feel I did not go into enough depth, but that may be in a future video...
Thanks for watching!
that test battle in Attila was bullshiet, you would never play an unshielded pike formation to take the charge of a unit armed with jabalines. I know that the point of the video is to show the shortcoming of the last tittles in the franchise but in my opinion it shows better when you give your best and loose too many soldiers by the game being undevelop, than when you do something that doesn't make sense gameplay wise, and then complain for the estupid results
just like the rome 2 test battle.
I understand that he comes from a competetive focus on unit balance, but I as a history nerd, very much like the fact that a elite unit that cost 4 times as much as the trash unit beats them up completely. For me thats not bad game design, thats how it should be, just like a real professional soldier would shred a random peasant with just a spear in hand. But I guess thats just different views and different expectations from a game.
On top of that, he picks two of the weakest cavalry units in the game and expects to beat 3 elite units via hammer and anvil(on very hard). Cavalry thats not meant to use that tactic in the first place.
If anything this shows how OP light cav was in S2.
This rome 2 test battle completely missed the point for me. The main problem is the awful HP system which he mentioned, and the fact that shield only give a stupid demage reduction boost instead of actual protection.
No hate, the video is still good and shows the downfall of the series, from a developer who had a vision to a casual cash grab.
btw the difference between principes and legionaires is, the first is pre reform the other is post reform, but you should know that if you played hundreds of hours :)
@wuestenfuchsxy yes, now that you say it, i see it. I discovered the series in 2011 and since i have played napoleon, empire, medieval 2, shogun 2 and attila.
if you mostly play pvp i see how the battle simulation and balance has the foremost focus for that player because you have one chance to win and that it but I mostly play campains so i dont care so much for balance in that way because balance is les important when the IA is cheating anyways and have tree times your hability to sustain armies
But yes, why would hammer and anvil work everytime? let alone when you are triying to do it in and unfavorable match. sometimes a formation is just strong enough to resist even when surrounded. I do think that lack of real formations and drills are a sirious weak point of the games. I do miss the schiltron and platoon fire very much.
you know i dont know about the HP sistem because i only have play with it in attila, and dont mind it much, i dont really understand where is the fault of it when not dealing with the single entities units of the later games. Could you tell me a little bit about it?
I sometimes like the combat in attila better than in shogun 2 where i feel that soldiers die to easy and battles last 5 minutes at most once the first clash has happend.Is not my favorite just because I do think that the army being atacht to the general is one of the most moronic development desitions. commanders raising trough diferent ranks would be such a grat feature.
I would say that the battle simulation is fine anyway, sometimes even great, for the games i have played.
As a history nerd myself I would love to play around with logistics, to have back the features that CA chop off, expand them and ad new ones. To have them focus on a well rounded simulation of a campain, expansive and with many evolutionary tangents, instead of the flash of the battle simulation, that up to attila is fine. But i dont think we are gona get it. oh if only CA dindt have the monopoly on the genre
@@Waakala I completely agree with you, on every point. I loved to move single units over the map to refresh my weakened front armies. You had to think about the supply chain so to speak to keep advancing because units didnt magically refresh deep in enemy territory.
The problem with the HP model is that even the strongest unit with the biggest shield gets worn down by arrows and slingers etc.
Its not that a lucky hit in the face knocks individual soldiers out, its enough to throw enough rocks at their shield to kill them.
That means nobody dies in the first volleys, but over time they start falling like flies.
That works for Warhammer and its huge unit variety, but not so much for historical titles.
Rome Total War, for me is still the best TW. S2 was part of the downfall with the new settlement management system.
I'd like to add #51 to the list of cut features.
Seeing your units armour change depending on their armour upgrades, only seen in Medieval 2 (afaik)