Total War: Rule Britannia, literally.

[Great Houses of Xie]

Oh, lawdy, now he says that he's not arguing economics while initially following up with the following: "Frankly, I feel like the more recent Total Wars I've played (Attila's Charlemagne version and R2) have basically just made the early game more expensive, you ride out those problems and eventually you can actually afford stuff and then eventually you're just crazy wealthy."

It's fun to claim that I'm not reading something; it's even more fun to look at you and see that you're not reading YOUR OWN POST. Technically, I guess, you COULD not read while typing, lel

LAWL, OK, so, I suppose the screenshots demonstrate several things. First off, the year is 1780+, a year I literally never get to because I always win Empire a solid 30-40 years earlier; I'll note that you're still not even close to winning by 1780, which is even more entertaining. Indeed, if I were to spend an additional 60-80 turns wasting time and building up my armies instead of actually doing anything productive, yes, I, too, could amass massive armies like that.

As such, I don't see my fewer armies as being "bad army building" and your more numerous armies as utter boredom, and, by extension, failure.

Indeed, the AI COULD amass large armies, but I was referring to my own armies, lel. Given how glacially slow you do anything, I'm not surprised the AI amasses far larger armies in your campaigns than in mine, such that hordes were my only concern, regarding extremely large and time-consuming battles. As an aside, one of the reasons why I trend towards blitzing things is precisely to stop the AI from getting huge.

Indeed, I did. And it was not at all difficult to "identify characters." The first unit in every stack was a general, iirc, and thus would gain exp when sent into battle. As soon as that general got a second star, boom, character with stats. Admittedly, it really sucked when a peasant unit just happened to be the general, but wutevs. In this manner, it was extremely easy to create, if you will, characters and thus rotate out the corrupt governors. It's worth noting that because I was too busy winning and not sitting around building more armies, I definitely had fewer armies and thus fewer characters to look through.

Such a system did incentivize such fiddling, since, as you noted, characters could build up corrupt traits which could suck. Thus, obviously, it's necessary to rid the corruption by just shifting governors. I don't know how you arrive at the argument that somehow I should be stupid and let my corrupt guys stay in charge; I suppose I would be incentivized to keep them in charge if I felt like nerfing my own economy.

I'm reading a few guides that are saying that in M1, a "little bit of income" is generated by various buildings when the player has no trade partners, which could then be increased by other buildings.... I wish said guides had concrete numbers, but it's definitely not the 0 income that you claim.

Definitely only 4ish levels of castle, but upgrades for the castles could be built. However, there was no limit to the building slots, so a province could get real fat, whereas there's a very limited number of building slots and worthwhile buildings to build since....Empire, I'd like to say.

Corruption wasn't mandatory like it is now; it was limited to governors before. In other words, it could be managed and removed before; it is a feature now that can't be removed. I suppose I was not clear what I meant.

I suppose the question then, is, what do you consider "early" "mid" "late" game? I'm used to playing OPMs or gimped sick men, so my definitions are less concrete turn counts and more phases of the game. "Early" defines my early expansion against 1 or 2 immediate neighbors, probably with an early rival (eg my Syracuse vs Rome or Colchis vs Armenia). "Mid" defines my ability to then take on the next big bad(s) (eg using the Syracuse example, then going after Carthage or Colchis vs a major Anatolian power, forgot who it was now), but this time able to rapidly build up my economy, at the same time. "Late" is when my economy is on a roll and I have multiple armies deathballing around taking all comers.

Early game, using my definition, is easier on the economy side, since I'm more focused on rapid advances and good generalship to gain huge advantages. At a few hundred cost for the early game economic buildings and few hundred cost for units, the early game has stayed the same across all the TWs (barring already developed settings like Empire and Napoleon). It's the midgame that I have to worry about balancing things, since I need to quickly grow my economy to be able to support multiple stacks for lategame, and I can't afford to pull one of my few frontline stacks from the front to deal with rebellion. Early game, because I'm working with such small territory, dealing with rebellion is easy; I actually just got through murdering 2 rebel spawns as Syracuse, hah.

tl;dr: lol, really? Accusing me of "not reading" while ignoring the refutation of the original points you made, which was "two interesting features" that made MTW "superior" and "just made early game more expensive..." Clearly, MTW has a BETTER economic curve than the latter TWs and same early game, rendering your complaint moot as clearly MTW hits that point FASTER while having the same early game. Trade income could nosedive, but wasn't wiped out (and depending on the buildings, could still be substantial, cuz hilariously fat percent increases). Corruption is for lazy nubs in MTW and felt far more in latter TWs (ie, no bite, definitely a bark, though)

PS: *sigh* I miss the good ole days when 2 general stars equated to 1 exp per unit in the army, when 1 exp gave comparatively huge stat boosts.

[United Muscovite Nations]

I haven't played the warhammers too much despite liking them, but are Bestigors OP for their price?

[Forsher]

Oh, lawdy, now he says that he's not arguing economics while initially following up with the following: "Frankly, I feel like the more recent Total Wars I've played (Attila's Charlemagne version and R2) have basically just made the early game more expensive, you ride out those problems and eventually you can actually afford stuff and then eventually you're just crazy wealthy."

It's fun to claim that I'm not reading something; it's even more fun to look at you and see that you're not reading YOUR OWN POST. Technically, I guess, you COULD not read while typing, lel

Or maybe things in different paragraphs are different ideas? Shocking concept, I know.

What you seem to be refusing to understand is that pointing out that MTW had two interesting features is not the same as arguing that "MTW had the best economic balance ever" which is what you understood it as. In the second paragraph, I suggest that the only contribution towards the ideal the thread desires in later games is simply to have made the early game cost more. Sometimes a spade is just a spade because sometimes people know how to use paragraphs.

LAWL, OK, so, I suppose the screenshots demonstrate several things. First off, the year is 1780+, a year I literally never get to because I always win Empire a solid 30-40 years earlier; I'll note that you're still not even close to winning by 1780, which is even more entertaining.

Why should I play aggressively if it's not interesting to do so? Nor do I ever play to conquer the entire world. When the options allow, I am looking for something akin to MTW's Glorious Achievements. When the options don't allow, I still prefer to play that way because, you know, MTW is the superior Total War.

This is, in fact, a totally uninteresting way of playing. Total War is much more fun when you can allow yourself the conceit that history might have been able to go this way.

Indeed, if I were to spend an additional 60-80 turns wasting time and building up my armies instead of actually doing anything productive, yes, I, too, could amass massive armies like that.

As such, I don't see my fewer armies as being "bad army building" and your more numerous armies as utter boredom, and, by extension, failure.

Perhaps you would find building large armies to be interesting, if you found building large armies to be interesting. Remarkably, tautologies are true when it comes to personal interest. No, wait, it's not remarkable at all... people play how they, not some random hubris, they find online wants them to play.

Indeed, the AI COULD amass large armies, but I was referring to my own armies, lel. Given how glacially slow you do anything, I'm not surprised the AI amasses far larger armies in your campaigns than in mine, such that hordes were my only concern, regarding extremely large and time-consuming battles. As an aside, one of the reasons why I trend towards blitzing things is precisely to stop the AI from getting huge.

How boring.

Indeed, I did. And it was not at all difficult to "identify characters." The first unit in every stack was a general, iirc, and thus would gain exp when sent into battle. As soon as that general got a second star, boom, character with stats. Admittedly, it really sucked when a peasant unit just happened to be the general, but wutevs. In this manner, it was extremely easy to create, if you will, characters and thus rotate out the corrupt governors. It's worth noting that because I was too busy winning and not sitting around building more armies, I definitely had fewer armies and thus fewer characters to look through.

No.

To identify characters as they accumulated negative traits required (a) knowing which traits did what (not so difficult but there were a lot of them), (b) clicking on them in the end of turn report, (c) being directed to a stack where governors could very easily be the sixteenth unit in it (because the general of a stack was exclusively the highest starred guy) and (d) then finding a suitable replacement (when everyone is getting the corruption traits). And, then, possibly it might have directed one to a province rather than a stack.

Alternatively, I think you could find governors via the provinces themselves... this, of course, gets more time consuming as empires expand. IT seems vastly more likely to me that you simply never realised that your economy was being eaten away by corruption.

Such a system did incentivize such fiddling, since, as you noted, characters could build up corrupt traits which could suck. Thus, obviously, it's necessary to rid the corruption by just shifting governors. I don't know how you arrive at the argument that somehow I should be stupid and let my corrupt guys stay in charge; I suppose I would be incentivized to keep them in charge if I felt like nerfing my own economy.

You have not presented a realistic account. Hell, if you're aggressive as you claim to be, I wonder if you even ever let the game get to a point where it's hundreds of corrupt characters a turn.

I'm reading a few guides that are saying that in M1, a "little bit of income" is generated by various buildings when the player has no trade partners, which could then be increased by other buildings.... I wish said guides had concrete numbers, but it's definitely not the 0 income that you claim.

So, effectively 0?

Definitely only 4ish levels of castle, but upgrades for the castles could be built. However, there was no limit to the building slots, so a province could get real fat, whereas there's a very limited number of building slots and worthwhile buildings to build since....Empire, I'd like to say.

No, there were six. It seems mostly the subsidiary buildings only had about 4ish versions.

Corruption wasn't mandatory like it is now; it was limited to governors before. In other words, it could be managed and removed before; it is a feature now that can't be removed. I suppose I was not clear what I meant.

Very ishly.

I suppose the question then, is, what do you consider "early" "mid" "late" game? I'm used to playing OPMs or gimped sick men, so my definitions are less concrete turn counts and more phases of the game. "Early" defines my early expansion against 1 or 2 immediate neighbors, probably with an early rival (eg my Syracuse vs Rome or Colchis vs Armenia). "Mid" defines my ability to then take on the next big bad(s) (eg using the Syracuse example, then going after Carthage or Colchis vs a major Anatolian power, forgot who it was now), but this time able to rapidly build up my economy, at the same time. "Late" is when my economy is on a roll and I have multiple armies deathballing around taking all comers.

Early is when you're trying to expand. Mid is when you're the largest faction in your immediate area. Late is when you're bored.

Early game, using my definition, is easier on the economy side, since I'm more focused on rapid advances and good generalship to gain huge advantages. At a few hundred cost for the early game economic buildings and few hundred cost for units, the early game has stayed the same across all the TWs (barring already developed settings like Empire and Napoleon). It's the midgame that I have to worry about balancing things, since I need to quickly grow my economy to be able to support multiple stacks for lategame, and I can't afford to pull one of my few frontline stacks from the front to deal with rebellion. Early game, because I'm working with such small territory, dealing with rebellion is easy; I actually just got through murdering 2 rebel spawns as Syracuse, hah.

As has been established, we play at different rates.

tl;dr: lol, really? Accusing me of "not reading" while ignoring the refutation of the original points you made, which was "two interesting features" that made MTW "superior"

Not even remotely close.

Two interesting features of the original (and superior) MTW.

It's in brackets. That makes it a parenthetical remark. That means if I remove it, the meaning I wish to convey is exactly the same. Leaving:

Two interesting features of the original MTW.

Hmm... maybe that says literally only that. Not really anything else for it to say. Certainly no claim that these make MTW superior. Certainly no claim that these features fixed late game economies. Simply that these are interesting features.

and "just made early game more expensive..." Clearly, MTW has a BETTER economic curve than the latter TWs and same early game, rendering your complaint moot as clearly MTW hits that point FASTER while having the same early game. Trade income could nosedive, but wasn't wiped out (and depending on the buildings, could still be substantial, cuz hilariously fat percent increases). Corruption is for lazy nubs in MTW and felt far more in latter TWs (ie, no bite, definitely a bark, though)

In the second paragraph I suggest that the "recent" games have for economic balance simply made the early game more expensive. Things are pretty crazy cheap in MTW and agents are cheap (and using them is free). Consider watch towers and border forts... if later games have such functions in them, they are not early game costed items and they are not ubiquitous.

You seem to have a very... partial recollection of MTW. It is inhibiting your ability to contribute to this conversation.

[Great Houses of Xie]

It would be mere ideology or tautologies if it wasn't clear that blitzing remains superior to being hilariously slow. And indeed, the paragraphs were separate issues, which was why they were dealt with in turn, admittedly starting from the last moving up.

Issues that you have identified that I also noted which help further the idea that blitzing is factually better, as opposed to personally:

1. Increased number of characters

Indeed, I pointed out that because I win so fast, my list of characters is far smaller than the "hundreds" that you claim, in all likelihood truthfully so. As such, I then also pointed out, and you affirmed, that it's far easier to manage said list, which leads into 2.

2. Increased amount of corruption

More characters, and more time spent accumulating traits, leads to more difficulty in managing corruption. Again, you affirmed this. And, despite your thinking that I was not aware of corruption, again, I was easily able to roll through the list of characters and quickly ascertain who needed to be changed out or not, partly because of the paucity of characters, relatively speaking, and paucity of traits. Never mind that the "everyone is getting corruption traits" is a wildly overblown statement.

3. Larger armies

Needless to say, larger armies is a lot more upkeep

Hubris? I suppose if you consider your economy getting wrecked by utter mismanagement, which includes corruption and upkeep, as interesting and fun, by all means, continue.

And, indeed, you consider governors getting corruption interesting (and, by extension, mismanagement is interesting; as an aside, there's another word for mismanagement), a game mechanic that I've pointed out is in later TWs, thus negating the claim that M1 is somehow more interesting because of it.

Furthermore, f you argue that rather than the 0 that you originally claimed for trading with yourself, the latter TWs also reduce the amount of insider trading to effectively 0. Whereby, once again, negating your claim that M1 is more interesting, since the latter TWs also have the same mechanic.

As for there being 6 levels of castle, whoops, my mistake; I never got those, lol, as there were far more important buildings to first be built. To get an optimized economic province, it was something on the order of a solid 50 turns of construction? Naturally, due to budget constraints, not every province I'd owned from the beginning could be built up as desired *shrug*.

As for the attempting to use your definition of early game with the notion that early game is "more expensive", I'll have to think on that one, considering I'll have to upend my own sense of early game understanding to try and determine whether or not your consideration of early game is more expensive or not. Given that your early game matches my understanding of midgame, in a rough sort of way, and my understanding is that the midgame got more expensive, I strongly believe that I'm inclined to agree.

[Forsher]

It would be mere ideology or tautologies if it wasn't clear that blitzing remains superior to being hilariously slow. And indeed, the paragraphs were separate issues, which was why they were dealt with in turn, admittedly starting from the last moving up.

Issues that you have identified that I also noted which help further the idea that blitzing is factually better, as opposed to personally:

"If we define enjoyment by the values I, the Great Houses of Xie, highly aggressive play dominates any other."

I might as well identify features of what I find interesting as we go along here and, actually this time, identify why I like MTW the most of the ones I've played (both Medievals, both Romes, Empire, Attila).

1. Increased number of characters

Indeed, I pointed out that because I win so fast, my list of characters is far smaller than the "hundreds" that you claim, in all likelihood truthfully so. As such, I then also pointed out, and you affirmed, that it's far easier to manage said list, which leads into 2.

Unfortunately, reduced characters are boring.

The problem with MTW's vast list of characters is also entirely avoided with the superior user features of later games, e.g. if there was a list of only governors and appointees (e.g. Lord Treasurer or whatever the actual title was, because sometimes those characters were not also governors) as well as a general character list then MTW would not have the issues we've been discussing.

Furthermore, the complete screwing up of the character ages in MTW 2 makes the base game basically unplayable for me.

2. Increased amount of corruption

More characters, and more time spent accumulating traits, leads to more difficulty in managing corruption. Again, you affirmed this. And, despite your thinking that I was not aware of corruption, again, I was easily able to roll through the list of characters and quickly ascertain who needed to be changed out or not, partly because of the paucity of characters, relatively speaking, and paucity of traits. Never mind that the "everyone is getting corruption traits" is a wildly overblown statement.

It's really not wildly overblown and really isn't at all different to how Rome 2 does things, except instead of putting corruption into terms which can be controlled somewhat by the player it hides it within a fairly un-manipulatable game mechanic. That's... boring. Corruption, in some sense, then is just another thing stripped out and streamlined in the game.

3. Larger armies

Needless to say, larger armies is a lot more upkeep

Naturally.

Hubris? I suppose if you consider your economy getting wrecked by utter mismanagement, which includes corruption and upkeep, as interesting and fun, by all means, continue.

\

I started from this statement:

Game gets harder as you get larger and the economy fluctuates instead of just accumulating money

which we might compare with your earlier remark:

To be fair, playing as ANY of the Romes is freaking easy, lol, cuz they're so big and they start with already substantial armies/economies. [...] but by then I'd already gotten so huge that it's too late for them to stop me and my doomstacks/economy

Which is to say, it's more fun than the alternative.

Now, I'm really bad at personally commanding battles... I've been saying that since literally page one (seriously, it' like the tenth post in this thread)... so that's the main reason why I have large armies, but in MTW I'd get these massive conflicts between me and this other faction (whomever that would actually be... it varied between, iirc, about three different factions... Empire, as everyone says, is always the Marathas and I haven't played enough campaigns of the other games to know if they share Empire's one faction inevitability). That's quite interesting. And sure, if MTW was better I'd rarely win those conflicts (due to persistent negative incomes and sometimes large negative treasuries) but with the way it works you can pretend that you're borrowing from your nobles. And I hardly ever suffer civil wars (in fact, I've only had them in the original MTW... usually in a situation following a single battle that was a surprise loss)... I keep their faith in me.

Basically, what I'm saying here is that if they made the early expansion in Total War much more reliant on extraordinary tactical victories (rather than strategic decision making) I'd be really awful at the games. I'm under no illusions, I am not a fantastic player. But if being better makes the game more boring... more inevitable and less variable... then why would I want to be?

Notice also that MTW is more abstract in what I don't quite care about as much (the military side) but because of that is less abstract in other facets of the game. Imagine how great a Total War game would be where you had MTW style and Rome 2 style civil war management. You keep the generals on side and you keep the families on side... and deterioations in one provide deterioations in the other fairly directly... You'd even just have two types of "general"... generals like it has and "captains" who'd be individual unit characters, who could command battles, gain character traits and all that but who couldn't govern, who couldn't train more units etc. etc.

And, indeed, you consider governors getting corruption interesting (and, by extension, mismanagement is interesting; as an aside, there's another word for mismanagement), a game mechanic that I've pointed out is in later TWs, thus negating the claim that M1 is somehow more interesting because of it.

They don't get it the same way. But maybe it's just because getting rid of character level corruption is so much easier in the later games you/I don't notice the interesting facets of it.

Furthermore, f you argue that rather than the 0 that you originally claimed for trading with yourself, the latter TWs also reduce the amount of insider trading to effectively 0. Whereby, once again, negating your claim that M1 is more interesting, since the latter TWs also have the same mechanic.

MTW is more interesting, but the trade mechanics isn't that something that makes it more interesting. The most interesting trade in total wars come from Empire and Med 2 for obvious reasons. All the latter games also have nice visuals for trade and do port blockades more interestingly. I honestly cannot recall if internal trade zeroes in the later games. I have never enjoyed them or played them as much as I played MTW. It seems unlikely they'll fix that.

However, the problem you have is that once again you appear to believe features which I say are absolutely interesting are being turned into relative points. They were not.

As for there being 6 levels of castle, whoops, my mistake; I never got those, lol, as there were far more important buildings to first be built. To get an optimized economic province, it was something on the order of a solid 50 turns of construction? Naturally, due to budget constraints, not every province I'd owned from the beginning could be built up as desired *shrug*.

No idea. But you accept the point that building ran deep in MTW and it's been getting progressively shallower?

As for the attempting to use your definition of early game with the notion that early game is "more expensive", I'll have to think on that one, considering I'll have to upend my own sense of early game understanding to try and determine whether or not your consideration of early game is more expensive or not. Given that your early game matches my understanding of midgame, in a rough sort of way, and my understanding is that the midgame got more expensive, I strongly believe that I'm inclined to agree.

I was thinking about this in the shower... I think the Total War games are meant to be played slower than you play them and faster than I play them, but the designers haven't managed to make the game such that if you play it full bore (as you seem to) you reach their intended pacing.

Also, looking back at the definitions, I would say that I actually try to play with four "games"... just before the early game is typically a "momentary" game no more than five turns long with a single aggressive objective in mind (e.g. MTW Danes, going after the rest of Nordic Scandinavia) after which I'd ideally calm down a bit.*

*Usually I'd play to take Saxony, build my navy and then get some North African rebellion provinces or, ideally, ones in the Levant. This is very opportunistic and much more my speed than having to expand around this regional area.

[NeuPolska]

Playing M2TW Stainless Steel, muting the regular music and playing the Kingdom of Heaven soundtrack is next level immersion. I don’t mute anything besides music, just lower the master volume so the soundtrack is loudest.

[Seraven]

So sad

This thread is empty.

Anyway, ROTK is coming but that's it.

[Impaled Nazarene]

Why did they break autoresolve in Rome 2 onwards. I can have 1.5x bigger army, be on the defensive, not facing any cavalry, mega units or super mercenaries and still lose autoresolve.

[The Two Jerseys]

Why did they break autoresolve in Rome 2 onwards. I can have 1.5x bigger army, be on the defensive, not facing any cavalry, mega units or super mercenaries and still lose autoresolve.

Autoresolve is an idiot. If I can rout a single militia regiment using artillery fire long before they get within musket range, there's no reason why my army should be suffering casualties if I autoresolve the battle.

[Impaled Nazarene]

Why did they break autoresolve in Rome 2 onwards. I can have 1.5x bigger army, be on the defensive, not facing any cavalry, mega units or super mercenaries and still lose autoresolve.

Autoresolve is an idiot. If I can rout a single militia regiment using artillery fire long before they get within musket range, there's no reason why my army should be suffering casualties if I autoresolve the battle.

and most of your units lose a few men too which is even more ridiculous. But I'd take Empire's and shogun's autoresolve over Rome 2's

[The Two Jerseys]

Autoresolve is an idiot. If I can rout a single militia regiment using artillery fire long before they get within musket range, there's no reason why my army should be suffering casualties if I autoresolve the battle.

and most of your units lose a few men too which is even more rediculous. But I'd take Empire's and shogun's autoresolve over Rome 2's

Even more ridiculous: units that weren't even engaged getting credit for killing enemies.

[Impaled Nazarene]

Ok yeah Rome 2 is absolute bullshit. my army of 1400 roman infantry plus 400 reinforcements is repeatedly demolished by these 1000 celtic infantry wiping out 2/3rds of my army and losing less than 300 men. I've played this battle 3 times now and once one unit routes the whole army routes like armed citizenry in empire

[Post War America]

I've never really had a problem with Rome II's AI. Though I must admit I didn't get it until well after release.

[The Huskar Social Union]

I've never really had a problem with Rome II's AI. Though I must admit I didn't get it until well after release.

At release it was very stupid, i didnt have anywhere near as many problems as some people did but it was not great.

You can find videos on youtube of enemy armies charging towards the players lines then falling back at the last second and kind of just running around in circles. Watching that was fucking bizzare.


Auto resolve battles in general can be a pain in the ass, in the warhammer games peoples artillery seem to be destroyed constantly in auto resolves but the rest of the army barely takes any losses.

[Impaled Nazarene]

I've never really had a problem with Rome II's AI. Though I must admit I didn't get it until well after release.

At release it was very stupid, i didnt have anywhere near as many problems as some people did but it was not great.

You can find videos on youtube of enemy armies charging towards the players lines then falling back at the last second and kind of just running around in circles. Watching that was fucking bizzare.


Auto resolve battles in general can be a pain in the ass, in the warhammer games peoples artillery seem to be destroyed constantly in auto resolves but the rest of the army barely takes any losses.

The ai on the map used to seem like they had extra move points. You'd take a province, then their army runs around your army's range and then take the province you just took if you chased them and if you didn't they'd take the province you just came from. By the time you chase them down its a dozen turns later. The ai still does this but not as bullshit, instead they just slip through your engagement radius.

Autoresolve however? Fuck don't even bother if there's an army in the settlement. The ai gets to add another 500-1000 troops to their army. best hope you like fighting offensive sieges or diverting a second army to win an auto resolve at 68%. Warhammer improved sieges iirc in that the AI no longer gets a bigger doomstack. Autoresolve was much more tolerable imo but i haven't played much and never fight battles because fucking hell total war insists on making their games run like shit on minimal graphics. Of course to paraphrase the immortal words of Total War God Xie: Never Autoresolve, always fight battles. To which I say: Fuck loading times.

I have a 4 year old gaming laptop and before shitvidia decided to roll out good updates i couldn't even play Attila. The fucking campaign map lagged.
Basically this series is shit and the problems make Empire look great. That being said: when things work and the AI doesn't ruin your day Post Shogun 2 Total War is the most fun in the series.

[The Huskar Social Union]

At release it was very stupid, i didnt have anywhere near as many problems as some people did but it was not great.

You can find videos on youtube of enemy armies charging towards the players lines then falling back at the last second and kind of just running around in circles. Watching that was fucking bizzare.


Auto resolve battles in general can be a pain in the ass, in the warhammer games peoples artillery seem to be destroyed constantly in auto resolves but the rest of the army barely takes any losses.

The ai on the map used to seem like they had extra move points. You'd take a province, then their army runs around your army's range and then take the province you just took if you chased them and if you didn't they'd take the province you just came from. By the time you chase them down its a dozen turns later. The ai still does this but not as bullshit, instead they just slip through your engagement radius.

Autoresolve however? Fuck don't even bother if there's an army in the settlement. The ai gets to add another 500-1000 troops to their army. best hope you like fighting offensive sieges or diverting a second army to win an auto resolve at 68%. Warhammer improved sieges iirc in that the AI no longer gets a bigger doomstack. Autoresolve was much more tolerable imo but i haven't played much and never fight battles because fucking hell total war insists on making their games run like shit on minimal graphics. Of course to paraphrase the immortal words of Total War God Xie: Never Autoresolve, always fight battles. To which I say: Fuck loading times.

I have a 4 year old gaming laptop and before shitvidia decided to roll out good updates i couldn't even play Attila. The fucking campaign map lagged.
Basically this series is shit and the problems make Empire look great. That being said: when things work and the AI doesn't ruin your day Post Shogun 2 Total War is the most fun in the series.

The garrison size depends on the settlement in all their games i believe but the settlement battles are not too bad. Garrisons will only give you some serious trouble in warhammer total war (1 and 2) if its a heavily built up capital as it can often have a full stack of troops guarding it and at the later levels they can get heroes too, so a melee hero or a spell caster depending on the race.

I often fight my own defensive settlement battles on lower level settlements (though its not actually in the settlement but outside it in warhammer) just to try and kill as many enemies as can and sometimes you can clutch a win against large armies depending on your race. Like High elves vs skaven a couple of times ive won with a smaller high elven army simply because they are often better unit per unit than the skaven who use numbers and such.

[Forsher]

Rome II autoresolve is probably much like autoresolve in some of the earlier series and depends on what exactly is in the armies. I say this because I had absolutely no problems with it when I was playing as Rome but in my abandoned Carthage game (whichever specific abandoned one it was) I do remember losing battles I thought I'd win. Obviously fairly different unit compositions.

I actually quite like its interface, really. Bunch of different options and it also gives a "prediction accuracy" measure.

[The Vekta-Helghast Empire]

I always used to play Rome II with mods that’d buff the AI, giving them more armies and economic buffs - but it’s finally not me in the ass in my latest Macedonia game. I’d conquered all of Greece and pushed up to Crimea, and even attempted an invasion of Anatolia. But I suffered a nasty defeat against the Anatolians when my 3,500 was engaged by over 10,000 and nearly destroyed. I ended up garrisoning the strait on the Anatolian side with 2,500 men and they beat the Anatolians back the first time, killing 7,000ish, but then another 12,000 arrived and my diminished army was destroyed. Luckily my armies from Crimea arrived in Bulgaria before the Anatolians could push, but I’ve been left significantly weakened both financially and militarily - and I’m barely keeping the Anatolians at bay.

[Impaled Nazarene]

The best total war moments always come from a garrison with no chance of winning not only bleeding the enemy dry, not only killing their general, but also winning.

Libyan hoplites are thankfully shit in battle.

[Impaled Nazarene]

We really should keep this thread somewhat running so as to avoid semi-gravedigs like this.
For starters though I am somewhat hyped for 3k as it is so different from the rest of total war that the letdowns might not be as crushing unlike the recent games.

Also what are the best mods for empire. I need a deeper game less boring game but I do not want one that is just going to make the AI ridiculously hard for no reason.

[The Huskar Social Union]

We really should keep this thread somewhat running so as to avoid semi-gravedigs like this.
For starters though I am somewhat hyped for 3k as it is so different from the rest of total war that the letdowns might not be as crushing unlike the recent games.

Also what are the best mods for empire. I need a deeper game less boring game but I do not want one that is just going to make the AI ridiculously hard for no reason.

Im looking forward to it, but the gameplay stuff loooked a bit rough, especially the AI so im glad they delayed when they did.


Im not too familiar with empire mods myself sorry.

[NeuPolska]

We really should keep this thread somewhat running so as to avoid semi-gravedigs like this.
For starters though I am somewhat hyped for 3k as it is so different from the rest of total war that the letdowns might not be as crushing unlike the recent games.

Also what are the best mods for empire. I need a deeper game less boring game but I do not want one that is just going to make the AI ridiculously hard for no reason.

Darthmod is pretty much it

The blood and smoke ones aren’t bad, General Andy’s musket sounds is a personal favorite, and orange crush is good for making the marathas not ruin the game

[Impaled Nazarene]

We really should keep this thread somewhat running so as to avoid semi-gravedigs like this.
For starters though I am somewhat hyped for 3k as it is so different from the rest of total war that the letdowns might not be as crushing unlike the recent games.

Also what are the best mods for empire. I need a deeper game less boring game but I do not want one that is just going to make the AI ridiculously hard for no reason.

Darthmod is pretty much it

The blood and smoke ones aren’t bad, General Andy’s musket sounds is a personal favorite, and orange crush is good for making the marathas not ruin the game

Ugh, but Darth Mod sucks. It's too edgy.

[Andsed]

Nice to see we have a total war thread. I think my favorite of the total war games is Rome 1. I mean I like all of these new games but Rome 1 will always have a special place in my heart as it was the first Total war game I played.

[Impaled Nazarene]

Nice to see we have a total war thread. I think my favorite of the total war games is Rome 1. I mean I like all of these new games but Rome 1 will always have a special place in my heart as it was the first Total war game I played.

Rome is awesome. My first was empire but I hate how shallow it feels and it only gets worse with time.