I may need to drop this down to normal difficulty, as the Saxons I feel I can’t keep up with the ai bonus to economy and combat. The varinians just sacked all 3 of my towns by maintaining 3 full stacks off of 2 towns. I can barely support 2. In Rome you could overcome this with superior troops but most of the Saxons early units are garbage.
I struggled a ton with the Saxons early.
I think Saxons are better served going into Galia and plundering Roman territory rather than going into England to replicate history. It’s very difficult - the native factions, initial roman stacks, and then your German/Viking allies will come in and burn down the nice cities you were going to take.
It just seems a real struggle to get 3 regions to own an entire province.
They don’t even have crossbowmen, which all the other barbarians seem to have. Crossbowmen shoot in arcs so you don’t even need to pay attention to their position.
Celts culture pack.
The Celts have a few tricks up their sleeves when it comes to battle, such as Guerrilla Deployment for every unit (yes, EVERY unit) in the army, allowing them to deploy deeper into the battlefield catching their enemies by surprise.
Alongside this, each faction has a set of unique units with their own distinct playstyles. Opt for the tactical approach of The Ebdanians, using “The Righdamhna’s” powerful ribbed spear to kill from cover, or try the more up-close-and-personal approach of The Picts, using the super cool “Black Blades” to slice your way through the frontlines.
And finally, the blood pack.
Blood & Burning comprises:
• Gory new Campaign Map combat anims with blood-spatter, arm severance and decapitations.
• Ultraviolent Battlefield combat animations including limb-severance, decapitation and blood spurts.
• Soldiers in armies suffering from disease will vomit when idle on the battlefield.
• New burning and burn-to-death animations for both soldiers and civilians.
• New gore decals in battles depicting vomit, blood and bodily organs.
• New, blood-soaked versions of key animated event messages.
Sounds like the best $3 you can spend!
Its amazing how many people have clamored for this over at the official forums. People really are bloodthirsty it seems.
The games get sanitized for release. Something to do with avoiding an M rating. Blood dlc just restores them to their bloody selves.
Sure, but its not like its something that we missed in the first Rome, Shogun or Medieval games? I just find it weird people are so up in arms about getting blood and vomit in their games.
People are weird fucks indeed. I do find the bloody versions better and worth a buck. On the other hand, I haven’t bought Attila yet because I never finished neither Shogun2 campaign, nor Rome2’s. I’ve set myself the goal of finishing my Rome2 grand campaign at least before I ever buy another Total War.
Ebdanians, Caledonians and Picts coming in Celts Culture Pack.
Every unit in the Celtic roster has the Guerrilla Deployment trait, enabling them to deploy almost anywhere on the battlefield – even behind enemy lines.
The Celts are a raiding, looting and sacking based culture type. Each faction benefits from its own unique traits, but all share Celtic cultural traits that vastly increase their income from these activities. An all-new Celtic roster is available for recruitment, alongside new units unique to each faction.
Also included are new objectives, skills, tier-5 buildings, ancillaries and a new narrative event-chain.
They’re already here! The Celts arrived last month and they’re pretty good. The narrative event chains are kind of cool, sort of a mini-Kings of Dragon Pass situation. The one I got had you sending a hero off on a quest. You would periodically make decisions for the hero’s challenge. When he came back as a powerful leader character, his stats and attributes were determined by your choices.
-Tom
Jeez. I don’t know how I got the date wrong on this. I even reported it earlier a few posts back. D’oh!
Assembly (dev) kit released. Also the Workshop is now open for modders.
The Last Roman Campaign released.
- Mediterranean campaign map
- New ‘Expedition’ faction with new gameplay features
- Ostrogoths, Vandals, Franks and the Visigoths
Free for everyone on the base game: the Suebi playable faction, a new historical battle (The Battle of Dara) and the latest game patch.
Belisarius gets his due! Thanks for posting, may have to pick this up.
Free weekend on Steam, ending June 28, for all Total War games, including this one…
hopefully i’ll carve out a few hours for the new campaign this weekend…
This has been sitting in my backlog since release and I suddenly got the urge to play. Are there any essential mods I should be installing?
This is probably my favorite TW game since Medieval 2, but i don’t seem to have time to write about it. Regardless of that the combination of speculative and thoughtful historically based art make it possibly not only a really decent Total War game but perhaps an important contribution to the age old dialog as to why Rome fell. It’s also (I think) the TW game where they really let the nerds run wild. Whenever i scroll to look at the Ghazanids and the Lakhmids and see Yathrib in ruins at the beginning of the campaign, i get a bit of the shivers.
I haven’t used any mods for it though. It seems pretty well balanced other than high end unit availability. It also never runs out of turn by default either, smartly.