I played all TW games up through Empire. It was one of those series of games that I kept buying because on paper it seemed like I should like it, but every time I stopped playing because I thought the battles got too tedious. Has any of the TW games since then done anything that may mitigate that perceived weakness on my part?
What got tedious? Which Total War game did you like best, if any?
I’ve played all from Rome to, well, Rome 2. Haven’t played Attila yet, mostly due to time. But depending on what you liked, what worked and didn’t work, I might be able to give you an answer.
Personally my favorite is Napoleon, but that’s mostly an era thing, as well as it having some pretty good short campaigns.
Not really. If you think the tactical battles are tedious, then I’d say the series probably isn’t for you.
I usually would enjoy the early part of my first campaign, but it seemed like the battles would play out similarly because I could use the same tactics. That doesn’t mean I’d always win if the enemy had superior troops. Also the AI couldn’t figure out how to attack a walled target, so those were kind of anticlimactic if I had at least a reasonable defending force.
Part of the problem is my fault because I rarely auto resolved unless I had a vastly superior army, so I played out a lot of battles. How often do you guys autoresolve to help keep it fresh?
My guess is that you’re probably right, but I figured I’d ask.
All of them have offered a solution for the tactical battles, auto-resolve. I fight them early in the campaign, auto more later when I have superior troops and numbers.
I don’t autoresolve unless it’s showing overwhelming odds AND I don’t care that army being a little bit low on numbers (an army on defense that can restock relatively quickly, for example)
Otherwise, some battles are not about winning, but about winning with minimal loses, so I can still win the next 5 battles in a row :P
I play on the hardest (or second hardest, can’t remember) setting with realistic camera on, so even small battles can get very tense…
Think it just comes down to whether you enjoy the tactical battles, often I do, and I like them more in some of their games than others. For example, love Shogun 2 and MTW2, really not much of a fan of Rome 2, don’t like the units, don’t like how it plays out as a rugby scrum, not a fan.
I’m much the same. I won’t consider autoresolve with less than 4:1 odds in my favor. To me the draw of Total War is the tactical battles, the campaigns are an excuse to generate an endless series of varied terrain and unit mixes.
Honestly rob, if that is the case I wouldn’t reccomend playing the campaigns if I were you. Autoresolve skips the best part of the game IMO, as well as generally making the strategy layer harder due to higher losses. Meaning that the diplomatic AI being relatively pointless since it won’t negotiate becomes a bigger deal.
But individual skirmishes and historical battles could be what you want from a Total War. Preset maps with more variety than you may find on a typical campaign battle.
If all you do is play the strategic portion of the game, then I’d advise you to get thee hence to a Paradox Clausewitz engine title. While the TW series has a serviceable strategic framework, it’s not really all that good on its own. If you’re not here for the tactical battles, then you’re not playing the correct game.
I do not own this latest Total War game, but I agree with this unless Attila is somehow fundamentally different. The Total War series has had minimal improvement since the original TW:Rome. The graphics get prettier and they sometimes find a time period/art style/map (Shogun II) that is more appealing than others but the game is essentially the same. I know it is a winning formula but I liken the TW series to the King’s Bounty series as being the same game in a new box. When you go from EU3 to EU4, you see many new core aspects of the game. When you go from Civ IV to Civ V, you see many new core aspects of the game. I simply fail to see the same innovation in the TW series. I get far too much of the “been here, done that” feeling from the TW series.
Creative Assembly’s quality control has gotten pretty horrible over the years as well. Empire was terrible on release with some customers not being able to run the game for months after release. I encountered crash problems from Shogun II that finally made me shelve the game for good. Rome II was also a disaster.
Rome II was straight-up terrible at launch. Crash issues, engine glitches, AI problems, and just plain broken. It took them a year to straighten it out, but I have no hesitation in suggesting Rome II now to anyone interested in the game.
Attila is fairly solid as well from a technical perspective, but the turn processing still takes too long in the grand campaign. For whatever reason, they didn’t bring over that improvement from Rome II’s patched form.
Thanks for the advice guys. I won’t feel tempted by Attila then. I’ve had Shogun 2 sitting in the library for a long time now and haven’t cracked it open. For some reason I always have extra trouble getting into Asian settings - not sure why. Maybe one day I’ll at least give it a go. Medieval TW was probably my favorite setting.
Actually, do any one the new TW games have campaigns where your empire tends to stay relatively small? I could probably go for something like that - less scope with less frequent battles, especially if there are more varied enemies. I also enjoy starting small.
The Peninsular Campaign from Napoleon? There are also Italian, and Egyptian campaigns for the base game that are much smaller, probably in the 10 hour range to complete each.
Doesn’t Rome 2 have some smaller campaigns, and isn’t Kingdoms for Medieval 2 a smaller campaign map?
Humble Bundle is Total War and they’ll throw in an Atilla 66% off coupon if you go $7.42 or higher. I just picked up RomeII and Empire since I hadn’t got them yet, as well as others I may already own. They include a map of Total Warhammer, but I didn’t see it in my redeem page. Maybe it isn’t released yet.
I won’t try and convince the skeptical but i really do love Attila and the DLC it has added. The Kindoms of Sand sound pretty damn boring but in fact the factions are pretty interesting historically and from a gameplay situation. I think CA always does a good job at making sense of how geography channels the sociopolitical decisions, and making factions reflect their historic situation. Attila is by far the best and most successful attempt at that. But what Attila adds even moreso compared to all other CA games is several significantly different “phases” of the Grand Campaign.
I’ve been playing this again lately and I do think it is the first time in a long time they’ve made a Total War game that has a decent strategic layer. I’ve gone back to my Byzantine game from months ago and have been reminded at how much I enjoy it. I had to commit most of my armies to the east for my war with the Sassanids(and their many many puppets) which left one army to defend against the Hun threat. That threat is pretty unique to Attila as I always know they are out there, but I’m never quite sure where they’ll show up, so positioning my single defensive army to respond to that thread is very difficult. What you are left with is a constant dread of what will come out of that darkness to the north.
I ultimately puppeted the Sassanids and was able to free up half my armies to go back west, but not before I had a half dozen cities burned to the ground along my various borders. Recovering from that took some time and I felt vulnerable throughout. However, now I’ve had probably the longest streak of diplomatic quiet I’ve ever seen in a TW game. Even the Huns were willing to make peace for a paltry 6000 gold. This has allowed me time to fully recover and make huge upgrades to my infrastructure. They’ve gotten the building system to the point(they seem to have tweaked this a lot in patches since release) where it isn’t horribly boring, but I also know that my victory is pretty inevitable at this point. Peace means I can abuse the 5% interest I get on my treasury and I’m sure I’ll be done with this game soon. However, getting through that major war felt like the kind of large scale struggle you don’t normally get in a TW game and really did make me feel like an empire under siege.
I’ll probably jump into a game as one of the Northern European tribes I haven’t tried yet next, which will be a refreshing change. I also still haven’t tried playing as the Western Romans which will amp that under siege mentality up considerably.
I found you can’t paint the map because of the corruption penalty so you can’t ever completely dispatch the threat of invasion. In my Ostrogoth game ahistorically and against the victory conditions I settled in Spain instead of Italy to avoid the damn Huns. It was great fun and really by the skin of my teeth for a good half of the game. Finally i started amassing enough armies to push out, but by the time i faced down the Huns they had nuked virtually all of Europe; only a handful of nations were left sheltering on the Atlantic coasts. I then started moving into barren Italy and resettling it. But with the Huns finally cornered and destroyed all the other nations started settling back eastward, growing in power and starting to challenge me. But also the increased corruption from owning both Italy, western North Africa and Spain meant that ever new city i captured actually reduced my income past a certain point, so even though it’s very unlikely i will lose i still have to ‘try’ to win. Of course this is a result of my previous non-optimal decisions.
In many ways these sorts of non-optimal decisions in strategy games are kind of that intersection between strategy and “fun”, aren’t they? Perfect play, playing the numbers, is less enjoyable than playing for sport. I think that’s why people enjoy Paradox games.
If I never played a Total War is it worth going straight to Attila or are the other ones worth getting too?
Grab the humble bundle. That gets you Rome 2 with a few of the DLC for cheap. If you like it, then you can grab Attila with the coupon.
This is why I think the Eastern Roman Empire bonus that gives them the 5% interest on their treasury and trade boost is very powerful. My corruption greater than 60% but I have a huge amount of income coming from sources that don’t suffer correction penalties. It may actually be possible to paint the map.