never experienced the launch , although , i've started playing when the emperor edition came out , it was great! had much fun roughly 300hrs of gameplay so far.
@Dragon Dimosthenis Medieval 2 is easy, the AI is retarded so the best battle tactics are horse Archer spam, or using spearmen to hold the line while all your combined General's Bodyguard to smash the massed pinned enemy in the rear virtually all the time causing a mass rout. (Battles only become difficult late game when enemy has high moraled infantry and gunpowder....) Combine that with conquest of major cities earning tons of loot if you sack them, and the enemy half the time using captains instead of generals to lead big armies as long as you have a semi aggressive playstyle the game is a cakewalk compared to other total war games even on /vh/vh difficulty...
The most difficult/interesting/fun campaign I’ve had in TW was playing as Julia in Rome TW2 with a world history atlas next to me showing each of the Roman provinces and the year they were captured. I placed the following rule on myself: Expand the Roman Republic (then Empire) 100% historically accurate. In other words, I had to capture each of the provinces in the correct order. The main challenge with this is both the diplomatic challenges, as a lot of factions won’t stop a war with you midway through it, but also the fact that you can’t use your momentum. For example, I needed to capture Epirus from the Macedonians (Epirus was wiped out), but had to stop the war immediately after because Macedonia proper would not be conquered until some years later. Macedon didn’t like this and refused to make peace, so I had to defend my holdings there while also trying to capture other areas in Spain, Africa, etc. It was quite fun and yes I did eventually do it!
I am also interested in recreating the conquests in historical order. I have found that if you take note of the different bonus objectives, it does push you in that direction anyway. You need to conquer a settlement in both Greece and Macedonia before conquering northern Italy for example. Then territory in Gaul, Spain, Africa and Mauritania I think. This results in a fragmented empire at first, but eventually you will be able to link all these territories up. I'm committed to a Rome 2 Campaign as the Cornelia right now, and my goal is to follow every bonus objective and see how it turns out.
@@TheDirtysouthfan Pikes aren't bugged to shit. Unlike most units, pikes in Medieval 2 vanilla have a secondary weapon, this means that once the enemy gets close, they will swap to the secondary weapon. Once that secondary weapon is removed, pikemen will keep using their pikes even if the enemy gets close. Not a bug, just the way the unit is set up.
Never liked Total War difficulty mechanics - especially dealing with "loyalty" and "morale" scaling. They could do more with their AI instead of cheap shortcuts.
Fully agree on that. I'd rather have to deal with a lot of micro management that is a must to do in battle, rather than wasting my time managing taxes, provinces and their happyness. I like total war for the great battles, but the economy is really painfull to manage.
Just Thunderbolt total war is also about managing kingdoms and empires. The actual fighting is only half the battle, literally, as a tactician needs to raise an army, equip it and field it. Of course you could always just automanage settlements, play custom and historical battles instead of the campaigns. Or just play multiplayer.
@@kyleweichert1553 Agree on the equipping and creating the army, that's a thing that adds to the game;but a general should worry about army composition( so economy to a certain extent) and manouvers. Many of the revolts in the game wouldn't happen in real life, because no one wants to rebel against the army that has just destroyed your best fighters. Or worse, you are moving your troops to a front and suddenly a city starts to lose loyalty just because they don't like you/your culture: that's the annoying part, fighting the enemy outside and even inside your realm.
Just Thunderbolt Oh ok, I though you wanted to ged rid of the entire Economy system. I get the annoyance of the culture penalties and how rebellions are sometimes mindless. I had thought you wanted to just remove the non-battle systems. I too would like CA to remove poorly fleshed out and annoying features and focus on their AI and other, better features.
@@LichlordKazam Merchants and an early Colony in Egypt financed my blitzing thru the map as the HRE......then I sat around bored waiting for the Mongols to arrive. If you can successfully do an early crusade on Egypt and spam merchants (including that one southern province down the nile) you get so much gold........sooo much gold......
I succeeded on legendary with the western Roman Empire using a pretty simple strategy: I abandoned all my territory in Europe and retreated completely into the Iberian peninsula and into Italy and built up my armies and defended for a while until things stabilized then i reinvaded Europe and Africa
My strategy was to allow England and Eastern France/Belgium to revolt while dismantling all churches and any buildings In england/France that I was leaving. Then as they were taken id subjugate the tribes who I could and let them create a secure border. Then max fortify Austria/venice as a bottleneck and ditch the western Balkans as it's strategically a nightmare to contain. After that it's really keeping 2 armies in Spain 2 in Africa and the rest in Austria/France until you resolidify and take your territories back from those tribes
I remember when Lionheartx10 did a campaign as the Odryssians in Rome 2. Within the first couple of episodes Athens had completely conquered all of his territory and all he had left was a single army. Luckily he managed to take that army north and conquer a single town. From there he was able to build his strength, form a couple powerful alliances while taking over his neighbors, and eventually went on to conquer the world.
the ottomans in napoleon total war have the best elite units at the end if u manage to hold off the austrians and the russians the nizam e cedit rifles and the line infantry crushes any other european grenadiers and their 60 pounder omg that damage is almst complete without even meeting ur infantry units and their cav is just op the caucasian mounted infantry is the best cav in the entire game if u manage to research using ur 2 univ and survive the early austrian and russian fight
@@eriksellares3431 evn their navies are strong compared to other european nations such as portugal,denmark,sweden and austria also russian navy is trash compared to the ottomans
My Empire says otherwise I have a foot hold in every theatre and I make 130000k per turn.Also I played it in normal maybe that's why hahaha.Easiest play through ever
The cut-off time should be 1565-1572 - the defeats in Malta and at Lepanto and Molody (surprisingly little known given its significance) and the death of Suleyman I. From then on it was decline mixed with the odd false dawn for quite some time, until the false dawns went out of the equation.
I would’ve added the Seleucids from Rome 1 Also Top 5 pointless units? (not necessarily weak, just completely irrelevant, (cough cough incendiary pigs))
I think the seleucids are definitely a good pick, I'd say they're even worse in Rome 2 just because they start off with so many satraps & with the very hard/legendary difficulty diplmacy penalty you basically end up at war with all of them by turn 2, and Egypt is on your southern border, and all the guys to your north want to crush you as well.
Focusing in defending your immediate vicinity and moving in force towards Cyprus Egypt quile keeping a half stack in Anatolia and a half stack navy in the med tend to be good openers pushing out south while doing your best to support loyal vassals or hold back enemy armies in the East and west until Egypt is dealt with and Arabia is taken or unable to push your way and you can go on a push towards Anatolia Armenia or deep in the East depending on how the AI is reacting even a push across the Aegean can follow depending on your vassal situation in the east
That thumbnail made me think for a second that you started playing Dark Souls Would've been hella interesting seeing you emptying all your anger issues on it Love the list btw I always wait for these vids to come out
This should be narrowed to unmodded playable factions, because the newer games have unplayable minor factions that are weaker than the normal playable ones.
Dacia, Gaul, Spain, Germania, Britannia in RTW. Top 5 done. They're all demonstrably worse than every other faction. Although Germania actually seems to have the edge over the Roman factions due to their high armour penetration (I suspect it was purposefully built as an "anti-Rome faction by the devs). Britannia's chariots are very good, but predictable due to it being their only good unit and as a result very easy to counter. I don't know what the devs had against barbarian factions, but they're all shit in that game.
@@ze_rubenator I wouldnt put any of those exept Gauls, Since they are all quite unique, Spain with well bull wariors and being in iberian peninsula fighting off Carthage and Gauls, Britania being intresting since it starts of on an island and uses chariots, Germania since their roster is mostly unique including screeching women and berserkers and Dacians having flaxmen and being in such a position in middle of war but still kinda not in it, at least in my games thats how it plays out, sure Thracians have falxmen too but i associate Thracians more with phalaxes, and gauls, well they suck, they just have, nothing, they have druids, but so do britons, and naked fanatics are also with spain, they aren't anything unique, and yes this is mostly since they are unique but their unique units do have, uses, albeit few, exept screeching women thats just fun to spam.
One tactic that's worked for me with the Ottomans in Empire - push through Persia and into India. War is a bit of a bitch with the mountains, and your European holdings will probably go to shit, but if you can push through and get an Indian Ocean port, you can start sending treasure fleets out and make a boatload of cash. From there you can reclaim whatever the Hapsburgs took pretty handily with sheer numbers, and ride the momentum through most of Europe
My most ambitious and memorable TW-game ever was with WRE in Attila. I set out for a couple achievments such as legendary general and veni vedi vici (the real and the duplicate with wrong description). And some others less demanding. In other words not losing a single battle and on legendary (to 425 anyway for those), and I decided to choose WRE for the job and I kept every settlement. Taking the cowards route and abandoning everything down to italy isnt how I do things. Had ofc fresh knowledge exacly what happens the first turns back then, in detail. Everything required planning so I wasnt caught off guard. It was a such a slog, battle after battle...so many its unbelievable. Burned myself out on the factions for like a year. But that ending at year 450 have never in any TW-game felt better. Luckily for me I didnt try to shoehorn in a this is total war in it
Dude,with Seleucid half of the known world is under your control.(Just make good relations with your satrapies by offering then trade agreetment,money etc).Some will revolt against you but most of them will stay loyal if you treat them well.So basically its pretty easy.
JimOriginal_21 john whenever I play, I try to ally with my neighbours, namely Pontus and Egypt. Also Armenia. 5 turns later, Egypt besieges my border city because why not. Pontus breaks alliance and attacks me, because why not. I invade Parthia as I had been planning so I’m at war with them now. Armenia ally’s with Pontus and Egypt. Greek cities are at war with rome. Another 5 turns later. Armenia declares war on me, the Greeks declare war on me despite almost already falling to Macedon and the brutii. Numidia offers me alliance. I accept. 1 turn later. Greeks move their last army that has a chance to save Sparta to attack my currently poor western territories. Numidia declares war on me. 3 turns later. Make first contact with Carthage diplomat. They declare war on me. 5 turns later. Egypt is on its last legs. Refuses to peace out, however. Scythia offers alliance, then attacks literally later in their turn. Random gaulic army lands in Cyprus and attacks. 30 turns later. Everything east of Europe, south of the Caucasus, and east of Cyrene is under my control. Every other nation in the world is at war with me because why not. 2 turns later the mongols appear, despite not being possible due to them not being in the game. They attack my eastern territories. 5 turns later. Strike oil. US invades. I’m never playing them again. They’re a joke
You always sound like you're doing a speech at a board meeting and i you start the video like a quartermaster starting a briefing. Enjoy your content alot man!
It still baffles me how Thrace, the land of the peltasts, doesn't offer projectiles for their Thracian warriors while Celts get them even for their levy units
Top 5 cultures in Total war Warhammer 2. I think the variety of mechanics in that game gives you many different ways to slay, and different tactics to employ. From the different types of corruption, to Brittonian Honor, to Dwarven grudgebearing, to Tomb King bookhunting, and so on, I think it would be fun to see how they are ranked in terms of enjoyability and effectiveness. On the flip side, you could also rank the top 5 worst cultures, in seeing how much of a pain in the ass those mechanics can be.
I once played an Usegi campaign where I was Allied with the Date. That in itself is not that special. But, what ended up happening was me keeping that alliance strong to the point where it was three clans in the game. The Date clan took the shogunate with me and them sharing literally half the island split between us. And the Ito on Kyushu. I kept my orginal Daimyo through out this. So I roleplayed a little where when the original Date shogun passed on of old age, relations broke down between our clans and the final civil war broke out. My daimyo lived to be 91. I don't know if it was a glitch or what but that was the longest I ever had a general from start to literally finish of a campaign. And I learned that is Shogun 2, if your wife dies before your daimyo, he can remarry. I married a 16 year old to a 88 year old man and was still able to sire a son on her.
Hardest is actually WRE in rome 1 barbarian invasion, all that was mentioned for attila applies, but you also have a civil war in the first couple of turns and you also have no garrison units in rome 1, so you have to spend more money defending your towns. Also you dont have any faction traits.
I just destroy the buildings in the cities and towns that are about to revolt in the outer territories of the Empire to help me raise gold at the beginning of the campaign.
These fucking Top 5 lists are some of your best content, mate, you give really good reasons and you're clear about the 'perspective' you're giving (optimal play).
My hardest (and most repetitive) campaign ever was with the anteans going a non migration route. The huns are nearly impossible to appease and the first 70 turns or so are just fighting the same settlement defense battle over and over against multiple doom stacks all while basically permanently suffering the insane debuffs the huns give for being in a province.
Teutonic knights in the west and north, angry mongolians in the south... The moment those russians in the east declare war on you in the early game, you can kinda give it up. Also, every fucking time in my play through, Poland joined the order in it's campaign of turning my south-west into "deus vult"-country while I desperately tried to munch through their armies in the north to close that front -.-
@@paulenan9636 i find it easiest at start if you make Novgorod allies for money if required. Then try and delay the mongols from declaring war with you diplomatically. Defend South with strong garrisons from Poland and Teut. and attack north with Novgorod.
@@godlovesyou1995 that was exactly what I did. Problem is: You need to defend your whole south against 3 nations and that one english crusader army in the west. And to have enough troops to wage war in the north. When you cleared the north and hold south you are good to go, but there is so much that can go wrong. As I said: When Novgorod attacks you, game is over.
I agree with n°1 Western Roman Empire campaign. What I personally did was to give up on pretty most of Gaul, actually its entirety. Then sold every monastery: they cost so much money and selling them brings back some valuable amount of cash. Then turtle around Italy, North Africa and Britain. Gave up on Spain as well, you have to hold on strong fortresses and choke point, but also the most valuable settlements, and I personally held on to Britain because it was pretty isolated and was a good starting point as a head on camp base to invade Scandinavian countries.
I KNEW it was going to be Attila's WRE. Call it boring, call it artificially complex, call it nerve breaking, call it unfair, call it whatever you wish. But, completing this campaign on legendary is a must if you want to call yourself a Total War veteran :)
Either Roman empire in TWA has a shit start. I mean, just look at how the AI handles them. The ERE falls a thousand years early to infinisassanids and the WRE is just screwdus maximus from turn one. It takes a lot of repetitive cheese battles in towns to prevent that, and that's why TWA is so boring as the Romans. Everyone else is going out and conquering stuff, whatever, and you're sitting there doing the same battle over and over again lol
Dorian Winston very true, if you don’t take Advantage of the dumb ai it becomes a awful, tedious experience constantly fighting city battles. All I do is abandon parts of the far flung empire and put as many standing army’s as I can in the boarder Provences and... win... TWA was exciting and I don’t think it’s a bad game. I just feel it lacks much substantial content to stop it from going stale from all the city battles and the stupidly small unit roasters. I don’t want to fight the same spear unit uniformed differently from the 364th Germanic tribe to try there luck :/
I had a lot of fun and success playing as the Ottomans in empire by giving all my Balkan territory to Austria in exchange for an alliance and then forgetting about Europe and marching straight into India.
I agree. I had to look up a walkthrough for Lithuania. I remember destroying any useless building and infantry units and spamming light cavalry, using heavy infantry to blitz the teuton settlements and blocking reinforcements with cavalry, all before the Mongols and Poles attacked.
Aside from western rome, I found the goths (Ostragoth and visigoth) in TW Atilla to be exceptionally difficult. AI enemies know exactly where you are and your army condition and western rome hunts you down if you go anywhere near them. I had both my armies take some casualties from fighting the romans and a double vandal stack chased my forces all the way back to the black sea.
Total War Atilla in the western Roman Empire is certainly a hell of a start. But I have found a few tiny adjustments that can help massively. 1: Burn the church. When I first got started on that campaign I was hemorrhaging money and trying to figure out why, When I looked at the churches in all of my settlements... They have UPKEEP. I'm PAYING to keep these things in place? Spend two turns ripping down every church in the entire Roman empire. Suddenly I have a neat few grand coming in each turn and I can replace those churches with sanitation, food or entertainment. 2: Kill the barbarian hordes wandering through your territory. In France and (I think) Spain there are two wandering tribes that you are sort of allied with that pillage and generally lower happiness in every settlement they wander through. They also tend to backstab you at some point... 3: Fill your most profitable province governer slots and train them up to reduce corruption. As the video states, Corruption is rampant, but I don't like the idea of giving up ANY territory. (Except maybe Brittian). Governers are your best tool against corruption.
Just cheese, get artillery and use ghosts to blob up the enemy units and hammer them with the artillery. Rinse and repeat until you are back to karak eight peaks
The wre isn't hard though, I actually find it to be maybe the easiest. You have excellent income from trade with ere, loads of territory you can lose while you consolidate, you're on defense, and unlike every faction trying to conquer you, you don't have to pay insane conversion costs as you already own everything. If you want a real challenge play the fucking lahkmids, I can't stand those bastards. And yes, I play on hard very hard and even legendary.
@@minrominro9986 I was playing as the huns, and when i reached north italy after sacking Constantinople i decided i didnt wanna be the scourge of god anymore. so i went to diplomacy and I offered to join all WRE wars as long as they be my client state and they accepted. I gained massive amounts of money to build the greatest horde pretty early in the game. Crossing the alps was one of the hardest shit! I couldnt move an inch and barbarians were literally endless(legendary diff). I had a 10x better army and no settlements to defend and still it was a grind. I never played WRE but grown to respect the sheer amount of enemies they got
Solid list, mine is as follow: 5. Russia (Medieval II) 4. Hattori (Shogun 2) 3. Order of Loremasters (Warhammer II ME) 2. The Empire (Warhammer I at release) 1. Western Roman Empire (Atilla) 5. Russia because the settlements are so far apart and I find their units lacklaster, I like to rush other factions early game to gain the upperhand. 4. Hattori because they start small and in the middle of the land, can also be an advantage to some players I suppose. 3. Order of Loremasters in Mortal Empires, especially with the addition of The Blessed Dread and Vampire Coast, they are surrounded by good early game units that can get ground fast. 2. The Empire because when it was just released most if not all factions hated you, the human factions all disliked you except for maybe a few and you would get constantly invaded by Chaos and Norsca. If you had a bad early game it would get rough fast. 1. Western Roman Empire for the reasons you stated. Also keep it up with the flow of content, loving it! Some of your recent video's and livestreams made me pick up Medieval II again.
what about the illyrians (i think thats how its spelled) in rome 2? they are even worse than the odrysian kingdom imo and have terrible early and late game military.
Prussia in Napoleon: Total War is pretty hard, they are fairly spread out - Army fairly weak, and Napoleon will declare and invade within 20 turns usually. You also don't start off allied with any of the other factions France is at war with, and they often won't ally you if you are getting invaded already.
I completely disagree with The Ottomans in ETW. In the early game they are the richest faction, allowing for spam armies and they get a variety of strong melee infantry and cavalry, meaning that you can steamroll most of your neighbors for most of the game. Because ETW ai is broken even with mods and will takes ages to research Fire by Rank (I've never actually seen it, I've had to gift it to the ai factions) and won't bother colonising, trading or doing anything of economic value at all you don't need to worry about effective opposition, just spam cheap melee
26CLT For me it's just conquer Persia, Venice and the Barbary States, so that people don't hate you for being allied to them. Then ally Sweden and take Russia. Units are trash but you you can spam them.
I only played ETW once, the broken AI was shocking even by the low standards of some of the other games. The AI barely fired a shot in battles, it just marched into gunfire range and then messed around rearranging its line while I mowed them down. And the general started the battle by trying to attack my army single-handed despite being a non-combat unit. Can't believe any start is difficult in that game.
I think the Marcomanni (in Augustus Rome II Campaign on Legendary) are relatively hard on legendary (at least so far for me) - Immediately at war with a faction that has better units then you and a same sized army - Lack of food production - Don't receive alot of funds unless you bump up taxes; - Literally cannot keep your provinces happy unless you spend all of said money on public order, where lack of food comes in place as well as funds. - Neighbors (I've had 4 at once before.) will war you almost immediately after they form confederations or defeat the Frisiia, so you need to fork over funds to keep the factions that you are happy with you to stay that way. - Starter ally will get destroyed unless you help almost immediately - Can't expand west until mid game due too Rome - No Trade But yeah, that's my struggle with the Marcomanni; most people can probably do them better then I can but getting flooded and then sieged without any funds coming in and starvation is my struggle with them.
Ottoman sounds harder. Also its possible to provoke a war between prussia and austria and russia usually doesnt declare war. So imo not hardest. I did die by the germans in my first playthrough tho
@@ravenstrategist1325 no, i mean in napoleon. With factionunlocker. And since russia, prussia and austris have an Alliance and a common enemy pretty much from turn one you wont be able to make them turn against each other
Crooked Moon are one of my favourite factions. While migrating you can easily run a couple of stacks given the gobo upkeep bonus (gobo infantry main stack with wolfrider reinforcements). Trash poorly defended regions on the way to keep your cash topped up. Taking Eight Peaks itself is a challenge, but not after you have grabbed the adjacent regions. The agent you start with levels extremely quickly and is key to scouting the route and dominating hero combat with Skarsnik on the battlefield.
Should definitely be there instead of Uesugi. If you are not fit to play as the embodiment of the god of war you should not go for the dragon. Epirus or the Oda fit better in that spot
Handling Western Rome in Attila is like being tied to the Titanic as it sinks. Sure its nice and luxurious inside but its going down and taking everyone with it.
I would say the Saka in EB 1. You only have 1 region in the middle of nowhere. As nomadic people your agriculture is a joke, your trade can be good but it's long to put in place. The first turn you have some money but from the second turn you turn into negative income.The rebels are harder to beat than in a regular total war game and you can't recreate your batalions as you have no money. So if you lose a battle, you are done. But even if you capture a settlement, don't think that you are saved because they bring so few income that even with less soldiers, you must have 4-5 villages before strarting to see positive income. BUT, as you just spent 35 turns in red, you dug a hole quicker than a ferret on emphetamins so when you start to have a little bit of money, you see a benefit of 300-400 mnai per turn. I let you imagine the time that you need to be back in positive numbers.
At start break up with the Barbary (too much heat with the Europeans) and send all your troops to take Ukraine and give it to your vassal Krimean Khanate. This rips the guts out of Russia and you won't have to worry about that flank for a while. Then send all your troops to the Caribbean and take the pirate islands to establish a foothold in that theater. Make trade ships from here and start taking trade points with your ships. Once you've got some decent swordsman and artillery in the army send it to India to establish yourself there because you can't let the Marathas take over India that's your job. :) Send the troops you get from the first revolution east to take Georgia. Hold in Iraq until Georgia is secured and that army can start fighting the Persians. The troops from the second revolution can back them up or take Moscow if Russia is busy fighting others. To hold Moscow you would need to leave those troops there for 2-3 rebellions or you can destroy all his buildings and let it rebel. Trade with all the Europeans and take over Morocco too. iirc if you want to try to trade Balkan land for North American land it's better at the beginning when you're still a monarchy like them before you have a negative modifier from being a republic. You start out with tech they don't have and that can help sweeten deals.
Odeysseus Kindom is a walk in the park. They have acceptable spear. It's below mediocre, but 2 spears can rout 1 average infantry pretty well. Also, they have 50% discount for recruiting mercs, so recruit them before battle. Let them charge into the densest part of the battle field, and disband them before you hit end of turn. I never let them die for no reason, but you get my point. Diplomacy is easy, just have non-aggression with northern neighbors. After that, you can trade with them. Focus on taking out Macedone fast, and then Greek states will be grateful to you. The main challenge is that it has no armored tier-2 infantry, so you need to take a city with wood, and recruit nobles as fast as possible. Pontus is not far away, and you can take it as soon as Macedone is destroyed. After that, recruiting units from dozen-turn's building is a real pain, but it's more annoying than hard. It's not nearly as hard as WRE. You have a very hard time with every battle with insufficient troops and money in WRE, unless you cheese AI. OK is just normal. It's not even as hard as Frank Kingdom in Attila: TW.
And the Latin Christian religion is also a pain in the arse for the Western Romans, especially because of the insanely high upkeep. Also the tech three sucks, because of the legacy loss (I've learned it the hard way).
Do not rely on churches, build garrisons instead. Collect the extra food you need by fishing. Do not go down this part of the tech tree until the endgame.
@@lars9925 I wrecked every church. I could find. I also installed a mod that allows you to convert at 10 percent. Instead of building guard houses, I build fountains and sheep floks.
Crooked Moon is hard but super fun for me. Something about a huge mob of screaming goblins running into combat, routing, coming back, routing, coming back is hilarious.
western roman tactic during the attila time was engage with light spears hold heavy at rear as each lighter unit grew tired they would withdraw and the heavy troops would hold until the lighter troops were ready to fight again then they would repeat also missile troops were normally used aswell to slow the enemy and take some out
I really don't understand why everyone thinks the Uesugi have a bad start (or would be difficult to play) I didn't have any problems on the Legends difficulty. my neighbours literally thought like: *"Let me out of here, i don't wanna fuck with these Monks on the other side."*
The WRE start isn't that bad if you're not opposed to losing territory slowly. Your garrisons are pretty strong and once you upgrade to tier 2 troops they can hold back most 20 man stacks of barbar even on legendary. The real kicker is corruption, which can be dealt with using spies and I believe certain governor traits. Your troops at the start are ideal for turtling though so even 20 man migrating stacks and rebels aren't a huge deal. Territories not being worth shit means it's no big deal to lose them, though you'll want a -big- garrison in north Italy. I did a WRE legendary playthrough and got the achievement where you aren't allowed to autoresolve and have to win every battle. Good video! Looking forwards to your next one.
I'd say one of the most difficult starts is a Diplomatic Karl Franz. The amount of times you'll diplomatically back yourself into a corner if you're not paying attention with which fucker you're trying to confederate with and which fucker you want to murder while the vampire counts are growing in power is immeasurable to me. I try not to go full stupid in that game, but sometimes I start making the wrong friends only to realize, they have an anti-confederation boner and won't help me till their lands are nearly entirely gone and their corrupted to all hell.
Takeda or Uesugi yeah. Either one. Takes 2-4 turns to reach your enemy. Takeda has cavalry which sucks when you are sieging. Finished Legendary Takeda campaign multiple times, it's always fun
Agree ,played western roman empire. You really need to prioritize 1 area to build upon and Hope to hold on to as many provines as possible. I went crazy and built up britannia first which was horrible but eventually it paid off.
This is meant more as a comment on how your typically excellent video could have been even more valuable for players of various TW games, and that is to have spent a few seconds on the other "honourable mentions" for the titles you chose. Wasn't surprised to see Crooked Moon in Warhammer, for example, but those who haven't played much of WH1 or 2 might have found it interesting to hear you mention the others you consider difficult enough to have been on the list of the most difficult for that game (or games). Cheers
The thing about the western Roman is that, even if you sacrifice some (read most) of your provinces to focus on developing rome and the inner cities, like out of nowhere random tribes pop up that are like "oh we weren't here 1 turn ago and you had your armies dealing with a revolt ? Don't mind us having a full stack in 3 turns to Rome then" Like what the actual f word
Parthia from Rome 1 was rly hard because Poor ecenomy, rly Poor infantery and the northern Provinze which produced minus income, also egypt was coming your way sooner or later. Which meant endless missle horseman kide battles.
Being a bit of an old-school guy, I was expecting BI WRE in here. But I do agree that they're not even comparable to the nightmare that is Atilla WRE, and honestly, you can cheese your way out of almost anything in RTW and M2. A list with more focus on newer titles, like this one, is not exactly my favourite, but I think the ranking is relatively fair.
i find that clan angrund is harder than crooked moon with some of the same problems, but instead of having shit armies they have reeally expensive armies and crooked moon actually has a upkeep cost reduction for goblins so if you take 2 full provinces you can get 3 maxed armies, send 2 for karak 8peaks raid to get 2 waaah armies and get k8p, but when you play as clan angrund you need 2 provinces to maintain 1 full army, just my personal opinion
Poland Lithuania is bloody hard too. No matter what I seem to do Austria, Sweden Prussia and ottomans ALWAYS declare war and Russia only most of the time. When you manage to get a port it's always useless because they always block it before you can recruit a fleet to protect it so you're stuck with no trading income and completely sandwiched...
In fact Attila West Rome is not to hard if you start right: 1. Abandon Spain, Britain, Iliria and most of Gaul 2. Disband Britain Legion 3. Fortify North Italy, Sicily and Carthage, if you can (if you have time to build) hold Libia 4. Dismantle all Church, and build farms (you need Food!!!!) on Sicily and Africa 5. Massilia, Milano and Venice are key point for defense 6. drain money from tax until you can from abandon zone (don't build anything, but dismantle church), you will get enough money for build defense in Italy 7. ASAP >> research level I and level II military, only then start research to economy I, then military III, economy II 8. Army In North Italy 3-5 Legion must in defense 1 legion for Sicily and south Italy 1 Legion in Carthage 1 legion in Libia (I usual send fleet in start of game, later replace them with regular Army, its low priority) 9. Do not be Hero. Keep Armies in forts and play defense until you kill Huns 10. Huns - in start you can bribe them, even make them ally, but when they trespass in Italy kill them ASAP (even if they ally), DO NOT give them or anybody to make Raid in Italy
Unrest increases too much if you abandon regions either disband or reduce in size the outer provincial armies and do your best to fight a fighting retreat towards the heartland sell buildings in the outer provinces for cash get food going in italy Sicily make the bulk of your upgrades in Sicily and push out to retake loss land once economically stable Avoid the huns at all cost until economically stable if possible and hope barbarians kill them or surprise them if depleted and kill Attila
I'd argue queek headtaker's vortex campaign start is at least 2nd or 3rd hardest. 90% of your units are utter cannon fodder until you can get the appropriate traits and buffs, the food mechanic cripples aggressive expansion (coupled with the fact that territories with the ability to farm food are hard to come by), and youre surrounded by enemies capable of curbstombing your armies if you arent playing carefully.
The hardest start is Rome II at launch.
Indeed, a fair point.
never experienced the launch , although , i've started playing when the emperor edition came out , it was great! had much fun roughly 300hrs of gameplay so far.
@@CA-pl1mh Oh boy, you missed out on the intense action of Trireme ramming hoplites off a city wall.
Dragon Dimosthenis france is inthe same situation
@Dragon Dimosthenis Medieval 2 is easy, the AI is retarded so the best battle tactics are horse Archer spam, or using spearmen to hold the line while all your combined General's Bodyguard to smash the massed pinned enemy in the rear virtually all the time causing a mass rout. (Battles only become difficult late game when enemy has high moraled infantry and gunpowder....)
Combine that with conquest of major cities earning tons of loot if you sack them, and the enemy half the time using captains instead of generals to lead big armies as long as you have a semi aggressive playstyle the game is a cakewalk compared to other total war games even on /vh/vh difficulty...
The most difficult/interesting/fun campaign I’ve had in TW was playing as Julia in Rome TW2 with a world history atlas next to me showing each of the Roman provinces and the year they were captured. I placed the following rule on myself: Expand the Roman Republic (then Empire) 100% historically accurate. In other words, I had to capture each of the provinces in the correct order. The main challenge with this is both the diplomatic challenges, as a lot of factions won’t stop a war with you midway through it, but also the fact that you can’t use your momentum. For example, I needed to capture Epirus from the Macedonians (Epirus was wiped out), but had to stop the war immediately after because Macedonia proper would not be conquered until some years later. Macedon didn’t like this and refused to make peace, so I had to defend my holdings there while also trying to capture other areas in Spain, Africa, etc. It was quite fun and yes I did eventually do it!
Zach Robison That’s sweet. I’ve thought about doing that before but haven’t tried it yet
I am also interested in recreating the conquests in historical order. I have found that if you take note of the different bonus objectives, it does push you in that direction anyway. You need to conquer a settlement in both Greece and Macedonia before conquering northern Italy for example. Then territory in Gaul, Spain, Africa and Mauritania I think. This results in a fragmented empire at first, but eventually you will be able to link all these territories up.
I'm committed to a Rome 2 Campaign as the Cornelia right now, and my goal is to follow every bonus objective and see how it turns out.
Now do it again with the "Divide et Impera" mod :D
And how did you do with the provinces they actually got without war? Like Asia Minor for example.
gay poop
You're getting quite good at these top 5 videos. I find them very enjoyable to watch.
Could not agree more
How about top 5 things Legends trolls like to complain about...HAHAHAHAHA :P Great vid btw!
Your mom is enjoyable to watch
Top 5 hot garbage units, a.k.a seemingly good but not cost effective.
Two hander units in Medieval 2 besides Varangian Guards.
@@ethanwhitney6168 even varangian are bad, only good to rear charge or flanking. you're better of with latinikon.
Any pike unit in medieval 2. Pikes are bugged to shit and the units always drop their pikes to fight with their swords.
@@TheDirtysouthfan Pikes aren't bugged to shit. Unlike most units, pikes in Medieval 2 vanilla have a secondary weapon, this means that once the enemy gets close, they will swap to the secondary weapon. Once that secondary weapon is removed, pikemen will keep using their pikes even if the enemy gets close.
Not a bug, just the way the unit is set up.
Peasants
Never liked Total War difficulty mechanics - especially dealing with "loyalty" and "morale" scaling. They could do more with their AI instead of cheap shortcuts.
You'd be suprised how tough that is for these types of games.
Fully agree on that. I'd rather have to deal with a lot of micro management that is a must to do in battle, rather than wasting my time managing taxes, provinces and their happyness. I like total war for the great battles, but the economy is really painfull to manage.
Just Thunderbolt total war is also about managing kingdoms and empires. The actual fighting is only half the battle, literally, as a tactician needs to raise an army, equip it and field it.
Of course you could always just automanage settlements, play custom and historical battles instead of the campaigns. Or just play multiplayer.
@@kyleweichert1553 Agree on the equipping and creating the army, that's a thing that adds to the game;but a general should worry about army composition( so economy to a certain extent) and manouvers. Many of the revolts in the game wouldn't happen in real life, because no one wants to rebel against the army that has just destroyed your best fighters.
Or worse, you are moving your troops to a front and suddenly a city starts to lose loyalty just because they don't like you/your culture: that's the annoying part, fighting the enemy outside and even inside your realm.
Just Thunderbolt Oh ok, I though you wanted to ged rid of the entire Economy system.
I get the annoyance of the culture penalties and how rebellions are sometimes mindless. I had thought you wanted to just remove the non-battle systems.
I too would like CA to remove poorly fleshed out and annoying features and focus on their AI and other, better features.
1.) When you have no merchants
Send those fucking merchants to africa
*Seriously though, it's a goldmine down there*
John Jacob Astor nice profile pic...is that angle eyes😋
@@jichaelmackson4797 its his actor, lee van cleef, in for a few dollars more
@@LichlordKazam Merchants and an early Colony in Egypt financed my blitzing thru the map as the HRE......then I sat around bored waiting for the Mongols to arrive. If you can successfully do an early crusade on Egypt and spam merchants (including that one southern province down the nile) you get so much gold........sooo much gold......
Need more Jewish friends
Top 5 Settings for future Total War Games
grün weiß das Emblem
Well, Nation Total War, modern warfare and airplane usage. Warhammer utilized that to some level.
Victorian Era/19th Century/1800s post Napoleon
"Ancient China" - said no one ever.
@@SlurpyGuy Dude, Three Kingdoms period tho
Top 5 most fun campaigns
I really like this one.
No Name Is A Name Very subjective
SPARTA
I succeeded on legendary with the western Roman Empire using a pretty simple strategy: I abandoned all my territory in Europe and retreated completely into the Iberian peninsula and into Italy and built up my armies and defended for a while until things stabilized then i reinvaded Europe and Africa
No need to get so drastic. As WRE, I absolutely refuse to give up even an inch, I fight with everything I can muster and believe me, it's doable.
@@chelsblue7370 Always doing that too. That is mine!
Yea but you get penalties for losing settlements so it's hard to balance your slow retreat.
My strategy was to allow England and Eastern France/Belgium to revolt while dismantling all churches and any buildings In england/France that I was leaving. Then as they were taken id subjugate the tribes who I could and let them create a secure border. Then max fortify Austria/venice as a bottleneck and ditch the western Balkans as it's strategically a nightmare to contain. After that it's really keeping 2 armies in Spain 2 in Africa and the rest in Austria/France until you resolidify and take your territories back from those tribes
And converting to paganism to ruin Huns bonus and getting traits with paganism building
Congrats on 125k subs! If anyone deserves that, it’s you
I remember when Lionheartx10 did a campaign as the Odryssians in Rome 2. Within the first couple of episodes Athens had completely conquered all of his territory and all he had left was a single army. Luckily he managed to take that army north and conquer a single town. From there he was able to build his strength, form a couple powerful alliances while taking over his neighbors, and eventually went on to conquer the world.
Top 5 Mercenary Units in Total War
Mercenary Crossbowmen in M2TW for #1
Cretan archers in rome2, best bow units in the game and theyre mercs
BoomDowg the Portuguese units in Shogun 2
A L A N M E R C C A V A L R Y
Serbian and Croatian knights in MTW2, those two units are usually the last units to flee if the battle goes against you and they're tough as hell.
I was thinking Suebi from Rome 2 but everyone of these factions are absolutely hard as hell starts. Great list and Nice work!
Why Suebi? I've run them a few times and They've always been good.
@Varg the Jew Slayer plus you need like 20 rounds so the celtic provinces calm down.
@Varg the Jew Slayer Suebi start with a walled capital.
@Varg the Jew Slayer Also, the Suebi infantry massively sucks in terms of armour. After every battle, I always ended up losing a lot of men.
@@nikitaosminine1628yes and once you kill one army there's always another coming so you can't advance
"the ottoman units are not very good..."
oh how the mighty have fallen since 1453
the ottomans in napoleon total war have the best elite units at the end if u manage to hold off the austrians and the russians the nizam e cedit rifles and the line infantry crushes any other european grenadiers and their 60 pounder omg that damage is almst complete without even meeting ur infantry units and their cav is just op the caucasian mounted infantry is the best cav in the entire game if u manage to research using ur 2 univ and survive the early austrian and russian fight
early game they suck, later they are very strong.
@@eriksellares3431 evn their navies are strong compared to other european nations such as portugal,denmark,sweden and austria also russian navy is trash compared to the ottomans
My Empire says otherwise I have a foot hold in every theatre and I make 130000k per turn.Also I played it in normal maybe that's why hahaha.Easiest play through ever
The cut-off time should be 1565-1572 - the defeats in Malta and at Lepanto and Molody (surprisingly little known given its significance) and the death of Suleyman I. From then on it was decline mixed with the odd false dawn for quite some time, until the false dawns went out of the equation.
The hardest start is wanting to play Thrones of Britannia
Top 5 most attractive faction leaders
Easy Isabella Von Carstein takes #1
Daniel Boyas, Flavius Julius does
Throgg
Karl Franz
Faction leader in Shogun Total War
I would’ve added the Seleucids from Rome 1
Also Top 5 pointless units? (not necessarily weak, just completely irrelevant, (cough cough incendiary pigs))
I think the seleucids are definitely a good pick, I'd say they're even worse in Rome 2 just because they start off with so many satraps & with the very hard/legendary difficulty diplmacy penalty you basically end up at war with all of them by turn 2, and Egypt is on your southern border, and all the guys to your north want to crush you as well.
Fire pigs are super cost effective provide after battle snacks and are great battle openers if only all total war titles had them
The Seleucids is not that hard and are pretty fun actually
@@GAndreC they're my favorite faction, but their start position is one of the more challenging starts in both Rome 1 & 2.
Focusing in defending your immediate vicinity and moving in force towards Cyprus Egypt quile keeping a half stack in Anatolia and a half stack navy in the med tend to be good openers pushing out south while doing your best to support loyal vassals or hold back enemy armies in the East and west until Egypt is dealt with and Arabia is taken or unable to push your way and you can go on a push towards Anatolia Armenia or deep in the East depending on how the AI is reacting even a push across the Aegean can follow depending on your vassal situation in the east
That thumbnail made me think for a second that you started playing Dark Souls
Would've been hella interesting seeing you emptying all your anger issues on it
Love the list btw I always wait for these vids to come out
I thought it was just mount and blade.
Pretty sure it's from mount and blade
yo guy ya know its from Mount an Blade warband? xD
Top 5 Weakest Total War Factions, for the next top 5 please.
This should be narrowed to unmodded playable factions, because the newer games have unplayable minor factions that are weaker than the normal playable ones.
@@ethanwhitney6168 Isn't Amako quite strong in Shogun 2?
*cough* Portugal *cough*
Dacia, Gaul, Spain, Germania, Britannia in RTW. Top 5 done. They're all demonstrably worse than every other faction. Although Germania actually seems to have the edge over the Roman factions due to their high armour penetration (I suspect it was purposefully built as an "anti-Rome faction by the devs). Britannia's chariots are very good, but predictable due to it being their only good unit and as a result very easy to counter. I don't know what the devs had against barbarian factions, but they're all shit in that game.
@@ze_rubenator I wouldnt put any of those exept Gauls, Since they are all quite unique, Spain with well bull wariors and being in iberian peninsula fighting off Carthage and Gauls, Britania being intresting since it starts of on an island and uses chariots, Germania since their roster is mostly unique including screeching women and berserkers and Dacians having flaxmen and being in such a position in middle of war but still kinda not in it, at least in my games thats how it plays out, sure Thracians have falxmen too but i associate Thracians more with phalaxes, and gauls, well they suck, they just have, nothing, they have druids, but so do britons, and naked fanatics are also with spain, they aren't anything unique, and yes this is mostly since they are unique but their unique units do have, uses, albeit few, exept screeching women thats just fun to spam.
One tactic that's worked for me with the Ottomans in Empire - push through Persia and into India. War is a bit of a bitch with the mountains, and your European holdings will probably go to shit, but if you can push through and get an Indian Ocean port, you can start sending treasure fleets out and make a boatload of cash. From there you can reclaim whatever the Hapsburgs took pretty handily with sheer numbers, and ride the momentum through most of Europe
5. 00:58 Ottoman Empire; ETW
4. 2:47 Some Japanese faction; Shogun 2 Sengoku
3. 3:48 Odrysian Kingdom; Rome 2
2. 5:49 Crooked Moon; WH 1 and 2
1. 7:29 Western Roman Empire; Attila
Western Roman Empire, Rome Total War: Barbarian Invasion.
My most ambitious and memorable TW-game ever was with WRE in Attila. I set out for a couple achievments such as legendary general and veni vedi vici (the real and the duplicate with wrong description). And some others less demanding. In other words not losing a single battle and on legendary (to 425 anyway for those), and I decided to choose WRE for the job and I kept every settlement. Taking the cowards route and abandoning everything down to italy isnt how I do things. Had ofc fresh knowledge exacly what happens the first turns back then, in detail. Everything required planning so I wasnt caught off guard.
It was a such a slog, battle after battle...so many its unbelievable. Burned myself out on the factions for like a year. But that ending at year 450 have never in any TW-game felt better. Luckily for me I didnt try to shoehorn in a this is total war in it
honorable mentions sections?
This isn't watch mojo
LegendofTotalWar good point
Damn apply water to that burn Cyrus
@@LegendofTotalWar we wouldn't want it like that
Watch mojo are shit
I think an honorable mention should be the Seleucids in RTW
Chad Warden they’re honestly pretty easy, the AI just sucks at playing to their strengths and gets dog piled
Dude,with Seleucid half of the known world is under your control.(Just make good relations with your satrapies by offering then trade agreetment,money etc).Some will revolt against you but most of them will stay loyal if you treat them well.So basically its pretty easy.
JimOriginal_21 john whenever I play, I try to ally with my neighbours, namely Pontus and Egypt. Also Armenia. 5 turns later, Egypt besieges my border city because why not. Pontus breaks alliance and attacks me, because why not. I invade Parthia as I had been planning so I’m at war with them now. Armenia ally’s with Pontus and Egypt. Greek cities are at war with rome.
Another 5 turns later. Armenia declares war on me, the Greeks declare war on me despite almost already falling to Macedon and the brutii. Numidia offers me alliance. I accept.
1 turn later. Greeks move their last army that has a chance to save Sparta to attack my currently poor western territories. Numidia declares war on me.
3 turns later. Make first contact with Carthage diplomat. They declare war on me.
5 turns later. Egypt is on its last legs. Refuses to peace out, however. Scythia offers alliance, then attacks literally later in their turn. Random gaulic army lands in Cyprus and attacks.
30 turns later. Everything east of Europe, south of the Caucasus, and east of Cyrene is under my control. Every other nation in the world is at war with me because why not.
2 turns later the mongols appear, despite not being possible due to them not being in the game. They attack my eastern territories.
5 turns later. Strike oil. US invades.
I’m never playing them again. They’re a joke
@@ahnono1283 lmao
JimOriginal_21 john I’m not wrong though, am I?
You always sound like you're doing a speech at a board meeting and i you start the video like a quartermaster starting a briefing.
Enjoy your content alot man!
Top 5. TOTALWAR EXPLOITS
One of them would be spamming rorarii in r2 and auto resolving
Embezzle send rival party on diplomacy missions ... infinite monies
It still baffles me how Thrace, the land of the peltasts, doesn't offer projectiles for their Thracian warriors while Celts get them even for their levy units
Top 5 cultures in Total war Warhammer 2. I think the variety of mechanics in that game gives you many different ways to slay, and different tactics to employ. From the different types of corruption, to Brittonian Honor, to Dwarven grudgebearing, to Tomb King bookhunting, and so on, I think it would be fun to see how they are ranked in terms of enjoyability and effectiveness. On the flip side, you could also rank the top 5 worst cultures, in seeing how much of a pain in the ass those mechanics can be.
This is a good one there's a lot of room for personal favourites.
4 years but it's Bretonnia*
I once played an Usegi campaign where I was Allied with the Date. That in itself is not that special. But, what ended up happening was me keeping that alliance strong to the point where it was three clans in the game. The Date clan took the shogunate with me and them sharing literally half the island split between us. And the Ito on Kyushu. I kept my orginal Daimyo through out this. So I roleplayed a little where when the original Date shogun passed on of old age, relations broke down between our clans and the final civil war broke out. My daimyo lived to be 91. I don't know if it was a glitch or what but that was the longest I ever had a general from start to literally finish of a campaign. And I learned that is Shogun 2, if your wife dies before your daimyo, he can remarry. I married a 16 year old to a 88 year old man and was still able to sire a son on her.
I was playing as the ikko Kiki and can say that date clan is a true ally, even after the divide we stayed allies.
Hardest is actually WRE in rome 1 barbarian invasion, all that was mentioned for attila applies, but you also have a civil war in the first couple of turns and you also have no garrison units in rome 1, so you have to spend more money defending your towns. Also you dont have any faction traits.
I just destroy the buildings in the cities and towns that are about to revolt in the outer territories of the Empire to help me raise gold at the beginning of the campaign.
These fucking Top 5 lists are some of your best content, mate, you give really good reasons and you're clear about the 'perspective' you're giving (optimal play).
Hardest campaign start was definitely western roman empire from Rome Barbarian Expansion
Top 5 favorite alternate world total war mods
My hardest (and most repetitive) campaign ever was with the anteans going a non migration route. The huns are nearly impossible to appease and the first 70 turns or so are just fighting the same settlement defense battle over and over against multiple doom stacks all while basically permanently suffering the insane debuffs the huns give for being in a province.
Moral of the story: if everyone hates you, life is going to be pretty tough.
Lithurania in M2 Teutonic is also pretty hard, easily the hardest start in M2. Then again it's M2.
Teutonic knights in the west and north, angry mongolians in the south... The moment those russians in the east declare war on you in the early game, you can kinda give it up. Also, every fucking time in my play through, Poland joined the order in it's campaign of turning my south-west into "deus vult"-country while I desperately tried to munch through their armies in the north to close that front -.-
@@paulenan9636 i find it easiest at start if you make Novgorod allies for money if required. Then try and delay the mongols from declaring war with you diplomatically. Defend South with strong garrisons from Poland and Teut. and attack north with Novgorod.
@@godlovesyou1995 that was exactly what I did. Problem is: You need to defend your whole south against 3 nations and that one english crusader army in the west. And to have enough troops to wage war in the north. When you cleared the north and hold south you are good to go, but there is so much that can go wrong. As I said: When Novgorod attacks you, game is over.
I agree with n°1 Western Roman Empire campaign. What I personally did was to give up on pretty most of Gaul, actually its entirety. Then sold every monastery: they cost so much money and selling them brings back some valuable amount of cash. Then turtle around Italy, North Africa and Britain. Gave up on Spain as well, you have to hold on strong fortresses and choke point, but also the most valuable settlements, and I personally held on to Britain because it was pretty isolated and was a good starting point as a head on camp base to invade Scandinavian countries.
After watching this, we really need a "Top 5 difficult start" for each game.
I KNEW it was going to be Attila's WRE. Call it boring, call it artificially complex, call it nerve breaking, call it unfair, call it whatever you wish. But, completing this campaign on legendary is a must if you want to call yourself a Total War veteran :)
Either Roman empire in TWA has a shit start. I mean, just look at how the AI handles them. The ERE falls a thousand years early to infinisassanids and the WRE is just screwdus maximus from turn one. It takes a lot of repetitive cheese battles in towns to prevent that, and that's why TWA is so boring as the Romans. Everyone else is going out and conquering stuff, whatever, and you're sitting there doing the same battle over and over again lol
Dorian Winston very true, if you don’t take Advantage of the dumb ai it becomes a awful, tedious experience constantly fighting city battles. All I do is abandon parts of the far flung empire and put as many standing army’s as I can in the boarder Provences and... win... TWA was exciting and I don’t think it’s a bad game. I just feel it lacks much substantial content to stop it from going stale from all the city battles and the stupidly small unit roasters. I don’t want to fight the same spear unit uniformed differently from the 364th Germanic tribe to try there luck :/
I never, ever play vanilla TWA, due to those small, boring, ahistorical unit rosters.
Dorian Winston The Eastern Empire is easy to play as and as the WRE it's just a case of managing rebels and conquering neighbouring barbarian tribes..
@@markhenley3097 it's not easy
@@HannibalsHorse You gotta use the minor roman factions mod
"Everybody hate you"
Instantly reminded me of Greek Cities in RTW 1
Was looking forward to the hardest start in M2 :(
I had a lot of fun and success playing as the Ottomans in empire by giving all my Balkan territory to Austria in exchange for an alliance and then forgetting about Europe and marching straight into India.
Who else read it as "Top 5 difficulty settings" at first?
One honorable mention: Western Roman Empire in Rome TW - Barbarian Invasion. I think it was even harder than Attila.
I agree
Lithuania in the m2 Teutonic expansion is pretty tough
I agree. I had to look up a walkthrough for Lithuania. I remember destroying any useless building and infantry units and spamming light cavalry, using heavy infantry to blitz the teuton settlements and blocking reinforcements with cavalry, all before the Mongols and Poles attacked.
Scotland in medieval 2 mate. They start off as a one province that literally gets eaten by England instantly
Aside from western rome, I found the goths (Ostragoth and visigoth) in TW Atilla to be exceptionally difficult. AI enemies know exactly where you are and your army condition and western rome hunts you down if you go anywhere near them. I had both my armies take some casualties from fighting the romans and a double vandal stack chased my forces all the way back to the black sea.
Total War Atilla in the western Roman Empire is certainly a hell of a start. But I have found a few tiny adjustments that can help massively.
1: Burn the church. When I first got started on that campaign I was hemorrhaging money and trying to figure out why, When I looked at the churches in all of my settlements... They have UPKEEP. I'm PAYING to keep these things in place? Spend two turns ripping down every church in the entire Roman empire. Suddenly I have a neat few grand coming in each turn and I can replace those churches with sanitation, food or entertainment.
2: Kill the barbarian hordes wandering through your territory. In France and (I think) Spain there are two wandering tribes that you are sort of allied with that pillage and generally lower happiness in every settlement they wander through. They also tend to backstab you at some point...
3: Fill your most profitable province governer slots and train them up to reduce corruption. As the video states, Corruption is rampant, but I don't like the idea of giving up ANY territory. (Except maybe Brittian). Governers are your best tool against corruption.
Clan Angrund is harder than Crooked Moon
Yeah way harder
Just cheese, get artillery and use ghosts to blob up the enemy units and hammer them with the artillery. Rinse and repeat until you are back to karak eight peaks
Attila really lives up to the survival strategy moniker
Lemme guess Western Roman Empire Attila
For number 1
Western Roman Empire Rome Total war for 2nd
Imma make a guess too, persian empire in the alexander campaign since you start with a lot of debt and useless fullstacks
The wre isn't hard though, I actually find it to be maybe the easiest. You have excellent income from trade with ere, loads of territory you can lose while you consolidate, you're on defense, and unlike every faction trying to conquer you, you don't have to pay insane conversion costs as you already own everything. If you want a real challenge play the fucking lahkmids, I can't stand those bastards. And yes, I play on hard very hard and even legendary.
@@minrominro9986 I was playing as the huns, and when i reached north italy after sacking Constantinople i decided i didnt wanna be the scourge of god anymore. so i went to diplomacy and I offered to join all WRE wars as long as they be my client state and they accepted. I gained massive amounts of money to build the greatest horde pretty early in the game. Crossing the alps was one of the hardest shit! I couldnt move an inch and barbarians were literally endless(legendary diff). I had a 10x better army and no settlements to defend and still it was a grind. I never played WRE but grown to respect the sheer amount of enemies they got
YES! When I saw the title I was like, Uesugi better be in there. Not disappointed. I pulled out so much hair trying to beat their campaign in VHard.
Solid list, mine is as follow:
5. Russia (Medieval II)
4. Hattori (Shogun 2)
3. Order of Loremasters (Warhammer II ME)
2. The Empire (Warhammer I at release)
1. Western Roman Empire (Atilla)
5. Russia because the settlements are so far apart and I find their units lacklaster, I like to rush other factions early game to gain the upperhand.
4. Hattori because they start small and in the middle of the land, can also be an advantage to some players I suppose.
3. Order of Loremasters in Mortal Empires, especially with the addition of The Blessed Dread and Vampire Coast, they are surrounded by good early game units that can get ground fast.
2. The Empire because when it was just released most if not all factions hated you, the human factions all disliked you except for maybe a few and you would get constantly invaded by Chaos and Norsca. If you had a bad early game it would get rough fast.
1. Western Roman Empire for the reasons you stated.
Also keep it up with the flow of content, loving it! Some of your recent video's and livestreams made me pick up Medieval II again.
what about the illyrians (i think thats how its spelled) in rome 2? they are even worse than the odrysian kingdom imo and have terrible early and late game military.
Prussia in Napoleon: Total War is pretty hard, they are fairly spread out - Army fairly weak, and Napoleon will declare and invade within 20 turns usually. You also don't start off allied with any of the other factions France is at war with, and they often won't ally you if you are getting invaded already.
I completely disagree with The Ottomans in ETW. In the early game they are the richest faction, allowing for spam armies and they get a variety of strong melee infantry and cavalry, meaning that you can steamroll most of your neighbors for most of the game. Because ETW ai is broken even with mods and will takes ages to research Fire by Rank (I've never actually seen it, I've had to gift it to the ai factions) and won't bother colonising, trading or doing anything of economic value at all you don't need to worry about effective opposition, just spam cheap melee
26CLT For me it's just conquer Persia, Venice and the Barbary States, so that people don't hate you for being allied to them. Then ally Sweden and take Russia. Units are trash but you you can spam them.
I only played ETW once, the broken AI was shocking even by the low standards of some of the other games. The AI barely fired a shot in battles, it just marched into gunfire range and then messed around rearranging its line while I mowed them down. And the general started the battle by trying to attack my army single-handed despite being a non-combat unit.
Can't believe any start is difficult in that game.
I think the Marcomanni (in Augustus Rome II Campaign on Legendary) are relatively hard on legendary (at least so far for me)
- Immediately at war with a faction that has better units then you and a same sized army
- Lack of food production
- Don't receive alot of funds unless you bump up taxes;
- Literally cannot keep your provinces happy unless you spend all of said money on public order, where lack of food comes in place as well as funds.
- Neighbors (I've had 4 at once before.) will war you almost immediately after they form confederations or defeat the Frisiia, so you need to fork over funds to keep the factions that you are happy with you to stay that way.
- Starter ally will get destroyed unless you help almost immediately
- Can't expand west until mid game due too Rome
- No Trade
But yeah, that's my struggle with the Marcomanni; most people can probably do them better then I can but getting flooded and then sieged without any funds coming in and starvation is my struggle with them.
Poland in napoleon. Surrounded by 3 powerhouses who hate you, no port, no starting army, underdeveloped province.
in Empire you mean. In Napoleon Poland is part of Prussia. And it is not difficult at all. Just sell Danzig to the austrians and abbandon Saxony.
Ottoman sounds harder. Also its possible to provoke a war between prussia and austria and russia usually doesnt declare war. So imo not hardest. I did die by the germans in my first playthrough tho
@@ravenstrategist1325 no, i mean in napoleon. With factionunlocker. And since russia, prussia and austris have an Alliance and a common enemy pretty much from turn one you wont be able to make them turn against each other
@@Cyprian96 ah my apologies then.
Nah... Actually anyone fighting against Napoleon with his cheating units
Crooked Moon are one of my favourite factions. While migrating you can easily run a couple of stacks given the gobo upkeep bonus (gobo infantry main stack with wolfrider reinforcements). Trash poorly defended regions on the way to keep your cash topped up. Taking Eight Peaks itself is a challenge, but not after you have grabbed the adjacent regions. The agent you start with levels extremely quickly and is key to scouting the route and dominating hero combat with Skarsnik on the battlefield.
I expect Epirus to appear
Should definitely be there instead of Uesugi. If you are not fit to play as the embodiment of the god of war you should not go for the dragon. Epirus or the Oda fit better in that spot
DerekGuerrero Epirus can be fun af if you play your cards right tho
watch legends epirus videos, you'll understand.
Handling Western Rome in Attila is like being tied to the Titanic as it sinks. Sure its nice and luxurious inside but its going down and taking everyone with it.
Top 5 dankest factions
Himyar in Attila, V Coast in WH 2
U
Put another shrimp on the barby - I'm bringing the beer
top 5 mods of total war
I would say the Saka in EB 1. You only have 1 region in the middle of nowhere. As nomadic people your agriculture is a joke, your trade can be good but it's long to put in place. The first turn you have some money but from the second turn you turn into negative income.The rebels are harder to beat than in a regular total war game and you can't recreate your batalions as you have no money. So if you lose a battle, you are done. But even if you capture a settlement, don't think that you are saved because they bring so few income that even with less soldiers, you must have 4-5 villages before strarting to see positive income. BUT, as you just spent 35 turns in red, you dug a hole quicker than a ferret on emphetamins so when you start to have a little bit of money, you see a benefit of 300-400 mnai per turn. I let you imagine the time that you need to be back in positive numbers.
You've inspired me to do an ottoman campaign in empire. I'll do it and flip it to a republic asap.
good luck
They were my first to go when i first played the game but i always gave up on it
Kill Russia asap
push to mughal border, then stop.
make persian gulf as trade hub to southeast asian /east africa.
At start break up with the Barbary (too much heat with the Europeans) and send all your troops to take Ukraine and give it to your vassal Krimean Khanate. This rips the guts out of Russia and you won't have to worry about that flank for a while.
Then send all your troops to the Caribbean and take the pirate islands to establish a foothold in that theater. Make trade ships from here and start taking trade points with your ships. Once you've got some decent swordsman and artillery in the army send it to India to establish yourself there because you can't let the Marathas take over India that's your job. :)
Send the troops you get from the first revolution east to take Georgia. Hold in Iraq until Georgia is secured and that army can start fighting the Persians. The troops from the second revolution can back them up or take Moscow if Russia is busy fighting others. To hold Moscow you would need to leave those troops there for 2-3 rebellions or you can destroy all his buildings and let it rebel.
Trade with all the Europeans and take over Morocco too. iirc if you want to try to trade Balkan land for North American land it's better at the beginning when you're still a monarchy like them before you have a negative modifier from being a republic. You start out with tech they don't have and that can help sweeten deals.
@Harold Haroldson indeed, absolute monarchy for life :)
Odeysseus Kindom is a walk in the park. They have acceptable spear. It's below mediocre, but 2 spears can rout 1 average infantry pretty well. Also, they have 50% discount for recruiting mercs, so recruit them before battle. Let them charge into the densest part of the battle field, and disband them before you hit end of turn. I never let them die for no reason, but you get my point.
Diplomacy is easy, just have non-aggression with northern neighbors. After that, you can trade with them. Focus on taking out Macedone fast, and then Greek states will be grateful to you.
The main challenge is that it has no armored tier-2 infantry, so you need to take a city with wood, and recruit nobles as fast as possible. Pontus is not far away, and you can take it as soon as Macedone is destroyed. After that, recruiting units from dozen-turn's building is a real pain, but it's more annoying than hard.
It's not nearly as hard as WRE. You have a very hard time with every battle with insufficient troops and money in WRE, unless you cheese AI. OK is just normal. It's not even as hard as Frank Kingdom in Attila: TW.
And the Latin Christian religion is also a pain in the arse for the Western Romans, especially because of the insanely high upkeep. Also the tech three sucks, because of the legacy loss (I've learned it the hard way).
Do not rely on churches, build garrisons instead.
Collect the extra food you need by fishing.
Do not go down this part of the tech tree until the endgame.
Yeah the mini ice age caught me flat footed. I was almost ready to go win and the I got hit by minus 500 food.
Then attila showed up ahah.
@@seastand12 Famous last words.
Convert to Greco-Roman Paganism if you want to survive and thrive.
@@lars9925 I wrecked every church. I could find. I also installed a mod that allows you to convert at 10 percent. Instead of building guard houses, I build fountains and sheep floks.
Jumped straight in to Western Roman Empire and many hours later got the achievement. What a pain it was thought….
TOP 5 most op starts
Gotta throw in an honorable mention for the Golden Circle in Warhammer II Mortal Empires campaign. The undead hordes are super rude.
Top 5 mistakes developers have done creating the total war games
Crooked Moon is hard but super fun for me. Something about a huge mob of screaming goblins running into combat, routing, coming back, routing, coming back is hilarious.
western roman tactic during the attila time was engage with light spears hold heavy at rear as each lighter unit grew tired they would withdraw and the heavy troops would hold until the lighter troops were ready to fight again then they would repeat also missile troops were normally used aswell to slow the enemy and take some out
Finally you started picking features out of all TW games instead of one, I'd been longing for that for quite a long time
I really don't understand why everyone thinks the Uesugi have a bad start (or would be difficult to play) I didn't have any problems on the Legends difficulty.
my neighbours literally thought like:
*"Let me out of here, i don't wanna fuck with these Monks on the other side."*
The WRE start isn't that bad if you're not opposed to losing territory slowly. Your garrisons are pretty strong and once you upgrade to tier 2 troops they can hold back most 20 man stacks of barbar even on legendary. The real kicker is corruption, which can be dealt with using spies and I believe certain governor traits. Your troops at the start are ideal for turtling though so even 20 man migrating stacks and rebels aren't a huge deal. Territories not being worth shit means it's no big deal to lose them, though you'll want a -big- garrison in north Italy. I did a WRE legendary playthrough and got the achievement where you aren't allowed to autoresolve and have to win every battle.
Good video! Looking forwards to your next one.
Carthage in Rome II is tough as you start out divided with little money and quickly at war with everybody
Top 5 economy buildings in total war
2:22 Fun fact: back then it was called the Dutch East Indies
I'd say one of the most difficult starts is a Diplomatic Karl Franz. The amount of times you'll diplomatically back yourself into a corner if you're not paying attention with which fucker you're trying to confederate with and which fucker you want to murder while the vampire counts are growing in power is immeasurable to me. I try not to go full stupid in that game, but sometimes I start making the wrong friends only to realize, they have an anti-confederation boner and won't help me till their lands are nearly entirely gone and their corrupted to all hell.
Queek head taker has a hell of a start
Takeda or Uesugi yeah. Either one. Takes 2-4 turns to reach your enemy. Takeda has cavalry which sucks when you are sieging. Finished Legendary Takeda campaign multiple times, it's always fun
The Ottoman cannons are very good. You don't need fire by rank. Just blow them to pieces with grapeshot.
Agree ,played western roman empire. You really need to prioritize 1 area to build upon and Hope to hold on to as many provines as possible. I went crazy and built up britannia first which was horrible but eventually it paid off.
This video has convinced me into rolling up a Crooked Moon Mortal Empires Campaign.
This is meant more as a comment on how your typically excellent video could have been even more valuable for players of various TW games, and that is to have spent a few seconds on the other "honourable mentions" for the titles you chose.
Wasn't surprised to see Crooked Moon in Warhammer, for example, but those who haven't played much of WH1 or 2 might have found it interesting to hear you mention the others you consider difficult enough to have been on the list of the most difficult for that game (or games).
Cheers
The thing about the western Roman is that, even if you sacrifice some (read most) of your provinces to focus on developing rome and the inner cities, like out of nowhere random tribes pop up that are like "oh we weren't here 1 turn ago and you had your armies dealing with a revolt ? Don't mind us having a full stack in 3 turns to Rome then" Like what the actual f word
My early Date game in Shogun was saved by taking Sado Island, which has a very profitable gold mine... I'm sure you could do the same as the Uesugi?
Vandals in the last roman never fails to kick my ass
Parthia from Rome 1 was rly hard because Poor ecenomy, rly Poor infantery and the northern Provinze which produced minus income, also egypt was coming your way sooner or later.
Which meant endless missle horseman kide battles.
Being a bit of an old-school guy, I was expecting BI WRE in here. But I do agree that they're not even comparable to the nightmare that is Atilla WRE, and honestly, you can cheese your way out of almost anything in RTW and M2. A list with more focus on newer titles, like this one, is not exactly my favourite, but I think the ranking is relatively fair.
That said, I'd like a "weakest unit roster" list next, and I'd like to nominate the RTW britons.
Hattori anyone??? I thought they would be on first position
i find that clan angrund is harder than crooked moon with some of the same problems, but instead of having shit armies they have reeally expensive armies and crooked moon actually has a upkeep cost reduction for goblins so if you take 2 full provinces you can get 3 maxed armies, send 2 for karak 8peaks raid to get 2 waaah armies and get k8p, but when you play as clan angrund you need 2 provinces to maintain 1 full army, just my personal opinion
Poland Lithuania is bloody hard too. No matter what I seem to do Austria, Sweden Prussia and ottomans ALWAYS declare war and Russia only most of the time. When you manage to get a port it's always useless because they always block it before you can recruit a fleet to protect it so you're stuck with no trading income and completely sandwiched...
In fact Attila West Rome is not to hard if you start right:
1. Abandon Spain, Britain, Iliria and most of Gaul
2. Disband Britain Legion
3. Fortify North Italy, Sicily and Carthage, if you can (if you have time to build) hold Libia
4. Dismantle all Church, and build farms (you need Food!!!!) on Sicily and Africa
5. Massilia, Milano and Venice are key point for defense
6. drain money from tax until you can from abandon zone (don't build anything, but dismantle church), you will get enough money for build defense in Italy
7. ASAP >> research level I and level II military, only then start research to economy I, then military III, economy II
8. Army
In North Italy 3-5 Legion must in defense
1 legion for Sicily and south Italy
1 Legion in Carthage
1 legion in Libia (I usual send fleet in start of game, later replace them with regular Army, its low priority)
9. Do not be Hero. Keep Armies in forts and play defense until you kill Huns
10. Huns - in start you can bribe them, even make them ally, but when they trespass in Italy kill them ASAP (even if they ally), DO NOT give them or anybody to make Raid in Italy
Unrest increases too much if you abandon regions either disband or reduce in size the outer provincial armies and do your best to fight a fighting retreat towards the heartland sell buildings in the outer provinces for cash get food going in italy Sicily make the bulk of your upgrades in Sicily and push out to retake loss land once economically stable
Avoid the huns at all cost until economically stable if possible and hope barbarians kill them or surprise them if depleted and kill Attila
I'd add Lakhmids from TW: Attila to this list, if you want to achieve the goals. Being a small desert faction trying to have war with the Sassanids.
I'd argue queek headtaker's vortex campaign start is at least 2nd or 3rd hardest. 90% of your units are utter cannon fodder until you can get the appropriate traits and buffs, the food mechanic cripples aggressive expansion (coupled with the fact that territories with the ability to farm food are hard to come by), and youre surrounded by enemies capable of curbstombing your armies if you arent playing carefully.