How Total War Destroyed Its Campaign Gameplay: Army Systems, Balls, & Chains
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0:00 Total War's Campaign Map
4:55 What Makes a Good Total War
8:50 Being Inventive in Total War
15:50 Where Things Went Wrong
19:15 Tangent: Logistics in History
22:20 Army Management in Total War
29:54 Global Recruitment is Moronic
34:30 Casualties: Sieges and Naval Warfare
40:36 Rewarding Inventiveness
43:10 The Warhammer Lore: Missed Opportunities
48:40 Proper Faction Differentiation
53:55 Supply Lines & DoomStacks
57:20 Fantasy isn't an excuse
1:01:00 Why We Play Games in the First Place
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Not being able to move your units independently is hands down the most idiotic design decision the developers have taken with Rome II onwards, it has done nothing but to drastically cut down the fun and interest in the campaign experience.
I hope to find a way to mod this feature back in and I have a few ideas on how to do that.
Great video as always
I miss my Watchtower Empire 🥺
I think they did that because they wanted every army to have a general and also there was an unfixable exploitable which you were able to move around map infinitely, I think the main problem was the engine itself they introduced from empire . Shogun 2 showed the maximization of that engine and it just went downhill from there.
I dont know if this is true but I heard on a forum a long time ago that army limits were implemented after empire or napoleon tw because of a bug they couldnt fix. Ai factions spawned hundreds of 1 unit armies instead of making a stack of 20 on campaign
Not to mention using an army without a general was a way to GET a general if you won the battle. Was a great feature
@@LLMCxDak Wait, WHAT? That was a thing? I never knew. Was it all pre-Rome II games or just one specific game?
Great video.
You could have gone even further with how well thought-out Tolkien's sense of strategy and logistics was by mentioning that, in the books, Sauron opened a third front with the corsairs of Umbar, not to strike the city of Minas Tirith, as it was depicted in the movie adaptation, but to attack the western coastal settlements of Gondor to prevent those provinces from sending reinforcements to Minas Tirith.
Aragon did not summon the army of the dead to destroy the main army of the Witch-King but to free the western provinces so that he could lead a counter attack.
This was also written on in the blog but at that point I didn't want to end up quoting the whole work lol
It's an amazing read and you can truly tell Tolkien did his research, contrary to the idea that fantasy is an easy genre because you can just make whatever up.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 It's all right, I am a great admirer of Tolkien's work :P Consider that a TL:DR summary ;)
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 i mean you can it's just that it looks silly even with the "it's a magic world" card
I am someone who basically never plays the battles in TW, I almost entirely play it for the campaigns. I agree that TW has gone downhill over time but generally people talk almost entirely about the battles and not really talking about the campaign’s downfall too, so its a blessing to actually hear about this.
Yeah, part of my drive to make this video is that some older TW fans will state that campaigns were really barebones and just an excuse to add weight to battles; as someone who has put more than 1,000 hours into EU4, a grand strategy game that is often compared favorably to TW campaign maps, I can confidently say that the campaign map experience in games like Medieval 2 and Shogun 2 were actually more nuanced and interesting.
Games like EU4 and CK pretend to be smart by shoving overly complex menus in your face chock full of nouns that are never really explained and numbers going up and down and bars filling up; so when they see a game like Shogun 2 with relatively minimal UI they immediately think "this is barebones, where are all the buttons and submenus?"
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Very well put actually. I played paradox games through my highschool years and thought they were the most complex games on the market. Then I played DCS.
@@ShahjahanMasood what is DCS ?
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498EU4 and CK2 arent that complicated actually, theres just a lot of things to take care of. A lot of it is natural and makes sense. The game I have the most issue with is HOI4, for some reason its very unnatural to me, but I can do Hoi3 without a problem, albeit not that I understand the OOB, but i can somewhat set it up.
In HOI4, i understand nothing, its a very weird game design. Just like with TW since Rome 2 (battles suck ass)
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 'campaign map experience in games like Medieval 2 and Shogun 2 were actually more nuanced and interesting.' This is some weapons grade copium, paradox grand strategy games aren't especially complex but to suggest that the TW campaign maps for Medieval 2 or Shogun 2 are somehow better than what EU4 or ck3 has to offer is extremely retarded.
Medieval 2 has bribing too. Also depending on your ruler's authority your armies without generals may rebel against you. That was a good balance to having many armies. God i love medieval 2.
Isn't that restricted to bribing generals, though?
And bribing agents, too.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 i ve just checked it bro u can bribe armies without generals. u can even bribe settlements in medieval 2.
@@enesbilge1646 In fact, you could bribe any army going back to the OG Shogun 1.
@@CecilXIX in mtw2 too i think. Havent tested the armies in crusade or jihad though.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 No you have more, you can bribe settlements and non-general armies.
46:00 the thing is at a late stage of Warhammer 2 they started to make fractions work and recruit different, like beastman who pay no upkeep and have special way of recruiting or later on nurgle focused on buildings that all produce troops. But they got onto it too late, and all previous fractions lack this sort of differences
The mere fact that the Lizardmen work exactly the same as most other factions, recruiting units by spending money, already invalidates the whole game and shows how little imagination and creativity the developers have. It's so easy to make a better system: You periodically get new spawnings of troops and that's what you have to work with. You can use priests to try and understand the designs of the old ones to get more troop spawns, this would give essentially be missions. Voila, this already makes them play completely differently from other factions.
Regarding population and logistics(and a bit of limiting armies to generals).
Not so long ago I've played Julii campaign on Imperatoris Mundi map in Rome remastered. By the time I've reached Egypt in my conquest they literally had hordes of armies due to the map scale. Like it was not unusual to see 10-15 stacks on the screen, or more, if it was a region of prolonged conflict. Before Marian reforms, having only hestates and principes with some equites and local mercenaries I had nothing to counter chariots thus I could not outflank egyptian phalanxes, while they also possessed superior archers, so I could defeat the army only if I had significant advantage in numbers(thanks to reinforcements, which I cannot control, so they suffer significant losses). So I've started sending every spearmen I had or could recruit to the Egypt, including even mercenary warband. Cyrene was one of four cities that could train triarii and due to its proximity to the front line I used it as a retraining center to replenish damaged triarii units. But it quickly run out of population. So I've started moving peasants from garrisons in Spain to Cyrene to replenish its population. This way I've moved somewhere around 60k of population half way across Africa.
This was quite a big scale of operation. While this all was not the most enjoyable by itself, but it created the feel of large and complicated system that is your empire. And the consequences of large scale war.
Now I'm playing shogun 2 and I miss having population, merging and manually retraining units.
I remember a trick I used to do in Shogun 2 was to spam out a lot of single unit armies of peasants and throw them in the general direction of enemy armies. Instead of advancing on my towns, these incredibly strong armies would waste their movement chasing after these "easy" targets, buying me time to bring my own armies over.
good idea never did that
That's kinda cheating, and actually helps justify tying armies to generals to prevent that kind of cheese. But if the AI was able to recognize that single unit armies were a minimal threat and engage them with an appropriately small force of their own (like running down a single bow ashigaru with a single unit of light cavalry etc.) it would be okay, and that would be the ideal fix. But as it is, you're basically cheating.
@@doltBmB Is it cheating to kill the enemy general when the AI uses them like Katana Cavalry, charging them straight into your Yari Ashigaru?
@@doltBmB Oh no! Not "cheating" against AI that already get their own "cheats". There are 101 ways to exploit the AI that they could fix to make the game fun. Literally just never attack unless you can autoresolve and it's ez ggs no re. Set up in a good position and watch the AI charge straight into your meat grinder. Thankfully some mods change this like Darthmod so the AI will actually move when defending. (Wow so CA could, too!) Changing that instead of an interesting and fun mechanic would be a much better solution to this supposed cheating you mention. Plus, they're not good at flanking. I did a custom battle with modern vs tradition units. I had around 2500 troops and they had around 4500 troops. They had like 10 units of calvary. Instead of choosing to go all the way around me and attack me from behind where my artillery is, they chose to attack where I had set up to counter flanks. If the AI had just gone around I would've lost. They would've been in the middle of my formation behind all my troops. The only thing that makes this game hard are the artificial bonuses the AI get in the campaign. And even then it's really not hard. My first Rise of the Samurai campaign was on very hard and I steamrolled the AI without even having 100 hours on the game. I have no clue why I wrote all of this because there doesn't seem to be a point to be made. If I were to make a point, it would be boohoo cheating in SP :(
This technique was actually one of the reasons *why* the devs made the change over to generals being needed to lead armies in various ways after Shogun 2. Because I guess it was easier to change army organization than it was to make the AI understand the concept of splitting off a detachment from a main force to deal with cheese like this.
Generally speaking I think a lot of the changes made to the campaign gameplay have been due to trying to design around limited AI more than anything. Because yeah, it's very difficult to make complex, complicated and resourceful AI that doesn't wig out regularly.
I also think really bad decision is that they never go back, once CA make some changes in games they adamantly staying by them an never going back or trying to innovate. Such as the region system from Empire/Shogun, it can be used in so many ways if used correctly, such as you said Mongolian raiding. For example Mongolian invasion of Hungary in 1241. Mongolians were stealing supplies from local villages, defeating their armies, it left scars on the country. King Bela IV took notes of what was weakness of their forces and made changes, he went on building spree building castles, forts, anything with walls to prevent Mongolians from stealing their supplies, as local population would take everything inside of those fortification.
Then lot of military decisions but that's another story, but this way you could make the town system more engaging, as you could have the option to stop the economy in that province, and then there would be no way for enemy to get supplies suffering attrition if they are horde armies. Now they would be forced to go on prolonged siege or just burn your town of of spite. If you they into siege and won you would extra money that was stored. And if you don't put everything into forts, then they can raid your towns, ruining your economy, stealing some resources and money, while getting replenishment. Like this could be experimented with, instead they just abandoned it.
Combining new with all image in Warhammer if Orcs would use Shoguns town system, but instead of town they could be called warbands, or what not. Empire can use current Rome 2 system of province as to show their organization and Empire building. Dwars could use Medieval 2 province system since they concentrate in big underground cities. (this is just an example, I don't know lore that much, so these examples can be replaced) So that each faction would play and feel differently. They don't even attempt to combine new and old.
Like current province system made sense in game about Rome, and ancient empire that where known for organizing their empire with higher degree of regional governance. You can expand on this with governor system, so region might ban trade against one another, you would have to keep regional politics in check. They can refuse you recruiting in them so you might lower taxes to appease them, increase military presence because they feel unsafe. But there is no innovation, it's always seems CA is replacing rushed stuff with more rushed stuff, never giving time for anything to crystalize to beauty.
Bonus Stuff:
Another thing as you said navy. Like okay you are too lazy to model all the ships, programing is already done thanks to past games. But why don't they at least have navies like Medieval 2/Rome, why did we lose this completely, that is beyond me.
Also Dwarfs and their tunnel system is wasted potential. Let's look Heroes of Might and Magic. Underground is it's own separate map layer, that directly leads to places on surface. Image second map for Dwarfs and Orcs to fight in. And that leads to another things, they will never go back to improve older titles, because they need to this out more.
And and for fantasy can't be compared to history. Bullcrap to that. Look at Shadiversity, Wizards and Warriors, Spacedock ... that talk about fantasy and scifi, comparing it real life examples, sometimes experimenting how feasible would that thing be in real life. Making setting grounded, even if fantasy and scifi one, can make it more believable, and more engaging, and it doesn't feel like made up world full of nonsense. Restrictions also can make for interesting design decision or creative solutions for that. Example would be if your setting had wizards that can conjure up food, image what it would to to supply lines, there would be none. And what would happen with a guy feeding and army, the army would become loyal to him, so wizards would become kings and get lot of power, so you can make you setting around that. We didn't remove the need for logistics, they still exist, but we made lore around this problem, instead of just saying "It's fantasy, logistics are unimportant."
And modding. I think we all the famous total conversion new title have such as "nothing", a truly classic to be remembered. Compared to Older stuff like WW2 mod for Rome. WW1 for Napoleon. Now there is mod for Shogun that adds china and Korea. Medieval 2 with Warhammer, Lords of the rings. And much more. And fact that community still tries to mod new titles and improve them, like reworked animation in WH3. Loading for gunners. Reworking broken balance.
Honestly we should just learn how to make games, assets, coding, and make our own gaming series. Like it can be done in 20 years, no problem. It will be faster than waiting for CA to move a finger.
Sorry if this was long, but it was well made video, with good points, so I wanted to put few things of my mind too. Like this seems like right place to rant. :D
Your point about Dwarves is amazing, you'd think their mining skill would play a huge part in determining how they conduct war. You'd think it would make them experts at sieging.
Just like how the Venetians relied on sea trade which meant they ended up being far more navy-focused than on land; civilian activities and culture tend to heavily shape military organization, and yet Warhammer does almost nothing to functionally differentiate these races.
I always wished there was more meat to each province, or more ways it capturing it/weakening it. I get the idea behind the games I'd grand battles and spectacle sieges assaults, but wearing down a province by waging war on the countryside and infrastructure is what I wish I had the option of doing. The first time I played Empire, I thought that's where we'd end up, but too bad.
Although navy was always my least favorite aspect of the games, so I couldn't care less what they do with it.
The Tomb Kings in Warhammer 2 have no upkeep costs which means you can field a large number of armies and have them support each other.... except in Quest Battles, where even a stack of your strongest possible units won't be strong enough because even at high tier you're supposed to capitalize on having multiple armies working together.
Frankly I would love a video on how Total War destroyed its own battles. (with all it being stat junk, button pressing simulator, how range combat was killed, etc)
I started with campaigns since very few people actively focus on that; battles will require a huge effort to cover in an upcoming video.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I agree! Battles are very in-depth. If you ever need help, feel free to ask other players or CZcamsrs. I wish you the best of luck my Daimyo.
To see such a well-thought out and well portrayed video left only on 284 views is such a shame
Still 284 better than 0. This was fun to make.
A shameful display if you will
You can easily tell how much work is put into this video, he goes to prove each and every point with video footage and detailed knowledge unlike other CZcamsrs who be making points out of the void without any context
helly is the biggest liar ever
dont u know i am super nostalgia boy who actually just really hates fantasy for some reason
educate yourself
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 based
"Total war warhammer is the best one"
"Jurassic park dominion is the best one"
Corporate wants you to find the difference between these two photos.
*They're the same picture*
Great video. Lots of great points made and I hope this gets enough traction to influence total war games in the future
this actually gave me a lot to think about in the games that i play. i always have trouble keeping settlements early on, I never really considered actual strategy in where I'm recruiting units lmao
Ironically, Warhammer Fantasy tabletop has (or used to, it's been a while) a system similar to MII's. Units are divided into tiers, and an army of a given size can only have so much of the top two tiers.
its crazy to think that the fucking tableop is more grounded in reality than the game. One of the most beloved mods of warhammer is literally an effort to make the battles closer to tabletop, and I dont bleive for one bit even a third of the people using the mod actually played the tabletop.
Another godly upload from our Daimyo! Keep up the fantastic work!
This train wreck is the gift that keeps on giving
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Well it is the most wonderful time of the year!
Yep, armies not being tied to generals makes a huge difference in Shogun 2. It is a really good feature
Just a comment for the algorhytm. Your videos speak out of my heart and are so high quality. More people need to hear this.
1:04:46 I think you're a bit mis-informed here. I've played the Dark Souls games for a long, long time. It has gotten extremely easier, in fact so easy I don't see the challenge in it anymore. Demon Souls started out with at times very un-fair difficulty, but still enjoyable most of the time. Things like World Tendency actively punished you for dying in an un-fair way by taking away your health and making enemies harder, even though you will die, a lot. Dark Souls 1 perfected the difficulty of the Dark Souls games, and it's been down-hill from there.
Dark Souls 1 made it so fighting a boss was a learning experience, every boss taught you something. For example, Bell Gargoyles taught you there can be more than one enemy in a boss fight, and teaches you kiting. The Tauros Demon, teaches you to pay attention to your surroundings, by making the boss's main weakness hard to spot. The same boss also teaches you to remember what you learn, as it builds upon an already known skill you learned earlier. This is repeated throughout every boss, beside the final 4, which are the, "Have you learned what we're teaching you?" tests (Beside Bed of Chaos but that was obviously a budget and time issue.) Regular enemy encounters do this too; for example, in the beginning area, Firelink Shrine, there is a group of enemies. These enemies teach you three things,
1-
Pay attention, there is a firebomb thrower that can take out half your health if you're not careful
2-
Kick shields, it makes them vulnerable
3-
Don't rush encounters, you will get ambushed and die
Again, this same design is repeated again, and again.
Contrast this to Elden Ring.
One, Bosses are now just cool fights you get to do, no learning and no special mechanics. In fact, several bosses are repeated, as actual boss fights, not regular encounters. Like the Tree spirits which is just shamelessly bad. The only thing you can learn from bosses now, is when to dodge, and maybe to use consumables and go visit other places in the game before fighting bosses. Which is something that is praised so much in Elden Ring, yet beyond Margit you can just fight bosses however you want to, so the lesson isn't even needed. However, I do appreciate they did this for new players, so they don't get trounced, but for experienced players like me, I can just do whatever the fuck I want to.
Secondly, you can dodge boss's attacks without even knowing what they are. This sounds good on paper, but fails in practice. This means, if you have a feel for the rhythm of a boss's moves, you can side step all difficulty. This sounds really hard to do, but it really isn't, especially with the huge, "I'm gonna hit ya, I'm gonna hit yaaaaa, now I hit you" attacks. After Dark Souls Two's release, enemies are just groups that you have to defeat, not learning experiences. This is evident for me in the Storm Veil Caste at the beginning bit. There is this horn blower, that alerts the enemies around him, so the obvious solution is to sneak. However, sneaking doesn't work, and you might die if you do since you are moving slowly. This is something that is repeated again, and again throughout the entire game, you think you find a solution but actually you are punished for doing that because of, "Difficulty."
The most damning thing of all, is that spirit summons are so beyond broken it's funny. In Dark Souls, you could summon people, but this could come at the cost of getting invaded, which most of the time these invaders are quite skilled, because of limitations imposed upon them. Which has also gotten worse, but don't even get me started on that. So, there is a trade-off. However, spirit summons can be used offline, meaning that there is no punishment or trade for using them. Also, some of these spirit summons are completely broken, and can actually beat bosses, by themselves...
So yes, there is a easy button, and that is broken mechanics.
Advance Guard is a more generalized term.
Armies usually use the Term of Vanguard.
Rome 2's Army system is barebones but have some good things that can be improved, allowing you to detach unit is one such improvement, making the Army/Legion the General Led main force while leaving the Detachment of Cavalry or Legionaries to scout or reinforce regions.
Like the Recruitment can still be based on the armies, but with detachments Armies become a barrack entity in the campaign map that makes it more important to have an army on a side of your territory not only for a force to defend it but also the ones who recruit units into the part of your territory which can be detached to defend the regions while the army become the main punching force if the detached force is overwhelmed by the enemy Army and detachments.
Also losing Armies in Rome 2 is not a setback as you can just reinstate said army with all it's traditions intact, it would be more of a setback if you need funds to reinstate lost armies or has to hunt down the enemy army that destroyed your army to gain back the standard of the destroyed army to reinstate it.
It's either I'm too used to the Rome 2 and on Recruitment system or it's just an ease of management, but from what I heard the Region based recruitment downfall is the AI would eventually recruit a lot of units and the movement of those units would tank the performance in the campaign map, but there's some mod in Warhammer where the pixels can be counted where in said mods the closer you're to a region's settlement the less upkeep you need, which can be a good way to use a mechanic where if you recruit units in the province while being outside the settlement which can recruit said unit the unit cost will be increased making it more cost effective to recruit your units while inside the settlement that can produce said unit.
This is simply a problem with games being a product, from corporations. A corporation MUST grow. It can’t simply tread water, it either grows or it dies. This drives games to ALWAYS strive for a larger audience, even if it damages your core audience, and even if it kill the series, the numbers MUST. GO. UP.
Wonderful, thoughtful video. Thank you
I never realized that the campaign-map management part of the game was not a thing for some people, it was always the main and most engaging part of the game for me ☠
THANK YOU! About time someone pointed this out. Logistics is something that Total War has just STRAIGHT UP ABANDONED! And the results speak for themselves, AI army spam and Player battle fatigue. Empire may be infamous for its shit AI, but if you stand back and observe, the BATTLE AI may have been brain dead BUT, the Campaign map AI was almost a genius. It would send out small armies to do some scouting, and then when it DID find something to fight it would gather its forces and come to fight you.
Without question however the changes to Armies/Navies, Cities/Provinces and the methods CA employs to "LIMIT" what you the player can do have overall made the series WORSE. Why did they do this? Most likely the AI which is so bad games from 10+ years ago can be pointed to and go "they did it better", Just look at the latest patch notes for Warhammer 3 how they add "AI behaviors" based on DIFFCULTY LVL instead of just making the AI Smarter.
In anything Pre Rome 2, you kill off an army and you would have a few turns (or several) of free reign to pillage, plunder and otherwise conquer your enemies. Units also have different amounts of movement depending on type: Cavalry units had the most, followed by Infantry, and lastly artillery. Thus having artillery in your armies would slow down your armies ability to move, while fielding an army of PURE Cavalry would net you superior movement to any other army.
Rome 2 and Attila are and were at least "tolerable", the last "true" total war games (at least they feel like one) in my opinion. The building system and even the Garrisons where better in those games then they are in the Warhammer games. Buildings in WHTW only do ONE THING and thats it, and the garrisons are just a JOKE since the AI will just build ELITE armies making half the garrison useless. And yes outside of FACTION MECHANICS and UNIT ROASTERS, every faction is the same.
Meanwhile Rome 2 and Attila's buildings tended to do 2 things or more for a single building slot. A military building would not only increase your garrison size but allow recruitment for example, said garrisons where also ALOT better since they could actually hold off attacks if you played well (or cheese). Faith buildings not only converted the populous but gave public order, extera extera extera. Not a perfect system mind you but it was better then Warhammer. Attila also made each faction alot more "different" from one another within each "culture group", where as Rome 2 was very Cookie Cutter about it.
"et cetera" is latin for "and stuff" ;)
After playing other Total war series (R1, M2, S2, R2, Attila) I was wondered about Napoleon and wanted to give it a try. Man, I became a addict. NTW litterally conquered my 2022 year. , Napoleonic warfare, Naval battles, coordination between cav arty and infanrty, masterpiece soundtrack and so on. Everything was great. Until I discovered every downside of the game. Nowadays it doesn't feel as glorious as it used to. It really hits the face that NTW it's getting so old and becoming boring.
"NAPOLEON II" IS DESPERATELY NEEDED.
But when I see the downfall situation after Rome 2 and beyond, I losing my hope.
Hey, Napoleon may not be the best Total War but it is a pretty solid game overall. The morale system actually works, for one.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I totally agree, I just think France is overpowered on morale.
Only thing is the absolute horrible camera height...
Honest to god. My respect for the Total war community and the content creators in that community has peaked. I am not a Total war player. I just got into it a few days ago. Medieval II is my first Total war game and I love the Broken Crescent mod. I plan on playing the other titles as well when they on sale. But the passion for the games is real. The ammount of effort small youtubers make into editing a long form essay on the issues of the games speaks of that. Have a good one guys.
Dude...I guess you don't know but the Total War CZcams space is full of people shilling the games with clickbait thumbnails and titles and constant hype videos discussing the next DLC.
There are very, very few CZcamsrs actually discussing the games for what they are.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I know of a few shill channels yeah but I also know of quite a few channels that were dissatisfied with the current state of the franchise. Thats why I got interested in MD2. The Paradox community also has a similar problem of shills and real people.
As someone who plays Shogun 2 fots before playing its base game, I just realized how challenging its campaign is
Sorry if it's inappropriate to ask, but does a general in charge of a separate stack get experience for a fight or only the general in charge of the main stack?
all generals get experience by participating in a battle, where they are in the same stack or a reinforcing stack (of course the amount varies; a general leading the 2nd stack will gain more XP than the 2nd one in the first army).
In Shogun 2 in a Victorious Battle:
The Leading General who's army is attacking/defending gets +10 exp.
The General Reinforcing the Leading General gets +3 exp.
The General inside either the leading or reinforcing General get +1 exp.
So it's highly recommended to split up your general led armies even in early game as +3 exp is more than +1 exp, but always have the knowledge of putting 2 general in 1 army to prevent the enemy to attack the one general or small army and making your leading army becoming a reinforcing army.
As someone who still enjoys warhammer tw (though mostly just multiplayer now) this video is spot on. Older total wars provide far more interesting and dynamic choices/situations both in and out of battle and shogun 2 will remain my favorite.
Fingers crossed they bring some of the older depth back for medieval 3, but I doubt it. And it sucks, too since CA obviously wants the success of warhammer to carry over to new historicals, and making "warhammer tw but not fantasy" is not the way to do that since people who like it will just stick with warhammer.
Half the reason many newer players don't get into older TW's is the age and clunkiness that comes with it, I think the old total war depth with a fresh coat of paint would do great and provide something for newer players to latch onto when trying out a considerably less flashy setting.
I'm really hoping to see a Medieval 2 Remastered after all these mobile releases of the game. That's what happened with Rome Remastered. I don't think Rome Remastered was "great" by any means, but it works for the most part, I'm happy with it because solves my biggest gripes with the old Rome (and Mediveal 2) which are things like the clunky camera controls. All I want is classic Total War with better camera and keyboard controls so I don't have to fight with the game itself to fight actual battles. If we can just get that, I wouldn't have to give a damn what they decide to do with their next coming installments into the series.
The campaign map gives much needed stakes and context to the battles. Without it, the battles would be just individual video game levels that you grind through. That can be fun aswell but in terms of player experience, definitely the inferior way to play a tactics game. That being said, if we look at Total War campaigns in an isolated manner, i.e. without the real time battles, they really are rather shallow experiences compared to quintessencial entries in the genre like Civilization or Paradox games.
That is not to say that they are bad by any means. They fulfill their purpose: being a relaxing and not too mentally taxing respite from the intense battles, all the wile complementing them thematically.
Nevertheless, I wonder what a game would be like if it offered the complete package, that is: A true battle simulator (like Total War) inside a true politics simulator (like Paradox grand strategy games).
A late reply but I bring thee good tidings, the game thou seeks is now possible. Have you good sir heard of the mods CrusaderWars and CrusaderBlade? First one allows CK3 and Attila combo, so strategy in CK and battles in Attila and it uses the MK1212 mod for units. Crusaderblade combines CK3 and the battles are fought in Mount&Blade Bannerlord. Enjoy ;)
My personal pet peeve is how CA treats gunpowder/black powder units in TW Warhammer. Like the many other points mentioned, it's just another casualty in CA's shift from form.
i played an Ikko Ikki legendary , war on everybody from turn1 , monks only champaign. That was fun
Warhammer fantasy the tabletop for all its faults had a lot of thought put on terrain and formations.
Around 44:00 ,
I really do hate that complete bad faith argument ((atleast to me it is)) of: ""YoU CaNt JuDgE iN CoMpAriSoN ThE FaNtAsY GaMes To ThE hiStOriCaL oNeS heRe, YoU HaVe To TaKe ThE LoRe iNtO coNsiDeRaTiOn!!!!"" that some people (( -mostly from Reddit here- )) try to make. To attempt, to hand-wave away. any type of criticism levied against the Warhammer games.
Because that whole argument shitter-shatters into Like that of fine china; when you realize, that almost all of the other mortal races in the setting (( _especially those of the human ones here_ )) are almost directly based-off or mixed of a specific time's ((or people's)) in history. If it isn't the southern realms being based off of the Italian city-states, the empire being based off of the mixture of the 1400's HRE and that of Frederick the Great's Empire, to Kislev being 1500's Muscovy to the new world colonies being a mix of Charles the 5th's spanish empire to that of Queen Isabella's Union over Aragon and Castile . And not just that, but then it gets curb-stomped further to fine dust. Upon the fact: That CA has has almost by verbatim here; covered Every single one of those era's, that those factions are based off of. ((the only exception, that hasn't been properly done: is 1500's Muscovy here. but streltsy and cossack units were in Empire: Total War, so there's that)).
So again, in uh other words here: there is literally no excuse, to not include proper musket anims. for 3 games in a row now, ""Lore-wise"" or not here.
Oh And very good video too, Daimyo!
There's also a double-standard when they criticize Shogun 2 for having all units be common; by their own logic this should be fine because it is accurate to the history it's portraying.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498
Ye, I remember volound. Bringing it up in a video once.
But I also just reached 57:30 here. And Holy shit, I can't believe that someone Unironically wrote that.
that is perhaps, *thee* most stupidest thing I've ever heard someone ever say here. Especially all things considering here; that Warhammer, was ((and also is)) a table-top game.
@@tzardnickolasthelitromanov that argument of “its fantasy it doesn’t have to make sense” is so bullshit, Warhammer guns are like normal real world muskets, thus I expected it to behave like muskets, nothing fantasial about it
one thing I don't think you mentioned is that in rome and medieval 2 you could consolidate units that had taken losses, combining two half strength units to one full strength unit, which often is more useful. I think it even calculated the new units experience based on the experience of both units
Needing a general is dumb in medieval 2 I would always start the game with a no general army and use it till I got the option to adopt the captain into the family,
And don’t get me started on the unit replenishment absolutely kills the feel of long campaigns nothing beats that feeling of going deep into enemy territory slowly losing your army until you’ve got 1/8 of the troops you started with and have to higher mercs just to keep your lord alive as you march home having to win massively outnumbered battles just to get back to your own territory, or slowly losing manpower holding a castle for siege after siege waiting for reinforcements
Honestly give me Med 2 campaign army movement like individual unit armies and watchtowers on the over world map with Rome 2 resupply and unit movement in battle (being able to click and drag army positions, getting to use WASD to move the map and the arrows to move units) mmm that’d be good stuff!
I really enjoy your essay vidoes. They make so many good points. I can enjoy both Shogun 2 and Warhammer 3, I gave the older titles like Rome 1 and Medieval 2 legit shot and could enjoy them for dozens of hours, possibly only for their deeper campaign compared to modern total wars. Because battles just didn't do it for me, felt clunky, pathfinding confused. What suprised me, was that Medieval 2 interface worked fine on my 4K, while Shogun 2 scales down and is too small.
Shogun 2 really GOAT of Total war. It has everything - naval battles (which I am not into that much). Fast phased, tactical battles where almost every unit is relevant at almost any point in the game. Snappy turn times, deep campaign where you can focus on different things - combat tech tree, or economy tech tree. I personally enjoy seeing my town grow. Ah and also guns that feel devastating and even artilerry that is a more of a meme in Shogun 2 classic, still has great presenation and is damn scary. Even diplomacy isn't worst, it works. If AI is listed as honorable, they stay my ally for the entire campaign, well except that damn realm divided.
In Shogun 2 you need to stay strong. AI knows your total power level and they can declare war on you just because you just lost a battle and you are now weak, this can have snowballing effect and your campaign is on it's way to be doomed.
I wish WH3 had more deeper campaign. It asks so much for medieval 2 style of recruitment. WH3 is a static world that has all its techs discovered at the start of the game. So it would make sence if you could recruit any unit at a limited numbers from the start of the campaign and you would need higher tier settlement and possibly dedicated recruit center to be able recruit that unit reliably.
I wish there was a Mongol invasion for Shogun 2 (or I suppose it would be rise of the samurai). It's still my favourite total war.
I love how you clearly explain what makes a game good.
But only a few people play games to find a purpose or challenge.
They want to relax; they want an easy power fantasy, a show. And...
... By giving us beautiful challenges, games take us away from our lives.
39:48 then you would be pleased to learn that medieval 2 mods have recently added the ability for armies to passively replenish in friendly territory like in newer total war games.
With how much time you have to sink into a vanilla Total War game to get its full experience, I won't be trying any mods (other than cosmetic and in some cases faction unlock) soon.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 vanilla total war starts to get supremely shallow after time. Please for the love of god try the masters of strategy mod for shogun 2, makes the campaign far more complex and engaging. Together with the great maps its like a shogun 3.
This is an amazing video.
Who's video did you jack for the Warhammer lore thing? Could you link it please?
It's right here: czcams.com/video/VHkTy1xMrdI/video.html
Nasmr is on the discord, pretty chill Welshman.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 brilliant, thanks man! Great vid by the way, succintly put and accurate. installed Shogun 2 after watching it :D
I just finished a Rome Remastered campaign, where the only mod I used was destructible farms and mines. I was trying to get wall and core building destruction to work, but didn't have time for playing and modding. I would strategically demolish and exterminate cities that were going to be a threat to me, and then I would hold on to some regions as central hubs to recruit troops from. When I was testing out Attila, I had to flee my homeland, and what I would do was to destroy settlements in my wake, as to create a barrier between myself and the incoming enemy. I settled in Spain I think, with Europe devastated. I could stop and rebuild.
There is so much that could have been done with this series since Rome I, but they basically kept ruining something every release, until there is not much left of interesting gameplay. Imagine if they would have built upon all the old games, and added features. We could probably use total war to go to space these days.
One of the most common excuses I see for why independent unit movement was removed isn't even that it would make army losses more painful or limit the micro of late game empires. At least that argument (as wrong as it turns out) would be bit more respectable. No, the most common defense I've heard is that it helps deal with the AI being stupid and making tons of tiny useless stacks that you have to chase around or just die without providing a good fight. It goes without saying, but if your AI is too stupid to handle the ability to have more than 3 armies, maybe the AI needs to be improved?
But even beyond that, these changes didn't even help deal with AI harassing with weak armies and leading the players on a benny-hill chase forever. At least in the older games:
1. you could split your faster cavalry units to catch these harassing stacks
2. you could garrison your towns to the point of being able to repel them cost efficiently
3. AI couldn't put their garbage units into 'encamp' stance, and globally recruit a full stack of units behind your lines.
Now unless your whole army is faster than theirs, you can't catch them. And march stance doesn't allow you to start fights, so no luck there unless you have yet another general to start the combat (2 out of a very limited pool of generals mind you). And if the enemy forces are juuust strong enough to beat garrisons in un-walled towns, then you have to chase them lest you lose core provinces. So then the solution to the player becomes obvious: put walls in every single settlement, at massive cost and opportunity cost, even further limiting customization of towns.
To me, it feels like every TW game is taking further steps backwards just to avoid dealing with the simple fact that their AI both campaign and battle are absolute shit. But it's expensive and hard so they'd just make their games shittier to compensate.
the problem of the AI spamming tiny stacks had also already been largely solved in Shogun 2 and its expansions.
This is a case of historical revisionism (not the only instance, too).
@Dishonorable_Daimyo First its nice to hear you grew to appreciate the TW campaign side - since TW became big (Rome 1) the main reason for it success was the 50/50 split between battle and campaign and the connection between both, Obviously this drew a large variaty of players some leaning one way more than the other (you towards battles, I towards the campaign) but its the connection and sandbox which made this series succeed.
As for the depth of the campaign and people claiming that there are Paradox games for campaign lovers, TW wasn't to deep but it wasn't shallow either but more importantly older games establish the foundations on which people expect growth - TW had a diplomacy system in Rome 1 which was attempting at being quite wide ... when people bought Medieval 2 or Empire they expected it to expand, just like you expect graphics to improve and for combat to be better ... if a product is successful people expect a a reinvestment from that success, unfortunately this seemed to stop being the case after a certain point since CA was more focused on increasing their share of the profit per project rather than produce better projects.
As for the depth itself, it varied over the different titles with a lot of them taking what I refer to is one step forward two steps backwards appraoch. Three Kingdoms returned the 'populations' but not really, this was a step backwards as they didn't understand why the population was important from the first place (something you and I understood), but they did get TW its finest Diplomacy since its inceptions, having a system that for the first time encourages getting vassals and alliances.
Thrones of Brittania was really bad in so many ways but its approach for raising armies was pretty good, taking it and combining it with Rome and Medieval ones would probably one of the better recruitment systems TW had so far. While Troy tried to introduce resources and did it pretty niceless (I didn't like the fact you need to renew and micro manage the resource trading but it was otherwise nicely implamented).
and so on... Which leads to the point - TW is suffering from a very short development cycles (in general) and very differing agendas on how to deisgn the games.
Now personally I don't mind about different design choices as long as they are being seperated clearly, what do I mean by that ? here is a solid example : I love Hell Let Loose, and I love Call of Duty Modern Warefare (the newer ones), both scratch different itches I have, both are very good FPS games but in different ways, none of them is perfect. The problem in TW is that there isn't destinction yet there are clearly different TW games and they are mostly lazy copy paste to a degree all of them.
If CA had marketed SAGAs as main stream TW and the main series as the simulation experience that people grew to know I would be fine with them mainstreaming the games - the problem is that CA doesn't market their games like that, they don't bother making it clear or communicating it, they attack or let fanboys articulate falsehoods or even create them themselves (I still remember the lies that were spread about why Rome 2 didn't release with familiy tree) all the while trying to bait people into buying their products which can be randomly pushing one way or another failing to create a cohersive vision.
Does it make their games bad ? not necessarily, it depends what you are looking for and how you count their worth. Warhammer is a great example, with 3 'games' out the WH titles are the most developed games since Rome 1/Empire and maybe Rome 2 and it shows. I think those games can be a huge fun for a lot of players but at the same time those games are lacking the campaign-battle connection and the sandbox nature of older TW games which is moslty because of bad campagin design such as features like the global recruitment you had chatted about in the video. It only gets worse when you take in consideration that all TW games since Empire are basically copy paste in terms of development and WH is a copy paste of its previous 'games' and the reason the games suffers mostly is because while CA because over the years the biggest UK gaming company thanks to TW it barely put any of the success it made back into the games.
Now some important reactions/criticisms about the video :
1) Bribing was in the older TW games.
2) You can reduce Global recruitment by building more military facilities, this way CA wanted to encourage getting more of those buildings, I would say nice attempt if only it didn't create another issue that later on in the campaign you can literaly get an instant army of the best units any where on the campaign.
3) I am not a lore person for WH but I don't know if line formations are how lizardmen fight, I am having less of a problem with the way of engagement and more with how you reach the point of the engagement and its impact - things you have talked about in this video, such as how you recruit, how you replenish, army compisitions - In older TW it wasn't just a shitty autoresolve that made me fight battles, it was the knoweldege that my army wouldn't see a place to replenish for a while or that I wouldn't be able to recruit good units for a time or that I wanted to save veteran units that made me take fights, which made those fights fun and not boring or tedious.
4) Shogun 2 did one of the worst things for TW, introducing every unit able to climb which now killed the WH sieges. I am very much in favour of very specific units being able to climb and make it dangerous and counterable (able to throw units while climbiing, towers hitting them, units fall to their death) as it creates real diversity in game (just like barbarian invasion introduced very specific units which can swim - where are they CA ? :( ).
5) Its ok to make things less complicated if they keep the depth that the original ideas had in them, same as its ok to have rules that create those systems from the first place. I really hated the way auto replenishment was introduced into TW but I don't hate autoreplenishment as a concept. It was tedious to manual replenish troops same as it is tedious to move lots of small 1/2 unit stacks all over the map (and its not historical either), but having them pop up everywhere isn't a good solution either. There are ways to make the game accessible and enjoyable and challenging without simplifying or removing depth from it.
I am glad to see you making videos, as everyone except shills and clickbait TW creators have stopped creating conent, shame nothing is gonna change as long as the majority of players are like the ones you complained about in the end of the video out there. Those are the kind of people that will make up things like "CA doesn't have the rights for naval, that is why WH doesn't have it" or keep buying DLC despite CA failed half assed 'siege rework'.
Played my first full FOTS game the other day, completely forgot that there was a time limit until it popped up saying i only had a few seasons left to capture 4 provinces sadly my armies were far from enemy provinces so by crunch time i had one left, used the FoTs metsuke equi to raise rebellion in an allies province (they only had one and were a former rebellion against me) sabotaged their force when they left castle to go deal with them and raised another rebellion that could freely move in to take the allies province eliminating them and having my newly formed army that i was readying to send to the other side of japan move in and take it to win the game with 2 turns to go. I just sat there like wow even tho its unrealistic to have a victory timer (it does give a sense of urgency when dealing with threats which enhances gameplay imo)😄 it was so fun trying to solve that puzzle, i loved the warhammer setting but feel it just turned into map painting and making your own story seems to have been not lost but dulled
What's your favorite mod overhaul for playing Shogun 2? Do you have a personal modpack? Many new players get discouraged from the mod scene because all the choices inbetween vanilla, Darth, Radious, UIM, and Master of Strategy and their subsequent submods and other compatible mods.
tried them all, none of them are good, they all make balance changes that sounded cool on paper but don't seem to have been tested by the people making them (and many of the users, too). Example is Darthmod giving matchlocks the same range as archers which was completely moronic as guns were meant to be a short range morale breaker, not skirmishers, not to mention archers were already in dire need of help in vanilla balance.
Darthmod and Radious also ruin the economy (which was already flimsy) by making armies so cheap to field, losses end up being meaningless and the game turns into a dead lock stat grinder where you spend a whole hour in sieges every end turn. They also seem to mess with the campaign AI in some way as they always end up suffering from bankruptcy and rarely if ever upgrade their settlements.
A lot of them also make an effort to nerf Realm Divide which was one of the best things Shogun 2 brought to its campaign.
Not to mention some of them fill the roster with useless chaff out of the need to improve the game's "variety" not understanding that units like Yari Ashigaru and No-dachi were multi-dimensional units who could perform in different roles.
I only use cosmetic mods, as a result, and maybe faction-unlock mods.
Edit: so no I actually recommend against using any balance mods whatsoever, the vanilla game is more than enough as is.
Your videos are great bro I hope your channel grows and more people will learn about Total War
It's both funny and sad that army caps are one of the worst things introduced in total war yet it is a mechanic used to make a very unique and fun faction in a game inspired by total war (along with masters of orion). That would be the morrigi in sword of the stars, a space 4x game. Morrigi ships are the least cost effective ships in the game for combat, you have less income at base because you rely on trade between settlements which means if one settlement goes down those nearby also get significantly reduced income; trade also requires you to build freighters which take up the same queue on settlements as warships; trade also reduces industrial capacity on a settlement increasing the time it takes to build ships; finally your ships are among the slowest but grouped up together in very large groups of varying sizes, are generally the fastest for their tech level creating a cap on the number of fleets you have to do almost anything beyond exploration.
So how do you win with a faction with so many disadvantages? Your combined fleets move the fastest for their tech level and you have a lot of income that can't be spent anywhere but research due to your limited industrial capacity. You also are good at stealth technology to let smaller and slower fleets get closer than normal before being detected in los, if at all. You start smaller and more fragile than your neighbors in every category but your forces are concentrated, you are faster, hopefully better prepared due to your stealth fleets, and you likely got some technological advancements before they did. The game's mechanics naturally put you into a similar mindset as Genghis Khan and the mongols had when they carved out their empire across Eurasia and you just realize this as you get better at playing the faction.
This reminds me of the early versions of EU4 where hordes were differentiated by suffering internal conflicts if they spent too long at peace; at the same time constant war would leave you little time to regain manpower lost in battle, leading players to recruit mercenaries and fund them through money from pillaging.
Sadly as with many things in EU4 they got patched to be almost indistinguishable to other countries outside of better stats for their cavalry.
Strong video!
OHHHH I know about Deveruex’s blog, so its really cool to see it mentioned.
39:50 Empire Total War had such a system. It also had the aforementioned population system, with the added bonus that it had historically accurate population numbers (or so I believe), rather than the arbitrary max number of 50K from Rome Total War, knowing that Rome had at it's peak more or less 1 million inhabitants in the Classical Age.
Vanilla ETW? You sure about that chief?
iirc ETW did have population in a sense but it was decoupled from recruitment, and settlements didn't level up anyway, making it have very little real impact on gameplay.
I feel like the wider the scope of your game, the smaller the player base. Thus many game developers strive to make their games easier, with simpler and more gratifying gameplay loops, in order to appeal to a wider audience of paying customers.
The logistical challenges were what made the title 'TOTAL War' real.
Excellent video. You raise a lot of very good points about what works and doesn't work in the series, in terms of game-play being a 'realistic' representation of what was feasible in the era represented.
I have considerable experience with Shogun 2, and wholeheartedly agree about the replenishment system needing to be overhauled along the lines you present. Another inconsistency with it that bugs me is that, if I put two depleted units in a province, they might each replenish 20 men, so if I put a single unit in there, why can it only replenish 20 men. Were there 40 men available or not? [I'm not defending the current mechanic, just pointing out another flaw with its logic].
On the Ikko Ikki. Get the horse trade node, expand really slowly, trading with all neighbours. Expand along the coast to gain ports to upgrade to trade ports to trade with more distant clans. Within 5 turns, the trade agreement will completely off-set the religious difference malus - and it only gets better from there, without upsetting any other clan.
I agree about trapping enemy armies in forts. I would only leave an army in a fort in desperation, otherwise I let the enemy take it, trapping themselves and stack wipe them.
On raiding, in Shogun 2 light cavalry for me has its main role on the campaign map. Destroying all infrastructure outside the fort and besieging the fort so they cannot recruit/replenish. If there is only garrison in the fort, they can attack but do not follow up if you retreat so you can rinse and repeat with no penalty (until they send a relief force) - which is kind of cheesy with only a single unit of light cavalry. It is possible to trash the largest faction's economy in a couple of years by doing this, but it can be used to get them to pay for a peace deal, without the need for significant battle or taking a province - important in the pre-Realm Divide period. When going to war proper, I always precede my army's line of advance with a unit of light cavalry, to trigger any unwelcome ambush, pillage infrastructure and siege the fort if there are armies both inside and outside, so that those within cannot reinforce the army outside while I deal with that first.
That usage of light cavalry isn't all that cheesy, actually; historically even a small cavalry detachment had a majorly disproportionate area-denial effect; you can replant crops but can't easily replace farmers so even the news of enemy cavalry being somewhere in the vicinity would cause major economic disruption as they would seek refuge within walls.
Also I have attempted that approach with the Ikko ikki and while trade lasts for some turns it always devolves into multi-front war anyway; so you might as well strike first while they're busy fighting one another. Hattori, Oda, Takeda become massive threats if you don't take them out early.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I agree entirely regarding the light cavalry pillaging outlying provinces - totally accurate historically. Also triggering ambushes, the very purpose of light cavalry scouting ahead of the army to gather intel. The cheesy part, for me, is that a single unit can be used to isolate a full stack in a fort while your army deals with another army outside the fort and those within cannot reinforce, in spite of being in range.
In the case of Ikko Ikki, I guess you expand more aggressively than I do these days. I like to play the diplomatic game. Looking at the last time I played them I see I allied the Takeda (who even joined me in wars when I was attacked), and the whole of Japan was in the green diplomatically, except the Christian Sagara which were Indifferent towards me. I was at war with no-one at the time of the screen grab. My recollection is that prior to RD, I was usually only at war with one clan at a time because of the expansion routes chosen and the diplomatic relationships. I forget whether it was this campaign, or one with the Oda, in which I maintained the Takeda as an ally for 8 years (32 turns) after triggering RD.
In a domination campaign, I trigger RD when there are only abut 4 clans left on the map, that way, on becoming shogun, I can vassalise most provinces in the run to the campaign end.
Having any army be able to get on the sea without ships is, even a decade later, just mindboggling. It btw destroys campaing gameplay for any maritime nation (byzantines in 1212ad for example) as the ai will ALWAYS chose to attack your settlements on the sea route as they can ttack on turn 1 without sieging. Just crazy how any of the donkey working on rome 2 could´ve thought this a good idea, and even more crazy that 12 years later Ca is still using that joke of a system.
Very good points I hope CA reverts back to challenging memorable games
I really like the *idea* of a supply train mechanic, especially in games like Napoleon and empire. You could have a whole new type of battle evolve around that, that is smaller scale but has immense risk and rewards associated with it, and would mirror how war was conducted in those time periods. Imagine your lights Calvary and infantry guarding your supply train when it gets hit by enemy hussars and skirmishers. Now you're defending this incredibly important strategic asset in a different style of battle than your large scale ones, employing different tactics.
Of course it's completely neutered and boring in Warhammer but I still think it could be a fun and engaging mechanic if actually implemented correctly.
This was actually already a thing, just on the strategic scale, not in battles. You could cause quite a lot of disruption by having a small force siege down a major military base, cutting off further recruitment and potentially forcing the main enemy force to abort an invasion as they turn to relieve the settlement.
The AI also had a habit of doing naval invasions with more than an army, but they wouldn't land at the same time. You could either sink the second army on its way, or attack the first force beforehand, or even launch your own counter naval invasion at the same time (meeting an attack with your own attack). That last one was entertaining as it could completely change the landscape in a few turns.
It was pretty crude overall but it's interesting to see how even such a basic design allows for so much creativity.
Imagine if they brought this into battles, where men need to be resupplied and regiments can replace losses mid battle. We were on the cusp of something great.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I really like the idea of formalizing the mechanic by doing what I mentioned before. If we look at Napoleonic warfare (I'm a fan of that particular entry if you couldn't tell lol) most fighting wasn't done on a grand battlefield with massive armies. It took place in between those large decisive battles in the villages and country sides. Skirmishers and light/medium Calvary would engage in smaller fights while doing recon for the armies. This was important for something you mentioned in the video which is scouting, but also for disruption tactics. So having a new battle type where you are either attacking or defending a supply train I think could be a fun a way to shakeup a historical title while adding new meaningful ways for the players to interact with the campaign. Imagine you're on the backfoot as a coalition force pushes deeper into your territory, and instead of fighting a losing battle you intentionally draw them further in, extending that supply train. You dispatch a force light Calvary to flank around, and cut their supply line in half. Now you have an army that's suffering from attrition (this could manifest in actual unit loss after some time, but the immediate effects are lower morale, exhaustion, less unit cohesion ect.) And now that your enemy is weakend you strike with your army in the front and your light Calvary in the rear and capitalize on the advantage that you created. It creates a more dynamic wartime environment while also being more true to historical strategy and tactics.
All brainstorming, but things like supply lines, and more involved and realistic siege mechanics are a few things I've always wanted implemented in total war. Not sure if CA is capable of delivering on that but I can dream
The main reason this doesn't happen in the games is: the maps are too small & light infantry aren't mobile enough.
You don't even need dedicated battle phases for this; just having a very large map would be enough to allow for wide maneuvers and localized fights. You can see a glimpse of this in Shogun 2 multiplayer when dojo's are enabled: there will sometimes be an early scramble and minor skirmishes as the lines coalesce, preceding the main fight, especially with light infantry units who were better at hiding.
All of this stuff was so close to being fully realized before they took a complete u-turn.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 yeah what I'm suggesting would be best implemented in a new entry, with multiple changes made to the formula to facilitate it. But I think that gets at what you talked about in your video, there are actual changes being made with the new entries just the changes are either superficial (ie adding fractions that function the same as every other faction) or are contrary to what total war as a franchise has historically tried to achieve. The problem isn't that they changed things, it's that they changed things that did not improve the series, or actively made it worse.
There's glimpses of cool things in say Rome 2, specifically staying politically engaged, balancing out the different government reactive to prevent civil war, or outright changing your type of government altogether. At it's heart that's a really cool system that is right at home in the time period. But it never realizes it's potential, and more importantly doesn't meaningfully and satisfactorily replace the system that came before.
I feel like there's one dev at CA who has all these great ideas and they get approved, only for them to be neutered by some project lead in the development process.
At the end of the day I just want innovation on top of what works, not wholesale replacement of better systems and gameplay.
Yup man this guy is voicing some of the things that have been bugging me for years lol
I think you missed the primary reason for the campaign gameplay as described by the devs themselves way back in the original Shogun 1 days. The core feature of their game was to have these massive RTS battles with thousands of men on screen using roughly accurate tactics to real historical warfare, but they quickly realized during early playtesting that just giving players armies of various composition to fight against enemy armies didn't do much to engage the player's interest as to *why* they were fighting.
At first they were designing a single player campaign set around real historical battles, with cutscenes and everything to set up these battles, and this worked to draw some player's interest, but it was mostly history nerds, and frankly, because they decided on Feudal Japan as their first game (though even during Shogun 1's development, they were messing about with knights and such for what would become Medieval 1 in a short amount of time) most of their target audience didn't have much attachment or knowledge about the period to really care about a campaign following the exploits of people like Oda Nobunaga or Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
I forget which dev specifically said it, but basically he saw someone playing the boardgame Risk and just how invested they were in a longer game they had going at the time which they had put on hold to continue later, leaving the pieces on the gameboard to "save" their progress, talking about how he was planning these big sweeping strategies when he got back to it. And basically, it clicked. The point of the campaign map was to give a sense of ownership and responsibility to the player and create context for the battles themselves in an organic way.
Having some random battle with armies you have little to no attachment to didn't really pique player's interest. But knowing that you have to take a risky bridge battle to crush any enemy that has long plagued you, or that an enemy invasion force is sweeping down at you and so the thin garrison you have *needs* to hold a castle even though they're outnumbered - that creates the all important context for any given battle. And since the campaign gameplay is very boardgame esque and therefore extremely sandbox based, the specific circumstances of any given battle have almost endless variation.
And once the Risk-like campaign board was created (which in the original Shogun and first Medieval games especially resembled a board game more than later entries, with units and armies purposefully designed to resemble the types of game pieces you'd see in a board game, featuring things like bases so they can "stand up" on the "board,") all the other concepts started to fall into place quickly, like agents and alliances and trade agreements and building infrastructure.
Unfortunately, I don't think there are many still at Creative Assembly who remember those early days. It was over 20 years ago at this point, after all, and just natural turnover at the company has probably meant most of those old heads are long gone by now. But the reason for the campaign was always to facilitate the necessity of the battles themselves. And to create as many unique variations of potential reasons for the battles to occur. They well understood this at least up until Empire and Napoleon. I think with Shogun 2 they started to really forget the reasons they used to do what they did in the earlier games, and for that game, it was kind of seen as a breath of fresh air and a time to rethink things and innovate, even while they very intentionally made a game meant to hearken back to their first game to train a new crop of developers at CA. It received positive feedback, and unfortunately that meant the lesson they learned was that it was important to always innovate everything all the time, rather than that the audience really like the balance of the traditional systems with only a smattering of new ideas. The result was trying to reinvent the wheel with Rome 2, which ended up a disaster, and ever since then, I'm not sure CA has fully understood their own series or their audience very much.
subscribed. what a video
I'm on board with the general argument, but I don't agree with pre-Rome 2 system being good or offering meaningful simulation of considerations empires would have to face: rather, I think the greatest misstep actually was already made with Rome 1 with its system of army models moving independently around the campaign map, as opposed to the "Risk-style" province-system of Medieval 1. I concede that it offers some degree of emergent depth for army movement, in powergaming sense (utilizing tricks like agent squishing in Medieval 2 does add to level of proficiency an expert player can achieve even if it's completely abstract and game-y) but also in "meaningful operational sense" like baiting enemies into ambushes.
But also, it doesn't work particularly well at all with any kind of simulation systems for logistics, it's tricky to implement for the AI (the level of AI in modern TW games is inexcusable, especially considering there are mods made without as much as access to modding tools never mind source code, that substantially improve upon it and demonstrate it can definitely be done) which probably is one of the main reasons why they went for the general limits, and it's inherently high-maintenance for the human player. That is to say, if you want to maintain campaign to battle gameplay balance constant (and I think it is or at least was in a pretty good place), moving to lower-maintenance system would e.g. allow more in-depth logistics or recruitment systems to be included instead of dealing with minutiae of the army models, and the AI being able to handle things with greater confidence could be fed back into victory being more contingent on "real strategy and tactics" rather than cheesing the AI with obscene bonuses.
yea ive heard this argument before and I still don't buy it. You are comparing what Rome 2 gave us to Rome 1 when the game directly preceding Rome 2 had already addressed this issue.
Shogun 2 had and still has by far the best campaign AI that the series has ever managed (excluding perhaps the first 2 games with their 2D maps).
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Right, I'm not denying that Rome 2 was a disastrous downgrade compared to Shogun 2 whereas, as a matter of fact, Rome 1 is a much better game than Medieval 1 overall. But I agree with the overall point that systems like logistics are important (and that R2 and subsequent games are much lesser for not having them even as emergent mechanics), and because the M1 style system can much better accommodate such mechanics, I would rather have them sticking with it, or at least going back to the roots in R2.
Honestly wish this series was so much better, adore history, adore warhamner and all I can think is of how great, how educational and how fun it all could have been.
A crying shame, but this is what Capitalism does to franchises. Keep appealing to more and more people, reaching for more and more money, dumb things down, make things easier, focus money on marketing alone.
Tragic.
Did anyone ever have fun in a naval battle in any total war game? 😂 It has always been so scuffed and frustrating
Naval battles were actually quite fine mechanically, even in Empire. The issue was they were strategically meaningless a lot of the time; whatever your navy contributed to a war, it's your army that will be finishing the job. Navies ended up being a way to support the army which led to spamming cheap ships for a few turns -> shipping your army somewhere -> getting rid of the fleet as it had no further use and was a money sink.
When you spoke about army management/logistics for shogun2, you forgot to mention one overlooked aspect of shogun2 in particular... Navies!!!!
Your armies can move MUCH futher with ships. You can take an fresh army from kyushu island to kyoto or even edo in a single turn if you have invested in some navies that form a sea route for your armies to quickly steal unprotected provinces. Ofc, that requires investing into a navy, which can be seen as a massive drain to your economy.
bruh i mentioned that later at around 36:00
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 yea lol. I wasnt finished watching the video when commenting on it.
Kyushu is the richest region in the game so coming up with a plan to take it early is a good idea. Even as the Date I've sailed landing forces there to take it. At least the Shimazu's home province with the blacksmith and close proximity to a trade node.
its sad, I was incredibly excited for Rome 1 release, checking daily for updates, and looking at the screen shots. Same was true for M2tw playing the demo battles over and over waiting for the game release. I enjoyed hours of playing all the way back to S1 and M1, with my only complaints being things like, "A better AI and visuals would make this game perfect- maybe they will fix it in the next title". ETW I was also extremely excited for, but I immediately noticed the game was unfinished and it pained me to know how good it could have been. Since then, every release I have become slightly less excited for, and when I start playing, it falls shorter and shorter of expectations(S2 was the only exception). Now days, I play a campaign on the new release, realize they didn't actually change much, and the things they did change are inconsequential at best, and then it sits in my steam library. I am now at the point where I haven't bought a new title since 3KTW. And when I saw the Pharaoh trailer, it barely registered with me and I have no plans on even buying it on sale(same with expansions for 3k, WH3, Troy).
Also, matched combat needs to make a comeback, this is one of the larger buzzkills for me. Even with ultra realistic graphics, the lack of matched combat makes it seem like a cartoon.
What do you think about Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord bro? I really wonder this.
never actually played it, though my discord mod is into that series.
Campaigns after some hours of gameplay becomes just "how can i take advantage of the AI predicted moves" and in battles is the same, i cant believe after all this years they didint make a 4 player campaign, that would be true
Oh, good tw contenet arrives
1:06:06 You have one of the strangest laughs I have heard
this video just made me want to reinstall shogun 2 wich is convenient given i found a kessen music mod for it
I just don't get it. They could have leaned into this. Instead of Generals and armies being completely tied, What if you could move your own units in your own territory whenever, and then Generals had an area sub-units, acting as Vanguards, could move in? And then those generals can be moved with other higher-ranking generals, and so on, allowing us to open massive fronts and salients instead of single "doomstack" armies, while still keeping things tied together? Instead of having "Imperium", we have an actual general who We rose to that level, and generals under that, and generals under that, and vanguard forces tied to those generals and Raiding and Scouting forces not tied to an army at all?
Why not a system where Towers and Fortresses could have a garrison? I mean, Medieval 2 did that, why not lean into that? Infact, let's lean into Empire too. They had tiny villages, why not give those villages an ability to train or produce their own 1 or 2 units and buildings, while still not acting as full cities? Why not make it so that sacking a farm really is denying a defending army a place to resupply, retrain, and fortify? And besides, an army far away from your main recruitment centers Should be using weaker local forces anyway! That's why you should go out and keep conquering, if nothing else.
Why do we still not actually have interactive logistics? No menus, no dumb graphs, just an on-map physical representation of a supply line with some carts or something, and you mouse over it and see how many turns it'll add to a cities' holdout, or how much it improves ranged units ammunition or a fortification against Attrition (in single numbers, NOT percentages). No number crunching, just plain visual representation and straight, easy-to-see +1s. This already sort of existed when we have little wagons moving between towns on our roads, now let's marry that with sieges and armies themselves and get real supply lines that, importantly, could and should be raided to cut those lines. Take what we already have and Intensify it, make the different gears click together in a way that's sensible.
"Faction Variety, Faction Variety!"... Of all the little trinkets given to each faction in Warhammer or Troy or any other dumb Nu-TW game, why are many of these shiny options not available to All factions in a historic game? Make it political. Now clean up the stupid percentages so that there's real effects to public order or to your armies. Faction Variety should come from each factions' specific combination of starting conditions, neighbors, military compositions, resources and leadership. Not because a Faction can get +25% gold for every 20 men you have in an army because "historically" that faction clapped the muscle-man cheeks 25% more than every other faction that ever existed. I remember playing Lycia in Troy and they can steal other nations' trade deals. Why not tie that to a Merchant agent, and make every faction able to do it? And then Lycia specifically only uses Cretan Marble, Meteoritic Iron and some other dumb thing- despite every one of these reources being found somewhere else. It's just stupid, why am I the only one who uses these?
And what about resources? Empire reduced the number but started to push them in the right direction, now we got absolutely nothing. I don't recall a single time we did any resource management even when they actually did start to do something. See, Troy was very smart to put in a multi-resource system in my opinion. Now can we tie that multi-resource system to Medieval/Empires' luxuries, and tie that to Merchants, and make it so these can be traded and managed, and actually function in a world economy? If we should do any spreadsheeting at all that's where it should all be done- in the Economic and Political screens, NOT on the battlefield, and certainly not on the Campaign map itself.
It was all already there. Rome, Medieval, Empire/Napoleon, each one took out some features of the last but added in new features to make it work. For the one and only one good thing added (The multi-resource system in Troy), the systems in Nu-TW just aren't worth every single thing we've lost. There are so many systems in every Total War game between Shogun 1 and Shogun 2, that are just *Fun*, and should all be brought back and expanded upon. That's all I ask for. Make the pieces click together- stop throwing the pieces in the trash... there's nothing left to play with.
I dont mind the significance of stats in warhammer because yes, an army of ogres or bat monsters will roll over peasants on qny terrain but it is very out of place in historical settings
Though non monster faction heroes and leaders should have been weaker. A human general is not supposed to be as strong as an ancient vampire
I sadly don't want to watch 1 hour video. but your video is probably good have a like. have you looked at knights of sovereign
I think our only hope is for another company to try and create a "total war killer" title. Bannerlord has come the closest, especially with mods like Calradia Expanded and Bannerkings working together it turns Bannerlord into Crusader Kings but with real time battles. Creative Assembly is over the Total War title, especially historical Total War.
I enjoyed your content. All in All I feel you accurately analyzed the Game design. There is a saying. Follow the Money You will Find the Truth. CA will always chase the "Short Term $$$ Gain" . If we look at their "Ethos" they probably view Shogun2 as a failure. Because they gave to much Content for not enough $$$ exploitation. Yes they would Dumb down the game if it means increasing sales. That does not mean player retention. Personally you have given me a much deeper appreciation for Shogun/Napoleon . Thank you.
These are all really good points - I hope we can get a TW type game that leans into this as opposed to what we have going on with WH total war games...
looking at the smoke sfx and sounds just reminds me what they butchered in warhammer made em cheap pop gun toys thats worth an entire chapter of grudges then again all missiles got degraded after shogun 2 which to this day baffles me still
the amont of vieu are Criminal
Soo.. global recruitment and lord-locking of units must go away 🙂
Great vid, as usual, and points my brother, it feels so weird to still be drawn to Shogun 2 , Medieval2 and Napoleon while having 0 interest for newer titles although I own them. They feel so boring and bland even with mods :/ You did forget about one major difference that old games had: every faction could be a superpower in mid to late game, that's what still gives them endless replaiability IMO, no campaign is the same! There was also a lot of treachery involved, you had to draw your allies/neighbours carefully into wars so that they don't turn on you.
i started tw on rome2 onwards and only played a little bit of the older games. for the past 2 years ive been playing exclusively shogun2, napoleon, and medieval 2 to mix it up and thought the games were good. i went back to play warhammer 2 and 3 because i really liked them, and then i figured out yall are right 90% of the time ong
Damn the ending is so true . "Dont know what u got till its gone" = czcams.com/video/i28UEoLXVFQ/video.html
Shogun II had already begun to become arcadey with all the general's special moves with a refresh buttons. It only got worse from there with Rome II.
But , but ,
Gunbatte D:
I always find myself going back to Shogun 2 for my Total War gameplay, I find the army management, UI, and politics of Rome2 and Atilla insufferable. I got into Warhammer for a bit, but got bored since it is not the same.
Interesting you hit all the issues i have with this series and i am somebody who bought and played the original game when it released and bought every version up until they went full fantasy in warhammer ... i am a historical player and i lose the immersion when you throw in dragons and magic :) But it was Rome 2 that killed it for me, i was soooo excited about what Rome 2 would be and so disappointed with what i got, i still go back every so often like an addict get an initial high then comes the remembrance of why i disliked it ... after this video i think i will reinstall Shogun 2 as the battles especially the sieges were epic .. j
It's really sad because I adore both the total war series and warhammer fantasy. personally, W1 was atrocious, W2 had some potentially good ideas (not enough of them!), and while the outlook seemed ok for W3, it just dropped hard. The basic gameplay loop is fun enough to give me lots of hours, but I really really miss the macro depth of older titles, and its what I have been advocating for ever since rome 2 came out.
Balls?
sllab
You sort of mentioned how feel about balance. Total War functions don’t need to balanced, it’s part of the fun kicking Rome’s arses using unique strategies because on paper they’re better than you. The copying and pasting of rosters is boring and brings nothing to the interests of the factions.
Bro be honest pls. Is there any hope left? Which total war are we gonna get in 2023? Knights of Honor 2 is a total failure noone can imitate the total war battles it seems.
The good games are always there. I may have made video on bad games but it's not like I play them on a daily basis; I'm actually really grateful for the good games we got now after seeing where everything has gone.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Bro i m still playing medieval 2 this day. But i think the time for new games has come.
@@enesbilge1646 as for myself I got into Battlefield 1 several months ago and it has great gameplay supported by some of the best visual and sound design I have ever experienced.
There is nothing quite like hunkering down and searching the battlefield waiting for enemies to expose themselves with muzzle flash, or having an enemy announce his approach by popping smoke and gas grenades.
Koh 2 not that bad. Its like first koh remasterd and lightly tweaked.
rome tw is way better than rome 2
have you played DEI mod for rome 2 it really improves the game.
i have not, i have such a bad taste in my mouth from the 100 or so hours I poured into Rome 2 trying to like it, won't ever touch that game again outside of making videos.
I am interested in the rebirth mod in progress for WH2, though
Would love to run some games with you or anyone reading this comment !
Heavenly-Donuts on steam
discord.gg/ncg7YhtU
That's the discord, plenty of people to play with
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 nice thanks man