Total War series

[Dunenewt]

Are these games any good?  Which one is the best?  You guys seem to discuss them a lot anyway!  The only two things that brought the series to my attention were:

1)  There was an advert for Shogun: Total War on my Emperor case

2)  I played Rome: Total War once, and found it boring.

[Andrew]

I played the total war that took place in Japan (the original). I enjoyed it. Although outdated graphics now.

I've played rome total war a lot. I really enjoyed it. Building an empire and the real time battles were very cool. It's fun playing as different civs. Although eventually it does get boring because you know you will win. That is why the short campaigns are good. Get the adrenaline of surviving at first, then quickly kill your designated civs.

[Anathema]

Medieval: Total War (the first one) was very good. I highly recommend that you buy a copy if you happen to see one (especially the Gold Edition).

Rome: Total War gave me a couple of hours of fun, but overall it's a poor game. There are excellent mods out there, though.

[gunner154]

Really? I enjoyed it (Rome: Total War. I haven't tried the rest. I do prefer the general Roman theme anyway). Nothing felt like fighting a mega huge battle, zooming at appropriate times to get a closer look at the fighting, winning it (especially if you're scarcely won) and hearing the ending triumph theme. I thought the game was good for the civilisation management part but combat just blows me away.

The managing part can be challenging and rather frustrating to play at times, but the interface is quite intuitive.

[Anathema]

Well, MTW had:

-better ballancing

-better battlefield AI

-more large battles (due to the way the campaign map works)

-a lot more "small touches"

Additionally mods can push the number of factions in MTW up to 30, while the RTW number of factions is hardcoded at 21.

[deathand999]

  I DONT LIKE IT , but i think supreme commander is worse .

[Sneakgab]

Seems like you are quite a Total War connoisseur Anathema, to notice such difference and to have knowledge of such mods. Btw MTW2 and RTW I can't really comment on balance differences. Well, there were the seemingly unfair screaming women and some seemingly absurd archers possessed by some barbarian teams (might be the same teams). Not sure if they were really unfair, though a demonstration from a freind using these archers made them seem a bit to much. Other than a few oddities like that though both games seem pretty well balanced... maybe a bit more useless units than overly good units. Something I didn't like in MTW2 was that it seems that lower tiered units became useless at the end in the face of gunfire, they routed practically immediately. Keeping 1 or 2 gun regiments in you're army seemed to render the enemy only able to use high morale and typically high tiered units. Not sure if this was the case if they had a good commanders though, so even this little problem may be non-existent. In such cases it's actually nice to have some units with serious morale damage so the concept of routing is still important in battles where both sides have good commanders.

BTW, has anyone played the MTW2 expansion? Might just purchase it some time.

Anyway I thought these TW games might be the best strat games I've played. They're up there with Starcraft.

''  I DONT LIKE IT , but i think supreme commander is worse .''

Well, some people are put off by not being able to build during a battle like in a traditional RTS. Also, the map side of the game requires much patience and the battle also require significant patience at first if you want to fight effectively. Not saying that's the case with deathand999, though his outright and abrupt disapproval suggests this to to be the case.

[spicy]

no its the graphics , the way u see things . i like to see units

arts not small dots  like this  ..:"'.,.  lol is that an army?

i can make a game like this in here look

first army  :  ..:"'.,.

second army : ..:"'.,.

they fight  :  ..:"'.,...:"'.,.

result :  ..:"'.,.

lol  back to base then

[Anathema]

I only played MTW original and RTW (both +expansion) really. I bought a copy of STW once, but there were to many compatibility issues. I never bothered with MTW2 because my PC wouldn't be able to handle it except on the sparsest settings.

As for RTW ballancing: archers were too powerful, so were chariots and cavalry in general. Aside from this being ahistorical, it just wasn't a lot of fun, especially when a unit of Cataphract cavalry could break a formation of pikemen head on.

When it comes to individual factions, the Romans had a unit selection that was far too diverse (including elite archers and cavalry) while some factions got the shaft (i.e. Gauls and Numidians)

About AI:

RTW's AI would simply piledrive half their army on one of your units and chase it halfway across the map.

It doesn't move its armies in a coherent line, meaning you could often rout a unit before the others arrived, who'd then have a morale penalty from seeing a friendly unit flee.

It doesn't use cavalry in a way that's remotely historical or even rational. It often attacks enemies head on. Due to RTW unit stats, they often win, but if you modified the game to be more realistic they continue to do so.

MTW's AI would try to keep a coherent line, put their cavalry on their flanks, use up all arrows before pressing on, try to flank you, take in account altitude differences, etc.

[gunner154]

Cavalry was supposed to be very powerful, though how they broke the pikemen formation puzzles me.

[Sneakgab]

Thats probably true about the AI of the two TW variants. Well, the MTW2 AI wasn't exactly perfect at all times though, especially when besieging a city. I recall the mongols flooding pike filled streets (with all kinds of support againt the mongols) with HORSE ARCHERS. Also some attempted sieges without any siege equipment (bug?) which obviously weren't very successful. Also, there are times where one of you're gates will be build back into the city with the ballista towers creating a very effective murdering zone. Very easy to lure the comp into. Other than their siege attempts though the AI was pretty reasonable.

Well, in RTW I played the Romans whose emphasis was heavy infantry so I never really got to use and absurd heavy calv, though thats not to say that I didn't take advantage of the Romans great variety. I don't really think they were unfair. You can't exactly call their auxillary archers elite archers, they're just an upgrade over the lowest rank of peasent like archer they possesed before. I actually prefferred the archers BEFORE the reforms as they pretty much had the same ranged ability for much less price and of course I didn't care for archers with improved melee (though incr defense is always good). Though at this point the cash was flowing so I still prefferred the extra quality of the auxillary. Basically, in money is no object situation the quality troops are always better of course. I don't remember having to much trouble with chariots and cavalry despite the fact that for all that variety the Romans didn't have pikes (though I'm pretty sure they had spearmen). I do remember looking upon my brother using his cataphracts though. They did seem to overrun everything.

In MTW2, the cavalry seems to be a lot more randomized or perhaps even buggy... might just be comp ''cheating'' on higher difficulties. I've seen a deployed pike formation just ''moved'' over by calv like tanks over infantry in RA. Ie: they hardly even slowed down and the pike regiment was dead. Of course, in MTW2 the Holy Roman Empire pikes are cheap 150$ fodder... but still. I've even seen my teutonic knights getting their posteriors handed to them after charging a group of horse archers... But basically, MTW2 DID seem better balanced than RTW. With support a regiment or two of cheap pikes can kill a regiment or two of calv that much more. Haven't even seen what the swiss pikes and landshrekt can do. Also, siege weapons have been much improved and in the right situation calv can be much more vulnerable to them than other types. Sure, calv regiments have 20-30 men as opposed to a regiment of 60 foot soldiers, but those calv units take up about 3 times more space than a single foot soldier due to their horses, and a cannon ball goes through a 1500 $ knight (ie: his reg costs that) just as easily as a 90$ peasent. Using the serpentine with a nice bottleneck can really create a massacre out of a massed calv rush. Quite agreeable with history, as it is said that the gun and cannon ended the age of knights. Though, without a bottleneck these cannons are generally quite mediocre.

[Anathema]

The archer auxilia had a much better range than the early ones, and fairly good armour. Granted, they're still not the best.

Worse is their Praetorian cavalry: it's stronger than Macedonian Companion cavalry, wich is wrong from a historical and a gameplay point of view.

Cavalry was supposed to be very powerful, though how they broke the pikemen formation puzzles me.

While cavalry was an important asset, in antiquity they weren't as powerful as medieval knights were. No ancient general would have charged his cavalry head on into an infantry formation, let alone a pike phalanx.

To anyone who still plays RTW: you might want to check out this mod.

[Andrew]

Thanks for the link to the mod. What do you like about it? More balanced or historically accurate? Or just something different than default campaign?

21 playable factions? or just the factions listed on left side of website are playable?

EDIT:

read more about it. More historically accurate and a lot more stuff to do. Downloading it now.

[gunner154]

The Romans did have spearmen - Triarii (sp?) but they were not impressive. They couldn't get into a phalanx formation either.

[Sneakgab]

Well, the calv in RTW were probably to strong for historical correctness. I'm pretty sure the archers have been severely nerfed from RTW to MTW2. They're still very useful and can still wipe out squads given enough time. Their damage per a volley has been greatly reduced but they have much more ammo which is a basically a reasonable downgrade that puts archers into a harrasment or force the opponent to attack role (as he will otherwise suffer significant damage) and not a kill everything before it even gets to you role like they were sometimes like in RTW. I'm not sure if the calv were to imbalanced though, especially because phalanx were very strong (giving a unit a bonus against another unit relatively nerfs the other unit on avrg). I remember that if you a good (Greek perhaps) regiment of phalanx pretty much nothing was going to get past or take out the phalanx from the front. As for MTW2, maybe it's just me but it seems like a few teams don't have any pikes or even spears, which can make calv a bit unreasonable at time.

[gunner154]

Phalanxes were excellent. Attacking them from the back just melted the whole group, of course. The Romans didn't exactly have lots of pikes or spears. Post-Marius (this of course means I'm not talking about Barbarian Invasion) had no actual spearmen. Only the Light Auxilia, which had a bonus against cavalry. This was nothing compared to how an actual spearmen group can handle cavalary. Usually I use other cavalry (especially heavy cavalry) to counter cavalry, since they laid waste to my archers and my infantry weren't particularly stellar in handling them either.