Total War: General discussion.

Red Cliff has to be one, since it's probably the one people know best.

I'm thinking about Chang Ban bridge, Wu Zhang plains, the defense of He Fei by Zhang Liao, the battle of Guan Du...

Also I know this isn't the Warhammer thread but that thread is basically dead, so...

Who the fuck decided that it was alright to give a Rogue Army the ability to recruit BLACK ORCS EN MASSE.

Seriously, those things turned what should have been a fairly easy war of High Elves vs Humans into a slog!

Wait until you meet Vashnaar.

I'm kind of torn though. Do I try again after abandoning that campaign, or just wait for Three Kingdoms to come out on Friday?

At this point, I say let yourself get hyped to play Three Kingdoms instead of starting another campaign.

Fair enough.

So, I splurged and got total war: Warhammer about a week ago.

The original, or 2?

Damn double post

Edited by theLibrarian on May 21st 2019 at 11:16:48 AM

Fanatical and GameSpot are offering Three Kingdoms at up to 22% off. Looks like a pretty good deal when you count the free Yellow Turban DLC.

Original.

Edited by fredhot16 on May 22nd 2019 at 1:30:56 AM

Chinese noms.

Edited by VutherA on May 22nd 2019 at 5:36:42 AM

Alright, starting a Sun Jian campaign. The new expanded campaign UI is a bit tricky to navigate and I'm still winging it through the new diplomacy/court system, but I think I'm slowly getting the hang of it. My guy starts out surrounded by Dong Zhuo-allied Han commanderies, plus Yuan Shu on one side and Liu Biao on the other. Liu Biao just declared war on me and I'm moving my forces to attack his vassals Huang Zu and Cai Mao... but I have no idea how strong and aggressive the surrounding Han armies are, and leaving my cities behind (well-upgraded as they are) feels like a gamble.

Some early-game thoughts:

• Food surplus gives you a major advantage in diplomacy. The starting reform that gives you diplomatic bonus to trade also adds onto it.
• Bows are the biggest killers on the battlefield so far, thanks to the lack of armour on early-game units. I'm honestly quite surprised by the responsiveness of the battle AI: it focuses fire on your flanking cav, holds troops in reserve to protect its archers, gangs up on isolated units the moment your formation goes funky, and never misses an opportunity to go after your more fragile units.
• Minor settlement upgrades can actually give them pretty beefy garrisons, unlike in Thrones of Britannia.
• Charge reflection is a great mechanic. It turns the basic Ji Militia into a reliable defensive unit without making them totally overpowered like the Yari Wall in Shogun 2.
• We're all here for GPU-melting million-man battles, but the retinue system and Thrones-style recruitment gives you a lot of opportunities for smaller battles and skirmishes, which is pretty great.
• The aesthetics are on point. The soundtrack is easily one of the best in the series.
• I'd hoped that the rivers would be somehow navigable, but alas, they aren't.
• Minor nitpick: it's slightly distracting when the English dialogue refers to "China", considering that the notion of the Chinese nation-state wasn't quite there yet. "The realm" probably would've been more appropriate; the Chinese voiceover uses the term tianxia ("[all] under heaven") instead.
• I have no idea if Sun Jian's Flame of the Phoenix ability actually does anything, but he carves through enemy cannon fodder quickly enough that I can't really complain.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on May 23rd 2019 at 11:33:38 AM

Say, what historical battles are there in-game? I'm at work so I wasn't able to try out the game yet, but I'm curious about those.

So far we have:

• Xingyang, 190 CE (Cao Cao vs Xu Rong)
• Jiangdong (Qiantang), 196 CE (Sun Ce vs Wang Lang)
• Xiapi, 199 CE (Cao Cao vs Lu Bu)
• Red Cliffs, 208 CE (Sun Quan vs Cao Cao)
• Changban, 208 CE (Zhang Fei vs Cao Cao)
• Jing Province (Maicheng), 219 CE (Guan Yu vs Lu Meng)

I haven't looked at them yet. I spent pretty much the entire morning playing a Liu Bei campaign. He starts off surrounded by Yellow Turbans and a number of other, smaller factions, along with various minor Han administrators that don't leave their areas that are easily defeated. I've taken two cities so far, but I neighbor Cao Cao and there's a huge portion of China that remains unexplored so far. Idk what the rest of it will be.

I'm having fun, though. The upgrade system seems a lot more like the older games, particularly Shogun 2. Upgrading your capital requires food so that's a constant issue that you need to build in favor of, and it helps you strategize, too.

The generals are also pretty fun to use. While they do have some abilities they are definitely not Warhammer-level, no spells or special items and stuff like that, though the equipment system isn't there. Generals can actually sort of almost solo units. They can also help to tip the balance in a battle that's fairly even; I besieged a Yellow Turban city that had a full army garrisoning it that we were forecasted to lose against, but our heroes were able to turn the tide and turn it into a Pyrrhic Victory.

I'm gonna pick it back up tonight, but I'm definitely having fun.

Hurray for Changban! It's one of my fave battles in the Dynasty Warriors games.

Started a Liu Bei game. Zhang Fei's unit got 897 kills in the third battle (They got into a lotta archers).

The Yellow Turbans seem to have a surprising amount of Unbreakable, I swear I've seen three in all of the battles I've had against them.

After Tao Qian passed his land onto me, one of his Strategists just didn't care for that and two promotions with an ancillary still doesn't put them above low! Maybe the satisfaction assignments are worth the unity loss after all...at least you'll always be with me, my two sworn brothers ;_;

Food is hard here. I've basically been living on traded food since I got a second commandery.

...also Cao Cao stole my farmland. Good thing I'm ready to beat him next time after I ambushed and he went to siege a nearby city.

I've generally found the game is a decent bit more difficult than I was expecting. I've been getting nothing but pyrrhic victories since the first battle (and it's not the simply expected Total-War's-weird-definition-of-pyrrhic causes).

Does anyone know how to upgrade units or recruit ones that you unlock through reforms? I can make Ji Infantry now because of reforms but have no idea where to find them, and a while ago I unlocked Repeating Crossbowmen but can't find them either.

You do have the required General classes◊ to recruit those◊, right?

Because if it's not that, I haven't gotten far enough to help you anymore.

Edited by VutherA on May 23rd 2019 at 10:45:49 AM

Ooooooh, I see. I didn't realize that.

Anything about upgrading though?

First impressions after playing for one hour, fiddling with the menus and options, is that I quite like it. Combats are very fast paced on Romance, and they could use a bit more clarity that your units are following your orders, and the unit panels are a little on the small side and make it difficult to see the remaining number of troops in a unit.

But that's minor stuff. I've been having fun with experimenting.

Personally I'm being confused by the units that are exclusive to various types of heroes and how you can't merge units and stuff like that.

Oi theLibrarian, someone says you should be looking for a button to "swap troops" for upgrading a current unit to a better one.