Total War: General discussion.

No Total War game ever released hasn't been buggy when they've finished supporting it. No matter how long it is.

We're not saying to fix it forever, but 3K was released three years ago and support was dropped virtually immediately after the last DLC. You would think they would keep support for at least long enough to fix the patch's inevitable bugs.

The last DLC isn't even that good so that shouldn't be a problem.

Eight Princes is honestly the DLC with the most interesting content instead of a mildly different starting situation.

Edited by RAlexa21th on May 25th 2022 at 10:19:51 AM

Mildly different starting positions tend to be the better Total War DL Cs by actually giving you content that's applicable to the majority of the game experience.

I think Napoleon (by its existence) and the Shogun II games are the only ones that sort of did "here's a new campaign entirely with no shared factions" well.

Yeah, that's exactly why I haven't played Fates Divided. It's just the base game with less playable factions.

They also talked about a future northern expansion not too long before dropping the game entirely.

How would a northern campaign work? Unless it's a series of missions like a traditional rts, I can't see any outcome except the campaign disintegrating into a mess.

It's not any of those things separately, it's the combination of 1. TW:3K was still going strong with plenty of players 2. Additional content was being teased 3. A bunch of bugs haven't been fixed or only have duct-tape solutions 4. Bandit and Yellow Turbans are stuck without any of the updates that Han factions got in Fates Divided 5. A lot of actual unique historical characters are still stuck as generics and 6. Ending of support was very abrupt.

Also a 6.5 existing DL Cs have been very hit or miss.

As a point of comparison, the brouhaha over Mass Effect 3's From Ashes DLC wasn't that it was a day 1 DLC, it was that it was 1. Day 1 DLC 2. Dev work had already completed before the physical copies of the game had shipped and 3. Previous Day 1 DL Cs had been free. Any of those things separately, fine; the combination of those things, enraging.

Changing the topic to another northern campaign. I'm playing Gongsun Zan's MTU campaign, and beating up Yuan Shao never gets old.

I let Zilong beat up all of Yuan Shao's generals and then lured his troops to a burning forest.

Northern expansion = fleshing out Northern China more (by adding relevant "barbarian" factions as playable)

It would have probably added the historical five barbarians that conquered northern China after the War of the Eight Princes to the game: the Xiongnu, the Di, the Qiang, the Jie and the Xianbei. It must be noted that all five groups were present at the time of the Three Kingdoms so they could have been ported as far back as to the Mandate of the Heaven timespot.

I like this idea.

Lu Shi: "You're the one who's always horsing around in class, Bogui."

Liu Bei: "And you still owe me the money I lent you."

Gongsun Zan: "Dammit, Sifu, Xuande, that was decades ago!"

After a week-long break of Total War to play through Elden Ring, I am back in the thick of things to bring the Saga clan to victory. Realm Divide has struck at turn 142, which is even later than me finishing my Obama campaign. This was a much slower campaign due to the starting position, which is right next to an ally, preventing easy expansion. So I focused on the surrounding islands, taking them one by one while I watched how the situation progressed on the mainland. As the Satsuma fell to a Shogunate clan, I took advantage of the situation by capturing their previous territory, but that's as far as I managed to go in Kyushu, as another clan, the Fukuoka, destroyed my ally, but I allied myself with them since they were pretty strong and would be an excellent bulwark against Shogunate forces.

Speaking of Shogunate forces, the Choshu abandonned the Emperor soon afterwards, so they were the next expansion target. I conquered their provinces to enter Honshu and the Fukuoka and I captured territories together as we expanded into the mainland. At this point, the Nagaoka sent an invasion fleet from Northern Japan against me, and the province I lost, which annoyingly had clay in it so I lost access to a valuable resource, was then recaptured by the Fukuoka. As we approached Central Japan, the Tosa were next to throw in their lot with the Shogun, so I invaded Shikoku next, though the other clan who shared the island with the Tosa did the majority of the work there.

Now I am fully focusing my effort on capturing every part of Central Japan that isn't already owned by my allies. As the vanguard for the Emperor, I am accompanied by the Fukuoka, the Tokushima who have taken over half of Shikoku and a good number of provinces in Central Japan, including Tokyo, and the Tsu, who have barely survived against the onslaught from the Shogunate clans and have only a single province left. Our enemies are led by the Nagaoka vanguard, with the Jozai and Aizu serving as strong secondary forces and the Sado who remain on their island.

I've been thinking of getting into TW Warhammer lately (well, the next time Steam has them on sale) and I'm a bit overwhelmed at how much stuff there are - 3 base games, a ton of DL Cs, etc. What's the recommendation for what to buy as a new player? Which base game and DL Cs should I go for (or conversely should avoid) if I don't want to fork out the money to get everything?

I'd say you should start with Warhammer 2 on its own. Then if you decide to stick with it, start getting DLC's for the races you particularly enjoy playing as.

Paid DLC's for W2:

• The Queen and the Crone - High Elves and Dark Elves
• The Prophet and the Warlock - Lizardmen and Skaven (definitely recommended if you like Skaven at all)
• The Hunter and the Beast - Lizardmen and Empire (Empire is otherwise not playable without owning W1)
• The Shadow and the Blade - Dark Elves and Skaven
• The Warden and the Paunch - High Elves and Greenskins (Greenskins are a similar situation as the Empire)
• The Twisted and the Twilight - Skaven and Wood Elves (same as Empire and Greenskins)
• The Silence and the Fury - Lizardmen and Beastmen (see: Empire, Greenskins, Wood Elves)

There's also the Tomb Kings and Vampire Coast, which have their own dedicated DLC's, though I wouldn't recommend buying them unless you decide you like the base game.

Finally, there's also a number of free DLC's available, though they're sort of split between being bundled in the same download, being a separate download from Steam, or a separate download from Total War Access. It's honestly kind of confusing.

Edited by IrishZombie on Jun 1st 2022 at 10:39:24 AM

You're mostly better off sticking with DLC factions I would think - out of them, the Warriors of Chaos and Norsca are considered to be working the worst right now while the rest are great.

If you're still interested in the other packs, The Queen and the Crone in addition to The Prophet and the Warlock have some unit additions that are readily considered the most brokenbest units in the entire game. Otherwise, the Total Warhammer 2 lord packs are generally better value than the 1 ones with their lords being more liable to provide distinct gameplay on the campaign side of things.

Total Warhammer 2 is definitely the better game out of the two since even the first game's factions received changes in 2 and only in 2 - but especially because magic's a lot more powerful and therefore fun in it.

Edited by VutherA on Jun 1st 2022 at 1:41:31 PM

If you can get them cheap in a sale, 1 and 2 together will allow you to play the combined map and will have the most content for you to enjoy. You can kind of consider Warhammer 1 to be DLC for Warhammer 2's Mortal Empire campaign and that will add the most content in a single purchase.

Thanks for the advice. It seems Steam has them on sale starting today. I'll pick up 1 and 2 and see where to go from there.

Got my first total map paint. It was tedious yet satisfying. I just wish I had more redeployment slots so I can teleports more armies in a turn.

I've honestly promoted a fair amount of generals to the top positions because they provide a bonus to redeployment or army limits solely because I didn't bother to think about it before and it's late enough in the game that those bonuses pretty much are the only things that matter anymore if you can't have something really nuts like Sun Ce's faction bonus.

I've begun Liu Bei's campaign in the Red Cliff mod (start year 207)

The starting situation is definitely tougher than the 190 and 194 start dates. Liu Bei starts out surrounded by Cao Cao, who is hostile and has multiple powerful armies running around. Whenever I capture a settlement, Cao Cao grabs two full stacks and captures it back.

Satisfaction is actually difficult to maintain. I have multiple generals ditching me. Fortunately, they were just the generic generals.

One cool thing in this mod is that Liu Bei got five extra court positions for his Tiger Generals, which boosts the combat stats for their retinues.

Edited by RAlexa21th on Jun 2nd 2022 at 6:54:53 AM

After confederating with a couple factions, I produced another army, and managed to push Cao Cao back, even capturing his capital and the Han Emperor. Pushing him back to the north of the Yellow River is still a challenge, though, since he has more armies than me and can replenish himself at a faster rate.

One silver lining is that game Cao Cao continues to prove himself unable to keep Sima Yi around, so I snatched him away to my side.

Liu Biao's refusal to get confederated is getting on my nerves. What a stubborn old man.

Saga campaign complete on turn 180, a bit longer than my other campaigns yet. As it usually happens, the campaign picked up in speed during Realm Divide, but it wasn't easy pushing through Nagaoka, Sendai and Aizu armies. They trained a lot of huge stacks to defend themselves and often tried to sneak armies past my own stacks to attack lightly-defended provinces. Thankfully, my allies proved to be very valuable, with the Fukuoka sending an army behind enemy lines to capture Hokkaido, which was very helpful to increase the number of allied provinces necessary to win the campaign. Without that, it would have taken a good ten more turns to push through the Sendai's armies to capture all their provinces and finish them off.

That Saga are otherwise not the most interesting of factions in the late game. The extra accuracy on cannons doesn't do all that much when all your armies are fully upgraded, the industry growth bonus takes a long time to take effect, at which point your economy is already strong enough to not need it, but the cheaper navy does make it helpful to secure the waters.

My next campaign will be as the Nagaoka, a Shogunate clan who are very good at using rifles, with increased reloading speed and cheaper recruitment. They also get more money from business buildings and increased geisha action success rate, but the real advantage is clearly the bonus to reloading speed (plus their starting army has a line infantry that makes them far superior to the surrounding factions). My first objective will be to capture Kaga province, with the blacksmith, to get a good recruiting center for my line infantry. The surrounding provinces also have rich farmlands, which will be helpful for my early economy. I'll also make capturing Sado province a priority to get a gold mine quickly. There are several Imperial clans nearby however, so I'll have to be careful about where I expand.

A little known fact is that the Battle of Red Cliff took place in the Yellow River instead of the Yangtze River.

Edited by RAlexa21th on Jun 4th 2022 at 4:10:08 AM