Total War: General discussion.

I tried that in Total Warhammer 2, couldn't get it to work, I saw no charging from my units. Tried it with a control group of many melee units in addition to two other control "groups" of single cavalry units.

All righty, I got it now, thank you everyone.

Happy to help

The whole Collapse system seems like a big improvement on the "Mini Ice Age" thing from Attila. Either way I like the prospect of the endgame just being a desperate battle for survival against invading desert tribes and the Sea Peoples, sort of like how Warhammer 1's endgame was a massive invasion by Chaos.

I wonder if there's going to be some cameos from the Troyan War once the collapse begins.

For the past five years or so, every time a new Total War title comes out, my reaction is always "Wow, X mechanic looks pretty cool. I can't wait to see how they refine and implement it for Medieval III!" The Collapse mechanic could work for the Black Death (or maybe even religious authority?) Legitimacy and pretenders to the throne are obviously important for a feudal system. Regional diversity could make the disparate regions of the map more meaningful. And so on.

Throw in Three Kingdoms' family/retinue mechanics and the confederation system from the Warhammer titles and you'd have the medieval-est Medieval game ever.

There are two kinds of Medieval 3 desirers.

Tacitus' kind, and the kind that apparently suffers physical pain every time CA announces something which isn't Medieval 3. At least they're not the kind hoping for Empire 2

I wouldn't count on the collapse system being used for the black plague, but I could certainly see it used to affect religion. Both Christianity and Islam have their pillars of their religion (and they usually overlap), so it makes full sense that one of the two religions controling those pillars would have effects over the campaign world. And that's not even counting the Orthodox church. Maybe even Pagan faiths in the north could have some involvement.

CA has gone on record to say that Medieval 3 is difficult for them to tackle because there is no way it could ever be as good as the fanbase has hyped itself to think it will be. It's like Half-Life 3, that game is hyped to high heavens for the only reason that it hasn't existed for a while. You can't match expectations like that.

At least we now know for certain that Creative Assembly can count to three.

Maybe they'll blindside us with Total War: Joan of Arc first.

Medieval III is going to disappoint me, even if it has all the features I want in it. It'll be hard to match the fun I nostalgically remember from playing Medieval II for the first time, and I'm aware of the technical problems that crippled the likes of Rome II at launch. The odds are greatly stacked against it living up to the hype.

And even if everything goes right on launch day and the game has all the mechanics I want in it, I know that they're going to try to sell me hundreds of dollars of DLC. The "Balkan Nations" pack, the "British Isles" culture pack, the "Scandinavian" culture pack, "Baltic Sea" culture pack, the "Peoples of the Steppe" culture pack, the "African Nations" culture pack, "Mesopotamian" culture pack, the "Italian City-States" culture pack, the "Holy Roman Empire" culture pack, "the Heirs of Rome" expansion to rework the HRE and Byzantines, the "First Crusade" mini-campaign, the "Mongol Horde" and "Rise of Timur" campaign/faction packs, the "Historical Heroes" retinue pack, the "Holy Orders" unit pack, the "New World" map expansion...

All that to say, as much as I want to play Medieval III someday, it'll probably be a game I only buy when the Total War game after it is released, and Medieval III and all its DLC are on sale.

We still do not know what their main TW team is doing. WHIII is handled by DLC team now and Pharaoh is made by CA Sofia (who worked on some DL Cs before and made Troy).

No game can possibly match childhood memories.

Edited by Resileafs on Jun 2nd 2023 at 4:34:24 AM

It was my first Total War game. I'd played various entries in the Civilization, Age of Empires, and Command & Conquer series, but never a game that combined dynastic empire-building with real-time combat where you could zoom the camera in and pan it around, following a wedge of knights as they scattered infantry like bowling pins, or a trebuchet's payload as it smashed a castle tower to rubble. Strategy and spectacle, that was what grabbed my attention. Plus I always liked the medieval setting.

And the only reason I bought the game in the first place was because I randomly started reading A Scotsman in Egypt on the LP Archive one evening. Weird how a chance click on the internet can open up a new interest and hobby. Said the TV Tropes addict.

So yeah, there's no way Medieval III is going to match that sort of eager introduction to the franchise. Hope it comes close, though.

I got into TW with the original Medieval, and thus was unwilling to touch any later TW for quite a while because the strategic game was so changed from the province-by-province movement of the early TW games.

I got over that, though.

I also started with Medieval 1. Still have it on steam but have not played for a long time as even the Steam version with extra tweeks crushes a lot.

But I am actually thinking of playing some Third Age mod for Kingdoms now as WHIII does not run that good on my laptop (I can afford a modern PC but when you can move any day it is not convenient).

An interview on Pharaoh.

They say combat's going to be slower and settlements will have more distance between them which will facilitate more field battles.

Edited by VutherA on Jun 5th 2023 at 4:59:00 AM

Roxolani campaign complete on turn 149, one of my longest campaigns to date (only Ardiaei have gone longer). One of those campaigns where I got distracted and got other game moods before completing it. As I suspected, this went pretty much the same as the Massagetae, but without the huge advantage given by Saka cataphracts.

6 campaigns left and my next one will be as the Lusitani, the Iberian tribe that specializes in melee units. Not only do they get a bonus to experience for them, but their veteran shield warriors and noblemen are possibly the best melee units of their respective tier in the entire game, with the caveat that they have virtually no armor and are extremely weak against ranged weapons. Their bonus to ambushing are very useful to make up for that weakness. Ranged-wise, they get to train Baeleric slingers, which makes them very good to get rid of enemy skirmishers. One thing they do lack however is cavalry, having no high tier horses to use and their mid-tier is rather mediocre. A final advantage of theirs is that they start with an iron mine, giving quick access to equipment upgrade and good trading options.

First order of business will naturally be to take all of Iberia from the other tribes and the encroaching Carthage, after which we'll spread into Gaul and Africa, with Italy as the main target. Thankfully, the campaign can also be completed with military allies, so I'll be seeking those out where possible.

Early-game Iberians are honestly funner than late-game because your basic melee infantry having 5 javelins to throw is just hilarious.

Yeah, that combo is pretty lethal in early and mid game but by late game you'll want to keep that infantry only as flankers because Rome and co. can just field heavier infantry to tank those javelins.

It's kind of funny how the game basically encourages the Iberian tribes to vassalize Massalia as soon as possible, with Syracuse being an optional addition.

I really ought to try playing through the Rome and Antiquity games again.

Early gameplay showcase for Ramesses, with a few things that weren't mentionned in the first look video a couple weeks ago. Every territory has outpost slots in which you can build various outpost types for passive and active bonuses and seasons return, with passive effects given every turn.

The graphics continue to be super pretty!

Lusitani campaign completed on turn 112, relatively average, could have been longer without Total Diplomacy.

The early campaign went sensibly as my Arevaci campaign did, though where I used diplomacy with them, I used military might as the Lusitani to conquer the majority of Iberia, with some diplomatic missions to Carthage to peacefully take over the territories they had on the peninsula. I tried to ally with them by fighting their African enemies, but they would eventually be wiped out, so I took everything in Africa as well. I then spread out northward, taking over Gaul and Britannia before surrounding the Roman territories in Africa and Italia. The war against them was brutal and short as they didn't have strong armies at all, and they were already pressured by Egypt, whom I allied with. After Rome fell, I used my large treasury to buy higher relationship with Nabataea and Pergamon until I convinced them to become my military allies and win the campaign.

Not much to say about the roster, the lack of good cavalry makes them a little less fun than the Arevaci, but they're still pretty solid.

Next up, Athens. Their major bonus is to fleets, where they get massive experience bonuses to all ship recruits and also get bonus income to culture. They start in an unenviable position though, being the client state for Macedon. I believe that my first actions will be to destroy Epirus and Knossos to strengthen myself to defeat Macedon while allying with Sparta to complete a secondary objective. I intend to eventually betray Sparta though. After that, we'll see who I can make alliances with around the world after that.

Why do they force us to do Athens/Sparta like that ;_;

They don't force us to do anything, can fight or ally if we want. XD It's just a secondary objective, I just do them for fun.

Finally fired up Shogun 2 again, and lost the initial Saga sea battle again. Wish the game would explain certain mechanics better, after going on Reddit for help, apparently ships take more damage from getting shot from the front, and turning around to bring the other side's guns to bear actually isn't good in this one.

In any case, shelving Fot S for now, tried the regular campaign as Shimazu. Find it weird that despite having katana samurai as their thing, they don't actually start with any.