previously >>1890617

GODS, I hate Gauls.

Histw could only be better if they made more complications for the battle maps (terrain, obstructions, field fortifications, siege shields, trenches, booby traps, the supply wagon, etc) that encourage actual field conditions and strategic thinking instead of just fighting in blank fields where your only option is to hammer and anvil because your lead officer is safe behind your front line and there are no surprises once you launch the battle, no need to keep reserves, and there's no reason to be extra creative with lighter infantry or mobile dragoons
Empire tried to add them but it was a consequence of being shitty thst they were removed

>>1991167 (OP)
Reposting dis

>Does anyone like 1212ad? I'm liking it a lot so far.. but it's kinda slow in some places and really fast in others. Like for one, France and the HRE shouldn't be wiped out by like turn 20 or 30, i suppose it's because of the nu-tw rebel systems and vassals and shit, but in most M2TW games i play France and HRE are meant to be one of the stronger factions out there. Oh well.

>Also is razing settlements locked to a few factions or something? Ig they wanted to go the old M2 route and make it so you can only really sack, exterminate etc. But i actually liked the razing mechanic.

anyone know any good bugfix mods for M2TW?
feel like playing a vanilla campaign, nothing crazy like Stainless Steel, but remembering useless pikes and 2H units turns me off

>>1991178
My grandfather hated Gauls

>>1991611
eb2

>>1991611
Vanilla Beyond

Where THE FUCK is the modding scene for Rome: Remastered? We finally got a total war game with the right gameplay engine and removed caps and there are only like 5 people making mods because everyone stayed on Medieval 2.
Like why would you make anything for Medieval 2 at this point when Rome: Remastered exists? And why are all the Rome: Remastered mods minor variations on the same setting instead of huge total conversion mods for other settings like the best Medieval 2 mods?
Kirsi put out two amazing maps and nobody fucking used them. RIS is done by one guy and all he wants to do is polish units in the balkans.

>>1991370
Blob combat. I want to like Attila but nothing can save that combat.

>>1991845
There is no mod that makes remastered look decent. The mobile graphics and UI are cancer.

>>1991845
it doesn't work on win7

>>1991845
>RIS is done by one guy
lol no its not. its done by a big ass team. and they are gonna push out romans one year from now.

>>1991845
Rome Remastered was a monkey's paw wish grant. If it was just a better, modernized, compatible, higher limits RTW then we'd be seeing tons of mods. But they changed a lot of other shit that people didn't like which keeps people away.

>>1991845
Most mods are ports from R2. I blame RRemastered's failure on the UI, it's horrible

>>1992211
>R2
R1 you mean.

>>1991845
>shit ui
>no, you can't mod it
>weights too much, 10 times as the original
>the modding improvements came at the end of the update cycle, almost scamming everyone who bought it
>runs worse than med 2, if it even runs, on the average slavic modder pc (the disabled execution in windows 7 and the linux port being garbage doesn't help)
>can't check enemy unit stats in battle
>can't adjust battle speed in decimals like in m2
>1 recruitment slot only unlike m2
>the new filters are ugly (night is really fucked) and you can't make it look like the original even lowering settings
>can't highlight who the units belong like in m2

and that's from 5 hours of playing, im sure there is much more to it if anyone put the time to check

>>1992257
>>can't highlight who the units belong like in m2
im pretty sure you can its space bar

>>1992278
really? i never noticed, why didn't they also put it in the fucking shield

>>1992285
im going have to recheck later but yeah i think pressing space highlights troops, enemies and yours. i think you can change that too, cant remember right now. maybe this was introduced in a later update when was the last time you played RR?

>>1992288
may 2023 according to a post i left in a torrent site

>>1992527
yeah checked the game, press space, my units are green enemy is red. unless you mean something else? i cant remember unit highlighting and how its done in M2.

Gonna get into Europa Barbarorum again. Can an anon pick a faction for me that isn't Rome or Baktria.

People don't give RR's UI enough credit. It's the only game where managing infinite spies isn't a chore. The overmap lets you see your agents, their line of sight, and even if they've moved or not. It's the only game where mass agents are usable.

>>1992655
It also might be the best TW for quickly scrolling through your cities/armies owing to this screen. Really takes the tedium out of micromanagement.

Sure it's not perfect, but everyone is very dismissive when it has some real positives.

Roll Charts: https://imgur.com/a/81snQma
Stolen from /twg/. We should have our own OP if we intend to keep having these. (Which I do)

>>1992596
Gayreeks

>>1992655
>>1992658
>muh UI isnt that bad!

Really though it grows on me the more I see it, but I still think the UI deserved better. Also that settlement tab is available in OG Rome and it gives more info than that.

>>1991193
Sorry anon, Total War combat is just stat checks now, be sure to have higher tier units than your opponent!

>>1992674
The OG settlement tab takes more clicks to get to, and doesn't display as many cities at once. I think the only extra info it gives is the presence of a governor?

>>1992655
>>1992674
The new UI did grow on me as well the more I used it, but still wish it was customizable

I feel embarrassed to admit that I've never actually tried fighting the timurids or Mongols in med ii unless one of their cities is a crusade/jihad target and my power base is safely far away

>>1992655
this is so much uglier than rome 1
it's insane how much ui has gone backwards
>>1992658
utterly soulless and painfully utilitarian
rome 1 by no means had a perfect ui but it's like developers forgot that while it needs to be functional it should also look nice and not like a windows 10 control panel

>win against all odds thanks to a meticulously planned defense, timing and coordination
>enemy just spawns another doomstack next turn and destroys your dreams and hopes
Many such cases

>>1991193
I like mods with large maps that actually necessitate scouting

>>1991167 (OP)

I miss Civilians and Wild Animals, idk if the newer games have wild animals too (i think Warhammer would probably have because they'd add some unpredicatble risk to battles or some shit) but i liked in Attilla seeing the civilians running around and the historical games where you could see wild animals like Elephants wandering around as well. They added very very little but i liked them as decor in my maps, maybe if they found a way to make the games run even more units well they'd bring them back

>>1991845
Med 2 still offers more vanilla features and has more modding potential and does so with less processing power and full compatibility on a wider number of OS's. Personally, I think Rome's battles are better but I can enjoy those on a gold edition copy and dgvoodoo rather than play them on Remastered. There's just no strong incentive in modding RR unless you really want removed faction cap.

>>1993090
>more modding potential
>caps
but thats not even including the enhanced scripting powers and the ability to have BI and vanilla rome features if say its equal if not better

>>1993090
>>Med 2 still offers more vanilla features and has more modding potential
Where on earth did you get this idea? RR even back ports at least one feature from M2.

>>1993223
>RR even back ports at least one feature from M2.
yeah but nobody cares about merchants but one modder even created a recruitment pool via scripts in RR.

>>1993225
That's true, I was thinking about how you can add distinct graphics for armor/weapon levels.

>>○ Added the ability to vary unit models, including based on armour and weapon levels
■ Each unit can now define multiple soldier models in the EDU, and the soldiers will randomly choose between them
■ You can specify armour level and weapon level; if weapon level isn't specified it will be set for all weapon levels
■ A total of 255 unique models can be assigned to a unit across all weapon and armour levels

>>1993231
yeah scorched ground uses the armor upgrades for the romans but again its a lot of work for modders to create extra assets for armor upgrades

>>1993239
I think you've identified the key issue. There's a lot of neat features but they all take work to put in the game, and the community has been hampered by the botched release. Aside from RTR I only see Tales of Antiquity and Glory of Rome Remastered trying to make a grand overhaul mod for the original setting.

CA messed with the urls for their forum so I don't even know how to find the official notes, but I have a back in case anyone's interested. There's some cool stuff in there. https://justpaste it/rrpatch204

>>1993172
>caps
>unless you really want removed faction cap.
Med 2 doesn't even have a unit cap these days lel.

>>1993223
I mean if you want to elaborate then sure but I have yet to see anything that really stands out in RR aside from RIS. Which I suppose, to backpedal a bit, does show the potential of RR but that potential is not as easy to do.

>>1993271
>not as easy to do
Meant to say not as easily accessible.

>>1993271
>Med 2 doesn't even have a unit cap these days lel.
yes it does. its a huge thorn in DaC. not to mention the faction cap which is a huge killer. those two alone are a big boner killer in terms of modding.

>>1993266
>There's a lot of neat features but they all take work to put in the game, and the community has been hampered by the botched release. Aside from RTR I only see Tales of Antiquity and Glory of Rome Remastered trying to make a grand overhaul mod for the original setting.
I think it still would have been hard for people to switch as Med 2 has features that many will prefer and just asking people to port over all of their work again is a hard sell, even if RR was perfect. Hell, there'd probably be Rome OG modders who wouldn't move over even if RR was perfect, its just extra work they'd have to do when they are perfectly content with what they have. But it is interesting to see that RR has slowly gained players and thats because of the modding community, small as it may be. I think RIS will really show everyone just how great RR is, they're going to do shill campaigns and everything when the Rome patch drops. It's going to be great. EB-style govt, economy rework, trade rework, Rome, more script stuff. Next year can't come fast enough.

>>1993285
>yes it does
EOP removed it.

>>1993299
do any mods use it?

>>1993311
nvm found a couple of DaC submods, will be trying those out. but still the faction limit is a pretty big one. 32 is hard to go back to and rebels suck.

>>1993311
>>1993325
Ya I was going to say DaCv6 is being made with it taken into consideration and I think SSHIP as well. EB2 could add more units if the devs aren't in a coma or w/e they are.
> but still the faction limit is a pretty big one.
That's true, but I think that it's been readily adapted to for so long that it's more tolerable than something like unit cap leading to repeat units or the ancillary cap breaking scripts.

>>1991845
>bloat a 3gb game into 60gb
>that atrocious UI which requires more clicks than OG rome
>didnt fix shit AI, pathing or made giving unit orders fluid like in new games
its a bad remaster

>>1993333
>That's true, but I think that it's been readily adapted to for so long that it's more tolerable than something like unit cap leading to repeat units or the ancillary cap breaking scripts.
I'm of the opposite opinion. I'd rather have more factions than more units. I see it as after all it is just reskins of spear, sword, archer, Harcher, and horses, nothing radical will change unless its magic units like in the fantasy mods but for factions seeing something like Hellenic League, eat up all of Greece and Crete in EB2, just disgusts me so much.

>narrowly defeat a superior army in a pitched siege battle just in time to wheel the army to the south to defend the invaders
>game crashes
shit like this makes me want to stop playing these games forever

>>1993336
I think that people just wanted the same game but modernized. If they had left the UI and aesthetics the same then it would have been much better received.

>>1993225
A recruitment pool mod? That's actually huge!
What name does it go by?

>>1992669
Fuck it why not, not playing vanilla though so I'll pick the closest thing in SSHIP

>>1993353
At that point you earned the use of an auto_win cheat for when you boot back up

>>1993366
Correct. Only upscale the backgrounds if necessary.

>>1993628
cultural conquest

>>1992658
What the fuck with these useless chaotic empty spaces?

>>1993686
Imagine going from STW to RTWR. Such a shamefur dispray.

>>1993689

>>1992913
>t.Pyrrhus in italy

>>1993663
Must have missed it when I looked it over.
I see they used the hidden resources to finagle a workable recruitment pool, interesting...

>>1993691
Soulless if I weren't a zoomie.

>>1993689
Here's the equivalent for S2. It gets points for showing more provinces at once, and the specialty plus the wealth are good to know, but what can you do with this information? It doesn't tell you anything about construction or recruitment, so you still have to go through each province individually to see what needs to be done. RTR does the best out of any Total War game in helping you check your provinces with the minimum amount of time, which is the biggest part of empire management.

>>1993231
What the fuck in all my years on 4chan ive never seen bulletin points in a post.

>>1993686
Worst part is they gave no option to revert to original UI/graphics like every other worthwhile remaster of a PC game does.

>>1992730
>I think the only extra info it gives is the presence of a governor?
Yes but it also gave specific numbers, the population, number of public order, amount of income. You could argue most of this info isnt that important which is why they decided to remove it, but knowing the exact public order in the screen once your empire is massive is very helpful.

Who here Time Commander chads?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MQ8gIxBj4Y&list=PL05012F0E0C42D0B5&index=16
I always enjoyed this episode because of how the players really overthink their strategy vs the simplicity of how the real battle was won.

It frustrates me that Empire and Napoleon, the games with abysmally poor unit variety, are also the only games in the series where the AI can consistently recruit a credible army with all the right units. Every time I look at another historical game I remember facing endless stacks of 20x spearmanii or t1 clubmen and slingers and I'm immediately discouraged.

>>1994712
>the games with abysmally poor unit variety, are also the only games in the series where the AI can consistently recruit a credible army with all the right units
I don't believe that's a coincidence...

>>1994712
>Empire
>recruit a credible army

>>1993686
It's a mobile (phone/ipad) UI they tweaked and resized to pass off as a desktop UI. The empty space is there so people's fat fingers don't accidentally touch the wrong thing.

>>1994714
>Civ5 is the best civ!
>Civ5

>>1992730
It's a trun based game, where are you, so why rushing it? And is still could show to a player much more >>1993686

>>1994782
RR has the tooltips showing info too

>>1994712
i love going in a crusade in med 2 and decimating stacks of only ballistas and catapults with heavy cavalry
>>1994670
still kino in this day and age

>>1994712
>the games with abysmally poor unit variety
It's the same as AI doing well on the Med 1 map, it just does better under more limited conditions and has never been properly adapted for more complex options since Rome 1.

>>1994782
I actually wish the UI in vanilla Rome was more configurable than it is. Would be nice to change window popups and such rather than be limited to graphics.

I'm still mad about the fact that they stopped selling original Rome Total War separately, I'm forced to buy the stupid shitty remastered (wich is useless for me, since my pc is too old to handle it) in order to have the original one.
Fuck this shit, this is what encourages people to pirate.

>>1995253
>my pc is too old to handle it
You're poor so you don't matter.

Any anons know/recommend any good challenge runs? Like migration or no fighting Catholics kinda stuff? I find these interesting and I want something to spice up my next Campaign.

>>1995253
I bought the remaster because the original runs like shit on my PC while the remaster runs at a constant 144fps. I use a mod for the original unit models and icons though.

>>1994782
Being turn based has nothing to do with it, getting to the important information with fewer actions is good.

>>1994517
Fair point, but I still maintain that the easier access plus fitting more cities at once gives RR the edge.

>>1995542
>I still maintain that the easier access plus fitting more cities at once gives RR the edge.
Sounds like an agree to disagree, its whatever your looking for out of it. Im so used to the old system 1 extra click is nothing to me. You can organize the cities by all those attributes I listed earlier so you can see whatever city you need to immediately without scrolling so the city limit doesnt matter to me much, though I would imagine that feature is available in the remaster as well.

Another day without the Roman Empire in my life.

>>1995253
Rockstar did the same thing when they remastered their three GTA games from the same era in an even shittier more disastrous way.

>>1996163
Its just the standard move when they remaster, you cant buy the original Dark Souls anymore. No original Metroid Prime, no original Mass Effect. How else are you supposed to convince normies to buy the inferior product?

>>1995253
>Buying games.

>>1996266
I usually eventually buy a good game even after playing it pirated for years. Sometimes they even go on sale for like $2 it it creates some convenience. But when they take originals off storefronts then you have no choice but to pirate. In fact, it's your duty

I have been craving some Med 2, but DaC V6 has apparently not been released yet.
What other mods do people play nowadays?
Is SSHIP any good?

>>1995253
>since my pc is too old to handle it
Are you from fucking Somalia or something? Just buy a new PC

>>1996564
>Are you from fucking Somalia
thats like 75% of the modding scene

>>1996256
blizzard makes you download 30gb deforged turd instead of 1.5gb game even if you own just the OG wc3tf.

>>1996568
slavs are european tho

>>1996564
No i'm neither poor nor from Somalia, I am just too much of a stingy motherfucker to buy a new one, if not for that i would be able to buy a $2000+ dollars computer that lasts for decades.

>>1992669
rollan

the only shogun 2 unit I like is the Tercio. God if only CA was not retarded we could've had a Thirty Years Total war by now

>>1993691
Simple, elegant, refined even.

>>1996522
Bellum Crucis 7 and Europa Barbarorum 2 are my favorite Med 2 mods. I prefer BC over SS. EB2 is my go-to mod when it comes to the ancient world. Falcom Total War is also fun, closest thing you'll get to world conquest in Medieval 2. Broken Crescent is great for the Middle East and crusader warfare. As for early modern mods, problem I remember back then was that they were usually incomplete and buggy. There's a recent one called Lucium Total War which seems to have improved a lot of things.

>>1998287
Installed EB2 and other than the crashes I don't see anything that interesting.
Any tips? Money is thight and the independet kingdoms are extremely powerful. I started as the keltiberians.

>>1998347
first 50 turns are for warmup. trade matters, I remember making more from trade than every other economic activity. it's easier to ally and make deals with factions that share your religion/culture, but some of them will still randomly attack you. other than that it's med 2 nigga, just conquer shit until you're rich

>>1998548
>other than that it's med 2 nigga, just conquer shit until you're rich
I mean yeah, but rebels still have two full stacks most of the time, wich is stupid because I don't think the AI can really expand.

I started a couple of days ago to replay vanilla rome2, I was arriving from a couple of campaigns of FotS, and my god what an boring game. I remembered rome2 to be somewhat of a hit or miss game, but on further inspection it's just BORING:
>play as rome
>you already have a solid economy turn1
>easy to wipe out etruscan
>diplomacy is functional, but nothing ever happens
>political system it's just prevent civil wars, most options are unavaible or just bad
>tech tree +2% on agricolture
>real time combat not so bad, you have to flank to win in a nutshell, but no so bad and the AI even react to flanking maneuvers, but unit stats make zero sense
>start to realize how little the actual map is
>see marian reforf units, basically principes with little more armor and health and little less melee def, a reskin
>realize there is literally nothing interesting to do other than map painting, an easy map painting, even the real time battles are just the same shit over and over, since the unit that you can have at the start are the same that you'll have at the end

rome2 really killed all

>>1999383
I completed 2 long campaigns and it wasnt until the end of the 2nd campaign I realized I was using the OP autoresolve feature for as many battles as I possibly could and was just map painting. Once that happened it was over.

>>1999383
You forget
>autoresolve that tells you everything that will happen with 0 repercussions
>province system that funnels you into conquering a certain group of settlements rather than what you want to do
>units tied to general
>no dedicated and varied general speeches
>added women to the game (GROSS)

It was all downhill from this design philosophy.

>>1999575
>autoresolve that tells you everything that will happen with 0 repercussions
they should keep this for naval battles because fuck engaging 2 ships with 5 and losing

>>1999383
I think most people move on from vanilla Rome 2. Mid to late campaign is just too easy and comfortable. I moved on to DEI and, while I enjoy most things like the units and mechanics, the relentless hyperaggressive diplomacy is fucking annoying

>>1999604
>dude just tell me the outcome before I roll
Modern strategy players, everyone

>>1999635
I could never properly move to DEI. Some of the Rome early game requires precision movement and recruitment, and it's more like a puzzle than a strategy game.
>simon says move here or you lose
It's shit.

>>1999721
naval battles suck, bite me

>>1999754
>clicking a button sucks
lmao

>>1996522
Dale looks interesting in V6. I'm looking forward to playing as them.

>>1999882
Are you watching Augimund playing Dale in V6?

>>1999724
Are there any better Rome 2 mods?

>>2000397
well there's Radious but I wouldn't say it's better

>>1996522
>Is SSHIP any good?
It has too much scripts that break the game to make it more "realistic"
>What other mods do people play nowadays?
Vanilla Beyond and Vanilla Kingdoms are both good vanilla+ mods
If you you want more fantasy play Elder Scrolls: TW without the unofficial patch

>>2001335
>It has too much scripts that break the game to make it more "realistic"
Explain.

The Fire and Sword AI is a real grind

>>1999754
Naval battles are the highlight of Empire dawg. (Dont @ me about S2 battles because who needs a navy in that game)

>>2002469
Juicy AARP's anon. Keep up the good work

>>2002506
i agree but i was thinking about Rome battles which are totally rigged

>>2000397
Rome 2 is not salvageable.

>>2000397
Just play Attila and get a mod that removes Climate Change and boom, you have the best modern historical TW.

>>2002538
>removing climate change
Skill issue.

>>2002527
I forget it even has naval battles because again, often having a navy isnt important in that game unless your doing an amphibious landing.

>>2002543
Climate change makes Attilla a survival game rather than an empire building game. Survival games isnt why I play TW. I understand peoples resistance to such a mod, but I have the most fun when climate change is not a factor.

How's Steam & Steel for Medieval 2?

>>2002538
>Best modern total war
Not much of an achievement when Rome 2 and the saga spam is your only competition.

>>2002549
You just adapt. If you told me something like "well it ruins my Norse autism", I'd have understood; but forcing you to deal with the apocalyptic theme of the game is Attila's greatest feature. And it's not like the game doesn't give you tools in the alternative. I had a great time "industrializing" Britain as the WRE.

>Miao Ying can't capture siege points
Another one for the book

>>2002932
Hey Shogun 2 is good if you consider it in that spectrum.

Damn, Mongol got hands.

>>2002538
I've never played Attila before. What should I expect? And what's this climate change thing about?

>>2006139
All provinces have a base fertility level that determines its food output into your empire. More and more climate change happens over the campaign which reduces the base fertility for the whole map. By the end of the game the only fertile provinces are in Italy. Theres buildings you can build to get around it and wont be the biggest deal, but my problem is the AI has problems handling it and late game other nations can barely hold it together meaning less challenge late game.

Overall I still recommend Attila, and would probably say try vanilla before you take my advice. its one of the better modern historical TW's with great atmosphere, good battles, and good variety in factions and playstyles for you to enjoy. Im a sucker for this and Barbarian Invasion trying to keep WRE alive, whilst you can also aid its demise as attila, overall very kino.

Was a bit of a mess in the late stages, but I'm happy enough with the results.

>>2006221
OOF

Are there any historical med 2 mods with unique or at least more interesting siege maps? I'm kind of disappointed that Constantinople's walls in Tsardoms were just the normal city walls recolored to look vaguely like the Theodosian walls.

>>2007799
i will never understand why they shrunk the size of the streets even more for medieval 2, the path finding just goes to shit

>>2007799
Can you even make city-specific maps in MII? Surely Tsardoms would have done it if it was possible.

>>2008316
Important settlements in Divide and Conquer/Third Age (lord of the rings mods for Med II) have unique maps.

>reinstall EB2
>rebel battle
>rebel battle
>siege city
>rebel stack spawns
>rebel script line that spawns multiple rebel stacks
>more expansion towards rebels, followed by cleaning up the devastation-causing rebel remnants
>need to slowly and manually take care of every single rebel battle because replenishment takes dozens of turns

got bored after a few dozen turns
just endlessly and brainlessly slaughtering gray stacks gets dull very quickly

>>2008775
Jumping from Med 2 to Rome II for first time and seeing the replenishment feature was like finding water in the desert

This was a more interesting campaign for me, I can usually beat a VH campaign in under 100 turns by just steamrolling through Europe and getting Jerusalem. This time I tried not fighting any Catholic factions to appease the pope (eastern orthodox is ok) as Poland. Which lead me to taking the long route Southeast into Turkey. The problem with this route is it doesnt yield any high income settlements (mostly castles for some reason) until I could cut through and get Constantinople and get the clustered cities around Jerusalem. That was a challenge because of course by the time I get there the Mongols are in their prime rampaging through the Middle East. The Byzantines still had some teeth as well. Balancing economy with military was more of a struggle than usual. And of course, once the Mongols were dead, as if on cue, in came the Timurids.

>>2008775
>EB II
>Turn 100 with the Aureaukoi
>Conquered all of Iberia and started to plan conquering North Africa
>Build huge fleet
>Greek states decide to declare war on me, and all they do before completely being whiped out is to send 200+ ships my way and fuck my fleet
Yeah, fuck you too game.

>>2006154
Well thanks. I've played a lot of Rome II but never tried Attila because I don't find the era too interesting. I'm planning to give it a try.

>>2009010
You mean where the game automatically restores all your lost troops no matter where you are? kek

>>1991167 (OP)
Controversial opinion: Most of the map being passive rebels is a good thing, actually. The AI and diplomacy in these games is shit and having a million useless NPC factions that sometimes manage to kill off the factions I actually want to fight doesn't amuse me in the slightest. The 4X setup just makes far more sense when the draw of these games is the battles.

>>2009279
I think that's easily solved by just giving NPC factions different behavior than major factions. Rebels all being the same faction has its own problems too, namely that they're indistinguishable and are technically capable of working together.

>>2009282
>technically capable of working together
Literally never happens. I have close to 500 hours in Medieval 2 and I don't think I've ever seen that. You're not wrong, otherwise. I actually don't have a problem with the minor factions up until Rome II. They're really passive in Empire/Napoleon and then in Shogun 2 all the factions are pretty much the same anyway so whatever. I admit, I'm just angry because the first time I played Total Warhammer was as Heinrich Kemmler so I take 100 turns to conquer Brettonia then some faggot Dwarf minor faction teleported a crapstack of speardwarfmanii under the mountains into my core territory which was undefended because lol armylimit and I've been seething about that incident for 2 years even though I uninstalled not long after.

>>2009279
I agree, given the circumstances. But I don't know why everyone just accepts that CA won't make better AI.

>>2009077
>Building a ship fleet in a total war game
Ships can't be attacked while inside a port and a single ship can transport a whole 20 unit army.

>>2009165
Well I was certainly getting tired of waiting dozens of turns just to retrain large armies, especially AoR units that force you to travel back to the city where you recruited them. Most specially if the computer is spawning doomstacks.

>>2009279
>draw of these games is the battles.
no. if the draw of the games were the battles, youd be playing a different games. its both the campaign and battles put together thats the draw of the game, not just one or the other. having as many factions that can fight each other and battle is great. having grey rebel blobs that you just slog through sucks. perfect example, EB2. itd improve tenfold if those were replaced with real factions.

>>2009603
the rome 2 replinishment sucks as vanilla. DEI made it work with the pop mechanic but thats still just another way the old recruiting system also accomplished the goal of not being able to magically spawn your elite troops in the middle of nowhere. which is a GOOD thing. you should have to go back to that city to get the troop you want or be forced to hire mercs or hire more local troops.

>>2009378
Ever read this? https://medium.com/@julianmckinlay/total-war-rome-ii-and-creative-assembly-my-statement-ten-years-on-d964f65b0a8f
Tldr is that CA is retarded and thinks its players are retarded, and good AI would make the game less accessible. These days, I doubt they have either the will or talent even if they wanted to try to improve the AI.
>>2009603
Strategy? In my strategy game? Perish the thought.
>>2009641
The campaign adds context and asymmetry to the battles. My fundamental problem with it is that nuTW minor factions aren't fun in the slightest to deal with because if they stay as minor factions and don't manage to blob up, they're functionally the same as rebels just way more annoying and infinitely respawn unless you wipe them out. I also think that nuTW has fucked up pacing because of it. I'm playing Tsardoms right now and I'm finding that the deeper I get into it, the more intense things become because suddenly I'm beginning to clash with giant empires while in nuTW everything depends on the first 5 turns and then it slowly becomes either trivial or a chore to play. Shogun 2 wasn't like that, but Shogun 2 is extremely tight and focused compared to just about every other Total War game.

>>2009847
>Ever read this? https://medium.com/@julianmckinlay/total-war-rome-ii-and-creative-assembly-my-statement-ten-years-on-d964f65b0a8f
i remember reading that document, if its the one im thinking of where he basically outlines the development of rome 2 while working on it. pretty crazy to think the higher ups were just like
>lets not make a game the fans will like and just add in stupid shit just because!

>>2009860
>lets not make a game the fans will like and just add in stupid shit just because!
Exactly that one, except it seems to have worked out for them. Based on the popularity of Total Warhammer and Paradox games, people LOVE pointless sliders, modifiers and buttons and are willing to pay big money for then.

anyone tried master of strategy for shogun 2??
how autistic is it?

>>2009989
this guy with the kings and generals youtube channel quite likes it lmao
https://youtu.be/fPL_VXC-ssA

>>2009989
Its actually a really brillaint mod. It is right up there with EB, Stainless Steel, and DEI as what I would consider the essential modded experience for Shogun 2. The sub systems work beautifully and aren't nearly as obnoxious as they are in DEI. Unfortunatley it came out so late in the Shogun 2 Mod scene most people had moved onto Rome 2 by that point and it completely flew under the radar. I highly recommned playing it before CA release another "patch" that break shogun 2 mods since the main dev has retired.

I wish there was a Rome Total War mod that only focused on Greece and where all the factions were just greek city-states; and maybe Persia and Thrace to spice things up with possible invasions. There's ''Extended Greek Factions'' but it's really underwhelming, it only adds like 2 new ''greek'' factions (Bactria and Ptolemaic Empire) but the greeks are still all grouped in 1 generic faction called ''greek cities''

>>2010114
Literally first result on google.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/wars-of-the-peloponnesus/images/image-3#imagebox

>>2009847
Thanks for sharing this. It sounds like leadership was headed by some fucking retard who thought game AI is literally a scifi robot able to play the game like a human does.

So the question is why are the design team all smoking crack and why haven't upper management tardwrangled them?

>>2010187
I'm glad to spread the word. The thing is that the design team at least may know what a video game is and if they're on crack, then everyone above them is wired to an IV drip of Chinese gutter-grade fentanyl. These are the same people who thought that Hyenas was a good idea and the delusion and detachment from reality are pretty clear in the article, which I reread and is worse than I remember. It's probably the natural outcome of our society which confuses psychopathy, bossiness and wealth for virtue, leadership skills and intelligence. I remember hearing a rrat that a lot of the animation work, for example with the big monster units, that people actually like in Total Warhammer was actually done by low-level devs in their spare time.

Check out my Milan campaign in Tsardoms, I'm currently assembling mighty armies for an invasion of Sicily which I want to use as a naval base and staging ground for a crusade against the Turks who have taken Constantinople. Also check the Gigabosnia.

>>2010114
play Hegemony gold

>>2010104
I don’t know, it just feels like I constantly have to keep a third of my units garrisoned or they’ll revolt on me...and to make things worse, it seems like half the buildings add to unhappiness, which means I’ve gotta station even more troops. Also what happened to the cities on the map? Every province is just castles now.

Kosovo is rightful Serbian Land.

Everyone knows Planet War is the best mod out there anyway.

>>2011087
Based.

Reposting from /twg/ since I didn't know about this thread.
I started playing Rome 2 for the first time recently. Holy crap, those Noble Horsemen are no joke. Almost defeated Triarii in prolonged combat. One unit rallied with four dudes left and charged back in while I was struggling to bring down the Oathsworn general and I had to wipe the unit completely.

R-R-R-ROMAN
E-E-E-EMPIRE

>>2012999
tarantine cav, that's the answer

>>2012999
Whats your difficulty setting? Legendary just makes every enemy unit a last standing fanatic

>>2014112
Very hard

Anyone have tips for Poland in Empire? Starting position seems terrible.

>>2009603
You are supposed to merge units and just disband the ones that get too small while supplanting with mercenaries while your reinforcements are being moved to the front.

>>1991167 (OP)
I need some advice regarding vanilla Medieval 2. When I first got the game as a kid I didn't understand the mechanics and for roughly a decade I didn't touch it. Now I'm playing it again and have great fun this far. But I have a few issues I need some help with. For the background of my current game: I'm playing as the HRE with campaign and battle difficulty on medium.
Now firstly I'm currently in a war with Milan and Venice - both of them attacked me and this far I have beaten back every attack. But I only have one larger army in northern italy, which I use to defend Bologna and Florence. Another army is stationed in Bern - here Milan often attacks. And another is in Vienna - often attacked by Venice.
My other armies are in the north and east capturing rebel provinces but I'm hesitant of moving them south as I don't know if the other kingdoms (France, Denmark, Poland) will attack me as well.
Thus far every diplomatic attempt of making peace with Milan and Venice have failed - I didn't try to bribe them and always have ransomed their captives but occasionally they wont pay and their captives get slaughtered (I assume). Is it better for me to just release them without any ransom in order to improve my diplomatic relations?
Additionally I have a really weak (3 or 4 papa points) with the Papacy - is there a way to increase my standing? I built churches/chapels in every settlement and have many priests in order to convert the eastern provinces but this doesnt seem to work.
Additionally the Pope has called for a crusade but I really can't spare an army for the Holy Land at the moment.
So what would you do?

>>2015363
>Ignore Navies they are not worth the trouble and enormous upkeep costs for unreliable income that immediately disappears if your or your trade partner's port gets blocked.
>Stack universities in your home region. Remove the craft workshop there you start with. However get nothing but craft workshops in all other regions. You can only build the best universities in your home region and the public order penalties from your research is only applied once for every region with at least one university.
>Don't waste your money upgrading your roads and ports. It's better to focus on troops.
>Spam Line Infantry

>>2015363
take out prussia

>>2015530
>is there a way to increase my standing
with a tribute of 100 or 200 denarii for 300 turns he will never excommunicate you
>the Pope has called for a crusade but I really can't spare an army
you only need a general with 3 units, grab your shittiest lord and give him 3 peasants or something. when you join the crusade you can recruit crusader mercenaries for pennies, also you don't pay upkeep for them (as long as the crusade is ongoing) so just go kill some muslims

>>1994712
There's a reason many mods flatten the barracks/archery//stable/whatever buildings into a single generic military building, or tie it into the settlement level.

>>1991167 (OP)
A thing I really miss from older TWs is how the AI sometimes seems to "probe" you
It will either send a force near the border or violate your borders a bit, as if to reveal FoW and to assess your reaction
And if you react to that movement by sending in reinforcements or a field army in front of the AI, it may cancel its plans to attack you for at least a few turns

Made the diplomacy feel more connected to the campaign map. In newer titles countries will just formally declare war on you, sometimes several turns before hostilities even begin
Of course you still had crap like "accept or we will attack/please do not attack" or alliances being more like glorified NAPs

>>2012999
>>2014112
Cav sucks major ass in Rome2. In fact everything sucks ass in Rome2 compared to heavy infantry.
If you play in Very Hard then wait until you meet a large stack from a faction that mostly uses heavy infantry like hoplites. You basically have to murder every single one of them because that morale isn't going to break.

>>2009010
>>2009165
Automatic replenishment began in Napoleon iirc but it heavily depended on two factors
>tech level (more tech makes replenishment faster)
>whether the city your army is currently located has the buildings necessary to produce a given unit, if not then that unit still replenishes but much slower
That meant that at the start of the game heavy units barely replenished outside of your main recruitment city and other units replenished slowly. But as the game went on, your armies would start replenishing faster and faster and faster until by the endgame you reached a level similar to that of Rome2 where you can rest for a turn, maybe two, and then march on.
I liked it.
Shogun2 also had automatic replenishment didn't it? Or did you have to pay for it? Can't remember.

>>1992669
Lemme see

>>2016029
Shogun 2 has exclusively automatic replebishment as long as you are in your own territory.
Its speed depends on roads, technology and building in the provonce you are.
It doesn't matter that much because every faction's roster in Shogun 2 is the same units + 1 or 2 unique units.

>>2016027
Just turn the battle difficulty down to normal. I do and stick to tier 0-2 units (with sometimes elephants as a treat). Never liked using armies of high tier units. Seemed silly.

Then cav can sweep away all ranged enemies and shatter enemy infantry battered by your own infantry, run them down and consistently score the most kills every battle.

How the fuck does Rome calculate who gets healed at the end of a battle? Played this siege and completely fucked it up, like full on retardation on my part. Still, managed to eek out a win and capture the settlement. My general has a field medic so I figured I might get some troops back but I got nearly half my casualties healed (over 300 troops restored). One unit was wiped out to a man, only for literally all of them to dust themselves off and replenish to full.

>>2016468
You sure they weren't just captured while fleeing?

>>2011035
You need to make a province that produces positive public order to neighboring provinces. Find one province that is situated between a lot of other ones and have it be built purely to spread public order to your military and economic provinces.

>>2016468
Im not sure, I always assumed it works on Medieval 2 rules where if your unit routs and the enemy runs them down those are considered captured, and you get them back if you win at the end of the battle.

>>2015530
Diplomacy in this game is fucked and trying to keep good relations isnt worth bothering tbqh. Theres a bug in the files that treats capturing a settlement as massacring them (which accrues negative relations to all factions).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5gzhsAqbZQ
You can try this to help fix it. As far as the papacy I try and get priests so I can get a Theologians guild in the city, once you have one and upgrade it at least once any priest you recruit in the city will have high enough ranking to immediately become a cardinal. Spam them to where you can reliably secure enough votes to always put in your factions pope and then keeping good relations with the papacy will be pretty easy. Of course you can take the other anons advice for papal relations and crusading if that doesnt sound appealing to you.

>>2015530
Also on your next campaign I recommend bumping campaign difficulty up higher. This gives the factions more gold to field larger armies so you can have larger battles. Battle difficulty staying medium or going higher is up to how you are feeling about your skill level currently.

>>2016027
Cavalry always sucks against spears. Why would you run your horses into hoplites unless you're flanking from behind

How well does Bellum Crucis compared to Stainless Steel?

>>2016970
really? You have to add 3 semicolons and that's it?? fucking creative assembly couldn't fix this shit all these years?

>>2017046
There's so much shit in TW that's never been fixed. I play Rome 2 a lot and the naval fighting is still broken after all these years with ships randomly freezing in the middle of the sea or your troops not landing on the shore after clicking 20 times.

>>2017046
Expecting competency from CA is like expecting the hooker in Thailand wont have a dick.

>>2017046
CA has never been competent.

>>2017046
Med 2 had a reputation for being a buggy piece of shit, it's just that the games that have come after have been so much worse that it made it look good by comparison.

>>1991167 (OP)
>Tfw want Med 3
>Tfw want Empire 2
>Tfw going to get Rome 3

>>2017036
I think stainless steel is more hardcore

SCOVT
EQVITES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J__ZdvsZaE
>>>/wsg/5856529
>>>/wsg/5856531

>>2017355
i hated when they removed armor piercing from crossbowmen, retarted decision.

>>2017036
BC has a lot of scripts in an attempt to make the game deeper and more complex. You could deactivate most of them at the start though and I don't remember having too many crashes or some campaign-breaking bug. It also has some of the most beautiful and high quality units I've seen in a Med 2 mod. I've always thought that SS was more arcadey in comparison.

>>2016468
The first squad to receive a casualty automatically receives a bias to casualties healed and squads that receive heavy casualties also have an increased chance of healing. Outside of that I think a lot hinges on traits or ancillaries that affect healing.

>It's the "everybody who borders you automatically declares war on you" episode

>>2016027
So, funnily enough, in that game Kush took out Egypt, and Kush + Lusitania almost took out Carthage. Meanwhile in Greece one of the Celtic factions ended up running roughshod over Athens and Sparta (to put it in perspective I was able to take the entire Hellas region despite being allied to Sparta the whole game. Of course there were only celts in the Britain, so by the time I checking the last few boxes for a domination victory I had somehow gone almost the entire game without fighting another heavy infantry faction.
However, in my current game (Egypt on Legendary), while it has been going quite smoothly, other Hellenic states have definitely given me the most difficulty. Pikes in settlement defense are soooo fucking busted though haha. They really channel the power of the Yari Ashigaru. My jaw actually dropped when the ai charged some horse archers into my pikes at one point.

Which Attila medieval mod is a best, Anno Domini 1051 or 1212 AD

Med 3...I can see it in my dreams...bros...

>>2024727
what do you see anon? tell me about it and your relationship with your mother

What historical Total War should I get if I want to play a game centered around gunpowder-era combat? I want line battles and artillery and maybe the occasional cavalry charge.
It seems like Napoopan, Empire, and Fall of the Samurai are the main contenders for this era but I don't know which one is the best. I've played the hell out of the OG Rome Total War and a bit of Medieval 2 but I'm getting bored of melee combat.

>>2016468
In my experience it just comes down to whoever died first is who gets healed.
I sometimes abuse this by sending my most valuable units to skirmish first knowing that most of their casualties will be healed, then pull them back before sending in my expendable units to take unrecoverable casualties.

>>2008775
Rome Remastered unironically makes the scripting of the old way pointless. I'm sure it'd pain the team to move to it but it would be the best.

>>2024780
Napoleon is the best of the 3 but all kind of suck. You're better off getting the Lucium Total War mod for medieval 2

>>2024780
empire is ok but can become a mess in some situations, like siege forts
napoleon never played
fots has a limited gunpowder gameplay respect empire, but is more refined in it and overall a better game

>>2024780
FotS is the better game, but it really lacks all the characteristics of gunpowder era warfare we associate with Europe in the XVIII-XIX centuries.
I still think Empire is the better game despite it's very glaring flaws.

>>2025219
If FOTS was the european theatre it'd be one of the best regarded total wars. That isn't a bitch about people disliking the non-europes since I recognize FOTS' setting inhibits some what you can do. But god damn if it had been 1860 Europe people would be bazoonga eyes over it.

I had fun with empire despite the terrible flaws. I do hope we get an Empire2, but I'd like to wait on it than having it be the next.

>>2025513
>I'd like to wait on it than having it be the next
Haven't we waited long enough?

>>2025528
I hate to be a medieval-wah-wah fag because I hate that scot for being scottish and for being a whiny bitch I have to hear of without ever watching ecelebs, but M2 is literally approaching 20 years old this year or the next. In terms of the hierarchy of wargaming and pop cultural interest Medieval is able to rival and honestly in some ways eclipse Rome.

As I see it, you can easily work backwards from a medieval game to gunpowder. It's much harder to work backwards from gunpowder to medieval - and you know what I mean, in terms of what the coding/setup/ect is built around.

That and with how hostile to naval combat CA has become I think we may not get an Empire/Napoopan for that reason alone.

>>2025544
Also while I am approaching a tripfag in my championing for pike and shot (I'll save a wall of text again), I've started to worry that empire is in an anti-golidlocks situation of sorts.
>Pike and shot
More unit variety, melee, DLC potential (Unit differences aren't just uniform coloring). Worse with artillery.
>Victorian/19th century
More artillery variety, more gunpowder variety, interesting new campaign map features like railroads. Honestly the 19th century ends up being 18th century but better since:
>Depending on start date you can get clunky old muzzle loaders, but you also now get rifled guns, repeaters.
>You still get lancers, cuirassiers, dragoons
>While still 'recolored units' 19th century uniforms are much more approachable to rule of cool for the average user, while 18th century can be maligned for powdered wigs, tighty whities, dandiness.
>Ironclads and steamboats too

I hate to say it, but Empire 2 starts to feel less likely a full release and more a saga. Except would people really clamor to buy Total War: Austrian succession?

>>2025528
>warscape is 16 years old
jesus christ

>>2025548
>Except would people really clamor to buy Total War: Austrian succession

Honestly the only way you could drum up hype for the early modern period is to really lean into the wars of religion, but good luck getting a marketing department to navigate that without causing a shitstorm.

>>2025579
I don't think catholic vs protestant would cause any problems, but you'd have to politely ignore the Sunni-Shia animosity that was as nasty. Blew my fucking mind to learn Suleiman's dad did a census of Shia in Eastern Anatolia only to use that as a list of who to genocide years later. Modern problems and modern solutions? Nah, ancient problem and ancient solution apparently. Got me wondering if the Latin Vespers wasn't also bureaucratic but it was more likely just shibboleth. But yeah, that's precisely why I think pike and shot works. Best of both worlds, and what it loses in medieval isn't too much.

On that topic fear of the crusades/jihads is a nothingburger since Paradox has run with those no problem, so that won't be an issue in medieval 3.

>>2025576
We're in the era of never changing engines, unless it' that weird oblivion "We're both on unreal and creation at the same time somehow"

>>2025589
>unless it' that weird oblivion "We're both on unreal and creation at the same time somehow"
That's literally how Total War works, though.
They have TW3, the gameplay engine, and Warscape, the graphics engine.
At any moment you could make a game that runs its gameplay behavior on TW3 while doing all the graphics rendering in Shitreal Engine 5. It would just be retarded as you obviously need lots of tricks on the graphics end to make TW games work and Stutter Engine 5 doesn't have those... quite clearly otherwise there would already be many TW clones.

Gembryo at Bethesda handled both graphics and logic but the Demaster cut out all the graphics code and had Project Caesar run in the background being fed all the "play animation, move the camera, spawn in character X/Y" interactions from Gembryo to render it all in blurry-ass 9001p.

>>2025589
>We're in the era of never changing engines, unless it' that weird oblivion "We're both on unreal and creation at the same time somehow"
Probably another reason why games run like shit these days.

>>2024780
Napoleon with Darthmods 40 unit saves

I can never make it through more than 1 hour of a Divide et Impera campaign. The end turn time and full stacks of horse archers (I was playing as Bactria) makes it tedious.

Is Three Kingdoms Total War good for 15 bucks? Does that even count as a historical TW?

>>1991167 (OP)
What mods would anons recommend for Rome 2?

Does anyone have a good resolution image of the Medieval 2 building and units tree? The only one I can find the link is broken and it just takes you back to the TW wiki

>>2025513
We all know the kind of historical TW we are missing.
One in the XIX century and another one in the early modern period or in the Thirty Years War.
It's never happening and even if it happens we know they will be trash.

>>2026495
Three Kingdoms is good unless you have terminal CDS, especially for $15

I'm playing Rome II in normal/normal for the first time and I'm absolutely fucking the AI on the ass.
I meet no opposition from any faction. Most of their cities are empty.
What the fuck is this game?

>>2027070
Starting with Rome II, armies are now tied to generals, of which there is a quite unforgiving cap. It's fucking stupid. The AI of the series always had its issues, like with any other strategy game, but at least before they could make as many armies as they could afford. If you haven't already done so, just play the first Rome and Barbarian Invasion. I find them to be much more enjoyable than Rome 2 and Attila for this and a variety of other reasons.

>>2025745
>try the new ''TW challenger'' - Strategos
>it run from under 40 to over 70 when in battle no matter the settings
>engine? - unity

>>2026495
there is records mode(more grounded compared to romance mode with heroes soloing whole units) also there is some mods that help
biggest flaws are some undercooked mechanics(like retinue, again mods help) and setting(if you don't like it) but you can watch 2010 3 kingdoms to help
Its actually pretty good game, I would say the best from modern TW games(well i didn't play Pharaoh)

>>2026972
Cute girl
Reverse image search
Pic related.
I'd be fine with flaws, I am not expecting perfection but I just don't want Empire/Napoopan style foolishness (or Pharaoh non dynasty). At the same time the dilemma I think I wall-of-texted on is if you do theatrical releases combined like Warhammer or big empty(ish) map filled in like R2/Attila. Neither is a guarantee against
>The future of 3 Kingdoms total war
Which to date is still just a what the fuck to me. It was doing far better sales wise than my boy Dynasties, the work needed to make more DLC was incredibly tiny and then that "Haha we wanna make a 3KTW2" who the fuck is going to buy that unless it's 10 years later?

>>2026972
>Annoyed girl.png
anon...

>>2027144
I know.
I made the crop myself.
Fag.

>>2027138
>"Haha we wanna make a 3KTW2"
what the fug they were thinking?
imagine what sofia could do if they got free hand with 3k

>>2027138
>>2027292
>what the fug they were thinking?

You can just read their quarterly strategy meetings.
They split up the plane into Western/Asian History/Fantasy. TW3K2 was pitched as the missing Asian Fantasy setting. At the same time WH3 pitched the option of making Kathay a focal point of their expansion.
Whether they actually planned to use one onether as backup options is just a wild extrapolation but their strategy about needing to fill that Asian Fantasy slot is written black on white and if you remember the pitch video of TW3K2, it was fairly clear on following that as well. They promised to go all-in on the fantasy, part of the reason why they refused to call it TW3K2 since it would imply it as a sequel to the historical game, which it wasn't meant to be.

>Okay, so why drop Three Kingdoms?
They did explain that fairly clearly. Asian audience had standards and refused to buy buggy, nonsensical DLCs. If you're a company you obviously prefer to have an audience that laps up everything you serve them. They can complain, but they must pour money on it.
Just look at the swine pens of AoE2. The devs shat all over them with a 3K DLC. They squeeled and threw up the shit in their pens but are all lining up to buy it with a smile on their face as their Youtubers tell them, with a shit eating grin, how the DLC is beating all previous sales records.

>>2027395
>Asian audience had standards and refused to buy buggy, nonsensical DLCs
they refused not because of bugs but because of politics(bad period) and grace going mongol on their sexy mods ass and so eternal chink unleashed his anger

>>2027395
How would they pull off a 3k2 in a truly fantasy way is what I am confused on. I never read the original books but in any retellings I've seen short of Wo long it's just at most wuxia-y bullshit by the heroes and villains. They'd need to do like Wo Long and full on innovate a hyper magical setting, xianxia territory. I don't think the idea is impossible but it requires a creativity I am skeptical of from CA. You'd be better off just finding some popular IP that's fantasy east asia (Five Rings is pure Japan so I am not sure what there is).

With the AOE2 swine pens I am not quite following - the devs shit on them with a bad 3k DLC but then the chinese fans are willing to buy it? Or are you saying there it's the AOE2 paypigs rather than the Chinese audience?

Oh I get your image now. Did CA literally write Geedubs though? The red arrows are MS painted from 3k and TWh but I understand the point now
>GW did not yet confirm we'll get to do Kathay
>I assume the future of 3kTW was announced before TW3 came out, I forget
>GW said yes to cathay, so now we can scrap 3KTW2.

>>2028075
How they'd go about it is anyone's guess at this point. On one hand CA can be fairly good when they try. Alien was not an original IP but many of the things they did to make that game what it is were original ideas. The pirate faction in Warhammer was also completely made up by them, rather than Geedubs.

The exact details of how 3K2 and Grand Cathay interacted are obscure but the timeline looks like this:
>2. 2021 Warhammer 3 announced, Kislev, Cathay and Chaos
>5. 2021 Three Kingdoms 2 enters pre-production
>9. 2021 Cathay reveal
>2. 2022 Warhammer 3 released and makes a bank in China
>"Early 2022" cancellation of Three Kingdoms 2

The timelines are too strict to literally have them wait until much later to get an OK from Geedubs on Cathay but some sort of "Backup plan in case Chinese spit in our face instead of buying Wh3" is fairly plausible.

>With the AOE2 swine pens I am not quite following
AoE2 fans in general are conditioned to consume any slop you serve them. The DLC is getting bought by most of their playerbase, east or west. In spite of how vocal they were about not wanting it the way it is.

>>1999383
I recently finished my first game of R2. It wasn't... bad... but for most of the experience, I felt I would simply be having more fun if I was just playing R1 instead.
Settlement management wasn't satisfying.
Army management wasn't satisfying.
The battles weren't satisfying.
It was a disappointment since I had been looking for over 10 years to playing this game.

>>2027395
Where's that from? Can you provide source? Might be interesting read.

>>2028671
It's from their IR 2021
>https://www.segasammy.co.jp/cms/wp-content/uploads/pdf/en/ir/managementmtg_script_20211224_e.pdf
All of the IRs are available here:
>https://www.segasammy.co.jp/en/ir/library/presentation/

But this is all corpo shit, plus it's SEGA. You will clearly see much more into their heads than if you listen to random retards online who treat the company like a friend or a villain but you're not going to get all that much exciting info.

>playing Rome 2 for the first time as Egypt
>Kush declares war on me
>quick begin making a new army close to the border because my other armies are far away and busy
>the very next turn Kush offers me 300g to peace out
>accept the free gold and move my new army away from the border
>couple turns after Kush again declares war on me
>I quickly bring the small new army back to my border town
>next turn after I stationed the army in the city Kush, which hasn't even crossed my borders, offers me 1000g to peace out
Is that how Rome 2 AI normally act? I'm playing on hard btw.

>>2029001
>Cumulative sales is only 27.6 million for the whole series
Huh

>>2029002
>if at peace & neighbour has fewer than "arbitrary amount of" troops at the border then declare war
>if at war & neighbour has more than "arbitrary ratio of" troops compared to you & has more than "arbitrary amount of" troops at the border then sue for peace
Ad infinitum

>>2029096
Your brain is a bit fried, anon.
27.6m is a fuckton of sales for a then 19 year old, PC-only series.

That chart was made before 3K and Warham 3 release. Between those two, they got to 42.5m.
They hit the critical mass with Rome2.

Shogun 2 was promoted by saying the series had sold 7m units up to that point and while we lack exact numbers for Shogun 2, Rome 2 was an unbelievably huge success with 1.3m units sold in a year.
It was the starting point of their budget and sales inflation where nowadays they wouldn't even get out of bed for a game like that.

>>2029178
and still the best TW was and is Shogun 1(before expansion)

>>1992913
>BOGII

Our general is in GRAVE DANGER my lord!

>>1992257
Why do women hate chivalry?

>>2033672
there was an interesting explanation in a reply to the post where i got it from but i don't think i screenscaped it

>>2029002
It's shit like this that makes the yearly
>IS Rome II WORTH PLAYING IN [current year]???
YouTube shill campaign so hilarious to me. That game is fundamentally a game design disaster and to this day people are still coping about how it is totally fixed.
The answer is always no.

Rome 3 (4) will save the Rome series.

>>2027070
When I played my first R2TW campaign as Parthia, once I conquered my way to the Hellespont and seeing the Romans had a presence just across it and that they conquered Greece, I prepared three full-stack armies of top quality troops to invade, keeping in mind the constant waves of armies that R1TW throws at you and anticipating a slog. Result? Took over all of the Balkans up to the Alps fighting nothing but settlement garrisons. At that point I started intentionally dithering by avoiding going into Italy, hoping they might throw something my way. They did by sending one full-stack army on boats across the Strait of Otranto where I had a few ships docked, which I easily sank before they landed on shore. At that point I just gave up and put them out of their misery.

It's especially aggravating when you consider that one of Republican Rome's strengths was just fielding so much manpower that others couldn't compete with. You don't get to experience that side of them at all in this game.

>>2027076
>Starting with Rome II, armies are now tied to generals, of which there is a quite unforgiving cap. It's fucking stupid.
It's because there was an exploit in Empire and Shogun II that let players move troops infinitely by splitting off units from an army and merging them back in. So they just decided to not let you do that anymore because they couldn't fix their shitty retarded engine for 16 years and counting.

>>2035221
You're right that Rome 2 being good is a cope, but the greater and arguably most overlooked cope is that Attila is somehow a good game when it in actuality it's just a glorified Rome 2 dlc with all of the most important gameplay-related fuckups still intact. Jewish Assembly decided to market it as a separate full game with its own dlc but it's really just Barbarian Invasion 2.

>>2035224
I actually don't want to see another Rome Total War game for as long as I live. Not because I dislike the Roman era, but because I've come to believe that it isn't a good time period for Total War. You effectively have Rome as the "true protagonist" with all the fun mechanics, Carthage as a cope empire with cope non-mechanics, barbarians just existing to be conquered, Greece stuck in a kind of stasis not much better than Rome 1's bronze age Egyptians, and the Sassanids just sort of existing.
You could change my mind if things weren't so undeniably Rome-centric, but they are the title faction. It's not really going to change. I think Attilla improved things signifigantly by having Barbarians for example morph into post-Roman kingdoms via the tech tree, but I don't think that would ever happen in a proper Rome 3. You are free to disagree. It could be done well, but it won't. It'll just be Rome 2.5 with shinier graphics.

>>2036042
All TW games released since Rome II are a fork of it (with the exception of maybe Three Kingdoms), that's true, but none of them are as bad. I can at least concede they do some things better than that game, and some even come close to being good, but they're all ultimately disappointing games. That's the worst thing about Rome II, it set the bad precedent that the franchise is unable to move past.
The biggest problem with modern TW is how emblemic it is of CA's complacency and inability to learn the right lessons from each small success to push the series forward. That and their horrid DLC policy. They're one of the few game devs I'd actually label as incompetent, and I really don't use that word lightly.

>>2036063
True. Rome is good and all but what's the point of having a whole game with dozens of different factions if only one of them feels like a real faction? Everything else, even the DLC, is completely half-baked and pointless.

>>2036333
People buy it looks shiny and that's all they care about. They simply minimize dev costs by reskinning the same old shit game which lets them maximize profits. Sure they have flops, but overall they are still selling strong. That's not incompetence, it's a business approach that simply doesn't care about making a good game. The brand name alone will keep them selling. They've had flops but, overall, they keep selling. Empire was shitted on for being a dysfunctional piece of shit 16 years ago, same for Rome II 12 years ago. And people still keep buying every new release.

>>2036754
As game designers they are absolutely, 100% incompetent. Money-making is all that matters to them and its community is well aware of that, but what can they do when Total War is the only real choice on the market for high budget, large scale RTS? If it weren't for the fact that they don't have a serious competitor, they wouldn't be around anymore.

Wanna get another M2 campaign started but not sure what to play
Any mod is fine but preferably something very stable
I'm a bit of a bitch boy and I want something engaging but not at all challenging. Honestly I get a bit stressed out playing sometimes. Just by the campaigns, the battles I can handle no problem.
Can anyone recommend something for me please

>>2037461
Survival mode vanilla England. Abandon Caen with a revolt. Declare war on every faction and just develop Britain while sinking every ship that comes within 100k km of your island.

>>2037461
I'd recommend Broken Crescent as one of the backwater factions. You'll have money problems starting, but won't face any major immediate threats for a while, as most of the Levant and Syrian factions are busy duking it out while you build up your economy.

>>2037461
I recommend you stop being a sissy.

Very comfy faction overviews for Tsardoms: Fall of Constantinople. Great for getting some basic historical context.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLL0Xhkwu6xcilYjZkA2SBu5w-cxSHS170

>>2038070
>Roman Empire
Based.

>>1994670
still makes me kek how the military advisor from Sandhurst is a non convincing trannyjew now

>>2016468
I always found units that are "killed" indirectly - so city defenses or arrows are more likely to heal.

Maybe it's time spent in engagement? less=better

>>2038997
Türkiye*

>>2039476
Turkey*

>>2040273

>>2040300
Showcases Anatolian mutt's mental schizophrenia over his identity.

>>2036042
Attila was supposed to be the DLC following Empire Divided btw, but they thought the scope was getting too large for Rome 2 so they just transferred it to its own game

>>2040351
Do you have a source for that? It sounds strange considering that Empire Divided came out several years after Attila.

When I put my army to sit in a port to avoid DEI's regional supply consumption or extreme weather conditions, in my mind I'm sending assigning them to fish for their own food. Not sure how that lets them avoid attrition from e.g. extreme drought; I'm still trying to find a slightly plausible explanation for that.

>>2040681
they buy food from markets?

The next historical title has to be Med 3 or Empire 2....right?

>>2041363
Zulu Total War.

>>2041369
God I hope this company finally dissolves.

>>2041363
Here's a truthpill, anon.
The reason recent historicals except for Three Kingdoms didn't sell shit isn't their setting.
And Med 3 or Emp 2 will just put a stamp on that unless a miracle happens.

That's why CA is delaying making them as much as possible. They are a stupid studio, but they are not retarded.
>Yeah, just make Warhammer 2.0 but set in the Middle Ages! Instant money haxxx.
Sure, right after they tie a noose around their neck and have a cat play with the weight on the other end placed strategically at the window.
The appeal and novelty has worn off. They can't wow people with the graphics anymore, they have no giant movie epics to ride the popularity of and the gameplay loop is already boring to their playerbase.
A massive change needs to happen to keep interest. But it's going to be a shot in the dark and cost massive amounts of money. And as the studio that made Hyenas, they're not exactly the prime recipient of such a risk by SEGA.

>>2038070
NEW. PATCH. FUCKING. WHEN. !?!?!?

>>2041591
>The reason recent historicals except for Three Kingdoms didn't sell shit isn't their setting.
Yes, that is literally the reason.
>ToB did poorly
>Then 3k comes out - does great, better than WH up to that point
>Then Pharaoh comes out - does poorly.
The fundamental change was the setting. Your only counter-argument is "It was because of the chinese" which just validates that yes it is because of the setting - sufficient # of people liked the setting enough to buy it. 3k has bad unit variety, bad faction variety, bad geographic variety yet it did great because of the setting being popular. I like the bronze age but most do not beyond nebulous haha sea people memes or uuoooohhhh egyptian catgirl crying emoiji. Vikings are popular in the high fantasy abstraction rather than the reality, exactly like the bronze age really where people go
>Oh I'd love Babylonia, I wish Elam was playable
"So yeah buddy what army did Babylonia and Elam have? What would their battlefield experience be like?"
>Uuuuhhhh I dunno lol
Same shit as when you hear dumb ass takes here of let's have 30 years war (Not 17th century, no, just the 30 years war) or American civil war. CA is not as stupid as posters here and that is saying a lot because CA is DUMB.

>>2042268
>>ToB did poorly
>>Then 3k comes out - does great, better than WH up to that point
>>Then Pharaoh comes out - does poorly.
Because ToB was a Saga while 3k was a full game. Same reason Troy did worse than Pharaoh which you conveniently skipped. Setting does matter but not as much as the game actually being good. Medieval 3 would release way better than Pharaoh because of its setting, but it would still be surpassed by the newest WH then quickly forgotten like 3K. 3K still released well because the last game, Atilla, was still pretty good. But 3K did not leave the same optimism for the next historical main title. That's in addition to Pharaoh being shit, which is just more evidence that TW cannot make a good historical TW, only good WH games.

Review of the Medieval 2 mods I've played
>Divide and Conquer
Really good. Probably the most incredible mod of all time for any game. The actual gameplay is a bit worse than the initial wave of nostaligia. The ring script is overwhelming and not easy to do. The other random faction / character / barracks scripts are in no way intuitive and you pretty much need to follow a guide to know what to do. Still it's an amazing mod.
>EB2
It's very slow, the battles feel really good but also very slow. The campaign is very slow. You need to fight wars with rebels not just rush their cities and take half the map in 20 turns. The immersion is unmatched, but slow. Campaign AI is a bit passive but battle AI is good.
>SS
Vanilla+ which is to say it's really really good. So good I'd still recommend it to anyone who just wants to play a medieval total war game. Can't really think of anything wrong with it. Maybe the AI could be better but there's a bunch of settings I never messed with which may or may not fix that.
>SSHIP
It's like if you cross EB2 with SS but made it worse in every way. It takes a ton of time to do anything, everything costs a million dollars but for me it wasn't as immersive. TBF I didn't finish a campaign I always quit after taking the first rebel settlement or two. It's just not fun for me, maybe it is for other people idk
>Tsardoms
Beautiful map, a ton of historical flavor, probably my favorite battle AI. Campaign AI can feel a bit "cheap" at times (they seem to just have vastly more units than you) but it's fine. A bit script heavy for my tastes but fun. Map is focused on a time and place I don't much care for but I've still enjoyed a few games here. If you don't know who to play as literally just pick a random faction they're all pretty fun. I did Bohemia as my first just because I didn't know who to play as so I picked one at random. It was fun.
>Insularis Draco
The tiny unit sizes turned me off desu but if you can get over that it's great

>>2043694
>>Tsardoms
Did you play the regular 1345 campaign or the Fall of Constantinople campaign?

>>2043700
Fall of Constantinople. I've actually never played the first one lol didn't know about this mod until a year or two ago but it's absolutely top tier. I should have added the gunpowder units mixed with spears and heavy cavalry is really fun change of pace from the hammer and anvil or line battles the other games feature.

Ptolemies in DeI are really a high variance start. Can be very easy or very hard, all depending on whether the Seleucid AI decides to declare war on you from the start or gives you enough time to get rid of Cyrenaica. With Medewi to the south (who are aggressive and start off hating you) inevitably conquering Blemmyes within 10-20 turns, you can get sandwiched between three enemies at war with you, and that's a death sentence so early on when you can barely field even two full armies.

>>2043694
Try out Broken Crescent. It was a bit unstable for me but otherwise cool. I think you’d like it.

I'm planning on doing another playthrough of Empire and then Napoleon, but I can't decide on the faction(s) I should pick. Any suggestions?

>>2044332
Vanilla? I love Maratha Confederacy in Empire.
If you've got the extra factions mod Sweden is a lot of fun.
For Napoleon I have only ever been able to play as France. I just can't bring myself to bring disgrace to His Glorious Empire.

>>2044345
>For Napoleon I have only ever been able to play as France. I just can't bring myself to bring disgrace to His Glorious Empire.
This. I bought and play Napoleon for Napoleon.

I've made a number of threads on /v/ about how fantasyslop has ruined Total War, but the consensus seems to be that fantasyslop is a good thing. What's your take on it?

>>2040410
The source is his shitty ass.

>>2044501
CA ruined Total War, fantasy is just prolonging it's inevitable demise, warhammerfags are hyper consoomers who don't care/realize how bad the game got

>>2044501
Warhammer 2 is better than all historical games they've put out since Shogun 2. The problem Warhammer brought to the franchise isn't necessarily the game's fault, it is that CA saw that as a justification for inserting fantasy elements in their historical games while doing nothing that sets those games apart and makes them worth buying over Warhammer.
As a result, historical games are a watered down, less varied rendition of what Warhammer executes much better. This shows how out of touch, complacent and inept they can be, merely copy and pasting the same stagnated formula with minimal changes while stripping away what little well received additions they make.
The historical games needed to push towards a completely different direction, with slower, more tactical and realistic battles and mechanics while Warhammer and whatever other fantasy game they make next goes for the relatively simple but brimming with style and spectacle gameplay that only a fantasy setting could pull off.

>>2044501
this >>2044527
Total War was clearly on a decline well before Total Warhammer
but Total Warhammer did fuck up CA by giving them a taste of a reliable cash cow and it fucked them up, to the point where it brought them out of touch, to where if a DLC that nobody asked for for a game that was doing well then CA would rather just drop the game and kill the series entirely because hey, the game might be doing well but it's not doing Warhammer levels of well so why bother when we can churn out some more $15 legendary lord packs?

Alright so here is the news. I left CA a bit ago. CAs next game is 100% gonna be 40k on a new engine with a release christmas season 2026. The plan was originally to have a ww1 game aswell but that was scrapped. Medieval 3 is on the radar but development hasn't even started yet. Empire hopefuls lol good luck. Either start your own studio or be ready to wait a decade. Honestly I think medieval 3 on the new engine could be amazing but it's so long off from happening. Historical fans don't get your hopes up. You have a very long wait ahead. Your best hope is to see a new developer hit the market.

>>2044538
>2026 for WH40k
I believe it. After Dynasties fucking flopped and WH3's launch and DLCs were poorly received I'll bet CA is terrified of releasing a new game, let alone a new historical game, any time soon. People are fucking sick of their antics and they probably just need one more major fuck up to get SEGA to shut them down.

>>2044544
>they probably just need one more major fuck up to get SEGA to shut them down.
Maybe selling to SEGA was their real downfall

>>2044591
SEGA is the one who aborted Hyenas in the womb before CA had a chance to birth that abomination into the world so as far as publishers go I think they could've picked worse

>>2044535
I never realized just how much they churned out 3 kingdoms dlc. Also:
>In siege battles, players command both infantry and cavalry units. All the units featured in the game are divided into different retinues, with each led by a powerful general. The player can deploy up to three generals into the battlefield at once along with three in reserve, and players will only have access to the units that said generals can recruit.
This sounds extremely clunky and I have no idea if it was considered a success
>The team introduces the concept of "guanxi" to the game, in which each general will form social connections and relationships with other characters. Viewing concepts like "obligations, reciprocity, and trust" as important virtues, these generals have unique personalities and desires that players need to cater to. If their demands are not met, their happiness rating will drop and this may lead to various repercussions for players. Unlike previous Total War games in which characters seldom interact with each other, the generals featured in the game are actively forming relationships with the characters they meet throughout the campaign.
I'm willing to bet this is a minor impact on the average campaign at best

>>2044617
>This sounds extremely clunky and I have no idea if it was considered a success
The recruitment system is confusing but it's not as limiting as it sounds, honestly. I don't know if it was a success, but it didn't really feel like a downgrade to me. Maybe I just got used to it.
>I'm willing to bet this is a minor impact on the average campaign at best
Yeah, it rarely amounts to much. Low satisfaction nobles/generals can be annoying but they are very easily dealt with. Like usual CA talks a big game about the new mechanics they are adding to their games, but in practice they barely do anything to shake up the campaign experience. Superficial at best, a nuisance at worst.

>>2044617
>I never realized just how much they churned out 3 kingdoms dlc.
Anon, it's literally just 2 lord packs, 1 faction pack and 1.5 historic DLC in total:
- Yellow Turban Rebellion is a pre-order bonus, it's not a DLC, just shit cut out from launch and sold extra
- Reign of Blood is likewise the blood effects they cut out of launch to sell extra

- Eight Princes is DLC 1. Just a copy-paste of the map with new names. They didn't even bother changing the voices so the warlords actually call each other out according to the Three Kingdoms era names they got copy-pasted from.
>Mandate of Heaven DLC 2. The first actual DLC with usable content. New faction (bandits), new units, events and mechanics.
>A World Betrayed DLC 3. Warhammer lord pack 1. No new factions but the existing ones got leaders with unique mechanics.
>The Furious Wild DLC 4. Warhammer faction pack with Barbarian faction and leaders.
>Fates Divided DLC 5. The final Warhammer lord pack. Modifies the game mechanics of Cao Cao and Yuan Shu.
It was really just flailing around and the doing next to nothing by Warhams standards.

>>2044626
It's really telling that 3K's inability to hold momentum was entirely CA's fault. It had the most successful launch in the franchise up to that point.

>>2044630
Well that and obvious priorities.
Three Kindgoms came out as the very first Total War game not shitting itself on launch.
What followed was that:
>They ported all the loading time and campaign map improvements to Warhammer 2
>Each new DLC piled on mountains of bugs you couldn't opt out of.
>Told the community to go kick rocks.

>>2044617
I actually just started playing 3k because I got a rig that can actually run new Total Wars so I wanted to see all the games I missed out on and I got to say I am actually really enjoying it
it is by far the most complex Total War I've played and I played all of them up to 3k and I do mean that in a good way, there are diplomatic options that aren't even available in more diplo heavy games like EU4
the court system is cool albeit a pain in the ass to juggle character satisfaction at times and the spy system is really cool it's nice that the campaign map isn't littered with agents

ignore all the chinese words making the mechanics seem more complicated than it is because it isn't once you get things down
the generals thing is definitely a departure from the older systems but is actually a more historically accurate way most pre-modern armies were built and organized
basically generals are organized into 5 classes and you can only recruit the basic units that correspond to that general's class however the tech unlockable units can be recruited by everyone although they get the best bonuses going to the general of what class they are
you disband the general, his units get disbanded with him but if you raise an army with him he comes with his retinue intact so if you stack mustering time reduction bonuses you can basically teleport your armies across the map in half the time marching them would take, very fun

the personality shit is actually very straightforward, "guanxi" is basically the generals have a set personality and some traits which either complient or conflict with traits other may have, you put these generals together in an army and they will start to get events so that they grow into friends, rivals, etc., basically stuff like "you are brave and I am headstrong so I consider you my friend and now that we fought side by side we are now oathsworn so if you fall in battle I am going to crash the fuck out and murder the entire enemy army"

>>2044617
>>2044642
I like the personalities
it gives generals character that hasn't really been a thing since Medieval 2

apparently people really didn't like generals being single hero units, accusing CA of trying to shoehorn Warhammer aspects into historical games however I just saw it as CA trying to pull the Dynasty Warriors crowd so I didn't personally mind it however I am also a longtime Dynasty Warriors fanboy so that might be bias speaking
there is records mode that gives generals proper bodyguard units like any other prior historical title amd while I myself haven't gotten around to trying that mode yet from what I read apparently it feels like CA clearly designed the game around romance mode

overall I really liked the direction Total War was heading with the depth 3K had so it saddens me to see it get shitcanned
while I am very much enjoying the game it does feel abandoned, like there are things that seem like that they were meant to be fleshed out more down the line and some base game factions that are more base and generic than DLC factions as they were supposed to get reworks that will now never come

>>2044645
>single hero units
The really big problem with this is that it's very poorly balanced. General units are almost as strong as Warhammer lords and are often the strongest and most valuable unit available in an army and are very hard to take out, which leads to a lot of unnecessary frustration. The influence is obvious for sure and I think the game even has a weird little minigame where you control your general and solo waves of units like a DW game, but really the implementation just really hurts the tactical element of battles and it would have been better without it. Records is obviously an afterthought and it feels like one, too.
>the game it does feel abandoned
Yeah, the game was literally abandoned. They had promised more DLC shortly before the announcement, too.

>>2044648
yeah they got to Cao Cao v Yuan Shao era in the start dates and decided to make the 8 Princes DLC that absolutely nobody asked for, it did poorly because obviously it did nobody asked for it so CA threw a tantrum and the 3 Kingdoms game never even got a 3 Kingdoms start dates let alone things like Red Cliffs
to top it off there was talk of them putting together a tweaked amd polished sequel just for them to axe that too

>>2044651
Eight Princes was the very first DLC, I think, if you don't account for the pre-order bonus.
The Eight Princess period is good, don't get me wrong, it's highly underrated, but as a DLC for their most successful title up to that point it was an extremely stupid decision. At best it should have been left for last after they had covered the whole Three Kingdoms period. It doesn't help that it was obviously made on a budget, it's like they WANTED to piss people off. I seriously can't wrap my head around what goes on in that studio sometimes.

>>2044617
>This sounds extremely clunky
it is but for different reasons that you probably guess

>>2044642
if you enjoy it I will drop my mod list for you

>>2012999
>legio equestris
>can’t handle horses

>>2043694
>EB2
Yes, very slow paced, 200+ turns in secured italy and took all of carthages settlements, at least another 50 turns until the conquered cities stabilize enough so I can muster an army to invade greece. Quite fun.

>>2044501
I don't mind fantasy, but I am bored of Warhammer as a setting desu, and I don't see them making a fantasy game I would like.

>>2044501
I tire of the slop soi mindless faggot words and takes. I enjoy warhammer and I enjoy historicals. What I do not enjoy are the warhammer addicts who behave like furries and try and suffocate anything else from existing in the room at the detriment of more warhammer. They sincerely would like total war to just be:
>Warhammer:TW 1-3
>Warhammer 40K TW 1-3
>Horus Heresy TW 1-3
>warhammer: The Old World TW: 1-3
From now to about 30 years on. Nothing else.

3k eclipsed Warhammer 1 and 2 sales, it was the highest selling total war to date so the whole "abloo bloo bloo nobody'll buy historicals" is rank bullshit. The schizo shit from them is just mind numbing, and it's infecting here as it already took over /twg/. I should find it beyond my comprehension but then again /tg/ literally was created because of 40k faggotry spam back in 2007, so it's just par the course.

>>2044617
The diplomacy of the generals was fantastic and I hope it remains a feature of any future total war. The 'retinue' system was flawed, more so because of the wuxing elemental system which was >>

>>2045203
Generals assigned an element on the five-element chinese compass, and these elements dictated the units you got. Beyond some basic bitch entry level militia types. Metal is melee infantry, wood is polearm, water is ranged, fire is shock cavalry, earth is melee cavalry. So if I want just 2 horse archers now I have to take a water general which limits my further options. In theory forcing people to not doomstack is great, in practice forcing me arbitrarily like that isn't. Had the themes been of a broader category like infantry/cavalry/archery, or in a case of a medieval 3 by background (Communal vs feudal, mercenary vs religious order) it'd be fine.

Also for an example of the diplomacy of generals - I was Cao Cao, it was that Yuan Shan guy (Yellow general to the west not the coalition builder in the north). He was very friendly with me but he had a personality trait that if you ever disagreed with him diplomatically he would hate your guts. I rejected inviting someone into our alliance he wanted, which made him sour on me and then begin an endless war. Once he got killed off his successor was a peacenik who'd sue for peace. It gave a really rich variety to diplomacy and the campaign map. Warhammer TW has some campaigns with greater depth (Chorfs), but most are rather dumbed down. And fundamentally 40k has the same inhibiting factors. So while I'd be able to enjoy a 40kTW with thousand sons or dark angels I find it annoying that instead of total wars that can play up more campaign map mechanics and interactions to approach GSG levels we've got screeching faggots who want nothing more than a blank canvas for SEM spam, this time with pauldrons.

>>2044630
I Just don't get why they went with that 8 princes. Rise of the Han sure, peak-center of romance of the 3k sure. But this was like releasing R2 and then having your first big DLC be fucking Year of the Four Emperors or something.

>>2044672
go for it
I have a couple of those
I like the mods that give art and models to the unique generals that never got any
some of those however doll up some of the generals too much for my tastes
don't get me wrong I have nothing against making Total War chatacters look better especially some of the more fuckass ugly girls CA likes to make but conflicting art styles irk me
like seeing a dolled up porcelain skinned geisha fighting side by side with a bunch of rough and weathered warriors just throws me off

besides that anything that adds more content is nice however since I just picked up the game I'd like to experience a bit of the vanilla content first before adding onto it so I'll download it all I won't activate it until later unless you think some are absolutely necessary right out of the gate

>>2045222
8P is fine conceptually, it was just poor timing, planning and lazyness on their part. The DLC had no budget.

>>2044167
I'll give it an honest try next time I start up a new game. I do have the buff and shine mod installed but only ever tested it a bit to make sure it worked. It's a bit like Tsardoms where I'm not very interested in the setting (did I mention I mostly only care about western europe lol) but I'll just do like I did for Tsardoms and make myself pick a faction and stick with it. Hopefully it's a pleasant surprise. Any faction in particular you'd reccomend?
>>2044917
I actually really liked the pace and everything about that game. Only problem is when you have a job and shit to take care of it takes literally months to play lol. Overall it might honestly be my favorite mod. It's really well done but not everyone's cup of tea I'm sure

>>2041363
Hopefully Med 2 Remastered.

>>2046538
My only interest in this would be to see what this allows for mods.

>>2046550
No hardcoded limit so they can have as many factions and provinces and units as they can throw a stick at. Your bigger issue is brain drain unless there are still active teams for a 20 year old game

>>2044917
I haven't done 2, but I liked how in one they had the Numidian rebels so uptuned I had an intense early carthaginian campaign just dealing with them.

>>2046538
As long as they don't fuck with the UI this time, I'd happily accept a barebone remaster just for the mods and modern camera controls.

>>2046538
Feral has confirmed they are not working on it and have no plans to. Unless CA hires some other studio, because they sure as fuck won't do this themselves, it's not happening.

Chudbros... are we the baddies?

>>2047183
Why CA hates money?

>>2047413
fantaslop outsells historical like 3:1
CA knows exactly what they're doing

>>2047414
>fantaslop outsells historical like 3:1
Going for the Warhammer audience was honestly a genius move. They'll fucking pay any amount of anything.

>>2047413
The real answer is that Feral is a mobile games studio and they don't have the resources and manpower to tackle a project as large as remastering Medieval 2. They've stated this directly. If CA were to remaster that game, they'd have to either hire a larger studio or do it themselves.

>>2047414
Three Kingdoms is their most successful launch. The historical games can make as much money as Warhammer, but CA wants to treat their historical branch like a side gig.

>>2047549
bro, there are more people playing W3 than all historical titles combined

Just got total war attila
Never played a TW before
Any specific guides I should check out? Any tips? Why does this 10 year old game stutter ever second on my high end PC I built less than a year ago?

>>2047662
3K peaked higher than nay warhammer ever did, but the game had garbo support and hasn't had an update in years

>>2047675
I think Wh3 eclipsed it in initial sales but it's a difference of a few thousand when both were in the near million range. The anon posting the "More people play Wh3 than all historicals combined" is comparing a game that came out in 2022 to a game that came out in 2019 and had support dropped, a 12 year old game (R2), a 20 year old game (M2), a 2009 game (Empire), a 2011 game (Shogun), a 2015 or something game (attila).
~3000 players active for a 20 year old game is fucking spectacular performance. It is fucking amazing. Go ahead and try and find numbers like that.

BF2 came out in 2005, it has 8 players on steam. San Andreas came out in 2005, it has 454 players. Quake 4 same year, 21 players. Age of Empires is the only RTS I can think of with comparable numbers, AOE2 2013 edition having 2.7k players right now.
DOW3 came out a few years ago it has 176 players right now. (It's almost like 40k is not a guarantee for success, the game has to be good too?)
Right now Soulstorm is 796 players, Dark crusade is 346, DOW1 anniversary edition is 180, winter assault is 47. About a thousand total to medieval 2 having three times that.

God at this point I want Total War Age of SIgmar just to fuck with you 40k autists

>>2047662
The majority of M2 players don't use Steam.

>>2047689
neither do the (real) rome 1 enjoyers, you get like 50% more fps in the old non steam exe

>>2047665
There's something fucky with the exe. If you can get a .dll file or some shit from TOB it runs better. But it's also a trend of games to do poorly on newer better tech because they weren't built with it in mind. Hence why until the R1 remaster R1 would run worse than say, R2

>>2047665
There are some unofficial patches that supposedly help with performance. IN my experience setting core affinity for the process to all but one in task manager seems to help too. No idea why it works, it just does.

Did the execs who pushed for Hyenas get fired?

>>2047662
Of course it has, it's their only game currently getting any support.
I think the key thing here is that Warhammer's DLC model is a lot more efficient in terms of long-term profit. They're cheap to make, and sell at a relatively high price. Ocasionally CA puts out a new race pack to generate hype, but the vast majority of Warhammer DLCs are very cheap for CA to produce, while always feeling essential to players thanks to powercreeping and the need to "complete" the faction rosters, thus guaranteeing sales.
The same thing wouldn't work in a historical game. You can't sell Lord packs with new flavours of spearmen the same way you can sell differently coloured dragons and elves for 20 fucking dollars. Faction packs are usually a bad deal, too, for similar reasons.
The only choice left for historical games are campaign DLCs, which can be hit or miss and -between the half a dozen new factions, dozens of new units, mechanics and a new map- are much more expensive to make and a bigger risk from CA's perspective, because they simply cannot afford to cut costs and be lazy with those. Looking at the poor performance of campaign DLCs such as Eight Princes and Fates Divided, you can see why they chose to not just abandon Three Kingdoms in spite of its enormous initial succes, but to also turn their historical branch into the low budget branch, while Warhammer gets the real post-launch support.

>>2047838
Nope. The console dev team who worked on Spartan Total Warrior got fired instead.

>>2047698
>>2047756
Disabling a core in core affinity worked for whatever reason and now there's no stuttering, bizarre, but I'll take it
any recommendations for a good starter faction? I've heard the byzzies are the easiest nation to play as despite being listed as hard, but I'd rather try a much smaller nation with much less going on or to keep track of

>>2047393
lol

>>2048074
the Visigoths are fun. Solid unit roster and a starting position that lets them do pretty much anything

>>2047662

>>2048074
I second that >>2048119
You are really meant to play one of the germanoid tribes and go around wrecking shit for a bit before you decide where to settle. It's the most "baseline" TW experience for Atilla.
It mostly depends on what you want your victory condition to be.

>>2048200
I am not opposed to fantasy setting total war games (or even warhammer stuff) but jesus WH3 is dogshit. The last total war game I liked was empire (dogwater) and that was a complete disaster. I just don't think CA can make a good game. Fantasy injected some life as it let people play with big monsters and stuff but their last set of games are just so bad from a campaign and battle perspective. I swear the devs/managers don't play the games at all and have probably never gotten to turn 50 on a campaign ever.

>>2049241
The pacing in their last few games barring maybe Three Kingdoms has been a mess. They still haven't figured out how to make the game not the most boring, time wasting piece of shit in the world past the mid game. Statistically, most people don't even finish the campaigns.

How applicable are real life tactics to total war games
Like if I study Caesar or Scipio will I become a better total war player or do the games just have some shitty meta because the AI is shit or something

>>2050076
Basic battlefield tactics (like skirmishing and hammer and anvil) are universally applicable in game but most actual strategy was a lot more nuanced than is depicted in game because the units don't need to worry about supplies, movement takes place on a super abstract campaign map and is represented by turns, and each side is limited to 20 "units" which you can personally and completely control with perfect vision of the battlefield.
Some other stuff goes into it but no it's really not a great representation of actual warfare but it is a fun game and it's also fun to learn about famous leaders in history.
For roman warfare particularly I found the triple acies technique to be actually pretty effective in EB2 last time I played as the romans.

>>2050076
Formation fighting mostly works, especially in older games (Rome and Med 2) before they ruined unit collisions. You can emulate tactics used in historical battles and win many battles that way, I've done it before. But the AI and mechanics are still very exploitable and later games make tactics and formations a lot less relevant compared to just having better units. Historically, logistics and organization were ultimately more decisive than 200 IQ tactics in battles but the games do very little to actually simulate any of those. You can also easily make enough money to field a lot of high-quality troops which takes away any economic consideration behind building and army and choosing which unit types to use.
The games are a great way to get an idea of how military tactics would've worked back then but don't consider them accurate simulations.

>>2047549
feral sucks donkey balls

>>2049241
Empire lacked polish, if it was polished like Shogun 2 then it would be great
seriously if you compare Shogun1 with Medieval 1 or Shogun 2 with Empire/Nappy then you can see the difference in quality and effort
anyway Empire had some really good ideas and innovations but it was buried under the bugged shitpile of AI, gameplay and locked modding

>>2050076
its better than the ''real'' battle tactics games like Field of glory
still the AI is dumb and some engines and solutions are not great(delicately speaking)

Playing the insularis draco mod for m2tw and is this the hardest mod for m2tw since idk what is going on but I am getting my ass whopped by it.
Is there anywhere to read more about the mechanics of it?
I wanted to play as the frisians but I just ended up getting my ass handed to me after the first tutorial battle whenever I face a real army.

>>2050076
You "can" attempt to make an approximation of some real life tactics, but the battles in Total War are too gamey to portray warfare realistically; units don't lose cohesion when charging; melee always turns into a moshpit where units robotically pile on each other; there are no camps to assault or supply lines to cut, etc. The closest Total War ever got to portraying pitched battles somewhat realistically was Medieval 1, but those days are long gone.
This is understandable since warfare, from the Meiji Restoration all the way back to the Bronze Age, was extremely complex and can't really be emulated in video games. Some of the games don't even offer you the right mechanics to even start trying to imitate history, such as Pharaoh where chariots are janky and cannot be made to use period accurate tactics, Napoleon where the army sizes are way too small, or even Shogun 2, which is the most pop-historical Total War game and has nearly no historically accurate units.
Also, it's just not the optimal way to play. If you're looking to use your units efficiently, trying to emulate real tactics is not the way to do it, unfortunately.

>>2041627
According to their dipshit server very soon like next two weeks

>>2050170
On the whole, not really? But it definitely gives you an advantage.
I mostly play Rome 2 with Divide Et Impera mod. DEI slows down battles a lot and the battle AI is pretty good, random cavalry suicide charges into phalanxes notwithstanding. Recently I've been playing the Alexander campaign where you are hugely outnumbered in most battles. The AI is quick to exploit gaps in your line or exposed flanks. On top of this the Persians like to field a lot of missile cavalry. I approach most battles the way Alexander did in real life, with pike phalanxes in the center, and elite hoplites and light infantry auxiliaries covering the flanks. All arranged in oblique formations to avoid being surrounded like Alexander did at Gaugamela. The AI never uses tactics like this and you can shred thousands of enemies just doing what he did.
DEI also has a population class system which further encourages you to use real life tactics. You can't throw away your elite units because not only are they expensive, the noble population you recruit them from tends to be very low and regenerates slowly compared to the lower classes and foreigner classes. So I end up relying on expendable auxiliaries for a lot of the fighting, just as Alexander did.
Don't have a screen of the formation so here's one of Alexander's marshals.

>>2050347
Was meant for >>2050076

>>2050347
>it just werks

>it makes battles longer
Nigga Rome 2 battles are already decent long. The only game that benefits from its overhaul that slows battles down is Warhammer 3

>>2050587
DEI makes matched combat very long but flanking quickly destroys morale. The way to win is to completely encircle the enemy army and start a mass rout. Even the largest battles are 15-20 minutes max.

>>2050758
Yeah that's how you win in base Rome 2 too retard

>>2050759
>Bring cavalry around to flank
>Enemy army is already routing
That's any vanilla TW. I installed Rome Remastered the other day and was surprised how quickly units melt in combat. There is no time for complex formations.

>>2050761
Ok but we're talking about Rome 2 not Rome 1 or some other TW game.

>>2050758
The problem with excessive length in combat is that it puts all the onus onto cavalry (and to a lesser extent flanker infantry). It means you can field trashier line infantry and just flank and spank. Something warhammer 3 does well is make it so the frontline grind can get over quick enough that it's well and good if you eventually win the cavalry battle on the flanks but your entire line got folded up because you fielded lower-middle class infantry against Khornates or black orcs. I remember that being the case in R2 but really badly in DEI (and possibly EB1, but I am hazy there). It do be interesting how combat differs across the total wars though as I remember horse-archery being godly in M2 and R1 and EB whereas I found them a fair lot more fragile in R2 or Pharaoh.

>>2050170
We just have to accept verisimilitude rather than proper simulation. When I mod on Pharaoh I just get struck by the absurdity of how much more bronze there is given how expensive bronze would be, such that you can field entire legions of just dendra-panoplied guys. And of course chariots behave like regular cavalry but with 2 horse.

>>2050761
Rome 1 is also the fastest vanilla TW and no game even comes close, and like the other anon said that's how every TW works barring maybe Warhammer. Rome 2 is far slower than 1 and the pace of battle in vanilla is fine enough, and I say this as someone who doesn't even like that game.
DEI slows things down a lot and depending on what unit you're fighting a cavalry charge at the rear won't make them rout until their HP has whittled down significantly, which is just like how it works in vanilla anyway because of how the game engine is designed, but now it's far slower and grindier. DEI's cool because it has tons of more units, but the slower battles are very easy because you have all the time in the world to set up a flank and grind down that enemy HP. At any rate, if you're looking for challenging battles a faster pace works much better because you have less room for mistakes, and it helps hide the AI's shortcomings.

>>2050802
>We just have to accept verisimilitude rather than proper simulation
You're right, but even when it comes to historical authenticity rather than accuracy, Total War can still be way off the mark. It'd be nice if units were actually designed to be deployed like they did historically (or at least a decent enough approximation of it) and period tactics were the optimal way to play, because I've sure come to hate the rock-paper-scissors system they use.
Does Pharaoh even have any good mods? That game is such a mess.

>>2051095
The workshop's main mods are radious, immersive unit reskin, agony (which seems to be the main overhauls for it and troy). I think there may be some others out there but I haven't heard of them. Seems like a brain drain right now, and funnily enough Troy is the one with a bigger project I know of (The one adding the Gods and shit).

I am working on a reskin because texturing/model editing is basically miniature painting for me (but it costs nothing and I like sharing content). Haven't released it yet, I was going to after doing Canaanites+Hittites but I hit a snag on Phrygians for Hittites and shifted to work on Greeks and Trojans. So probably after them.

I'm going to look into lua-scripting to see how difficult it is to swap region owners and spawn armies because I really like the idea of a 740 BC mod. My thinking was:
>First do a reskin
>If not bored then a "Homerized world" where everybody resembles the age of Homer (8th century) in units and to an extent in visuals (So you'd get some Archaic Greek shit for the Greeks, but they also reference older stuff like 'mitres' (hanging skirt metal armor a'la dendra) and boar tusk helmets).
We're frankly already at this stage because CA uses 700-600 BC material for the Mesopotamians.
>Then if still going, try and 740BC-ify the map
>Then if able, learn how to script in Scythian invasions.
But I am skipping ahead to try and test out LUA scripting to make sure that's even plausible for my grug-ass to do. The whole shift of discord for communication has made ferreting out info/guides an absolute chore though. And given my commitment issues, one manning this, and if it's M3 or Pike and shot next I'll shift gears to that I can't promise I'll get it done. Worst case is I just dump the reskins on the workshop and say 'go nuts'.

>>2051140
Also to your response to me on verisimilitude, I've actually come around to a kind of Warhammerification view instead of my older EB-preference. That is to say I think they need to game-ify units 'more' to achieve greater distinction.

Like what hit me suddenly was in the big historical tabletop format of DBA/DBM I think they split archers into "bowmen" (ranked bows, firing en masse) and "Psoli" (Light infantry skirmishing archers shooting individually). Psioli are functionally your wood elf waywatchers and deepwood scouts just lower quality: fire while moving Accounts of Floridian Indians by the spanish relate them being basically 'call of duty but with bows'. Even hugging trees and using their bow in front of the tree like a body shot and 360 degrees. Then you just realize
>Wait, why don't we have 360 degree or fire while moving light infantry?
Like Neo-Assyria had some Aramaean tribe they used as professional light infantry, the Ituʾaeans. You could just make them have higher morale, more damage, more armor, ect the usual historical way. Or you could make them fight in a fundamentally different and better way. Or give animations that make a unit more AOE-efficient (say Huscarls with dane axes), or make their mass so heavy they can straight up penetrate enemy lines like an elephant (hoplite phalanx).

As ultimately a lot of units in warhammer are functionally 'spearmanii' they just have (1) a hugely different model and (2) Very 'exaggerated' stat differences. The former you can't do historically, the latter you can do. Nothing is stopping you from having say, Austrian pikemen being goblin like (huge numbers, shit morale, your knights dgaf if they flee), Swiss pikes being dwarves (Slow, stubborn, defensive), Spanish pikes being Khornate (You gain a big bonus the more kills you do), Ottoman Azabs being skaven (dogshit morale, flee return flee return).

>>2051140
I have been hoping for a campaign overhaul that makes the starting faction positions more historically accurate. It doesn't make sense to me that Egypt and Hatti are that small and fragmented before the collapse even started. They and Myceneae should be that game's equivalent of the WRE and ERE in Attila.
Also smaller things like Seti II, Twosret and Merneptah being separated factions for no good reason really bothers me. They're part of the same family and the game technically has mechanics to accomodate that, disjointed as they are, but then having these characters who should be in the same faction acting completely independently is just really sloppy design, more so when games like Attila and 3K handled that much more elegantly. You can tell Pharaoh and Dynasties were extremely rushed.
>>2051155
I don't think you need to sacrify historical authenticity to improve gameplay, in fact leaning on it could greatly benefit the gameplay. What I think is that CA doesn't really know what to do with its historical branch, at this point.
They seem to be doing fine with Warhammer, but the same design simply does not translate to historical games that should be more grounded. Pharaoh made it very clear to me that CA has lost its footing on non-fantasy games.

>>2051211
I was thinking on that first issue you mention
>Fragmentation
When I was looking at how the map would be circa 740. It's a philosophy CA's taken to with some deviations (WRE/ERE) since the sillykids: Do you depict a giant bloated entity or do you have more centrifugalism. From a gameplay view I favor the centrifugalism as unless the experience is "maintain a big empire from collapse" (WRE/ERE) I don't like starting big. For a historical perspective I think the best approach is the level of control from the central regime. Like with Assyria I'm reading that TIglath started to change policy by having more assyrian governors (direct control) as opposed to vassalage.

I get your point about it being inappropriate from a historical point of view. Having Tausret and her husband two different factions felt very off to me, I don't know enough about Mern relative to those two though. It seems like Pharaoh was a continuation of the Troy personality-focus while Dynasties was as the name implies a shift towards dynastic consideration. Which I think is far more fitting for total wars, and what I'd hope to see expanded on in a Medieval or Pike and shot.

>>2051229
At the very least as far as Hatti is concerned, the Attila approach would have unquestionably been the best. The late Bronze Age collapse is what the game is all about, but the personality-focused, cartoonish and Warhammer-esque design could almost make you forget that you're playing a game set in one of the most important events in human history.
I'm spitballing, but I think even Egypt would have been fine as a big faction with Merneptah as the leader and Seti as the heir; you could have the option of starting as a small vassal in the form of Amenmesse or Setnakhte if the large starting territory is too overwhelming and spend the early game fighting off barbarian neighbours and planning for the crisis ahead. Merneptah's death could even trigger a seccession event if you don't want to remain a vassal, helping the campaign stick closer to history while maintaining a cohesive narrative and a stable early game with an element of choice that has large consequences like FoTS's realm divide. You always have the option to pick one of the Canaanite and Mesopotamian states if you want to start small and independent, too.
>Dynasties was as the name implies a shift towards dynastic consideration. Which I think is far more fitting for total wars
I agree that it's more fitting, but Dynasties' execution was extremely sloppy. The game clearly wasn't designed for that and Sophia quickly threw something together with the limited time and money they had after all the complaints. It is frustrating because Three Kingdoms already had all the systems they needed to make a very authentic LBA game.

>>2050761
low tier units in rome run fast, dies fast and run away fast

is SS good if i just want to play medieval 2 with fixed two handers, polearms and diplomacy?

>>2051351
SS is probably the best overall medieval mod desu especially coming from vanilla
It's so good it doesn't even feel like a mod desu it still has the same charm, none of the changes are so extreme as to change the core gameplay substantially and yeah pikes are "fixed" (as in they lock the polearms) diplomacy is "fixed" (as in factions don't just randomly attack you but they're still pretty retarded) and there's even some configuration options in their launcher which you can use to customize the experience to your liking.
Overall yes I reccomend SS if you just want to play medieval 2.
If you want to play a better game built on the engine of medieval 2 you should try Tsardoms instead but I understand if that's not what you're looking for.

>>2051363
thanks, i'll give it a try then
tsardoms looks really good to, have been meaning to try it, will do after ss

>>2051380
Dynasties was a jumbled together pile of assets that were meant to be released over the course of one to two years rushed out in six months, I wouldn't be surprised if the whole thing is a mess beneath the surface.

>>2047662
How are there so many playing attila? Does the steam version actually work?
That shit is unplayable I FUCKING HATE CA

>>2051857
Try >>2047756
I have no idea why the affinity thing works but it also work for another anon so something is going on.

According to the developers, the decision to tie Pharaoh to Troy was one of the first things they learned about the project; it was forced on them. This leads me to believe that the end state of Dynasties is what they really wanted to make, as it pushes the game away from Troy, which is the most normal historical title in a decade. Not as good as 3K for me, but much more polished.

>>2052236
imagine if they had free reign and was allowed to make med 3, empire 2 or pike and shoot 1

>>2051857
It runs okay so long as you don't max out the settings. There's a bunch of supposed fixes out there but whether they will work for you or not is a bit of a coin toss.

>>2052236
Troy does feel more polished, and I had a lot of fun with it. Pharaoh was sort of okay on release, but it had a few technical and gameplay issues and the scale was too small for a supposedly mainline game. Dynasties was rushed out the door and will forever remain unpolished and janky.
What happened to that game is a shame, because the Bronze Age is one of my favourite time periods together with the Thirty Years War and the Late Roman Empire. I remember theorycrafting with people on /twg/ about how cool a Bronze Age collapse game could be, but Pharaoh and Dynasties flopped so spectacularly it killed all interest in the period. Still, I can't let myself feel too bad because it was all CA's fault anyway, they mismanaged that game in a way I haven't seen since Rome 2's release.

>>2052269
Do you want Medieval 3 to come out with the scale of a Saga game? Pharaoh was made by Sofia, they're much smaller than Horsham and don't have the budget to make that game. Let's be realistic, pike and shot Thirty Years War? Maybe if you accept that it would be a Saga title, but Medieval 3 and Empire 2 are a pipe dream. I don't think even Horsham can make those games, at the moment. Looking at how they handle gunpowder units in Warhammer makes me dread what Empire 2 would look like.

>>2052374
What are your issues with the polish? I know this is ridiculous but I haven't actually played it yet - I just enjoy texturing and tinkering and I want my run of the game to be with all my edits completed, else I'll find units an eyesore or whatever. It was one perk for me of warhammer 3 in that I don't give a shit about the setting beyond vague interest so I could just hop in and run around with chorfs et al without having to fix it to match my expectations. So I am curious in what to expect.

As for your other question, the psychic damage we have to prepare ourselves for is that it will be on some level a Saga game, the same way WH1 was a saga, or Vortex was a saga before ME got added. I am just highly skeptical Horsham or Bulgaria or whatever will produce a full map. The best case scenario we can hope for is:
>Release 1: Western Eurasia, North Africa - the classic R1/R2/M2 map
>Release 2 and 3 then adding onto it (New world, Asia, Africa, ect).
My fear is more that it'd be Saga style where
>Release 1: UK, France, Western/Central Germany, Norway, Denmark (Nightmare scenario)
>Release 1: Ibid but with Spain, Italy, Sicily, North Africa to Tunisia
>Then Release 2 adds East Europe and Middle-East, Release 3 adds Far East and India/Central Asia.

Because holy shit I am not buying the nightmare scenario full stop. Maybe, MAYBE if it's incredibly good, but you need Reconquista or Italy at a minimum to grab me and I'd rather have East Europe and the Middle East. But I just am certain what comes next will be Warhammer-esque in theatrical releases that combine into a [blank] empires style of joined world.

Even if they know everyone prefers ME/IE to the theatre map, I am just skeptical it'll be "Big map but homogenized/semi empty filled in over time".

>>2052454
With Pharaoh's polish I mean
>"What are your issues with the polish"
makes it sound like I'm chatting with an Austrian painter.

>>2042295
>Same reason Troy did worse than Pharaoh which you conveniently skipped.
Troy was literally free

>>2052458
The funny thing is 7 fucking million people downloaded it on Epic during the giveaway. But there's no way of telling
>How many would have bought it
>How many played it at all versus just grabbed a free game and never touched it
>How many liked it
I know that with Phoenix Point which I got burnt by they (Devs) had admitted forthright had everyone who crowdfunded it been given a refund they still would have turned a profit because of how much epic paid them. I swore I heard for Troy that the entire cost of making that game was covered by the epic deal but I am not sure if my memories are overlapping.

>>2052470
I got it during the giveaway and probably played it less than 10 hours. I just didn't like the game. Also How I feel about the Polish

>>2052374
>Do you want Medieval 3 to come out with the scale of a Saga game?
you mean like warham 1? warhammer 1 scale wasn't big either and see how big they are

>>2052454
There's a lot in that game I take issue with but off the top of my head:
>Court system is tedious busywork
>Sea Peoples invasion is poorly scripted and with passive armies that are supposed to be the end game threat (somewhat fixed in Dynasties)
>Terrain effects are weak and don't impact battles nearly as much as unit tiers
>Unless you're using chariots, then even grass makes them useless
>Chariots have poor pathfinding and can't skirmish like they're supposed to, just an unwieldy unit you crash into things which is hilariously innacurate
>Armor degradation is redundant because Armor and Armor-percing already exist and makes battles grindy and morale less important
>Unit formations look awful and have no proper animations
>Collisions are still dogshit
>General skill trees are boring and don't do much
>Research tree is also boring and doesn't actually reflect the technological and social advancements of the period
>Flavour text is extremely generic
>Sandstorms killed your FPS (fixed in Dynasties)
>Dynasties system is barebones and interacts with the campaign and diplomatic layers of the game in extremely bizarre ways such as Seti not inheriting Merneptah's territory in spite of being his heir, so Merneptah's faction is led by a generic general instead and selling Legitimacy breaking diplomacy
>Family trees are unfinished and incomplete, last I checked Menelaus and Helen aren't even married
>Lethality is unbalanced and makes archers the strongest unit in the game
>Cavalry is better than chariotry in every way, even though it's supposed to be in its infancy and meant to be a support unit while chariots are the real killers
>Achievements randomly don't work
>Can't play legacy without downloading the game twice and nearly doubling the file size

>Medieval three(logy)

If they want a good setting total war then they should make total war victoria
THERE IS A REASON WHY FALL OF THE SAMURAI IS BELOVED

>>2053074
>Most successful gunpowder total war was fucking japan DLC.
If napoopan was vicky era, maybe the R1-y map so you can get Algeria war and Middle East and Crimea and such but nothing more, it would have been considered one of the best total wars hands down.

>>2053227
the most successful gunpowder total war is the DLC for Warhammer 3 that adds the witch chick to Empire lmao

>>2053235
>Warhammer 3
Not total war.

every do this in fots multiplayer:
-get a bunch of gun horse cav
-your enemy is shogun 2 player
-kill off the enemies archers and cav
-the enemy only has melee ground inf
-just run around the map shooting this men with your dragoons. If they get close just run and then shoot, run and then shoot run and then shoot

>>2053235
>the most successful gunpowder total war is the DLC for Warhammer 3
Are you retarded? Actually, seeing how you're a warhammerfag, I already know the answer.

>>2053227
napoleon could have been greater. It could have been empire 2. It could have been kino
instead it was just a shitty dlc

I've got hundreds of hours in shogun 2 but med2 modded out (historical) was my favorite. I played the Warhammer ones but the execution, visual clarity and combat feel/floaty mechanics drive me nuts. From what I've read, the current engine is dogshit. I can load up med2 and projectiles, charges and general combat are 100% more enjoyable. What are the chances CA actually recreates that feel in the future or are they just shot as a company?

>>2053429
Nothing will ever replicate the feeling classic games had. This is partly because of nostalgia, partyly because of the competency crisis, and partly because the sensibilities of modern gamers (and therefore the products designed by studios) has changed.
We already have Medieval 2. We already have amazing mods (and more may be developed yet)
Now am I saying it's impossible for CA or anyone else to come out with a great new strategy game? No. But it is very unlikely and even if they do it will never replace games we already have like M2.
The last time I enjoyed a CA game was S2 and it was a huge step down for me from Napoleon and Empire (I know everyone has their own tastes but for me I didn't like it nearly as much, and I don't like Empire nearly as much as M2 lol)
I have been impressed by some recent strategy games tho
Have you tried
>Grand Tactician: Civil War
It's not very re-playable and it's a little rough around the edges but I found it extremely enjoyable for a couple of campaigns.
>semi modern paradox games
Not a fan of V3 but HOI4, CK3 and Imperator are all fun games from the last 10 years
>Scourge of War
This game is an autism simulator but it's as 'realistic' a battle game as I've ever foundf

None of those really replace. total war but they're all fun and prove that modern game studios /can/ create good games. As good or better than M2? That's subjective but no not really. Again tho that's party nostalgia and partly that what I want in a game is something most consoomers don't want in a game anymore
Hopefully with AI we will all be able to enjoy a personalized strategy game tailored specifically to our needs and shat out by a LLM in the next few years which is either really exciting or super bleak depending on how you look at it

>>2053429
About as likely as all of CA's management committing mass suicide together, as that's what it would take. All their best selling games have been their shittiest, they simply don't care about quality let alone fixing 15 years worth of tech debt.

>>2052269
Considering when CA had free reign they wasted all of their warhammer money on hyenas it'd be better if they never had freedom again. That burnt hole was so big Relic got cut loose and SEGA had to restructure their europe division.

>>2017414
scovt eqvites are kind of kino but the charm wears off fast after doing 5 siege battles per turn every turn for 100 turns and using the same strategy to get 1k kills. You probably need to start using the hitler scale to measure the number of kills scout equites get during an entire west rome legendary campaign. Probably something like 0.1 hitlers (or 100 millihitlers)

>>2054119
Yeah WRE campaigns where you don't give up land are tense and take forever to get through the early game. It's funny how the meta strat is to operate a campaign of not conquest, but extermination on all the tribals.

>>2053441
I'm of a similar mind that you can't go home again. Criticisms I have for total war are more from a current perspective than a comparison to the past. Not least because I think nostalgia can make us think better of the past than what it was. I distinctly remember that flanking fuck-all-happened in R1/M2. Whereas now cavalry flanking happens nearly all the time in warhammer and historicals for me. The enemy army also tends to hit mine more cohesively whereas in the past they didn't. Javelins and archers behave much better than in the past, I remember vividly raging in M2 at how javelinmen took upwards of 15-20 seconds to let off a shot, waiting until every man was in the exact position (A trait Empire suffered too with firing techniques).

If the next were pike-shot or medieval the essential desires for me are just:
>3k style personality-drives-politics.
>Complexity on the campaign map
>Keep up the Pharaoh attempt to give more push-pull options with infantry
and for the love of christ new animations. Idle attack animations (Not attacking, but combat idle) suck in R2 and have sucked since. Everyone is a hunchback holding swords and spears the exact same way. I tried to look into porting 3k spear animation over for idles but it didn't work. There is a way to try and splice in something new but it's a bit tricky.

There's more, but I am not expecting the childhood love of R1/EB to be replicated. Frankly if we get a means to edit the campaign map from the get go then that makes me over the moon alone because it is one of the singular if not the singular killer of Total conversions. Had the map editor been available (and not miserably kept private if I head right) for Attila from round 1 then aside of attila's performance issues it would have been a Medieval 2 style renaissance of total conversions.

>>2053850
i was talking about sofia not horsecam

>>2054671
>Idle attack animations (Not attacking, but combat idle) suck in R2 and have sucked since
I agree but I'll say the attack and charge animations themselves also really suck. Too much flippy, twirly shit without an ounce of realism. They need to keep things grounded, at least in the historical games.

Do you anons make personal mods or even edit existing mods for MTW2? I just got done extracting musket animations from Call of Warhammer mod and adding it to KGCM. Now black powder units are most more effective.

Example:
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvN3IUvItVI

>>2054945
That's cool as hell. Musketmen didn't start firing by rank until the 1500s though, do you think it would be possible to change the attack animation for those units to start firing by rank after certain turn number, or would they have to be made into a separate unit upgrade?

I've never modded Total War games before so I don't know how easy or hard it would be to do some of this stuff compared to say, Paradox or Bethesda games.

>>2055190
>do you think it would be possible to change the attack animation for those units to start firing by rank after certain turn number, or would they have to be made into a separate unit upgrade?
I am not really animator or nor do I create unit skeletons, I just followed couple guides on how to extract animations from other mods for my personal use.

>I've never modded Total War games before so I don't know how easy or hard it would be to do some of this stuff compared to say, Paradox or Bethesda game

This is basic modding tutorials, how to edit simple things
>https://medieval2.heavengames.com/m2tw/mod_portal/tutorials/

For more complete and in depth tutorials, twcenter is highly recommend, best source of information how to do stuff, highly suggest you go here first
>https://wiki.twcenter.net/index.php?title=Medieval_II:_Total_War_-_Modding_Index

If you want play around with modding without fucking up your main game, I suggest you start with this modding base, this I how started my understanding of modding the game by testing and experimenting with things.
>https://www.twcenter.net/threads/creating-a-world-bare-geomod.352216/

>>2055288
That's a lot of information and guides
Thanks anon

Med 2 remastered would get them so much money it isn't even funny.
Just increase the graphics and get rid of hardcoded limits in the engine for modders and its free money basically.

>>2055549
Completely redoing all the graphical assets is an incredible amount of work lol
Also re-making the engine with 64 bit comparability is also an incredible amount of work
You're basically saying "Why doesn't CA just make a brand new game but make it also exactly the same as a game from 20 years ago" and assuming A) people would buy it (again) and B) this is a better use of their resources than developing DLC for warhammer
It's not gonna happen

>>2055552
Literally just contract it out to the feral people that made the rome remastered.
And all its asking is to modernize med 2 it isnt like making a new game or dlc.
It would take a big studio like CA probably like 3-4 months to do.

>>2055555
see digits confirm.
Also it would be a guarenteed hit, not a draw of luck like a new dlc for warhammer or a new game.

>>2055552
>assuming A) people would buy it (again)
they absolutely would. RR with very little marketing done before a month to release still did like 20k concurrent users despite not having much of anything to sell outside an ugly UI and improved performance.

they do a massive marketing push well before release, dont fuck up the UI, and that would sell like hotcakes.

>>2055555
I wonder how much money SEGA actually took home from the remaster. If it was "free money" as you suggested it would have already been developed and released.
Making an entirely new game engine (which is what is required to "get rid of hardcoded limits" is not a trivial task. There's a reason why the Rome Remastered just added a camera function and a fresh coat of paint onto the already existing engine.
And Feral is also not a big studio like CA is and as I said before there is 0% chance CA would ever waste their time "remastering" Medieval 2. It's possible they would develop an entirely new Medieval 3 but as I pointed out last week the historical titles don't sell so SEGA has no reason to greenlight any new historical projects.
The absolute best thing you could hope for would be a Medieval 2 port in the same spirit as the rome remaster which begs the questions
>Why should the studio do this?
There are maybe 10,000 people who would buy and play this remaster, and there is no opportunity to sell dlc
>Why should players want this remaster
Do you want a fresh coat of paint on the old TW engine? That's Rome Remastered. What exactly do you think a Medieval 2 remaster is going to add that doesn't already exist?

I think what you're actually asking for is for someone to develop a very convincing MOD for Rome Remastered which takes place in the medieval setting but even that won't be the same as the original game and no total war game is exactly what a perfect medieval strategy game would feel like anyways.
Putting any hope or faith in CA or SEGA at this point is folly. You're better off donating to and supporting R:R modders, or supporting different studios, or using AI and leveraging other schizo anons to make your own game than waiting for them to shit something out.

>>2055560
>There's a reason why the Rome Remastered just added a camera function and a fresh coat of paint onto the already existing engine.
rome remastered got rid of hardcoded limits.
All a med 2 remaster needs is a fresh coat of paint ie graphics and just making it more moddable, nothing else is required.
CA have shown themselves to be unable to do actual marketing research for their shit, the fact that pharaoh and troy even got made is a testament to this.

>>2055560
>I think what you're actually asking for is for someone to develop a very convincing MOD for Rome Remastered which takes place in the medieval setting but even that won't be the same as the original game and no total war game is exactly what a perfect medieval strategy game would feel like anyways.
NO I WANT MED 2 MODS TO BE PORTED TO MED 2 REMASTERED LIKE HOW RTW MODS ARE BEING PORTED TO THE REMASTER.
I am tired anon, I just want something new and fun to play even if its a paint job.

>>2055563
>rome remastered got rid of hardcoded limits.
It did not. The EOP does the same exact thing in the old engine. A brand new engine in 64 bit is the only way to actually remove "hardcoded limits" and it's never going to happen.
>>2055565
You've consoomed too much anon. Take a walk, touch grass. There are still new mods coming out. DAC version 6 later this year, RIS update next year, I'm looking forward to the Napoleonic Grand Tactician game in development.

>>2055568
>It did not. The EOP does the same exact thing in the old engine
I thought that RTWR got rid of faction limits and that stuff?

>You've consoomed too much anon.
honestly I just think I have outgrown videogames in general, I can't play anything anymore.

>>2055560
>Do you want a fresh coat of paint on the old TW engine? That's Rome Remastered. What exactly do you think a Medieval 2 remaster is going to add that doesn't already exist?
I'd pre-order at full price if the Med 2 Remaster was the same as Rome Remaster without fucking up the UI.

>>2055574
>>I thought that RTWR got rid of faction limits and that stuff?

There's still a limit, it's just much larger. Thete's also a soft cap, RTR had to scale the map down from 1800 settlements to 1200 IIRC in order to improve stability.

>>2055560
I agree that people here vastly overestimate how well Med 2 remastered would actually perform, but historical titles can and do sell. Rome 2 and Three Kingdoms are among their biggest launches ever, only outperformed by Warhammer 3.
What doesn't sell are their DLCs, because new factions with different flavours of spearmanii don't have the same marketability as a race pack like chorfs and tomb kings.

>>2055620
Actually, I mistemembered, Three Kingdoms had even MORE players at launch than Warhammer 3, and it probably could have kept its momentum if CA's DLC policy for that game wasn't complete crap, forcing them to abandon it.

>>2055635
>"But Three kingdoms only sold well because it appealed to the Chinese bugmen who bought it in droves"
"Yeah you're right, having China representation makes for bigger sales."
The irony is lost on them but this actually really is eye opening to realize, because Warhammer 1 was half a million sales in the first few days/weeks. Which I recall reading was true of Warhammer 2. Frankly had Warhammer 3 not had Cathay it would have had a dramatically lower initial sales

In light of that, aside of the risk of pharaohism by lacking a European option, this makes me suspect perhaps Total war: Khan is more likely. They could upset the expected route and start us off East to West, not West to East.

I doubt they will, but it actually makes a bit of sense when I finally put two and two together and consider by the logic of "3K sold because of China" that "Warhammer 3 sold because of China [Cathay]" too.

>>2055563
>rome remastered got rid of hardcoded limits.
it don't , it also locked out UI

>>2055560
>I wonder how much money SEGA actually took home from the remaster.
probably not much, feral&CA completely fumbled the release
>nor working on Win7
>at the time of release limits were no lifted
>new bugs
>they didn't contact any modders before hand and let them port mods into new engine
>people expected some more new factions or polished the old one but they just unlocked minor factions that you could unlock in 15 in notepad
>new UI was even more cancerous that it was now
>they bundled OG Rome with the new one

>>2055656
>Total war: Khan
not gonna happen, chinks would chimp out

>>2055656
Honestly? I believe even a game like Pharaoh could have performed well with better timing, and if it was an actual full title rather than a Saga masquerading as a full game.
The thing there is that there was so much shit going on at the time of its release that there is no way it could have done well.
>Fans were mad at WH3's shitty DLC policy
>Not just that, everyone was absolutely fucking rabid for Med 3 and Empire 2 (they still are)
>The reveal trailer was a very poor choice to draw interest
>Had a shitty art style that didn't evoke the setting properly
>Developed by Sofia, which while usually more competent than Horsham is considerably smaller and cannot handle larger projects on its own
>Literally half a game sold at full price
>Season Pass to sell content that should have been part of the base game
>Used an inferior fork of the engine instead of inheriting Three Kingdoms' extremely well received features
It's like they wanted that game to fail. It wouldn't have made WH3 or 3K numbers but only a game like Med 3 or Rome 3 could do that, anyway.

What I don't get in these 16 years since warscape engine is why CA didn't make a single gunpowder game after FotS.
They made empire, after a year napoleon, then FotS, and that's it. All the other titles were fantasy or classical period, and all the games on warscape had a good range combat. Yes there is some clunky shit with LoS, but if you put a flat trajectory range unit in fron of an obstacle it's really not a engine problem, it's just how the maps are designed and the lack of a tool to easily verify the LoS.
Rome had good range units, desu better than rome1, archers were distinct from javelins etc..., so you developed a full engine on ranged combat, you tried (an failed) to improve the mele part (unit cohesion, stats...), but still FotS proved that a solid historical gunpowed TW would be good.

>>2056146
>so you developed a full engine on ranged combat
They did alright with muskets but fucked archery completely after medieval 2

>>2056146
Probably because the current version of the engine has shitty gunpowder combat, looking at how they look in Warhammer. This isn't really the exact engine they used for Shogun and Empire.

>>2056155
>>2056170
>modern engine can't do melee or archery
>modern engine can't do gunpowder
what the FUCK is the point then of this shit heap

>>2056155
I think archery it's fine, med2 and rome (I think) had the neat feat of archers that can shoot 360° without rotate the whole formation, definitely a thing that must return, other than that I don't have complains on how archers operate, they are a medium damage dealer with a arc fire
>>2056170
warhammer got rid of most of the tactical features of old TW, especially on the morale and flanking aspect, so it's really not representative of what can be done

>>2055875
Why would they chimp out? China in a Total War Khan would be like Rome in Attila, divided in two. One easily conquerable corrupt North and a more stable south.
All you'd get is a bunch of "CAN I HOLD OFF THE MONGOLS AS THE JIN????" videos on Biliibili.

>>2056257
>warhammer got rid of most of the tactical features of old TW, especially on the morale and flanking aspect, so it's really not representative of what can be done
Maybe, but it is representative of what CA is willing to do until proven otherwise. Their latest historical title was developed using a fork of the Warhammer engine, and while it lacks gunpowder, the combat is janky and feels like shit.

>>2056293
Chinks online go absolutely fucking mental over the smallest things, they're very likely to chimp out at the sight of a game with the Mongols as the protagonists fighting a failing Chinese state.

>>2056293
you tell me

>>2056293
Chinese hate any media that shows Chinese fighting and losing to foreign empires, only Chinese can lose to Chinese. Century of Humiliation is still ongoing due to hundreds of millions Chinese boomer sages still breathing and telling their experiences to the youth.

>>1991167 (OP)
They needed to expand on custom battles for those who don't want to bother with campaign maps.
More maps, hotseat battle mode, more controls on how to lace your and enemy units for more custom situation set ups, mix and match units from different factions and so on.
A proper sandbox.

>>1991611
>but remembering useless pikes and 2H units turns me off
i modded these myself to fix them based off of some yt vids i watched
you can then apply them to any other mod you want once you learn how

Should total war have victorian 3 style economics? Or at least a lot more of a dynamic economy?
Or is the current system good as it is.

>>2056715
they make korean war movies where they get spanked by america tho

>>2057382
Economics was never the main focus of Total War so I don't think the system needs to be as complex as it is in the Victoria games, although ideally it shouldn't be extremely simple either, like it is in some of the newer Total War titles. Economies are essential for waging war, and are one of the main causes of war, after all.

>>2057486
what we need is a more refined version of empries system. That would be perfect

>>2057382
Before that, I think they need to work on the pacing of the campaign. Nearly every TW game turns extremely tedious past the mid game because the player becomes unstoppable and fighting other factions turns into a mindless grind.

>>2057382
i hate it when mods try too hard by adding shit tons of mechanics for "realistic economy" that would break the campaign gameplay. Even older games like medieval total war and empire weren't complex and it worked just fine
At the same time i dont like how braindead and limited the economy/building like in rome 2 and warhammer.

Somewhere balanced between both like Fots or Three kingdoms with resources like troy would be good

>>2057382
can AI handle?
if not then no and we both know the answer
desu early TW have simple economics and it worked well
even modern one have pretty straightforward, if you really want more then gold, food and manpower plus trade goods affecting these are enough, I dislike when there is like dozens of resources

>>2057579
Absolutely. I'd say that's the biggest priority. On that end, solutions that come to mind:
>Hotseat singleplayer
Let the player build up and then switch to knock em down. Or if you can do it more than once let the player jump around so they can curate the campaign they want (Say to guarantee a future big enemy or to try and match history)
>Civil Wars and coalitions.
This has to be done smartly and not half-ass like Realm Divide in Shogun 2. Calculations of shared culture/religion, primary threat, time until the hegemon becomes the bigger threat, hegemon's behavior in the campaign. Civil war wise and a big feature I'd want is
>Be able to fucking choose your side
If I am playing Faggetia and I am just told "lol half the kingdom split to support the Dickusian dynasty" then I'm annoyed because I have no agency past preventing the civil war. Now if I am playing Faggetia and the Dickusians declare for the throne and I get a choice? I loved general Hairy Dickus, he was really cool and invaluable in conquering Vulvia. So I play as the Dickusians. Or Hairy Dickus's faction has shitty provinces sworn to him so I don't wanna play with that I'll go Faggetia.

Then also give players the means - telegraphed - to help prevent civil war. Put generals more loyal in important positions (But if you completely omit the other sub-factions you precipitate a civil war faster) and the like.

>>2058430
I think another thing worth noting is that the map sizes are too large relative to the pace at which a player can expand. A lot of the mid and late game tedium comes from autoresolving consecutive siege battles against small shitty garrisons, or fighting large AI factions which spam you with full stacks of shitty levies or unfun doomstacks, turning the war into a grind as if all the battles you're fighting carry no consequence in the campaign.
This wasn't much of a problem in games like Rome 1, Medieval 2 and Shogun 2 because the maps are smaller and the campaign is better paced. There needs to be a way to speed up and streamline expansion or consolidation (at least in the later stages) if they want to keep making the maps bigger, because it's way too fucking slow relative to the ludicrous victory objectives these games have, asking you to paint nearly the whole map when you are, for all intents and purposes, well past the point of having won the game.
Also, maybe more fail states besides losing all your territory so that the player has something to worry about after the first dozen turns. Maybe if your entire family dies and your dynasty ends you could have a game over, giving you a reason to care more about your characters, or at least give you the choice of ending the campaign or continuing as a new ruling family, changing the name of your faction.

>>2058634
>This wasn't much of a problem in games like Rome 1, Medieval 2 and Shogun 2
because battles wasn't a chore and actually mattered

>>2058634
3k improves. Not only are vassals and allies able to quickly take the provinces you assign them with war coordination, but eventually you can diplo-annex factions through peace deals. Makes even a full-map conquest feel pretty smooth. Yellow Turbans and Nanman can't do this, however.

>>2058634
>Maybe if your entire family dies and your dynasty ends you could have a game over
This already happens in almost every Total War. Empire and Napoleon are the exceptions since in those games faction leaders are not generals (except for Napoleon himself but he's immortal anyway).

>>2059315
True. You also have Form Empire to consolidate with your allies. Still, diplomacy can feel scuffed in that game with how stingy the AI is, and it gets worse in the late game because the only factions left hate you too much to act reasonable and there's still some tedious grinding. Good system, but it needed more balancing, it is baffling that they got rid of it.

>>2059315
>>2059513
You can also force other emperors to abdicate in a peace deal. It's an insta annex. Instead of beelining for emperor seat and having to mop them up afterwards anyway you can instead focus on crushing them in the field and a good quick offensive might be enough to get them to surrender, more fun and saves you a lot of time

>>2059478
Pretty sure Rome II and onwards got rid of that

To all newbabs and boomers that are too retarded to get old games working on newer systems, I have put together an archive of the original Shogun and Medieval Total War games, pre-patched, pre-cracked, all that good stuff, and they work quite fine with like a 5-step process
Instructions are included
>https://www.mediafire.com/file/an53w6nmj6a8dcr/Total+War™+-+Classic+Collection.rar/file
If you already have your own copies or are rightfully too spooked to trust random strangers and would rather just track down the games and updates yourself, here's just the DxWnd exports for them, along with instructions
>https://www.mediafire.com/file/4p5h6t8sm0n1t98/SHOGUN-MEDIEVAL_Exports.rar/file

Do you guys accept Troy immigrants or am I just stuck in no man's land?

>>2059764
I had more fun with Troy's battles than I anticipated, so you're alright in my book

>>2055916
One mustn't forget the DLC disaster was part of the greater Hyenas debacle

>>2059746
thank you man, I struggle to replay med1 since forever, appreciated

>>2059908
No problem bro, I just figured I should share the wealth so other people don't have to manually put it all together
Hope you enjoy!

>>2059746
thank you anon, i never could get it to work before

>>2059773
I genuinely deleted that game out of my mind, but you are right

>>2059746
Remasters when? Medieval 2 is a pipe dream, but surely Feral can work on these?

>>2059773
>Hyenas debacle
Is this CA's crisis of the third century?

>>2059952
Enjoy it frendo
>>2059958
>Remasters when?
Never lmao

>>2059971
>period of turmoil that ends with the western half facing decline from the weight of its own corruption and decadence as the eastern half is able to renew itself and prove its value in trade and culture
Yes, now we're waiting for the Sofian Constantine

Does anyone here actually play the RIS mod for Rome Remastered? Everytime I load the game up it's totally overwhelming. Do you just have to pick one of the tiny factions? I'm not great at these games but all the "EASY" factions start with like 50 provinces and it's just too much for me to wrap my head around. Like what do I build?
IDK going back to Europa Barbarorum I guess

>>2060105
I tried, but it is way too slow and autistic for my tastes, and it is also far from finished. Also it runs and looks like shit outside of the units and the devs refuse to acknowledge that their mod is poorly optimized.

>>2055549
wish granted, here's your mobile UI and ""features"" no one asked for

>>2060105
Pick one of the greek factions either on greece or anatolia but the map is getting reduced anyways with the next update. Probably best to wait till then.

I actually really liked RTWR

>>2060308
vanilla? or the bloatmod?

>>2060310
Was excited about bloatmod at first, but it was just way too autistic. Maybe after it's improved. Still kinda sad cause I want more provinces and more factions but definitely not that, and double definitely not their weird ass recruitment system

>>2060308
It's fine. The UI is kind of ugly but it's not a deal breaker when the camera and controls are so much better.

Ahhhh the Roman experience

Med 3 announcement today

>>2060354
don't overdose on that copium buddy

>>2060354
Is there even any event/occasion for an announcement today?
Also I think they said they 'd announce something this year, but I wouldn't expect it just yet or that it would be med3

>>2060369
>Is there even any event/occasion for an announcement today?

>>2059746
Turns out I too am extraordinarily retarded and the latest build of DxWnd I included in that archive fucks with Shogun and I didn't check until now cause I was focusing on Medieval
If you get an error when you try to load a battle or your screen spazzes out anytime you get a notification/event, revert back to this version
>https://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/files/Latest%20build/v2_06_09_build.rar/download
I'll be repackaging and reuploading the archive with the older version included and then link it next thread or something

Next week is the 25th anniversary of Total War.

>>1991167 (OP)
I dont know if this the correct place to ask but...
years ago i was working on a personal modding project in MTW2, the thing is, that mod is full of "borrowed" units from other mods because 3D modelling was a pain in the balls for me. However, recenlty i was watching about some AI tools that produce 3d models. Did somebody has any experience using that tools in moddding?

>>2060491
There's been like 5 good years.

>>2060563
I've seen some of the more recent models of ChatGPT make sprite art. I'm assuming the new gemini tools are more advanced than that but I think a lot of the novelty of using generative AI for creative purposes has worn off and left a lot of the actual creators jaded about it's use. You're free to try but I'm not sure it's up to the task of full 3d rendering yet and I'm also not sure you're up to the spirit breaking task that is working with an AI model.
My advice to you is to just use other people's art and not give a shit. You're already using another company's game to make the game you want, why care about what some other sperg thinks? It's not like he can do anything to make you stop

>>2060370
>He actually expected CA to announce a brand new game during an event watched by hundreds of thousands of people for guaranteed mass exposure and hype

>>2060785
T-there's the xbox showcase tomorrow!

thoughts?

>>2060836
you shouldn't post reddit screencaps

>>2060836
There are a vocal minority who love M2 for the gameplay (more so their memory), but for most of us it's just that the medieval period is tied with classical antiquity in being the richest for total war(fare).

>>2060563
I tried using GPT to generate simple patterns or shield emblems for me. The truth was it generally didn't do anything that I couldn't find/get on google images or artstation in terms of patterns, but I did find the more 'painted rustic' look I asked for a little bit helpful. With 3d modeling the big issue I can see you having is the topography if that is the right word. I once had a burning desire to have a BTR152 in Arma 3. Not only were the tutorials so shitty and my ass so dumb I'd never have been able to do that, but when I shopped around on places for that model the one I found had the most god-awful polys. It looked like the surface of the moon. And that was by someone. I am skeptical AI, outside of low-poly (REAL low poly, like, LOD4 tier polys in the count range of <100, PS1 kinda territory) can really do what you need right now.

>>2060851
Samefag. You can shop around on artstation and sketchfab and the like to see if you can find the model you need, or do some real dr frankenstein work. For example I found a free knife, I took the knife model, I put it on a handle and now I have a knife in pharaoh.

I am not sure AssetEditor would work with M2 model files. Probably not, but check that out (Total war asseteditor) as it makes kitbashing for Warhammer and the R2 onwards stuff possible. If this mod is for your own personal consumption then you can nab whatever you want and nobody'll care (or should care). If you want to port stuff forwards and back, the discord that had some CA rep work with them said CA is fine with porting stuff within the historicals (example the guy quoting the CA guy gave is 1212 AD uses 3K trebuchets). It's just that you cannot port anything whatsoever from warhammer.

But tl;dr I'd encourage you to try and just tweak/ghetto-rig an existing model, since that might be a way to learn how they work. What is it you are trying to do? This a new helmet, new weapon situation, or you want to port in some monstrous new creature?

>>2060836
the problem with m2tw is that there aren't enough animations and powers. this is something boomers don't realise

>>2060888

>>2060836
medieval 2 is great and probably the best total war game as a whole but some people have a serious case of rose tinted glasses and think medieval 2 was this kind of esotheric technical marvel with sophisticated physics and realistic battle simulation when its mechanics were actually rather simple, it's the sum of its parts that made that game good in spite of its bugs
modern tw might be more stable but they have many other issues of their own dragging them down

>>2060851
>classical antiquity
not for as long as rome keeps being the only faction with fleshed out mechanics and roster. it's a power fantasy setting with very little replayability because rome outclasses everything else.
bronze age might lack artillery but like the medieval era the major factions at least feel like real competitors rather than jobbers for the protagonist faction to slap around
all in all i think the medieval and renaissance periods have far more potential for total war

>>2060891
That's the fault of a developer rather than the setting itself. The idea being you have such a wealth of information, resources, visuals to work with and factions to work with that unless you are a wanker for Rome (Or greece) you can do a lot. Whereas late antiquity and beyond rome bloat it's unbelievably difficult to make Franks and Vandals and Goths different compared to how quick you can have Thracians, Iberians, Celts, Germans be.

>>2060891
Also for m2 they forget some of the severe bugs. I distinctly remember javelinmen being functionally worthless because of how long it took them to get a volley off. Straight up like 15-20 seconds, even when babbu me edited their reload times. Similar to how people laud Shogun 2 but I was driven crazy but how the horse archers in that cannot just not parthian shot, they can't even fucking drive-by shoot. It's literally just a what, 90, 120 degree frontal angle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0qYPxBNksc

I remember empire had the same issue, napoleon I forget, Shogun 2 had it, but FOTS finally gave us 360 degree firing for the revolver cavalry

>>2060900
>That's the fault of a developer rather than the setting itself
TBF you can make this argument for any setting unless we're going too far back to the Copper Age or anything that predates large-scale warfare in a given region. The real limiting factor is the developers' own passion for the setting and will to bring it to life in a manner that is both accurate, fun and diverse. But, we've had two Rome-themed games so far and they've both been themed around power fantasies, so it's clear CA builds Rome in a way that every non-Roman faction is an afterthought at best that is lucky to have unique mechanics and a roster that is half the size of theirs. Sure, Rome is and always will be beloved by the West, and thanks to that the games are hugely successful, but when was the last time you played a vanilla campaign as a non-Roman faction?

>>2061042
>but when was the last time you played a vanilla campaign as a non-Roman faction?
i play greeks and macedons all the time

>>2061143
>Greeks and Macedonians
I'd like them more if they had a bigger roster with military reforms like Rome. Also the Greeks not being unified for no reason from the get-go.

>>2061188
>Also the Greeks not being unified for no reason
historically accurate

>>2061042
>TBF you can make this argument for any setting unless we're going too far back to the Copper Age
I wouldn't say so. Fundamentally the bronze age has problems for a total war set piece. I say that as someone who enjoys the period. There's a reason CA had to use ~500 years later material for Assyria and Babylonia. The fault I was stating is the fault of prioritizing one faction over others. Rome is just unique in that it's given inordinate protagonist syndrome focus by CA when there's no obligation to, whereas a setting like:
>Bronze age
Is inherently limited in material, unit types
>East Asia TW
Is not limited to being china-protagonist unless you set it just in China (3K).

To clarify it, my point with classical antiquity is that nothing precludes equal or greater focus on a non-Roman. We have lots of resources (visual, informational, textual) to run with. We can set the clock back by just 50 or so years to the Diadochi and then Rome is a single city-state. So Rome-bias is not baked into the setting.

>>2061188
Why would you want the greeks unified, unless you mean an Aetolian/Achaean league. In which case yeah having Sparta and athens was gay.

I give up. Trying to get Med 2 mods to run fine at this point is such a pain in the ass.

>>2061353
>Go to the internet archive and download M2TW gold edition.
>Apply the 1.05 patch
>Go to gamecopyworld and dwonload cracked exe files to replace the originals
>Get a LAA and 4GB patcher and patch both medieval2.exe and kingdoms.exe
>Then install the mods

>>2061278
>Fundamentally the bronze age has problems for a total war set piece
It really doesn't, unless you're saying artillery is the ultimate deal breaker here. But, if the Bronze Age by itself is that much of an issue, it can be mixed with the early Iron Age in a grand campaign that spans a few centuries, not unlike the Rome games. It's really not a problem.
>There's a reason CA had to use ~500 years later material for Assyria and Babylonia
The reason is incompetence and a lack of caring. They added cavalry to Assyria when they should have added them to the Hittites, who had actual records directly mentioning cavalry. Greeks, too, though the evidence is scarcer. Mixed spear/archer units were possible to implement, too, possibly even pikemen (though not sarissa pikemen) but for whatever reason those were not ever considered.
>nothing precludes equal or greater focus on a non-Roman
Marketeability does. Rome is what sells the classical antiquity games (complete with Romans speaking in the Queen's English and all because the Brits can't help projecting themselves onto the ancient Italians) and that unfortunately for CA means every other faction has to get the NPC treatment. I suppose it's not an inherent problem with the setting, but much like the Bronze Age, it is a problem with what CA's willing to do with it.
>Why would you want the greeks unified
I worded that poorly. I meant to say that I don't like unified Greeks in Rome 1.

>>2061353
I find it ironic as a linux user that Medieval 2 mods are "they just work" whereas 10 years ago you couldn't even get them to run and now windows users can't get them to run and all I have to do is copy a folder and set a launch option

>>2061397
A fair point for you is that I am thinking of things from more of the hyper autism accuracy perspective, rather than the more verisimilitude perspective. It's akin to how in looking up archaic/geometric greek cavalry the overwhelming consensus is they did not wear armor on horseback (just mounted hoplites who dismounted for combat). But if you snuck in armor then nobody would really give a shit.

Honestly, in researching cavalry I suspect there's a kind of grognard "It doesn't compart with my expectations, therefore it's not valid" rejection of cavalry's existence around the collapse. The historians all understandably want a smoking gun since going "Well it was probably in existence for a few decades or a century prior to the first depiction". But this leads to historical interpretations being very hostile (and I was falling into that trap my previous posts) to the idea of them existing in the 1100s period because "That doesn't jive with our expectation". I talked about that on an autistic spree on /k/ awhile back actually. How I can be enslaved to my expectations with something like "Kush didn't use horse archers because black african horse archers? That's silly". Yet we know the Blemmye did later. And the Kushites were famed for their horses (not necessarily cavalry) by the Assyrians, and the Assyrians mention the cavalry of Kush. It's a reasonable assumption they didn't have it, but it's still being enthralled to "This is how it's been done, so clearly it must always be that way".

A really telling example of that slavery to tradition is the celts. Until ~2010 I never fucking saw Gauls in leather or linen armor. This is despite Halstatt scabbard being known for probably 150 years or some shit, whenever it was found in Austria in the 1800s and various statues too. Then you have French re-enactors wear it, then you have Rome2 give them it, and now I suspect you'll always see celts with such armor going forward.

>>2061450
And the other bit with cavalry was my own sussybobcatism at the actual historians. Over and over you'd read that early cavalry was primitive, inefficient, required a pseudo-chariot-team of one guy holding the reins. They say this because of Assyrian reliefs of Ashurnasirpal in the mid 800s. The same reliefs that show enemies of said king doing parthian shots. Meaning it was just Assyrians who were inexperienced with cavalry.

A really interesting theory for the rise of cavalry I came across that I find compelling is the introduction of metal snaffle bits (possibly also jointed, I forget). It was in Robert Drews 2004 Early Riders book, I can't remember the exact thesis but it was that either metal snaffle bits, or metal and jointed snaffle bits, meant you could actually fully control the horse. Prior to that and organic bits could be tongued by the horse to fall into a part of their mouth that meant the snaffle did fuck all. Or straight up just break the organic bit. In a chariot you've got the other horse and also the rigging of the chariot to give you some control. On horseback it's that snaffle or you've trained it with your thighs and that's it.

The oft cited
>"Horses weren't robust enough to carry an armed man from horseback"
seems like pure myth, since the cavalry horses weren't Nisaean gigachads and were ponies or smaller by modern standards even when they began to be ridden. It's not like you had +130 pound men wearing +60 pounds of kit on. But what you did have was people who wanted to be sure they were in control of their mount in fucking battle.

So yeah, if I could have shaped design policy for Pharaoh Dynasties I'd have made it more of a 1200 to 900 (Aka slightly short of R2's length) where cavalry opens up for people at the end of your building tiers. I suspect that was their goal with the scrapped DLC campaign (Unless that was to do some kind of Rig Veda map since they did strangely have "Indus" tagged human models.)

>>2061399
>as a linux user that Medieval 2 mods are "they just work"
until you run into a mod that needs a custom .exe like m2tweop

>>2061485
maybe the golden age will come to an end in this next generation of mods that are relying on the EOP but from a quick search on the discord someone claims to have gotten it to work already so I'm going to remain hopeful.
Regardless my original point stands in that every major mod right now (except Lucium which has a .BAT file I haven't figure out but also don't care about enough to try) is literally
>extract file
>copy folder
>set launch option
>???
>profit

>>2061491
I remember getting Lucium to work with a launch option on Steam, i got it from the .bat if i remember correctly
>on the discord someone claims to have gotten it to work
post it so i don't have to join a groomcord

>>2061493
I've never used the EOP desu (and I'll be honest I thought it was something only the modders needed to use and would be "bundled" with their new releases) so I'm not an expert but here's a post from last august

>Wine could be a starting point, as I can run eop on Linux using steam and proton, and proton is based on wine.

Based on this I'm assuming they just added EOP to steam and then launched it with proton. This is the same system I used when I was running the SS configuration thing so I could see this running.
I've honestly not been very interested in EOP as a user because I don't make the mods I just play them and as I mentioned I had assumed this was something that would be dealt with on their end then "packaged" for the user. The big mods I'm looking forward to which use the EOP are DaC and SSHIP both of which probably wont see a release until next year. I know EB2 is using it as well but that team moves with a snail's pace so probably won't release for 2 years. I'm sure other modders are using it as well and I'm just not aware.

>>2061353
you have to be borderline retarded to not be able to figure out how to run the modules for med 2.

yes..... YES!!!!

>>2061353
that is why i am still on win7

>>2061450
>hyper autism accuracy perspective
who cares really
that sort of autism is usually overbearing and hurt the gameplay and flow of the game

>>2061461
>cavalry opens up for people at the end of your building tiers
They can show up quite early on, most particularly for the Hittites but possibly for a few other civs, but as lightly equipped scouts/skirmishers and support units to chariotry or light infantry units, which later evolve into independent assault specialists through scripted reforms. We shouldn't see "traditional" shock cavalry in the early game, though.

>>2060836
Yeah Med 2 is buggy as shit but it's still the best TW because:
1. Its battle gameplay is actually fun, satisfying, and tactical instead of floaty gookclick garbage
2. The campaign is satisfyingly personalised and allows for smaller stakes battles instead of tiresome doomstacks all the time
3. Peerless level of good mods.

>>2061562
I think the total war community aged out of it. I look at >>2061504 and I'm just "what's the point of the entirely indigenous terminology". And I used to do that for mods I did. Now I'd just go with a mix of native and modern english or just modern english. But that's why I emphasize verisimilitude over realism. I mean having the armor we do on the amount of units we do is already off. So you just what that sense of immersion. Wherein is the rub that for many people there is cavalry did not exist in the bronze age collapse. When it's more likely it did, but the capacity is the debatable one. Anon here >>2061604 favors a more supportive view whereas for me the say, hittite or canaanite horses on Egyptian reliefs or even the Egyptian scout cavalry just hits a verisimilitude issue a little. Where I would question letting you just field nothing but cavalry and making chariots irrelevant but for shock action. That's more of an iron age thing which is a lot easier to work with as the calculus is just chariots are your cataphract archers (Charge, armor), and horsemen are your light horse archers. With Assyria and Urartu being able to field heavy horse archers too.

I wish I had more info on that greek rolling toy though. Because if that's legit then that's just a smoking gun for Mycenaean cavalry (not mounted infantry, but actually fighting from horseback cavalry)

>>2061622
>Where I would question letting you just field nothing but cavalry and making chariots irrelevant but for shock action
Just bring back Med 2 recruitment.
Anyway, it sounds like your concern boils down to balance. Chariots in TW are very janky and have a lot of issues. If CA cared and gave that game a real budget, they could have rebalanced and maybe even overhauled their mechanics along with cavalry. Their engine now feels more limited and outdated than ever.

>>2061751
>Just bring back Med 2 recruitment.
I wish we got a recruitment system where you don't replace your entire army with noble armoured sacred chosen barbarian rapist band the moment you have one settlement hit tier 5.
Some games are flirt with it a bit and stuff like troy/pharaoh bronze helps a bit so depending if you are rick in one resource you might favour quality or quantity.
We need to have recruitment/manpower pool again.

>>1999882

Where is that image from? I've seen it before somewhere.

Any EB2 fans around?
I really love a lot of things about this mod - the time period, the historical depth, the unit diversity, the longer battles, the unique faction scripts and dynamics etc I even like the "slow" campaign pace BUT I do have one problem
It's just way too easy.
I'm playing as Macedon now (picrel) and I've successfully taken all of Greece and built a huge navy and now I'm sending my Heir with a fat stack down to Krete and then Rhodes to start taking control of the Aegean and I haven't felt challenged a single time.
Fighting Pyrrus was the closest I felt. I remember feeling pretty skeptical about victory when I saw he had elephants but his entire army routed quickly and he died in the cavalry fight.
Taking Athens they kept landing troops but I was able to defeat them in detail and finally the garrison sallied out and was destroyed.
The random rebel stacks all destroyed as well.
Every battle I follow the same tactics: Javelines up front to skirmish then fall back, Pike wall with light infantry on the wings, Hoplites in reserve to plug gaps and then wrap around after contact. Skirmisher cavalry on the wings to ward off enemy cavalry and then heavy cavalry in reserve comes out after contact to hit the enemy from behind.
Every battle I seem to lose like less than 20% casualties while the enemy is totally destroyed.
It seems like their units rout almost immediately whereas I've had units of light infantry fight on the enemy's walls until they're down to like 30 men.
Maybe I should have bumped the difficulty up but I read in the guide, and the forums, and discord that the game is meant to be played on H/M but it's just so easy.
Does anyone else struggle with this? Does it get better when I start fighting empire sized factions? After I take Rhodes I'm planning to start fighting Egypt and eventually I'm sure Rome will backstab me as well but so far the campaign has been kinda too easy but the battles have been ridiculous.

OH yeah I forgot to mention that I've been able to exploit Egypt for 10,000 - 25,000 gold each turn (not a typo) because they're desperate for peace but seem to keep declaring war on me because of some script. I probably shouldn't be exploiting that but like I want peace right now while I secure the Aegean and I'm not the one declaring war.

>>2063262
I like EB2's units and soundtrack, everything feels quite authentic.
However, the AI in slow, autistically accurate mods like EB2 and DEI tends to be quite easy because it isn't really meant for that kind of gameplay pace. It straight up doesn't know what to do between all the waiting and money problems and slow ass battles. Bumping up the difficulty will either completely break it or do next to nothing at all.

>neighboring faction's army gets wiped by rebel settlement
>take advantage of the fighting and take the settlement for myself
>one turn later

>>2064141
At least they can only attack you one at a time...right?
Is that Insularis Draco? Are you actually 500 turns deep? How do you find the game so far? Been meaning to try it out but the whole small unit scale thing always turns me off plus I have no idea who to play as or really what's going on in this time period either.

>>2064182
Nah, for whatever reason the developer chucked out the turn timer and replaced it with a year counter, which is kind of stupid since he already has one on the map bar. This is actually one of the subcampaigns that starts a few centuries after the "main" one, I tend to prefer this one because it doesn't have mainland bloat. ID's definitely one of the best things to come out of the M2 modding scene, strikes a very nice balance between arcadeyness (being a fun game) and historicity (tedium). Then again I'm probably biased because sub-Roman Britain is one of my favorite time periods. A tl;dr of who's who and what's going on (note that the mod takes some liberties/interpretations):
>cont. due to charlimit

>>2064217
>Rome is falling apart (climate change and Attila being two major concerns) and Britain is left to fend for itself
>Goidels (proto-Irish) keep raiding the coasts, Picts (northern, more inbred cousins to the Celtic Britons) keep raiding inland
>Powys: the foremost of the Romanised Britons invites some Germans to fight the Picts and Goidels on his behalf. proves his Roman-ness by being almost immediately betrayed by said Germans
>Gwent: council of self-governing cities, safe havens for Romanised population, ruins themselves with infighting; they decide (or are probably forced) to elect as their king a local warlord
>Gwynedd: local Britons decide that they've had enough of these fucking micks and their goddamn boats and invite a wealthy Pictish warlord to be their king and enact TOTAL GOIDEL DEATH
>Dyfed: local Romanised Britons decide that if you can't beat 'em, marry 'em; son of a Goidel settler marries into the local power structure and invites more of his friends to the lovely beachfront property
>Rheged: Romano-Brits from da Norf, including remnant garrisons of Hadrian's Wall; also invited Germans to help out with the Picts and Goidels, went about as well as you'd expect
>Dumnonians: featuring King Arthur and his uncle: Ambrosius Aurelianus (just kidding, I think they were removed in 1.1?)
>Cornubians: sea merchants with a presence both in Cornwall and Brittany
>Strathclyde: local warlord beyond Hadrian's Wall considers his realm more civilised than his neighbors; gets written a stern letter from one St. Patrick over his naughty business with the Goidels
>Gododdin: another warlord beyond Hadrian's Wall who thinks he's less of a barbarian than his neighbors, probably right because said neighbors are Picts
>Fife: one of said groups who justify their neighbors' beliefs in civility, also one of the main contributing factors in why so many Germans were invited to the Isles

>Fortriu: the ACTUAL ass-end of what the mod considers civilisation; Pictish barbars who, unlike the highlanders around them, know how to build and hide in forts
>Scoti: Goidelic settlers in da Norf. biggest achievements include lending their name to the region and enslaving an aforementioned St. Patrick
>Nial: otherwise known as the O'Neills, currently the leading clan in the Thunderdome that is the race for Irish High Kingship; main roadblocks include overconfidence, mere existence causing neighbors to unite in opposition to you, and complete inability of family members to cooperate in the face of mortal peril
>Ulster: the Nials' northern rivals who really like raiding those fellas across the pond
>Leinster: the Nials' southern and foremost rivals whose line was responsible for killing the Nials' mythic forebear; really like raiding those fellas across the pond
>Munster: one of the main sources of Goidelic settlers in western Britain, one of their number even rules Dyfed; really like raiding those fellas across the pond
>Connaught: an insular clan due largely to their geographic position, have refocused their genetic disposition for pillaging and raiding into more scholastic pursuits
>Jutes: first of the German tribes invited to help deal with coastal raiders by Powys' superbus tyrannus Vortigern; home of a certain Hengist and Horsa
>Saxons: another German tribe invited to help deal with coastal raiders, this one was sent word by aforementioned messrs. of how weak the locals were and how rich the land was and just had to see what all the fuss was about
>South-Angles: another German tribe invited to help deal with coastal raiders, settled some marshes that had been so thoroughly devastated by said raids that they'd become uninhabited; the Kingdom of Mercia would later sprout from this seed
>North-Angles: another German tribe invited to help deal with coastal raiders, this time up in da Norf

>>2064331
The main campaign also covers some mainland factions such as the Gallo-Romans and the Goths and Franks and so on and so forth, but I've always considered the real meat of the mod to be on the north side of the English Channel. Also features nice little "this year in history" reports.

AND FROM OUTSIDE THE RING COMES ROME 2 WITH A GRECO-PERSIAN WAR DLC

>>2064429
Wrath of Sparta was the worst DLC they've ever made

>>2064268
This is a really cool faction guide anon thanks for typing it up.
The Dumnonians sound pretty based and anglos or saxons could be fun as well. I didn't know it had different campaign (not just different start dates either) which is very cool as well.
Can't believe I haven't already played "one of the best things to come out of the M2 modding scene" I've heard of it of course but yeah idk never gave it a fair shake.
What would you recommend for a new player? And also does the mod have a ton of custom scripts like horde factions, special spawn stacks, plague / other cool stuff?
I'll try to watch a doc on yt about the sub roman british era too. All I know is the legend of King Arthur lol

>>2064217
I quickly dropped it because it does have a glitchy combination of units that take multiple rounds to recruit and lots of experience bonuses.

M2TW has this glitch were units that don't immediately get produced the same turn you put them in the unit queue always come out with 0 experience. Mods should be designed to work around engine glitches and not get extra fucked by them.

>>2061622
I don't mind native names on the basis it has what it describes in english, unless it's italian (for the roman period) because everyone knows that stuff.

>>2065061
Native name (English translation) is the best approach

>>2061622
>LBA chariots
>Shock action
Chariots in the LBA weren't even meant for shock. They were not knights, they were more like horse cavalry and only charged at enemies once they lost cohesion. The exception would be the Hittite heavy chariots but even then their main role seemed to be to get enemy chariots off the battlefield, if the accounts of the Battle of Kadesh are any indication.
Also, the game needed proper chariot runners, aka the support medium/light infantry that accompanied the chariot regiments.

can someone explain me what happened here ?? -300 in public order ? is it possible ? or is it just a bug ?

>>2065061
I favor Native term for flavor then english term for function. Comitatus Spears or whatever. There's a nice theorizing to be had with how much to localize and how much to keep indigenous. Because you can go much too little:
>The King of Japan learned that the baron of Shikoku rebelled, and so the king summoned his loyal knights with their longswords.
Or you can go too far.
My general rule is
1) If the indigenous term is very distinct from the localized term then don't use it. An Arab Faris/Fawaris/whatever is functionally a knight. Arabian Knight is a bit too symbolic/thematic (due to the homonym) but 'Knights of Emir Abdul Abdul' is fine.
2) If the indigenous term is familiar enough for people to have become englishized (for us), then keep it. This solves the issue where a samurai is functionally a knight, but samurai/ninja has become normalized in a way that Hippeis has not.
3) If the localized term really robs the term of its evocation/theme, think Hoplite.

A hoplite is "Man-at-arms". Name it that and you run into #2 and #3.


>>2065505
Risk there is it can get inordinately long.

>>2065859
I was talking about early iron age when they are commonly seen to become shock 'cavalry' with everyone trending towards 3 (and then 4) horses, 3-4 crewmen.

>>2065859
>horse cavalry
I meant to say archer cav

Just a demonstration of what I was talking about earlier this week about the EB2 battles.
https://odysee.com/@RubusArdens:7/eb2_battle_8bitrate:f
I really want to continue this campaign but never feeling challenged in battles is a huge vibe kill. It's like this in every single battle and it makes the game just tedious instead of engaging.
Maybe I'm just used to playing the "hardest" mods on VH idk.
If anyone has any suggestions please let me know because like I said I am really enjoying this campaign but yeah the battles are a turn off.
Should I limit the size of my armies to like 15 instead of 20?
Should I skip the pursuit phase at the end and just click "End Battle" instead of continue?
Should I start a new campaign on VH difficulty (even though everyone and their mother seems to insist M is the correct option)
Is Macedon OP?
Are my tactics OP?
I'm like 60 turns in and rather invested at this point but it's just not fun.
Any other / better mods? Something similar to EB2 but just with more difficult battles?

Is there a way to lock mouse to screen for borderless window in Med 2?