So Total War

[VonVentrue]

It's a vastly different experience after the patch, in a good way - what surprised me the most is how high the cost and upkeep naval units have right now, however. Almost absurdly high.

 

[Trash]

Campaign and battle AI is still a mixed bag. Sometimes so moronic you hardly believe your own eyes while at other times it pulls out some neat tricks. My two wars as Sweden on Russia was too easy to even call wars. I thought a handfull of minor battles in which I crushed them and gained several provinces. Pathetic, but then again, they were at war with a lot of enemies.

When I fought Prussia I got my ass handed to me several times and have the greatest trouble keeping them at bay. Courland was easier because they are a minor faction. They however did doggedly defend their capital in a battle that cost me over half of my own (superior) force.

The game is a whole lot of fun now, but it's still quite unfinished and unbalanced. In a few months from now it might very well be the best tw ever, but that will only happen if they keep churning out these patches.

 

[Monocause]

It's vastly different experience after the patch, in a good way - what surprised me the most is how high the cost and upkeep naval units have right now, however. Almost absurdly high.

It should be much, much higher than in vanilla. Face it, the notion that upkeep of a warship would cost the same or less than an infantry regiment's upkeep is a fucking joke.

 

[poocolator]

Total War: Middle Earth

It seems to be a pretty well-made mod, with focus on detail. Only thing that they haven't really changed are the voice-overs, so you'll have Italian dwarves and german goblins.

Just like in real life.

 

[Panthera]

It's vastly different experience after the patch, in a good way - what surprised me the most is how high the cost and upkeep naval units have right now, however. Almost absurdly high.

It should be much, much higher than in vanilla. Face it, the notion that upkeep of a warship would cost the same or less than an infantry regiment's upkeep is a fucking joke.

Or hell, an infantry company!

 

[Trash]

Total War: Middle Earth

It seems to be a pretty well-made mod, with focus on detail. Only thing that they haven't really changed are the voice-overs, so you'll have Italian dwarves and german goblins.

Have they managed to mod in the LOTR locations on the battle map? The RTW version of the mod had all these classic locations and cities from the book, but as soon as you started a siege they turned into standard RTW cities. It kinda killed the mod for me.

Nevermind. They haven't figured out a way to do just that. Shame really. Would have been kick ass to storm the black gate. Still, the mod looks incredibly cool. I'm going to give it a try.

 

[Kaiserin]

Or hell, an infantry company!

And militia should cost much less, as they are not even worth using given the small disparity in their upkeep from line infantry.

 

[Monocause]

Or hell, an infantry company!

And militia should cost much less, as they are not even worth using given the small disparity in their upkeep from line infantry.

Upkeep disparity can be small when it comes to realism. Militia would get paid much less (or nothing at all), but you'd still have to feed them and arm them, provide gunpowder etc.
The recruitment cost for LI should be much higher, on the other hand. Getting recruits through the drill needed should be expensive and take more time.

The good solution would be - very cheap militia units that you can get fast when you need to fill the gaps in your army quickly, but that are a bad long-term solution since the upkeep costs are high anyway and they have bad morale; money and time-consuming line infantry units which are the core of any serious army but are tougher to get.

 

[Quilty]

Post-patch, 20 turns in my latest campaing as Britain, and the game CTDs after I press end turn. Nothing helps, and there are a lot of people out there with the same problem, a problem which the last patch was supposedly oh so keen on fixing that they almost completely ignored the broken AI, so now neither is fixed.

Shelving this for a couple of months at least.

 

[Monocause]

So I've pirated M2TW. I've got a legit copy, but it has Polish localisation, making many mods incompatible (well, they work, but somehow I don't enjoy playing the game when one thing is written in English and another thing in Polish). The game installer on my CD does have an "English" option, but it still installs the Polish version. Sigh.

 

[Kaiserin]

Militia would get paid much less (or nothing at all), but you'd still have to feed them and arm them, provide gunpowder etc.

Then at least give a certain number of units free upkeep in cities like M2:TW, I felt that was a fine way of representing the idea that they came from within the community. I don't know why they scrapped that in this game, the era is even more appropriate for it.

Giving them a low recruitment cost with a high upkeep out of cities makes perfect sense though.

 

[Trash]

Militia would get paid much less (or nothing at all), but you'd still have to feed them and arm them, provide gunpowder etc.

Then at least give a certain number of units free upkeep in cities like M2:TW, I felt that was a fine way of representing the idea that they came from within the community. I don't know why they scrapped that in this game, the era is even more appropriate for it.

Giving them a low recruitment cost with a high upkeep out of cities makes perfect sense though.

You do get free civilian militia units when you're city is attacked however. The number based on size, importance and loyalty of the city. Thought that was a better representation of the local community getting involved than the free upkeep in MTW2. It's basically a better working version of the garrison script most big mods have been trying to implement. Guess it's a matter of taste, but I prefer the ETW version.

 

[poocolator]

The new Third Age mod for Medieval: Total War 2 is more fun to play than E:TW :/

Just search "Third Age Total War" on any torrent site and get it that way.

 

[Lingwe]

Playing a game as Britian with the new patch. about 20 turns in and all I'm doing is trying to protect the thirteen colonies from the indians, never mind attack them. They already conquered the only territory with a port which means I can't even use them as a trading partner anymore (although the United States emerged and reconquered that exact same territory). AI is a lot more aggressive this time around.

 

[Tigranes]

Fuck it, apparently post-patch AI does invade by sea and stuff, but now attacks all the time and never wants to make peace (like, uh... MTW2 Vanilla) and the battle AI's gone retarded.

Still going to try it because I so want ETW to actually become a properly completed game.

 

[poocolator]

Playing a game as Britian with the new patch. about 20 turns in and all I'm doing is trying to protect the thirteen colonies from the indians, never mind attack them. They already conquered the only territory with a port which means I can't even use them as a trading partner anymore (although the United States emerged and reconquered that exact same territory). AI is a lot more aggressive this time around.

I found the natives were ridiculously ravenous in the vanilla version. I was peaceably developing my moose factory colony when out of the blue, the natives went nuts and fucked me over. I sought sweet revenge, and got it, after much bloodshed. I lost a few battles (and had to reload) because I had no idea how to conduct warfare having just started playing

BTW, keep your peasants dumb (avoid enlightenment technologies) so you won't have a full-fledged revolt on your hands.

 

[ricolikesrice]

started a new prussian VH campaign and thus far ..... its definitly more challenging, but imho more because of the economic rather than AI changes. money comes a lot slower now making fast expansion a lot more difficult then before.

in previous VH campaigns i had whole germany by 1715, now it took me till 1735.

in previous VH campaigns the AIs of france and the dutch would constantly bombard me with trade offers for rhineland, in this campaign the dutch actually attacked me and took rhineland and i had some good fighting with the dutch in which rhineland switched owners 3-4 times ....

there s a lot more wars going around the globe as it looks like as well.

what still sucks:

-poland still "fought" mainly by sending single units to get massacred by superior numbers.

-AI declaring wars often makes no sense at all:

in my campaign i tried to become an ally of austria, gifting them stuff, trade agreements etc. and got my rep up to very friendly with them. didnt took any regions from them, never attacked them, didnt trade with austria s enemy, attacked austrias enemies etc. etc.

austria was / is also pretty busy with the ottomans and russia as it looks like but despite all that they still declared war on me for no reason. said declaration of war wasnt even backed up by an actual attack, so its not like they (as i expectted) would backstab me to take one or two badly defended provinces from me. quite the opposite, they had / have badly defended provinces directly in my neighbourhood with a zero-garrisoned prague sitting directly next to half a stack of my troops in dresden.

so i m at war with austria since 20 years and we havent had a single fight yet and while they accept peace offers - they immeditatly declare war again the next turn.

is it a trap ? do they want me to send an army to their ungarrisoned prague and then blow the city up ?


anyhow, the "economic" changes were good and i did stumble upon some real wars (i.e. not just taking a province, reinforcing your army and taking the next ... but the enemy actually trying to get lost territory back ) so i might keep playing the campaign for a bit, but overall the AI still seems really, really bad.

 

[Monocause]

Started as Poland, post-patch. After turn 1, got a proposition from Ze Prussians to make a switch - give the shit-poor lands close to Gdansk in exchange for Eastern Prussia, a developed and rich province with a city. This was so absurd that I don't know if I'll play more.

 

[Trash]

The new Third Age mod for Medieval: Total War 2 is more fun to play than E:TW :/

Just search "Third Age Total War" on any torrent site and get it that way.

It's pretty hilarious even when it feels rather rough, unfinished and unbalanced. It does provide a pretty good challenge when playing with the "good guys" though. Having a damn good time with it.

However I do recommend you use this submod. It improves the balance of the troops immensely.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=254055

 

[Korgan]

Hmm? Will try this out while waiting for M&B's The Last Days.

 

[poocolator]

The new Third Age mod for Medieval: Total War 2 is more fun to play than E:TW :/

Just search "Third Age Total War" on any torrent site and get it that way.

It's pretty hilarious even when it feels rather rough, unfinished and unbalanced. It does provide a pretty good challenge when playing with the "good guys" though. Having a damn good time with it.

However I do recommend you use this submod. It improves the balance of the troops immensely.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=254055

I stay away from automated battles, because the large numbers in orcs units & powerful trolls rape my pitiful AI general. I have to painstakingly control every little skirmish myself-- and I love it! I hate dwarves: Overpowered little buggers.

Definitely gonna try that mod out. I was disappointed at how canonically the vanilla mod suffers.

 

[The One True Gamer]

I think Rome is my fave. I like Medieval 2 a lot as well but I haven't spent much time with Empire yet. Though I'm confident that iterative improvements will continue; 1.0 RTW and M2TW were far inferior products to current versions.

With mods like Europa Barbarorum or Stainless Steel, the Total War games go from being fairly awesome to nustompingly good.

 

[poocolator]

Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang always had the best quotes in AC, IMO.

 

[Kaiserin]

You do get free civilian militia units when you're city is attacked however. The number based on size, importance and loyalty of the city. Thought that was a better representation
of the local community getting involved than the free upkeep in MTW2. It's basically a better working version of the garrison script most big mods have been trying to implement. Guess it's a matter of taste, but I prefer the ETW version.

The free civilian units are very weak and don't reward planning though. Where are the minutemen?

 

[ricolikesrice]

..

thinking of going back to MTW2 for the time being - with some mods this time ... i know DLV and Stainless Steel are pretty popular, but how good are they or what are the differences between those two ? from what i read about DLV it seems to focus on "roleplaying" your governors/generals and thats not really something i enjoyed in vanilla - i d rather focus on economy/warfare/diplomacy (as far as possible in TW ^^ ) then on micromanaging my generals so that they dont become liberal sodomites.

most important thing i want from mods is more challenge/better AI , and being able to play the teutonic order (DLV and SS make it possible as i read) d be a bonus, else i have to stick with HRE.

Any recommendations of codexers who fooled around enough with MTW2 mods ?