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Total war games,boring gameplay?

Rahdulan

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Because the 4x part of Total War is trash compared to a proper 4x game. And the tactical battles, while not horrible, just isn't as fun as playing AoE2.

That's my problem with the franchise - both parts get pretty quickly stale in a campaign, which leads to a boring campaign part with inadequate AI and a click on auto-resolve.

Loading times certainly don't help either if you don't have an SSD to cut them down. I think Shogun 2 was a weird case for me because I got its combat and then dabbled into Paradox's Sengoku for the campaign play. Kinda wish the campaign segment didn't get relegated to "pretty downtime between battles" in recent Total War titles, though. Maybe I'm just jaded.

preview.jpg
 

karoliner

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Maybe i just have franchise fatigue because i have been playing since Shogun 1 but i find the strategic map really tedious in the new games. They keep adding stuff to it that isn't at all interesting. Do we really need 4 different agent types? The politics of Rome 2 or the eternal winter in Atilla? I'm pretty sure most people play these games for the combat if they wanted a complex campaign they would go for one of the Paradox games instead.

Also the battles are so fucking fast now.
 

Burning Bridges

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Try Shogun 1 and Medieval 1. I found those the best because the strategic layer wasn't as needlessly bloated as in later titles. They should have stuck with the board game style.
I have mate,played every single TW game (except WH2). The older they are the better :)

and TW warhammer 2 is it slow as well?
It is just a expansion to the first one,everything is the same,except the performance.

Shogun was the only truly amazing game in the series, I was completely enthused by it. MTW was the same game with more dumbfuckery, and Rome was a brave attempt at revolutionizing that only fell short because of the unnecessary 3d map and bad AI.

But while you are at it, make sure you also play Ultimate General Civil War and Scourge of War Ghettysburg. Both are about the battles but in all respects a continuation of the ideas that made Shogun, and they do have "sort of" campaigns.
 

fantadomat

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Try Shogun 1 and Medieval 1. I found those the best because the strategic layer wasn't as needlessly bloated as in later titles. They should have stuck with the board game style.
I have mate,played every single TW game (except WH2). The older they are the better :)

and TW warhammer 2 is it slow as well?
It is just a expansion to the first one,everything is the same,except the performance.

Shogun was the only truly amazing game in the series, I was completely enthused by it. MTW was the same game with more dumbfuckery, and Rome was a brave attempt at revolutionizing that only fell short because of the unnecessary 3d map and bad AI.

But while you are at it, make sure you also play Ultimate General Civil War and Scourge of War Ghettysburg. Both are about the battles but in all respects a continuation of the ideas that made Shogun, and they do have "sort of" campaigns.
Yeah,played the civil war games for a few hours. The mechanics are very interesting but i don't care about the civil war.
 

sparq_beam

Guest
The campaign map may be too slow, but the battles are too fast. In modern Total War iterations a battle with 10,000 soldiers typically ends after about 6-8 minutes. It's somewhat of a contradiction because Creative Assembly clearly want you to zoom in and admire their elaborate interlocking animations, yet if your gaze lingers for more than a couple of brief seconds they'll make you pay for it in blood. 'Oh cool, look at my giant! He's swinging his club... and I've just lost half my army off-screen.'

This is a problem with real-time strategy in general. Unless the scale is restricted you won't have time to appreciate the action. If there is a zoom-out feature with abstract icons, like SupCom and Wargame: EE, you'll inevitably spend most of your time looking at that.

This is why I like the we-go system in the Combat Mission games. You can take your time to issue orders, and then replay the action from various angles. Not only does it look cool, but it's useful to plan your next turn.
 

Eyestabber

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Just came to this thread to say that ships are fucking boring and naval battles bore me to tears. Medieval 2 was the last TW w/o naval battles. Coincidence? I think not.
 

mbv123

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Naval battles are cool, it's just that CA can't make them fun if their life depended on it so you never play them.
 

fantadomat

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Just came to this thread to say that ships are fucking boring and naval battles bore me to tears. Medieval 2 was the last TW w/o naval battles. Coincidence? I think not.
Coincidence that it was the last decent game? Also how can a clicking the quick battle button be boring?
 

fantadomat

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Just watched this preview/review of the game and it looks like the idiots are doubling down on the timewasting mechanics. It looks like the game will be total shit.
 

Okagron

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Messages
753
I enjoyed Rome 1 and the Barbarian Invasion expansion a lot.


Fuck Egypt in the base game though. I was playing with the green Romans and every other turn it kept either saying that Egypt was the most advanced faction currently, the richest or has the largest army. Even though i already had some huge cities, several armies and enough money to throw at strippers for 100 years. But as soon i crossed that little hallway to Antioch i just saw hordes of Egyptian armies. After that, it was 20 years of me fighting with them because these fuckers seemed almost endless.
 
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mbv123

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I enjoyed Rome 1 and the Barbarian Invasion expansion a lot.


Fuck Egypt in the base game though. I was playing with the green Romans and every other turn it kept either saying that Egypt was the most advanced faction currently, the richest or has the largest army. Even though i already had some huge cities, several armies and enough money to throw at strippers for 100 years. But as soon i crossed that little hallway to Antioch i just saw hordes of Egyptian armies. After that, it was 20 years of me fighting with them because these fuckers seemed almost endless.
Nile Delta is the richest region in the game and the fact that they're surrounded by shitty factions like Numidians, Seleucids, etc. means that they can blob into Mesopotamia which just boosts their already insanely good economy. Egypt is literally easy mode.
 

Okagron

Prophet
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Mar 22, 2018
Messages
753
I enjoyed Rome 1 and the Barbarian Invasion expansion a lot.


Fuck Egypt in the base game though. I was playing with the green Romans and every other turn it kept either saying that Egypt was the most advanced faction currently, the richest or has the largest army. Even though i already had some huge cities, several armies and enough money to throw at strippers for 100 years. But as soon i crossed that little hallway to Antioch i just saw hordes of Egyptian armies. After that, it was 20 years of me fighting with them because these fuckers seemed almost endless.
Nile Delta is the richest region in the game and the fact that they're surrounded by shitty factions like Numidians, Seleucids, etc. means that they can blob into Mesopotamia which just boosts their already insanely good economy. Egypt is literally easy mode.
True, but still. Seeing all those Egyptian armies made me think i was already playing Barbarian Invasion because it looked liked hordes.

Poor Selecuid Empire, those bastards are 90% of time the first faction to be destroyed.
 

AwesomeButton

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I don't know how rich the Nile Delta was, but the AI cheats very blatantly in RTW :D
 

mbv123

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AI is so fucking retarded it's the only way it can give you the illusion of challenge.
 

Maggot

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire
Try Shogun 1 and Medieval 1. I found those the best because the strategic layer wasn't as needlessly bloated as in later titles. They should have stuck with the board game style.
I have mate,played every single TW game (except WH2). The older they are the better :)

and TW warhammer 2 is it slow as well?
It is just a expansion to the first one,everything is the same,except the performance.

Shogun was the only truly amazing game in the series, I was completely enthused by it. MTW was the same game with more dumbfuckery, and Rome was a brave attempt at revolutionizing that only fell short because of the unnecessary 3d map and bad AI.

But while you are at it, make sure you also play Ultimate General Civil War and Scourge of War Ghettysburg. Both are about the battles but in all respects a continuation of the ideas that made Shogun, and they do have "sort of" campaigns.

There is no reason to play STW when Warlords mod exists for MTW. It's just an improvement in every way.
 

AwesomeButton

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I fired up Europa Barbarorum II for the first time yesterday :feelsgoodman: Let's see how long before I get bored or it starts crashing on AI turns.
 

Burning Bridges

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Try Shogun 1 and Medieval 1. I found those the best because the strategic layer wasn't as needlessly bloated as in later titles. They should have stuck with the board game style.
I have mate,played every single TW game (except WH2). The older they are the better :)

and TW warhammer 2 is it slow as well?
It is just a expansion to the first one,everything is the same,except the performance.

Shogun was the only truly amazing game in the series, I was completely enthused by it. MTW was the same game with more dumbfuckery, and Rome was a brave attempt at revolutionizing that only fell short because of the unnecessary 3d map and bad AI.

But while you are at it, make sure you also play Ultimate General Civil War and Scourge of War Ghettysburg. Both are about the battles but in all respects a continuation of the ideas that made Shogun, and they do have "sort of" campaigns.

There is no reason to play STW when Warlords mod exists for MTW. It's just an improvement in every way.

About 20 years too late anyways .. I played STW in ca 2000 and 2001.
 
Self-Ejected

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I've been playing early Total War games recently and the difference between the first two and later ones is night and day. Getting rid of the simple risk-style strategic map was the worst mistake Creative Assembly ever made with the series. It went from something quick and simple that existed to contextualise the battles to this incredibly dull waste of time that takes forever and only throws battles at you occasionally. Which is a real shame, because the actual battles in Rome and Medieval 2 aren't bad at all. However, there isn't just more time between battles in the later games but the battles themselves are very negatively impacted by the strategic map redesign, because they are less likely to be somewhat even or take place in interesting locations. If for example in Shogun you have a region with a bridge then you know it will be a pain to take over and rather easy to defend. But what are the odds of you having to cross a bridge in Medieval 2 or Rome? It almost never happens.

Shogun was the only truly amazing game in the series, I was completely enthused by it. MTW was the same game with more dumbfuckery
MTW is better than Shogun in some regards, it was more stable and had more varied units and maps. There's something to be said for the minimalism of the Sengoku era of Japan though, it makes the game extremely balanced and it had an elegance to it.
 

Norfleet

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If for example in Shogun you have a region with a bridge then you know it will be a pain to take over and rather easy to defend. But what are the odds of you having to cross a bridge in Medieval 2 or Rome? It almost never happens.
Well, it happens if you're the one camping the bridge and the AI is attacking you, but the AI in more recent TWs is utterly chickenshit and only attacks when it thinks it has overwhelming advantage, and has a really poor grasp of strategic terrain, so when you can micromanage placement, it can't deal with this effectively as the only way to fight a bridge battle is to end your turn blocking one. Any other time, you can just move straight through and be past it before the enemy's turn.
 

JarlFrank

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I do like the battles but all the other stuff is super annoying,you have to spend and hour before you get to do some interesting battle. And most of the time is watching slow animations and the turn wheel. The game is so slow,it really kills any dynamic with pointless shit. The worst thing is how armies get away with 5 guys and you have to waste years chasing them.

Thing is, I love Total War's battles and how the game offers you a combination of moving your armies across a strategic map and then fighting battles on a tactical map.

But due to how the buildup works, the AI often ends up with low-tier armies since building high-tier armies requires many turns of building up your settlements. So the early game always has lame units in the armies and the cool units all come in during the late game, when most enemy nations have already been whittled down by you, so you rarely see high quality armies among the enemy.

It would be better if researching a new unit unlocks it for building everywhere, rather than having to build the next tier of barracks before you can recruit better units.
 

janior

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I fired up Europa Barbarorum II for the first time yesterday :feelsgoodman: Let's see how long before I get bored or it starts crashing on AI turns.
Until you play for 300 turns and forget to activate the script upon loading a save and can say goodbye to any military reforms or anything that makes EB fun really
 

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