Games similar to Total War

JarlFrank · Oct 26, 2010

So, I really like the TW series from Shogun up to Empire (it's fun with DarthMod). Playing the whole series including expansions and a huge collection of mods can provide me with fun for many months, but I'm always on the lookout for similar games that either play in a different era, or have different mechanics, or just do the AI much much better than TW.

The ones I'm aware of are:
Knights of Honor - more like a mix of TW and Europa Universalis. Really liked it back when it came out. The AI is rather mediocre, though. I heard rumours about a second game being in development but it's not officially announced yet.

King Arthur - that one was rather fun, with lots of unique features. Shit balance, but good challenge level and nice RPG elements. Lionheart is also awesome but it's much more linear. Lack of sandbox worldmap lowers replayability, especially in Lionheart.

War Leaders - this one looks fucking awesome on paper, but it has long loading times and turns take longer than they should, too. Also, the battles suck horribly and the world-map management is rather mediocre, although it has some nice elements like research. Too bad the battles are shit, watching WW2 infantrymen soak up 10 bullets before the big healthbar above their heads is depleted isn't much fun. Morale doesn't really play a role since units don't flee, and I don't think that hitting tanks from the flanks/back does more damage than frontal hits. Overall a huge disappointment, and I really *tried* to like it because you can use Hitler as a general on the battlefield. Yes, he actually appears as a unit. Alas, it's not enough to salvage this trainwreck.

So, do you guys know of any others? I remember reading something about a Russian game called XIII century or something like that, is it any good?

Furious Flaming Faggot · Oct 26, 2010

It's not a separate game, but Europa Barbarorum is a great mod for Rome Total War.

Carlos' Bitch1 · Oct 26, 2010

Alas no. You already know of all the similar games. I have also been wishing for some TW clones. Clones that didn't go completely retarded like the TW series has that is.

Furious Flaming Faggot · Oct 26, 2010

There's Imperial Glory. It got a very negative reception but that's probably just because of Creative Assembly mainstream cocksucking. It's set around E:TW's time frame i think but i never bothered to try it because it doesn't have a morale system.

Abraxas · Oct 26, 2010

I have not tried it, so can't talk about quality, but the Takeda series is similar in gameplay to the Total War I think.

commie · Oct 26, 2010

Magitech games are the shizzle if you want decent AI and don't mind archaic interfaces(though with a good help system) and graphics that look like updated Medieval ones:

Strength and Honor 2: Rome Total War era equivalent though with a map that has Chinese culture and Indian as well.

Takeda 3: Shogun equivalent
Sango 2: Romance of the Three Kingdoms equivalent

Have a look on their site:
http://www.ezgame.com/magitech/

They are a Chinese company, yet the games are really good(if hard to get into easily) and provide a stern challenge.

NINJEDIT: Abraxas beat me to the link.

Overweight Manatee · Oct 26, 2010

commie · Oct 26, 2010

XIII century and it's successor 1242, is a LOT like Lionheart mixed with the historical battles of M2 TW. It's a good game indeed. Just a series of battles really, but with a very serviceable AI.

There is a version of this game with a strategic layer in development in addition to just canned battles, so this should be a direct rival to the TW series.

JarlFrank · Oct 26, 2010

Furious Flaming Faggot said:
There's Imperial Glory. It got a very negative reception but that's probably just because of Creative Assembly mainstream cocksucking. It's set around E:TW's time frame i think but i never bothered to try it because it doesn't have a morale system.

From what I've heard of it it's not very good. Might give it a try if I find it on piratebay, but it's probably just an attempt to make money from Total War's success, just like the horrible War Leaders.

Furious Flaming Faggot said:
It's not a separate game, but Europa Barbarorum is a great mod for Rome Total War.

I know. I like the Total War series so naturally I've played all of the major and some of the minor mods - Europa Barbarorum, Roma Surrectum, the Invasio Barbarorum series, Amazon Total War, Viking Invasion 2, Aristeia, Stainless Steel, Broken Crescent, DarthMod Empire, The Great War for Napoleon... the twcenter mod forums are a goldmine for awesome stuff.

@ commie:
Those don't look bad at all, thanks. I'll look into it.

Fuck_The_Banks · Oct 26, 2010

Did the King Arthur thing turn out to be any good?

commie · Oct 26, 2010

Fuck_The_Banks said:
Did the King Arthur thing turn out to be any good?

Yes, I think so. Balancing sucks a bit and some heroes are useless, AI cheats with stacks, archers overpowered(though you can make them weaker, I don't as it makes the game a bit tougher on the offensive and there's enough counters later) etc. Even so it's a very good game, a change of pace from TW. The Saxon expansion makes it more non-linear, just like a TW game.

A shame they went back and did a remake of Crusader: Thy Kingdom Come(Lionheart), which in my opinion is a step back rather than go all the way and make a real TW challenger, but maybe next game.

@ JarlFrank

Yeah, they look simpler(particularly Strength and Honor 2) because of the lesser number of provinces, but there is a lot more to governing(political parties, independent governors), diplomacy(marrying off characters to very tough rival generals can get them on your side), trade, and a GREAT character system where each of your generals and governors has traits that are much more beneficial/problematic than the system in TW. Learning curve is steep, and they're not very intuitive to begin with though.

It's great to see defending armies in a castle actually try to go out and storm your positions if you're besieging, and taking well defended castles is a challenge.

Oh, in Sango 2 you can lure enemy armies into forests and set them on fire

markec · Oct 26, 2010

Play Birthright: The Gorgon's Alliance, its one of my favorite strategy games.

xrm1 · Oct 28, 2010

The strategic map part of Imperial Glory is better than ETW IMO. It had a nice board game feel to it and diplomacy seemed to actually work. Its just the battles that are crap.

Burning Bridges · Oct 28, 2010

http://www.tacticularcancer.com/content.php?id=62

Trash · Oct 28, 2010

commie said:
XIII century and it's successor 1242, is a LOT like Lionheart mixed with the historical battles of M2 TW. It's a good game indeed. Just a series of battles really, but with a very serviceable AI.

There is a version of this game with a strategic layer in development in addition to just canned battles, so this should be a direct rival to the TW series.

I'm really looking forward to that one. Mainly because you had so much praise for the AI of XIII and 1242 and because I desperately want a non-retarded TW.

Destroid · Oct 28, 2010

While I played and enjoyed S:TW, I've ever really understood the appeal of the total war style of game. Playing out the real times battles causes the strategy element of the game to progress at a snails pace, as you spend so much time in the tactical battles.

It just seems that there are other games that do the strategic layer better (paradox games), and probably others again that do the tactical better, although I'm not very familiar with the genre of historical real time tactical games.

Burning Bridges · Oct 28, 2010

Its all about scale. If you command just a few thousand men it works out, and that's why TW works best in the small, fragmented feudal states model of STW. I definitely don't like it in all the later games. Crusader Total War would have been great, Medieval Total War was not, RTW would have worked much better if one commanded just 1 legion in 1 province, lets say "Cesar in Gaul Total War", etc.

Panthera · Oct 28, 2010

xrm1 said:
The strategic map part of Imperial Glory is better than ETW IMO. It had a nice board game feel to it and diplomacy seemed to actually work. Its just the battles that are crap.

Sadly, this is true. The biggest problem is that the AI made release Empire:TW's look good.

astrosmurf · Oct 28, 2010

Destroid said:
While I played and enjoyed S:TW, I've ever really understood the appeal of the total war style of game.

I love the battles in TW. But I need a strategic campaign game to put the battles in context and make them "meaningful".

commie · Oct 28, 2010

Trash said:
commie said:

XIII century and it's successor 1242, is a LOT like Lionheart mixed with the historical battles of M2 TW. It's a good game indeed. Just a series of battles really, but with a very serviceable AI.

There is a version of this game with a strategic layer in development in addition to just canned battles, so this should be a direct rival to the TW series.

Click to expand...

I'm really looking forward to that one. Mainly because you had so much praise for the AI of XIII and 1242 and because I desperately want a non-retarded TW.

Yeah, me too. A caveat that of course eventually you'll overcome the canned missions of XIII, as they tend to show particular battles as they were and you react to the tactical problems in one or two 'right' ways(though obviously they are sensible and historically correct ways). They are more 'puzzle' like, though the AI does tend to react pretty well in the more fluid battles.

1242 seems to have more leeway with army setup and deployment, so it's more of a half-way between 'canned' and 'freeform'.

If they really bring out this TW style game and the AI is at least as serviceable and can operate with fully free form armies then it should be good. Russians tend to make half-arsed games and then rarely patch them though...so who knows?

Burning Bridges said:
Its all about scale. If you command just a few thousand men it works out, and that's why TW works best in the small, fragmented feudal states model of STW. I definitely don't like it in all the later games. Crusader Total War would have been great, Medieval Total War was not, RTW would have worked much better if one commanded just 1 legion in 1 province, lets say "Cesar in Gaul Total War", etc.

Well that's fixed easily enough, what with just making 1 soldier=10. Combat mission tends to have 3 soldiers=10 as an abstraction, and the TW games are abstracted enough as it is so unless you are a pedant, it shouldn't matter too much.

muds_animal_friend · Oct 29, 2010

Imperial Glory's strategic layer is reasonably entertaining. It's like Victoria's less sophisticated, but faster-paced, little brother. Infrastructure, trade, research, and government types are all modelled. Diplomacy is solid -- certainly better than anything CA has produced -- and territorial expansion can be achieved by peaceful means. There are also various quests available, e.g. achieve agricultural revolution, which confer bonuses on the first to achieve them.

In contrast, the 'tactical' layer has no redeeming features whatsoever. None. It's truly awful. Once I accepted that fact, and just auto-resolved all battles, I learned to enjoy the game [meme]for what it is[/meme].

There's also Cossacks II: Napoleonic Wars, but comparing it to a TW game is a bit of a stretch. The campaign map is a bare bones RISK-like where your general (singular) gains experience and improves his army (singular). You can have garrisons, but, as far as I can recall, there is only one offensive army.

The meat is in the RTS portion, which, while it doesn't always succeed, has some interesting ideas. It's an attempt to model war on a provincial level over a number of weeks/months. Towns, villages and mines provide resources and fresh recruits. Unlike Imperial Glory, moral is modelled and important. Side quests occasional pop-up during play. The game is a strange hybrid of RISK and RTS, with some lightweight RPG elements thrown in. Some of it works, some of it doesn't.

JarlFrank · Oct 29, 2010

astrosmurf said:
Destroid said:

While I played and enjoyed S:TW, I've ever really understood the appeal of the total war style of game.

Click to expand...

I love the battles in TW. But I need a strategic campaign game to put the battles in context and make them "meaningful".

Yeah. Also, that way it's more non-linear and emergent. Anything can happen. In one game, Gaul fucks up Rome and you play as Greece and have to conquer a Gaulish Rome, fighting against a strong Gaulish army, while in another game Rome might be able to defend itself but lost most of its army and you can easily invade...

There also often are situations of being in deep shit, at least with mods on very hard campaign difficulty. 5 full enemy stacks right in front of your capital? Be afraid. Be very afraid. Fight huge siege battles.

It's just a great combination. Having only battles makes the battles less meaningful and less dramatic, having only a strategic layer makes fights just a matter of calculation, with no way to win a theoretically unwinnable battle with cheese tactics or losing a battle you should've won because you made a mistake.

My dream-game is a very complex Europa Universalis clone with elements from Crusader Kings and Victoria, combined with Total War style real time battles with up to 15,000 men per side. Would be heavan.

ArDiGames · Nov 7, 2010

Imperial Domination II

I came across this topic and decided to register here. I'm actually developing my own game which is similar to the Total War strategic campaigns. You should take a look at my website to download the latest demo. I'm not saying it's at good as the Total War series but I think it will do for a freeware game and it's definitely similar.

The game is still in development and I'm looking for some strategyfans who can give some good feedback because there are hardly any on the GMC where I released the demo.

So if you like Total War (you do if you read this topic) please help me to develop my game Imperial Domination II

commie · Nov 8, 2010

@ ArDiGames

Checked it out. Nice effort there.

Destroid · Nov 8, 2010

Play a Paradox game and take a break every half hour to play a level in Shadow of the Horned Rat.

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