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[Game] Total War series

Once you start adding whole continents and timelines spanning multiple centuries, the core game mechanics stop making sense.

It could work a lot better if there'd be any actual depth in diplomacy besides the basic trade agreements and some other things. Having bit more depth in logistics and other things surrounding them could also make wonders to some things besides the already functional (relative to the whole turn based map gameplay) attrition system in NTW and Shogun 2.
 
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It could work a lot better if there'd be any actual depth in diplomacy besides the basic trade agreements and some other things. Having bit more depth in logistics and other things surrounding them could also make wonders to some things besides the already functional (relative to the whole turn based map gameplay) attrition system in NTW and Shogun 2.
Of course but that would mean taking the game from its very roots of conquest and into "winning" by other means, for example whilst 7 years war had dynamic land shifting in what is now Canada but the most famous of battles took place in Prussia which was a war over a single Province, certainly not a war that would have meant end to Prussia. A prestige system could work but there are 2 major issues, they need to make sure the dice are not loaded like in paradox games and having to deal with a pissed off fan base who just want to cover the map in their colour...
 
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Not necessarily. It's not "Make total warfare and conquest useless" but rather "Make alternative means actually worth trying given the circumstances.", it would only add more gameplay possibilities without taking the core completely out of it as long as it's just done reasonably. Maybe I am thinking too much into it but they could always add a new toggable option of having simple diplomacy or not, problem solved especially if you want to go just expand your lebensraum. :p

That actually reminds me about one very interesting if bizarre chain of events in ETW when I played as Sweden. Over the span of many years (running with DMUC 4x turns per year) Poland kept asking me for military alliance while I was supposed to pay them quite large sums of money, so they obviously ended up being Charles XII's toilet paper. Now over the time it changes from requests to alliance to begging to alliance and eventually they threathened to attack if I did not respond, yet more toilet paper; this was around 1714 to 1718. Now fastforward to 1720 when Poland was fighting its own wars with some random factions, but also putting constant traderoute raids and port blockades which affected my trade income. By 1722 the income was halved and Poland once again started to ask for military alliance, this time offering me some money instead. I refused, then it kept going on for another year or so how they tried to get allied with me while wiping out at least two of my old trade partners. In winter 1724 a polish fleet sailed near Kattegrat and a turn before that I had effectively was losing money because they had ****ed up my naval trades with one way or another. Once the winter was over it pretty much ended up being "**** you Poland" (I started preparations around a year before this) and declared war on them. By 1726 Warsaw changed its owner and by 1730 Poland was part of Sweden's glorious backyard and ~5 years later Russia ceased to exist.

Probably the only time I have seen such behaviour ever in any game but it was quite fun even if it was just sum of random actions. :)
 
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Not necessarily. It's not "Make total warfare and conquest useless" but rather "Make alternative means actually worth trying given the circumstances.", it would only add more gameplay possibilities without taking the core completely out of it as long as it's just done reasonably. Maybe I am thinking too much into it but they could always add a new toggable option of having simple diplomacy or not, problem solved especially if you want to go just expand your lebensraum. :p
You say that but much pretty much every major war in Europe was Realm Divide as each nation did it best to beat up the most power using power blocks, then after some minor chnages everything pretty much reset to how it was before as no one wanted a country to be fully defeated. Sure you could add in the option but then how could you balance the game around it? I mean I thought RD was a pretty good idea (just not how it was executed) but the forums are full of people *****ing about it, like I would love the game to be more political but there are lot of people who dont want that...
 
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OK with your advice, I changed my mind about R6:Vegas and got Shogun 2!

Looking at the guide I see this is bloody complicated game (extremely suprising as Sega publishes it). I'm really gonna have my work cut out for me.

Another problem is that none of my personal friends have Shogun 2, and from what I heard, you need friends in order to enjoy multiplayer. So if anyone is from Aus/NZ and would like a (rather crappy) fighting partner for Shogun, feel free to add.
 
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The single player in Shogun 2 isn't too bad with DMS and it has good multiplayer support coop-wise plus it also helps it fixes the most annoying things from the game I.E. heatseeking arrows that almost never miss and can travel beyond any physical range, melees being over in 4 to 10 seconds (including charge period) etc.
 
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Although truth be told play on vanilla first, just watch out for archer stacks and the dreaded realm divide, although I can do eight pro tips:
1) Do not be fooled by the how much a town makes on the campaign map, double click on the town and then look at tax income.
2) Use Agents, they are deadly in war with Ninjas slowing down armies but they are even more deadly when you are at peace and metsuke in high value province will make you rich, if you hate a certain clan use Ninja to attack farms to lower thier food causing clan wide (every land under the clan rather than that province) unhappyness...
3)...never for love of god let your own food supply drop too low, dont sack provinces and never brake an alliance, Honour is everything.
4) Dont be too obsessive about teching up early on, get a decent stack and then focus on teching up. This is a MUST if you are in central japan...
5) People moan about clans turn on them, if you dont want this to happen then butter them up with marriages, hostages and alot of gold...
6) Minor Clans are not cannon fodder, if the wild blows the right way they may end up with half of Japan under their belt.
7) Build lots of markets but ONLY ever build higher level markets in your rich provinces, food is best stock piled.
8) Use Vassels to buffer you on borders you dont want to expand on, just watch out that they may betray you.
 
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If anyone has not played RTW with the SPQR mod (using the new addition of the Roma Surrectum 2 map which was recently added to SPQR) I HIGHLY reccommend it. Tactical AI and strat AI are much smarter, and battles last a lot longer and are more "tactical" and feel much more realistic. They're also huge. I've already had a battle with close to 10,000 soldiers involved. Very rarely do I get total "heroic victories", unlike when I first bought the game when that's all I got.

Play as Rome though, the mod is centered around that. (also got unique legions and fun stuff once you hit imperial reforms, which I haven't yet)
 
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If anyone has not played RTW with the SPQR mod (using the new addition of the Roma Surrectum 2 map which was recently added to SPQR) I HIGHLY reccommend it. Tactical AI and strat AI are much smarter, and battles last a lot longer and are more "tactical" and feel much more realistic. They're also huge. I've already had a battle with close to 10,000 soldiers involved. Very rarely do I get total "heroic victories", unlike when I first bought the game when that's all I got.

Play as Rome though, the mod is centered around that. (also got unique legions and fun stuff once you hit imperial reforms, which I haven't yet)
I always thought Darthmod was better than any mod speaking of AI.
Plus Darthmod is there for almost any TW Game, including Napoleon :)
 
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RTW: I used to like SPQR but Roma Surrectum just came out and I find it much better. There are more city options and I think the enemy makes more ship to shore landings. it was also just released and the artwork is much fresher IMO.
MTW: On this I was Deus Lo Vult all the way. However when I switched from XP to Win7 x64 I have had nothing but CTD after 3 or 4 turns which is painful. I have tried every thing suggested and cannot make it work right. This is very disappointing. I can get Broken Crescent and Stainless to work on the same installation with no problems so I dont know what the issue is.

Empire: DarthMod seems to be best

Shogun2: Got the demo going to see if it is any good.
 
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Here's a video I put together featuring a replay of a battle I fought vs Napoleon a couple of weeks ago. It was super nasty and actually had me raging IRL at one point, mainly because the French are so ****ing over powered in this game! Anyway, given the trolling nature of Napoleon and his army, I decided to record the video with commentary for extra lulz.

Thanks to Shadowmoses ([TK] Ubi) and Oldih for their trolltastic commentary!

Napoleon Total War: Trolling Natrolleon - YouTube
 
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By the way, I'm going to give this thread a bit of a bump because Darthmod for Napoleon Total War is really turning out to be a great mod. The current version is 2.2+ which you can find here:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1824

If any of you guys out there have the game download this mod NOW. I'm working on making another video. The next one will be mostly action and quite a bit shorter, but the battle is more epic. They just keep getting more epic with each new version of darthmod.
 
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By the way, I'm going to give this thread a bit of a bump because Darthmod for Napoleon Total War is really turning out to be a great mod. The current version is 2.2+ which you can find here:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1824

If any of you guys out there have the game download this mod NOW. I'm working on making another video. The next one will be mostly action and quite a bit shorter, but the battle is more epic. They just keep getting more epic with each new version of darthmod.
.. and here's the new video:

Napoleon: Total War - FOUR ARMIES CLASH! - YouTube
 
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Ok, so finally got the game, and first impressions are: This is bloody hard!

since this is my first TW game I set this game on easy and start rocking out with the Shimazu clan, after 5 turns I have to restart because all the rival clans have made an alliance with each other and barricaded me in with the only two towns I have, I then lose due to financial and food shortages to try and keep my army up with theirs!

No matter, I'll try the more aggressive approach so I capture the first province that I was supposed to, and I wage war with the clan that was competing with me for extra territory, next thing I know, every clan I have met is trying to bloody kill me! Not being able to recover my armies in time, losing soon afterwards...

I don't know why realm divide is so hated in this game, everyone's out to get your guts anyway!

I also git some other impressions off this game,

- It's great I finally managed to find a game where superior tactics defeat superior units, my general tactic is to mass ashigaru and encircle the army, it's been working out for me

- This is one of those games where the AI know exactly where you are, and what you are doing, somehow managing to sneak past my main army, and frontal defenses and still somehow knows which province was just drained due to me reinforcing my main army, really annoying!

- Auto resolve is a pain in the arse! It seems to think that because I clicked it, it gets special permission to use my level 3 general as a meat shield against a group so my all important yari ashigaru remain unharmed. This means that either I have to prepare to lose my general gaurds which take forver to heal. Or fight manually anaginst a lone group of load sword units which were harrasing my rice crops, draging out the entire game.

- healing takes so f**cking long! I lose ten of my general guards and it takes 20 turns in one of my provinces 20 turns! that's five years needed for the general to pick ten units, all he needs to do is go to a local barracks, and pick ten soldiers he fancies, almost all of which (AFAIK) would kill for simply being a part if the generals presence!





Wow that was a bit more than I was planning to write...
 
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Ok, so finally got the game, and first impressions are: This is bloody hard!

since this is my first TW game I set this game on easy and start rocking out with the Shimazu clan, after 5 turns I have to restart because all the rival clans have made an alliance with each other and barricaded me in with the only two towns I have, I then lose due to financial and food shortages to try and keep my army up with theirs!

No matter, I'll try the more aggressive approach so I capture the first province that I was supposed to, and I wage war with the clan that was competing with me for extra territory, next thing I know, every clan I have met is trying to bloody kill me! Not being able to recover my armies in time, losing soon afterwards...

I don't know why realm divide is so hated in this game, everyone's out to get your guts anyway!

I also git some other impressions off this game,

- It's great I finally managed to find a game where superior tactics defeat superior units, my general tactic is to mass ashigaru and encircle the army, it's been working out for me

- This is one of those games where the AI know exactly where you are, and what you are doing, somehow managing to sneak past my main army, and frontal defenses and still somehow knows which province was just drained due to me reinforcing my main army, really annoying!

- Auto resolve is a pain in the arse! It seems to think that because I clicked it, it gets special permission to use my level 3 general as a meat shield against a group so my all important yari ashigaru remain unharmed. This means that either I have to prepare to lose my general gaurds which take forver to heal. Or fight manually anaginst a lone group of load sword units which were harrasing my rice crops, draging out the entire game.

- healing takes so f**cking long! I lose ten of my general guards and it takes 20 turns in one of my provinces 20 turns! that's five years needed for the general to pick ten units, all he needs to do is go to a local barracks, and pick ten soldiers he fancies, almost all of which (AFAIK) would kill for simply being a part if the generals presence!





Wow that was a bit more than I was planning to write...
wow, your first experience with shogun 2: total war! Congratulations. I guess many of us started with shogun total war or at least with Rome: total war.

In short: there is a whole total war millennia and hundreds of years on top of that for you out there.
I recommend to try the excellent mods for all those TW games, especially the mods that enhance the AI: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/index.php

Much, much better than the vanilla gameplay. There is so much out there... go nuts!
 
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