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Mans posted:Roma Surrectum is fun as hell and doesn't focus too much on historical details while still maintaining a rich and detailed roster. You also have a lot of ways to deal with squalor that don't involve purging half of the inhabitants every few years via building suburbs and other auxiliary structures. If you are looking for an awesome but accessible(well for a TW mod) for Rome, then Roma Surrectum is where it's at. Playing Rome is a seriously crazy/intense game where poo poo is constantly happening against you, as opposed to most nations just kind of farting around while you slowly snowball into a superpower. All the other nations are incredibly well done too, I had a great game as Pontus. They also have a seemly sane forum layout with actual information, something that is rare at TWcenter.
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Feb 5, 2013 05:28
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shalcar posted:Multiplayer is great fun, but the locking out of various units is less than ideal. You can bypass it a bit by buying the DLC unit packs, as they add a veteran unit of the types they provide which tend to fill the gaps of not having a fully unlocked roster (like Fire Cavalry basically being Great Guard or Wako Raiders being like Katana Samurai). Oh yeah, I got that unit DLC - I'm just missing the Otomo and Ikko Ikki ones, and the Hero Units one (which I thought wouldn't apply to multiplayer). I just unlocked Yari Cavalry, and I'm mostly trying to get 2 or 3 veterans on each unit type, so I guess I'll sooner or later win some battles. Also, it's certainly weird to see how much depth I've missed in these 4-5 years I've been playing Total War games. 
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Feb 5, 2013 05:37
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Azran posted:Oh yeah, I got that unit DLC - I'm just missing the Otomo and Ikko Ikki ones, and the Hero Units one (which I thought wouldn't apply to multiplayer). I just unlocked Yari Cavalry, and I'm mostly trying to get 2 or 3 veterans on each unit type, so I guess I'll sooner or later win some battles. Its kinda counter-intuitive but in small matches a lot of the time you don't want to be bringing veterans and expensive badass troops. Instead you can often win by doing one two things: -Bringing a fuckton of Loan Swords -Rolling out with an inordinate amount of Yari cav. What you want to do is here is try and plop at least one unit of cav into some woods where the enemy can't see them, then march your army in parallel with your hidden cav. The enemy will see your non-hidden cav and assume thats all you got. Then, when he gets close enough you can do a couple things: A) Lock down his cav with your exposed cavalry, then use your hidden cav to take out his general B) Lure his cavalry into a trap by leaving one cav unit dangling in front of his troops, then retreat into your hidden cav to hit them from two sides at once. Then, after all his cav has shattered you can gallop across the battlefield to your hearts content C) Send your men into melee and then use your cav to roll up his flank like a rug It's uncanny, it works almost every time. People just don't expect more than 2 cav units in a 5000 point match.
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Feb 5, 2013 06:59
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Has anyone had trouble with 403 errors on the Total War forums? I registered there and before I had a chance to even log in I started getting 403s.
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Feb 5, 2013 08:22
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Azran posted:I take the multiplayer isn't worth it? I've played 5 matches so far, and though every single one of them has been a Costly Victory for the other guy, I hate the unit limitation they imposed. I just got rocked by 6 FOTS line infantry units because my best cavalry unit were Light Cavalry. Also, speaking of Shogun 2 multiplayer look I'm on youtube!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDitMW2ovjI
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Feb 5, 2013 09:03
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Llamadeus posted:Multiplayer Protips: untick "mixed avatars". Base Shogun 2 vs FotS isn't really balanced at all. Also be careful when upgrading unique DLC and hero units: they can't be reset and plenty of people end up putting bad/suboptimal upgrades. I thought having "Mixed avatars" on would give me a bigger player pool.  Also, what upgrades are bad or suboptimal? The clan tokens ones? V SHAMEFUL DISPLAY. Nah, seriously though - I'd say I lose one battle per every 15 I fight (Normal Difficulty). I'm about to win with the Oda faction - just missing 9 provinces and Tokyo, and supposedly it's one of the "hard" starts.
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Feb 5, 2013 09:17
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Man, Total War games are some of the most stressful games (in a good way) that I've played, especially for someone who's usually a builder/turtler like me -- they give you options that push those buttons, but that's not how you ultimately win and now I have 9 turns to capture 5 provinces while trying to secure my overextended push into Kyoto against three doomstacks while hoping my vassals don't get gobbled up, and what's that, there are a bunch of fully-laden fleets working their way towards my core provinces...? How often on average do you lose battles in a campaign? When it happens, I know rationally that my mostly-levy fodder army was serving their purpose in bleeding the opponent while I move my main general into position, but when I'm playing it, my advisor is yelling about shameful displays, then there's the ominous music and the body count in hard numbers, and I'm resisting the urge to savescum or just start over 
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Feb 5, 2013 09:20
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Azran posted:I thought having "Mixed avatars" on would give me a bigger player pool. Generally high level play revolves around a core of units with either clan token attack upgrades or clan token defense upgrades, so these are definitely worth it.
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Feb 5, 2013 09:27
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:How often on average do you lose battles in a campaign? When it happens, I know rationally that my mostly-levy fodder army was serving their purpose in bleeding the opponent while I move my main general into position, but when I'm playing it, my advisor is yelling about shameful displays, then there's the ominous music and the body count in hard numbers, and I'm resisting the urge to savescum or just start over If I'm facing doomstack(s) that I can't beat with my "oh crap, we didn't actually expect anybody to attack" rear guard, I just make every victory of their's hurt. A lot of it is borderline-cheating with how much I game the AI, but I'm fighting against the entirety of Japan here, give me a break. Put some hurt on them in the field, retreat before they can do significant damage. Cheese the castle defender AI and blow all my arrows on whittling down their garrison before "retreating," and doing it again next turn so their replenishment is moot. All while tapping all the nearby castle towns for troops. The game counts these as a pretty solid number of losses but I consider it guerrilla warfare.
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Feb 5, 2013 09:29
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Most FOTS armies aren't that hard to beat as a traditional army if you bring the right troops. Use the hills and valleys to your advantage. Always be zooming in to the ground level to see line of sight and pick a spot to fight where they won't have good line of sight on you till it's too late. If they're smart they won't let you pick the spot like that, so bring about 2-3 yari ashigaru and if you have it a bulletproof samurai or a naginata samurai if you don't and use them as your meat shield. They're going to charge first with your heavy melee following shortly behind and the meatshield will let your melee close in without taking much casualties. Once I started doing that I've only lost to a few FOTS players, one of them being a 10 red star and I don't even know what that means. Also bring something to deal with gun cavalry because if you don't they'll massacre you before you even cross a sword. Bow cavalry can work as long as you don't let them get shot because they'll get torn up. Bow cavalry can also be used to kill their enemy general once the fight starts because FOTS avatars don't have great armor. And watch out for shogitai.
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Feb 5, 2013 16:02
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Back to the Rome 2 factions couldn't I just take the game files and make the other factions playable like I did for Rome 1? Also I kind of want to see a Post Apocalyptic Total War game, just an idea that sprang from me walking and thinking.
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Feb 5, 2013 16:48
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achillesforever6 posted:Back to the Rome 2 factions couldn't I just take the game files and make the other factions playable like I did for Rome 1? Modding has been tricky with these post RTW engines. Tricky or impossible.
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Feb 5, 2013 17:53
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Does the AI get any income bonuses or helpful spawns in Stainless Steel? Genuinely asking, I'm not enjoying it any less. But gently caress it's relentless, I'm still battling the Seljuks and Fatimids in my Crusader States campaign. I've pretty much won massive battle after massive battle since what feels like the dawn of time, I've managed to expand at a glacial pace and actually taken all the Fatimid provinces, in addition to knifing every single general and family member and they're STILL coming out of the woodwork with stacks from the one remaining town. And all this while fending off the Turks in the north, I've taken one or two of their castles but mostly it's been a defensive game on that front. Not to mention that, almost as if in retaliation for my sneaky crusades, somebody called a Jihad on Jerusalem and Moorish doomstacks are besieging it. Jerusalem holds though.  So is the endless horde financed and built like mine or does it get a helping hand? This game needs a grand tally of the bodies your empire is built on. While I'm asking I'm sure I've seen failed Jihads before. What's the criteria? I've biffed plenty of the armies.
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Feb 5, 2013 23:24
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Captain Diarrhoea posted:Does the AI get any income bonuses or helpful spawns in Stainless Steel? Genuinely asking, I'm not enjoying it any less. I am pretty sure the AI is going to fart out doomstacks until you capture its last province. Its recruitment definitely doesn't adhere to the same rules or restrictions as you, which is one of the things that annoyed me the most about Stainless Steel and the TW series in general. I suppose it prevents the game from turning into a cakewalk where you defeat a faction's main armies and then traipse all over the countryside unopposed, but it means most of your campaigns can become a bit of a slog. Seeing smaller factions fielding twice the number of troops as you is aggravating, and it's downright obnoxious when you buy off an enemy army just to see it replaced in its entirety the following turn. I'd like to think there's a middle ground between this and conquering with impunity following a large battle or two, but I'm not exactly sure what form it would take or if it would fit within the limitations of whatever engine M2TW uses.
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Feb 5, 2013 23:42
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SeanBeansShako posted:Modding has been tricky with these post RTW engines. Tricky or impossible. The faction playability mods seem to work. But that's assuming there will be other factions. There probably will be but there's no guarantee they'll structure the game the way they have been. I'm assuming at least a couple of the other factions will be fleshed out enough to sell DLC to unlock them.
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Feb 6, 2013 05:51
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Trujillo posted:Use the hills and valleys to your advantage. Always be zooming in to the ground level to see line of sight and pick a spot to fight where they won't have good line of sight on you till it's too late. Man, I'm sure another total war game based around guns is probably far off but having a better mechanic to surface use and exploitation of unit line of sight would be rad. Hell, I'd hope a "realism" mode in the next game had a built in mode where you'd have to send scouts around the map to scout out enemy locations. As is, I feel like most battles play out largely the same once I figured out a basic hammer and anvil strategy.
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Feb 6, 2013 05:58
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Jabronie posted:Man, I'm sure another total war game based around guns is probably far off but having a better mechanic to surface use and exploitation of unit line of sight would be rad. Hell, I'd hope a "realism" mode in the next game had a built in mode where you'd have to send scouts around the map to scout out enemy locations. As is, I feel like most battles play out largely the same once I figured out a basic hammer and anvil strategy. I think that'd require much much bigger maps, and at that size the game would get pretty tedious.
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Feb 6, 2013 06:02
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Captain Diarrhoea posted:Does the AI get any income bonuses or helpful spawns in Stainless Steel? Genuinely asking, I'm not enjoying it any less. Stainless Steel never lets opponents go bankrupt, and essentially lets them spend unlimited amounts of money. It's very cheaty in that way.
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Feb 6, 2013 08:25
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Welp, won with the Oda on Normal (short campaign).  It's weird, though - after Realm Divide hit, the Takeda (who had an entire third of the main island) remained my trusted allies through the rest of the match, but one of my post-RD vassals went and declared war on me. Alright I guess.Also, I don't really see how a Long Campaign is feasible when after getting 18+ provinces Realm Divide starts. Is the fame progress slower in longer games?
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Feb 6, 2013 08:37
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Azran posted:Welp, won with the Oda on Normal (short campaign). Nope, you still hit Realm Divide around 18-20 provinces. A lot of it depends on positioning though. If I'm the Shimazu or Chokosabe, 18 provinces means I can have the whole west of Japan under my control, and then just slowly push forward with that. Alternatively, if I'm Hojo or Dewa or something, I should have a good chunk of the east. As long as you keep a set of provinces in the back with upgraded markets/ninjas to pump out money, it isn't that bad. Let megastacks break on an upgraded castle, then push forward one province at a time.
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Feb 6, 2013 08:41
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Nope. The usual trick is to get one province short of RD and tech up like crazy. Also incite revolts everywhere to disrupt large clans.
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Feb 6, 2013 08:42
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Cantorsdust posted:Nope, you still hit Realm Divide around 18-20 provinces. A lot of it depends on positioning though. If I'm the Shimazu or Chokosabe, 18 provinces means I can have the whole west of Japan under my control, and then just slowly push forward with that. Alternatively, if I'm Hojo or Dewa or something, I should have a good chunk of the east. As long as you keep a set of provinces in the back with upgraded markets/ninjas to pump out money, it isn't that bad. Let megastacks break on an upgraded castle, then push forward one province at a time. Oh yeah, that ended up being my plan. But wait - Hojo or Dewa?  Are those FOTS-only factions or something?
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Feb 6, 2013 08:48
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Azran posted:Oh yeah, that ended up being my plan. http://www.twcenter.net/wiki/Hojo_(Shogun_II_Clan) http://www.twcenter.net/wiki/Date_(Shogun_II_Clan) edit: meant date, not dewa, sorry
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Feb 6, 2013 08:59
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Are there any mods that improve the Barbarian Invasion campaign? That time period is a lot of fun.
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Feb 6, 2013 09:01
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Azran posted:Also, I don't really see how a Long Campaign is feasible when after getting 18+ provinces Realm Divide starts. In a short campaign it's about 15 provinces while in a long campaign it happens after taking about 20 provinces. And domination is slightly higher than that.
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Feb 6, 2013 10:22
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Also, there's a bit of a snowball effect at higher province counts. Extra provinces gets you more income than you need to defend the extra provinces, so you can afford higher quality armies and do more steamrollering. Sure, you often have a slightly longer front to defend, but you can usually run up against some terrain feature that'll prevent your exposed fronts from growing too quickly. That's why Chosokabe/Shimazu/Date have it so easy, but even clans starting in the middle can secure one flank with the sea, meaning you only really need 3 doomstacks, which is pretty affordable at 15 provinces.
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Feb 6, 2013 14:51
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It's not that easy, at least in my experience. The AI does launch naval invasions from time to time so if you don't have at least one stack in your heartlands, you might get problems. Having to lock down the AI on the seas without nanban ships is awful.
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Feb 6, 2013 14:57
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Cantorsdust posted:http://www.twcenter.net/wiki/Hojo_(Shogun_II_Clan) Haha, I totally blanked on the existance of the Hojo. Thought there was a Lesser clans mod or something.
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Feb 6, 2013 18:05
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NihilVerumNisiMors posted:It's not that easy, at least in my experience. The AI does launch naval invasions from time to time so if you don't have at least one stack in your heartlands, you might get problems. Having to lock down the AI on the seas without nanban ships is awful. Yeah, my first ever game was as Date, precisely because they have so few fronts coming from the extreme eastern part of the map. However, right before Realm Divide the AI actually landed a full stack in my capital province and I just couldn't mobilize troops that far back and I got totally screwed over. What usually saps my enthusiasm and ultimately makes me stop playing a campaign is the naval stuff. It's just such a pain to have alerts every single turn of ports being blockaded, trade routes raided, trade fleets being pushed off the points, etc. Navies are just so expensive and I absolutely hate the naval battle system, so I have to rely on what often seems like luck from the autoresolve for all my battles. At least in Medieval 2 and earlier I could just use auto_win defender and bypass the whole system.
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Feb 6, 2013 19:39
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How do I "win" campaigns in these games? I can often do well in the early years establishing a foothold and growing economically, but I feel like the AI is just a loving bastard in the mid-game. They just spam. Those. loving. Half-size. Armies. Then they run them all over the place, pointlessly assault cities that have little value, and it takes hours upon hours of grinding out incremental advantages before I can stage a winning assault on their capital. This is all just to take out one faction! Then I get to do it three times over again, sometimes having to recover from some backstabbing seemingly best-friends-forever ally who randomly fucks me. I love the battles in this game, but gently caress if the campaigns aren't gigantic missed opportunities to be something great. Is there something I am missing? What does it take to mount a swift and effective offense in the midgame that actually gets you results? What are peoples' general approach? I'm at a loss right now. (For reference, I'm referring to Medieval 2 but have encountered this same game design problem in Rome 1. "Total War never changes.")
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Feb 6, 2013 21:12
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Siets posted:How do I "win" campaigns in these games? I can often do well in the early years establishing a foothold and growing economically, but I feel like the AI is just a loving bastard in the mid-game. They just spam. Those. loving. Half-size. Armies. Then they run them all over the place, pointlessly assault cities that have little value, and it takes hours upon hours of grinding out incremental advantages before I can stage a winning assault on their capital. This is all just to take out one faction! Then I get to do it three times over again, sometimes having to recover from some backstabbing seemingly best-friends-forever ally who randomly fucks me. You might enjoy shogun 2 more. It's honestly the first one in the series that has a super fun campaign
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Feb 6, 2013 21:15
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So for completion's sake I'm having a crack at RTW:Alexander. Is there any advice beyond "never stop going forward and kill multiple doomstacks per turn without sustaining moderate losses or else"?
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Feb 6, 2013 23:16
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I'm in this wierd situation where I've played the heck out of Shogun 2 and I'm sort of tired of the setting and period right now, but I still like the hell out of the engine and I really want to play a Shogun 2 quality game, just in another setting. I can't wait for Rome 2. Even though I played Rome and Medieval 2 to death, now they feel primitive and akward, even with mods. And Napoleon's gunpowder armies never quite clicked with me, despite me loving the period, French history and the man himself. Gonna give Roma Surrectum a try though since I've been binging on Dan Carlin's hardcore history podcast on the fall of the Roman Republic and it's making me itch to lead some god damned legions to crush the barbarian hordes :rome101:
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Feb 7, 2013 00:18
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Zyla posted:You might enjoy shogun 2 more. It's honestly the first one in the series that has a super fun campaign I might give it a go someday, but the more medieval European settings have always appealed to me more. I feel like the problem would be solved by having some kind of cumulative upkeep cost that grows exponentially with the more individual standing armies you have. Write it off as some kind of "stressed supply lines" cost of maintaining separate armies in various locations that gets checked at the end of each turn. Minimize this cost against those armies that are stationed in cities (since there wouldn't be any need to ship them supplies.) That way you can't go apeshit spewing barbarian hordes across the countryside that come knocking at my every doorstep like jehova witnesses every turn.  It also encourages more strategic placement and consideration of the armies you do have, while also making the battles you fight have more actual impact on the outcome of the next few turns.I think I spent over 20 turns in Medieval 2 pumping out basic infantry/archers/cavalry armies and just throwing wave after wave into a faction to my south that had half the territories and resources I did. Yet he somehow continues to match and even exceed my numbers. What the gently caress, honestly. I just wish the game gave you more insight into how the enemy could be exploited to cripple their output (unless the AI really just is arbitrarily cheating so as to up the "difficulty.  ) It might just be that my game knowledge is still too limited however, or that I wasn't fighting on other fronts hard enough (like abusing merchants or working the diplomacy system correctly to my advantage.)
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Feb 7, 2013 00:45
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The one real downside to Shogun 2 is that the cheapest most basic unit also murders cavalry.
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Feb 7, 2013 01:15
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Zyla posted:The one real downside to Shogun 2 is that the cheapest most basic unit also murders cavalry. Yeah a lot of people here seem to really like cavalry but I basically never use them (in Shogun 2). They just don't seem effective when about a third, at least, of every army you face will be composed of yaris. I always dismount my generals too, all them being on horses seems to do is make them a bigger target for bows. edit: against the AI, this is. I haven't played that much multiplayer but for what I have the cavalry for some reason suddenly seem to become a lot more effective. edit 2: vvv but the yari ashigaru aren't locked into rigid phalanxes like the spears in the previous Total War games. All they have to do to kill the cavalry that engages in a rear charge is turn around. The cavalry (in my experience) will always take significant casualties in any charge against spear infantry even if the spears were otherwise engaged, and in fact usually significant casualties even doing charges against units they're supposed to counter (like seriously I routinely lose katana cavalry to loving bow samurai in melee, what's up with that). Shogun 2 combat is too lethal for cavalry to be a sustainable thing. Koramei fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Feb 7, 2013 |
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Feb 7, 2013 01:18
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Zyla posted:The one real downside to Shogun 2 is that the cheapest most basic unit also murders cavalry. Although the units that murder them are themselves murdered by cavalry. The basic melee unit also don't really have the morale to stand up to a rear charge, especially if it's already under pressure despite it's decent anti cavalry statistics. It's mainly the expensive and powerful units which are countered by cavalry, which given the cost of cavalry makes them quite cost effective.
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Feb 7, 2013 01:21
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Siets posted:Medieval II complaints Yes! I've been playing a lot of PC games lately and going through my Steam backlog I've started all the Total War games I've bought (oh hey those battles look cool *purchase & never play*), started with Medieval II, and it was fun but man the campaigns starts to really drag for all those reasons you list. I consoled myself just to conquer England, Scotland, Ireland and Paris and move onto Rome: TW. Which I do not understand why it is I can only seem to queue up to build one military unit at a time in Rome: TW Takes forever, but apparently a winning strategy is hiring mercenaries, which annoys me that I'd have to do it (I want to be Romans drat it), and there being a problem with overpopulation they never fixed and slaughtering your own citizens is the way to go. Terrible. I don't really want to deal with mods because I will move onto Napoleon and maybe Shogun 2 soon, and hopefully their problems won't annoy me so much, but drat, these games are good but they could be really, really great if the campaign sections are more streamlined.Also a question: In Rome:TW at least, as I think it was in Medieval II, is the only way to heal up/retrain my units is in cities? I can understand that but that can be a real drag too and take too long; I guess that's another reason why mercenaries are so useful 
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Feb 7, 2013 01:58
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PlushCow posted:Yes! I've been playing a lot of PC games lately and going through my Steam backlog I've started all the Total War games I've bought (oh hey those battles look cool *purchase & never play*), started with Medieval II, and it was fun but man the campaigns starts to really drag for all those reasons you list. I consoled myself just to conquer England, Scotland, Ireland and Paris and move onto Rome: TW. In Empire you could have it retrain in your own province as I remember (maybe in enemy territory too? I can't remember), but you didn't have to be in a city. In Shogun they retrain automatically over time in friendly territory, so you telling it to retrain is removed.
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Feb 7, 2013 04:07
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How is your progress to realm divide calculated? Obviously, capturing provinces are a major factor, but do things like number of troops, level of technology, or heroic victories contribute to it as well?
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Feb 7, 2013 04:07
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