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Eimi posted:Troy not being in 3K's engine is a big part of why I was really biased against it despite liking the time period. I think this is certainly an important part of it. Peeling off the Warhammer part means that the tactical engine needs to stand on its own much more, and that reality is a bit ugly.
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Oct 23, 2023 11:30
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Eimi posted:Troy not being in 3K's engine is a big part of why I was really biased against it despite liking the time period. edit: and I think more should be said about how buildings and economy in 3K worked. In most TW games, every province is essentially identical because you can build the same buildings everywhere so you're just blobbing; in 3K, the farming/peasant vs commerce vs industry separation plus the way minor settlements work plus the building choices in major settlements plus how the tech tree(s) work... is awesome (to me). Instead of blobbing wherever, I feel like I get decisions to make about where to conquer. "I'm teching into Commerce so I should find a way to conquer that commercial port or teahouse" or "should I send an expedition to take this spot since my neighbors are really strong". For any of you that play EU4, its a similar feel as to why I love Monuments - they give me a reason to conquer a specific spot of the map that I may not have cared about otherwise. AAAAA! Real Muenster fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Oct 23, 2023 |
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Oct 23, 2023 14:42
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:edit: and I think more should be said about how buildings and economy in 3K worked. In most TW games, every province is essentially identical because you can build the same buildings everywhere so you're just blobbing; in 3K, the farming/peasant vs commerce vs industry separation plus the way minor settlements work plus the building choices in major settlements plus how the tech tree(s) work... is awesome (to me). Instead of blobbing wherever, I feel like I get decisions to make about where to conquer. "I'm teching into Commerce so I should find a way to conquer that commercial port or teahouse" or "should I send an expedition to take this spot since my neighbors are really strong". For any of you that play EU4, its a similar feel as to why I love Monuments - they give me a reason to conquer a specific spot of the map that I may not have cared about otherwise. It also leads to difficult, interesting decisions in the tech tree. On one hand, you want to tech into colors that augment your economy -- Yuan Shao's starting location, for example, is flush with farms so you want to go down the green tree to make the most out of the food and peasant economy. But on the other hand, all the units on the green tree are variations of spearmanii with a hybrid archer/glaive at the end, which are all pretty redundant with the Warriors of Ye/Defenders of Hebei/Ye Crossbowmen Yuan Shao already has. So maybe you want to tech into blue to get better bowmen instead, but then you'll have to grab commerce techs which won't be all that useful to you. So what do you want to do: tap out at state troop archers or go all the way for Onyx Dragons? Not only is there no right answer here, the calculus is gonna be different for every single faction and that rules.
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Oct 23, 2023 15:52
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Captain Beans posted:Best upgrade to Empire is to play Napoleon instead. Just across the board just about every aspect of the game is better, primarily because the AI can handle things better in Napoleon (campaign, battle). I've read some good things about the Empire 2.0 unofficial patch, and I look at it and i am tempted. But I wonder if whatever Napoleon fan patch out there makes a patched up Napoleon better. And then I do nothing.
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Oct 23, 2023 16:59
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i'd agree that napoleon is better than empire but it's like... very slightly better. the AI is still pretty bad. i'd just play whichever one has the factions/maps that interest you more.
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Oct 23, 2023 17:04
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The biggest issue aside from the glitches and wonkiness is Napoleon doesn't accurately portray how gigantic the battles were in the late Napoleonic wars compared to in the preceding period.
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Oct 23, 2023 17:11
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The trouble with napoleon is that if you have a computer less than three years old Napoleon wont even start.
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Oct 23, 2023 17:19
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pesty13480 posted:I've read some good things about the Empire 2.0 unofficial patch, and I look at it and i am tempted. I always get weird bugs with Empire 2, like whenever I attack cities I deploy within the city for example. I’ve been playing Medieval 2 waiting for a new Empire 2 patch, this time with SSHIP, and having a great time. Hard to unlearn the “always be attacking places” thing I always do generally in TW. Hyrule Total War is still a ton of fun, way better than any of the LotR stuff I’ve played honestly. Also tried the mod that merges CK3 and Attila and it’s absolutely amazing - gonna try it with the CK LotR mod.
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Oct 23, 2023 18:00
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I've tried twice to get into 3K, but bounced off it both times. My first entry into total war games was WH2, and I just got overwhelmed by how complex everything seemed in 3k, and the totally different UI. I want to have another go, does anyone have any tips for a good start to learn the game, what to build, or any recommended mods?
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Oct 27, 2023 02:16
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Control the pace of expansion. It's easy to grab more than you can afford to hold and tank your income with corruption. Pick a theme for any province based on the income type. If you have farms go all in on food production. Bring overwhelming force, nothing worse than waiting many turns for your force to replenish. Same goes for sieges, waiting them out takes some considerable time. Early on replenishment is pretty bad, some research helps. Get into a faction with people that don't live in a direction you want to expand into. It's probably the only TW game with actual working diplomacy that makes it possible to other AI allies to carry you.
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Oct 27, 2023 10:29
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Rush the replenishment tech in the red tree, it makes a huge difference
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Oct 27, 2023 11:08
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Your Brain on Hugs posted:I've tried twice to get into 3K, but bounced off it both times. My first entry into total war games was WH2, and I just got overwhelmed by how complex everything seemed in 3k, and the totally different UI. I want to have another go, does anyone have any tips for a good start to learn the game, what to build, or any recommended mods? For your army, give Gongsun Zan some White Horse Fellows (archer cav that melee/charge ok), his unique Sentinel general Zhao Yun (a total badass) some melee infantry of the same color (I personally love Axemen - charge them into opposing infantry for max effect; they will mulch spear infantry and should be able to beat other purple infantry), and recruit Gonsun's wife, a Strategist (blue theme) and recruit her a Trebuchet and a couple archers. Do not feel the need to fill your army completely initially because that gets expensive. In battle, use the Treb to draw the enemy to your infantry line while your horse archers harass the flanks and arrow other cav down. If you're good at in-battle micro, you can use Gongsun and Zhao to beat up units that are stragglers or isolated on a flank, help kill cavalry, or duel enemy generals - Zhao should be able to beat anyone you run into early game, especially if you can get him a good weapon. Gongsun should be able to beat Commanders (yellow) and other Vanguards (red), but will probably struggle against Sentinels (purple) and Champions (green). For city management, this is where more stuff comes in with the color theming in the game, which was difficult for me to grasp initially but once I got a handle on it, I love it. Red: Charge Cavalry, military techs, military buildings Blue: Archers, commerce techs, commerce buildings Purple: Non-spear infantry, industry techs, industry buildings Green: Spear infantry, farming techs, farming buildings Yellow: Melee Cavalry, administrative techs, administrative buildings Every Commandery is a capital plus at least one minor settlement. The capitals all have the same buildings available to them (with coastal capitals having access to a port buildings). The minor settlements all follow the above themes. Youbeiping has an inland capital + a commerce port (blue). You can specialize your capital to enhance the commerce income from the commerce port via the Inn line of blue buildings. Guanyang has a mine (purple/industry) minor settlement, which I think that mine is what you start off conquering first. Other city management notes: Capitals can be, with enough money, upgraded to tier 10 in one turn (no growth required like in WH2) HOWEVER, cities above tier 4 require food upkeep. Food is of course produced at Farm or Pasture minor settlements, at fishing ports, and at the farm (green) building in capital cities (which are never as good as a farm minor settlement). Therefore with a capital city farm building in the city you take from Liu Yu and in Youbeiping, you can get Youbeiping to level 4 or 5 without issue, but higher than that would be hard. You can trade for food, but it can be expensive. The bigger the city, and the more population that lives there, the bigger the bonus you can get from Commerce income but the worse Public Order gets. No pressure to go too tall here, just pointing out some nuance. I agree with Communist Thoughts about getting the red line tech that gives you 10% replenishment. It sucks having to go like 25 turns only researching red techs for that, but it makes a huge difference. I think thats a good primer on hopefully getting a game off the ground so you can see things develop a bit and get a feel for how some mechanics work so you can build some confidence with how the game works and plays. AAAAA! Real Muenster fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Oct 27, 2023 |
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Oct 27, 2023 16:52
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Your Brain on Hugs posted:I've tried twice to get into 3K, but bounced off it both times. My first entry into total war games was WH2, and I just got overwhelmed by how complex everything seemed in 3k, and the totally different UI. I want to have another go, does anyone have any tips for a good start to learn the game, what to build, or any recommended mods? For more lord specific advice, let us know what starting lords type looking at because there's a lot of advice you can use depending on who you are starting with. Liu Bei is a really great lord to learn on. He starts with an absolute wrecking ball of an army with the peach bros. Once you finish off the yellow turbans he can just circle around and annex all the nearby Han settlements to very quickly get 3-4 provinces. From there just knuckle down for a while and focus on building tall and defending your holdings while your economy comes online. How often does the Dong Zhuo assassination fail to materialize? It usually hits like 8-10 turns in right? I'm like 10 years into my current campaign. The Emperor is an adult now and the court politics has started and he's still sending me troll diplo requests every other turn.
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Oct 27, 2023 17:59
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I want to play Pharaoh despite the negative reviews. I haven’t played Troy or 3K, so the engine or ‘just Troy dlc’ complaints are not a big concern (ignorance = bliss). Everything else is though- how much would I still regret it?
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Oct 27, 2023 18:15
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you're paying full price for something you can get a better version of in a half dozen cheaper games so unless you really love chariots I don't see the point
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Oct 27, 2023 18:18
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Another good starter lord is Sun Jian -- he starts pretty far away from most of the other major powers so you can take your time consolidating and improving your core territories in the south before you start making bigger power plays. Some people find this style a little boring though. The Peach Garden Gang is a raid boss for sure, but you start right in the middle of the Yellow River Thunderdome and will very quickly need to deal with Cao Cao, Huang Shao and both Yuan brothers. Liu Chong and Kong Rong are likelier to be your allies but sometimes they decide they want a piece of you too, you never know. But Liu Bei starts with no territory and you don't lose the game until you have no stacks left, so it's a totally valid strategy to just leave your starting zone and find somewhere a little quieter if you need to.
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Oct 27, 2023 18:19
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Gaius Marius posted:The biggest issue aside from the glitches and wonkiness is Napoleon doesn't accurately portray how gigantic the battles were in the late Napoleonic wars compared to in the preceding period. I feel like Napoleonic warfare is brushing up against the limits of what the total war battle engine can properly convey. It's not just a case of the armies being much, much larger, but also in how much larger the battlefields need to be as well. I think you'd have to fundamentally change the way you control units for proper napoleonic battles because they don't lend themselves well to the same "micromanage every movement and hope the pathfinding and unit AI understands" style of gameplay that total war embraces.
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Oct 27, 2023 18:20
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Sun Jian also has OP instant-recruit mercenaries. I absolutely love his campaign. Once I took Liu Bei down to Cangwu with the intention of taking the peasant income in that province up to the moon but beating up on Nanman sent endless stacks at me and while beating them up with cavalry is fun, it eventually got old.
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Oct 27, 2023 18:23
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Sun Jian also has OP instant-recruit mercenaries. I absolutely love his campaign. Yeah, the mercs are kind of silly and circumvent the whole mustering thing, so it's a lot faster to scale your military operations up and down as the wars come and go. Ma Teng is a start I really want to like, but man the public order penalties just kill me. He has a really good starting locaion. His unique units are all fatigue immune cav and they just dumpster everything early. His story event puts you in a fun opportunity to betray the Han and steal the Emperor at like turn 15.
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Oct 27, 2023 18:51
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LordSloth posted:I want to play Pharaoh despite the negative reviews. I haven’t played Troy or 3K, so the engine or ‘just Troy dlc’ complaints are not a big concern (ignorance = bliss). Everything else is though- how much would I still regret it? I'd just get troy for cheap honestly, it's practically the same game and you can see if you like it. I've heard the mythos dlc is fun but never went back to troy after playing it a decent amount but not really having fun with it.
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Oct 27, 2023 21:31
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Shame then, I was interested in Egypt but I’ll just play Troy and figure out the right price to actually play Pharaoh. I found it for $32 US but I’d rather wait for a sale on some site I’m more confident about. Thinking about it, I might actually have that free copy of Troy on the epic game store, where I’ve never launched any game.
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Oct 27, 2023 21:37
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DeathSandwich posted:Yeah, the mercs are kind of silly and circumvent the whole mustering thing, so it's a lot faster to scale your military operations up and down as the wars come and go.
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Oct 27, 2023 23:37
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Arc Hammer posted:I feel like Napoleonic warfare is brushing up against the limits of what the total war battle engine can properly convey. It's not just a case of the armies being much, much larger, but also in how much larger the battlefields need to be as well. I think you'd have to fundamentally change the way you control units for proper napoleonic battles because they don't lend themselves well to the same "micromanage every movement and hope the pathfinding and unit AI understands" style of gameplay that total war embraces. I feel like having ai sub commanders on your flank would work, but would be incredibly frustrating to play for most people. Although I'm sure Napoleon was also frustrated when Grouchy hosed up checking Blucher and lost him the campaign.
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Oct 27, 2023 23:45
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Being 100% sincere here. Every time I start to ask myself if I should give Pharaoh a shot, I boot up Troy and play a couple battles and then go back to not buying Pharaoh.
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Oct 28, 2023 00:01
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Gaius Marius posted:I feel like having ai sub commanders on your flank would work, but would be incredibly frustrating to play for most people. Although I'm sure Napoleon was also frustrated when Grouchy hosed up checking Blucher and lost him the campaign. That's the other thing, going back to my point about the scale of the battles. They could be massive hours long affairs stretched acrossultiple towns, rivers and geographical boundaries. Total War can at best represent division strength engagements. It would almost be better IMO if the strategic map and battle map were layered atop each other so you could control multiple engagements across a campaign in real time so you could do something like the 1814 retreat to Paris or a multi-front battle like Waterloo.
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Oct 28, 2023 00:04
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i don't want to generalize too much but it really feels like most people play total war games to smash their electronic army man figurines together, not to get an operational-level simulation of warfare. verisimilitude matters a lot more than actual accuracy, if that's the case.
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Oct 28, 2023 00:20
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Anyone remember when Rome was considered so cutting edge that they made an actual, for-real TV show about people playing it? They took it so seriously too, like they were actual commanders, it was hilarious.
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Oct 28, 2023 00:27
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Reiterpallasch posted:i don't want to generalize too much but it really feels like most people play total war games to smash their electronic army man figurines together, not to get an operational-level simulation of warfare. verisimilitude matters a lot more than actual accuracy, if that's the case. Yeah I feel like the nostalgia for Empire and FOTS is more about it being the last time (historical) TW really tried a diffrent kind of gameplay, not that they accurately represented the realities of the conflict.
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Oct 28, 2023 00:49
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I used to wonder what kind of trickery they were using to keep it interesting for the show. My experience of Rome was walking around for a minute or two and a 20 second battle and everything's routed. What a hideous step back it was from Medieval: Viking Invasion.
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Oct 28, 2023 01:13
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Nephthys posted:Anyone remember when Rome was considered so cutting edge that they made an actual, for-real TV show about people playing it? They took it so seriously too, like they were actual commanders, it was hilarious. Yeah I can't remember what youtube channel covered it but they did an interview with CA and essentially how it worked was that they had CA devs behind the scenes trying to follow the contestants' orders as closely as possible. IIRC they had a pretty big bug happen during one of the matches and somehow no one other than the devs noticed lol
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Oct 28, 2023 01:19
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Reiterpallasch posted:i don't want to generalize too much but it really feels like most people play total war games to smash their electronic army man figurines together, not to get an operational-level simulation of warfare. verisimilitude matters a lot more than actual accuracy, if that's the case. Don't get me wrong I really like Napoleon and Fall of the Samurai I'm just spitballing other ways to capture gunpowder line warfare.
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Oct 28, 2023 01:22
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Oh yeah, Time Commanders. They tried to simulate historical battles by offering non-gamers armies and troop formations based on what we know about the historical record. Had professors and historians and stuff as hosts. Pretty fun show, if a bit cheesy, fun to watch 4 people try and run a tw:Rome battle together giving vague commands when the commanders have limited view of the battle field. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkGVh102Tlw lovely quality, but VHS recording of old show. watcha gonna do? 3rd season came so long after the 2nd season that one of the hosts had time to navigate the NHS and transition to female. killer_robot fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Oct 28, 2023 |
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Oct 28, 2023 01:22
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Here's the interview, of course it'd be by the amazing People Make Games people. It's like 10 minutes long, worth a watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b61uwK2Bwps
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Oct 28, 2023 02:09
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yea it's come up a few times but it's crazy how they revived it like 10 years later, got a brand new fancy set, brought back the original hosts, etc etc but only made 3 episodes. why is british television like that
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Oct 28, 2023 02:20
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Yeah Ma Teng is a... annoying (?) start. It's not super hard but there's just a lot of weirdness with it. I got him off the ground once... I think I got his cav down to being like 3 bucks a turn in upkeep thanks to Ma Teng, Ma Chao, and 3 pastures upgraded to tier 5. I had like ten 100% cav armies and it was... quite fun. It's definitely worth considering just intentionally killing Ma Teng so Ma Chao can inherit and get rid of that annoying af public order penalty. Otherwise I guess you could pray for that faction council choice that lets you reroll a stat, but there's a lot of RNG involved and I don't think you even unlock the council position that offers that choice until Duke level.
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Oct 28, 2023 04:37
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Mantis42 posted:you're paying full price for something you can get a better version of in a half dozen cheaper games so unless you really love chariots I don't see the point I've been watching a guy on YouTube, called Lionheart, play Pharaoh and it's battles look mechanically interesting. You can order units engaged in melee to advance while fighting, pushing the opponents back if they are inferior or wrong footed or order the fall back order that draws them. Archers can use fallback stance as a better version of skirmish. Archers are more deadly with direct fire but have more utility/less damage with arching fire. Some units can change between one handed with shield or switch to two-handed for more damage. Which gods you spec into look cool and is generally historically acquarate in that different Pharoah's would attempt to install their preferred pantheon on the populace to control what they learned. The Sea peoples are a growing threat and might give a satisfying endgame. In other words, these are novel expansions on older ideas. When he showed off the other cultures they just seemed to be more boring versions of the Egyptian factions. If they do an expansion into parts of the map to the South and South-East then I would be really interested in how they're handled even if they have to lean into historical guess-work. The guy rarely uses the weather to his advantage so he's not engaging with all the systems but the battles look fine.
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Oct 28, 2023 05:32
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fair enough, I haven't played it (few have lol), and the push/retreat mechanics do sound interesting
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Oct 28, 2023 05:38
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As someone who did 3-4 playthroughs of Pharaoh, it is ironically probably the best historical Total War out there. Competes well with 3K. Like the battles are actually super fluid, lot of additional mechanics. Archers feel good/aren't just broken. Infantry feels good across the various types. Lack of calv actually opens up some new ways to play/unique playstyles. Weather effects actually do matter especially on real difficulties. Campaign map is the best it's ever been. Starts in the endgame crisis, scales as you go. Cities actually have various resources to think about, and the various crisis events can and will destroy your breadbasket. You are forced to constantly adjust/think about next steps. For example I was forced to engage in a few fights/betray allies because I needed their food/growing regions more than they did, especially before the next Sea Peoples Invasion. I actually lost my first attempt at Suppli because a drought started and would not. loving. end. and it devastated my growing regions so badly and I wasn't ready/willing to gently caress up my allied neighbors for food so I wasn't ready for things getting even worse from there. Gods and Court stuff isn't as deep as 3K, but it's pretty well done and gives you a lot of diversity of playstyle. It's ironic but it's really not a "Saga" game insofar as being halfassed. The biggest issue is you really only have the three starter cultures. If the DLC does add something like Greece/Assyria it'll probably match fairly with what 3K ended up being. It just needs one more proper unique culture and it'd be perfect. Right now you basically only have Hittites and Egypt, since Caan is basically just "guy who can play either Hittite or Egypt well" or "guy who doesn't care and wants to destroy both.". They function almost more like a pseudo race then a proper third faction. Wait and see what CA does with the title to judge. If it's DLC is just like, Nubia/Kush/minor new lords it's probably going to be a secondary game to gently caress around with at some point since it's got some neat ideas. But if they actually do get Greece/Assyria/???? in even if it's just one of them I'd say it's a worthy counter to 3K.
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Oct 28, 2023 07:16
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As a big Troy fan except not enjoying the island hopping aspect, Pharoah is made for me, love infantry stuff.
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Oct 28, 2023 16:17
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Yeah I'm having a good time with Pharoah, some of the campaign mechanics seem pretty Melvin if you're familiar with that MTG parlance, but not to an extreme degree
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Oct 28, 2023 16:41
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