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TheHoosier posted:Fair enough. We'll see how it goes. Atilla didn't end up clicking for me for some reason. It also felt like AI turns took forever way too early in the game. Maybe ill give it another shot if Rome II ends up being a bust The turn time is Attilas big problem even on an SSD. Every few months I see it in my steam library and go "hey, how come I never gave this a proper go" install some mods, get excited by the many cool factions then immediately quit due to the turn times. E it also had the classic CA balancing where the hun cavalry army had the strongest infantry and the Roman infantry army had the strongest cavalry.
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Apr 19, 2017 18:23
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One thing I really miss in Warhammer is the old growth system where city income increased as the city grew, I don't think that's a thing anymore. It was a pain in the rear end in ME2 because some cities would basically be worthless for 100 turns but I just like the concept. Feels good.
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Apr 24, 2017 12:34
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is there a decent Empire mod? thats the one I've played least, just a game as India way back in the day. I think I have Napoleon too, whats the best way to do this?
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Jul 30, 2017 02:51
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I love the period of Attila but the turn times are absurdly long and I don't think the actual game... works, like the campaign AI is even more braindead than usual. I always install it and get hyped then get really frustrated when I just cut through Rome or any other rival like a knife through butter as they don't even try to defend their settlements. I was without internet for a couple weeks recently and just played Divide Et Impera for Rome 2 for days on end, with the DeI softcore mod and Faster Battles V2 (why do all TWC fans demand the slowest possible battles?) Despite also having absurdly long turn times gently caress I love that mod. Its kinda ruined Warhammer Total War for me, I dig the streamlining a lot but it also vastly reduces the amount of thinking to be done per turn which is basically the whole reason I play strategy games and also... the ancient world is vastly cooler than Warhammer and I say that as a recovering plastic addict. DeI now simulates population and social class in fun ways, I played as Sparta and they seem to accurately model how few spartans were free citizens so your troops trash other state's hoplites but you can barely recruit any because almost all of your population are helot slaves you refuse to arm for obvious reasons. All factions have 1st class, 2nd class and 3rd class citizen pops as well as foreigners and they affect recruitment in different ways from faction to faction. And of course the regional recruitment stuff thats been in for years is really cool, conquer numidia for their cav, rhodes for their slingers, crete for their archers etc, especially once you get Roman Auxillary barracks and can start pumping out better versions of local troops. Also the regional food system means you can starve your enemies to death and have to rotate your armies between your breadbasket regions and newly captured regions if you want them to replenish. I love historical reskins too, Attila has Fall of the Eagles i think which is unfinished tragically but has some lovely units in it. Its really nice being able to zoom in and get a feel for the people and region you're playing/fighting compared to CA's "everyone looks the same, all barbarians are shirtless with 3 hairstyles" deal. Its nice just having teams of modders gradually replace everything with poo poo from actual sources as much as possible. Currently playing as the Scythians in DeI though and having these long, brutal skirmishing fights with the bosphoran greeks and I'm not sure whether I want to plunge west to conquer Greece, swamping their slow, heavily armoured infantry in horse archers or east into the persian successors who will have powerful cavalry and bow infantry but light armour or south into Africa where everyone is naked and vulnerable to missiles but basically every soldier is also an archer. Or hell, journey to Britain and conquer some swamp folks. tl;dr, DeI owns bones, new update is great. Probably the best TW has ever been. If only the turn/load times weren't insane it'd be the perfect game.
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Sep 6, 2017 16:46
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Mr Luxury Yacht posted:Do you have it on an SSD? Yeah, sadly it doesnt really help the old games, it makes a big difference for TW:WH though yeah. TW;WH is in general MUCH better technically than any of the older games, finally being 64bit and utilising SSDs. I really wish it worked the same for Rome 2, spent most of my evening slowly enroaching towards Serbia as the Scythians, taking a couple hours for like 20 turns, then stuck on warhammer for an hour and got a long way into a Chaos campaign. I am now becoming everything I ever hated though and when I play warhammer I'm like "these battles are just too fast!". DeI has a bit of a problem where basically skirmishers firing into the rear is the ONLY thing that kills/routs with any speed so every battle becomes that, but the battles do feel lengthy and tough and I like knowing even my terrible spearmen are gonna hold long enough to roll up the line. Whereas in Warhammer it kinda feels like everything bashes into eachother and rapidly disintegrates into a mess. TBF I've played a truly insane amount of TW:WH this year, basically every possible team with every possible goal with every possible mod so maybe I'm just burnt out.
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Sep 7, 2017 02:21
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Kaal posted:Super agreed. Total War is fascinating because the way it's advertised and nominally designed is often completely at odds with how it's played. Creative Assembly would do really well to spend an entire design generation focusing on gameplay development, balanced replayability, and AI competency. The graphics are beautiful and there's a wide diversity of units/buildings/tech paths, but 9/10ths of the game is spent zoomed way out, making the same obvious upgrade choices, and seeing the AI make the same stupid mistakes over and over. I think Warhammer was their attempt to do this, since its massively pared down compared to the previous entries so they could distill the mechanics into a purer form. I guess that seems to be somewhat falling to the wayside now they have to release 900 DLCs and a dozen races and also the game is extremely popular compared to the older ones. The WH AI is much more competent but kinda too cheesy, its better than Attila's completely broken AI where the AI just never ever attacks you or even tries to play the game, but in WH the AI just will never engage if they don't have the advantage. This becomes kinda absurd on Chaos who don't have ambush and ambush becomes basically the only way to manipulate the AI into making a mistake and even then you need an army as bait because the AI still knows you're there, its just not allowed to click on you so you need to put a second unit behind your ambusher so it can click on that instead. I think good AI can both play the game but also make mistakes, maybe based on the personality of the nation or whatever, its nice that in some of the old games when you declare war against a nation with an army in the field they will clash with you even if they're at a disadvantage. Actually feels kinda more real, rather than in WH where every single faction from Orcs to Vamps to Humans is constantly dancing out of move range and hunkering down in cities.
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Sep 9, 2017 12:51
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Randarkman posted:
One of the cool things about DeI is how you need to rotate your line infantry or have multiple lines and THE AI DOES IT TOO the battle AI of DeI is pretty great, its much tougher to fight a large army when they wear you out by attrition and hold men back rather than thermopylae erry day, although the cavalry AI isnt as good as it is in Warhammer, it tends to get stuck into stupid fights rather than flank your skirmishers. alex314 posted:After browsing the thread I've installed DEI with 12tpy and faster battles mod. So far it really scratches this RTR itch for me. Having lots of surplus global food and max public order seems to be the best way to grow your population apart from just buildnig + pop buildings. Which pop you want depends on who you're playing as, Rome's great strength is that their elite infantry are all 2nd class proles rather than 1st class nobility like most factions. If you're playing as Sparta it does a good job of simulating spartan apartheid cause the number of spartan citizens is absolutely miniscule compared to your vassals and your huge population of slaves you refuse to arm, so all spartan units require 1st class pop which grows sloooowly. When taking cities the easiest time you'll have is if they're your culture, in which case you Occupy and get to keep half the population, so you can usually immediately start replenishing. If you're not their culture you're gonna be in for 4-5 turn wait for replenishment whatever happens so I often just loot or raze the place, razing is surprisingly good for public order which i suppose makes sense, nobody left to complain. Looting makes you crazy money in DeI. You can also disband units in a new province to transfer population to it, iirc. I don't -think- you can do a lot to the AI supply and population, apparently they are effected somewhat by it but can ignore population mostly and only seem to run out of supplies if they gently caress up badly. (Sometimes the guy you want to invade will helpfully stack 3 armies in his single province and you can invade while they starve.
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Sep 27, 2017 18:46
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Tenzarin posted:Did they fix the issue of the AI razing a town then force marching away? Something you the player can't do because razing uses all your action points. As far as I know the ai can force March and basically do whatever it wants in the same turn They also will NEVER meet you in the field unless they have a stronger force and legit the only way to get them to is by spamming ambush next to a bait stack
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Sep 28, 2017 02:05
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Tenzarin posted:You can get owned trying too do that to if the AI uncovers your army on their turn. It gets really bad if its chaos and their 4 stacks. Only if they have multiple stacks like chaos, otherwise it seems like if an AI army discovers an ambusher it auto ends their movement where they were when they saw you. If you're super lucky you can now hope you have enough movement to attack them, they will retreat, then attack them again.
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Sep 28, 2017 02:24
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as long as the update doesnt break DeI... hell, they should just pay the DeI team to keep making Rome 2 the best TW game
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Nov 6, 2017 16:10
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Deakul posted:Minus the ridiculously spergy parts of the mod, sure. all TW modders just seem to be obsessed with busywork and extremely slow battles where nobody can hurt anyone else
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Nov 7, 2017 17:09
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DeI grand campaign now ends turns 5 seconds faster than TW:WH2 (yes I timed it) so I've been playing a lot of that as Hayasdan and it rules. Got an Armenian empire stretching from Iraq to Greece with Amenian Cataphracts and pseudohoplites backed up more locally composed armies with horse archers from Scythia, hoplites and axemen from Pergamon and big loving two-hander shock infantry from Thracia. The regional recruitment system and reforms (as well as basically all the additional systems) really do keep things interesting much longer than they would be normally, I'm gonna go conquer africa for elephants and numidian cavalry by which time I'll probably have the reforms for pseudolegionaries then I'm gonna team up with the Seleukids and Bosphoros to gently caress up Rome. Hope the new update doesn't totally gently caress everything up. Vanilla R2 just feels so basic in comparison, especially the unit models which have no variety and look like toys.
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Nov 8, 2017 17:52
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GrossMurpel posted:Yeah I think it was the blue Dwarves who hosed me up good. From what it looks like I need at least the next tier of units (Big 'Uns/Black Orcs?) cause Orc Boys might as well be cannon fodder for the regular dwarf units. Probably focused too much on buildings generating dosh instead of units, I just wanted to build up enough money and building levels to get that unbeatable spider unit orc boys are reasonably killy and also hold things up for a bit but the best anti-dwarf option at low tiers are the sneaky stabber goblins who should be sent round into the back of the dwarves and your boys to attack their butts and their archers. they have very high armour pen (as high as saurus last i checked) and become super strong even in a frontal attack if led by a goblin lord with all the + goblin attack red line buffs. they are also easy to flank with since they are faster than anything the dwarves have and also are stealthed even when not in cover. a little later you get regular boar boys who chop dwarves up and dwarves have little answer to beyond shooting them orcs are reasonably straight forward but reward aggression mind you so do a lot of warhammer TW teams, if you do want to go with an easier team I'd go with dwarves, they lack cavalry but their basic infantry is very tanky and act as a very good anvil to lots of nasty guns, empire are beset on all sides with a squishy roster so i wouldn't say they were easy
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Nov 8, 2017 19:58
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. So the way to go is to completely ignore unrest and just keep sacking and taxing the gently caress out of everything? Don't think I've even seen a WAAAGH! yet, that should give you some idea how passive I was being.
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Nov 8, 2017 20:51
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a little concerned about TW Britannia, having not seen anything about it before really I just watched some videos and apparently its basically an expansion of Attila with much less unit variety? I love the Attila time period but I'd say thats the only TW game that doesnt actually work at all. All my games of it have been just been me putzing around with 100 gold income slowly building boring units while the AI does nothing at all. Though admittedly its a little better if you play as either of the Romes. A proper 64 bit engine and such should fix a lot of the technical issues and I cant imagine the CAI will be as braindead but still a little offputting if so, I was kinda hoping TW:WH would signal a clear break from their old stuff, since IMO both TW:WH games are the best vanilla TW experiences. Maybe TW:China will be that instead? Do we have any news of that one? And again, terrible visual variety in the units, all of them are clones with 2 diff colours of hair and cloaks. I guess maybe in 4 years or so there will be a really good mod for it, but that never happened for Atilla. (Sorry for repeating myself in the WH thread, i forgot this one exists)
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Feb 14, 2018 17:31
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:You're supposed to disband your units in Attila often since the upkeep starts out so high. Also the AI ought to be burning down everything Roman and taking their poo poo so idk what is going wrong. I just found in Attila the AI just fled and never battled me, with the exception of if I was the romans, in which case you get some early battles then steamroller everyone or as the huns in which case rome will occasionally send lazy stacks after you (sometimes, the AI is terrible at managing Rome). I remember people saying it was made as a "manage a falling empire" sim and that seems about right, I played as Western Rome and Eastern Rome when I last played and it was the first time I had a good campaign on it and pretty unique too. Age of Charlamagne was okay, the avars are quite fun but I found the other rosters pretty boring and I'm a bit concerned because thats what Britannia looks like to me so far. Some video I saw was like "well they can add in faction variety later, its still in pre-alpha" but its only 2 months away and this is Creative "Still havent added the Norscans to TWH2" Assembley. e: fwiw I'm not expecting horse archers and stuff, just some clear dilineations between the factions Shogun 2 style. also to be clear, I will buy it and all the DLC because Shogun 1 was the first game i ever beat and I've been hooked since then. Communist Thoughts fucked around with this message at 11:19 on Feb 15, 2018 |
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Feb 15, 2018 11:17
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Fhqwhgads posted:Oh wow, I am that far removed from Total War games. That makes me sad that Rome II wasn't good. I'll take a look at Shogun 2 and the Warhammer games, though! warhammer 1 is the best vanilla total war game modded rome 2 is the best modded total war game - oh theres a new dlc for rome 2 lets have a look at the steam comment- quote:Because peoples complaints about this hot garbage are more than fair. You can defend it all you want but I for one won't play this shite; zooming down to the battlefield to see an all female melee unit beating an all male melee unit. I refuse to take part in this forced third-wave feminism and utter lunacy. That is literally game breaking and immersion destroying for me, and probably a lot of others too I'd wager. quote:Lmfao you SJW's defending this nonsense is hilarious, then you say we're the triggered ones. Didn't you cucks invent being triggered and safe spaces? If you think women had substantial military roles you're literally smoking meth. Sure, some women LED some armies or maybe at best played some minor roles in guerrilla warfare, but lmfao an all female heavy mele unit? I laugh at the thought of a female shield wall, literally brings tears of joy to my eyes to think you twink boys get off on that. If you think women have the strength to stand toe to toe with men in sustained combat you are sadly mistaken. oh i... i was going to say it was silly to see numidian chariots... its weird that steam actually has more of these angry incels than TWC now
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Mar 8, 2018 01:21
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anybody know if TW: Britannia is gonna be 64 bit? I'm real worried about it being based off attila cause that was by far the worst running modern total war
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Mar 8, 2018 01:23
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canyoneer posted:Hoo boy, you're not kidding. Some goober was sneering that these factions have been in DeI for a long time, and CA was ripping them off. yeah its stupid, the CA factions look totally different too and fwiw the DeI developers are happy at the changes and looking forward to them incidentally, for no real point, but I always thought the DeI medewi faction that I think will be the Kush faction in in the DLC has some loving awesome looking units lots of varied bodypaint and scarring and cool animal skins, massive props to whoever did that faction its definitely one of the best looking my fav are the... ahah... kulus bomani and haug'ba... thats DeI for you http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?743512-Preview-Medewi i think thats 80% of the reason I like DeI so much, the cool, varied looking units. its hard to recommend overall though cause its like "okay so its like rome 2 but you gotta spend your first 20 turns teching and building farms" looking at Britannia the actual squads themselves look like toys, just 200 copies of the same 2 dudes with diff colour cloaks and most TW games have this problem, I think TW: Warhammer 1 is excellent but its even worse for internal unit variety at least those are actually based on toys though even if on tabletop variety and customisation within a unit is a big deal in DeI and FotE (don't bother) for Atilla the squads actually look like representatives of a specific culture and you can roughly tell how elite they are and their culture just by looking at them
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Mar 8, 2018 01:44
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ZearothK posted:It is, even mentioned in the system requirements. Yay I'll grab it then. All I really want are some historical games that run as well as Warhammer 1
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Mar 8, 2018 19:04
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Fhqwhgads posted:So for Rome II, what are the useful mods to use? I feel like I'm buried under cosmetic/obscure faction/unit mods in the workshop and don't know what UI/QoL mods are out there that are good/necessary. I dunno about vanilla mods, I use divide et impera which is an overhaul and it's softcore difficulty and faster movement submods. You'd probably want the English names mod too. It makes the game more complicated though so if you're new to Rome 2 maybe it's not what you want. If you wanna give it a go it's reasonably easy to get going just build a Barracks first then spam farms then public order buildings while teching towards tier 3 settlements. That's basically all you need to get you to late game
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Mar 9, 2018 14:38
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ZearothK posted:Trip report on the new factions? Anything meaningful to go back to Rome 2 in 2018. I'm not playing with the new rosters but the other stuff seems to be mainly random events and choices giving you small buffs. There are a lot more of them though I think I got the old "someone has started a riot in your city, what do you do?" one about 10 times over 50 turns whic seems excessive
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Mar 9, 2018 15:01
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The AI personalities are important and I think they randomise each game. So a reliable and defensive friend is probably not gonna backstab you but an unreliable expansionist one might
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Mar 9, 2018 16:12
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Mans posted:I literally just ended up downloading Fall of the Eagles. It's not bad it's just half finished and permanently dead. That and Europa perdita (I think it's called) together is supposed to be more or less as good as modded Attila gets but I didn't find much interesting there. The model work from FotE is very good but that's basically it. Attila is dead modwise though there is an up and coming one called Ancient Empires but I have my doubts that will go anywhere. Divide et impera for Rome II is basically where it's at for historical mods. They are extremely dedicated updaters, usually an update every 2 weeks or so and have overhauled combat and stats recently and improved performance a lot . That team rules, I once posted a comment about a bug on a submod of a submod and they repaired it that day! They really put CA to shame imo.
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Mar 10, 2018 05:21
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Arcsquad12 posted:Attila is also pretty drat playable out of the box. I'd rate it third after Shogun II and Warhammer for Total War games in least need of mods to be playable. Just a few tweaks like the unlimited governors mod, lower upkeep and maybe a unit mod are all you need to play Attila. I actually think Attila is the least functioning of all the total wars since empire, ive tried to play it a number of times and the CAI just barely seems to exist. The whole challenge comes from the restricted resources and climate change stuff but I found the AI essentially never opposed me. Shame cause the concept is great and so is the time period (even if they just went, "Huns = Mongols right?") but the only time I ever found it nearly working is if you play as one if the Roman empires. Even then you basically smack a couple barbarian stacks and everyone else makes peace with you then you use your huge income to stabilise for a million turns with 2min turn times. E I think the CAI is probably cause it was the mid point between the old stupid aggressive AI and total Warhammer's dickish AI where it wont fight you if it looks unlikely to win and hovers ever out of reach. Attila AI is like that but won't even make final stands, it just runs away until you conquer the whole faction, whereas Warhammer AI will at least make stands inside walled cities. Communist Thoughts fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Mar 10, 2018 |
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Mar 10, 2018 17:46
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Fire Barrel posted:Generally I've heard Attila tended to work pretty well on release, but I only picked it up at a later date so I may be way off base. Agreed, though, about Empire. I think Empire may have been the worst for me personally, though I say this without having played Rome 2 on release either, which many seemed to be quite disappointed with to say the least. Rome 2 flat out wouldn't run on my PC for about 4 months after release but would run on my lovely laptop, supposedly it's good now but I don't play vanilla anyway
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Mar 10, 2018 17:55
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Asehujiko posted:His invulnerability goes away only if he loses a field battle that he initiates. Wow... That's stupid
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Mar 13, 2018 12:26
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Is Atilla worth getting at this point if I like Rome 2? Late Antiquity is one of my favourite periods. The period rules but I think its the worst modern total war. It barely runs and barely works as a game depending on which faction you play. Other people like it though and it can be OK if you play as one of the Romes. Playing as the ERE was the only time I've had fun in that game AoC included. (AoC runs much faster but has tiny, samey rosters apart from the avars) It sort of seems meant for a big Empire gradually deteriorating kinda like the reverse of a normal TW. It's a shame cause the combat is cool, especially cavalry who are as supreme as heavy infantry are in Rome 2. And fast skirmisher cavalry have never been better. It's such a slog though, I boot it up to play Huns or really any faction and rarely make it past Attila's birth without uninstalling and playing something else.
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Mar 16, 2018 04:08
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reagan posted:Just to reiterate what people have been saying - Rome 2 owns with mods. Attila is hot garbage, but I'm looking forward to the Ancient Empires mod which will turn it into a better Rome 2, but with the family tree and other features that should have been there from the start. I wrote a page or two ago about how that wasn't gonna come out and it looks like I'm wrong. First release will likely be soon It looks like divide et impera but on the Attila engine which sounds... worse? The worst part of Attila is it's engine. It really needed a modern 64bit client. The best part was it's time period but this is just set in Rome 2 time. I still hope it'll be good but looking at it I was just like "hmm why?" it's a huge effort and I don't see the reward and the devs seem to be like "we ported it from Rome 2, hopefully it'll be worth it...?"
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Mar 17, 2018 05:55
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ZearothK posted:I think Attila is the best historical game (caveat, I never played Shogun 2 due to lack of interest in the region), battles are way better than Rome 2 to me and the sieges and urban combat are at their best in the series, plus it has the hardest campaign layer of all the games in general, partly due to all the moving parts you have to balance in each region and partly because of corruption and the decaying climate (until you learn to embrace the goat). My major problem with it is that they really should have used a 64-bit engine for this release. Yeah the siege battles are good, especially the fire stuff, running raider cavalry around towns lighting everything on fire is real cool. Though minor settlements are MUCH harder to take cause they have loads of arrow towers and stuff which plays into the increased difficulty but to me a lot of Attila difficulty mechanics seem like theyre giving you the usual set of TW mechanics but every time you use them wasps fly out of the monitor attack your face and you don't get much to compensate. If it had run as well as warhams I'd probably be way more positive about it. I'm a little concerned that Britannia is based on it, since I was hype for new historical games on the warhams engine
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Mar 17, 2018 14:31
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V for Vegas posted:I'm playing DeI and um, none of my Warhammer tactics are working. I think its the much larger unit sizes - I'll run a cavalry unit around to take out some slingers and the slingers just soak up the impact and then start grinding them down. Then my Hastati are routed by a bunch of Italian spearmen. Alert: this became a wall of text, sorry, I am bored in a train station and enthusiastic. Cavalry need to cycle charge, watch their kill counter after the charge and once they stop killing withdraw them, drag right click to position them ready for a charge (just giving them a usual move order they won't withdraw as effectively) then once theyre all there charge them again, repeat. They should still be routing slingers 1v1 but Roman cav isn't that great until you get some good auxiliaries. Gaulic or Macedonian auxiliaries are probably the closest good cavalry. Cavalry is fairly fragile unless you're playing an eastern faction with cataphracts in which case theyre hard as nails. In general DeI is quite diff from Warhammer, in Warhammer you select a strong unit and right click a weaker unit and it quickly deletes it with minimal losses. DeI is more about hammer and anvil and even tough infantry units will get bogged down by weaker ones. You can use this to your advantage by having a screen of crappy auxiliaries in front of your expensive pro units that will wear down the enemy. Think of it as playing dwarves where your infantry are tough but not killy and they hold the enemy line while you put skirmishers or cav behind them. You gotta attack their butts to kill quickly in DeI (or use shock cav on weak units/non-peltast skirmishers) frontal attacks are slogs. Cause I'm a huge nerdo DeI fan and I always like faction suggestions here are my fav factions: Rome, obvs, best use of the auxiliary system, extremely strong units past the first reform. Hayasdan, good unique unit selection, strong cav, automatic reforms(!). Selukids, strong pike roster and big and wealthy start, good for playing as an Empire from the beginning. Macedonia, early lancers, strong hoplites, positioned to strangle Rome in the crib. Massalia, Greek barbarian hybrid positioned to smack barbs about. Scordisci, huge varied roster of semi barbarians Basilia Scythia, (sp?) horse Archer swarms, make the Greeks fear you. Pontos, similar position to Hayasdan but with greek/persian hybrid roster so hoplites and hybrid melee archers, with extremely good auxiliary lancers. Then there are the strong gimmick factions: Rhodes, amazing slingers Syracuse, amazing crossbows Thracians, amazing shock infantry Partha, amazing cataphracts Numidia, amazing javelin cav Nervii, amazing naked javelins Best archers are Cretans or Syrians but can't play as Crete. And finally, the best looking faction: Medewi, awesome African roster that looks sweet on the march with early elephants and good javelins. Theyre redoing Carthage soon which is good, it's a bit lackluster at the moment.
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Mar 18, 2018 15:22
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Fuligin posted:Thanks for this, I'm still coming to grips with dei. Any insights on sieging? Auto resolve always seems absurdly tilted against me, and it's kind of a pain in the rear end I basically always encircle cities and let the garrison come to me because of the aforementioned tilted autoresolve. Maybe someone else has some better advice cause I rarely do actual siege assaults unless I'm playing someone with awesome infantry like Rome or Sparta, just cause I'm a lazy coward and I know how to win in field battles, in which case just ladder or siege engine up the walls, ram or catapult the gates and always attack from multiple fronts cause the AI can't handle split defending.
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Mar 19, 2018 19:38
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reagan posted:Can you explain what you mean by engine issues? I know it is hot garbage for Rome 2, since it was designed for Empire Total War, which was a bunch of guys forming a line and shooting one another from across the map, which results in hand-to-hand combat in Rome 2 being total poo poo. The engine is just super slow, I'm not entirely sure why, I imagine they basically tried to make a modern game in the Rome 2 engine and so turn times are absolutely abysmal even with mods that remove insanely stupid things like how when any faction razes a settlement it plays a little 5 second animation even if you can't see it. The battle engine is okay, still seems to be poor for hand to hand combat though, but light cavalry are represented very well, they're super fast and nippy and they made general units much, much stronger to an almost Warhammer level. I personally think ranged combat is a bit worse than Rome 2 but that might just be bias, its been a while since I played it. Every now and then I hear about people liking it and give it another go then quit by year 420(eyyy) every time. If you don't care for the setting I'd give it a miss since thats its major selling point but if you are interested in a harder, unforgiving campaign thats basically trying to destroy your fledgling empire through lack of goats at all times then give it a shot. Playing as ERE or WRE is a pretty unique total war experience, since you're starting big and struggling to stay big, rather than starting small and trying to get big and can be a good challenge and reasonably enjoyable apart from that you start with dead garrisons that dont seem to replenish. It doesn't work very well for the smaller factions IMO. The huns are okay (though CA was just like "Huns are mongols right?" theres only a thousand years distance between them), being all light cavalry which dominate in this battle engine but were added as an afterthought since they were supposed to be an AI threat not a playable faction. Theres a lot of neat ideas in it, more than in Rome 2 but I just don't think it comes together well enough. I'd say its the weakest TW since Empire but even Empire I "finished" a Maratha campaign to my satisfaction, finishing an Attila campaign would mean dozens of hours of steadily increasing unit upkeep (high tier units outright replace lower tier units, and you cant recruit the lower tier ones once you've researched their upgrade), dropping public order and starvation. Some people love that stuff but its not for me. Agreed that DeI is basically the best TW game, though TW:WH1 comes close imo, theres just so much to discover and so much... i dunno, effort and love put into it. For example, Sparta is a really interesting faction in DeI, in vanilla and most games they would just be the strongest soldiers faction but in DeI since they simulate social class they actually do a decent job of simulating spartan apartheid. Your spartan citizen hoplites are extremely strong and their main strength is their heavy infantry have the stamina of light infantry (due to all those naked calisthenics) and nearly unbreakable morale so can fight harder and longer than their neighbours. However, they are recruited from the 1st class population pool which is very small, and hardly regenerates in conquered territories, so just like was apparently the case you end up with 1% of your forces being fearsome spartan citizens and the rest being nearly as fearsome 2nd class client warriors and then shitloads of terribly armed and trained helot slaves. On top of this their cavalry is shockingly bad, there is no reason to ever recruit spartan citizen cavalry unless you are roleplaying, in other games they'd be like "spartan cavalry? must be super sick right?" but in DeI they appropriately have them be terrible since the spartans were such bad horsemen they just instead named their heavy infantry "horsemen" to not feel left out. So you end up with a precious core of Spartan citizens being totally carried by their vassal warriors and auxilliaries while still thinking they're superior. The only issue is they get a reduction in slave rebellions when they should get an increase imo.
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Mar 19, 2018 19:57
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oh and in a classic example of CA's inability to play their own games or balance things, on release rome had the strongest cavalry in the game and the huns had the strongest infantry ... er
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Mar 19, 2018 20:01
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DeadFatDuckFat posted:Probably not. If you play it, definitely get some friends and drink some booze while voicechatting. It's not a super serious game, the rounds are short and you don't have to see the whole battle through if all your dudes are dead. I haven't played it since it left steam, but pulling off successful hammer and anvils as Alexander was the most fun thing in the game for me. He was good, also cynane full Archer army in tiers 1-3 I don't know if she still has it but she used to have this absurd triple tap move where you could get archers to fire 3 volleys in one and combined with unlimited ammo and a selection of expendable ammo types ranging from basically javelin arrows to armour and shield piercing arrows that can shred legionaries from the front archers were crazy in that bracket. The most fun though was the barbarian general who could appear to be friendly to the enemy so you'd act like a retreating friend and charge naked maniacs into the rear flank. Like Alexander he had a charge boost move unlike Alexander it worked on infantry and cav. Oh also there is friendly fire so you just hail arrows into a melee and it's like "warning you're ruining this melee scrubs day" and nobody even remotely cares apart from the poor dude getting friendly fired. Also also pike infantry hurt your friends too and were woodchippers so sometimes you'll have a unit of pikes guarding the base and someone will move order their cavalry through them and the entire unit will die in seconds. Communist Thoughts fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Mar 20, 2018 |
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Mar 20, 2018 03:53
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Deketh posted:Speaking of DeI, I want to actually play a Rome 2 campaign since I was so disappointed by the vanilla launch and barely touched it since. I'm wary of these massive overhauls though, because of nerds cramming in pointless busy work, "feature" bloat and making battles last forever. Does DeI suffer from this? Are the submods that tone it down required for fun? When I first started playing battles were insanely long, they have updated it about a million times since then, so people may have an out of date idea of how slow it is. I think in general that bears mentioning, DeI mod runs faster, plays faster and is just plain better than it was when I started playing it about a year ago. Turn times are still fairly long but shorter than Attila and about on par with Mortal Empires in TW:WH2 (except the campaign is good, jk jk sorta) and they fixed the crappy FPS so it now runs smooth even with the huge units and giant battles. I run with just the softcore mod that doesn't affect battles at all and they're fine now. Longer than TW:WH but so is practically every total war. They seem about as long as a Shogun 2 battle now though obviously will slow down if neither side has any killy units. They even boosted movement speed, (loving modders love making all soldiers run at a leisurely walk I don't know why) and now fast cavalry are FAST. In terms of feature bloat there is the supply system (also recently reworked, now I basically never run out of supplies whereas that used to be a constant issue) just build the odd farm if you're gonna have armies hanging around there, and the population system which simply means you recruit units from certain social classes and can run out of manpower. Rome has a big advantage cause it recruits all its good units from its big plebian social class whereas barbarians etc may recruit their armoured warriors from the small nobility. Otherwise you usually have huge amounts of "foreigners" you can recruit as different units depending on the province, sometimes amazing (syria), sometimes shite (mesopotamia). It used to be I'd need battle speed, movement speed and various other mods, now I just use the softcore one out of habit mostly, it just lowers the PO penalties and makes the AI a little more willing to be diplomatic, I've played without it and its fine too. They recently overhauled all the stats and the battle animation system, so its in a very different place than it was recently, pikes are no longer invincible lawnmowers and they recently toned down hoplites a bit who had assumed that position. Electronico is right about there being some dead turns though, it depends on your start, Rome or Seleukids are good for not really needing a ramp up to start kicking in doors and stabbing faces and most greek factions can take on most neighbours with a stack of hoplites and archers. Most Barbarian factions take a whiiiiile to get going though. Check it out, play as Rome or your favourite Greek faction and it will rule. That goes for anyone who previously played it and wrote it off for being too slow and cumbersome. Starting tips to help newbs: -First buildings should be Barracks then Farm>Fields (I always go field, i dunno if the others are situationally better). -First research should be rushing tier 3 settlements, your income will go from weak to extremely strong as soon as you crank out some tier 3 trade capitals. -Capital buildings should be Sanitation, Gymnasium (or other +PO equiv) and Library, then go nuts. -Get trade agreements with everyone. -Get NAPs with anyone you aren't gonna invade in the next 10 turns. -Killiest units (currently): Elephants>Shock Cav>Archers (When i started playing it was all about javelins but they seem to be inaccurate now, massed bows are much more reliable) -Phalanx units like hoplites and pikes need a bit of micromanagement for their full potential. While in phalanx a single click makes contact with the enemy, a double click pushes into the enemy, doing more damage but potentially taking more damage in turn. For extra fun charge hoplites into the rear, activate phalanx and keep pushing until they're steamrollered. e: oh also if you want a game thats as fast or faster than shogun 2 just play Caesar in Gaul or the bespoke Macedonian Wars campaign for DeI, though the latter is a bit boring cause its just 15 flavours of greeks and some romans, and both lack the reform system that keeps the game interesting and is one of DeI's best bits. sorry to keep posting entire novels about this mod, i don't know if it comes across but I -really- like it. Its not perfect but for my money its the best TW campaign there is just for the depth and the addictive feeling of exploring the world collecting the best of each type of unit in the world like pokemon (yes please I will have some archers and elephants from syria, some shock infantry from thracia, slingers from rhodes, hoplites from sparta and a bro-team of cavalry from scythia and macedonia) Communist Thoughts fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Mar 20, 2018 |
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Mar 20, 2018 18:51
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Deketh posted:Very cool of you to write this up, thanks man. Gonna give it a go as Rome. you're welcome, just try and stop me posting about DeI haha e: just thinking, the other two mechanics i didnt mention are: AoR recruitment: you can recruit diff units in diff provinces on top of your core roster. They have a little banner on their icon to differentiate them. Reforms: Most of the big factions have reforms which introduce new units or replacements for old units. They are triggered by Imperium level which is only impacted by the amount of territory you occupy (with a bonus for complete provinces) and number of turns. quote:Rome You basically have to conquer half the map to get the imperial rome upgrades but when you do you get awesome local stuff like Imperial Cataphracts and Germanic Legions Communist Thoughts fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Mar 20, 2018 |
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Mar 20, 2018 19:32
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Shogun 2 was great at the time, recently my graphics card exploded so I had to switch to that and it's decent but I think some of people's love for it is: A) its by far the most technically optimised out of the total wars (runs amazing on ultra with 1gb vram, has SLI support etc) and FAST TURN TIMES!!!! B) Has the best unified art style of any of the total wars, even though the units look ugly as hell close up and are all identical this probably allows for A C) Has rock paper scissors units without there being a hundred permutations of each, which some people love and some people (raises paw) dont D)FotS is the best and last gunpowder TW Despite this as soon as I could I went back to the more modern games and though good it has some problems: I think the campaign layer is limited and easy, generally I steamroll across several factions with a single stack. Siege defence looks sweet but is a bit meh, super easy on defence and super hard on offense and the higher tier your city the worse it is at defence (though this makes you choose between small easily defended forts and sprawling cities). No unwalled towns to attack, AI can March in and burn your farms which would be a neat thing if it didn't just result in making the AI fight you harder. In FotS there's not a huge amount of reason to upgrade your gun levies since guns kill everything no matter who holds them. Despite the rock paper scissors balance and limited units the game is still not that balanced, basically any western unit shits all over everyone especially ships and I see the point but then the only reason to not rush those Spanish armoured soldiers every time is role playing. I would genuinely like to know what things people think makes FotS the best? Maybe I'll go back and give it another go, I definitely liked it when it came out. It's definitely up there but I think it now beginning to age poorly and wonder if this is just one of those things that hangs around as gospel for a while. Communist Thoughts fucked around with this message at 13:07 on Mar 21, 2018 |
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Mar 21, 2018 13:03
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As much as I love DeI Rome 2 kinda sucks without it. For me the best vanilla TW would be Warhammer 1. I prefer DeI but WH1 is unarguably a better game from my PoV. It did a get a bit bloated and slow towards the end though culminating in WH2 mortal empires being about the most bloated and slow TW since Attila with a series of problems any total war player could immediately predict since they boasted about the huge map and most factions ever in a TW. Thinking back on it, with it's beautiful art direction, reasonable balance and strong optimisation was Shogun 2 developed by a different team or something? Those are some very un-CA traits.
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Mar 21, 2018 16:33
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:None of the Clausewitz TW games have ever been that great because the campaign AI is programmed to be annoying rather than fun. The AI is programmed to be a poo poo and do some of the things a human player might do in the same situation, but the game mechanics are too shallow for the player to respond in a meaningful way. When the AI sends a single unit to raid your farms, there's nothing to be done besides ignoring it, or conquering the AI. When the AI invades you then runs into your heartland by keeping juuuust ahead of pursuing armies, all you can do is reload or lose something important. In FotS, this comes to a head with bad naval battles, bad naval autoresolve, and an AI that will build and send fleets at you all game. I think this annoying rather than fun AI culminates in Warhammer sadly, the battle AI is better than its ever been, the AI can use cavalry for example and always tries to get your rear skirmishers by going around the side whereas in Rome/DeI it just plows cavalry right into your pikes (though DeI at one point had rather impressive BAI where it would correctly use reserves and was actually pretty dangerous because of it since it wouldnt just lay its whole army across your anvil. That seems to have gotten lost in some update or DLC patch somewhere) but the campaign AI is basically just a dick. Always hovering outside of reach, never giving you an equal battle if it can help it, you really have to game it with ambushing to get it to ever put its army in a disadvantageous or neutral position. Its a bit better than Attila's AI though which had that but it wouldnt even stop running when you approached its final city, it'd just let you roll over Rome or whatever while it hides at the edge of the screen, whereas the WH AI at least makes last stands. What faction/goal would people suggest if I give FotS a go? I've nearly run out of factions in DeI so could probably use a break. (hmm orr I could play Parthia and conquer the world with cataphracts or Skythia and burn greece to the ground... or the custom indian faction, those armoured macemen and armoured elephants seemed pretty tough last time i was- NO! help!)
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Mar 21, 2018 22:15
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