Your first TW experience

[Anarius]

..Except tutorials. What was very first experience with TW? What was your expetations? Were you disappointed? Post your little story here!

My first Total War experience:

I'm not a scarred Total War veteran, with medallions all over my jacket. But I did start with MTW. I was late though, I had read about it in a magazine, and I were super hyped about it. But I forgot it at some point, only to see it really cheap in a shop later. That was the start of a love story.

After completing the tutorials, I started a campaign. I was looking for Norwegians in there ( ) But with no luck. I decided to take the next best: Danes. I had no idea how to manage economically, and the campaign was a disaster. But I have some fine memories, like when I found out sending bishops to the papacy did nothing, and when I lost my first battle.

My first battle:

Sweden
The weather was foggy and miserable, as the Danish cavalry rode through the landscape. No barbarians in sight, only a small pack of buildings. Suddenly, the Swedes appear and charge them with savage screams. The cavalry have no time to charge. The battle doesn't take too long. In the end, lots of Danes and Swedes lie dead upon the field. Later the swedes are conqerored, but at a high cost.

[Kaidonni]

I started with MTW back in 2002...it didn't last long, but...I was overwhelmed! I now have MTW: Gold Edition, and I keep getting put off RTW and M2:TW (yeah...I am a more nostalgia-based gamer - I prefer the older games I grew up with - Doom, Doom 2...Heretic...Age Of Empires: Gold, Age Of Kings: Gold...Medieval: Total War Gold...heh, funny story behind the last three mentioned - I ended up buying the Gold Editions because I couldn't resist a return to the fold).

At least now I know what I'm doing in MTW...and it keeps my attention for longer than RTW. Even the dreaded 'Just one more turn...I want to see how much extra income that new Port gives me next turn' problem has returned......right after the 'Just one more turn...I want to see how much extra income that Merchant will give me next turn'...

PS: That 'Just one more turn...' thing was last night...LOL! I'm playing Sicily/Early/Hard/GA - but without massive expansion. 1120, and I own Sicily, Malta and Naples. I'm not intending on world domination. I'm in my little corner of the world, with a prosperous maritime nation - the envy of the world. The only two wars I've had have been with Byzantium - took Naples from them. Got a ceasefire from Emperor Alexius II after his predecessor rejected the proposal the turn before. Then one of their ships attacked mine (I won). I accepted their offer of a ceasefire. I feel like my Kingdom Of Sicily (my surname is Norman, and Sicily was Norman-controlled in the 10th and 11th centuries AD) is a nation to be proud of, with a developed infrastructure and a well-managed small part of the world. Not over-extended at all. The envy of the world, I bet - though no one admits it. Only 4 Influence on King Adam II...

I have no intention of world domination this campaign. Seems...too...unrealistic. I like having variety on the campaign map. So at least this once, I'm not going to be power hungry. I like my nation I've forged - and it will gain more land. All in good time. Just I won't be overly ambitious. You could say I'm playing with great respect for the other factions.

[Ruhan Zarathustra]

My first TW experience was with Shogun. I got it cause, uh, it looked and sounded cool. I don't recall there being a lot of hype for it, especially pre-Mongol Invasion. I flipped a coin to decide between Hojo and Takeda and Hojo won (Which means that my, probably, hair dye using alternate universe self probably started with Takeda...). I lost a few of my early battles, but never really lost territory... cause, well, I had insane defenses (Three cheers for Hojo koku and Hojo walls). Honestly, I never really play Hojo when playing STW anymore (Unless it's not the standard start, cause on the earliest the Hojo do have a hard time about it). It was quite interresting and, for some reason, in STW my diplomacy always works better... Takeda stayed allied with me in that first game until after the Oda clan was virtually eliminated and we were co-rulers of the vast majority of the core island of Japan.

I generally play Takeda now, I still prefer economic build ups... but that I'm willing to pay more for, I greatly prefer highly mobile armies. Shogun was awesome...

[Henry of Grosmont]

MTW, week after it was out - got it as a present. I, actually, didn't have any ecpectations. I was: "Another "Civilization" type game, whatever". The truth is, first couple of minutes (started as England), I was shocked. Still till now. It was the game, that I was dreaming of, since I was 12 (I'm 29 now). Then it was Viking Invasion (oh, yeah).
After that, I bought Shogun and Mongol Invasion, liked it a little less. But I was addicted already, and nothing could spoil my fun.
Rome, as a game - not talking about graphics, I like less then MTW, but more than STW (my own opinion).

Edit. Hehe. Just saw my post again^. I was, probably, drunk when I wrote it. Bit it's all true...

[Favre]

In played STW when i was about 8 or 9, just picked it up off of one of the shelves. Back then i remmeber all i did was historical battles and i thought thats all the game had to offer. I wasnt the sharpest tool in the shed back then and i dont think i ever figured out the campgin because i still have the game, but have no recollection of ever playing the campaign. So, that was my first expierience but i soon became bored with cusotm battles only and stopped playing it. Bout 5 years later i decided to play RTW, then got into MTW a bit.

[carl-the-conqueror]

my first experience of shogun - it crashes, and couldnt close it(never got te hang of it anyway
mtw my freind was playingit, but wasnt doing particuarly well.
rome total war(first ever): i remember hoow amazed i was at our empire (salona, croton and tarentum :

[KaerMorhen]

Shogun TW of course and my favorite Clan Shimazu and long lasting rivalries with Mori and Imagawa clans, o yes those were the days Latter on I'd loved to play as Uesugi and Takeda clans and of course Oda. Takeda Shingen, Oda Nobunaga and Uesugi Kenshin my heroes,....and by any chance the if any of you TW maniacs know if Uesugi Kenshin and "Tiger of Echigo" is same person let me know by post it!

[Spartan156]

Rome total war gold edition. ABSOULTELY AMAZED!

[Oddball_E8]

I remember i got to play a battle on my friends computer... it was on Shogun: Total War, i dont remember the faction or anything, but there were alot of warrior munks and his leader was exceptionally good (but very low on numbers... i think something like five bodyguards)...
i started by lining up my troops in two lines with my general at the front and i was going to attack the enemy through a valley with tree covered hillsides... once i reached the enemy lines the AI burst out of the woods with more units and completely surrounded my units... they were cut down to the very last man, but the general got something like a hundred kills... with his five man bodyguard!

now that i think of it... why dont the ai ever hide in woods and make surprise attacks like that any more? in Shogan you could count on the enemy hiding something in the woods on your flanks if there were any... so why dont they do that any more... the AI has only gotten dumber and dumber it seems...

[Pelican Man]

Well, my first recolection of TW was with Shogun, my buddy was playin it and I just got into history at that time, somethin like 6 years ago or so, well, he was playin, and i was over at his house watchin tv (his rents were gone , so i got drunk... lol) and He wanted to know if I wanted to cover a couple of turns for him while he made somethin to eat, well.... that was the biggest mistake of his life. lol I played for I think 3 hours, figuring things out, and then I asked if i could borrow it. I still have the game. lol haha and all the rest of the TW games I have bought after Shogun have been amazing. Too bad the AI has gotten dumber in RTW, but thanks to the DARTHMOD team, I have still kept on playing it. Anyways, this game is worse then cigarettes.

THE P-MAN

[JHS]

The shogun total war demo, which was ages ago now. I remember playing that last battle in it over and over.

[Turkeys!]

medival total war i forgot which faction but i remember blitzing through the almohads

[Darkragnar]

I started playing with Shogun, back then haveing more then a 100 unit's on screen was a big big achievement, but with Shogun TW u could have a battle with 3000 men, it abosoltly blew my mind then, and i coudnt care less the unit's were 2d or not. The No of units and the fact that it was set in The Sengoku Jedia Peorid of Japan was what pulled me in, not a lot of diffrenet games come along and Shogun was the Exception.

I had a lot found memory's of STW but 1 that i can recollect is from MTW , i was playing as the dane's and i had just begun the Early Campaign, after a couple of turn's and a few battles a prince of mine reached Honour level 7! but unfortunatly all the men in his unit go killed in the last battle and he was all alone in his unit, That Man i remeber routed an army of 300-400 people single handeledly while fighting on a bridge!. After that battle i started calling him Dracula for because that man could wipe out army's of peasent's single handedly since there wasnt anyone with him in his unit.

[wopup2]

*Sigh* When I saw the game at the store, I was interested. I bugged my mom into buying it and it was the greatest uninformed investment I have ever made. My mother made me wait, so I was excited to start playing it. I toltally STANK at playing early on. I started as the English, but everything went bad. There were rebelions all over. Thousands of soldier came out of nowhere. They were the biggest armies I had ever seen (TO THAT POINT, I have seen bigger since then). I had only a few units stationed in all of England, so I quit. I Emediately started a new game as the English. I did much better. I took over the whole island and took Aragon, Narrave, and Provience. (I KNOW I spelled those wrong, sorry) It then went slowly. I allied with the French and Spanish and we became close friends. I was at war the the Germans (Since the beginning of the game) and the Italians, who eventually took over the Germans. The Spanish were eventually conquered by the Almanhads. May they rest in peace. In all my campain games, I have never seen any faction fight as hard as them. The French experienced rebellion. The Almonhads conquered the sea as well. This almost was my down-fall. I eventually carved an empire in the shape of a cressent across Europe. It was THEN that things went bad. The Egyptians attacked me, Causing my fragile aliiance with the Almonhads to die. They eventually attacked me by sea. (I did not realize at the time that controlling the sea tiles meant instant movement) I felt so upset. My heartland was attacked, I was so angry that I stopped playing that game. I didn't come back to it for months.
After I had won several games I went back to it. Not only did I conquer 60 % of the World, I also conquered 100% of the World. I was happy then.
All-in-all, It took me a year to finish that campain. I will never forget its vivid details. It all felt like one day.

[Scar Face]

My first campaign (And to this day, my favirete) was Hungary. At my height, I reached from Kiev/Cremia in the East, to Rome in the west, to Athens in the south. I never fought the HRE, we were powerful allies, this is one of the few games where they stood strong, eventually launching a three way invasion on France, the British isle's, and Iberia. It was an awsome game, even with me pushing the Byzantines out of Europe, they held on against the Turkish advance for 30-50 years! Because they were so weakened, it was the Turks, not the Egyptians, who took down the Byzantines. I constantly was spying on the war, it really interested me. Eventually, the Byzantines captured Rum and were on the verge of victory, however, they tried to recapture Constinpole. When I defeated them a few turns later, and about 3 of their armys, the Turks capitalized on those defeats. Within ten years, the Byzantines were barely holding on. However, I was starting to decline in power. I was constantly fighting the Pope in Rome (Refusing, due to asthetic reasons, to allow them freedom) and putting down rebellions else where in Italy. Likewise, I was having a race with Poland on who could take most of Russia, I was wrong when I said Kiev was my eastern border, it was peresyavle, and for a few years, a few provinces above that.

However, the Golden Horde came. They came for Poland first. Poland held land from everthing south of Moscow, right up to peresyavl. They clashed with the Golden Horde for years, and since we were long term allies (Even though rivals) I decided to intervene on their behalf, they had lost most of Russia by this point. After a few clashes, my armies stood their ground, but were broken and tired. The only reason I was saved from the Golden Horde, was because I hired hundreds of mercs. Crushing my economy. The Golden Horde took all of Russia except for Kiev, and with my economy buckling they finally were gaining headway. Likewise, the Turks were attacking me in Constinople. The Golden Horde was so powerful in fact, that when it decided to fully focus on the Turks (Who now had control of Egypt as well), it took them only 4 years to destroy them. They conquered the Eastern half of Asia Minor, and killed their last king in Antolia, thus it all broke up. Man, it was a hard campaign. I left around 1300, massivly in debt. The HRE however, was pushed out of Spain, and most of France, it held only a small Imperial enclave in Britain (All the powers they conquered had re-emerged).

Best campaign ever. I really wish the HRE could be that stable (Not that powerful maybe) every game.

[Erwin Rommel]

Ah my first Tw experience, what i first saw was a battle scene that i can still vividly remember! they were chivalric knights riding towards a trebuchet. For a kid like me who has played with sim city, close combat, age of empires, this game is so awesome, literally my jaws drop cause what i saw next were thousands of men. i could not believe that such thing is possible cause when i am playing other game the only thing coukd be 200 and that will already make the computer kind laggy, anyways on to jaw dropping part. i was given a chance to play the game after a little while (it was one of my relatives who was playing). since i'm rts fan before MTW i'm kind of confident that i don't need tutorial so this is my first battle, i click straight to historical campaigns there i choose mongols (since i was age of empires and my campaign there are the mongols). it was the battle of a river with 3 bridges, i was so overwhelmed with the graphics that i totally forgot about my units! anyways i manage to turn the side in my favor, but what really amazes me to this day is how there archers fire, it was so realistic unlike other games were the range is like what? 2-10 meters and thats just one guy! when i was hovering to the battle field , arrows darted through the screen and i said what the **** was that then i realise they were archers (that high and that long? damn!) long story short, i stick to the game till i gopt rtw which is 2006 i got MTW 2003 and now i'm 16 yrs old and by the way that bridge battle was a victory!

[HorseArcher]

Wow, good thread, interesting to read all these alternate histories, makes me want to reinstall the good ol' MTW or STW!

I didn't get into the TW games until MTW was shipped. I was then a suscriber to PCGamer magazine and the demo came on the disk. There was rarely any demo available on the net to download, not to mention, I had phone-internet and I only used it to check my mail and log off to save money (lol).

So anyway, I got the demo disc, which featured the mission of the 3rd crusade, with Frederick Barbarossa. Anyway, I had to have my troops against the town wall and I had to wait. My jaw dropped to the floor when the view front of me was filled with nothing but with the turks flooding down on the sand dunes and the dust they kicked up. I said, damn!! I tried to play the game like I was used to play the command/conquer style and I got completely pwned, then I was suprised, that someone actually would make a 3D battle game that requires strategic thinking, instead of the cookie cutter RTS games, in which you just mass-rush everything with what you got.
I was sold on the demo, and later when it came out, I immediately bought it and played it for over like 3 months, 6 hrs a day. (then went down to like 3hrs a day every other day ;-)

Later I bought the STW with mongol invasion and played a few campaigns.

There is no way I can compare MTW or STW to M2TW or RTW, because that would be like comparing chess to LEGO.

[ShadowDrake]

I got MTW Gold on a "because I felt like it purchase" at microcenter for $20 (this was 2005, i guess). I remember my first campaign as the Almohads. I kicked butt until I got to france and egypt, then the PC crashed and the hard drive went out the window. But I kept playing until I saw the news that M2TW was coming out. Not able to wait, I grabbed RTW Gold and played that until M2TW came out. Though when you look at the AI, its a steady downward slide from medieval. I mean, I actually lost battles in MTW!

[ShadowDrake]

I got MTW Gold on a "because I felt like it purchase" at microcenter for $20 (this was 2005, i guess). I remember my first campaign as the Almohads. I kicked butt until I got to france and egypt, then the PC crashed and the hard drive went out the window. But I kept playing until I saw the news that M2TW was coming out. Not able to wait, I grabbed RTW Gold and played that until M2TW came out. Though when you look at the AI, its a steady downward slide from medieval. I mean, I actually lost battles in MTW!

[Hells Bells]

i bought it a store, the battle chest, looked at it and thought itd be like the regular rts games, but with different camera. Took 3 hrs to install. Played it and couldnt stop for months. Thats before i got bored with mtw2 after a week.

I played viking invasion first, i was the irish, i remember the gallowglasses being almost unbeatable. Battles were alot different from in other games, i had started out rts on warcraft orcs and humans, with my strategy being one of squad based trench warfare, inching along from defensible position to defensible position. I would try to do that with zero casualties, so i think thats the reason i never got into the rush/build games.

I had tried that strategy in age of empires 2, didnt work. The enemy always got more men than it was posssible to ambush and kill and eventually i had to just set rally points and mass.

I tried medival, and the old tactics worked like new, setting up a strategic ambush and hubanding your forces, gain you the victory. The turn based elements i liked the best, now instead of pointing, clicking and missing, then losing because i converted all my gold to wood, there was no rush and all calcuations were done after the turn was over, so there was time to think.
Also the scope of what you could do was really amazing, i once gave a princess to a prince and it said the matter would be hushed up. I havent gotten to do that yet in mtw2, and havent figured out how to ask for a foreign princess in marriage yet. EVerything in mtw was simple. like a board game. Yet it was also complex too, because the simpler something is, the more time you can spend on detail.