The TW series is dead. Everything after Medieval II sucks!

[Carracalla]

It's funny that one option is about "Failhammer" since Warhammer games have been really good TWs compared to many others

That option is so blatant bait for trolls and blind fanboy's. It did have some problems but thoose are in many of the warscape entries, but a failure it ain't.

[Alwyn]

I play TW since TW Shogun I. Empire and Napoleon are not in my interests but they suffered from the entire diferent way they had to "fight" comparing to previus titles.
Shogun II was a pleasant surprise. But here is something odd.
In Shogun II (and in ETW)a player can assault to an enemy ship and capture it. Nothing similar in both Rome II and Attila!
In Shogun II TWO OR MORE AI armies assaulted to your castle the same time. Nothing similar in both Rome II and Attila.
In Shogun II A MOUNTED unit dismounted and assault walls when needed. Nothing similar in both Rome II and Attila.
The question that emerges...What revolutionary feature brought both Rome II and Attila? The landing from the sea? What else???

You make good points. I like the ability to capture enemy ships in older games. Yes, when an AI army attacks a walled city in Rome II and when it just has cavalry left, it doesn't seem to know what to do, which is a shame. I enjoy Empire, Napoleon and Shogun II as well as Rome II.

You asked about new features in Rome II. I agree combined land and sea battles are a major new thing. It's strange in Empire TW that one militia regiment can keep 20 ships of the line out of a port indefinitely. Surely, in real life, the marines of 20 ships of the line could take the port? Page 3 of Marines Aboard Ship lists the number of marines which British navy warships carried in 1810 (slightly after the end of the ETW Grand Campaign, but this should give us a general idea). A fleet of twenty 74-gun Third Rate vessels would have had a combined force of 2,500 marines (at full strength) - surely enough to defeat one militia regiment. In an equivalent situation in Rome II, I can land marines and take the port with just a fleet or use marines to support an army.

There are other new features. You might not consider them 'revolutionary', important or even useful, but I like them. Here are some of them:-

- A true line-of-sight system. Now, at the start of a battle I often don't know where the enemy are. Finally, I need to use scout cavalry for their actual purpose, not just for hitting enemy skirmishers and pursing broken enemy units. This makes playing or fighting against units which have stealth abilities (such as guerrilla deployment) more exciting. Attacking a Suebi army in fog on a wooded map feels very different to fighting a Roman army under a blue sky on an open plain. I also like the fact that several factions in Rome II have units on their roster which can use guerrilla deployment (Suebi, Nervii, Iceni, Lusitani, Ardiaei and Masaesyli/Numidia.)

- An army traditions system. Before I played Total War games, I played a lot of Civilization. I liked the way that armies could 'level up' in Civ IV, acquiring advantages and abilities. However, sooner or later my high-level army would get unlucky and be wiped out. In a TW game like Shogun II, we can spend many battles getting our archers up to a high level of experience only to see them wiped out by a cavalry charge. (I know, I should have protected those archers, but I only have to make the mistake once.) Rome II introduces an army traditions system, which allows us to regain some of what we lost after 'one bad battle.'

- Civil wars in which part of your faction can form a new one. I read an interview with Skantarios, author of the famous AAR I am Skantarios. He explains how he modded the game to create a civil war:

Basically, it involved fighting a series of custom battles based off the composition of the armies facing each other. Since the game wouldn’t allow me to fight my own faction against each other, I wound up having to change the skins of the opponents (in this case Novgorod) to those of the Byzantines and then fighting custom battles pitting the Romans/Byzantines against the reskinned units of Novgorod. I also had to modify the overview and results screenshots to get the names right.

Of course, rebellions could occur in earlier games and Shogun II is set during a civil war. What's new in Rome II is that a new faction can emerge out of your own. In my Carthage campaign, for example, I could see that a civil war was possible and knew which rival parties controlled which factions (as you can see in the second screenshot in this post - a 34% risk of civil war; the leader of the Hannonid Dynasty had just been killed and their loyalty dropped to -27). The third screenshot in the same post shows that the Hannonid Dynasty broke away from Carthage to form the Adirim Republic - not just 'rebels', an emergent faction which controlled several regions and sent armies to try to capture more. I know that not everyone likes the politics system and many players miss the family tree. I like the way that a civil war can happen in response to specific events (the politics screen in the screenshot I linked to tells the player why a faction is loyal or disloyal, if you hover your cursor over the icons and numbers) and that it encourages players to balance our cities and armies across our empires (never build a city or army that you wouldn't want to fight, because you might need to.)

- Confederation: I don't remember being able to combine my faction with another to create a new one in older games. I don't usually confederate with another faction in Rome II, but I like the fact that enemy factions do. Confederating is a logical choice for a faction which is losing a war against me. I also like the fact that capturing the last enemy city doesn't cause their armies and fleets to vanish into thin air. Their remaining units might become raiders, confederate with another faction or capture a city.

- Varied building options: Rome II also offers more variety in its building trees. AI factions make different choices in different campaigns. In one Iceni campaign, the Atrebartes turned Nemetocenna into a major unit-production city; in another Iceni campaign, they turned it into a major commercial hub. Different choice create different challenges and add to replayability.

- More specialised regions, limited numbers of armies. I know that some players don't like the fixed number of building slots, but I prefer it. We can't build everything everywhere so we need to specialise. Similarly, some players don't like the maximum number of armies, but I like this too. If we can't guard every border with an army (at least, in some campaigns) then diplomacy and spying matter more. This also means that I don't need to worry about the 'Ottoman turn bug' which slowed down AI turn times to 30+ minutes in some Empire Total War campaigns (when the Ottoman Empire recruited huge numbers of tiny armies.)

For me, the important new features are combined land and sea battles, a true line-of-sight system, army traditions, civil wars (in which a new faction breaks away from ours), confederations (and the survival of enemy units after their last city falls), more varied building trees, and limited building slots and armies (making the game more strategic).

[Leonardo]

civil wars (in which a new faction breaks away from ours)

This Rebel mod allows the player to play the Ostrogoths in BI, which is an emergent faction and I like playing the Ostrogoths.

I consider that Rebel Commander mod to be equal to husserlTW's Total Factions mod for both ETW and NTW. Of course there is Hader's All Factions 1.5 mod for the Roman campaign (not the Roman campaign in BI).

[AnthoniusII]

I agree that real line of sight was a great feature and a very realistic one.
I remember mentioned it when i mentioned one great -for me - feature the realistic horses back in early days of Rome II.
But the good things stoped there.
You had a huge city on a strat_map and it was a village on the battle map.
Things gone worst in Attila that each level of settlement uses ONLY ONE BATTLE MODEL!
Cloned cities!!!
You are right...about the civil wars.But I must inform you that civil wars ussing "shadow" factions can exist in M2TW/Kingdoms too! TGC mod has two shadow factions creating major civil wars in historical dates that are fully factional with full army roster.

My complains were based on the CA/SEGA rash to publish Rome II "forgeting" all previus great features of the previus TW games. And if M2TW was too old , Shogun II was not!!
A huge why emerged as question but it got no answer in Attila too. In fact CA/SEGA devs were so "lazy" that forgot to simply reskin Rome II's Roman walls and used barbaric ones and rediculus towers like those we saw 20 years ago in Age of Empires II!
Their refusal (in-cappasity?) to fix Siege AI was something annoying...

[herne_the _hunter]

I didn't think you could streamline Total War any further than Rome 2 but CA have proved me wrong. So for me the series has gone downhill since Rome 2 with it's emphasis on battles rather than campaign mechanics.

[Totalheadache]

I didn't think you could streamline Total War any further than Rome 2 but CA have proved me wrong. So for me the series has gone downhill since Rome 2 with it's emphasis on battles rather than campaign mechanics.

Agreed! And then battles feel rushed unless you mod. Also still charges seem weak n A.I pathing n sieges still have bad moments. Attila still play a bit and that for me mostly turns into sieges where its quite easy to beat the A.I..stiil not bad. However with thrones it seems its more about rebellions and chasing down armies that could wreck undefensable settlements. However there are some better looking fortified cities.

But the lack of creativity in the building management is really poor n dumbed down plus other features gone. So there are some positives but still an above average game and not worth the £30. As stated before a glorified Attila mod.

[Hazbones]

I am/was a TW player since Shogun I all the way up until that fateful day that I installed Rome II and saw the blatant Game-of-Thrones-esque expanding cities that grow to cover almost an entire region (looking at you Rome) and the automatic transports that completely negated any reason to build a navy. That was the last straw for me and I quietly uninstalled the game and haven't touched a new TW title since. I still dust off a Med II or Empire game every blue moon just for nostalgia sake but from Shogun II onward it was all downhill.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the Sengoku Period but I found Shogun II to be just a Napoleon game shoe-horned into a different wrapping. It turned out to be probably the laziest TW game I had ever seen up to that point with CA trying to pass European warfare off as Japanese. They were nowhere close! Just a little bit of research on Japanese warfare and the time period would have gone a long way to saving the game and possibly keeping a customer at least a while longer.

[AnthoniusII]

Don't get me wrong that i presist in AI matters.
In previus posts we agreed that time is a barrier for a correct development of a game.
But that excuse hit me like a rock when i remember that CA/SEGA invided certain modders to test Rome II and discuss the future of modding.
I will not mention any further Darth Vader but I can not stay away from mentioning Germanicu5.
Why him? I explain. Creating our mod we had to chose our BAI system as long as our CAI one.
One test was Germanicu5's BAI. In TATW it had some bugs but in TGC works realy good.
I was pleasantly surpriced to see AI chose the proper units to attack , cover flanks, chassing my cavalry that try to flank them, AI units retreating to a certain point to regroup and return to battle etc!
Why this example? If Germanicu5 is not a proffesional in his matter (AI) then what made CA/SEGA AI creators proffesionals worthing to be payed and convince us to buy of what they created? Why anyone of them didn't simply take a look of what he did to adjust it to Rome II and Attila? Not to mention XCAI because i will embarace CA/SEGA devs even more. In that gathering why modders never mentioned worthy of attention mods to given as examples for future games? Why proffesionals fail where ammatures succeed? That is my big "why" since i played the 1st battle in Rome II and became even bigger in Attila.
WHY???? The answer that may or may not emerge will give the answer why TW GAMES are dying.

[Stone Cold Shogun Panther]

Total War has been dead mostly since Med 2. Med 2 was the last good game in the series. Shogun 2 wasn't bad but everything else was trash to a extent.

[PikeStance]

I didn't think you could streamline Total War any further than Rome 2 but CA have proved me wrong. So for me the series has gone downhill since Rome 2 with it's emphasis on battles rather than campaign mechanics.

It is funny you say this because i think CA spent too much time developing the Campaign and nowhere near enough on the battle mechanic.

Don't get me wrong that i presist in AI matters.
In previus posts we agreed that time is a barrier for a correct development of a game.
But that excuse hit me like a rock when i remember that CA/SEGA invided certain modders to test Rome II and discuss the future of modding.
I will not mention any further Darth Vader but I can not stay away from mentioning Germanicu5.
Why him? I explain. Creating our mod we had to chose our BAI system as long as our CAI one.
One test was Germanicu5's BAI. In TATW it had some bugs but in TGC works realy good.
I was pleasantly surpriced to see AI chose the proper units to attack , cover flanks, chassing my cavalry that try to flank them, AI units retreating to a certain point to regroup and return to battle etc!
Why this example? If Germanicu5 is not a proffesional in his matter (AI) then what made CA/SEGA AI creators proffesionals worthing to be payed and convince us to buy of what they created? Why anyone of them didn't simply take a look of what he did to adjust it to Rome II and Attila? Not to mention XCAI because i will embarace CA/SEGA devs even more. In that gathering why modders never mentioned worthy of attention mods to given as examples for future games? Why proffesionals fail where ammatures succeed? That is my big "why" since i played the 1st battle in Rome II and became even bigger in Attila.
WHY???? The answer that may or may not emerge will give the answer why TW GAMES are dying.

Personally, I think the games are designed for young teens, rather than hardcore gaming and historical enthusiasts. I think this is why when they add one feature they remove another to keep the game at the same level of difficulty.

[AnthoniusII]

Personally, I think the games are designed for young teens, rather than hardcore gaming and historical enthusiasts. I think this is why when they add one feature they remove another to keep the game at the same level of difficulty.

I wont disagree with that....But atleast they (CA/SEGA) must be atleast honest with the hardcore gaming TW series followers OR give them the right tools to do their "work". So far non of these options became true.
Please don't come anyone to say that Rome II has modding tools and there are "overhaul" mods for that game because i will laugh to death.
Repainting units or giving them swords instead of axes are not "modding tools" that lead to overhaul mods. I realy do not understand that well known modders advertise their mods for Rome II and Attila as overhaul simply because they changed the human models or their textures.! We are forced to change the meaning of the word overhaul from its real one to a lie.

[Totalheadache]

I wont disagree with that....But atleast they (CA/SEGA) must be atleast honest with the hardcore gaming TW series followers OR give them the right tools to do their "work". So far non of these options became true.
Please don't come anyone to say that Rome II has modding tools and there are "overhaul" mods for that game because i will laugh to death.
Repainting units or giving them swords instead of axes are not "modding tools" that lead to overhaul mods. I realy do not understand that well known modders advertise their mods for Rome II and Attila as overhaul simply because they changed the human models or their textures.! We are forced to change the meaning of the word overhaul from its real one to a lie.

Exactly surely they want all ages to be happy? I know you cant please everyone but modding should be able to really lessen the impast. For example am sure some would love to mod thrones of Britannia to include say agents and different buildings plus perhaps some kind of forts seperate to the capitals to break up the current way settlement are done...

[Intranetusa]

Their "innovations/ new things" are often poorly done versions of mechanics they had in earlier tittles. That point have been done death in criticism of TW, and that one off the reasons many are on the fence regarding thrones.
But to think that historical fans would even consider to buy Warhammer Fantasy, when they clearly are not in the target demografic is nonsensical. I do agree however that fanboy's on both sides have unreasonbly been taking a sense of ownership/ belonging of the franchise. However, just to respond to the third point quoted, people are not going to list "positive" aspects if it's all the same old stuff from attila or older games with thin claim of being new. And people are not going to be in favor of giving them a chance when they don't try to fix features, not posting patch notes on steam or official forum, but on reddit of all things and trying to get a answer from them on the official forum after having delivered a crash-file for support is down right pointless. Attila players had real "fun" time when that launcher update created nearly made all non-steam mods unplayable and all we got was a link to a reddit post with the patchnotes. A lot of goodwill was lost that week, thats for sure. And just to hammer this point: I don't give a game "a chance" just because it's part of a franchise, I only buy it if I like the gameplay and when I know the proper scope of it (after having gone trough marketing , and seen proper gameplay).

So what you're saying is they're going to streamline or dumb it down even more for casual players who make up a greater and greater share of their customers...?

[Carracalla]

I said what I said in your quote. Not sure CA gonna have much of a customer base if they keep up the poor implementation and lack of tech support (a least answer the people when they allready have given crash file).
If CA wants to go for the casual then fine by me, and if they implement old features or try new ones, then go for it. They do that however it only done poorly and thats my point. Then they claim old stuff is new and that is just blatant lying to the customers, or they have no idea how the older succsesses played.

(Sorry if I seem grumpy, had eksam and West-Norway is for some reason going through a nice warm summer for some reason and I don't know how to deal with that)

[Carracalla]

Personally, I think the games are designed for young teens, rather than hardcore gaming and historical enthusiasts. I think this is why when they add one feature they remove another to keep the game at the same level of difficulty.

I was a teen when rome 2 came out and after a while I moved over to Medival 2. We liked a lot of compleks games, heck several of my friends played Heroes of might and magic 3. games that where to easy where boring. And removing a feature while adding another one feature don't mean it will be the same difficultly, as the features are different in function. And current TW alot of the difficulty comes from the changed numerical values that change per difficulty level. Its disturbingly easy to outmanuver the nemy ai on the battlefield. Not to mention that teens are pretty hardcore when it comes to games, and TW is not hard for them. And for me it seems that what you said might be the case since they seem a bit out of touch with the playerbase, and given the critiscism levied against them from people aho have been on early access seems to comfirm this.

[Jurand of Cracow]

IPlease don't come anyone to say that Rome II has modding tools and there are "overhaul" mods for that game because i will laugh to death.
Repainting units or giving them swords instead of axes are not "modding tools" that lead to overhaul mods. I realy do not understand that well known modders advertise their mods for Rome II and Attila as overhaul simply because they changed the human models or their textures.! We are forced to change the meaning of the word overhaul from its real one to a lie.

This is exactly what I think of the new titles.
Unfortunately, I think it's done on purpose. Small modding may bolster up sales, but large mods offer alternative games for the players and this prevents them from buying new titles (they simply don't have time for the new games).
However, why the AI keeps on being so dumb, is a riddle for me.

[Daruwind]

CA said recently that only about 30% players is using any kind of mod. (I can dig up statement if need be..) So the number of players of total overhauls will be even less. That was about R2 but why other games should be much more different? Point is not all are caring about moddability. Modder and users are usually sharing certain view how the game should be, how to play,what to play, what to enhance but CA has to caretake to all players. Like if we make a 100 points list, every player will listen them in different order,different priorities.. For example during some ToB early access preview streams, some reviewers said they are just using autoresolving all the time. There are even people deliberatly missing a half the game/fun because why not...I cannot even comprehent that.

But looking at Warhammer 2 mods, there is plenty of really great mods adding new features. So calling it just unit reskins, even if they are limited to lore, it is little unfair.
Tons of battle maps:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1385002665
Region trading
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1376337924
UI modding framework
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1354363596
Custom lord creation
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1354363361
Rites for Old World
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1364131654
Empire politics
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1297634303
Runic forge for dwarfs
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1333020820

Besides with 3K, ToB, New content for R2 and WH2/3 TW are definitely not going down anytime soon. We can say whatever we want, but Warhammer for example has unprecedent unit/faction variety and DLC quality of Norsca, Tomb Kings is probably the best in history. And scale of Mortal Empires is surpassing Empire´s grand campaign. If TWs are dying then i´m quite certainly enjoying the funeral and especially next week.

[AnthoniusII]

CA said recently that only about 30% players is using any kind of mod. (I can dig up statement if need be..) So the number of players of total overhauls will be even less. That was about R2 but why other games should be much more different? Point is not all are caring about moddability. Modder and users are usually sharing certain view how the game should be, how to play,what to play, what to enhance but CA has to caretake to all players. Like if we make a 100 points list, every player will listen them in different order,different priorities.. For example during some ToB early access preview streams, some reviewers said they are just using autoresolving all the time. There are even people deliberatly missing a half the game/fun because why not...I cannot even comprehent that.

But looking at Warhammer 2 mods, there is plenty of really great mods adding new features. So calling it just unit reskins, even if they are limited to lore, it is little unfair.
Tons of battle maps:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1385002665
Region trading
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1376337924
UI modding framework
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1354363596
Custom lord creation
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1354363361
Rites for Old World
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1364131654
Empire politics
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1297634303
Runic forge for dwarfs
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1333020820

Besides with 3K, ToB, New content for R2 and WH2/3 TW are definitely not going down anytime soon. We can say whatever we want, but Warhammer for example has unprecedent unit/faction variety and DLC quality of Norsca, Tomb Kings is probably the best in history. And scale of Mortal Empires is surpassing Empire´s grand campaign. If TWs are dying then i´m quite certainly enjoying the funeral and especially next week.

Did CA say how it was possible a year ago to SELL again M2TW/Kingdoms a 10 years old game?
Would any non mod user spend his precius money to such an old game when there are many much newer and better games?
The answer CA "forget" to mention is MODS!
If only 30% of R2 or Attila play mods its because with or without mods the core games suck!
But...make a search...how many THOUSANDS downloads mods like TATW and Stainless Steel or Broken Cresent or.....do they have untill YESTERDAY?
If we take an Overhaul mod like TATW...IS THERE ANYTHING SIMILAR to the last historical TW games?
Is there a mod that COMPLETLY CHANGE those 2 TW games in such a degree not to be recognisible?

[Daruwind]

What about Ancient Empires for Attila? It is being released first time for public right now..Or War of the Bear mod for warhammer? https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1228673734 Point is, big mods need a lot time and resources...and newer games seems to be more complex. Not neccessary harder, but we all will probably agree that Shogun 1 to Warhammer 2 are kind of different levels of everything..

But I agree that older games allows especially better campaign map moddability. That´s true but let me ask you a different question. Does it mean we cannot tell any more stories, scenarios on newer campaign maps? And again, people are not buying older games just for mods but even for nostalgia itself. Look at blizzard and others releasing HD Starcraft 1 and such games...steam is full of older games no matter if moddable or not. But naturally mods are factor, I don´t deny it :-)

[AnthoniusII]

Let me re phrase : In FB CA/SEGA advertised a mod that completely replaced all units in Rome II to Chinese and the models and their textures were excellent. When I asked in that FB page (the CA /SEGA official), if the mod will have a unique map also they replied no. When I asked what is the point to have Chinese units in a European map they blocked from their page. Was that mod an overhaul one without a proper map? I would be surprised if the new TW game relies on those moders work. If that is true I hope that they got payed.