>the cancer that killed total war
Total War has been a corpse paraded by a procession of increasingly insane and degenerate "tech talent" for the better part of a decade. It was killed by patently insane business practices from a cabal of unhinged and out of touch management boomers who thought maintaining their development platform and expanding their tools were "bad investments" and kept chasing away everyone competent at the company by being petty and insecure.Shit games with shit DLCs is just a symptom of the problem, and the recent shit game with its recent shit DLC is no more or less shitty than the last several.Everyone cried when they released Pharaoh for full price despite it obviously being a Troy asset flip with Saga-tier content like this was the first time it happened because apparently Attila was so forgettable we all forgot that's exactly what it was.
>>2189320>Attila was so forgettable we all forgot that's exactly what it wasand what was it, exactly?I was late to the party and only played it post 2020
>>2189425Attila was being developed as a Rome 2 DLC. CA overestimated how successful R2 would be and had a whole production pipeline working on DLC before the game even launched, but the game launched as a broken dumpster fire that was barely playable. All the early DLC sold like shit because the game didn't work and players were outraged and the patches were trickling in slowly because the priority was clearly DLC-focused.So CA decides to quietly pull the plug, leave Rome 2 in a broken state and repurpose the DLC production into a standalone game, hoping for a 'clean slate.' They even had the gall to market Attila for including fixes to shit that was still broken in Rome 2.When the predictable happened and Attila flopped, CA was forced to go back and start patching Rome 2 again to try and rebuild the bridges it had burned, ironically abandoning Attila in the process. After a couple of years, players flocked back to CA's side cheering "They fixed it, it's good now" and fawned over them until they repeated the exact same mistake so many years later.
>>2189603Attila didn't flop and still has a decent player base. The same for Rome 2. CA has (to my knowledge), never released an unbroken game. CA has repackaged dogshit and released it for widespread and willing consumption. If anything killed, or is going to kill "total war", then it was warhammer and CA's business practices.
>>2189603So Attila is to Rome 2 what Napoleon was to Empire. Anyways the last good TW game was Shogun 2, never cared for the fantasy stuff
>>2189320It's funny how people praise Pharaoh after all those years, even though it and Troy were one of the most garbage games they released in the past years.Warhammer 3, while broken af, has a few novel concepts here and there, you can extract SOME fun out of it
The next new total war games announced in december 4th will be Medieval 3 and Lord of The Rings First Age.Mark my words.
>>2189745or star wars
>>2189715Attila didn't sell nearly as much as Rome II and Warhammer I, it flopped. People just gaslit each other into thinking it's good (plus mods, I guess) years later and developed a cult following around it. Same thing happened with Empire.Let's not forget that CA spread the most bold-faced lie of all time about the game's poor optimization, making sure it will always run like shit even with """"future hardware"""" and abandoned it in a buggy and unbalanced state in favour of the Warhammer trilogy and resuming development on Rome II with the B team. That's as clear a sign of a game flopping as you can get.>>2189731People praise Pharaoh for the same reason they praise Rome II:>IT GOT MORE LE CONTENT>IT GOT LE FIXEDWhich is only true to an extent. Yes those games are objectively bigger now compared to release, but they are still extremely bland and covered from head to toe with undercooked mechanics and bad design decisions.The community is just used to eating shit and WH3's success is the ultimate proof of that.
Good. Total War deserves to die.
>>2189772I still don't believe
>>2189745If it's not Medieval 3 or Empire 2 then they can kiss my ass. I'm not falling for another cheap asset flip, no more saga bullshit.
>>2189723Very much so
>>2189715Attila is genuinely good but this fact is basically incidental. It's the unloved bastard child of CA's messy years, when it thought too highly of itself and built up the shaky pedestal from which to fall from grace.Its existence is almost quintessential of CA's issues. There's talent and vision pouring from it, mechanics are well thought out and engaging, gameplay has a purpose, rosters are creative with clear intention and unit interactions and emergent strategies are largely intuitive. It's not impressive graphically but the art direction gives it a coherent look and style.But it was shat out on a compressed development cycle, hamstrung by technical issues incumbent to its overloaded and underloved engine, crippled by an AI that can't play its own game, with half of its factions excised mid-development and then sold back with pointless powercreepAND on top of all that, promptly abandoned while its latest DLC was still fresh and warm, left to rot with obvious and easily fixable bugs ranging from missing building slots to unit rosters breaking. The hard work of all the clearly talented and passionate developers being ultimately squandered in a product that's made to fail because someone above accountability deemed it so is pretty much exactly CA's problem. Only by the time of WH3 there was pretty much nobody with talent (or dignity) left to take the fall.
>>2189745Keep dreaming. It'll be either a revamp to shogun or wh4.
>>2189263>game dies 380000 times>still gets threadsStop digging up the corpse and getting mad when it stinks, retards.
>>2189603I am pretty sure Barbarian Invasion was a standalone expansion, but it's been too far back for me to remember and I can't find an answer - and the answer gets mucked with the remaster complicating things. I am going to call bullshit on Attila having been intended as a DLC though.>>2190143>half of its factions excised mid-developmentYou guys need to understand we will never, never, I mean NEVER, ever get a M2 where every faction is brought in on release. That is just never going to happen. It didn't in WH1, 2, 3, Troy, Pharaoh, 3k. To be frank even in Medieval 2 it happened because factions were samefags with nothing to distinguish them. Other complaints are valid, but>They didn't include the cut content and instead DLC'd itIs always going to happen. And to be frank it's an unrealistic prospect because if they added any DLC you would cry "Cut content" and if they didn't have any DLC you'd cry "Why no DLC?"
How optimistic we were after this dropped
>>2190182Alexander is the standalone expansion, not BI.Expansion packs are nice when they add to an already finished game, not when they're there to make some barebones piece of shit feel like it's finally starting to have some substance, like the WH trilogy. Only a braindead consoomer on reddit would complain about no DLC for a complete game.Granted with how bloated development costs are these days and how gaming at large has been enabling greedy practices for years, it's highly unlikely that we will ever get a finished game on release.
>>2189723>Anyways the last good TW game was Shogun 1fixed
>>2189263>best graphics>best gameplay>best faction variety>thriving mp>best seller>>Oy vey it's dead goys!Yeah, riiight. Keep shitting your pants doomzoom.
>>2190197That was gamey slop just like the test of wh
>>2190215Nobody cares about S1/M1 stop trying to make it a thing. This is terminal contrarianism.
>>2192689fuck off loser
>>2189723shogun 2 isnt even the last good total war, its literally the only good one. its the only total war ever where the core of the game actually feels like it works and the only one with competent AI. CA can only pull off a game with scope as small as S2, and even then its buggy and unfinished. i find it laughable when people say warhammer killed total war when rome 2 and literally everything made since exists. its tragic really, because im so tired of sengoku jidai, but no other total war and thus no other game on the market scratches that specific itch for me so im stuck in japan forever.
>>2190182>if they didn't have any DLC you'd cry "Why no DLC???????????????ive never ever ever had a thought like that tho? good complete full games dont need dlc. when elden ring got announced a dlc i was almost dreading it because the game is already so fucking massive, and so complete, that it really doesnt need more. you must be a mouth breathing consoomer to even think of that thought you just had
I got Pharaoh Dynasties for $7 and don't feel cheated but good god TW sucks now
>>2189320True. The writing was on the wall with the release state of Empire
>>2192833This is how I fell about Troy. Got it for free when they did that launch giveaway thing and I still feel like I wasted time on it.
>>2189263That would be Rome 2 and its abysmal release.Also: if a game reaches "3" in the title in a decade, it's many things, but failure is not one of them.
>>2189715>Attila didn't flopCool fanfiction>still has a decent player base... of a deluded fan, at thatDo I really need to remind you this game was hyped more than Rome 2, aka their peak overhyped garbage?
>>218974530 years war kino will arrive
>>2195454>30 Years War kino>Implying it would be anything more than Saga slop with 0 replayability buggy pikes and unsatisfying gunpowder
>>2192847It wasn't.Empire was overambitious and wanted to be a huge world map with three continents (or subcontinents as the case may be) worth of factions. It was undercooked and experimental in a lot of ways, like provinces having non-city towns that could be captured and fought over (which unfortunately meant stuff like one province France). There was a lot of hope with Empire, and some remedies were made in Shogun 2.But Rome 2 is where everything fell apart, the warscape engine truly showed itself to be unsalvageable, and CA decided that rather than fix various bugs (like the AI sending lone ship fleets to harass you) they'd just add new constraints to stop the AI from being retarded (all navies must have admirals, all armies must have generals).
Still the best
Not only does it have a great medieval campaignIt even has the best gunpowder TW experience
>>2195580>some remedies were made in Shogun 2A lot of the ambition was lost by the time we got to Shogun 2. The game still turned out good, and ultimately Empire is by far the worst game, but a lot of what made Empire so ambitious did not carry over to Shogun 2. It was a much smaller game, you couldn't even trade regions.>the warscape engine truly showed itself to be unsalvageablePinning the whole blame on the graphics engine is retarded. The sad truth is that CA's management did an extremely poor job with the franchise before Warhammer's incidental success, and a lot of the truly skilled designers have jumped ship over the years. Their engine being buggy and nearly impossible to work with is just a symptom of a larger issue, updating TW3.0 into TW4.0 or replacing Warscape now isn't magically going to make the games better.
>>2195598Warscape isn't a 'graphics engine', it handles everything such as projectiles and unit collisions. And criticizing CA for not fixing warscape after two games worth of complaints about but instead doubling down isn't 'blaming the engine', because engines can be fixed. CA cannot.
>>2189263The best one was first Medieval, way better than its shitty sequel that was saved by years of mods and patches.I wish there was a good remake of the first Med. That shit is so hard to run on modern hardware.
>>2195616dumb boomer
total war died after Medieval 2.
>>2195682M2 is by far the most overrated TW
>>2195616
>>2195616Unironically: Risk map is better than 3d map.
>dither with map modding on shogun 2>use it as an excuse to strip it from every game since>might have actually been a cover up for them losing the ability to give out an SDK at all due to licenses or some shit>>2195598Warscape is inherent to a lot of the complaints with these games. You zoom in on a fight and you'll see characters zipping into canned animations. You've got the rather well known Rome 2 videos where units will just stop fighting at a certain point.A lot of the melee "fixes" these games present was to use the simplest animation there which was a quick weapon jab. The most common thing people ask for is better melee combat in the older pre-warhammerslop games.At this point you'd need a new engine, something which would have been possible if CA didn't piss away literally all of their money on Hyenas, a game that bombed so bad SEGA was forced to restructure their Europe division and drop Relic.Unfortunately we're all doomed to [franchise]slop instead.
>>2197425People don't understand why mod making has been progressively stripped out, and it's because games are becoming increasingly reliant on third party shit as well as various in-house tricks to get basic shit working, so most games are 80% locked down and what you can do with them is limited. It's the same in the Civ series. We went from a mod golden age in IV to V where the best you could do was a custom anime civilization, with your waifu as the leader portrait.
>>2192732Modded NTW is pretty good. I like LME.
>>2195454I just want ONE historical title where I can play Poland at their golden age. It's almost as of CA is intentionally avoiding anything between 14th century to early 18th century specifically to piss me off.
>>2197506Really the only area that modding is cuckolded is the map. I think possibly audio. People forget the dark days of pre warscape with hardcoded limits for factions, units, ect. The problem is that the map is really the centerpiece of the experience, so being unable to edit the map instantly fucks you over for being able to do any kind of total conversion unless it's of the exact same geographic area. Lemme put it this way - with a map editable from the start for Attila we'd have had a LOTR mod in some kind of alpha status by 2020 at the latest, we'd have had a Westeros mod by 2018. With an editable map I'd be working on Hyboria total war for Pharaoh.
>>2192689i care about m1 but not s1i couldn't understand the economy in s1, got to a point where me and the one other remaining clan met up in the middle of japan and started stalking each other and shuffling our armies between provinces to get the jump on one another but i could never get enough money to support a large enough army to break through. shit was like the stalemate in 1984. i just gave up and left the campaign in that state
>>2189263Creative assembly already decided to shit the bed before they sold out to games workshop.Total war has been in decline since kingdoms.
>>2189745they're going to cave in to onions demand for 40k and it will flop because it makes 0 fucking sense for a TW game, and after it fails they will just say fans don't want TW anymore and close down
>>2212851it actually makes 100% sense for a TW game. Just every unit is gonna be some form of free company militia
an official Total War: Middle Earth game would print $billions
>>2203921The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is literally one of the major factions in Empire. Go LARP there.
>>2189263>>the cancer that killed total warI dropped Total War after Empire. Speak for yourself.
>>2213865nta but 18th century is hardly the golden age of Polanddon't you start off as russian puppet state in there or something like that?
Played wh3 as Cathay for a few dozen hoursRealized that I wasn't allowed to coalition with the green Lu Bu guy without buying his $8 or $9 DLCStopped playing wh3It seems like they make the game incomplete on purpose unless you buy all the DLCNot fun not cool
>>2214528Thats not even the gay part.Worst offender is you can't hire some of your faction's troops without DLC. It was one of the reasons why I looked into creamaping dlc.
>>2213849As long as they stick to the lore and keep anything Amazon-related away with a flamethrower.
>>2195616nigga it can run really well, watch this guidehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uR8WmkG1-I
>>2192847thisabsolute broken game which got overhyped by it's retarded fanbase
>histfags malding funny shit.
>>2195603>it handles everything such as projectiles and unit collisionsIt actually doesn't. And never did, either.Thanks for being a useful retard, who still blames everything on Warscape, which is the surface of the actual issue of how badly coded those games are.That doesn't mean that Warscape is good. It's simply not the real cause of the issues
>>2213917>don't you start off as russian puppet state in there or something like that?Which, unlike real historical situation, makes PLC SUPER secured and safe. You have a butt buddy to protect you, and not a foreigner power meddling in your affairs (and making sure a self-appointed king remains your ruler, too)By Empire internal logic, Polish situation couldn't be any better.
>>2189263>Legends proves they pivotedSo...CA really wanted an all cathay DLC?
>>2189745>MEE licensing the SilmarillionI'll believe it when I see it.
>>2213849Fuck I would love playing as any of the orc factions Given that they stick to the old Peter jackson style instead of the newer cartoony stuff (shadow of Mordor, yuck)
>>2213849I don't want a modern british company to touch LOTRmight as well ask for nigger porn
>>2223082But I like BBC porn
>>2223082Haradin exist.
>>2224402>harridan (noun)>an unpleasant woman, especially an older one, who is often angry and often tells other people what to doYeah they absolutely exist, and they'll poz up LotR if they touch it
I like it
>>2195593crazy how shogun 2 is the only post empire game that feels like it actually plays as intended.now go to something like WH3 or Troy and you can't shake off the feeling that the devs don't know how the game is even supposed to be played.
>>2223082>britishI sometimes wonder how many people in charge of those companies are in fact British
>>2243672>the only post empire game that feels like it actually plays as intended.Attila, performance issues aside, is probably the peak of TW game design. It's doubly frustrating because they made Attila so good and then immediately went on to make WH1 and ToB and haven't made a good game since.
>>2244067>The peak of TW is the abandonware that's good by accident and not because they had competent people at the helm
I fucking loved Rome and Medieval II, then never succeeded in getting into any of the subsequent games to that extent.
>>2244319>A systemically dysfunctional company produces it's best work entirely by accident and then immediately kills the golden goose Sounds about part for the course
>>2192689Ask me how I know you're a zoomershit younger than Rome 1
>>2244067>Attila>the peak of TW game designIt has all the cancerous elements introduced in Rome 2 (since it was originally a DLC for it)People wanking to that game are almost as insufferable as M2 crowd. Except M2 at least has good mods, and Atilla is just shit game, period.
>>2206959>economy in s1Build ports and mines always. Build farms only in rich provinces with high base farming income. You can switch to Christianity and build churches and cathedra for extra income. Build up watchtowers and keep shinobi and ninjas in border provinces for extra security.Build up few provinces with high tier dojos that produce high quality troops(preferable in iron rich provinces) , you can retrain units to get better stats.
>>2244067Nah. Its side grade of Rome 2. It have all shitty mechanics that make it no fun to play.tried to like it many times and failed each time.
>>2244067battles play exactly like rome 2its shit you coping nigger
>>2248655>It have allit have no bharat empire sar
>>2250327Its still is full of shitty mechanics you dumb mongrel.
just waiting for Strategos rn
>>2192689Shogun 1 was fun.
>>2197506>>2205822Eh, Total Warhammer's modding has been going pretty well. Still, CA are fucking cucks, afraid of GW getting pissy if some TC mods would get made. Furthermore, modders do incredibly amazing jobs (remember when they finally made 'sea' battles, only for CA to add that in patch few weeks later?), while the big company can't be bothered to add more than a couple of units or fix some really game-breaking bugs. Seriously, playing without community patch is retarded>>2197208Yeah, that old mapstyle was great.>>2217632Well, now I know what I'll be doing this weekend. Thanks bud
>>221383340k combat style absolutely does not work for Total War lmao. 40k isn't formation based combat and takes place over planets. Broken Arrow is far better a basis for a massive scale 40k game.
>>2214528Just use CreamAPI dude.
Still seething they fucked up the first major DLC and dropped 3K.Rot3K is still one of the goat strategy games in terms of management/life/diplomacy systems and something Total War really needed to learn from and the perfect setting to do it in they fucking drop despite by all accounts, TW3K sold more than Warhammer 3.
>>2192732There's a massive Empire/1700s mod being made in the Shogun 2 engine, forget the name, but it spans the Americas and then Britan all the way down to the Jeet hole. Looks amazing, it's called "Rise of Empires" on Steam.No, I'm not a bot, I know how this types.
>>2195580>subcontinent>Europe Is this some weird Jeet thing I'm not aware of? You're lucky we don't call the subcontinent "the shit and trash heap"
>>2257481Probably a russian as they teach eurasia as being one continent with europe just being a sub continent.
I only really like Rome and Medieval 2t b h (despite some issues like pathing)I tried some of the later ones (Shogun 2, Napoopan) and I don't think they were bad, but there's something missing from them, like the combat just didn't feel as visceral for whatever reason
Total War was pretty much dead since Empire. Medieval II was the last good Total War game.
>>2257510>Probably a russian as they teach eurasia as being one continent with europe just being a sub continent.Wrong. In school we're taught two separate concepts: continents (as geological regions) and the so-called 'parts of the world' (as historical regions). We're taught there are 6 continents (Eurasia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia & Oceania, Antarctica) and 6 parts of the world (Europe, Asia, the Americas, Australia & Oceania, Antarctica). The only subcontinent we're taught about in school is the Indian subcontinent (since it's a separate continental plate that split off from Africa and drifted towards Asia forming the Himalayas upon impact).
>>2195580It was ambitious yes but it crashed that ambition straight into a cliff with its godawful execution. The engine change made all combat a shitty unsatisfying joke and has plagued the series ever since. The mod support was gone, the faction rosters were copy+paste jobs, the ship combat was sleep-inducing, etc.
>>2244067Attila's combat has floaty blobs clipping into each other. Anything else it does right pales in comparison to that fact given what a central role combat plays in the series.
>>2213849There's no way it would be as good as the mods that already exist.
>>2195698>Rated 16/10 when it is in fact a mere 11/10I guess you're not wrong
>>2190221This. Its "so dead" it single handedly revived Warhammer Fantasy table top, lol. Historical chuds are so cringe
>>2268503>giving a fuck about Warhammer in any way, shape or form in the Year of Our Lord 2025Imagine being this much of a faggot
>>2190221but what do they do now that warhammer is finished warhammer 1 remaster?
>>2268622warhammer 4
Obviously Rome 1 and Medieval 2 were awesome. I think the development in game mechanics peaked at Shogun 2. Most of the limitations of that game were baked into the setting, like lack of faction diversity and a very limited map. If they had just ported the Shogun 2 model basically as is to different times and places the series could have been amazing. Instead they instantly departed from it and started introducing retarded mechanics like all armies must have a general unit and basically getting rid of the awesome trade lines dynamic from Shogun. I dropped the series for a long time after Rome 2 but just tried the new Pharoah Dynasties. Some of the mechanics are OK, but the game is just so dumbed down and linear. The unit rosters suck because it's the fucking bronze age, they have straight up eliminated the concept of building harbors and fleets altogether (what the motherfuck??), there's no trade routes, no deep regional specializations like in Shogun. Now each regions just gets a tiny bump to some resource it produces. Compare that to the like 15 different specializations in Shogun from religious sites, to shipbuilding, to bow making, etc. When two opposing unit transports meet at sea they just go into a generic land battle between the two armies. I guess the game looks decent, but its so fucking lazily done too. All the generals literally look exactly the same, and not in the charming way of Shogun 2 where it's the same face but with unique characteristics. They're all the same fucking guy. The diplomacy doesn't show you a nice concise map of faction relations, it's all some vague bar graph. It's so crazy, like all this time later and almost every single gameplay dynamic that made Shogun 2 good has either been outright removed or sloppily dumbed down to the point of irrelevance. Like what the fuck have they even been developing over the last 15 years? Unit skins and a UI which is worse in every way? The battles are ok, but they aren't improved at all.
>>2269380To continue. I really think the Total War model of combining turn based and real time elements is pretty much the perfect strategy game format. But it just sucks that the sole company making games in that format has become so fucking trash. Being a Total War fan is like on par with Sonic the Hedgehog in terms of the low quality content you get to enjoy. Would be nice if a new company stepped up and took the format seriously again.
>>2189745The sad thing is even if they announce M3 you know they're going to completely fuck it up. And then there won't be anything left to squeeze out of the series.
>>2269388>Being a Total War fan is like on par with Sonic the HedgehogI always thought of CA as a less popular Bethesda; consistently releasing mediocre or outright bad games and staying afloat thanks to an unwaveringly loyal fanbase that is used to eating shit and conquering a unique niche in the market that has no real competition.
>>2257474>Shogun 2 mod>For doing line infantry armed with gunsThere is fucking FotS, which is a stand-alone game now for years. What sort of insane maniac takes a melee-centric, arrows-heavy, no-artillery game and grafts into it line infantry fire and artillery... rather than picking a game that ALREADY FUCKING HAS THOSE?!
>>2269743They HAD a competition and a lot of it. Things is, they were smart enough to sell out to SEGA first given chance and that allowed them sto simply outlast their competition with SEGA's money.
>>2270478The point is that now no one can (or is willing to) challenge their position, so they can get away with releasing low quality reskins of Rome II in perpetuity, with egregious DLC models and post-launch support.
>>2257481By 'subcontinent' I was directly referring to India. Europe, the Americas, and India.
>>2213917no you start allied, which is great because it lets you stomp Prussia before they get too dangerous and then liver-punch Austria when they eventually come for you. I remember it being pretty nice campagin. Might've been using Darthmod tho.
>>2189263... but that's Rome 2 release and the debacle surrounding it, Attila being then the final nail to the coffin
>>2271001... yes, and?And to make myself clear: literally nobody is forcing to play their shit-tier games. Anyone playing post S2 games is a retard. Anyone paying them money for their games is a retard. Those people only have themselves to blame.>b-but I want games like thatRome 1 still has an active modding sceneSame with Med 2.Same with Shogun 2.Fucking EMPIRE has active modding scenes if you're desperate for (shitty) take on line infantryThere is NOTHING worthwhile in R2 and later games. Literally no point getting them.
Empire killed total war for me. Haven’t touched a new one since. Shame, loved the series
>>2270472...because Empire and Napoleon are fucking terrible games? To use the engine to actually do the concept in a decent manner? Are you retarded?And I'm the guy saying to make sure you play with the 86 clans and Naval Overhaul mods
>>2273063To further expand on my fellow grognard fag, Med2 has an active modding scene AND projects like the Engine Overhaul Project meant to improve both modding options and overall performance and stability for the game with lua coding, thus addressing decades-long complaints without making you have to buy the newest slop to enjoy fantasy and medieval warfare, among other periods and universes such as Three Kingdoms, the European Dark Ages, etc.You have options. You just have to find them.
>>2189263The cancer that killed warhammer fantasy.
>>2273059Attila was kinoTW was ruined once CA tried to make games for hisfags and basedhammerfags at the same time
>>2273767I'm generally not a fan of the changes to campaign mechanics like limited armies bound to generals and fixed building slots in cities compared to older games, but Attila has a fantastic campaign that feels much more dynamic and interesting in comparison. Defending and rebuilding West Rome in Attila was a more intense and rewarding experience than any campaign I did in either of the Rome games or M2.
>>2195587A good game with an insufferable fanbase that played literally nothing else ever.
>>2213849>Generic (Ur) fantasy but some of the factions are ~~brown~~ dark green and primitive Just play warhammer and mod out every interesting faction or just play an Attila/medieval II campaign in the middle east.
NAGASH IS COMING!https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dEGj9lZRcGYThis is not a drill, I repeat! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!
>>2273767I don't like the faghammer games, but you can't deny that without money CA made off em' the studio would be dead and gone by now. The deathblow came when they tried to go back to historical titles with the same formula and bombed hard.
>>2275442FINALLY
>>2275699>The deathblow came when they tried to go back to historical titles with the same formula and bombed hard.The problem is that they went back to historical using the Warhammer formula, but with the 'fun' parts removed. So you're left with arcadey feeling historical games where you are playing Bronze age "legendary leaders" that nobody has even heard of
>>2275870I honestly hope that when he finally comes, then not as part of any of the existing undead, but as his own thing.Think Daniel and Daemons of Chaos, but with actual fun mechanics, his own tech tree, the best of all three rosters + his own stuff like the Morghasts and more.
I just want a good modding scene again. Keep the hardcoding gatekeeping for fantasy where units can do shit like casting spells if you must but for historical games with just arrows and swords and stuff let the modders do stuff. I want Europa Barbarorum III.
>>2273767>Attila was kinoit was build on rome 2 so it couldn't be kino
>>2276163It's almost a shame they're guaranteed to fuck with the vampire counts campaign with his release. That campaign is perfect as far as I'm concerned.>Little to no powercreep on their tech tree or faction specific mechanics>No mechanical bloat>Each path on the tech tree is quite unique and totally exclusive from the others, giving varying ways to play>Semi-legendary lords so you don't have to autistically befriend your fellow undead>Vassalage makes for some fun map painting
>>2276369You'll never get a good modding community again because the game is locked down and you have to design the mod around the hardcored problems. Like DEI for example tries to make it a deep grand strategy game with pops and logistics, but this just results in 'bugs' like all your pops becoming foreigners the minute an enemy army takes a city no matter how temporarily and you have to build up your native pops again from scratch. And because of these same pop mechanics, instead of long campaigns you need to focus on short ones in order to keep your units reinforced and the cities from rebelling the second your army is somewhere else.
>>2276624This. The vampire counts have been in a pretty good place as far as I can tell. I don't get the obsession some people have with giving them WoC or horde mechanics.
>>2276631Listen, all I'm saying is that Historical Total War is bound by historical-ish limitations', that if CA let their historical games be more modable it would be a big draw in for history fans without eating in Fantasy TWs market. History Total war has a different consumer base than Warhammer TW, so the approach to History TW should be different. In addition to being more modder-friendly, maybe Historical could go in a more grand-strategy direction too. Because right now I fear CA might just axe historical if the next few games under-perform.
>>2276624>>2276657In all honesty there is still room to improve the V-Counts campaign.The Bloodline mechanic could be expanded.Instead of three unlockable tiers, you could make it so that each bloodline has three tiers with three unlockables. Each unlockable is either a flat-out boon to your faction's economy and/or units, a boon to your lords and/or heroes, a unique RoR + small boon, or a repeatable unlock that will allow you to produce random items/ancillaries for money. Unlocking each tier takes up as much Bloodkisses in total as they are currently and you get a unique Bloodline Lord to recruit with some seriously strong traits (BTW, the generic Vampire Lord and Strigoi are replaced with generic Bloodline Lords).The tech tree is fine, but it could be slightly expanded as well as have anouther path added to it that would offer unique researches depending on what LL you are playing as (like if you play as Kemmler then his tech tree would focus on Necromancers while Vlad's would focus more on Sylvanian levies...stuff like that).Bu in all honesty I'd really like it if they do turn Vampire Counts into the undead versions of the monogods. If I'd play as Neferata, then I want to play as the manipulative spymaster faction that is Lahmia. If I'd play as Ushoran, then not only I want to lead an army of ghoulish monstrosities and not!gypsies, but also aim to rebuild the old Strygos Empire and actually achieve it.Stuff like that. Each having their own mechanics, but now that CA is focusing on smaller DLCs with singular lords, then I won't see them getting a CoC-style DLC like WoC got back then. More like each LL getting some kind of mechanic and a unique tech tree.BTW, Vampire Coast needs an update. For starters all their armies should be horde armies and not just the LLs.
>>2276687>maybe Historical could go in a more grand-strategy direction tooNah, battles were always the main draw of this series so they should go all in on them and make them more tactically deep to make up for the lack of fantasy shit. There's nothing they could do to compete with grand strategy devs on the campaign layer anyway because they can't design fun campaign mechanics for shit, but imagine being able to build siege engines, trenches, tunnels and bridges in real time instead of waiting a dozen turns to build some fucking ladders.
>>2276953>BTW, Vampire Coast needs an updateAn understatement if I ever heard one. At least they didn't forget to give them the ability to attack by sea. And it looks like thanks to that change, coast might actually start being a threat to Ulthuan because of it based on the vods I've seen.
>>2277916The controversial take I have is that elements of warhammer total war are entirely applicable in historicals. The meaningful difference between a a helf/delf/human/lizardman/skaven/wood elf spearmen is not their appearance, it's their functionality. >Murderous prowess (90 seconds of boosted performance if sufficient kills are made) https://totalwarwarhammer.fandom.com/wiki/Murderous_Prowess>Martial Prowess (better stats if above 25% HP) https://totalwarwarhammer.fandom.com/wiki/Martial_Prowess>Predatory Fighter (Faster speed/damage if enemy is routing) https://totalwarwarhammer.fandom.com/wiki/Predatory_Fighter>Primal Instinct (Include Rampage! Like in the past because that was cooler): https://totalwarwarhammer.fandom.com/wiki/Primal_Instincts>Expendable (routing does not reduce leadership of other units)>Scurry Away (Speed bonus if leadership is waivering or lower) https://totalwarwarhammer.fandom.com/wiki/Scurry_Away!>Strength in Numbers https://totalwarwarhammer.fandom.com/wiki/Strength_in_Numbers Let's reimagine this as a Cathayan style "If a nearby friendly unit is equal to 100% of starting strength of this unit, get a morale bonus" to encourage grouping together>360 degree fire while moving foot archers>Hellblade: damage and AP boost if you make more than XX killsAll of these are 100% plausible to have in a historical. Taking ranged bow/crossbow guys as an example:African archers - scurry away, 360 degree firing, fire while movingWelsh bowmen - 360 degree fire while moving, hide, shoot while hiddenCrossbowmen X - 'sniper' trait, where the less men in a targeted unit the better their marksmanship.Genoese crossbowmen - able to put down pavisesCrossbowmen with windlass pulley - able to reload fasterCrossbowmen Y - strength in numbers, so you have to Cathay style put them close to protective spearmenEnglish longbows - able to put down stakesCrossbowmen Z - hellblade, so now an enemy reliant on chaff empowers
>>2277961Oh indeed. But I wouldn't mind if in the future they will get one more LL and some extra units along with additional reworks.Like Bone Hydras and Sea Giants (both from the Galleon's Graveyard)...ain't adding Leechwyrms since they are sea dragons reanimated by giant leeches (and since Sea Dragons dwarf over normal dragons by a lot, then I dunno how that would work on the battlefield, yet alone move).And in terms of mechanics, they really should have all their armies be horde armies that operate often in far away parts of the Warhammer world (BTW, shame they didn't turn Wulfrik and his army into a horde army with unique ship structures for Seafang), as well a rework to how Infamy works (because all it does is make you see how much of a infamous pirate you are and causes the other famous pirates to challenge you in order for you to get the sea shanty verses for the hunt for Amanar).
>>2278118The problem there is that you end up with a game that plays exactly like Warhammer but with none of the things that make Warhammer appealing and not enough depth to compensate, aka Troy and Pharaoh.I think historical needs to take unit design in a different direction entirely.
>>2278118I think Attila is basically the only historical game that approached roster design this way. Most factions had their equivalents to the core unit types, but each one was distinguished primarily by its abilities and formations in addition to just its stats.It's not something that's all that much of a stretch to do. It's just that every history game since Attila has been phoned-in SAGA slop that tries way too hard to build off of WH's shallow model to save time.
>>2278849What would that unit design be? Because the old "barely any stat difference" is not going to fly. Warhammer plays differently because of the presence of magic, SEM, flying units, monstrous cavalry and so on. It doesn't fucking play differently because of a unit able to fire in 360 degrees or murderous prowess.It would lack magic, it would lack flying units, it'd lack SEM, it'd lack herohammer, it'd lack monstrous cavalry, monstrous infantry, unbreakable undead/demons, so tell me how the fuck is this playing exactly like warhammer when it lacks 80% of what makes warhammer warhammer?
>Lords of The End Times (featuring Nagash)>End TimesBY SIGMAR N...!!!>There will be more contentPraised be Sigmar.Shame no Abhorash.Also Khemric Titan for the win...Not to mention the whole map will turn apocalyptic if you won't prevent it (you can revert some of the damage) and it's confirmed that the Realm of Chaos will come to Immortal Empires.
So it's just Niggash, in this DLC?
>>2279113Because all that shit is just window dressing on the shit engine and the fact that a cavalry charge in Warhammer is just as floaty and shitty as it was in Empire.
>>2275442Finally, now I will buy TW: Warhammer. All hail Nagash!
>>2279429>Bony gary stu>People follow him just becauseWarhammer undead really are lame if they can`t deny a bony idiot.
>>2243819the loss of the empire actually mindbroke them
>Didn't buy it on release because people said it's bad + can't buy it now because of the whole "banan" business>Eventually move on from TW in general>Check my steam library just now>This game just appears out of nowhere in my library>No history of purchasing or redeeming it according to the account detailsI mean thanks for the game and all, but how the fuck did this happen?still not going to play it
>>2279542The one dude who didnt follow Nagash dird the final death
>>2279705The big sandbox map got made free to play if you oened the previous games or game
>>2279742If none followed nagash that idiot would have nothing to rule over.
>>2279915Saying Nagash killed him makes it sound like he put effort into itNagash eradicated vampire lord with just a flick of the wrist
>>2279421>Shit shit shit shit shitYou're more scatological than a fucking Indian. If you're going to just throw a tantrum and stew around in perpetual misery then do so by yourself.
>>2189263>the kino that saved total war
>>2251851Still dont understand WHY the dropped free chinese money
>>2282264Basically because Hyenas at that point was already in development hell. CA had already staked their future on that project and burnt ungodly amounts of SEGA's money but they were already running short on budget with no game to show for it. Their choices wereA: Crawl back to SEGA's boardroom and beg for another massive cash injection to keep the ailing project afloat, revealing in the process that they had wasted monumental sums of money without accomplishing anything, that the project was already likely doomed and that CA couldn't be trusted with something this important and risk suffering the same fate as Relic.B: Pretend that everything is fine, lie to SEGA about the status of the project, and find money within CA to keep production running by cannibalizing other project budgets that SEGA didn't have oversight of.Yes, in the long term it makes more financial sense to keep 3K alive and continue profiting off of it. But CA wasn't thinking longterm, they were thinking "we need millions of dollars next week or we're not going to be able to pay people."The DLC not meeting expectations was just a shallow pretense to justify killing the game, because they needed to maintain appearances just long enough to get Hyenas to market, so they could leave total war behind and become a live service studio.When the shoe dropped and Hyenas imploded, all the people involved in that deception and the utter trainwreck that was CA's financial management and public relations from that era lost their jobs.
>>2213849Millions even.
>>2282508Wasn't Hyenas forced on them by Sega?
>>2282186>complains about using the word shit>types it out more than the guy he was bitching about>no actual responseFuck off rajesh, you're not fitting in as well as you think you are.
Barbarian Invasion is the best Total War and it simply had the best features (even better than Med 2), shame they never got carried over.Coming from Rome into BI to cheese a bridge battle only to see half the enemy army ford the river was shocking to me as a kid.Shame the best mods for it are abandoned, incomplete, buggy or all 3.
>>2282808Hyenas was 100% CA big chairs decision, SEGA had to rein in CA after the concord level of failure was out.
>>2279915Nagash can force obbedience on like 99% of sentient undeads in the world. Only exceptional individuals with overwelming willpower can resist (Settra, Vlad). And he did get betrayed that a scumbag that faked obbedience (Manlet von Baldstein)
>>2189263>killed>it never been more popularhehh
What the fuck is Hyenas?
>>2283916It's hovering around the same numbers as Empire in terms of average unit sales per game. That's 16 years of no growth, despite selling out the fans to appeal to a different audience that doesn't care about gameplay. They will never get back the seven million sales of 3K, helped by selling to a Chinese audience that then realised it was garbage and didn't buy the DLC, leading to it being abandoned. >they continue to rely on 'historical vs. fantasy' copium, to avoid addressing the problem of ever-worsening technology and gameplay
>>2284334A paint-by-number live-service looter shooter CA was developing for about six years until late 2023. They ended up spending 100 million dollars on it and cannibalized the dev teams for their other projects (IE, Total War) to work on Hyenas, which basically lead to the sorry state CA is in. And the kicker is that SEGA ended up stepping in and axing the game because it had become a huge money pit for the company, a money pit that wasn't going to get any return on investment if the reactions from the open beta were anything to go by.
>>2284465How did I never hear about CA's concord?
>>2284563I guess if you haven't been following Total War for the past few years you might have missed it, but if you've been following it then I have no idea how you could have missed it. That shit killed Three Chinkdoms and hamstrung Warhammer 3, I'm honestly surprised Sega didn't just shutter CA over that whole debacle.
>>2189263I think the problem, is selling three times the game
>>2284916It was just a more elaborate early access with triple the cost yes.
>>2278869>It's just that every history game since AttilaThere was literally ONE historical game since Atilla - Three Kingdoms.And it doesn't work the way you pretend supposed historical games work.Have you tried actually FUCKING PLAYING TW games, rather than bitching about them?
>>2273258>Reading comprehension: None detected.Re-read my post.And in case you still don't get it:Why the fuck trying to do line infantry in Shogun 2, when FotS did that and is just as moddable? Nobody fucking mentioned Empire nor Napoleon, you dumb moron. FotS is just a straight upgrade for Shogun in terms of guns and artillery, since it has actual fucking mechanics for those, not arrows pretending to be bullets and no option to fire by rank, while having only one type of (awful) artillery shells.
>>2273767>DLC for Rome 2 was kinoAsk me how I know you only know Atilla via memes and never actually played any>TW was ruined once CA tried to make games for hisfags and basedhammerfags at the same timeSo... never, since that never fucking happened?
>>2223082mutts law>>2243819Gee the country that teamed up with some weirdo mystery meats, Russians and jews from across the sea to invade Europe, they would certainly never be anti-European loons now would they
>>2189263Slaanesh is the only faction I find fun in this game anymore. The 2 new Slaanesh lords were OK but too steamrolley.
>>2189263Is Gorbad any good now? I've got the itch for some Greenskins.
>>2279113>It would lack magic, it would lack flying units, it'd lack SEM, it'd lack herohammer, it'd lack monstrous cavalry, monstrous infantry, unbreakable undead/demons, so tell me how the fuck is this playing exactly like warhammer when it lacks 80% of what makes warhammer warhammer?Imagine a Warhammer game but the only units available are melee infantry and archers. That's Troy/Pharaoh.Historical needs to look beyond unit types and magical abilities, because nothing it can do could possibly compare to the level of diversity a fantasy game can provide. Think of units that can provide multiple and highly distinct and tangible roles in battles besides stat differences, like archers who can freely deploy stakes and palisades or lay traps, or professional infantrymen who can interact with the map by chopping down trees and building siege engines so you don't have to waste a dozen turns on the campaign map, or multi-purpose units who can switch their weapons on the fly, or combine with other units to perform special tasks, or proper garrison mechanics so units can take cover. A lot of that has been done before to a degree, although it was highly flawed and became almost entirely absent post Rome II, they need to bring that back and push it further.
>>2282873You dumb cunt. The anon went"All that shit is just window dressing on the shit engine....and shitty". It's a childish hyperfixation with poopoopeepee dialogue as all he can think is like a fucking kid in terms of 'stinky poo poo' words. The only words he can think of for negativity is 'shit'. If he wasn't a child - or a ranjeet - he'd just go "Because all that shit is just window dressing on the terrible engine and the fact that combat in warhammer is just as floaty and miserable as in empire."
>>2288976>reads 36 words>brain literally only sees 3 of themPretty sure you're the one hyperfixating on shit lol.>childish>kid>childsomething you want to tell us Jeffrey?
>>2286997Woah easy there, they're just a small family company, there's no way they could impliment actual battle mechanics
>>2189715>Attila didn't flop It did>and still has a decent player base.Only because of the 1212 AD mod
>>2284921Pharaoh Dynasties
>>2282508Lynch everyone who thought developing Hyenas was a good idea>Killed 3K>Made Warhammer 3 release a soggy turd because so many people got fired >Is the reason why Medieval 3 is in "pre production"
>>2189715>CA has (to my knowledge), never released an unbroken gameShogun II is when they peaked and that released in a very much playable state. At least back then everyone still remembered Empire so it seemed like they had fixed their shit.
>>2291718I thought it was a good idea only because it caused CA is shit itself
>>2189263it's overyou don't know just how over it is
>>2279113And yet the old games are still more fun despite the lack of "variety"
This is a Warhammer thread so I may as well ask this here.Can anyone give me tips on winning this battle? I can't seem to do it. Their lord who has a really cool looking mammoth keeps plowing through my lines, which retreat so quickly that my ranged units can't deal damage fast enough. I tried focusing on it, or other units, spreading out or keeping tight, but I can't seem to survive long enough to shoot them down. I don't want to lose this army, but I'm not sure what do do.
>>2293912Snipe the general asap and then focus fire on the monsters, kite with your crossbows, keep the snipers behind your infantry and pull aggro with your lord and monsters to delay them meeting your frontline because they will collapse very quickly. Your first mistake was trying to make a balanced army, but Warhammer is much less about tactics and more about exploiting the system to make overpowered armies centered around your strongest units. Cathay really likes archers and artillery so build your armies around buffing those as much as possible. The lack of heroes really fucks with your odds, too, since their buffs and magic are very important and they do a better job of tanking and doing damage than most infantry. Incidentally, generally speaking infantry is pretty garbage past the early game once you start seeing more SEM and you'll usually only need a nominal amount to protect your archers, and in Cathay's case give them the harmony buff.
>>2294456I tried sniping them, but again, the general plows through my lines so quickly and is too damn tanky to kill off quickly, and I need to take down the flying dragon because it can disrupt my units, along with the wolves. My lord is only low level, and cannot stand up to them, or outrun them because he has no horse. I did want to add a hero to the army, but I kind of rushed it out to help near the gates.>Your first mistake was trying to make a balanced armyDoesn't the yin and yang thing encourage balanced armies? Should I just use more monsters like the lions then?
>>2276687nahlike the other anon said battles should be main focus and strategic layer should be supporting itif anything they should go full into deeper unit customisation like captains, banners, uniforms but also unit composition and attached subunits, customised weapons and armoursShogun 1 have little diplomacy and quite basic province development and it is still one of the best TW(as pure wargame)
>>2278849>but with none of the things that make Warhammer appealingbut also with no things that make warhammer unappealing like heroes, magic, sem etc
>>2189715Man I would love to play attila but that shit is still ten years after completely unplayable
>>2295017>Doesn't the yin and yang thing encourage balanced armies? Theoretically, sure, but this is still Warhammer. Only use yin yang to buff your most important units like the jade crossbows, but don't try to cover everything at once, the 20 unit limit and the game's balance simply does not support that.>Should I just use more monsters like the lions then?If you are building a monster based army, yeah, but the lions are more of a support unit for your mages and anti-ranged gimmick, you could rush sentinels instead if you want to build a SEM army. Cathay usually just wants to spam artillery and jade crossbows (with some crane gunners) and stack as many buffs on those units as possible, and heroes are great for that. It's not uncommon to have 4+ heroes in your army just for the buffs and magic utility.
>>2192689Ho ho ho, you ruffled some feathers
>>2213849ANYTHING they make, no matter how many millions go into production, will ALWAYS be MOGGED by Third Age Total War
>>2189263Total War died with Rome 2
>>2269388Knights of Honor 2: Sovereign exists you know?
>>2295177Ah, fuck. I guess the battle is fucked from the army comp itself. I'll just bite the bullet and let it die then. Maybe the next army will be better.
>>2189263Doing guerilla warfare tactics with Beastmen alone is more fun than anything the history slop does.
>>2189745Anon, I...
>>2197208I unironically agree. M1 TW best TW
>>2213849Nope
>>2251845>>2214710>creamapWhy not just torrent all of it at this point
>>2296118You still want to buy the game, just not support Talmudic DLC policies.
>>2296118WH3 hasn't been cracked
>>2296461Fuck me, really?
>>2295858-in wh1/wh2 (pre patch) Current beastmemes don't need to do le gorilla tactics because they're 10x stronger than every other faction surrounding them and snowball harder and faster than almost anyone sans khorne
>>2296465Yeah, blame Denuvo+active developmentFor the record, the last patch for Three Kingdoms was only cracked fairly recently
>>2296118TWW3 wasn't cracked and most likely will not be. Best solution is to buy only base game which can be very cheap on steam sales and use creamAPI to give yourself access to all DLC.
>>2296811What are you talking about? It's been cracked since forever.
>>2296812It took one google search to prove youre lying
>>2296744I agree for all the beastmen except Khazrak. I can completely stomp the map as everyone else but him. His campaign goes way slower, so I never end up with his OP units until the AI starts spamming doomstacks.
>>2269380the faction management shit they added in Rome 2 fucking blows as well, it's not even interesting and you have the same 3 scripted events pull up every second turn. i also preferred how in the older games your characters gained skills or traits by RNG or specific choices you made rather, like in ME2 your general's dread vs chivalry rating being based on your treatment of captives after battle or captured cities, than just giving you a skill tree to invest points in.
>>2273063>... yes, and?And that's why I equated CA with Bethesda. One releases endless reskins of Rome II and the other re-releases Skyrim in perpetuity. Both get away with it because of the strong grip they have on their particular niche that has been unchallenged for years. Your autistic rant is irrelevant to my point.
>>2284924>Why the fuck trying to do line infantry in Shogun 2, when FotS did that and is just as moddable?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38MeMdsmgQs
Hay guiz. So apparently I can play immortal empires in III despite not owning it? If I buy chorfs can I play them in IE without buying III? I am assuming no, but wanted to check.
>>2301263They gave it out as part of some anniversary. In theory yeah if you buy Chaos Dwarfs you can play them in immortal empires
