Idk if youve seen him play total war but all he usually does is cheese the ai and basiclly ends the campaighn before turn 100 so its no shock he hasnt seen knight spam
On some of my england campaigns. I just sit and wait so i can see the hell europe is going through. By turn 160 I see doom stacks everywhere, most of em were stacks of nights and the others were some foot knights and a huge amount of militia. This was the strangest england campaign for me because somehow the mongols were non existent and the pope had all of italy and parts of africa
i've played tons of me2 campaigns and I've never seen the Milan knight spam. But then again I usually kill them early since they are traitorous, irritating, vile scumbags. The only spam i've seen from them are their damn italian spearmen which are surpirsiningly meaningful in the early game
Oh my god I loved that so much. Played with the spartan hoplites. Had like 1-2 in my cities. Full stacks attacked the city. Just let them take the walls and then when you get into the closed paths of the inner city, just put my spartans in their way and they just slaughtered every single dude alone, with 1-5 men lost tops. I miss that in the newer games. Like cavalry charging a pikeline. In rome, you'd lose half the unit instantly. Nowadays it's nothing close to that. Medieval 2 had the best cavalry charges too, top level knights could level a weak unit in a single charge.
Yeah like he states that Medival 2 is the easiest, but man try playing the russians: slow progress and mongols and timuids fucking you up nice way. Once you've beaten them you are fine, but man it ain't easy
@@Schwachsinnn its easy for russia to migrate to england, you just don't build any units or buildings except for a port. Once the port is done you throw all your units onto a ship and head to london or the castle north of it. Once you have a few settlements you just switch capitals and let the old settlements rot with whatever free defenders you left. I think you can get london before turn 15. It gimps you a little but once you have all of england you are in a better position than you would be if you had stayed in the motherland. Plus you don't have to worry about the mongols or timurids unless you feel like it.
Nice strategy to follow mate. I might decide that in my next campaign. But I actually like the challenge of playing the Russians, staying true to theur home. I only said it's hard, not that it ain't fun.
@@zaatas Or just play England. By 1250 they've destroyed France, Spain, the HRE and the Italian city states and probably have a strong foothold in the Middle East anyway. (Disclaimer: I'm English, so I'm biased. :P )
I kinda wish you could still trade settlements. It would be nice if you could trade with your allies when they take settlements that you want to complete a province
I often wish I could just give away settlements to build up an ally (especially in Warhammer 2 if the climate doesn't suit me or my allow holds the rest of the region). I know you can raze but it's a huge waste and they often don't settle it anyway.
Wouldn't it be cool if it was set during the glory days of the British empire. Like with martini Henry's and revolts in the colonies and oooh battles against the Zulus/Boers and the boxer rebellion and obviously you could go alternate history by attacking America or something. The mechanics would probably favour cover and quick reloads or overwhelming the enemy (if some sort of tribal army). Hehe sorry, got carried away there...
I would love a European Pike and Shot era game, including a couple campaigns set in the Thirty Years War. That would be my top choice. Second place would be Bronze Age Total War. Who wouldn't enjoy getting to rebuild the Assyrian Empire, or seeing if the Egyptians could go beyond the Euphrates?
But thats actually stupid from him, Alsace is completly unprotected. It may have a fort, but is easyly reconquered. Furthermore the KI spawns a ridiculous amount of Ships and Attack your Trading ships, because he went to war for nothing 🤦♂️ I have to admit I havent Played the vanilla for years .
>Begin Empire campaign > TFW no navy to send to trade nodes > Declare war on SPAIN > Use a single fast moving ship against their entire fleet > Cheese the heck out of their galleons, take out their masts one by one, kill crew one by one > ??? > You have 50 of the best ships in the game now that also happens to be able of trading
What I love about medieval II is the diversity on all the factions, even inside Europe, Denmark, the HRE and Portugal are definitely one of the most fun factions to play
Factions in Medieval do have some bonuses. Order resolving can make them have unexpected heroic victories which would not be rare on the highest difficulty. They also have some money bonuses. Their economics can plummet, but they still will be able to hire 2-3 more units before they stop their expenditures. Still, yeah compared to other TW series, those bonuses are really minor
Epirus in Rome 2 DEI feels great, like you are the guardians of civilisation. And you start with very good but few units (including elephants) and each battle is dramatic. Massalia and Pergamon were nice but not as great. Fighting celtic factions is usually kinda boring and fighting parthians can be pretty annoying. Crushing Romans, Hellenics and Cartaginians is much more fun. Then Syracuse is probably my next choice but I have not tried them out yet
Empire is weird for me. I loved it despite finding it incredibly easy at times. I won as India once simply by taking the whole map there, establishing an economic powerhouse that dwarfed the rest of the world combined, and getting into trade partnerships and alliances with literally everybody. All I had to do to destroy a faction was stop trading with them and their economy would dip so much relative to everyone else that their neighbors would invade.
The Hojo clan on Shogun 2. You start with two provinces, one with a freaking gold mine and it's a peninsula. You build faster and better fortresses, so very early in the campaign, the AI can't win a siege against you, at all. The default garrison will be enough. So you basically Yari-steamroll the campaign and it's almost impossible for the AI to take back anything you captured, you don't defend you just go and upgrade settlements, and you're rich as Cresus to do so.
@@legatusdonatus6183 Yes and no. I was really playing like shit back then, it was not my first attempt at the campaign, though Hojo left my bullshit unchecked and carried me to the victory with no threat.
Quick question, do Medieval 2 mods increase AI capabilities as well? Such as Stainless Steel for instance? That mod seemed much harder than vanilla to me, for instance.
Mods usually dont make the AI better but gives it some cheats BUT not as stupid as like for example atilla they are reasonable cheats for example if you start with 5k gold the AI starts with 8k gold
Dac does do that, in the battle map. It changes the formations, I think. It might do more though. Here’s more info on what you can do: www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?2147-The-AI-Workshop
Shimazu clan. Their position is great, their bonus units (Katana Samurai) are cheap and powerful, and they're in a great position to utilize trade ports for early economy.
Really love your vids and couldn't agree more with your picks here! One key thing that I *always* did to level the playing field in Medieval 2 is use cheat codes in the A.I. faction's favor. For every major faction that my diplomat came across, I'd fork over somewhere between 70K - 100K florins. This allowed them to field some pretty decent stacks while also building up their castles / cities. When playing Britain (my favorite faction from that game), I wouldn't do this for the Scots because I do want at least the British Isles under my control. But the French? Milanese? Holy Roman Empire? Danes? Venetian? Turks? Hell yeah, I loved the challenge of going up against factions that weren't quite pushovers.
@maciejl20 I find it easier to steamroll as barbarians, i try not to cheese while playing campaigns until I'm getting rekt and on my last settlements, selucid was so hard trying to defend on 3 fronts and my main unit being fricking militia hoplites
@maciejl20 I try not to use doomstack autoresolve armies to handicap myself because the AI is trash, but I never attack Egypt I try and ally them everytime knowing I'll get betrayed as I keep attacking parthia and Armenia first
Rome's AI get cheats, Medieval's doesn't. The AI in Rome is dumber than a sack of bricks so it may be easier for a veteran who knows how to exploit the AI, but for a beginner who's just recently started playing Medieval is easier, precisely because of the cheats
in Thrones of Britannia I made an edit to the game that made it where you cant have more than 10 units in a single stack and it changed the game quite a lot. I'm a nerd who enjoys smaller scale battles resulting in longer wars my change somehow made it actually let the ai make more use of its armies and actually made multiple rather than its 2 or so you were accustomed. So my wars and stuff were a lot longer and less risky for the ai, since if they lost an army, it wasn't such a MASSIVE loss like it was before. I had one campaign where i was surdreyar and was attacking wessex, we had some small skirmishes on the way to their capital. They managed to scrap together reinforcements and brought their 4 armies to help defend the city, and i brought all of my 4 armies to siege it. It became the size of a "normal" battle of Total War but was much more thematic since I knew it was one big combined force than a typical blob. I can't remember how to do the edit but if anyone wants to try it you should definitely check it out. Fair warning though the Viking/Norman invaders WILL still spawn with stacks of 20 sooooo yeah. Watch out for that.
lol, Empire's Diplomacy is the polar opposite of most every other strategy game around. Usually it's scrapy doo refusing any deal that doesn't pretend he was the victor. With 70% of his territory gone and his armies wiped out.
„Hey fellow lizard men, i see you‘re only holding on to only one minor settlement without an army while powerfull enemies are swarming you from all sides, do you wanna confederate? I‘m the strongest faction world wide.“ „... WE DIDN‘T HATCH FROM THE SAME WATER! BE GONE... THOT!“
For me Medieval II is the hardest campaign, and Napoleon is the easiest. Medieval for me is hard because the AI agents are always better than your agents, like spies, merchants, priests, and heretics. The pope always gets in the way, and religion is such a big factor. On Napoleon you can just get all the trade routes, and the map is smaller.
For Thrones of Britannia I feel like that is what they were going for. It's realistic that once you have defeated their army, a second army, although possible, is unlikely to be built, or at least not one as good as the last. I like a lot of the mechanics as it seems more realistic and it forces you to plan ahead and take every action you make cautiously. If you are to lose an army then your lands will be quickly stolen. Again, this is the point. Maybe try a harder faction with bad map placement and diplomacy/loyalty issues like Mierce or Jorskir? (I think I just spelled that wrong but whatever)
@@thehistoryofcivilizations5702 granted that thing is slaaneshy and Slaanesh has tendencies to mutate it's followers to the opposite Sex they started with.
Really? How so? I don't know what exactly DarthMod changes, but I can remember really struggeling on the campaign map on hard/very hard difficulty (without exploits of course) in vanilla. Now that I have DarthMod I yesterday conquered all of northern europe with Sweden (on very hard difficulty) without having to fight a single city defence. the ai was just totally non-agressive
Cool Video. I always treat Total War games like reading a book; It takes a bit of your own imagination to fill blanks and create the perception that the A.I isn't as stupid as it so often seems.
I am not really sure what you are talking about in connection with Empire. The biggest problem that I have with your assertions is that you do not get a shit from trade until you annihilate the pirates. Before that you are just sending your ships out to be destroyed.
@@jonsouth1545 Yup! If you play the right faction. Sweden, Russia and many others - not so much. Then you have to wait for your third rates, and thus the possibility to venture into the Caribbean.
I played shogun 2 lately as nostalgia and hell the AI is beast, I did really realise how stupid is warhammer 2 AI in comparision and that only thing what improved since shogun 2 on that matter are AI cheats...which is sad... also honorable mention for shogun 2 ...1 on 1 combat animations are insane...
I'd be interested in seeing you play a Tannukhid campaign from ATTILA. I wouldn't mind whatever difficulty. If you don't want to play ATTILA or make a stream or video of that sort. Feel free to refuse, keep up the content so far. It's keeping my interest consistently.
im gonna solve your problem 4 you, play aginst an Ai who learned all your tactics from the first games you played until you reach legendery, you cant open legendery until you actually played at least 3 factions from easy to legendery. That way your Ai on legendery mode will learn how to counter you. This is an exelent way of geting a super good AI
You missed a point for Rome 2 which you mentioned for Thrones: Auto-resolve is way too generous for sieges. For example, playing as a nomad faction... Just bring two stacks to a siege and it's a guaranteed win. The way auto-resolve works is that it considers unit count but also unit quality, and therefore you can take two stacks of your typical nomadic army and steam roll Hellenic factions when in real time you would be absolutely shredded by phalanxes in choke points and archer/slinger fire from walls.
i find rome 2 is decent now i dont care for auto resolve i only auto resolve battles where i seriously outnumber the enemy i fight battles manually its more fun to me
iamplay yeah the campaign is decent but the pathfinding and the stupidity of the AI in battles just makes it pointless to fight a lot of battles. I can’t count the number of times the AI has just sent their whole army into one chokepoint or one ladder and got slaughtered.
@@ashmonkey2572 You don't have to understand, Mounted Infantry is just a cool concept, even if the execution is ill-formed. I so rarely see cavalry used as mounted infantry, that I have no idea which unit bests performs that function.
so oddly specific. and ironically there is like 5 cavalry units in that game to begin with so im not sure what that list would accomplish. FYI: you dont use cav in shogun 2 as melee cavalry. it just doesnt work. most underwhelming cavalry out of any total war. all they are good for in that game is flanking, running down routed troops, and general snipers. they will even lose to bow ashigaru for fucks sake.
@@RTB3550 Main reason I mentioned Shogun 2 is that's the only game I know (besides Empire) where you can use Cavalry as Mounted Infantry, and since Empire and Napoleon have a specific class of unit called "Mounted Infantry" I didn't want to look like I was excluding Shogun 2 (I do not know that if there exists later Total War games with mounted infantry).
I never playted the others that you mentioned but medieviel 2, rome 2 and empire total war i have played and i agree with you on them. It is one of the reasons that i am enjoying warhammer 1 and 2 because well TBH they just have abit more difficulty.
My favourite territory swap on empire is for anything with the ottomans for scotland - public order drop creates an instant revolt and they dont have time to reinforce, then you just sweep in and retake it, netting you a territory close to India with 0 repurcussions
Empire: another nation wants some random province from me and offers me trash in exchange. Of course I decline. And then I can always prepare myself for war as that nation will turn up somewhere randomly with an army on a ship, declare war, conquer that province where they landed and then do nothing further. It's almost always like this, no matter on which difficulty I play ...
WALN Zell It’s weird to me, there were a good number of advances that went into Warhammer 2 but not into 3K, and they would’ve been easy to implement. Things like that are weird design choices
maciejl20 Because that’s an estimate and you’re accepting a certain level of risk by auto resolving. Also, as your commanders’ levels increase, the prediction becomes more and more accurate. The problem with AR wasn’t the bad vs percentage, it’s units randomly getting nuked and it being unable to figure out what to do with hybrid units (like Lothern Sea Guard).
I just had my first succession war in rome 2 today, years after buying it. I was actually kind of shocked because I was pretty sure the whole disloyalty thing was one of those poorly implemented mechanics that never did its job
I see MTW (the original) is neither in the top 5 hardest or top 5 easiest. In my books that's just right. Perfectly balanced and challenging AI that doesn't resort to ridiculous cheats. Yes Expert mode had some unfair buffs, but tbh it was a great way to challenge yourself without feeling that you were being crapped on. Best TW EVAAAAAAR
My favourite thing to do in Empire was get a shitload of income per turn and then just buy out every region from AI for like 20k each until they only had 1 left and then conquer them.
the real medieval 2 difficulty slider is how close your starting position to the east is. putting yourself right in the shit with the byzantine is one thing, but when the turks are gone and the mongolians start to show up you'd better hope you haven't pissed off the catholics either because goddamn the medieval 2 AI can smell blood in the water
One gripe I have with Medieval 2 is when a crusader army (especially one that is at war with you) decides to just sit outside one of your cities (without desertion penalties, of course) and then sieges that city once the crusade is over. If I decide to not progress toward the crusade city objective I lose my army to desertion but the AI gets a free pass, pisses me off to no end.
I love the auto resolve system from Rome II because it’s not a dice role. I hate how other total wars say I have a 75 percent chance of winning and then I loose. It’s bogus.
disagree with number 1 because if you play on the hardest difficulty and with a faction close to the mongol and timurid invasion you are having problem with those stacks.and if in europe a faction becomes dominant like france or hre they send over 3 armies epsecially on a crusade. it usually is more human with no buffs and is more fun.( I agree with the part that a smarter AI would make it fantastic) Top 5 most annoying AI cheats would be a nC video.keep up the good work :) P.S. do you compare all on legendary?
Tasos Lotet I'm playing as moors on legendary and it was the most difficult start I've ever had on any total war game. 150 turns in now and it's still a challenging campaign. I've played every total war besides the warhammers and this has been the hardest campaign I've ever played
wanted to share a Disaster campaign with you but i dont now how to acces the save files in medieval total war 2 it´s basically were i established a superpower england but i am at war with Portugal - Milan - France - The holy Roman empire . Spain was in war with me but declared ceasefired pretty fast and the relationship with the papal state is pretty bad
My least favorite attribute of MTW2's AI is its desire to hire all mercenaries available, and if bankrupt will become completely passive strategically. It will not start any new wars, it will not attack enemies it has, it will defend if attacked but that is all, and it will not disband armies to pay off its debt, which means it will always stay in debt and is effectively a dead AI for the rest of the game if this happens.
Fuck, I completely suck at Med2 - I tried the Spain and HRE campaign multiple times and always found myself swarmed by Milan, England and France(as Spain)/France, Poland, England, Milan, Venice(as HRE) after I've dealt with Moors and Portugal(as Spain)/Danes and Poland(as HRE). Compared to RTW, I've actually found Med2 much more difficult mostly because in RTW I wasn't randomly attacked by nations that didn't have a land border with me that for some reason have to sail full stack armies across half the map to get to my territory for lolz(because they usually get max 1 settlement and then get their ass handed to them).
I don't agree with the Medieval 2 one. When I played Teutonic Order DLC, the AI had literally dozens of armies with quite good units and everyone just declared war on you (it was impossible to make peace with them)
The part ab the choke points with pikes in total war 1 I spent hours as the just using shitty hoplites to hold a spot and I never lost even against romes higher tier infantry
In one of my Rome Total War campaigns, I was the Scipii, and the senate told me to take a settlement in Greece, but I was focusing on Africa. So I sent an army, took the settlement, and sent my army back to Africa. I remember I successfully defended that city countless times against full stacks of Greek armored hoplites, when I only had 2 legionary cohorts and a single unit of archers, because the archers would destroy their ram, and the legionaries would defeat the unit that was pushing the siege towers or ladders, then they would never send another unit up their towers or ladders, they just sat there, so I'd send someone out the gate long enough to draw them closer, and then just leave my computer to let the wall towers kill their whole army, took a couple hours sometimes
Hello there! I don't know why but on diffrent rigs AI in moust of TW's i played bechaves diffrently- in my youth my father had a problem with tuning cpu's so i changed my interlans a lot. Especially in Empire where it can go from broken (as you described i had this issues on every AMD FX rig as well as heavly unbalandes rigs) to somewhat competent (like on 2000 series I5's and AMD Phenom II line - RIP 1100T you where the best). Similar behavior can be observed both in Medival II and Rome but to the lesser extent. AI disorientation can be caused by wierd ram setups (sometimes quick bios cahnge can do a lot of good) or malfunctioning motherbord - happened twice after getting new one (same/similar model) games started to be playabele again. I would love to hear on what kind of rig you recored your gameplay.
i remember jon managed to screw over the juelia and scipia by keeping a unit of equitas with their army which let him prevent the other roman families from cheating with the auto resolve to win battles they should lose. rome is pretty broken but even the broken units are countered by other broken units. Denmark hype at the end.
Well Wessex is the most powerful faction in the game you don’t need a stack and a half to take a city all you need is to know what soldiers you can recruit in your faction that are really good try playing as ciriecenn or the welsh and wait till you have to send a bunch of ships to attack the sea kings and watch a unit of levy axemen kill your generals unit with ease or when you have 3 nations that own the entire map then it doesn’t matter how many armies you destroy
I agree M2TW is easy, especcially if you have seen the turkish blitz, but if you don't know how to handle the plague or mongols (in my first campaign as venice I had both at once), you will have a hard time on any difficulty
Honestly total war games are generally known for being quite easy and casual. Just have 2 stacks Mob around close to each other and nobody can really stop you.
Thelondonbadger yeah, I re visited Rome, my issue is is that I get a tonne of momentum at the start but then end up stalling, it’s certainly one of the easiest campaigns I have played
Thelondonbadger Rome 2 I haven’t played much as it’s a recent purchase but you’re right after Carthage it easier only issue is that they revolt all the time
No mention of the Slav Campaign DLC for Attila? They all have unique poison archers and can win by just holding the capital, building a shrine, and then running the shrine down. Which is further buffed by diplomacy options with the war hungry Huns. Easiest. Campaign. Ever.
the is why i love and still play medieval 2 because it doesnt feel like the AI is cheating all the time. if you almost kill off a nation, it will stay weak
Solid picks, but for me, the easiest game for me at least was Shogun 2. Shogun 2 LITERALLY has a win button, and that is Yari Wall. It's basically a Win button that shifts the odds into your favor.
Rome 1 siege defence: attack them before they build any siege equipment, send one cav out and let them chase you into towers. Repeat. Heroic victory 0 casualties.
After watching this again, I do have one big question. Why not Shogun 2? It is such a simple rock-paper- scissors game and it takes a long time to master but it is extremely basic and easy to learn. Basic units that all factions have, and a pretty basic campaign map.
To be fair to thrones of Britannia its just trying to be realistic because in most cases back then you just had one army and if it goes your probably fucked
One thing for a medieval 2 campaign that is difficult: play as Turks or Byzantine. The Mongols are hard to deal with, especially if you mess up your politics with the West and have a crusade ongoing in your lands.
