All Judgements were made on Legendary Difficulty. Some of these battles are not that difficult on lower difficulty settings. Do you agree with my list? What should the next top 5 be?
These battles are so difficult you can't even re-enact them when you have 360 degree vision of the battlefield, a zoom in and out function, exact troop stats and numbers, and a lack of actual lives, political repercussions and historical legacy on the line. Must've been bitchin hard to be a real ancient general.
Also, your troops' morale can be dropped based from so many things and not just from direct engagement and the loss of the integrity of the units. Attrition may as well lower the base morale before the battle even starts.
I imagine you are especially right about the lack of vision and numerical information. A flank could be near collapse and you wouldn't even be able to tell until it disintegrates. Hell maybe some of the officers IN that very flank wouldn't realize it until it was too late.
Yeah but the downside is that you don’t have any subcommanders who you delegate parts of the army to. In real life, if you forgot about something or missed something, one of your delegates would take over
@@generalaccount6531 like in the battle of aleasia. Defenders where destroyed from the beginning, no food no water, they probably had no streght to fight back, but i am sure Roman army wasn't on its best shape neither
The romans did really prepare to the absolute maximum in Alesia and just barely came out on top irl, so in that context you as a player should have tons of ammo imo
To be honest they won just because of Ceasar's bravery. His men already wavered and if he himself didn't charged into enemy lines and thus boosted their morale, they would lost.
Steva Stevanovic They didn’t just win because of Caesar’s bravery. They won because they had to win, or else they would have been completely wiped out. The Romans knew of the things that the Gauls did to POWs and knew that no quarter would be given or received. Caesar played a huge role in the battle, as did Marc Antony and Labienus, but I would argue that being forced into the corner as they were made the Romans fight that much harder.
@@timsellers4946 Yes, you are right, but the same thing goes for Gauls. They too knew that, it Romans win, there would be no mercy! They lost and indeed there was no mercy for the Gauls. So they had the same motivation and we cannot say that Romans win because of their motivation. It was more the discipline and bravery of Ceasar and other commanders. If Vercingetorix (I probably "nailed" the name 😁) joined the fight who knows what would happen.
Steva Stevanovic I think we can all agree that Alesia was one of the hardest fought and hardest won battle for both the Gauls and the Romans. It was a showdown between two of the most powerful factions of their time that changed history as we know it
They actually had to scale down the difficulty for the battle of Alesia , people were complaining that it was actually impossible to defeat on legendary difficulty so after some time, they made it easier.
@JustforfuN I won cannae in hard the other day, Intersting enough I used a tactic similar to the one used In real life, It cost me a lot to trap the romans but I managed to, and It was incredible that my center held the position. I tryed so many combinations before not to do It like in IRL but just to win the battle and I never could, but by chance I ended up doing a similar tactic like Hannibal Irl and I came up on top. In hard difficulty, not even very hard o legendary
1:39, well, that’s historical. That third line might as well be the most veteran and powerful infantry line ever. 14 years of not losing a single battle, that’s more time than Alexander’s whole campaign, so imagine it. It took a mix of the three Roman Cohorts and a cavalry charge from behind to make a fight against them. And it took a bit of luck, it could have easily gone wrong if the cavalry hadn’t realized the rest of the army was in trouble and that chasing the fleeing enemies was useless.
So like a LegendAsk instead of JackAsk? I mean he already kinda has a "Your Campaign Sucks" series if you think about it. It's the only logical next step! :P
To be fair, the extra troops makes way more sense that cheat stats. Most battles in real life where not even near "fair". I keep playing rome 2 and my most intersting games are custom games Vs AI with double the amount of points that I have to spent. The amount of tactics I had to develop to win such battles are the most fun I ever had on the game
@@v44n7 yeah but when there is a one settlement faction with 3 full stacks, meanwhile you struggle to maintain 1 it is not fun. Although I have enjoy their newer titles, 3 kingdom, and warhammer
@@aksmex2576 that why there is normal difficulty . I personally enjoy the cheating ai .. because no matter how smart they make him you can outsmart him and get satisfaction out of it ..
I remember buying Rome 1 when it first came out and having so much trouble against the spartan hoplites in that one historical battle I can’t remember the name of. Hate that battle to this day.
I winned that one because of luck lol, the spartans that come after a time just forgot to enter the city because one of my artillery units routed and the elite hoplites just followed them very far away in falange formation, so, really fucking slow. By the time they finished that, I already was one minute from winning, also, the battle Irl was a defeat, so, I think that's why it is very hard
@@jimcrow582issue is Epirus isnt in Rome 1, its rebel territory they were already using the Greek Cities faction for Sparta, so Macedon or Seleucids were the only picks
Well, a lot of them can be debated, but these two should definitely be the top two: #1 - Rebels (Any traditional TW with rebel factions starting off with between factions). Don't know why you would ever play them, you can't "win" the campaign really, but it is easy; crush everyone in a few turns. #2 - Persians... Alexander DLC, you can't lose it. ie: again, don't know why you would play that, but it is the easiest, most immediately overpowering position you can push yourself into I can remember in any TW for a real faction you can control outside of let's say, bugged rebels.
@@vicentgalvan70 Out of cheer curiosity, which game is Stainless Steel for? I'm aware of Darth for Empire and Napoleon, Divide et Impera for R2 and Ancient Empires for Attila (Rodius as a notable mention).
Or Carrhae. You are up against heavy cavalry and horse archers and your own cavalry starts in the middle of a hopeless fight they can't even flee away from because the enemy is simply faster.
The funny thing is, what you described at Zama comes pretty close to what really happened. The Roman and Carthaginian armies did break from one another for a time in between each Carthaginian/Roman line failing. Both sides would reorganise, and then the next attack would begin. In the end, the Carthaginians just ran out of time. Much as you describe.
More like the tactics they could do Alexander escaped a death sentence by ordering his troops to do drills That hit the enemy morale so hard they didn't dare to attack even tho they had the best chances. But in game that'd be a different story
I would add Trafalgar and Borodino, for me those were the hardest battles in Napoleon as timing is what guarantees victory. Some people say that Waterloo and Austerlitz were the hardest ones but I disagree, of course i had to try at least a couple of times before winning. Empire is super easy. Medieval 2 can be east if you know how to win. Rome 1 is easy in general, maybe Carrahe was a bit tough. Alexander was fairly easy as well as barbarian invasion, surrounding the enemy and killing the general is key in Rome 1. Rome 2 is Nasty. Shogun 2 has some easy battles but some are really difficult. That's all the games I played so far.
For Borodino you only need to follow real life plan of Marhsal Devout. Go on a flanking round from the south. Once south is secured, you can destroy Russian fortification one by one. I often try to make a breaktrough in Borodino village too, but I never succeeded except to slightly weaken it up. Either way, casulties will be heavy but still menagable unlike with Austerlitz which for me is battle where two armies anhialate each other.
I have just remember how i needed two months to win alesia in legendario. I had to learn every movement of the enemy and how to counter it. Everything has to be perfect, you have to make all your units work in an awesome way. More than two tiny mistakes and toy know you have to restart the game. I almost gone crazy with that battle, but i won it, two times.
That kind of depends on your own personal campaign restrictions more than anything else. If you're not allowed to lose any battles or towns, its Western Rome from Attila. If you're allowed to lose battles but you have to win the campaign, very few Total War games are even challenging.
@@zarakdurrani7584 Just play as the northmost faction for Shogun 2. It's a ridiculously easy campaign because you're never going to be fighting on mutliple fronts unless you're fairly far south and choose to start multiple wars, by which time you'll have multiple settlements.
I personally suffered, and am suffering, greatly at Waterloo from the French perspective. I beat it with ease from the British, but I still can't do France.
@@wamakima5004 I sent my troops to the corner where the Prussian appeared tp blocked their way and bombed the Prussian with my artillery , I killed Gebhard then I attacked the British from the same flank
No way! I didn't mention the alysia battle when you asked our opinion on the livestream cause I though it was pretty normal difficulty wise!Granted I did play it on very hard and not legendary....
@@pjhood3770 I don't think you understood what he was saying, archers in back mean literally archers in the back of the enemy. You can't get the artillery to do that since they are very slow
1:00 "Hannibal still has his war elephants?" It tilts me to no end that people always associate Hannibal with his elephants just because he marched them over the alps. These animals died very soon and Hannibal fought at least years without them! The elephants at Zama were super fresh, maybe even rushed out. The fact that Hannibal just threw them away at the start of the battle shows how little he trusted them even though he was outnumbered. And Scipio's preparations showed he was right to do so, just imagine them running into the sides of his old veterans when peppered by the Numidian cavalry! The sacred band as his thirs row at Zama when the actual Sacred Band wasn't part of the battle makes me cringe. Why not have super experienced 'regular' troops? They'd be too weak you say? Well, then your whole veteran / experience system is obviously shit and relies on big names way too much instead of acknowledging that a soldiers past experience was way more important than fancy decorated helmets and greaves!
@@hotsingleplaguedoctorinarea Ah yes, the Battle of Arsuf. I remember the first time playing it when I was young. It was the first time I won a Total War historical battle ever.
LegendofTotalWar: Legend of total war here... Captions: I jump to the wall here ................................................ LegendofTotalWar: today i'll be doing another top five Total sar video Captions: today be doing another top five Twitter war video
Napoleon Total War Trafalgar on the hardest difficulty fighting with the french against the british navy is extremly hard if not nearly impossible. Your allied spanish ships get rekt within a minute and there is nothing you can do about that. And for those who thoght waterloo is hard its not its extremly easy to win just push everything over the left flank you can win all the houses with the old guard easily and then just strike the prussians as soon as they apear on the map, if you are fast brits are nearly gone before prussians even arrive.
Surprised the Battle of Carrhae isn't here, from Rome 1, it's definitely the toughest from that one. Admittedly, I found Rome 2 so bad I never really bothered with the historical fights in that one.
Surprised not to see the battle of Borodino from Napoleon. I found it hard not only because of how heavily entrenched the russians are, and how far you have to march under artillery fire to actually get to them, but mainly because of the damn time limit that cant be turned off for historical battles for some reason.
I think that one historical siege in shogun 2 ( can't remember the name ) where you defend (as hojo I think ) against 4 armies at the same time . That one was extremely hard on legendary .
I love your videos man. But respectfully, I don't think you've played enough total war games in the series to make a top five historical battles list cuz I've only seen the same repeat titles. No Napoleon or Shogun 2 battles on here and some of those are freaking hard like Trafalgar, for example is almost impossible on that legendary and others as well. You should try more of the historical titles before making such a list. That's just my honest opinion
I've played all the historical battles I just haven't made a video on all of them because they tend not to do very well. There are a lot of difficult historical battles so this list was bound to get some disagreement.
Who else is doing campaign battles in total war games outnumbered again and again until they win for days, smithing plans during the day 😂 just too see how you get day for day more deaths on the enemy site until you won it. Its so hard, total war games are maybe the most strategic games ever. But if you get it. Its epic.
Here was my strat for the shogun 2 battle, found it really easy even the first time, just engage each ship with a boarding party and they will stop firing, then immediately in sync send in the bomb ships, they will blow up the enemy ship and losses for the boarding party will be pretty minimal if you time it right, but buggy but works like a charm
I probably agree with your list on legendary because this is what you do for a living, but i guess i hoped for some battles that are hard, not because of unit buffs from difficulty level but just generally a hard battle to complete without several tries. Something from Rome 1 should probably be included since they have the most immersive historical battles and some of them are hard.
For me the battle for Alesia wasn't that hard, I played it on almost every difficulty except easy. So basically the trick to that battle was, memorizing where the next army will come from everytime and before they arrive, setup! So you start moving troops over there so then you can start holding and deal with the other troops at the same time! I've seen you pushed up a unit to deal with the gates of the fort. I let Vercingetorix come to me. And since I knew when he would I could detach a unit to hold the choke! Idk, after I played the battle a few times and I knew where every time the opponents army will come from it wasn't that hard for me. So when I see oh, this army I have almost dealt with and I know the next army will appear shortly and I know where, I already bring my artillery in position and some Legionaries. And I actually never took the fort and the point in it. But even on higher difficulties, the morale is bad for the opponent free levy's and such so continues cav charges in the back to the job after a good while!
for the first battle in the video i thought of another plan... use you numidians to guide the elephants to ur lines and butcher them whith javelins. Try to conserve as much ammo in the numidians as possible . It will be usefull. Next step is dispatch two triaris to the flanks and 3 behind a line whith all the hastati. your not expected to beat the sacred band , comitt your princepes to fight low tier infatary , pull them back and sacrifice the hastati when the sacred band come in. Next attack the sacred band whith the 3 triari , put them in square formation. This will hold them and disroupt their formation. Commit your principes to deal whith any non sacred band infatry left , after that attempt to charge the sides and back of the sacred band whith the left over pricipes. This will probabely not be enough however. While all this is happening , use the left over numidians to shoot down at eneymy cav right after dealing whith elephants. They will probabely charge ur numidians. But you are faster. Bait them away as far as possible. Use one of your cav (or 2) to hold them in place as far from their lines as possible. the 2 triaris in the flanks should now help your hastati in the fight. Or fight the enemy cav if you failed to put them away from the main fight. you should have at least one free cav or more. Use it to demolish eneymy skirms and charge the back of enemy infatary.The triari in square formation is a good anvil. P.s I would mostly ignore the enemy numidians. Since you have the triari in the flanks , they will probabely be shooting at them. They are tough and well armouerd , and can take the punch from their javs. Try to distract the enemy cav instead. This strategy can work , but its very micro managing intense and relies on their cav to chase ur numidians , otherwise it fails.
I kept watching the video repeating "where is battle of Alesia? Is it number 1?" That battle just kicked my ass so many times that I was legitimately shaking when I won it for the first time.
You should do a top 5 hardest factions to start playing with like rome(western empire) in rome TW barbarian invasion pack. Cause it’s really hard with horrible public order , bad economy and extremely expensive units and upkeep plus every body just tries to destroy you before you can fix your economy.
Ive found the best way to win is to sacrifice which territories you can do without, and consolidate your forces. Have a raiding army to help with your weak economy before stabilising. Once you got enough for a push, secure your weakest flanks first. Play as nice as possible with other factions
Nah it's not that difficult, it's just about being aggresive, for example, use most of your troops from Britain to strike North and kill the faction. Also let a couple of cities rebel in middle France and around Switserland and use that to start mopping up German tribes, both Alemanni and Franks should fall quickly. Next combine your fleets to save money, wreck everything building you own that is a different religion, I'd say go Christian, you have a god tier converter near the very north east edge, like 90% or some insane number. And while doing that just pull out of cities let them rebel come back in and exterminate them, gives tons of money. And by the time the Huns or other hordes you should have two powerful armies, 6-8 elite cav, 4 archers, legionnaires and a general. Use forts and night attacks to destroy their stacks one by one. So it's about combining weaker armies into full stacks, using armies from several cities to smash other cities and turning back etc. It's not too hard at all. But it is a lot of fun, almost as much fun as playing as rebels in rome or medieval 2.
This video made me realize something. I wish the Total War series continued something that started in the early games: historical campaigns, and with certain battles you are told you have to do better than the leader you're playing in order to achieve victory. It was a dope feature from Medieval I.
Well since the battle of Alesia was probably one of the toughest battles to win for any general ever, it only makes sense that Total War goes all out to make it the biggest challenge they can
have to say there are 3 battles in Napoleon that i would argue are harder than any of these. Trafalgar, Borodino, and French Waterloo are absolute nightmares where you cant afford a single mistake or bit of bad luck with arty. some of the other ones in that game are no cake walks either.
Shogun 2 was my entry into the series and the sea battle at No. 2 my first historical battle. It fucked me so hard that it took years for me to touch another historical battle
Top 5 best looking - i will rush these units and use them even when they are not that even good in historical total wars (my pick are the royal banderium)
I think a campaign in Africa, of ancient African tribes battling for supremacy of Africa would make a great total war game. With the hundreds and possibly thousands of African tribes there are and the scale of the map to their disposal, the only thing that might present a challenge is the amount of research they'd have to do on the individual tribes to make them historically accurate
