Top 5 Most Challenging Total War Campaigns 

I like the apocalyptic feeling Attila gives you. Really goes well with Rome dying

Atilla was my first total war game and my baptism of fire

It's hasn't been picked yet, but I'll keep trying... Top 5 mercenary units in Total War

I’m commenting just so the yt algorithm knows how good your content is. Much love brotha

Top 5 Most Awsome-looking Units in Total war.

actually expected this to be about specific campaigns in games rather than the games themselves.

In Total War Attila you don't paint the map, you paint your body.

"the most challenging total war campaign is total war attila" i've pretty much never been less surprised to hear something like that in my life

The 'Slave & Rebels' campaign from Rome 1, is interesting, limited recuitment, at war with everyone, win or die every field battle with no withdraw option, no starting Generals , random reinforcements map wide.

Attila will always be my favourite total war game, and taking 100% of the map will always be my greatest TW achievment, it was actually your total war atilla huns series that introduced me to this channel, and the power of horse archers.

Total War Rome Barbarian Invasion Western Empire. Enough said

Shogun II is the last Total War game where the AI actually has Fog of War on the campaign map so they don't see you when you're out of their line of sight. You can stumble across random AI army scouting the map. However, starting from Rome II the AI has 'god vision' so they never waste any movement points and can escape from your chasing armies every time. The more I mod the recent Total War games the more new AI cheats I can find. And this is one of those that actually affects not just the balance of the game, but the fundamental gameplay mechanics as the AI can always anticipate your troops.

TW Attila - when Total War meets Dark Souls

Napolean Total War is difficult because it's bad to charge a pike formation with your cavalry... Dammit, I knew I've been doing something wrong this entire time!

Number 1: Thrones of Britania: The campaign is so bad and boring to where it is almost impossible to beat the game before uninstalling the game.

5 Good Units that belong to a faction or unit type that are generally weak.

i'll never forget Sassanids and their vassals spamming armies and agents (which are harder to deal with) like a crazy :(

Top 5 artillery units

Attila is my favorite total war game! It took me hundreds of hours before being actually good enough to finish a campaign at legendary difficulty with WRE but the satisfaction you get after that it's indescribable. Congratulations for you top 5 videos and your gameplayes anyway, I really enjoy watching them. Keep it up

Top 5 features you didn't know about / hidden features

Completely agree about the difficulty for the diplomacy for Napoleon Total War but I think that does actually represent the Era pretty well. Immediately following this was the Concert of Europe specifically designed to make sure that no one could expand inside the continent to any level that might change the balance of power. Before this was the 7 years war and the 30 years war which both featured major decisions based almost entirely on limiting the power of potential rivals.

12:00 one thing I found with Shogun 2 during realm divide is that ALL of your vassals turn on you which really screwed my first shimazu campaign 😂 Needless to say I didn’t create any vassals in my second shimazu play through 🤣

I bought Shogun Total 1 about 18 years ago from a thrift shop for like $5. I’ve been hooked ever since. I’m a noob tho and only play the game on easy and use cheat codes

Top 5 Most Challenging This Is Total War Total War campaigns (where you declare war on everyone from the start)

Legendary Difficulty is for Masochists It is only there to add padding due to shitty AI and game mechanics. No substance I wish CA had real competition

Shogun Total War, where "Bingo Bitchu!" is an appropriate response to what your plans are.

Great content! Started playing the series back on medieval 1. Wish I found this channel sooner!

Love the throw back to original shogun

Hope you'll make some top5 again. Love these. I understand they take a lot of time but still, they're amazing and educational.

Ever thought about doing a top 5 units that are good in campaign but bad in multiplayer or vice versa

I really enjoy these list videos, I don't agree with all points in each one, but that's what I enjoy about them. Thanks for doing these

Isn't it a little bit weird to base this list on a new player experience, like you go out of your way to mention in the napoleon section, but also base the order on playing on legendary difficulty, which nobody who hasn't played several hundred hours or more does?

Much as I love most TW games I have no respect for difficulty mechanics that only translate to unfair bonuses and debufs. I expect higher difficulty to equal smarter moves from the AI. Sadly this is where TW fails to deliver.

I think it would be interesting to know the top 5/top10 challenging factions to play in the Total War Series

The western roman empire is a rough one. Ive stabilized the empire from southern gaul south. The eastern empire is easier i was auctually able to expand into southern dacia and Mesopotamia. My only problem with attila is how in the family tree ur sons have randomized names snd dont keep the family name

I love how often Legend usually mentions Attila on this list. I mean, I really enjoy the game, its my favourite game in the franchise, mostly because its different. Anyway, great video!

Top 5 desired settings for future fantasy titles, possible candidates being Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and World of Warcraft.

Thanks for the consistent posts and high standards brother

4:40 "It could be your head on the chopping block" Well since it's Napoleon TW, then it's your head on a guillotine.

I played as the ERE at one point on Normal (I don't really like super difficult settings because of all the massive cheats the AI gets over the player), and I managed to assemble 8 armies in the Bulkans. This allowed me to easily fight off the Huns who were led by Attila at this time. They tried constantly to get past the Danube, but they never could. The next thing they did surprised me; they asked me for peace and settled in a territory away from all of mine and even became another factions vassel which surprised me even more. The Huns were not a problem for me in that game, it was actually the Sassanid Empire that was the real trouble for me. I even had to stop playing that game because they just got too scary for me to handle.

I was playing Attila once as Eastern Roman Empire, I managed to peace out and then ally hunns. This lead to both me and western empire doing quite well.

Love your videos man. Keep up the posts.

Actually Attila was my first total war game... After that bullshit warhammer 2 is so easy

Not a base game campaign, but playing as Persia in the Age of Cyrus mod for Rome 2 was probably one of the hardest campaigns I have ever played. You basically start with one settlement, Pasagardae, and two armies. One full army led by Harpagus and a half stack led by Cyrus. You also start off at war with the Median Empire. In addition, the three other biggest empires, the Chaldeans, Egyptians and Lydians are all allies with the Medians and they WILL join the war against you. At the same time. One single misstep can end your campaign right there. You can't stay on the defensive because your armies are hopelessly outnumbered and if you wait at Pasagardae (which by the way is not a walled settlement), the Medians and Chaldeans will bring their full force down on you. So you need to blitz immediately, capture as many settlements as you can so you can start raising money to finance more armies. But those first 50 or so turns are absolutely nerve wracking. Advance too far ahead, fight the wrong battle, siege the wrong city, run afoul of the wrong agent, and your entire campaign is basically over.

"Shogun 2 has the best ai" Me every battle: ai sits on defensive despite attacking me and having a way larger army

I like how you say its from a new player perspective but also on legendary difficulty

Attila is literally my favorite total war game.

attila is my favourite TW game. I really enjoy the “end of the world” atmosphere

Maybe Top 5 missing game mechanics. We had tabletop wargaming in university (wasn't as funny as predicted) but one mechanic that excelled was Reactive actions. For example , if army A approaches army B, the latter can either a) reactively attack or b) reactively evade. That mechanic could come in handy i.e. in a situation where you get besieged by a commander-only-army and don't get replenishment for the next round.

Nice and PROFESSIONAL advice!

Realm divide makes Shogun 2 the hardest IMO

This made me feel better about not being able to beat Rise of the Samurai on shogun 2. Even if it wasnt mentioned lol. I have so much trouble with that campaign still

Me seeing attila at the top knowing im addicted to it.

Thank you for uploading and have a nice day

WRE legendary dificulty on Atila is hard even with thousands of hours of total war experience, i could win a very hard game with no issues but it was a nightmare on legendary.

I remember the first time I played WRE in Attila on Easy and I still had a rough time.. Lost a 5th of my territory before I was finely able to rebound. Still have that save too. I reconquered all of Rome with it, but by the time I got to that point, the ERE was barely hanging on. I later played WRE on legendary and I was sucking my thumb after I ran away..

thank you for the video!!

the huns can be dealt with by getting them to sign a treaty with your faction and being their ally until attila comes around at which point the areas you control if they have been used to shield a few other factions enable you to start stacking up armies in them that when you have enough you break the alliance with the huns and get as many of the other factions that are left to go to war with them first your armies only act as backup in battles until they are really beaten down by this point attila himself should be on his last legs and when this happens fully commit to battle with the faction if you have to get as many client states as you can this helps in that you can force other factions into war alot easier when he finally dies the rest is just easy

Man I remember first time I hit realm divide watching my whole wee Shimazu empire collapse and having to fight for every region on Shikoku second time I was Takeda and allied with Hojo right at the start and they stayed with me even through the realm divide

On my second attempt at Western Rome in Attila I found that deleting everything except Italia and Britannia forced negative public order to max out overall, denied other factions my settlements, and allowed me to consolidate my main provinces and armies early on to crush rebellions and get my eco up fast.

I was very proud when I won total war atilla campaigns on legendary did both Eastern and western Romans empires. Never nuked my own lands or any of the semi cheese strategies just did the best I could til I stabilized and was able to repush and take what I had lost. Western empire almost became somewhat easy after turn 20 lucked out and got Attila dead within 3 turns of his arrival based on where he spawned.

Outstanding list. Love it. Kudos, and as I continue to build me channel. I will keep coming back to this list. I don't want to give too much away for those reading the comments to decide whether to watch the whole video or not. The answer is yes. haha.

Agree in empire Austria ends up rolling in and Poland plus trying to expand becomes a thorn in the side.

Big thing I find with shogun 2 is the agent spam, later on in a campahine I've noticed the a.i send so many agents at you it doesn't even seem to matter if you kill or convert them a bunch more pop up to replace the one you just took out

Nice this makes me want to download some new total war games

I don't mind difficult campaigns and the ai getting free stacks as long as there are no ridiculous battle buffs. I do like how WH2 lets you change the campaign and battle difficulties separately.

damn didn't even mean to be this early on watching your video keep it up man

Top 5 Best 'This Is Total War' factions. Spread over all the games.

I’m commenting just so the yt algorithm knows how good your content is. Much love brotha EDIT: I stol this comment from @Stringbean219

Shogun 2 with Expanded Japan mod (more than doubling the number of factions) is brutal on legendary. 5 wars for most factions from game start, then everyone piles on once you meet/border them.

Shogun 2 AI confuses me a bit because you see clans like the Chosokabe with a built up city and they have public order problems... but then you get clans like the Takeda just conquering provinces over and over and they seem to get no resistance to invaders or public order issues, don't have to leave any troops in the settlements and can just expand so quickly and become strong so fast.

Haven't played them all but Shogun 2 and Attila at the end have to agree with. I absolutely love Shogun 2, the challenge feels about right, completed every clan campaign. Attila haven't managed to finish at all yet, I played it breifly at launch got multiple rebellions/disloyal generals, i've only decided to give it another go recently.

It makes a bit more sense how I felt overwhelmed when I got Attila as my first TW game, lol

Thats what makes Shogun 2 so good for me. Its a challenging game on a solid basis. There is no giga cheesy stuff like the Huns in Attila. Every single AI lord just has a strong army and puts up a hard fight. There are only few occasions where you can be the laughing third because they also act carefully. And realm divided is a great mechanic to put up a challenge for the late game where you otherwise would be a behemoth already who steamrolls all remaining factions one by one with ease. If it werent be for my huge nostalgia for Medieval 2 id rate Shogun 2 as the best TW game ever. Its just the essence of what a TW game needs to be.

My first total war game and introduction to the whole genre was napoleon and I can tell you I really struggled for the first hours

I won every campaign you listed. Atilla was really hard but I spammed them and won in attrition war. Shogun 2 Is hard one too. Depends wich clan you play. You just need good armor upgrade and then you will win every battle

I'd say Attilla is the hardest for me. I've played hundreds of hours of Total War across the other games and I still have a damn hard time playing even the easy start factions in Attilla.

“Your elite troops can die to Militia” *laughs in Old Guard with full experience*

Late to say this but in Shogun 2 if you quickly turn Christian and seize the trade nodes with any clan you get alot of headway to winning.

Play Shogun 2 on Very Hard/Legendary Low tier Ashigaru goes full berserker John Cena style agaist you and almost dont broke Aaaaaa gotta love this s###

Love shogun war 2 so much but I havent played in a while, the online is almost dead and my legendary Takeda campaign has a disaster battle... I might have to send it in...

Nice this is gonna be a good one

I was very excited to play Attila because of the time period and yeah, I felt completely, totally overwhelmed by it. So many mechanics, so many building options with no idea how valuable any of them are or are not or how urgently I should be building versus hiring units... where to put my governors, who to give promotions, how to handle diplomacy.... exhausting. I felt like there was no chance of me ever being good at the game without many, many hours and many, many beatings.

Has 2000 hours in ntw3 just now finds out why all my allies hate me

Shogun 2 is one of my Favorit Total war. I wished they would go a bit back. I also liked, for atmosphäre case, that soldiers were, after defeated, suffering on the floor. It looked realistic.

Top 5 strongest non playable factions

Arkhan on legendary in ME is more difficult than wre in Atilla. And mazdamundi on ME release was just insane. It took me over 150 turns to just get out of the first two provinces as arkhan on one of my playthroughs.

Caesar in Gaul - Only campaign i could never really beat. I have one win, only because I just about managed to splay myself across the victory provinces before I was overrun

What about Alexander? I've heard that described as the hardest due to the time constraint and the fact you are outnumbered to an insane degree.

Roman expedition (belisarius) independent campaign is insanely difficult too. The moment you revolt you have to face down 5 full stacks of romans and depending on where you set up other stacks of barbarians all with the shittiest economy imaginable, like you can't even afford a full stack under belisarius. There are ways to cheese but they require you setting up far away in the corner of the map.

I have thousands of hours sunk into Total War, across most of their titles. I can't do it at triple speed, but I can get similar battle results as Legend in Medieval II and Rome. I finally picked up Shogun two a few days ago, jumped straight into hard difficulty (because I know what I'm doing) and got absolutely dunked on. I took two settlements in two turns, and my neighbor with a 'friendly' attitude declared war on me. I took one of their two settlements (how tf do they already have Samurai armies? Like I'm not sure there have been enough total turns for that), but had to peace out and move on because 5 other factions had already declared war on me

Shogun 2 is my favorite one outside of Warhammer...it can be super unforgiving but I didn't find it as much as others depending on your faction. I played as the Date when I won the campaign but I tried two others (one before and one after) and just got pretty stuck.

I played alot of medieval 2 before Attila... Holy crap was it hard for me. I was playing the Visigoths I believe.

In Rome 1 it seems like the AI is much more likely to avoid crossing a bridge and instead try to find a way around. Shogun 2 AI is pretty good, but in my experience it will always chose to attack a secured bridge, stack after stack getting eaten by it, and on the battlefield rarely pays attention to the extra fords on the battlefield. In Shogun 2 with Darth Mod Slow Mode it does seem to even it out a lot because your peasant troops, while not very good, can just form into a shield wall and hold a line for a long time. Having a large backbone of spearmen with just a few high end units to perform flanking attacks usually has good results, since you don't have to deal with the Vanilla problem of the soldiers not being capable of defending themselves in line. The most challenge I ever had in Total War was going to war against the Greeks in Roma Surrectum mod for Rome 1. You literally cannot get close enough to them to do damage, you have to micro manage formations that stand off from the front of a formation of pikes until you can disrupt them enough to get your guys individually mingled in with the enemy, and/or have them shocked with a surprise flank.

13:30 You have a lot of revolts even on medium difficulty

Definitely agree on Attila - I've just played it. Game just wants to see you suffer. And survival is very stressful.

The top 3 are all of the total war games I have ever played...I stand by Shogun 2 being a great intro to the games at the very least.

I remember my WRE playthrough: torched half the empire, only kept Africa and Italia, used money to raise armies and quell revolts. Huns arrive, face two stacks of my troops vs 3 stack of their troops, led by my emperor and Attila respectively, managed to kill Attila Proceeds to find out he's not actually dead, all Hun armies come gunning for me. I did win, but oh dear god the devastation to Italy, oh the devastation

I cant dispute difficulty on legendary because i never played on that difficulty level. But Shogun 1 is brutal even on normal difficulty. Its not because AI is super inteligent or anything but its simply super efficient. It mercilessly camps on hills, in forests, massacres you with archers etc. All while its the only TW title where your troops dont recover stamina during battles and can actually run away before clashing with the enemy ( in normal circumstances, i know you can make people rout before any melee in other TW titles but its always some OP shit like "focus your entire ranged component on one unit" ), there is no way to bait enemy onto more favourable terrain because of the province system , you can end up with your heir leading ashigaru or some other useless unit, immortal geishas etc. I still have ptsd from playing that game.

As a man who played shogun 2, on basic difficulty, i would get realm divide from just playing how i would normally... I wouldn't really ever declare war on the ai factions, and in fact im confident they've declared war on me more than i ever them, but once they did i would war them till they didnt exist and now that i think about it, i guess i shouldnt have taken war goals and left them alone more, but i did come up with the strategy to make more vassals and so i would make a lot mror vassals and i noticed that was able to push more expansion for it... So i never really knew that you could just wait out the ai and they wouldnt realm divide, but at the same time like i said i would always be declared war on and most of the time barely had peace so i would have to learn to no completely kill my enemies off