*UPDATE. With the latest patch Albion should no longer be on this list. Instead the moot, which is a single region province and a MINOR CITY, takes the top spot. It's a total piece of crap*
But The Moot has a unique building (The Grand Cauldron) that produces a fair amount of trade resources, takes care of its own public order (I play on Very Hard though not Legendary), and even provides growth factionwide. I think it's just for Empire factions though so yeah it is pretty bad for any other faction.
@Aggressive Tubesock Anyone with a brain realizes that people invest different amounts of time into games. Casual gaming isn't inherently worse than non-casual gaming. I play on Normal because all the time I have to actually git gud at a game I invest into Starcraft. If I'm playing anything but Starcraft, I'm just lazily clicking.
@Aggressive Tubesock Legendary difficulty on Total WAGH? It's pretty annoying considering you cannot make even two decent armies without the financial-military penalty.
@Aggressive Tubesock Aside from the fact that everyone knows legendary difficulty isn't fun? Most people play games to have fun. People who play on legendary either enjoy the cheese (and even then, ask legend how much fun dealing with public order is), or don't care about having fun and just think they sound cool because they play on the hardest difficulty. I'm guessing you're the latter.
back when atilla was new, I reported Argentoratum and Nova Trajanum Bostra as a bug and got told that it would get fixed with the next patch.... which never came :(
Never get why instead of patching and polishing Attila, they went back and support Rome 2, which after all of its patches and dlcs, is still barely enjoyable without DeI
@@PhongTran-km1mx The reason is simple. Rome 2 has been bought by much more people. There is a lot more people playing in it than in Attila. So when CA made the decision which TW patch and make DLCs they chose Rome 2. Attila would be much easier to patch and improve because it was lights out better, but they didn't want to take that risky approach only because the player pool.
You know.. If you can't beat'em, join'em. I just tell myself that it's because of historical realism (bollocks, cause Nova Trajana Bostra and Caesaria Eusebia were some of the largest cities in the empire.). In other words, tell yourself that "it's not a bug, it's a bad feature"... Attila has dosens of these anyway...
I remember that when i was 10 or so, in 2005, i was desperately trying to find that settlement since i saw there was a province on the map not owned by me. Took me like 15 turns to even find it, and having no road definitely helped that :D
@@Klubargutan Yes, absolutely. I was like "there must be a city there!" and looking over the map I was like "they must be kidding!" Definitely worth only as an easter egg! :)
In the real world yes. But in the game its very easy to by pass. It owning it helped more with actually defending the straits then yes. But i've played this game. Its a crappy city
Even in the real world, Gibraltar is basically just a rock. It was really only ever useful for strategic purposes and so that the british could spite the spanish. But Gibraltar was never known for it's monetay value or other great things. The game depicts it quite good IMO
I think Albion was intended as a bit of a joke province. It's basically Warhammer's Great Britain, so naturally it has a miserable swamp climate that everybody hates.
Ah yes, I recall taking Themiskyra as Greeks. Good grief it took ages to travel with heavy hoplites, my general died of old age before they reached it, but the amazons melted against the OP-ness of phalanx.
well the amazons should have elite xp vet troops how did you get them to melt under that and what troops did you get from there both recruits and mercenaries? in addition to the public order issues.
@@TheManofthecross Their arrows don't matter if your hoplites are the heavy armored type. Sure, some died, but not enough. Chariots in towns are very poor at their job, hindered by streets and pathing, so it was just a matter of pushing to the centre plaza. The town had no unique troops to recruit, had very little to offer as it was a wooden fence type and if memory serves me well, mercenaries are steppe type. After taking it I just left it to revolt since I'd have to keep way too many troops in there.
@@Xukti ah so that's what the region offered etc. dam no signature troop, no mercenaries of value beyond the steppe type which I did not see in my play through in there as rome cause I did not get there etc. and besides one could use that to farm the revolts to gain xp etc. if handled correctly that is. so that's the troop type you used etc. dam son that is lucky.
@@bogdanleshenko7149 tbh I never bothered with the most northern regions, which might explain it. I might have come across it early on, but if I did I dont remember it at all.
I did what he described, I just marched along that route with an army looking for settlements, bumped into it, and failed miserably against the garrison :D
@@RagingAggron The northeastern settlements are near useless anyway, even as Parthia. In my campaign they just kept building up a huge population even on huge unit scale, but with terrible unrest, almost no trade and need to build my troops elsewhere, they made no money either and weren't useful to train units either. I think I trained a single army in that area early on while fighting Scythia, other than that just used my experienced and actually good troops from Armenia/Parthia/Seleucia
Gibraltar was included to be taken by the british. Also, if you maintain a ship on Gibraltar's Shipyard, the moroccans will not be able of reach Gibraltar, unless they defeat you ship. The ship will prevent any army to cross the strait.
Very fertile, much more temperate than it should be because of the gulf stream. Tons of natural resources and natural scenic beauty. Yeah it rains a lot. Rains more in Ireland. Easily defendable because it's a island. Not sure how Britain is inhospitable, especially considering 66 and a half million people live there. When you have areas like Siberia and the Ozzy outback.
Top 5 Total War easter eggs. I was surprises that Themiskyra was actually on the list since I always capture that settlement dead last and end the game. When I first discovered it, I was fairly shocked since it was the most unique settlement I've encountered
Durazzo in Medieval II sucks. It takes at least twenty turns to become a town IF it’s given low taxes, and meanwhile it switches hands between Sicily, Venice, and the Byzantines because the AI somehow thinks it’s valuable. Until the game is almost over (and sometimes afterwards), it’s a fairly close rival to Bulgar in how worthless it is. The distance and the Mongol invasion are the only reasons I agree that Durazzo is better than Bulgar.
Playing as byzantines I had to keep Durazzo as a castle settlement to keep the frontier with Venice and Hungary secure, took me probably well over 100 turns to get it up to a fortress, every time it got close i got hit with a plague and dropped it back down to 4000 ish when you need 6500 (correct me if I'm wrong) for fortress upgrade. Had to throw so many militia armies at it to stop it falling to Venice as didn't even ballista towers 😤
5 лет назад
Only if you don't know how to play it. You convert village to castle (in one turn), then at your leisure up to stone castle, then if you want back to town. For low level settlements those conversions are great tool and very cheap.
Personally, I invest in turning Bulgar into a strong fortress as soon as possible and should the Mongols try to attack it to simply let them die at my walls.
@@diegowushu I don't have stainless steel my pc can't support it XD but in regular total war, it can if you know how to defend it(I don't auto resolve it). After all forts were made to even numerical odds.
@@diegowushu Also even if I lose the battle it will be a pyrrhic victory, since the mongols will lose about 5-10 men for each one of my own men. Allowing me to face them with an outnumbered force in future conflicts
@@nvmtt Byzantium is insanely OP in siege battles in Stainless Steel, even in Late Era (and especially against armies with a lot of cavalry, like the Mongols), mainly thanks to a select few units. Mourtatoi - decent archers, and not utterly useless in melee, so great on walls, but their main strength lies in their ability to deploy defensive stakes. This makes it incredibly useful to have them deploy their stakes in a funnel shape right behind the gate likely to be attacked during battle deployment, then run them up onto the walls to do their work as archers once the battle starts. Behind the stakes you place Scoutatoi - basic spear infantry that are great at tying up enemies and holding a line. To the sides of the gate, you place a unit or two of Siphonatores - very hard to come by and replace, but absolutely devastating in sieges since they basically are a flamethrower unit. The AI is incredibly dumb in sieges, so all you have to do is wait until the enemy breaks down the gate and charge in headfirst with cavalry (usually including their general) and charge full speed into the stakes, which basically wipes them out. At this point, the rest of the army will have made their way to the gate (under archer, javelin, and defense tower fire) and pack into the gate and the area directly inside/outside very densely. They'll run into the Scoutatoi to keep them tied up, while taking missile fire and taking dozens (if not hundreds) of casualties from the boiling oil being poured through the gatehouse murder holes onto their heads. Then the real fun begins - you order the Siphonatores to fire into the mass of enemies. A single volley can literally burn upwards of 300+ men alive instantly, and completely sap what little remains of the enemy morale at that point (especially since their general usually dies in the first charge). What follows next is an almost immediate and complete enemy rout with your melee units chasing them out of the gateway while you have your token light cavalry garrison sally out of the side gates to hit the routers in the flanks, which typically ends in an absolute massacre and the enemy army being wiped out entirely. I've won tons of sieges this way, even ones where the battle odds are heavily in my enemy's favor, and lose maybe a few hundred men compared to thousands of enemy casualties. Even without the Siphonatores, it's still insanely easy to win sieges as Byzantium. Once the melee fighting begins in earnest, it's typically less than five minutes before the enemy army has had enough and begins to rout. Cleanup usually takes longer than the actual fighting lol. And if the enemy army brings siege artillery, you can just sally out with your great Roman cavalry to eliminate those as a threat and force them to use the gate to enter and destroy themselves. If you have cannon towers it's even easier to cheese - just 'sally out' and literally do nothing while the enemy just stands within range of the towers and gets wiped out.
A new engine would fix the bug, I love historical games and splitting armies is a key tool for any general it's just stupid not to fix it. And yes I would suggest stuff from old games that was removed but also new features legend could recommend that should be in a total war game.
@@bogdanleshenko7149 who cares if it caused an opportunity to exploit it I've been playing since Rome 1 came out and still have never used that exploit. Not because I don't like cheese in my campaign but I just don't need or want to use it but the balance and realism that army splitting brings is so worth it existing
I'd swap Gibraltar for the Komi Province in ETW. It's on the eastern edge of Russia, has no trade resources, it's landlocked and has only 1 building in the capital and 1 village. It's Gibraltar minus the strategic value.
I remember the first time I accidentally found Themiskyra in the middle of nowhere in some Rome: Total War playthrough as a kid. Was super excited to find a settlement I'd never seen before, only to then have my army raped by a bunch of Amazons. At least it gives a quite unique sense of achievement to successfully capture it, even if there's not much practical benefit to it
I really liked Empire aswell, especially the Naval Battles ! But i have to admit that some things are really dumb. The Provinces of Spain and France for example. You can wipe out two of the strongest nations by just taking their capital. I ve seen the Dutch conquering all of France with one blow multiple times. Also the AI is just bad. On the campaign Map it splits up Armys into swarms of small units for no reason, an issue CA was only able to handle with the General only system. In Battle the AI is just dumb and can get stuck in siege battles.
@@feanorn8409 you can take London with France on second turn and remove them from British isles in next four turns, 15 turns later they all behave and speak French like in a good old times ;)
Having played many total war games, my opinion on ETW was rather good. But when I played FOTS.. man, that changed everything: ETW is actually shit in comparison to FOTS, both for naval battles and regular battles. Empire was an ambitious game due to the enormous campaign map, but it failed.. hope creative assembly will work on Empire 2, or something similar.
I actually found Themiskyra by sheer stubbornness as Germany. I just had to know where that movable path would lead. Great list, I would like to add Jedda and that town west of Timbaktu in med2, they are just not worth it even as Egypt or Spain (respectively).
@@warr666pigg Initial unrest, religious penalties (its pegan), and slow population growth never made it compelling for me and yes I meant moors not egypt.
All these years and I never knew there was a mythical Amazon city hidden way up at the top of the Rome 1 map! Kind of makes me sad now that I do know... :/
Surely having Bulgar, fortifying it and letting the Mongols break their teeth on it is better than having them wander into your richer lands and treating multiple, better settlements.
Yes and no, the AI isn't completely idiotic. If a town's/castle's defenses are too strong for them to break through, they might decide to siege it into starvation instead. I personally like holding the bridge behind Bulgar, the AI rarely takes river passings into account as strategic chokepoints.
@LegendofTotalWar For "number 4", Argentoratum in TW:A This can be fixed VERY EASILY, and affects 2 settlements (Ancyra, Argentoratum, Caesarea Eusebia, & Nova Trajana Bostra) but CA has never bothered to include the fix in a patch (but keeps replying in fourms they will "fix it..in the next patch" but never do it). All you need to do is edit the "startpos" file. Here is the fix: just add the 4th building slot to each "region" To open the startpos file: Open Pack File Manager Ctrl-N to make a new pack file Hit Shift-Insert to add a new directory - browse to data > campaigns > main_attila Select the startpos file and navigate down the tree as follows: CAMPAIGN STARTPOS > COMPRESSED DATA > CAMPAIGN_ENV > CAMPAIGN MODEL > WORLD > REGION_MANAGER > REGIONS_ARRAY The arrays we need to edit are: 34 = Ancyra 60 = Argentoratum 88 = Caesarea Eusebia 162 = Nova Trajana Bostra This will now be AS INTENDED. yes its a bug, and its in the "game breaking" class I would say. Spread this fix, and for the love of Gabe Newell will someone in "the scene" make a steam workshop "fix" to address this for now?
I was getting a bit sleepy but when I clearly heard the awesome Rome 1 music at 12:48 I woke up and thought, like many others in the comments, how bloody awesome it is after a decade and a half. The box art and the music are the most iconic things I still admire after years (haven't played it much otherwise as I began with NTW)
Top 5 mistakes noobs (or someone new to a particular game) make when they play Total War! Or top 5 TW trailers. That Blood and Burning trailer is just so damn good!
Themiskyra is really a pain in the ass. I neutralised it with tier 6 Cataphraktoi as Parths, though suffering heavy losses and public order is really difficult. I basically sacrificed taxes and everything just to, as you said, repaint the map in magenta.
I came to the conclusion that Argentoratum and Nova Trajanum Bostra lacked the final build slot to prevent the player from building up a garrison to a full stack. The player was forced to maintain army stacks that needed to be paid for to defend these settlements.
I remember when I first time conquered Themiskyra. It had a full stack of those Amazons. + some in ambush. I still remember it till this day and honestly for a while I thought legit that their tribe existed, because they left such an impression that I had not seen such a powerful force in any of the total war games. It was a very tough guerrilla war for the House of Julii.
So glad you put themiskyra at the top of the list. When I was a kid playing rome total war that settlement was always the final cherry on top for my campaign, also new subscriber here I think your channel is great
Surprised Galleon's Graveyard from Warhammer 2 isn't mentioned, since it's completely without value to anyone who isn't a dead pirate. Like you can have your settlement building and thats it, it doesn't grow, the climate is hostile, everyone there is always angry and basically the only reason you'd take it is to put the original owners in a safe and throw them off the side of your ship... and even then it's better to leave it a ruin.
Thanks to you now i knew that base unrest is a thing in RTW. That explains the "doomed cities" in the Warhammer mod in Rome (Albion included), and the Norscan ones that drive my brother crazy.
Normally I quietly watch and learn from your videos on TW series. But when I saw you trashing Argentoratum (TW Attila) the way you did I had to come out and say: "With all due respect, Sir, you are wrong!" When playing as the WRE, Argentoratum and the rest of the province where it is located (Maxima Sequanorum) stand on the frontier between the Empire and the Barbarians and the Nomads. Since in the said province there is iron in one of the minor settlements (Octodurum) this means that the entire province should be used as a huge top notch military hub and as the most impregnable fortress of all the campaign map, where wave after wave after wave of barbarians and nomads will crash unsuccessfully. Forget about getting food or taxes from this province, because you must exempt it and let the rest of the Empire carry the burden. Build two military recruitment buildings in both minor settlements and two guardhouses, build two buildings from the supply center chain (the ones that improve defensive and offensive stats of units) and a statue, which doesn't cost food or money to upkeep, improving it all the way up to get that sweet +1 /+2 experience. I recently tried to get the "This is Total War" achievment with the WRE (I know, it was masoquism), which requires you to declare war on every faction on turn 1, on every faction you discover during the campaign in the turn you find it, to never negotiate a peace deal with anyone and to win the campaign (I'm not sure what kind of victory is necessary for the achievment to fire), and what saved Italy, Hispania, Southern Gaul and Africa from being overrun by the relentless barbarian and nomadic onslaught coming from the North and the East was the province of Maxima Sequanorum and, especially, it's minor heavily fortified settlements of Octodurum and Argentoratum. I crushed endless hordes in that poor punching bag of a province and it was, undoubtedly, one of the most important provinces of my entire campaign. So there you have it, how to make Argentoratum and the province of Maxima Sequanorum great again - if the province sucks in its ability to feed itself, to generate taxes and to stay stable in terms of public order, then forget about all of it, exempt it of taxation and any kind of food buildings and turn into a military powerhouse. Cheers
All of Gibraltar’s importance definitely lies in its strategic importance due to its location. Stack a full banner Heavy First Rate fleet in the port and nothing will get in or out
If you measure Gibraltar by how much you can make off trade privateering.... In my experience, Gibraltar is quite powerful. Especially when you reach the point where you own the Mediterranean, or one of the Mediterranean countries keeps trying the break out to the Atlantic. Sure, you can blockade the channel withought owning Gibraltar, but the port means you have ease of access to ship repair. Whether it's Empire, or Napoleon, the global maps, the peninsular campaign, etc. Controlling Gibraltar is a massive area management gain. Once you have control of one wide, and you don't want to have to go hunting down fleet's or babysitting trade fleet's in those waters again, just plug the gap, and you can move on to conquering the other side...
In Napoleon Total War you could *block* sea crossings with ships. If this mechanic is present in Empire Total War, it should be possible to prevent Morocco from crossing into Gibraltar simply by keeping one ship in your port or in between, though I haven't played Empire for a long time to try this.
Top 5 toughest boss factions (1 per total war game, and only 1 hun faction plz n_n) Just to clear things up, a boss faction should be a powerful endgame faction, like the huns in attilla (still think that rtw:bi huns are harder) An example would be the Hojo in shogun 1, as if they can start building a ton of castles, it becomes a pain to beat them.
Mongols. In most of my campaigns where i started in the West, they build up a huge empire while the Timurids failed miserably, and in the end only me and the Mongols were left.
@@otwk The trick is to launch a crusade and get the middle east reasonably well defended, so you can beat them before they ever get a city to train new troops
@@otwk Artillery, lots of artillery. In every single 3d total war, artillery will almost completely decimate cavalry. Well, any unit that creates explosions will do the trick. So bring an army of a few artillery and some spear units to protect them, and whatever else you want. And move this army to support your other armies (obviously try to attack/defend with this one first). Or bring some artillery to swap into your army when your expecting a fight (so you don't get movement penalty).
What about The Galleon's Graveyard in WH2? I took that as the High Elves and was very disappointed to find out that all the attrition and a tedious battle got me was a settlement with one build slot that I'm pretty sure only had one building to choose from :(
General conquers Domus Dolce Domus or whatever it was called and then wonders what other crap is hidden north. First time is was a surprisingly tough fight. :-)
The ambush on the way to Themiskyra is ridiculous as well! So many chariot archers that destroy equites cavalry. The rebel ambush actually wiped out my entire army the first time!
Durazzo in Medieval 2 Total War. It's an undeveloped village at the start of the game, its income sucks, it has no walls (initially) and if you're playing as Byzantines you can expect to be immediately attacked by Venice and Sicily for control of it. It adds little income and costs money to defend, and there's very little benefit to holding it.
When I see gibraltar which I myself use as my main recruitment center when invading spain as the United Provinces (for those of you who haven't played the united provinces alot in empire total war, you need to take out France and take most of the European holdings of Spain in the first 10 or so turns if you want to do anything besides deal with massed infantry assault waves on your capital for the entire game. Which means you need to send a fleet south to the iberian peninsula with all of your starting army except one of the generals in the first or second turn before churning out an army that can take out mainland France in 3 to 4 turns.) Also the morroccans are pretty easy to defend against if they do attack... they never make more than a single stack army which is easy to defend against as a European power with 5 or 6 units of dubious quality on anything except very hard, where you will need 7 or 8 of them. and that is if you don't just charge across and slaughter them back in the early game where they have, even with armed populace added in, less than a full stack of very bad units which you will only need 4 line infantry, a general, some artillery and whatever pikemen you still have leftover to handle sieging out
How about the top 5 most versatile units? Units that fulfil several roles better than they ought to, e.g. ranged cavalry that also makes for good dismounted melee infantry or anti-cavalry infantry that are surprisingly good against anti-infantry units.
Argentoratum and Albion are not the only ones with missing build slots. I got the feeling that the modern titles after Shogun 2, Medieval 2 and Rome 1 had that problem. Rome 2 have a lot Major Settlements with only 5 building slots instead of 6 and minor ones 3 instead of 4.
I can't believe that in all these years of playing Rome Total War I have never heard of Themiskyra, Eastern Europe is just so unappealing in that game, the area is huge but has only a handful of settlements, it's a nightmare to hold.
argentoratum (moreso its entire region) has iron and no build slots dedicated to ports and has a pretty central location so it's pretty good as a recruitment province if you exempt from taxation so you don't get order problems from lack of food
When I played the WRE campaign in Attila, Argentoratum was the city I defended the most and if I had not won those battles, the enemy would have had a free road to my inner cities. I think it's a major choke point in the beginning of the campaign.
Durazzo on early medieval 2 is annoying, it has no walls, no population growth and it easily gets you in war against Milan, Venice, Papal States and Sicily as Byzantines.
I would have to disagree with number five in Empire total war. I don't know what the name of the region is, but it starts off as a part of the Barbary States. It is worth absolutely nothing in any capacity, and it's a capital region. As Malta in Darth Mod max difficulty. It took my entire army to conquer it, suppress it for like 20 turns, get rid of the rebellion. All for 200 gold per turn. It is why I think it is better to make peace with the Barbary States rather than conquer them. Also they got to be one of the most annoying factions in Total War history.
I know Themiskyra is an easter egg, and it is supposed to be hidden ; but the location on the map is very inaccurate. It should be somewhere in the kingdom of Pontus, north-east of the Black Sea but ON THE COAST !
I still remember when I was playing Russia and was almost steamrolling but then... The Mongols... My three stacks against 15 Mongol doom stacks.
5 лет назад
For the most obvious strategy, crossbowmen spam with some spear militia for protection just melts Mongol stacks away. If you can fight 1 stack at a time, it's a gg with minimal losses. Unfortunately they often stay close, have too good generals for night attacks to work, and dealing with two at a time is much harder. Or just let them attack your citadels (which you should have at that point), AI is so bad at siegeing multiples levels of walls you'll wipe out multiple stacks in one battle even with fairly shitty units. And don't worry about your losses. Medieval 2 troops have stupid cheap recruitment equal to only about 3-4 turns worth of maintenance, so losing a stack and recruiting a new one costs you basically nothing. In my experience most common thing that happens with Mongols is them just wandering around forever and never actually attacking anything.
About bulgar: If mongols DO NOT spawn there the settlement is even more worthless, apart from mongols and timurids spawning there it doesn't have a reason to be a castle settlement since nobody else would bother coming to that corner.
Buzen in Shogun 2 is the weirdest province. It often gets hit by disasters but tend to become the wealthiest because of its fertile volcanic soil and speciality.
It is not all that difficult to defeat the Mongols in Medieval 2, all you need is a little planning and keep your forces agile and flexible. I was playing Egypt I guess when I successfully overturned them, and once the Timurids arrive, I guess they fight the Mongols, and this opens the window for yet another opportunity.
There are two cities in Rome barbarian invasion in like Bavaria and Austria that start out very small and will always get sacked and razed by hordes. You just can't hold them long enough to upgrade them
The complaints for #5 regarding defending the settlement from Morocco is bogus. All you need to do to prevent a land invasion from them is just to have a ship of yours right on the straits. Your only actual concern is if they have a navy that can crush your ship(s) blocking the straights although I believe this may not even be an issue at all if you just keep a ship at the port in Gibraltar (I'd have to open up the game just to be sure). A similar concept applies if say you take Newfoundland as the British from France. The Northwest Indian tribe (forgot their names) who could walk over and take the settlement from you can't if you place a ship in the "land bridge" connecting Newfoundland with their territory. Also on the same campaigns as Britain, I've used a similar tactic in reverse with regards to Spain, that is, when I take Morocco, I keep a ship in the straights to block Spain from marching through it. And since I was already at war with Spain pretty much since turn 1 and have continually attacked their ports, they have no means of invading me. It works, every time.
In Warhammer II I'd put The Galleon's Graveyard as the worst city, hands down. It's only useful to the Vampire Coast, all other races can only have it at level 1 with port being the only building. And it has vampiric corruption, so it's only possible to hold it in the late game, when you have a bunch of factionwide bonuses to public order.
