Total War's Design Language: No Style, No Substance, No Grace 

To me it was destroying buildings in a siege, would make them broken even in the map

Warhammer mod for Medieval 2 has this supercharged, with 4 or 5 different models depending on the armor level for some units. It is beautiful.

yep video title is misleading. it's not total war, it's only total war warhammer, three kingdoms, and troy. fantasy games for the lowest common denominator

@@cagneybillingsley2165 so, all of the new total war games? Gee, wonder if that indicates something

@@cagneybillingsley2165 Misleading? Title very clearly implies I'll be talking about the state of the series presently, which means the focus on newer games...

It's not really hidden--not in M2TW, anyway: the horses themselves give you a sense of what to expect. Which is a really nice touch: a classic version of "show, don't tell".

@@Albukhshi It's never insinuated by the game itself at any point that the armor on the horses does anything more than be a part of the armor stat. And because the attack stat factors into the equation, it's a muddy thing you only really learn by digging through the files as there isn't any evidence that it exists within the game

@@darkfireslide I'm referring to the mass, not the attack or armor. Should have clarified on that. Sorry. To clarify: while the mass is actually coded in descr_mounts.txt, you still get a sense of what the horse can do mass wise from what you see on the battlemap: the destriers the knights ride are better at slamming into the target than, say, the ponies that a Turkish horse archer has. That's the sort of thing I was trying (ineptly) to explain. It's naturally not as precise as reading it from the text file, but it gives you the right idea. As to the armor: for cavalry that is indeed merged with the soldier's armor, under the primary_armor (secondary armor is for elephant units, for example). For attack, the export_descr_unit.txt suggests that the horse's attack is part of the secondary weapon entry, but the game itself contradicts that.

Agree, even arcadey games like AoE IV has this lance drop system which they recover over time. TW's direction is indeed wrong lately..

Sadly, it's just the charge bonus giving the cav extra attack. Mass only affects how much the inf are launched in the air, but armour DOES play a huge role in how much cav dies on the charge when charging into heavy inf which is abandoned in future titles for some reason in favour of charge reflect only given to spear/polearm units.

When Empire of all games is a positive point of comparison you know how far we've fallen.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I was just gonna bitch about that as the diehard Medieval II fanboy that I am. Still, Empire had... something.

Lines in general are usually pretty fun ;`)

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 That game REALLY needs a remake/remaster, just give the BATTLE AI some modern AI and the game WONT SUCK! Also add in all that stuff thats STASHED in the files that they never used, cus that shit is cool. Heck look at some of the MODS that have come out for Empire lately. PEOPLE LOVE that kind of warfare, Order amongst the CHAOS of battle. Warhammer just feels Chaotic and sometimes i just go "dude WTF why are you losing in melee? Why are you dying so fast?" Also ya know, add in all the little touches from Napoleon and/or FoTS. Like repairing your SHIPS mid battle.

compare melee unit duel visuals from rome 2 to - Shogun 2 to Warhammer, there are 10 minute kill compilations from shogun and rome

Hmm… as a code monkey trying to shift from working in regular tech to game dev, I sense an opportunity…

Wise words

Here’s hoping for 🤞

No serious competition anyway. We had a few games that have a campaign map and similar style large scale combat. But yea, nothing quite close to the quality CA makes

@@mcmarkmarkson7115 Which others came the closest?

i know this exists in shogun 2 and FotS, ill have to see Empire and NTW.

I think it has less to do with the engine and more to do with a clear shift in design direction and priorities. Recall that the last "good" engine was adopted before CA was acquired by SEGA; Medieval 2 was already showing signs of what was to come despite reusing Rome 1's engine (cavalry vs cavalry combat being awkward, pikes being weird, projectile physics not as tight as Rome 1, and the introduction of matched combat animations). Even if CA never moved to the TW3 Engine I still think we would see a decline in quality.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 No doubt I'd agree with your take; I just look at it as more of a "perfect storm" of the engine change and corporate design change really taking things down. You mentioning pikes in Medieval 2 just gave me some horrible flashbacks...it was such a confusing change considering how they worked in Rome 2.

Shogun 2 and FotS was excellent. It's not just the engine.

​@@LordVader1094 I know I'm an outlier here, But my personal Total War experience was- Rome 1- childhood "wow" seeing my cousin play, into owning and playing it for hours and hours, becoming a fan, adding mods, etc. Barbarian Invasion- spending even more hours exploring this world lost to history, inspiring a lot of research as I found out about the times surrounding the fall of Rome. Empire- Loving the game idea but it was too frustrating to run on my budget machine, so I never got to really play it until it was years out of date Shogun 2- Wait, what happened? Nothing feels right here, the combat isn't satisfying, the formations dont hold, the country management sucks... theres all these new features the game is advertising, from animations to AI and politics, but I can access any of it I'm too busy micromanaging this massive swarm I'm supposed to call an army, and this headache I'm supposed to call a nation. Rome 2- Okay. Return to greatness, finally, and they said they fixed it up. ...This feels... empty and wrong. It looks better, but its opaque, and uninteresting. Formations still dont hold. Okay... I guess I'm done with TW. I'll just play M&B.

@@ClockworkAnomaly "Combat isn't satisfying for Shogun 2". I 100% disagree on that, combat is so damn satisfying.

And, just a coincidence, Empire was the first game to have unit pack DLC's.

It's not just the terrain, soldiers in 3K especially look a lot more like pastel drawings than actual 3D models, even up close. CA either over stylizes their games (3K, Troy, WH) or makes them dull and bland (Attila). 3K somehow manages to do both, with colorless unit cards and cartoon-ish looking soldiers, and I don't mean the good type of cartoon. All the games from RTW to FotS all perfectly managed to showcase graphical fidelity for their time while keeping strong sense of style, whereas the newer games are designed by people who think style and function are mutually exclusive.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I was never a big fan of Shogun's plasticky-looking character models and its terrain is a noticeable step backwards visually from Empire/Napoleon, but its overall style was definitely a lot more coherent than newer titles.

@@HeadsFullOfEyeballs finally somebody aprecciates the battle maps in napoleon. They looked wonderfull and were actually huge with interesting design features to a point where a 4v4 linebattle spanning the entire map was fun and engaging

MTW2 was better tho

Yes! Napoleon has always had my favorite maps, in terms of the layout and also just the look of them

Similar thing with shogun 2 and empire. In those games in order for all the lines to fire they needed line of sight, so the back rows of the unit could fire because they had other soldiers in front of them. If you wanted them to fire you needed to have them kneel, but in Warhammer everyone in the unit fires regardless of if there's a friendly infront of them or not. Having a unit on a hill was such and advantage in older games cause every single soldier in the unit had line of sight on the enemy.

@@gtassa01 not to mention this new system means you have no issue concentrating firepower in one area, just bunch your gun units in columns.

One another cool thing I noticed in Med 2 recently is how you can extend your ranged units' range EXTENSIVELY (like even twice or thrice) by putting them in a position where they will have line of sight and the trajectory to hit their target (for example a reversed slope or a hill). I really love when games take terrain into account and this is one of the best ways to do that.

medieval 2's campaign map is a lot worse than later titles but the units still look absolutely great imo

I rebooted up Attila the other day and was shocked to see how bad the graphics were lol...

@@JohnSmith-bs9ym not to mention it also runs like crap, Total War games have no right to be system hogs with how they look mediocre at best.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 it does indeed run like garbage for what it us

@@calebbarnhouse496 I'm sorry but Yari Wall is not some magic win button. Anything that hits their flank will cause the unit to break and the AI on very hard difficulty regularly flanks them. And once you reach turn 10 and start fighting Samurai units with experience you will need to support your Yari with your own cavalry and specialist units. Not to mention they get shredded by archers. "Yari Ashigaru spam" is a 2011 meme.

They'd probably charge 5 dollars for it.

this is the worst fucking capitalization i have ever seen

@@richardvlasek2445 oh my "I"s. ya i never bother.

@@jaywerner8415 yet you BOTHER capitalizing other RANDOM words in each SENTENCE.

@@zeropoint216 for empisis. I dont know any typing commands, to make hte words look diffrent. so i just capitalize it.

The graphics are a downgrade from warhammer 2 The game is so blurry it hurts my eyes

dont ask, just consume products and get excited for next products

Yep. It's one of most frustrating things, I want to conquer the world, and instead the game tries to slow me down

You say that, but the freedom of Rome lead to a lot of gamification too. Choosing your capital in the middle of nowhere just to minimize the order penalty? Recruiting/moving/disbanding units to move population around? Moving your army out to town, gifting to enemy then march in+execute to get rid of squalor in one turn for free? All very exploitable game mechanics in Rome.

@@henkrpe3249 No game is perfect and whatever you play you'll always be able to exploit game mechanics in one way or another. What you are describing is freedom to use those mechanics that way. Freedom you don't have in newer games. No concept of population, replaced by a broken growth system. Shallow characters, army tied to general, extreme limits on number of generals/army, extreme limits on settlement development. Limits that don't make sense in universe. It would be like praising the removal of the physics system from a potential Half-life sequel because it allowed you fly and clip through walls in the previous game. Sure the absence of a system removes its potential for exploit, but you also forgo gameplay depth.

@@Rubafix989 I would say the growth system in wh is a lot less broken than the growth system in Rome. Mainly because you can't level up a city to stage 5 by just disbanding troops there. Less interesting sure, of course, but more broken? No way. Limits on not being able to make every single city a huge level 5 settlement also makes sense. Less fun and less sandbox yeah, but much more realistic. Also, what wh lacks in genealogy it makes up for in standard RPG stuff like items and spells. Sure, you can't "breed traits" into generals anymore but you get spell trees, stat items and on-use items. Tbh character progression is one of the things wh does well...

@@henkrpe3249 stat stacking on a lord so he can defeat entire units or armies is far from engaging

Volound has no credibility he killed his yt channel by raging at kids in the comments. CA blacklisted him cuz he is actually toxic not because he made valid points.

@@rodsquad5764 pretty petty reason to be against someone

@@TheManeymon Signing petitions to a company that blacklisted you based on your personality is the textbook definition of petty lol

he made hours long videos basically showing the same things in this video so I don't see why he's any less analytical. More emotional, sure, and that's what is probably putting a lot of people off, but downplaying his critiques is just dishonest.

@@Goodmanperson55 my bad

"My enemies are many..."

I often come back to Medieval 2 and Empire. Played and finished Troy campaign. Apart from nice graphics there was nothing I liked about it. P.S. Resources system instead of just money was interesting though.

The way naval stats were so poorly conveyed in Empire completely doomed the idea from its inception sadly :(

I feel like if you rag doll a group of infantry its really easy to finish that group off. I do understand what your saying but if you break an infantry line and they go flying most of the time you can wipe that unit out quickly.

well the naval part is somewhat mor understandable... beyond diversity Warhammer just includes some factions that dont know what a boat is. Be ist Beastmen, most of chaos or even woodelves

@@iandevine3063 yeah people talk about this in competitive warhammer 3. Just breaking the line is good because the time it takes to reform is time you can use to deal free damage.

i think one reason why they didnt add the whole naval system to the warhammer games is that those feel like theyre supposed to be more accessible for a broader variety of players. A little bit like comparing an arcade racing game to a sim one.

And that's how it should be. A reminder that soldiers of the time felt that way about these new weapons.

The damage done by healthbars is so great and all-encompassing that it merits its own video which I will be making.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I think what cannot be overlooked in this case is how Total War battles effectively changed from a singleplayer spectacle into a competitive multiplayer oriented "match", where AI simply takes the role of another player. And there is no place for relative randomness of a 1hp / model system in a competitive game, because it would result in a tirade of complaining how a high tier unit can take considerable losses at a hand of a basic unit. This degree of randomness gave the game a touch of realism, where even a heavily armed praetorian would not be able to solo tank a dozen peasants. And a shift from this pushed battles into the arcade territory, where actual combat doesn't really matter any more and it's all in the statcards.

@@mrorome5064 Yeah but that's focusing on tactics while ignoring the strategic and operational layer: how do you avoid involving your high quality units in fights that are not worth their time or the casualties? It's why its wasteful to use guns against levy infantry when there are higher quality armored targets around, for example. The "random" aspect will only punish you for not putting in the effort to give your units favorable fights. But of course that would pressure the player into actually thinking which we can't do.

@@mrorome5064 good example of same realistic approach is men of war series in comparison to health bar, more sporty-arcady, company of heroes

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Yup. It's all been dumbed down to the point where the best tactic is literally just cheesing the AI or making doomstacks of the current meta high tier unit because stats go brrr. I think you could just look at any video from LegendOfTotalWar to see what's wrong with the current battle system.

Because technically bayonets werent common in the Boshin war

Jim Ansel CA's Founder left in 2005, and right after that we got Medieval 2 which already had visible cracks in its gameplay (charges being more janky, pikes being more janky, matched combat was featured for the first time, 2-handed weapons issues); and I don't think that is a coincidence. Ansell was unique in the world of CEO's as he had a strong technical background and was even quoted as saying he would rather see the company close than release a bad game. 4 years later we got Empire's botched release. And right around that time we also had the acquisition by SEGA. With these pieces in place it was only a matter of time till this turned out how it did.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I have to respectfully disagree regarding Empire. You can tell there was so much more there that they wanted to do, but didn't take the time to fix. If they had more time to fix the issues and cut the giant diamond in the rough they already had, Empire would have been the best game to come out of CA, before or after. Its a fundamentally good but still fatally flawed game.

Thinking it's just a fantasy game is a mistake. Realistic formations are a key aspect of Warhammer Fantasy, the tabletop game. TWWH is really not a good Warhammer game nor Total War game. It's just a flashy spectacle. Like a movie or something. In actual Warhammer, most leader units do* have extra hitpoints, but they can't tank multiple repeated direct hits from musketballs like TWWH, for example.

@@cole8834but you have to change things for a RTS. In tatble top it's easy to keep track of where your units are at all times. In a RTS you don't want your general dying if you look away for 5 seconds

@@zeropoint216 people could manage this in old total wars like empire Napoleon and shogun 2

@@zeropoint216 In older games Generals would be apart of a unit of say, 40 men, and the general himself could have traits that specifically increased or decreased the generals individual hitpoints. Since he is apart of a unit, and not an individual general by himself, it was more realistic and engaging. I dont understand how in the newer titles they left that behind in favor of individual general tanks.. it seems to me that CA is following a pattern in the gaming industry; "brighter colors, hollow games." focused on making the games look nice rather than the actual gameplay...

@@zeropoint216 The only time the general would die in 5 seconds is usually due to a stray artillery shot that managed to hit that model. The game was very generous for the general model not to be the first to die in the first charge if they were on horse back.

He showed the dwarves, which are overall an old faction. The sound design of the total warhammer 3 factions is extremely good. Hell, even in total warhammer 2, take the vampire coast as an example, their sound design is fantastic and they're a gunpowder focused faction.

Leadbelchers are mid at best, man

This comment is golden. I always felt this altho i never seen anyone or have myself put it into words.

After 7 years of playing ro2-rs1 I still get jump-scared at times by the "you got head-shotted" sound. Sound design for those games was insane.

I don't think it's because game devs are "pandering to the weak children of today", it's probably more people don't like loud noises and don't know or care that guns are loud. Also, it's not a flex to talk about how video games gave you mild hearing loss.

@Grayble's Gringus CA has literally, never, ever, been a top of the line developer that puts out solid content without flaws. Empire total war? Unplayable until 6 patches later. Rome 2 at launch? Don't even make me laugh. This is literally just more of the same.

@Grayble's Gringus It's even worse when you realize they have an entire reddit of sycophants who would suck them off for taking a dump right on their heads. "They are worked so hard, poor poor CA, they are just victims of mean fans who will never be satisfied" that is the mentality of the reddit. This is almost the mentality of all new games coming out, which is why they all keep getting worse and worse each year.

@@generals.patton546 Dude it's Reddit, what did you expect. All of them are commie groomer pedos who hate free speech. Ofc they like being Stockholm syndromed.

Probably due to poor sales/player numbers for empire and napoleon so hard to justify the development to corporate.

For me its that Line infantry battles with guns are Hella boring in my opinion. Unit one stands in Front of unit 2 Shoots untill enemy flees or ammo is Empty And the defender is mostly in advantage because who shots first wins mostly if the units are not miles away from strength

I've found a good Great War mod for Napoleon and there some barebones Civil War stuff for Shogun 2.

@@pascalheinrich3990tell me you've never played a gunpowder TW without telling me. You can't win at NTW or ETW or FOTS by just standing in a line and shooting. Unless your on easy or some shit....... Ok you can win in ETW because the AI will freak out and start death shuffling infront of your perfectly straight line.

Putinist loser. Cool job being a traitor to your own country. What a disappointment to your own family.

Really is a wonderful way to describe this.

it's perfectly fair. And for the record I did include comparisons with Medieval 2, a game that is very much not centered about line warfare, either. The setting of a game is completely superficial thing on its own; all I care about is how the different elements interact with one another.

You can see that on full display in Attila most of all: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gh0GSKX2AzY.html

This bird is not infuriated at all, I see. But yeah thanks my dude. It's great to know that I put together an argument that can convince someone who may be skeptical of the conclusion. I look forward to making more of these.

I've never been into the Warhammer universe that much but I have read enough of the lore and TT roles to know that things like terrain, line of sight, reloading, formations actually matter quite a lot. It's shocking to see some people say "well these are historical features and Warhammer is fantasy where they need to keep true to the lore" as if 1) the execs at CA care so much about being faithful to the lore, and 2) reading the Warhammer wiki for 5 minutes will show you that counter-argument is wrong.

look at the depth of the image itself, specifically the soldiers up close in relation to the terrain further off in the background. And even desert/snow terrain in older Total War games had plenty of granularity in the textures. Sand =\ lacking in detail.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 totally fair, but I'd just use similar terrain in future for a better comparison

every TW game since rome 2 has had their maps look like desolate deserts. I didn't even realize that he was playing in a desert until I looked at your comment. Even load up a mission battle in WH2 and look at the ground, its a flat texture with no depth, there are just a lot of good looking props scattered about the map. The maps are all just flat textures that look horrible especially vs NTW or S2's maps.

​@@nilloc93 main problem with 3k for me is the units in the desert maps are just black blobs because of the lighting.

@tellyheadlol4258 the lighting in 3k and warhammer in general is attocious

Shogun 2 menu buttons are enough to scare me if I have my speakers too high.

no that is not how it works if out of a big unit 1 models gets hit by a lot of missiles only that exact model looses hp the others remain untouched. I can only say that with absolute certainty for warhammer and Rome 2 but I doub't that's a thing that would have ever worked differently.

@@freaki0734 A) I don’t think you’re correct and B) even if you are correct that means individual models are still tanking damage that should be killing them. Any individual model should not be able to take multiple musket shots and keep fighting, just like infantry that gets thrown 30m by a cavalry charge shouldn’t be getting back up and returning to the formation like nothing happened.

@@Freesorin837 I am very very sure that I am correct. In warhammer (all parts) you can easily test this by targeting a cheap infantry unit with spell like shem's burning gaze or fireball. Since the spell only targets parts of the unit you would expect only the models near the impact to die which is what you see 100% of the time. In rome 2 you will have to take my word for it since I doubt you would find the kind of watching competetive replays and zooming into any dodge of precursor javelins on slow mo I did easily replicated on youtube. But I guess you could maybe replicate that against the AI yourself as well if you wanted. just a lot less clear cut than the spell thing. Granted they could do some trickery that only applies for high bursts of damage but that does not seem logical, and more complicated than just coding the health onto the models. I disagree honestly. A hitpoint system such as warhammer and Rome 2 have is strictly somewhat less realistic but for one: It allows for much more in depth unit design. and also small injuries wearing you down would also be an important factor on the battlefield. The 10th Volley of sling stones will see a higher percentage of men go down than the first one, due to small injuries adding up and maybe even armor and shields taking damage. I feel like for optimal realism you'd have to blend the two systems to where you either introduce crit chance into a healtpoint system and crits are fairly common representing the fact that a large parts of fighters going down is a case of if you got injured you are out. while maintaing the wearing down aspect, this would maybe even expand upon the depth in unit design where you could have heavy weapons like hallberds have a higher crit chance than lets say sling stones which will be more likely to just bruise you. or you could introduce more half and quarter hp hits into a 1hp system with again the chance to full hit warrying by weapon. Feel like the first would be best there but they would turn out pretty similar I guess. this I would of course not recomment for a fantasy game as things there are meant to be a bit more ridicoulous.

In Rome 2 I had a siege battle where 1 arrow from a tower hit my general's bodyguard and the only guy who died was the general (guy who got hit by the arrow) this is certainly not true for the older games

Tell me you don't know the in depth mechanics of the newer games without telling me directly lmao. Also no health bars would mean the competitive total war scene would not exists as well as it does now

In Shogun 2, I noticed recently that when ordering a Yari Ashigaru into spear wall leads the officer to get into the 2nd/3rd rank, to prevent him dying when getting charged. Just a bit of attention to detail we don't get anymore.

Shogun 2 had you fighting the 3-stack Ikko-Ikki with 12,000 men...we were really on the cusp of something truly great. Imagine a Total War game that used the power of modern day Intel / AMD 8-cores and higher CPU's with over 5Ghz clock speeds to give us true-to-life battle scales. Instead CA uses the increased power of new hardware to compensate for their continued poor optimization. 3K straight up would not launch on Windows 11 using a 12th gen Intel CPU. And Napoleon still doesn't work on 12th gen. And even when 3K did work, it was a system hog so much so that tech channels used it as a torture benchmark. And then Warhammer 3 released in the state that it did, running like crap. And all this despite features being removed, visual downgrades, and the scale of battles remaining stagnant and in some cases regressing.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I agree wholeheartedly with you. Went back to M2, and honestly, the unit graphics hold up really well, and each unit feels like an individual fighting on its own, in a bigger unit. While in WH, its simply 1 unit, there arent any individuals, unless its an individual unit, in which case the animations are just shockwaves.. theres just no impact in it, no depth, it all just feels surface level compared to previous games. So youd have to ask, whats the point making the units look good, raising all these system requirements... if at the end of the day, i can go back to a game 14 years old and still compare how it looks and play ... just keep those graphics, and raise the scale 10x or something.. Instead of giving me a campaign map that bogs down my 12gb vram enough that i cant have anything on a 2nd monitor, and changing graphics doesnt actually change that. Another aspect that you didnt touch on in the video, that i actually think have a big part in the decline of it all, is that "Multiplayer" started becoming a thing, and was growing with each game, and with multiplayer, comes the need for "balancing" and "ease of use", and "UI clutter", to make it easier to game it in multi. In singleplayer, things can be unbalanced, as long as its not broken, but when you take multiplayer into account, things have to be "fully balanced", which means they have to keep the game simple, and gameyfy formations, skills, abilities, units, just to make them work in the game, instead of work like it would realistically work. *(Why they balance multiplaer and singleplayer together in the same is beyond me, Shogun 2 had separate entities in the pack folders for single and custom/mp, expand on that... but anytime CA comes with a new good feature, they remove it for the next game... then come with new features for that.. that are removes for the next... and in the end, we make no progress from the older entries. PS, im not against multiplayer at all, by all means include it! But dont let it be at the expense of the game it could be.

Really agree with what you both say here

I mean you can just go into the preferences script and change the "campaign unit multiplier" value. It's done the same in pretty much every TW game up to shogun 2 (I havn't tried it in WH) I know its a cheap hack but CA will never increase unit scale.

And it's even more absurd when you realize this is something they already did and went out of their way to remove it.

Same with unit formations. Or that modders even made fricking airships, while CA isn't even willing to make normal ships/naval warfare

Lmao but why throw shade at the modders with the basement, they're doing nice work and most of the time for free

@@diegosrvin4332 Sorry if that came out wrong, that was meant to empathize how some players with nothing but their PC can do better than a big compagny like CA.

Yup, this is why I do my best to include ample video evidence, it's easy enough for me to say it, but I'd rather you see it for yourself.

Which is a reasonable design point in that context. However, I would wager far more Total War players were introduced to Warhammer by the games then Tabletop players were introduced to Total War by the games. Having basic tenets of the design language change with no official warning or acknowledgment is a poor surprise after paying full price for the game.

@@pretzelbomb6105 Most people who play warhammer has played total war, at least from what I gathered from the table top games in my city. Total war is a war game at heart alot more than rts' like age of empires.

The whole gimmick of the empire is pike and shot man, you can't have people shooting through their mates' hearts

@@Laucron I keep getting the sense that a large chunk of WH TW players have very little to no knowledge of the lore the games are based off of. Read the wiki for 3 minutes and you'll find out just how much is left out of the games.

This should be modeled by the physics and shape of the formation itself. In Rome 1 phalanx wasn't just magic stat buff, the advantage was having a dense wall of pikes outranging all other melee weapons. Soldiers would have to find a way through the wall. Slapping a 10% modifier instead is not only less interesting, it also opens up potential to abuse it because you no longer have to bother to ensure your formation is in good order. You can see this stat stacking stupidity in how Testudo offers full protection to missiles even when the men are dispersed.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 It would be better if the visuals matched the stat modifier.

@@cem174you need to play rome 1 Phalanx does not confer a stat modifier on units the actual formation makes it harder to enemies to get into melee range of the phalanx. All modern TW games accomplish through stat buffs what the older games did through realistic movement and formations.

you are in for some of the best gaming out there. I recommend you go all in on the highest difficulty for your first try, just to see how punishing it can be.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Noted! Any specific faction I should play as first? Have played the tutorials, so I have a minor grasp on the controls and whatnot

super easy start: Shimazu or Chosokabe intense opening and likely death for a first-timer: Oda

btw if you need help you can hop in here: discord.gg/W4vn46EAqf

You just need to fire up Medieval 2 and hear that imposing menu theme choir and then boot up something like WH2 with its tinny sound effects and non existent soundtrack to notice something has changed.

Yes I only started to think about this after trying to play some of these newer games and things never felt "right."

and then the advisor's comments being context sensitive based on the cultures of the 2 factions

And this is without even mentioning the absolute insanity of rushed projects and mismanaged developments. False promises and lack of support/updates/fixes.

They didn't get more fans, both ETW and Rome 2 heavily damaged the franchise's profitability (and it has never fully recovered). Rome 2 had 120,000 launch day players, something no other TW game managed until 3K in 2019, which was killed less than 2 years later.

Hello from Total war Cat

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I think it should be safe to say that Rome 2 sold well despite the recieved failure, and it did so because of the name and expectations alone. But so much was changed fundamentally that the identity of Total War was put into question moving forward. The Total War Warhammer seies has defintively garnered a pretty significant player and fanbase, but to call thoise games Total War is just so wrong. The titles since and including Rome 2 have done nothing to hold the torch up as high as Rome and Medieval 2 did. Shogun 2 did a good job, though some things could have been better, Empire; maybe the same more or less. Everything after is just miles away from casting the same meaning of the name Total War.

@@dmmoof742 hello my man, hope you enjoyed the video.

I am not the true Longman, you can call me that when I'm running 9 hour streams weekly ;) Long gas mask man is good

That doesn't explain why Medieval 2 or the Shogun 2 base game handled their guns well, despite them being very melee-centric and very much not centered on guns. Medieval 2 had spears, pikes, light melee cavalry, heavy melee cavalry, horse archers, mounted gunners, ballista, catapults, trebuchets, cannons, war elephants, plenty of "variety" and yet it handled most of them very well.

At least in Total Warhammer 3 having corridors and other limiting terrain features on the campaign map isn't just necessary but also adds some depth to things. Having to plan ahead, using game mechanics and using/avoiding ambushes is far more engaging than just having a flat open map with the occasional mountain.

They might not look all that impressive though imo it was more so that the lack of health pools meant that the men who got launched in the air actually died, giving the impression the cav charge was way more impactful. Also meant that units would rout faster because of the fast kills from a good charge.

Cav charges in total wars never looked good imo but there's a differance between watching your cav decimate the enemy and watching your cav decimate the enmy but then all of them just stand back up like its nothing and only having 5 kills. Or in the case of attila most of the times just straight up stopped by infantry like hitting a brick wall.

they look bad because the games is fucking 20 years old. On a mechanical level you can cleary see massive casuallties, with acceleration, mass and imapct playing huge roles in the fight, while in TWW you see 5 casuallties on a charge and enemies going flying 20 meters from cav that had a charge space of 2 meters.

yeah it must be said that graphical fidelity and design language are two very, very different things.

If Third Age, a mod, can bring to life the races of Tolkien's universe, spanning Orcs, Dwarves, Men, Elves, etc. then there is no reason that same care can't be demonstrated by an AAA studio with all its resources and talent. I don't agree with the insinuation that fantasy is inherently more difficult or that it should be held to a lower standard.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 That's not what I said at all. I said it becomes less important overall because a lack of attention to detail is generally less jarring or disturbing in an already silly environment.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 And further more now that I think about it, this narrative you tell yourself of the plucky modder who somehow outperforms the incompetent corporation of hundreds is erroneous for a number of reasons, chiefly being: 1) The person who made the third age mod didn't do it all alone. His work was built on the shoulders of giants without which his 'mod' would have never been possible. 2) The development pipelines for a hobby modder and a corporate team delivering a commercial product to market are VASTLY different from each other to the point of it being ridiculous to even try to compare them. A modder 'working alone' doesn't have to compromise on the final vision for the product with other people, and also doesn't have to deliver his product on a set time table. He just works on it when he has time until he's done, oftentimes over the course of years or even decades!

You're busy hating Troy meanwhile the rest of us forgot it exists. Also I have such fond memories of Shogun 2 back in 2012 fighting the 3-stack Ikko Ikki army with over 10k men, I had so much hope for what the future would bring us lol...

Those massive armies are always teased in the trailers. Even the Shogun 2 teaser video that showed a battle had like massive, massive armies of dudes on the screen. It never lived up to that.

Just goes to show the impression it nade... as for forgoten total was games. Atila the trash and a few more.

Same feeling when I realize Shogun 2 is more than 10 years old.

Also name checks out

Yes, the whole point of this is to immerse you into forgetting you are playing a game.

My god mode kholek suneater always looks for a battle to fight.

actually i never liked to fight the battles, just loved the music and the atmosphere, just used autocalc in rome 1 med 1 and med 2.

The "rule of cool" argument probably stems from a complete lack of knowledge or experience in the older titles, just assumptions. That or most people never had a decent speaker setup to really see the shocking difference. If I play Shogun 2 or Battlefield 1 in my spare time I play using my speakers and my entire room vibrates at drums and explosions. I never had that with a title like Warhammer. All of the sound effects and music are so tinny that it sounds like compressed garbage. That's not even getting into the visuals.

And I can't wait to see fanboys perform mental gymnastics to justify the changes.

I made a direct comparison to Medieval 2 instead of ETW or FotS because, like you said, one could argue it would be unfair to compare a game centered on gunpowder to one where it's only a specialist unit. Medieval 2, just like Warhammer, is far from a gun-centric game, even less so than Warhammer, yet it manages a much more impactful and interesting depiction of these weapons despite their relatively minor role. And the lack of an entire reload animation speaks to just how little the developers cared, especially if guns feature more prominently in WH than M2TW, wouldn't it make more sense to put more effort into a unit that a player will use more often.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 sure, but also remember that how loud and visible you make your stimulus needs to correlate with how important it is. In Medieval 2, guns fire slowly, do huge damage and are essentially late game units. In Warhammer, guns fire about the same speed as bows, don't do noticeably more damage than bows, and are at best mid-game units. This is a feature of the source material, so I think there is a reason why gunpowder is comparably underwhelming in Warhammer compared to Medieval 2. But yeah, the lack of reload animation is just laziness.

@@kapitankapital6580 Is it really a feature of the source material? Because according to this guns are Warhammer universe are just as finnicky and devastating as they are in our own: warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Gunpowder_Weapons And also even if something is accurate to the source material, that doesn't suddenly erase the issue.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 in the tabletop, yes. Without getting into stats, handguns are generally fairly interchangeable with other weapons, they just trade the ability to move and fire for higher armour piercing. (at least for 7th edition dwarfs, which is what I played)

Shogun 2 has better unit variety than every TW game since, does Rome in Rome 2 having 14 melee units that share mostly the same stats count as "variety?" Especially when the AI gets ridiculous bonuses to melee and morale that it marginalizes melee infantry, leading to cavalry, ranged and single entity spam in later games? WH has a lot of units but you the majority of them are almost never worth recruiting they may as well not exist. I never implied Shogun 2 is perfect, but the fact that we have only seen regression since then is embarassing. I would much rather have a roster of 10 units that are distinct from one another than 100 copy-paste units of which only 20 are worth bringing. Useless clutter that also coincidentally makes for easy DLC fodder.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 have you played Warhammer? Saying 90% of the units are useless or redundant is just patently false, you can pretty much make any unit in wh have its use, with the exception of a few outliers per faction.

@@Haunterthe1st yes and that's where I got the clips from WH utilized in my video. In one of my previous videos I showcased a combat test with the express purpose of showcasing how terrible melee infantry are in WH thanks to difficulty modifiers; with 2 armies of equal size and quality, my units routed despite surrounding the enemy and despite having a major uphill advantage. It is no secret even among those positive towards WH that melee infantry are a poor investment, only worth getting to pin down enemy units so your ranged units and lord can do all the real damage. And considering how many melee infantry units are in WH, they do indeed count for a significant portion of the roster.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 well I mostly play multiplayer/H2H campaigns, and almost every unit for the factions I play religiously have a use.

@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 The issue is that while that small roster is distinct, in the late game, only 4-5 are worth bringing. Naginata Samurai, Bow samurai, Great Guard if you can get them, european cannons and matchlocks if you want to larp and pretend they are useful. The AI will spam Samurai units and the game will be ass in that lategame period. It completely throws away any historical immersion. Japanese armies of the time were much more diverse and me needing extensive modding to get to an acceptable point of balance:realism will always be a stain on shogun 2. It's a fantastic total war game, arguably the best, but it's also CA's biggest compromise between streamlining and quality content.