Total War's Hilariously Broken Combat - A Critique on Morale 

20:20 Exactly the problem with the "morale/leadership" roles in this game, it no longer rewards you at all for out maneveuring the AI. Because CA knows it can't cook up a decent enough AI to challenge the player they've now switched gears to make it a stat-based game. The primary focus's are no longer revolved around positioning and tactics, they're revolved around matching units stat for stat and META-crafting up spells. So, trying to recreate a battle of cannae is now impossible. You can't put mid/low tier troops in the centre to hold ground while enveloping a larger force, your front line will shatter at breakneck speeds before your horses can even move 100 yards and the entire battle plan goes to shit. And even if they somehow manage to hold out, the morale shock of a flank does neglible effect. To where people now are having to APM spam cycle charges. This has completely ruined well layed out plans and executions, because chain routing is no longer a thing either. They have supposedly streamlined it to be the battle loss penalty (another stat, oh boy) where if you kill a significant amount of units the entire army shatters, context be damned. So what this means is if you rally 3 or 4 units at 70% strength at a crucial choke point, like a bridge crossing or gatehouse, and the enemy wipes the other last stray unit 600m away, the entire force at the bridge just instantly shatters because it crossed that army loss penalty threshold. It doesn't matter that the men would have obviously won the day against a tired and depleted enemy. You lost x% more than the enemy so you lose. It also has gutted chainrouting, a long battle line will no longer collapse and break at a devestating charge on the left flank causing unit after unit to break at the sight of it's fellow units running...nope! Only that ONE specific unit breaks and the others hold out because the army loss penalty hasn't kicked in! Yeah nah m8, don't care that you out manoveured me, you're in the grind fest now, hope you brought better units than mine! It really is a fancy card game in all intents and purpose at this point. Also first.

I'm glad you talked about units fighting to the death when surrounded in the older games. When I was just starting to play Rome as a kid that mechanic was what got me to start thinking about unit positioning instead of just throwing blobs of legionaries at my problems.

Tldr: even the WFB tabletop game had a lot of focus on morale and allowed you to chase units off the map or kill them entirely if you rolled good after breaking them. To add to your argument against "meaningless morale is accurate in warhammer!" Point, morale is even heavily featured in the tabletop game as well. In warhammer fantasy battle every time you had a round of combat between units you would add up points based on certain factors to decide who "won" that round of combat. There's a myriad of modifiers to it, whether or not the unit's leader or banner bearer was still alive, whether or not you charged/got charged, who killed the most, who has more ranks of men, etc. Every time you lost, you would have to roll for whether or not your men would route. There was a leadership Stat that also had modifiers for things like being close to your leader or a terrifying unit/monster, if you routed you rolled to see how far and where you run, and the enemy could choose to pursue and roll their own distance. If they could remain in contact with the routing unit, or it routed off the game board, that was it. The whole thing is gone.

The absolute worst experience I have had with the health system was when my artillery had taken more than half the health of a Chosen unit, but it had lost zero entities when they hit my front line. Nobody has any fun experiencing that.

"Arms Race" is a really fitting way to put it. Great video as always mate

What we want: Actual combat, Tactics matter, blob punishing, Single entities either have important roles to the massive armies and battles or outright remove, a functional moral system, Good AI that knows how to protect, flank and charge, Guns function as guns, and developers taking more time to fix up every major and minor details and functions. The fantasy setting is alright but keep the fundamental gameplay intact. We are ok if CA want to try new things, as well as QoLs. What shills and CA heard: Not Shogun 2, bad! Not Historical, bad.

The thing about the total wars after Shogun 2 is the units being fixed to generals and each province having a town/city and nothing else.

Morale has definitely taken a backseat in terms of importance that much is true (you can even see when the CHARGE of a cav charge ends by how the morale bar fills back up). However, one stat the really isn't talked about in Warhammer, SPEED. Sounds simple i know but, If your unit can't be caught (or hit) then they can't be killed. While the speed may not be drastically different, if you can out run and "skirmish" with the enemy They will get tired as well as start dying before your troops do. Free Company Milita, Dark Elf Shades, and Wood elf archers are good examples of this. Their is also Unit Mass/Unit Weight and Unit Stamina to consider as well. In Rome 2 units where classified by Type and Weight, the Heavier the unit the faster they got tired. Skirmishers where also inherently faster then infantry so you needed your own Skirmishers or Cavalry to catch them. As we all know, the more tired a unit is the worse it preforms (this effects among other things, Moral, Melee attack and defense, and how fast they move). Then their is the whole WEAPON DAMAGE and ARMOR thing. In Rome 2 and Attila Armor flat out blocked damage, which is why Heavy infantry fights drag on so long, and why Flanking with Javelins (which have High AP damage) is so effective. In Warhammer armor only blocks a Percentage of damage taken (down to a minimum of 1 damage, or so iv been told) which is why Ranged unit spam is stupidly effective. AP damage is obviously more effective vs Heavy Armored units while Normal damage better vs lighter armored troops. (or at least its supposed to be. Feels like the more AP damage the better since it CAN NOT BE BLOCKED) Then in Warhammers case you have all the Buff Spells and Healing spells and shit just gets awkword and complicated. Hell everyone Recommends the LORE OF FIRE because it specifically DOES moral damage (the Burned state effect gives minus 8 moral while active). Meanwhile you all these buff spells that NO ONE ever recommends, although some do when you read into what they do.

I feel like expanding on WWI Total War as a tangent and putting my two cents into the idea. Tanks would actually make an interesting unit type for Total War, a kind of inverse to the matchlocks in Shogun 2 if you will. In fact, you can think of them almost akin to a Testudo formation applied to artillery. with strong armor against bullets to the front, but weaker armor to the sides and rear. Unsupported, they are actually vulnerable to infantry attacks as their motors can't outrun running infantry, and neither can their guns cover enough area to handle being torn apart by infantry. Even without flanking, enough firepower may be enough to cripple the crew or the tank itself, as while armor is thick, there is still the chance to get a lucky shot through a vision port, to break through armor, or cause spalling. I suppose they can borrow from ships even as ships have crew and guns on them, as well as "hull health", or effectively "land ships" Artillery can be a unique "land-based" bombardment unit, which are slow to move on the campaign map, but doesn't require the sea to do its bombardments. It can also be selected individually while in an army in order to do its bombardments. and when partaking in a pitched battle, it has a long range but is very slow to move, It can also be balanced by giving it low ammo. Fortifications, such as Trenches, Bunkers, or so on. can be constructed by armies in friendly territory similar to forts in Empire and can be occupied by armies, Trenches provide similar bonuses to earthworks from Empire, while bunkers perhaps provide additional firepower akin to say Gatling towers in FOTS. Units themselves would be changed in just a few unique ways from typical total war games. Perhaps a funny inverse would be that early-game units have tighter formations and later units have looser formations, compared to normal total war where weaker units usually have loose formations. Regardless, the default would be looser formations when not entrenched since cavalry is basically obsolete, and melee isn't as big of a threat. I would also say that while a unit is in the open and not moving, their units will naturally go prone while they wait for orders, and leave prone once given orders to move. Units may also use trees, buildings, fences, and so forth for cover. Snipers are a bit confusing but my best idea is to make them agents akin to foreign veterans from FOTS and ninjas from Shogun 2 with the "harass" action, which will cause a loss of men and lower morale, they can also be used to kill other snipers in a "sniper duel", While in an army they will act like ninjas who allow the army to move further and provide more vision, They can also be used to scout ahead, but, I would think they have a much larger chance of critical failure while in enemy territory, as they are just a man (or squad) with a scoped gun, and unlike ninjas, aren't masters of disguise. Grenades have already been implemented in Empire Total War under Grenadiers, so honestly, this point is already covered. Aircraft unfortunately I think is way out of bounds for Total War to implement, at least not without some kind of overhaul, so I don't have much to say in this regard. Generals no longer lead armies from the front I'd imagine, instead, I would say something akin to you having a "Faction Leader" who is not visible on the map, and instead just confers bonuses on armies globally. maybe there could be something akin to a Captain/Major? but in general, I would see them less as a combat unit and more so an agent on the field that provides bonuses to armies in a radius. Units classes could be considered something like this Rifles (Bolt Action, Long Range, Poor Close Range Performance Assault (Submachine Guns, Grenades, Good Close Range Performance) Team Weapons(MGs/Mortars/Anti-Tank, Slow and requires set up, but deadly performance while set up) Motors(Armored Cars/Tanks, Varying Speed, but generally more resistant to bullets, Small Unit Size, Poor Performance in Melee) But yeah, apart from Generals and Aircraft. Bam. You basically got WWI combat

27:24 This almost feels like most of the Cheap unit that will punch above their weight if used well, from the Rome 1 Greek Militia Hoplites being able to be used for the majority of the campaign if you can use Phalanx having the weakness of needing to keep their formation as they have low morale, Medieval 2 European Spear Militia where they can take charges and Missile fire due to the combination of having good shields and upgradable armor with their only weakness being overpowered by a super rare Sword Infantry units or being flanked. even Rome 2 have such units from the Roman Rorarii being able to form Square formation which could delay or tire Low to Mid Tier units, Celtic Levy Freemen being a Speedy Light Spear unit who have Precursor Javelins and high anti Cavalry, making them somewhat of a damage dealer, Greek Militia Hoplites that have high armor due to their Shields and being quite effective against other Infantry when in Hoplite Wall but is extremely vulnerable to flank and rear attacks as they actually have low armor, to even the Eastern Spearmen who are better used as meatshields against both Melee and Ranged attacks due to having cheap cost and shields specialized in blocking missiles. And then there's Warhammer where Empire Spearmen are best used for...huh...a road block until you get Spearmen(Shields) or Halberdiers as by the time those 2 units are available Spearmen are completely obsolete even against Factions who doesn't bring Missiles, which in many cases Halberdiers are just better.

I love your takes on Total War, by far one of the greatest franchises imo. We all loved playing with the green little army men as kids, and the ability to do so in a fleshed out game is a dream come true in a sense, even if we have to play the ancient Total Wars, im still happy CA at least made our childhood dreams come true.

Idk why im thinking of this now after years playing the series, since medieval 1. But what if when you lose a battle your units scattered around the campaign map, so you had to take some time to regroup your arny? 🤔 Every unit scattering would probably get tedious, so what if they only scattered if they routed off the battlefield before your general did? Or maybe only if they routed a decent amount of time before the rest of the army? Idk, could be cool to see! It would fit so well, desertion has forever been an issue for armies. What do you think??

While I disagree with parts of your video, the point you have about games being BETTER than their predecessors strikes home. It is entirely messed up that even if we disagree on what we think are some of the fundemental designs of total war, and what we can expect from it - CA has still somehow managed to disappoint both of us with mediocre titles that barely hold a candle to the earlier games. Goes to show that they have a focus on it being pretty, and having lots of buttons to press with flashy animations, over being truly "deep" and engaging in a way that holds you captive from start to finish. To be fair to Total War, I haven't had that love for the franchise since Medieval 2 ( and even that wore out quickly enough once I learned how to blitz the game ) but it is extremely disappointing that no game in the series has, for a decade and a half straight, failed to capture me the same way again. I might like some of them - but I don't think I've ever loved any of them quite as much, or will ever again if this design keeps up.

For convenience sake I'll split each comment for each chapter as to not make it into a solid wall of text. Ch1: Oh god the foreshadowing on units still fighting the same with 1 health as they do with full health (except with wounded trait which just decreases stats for a single entity unit) Ch2: It was mostly the AI that was made with the inspiration of The Art of War, how the AI would react if it outnumbers 10:1, 5:1, 2:1, etc., the book's influence is far gone ever since the tile based movement system introduced in Rome 1 that no longer allows the player to strategize nearly as much or get punished for overextending as counter attacks are very rare by the AI 3:50 - Shogun/Medieval had army destruction from just cutting off the retreat path of an army which resulted in entire armies either getting executed or ransomed off, kinda impossible with the tile based movement now. 4:15 - Would've been very different if irl battles had TW style chasing where one light cav can one shot entire armies or set off charges that send men flying, without anyone stabbing nor shooting back. 4:40 - That aspect of letting units rout has been sadly toned down, no longer generals get coward/captured traits that decrease the effectiveness of the army, Attila sort of tried with the integrity system but one click of a button (decimate) fixes that with no real downside as autoreplenishment is fairly generous. 6:35 - But the goal instead is to just stackwipe armies by destroying most units so they don't randomly replenish out of nowhere and be a nuisance later on, sadly another part of TW that isn't really dynamic, it's just individual army strength, no manpower or other armies being affected by the destruction. War weariness was a pretty neat concept but I'd rather just see it in EU4 than TW. 8:55 - Could've pointed out the lack of experience and how those units can break almost instantly even from just fighting uphill 10:00 - Rears and flanks exposed is a pretty accurate view of how units are engineered, there can be a thousand units attacking the rear of a unit and the second it's not touched in the side it won't get the side morale damage penalty, which is kinda why these penalties have seen the most adjustment in any TW game 10:30 - Cannot wait for Ceasar to be like yeeaa see those Gauls? Hit them in the rear for -30 morale damage but don't hit them in the sides, that doesn't deal morale damage. Capisce? Ch3: Could be an interesting commentary on how the TW games are just player centric, there's no abstraction of the units relaying orders it's just the player. There's also an issue of the battles just boiling down to fatigue/ammo/army strength. Would also add how it's possible to abuse gaps in the formation that are caused by uneven inf lines, oblique order sadly doesn't quite work in TW though. 14:35 - Oh my another gamey aspect where the units would die much faster from pulling out, very abusable in games like Rome 2/Attila Ch4: www.rockpapershotgun.com/talking-about-total-war-with-mike-simpson "Okay, well, the way we look at it is that there is a long list of things we can do with Total War, and I should think that almost anything you've ever thought of is on that list. We argue constantly about the things on that list, and the order in which we're going to do them. The order changes all the time. The 20th century is on the list, but of course it's not exactly the easiest transition from the kinds of battles that Empire was all about, which was all about formal armies and men moving around in units. The 20th century is much more fragmented, much larger battlefields, and there's just more to deal with: aircraft, and so on. It's certainly something we want and intend to tackle one day, but it wasn't the thing we most wanted to do after Empire. What we really wanted to do was go back and redo Shogun." If the executive producer tells it can be done then idk try telling that to the fans who have no clue what can be done, kinda tired of things becoming a set formula out of context. Ch5: Thorax swordsmen are very heavy infantry who are really sturdy units, it also has pretty good morale that matches legionaries. Could've made it so the battle difficulty is on normal so the morale modifiers are shown, stuff like attacked in the rear appears a lot which is -30 but it's just not enough to do much. Not sure what to think about that section like the bunching up is how units held together because of flanks secured and friendlies nearby/general nearby, though I would be a big fan of it if it was possible to use lesser units to break elite ones which sadly started to get phased out in favour of casualties sustained and army losses taking the top of morale damage penalty modifiers that are meaningful. Morale still is decisive but instead of starting chainrouts it's to aim for that sweet army losses penalty which is sad since friendlies routing took the backseat. Fextralife's vid is pretty good but it could've been used to point out how fatigue penalties also took a step back, same with rear/side flank penalties that even Rome 2 had it pretty big. As for the Shogun 2 footage at the end the katana samurai did have to deal with a routing/dead general on top of projectiles giving a slight morale penalty so even in Rome 2 it would be kinda similar especially if the inf holding are hoplites/pikemen in lanx Ch6: Terrain's kinda always been a morale/damage modifier but it's sadly so negligible especially on higher difficulties. I would rather make the argument for just the xp/upgrade stacking making everything morale/terrain based really pointless lately, at least in Rome 1/Medieval 2 the friendlies routing penalty could potentially rout 12 morale units due to how hard it stacked, 12 morale being pretty much for some of the best units around. Ch7: wtf is a half hitpoint of damage tho LOL but yea it was mostly a thing with units either getting one shot from the first hit or taking multiple hits at a time without anything affecting them. Health was introduced for that as to make those hits eventually take the unit down but at a cost of removing those one shot kills that used to happen especially with charges www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?548136-Exclusive-Content-and-Dev-chat-for-Total-War-Center&s=7b9c3f9786cc7880c64fa5e3b540bf81&p=12805863&viewfull=1#post12805863 Jack lusted explaining health and all other stuff that's being implemented for Rome 2 went through this and while I agree with his sentiment of getting the weapon damage modeled idk I just wish there was something about health that made the engagements more dynamic like the entity becoming effectively exhausted or bleeding out. Don't care if there's muh PC performance argument if Shogun 1 had individual xp with individual stats attached then I don't see how health couldn't be implemented the same way. This alone made morale just a thing where casualties sustained becomes the morale for units rather than playing around the concepts of flanking, fighting downhill, surprising units, etc. The tangent section on guns: Shogun 1 had the morale shock alone giving guns such a huge impact that it didn't really matter how much damage they deal. Might as well just use archers with armour piercing if you want to deal damage. Sad that it got removed making Shogun 2 matchlocks like armour piercing slingers basically. Also I don't agree that every unit really needs a counter for everything, the biggest reason I got into TW is that I can finally just leave the stupid interactions of spears beat cav, inf beats cav if I can just isolate a bunch of spears and rout them in detail. I still don't get what's with this rock paper scissors design if morale is a thing, make spears formiddable but break easily when using combined arms like missiles with inf idk. Ch8: Based Ch9: Stats can be deceiving since you'd need to develop a really big trust into what to expect of the unit. It still would require one to look at the stats eventually to see if you're not missing out on anything. Hint: bonus vs cav on riflemen in FoTS where one needs a bayonet mod. I think health made it a little too consistent, how charges are always meant to be damage dealers at the start and then nuke when the battle has developed, there is technically less randomization as you don't have to pray that a charge breaks the unit with enough kills rather than be sure that the charge dealt its expected damage which leads to all the cycle charging/softening up bs with precursors and so on 42:55 - Shogun 1 was also made because of the tech race - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8rFh9BDNLqk.html Epilogue bit: Fight to the death is the biggest bait I've seen people fall for where even the most bugged out yari ashigaru or Rome 2 pikemen are putting up more of a fight than these seemingly desperate units while in Shogun/Medieval it was just an attack bonus to the chasing unit so a bunch of spears can still potentially be a threat to light cav while starting from Rome 1 they can just walk in and nuke everything without any consequences. I would much rather focus on how those routing units can make another reinforcing army passing through instantly shaken from the friendlies routing so letting them rout can give you an opportunity to destroy another army. I still can't believe people fall for the fight to the death bait though I would still have it implemented, as well as a chance of multiple units routing being able to repel a single chasing unit rather than perpetually not being able to rally just because there's a single light inf/cav chasing them which makes them completely harmless.

28:45 saying what aboutism is just a defense of hypocrisy

So CA struck gold when they developed morale, which combined with advancements in computing power allowed them to model historical battles in a more historically accurate way. More soldiers in battle lines who fought until they lost the will to fight, and not just 5 guys fighting until their HP dropped to 0. The problem is they didn't continue pushing the boundaries of accurate military history, only their graphics. This left their gameplay to stagnate and ultimately influenced by the community it drew from: RTS players. Instead of, say, exploring the idea of friction where your troops visibly lose cohesion as the battle drags on. Instead of exploring logistics where scouting and raiding and foraging are just as important as the set piece battles. Instead of expanding the experience system with unit officer growth, training drills, or discipline and reaction speed to practiced vs unpracticed maneuvers. CA couldn't afford to upset this audience, and so did nothing but appeal to them with QoL and a variety of popular settings and units. A small group of these players found something to like in how the unique parts of TW combat mechanics allowed for slightly different RTS experiences, but the majority were here for the same reasons they came for Age of Empires.

I have over 400 hours in shogun 2. I couldn't tell you a single stat number of any unit. I just know what each unit is good at, I don't need to know the number of melee attack on a katana samurai to know they are going to defeat yari samurai. All I need to know is katanas beat yaris

In Warhammer 2, playing as the Empire is the only way I can start a new game. I've tried multiple factions by now, and only Tomb Kings come close to the _possibility_ of varied army composition - but only with some critical mods. Even the imperial roster needs some special abilities to become truly interesting and worthwhile competitors to doomstacks, otherwise handgunners are, as you said, archers with a different skin. I've always liked modding TW games, but Warhammer is, by a longshot, the one which needs most "fixing" mods, not bug-patching, but gameplay correctives.

😳 22:26 Never realized how crazy the ai unit buffs are in higher difficulty, i assume this footage must be from legendary?? Im a scrub that plays on normal in tww2 & 3, because fuck that shit😅!! But when i get off a good flank charge the vast majority of units rout super quickly! Does ai get morale buff too? I thought it was just ma and md...

@ 21:07 Come out to playyyyyyyyy-yayyy *clinking bottles*

Ive only played 2 total wars, shogun 2 and 3 kingdoms, and the battles felt so bad in 3 kingdoms that i only played one campaign and did everything to just auto win battles because it was awful when in shogun 2 every battle feels great even if its one sided

I hate how rome 2 turned out because I really enjoyed the time period and soundtrack for the game

Yeah the idea that ww1 total war could work is just straight up wrong. It's true that the change in weaponry wasn't exactly revolutionary but... no, ww1 combat did not look anything like any total war game on a doctrinal level.

Can I ask which is the ww1 at the chapter titles? It looks like a lot of fun

👏🙂

My favorite old morale based status was "charges without orders". What I find ironic is that TW moved to health bars and used that for Warhammer when the tabletop version of Warhammer played more like the older TW.

HP introduction was supposed to granulate the ability of two units fighting to kill each other. It was purely designed to stretch out battle times. At some point they must have realized this wasn't enough, so they gave units far too much leadership(morale). A basic unit of swordsmen in warhammer 2 has 69hp/model and 60 morale. It is intended by design that the unit will remain in combat until at least 50% casualties. The accumulated morale penalty from entity losses is much higher than taking a rear charge or from facing a stronger opponent or being flanked. While it is possible to quickly rout any given unit, you're typically required to cause such a massive Ld debuff including via damage taken within 8 seconds that its almost impossible. Only monstrous cavalry like great stag knights, appropriately buffed have the charge damage and splash damage required to rout or outright shatter a basic infantry unit on the charge. As units don't get any consideration to their weapon type in melee, for example, there is no phalanx in WH3, there is no scenario where the sheer density of weapons is repelling enemy models and preserving the wielder. When a unit is charging, it doesn't matter if it is a halberd unit, axeman, sword or spearman, who each would have completely different engagement openers, there is only impact and then an attack animation to provide any impetus to the charge. The arms race we see in these games comes from stat-stacking where you are constantly chasing units that have better armour, more hp and more MA. MD is an important stat too but I would argue having 200MA and killing the enemy in a few seconds is more valuable than having 200MD and taking 30 minutes to die in a protracted and very stagnant melee. If you don't chase these stat boosts then you need to have another strategy to reinforce it, such as crapstacking archers or some other gimmick unit that is either extremely easy to replace or has a nuanced ability that offsets their trailing effectiveness relative to the opponents continuous army composition improvements. Nasty skulkers are a good example of a crappy melee unit that can punch above its weight, they do a lot of AP damage and can remain hidden for a long time. They're also very small models so you can pack more attacks in over a given physical area. I'm not really sure I would ever want to see CA do 20th century era game, not because I don't think they want to (and I am sure prototypes of the games were made many years ago to test viability) but rather because I doubt their competence at making a compelling game that doesn't degenerate in to tank spam. I don't think they can make the game people want and why would I? They can't make games that attract universal praise today, why would I expect them to do a great job in the future? I believe in judging a person by the merits of their actions and ever since Empire they have released more duds than successes. They have a filthy habit of dropping games early leaving them broken or to chase an expansion/DLC model that has also proven to generate animosity against them. I wish CA the best but I am not going to hold my breath lest I die while waiting.

One aspect you haven't really delved into is tabletop Warhammer. I say this because, despite the fact CA took inspiration from a tabletop game, they completely omitted following in its logical ruleset. Like, first of all, banners and officers were always a staple of Total War units before, and they play a significant rule in tabletop as well. In Total War Warhammer though? Totally neglected. Armour, damage, health, morale... Everything made so much more sense, there was a system around dealing with single entities, there were costs and tradeoffs and weaknesses etc., so for a Total War game, it is simply ridiculous that the tabletop game offers a better combat simulation. Basically Total War Warhammer is a slap in the face to everyone except the newcomers who just want a new shinier Warcraft game.

Great stuff man, I agree that the HP system in the newer games ruined everything

I really like this video, but it feels like idea vomit. Your ideas are valid but presented in a disjointed way. I think there are too many chapters and cutaways to you playing other games. Having chapters and cutaways are cool but there are so many that it cuts the flow off and lessens the overall impact of your message. I agree with you 100% though, I never realized this until playing shogun 2 after exclusivity playing Warhammer 2. I could tell immediately it was way better, you can always tell when the developers put love into a game.

I can name a couple of times where having a high amount of Morale in Shogun 2 saved me a few battles when I was still new and learning how to win against anything past the normal difficulty. Samurai Retainers especially gave me the ability to cause some last-ditch morale shocks that ended up in units mass routing. It was quite the spectacle for me back then. But now? Enemy units come back all the fucking time. Every. Single. Fucking. Time. You could have reduced a unit of 200 men down to just 30 and they will still come back. The battle could practically be over, and yet they will still un-rout themselves and come back.

The "MUH FANTASY LLULU" is probably the biggest low IQ argument I've ever seen in a discussion, it just shows how they actually have no argument and are just stupidly apologising for something they like, but they won't agree that the thing they like has any flaws. Next time I write a ticket to CA about why I can't win a battle automatically by just deleting all my units, it's a fantasy setting after all. Why can't I just infinitely move on the campaign map? It's a fantasy setting after all. Why don't I win the campaign when I just ALT-F4 the game CA? It's a fantasy game! If it's the case that fantasy just makes you not bound by the rules, then you can't argue against the points I've made, stupid as they are, because the whole argument is absolutely nonsensical and stupid.

Rome 2 still has the morale system, but because one of the big impactors on moral is losses taken, the hitpoints system prevents losses from being taken until very near the end of the fight, and then they just start dropping like flies, so most of them will die before the moral impact can kick in. Where with the statistical model of 1hp systems the losses taken will be more regular and build up a morale penalty over the course of the battle which is more severe for the losing side, allowing the other moral effects to stack better with it.

16:59 The ones used by Guards and Foreign Marines are actually breech Loaders, not bolt action despite there's some Retainer weapon such as Needle Rifle Retainer which is a German Bolt Action Rifle made in 1824. While the main problem of implementing the 5 Round Clips(not magazines) is the absurd fire rate a WW1 Total war would have, in WW1 it's quite rare for a Soldier to get shot by another Soldier despite how accurate the Bolt Action weapon is, while there are speculation as Soldiers doesn't shoot to kill or both sides pretending to shoot eachother while missing on purpose, a WW1 Total War would probably be Fall of the Samurai without the Samurai 19:00 iirc there's a small Penalty for Melee Attack and Defense when Soldiers are too bunched up in Rome 2, but it's mostly negligible as the only way to stop them is either a Heavy Shock Cav cycle charges(if the blobs are Medium Weight) or Rear Missile Attacks followed by a Cavalry Charge as Morale Calculation in Rome 2 tends to view Morale as a second health bar rather than a pillar you need to break for the unit to rout. This is also prevalent in Warhammer viewing Morale/Leadership as a Second Health bar which isn't really that easy to drain unless the unit is filled with unicorn magic, lost 80% of the Men, or just puke at the sight of 19 Cow Man with specific traits that reduced Morale.

To add some of my own observations about Rome 2 to the discussion: There is a distinct difference between playing Rome 2 on Legendary where units get a +7 morale bonus, with Latin/Hellenic armies, vs playing with the intended morale levels and using Barbarian factions. You can see in a lot of multiplayer battles at high level that barbarian units will flee between 75%-50% casualties, especially if the general has been killed, while Latin/Hellenic units don't have this issue. Why? Latin/Hellenic professional units like pikes, hoplites, Hastati, Legionaries, etc have a "disciplined" trait that significantly reduces the impact of morale shocks to the unit. This completely damages the gameplay and leads to the results you showed in the video. So what's my point? Rome 2 was on the knife's edge of not being completely terrible and poor balancing with careless design invariably made it utter dogwater when it didn't have to be. I urge you to test the difference between the two army types and you'll likely notice how less-terrible battles are with mid tier barbarian swords compared to Roman units that always fight to the death essentially. Legionaries weren't superhuman though so the whole thing reeks of historical fanboyism anyway

Great video, you captured some good points. I would argue in favor of HP that it's a good way to handle the effects of magic, without making it too weak/broken. Also HP are individual: every man has their HP bar, which are summed up to the unit's one. I also partially disagree on your arguments about morale and single entity units. TW Warhammer could improve in many ways, but at its core it has great mechanics. And I don't speak from my own experience only: you speak about experiments, there's plenty of other channels doing them, and they all put emphasis on the importance of morale. That being said, I still think you have valuable points. Older Total War were broken for other reasons (mainly pathfinding and AI - often problematic to this day), but battles were more realistic. And it's not a matter of being historical vs fantasy: Rome 2, Britannia, Three Kingdoms (which is amazing, but definitely not for the battles) are essentially historical titles, but the battles suck, a lot, precisely for the reasons you explained. I would finally also add another thing to the argument: artillery. Artillery fucking ruins a Total War game. Rome, Medieval 2 and Shogun 2 artillery is amazing, because it's inaccurate and because it doesn't deal more than its value in damage (often even less). Of course, if you support it correctly, it can be even more effective, but that goes for every unit, and it's essential for sieges anyways, so you have to bring it. Artillery is an asset because it forces an enemy to chose between taking casualties but keep their position and moving somewhere else / attack themselves. New Total War artillery has pin-point accuracy, it can unleash devastating napalm attacks and it's easily the main source of damage of an army. Such a powerful weapon is boring, because it destroys tactics and it just encourages corner camping (and it also makes me mad, as an history enthusiast, but that's on me). Even FotS artillery is a bit on the broken side, but I can accept it. They usually kill up to 300 people, but it's just two units in the end of the day, and they themselves cost probably more than that. Definitely a great asset worth having, but not necessarily wrong. A trebuchet in Three Kingdoms can annihilate between 500 and 1200 people per battle, in a game with less men on the ground, set in a era of melee combat. Outrageous. Thanks for reading my essay lmao

28:12 same with Spear Milita, Urban Spear Milita, etc in med 2. I been learning to respect Shogun 2 more, already liked it but its getting close to the same level as med2 for me.

If someone interested with the concept of ww2 total war, then i suggest trying order of war, a game made by collaboration wargaming and square enix (i think). its not 100% realistic (there are other like graviteam tactics) but its close enough as a concept. I think if they ever wanted to include plane in a total war game than make it a callable support like how naval support work in fots. Btw love your videos keep up the awesome work❤ Edit:Recently rewatched some gameplay for order of war, realizing how close it was to company of heroes, Which is a bad sign for people expecting a good combat.

Great video, agree with most points. Only thing I want to add is that there has been one notable counter example of proper use of defeat in details and the importance of flanking/surrounding enemies in 'Attila: total war', particularly in the video 'how to alans' by Yrrdian where he uses low tier melee cav to pull apart enemy formation and kill the most threatening units one at a time. It still runs into the problem of absurd number of casualties (particularly since he is using a fully light cavalry army), and doesn't have the fight to the death mechanic, but it's probably the closest thing I've seen in modern total war games where clever tactics are used to defeat stronger enemies. It's rather telling that this is pretty much the only example I can think of where it feels like the player is outsmarting their foe rather than out statting them or cheesing them. And even then, it's in one of the less popular/forgotten games and requires an extremely unbalanced (as in 0 infantry, archers) composition to work.

these random battlefield clips are so distracting

Total Wars terrain has just become too elementary, rarely if ever do i find myself actually considering the implications of a say, small forested hill in the center of the map, maybe a large forest to my Southern flank. The A.I proves itself too dumb to ever actually use positions like those. However in a game like Graviteam Tactics, local terrain proves itself the most important factor in all engagements, any even minor hill can prove itself a valuable position for some mortars and HMG's, or maybe you can place an artillery spotter, a large forest can be used to covertly and securely move large formations of men in and around the battle area to get a better position on the overall objective, Scouting units can be told to go on covert missions on the extreme flanks of the players line in order to set up new firing positions and perform recon. This is all from a game made by a couple of guys in Ukraine, really recommend you check out this game.

Tbh, at least in rome1, the fighting to the death state heavily debuffed the unit. They usually get massacred quick without dealing too much damage in that state, it was often worth to just grind em down instead of letting em run and risk their escape

The only solid blueprint that would a make a Total War WW1 or 2 game possible, is a small game called Graviteam Tactics, the game simulates WW2 combat on the battalion-level and it looks amazing, i myself have a couple hours on the game and whilst navigating it should be difficult (Slavic indie devs) its something you should definitely check out.

On the Topic of "Guns, guns, guns, who took my guns?", such Cheap anti Elite counter does exist in both Shogun 2 and Rome 2, where in Shogun 2 it's the Matchlock Ashigaru while in Rome 2 it's the Javelin Skirmishers units, while the Javelins in Rome 2 doesn't really have a fast projectile speed nor instant kill units like the Shogun 2 Matchlocks, the Javelins no matter the cheap Javelinmen or the Picked Peltast would deal good damage to any unit especially on the rear or right flank(weapon hand), although unlike Shogun 2 Matchlock who needs good terrain and timing to effectively counter the Elite Armored Units, Rome 2 needs timing and placements while you can loose a hail of javelins at a Praetorian Guards, most of those Javelins would be blocked by their Shields and finding the perfect terrain to fire at a flank in a middle of a battle would be harder making the only way for a Javelin Skirmishers to deal with Elite Armored units is for them to literally assume the role of Cavalry and maybe Light Melee units being placed in the Flank of the army and having to work with the Cavalry who chases down the opposing Skirmishers allowing the Javelin Skirmishers to take a clear shot at the Elite Armored unit's rear. In Warhammer every Ranged units with 140+ Range are all stop gap for any unit as a single volley of arrows by 8 High Elves Archers would deal more damage without any loss to fighting power due to literally fighting at range, or how Crossbows and Bows are basically the same weapon as Empire Crossbows and Huntsman bows have the same projectile speed and can lob their shots.

On the jets and planes point. It would be trivial to implement off map assets like this attached to an army. We already have general abilities and spells and spawning units. Hypothetical units like officers, general or forward observers could call in assets like biplanes or jets and could strafe areas like wind spells work in Warhammer except they are strafing enemies with bullets and bombs/missiles. The plane can simply fly off map and despawn with a timer cool down. They could even have animations for crashing and being destroyed. Outside the map assets with animations already exist, see green skin wyverns flying around on badlands maps. Don't see why this couldn't be done with jets in a holding pattern waiting to be called in. The main difficulty with a ww1 total war would be changing the campaign map/mechanics to implement trench front lines but that could be done even if that meant changing how armies move and how settlements work. If the battles were good enough players would be enjoy the game.

After being severely disappointed by Rome 2 (disastrous launch + the changes to the campaign map ruined it for me) I tried TWWH many years later and noticed every battle just devolved into chaotic blobs, despite my attempts to use the tactics I was familiar with in RTW and MTW. It makes sense that this is a consequence of the changes to the morale system, the HP system and how armor etc now work. Very unfortunate that we will probably never see this series return to it's former glory.

On the ww1 thing? I've wanted to make a modern warfare mod for TW myself if I could code. Planes helicopters strategic bombing, tanks armored vehicles etc etc can be managed in game just like how we do it irl, you build an air base, it has a dedicated range or engagement and you can slot the amount of armaments you plan to use for certain engagements etc. It wouldn't even be that hard to integrate exploitable supply lines, road conditions etc as the components for such already exist in TWWH abd the China one that no one played after the checks stopped coming

32:31 I think this is a very true argument as well- in FOTS, for example, you can field an army of traditional units, or of modern units, or of a combined arms type- I’ve fielded all three against traditional and modern armies. They change the way you play but I don’t think that one is necessarily superior to the other.

One of my favorite aspects of Shogun 2 is the rewarding feeling of seizing a hill or cleverly defeating a superior army in detail- being able to quickly put a small force to rout being the crux of the victory, and the witty tactics being the only way to win against a better equipped and numerically superior foe. It’s such a simple sentiment, and yet it’s the difference between the games that we love (Shogun 2) and the games that we don’t (Three Kingdoms)

I think health bars were introduced for consistency. Having 100hp means you can always take 100 damage, but having 1HP and 90% chance for enemy to miss can still one shot the unit. But in the grand picture it was statistically consistent because there were hundreds units on the battlefield, so maybe I am wrong. Introducing HP system make sence for warhammer and single entities and elite troops.

Let's gooooo

A WW1 Total War game, it's a mod for Napoleon Total War, which did an amazing job. I was one of those people who dismissed the idea both on the tactical(battle) and strategic(campaign) levels but as this mod proved it's very much possible. Is it an accurate representation of WW1? Hell no. But under the confines of a Total War game, and being a mod of an existing game at that, it did pretty darn good job. I still don't think it's an ideal setting for the series but considering other games, like the afore mentioned Napoleon, also don't perfectly fit(as opposed to Empire which a terrific setting) it's really not that much of a leap from those. Heck the mod even managed to incorporate recon planes into the game, something I thought would be impossible in a Total War setting as no game before WW1 had air combat to begin with, unlike naval combat which is incredibly old. So I still digress that a WW1 Total War, as an official title I mean, still isn't really a great fit, the mod for Napoleon proved that the setting is very much feasible.

the fun of the older games was that even though you might have smaller forces or weaker units, than the enemy, you could win by using smarter tactics, taking advantage of terrian, flanking, formations, etc. gameplay changed from using to superior tactics to getting armies with superior stats some say this is because the battle AI was, and still is, incredibly stupid, so rather making the AI better, they just changes the nature of the game to make it easier for the AI (amassing high stat units) and more challenging for the player, which, as you say, is pretty much what AOE is

I think health is not inherently a bad thing in total war, but it has been used too much and in too high amounts, would a giant in warhammer die to being shot 10 times, probably no, but would it also be able to tank 5 units of huntsmen shooting it full of arrows for like 30 seconds, again probably not. Same has happened with moral, it has gotten too high with too little negatives for reducing it. I think a perfect example of this is the " immune to psychology" trait from warhammer. You would think this would be a great trait in a world full of monsters, magic, walking corpses and skeleton. But no, most units have a base leadership so high that this is one of the most useless traits to have, it has uses but most are extremely situational and can often be countered by other means. It kinda diminishes your elite units when everything from the mid game up will often fight until it has only 20 men left, even less if they have experience levels that the ai has cheats for anyways, so theyr units will almost always fight to the last 5 man.

My favorite doctrine in Total war was massive infantery fire with artillery support. I just LOVE my battle line in Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai consisting of elite troops of the highest level,with all the accuracy buffs you can get from buildings, generals and advisors, US marines and Kneeling Fire just to keep the guns going. Supported by 5 Armstrong cannon groups to POUND the enemy forces into OBLIVION as soon as they group up, to crush cavalery before they can flank me with my 5 Yari Infantery from the VERY BEGINNING of the game right behind the cannons ready to charge forward to drive back meele attacks,to swing around to cover flanks against infantery. I just love how much "Shock and Awe" could be done to absolutly crush the enemys. Sad that Napoleon had a lacking artillery and fort mechanic while empire,even older as napoleon, felt even worse then using artillery or forts. Oh yes. And the defensive war in Fall of the Samurai is peak fighting. You old the outer egdges and fire,retreat inwards while the 2nd line fires on the ariving soldiers who have to regroup under fire before going for the next wall with more soldiers. Edit: You mentioned the powercreep in Fall of the Samurai as a starting point, but you can even go back to napoleon where a french militia unit would have the same moral as a austrian or prussian infantery of the line with just worse accuracy and reload, while the french infantery of the line was as good as its counterpart with 2-4 moral more, almost double of what another nation would field on the base level!

Battles in old total war games: we must expertly position ourselves to outmaneuver the enemy Battles in Total War: Warhammer: SEND IN THE MUTANT RAT OGRE BLOB

4:10 for real the numbers always amazed me how armies so big lost not even half their men but it already led to a decisive outcome and you really think how morale actually even played out and when you play these “historical games” where morale has been made an absolute joke and it does not even depend on shocks like a cavalry meant to quickly deliver a finishing blow on rear or flank to rout the entire battle line but you have to wait for your infantry first to drop some significant hit points on enemy units just so that your cavalry charge could be barely effective is downright stupid. Great bideo as always

Wikipedia says the Boshin war had a total of 8000 casualties. An average FOTS battle could easily equal that.

Graviteam Tactics and Wargame both are examples of WW2 and Modern games with TW esque mechanics, a turn based strategy map leading to realtime tactical battles. You would have to change some things but the concept absolutely can work.

Rome 2 not only added HP but WEAPON DAMAGE as stats. I swear to god every single issue with Total War STARTS with Rome 2, GOD DAME YOU CA! What Level of Irony are we on when the Sequel to the game that PUT TOTAL WAR ON MAP, is the same game that signals its decline from grace and glory. Total War has shifted quite a bit from Shogun 2/Rise of the Samurai to Fall of the Samurai then to Rome 2 and onword. To be FAIR though, one thing that Shogun 2 really showed was that MORAL SHOCK mattered more then anything else, admittedly most of that was from the MASS SLAUGHTER of the unit itself but still. Moral may not matter as much as it did, BUT unit "stamina" and Flanking does (to a point). As it as always been, units that are Fresh fight better then units that are Winded, Tired or Exhausted, you still arn't going to with the "quality battle" but you will take more of them with you. As for Flanking, that mostly has to do with Ranged units, as most units have Shields and most of their armor on the FRONT side, and have less and less as you Flank them and eventually get around their back side. I still prefer Shogun 2s Rock Paper Scissors style, its simple but it works. Now we have HP bars, Weapon Damage, Armor Piercing Damage, Unit MASS, UNIT SPEED and Spells to worry about.

Relating the point made in 19:05 - as a matter it's not that cavalry rear charges are effective because of "charge bonus" or even having the unit surrounded per se (greater surface area and all that). Infantry beats cavalry, or more like makes charging in a suicide pact for the cavalrymen... if they hold. It's that facing great beasts with pounding hooves is inherently terrifying, and even if the infantry formation would beat the cavalry, the first rank involved in the suicide pact might have different ideas: perhaps it's better to run away and maybe survive, than die for sure. That is to say, the impact is almost completely psychological, and even the earlier Total War games were unthematic for less cohesive infantry forces standing long enough to receive a charge in the first place (most of the time), which makes unbreakable units in neo-TW simply appalling.

Decided to watch your vids after the CA fallout and your critique of the pharoah reviews. Sad to say I'm a bit disappointed. You have a lot of valid well thought out critiquues that I agree with, but so much of it seems to be heavily biased/misleading and with it being more about "it's different so it's bad" than why it's actually a problem. Which is a shame as there are a lot of negative consequences to health/morale systems you've missed. I agree that healthbars are a serious problem here, but you would do your side a much bigger favour if you were a bit more balanced with your critique, As it stands, it comes across as more fanboyish than actually balanced. With your goal seemingly to dunk on newer games for being different to S2. A great game, but not some be all end all. Agree that morale and the healthbar system has lead to morale taking a backseat, but honestly, your WH footage comes across as deliberately misleading. You have multiple charges that are either fodder cavalry charging heavy spear units (19:39 ok dude, this is the equivalent of charging a single half strength light cavalry into a blob of Nagi samurai and then leaving them there. What exactly do you think will happen?), heavily depleted cav or just a point blank charge where there's no room for them to hit max speed. You seemingly neglect the damage of charges being delayed in the later games. Shogun 2 cav charge damage was impact based and got its shock from the units being launched into the air. WH has that but lessened, and also has the big weapon and melee attack buffs you get for doing it. Contrary to this video, flanking very much still has a role. It just isn't the single decider like in older games. What matters now is not the morale shock, but the amount of damage you can do from flanks. Slaanesh is the pivotal flanking faction and can absolutely blend through lines when flanks are successful. Daemonettes are buzzsaws when they get a surround and they can do it fast thanks to their speed. Elite units will get dumpstered by them. Hell, even the empire can. You just can't expect fodder cavalry to melt mid level spear blobs without support. Part of the greater unit variety is that you have far more tools to consider when attacking the enemy. Morale shocks come from flanking, magic and fear/terror. using these properly, you can trash the morale of units. The problem is less that, and more that chain routing is less possible, due to the knock-on impacts of routing units not being enough. In Rome 2, you could fear stack combining with flanks to have ridiculous chain routs that would make seemingly impossible battles winnable. Not at all possible in WH,where army losses is the decider. Base morale needs to be dropped and the morale penalty of flanking and friendly units routing needs to be buffed. For healthbars, I do have a preference for 1-2hp units but I question how this would work in games with such a wide range of units that need their own identity. I feel a middle-ground is needed. Healthbars mean individual moves have far less impact (aside from well timed elite cav charges, welltimed magic or artillery) which i agree is very unsatisfying. but overweighting these specific tactics just means the game centralises on them alone and strips away the relevance of basically everything else. Why bother with yari samurai when yari ashigaru do basically the same thing? Why bother with bow samurai/bow monks when bow ashigaru do almost the same? (arguably better due to higher model count, taking advantage of the low hp of units across the board) Why bother with matchlock samurai when matchlock ashigaru have the same infantry melting guns? Your doomstacking point seems largely irrelevant too as this has always been a thing. Shogun 2 you doomstacked when you hit critical mass with food surplus and could afford samurai stacks. In medievall, you could doomstack with praetoreans/urbans and in Med2, you could spam knights. But similar to WH and Rome, it wasn't something you were forced to do. I have always been able to use balanced armies, even in to lategame. Not once have I felt the need to SEM spam. People do that, but they're powergamers who want to minmax. It's not some requirement. Same as how exploiting the siege battle AI in S2 isn't required for your average player. 15:27 SEMs are weak to missiles, magic and tarpits. Honestly, a lot of these issues you have seem to be simply a disagreement with the design philosophy. Which is fine, but don't pretend every different approach is an objective failure of the game. S2 has this rock paper scissors arcade style balance because there are far fewer moving parts. Spear beats cav, sword beats spear, cav beats sword, bow beats everything unless compromised. If you have a game where there are several times more unit types, having this philosophy remain dominant defeats the purpose of having all these units and would only encourage crapstacking. Of course this doesn't matter if you don't value unit variety, which is valid. If you have the level of unit variety in later games, there needs to be some intrinsic value elite units bring that means that they can't just be slaves to the rps meta. Otherwise, all battles will be the same. S2 battles end up becoming samey because not only are battles over far quicker, the limited unit variety means effectively the same tactics are used. Hammer and anvil is king (oblique order would be great if it weren't for the battles ending so quick).

I stopped playing Total Wars after Shogun 2 after seeing what they did with Rome 2. And I won't touch Warhammer games because I was curious and watched tons of multiplayer battles for those awesome animations and units and EVERY SINGLE ONE ENDED WITH A BRAWL OF 3-4 HEROES after the 10 minutes top battle.

16:25 I also rather have the great northern war

''Shogun 2 is only Ashigaru spam'' Yeah cause when the AI has 20 stack of Ashigaru Spearmen, i cry and shit myself cause my veteran Katana Samurai, are now useless. God forbid you flank them or something. What next? ''Fall of the Samurai is just Line Infantry spam''

One of my favorite total war games to play to this day is the OG medieval, it improved on Shogun 1's controls and took what it did well and made it bigger(yes irrelevant but fun when done well) and more importantly better.

As someone who just couldn't hold the line, I bought Pharoh. I am sorry everyone but one year from this video I can say that the morale system is still shockingly bad. The worst being how my armies never seem to have any, despite better positioning, armor & weapons, and having not lost any auto-resolves but as soon as I manually play a balanced fight the enemy basically is an army of motivational speakers who can flee and rally multiple times!

One of the things I don't like about total war is how you can have broken lines and nuts acting independently from the commander. That just doesn't work in real combat. Numerous reenactment groups have tried something similar (like the sca) and shit falls apart immediately when confronted by an inferior force properly arrayed. And that's just melee on melee, not accounting for calvary and stuff. In every document we have about warfare from Asia and Europe it almost always ends with "and then we caused their peasant infantry to break apart into different units and exploited the gaps

another effect of having the 1-2 hitpoint system in the older games was that it really broke elite infantry into different roles. In Rome 1, the arcani were elite infantry with 2 hitpoints, the ability to hide, and great stamina. They were also much less numerous per unit than something like an urban cohort. So they would be able to engage in quick, aggressive action subsequently run away before the rest of the army could envelop them. But if they pushed things too far, they'd start snowballing casualties. In medieval 2, the hungarian assassins and the muslim Hashashiin also were 2-hitpoint-units with the ability to hide. Because they had less manpower, they didnt have the offensive capability as comparable elite infantry. But medieval 2 was structured heavily around sieges, sometimes against castles with multiple lines of walls. And on walls, when you only have a certain amount of space to cram defenders on or are limited in how quickly your attackers are able to scale the ladders, having men with twice the survivability was such a force multiplier

I had a completelly different opinion over this worth noting i've only player warhammer total war III Because you've provided footage of combat where the key features of the enemy units are their high leadership, or directly unbreackable such as,korne, lizardmen, bretonians, wehre a cavalry charge will only deal damage, and not hinder much of their moralle, since these factions have units specifically made to be used on slugfest Because, personally, i find that a lot of battles i have low casualities numbers, simply because i for the enemy to route before actually having any pushback In the case that you feel that the units have too much moralle, you should play against skavens or the empire, where lines of units can or will fall due to fear Key exceptions to these rules are korne, vampiric factions, lizardman and bretonians (sort of) Korne has high leadership, frenzy....etc, so if they're on melee combat, they're harder to rally down all vampiric factions non-human units don't rally up, they unbind/desintegrate when an ussual unit would rally up and lizarman/bretonians have high leadership, meaning that they will not rally up unless massive ammount of damage is taken I understand and somewhat agree with you over moralle, but you should have used other examples where the combat is not meant to be an slugfest

Its funny cos tabletop warhammer did the same mistake. Leadership was a gamecore mechanic and you can wipe out the entire squad by breaking their morale. U can kill only 5 model of 20 and break they morale. And then gw bring up so many artefacts, units, special rules and auras with no fear bullshit, that u cant even scare some petty villager with your dead dragon cos he has no fear rule sharing by some lord nearby. Fearless is one of the most common keyword in warhammer. Sorry for my english

Ill never forget the disappointment i felt when i executed my first hammer and anvil maneuver in rome 2. Hype and excitement at the carnage i was about to inflict immediately turned to confused, underwhelmed, disappointment 😔

I think the biggest problem with implementing World War 1 in Total War is the hindsight problem. Everyone nowadays know that trench warfare is not benefiting the attacker. So with that in mind no one would attack a good dug out trench if it does not give an attack bonus or economy boost. So the game mechanics have to reward you for wasting manpower and material to gain a few meters of useless territory. While also punishing you for wasting these resources to make it somehow realistic. I think this is the reason there are not so many good WW1 games that try to be somewhat realistic and it is especially not working for Total War.

21:53 THE CAVALRY IS SO DAMN SLOW, SLOWER THAN THE HEAVIEST CAVALRY UNIT IN MEDIEVAL 2 (that being byzantine schrolli)

You had me UNTIL "CONCISTANCY" What is More concistant than a 1 million HP bar being hit by 10k attacks? You do t get more concistant than that. DPS is a measure for game with Health bars you dounce Meanwhile the other have 1 HP and can die by any ARBITRARY RNG roll. So what really happen is that Moral became LESS predominant With Raw damage and bonus damage becoming the main gate. So now you kill before route, UNLSS you cant and need to depend on route Also, scaring Some enemy formation amke other elite one vulnerable, like how tanks NEED infantry support otherwise is a metal duck waiting for an RPG, mine or Artillery shot. Game changes, i concure on that. But in a way more mainstream, precise and where NUMBERSatters Until the point power creep make is so "number are so big they stop making sense. Or the korean MMO sindrome

Frankly, I think Sun Tzu is bullshit. He’s like George Orwell, people quote him without knowing anything more than surface level about his writing. However, having read The Art of War, I find most of the things he wrote either straight bad advice or only applicable on a purely tactical scale, and unfeasible in real life. For instance, take the fact that he recommends not even attacking the enemy unless you outnumber them 32:1. This makes me think that he’s either a complete fool or has never seen a battle before in his life. Most of Sun Tzu’s strategies are completely impossible to achieve in real war.

Completely agree that Shogun 2 is GOAT, but still bro does not understand that medieval/victorian Japan is not the same as ancient Europe or a fucking Fantasy World with Demons, Zombies (which have the specialty that they dont flee) and giant Monsters

Honestly, I'd rather them have a newer engine tailored for WW1.

Have you found any combat mod for warhammer that adresses the issue? Also what do you think about three kingdoms. From what i recall it was close to shogun combat wise

There is a wwq game total war. The great war, western front, check it out

"How do you do tanks?" Warhammer has giant monsters. Tanks are easy. "Snipers?" Off the top of my head? Have a smaller unit of "normies" with the sniper in it. "Unit sizes, formations, front lines, etc?" Yes, a few things may need to change, like the actual sizes of units, and they'd need to invent new mechanics to, say, dig trenches. Your point? You mean Creative Assembly would have to do some actual competent work? Clearly they're not big on that anymore, so I guess the naysayers are right, WW1 Total War is impossible.

Making a "WORLD WAR 1 GAME" isn't just a matter of having Bolt action riffles and Machine guns. Its a matter of Organization at scale and style of warfare that is functionally plausible. Cavalry was also used up until World war 2 in Russia but that doesn't mean that just having cavalry with a ww1 skin means you're accurately representing a World war 1 military setting. This stuff matters if you are trying to make a military strategy game. I can imagine the kind of shitty WW1 game CA would make with riflemen who are just reskins of muskets with a higher fire rate and the tanks are just the steam tanks from Warhammer with a mark v skin. Just because you "CAN" doesn't mean you "SHOULD". Part of the facts are that Rome which was created decades ago to simulate ancient roman warfare became the template for every total war game no matter what the setting and we have sometimes seen minimal changes to accurately represent different time periods. And then instead of adding new depth for different settings CA adds an artificial aesthetic/façade of mechanics and removes actual depth from combat

No, FOTS isn't remotely comparable to WW1. Line infantry based combat was not a regular feature of WW1. Maxim guns and fully automatic machine guns were far beyond gatling guns in their killing power. artillery was massed and significantly more accurate. The sort of artillery you saw in the mid 19th century may as well have been muskets compared to breach loaded. The Franco Prussian war was Europe's wake-up call to how it was unnaceptable to wage war in the traditional way. Massed bolt action rifles meant frontal engagements would lead to utter massacres. Artillery was increasingly relied on as a consequence and armies were forced to become looser, lest they lose 1000s of men within minutes. The Boshin war was a bizarre theatre that worked only because it served as one of the last sightings of traditional line rank and fire and matched with the isolated Japanese more traditional based war doctrines. Sure you could do it, but it would be so fantastical and far removed from history, you may as well be playing WH. It would have next to no resemblance to the actual conflict and do it a mssive disservice. A WW1 total war would require a complete change-up of the formula.

Sounds like they learned a little bit too much from GW lol

great video. it is very nice that cover so well everything that is wrong with total war this days. and is a real pity that such a good game went to waste given all the improvements that came with computing. hope that a good company picks up where shogun II left.

24:40 I have another charitable reading: in "most games" units simply fight to the death, so an army in Warhammer beginning a rout after 75% casualties means morale is a thing, so it "matters" relative to most other games the players are familiar with. By my reckoning, most TW veterans agree with the point being made here vigorously.

The game being fantasy actually works against it as an excuse. A historical game like Shogun 2 should have a meta that one should spam since that is what happened in real life - they made 500,000 guns in 50 years afterall. However, that is not what happens in Shogun 2 campaigns or even multiplayer.

To consider the emergence of health bars as intending to implement classic rts elements is just naive. It is obvious that it is meant to make the game more forgiving for new players combined with the decline of morale factor. You can read it throughout all of CA's advertisement for Rome 2. It is meant to draw new players rather than improving on what the old players considered as flaws and hoped to get better. I don't think CA is going to reverse what they've done for that reason. It is a marketting decision rather than a design decision and it works perfectly well in that regard for them. This is always what happens when a company tries to please every kind of people with their game.

24:47 ur telling me that me cycle charging my dying skaven spear men into the rear of saurus warriors and winning cus they are quote " *Higher Quality Units* " Actual opinion i want to talk about(dont know wat else to call it):yeah morale didn't do jack crep with those rear cus saurus be unbreakable but the charge bonuses buffs that increase damage and defense definitely made a difference granted the only influence moral did was make it, the worst idea to leave them in any level of prolonged combat cus skaven have dirt morale and if i just blobbed them into the sarus it was garenteed defeat like morale has less of an effect on it but it still plays a role cus routing units get hurt more and might not comeback so managing units morale is still important but not the game changer as much as shogun 2 unless u play a faction that specializes in terror tactics like the undead kinda Edit: also terrain advantage i noticed that he was fighting the units up the slope so the terrain advantage was gained by the top but the flanking units were down hill so the enemy gained the terrain advantage and rear benfits outside of morale are not there in prolonged comebat outside of killing more units(on both sides cus units turn around losing some killing power of rear attacks) however cycle charging may result in less on ur end and more on the enemies side also arent those saurus which as previously stated are borderline unbreakable with special terror abilities

One of the biggest let downs total war ever gave me was in total war attila. Seeing the historical scenario of the battle of dara in that game convinced me total war battles were never going to be good. Seriously look up how the real version of the battle went compared to a clear of the scenario on legendary difficulty. It's like every new mechanic and design decision came together to ruin any sense of it being a simulation of that battle.

Just my two cents before watching the video; I think the morale difference in Warhammer is part of why I feel those games to have such slogging battles. When I first played the Warhammer games and realized that leadership was morale, and then saw basic units with 70+ leadership, buffs that add like twenty leadership a pop, and then morale effects of flanking, rear charging, and taking casualties being negligible, I knew I was in for a poor time.

I think the HP system can actually work, and the intention of it may have been honest. But you must show exceptional restraint and clear thinking to use it well. Essentually what it would model is glancing blows and nonlethal injuries. In the earlier games, an arrow might either kill or do no damage, with no inbetween state. But with HP, assuming that the HP value is always below the maximum damage of the arrow then you still have the possibility for a lucky shot, with HP you could model armor which is totally impervious to light arrows, or medium armor which will deflect most arrows, or light armor that has a small chance to save the wearer. In Med2 even full plate armor is vulnerable to any attack even though realistically it would be 100% impervious to most non-piercing weapons. You could also use HP to model armor which can be worn down, or armor where a multitude of blunt strikes will eventually kill through sheer force alone but where any one strike is not itself lethal. Unfortunately this careful design is nowhere to be found and it just turns into whittling down a bar.

The warhammer games are fairly abominable 'adaptions' of the tabletop if they could even be called such. Units don't care about being encircled, artillery always works and always hits where you aim, ranged units mindlessly arc fire and can have 10 lines behind the core infantry and just arc their shots to deal the same level of damage. Heroes are monsters in combat with roughly half or even near equal health to core units. Magic is just an instant win button that yeets half an army while miscasts do piddly damage. Absolutely none of this is the case in the tabletop, especially 6th edition. It would be good to watch batraps of 6e or 8e Fantasy and see just how alien total war is to the core concept at play, fluff be damned. You can't even bring a shitload of monsters on the tabletop because of army limitations wherein a set percentage of points needs to be 'core' units. Nobody even has core monsters.

Warhammer series (I played 1&2) is all about single entities, cavalry is useless, terrain is useless, spam strongest unit and stomp all armies. AI is also cheat in a way of stupidity spam more army, yet in battle just brainlessly charge to defend side or brainlessly charge into the attacker side if you bombard with artillery. These reasons totally convince me not to buy Warhammer 3 considering 1&2 all are same.

Shogun 2 had really good morale system but sadly high level multiplayer was dominated by leveled up ashigaru with skills giving them unbreakable morale.... and super gun cav units which made the game more kill focused

I've never played any TW games after Rome 2, I didn't know the gameplay got so bad. The whole point of TW back in the day was to get as close to real historical battles as possible. They stopped going down that road long ago.

I see the point talking about morale and leadership, it was definitely a bad design choice. I notice it a lot in the game, but using Warhammer 3 and the morale system to be so fundamentally bork'd is crazy, especially with how you can entirely surround a unit but it wouldn't matter, because of their health bar, or whatever else stats. Two spreadsheets fighting. It's disappointing that I have to settle for what Warhammer 3 offers since warhammer fantasy content is so scarce and I haven't found a group to play tabletop with yet.

One aside is that there already exists a template for a World War Total War: Wargame/Steel Division by Eugen Software. There are issues, but it works. Planes are destroyable call-ins that you have a limited number of and can be shot down when they appear for missions by other planes or AA artillery. Tanks are deployed independently while infantry are used in squads and instead of pulling all units of a stack in at once you deploy with a set number and call the rest in as reinforcements to either reinforce a position or concentrate for an assault.

Hum, no. Fall of the samurai is NOT world war one. When you even just envision ww1, do you think of man staying in formation while the drum & fife is playing ? Don't be ridiculous. It went from large formations led by officers to a squad based system, it evolved from ranged battles to modern warfare. Also comparing entrenchment and artillery of FOTS to ww1 reminds me of people comparing medieval knights to blitzkrieg, it's just laughable. The only thing that would work is the first few months, that were still fought in ranged battle, and then again you'd need to rework the system a lot. Also comparing breechloaders to bolt-action magazine with smokeless powder... Yeah just, no. And just a note, the "level of carnage" FOTS captures is nothing, not even close to what the levels of the first months of ww1 would be

My favorite Tactic is Shogun II was creating a intentional gap in my frontline, the enemy would try to use that gap to attack my archers, where incidentally was where my vicious katana samurai were hidden. Horses on the wings tucked into a forest, and you get some pretty realistic depiction of warfare tactics.