I am sooo underwhelmed by Total War's current trajectory. The last one I tried was Britannia and that was a massive disappointment. The game in the series I'm most excited for came out in 2011. They need to surpass that benchmark to even get a wiggle out of me. Edit: To be fair, I hear Three Kingdoms is pretty good? I don't know. Haven't played it. I'm not sure what they are trying to accomplish with Troy. It sounds more like an RPG than a grand strategy game. Maybe if they bring back the "romance" options for Troy and expand it to include the invasion of the Persian Empire... that could be interesting.
It's one of their Saga games. Their idea behind them is smaller but more focused. It's also the games where they are experimenting abit more. Shogun 2 is great but I think that at this point Rome 2 is a better game after all the updates it have had. Still prefer the setting of Shogun 2 but I have still spent more time in Rome 2. The Warhammer games are fantastic but It depends abit on if you like the fantasy setting or not. Offers the best combat and with a very large variety of units. Three kingdoms have the best campaign map gameplay and combat is good but not as good as in the Warhammer games. The total war games have definetly been improving over time but it haven't been on the same scale as Shogun 2 did compared to the games before.
Three Kingdoms looked like DoW3, it looked like it was all about heroic heroes doing heroic stuff and winning battles with their heroism; eg. you'd have like 3 individual hero characters in your main army and they'd win the battle for you. The Total War series in general suffers from a few epidemic issues such as missile troops etc. behaving in ridiculous manner and it being possible to easily break the game with things like accuracy buffs resulting in stuff like a unit of 80 archers hitting 80 enemies running 150 meters away. Then there's the issue of how historical armies would typically be hired in an entirely different manner; for instance when setting up a company sized unit for the state you'd pay for the funding cost to a company master who'd then proceed to recruit his own 'squad leaders' who he would then give money to raise their personal retainers. Often the equipment went down per rank; the squad leaders would often form the front rank or ranks and the retainers or squaddies would primarily serve to add mass to the formation behind the first rank. It often was so that the 'heavy infantry' in the main body would be the squad leaders or 'first rankers', they'd have the best armor and weapons (and look the best) and the rest would not. As the games go we often go 80% of the campaign with the cheapest unit types and by the time you get your hands on the better units that ought to have comprised 20-30% of your army from day 1 the campaign is already at such a stage that it's mostly about steamrolling it to finish; in some cases the elite units won't even make it to the front by the time that the peasantry have rolled through the entire map. That is all very well though in my books; they're just games of the 4X style merely imposed upon a pseudo-historical setting. The result is quite amazing, I've poured hundreds of hours into Shogun 2, nevermind the original Shogun 1 and Medieval 1 or it's Viking Invasion expansion. Really fun games. To me it's mostly that they're flirting with the Dark Side, eg. the Hystery Channel's fake history and Hollywood expectations instead of real history. Silly stuff like replacing French instructors with American ones because of a Hollywood movie and whatnot when you actually had a faction that had French officers among the leadership trying to form a real republic before the emperor crushed them. Warhammer games are by all accounts great games and a grand act upon the long term fans of Warhammer. I'm more into 40k and mostly the books and video games. To me the entry level is a bit steep for Warhammer Total War; I simply don't have the time available to learn all the things about all the armies and so. Luckily the games will wait and expand upon themselves for when I can lay my hands upon them. All in all I like the Total War series. If anything I don't need it to change all that much - but instead I'd like to see a little bit of competition for them with more realistic setting.
I don't expect total war to be completely historical in every regard. I do expect it to feel historical. There is some competition but its mostly from small studios who have limited capabilities. Here is an interesting look at the popularity of the total war games based around daily peak players. With Troy set to release on the 13th August, i don' expect to see any dlc until then. Warhammer just had one and i dont expect anything for three kingdoms yet but they could surprise us. If it comes it should be end of this month. After Troy is released, i think we will see a three kingdoms dlc and another warhammer dlc. Then we are probably starting to look at the release of Warhammer 3. Something called Total War: Elysium have made it into closed beta. Its a free to play collectible card game. That is all i know about it right now.
Yea, I agree. They are doing great and people like them, let them do their thing. Meanwhile there are so many ways to go by to add historicity. Too many for the scope of this thread to mention and what a pointless exercise that would be. I'm a different person, really. To think that I would pass an opportunity to ramble on and on endlessly. Things change. Was there some news that Troy was only going to be coming to Epic stores?
Yes, they are making it an Epic store exclusive for 12 months... It will also be free to get the first 24 hours, which is something i guess. That sucks, oh well. Guess it's a Total War game i'm not going to get. Will maybe pick it up when it comes to steam. Hope they get massive backlash from this.
In general I mostly only get older games nowadays - I don't have much time so I get to see if the bugs were ever patched and if so I get all the mods and extra content from discount. No way are they going to avoid backlash from it!
Very cool timeline video. I've always had a passing interest in TW since Medieval 2, but after Britannia burned me bad I've been very cautious about this franchise. The fact that these games require a lot of time to play (and I already have great games similar to it) has also prevented me from fully enjoying it. Definitely a "wait for review" purchase.
Yeah, i can understand that. I thought Britannia was ok but i had a fairly good idea of what we were going to get. A relative small game focused on one specific historical event where they were going to experiment with some new mechanics to see what the fanbase thought. If one were expecting something along the line of Shogun 2, then ofcourse one would be disappointed. Thinking back about all of this makes me a bit worried for Troy. It feels like the went with the Epic store exclusivity deal because they have no faith in it. There is a release day dlc but no mention of any plans for anything in the future. It probably means that they will wait 2-3 months, see how many is still playing and then decide if they will do another DLC or not.
Troy is still on track for release on the 13th August. The next DLC for Warhammer 2 will be a Wood Elf Lord Pack. They will also be revisiting one of the core races from Warhammer II. Spoiler: Wood Elf DLC Info The realm of the Wood Elves returns… We can reveal that the next DLC for WARHAMMER II is indeed a Lord Pack, focusing on the Wood Elves, and we will also be revisiting one of the original core races from WARHAMMER II. This Lords Pack is packed full of all of the great content that you’ve come to expect from Total War DLC, but this time we are excited to talk to you about a few additional ways we are giving a little extra back to our fans who have joined us on this journey through the Warhammer world! However, there’s a couple of things that you need to know about it, so please take a glance through the below for a bit of a breakdown FOR OWNERS OF TW: WARHAMMER II: You’re getting a full and complete Legendary Lords pack that will introduce you to two brand new Legendary Lords, each with their own factions, objectives, mechanics, units and playstyle. As always, you’ll be able to use them in the Eye of the Vortex campaign, and custom/multiplayer battles. We’ll also be dropping an awesome new free hero, for all Total War: WARHAMMER II players to enjoy. FOR OWNERS OF TW: WARHAMMER AND TW: WARHAMMER II: We’ll of course be continuing our Old World Updates for Mortal Empires so you can use all your shiny new content in the Mortal Empires Campaign. This update will also bring some reworks for the Wood Elves faction and some general Mortal Empires updates to the game. FOR OWNERS OF TW: WARHAMMER, TW: WARHAMMER II AND THE REALM OF THE WOOD ELVES DLC PACK: If you’ve been with us since the beginning, we have a few additional surprises lined up that make this, already jam-packed DLC, even more interesting. If you’ve collected all that content you’ll also get a bonus legendary lord with all the trimmings! We can’t wait to introduce you to her. We’re looking at this DLC as something that’s really for the players who want to complete their collection. While you can absolutely buy it and get a ton out of it if you only own WARHAMMER II, it’s also true that you’ll get the most out of it is if you own WARHAMMER , WARHAMMER II and the existing Realm of the Wood Elves DLC, and we think it’s worth us being upfront about that here. Is this all too confusing? Don’t worry, we’ll be announcing it properly soon and we’ll have plenty of very clear info on what you get depending on which games you own. We hope it works, and you get a kick out of it because then it means we’ll be allowed to do it again. And we really want to add everything we can to Total War: WARHAMMER. For Three Kingdoms the next DLC will see the addition of the Nanman (also known as Southern Man or the Southern Barbarians). They lived in inland south china and south west china, mainly around the Yangtze river. Gatepass battles and settlements will also arrive. Spoiler: Three Kingdoms DLC The Nanman are coming – in fact, they’re lined up to be our very next DLC release. We’re very excited, and we think this pack has a lot of great stuff in it that you’re really going to enjoy. You’ve seen ‘Chapter Packs’ before, but this will be our first ‘Expansion Pack’ DLC for 3K, and it’s a large one. First off, something that a lot of you have been asking for is coming – gate pass battles and settlements will be added to the campaign map helping to make core passes much more defensible (and some impassable shallows around Chang’an to stop the Yellow river being used to quickly take it). We don’t want to give too much away yet, but we can also let you know that if you don’t want to buy the DLC there will still be a new Free-LC Lord for the Han, new options to stop characters dying from old age at the beginning of the campaign, and some UI changes that we think will make a big difference. Plus there’ll be some things added that you’ll never forget… Having said that, there is a minor issue that might bother some of you, so we want to get out ahead of it. Hulao pass is sort of in the wrong place. We know and we’re sorry, these things happen! Hulao Pass is positioned North of Mount Song,and we have placed it there on the 3K map. The issue is that the mountain is in the wrong place. This was pointed out to us but at a place where fixing it would break all of our internal saves. Our focus is on making sure the upcoming release is as stable as it can be, and having to start over with getting saves to help us bug fix and balance the game came with too many risks. This is something that we’re going to correct in a future update, so rest assured that we’re aware of it. That map update will come with the second ‘Expansion Pack’ DLC that will focus on building out the North of the map. Total War: Elysium, the CCG. Is now running a test on PC aswell. They will be opening up the test for a few thousand more players over the coming months. They are planing to announce the next major Total War title but as we are all aware of, Covid-19 happend and have made things a bit Chaotic for CA.
Talk about waiting, I only got Rome 2 this summer and even then I was worried of whether I was going to regret it or not! Well, it's a good game by now and it only suffers from the same general category problems all Total War games tend to suffer from - repetitive battles etc. For me these are fun games but I also need to be in the TW mood to appreciate them.
