CA's Total War: The Celtic-Han-Lizardmen alliance that never was

[Heartofice]

I’ve seen a lot of people say Attila is worse than Rome 2 but I always considered it an upgrade, if only visually ( really hate the unit cards in Rome 2)

Either way, the Western Roman Empire campaign is maybe my favourite in any TW game. That it just expects you to lose ground and struggle to fight back until you build up strength is a real twist, when you are so used to just building up from a small faction to a big one.

You do need to basically abandon pretty much everything to make it work but that is part of the fun.

[Werthead]

Attila was generally reviewed much better than Rome II and in general critical terms seems to have done better, although Rome II's steady stream of patches and expansions has certainly made it better-regarded than the hideous, bug-filled mess it was on release. The main complaints I've seen are that it really is an overgrown expansion pack rather than a full game (it is effectively Barbarian Invasion II), denying some of the improvements in the game to the original (the same issue that Napoleon had versus Empire) and some people dislike the theme, much preferring to play a Rome rising to power or at its height rather than teetering on the edge of collapse.

Although I've also seen people noting that the expansions to Attila, expanding it to post-Rome Dark Ages Europe with the Charlemagne stuff, have done a really good job of expanding the game's appeal beyond its original time period.

[Toth]

30 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Although I've also seen people noting that the expansions to Attila, expanding it to post-Rome Dark Ages Europe with the Charlemagne stuff, have done a really good job of expanding the game's appeal beyond its original time period.

I must admit, I only ever played the Belisarius campaign from the The Last Roman DLC and found the campaign mechanics really good and playing a Roman horde was fun, but the battles were extremely boring. I don't have Rome II, so I can't compare that, but I was baffled how you can make this time period this boring with every faction having essentially the same units with different skins for some reason.

[Corvinus85]

37 minutes ago, Toth said:

I must admit, I only ever played the Belisarius campaign from the The Last Roman DLC and found the campaign mechanics really good and playing a Roman horde was fun, but the battles were extremely boring. I don't have Rome II, so I can't compare that, but I was baffled how you can make this time period this boring with every faction having essentially the same units with different skins for some reason.

Well, people mostly fought in certain ways in this period. Everyone had guys with spears and shields. The Huns and other nomadic people offer a different way of fighting, but The Last Roman DLC doesn't have them. But I will admit that adding the Radious mod is something one should do for better enjoyment of battles and other campaign aspects. 

I prefer the main campaign. The Age of Charlemagne should have been interesting, but I feel that's where the reskinning falters. It doesn't feel like I'm in command of the famed Frankish cavalry, but more just the same cavalry from 400 CE with different stats.

 

[Werthead]

More info on the changes to Rome Remastered over the original.

The presence of the Merchant - imported from Medieval II - makes me way more hopeful that a Medieval II remaster will follow.

[Corvinus85]

On 4/17/2021 at 9:11 AM, Werthead said:

More info on the changes to Rome Remastered over the original.

The presence of the Merchant - imported from Medieval II - makes me way more hopeful that a Medieval II remaster will follow.

True, but Feral Interactive had a head start with Rome, because they already had the code for Rome for a mobile game. They were the ones who approached CA with the idea of remastering the game. I don't believe they have it for Medieval II, so it will take longer, I think. I'm sure it's being planned, but will it interfere with any plans for Medieval III?

[Werthead]

33 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

True, but Feral Interactive had a head start with Rome, because they already had the code for Rome for a mobile game. They were the ones who approached CA with the idea of remastering the game. I don't believe they have it for Medieval II, so it will take longer, I think. I'm sure it's being planned, but will it interfere with any plans for Medieval III?

Feral did port Medieval II to iOS a while back, so they certainly have the code and material from that. They didn't make a mobile port of Medieval II because I gather the Rome mobile port only did so-so, and compressing Medieval II down to the format is more challenging. Medieval II is often said to be a same-engine game as Rome, but that's being economical with the truth, the game's more of a ground-up rebuild of the engine and has an absolute ton more moving parts than Rome ever had to contend with, so it's a more challenging project.

It's also a more worthwhile one. Medieval II was hamstrung by technical limitations more than Rome: particularly not being able to use the maximum amount of memory available, and limiting CPU resources to just one core no matter how many cores you have available, meaning that Medievall II can chug like a MFer on modern PCs running 3090s because there's just too much of a bottleneck. Remaster the game to remove that bottleneck, upres the graphics and the game could look pretty state-of-the-art (moreso than Rome).

The question is if CA/Sega really want to make a Medieval III. They've said in the past they don't want to make any "IIIs" but they seem to have run out of source material for the big historical games, unless they go forwards to WWI or do the American Civil War (political considerations make that unlikely). The only other thing I can see them doing is a big "Ancient Empires" TW with the Greeks, Alexander, Egypt and maybe ancient India and China, and that's both crossing a lot of their own timelines from previous games and also a bit nebulous as a concept. The medieval period is something they haven't touched since 2007 (apart from Charlemagne in Attila) so it really makes the most sense.

If they're not planning to do that for a few years, a Medieval II remaster could certainly tide them over in the meantime.

[Corvinus85]

5 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The question is if CA/Sega really want to make a Medieval III. They've said in the past they don't want to make any "IIIs" but they seem to have run out of source material for the big historical games, unless they go forwards to WWI or do the American Civil War (political considerations make that unlikely). The only other thing I can see them doing is a big "Ancient Empires" TW with the Greeks, Alexander, Egypt and maybe ancient India and China, and that's both crossing a lot of their own timelines from previous games and also a bit nebulous as a concept. The medieval period is something they haven't touched since 2007 (apart from Charlemagne in Attila) so it really makes the most sense.

If they're not planning to do that for a few years, a Medieval II remaster could certainly tide them over in the meantime.

CA seems to be of two minds now. Warhammer's massive success has enabled them to look for other fantasy worlds they could use, but at the same time they know they need to appease the historical game fans. So we got Three Kingdoms and Troy, with their low fantasy gameplays. I'm sure they're looking at medieval Europe and thinking how to add some fantasy. I would not be surprised, but still disappointed, if we get a Norse/Celtic/Arthurian mythology game featuring largely northern Europe, instead of a proper Medieval III.  

[Werthead]

9 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

CA seems to be of two minds now. Warhammer's massive success has enabled them to look for other fantasy worlds they could use, but at the same time they know they need to appease the historical game fans. So we got Three Kingdoms and Troy, with their low fantasy gameplays. I'm sure they're looking at medieval Europe and thinking how to add some fantasy. I would not be surprised, but still disappointed, if we get a Norse/Celtic/Arthurian mythology game featuring largely northern Europe, instead of a proper Medieval III.  

In the Noclip documentary last year, it sounded like after Warhammer III they'll be looking at another licensed product, and they mentioned Middle-earth and The Witcher specifically as possibilities. Given the immense success of Third Age: Total War and the topicality of the Amazon show, Middle-earth I think is by far the most likely possibility, and could give them another multi-game approach, although by timeline more than geography (First Age/War of the Jewels, Second Age/Numenor and Third Age/War of the Ring).

[Slurktan]

48 minutes ago, Werthead said:

In the Noclip documentary last year, it sounded like after Warhammer III they'll be looking at another licensed product, and they mentioned Middle-earth and The Witcher specifically as possibilities. Given the immense success of Third Age: Total War and the topicality of the Amazon show, Middle-earth I think is by far the most likely possibility, and could give them another multi-game approach, although by timeline more than geography (First Age/War of the Jewels, Second Age/Numenor and Third Age/War of the Ring).

If they end up going ME I'd hope they'd do 3 games but each game with stuff like Three Kingdoms which has with multiple timeline scenarios.  So like FA you could have one pre Bragollach, pre Unnumbered Tears.  Second Age you could have War of the Elves and Sauron, Maybe another pre downfall with Numenor split into 2 allied but opposed factions, and post downfall.  TA is a bit harder given Gondors dominance.  Maybe do one around 1300 where Angmar pops up and then the Gondor civil war, one around 1950 with Arthedain vs Angmar, Moria pre Balrog, Fast forward a bit so  ringwraiths take Ithil like 50 years earlier, and then War of the ring.

[Werthead]

1 minute ago, Slurktan said:

If they end up going ME I'd hope they'd do 3 games but each game with stuff like Three Kingdoms which has with multiple timeline scenarios.  So like FA you could have one pre Bragollach, pre Unnumbered Tears.  Second Age you could have War of the Elves and Sauron, Maybe another pre downfall with Numenor split into 2 allied but opposed factions, and post downfall.  TA is a bit harder given Gondors dominance.  Maybe do one around 1300 where Angmar pops up and then the Gondor civil war, one around 1950 with Arthedain vs Angmar, Moria pre Balrog, Fast forward a bit so  ringwraiths take Ithil like 50 years earlier, and then War of the ring.

Yeah, the Third Age mod and its numerous submods work like that. So the base campaign is War of the Ring with a lot of really interesting factional situations (Gondor is quite strong but it's also locked in a murderous slog-war with Mordor immediately; you will get to know the Osgiliath battle map like the back of your hand before you're done) but other people have added very specific stuff like the war against Angmar, the Last Alliance etc. They had a few First Age submods but I don't think any of them were really outstanding.

Westeros: Total War worked the same way, the main campaign was War of the Five Kings but submods switched that to Robert's Rebellion, Blackfyre Rebellion, Dance of Dragons and I think the Age of Petty Kingdoms as well.

[Corvinus85]

I've been thinking that Total War doesn't lend its formula well to Middle-earth. Yes, about the only way you could do it is in short timespans, like the War of the Ring, the rise of Angmar, or the War of the Last Alliance, but even with those, you would have limited factions for where the theaters of war are located, while the rest of Middle-earth is less involved. The First Age would probably be the best for a complete TW game, given the smaller, better populated map, and more eventful history. The First Age would also better justify the use of larger-than-life heroes, like we see in Three Kingdoms and Warhammer.

But if one wanted to cover the grander history of Middle-earth across all three ages, the more ideal strategy game would focus on city building, with the addition of Total War battles when warfare breaks out, and some 4X strategy.

[Fez]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

The question is if CA/Sega really want to make a Medieval III. They've said in the past they don't want to make any "IIIs" but they seem to have run out of source material for the big historical games, unless they go forwards to WWI or do the American Civil War (political considerations make that unlikely). The only other thing I can see them doing is a big "Ancient Empires" TW with the Greeks, Alexander, Egypt and maybe ancient India and China, and that's both crossing a lot of their own timelines from previous games and also a bit nebulous as a concept. The medieval period is something they haven't touched since 2007 (apart from Charlemagne in Attila) so it really makes the most sense.

They've still got options, like:

• A second China-focused game, something like the 10th century "Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms" period is less well-known than Three Kingdoms, but I bet would do well in Asia. And with a strong marketing push would probably do fine everywhere.
• A Middle East/Persia/India focused map covering pretty much any time period would have a lot of potential factions and mostly be new ground.
• A Meso-American game. Set it circa 1300 at the start, have the Spanish showing up as a Mongol-eque end-game crisis.
• A West African kingdoms game would be almost entirely new for the franchise. Probably would need to be a Troy or Britannia sized game though.
• A big late 13th century Asia map, with all the different post-Empire Mongol hordes as factions, plus the breakaway states re-asserting their independence.

That's just off the top of my head. Europe is well-trod territory at this point. But the success of Three Kingdoms proves they could move beyond that within their historical games (and the original game was feudal Japan after all).

[Toth]

I must admit, I never played The Third Age Total War, but what I did play extensively was the Fourth Age mod for Rome as a kid. That mod uses Tolkien's dismissed cliff notes for a supposed Lotr successor story called 'A New Shadow' and ran absolutely wild with it. I played one game as the Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor which is pretty straight-forward, but the most interesting faction by far is the Kingdom of Adûnabar. Basically gondorian settlers in former Mordor who have to deal with a creepy death cult worshipping Sauron while in the middle of a bloody succession crisis since it's lead by the brother of the current king of the Reunited Kingdom who declared himself independant.

I tried to play Adûnabar as the good guy, cracking down hard on the Sauron worshipping cult, which in turn gave me access to slightly weaker knock-off versions of Gondor's elite troops, basically just with a purple paint job. But the Reunited Kingdom absolutely hates your guts and you have several full army stacks standing in front of Minas Ithil every damn turn while at the same time dealing with Easterling incursions at the other side of Mordor (who hate you if you aren't a Sauron worshipper) and the Haradrim in the south turning against you every time you claim Ithilien (and offering an alliance every time Gondor takes it back). I should repeat that this is a Rome mod. Meaning you have to keep your population pool in mind when recruiting troops. And since Mordor is only sparsely populated you can field only a tiny amount of troops, so even when smashing your enemies heroic victory after heroic victory, you are still only barely able to cling to life... at least until you remember that as Mordor successor state you have the ability to establish Orc settlements, giving yourself immense penalties to public order and human troops recruited there, but massively increasing the population and population growth and giving you access to cheap hordes of Orcs that you can use as meat shields in front of your human troops. This game was so stressful, but immensely fun!

[Corvinus85]

35 minutes ago, Toth said:

I must admit, I never played The Third Age Total War, but what I did play extensively was the Fourth Age mod for Rome as a kid. That mod uses Tolkien's dismissed cliff notes for a supposed Lotr successor story called 'A New Shadow' and ran absolutely wild with it. I played one game as the Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor which is pretty straight-forward, but the most interesting faction by far is the Kingdom of Adûnabar. Basically gondorian settlers in former Mordor who have to deal with a creepy death cult worshipping Sauron while in the middle of a bloody succession crisis since it's lead by the brother of the current king of the Reunited Kingdom who declared himself independant.

I tried to play Adûnabar as the good guy, cracking down hard on the Sauron worshipping cult, which in turn gave me access to slightly weaker knock-off versions of Gondor's elite troops, basically just with a purple paint job. But the Reunited Kingdom absolutely hates your guts and you have several full army stacks standing in front of Minas Ithil every damn turn while at the same time dealing with Easterling incursions at the other side of Mordor (who hate you if you aren't a Sauron worshipper) and the Haradrim in the south turning against you every time you claim Ithilien (and offering an alliance every time Gondor takes it back). I should repeat that this is a Rome mod. Meaning you have to keep your population pool in mind when recruiting troops. And since Mordor is only sparsely populated you can field only a tiny amount of troops, so even when smashing your enemies heroic victory after heroic victory, you are still only barely able to cling to life... at least until you remember that as Mordor successor state you have the ability to establish Orc settlements, giving yourself immense penalties to public order and human troops recruited there, but massively increasing the population and population growth and giving you access to cheap hordes of Orcs that you can use as meat shields in front of your human troops. This game was so stressful, but immensely fun!

Did it have monstrous creatures? Because The Third Age did manage to give us believable troll units, and even had the Balrog and Sauron as he looks in the movie prologue. I did a custom battle once between just the Balrog and Sauron. Because they had high stats, they kept mainly just spinning around each other until the game crashed. 

[Toth]

21 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Did it have monstrous creatures? Because The Third Age did manage to give us believable troll units, and even had the Balrog and Sauron as he looks in the movie prologue. I did a custom battle once between just the Balrog and Sauron. Because they had high stats, they kept mainly just spinning around each other until the game crashed. 

Very sparsely. It is the "Age of Men" after all. The haradrim can field an extremely limited number of irreplaceable oliphants, Adûnabâr and Rhûn have access to trolls if they follow a certain culture paths. That's it, really. Heck, the game didn't even have elves and dwarves anymore. The Reunited Kingdom starts with a single unit of irreplaceable Elven archers and there are a couple of non-player dwarven strongholds hidden in the far north, but otherwise the mod was offering a rather subdued portrayal of middle-earth fitting to the time period.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Corvinus85 said:

I've been thinking that Total War doesn't lend its formula well to Middle-earth. Yes, about the only way you could do it is in short timespans, like the War of the Ring, the rise of Angmar, or the War of the Last Alliance, but even with those, you would have limited factions for where the theaters of war are located, while the rest of Middle-earth is less involved. The First Age would probably be the best for a complete TW game, given the smaller, better populated map, and more eventful history. The First Age would also better justify the use of larger-than-life heroes, like we see in Three Kingdoms and Warhammer.

But if one wanted to cover the grander history of Middle-earth across all three ages, the more ideal strategy game would focus on city building, with the addition of Total War battles when warfare breaks out, and some 4X strategy.

Third Age did a pretty great job with it, even if they had to almost break the game to get it working properly (having a multiple-Balrog unit because the game couldn't generate just one single stand-alone unit was probably the only bit where it broke down a bit).

It does depend on if they think they need to have a three-game strategy like Warhammer before or they can do something differently. Not many other fantasy worlds are big enough for them to repeat that approach. The only one that comes to mind is Forgotten Realms, except that world is even larger.

Ha, I remember playing as the Wood Elves and those guys were slightly OP as archers. If you've ever wanted to see enemy units running into what is effectively machine gun fire in a Total War game, that's probably the closest anyone as ever come (bar only the gatling gun in the Shogun II DLC). I think they nerfed that in a later patch.

I did a campaign as Dale which was pretty good. After defeating Rhun and Dol Guldur, I sent a full-stack army through the eastern end of Mordor and took down the Dark Tower by surprise whilst Sauron was grinding it out against Gondor. Won that one despite things going south (Isengard managed to destroy Rohan and was marching on Gondor from the opposite direction).

[Corvinus85]

27 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Third Age did a pretty great job with it, even if they had to almost break the game to get it working properly (having a multiple-Balrog unit because the game couldn't generate just one single stand-alone unit was probably the only bit where it broke down a bit).

It does depend on if they think they need to have a three-game strategy like Warhammer before or they can do something differently. Not many other fantasy worlds are big enough for them to repeat that approach. The only one that comes to mind is Forgotten Realms, except that world is even larger.

Ha, I remember playing as the Wood Elves and those guys were slightly OP as archers. If you've ever wanted to see enemy units running into what is effectively machine gun fire in a Total War game, that's probably the closest anyone as ever come (bar only the gatling gun in the Shogun II DLC). I think they nerfed that in a later patch.

I did a campaign as Dale which was pretty good. After defeating Rhun and Dol Guldur, I sent a full-stack army through the eastern end of Mordor and took down the Dark Tower by surprise whilst Sauron was grinding it out against Gondor. Won that one despite things going south (Isengard managed to destroy Rohan and was marching on Gondor from the opposite direction).

I usually enjoyed playing with Eriador, since you had the option to bring back the Kingdom of Arnor. In a later version of the mod, they made the Shire more autonomous, with the Hobbits giving you units occasionally, or helping you build roads faster. One of the best battles I fought in any TW was in the Third Age game, as Arnor, where I tried to save my army by doing an organized retreat, and it turned into a victory.

But on the subject of units that can mow down enemies, there are units in Warhammer that can practically do that. 

[Slurktan]

19 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

I usually enjoyed playing with Eriador, since you had the option to bring back the Kingdom of Arnor. In a later version of the mod, they made the Shire more autonomous, with the Hobbits giving you units occasionally, or helping you build roads faster. One of the best battles I fought in any TW was in the Third Age game, as Arnor, where I tried to save my army by doing an organized retreat, and it turned into a victory.

But on the subject of units that can mow down enemies, there are units in Warhammer that can practically do that. 

Not sure if you've tried Divide and Conquer submod for Third age (although technically I don't think its submod anymore).  Lots more factions and weird shit to do. One notable thing is if you play as Isengard you can get the ring and can give it to Sauron and that makes him happy *or* you can keep it, become Saruman of many colours, get a really strong unique unit but everyone (good and bad) automatically goes to war with you, oh but at that point the ringwraiths all join your team as well.

[Werthead]

Total War: Rome Remastered's installation size is 45GB, which seems like quite a lot already, but if you want the full, mega-enhanced textures (which is half the reason we're here), it jumps up to 70GB, which seems absurd.