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

[Heartofice]

Haven't played 3 Kingdoms, I heard the diplomacy is a lot better, but it still seems like the core mechanics of the game are not entirely different to other Total War games.

This has got me thinking about what I think I would want to be improved in future TW titles, as while I love Warhammer 2, I often find that it is a real slog rather than an enjoyable experience. 

So some of the problems I see in campaign for Total War:
 

• A real lack of any sort of strategy. This is especially true in Warhammer titles where realm building essentially comes down to constantly upgrading your settlements and just getting more settlements. I know the game centres around it's battles (I'll get to that) but there is virtually no grand strategy in these titles at all, outside of picking which factions to start a war with and what units to build. I can let it go a little in a fantasy setting, but in historical titles it's pretty unforgivable.
  
  I had the misfortune of buying the Britannia saga game and played it about 3 times before losing interest. Compare and contrast that to CK3 or 2 and it a different world. Britannia gave you almost nothing to do, you could gift titles and stuff to lords to keep them happy but like most TW games it just comes down to adding and subtracting buffs. It was very dull.
  
  I want to be making grander strategic decisions, I want to be able to pull in allies properly, I want to be able to have real vassals who feel like real people, I want to make building choices that feel impactful, and flavourful. I don't want to just be able to build everything if I want. Right now there is nothing stopping me having every building and unit in the game. 
   
• There doesn't feel like there is any real sense of event when these big battles happen. Think about all the big battles in history and they feel like they have changed the course of a war. I never get that sense in TW, if you lose a battle you can just and spam a load more units and try again, same for the AI. The game unfortunately has too many battles, and I auto resolve most of them because they are not very interesting. When there are numerous stacks floating about and the AI can just raise multiple armies, and regenerate them quickly, it doesn't feel like 'If I just win this battle then I win the war', it's more like you need to fight 20 battles to grind your way to completion. It's dull. 
   
• On top of that, there is very little in battle strategy. I accept that the AI is never going to be perfect, and it can really be improved a hell of a lot. Campaign battles however do not come down to strategy or require a ton of thinking. They are unfortunately decided by who has managed to spam the greatest number of higher tier units.. or at a pinch, if you have managed to cheese your way to a win by kiting with lords etc. That to me isn't fun and it isn't why I have been playing the series for so long.
  
  The first thing I would do is place a limit on the number of unit types in any one army. This occurs in multiplayer, but in campaign you just end up with endless doomstacks and it feels wrong. If I'm Bretonnia I should be forced to field a large set of shitty peasants, and a smaller group of super powerful knights to balance it out. I don't want to see 20 units of Ratling guns in Skaven armies. I hate Lizardmen stacks which are 18 units of huge dinosaurs. 
  This might create problems for the AI but I don't care. The game stops being fun when those doomstacks turn up. It also means that factions lose their individual flavour. If all factions have units that have the same functions then what sets them apart. If I'm facing Skaven I want to have to deal with wave after wave of trash skavenslaves, if I'm facing High Elves I'd expect to see armies made up of a small number of elite units. Right now it all feels a bit samey at times, especially late game.
• As I said, bring in concepts from the Paradox games, CBs and war goals, genuine personal interactions, inheritances and real family trees. If it's historical then make it feel more historic rather than a paint the map game. 
   

I dunno if there is another historic title coming, I do have high hopes for TWW3 but I also don't expect them to change the mechanics a great deal. I do think CA do recognise the flaws in their games and try to rectify them. If you look at later DLCs they've tried to make their campaigns more interesting and more targeted. I'm hoping they are thinking of being even more ambitious than they are.

[Toth]

Yeah, I at least agree that Total War is in dire need of copying Paradox' diplomacy system. I especially love the Stellaris/Crusader Kings approach in which you get malleable traits in regards to your government system/ruler that causes other factions with certain traits to react a certain way. They kinda tried I think, but I don't think they really understood just how far you have to drive this system to not make it trivial.

So... I'm just coming back from another attempt... oddly enough, after yesterday's miserable experience things start looking bright again. Morathi is sieging me in Naggarond, but I have recruited Alith Anar and gave him a full stack. I just... need to wait three more turns until he gets his moon dragon.

Meanwhile Itza got confused in their 'invasion of me. Not only is Wulfhart still kicking around being a pain in the ass, amusingly enough Count Noctilus just landed with a stack in their territory wreaking havoc, so they pulled their armies back and left their capital wide open for two of my stacks to converge on. And siege battles are still silly: https://s12.directupload.net/images/210112/y4nuw6ec.jpg

Now... Chaos... that's a funny story. They razed three of my villages, but thanks to me having built watchtowers in each of them I made them bleed, taking out the hellcannons with my eagles every time they attacked. So when Teclis arrived, my brave defenders already pulled the teeth from three Chaos armies. Teclis then smashed two armies in a row, the second one being a heroic victory even. At the same time my dear Gilgalion, the prince of Ellyrion that I had confederated earlier, still battered from yesterday's shit battle, was sitting in a village and got attacked by the third weakened Chaos army.

I call the result "Fuck you, I don't need armor piercing!": https://s12.directupload.net/images/210111/6hh6ukf2.png

This battle was actually my first effective use of hammer and anvil in this game. My silverhelms from the garrison who had been utterly useless in the previous battles for once proved surprisingly good charging their exposed infantry and causing a mass route.

In fact... after mopping up the other already somewhat battered Chaos stacks, I managed to destroy their invasion after 4 turns and can take a bit of a breath now, watching how Hexoatl fares and whether I can nab a settlement or two. Only one ritual to go... I'm still upgrading my towers and stuff to get the heavy melee units you wanted me to have, so rearranging my armies will be tough.

[Corvinus85]

I will admit that I'm not a fan of Crusader Kings. But I wish to be, just every time I tried CK2 and even CK3 I crashed and burned. One thing that CA has done better is the UI. All those damn lists for lords, fiefs, etc. I just get overwhelmed with CK and Paradox in general. Stellaris is the only Paradox game where I had some success playing it, though I dislike the later stages of that game, too.

Do I want more complexity out of Total War games? Yes. But I don't wish them to copy Paradox's 4x model. After all, the TW series has always been about empire building through conquest, not conniving machinations or economic expansion. So added complexity should still be focused on that - more layers of military strategy on the campaign map, more tactical complexity in battles etc.

Anyway, back to my Warhammer II Imrik campaign - it's a brutal business fighting in the mountains. I managed to lose a whole province, but now I got 2/3 of it back, and my Dwarf allies got the other town. The Greenskins are relentless, but I've steadily chipped away at their strength, as the Dwarfs also held them off, and were able to deal with the Von Carsteins, too. The AI keeps spamming doomstacks of Black Orcs, but my army with Imrik has a total of 5 dragons, 2 being mounts, and 2 others being the special dragons you can find. Clan Mors is bugging me in the southern part of the mountains, but their armies are weak. It's a grind, the grind of grinds, boys!!!

[Heartofice]

Yeah I'll admit it has taken me a long time to get into Paradox games and their UI is appalling. They have such a steep learning curve that it can be a horrible experience when you first start out.

From my perspective I just think Total War games could be a little more complex, without going the whole CK3 route. I'd just like it to feel like the campaign map wasn't just a set of excuses for me to have a ton of pointless battles. 

My main ask is that battles should feel like they mean something, which I think is the real problem I have at the moment. Too often just just feel like I need to grind through these battles to get to the end, especially when there is so little actual strategy involved.

[Slurktan]

7 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

I will admit that I'm not a fan of Crusader Kings. But I wish to be, just every time I tried CK2 and even CK3 I crashed and burned. One thing that CA has done better is the UI. All those damn lists for lords, fiefs, etc. I just get overwhelmed with CK and Paradox in general. Stellaris is the only Paradox game where I had some success playing it, though I dislike the later stages of that game, too.

Do I want more complexity out of Total War games? Yes. But I don't wish them to copy Paradox's 4x model. After all, the TW series has always been about empire building through conquest, not conniving machinations or economic expansion. So added complexity should still be focused on that - more layers of military strategy on the campaign map, more tactical complexity in battles etc.

Anyway, back to my Warhammer II Imrik campaign - it's a brutal business fighting in the mountains. I managed to lose a whole province, but now I got 2/3 of it back, and my Dwarf allies got the other town. The Greenskins are relentless, but I've steadily chipped away at their strength, as the Dwarfs also held them off, and were able to deal with the Von Carsteins, too. The AI keeps spamming doomstacks of Black Orcs, but my army with Imrik has a total of 5 dragons, 2 of each being mounts, and 2 others being the special dragons you can find. Clan Mors is bugging me in the southern part of the mountains, but their armies are weak. It's a grind, the grind of grinds, boys!!!

How fast did you deal with Eshin?  I try to take them out before turn 30 as Imrik otherwise they are too annoying and just go back to Ulthuan and play Elves like normal.

[Corvinus85]

4 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

How fast did you deal with Eshin?  I try to take them out before turn 30 as Imrik otherwise they are too annoying and just go back to Ulthuan and play Elves like normal.

Pretty fast. And I took out Hag Graef after, too. But I chose not to confederate with Caledor and leave Ulthuan on its own.

I did manage to recently take Black Crag and Mount Gunbad, so in a quick stroke I got both gold mines from that part of the world. Will see how easily I can hold on to them.

[Heartofice]

I did actually go back to my Teclis campaign today to see if I can make any progress. 

Unfortunately I got Teclis killed because he was sitting in the settlement in the middle of Lustria that produces Way Fragments, and it got sieged by 4 stacks of Lizardmen. I could have easily won that battle I think if I'd had the time to play it myself as the AI really can't do sieges and they are easy to cheese, but I instead just autoresolved and accepted the loss.

Then fighting off the remnants of a chaos army I did much worse than I could have done because I spent too long waiting for their Hellcannons to become exposed. They are so annoying to kill because they just don't route.

So now I have to create a whole new army for Teclis and go and take out the Lizardmen, but I have so much money it is going to be an elite mix of Phoenix Guard, Dragons, Dragon Princes and Swordmasters. They won't know what hit them

[Corvinus85]

The Chaos invasion seems better now, provided you pick the higher difficulty levels for it. I picked 'very hard', and at turn 97 the first wave came, with 8 armies spawning in the Chaos Wastes. Now it's turn 132, and they're still going strong, still only the first wave. I was wondering if the opening of the map into the Darklands would bring them down to where I am, but so far nothing, probably still fighting the usual factions.

[Toth]

2 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

I will admit that I'm not a fan of Crusader Kings. But I wish to be, just every time I tried CK2 and even CK3 I crashed and burned. One thing that CA has done better is the UI. All those damn lists for lords, fiefs, etc. I just get overwhelmed with CK and Paradox in general. Stellaris is the only Paradox game where I had some success playing it, though I dislike the later stages of that game, too.

Okay, that's weird. Next to Stellaris I always found Crusader Kings to be the most accessible Paradox game due to how natural the role-playing aspects govern your playstyle. Though I must admit I did my first baby-steps as a little count instead of starting as a king or gods forbid emperor and all the shit the big guys have to wrestle with. Just focusing on my little castle and villages to get the basics down, then marry and murder myself up the fiefdom pyramid to get access to more and more mechanics as my territory grows. Alternatively you could start as one of the kings in Spain. That was also a very enjoyable campaign as Leon that I played once, given that you don't need a casus belli to fight muslims you have plenty of expansion possibilities whenever the muslims implode to infighting. At the end you can found the empire of Spain to underline that you have won.

16 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Now it's turn 132

Holy shit, how fast are you in your Imrik campaign? I'm at around the same turn count and I already thought I clicked away far too many turns waiting for my armies to traverse some goddamn jungle.

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Unfortunately I got Teclis killed because he was sitting in the settlement in the middle of Lustria that produces Way Fragments, and it got sieged by 4 stacks of Lizardmen. I could have easily won that battle I think if I'd had the time to play it myself as the AI really can't do sieges and they are easy to cheese, but I instead just autoresolved and accepted the loss.

The last battle I fought yesterday before going to bed was also an insane siege battle. Against Morathi. Because of course the turn before Alith Anar's recruitment finished, she attacked and I had to defend myself against her Black Guard stack. I... somehow won, though with some trouble. Defending has always been significantly more enjoyable than attacking. I managed to wipe Morathi's stack out with only two Medusas left. That crappy lvl 6 life mage girl I got from Nagarythe seems to become Morathis new nemesis. I had several layers of defense with my Lothern Seaguard holding the walls, my spearmen and archers behind. The seaguard and spearmen were able to repulse the towers, but then they broke through the gate and I had to reatreat and reform at the central plaza from where on my archers managed to pick their targets as they got distracted fighting my skirmishers in the streets. Morathi herself once again suicided herself in the early stages of the battle landing in the middle of my yard to challenge my Arch Mage. I suppose giving her a flying mount is a bad choice given how the AI somehow seems to think that makes her a melee expert.

[Corvinus85]

35 minutes ago, Toth said:

Okay, that's weird. Next to Stellaris I always found Crusader Kings to be the most accessible Paradox game due to how natural the role-playing aspects govern your playstyle. Though I must admit I did my first baby-steps as a little count instead of starting as a king or gods forbid emperor and all the shit the big guys have to wrestle with. Just focusing on my little castle and villages to get the basics down, then marry and murder myself up the fiefdom pyramid to get access to more and more mechanics as my territory grows. Alternatively you could start as one of the kings in Spain. That was also a very enjoyable campaign as Leon that I played once, given that you don't need a casus belli to fight muslims you have plenty of expansion possibilities whenever the muslims implode to infighting. At the end you can found the empire of Spain to underline that you have won.

Too much information overload in the UI for me.

35 minutes ago, Toth said:

Holy shit, how fast are you in your Imrik campaign? I'm at around the same turn count and I already thought I clicked away far too many turns waiting for my armies to traverse some goddamn jungle.

There are only so many campaign things you can do in a turn, and I'm not sure what the percentage of battle I fight is out of all, but it's low.

[Heartofice]

Ok I'm done with my Teclis campaign. Fuck this game honestly. 

Got to the 4th ritual  (didn't start the ritual) and the massively confederated Skaven faction decided to turn up on my doorstep with 5 full stack armies. All fully Tier 5 units. Seriously. Fuck off game. That isn't fun. Vortex isn't fun. It's bad game design. 

I don't even think I had it on hard campaign difficulty. I'd just come out of a battle against Ikit Claw where he somehow buffed his clanrats to have 80 armour, which was just insane. My Phoenix Guard were getting diced by Gutter Runners. 

I really like the idea of focussed campaigns but the endgame of these playthroughs become incredibly irritating and tedious.

Every turn is just 'Upgrade this character, don't even look at what you are upgrading because there are so many it's boring', ' Attack settlement, auto resolve' , 'Upgrade building'.. blah blah blah.

Yeah I'm in a bad mood about it but still. Fuck this game.

[Toth]

16 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Ok I'm done with my Teclis campaign. Fuck this game honestly. 

Got to the 4th ritual  (didn't start the ritual) and the massively confederated Skaven faction decided to turn up on my doorstep with 5 full stack armies. All fully Tier 5 units. Seriously. Fuck off game. That isn't fun. Vortex isn't fun. It's bad game design. 

I don't even think I had it on hard campaign difficulty. I'd just come out of a battle against Ikit Claw where he somehow buffed his clanrats to have 80 armour, which was just insane. My Phoenix Guard were getting diced by Gutter Runners. 

I really like the idea of focussed campaigns but the endgame of these playthroughs become incredibly irritating and tedious.

Every turn is just 'Upgrade this character, don't even look at what you are upgrading because there are so many it's boring', ' Attack settlement, auto resolve' , 'Upgrade building'.. blah blah blah.

Yeah I'm in a bad mood about it but still. Fuck this game.

So much for playing Teclis tall, huh? Not trying to be a smartass though. I know how frustrating fighting blobbed Skaven (and Ikit in particular) can be and infantry sucks in every Total War game since Rome, so I find it baffling to rely on Phoenix Guard and Swordmaster for anything. I'm using my one unit of swordmasters I had from the start of the game solely as a flanking unit and they still get horrific losses whenever they are in a prolonged fight.

Weirdly enough I think my archer spam would actually somewhat help against the stuff they are throwing at you. Let them waste their ammo on a Prince (as long as they don't melt him immediately), preferrably an eagle or a dragon who can evade them or some chaff spearmen while your archers take out the nastiest weapon teams. Don't even bother fighting fair, it's Skaven!

I'm not really looking forward to myself fighting an all-out war against Clan Moulder that owns half of Naggarond, all of the Norsca territory and recently landed on the shores of Ulthuan, starting to gobble up Alarielle.

[Heartofice]

Yeah the issue was that I have to fight against lizard even and skaven. Archer spam works well against skaven cos you can snipe their best units. Less so against lizard men. The game just isn’t fun if you have to paint the map. 

[Corvinus85]

The High Elf influence mechanic needs a rework. I have a ridiculous amount of it, with not much to spend it on. I occasionally use it to improve my relations with another faction, but I don't bother to try to get my enemies at each other's throats. I don't think it works that well with that. And there's only so many powerful lords and heroes I can afford to recruit. 

[Toth]

9 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

The High Elf influence mechanic needs a rework. I have a ridiculous amount of it, with not much to spend it on. I occasionally use it to improve my relations with another faction, but I don't bother to try to get my enemies at each other's throats. I don't think it works that well with that. And there's only so many powerful lords and heroes I can afford to recruit. 

Well, you can... as long as they have the entrepreneur trait.^^ I saw that you can stack them to such a ludicrous degree that it breaks the game with you gaining millions of income. I didn't try it though, it seemed like a cheap exploit.

[Corvinus85]

44 minutes ago, Toth said:

Well, you can... as long as they have the entrepreneur trait.^^ I saw that you can stack them to such a ludicrous degree that it breaks the game with you gaining millions of income. I didn't try it though, it seemed like a cheap exploit.

This might work on 'normal' but at higher difficulties every additional lord raises upkeep for all units. It might be counterproductive.

I think they should add a feature were you can use influence to train cheaper units, build cheaper, or even trade it for gold.

[Toth]

Legend of Total War shows it on Legendary and still makes 1,8 Million:

 

[Heartofice]

I thought they nerfed that exploit?

[Toth]

21 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I thought they nerfed that exploit?

They halved the income bonus from 30% to 15%, but it still stacks.

[Slurktan]

4 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

This might work on 'normal' but at higher difficulties every additional lord raises upkeep for all units. It might be counterproductive.

I think they should add a feature were you can use influence to train cheaper units, build cheaper, or even trade it for gold.

You don't get entrepeneur lords, you get them as hero mages.  They all stack without increasing upkeep.  You can have like 40 sitting in Lothern making a million a turn like LegendofTotalWar does.