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Tres Burritos posted:The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Total War Megathread 2 - Ramming bitches with my quniqueremes Total War Megathread II: Goontilius Varus, give me back my Legions quote:Could someone explain to me the difference between Hoplite and Macedonian phalanxes? The Macedonian phalangites used smaller shields and longer spears, which they supported with both hands.   Pictures are from Waldemar Heckel & Ryan Jones' Macedonian Warrior EDIT: welp, Grand Fromage got there first. Enjoy the pictures, anyway! 
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Sep 12, 2012 08:02
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Thanks guys, I have learned something today.
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Sep 12, 2012 08:11
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Chiming in about NTW, I think it really got overlooked thanks to the ETW debacle. When it was first announced I just assumed it was an Empire expansion so I didn't bother, but I actually got it as a gift from one of my friends who knows me as a huge Napoleon buff, so I tried it out and the mechanics are actually pretty solid. Unfortunately the scale of the game was just too small. I beat the Egyptian and Italian campaign both in the same day, and the "Grand European" campaign was, while certainly not sloppy, not particularly exciting either. At least playing as France, the game tries to railroad you in a pre-scripted series of battles Hint: Move east! that just set you up for the next slog. The diplomacy is basically pointless and the default personality seems to be either "I hate Napoleon" or "I will hate Napoleon in a few turns." I actually managed to capture London and the only thing that happened was the Ottomans decided to backstab me along with the Prussians. I had hoped since the game only covers a decade or so that maybe we'd get a much deeper experience in terms of the campaign map but besides the weather/attrition stuff there just isn't any of the diplomatic shenanigans and fantastic personalities that made the period so interesting. The map is kind of lacking as well. Russia is huge but everything else just feels a bit... petty. When I saw that Spain was a single province I almost cried. On the plus side the actual battles are really exciting. I actually was extremely skeptical about putting guns in TW games but the AI is actually good enough I couldn't play on the hardest difficulty or I would get spanked even with relatively even odds. Getting the right mix of units is crucial and getting your army lined up so you can properly fire on the enemy while at the same time protecting your artillery from cavalary and keeping your own men from being shredded by enemy artillery makes for a true challenge. Also N'thing the excitement for RTW2. It really looks awesome and I hope it won't be a rush job like Empire turned out to be.
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Sep 12, 2012 08:24
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In case any of you haven't tried it, the Peninsular Spain DLC for Napoleon Total War owns and you should play it. Its got a faction mechanic like RoTS where you try and influence the populace to your side, either Pro-France or Anti-France so you end up with agents all over the place assassinating each other, sabotaging, and trying to flip towns from one side to the other. The Brits are fun cause they start with only one province but a couple solid armies to conquer quickly while France starts with most of the map but has to fight on multiple fronts and try and hold onto areas where the populace that mostly hates you and will spawn guerrilla units to fight against you.
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Sep 12, 2012 08:52
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Lord Hypnostache posted:Could someone explain to me the difference between Hoplite and Macedonian phalanxes? The 16x16 block in the picture above is a syntagma, the basic maneuver unit of the Macedonian phalanx under Alexander (comparable to a company in the days of linear warfare). As has been mentioned, the division of the Macedonian phalanx into individual units made it much more flexible in battle. We know of several incidents in which Alexander dramatically reorganized his phalangites mid-combat (as at Gaugamela against the Persian scythe chariots). This stands in significant contrast to the classical Greek phalanx, which was incapable of much more maneuver, once deployed, than a gradual shift to the right as each man sought the protection of his neighbor's shield. Here are a few general differences between Alexander's phalanx and a typical Greek one from, say, the Persian wars: -The Greeks used a spear of about eight feet, a shield of about three feet diameter, and heavy bronze breastplates and greaves (at least among the well-to-do); the Macedonians carried the twenty-foot sarissa, a much smaller shield (about half the diameter), and less armor (such as quilted or padded linen). -Where the typical Greek phalanx was composed of citizen-soldiers, the Macedonians were professionals and thus were able to spend more time on drill, amplifying their maneuver advantage. -A typical Greek phalanx was eight ranks deep, although this saw experimentation; the syntagma was a sixteen-rank formation. It should be noted that both types of phalanx changed over time. The Theban general Epaminondas used an unusually deep wing attached to a thinner line in echelon (refusing his right flank) to defeat the Spartans, for example. After Alexander's death, his successors exhibited a distinct tendency to up-arm and up-armor their troops at the expense of mobility.
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Sep 12, 2012 09:42
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I heard that they went right-flank heavy because the tendency for phalanx vs phalanx battles was for them to turn in to a pushing match that wheeled around from the stronger right side. Is this correct? I heard that this general decided to double up his right flank so it stopped the veterans of the opposing army pushing him back and was about to out maneuver them.
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Sep 12, 2012 10:07
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Flippycunt posted:In case any of you haven't tried it, the Peninsular Spain DLC for Napoleon Total War owns and you should play it. Seriously, it is one of the more unique campaigns of the modern Total War games and it is worth trying out. With the British Campaign you actually have to plan ahead for the first half and make sure you can easy reinforce with what little you have because France sends out like three or four stacks at you. My one grievance with the campaign is you have to hold Spain and Portugals hands most of the time because the campaign AI can't defend two vital bridges or liberate empty regions efficiently. I will never get why Europe was so loving tiny in Empire, for a game with a century of turns and such an AI with a hard on for needless conflict did they really need to make Spain and France that tiny? because two of the three biggest powers of the era can easily be crushed by their smaller neighbors by 1720. Also, stop loving emerging before 1770 Independent America arrrrggggh.
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Sep 12, 2012 11:44
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I know I've seen people posting here asking about Rome Total War mods set in late antiquity so here is a brief trip report on Invasio Barbarorum. There are 4 submods by different teams and I've been playing the Somnium Apostate Iuliani 355 AD campaign. The Restitutor Orbis mod is apparently the only of the 4 not finished which is too bad because it's the time period I'm most interested in. I can't speak to the other two or the consistency between mods but according to the descriptions they have start dates in 410, 434, and 463 so those are out there as well. SAI also has campaigns starting in 361 and 365. The production values of the mod are high, nearly on par with EB, although I have noticed minor spelling and grammatical errors. It has a religion mechanic which I don't recall if vanilla BI has or not but is cool. The biggest question is always the historical sperg factor vs. gameplay/fun factor. It's really, really spergy. The unobtrusively spergy things like the unit cards and cool revamp of the retinue/traits are excellent. The recruitment system is probably a little too far. It's heavily regionalized and it makes sense from a historical perspective but finding which city to send troops to retrain them is a horrific process. Note that I've been playing as Constantius II who starts with diverse holdings. Having completely different sets of units, each with three tiers of quality, for each theater and having some out of their native regions from the start makes for a steep learning curve. From the beginning there a lot of full stacks of troops everywhere so expect many and large battles. I've been playing probably an average of an hour or 90 minutes a day for the past week and have only played 8 turns, so ya, don't expect to get anywhere fast. Of course there are plenty of smaller factions to get more of the EB spend the first 30 turns conquering to get out of debt feeling. TLDR: I give it a 6/10 but with caveat that I'm probably willing to put up with a bit more spergy poo poo than most. DriveC fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Sep 12, 2012 |
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Sep 12, 2012 19:44
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Flippycunt posted:In case any of you haven't tried it, the Peninsular Spain DLC for Napoleon Total War owns and you should play it.
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Sep 12, 2012 20:39
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Also, you REALLY will value your Elite units (like the Brunswickers) as long as they don't get decimated horribly a veteran elite in your centre can turn the tide.
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Sep 12, 2012 21:02
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concerned mom posted:I heard that they went right-flank heavy because the tendency for phalanx vs phalanx battles was for them to turn in to a pushing match that wheeled around from the stronger right side. Is this correct? The pushing match thing is definitely true. You often see wildly imbalanced casualty reports in ancient battles because the bulk of the casualties occur only after the loser succumbs to harder pushing. I can't, off the top of my head, recall a specific example that's exactly like yours, but there are certainly lots of sort of similar ones. If I'm remembering correctly, it was conventional for commanders - and therefore also the best troops - fight on the right side, which is still the place of honor. Epaminondas subverted this by placing himself and his best troops very deeply ranked on the left with the intention of punching through the Spartan line (greater depth providing superior pushing power) and rolling it up. He placed his allies on the right in an echelon formation (staggered toward the rear) to prevent the Spartans pulling anything similar on him. Marathon is also well known as an experiment with depth and flank action. The Athenians deployed a weak center (having less than normal depth) with stronger, deeper wings. As a result they were able to subject the Persians to a sort of preview of Hannibal's famous double envelopment at Cannae.
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Sep 12, 2012 21:27
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Morholt posted:Did the hoplites hold their spears overhand or underhand? I've heard it both ways. The most likely answer is both ways, over arm while in the phalanx, and switching to underarm when the formation broke up, as in during a rout or for more open combat in general. Remember that the Greek spear, the doru, had a bronze butt spike acting as a counter-weight so was easier to use while overarm. In the Anabasis Xenophon mentions hoplites fighting in more open order several times so we just have to assume that hoplites didn't exclusively fight in a phalanx with overarm spears. Like all bodies of fighting men there was a degree of flexibility.
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Sep 13, 2012 12:33
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Rabhadh posted:The most likely answer is both ways, over arm while in the phalanx, and switching to underarm when the formation broke up, as in during a rout or for more open combat in general. Remember that the Greek spear, the doru, had a bronze butt spike acting as a counter-weight so was easier to use while overarm. In the Anabasis Xenophon mentions hoplites fighting in more open order several times so we just have to assume that hoplites didn't exclusively fight in a phalanx with overarm spears. Like all bodies of fighting men there was a degree of flexibility. This man makes some good points regarding underarm vs overarm spears: basically that the greek armour was designed in a way to better protect against where spears would be striking while underarm (ie not in the neck, where they have no armour); it's easier to parry; and it gives you much more reach, which is the main advantage of using a spear in the first place. He also disagrees with the whole pushing match idea in another of his videos, since in that kind of situation the first few lines of men are basically guaranteed to die whenever they go to battle; nobody with any sense would agree to be put in that position. Unrelatedly, has anybody tried Total War Battles? Is the faction pack that comes with it random?
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Sep 13, 2012 17:50
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Koramei posted:Unrelatedly, has anybody tried Total War Battles? Is the faction pack that comes with it random? I haven't bought the Steam version, but TW: Battles on iOS is pretty fun. It feels less like a "TW game" and more like a "Shogun game" but that's not reflective of the gameplay, just the presentation.
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Sep 13, 2012 17:56
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Saw this on the RTWII wiki article. The source is probably the thread linked to in the TWC thread I linked earlier, but I'm not going to wade through 30 pages of TWC-posting.quote:Creative Assembly also seeks to capture the uniqueness of different cultures and fighting forces in the ancient times. Jack Lusted, the Creative Assembly's lead unit designer, has stated that instead of the 'Rebel' faction of the original Rome: Total War there will be a large number of smaller factions, including one for each of the Greek city states. Every faction will be playable and each will have a unique playstyle. A tribe of British barbarians will look and feel completely different from that of a disciplined Roman legion, for example. Different agents and technologies will also be implemented for different factions.[6] So no more grey rebels, apparently! I wonder if this is a hint as to customisation options in Rome II; it'd be a lot more feasible to create factions for every province on the map if you can mix-and-match equipment/armour/body models to create locally-appropriate units (so the Pontic empire might be Greek-Persian, the Bactrians Greek-Indian, etc). EDIT: quote:That's basically been true since Shogun 2. I'm so behind the times. TOTAL WAR: EDIT II: Source for the Jack Lusted quotes above is this video. They'll apparently be showing in-game footage to attendents at Eurogamer Expo later this month (behind closed doors, I assume). The video also shows concept art of the harbour of Carthage. Ghost of Babyhead fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Sep 13, 2012 |
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Sep 13, 2012 22:50
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Ghost of Babyhead posted:So no more grey rebels, apparently! That's basically been true since Shogun 2.
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Sep 13, 2012 22:59
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If this 'equip a faction with armour/weaponry' sub set stuff could be modded with reskinning and replacement models in RTW2 that would be incredible.
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Sep 13, 2012 23:02
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More from Jack Lusted:quote:Hello all,
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Sep 14, 2012 17:25
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I'm starting to get the same feeling I had a few months before RTW's release, which was basically "oh god this will be the best ever". Which turned out to be sort-of true. Hope RTW2 can repeat this 
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Sep 14, 2012 17:48
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peer posted:I'm starting to get the same feeling I had a few months before RTW's release, which was basically "oh god this will be the best ever". Which turned out to be sort-of true. Hope RTW2 can repeat this I had that feeling pre-Empire so uh.... Deep breaths.
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Sep 14, 2012 17:52
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I am just happy that the Celts will not be guys with different coloured pants and hair now.
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Sep 14, 2012 18:00
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Alchenar posted:That's basically been true since Shogun 2. Still great that they're removing it entirely, though. I hope they also use this as an excuse to revamp the vassal system. Vassals in Shogun 2 were effectively time-bombs thanks to the Realm Divide mechanic and adjacent ones loved to declare war on each other. Meanwhile in Empire, even the weakest and most impoverished nations would choose being slaughtered to the man over becoming a vassal.
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Sep 14, 2012 18:01
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So apparently Darth Vader the author of Darth Mod just quit the modding scene forever: https://www.facebook.com/DarthMod/posts/146924002116188?notif_t=feed_comment
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Sep 20, 2012 22:24
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UberJumper posted:So apparently Darth Vader the author of Darth Mod just quit the modding scene forever: What did CA do to "devalue his efforts"?
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Sep 20, 2012 22:45
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Didn't he say the same thing prior to the release of Shogun 2, and then promptly turned around and put out a DarthMod for it?
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Sep 20, 2012 22:49
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People that make mods for games often have entitlement issues.
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Sep 20, 2012 23:09
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tables posted:What did CA do to "devalue his efforts"? He didn't get invited to the mod summit.
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Sep 20, 2012 23:12
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UberJumper posted:So apparently Darth Vader the author of Darth Mod just quit the modding scene forever: This is the 953rd time he has "Quit Modding Forever!!"
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Sep 20, 2012 23:33
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Anyone know if it is possible to unlock more than 20 units per battle in Medieval 2? I got so spoiled by playing NTW with 40v40 armies that now the Medieval 2 battles look tiny 
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Sep 20, 2012 23:38
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UberJumper posted:So apparently Darth Vader the author of Darth Mod just quit the modding scene forever: He'll be back 2 weeks after release. And gently caress i'm getting so excited for a videogame, i haven't been like this since Red Orchestra 2. ...Don't break my heart again vidja games!
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Sep 20, 2012 23:42
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quote:Q. Are there really going to be around 700 units in Rome II? I thought 'unit bloat' was a terrible thing and Shogun's 'more types of trees than units' was the best TW game because it cut the number of units drastically. For anyone wanting to get in on some hot, hot, hot Roman Civil War action while waiting for RTW2 - check out Alea Jacta Est
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Sep 20, 2012 23:43
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V for Vegas posted:I thought 'unit bloat' was a terrible thing and Shogun's 'more types of trees than units' was the best TW game because it cut the number of units drastically. Oh man, I totally disagree the identical factions and small unit pool was the worst part about Shogun 2 for me. I suppose that's what the setting called for though.
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Sep 20, 2012 23:55
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V for Vegas posted:I thought 'unit bloat' was a terrible thing and Shogun's 'more types of trees than units' was the best TW game because it cut the number of units drastically. It's a game about the whole of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, possibly with the Arabian peninsula and the Iranian plains showing up too. A game of this size should never, ever, EVER, have the same homogenization as a game about loving Japan.
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Sep 21, 2012 00:05
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Ahh, that was more of a sarcastic comment that the marketing for these games changes wildly from game to game. It's kind of amusing that CA goes from 'we really learnt our lesson from ETW and NTW where we had so many units, it just wasn't any fun so we are concentrating on giving you a few units to play with that will lead to more interesting tactical choices' to 'OMG lots of units!' in the very next game.
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Sep 21, 2012 00:12
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UberJumper posted:So apparently Darth Vader the author of Darth Mod just quit the modding scene forever: I love how big this guys ego is, thinking CA is out to get him and his spergy modding skills. Somebody remove all that Darth Vader poo poo from the UI now and I'll actually touch the mod.
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Sep 21, 2012 01:04
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Game balance and design aside (as easy as that) I love as many units as possible because I'm literally 12 and it's cool.
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Sep 21, 2012 09:40
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Joink posted:People that make mods for games often have entitlement issues. Yes, it's the people making free things for you to use that have entitlement issues, and not you. 
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Sep 21, 2012 09:43
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Lemon Curdistan posted:Yes, it's the people making free things for you to use that have entitlement issues, and not you. I don't think he was saying that Darth should be required to make mods for him, so I'm not sure where you get the idea that he is entitled from. He's saying that the people who modify the games often tend to assume that the company should cater for their vision of the game and make their job as easy as possible, which is an entitled point of view, since the company in no way exists or give the implication of existing to make the modders life easier.
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Sep 21, 2012 10:10
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shalcar posted:I don't think he was saying that Darth should be required to make mods for him, so I'm not sure where you get the idea that he is entitled from. He's saying that the people who modify the games often tend to assume that the company should cater for their vision of the game and make their job as easy as possible, which is an entitled point of view, since the company in no way exists or give the implication of existing to make the modders life easier. It obviously varies from community to community and modder to modder, but in the more obnoxious cases there tends to be a very visible failure to appreciate that what they are doing is standing on the shoulders of giants. Darth in particular showcases the fact that he's on an ego trip by replacing all the loading screens with a Vader image, destroying all immersion to make sure that the player never forgets his moniker. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 10:51 on Sep 21, 2012 |
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Sep 21, 2012 10:48
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Taking bets he'll be back a week after Rome 2, poorly photo shopping Greecian and Roman style helmets over Darth Vader.
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Sep 21, 2012 15:28
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