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Something I'm noticing in the vids so far is that replenishment on top-tier units is kinda dogshit, and replacing them isn't easy either. Which, I suppose, increases the consequences for getting them killed, and encourages you to use disposable units to protect elites much more than previously. Also, since you have a slow-replenishing pool to recruit them out of, and units take a few turns to get up to full strength, I can imagine having a mini-stack of elite infantry hanging around permanently, expanding them with levies when it's time to do something. Recruiting a whole bunch of elites in a hurry just won't be feasible.
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Mar 19, 2018 05:06
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nopantsjack posted:Alert: this became a wall of text, sorry, I am bored in a train station and enthusiastic. Thanks for this, I'm still coming to grips with dei. Any insights on sieging? Auto resolve always seems absurdly tilted against me, and it's kind of a pain in the rear end
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Mar 19, 2018 05:32
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500 hours in Shogun 2 and I just learned that not only can you disband generals as a unit on the campaign map, but it actually wipes them off the family tree too, without a confirmation window or anything.
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Mar 19, 2018 05:34
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So it turns out you CAN defeat Attila without trying to get him to commit to a battle. I was just one victory off from the event declaring him mortal. Repeated night attacks autoresolved and the Huns broke off their invasion of my territory after I killed Attila and shattered their armies. They're still around futzing around Greece.
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Mar 19, 2018 08:21
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Fuligin posted:Thanks for this, I'm still coming to grips with dei. Any insights on sieging? Auto resolve always seems absurdly tilted against me, and it's kind of a pain in the rear end Yeah I'm not great at DeI sieges either but holy poo poo don't autoresolve them. Even if it's a stomp in your favour you'll take inane casualties. I autoresolved a walled siege once and took NO casualties except losing one heavy cav and decimating another, then some elephants. What, did they dismount and climb the walls? Was it the infantry's day off? If I have to face more than a garrison in a wall siege I try and make the AI think it can sally forth. The garrison looks strong on paper but everything except the top-tier militia they get (hoplites/swordsmen/etc depending on faction) will melt in a field battle, so it ends up being an even stack-on-stack fight usually. The garrison is barely an issue. Another thing to really hammer home is that shock vs melee cav in DeI is a waaay bigger difference than in Warhammer. Check out the slinger-level melee defence on units like lancers. Those guys absolutely need babysitting. Stuff like armored elephants and heavy melee cav can stick in for a bit. Elephants especially, as long as they're not frontally facing any hoplites or romans they can tank multiple units and lose one or two models. I underrated them until playing Epirus but those armored merc elephants are worth the insane upkeep cost.
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Mar 19, 2018 16:53
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PirateBob posted:Is Total War Arena any good I say yes, it is. It’s very different than multiplayer in the usual titles in the sense that you will not be able to handle all situation with just your 3 units, and must rely on your team for support. You can imagine the quality of teammates you can expect being a f2p title. Luckily the opposing team has just as many total idiots. Grinding tiers sucks, but only if you focus on that. However I find the game to be the most fun at <t7, so I have no idea why anyone would want to grind to top tier. T1-3 has limited unit types (none of the types listed below) and is a great intro. T4-6 you start seeing everything, slingers, elephants, heavy armored cav, siege weapons, pikes, 2h infantry, dogs. It’s free and getting into matches takes less than 30 seconds, give it a shot. Definitely more fun with some friends in a party too. Captain Beans fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Mar 19, 2018 |
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Mar 19, 2018 17:49
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Fuligin posted:Thanks for this, I'm still coming to grips with dei. Any insights on sieging? Auto resolve always seems absurdly tilted against me, and it's kind of a pain in the rear end I basically always encircle cities and let the garrison come to me because of the aforementioned tilted autoresolve. Maybe someone else has some better advice cause I rarely do actual siege assaults unless I'm playing someone with awesome infantry like Rome or Sparta, just cause I'm a lazy coward and I know how to win in field battles, in which case just ladder or siege engine up the walls, ram or catapult the gates and always attack from multiple fronts cause the AI can't handle split defending.
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Mar 19, 2018 19:38
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Yeah I'm not great at DeI sieges either but holy poo poo don't autoresolve them. Even if it's a stomp in your favour you'll take inane casualties. I autoresolved a walled siege once and took NO casualties except losing one heavy cav and decimating another, then some elephants. What, did they dismount and climb the walls? Was it the infantry's day off? Oh I see this was never changed. Vanilla Rome 2 was like that too
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Mar 19, 2018 19:48
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reagan posted:Can you explain what you mean by engine issues? I know it is hot garbage for Rome 2, since it was designed for Empire Total War, which was a bunch of guys forming a line and shooting one another from across the map, which results in hand-to-hand combat in Rome 2 being total poo poo. The engine is just super slow, I'm not entirely sure why, I imagine they basically tried to make a modern game in the Rome 2 engine and so turn times are absolutely abysmal even with mods that remove insanely stupid things like how when any faction razes a settlement it plays a little 5 second animation even if you can't see it. The battle engine is okay, still seems to be poor for hand to hand combat though, but light cavalry are represented very well, they're super fast and nippy and they made general units much, much stronger to an almost Warhammer level. I personally think ranged combat is a bit worse than Rome 2 but that might just be bias, its been a while since I played it. Every now and then I hear about people liking it and give it another go then quit by year 420(eyyy) every time. If you don't care for the setting I'd give it a miss since thats its major selling point but if you are interested in a harder, unforgiving campaign thats basically trying to destroy your fledgling empire through lack of goats at all times then give it a shot. Playing as ERE or WRE is a pretty unique total war experience, since you're starting big and struggling to stay big, rather than starting small and trying to get big and can be a good challenge and reasonably enjoyable apart from that you start with dead garrisons that dont seem to replenish. It doesn't work very well for the smaller factions IMO. The huns are okay (though CA was just like "Huns are mongols right?" theres only a thousand years distance between them), being all light cavalry which dominate in this battle engine but were added as an afterthought since they were supposed to be an AI threat not a playable faction. Theres a lot of neat ideas in it, more than in Rome 2 but I just don't think it comes together well enough. I'd say its the weakest TW since Empire but even Empire I "finished" a Maratha campaign to my satisfaction, finishing an Attila campaign would mean dozens of hours of steadily increasing unit upkeep (high tier units outright replace lower tier units, and you cant recruit the lower tier ones once you've researched their upgrade), dropping public order and starvation. Some people love that stuff but its not for me. Agreed that DeI is basically the best TW game, though TW:WH1 comes close imo, theres just so much to discover and so much... i dunno, effort and love put into it. For example, Sparta is a really interesting faction in DeI, in vanilla and most games they would just be the strongest soldiers faction but in DeI since they simulate social class they actually do a decent job of simulating spartan apartheid. Your spartan citizen hoplites are extremely strong and their main strength is their heavy infantry have the stamina of light infantry (due to all those naked calisthenics) and nearly unbreakable morale so can fight harder and longer than their neighbours. However, they are recruited from the 1st class population pool which is very small, and hardly regenerates in conquered territories, so just like was apparently the case you end up with 1% of your forces being fearsome spartan citizens and the rest being nearly as fearsome 2nd class client warriors and then shitloads of terribly armed and trained helot slaves. On top of this their cavalry is shockingly bad, there is no reason to ever recruit spartan citizen cavalry unless you are roleplaying, in other games they'd be like "spartan cavalry? must be super sick right?" but in DeI they appropriately have them be terrible since the spartans were such bad horsemen they just instead named their heavy infantry "horsemen" to not feel left out. So you end up with a precious core of Spartan citizens being totally carried by their vassal warriors and auxilliaries while still thinking they're superior. The only issue is they get a reduction in slave rebellions when they should get an increase imo.
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Mar 19, 2018 19:57
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oh and in a classic example of CA's inability to play their own games or balance things, on release rome had the strongest cavalry in the game and the huns had the strongest infantry ... er
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Mar 19, 2018 20:01
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Didn't Rome in R2 have bonuses to fighting in the woods while the Barbarians didn't which was completely rear end-backwards?
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Mar 19, 2018 22:21
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nopantsjack posted:oh and in a classic example of CA's inability to play their own games or balance things, on release rome had the strongest cavalry in the game and the huns had the strongest infantry ... er ERE still has Tagmata cav which are expensive but also unkillable, and the huns have Bosphoran Infantry which are total bullshit.
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Mar 19, 2018 22:24
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Captain Beans posted:I say yes, it is. It’s very different than multiplayer in the usual titles in the sense that you will not be able to handle all situation with just your 3 units, and must rely on your team for support. You can imagine the quality of teammates you can expect being a f2p title. Luckily the opposing team has just as many total idiots. Thanks. Is there a thread for Total War Arena?
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Mar 20, 2018 00:45
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PirateBob posted:Thanks. Is there a thread for Total War Arena? Probably not. If you play it, definitely get some friends and drink some booze while voicechatting. It's not a super serious game, the rounds are short and you don't have to see the whole battle through if all your dudes are dead. I haven't played it since it left steam, but pulling off successful hammer and anvils as Alexander was the most fun thing in the game for me.
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Mar 20, 2018 01:18
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Krazyface posted:Something I'm noticing in the vids so far is that replenishment on top-tier units is kinda dogshit, and replacing them isn't easy either. Which, I suppose, increases the consequences for getting them killed, and encourages you to use disposable units to protect elites much more than previously.
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Mar 20, 2018 01:23
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Arcsquad12 posted:ERE still has Tagmata cav which are expensive but also unkillable, and the huns have Bosphoran Infantry which are total bullshit. Well I mean the ERE getting the ability to get units that don’t exist for two hundred years is pretty impressive
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Mar 20, 2018 01:29
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DeadFatDuckFat posted:Probably not. If you play it, definitely get some friends and drink some booze while voicechatting. It's not a super serious game, the rounds are short and you don't have to see the whole battle through if all your dudes are dead. I haven't played it since it left steam, but pulling off successful hammer and anvils as Alexander was the most fun thing in the game for me. He was good, also cynane full Archer army in tiers 1-3 I don't know if she still has it but she used to have this absurd triple tap move where you could get archers to fire 3 volleys in one and combined with unlimited ammo and a selection of expendable ammo types ranging from basically javelin arrows to armour and shield piercing arrows that can shred legionaries from the front archers were crazy in that bracket. The most fun though was the barbarian general who could appear to be friendly to the enemy so you'd act like a retreating friend and charge naked maniacs into the rear flank. Like Alexander he had a charge boost move unlike Alexander it worked on infantry and cav. Oh also there is friendly fire so you just hail arrows into a melee and it's like "warning you're ruining this melee scrubs day" and nobody even remotely cares apart from the poor dude getting friendly fired. Also also pike infantry hurt your friends too and were woodchippers so sometimes you'll have a unit of pikes guarding the base and someone will move order their cavalry through them and the entire unit will die in seconds. Communist Thoughts fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Mar 20, 2018 |
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Mar 20, 2018 03:53
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Speaking of DeI, I want to actually play a Rome 2 campaign since I was so disappointed by the vanilla launch and barely touched it since. I'm wary of these massive overhauls though, because of nerds cramming in pointless busy work, "feature" bloat and making battles last forever. Does DeI suffer from this? Are the submods that tone it down required for fun?
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Mar 20, 2018 13:52
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Deketh posted:Speaking of DeI, I want to actually play a Rome 2 campaign since I was so disappointed by the vanilla launch and barely touched it since. I'm wary of these massive overhauls though, because of nerds cramming in pointless busy work, "feature" bloat and making battles last forever. Does DeI suffer from this? Are the submods that tone it down required for fun? If you aren't already into grognard mods, DeI won't change your mind. Battles take long, especially at the start and if your stuck fighting greeks and their hoplites and you don't have the infantry to plow threw. Auto-Resolve hates you, so you'll be playing a lot of long sieges. The campaign map is just filled with nonsense, you have food, sanitation, public order, manpower, building upkeeps, banditry, citizen growth, to keep track off. Takes ages to build anything. Thanks to manpower there's also unit bloat, because italian spearman unit uses this mp pool, but sicilian spearmen which has the same stats, uses another type of mp pool, this also affects replenishment. But at the end of the day you still playing Rome 2, and why would you do that, when Shogun 2 or Warhamms are far superior games.
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Mar 20, 2018 14:31
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I guess I am just a sucker for the setting and would love to enjoy the game, somehow. Thanks for your input friend
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Mar 20, 2018 15:19
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I absolutely disagree with everything the above poster said. DeI is far better than Shogun 2 and on par with Warhammer.
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Mar 20, 2018 15:52
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PirateBob posted:Is Total War Arena any good It's good and bad. The mechanics are pretty much standard Total War for the most part, archers are a bit too strong against shielded infantry from the front imo, and spears don't give an advantage against cav, but infantry will generally demolish cav in a prolonged fight and everything else just feels familiar in a good way. There's a big variety of units and it's quite spectacular to see a massive clash between well-used lines of units properly supported. The biggest problem with the game is that it's a team-based multiplayer game that demands teamwork to be successful, so your enjoyment is fully dependent on your teammates not being selfish window-licking fuckwits. And boy you better believe a lot of them are  I'm not a god-like player by any means, and god knows I've made gently caress-ups, but watching your only cav player charge off into the distance only to get demolished and leaving you with no mobile force is disheartening. And quite realistic!It's free and in open beta, so give it a crack. nopantsjack posted:Oh also there is friendly fire so you just hail arrows into a melee and it's like "warning you're ruining this melee scrubs day" and nobody even remotely cares apart from the poor dude getting friendly fired. I don't mind friendly fire as long as it's being fired into the back of the enemy, but holy gently caress you try and tell people that they will do better that way and they respond like you've just offered to gently caress their dog or something. Or I get a blast of russian, good ol' EU servers 
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Mar 20, 2018 16:28
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:I absolutely disagree with everything the above poster said. DeI is far better than Shogun 2 and on par with Warhammer. DeI is way to slow paced to be on the level of Shogun 2 and even more so Warhammer, which I think a lot of DeI folk casually forget. This mod is not for your average player. There's a lot of dead turns in DeI where are all you doing is waiting for stuff. Shogun 2 is also largely bloat free, especially FotS. This is something that took 5 years and two very dull games for CA to relearn with the Warhammer series. Empire management has always been one of the boring sides of these games, so I don't find any coincidence that the best games are the ones with the bare minimum of it. DeI only doubles down on more empire management. With Tomb Kings it's now more clear that the fun and potential challenge in a TW game are in the limitations of the armies themselves, the empire management needs to just go away entirely or be the bare minimum, and devote the time and resources to make the campaign map to be able to deliver more and better battles. But thanks to modern science, installing DeI these days is really easy. Just go to the steam workshop and install the 8 parts, and try out the Rome start, and a handful of turns in you'll know if this is for you or not. Electronico6 fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Mar 20, 2018 |
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Mar 20, 2018 16:49
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Shogun 2 honestly isn’t very good. It has decent balance but man it made a lot of bad design decisions.
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Mar 20, 2018 18:28
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I wanted to build all the cool stuff in S2, so I've downloaded a mod adding 1000 food to everyone. It broke the economy and everyone has a fuckton of money. I've also just triggered RD and it's mega unfun grind. Is there an easy way to edit a mod? +40 food would be ok for me, and would still prop up enemies.
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Mar 20, 2018 18:47
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Deketh posted:Speaking of DeI, I want to actually play a Rome 2 campaign since I was so disappointed by the vanilla launch and barely touched it since. I'm wary of these massive overhauls though, because of nerds cramming in pointless busy work, "feature" bloat and making battles last forever. Does DeI suffer from this? Are the submods that tone it down required for fun? When I first started playing battles were insanely long, they have updated it about a million times since then, so people may have an out of date idea of how slow it is. I think in general that bears mentioning, DeI mod runs faster, plays faster and is just plain better than it was when I started playing it about a year ago. Turn times are still fairly long but shorter than Attila and about on par with Mortal Empires in TW:WH2 (except the campaign is good, jk jk sorta) and they fixed the crappy FPS so it now runs smooth even with the huge units and giant battles. I run with just the softcore mod that doesn't affect battles at all and they're fine now. Longer than TW:WH but so is practically every total war. They seem about as long as a Shogun 2 battle now though obviously will slow down if neither side has any killy units. They even boosted movement speed, (loving modders love making all soldiers run at a leisurely walk I don't know why) and now fast cavalry are FAST. In terms of feature bloat there is the supply system (also recently reworked, now I basically never run out of supplies whereas that used to be a constant issue) just build the odd farm if you're gonna have armies hanging around there, and the population system which simply means you recruit units from certain social classes and can run out of manpower. Rome has a big advantage cause it recruits all its good units from its big plebian social class whereas barbarians etc may recruit their armoured warriors from the small nobility. Otherwise you usually have huge amounts of "foreigners" you can recruit as different units depending on the province, sometimes amazing (syria), sometimes shite (mesopotamia). It used to be I'd need battle speed, movement speed and various other mods, now I just use the softcore one out of habit mostly, it just lowers the PO penalties and makes the AI a little more willing to be diplomatic, I've played without it and its fine too. They recently overhauled all the stats and the battle animation system, so its in a very different place than it was recently, pikes are no longer invincible lawnmowers and they recently toned down hoplites a bit who had assumed that position. Electronico is right about there being some dead turns though, it depends on your start, Rome or Seleukids are good for not really needing a ramp up to start kicking in doors and stabbing faces and most greek factions can take on most neighbours with a stack of hoplites and archers. Most Barbarian factions take a whiiiiile to get going though. Check it out, play as Rome or your favourite Greek faction and it will rule. That goes for anyone who previously played it and wrote it off for being too slow and cumbersome. Starting tips to help newbs: -First buildings should be Barracks then Farm>Fields (I always go field, i dunno if the others are situationally better). -First research should be rushing tier 3 settlements, your income will go from weak to extremely strong as soon as you crank out some tier 3 trade capitals. -Capital buildings should be Sanitation, Gymnasium (or other +PO equiv) and Library, then go nuts. -Get trade agreements with everyone. -Get NAPs with anyone you aren't gonna invade in the next 10 turns. -Killiest units (currently): Elephants>Shock Cav>Archers (When i started playing it was all about javelins but they seem to be inaccurate now, massed bows are much more reliable) -Phalanx units like hoplites and pikes need a bit of micromanagement for their full potential. While in phalanx a single click makes contact with the enemy, a double click pushes into the enemy, doing more damage but potentially taking more damage in turn. For extra fun charge hoplites into the rear, activate phalanx and keep pushing until they're steamrollered. e: oh also if you want a game thats as fast or faster than shogun 2 just play Caesar in Gaul or the bespoke Macedonian Wars campaign for DeI, though the latter is a bit boring cause its just 15 flavours of greeks and some romans, and both lack the reform system that keeps the game interesting and is one of DeI's best bits. sorry to keep posting entire novels about this mod, i don't know if it comes across but I -really- like it. Its not perfect but for my money its the best TW campaign there is just for the depth and the addictive feeling of exploring the world collecting the best of each type of unit in the world like pokemon (yes please I will have some archers and elephants from syria, some shock infantry from thracia, slingers from rhodes, hoplites from sparta and a bro-team of cavalry from scythia and macedonia) Communist Thoughts fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Mar 20, 2018 |
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Mar 20, 2018 18:51
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nopantsjack posted:When I first started playing battles were insanely long, they have updated it about a million times since then, so people may have an out of date idea of how slow it is. I think in general that bears mentioning, DeI mod runs faster, plays faster and is just plain better than it was when I started playing it about a year ago. Turn times are still fairly long but shorter than Attila and about on par with Mortal Empires in TW:WH2 (except the campaign is good, jk jk sorta) and they fixed the crappy FPS so it now runs smooth even with the huge units and giant battles. Very cool of you to write this up, thanks man. Gonna give it a go as Rome.
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Mar 20, 2018 19:16
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Deketh posted:Very cool of you to write this up, thanks man. Gonna give it a go as Rome. you're welcome, just try and stop me posting about DeI haha e: just thinking, the other two mechanics i didnt mention are: AoR recruitment: you can recruit diff units in diff provinces on top of your core roster. They have a little banner on their icon to differentiate them. Reforms: Most of the big factions have reforms which introduce new units or replacements for old units. They are triggered by Imperium level which is only impacted by the amount of territory you occupy (with a bonus for complete provinces) and number of turns. quote:Rome You basically have to conquer half the map to get the imperial rome upgrades but when you do you get awesome local stuff like Imperial Cataphracts and Germanic Legions Communist Thoughts fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Mar 20, 2018 |
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Mar 20, 2018 19:32
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nopantsjack posted:You basically have to conquer half the map to get the imperial rome upgrades also worth noting that these are pretty easily editable if you'd like to ever see the lategame units
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Mar 21, 2018 00:52
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:I absolutely disagree with everything the above poster said. DeI is far better than Shogun 2 and on par with Warhammer. I was gonna agree with your opinions until you said DeI is far better than Shogun 2. DeI might be on Shogun 2's level, but it's too imbalanced and rough around the edges to best Shogun 2, especially with FotS being the gold standard of TW games.
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Mar 21, 2018 01:02
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FOTS being the gold standard. Lol what
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Mar 21, 2018 01:08
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CharlestheHammer posted:FOTS being the gold standard. Did you want to elaborate on all these supposed bad design decisions or did you just want to poo poo post?
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Mar 21, 2018 01:26
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shalcar posted:Did you want to elaborate on all these supposed bad design decisions or did you just want to poo poo post? Realm divide alone disqualified it. I know what they wanted to do but they did it by doing the thing even good TW games do but this time on purpose. There are other things but honestly they are smaller nitpicks and realm divide alone is all that’s necessary.
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Mar 21, 2018 01:40
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alternatively: realm divide is good and because of it shogun 2 is one of the only total war games with any late game challenge
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Mar 21, 2018 02:00
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Realm divide can also screw you over in fots because instead of converting all your shogunate or imperial troops to republican units they just vanish and suddenly half your armies are gone.
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Mar 21, 2018 02:06
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that part is admittedly pretty dumb e: realm divide definitely falls short in first time playthroughs since there's not enough warning about what's actually gonna happen, but once you've seen it that's not a problem. it nullifies diplomacy but then diplomacy in total war games especially by the midgame just serves to suck whatever little challenge is left away. it's gamey but then so is everything in Shogun 2. i can understand not liking realm divide, but saying it ruins shogun 2 is pretty stupid. Koramei fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Mar 21, 2018 |
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Mar 21, 2018 02:08
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Realm divide ruins it because it makes it an unfun chore to play. Sure if you meta game it it’s not so bad but where is the fun in that. Outside that Shogun is a fine if little bland game. TW does have issues with late game but Realm Divide makes it so much worse.
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Mar 21, 2018 02:14
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FotS had the improved version of realm divide where all the other factions on your side permanently ally with you, I believe.
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Mar 21, 2018 02:17
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If you don't go republican every time in FotS what's even the pointCharlestheHammer posted:Realm divide ruins it because it makes it an unfun chore to play. Effortlessly mopping up town after town with impunity because you have no actual rivals anymore is less of a chore than having to face an real threat again?
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Mar 21, 2018 02:40
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He’s right, challenge does make games unfun. You have to sit there, crunch numbers and optimise your army compositions and positions on the map. You might even have to use terrain features for ambushes or chokepoints. Worst part is when I can’t just autoresolve the fights and have to play the drat game. Kills me.
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