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I was stoked on all of throbs bells and whistles but I haven't gotten more than forty turns in
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May 26, 2018 00:07
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Whatever you do, remember to play it with the beta patch. Lots of tweaks and improvements in there.
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May 26, 2018 00:12
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:ToB: worth the money? Forty hours in. Depends on your play habits. I personally find this game like 10x less time-wasting and exhausting than R2TW and Atilla (I dont own Warhammer and can't compare), but I can see how it feels like TW-lite. I agree with most of the decisions they made and so far it hasn't burnt me out. If Total War is a big "if" series for you, I can see why this game just doesn't do enough to justify the price. But I love history, historical simulation, and roleplaying a despotic autocrat, so I personally think ToB has been well worth.
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May 27, 2018 08:16
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Amgard posted:Forty hours in. Depends on your play habits. It took a few false starts to get in the groove but I think I agree. I am kinda disappointed in, well, not the siege maps themselves, but that we got these huge, sometimea Minas Tirith epic maps that almost always end up being a tiny garrison vs a 12 stack. They would be amazing 3v3 or 4v4 MP though. I wish the AI was less prone to benny hilling and in general there were anti-border gore mechanics. And I really like the multiple win conditions plus an “ultimate” one. I wish fame and conquest varied by culture as much as kingdom does but that can and hopefully will be rectified in future TWs. My nitpick is that the welsh are my favourites and Gwined is probably going to be my first complete campaign, but their long kingdom victory is dumb. Short is Gwined has to unite Wales, and Strat Clut has to unite the scottish lowlands and a bit of England. Long for both combines the two. Why?? As either, fulfilling the long kingdom victory means sailing out of your way to attack far off lands that you have no reasonable interest in, or going for a near-conquest by carving through a huge chunk of England. I don’t want to conquer my northern friends, CA  imo Gwined’s long goal should be a chunk of southwestern England + kill Mierce and Wessex, and Strat Clut’s should be northern England and Gall Goidel + kill Sudreyar and Northymbre.Seems silly that after uniting your ancestral lands your next step is “let’s go kill our cousins” and not “let’s drive back the invaders” Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 09:23 on May 27, 2018 |
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May 27, 2018 09:21
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Wait, people care about victory conditions in a Total War game? I thought that was like the end date of a Paradox game.
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May 27, 2018 09:50
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I care about the kingdom victory conditions in Thrones too because they change your faction a bit and give you bonuses. It's an achievable thing to aim for in most cases, and I agree that in this case it would make more sense to push back the Saxons than unite the Welsh lands.
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May 27, 2018 10:17
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Yeah, in ToB the conditions are mostly cool and reasonable. Short Kingdom victory can be obtained in less than 50 turns if my Gwined campaign is anything to go on, and they actually vary in interesting ways from culture to culture. It isn’t perfect but I’d love to see it honed in future games. Having multiple paths to victory that don’t take 40 hours of tedious steamroll and then having a super victory if you want to continue your campaign, that’s cool. Especially if they double down on different factions having different goals. And getting bonuses for doing x short goal while having a long or ultimate goal to achieve is fun too. I think the idea of multiple victories you can achieve in a single campaign, especially if each gives bonuses, could be super fun in future titles. Like imagine a Rome with a Culture Victory where as Athens, you can win by never expanding, and just play Team Greece: World Police. Send armies and fleets around defending greek factions and get money and boosts for each intervention. Your ultimate goal is greeks, any greeks, owning Rome, Carthage, and the Indus Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 10:37 on May 27, 2018 |
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May 27, 2018 10:22
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i wish we had the option to get a billion random missions again like back in rome 1
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May 27, 2018 10:54
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:I am kinda disappointed in, well, not the siege maps themselves, but that we got these huge, sometimea Minas Tirith epic maps that almost always end up being a tiny garrison vs a 12 stack. They would be amazing 3v3 or 4v4 MP though. The funny thing is, as far as single player goes, the Warhammer approach to sieges makes much more sense and is much easier for the AI to handle. Statistically I think CA said that more sieges were played in Warhammer than ever before as many of them were auto-resolved in the historical titles. The same is true here, because who wants to spend 20 minutes climbing the walls to fight 2 units and marching to the city center to face one more? At least if the siege were confined to one part of the walls, the AI could concentrate its forces and try to put up an actual fight.
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May 27, 2018 19:02
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are there any mods for m2 that make the ai and pathfinding better without significantly converting the gameplay?
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May 28, 2018 01:46
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Dramicus posted:The funny thing is, as far as single player goes, the Warhammer approach to sieges makes much more sense and is much easier for the AI to handle. Statistically I think CA said that more sieges were played in Warhammer than ever before as many of them were auto-resolved in the historical titles. The same is true here, because who wants to spend 20 minutes climbing the walls to fight 2 units and marching to the city center to face one more? At least if the siege were confined to one part of the walls, the AI could concentrate its forces and try to put up an actual fight. The AI in ToB does just fine in the beta patch now that they swapped the counts so that the main building and garrison buildings give 8/9/10/11/12 and 5/5/6/6/7 units with the Garrison units being all Retinue and Elite. Even the most basic town now has 10 units with their governor to defend, which actually lets the AI put up an interesting defence. The towns were just way, way too big for 5 units. Honestly, the town maps are a bit too big, but I can see why they wouldn't make additional maps for the town sizes like they did in earlier Total Wars in the Saga ToB. The beta patch really makes ToB worth it and the changes that are coming out during the beta patch give me a lot of hope that it will be one of the tightest Total Wars in a while when they are done.
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May 28, 2018 15:58
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i keep getting frustrated with total war games because they tend to be really bad at actually giving you cool pitched battles and you spend 90% of the game autoresolving sieges unless you crank up the difficulty high enough that you end up getting outnumbered 3-1 every turn, and because all of the non-shogun or warhammer rosters tend to be pretty samey. does tob have more interesting battles and/or rosters?
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May 28, 2018 21:43
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StashAugustine posted:i keep getting frustrated with total war games because they tend to be really bad at actually giving you cool pitched battles and you spend 90% of the game autoresolving sieges unless you crank up the difficulty high enough that you end up getting outnumbered 3-1 every turn, and because all of the non-shogun or warhammer rosters tend to be pretty samey. does tob have more interesting battles and/or rosters? I can't speak for the battles but it has one of the least (if not the least) diverse roster of any TW game I know of. It's all on the same two islands so all the troops are slightly better/worse versions of each other.
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May 28, 2018 21:52
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idk, it's not so much diversity- i liked shogun 2 because each unit has an obvious niche, even if there's like a dozen and they're all the same. what i don't like is comparing levy germanic axemen against light pictish spearmen and trying to figure out what the difference is
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May 28, 2018 21:57
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Bought R2 without any DLC during the last sale, downloaded DeI and am really enjoying it. Some questions tho: Is there any guide to buildings and modifiers? I'm confused over whether effects are for a settlement, province, or empire. Also, is there any general advice for what to build to maximize province income? What does Atilla change mechanically from R2? It looks like a cool game, not sure how different it is from R2 tho. Are the DLCs worth it/what ones are better than the others?
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May 28, 2018 22:21
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the coolest thing in attilla are the horde factions that have no settlements and their armies are basically their cities
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May 28, 2018 22:24
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shalcar posted:The AI in ToB does just fine in the beta patch now that they swapped the counts so that the main building and garrison buildings give 8/9/10/11/12 and 5/5/6/6/7 units with the Garrison units being all Retinue and Elite. Even the most basic town now has 10 units with their governor to defend, which actually lets the AI put up an interesting defence. The towns were just way, way too big for 5 units. Honestly, the town maps are a bit too big, but I can see why they wouldn't make additional maps for the town sizes like they did in earlier Total Wars in the Saga ToB. That sounds a lot better. When I played my Wessex campaign, unless I caught an army inside a town, I was generally facing 1 levy spear, 1 retinue sword, 1 levy archer, 1 levy jav on the walls, and another levy spear in the city center.
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May 28, 2018 23:16
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I found Fall Of The Samurai the dopest (with Darthmod) because of guns being a thing you don't actually want to attack the castles most of the time (until you get lots of Cannon) and as a result you just end up sieging, and then the AI breaks those sieges so they don't get starved so you get tonnes of dope as fuuuuuck pitched battles with massive lines of troops shooting one another and crazy Banzai charges with dudes with pointy sticks. What i'm saying is the next game should just be Fall of the Samurai.
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May 29, 2018 02:10
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StashAugustine posted:idk, it's not so much diversity- i liked shogun 2 because each unit has an obvious niche, even if there's like a dozen and they're all the same. what i don't like is comparing levy germanic axemen against light pictish spearmen and trying to figure out what the difference is The ToB armies cover all the bases and use the Shogun 2 style of army breakdown with units being either Levy, Retinue or Elite (Ashigaru, Samurai or Monk in S2) and being defined by their weapons of Axes, Spears or Swords. Much like in Shogun 2, Levies lose to Retinues who lose to Elites but utilising the weapon triangle lets them put in a stronger showing than you would expect. You don't need to care about if the spearman is a Circenn or Wessex one, because what matters is it's a Levy Spearman and it will behave like all the other Levy Spearman units, much like the Shogun 2 Yari Ashigaru.
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May 29, 2018 02:58
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My Imaginary GF posted:Bought R2 without any DLC during the last sale, downloaded DeI and am really enjoying it. Some questions tho: Re: DeI Most effects are per province though iirc blacksmith upgrades are global. Population is per settlement, though the growth factors from buildings may affect the whole province? So if you run out of hoplites to recruit shuffle to the next town over and see how many you can grab off them. Number one easiest way to make money is to upgrade capital settlements to tier 3 trade cities so I always beeline researching that in construction, unless I need tier 2 barracks researched in which case I do that second. Only a few factions are capable of throwing their weight around before that upgrade but after it even minor factions are able to field a solid expensive army. The wealthiest provinces are ones where every minor town has a trade resource, then simply build the resource building and go for the chain that gives you cash. They tend to give +banditry but as long as the odd barracks is about I don't get troubled by banditry much. If you are then get a grain depot. By far the most profitable resource is silk, followed by slaves, gold and silver. If you're in the east there are something like 3 silk towns you can seize and become unbelievably rich. Also worth noting is if a town produces a trade good upgrading the main town builsing will give you lots of cash, so a silk town gives something like 1000 gold as opposed to 200 for a standard farming settlement.
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May 29, 2018 04:08
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shalcar posted:The ToB armies cover all the bases and use the Shogun 2 style of army breakdown with units being either Levy, Retinue or Elite (Ashigaru, Samurai or Monk in S2) and being defined by their weapons of Axes, Spears or Swords. Much like in Shogun 2, Levies lose to Retinues who lose to Elites but utilising the weapon triangle lets them put in a stronger showing than you would expect. You don't need to care about if the spearman is a Circenn or Wessex one, because what matters is it's a Levy Spearman and it will behave like all the other Levy Spearman units, much like the Shogun 2 Yari Ashigaru. When do I want Swords men over Axe Men? Is one better against Cav or something?
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May 29, 2018 04:17
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DeI as Syracuse is a special hell. Gave it five tries today and calling it quits, the Rome free deathstacks whenever you try to take territory are.. maybe not insurmountable, but close, while you have to keep a 2nd army in Sicily to fend off Carthage.
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May 29, 2018 04:20
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Where do you get DEI? I can't find it on the workshop but I'm a big idiot
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May 29, 2018 04:42
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algebra testes posted:When do I want Swords men over Axe Men? Is one better against Cav or something? Swords are good all around units whilst Axes excel at charging. For dealing with Cav you want spears just like in every other game. Of course everything loses to Welsh Longbowmen in any quantity but that is because they are an absolutely terrifying unit.
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May 29, 2018 04:45
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algebra testes posted:When do I want Swords men over Axe Men? Is one better against Cav or something? Swords kill low armour units very effectively, Axes kill high armour units best, Spears kill cavalry best. Spears are relatively high armour, axes are relatively low armour, swords are in the middle. This means your basic axis of counter is axe beats spear beats sword beats axe. Obviously this needs to be considered against the Levy, Retinue or Elite status of the unit as an Elite Spearmen unit will wreck a Levy Axe unit but the Levy Axe will do the best out of any of the Levy units in that matchup. Obviously there is another dynamic of how each type fares against archers (swords tend to have the best mix of murder and armour for dealing with archers in the general case, but spears take volleys the best while cavalry engages the fastest) but that's a lot more intuitive and also not as big a factor in battles. You tend to know why you lost if enemy cavalry wrecked your backline, but it's a bit harder to work out what happened when your Retinue Spearmen lost against their Retinue Axes.
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May 29, 2018 04:47
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Senor Dog posted:Where do you get DEI? I can't find it on the workshop but I'm a big idiot It's on the workshop. Search for Dresden. Here's the first of the 8(!!!) parts.
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May 29, 2018 05:00
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can someone give me a rundown on how to build up provinces in tob? as alfred in particular
StashAugustine fucked around with this message at 05:55 on May 29, 2018 |
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May 29, 2018 05:52
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find the provinces with markets as their primary building and pump all your money into them. hey presto
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May 29, 2018 06:00
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That point about singing so as to get pitched battles is a good one, you can do that in any one of the recent games except that if there is no relieving army, the garrison is usually pretty weak once attrition has kicked in. The other thing you can do is siege with an army that’s just slightly weaker than the garrison.
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May 29, 2018 06:04
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another option is to play on legendary where the ai will have full stacks roaming around wherever you look for you to engage in pitched battles with
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May 29, 2018 06:16
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StashAugustine posted:can someone give me a rundown on how to build up provinces in tob? as alfred in particular That's actually a pretty tough question! My answer is it depends entirely on what you want to do. You want to run relatively cash heavy as Alfred due to Fyrd favouring Retinue and Elites over Levies. If anyone is interested I'll go through tonight and run the numbers of rate of return on the economic buildings and see what falls out. I've just been going with the good old plan of upgrade your lowest level yellow, green and grey village buildings (within reason) unless I've got a Mint or unlocked the Market Fair chain.
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May 29, 2018 06:35
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nopantsjack posted:Re: DeI Whats a good strategy for defeating greek/hoplite armies? As Rome/Carthage, I always seem to looks 1k more in full-stack battles against hoplites than the other side.
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May 29, 2018 07:50
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Beefeater1980 posted:That point about singing so as to get pitched battles is a good one, you can do that in any one of the recent games except that if there is no relieving army, the garrison is usually pretty weak once attrition has kicked in. Pitch-perfect battles
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May 29, 2018 10:04
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My Imaginary GF posted:Whats a good strategy for defeating greek/hoplite armies? As Rome/Carthage, I always seem to looks 1k more in full-stack battles against hoplites than the other side. I find Rome v Greek battles kinda tough until you get reform troops, the answer for hoplites is always cycle charge them in the rear once you've engaged them with your main line. Particularly using cavalry to do this, hoplites are very, very tanky from the front but take bonus damage from the back. Carthage should have an easier time since they get their own hoplites (technically so do Rome, the early Triarii act the same way they're just expensive) and better early cavalry than Rome. Ideally, as for basically anything you want dead, you charge them in the back with shock cavalry but Rome doesn't get them til later. You can recruit them early if you conquer a settlement in Macedonia and upgrade it to tier 3 iirc. That gives you limited thessalian cavalry who are very good at killing hoplites and pretty much everything else but are somewhat fragile.
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May 29, 2018 12:20
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Beamed posted:DeI as Syracuse is a special hell. Gave it five tries today and calling it quits, the Rome free deathstacks whenever you try to take territory are.. maybe not insurmountable, but close, while you have to keep a 2nd army in Sicily to fend off Carthage. A secret I learned as Pyrrhus in DeI (ROMANS HATE HIM) is that that event never fires if you just liberate Italy instead of occupying the towns. You can always backstab your liberated buddies after Rome is dead.
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May 29, 2018 12:38
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I despise cycle charging. It's always felt like the lamest, most gamey aspect of Total War. Not to mention that my general always ends up dying like an idiot when I use him to charge the back of hoplites.
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May 29, 2018 12:48
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Do the newer TW games still have high ground bonuses for melee fighting? I remember high ground being hugely important back in the Medieval 1 days, but it's hard to tell what the effect is in these later ones like ToB, and I never played Rome 2 or Attila. Like for instance, the cities in ToB have these big mounds leading up to the defensive walls: I noticed that attackers can easily capture a segment of the wall with siege towers, then push the defenders down onto that steep slope. So does that mean the defenders are suffering a huge penalty when trying to push up that slope to keep the attackers contained up on the wall? Is it better to abandon the walls when that happens and then try to form a second line deeper in the city? The game doesn't seem to tell you when a unit is getting a high ground bonus, or at least I haven't noticed.
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May 29, 2018 13:45
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My Imaginary GF posted:Whats a good strategy for defeating greek/hoplite armies? As Rome/Carthage, I always seem to looks 1k more in full-stack battles against hoplites than the other side. I get the impression you're probably looking at the enemy front line and trying to match it 1:1. They have 10 hoplites lined up so you have 10 of your own troops lined up. Don't do that. Stretch your lines out and maybe have half as many of your infantry engage the front and keep the rest in reserve to flank and encircle. Every single battle in Rome 2 - DEI or vanilla - should end up like a full Cannae type encirclement (disclaimer: i haven't player it for years but DEI doesn't change the basic battlefield AI of Rome 2 last time I checked). You can even roleplay a pre-Marian force of Romans and have great success with it. Keep your general near the centre of your front line but not engaged because the enemy will always blob into the centre to get at him. Stretch out a front line of Hastati to match the enemy line and have them engage from the front. Your hastati will lose that engagement but you have the triarii reserves that will hold the line when the hastati crumble. Have two Triarii act as reinforcements for the centre and use the other two to help your cav kill the enemy cav (keep that fight as close your main force as possible - don't go adventuring way off to the flanks for a cav fight and let them come to you.) You'll need the spear support for your cav because Roman cavalry sucks and can at best slow down the enemy cav. Probably they'll just charge their cav straight into the centre of your line though. If they do that you can just keep the triarii as a reserve and use your cav to go kill their skirmishers. Move your Principe to the flanks and engage any infantry that got around your lines. They will try to flank your front line so you can get an easy rear attack on any flanking infantry. Once you win the flanks move all of your principe and cav to the rear of the enemy blob and crash those two triarii you were using the fight cav into the enemy flanks. If your hastati line has held to this point move those triarii reserves into combat. Have your cav clean up skirmishers and let your principe unload all their pila into the enemy rear before charging in. The enemy will mass route pretty quickly from flanked and rear attack moral penalties and instead of just beating them you'll wipe out the army because they have nowhere to route to. Your army should be 5 hastati, 5 principe, 4 triarii, 4 equites, 1 velites (just in case of elephants while your pila armed troops are engaged in melee) and your general. If you have the money you can tell those 5 hastati to gently caress off and just have 10 principe ordered into two lines. This tactic will work against any enemy faction until you get to a real cav heavy and/or skirmisher heavy faction. Don't ever engage pikes (no matter how low tier they are) from the front. Just keep shuffling your line back from them until you've emptied all your ammo into them and are in a position to flank. The heaviest infantry still moves faster than a pike phalanx in formation. Pikes will derp out if they're not provided a clean front line to attack. Again, draw them towards your centre with your general and wrap around. Don't engage two of your units against one isolated enemy unit head on. Engage with one unit and move the other to the rear and sandwich it. You will win every single battle you fight doing this until you start getting outnumbered by like 4 - 1 (because then the enemy can't field all of their troops at the start of battle and your encirclement will be compromised by a constant trickle of enemy reinforcements coming in from the rear. Even then if you get that encirclement fast enough you can just pick off reinforcements one by one or reform your lines and repeat the process. It's really satisfying at first but after 5 or so times doing this you'll realise how limited the AI is. They will never not blob into the point of your line closest to your general. E: Kenzie posted:I noticed that attackers can easily capture a segment of the wall with siege towers, then push the defenders down onto that steep slope. So does that mean the defenders are suffering a huge penalty when trying to push up that slope to keep the attackers contained up on the wall? Is it better to abandon the walls when that happens and then try to form a second line deeper in the city? The game doesn't seem to tell you when a unit is getting a high ground bonus, or at least I haven't noticed. Never contest the walls. Let your towers and missile troops pick at the enemy as they move forward then move them back as soon as they reach the walls. Set up choke points in the city and get the enemy to blob. You can tier these choke points and have the enemy exhaust themselves by having 5 units fight one of yours before moving onto the next. Exhausted troops suffer huge melee attack and melee defense penalties. I don't remember exactly what but it's something like -70% effectiveness at exhausted. Funky See Funky Do fucked around with this message at 14:17 on May 29, 2018 |
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May 29, 2018 14:07
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Krazyface posted:Pitch-perfect battles I missed this and now I refuse to edit it as the typo is so much better than the original.
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May 29, 2018 14:19
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:I despise cycle charging. It's always felt like the lamest, most gamey aspect of Total War. Not to mention that my general always ends up dying like an idiot when I use him to charge the back of hoplites. depends on the game, in DeI its pretty easy to preserve your cavalry while cycle charging, just click and drag them out of the fight to position them facing the enemy for another charge, rather than just moving them away, that seems to result in a lot less cavalry dying while leaving the fight. its a stop-gap solution until you get a general with loads of +charge +melee attack bonuses and you can just crash straight through the front of hoplites in a single charge, which is the best way to play macedon. by the end of my campaign I had 70 year old Antigonus II obliterating elite hoplites from the front and dominating whole armies, he died of natural causes after killing at least 10,000 men over his lifetime
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May 29, 2018 14:20
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