How realistic are the total war games?
Could someone with a good knowledge of real life, era appropriate formations and tactics jump into the game and dominate?
I know the hammer and anvil strategy works, but I haven't played enough total war to test anything else.
The more realistic is Warhammer Total War.
And I am not even joking
>>1043836
>Could someone with a good knowledge of real life, era appropriate formations and tactics jump into the game and dominate?
Nope, I love total war and have played thousands of hours across the games but they are basic as fuck.
There is almost always some simple dumb strategy that always works all the time because the AI is shit.
>I know the hammer and anvil strategy works, but I haven't played enough total war to test anything else.
You don't need anything else in most of the games.
>>1043853
>There is almost always some simple dumb strategy that always works all the time because the AI is shit.
How about in multiplayer?
>>1043836
They are the best you'er going to get.
A lot of mods out there to make them near perfect in term of tactics and strategy
Too bad Sega has realize us fanboy will buy anything from them and they are abusing us.
Total War Attila what was supposed RTW 2.
Warhammer is what we always wanted on our list but not in warhammer universe BUT fuck it i already preorder it.
If you'er looking for a great indepth tactical game. You wont be disappointed. Personal Shogun 2 was my favorite
Well the most unrealistic part is probably the fact that you're an omnipotent general with units that respond instantly to all of your commands - which really takes any element of surprise out of battles, since you can always generally manage to pivot units in time and what not. The most realistic tend to be the heavily modded versions - Divide et Impera for Rome 2 for example - although this can be a little dull and time consuming, since it takes units a more realistic amount of time to grind each other down (20-25ish minutes rather than 1 minute). Ultimately though, they're self-admittedly arcade versions of warfare - not simulators.
I can't imagine Hannibal's strategy at Cannae working in the game for example, since units don't 'bend' inwards as they're pushed.
>>1043868
I haven't played the multiplayer since Rome 1, but I know in Rome 1 multi it was still about trying to get in position to hammer and anvil the enemy. I distinctly remember a lot of Rome v Rome battles where whoever won the cavalry battle off on the flanks would end up winning 90% of the time.
>>1043868
Check out PrinceofMacedon videos
Dude pulls of great tactics in multiplayer.
He's pretty fucking good.
>>1043891
1v1 more or less
its why you play 6 or 4 free for all. It's intense. Where you need to be playing to your faction strength and using proper tactics.
really far from realistic
you have an overview over the battlefield
your army responds to commands instantly
some of your units will fight to the last man
skirmishing/ranged works very very well, where in reality they just had an episode at the start of the battle or screened the main body of your army
modders make the units realistic
>>1043901
>pom
Lololol
>>1043926
On top of all that:
>Army is organized into 'units' of soldiers
>Who are all the same
>And only carry one, maybe two weapons
>Which are all the same
>And can be switched to immediately at any time
>Repeatedly, no matter how cumbersome like a lance or pike
Also most victories in a typical TW battle involve ridiculous casualties even for the victor that would have realistically crippled that army from any further battles.
>>1043930
oh stop dudes been around whooping ass for a decade.
He's a faggot elite who refuses to play anything other than rome era. i get it but he still good.
Not really realistic without mods but it's still enjoyable.
>>1043980
Things like DEI and TROM can at least make it a little more historical though.
More accurate units, better balancing, more capable AI, more realistic battle times and casualties, etc. etc.
Of course there's an extent, they're not miracle cures, but it's still far and away better than the released product most of the time.
>>1043995
Better illusions, but illusions all the same.
How about Napoleon: Total War?
Are they fun? Yes, with mods. Stay away from vanilla, most of the time it's too buggy and pretty basic. The only Vanilla version that I've enjoyed was Napoleon (because it's too scripted and not much can go wrong) or Shogun 2 because it's actually a good game and not meant to be realistic in any way.
You're not going to be executing any complex tactics since Hammer&Anvil works 99% of the time and just enjoy watching your toy soldiers hacking at each other until one side routs.
P.s. Mods that I'd recommend are Stainless Steel (for M2TW), LME4 (for Napoleon) and EB (for Rome).
>>1043836
There's not any real-life tactic that works for Total War, which is why the multiplayer meta resembles RTS more than a military college. Even hammer-and-anvil doesn't resemble the actual way that tactic worked, but instead is just a historical idea used as a coat of paint on game mechanics expanded from the RTS genre.
It's a facsimile, which is what makes the series popular to begin with. They were never battle simulations to begin with, but movie-like experiences where atmosphere and graphics made up for essentially a reenactment from your favorite period war movies.
>>1044039
Napoleon total war is possibly the most realistic total war out there.
Since it was a fairly easy period to research compared to shit like Medieval Europe, Classical World, or Feudal Japan.
>>1044039
I think Napoleon total war is the least realistic of them all. The AI never attacks in column, lines of communication aren't even touched upon and more often than not a bayonet charge will turn into a lengthy melee with the other side when in reality one battalion would likely break and run before the other battalion reached them with their charge. There's also hardly any skirmishing between the light infantry in front of the lines. But like the other posts said, mods can make up for most of these problems
>1:2 ratio of horse archers and cavalry
Literally unbeatable
>>1043836
>Shogun 2 ForS
>a war which had around 7000 casualties I think
>you can have that many in a single battle
>>1043836
>How realistic are the total war games?
They're quite arcade, but there are mods which go for realism, I am a Total War modder and we're trying to create the most realistic mod yet.
>Could someone with a good knowledge of real life, era appropriate formations and tactics jump into the game and dominate?
Against the AI you don't need much tactics, even though it's quite competent in the latest games, it's still easy, it's like playing against a 10 year old. You can tell theres a plan behind what its doing, and attempts to counter your actions, but they're pretty basic moves.
The fact that you have God powers is the main thing that makes Total War so easy, you could beat Caesar or Alexander if you could control your army from the air and move them with a single click instantly. It also doesn't help that the maps are usually huge with no protected flanks, making flanking very easy. Historically armies would cover their flanks with natural obstacles which rarely happens in Total War so you can Always go around the rear with ease.
However try playing against another player. Then it becomes more much strategic and fun. OF course its still about flanking and getting behind, or punching through their lines, but that is how most battles were won.
>>1044264
What mod are you working on?
>>1043879
I used to in a S2 multiplayer battle. Just before contact i pulled my centre back a bit and then surrounded him.
1-0 retired undefeated in TW multiplayer battles.
>>1044298
Ancient Empires
It's sort of a spiritual successor to Roma Surrectum 2. Heavy focus on historical accuracy and realism.
>>1044307
>Ancient Empires
Nice! Very much looking forward to your mod.
>>1043836
Realistic battles are just not possible in Total War. The best you can do are graphical edits and balancing "units" to be better or worse than others using arbitrary stats.
A realistic battle sim needs the logistical complexity of a Paradox or RotTK game while simultaneously expanding the concept of the battle beyond the usual scope of the 5 minute battlefield.
What's the best TW game? Roman Empire is one of my favourite time periods but I've heard Rome 2 sucks cok.
>>1044621
EU4 :^)
>>1043836
Incredibly unrealistic, they're basically fantasy games loosely based on reality.
Real life, era appropriate strategy and tactics can work, but it's usually suboptimal.
ROMA INVICTA
>>1043836
The numbers are typically less than 10% of what they actually were and you get a birdseye view.
Imagine a battle line stretching for 3 kilometers and only being able to view it from first person and it becomes a different matter.
>>1044621
Rome 2 is pretty good in it's current state.
It was shit at launch, but now it's pretty fun.
>>1044621
Attila or Shogun 2
>>1043836
Napoleonic war is the most unrealistic, but if they showed how they actually fought, no one would buy it.
>>1044621
They fixed R2 by now and DEI made it even better.
>>1044777
Why?
>>1043836
>How realistic are the total war games?}
I've only played Rome and Medieval 2, but not very. Battles are very short, often the entire action being decided after an inital clash and some flanking maneuvers, and often end with entire armies being obliterated. While this very occasionally happened in real life, most of the time, you'd be lucky if you got more than 20% of your enemy's forces.
This in turn makes it too quick and easy to gobble up entire nations after a few huge battles.
>Could someone with a good knowledge of real life, era appropriate formations and tactics jump into the game and dominate?
It's pretty easy to dominate without that crap.
I'm pretty sure OP isn't talking about AI or battle realism but more about the actual era realism, the name of buildings, troops, important cities, etc...
>>1045258
>Could someone with a good knowledge of real life, era appropriate formations and tactics jump into the game and dominate?
>>1043901
Spaghetti lines confirmed for not working well in Total Warhammer
I agree with everyone else here about the TW series unrealism, but one thing I would say in their defense is that they're a big step up. If you look at what was around before them, probably the closest analogue would be the Lords of the Realm series, which had that same turn based building game, real time tactical combat.
And in Lords.... oh boy. No morale, all fights are to the death, minimal bonuses for flanking/surrounding, you have 7-8 unit types which you can build weapons for at your blacksmith, 0 customizeability: For instance, Bowmen don't wear armor, hence costing no iron. You get a lot of bowmen, especially early in the game. Later on, you want some bowmen with armor to protect them from the enemy shooting back? Fuck you, we don't do that in this game.
Not to mention the feudal economy is vastly simplified, consisting of "How do you want to allocate your serfs in this province" and "How big is the castle here"?
So don't knock the Total Wars that bad, it's hard to make a game that's simultaneously a good simulation and a good game.
>Medieval 2 stainless steel
>Get 4 units of lancers plus a boatload of cheap pikes.
>1 unit of lancers left flank other three right flank
>Open battle with a massive rush
>3 units of lancers wipe out any and all flank protection the enemy has
>Proceed to charge whats left of the infantry with my lancers before the left flank falters.
And that is how you can win a tons of battle with little thought.
>>1043901
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfFNNLyAWGE&index=3&list=PLVw-VZKIsafvckLHXeu-qk096yKAOmeVP
I prefer this guy. his videos are concise and good like jelly beans so you can watch one and move onto the other quickly compared to the 30 minute long videos by others
>>1043891
Isn't that pretty historically accurate? I know that generals in the 1600's talked about the cavalry on the flanks winning or losing the rest of the battle.
>>1045436
How would one design a better simulation/game building off the lessons of both Lords and Total War?
Two biggest problems:
Units are willing to take far too many casualties before routing. It should be unusual for a unit to keep fighting past 50% casualties, including not only deaths but also wounds.
Ranged weapons are far too accurate. Historically something like 1 in 200 projectiles or less would actually hit the enemy. Especially in the Warscape game the soldiers are like snipers when you get the enemy down to their last few guys. Archers can even accurately hit units that they can't see because of terrain and walls.
![Army1[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/QV4649Q.jpg "Army1[1].jpg")
>>1044264
>Pikes in a line formation
Disgusting.
>>1046062
Well, I have 0 design experience whatsoever, so take this with a grain of salt: But especially if you want to simulate say, something in medieval times:
Battles should be less lethal and easier to escape from. I'm not sure how you could do this, maybe make it harder to issue orders, as well as making pursuit tougher. Probably a lowering of lethality in melee combat, although this will make battles last longer.
You should also make routing much more frequent, and "less intense". Unless and until you have hyper-professional troops, you're more likely to see a pattern of fight-rout-reform-fight-rout-reform several times before a battle is decided.
Armies should be much more expensive relative to the economy. Something like 3/4 of the Roman empire's budget at its height would be going to maintaining 25-30 legions, with the wealth of most of Europe to draw upon. Armies should be relatively small, and often raised for campaigns, disbanded when they're over, something you pretty much never see in TW games.
Probably some more stuff besides, but that's just what's coming up off the top of my head.
>>1045118
>Europa Barbarorum
I remember the first time playing the mod and getting rekt.... i was so fucking mad
Now its all i still play
this >>1045578
no one wants to watch you spend 20 minutes setting up your formations and a lecture about sonic the hedgehog
>>1045578
nice, yeah i can see why you like him,
man i miss the old days 1vs1
>>1046141
Apologies
>>1046164
I especially agree with the point of raising and dissolving armies as needed. That was the standard of every civilization with the exception of Rome under Marius and onwards.
Unless you have a fucking ridiculous economy, you shouldn't have standing armies.
I would like to see aggression checked on the campaign map. war weariness was a good addition to Attila. But very rarily were people at war for huge lengths of time, nor did they just bounce for war to war in ancient times.
>>1046469
>Unless you have a fucking ridiculous economy, you shouldn't have standing armies.
It wasn't just the economy, you also had enormous political troubles with keeping a standing army, the pressures of which caused quite a bit of trouble for the Republic, and probably precipitated the transformation into Empire; and throughout the entirety of the empire, Imperators were always trying to balance this general against that one, to prevent any from unseating him.
>>1046553
Yea but trying to accomplish that in a game tends to just get tedious rather than making it interesting.
>>1046604
I'm not so sure: I don't think it would be that hard to implement something where the longer your army is in the field, the higher your rate of rebel spawning and the lower your generals loyalties sink.
>>1046619
>>1046604
The trick is to finally move outside of the scope of both real-time strategy combat and the massive spreadsheet mechanics of Paradox style games. The former is inherently limited by the need to create an RTS unit like a halberdier, scale up his numbers a hundred fold, then group them together and hope the engine can keep up. The latter has too huge a scope with too much going on to spare enough memory for much else. The trouble is most people expect a certain level of scale these days, like a map the size of Europe with dozens of factions all making their moves in turns.
It might be time to take a step back and come at the problem from an entirely different angle. Maybe limit the scope of a game to a campaign season, or series of campaign seasons.
>>1046731
you could probably add tactical battles into something like CK2. It'd be very dull early game though, just a cripple fight between a couple of hundred peasants with a tiny group of mounted retainers.
>>1043901
>prince of mindanao
>>1045202
War in the napoleonic era was based on shock action. Read Paddy Griffith and de Piq
>>1044003
Gee... I wonder who's behind this post
>>1047110
kek
There are autism mods that make Rome 2 battles last like an hour in real time because battles were said to last days, and other things like that. Its pretty fun, and it looks decent.
>>1043945
For a youtuber, bring any member of RTK or HoS and they whoop his ass so hard he refuses to talk about it, if you want a decent tourny player and youtuber, prince of prussia is good.
>>1044307
Isn't that a DEI submod?
>>1044621
Attila by far, it is simply the most refined and in-depth installment of the series.
The politic/diplomatic system of Attila is great.
>>1047233
No that was done as a proof of concept in Rome 2.
Ancient Empires is going to be a total conversion for Attila.
>>1047233
We have a submod for DeI which uses the Imperator Augustus campaign map but with the 272BC setting.
But the main mod however is for Attila, changing the setting to 202BC.
>>1046755
>just a cripple fight between a couple of hundred peasants with a tiny group of mounted retainers
This is also an issue with the design philosophy of most war games. The assumption is that you start with peasant shitters and must survive long enough to build up your economy to 'progress' from there. It's a very RTS idea that's not any different from starting out with cavemen with clubs and researching tech and gathering resources to then churn out better units.
>>1044307
Holy shit. AE when?
>>1046164
This is the design we're going for in Ancient Empires. Units rout fairly easily but not off the field and usually come back under control, better trained units have a disciplined trait which further increases their chance of returning to control after routing. Routing is more like simply escaping the current fight to come back fresh, but of course this is a good time to take advantage of them with their backs turned. We're managed to make it so that a lot of men survive a battle even if they were the defeated army, which is because most victories are won by causing a mass route of your enemies army rather than annihilating him.
This is a battle i just fought, i won, decisively, my pikemen held long enough to cause the enemy to get exhausted and flee, with a little help from my thorakitai flanking and my Cretan archers persistent fire. I didn't have much cavalry, if i did i would have chased down more of the routing enemies, but even so you can see that a 15 minute battle (long for TW) which is a decisive battle still leaves a large enemy force that could regroup on the next turn.
>>1047482
Summer
>>1047759
H Y P E
Y
P
E
>>1047759
>realism
>female models
dropped
>>1047781
They look like Scythians
>>1047744
Do you do anything with rally points to create things like camps and banners under which reforming units can gather? I always thought it'd be cool if a battle was about having two command points that the other side needs to scatter or control to scatter an enemy force, but in Vanilla R2TW it didn't quite work out very well.
>>1047781
They're Scythians, the only faction with female troops, and its only on the commoner units.
>>1043944
No, each division ~150-200 men, van have its own weapons
>>1047804
Not in land battles, there's things like that in sieges i guess. Land battles are about routing your enemy though not holding certain points.
>>1047835
Why aren't the Egyptians black?
>>1048472
Why would they be?
>>1043848
Nice bullshit
>>1043836
Crusader Kings 2 is more realistic and even then you can play as the Byzantines and world conquest.
>>1048755
No combat and glitchy as shit though.
Plus Paradox likes to remove shit from the game that you have to buy back in DLC
>>1048764
Reminder that /gsg/ can get you all DLC for free, and it's just a simple megadownload and copying files into your DLC folder.
Also, reset your edition to pre-Conclave to get rid of that shit.
>>1046940
>shock action
Meaningless buzzword
>>1048812
Oh I already have CK2 with all dlc minus conclave.
I just don't think it's comparable to the TW series. They're two different directions.
>>1048472
Also, if it is Pontic Egypt, the elite units would have been Macedonians.
>>1043868
It varies. Infantry fights can get interesting.
>>1043925
This.
Three Byzantines vs mongols, papal guard, hungarians.
Ealy era,no armor upgrades.
HUngary cheated, upgraded his guys and bought chivalric knight and fucking pavise crossbows.
Pope and mongols both marches on the guy on our right.
I Send my cavalry to fuck up the hungarians and marched my infantry to save our right flank.
Shit got chaotic really fast. Luring the knights out with my horse archers sop my lancers sould flank charge them was fucking satisfying.
So was hammering my infantry into the mongol/papal lines flanks and routing most of them before reforming to kill the last 30% of them.
>>1048472
Because they weren't. Our Kushites are black though. The Kushite civilisation gets its proper respect and representation in AE.
>>1049004
You mean Ptolemaic.
>>1043872
>Warhammer is what we always wanted on our list but not in warhammer universe
Speak for yourself, I've wanted this since playing the shitty Russian mod 5 years ago
>>1045578
I remember when Napoleon released there was some guy who uploaded MP videos of himself exclusively using tactics that Nappy himself did (at least within the confines of what was allowed in TW) I can't remember at all what his name was or what the titles were but it was pretty interesting.
>>1047817
Are the city/town maps going to be changed, or is that impossible to do for the campaign? Main thing I'm worried about is that city "progression" was better in R2 imo than Attila.
>>1049918
Eventually every city will be unique, we are overhauling the building chains as well.
>>1044621
>The best TW game
Depends what you want.
Rome 2 has by far the best battle experience (properly modded), all units have abilities that can greatly affect the outcome of a battle.
However, you need to player on a harder difficulty than normal for an actual challenge from the AI.
The unit variation is also great.
The diplomacy is pretty simplistic, but slightly more in depth than the previous games.
Shogun 2 has great visuals, and the expansion packs (especially fall of the samurai) add a shit ton of content to the game.
It works flawlessly, the ai can and will challenge you on harder difficulties, and it works perfectly without mods.
Empire is my favorite, as I'm a bitch for naval combat, and it still looks pretty great 7 years after release.
The actual mechanics of land based combat are shit though, literally just make a big line and spam cannons. No real unit abilities, except some formations, and generals can't do nearly as much as in later games.
But you get to colonize America and India, as well as fuck around in the whole of Europe.
If you like the idea of colonizing the world, it's pretty good.
Napoleon was for some reason a stand alone, instead of just an expansion pack, which is annyoying, as it removes America and India but increases the size of Europe to compensate.
Virtually the same game as Empire, however in a slightly later time period.
Diplomacy in both games is shit.
Attila is absolute garbage when it comes to the battles.
>>1052306
>Attila is absolute garbage when it comes to the battles.
What a wrong opinion.
>>1043901
>prince of calvary
Not even once
>>1043836
There are some basic things which makes it really suck. First of all everyone fight 1v1 which makes it feel like any form of phalanx or formation is pointless and has zero effect in game, it's more just a simple rock paper scissors system where pikes beat horses, infantry with swords beat pikes, and so on.
2nd of one unit of 200 ppl move as if they were one. This means that if some horses ride in and fight right at the tip of your formation, the entire unit has to stay and fight and get stuck and can't keep moving.
And thirdly Cavalry doesn't behave like it should at all. Instead of keeping in constant movement and riding down foes and then circle back and do it again, they just run into the enemy and then stand and fight with their horse totally still.
These things have been in the games from the start and they really prevent me from enjoying them to the fullest.
>>1052306
Talkin shit, the post
>>1054663
The first 2 are false, the 3rd one happens sometimes but even if the charge halts it still does its damage.
>>1054663
>First of all everyone fight 1v1
only true from empire to shogun 2
>>1055083
this is true, I really should revisit the first rome and medieval but I'm afraid it will feel aged.
