My first was Rome. I liked it, played it alot and then picked up Medieval 2, which I liked even more, as I find the time period much more interesting. Once I found the Stainless Steel mod I loved it and played hundreds if not thousands of hours on it. I never saw the point of trying Shogun or Medieval at that point.

Around the time Empire was coming out I was ready to buy, looking forward to it. But the early word was that it just wasn't a good game, more technically I think than anything else, so I held off. And then I got married, had a kid and didn't game for a few years, but that's another story.

Once I got back in to gaming I was looking for a new strategy game and ended up getting Crusader Kings 2, and then Europa Universalis 4, which I love, as you might tell from the thread here at SimHQ. During the most recent Steam sale I decided to pick up Shogun 2. I've heard great things about it. And it is a really good game. Focused, polished and deals with a part of history I know little about. I love the art style, and the game just evokes feudalistic Japan. At first I was really in to it, but by the time I hit realm divide I was feeling sort of bored with it. Don't know why really, but that's how I feel.

So I thought perhaps if I try another game I might find it grips me a bit more. I'm leaning toward Empire, which seems to be the title that divides the player base the most. For many players it's their favorite TW game, and for many their least favorite.

Which brings me to this thread. Curious as to which title you like the most, and hopefully, why. If you can rank the titles you've played, and even better if you can detail why you feel that way I'd appreciate it.

FWIW, what made me gravitate away from TW games to Paradox games was I felt the non-battle aspects were weak. Diplomacy, espionage, politics that sort of thing. And in Shogun 2 I don't find it any better really. I've read many posts saying how good diplomacy is in Shogun 2, but I didn't see it, and frankly, realm divide made me feel that diplomacy was pointless.

The battles are still glorious, and I'm not expecting much from the other layers. But curious to know how others feel about the various TW games, including Rome 2 and Atilla. And if you feel certain mods make any of the games even more fantastic please share, like how I felt Stainless Steel transformed M2 in to a much better game.

I've never used any mods for any of the TW games. Having said that, I've been very impressed with Total War: Attila so far. The graphics are a huge improvement over those of Rome II but I'll also warn that it's a bigger frame rate hog as well. The diplomacy and family intrigue is a lot more complex and detailed than Rome II and the decisions you are faced with make more sense imho.

I enjoyed TW: Empire but I think TW: Napoleon is the better game across the board. You don't have any of the weird frame rate slow downs that you do in Empire and it's just simply a much more polished game.

I would say that TW: Attila, TW: Rome II and TW: Shogun 2 are my top 3 favorite titles from the series.

Thanks PM, it's interesting what you say about Napoleon. I get the feeling that many people regard it as a linear campaign that should have been an add-on for Empire. Narrow scope. Not necessarily a bad thing, but wonder why you feel it is better than Empire. The sheer scope of Empire appeals to me but not at the cost of gameplay. I understand your technical reasons, but do you feel it has better gameplay than Empire?

Did you play any of the TW titles prior to Empire?

One knock on Rome 2 that I've been reading is that there is little variety between factions. Is that the case?

I've played all of them except for the first Shogun and Medieval and Attila.
My favourites are Empire and Napoleon, and Medieval II. I really like the scope of Empire, it has a lot of replay value.

I'm not sure why, but I just couldn't get into Shogun II, and I simply haven't had enough time for Rome II to evaluate it [I stopped, for lack of gaming time, in the midst of the tutorial campaign) but I didn't really care for the "control point" system... part of the appeal of the TW series is trying different, out-of-the-box tactics and the "hold this area and then this area and also this area" seems unnecessarily constraining. But maybe that's only during the tutorial?

I played the original Shogun but for whatever reason I didn't come back to the TW series until Empire. I've not played either of the Medieval games or the original Rome.

There are quite a few factions in Rome 2 that are similar; namely the Hellenistic ones and the Celtic ones. So under the first group you have Athens, Seleucids, Epirus and Macedonia which all have mostly the same units and under the second group you have factions like the Arverni, Boii, Tylis, Nervii and the Volcae whic have the same set of units for the most part. I've found that Rome, Egypt, Suebi and the Persian Empire to be the most distinct. There are a crapload of different factions to play so even if some are very similar to each other I don't think it's a huge deal.


Oh, and concerning Napoleon, it has a really excellent narrative driven campaign game if you play as the French. I found that it really immmerses you in the game if you are a big fan of the history of the Napoleonic wars. But yeah, I guess you can say that TW: Napoleon could have been an add-on for Empire since so many of the same units and buildings are re-used.

Thanks for the replies, it helps alot. Another reason I am leaning toward Empire is that I can play as Prussia. 'nuff said. Although it isn't 'nuff said because it's probably true that they aren't any different than Saxony or Bavaria or Austria, am I right? Do nations have some sort of uniqeness in Empire? I understand there is variety from continent to continent, that is England will be very different from Ottomans for example, but is there anything special from say one Germanic nation to the next?

In the TW series it seems sort of a rock-paper-scissors thing when the nations are so similar. There's a bit of asymmetry to EU 4 which is part of it's appeal.

I agree with Panzer that Napoleon is quite a bit more polished than Empire, but since there are only five playable factions--England, France, Prussia, Austria, and Russia--it does not have the epic world wide scope or replay-ability that Empire has. Of course in Napoleon, if you play as Prussia, you do get Gebhard Leberecht Von Blucher as one of your best generals and no period in history can compete with the snappy uniforms of the Napoleonic wars. Consequently while they may play a bit the same, the armies do not look like cookie cutter versions of each other.

On the other hand, with the exception of India, North Africa, and the native American forces in Empire--most of the nations in have exactly the same uniforms--only differing in color for each faction. In other words the only difference in a standard infantryman from Prussia, France, or England is the color of their tri-corn hat and uniform.

If you like age of sail naval combat, you will get more of that in Empire than Napoleon since almost every nation in Empire has a fleet and there are also pirate factions raiding your trade lanes. In Napoleon, only England and France start with decent fleets, and it takes a while for France to try to take on Nelson's boys.

However, Empire is marked 75% off on Steam presently, so you can pick up the base game for $5 or the Empire collection which includes all the unit packs and the Warpath mini-campaign for $8.74.

I'd wait for a similar sale on Napoleon since it's about $15 presently and that's only the base game.

Too bad you didn't start this thread week before last. To celebrate their 15th anniversary, Sega/Creative Assembly had all their TW titles on Steam set up for a free to play weekend with all but Attila marked 50 to 75% off. Of course one might not have been able to try them all, but at the least one could have still had time to get a good taste of the titles they were most interested in.

Good Luck with your choice.

I enjoyed playing as Prussia in TW: Napoleon but playing as the French was the most fun since it was also the greatest challenge.

Oh, I forgot to mention one major new introduction with TW: Attila. The Huns are nomadic so each Hun army has its own self contained set of temporary buildings that provide income. You have no settlements as the Huns. You can either raze or sack enemy settlements but you can't capture them. Playing as the Huns makes for a VERY different Total War experience.

Well it's a certainly worth a punt at that price, isn't it?

So I did indeed pick up Empire, and started a H/H campaign as the glorious Kingdom of Prussia. So far I like it. Managed to annex Saxony and took Danzig from the Commonwealth. Then Kurland/Courland declared on me and that's where it stands. I suspect Austria will be invading soon and they have many allies so I need to figure out how to appease them. Don't really have a clue how to go about diplomacy, I hope it's not just a matter of paying them repeatedly.

I like the battle layer, especially the maps and the pace. It's somewhat slower and more tactical than say Shogun 2.

Only thing I can think of that I don't care for is replenishment. That will get old quickly.

Ah right. That's where you have to select and pay for the units that you want to replenish. I agree that it was a pain.

I guess the best thing to do is just drag unit cards to fill them out and choose to replenish the one left understrength.

I think the problem with that is that it dilutes any units you may have with veterancy (experience ranks). If the units are green with no experience then merging the units has no drawbacks.

Yes you're right, but I assumed that replenishment would have the same effect. Do you know if it does?

No it doesn't. In the real world it should make a difference but in the game it doesn't.

Ahh thanks PM, that helps, and I will use replenishment to keep the veterancy. Appreciated.

Rome 2. closely followed by TW Napoleon...

What is it about Rome 2 that puts it at the top of your list?

I love that period... the republic in the time of Caesar, and the early Imperial times, as opposed to the later times of Attila. which doesn't interest me at all.
It's a game, it's not perfect, and I know the 'experten' out there gnashed their teeth and cried about it, but I don't care much about what the so called experts said what it should do and how it was released etc, but I have had no problem with it

It's been my experience that if you have a genuine academic interest in the historical period in question then that will contribute greatly to your enjoyment of the Total War title that covers that period.

What fascinates me about TW: Attila is that it covers a period when complete and widespread chaos swept across Europe and how a crumbling Western Roman Empire was desperately trying to stay together while an opportunist Eastern Roman Empire flourished.

So you purchased Empire DBond. Good choice as it is one of my favorite periods. I suggest you play vanilla to get the feel of it and then move to Darthmod. You will be glad that you did.

Here is a link:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?1126-DarthMod-Empire

Thanks Trooper for the reply. I think Panzer nailed it on the head. That applies to me, certainly. As fondly as I remember the first Rome, it isn't as interesting a time period, to me, as the middle ages or the renaissance are. It's been many years since I played Rome, probably 2005 or so. I do remember how much I liked the music that played on the campaign map though. So soothing.

Thanks Barkhorn. I will do exactly that. Or I will see what I would maybe like to be different and see what mod is best. But I know Darthmods are popular for most TW titles. BTW, are you the Barkhorn that flew with JG3 when Il-2 first came out?

No that was not me w/ JG3. And you can't go wrong w/ DarthMod. Here are some of the changes:
- Better Camp. AI
- 2/3/4 turns per year option
- Diplomacy that actually makes some sense
- Better Camp. atmosphere
- Mo money to start
- More unit variety for each faction - about a dozen new units for Prussia w/ their uniforms modeled in battle
- Better Battle AI
- Weapons effects tweaked
- Awesome smoke effects
- Individual fife music for the major powers - Hohenfriedberg march for Prussia

Cool, thanks for the info. It will take a me a little while to discover what I would like to change. But those changes seem reasonable and useful.

Even playing just a few hours last night I'd say that Empire has taken over the second spot in my list behind only M2 with Stainless Steel, and could easily vault to the top spot as I get deeper into the campaign. But then again I would have said that about Shogun 2 a week or two ago.

As it stands I'd rank my TW experience as

1. Medieval 2
2. Empire
3. Shogun 2
4. Rome

All good games, regardless of their position in the list, and as PM alluded to probably due at least in part to my preference for the time periods.

Shogun II (FotS only)
Napoleon

Short answer, I like the gunpowder era better. I actually played Empire more than the other two combined, but it has a lot of bugs/issues that prevents me from giving it a strong recommendation.

I play cooperative campaigns a lot so that feature is very important to me so one major disappointment for me with TW: Napoleon is that it does not have a coop campaign mode. I've played cooperative campaigns in Shogun 2, Rome 2 and Attila and they are a crapload of fun.

What's co-op mode? Two players playing the same nation?

Still enjoying Empire. Have to say it's very challenging. I don't know how many turn in I am, but probably 30ish. There has been exactly one turn we have not been at war, the first one. The rest of the time we have been at war with multiple nations. Courland, Poland (twice), Westphalia, Bavaria, Austria and freakin' England have all declared on poor old Prussia. We've been at war with England a long time, without having fought at all and they won't make peace.

The net effect is I have a decent professional army and usually prevail on the battlefield, but I spend virtually all of my money refitting regiments and repairing damage from raids and sieges. My economy isn't progressing, I haven't been able to build anything aside from a church or two.

So it's a campaign finely balance on a knife's edge. We have expanded (Prague, Warsaw for example), but if say France attacks, or if England actually gets around to it I don't think we'd survive. It's probably normal for Prussia in Empire, but it's by far the busiest TW game I've had.

No, each player plays a different faction/nation but work together to achieve the campaign mission objectives. The two players are permanent allies.

By the way, what difficulty are you playing your Empire campaign on? I don't play on anything above "normal" because the AI get cheats and bonuses on anything above "normal". I want to play against AI that is truly intelligent and not AI that simply get bonuses and cheats to their economy and unit stats.

OK that makes sense about the co-op and does sound fun.

This campaign is on Hard/Hard. And it's not the battles that are causing me grief, it's the campaign AI. Bunch of backstabbing sneaky warmongers, they are.

Not only do the AI get cheats on "Hard" but they are also overly-aggressive with diplomacy. In other words, even if it makes no sense and it wont further their own interests, the AI will often still declare war on you.

Yep, and it's always been that way with the TW series. H/H is what I've always used to get a decent game. I think this is more a case of Prussia's location, surrounded as they are by scoundrels and miscreants.

I obviously love the TW series but there have always been a few aspects of AI behavior that have annnoyed me like,


1. Even though an AI nation is at war with a ton of other nations, that AI will still send all of its forces against YOU. It's pretty obvious that the AI in Total War know which faction is being played by the human player.


2. At times an AI faction will declare war on you and then on your very next turn they will give you peace if you ask them for it. WTF??


3. And of course the siege AI has always been rather poor. My favorite is in TW: Attila where the enemy AI will charge its cavalry general unit straight into my entrenched and defending pikemen. LOL

Yes, the AI could use some work, but it's always been like that hasn't it? Like in Shogun 2 you could make the enemy AI chase your cavalry all over the map, exhausting them while you attack the rest of their troops piecemeal. Though I will say the siege AI is alot better in Empire than it was in M2.

As for the war then peace I haven't seen that so far in Empire. Having a very difficult time making peace with anyone.

Hate to sound like a broke record here but Darthmod does fix a lot of the silly diplomacy issues.

Thanks Barkhorn, can mods be installed without issues mid-game? Is it done through Steam workshop?

No and no for Darthmod Empire - too many changes. DME has it's own launcher where you can set many variables and manage sub mods should you choose to install them - I didn't. And you can go back to vanilla if you wish as well. Just make sure you launch Steam before DME and you will have no issues.

OK thanks. Don't really want to start over at the mo, I've overcome my initial inertia and expanded quite a bit. But the main reason is I don't want to start over with new generals. I've always enjoyed the traits system in TW games. In Empire it seems to be all positive traits, so no more drunken, incestual, hunchbacks with a lisp and +5 to command, but I enjoy developing them and grow attached to them. And when playing Prussia on H/H believe me there is a lot of fighting! and the generals become amazing. Only negative trait I've seen is Bloody, which is just -1 to morale.

I'm currently playing 3 campaigns right now. One in Napoleon, one in Rome 2 and one in Attila.

I have been playing Empire again, too. I usually play as Britain, so not a terrible challenge, but it really is very fun. I enjoy the period, and the multiple theaters and trade zones are neat. Particularly fun to me are the naval battles and trying to establish dominance of the seas. I think I am on turn 40 or so and basically just trying to conquer enough territory to win. Not much challenge left in this one. I may try DarthMod once I am done. Have actually never played a modded TW title.

My favorite nation to play as in Empire is definitely Prussia. Tons and tons of land combat from pretty much turn 1 and you don't have to worry about building a navy. You can just get Britain as an ally and have them take care of that.

Guys - and I can't stress this enough - if you already like Empire vanilla then I'm tellin' ya that Darthod is like vanilla x 5!1!1

Just get it already.

Oh, I just remembered another complaint of mine with the Total War games and ALL of them do this.


Shattered, retreating infantry units somehow always manage to run faster than my confident and victorious infantry units. I think Creative Assembly does that on purpose in order to force you to use cavalry to chase down retreating enemy units.

In Shogun 2 there is a tech that increases run speed. So I imagine if you have it and the enemy doesn't you might catch up, eventually.

About your Prussia comments I agree, aside from the England bit. I'm around 1730 and have built but a single ship, just to quickly move troops about my realm. I could use a navy, but can't afford it. War with Sweden means blockades, and I have no means to counter it. England is my ally, but they never send any ships in to the Baltic. Matter of fact I have yet to see any of my allies do anything to help aside from attacking enemies that happen to enter their homeland.

Earlier you mentioned the inexplicable slowdowns in Empire. Was it on the campaign map? I ask because I got this too, but only when trying a non-native resolution (I also tried hardware shadows, but turned that off and returned to native res and it was smooth again)

Yes, the slowdowns almost always happened in the campaign map. I was using the correct resolution for my monitor but I may have also b een using hardware shadows.

By the way, your military allies in Attila work really great. They will often actually attack an army or city that you have designated as a mutual war target. In Empire and Napoleon though forget it. Your military allies don't do crap.

This discussion has me kind of itching to play both Empire and Napoleon again. I played them both sometime late last year, but several months ago had to re-install my OS due to some issues and since haven't re-installed either game.

I did have a few minor mods installed for both,and hope I retained them on my external hard drive. For both games I had alternative music and most importantly had a no weather mod for both. Since the Steam mod workshop doesn't function with those games, it is not quite as easy to find and apply various small mods.

Cheers

I actually never noticed those campaign map slowdowns until my latest game. It is frustrating and always happens to me along the East coast of North America.

I have really been enjoying Britain's naval superiority this time around. Have gotten into some downright slug-fests with the Spanish but, unfortunately, I am almost out of adversaries now. I never usually finish Total War campaigns because of this, but I am dedicated to completing this one, lol.

Never cared for DarthMod. Too many changes were plain arbitrary, and I never felt his tactical AI mods actually made the AI any harder (not really his fault, other than that he claimed it did).

I'm not a programmer but I also realize that it is very difficult to create a truly intelligent AI so I still enjoy the TW games a lot even with the AI limitations.

It just bugs me that playing a TW campaign on a higher difficulty just means that the AI get extra stat bonuses to their morale and you get less money and higher public order penalties. They're all just arbitrary changes.

I'm enjoying Empire. What stands out for me in comparison to other TW games I've played are the battles. In other TW games, where the armies are mostly melee, it was a matter of smashing my formation in to the enemy formation and getting cavalry around behind. The gunpowder armies in Empire though makes it, for me, much more tactical. I'm much more aware of terrain, and trying to use it to my advantage. I spend much more time maneuvering my regiments as well. Bottom line is the battles in Empire are the most enjoyable and interesting of the TW titles I've played. Total war is apt, there has been no peace and little diplomacy. These were always my complaints about TW series, and I won't draw comparisons with EU IV, but the fun battles make up for the campaign shortcomings.

The campaign AI and campaign in general is much the same as all of the others for me. I sort of wish I hadn't chosen hard campaign AI. Everyone is so aggressive toward me, and as PM I believe mentioned earlier, seem to focus only on me. It makes it challenging, but also difficult to develop my nation from an infrastructure and economic standpoint. We seem to be miles ahead in tech, but all the AI nations are far advanced in buildings. I guess it 's because they get more money while I spend most of mine on refit and repair. The upshot it that expanding nets me better cities than I had already.

I do sort of miss the Medieval 2 system of military castles and civilian towns. I liked being able to build armies in a single location, as opposed to recruiting artillery in Prague, cavalry in Vienna and infantry in Berlin. But it's the same in Shogun 2 of course.

I'm glad I picked it up, it's fun, if a bit over the top with non-stop warfare, but ignoring that, probably the most fun I've had in the TW series.

What's interesting is that if you look at the history of the 18th century, the major powers of Europe were at war not quite non-stop but close to it!


Let's see,


War of the Spanish Succession
War of the Austrian Succession
Seven Year's War/French-Indian War
American Revolutionary War
French Revolutionary wars
Great Northern War


And I'm sure I'm forgetting a few others.

That's true of course. In my game what I'm finding is that I eliminate enemies, there are few border wars for example, or limited wars that result in a province changing hands and both sides calling it a day. In this Prussia game I could only eradicate Poland. They would not accept any peace deal even when they were down to their last province, which happened to be Constantinople. So now they are relegated to to history. But at some point they should have been eager for peace. I've avoided making comparisons to EU IV, but this area is one where it's miles ahead. AI nations factor in besieged and occupied territory, relative strength of alliances, state of manpower, length of war, war exhaustion and much more when 'deciding' whether they want to make a peace deal. And the negotiation options available are far more comprehensive. You can choose to release sovereign nations, create vassals, annex territory, demand trade power or fleet basing rights, force religion, return core provinces to allies, and a myriad of other options. In Total War, it is indeed! Not that TW is bad, it's just much more limited, more simple, in it's approach to diplomacy and peace negotiations.

But on the battlefield EU IV doesn't come close to TW, and that's where it shines. And for those unfamiliar, there is no 3D battle layer in EU IV, it's all fought as abstractions using dice rolls. It works, but its nowhere near as fun and engaging as the battles in Empire.

Oh wow that is indeed dull imho. I do occasionally auto-resolve in the TW games though if the odds are overwhelmingly in my favor.

Yes, battles are not the strength of that game, but it handles most other things well.

Does anyone change government in Empire? I tried switching to a republic, but I guess I wasn't ready for it as my income fell drastically and unrest increased, so I reloaded and stayed an absolute monarchy.

I'm at the point in this Prussia game where I can finally start thinking about having a proper navy. From time to time I am losing serious ducats in trade, I imagine because pirates are raiding the trade routes, so I'd like to send out a navy to counter them and keep the trade routes open. Any advice on what sort of composition a pirate-hunting navy should be? Like what type of ships and how many?

I see some nations, Ottomans (my ally) for example, and the flag on the ship unit fades from the Ottoman to pirate and back to Ottoman again. Does this mean they could be affecting my trade? They are a trade partner of mine.

Yes. It means that Ottoman fleet is raiding that trade route. If you put the mouse cursor on the trade route line it should show you which nations are using that route. It is possible to negatively affect the trade route of an ally since many trade routes are often used by different nations. If the trade route line is colored red it means that it's only being used by nations you are at war with.

As far as a pirate hunting navy is concerned, it totally depends on the pirates you are fighting. The Pirates faction tends to use Galleons and Fluyts, for which you will need 5th rates (at a minimum) to be competitive. The Barbary Pirates use smaller vessels, but you shouldn't underestimate them. They often pack a lot of destructive firepower. I would recommend using fewer heavy ships and more fast ones to combat them. Any navy can raid a trade route, so the remainder will be dependent upon the nation doing the raiding and the composition of their fleets.

Usually, my best fleet composition has been to use a handful of smaller, faster vessels to chase down enemies, the bulk of my fleet being 5th rate frigates, and then a few of the larger ships I can recruit for firepower. Obviously, this composition changes slightly based on what I can recruit and my enemy's fleet composition. A broadside from a 2nd rate has a tendency to make almost anyone surrender .

Speaking of naval combat in the TW games, I absolutely loved doing the early ironclad battles in the Fall of the Samurai add-on for Shogun 2.

Thanks for the tips. I read about the different ships and decided that third rates were the way to go, seemed the best bang for the buck. But turns out I hadn't the right tech or building, so set about correcting that and built a navy of about 6 fourth rates and as many brigs. Looking at enemy navies though I saw they were comprised mostly of weak ships and were easily destroyed. But I haven't been off in search of pirates just yet.

So I hit 1750 and won the short campaign, and at the same time saw a marked increase in unrest. Perhaps it coincided with an enlightenment tech that further increased clamor for reform. I think I may try to flip government again so that my cities aren't always on the brink of revolt.

I was worrying about public order penalties from enlightenment tech, but I plan to counteract it to some extent by demolishing my universities once I begin finishing up tech research. So far it has not been a problem, and I am in the 1760s.

Yeah once you have researched every technology there's no reason to keep those universities around.

Damn progressives causing my public order to drop!!

I flipped government again to republic and it cured those ills,and changed my flag from Prussia to Germany for what it's worth. Easier to find my units now, especially in winter I think the first time I did it my lack of unrest was due mostly to repression from the monarchy. I hadn't built all that many cultural buildings. So when flipping to republic and losing that repression it caused me to slip below that threshold and resulted in unrest.

This time, lack of unrest was due more to cultural buildings and less to repression, unrest was mostly due to industrialization and enlightenment, so flipping to republic washed most of it away, and now the realm is very peaceful and content. Changing form of government caused a drop in relations with all other nations with a different form of government, but frankly we've been so expansionist that it doesn't really matter any more. I am also in the 1760's.

I've never bothered with changing state religion or government type in any TW game. I just never found the necessity or advantage to doing it.

Could it be that the player has higher unrest penalties in hard campaign versus normal? Because despite every effort to control it, unrest was an issue in this game for me. I built cultural and church buildings everywhere, as well as used dragoons for garrisons and missionaries to convert.

Yes, you get more public order penalties when you play on any level above "normal". That's part of the reason why I don't bother playing on any level above "normal". It's just an arbitrary way to make the game harder.

Thanks, yeah I should have played on medium, it would have made for a better game I think. If I play another one when this one is done I think I will go M/M instead of H/H.

The hard battle AI is fine. I know they get bonuses, but it makes for closer battles. But the campaign AI I think I should have on medium. The sheer number of battles I've fought has been madness, at least 6 per turn, every turn. Two or three on the AI's turn and then another 3 or 4 in my turn, both against nations and against rebels. Admittedly this results in highly experienced generals, and I have 6 full stack armies with level 3 veterancy on all units. But I wouldn't mind a little slower pace to the warfare.

Wow. Yeah, that is insane! I've never played a campaign in any TW title with that much combat.

Yep, things are quieting down now, but that's only because we've eliminated most European opposition. France should be the next to fall, leaving only Russia, OPM (one province minor) Sweden, OPM Austria (my very petulant Protectorate. As Prussia I just had to add insult to injury and protectorate them, even though I don't see much value in doing so, more of a role-playing thing), TPM Venice and what's left of Russia. Everyone else has been absorbed in to the Greater Germany Co-Prosperity Sphere.

I guess expanding in to colonial lands might be worthwhile at this point. As my navy is now growing, it seems the time is right.

I played the vanilla Prussia game until about 1775 and decided to wrap it up. Downloaded and installed Darthmod 8.0.1. Early impressions are good, though I only played maybe 10 turns so far. Too early for a well rounded impression, but I like the increased range of ships, the fact that any ship can generate trade, and it seems as though agent traits were 'fixed'. Now I don't know that anything was wrong, but I found it very difficult to train up my agents in vanilla. It seemed very rare to get any traits or increase subterfuge skill, even with agents that had many successful missions. In Darthmod it seems much better.

Too early to know how different the campaign AI is. I chose France for this run. All was going well until England declared on us and now we are stretched thin, but these are the sorts of things that make the game fun and interesting. I do like that the enemy AI get much improved garrisons to prevent me from walking right over them.

As for battle AI, I really can't see much difference. I like the smoke, increased musket range, new battle sounds and larger and more varied units, but I wonder about the author's claim of vastly improved BAI.

The thing that I really don't understand is naval auto-resolve. I'll give an example. I have a navy that is comprised of 6 veteran fifth rates, 2 sixth-rates and a couple brigs and sloops. Embarked is a very fine admiral with half a dozen positive traits as well as a couple ancillaries. The enemy is a single sixth-rate with no admiral. To avoid spending 10 minutes actually playing the battle to sink a single ship, I chose auto-resolve. We sink the ship but lose like 6 ships in the process. How does that single ship sink half my navy of superior ships?

The same thing happens with auto resolving naval battles in Napoleon TW.


I have no evidence but my impression is that there is an extra penalty for auto resolving naval battles in both Empire and Napoleon. I think the developers did this to encourage people to play more 3D naval battles.

Yes, I agree. Typical CA gamey BS.

Well that's disappointing. I had a quick look about for a mod to 'fix' it, but turned up nothing. In the Prussia game it really didn't matter because I had no navy to speak of until the second half of the 18th century. But as France, at war with England, a navy is essential, but I'm not keen on fighting countless 3D naval battles quite frankly. Maybe if I knew what I was doing I'd be a bit err, keener.

What really sucked is the coop campaign mod that was made for Empire because it didn't allow you to fight 3D battles. You could only autoresolve which meant that you needed to avoid naval battles unless you had an overwhelming superiority.


In TW: Empire I found a navy to be absolutely essential if you played as Spain, Netherlands, Britain or France. All of the other factions I ignored having a navy except for trade ships.

What's the single hardest campaign you've ever played in any TW title?


Hands down the toughest challenge for me was playing as the Western Roman Empire in TW: Attila.

Yep no doubt. My navy is more or less gone at this point. I'm in about 1710 in this Darthmod France game. I chose 2 turns per year FWIW.

I started off the game by attacking Savoy. They fell easily enough. Due to alliances I found myself at war with Genoa, so took Genoa from them. And then we took Wurtenburg because I wanted to expand the borders slightly and get their school. These wars resulted in war due to alliances with virtually every western European nation. But I didn't want to expand on the continent any more at this point, so went turtle and concentrated on the colonies.

But soon England DoW'd me and that's not good. Immediately they were all over my navy. They sunk both of the trade fleets I had just sent to Ivory Coast and my Home Fleet that was raiding, wish I had kept them in port! And then they landed a full stack in French Guyana, which has a gold mine that I had just upgraded. Yeah, enjoy the ducats you English kniggits!

And then they invaded my sleepy French Canadian provinces, one turn after I had declared on Iroqouis. As France I got a mission to take Michigan, Algonquin and a Cherokee province. Upon completion, my protectorate Louisiana would become part of France, so seemed worth a punt. But of course now we are stretched too thin, as my colonial army was in it's infancy and not strong enough to fight on both fronts. But we set about correcting that and went all Medieval on England's American territory.

In a series of close fought battles we managed to push England back as far as Virginia while also making gains against the Iroquois. Speaking of which, the natives can put up a hell of a fight. They really did a number on me in a battle that I entered with confidence and favorable terrain. We won, but at too high a cost. I think that army had an elite general who survived the battle and was later assassinated.

And then England accepted peace, good thing too as they were blockading my ports and we were closing in on bankruptcy. Relieved, I aggressively moved the majority of my colonial army toward Michigan with a view to sweeping through and then down to the Cherokee nation to complete the mission and integrate Louisiana, then Iroquois outflanked me and is now living in my former cities Philadelphia and Algonquin. Nice move you sneaky bastages!

And then Mughals took my colony in India. Oh well, less to worry about.

I'm really enjoying this run, thanks Barkhorn for suggesting the mod. These games are quite fun when everything is so finely balanced on the edge. When you know you don't have enough troops, enough money and you're praying that the enemy doesn't land another stack.

For me I'd say it was a Teutonic Order H/H Stainless Steel game in M2. They have the coolest units and headgear, but very hard to get going against the pagan menace, and then the Mongols arrived. Nightmares!

Apparently it seems that most TW fans want a Medieval 3 for the next release by Creative Assembly. I concur!


I have zero interest in this whole Warhammer thing.

Medieval 3 sounds fun. I really enjoyed 2. There aren't many time periods that CA have not already touched on that I would have any interest in, honestly. The only subject I would really like to see, that they haven't already done, is the American Civil War. It would probably have to be more like Napoleon because of the narrow focus, but if done right I think it could be really fun!

Based on how great "Fall of the Samurai" turned out, CA could most definitely make a really good TW: ACW but like you said, the main issue would be limited scope. You'd only have two playable factions.

Solution - have two campaigns, the historical Union vs Confederacy and a second fictional campaign where it's every state for itself! Maybe include a few Napoleon TW style mini-campaigns that focus on a single theatre.

Yeah, In Napoleon, I only really ever played the historical campaigns. I can't really speak to the grand campaign for that title. I got a lot of enjoyment out of the smaller scenarios, though. I really liked the way I had to alter my playing style to accomplish the objectives in a limited time and with limited forces.

They could probably do something similar with the ACW and get a good result. It would be interesting to see how the real time battles were done, since the real life armies were so much larger than your average total war army. I wonder if it would even be feasible to have correctly sized armies? As far as general characters go, there are tons of interesting and famous generals who could be represented.

If they broke the war down into detailed campaigns the relatively short time period covered would be less of an issue. I think, though, that for the strategic map portion to remain relevant it would need a serious re-working. Perhaps a focus on army supply and logistics and the resources that certain towns offered as a strategic consideration, and less on the general economy like in other TW titles.

I would love to see it, and think it could be done, but I don't think it will be.

I would certainly like another Medieval game. And the Civil War too, so I support both of those ideas. There is a Civil War mod for Empire but I haven't tried it. But I don't think an American Civil War TW game will be made. The limited scope will be a turn off for a large section of potential buyers I would image. I don't know how much interest there might be outside of the US. It could be made more interesting and challenging by introducing things like lines of supply and the narrower focus could be offset by new features and game mechanics. New terrain features like sunken roads, creek beds and so forth could bring a new tactical dimension. The TW formula works, but I would like to see a bit of a re-imagining of the mechanics.

As for Medieval, that would be welcome.

I was enjoying the Empire Darthmod run, but ran into a CTD at the end of the turn in 1738. Tried a few things to fix it but unable, so bought Napoleon. The campaign was getting a bit stale as we held half the map, so not a big deal really. Downloaded Darthmod and La mont�e de l'Empire mods for Napoleon but didn't install either one yet as I'm not certain which one I want to use. In the mean time I am playing Napoleon's Italian campaign to get a feel, but really, there isn't much difference from one TW game to the next.

The main gameplay differences between Empire and Napoleon that I remember are,

1. No religious agents
2. No cost for replenishing armies. You have to still pay to replenish navies though.

The biggest technical difference is the graphics engine which runs much more smoothly and it looks better too.

Are there any agents? I'm only 10 or 12 turns in but I have no spies/rakes/ninja.

It does look fine, I must agree. And you mentioned replenishment. I really like the way it's done in Nappy. A wounded army takes a while to recover, not like Empire where as long as you have the ducats you can have a full strength army in 2 turns not matter where you are. Here, dealing a defeat, or taking one for that matter, has longer term consequences.

Replenishment rate will vary depending on the level of road infrastructure you have in the region where the army is located. In order to get spies you have to have built the appropriate building. I think it's called a "gentlemen's club" or something like that.

OK, thanks PM, very helpful as always. I got a mission to build a supply house or somesuch that also increases replenishment rate in that province, but due to the nature of the Italian campaign, those provinces will soon be far behind the front and not much use.

What mods do others here like for Napoleon? I think the two I mentioned above are the most popular among the player base. I'm leaning toward LME.

I was leaning toward LME but installed Darthmod. Fired up a campaign as Denmark. It's tough. Big enemy stacks, and when I had a rebellion in Stockholm a full stack and another half stack of uber Swedish Revolutionaries spawned. Good grief. Wasn't ready for that. At least the stacks didn't spawn with generals. But still...

Seems a good mod, but way too much smoke. The smoke in Darthmod for Empire was perfect. More opaque. I will look for an alternative because I can't see half of my line once the battle is joined.

Over the course of the month since I started this thread I played quite a bit of TW. And having now played Rome, Medieval 2, Shogun 2, Empire and Napoleon, I'd have to say that Napoleon is my favorite. All of the games have their own strengths, but there are several facets of Napoleon that give it the edge for me.

In Napoleon I like that everything on the map is smaller. Units, cities, ships, etc are rendered on a smaller scale, and makes it somewhat less cartoonish. It has zero effect on the playability, but is more appealing to my eye. The graphics on balance are the best of the series. Well I haven't played Rome 2 or Atilla so shouldn't say that, but the best of the ones I've played. No news there.

The replenishment system in Napoleoon is fantastic, and I wished it worked this way in all TW games. On one hand it is far less micromanagement for the player, while at the same time being more realistic and strategic in my opinion.

I like the compressed time frames, with 2 turns per month instead of per year. Not a big deal really, but it means your generals live through the campaign, or at least won't generally die from old age. The compressed time frame also means religious conversion isn't a thing. Not necessarily a bonus, bit slightly less to micromanagement of agents, which isn't always a bad thing.

Experience bonuses translate on to the card stats/attributes on the campaign map. I could be wrong, but it seems that in other titles you can only see the improved stats when looking during the battle phase. In addition there is slightly more info available during battles, and you can see when units gain a level. Again, not a big deal, but another little thing that I prefer.

It should be said that I am playing with Darthmod, so some things may be due to that and not in vanilla. I find that the campaign AI is 'better'. By that I mean that allies tend to stay allies, and enemies are smarter about forming strong armies and using them better. In so many TW games the AI has many little armies running around rarely consolidating in to a full stack. I'm playing a Darthmod Europe campaign as France. I had been at war with Prussia, and after we took Berlin and Pomerania struck a truce. After a while Prussia declared on me again and sent 3 full stack armies to retake Berlin, but we were able to break them by making a stand at a river crossing. But the point is that the AI is forming strong armies and using them aggressively in the right situations.

Ambush. For what ever reason you can't set an ambush in Empire. But it's back in Napoleon.

This may be down to Darthmod, at least in part, but the units and battles are excellent. Until I played Empire I didn't know how much more I would enjoy battles with gunpowder units than I do with melee units like Rome, Medieval and Shogun. However, there's something I can't quite put my finger on about the battle maps. I love the terrain you fight on in Empire. It tends to be more open, with rolling terrain, and more elevation changes. More fences and stuff. I wasn't at Waterloo, but the way I picture the battle it would definitely be closer to what you see in Empire. Of course battles were fought in all sorts of terrain, but I just love the sweeping vistas full of gunsmoke that I get in Empire.

I'm glad to see that you have been enjoying TW: Napoleon. By far the most enjoyable campaign for me was playing as the French and then followed by the Prussians. I played the grand campaign on "normal" and it was still quite a challenge for me since as the French you are often fighting Austria, Russia, Britain and Prussia at the same time. When the campaign first starts it's critical to do everything you can to make Prussia happy on the diplomatic side so you will have enough time to build up your armies before the inevitable declaration of war by Prussia. I also consolidated all of my ships into one big fleet and kept it safely away from the British until I was able to build a few decent 3rd and 2nd rate ships of the line.

Yes, I've been at war with all of those, though England, Austria and Prussia are no longer able to annoy me due no longer existing. I made England my first target. In any strategy game I tend to try to fight in as few directions as possible, no enemies (or potential enemies) at my back if I can. So England was the first to go and has been a prosperous money making region with no attempts by the AI to land armies there.

It seems that the AI is not building ships, so we have full mastery of the seas and trade routes. That's a bit of a disappointment, but whether it's down to the mod or not I can't say. But on land it's been a fun campaign, with strong, fairly aggressive enemies, with an AI that actually attempts to use their agents (sabotage & assassination), allies that actually help in war, and a sense that diplomacy isn't completely pointless.

Do these mods make the agents less affective? I just ask because I've always felt that the spy/rake/ninja agents were way too powerful and effective. I mean really, one guy can somehow sabotage an army of thousands of men and prevent it from moving for an entire turn? I also think that the odds for successfully assinating an enemy general should be much higher to reflect how extremely difficult it would be to pull that off in the real world. I'm ok though with the dignitaries/gentlemen/priest class agents as far as their abilities go.

I don't know a way to know, but my guess is that they are not less effective, probably about the same. And your points are good ones. I'm just happy they are active and trying to do what they are designed to do. The agents were a threat in Shogun 2, but in vanilla Empire and Napoleon I never even noticed them.

I didn't notice them either in Napoleon until late in the game when a Prussian spy killed Michel Ney! I was outright pissed and quickly proceeded to wipe Prussia off the map over the next few turns.

This thread's two years old, and aside from the games that have been released in the interim it's still valid, I suppose.

A few days ago I started an EU IV run in Japan. I've played in Japan before.... as a very expansionist and colonial Portugal But this was the first game I started as a Daimyo. And it didn't go so well. Eventually I quit due to ahem, AI inconsistencies

But I had Japanese warfare on my brain so I decided to re-install Shogun 2. While it was downloading I remembered that I never played Fall of the Samurai, and I alos knew it gets great ratings and reviews, and many love the campaign. So I bought FotS and gave it a go as Samatsu. And it's great. Recently we were discussing a Civil War TW. FotS is probably as close to the Civil War on the battlefield as we are going to get. It's a particularly interesting technological crossroads, where swords meet gatling guns. I'm really enjoying it, although my closest neighbor and ally is running wild, amassing 15 provinces in the time it took me to get 8, so I'm not exactly winning.

But this FotS campaign nudges Shogun 2 further up my favorites list. Glad I finally got around to giving it a go.

I play Shogun 2 and like DBond just grabbed FotS over the weekend and indeed it is a great add on..Just scratched the surface on it but it was a good buy

Fall of the Samurai is an outstanding addition to Shogun 2 and if you really want to continue your interest in that era you can then watch "The Last Samurai" starring Tom Cruise.

The ironclad naval combat is really well done too in FOTS.

Is there any more news on what the next historical title will be?... I know they said awhile back that it's an area they have never touched before.

All they've said is that they are working on a DLC (I'm assuming for Attila) and also a new full historical title. They have not disclosed which eras they are doing.


Up to now there is no news in Steam either.

WWI or ACW might tempt me to buy another TW title.

Maybe WWI but I doubt ACW will ever get done since there are only 2 factions.

I think there might be a way around the '2 factions' problem, and that's instead of factions, the player chooses from divisions or Armies. Each division could have unique traits, for example one could have superior artillery, another better scouting, another gets better cavalry and mobility, and another better supply and morale or whatever. I'm not enough of a Civil War expert to know how plausible this is, but it was something I was thinking about.

Of course ultimately any division chosen is still on one side or the other, but it could add unique qualities and make the 'faction' choice mean something as well as give some level of replayability.

I remember now why I didn't give Shogun 2 a proper run....Realm Divide.

I recall that when I played Shogun 2, years ago, all was going well until Realm Divide, which as I recall at the time, I was not aware was a thing. Suddenly being at war with all my enemies AND all of my allies was not fun. I suppose if you know it's coming, it's manageable. But as I recall, that's when I stopped playing Shogun 2 and never got around to returning. I bought Empire and Napoleon and ended up liking both games and S2 went on the back burner.

So now I'm playing FotS and reached it again, while having forgotten in the interim that Realm Divide is a thing

Not good. Only about 22 provinces were aligned with the Emperor (15 of them mine), leaving the majority of Japan arrayed against me. In addition, at the time it triggered, 6 Samurai revolts occurred, leaving my nation in a state of prodigious peril. So I quit. I had in no way prepared for this, and while I might have survived, it would have been long and painful, and I know my economy would have crashed. I can deal well enough with armies on land. But the sheer amount of ships running about bombarding all of my stuff is more than I could handle. I can't afford the repairs.

So I reverted back 6 or so turns. Now I knew what the threshold is for triggering RD and I went up the line, but no further. Now I plan to turtle for 30 turns while I build up enough to take on everyone. What's the advantage, if any, of going Independent at Realm Divide?

Playing this game again reminded me also of why as a long time TW player I began looking for another game (which ended up being Crusader Kings and then Europa Universalis), and that's the terrible diplomacy. Oh man, it's so bad.

But the battles are fun, and nation building is fun, and as always in a TW game I like utilizing the various agents.

Of course Rome 2 also has its own version of "realm divide" whereby you risk civil war if your family faction gets too powerful.


One of the big pluses with TW: Attila is that there is no "realm divide" equivalent.


As for Shogun 2, you do indeed need to throttle back and make sure you have plenty of money saved up and plenty of armies out there properly deployed before you trigger realm divide. I've also found that marrying off your daughters to factions friendly to you will considerably delay their entry into the war against you.

That's a great tip about marriage, thanks. But the thing is I have no daughters, and even if any are born, the compressed timeframe in this campaign means they won't be of age (I assume they have to reach a certain age?) before the game ends.

Yeah, Shogun 2 (the main campaign) is 4 turns per year so it can be a while for the daughters to come of age. I'm not 100% sure but I think they have to be at least 15 or 16 before you can marry them off.

FotS is 24 turns per year.

I finished that campaign, a normal difficulty long campaign as Shimazu. Good stuff. The 24 turns per year means that winter actually means something, which I like. But it became clear that normal difficulty isn't all that hard. So, having had so much fun with that, I decided to start a vanilla Shogun 2 campaign (stock campaign) as Oda on Hard.

Oda has a tough start, at war with three nations and owning a single province. But what a great start I had, eliminating each of those at-war nations in short order. As I sat and basked in my glorious victories, another nation declared on me and absolutely crushed me with their huge army of space marines. I thought I was in great shape, but this huge stack of advanced warriors rolled right over me. It was like 12 turns in, how did they manage such a huge advanced army? Good grief.

I want to play again, but I'd like to mod it a bit first. Two things I am thinking of are more turns per year. Winter means nothing when it's 4 turns per year. I'd also like to limit (not remove) agents. Have a cap for each nation so that it's not just agent spam by the end.

What mods do others have on their S2? I think I'll skip Darthmod here, though I enjoy it on Empire and Nappy. Not looking for a conversions, just tweaks to make the game better.

There is a very specific reason why I never play above "Normal" in any TW title. On "hard" and above the AI get outright cheats with critical things such as reduced unit upkeep costs, income bonuses and morale bonuses.


In short, playing above "Normal" doesn't make the AI smarter in any way.

Yeah good point PM, but normal is a bit too easy. But hard is too much, at least for me, at the start.

I noticed the restricted UI option for battles. Do you play with that on? Perhaps I should give that a go to freshen up the challenge on the battlefield.

You may already be aware of this, but if not----Something you should note is that within the general difficulty setting to start the game, each clan has it's own individual difficulty rating. For example, Shimazu is rated as easy when playing on normal and Oda is rated at hard. Other clans are rated as normal. What this means is that the individual clan rating moves the general difficulty setting up or down by one level. Since Oda is already rated hard, if you played it on Hard, you were in a sense playing some aspects of it on extra hard.

Also once you have started a campaign, you can go back into the options menu and change or reset the battle difficulty under battle settings. You cannot change the initial strategic difficulty.

In other words, the difficulty you originally chose for the strategic side cannot be changed---only the tactical battle difficulty. I think this changes the initial experience levels of the enemy units and/or alters their aggressiveness. You can also add or disable battle realism mode plus reset the battle time limits after starting a campaign in this screen.

A lot of players play the strategic and tactical parts of the game on different difficulty levels based on the parts of the game that they want to be the most challenging. I'm lazy and rarely bother with this, but it's good to know that it's available.

Cheers

Thanks FO. Yes, I have it on Normal/Hard. (Campaign/Battle)

But I am curious about the thing you are saying regarding the initial challenge rating. Is that really how it works, or is it more of an indicator of that clan's starting position and situation as I have always considered it to be?

You want to have a super insane challenge?


Play the Western Roman Empire campaign in Attila on "Legendary" difficulty. If you can win that you are the ultimate bad ass. State of the bad ass art.

It's the latter. That difficulty setting has to do with the initial strategic disposition of the clan/faction at the outset of the campaign. You can easily tell right away as with the example in Shogun 2 where the Shimazu clearly start off in a better situation in terms of diplomatic relations and economy. I played the Oda campaign as well and the initial challenge was much tougher compared to the Shimazu.

No

What I want is a CAI that doesn't cheat much, but battles that are challenging, and I am OK with the AI having some cheats on the battlefield. But when they have a money cheat it gives them armies and navies that easily outsize mine in the early going. So Normal/Hard seems to be about what I am looking for.

It's interesting, when I played Shogun 2 five years ago, I played 30 hours or so, up until Realm Divide, then stopped. Now I've given it another go, (completely vanilla) and I've dropped another 100 hours and have completed a FotS campaign as Shimazu/Samatsu and a standard campaign as Mori. Something clicked with me this time around I guess. I've actually begun another FotS campaign as Tosa.

That's the way a developer at CA described it at some point, but like you, I think it's more as you describe. That's why I used the phasing "you were in a sense playing some aspects of it on extra hard" as a caveat. I should have elaborated that it probably had more to do with start positions, clan attributes, existing allies, etc.

Cheers

OK, thanks FO. Oda is 'Hard' because you start with a single province and at war with three nations. I was able to deal with all of those initial enemies, but then was hit by a full stack army of advanced troops from whichever nation begins just to the SW of Oda. My complaint stemmed from the fact that it was about 10 or 12 turns in and they had this massive force that there was no way I could have dealt with, especially having just fought three wars. So they crushed me. Compounding matters is the fact that vanilla Shogun 2 has a more compressed map than FotS, putting each city much closer together, and allowing that army of space marines to capture multiple provinces in a single turn.

Having started a new FotS campaign on Normal/Hard as Tosa, it is much more manageable. It was a difficult start, you know how it is when successive AI declared wars keep you hanging by a thread, stretched too thin and always one disaster away from destruction. Love that part of the game, or any strategy game for that matter. When the question is in the air the game is much more fun. But I've kept at it and carved out a nice empire up the the Realm Divide threshold.

Has anyone played as Tosa? They get a special unit called Tosa Riflemen. Wow. In 3D battles they are good. But in autoresolve they are ungodly. I feel like I'm cheating, they are that good. In one autoresolve battle, a single unit of 90 of these dudes killed 1800 enemy. I mean, come on. I would still be struggling to survive I think if it weren't for these units.


I was thinking about this thread when I was playing last night. Here was my 'list' two years ago

1. Medieval 2
2. Empire
3. Shogun 2
4. Rome

Now, I would like to update this list.

1. Napoleon. I feel it's the most tactical title and has the best supply/resupply model. I wish I could import that to all other titles. Of all of the TW titles I've played, I feel this one has the best combat. (I play this with Darthmod)

2. Shogun 2. Specifically Fall of the Samurai. Base game is very good, but Fots is even better. Interesting technological crossroads, and it oozes atmosphere, plus does away with the trade node stuff from S2. The 24 TPY in FotS is great and makes General Winter a formidable adversary or ally as the case may be. (Vanilla)

3. Medieval 2. Tough choice here between this and Empire. But I miss the old trait system and the commander/governor thing. I liked having to make a choice as to whether this city would be economic or military. And who didn't love the slaughter when defending those bridge crossing battles? (Stainless Steel)

4. Empire. Gunpowder is the sweetspot for TW games for me. But the scope of Empire is a bit too much. I hated the naval battles too. But it is still glorious on the smoke-filled battlefield. (Darthmod)

5. Rome. First TW game for me. Was great at the time, and still one of my favorite scores. I've mentioned it before, but TW is one of the very few games in which I do not disable the music. But looking back I see this game had some issues. It tried to do too much maybe? (Vanilla)

The music in all of the TW titles is fantastic with my favorite perhaps being Rome 2.


When it comes to the naval warfare aspect, Napoleon is hands-down my favorite. There's just something about First Rate ships of sail exchanging broadsides that feels visceral to me. The naval combat in Rome 2 and Attila is implemented ok but I'm just not a big fan of the melee and ramming tactics of ancient naval warfare. Also, the ramming is just way too overpowered in both Rome 2 and Attila. Why waste time trying to board ships and firing arrows when you can just ram the enemy ships and sink them much faster that way?

Yes, I agree with that. Definitely the best naval combat of the series. Probably the only one where I actually want to play the naval battles out.

I mentioned the old trait system. Does anyone else miss that too? Traits were gained by what the character did, or didn't do. They were weighted according to the town they spawned in or were stationed in. For example high level economic buildings could make that guy better at tax collection, or more corrupt. There were as many bad traits as good. I know the Stainless Steel mod probably added lots of traits that weren't in the stock M2. But I thought that was a better system than what we have now (up to Nappy, since I have not played any later titles).

The only thing I don't miss is the fact that in order to try to avoid bad traits, the player would have to move his generals out and back in to the town, as generals who hadn't used any movement points were more likely to acquire bad traits. I still do that, but far less often. In Shogun 2, the only bad trait I've seen is "Ladies Man" for -7% movement.

Attila is full of negative traits but I noticed that many of them are just randomly assigned based on some unknown percentage of likelihood.

For example, I've had my faction leader in Attila be rank 7 or 8 or even higher and he would still get negative traits from time to time even though his army has been fighting often and winning every battle.


Attila also has provincial governors and those will often get negative traits as well.

Yeah, some of those traits are so bad that you might as well put your general or governor out of his misery. I'm playing a campaign as the Eastern Roman Empire, which is not as hard as the Western Empire, but still a challenge. One of my well ranked governors just got the random trait of blindness. I've had it happen before to a general also. This means that the character has gone totally blind, which takes his attributes of authority, cunning, and zeal to zero. You might as well put them out to pasture at this point an hire a new officer.

DBond, you really should put Attila on your Steam wish list, so you'll get notified when they have a sale and be sure and get the Charlemagne expansion, which takes the game from late antiquity to the 8th century. It's probably as close to getting a Medieval 3 as we'll get. However, there is an overhaul mod that some guys are working on using the Age of Charlemagne expansion that changes the time frame to the 13th century. It's called Medieval kingdoms 1212 and looks quite promising.

Cheers

I really love the Age of Charlemagne DLC. Favorite factions to play are Charlemagne and the Emirate of Cordoba. The latter was a really interesting experience to play as since you are dealing with Muslim/Moorish units and buildings for your cities.

Yeah, maybe I will. I like the gunpowder stuff as I said, but I would probably still enjoy that, especially if the non-combat gameplay is more compelling or polished in some way.

IMHO, getting to play as the Huns is very unique and fun experience so I think the game is worth getting just for that aspect alone but I also have some friends who passed on Attila because they just didn't care for the historical period. Some of it has to do with the fact that the Western Roman Empire was decaying and crumbling and had already converted to Christianity so it really bears little resemblance to the pop culture view we have of the Roman Empire (ie all powerful, pagan, etc.).

You hit it on the head. The era, or time period holds little interest for me. But that isn't necessarily enough to make me not want to play it.

What I find is that TW melee combat is just a matter of smashing your line in to the enemy's line and then hitting them from behind with cavalry. The tactical aspect is less compelling for me. Perhaps I am oversimplifying? But a more strategic and interesting strategic layer could more than make up for it.

Worth a punt anyway, maybe it will shoot right to the top of my list.

In fairness, even in Shogun 2 which I am enjoying now, it a bit of the same. However, especially in FotS, there is a high degree of assymetry. I am playing as an Imperial clan, and the modern versus traditional aspect of the battles makes it interesting. Perhaps though, if I were playing as a Shogunate I wouldn't feel the same? It's easy to like it when my guys have the guns right?

There is something about Napoleon which I feel makes it more tactical. Instead of having two lines squaring up, I find Nappy combat involves more maneuver. It's been a while since I've played it, so I can't recall exactly why it's so. But I recall thinking that positioning and maneuver were more critical in Napoleon. I think I'll need to give that another go next

I see the point you are making and it's largely accurate and I think a big problem is that the AI in the 3D battles is pretty predictable. The AI will always put their cavalry on the flanks of their advancing melee line so you have to do the same to block their cavalry when they try to outflank you. I've found that it ultimately comes down to who has the better units and higher morale once the opposing melee lines clash. That is historical after all when you see what happened at the Battle of Pharsalus and later at Phillipi. The Caesarian legions were just so vastly superior in both morale and experience compared to the conscript legions and auxilliaries used by Pompey and then later Brutus and Cassius.

Right you are! The AI has always been, err, unimaginative in how they fight. More complex and unpredictable routines would go a long way toward making the 3D battles better.

So would delayed reinforcements. Wasn't this a thing in the past? Or maybe I'm thinking of a different game. If there were one thing that would make the AI much more challenging, it would be more intelligent use of cavalry. If the AI were smashing my line from behind it would be much more difficult. When I have sufficient forces do do so, I tend to leave a couple of capable infantry units in reserve, to potentially deal with this sort of thing, but mostly used instead to fill the line at critical points and junctures, to stiffen wavering units or outflank and trap a strong AI melee unit.

As it is the AI tends to move toward you until contact, often stripped of some or most of their cavalry and outpacing their artillery. On defense, the AI does a more creditable job, but that's to be expected, since maneuver is largely taken out of the equation. Again, I find this is another area where Napoleon seems to be better. I am installing Nappy tonight

Finished up my Tosa (FotS) campaign last night. Victory for the Emperor

After that, I installed Napoleon, ran it once, then installed Darthmod. Started an Italian campaign to get accustomed to this version.

A few thoughts about Darthmod.... I don't like every Darthmod. These are mods that incorporate many changes, and I don't care for the Shogun version for example. But for Napoleon (and Empire too) it is fantastic. The sights and sounds of battle are the best in the series. The crack of the rifles (who fire more or less in unison, with a few stray reports on either side of the volley), the smoke, the commands. It had been several years since I played Nappy, but playing again served to justify it's place at the top of my Total War list.

Darthmod also gives you more control over unit sizes, and the best part about it... the Europe campaign, which is a grand campaign with every nation, major or minor, playable. 40-unit armies are also possible.

I was talking earlier about how I remembered Napoleon as more tactical. And having given another go, I think it's largely due to the way the 3D battle maps are done. There is just way more stuff than most TW games. Fences, towns, hills, draws, forests and so on. It's rare that there is an open space large enough to conduct a classic TW set piece battle. The maps essentially force you to maneuver, or at least that's how I feel.

I really enjoyed Fall of the Samurai. And I thought maybe it would be my favorite version, but I had to re-acquaint myself with Nappy before knowing for sure. And having done so, Napoleon is still the top, quite easily even. It's polished and focused. The cutscenes and story elements are well done -- not that we play TW for that stuff. But it's striking how it stands out.

But the battlefield is amazing. And as I've mentioned several times in this thread, i especially like the supply/replenishment system. Attrition is actually meaningful. A skirmish has a knock on effect, as that army will not be fully replenished in a turn or two like in most TW titles, until or unless you build up the supply building line. In this Italian campaign my army led by Napoleon has been stuck in a town for 6 turns now, as they recover their strength. I should have opted for a supply post instead of that market

I had Napoleon installed as recently as a couple months ago and I played the long Europe campaign again as the French. I find the campaign to be too easy if I play any of the Coalition nations (Russia, Prussia, UK and Austria). Playing as the French is a great challenge since you are basically at war with almost everyone and your main ally Spain is basically worthless. They don't do crap.

Did you play it modded? I can't recall how it is vanilla, but with the mod I am playing I'd say it's still a challenge playing as a nation other than France. I am playing as Prussia, of course, and while I am not exactly struggling to expand, the challenge arises mainly due to the fact that all cities are fully garrisoned. So even after defeating the enemy's field armies, you are still faced with a fully-stocked city to assault or siege. This essentially means that any attack on an enemy province requires a minimum of two, sometimes three, of your own armies.

I think I recall you mentioning that you don't mod your TW games, and fair enough, but I'd be very interested in your thoughts if you gave it a go with Darthmod. Would you be willing to try it? Vanilla game-state can be reverted to with a single click.

Having played Shogun 2 for the past few weeks, I just gotta mention again how much better I think the combat is in Napoleon. I tended to use auto-resolve a lot in S2, and frankly it seems to heavily favor the player. I mean, I would auto-resolve and get results like 2500 enemy casualties and zero of my own. Yep. The same slant doesn't happen in Nappy, and partly as a result I play out a much higher percentage of the battles. Well, that and it's just plain fun. There's no doubt I suffer far more casualties in Napoleon.

Everything in Napoleon seems on a higher scale. New armies can be recruited very quickly, money is plentiful, construction constant, movement distances far greater. That can be good or bad depending on your perspective. In Shogun, it could take 20 turns to create a full army and get it to the front lines. In Nappy it's 3 or 4 at most. A very different sort of game. I did prefer the agent play in S2 though. It's not a strong suit of Napoleon.

I've only played Napoleon unmodded. I wouldn't mind using a graphics overhaul mod though since the default graphics in Napoleon look really outdated now.

Concerning agents the AI is very aggressive with the damn spies. The AI will definitely seek out your high ranking generals to assassinate them. As a result, I always have spies embedded in my armies for extra security. The gentlemen I use strictly to increase my research rate at my universities.

OK, so that's a no then...

It's cool, just was curious about what you would think.

Your comments about playing as a nation other than France being easy are true in the general sense. I mean, in that Prussia game no one DoW'd me the entire game. I finished that run and started a new run as France. And honestly, I dare say it's been even easier. Well, that may not be exactly correct. I've expanded much more quickly. I'm on turn 41 and have reached the Russian frontier, reduced Austria to two provinces, eliminated Prussia. Prussia was dumb. They just kept declaring on me over and over. So now they are dead. The Paris region is key. That province alone generates a ton of income, has a school, factories, well, everything really. No other nation has it's equal. Plus ol' Nappy himself is quite the general.

I have yet to see a spy attempt assassination on me, the only agent actions I see are gentlemen stealing tech and some spy sabotage.

I think I will try one more TW game before I burn out on it. Maybe Attila? Or maybe I'll re-install M2/Kingdoms with Stainless Steel and see if the nostalgia still holds up. If it just weren't for the damn Pope...

If you play Attila, I recommend you play as the Sassanids. It's a challenging campaign but not insanely difficult and you start off with a lot of territory but you also have some nearby enemies to contend with.

I may yet do so. I put Attila on my wishlist for sale notification. Last night though, I installed M2/Kingdoms. I saw I hadn't played since 2008!

I played about 35 turns of a France campaign and really enjoyed it. Great memories of this one. The comments "I'll rip off your head and spit down your neck!" Come feel the might of the Reich, coward!", "My sultan wishes you dead!", the music and the sounds when you click on stuff or build, or recruit are just great.

I didn't install Stainless Steel yet. And after playing S2 and Napoleon, it's true that the combat isn't nearly so compelling. But the strategic part of the game might be my favorite of them all. You'll recall that refitting is done by 'retraining', where you need to return the depleted units to a town or city that can produce that unit, and pay a small amount to refit them. No field replenishment like in later games. I remember thinking when I played newer games that the replenishment systems were better. Well, I'd say it's just easier, while losing some of the strategic gameplay as a result.

And as I mentioned earlier, the trait system is awesome. So many, and with little control over the whole thing. Watching your best general become a drunk, corrupt hypochondriac would not be good Of course that isn't likely since he's in the field supposedly crushing enemy formations, but you get the point. Now, the governors on the other hand...

Merchants are useful, but I quickly remembered that I shouldn't even bother with them until I can be spawning merchants of high level. Otherwise they are bound to be 'acquired'.

If I could somehow meld the strategic gameplay of Medieval 2 with the combat of Napoleon I would be happy.

Forgive me, I tend to post endlessly about whichever game I am in to at the moment.

So I finished the France campaign, it was a Short campaign and all I needed to do was eliminate England and hold 20 provinces, so not too hard.

While I played it though things started coming back to me, and I realized that I was missing much of what I liked about it last time I played. So I set about finding Stainless Steel. The last version I played was was 6.0. But I see that there were a couple of later versions, up to 6.4. So I found a good download link and got it. For those unfamiliar, here is some of what SS does.

http://www.twcenter.net/wiki/Stainless_Steel

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?417435-Stainless-Steel-6-4-Released!

Many changes, and the more game-altering ones are optional, so you can flavor to taste. For example, the recruitment changes mean that there are limits to how many of a particular unit can be built over a certain amount of time. You might recruit a Norman Knight unit, then need to wait 4 turns before being able to build another. It's a great addition. Not only does it serve to curtail unit spam (and particularly so with the strongest units), but it also makes each unit that much more precious, leading to more caution as units are not easily replaceable within a turn or two like most versions of TW. But you can choose to play without this.

I started a medium/hard Early Campaign as Sicily. I've always loved playing in this region in strategy games, not only TW but in EU IV for example as well. The location is unique. The center of Europe with a strong naval affinity and surrounded by a mash of cultures and religions, I ignored the fact that my banners are almost exactly the same shade of grey as the Rebels. I'll get Norman Knights after all! Well, eventually...

And frankly it's as far east as I care to go. The further east you are, the more likely and quickly you'll need to deal with the Mongol Invasion, and that's usually not much fun. Actually there are three main mechanics of M2 that I've never really cared for. The Mongols, The Pope and Rebels. The Pope is constantly putting the brakes on your expansion against Christian neighbors and is frankly a big PIA. Rebels are popping up all over, all the time. They tend to be quite weak, but it's a constant game of whack-a-mole. Good training for the troops anyway I suppose.

Got a fairly decent start, moving to take the rebel-held castle at Ancona, to seal off southern Italy from the HRE. I allied with the Pope of course. Once done with Ancona I would pivot my army south to take the castle at Bari on the heel. But surprise! While sieging down Ancona, the damn Byzzies landed and took Bari! Son of a gun! On turn 8. That doesn't happen in vanilla

Hmmm, I have 4 provinces now and the Byzzies have 16. Not wise at this stage to take them on, so I bought it for 8000 ducats, trade rights and an alliance. Couldn't have a potential enemy based there. Then I sent the army to take Sardinia from the rebels and settled down for some peaceful building. I'll see about getting a chunk of Tunisia from any rebel-held provinces and turtle for a bit. It's a long game (300+ turns), no reason to rush.

Anyway, Stainless Steel is fantastic, really. A whole new map, many new factions, units, buildings, traits, ancilliaries, titles (some transferable), mechanics.

That said, while doing some reading last night I learned that there are some newer popular SS submods, notably SSHIP and Titanium. Has anyone here tried either of these? I'd be interested to hear some opinions.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?2055-Stainless-Steel-Historical-Improvement-Project-(SSHIP)

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?605321-WIP-Titanium

Believe it or not, I have never played either Medieval or Medieval 2! The closest thing I've played is the Age of Charlemagne DLC for Attila.

Lol, I do not believe it. Well, I'd try to convince you to give it a go, especially with the mod I just talked about. If the era interests you at all, it's well worth a go.

Steam has M2 and Kingdoms for $25

http://store.steampowered.com/app/4700/Medieval_II_Total_War/

Just thought I would update this thread to let you know that Sega/CA is having a weekend sale that started today on all the Total war games.

35% off on their current Warhammer title, but 75% on all the historical titles. That means the Emperor edition of Rome II is $15 and Attila is $11.24

All the expansions are discounted the same. If you get Rome II, I would recommend the Caesar in Gaul expansion. For Attila, the Age of Charlemagne, which may get as close to a Med 3 as we'll see any time soon.

Cheers.

Link

http://store.steampowered.com/sale/ca30/

Yeah, I had it on the wishlist, got the email today and bought Attila with Charlemagne after I got home from work (15 bucks for both). It's funny, because just a few days ago I reached full TW burnout. Over the past couple of months I've played a hell of a lot of campaigns in Shogun 2, Medieval 2 and Napoleon, more than a dozen in all. But a few days ago I realized I was just tired of the 'chore' of managing a large empire. I was playing a Denmark run in Stainless Steel 6.4 for M2 and just realized I wasn't motivated any longer. So I moved on and began playing Mankind Divided which I bought back in February.

But of course today this sale came along and I have it now. My most recent TW game is Shogun 2, so I'm looking forward to giving Attila a go, daresay even a little excited to try it out.

I'd recommend watching a few Attila play-through's on Youtube for which ever faction you start with. Rome II and especially Attila have so many new features added to the strategic side of the game which no previous TW release has ever had--so it's easy to be a little overwhelmed if one starts cold. There is a prologue tutorial that will help you get started, but watching a faction play-through will give you even more insight to how the new province system and army structure works. It will seem similar, but building up your settlements is a whole new mini-game of balancing the negative and positive aspects of all the structures to get the most income, a positive food supply, and sufficient sanitation to maintain positive public order and growth. Population growth opens up new building slots in the settlements.

Also different is the feature that you can no longer recruit troops or ships for an army or navy without first appointing a general or admiral. The number of armies or navies you can have is limited by your imperium level. This means you can't simply recruit a couple of basic units to reinforce the garrison of a settlement or to shuttle troops to an army in enemy territory. Your only option is to move an existing army into friendly territory or hire mercenaries. All recruitment is tied to a general or Admiral. However armies can now sail over water without a regular naval fleet.

You just move them to the waters edge and then onto the water. They will morph into a transport fleet. However they will not be able to combat regular naval ships due to the slow speed and weak hulls of the transports.


The game is also organized into chapter levels based on the literary theme of the seven seals or signs of the apocalypse from the book of Revelation in the Christian bible. Many scholars during this time thought that the birth and ascension of Attila to lead the Huns were part of this prophecy. With each chapter you will have goals to accomplish that will result in bonuses to your treasury, but the events will also come with climate change lowering the productivity of your farms and increasing the turns of the year that your troops will suffer attrition from being caught in snowbound territory. However, you do have a new feature of "army stance" that will allow you to fortify in the field to prevent attrition. There are also several other new and useful army stances that include ambush, raiding, or forced march.

Anyway, I could write volumes about the new features of the game, but watching a few play-through's might be the best way to get a handle on it.

I started with the Eastern Roman Empire, which is rated as a hard start, but not as bad as the Western Romans. I probably restarted that faction at least 2 or 3 times before I got a handle on how to deal with the overwhelming migrant Germanic armies attacking my unfortified settlements on every turn.

I'm currently playing a campaign as the Saxons which has been totally different than any of the other factions I have tried. I did follow their historical path somewhat by running the Western Romans off the British mainland, but took it a bit further and conquered what will become Scotland and Ireland. Now, I'm off to warmer climes through Gaul to take Italy with maybe a side trip through Iberia for their gold resources. If I can wade through the Huns, I plan on assaulting the great prize of Constantinople and keep heading for the sunny weather in the south.

If you do decide to try the ERE first, I have a few suggestions that should get you off to a pretty good start and help you eliminate your biggest threat (the Visagoths) at the beginning of the game.

Cheers

I was able to win as the Eastern Roman Empire on "normal" difficulty without too many problems but Western Rome was a different story. I had to bump it down to "Easy" in order to win that campaign.

if anyone can win the Western Roman campaign on "Legendary" they deserve a fricking medal.

Thanks for the tips. Honestly, the Atilla time frame isn't so interesting to me. I will play it later, but I started with AoC and the Kingdom of Mercia. You hit the nail on the head FO, because I was rather lost with the game being so radically different from the others I have played. There is plenty that I saw that I like. In particular, the siege battles. I'll admit I rarely played out siege battles in recent times, just auto resolve. But here it seems much more interesting and tactical, largely due to the way the settlements are done.

I also like the increased (or is it decreased ) zoom on the battle map. I'm not much for getting the camera close in to admire my troops (and why I never have cared much about the appearance of units nor cared to purchase any unit pack type DLC). So being able to get a wider view of the action is great.

The rest of the mechanics and features I'll save judgement on until I have more than three hours in. Here's a quick summary of my first go at the campaign....

I had a look at both the Atilla campaigns and the AoC campaign, the various factions, starting positions and unique abilities. Not all TW games have featured unique faction abilities, but it's one of the most interesting bits. Anything to add some assymetry and variety is welcome.

I decided on Mercia, as I reckoned starting on an island would be good, as it usually is. It tends to let you concentrate on local matters, to consolidate your region, gathering power and then enabling the player to turn his focus elsewhere from a secure base of operations. But really, I don't know yet how frequently and competently the AI will use naval landings. It's never been a strong suit of the AI in other TW games. But we will see, and there are Danes out there somewhere anyway right? Perhaps they will come screaming, axes in hand, over the gunwhales at any moment...

I skipped the prologue and jumped right in (Hard difficulty). But clearly I wasn't prepared for all of the 'changes' from what I am used to. I took my starting army, recruited a couple of mercs and marched on one of the Welsh provinces to the west that Mercia begins at war with. Managed to deal a stiff defeat to the enemy's field army. Started building a barracks and secured non-aggression pacts and trade deals with Northumbria, Wessex and Charlemagne. Well Charlemagne didn't bite on the trade deal, but the other two did.

Sent my priest to scout further to the southwest, moved my army back over the border to replenish a bit, installed a governor, passed an edict, kept a couple thousand quid in the bank and ended the turn. Next turn I moved to siege down the enemy, began building a farm in my northern province and had a look about for any Danes who might be preparing to do what Vikings do and ended the turn.

This is where it all went to sh!t. The other Welsh faction raided my northern province and my tributary Kent declared on me.

Already the people were war weary, 3 turns in! And I had yet to lose a battle.

So I will start over now that I know a little more. I guess I made a mistake by not having a navy to protect against the raid, and had no garrison/standing army near London to discourage Kent from their treachery.

More tips welcome!

One of the biggest changes with the Charlemagne DLC is that having your provincial tax rate on the middle level (standard) now incurs a public order penalty of -10!

I've finished the campaign twice as Mercia and the main priority should be to try and get peace with one of the Welsh factions so you can concentrate your forces to take out the other one. Divide and conquer!

Kent is kind of weird because it's like a 50/50 chance whether they'll declare war on you or not. If they do declare war on you the best you can do is wipe out the Welsh factions ASAP so you can then turn south and deal with Kent.

I was thinking I could take the Welsh on in turn, as they are OPMs (EU IV for one province minor). I took out the first (Gwynedd?) in three turns, but no way I could take on the next to the northwest and also Kent to the southeast with my limited forces. So I will try what you suggest and see if I can get a peace with the other Welsh faction to buy some time. Frankly I think all would have been fine if Kent hadn't gone rogue

How back stabby is the AI?

I've noticed in Attila and the two DLC's that factions that start off the campaign not liking you (-50 diplomatic status or lower) or at war with you will almost certainly backstab you later if you happen to get peace with them. The worst mistake you can do is to get peace with that faction and then to move all of your armies away to another part of the campaign map. I usually try to leave at least one medium sized army behind so that I don't get caught with my pants down when they inevitably declare war on me again.

It's been quite a while since I played AOC, but I also played as Mercia my first two campaigns. It's been so long now that I simply don't remember a lot about them. I do remember that in all that time, the British Isles were never invaded by the Danes or anyone else, so I was able to play unmolested by any outside factions just as you have surmised. I have heard this same experience from other players on the TW fan sites. Charlemagne is indeed hard to get a trade agreement with, but I finally did at some point. One point that you may already have figured out has to do with the new province structure that has 3 physically and financially intertwined settlements with only one being walled. The A.I. will go out of its way to avoid attacking the walled settlement, so if you have an army in the area--always put it in the most appropriate unfortified settlement. The garrison troops are fairly competent in these games, so a relatively small force along with those of the garrison can hold off a much larger attacking force using the choke points with your troops in a shield wall or static testudo in the main Attila game.

If I remember correctly, it takes a while to get the necessary building to recruit cavalry for the Mercians, However, along with a few onagers, cavalry can really help with taking out archers, hitting engaged infantry with rear attacks, and running down routing troops, so you don't have to face them again. One can recruit merc cavalry in a tight spot, but their maintenance costs are so high that one has to usually dismiss them immediately after use. Also there is a long standing mechanic in all the TW games since Medieval II--- in that if your army has long range artillery and the enemy has none, or you just have more than they do, the enemy will become the aggressor no matter who initiates the battle. Obviously, even in field battles, managing a static defense and getting to choose the ground can be a great advantage. For this reason alone, I always work toward building whatever structure is needed for siege engines so I can recruit them as quickly as possible, which in turn forces the enemy A.I. to always be the aggressor on the field.

After taking all of the British isles, I avoided going up against Charlemagne, and managed to pick on everybody else around his domain to achieve the victory conditions. I think I went directly to Iberia (Spain), and worked my way along the north shore of the Mediterranean/. I don't know why I was afraid of taking on Charlemagne. I have a Kingdom of the Danes campaign half completed that I sort of abandoned for the same reason. I conquered all the British Isles, then tackled the few provinces not held by Charlemagne on the Normandy coast and then just sort of held off going up against them. I acquired another game about that time (Mad Max, I think) and just stopped with the TW campaign. It's been so long since I left that campaign in limbo, that I'd have trouble trying to restart it.

Playing as the Danes in AOC was initially was interesting. You get big bonuses for sacking English settlements without taking them, so you have to do this at first since it's your only source of income and then eventually capture the town for occupation The Danes also get a "restless Warrior" trait that gives them a large negative faction wide public order penalty until they raid and sack a certain number of settlements on the British mainland. After they take the islands, then they play like any other faction.

Maybe, I'll try to restart that campaign after I finish as the Saxons in the main Attila campaign.

Cheers

I had a ton of fun playing as the Emirate of Cordoba in AOC. Not only are they unique in being the only Muslim playable faction, but I also like the unique architecture of the buildings and other structures you could build for your settlements. The end game is also pretty straight forward. Just conquer all of Spain and you are good to go. No need to go into France and fight Charlemagne and the other Christian factions.