# Total War!!



## quantumtheif (Aug 29, 2013)

I have been playing total war games since middle school. I believe that in terms of strategy games the total war series is absolutely unrivaled.

My favorite total war game is Rome: total war (Julii are the masters)
or empire total war

Do any of you play the total war series? If so which is your favorite?


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## DarkFiBiro (Aug 29, 2013)

I've played a few of them but admit I've fallen behind with the latest ones. I still have Empire and Napoleon sealed in the boxes lol. I couldnt resist the sale prices in HMV one xmas, think they were a tenner each.

My most played was Rome, but I did play a lot of Medieval 2 too. My fave moment was when an enemy king strayed too close to my city and I just unleashed my full army on him and his bodyguard. Easiest win ever! . Then I executed him of course 

I really want to get into Shogun 2 but didnt get much past the tutorial sadly. Think my pc went wrong at the time and never revisited it  lol.


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## quantumtheif (Aug 30, 2013)

Empire is one of the best games ever, let alone total wars. Its proves that america and England are superior at everything. 

You should definitely give napoleon a shot as well.


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## devilsgrin (Aug 30, 2013)

Medieval 2 was and is my favourite Total War game. 
I also loved Empire, and Rome was quite good. 
Like so many others, i found Shogun 2 utterly unengaging... perhaps it was the small scale of just the japanese islands... perhaps even more same-ness than Rome... but it remains a "meh" Total War.


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## Dozmonic (Aug 30, 2013)

Rome was my favourite, though I didn't play the medieval ones. I didn't enjoy the latest shogun one, but I'm looking forward to the new Rome one


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## svalbard (Aug 30, 2013)

Loved all the games with Medi 2 as my favourite. Leading Milan to world dominance is up there as one of the highlights of an otherwise boring life


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## DarkFiBiro (Aug 30, 2013)

quantumtheif said:


> Empire is one of the best games ever, let alone total wars. Its proves that america and England are superior at everything.
> 
> You should definitely give napoleon a shot as well.



I keep meaning to lol. They do look like fun. I'm just wary of starting a game and just getting bored with it because Im starting it at a time when I dont fully fancy it, if that makes sense.


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## quantumtheif (Aug 30, 2013)

DarkFiBiro said:


> I keep meaning to lol. They do look like fun. I'm just wary of starting a game and just getting bored with it because Im starting it at a time when I dont fully fancy it, if that makes sense.



Yeah I get that. Sometimes you need to get in the mood, maybe why people play more fifa during football season.


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## nubins (Sep 23, 2013)

I cant decide if i prefered Rome Total War or Medievil 2 Total War. I spent rediculous amounts of time on both. Empire I enjoyed, but the battles became too samey. Shogun 2 i also enjoyed.. but it was too short, the battles were over too quickly and all the units looked alike, but with different colours.

I played the first Shogun and that was fantastic, but then it was the first of its kind (well.. its scale and kind anyway). Medievil 1 was also very good.

Rome 2... im enjoying it, it looks incredible. But.. it suffers from battles that are over far too quickly and that descend into a confusing mess of slightly different models mashed together too often as well. Defending siege AI is abismal and the campaign AI is still too tame, even on hard. 

They have started to address some of these issues, the last patch slowed infantry down and added a little time to the battles (still averaging about 8 minutes per battle.. im sure medievil 2 battles would last about 25 minutes on average and Empire was more like 40 minites). They also adjusted the campaign AI so it stopped churning out armies full of crappy cheap units that offer no challenge at all. Given a few mor epatches it may be a considerably better game.

Although the community will probably produce mods that fix all these problems anyway


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## quantumtheif (Sep 23, 2013)

Medieval total war 2 was probably the most fun out any of the gun less total wars. Well Rome only offers a challenge when you DON'T play as the Romans. The roman's are god tier, their mid level soldiers are as powerful as everyone's highest. 

If you want real gun strategy Napoleon: total war is where its at. The British are over powered in Empire (same with the Americans.), and so the most fun faction was Sweden.


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## nubins (Sep 24, 2013)

quantumtheif said:


> Medieval total war 2 was probably the most fun out any of the gun less total wars. Well Rome only offers a challenge when you DON'T play as the Romans. The roman's are god tier, their mid level soldiers are as powerful as everyone's highest.
> 
> If you want real gun strategy Napoleon: total war is where its at. The British are over powered in Empire (same with the Americans.), and so the most fun faction was Sweden.


 

I found Egypt a good faction to play in Rome - using armies that were 40% hoplites, 10% cavalary and 50% archers. Nasty combination


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## quantumtheif (Sep 24, 2013)

I play as the selucid empire. They are the hardest to play, and they are the furthest from rome.


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## Danny Franks (Oct 26, 2013)

Medieval: Total War.

The first one. I played that game to death, tried all the factions, all the periods, tried a fair few mods too.

Loved playing as the Turks, loved their unit selections and the flexibility of their troops. Futuwwa, Ghazis, horse archers. And then later in the game, you had the incredibly powerful Janissary Heavy Infantry.

But even more, I loved the Viking Invasion expansion, and being able to play on such a smaller scale, conquering just the British Isles with Irish Gallowglasses and Kerns, or defeating heavily armoured Saxon armies with a bunch of half-naked Pictish warriors. Great, great fun.

I've played all of the games so far, except Rome II (don't think my computer will handle it), and enjoyed them all. Each game managed to have a distinctly different feel, despite the similar mechanics. But I do think Medieval was the most balanced, and offered the most.


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## Boneman (Oct 27, 2013)

Please will you all stop posting about how good these games are??!! I'm still in therapy after being weeded off them, and I've got work to do!


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## Dozmonic (Oct 27, 2013)

Rome 2 didn't start out too great, but they've put some graft in to bring it up to par. I only tend to play it now and then, mammoth multiplayer sessions until the early hours of the morning with my cousin. However, since they improved the AI, we can no longer declare war on the African/East European alliance bloc and still win with just 3-4 armies


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## Boaz (Apr 3, 2014)

Danny, I'm with you.  MTW was the best.  So you liked the Turks.  Do you think they're easy in any period? 

 I loved playing as Denmark and Poland.  As Denmark, I didn't have to wait for the HRE to attack... I got to pre-emptively stab them in the back!  The Danish trading fleet is more awesome than I first thought.  And sure the Poles have relatively easy pickings to the east, but could I secure them before the Mongol Invasion?  

After the expansion, I loved playing as Hungary and especially as Aragon.  Hungary is the weak sister on the Byzantine doorstep.  Sheesh! The Germans and Italians, heck even the Poles, all want an easy piece of your kingdom.  As an non-crusading Catholic faction, the Hungarians can lose tons of troops to the Germans and Italians... and then get overrun by them.

But Aragon was the best.  You have to immediately battle both the Spanish and the Moors while not leaving yourself vulnerable to the French and English.  Should you buy El Cid... and what about Navarre?  Oh, by the way... the Pope hates you.  It's impossible to build a trading fleet because you must field armies.  And none of the Christian factions will allow you to marry their princesses... You're completely up against it!  And yet.... if you can hold off the Almohads and defeat the Spanish, and then if you can push on the Almohads and judiciously gain French territory while never getting excommunicated... then you'll feel like you've really earned a win!


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## Mr Fraaz (Apr 3, 2014)

I had great fun with MTW. I also tried a few excellent community mods for M2TW. But these are the kind of games I like to play for hours upon hours and I just don't have that amount of time to spend at present.


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## Brian G Turner (Apr 3, 2014)

Am I the only one here who never played the actual battles? I always had them resolved automatically - it was the overall strategy of tabletop conquest I preferred. 

Really enjoyed MTW:1, but took a while for me to get into MTW:2, and even then haven't played it anywhere near as much.


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## Mr Fraaz (Apr 3, 2014)

M2TW - as published - had some serious issues as I recall. To me, it needed modding to be enjoyable. Fortunately there was a really passionate fan community that provided all kinds of patches and mods.


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## Dozmonic (Apr 3, 2014)

I said:


> Am I the only one here who never played the actual battles? I always had them resolved automatically - it was the overall strategy of tabletop conquest I preferred.
> 
> Really enjoyed MTW:1, but took a while for me to get into MTW:2, and even then haven't played it anywhere near as much.



I always felt total war's overall strategy was really weak in comparison to, say, Civ IV. Civ IV's overall strategy with total war's battles would be immense and give the best of both worlds


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## devilsgrin (Apr 4, 2014)

I said:


> Am I the only one here who never played the actual battles? I always had them resolved automatically - it was the overall strategy of tabletop conquest I preferred.
> 
> Really enjoyed MTW:1, but took a while for me to get into MTW:2, and even then haven't played it anywhere near as much.



i always auto-resolve... maybe once per entire game, i'll actually engage a battle... but the interest wanes after about a minute of watching troops trudge across the battlefield.


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## Foxbat (Apr 5, 2014)

I said:


> Really enjoyed MTW:1, but took a while for me to get into MTW:2, and even then haven't played it anywhere near as much.


 
Despite the inferior graphics, I actually prefer MTW1. Only problem is that my PC just won't run it nowadays


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## quantumtheif (Apr 5, 2014)

I said:


> Am I the only one here who never played the actual battles? I always had them resolved automatically - it was the overall strategy of tabletop conquest I preferred.
> 
> Really enjoyed MTW:1, but took a while for me to get into MTW:2, and even then haven't played it anywhere near as much.



I tried my best to table top it, but sometimes the stat system is broken. Whenever the battle seems even you will lose 8/10. Also, with strategy you can win while being significantly outnumbered (the most fun). That is why I play the battles anyway.

MTW is the most realistic table top out of the franchise. Training, weapon quality, and troop type are all perfectly taken into account on Medieval.


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## Overread (Apr 5, 2014)

My only problem with MTW 2 (never played the first and it appears to be stuck in some legal limbo as its not for sale anywhere new). Is that the AI is a coward with siege. It never ever wants to actually attack; it will retreat from the siege weapons it built for hte siege it started and line up behind. Which means you either wait it out (and likely your army and city surrender later); or you have to exit the fortifications - line up and do battle normally. 

Granted the AI is probably being half smart - but its a nightmare and takes some of the fun out of it. 

Been having some more recent fun with Shogun 2! I'm also a big fan of the new ship to ship battles they've got (even though whenever it gets to gun-lines of ships I lose because - I fight wrong). Interstitially its about the only ship-combat game out at present, barring a couple of heavy realism (and rather dull) sims


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## Brian G Turner (Apr 6, 2014)

quantumtheif said:


> I tried my best to table top it, but sometimes the stat system is broken. Whenever the battle seems even you will lose 8/10.



Generally, try to avoid fielding low star generals against high ones - put your highest star generals into battle - and use superiority of numbers as much as possible.

Additionally, militia + spearman (and later pikemen) make for a solid army that tends to only suffer if poorly armoured and fighting a well armoured foe. 

I never found cavalry particularly effective in automatically resolved battles - they are expensive to produce and are easily killed off. And spearmen and militia are relatively cheap to produce, and all nations can have them - though they tend to be weaker under the Arabs and Russians so far as I can tell.

Dominating the seas, and capturing key strategies territories, such as Constantinople, Egypt, Flanders, Sweden, Venice, and Ukraine, will provide you with a strong income as these develop.


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## Overread (Apr 6, 2014)

Horses are deadly if used right, but yes you've got to control them direct to get the best out of them. Which means avoiding the spearmen! When the AI just number-crunches the auto battle it isn't trying to flank spearmen - or skirt around to attack archers/siege weapons from the rear.


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## Brian G Turner (May 19, 2014)

I do like large battles, especially preparing for them.

For example, starting out in the early age period, and building up halberdiers and spearmen ready for the arrival of the Mongols:













Auto-resolved, of course. Wouldn't like to think what hardware specs I'd need for 36,000 soldiers!!


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## Overread (May 19, 2014)

You should have tried it- at least shown what the armies looked like all masses up like that


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## Karn Maeshalanadae (May 23, 2014)

The trouble with Total War is, it's really just birds eye view unit management. I at least prefer Mount and Blade, where one can see the action up close and actively participate, or old school RTS games that allowed for the building of towns and resources. Slower, perhaps, but a lot more fun for me than placing down units and letting it go. Age of Mythology was my absolute favorite RTS. Played both the original and its expansion thoroughly.


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## Dozmonic (May 23, 2014)

The problem with mount and blade is that after a short while you become an ubersoldier with a mount who can gallop forever while you circle the battleground and fill the enemy with arrows. It is a lot of fun doing that, of course


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## Boaz (Oct 5, 2014)

Brian Turner said:


> Am I the only one here who never played the actual battles? I always had them resolved automatically - it was the overall strategy of tabletop conquest I preferred.
> 
> Really enjoyed MTW:1, but took a while for me to get into MTW:2, and even then haven't played it anywhere near as much.


For me, it's about perspective.  The first two games, Shogun and Medieval are played on the daimyo/king's desk.  As the supreme leader of your faction, you look at the map, give orders, analyze revenues, review messages, and send messages.  So unless you're fighting in your capital or a neighboring region, it makes little to no sense to take command over a battle.

In a battle, you assume the multiple duties of general and commander of each individual unit.... you're basically God.  And this breaks the sense of authenticity for me.  There needs to be some resemblance of command and control on a medieval battlefield.  Did your units set up correctly?  Do they understand their orders?  Will your ambushers appear when you ordered or too early... or wait for an even better moment?  The games try to address this to a certain degree (morale, ammo, fatigue, pursuit, rout), but mostly it feels like a click race.

Since I prefer the role of monarch, I always auto resolve the battles and hope my generals come through. I shudder to think how long a campaign would take if I fought every battle.



Dozmonic said:


> I always felt total war's overall strategy was really weak in comparison to, say, Civ IV. Civ IV's overall strategy with total war's battles would be immense and give the best of both worlds


The strategy of Rome and Medieval II felt more like Civ II, Alpha Centauri, Civ III, and Civ IV... because you're moving stacks around the map, sqaure to square, instead of region to region.  Civ IV's major downfall was the random appearance of natural resources like rubber, oil, and uranium.  I like the Persians (Scientific, Industrious... I think).  I try to avoid lengthy conflicts until I can get interior lines of travel set up... railroads.  But natural resources never appear in my kingdom and the only nations who have it will not trade it away.  It does not matter that they are naked and illiterate savages... somehow they know that black ooze from the ground will allow me to conquer them.  I offer them furs, jewels, horses, wine, cash... you name it... but they won't trade.

The Papacy is the most frustrating element of Medieval... for both Christians and Muslims.  Nations far away, must respect Papal power... I don't know how many times I've seen Spanish Crusades devastate the Rus... and I've been excommunicated while the Almohads have over half of Europe under their thumb.  Now don't get me wrong, I like the Papacy's role in Medieval.  It has a randomness... an unknown timing... that most games (including the aforementioned battles) lack.  The arrival of the Golden Horde, pollution in Civ, and drone riots in Alpha can be precisely countered or avoided by players, but the death of a Pope, the launching of a crusade (or jihad), or excommunication may come out of the blue or be impossible to avoid.

That being said, Civ II may be the best game I've ever played.  The comprehensive, yet streamlined, game play has rarely been duplicated.  Civ III was excellent and Civ IV added some nice touches.  But even with the improved graphics, they managed to slow down the game play... and to lose a little bit of the fun.  And maybe I just remember it fondly...


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## Brian G Turner (Sep 28, 2015)

My copy of Medieval: Total War stopped working suddenly last week. I've not been able to get it playing again, despite uninstalling.installing it again multiple times.

I has a sad. It was the one game I'd got used to relaxing with. And it was kind of like research, too.


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## Overread (Sep 28, 2015)

Brian my bother had the same problem - apparently its some windows update which broke something that the game needs. If you haven't already you might try the TW Medival on Steam which might have slightly different code and might continue to work (and is the most likely to be fixed or have a fix found for it).

I've also heard that virus scanners can mess up the old game so disabling your virus scanner might help. 


I must admit I rather like the older game. Despite only playing it for the first time very recently I do like it; the visuals are, in the world map view, simple and clean and easy to understand. There isn't so much "visual garbage" which is highly detailed, but ultimately that detail holds no important information; so you can't "at a glance" see what is going on you have to look for the details.


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## Brian G Turner (Sep 28, 2015)

Overread said:


> TW Medival on Steam



I tried it with Steam, but unfortunately it kept crashing. Steam are already aware that there's a problem with the game, but won't issue refunds if played more than 2 hours. So I've raised a dispute with Paypal, and will issue a chargeback if needed.

Did your brother's stop working the past week or so, too?


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## Overread (Sep 28, 2015)

Yes a week or so ago whilst my copy is still working.

I'd say that the best thing is to try and see if you can find a fix rather than a refund. Steam Refunds is mostly aimed at working for recent purchases rather than long term ones; for a fairly major issue (as its affected a large number of people) you might get the developers releasing a fix (it is semi-new on steam release so might have enough new attention to warrant work being done by current rights holders); or at the veyr least someone in the community might find a work-around.


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## Brian G Turner (Sep 28, 2015)

Well, I've emailed Sega Europe tech support. I can only live in hope.


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## Venusian Broon (Sep 28, 2015)

When you say it's not working, what does it do - i.e. does it start up but then instantly crash? When I upgraded to Windows 10 I found I could no longer play all the TW games I've got. They'd just crash when I tried to start them. It was because Win10 now has DirectX12.0, but this no longer seems backward compatible with games like Rome: Total War which were originally designed to run on DX9 (I think). So after a whole night trying _everything (_yes, it _says_ you can run programs with older versions on the same system. But what it says you can do and what it actually does...) I got rid of Windows 10 and went back to 8.1! Problem solved - all games working fine again! (Note: I never figured out how to run something older like MTW1 on XP and younger systems, so I don't know if this is a solution to look at for you.)

Was there anything big that changed, a week ago, on the computer that had MTW installed? 

I'm not sure there ever will be a fix of something as old as Medieval I - unless someone in the TW community figures it out - I have a horrible suspicion that Sega won't be supporting the program any more to fix things like this.


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## Brian G Turner (Sep 29, 2015)

MTW crashed, then I rebooted my computer and updates installed. Then then clicking on the icon to fire it up results in the PC doing nothing.

The Steam version loads up, plays, then freezes at some later point - and the saved games always results in a repeat, so cannot be continued.

So there are different issues affecting the different distributions - from my experience.


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## Venusian Broon (Sep 29, 2015)

Yeah sounds like something has been altered that the old program just doesn't know how to handle (from memory I think you said the operating system is Win7). My version of RTW was the CD version not the Steam version and it utterly failed in Win10. But the Steam version of RTW works perfectly first time in Win8.1 (something that took me a good few days to figure out with my CD versions...) 

When doing a wee bit of interwebbing I found a thread from someone having problems that sounded very familiar - but with MTW2. He did get in touch with SEGA Europe and they responded (in part - they also gave him advice to try.)




> Medieval 2 was released before Windows 7 was available and as such was never tested specifically for Windows 7.
> 
> Unfortunately this means we cannot guarantee it will run without issues on Windows 7.



Rest of the stuff is here - I guess you've done most of what the person who started the thread has done anyway. http://steamcommunity.com/app/4700/discussions/0/846960628379400071/#p1

Also from the interweb there does not seem to be a win95/98 emulator - a bit like DOSBox - which would be a nice solution...(Well that's not quite true see here: http://www.dosgamers.com/windows95-98/win95-games, but apparently it's not a great option)

Personally if I could afford it and was desperate for a MTW fix, I might be tempted to use an old PC/laptop or a dirt cheap one, wipe it clean then install Win95/98 and have it as the 'Medieveal Total War PC'  . Except for the fact that I don't have my copy of Win95/98 any more and I don't quite know how to go about getting a new copy today!

However, I hear Ray has all copies of the operating systems and knows how to use 'em


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## Brian G Turner (Oct 21, 2015)

Paypal sided with me in my claims against Steam, so I'll get that refunded.

Still no access to MTW Gold Edition though. Big sad.


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## Boaz (Nov 7, 2015)

Brian, here's a discussion on patching (due to two small files) that fixed crash on high end rigs, but since rapids hate went under... I dunno.

http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...hen-starting-campaign-(Nvidia-High-End-Cards)


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