Empire Total War has a mixed legacy. It received almost universal acclaim by critics at its release but among fans, it’s one of the more divisive in the series. When Shogun 2 was released the general feelings turned negative, where Empire’s bugginess stood in stark contrast to the pristine execution of Shogun 2. But recently, bereft of a grounded historical Total War, fans have returned to Empire and marveled at its utterly ambitious scale and design. 

If I could summarize the design philosophy behind Empire it would be “new and more”. New mechanics: naval battles, building slots, a new focus on ranged warfare, and a new engine. More Stuff: three continents, a story campaign, more units, revolutions, more diplomacy, and more factions.

Medieval II perhaps should have served as a warning for the Creative Assembly about feature creep. The parts of that game that worked were the parts it refined from previous titles, while much of the new focus on religion and diplomacy, fell flat. 

Empire Total War tries to do so much more, so much that’s new that I can’t help marvel at the attempt, while quietly(not quietly really because I’m writing this) thinking it was doomed from the beginning. It tries to do way too much, without the time needed to flesh its new changes out. 

Beyond just the mechanical “new and more” philosophy, Empire doubles down on Medieval II’s increased focus on diplomacy. The game desperately wants to create a living world with its own dynamic geopolitics akin to a Europa Universalis game. This is where the game fails most spectacularly, by putting a greater focus on “great power” diplomacy without overhauling the diplomacy system or AI, the game shoots itself in the foot. 

Despite the fact that many mechanics feel half baked, there is a ton of good in here as well. Lots of it is rough even after patching but the core design is still compelling. The problem is most of these features were refined to be so much better in later games, especially since 18th-century warfare was improved on in Napoleon Total War and Fall of the Samurai.

It should also be noted that many people’s experiences with the game are now colored by mods which have improved the game significantly. I’ll talk more about mods later but everything I say here assumes you aren’t using mods. 

How did Empire Total War Happen?

Empire Total Wars’ lack of polish is far easier to understand if you look at the development cycle the game had. Mike Simpson, was the director of Creative assembly at the time and detailed some of the problems the game had in his now-defunct blog. 

He noted that most of the team was “not entirely happy with the state of Empire: Total War when it went out” but worried that the fan backlash to the game could hurt CA’s chances to make future Total War games. And went on to explain that the rushed nature of the game was due to financial and commercial concerns, and on top of that, they were massive problems with the AI which only became apparent soon before release.

He says that the AI’s problems were due to it being “by far the most complex code edifice I’ve ever seen in a game”, with the main crux of the issue being that the AI often “disagrees with itself chronically and often ends up paralyzed by indecision”. This is the passivity that players often criticize the AI for in Empire Total War. 

Simpson also notes that there were several team issues during development, with critical team members having to leave during development for personal reasons. 

The Grandest Total War Campaign

The campaign map is now divided into three separate continents. In terms of geographic scale, this is the largest Total War has ever been. Covering Europe & the Middle-east, India, and the Americas, the map is expansive, allowing for a greater number of factions and cultures. 

The problem here comes from the province layout. Although the map size has increased significantly, the number of provinces has not gone up accordingly. This leaves many areas of the map feeling incredibly sparse. France, Spain, Persia, and the British Isle are the worst of the lot. This has a massive impact on gameplay, as it’s now incredibly easy to conquer the entirety of France or Spain in just one siege. 

The mighty Safavid empire of Persia feels like a backwater simply there to bridge the middle-east to India, instead of a thriving empire in its own right. 

In my France campaign, I was able to take London in the first six turns than the Netherlands and Scotland by turn 12. Going to War with Britain called in their alliance with Portugal and Austria but neither ever attacked me, only raided my shipping lanes. 

In India, the Maratha Confederacy rises to power in almost every game leaving India feeling very homogeneous. This ties into a larger problem with combat which we will get to later but let’s just say that melee units are quite powerful in this game, which I haven’t heard many people talk about. The Marathas focus heavily on melee units which makes them uniquely suited to conquer all of India. 

Part of the reason for this lack of settlement density is that city management is now entirely revamped from previous Total War games. 

Cities are now not the only settlements in a province. There are now minor villages and ports which can be upgraded to act as extra building slots. For cities, you can now no longer build any building you want. You have to keep to the set number of buildings assigned to that region. Some cities are considered minor settlements and can never build more than a few slots. 

While I don’t think the change to a building slot system is inherently bad, the way that it was implemented in Empire Total War is abysmal. 

The minor settlements are an interesting idea but they can only be managed through their own menu, unlike Shogun 2’s consolidated view, so that when you are trying to upgrade your provinces, you’ll have to click through each minor settlement to individually upgrade them. 

The other main problem with these is that it encourages the AI to send small stacks of one or two units to raid these settlements instead of forming an actual army to oppose you, which certainly doesn’t help the AI’s passivity problem. 

Alternatively, ships being able to raid supply lines is a great feature. Navies in previous Total War games were exclusively used to transport troops. Now you actually have reasons for navies to fight each other, and it forces you to think about where your trade is coming from. 

While the AI is happy to raid your trade lanes it won’t transport armies by sea, except for on a few occasions, which is a huge problem for a game with three maps separated by large oceans. 

The problem with the AI is core to Empire Total War’s sorry state, and if I tried detailing everything the AI fails to do we’d be here forever. And that’s the biggest part of the problem. CA wanted the AI to do far too much and made the game far too complex for the AI to ever handle effectively. Even with mods that improve the AI it still struggles to be a challenge.

Many of these issues were far worse on release since Empire received a series of patches that sought to fix many of these AI issues and stability problems, while these did significantly improve the game they were not enough to fully fix it before CA moved on to their next project, Napoleon Total War.  

Empire Total War is also somewhat unique for the Total War series in that it doesn’t have any sort of endgame challenge for the player to deal with. In Rome Total War you had the Roman Civil War, in Medieval II you had the Mongol and Timurid invasions, while the Empire has nothing of the sort. CA clearly recognized this was an issue as in Shogun II they implemented the Realm Divide mechanic. 

What about the People?

Characters have been drastically simplified since Medieval II Total War. They only have a few traits and attributes now and are largely aloof from the core game. Your faction leader will no longer be a general but is now represented with his ministers on the government tab. 

This along with not having characters directly govern a settlement means the only characters you’ll really be interacting with on the map are your generals and agents. Generals are still a step down from earlier games, especially since they no longer give hilarious speeches at the beginning of battles. 

Dynamic characters were something that set Total War apart from other franchises like Age of Empires, or Civilization. It was something that tied the player to these campaigns and created opportunities for emergent story moments that could occur. 

Those Damn Agents

While other Total War games are strictly worse for Agent spam, Empire Total War has the worst implementation of the series. You no longer recruit agents, now you simply receive them randomly every few turns. This is terrible, if you desperately need a new agent you can’t make the choice to build them. 

For agents, you now have Rakes, Gentlemen, and Priest. Rakes function as your assassin/spies. Gentlemen act as researchers and can duel other agents.  Priests do what priests always do which is convert people and increase public order.

Technology

Empire is the first Total War game to add a technology tree to the game, before new technologies would only be unlocked either by a certain date or when a building was built. Now Total War had a Civilization-style tech tree with a few branches of research that could be completed. 

The technology system itself is fine, but what is wrong with it is that it blocks off-key battle features like forming a square and bayonets. This makes combat extremely simplistic until you unlock these, and there was little reason to block these off. 

Besides that, there’s little reason for the tech tree outside of just getting better units and buildings which was already done in previous games through the building system. 

The Great Game, or lack thereof

The diplomacy interface is much improved even if the diplomacy AI is not. The problem is that as you expand more factions will gain negative opinion modifiers of you. So in theory you shouldn’t expand too quickly as to not start a massive coalition war. The problem here is twofold, first, the AI will declare war on you no matter what on higher difficulties. Secondly, they are so passive it doesn’t matter if they do declare war on you since you likely won’t be in any danger. 

Removing diplomats meant that each faction could not spam you with nonsense offers endlessly instead of just sometimes. 

In my Prussia campaign, I had all of Europe at war with me after I had conquered most of Germany and France, even so, the AI nations were so disorganized that I was able to pick them off one-by-one, they never attacked me proactively or joined together. 

This diplomacy system is clearly a core focus of the game. The 18th and 19th centuries are famous for their Great Power politics, and the wars they spawned. In Europa Universalis, this works because the campaign map is simple enough for the AI to handle diplomacy and warfare. But here it’s critically unable to do either. 

Road to Independence

Empire’s campaign ambitions go further than just the Grand campaign, it also features an episodic narrative campaign in the vein of the Rome Total War’s Alexander expansion.

The Road to Independence campaign follows the English settling of North America. From fighting natives to the French and Indian War, the American War of Independence, and finally a grand campaign as the newly born republic. This acts as both a tutorial and the only way to play as the United States in a grand campaign setting.

Overall the tutorial is good. Though the American revolutionary war looks nothing like the historical conflict. The Americans will first fight the battle of Bunker Hill, after which the Americans only control Boston while the British control the rest of the colonies.

Once you finish the revolutionary war you can begin to play the grand campaign as the United States

The campaign is good, if a bit too simple, and that’s really all there is to say about it. 

Battles

The core battle design of Empire Total War isn’t terrible but like the rest of the game, it’s hampered by bugginess and poor AI.

Unit movement is incredibly finicky, soldiers had to be in the exact right position to even think about firing their muskets. They’d often reshuffle themselves right before being charged which stopped them from getting a shot off.

Melee combat is broken due to the introduction of kill moves meaning only one unit can fight one other at a time, units who outnumber the enemy cannot gang up on their foes. This makes the melee infantry of the Marathas incredibly powerful as they can hold a unit in place while another flanks them to break their morale. 

AI has been a constant problem in Total War but the insane complexity introduced by 18th-century warfare was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Now positioning was incredibly important, and with the already overly complex system, the AI just broke. 

What this means is the AI will execute melee charges at you constantly usually after standing and being shot at for a few seconds without firing back. They’ll do this with all of their units, including and perhaps especially their general. 

Units won’t fire unless in formation so if a unit gets stuck they can stop the whole unit from firing. Pathfinding on the whole is buggy and the AI will sometimes also stop moving any of their units and stay in a static position even when attacked. They rarely use cavalry to flank and will generally just charge straight into your lines, even when stakes are set up. 

There are also more subtle UI changes made to simplify UI but also remove some important features, such as highlighting your own units.

Battles often feel so repetitive because of the sameness of the units, they are generally different versions of line infantry, cavalry, or cannons. With the AI using the same nonsensical tactics in each battle, they all end up feeling the same. Fighting Indian or Native American factions is far more interesting, as you’ll be facing a mix of melee and ranged units, forcing you to actually change up your tactics. 

While there is a steady increase in your troops and cannons’ effectiveness as the game progresses, there is nothing like the military revolution toward renaissance warfare which occurred towards the end of Medieval II Total War. It would have been nice to see a greater difference in the tactics used during the War of the Austrian Succession vs. the Seven Years War. 

Sieges are the worst so far in the series. Generally due to the bugginess of the AI. Sieges were always the bugginess parts of previous Total War games and here they are absolutely the worst.

Naval Battles

The naval battles are the most impressive addition to the game. They look amazing even if they don’t always play the same. Naval combat works with different types of ships countering others. Naval battles are suitably complex, you can choose different types of shot to fire at the enemy, micromanage ship movement, and manually fire broadsides. 

The problems come with how buggy the combat is overall. Ships might get stuck and refuse to fire, or try and board each other but never do. 

Conclusion

Empire Total War is the first major misstep for the series. Coming from Medieval II it was a massive shift with tons of features being changed or expanded. It’s no wonder that with all this ambition that the game was a buggy mess. 

Mods vastly improve the game and are the only way to play the game today. Mods can largely bring the experience of playing Empire in line with the rest of the series and fix many of the critical AI problems that the game has. 

The problem it seems is that CA would learn from this beautifully with the release of both Napoleon Total War and Shogun 2 which were far more condensed and scaled back than Empire but then make the same mistakes again with the launch of Rome Total War 2. 

This article is part of a series on the Total War Series you can find the other articles in the series here:

• Shogun Total War
• Medieval Total War
• Rome Total War
• Rome Total War: Barbarian Invasion
• Rome Total War: Alexander
• Medieval II: Total War
• Medieval II: Total War – Kingdoms

The post How Does Empire Total War Hold Up in 2021? appeared first on StrategyFront Gaming.

The four campaigns are Britannia, the Crusades, the Teutonic, and, the Americas. Each puts its own twist on the standard Total War formula. It would have been easy for CA to just take the units and mechanics from the base game and repurpose them for these campaigns since most of these factions already appear in the base Medieval II.

Instead, CA chose to include different mechanics that serve as experimental ideas some of which would presage the changes to come in the next Total War game, Empire Total War. 

Campaigns 

Each campaign takes place on a zoomed-in section of the Medieval II map. It’s often the case where Total War plays at its best in these smaller scenarios, though I still do love the sweeping grand campaigns. The focus allows CA to really hone in on the specifics of the conflict at hand, and give the factions more depth than they otherwise would have.

There is also a great contrast between each campaign setting. The lush jungles of Central America are a far cry from the wind-swept hills of Scotland or the scorching deserts of the Levant. 

Despite this, the common theme throughout each campaign is the conflict between outside invaders and the natives. This can take place on multiple levels as well, in Britannia, the English will be the invaders for almost every faction but the Norwegians are also launching a full-scale invasion of the isle. In the Crusader campaign, the Crusader factions themselves are foreign invaders, while the Mongols will invade later in the campaign. 

Medieval Total War II Invaders might be a better title for the expansion, though this may sound too close to both Barbarian Invasion, Viking Invasion, and Mongol Invasion. Now that I write that I’m beginning to think that creating expansions based on large-scale invasions is a running theme in these early Total War games. 

Brittania

The Brittania campaign is the most ‘vanilla’ of the four campaigns and will see you fighting mostly armies of the same western-European caliber in 1258 across the British Isle. The most interesting dynamic comes from the fact that England, with far superior troops, is overextended and trying to maintain its hegemony across the entirety of the British Isle while dealing with strife at home. The other factions will feature less well-equipped rosters but will have the advantage that England will have to deal with Ireland, Wales, and Scotland at once.

Playing as England you’ll be trying to maintain your holdings across the Isle while simultaneously battling a rebellion at home: The Baron’s Alliance. The Alliance acts as a rebellion faction for the English, when a city or army revolts they will join that faction, instead of just becoming rebels. This forces the English to maintain large standing armies within their own territory, as well as on their borders.

The Baron’s Alliance is also the only faction that can truly challenge England in terms of the quality of its troops. Meaning that the advantage in heavy cavalry and infantry the English possess is now rendered null.

England is the toughest start in the campaign, and it’s an experience close to playing the Western Roman Empire in Barbarian Invasion, as your territories are overextended, rebellious, and underdeveloped. The best way to handle these threats is to use the extensive fortress systems that the English have built to secure your territory.

Fortresses work differently in Kingdoms than in the base game. They cannot be placed but are static features on the map. In return for this, they are now essentially castles, and critically, several units placed in them will not require any upkeep. Using these to bait the enemy into attacking you as England is critical, as you won’t be able to defend everywhere else at once. 

The Irish’s main goal is to drive the English from the Emerald Isle. The English own extensive territory in Ireland and will pose a large threat to the Irish. They don’t have the heavy troops of the English or the devastating longbowmen of the Welsh, instead, you’ll have to use skirmish tactics, and take careful engagements to whittle down the English forces on Ireland. 

The Welsh are in a precarious position, they’re right next to the English’s main powerbase which means they’re vulnerable but also in a position to strike at England’s heart. The Welsh faction comes closest to the English in terms of troop quality due to their elite longbowmen. In vanilla Medieval II longbowmen were incredibly powerful, and here they’re even more so. The Welsh also have an advantage where if any of their settlements are captured by the English, a Welsh army will spawn to attempt to retake the town.

The Scottish are sandwiched between the invading Norwegians in the north and the English in the south. Their provinces are critically underdeveloped and their troops are of poor quality. Though they will eventually get William Wallace as a unique general. 

The Norwegians are perhaps my favorite start in any Kingdoms campaign, they are stuck on the rocky and poor islands to the north of Scotland with few troops at their disposal. They need to secure their power base without engaging the Scottish until their main force arrives. It truly gives the sense of being an invading expeditionary force on campaign, but unlike the Spanish in the Americas campaign, you will not have the advantage in technology. 

The campaign also introduced several new features into the game. Culture replaces religion since all factions here are Catholic, and will allow for your faction’s units to be produced in a settlement only once the culture level is high enough. 

There are also a number of interesting figures that will spawn throughout the campaign, like William Wallace or King Haakon of Norway.

The Brittania campaign is solid even if it doesn’t do anything exceptionally in terms of mechanics. Each faction plays entirely differently both in battles and on the strategic map, as you try and unify the British Isle. 

Crusades

The Crusades campaign is set in 1174 and brings you to the Holy Land just before the launch of the Third Crusade. The main dynamic here is the endless struggle between the crusader states and their Muslim enemies, who seek to drive them out of the holy land. The other main faction is the Byzantine Empire, which lost a good deal of its territory and is now looking to reclaim it.

The main mechanical focus of the campaign is on unique commanders with special abilities. Instead of just being able to rally troops, these special commanders have either their own unique abilities to cast. This is a change that would become more and more prominent in later Total War games, culminating in the legendary lords of Total War: Warhammer.

Characters can now construct the same sort of permanent stone forts that were present in the Brittania campaign. As the Crusaders you’ll need these to keep your troops upkeep from overwhelming your economy, while also acting as defensive bastions against the constant invasions you’ll face.

The two Crusader factions can recruit either Templar and Hospitaller knights. These are some of the most elite heavy cavalry in the game and have access to other unique holy order units.

Factions also have a “power center” now that acts as their heartland and will allow them to recruit their most powerful units. If a faction loses this settlement then an army will spawn and attempt to retake it.

There are also a few important events throughout the campaign. The Byzantines have their backs to the edge of the map, meaning they’ll only have to deal with enemies in one direction. But eventually, the Fourth Crusade will arrive near Constantinople and immediately besiege the city. 

There will also be a Mamluk rebellion in Egypt, the arrival of the Third Crusade, the Turks will receive their Janissary reforms to reflect the rise of the Ottomans, and the Mongols will invade in the east.

The Crusades is the most fleshed-out campaign in terms of new mechanics and events. It feels more scripted than the other campaigns but that also makes it appear more realistic than the other campaigns. It’s also got a great clash of east vs. west in the battles, as you’ll be leading very different armies for each faction.

Teutonic

The Teutonic campaign brings us up to the Baltic coast and follows the Northern Crusades carried out by the Teutonic Order against the Lithuanian pagans. Beyond this conflict, there is also, the expansionist Republic of Novgorod, Denmark, Poland, the Mongols, and the HRE. The map is smaller than the Crusades or Brittania but there are more factions, and they are locked in conflict the entire game.

The campaign features its own unique mechanics for the playable factions. Teutonic Knights will periodically receive Crusading noble armies from western Europe. Campaigning with these armies without destroying them will net you donations from the grateful nobles. Alternatively, if the Lithuanians manage to kill the crusaders the tribes will grant them their own reward.

The Danes can unite the Kalmar union by taking several settlements and killing the Norwegian king. This gives them a new flag and will give you all the troops Norway has under its command.

The Guild system is used to represent the Hanseatic League which can only appear in certain settlements and the city which builds the League’s headquarters will be given financial rewards.

The Teutonic knights present a unique challenge, they are surrounded by enemies and will have to deal with hordes of Lithuanian troops, who will swarm over their small but elite armies. Each Teutonic general has a rank, with Hochmeister being the faction leader. Their strength is in their slow but incredibly powerful knights, and infantry, who can mow through unarmored Lithuanian units. 

Lithuania on the other hand is much harder to play as you won’t be given the endless hordes of units that the AI gets. Instead, you’ll have to use your speed and mobility to harass and outflank your enemies. You will get some elite pagan units but you’ll be hampered by not being able to fully upgrade your settlements. 

Eventually as Lithuania, you get an event allowing you to convert to Christianity. Taking this will cause massive unrest in your settlements and you’ll lose all special Pagan units but you can now fully upgrade your settlements. 

The rest of the factions play mostly like their Vanilla counterparts, with Novogrod being a reskinned Russian faction. 

The Teutonic campaign is the most difficult and relentless campaign in any Total War game. You’ll be constantly pressed on all sides while never having enough gold to do everything you want. The biggest problem with the campaign overall is the Lithuanian unit spam, it gets entirely excessive to the point it slows down the game, otherwise, this expansion is amazing. 

Americas

The Americas is the latest campaign in terms of the time period for Medieval II Kingdoms and it’s also the most unique of all the expansion campaigns. 

The campaign starts in 1521 and details Spain’s conquest of the Americas. Spain will have a technological advantage while suffering from extremely low manpower. They will instead rely on native allies supplemented with their European elite units to conquer the new world. 

The native factions will be tasked with both pushing out the new foreign invaders while also dealing with their age-old rivals, and the new deadly diseases brought by the invaders.

The Spanish will have well-armored, and technologically advanced units but keeping them reinforced will be a problem. They also have access to gunpowder and cannons, which will help multiply their force advantage. 

The Spanish will also be reinforced by Conquistador fleets which spawn periodically and will contain European units. 

French and English expeditions will also arrive in the Americas, leading to even more bad times for the natives. The French will appear in the north by Louisiana and the English will appear farther south. 

To supplement your forces as the Spanish, you’ll need to recruit the incredibly cheap and fragile native mercenary units. These act as your fodder units, which will hold the native units in place while your cavalry or heavy infantry flank them. 

As the governor of New Spain, you’ll need to complete missions for the king of Spain in order to gain more influence with the crown and be granted higher titles. These titles allow you to build more advanced buildings. 

I cannot overstate how much I like this mechanic. Not because it is revolutionary in any way but that it actually incentives the player to complete missions. They’re now not just a useless pop-up. I think this title system could have been meshed really well with the Senate office system of Rome Total War and made missions a lot more useful in that game. 

Central American natives like the Aztecs will bear the brunt of the Spanish invasion, all the while being locked in a bitter war with their Txacalan and Tarascan neighbors. Instead of disbanding units and exterminating settlements, these factions can sacrifice them to improve public order. 

The final major faction is the Apache who can use their Warpath to call for a Crusade on a settlement. They’re also more adaptable than their southern neighbors, if they defeat European armies in several battles they can begin to adopt cavalry and eventually firearms. 

The Americas campaign is the most unique of the Kingdoms expansion and consequently are many people’s favorites. For the Spanish, it gives the sense of exploring a new and hostile world, while for the natives it represents the desperate struggle both internally and against these new invaders.

Conclusion

The Kingdom’s expansion is one of the best for the entire Total War series. It provides four unique campaigns, each with its own setting and mechanics but unified by a central theme. No campaign is “the best” by far, though most people will have a clear favorite. 

The expansion also greatly expanded the tools available to modders and is now the base for some of the best Total War mods period. Some of these, like Stainless Steel, are massive improvements over the vanilla experience. 

From the height of Medieval II: Kingdoms, CA would go on to release arguably its first unmitigated disaster in Empire Total War.

This article is part of a series on the Total War Series you can find the other articles in the series here:

• Shogun Total War
• Medieval Total War
• Rome Total War
• Rome Total War: Barbarian Invasion
• Rome Total War: Alexander
• Medieval II: Total War

The post How Does Medieval lI Total War: Kingdoms Expansion Hold Up in 2021? appeared first on StrategyFront Gaming.

Released in 2006, Medieval II Total War is sandwiched between the beloved Rome Total War, and the series’s first major misfire, Empire Total War. It’s the first Total War game that is a direct sequel, specifically to Medieval Total War (Duh) and is the last Total War game to allow true Total Conversion modding.

And perhaps it’s best remembered today for those Total Conversion mods which haven’t been surpassed due to the limitations of the newer Total War game’s engines. But does the vanilla Medieval II experience hold up in its own right?

If the original Medieval Total War expanded and refined Shogun’s gameplay then Medieval II does the same to Rome Total War. Medieval II’s design focus centers on solidifying the series’ successes so far and improving the quality of Rome’s systems while adding a cohesive atmosphere to the game. 

Medieval II Total War thrives on its minor details. When you upgrade a unit’s armor at the barracks it actually changes its model with new armor. Cannons and arquebus the units have incredibly well-done animations even though those units will be absent for most of the game. Knights have a weight to them as they charge across the battlefield. These features aren’t revolutionary but they do speak to the attention paid to making Medieval II a cohesive experience.  

Where Medieval stumbles is in its increased focus on the Grand Strategy elements of the campaign. Medieval II clearly wants you to be worrying a lot more about alliances, religious relations, and fighting far-flung holy wars far more than you ever did in Rome. In this way, this game is truly a sequel to the original Medieval. 

It feels like it wants you to be more concerned with Royal families and geopolitics than just outright warfare. But the AI and design of the game haven’t yet caught up with Creative Assembly’s vision, and it’s a mistake they’ll repeat in Empire Total War. 

While Medieval succeeds at being a worthy successor and improving upon Rome it doesn’t go so far as to succeed at being the game of politics and diplomacy it seems to hint at wanting to be. Unlike Crusader Kings  2, It’s not good at being a simulation of a medieval world but it is still a great Total War game. 

Up to and including Medieval Total War, the Total War series has been pretty much a straight upshot in terms of quality. Which is one of the rarest things in strategy games series. It’s also hard to argue that the series to this point has been critically dumbed-down or made too casual, which are accusations that will plague later games.

Grand Campaign

The Medieval II grand campaign starts much like all Total War campaigns. You can choose from a few starter factions, as to not overwhelm you with choices. Your first choice should be England or France which are both strong starter nations. 

But what’s missing from the original Medieval is the different campaign eras. This is such a shame since Medieval II gameplay changes drastically over as technology progresses.

Medieval II focuses far more on the disparity of the quality among Medieval troops than previous games did. It’s immediately clear during battles how much better-armored knights are than the peasant infantry they’ll be smashing into. But in the early game, you’ll mostly be fielding those low-tier peasant units. This is why it’d be great to have a later era campaign where you could jump right into using higher-tier units.

Medieval II also focuses on the technological changes which took place during this period. In this focus perhaps the only other Total War game to rival Medieval II is Fall of The Samurai in how radically different your armies will change in composition and function. Whereas in Rome Total War you’d be fielding legionnaires throughout the whole game, granted they got more advanced as time went on but the core make-up of your army and your tactics would stay the same. In Medieval II you’ll begin by fielding peasant militia and end the game with proto-Pike and Shot warfare.

Most factions in Medieval II start out with very similar rosters, mostly light or medium spear militia as a mainline, peasant archers, and whatever cavalry you can muster. But as the game goes on you’ll eventually specialize toward your faction’s strengths. Spanish employ their horse javelineers, the Jinetes, while the English could recruit deadly Longbowmen. While in Rome Total War each faction was immediately distinct through its roster, Medieval’s factions take some time to grow into themselves as they get higher-tier units.

Throughout the game, you’ll move from peasant levies and toward better-equipped men-at-arms. This mirrors the historical trend toward professionalized mercenary armies and by the late game, you’ll see battlefields filled with cannon and arquebusiers as a prelude to renaissance warfare. The new units you unlock radically expand your options on the battlefield which removes the relative sameness of the factions rosters in the early game. 

This would also help with the number of rebel provinces in the game. Almost every faction is separated by a buffer of rebel provinces which is likely meant to represent the decentralized nature of control in many Medieval states. What it means in gameplay terms is that you’ll be spending a lot of time fighting rebels who are more a nuisance than a real threat before you get to tackle more interesting opponents. 

This allows new players to ease into conquest and massive wars with other powers, which is good but it’d be better to have a later-era campaign that allows you to start those wars immediately.

Another advantage to having multiple campaigns is that it would allow you to play as the emergent factions which appear later in the game. These are the fearsome Mongols and Timurids who will rage across the Eastern part of the map destroying everything in their path. These emergent factions offer a great challenge to those Eastern factions and add even more unit variety to the game. Even some insane units like the Timurids Elephant cannons. 

Settlements

The technological arms race extends not just to units but to fortifications as well. Settlements are now divided between cities, which act as your economic hubs, and castles which act as fortified bastions and unit production centers. 

Castles are strong points of defense, especially once you upgrade them to have multiple circuits of walls. Upgrading these castles is critical since the increased defenses will allow you to leave less men garrisoning the castle and move them into field armies for conquest. Upgrading them will also mean you will now have access to higher tier units for recruitment.

You can convert any city to a castle and vice versa, which is a great design decision that allows players to decide where they’d like their fortified production centers to be. It can be critical to convert border cities to well-fortified citadels and convert safe castles into rich cities. 

Other than that, settlements work much the same as in Rome Total War. They have dynamic population numbers, growth rates, and taxes. The major difference in terms of gameplay is that it’s much easier to maintain public order in Medieval than it was in Rome. This is great because in Rome many of your cities would become endless centers of rebellion due to their high population, which is not the case in Medieval II.

Medieval II also has the distinction of being the last game in the series where buildings served as the sole way to upgrade your technology. Later entries would implement a Civilization-like technology tree, alongside upgrading buildings.

Buildings are more varied than in Rome, with Guilds being the most important edition. Guilds will appear organically once some hidden requirement has been met within a settlement. This means that Guilds don’t just appear randomly, you’ll have to specialize a city in a certain way for them to appear. This allows you access to higher tier upgrades. Some of the most powerful Guilds are the Holy Orders, which grant you the ability to recruit elite heavy knights.

Religion

Religion is a key aspect of Medieval II’s campaign. The Papacy has an adapted version of Rome’s senate mechanics. Meaning he will occasionally send you missions. 

In Rome Total War, these missions were easily ignored. Here in Medieval the Pope has power and will excommunicate you if at the drop of a hat. The most annoying mission he will give is to stop fighting another Catholic nation. Let me give you a tip, never do this. It’s never worth it to go out of your way to break a siege just to please the Pope. 

It would be much better if you could bribe the Pope into relenting when this happens so you at least have some control over this. What these really are is a not-so-subtle way of slowing down your conquests so that you won’t outpace the AI too quickly.

Excommunication will mostly cause greater unrest among your population and make other Catholic factions hate you but if you play on the harder difficulties most factions will constantly be at war with you anyway. 

The benefit of the Papal System is that now you can influence the Papal Election. You can do this when a Pope dies. You can demand their votes in return for a bribe or other concessions if you have a cardinal in the running to become the new Pope.

When you get a Pope from your faction elected you can influence him to call a crusade. Crusades target specific settlements of another religion or an excommunicated faction. You can assign one of your armies to become a “Crusader Army” and gain access to unique Crusader units as mercenaries. 

Once you assign this army to be Crusaders you will need to steadily move them toward the Crusade target or else they will begin to desert.

The crusades are great in Medieval II, they force you to take your forces far away from your centers of reinforcement and send them on an expedition to the other side of the world. They force you to think carefully about what battles you want to take since you’ll need to be clever about preserving your forces in this hostile land.

Catholics also have their own unique agents beyond the priests. These are Cardinals, who act as stronger priests and are eligible for the Papacy, Inquisitors, who are controlled by the Papacy and can burn your characters at the stake for Heresy, and Heretical preachers, these are rebel units who will convert your populations away from Christianity and lower public order. The other version of these Heretics is the Witches, who function in the same manner. 

Overall the religious mechanics, especially for Catholics exist mostly to slow your expansion down, increasing unrest, eliminating your generals, or giving you missions to not conquer. While I appreciate the attempt to force the player to think about things besides just expansion, it often feels like these are mere annoyances rather than real challenges in your conquests.

Agents

Speaking of agents, besides the religious agents the newest addition is the Merchant. Merchants have generated a lot of debate over the years about their usefulness. I generally come down on the side of them being a waste for a few reasons. 

The first is that most enemy agents will try and seize your merchant’s assets which will eventually succeed. The second is that they often don’t produce enough gold to make good on the initial investment. 

Merchants can be useful if you send them all the way across the map, especially sending them to Timbuktu but at that point, you could have spent that 500 gold on something else. Keeping your treasury full is far more of a challenge than in Rome Total War. 

Otherwise, agents are mostly the same, the problem here is that there are just so many of them, that this is the point here agent spam really started to become a problem for the series. It is also a problem that agents are largely useless on higher difficulties since the AI will always get buffs to their agents making yours nearly ineffective. 

Diplomacy

Diplomacy is still the game’s main problem area. With the increased focus on religious relations, marriages with Princesses, and Royal Lineage it is sad to see this hasn’t been improved. 

Diplomacy has long been the Total War series’ Elephant in the room. It’s cumbersome, takes away from the overall campaign, and kills any roleplay. This is entirely due to the arbitrary nature of the AI in relation to the player. The AI will accept your trade agreement then capriciously attack you for no reason. 

This is partly due to the fact that the game wants to keep you constantly at war. This means that AI relations are meaningless, as they may simply declare war on you at any point.

The solution is simple, the Total War AI respects only one thing: strength. That alliance you have with France? Yeah, that’s a useless piece of paper. But an army parked on their border? That will make the AI think twice. 

This force-based diplomacy system is poorly explained by the game. The way diplomacy works and the way it seems it should work is a gap that a lot of players have had problems with.

On the hardest difficulty, the AI warmongering can get insane. Playing as England, by turn 70 Spain, France, Portugal, Denmark, and the HRE had all declared war on me. While this made for a fun challenge it Portuguese armies invading Wales broke all immersion in the campaign.

This hatred of the player hurts the games in other ways, namely that it creates a less interesting campaign world. Instead of each faction feeling like the protagonist of their own story it feels like they are all just looking to take you down like every faction has geared their entire national effort simply towards killing you. 

Royalty

The Royal family and political mechanics haven’t been improved over Rome or the original Medieval individually but Medieval II combines elements of both. 

Gone are the dynamic Civil Wars which appeared in the original Medieval. Now when generals have low enough loyalty they will simply become rebels, taking their whole army with them. This can be interesting, as when I had a commander besieging an important French citadel, waiting to starve them out.

One turn before their garrison was set to surrender the Commander rebelled, lifted the siege, and took that whole army with him. It completely changed the dynamic of the war and left me scrambling to plug that flank. 

It’s those great character moments that Medieval II does so well. 

Characters

One of the strongest aspects of the game is the character system. In terms of how the Total War series handles characters, Medieval II is the best in the series. The system is a more robust version of the Attributes-Traits-Retinue system of Rome Total War. In the Medieval era when most politics were personal, characters have to be a central focus.

Any male character will automatically be made a commander, who can then be assigned to either lead armies or govern settlements. Mostly gone are the unique titles for governors from Medieval Total War, which is a shame. 

Characters will receive a laundry list of traits that flesh out their personality and impact their Attributes. Attributes generally determine what a character should be doing, if they have high command then put them at the head of a host, if they have high chivalry put them in a city to increase population growth.   

The best thing about the traits system is how it can affect the speeches that generals give at the beginning of battles, it is a small detail that most people won’t notice but Medieval II thrives on these little touches that add a sense of realism to the game. 

Battles

Battles haven’t changed much mechanically in Medieval II but slight tweaks to the formula ensure that battles play out much differently than in previous titles. Here battles are probably the weightiest in the series. Units move slower and charge with a higher impact. They also take longer to break than in Rome which allows for more tactics to be employed on the player’s side. 

Whereas in Rome the focus was on heavy-infantry, here the dreaded knights rule the battlefield. Cavalry is no longer as vulnerable as it was in Rome. Knights look far more menacing than another cavalry as well.

Medieval II nails unit design in general, no longer are your regiments populated by identically faced soldiers. Now there is a rag-tag quality to your troops, they’ve clearly all brought their own armor here. 

The differences in the tiers of medieval troops I mentioned earlier also plays out here. Your Spear militia is going to get crushed by mail knights or torn apart by longbowmen. Their use, then, is to hold the line long enough for your own heavy cavalry to flank the enemy and crush them. 

It’s a great system overall which is only enhanced by the variety of terrains you’re going to encounter on the battlefield. The reliance on heavy cavalry means that finding open fields is paramount, and you’ll want to position your battles carefully since Medieval II uses the same dynamic battle generation system as Rome.

There are also a number of Historical Battles in the game. These are generally mixed in quality with the best being Agincourt and Arsuf. These mostly do a competent job of depicting the historical event but more importantly their challenging scenarios that you can’t recreate on the campaign map.

Sieges

Sieges here are the best in the series. There is now a far greater variety of siege maps to play on, and they’re split between cities and castles. Castles are far harder to attack than cities and may feature multiple rings of walls you will have to penetrate before claiming victory.

Critically unit pathfinding has been far improved in settlements, meaning you’ll be less frustrated during these engagements. Pathfinding is still worse than in field battles mind you but at least it’s improved.

DLC

Medieval II only featured one expansion: Kingdoms. It featured four separate mini-campaigns which in terms of content for money, Kingdoms is the best Total war DLC out there. Though Fall of The Samurai is likely the best in terms of quality content. The four campaigns are Britannia, Americas, Teutonic, and the Crusades. They are vastly different from each other and the main campaign, and each is interesting in its own way.

I won’t talk much more about them here because they deserve their own separate review. 

Conclusion

Medieval 2 continued the upward trend in terms of the quality of the Total War series. It is the last Total War for many things and is considered the last of the “Old Total War” games. 

The game survives today with a fairly large player base mostly due to its insanely talented and dedicated modding scene which have kept the game on par with modern Total War releases. 

It succeeded mechanically mostly due to refining what made previous games great and forged its own identity with its unique attention to detail, and character. 

Where Medieval II failed it’s mostly due to failings for the series, those being diplomacy and agents. Both of these would receive massive overhauls in later games. 

As I said before, Medieval II is an awkward place in the series. It felt like CA wanted to do far more with the game than the engine allowed, a failing they’d attempt to remedy with the unabashedly huge Empire Total War. 

This article is part of a series on the Total War Series you can find the other articles in the series here:

• Shogun Total War
• Medieval Total War
• Rome Total War
• Rome Total War: Barbarian Invasion
• Rome Total War: Alexander

The post How Does Medieval II Total War Hold Up In 2021? appeared first on StrategyFront Gaming.

The expansion takes place during the campaigns of Alexander the Great, detailing his conquest of the Persian Empire. Whereas the base game and Barbarian Invasion detailed clashes of people, and whole historical periods, RTW Alexander focuses on just the ten years of Alexander’s conquest.

How does Total War handle this much tighter historical focus? Not too well. Barbarian Invasion’s campaign built on that of Rome Total War, showing the eventual consequences of the base game’s obsession with rampant imperialism and expansion. In the Imperial Campaign you built things up, in Barbarian Invasion they fell apart. 

That being said, I’m not so sure what RTW: Alexander’s campaign is about. You’re conquering an empire, yes but you’re not really building it. Its campaign is more of a mad dash to the Indus River than the conquest of an ancient and powerful civilization. You aren’t trying to synthesize cultures or build a new state as Alexander did historically. 

RTW: Alexander often feels more like a tech demo for the main campaign than it does the final expansion for the now legendary Rome Total War. The map is awkwardly shrunk down to fit the 100 turn limit and the factions feel barren of any new interesting units or mechanics. 

Instead of building on the strengths of vanilla Rome Total War, as Barbarian Invasion did, Alexander tries something entirely new for the Total War series, and it mostly fails. 

If vanilla’s main focus was on the sprawling campaign then Alexander places it squarely on the battlefield. I think that this in and of itself is fine, the problem is that Alexander fails to do anything new or interesting with its battles, at least in the campaign. 

Alexander’s Campaign

The shifts to the overall campaign come in a few key ways. Instead of a map of the entire Mediterranean world, you’ll be limited to Greece and the Persian Empire. On paper this is a great change as the narrower focus will allow CA to add more settlements and factions to this region to make it feel more alive. 

Sadly the opposite happened, despite its smaller region RTW Alexander features fewer regions than were in the same area of its base campaign. This puzzled me for the longest time, it couldn’t have been a technical issue, RTW already ran fine with more provinces. There were no new mechanics or more factions. There was just less. 

Until I realized why the map had to be so cramped and small, the developers had shot themselves in the foot by their own design choices.

You see RTW Alexander’s campaign only allows you to play as Alexander, and only gives you 100 turns to complete his campaign. Again, on paper this is good, it makes you think about each battle you’re fighting because you’ll always need to be advancing to conquer the 30 necessary regions to win the campaign. 

You can’t be bogged down by unnecessary movement and long sieges as you race east. So the campaign map had to be awkwardly shrunk down so that you could reach those 30 regions in a reasonable time.

It’s not a great solution. Why not just give armies more movement points or make some cities surrender to Alexander when he arrives? It’s just lazy design and makes it seem like the developers ran out of time and weren’t able to do everything they wanted with the expansion.

I think the map of Greece is the best representation of this. There are no Greek allies for you to coordinate, in fact, there’s not really any Greece at all. There are seven settlements in Greece in the main campaign(including Epirus and Macedonia). In Alexander, you have two settlements in that same geographic area. 

Besides, the restrictive turn limit and simplistic campaign map Alexander must have at least kept the religion system from Barbarian Invasion right? I mean part of Alexander the Great’s whole thing was that he wanted to merge Persian and Greek culture, and his conquested Hellenized the Eastern Mediterranean. 

Nope, that’s all gone, since the turn limit is in place there’s no time for any of the frills of empire management or diplomacy despite those being some of Alexander the Great’s core concerns. 

So the turn limit is a trade-off, less interesting empire management but each action and battle has more strategic weight, they matter more. 

This might be interesting if the AI was competent enough to try and stop you, but it feels like the Persian AI are more inept than in the base game, which I don’t fully understand because it should have fewer variables to work with. Perhaps It’s just that since you’re only dealing with one main enemy it’s more noticeable when they are making terrible moves.

It surprises me more so since most of the reviews at release criticized the campaign for its difficulty. In fact, it was many reviewers’ main criticism of the expansion. 

I’d say, yes the campaign is difficult but not overly so, and I think that level of challenge is probably the most interesting thing about the campaign. You have no time to sit back and build up; you have to go out conquering with the limited resources you have. 

One interesting thing that this campaign does is logistics. Since your main armies will likely be far off to the east, you’ll have a good deal of trouble reinforcing them as you go from battle to battle, and are pulled further and further from Greece. 

Most Total War games have never really done campaigning well. Armies fight without regard for supply or logistics. Modern Total War games have brought this into greater focus, with a supply system in Three Kingdoms especially, but the earlier games like RTW never really bothered with it. 

Having to send up reinforcements from Greece or the cities that could Greek produce units was interesting to try and keep your armies at strength while marching through a foreign and hostile land. 

It often feels more like a puzzle than a Total War campaign, you have to plan your moves exactly right to get to the end before turn 100. You’re not managing your ambitious generals, not dealing with the task of combining Hellenic and Persian cultures, no instead you’ll just be conquering. 

So if not the campaign, then what is the focus here?

Historical Battles

The main focus of the expansion is the string of historical battles that detail the major clashes of Alexander’s rise. 

Both RTW and BI both had Historical Battles but they were always more of a fun distraction than the main focus of the game. They often acted as semi-historical challenge scenarios, such as Cahhrae or Teutoburg Forest. They were always fun if a bit short. It’s clear more time went into the Historical Battles here, making them more of a mini-campaign than anything else. 

Brian Blessed narrates the set up to each battle, which was unsurprisingly excellent voice work. His narration sets up the context for each battle and does a good job of hyping them up.

The battles offer some interesting play, you’ll be severely outnumbered in each one and will need to use clever tactics to win.

What fails here is the scale of the battles. Alexander’s armies are often smaller than the 20 unit army cap, making them mere skirmishes compared to what you’ll be fighting in the campaign. 

This isn’t just to make Alexander feel smaller, Persians will sometimes bring multiple armies to the field, such as Gaugamela. Those Persian armies could have been beefed up and Alexander could have been given a full stack of units.

My best guess is that this is for performance reasons, as having too many units on screen could cause some computer problems. But isn’t this why Total War has graphics and unit size settings? 

Regardless, both their disappointing size and the mediocre RTW battle AI leave these historical battles feeling shallow. Clashes like Gaugamela and Issus should be some of the largest in the series so far, they should be the laurel crown that ends your time with Rome Total War, instead, they’re smaller than most campaign battles, and that stinks. 

Creative Assembly clearly tried to improve the battles even going so far as adding a tournament battle mode and even allowing you to play each of the six historical battles Alexander fought against human opponents.

Fighting these battles against actual people does elevate the experience and like most Total Wars, is the best way to experience the battle system. It still suffers from scale problems but the battles actually feel like interesting clashes now.

Factions

There are eight factions in this expansion but as I said, only Macedonia is playable in the campaign. There is a good variety between their unit rosters though. 

With Persia and Macedonia especially being an interesting combination. Macedonia relies on its unstoppable phalanx of spearmen to push through the enemy while their cavalry protects the flanks. The Persians focus on archers and light cavalry, with their elite Immortals holding the line where needed. This forces the Macedonians to close quickly or risk being overwhelmed by the Persians fire. 

The campaign also introduces Indians who use a combination of weak infantry with extremely potent elephants as their main units.

These factions are great in multiplayer as their strengths each allow them to play off each other but the AI cannot take advantage of these differences.

Conclusions

In some ways, Alexander was a dead-end for the Total War series. Never again would they have such a restrictive campaign. Even Warhammer II’s Vortex campaign mostly let you do what you want.

In another way, I see a lot of the decisions made in the maligned first Total War Saga game, Thrones of Brittania, to be the heirs of this type of campaign making. Restrictive, somewhat arbitrary, and cramped. 

Rome Total War and Barbarian Invasion knew the strengths of the series and succeeded because of it. Alexander was an ambitious experiment in another type of Total War campaign, it asked if the battles could be the core focus of the experience, and the campaign was just fluff, and it failed.

Rome Total War is a legendary game, and Barbarian Invasion is often brought up alongside its greatness but Alexander is not. It’s noteworthy that when Creative Assembly made the sequel they made Rome II as a sequel to RTW and Attila Total War as a sequel to Barbarian Invasion. 

Alexander never received anything like it, and I can’t say I blame them. I don’t hate the race-to-30-provinces campaign mode but it clearly didn’t work and took away far more from the campaign experience than it ever added.

This article is part of a series on the Total War Series you can find the other articles in the series here:

• Shogun Total War
• Medieval Total War
• Rome Total War
• Rome Total War: Barbarian Invasion

The post Rome Total War Alexander -Retrospective appeared first on StrategyFront Gaming.

A year after its release Rome Total War received its first expansion: Barbarian Invasion. Rome Total War is a grand expansion of the series bringing it into 3D and introducing new mechanics, Barbarian Invasion is more about thematic and strategic changes to the Total War formula.

Most strategy games feature you starting small and rising up to become a great power. This setup commits players to a steady sense of progression and expansion giving them a connection to the empire they built, Barbarian Invasion inverts this trope.

For the two fractured halves of the Roman Empire, you’ll simply be tasked to survive the waves of barbarian migrations, and hold together your massive crumbling empire. As for the other factions, you’ll have to fight your way into the heart of the ailing Roman Empire and carve your way through to the richest regions to give your people a new homeland.

Instead of the diversity of faction cultures which you have in Rome Total War, hew you’re limited to the: Romans themselves, Germanic Barbarians, Steppe nomads, and the Sassanid Persians. 

The biggest difference from Vanilla RTW though is between the factions is the close of the technological gap between the Romans and their barbarian neighbors. Mostly gone are the naked warbands of the Gauls and Germans, replaced with hardened warriors who can go toe-to-toe with the Romans. Now that they have their troops on par with the Romans and the Romans are trying to cover far more territory at the start than they were in Vanilla, there’s a more even playing field. 

On top of it all, you’ll now have to deal with the struggle between Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Paganism. With the Roman Empire being split between the rising Christians and the older pagan tradition.

All of these factors coalesce in the amazing campaign of Barbarian Invasion. Few Total War worlds are so well-realized and so focused. 

Campaign Overview

The campaign isn’t just smaller in terms of there being fewer factions, there are also literally fewer provinces in the game 72 compared to the original’s 103. There are fewer factions, less troop variety, fewer provinces, fewer armies at your disposal. It’s a time of decay, the old ways are failing, that empire you built-in Rome Total War that was so glorious? Yeah, that’s this monstrosity now. 

Rome has grown too big to even maintain a singular authority. Throughout the empire, corruption and religious struggles run rampant. Rebellions are all too common, your borders are overextended and the Barbarians who’ve you’ve kept divided for ages are now ready to come and take your land.

Manpower is now at a premium, after the Crisis of the Third Century, plagues, and previous invasions the Empire is a shell of its former self.

As for the Germanic tribes, well they’re about to have a bad time themselves, as Attila the Hun is on the move. In the East, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Persians are locked in a struggle they’ve been in for nearly 200 years.

Each faction is poised on the brink of collapse. It’s not the hopeful future of the main campaign where you sought to build an empire that will last the ages: Barbarian Invasions is about just surviving. 

Roman Campaign

There are now two Roman factions: The Western and Eastern Empires. The Western is in far worse shape than its cousin in the East, as it was historically. 

The Western Empire was never as populous or as Urbanized as the East. It also has far more vulnerable borders to defend. On top of this, the empire is swimming in corruption and the religious schism between Christian and Pagan is far worse than in the East.

You’re dealing with both pressing managerial and military problems. On the military front, you’ll have to manage four fronts to fight on: Britannia, Germany, Illyria, and Africa. In the north, you’ll be fighting off the Celts and the Saxons with the limited resources of Brittania. If you lose Britannia to any other faction a new emergent faction the Romano-British. 

The Romano-British represent the remnant peoples left in Britain in the wake of the Roman retreat from the island. Their faction roster combines the best of the Roman and Celtic armies with the excellent Comitatenses and the Celtic Gael Knights. They’re not playable in the base game but are in custom battles. 

For the Western Empire, you have two options to deal with Britannia: abandon it or rush the Celts, driving them from the island, then defending it from the Saxons. In Africa, you’ll want to just hold Carthage. The Barbarian Berbers will launch assault after assault onto your settlements there and you’ll likely not have the resources to hold them off. 

Looking at Illyria, you’ll want to either abandon the area entirely and defend Italy or garrison the territory as a buffer. Note that if you do decide to keep the area you’re liable to be attacked by your “allies” in the Eastern Empire. This is an effect of Rome Total War’s not-so-excellent diplomacy system.

Germany will be your main area of focus. This is where the Germans will be being pushed across the borders as hordes, fleeing from the oncoming Huns.

Internally, you’ll have to deal with a ton of rebels. For each Roman faction, their rebels will form your own faction which will produce armies and try and conquer your territory. This is unlike the bog-standard rebels you’re usually dealing with. 

I’ve spent a lot of time on the strategic options of the Western Roman Empire because I think there are some of the deepest in the Total War series up to this point. Focusing on preserving something already too large and rotten to its core is the sort of compelling setup which makes Warhammer 40K so popular.

The main strategic choices are either: abandonment or defense. Will you try and hold all your territory or pull back to more defensible positions? The answer has its degrees. I’ve pulled all the way back to Spain or Italy but generally, it’s a good idea to just abandon Illyria and Brittania. 

This is what Total War does well, and it’s these sorts of interesting strategic decisions that are so lacking in too many other Total War campaigns. 

The Eastern Empire’s situation is far simpler. You have the Danube and the Mesopotamian fronts. The Danube is a difficult early concern as that’s where the Hordes will be coming through in the beginning of the game before moving west. 

Your main adversary lies further East: the Sassanids. The Romans and Sassasinds have been locked in a 200-year on-and-off conflict by this point and the Sassanids are no pushovers. Compared to the Romans, they have some devastating heavy cavalry and their infantry has improved from the Parthians in RTW.

I find the Eastern Roman Empire less interesting than the Western since they start in a much better position. Their cities are more prosperous, borders more secure, and more Christianized. So once they are able to defeat the Sassanids they’ll be in a good spot for the rest of the game.

That doesn’t mean their campaign is worse, it’s still more difficult than any campaign in Vanilla RTW and provides a great sense of challenge without the sheer masochism that is the Western Roman Campaign.

Barbarian Campaign

The selling point of Barbarian Invasion is obviously that you’ll get to be the barbarians doing some of the invading. The major change from Barbarian factions in Vanilla Rome Total War is that if they are defeated they will be able to transform into a horde, instead of being wiped off the map.

They can also transform into a horde by choice if they have only one settlement remaining.  When that happens the faction will spawn several stacks of units and begin to search for a new homeland. 

This means as the Romans it’s often a better idea to keep certain barbarians weak but not destroy them, as doing so will give them several full stacks on your doorstep. 

Among the Germans

The German tribes are some of the most interesting in the game, each one features their own unique units, though in practice this often just equates to medium spearmen. I think this relative uniformity between the Germans is good. It makes them feel like a people, though each has their unique flavor, Saxon Keelmen look nothing like the Frankish Sword Heerbann even if their function remains mostly the same. 

As the Germans, you’ll be sandwiched between the Western Roman Empire and the advancing Steppe tribes. Tribes like the Vandals and Huns, not to mention those that they, in turn, push out like the Goths and Sarmatians. 

This means you’ll either have to pack up and try and fight your way into the Roman Empire or try and battle the Huns, often you’ll end up doing both. There is this beautiful strategic line you must walk as the Germans between not pushing into the Western Empire too early and bearing the brunt of their still formidable armies or waiting too long and not getting their rich cities for your own. 

The next major group of Barbarians are the Goths, you can play as the main group of Goths but there is also another emergent group: The Ostrogoths. The Goths start in the Carpathian mountains but will quickly want to move as they are directly in the path of the Hun’s and not likely to do well against them. The Goths generally move west, as they did historically, to avoid the main thrust of the steppe tribes. 

The final major Barbarian group are the nomadic Steppe Tribes namely the Vandals and the Huns. These tribes start as hordes and are the catalysts for most of the actions in the game. They’ll move west looking for lands to conquer and a new homeland to settle in, and in doing so push out everyone in their way. This creates a cascading wave effect as the people pushed out by these tribes will push against others and eventually crash upon the borders of the Roman Empire.

Playing these tribes is a balance between looting cities and maintaining your armies enough so that when you do want to settle down, you can. Your horde units don’t require upkeep but can’t replenish themselves so you’ll want to keep them relatively safe. When you seize new cities you’ll have the options to either settle or sack them. With sacking providing massive amounts of gold but incurring huge deaths among the population. 

Once you settle as a horde you’ll lose most of your horde troops and be forced to rebuild your armies in your new homeland. This is why it’s smart to settle in the heart of the Roman Empire, where there is already enough infrastructure to support producing higher-tier units. 

Emergent Factions

New to Rome Total War are emergent factions, which I touched on previously. These factions don’t exist at the beginning of the game and are not playable without modding. Instead, they will appear on the map once certain conditions are met. These range from the Romano-British to the late-game horde: the Slavs. 

There are also the emergent rebel factions for the Roman empires. I should note that generals in the empire now have loyalty ratings which represent the General’s probability of rebelling. If the general does join the Rebel faction they’ll take their army with them.  

Religion 

Speaking a little more about religion, there are only three religions in the game paganism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism. Religion is detailed both at the settlement level and on the Character sheet. This creates a dynamic where you can have a Christian governor managing over a pagan population, which will enrage them. It further deepens the level of empire management you’ll be doing and you can influence the direction of your empire by tearing down temples of the opposing faiths and building your own. 

This is most critical for the western Roman Empire whose lands are fairly evenly split between Christian and pagan. An important choice in that campaign will be which religion you choose. It also adds another layer of problem-solving onto the Western campaign as you’ll have to manage that on top of everything else you’ll be doing and tearing down religious buildings will only further the unrest throughout the empire. 

Choosing between the religions will also influence what buildings you can build. For example, Christian cities cannot build Coliseums and hold games, as the blood sports are repugnant to Christians.

Battles & Units 

The biggest change in terms of the battle system is the inclusion of night battles. This can be triggered when a general has the Night Fighter trait. This disallows enemy reinforcements, and your own(unless the reinforcing general also has the Night Fighter trait). 

These battles expand the strategic options you have at your disposal and just look great. Units hold torches and fire arrows light up the night sky, for 2005 graphics this is really something. 

The types of units you’ll be using have also changed. Gone are the Sarissa pikemen and crack legionaries of the ancient world. There is a greater focus on heavy cavalry in the game, anticipating the rise of knights in the medieval era. 

Comittienses have replaced the standard legionarrie, and while they still dominate the battlefield they’ll act as your elite heavy infantry, not your mainline troops, as they are often too expensive to maintain. 

General units can now be recruited in cities like regular troops. I cannot express enough how much this can break the game. With the greater focus on heavy cavalry, and the general unit’s ability to regenerate troops this makes an army of generals unstoppable doom stacks capable of wiping out anything. I’ve played games where having just one of these can conquer nearly the entire Roman Empire as the Franks, it’s ludicrous. Generals used to be a rare commodity, something to be protected and nurtured since there was such a limited pool, now they are the strongest unit and you can have as many as you want.

Barbarian Invasion also adds two new historical battles. The Battle of Chalons or The Battle of the Catalaunian Fields between Attila and the Roman general Aetius, and the Battle of Badon Hill which is non-historical and features King Arthur as the Romano-British. Both of these battles are alright, and I don’t feel like either really makes use of the setting. It’s also sad to see other historical battles like Adrianople were ignored in return for a mythical one. 

Conclusion

In my piece on the original Rome Total War I argued that the strength of that game was in its campaign, specifically the detailed mechanics in the Roman campaign, and in the diversity of its factions which gave the game a “clash of civilizations” feel. 

Barbarian Invasion mostly does away with the huge amount of faction variety and unique campaign mechanics for a more universal experience. Each faction has its own goals, either to preserve or destroy the Roman Empire, and around that crux, and the catalyst arrival of the Huns, the campaign succeeds. 

In many ways it’s a much better campaign than the original, more factions are interesting to play, the introduction of religions adds new levels of management. It maintains what was great about the original, and builds off of that while taking its own direction. In short, it’s an amazing expansion to the base game.

Barbarian Invasion is about decay. About fewer armies, factions, and provinces but that’s only part of the story. For many of these factions, this is their time to rise up, to begin to build their own story and emerge onto the world stage. It’s a time when the ancient world is dying and a new medieval world is being born. It focuses on just maintaining what you have serves as the perfect bookend to Rome Total War’s empire-building bonanza. 

Barbarian Invasion painted a darker world but was a worthy successor to Rome Total War, next we’ll be looking at the less worthy second expansion to RTW: Alexander.

This article is part of a series on the Total War Series you can find the other articles in the series here:

• Shogun Total War
• Medieval Total War
• Rome Total War

The post Is this Rome Total War’s Best expansion? – Barbarian Invasion appeared first on StrategyFront Gaming.

Does the Total War series have a single shining breakout entry and if so is it Rome Total War? 

The answer dear reader, is of course, yes. 

But is Rome Total War the best game in the franchise? Well let’s find out.

What is clear is that the monumental success of this game cemented Total War’s place as one of the top strategy game franchises of all time. 

Released in 2004 by Creative Assembly, Rome Total War holds a significant place in many people’s hearts, including my own.

Rome Total War held a sense of epic scale and graphical fidelity previously unseen in the strategy game space. Feasting your eyes on the thousands of individual soldiers clashing across the entirety of the ancient world was exhilarating in 2004. Rome Total War proved how PCs had finally caught up with developers’ ambitions.

Rome Total War was well-received both critically and commercially at release, and today it’s often given prime spots on “Top PC games of All Time” lists and is talked about with nostalgia-tinged reverence among strategy game circles.

Rome Total War is so beloved that it’s still used as the standard for Total War games for years to come. The trend of comparing later games to Rome reached its climax with the disastrous release of Total War: Rome II in 2013. The utter failure to launch for Rome II just compounded the idea that the original was something truly special. 

But was it? Was this game as good as we all collectively remember or do the clunky controls and outdated graphics make this game a relic of the past, only good food being gawked at in long-winded essays on some random blog on the internet?

While today Total War is one of the preeminent strategy game franchises, where players can enjoy well-detailed battles with crisp graphics, Rome Total War may well feel like a dinosaur in the gameplay department. 

So what exactly draws people to the series today? Fans will laud the dynamic traits systems for characters, diverse factions, and incredible soundtrack. And, how do these hold up today?

Well, the first thing that becomes clear when analyzing Rome Total War is that this is the make it or break it moment for the franchise in terms of appealing to a wider audience. The Ancient World is one of the most beloved historical settings and the move to full 3D graphics meant that Creative Assembly was banking on Rome Total War’s success to catapult the franchise from a niche strategy game to something more. 

Some Background

The Total War Franchise kicked off with the release of Shogun: Total War in 2000. Shogun was conceived as a competitor with the wildly popular Command & Conquer series but throughout its development morphed into the historical real-time turn-based hybrid that we know today.

Shogun even had a historian consulting on the game, something Rome Total War definitely did not have. 

Shogun was followed up by Medieval Total War in 2002. Medieval maintained the 3D real-time battles and turn-based campaign of the original. It’s main contribution to the gameplay of the series was the introduction of siege battles, something Rome Total War would expand.

Both of these previous entries would stick to the RISK-style campaign map, where players would move their armies from province to province. This campaign system was somewhat finicky as you had to set up long frontlines at your borders, and any province undefended means the AI can slip into your territory and wreak havoc. 

Rome Total War would change all this, updating the campaign to fully 3D allowing players, all the while keeping what made its predecessors great, namely the epic battles. 

Clever Use of Terrain

Gone are the 2D hand-drawn-style maps of Shogun and Medieval. Now you are in individual forests, rivers, lakes, deserts, etc. This shift wasn’t just an aesthetic change but provided new and interesting strategic options for players. 

Do you want to push ahead and take that bridge allowing you to defend it in an easier battle or hide in an ambush in the forest? Instead of just moving between provinces you now could choose your exact positioning to take battle. This shift to a 3D campaign map is so great not because of the increase in graphics but because it provides more strategic depth, and gives you more options to consider before initiating a battle. 

Fighting near mountains provides you with a battle map that reflects that type of terrain, potentially giving you an advantage. Tying the decisions made on the campaign map into the battles in this way was a huge step forward for the series, and is a key tenet of good strategy game design.

This was only enhanced by the clarity of the visuals. In modern Total war games, it’s often unclear how terrain on the campaign map will play into the battles. Is my army directly on this river crossing or is it slightly too far away? How will the terrain look on this map, will it give the advantage to me or my enemies? These are minor problems in the modern Total War games but it’s interesting to note the Rome Total War didn’t have them.

An Actually Good Tutorial

Before jumping into the main Imperial campaign I want to talk about the prologue or tutorial campaign for Rome Total War. It does something extraordinary for a strategy game and makes the tutorial section not terrible. 

You’ll command a small force of Romans coming in to assist a larger Roman army in battles against the Gauls. The battle is relatively easy as it mostly serves to teach you the camera controls and your allies will take the brunt of the assault. 

The game then unleashes you on a smaller version of the campaign map. Here, you’ll only be tackling the Italian peninsula instead of the entire ancient world.

It is a serviceable enough introduction to the gameplay throwing things at you one at a time to ensure new players aren’t overwhelmed, gradually adding more mechanics until you are ready for the full game.

I only mention all of this because so many strategy games have abysmal tutorials. Here it mostly lets you just play the game and gives you more direction than you receive in the main campaign. It’s simple, allows you to learn by doing, and provides context to the Imperial Campaign. In short, it’s everything a tutorial should be. 

Imperial Campaign

The Main Campaign is the highlight here. Spread across the ancient Mediterranean World you take control of a faction, expand your territory, and conquer your neighbors, fairly standard Total War stuff. The Campaign itself starts in 270 BC and ends in 14 AD. Each year consists of two turns. Your main resource will be the same as in previous Total Wars: gold, which you can earn through taxes, buildings, and sacking cities.

The first thing you’ll need to do is choose between the three Roman factions. Wait? only three factions? Well, Rome Total War has 20 factions in total, with 13 being playable, although all 20 can be unlocked by messing with the game files. But you’ll only be able to play the three Roman factions at the beginning. Creative Assembly got rid of this for every other Total War game, for clear reasons.

Though it does make some sense why they’d limit the amount of starting factions. The first is to teach news players the game using the strongest faction. This will reduce player frustration since it’s unlikely they will be defeated as any of the Roman families, and then give up on the game. Second, is that the Romans have several unique mechanics that spice up the game, namely the Senate offices and senate mission. Third, is that playing as anyone but the Romans and you’ll eventually come into contact with their overpowered legionnaires which if you’re fighting with a bunch of naked Gauls can lead to a bad time for new players.

You can then choose your difficulty and whether you want “arcade battles” or not. Arcade battles, what’s that? Well just know, no one, and I truly mean no one, plays with Arcade Battles on. What it means is that fatigue and morale aren’t taken into account during battles, making them more like traditional RTS games where units fight to the death. This not only destroys the historical feel of the battles, eliminating most need for tactics and strategy but it also completely breaks the unit balancing. In short, don’t use it. 

“We Brutii are the only true Romans. We saved Rome, we drove out the kings, we made the Republic. The family deserve respect; respect, and obedience. We know what is best for Rome: new lands, living space, territories, slaves! I know what must be done. The Greeks look down their perfumed noses at all Romans, and they hate us. I’m going to give them a reason for hate…when I’ve crushed them! Roman steel, that’s the answer; Roman steel in the Brutii fist. And the other great Roman families…the Scipii; trash! They have no respect for proper Roman ways, for us! The Julii prostitute themselves. As if the people matter! Bah! We Brutii must lead Rome.”

Brutii Intro for Rome Total War

Anyway, back to the Romans. The three Roman factions are the: Julii, the Brutii, or the Scipii. Once you choose one you’ll be treated to an intro cinematic with some truly great voice acting. This sets the stage for the campaign and highlights the differences between each family. 

Oddly these aren’t historically the most prominent Roman Families, instead, they’re the most recognizable. Each also is a nod to their historical areas of influence. The Julii being situated near the Po River and Gaul, the area where Julius Caesar conquered. The Scipii being situated in Sicily primed for a fight with Carthage in Africa, the historical stomping ground of Scipio Africanus. While Brutii for Lucius Junius Brutus, who created the republic, and Marcus Junius Brutus who was Caesar’s “Et tu, Brute?”

Although this may make it sound like each family may have a specialty or role within the republic, they really don’t. Their main differences come from their starting positions and a few types of units they can recruit, such as the type of gladiator.

Roman Campaigns

“In politics, the tripod is the most unstable of all structures”

Frank Herbert, Dune

The city of Rome itself isn’t controlled by any family faction; instead, it’s held by the SPQR, a neutral faction that mostly just hangs around Rome twiddling their thumbs. 

Needless to say, this setup isn’t what we would call “historically accurate” but it works in gameplay terms. Setting up three Roman factions who are all allied but heading for an inevitable showdown presages the later civil wars of the Roman Republic. 

Throughout the Roman campaign, you’ll be given Senate missions to complete. This can be anything from blockading a port to signing a trade agreement with another faction. These will often force you to go to war with neutral factions to complete, which forces you to either prioritize your diplomatic standing with foreign nations or your popularity with the senate. 

By completing these missions you’ll generally get some immediate reward like money or units and increase your relations with the Senate. Increasing your standing in the Senate will help you hold higher offices within the Republic which grants those characters bonuses and will greatly increase that character’s influence score. 

More often than not though these missions are often entirely nonsensical and seem to go out of their way to be annoying and conflict with your interests. This has given them a bad reputation among Total War fans especially since the reward of a few thousand coins doesn’t compensate for going to war with a major world power. 

The other group you’re trying to court as a Roman faction are the dirty unwashed masses of Rome. Pleasing them is done mostly through conquest. Conquest brings in new slaves and opens new markets to the Roman people so as you conquer more, the poor be happier with you. 

These two modifiers feed into the Roman civil war mechanic where your faction will inevitably be outlawed by the Senate and forced to fight the other two families for supremacy over the Roman world. 

Roman factions will also receive the Marian Reforms event which allows you to build more advanced Roman Legionnaires, abandoning the older Polybian legions. This can be annoying since your troops were already the best, and now you can’t retrain any of your current armies, leaving those soldiers obsolete. 

The Roman campaign is brilliant. Each phase has a distinct feeling as you slowly conquer your way across the Ancient World bringing the riches of distant lands back into Italy. As your wealth and power rise, you’ll slowly draw the ire of the Senate until the situation explodes into open war.

There are a number of theories about why the Roman Republic fell. People blame Caesar, they blame the Optimates, Marius or Sulla, or even the Latifundia. But the argument Rome Total War makes is that it’s this wealth, this insatiable need to conquer which drives the Republic to its own ruin. When there is so much wealth and the armies are so large the stakes become too high, your family can’t back down, lest you lose everything. The Roman civil war is inevitable just by playing the game. There is no way to come to an agreement with the other families, and placating the senate can only go on for so long. 

That all this “fun” you’re having conquering the world is going to come back to bite you eventually.

Or to paraphrase what a wise man once said, these imperial wars, they always come home.

Empire Management

Rome Total War kept the structure of the settlement management mechanics from Medieval Total War, translating it into the new 3D map. The most striking change from previous entries is the shift from a province-level overview to a city-level. Effectively this doesn’t change much since the cities function as the province capital and house all of its buildings. 

Provinces are governed from these major cities, which will be upgraded into different tiers, starting with a small village and progressing all the way up to a massive city. These settlements will act as your production and recruitment centers, unlike modern Total War games where armies are where you build new troops. 

Also unlike in modern Total War games, there are no set building “slots” in Rome Total War. Instead, you have a number of building trees your faction can build and the only thing stopping you from building all of them is time and money. 

This building system ensures that settlements feel like actual cities, they will have aqueducts, temples, and coliseums. The drawback is that no city feels unique for very long and by the end game every city is a jack-of-all-trades center of military, economic, and population growth.

Cities have dynamic population numbers which are decreased when you recruit troops out of it. This is in stark contrast to the later Total Wars where population levels are abstracted, which is a change that many fans criticize to this day. Having population numbers be dynamic also means you can theoretically destroy your enemies fighting ability by attrition or constantly sacking their settlements. Although being able to actually do this without just destroying their entire faction is unlikely.

One interesting wrinkle of this system is that since your population is constantly increasing your Public Order is constantly at risk. Public Order represents the stability of the settlement. Settlements without proper sanitation or that were recently conquered will have low Public Order. 

The problem with city management getting into the late game is that your cities will eventually become constant centers of rebellion as the exponential population growth outpaces any efforts to mollify the populace. This is more of an annoyance than a concern to your empire but it is probably one of the main reasons why Creative Assembly chose to ditch the population mechanic. 

Still, despite the system’s flaws, settlement management in Rome Total War successfully provided context for your expansion as well as giving you a range of strategic options and challenges to deal with.

Characters

Rome Total War’s character system is still lauded today for its dynamic traits and the way the player’s actions affect those traits. 

At its most basic level, characters are grouped into a family tree which neatly shows you each character’s relationships, age, and their best stat. Male characters above the age of 16 will appear on the map as generals with their own traits, retinues, etc. The children and women of the family are not represented on the map but can be married off to gain new generals for your faction. Also, If an army not led by a general wins enough battles the Captain will be appointed the “Man of the Hour” allowing you to adopt him into your family. Yay meritocracy?

Characters’ abilities are represented by three factors: Command, Influence, and Management. Command related to the character’s skill on the battlefield, the higher the command the less likely units are to break and run due to low morale. Command will increase as a character wins more battles. A character with 10 command stars has troops who are nearly unbreakable gods of war. 

Influence helps increase public order when a character is within a settlement and determines who will automatically be set as the faction heir, though you can manually change who the heir is. Influence is gained by holding offices in the Senate.

Management refers to how effective the character is as a city magistrate. More management points will increase both the Public Order and revenue of a settlement. It is gained by leaving a character in charge of a settlement. 

Beyond these, a character will have traits that will influence their stats. These traits are part flavor, fleshing out their personality, and partly have an effect on gameplay. A character can have the trait “bad ambusher” or “coward” which influence their command points either in general or in certain situations.

The last main feature of characters is their retinue. These are various advisors and hangers-on to the character. They also augment the character’s stats and provide a further level of flavor. They might be accompanied by a barbarian turncoat, leading to increased command against barbarians. Or a Military Tribune, or a Courtesan. 

While this may all seem fairly standard the reason this system is so praised, even to this day is just for its sheer dynamism. Win enough victories with a commander against a certain faction they’ll get a bonus against that faction. Retreat too many times with a general and they may become a coward. Put them in charge of a settlement and they’ll become a good builder, you get the idea. These traits influence their stats, yes but they also tell you something about how the empire is going. They’ll become more experienced over time and grow into the role you assign them to.

Too many trait systems are static or traits are gained semi-randomly(cough* Crusader Kings 2 cough*). RTW allows plays to subtly influence their characters in interesting and meaningful ways and adds to the overall atmosphere and roleplaying experience of the game. 

The whole system works well, if in the background. You can ignore most of this and just conquer whatever you want for the most part and be fine. But it is there, and it adds a level of immersions which often feels lacking in characters of modern historical Total War titles. 

Agents

Beyond your familial characters, you have agents, who can perform a number of tasks for you. There are three agents: Spy, diplomat, and assassin.

The spy can scout out enemy positions, reveal enemy buildings and if put into a settlement has a chance of opening the gates upon your army’s arrival. 

Spys also have another use though… If squalor gets too high in a settlement it can cause a plague. If this happens characters can get a plague and if they move to another settlement they’ll then spread that plague. So since spies can infiltrate enemy settlements you can purposely infect a spy with the plague then send him to your enemy’s cities. Some would call this “biological terrorism” but hey, it’s the ancient world.

What this does show is how much of a sandbox Rome Total War is. Did the developers mean to allow you to commit acts of biological genocide? No probably not, but since Rome Total War is a series of interconnecting systems you absolutely can do that.

Diplomats will open negotiations with other factions and can bribe characters and settlements. When bribing you will pay a certain amount of money for the subject to join your faction.

This can be incredibly finicky, as your only option is to “offer a bribe” then they can suggest an amount of money. It’s often not very useful as it usually doesn’t work and the settlement will be poorly defended opening it up to attack. 

Assassins are pretty simple, they can kill characters, agents, or sabotage settlement buildings. This can be useful for dealing with powerful enemy generals or if you want to annihilate another faction. 

Once a faction loses all its characters it will cease to exist. So if you assassinate every general of a faction they will collapse into being rebels. This is another effective if tedious way to destroy your enemies.

How is Diplomacy and Politics?

The diplomacy system in Rome Total War is absolutely broken. There’s no other way to say it. 

The AI in Total War games determines its attitude to you off of your relative strength so building more armies and placing them on your border will deter the enemy from attacking. The problem is this is completely hidden from the player’s view. 

This makes the Diplomatic AI seem insane and nonsensical. Your allies will attack you out of nowhere, they’ll send you the infamous: “Please do not attack, accept or we will attack” offers which are both meaningless and confusing… That is unless the AI is playing some weird mind games. They’ll be attacked on two fronts and still not want to make peace with you, the list goes on.

That being said the Total War diplomatic system only improved incrementally after Rome. The same core system was there based on relative strength but now it was out in the open. That is until Total War: Three Kingdoms came and fixed the whole thing. 

Historical Accuracy

“Dedicated wargamers will delight in the attention to detail; Rome doesn’t disappoint in fanatical attention to historical accuracy.”

Gamesradar, Rome Total War Review

That quote is from the GamesRadar review and is mostly just to show how insane some Games Journalists are but seriously, this game has some terrible historical accuracy.

Now the Total War series has always been about Historical authenticity, not accuracy, which is fine these are games. But man is Rome Total War the worst of the bunch.

Without teaching you a whole history course let me sum up the two biggest points: 

The first thing to note is that the Roman Republic was not divided up between three main families each controlling territory on the peninsula in some sort of feudal arrangement. The territory was controlled by the Senate or by Socii which were Italian subject allies of the Republic. 

The second is Egypt. Now I haven’t talked much about other factions besides the Romans yet, because their campaigns don’t really have any unique mechanics but Egypt is bad.

Egypt during this time period was a Hellenistic Kingdom ruled by Macedonian nobility. They would have fought similar to the Seleucids with large pike formations. In the Rome Total War, they are straight up from thousands of years before this time period. 

I could go on about flaming war pigs and Amazonians but let’s move on. 

De Bellum

Battles in Rome Total War are a vast improvement over previous games. This is mostly due to the diversity of the unit rosters and potential matchups, though controls have been greatly improved from Medieval. Each faction has its own unique feel when handling their armies. German barbarians play nothing like a mass of Seleucid pikemen. 

Units stats have become far more complex from previous games allowing for a greater variety of units, and for each unit to feel very different. This ensures it feels like there’s a greater disparity between ‘barbarian’ and ‘civilized’ factions. With barbarians focusing on an initial charge to break the enemy morale while civilized factions seek to grind away at their opponents.

Total War battles have always been focused more on cinematic spectacle than granular tactical maneuvers and Rome Total War accentuates that cinematic quality more so than previous games. Units move across the battlefield extremely quickly and clashes are often done in a few minutes. This prioritizes a player’s micro skill in a way that wasn’t emphasized before, something that would only increase in later Total War games. 

If the campaign AI struggles a bit then the battle AI in Rome is often having a seizure. The AI will often simply charge your formation, making them insanely easy to defeat even with a smaller force.

Despite that, using all the different units and experimenting with different formations for different factions is deeply satisfying. Executing cavalry charges and encirclements leaves you feeling like Hannibal at Cannae even if it’s not really a fair fight against the AI. While battles in Rome Total War definitely favor heavy infantry there is enough faction diversity to change up the game. 

Among heavy infantry though Roman Legionnaires are king. There are a few main types with the earlier forms being split between Hastati, Principes, and Triarii before transitioning to the official Marian Legionnaires. 

General units tend to be overpowered when used en masse. For one of my recent games I was playing a Julii campaign and had put every general unit that I had in a single death stack. We were able to roll completely across the map with ease. With the added bonus of never having to retrain troops at a settlement since your General’s retinues refill automatically. 

Generals also have the special ability to rally fleeing units. Other units can also use special abilities like the Romans forming Testudo to protect them from arrows, or the Greek Phalanx forming a wall of sarissa pikes. 

Where the units and battles shine is in multiplayer. If you can find a community to play with, it’s great. Without the lackluster AI, the gameplay focuses far on smart army composition and tactics. You may or may not be able to find games through matchmaking, so your mileage may vary here.

If you’re having trouble with the gameplay or would like more in-depth guides I’ve linked several Strategy Guides and Primers on the game below:

Quietus’ Rome: Total War Guide

frogbeastegg’s Guide to Rome: Total War and the Barbarian Invasion

Firewind’s ROME TOTAL WAR STRATEGY GUIDE

Mods

Throughout this piece, I’ve attempted to make clear my problems with the game: mostly with the AI. These aren’t new criticisms and many of them have now been fixed with mods. 

Rome Total War and Medieval II Total War have two of the best modding communities in gaming hands down. In terms of Total Conversion mods, those that overhaul large portions of the game, while maintaining the Ancient World you have three main options. 

These are Rome Total Realism, Europa Barbarorum, and Roma Surrectum. Each of these is unique in its own way and I’ll be doing a whole series outlining each one in detail. For now though check them out as they really do improve the game tremendously. 

I’d be perfectly comfortable saying that any one of these three mods would be able to go toe-to-toe with Rome II today. Yes, that’s how good they are. 

If you’re looking for something that improves the game without entirely overhauling it I’d recommend DarthMod. Which keeps the overall look and feel of Vanilla but improves gameplay and AI.

Conclusion

Rome Total War was a seminal game for strategy games. In terms of Technology, the jump too fully 3D real-time battles and the campaign was a huge step forward. PCs were finally ready to handle thousands of units on screen at once.

In terms of design, it clearly had its failings. I didn’t talk much about the other factions’ campaigns because there isn’t much to talk about, they’re all fun yes but not very mechanically interesting. The biggest problem though is simply the AI. Now of course, you may say that “this is a Total War game” why would you expect good AI” but that in itself is the problem. While the Total War AI has certainly improved since Rome Total War it doesn’t feel like 16 years of difference. 

Still looking back on this game I think there are great design decisions here that go beyond nostalgia. A lot of the ideas behind the Roman campaigns are great, and the character system is excellent. Agents can do some interesting things in this game but mostly the AI just spams them to be annoying. The Total War series still hasn’t really figured out what to do with agents and fluctuates between removing them or keeping them. 

What perhaps surprised me the most is how many of the Total War Franchises nagging problems really come to fruition in Rome Total War, and arguably haven’t been solved to this day. To be clear, I’m not blaming Rome for this, it is a hugely ambitious game and was a massive step forward catapulting the series into the strategy game stardom it has today so of course it has flaws. Instead I’m saying that it should have been the job of the successors to the Rome Total War to even attempt to fix them. 

Now, I know what you’re saying, “But you didn’t even talk about the expansions!” Don’t worry I’ll be covering each individually, Barbarian Invasion(Which is amazing) and Alexander(Which is mostly not amazing). Don’t worry they’ll get their own individual pieces coming soon.

This article is part of a series on the Total War Series you can find the other articles in the series here:

• Shogun Total War
• Medieval Total War

The post Does Rome Total War Still Hold Up in 2021? appeared first on StrategyFront Gaming.

It is a game that understood what its predecessor did right and what audiences would want next. In truth, when playing Shogun Total War it often felt like a proof-of-concept for what Medieval Total War was trying to do.

Medieval Total War was released in August 2002 and expanded the scope of every feature of Total War significantly. Now all of Europe and the Middle-east are open to your conquering armies. Consequently, due to this huge expansion in map size, there is also much greater faction diversity.

But what’s perhaps most impressive about Medieval Total War is that it managed to balance its improvements to both the Battle and Campaign systems. Where most Total War games focus on improving one or the other, Medieval enhances both while staying true to the historical and tactical thesis of the original Shogun.

Development

Medieval: Total War was first revealed as Crusader: Total War in 2001, shortly after the release of Shogun Total War, but the name was soon changed to Medieval: Total War to better reflect gameplay and represent those factions who couldn’t go crusading. Through development, the publishers also changed from EA to Activision.

The game engine was updated during development which is what allowed for the update to sieges and for a vastly increased troop limit on the battle map. While it’s still definitely the same game engine as Shogun but the updates make a huge difference especially in the scale of the battles at play.

The biggest improvement made by the engine is on the battle maps themselves. The terrain is now more varied which is a nice reprieve from the forests and plains which made up almost every Shogun map. With the inclusion of more varied climates on the map, like the Middle-east, this allows for their terrain to be more accurately represented on the battlefield.

Campaign

The campaign is far more expansive than in Shogun. There are now 20 different factions in the game with 14 being playable. Each is assigned roughly their historical territory for the given time period, which shifts depending on which era you choose: Early, High, or Late.

The Era system is something that is clearly missing in modern Total War games, and while I’m not sure it would work in the more balance-focused Total War campaigns it was a nice touch that added needed variety to the campaign. This also allowed you to choose how quickly you wanted to ramp up to massive battles, as the more developed territories of the later era would be able to pump out much larger armies.

Scenarios

Beyond the grand campaign, Medieval features several scenario campaigns that focus on a specific conflict of the era, such as the crusades or the Hundred Years War. These are an excellent addition to the game that would be DLC in most modern Total War games. Beyond these historical campaigns Medieval also has a series of historical battles that allow you to play out the greatest battles of the era.

There is also an alternate campaign mode named “Glorious Achievements” which tasks you with completing certain historical goals for your factions which will in turn earn you points. At the end of the game whoever has achieved more of their historical goals will win the game.

While this mode could be finicky and felt more restrictive than the grand campaign it added a nice historical focus to what you’ll be doing.

Factions

The factions in Medieval are also more diverse than in the predecessor. You can lead any nation from England to Byzantium, or the Turks. It is a huge breath of fresh air coming from Shogun Total War’s single faction roster and feeds into that game feeling like a bit of a prelude to what Medieval is doing.

Medieval also introduces emergent factions like the Golden Horde and Burgundy, who appear during the campaign only when certain conditions are met and as such are unplayable. These serve as an added challenge for those regions but can ruin your game if you’re not prepared for them, and they come stomping through your corner of the map.

The addition of faction diversity is a huge stepping stone for the series and would pave the way for the wildly different factions of Rome Total War. It also added much-needed variety to the battles, which can now vary wildly based on the terrain and faction you’re fighting. 

Building

Medieval Total War features hundreds of available buildings that can be constructed in each province. The building system serves as the game’s technology tree, as you build more advanced buildings you have access to more advanced units, agents, and best of all, even more buildings.

I like this system a lot better than the Civilization-style traditional technology trees that modern games have implemented, it feels less arbitrary and more grounded in the reality on the map.

Through new buildings, you can gain access to radically new technologies like gunpowder weaponry. In order to build new buildings and gain access to higher tiers of buildings, you will need to upgrade the castle itself.

Most buildings though will not grant new units or technology but will augment the economic or defensive nature of the settlement. You can build trade posts or stronger walls among tons of other buildings to do this.

Coming from the limited build slots of modern Total War games the sheer amount of options you have is overwhelming. This does allow you more freedom in how you go about building your settlement but can also lead to every province feeling interchangeable. We will talk more about this change when we get there in this series.

Characters

Your faction will be led by its Royal family and nobility who function as the generals and officials of your realm. The character system is greatly expanded and they now have several attributes they are scored in, instead of just Honor in Shogun. These attributes are Command, Piety, Dread, Loyalty, and Acumen.

Beyond this Medieval introduces traits to the game, which are called “Vices and Virtues” and greatly improve on fleshing out the characters. These are given due to whatever actions you take with them. Meaning that if you leave a governor in a province with a high tax rate, they’ll be at a much greater likelihood of getting a negative trait.

Perhaps most intriguing about Medieval’s Character system is the loyalty mechanic. If multiple generals have low loyalty they can trigger a civil war, plunging the country into chaos. This is by far the best civil war mechanic in the entire Total War series, not only because it happens organically but also because you can choose which side to back when the civil war occurs. You can also do this in Empire Total War but that game’s civil war mechanics has other problems.

This mechanic is excellent in that it forces you to make interesting strategic trade-offs between using a great general who has low loyalty and not using him but significantly weakening your military.

Since the game is played in the Middle Ages, where lords often gave titles to their loyal generals, you can likewise give land and titles to your loyal servants, who will then in turn govern the province in your name. You can actually use this system to your advantage, for example by making a pious Muslim general the leader of a Muslim province to increase its loyalty or by turning over control of a mineral-rich province to a shrewd general to increase revenues.

To prevent a civil war, you will need to keep your generals happy. The best way to do this is by giving them titles. Titles act almost as units on the map but can be “equipped” to generals giving them a loyalty boost. Titles are gained every time you conquer a new region and gaining more will be part of what fuels your conquest as you’ll need them to continuously keep your generals happy.

Beyond generals, you’ll also have to manage your Royal family. Over the course of the game, your king will die, if you don’t have an heir the kingdom is far more likely to devolve into civil war. You’ll now be able to use princesses as emissaries and to marry them off to

A cut feature that was planned was to allow kingdoms to claim another’s thone if they have a marriage through a princess and the country was in a civil war. Which is just the sort of Medieval backstabbing that makes me love Crusader Kings so much.

Agents

Agents also make a return with the princess, who we just mentioned. being one of the newest editions. The other agents are mostly the same as in Shogun with Assassins and diplomats. What’s interesting about assassins is that they can kill your own characters, so they can potentially take out a disloyal general you need to be removed.

Kingdoms will now also have unique religious agents which act to spread your state religion to new provinces.

Religion

Religion is now in the game, which mostly affects diplomacy and province unrest. There are three religions represented in the game Catholic, Muslim, and Orthodox. Using your religious agents you can shift the religious affinity of your provinces and pacify them.

Catholic nations have unique mechanics regarding the Papacy who can call them to a crusade or excommunicate them if they step out of line. Muslims can also call a Jihad as their specific option for holy war.

Diplomacy

Diplomacy suffers from many of the same problems it has generally had in Total War games. While there are several diplomacy options, the campaign AI will often make nonsensical offers and is completely out for the player’s blood on higher difficulties.

The game’s setting lends itself to a lot more political intrigue than Shogun, and in addition to forging alliances through diplomacy, you can also marry off your daughters to create lasting ties with rival rulers.

Battles

The battle system in Medieval saw probably the largest improvement due to the advancements made in the Total War Engine. The AI, while still not great, is improved over Shogun. The AI can now use formations and put up an effective struggle against the player, even if it misses many of the finer tactics you can take advantage of.

There is far more unit variety in Medieval with troops ranging from heavily armored knights to longbowmen and Vikings. Much like on the historical medieval battlefield heavy cavalry rules the day. Knights are expensive to buy and maintain but you’re paying for quality, and a group of knights can demolish infantry out of formation.

Units can now also gain Valour which acts as unit veterancy and increases their potency in combat.

All of this combines to make a more dynamic battle system than you had in Shogun, where the rock-paper-scissors relationship between units was starker. The morale of each unit also seems higher than it was in Shogun which allows for more draw out engagements.

But the biggest improvement is in the battle maps themselves, which now allow for more tactical options and more varied climates than they did in Shogun. Now you’ll fight across deserts, mountain passes, and snowy hillocks.

The battle system is still marred by the finicky camera and the stiff controls, which make controlling the units themselves difficult. This wouldn’t be something that was fixed until the next entry into the series: Rome Total War.

Sieges

Sieges received a massive improvement, in that there are now actually sieges with a full curtain wall around the castle. They only occur when a defending army retreats into its castle instead of taking the fight on the field.

Throughout the siege, the attacker will have to break through the walls of the castle and pry the defenders out. While the system is an improvement it also suffers from pathfinding and collision issues, meaning sieges are still generally the buggiest part of the game. The added complexity also doesn’t help the AI who will struggle to coordinate a well-meaning attack on your fortifications.

Viking Invasion

Medieval Total War received its first and only expansion pack in January of 2003, titled: Viking Invasion. The expansion added a new campaign which features, you guessed it, everyone’s favorite Scandinavian adventures.

Viking Invasion rolls the timeline back to 793 as the Vikings begin expanding outside Scandinavia. The campaign itself takes place solely on the British isle, splitting them up between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the Celtic kingdoms, and Vikings.

Mechanically the expansion adds flaming arrows which can burn down wooden castles and lower the morale of units. Also apparently included was the option to pre-deploy your troops before a battle, which I didn’t know was only added in this campaign but seems slightly critical to the overall balance of the game.

The expansion also added three new factions to the game’s main campaign and new units.

The campaign itself is reminiscent of Shogun’s Mongol Invasion expansion, with the possibility of attack from anywhere. Otherwise, this feels like a more detailed scenario campaign from the main game. It certainly works and is well done but in the end, is just more Medieval Total War.

Conclusion

I’ve spent parts of this piece comparing Medieval to Shogun, which some may think is unfair. To be clear I’m not saying Shogun is lesser to Medieval or a bad game. But It’s clear to me that Creative Assembly took the core formula from Shogun and expanded every part of it for Medieval Total War.

While Shogun is historically important for Total War as a series, I wouldn’t recommend you go play it today. Medieval though still holds up as a game today and is pretty damn competent.

Some things it does like the Civil War mechanic have yet to be surpassed in a Total War title, and though the controls and UI inherit many of Shogun’s problems its expansive features and simple campaign structure allow the AI to at least participate in putting up a fight against the player.

If you missed it check out the other articles in this Series:

Shogun Total War

The post Medieval Total War Retrospective appeared first on StrategyFront Gaming.

Shogun Total War’s strength is in its perfect blend of the more historically accurate nature of wargaming with the arcadey-but-exciting elements of RTS games. And it was a combination that clearly worked at release. While old-guard wargamers might turn their noses at Shogun’s fast-paced battles and hardcore RTS fans may have been bored by the campaign there was clearly a huge audience who was looking for something that mixed these two genres.

First and foremost is the setting. Eschewing the usual European setting of most medieval strategy games, Shogun went straight for the exotic setting of Sengoku Jidai Japan. This was a brilliant move that instantly set the game apart from its competitors, and allowed for the team to make a smaller first title before expanding in Medieval Total War.

While Shogun’s gameplay is split between turn-based campaign mode and real-time battles, Shogun’s focus is clearly on the battles. With semi-historically accurate engagements consisting of thousands of men on the field at the time, it’s something that set itself far apart from its contemporaries.

The battle system is truly the pumping heart of Total War with the goal of being to give you the sense of actually being a commander with the battle developing right in front of your eyes.

While these were meant to be spectacles they were also deeper than most RTS battles at the time. Units are affected by morale, flanking, and their commander’s proximity to them. Factors not seen in your average Age of Empires or Starcraft. This created the sense that these units were real soldiers, not just emotionless automatons willing to charge into a meat grinder again and again.

That being said, you can see the dedication to having a fleshed-out campaign already in Shogun. While most RTS-focused games would relegate their strategic campaigns to be little more than sideshows, Shogun wanted it to be a competent companion to its battles since those battles are relatively short.

Shogun’s battles allow for over 1,000 soldiers to be on the screen at one time, which for 2000 was an incredibly impressive technical feat, and was heavily promoted in the marketing materials for the game. Shogun was also unique in its use of Agents, having multiple types of each with their own role. While fairly simple in this title it began a mechanic that became a staple in most later Total War games.

Background & Development

Before Shogun Total War, Creative Assembly mostly worked on porting sports games to different PC systems. They began to work with EA in the 1990s when they ported FIFA and several other sports games. After Michael Simpson joined CA they began to work on a side project which they envisioned as a low-risk “B-title RTS game” to compete with the likes of Age of Empires, Command & Conquer, and Starcraft. This would eventually become Shogun Total War.

The most important factor in Shogun’s development was the upgrade to 3D graphics for the real-time battles. This gave CA much more flexibility in how they could portray the battles and it was at this point that they decided on a more historically accurate approach to designing the game’s units and gameplay.

The problem they had was without the base building mechanics present in most other RTS games the “battles themselves were very short, and we needed something to tie it together and make people care about the battles.” The solution was the strategic campaign which was designed mostly to provide context to the battles.

Creative Assembly chose Medieval Japan due to their interest in Samurai, and the fact that they could introduce gunpowder into the game quickly without having to worry about the player needing to develop it.

They went so far in their quest for historical accuracy that they hired a historian who studies Samurai warfare, Stephen Turnbull, to consult on the game. This led to a much higher level of historical accuracy overall than many of its competitors in the same space.

Campaign

The early Total War campaign maps have often been described as similar to RISK, and that comparison is generally apt here. Your armies are placed in a province and can only move to directly adjacent provinces unless there is a port.

When setting up a campaign you’ll choose a time period that determines how big each clan’s starting territory will be with the later dates featuring each clan holding more land. The choice you make will be an indication of how much campaign management you will want to do, as later start dates have more built-up provinces, and be able to get into combat faster.

You’ll then choose from one of seven historical clans, which determine your starting position and some starting buffs. I was surprised to see each clan already being differentiated here in Shogun. The Takeda gain bonuses to their cavalry, Imagawa to their spies, and Shimazu can recruit higher level No-Dachi Samurai for a lower cost. This idea of faction traits being the major differentiator between different clans is mirrored in Shogun’s sequel and works well for a game that necessarily has the same units for each faction.

You can manage your provinces by constructing buildings and maintaining public order. Certain provinces will have special resources that can be exploited with mines. It’s all fairly simple compared to later games but there is a good amount of depth here, despite often wrestling with the UI.

Army and province management are both done through the simple but unwieldy UI. I would argue that more than the art style or the gameplay the UI and controls are what is going to date the game for many people.

You’ll also be using your castles buildings to upgrade units and gain more koku. The more advanced dojos and barracks you build the more specialized units you can produce. What shocked me here was that each castle can only support a certain number of these buildings which was a feature I had thought Creative Assembly had only introduced in Empire.

It was often a hot button issue for fans who accused the series of simplifying its mechanics compared to Rome Total War and Medieval Total War 2. The feature works well here and forces players to specialize in each region to produce specific units, making the different provinces of your empire feel valuable.

Playing the campaign itself is different from the later Total Wars. The RISK-style province system means that if an enemy gets behind your lines, they can capture your undefended heartlands easily. This makes it important to build and garrison castles throughout all provinces, Defense in depth is key here.

This is especially true since many of the rebel armies will start out larger than your own faction’s forces, and you’ll have to carefully think about where you will push out in the beginning so you aren’t cut off from your home provinces.

Campaign AI

Shogun’s campaign AI is fairly competent compared to later Total War games. Obviously, with the RISK-like province system, the AI has far fewer variables to contend with but it will do intelligent things like pull back its forces from a province when it’s outnumbered before counter-attacking with a larger force.

It doesn’t always succeed but it’s a challenging opponent but on the higher difficulties it can be difficult to deal with. This is especially true since the AI is ruthless about exploiting any gaps in your frontlines, and will quickly take advantage of any situation they see fit or retreat when the situation calls for it.

The campaign is heavily-influenced by board game design, even down to the fact that the units have bases like a miniature model would. This evokes the image of a Daimyo standing over a map shuffling his armies around as he plans his conquest of Japan. It’s an excellent visual design that belies the simple map.

Characters and Agents

Generals in Shogun do not possess any traits as they do in later titles. Instead, they possess an Honor rating that can change based on their actions. For example, let’s say that your general has just lost a string of battles, their Honor rating will then suffer which can eventually lead them to commit seppuku if it goes on too long.

Every faction also has a range of agents to work with. You have emissaries that act as simple diplomats. Then you have the Ninjas and Shinobis which act as spies and assassins. Finally, you have the all-powerful Geisha who act both to stop assassins from infiltrating your castle and as assassins themselves. They also cannot be killed in a failed assassination attempt which makes them the most powerful agent in the game.

Each agent has their own cutscenes that play when they undertake a mission. These are all excellent and some are extremely over the top:

Technology

Shogun attempts to emulate several of the critical historical episodes of the period, such as the arrival of Europeans and the spread of the Ikko Ikki, through events. Once the Europeans arrive the player must make the critical strategic decision of whether or not to cozy up to them in order to obtain their valuable gunpowder technology.

Doing this was a double-edged sword. Seeming too close to the Europeans could cause other daimyos to start to resent you while your own people will grow more rebellious. So the player has to maintain a careful balance.

Battles

The real-time battles are Shogun’s most impressive feature. In a game like Age of Empires tactics like flanking can be useful but are hardly necessary for victory. Most RTS games of that vein prioritize unit composition over tactics. Shogun does the opposite: the game insists you need to use a clever variety of tactics to win the day.

The fact that the battle AI was said to have been programmed with Sun Tzu’s philosophy in The Art of War is interesting but the game doesn’t bear this out in any meaningful way besides the most basic tactics. While I see this was heavily pushed in the marketing of the game, the AI in Shogun’s battles simply doesn’t hold up to this ideal.

The best thing about the AI here is that it doesn’t just rush into your lines as it would often do in later Total War games. Instead, it will often try to maneuver for a better position before the main clash. Once the battle begins though, all bets are off, as the AI cannot keep a formation together to save its life.

It will be happy enough to sit on a hill and pepper you with arrows but it cannot assist its units once attacked, and will often try and reposition its forces while being attacked.

Shogun relies on a rock-paper-scissors relationship between cavalry, infantry, and archers. This means that for the AI to be successful they’ll have to successfully take certain encounters while avoiding others, which is something even modern Total War’s battle AI struggles with. The AI will struggle to keep its formations while moving so they can easily be caught out and destroyed.

The battles do suffer from awkward controls and the finicky camera. This makes the game a chore to handle but not having to pinpoint accuracy over where exactly your troops go added a sense of weight to your orders since it’d be difficult to rescind them and more realism to troop movements. It all adds a degree of chaos to controlling battlefields missing from some later titles. 

Sieges in Shogun are definitely its weakest element. The fortifications will mostly be there to provide choke points since they have wide openings instead of a closed circuit of walls. This is due to engine limitations.

DLC

In 2001, Shogun Total War received its first and only expansion pack: The Mongol Invasion. This expansion features a new campaign and a new faction, the Mongols. In the campaign, you can now either play as the Mongol invaders led by Kublai Khan or the Japanese defenders of the Hojo.

This adds some much-needed variety to the campaign and battles but considering that the Mongol Invasion campaign takes place almost 300 years before the Sengoku Jidai period, it’s a little disappointing that the Japanese still have almost all the same units they did in the main game.

The campaign pits a united Japan against two massive stacks of incredibly strong Mongol troops, essentially asking the question, what if the storm hadn’t destroyed the Mongol fleet. The Mongols will be able to easily push out of their early holdings in Kyushu but will have to carefully preserve their forces. The Japanese will need to marshall their far larger but inferior forces to stop the Mongols from gaining too large a foothold on the island.

Multiplayer

Shogun Total War also had an interesting multiplayer system. Multiplayer rank was determined by “Honor” which was a set of points that were gained and lost by winning and losing matches. Each player started with 100 Honor and based on that were ranked accordingly.

The system was balanced so that if a player had too much more Honor than their opponent they would actually lose Honor even if they won the match. Which heavily discouraged experienced players from beating up on beginners. You could also play unranked matches against other players so that experienced players could still show beginners the ropes if they would like.

Multiplayer battles shone since, without the incompetent battle AI, the full measure of the tactics engine could be exploited. The battles were fast and short with formations and positioning being the top priority.

The game’s wiki notes:

“In Shogun, any army could win over another using clever, fast, and precise strategies. In later Total War games, army selection was given more importance. This is the reason why many fans still refer to Shogun as the purest and most skillful of the Total War games.”

When the game first came out, the multiplayer was extremely popular with many players taking up role-playing as Japanese generals.

Conclusion

Shogun Total War was a strong foundation to build one of the most popular strategy franchises on. In researching and playing the game for this article I was shocked by how many features were laid down here that Total War would still be using or reintroduce in later titles.

While the game is now old, the concept of having 1,000 units on-screen is extremely compelling and the historical flavor is superbly done. For a series that has mainly focused on Europe since this game(except for of course Shogun 2), it’s important to recognize where the series started.

Unlike the first Medieval total war, I wouldn’t say it’s a game you should necessarily play today. But it is hugely historically significant for the total war series and served as a strong foundation for Creative Assembly to further explore this concept.

Above all, it demonstrated there was a market for a hybrid approach to war games and turn-based strategy and that Creative Assembly could successfully blend those two systems.

The post The First Total War: Shogun Total War Retrospective appeared first on StrategyFront Gaming.

The DLC will release on September 3rd, 2020.

This new DLC is focused on the southern portion of the map, an area that was severely underpopulated in terms of characters, compared to northern China.

4 new playable factions each with their own unique mechanics, with 19 new factions overall populating southern China

25+ new units including exciting and formidable animal units

New ferocious character artwork

New Nanman-specific tech tree with keystone technologies requiring missions to be completed

A completely new character progression style, with feats, used to unlock traits

Unique missions and narrative events bespoke for the Nanman culture

One goal to ‘Unite the Tribes’, but how will you achieve it, through diplomacy or conquest?

Playable in 190 and 194 start dates

from Steam

The campaign will feature the jungles of Southern China. With the new campaign focusing on the unification of the Nanman tribes under one of the new four Legendary Lords.

The four new lords will be: Meng Huo, King Mulu, Lady Zhurong, and King Shamoke.

Each will have their own unique mechanics and special units(From Steam):

Meng Huo

Having risen through the ranks of the Nanman tribes, Meng Huo has gained repute for his fierce but stubborn leadership. Loyal to his friends but merciless when it comes to his enemies, his tenacity garners him as much trouble as it does success. With one goal in mind – becoming the king of the Nanman – Meng Huo must look to his neighbors to help spread the flames of his rule.

King of Kings

When Meng Huo takes control over another Nanman faction, either by making an alliance or destroying them, he gains certain temporary bonuses. These bonuses can also be stacked, creating a rolling momentum that will surely bring Meng Huo the kingship he desires.

Unique Units:

• Nanzhong Champions: A cut above your usual shield-wielding infantry – perfect for holding your frontline steady as a rock in the face of incoming missiles
• Nanzhong Elephants: Drummers sit atop these mighty elephant units, playing rhythms that provide passive buffs to your nearby units. Use them to wreak havoc on the frontline or pull them back to provide support for your units
• Nanzhong Spearmen: The eye-catching rattan armour these spearmen wear provides defense against any errant darts headed their way, leaving them free to focus on any incoming mounted foes

Lady Zhurong

A descendent of the god of fire, sparks fly when Lady Zhurong enters the battlefield. With a hot temper and an iron will, she seeks to expand her lands, and remove any obstacles in her way. Her passion seems impossible to rival, but there may just be allies closer than she thinks.

Goddess of Fire

Across the seasons, Lady Zhurong accumulates points toward her Goddess of Fire mechanic. Once enough points have been gathered, players have the ability to activate her Wild Fire bonus; this formidable bonus makes her units near unbeatable in battle. The bonus changes according to the season it is activated within, and these powerful effects last across a series of turns. Once Wild Fire has burned out, Lady Zhurong is vulnerable for a short period and will need to recover before she can fight again without weakness, so time your expansion wisely.

Unique Units:

• Tiger Warriors: These axe-wielding warriors have an ace up their sleeve – their tiger companions. Use these tigers to give your opponents a scare before going in for the kill
• Followers of the Flame: What’s better than a two-handed mace? A two-handed mace that’s on fire. Engage this fiery unit in as many frontline battles as possible and watch as their damage-over-time effect causes chaos
• Tiger Slingers: While tigers disrupt your opponent’s line, these slingers will pick off any stragglers who manage to escape

King Mulu

In the undergrowth of the Southern jungle roams King Mulu, a friend to the animal kingdom, but a stranger to man. Spending time in the animal world has gained him many advantages, not least, the mighty elephants that walk by his side. Now Mulu must face his brethren, but will his pride get in the way of future partnerships?

Pride & Ritual

You know what they say, ‘Pride always comes before a Ritual’, quite literally in the case of Mulu. During his campaign he will accumulate Pride, his faction’s pooled resource, according to the rank of characters he defeats in battle. Your faction will gain lucrative bonuses to animal units, such as an increase in unit capacity and even a decrease in recruitment cost, in line with the amount of Pride you have reached. Periodically, Mulu will take part in spiritual rituals, invoking the elements to grant additional distinct bonuses for his faction.

Unique Units:

• Southern Elephants: A small band of elephants that pack a mighty punch to frontlines, accompanied by some handy slingers on their backs
• War Elephants: A more heavily armored elephant unit used best to charge into enemies, also accompanied by slingers
• Ravine Warriors: These frontline warriors are ready to clean up after any elephant-related carnage with a weapon in each hand

King Shamoke

Shamoke’s origins may be as murky as the dense jungle he controls, but his drive for power is all Nanman. As the ruler of the five valleys, several tribes have pledged their allegiance to him, but many remain wary of the leader. The Han’s interest in him has only deepened this suspicion. With both sides in opposition, Shamoke must choose where his loyalty truly lies, and neither choice is without cost.

Unification Mandate

Shamoke’s chief concern is uniting the Nanman under his rule, and so, his faction mechanic gives him bonuses according to what unification technique the player chooses to employ. Whether you conquer, subjugate or reform, power is yours for the taking and you will be rewarded for the followers you bring to your side.

Unique Units:

• Might of the Valley: Fast two-handed axe infantry that gain large bonuses when fighting near death – watch as they flank and charge enemies into submission
• Wuling Slingers: These light-footed short-range units are able to side-step potential terrain penalties – ideal for skirmishing in dense jungle where they can quickly evade and wear down enemy units
• Wuling Fighters: Offensive-minded warriors with a health pool hardy enough to take the mightiest of blows. These fighters do best pitted against the strongest heroes

The post New Total War: Three Kingdoms DLC Announced: The Furious Wild appeared first on StrategyFront Gaming.

The game will receive a free DLC adding an entirely new faction to the game: The Amazons.

The Amazons DLC will release in December 2020 along with mod support for the game.

Adding these mythical warrior women goes hand-in-hand with their “truth behind the myth” tagline for the game.

The Amazons feature more cavalry than most factions in the base game, which will be interesting for a game where infantry play a dominate role.

Fast and manoeuvrable, Amazons’ cavalry units unlock a plethora of tactical options. Treasure your warriors and they will grant you victory on the battlefield!

The two Amazon heroes will be the sisters Penthesilea and Hippolyta.

Each sister with have their own faction with their own goals:

As Hippolyta, capture sacred regions to gather Amazon Treasures and rank up your units, improve diplomatic deals and complete Royal Decrees.

As Penthesilea, roam the world and capture new settlements with a Horde army at your side, granting you unique War Spoils to boost your campaign.

Read more on the Total War Troy Site.

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