Total War thread: What's your favorite Total War and when did the series frick up?

It's so fricked that strategy game AI hasn't really improved in the past 20 years.

I only play warhammer. History Total war players are cute twinks, I'm glad they got abandoned

Empire is the buggiest, the most overambitious, and the one that keeps me coming back. It added naval battles, multiple theaters, city garrisons, a shitty massless zero-friction engine they keep to this day, a tech tree, a much more convenient diplomacy system they also kept, and plenty of other features.

I'm trying out DarthMod right now, so far I've not actually noticed major gameplay changes beyond larger unit sizes. Reddit claims the AI changes are placebo and while I don't trust reddit, all the alleged improvements people note from DarthMod were things you see in the original. The added troop variety is neat but doesn't impact gameplay. I'd like to try other mods but they all seem dumb in their own ways.

medieval 1 is my favorite since it was my first one

the game was pretty darn revolutionary for the time

"whoa i can play a strategy game and control THOUSANDS of units in a single battlefield??? " that was mindblowing coming from games like age of empires 2 where the max you had was 200

the series went to shit after empire

empire was a mess but they were at least trying out new things, the whole revolution system and whatnot

they scaled it back with napoleon to just europe and that was the first warning sign

never liked shogun 2 and subsequent games they all felt too arcadey

i stopped buying total war after rome 2, besides warhammer ones because i kept getting scammed by friends who kept convincing me no dude its a great game and i fell for it and stopped playing 15 hours in THREE TIMES

i just hate the direction the took modern total war games

i hate starting with a single province

i hate the abstraction in resources, compare something like rome 1 - you build farms for income and population, you built roads for better movement and trade, you build markets and docks for trading with others, your population grew and you were able to upgrade the town to a city etc. it all felt logical and immersive, compared to modern total war where buildings and resources are too abstracted and just feel like soulless tech trees

somewhere down the line the games stopped feeling like youre playing an advanced version of age of empires and started feeling like youre playing fantasy/medieval version of starcraft 2 if that makes sense, vibes wise

I cant even bring myself to play the series anymore. A decade of watching them try to wrangle the warscape engine has left me permanently blueballed with how many weird hacks they have to add to the code to add in basic stuff that rome 1 had 20 years ago like unit collision, and ai that will actually siege your cities. Until they fix the engine no total war game will be above a 7/10 for me.

Empire is a fricking mess and my favourite. Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai was the last good historical TW game.

I actually really like the Warhammer stuff too.

I don't think they're able to create good historical games anymore

medieval 2 with stainless steel

warscape ruined total war forever and CA lacks the ability of talent to ever make campaign AI good. the campaign maps are pointlessly big and the gameplay is unfocused.

I don't know how to describe it but I hate how cartoonish if feels now. Especially things like archers where you see there giant arrows flying in the air. The new games my units will route and I have no idea why.

i was obsessed with rome 1 when it came out. ive tried a couple other entries but they felt clunky and i never played them long

i havent played it in awhile but ive got a friend that still plays rome 1 a lot. its like his minesweeper

If we're wishing for things then I'd like a larger Bronze Age game than just Pharaoh and Troy On the other end of the scale I'd like another 18th or 19th century game but with the whole world this time A global medieval game maybe themed on the Mongols would also be great

Would also be interesting if they had IPs to work with besides Warhammer. Total War Elder Scrolls would frick hard

I like empire

i think my biggest gripe with the new games is the building system. i don't think the choices u have to make are interesting or meaningful, and the forced choice between economy and unit variety really just sucks.

i liked empire where buildings types just had independent slots, the choice was a more strategic question of when to build unit variety vs economy, not if.

also the navel battles were uniquely fun, and i wish warhammer had built out that aspect.

I think Rome 1 was really the peak. All the core features were there and rock solid, it was ahead of its time. The ai sucked but it was a massive leap forward from previous entries.

Fast forward to Rome/Shogun 2 and while the graphics were much better it felt like a lot of the campaign map features were overcomplicated. Did the game really need three kinds of diplomat? Similarly the new battle features were poorly done. Ambushes were rare and lost their novelty immediately. The less said about naval the better.

Never had the interest for Warhammer so it's been a while, the Rome 1 remaster looks interesting though.

Med 2 and rome were my firsts but warhammer games are just better

I tried Napoleon Total War and gave up after fifteen minutes

It sucks that the ancient Egypt game they released is mostly a shitpost and that the series is probably dead

I always wanted a Bronze Age game but on the scale of a full entry

Medieval 2. Haven't played much of the other ones except Rome 1 some 20 years ago.

I really like the combat system in Medieval where units behave in a more natural way, compared to the 1v1 simplified nature of the future games. Despite it's occasional clunkiness (so many soldiers stuck on ladders) it's so much fun to zoom in and see soldiers fight.

I bought Shogun 2 on sale and was excited to finally try a TW game, until I realized I forgot to check if it's even playable on my steam deck. It's not.

Warhammer

All I know is that i tried playing shogun2 and the controls were so crap I didn't even make it 3 hr before I quit. Honestly SC2 is flawed in a bunch of ways but it ruins 90% of rts games by just being so polished.

I used to be really good at the Warhammer 2 multiplayer but I really fell off when I outgrew my depression and lowered my Adderall dosage. Still a big fan of Turin's multiplayer casting despite not having played for years.

I've pretty much given up on this series. Since I discovered Paradox grand strategy games they've felt redundant.

I played lots of Medieval and Rome 1, but after then the controls started to feel weirdly mushy, like you have to spam orders to get units to actually do what you want.

It took a long time for me to learn my lesson, though. I really wanted to get into Three Kingdoms but the visual filters they used were so overdone that I couldn't see what was going on. Tried Warhammer but found the fantasy setting lame.

Im not gay. Dont fricking call me gay ever again. I'm honestly one of the least gay people youll ever meet. I frick mad b-words. If you were a girl Id have already fricked the shit out of you but unfortunately your a GUY whose tight bussy will remain unstretched by my fat meaty 9 in