I'll tell you exactly why Total War doesn't feel the same anymore

The Total War series have undergone massive changes in the past 20 years, but not necessarily in the way you'd like. Even though the series and developer Creative Assembly has managed to strike gold on several occasions, the tragedy is that rarely does this lead to several great games in direct succession. Just think of how many mechanics and features are won or lost per game, and that even the best Total War games, probably lack certain amazing features from the game prior - not because they wouldn't fit in, but because for whatever reason.
In this video, I define what the tragedy of what the Total War series is, and the sad state of affairs we find ourselves in, when great mechanics that used to be staples, are for some reason left by the wayside. Whether Rome to Medieval 2, Empire to Napoleon and Shogun 2, or Rome 2 to Attila and the Warhammer series, the mechanics are what makes a Total War game great, and their lack is felt all the more pressing when they're not replaced by something better.
I value immersion, role playing and player agency in Total War games. But what do you value? Let me know your thoughts on these questions and this video in the comments, and remember to leave a like and subscribe to the channel :)
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[@fallenhero4550]

Imagine if Rome Remastered had Co-op campaign, what a major missed opportunity that was.

[@AndysTake]

Yup. It would have been beyond, and I have no idea why they weren’t given the resources or time or tools to make that happen. A complete waste

[@erikvannik5208]

​@@AndysTakeI guess tight budget and little time

[@DeadLikeMeJ]

* Multiplayer Campaign, the AI is still so bad that I don't need help to squash it XD I need people to replace it.

[@Etaoinshrdlu69]

Rome Remastered is pretty good to be honest. We've become spoiled. Total War has gone downhill imo but the fact that people complained about RR makes think that we've all become spoiled.

[@Rather.Splended.Cromwell]

true

[@Daniel-hp3tk]

In my opinion the harsh truth is that CA changed; it's a different set of developers who have a different view on what a Total War should include. Therefore, to expect a Total War that comes close to the mechanical complexity of the older games is simply foolish, and I don't get the impression that eminating the older titles is their intent in the first place

[@GhenTuongHB]

It could be. They have been around for a few decades. Men gone and new ones come. I also notice that at some point, developers don't play their own game anymore. Both playing from passion and play test. They just make what they think the players would like. Decisions are made based on spreadsheets.

[@KERAAK35]

@@GhenTuongHB Correct & we seeing such by humans trough out the history & years, no matter what we do or what we build, building up. WE humans always raise & falls after a while & re build or a new company takes over the throne & those people does a better job & in that specific market & category & they will be Kings for a period of time & so on... This can truly be the upcoming start of the, the ruining fall for CA. Yet it did in the past & yet they raised up once again with Shogun 2 when it came out & WH1 and WH2. But again it´s starting to fall & change drastically into something else, then of what we TW users are used to. We shall all in calm spectator the diagram line that goes up & down, what the future will tell & what next to come, there new ideas & visions will tell!? BR AN.

[@lastword8783]

@@GhenTuongHB This is why its important to not wait too long between sequels.

[@liofalba]

Tbh, they are making the game people want to play. “Immersive” only appreciated by hyperfans that played the games for 1000hrs are mostly not a loss. Pharaoh and Troy fail because they are Warhammer clones without the Warhammer, but Attila is clearly the best historical game except maybe Shogun 2. Also most people aren’t that bothered about bugs.

[@itnotmeitu3896]

Code is also, as a general rule is getting worse.

[@LeoMajor1]

If CA combined Napoleons combat and mechanics and combined it with empires map.... that would have been an amazing game.

[@lars9925]

Yeah, I am saying that for years. Empire with all the Napoleon fixes and improvements would be the best game imaginable.

[@BestOpinionHaver]

@@lars9925 Agreed! Also, pliz make a Pike and Shot TW set in the 1500-1700 era

[@thegloryofromeiseternal]

​@@lars9925modded Empire is the best although the AI remains broken

[@thegloryofromeiseternal]

@@cold_servo_pieI actually prefer the old replenishment where you pay to replenish as it puts a real strain on your economy it really helps make the game more fun especially mid to late game where you tend to field multiple full stack armies

[@thegloryofromeiseternal]

@@cold_servo_pie you should check out the empire 2 mod it's awesome

[@Boomer04888]

One of my biggest gripes with the newer games is how fast battles and skirmishes take place. While there's a tad of tactical choices to be made, 90% of the battles in the last several titles devolve into "smash my army into theirs, make a gigantic mosh pit where like 1,000 people die in 30 seconds, then one side starts running away entirely". Boom, an entire massive, decisive battle over in 2 minutes and 30 seconds. I vividly remember watching sieges in Medieval 2 where I'd be able to spend 10 minutes just watching my knights fight their way through a single breach in a wall as I tried to work a few units in through a different entrance for a flank.

[@Tom_Quixote]

Even MTW2 was dumbed down and sped up a lot compared to previous games where you had to conserve unit stamina etc. instead of just sending them running everywhere.

[@scmrph]

I'm really surprised he didnt touch on this because for me this is what killed the franchise. I loved the campaigns but without the battles there are plenty of other better strategy campaign games. It seems like every game they tried to make the battles more flashy and arcady which slowly strips out tactical play and the tension of a battle. Now you can see within a minute or two which way the battle is going to go and it will usually only snowball from there. Then bring in hero units and the ever increasing difference between unit tiers and there's really no reason not to just auto-resolve every battle. Is your army mostly 1 tier below your opponent, welp guess its going to get wiped while they suffer minimal casualties. The game is just a race to the next unit tier.

[@Aufsammelkabbler]

@@scmrph Yeah, it is quite sad honestly. In the older games the strategic use of even low level cavalry, terrain or the sniping of enemy generals could turn the battle against totally superior forces. For me the newer games lost this strategic aspect and so the series lost me. But well, I can at least still play the old games (that where absolutely astonishing graphic wise for their time! Even today I enjoy simply watching the units fight)

[@AlexTTzer0]

The battles of medieval 2 felt like real battles. Maybe many people voted that they took too long but I also enjoyed a half hour - one hour battles of medieval 2.

[@TheDirtyFritz]

One of the main problems I have with modern total wars is that it usually turns into either a slog to take out unlimited enemy armies, or an auto resolve nightmare where you spend hours in a shallow boring campaign just auto resolving battles so you can win and get it over with.

[@samadams2203]

The best time I've ever had remains Med II add-on as teutonic knights in their scenario. Great, hardfought battles with everyone, really close sieges, a wonderful feeling of upgrades being meaningful. And it wasn't like every single turn was a big fight, it was usually just once or twice a year, so it wasn't tiresome.

[@WAAAAAAGH]

I remember, in my zealous fervor for the glory of Rome in a western empire playthrough in Attila, the first ten turns took literal hours each. As all the walls are crumbling in when you start, I didn't treat the ultimately lost sieges as a pawn on the board but as a person defending the very place that was under attack so I didn't ever auto resolve to see how much land I could retain instead of abandoning it for the core of the empire. You wanna talk about a 'slog', damn man that was brutal...And one that you START with instead of turning into. One turn would sometimes have more than ten defensives siege battles, and I fought every single one to the last man or a heroic/pyrrhic victory screen. And that's not including going through every single province and redoing every single botched and nonsensical building configuration you can as your gold per turn gets lower and lower as you lose more and more. Then, as things were finally taking a turn and I had rebuilt Rome's inner glory...As I was preparing to retake everything that was lost and more like the Resistitutor Orbis before the time you're placed in, the game would crash after turn 50 or so and reloading earlier saves wouldn't save it. So I uninstalled and haven't touched another TW game in the years since. In retrospect, seeing how things have turned out...Not a bad decision.

[@N0TYALC]

It sounds like you don’t like strategy games lol

[@Lucpol1986]

@@WAAAAAAGHDid the western empire play through, as the first one after purchasing the game a few months ago. Found it somewhat irritable but fairly simple myself 👍🏾. Did the Mercia Charlemagne play through afterwards and have put the game down just shy of 100 hours.

[@poison7512]

Yeah honestly it sounds like these games aren't for you if you think the battles are boring.

[@enesbilge1646]

Medieval 2 has a wonder: Jerusalem. If you capture Jerusalem in medieval 2 your settlements gain public order bonus.

[@MushroomTherapy28]

That game was the absolute peak of the franchise. There were just so many events that kept the player interested for months on a single campaign. I still didn't really get why they have still yet to make M3TW, just trying to recreate some of its features.

[@ChocorocK]

@@MushroomTherapy28 Med 2 out of all the total war games holds my interest the longest everytime i play it. Empire would have came close to it if not for its problems.

[@niccolodagruma]

@@MushroomTherapy28 also just the mods I don't think I have ever played the base game, I only got it to play lord of the rings.

[@Enkabard]

@@ChocorocK empire total war was last game i ever preorderd, imho its terrible game. Comming back to it decade later i hoped bugs be fixed and game would be improved (its the definitive edition after all but nah. CA and QA is like that one episode from kitchen nightmares Players: there are massive bugs in your game CA: what am i suppose to do with that information ?

[@DEVAEGIR]

@@Enkabard I am considering the mod Empire II which I am seeing enthusiastically reviewed here and there. Have you played it?

[@kapitankapital6580]

There's a quality to newer Total War games that just makes them feel like they lack the sharpness of previous games. And while I do think things like combat animations, arrow trails (and projectile velocity) and lighting all contribute to this, I think probably the single biggest factor is the sound design, and more specifically the sound mix. Things like the clanking of a testudo, or the boom of cannon fire, or the clanging of samurai swords, these things add audible cues to the player for what is happening, where the camera is or what unit is selected. Add to this very distinct dynamic battle music, and an experienced Total War player could tell you what was going on on-screen with their eyes closed. That's not to say this doesn't happen in modern games, the Warhammer games in particular have some excellent sound design with things like spells, but in general the sound is much more of a muddy cacophony designed to create an ambience than a key way to convey information to the player, and I think that's a weakness of the new games.

[@robevans8629]

The sounds of battle really help make the fighting come to life, even the sounds of swords hitting enemy soldiers for the kill animation can tell you if your side is winning or losing

[@landashua]

I don't know what it is, but since Rome 2 they've all looked overly the same to me. As the individual men in a unit get more fine detail, it all kinda smudges together and ruins visual clarity. Even with nice settings, from an overview, they lose detail. They also seem to lose saturation of their colors, or in Rome and Attila's case (I haven't really played anything since, but from watching videos it appears it's still there), there seems to be some sort of ruddy brown color filter over the screen. Everything looks like some sort of rust brown. I'm sure gameplay-wise they're still alright, but it just looks like shit to me. I've tried playing with my settings and even running a color filter on my monitor but I can't get it to look as good as Shogun 2 used to. Even in a game where all of the units had the same armor and weapons, the visual clarity of what was what was insane in that game.

[@kapitankapital6580]

@@landashua yeah I think you're completely right. The models are definitely more realistic and up close they look great, but the way Total War works (and most video games for that matter) is they become lower definition the further you are from them, and those range of colours and designs end up just becoming unclear at the macro scale. Whereas the strong, cohesive colour palettes of older games, even if it was less realistic, made for more visually satisfying and informative battles. Two identical units in Shogun 2 look more distinct on the battlefield than two completely different units in Atilla.

[@findus3d]

maybe a little bit but the sound aint that important what's important is how they REMOVE game mechanics this almost 20 year old games had, simplefying all the games taking all the management out of them which is what total war is about, battles and management, now management is gone and the battles are way more arcade like.

[@kapitankapital6580]

@@findus3d mechanics don't impact game-feel that much though, which is what I'm talking about here.

[@JM_Traslo]

Remember the good ol' days where you could lead armies without generals but it came with drawbacks and huge risks of them being turned due to no stats, but if you won a great battle with them you might get a new general / leader from the makeshift leader distinguishing themselves? Peak Total War. Compared to the modern "oh you've hit an artificial leader cap, you can't even redeploy troops around now."

[@boomerix]

To be fair the agent limits aren't necessarily bad. Having 20 enemy priests stand around my capital was weird and the AI would (at least for me) often create huge agent brawls somewhere on the map where they would congregate and try to kill each other.

[@ElBandito]

In a Medieval 2 campaign, I had 7 foreign princesses surrounding my family member named Tostig the Ugly, all trying to woo him at every turn.

[@JohnDoe-bh2lp]

Gigachad Tostig@@ElBandito

[@wuestenfuchsxy]

so the agent limit was just a band aid to the actual proble, the AI. Just like removing armies without Generals, to reduce single unit spam.

[@boomerix]

@@wuestenfuchsxyI don't really remember single unit spam to have been a problem in the past. To me it rather feels like a limitation to prevent the player from snowballing.

[@wuestenfuchsxy]

@@boomerix in rome and medieval 2 the AI tended to use smaller armies a lot. I think there would be better ways to prevent the player from snowballing, like rising unit upkeep or something. I personally liked it to send rinforcement units to the frontlines to refresh my troops instead of just waiting for them to replenish out of nothing.

[@Romczy]

The biggest issue I have with modern TW games are battles revolving around killing, not shattering enemies in battles. I still remember while playing Rome TW as Carthage, I won absolutely gamechanging battle against Scipio Romans by taking chance and attacking vulnerable spot with my all cav. The battle was over before my infantry reached enemy only because I managed to kill general, rout 3 triarii units which was followed by their whole army breaking by sheer shock. For some reason Med2 felt more clunky so I never spent as much time in it. But simply ever since Empire TW, morale of army as a whole felt nonexistent. It was brought back in poor way by introducing "army loss penalty". Bad system basing on number of killed/shattered units while influence of enemies routed felt pretty much nonexistent. And let us not forget about absolutely abysmal melee system which was also bad since Empire. The settlement and population management is boring. Limited building slots take aeay feeling of creating metropoly, the seat of power. Replenishment out of air, recruitment systems, introduced in WH (i think) infantry ass ladders. The franchise has become more braindead over years for the cost of graphics. And maybe units are more responsive, but not by massive margin

[@krystofcisar469]

I thnk Attila did great with morale system. Medieval 2 was bit clunky, but for year 2006 it was total banger and i still play it occasionally.

[@yllbardh]

infantry ass ladders have their origin in EW, where infantry didn't have the need to carry ladders but scaled the walls with help of ropes. Since then defensive city-battles have lost all of my interes, always auto them

[@manel_playerr2741]

I like the limited slots for building and the limited armies since it creates a smaller Window for mistakes that forces me to think twice before building something or sending and army to Enemy territory, wich in my opinion is what true administration means.

[@ancaoraathasach]

I think the real problem isn't whether 3K or Troy are good games. It's that the historical fans have been so alienated that they've either given up entirely or they're playing games from companies like Paradox. The last title I bought, aside from Warhammer, was Thrones of Britannia. I won't be picking up any more Total War titles in future. CA have shown that they don't care any more. It's fine to want to make a buck but stripping down your titles isn't the way to do it.

[@AwkwardDuck88]

The last Total War I bought was Attila. Technically I bought Rome Remastered but I returned it. I'll buy it again to play Imperia Insurrectum, that massive overhaul mod for it.

[@DEVAEGIR]

Yes, I am one of those old fans. I stopped at Attila. Tried the others at a friend's place, and did not bother. I replay Shogun II and FOTS quite a bit, Napoleon - for relaxation, and am looking at Empire II (the updated mod for Empire), but the stuff after Shogun II and FOTS does nothing for me. So, I had to go over to things like Pike and Shot, and TBT stuff like XCOM 2 and various things like it, which are really good. Otherwise, it is those old TW titles, and Scurge of War: Waterloo. Also, trying my hand in Grand Tactician in recent weeks, even though the American Civil War was never really my thing.

[@jay-1800]

The sad part is paradox fans are also finding themselves more and more let down by the games. Vicky 3 was and is a train wreck

[@DEVAEGIR]

@@jay-1800 It is the arcade approach creeping in, isn't it? More flashy animation, and less and less substance, made for a generation with the attention span of a goldfish. You see the same in movies (all these superhero copy-paste flicks the studios are churning out), in gaming, everywhere, really. Quality? Consideration? Respect for the fan base, which made these people into who they are? Zero, zilch, nada. The fact that there has been a friggin' controversy over Baldur's Gate being a very good game, both generally and 'out of the box', and the studios' backlash about it heightening expectations... Crazy times, man. Thank the Whatsit for golden oldies, modding, and the occasional new Indie projects. (And for Korean films.) Oh, in my list above forgot to add Slitherine's 'Sengoku Jidai: Shadow of the Shogun'. If you swing the TBT way, it is a really beautiful game.

[@algardaus]

@@jay-1800 Vicky 3 after first major patch was good. Then fell off with the new DLC but the next couple of patches seem to have fixed it mostly. I'd argue they still need to make warfare more interesting but I definitely wouldn't say it's been as soul crushingly disappointing as what has happened to TW.

[@marcwilson368]

So true. Total War went from in-depth strategy game to a crass Arcady mock up.

[@MateusVIII]

I think for Empire to have a tech tree and for it it be less "personal" (With diplomacy happening without agents for example) are good things in terms of depicting the 18th century and the rationalism and new manners of managing anempire. However I do think that Empire has huge issues and that it unfortunately had some big negative impacts in other titles. Although the tech tree worked in it, it doesn't work on most of the other Total War games. Also, the idea of having other cities alongside a "province capital" was great, but while in Empire they developed organically and with a population system they just became incredibly stuck in future games. Honestly, I just think that there is a big demand for a competitor to Total War. We need some other company making these kinds of games with that scale so that CA gets their shit together and pays attention to its community. And for God's sake, just help modders and support flexibility. That can improve a game SO MUCH.

[@John333Scout]

I agree that Empire can get away with those way more than older TW's given the time period. Couldnt agree more with most of your points.

[@janbananberg357]

Yes, we need someone else to make these games.

[@adsffdaaf4170]

Empire has the most AI issues of any total war title. I just played a seige and the defenders started climbing down the ropes I had set up to scale their walls. Its busted but definitely set in my favorite historical time period.

[@RedZeppelin1968]

​@@adsffdaaf4170My empire AI story is that I was playing the campaign and attacked a fort and blew holes in the walls. However, there was a bug that prevented me from repairing the wall once I captured the settlement. I was like shit especially when the enemy sent a doom stack to recapture it a couple turns later thinking I was fucked with a broken wall. But I did play out the battle and it turned out that a pair of Cannon units with Canister Shot aimed at the breach were able to single handedly win the fight because the dumb AI just kept mindlessly sending his men into the breach. It was funny but it definitely soured me on the game... which sucked because out of all the Total War games I feel like Empire had the most potential.

[@mildlyderanged]

My issue with Empire is always the slow economy, I want to love it and there's so much good to enjoy, but it always boils down to me struggling, as the British empire, to afford more than a couple of units of infantry a turn, so you can never do what you want to do The AI doesn't really come for you either, so it's not like your having to prioritise resource or make difficult decisions, it's just a really slow, turgid game but in an era I want to see more of and with the best naval battles of the franchise

[@basileusp5494]

As a person who has lived longer than most gamers I have seen many changes over time. The trend in everything is away from history. Historically themed games are going to suffer the same fate as historically themed toys. Historically themed movies. Historically themed television shows, and so on. Most young people in the area of the world that I am from have very little interest in historical gaming, but a whole lot in fantasy, sci fi, etc. CA is a company that wants to make money. The fact is that they can make more money going the way of Warhammer. I would not be surprised to see more releases set in fantasy worlds or sci fi worlds like Conan or John Carter. Sad, because I loved all the historical Total War releases, but Medieval Total War the most of any of them. If it weren't for the amazing modding community out there I would have abandoned all hope. Many of the previous comments are spot on!

[@therasco400]

I don't think the trend has been away from historical games. Its more that the trend across the industry turned into leaning on graphics instead of gameplay or in other words visuals instead of depth. I think what you are seeing in the reduction of historic games is simply because they lack these things. They may get dark and gritty but they will never match something like a spell going off for visual impressions. This is the hype factor something advertising companies are very good at promoting which in turns means more revenue.

[@ElZilchoYo]

It probably has some social reason, like people don't want to live in a brutal reality they want a fantasy world instead.

[@therasco400]

Not really. 40k fans do not want that. Warhammer fans don't want to live in that era. @@ElZilchoYo

[@houndofculann1793]

@@ElZilchoYo I definitely want to live as a WH Fantasy Empire nobleman who knows the reality about Skaven but also knows he can never let anyone else know. Much less brutal than reality /s

[@headrockbeats]

Remember when they made games about the Gulf War, pretty much while it was still happening? Good times.

[@gerardotejada2531]

Total War went from Sid Meier's Civilization to Starcraft so slowly we didnt reallize till now. Maybe Paradox should take notes, Stellaris 40k

[@ForFunksSake]

Dang man. You always bring up points that I haven't even thought about from Rome 1 and barbarian invasion. Thank you for these breakdowns, it helps put into perspective why I don't have nearly as much time playing the newer total wars.

[@antun88]

The sad thing is that when I played Rome as a kid, I thought by now, 20 years later, we will have a super detailed map, insane historical accuracy of the units and the events, complex state management, and epic 100k battles. Instead we have a new warhammer every year.

[@danielvanhaften5779]

As a long time modder of RTW in the form of Roma Surrectum III, I agree with you 100% that CA has consistently dropped the ball when it comes to listening to their fan base. We shared info with CA personnel often, begged them for changes that would make the game better, and pleaded for modding tools that allow modders to change things without having to jump thru hoops or become software engineers. What we got was Rome II. Arguably the worst release from CA ever (as it was broken IN THE BOX), and addressed nothing we had asked or hoped for. My conclusion was: They don't care.

[@redman1788]

Love this mod a lot, is there one being made for Rome remastered?

[@Turiargov]

RTR: Imperium Surrectum @@redman1788

[@CodyLundberg]

@@redman1788 It is already on the Rome TW Remastered steam workshop. It is called RTR: Imperium Surrectum and includes some of the original developers from Roma Surrectum III and Rome Total Realism from RTW1. It has received 24 updates since it was uploaded and is great.

[@arhexirthewistful5891]

​@@redman1788Oh yes

[@savasolarov8424]

ROMA SURRECTUM is my go to mod for playing the game, thanks for sharing your opinion dev man!

[@DEVAEGIR]

My two cents, as someone who was there since the beginning, since the first Shogun (which was an amazing experience back then, just magical, really). Medieval TW was exceptional, and in so many ways better than Rome, even though it continued the relatively ascetic look of Shogun. We loved its slightly expanded, but still clearly board game aesthetic (the clack the armies made when you moved them was similar to the sound of a chess piece hitting the chessboard. A beauty!), and despite it being miles behind Rome graphically, it remained on many a PC for a long time after Rome hit the shelves. I myself still kept coming back to it even after Medieval II came about, though, admittedly, less and less so over the years. But I still remember several battles I had in Medieval (one Spanish army on a hill, against four Almohad ones coming in waves!!), and in Medieval II... and these happened twenty or so years ago! Can you imagine? Looking at it throughout its history, to me, the best TW game is Shogun II. Following the change in aesthetic (which came with Rome), it was Shogun II that marked the absolute peak, helped immensely by Fall of the Samurai which was an exceptional expansion in both the things it did and how it did them, and in terms of its size - essentially a full game. Yes - Empire was big, yes - Napoleon was fun, yes - Attila presented an interesting experiment with diplomacy and faction administration, but Shogun II really brought things home on many levels, and, more importantly, brought back that felling we had once, a long time ago. (And FYI, I was quite different from those of my generation who were going gaga about samurai and stuff like that in their teens; I did not develop a fascination with Japan until much, much later, when I had to give lectures on Meiji Japan at my university.) Anyway, after Shogun II & expansions, it all went rapidly downhill. Warhammer was cute, but a no-no to the majority of fans who were looking at the series as the source of historical games. And Three Kingdoms was just so much of an arcade. I think in many games it is the feeling a game creates. It is not quite immersion (that term didn't exist until more recently), though immersion can play a part. It is difficult to pinpoint, but you know it when it is there,... and when it is not. Graphics are a good thing, but visuals alone are not enough, at least to anyone who wants to savour a game, rather than hit yet another achievements milestone and move to the next thing on offer. Old TW titles had that, they invited you back, they were simpler, and offered less in some ways, but you wanted to come back to them. The latest TW stuff I didn't even want to start with. Even those that offered something interesting... Attila, for example. I have tried several times to play it, and even though my campaigns were going well, with good challenges to make them interesting, I have never finished a campaign in Attila. And when I think of trying a replay, I usually find myself playing Napoleon or Shogun II. An interesting thing to point to is the continuing and great popularity that mods on previous titles enjoy, whether historical conversions, or improvements. Empire mods continue to be the IN thing, with the latest iteration of Empire II creating a buzz right as I am writing this, and Imperial Splendor being something of a staple. And these are mods on a 15-year old TW title which appeared 10 or so TW games ago, right? And the latest offering, Pharaoh? The reception has been lukewarm, and quite rightly, because... Well, to me, simply because CA have lost their touch, and because they have lost their charm. So, I continue to come back to Shogun II, to FOTS, occasionally to Napoleon and a modded Empire. But it has been years since TW made me excited about a new release.

[@Apodeipnon]

Medieval 2 is my favorite, I also liked Shogun 2 and Empire. Although some parts of empire just are dreadful. But I could never get more than a few turns into Rome II. And since then the new total war games have elicited zero excitement or interest in me.

[@niklaso1113]

The lack of competition... Crazy how CA basically have a monopoly on these types of games.

[@dholl17]

It appears to be too late for CA. The big money suits have moved in on another successful franchise. These games will continue to be rushed out with tons of bugs, full of mtx/DLC, stripped down UI, decreased mechanics in order to be playable on mobile/console, and streamlined for "general audiences". Been playing since release of Medieval 1 and the change at Empire is incredibly obvious. So sad. These games used to be...full. really miss the agent cinematics

[@carreraspain1900]

Arcady from the begining, it became more and more by the years. Mods that slow combat or makes it more morale-dependant, like Napoleonic III, make them much more enojoyable.

[@TheManofthecross]

Untill retroactive patches and updates kill those mods like what happened with darthmod etc

[@BlackHawk2b]

Napoleonic III is a blessing

[@clydedoris5002]

The fact that my roman legionaries loses half their units in 30 seconds of combat made me quit the game

[@Tom_Quixote]

Wasn't arcadey in the beginning - the beginning being Shogun and then later Medieval: Total War (the first one)

[@RRRRRRRRR33]

TW was always "arcady" if compared to Paradox and even Firaxis games, that's why it became "popular" (niched, but still popular). CA is exactly like Bethesda, they are the poor cousins of Bethesda, the reason why Oblivion worked, Skyrim, Fallout 3, etc.. they were unique sandboxes (for their time), also offered very simplified gameplay and rpg mechanics, so that attracted a lot of people. TW the same thing, unique experience, easy learning curve, everybody knows the Romans, the samurai, Napoleon, etc.. it's easy to jump in and have fun with mediocrity, but for how long? I'm being around since the Medieval 2 days, currently Warhammer is my favorite comfy game, guilty pleasure making mods for it... but it's pretty much a certainty, when the Warhammer cycle ends (most likely in 2025), that will be the end for me, I will not play TW games anymore. And I bet many older fans are abandoning TW en masse. People say this game has a monopoly, you don't have a choice... yes, you do have a choice, you can simply stop playing the "TW formula" and do something else

[@punkthatiscyber9091]

I still remember when Rome II finally added seasons to the campaign map. In the one of many cringy marketing videos they did to announce and explain it.... They also addressed turns being 1 year each, instead of 4 TPY. (Something that they got an insane amount of backlash about.) "We still have 1 TPY. So each turn will be a new year and new season. If you wanted 4 TPY, you can just download a mod 😀" I still to this day wanted to know the name of the dingus who thought any of that, and removing the family tree, was a great idea.

[@gerardotejada2531]

Say wathever you want, Thrones had the best siege level design since Medieval 2 and 3K has the best diplomacy in any Total War. And while none is a great game, they show CA have the tech ad mechanics to develop a better game than Rome or Medieval 2. They should apply Larian's method. 7 years development, big group of experienced people, 3 years early acess, listening to the fans.

[@AndysTake]

This is the problem - CA clearly knows how to develop great mechanics, but new gold rarely makes it to the next game, a la Thrones’s siege battles, or the full extent of 3K’s diplomacy

[@mitchellpolinop7650]

100% agreed! The siege dynamic gameplay was fantastic and the sound mix was incredible

[@GhenTuongHB]

OMG what year is it? Have they invented the future hardwares that were promised to run Attila smoothly back in the day?

[@Kvs-vf9nt]

It's disgraceful that Attila still isn't fixed. They said it was gonne run much better on future hardware. Well where is there damn fix because we can own a super PC. The game still isn't optimized great.

[@GhenTuongHB]

@@Kvs-vf9nt They just updated Attila this july. And what did they do? Disabling multiplayer chat. Highly suspect that some use it to do discuss illegal stuff and CA doesn't like it when they don't have a cut. It's like a slap in the face for all Attila fans, myself included.

[@Speederzzz]

​@@Kvs-vf9nt*me buying time on the University super computer to play Attila like it was intended*

[@Kvs-vf9nt]

@@Speederzzz I have an I9 12900H with an rtx 3080 and 2x16gb ddr5 ram and my games are on SSD. And with everything on quality it is ok now. But normally I should play this game with everything on max quality. Like Rome 2 everything is on the best graphics and graphic mods and so on, and have still like 100 fps. On Attila on Quality I have now average 72 fps on quality and it doesn't use my hardware to the fullest at all. It's so badly optimized.

[@Trident121]

I am missing the more satisfying campaign / city management. Its dumbed down now. That is why i play RIS mod on Rome Remastered and DAC for med 2

[@breezysanti]

And battles are so much faster and dumbed down too. I've been replaying Medieval 2 and the way that simple spear militia holds the line for a while, meanwhile my heavier and elite cav cleaned up the enemy and then came around to flank the enemy infantry. You can't do that in Rome 2. Cheaper units just melt away before your cav even gets a chance to flank. It's dumbed down because now tons of strategist that rely on timing cannot be done anymore.

[@TheManofthecross]

@DillsyYourDaddy67if you have the forges set up in that settlement out right otherwise no dice

[@anachronisticon]

The funny thing is that Paradox games are actually more expensive, and keep making new DLCs too. It's an incredible cash cow, and something CA should emulate. Make money by offering MORE DEPTH not just new units.

[@AndysTake]

Exactly this

[@Rockbuster619]

Except paradox is a shit company now. They have gone a similar route to CA and EA. Their dlc policy is trash, they produce garbage and sell it at a premium. Most of their newer titles suck, CK3 is a terrible game when compared to its predecessor. Most of the dlc for ck3 has done little to nothing to improve the game since its release.

[@anachronisticon]

@@Rockbuster619 I must admit to being new to their games. HOI4 is what I've played most. And each DLC is expensive but provides new depth. I still feel like I need a PhD before attempting EU4 though.

[@Rockbuster619]

​@anachronisticon eu4 isn't too bad, it's a bit difficult to get into at first but not nearly as difficult as hoi4. Imperator Rome was a giant flop on release, but since paradox abandoned it, it has got better with the Invictus mod. I'm not a huge fan of mods, but invictus has made Imperator one of my favorite Paradox games next to CK2. The abandonment was a blessing in disguise.

[@landofthesilverpath5823]

​​@anachronisticon HOI: Darkest Hour, although much older, is far better than any of the other HOI games. By far. It's a lot more complex in a good way and allows you to fine tune everything about your army. If you started with HOI 3 or 4, you're missing out. Darkest Hour is the best wwII strategy game ever made.

[@andreitabun2353]

CA definitely needs to go back, to the roots, I of course will continue to play the older games for many years to come if nothing new will come, but it will be a shame if what they started will "die" like this, when there is so much potential, when you see how only some modders with limited resources can make a game so much better and deep and diverse

[@AndysTake]

Yeah, the fact that modders, unpaid, over years and years, make their games so much better than CA themselves have, is sad.

[@Etaoinshrdlu69]

@@AndysTake You should look into "Grand Tactician: The Civil War" it bridges the gap between Paradox and CA games.

[@Draythur]

small correction the agent videos were actually present all the way back in shogun one... as much as i love medieval 2, I can't let it take credit for that.

[@AndysTake]

That’s great, thank you!

[@Draythur]

@@AndysTake no thank YOU sir, I just played M2 with your reshade setup for the first time, its whole new game!

[@AndysTake]

@@Draythur awesome to hear, glad you love it!

[@matts7125]

The one thing I like in empire building more than other total war is the ability to build better roads but not have to sacrifice another building for it. Other than that the buildings were very lackluster

[@reheyesd8666]

Like most games that are long lasting series. They stopped being a game and became a product.

[@icewindofchange]

Agree, I find it more interesting to manage the empire, rather endless battles. I only play complex or large battles, because after time, small border skirmishes get boring.

[@natethenoble909]

In my opinion a War of 1812 expansion for Napoleon would have been amazing

[@quimble2177]

One aspect I think, that you actually hit on a bit, that often gets overlooked, is the responsibility of the consumer. CA has gotten complacent, just as Gaijin, creators of War Thunder, did. (Gaijin actually did positive change due to the backlash however) How did this happen? *We* let it. The Devs, and higher ups are to blame as well, the higher ups for abusing peoples...passiveness? I suppose? and the Developers for accepting that they can half arse it and be lazy, such as CA just cutting things that they can't fix or figure out, when they fit *perfectly* into a series like Total War (Like Naval battles), or just the outright removal of perfectly working mechanics like a functioning Population. Hell, I'd say its gotten *really* fucking bad. When *I* think of total War, I look at all the games and go "Mass Formation focused Warfare, with drawn Battlelines, as well Empire Management and map painting", but I see so many others just put it down to "Big battles and map painting" when...that's just objectively wrong, Total War is much more than that and the fact so many dumb it down FOR CA is so depressing. Look at what *was*, look at the amazing games that came before Rome 1, Why don't we have that, but warhammer? Why don't we have that, but Bronze age collapse? Because WE let it happen. We let it get this bad. CA is to blame, but the fact the community can turn off its critical thinking so easily, is the, I personally think, Primary thing to be blamed (Its also why so many people think 40K Total War could work, to which I can only say don't make me laugh)

[@Shedovv]

A lot of people keep saying 40K Total War is impossible. Are themselves "turning off critical thinking so easily". I mean think about it for real, for a moment? Do you know of Dawn of War? Do you know of Dark Crusade? Do you perhaps remember it had a Campaign? Now replace THAT with Total War's Campaign. And boom! If it is not a Total War 40K it is at least a Total War-like 40K.

[@quimble2177]

@@Shedovv ah, but that’s the smart way to do it, add to that, make it part of a new series, but the same concept and CA, if they were competent enough, would have a money maker right there But the thing is friend, to slap the total war label on it, would cripple total wars identity, because in 40K, unless you’re talking Nids, you don’t tend to get hundred man units all moving as one squad. forces with guns, and a lack of a hive mind, tend to be organised into their version of squads, platoons, companies, etc. they don’t operate in the same way as line troops, they act more like modern militaries. Total War as a series is known for its focus on formation combat, back when large blocks of infantry fought other large blocks of infantry, the Roman cohort, the Greek phalanx, the English billmen, Longbow-men, Norman Knights on horseback, etc People, for example, act like Warhammer is a magical thing (total war) and it’s amazing that it works when….not really? You still have the usual types of troops, it’s just got flying troops now *but* Warhammer fantasy is still the era where formation fighting was a thing, and combat wasn’t as fluid as it is in 40K, modern day, or hell, even WWII or WWI.

[@RRRRRRRRR33]

Absolutely, I do think the consumers are 90% to blame. How do you accept "blood DLC"? C'mon, the excuse of "parental reasons" was so absurd, but the TW public embrace it like a bunch of blind fanatics. CA was so smart to use the love of the consumers against them, Shogun 2 was praised, they attempted the blood DLC bait and it worked great. And that's a major issue because this blood DLC opened the way for more predatory DLCs in the future, the whole industry shifted to this kind of monetization, so it was even easier for CA to justify reskins in Rome 2 as "content", they remodeled the maps and asked a bit more money, obviously the blood DLC was still a thing, etc.. it reached the breaking point, finally, with Warhammer "3"... the public realized how fucked up and toxic this whole DLC nonsense really are, always been, even in Warhammer "2" (that is usually well received)... this kind of DLC is just lazy and predatory, you have Fantasy Africa and you remove Fantasy Egypt on purpose, asking extra money to include a faction that should be a thing at release smh I really hope the TW consumers learned their lesson, they should stop buying DLCs until CA actually offers decent content. Medieval 3 will be the "test of iron" so to speak, if the players were willing to buy blood DLC once again, the Holy Roman Empire DLC, etc.. then they are doomed, they deserve to be abused

[@roberthansen221]

Hopefully the failure of pharaoh will be a wake up call for them.

[@SereneJoy42]

My father played the original Rome total war when I was a kid, and a couple of the other ones as time went on. I remember him letting me watch him play by sitting next to him and watching the spy cutscenes and the battles. And he let me sit down and play around on his save files (as long as I didn't start any battles). I remember stumbling upon the "look at your city in peace time" button, and was absolutely amazed as a kid, lol. The idea of seeing a town at peace, with people running around, just blew the mind of eight year old me. I never really got to sit down and get any of the games for myself over the years, I only have Warhammer 3 because a friend gifted me it, played it once and got trounced by the AI, felt disheartened that every fight was auto-resolved because I didn't want to waste peoples time (we were in multiplayer) and saw how many characters are locked out by dlc from the older games, so I uninstalled it after that first time. I hope to get Rome Remastered one day, but it is sad to hear so much from the old games hasn't been carried over.

[@williammullinax6130]

I just always wanted them to up the scale of realtime battles. I want to see the historical numbers of major battles in total war. 10's of thousands of troops on the battlefield. The unit sizes have largely remained the same, or even got smaller with some releases.

[@benghiskahn3673]

Yeah. Totally agree with this. I was a HUGE fan of Rome and M2 - the only thing that was left to be desired with these games was the scale of the battles. They were big, but they could have been much bigger and I always thought that as technology progressed and future releases came along, the scale would continue to grow and grow up to a certain point. Now i've not really played many of the newer titles because my PC is quite dated but from watching videos on KZbin i've always been very stricken by the lack of scale.

[@Tom_Quixote]

Who cares if they put more troops on the battlefield if they don't make the battles feel real and impactful?

[@williammullinax6130]

@@Tom_Quixote Larger battles can be just as meaningful as smaller ones. Are you saying they can't be? Is that your claim? I didn't say I wanted larger but less meaningful battles, so idk why you would assume that.

[@sergeantsharkseant]

imagine playing the Völkerschlacht of Leibzig in TW EMpire/ TW Napoleon with ~600k soldiers involved.

[@Apodeipnon]

It's definitely puzzling. Technology these days would probably make it quite possible. So why keep the same unit sizes even as tech gets better. Maybe one day there'll be a game that actually attempts real scale.

[@HistoricalGameplay]

good video, couldnt agree more. questionable and repeated "feature strips" and limitations that arent implemented organically - i.e. how is there no meaningful manpower/population in total war game, or why is there suddenly "castrated cities" with 4 building slots, why i cannot fortify some cities etc etc? and the funny thing is that whilst some great ideas/features were introduced in more recent games, much of the old good stuff got shelved for no good apparent reason, dumbing down and streamlining already uncomplicated gameplay:(

[@Josuegurrola]

"We lost the technology". Nasa example of not getting back to the moon.

[@HistoricalGameplay]

@@Josuegurrola haha, yeah, some such misfortune:D

[@ThatGuy-ff5mj]

i remember being younger and thinking..... "if my pc could only handle empire total war id be happy forever." then i bought a new pc and i found my self going back to rome total war

[@Deripperda]

One often overlooked detail is the character personality trait system, also greatly expanded in mods. It gave every playthrough some features and things to build a story around.

[@nelson_sauvin]

Ill save this for my cycling to work. Thanks man, your content is awesome. Greetings from Chile.

[@ryankassulke]

Feel like you forgot about medieval 2 kingdoms. 4 historical campaigns that were amazing for roleplaying and making videos. Total War games are now a staple in footage for historical educational videos on youtube. The community has done alot and I feel like they should be recognised somehow.

[@darkmattergamesofficial]

"Dante's Inferno level crimes" HAHA! I will be using that one... This video hit the nail on the head. I haven't been excited by a TW battle since Shogun 2... The new games just don't have that "oomph" factor in combat.

[@AndysTake]

Glad to be of service! :D

[@gergarcia666]

i really miss not being able to tour the cities

[@DrenaiSaga]

I agree, I bought everything from Shogun 1 when it came out through to Atilla, was even part of a prominent Rome 2 Modding team for a time, the games just seem too shallow now, don't know if it's lack of passion or the publishers cracking the whip, either way, I doubt it will get any better when people still line up while CA offer horse dung while telling us they are honey cakes.

[@lucarich8711]

You mentioned not being there for the OG Shogun and Medieval, I would just say that we all miss having cool cinematics for agents. Nothing beats watching a ninja's hilarious failed attempts to do stuff.

[@tylerschofield]

As a halo fan ive been witness to an amazing ip obliterated by a corporation, and i pray to the god emperor this wont happen to total war but the writing is on the wall. These days its a sad time to be a fan of any established franchise.

[@CarterElkins]

I feel that. Luckily, we can still enjoy what's been done in the past, and it can't be sullied by what comes in the future. I recently read the Fall of Reach books for the first time, and it was so cathartic after enduring the show. And despite my many criticisms of 343 Studios, I'll give them credit for beautifully preserving the Bungie era for PC players like me in the MCC.

[@ZZ-cr9pz]

I really miss the motion capture, it was a joy to zoom in and watch the battles. Now they keep fighting the air, feels off somehow. However the biggest issue with modern TW games is the UI, it's too cluttered with icons and big arrows. Hot take here but i don't like how they force micro-combat with tons of pointless abilities (boost power, boost defense), i rather spend time watching the battle then clicking boosts.

[@jbates9321]

The best memories I had of Rome one was the civil war after what felt like a long beginning campaign developed into a mid game civil war. The campaign made the game memorable

[@MeepFromSpongebob]

Just want a game with the simple mechanics of Medieval 2 with the more in depth politics of the later game

[@MrBell-iq3sm]

Has CA and their publisher ever truly cared for the fans? For example, how often have they been told to fix some bugs in Napoleon TW? And how often were they told to make add-ons for Napoleon that expand the map of Europe and to bring back India and America like in Empire. They could even make a second add-on progressing time to the American Civil War, with the assets from Fall of the Samurai. The fans would love and buy such expansions.

[@lostalone9320]

The key problem is that CA are afraid to touch "classic" parts of the formula, like unit caps. The result is that they are hamstrung both in the strategy and tactics parts of the game. The unit cap puts a lot of emphasis on the grand strategy element, to the point where once you have your doomstack you can auto-resolve a lot. But once you have it, what do you do next? The way that most tactical games create interesting battles is by making you fight in sub-optimal way. Each battle is a kind of puzzle, where you don't have freedom to move and a 1:1 ratio of troops. But in the campaign of any Total War game, winning in the grand strategy portion means the battles become less and less interesting to fight. Mechanics like the Mongol invasions aren't ideal, but at least they give you a real test. In the recent Total War games, why even bother finishing a campaign? You snowball so quickly, once you snatch the first couple of wins you are so very far ahead. The way to fix this is to make it difficult to have big standing armies, which is historically correct. Create war-weariness mechanics, and make us need to consolidate our wins. Make it so we don't just rumble on to the next conquest. Give us genuinely difficult choices between lots of troops and quality troops. On the battlemap, everything needs to slow down. Historic combat was all about artful maneuver. When the maps are small and the dudes move fast there is no real maneuver, it's just hurtling into each other. And when both sides have the same number of units, whoever has the most elite units wins. Equally, when everything is so fast it's almost impossible to use good tactics. Often infantry will break the opponent before the cavalry arrives to hit a flank, so why bother? The last really interesting Total War game was Napoleon, because it gave you lots of additional things to work with. Forming squares, skirmish mode that actually somewhat worked, a mix of infantry, cavalry and artillery. It wasn't perfect, but it was good.

[@MrKYT-gb8gs]

Rome 2 was the death of the studio. They should have kept the shogun 2 model. Small map with a few units with deep mechanics. The province system and single general armies killed the series.

[@nathanara8051]

I disagree

[@thoronirgros188]

To me Shogun 2 was peak total war. A more focused story, a tighter map, plenty of RP, a great MP system. They need to make more of those.

[@animegaming4057]

I’ve said this throughout the discourse on CA on several channels, CA should be proud of what they created, as they do continue to make money, but the mechanics of each franchise should not bleed together. I’m more of a fantasy guy so my bread and butter is the warhammer series, but everything created for warhammer should not bleed into the historical titles (minus Troy as, as far as I’m aware, is just a poem from homer and not based on historical presidents). Even as I love my 10-15 minute battles, I do enjoy the super long sieges as well. I’m in the minority in this, but I love the empire sieges as I do just love seeing my guns pounding the wall. I mean, just to give a historical example, Constantinople withstood 55 days of bombardment before it fell, so to even relive a 20th of that excites me! It’s a battle of wits and patience.

[@hellbringer09]

Anyone remember when you bought a total war and you had access to all the the factions from the get go without paying more for dlc factions? Pepperidge farms remembers.

[@paulschumacher4308]

I played the first Shogun Total War and I'm glad to hear someone put words to my feelings.

[@cyllananassan9159]

greed and more greed destroyed total war

[@HisCarlnessI]

Yeah I started the series with Empire (I was super into Age of Sail combat, which is how I found the series, and it was wild to me that there was a game that actually simulated that stuff at all.) I went on the enjoy Napoleon, but it was just so much smaller of a game... then Shogun 2, which still remains my absolute favorite in the entire series. But after that, the whole Rome 2 debacle, which had me out for awhile, then they started focusing on fantasy stuff, which kept me out. MANY years later I went back and thoroughly enjoyed Rome 2 multiplayer campaign with a friend after all the DLCs, patches and fixes. But that is certainly the turning point.

[@Orlunu]

Playing both the Medieval II Warhammer mod and TWWH 3 really makes you realise how incredible things could've been if we had access to the best of both worlds together.

[@xavierdeabreu1991]

Andy thanks for the video i 100% agree with you and hope CA take notes.

[@AndysTake]

You and me both, mate!

[@anniew4105]

There are so many amazing little things about the original total war titles that are clear indicators of passion at SOME level. Someone in that studio actually wanted to make the game. Nowadays, i think most game developers only care about their paycheck and dont really care about the project theyre working on.

[@jereboy2005]

I never knew you started total war more recently with Warhammer. I thought you were a crusty old timer like me who started when Rome was the hot new thing. What you say about feeling like the games no longer catering to you really hit home. The first time I started to feel the games not being what I wanted was Rome 2. Then it really solidified with Warhammer. And ever since it's basically had a design philosophy in every game that just doesn't hit me the same as the old games. I was very briefly hyped for Pharoah as I was one of the ones who voted and clamored for bronze age total war back in the lead up days to 3K reveal. But their character focus and limited scope campaign map reveals since then have killed most of my interest I truly hope we get a more return to form historical game one day but I don't have very high hopes of that. Thankfully Rome remastered has pretty much all the love of Rome 1 plus a few extra things and the massive modding potential. It's what I primarily play nowadays if I get a total war itch. I've tried all the newer stuff but anything after Attila I don't find myself enjoying all that much. I dont even play Warhammer but this dlc price controversy definitely has a feel of the "straw tha throne the camel's back" to it. It's a bit humorous to see from the outside how much CA has gotten the fans to be mad at them, i thought they had a lot of goodwill with Warhammer fans but seems it has eroded a bit. I do love your channel as it feels like the values you have in these games closely aligns with what I have. As always, a great discussion video and something great to listen to on my commutes.

[@houndofculann1793]

Uh, what? He says he's been here since Rome in the video

[@Wonderwall627]

when you highlighted the building system in Empire, it felt like a gut punch. I miss the old cities of RTW so much.

[@scrawnyserf9298]

Loved how you were able to explore the cities as a feature in Rome 1. For the time, it was really cool! Now we get 4 to 8 building slots and settlement maps are awful.

[@youvebeengreeked]

• *Pre-Battle Speeches* - Medieval II's were funny, Shogun 2's were cool in their native tongue, and Rome I's were the most glorious. We need these speeches back. Pre-battle, detailing what troops you have, both armies, the advantages and disadvantages, the changing of speeches based on the traits and characteristics of the general... maybe with a togglable native language feature? Either way, these have to come back as they were. • *View city from campaign map* - that feature in Rome I when you could just go see the city at peacetime... tiny little detail but why remove it? • *Naval battles* - when something doesnt quite work but the idea is great, please don't just abandon it as a feature altogether, and come up with the excuse of "Warhammer naval battles aren't really a thing, so just look at the magic spells and flashy lights" - bring back naval battles, with Rome II's amphibious assaults mechanic. And Empire's naval battle greatness of course. • *Visual armour upgrades* - From Medieval II, if a soldier has chainmail as standard armour, you see that armour on the battlefield, of course. But if you upgrade their armour to plate armour, the stats go up of course but the visuals ALSO change on the battle map. I dont think CA realise just how much this feature is undervalued and loved. • *Change city names* - If I wanna call my city "Shitistanopolis", let me. Also makes sense if you're the Turks conquering Constantinople and changing the name to "Istanbul" for example. • *Population mechanic* - If I recruit 160 soldiers from a region, I want that region's working population to decrease by 160. It would also be nice if there were different classes you could take out of, like low class troops come from the proletariate class and elite troops come from the aristocracy etc, and it's harder for higher classes to replenish - makes having those elite troops even more special. • *No special characters* - TROY, stop telling me that Achilles is my favourite leader. TK, stop telling me that Cao Cao is my favourite leader. PHARAOH, stop telling me that Ramesses is my favourite leader - *I* DECIDE who my favourite leaders are. I'm not saying "don't have historical figures show up at the times they actually showed up" - DO, by all means, it's cool, but if I want Ramesses to stay and govern Egypt while Shitpharses II does my fighting and becomes my greatest general, then that's what I'll do. • *Blood DLC* - I don't wanna sound like a cheapskate, but make the Blood DLC's a free part of the game. We don't play Total War to see guy's cuddling - we want TOTAL WAR, and that means blood. Make it toggleable at least. • *Formable Nations* - Tiny, little known feature from Medieval II's Teutonic Campaign, but when playing as Denmark, if you assassinate the Norwegian King and own a certain collection of cities, you form the Danish-Norwegian alliance known as the Kalmar Union... can you imagine playing Medieval III as the "Byzantines" and taking back Rome and officially reforging The Roman Empire? It's what we all do anyway when playing as them, may as well have the game acknowledge it. Or if England allies with Scotland or vice-versa, you've got the UK. • *No More Fantasy* - Literally, why would you bother with made-up fantasy when there are still eras of history left uncovered? Total War: CALIPH, Total War: KHAN, Total WORLD War, PIKE and SHOT, an INDIA Total War... I'll make an exception for Middle Earth tho ngl. • *Captains* - I have a general leading an army. Cool. LET ME DETATCH A SMALL PORTION OF MY ARMY TO GO DEAL WITH SOME BANDITS NEARBY. I don't care if there was a movement glitch, nobody used it seriously anyway. • "Avatar Mode* - I'm not familiar with Shogun 2 myself, but the idea of having your own customisable avatar seems neat. I want that. Gimme. • *Theatres* - Empire's European, Americas and Indian theatres were cool - spreads a huge map out into chunks and this could have EASILY been reintroduced into Immortal Empires. • *Regions within Regions* - Like how Empire had small towns within regions, or like how TOB had tonnes of smaller dedicated settlements around one large one... this needs bringing back. The real-life conquest of a province or a state doesn't always start and end with the capture of one large city - there are several small sanctuaries, port towns, gold mining sites and grain depots that need capturing first - Hannibal didn't even CONSIDER marching on Rome before taking out the Roman's key grain depot of Cannae. • *Animations* - When my muskets are firing, can I please SEE them reload? And can the guns and artillery ACTUALLY sound deadly please? I'm a simple man, I like big boom. • *Discoverable Regions* - OK, Medieval II's Americas only had 6 regions to discover, but the concept they were playing with was really cool. Imagine if you discovered the America's DLC map under all that fog and found out you pretty much had a second campaign to win?! • *No. More. D. L. C.* - If you want to unlock a faction in-game, you BEAT THEM IN GAME. Like a TRUE gamer. Sell the game 100% polished, and stop trying to get people to pay for unfinished work. "Oops, we left the soundtrack out of the game! Well if you want it NOW, that'll be ten bucks please!" ... Sod off. • *Three Kingdoms' Diplomacy* - ... OK this is a new feature that's still in the game and that we all appreciate very much. I'll give you that. There's definitely more features that need re-adding. And that's the annoying part - I haven't suggested anything new - these were all in Total War games at SOME point or another, and some of them were present nearly TWENTY years ago. And I remembered this many from the very few games I've had exposure to over the years while I'm sitting here eating breakfast. I hoped that Pharaoh would be an opportunity to go to a very technologically simple era of history so they could step back and make all these readjustments, but no. Same old New CA. We asked for Bronze Age TW and they gave us NO Mesopotamia - that'll be DLC coming soon, for half a week's wage. If you want to defend them as say "They take a lot of time and effort to put these games together - it has to come out in segments"... Piss off! Medieval II is still probably the most beloved Total War game to this day - we will happily carry on playing it and waiting for a newer, polished Total War game comes out. QUALITY games ALWAYS OVER QUANTITY of games. And what's more annoying - I just read a top comment saying this - is that Total War has no competition - NO other game out there offers such grand campaign and empire building experiences mixed so beautifully with full real-time 3D battles - it's the most glorious of gaming combinations that makes me stand here typing up this comment about a recent game that I don't even play or like, because Total War was once the greatest thing to happen to gaming, now it's just failing thanks to its own greed and impatience. Step yer game up, CA. There once was a dream. A dream called Total War... Also I wanna be able to make my own custom battle maps, that'd be fckn sick.

[@michaelpriestley1304]

I agree empire was the start of the decline of the series. That's when they started releasing the small dlcs and patches. I miss being able to recruit armies w/o needing a general.

[@KaiserMattTygore927]

So many games "Gamified" so much stuff, and usually the first causality is anything related to City building in games that aren't STRICTLY city or base builders. That has ALWAYS annoyed the shit out of me.

[@risto3425]

Tbh all modern games kinda suck. Back in the day devs used to pour their hearts into games, nowadays they could just as well be developing accounting software. Gaming industry became too big and the soul of it died.

[@cslantz4020]

Summed up pretty much the greatest issue with capitalism and the monopolization of the Gaming Industry as well as many other faculties

[@JuanRojas-xs9fc]

One of the main things I believe newer Total War games are missing are formations. How is it that my empire spearmen or handguners, swordmen etc, cant make a shield wall? For god sake the guns didnt even have a reload animation. It lacks soul.

[@andresr.viguera9791]

If only CA and SEGA listened to these videos...

[@AparajitaStormhoof]

Instead, SEGA would just fire a "cease and desist" letter.

[@thaliatherasdotter9175]

Dude, Pharaoh is a reskin of Troy and will cost more than Warhammer 3. WHAT THE F*CK!! XD

[@ludovicgraham6234]

I think a strong example of consumer response to creative assembly can be seen in the continued health and vibrancy of the M2TW modding community. I've never even played a more recent game in the series and from what I've seen they look like a lot more sizzle than steak when held up to, say, Europa Barabrorum 2.

[@Jack_Stones]

I started my Total War journey with Rome 2, and while I loved it at the time, Three Kingdoms has been my favourite total war game since I first dove into it on christmas day of 2021. I was blown away by the level of deplomacy offered, and at the time, thought the population mechanics it offered were incredibly deep. That being said, I've very recently experienced the original Rome for the first time, and while I think 3K will always be my favourite, it is very sad to think about what we have lost along the way with these games.

[@misanthropicservitorofmars2116]

Shogun 2 is the best total war game ever made. It’s not even close. Everything about that game is perfect. Aside from merchants. Bring back merchants :(

[@declansmyth1973]

You should buy medieval 2 immediately so your family can watch become a hermit for a month

[@Jack_Stones]

@@declansmyth1973 I do own Medieval 2, but I've yet to dive into it properly, this comment has given me the push to do so, I think

[@Jack_Stones]

@@misanthropicservitorofmars2116 Thats a solid recommendation, I'll definitely have to check out shogun 2, I have heard very good things

[@De_Futura]

@@Jack_StonesI would recommend playing it with mods (Stainless Steel, Grand Campaign) or the kingdoms expansions. (Best "DLC" CA has ever made)

[@vitaliitomas8121]

"Gooods, I hate gauls..."

[@Chaos_Dave98]

Im still wondering why things like wall climbing for sieges battles never worked well (or when they get out of siege towers, it looks so wonky). Also cav charges are like you throw pillows at the enemy. Also things like when a 120 men group are fighting and you try to escape and there are 3 man of the 120 still fighting the whole group stands still and does basicly nothing. Its sad that theres no competition and im stuck with rome 2 and attila (with tons of mods) My opinion is: since rome 2 we have the same bugs, the same wierd AI behaviours, clunky animations and the graphics didnt change that much since then. my Friend paid over 300€ for Wh1-3 with all dlcs and we still cant play the campagne without crashing every 1 hour. CA needed over 1 year to fix napoleon for intel 12th gen users. And then they also replaced sounds? (Sorry im not a native english speaker)

[@riverblack565]

I understood that CA leaders want as much money as possible with less investment as possible so that might be a good explanation for the reasons why TW didn't changed the engine or made the features and mechanics worst since Shogun 2 and the new ones not polished enough...for me was clear when they announced Pharaoh that will be a Saga,cause Bronze Age has way more than that to offer,plus because of their history Empire-Napoleon,Rome 2-Attila I was sure this will be a Troy-Pharaoh and there's no way I'll buy a copy/paste with little improvements from a free game,even for 24 hours,Troy is unplayable to me,if I want smart campaign I'll switch to Paradox,I'm at CA for battles....and I'm still playing mods for Rome 2 and Attila,I'll try Shogun 2 again and even some oberhauls for Empire,but I'll never buy another CA game

[@DarkKhagan]

It's sad to see a Iconic Brand like The Total War Series abandon it's original fan base. I've been with them since Shogun Total War/Mongol Invasion Warlord Edition 2000. I sincerely hope that they will continue to produce great history based Iconic games that we so love and enjoy! 🙏🏼

[@dasberk4971]

You have accurately described the nature of my grievance with total war.

[@ultimoguerreiro82]

True, total war peaked in Rome/Medieval2 (same engine)...

[@MrMyers758]

How is what you stated a democratic way of handling it? There is no voting for or against it, there are only purchases, and those who can purchase more have more "votes". The customer base was not asked to vote on whether or not they wanted any particular monetisation system, but when forced between the choice of not playing the game, or playing the game while ignoring the monetisation, the latter isn't a vote in favour of the monetisation. I really think you need to clarify that position because it sounds utterly ill informed and ludicrous. Markets are not democratic. What options are available are not determined by the consumers, nor is their content determined by the consumers, nor is their success determined by all possible consumers. If it were democratic, iPhone would not have designed obsolescence, nor would they have non modular parts, American internet providers would not have divided the country up into monopolistic fiefdoms, and food would not be packaged in ever reducing quantities but with ever increasing prices. Also: "It becomes vital that Creative Assembly listens to what its historical audience has been begging for ever since Empire came to be..." Creative Assembly has nothing to do with it. You forget the relationship because the devs and their publishers. If Creative Assembly listen to its historical audience, it then needs to present those to Sega to be approved. Sega has already decided what the historical audience wants is irrelevant, as they make up a minority of the customer base, and so are not worth investing additional efforts in developing for. You can make appeals to CA all you want; they've already heard everything you've had to say here, over and over, for nearing on a decade now. You won't change their minds, and they can't change Sega's. Changing direction is too much of a risk, and if there's one thing a large company in the midst of late stage capitalism despises, it's risk.

[@BloodwyrmWildheart]

Sega has granted CA complete autonomy. CA has everything to do with it.

[@MrMyers758]

@@BloodwyrmWildheart Complete autonomy. 🤣

[@Milan74]

For real, i'm dreaming of a Empire 2: TW spanning from Columbus in 1492 untill the end of the Victorian age in 1901 on a global map. Let the real colonization begin ;-)

[@Shiro-bj2fc]

Good take, finally not someone who only talks about: historical vs fantasy

[@jimboslice214]

I wish you could still change your faction heir in Medieval 2, lots of the time random people become my heir who shouldn’t be

[@tanpham937]

Pretty sure you can do that in shogun 2, Rome 2, Attila and Three kingdoms or you haven't played those yet.

[@Sakarraterrum]

You can in some mods

[@MateusVIII]

I mean, doesn't make much sense though. It is the middle ages, there are inheritance laws.

[@rhoetusochten4211]

It has been a moment, but I seem to recall sending a useless son/heir on a ...let's call it "an exciting boatride". Or having him show the dynasty's compassion in plague-ridden cities . 😊

[@robinwolstenholme6377]

well said the grafics have inproed but the machanics not so much

[@cyllananassan9159]

DLC´s They making DLC´s, AT $25 A POP, this is value for them

[@james2529]

Your love letter to Rome 1 made me very happy. My favourite game of all time.

[@rhoetusochten4211]

18:45 modding in the Rome and Medieval days was so easy even a luddite like me could do some. New faction? Check. New units? Check. A single character who threw catapult stones or cannon shot? Oh, you betcha. That was a big part of replayability. Don't get me wrong, over the years I've probably played Empire the most (thousands of hours, if I recall) but if I could tweak the game, or find an easy way of getting someone else's tweaks, then I'd still be playing it. I think the dlc model of business has been a leading factor in devaluing the base games in today's market. It's also why I am unlikely to ever buy a Paradox game ever again.

[@cyllananassan9159]

everything VOLUND said was true all along

[@shrouddreamer]

Yes he was right. It's just because his behavior towards other people that most players didn't listen to him. Instead of trying to convince others of his points, he ridiculed and insulted everyone who said that the later Total War games were great too. Aaaaand, now he promotes staying neutral towards Russian aggression in Ukraine...

[@cyllananassan9159]

@@shrouddreamer The war in Russia is due to NATO expansionism, and mistreatment of russian minorities in Ukraine. People forget Rusia could send the whole wold back to pangea age... Biden doesnt care, cos he has a nice white house bunker, neither NATO members

[@Crouchy232323]

Volound's videos aren't about Total War. They are about Volound

[@cyllananassan9159]

dont care @@Crouchy232323

[@TheManofthecross]

What did they say.

[@nickolaygrigorov1475]

CA are in dire need of actual competition. If another publisher can launch a better battle engine CA will be forced to innovate. Right now, they don't care.

[@Natediggetydog]

As many things as Rome II messed up, the DeI mod is still one of my favorite total war experiences, right after the LotR mods for Attila and medieval 2, and the 1212 mod that basically turns Attila into medieval 3

[@yeahhbuddy3932]

Honestly total war is boring now.

[@Lykyk]

Andy, you need to learn to get to the point, the entire first 5 minutes could've been done in one.

[@VanguardDeezNutz]

Bro, seeing those Legions marching at 0:30 made me nostalgic for the game Rome II never was

[@douglaspurcell7506]

someone once said something that has stuck with me since. it was something along the lines of "maybe games aren't getting worse. maybe we're simply becoming less and less capable of enjoying them as we grow older." that really stuck with me and made a lot of sense to me. the games you played as a child will always be your favorite games, because of how that time period in your life makes you feel. no responsibilities. just going to your friends house every weekend to game.

[@zulazhar1259]

What you said makes sense if they added more features but we just didnt vibe with it. Like the video said they removed a bunch of features and never push the features that used to work that the older fanbase wanted.

[@douglaspurcell7506]

@@zulazhar1259 they have added a bunch of new things. I'd say there are more new things than old things that got removed. this is my perspective. I just bought every single total war game a couple weeks ago when they were all on sale. I've played every single one. the only one that's hooked me has been Warhammer 3 (and I'm not even a warhammer fan. knew nothing about it.) that's kind of what I mean. yall might love those older games, but the new games ARE great in their own ways. you're just too in love with what WAS to appreciate what IS

[@Apodeipnon]

​@@douglaspurcell7506huh this guy just perfectly explained his view on it in a thirty minute video and you come up with *that*?

[@kingsuperbus4617]

the lady at ca told me to get stuffed back in RTW2 because of my criticism. i got banned from the modding community all the way back in MTW2 because i was critical of them making religion bland in literally every single mod. if i was a betting man, i'd bet they hired those early modders and thats why the games all suck now. literally a gated community that killed themselves.

[@CD-zd6zr]

I remember a rumor that the Darthmod guy was hired on a trial basis and it didn't go well

[@user-vr8qd4hk6y]

Once again - unless they will finally make a step forward in simulating battlefield tactics, then it will be just disappointing. Total War made a revolution of going from dum dum RTS to battlefield tactics. But they are practically stuck since... Rome. Only adding smaller features, while others not rarely are lacking / worse. This revolution and Total War tactics is mainly about morale system. Which really can be improved. They should finally make a step forward and add mechanics for unit's cohesion. It should be similarly important like morale and be related to it. For now Total War games are still pretty much dum dum RTSs in terms of how unit's behave much ignoring aspect of cohesion. For example you can run your own unit through another one just before enemy attack - something that should mean you already lost. Fatigue also should play a greater role really. Would be nice to see mechanics for formations and commanding finally developed a bit. Last thing - it would be good to think a bit more about operational level of war and gameplay. Sadly, they totally focused on making new games glitzy and in various flavours. While in their core, they are pretty much stuck in point evolution which was Rome. SOOO many years, think about it for a moment. We can't even say about adding naval battles really, cause there were issues with them and they abandoned it later...

[@azzlingtonmcazzle9544]

I have an idea - List the total war games you've played, and write down the gameplay features that you enjoyed from each of them, and why. I'll start: 1. Medieval 1: i. The ability to promote the captain of any unit to a general. ii. The level of detail that went into city-building - needing multiple buildings to be able to recruit certain units. iii. The ability to arrange the order in which reinforcements would arrive on the battlefield. 2. Rome 1 + BI: i. The ability to move armies around on the campaign map. ii. Battle-map mechanics (infantry units can have 2 weapons, i.e. spear and sword, without causing issues). iii. Playable hordes. iv. Honestly, too many to list. 3. Medieval 2: i. The potential for realistic limitations on recruitment (there is a reason we didn't really see armies entirely composed of praetorian cohorts during the times of ancient Rome, this reason is called scarcity of suitable candidates) - a good recruitment system. ii. Different types of armour being upgraded by different levels of smithing building. 4. Empire: i. Naval transport system - this allows for a good representation of the differences in mobility between naval and land forces of the era, and made a strong case for naval empires. ii. Naval battles - it added them. iii. The trade system and necessity for a navy to protect it. iv. The size of battles - with mods pushing certain unit sizes to exceed 500 men. There are more, but for now these are what come to mind. Sharing is caring!

[@Revan-N7]

For me, being a fan of the Total War series is like having a toxic relationship with your first and now ex girlfriend. You know how beautiful she was and how she used to make you dream every day. That's what makes you want to hope that you can still experience these moments, once again. Her flesh exudes nostalgia for the days when you discovered your first carnal pleasures. But you're constantly caught up in her shitty behaviour and you inevitably end up finding out the fact that these days are in fact over, and that it will never be the same again.

[@ancienthistorygaming]

I do think Pharaoh in theory should be a lot better than Troy. Due to being a main historical title meaning they should gotten a bigger budget than they did for Troy. Even though Pharaoh is getting hate for reusing some assets from Troy it is set within the same time period as Troy so it would make sense CA Sofia would use some of the past features and improve on them. Also this is this studios first major title so hopefully they will put additional love and dedication to this game. I believe and hope that TW Pharaoh is one the best modern TW games. Hopefully also everyone will give this game a chance and maybe if people gives it a chance and be honest with their experience we might see them make games set in a larger setting.

[@AndysTake]

I too hope Pharaoh will turn out great!

[@ancienthistorygaming]

@@AndysTake I am hyped for the game but I do wish we had country based factions, cover longer span of Bronze Age history, and have mortal characters that died with family trees and stuff like that. Will this kill the game for me, no but I wish those features were in the game.

[@CptSlow89]

​@@AndysTakeDoubt it.

[@waltonsmith7210]

Capitalism eventually corrupts everything.

[@beakerthefrog]

I think the reason why this has never bothered me with newer Total War games is simply the fact when I want to play a governance simulator, I'll play something like EU, Victoria, or Hearts of Iron. For me, Total War is at its best as an evolution of Age of Empires. It's an RTS first, with empire management sprinkled in. You're never going to cross those two genres seamlessly. It simply isn't possible without making a game that's pushing half a terrabyte, and there are bound to be weird clashes in design (there are already are). There are plenty of high quality governance simulators out there, and outside of Total War games almost no high quality battlefield simulators. There is ALWAYS the negative impact of corporate oversight, and Total War games do suffer from this, but that's a broader cultural and economic issue, and is by no means confined to game development. Every single aspect of our lives is poisoned by corporate corner-cutting and customer-squeezing. I doing see the utility in pointing at the damage corporatism has done to Total War's design, unless you are also going to be critiquing this iteration of capitalism as a whole simultaneously.

[@MrJabbothehut]

It's because marketing teasm have figured out that people are suckers for visuals and will buy stuff because it looks pretty. The old games didn't only look pretty but they also felt like the world was alive and that things had weight and energy to them. It's the difference between playing a Rockstar open world game and a Ubisoft open world game. Rockstar put so much effort into the little details that make their worlds memorable but take a lot of time to produce. Ubisoft make big games filled with bloat and easy to copy and paste content with game worlds that are lifeless and forgettable with cookie cutter characters and events. CA were the former with Shogun 2 being their last Rockstar like game and then Rome 2 onwards is when the company mindset properly changed, and they went down the route that most developers started going down then, to style over substance. the reason this works is because humans are naturally visual creatures who are very easily impressed by pretty visuals and take time to discover that eventually that fades and they want something a bit deeper and immersive. By the time a generation figures that out then you have another generation of fresh blood ready to buy all the crap that the previous one did.

[@AndysTake]

Remember though, Rome and Medieval 2 looked downright gorgeous in their day!

[@MrJabbothehut]

@@AndysTake true that!