Ok, I caught up with my uni work, we are back on schedule. Also, Thank You for 2000 Subscribers, March has already been my Best Month yet : ) There will be a 2000 Special TimeLapse. Probably Europa barbarorum, but still unsure.
You’re growing quickly! If I recall correctly, you had about 250 subscribers when I first happened upon one of your videos. If you keep up the hard work, you might even reach 10K this year.
"And everybody hated egypt, but then I looked again and rome had taken over" Pretty much a 100% accurate summary of the Middle east during the classical era.
I think it's less that they're troops are good and more that there are four very powerful Roman factions with decent economies and the freedom to focus on separate factions all at once, on top of having really good units
Maybe you never fought them deep into a game when they develop all kind of units.. they will have archers and onagres that will destroy you from afar and fear your men.. and if they have pretorian or urban cohort good luck routing them with your cavalry
giovanni ferro no I play all my campaigns on VH/VH and have fought post Marian Roman armies. Of course I didn't mean that you can just begin the battle by charging into them, I'm just saying that you can quite easily take out their archers and even their cav (unless they have praetorian cav) with your cavalry and then just rear charge the infantry once they've engaged with your front line
I weirdly don't mind them as much in Attila, mostly because I can allow my troops to form that defensive formation where they are almost immune to missile fire, but I get what you mean : )
Yeah me too, regular horse archers early game, but getting the cataphract archers quickly as nothing beats them. faster cavalry = murderizing in melee Infantry = shoot them then charge other horse archers = this armour sure is convenient right now chariots = shoot them first before they reach you, good thing they're weak to missiles foot archers = CHAAAARGE They looked at a game of rock paper scissors and just flipped it off
I suppose Carthage might also be annoying early game because you need a navy to destroy all their islands, and navies transporting armies or all your favourite generals can be destroyed by sneaky auto-resolving winning pirates! ;)
This and 100% this. Early game pirates are the bane of my existence, you need to soak so much money into a fleet just to deal with them, that it’s not funny
XD How about, Top 5 Most Annoying Unit Rosters? That seems closer : ) Also, how else do you expect me to judge the faction, the faction colour annoys me, the sound of their name annoys me? ; )
@@MelkorGG well for example I think the egyptians are quite annoying because by they time you reach them they've got quite a large empire which allows them to field far larger armies. Conquering them can be a bit of a drag too given their wonder. Gaul's cities don't provide much money so although the first victories aren't that hard fighting them wil either be slow or will drain your resources. The germanic tribes can be annoying given all the ambushes their terrain provides (also I don't like forest fights). I'm not saying that this is how it should be but these arguments do cover more than one unit. Cheers mate!
Ai phalanx: soldiers can turn around in one second and drop their spears. My phalanx: is just standing there facing the enemy, I tell them to drop spears before the enemy charges them, ENTIRE UNIT HAS TO PLAY MUSICAL CHAIRS FIRST! Gets charged before phalanx is down. Dies
In order to avoid this, when you need an emergency "spears down" you press Stop then immediately the spears down command. If the unit is facing the enemy, they will get some spears down, it won't be pretty but it will do.
They would probably make the top 5 if anyone ever fought against them late game, but that just doesn't happen. I wonder if you can manage to get the AI seleucids big by playing a faction close to them. Like playing as Egypt and not attacking them, maybe even leave Sidon and Jerusalem free for them to take. Idk, they would probably still get crushed by Armenia, Pontus, Parthia and the greeks but it'd be an interesting experiment.
howie lowis interestingly enough, in my Macedonian campaign they are doing surprisingly well. The reason for this might be that Pontus attacked me early on, losing most of their army, then naturally Armenia decided to conquer weakened Pontus, after that Egypt tried to invade my territories in Asia Minor so basically most Eastern powers were fighting either me or among themselves, not bothering with the Seleucids.
Parthia is hell to fight with the right (or wrong) units, it just rarely happens with the AI. Horse archer spam, cataphracts and elephants together are just about invincible. They make mincemeat of the Romans.
Egypt, Egypt, and Egypt and not for reasons that you would expect. I hate that Egypt so easily takes out the Seleucid AI which could have been a great faction to fight in the late game. Egypt usually takes out Parthia as well. It gets annoying just fighting Egypt and usually Pontus in the East.
Fax but to ensure that wouldn’t happen while playing the Seleucid’s I would just have my elephants charge first then my and cav and then a line of chariots and when my infantry met up with the aforementioned units I’d have my elephants retreat. Also anything fire related i ran from
Missile cavalry is devastating for a reason. Especially if they are archer cavalry. There's little counter for it aside from your own archery but you are guaranteed high casualties no matter what you do. This is kind of historically accurate. The most successful armies on the planet relied entirely on this method of warfare... in the cases of the Mongols, literally damn near every man, woman, and child understood horseback riding and archery. And still do. Much like in the Total War series, the only downside of them is that most cultures in the "civilized world" didn't utilize it to the same extent and it was kind of a niche means of fighting because of how difficult it is to have to combine archery and horse-riding, both of which are already difficult to learn on their own. Any army that brought such units to a battlefield would have a small number of them and while they are dangerous, they'd likely run out of ammo before they can kill everyone... much like in the game. But if you get a full stack of them like the Scythians can or Huns in BI and you are kind of unstoppable on field battles.
Realistically, the selucids should be the most annoying but they get absolutely dogpiled and never amount to anything. However, elephants, phalanxes and chariots make for armies that would be insane late game. They just cant get there
You see, I LOVED the Seleucid campaign for that very reason. It was so fun to save them from the "dogpile" so to speak! Plus your early units are absolutely TERRIBLE. The way I did it was thus: 1. Build up a strong defensive line against Egypt, as they are obviously your greatest foe, so you have to play slowly, steadily and VERY CAREFULLY against them. 2. Play a war of attrition against Pontus and Armenia to the North. Their forces can catch you off guard if you're not careful, so you have to be prepared for strikes out of the blue and gradually wear them down/ capture their cities in the mountains. 3. Take out Parthia as QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. They are an absolute thorn in your back, so doing so will free you of your other dangerous enemy quickly, and will make sure you are safe on one side. 4. Don't declare war on the Greek cities until you know you're very safe/ they're nearly dead themselves. Their cities in Asia Minor are quite hard to take, and you need trade partners anyway. 5. When the Parthians (in Persia) are down, take your troops to help against Egypt and in the North. 6. Once you get access to Archers, Phalanx and Silver Shield Pikemen and the better Cavalry Units (plus Elephants), you are going to absolutely WHIP Egypt's ass! I absolutely relish the moment you capture the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Pyramids! So satisfying. 7. So yeah, follow these steps and you will have the WHOLE of the Middle East under your control! And the most incredible, diverse roster of units in the whole game, as well as Armoured Elephants and Silver Shield Legionaries! 8. Then it's just the slow, steady slog against the Romans...
It’s really all situational. If you’re playing as the Julii, the Brutii will invariably be the hardest faction to beat and vice versa just due to location- by the time of the civil war either faction can cut out wide swaths of the others less defended areas. In nearly every other campaign against a faction, you are able to consolidate your forces and basically make counter-attacks impossible.
IMHO Armenia has a tougher army than Parthia if allowed to build unchecked. Way tougher because they have higher tier infantry and better cav archers in Cat Archers. They do start off poor though so they likely won't be too much of a threat though. AI Armenia and Parthia are no problem.
Yeah people tend to overestimate Parthia whereas actually Armenia's roster a lot more useful (Cat Archer's basically a tank in the game and Heavy Spearmen spam is better than Eastern Spearmen spam)...
I fully agree with you about Scythia, I remember doing a campaign as a kid where Scythia had taken most of Greece and I (as the Brutii) kept throwing full stack armies at them and losing the lot
My no. 1 are the Britons mainly because you can't auto resolve when they have generals in their army. The AI just thinks their chariots are capable of destroying an entire army. I once put out 3 beserker units and 1 merc cavalry against just one general and it was a crushing defeat! When you fight it yourself it's an easy win.
I usually used some cav, pretending to attack them to draw their fire, then turn and attack their infantry flank instead. A lot of times the enemy missile cav will use this to charge into your back. Once they are in melee combat they die quickly and if your cav managed to rout the charged infantry quickly, they will swiftly deal with those pesky horsearchers.
And no one called a REALLY the most annoying faction - REBELS! These bastards spawn everywhere at any time and never end! And I said nothing about pirates.
I have to super disagree with number 1, for a few reasons. 1. Egypt is usually pretty strong every time I watch them play. While the same can be said for Britain sometimes, it is far more often the case with Egypt, making them more dangerous. 2. I would argue that Pontus is even more annoying than Britain, they have the strongest melee chariots and missile chariots as well. Most of their cav is missile cav and they have phalanxes late game. In my Brutii campaign back in the day, they kicked me off Anatolia twice. 3. I think the bias you, me, and others feel is heavily dependent on the fact that all three Roman factions inevitably have to deal with an annoying faction, so I am not too surprised you chose Briton and Scythia seeing as your last campaign was the Rome in a day one from my knowledge.
Egypt is pretty ridiculous because of all the chariots they can raise. They’re an obviously hard faction to put down. Pontus surprised me as they were hard to put down. They had incredibly strong chariot & skirmisher units. Their infantry had spair numbers.
Egypt is the first for me. Phalanxes? Check. Not very strong, but still. Chariots? Check. But still manageable. What drives it in the 1st place, however, is it's Pharaon's Bowmen. Elite Archers with good range and good damage and armor on top of that, so you can't chase them off with Light Calavary. Hell, you can send a General after them and lose him.
House of bruuti. Greek cities: Hoplites every single war. 50 horses at full speed charges from behind but NOPE they dont insta kill any hoplite instead the hoplites turn around while under attack and pull their spears out like if the horses were made out of cardboard. Thrace: A bunch of 1000 units that came out of nowere from one single turn and as soon as you touch one stack all of them they all flee the battle Britania: The same as above but britania holds half of the north Egypt: Chariots that do damage even if they are fleeting away
Phalaxes; the general unit has a morale bonus anyway so if there are more units, go for others first. Once i beat an entire phalax army with 3 equite units, by splitting them up to smaller unit groups until one unit is being left alone. Then you can encircle the loney unit with your cavalries, and if you do it right they might even start running before you touch any of them - well not sure about very hard level, maybe u have to touch them there cuz of the general morale bonus thanks to the level. Ah, and that phalanx turning bug.. really anoying. It should be called a bug, cuz they are stand still, while their pikes are in the air, and not loosing even 5 men, while you are loosing half of your charging units. Cuz of this i always only charging while it seems like they wont have the time to lift up fully their pikes.
I never had that much trouble with charioteers, but that may be because I usually end up either taking the barbarians down quickly or because I start as one of said barbarians. Can't destroy me with OP chariots if you don't have time to build OP chariots. ;) Cataphracts, on the other hand, can be like trying to stop a tank with a speedbump, so I absolutely understand the rage against the Parthians. I just bring archers to deal with missile cav. The heavier variety that can turn and thump you in melee anyway.
5. Egypt or Gaul 4. Egypt or Gaul 3. Egypt or Gaul 2. Egypt or Gaul 1. Egypt or Gaul Honorable mention: Egypt or Gaul DID I FORGOT TO MENTION EGYPT OR GAUL!?
Nice work! Any chance for a similar video being done for Barbarian Invasion? Because the Sassanids are right up there with all the most annoying factions from vanilla Rome.
Interesting.Based on my playthrough.I always feel that the EYGPTIANS were the most annoying because when I reached them.They were already entrenched heavily in the East.
#1. Egypt. #2. Numidia. #3. Pontus. #4. Scythia. #5. British + Elephant Nations. ( All of the missile calvary nations are super annoying in RTW). - They have your units running around the entire map. A battle that would have been a quick, and decisive victory is now super annoying all because of missile calvary that drags the battle on to what seems like ages more. ::::: Elephant nations are annoying to fight too cause you know that you have high potential in losing a lot of men trying to kill them off. You lose men by the elephants just falling over dead. - You hope your General units dont get pinched between them when fighting; cause all it takes is one elephant to fall over on your General to kill him which is a most unfortunate, disappointing, and ridiculous way to lose a General.
Those damn Britons and Germanic tribes are annoying as hell, each time I conquer what I think is their final city, another just pops out of no where, and not to mention the goddamn German pikeman. Back then when I first started I had to wait until the Marian Reforms to conquer the damn tribes.
XD I never have a problem with the Germans in Rome TW. Cavalry is the best option, even against their pikes if you get them in the back - from my experience, others will do it differently : )
It is the Barbarian Theme, not a remix. Here is where I found it: th-cam.com/video/12HXnYNA6Cg/w-d-xo.html The part you are looking for starts at 47:03 : )
Melkor, do you know of any way to play Rome:TW in hotseat mode? Considering (and i might be wrong here) thats its done on the same engine as M2TW, so maybe someone had ported it across somehow. Would love to relive this with my brothers, each controlling one Roman faction!
It is possible if you have a mod. It's discussed here: www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?128276-Hotseat-mode-in-Rome Although I imagine it to be very buggy. Either way, good luck : )
Really you put the British on top because of their chariots. I'd rather fight British chariots instead of Egyptian or scythed chariots. Egyptians because they can fire arrows and scythed chariots because of how much damage that they can inflict in a charge.
I hate using missile units, I find them dull watch, personally. And so most of my armies are cav and infantry heavy, which do not do good vs chariots. : )
@@MelkorGG Ah, so it a problem of mentality then. Just bring a few archers and target explicitly anything ranged and mounted while your infantry does it job/screens them for a bit until you've softened the enemy up enough.
Missile cavalry; early general units in pontus or parthia - if you have them they are weak, and running out of ammo really soon. If they are agains you, you can’t catch them, they are fking strong and doesnt running out of ammo. Bahh. I hate them
I never had a problem with Britain! I just used to overpower them with my legions and heavy cavalry. Most annoying for me , was Egypt. Because they always, like ALWAYS managed to conquer all the east until the middle of the game and because of that were able to pull HUGE amount of money by which they were able to hire unlimited number of armies, sometime I just need to wait until 50 a.d to be able to conquer at least Asia minor from their Hands! (Of course when I was playing for Romans), but if I was playing for anyone else, then Romans are most annoying, because they were able to conquer half of the map until 100 b.c! And worst of all, they ain't fighting with each other so they can left 0 number of legions for the protection of their city's, by that concentrating HUGE number of legions against you! p.s they are unfairly OVERPOWERED and economically, and technologically, also have most strong/balanced army units in the game! The good part of this game, that you can modify other faction's like I used to do, to make game more interesting.
Armenia, scythia, and egypt are my top 3 most annoying factions. Missile troop spam, especially cavalry missile troop spam is annoying and guarantees you will lose so much of your infantry you have to wait for reinforcements
I really HATE Brittons. But not because of chariots, they could be easily destroyed by any unit, if you sent 2-3 units one one chariot squad. I hate them be because of killers. In every game I fight them they literally wipe out one third to half my generals and governors and I can’t do anything but wipe out Brittons
Will never forget the pain of trying to invade late game Portugal in twm2 like on the field pretty easy but for me sieging a town was a war all on its own didn't help i spend half of my money on gothic knights and two handers
I really didn't hate especially playing against any faction especially, but I know that I was pretty hateful playing as Pontus (I was an expert using its skirmish cavalry, its units were OP).
Ok, dont hate me, last comment; So yeah I totally agree with egypt on top, its because they have so many good units, and always using in their armies mixed units. And cuz of this you cant just use one hammer and anvil tactic to take down the entire army, but you have to mix up various tacticts to win. One battle is alwasy fun with them. But then you realize that they still have like 7-8 another armies like that. Ahh, same type of battles. Again. And again. But why are the romans on the top? They also has a lot of armies, but with some infantry units plus like 5 cavalry units you can hammer and anvil them down really easily, its quite fun. Not like egypt. Or greeks with their endless porcupine. And they have nothing else but that.
i really dont understand your hatred of the chariots, they were always the easiest thign for me to kill, if fact they were so easy i prefered to fight them over regular cav, it only takes one melee hit to kill them after all, so send a unti of regualr cav after them and the chariots melt
Pontus is very annoying to face. They have pikemen, melee chariots but being more eastern than the seleucids they have also access to missile chariots. On top of that those heavy armoured Cappadocian cavalry.
I thought you might go for Numidia because I know you dont like fighting in Africa, it takes ages to walk through their land, they have missile cav & elephants! xD Bonus Points: Can anyone name the 2 "Other" factions NOT included in Melkor's poll?
Correct, they are certainly annoying. They could easily have made it onto this list, but they are usually destroyed, mostly, by the time I get there, unless I play as Carthage. : ) Which factions did I miss?
Numidia don't get elephants in their normal unit roster. They do have access to the war elephant mercenaries but their economy is so bad they often can't get them
Most annoying faction for me is the Celts on BI, their scotti chariots are absolute garbage in a battle but they absolutely demolish anything you have on autoresolve.
In manual battles it’s anyone with horse archers, apply that to medieval 2 as well. But Romans are the worst to fight with auto resolve because it’s so in their favour
As someone who likes to play as the seleucids, I think the most annoying factions are Parthia and Egypt. Parthians because they will siege your settlements with horse archers and You can't do much about it, except hoping that they will charge your base through the gates and you phalanx them to death. And Egypt is anoying because they dont make any sense unit roster wise and because of the huge advantages they have against other factions.. annoying shit faction :p Too bad the seleucids are so weak in rome total war vanilla version, the realism and darthmod version and the rome 2 version are OP so in a way it balances out nicely :p
Well they suck early game but I honestly classify them as the "waking the sleeping dragon" faction. If you allow them to "wake up" (reach their late game units) they become one of the most powerful factions in the game. You probably know that though.
@@courtlycard6556 you need to invest heavily in pikes, and play very defensively in the beginning. You need their late game strength to overcome the egyptians. Also missile support is needed. But it all depends on how heavily you are focused on by the other factions..
British is nothing...Egypt has chariots that by miracle are fast moving and can't panic😒😒😒.The Romans aren't that difficult to handle early on, but later when have a ton of troops, and I mean a ton, it's just not worth the time and effort to deal with them...The Scythians with light cavalry are easy to handle, you just need more cavalry, and since they are poor and with 2-3 cities at most, and need to move far away from their cities, you don't have to fight them at all, you just block their way with forts and when they attack you move for their towns...
I love how in almost every video, you throw out there that you HATE missile cavalry. I do too...especially those Egyptian chariot archers.. double EFFING negative.
fighting rome can be a pain yet fun it just depends how much you like fighting 10 or so stacks hours on end as for missle cav i do okay i play the slow tank so they just about run out of bullets or get out shot by my long range archers when i start chasing them don't like using them much they dont like working for me for some reason they do their own bloody thing when i move them around (s mood off) and they die sigh
In the only campaign I've done so far Carthage was crippled so early on they never got a chance to develop elephant units. And at this point I don't think they'll get the chance. Their still hanging on at this point, but their only settlements are in a worthless village in Africa and a few towns/cities in Iberia. Apparently they've teamed up with the Scipii to crush the Spianards at this point. Oh well, the Scipii can ally with as many useless factions as they want at this point. I've already taken about half of their holdings and the rest will probably be easy pickings. Yeah dealing with spear lines is a real headache if you tend to rely on cavalry. And I definitely like to field a large amount of cavalry in field battles in order to quickly flank the AI. So, I've definitely lost my fair share of horses against the Greeks. Even with me playing the game on M/M at the moment. And I've taken more then my fair share of losses against chariots. It's why I'm probably going to fire bomb the next Egyptian city I take with onagers in order to get rid of them before I try to seriously capture the place. Even if it means accepting another defeat. Sadly, I haven't gotten far enough into my fist campaign to face the Scythians just yet. I'm definitely considering it though since it seems they've wasted most of their troops trying to take out Armenia. So, I may have an easier time then I expect at this point. Though, I imagine my conquest of the area will be rather slow since I'm in the middle of the civil war at this point. Oddly enough Parthia is probably one of the strongest factions left in my campaign. Though strong is rather relative considering they currently only control six settlements to my knowledge. Honestly my biggest annoyance with the British so far is they finished off the Gauls before I could.
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Ok, I caught up with my uni work, we are back on schedule.
Also, Thank You for 2000 Subscribers, March has already been my Best Month yet : )
There will be a 2000 Special TimeLapse. Probably Europa barbarorum, but still unsure.
You know, the best counter to missile cavalry is archers. Massed archers can bring down horse archers very quickly, as the horse is a big easy target.
You’re growing quickly!
If I recall correctly, you had about 250 subscribers when I first happened upon one of your videos.
If you keep up the hard work, you might even reach 10K this year.
1.5 years later: you now have 15k!!!
what are you studiyng
you had 23.3 subs
"And everybody hated egypt, but then I looked again and rome had taken over"
Pretty much a 100% accurate summary of the Middle east during the classical era.
4:20
We got 'em now boys! They're hopelessly outnumbered! CHAAA-
Oh, dinner's ready back at the camp. Retreat, men!
Pre reform cavalry in a nutshell haha
I don't really get why people think the Romans are hard to fight. Yes they have good infantry but all infantry is weak to a good ol' cavalry charge
Nice, someone who understands the true power of cavalry. : )
Cavalry in this game is so OP
I think it's less that they're troops are good and more that there are four very powerful Roman factions with decent economies and the freedom to focus on separate factions all at once, on top of having really good units
Maybe you never fought them deep into a game when they develop all kind of units.. they will have archers and onagres that will destroy you from afar and fear your men.. and if they have pretorian or urban cohort good luck routing them with your cavalry
giovanni ferro no I play all my campaigns on VH/VH and have fought post Marian Roman armies. Of course I didn't mean that you can just begin the battle by charging into them, I'm just saying that you can quite easily take out their archers and even their cav (unless they have praetorian cav) with your cavalry and then just rear charge the infantry once they've engaged with your front line
I think you'd hate me then. My Armenian campaign I've been using EXCLUSIVELY missile cavalry
Yes I do hate you. Leave a Dislike and never return XD
I agree it is fun to use at times against the AI, but having used against you is a crime. : )
Just wait til he plays Attila
I weirdly don't mind them as much in Attila, mostly because I can allow my troops to form that defensive formation where they are almost immune to missile fire, but I get what you mean : )
Yeah me too, regular horse archers early game, but getting the cataphract archers quickly as nothing beats them.
faster cavalry = murderizing in melee
Infantry = shoot them then charge
other horse archers = this armour sure is convenient right now
chariots = shoot them first before they reach you, good thing they're weak to missiles
foot archers = CHAAAARGE
They looked at a game of rock paper scissors and just flipped it off
Byz can do that as well. It's great.
I suppose Carthage might also be annoying early game because you need a navy to destroy all their islands, and navies transporting armies or all your favourite generals can be destroyed by sneaky auto-resolving winning pirates! ;)
This and 100% this. Early game pirates are the bane of my existence, you need to soak so much money into a fleet just to deal with them, that it’s not funny
@@Old_Guard2 eh just save before you send out the fleet.if you get sunk reload and go another way.i always load my army on one ship
shane app I play mobile unfortunately
@@Old_Guard2 oh it doesnt let you save and reload saves if you mess up?
shane app no
The title might say top 5 most annoying factions but the video is basically top 5 most annoying units.
XD How about, Top 5 Most Annoying Unit Rosters? That seems closer : )
Also, how else do you expect me to judge the faction, the faction colour annoys me, the sound of their name annoys me? ; )
@@MelkorGG well for example I think the egyptians are quite annoying because by they time you reach them they've got quite a large empire which allows them to field far larger armies. Conquering them can be a bit of a drag too given their wonder. Gaul's cities don't provide much money so although the first victories aren't that hard fighting them wil either be slow or will drain your resources. The germanic tribes can be annoying given all the ambushes their terrain provides (also I don't like forest fights).
I'm not saying that this is how it should be but these arguments do cover more than one unit. Cheers mate!
Ai phalanx: soldiers can turn around in one second and drop their spears. My phalanx: is just standing there facing the enemy, I tell them to drop spears before the enemy charges them, ENTIRE UNIT HAS TO PLAY MUSICAL CHAIRS FIRST! Gets charged before phalanx is down. Dies
In order to avoid this, when you need an emergency "spears down" you press Stop then immediately the spears down command. If the unit is facing the enemy, they will get some spears down, it won't be pretty but it will do.
If you hate fighting chariots, you'll love hoplites. They instakill chariots. It's crazy. And every faction can recruit mercenary hoplites.
I thought the Seleucid would win, having elephants, phalanx and damn chariots
They have the best Army if you don't consider the Roman factions but they have a bad starting point, being surrounded by enemies.
They would probably make the top 5 if anyone ever fought against them late game, but that just doesn't happen.
I wonder if you can manage to get the AI seleucids big by playing a faction close to them.
Like playing as Egypt and not attacking them, maybe even leave Sidon and Jerusalem free for them to take. Idk, they would probably still get crushed by Armenia, Pontus, Parthia and the greeks but it'd be an interesting experiment.
howie lowis interestingly enough, in my Macedonian campaign they are doing surprisingly well. The reason for this might be that Pontus attacked me early on, losing most of their army, then naturally Armenia decided to conquer weakened Pontus, after that Egypt tried to invade my territories in Asia Minor so basically most Eastern powers were fighting either me or among themselves, not bothering with the Seleucids.
Parthia is hell to fight with the right (or wrong) units, it just rarely happens with the AI.
Horse archer spam, cataphracts and elephants together are just about invincible. They make mincemeat of the Romans.
The worst part about chariots is the AI is better at using them than I am.
Egypt, Egypt, and Egypt and not for reasons that you would expect. I hate that Egypt so easily takes out the Seleucid AI which could have been a great faction to fight in the late game. Egypt usually takes out Parthia as well. It gets annoying just fighting Egypt and usually Pontus in the East.
I hate the Spartan hoplites, they Never die.
Get missiles.
Fighting WITH elephants are the real pain in the ass. They are randomly go on crazy and destroy your own army. Bahh.
Fax but to ensure that wouldn’t happen while playing the Seleucid’s I would just have my elephants charge first then my and cav and then a line of chariots and when my infantry met up with the aforementioned units I’d have my elephants retreat. Also anything fire related i ran from
Missile cavalry is devastating for a reason. Especially if they are archer cavalry.
There's little counter for it aside from your own archery but you are guaranteed high casualties no matter what you do.
This is kind of historically accurate. The most successful armies on the planet relied entirely on this method of warfare... in the cases of the Mongols, literally damn near every man, woman, and child understood horseback riding and archery. And still do.
Much like in the Total War series, the only downside of them is that most cultures in the "civilized world" didn't utilize it to the same extent and it was kind of a niche means of fighting because of how difficult it is to have to combine archery and horse-riding, both of which are already difficult to learn on their own.
Any army that brought such units to a battlefield would have a small number of them and while they are dangerous, they'd likely run out of ammo before they can kill everyone... much like in the game.
But if you get a full stack of them like the Scythians can or Huns in BI and you are kind of unstoppable on field battles.
Realistically, the selucids should be the most annoying but they get absolutely dogpiled and never amount to anything. However, elephants, phalanxes and chariots make for armies that would be insane late game. They just cant get there
Agreed
You see, I LOVED the Seleucid campaign for that very reason. It was so fun to save them from the "dogpile" so to speak! Plus your early units are absolutely TERRIBLE. The way I did it was thus:
1. Build up a strong defensive line against Egypt, as they are obviously your greatest foe, so you have to play slowly, steadily and VERY CAREFULLY against them.
2. Play a war of attrition against Pontus and Armenia to the North. Their forces can catch you off guard if you're not careful, so you have to be prepared for strikes out of the blue and gradually wear them down/ capture their cities in the mountains.
3. Take out Parthia as QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. They are an absolute thorn in your back, so doing so will free you of your other dangerous enemy quickly, and will make sure you are safe on one side.
4. Don't declare war on the Greek cities until you know you're very safe/ they're nearly dead themselves. Their cities in Asia Minor are quite hard to take, and you need trade partners anyway.
5. When the Parthians (in Persia) are down, take your troops to help against Egypt and in the North.
6. Once you get access to Archers, Phalanx and Silver Shield Pikemen and the better Cavalry Units (plus Elephants), you are going to absolutely WHIP Egypt's ass! I absolutely relish the moment you capture the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Pyramids! So satisfying.
7. So yeah, follow these steps and you will have the WHOLE of the Middle East under your control! And the most incredible, diverse roster of units in the whole game, as well as Armoured Elephants and Silver Shield Legionaries!
8. Then it's just the slow, steady slog against the Romans...
Don't forget about Cataphracts too. I'm playing Seleucids now and the thought of crushing Egypt is what's keeping me sane early game lol.
It’s really all situational. If you’re playing as the Julii, the Brutii will invariably be the hardest faction to beat and vice versa just due to location- by the time of the civil war either faction can cut out wide swaths of the others less defended areas. In nearly every other campaign against a faction, you are able to consolidate your forces and basically make counter-attacks impossible.
IMHO Armenia has a tougher army than Parthia if allowed to build unchecked. Way tougher because they have higher tier infantry and better cav archers in Cat Archers. They do start off poor though so they likely won't be too much of a threat though. AI Armenia and Parthia are no problem.
Yeah people tend to overestimate Parthia whereas actually Armenia's roster a lot more useful (Cat Archer's basically a tank in the game and Heavy Spearmen spam is better than Eastern Spearmen spam)...
I fully agree with you about Scythia, I remember doing a campaign as a kid where Scythia had taken most of Greece and I (as the Brutii) kept throwing full stack armies at them and losing the lot
when dealing with missle cav use artillery and archers etc to deny them the distance so you can barrage them in to dust.
My no. 1 are the Britons mainly because you can't auto resolve when they have generals in their army. The AI just thinks their chariots are capable of destroying an entire army. I once put out 3 beserker units and 1 merc cavalry against just one general and it was a crushing defeat! When you fight it yourself it's an easy win.
Id put Scythia at 1 because the missile calvary is so annoying but still well done.
Recently found this channel and loving it Subed :)
Also I know its late to vote but I say Egypt for my number 1 so annoying!
I'm not quite sure why everybody's so hung up on Missile cavalry all you have to do is send a few light cavalry to Corner them
I usually used some cav, pretending to attack them to draw their fire, then turn and attack their infantry flank instead. A lot of times the enemy missile cav will use this to charge into your back. Once they are in melee combat they die quickly and if your cav managed to rout the charged infantry quickly, they will swiftly deal with those pesky horsearchers.
Yeah Egypt can be annoying but they gave me so much fun having 4v2 / 4v1 stack fights as Rome.
And no one called a REALLY the most annoying faction - REBELS! These bastards spawn everywhere at any time and never end! And I said nothing about pirates.
I have to super disagree with number 1, for a few reasons. 1. Egypt is usually pretty strong every time I watch them play. While the same can be said for Britain sometimes, it is far more often the case with Egypt, making them more dangerous. 2. I would argue that Pontus is even more annoying than Britain, they have the strongest melee chariots and missile chariots as well. Most of their cav is missile cav and they have phalanxes late game. In my Brutii campaign back in the day, they kicked me off Anatolia twice. 3. I think the bias you, me, and others feel is heavily dependent on the fact that all three Roman factions inevitably have to deal with an annoying faction, so I am not too surprised you chose Briton and Scythia seeing as your last campaign was the Rome in a day one from my knowledge.
@Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa That's why I said I super disagree, it's not that I don't believe he can have an opinion, I just disagree.
Egypt is pretty ridiculous because of all the chariots they can raise. They’re an obviously hard faction to put down. Pontus surprised me as they were hard to put down. They had incredibly strong chariot & skirmisher units. Their infantry had spair numbers.
Egypt is the first for me. Phalanxes? Check. Not very strong, but still. Chariots? Check. But still manageable. What drives it in the 1st place, however, is it's Pharaon's Bowmen. Elite Archers with good range and good damage and armor on top of that, so you can't chase them off with Light Calavary. Hell, you can send a General after them and lose him.
House of bruuti.
Greek cities: Hoplites every single war.
50 horses at full speed charges from behind but NOPE they dont insta kill any hoplite instead the hoplites turn around while under attack and pull their spears out like if the horses were made out of cardboard.
Thrace: A bunch of 1000 units that came out of nowere from one single turn and as soon as you touch one stack all of them they all flee the battle
Britania: The same as above but britania holds half of the north
Egypt: Chariots that do damage even if they are fleeting away
“First up is kArFaGe”
Phalaxes; the general unit has a morale bonus anyway so if there are more units, go for others first. Once i beat an entire phalax army with 3 equite units, by splitting them up to smaller unit groups until one unit is being left alone. Then you can encircle the loney unit with your cavalries, and if you do it right they might even start running before you touch any of them - well not sure about very hard level, maybe u have to touch them there cuz of the general morale bonus thanks to the level.
Ah, and that phalanx turning bug.. really anoying. It should be called a bug, cuz they are stand still, while their pikes are in the air, and not loosing even 5 men, while you are loosing half of your charging units. Cuz of this i always only charging while it seems like they wont have the time to lift up fully their pikes.
I never had that much trouble with charioteers, but that may be because I usually end up either taking the barbarians down quickly or because I start as one of said barbarians. Can't destroy me with OP chariots if you don't have time to build OP chariots. ;)
Cataphracts, on the other hand, can be like trying to stop a tank with a speedbump, so I absolutely understand the rage against the Parthians. I just bring archers to deal with missile cav. The heavier variety that can turn and thump you in melee anyway.
Wait if you wipe out the Romans before the reforms you won't be able to get the upgraded armoured general's bodyguard:O
I hear you can get them if there is a city in Italy that gets 24000 population.
Its so easy to dominate in this game with just about any faction that whatever the enemy brings to the battle is just irrelevant.
One annoying thing about chariots is that they kill your men when they die
When you charge into back of Spartans they have 2 hitpoints and you can take more damage then they do even if you are flaking with charge bonus
5. Egypt or Gaul
4. Egypt or Gaul
3. Egypt or Gaul
2. Egypt or Gaul
1. Egypt or Gaul
Honorable mention: Egypt or Gaul
DID I FORGOT TO MENTION EGYPT OR GAUL!?
Nice work! Any chance for a similar video being done for Barbarian Invasion? Because the Sassanids are right up there with all the most annoying factions from vanilla Rome.
Someday I will. I agree the Sassanids are certainly extremly annoying to deal with : )
Interesting.Based on my playthrough.I always feel that the EYGPTIANS were the most annoying because when I reached them.They were already entrenched heavily in the East.
#1. Egypt. #2. Numidia. #3. Pontus. #4. Scythia. #5. British + Elephant Nations. ( All of the missile calvary nations are super annoying in RTW). - They have your units running around the entire map. A battle that would have been a quick, and decisive victory is now super annoying all because of missile calvary that drags the battle on to what seems like ages more. ::::: Elephant nations are annoying to fight too cause you know that you have high potential in losing a lot of men trying to kill them off. You lose men by the elephants just falling over dead. - You hope your General units dont get pinched between them when fighting; cause all it takes is one elephant to fall over on your General to kill him which is a most unfortunate, disappointing, and ridiculous way to lose a General.
Those damn Britons and Germanic tribes are annoying as hell, each time I conquer what I think is their final city, another just pops out of no where, and not to mention the goddamn German pikeman. Back then when I first started I had to wait until the Marian Reforms to conquer the damn tribes.
XD I never have a problem with the Germans in Rome TW. Cavalry is the best option, even against their pikes if you get them in the back - from my experience, others will do it differently : )
@@MelkorGG To be fair, I started playing Rome Total War years ago as a total noob so I had no idea what I was doing for a fair while
Another reason to hate (AI) Egypt is that they never honour alliances, or even if you submit to being their protectorate. (In my experience)
The song around 2:40 sounds like a remix of the barbarian theme for Rome Total War, where can I get that?
It is the Barbarian Theme, not a remix. Here is where I found it: th-cam.com/video/12HXnYNA6Cg/w-d-xo.html
The part you are looking for starts at 47:03 : )
@@MelkorGG Thanks!
You forgot Spain and Thrace
Easy factions. Can remove them blindfolded : )
XD I just realised what you meant. Yes, I forgot to add them into the survey. However, I am sure that I did, I must just not have saved : )
Melkor, do you know of any way to play Rome:TW in hotseat mode? Considering (and i might be wrong here) thats its done on the same engine as M2TW, so maybe someone had ported it across somehow. Would love to relive this with my brothers, each controlling one Roman faction!
It is possible if you have a mod. It's discussed here: www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?128276-Hotseat-mode-in-Rome
Although I imagine it to be very buggy. Either way, good luck : )
Really you put the British on top because of their chariots. I'd rather fight British chariots instead of Egyptian or scythed chariots. Egyptians because they can fire arrows and scythed chariots because of how much damage that they can inflict in a charge.
I didn’t really understand what don’t you like about chariots and horse archers? They seem easy to deal with
I hate using missile units, I find them dull watch, personally. And so most of my armies are cav and infantry heavy, which do not do good vs chariots. : )
@@MelkorGG Ah, so it a problem of mentality then. Just bring a few archers and target explicitly anything ranged and mounted while your infantry does it job/screens them for a bit until you've softened the enemy up enough.
Missile cavalry; early general units in pontus or parthia - if you have them they are weak, and running out of ammo really soon. If they are agains you, you can’t catch them, they are fking strong and doesnt running out of ammo. Bahh. I hate them
Egypt isn't that bad. Once you know how to beat them they are very easy.
I never had a problem with Britain! I just used to overpower them with my legions and heavy cavalry. Most annoying for me , was Egypt. Because they always, like ALWAYS managed to conquer all the east until the middle of the game and because of that were able to pull HUGE amount of money by which they were able to hire unlimited number of armies, sometime I just need to wait until 50 a.d to be able to conquer at least Asia minor from their Hands! (Of course when I was playing for Romans), but if I was playing for anyone else, then Romans are most annoying, because they were able to conquer half of the map until 100 b.c! And worst of all, they ain't fighting with each other so they can left 0 number of legions for the protection of their city's, by that concentrating HUGE number of legions against you!
p.s they are unfairly OVERPOWERED and economically, and technologically, also have most strong/balanced army units in the game! The good part of this game, that you can modify other faction's like I used to do, to make game more interesting.
I'm destroying them atm as macedon
Seemingly endless Egyptian armies rolling west from Siwa, over and over against my Scipii. I know what you mean.
@@Anaris10 I used to fight them playing by Brutii, the most interesting campaign out of 3 factions.
Armenia, scythia, and egypt are my top 3 most annoying factions. Missile troop spam, especially cavalry missile troop spam is annoying and guarantees you will lose so much of your infantry you have to wait for reinforcements
I was expecting Numidia with there skirmishes & Jav Cav and/or Egypt with their tougher Bronze Age units & chariots
I hate always going against a big empire of British and Egyptians later in the game.
in any game, I don't mind using missile cav but i hate fighting factions with missile cav
Enjoying the microphone :-)
I really HATE Brittons. But not because of chariots, they could be easily destroyed by any unit, if you sent 2-3 units one one chariot squad. I hate them be because of killers. In every game I fight them they literally wipe out one third to half my generals and governors and I can’t do anything but wipe out Brittons
The Britons are annoying with their chariots... But they melt to Germanic Spear Warbands thanks to the fact they can form phalanx.
Will never forget the pain of trying to invade late game Portugal in twm2 like on the field pretty easy but for me sieging a town was a war all on its own didn't help i spend half of my money on gothic knights and two handers
Why spend all your money on the 2 most disappointing units in the game? just some dismounted knights for a siege and all will fall.
I really didn't hate especially playing against any faction especially, but I know that I was pretty hateful playing as Pontus (I was an expert using its skirmish cavalry, its units were OP).
Ok, dont hate me, last comment;
So yeah I totally agree with egypt on top, its because they have so many good units, and always using in their armies mixed units. And cuz of this you cant just use one hammer and anvil tactic to take down the entire army, but you have to mix up various tacticts to win. One battle is alwasy fun with them. But then you realize that they still have like 7-8 another armies like that. Ahh, same type of battles. Again. And again.
But why are the romans on the top? They also has a lot of armies, but with some infantry units plus like 5 cavalry units you can hammer and anvil them down really easily, its quite fun. Not like egypt. Or greeks with their endless porcupine. And they have nothing else but that.
i really dont understand your hatred of the chariots, they were always the easiest thign for me to kill, if fact they were so easy i prefered to fight them over regular cav, it only takes one melee hit to kill them after all, so send a unti of regualr cav after them and the chariots melt
Pontus is very annoying to face. They have pikemen, melee chariots but being more eastern than the seleucids they have also access to missile chariots. On top of that those heavy armoured Cappadocian cavalry.
I thought you might go for Numidia because I know you dont like fighting in Africa, it takes ages to walk through their land, they have missile cav & elephants! xD
Bonus Points: Can anyone name the 2 "Other" factions NOT included in Melkor's poll?
Correct, they are certainly annoying. They could easily have made it onto this list, but they are usually destroyed, mostly, by the time I get there, unless I play as Carthage. : )
Which factions did I miss?
Numidia don't get elephants in their normal unit roster. They do have access to the war elephant mercenaries but their economy is so bad they often can't get them
Well in my latest cathage campaign those sneakys bastards took my capital by force
Spain and Thrace
Yes! :D Spain and Thrace, neither are particularly annoying though.
Tanks of the ancient world.......with basically no dense.....and die instantly to a phalanx. Yeah, sounds exactly like a tank.
Any faction with militia cavalry/ horse archers
Most annoying faction for me is the Celts on BI, their scotti chariots are absolute garbage in a battle but they absolutely demolish anything you have on autoresolve.
My ranking:
Pontus
Armenia
Parthia
Egypt
Scyhtia
Also the greeks aint that hard to fight u can just flank them with light cavalry
In manual battles it’s anyone with horse archers, apply that to medieval 2 as well. But Romans are the worst to fight with auto resolve because it’s so in their favour
4:24 lol haha wtf as they catch em they just break xD
I loved to play sychia when I played back then... Good old time of rome total war..
As someone who likes to play as the seleucids, I think the most annoying factions are Parthia and Egypt. Parthians because they will siege your settlements with horse archers and You can't do much about it, except hoping that they will charge your base through the gates and you phalanx them to death. And Egypt is anoying because they dont make any sense unit roster wise and because of the huge advantages they have against other factions.. annoying shit faction :p Too bad the seleucids are so weak in rome total war vanilla version, the realism and darthmod version and the rome 2 version are OP so in a way it balances out nicely :p
Well they suck early game but I honestly classify them as the "waking the sleeping dragon" faction.
If you allow them to "wake up" (reach their late game units) they become one of the most powerful factions in the game. You probably know that though.
No mods has ever had them survive for me.ive tried killing Egypt for them giving the insane money with cheats.they just lose
@@courtlycard6556 you need to invest heavily in pikes, and play very defensively in the beginning. You need their late game strength to overcome the egyptians. Also missile support is needed. But it all depends on how heavily you are focused on by the other factions..
@@jonasjanssens25 oh I do fine playing them I meant left to the ai I've never seen them live once which is disappointing
@@courtlycard6556 yeah that's true.. they always fall as one of the first..
British is nothing...Egypt has chariots that by miracle are fast moving and can't panic😒😒😒.The Romans aren't that difficult to handle early on, but later when have a ton of troops, and I mean a ton, it's just not worth the time and effort to deal with them...The Scythians with light cavalry are easy to handle, you just need more cavalry, and since they are poor and with 2-3 cities at most, and need to move far away from their cities, you don't have to fight them at all, you just block their way with forts and when they attack you move for their towns...
Chariots are overrated
*Underrated
Anyone else notice that he is using Internet Explorer? Ew....
At the time, that was the only one that could run withotu lag. Bad laptop.
I was up against horse archers once. But for some reason they decided to just charge into my pikes...
Haha exactly the same here, from last to first
I love how in almost every video, you throw out there that you HATE missile cavalry. I do too...especially those Egyptian chariot archers.. double EFFING negative.
If you hate missile cavarly, then you must love testudo
Gotta do whatever you can to make chariots panic with flaming arrows.
The first rule of fighting missile cav, do not chase them.
vs chariots and missie cav, u need a lot of missiles of your own.
Is this just for multiplayer or singleplayer? Also gimme discord link the one in about page is expired
Just Single Player Campaign. I never do multiplayer so would not know for that : )
Melkor: I HATE missile cavalry!
Me: Hrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnnn
For multiplayer it depends on the matchup but the matchups against Armenia/Parthia, Scythia, Egypt/Pontus and Britannia are the worst for me.
Suprised nobody picked Spain cause they have bloody Bull Warriors
You must hate me then, cause i love missile cavalry and chariots. Use some weak units as bait and then rain arrows into the pocket
Egypt & schytia
Where are you from?
Northern England : )
The British auto industry goes vroom.
fighting rome can be a pain yet fun it just depends how much you like fighting 10 or so stacks hours on end as for missle cav i do okay i play the slow tank so they just about run out of bullets or get out shot by my long range archers when i start chasing them don't like using them much they dont like working for me for some reason they do their own bloody thing when i move them around (s mood off) and they die sigh
I knew #1 was Britannia as soon as I saw #3. Even Caesar lost to them due to their chariots.
Missile cav are easy. Beat em with archers!
Definitely Thrace(not even an option)
Flaxmen right?
Egypt
But for being bronze age Egypt xD
so men do you hate missile cavalry ?
In the only campaign I've done so far Carthage was crippled so early on they never got a chance to develop elephant units. And at this point I don't think they'll get the chance. Their still hanging on at this point, but their only settlements are in a worthless village in Africa and a few towns/cities in Iberia. Apparently they've teamed up with the Scipii to crush the Spianards at this point. Oh well, the Scipii can ally with as many useless factions as they want at this point. I've already taken about half of their holdings and the rest will probably be easy pickings.
Yeah dealing with spear lines is a real headache if you tend to rely on cavalry. And I definitely like to field a large amount of cavalry in field battles in order to quickly flank the AI. So, I've definitely lost my fair share of horses against the Greeks. Even with me playing the game on M/M at the moment.
And I've taken more then my fair share of losses against chariots. It's why I'm probably going to fire bomb the next Egyptian city I take with onagers in order to get rid of them before I try to seriously capture the place. Even if it means accepting another defeat.
Sadly, I haven't gotten far enough into my fist campaign to face the Scythians just yet. I'm definitely considering it though since it seems they've wasted most of their troops trying to take out Armenia. So, I may have an easier time then I expect at this point. Though, I imagine my conquest of the area will be rather slow since I'm in the middle of the civil war at this point.
Oddly enough Parthia is probably one of the strongest factions left in my campaign. Though strong is rather relative considering they currently only control six settlements to my knowledge.
Honestly my biggest annoyance with the British so far is they finished off the Gauls before I could.
british infantry is weak missile is weak? WTF
Good vid!
we do we do 0:04