Total War is riddled with Player Traps
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ต.ค. 2024
- If you want to send me your disaster campaigns email it here. totalwarlegend@gmail.com
Please only send campaigns on the verge of defeat or battles you can't win. Auto resolve wins won't be accepted. Modded campaigns are not currently accepted. Please only send campaigns/battles on large or ultra unit scale. Normal and small unit scale will not be accepted. Not currently accepting Realm of Chaos campaigns/battles.
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Came for disaster battle, got a legend coaching session instead
with a little embezzlement tips on the side. Banger vid lol
At this point every battle is a coaching session with legend
There’s never a disaster battle with dawi zharr at the helm
Legend is like "Ah, here's your problem, you have too much army, too much money and your defenses are too big"
he truly is the Grey Seer of Total War
that's way too accurate lmao
That Kislev's tax evasion was an icing on the cheesecake.
18:35 that is FUCKING hilarious that the AI goes from "ey gimme your money or we'll bonk ya" to "e's poor, let em go"
Tax evasion
Master Strategist: The enemy is coming, build a mighty fortress
Legend: nope, send one guy to the enemy, do tax fraud und why are we not Skaven ??????
yes yes! no play as filthy no furs!
The hiding money thing was my favourite part.
followed by the skaven laugh, so perfect lol.
Ya works well.I have had games with so much money friendly factions would ask for some when doing deals even if I could refigure the same agreement with them giving me money.
>be Legend
>delete army
>go bankrupt
>???
>win
the dynamic difficulty encourages bad tactical choices and bad player choices.
its a huge problem with many games that use it.
basically, giving the ai cheats and having an extrmeley simple criteria for ai protocols means bad tactical choices that should end your playthrough actually cause the ai to become worse and make even poorer choices.
in short, play well and get punished, play badly and get rewarded.
its why i say ca is BAD at strategy games. 😂
Legend, I'm sending in an Empire Swordboy doomstack.
Doomedstack
tell da boyz to get rouse up dem allbirddeers and dere pointy stickswords!! humiez is sending in dem swordboyz....
If you could somehow get a 17 stack of carrorburg greatswords…
@@Dusto-qz1hz it was already done
I heard is as Empire soyboy stack, and well that's how they performed in that game.
times and times again this absolute chad proves why there is "Legend" in the start of his name
@@Kas-p4pyou are the reason why legend does his little mocking voice 🤣
@@Kas-p4p This one is actually funny tho. I think people missed the sarcasm.
@@DaleHodgkinswait what, can you send timestamp?
thanks for that player trap explanation. i had a feeling something was working against me in my campaigns and it was the garrison being built up and them sacking all my minor settlements instead
The fundamental thing to understand about the AI is that it will always try and attack your weakest point. Hence it avoiding your armies and strongholds to go on minor settlement murder sprees instead. That's one of the reasons why ambush stance and building ambush chance is so valuable.
This is why I only ever build strong garrisons in either A) choke points the enemy HAS to attack to get through or B) in particular settlements of value I want to deter the enemy from attacking.
@@nonesuch6833 You can not build a weak point then. Just install any garrison mod that give you a garrison unit with every building. Then build a militarry buildings specially on border territory/ settlements fragile to attack to make the garrison able to fight. That actually make settlement menagment harder but at least logical.
This game is just design wrong, its full of bullshit because thats the only way devs was able to make it hard. Thats not how you design a game and creative assembly is not a good developer, they exist only because of lack of competition.
The only faction I’ve noticed that doesn’t seem to suffer from this is dwarfs (chorfs are worse since their early game garrisons are just greenskin slave spam) and I’m fairly sure it’s to do with the AR favouring them a lot in general.
That’s why most campaigns they barely get touched by other AI races except greenskins or elves with magic and AP, even their minor garrisons get decisive victories against full stacks lol
Tww3 is starting to feel less like a strategy/tactics game and more like a scrying session to see what rules the ai plays by and what esoteric decision it's going to take. For example, why does Aranessa insists on forcing Repanse(player) into a goose chase around Araby while ikit claw destroys her settlements in Tilea unopposed ? (Without using any doomrockets because those are reserved for the player only.)
You're starting to see the world through Tzeentch eyes.
Simple, cuz Ikit isn't the player character so she just thinks "fuck you in particular". I had an Oxyotl campaign where I had a vision mission against Varg. I'm at the very bottom of the world while they are all the way at the top. For the entire remainder of the game, all they did was recruit a 20 stack of garbage and boat it all the way down the entire world to my coastline. They didn't fight anyone else on the way, the elves on ulthuan that they were at war with just completely let them go by unopposed, and while they COULD have simply attacked the empire factions they were at war with (which were all right next to them) they didn't. Why? Cuz they weren't me.
There's an in-game reason why, which is that the AI actively targets the player strategically, and when outmatched in autoresolve will run as far as possible. So it leads to strange contradictions like that.
The reason why the game is programmed this way is a result of CA being a dysfunctional developer that has trapped itself into making campaign AIs that aren't really fun to play against. They have more or less kept the battles fun, but have not been able to make the AI competitive, so in compensation they have resorted to making the campaign AI force players into outnumbered battles as often as possible.
You could have done it easier.
Proceeds to delete own army.
Ok, now we can win.
F#@%ING LEGEND.
I think one of the bigger traps in TW games is the idea that you want territory.
Like, okay, don't get me wrong, there are a lot of benefits to painting the map (and this varies by faction/lord as well), but development takes investment and owning lots of land means having lots of neighbours, and lots of neighbours means lots of enemies, which means lots of wars in all directions. Especially early-game, far-reaching landgrabs can turn your empire into an indefensible money-sink.
What I've found to be much more manageable is... selling land to other factions. When I play Elspeth, I only keep like a handful of provinces to myself, and everything else I acquire, I trade to Franz. He makes for a great buffer (hostile factions generally don't wardec you unless your direct borders are relatively close to theirs) and makes a lot of money, so selling land to him is both more beneficial to my diplomatic flexibility, and more instantly profitable than building up settlements for passive income.
I like to do the same when I'm playing Vampire Coast. I don't need any cities that aren't ports, and I have absolutely no desire to fight a bunch of irrelevant landlocked people, so I always try to cosy up to the most blobby non-pirate around and trade cities to them whenever I need quick cash.
And the way that selling a city to someone makes them instant friends for life.
total war real estate manager
This lecture had my 100% attention, unlike my professor at uni.
Thanks legend
You should pay attention at school bro
Eu?
Something to note about siege battles as a player. the siege equipment also counts quite heavily in favour for the player. I've had sieges that gave me a decisive defeat turn into a close victory because I waited 1 turn and build a siege tower. I checked to see if the attrition had any effect, by reloading and not building siege equipment. but the auto resolve stayed the same in that case.
I think with sieges the auto resolve takes into account how easily your forces would breach the walls. But doesn't seem to realize that ladders are basically just as good (if not better) than siege towers.
Good point. I will now make a ton of battering rams now so I can auto-resolve more sieges since they are often boring
I like to build a Tower and A Ram...then use them as Decoys while I send ladders up in a few places.
Ironically, diplomacy is often a very big trap as well. If we make a non-aggression pact with a faction, all the other factions that dislike them will dislike us further, which might be just enough for them to declare war. If our faction is strong enough, weaker factions will not declare war on us, so we don't need to care much about them. If we get a non-aggression pact with a faction, we are often stuck with a faction that don't like us enough for further diplomacy. Eventually we will want to attack them, meaning that we either wait at least 10 turns to declare war, or break the agreement raising the likelihood of getting attacked by every other faction that dislike us.
If the faction likes you, they will not declare war. So no need for non-aggression pacts. If they dislike you, they will break the non-aggression pact if they are stronger than you anyway. If they are weaker than you, they will keep you stuck on the non-aggression pact and maybe a trade agreement but never much more than that. Of course, playing as humans or dwarves, diplomacy is often useful for confederations. But for the vast majority of factions it isn't.
Non-aggression can be a helpful warning that you are about to get dog piled if you are at the very beginning where enemies always outnumber you
@@flopus7 Yes. We have to be careful as well, that the races they dislike will dislike us even further due to the pact being created.
@@flopus7 The moment I realized how broken diplomacy in total warhammer is, is when I finished the main quest of Throgg. It was back in Total Warhammer 2 when norscans couldn't occupy settlements in the mainland. So I had to make sure there was a massive line of armies constantly razing every single settlement in the area and destroying every faction that could be capable of settling on it.
I had several dozens of armies in the map due to the 80% upkeep reduction in frost trolls. Everyone had red standing with my faction. But somehow, they were still sending me requests for military alliances. Since I was the enemy of their enemies with a massive army ready to crush them, they were sending requests for military alliances every turn even though I was crushing them.
@@rumplstiltztinkerstein Praise the "Decline Diplomacy" mod
I think a better example of the noob traps is using ladders to climb walls. The unit is considered running the whole time they climb the ladder, so by the time half of the unit climbs the wall they are tired and have reduced stats as such.
Didn't know this. Explains why there is siege equipment and no obvious reason to use it
Old man in wheelchair bullies several Imperial armies into submission all on his own, while shouting "I already cast Hell Hammer several times and I might've lost track of my winds of magic in all that excitement. So you got to ask yourselves one question: Do ya feel lucky, PUNKS?"
The worst offenses to me are the fact that A.I. "allies" constantly try to drag you into wars if you have an alliance with them. They can break alliances and suffer no diplomatic penalty, but if we the players do, we get very low reliability. I'm also still irked by how the A.I. is immune to attrition damage practically. What's the point of corruption or plagues if the enemy armies take 1% attrition damage per turn? It's obnoxious.
And the fact we need to use mods just to fix that nonsense. Bethesda moment.
My favourite recent camping was playing the dwarfs. Specifically belegar. I ignored the starting province and took Slavenblight, where I chilled for 30 turns. Only having one settlement became better and better through the deeps mechanic. I followed up slowly expanding into his normal starting province. And after that into athel Loren, building my deeps up evry time. At around turn 60 I sent belegar with a strong army to karak eight peaks and took it. Then I snowballed out of control due to upkeep reduction. That was one of my craziest campains yet. The best thing was the greenskins ignored me the whole time. I was surrounded by Grom and the dude that gives 10% physical resistance for defeating him, but because my armies
where small and I used my money on the deeps evry turn they just left me be until I was unstoppable. I stoppen playing the campain later on because All my armes were basically free and I got bored. :)
Warhammer 2, when you're the High Elves and you start the rituals. Chaos and Skaven armies pop up in your backyard.
Warhammer universe has this. When you start messing with rituals, you usualy ends up with chaos popping in your backyard. So that is positive lore check
doing the rituals is another players trap. especially for high elves. just conquer the map. simple as that.
I had a really cool campaign I played with a friend, where we didn’t go after each others factions, but always took control of each others enemy armies. So even though the turn based was the same against the AI, every fight was 100% fresh and intense, because the army is controlled by the other person. Lots of fighting, lots of laughs and cranks the difficulty to 11! I would love to see legend do a campaign like this.
I don't think that "Most" player traps are by design.
Regarding the siege thing, the devs probably didn't consider that "autoresolve boost for siege = AI takes siege more seriously = AI brings overwhelming force" and as a result they won't give the player a reasonable, fulfilling showdown.
That said there are a good number of intentional player traps in the game - Quest battles in particular are heinous for this.
Khalida's quest battle - its a chokepoint battle, where immediately the enemy flanks you with multiple armies.
Thorgrim's first quest battle - you can set up within an area in the middle, once you finish deploying you're immediately flanked by armies on both sides.
Katarin's Crystal Cloak (?) quest battle....it's literally a Tzeentch ambush. If you bring a conventional army to this fight you'll be cooked alive before you can shout BS.
Not to mention that these generally become available when your lord is like what, level 6? You've just taken your first province and you're expected to fight a late game battle with bad instructions?
They either want to make quest battles a late-game thing or somebody on the Dev team has a sadistic sense of humour.
Whole diplomacy mechanic is one giant trap. You can get in so much trouble if you don't understand it. And game doesn't help you with it :(
isn't that just every quest battle? you just sit there wondering when the bullshit army is gonna come in from nowhere.
I found Alarielles quest battle to be the hardest I ever fought. And it is also quite a trap.
Hellcannons on a hill to the left encourages to send your flyers and cavalry there. Norsca army with mammoth to the front encourages you to form a front line with your melee units and to put your ranged units behind.
That is challenging and occupies you alot to micro the Hellcannons which are guarded by chosen with Halberds.
And then with no notification a reinforcing army of chaos knights comes in from behind and slams into all your ranged units. It is the hardest buttfuck I ever got. Usually quest battles say a short message when reinforcements come but in this case they dont.
@@colonelthyran7755 Crone Hellebron has one of the most bs quest battles as well. You're encouraged to spam witch elves (obviously anti infantry with low armor piercing) in the campaign, but then one of the quest battles throws you in vs a tag team of dark elves with arty on both edges of the map, ranged units and heavy armor halberds; and then the beastmen army has chariots and anti infantry monsters; and it spawns you right in a pincer where you're ALREADY within the enemy's arty range and 10 seconds from getting rushed by the beastmen. You can't even run to either edge of the map without sacrificing half your army. Literally the best way to fight that one is to recruit anything BUT witch elves just for that specific quest battle.
@@ezkiller93I get by that by...never recruiting Witch Elves. I don't like that type of unit. Don't care how good people say they are, ECT. I don't like micro intensive glass cannons that aren't even that good of a cannon.
he could ve also just put slaves into the province to instantly build the garrison building as an alternative. But Legends strat is obviously the better 1
I would love to watch a whole video on player traps across tw games
90% of TW games, the player trap is melee sword infantry, and diplomacy :P total war games loves archery and artillery.
I've never played Attila myself, but I remember Legend saying something that gold mines (or possibly other income buildings) generate money and corruption. The trap is, the increase in corruption is more costly than the increase in money beneficial.
18:11 jokes on you, my economy is so bad I can't even recruit more armies!
I kind of experienced this too with Helman ghorst zombie stack armies. The zombies and magic punch upwards SO hard compared to their cost and balance of power, I've had it where a 10 stack of zombies are constantly challenged by 8-16 stacks of dwarves and empire armies that stand zero chance of winning and I see the AI as just feeding me free money and raise dead options.
I don't think the AI consider massive regeneration and mortise engine life drain as very high in the balance of power when in reality they are more useful than tier 5 units. That small stack of zombies with Ghorst buffing them can roam around and suck up all the enemy armies like a vacuum.
This is the real power of the Ghorst doomstack. Sure, it's near unkillable in a 1 on 1 fight like many great doomstacks, but the main benefit is the low ranking the AI gives it. Every single AI army throws itself on the pyre one after the other. The AI never runs away and never gets help from extra armies. It chases you down as fast as possible and dies on contact. The quadruple army that catches your doomstack at half-health is just not a thing that happens to fake chaff armies, but a legion of steam tanks may be unlucky enough to deal with that.
The biggest player trap in Shogun was playing Hattori. 😂
Hattori are the strongest clan in the game. Kisho training is just that good.
@AvengerAtIlipa doesn't change the fact that it's a player trap for "new players". Initial challenge: Normal, my ass. It's like starting on the hardest difficulty in a game.
@@AvengerAtIlipa What good does it do most of the time? I know that it helps in 2vs2 and bigger mp battles to stack one half of battlefield to steamroll single opponent using advantage in numbers but in single player?
@@AvengerAtIlipa tell me you didnt play the game without telling me u didnt play the game lmao
Legend, i have been watching your videos exclusively to learn, i never ever comented once, i dont ever give likes to any videos.
But this is easily your BEST video, exclusicely by explaining this extremely important concept for new and struggling players that no one else seems to show a spotlight in their guides.
Please i beg you, add this to the common lexicon of your videos and community. Got my like, my subscribe and my gratitude for this.
About player traps in the Quest Battles. One of the empire lords, don't remember which one, used to have a battle (or maybe even still has) where you would deploy literally on the edge of the map, and then without any warning, the enemy would just get cavalry reinforcements right in your rear. I've never called out bullshit faster than that in my life
Realm Divide in Shogun 2 will kick you square in the nuts if you're not ready. However, Realm Divide in FotS works in the player's favor if you stick with your allegiance. Half the map will become your "allies" (although they don't ever actually do anything proactively) and the other half will align against you. Or you can choose to be independent if you want to fight the whole map by yourself and without some of your best agents.
The biggest player trap is defensive/military allies. The game actively tries to screw you over by your allies declaring war on someone next to you that they can't even attack. So it's either declare war on someone you don't want or get bad reliability.
You mean military allies? Cuz defensive allies only calls you in if someone else is attacking them, not if they attack others.
@@LordVader1094 I mean both. If you have defensive allies then enemy factions will declare war on your ally forcing you to join the war.
And with military allies they can be attacked and declare war on other factions to screw you over.
@@HardcoreSalmonDefensive allies can sometimes work, if you have common enemies that will declare on you anyway
Indeed, I've been hosed and gone from max reliability to minimum because of allies. I'm very careful about taking alliances of either kind now.
That's why I don't alway accept allies. I only accept those that behave and those that I actually need to protect myself. And those aren't the ones that ask you to become allies. I have to buy them with settlements.
I feel like the benefit of defensive garrisons is literally just the AI's hesitance to attack a settlement, if it's high value enough. IE, building a garrison to preserve your landmark building you wanna hold, or so on.
I love it when Legend explains the game like this. There was so much I didn't know.
Some of the info can be applied outside of video games as well.
Thanks for this video. This kind of "player traps" are the kind of thing that really alienates me from TW3. I wanna feel like a part of a bigger world, and this completely ruins it for me.
These are not here intentionally but accidentally, it would be the same as complaining about how the AI always want a decisive victory and not to give you an epic fight.
Total War games are not about epic adventures in a world, if you want immersion in campaigns, this franchise is not it.
@@Thedefenses You are a game dev with years of experience and 100's of employees and multiple patches and you can't fix player traps that have already been solved by mods 2/3 of the time? really? Great excuse...
@@Thedefenses i've played total war games for over 20 years, and i can tell you, i fucking hate these player traps, and bullshit. it makes the games into cheese fests. i purposely play with mods that i made myself to emulate the older total war feel. elephant spam in rome II? GONE. defensive lines not being very defensive? how about boosting defence. everyone running all over the damn place and destroying the ability to think tactically real-time, and making flanking useless? fuck that. now you can actually focus on the cav micro, while being confident that your lines will hold just long enough for you to deal with enemy cav if you are skilled enough.
@@MsArchitectschannel If they are not intentional and more a side product of the way the game has been made, there is nothing to fix.
In this case the player got fucked due to being in a defensive fight while his army was fucked, that´s not a bug or error you can fix, that´s just what happens when you get yourself into the situation.
Player traps are not always due to some design but due to player playing the game in a certain way which causes them to make those traps for themselves.
@@Dejawolfs Never had any of those problems but each to their own.
Also, paragraphs my good sir, use them, putting all that into a big block makes reading it cancer.
One big player trap is a faction's starting enemy. I've found in many campaigns it's to your advantage to get peace with the starting enemy as quickly as possible so you can focus on the real threats before they have time to gain a foothold.
Edit: Oh, you mentioned that later. :) At about 28:00.
Yeah, I ended up running into Archaon's big boy army playing as Durthu with stacks of Treekin & Dryads. I think there's also something to be said in regards to player traps for having more entities (i.e. having units of 100 instead of 16/32, etc.). I find that the lower ones are significantly better in most cases because they don't really suffer from nukes, anti-infantry spells, anti-infantry units, and even anti-large ones if you have an AOE healer (which I did). I ended up thrashing Archaon after he nuked half my army of Dryads (I had them all stacked, didn't care about the Dryads because I wanted to replace them with Treekin anyway before he attacked me) with only 6 units of Treekin, Durthu, and a healer spellcaster flying around dodging artillery shots.
Easiest playthrough of my life, definitely don't want to go recruiting masses of 100+ entity units now.
Watching Legend play this game is like watching a clown perfectly snake out a clogged drain with a balloon animal. You're certain it can't work and then suddenly it does.
The lack of defensive siege battles are my biggest problem with total Warhammer . love a good siege defences , especially in older Total wars. and they just dont happen in this game. atleast not big ones. major problem in my opinion.
I just started playing this game recently, so this was really helpful. Thanks.
I want to add tot he 'never starve out' that sometimes besieging is the right move still.
An example is a typical skryer army with a lot of ratlings and Jezzails. They are terrible to get into walled settlements, prone to having LoS issues and terrible pathfinding. But on an open field? They are deadly.
So, what do I like to do is to besiege while appearing weaker, and bait them into a sally out (either directly, or by sending another small army over), so that I can massacre the garrison. To be fair, there had been bugs where the completly killed garrison units revived fully, but I think they hv fixed that one.
Another point is, that siege equipment gives a lot of balance of power. Sieging for 1-2 turns may turn a phyrric autoresolve into a close one without any of your units getting wiped out. Which can be useful for said Skryer army that is a real pain to play in a siege (even though the AI really sucks at defending a siege as well, tbf)
glad even as bad as I am I can understand how this goes wrong. I never thought of walled fights as a trap in this game, but now I cant see unsee it. thanks legend.
I remembered in Shogun 2 the army thing was actually an opposite, you didn't want to look weak. When I lost an army because I lost a battle hard. I would find myself at war with all the neighbours since they saw me as easy target.
Edit: Haha, yea... that not what you meant. :D
Game: sets up a player trap
Legend: pulls and Uno reverse card with Astrogoth and sets up an AI trap
solo Astrogoth would be so easy to kill with some outriders, or with kislev slow spell and streltsi.
The one player trap i learned in my first campaign is that if you accumulate a lot of cash everyone who gets money from raiding and sacking comes for you. Always spend excess gold. Having high income is less of a trap as long as you spend the money.
Thinking back on my Skarsnik campaign, he really benefits from TWW3 terrible siege design. Having a limited roster I used skulkers with flasks to climb walls and backdoor objectives while the dwarves focused on my gobbo fodder.
Today I had a psuedo-sally via an ambush outside of my minor settlement. I lost but he backed off and I saved a Supreme Sorceress. It felt pretty rude to have my doors kicked in by Valkia and Mung simultaneously on turn 17. Probably because I took Ghrond relatively early.
Cheers thanks for the video, a lot to think about and apply to my campaigns.
Thanks to CA that can't design their games I recomend mods that removes or midigate that player traps. i dont played shogun 2 yet but removing that stupid mechanic mod will be the first I instal before my first campaign. In warhammer 3 you need a garrison upgrade that actually can win in a siege - not only on paper in aouto resolve. There is planty mods for it. Need to test and pick up something that fit you. Greater garrison by zorbaz or dynamic garrison with full settlement strength is what I tested I stayed with the later. It help with a defense but harm the attack - AI also have better garrisons - thats fair though.
Funny enough in S2TW Realm Divide is quite liked as reasonable mid-late game challenge. Enemies don't spawn of thin air and you have quite a degree of control of how you approach that problem (with exception of diplomacy). Also within it players would probably win even quicker and thus see even smaller part of technology and infrastructure (as you never fill tech tree in short campaign and waiting before RD is often that big investment time in economy while not fighting). Also defending castles in S2TW not only feels great but is real force multiplayer (I had battles when my full stack defending castle was able to win against 3 stacks of enemies in long and epic battles; that were happening every 3-4 turns).
@@Sanvone Like I said I didn't play shogun 2 so maybe I will find a mod that... modify that mechanic instead of disabling it. I dont know yet. I will interest in it when I start playing or after first unmod campaign. All I know that shogun 2 is preaty good game and worth trying. Thing is total war games eats a lot of time. Specially warhammer 3 when you play on HDD so a lot of other games or tv shows you miss playing another campaign. So It will take my a bit before I start with with new total war game.
@@kapixniecapix3869 I have 1.200 hours in Shogun 2 about 90% in vanilla. There is a charm to figuring out the real intent behind some design decision instead of just cheesing the game in easiest way. S2TW just has that loop of: initial expansion - playing tall - starting final phase of game. Also while you play against everyone, map of Japan is one big string of chokepoints so you avoid cat&mouse gameplay from newere titles. Personally it works out for me and people I tutored into Total Wars in Co-Op campaigns. I encourage trying it at least once after knowing it is coming.
I have some good news for you - Shogun 2 has short victory condition that requires you only to have slightly above half of the smaller than wh3 map (it is 25 or 35 provinces IRC). It was the last game where campaigns weren't such a drag (Rome 2 had... basically world conquests no matter which victory condition you picked).
WH3 traps I experience.
-Declare war on weak faction early game, the other surrounding faction will flank the player.
-Capture and expand cause more enemies and even a passive neutral will declare war on player's back.
-Disband army, that will weaken the strength rank will trigger AI to declare on player on the early game.
-Most traps trigger on early game and make it a lot more challenging than on the mid-late game make the game often boring about 80+ turns for me.
I thought this was gonna be some bs after 9 minutes of nothing really, but holy shit did it pay off. I love this dude
I think that Kahlida of the Tomb kings has a trick start. You can fight the first few fights as normal, but if you then head north and focus on fighting the vampires, Thorik Iron brow gets very hard and will declare war on you at about the same time as the lizards, putting you in a two pronged war. Instead, if you ignore the vampires after getting the first two settlements and go straight for the dwarves while the orcs are still fighting them, you can get rid of him by like turn 10-15. I was actually inspired by Legends Ten turn vampire wipe for Gelt, before they moved him to Cathay, when I tried this.
Then you have a really strong start. You have the full mountains and can kill off the orcs really easily, then go focus on getting lamia back, either from the vamps if they still have it, or from the Kroc-gar. Either way, you now have two provinces and only one real threat, Kroc-gar. Sometimes Skarbrand gets involved, but dont be afraid if he declares war on you. That doesnt mean hes gonna come straight away, hes just a khornite. Ultimately, you can have a good three provinces, by the time most starts would only have one full one, or maybe two.
i think i just got caught in a viewer trap...
The approach I typically take for number of armies is to have two armies per frontline. One strong army that can usually handle just about anything, and one to support them in case the enemy brings a bit more to the field or to dissuade attacks on weak positions. I only bring more than that if I am facing more than one or two opponents on a single frontline. I also get myself a couple allies to limit the number of frontlines I have (thus reducing the burden on my economy). So far in my clan mors campaign Skarbrand and Tretch have made for useful blockers to my south and east while I focus my forces mostly north and south.
this video was worth the time to watch just for that "hide the money" trick lol
Great little warpstone nuggets of knowledge dropping here. Thanks dude
its like that story of the guy with no army sitting on the wall playing a flute, except the flute can summon a volcano and the guy is secretly riding a mech
I can’t wait for the next Terminator movie to star Legend outwitting Skynet by disbanding most of the military and stuffing everyone’s money in his mattress.
Very educational video. I've been playing for over a thousand hours and I'm alway learning new stuff.
Recently had a series of tough fights as Oxyotl, but thanks to Legend, i had faith in myself and in my troops enough to dismantle and defeat several hectic chaos stacks! Thanks Legend, you're the best!
As you pointed out, I think siege battles are absolutely the best example of this. Walls are useless except for sometimes slowing down armies that don’t have siege equipment. Another example of a player trap in Shogun is how useless a lot of the walls in the upgraded castles are. It is almost never worth it to defend the outer layers at all, while shoving all your unites into the keep yields consistent results.
I once heard it said of Realm Divide: it's the moment the AI stops pretending it doesn't hate you.
Sometimes you just want to play thematically or more realistic. Hold the quest battle high ground, build normal forces etc. But if you need some quick cash cheese a quest battle, frustrated at a powerful enemy or deep in a campaign and dont wanna reload use these efficiencies. Its always how ive thought of these tips and i dont get the ragebait oh legend just cheese - you giving the players tools its our choice where and when to use em
When the Helms Deep moment traps you in to wanting to stay and fight
Yea, the tank Lord's are in a league of their own - Ungrimm, Malus, Malakith, Archaeon, Vlad, etc. They take a seperate force altogether to take on on the battlefield.
I actually laughed out loud when you soloed those empire armies with Astragoth. Somehow it feels very warhammer for a Lord to take on a whole army and win though.
Yea, something I sort of dislike, but also understand when it comes to basically all strategy games; Defensive strategies are nerfed by how effective they Should be-based on logic and how the real world actually works-in favor of hyper aggressive strategies.
Partly, this is due to the nature of games; The main negative of hyper aggressive strategies is that they really only fail when you lose. However, in a game, losing is only a temporary setback. At worst, you start over, and do it again but better. In reality, obviously you've only ever got the one chance.
Partly, it's due to the nature of players; Defensive strategies tend to work best over a longer period of time, because investing in defense is almost always a static improvement-walls stay built once built-but offense isn't-soldiers require pay and upkeep regardless of if they're fighting, but in the short term can become unfit if they're not constantly training, or grow old and die in the long term. Players tend to prefer exciting action over more passive gameplay, so defensive strategies are discouraged by game mechanics. Players don't like to use them, and they also don't like playing against them (when they're as effective as they should be).
Total War also has no win conditions for "Sit on your base and make an unassailable wall." Everything, from your starting missions of "Go smack them for 500 quid" to your tech unlocks (what, you going to demolish and rebuild all your buildings so you can fulfill the tech tree requirements?) to even the "unify your starting province" mechanic FORCES you to go on the offensive
Other games can have more defensive & attrition-based strategies (eg: AOE2, starving out your unit's expensive gold-costing units; Into the Breach, you often win if you just survive enough turns) but TW is built on expanding, expanding, expanding, expanding
@@Zeldrake Which is more aggravating, because they have an entire diplomacy system-and an entire campaign set dedicated to making use of it-but no diplomatic routes for just "My economy is strong and my walls are unassailable, be my friend"
What a topic :)
TW players from my experience fall into defensive mindset of "Muh Thermopylae!" and are not aggresive enough. The question in those games is never - "Will you win?" but "How quickly and easily can you win?" As the other commenter already said - defensive strategies are only there to enable offensive strategies. With removal of population mechanic and more in-depth economy enagment you are not out-macroing anyone so much that you can stay on the defensive and win. "Go big of go home" is the name of snowball games. You don't really need to out-macro AI and you are probably not out-macroing another human opponent (because such players are few and far between). Defensive strategies also don't work in MP FFA - they are just answer to "Rush" strategies but fail miserably against "Bloom" strategies. Even then - aggresive players can expand often elsewhere and now of sudden your enemy has 2 players worth of economy against your 1 worth of. Lastly the problem of defensive strategies is the static nature of it. Once you build fortification you are not moving them. Unlike army that is the main investment of aggresive player. So they are long-term deals (I say it because there are too many people building walls up for 10 turns or shorter).
What is bizairre that across years I keep encountering this failure on strategic layer of understanding defense within TW community. While on tactical level everyone and their mum is using hammer&anvil strat, on campaign map few utilize shield&spear strat. So make small holding forces in defensible position (less than 10 units) that will hold 3-4x as many enemies forever then throw 90% of forces to roll other enemy in the meantime. It works best in older TW titles where there was recruitment pool but even in newer titles you are saving time cause you can keep auto-resolving on the offensive instead of having to both manually resolve defense and offense. Fortifications are force multiplayer yet they need only small crews as AI will keep barely enough people to win in it's opinion.
@@Zeldrakeeh Dwarfs now in warhammer 3 can totally do the set on one or two provinces and fight from there with their deeps mechanic which turns even the most worthless settlement into 10k gold a turn.
@@jarlwilliam9932 sure, but if you expand as the dwarves, you can make 100k a turn from 10 settlements. i ended up with 200k a turn at turn 100 as dorfs :P and just pumping out army after army after army...
In RTW1 and Med2 the Player Trap is Auto Settlement Management, because more often than not, this feature build building and recruit units you don't need and bankrupt player at the end of the turn. Player better off just manually manage settlements once understands the gameplay mechanic...
Like how you talk about player traps. I never build defensive structures in my settlements. In fact I use my settlements as a trap for the AI, luring them into ambushes when the AI thinks it has an easy settlement fight on it´s hands. The only time I build defenses is for Dark Fortresses as Warriors of Chaos.....then the AI focuses on taking the minor settlements which don´t matter at all.
15:20: Okay, I got a problem with this analysis on several levels:
1. Strategically speaking this is what you WANT. The point of the walls is to make them try to starve you out. Your strategy for a walled settlement needs to consider having a relief force nearby to break the siege.
2 The point of a walled settlement is not to force them to fight a strong garrison, obviously they will only choose battles that they can win, and siege out settlements. When you fortify a settlement you're buying time to send a relief force
I discovered this early days of wh3 playing Slaanesh was closing portals with a herald of slaanesh and 3-4 cultists was winning all the batles and levelling all the characters. completely rolled the campaign with exalted keeper of secrets and 5-6 cultists AI constantly under estimating the army
This is very interesting. I did not know what I was signing up on while downloading TWW and later buying most of my fav factions in TWW3. Clearly, the game is much deeper than I anticipated.
Using a single unit to obliterate armies is a skill you learn in TW 3K.
Play Lü Bu, send him into 10k non spear infantry and get him hiome withb 10k heads in carts and maybe a little cut
Hey Legend. Have you ever seen the Dominions' games by Illwinter? a favorite of mine, worth a deep dive. Cheers and thanks for the great tips and entertainment (never played total war before but it peaks my interest)
Dominions games are crazy fun with what goes on in them, but the barrier of entry is a mountain climb unlike any other. I don't imagine someone getting into them on a whim, although with how much Legend blazes through Total War games at this point, it could be an interesting step up the complexity ladder.
Also, I don't imagine there would be a comparable audience for videos about those games, sadly.
@@Bakecrusto yah there good games. wasnt so much recommending vids, just wondering his thoughts on the series or if hes seen it ; dom is a hard game to make watching fun lol
The problem is LegendofTotalWar is a player trap because he makes it look so easy as he is a great player! (Noob after watching him) full of confidence gets backside handed to him, because you still need the skill and awareness that only an absolute legend has! 😝
maaaan. you just had to remind me of my first Realm Divide like that. biggest fucking nightmare of playing strategy. First time playing a Total War game too. and i was bloody Takeda as a cherry on top. No Takeda Fire Cavalry for me as they weren't released yet. Smack Dab in the middle of the map. made vassals to the East, West AND South. then Realm Divide fell on my head. didn't get full map completion by the 1600s when the game "ended" and the timer reset back to 1545 when the game starts.
In real life also forces almost never send more than a 70% strength vs 30% strength. It weakens you elsewhere, troops feel like it's a massacre, 'overcommits' you, and is reallllly humiliating when you lose.
Thus if you can make 80% of force look like 30 you win great heroic victories.
Thanks for the video Legend, I kinda realised that siege battles are a not the best way to sped your time but your other examples made me understand AI a bit more!
Note to self: If I ever use that free copy of Shogun 2 they gave out years ago, remember to go EXTREMELY tall early on to avoid the player trap.
i'm glad i watch all videos that Legend posts. So many interesting nuggets of info!
I wonder if a decent change to the siege attrition is to make it so that instead of units taking damage it would be the walls themselves. Overtime the walls will be damaged and potentially create breaches. Perhaps there can be a hard cap for this mechanic such as only up to %50 damage (Although from my experience the walls are trivial by that point admittedly).
Also if the previous mechanic of attrition only happening after 4 or 5 turns, maybe some factions could have the instant attrition as part of their mechanic or for certain lords. A great example that comes to my mind is Nurgle, making it so that they can instantly cause attrition (if that seems too much, perhaps a new plague effect could cause this instead)
More videos discussing player traps could be cool, since there are so many of them. Another one I can think of, is that forming alliances will get you dragged into wars
"when strong, appear weak" remains unintuitive
I think Attila by far has the most player traps. Building military buildings feels like a player trap half the time.
I'm just starting to try and play this series. I would 1,000% capture a settlement at a chokepoint to try and defend the inner areas, because I know my war history!
18:17 25:55 learn how to do embezzlement with Legend lol
God I miss the old sieges. I just need functional walls that my ranged units can shoot properly from. And siege equipment needs to be built faster.
Some of my most fun fights as a kid playing Medieval 2 or Rome 1 was because of that grace period when encircling a city and having that 2nd AI army show up. I’ll push the garrison off the walls in a bloody fight, position my archers on the wall and set up blockades to fight the 2nd army and any remaining dregs of the garrison.
Maybe I’m just washed up, but sieges feel wrong to me now. I just can’t derive any joy from fighting the AI in sieges.
I remember trying to do walled defensive battle at first and getting all pissy about how enemy single entities can just ignore all your forces to go capture points on their own
Legend of Total Ted Talk... That tip on avoiding being threatened is gold.
Everything about this scenario is great. The poor AI had no idea what was happening.
All this makes sense, but also a perfect example of learning more about the game's less obvious quirks and systems, to the point that it's no longer fun and it just feels like cheezing your way through it. Not learning all this will make someone enjoy the game a lot more.
At that point you take a break and try new games. I reached that point several times, but after a few months I forget all the bs the game has and start a new campaign.
I don't think anyone is going to watch this type of video before playing their first campaign.
Found the "But Legend..." guy :D
That one is for the Hall of Fame of Legend's tutorials!
ok, i never heard about these kind of player trap systems in the background.
that something is happening is clear, mostly in regards of the size or mapcontrol. there the diplomacy points are falling down like nothing^^
the shogun stuff is nice to know now.
i already noticed that it is most of the time better to fight outside of the castle or fight or even attack him.
Legend of Coaching!
This stuff i find super good to know. Like a lot of this info just... doesnt make sense without logic to back it up and/or is never explained by the game itself. Having like a Legend coaches on X thing in the game, would be super fun to have alongside a battle review (though i know disaster battles is what the masses and algorithm likes, its fine to just have them being sprinkled around!)
21:05 that blob was begging for mortar strike
Walls are supposed to be a positive force multiplier, and CA has almost completely removed that from TW sieges. Compare that with Medieval 2, where walls are actually incredibly powerful.
Never played shogun but that mechanic reminded me of another wh2 player trap. Sounded just like the entire Vortex campaign mechanic lol
good old money hiding makes the Rome 1 nostalgia go brrrr.
I bounced off Shogun 2 because of the realm divide. I was fully expecting war with the rest of Japan. However, two vassals declaring war on me miles behind the front made me alt-F4 and stop playing. Whilst I've gone back to it a bit since, I don't think I've ever finished a campaign.
The easiest way to avoid them is save scum. Eventually you'll hone in on those critical decisions that you made 30 turns ago and learn from it. I normally treatbit as lesson learned, time to roll another campaign
this was the most unexpected win here. great video