If you want a fun challenge for this campaign then here are some of my ideas, you can use some or all of them: 1. Declare war on all factions you meet as soon as possible and remain at war all the times, no peace. 2. Enemy armies (except rebels) have to be attacked as soon as they enter your territory (next turn). 3. Recruit and retrain tier 2+ units only from starting provinces, for the rest you can only recruit only tier 1. 4. Mercenaries can only be recruited by the faction leader/heir and remain only in his army. Or all generals can hire mercenaries but they have to disband them next turn. 5. You can only fight manual battles if the army has a general, field army under a captain or a siege without a general has to be autoresolved. 6. You can only siege cities if you have siege equipment. 7. Enemy faction leaders have to be killed by your general unit. Keep up the good work, I enjoy watching your campaigns.
Gotta say, while I have been enjoying both campaigns and have watched every episode, I'm excited for the shakeup. I appreciate you keeping in tune with your audience. Hopefully you're still able to have fun while doing that.
I've watched all episodes of both campaigns. Speeding up the action a little and being aggressive is a good idea but, throwing inadequate armies into hopeless battles, not so much. If I want to watch a loser, I'll play myself.Try and find a balance.
I just recently found the channel and have been enjoying this campaign, and while I agree that it was starting to get a bit boring, I don't think this is the way to solve it. It was getting boring because there was no more need to play smart, and just choosing not to doesn't fix that. I would suggest adding restrictions, such as the "declare war on everyone" thing others have suggested, and stepping down the cheese. Declaring war on everyone achieves the same goal of facing extreme military odds, but it will still allow and force you to play smart, finding the windows of opportunity to advance in between waves of enemy armies. Archers are *clearly* insanely OP*, and having every battle be "just stay at range and shoot them" gets very repetitive, so I would limit the amount of them allowed. At least for me, TW is a lot more fun when playing with balanced armies. I want to see the infantry lines clash while the archers pick off key targets and the cavalry wheels around to kill archers or rear charge units that are facing away because they're locked in melee rather than because the AI is dumb enough to turn away from the melee cav. My normal recipe is about 25% range units (including artillery), 25% cavalry (including generals) and 50% battleline infantry. You don't have to stick to those exact proportions of course, but in my experience it produces the kind of pitched battles that the designers had in mind. In the beginning of the campaign you said that you weren't gonna be overusing horse archers, but at this point you seem to be recruiting every single one you get the chance to, and not hiring is more of a "they'll be more useful if they're hired in that other area instead" thing. They're insane killing machines and even more OP than regular archers, so I think severely restricting the number of them that you're allowed or banning them entirely would go a long way. There's been a lot of other good suggestions here in the comments too, so you can definitely take your pick of them, but at least personally I probably won't continue watching if you stick to the current approach. I watch TW content for the interesting strategy stuff, if that's not there then there's not really anything there for me. You could even simply declare the campaign won (it's inevitable at this point) and just start a new one in its place. * While it doesn't change the fact that the archers are insanely OP, I will say that the archers beating the principes was while the principes were completely exhausted and already demoralised from losing their general and a significant portion of their army, and the archers might have been getting +10 attack and defense from the generals command stars (not sure if it applies considering they were reinforcements, but it would explain a lot).
First up, I think the most important thing is that you play the way you want to play. Viewers will have their own preferences, but ultimately you need to do what you want to do. Otherwise you're just following whims, which can't be fun long term. That said, if you want to spice campaigns up, I think it's good to have an objective goal and/or a firm set of preconditions. It's difficult to play 'crazy' for a whole campaign, because it can actually end up ruining your initial objective, which was to win as Dacia. So something like 'no alliances, no peace, no mercenaries' might be an example of a list of conditions for winning a campaign, without having to play deliberately poorly. The best 'themed' play-throughs I've seen have had that specific set of preconditions attached. Some people do 'role play' campaigns where you can only play in the style of your faction leader, or only fight battles manually where your faction leader (or chosen character) is physically present, making all other battles auto-resolve. The nuttiest campaign I've ever seen was a Legend of Total War Med II campaign where he won the long campaign without technically winning a single battle - and yes, it was possible. That was pushing the game mechanics to the limit. Ultimately I think it's difficult to do a LOT of gimmick campaigns, it's more something to use as a specific challenge. It also depends on how many ideas you can come up with. But as I said, the most important thing is that you play the way you want to play, because you can't please everybody.
challenge based campaigns are the only way I can play at this point. Havent played rome tw in ages.. just installed it for a egypt campaign.. objective - conquer brits in less than 100 turns declaring war on anyone getting in the way... did it in 67 turns, and now i'll have hell facing everyone i've stuffed on the way.
All good things to keep in mind. It’s honestly a tough situation to be put in when the campaign is too easy. I think fighting on too many fronts is a good first step to figuring out a more interesting challenge in this campaign. I would love to get to a place of similar uncertainty to the Spanish campaign about 10 parts in where you have to fight against difficult odds. If I’m not happy with the results I’ll re-shake up the campaign and go from there.
an interesting role play could be Dacia having a political crisis once your faction leader dies. Many outskirt cities and internal units revolt and join neighbouring factions whilst your new faction leader was halfway to a Crusade in Jerusalem with the strongest units in your faction. Your new homeland is defenceless, your army is too far to help. Do you start a new homeland in jerusalem. Or race back to Dacia/Greece. Sorry, i had fun typing that.
@tdsniper215 well as a reference I tried a peasant only on Barbarian invasion with the Western Romans who are VH but played on easy. Manage victory pretty well tbh. I think with your skills on VH/VH it would be possible and very entertaining. I will attempt Medium/VH next and see how that goes
If you want a fun challenge for this campaign then here are some of my ideas, you can use some or all of them:
1. Declare war on all factions you meet as soon as possible and remain at war all the times, no peace.
2. Enemy armies (except rebels) have to be attacked as soon as they enter your territory (next turn).
3. Recruit and retrain tier 2+ units only from starting provinces, for the rest you can only recruit only tier 1.
4. Mercenaries can only be recruited by the faction leader/heir and remain only in his army. Or all generals can hire mercenaries but they have to disband them next turn.
5. You can only fight manual battles if the army has a general, field army under a captain or a siege without a general has to be autoresolved.
6. You can only siege cities if you have siege equipment.
7. Enemy faction leaders have to be killed by your general unit.
Keep up the good work, I enjoy watching your campaigns.
Gotta say, while I have been enjoying both campaigns and have watched every episode, I'm excited for the shakeup. I appreciate you keeping in tune with your audience. Hopefully you're still able to have fun while doing that.
Glad you’re enjoying the campaigns! I don’t think it’s a perfect solution but I want to keep it fresh :)
I've watched all episodes of both campaigns. Speeding up the action a little and being aggressive is a good idea but, throwing inadequate armies into hopeless battles, not so much. If I want to watch a loser, I'll play myself.Try and find a balance.
I just recently found the channel and have been enjoying this campaign, and while I agree that it was starting to get a bit boring, I don't think this is the way to solve it. It was getting boring because there was no more need to play smart, and just choosing not to doesn't fix that.
I would suggest adding restrictions, such as the "declare war on everyone" thing others have suggested, and stepping down the cheese.
Declaring war on everyone achieves the same goal of facing extreme military odds, but it will still allow and force you to play smart, finding the windows of opportunity to advance in between waves of enemy armies.
Archers are *clearly* insanely OP*, and having every battle be "just stay at range and shoot them" gets very repetitive, so I would limit the amount of them allowed. At least for me, TW is a lot more fun when playing with balanced armies. I want to see the infantry lines clash while the archers pick off key targets and the cavalry wheels around to kill archers or rear charge units that are facing away because they're locked in melee rather than because the AI is dumb enough to turn away from the melee cav. My normal recipe is about 25% range units (including artillery), 25% cavalry (including generals) and 50% battleline infantry. You don't have to stick to those exact proportions of course, but in my experience it produces the kind of pitched battles that the designers had in mind.
In the beginning of the campaign you said that you weren't gonna be overusing horse archers, but at this point you seem to be recruiting every single one you get the chance to, and not hiring is more of a "they'll be more useful if they're hired in that other area instead" thing. They're insane killing machines and even more OP than regular archers, so I think severely restricting the number of them that you're allowed or banning them entirely would go a long way.
There's been a lot of other good suggestions here in the comments too, so you can definitely take your pick of them, but at least personally I probably won't continue watching if you stick to the current approach. I watch TW content for the interesting strategy stuff, if that's not there then there's not really anything there for me.
You could even simply declare the campaign won (it's inevitable at this point) and just start a new one in its place.
* While it doesn't change the fact that the archers are insanely OP, I will say that the archers beating the principes was while the principes were completely exhausted and already demoralised from losing their general and a significant portion of their army, and the archers might have been getting +10 attack and defense from the generals command stars (not sure if it applies considering they were reinforcements, but it would explain a lot).
First up, I think the most important thing is that you play the way you want to play. Viewers will have their own preferences, but ultimately you need to do what you want to do. Otherwise you're just following whims, which can't be fun long term.
That said, if you want to spice campaigns up, I think it's good to have an objective goal and/or a firm set of preconditions. It's difficult to play 'crazy' for a whole campaign, because it can actually end up ruining your initial objective, which was to win as Dacia. So something like 'no alliances, no peace, no mercenaries' might be an example of a list of conditions for winning a campaign, without having to play deliberately poorly.
The best 'themed' play-throughs I've seen have had that specific set of preconditions attached. Some people do 'role play' campaigns where you can only play in the style of your faction leader, or only fight battles manually where your faction leader (or chosen character) is physically present, making all other battles auto-resolve.
The nuttiest campaign I've ever seen was a Legend of Total War Med II campaign where he won the long campaign without technically winning a single battle - and yes, it was possible. That was pushing the game mechanics to the limit.
Ultimately I think it's difficult to do a LOT of gimmick campaigns, it's more something to use as a specific challenge. It also depends on how many ideas you can come up with. But as I said, the most important thing is that you play the way you want to play, because you can't please everybody.
challenge based campaigns are the only way I can play at this point. Havent played rome tw in ages.. just installed it for a egypt campaign.. objective - conquer brits in less than 100 turns declaring war on anyone getting in the way... did it in 67 turns, and now i'll have hell facing everyone i've stuffed on the way.
All good things to keep in mind. It’s honestly a tough situation to be put in when the campaign is too easy. I think fighting on too many fronts is a good first step to figuring out a more interesting challenge in this campaign. I would love to get to a place of similar uncertainty to the Spanish campaign about 10 parts in where you have to fight against difficult odds. If I’m not happy with the results I’ll re-shake up the campaign and go from there.
Great work with the shake up. It definitely would have gotten stale. Well done.
Thanks! Had to do something to spice it up :)
an interesting role play could be Dacia having a political crisis once your faction leader dies. Many outskirt cities and internal units revolt and join neighbouring factions whilst your new faction leader was halfway to a Crusade in Jerusalem with the strongest units in your faction. Your new homeland is defenceless, your army is too far to help. Do you start a new homeland in jerusalem. Or race back to Dacia/Greece. Sorry, i had fun typing that.
I like that idea! I was thinking of something like that when the faction leader dies, so we may try it out :)
Peasants ONLY Challenge 😃
Hahah that would definitely be interesting on very hard!
@tdsniper215 well as a reference I tried a peasant only on Barbarian invasion with the Western Romans who are VH but played on easy. Manage victory pretty well tbh. I think with your skills on VH/VH it would be possible and very entertaining. I will attempt Medium/VH next and see how that goes